Janet Rudolph has compiled a listing of Valentine's Day crime fiction, or those titles that take place on or around Valentine's Day, as well as an updated list of Sweetheart Sleuths. And if you're a chocoholic, check out her Dying for Chocolate blog for Valentine's Day chocolate reviews, recipes, and vintage chocolate ads.
As Janet notes in the above link, it's also International Book Giving Day, an annual event conceived by Amy Broadmoore, founder of Delightful Children’s Books and The Curious Kid’s Librarian in 2012. International Book Giving Day is all about getting new, used, and borrowed books into the hands of as many children as possible. Volunteers are encouraged to organize their own events or simply contribute however they can by giving at least one book to a child in need. International Book Giving Day is celebrated in over 44 countries, including France, Ukraine, South Africa, Japan, Nigeria, the U.S., UK, and Malaysia, among others. If you'd like to participate and want to include some mystery books for kids, here are some links from Book Riot, Imagination Soup, and Scholastic.
The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have some recipes and reads for the holiday, including Leslie Karst's Seared Pork Chops with Apricot Brandy; also Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies, courtesy of Maddie Day; and Flourless Chocolate Whisky Cake from Molly MacRae.
For more than four decades, the people of Portland, Maine, have awakened on Valentine’s Day to find large and small red hearts adorning storefronts, statues, parking garages and some of the city’s biggest landmarks. But that tradition was imperiled by the death of the so-called Valentine’s Day Bandit last spring. But all was not lost when this year fans of the bandit plastered hundreds of the small paper decorations everywhere, including mailboxes and even trash bins, and hanging larger banners on a floating restaurant, construction scaffolding and the library.
If you're a Valentine's Scrooge, then you might prefer to check out this list of ten crime films where love doesn't conquer all.
The iconic 130-Year-Old Pasadena, California bookstore Vroman's is up for sale. Over the years, the bookstore has hosted bestselling authors including Naomi Hirahara and Walter Mosley, who put his handprints into fresh concrete in a Walk of Fame ceremony during the store's 125th anniversary celebrationn. The store was founded in 1894 by Adam Clark Vroman, who loved books and giving back to his community. He helped to rescue some of the old Franciscan missions from decay, and during World War II, Vroman's Bookstore donated and delivered books to Japanese Americans interned at nearby camps, such as the Manzanar camp in Owens Valley. When Mr. Vroman died in 1916, he left the bookstore to long-time employees, one of whom was the great grandfather of the current owner. In 2008, Vroman's was named Bookseller of the Year by Publishers Weekly.
In happier bookstore news, French President Macron now says that booksellers can stay put during the upcoming Olympic Games. The booksellers in question have operated near the Seine for centuries and become a fixture in the heart of Paris. So when the city’s police, citing security concerns, ordered them closed during this summer’s Olympic Games, an uproar ensued leading Macron to step in, deeming the booksellers "a living heritage of the capital."
U.S. publisher Soho Press is introducing a new horror-fiction imprint called Hell’s Hundred, named after the once bleak, now chic New York City neighborhood of SoHo. Publishers Weekly noted that the first two books from Hell’s Hundred will debut this summer, including youthjuice, by former beauty editor E.K. Sathue (aka Erin Mayer), which Soho associate editor Taz Urnov bills as "a horror satire about the beauty industry that really puts the gore in gorgeous," and Blood Like Mine from Stuart Neville, whose noir mysteries often incorporate supernatural elements and regularly border on horror. (HT to The Rap Sheet blog)
Writing for Public Domain Review, Daisy Sainsbury investigated the legend of Eugène-François Vidocq (1775–1857), the head of the Sûreté whose tumultuous life included a criminal past and work in law enforcement, forensics, private investigation, and prison reform. He also achieved literary fame as the author of wildly popular memoirs. According to those memoirs, Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun), and then, working on the other side of the law, apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founded the first criminal investigation bureau — staffed mainly with convicts — and, when he was later fired, the first private detective agency. (HT to The Bunburyist)
In the Q&A roundup, New Zealand writer Tom Baragwanath spoke with Crime Time about his new novel, Paper Cage; and Swedish author Johan Theorin chatted with Options The Edge on his crime quartet set in the island of Öland, and how writing crime fiction is his way of dealing with the darker side of things that happen in his homeland.
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