Mystery Melange

 

The submission deadline for articles for the Clues: A Journal of Detection issue "Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond" is coming up soon on October 12. Guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester),the issue will look at the important crossroads of mystery, detective, and crime fiction between the two world wars which saw the emergence of new genres like hard-boiled, noir, and true crime.

The St. Martin's Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition is open for submissions. You're invited to submit a manuscript if you've never been published and your novel is at least 40,000 words with a murder or serious crime at the heart of the story. The deadline is January 19, and the winner will receive a publishing contract and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

Noir Nation magazine, a crime fiction journal (available in print and Kindle editions) that was founded in 2011 by Eddie Vega, Alan Ward Thomas, and Cort McMeel, has been on a bit of a hiatus since fall of last year. But the publication recently announced it's ramping up again and will begin opening submissions for Issue #7 by the end of the year.

The New York Times Book Review profiled crime Joe Ide, whose debut 2016 novel, IQ, won widespread critical acclaim and was optioned for a television adaptation. Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Ide's protagonist who's named Isaiah Quintabe draws from the author's rough upbringing as well as his passions for Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood icons like Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Sidney Poitier in The Heat of the Night.

Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes word of CrimeFest’s move to a different venue in 2019; a crowd-funding project to republish Adam Diment’s vintage Philip McAlpine thrillers; reviews of new novels by Dominick Donald, Robert Galbraith, and John Simpson; and a look at forthcoming works by theJane Harper, Christian White, and Ben Pastor. (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Rob Lopresti profiled the new annotated version of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto, which offers literary and geographical context, as well as language and symbolism explications.

Writing for Crimereads, Anna Lee Huber compiled a listing of "10 Female Spies In Historical Mysteries and Thrillers," who take the topic up a notch after real-life women spies of the past have been given short shrift.

Does an obsession with crime thrillers have a psychological impact on readers? Maybe, or maybe not.

More from the "truth is stranger than fiction" department: The French gangster, Rédoine Faïd, who escaped from jail on a hijacked helicopter has finally been captured. Faïd has said he is a fan of gangster films, which he credits with teaching him how to pull off raids from the age of 12, especially Tony Montana from Scarface. He is also a fan of Michael Mann’s crime thrillers and once approached Mann at a Paris film festival and told him, "You were my technical adviser."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "World's Rocky Rim" by Nick Kolakowski.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People spoke with George Pelecanos about his latest novel, The Man Who Came Uptown, something of a bibliomystery; David Nolan took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge about his debut novel, Black Moss; and Robert Crais spoke with Writers' Digest about "Passion, Process and Plot Twists."