Mystery Melange

Author Vickey Delaney is to be honored with the Crime Writers of Canada's Derrick Murdoch Award, a special achievement nod for contributions to the crime genre. Delaney is the author of 34 published books, has been a strong supporter and advocate for Canadian crime writers, and also an advocate for literacy and libraries.

The shortlist for the 2019 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year was announced this morning:

• The Ice Swimmer, by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)
• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum, translated by Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway)
• The Katharina Code, by Jørn Lier Horst, translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)
• The Darkness, by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland)
• Resin, by Ane Riel, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark)
• Big Sister, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

The winning title will be announced at the Gala Dinner on May 11 during the annual international crime fiction convention CrimeFest.

There's a call for papers for Noir & Journalism: An international conference, to take place in in Chambéry, France, October 1st through the 4th. The theme is investigating the multiple relationships, influences and representations linking crime narratives with journalism.

Skyhorse Publishing is launching the crime imprint, Arcade CrimeWise, with plans to publish six to eight titles annually. Skyhorse noted that it has had success publishing genre fiction over the last several years in areas such as mysteries, noir, thrillers, and spy novels and wants to step up its presence in crime fiction. The launch list will feature Bart Paul’s See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, the third novel in the Tommy Smith High Mountain Noir series (September); Benson’s The Blues in the Dark, a crime drama that tackles racism, sexism, and murder in Hollywood in the 1940s (October); W.C. Ryan’s A House of Ghosts, a finalist for the NBA Irish Book Award set during World War I (October); and the second book in Lisa Preston’s feminist/western/mystery Horseshoer series, Dead Blow (November).

Law&Crime, the around-the-clock trial network backed by author, legal commentator, and attorney Dan Abrams and A&E Networks, is launching a book line that will feature true-crime and legal-based titles to be sold and distributed worldwide by Simon & Schuster. With an aim to publish two to four books a year, the focus will be criminal investigations, law enforcement, and trials. The imprint's first book, which should appear next year, will be by Tulsa, Okla., police Sergeant Sean "Sticks" Larkin, who is an analyst on the show Live PD and the host of A&E's PD Cam. (HT to Shelf Awareness)

Penguin Random House has begun a Reader Rewards Loyalty Program that will enable customers to earn points toward a free book. Under the program, readers who buy PRH books across print, electronic, and audio formats will be able to collect points for purchases made at online or physical stores.

Alafair Burke, the New York Times bestselling author whose most recent novels include The Wife and The Ex, which was nominated for the Edgar Award, applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Better Sister.

A New York Times article reported that 150 men and women in American prisons were exonerated in 2018, according to a recent report by a registry that tracks wrongful convictions. Combined, these individuals spent more than 1,600 years in prison, a record for the database, which has data back to 1989. The leading culprit in convicting innocent people was official misconduct, but another was misleading forensic evidence such as hair analysis, bite marks, and DNA analysis used to bolster unscientific assertions.

Even though the first private mission to the moon (the Israeli-backed SpaceIL Beresheet Lander) unfortunately crashed, it means that there are now books on the moon. The Lander carried something named The Arch Lunar Library contained on "Nanofiche," which will last for thousands of years. The payload contained millions of images of pages of books: all sorts of books, fiction and non-fiction. (HT to Joe Hartlaub at the Killzone Blog)

In a real-life whodunnit (and even a bigger whydunnit), someone vandalized Agatha Christie's statue in Torquey, removing it from its plinth on the harbor. The sculpture, by Dutch artist Carol Van Den Boom-Cairns and unveiled by Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks in 1990, has now been removed by Torbay Council for repairs.

Font geeks (and you know who you are) were abuzz with news that the iconic Helvetica font is getting its first redesign In 35 years.

In fun library news, The New York Public Library is bringing back bookmobiles. While the NYPL has employed bookmobiles for over 100 years, this is the first time they’ll be back on the road since the 1980s,

In more fun (make that, funny) news, Book Riot took at look at "Bacon Bookmarks and Cheeto Lures: The Funniest and Weirdest Stories Of Damaged Library Books."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "For Want of a Dollar" by Nancy Scott.

In the Q&A roundup, the Irish Examiner chatted with thriller writer Jeffery Deaver about his new novel, The Never Game, the first outing for Colter Shaw, who hunts down missing persons using his guile as a tracker; the Irish Times sat down with John Connolly to talk about the publication of the 17th Charlie Parker novel, A Book of Bones; while in Turkey for the 11th Istanbul International Literature Festival, Ruth Ware spoke with The Daily Sabah about her psychological thrillers and why "It's a great time to be a female crime writer"; and Locus Magazine threw a spotlight on David Baldacci, who chatted about his fourth book in the Vega Jane series, The Stars Below.