Mystery Melange

Along with many other fans, I was saddened to hear that Angela Lansbury had taken her final curtain call, passing away just weeks shy of her 97th birthday. As The New Yorker observed, Lansbury's career, like the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, spanned so many decades and cultural upheavals "that she seemed as constant and as comforting as the blue sky above." She wowed fans beginning with her breakout role as the saucy Cockney maid in 1944's Gaslight—she was seventeen at the time and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress—to her role as a witch-in-training in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, to creating the role of Mrs. Lovett, the rolling-pin-wielding serial killer’s accomplice in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Broadway musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She received three Oscar nominations total, including her chilling role in The Manchurian Candidate, and won six Tony Awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement. I suspect that most people in the crime fiction community will always remember her best for her iconic role as amateur sleuth, Jessica Fletcher, on Murder She Wrote. There have been countless tributes, including this one from The Guardian that called her "a national treasure," and many more touting her warmth, kindness, and generosity. She was also a devoted mother and once managed to save her daughter from being under the spell of notorious cult leader and killer, Charles Manson. She will be sorely missed by family, friends, and fans, but her legacy will certainly live on for many years to come.

We also lost author Peter Robinson this past week when he died at the age of 72 after a brief illness. The British-born novelist whose work included poetry and short stories as well as his bestselling thrillers, will be remembered as a master of plot and character. Robinson was best known for his novels featuring Inspector Banks, the first of which was published 35 years ago. The books were adapted into the TV drama series, DCI Banks, which ran between 2010 and 2016 and starred Stephen Tompkinson in the titular role. A total of 8.75 million copies of Robinson's books have been sold by his U.K. publishers Hodder & Stoughton and Pan Macmillan, and his books have been translated into 19 languages.

Amazon’s Kindle Storyteller Award 2022 shortlist was announced and includes a couple of crime fiction titles, Ann Girdharry's psychological thriller, The Woman in Room 19, and JD Kirk's City of Scars, the 14th book in his DCI Logan Scottish crime fiction series. The award was established in 2016 to celebrate exceptional writing, giving both bestselling and emerging authors the chance to win a literary prize of £20,000. This year's winner will be revealed at a ceremony in London on October 24 by guest judge and bestselling author, Adam Kay.

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. announced it will begin publishing James Bond books under its own imprint in spring 2023, touting the move as one that "marks an exciting future for 007." Fleming’s original Bond novels and short story collections will be available starting April 13, exactly 70 years to the day after Ian Fleming first introduced special agent 007 to the world with the publication of Casino Royale. The family company that owns the literary copyright to his literary works had partnered with Random House and Penguin for many years, but the new enterprise's managing director, Corinne Turner, explained that they felt it was time for a change of direction and "we hope our new editions will reach as wide an audience as possible, attracting long-time readers as well those who have yet to discover the Bond novels.” (HT to The Rap Sheet)

CrimeReads explored the literary blood feud between Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. As the article's author, Curtis Evans, explained, "Ironically, Chandler and Macdonald may have been in more aesthetic agreement than they deigned to realize. (Certainly they both hated the novels of Mickey Spillane.)." Both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald hoped to make the hard-boiled crime novel a vehicle for serious exploration of the human condition, yet neither author was able in this respect to see himself mirrored in the other.

Recently featured at the Page 69 Test was Secrets of the Nile: A Lady Emily Mystery by Tasha Alexander. In this homage to Agatha Christie, author Tasha Alexander sends Lady Emily to Egypt during British colonial rule to investigate a crime that leads back to the era of the Pharaohs.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Dead to Rights" by Tony Dawson.

In the Q&A roundup, E.B. Davis interviewed Alicia Beckman about her new novel, Blind Faith, over at the Writers Who Kill blog; and the Irish Times asked, "What compels Irish female crime writers to tackle such nightmarish topics?" with insights from crime authors such as Arlene Hunt, Andrea Mara, Claire Allan, Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin (who writes as Sam Blake), Patricia Gibney, Sinead Crowley, Louise Phillips, and more. As Phillips noted, “If crime fiction acts as a mirror on society and its cultural norms, then, I guess, there are many reasons why my writing tends to explore darker issues, and why female voices are currently being heard loud and clear.”