Mystery Melange

 

The 2018 Ngaio Marsh Award winners were announced recently at the WORD Christchurch Festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. Best Crime Novel went to Marlborough Man by Alan Carter, and the Best First Novel was All Our Secrets by Jennifer Lane. The literary awards honor excellence in Kiwi crime fiction, mystery, and thriller writing and are named after Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of the four "Queens of Crime" from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. (HT to awards founder, Craig Sisterson)

The longlists for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year have been whittled down to four finalists, including two previous winners, Chris Brookmyre (Places in the Darkness) and Charles Cumming (The Man Between) alongside newcomers Lin Anderson (Follow the Dead) and Liam McIlvanney (The Quaker). Winners will be announced at the Bloody Scotland conference later this month.

Sydney nightclub figure John Ibrahim was awarded the inaugural Danger Prize at the recent BAD Sydney Crime Festival, an honor which recognizes the best book, TV series, or film over the past year about crime and Sydney. He was given the prize for his memoir Last King of the Cross. The same event handed out the Danger Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously to Peter Corris, author of the iconic Cliff Hardy series of detective novels, who passed away the day before the conference.

The East Village Coffee Lounge in Monterey, California, will host a Noir at the Bar event October 26. Organized by crime fiction author Dietrich Kalteis, the evening of readings and signings will also feature Terry Shames, Kris Calvin, Tom Pitts, Rob Pierce, Susan C Shea, Mark Coggins, and Patrick Whitehurst, with Natalie Molina hosting. The event is free to the public but donations will be accepted at the door, benefitting a local charity.

As I noted above, we recently lost Peter Corris, the man dubbed the "godfather of Australian crime fiction," who died at his home in Sydney at the age of 76. He published his first novel, The Dying Trade, in 1980, introducing his best-known character, Cliff Hardy, a big drinker, fighter and womanizer. That was followed by 41 additional Hardy books including Corris's final book, Win, Lose or Draw, which was published early last year. Andrew Nette posted his thoughts on the passing of Corris over on the Pulp Curry blog. On the heels of Corris's passing, The Sydney Morning Herald's Linda Morris posted two articles discussing the state of Australian crime fiction today, which you can read here and here.

Janet Rudolph also posted on her Mystery Fanfare blog that mystery author Amanda Kyle Williams passed away last week following a long battle with cancer. Amanda burst on the thriller scene in 2010 with her first crime novel, The Stranger You Seek, which was hailed by Publishers Weekly as an “explosive, unpredictable and psychologically complex thriller that turns crime fiction clichés inside out.” She has been shortlisted for both the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Townsend Prize for Fiction.

Digital media company Open Road Integrated Media announced it has launched an immersive, interactive online mystery experience, titled The Murder Chronicles.The Murder Chronicles will provide a monthly episodic mystery as subscribers are guided through a new case file containing journal entries, newspaper clippings, old brochures, letters, and all the clues they need to solve the mystery. The idea to launch The Murder Chronicles came from editor Matthew Thompson, who noted that  "The Murder Chronicles is like gaming—an immersive, interactive, sprawl-it-out-on-your-kitchen-table-and-play-it experience."

A recent New York Times' "By the Book" interview featured critically-acclaimed crime fiction author George Pelecanos listing books that had influenced him or that he recommended to others. After it was pointed out by many readers and Sisters in Crime (which was formed in part to combat gender discrimination in the press) that all of the 26 or so books listed were by male authors, Craig Sisterson popped in on Twitter to recommend 26 outstanding female crime fiction authors. One of those award-winning authors he noted, Laura Lippman, also pointed out that how the New Yorker described her as a crime novelist in the same piece where Lehane and Pelecanos were listed as simply novelists, adding that "subtext seems to be to remind people that I'm 'lesser.'"

Not every author gets an alcoholic beverage inspired by their writing, but Shetland Distillery Company is releasing a special edition gin produced in conjunction with the launch of Ann Cleeves’ eighth and final book in the Shetland Island series, Wild Fire. Taking inspiration from the new mystery novel, Shetland Reel’s Wild Fire is described as “a balanced London Dry Gin with juniper and sweet spice notes that have a lingering and warming finish ... It has notes of cinnamon, orange and aromatic spice, and an added touch of heat from dried red chillies."

A vast theft of antiquarian books, one of the most expansive rare book thefts in history, has sent a shudder across the rare books industry after a prominent dealer was arrested.

Australia's Booktopia created a quick little quiz to test your crime fiction knowledge.

Mashable reported on the oddly calming combination of police radio and ambient music.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Punk" by Rusty Barnes.

In the Q&A roundup, Waterstones interviewed Laura Lippman about her latest thriller, Sunburn; Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy and the Traitor, was the latest "By the Book" interview for the New York Times (and he did pick a few women authors among his recommendations - see above); and Criminal Element chatted with Mindy Mejia, author of the new thriller, Leave No Trace.