Mystery Melange

 

In honor of Veteran's Day, I'm reposting a link to a previous blog post I wrote about Veteran's Day mysteries. Janet Rudolph has more suggestions via her Mystery Fanfare blog.

Vintage will be hosting an interactive locked room mystery tomorrow, November 12, from 2-3:30 EST, with a script written by Ruth Ware during lockdown and featuring Ware and fellow crime writers Steve Cavanagh, Lisa Jewell, Dorothy Koomson, Abir Mukherjee, and Liz Nugent (along with audiobook narrator Imogen Church). The event will focus on six fictional crime writers who are invited to the annual dinner of The Detective Club, an organization comprising the crème de la crème of mystery authors. However, their host is murdered, and audience members must follow the clues to solve the crime. (HT to The Bookseller).

The 2020 Tampa Bay Times Virtual Festival of Reading takes place this weekend, November 12-14, featuring video interviews and panels with more than 40 authors talking about their latest books. Live events will include Q&As with authors James Lee Burke, Colson Whitehead, John Grisham, Laura Lippman, James Swain, Michael Connelly, Lisa Unger, Ace Atkins, Walter Mosley, Brad Meltzer, and Carl Hiaasen. Preregistration is required for all live events, although they are free.

Fans of Michael Connelly (creator of the Bosch procedural series) can catch the author via two other upcoming online events. Bloody Scotland is presenting a global live-streamed conversation with Connelly and fellow author Ian Rankin (of the Inspector Rebus series). This free event is scheduled for November 16th at 7:30 BST. Connelly will also be marking his debut with the Mark Twain House & Museum lecture series on November 17 at 7pm EST as he appears with author and journalist Douglas Preston to discuss Connelly's latest novel in the Lincoln Lawyer series, The Law of Innocence.

QuoScript, a new publishing company initially specializing in YA and crime fiction, has been co-founded by Salt director Linda Bennett. The new firm is billed as an experimental publisher "keen to foster new writing and design talent." The crime fiction will fall under the Poisoned Chalice imprint, launching with Christina James’ new novel, De Vries, a sequel to Sausage Hall (published by Salt). They've also launched a NaNoWriMo Challenge, with one potential winner receiving a publishing contract.

The yearly anthology of All Due Respect is out on bookstands now. The magazine, edited by Chris Rhatigan and David Nemeth, posts one crime fiction short story online each month and then collects all twelve stories into the yearly anthology. Authors this year include Stephen D. Rogers, Tom Leins, Michael Pool, Andrew Davie, Sharon Diane King, Preston Lang, Jay Butkowski, Steven Berry, Craig Francis Coates, Bobby Mathews, Michael Penncavage, and BV Lawson. (Personal note: I'm honored to have my story, "Quaking in My Boots" as the featured December offering coming up soon.)

This is a nice idea which I hope spreads around to other stores: 130 children in need will receive books this year through the Book Angel Project run by independent bookstore Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck, New York. Begun in 2002 by Piper Woods, co-owner of Montgomery Row—and Oblong Books’ landlord—the program has provided books to over 1,500 children attending kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Writing for CrimeReads, Halley Sutton makes the case for a "new wave of private eye fiction," with PIs who are more diverse and share community bonds. Although Sutton also notes that the crime fiction world still has a long way to go to get out from the shadow of the loner white knight.

If you have a subscription to The Smithsonian, you might look for an article in the December issue by Jack El-Hai about a White Mountain Apache medicine man, wrongfully convicted of murder, who partnered with mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner to gain his freedom.

British comedy writer John Finnemore has solved Cain’s Jawbone, a murder mystery considered one of the world’s most fiendish literary puzzles, marking only the third time the puzzle has been solved in almost a century. Cain’s Jawbone was dreamed up by the Observer’s first cryptic crossword inventor, Edward Powys Mathers, who was known as Torquemada. First published in 1934, the puzzle invites the reader to reorder the book’s 100 pages – there are more than 32 million possible combinations – and solve the murders within.

In more "gaming" news, as the weather gets colder in some parts and the Covid-19 lockdowns remain/return, there's more demand for indoor entertainment options than ever before. Some of interest to crime fiction fans include a subscription mystery game; or you might try your hand at one of these "10 Mystery Subscription Boxes and Escape Room Puzzles."

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Trump at the Casket of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Reposing in State" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill spoke with Jennifer J. Chow, author of the Winston Wong cozy mysteries (under a pseudonym, "J.J. Chow," and the Sassy Cat mystery series; The Indie Crime Scene chatted with author John Triptych about his new release, The Boy in the Gutter; HB Lyle stopped by Crimetime to discuss The Year of the Gun, the third novel to feature Wiggins, the former leader of the Baker Street Irregulars and a pupil of Sherlock Holmes, now spy for Vernon Kell, head of the Home Department of the newly formed Secret Service; and Author Interviews welcomed D.S. Butler, a research scientist in biochemistry and pathology, about the latest book in her DS Karen Hart Series, House of Lies.