Mystery Melange

For the second year in a row, Alaska thriller writer Marc Cameron won the Spotted Owl Award, an annual honor via the Friends of Mystery organization, celebrating crime fiction produced by authors in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, British Columbia, Canada, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington). Cameron’s winning novel was Bad River, the seventh book in his series about Anchorage’s Arliss Cutter, a deputy U.S. marshal, which topped 71 nominees for the 2025 prize. Second place went to Baron Birtcher for Knife River, and third was a tie between Rene Denfeld for Sleeping Giants and Warren Easley for Deadly Redemption. For all the winners, follow this link. (HT to The Rap Sheet)

L’horloger, the debut novel by Belgian author Jérémie Claes, won the Evêché Prize for crime fiction on Tuesday evening in Marseille, France. The Evêché Prize – Polars du Sud, now in its eighth edition, is named after the legendary police headquarters in Marseille. It has been awarded since 2018 by a jury whose members include Marseille police officers, and which is presided over by Eric Arella, former chief of Marseille’s judicial police, who now heads Monaco’s police. Jérémie Claes is the second foreign author to receive this award, after Swiss writer Nicolas Feuz, for Heresix, in 2022.

John le Carré’s son, writer Nick Harkaway, continued his father's featuring iconic spy George Smiley series with the critically acclaimed and bestselling 2024 title, Karla's Choice. Now, he's announced a second book in the continuation series, The Taper Man (to be published in 2026), which sends Smiley for the first time on an operation to America in pursuit of an old communist network across the West Coast. In other Smiley news, le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold will premiere in the West End this autumn. Adapted by award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin, this is the first novel by the spy genre master to be brought to life on London’s stage. Following a sold out premiere at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2024, the play will be produced by Ink Factory and Second Half Productions in association with Nica Burns. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Janet Rudolph keeps a running list on her Mystery Fanfare blog of Memorial Day crime fiction, or titles that take place around that time. Memorial Day (aka Decoration Day) has been set aside as a day of remembrance for the men and women who died in the line of duty, and it's also become an unofficial start to the summer season in the U.S.

This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 is "(F)ELON" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Nev March, the first Indian-born writer to win Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America’s Award for Best First Crime Fiction, applied the Page 69 Test to The Silversmith’s Puzzle, the third installment in her historical Captain Jim and Lady Diana mystery series; Mike Martin chatted with Lisa Haselton about the newest novel in his Sgt. Windflower Mystery series, Friends Are Forever; and former FBI Director James Comey spoke with Crime Fiction Lover about writing his political thrillers featuring fictional prosecutor Nora Carleton.