Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime NorCal is sponsoring a Mystery Writing Intensive Workshop, October 6, in Daly City, CA. The special guest authors and workshop leaders include Jessica Lourey, Catriona McPherson, Gene Brenek, and Marla Cooper. The one-day event includes craft workshops and discussions geared toward writers at any stage of their journey, a wine reception, and even door prizes.

Belfast’s NOIRELAND International Crime Festival is switching to spring (March 8-10) for the 2019 conference and will once again take place once again at Belfast’s iconic Europa Hotel. Although the full guest lineup won't be named until November, the weekend event will feature interviews and discussions with some of the greatest names from page and screen. The October 2017 included a Line of Duty event with its BAFTA-winning creator Jed Mercurio and star Adrian Dunbar, author panels with Robert Crais, Benjamin Black, Adrian McKinty, Arne Dahl and Liz Nugent, and a closing event with internationally renowned actor Aidan Gillen. 

Canongate is launching the crime fiction imprint Black Thorn in May 2019. The Bookseller reported that Black Thorn will publish a wide range of titles from Severn House, which Canongate acquired in 2017, in paperback for the first time. Two of the list's titles will be released each month, marking "the first time that many of these Severn House titles have been available to the trade." The 2019 lineup will launch with Catherine O'Connell's The Last Night Out and The Savage Shore by David Hewson. Publishing Coordinator Holly Domney said the variety of titles within Black Thorn's catalogue will "feed the hungriest of crime fiction readers who need to devour one mystery, then reach for the next one."

Oldcastle Books is launching a new digital-only genre imprint, Verve Books, which aims to publish "great, original, page-turning fiction." The imprint will launch with the spy thriller The Righteous Spy by Merle Nygate. (HT to the Bookseller)

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 34:3) will focus on mysteries that take place in the Far East, and editor Janet Rudolph is looking for Reviews, Articles, and Author! Author! essays. The deadline for submissions is October 10.

An army veteran and longtime detective-turned true crime writer who helped in the Ground Zero relief efforts has died following a long battle with a 9/11-related illness. Mark Gado would work his shift for the police department and then head to Ground Zero, where he’d spend the night volunteering before sleeping in his van. He was a proud Army combat veteran who also spent two years with the Drug Enforcement Agency, and became a true crime writer later in life. He authored several books, including Killer Priest: The Crimes, Trial, and Execution of Father Hans Schmid, about the only Catholic priest to be executed for murder in American history.

Writing for the Paris Review, Anne Diebel took a look at Dashiell Hammett's strange career path from messenger boy to Pinkerton National Detective Agency operative, to crime author.

Authors on the shortlist for this year's McIlvanney Prize For Crime Fiction offered up their respective takes on "the perfect crime."

The city of Wallingford in the UK may be getting its own Agatha Christie statue. The Queen of Crime lived in town, and the Wallingford Museum sponsors an annual Agatha Christie festival in the author's honor. Now, the same artist who created a memorial to Agatha Christie in London (a memorial in the form of a large bronze book, featuring the crime writer’s face) is being asked to complete a similar tribute in Wallingford which will likely take the form of the author seated on a bench reading a book.

Spy novelist Tom Clancy's 537-acre Chesapeake Bay estate could be yours for $6.2M

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Four More Years" by Robert Cooperman.
 

In the Q&A roundup, Lizzie Sirett chatted with Louise Penny on the eve of her appearnace at the Bloody Scotland festival coming up this weekend; it was the battle of the Pauls as Paul Heatley took the "Short Sharp Interview" challenge from Paul D. Brazill; and Sarah Weinman spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about her new book The Real Lolita, which makes the case that Vladimir Nokokov's inspiration for his classic Lolita novel was derived from a real-life kidnapping.