Mystery Melange

 

Tonight, you can join in a webinar titled ''Murder for Sale: Raymond Chandler & James M. Cain Novels to Films," which begins at 8pm ET. Hosted by documentarian and author Steven C. Smith, the virtual experience will travel to sun-drenched California in the 1930s and '40s to explore the sinister origins of Cain and Chandler’s stories, which pitted Hollywood studio chiefs, screenwriters, and censors against one another over how to translate these explosive novels to the screen.

HarperFiction is launching Killing It: The Killer Reads Competition for Undiscovered Writers. The competition aims to open doors to crime writers who need a way into the publishing industry, and encourages submissions from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic writers in particular. Entrants are being asked to send the first 10,000 words of their crime, thriller or suspense novel, a short synopsis, and a bio by April 7, 2021. Three winners will be chosen to receive editorial reports from HarperFiction crime editors on their full manuscripts plus editorial mentoring (up to three one-hour sessions).

We lost crime fiction author, John Lutz, last week. John Lutz died at the age of 81 following a struggle will Lewy body dementia before he succumbed to Covid. Lutz was President of the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers and won an Edgar winner for his short story, "Ride the Lightning." He also penned some fifty novels of political suspense, private eye novels, urban suspense, humor, occult, caper, police procedural, espionage, historical, futuristic, amateur sleuth, thriller and just about every mystery sub-genre. His book, SWF Seeks Same was adapted for the film, Single White Female, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh). Another novel, The Ex, became an HBO movie. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

We also mark the passing of Eric Jerome Dickey, the bestselling novelist who blended crime, romance, and eroticism in Sister, Sister, Waking With Enemies, and dozens of other stories about contemporary Black life, who has died at age 59. Dickey was an aspiring actor and stand-up comic who began writing fiction in his mid-30s and became known for his witty, conversational, and sometimes graphic prose style, which brought him a wide readership, including his Gideon crime fiction series such as Sleeping With Strangers and Resurrecting Midnight.

Publishers Weekly has launched a new US publishing trade fair, following the retirement of BookExpo at the end of 2020. The US Book Show will debut virtually from 26th to 28th May this year, with attendees to include booksellers, librarians, publishers and literary agents from the US and internationally. There will be around five hours of programmed content a day to facilitate networking and parties as well as to accommodate those tuning in across different time zones.

A lovely old cinema in Devon that once reserved a balcony for the crime writer Agatha Christie – and a second one for her butler – is to be restored to its former glory. The Paignton Picture House on the English Riviera has been awarded a £200,000 grant from Historic England to refurbish intricate stonework and stained glass windows. Christie, who was born in Devon and kept a holiday home in the area, watched films from her special seat as her butler served her drinks and is believed to have used a thinly veiled version of the cinema in her fiction, calling it The Gaiety.

A rare second-edition novel written by one of the most popular writers of the 18th century has mysteriously appeared at a Perth library. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) was described as a pioneer of gothic fiction and was one of the most popular writers of her time. A copy of her book, The Mysteries Udolpho, had a rather stranger and mysterious journey.

Writing for The Guardian, Carmen Maria Machado examined the "Twisted brilliance: Patricia Highsmith at 100," and the dark allure of the writer behind Ripley.

Writing for the Sunday Times, author Val McDermid explained why "Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage was my gateway drug."

In case you missed it, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting-rights advocate, Stacy Abrams, has a thriller being published in May. Abrams has already had romance novels published, but this will be her first crime fiction title, a Supreme Court thriller titled While Justice Sleeps, which is due out May 11.

Carolyn A. Conley, who spent her academic career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a focus on criminal violence in the British Isles, applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Debauched, Desperate, Deranged: Women Who Killed, London 1674-1913. The book is the first empirical, quantitatively- as well as qualitatively-based study of women and homicide from the seventeenth century to the twentieth.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Free Delivery" by Max Thrax.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with Monica Rodden about her debut, Monsters Among Us, and also spoke with Molly MacRae about her latest Highland Bookshop Mystery, Heather and Homicide; and over at the Writers Who Kill blog, E. B. Davis interviewed Jane Willan about Abide with Me, the third book in her Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn mysteries series.