Mystery Melange

 

S.J. Rozan has won the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award, given by the members of the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan for the best hardboiled novel published in Japan. It's for Paper Son, which was published in the U.S. in 2019 but only recently was published in Japan. This is Rozan's second appearance on that list, having won in 2009 for Winter and Night. Other previous winners include Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, and C.J. Box among others. Rozan is one of only three female authors to have won the award, in addition to Sue Grafton and Nanami Wakatake.

The longlist was announced for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards, which celebrate excellence in New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing. They are named for Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of the Queens of Crime of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, who penned bestselling mysteries that entertained millions of global readers from her home in the Cashmere Hills. You can check out the list of fourteen titles here, which are currently being considered by an international judging panel of crime and thriller writing experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction will be announced in August, with the finalists celebrated and the winners announced as part of a special event held in association with WORD Christchurch later in the year.

Thirty-three books have made it to Sisters in Crime’s longlist for its 23rd Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books published by Australian women in 2022. Six Davitt Awards will be presented at a gala dinner at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel on Saturday, September 2, by award-winning investigative journalist and true-crime author, Debi Marshall: Best Adult Novel; Best Young Adult Novel; Best Children’s Novel; Best Non-fiction Book; Best Debut Book (any category); and Readers’ Choice (as voted the 600+ members of Sisters in Crime Australia).

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2023 Locus Awards on June 24, 2023, during the Locus Awards Weekend. There are a few crime fiction-themed books among the finalists including Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones (The Cemeteries of Amalo Book 2) in the Best Fantasy category, which centers on Thara Celehar, who can speak to the recently departed and works to find the killers of the murdered; and The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal, in the Best Science Fiction category, which follows a brilliant inventor and heiress on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner when her husband is arrested for murder.

HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, has announced the launch of a new £10,000 competition to find an unagented author writing Scotland-set crime novels. A search to discover the next Ian Rankin or Val McDermid has begun via the literary competition, which offers budding crime writers a book deal, a £10,000 advance, and representation by an agent. Any author who is born or raised in Scotland, is a permanent resident, or has a strong and enduring connection with the country can enter with a synopsis and the first 5-10,000 words of their manuscript.

Independent publisher Black Spring Press is launching a new imprint, Black Spring Crime, following the hire of consultant crime editor Luca Veste. The new imprint will publish one crime title a month for the first year beginning with Zephaniah Sole’s A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands, a novel "dripping with rich reality" and fantastical elements. Sole’s novel will be followed by Rob McClure’s "hard-hitting" detective novel, The Scotsman, later this month; J K Nottingham’s Jasper’s Brood, publishing in September 2023; and Clare Grant’s historical crime novel, The Winter of Shadows, publishing in November 2023.

ITW's 10th Annual Online Thriller School begins September 12, with a ten-week program focusing on the craft of thriller writing. Each instructor will teach an aspect of craft during a live Zoom session, will provide written materials for further reading along with study suggestions (when applicable), and will offer live Q&A with the attending students. Classes will be held every Tuesday at 1:00pm Eastern. The series also includes two bonus panels: a Q&A with bestselling authors Clare Mackintosh and Ruth Ware, and "What Makes a Literary Agent Go 'Wow'" with Jenny Bent, Jeff Kleinman, and Barbara Poelle. For more information and registration, follow this link.

Hachette India is spearheading a revival of the legendary Yellowbacks series, first published a century ago by Hodder & Stoughton in the iconic yellow book jackets. Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, has personally curated the list of nearly 200 titles over a period of seven years, with the aim of leading readers on a journey through the history of crime and detective fiction—from the 18th century to the golden age of the 1950s and ’60s. A second release, with another 50 to 70 titles, will be announced at the end of this year (with extensions beyond crime fiction to other categories).

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Osip" by Paul Hostovsky.