Mystery Melange

 

The 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards were announced at last weekend's virtual WORD Christchurch Spring Festival in New Zealand, with two debut novels coming up on top. Becky Manawatu won the award for best crime writing for her novel Aue, and R.W.R. McDonald has picked up the award for best new crime writing with his debut novel, The Nancy's. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The Capital Crime Festival announced the Amazon Publishing Readers' Awards for 2020. The winners include Crime Book of the year: Without A Trace by Mari Hannah; Mystery Book of the Year: The Mist by Ragnar Jónasson; Thriller Book of the Year: Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton; E-Book of the Year: Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee; Debut Book of the Year: Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi; and Independent Voice Book of the Year: Beast by Matt Wesolowski.

There's a new festival coming to the UK, the very first established crime fiction event in Wales. The Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival will take place from April 30th to May 2nd 2022 in the West Wales coastal resort and university town of Aberystwyth. In 2021, as a warm up to the event, there will also be a free, digital festival, and plans are also underway for the launch of the Crime Cymru First Crime Novel Competition. As part of what is planned as a biennial event, the festival plans to offer aspiring authors a pitch-the-agent session as well as potential workshops on writing thrillers. (HT to Alis Hawkins over at 7 Criminal Minds)
 

Ian Fleming fans, take note: Sotheby’s in London is currently hosting an online sale through November 11 that features “undoubtedly the most significant collection of Fleming ever to appear on the market.” Every Bond book is represented in the 114-lot sale, either in manuscript, proof, or first edition, several containing inscriptions to famous friends (Sir Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Raymond Chandler), plus a few from Fleming’s own legendary library.

Book Riot featured a selection of "8 Mysteries and Thrillers by Black Authors" to add to your to-be-read pile.

Crime writers take note: Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics, is becoming a more common partner with law enforcement. In August 2019, the Massachusetts State Police was the first law enforcement agency to use the robot dog, as a “mobile remote observation device," and just recently, Spot was spotted at an active crime scene in New York City involving a shooting suspect.

From the true crime you-can't-make-this-up department comes this headline from BBC News, "Russian 'Sausage King' killed in sauna with a crossbow."

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Mouthpiece" by Peter M. Gordon.

In the Q&A roundup, Writer's Who Kill's Grace Topping chatted with Alexia Gordon, physician by day and author by night of the Gethsemane Brown mysteries; Author Interviews chatted with Matthew Hart, a veteran writer and journalist who just published his first novel, The Russian Pink; and John Wisniewski interviewed Tom Vater, author of the Detective Maier series set in Southeast Asia, for Punk Noir Magazine.