Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association announced the shortlists for the 21st Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Fiction. The awards celebrate the best in fictional crime and true crime by Aussie authors, with the shortlists drawn from over seventy five entries across three award categories. The finalists in the Best Crime Novel category include Marlborough Man by Alan Carter; Under Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher; Redemption Point by Candice Fox; Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill; The Lone Child by Anna George; and The Student by Iain Ryan. For all the finalists, head on over to the ACWA website.

The Wild Detectives bookstore in Dallas will be holding a Noir at the Bar event tonight (August 2). Join the crew for free crime fiction readings out on the back porch from Kathleen Kent, William Dylan Powell, Opalina Salas, Michael Bracken and Michael Pool.

Suspense Magazine's summer issue is out, which the editors are calling the "Author Issue," with over a dozen interviews by the likes of Anthony Horowitz and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. Crime and Science Radio jumps off the air and into the issue with D.P. Lyle and Jan Burke talking with Marcia Clark about "Judging Evidence." Dennis Palumbo writes "What's so bad about good notes?" Plus there are the usual pages of reviews and original short stories.

Writing for The New York Post, Larry Getlen singled out his choices for "The 25 best thriller books of the summer."

The UK libraries released a new list of the most borrowed books. Figures showed that U.S. thriller king James Patterson has kept his title as the most borrowed author for 11th year. In addition, all ten of the top titles are thrillers, with Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train topping the chart for the second year running, followed by several books by Lee Child.

Best-selling author Lee Child once described Belfast as "the most noir place on earth," and now a local crime writer is starting a walking tour which explores the city's influence on some of the darker elements of television and movie drama. Simon Maltman is partnering with Belfast Hidden Tours and have been collaborating over the last six months to fine tune the new tour, which launched recently and is running all summer.

In news from the life-imitates-art-imitates-life category, an acclaimed Chinese novellist—who murdered four people and used the memory as inspiration for his stories—was sentenced to death, 23 years after committing the killings.

Since I'm a huge math lover, I've always been fascinated by codes and ciphers (which figured into my third Scott Drayco book, Dies Irae). Writing for Crimereads, Gray Basnight gives us "A Brief History of Cryptography in Crime Fiction" from Biblical codes to Holmesian ciphers, to Poe's encryptions, and more.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Grooming" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, British author Ann Cleeves spoke with The Australian about calling it quits after eight Shetland books; the Mysteristas welcomed Katherine Prairie, author of Blue Fire; Criminal Element had a Q&A with Shari Randall, author of Against the Claw; and the Mystery People sat down with Wallace Stroby to talk about his latest novel, Some Die Nameless, and taking a break from his Crissa Stone series.