Mystery Melange

The annual Edgar Awards banquet was held last Thursday, with Best Novel honors handed out to Lori Roy's Let Me Die in His Footsteps, making Roy only the third author to win Best First Novel and Best Novel during their literary careers. Best First Novel for 2016 went to The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (who also won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction); and Best Paperback Original to The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney. Walter Mosley was also honored as the 2016 MWA Grand Master, and his acceptance speech titled “Acceptance" was a highlight of the evening. For all the winners in the various categories, hop on over to the Mystery Writers of America website.

Also this past weekend, Malice Domestic announced the winners of the 2016 Agatha Awards, including Best Contemporary Novel:  Long Upon the Land, Margaret Maron; Best Historical Novel: Dreaming Spies, Laurie R. King;  Best First Novel: On the Road with Del and Louise, Art Taylor (Henery Press); Best Nonfiction: The Golden Age of Murder, Martin Edwards; Best Short Story: “A Year Without Santa Claus?” by Barb Goffman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine); and Best Children’s/Young Adult: Andi Unstoppable, Amanda Flower.

BBC arts reporter Vincent Dowd delved into the popularity of Nordic crime novels and how they have influenced British crime writing and television dramas. As author Yrsa Sigurdardottir noted, there is a long and complex relationship between what's now branded Nordic Noir and the English-language tradition of crime-writing, while critic Barry Forshaw (who published a book about Nordic Noir in 2013 and also a guide to the UK equivalent), added that "The links between the two traditions are quite involved."

Ian Rankin, the creator of the bestselling Inspector Rebus novels, is set to be the Unesco City of Literature visiting professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in September of this year, contributing to contribute to seminars, lectures, and tutorials.

The publication The Diplomat profiled "Bangkok noir," and how Thailand’s capital has become home to a vibrant community of writers exploring the city’s vast underbelly.

SelfMadeHero just released a "graphic biography" of Agatha Christie, written by Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau and illustrated by Alexandre Franc, which uses Christie’s infamous disappearance as a way into her life story. Marintetti and Lebeau will discuss their new publication and Christie at the Institut Francais in London on May 11.

Speaking of Agatha Christie, have you ever dreamed of taking your own trip on the Orient Express?  Here's your chance, sort of: the legendary long-distance train will soon be brought back to life to coincide with the Cannes Film Festival, as the historic Pullman railway carriages rolls into Cannes, Bordeaux, and Paris's Gare de l'Est station as part of an exclusive pop-up restaurant overseen by Michelin three-star chef Yannick Alléno.

To mark Independent Bookshop Week, Guardian readers chose "The 10 best independent bookshops in the world" from a bohemian Parisian temple of reading to a bookshop with hidden animals.

The April/May issue of Suspense Magazine includes Q&As with Katherine Neville, John Gilstrap, Alex Berenson, Joe Hart, S.G. Redling; Barry Lancet and Kendra Elliott offer up helpful writing tips in Craft Corner; Jeff Ayers takes you "where no man has gone before"; plus, there are over 20 pages of book reviews, short stories, and other articles.

The second issue of Crime Syndicate Magazine is now available at Amazon and is "full of variety with noir stories, transgressive stories, stories about betrayal and lust, heist stories, rock and roll stories and, surprisingly, baseball stories."

That was the happy crime magazine news; the sad crime magazine news is that Editor Todd Robinson announced that Thuglit's next issue will be its last. The move is due to financial considerations, but the final issue will be chock-full of stories as Robinson includes as many qualified story submissions still in the pipeline as possible. He hopes to have the final Thuglit edition up by the end of May. In his video announcement on Facebook, Robinson made a valid point that bears repeating - he has been receiving far more submissions than subscriptions. If writers want to continue to have markets availble for their stories and readers want to continue to have access to those stories, they should be willing to subscribe to and support the few remaining 'zines that remain. (Another good reason to join Sisters in Crime, which recently announced that members will receive discount subscriptions to several publications.)

The featured crime poem over at the 5-2 this week is "Uncashed Tickets" by Bill Baber.

In the Q&A roundup this week, Laura Lippman chatted with The Columbus Dispatch about her writing, her settings, Tess Monoghan and more; author Lily Gardner stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss her Lennox Cooper mystery series, and OMN also welcomed Josie Claverton to chat about her series featuring hacker Amy Lane; the Mystery People snagged Ace Atkins to talk about his latest novel, Slow Burn, in which Atkins continues the investigations of Robert B Parker’s Spenser; and John Hart (the only author in history to have won the Edgar Award for consecutive novels) chatted with The Hartford Books Examiner about his newly released Redemption Road.