Mystery Melange

Winners were announced for the 2025 Will Rogers Medallion Award, which recognizes excellence in Western literature and media, in a recent ceremony in Oklahoma. The Western Mystery category winners included Gold Medal winner, Knife River, by Baron Birtcher (Open Road Media); the Silver Medal winner, First Frost, by Craig Johnson (Viking); and the Bronze Medal winner, Tooth and Claw, by Craig Johnson (Viking).


It's time once again to vote on the Goodreads Readers' Favorite Awards. You can view all the twenty opening round nominees in the Mystery & Thriller category here and vote for your favorites through November 23. The final round of voting for the finalists is slated for November 25-30, with the winner announced on December 4.


Noir at the Bar heads to Richmond, Kentucky at the Apollo Pizza & Beer Emporium on Friday, November 21 from 7 to 9 pm with a second event the night following in Louisville's 3rd Turn Brewing. Authors reading from their writings at the Richmond event include S.A. Crosby, Silas House, Gwenda Bond, Eryk Pruitt, Wes Browne, Archer Sullivan, James D.H. Hannah, Carrie Mullins, Josh Boldt, Mandi Fugate Sheffel, and Chris McGinley, with Victor Puente offering up hosting duties. The Louisville lineup will include S.A. Cosby, J.T. Ellison, Eryk Pruitt, J.H. Markert, J. Todd Scott, Archer Sullivan, Scott Sullivan, Mindy Carlson, James D.F. Hannah, Rob D. Smith, and Wes Browne, with Fallon Glick serving as host. To register for these free events, follow this link.


Noir at the Bar also returns to Edinburgh, Scotland, November 27 from 7:45 pm to 10:30 pm for a night of crime, cocktails, and captivating reads. The list of crime fiction authors currently scheduled to appear and read from their works includes Jackie Baldwin, Rupa Mahadevan, Alex Kane, Chris Black, Andrew James Greig, Val Penny, Angela Nurse, Claire Wilson, and Daniel Aubrey.


As the Rap Sheet blog notes, a couple of additional "Best of" lists for crime fiction titles published in 2025 have been recently released, including 11 books that made the Kirkus List, as well as the Waterstone Bookstore's picks for Best Detectives & Cosy Crime and Best Thrillers & Espionage.


The International Crime Fiction Association will hold their thirteenth Captivating Criminality conference from Thursday, June 25 to Saturday, June 27, 2026 in Bamberg, Germany and has issued a call for papers on the theme of "Crime Fiction, Conflict, and Representation."  Abstracts dealing with Crime Fiction past and present, true crime narratives, television and film studies, and other forms of new media such as blogs, computer games, websites and podcasts are welcome, as are papers adopting a range of theoretical, sociological and historical approaches. For more information, follow this link. Submissions are due January 15, 2026.


This week commemorated Veteran's Day in the U.S., and I compiled a list a few years ago of Veteran-themed or related crime fiction, which you can check out here. Janet Rudolph also has some additional titles here.

 
This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Get Out" by F.I. Goldhaber.


In the Q&A roundup, James M. Jackson was interviewed by E. B. Davis about Unleashed, the second novel in Jackson’s Niki Undercover Thriller series featuring federal agent Ashley Pendergast Prescott; Author Interviews spoke with former Spanish teacher, Allison Brook (AKA Marilyn Levinson), who writes mysteries, romantic suspense, and novels for young readers, about her new novel, Death on Dickens Island, the series debut of the Books on the Beach Mysteries; and Deborah Kalb chatted with Courtney Psak, author of the new psychological thriller, The Tutor.