Mystery Melange

The 2026 Pulp Factory Awards finalists have been announced, voted on by members of Pulp Factory, a professional association of pulp writers, artists, editors and publishers. Although most of the nominees fall under the pure fantasy/horror/sci-fi umbrella, the Best Pulp Novel category includes A Walking Shadow (Paradise Investigations Book 2) by Teel James Glenn (Author) and Lissanne Lake (Illustrator), a supernatural private investigator mystery; and finalists in the Best Anthology category include The Lost Adventures of Captain Hawklin Vol-3 (The Captain Hawklin Adventures); Mystery Men (& Women) Vol. 10; and Pulp Reality No. 5 – Stormgate Press. (Hat tip to Mike Glyer's File 270). Voting for the winners is open to the public and available via this link. The awards will be handed out at the traditional ceremony at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention in Lombard, IL, March 27, 2026.


On February 13, from 6-7:30 PM, Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California will present "It's a Mystery: Five Authors on the Perfect Whodunit." Five masters of mystery fiction—Cara Black, M.M. Chouinard, Carmela Dutra, Laurie R. King, and Gigi Pandian—will reveal their latest titles; where they get their inspiration; and how they decide which clues to divulge and which to keep hidden until you turn to the very last page. For ticket information, follow this link.


The next MWA University from Mystery Writers of America will be on Wednesday, February 18th, titled "Killer Love Letters." Join senior editor for Atlantic, Joe Brosnan, and literary manager Liza Fleissig as they share what makes them fall in love with a query letter. There is a fee for non-members of MWA, but the online discussion is free for members.


The Midwest Mystery Conference announced the author lineup for this year's event, to be held in Chicago on April 11. Previous speakers have included Sara Paretsky, Scott Turow, Gillian Flynn, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Hannah, Rachel Howzell Hall, William Kent Krueger, S.A. Cosby, and more. (NOTE: I've recently updated the Conferences section in the right sidebar on this blog - linked here.)


For the more academically inclined, there are a couple of calls for papers with submission deadlines coming up soon. The National Conference 2026 to be held in April at SAGE University Indore, India, has a theme this year of "Towards 2050: Reimagining Crime and Criminal Justice System in the Era of AI & ML." Abstracts are due February 20th (and there are financial prizes for the top three papers). The 10th Workshop on the Economics of Organized Crime will take place at the University of Catania in Italy in May and is seeking theoretical and empirical studies on the topic, with abstracts due February 16th.


Janet Rudolph posted a list of Olympic-themed mysteries on her Mystery Fanfare blog, including both summer and winter games.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Say Her Name" (For Renée Nicole Good) by Jennifer Lagier.


In the Q&A roundup, Jeffrey Siger, a former Wall Street lawyer turned author of the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series of mystery thrillers, applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Study in Secrets; and Author Interviews chatted with Will Shindler, who spent years working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist and on various dramas as a writer and script editor, about his critically acclaimed DI Alex Finn novels and his latest book, The Bone Queen.