Mystery Melange

 

Book art by Daniel Lai

 

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Husband-and-wife mystery novelists Rosemary and Larry Mild have been named recipients of the 2024 Elliot Cades Awards for Literature, Hawai'i’s most prestigious literary honor. An annual award presented by the Hawai'i Literary Arts Council, the Elliot Cades Award celebrates established writers who live in the state. The Milds, who have made Honolulu their home since 2013, have penned more than 20 books together, including mystery novels, suspense thrillers, short story collections, and memoirs. Their latest work, The Morning Lisa, will be released in October.  
 

Winners were revealed for the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards across 16 categories, celebrating Alberta Canada’s best books of the year. A.J. Devlin's novel Bronco Buster won in the Mystery and Thriller Book of the Year category. Bronco Buster is the latest in Devlin's award-winning Hammerhead mystery series, which follows former pro wrestler-turned-P.I. "Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead. His debut novel in that series won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel in 2019.


An unpublished short story from Raymond Chandler is appearing for the first time in The Strand Magazine this week. "Nightmare" is an intriguing vignette that portrays Chandler, creator of the gritty fictional private detective Philip Marlowe, on the wrong side of the law, in a cell on death row awaiting execution for murder. The magazine’s managing editor, Andrew Gulli, described the tale as a “sleep-induced sojourn” that he discovered among a cache of papers belonging to Chandler’s secretary and later-life companion Jean Vounder-Davis. Although Chandler loved to mythologize his own life, boasting "I sold the very first story I sent out," Chandler biographer Tom Williams notes that "Nightmare" casts doubt about Chandler's more optimistic origin story. Williams added, "For all his efforts to make himself seem self-invented, Chandler remained, even to himself, his greatest mystery.”


As The Real Book Spy and Publishers Marketplace reported, there's been a shakeup in the continuation novels of the late Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. In 2024, Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, collectively known as Andrews and Wilson, released their first Jack Ryan thriller, Tom Clancy Act of Defiance, a direct sequel to Clancy’s iconic debut, The Hunt For Red October (forty years after its initial release). But now they're leaving the Ryanverse. Ward Larsen will be taking over the reins for an additional stopgap novel, Tom Clancy Rules of Engagement, due out May 19, 2026, and then M.P. Woodward will resume the series. Woodward had already been writing a Jack Junior (prequel) series, so after his promotion to Jack Senior, Jack Stewart will step in to continue the Jack Ryan Junior novels. Stewart, a former Top Gun Pilot best known for his Battle Born series and his work with Chad Robichaux (including Silent Horizons), has long been a fan of Clancy’s books, and he’s made no secret that entering the Ryanverse has long been his dream job.


The Rap Sheet recommended more than 425 books of interest to crime, mystery, and thriller lovers due out between now and New Year's Day, 2026, on at least one side of the Atlantic Ocean or the other.


Fans of both river cruising and crime might be interested in Death on the Brahmaputra, a 12-day journey through Assam & Bengal from January 16-27, 2026, including a 7-night private cruise on India's Brahmaputra River. Best-selling crime writer Abir Mukherjee will lead literary masterclasses and introduce the concept of the “closed circle mystery” before a screening of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. There will also be an evening exploring the heritage of Bengali detective fiction in Kolkata with local authors.


Art Taylors' "The First Two Pages" blog feature continues a series of essays on the anthology, The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy, published last month by Level Best Books. This week, LaToya Jovena talks about her included story, "The Six Questions."


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "At First Avenue and 97th Street," by Elisabeth Frischauf.


In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Karen Dukes, author of the new novel, Welcome to Murder Week; Jill Amadio interviewed Mary Keliikoa about her Kelly Pruett Mysteries and Misty Pines series; and James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle World War II novels, applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Bitter Wind, the twentieth installment of the Boyle series.