Mystery Melange

 

Manda Scott has won the 2019 McIlvanney Prize, making her the second woman in its eight year history to win the award. Scott was honored for her thriller, A Treachery of Spies, in a ceremony at the recent Bloody Scotland crime festival. The McIlvanney Prize recognizes excellence in Scottish crime writing, includes a prize of £1000, and nationwide promotion in Waterstones. This year also saw the inaugural McIlvanney Debut Prize, which went to All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew.

Noir Nation established the Golden Fedora Prize as a means to reward noir crime writing short forms, with the inaugural award in 2018 for poetry and this year's prize for short stories (the prize will alternate each form every other year). The 2019 Golden Fedora Prize winners are Erika Nichols-Frazer, BV Lawson, and Anne Swardson. Honorable Mentions include James Chesky, Jennifer Giacalone, A.M. Gregori, Mark Moran, Tyler Real, Gita Smith, and JMP Zute. (On a personal note: I am absolutely thrilled and humbled to have been honored with this award and grateful to the judges for their selection of my story "Alien Nation" for this accolade)

A Noir at the Bar event is headed to Hillsborough, North Carolina, tonight as an early spooky treat for the Halloween season. The event, which brings together independent crime authors to read from and sell their books, originated in St. Louis and was replicated in other cities across the country. Eryk Pruitt will host the Hillsborough event at the Yonder bar, with other contributors including James Maxey (Bitterwood), Suzanne Adair (Deadly Occupation), and Shawn Cosby (My Darkest Prayer).

The Library of Congress and Poisoned Pen Press are collaborating for the Library of Congress Crime Classics series, which "will feature a rich and diverse selection of books originally published between the 1860s and the 1960s," according to the Library. Titles will be drawn from the LOC's collection of hard-to-find and out-of-print books, with cover designs inspired by images from the library's collections. The series launches next spring with the publication of three books: That Affair Next Door by Anna Katharine Green (1897), The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope by C.W. Grafton (1943) and Case Pending by Dell Shannon (1960). (HT to Shelf Awareness)

The latest issue of Mystery Scene magazine features a cover story about Ruth Ware's latest novel, a idiosyncratic updating of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw; Michael Mallory profiles fictional detective, Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, who was popular between the two world wars in books and on film; in a new annual feature, Oline Cogdill takes a look at terrific current books from six up-and-coming writers; plus many more articles, essays, news, and reviews.

October 1 is the deadline to submit to the Clues themed issue on "Genre-Bending: Crime's Hybrid Forms" that will be guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (the University of Bologna). Throughout its long history, crime writing has inspired and been inspired by other genres such as the gothic, sensation fiction, horror, romance, film noir, science fiction, and true crime. Papers and extracts should "explore the richness of these generic contact zones and the acts of cross-pollination they engendered, ultimately contributing to the overall development of this galaxy of literary forms."

Abu Dhabi's The National publication reported on one of literature's enduring heroes, Inspector Maigret. All of George Simenon's Maigret novels will be available in English via new translations soon to be completed, a process that has involved the work of as many as 11 translators. Between 1931 and 1972, Belgian author Simenon wrote more than 70 novels in his Inspector Maigret series, and Penguin Books has been commissioning the new translations, releasing one story a month over the last six years.

Auction house Christies' online blog featured a profile of Dashiell Hammett, with a side look at the author's collectible books from auctions past.

I've mentioned before how the late author, Stieg Larsson, became involved with the unsolved assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. A recent Guardian article also talked about how Larsson put several references to it in his novels, taking that one step further to ask "Do his secret files contain vital clues?"

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Paradise Costs" by Barry Ergang.

In the Q&A roundup, Crime Reads spoke with Craig Johnson, author of the popular Longmire series that was made into a TV series, about his latest novel, Land Of Wolves, which puts his Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire in a new place; Lesa Holstein chatted with Ann Cleves, author of the Vera Stanhope and Shetland Island mystery series that have been made into TV programs in the UK; and There's Been a Murder sat down with Val Penny, an American author living and writing in southwest Scotland.