Mystery Melange

 

The Finalists for the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction have been announced, and readers will now have a chance to vote. The prize, which was authorized by the late Harper Lee, was established in 2011 by the University of Alabama Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. The books nominated for the ninth annual award are: The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey; Class Action, by Steven B. Frank; and The Boat People, by Sharon Bala.

The Maine Literary Awards were handed out at a ceremony held at the Bangor Public Library recently. This year's winner of the Book Award for Crime Fiction was Stowed Away by Barbara Ross.

Foreword Reviews announced the winners of the Foreword Indies Book Awards, celebrating the best from independent presses and authors. The winners in the Mystery category were:

Gold: One for the Rock by Kevin Major
Silver: A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang
Bronze: Burning Ridge by Margaret Mizushima
Honorable Mention: Uncivil Liberties by Bernie Lambek

In the Thriller & Suspense category:

Gold: The Eighteenth Green by Webb Hubbell
Silver: Speed the Dawn by Philip Donlay
Bronze: The Astronaut's Son by Tom Seigel

Amazon announced its selections for the Best Books of the Year So Far, including those in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category. Check out the twenty books that made the list.

The Mystery Writers of America’s board of directors recently approved new procedures for selecting the Special Edgar Awards—including the Raven, the Ellery Queen, and the Grand Master awards. The new procedures are designed to make the process more open and transparent to the entire membership. They also encourage participation from all members of MWA, who are asked to submit nominations for all three awards by July 31.

A record $10,060 is up for grabs in Sisters in Crime Australia’s 26th Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short crime and mystery stories by Australian women. For the first time there is an award that speaks directly to Australia’s criminal past – the Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival Award for the Best Bushranger Story. The closing date for the awards is August 31, 2019. The Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival is a brand-new biennial celebration of crime fiction, to be held between October 31 and November 5 in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.

Crime author Linda Fairstein has been in the news lately after a rescinded Mystery Writers of America honor (hence the MWA rules change above) and the recent TV mini-series When They See Us that casts her in an unfavorable light as the prosecutor of the infamous Central Park Five rape case. The controversy has renewed cries of proseutorial injustice on Fairstein's behalf and has led to the author being dropped by her agent, publisher, and several boards on which she served. Sarah Weinman penned an article for The Washington Post, which offers up a more nuanced take on the case and Fairstein's role. Weinman concludes that "canceling Fairstein herself may be emotionally satisfying. But it doesn’t account for the very real change she helped bring about. And without concerted effort and work, it won’t prevent other prosecutors from making the same terrible decisions that inflicted such a dreadful cost on the Central Park Five and on Matias Reyes’s (the real rapist) other victims.

Peter Harrington, the UK’s largest rare bookseller, is celebrating its 50th anniversary by offering up for sale an exceptional collection of Ian Fleming material for £2.5m, which it will be exhibiting at this year’s Masterpiece London. It is the most significant Fleming Collection to ever appear on the market and contains inscribed first editions of every James Bond book published in the author’s lifetime. 

Is China about to witness a crime wave? CrimeReads notes that readers in China are showing an appetite for crime stories like never before, especially among younger audiences in China. Article writer Paul French adds that there was always an enthusiastic market for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, but now Chinese fans are becoming more diversified in their crime tastes.

The Daily Mail reported on the real No. 1 Lady Detective, Maud West, a real-life female Sherlock Holmes who caught adulterers, blackmailers and thieves in early 20th century Edwardian London. Susannah Stapleton has a new book about the ground-breaking shamus, whose social circle is known to have included fellow crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers, creator of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.

Jeff Pierce at the Rap Sheet has compiles his annual curated list of more than 400 books, all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months⁠—just in time for beach-reading season.

The most controversial landmark in New York City may now be the Strand Bookstore.

The nation's capital of the U.S., Washington, D.C., may be known for its monuments and federal politics, but it's also the "City of Secrets": an estimated 10,000 people in DC are spies.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nothing New Under the Sun" by Dan A. Cardoza.

In the Q&A roundup, crime writer Simon Kernick told the Daily Mail what book he'd take to a desert island; the Bath UK Magazine interviewed Mick Herron ahead of the publication of his latest spy thriller, Joe Country, about why he wouldn’t make a good spy, how he creates memorable characters and how writing feels like an addiction; Harlan Coben spoke to The Guardian about the book that explains why writers are "plain nuts," and the William Goldman novel that started him on his career path; Kate Atkinson also spoke with The Guardian about why she's enjoying writing more as she gets older – and the return of detective Jackson Brodie fter nearly 10 years in the novel, Big Sky; and Alexander McCall Smith, author of the From the beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, spoke with CrimeReads about his new pivot to Scandi-Noir with The Department of Sensitive Crimes, the first in McCall Smith’s new series, where we meet a Ulf Varg, a Swedish detective who investigates particularly strange crimes in the city of Malm.