Mystery Melange

 

The Wolfe Pack (the society of fans of Rex Stout's mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe), held their 42nd annual Black Orchid Weekend this past weekend, including the presentation of the annual Nero Award for Best American Mystery. This year's winner was Walter Mosley for Down the River Unto the Sea, the second win for Mosley, who also snagged the Nero in 2004 for Fear Itself. Also awarded was the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, which went to Ted Burge for "The Red Taxi," which will be published next summer in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. (HT to Classic Mysteries)

The annual Goodreads Choice Awards winners were announced, including The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, which won the Best Mystery & Thriller category. The other top vote-getters included Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer; The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware; and The Lost Man by Jane Harper.

The late Ruth Rendell was perhaps best known for her psychological thrillers and series featuring Chief Inspector Wexford, but she was also a strong advocate for literacy. The Ruth Rendell Award was established for outstanding contribution to raising literacy levels in the UK, and this year the winner is children's author Tom Palmer.

It's always nice to see crime 'zines succeed and even return after a hiatus, which is the case for All Due Respect. It was created by Alec Cizak in 2010 and handed it over to Chris Rhatigan in 2012, who will continue as editor for the resurrected version, along with David Nemeth. ADR will publish one "hard-as-nails crime fiction" short story each month, with all published stories to be collected into an annual anthology published via Down & Out Books.

Elizabeth Foxwell, of the Bunburyist blog, is also Managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection as well as editor of the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series. She wrote on the blog that she has a wishlist for proposals for the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, but you contribute, too:  pitch a book manuscript proposal on alternative subjects for an upcoming book, as long as any nominated author has a substantial body of work (roughly defined as a minimum of 25 books). Previous installments in the series to date have covered John Buchan, E.X. Farrars, Ed McBain (a/k/a Evan Hunter), Andrea Camilleri, Sara Paretsky, James Ellroy, PD James, and Ngaio Marsh.

More "best of 2019" lists have been announced, including a selection of The Guardian's choices for "Best Crime and Thrillers of 2019," as well as Marilyn Stasio's picks for The New York Times.

Think you know everything there is to know about Agatha Christie? Well, then, this quiz is for you. (HT to Sisters in Crime)

Looks like police officers have a new K9 program. I, for one, welcome our robodog overlords.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Arm in Arm" by Elaine Person.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People's Scott Montgomery spoke with Ken Bruen about his novel, Galway Girl; author Con Lehane chatted with Randal Brandt, the archivist of Berkeley's Legendary Detective Fiction Collection; Janet Evanovich was interviewed by the Washington Post about her "career plot twist" (a recap here for nonsubscribers); and Crime Fiction Lover sat down with Leigh Russell, whose latest installment in the bestselling DI Geraldine Steel series is Deathly Affair.