Mystery Melange

 

The winner of the 2020 Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year is After The Silence by Louise O'Neill. The other finalists included: The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard; The Cutting Place by Jane Casey; Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent; The Guest List by Lucy Foley; and Fifty Fifty by Steve Cavanagh.

The winner of this year's Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel was also announced. Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen, translated from the Finnish by David Hackston and published by Orenda Books, won out over the other shortlisted titles, becoming the first Finnish book to win the honor.

Emma Styles has won the Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award 2020 for her novel, No Country for Girls. Little, Brown works with the University of East Anglia Creative Writing Crime Fiction MA to provide the award to the best novel by a graduating student. Styles nets £3,000, joining previous winners Bridget Walsh, Femi Kayode and Merle Nygate. The judging was led by Sphere Fiction publishing director Ed Wood, who said: "In a particularly strong year, the four judges were hugely impressed with No Country for Girls, a novel that hits the reader with tension and action right from page one and shows us a side of Australia we rarely see in fiction. It’s a taut, well-thought out novel we are proud to pick as a winner."

The shortlist for the 2020 Staunch Prize was announced last week. Now in its third year, the prize is awarded to a novel in the thriller genre in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered. The honorees include The Coldest Warrior by Paul Vidich; The Burning Island by Jock Serong; Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu; Heaven My Home by Attica Locke; Death in Her Hands by Otessa Moshfegh; and The Chemical Reaction by Fiona Erskine.

This evening (Thursday, December 3) at 7pm EST, you can attend a virtual "Noir to the Rescue," a benefit reading for NYC’s Strand Bookstore. Like so many independent bookstores, Strand is facing huge challenges in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. To help out, 3 Rooms Press is presenting a reading by four noir authors including Peter Carlaftes (editor, The Faking of the President), Alex Segura (author, Miami Midnight), Gary Phillips (author, Matthew Henson and The Ice Temple of Harlem), and Christopher Chambers (author, Scavenger). The event will be livestreamed to Facebook and YouTube, and viewers will be encouraged to make online purchases of the authors' books from The Strand during the reading.

2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Peter Lovesey's debut mystery, Wobble to Death. Murder by the Book and Soho Press will celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Diamond Dagger Winner and MWA Grand Master with a virtual gala, Friday, December 4 beginning at 6pm EST. Toastmakers include Louise Penny, Peter Robinson, Jeffery Deaver, Lawrence Block, and Cara Black. Lovesey will also announce the winner of the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest.

After a quarter of a century, ReedPop is "retiring" BookExpo, BookCon and Unbound. Usually held in late spring, BookExpo was once a prime venue for upcoming books to "break out," and for publishers to place orders with booksellers and bring in top authors to meet with store officials, agents, librarians and journalists. The ReedPop team said it was "actively engaging in conversations with publishers, booksellers, and other partners, and with their feedback and ideas they will together agree how to best rebuild the events in the future."

Mystery Readers Journal editor, Janet Rudolph, has a call for an upcoming themed issue on Historical Mysteries. She's seeking reviews (50-250 words), articles (250-1000 words), and Author! Author! essays (500-1000 word). Although reviews and articles are self-explanatory, Author Author! Essays are first person pieces about yourself, your books, and your unique take on History Mysteries. For more details, check out the Mystery Fanfare blog.

Mystery Fanfare also reported the passing of mystery author, Sue Henry, who died at the age on 80, in Anchorage, Alaska, on November 20. Sue served two years in the Peace Corps in Thailand and worked in libraries and education as she dreamed of writing novels. After moving to Anchorage in 1984, she wrote her first of 17 novels, Murder on the Iditarod Trail, which won the Macavity and Anthony Awards in 1992 and was adapted for TV as The Cold Heart of a Killer. She has two series: one featuring Jessie Arnold, a dog sled racer, and Sergeant Alex Jensen, a state trooper, in Anchorage; and another featuring Maxine "Maxie" McNabb, a 60-something Alaskan widow, who explores the USA in her Winnebago with her faithful companion, a miniature dachshund named Stretch.

Is this taking the true-crime boom too far? TikTok users are satisfying their true crime cravings with footage of real life murder scenes. Creators argue the videos are for educational purposes – but is this really what’s attracting people to their content?

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Oh God Not Again" by Angelina Mitescu.