Mystery Melange

The winners of New Zealand's 2021 Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction and non-fiction were announced in conjunction with WORD Christchurch Festival. Best Novel went to Sprigs, by Brannavan Gnanalingam; Best First Novel: For Reasons of Their Own, by Chris Stuart; Best Non-fiction: Black Hands: Inside the Bain Family Murders, by Martin van Beynen; Best YA/Kids Book: Katipo Joe, by Brian Falkner. To see all the finalists in the four categories, follow this link.

The winner of the 2021 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year is: To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi, translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner and published by MacLehose Press. As well as a trophy, Mikael Niemi receives a pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2022. This is the first historical crime novel to have that award. To check out all the finalists, head on over here.

The 2021 shortlists have been revealed for the Staunch Prize’s unpublished flash fiction and short stories without violence to women, while the original book prize is on hold until 2022. In the short story category, the shortlist features "My Flood Book" by Greg Beatty; "Swine Tags" by Tom Leins; "The Toll Bridge" by Arendse Lund; "Like Glue" by Kimberly Shaw; "Tremor" by writer Katrina Moinet. In flash fiction, "Cornered" by Moinet is pitted alongside "Serial killers" by Adele Evershed; "Two Faced" by M J Harbottle; "Pale on the Gatepost" by Alison Ringrose; and Ros Thomas' "How To Leave Your Childhood Behind." (HT to The Bookseller)

The shortlist for Waterstones' Book of the Year has 13 titles in the running for the prize, with books nominated by Waterstones booksellers. The sole crime fiction title among them is The Appeal by Janice Hallett, in which law students Charlotte and Femi investigate a mystery in the sleepy town of Lower Lockwood, dealing with everything from an amateur dramatic society’s disastrous staging of All My Sons to a dodgy charity appeal for a child’s medical treatment. Buyer Bea Carvalho said it had been a "real word of mouth hit" for the UK’s largest book chain.

Another "best of" list was recently released, this one courtesy of Publishers Weekly. The titles run the gamut from The Anatomy of Desire by L.R. Dorn to Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews. Follow this link to see the complete list of twelve recommended books.

Ian Fleming fanatic, Kim Sherwood, who is known for her debut novel, Testament, has been tapped by the Fleming's estate to pen a new series of "audacious, pacey, sexy" spy stories in the James Bond universe, becoming the first female to do so. The author struck a deal with HarperCollins to write three contemporary thrillers set in the world of James Bond but where the original 007 is missing, presumed captured or even killed. The series is set to launch in September 2022.

There's a call for papers destined for a book-length publication in the bilingual collection Book Practices & Textual Itineraries (published at Université de Lorraine, France) which traces evolutions in the production, transmission and reception of books and texts over time and across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. If that all sounds a bit puzzling, check out the details here.

Penguin recently announced their intention to buy publisher Simon & Schuster in a $2.2 billion deal. However, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit in the US district court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, saying the deal would let Penguin Random House "exert outsized influence over which books are published in the United States and how much authors are paid for their work." The Authors Guild, a writers’ organization, has said it opposes the acquisition because there would be less competition for authors’ manuscripts.

Just why are we so drawn to the "old book smell?" In a new book by Jude Stewart, the author says it "stems from their slow chemical decomposition...Books are largely paper, and paper is largely plants. But the materials from which books are made have shifted over the centuries—and those shifts, in turn, have influenced how different generations of books, smell." Stewart also provides a scientific explanation of how a book’s scent adapts to and blends with both the scent of the room in which it is placed and the people who occupy it.

Here's an fun crime headline: "Lego trafficking scheme of stolen sets worth thousands busted 'brick by brick,' Seattle police say."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Little Red Corvette" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Irish-born Jane Casey, author of the new novel, The Killing Kind, and also the Maeve Kerrigan series; Alison Gaylin (Never Look Back) chatted with Deborah Kalb about Gaylin's new novel, The Collective; and E.B. Davis interviewed Susan Van Kirk about The Witch’s Child, her fourth Endurance series mystery.