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Applications for the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers will be closing soon.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.