Mystery Melange

The winner of the inaugural $25,000 MysteriousPress.com Award was the action-packed heist novel by Mike Cooper, The Downside. Mysterious Press President and CEO Otto Penzler added, "We got some incredible manuscripts but in the end, Mike’s story was everything we were looking for: Fast, exciting, and well-written."

The Irish Book Awards’ Crime Fiction Shortlist was announced yesterday. The list includes: Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard; Little Bones by Sam Blake; Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent; The Constant Soldier by William Ryan; The Drowning Child by Alex Barclay, and The Trespasser by Tana French. (HT to Declan Burke.)

The recipients of the first-ever Whistler Independent Book Awards recognizing self-published Canadian authors were announced at the 15th annual Whistler Writers Festival Oct. 13–16. Ontario writer Gerry Fostaty won the crime-fiction category for Stage Business.

Cecilia Ekbäck has won the 2016 Historical Writers' Association's Goldsboro Debut Crown for her Nordic noir thriller, Wolf Winter, which tells the story of a vicious murder that threatens to tear apart an isolated community during the coldest of winters.

Coming up on November 5 in Paris, the American University of Paris is sponsoring a Noire is the New Noir one-day conference which will tackle the topic of the serie noire and the Franco-American detective tradition.

The deadline is approaching for submissions to the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First competition. If you are an unpublished author and have a cozy mystery manuscript lying around, send it along by November 15 for a chance to be published by Minotaur. Previous winners have included Donna Andrews and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Janet Rudolph has a listing of Halloween-themed crime fiction on her Mystery Fanfare blog so you can spare the candy and get both tricks and treats from some scary reads.

Did you know that Charles Dickens' pet bird inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"?

In another bit of macabre historical literary lore, the gun that the poet Verlaine used to shoot fellow poet Rimbaud is up for auction at Christies and may fetch up to €60,000 (about $65,000).

Author Ian Rankin (the Inspector Rebus series) chose his list of the best British thriller movies for The Telegraph.

Also in the spirit of Halloween, Electric Literature asked several authors—including James Hannaham, Lynne Tillman, and Teddy Wayne—to share their favorite scary stories.

Bookriot chimed in with "5 Halloween-Appropriate Books to Read If You Don’t Like Horror."

David Morell (the Rambo series, spy novels, and various horror works) joined Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! to discuss what he has learned in his more than four decades as an author.

Milwaukee Public Television is hosting Murder at the Mansion in January with mystery writer Jack Pachuta and the Milwaukee Entertainment Group creating an interactive murder mystery set in 1936 England after the death of King George V. Ask the suspects questions, explore the nooks and crannies of the mansion, then work alone or in a group and solve this nefarious crime.

James Lasdun profiled the "Genius of a Mid-Century Classic  How Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley Rises from Genre to Myth."

Author Tana French selected "6 mind-blowing mystery books" for The Week.

The Guardian's Ben Child scared up a list of "the most horrifying movie monsters of all time," from Alien to Nosferatu.

The ghoulishly delightful new issue of Yellow Mama is out, with plenty of "escape, poetry and some of the most macabre horror stories, ever."

The Mystery Lovers' Kitchen's Cleo Coyle will teach you how to make a Candy Apple Cocktail for Halloween.

Which slasher film killer are you? Take the quiz over at Criminal Element to find out.

This week's devilishly good crime poem at the 5-2 is "Cardboard Justice"  by Karlo Silverio Sevilla

In the Q&A roundup, BK Stephens discussed her young adult mystery novel, Fighting Chance, with Amy M. Reade; and Rob Hart sat down with the Mystery People to chat about his Ash McKenna series.