Mystery Melange

 

Taiwanese writer Chi Wei-jan has won the Falcon Award from the Maltese Falcon Society in Japan for his debut novel, Private Eyes, making him the first Taiwanese to win the honor. The Falcon Award is presented annually to honor the best hard-boiled mystery novel published in Japan. The Maltese Falcon Society was founded in San Francisco in 1981 based on the 1930 detective novel The Maltese Falcon by US writer Dashiell Hammett, and although the organization is no longer active in the US, the Japanese chapter has been active since 1982. Past winners include US crime writer Lawrence Block, who has received the award twice, as well as Michael Connelly, Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, and Don Winslow. This is Chi Wei-jan's second honor in Japan, having won the Honkaku Mystery Award earlier this year.

The 2022 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award finalists were announced in a variety of categories including Best Cozy, Best Historical, Best Investigator, Best Mystery, Best Thriller, and more. Winners will be announced at the conference in Nashville, August 18-21. For the lists of all the finalists, click on over here.

The time remaining to vote for the shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022 is running out. Presented by Harrogate International Festivals, six bestselling authors are competing to win the UK’s most prestigious crime writing prize. Voting closes this Friday, July 8, with the winner to be revealed on the opening night of Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, July 21. The winner will receive a £3,000 prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by T&R Theakston Ltd. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Some sad news to report this week: British crime novelist, Susie Steiner (1971-2022), passed away following a three-year battle with glioblastoma brain tumor. Steiner was author of the Sunday Times bestselling Manon Bradshaw trilogy, with installments in that series being chosen as a Richard & Judy book club pick, a standout book by the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and NPR, and also shortlisted for the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year. Susie had also written extensively about losing her eyesight to Retinitis Pigmentosa while living with her husband and two children in London.

Writing for Book Riot, Dee Das compiled a list of "8 Feminist Cozy Mysteries You Need To Read Right Away."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "The Husnock" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill featured an interview with Jennifer J. Chow, author of Death by Bubble Tea, the first book in the new L.A. Night Market mystery series; over at the Venetian Vase blog, Steve Powell chatted with Jill Dearman about her new novel, Jazzed, which delivers a twist on the famous Leopold & Loeb case from the 1920s – what if the two killers were women?; and Kellye Garrett interviewed Cheryl Head about her new novel, Time’s Undoing, which follows a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago, a story inspired by the author’s own family history.