Mystery Melange

 

Naomi Alderman is this year's winner of the Baileys Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange Prize. The award is considered the most prestigious for fiction written by a woman and was given to Alderman for her futuristic thriller, The Power.

The Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense is named for Daphne du Maurier, the author of Rebecca, a suspense novel with romantic and gothic overtones and a precursor to today's romantic suspense. Presented annually by the RWA Kiss of Death organization, this year's Daphne finalists were named in the category of Mainstream Mystery/Suspense and various Romantic Suspense categories. Finalists in the Mainstream Mystery/Suspense category include Notorious by Carey Baldwin; Death Among the Doilies (A Cora Crafts Mystery) by Mollie Cox Bryan; Elegy in Scarlet by BV Lawson; Say No More by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White. For all the finalists (including those both unpublished and published divisions) follow this link.

David Schmid, Ph.D. received the 2017 George N. Dove Award for Contributions to the Study of Mystery and Crime Fiction. David Schmid, Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York), was selected to receive the 2017 Dove Award. The honor is bestowed for outstanding contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction by the Mystery and Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The 2017 IndieReader Discovery Awards were announced recently at Book Con, part of the annual BEA conference. This year's First Place winner in the Fiction category was the suspense novel Darkroom by Mary Maddox. The Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category winner was Geoffrey Visgilio for his novel, Switch.

The English Bookshop in Stockholm, Sweden, will continue its Nordic Noir Talks series with authors Anita Shenoi and Gabriella Ullberg Westin on June 15. Other upcoming events include Johan Theorin on July 6 and Christoffer Carlsson on September 14.

Crime fiction authors Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, along with Deborah Levy, are among those who were made new Royal Society of Literature fellows for 2017. The RSL will host a ceremony honoring all the new fellows on June 19.

On July 9, the next Mystery Writers of America's MWA University moves to the Mid-Atlantic area in Bethesda, Maryland, with bestselling author Jeffery Deaver anchoring a day of classes to help you take your writing career to the next level. Deaver's will talk about "Writing Commerial Fiction' during the three-hour morning session. Alan Orloff will also be on hand to discuss "Writing the Dreaded Query Letter," and Clair Lamb will talk about "Managing Your Social Media Presence."

Criminal Element and Putnam Books are offering one winner a chance to win a complete set (to date, A-X) of Sue Grafton's Alphabet mystery series, featuring private eye Kinsey Millhone.

As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, HarperCollins India is coming up with 25 of the best Agatha Christie titles in a special and limited facsimile edition format. These limited hardback facsimile editions have been reproduced from the first editions published between the 1920s and 1970s with the jacket and text of each title presented exactly as they had originally appeared in hardback.

Atlas Obscura profiled the "Cheap Thrills, Private Dicks, and Desperate Dames From the Heyday of Pulp Fiction" from the late 1800s to the 1950s, with a focus on the covers and illustrators.

Every wonder what police departments do with all the guns they confiscate off the streets? This video will give you an idea.

Cool idea of the summer: the New York Public Library's second annual subway reading promotion is called Subway Library and offers commuters six weeks of free downloadable books from the city’s public libraries. The ten train cars have seats that resemble books on a shelf.

Copies of John Grisham's first book are worth more than $4,000 ... if you can find one.

Good police sketch artists can help make or break a case when it comes to locating suspects. But things don't always work out perfectly as this slightly tongue-in-cheek list of "21 Worst Police Sketches Of All Time" will attest.

You may need a microscope for these, but they might be worth it.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Trump as a Fire Without Light #266" by Darren C. Demaree.

In the Q&A roundup, Elizabeth Foxwell spoke with Joan Hess, who completed the last Amelia Peabody book begun by Hess' late friend Elizabeth Peters (the pen name of Barbara Mertz); Stuart Neville chatted with the Irish News about AC/DC, Genesis, and Tom Wolfe; WBUR chatted with Dennis Lehane about his latest thiller, Since We Fell; the Key West Bluepaper had a Q&A with Mystery Fest Key West special guest author Randy Rawls; Cara Black joined the Mystery People to speak and sign her latest Leduc investigation, Murder in Saint-Germain; and the Seattle PI featured a Q&A with both Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin, co-authors of Normandy Gold.