Mystery Melange

At the recent Literacy Partners Evening of Readings and Gala Dinner, crime fiction author Patricia Cornwell received the Lifetime Achievement Award "for her extraordinary career as an award-winning author most famous for her forensic thrillers." To date, over 120 million copies of her books have been sold in thirty-six languages in over 120 countries.


There will be a Noir at the Bar at the Kensington Club on Adams Avenue in San Diego on July 11, with seven featured authors reading from their latest books. Authors scheduled to appear include Marc Carlos, Jonathan Maberry, David Putnam, Caitlin Rother, Terry Shames, Michael Stetz, and Jamie Parker Stickle. The event is scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.


The new bookstore, Once Upon a Crime (not to be confused with the Minnesota store of the same name), opens June 27th in downtown Smithfield, North Carolina. The independent bookstore will specialize in thriller, suspense, mystery, and crime fiction while also offering titles across a variety of genres. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, June 25, ahead of the grand opening.


Residents of the UK can register to win £200 worth of crime books, choosing from bestselling authors including Lisa Jewell, Richard Osman, Lee Child, Claire Douglas, Tim Weaver, Shari Lapena, and many more. To enter, fill out the form on the following link by midnight Sunday, 19 July 2026.


Ian Rankin (of the Inspector Rebus novels) will be the featured guest at the Malta Book Festival from November 4-8, 2026. Attendance to the Festival and to all of its events is free of charge. Now in its 47th edition, last year's event drew 40,000 visitors to its workshops, author talks, family activities, and more.


An episode of the podcast Another Shirt Ruined (focusing on Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody Emerson series) featured Ava Dickerson, an archivist at IU Bloomington's Lilly Library, who catalogued the papers of Peters (aka Barbara Michaels and Barbara Mertz). She discussed aspects of the collection, some fans who wrote to Peters, challenges in cataloguing, and more. (HT to The Bunburyist)


Now that it's winter in the Southern Hemisphere, apparently readers in Australia and New Zealand, readers are curling up with crime fiction, with Kobo reporting thriller reading surging nearly 1,500%. Psychological thrillers led the way, followed closely by mystery novels, police procedurals, and suspense novels.


Art Taylor's "The First Two Pages" blog featured Debra H. Goldstein discussing her story “Musicians of Bremen" from the new anthology, Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson,


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Lunch" by F.I. Goldhaber.


In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Stig Abell, author of the new novel, A Twist in the River, the latest in his Jake Jackson mystery series; Kalb also chatted with Lee Huber about her new novel, A Bitter Cut, the latest in her Lady Darby Mystery series; British crime author Saima Mir stopped by Crime Fiction Lover to discuss her trilogy featuring Jia Khan, an antihero noir with a Muslim woman leading a crime syndicate; and John Connolly was interviewed by The Gloss about his family and writing career.