Mystery Melange - Halloween Edition

The Irish Book Awards shortlists for 2024 were announced, including the titles vying for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press); Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld). The public are now being asked to have their say and cast their votes through November 14th for the best books of the year on the An Post Irish Book Awards website.

Scrawl Books, the new indie bookstore in Reston, Virginia, is presenting a Cozy Halloween Mystery Panel on Thursday, October 31 at 7pm. Participating authors include Olivia Blacke (A New Lease on Death); Mindy Quigley (the Deep Dish Mysteries); Donna Andrews (the Meg Lanslow Series); and Korina L. Moss (the Cheese Shop Mysteries).

On November 1, AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland will show the silent film, The Bat (1926), directed by Roland West, with live musical accompaniment by Ben Model. Based on the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood (adapted from the author's 1908 mystery novel, The Circular Staircase), this suspenseful picture sees a masked criminal dressed as a bat spread fear and terror among the guests staying at a lavish mansion rented by a mystery writer. Hidden somewhere in the estate is a vast sum of money aching for the taking. The Bat served as inspiration for the creation of DC Comics' Batman. (HT to The Bunburyist)

Dallas Noir At The Bar returns to The Wild Detectives on Sunday, November 3rd. Authors currently scheduled to read from their mystery, thriller, and suspense works include Jim Nesbitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Trang Vu, Graham Powell, Scott Montgomery, and Harry Hunsicker.

Janet Rudolph has published an updated list of Halloween Mysteries that take place on or around Halloween, from full-length novels to short story anthologies.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the Halloween mystery short story "Floating Past the Graveyard" by Pamela Ebel, read by actor Theodore Fox.

Kings River Life published two free online Halloween short stories, "Clown-O-Phobia" By Bobbi A. Chukran, and "The Mystery of the Mirror" By Shari Held.

The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have some scary treats and reads for the season, including Warm Spiced Cider by Maya Corrigan; Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Bars via Peg Cochran; Halloween Carrot Cake from Alison Roman by way of Lucy Burdette; Edible Witches' Brooms, courtesy of Cleo Coyle; Spooky Blood Orange Spritizer from Leslie Karst; and Mummy Hand Pies from Molly MacRae.

Brian Cleary, a clinical pharmacist in Dublin, was trawling through the archives at the National Library of Ireland when he stumbled across something extraordinary: a virtually unknown short story by Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic masterpiece, Dracula. The story takes place in Surrey, England, at a spot that became infamous when three men who had murdered a sailor were hanged there in the 18th century (a gibbet is a gallows). In it, a young man goes for a stroll and comes upon a trio of eerie children who perform a strange ritual, tie the man up, and menace him with a sharp dagger. Though he passes out and isn’t sure what happens next — they are gone when he wakes up — the unsettling experience has repercussions that do not bode well for his future. 

Robert Lopresti is the latest guest at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, talking about his new anthology, Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, a collection spurred on by his continuing interest in ecological issues. (Taylor took over hosting duties of the column after its originator, B.K. Stevens, passed away in 2017.)

Author R&R with Alexa Donne

Alexa Donne is the Edgar nominated author of Pretty Dead Queens, The Ivies, and The Bitter End, young adult thrillers featuring terrible teens and big twists. She loves exploring themes of class and wealth, toxic friendships (especially between young women), and the double-edged sword of trying to keep up with the Joneses in the era of social media and toxic capitalism. By day, she lives in Los Angeles and works in television marketing. The rest of the time, she contemplates creative motives for murder and takes too many pictures of her cats.

Alexa’s latest young adult thriller, The Bitter End, follows eight students of LA’s elite Warner Prep, who can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. But they can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident. And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

Alexa stops by In Reference to Murder to talk some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

I LOVE isolation trope mysteries. LOVE. In movies, on TV, but especially in books. A ticking clock, no escape, and a limited pool of suspects—the tension in these stories is so high, and the dynamics at play so fun. 

Writing The Bitter End, I challenged myself to set a cast of teens loose on this beloved genre trope. I wanted to see how I could fit the constraints of YA world (there has to be some kind of adult supervision… at least to start) into an adult genre, while also bringing something fresh and exciting to the conceit so that it might surprise and delight seasoned adult readers.

The closed circle mystery is essentially a balancing act: a large cast size, a number of inevitable deaths, and of course the big reveal. It’s a game of teetering precariously to build and sustain suspense as I work to hide the true killer’s identity while not giving short shrift to characters who are not part of the narrative for long. Ultimately, I landed on eight teens rather than the Christie classic ten, and a minimum body count (though I won’t spoil the exact number!). It felt important to have enough personalities to stir up trouble while also not leaving the suspect pool too large at the end.

I chose multi-POV and multi-timeline, in part to stretch myself with a different thriller format, as well as to play with themes of friendship, appearances, and perspective, all of which change over time. I work backwards to construct my thrillers, so I started with a motive. Then built out a cast of spoiled Los Angeles prep school teens to kick the plot mechanics into motion.

But for an isolation trope to work, I needed to figure out how to get my new cast away from their parents and in a remote location. I knew the group should be somewhat disparate to create a lot of conflict and intrigue. They are not all friends, which ruled out a besties Spring Break trip or a post-Prom retreat. Authenticity is important to me in any thriller, but especially YA—it should feel feasible at its heart.

The solution to my problem came at a lunch with some fellow writer friends, including one who’d attended a Los Angeles prep school. She blew my mind when she talked about a program for seniors where for one week they’d get to go on a grand excursion—and real examples from her school included Alaskan dog-sledding and a Hollywood directing workshop! It was so fantastic and sparked my imagination—which is why those real examples are in the book!—and provided the perfect jumping off point for my isolation mystery.

And since I’m an East Coaster who sincerely misses weather (after fifteen years in Southern California), I knew I wanted a mountainous/forest setting with heavy rain or snow. I settled on Colorado for two reasons: first, the state and its glorious 14,000 feet peaks came up in several of the 20+ high-altitude mountaineering tomes I’d read, and second, I had several friends who were either native Coloradans or who had moved there.

And with my setting locked in, I now got to contend with several high-altitude, mountain, and snow-related elements that required some honestly pretty fun, if morbid and mildly terrifying, research. Some highlights:

High altitude sickness

The prep school teens in the book end up stranded in a ski chalet on top of a Colorado mountain of significantly high elevation. The copious amounts of non-fiction and memoir written by and about mountaineers who climb 8,000 meter peaks inevitably all touch upon high altitude sickness and its varying complications, including high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), hypoxia, and their symptoms. My made-up mountain isn’t quite that high, but altitude sickness is likely to strike an Angelino at high elevation for the first time.

Dark Summit by Nick Heil, in particular, went into great detail about a man who survived a near-death experience on Everest. Being able to get inside the mind, with vivid description, of someone experiencing hypoxia and nearly dying from it was invaluable. (Did you know it’s a common phenomenon to hallucinate a person following you/being with you, up high on the mountain? This is stuff made for the thriller genre!)

Cell phone emergency access 

It’s the lynchpin of the modern-day thriller, isn’t it: How to deal with technology? Especially in a closed circle mystery with an isolation trope, the key is to get characters AWAY from technology and any hope of help from the outside world. I’m fascinated by wild, out of the way places and all the terrible things that can happen to you there. The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman reinforced that there are many places in the United States where it’s easy to fall to the elements with ZERO recourse. Often, those searching for you may simply never know what happened.

My editor wanted to be double triple sure these students couldn’t seek help. “Surely they’d just call 9-1-1?” she said. Cellphones have an emergency call function. This led both me and her down a rabbit hole of cell phones and emergency communications in 2024, as technology is constantly evolving and mystery authors must tear their hair out to make their plots work.

Multiple Colorado friends confirmed that there are many spots in the mountains where cell coverage is so spotty to the point that it is nonexistent. I did a deep dive to double confirm: emergency calls require a cell tower within a certain distance to work. But then a wrench in the works, at pass pages, no less: newer models of iPhones and now Androids have emergency satellite texting systems.

Here’s where all those books on mountaineering came in handy—they all have passages on satellite phones. How they work, when they work, and, helpful for me, when they don’t. Satellite phone may not work under heavy cloud cover or during storms. Luckily, I already had a blizzard at play, and used my creative license as the author to make things that much trickier for my poor cast of characters trying to survive a killer.

Sadly, I can’t share some of the juicier bits of research without spoilers! But I can relay one anecdote whose lesson is: sometimes you’ll blank on the silliest thing despite meticulous planning, and it’s important to be scrappy with your edits! With all my planning and research into cell signals and plot mechanics to deprive my cast of their phones, Internet access, and eventually power… I still managed to write an entire plot thread in the first draft that hinged on the characters looking through people’s Instagram DMs.

Then, my editor pointed out to me “but they have no Internet, so how could they check Instagram?” Reader, I died. You have to laugh about it though! I had to get creative in terms of keeping the information gleaned while tossing out most of what I’d written for that subplot. On the plus side—it made the back half of act 2 much tighter! Do the best you can, but you can’t do it alone—and some of your best work will happen in editing (and with your editor!).

 

You can learn more about Alexa Donne via her website and also follow her on Instagram, Goodreads, and YouTube. The Bitter End is now available via Random House Books and all major booksellers.

Mystery Melange

The 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction has been awarded to David Joy for Those We Thought We Knew, a novel about a young Black artist who returns to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains and uncovers the dark underbelly of the community. The Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction was established in 1952 by the Historical Book Club of North Carolina to recognize the year's best book of fiction, drama, short stories, or poetry written by a North Carolinian.

Getting a jump on that end-of-the-year "Best Of" season, Barnes and Noble has posted its list of Best Mystery & Thriller Books of 2024. You can check out all twenty titles (which includes Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice - see the item below) via this link.

The Back Room returns October 27, 2024 at 7pm ET. The brainchild of bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne, who dreamed up the format during Covid lockdowns, the Back Room remains the only online event that allows authors and readers to chat face-to-face. Featured guests this time include Diana R. Chambers (The Secret War of Julia Child); Alex Segura & Rob Hart (Dark Space, a sweeping sci-fi spy thriller); Paula Munier (the Mercy Carr mysteries); and David Rosenfelt (Andy Carpenter mysteries). Each program begins with a fun "get to know you" game followed by the guest authors’ book recommendations, and then breakout rooms where attendees get Q&A time with the authors.

Applications for the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers will be closing soon. Interested writers must not have published a book, short story, or dramatic work in the mystery field, either in print, electronic, or audio form. The Grants Committee is looking for works in progress that are consistent with the Malice Domestic genre of Traditional Mystery, typified by the works of Agatha Christie. These works contain no explicit gore, violence, or sex. Prize: Each grant may be used to offset registration, travel, or other expenses related to attendance at a writers' conference or workshop within a year of the date of the award. In the case of nonfiction, the grant may be used to offset research expenses. Each grant currently includes a $1,500 award plus a comprehensive registration for the following year's convention and two nights' lodging at the convention hotel, but does not include travel to the convention or meals. Deadline: November 1, 2024.

For years, John le Carré’s youngest son, born Nicholas Cornwell, worked on establishing his own literary legacy apart from his father's, using two pen names Nick Harkaway and Aidan Truhen, in works featuring futuristic truckers, steampunk clock repairmen, superheroes and all-seeing techno-states. But after helping bring Silverview, the final le Carré novel to posthumous publication in 2021, he felt he’d stopped being afraid of people comparing their writing. Underscoring that confidence is his latest project, Karla’s Choice, a Cold War espionage novel taking up the characters that people regard as quintessentially le Carré: the rumpled, melancholy spy Smiley and his ruthless Soviet counterpart Karla. As Washington Post columnist, Sophia Nguyen, added in her profile of the work, "By writing it, Harkaway hasn’t just crossed into his father’s literary airspace — he’s descending into the heart of the territory and rolling out the landing gear, fingers crossed for a warm welcome."

Dean Street Press is continuing their murder mystery reissues with the Antony Maitland series by Anglo-Canadian author Sara Woods (1916-1985), set to be published on December 2, 2024. Originally released in the 1960s, these novels were lauded for their intricate plots, courtroom drama, and intellectual depth. Antony Maitland, the central character, was often compared to Perry Mason for his mix of legal expertise and investigative prowess (and was inspired by Sara Woods' brother, Antony Woods Hutton, who tragically lost his life during WWII). Out of print for nearly forty years, the first five novels in this compelling series comprise: Bloody Instructions (1962), Malice Domestic (1962), The Taste of Fears (1963), Error of the Moon (1963), and Trusted Like the Fox (1964).

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine spoke with bestselling author Kate White about her latest book, The Last Time She Saw Him; R. W. Green stopped by Criminal Element to discuss co-writing Mc Beaton's internationally bestselling Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery series; and Karin Smirnoff, the author of several books in the best-selling and award-winning Millennium series originally created by Stieg Larsson, chatted with Cultural Rendezvous about Nordic Noir.

Author R&R with Mel Harrison

After graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in Economics, Mel Harrison joined the US Department of State, spending the majority of his career in the Diplomatic Security Service, winning the State Department Award for Valor and its worldwide Regional Security Officer of the Year Award. Following government retirement, Mel spent ten years in corporate security and consulting work with assignments often taking him throughout Latin America and the Middle East, before turning his hand to writing. He’s penned six books in the series featuring Alex Boyd, a State Department special agent and regional security officer with the Diplomatic Security Service, including the latest installment in that series, Crescent City Carnage.

In Crescent City Carnage, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith are only a day into their long-awaited vacation in New Orleans to join their good friend and colleague, Simone Ardoin, when she is brutally murdered. Simone’s well-connected parents, long-time residents of New Orleans, are devastated by the tragedy and implore both Alex and Rachel to work with the New Orleans Police Department to find her killer. The city is infamous for its laissez-faire attitude, as well as its corruption. Nevertheless, Alex must work with the city's cops to break the case, also drawing support from State Department special agents. Identifying the killer is one thing but locating him proves more complicated than anticipated—Is the killer just lucky or does he have an inside source who is helping him stay one step ahead of the cops? The more Alex and Rachel delve into the case, the more they discover that New Orleans is a unique city full of its own traditions, family ties, and way of life. But the clock is ticking, and they need to capture the killer before he disappears forever.

Mel Harrison stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R today about writing the book:

Toward the end of my twenty-eight year career in the Foreign Service, serving as either a special agent with Diplomatic Security or as an economic officer, I realized that I had experienced a number of adventures in my lifetime that could be turned into intriguing action thrillers. After State Department retirement, I worked another ten years for corporate security, accumulating even more experiences. Finally, in complete retirement, it was time to challenge myself and start the writing process.

I have always enjoyed the action-adventure/thriller genre for my own reading, and so began my writing journey. I decided to write about what I knew and where I had served or visited, rather than struggling with unfamiliar territory. My six novels are based upon my personal experiences, albeit, with embellished characters and scenes to excite the audience. While the books and characters are fiction, they are often composites from real life, either experienced by me, or drawn from situations of which I am aware.

Many of the location settings, such as Rome, London, or Paris, I have visited again and again. Additional places, like Cairo or Islamabad, I also worked there and visited in retirement, even if less frequently than the former set of locations. As an avid photographer, I can research details of sites that my memory is vague on. Also, I use the internet to research technical details on everything from weapons to foreign police structures to plants and vegetation. Finally, nothing beats firsthand knowledge, so I have sought out subject matter experts, as needed.

While most people will say that thrillers are plot-driven, I love to create memorable characters as well. Just as the stories are fictional, so are my characters. Yet, I have drawn on people I have known, put them in different settings than where we met, and added features to their personality or appearance to make the reader feel that they can visualize the character or understand his or her motivation.

Equally important, I always think a long time about how to create villains. Reading how other authors handle this issue can be instructive. No one who buys a book wants to read about cardboard characters, and this includes the bad guys. The villains may be evil or demented, but they also have families and friends. Therefore, they need to be three dimensional and realistic. The reader needs to understand the villain’s motivation. Without excellent villains, the author doesn’t have an interesting story to tell.

I must note that I have a lot of restaurant scenes in my six books. Okay, I admit it, my wife and I are foodies. Here is a tidbit readers should know. Every restaurant in every book is real, and what my protagonist, Alex Boyd, and his wife, Rachel, are eating, my own wife and I have eaten at that very restaurant.

When I began creating my stories, I knew I wanted to put my protagonist, Alex Boyd, in harm’s way. Since he is a trained special agent, I needed to have him carry a firearm. For me, the best solution was the simplest. He either uses the real weapons issued by the Diplomatic Security Service, or in the one book, Moving Target, where is working in the private sector, I gave him a weapon that I personally owned and fired many times. Sometimes authors who are not familiar with guns get tripped up trying to write firearms scenes that just would not work in the real world.

An area that can be difficult to write about involves the sexual relationship of my two main characters, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith. When they first meet in Death in Pakistan, there is an immediate attraction, both physically and intellectually. The question is how far an author should describe this relationship. I took the view that the reader must believe their love for each other is deep and real. It must be based on something more than a casual handshake. Therefore, sex is part of that relationship and needs to be presented to the reader without going over-the-top into pornographic description. Since Rachel is put in harm’s way several times in my novels, the feelings Alex and Rachel have for each other must be based upon the full spectrum of emotions.

I will close with a final point about politics. I try to leave politics out of my books as much as possible. Readers buy novels to escape everyday life. They want to be entertained, not lectured too. Of course, Alex and his colleagues occasionally mock a specific Washington policy as wrong-headed, but that is different than the author taking gratuitous shots at either political party. When I worked in the Foreign Service, the internet had not yet been created. Therefore, there was no social media or even cable TV channels. I honestly did not know the politics of my fellow Foreign Service officer. It wasn’t important to getting the job done or to protecting employees from terrorists, kidnappers, spies, or criminals.

 

You can follow Mel Harrison on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. Crescent City Carnage is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Michael Cohen

Since his retirement from University teaching, Michael Cohen has been writing personal essays about his family, about lifelong pursuits such as golf and birding, about newer interests in flying and amateur astronomy, and above all about six decades of reading. His essays—collected in A Place to Read (2014, IP Press, Brisbane) and And Other Essays (2020, IP Press)—have appeared in Harvard Review, Birding, The Humanist, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, and dozens of other venues. He is the author of six other books, including an introductory poetry text, The Poem in Question (Harcourt Brace, 1983) and an award-winning book on Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Georgia, 1989). Michael Cohen lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tucson, Arizona. His most recent book is The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finding List (Genius Books, 2024)

In 1891, a new London magazine, The Strand, decided to publish short mysteries in connected series. Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories about Sherlock Holmes nearly doubled the magazine’s circulation, and Doyle became rich. Other magazines searched for tales with the same kind of appeal, and dozens of men and women began to write detective stories in the series format of the Holmes Adventures. Michael Cohen’s The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries is a guide to this trove of stories that fascinated readers a century and a quarter ago. In clear and crisp prose, Cohen takes you through the variety of stories with brief descriptions, and he shows you where to find the stories online in their original, illustrated magazine versions. Here you’ll find names you knew such as Chesterton’s Father Brown, and less well-known ones such as Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, Anna Katherine Green’s debutante detective Violet Strange, and Gelett Burgess’s "Seer of Secrets," Astro.

Michael Cohen stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about the book:    

The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries was my Covid book. During the year between the first lockdowns until I was fully vaccinated the following spring, I did a lot of reading, and most of it was detective short stories published from the 1890s to the first decade of the twentieth century in England, the United States, and Europe. These stories were not easily available twenty years earlier, when I wrote my first book on mysteries, Murder Most Fair: The Appeal of Mystery Fiction (Associated University Presses, 2000). The stories first appeared in newspapers and magazines, and most had not been reprinted; a good big library might have a few of the periodicals, but if the stories appeared in New Zealand’s North Otago Times or the English Newcastle Weekly Courant, for example, I wasn’t going to find them.

But in the ensuing twenty years, these periodicals had all been digitized and made available through Gutenberg, Google Books, Hathi Trust, and a score of other internet archives. The stories that entertained our great-grandparents and their parents could now be read by anyone for free, in their original context between news of the day and quaint advertisements; best of all, they could be read with the engravings and lithographs that illustrated them. Moreover, there were new reprints of the stories in book form published by Coachwhip Press, the Library of Congress Crime Classics, the Mysterious Press Crime Classics Series, and others.

I read through hundreds of detective short stories, and though I started without any clear writing plan, a book idea began to emerge as I took notes on my reading. I really needed to tell two stories about this treasure trove of entertainment from a century and a quarter earlier.

One story was about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. In 1891, a new London magazine, The Strand, decided to publish short mysteries in connected series. Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories about Sherlock Holmes nearly doubled the magazine’s circulation, and Doyle became rich. Other magazines searched for tales with the same kind of appeal. Dozens of men and women began to write detective stories in the series format of the Holmes Adventures.

The second story was about those other writers who followed Doyle. They created an enormous flowering of this kind of tale, with stories that featured female and male detectives, professionals and amateurs, young and old, aristocrats, gentlefolk, and plain folk. Detectives went rogue and became burglars and conmen. Others developed occult powers. It was a Golden Era of detective fiction, and it lasted for two and a half decades until the First World War. Nothing of its variety had been seen before.

So, The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finding List starts with the story of Doyle’s phenomenal success with the Holmes stories. I look at Doyle’s storytelling in the first ones published, with an eye to his plot construction and the original turns that he gave to situations that had been in the sensational literature repertoire for decades, as well as those that were brand new with him.

Most of the book is taken up with a closer look at the variety of stories written by those who followed Doyle. I give brief descriptions of the mysteries and how they struck out in new directions and created a range of mystery literature of astounding diversity. Finally, I provide a guide for finding the stories in their original, illustrated magazines. Here you’ll find names you knew such as Chesterton’s Father Brown, and less well-known ones such as Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, Anna Katherine Green’s debutante detective Violet Strange, and Gelett Burgess’s “Seer of Secrets,” Astro.

Once I sat down with the story lines in mind and my notes at hand, the book took only a few months to write, and it was a pleasure to revisit all those tales of detectives at work.

Michael Cohen's book, The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries (Genius Book Publishing, 2024), is available from Amazon and from the publisher. His earlier collections of essays, A Place to Read (Interactive Press, 2014) and And Other Essays (Glass House Books, 2020), are available in print or audiobook form.

 

Mystery Melange

The inaugural BloodShed Crime Fiction Festival heads to Swindon in the UK this weekend. Authors from around the UK will be featured in interviews and panels on historical crime fiction, psychological thrillers, and police procedurals, and deliver writing workshops for visitors at the Delta Hotel Marriott in Old Town from October 18 to 20. The festival also includes an interactive component, giving attendees the chance to show off their sleuthing ability against those who write mysteries for a living.

Also on that side of the Atlantic, Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival, returns to Dublin, October 17th – 20th in Dun Laoghaire’s landmark DLR Lexicon Library & Culture Centre. Now in its seventh year, the conference features Andrea Mara, C.L. Taylor, BA Paris, Vaseem Khan, Jo Spain, Steve Cavanagh, and Peter James, among others, taking part in talks, master classes, and workshops. There's also a special dedicated day set aside for young readers.

The inaugural A Christie for Christmas event will celebrate all things Agatha Christie at the News Building in London on November 19. The evening explores the legacy of Agatha Christie and the publication of the new And Then There Were None mystery edition, a unique issue that presents her story in a format entirely faithful to her original conception, with the final solution presented in a sealed envelope that can only be revealed once you have finished the story. Joining in the festivities are authors Mark Aldridge, Jane Casey, Lucy Foley, Sophie Hannah, Vaseem Kha, Bella Mackie, and Suk Pannu. 

Here's an idea that will hopefully gain more traction: independent Canadian author Peggy Blair is partnering with Little Branches Rural Routes Library Conference 2025 and Vimi Corp to establish the Toby Award, designed to celebrate and amplify the voices of self-published mystery authors who are ineligible to submit their trade paperback novels for existing awards because they do not sell in traditional bookstores or in traditional ways. Submissions are open until Dec. 16, 2024. As Blair noted, "Ian Rankin told me he couldn’t get published now if he was starting over. His first six books didn’t sell. They were remaindered, meaning the covers were torn off and they were tossed out. It was his seventh book that was his breakthrough novel. He told me no publisher these days will give an author the time they need to develop their craft and build up a reader base."

On October 21 at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET, Outliers Writing University is presenting a free live online talk with bestselling authors Lee Child and Andrew Child. The event will include a chance for fans to ask all your burning questions about the Jack Reacher series and get the inside scoop on their newest thriller, In Too Deep, releasing October 22. Lee Child (born James Grant) published the first installment in the Jack Reacher series in 1997, and recently decided to step back from writing full time, handing over the reins to the Reacher series to his younger brother, Andrew Grant, who now writes under the new pseudonym Andrew Child. The award-winning Reacher books currently includes 28 installments and were adapted into the TV series starring Alan Ritchson in the title role.

Crime Fiction Lover is once again sponsoring its annual awards with reader input. The British-based website wants to celebrate the best of the best from 2024, from books to authors to television shows, and they need your help to do so. Nominate your favorites in six main categories: Book of the Year, Best Debut, Best in Translation, Best Indie Novel, Best Author, and Best Crime Show. In addition to the main categories, the Life of Crime Award will be presented again this year, bestowed upon an author the editorial team believes has, over the course of their career, made an outstanding contribution to the genre. Nominations will close at noon UK time on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, with shortlists compiled for final voting at a later date.

Hachette is sponsoring a Killer Reads Sweepstakes which opened yesterday and runs through 11:59 PM ET on 11/1/24. Randomly drawn winners from the pool of entrants will receive copies of six different crime fiction books by Melinda Taub; Patricia Cornwell; Douglas Preston & Lee Child; Doug Brod; Holly Frey; and Mikaelia Clements & Onjuli Datta.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton spoke with mystery author Rhonda Lane about her debut mystery novel with a dash of psychological suspense, Fatal Image: An Avery Sloane Mystery; father-son duo, Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, joined Suspense Magazine to talk about their latest book in the Clay Edison series, The Lost Coast; and Janet Evanovich chatted with People Magazine about how "staying fresh" after 31 books in her Stephanie Plum series Is not the hard part.

Mystery Melange

 

Robert Randisi has died at the age of seventy-three. Randisi authored more than 650 published books and edited more than 30 anthologies of short stories, with Booklist magazine noting that he "may be the last of the pulp writers." He founded Mystery Scene Magazine and the Private Eye Writers of America, an organization he ran for over 40 years, which also sponsored the Shamus Awards. Author Rick Helms posted a tribute on Facebook, "I knew Bob for over 20 years. He was crusty and blunt and yet unexpectedly generous," adding that "Bob was a true master in the field, and I wish him fair skies, calm seas, and and the pleasantest of journeys. The writing world is poorer this morning for his loss, but we were so privileged to have had him. He will be missed."

David Burnham, the New York Times reporter who exposed police graft, has died at the age of 91. After being tipped off by the detective Frank Serpico, Burnham wrote an explosive series on police corruption in New York City, sparking an investigation by the Knapp commission. His reporting inspired the 1973 movie Serpico, which was adapted from the book Serpico by Peter Maas, and starred Al Pacino as the titular detective.

Audible announced a new Audible Original audiobook release on November 14th of a multi-cast adaptation of Agatha Christie’s iconic debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Peter Dinklage takes on the title role of Hercule Poirot, to be joined by Himesh Patel (Yesterday) who will be playing Poirot’s companion, Captain Hastings. The star-studded adaptation will also feature Harriet Walter (Succession), Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), Rob Delaney (Catastrophe), John Bradley (Game of Thrones), Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane) and Patsy Ferran (A Streetcar Named Desire). The Mysterious Affair at Styles tells the story of an injured and traumatized Captain Hastings (Patel), who has been invited to the large country estate of Styles Court to recover after serving in World War I. With tensions tearing the family apart, what seems like a perfect haven soon turns into a nightmare, as the matriarch of the family Emily Inglethorp (Walter) is brutally murdered.

The Guardian profiled the new book Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother by Robert S Bader, which is probably a shoe-in to become a movie at some point. Zeppo Marx was said to be the funniest of the Marx Brothers off screen, yet he was overshadowed by his siblings Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Zeppo went on to became a successful talent agent but as Bader reports, he mingled as easily with mobsters as with movie stars and may have even been behind a series of 1930s jewellery heists from Hollywood stars.

The latest "First Two Pages" offering on Art Taylor's blog featured David Avallone offering the third essay in a series of First Two Pages posts from contributors to Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, the latest music-themed anthology from editor Josh Pachter. David brings a wide set of backgrounds to the table, including work in film and in comic books in addition to prose fiction—and he has pedigree too, as the son of prolific author Michael Avallone. In the essay below, David focuses on other inspirations and influences for his story, specifically how autobiographical elements feed creativity.

Have you noticed print books getting thinner? It may not be your imagination. Publishers are trying skinnier books to save money and emissions.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element chatted with bestselling author of the Orphan X novels, Gregg Hurwitz, about his upcoming thriller, Nemesis, including what's next for Evan Smoak, and how Evan's moral code will be tested in this novel as it's never been before; Suspense Magazine interviewed John Connolly about his latest book, Night and Day, and what’s next for Charlie Parker; and novelist Richard E. Snyder spoke with Lisa Haselton about his new spy fiction, Defector in Paradise.

Mystery Melange

The Friends of the Orange County Public Library are presenting a conversation with crime writers, S.A. Cosby and Eryk Pruitt, on Friday, October 4th, at 7pm. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. S.A. Cosby is the bestselling author of Razorblade Tears, Blacktop Wasteland, and All the Sinners Bleed, which have won the LA Times Book Prize, Anthony Award, International Thriller Writers Best Hardcover Novel, Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger, and Gold Dagger awards. Eryk Pruitt is a filmmaker, podcaster, short story writer, novelist, and publisher of the quarterly literary magazine, Dark Yonder.

One More Page books in Arlington, Virginia, is hosting a Cozy Mystery Panel with authors Donna Andrews (Meg Lanslow mysteries), Maureen Klovers (Rita Calabrese Culinary Mysteries), Korina Moss (Cheese Shop Mysteries), and Maya Corrigan (Five-Ingredient Mysteries) on October 31st in honor of Halloween. Registration for the event is free.

Janet Rudolph has a list of crime fiction titles themed around Rosh Hashana, the "Days of Awe" in the Jewish religion, with ten days of repentance and renewal that begin at sunset on Rosh Hashanah and close with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This year, Rosh Hashanah begins October 2, 2024, at sundown and it concludes at nightfall on October 4.

Suspense Magazine announced on Facebook that it's making a comeback after closing down the PDF version of the magazine in 2021. But starting in January 2025, Suspense will be producing a quarterly digital magazine for free with more educational articles from bestselling authors and tips and tricks for authors. There will also be new reviews, features and much more. The magazine's Suspense Radio digital interview series is also back on the air, with author interviews posted on the magazine's website and subscriptions available via Spotify, Apple Music, and other podcast sites.
 

Publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) announced that Oscar-winning actor Reese Witherspoon is writing a thriller novel (her first) in collaboration with bestselling author Harlan Coben, of the Myron Bolitar series. Set to be published in autumn 2025, the untitled thriller is said to be based on an original idea from Witherspoon, and the co-writers "have been developing the concept, creating characters, and writing pages over many months," according to PRH.

Over at The Rap Sheet blog, Jeff Pierce has a list of new crime fiction releases coming out through the end of the year in both the U.S. and the U.K., including some titles he's particularly looking forward to.

This week at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, Linda Landrigan, long-time editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, stops by to discuss how knowing some of the pitfalls for writers in this form and genre is different from avoiding those pitfalls yourself.

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine chatted with Anthony Horowitz, author of the Moonflower Murders and the new PBS show based on the book; Janice Hallett spoke with the Irish Times about scripting, art, the crime genre, epistolary murder-mysteries and her admiration for healthcare workers after the death of her brother when she was 12; and Readers Digest welcomed Iris Yamashita to talk about her debut novel, City Under One Roof, as well as the difference between writing for the page and the screen, and more.