Mystery Melange

The longlist for the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel in New Zealand has been announced, celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the honors. This year’s longlist includes a mix of past Ngaio Marsh Award winners and finalists, some first-time authors, and other fresh voices. You can view the fifteen longlisted titles via this link. The finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction will be announced in mid-August, with winners announced as part of a special event in conjunction with WORD Christchurch Literary Festival on Thursday, September 25.

Author Martin Cruz Smith has died at a senior-living community in San Rafael, California, at the age of 82, from Parkinson’s disease. He was best known for his series featuring Russian investigator Arkady Renko, first introduced in 1981 with Gorky Park, which became a bestseller and won a Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. He was also a two-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Award from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers and was named Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 2019. Smith had just published Hotel Ukraine, the 11th and final installment in his Renko series, three days before he died. The novel featured his detective hero grappling with the usual concerns — official corruption, a brutal murder — as well as the same debilitating illness faced by Mr. Smith himself.

There's a North Carolina: NOIR AT THE BAR event tonight at the Yonder Bar in Hillsborough. Tracey Reynolds will emcee readings by SA Cosby (Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears), Jill McCorkle (Old Crimes), Eryk Pruitt (Townies), Katy Munger (Too Old To Die), KT Nguyen (You Know What You Did), plus Philip Kimbrough, Tonya Simpson, and Elizabeth Woodman.

A new Talking Volumes series in St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater, from MPR and the Star Tribune, has announced its fall schedule. Authors scheduled for discussion will include voting rights activist and mystery author Stacey Abrams On September 10, joining MPR's Kerri Miller to discuss Abrams's latest mystery centered on Avery Keene, a former Supreme Court clerk. On October 23, the featured guest is John Grisham, whose most recent book, The Widow, returns to the courtroom setting for some of his most famous novels, including The Firm, The Runaway Jury, and The Pelican Brief.

The deadline of July 31st is approaching for the Sisters in Crime Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. Interested applicants should submit materials including an unpublished work of crime fiction, aimed at readers from children’s chapter books through adults, which may be a short story or first chapter(s) of a manuscript in-progress of 2,500 to 5,000 words. Writers submitting work should have published not more than ten pieces of short fiction or up to two self-published or traditionally published books. Follow this link for more information.

It's not too late to check out reading lists for your summer beach reads. Crime Reads has a Queer Crime Summer Reading List, and Book Riot has ten Japanese mystery and thriller series starters "you won't be able to put down."

From the life imitates fiction department, Arthur Brand, nicknamed the "Indiana Jones of the Art World" for his high-profile recovery of stolen masterpieces, has been able to return fantastic stolen art, from Picassos to a Van Gogh during his career—but he says his latest is one of the highlights. He recently recovered documents from the 15th to 19th centuries, including UNESCO-listed documents relating to the early days of the Dutch East India Company, which were stolen from the National Archives in The Hague in 2015.

This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Asylum" by Peter M. Gordon.

In the Q&A roundup, CrimeReads has some interviews of note: Gabriel Urza discussed his new novel, The Silver State, a legal thriller that is first and foremost about the experience of a being a public defender; Michael Robotham talked about why we love stories about gangsters and how mobsters came to represent the American Dream; and Elly Griffiths, best known for the Ruth Galloway series, chatted about Victorian London, time travel, and her new mystery, The Frozen People. Plus, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe interviewed Liza Tully about her new mystery, The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant.