Mystery Melange

 

The Baker Street Irregulars just marked their 90th anniversary with the BSI Weekend in New York City, filled with events for Sherlockians of all kinds. At this year's event, Otto Penzler was given the Two-Shilling Award for his continued support of the Baker Street Irregulars and general Sherlockianism. As Penzler explained on Twitter, in the Holmes canon, the detective employed a group of street urchins whom he called The Baker Street Irregulars, giving each a shilling. When someone is accepted into the BSI, they are given a shilling, and if they are chosen to be honored for their service to that community, they are given a second shilling, hence the name.

Each year the Writers’ Police Academy hosts the Golden Donut Short Story Contest. It’s a fun contest with two major but simple rules—the focus of the story must be based on the photo they provide, and the story must contain EXACTLY 200 words. The panel of judges consisted of associate and commissioning editors of the UK publishing company, Bookouture. This year's winner was announced as "Adam-13" by Sally Milliken; second place went to "Law and Molder" by Marcia Adair; third place was won by Pat Remick's "Cemetery Justice."

New York Times best-selling author, Tess Gerritsen, will talk with the "Queen of Scottish Crime," Val McDermid, at Aberdeen’s Music Hall on Friday, January 26 about her career as a physician and novelist and her newest novel, Listen To Me. This is a special prologue to Granite Noir, which will take place with events across the city from February 20-25. Gerritsen is well known for creating compelling protagonist, homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles which inspired the hit TV series, Rizzoli and Isles.

Suspense Magazine has been on hiatus since fall of 2022 but this week announced they're back after they "needed to take a little break, to see how the best way to give the fans what they wanted." They will no longer be doing a PDF of the magazine, instead using the website as a repository for information (reviews, interviews, podcasts). They've also partnered with Outliers Writing University, where authors such as Jeffery Deaver, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Heather Graham, Don Bentley, Steven James, and Boyd Morrison to help authors get past writing blocks and put their manuscript in the publishing pile and out of the slush pile. There's no word yet on whether the site will continue to publish original short fiction online or in anthology format as they have done in the past.

Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has compiled a list of crime fiction titles published in the first three months of 2024 deserving of particular notice, including novels, anthologies, and a few nonfiction books. As he aptly notes, "Who Could Get Through So Many Titles?"

The BBC looked at the Indian hotel murder that possibly inspired Agatha Christie's very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a story which also introduced one of Christie's most iconic characters, the eccentric detective, Hercule Poirot.

In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Gregory Dowling, translator of the upcoming publication in English of The Lover of No Fixed Abode, a novel originally written by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini in 1986, which is set in Venice; Paul Durston talked to Crime Time about his second PC Charlie Quinlan novel, If We Were One; and Deborah Kalb interviewed Otho Eskin, the author of the new novel, Firetrap, the third in his series featuring his character Marko Zorn.