Mystery Melange

This year's list of nominees for the Left Coast Conference's Lefty Awards have been announced, including the Lefty for Best Humorous Novel honorees: Donna Andrews, Die Like an Eagle;  Ellen Byron, Body on the Bayou; Timothy Hallinan, Fields Where They Lay; Heather Haven, The CEO Came DOA; Johnny Shaw, Floodgate; and Diane Vallere, A Disguise To Die For. For all the categories and finalists, check out the Mystery Fanfare site.  The 27th annual Left Coast Crime Convention will take place in Honolulu, Hawaii, March 16–19, where Faye Kellerman and Jonathan Kellerman will be honored with Left Coast Crime Lifetime Achievement Awards.

The Center for Fiction in New York City's next CFA Master Class will be with Scottish crime author Ian Rankin on Tuesday February 7, 2017. Rankin's Inspector Rebus series turns 30 this year, and he will delve into his decades of experience writing the series and crime fiction in general as part of the class.

Fans of the historical mystery TV series Miss Fisher should take note:  a new convention, Miss Fisher Con, is headed to Las Vegas' Vdara Hotel from May 4-7, 2017. Events will include discussion sessions, a costume contest, scavenger hunt, and more. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

Miss Fischer fans (of the TV series or the original book series by Kerry Greenwood) may also be interested to hear that Tin Man Games plans to release the graphic novel Miss Fisher and the Deathly Maze later this year.

Congrats to the new chairman of the Crime Writers' Association in the UK, Martin Edwards, in what also happens to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of his joining the CWA. The organization hosts several events each year, as well as advocating for authors and sponsoring the prestigious Dagger Awards. Edwards is the first person to hold that position and the presidency of The Detection Club (founded in 1930 by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and others) simultaneously.

Author and editor Paul Brazill announced that A Twist of Noir is back and seeking stories of 1000 words or less in any genre as long as there is a crime and noir theme. Meanwhile, the new website is up with some stories to tide you over. (HT to Sandra Seamans.)

Former HLN host Nancy Grace has launched a new crime news website called Crime Online, which bills itself as an "intersection of crime-reporting and crime-fighting." Grace’s new digital media venture includes a podcast and will allow readers to engage by providing their own input and theories.

Washington Post book reviewer Maureen Corrigan took exception to the recent spate of suspense books with "girl" in the title, adding that "When an old dame like Jessica Fletcher displays more sang-froid in confronting the psychopaths of Cabot Cove than most of these girls do in routinely opening their refrigerators, perhaps it’s time for less malady and more moxie in female suspense fiction."

One of the fictional stars of Spanish crime fiction, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s gourmand private eye Pepe Carvalh, is getting a new case in a novel by Carlos Zanón. Zanón takes up the story line of Carvalh thirteen years after the death of Montalbán with the blessing of the author's family and publishers.

As the Agatha Christie commemorations continue (from 2016) for her 125th anniversary and also the 100th anniversary of Poirot's debut, Emily Temple compiled a list for LitHub of "30 Essential Crime Reads Written by Women in the Last 100 Years" In honor of Dame Agatha.

If you'd like to explore the works of female crime writers even further, the Mystery People's Molly Odintz compiled a list of fifty such mystery novel titles.

The Strand Magazine put together a list of the "Top 8 Mysteries set in China," selected for historical and social interest.

If legal crime thrillers are more your thing, Peter Manus profiled the genre and picked his "favorite lawyers in crime fiction."

It's amazing what people had the time to do before television and the Internet. As an example, check out these "40 Hidden Artworks Painted on the Edges of Books."

The featured poem at the 5-2 this week is "You Tell Me" by David Spicer, and the latest story at Beat to a Pulp is "Creepy" by Alec Cizak.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People welcomed Richard Newman, whose Graveyard Of The Gods made their list of the Top 5 Debut Crime Novels Of 2016, as well as author Tim Bryant (author of the P.I. Alvin "Dutch" Curridge series), and author Mette Ivie Harrison; and Jeffrey E. Seay stopped by Omnimystery News to talk about his latest thriller featuring NCIS Special Agent Ruben Carver.