Mystery Melange

The winners were revealed for the Deutscher Krimipreis, or the German Crime Fiction Award, the oldest and most prestigious German literary prize for crime fiction, awarded since 1985 by the Bochum Crime Archive. The winner of the German Language Category was Andreas Pflüger for Kälter (Suhrkamp), while second place went to Zoran Drvenkar for Asa (Suhrkamp), and third to Susanne Tägder for Die Farbe des Schattens (Tropen). In the International Category for best German translation, the winner was Lavie Tidhar for Adama (Suhrkamp), translated by Conny Lösch; second price went to Liz Moore for Der Gott des Waldes (C.H. Beck), translated by von Cornelius Hartz; and third place was won by Gustavo Faverón Patriau for Unten leben (Droschl), translated by Manfred Gmeiner.


UK Honours List Recipients this year were announced and include actor Idris Elba (The Wire, Luther), who has been made a Knight of the Realm by King Charles III and will be known as Sir Idris Elba from now on. Also, among those being named Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) is author Richard Osman, of the Thursday Murder Club mystery series.


Mystery Writers of America's online educational panels continue with the next MWA-U topic, "Whose Story Is It? Mastering Point of View."  Award-winning authors Lou Berney and Lori Rader-Day will lead the discussion on topics of choosing the right POV for your story, balancing character interiority with narrative tension, the benefits and pitfalls of first-person, third-person, and hybrid structures, and more, on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 at 8 EST / 7 CST / 6 MST / 5 PST, live on Zoom. Registration is free for MWA members and $20 for nonmembers.


Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, will host an evening with Rebecca Lugones, Heather Graham, J.D. Allen, and Alan Orloff on January 31 at 7pm ET.  They will be discussing their contributions to the recent anthology, Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy from Level Best Books.


Kate Jackson and her Cross-Examining Crime blog announced the results of the eight annual Reprint of the Year Award, following a survey and vote of all the classic mystery titles that have been republished during the current year from the British Library, Crippen & Landru, Dean Street Press, Pushkin Vertigo, Wildside Press and other publishers. Titles by John Dickson Carr swept the top three spots, with the top vote-getter The Judas Window by Carr (writing as Carter Dickson), from the British Library Crime Classics editions. Carr's The Burning Court was in second place, a reprint via Otto Penzler Presents American Mystery Classics. Rounding out the top three was Carr's The Ten Teacups, another offering via British Library Crime Classics.


In more reprint news, Blackstone Publishing has issued a new illustrated edition of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (originally published in 1930), featuring quintessential private eye Sam Spade. This new collector's hardcover edition of the book The Guardian included in its "100 Best Novels Written in English" includes brand-new black-and-white illustrations, a foil printed cover, and vivid sprayed edges. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)


The print edition of Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California II (41:4) is now available, with articles, reviews, and author essays about crime fiction set in Northern California. Free online sample articles include "If You’ve Got the Lipstick" by David Corbett and "Northern California: The Lost Highway" by Alexandra Sokoloff. The journal had previously published a companion issue: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries I (41:3) in Fall of 2025.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "La Cosa Americana" by John Kaprielian.


In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis interviewed Susan Van Kirk about Fabric of Lies, the sixth book in Susan Van Kirk’s Endurance mystery series, and also spoke with Annette Dashofy about the latest in her Detective Matthias Honeywell mystery series, No Stone Left Unturned; Lisa Haselton chatted with mystery author GG Calpo about her new cozy novel, Hook, Line, and Murder; Deborah Kalb spoke with Saul Golubcow about Were the Angels Wrong?, the latest in his Frank Wolf mystery series; and Alex Dueben Max interviewed Max Allan Collins for CrimeReads about Dashiell Hammett, private eyes, and picking up where The Maltese Falcon left off.