Mystery Melange

The Audio Publishers Association announced that they will be presenting bestselling author Stephen King with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Audie Awards in March in New York City. King is known for his horror novels such as The Shining and Carrie but also for his crime novels, the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch), The Outsider, The Colorado Kid, and Joyland.

One of the judges for this year's Booker Prize is to be best-selling thriller writer Lee Child, author of the 24 Jack Reacher novels. He will be joined by author Sameer Rahim, writer Lemn Sissay, and classicist Emily Wilson, with publisher Margaret Busby as chairperson. The selection of a commercially successful author like Child is something of a departure for the Booker Prize Foundation, although Lee himself has been openly critical of the snobbery in the world of literature shown towards popular crime novels.

If you're in the UK, you might want to check out some of these upcoming Crime Fiction Bookish Events on the handy list from Ayo Onatade via Shots Magazine, including several book signings, panels, and the York Literature Festival. Although I don't have a corresponding list in the U.S., as a reminder, this blog does have an Upcoming Conferences link I try to keep updated.

The second volume of The Mystery Readers Journal's two-part series on private eyes is out and available as a PDF or hardcopy, featuring essays by Kevin Burton Smith, Reed Farrel Coleman, Alison Gaylin, and dozens more. The next issue (Volume 36:1) will focus on mysteries featuring Environmental & Wildlife Mysteries, and editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays.

Writing for The Guardian, Alison Flood takes a look at the women who are breaking into publishing’s long established boys’ club in espionage fiction. Following on the work of previous pioneers such as Helen McInnes (1907-1985), the new school includes authors Stella Rimington, Manda Scott, and Charlotte Philby.

The Page 69 test featured J. T. Ellison's new thriller, Good Girls Lie, in which Ash Carlisle leaves the U.K. after the death of her parents to attend a prep school for young women located in a small Virginia town that is a stepping stone to the Ivy League. Initially unprepared for the mean girls and the hazing, things get worse when students start dying...and suspicion falls on Ash.

The BBC profiled Dundee University's MLitt in Crime Writing and Forensic Investigation, which was launched in 2017 and is the first course of its kind in the UK.

As a six-year reissue project of George Simenon's Inspector Maigret book series reaches completion, Scottish author Graeme Macrae Burnet explains why Simenon’s Parisian sleuth still matters, 90 years after his first case

Last week, I mentioned the coin the Royal Mint produced in 2019 in honor of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and this week brings news that the new year's batch of coins will include one honoring Dame Agatha Christie. The £2 piece will mark 100 years since her first crime novel was released and will include illustrations of a handgun and a bottle of poison framed against a missing puzzle piece. As designer David Lawrence explained, "At the heart of every Agatha Christie Mystery there is a missing component – a missing piece to the puzzle – which, when finally and ingeniously deduced, completes the picture and brings resolution.”

Love out of the way, unusual bookshops? Nicknamed Bookseller’s Row, Cecil Court is a hidden gem in the heart of central London. Packed with twenty-odd secondhand bookshops and antiquarian booksellers, it's paradise for literature lovers only moments away from the hustle and bustle of Leicester Square.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Oklahoma's Open Carry Law" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, Punk Noir Magazine chatted with Joe Clifford, author of the Jay Porter Series and his latest standalone novel from Down & Out, Skunk Train; the Writers Who Kill welcomed Barbara Ross to chat about the eighth installment in the Maine Clambake mystery series; and the Book People interviewed Jay Brandon about his new legal thriller, From the Grave, once again featuring Edward Hall, a one-time hotshot Houston lawyer.