Mystery Melange

The UK's Historical Writers Association revealed the winners of the 2025 HWA Crown Awards. The Debut Crown Award was given to A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp (Bantam). Ayo Onatade, chair of the Debut Crown judges, said: “The winner of the HWA Debut Crown not only evoked a profound sense of place and intrigue but the geography, local culture and historical period all intertwined to produce this well written and inseparable tragedy based on a true crime.”

The winner of this year's (German-language) Swiss Book Prize is Die Holländerinnen by Dorothee Elmiger, which had already won the German Book Prize and the Bavarian Book Prize, making her the first author to receive the triple honor. Elmiger's novel is based on a true story about a criminal case that remains unsolved to this day: in the spring of 2014, two Dutch tourists mysteriously disappeared during a hiking tour in Panama. The writer-narrator of the novel joins a theatre group on its journey into the deep interior of the jungle in preparation for a play that would reconstruct the case.

Some 69 titles nominated by 80 libraries from 36 countries have been announced as contenders for this year's Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative literary prize in the world for a single work of fiction. Judges will name a longlist of up to 20 titles on February 17, with a shortlist to follow on April 7, and the winner crowned on May 21. There are some crime fiction and crime-adjacent titles on that list, including The Clues in the Fjord by Satu Rämö; Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma; Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner; Leading Ledang by Fadzlishah Johanabas; Murder at the Castle by David Safier; Red Water by Jurica Pavičić; The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio; The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison Goodman; and Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet


Mystery Fanfare reported on the sad news that retired librarian turned mystery author Triss Stein passed away this week. She was the author of the Erica Donato mysteries set in Brooklyn and the Kay Engels mystery, Murder at the Class Reunion,  


The Washington Post's book editors released their list of the Best Mystery Novels of 2025 and a separate list of the Best Thrillers of 2025. It's behind a paywall, but Deadly Pleasures re-posted the mystery list here and the thriller list here.


Andrew McAleer is resurrecting Crimestalker Casebook, which ran as a semi-annual crime fiction publication from 1998-2006. Founded by Andrew McAleer and John McAleer, it was originally titled Austin Layman's Crimestalker Casebook and featured traditional mystery short shorts and P.I. stories. The first issue, due next month, will feature short fiction from Barb Goffman, John Floyd, Libby Cudmore, Michael Bracken, Gay Totle Kinman, Stephen D. Rogers, Shawn Reilly Simmons, John McAleer, Janet Rudolph, and Art Taylor.


Writing for The Conversation, Soohyun Cho, Assistant Professor at the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts & Humanities at Michigan State University, studied the rise of the autistic detective and why neurodivergent minds are at the heart of modern mysteries.

 
On Art Taylor's "The First Two Pages" blog feature, Neil Plakcy contributed an essay on his story, “The Missing Delegate,” from the anthology, Private Dicks and Disco Balls.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Harvard's Unofficial Copy of Magna Carta is Actually an Original" by Robert Cooperman.


In the Q&A roundup, debut thriller author Forest McMullin chatted with Lisa Haselton about his novel, Shooting at Shadows; Haselton also welcomed thriller author Mark A. Hill to discuss his new organized crime novel, Mitchell Rose and the Bologna Massacre; Suzanne Trauth spoke with Deborah Kalb about her new novel The First to Die; and Emma Stonex applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Sunshine Man, about a woman who seeks revenge on the man who killed her sister, after he is released from prison.