Mystery Melange

 

Harrogate International Festivals announced the shortlists for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025, as well as the McDermid Debut Award for new writers. Fans will have a chance to vote for their favorites through July 10th, and winners of both awards will be unveiled on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on Thursday July 17.

The finalists for Crime Novel of the Year include:

• The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown Book Group, Abacus)
• The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown Book Group, Constable)
• The Last Word by Elly Griffiths (Quercus Books, Quercus Fiction)
• Hunted by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage; Harvill Secker)
• Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney (Bonnier Books, Zaffre)
• All the Colours. of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Orion, Orion Fiction)

The finalists for the McDermid Debut Award include: 

• Sick to Death by Chris Bridges (Avon, Harper Collins)
• I Died at Fallow Hall by Bonnie Burke-Patel (No Exit Press, Bedford Square)
• Her Two Lives by Nilesha Chauvet (Faber & Faber)
• A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman (Headline)
• Isolation Island by Louise Minchin (Headline, Headline Fiction)
• Black Water Rising by Sean Watkin (Canelo)  
  
  

Sisters in Crime Australia released the longlists for their Davitt Awards, which honor the best crime and mystery books by Australian women. A total of 150 books were entered, and the judges selected 29 for the longlisted titles in the categories of Adult Fiction, Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Children's Fiction. The shortlist for the awards will be announced in mid-July, with winners revealed at an awards ceremony later this year (TBD).

On Wednesday, June 25, 2025, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm, One More Page bookstore in Arlington, Virginia, will celebrate Pride Month with "Gay, Solve Crime: A Queer Mystery Panel," featuring Cheryl A. Head (Bury Me When I'm Dead: A Charlie Mack Motown Mystery); Katharine Schellman (Last Dance Before Dawn: Nightingale Mystery #4); Stephen Spotswood (Dead In The Frame: A Pentecost And Parker Mystery); and Alex Travis (The Payback Girls).

A conference on British Noir (literature, film, TV series) will be held at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, France, from November 6th to November 8th, 2025. Organizers have released a call for papers, and those interested should submit proposals of up to 250 words, together with a bio of approximately 100 words, by May 31, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 16, 2025.

An Agatha Christie exhibition is currently on display at the at the UK's Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in East Sussex. Titled, "Agatha Christie – The Queen of Crime," the exhibit includes displays such as Poirot's dinner setting on the Orient Express, Christie's 1926 disappearance, Egyptian artefacts linking to Death on the Nile, and original items, books, and objects. It runs through August 10 and includes a "Crime Writers Day" on August 9 with area authors.

Art Taylor hosted Derringer Award-winner, C.W. Blackwell, on the "First Two Pages," to talk about his new story, "Making Up for Lost Time," for the anthology Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers. Taylor has been hosting the "Two Pages" feature—with craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work—following the death of its creator, B.K. Stevens.

This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 is "The Great Divide" by Victor Henry.

In the Q&A roundup, James Lee Burke and David Masciotra continued their years-long conversation on literature and American history for Crime Reads, discussing Burke's latest novel, Forget Me, Little Bessie, and the highs and lows of American history; Crime Fiction Lover welcomed A Molotkov, a Russian emigré to the U.S. and author of the novel, A Bag Full of Stones; Crime Fiction Lover also interviewed Icelandic author, Jón Atli Jónasson, who wrote the screenplay for The Deep and has turned his hand to crime fiction, penning Broken, a hardboiled thriller set in Reykjavik.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - An Amiable Charlatan

 British author Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) worked in his father's leather business before serving in the Ministry of Information following World War I. He eventually turned his hand to writing crime novels after his father helped him get his first book published. It was a good investment on his father's part, because Oppenheim was apparently successful enough to buy a French villa and a yacht and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in September 1927, referring to himself as the "prince of storytellers." That may appear to be a bit of boasting, but he published some 150 novels in all, with 45 movies made from his books between 1914 and 1942.

Many of Oppenheim's works were early precursors of the spy genre, with An Amiable Charlatan (1916) filled with its own smattering of intrigue. The story revolves around the protagonist, Paul Walmsley, a sophisticated British gentleman (a frequent type of Oppenheim character), with most of the action taking place inside Stephano's Restaurant in London. The "amiable charlatan" of the title is American "adventurer" Joseph H. Parker who interrupts Walmsley's dinner by sitting down with him uninvited and eating his food. When a detective bursts into the room and searches Parker for suspected stolen goods, he finds nothing—unbeknownst to Walmsley, Parker has temporarily stowed the goods on him and then palmed them off to an accomplice maître d'hôtel.

Thus begins an unusual friendship, as Parker sticks to Walmsley like glue, interrupting more of his life than just dinner and pickpocketing one item after another, even getting Walmsley involved with ex-cons, theft after theft, and a counterfeit ring. Even worse, Parker has a partner-in-crime, his lovely daughter, who Walmsley happens to fall for. But as the book proceeds, it becomes apparent that the charming and master-manipulator Parker isn't exactly what he appeared to be at first. It's a fun caper, with some adventure and romance mixed in. Parker is a winsome character and a little reminiscent of Donald Westlake's comic thief, John Dortmunder—except he has a success rate with his con jobs that would make Dortmunder proud.