Mystery Melange

 

The International Thriller Writers (ITW) announced the winners of the Thriller Awards, handed out this past weekend at the annual Thrillerfest conference in New York City:

• Best Hardcover: Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier
• Best First Novel: The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor
• Best Paperback Original Novel: The Lost Man by Jane Harper
• Best Short Story: "Nana" by Helen Smith (in Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2)
• Best Young Adult Novel: Girl at the Grave by Teri Bailey Black
• Best E-book Original Novel: Pray for the Innocent by Alan Orloff

Previously announced awards included:

• ThrillerMaster: John Sandford
• Silver Bullet Award: Harlan Coben
• ThrillerFan Award: "Mystery Mike" Bursaw

During a cocktail party last week, The Strand Magazine announced the winners of its 2019 Strand Critics Awards. Best Mystery Novel was a tie: Transcription by Kate Atkinson and Sunburn by Laura Lippman. Best Debut Mystery Novel went to The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The David Award nominees for the best mystery are:  Yesterday's News by R.G. Belsky; Died in the Wool by Peggy Ehrhart; The Consultant by Tj O’Connor; Misty Treasure by Linda Rawlins; Second Story Man by Charles Salzberg; and Feral Attraction by Eileen Watkins. The award is named in memory of David G. Sasher, Sr., a great supporter of the mystery genre and of the early days of the Deadly Ink conference where the award is announced each year.

Ann Cleeves and Michael Fuller are among the writers added to this year's Killer Women Festival of Crime Writing and Drama line-up, as the event moves to a new date. Usually held in October, the next festival will take place on Sunday 15th March, 2020 at Brown’s Courtrooms, Covent Garden, London. Other special guests include Alison Levitt QC, chief counsel to the Crown Prosecution Service in the Savile enquiry; forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop CBE; and top criminologist and TV presenter Professor David Wilson. The festival will also celebrate the Killer Women mentoring scheme, which was launched this year to find and encourage new female voices in crime fiction from BAME and low income or working-class backgrounds.

Entries are now open for the 2019 New England (Australia) Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing. All genres of crime writing are eligible, from hard-boiled to comic, paranormal to rural, historical to contemporary, noir to cozy. Entries welcome from anywhere in Australia, from published or unpublished writers. Deadline for entries is October 7 with winners announced in mid-November.

The Margery Allingham Society has agreed with the Crime Writers’ Association to continue the popular short mystery competition for at least another five years, until 2024. The Society, set up to honor and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition that opens for entries in the autumn on the CWA’s website and closes every February.  The short story can be up to a 3,500 words long and must echo Margery Allingham’s definition of a mystery. (HT to Shots Magazine)

If you're a fan and collector of pulp fiction, check out this auction that ends on July 30. Items being offered up, from a Pleasant Valley, New York private collection of Pulp Art, include magazines such as Argosy,  Detective Fiction, Adventure, Street & Smith's Wild West Weekly, and more. The lot also features framed magazine covers, slides, posters, and photographs.

There's a call for papers for "The Absurdity of Racism: an International Chester Himes Conference" to be held June 4-5, 2020, at the American University of Paris. As the organizers note, "always controversial, combative and daring, Himes carved a niche for himself in the worlds of crime fiction and protest literature while negotiating the 'quality of hurt' of his black American and European expatriate worlds." Abstracts of 250 words, accompanied by a very brief bio, should be sent by October 15.

The summer edition of Suspense Magazine is out featuring new author interviews; articles by Dennis Palumbo, Ellen LaCorte, Natalie Walters, and Patricia Bradley; an Alan Jacobson piece with important information on author income trends ("Have You Heard?"); book excerpts (Patricia Bradley and Laura Elliot); plus authors Keith Raffel, Sheila Lowe and Sharon Love Cook share short stories, and there are also the latest book and movie reviews.

Dynamite Entertainments will continue the adventures of Agent 007 in graphic novel form by adapting Ian Fleming’s second Bond novel, Live and Let Die, with a publication date for this fall. Live and Let Die follows the successful Casino Royale release and agent 007 as he traces stolen pirate treasure from the smoky jazz clubs of Harlem all the way to the formidable shores of Jamaica. Writer Van Jensen returns for this entry following his critically acclaimed Casino Royale graphic novel with Dennis Calero, while Kewber Baal has been enlisted to provide art.

In more bucket-list items to consider for your travel plans this summer, if you find yourself in the rural Eifel area of Germany, check out the "Kriminalhaus" (House of Crime) in the small village of Hillesheim, near the famous racetrack Nuerburgring. Inside this old house there is a bookstore, a German crime fiction archive with over thirty thousand books, and the Cafe Sherlock decorated with memorabilia of Poirot, Mrs. Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Wallace, Alfred Hitchcock, and others. For more info and photos, click on over here.

In more travel things to do this summer, the Asiatic Library in Mumbai, one of the oldest literary societies of India, has been hosting "Night at the Library," a series of immersive experiences that will include readings, discussions, quizzes, and cosplay. On July 20, the subject will be Agatha Christie, with a torchlit tour of the library (which is also home to some priceless titles, like one of the only two original manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy) and other events themed around Dame Agatha.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Scenes From an Ongoing Moment" by Ken Meisel.

In the Q&A roundup, The Guardian spoke with Adrian McKinty about his life-changing phone call that set him on the road to literary success after almost quitting writing altogether; Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo tells the Irish Times why "The details of a murder don’t really disturb me"; and Michael Connelly chatted with The Bronzeville Bee about his Harry Bosch series and his past as a crime beat reporter.