Mystery Melange

 

The Oxford Literary Festival, scheduled for March 21 through March 3, has introduced a Crime Fiction Program as part of the events. Some of the highlights are Whatever Gets You Through the Night - Charlie Higson being interviewed by Triona Adams; A thrilling life: the Slough House series. Mick Herron being interviewed by Triona Adams; The Past is Never Dead: Crime Fiction from Christopher Marlowe to 1979 : Val McDermid being interviewed by Emma Smith; Give Unto Others: Donna Leon talks about the 31st case involving her fictional Venetian detective Guido Brunetti. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The Manchester Libraries in the UK is hosting a ​Crime Festival March 16-18, hosted by Rob Parker.. There will be an Author Panel on March 16th with Karen Woods, Cath Staincliffe, and Joseph Knox, and another on March 17th with S J Watson, Alex Caan, Chris Simms, and Mandasue Heller. The featured event on the 18th is "An Invitation to Murder" Murder Mystery Night.

Harrogate International Festivals revealed the Festival Chair and Special Guest line-up for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Award-winning crime novelist Denise Mina will be acting as this year’s Festival Chair, following in the footsteps of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Lee Child. Mina is known for the Tartan Noir Garnethill trilogy, as well as her Alex Morrow and Paddy Meehan series, the latter of which was adapted into a BBC television drama. Special guests on this year’s incredible line-up, curated by Mina, include crime fiction titans such as: Lynda La Plante, Paula Hawkins, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Connelly, Lucy Foley, Charlie Higson, John Connolly, CL Taylor and Kathy Reichs. Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival will return to Harrogate’s Old Swan Hotel from July 21–24 2022.

A conference on the theme of "Crones, Crime, and the Gothic" is scheduled at Falmouth University in the UK, June 10-11, 2022. This conference addresses the key real-world issue of how older women are spoken about and represented in different cultures and locations, with a focus on crime and Gothic narratives. Organizers are welcoming abstracts for papers, panels, and workshops.

Running through August 7, 2022, is the exhibition "Cowboys, Detectives, and Daredevils" at the New Britain, Connecticut Museum of American Art that features art from pulp genres such as crime and detective, western, science fiction, adventure, and aviation. Robert Lesser gifted his extraordinary collection of 200 pulp art illustrations to the museum, and today, the Robert Lesser Collection represents the greatest assemblage of pulp art in this country, preserving the history of this exclusively American art form. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

The pocket watch owned by Edgar Allan Poe while he was writing his famous short story "The Tell-Tale Heart"—in which the murderous narrator compares the thumping of his victim’s heart to the tick of a clock—has been donated to the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Literary collector, Susan Jaffe Tane, gave the watch along with almost 60 other artifacts, including letters and rare first editions. Curator Chris Semtner said Poe’s timepiece was "especially important" because the author owned it while writing the story.

It appears that readers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway are big fans of crime fiction, at least according to a recent study in Switzerland.

The Massachusetts State Police has a novel idea for solving cold cases. They released a playing card deck that features fifty-two cold cases from the Unresolved Cases Unit in hopes of generating new leads. In a video earlier this month, MSP’s Col. Christopher Mason debuted the cards, imploring the public to look through the deck and come forward with information pertaining to any of the cases.

This is positive news: a new CBS News poll found that 83 percent of Americans say books should never be banned for criticizing U.S. history; 85 percent oppose banning them for airing ideas you disagree with; and 87 percent oppose banning them for discussing race or depicting slavery.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Last Visit to the Taxidermy Collection" by Angelina Mitescu.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element featured Gregg Hurwitz (author of the Orphan X series) interviewing fellow thriller author, Alex Finlay (The Night Shift); Deborah Kalb spoke with Dean Jobb, author of The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer; and Writers Who Kill's Annette Dashofy chatted with Joyce St. Anthony about her World War II-era historical mystery series debut, Front Page Murder.