Mystery Melange

 

The winners of the 2020 Davitt Awards, organized annually by Sisters in Crime Australia, were announced this past weekend. The awards, meant to "provide some much-needed—and overdue—recognition for Australian women crime writers," included several categories including Best Adult Crime Novel: The Trespassers, by Meg Mundell; Best Young Adult Crime Novel: Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte; Best Children’s Crime Novel: The Girl in the Mirror, by Jenny Blackford; Best Non-fiction Crime Book: Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate Cover-ups. One Journalist’s Fight for the Truth, by Adele Ferguson; Best Debut Crime Book: Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley; and the Readers' Choice Award (tie), Emma Viskic for Darkness for Light and Dervla McTiernan for The Scholar. You can check out both the longlisted titles and shorts here.

CrimeCon is partnering with Bonnier Books UK to launch its first true crime weekend in London next summer, featuring Lynda La Plante, Christopher Berry-Dee, Wensley Clarkson and Carl Chinn. The event, also partnered with true crime TV channel Crime + Investigation, will run from June 12th to 13th. London's CrimeCon will see criminologists, pathologists, leading law enforcement representatives, documentary makers, investigative journalists and crime podcasters creating over 50 hours of content through live shows, panels, and immersive experiences.

Join four veteran mystery writers as they discuss their new works and all that goes into writing a mystery series in the "Stone Cold Mystery Writers Panel." Archer Mayor (the Joe Gunther series), Paula Munier (the Mercy Carr series), Sarah Stewart Taylor (the Sweeney St. George mystery series), and ​Julia Spencer-Fleming (the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series) will be online in the virtual panel on Oct 7 at 7pm, Eastern Time.

The winners of the annual Writers Police Academy Golden Donut Awards were recently announced. The rules were simple—write a story about a provided photograph using exactly 200 words including the title, with the image being the main subject of the story. You can check out the first through tenth place winners here, as judged Linda Landrigan, editor-in-chief of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

CrimeReads took note of "Ten Golden Age Detective Novelists Who Deserve to Be Better Known," as the unsung maestros of British mystery fiction, and also profiled "Ten American Masterpieces That Are Actually Crime Fiction."

CrimeReads also tackled the topic of the sexist books in contemporary crime fiction, putting together a panel for the first of a two-part discussion featuring Robyn Harding (The Swap), Alex Segura (Pete Fernandez series), P.J. Vernon (When You Find Me), Kelly J. Ford (Cottonmouths), Layne Fargo (Temper), and Laura Lippman (Sunburn).

Marketplace studied the Agatha Christie effect, pointing out that a century after her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, appeared in print, the Agatha Christie industry is still going strong, earning $33 million in royalties in the latest year it reported.

Robert Dugoni, author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series as well as the Charles Jenkins espionage series and the David Sloane legal thriller series, applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Last Agent.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Shot Three Times" by Terry Dawley.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Unger stopped by the Just Katherine blog to discuss her latest psychological thriller, Confessions on the 7:45; Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Seraphina Nova Glass about her debut crime novel, Someone's Listening; Indie Crime Scene featured an interview with Daniella Bernett, author of Old Sins Never Die; and Ruth Ware sat down with CrimeReads to discuss locked room mysteries, ski chalets, and the evolution of voyeurism.