Mystery Melange

The festival schedule was revealed for Capital Crime 2026, set to return to London's Leonardo Royal Hotel June 18th-20th, with the Fingerprint Awards hosted by Ryan Tubridy on the 18th. Newly confirmed authors include Jeffrey Archer, MJ Arlidge, Chris Brookmyre, AA Dhand, Sabine Durrant, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Janice Hallett, Lisa Jewell, Vaseem Khan, T.M. Logan, Abir Mukherjee, Catriona Ward. They will be joining the previously announced headliners Jane Harper, Lee and Andrew Child, Claire Douglas, Andrea Mara, Ardal O’Hanlon, and Andi Osho, joining in panels and discussions around closed communities, Agatha Christie, courtroom dramas, and much more.


Likewise, the Whitby Lit Festival in the UK  announced the first authors confirmed for its 2026 program, as the event returns from November 19–22 following a highly successful inaugural year. Leading the first wave of announcements are Ann Cleeves OBE (creator of the Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez/Shetland series), Joanne Harris OBE (best known for her bestselling novel Chocolat), Dr. Sian Williams (an award-winning broadcaster and chartered counseling psychologist), and Mark Billingham (the Tom Thorne crime series). Set against Whitby’s dramatic coastline and historic streets, the festival will once again feature author talks, panel discussions, workshops, book signings, and special events across multiple venues.


There are only a handful of free tickets left for the upcoming Noir at the bar Sunderland in the UK on May 13. This in-person event brings together some of the best crime writers from the North East and beyond as well as some fresh new talent to share extracts from their novels. Authors currently scheduled to attend include Trevor Wood, Michael Wood, Marisse Whitttaker, David Mark, Helen Aitchison, L.M. Milford, Iain Rowan, Tom Sibson, Pam Plumb, and Kellie Appleby.


The sixth edition of the International Santiago Noir Festival will be held from September 22nd to 25th, 2026, in a fully in-person format, at the premises of the Faculty of Letters at Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, the Faculty of  Communication and Letters at Universidad Diego Portales, and Centro Cultural of Spain. The main objective of the Congress will be to bring together all kinds of specialists and creators who will contribute new perspectives on themes related to the noir genre. For more information about attending or submitting papers (due June 26), follow this link.


There are some other new calls for papers on crime fiction themes, including Crime Narratives on Screen for a conference in Durham in July, which invites papers that explore how crime narratives engage with social, political, and cultural issues within rapidly transforming screen industries (due May 31st);"Economic Crime in Practice" for the Journal of Economic Criminology (due January 27, 2027); and chapter proposals for "Tana French and Ireland," offering commentary chapters on each of French’s novels, including her Dublin Murder Squad series (due May 1st).


Here's a competition that hadn't crossed my radar before: The Association of Thriller Writers (UPiT) has officially opened the application process for the second annual Golden Thriller award, a regional competition across Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro aimed at identifying the most compelling crime fiction published in the previous calendar year. Interested participants must submit three printed copies and an electronic version of their manuscript to the association by the May 1, 2026, deadline. The five finalists will be revealed on October 15, 2026, before the final award ceremony in December.


The bestselling author of psychological thrillers like The Housemaid has revealed her true identity. Freida McFadden has used a pseudonym, wig and glasses to maintain her privacy in public but she says "it's time" to reveal her identity. McFadden is in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn't want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. "My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was (ready to) step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn't be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job," McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time. "But I have stepped away from my job. I'm only working like once or twice a month." McFadden was the second best-selling author of 2025 in the UK, selling 2.6 million books, and sold six million print copies in the U.S.


The BBC investigated seven places around the world where Agatha Christie found inspiration for murder, from South Devon in the UK to Petra, Jordan.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Right" by Craig Kirchner.


In the Q&A roundup, Mark Stevens, author of The Flynn Martin Thriller series, applied the Page 69 Test to Two Truths and a Lie, his latest novel with reporter Flynn Martin; another intrepid author to take the Page 69 Test was Susan Furlong, talking about her new novel, Amish Country Homicide; and the Self-Publishing Review interviewed Anthony Lee, who has a background in clinical medicine and health technology assessment, about his new medical thriller, Poison Pill.