Mystery Melange

 

The Wolfe Pack organization announced the winners for the 2020 Nero Award and the Black Orchid Novella Award. The Nero Award is presented each year to an author for the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, and this year goes to David Baldacci's One Good Deed, the first in a new series featuring WWII veteran, Aloysius Archer. The Black Orchid Novella Award is presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to celebrate the novella format popularized by Rex Stout. This year's winner is Tom Larsen, whose story, "El Cuerpo en el Barril" ("The Body in the Barrel") will be published in the July issue of AHMM.

They've announced the winner and two runners-up in each of the two categories of the German Mystery Prize, awarded for the thirty-seventh time this year. The German winner is Zoë Beck's Paradise City, and the runners-up are Max Annas with Morduntersuchungskommission (Murder Investigation Commission) and Frank Göhre's Verdammte Liebe Amsterdam. The international winner is Denise Mina's Gods and Beasts, with Garry Disher's Hope Hill Drive and Kim Young-ha's Diary of a Murderer the runners-up.

Somehow, these deadlines slipped past me until now, but there are a couple of contests seeking submissions for first novelists due soon if you just happen to have an unpublished manuscript in your desk drawer. The St. Martin's Press Tony Hillerman Prize is accepting submissions for a debut mystery novel set in the American Southwest, with a prize of $10,000 advance against royalties and publication. The deadline for that one is January 2, 2021. Also, the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Competition is taking submissions from the author of any unpublished novel who is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a novel (except that authors of self-published works may enter, as long as the manuscript submitted is not the self-published work). That one also has a prize of $10,000 advance, with a deadline of 11:59pm EST on January 1, 2021. Fortunately, you have more time to enter the CWA's Debut Dagger competition, with a deadline of February 26th.

Richard Osman became the first debut author to land the Christmas No 1 title on the bestseller lists in Britain with his book, The Thursday Murder Club, a cozy mystery about elderly sleuths. The book nudged out Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, and David Walliams's latest children's novel, Code Name Bananas, for the top slot.

Although many bookstores didn't survive the lockdowns and business stresses of pandemic 2020, the year turned out to be pretty good for publishers, thanks to so many folks stuck at home with time on their hands.

If you'd like to start off 2021 right, check out Mystery Fanfare's list of "New Year's Mysteries, Crime Fiction, Thrillers, and Movies that take place at the New Year."

A couple of new essays up at CrimeReads take a look at "Why Classic Crime Fiction Was Obsessed With Fashion" and "The Best Loved Detective Agencies in Fiction."

I'm not sure how to feel about this, except to shake my head and agree with the hubster that "humans just aren't ready for prime time yet."

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Last Day, 1966" by Diana Powell Lukoff.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb chatted with Edwin Hill, author of the new mystery novel Watch Her, the third in his Hester Thursby series following Little Comfort and The Missing Ones; Punk Noir Magazine's John Wisniewski interviewed Dan Flanigan about his crime suspense novel, The Big Tilt, and his other writings; Irish crime writer Anthony J. Quinn discussed the real life inspiration behind his new thriller, Turncoat; and Author Interviews spoke with Edwin Hill, the Edgar- and Agatha-award nominated author of Little Comfort, The Missing Ones, and Watch Her.