Mystery Melange

The UK’s book trade magazine, The Bookseller, announced this year's winners of the British Book awards, also known as the Nibbies. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite won top honors in the Crime & Thriller category, with the other finalists including The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley; How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid; The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides; Imposter by LJ Ross; and Blue Moon by Lee Child. Braithwaite was the first Black author to win her category, joining fellow authors Candice Carty-Williams and Bernardine Evaristo who became become the first Black authors to win top British Book awards for book of the year and author of the year, respectively.

Organizers of New Zealand’s annual Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction announced their longlist of nominees for the 2020 best New Zealand crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. You can check out all twelve titles on this list via this link. The finalists for both this Best Novel category and also Best First Novel will be announced later this year with the winners honored at this year’s WORD Christchurch Festival, held from October 29 to November 1.

On July 23, Mark Billingham will be in conversation with Ian Rankin in a special online event. Billingham will discuss the novel, Cry Baby, his 20th novel and the prequel to Sleepyhead, the first installment in the bestselling Tom Thorne series. You can register just for the event on its own or for a little extra, register for both a ticket and a signed copy of the book.

MurderCon organizer, Lee Lofland, announced that the event is going virtual, with two full days of live instruction featuring many of the same in-person event topics taught by the Sirchie’s expert instructors. Classes will include Fingerprints, Chemical Processing of Prints, Presumptive Blood/DNA, Blood Spatter, Footwear Evidence, Lifting Footwear, Homicide Investigations, Murder Case Studies, Toxicology, Forensic Geology, and Entomology, and much more. Full details, including how you can register to attend the 2020 Virtual MurderCon, will be available on the event's website by July 6. The registration period will be very brief and spots are limited on a first come, first served basis.

Austin Camacho, the director of Creatures, Crime & Creativity, made the very tough decision to cancel this year's conference. However, C3 2021 will be September 10th-12th at a new venue, the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Columbia, Maryland, with key note speakers to include bestselling mystery author, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and top fantasy author, Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Norlisha Crawford, associate professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, who guest edited the Clues issue on Chester Himes, will be teaching an online course on African American detective fiction in August via the Rosenbach in Philadelphia. Authors covered will include Himes, Eleanor Taylor Bland, Walter Mosley, and Nichelle D. Tramble. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at the Bunburyist Blog.)

A line of face masks from Out of Print (the Penguin Random House company that creates book-centric apparel and accessory items) and the American Booksellers Association has been the biggest new-product launch in Out of Print's 10-year history. The seven Out of Print Literary Masks sold more than 13,000 in their first week. They are available at outofprint.com and will begin selling at bookstores nationwide next week for $12 each. A portion of each sale is being donated to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) to assist bookstores affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Guardian featured a panel of authors titled "Me and my detective." Lee Child, Attica Locke, Val McDermid, John Connolly, Ann Cleeves, Amer Anwar, Ian Rankin, Sara Paretsky, Abir Mukherjee, Lynda La Plante, Michael Connelly, Mark Billingham, and Jo Nesbø revealed how they came up with their most famous creations, what it’s like to live with them over decades, and if they’ll last the distance.

Mystery Fanfare's Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of mysteries taking place during summer filled with murder and mayhem, whether it's on the beach, at the lake, or in the city.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "I Died a Thousand Times: Death #999" by Richie Narvaez."

In the Q&A roundup, Indie Crime Scene interviewed Michael Pronko, author of Tokyo Traffic; Karin Slaughter chatted with Woman and Home and revealed the secrets behind her best-selling books and her writing success; The Picky Bookworm welcomed Scottish author and former Detective Sergeant with the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, Ian Patrick, about his crime novels; CrimeReads spoke with Ottessa Moshfegh about her novel of metaphysical suspense, Death in Her Hands; and John Grisham had a video chat with The Mystery People to discuss his latest novel, Camino Winds.