Mystery Melange

Gene Christie has been named the winner of the 2024 Munsey Award. The award was presented at PulpFest in Pittsburgh on August 3 and voted on by a committee made up of all the living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award recipients. Named for Frank A. Munsey, publisher of the first pulp magazine, the award recognizes someone who has contributed to the betterment of the pulp community through disseminating knowledge, publishing, or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest pulp magazines. A researcher of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and adventure fiction for over thirty years, Gene Christie has extensively studied and indexed the magazines of the pulp era.

Some sad news this week, via Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare: Victoria (Vicki) Thompson passed away last week due to complications of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Thompson began her writing career as the author of 20 historical romance novels, then turned her hand to writing the bestselling historical Gaslight Mysteries series, which has been nominated for six Agatha Awards, an Edgar Award, and a Bruce Alexander Award. The Gaslight Mysteries follow midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy as they solve murder mysteries in turn-of-the-century New York City. Thompson also wrote the historical Counterfeit Lady series, which was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award by Mystery Writers of America.

Via Elizabeth Foxwell's Bunburyist blog comes an unusual but interesting event; the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States will hold a Victorian gaslighting roundtable on Zoom on Thursday, September 5, at 11 a.m. Pacific time (2 p.m. Eastern time). Presenters will discuss various examples of gaslighting in Victorian literature and culture. The term "gaslighting" refers to a form of psychological manipulation stemming from Patrick Hamilton's play Angel Street, aka Gaslight, adapted as a 1944 film. Advance registration for the Zoom event is required.

Dean Street Press noted on Twitter that in December, it will be re-printing the mystery novels of British author Lana Hutton Bowen-Judd, better known under her pen name of Sara Woods (1922-1985). During World War II, Woods worked in a bank and as a solicitor's clerk in London, where she gained much of the information later used in her stories. Her main series of some forty-eight novels featured barrister Antony Maitland, but she also penned three other shorter series under various pen name. In 1957, she and her husband emigratedd to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Woods was also instrumental in forming Crime Writers of Canada, serving on its first executive committee.

During a recent trip to Scotland, Martin Edwards traced some of the locations which crop up in Dorothy L. Sayers' 1931 novel, The Five Red Herrings, which are set in Galloway, a place I've always wanted to visit.

In the Q&A roundup, cozy mystery author Janice Hallett spoke with The Telegraph about how women dominate crime fiction "because we fear for our lives," as well as the life-saving potential of her novels, her love of Richard Osman, and why she won’t cancel Enid Blyton; and Steve Hamilton chatted with Writer's Digest about the process of continuing a series with his new thriller novel, An Honorable Assassin.

Mystery Melange

The Joffe Books Prize is looking for a talented new crime fiction writer of color. The prize invites submissions from unagented UK residents and British citizens (including those living abroad) from Black, Asian, Indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds writing in crime fiction genres such as psychological thrillers, cozy mysteries, police procedurals, twisty chillers, suspense mysteries, and domestic noirs. The winner will be offered a prize package, one of the UK’s largest literary prizes, consisting of a two-book publishing deal with Joffe books, a £1,000 cash prize, and a £25,000 audiobook offer from Audible for the first book. The submission period ends at midnight on September 30, 2024. This year the Joffe Books Prize judging panel includes A.A. Chaudhuri, bestselling author of She’s Mine, and literary agent Gyamfia Osei from Andrew Nurnberg Associates. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Mystery Writers of America University 2024's latest online class via Zoom is coming up on Wednesday, September 4th at 8pm EDT. Daniel Stashower, a three-time Edgar-winner whose books include Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle and The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War, will talk about setting. Powerful settings have always been essential to the mystery story, from Poe’s "rank sedges, vacant eye-like windows and white trunks of decayed trees" to I.S. Berry’s "noncontiguous streets, noises without origin or purpose, and angles that didn’t quite fit together." MWA-U classes are free to current MWA members and offered to nonmembers for $20 a session. For more information and to register, follow this link.

Thanks to Elizabeth Foxwell, over at her Bunburyist blog, I learned about a series of maps published by Herb Lester Associates, essentially insider's guides to the cities certain crime authors knew (and used in their stories), which can still be visited today. The latest, due out in September, is Maigret's Paris, a map of locations from the Chief Inspector Maigret oeuvre of Georges Simenon. Previous releases include The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles; Agatha Christie's England; John le Carré's London; and The World of Patricia Highsmith.


In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton interviewed Lindy S. Hudis about her new crime thriller, Hollywood Underworld, and spoke with Tracey Lampley about her new mystery, All Money Ain’t Good Money; Luke Deckard talked with CrimeReads about his latest novel, Bad Blood, which is set in 1922 and follows Logan Bishop, an American PI in London, looking for a missing woman who is connected to his father’s murder; and William Kent Krueger spoke with CrimeTime about the twentieth novel in his Cork O’Connor mystery series, Spirit Crossing, and the truths that inspired it.

Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association revealed the final shortlist of contenders for Australia’s distinguished Ned Kelly Awards, with winners from all categories to be unveiled in September. After announcing the contenders for Best Debut Crime Fiction, Best True Crime, and Best International Crime Fiction, it's finally time for Best Crime Fiction:

• Killer Traitor Spy, by Tim Ayliffe (Simon & Schuster Australia)
• Dark Corners, by Megan Goldin (Canelo)
• Dark Mode, by Ashley Kalagian Blunt (Ultimo Press)
• Darling Girls, by Sally Hepworth (Pan Australia)
• The Seven, by Chris Hammer (Allen & Unwin)
• Ripper, by Shelley Burr (Hachette Australia)
• The Tea Ladies, by Amanda Hampson (Penguin)
• Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, by Benjamin Stevenson (Michael Joseph)
  
  

The winner of this year's Österreichischer Krimipreis, or Austrian Crime Fiction Prize, was revealed as attorney, journalist, and author, Eva Rossmann. Crime fiction specialists – booksellers, bloggers, journalists, readers – were called upon to name three authors who write in German whose crime novels are particularly convincing in terms of content and literature and underline the cultural and social relevance of the genre as well as initiate trend-setting new developments within the genre. This is the seventh iteration of the Prize, which comes by way of the Carinthia Crime Festival. The award ceremony will take place on October 13, where Rossman will receive a prize of 4,000 euros.

Contenders for the 2024 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year are shaping up, with Karen Meet noting on her Euro Crime blog that 31 of the 32 titles that were eligible have been entered by the publishers. The winner will be announced online later this year. The Petrona Award honors books in translation that are published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year by authors/books who born/set in Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The winner of the 2023 Award was Femicide by Pascal Engman, translated from the Swedish by Michael Gallagher and published by Legend Press.

Authors and fans of private eye fiction take note: A panel co-sponsored by Private Eye Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America/SoCal will feature three working Private Investigators discussing what they do and how writers can get it "write." The panel of Joe Koenig, Sheila Wysocki and John A. Hoda, will be moderated by Gay Toltl Kinman, President of the Private Eye Writers of America. Register now for this event on Sunday, September 15, 1-2:30 PST.

Open Road Integrated Media (ORIM) has created the Free Voices initiative, a new marketing service to fight book bans and enable challenged works to be discovered and purchased by readers everywhere. David Steinberger, CEO of Open Road, added, "With Free Voices, we are going to fight book bans with the same proven ORIM marketing technology that already drives discovery and sales increases for more than 40,000 titles from over 100 publishers." A portion of all proceeds from Free Voices will be donated to The Freedom to Read Foundation, a non-profit organization which protects and defends the First Amendment to the Constitution and supports the right of libraries to collect—and individuals to access—information. Free Voices is open to all publishers with books targeted by banning efforts at schools, libraries or bookstores.

From June 25-27 in 2025, Monash University in Melbourne will host the hybrid (online and in-person) conference, Crime Fiction and the Global Challenges of the Twenty-First Century. Organizers are seeking papers to be presented at the event that will examine the global socio-political engagement of crime fiction from a broad range of perspectives, drawing on examples from across the world. Interested participants should submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation and proposal for panels and a short bio-note (about 100 words) via this form. Submissions are due by December 15, 2024. (HT to Shots Magazine)

In the Q&A roundup, Kate Atkinson spoke with The Guardian about her latest Jackson Brodie thriller, cozy crime, sniffy critics, and how she investigated her own family’s secrets; and Lisa Haselton interviewed mystery author Michael Ross about his new romantic thriller, Quiet the Waves.

Mystery Melange

Last week, the Australian Crime Writers Association announced the shortlist for the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards Best Debut Crime Fiction, and this week they continue the slow roll-out of award news with a revealing of the contenders for Best True Crime and Best International Crime Fiction. The True Crime finalists include: Crossing the Line: The explosive inside story behind the Ben Roberts-Smith headlines by Nick McKenzie; Killing for Country: A Family Story by David Marr; The Murder Squad: How Australia's toughest cops hunted the monsters of the Great Depression by Michael Adams; Reckless by Marele Day; and The Teacher’s Pet by Hedley Thomas. The Best International Crime Fiction finalists are Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton; Dice by Claire Baylis; Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly; The Only Suspect by Louise Candlish; The Search Party by Hannah Richell; and Zero Days by Ruth Ware.

I somehow missed this one, but the Glass Key award, given annually to a crime novel by an author from the Nordic countries, named its 2024 winner back in June. Christoffer Carlsson won for his novel, Levende og døde (Living and Dead), which was also named Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year in 2023.

The recently announced 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for a single work of fiction, contains two crime-related titles: Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses, which has been described as a "deftly told caper" by The Guardian, and Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, which "fuses a spy thriller with philosophical meditation" according to The Bookseller. They join other crime-themed books and authors from previous years such as Snap by Belinda Bauer, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, and and His Bloody Project by Graeme MaCrae Burnet, among others.

International Thriller Writers announced the 2025 honorees for ThrillerFest XX. The Thriller Masters are Janet Evanovich and John Grisham; the 2025 Silver Bullet Award honoree is James Patterson; the Spotlight Guests are Oyinkan Braithwaite and Jennifer Hillier; the 2025 Thriller Legend is Neil Nyren; and McKenna Jordan is the 2025 Thriller Fan. Registration is also now open for the event, which will take place June 17-21, 2025 at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel in New York City.

Flatiron Books will launch a new imprint, Pine & Cedar Books, in summer 2025. Flatiron executive editor Christine Kopprasch has been named VP and publisher of the imprint, which will publish "compulsively readable, story-driven novels." Pine & Cedar’s inaugural list includes King of Ashes, the next novel from bestselling author S.A. Cosby, which Pine & Cedar bills as "a Black, Southern, Godfather-inspired crime epic," and is the first in a three-book deal. Also forthcoming from the imprint are We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough, marking the author's return to Flatiron, which published her 2017 bestseller Behind Her Eyes, and This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum, billed as "the rare novel that successfully combines a gripping, pace-driven thriller with the soul of an epic love story." The publisher said there is no set number of titles that it plans to publish annually.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton chatted with novelist Manda Scott about her new mytho-political thriller, Any Human Power; Reed Farrel Coleman, whose new Nick Ryan novel is Blind to Midnight, stopped by Writers Read to talk about what he's currently reading; and Liz Alterman applied the Page 69 Test to her new domestic thriller, The House on Cold Creek Lane.