Mystery Melange

Best-selling author Peter James has been awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in His Majesty The King’s 2026 Birthday Honours List, in recognition of his services to literature and to charity. Best known for his DSI Roy Grace series, now a hit ITV drama, Peter James is the author of over 40 novels, which have been translated into 38 languages. He is also a supporter of many of charities including the Sussex Police Charitable Trust, the RSPCA, the Samaritans, and as an ambassador for The Reading Agency and National Year of Reading 2026.


Lambda Literary revealed the winners of the 38th Annual Lambda "Lammy" Awards for excellence in LGBTQ+ books. The winner of the Best LGBTQ+ Mystery was A Queer Case by Robert Holtom (Titan Books). The other finalists include: Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter by Samantha Crewson (Crooked Lane Books); Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron Books); Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur Books); and The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler (Kensington Publishing Corporation).


The One More Page bookstore in Arlington, Virginia, is hosting a panel on "Queer Characters in Crime Fiction" on Thursday, July 9th at 7pm. Authors scheduled to take part include Aggie Blum Thompson (The Neighbors are Watching), John Copenhaver (Hall of Mirrors, Crime Ink), Diana DiGangi (Last Chance Chicago), and Stephen Spotswood (Dead in the Frame).


The Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) named Rosalie Spielman as the 2026 Writer of the Year. The award recognizes Rosalie's "outstanding body of work and her remarkable contributions to the military writing community through her acclaimed series of cozy murder mysteries, each of which has earned MWSA recognition." The Writer of the Year award is MWSA's highest honor, presented annually to an author whose work the organization says exemplifies the values of excellence, integrity, and service that define the military writing community. Rosalie writes the Hometown Mysteries series starring a US Army veteran who returns to her Idaho hometown. The award will be presented during MWSA's annual awards banquet in October.


The Agatha Christie estate publishing house, Agatha Christie Limited, has released a new Ultimate Mystery Edition of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. With the final solution sealed in an envelope at the back of the book, this edition of Agatha Christie's much-loved mystery arrives just in time for the 100 year anniversary of its publication. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was Agatha Christie’s first book to be published by William Collins in the spring of 1926. William Collins became part of HarperCollins and are still Christie’s publishers today. The story formed the basis of the earliest adaptation of Christie’s work Alibi (adapted by Michael Morton), which opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1928 and successfully ran for 250 performances.


In February of 2027, Hard Case Crime and Titan Book will be re-releasing Cop Out, a novel by Ellery Queen (the pseudonym for Brooklyn cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B Lee). Originally published in 1969, the book hasn’t appeared in print in nearly 50 years. Cop Out is an anomaly in the Ellery Queen bibliography, being one of only two novels by Ellery Queen that don’t feature a detective named Ellery Queen. Included in this 272-page binding will be two bonus stories: "Child Missing!" and "The Case Against Carroll."


Writing for CrimeReads, Scott Adlerberg reconsidered Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance fifty years later (although it's more like 42, since the book was published in 1984). At the time, Mailer’s attempt at a hardboiled-style murder mystery elicited mixed reactions.


I missed this bit of news back in February, but it appears one literary mystery has been solved. Matthew Vaughn’s latest cinematic offering, Argylle, had obscured the source novel’s author, spending weeks teasing the real identity behind the pseudonym of "Elly Conway." Although many people speculated the real author was among the likes of Taylor Swift or J.K. Rowling, the co-authors have been revealed as Terry Hayes and Tammy Cohen.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Rudy Giuliani Mutters During His Last Rites" by Chad Parenteau.


In the Q&A roundup, author Hilary Davidson (author of the Lily Moore series and Shadows of New York series) applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Every Lie I Told; and Deborah Kalb spoke with Claudia Gray, author of the new novel, The Fatal Unpleasantness at Netherfield, the latest in her Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney mystery series based on Jane Austen's classic novels.