Showing posts with label Awards 2020. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Awards 2020. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Taylor’s Touch Brings Success

Although he produces his “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots only once per month, critic-author Mike Ripley still manages to surprise us every now and then with a modicum of news not spotted elsewhere. His January column, for instance, includes this brief item:
At last, at the fag-end of the plague year, there was some good news. The award-winning crime writer Andrew Taylor, the most popular panelist (because he knows things) in CrimeFest’s iconic quiz, “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Cluedo,” has need of a bigger trophy cabinet, having received the Historical Writers’ Association [annual Gold Crown Award] for best novel of 2020 for The King’s Evil.
The Gold Crown Award is meant to honor “the best historical novel first published in the UK in English.” You’d think there would be some announcement of Taylor’s win on the Historical Writers’ Association’s own Web site. But at last check, there is not. What can be found there, however, is a brief interview with Taylor—conducted last fall—in which he talks about The King’s Evil, the third volume in his 17th-century mystery series starring James Marwood and Cat Lovett.

Taylor’s fifth Marwood/Lovett yarn, The Royal Secret, is scheduled for release in Great Britain this coming April 29.

Friday, January 01, 2021

Bullet Points: 2021—At Last Edition

Down & Out: The Magazine, founded as a quarterly print/e-book periodical and helmed by the ever-resilient Rick Ollerman, debuted in the summer of 2017 and has since produced just five additional issues, their frequency having become quite unpredictable. The fifth edition came out in November 2019, and the sixth went on sale last month. This new one, by the way, is the first not to carry a “Placed in Evidence” column from yours truly. My schedule made it impossible for me to produce a creditable non-fiction essay by the deadline of January 31, 2020. Had I known that this issue wouldn’t be appearing until 11 months later, I might have asked for an extension on that due date. Oh, well. It sounds as if the latest number has enough to commend it, including “correspondence between two legends of crime fiction, Walter Satterthwait and Bill Crider, both of whom recently passed away”; a short story by the prolific Stephen Marlowe (1928-2008), plus an introduction to Marlowe’s work by Jeff Vorzimmer, the editor of last year’s The Best of Manhunt collection; and fresh short stories from James O. Born, Josh Pachter, and Rap Sheet regular Steven Nester.

• Is it merely my imagination, or has there really been less and less attention paid annually to Britain’s Staunch Book Prize ever since that commendation—which honors “a thriller novel in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”—was created back in 2018? I do not remember seeing any significant coverage of the 2020 shortlist when it was announced in early November. And I wasn’t aware until today (courtesy of Shotmag Confidential) that a winner had been declared on November 25: Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail). Locke, incidentally, is the first American to walk off with this award, which comes with £1000 in prize money. For the record, here are this year’s other five Staunch finalists:

The Chemical Reaction, by Fiona Erskine (Point Blank)
Glorious Boy, by Aimee Liu (Red Hen Press)
Death in Her Hands, by Ottessa Moshfegh (Vintage)
The Burning Island, by Jock Serong (Text)
The Coldest Warrior, by Paul Vidich (No Exit Press)

• As everyone knows by now, writer and Columbo co-creator William Link died earlier this week. The Columbophile, though, doesn’t want us to forget about these other Columboworld stars we lost in 2020—Robert Conrad, Honor Blackman, and yes, Dawn Wells among them.

• Immediately before Christmas, CrimeReads published a fairly wonderful piece by Paul Vidich (The Coldest Warrior, The Mercenary) about his fellow author John le Carré, who died on December 12 at 89 years of age. In it, Vidich observes:
Le Carré’s distinction and originality is that he used the conventions of the spy novel for the purposes of social criticism. The British intelligence bureaucracy and the men (and they are largely men) represent the social attitudes and vanities of a certain class of Englishmen. They marry, cheat, divorce, spy and play their games of political and sexual betrayal. Le Carré used espionage as Conrad used the sea and Kipling India, as an exotic world in which to explore the inconvenient truths that exist in a democracy that finds it hard to balance openness with the need to keep secrets.

Intelligence agents in this world often act as legally sanctioned criminals. Lies are told in the service of truth, friends suborned in the name of national security, and extrajudicial murder qualifies as justice. We are fascinated by these contradictions and are entertained by the inherent hypocrisy.
• Steele Curry offers up his own le Carré tribute.

• The Killing Times spent this week applauding what it declares are the top 20 TV crime dramas shown in 2020. Among its picks: The Outsider, The Undoing, Deadwater Fell, Perry Mason, Deadwind, Dare Me, Baghdad Central, and I May Destroy You. Obviously, those good folks at The Killing Times spent way more time staring at small screens over the last 12 months than I did! They count down their endorsements in four posts: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

• That site’s focus isn’t only rearward, though. In this long feature, Killing Times editors preview some of the new crime, mystery, and thriller programming bound for TV screens in 2021—all of it accessible to British audiences, some of it available to American watchers as well. Who knows what will draw the biggest ratings, but I am looking forward to seeing The Serpent (starring Tahar Rahim and the magnetic Jenna Coleman), Series 2 of Baptiste, The North Water (based on Ian McGuire’s 2016 historical adventure), Series 2 of McDonald & Dodds, Lupin, Amsterdam Vice, and of course Season 6 of Endeavour. The post also includes the first trailer I’ve seen for Clarice, a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, starring Rebecca Breeds as FBI agent Clarice Starling. It’s not very revealing, but still welcome.

• There’s more than a modicum of overlap between the aforementioned recommendations and Dead Good Books’ tally of “20 Crime Shows You Shouldn’t Miss in 2021.”

• One of the programs I most look forward to seeing this season is Miss Scarlet and the Duke, a period mystery premiering under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece banner on Sunday, January 17. Already broadcast last spring in the UK, this six-part production is “set in 1882 Victorian London, with a fearless, quick-witted, and sassy female aspiring detective facing all manner of obstacles, from Victorian conventions to the efforts of her rakish and wily longtime friend/competition/potential love interest!” Kate Phillips, who portrayed Princess Mary (Queen Elizabeth II’s aunt) in The Crown, stars as Eliza Scarlet, the daughter of a London private detective who takes over her father’s agency after he dies in order to avoid penury. Stuart Martin, familiar as Silas Sharrow on Jamestown, plays Scotland Yard Detective Inspector William Wellington, aka The Duke, Eliza’s childhood companion and reluctant colleague. The PBS Masterpiece site offers more information about this drama. Below is a video trailer.



• CrimeReads editor-in-chief Dwyer Murphy toutsThe Best Crime Shows of the Decade.” If I didn’t sit through all of them, I at least knew about these programs, which range from The Night Of and True Detective to Bosch and Justified. Just one exception: the American psychological thriller You. That Lifetime-turned-Netflix series, entering its third season in 2021, passed me by completely.

• It’s good to see that “The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and Netflix have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the author’s estate, which alleged that the film Enola Holmes infringed copyright by depicting a warmer and more emotional version of Sherlock Holmes.” The Guardian adds, “The lawsuit, brought against Netflix, the film’s producers Legendary Pictures, the Enola Holmes author Nancy Springer and others associated with the adaptation, argued that Conan Doyle created ‘significant new character traits for Holmes and Watson’ in the 10 stories still under copyright in the U.S., which were written between 1923 and 1927.” Lets hope this settlement clears the way to shoot a sequel to Enola Holmes, as I quite enjoyed that lighthearted picture starring Millie Bobby Brown, released this last September.

• Significant dates to remember, from In Reference to Murder:
Somehow, these deadlines slipped past me until now, but there are a couple of contests seeking submissions for first novelists due soon if you just happen to have an unpublished manuscript in your desk drawer.

The St. Martin’s Press Tony Hillerman Prize is accepting submissions for a debut mystery novel set in the American Southwest, with a prize of $10,000 advance against royalties and publication. The deadline for that one is January 2, 2021.

Also, the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Competition is taking submissions from the author of any unpublished novel who is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a novel (except that authors of self-published works may enter, as long as the manuscript submitted is not the self-published work). That one also has a prize of [a] $10,000 advance, with a deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST on January 1, 2021. Fortunately, you have more time to enter the CWA’s Debut Dagger competition, with a deadline of February 26th.
• The Private Eye Writers of America is currrently accepting submissions to its 2021 Shamus Awards competition. There will be four categories of honorees: Best Hardcover P.I. Novel, Best First P.I. Novel, Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel, and Best P.I. Short Story. As Guns, Gams & Gumshoes explains, “Submissions must be postmarked by March 31, 2021. No extensions can be given.”

• I’m still cobbling together The Rap Sheet’s lengthy rundown of crime-fiction works set for original release in the first quarter of this brand-new year. But already, Ayo Onatade has posted her list of British titles she’s most looking forward to reading in 2021, among them Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn, Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Daughters of Night, and K.J. Maitland’s The Drowned City. George Easter of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has assembled his own inventory of anticipated novels, running from Mick Herron’s Slough House to Jonathan Ames’ A Man Named Doll.

• “Best of 2020” lists continue to draw attention. MysteryPeople’s Scott Montgomery identifies his 10 favorite crime releases here, including one book I missed completely: James Queally’s Line of Sight, which Montgomery calls “my favorite private eye novel of the year.” The Web site Crime Fiction Lover has posted two additional sets of endorsements here and here. Librarian-turned-blogger Lesa Holstine has fond memories of S.J. Bennett’s The Windsor Knot, Bree Baker’s Closely Harbored Secrets, Harlan Coben’s The Boy from the Woods, and other yarns. Choices from the anonymous blogger at For Winter Nights take in Jane Casey’s The Cutting Place, Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water, Antonia Hodgson’s The Silver Collar, and We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker. CrimeReads and Book Marks present “The Best-Reviewed Crime and Mystery Fiction of 2020” (spoiler: Tana French’s The Searcher scored top honors, according to their accounting). Finally, a non-book compilation: Art of the Title’s top-10 movie and TV openings from 2020, featuring the title sequences from both Defending Jacob (adapted from William Landay’s 2012 novel of the same name) and The Good Lord Bird (based on James McBride’s 2013 book).

• Tardy though I am, I wish to direct your attention to this piece in The Stiletto Gumshoe, which recounts how famous American paperback illustrator Robert McGinnis employed, among his many models, one Shere Hite. That’s right, the very same Ms. Hite who composed such sexology classics as Sexual Honesty, by Women, for Women (1974) and The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976). Hite died this last September 9 at age 77.

• Rest in peace, as well, Guy N. Smith. A hard-working English concocter of pulpy horror fiction, Smith passed away on December 24 after testing positive for COVID-19. He was 81 years old. Smith may be best remembered for having penned a strangely popular series of novels about giant killer crabs, but he also wrote non-fiction, soft-core porn, and children’s stories. The blog Too Much Horror Fiction has posted a gallery of his creepy book covers. FOLLOW-UP: In his Dispatches from the Last Outlaw blog, Thomas McNulty recalls his meeting with author Smith in the fall of 2019.

• What a fun end-of-the-year project! Houston author and blogger Scott D. Parker devoted part of December to screening all half-dozen of the 1930s and ’40s Thin Man movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, and inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s 1934 novel, The Thin Man. You will find his spirited assessments here. “I enjoyed these films so much,” Parker remarks in conclusion, “that I’m going to seek out and find the other films Powell and Loy starred in together.”

• Kudos to Publishers Weekly! After considering the abundant challenges and disruptions that faced the book-publishing industry in COVID-clobbered 2020, that American trade magazine announced that its Person of the Year (actually, People of the Year) “are not the powerhouse agents or the megabestselling authors or the Big Five CEOs. They are the booksellers, debut and midlist authors, editors, librarians, printers, publicists, sales representatives, and warehouse workers, to mention just a few—the workers, who have been the most important people in the business all along.” Without those individual booksellers and the products they continued to place in our hands, despite the rigors of the pandemic and their risks of exposure to the disease, 2020 would have been an even more lonely and agitating time than it was. They may not have been considered “essential workers,” but for many of us, they were essential, indeed.

And of course there’s a Free Little Library in Antarctica.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Baldacci Takes the Nero

Virginia author David Baldacci has won the 2020 Nero Award for his novel One Good Deed (Grand Central), the first to star Aloysius Archer, a “straight-talking World War II veteran fresh out of prison.” The Nero Award is presented annually by the New York City-based fan organization The Wolfe Pack to what it calls “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.”

Strangely, the Wolfe Pack press release carrying that news makes no mention of other finalists for this commendation. However, we’ve heard (through Twitter) that David C. Taylor’s Night Watch (Severn House) was also in contention for the 2020 Nero. If anyone out there has a complete list of the Nero nominees, please let us know.

The Wolfe Pack’s news release reports as well that “El Cuerpo en el Barril” (“The Body in the Barrel”), by Tom Larsen, will receive the 2020 Black Orchid Novella Award. This prize is given out jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Larsen’s tale will be published in the July 2021 issue of AHMM.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Thursday, December 03, 2020

A First for Finland

Barely a week has passed since the announcement of finalists for the 2020 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, and already we have a winner. It’s Little Siberia (Orenda), written by Antti Tuomainen and translated from the Finnish by David Hackston. A news release today carries this statement from Petrona judges:
Antti Tuomainen’s Little Siberia stood out on the shortlist for all of the judges. From its arresting opening, in which a meteorite unexpectedly lands on a speeding car, to its very human depiction of a pastor grappling with private and theological crises, this is a pitch-perfect comic crime novel with considerable depth and heart.

The first Finnish crime novel to receive the Petrona Award,
Little Siberia is a particularly fitting winner for 2020—a year in which life was turned upside down. A celebration of resilience, fortitude and simply muddling through, it is a novel for our times.

David Hackston’s fine translation captures
Little Siberia’s depictions of an icy northern Finland and its darkly comic tone, skilfully showcasing the writing of one of Scandinavia’s most versatile and original crime authors. Little Siberia is published by Orenda Books, one of the UK’s foremost independent publishers, which consistently champions international and translated crime fiction.
In addition to a handsome trophy, author Tuomainen will be given “a pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2022.” He and his translator are in line, too, for cash prizes.

Also shortlisted for the 2020 Petrona were The Courier, by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda; Norway); Inborn, by Thomas Enger, translated by Kari Dickson (Orenda; Norway); The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst, translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway); The Silver Road, by Stina Jackson, translated by Susan Beard (Corvus; Sweden); and The Absolution, by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton; Iceland).

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Those Lucky Six

From a list of 37 novels entered into the competition for 2020’s Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, a shortlist of half a dozen works has been created. Those contenders were announced this morning:

The Courier, by Kjell Ola Dahl,
translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda; Norway)
Inborn, by Thomas Enger,
translated by Kari Dickson (Orenda; Norway)
The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)
The Silver Road, by Stina Jackson,
translated by Susan Beard (Corvus; Sweden)
The Absolution, by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton; Iceland)
Little Siberia, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Orenda; Finland)

Petrona winners are customarily declared during the spring British convention CrimeFest, but this year’s victor will instead be announced on Thursday, December 3. “The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize,” says a news release, “and the winning author will receive a full pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2022.”

This annual commendation—established back in 2013—takes its name from the blog operated by Maxine Clarke, a British editor and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction,” who had died the year before that. The contest is open to “crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.”

Last year’s Petrona recipient was Norwegian author Jørn Lier Horst, who took home the honor for his novel The Katharina Code (Michael Joseph), translated by Anne Bruce.

Monday, November 23, 2020

Mastering the Art of Crime

Authors Charlaine Harris and Jeffery Deaver were named today as the Mystery Writers of America’s 2021 Grand Masters. As a news release explains, “MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.”

“Mystery Writers of America is thrilled to honor Jeffery Deaver and Charlaine Harris as MWA’s 2021 Grand Masters,” said MWA President Meg Gardiner. “Over the course of decades, Deaver and Harris have gripped tens of millions of readers while broadening the reach of the genre with transformative books—notably, Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series, and Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels—and while generously encouraging and supporting fellow writers and the reading public. We’re delighted to recognize their achievements.”

Past Grand Masters include Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ross Macdonald, John le Carré, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Max Allan Collins, and last year’s winner, Barbara Neely.

Concurrently, the MWA chose the Malice Domestic mystery conference (founded in 1989) as the recipient of its 2021 Raven Award, recognizing “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.”

Provided that next year’s Edgar Awards ceremony is held in public (it’s currently scheduled for Thursday, April 29, in New York City), these prizes will be given out then.

Click here to read more about these commendations.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Champions Among Champions

(Editor’s note: The following article comes from Fraser Massey, a freelance journalist living in East London​, England, who has contributed work in the past to British periodicals such as The Radio Times, Now, and The Times of London. His unpublished first novel, Whitechapel Messiah, was shortlisted last year in the “New Voices” category at London’s Capital Crime Festival. He’s currently preparing to submit that manuscript to publishers.)

The 2020 awards season will be remembered for being like no other that came before. This has been a year when winning crime-fictionists couldn’t even receive their prizes in person, but instead had to make do with hearing their names read out during online ceremonies.

Despite the problems presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, most—though not all—of the regular annual awards presentations for crime, mystery, and thriller novels went ahead in some fashion. A survey of 12 different groups or organizations known for offering yearly commendations in this genre shows a number of shared judgments on new releases, but also plenty of diversity in their other choices.

Between them, the Agatha Awards, the Anthonys, the Barrys, the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, the Crime Writers’ Association Daggers, the International Thriller Writers (ITW) Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Macavitys, the Shamus Awards, the Strand Magazine Critics Awards, and the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel Awards assigned prizes to 31 different authors in 39 categories, with a total of 146 titles receiving nominations.

The big winner in 2020 turned out to be Northern Ireland-born, Australia-based thriller writer Adrian McKinty, whose ingeniously coercive tale about American child-snatchers, The Chain, picked up both the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year prize in July, then collected the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and the Barry Award for Best Thriller in October.

McKinty is one of four male authors to make the top-10 list of most wins and nominations at award ceremonies this year.

Some of the best-known contributors to modern crime fiction found their latest books in contention among various prize juries over the last 12 months. They include David Baldacci (One Good Deed), Stephen King (If It Bleeds), Anthony Horowitz (The Sentence Is Death), and Ann Cleeves, whose first Detective Matthew Venn novel, The Long Call, captured the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel in May.

However, it was Korean-American author Steph Cha who kicked off the 2020 awards season back in mid-April, when her fourth novel, Your House Will Pay, won this year’s L.A. Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category. She followed that by scoring nominations at five other awards ceremonies.

Spare a thought, too, for Lauren Wilkinson, whose debut novel, the Cold War thriller American Spy, was selected by The New York Times as one of its “100 Notable Books of 2019” and went on to score five nominations without her receiving a single winner’s trophy in the post to place upon her mantelpiece. Do people still have mantelpieces?

Special mention deserves to be made of the impressively prolific Max Allan Collins and Denise Mina, who each managed to collect nominations for two separate titles (Collins for Killing Quarry and Girl Most Likely, Mina for The Less Dead and Conviction), yet were shut out of winners circles this year.

Finally, congratulations are in order for the Capital Crime Festival, held last month in London, which managed to put forth what may have been the most diverse lists of contenders. Their judges nominated 26 different print titles, the majority of them neglected by folks judging other crime-fiction competitions.

The following top-10 list of this year’s acclaimed crime, mystery, and thriller works was created for The Rap Sheet using a points system that credits wins, commendations, nominations, and the numbers of awards ceremonies at which each title was recognized.*
1. The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland [U.S.], Orion [UK])
2. Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton [U.S.],
Hodder & Stoughton [UK])
3. One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)
4. Death in the East, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage [U.S.],
Harvill Secker [UK])
5. Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco [U.S.],
Faber and Faber [UK])
6. The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Flatiron [U.S.],
Little, Brown [UK])
7. American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House [U.S.] Dialogue [UK])
8. The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)
9. November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow [U.S.], Harper [UK])
10. The Sentence Is Death, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper Perennial [U.S.], Harper [UK])

Bubbling just under this list: My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing (Penguin [U.S], Michael Joseph [UK]); Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow [U.S.], Faber and Faber [UK]); The Godmother, by Hannelore Cayre, (ECW [U.S.], Old Street [UK]); Charity’s Burden, by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink); Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Simon & Schuster [U.S.] Sphere [UK]); and The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott (Vintage [U.S.], Cornerstone UK]).

* A note about list placements: The points system was devised to favor prize winners and books that received commendations over others that received multiple nominations but no awards. However, across-the-board recognition at a number of ceremonies was still reflected in the final calculations. Outright winners were allotted 25 points for each prize, commendations scored 23 points, and nominations (books that didn’t win) received 10 points apiece. Titles were given an additional two points for every ceremony where they were nominated.

Friday, November 06, 2020

Bullet Points: Election Anxiety Edition

Like so many other Americans, I have spent the last several days focused on news surrounding the 2020 U.S. presidential race. With any luck, ballot counting will soon near its conclusion, and we’ll have a view toward the final decision—likely in Democrat Joe Biden’s favor—by today. But in the meantime, I am struggling to pull my head out of the political arena and concentrate instead on crime and thriller fiction. Below are developments in that area worth mentioning.

• The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has put both the riches and the shallowness of modern television on vivid display. Over the last eight months, as opportunities for international travel and socializing have tried up, my wife and I have turned to TV series and movies to fill many of our quiet hours. While I’ve appreciated a few new and recent offerings (The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, Vienna Blood, Baptiste, Perry Mason to a lesser extent, and Lily James’ Rebecca remake—critical kvetching aside), I have been more often disappointed. SS-GB, for instance, got off to a rollicking start, only to end inconclusively. Dublin Murders wore poorly on my patience as the abundant troubles besetting its protagonists took center stage; I gave up watching the series halfway through. Rob Lowe’s short-lived British dramedy, Wild Bill, had it charms, but the plots were pretty weak, and potentially interesting secondary characters, such as Anjli Mohindra’s Lydia Price, were never fully fleshed out. Marc Warren’s Van der Valk was character-rich, and I relished its Amsterdam setting, but the episodes weren’t especially memorable. While I enjoyed the Mediterranean island backdrop of The Mallorca Files, that show overplayed its comedy at the expense of original storytelling. And the six-episode Netflix prequel series Young Wallander? Well, it was interesting because it explored hate crimes and racist violence in Sweden, and Ellise Chappell shone brightly as an earnest young immigration advocate; however, star Adam Pålsson was altogether too stiff to lead the cast, and fans of previous Wallander series (such as this one) are unlikely to applaud this modern-day reboot of their favorite Malmö detective inspector. So the following news, from The Killing Times, came as a surprise:
Young Wallander is coming back for a second series.

The Netflix adaptation of Henning Mankell’s celebrated series of novels made its debut on the streaming platform and its expected the second run will debut in 2021. …

It’s expected Adam Pålsson will return as the young detective, but there’s no more word on casting yet.
Evidently, my viewing tastes are not shared by everyone.

• I have higher hopes for a different Netflix crime drama, Lupin, set for release in January 2021. It’s inspired by French author Maurice Leblanc’s many novels and novellas about fictional gentleman-thief and master of disguise Arsène Lupin, who was introduced in Leblanc’s 1907 story collection, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar. The new TV series stars French actor Omar Sy as polished 21st-century robber Assane Diop, “a man who comes across a mysterious gift—a book about Arsène Lupin, judging by the trailer—that he says grants him wealth and resources, and several lives with which to spend them,” explains Polygon. “That detail, along with a few visual flourishes that suggest a little jumping through time, give the series a supernatural tint (in addition to a slightly meta energy), though we’ll have to wait to see the extent of how strange the series becomes.” Gizmodo adds, “Lupin’s trailer also has a very pronounced James Bond sort of energy to it that promises the series won’t just be a collection of scenes in which Sy tiptoes around museums boosting priceless works of art.”​

• Beyond watching just what’s available on streaming services, I have found entertainment these last several months in a variety of DVD releases. Episodes of Dan August, Longstreet and Peter Gunn have all showed at my house, as have the TV pilot films Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, a better-than-anticipated Raymond Burr legal drama from 1976; The Judge and Jake Wyler, a 1972 flick starring Bette Davis and Doug McClure, and written by Richard Levinson and William Link; and Jarrett, Glenn Ford’s 1973 audition for a private detective series. I’d long been on the lookout for a copy of that final telepic, since I had vague recollections of enjoying Jarrett when it was originally broadcast. So when I discovered that Web-based video retailer Modcinema had copies for sale, I immediately snapped one up. The story finds Ford playing Sam Jarrett, a boxer-turned-gumshoe in Los Angeles who specializes in cases involving art works of one sort or another. In the pilot, he’s searching for “the Book of Adam and Eve, a Biblical text that predates the Dead Sea Scrolls,” as this review in Mystery*File explains. The concept held promise, and Ford had already demonstrated his ability to lead a small-screen series in the 1971-1972 CBS western-cum-crime drama Cade’s County. The casting looked favorable as well, with Anthony Quayle, Forrest Tucker, Laraine Stephens, and Yvonne Craig all signed on to the project. Furthermore, the script for Jarrett came from Richard Maibaum, who had written the earliest James Bond motion picture, Dr. No, and gone on to contribute to other Bond films. Sadly, the finished product proved far less appealing than I’d recalled. As Mystery*File puts it,
Ford is miscast, Tucker overacts terribly and has some lame line readings, Stephens seems to think she is in a real movie, it all borders on the worst kind of camp …

And it is for all that, fun in a stupid way, because Ford, Quayle, and Craig all seem to recognize how silly the whole thing is and settle in to have fun. They are relaxed, playful, aware there is nothing they can do to save this, but determined to make it as much fun as they can.
I’d call that assessment far too generous. Despite my warm remembrance of Jarrett, watching it again all these years later amounted to a waste of 74 minutes. Much of its plot makes no sense, and other elements are simply ridiculous. It’s no surprise CBS didn’t add Jarrett to its fall 1973 prime-time schedule.

• With the Hawaii Five-0 reboot having finally ended its decade-long run this last April, 40 years after Jack Lord’s original Hawaii Five-O left the airwaves, Bill Koening of The Spy Command chose this moment to revisit—in some detail—Stephen J. Cannell’s unsuccessful 1997 pilot for a Five-O revitalization, starring Gary Busey. His post features a five-minute clip from that movie’s opening.

• The Goodreads Choice Awards are now open for public voting. There are 15 nominees in the Best Mystery & Thriller category, including Rachel Howzell Hall’s And Now She’s Gone, S.A. Crosby’s Blacktop Wasteland, Tana French’s The Searcher, and Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water. The first round of balloting will continue through this coming Sunday, November 8. Click here to make your opinions known. Two more rounds of voting will follow this one, with the winners in all categories to be announced on December 8.

In a piece for CrimeReads, H.B. Lyle profiles Riddle of the Sands writer Erskine Childers, asking, “How did the aristocratic author of English’s first great spy novel end up dead in the Irish Civil War?

• I hate announcing the deaths of people who have influenced the crime- and thriller-fiction fields. Yet each such individual deserves recognition for their efforts. So let’s begin with two recent passings mentioned in The Gumshoe Site. As Jiro Kimura notes, Richard A. Lupoff died on October 22 in Berkeley, California, at the tender age of 85. “The former technical writer was probably more famous as an American science-fiction writer than as a mystery writer …,” he observes, but “in the 1980s, Lupoff started writing mystery series featuring Hobart Lindsey (an insurance claims adjuster) and Mavia Plum (a black homicide detective in Berkeley), starting with The Comic Book Killer (Offspring Press, 1988), and ending with The Emerald Cat Killer (St. Martin’s, 2010). He also created a short story series, featuring millionaire autodidact polymath Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase and his lissome associate, Claire Delacrois, who live [in] Berkeley in the 1930s, and the six cases of Chase and Delacroix were collected in Quintet (Crippen & Landru, 2008).” The science-fiction Web site Locus offers a more detailed account of Lupoff’s publishing career.

• The Gumshoe Site also reports the demise of musician-turned-writer Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, who—under the pseudonym Rachel Caine—penned “Stillhouse Lake (Thomas & Mercer, 2017), the first in the Stillhouse Lake thriller series …, featuring Gwen Proctor, the ex-wife of an infamous serial killer, followed by four more novels ending with Heartbreak Bay (to be published in 2021).” Atop here crime-fiction endeavors, she produced dozens of novels and short stories in the fantasy field, including the Morganville Vampires series and the Weather Warden universe. Conrad/Caine 58 years old when she perished from cancer on November 1.

• Finally, Mike Ripley offers this delightful, if belated, obituary of Alan Williams, who apparently succumbed to COVID-19 on April 21 of this year. “He was called ‘the master of adult excitement,’” Ripley writes in Shots, “‘the first real challenger to Ian Fleming’ and ‘a ruthless, compulsive storyteller,’ though in another era, his famous godfather Noël Coward might have added ‘and he’s a very naughty boy.’” An initial career in journalism, coupled with “an eye for dangerous situations,” led Williams to begin concocting thrillers, his first such novel, Long Run South, reaching print in 1962. “Williams was 27 and seemed set for a long career in thriller fiction,” Ripley continues, “his trademark take on the genre being the ‘Englishman abroad,’ usually young, often a journalist, often randy and usually out-of-his-depth, entangled with villains and spies far more ruthless and violent than the hero, always in exotic locations ranging from North Africa to Iceland, South America to Cambodia. … By the 1970s, a new Alan Williams thriller was a major publishing event …” Nonetheless, the author stopped producing fresh fiction at age 46. He was 84 years old at the time of his demise.

• Back in August, I asked on this page, “So what’s happened to Reviewing the Evidence?” At that time, the 19-year-old Web site had already lain dormant for seven straight months, with no news circulating about its future. And an e-mail inquiry I sent to editor Yvonne Klein had gone unanswered. I feared the worst. Therefore, I was more than a bit surprised, on October 10, to suddenly find a new message on the site from Klein. It begins,
First, my apologies. This is the issue of RTE I had ready to go on the last day of February this year. I didn’t get to upload it as on that very day I found myself in the hospital, from which I did not emerge for some considerable time. When I thought about what to do with it, I felt that it would be a pity to waste all the hard work the reviewers had gone to, despite the months-long delay. The original date was special in a way—it was due to come out on Leap Day, February 29, I think for the first time in our history.
Klein goes on to write: “One more bit of news. After twelve years (or so) of editing RTE, I am stepping back, though not wholly departing. Happily, Rebecca Nesvet, who has long been associated with the site and whose reviews I am sure you have read and enjoyed over the years, has agreed to assume the editorship and will be gradually taking over the responsibilities in the next few months.” She went on to promise that a new issue of RTE would be posted “sometime” in November. Let’s hold her to that.

• Production of The Rap Sheet’s 2020 “favorite crime fiction of the year” feature package is well underway, and I’m looking ahead to a change in my reading habits. As I usually do at year’s end, I start turning to older books and works outside the mystery-fiction field, and digging primarily into those for the next three or four months. My preliminary choices this time range from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth to David W. Blight’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass biography and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (a 1722 release that I purchased early in this year’s pandemic, but still haven’t tackled). During said interregnum, I shall be poring, too, through Craig Sisterson’s Southern Cross Crime: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of Australia and New Zealand (Oldcastle). It’s part of a series of fiction guides that has already brought us Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, Historical Noir, and American Noir, all by Barry Forshaw. Sisterson, with whom I worked for several years while helping to judge New Zealand’s Ngaio Marsh Awards, is an enthusiastic genre reader and a spirited writer, which should make Southern Cross Crime a joy to peruse. Although I’ve sampled the output of Liam McIlvanney, Peter Corris, Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries), and Paul Thomas, and have read from the oeuvre of Arthur W. Upfield (the creator of Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte of the Queensland Police Force), my knowledge of Kiwi and Australian crime fiction remains fairly limited. Just leafing through this new book brings up myriad fictionists with whom I would like one day to be better acquainted—Marele Day, Alix Bosco, Emma Viskic, and Garry Disher among them. The only problem might be acquiring copies of their books; U.S. publishers aren’t in the habit yet of re-publishing Antipodean crime writing as frequently as they do UK titles.

• In January Magazine, Ali Karim has posted an interview between Heather Martin, author of The Reacher Guy: The Authorised Biography of Lee Child (Constable), and the Reacher Guy himself, best-selling author Child. “Their chat,” writes Karim, “gives us a taste for what both have in store for fans of the creator of Jack Reacher, one of most beloved characters of contemporary crime fiction.”

What a terrific book title for this genre!

• While we must now wait until April 2021 to see Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film, No Time to Die, my recent wrap-up of crime, mystery, and thriller releases includes an assortment of reading choices to keep spy-fiction enthusiasts happy in the interim. One I only just added there is Come Spy With Me, the initial installment in a series created by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens, and due out in mid-November from Wolfpack. Collins explains in his blog that this “homage to James Bond and Ian Fleming” had its roots in a different publisher’s rather peculiar proposal to create “erotic novels in which all of the sex was between married people. Married to each other. At the time,” Collins recalls, “I pointed out to them that few married people, particularly if they’d been married a while, did their fantasizing about their mates. But this, the publisher insisted, was a time that had come.” Although that themed project ultimately went nowhere, Collins and Clemens reworked their yarn into Come Spy With Me, a 1960s-set novel starring John Sand, a recently retired British secret agent on whom Fleming supposedly based his man Bond.

• And who says there are no such things as coincidences? On the very same day that Paperback Warrior reviewed Bourbon Street, which it dubbed a “pretty sub-standard” 1953 novel, set in New Orleans and written by G.H. Otis (aka Otis Hemmingway Gaylord Jr.), Mystery*File editor Steve Lewis critiqued a 1954 episode of CBS-TV’s Four Star Playhouse, also titled “Bourbon Street” and also with its action taking place in Louisiana. Lewis says the 25-minute drama, starring Dick Powell and Beverly Garland, “has more going for it than many a shoot ’em up, ultra-violent neo-noir two-hour extravaganza in full color does today. Dick Powell is in full hard-boiled tough-guy mode in this one, as a piano player who has managed to make his way out of the quicksand life of New Orleans, only to return when he learns that the girl he loved has committed suicide.” Click here to watch that whole episode, scripted by Dick Carr (1929-1988), who would go on to write for Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Johnny Staccato, Dan August, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Charlie’s Angels.

Sunday, November 01, 2020

First-Timers Win Big Time

Two debut novels have walked off with this year’s Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction. Winners were declared during New Zealand’s WORD Christchurch Spring Festival (October 29-November 1).

Best Novel: Auē, by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press)

Also nominated: Whatever It Takes, by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press); Girl from the Tree House, by Gudrun Frerichs (Self-published); The Nancys, by R.W.R. McDonald (Allen & Unwin); In the Clearing, by J.P. Pomare (Hachette New Zealand); and The Wild Card, by Renée (Cuba Press)

Best First Novel: The Nancys, by R.W.R. McDonald (Allen & Unwin)

Also nominated: Tugga’s Mob, by Stephen Johnson (Clan Destine Press); Auē, by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press); and Into the Void, by Christina O’Reilly (Self-published e-book)

A news release notes that “Both winners were first-time novelists, and while their winning books were different in many ways, each was told in large part from the perspective of young children dealing with loss and violence in small-town New Zealand, each included a rich cast of diverse characters, and each expertly blended lighter moments with dark events in tense tales that could make readers gasp and laugh.”

This year marked the 10th anniversary of these commendations, which founder Craig Sisterson says “were established in 2010 to celebrate excellence in local crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. ... [T]he Ngaios were modelled somewhat on the Hammett Prize in North America, which has been won by the likes of Margaret Atwood and focuses on ‘literary excellence’ in novels entwined with crime, so isn’t restricted to detective novels or whodunnits.”

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!

Saturday, October 24, 2020

A Basketful of Oddments

• In late August, Rap Sheet contributor Steven Nester wrote a review of the “forgotten” 1999 neo-noir novel East of A, Russell Atwood’s first of two mysteries starring New York City private eye Payton Sherwood. (Its sequel was 2009’s Losers Live Longer.) Then just last week, I received an e-note from Atwood himself, saying, “I have a new novel out, not a Payton Sherwood mystery but a haunted house novel with a difference.” Titled Apartment Five Is Alive, the book was released in late September. Atwood adds: “Currently, I am a bookshop owner in my hometown of Westfield, Massachusetts, and I wrote this novel specifically to save my bookstore from closing, so I hope you can see your way to promoting it.” His business, it turns out, is Blue Umbrella Books, in downtown Westfield, and as this story for Western Mass News makes clear, it has been hurt partly by “a combination of online book sales, Audibles, and digital books.” This year’s COVID-19 pandemic has done further damage to Blue Umbrella’s prospects. Atwood created a GoFundMe page last December, but he’s apparently not yet achieved his funding goal of $10,000. With Halloween on the horizon, it’s certainly the right time to think about buying a haunted house tale. If your purchase can also improve the chances that an independent bookstore can keep its lights on, so much the better. To learn more about Apartment Five Is Alive, visit its Amazon page. Then scroll down to a video of Atwood reading his new novel’s opening chapter.

• Despite it being only late October, Publishers Weekly is already out with its “best books of 2020” list. Included are a dozen picks from the mystery/thriller stacks, among them Rachel Howzell Hall’s And Now She’s Gone, Matthew Carr’s Black Sun Rising, Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water, Karen Dionne’s The Wicked Sister, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts.

From In Reference to Murder: The finalists for the An Post Irish Book Awards were announced this week. Readers and fans will be able to vote online for their favorites through November 16, with the category winners to be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on November 25th. Those vying for Best Crime Fiction [are] The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard; The Cutting Place by Jane Casey; Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent; After the Silence by Louise O'Neill; The Guest List by Lucy Foley; and Fifty Fifty by Steve Cavanagh.” Click here to choose your favorite from among those.

• Deadline reports that The Son, Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s 2014 standalone vengeance thriller, The Son, is being adapted as a TV series for HBO. Jake Gyllenhaal (The Sisters Brothers, Velvet Buzzsaw) has been signed to star in the production.

• Meanwhile, actor Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) will take the lead in a six-episode UK TV series based on P.D. James’ stories about UK police detective Adam Dalgliesh. The Killing Times says this show “starts in 1970s England and follows Dalgliesh’s career to present day as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets. Each murder mystery will offer its own unique setting and extraordinary cast. The six episodes will comprise three two-part stories, all of which are based on three of the Dalgiesh novels. The novels being adapted for the first season are Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death.” This new Dalgliesh (not to be confused with previous ITV adaptations starring Roy Marsden and Martin Shaw) is expected to air sometime in 2021.

• And this is more ammunition for critics who say there are no new ideas on television these days. Blogger B.V. Lawson says that “NBC has put in development Always Wright, a drama from For Life executive producer Sonay Hoffman and Sony Pictures TV. Written by Hoffman, Always Wright is set in Los Angeles and revolves around a young, wealthy, and jet-setting African-American couple who solve mysteries, run their own successful empires, and are completely head-over-heels in love with each other.” That sounds suspiciously similar to the premise of that 1979-1984 ABC series Hart to Hart?

• What a cock-up! Last week, the small bookshop where I help out had to send back its copies of John Grisham’s latest novel, A Time for Mercy. Shelf Awareness explains why:
At least some copies of A Time for Mercy by John Grisham contain printing errors so extensive that Doubleday has recalled copies and is replacing them. The book’s pub date was last Tuesday, October 13.

The publisher commented: “Doubleday has discovered some defective copies in the first printing of John Grisham’s
A Time for Mercy. We are currently working with our accounts to replace inventory, and have already begun shipping out corrected copies."

One bookseller who is receiving replacement copies tomorrow described the printing errors as including “pages in the wrong order and some repeated with chapter numbers following themselves.” The books were printed in the U.S.
• Finally, we bid a sad good-bye to English novelist Jill Paton Walsh, who died on October 18. Walsh was likely best known to Rap Sheet readers for having completed Dorothy L. Sayers’ previously unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane murder mystery, Thrones, Dominations (1998), and then going on to pen three Wimsey continuation novels, including The Last Scholar, which was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Endeavour Historical Dagger award in 2014. Walsh, who also wrote children’s books, was 83 years old. Martin Edwards offers a fond remembrance of her here.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Assorted and Applauded

Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association today announced, in London, the fortunate recipients of its 2020 Dagger Awards, in 10 categories. A news release reports that “The winners were announced during a live virtual ceremony …, hosted by one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction, the writer and reviewer Barry Forshaw. The evening also featured guest speaker, Richard Osman.” Below are this year’s victors.

Gold Dagger: Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)

Also nominated: What You Pay For, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton); November Road, by Lou Berney (Harper — highly commended); Forced Confessions, by John Fairfax (Little, Brown); Joe Country, by Mick Herron (John Murray); and Death in the East, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: November Road, by Lou Berney (Harper)

Also nominated: This Is Gomorrah, by Tom Chatfield (Hodder & Stoughton); One Way Out, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press); Between Two Evils, by Eva Dolan (Raven); Cold Storage, by David Koepp (HQ); and The Whisper Man, by Alex North:(Michael Joseph)

John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger: The Man on the Street,
by Trevor Wood (Quercus)

Also nominated: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Faber and Faber); My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing (Michael Joseph); Little White Lies, by Philippa East (HQ); and The Wreckage, by Robin Morgan-Bentley (Trapeze)

Sapere Books Historical Dagger: Death in the East,
by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

Also nominated: In Two Minds, by Alis Hawkins (The Dome Press); Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Quercus); The Bear Pit, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus); The Anarchists’ Club, by Alex Reeve (Raven); and The Paper Bark Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu (Constable)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger: The Godmother, by Hannelore Cayre; translated by Stephanie Smee (Old Street Publishing)

Also nominated: Summer of Reckoning, by Marion Brunet, translated by Katherine Gregor (Bitter Lemon Press); Like Flies from Afar, by K. Ferrari, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Canongate); November, by Jorge Galán, translated by Jason Wilson (Constable); The Fragility of Bodies, by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France (Bitter Lemon Press); and Little Siberia, by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Orenda)

Short Story Dagger: “#Me Too,” by Lauren Henderson (from Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Titan)

Also nominated: “The Bully,” by Jeffery Deaver (from Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B. Kane and Marie O’Regan; Titan); “The New Lad,” by Paul Finch (from Exit Wounds); “The Washing,” by Christopher Fowler (from Invisible Blood); “The Recipe,” by Louise Jensen (from Exit Wounds); and “Easily Made,” by Syd Moore (from The Twelve Strange Days of Christmas, by Syd Moore; Point Blank Press)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction: Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep (Heinemann)

Also nominated: Corrupt Bodies: Death and Dirty Dealing in a London Morgue, by Peter Everett (Icon); Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod, by Caroline Goode (Oneworld); The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury, by Sean O’Connor (Simon & Schuster); The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking, by Adam Sisman (Profile); and The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)

Dagger in the Library: Christopher Brookmyre

Also nominated: Jane Casey, Alex Gray, and Quintin Jardine

Debut Dagger: Revolution Never Lies, by Josephine Moulds

Also nominated: The Spae-Wife, by Anna Caig (highly commended); Whipstick, by Leanne Fry; Pesticide, by Kim Hays; Emergency Drill, by Nicholas Morrish; and Bitter Lake, by Michael Munro

Publishers’ Dagger: Orenda

Also nominated: Bitter Lemon Press; Harvill Secker; Head of Zeus; HQ; Michael Joseph; Raven; and Severn House

Congratulations to all of the 2020 nominees!

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Let’s Not Forget About the Anthonys

Concluding our coverage of this weekend’s “virtual Bouchercon,” we now bring you the winners of the 2020 Anthony Awards. As blogger Les Blatt notes in Classic Mysteries, “The Anthony Awards are named in honor of the late author and mystery critic Anthony Boucher (for whom Bouchercon is named), and they are considered to be among the most prestigious awards for crime-fiction authors.”

Best Novel:
The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Also nominated: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco); They All Fall Down, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge); Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); and Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura (Polis)

Best First Novel:
One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)

Also nominated: The Ninja Daughter, by Tori Eldridge (Agora); Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton); Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Agora); and American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)

Best Paperback Original:
The Alchemist’s Illusion, by Gigi Pandian (Midnight Ink)

Also nominated: The Unrepentant, by E.A. Aymar (Down & Out); Murder Knocks Twice, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur); The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandlar (Kensington); Scot & Soda, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink); Drowned Under, by Wendall Thomas (Poisoned Pen Press); and The Naming Game, by Gabriel Valjan (Winter Goose Press)

Best Critical Non-fiction Work:
The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, by Mo Moulton (Basic)

Also nominated: Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University Press of Kentucky); The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of the Collins Crime Club, by John Curran (Collins Crime Club); The Trail of Lizzie Borden: A True Story, by Cara Robertson (Simon & Schuster); and The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Best Short Story: “The Red Zone,” by Alex Segura (from ¡Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas!: Stories to Benefit the People of Puerto Rico, edited by Angel Luis Colón; Down & Out)

Also nominated: “Turistas,” by Hector Acosta (from ¡Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas!); “Unforgiven,” by Hilary Davidson (from Murder a-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go’s, edited by Holly West; Down & Out); “Better Days,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2019); and “Hard Return,” by Art Taylor (from Crime Travel, edited by Barb Goffman; Wildside Press)

Best Anthology or Collection:
Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons (Wildside Press)

Also nominated: The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods, edited by Michael Bracken (Down & Out); ¡Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas!: Stories to Benefit the People of Puerto Rico, edited by Angel Luis Colón (Down & Out); Crime Travel, edited by Barb Goffman (Wildside Press); and Murder A-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go’s, edited by Holly West (Down & Out)

Best Young Adult:
Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, by Jen Conley (Down & Out)

Also nominated: Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen); Killing November, by Adriana Mather (Knopf Books for Young Readers); Patron Saints of Nothing, by Randy Ribay (Kokila); The Deceivers, by Kristen Simmons (Tor Teen); and Wild and Crooked, by Leah Thomas (Bloomsbury YA)

A hearty congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!

Bestowing the Barrys

Day Two of this year’s virtual Bouchercon brings word of which books and authors have won the 2020 Barry Awards, given out by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.

Best Mystery/Crime Novel:
The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Flatiron)

Also nominated: If She Wakes, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown); Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam); The Border, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins); Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco); and Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

Best First Mystery/Crime Novel:
The Chestnut Man, by Søren Sveistrup (Harper)

Also nominated: The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides (Celadon); American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House); Save Me from Dangerous Men, by S.A. Lelchuk (Flatiron); Scrublands, Chris Hammer (Atria); and To the Lions, by Holly Watt (Dutton)

Best Paperback Original Mystery/Crime Novel:
Missing Daughter, by Rick Mofina (Mira)

Also nominated: The Godmother, by Hannelore Cayre (ECW); Winner Kills All, by R.J. Bailey (Simon & Schuster UK); Killing Quarry, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime); Fate, by Ian Hamilton (Spiderline); and No Good Deed, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

Best Thriller:
The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

Also nominated: Mission Critical, by Mark Greaney (Berkley); Backlash, by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bester); The Burglar, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press); True Believer, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bester); and White Hot Silence, by Henry Porter (Mysterious Press)

Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade:
Suspect, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

Also nominated: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (Crown); November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow); The Dry, by Jane Harper (Flatiron); The Blackhouse, by Peter May (Quercus); and The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)

I’m a bit surprised (and disappointed) that May’s The Blackhouse did not come out on the top in that final category, but then there’s no predicting the outcome of a competition such as this one.

Congratulations to all of the 2020 contenders!

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Friday, October 16, 2020

A Matter of Macavitys

As this year’s first “virtual Bouchercon” gets underway today, Mystery Readers International announces the winners of its 2020 Macavity Awards, in five categories.

Best Mystery Novel:
The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

Also nominated: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco); This Tender Land, by William Kent Krueger (Atria); Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); The Murder List, by Hank Philippi Ryan (Forge); and Sarah Jane, by James Sallis (Soho Crime)

Best First Mystery:
One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)

Also nominated: The Ninja Daughter, by Tori Eldridge (Agora); My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing (Penguin); Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton); Call Me Evie, by J.P. Pomare (Putnam); and American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)

Best Mystery Short Story:
“Better Days,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
[EQMM], May/June 2019)

Also nominated: “West Texas Barbecue,” by Michael Chandos (from The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods, edited by Michael Bracken; Down & Out Books); “Alex’s Choice,” by Barb Goffman (from Crime Travel, edited by Barb Goffman; Wildside Press); “The Cardboard Box,” by Terence Faherty (EQMM, January/February 2019); “Whiteout,” by G.M. Malliet (EQMM, January/February 2019); and “Brother’s Keeper,” by Dave Zeltserman (EQMM, May/June 2019)

Best Mystery Non-fiction/Critical: Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University Press of Kentucky)

Also nominated: Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story, by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland); Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan, by Ursula Buchan (Bloomsbury); Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint); The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, by Mo Moulton (Basic Books); and Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall, by James Polchin (Counterpoint Press)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery:
The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott (Vintage)

Also nominated: Murder Knocks Twice, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur); The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandlar (Kensington); A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington); The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime); and Charity’s Burden, by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink)

To find a schedule of Bouchercon events taking place today and Saturday, click here. Those events are available only to people who registered for the convention. You can also follow the proceedings—sort of—via Bouchercon 2020’s Facebook page.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Acclaim for Aussie Authors

During an online ceremony held earlier today, the Australian Crime Writers’ Association (ACWA) announced the winners of its 2020 Ned Kelly Awards (aka the “Neddies”) in four categories, as follow.

Best Crime Fiction:
The Wife and the Widow, by Christian White (Affirm Press)

Also nominated: Death of a Typographer, by Nick Gadd (Australian Scholarly Publishing); The Strangers We Know, by Pip Drysdale (Simon & Schuster); The Scholar, by Dervla McTiernan (Harlequin); Rivers of Salt, by Dave Warner (Fremantle Press); and True West, by David Whish-Wilson (Fremantle Press)

Best Debut Crime Fiction:
Present Tense, by Natalie Conyer (Clan Destine Press)

Also nominated: Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley (Affirm Press); Where the Truth Lies, by Karina Kilmore (Simon & Schuster); The Nancys, by R.W.R. McDonald (Allen & Unwin); Six Minutes, by Petronella McGovern (Allen & Unwin); and Lapse, by Sarah Thornton (Text)

Best True Crime:
Bowraville, by Dan Box (Penguin Random House)

Also nominated: Dead Man Walking: The Murky World of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich, by Kate McClymont (Penguin Random House); Shark Arm, by Phillip Rooper and Kevin Meagher (Allen & Unwin); and Snakes and Ladders, by Angela Williams (Affirm Press)

Best International Crime Fiction:
The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Hachette)

Also nominated: Cruel Acts, by Jane Casey (HarperCollins); The Night Fire, by Michael Connelly (Allen & Unwin); and The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

Click here to watch the ACWA announcement video.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Thursday, October 08, 2020

Now It’s the Readers’ Turn

This comes from B.V. Lawson’s excellent In Reference to Murder:
The Capital Crime conference announced the shortlists for the 2020 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards. The awards are a celebration of the crime and thriller genre and recognize excellence in film and television as well as books. The shortlists were decided by Capital Crime’s advisory board of authors, industry leaders and reviewers, but it's readers who will have the final say on who wins in each category. This is the second year for the awards, with authors Ian Rankin, Oyinkan Braithewaite, and C.L. Taylor among the 2019 winners. Shots Magazine has a list of all the finalists in the various categories.
The winners of these prizes are to be announced next Tuesday, October 13, “via Capital Crime’s social media platforms and newsletter.”

Click here to find more of Lawson’s crime-fiction news briefs.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Putting Women First

As scheduled, today brought an announcement of which books and authors have won the 2020 Davitt Awards, organized annually by Sisters in Crime Australia (SinCA) and meant to “provide some much-needed—and overdue—recognition for Australian women crime writers.” There are five main categories of contenders.

Best Adult Crime Novel:
The Trespassers, by Meg Mundell (University of Queensland Press)

Also nominated: Bruny, by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin); Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley (Affirm Press); Life Before, by Carmel Reilly (Allen & Unwin); Present Tense, by Natalie Conyer (Clan Destine Press); The Scholar, by Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Australia); and Six Minutes, by Petronella McGovern (Allen & Unwin)

Best Young Adult Crime Novel:
Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte (Allen & Unwin)

Also nominated: All That Impossible Space, by Anna Morgan
(Lothian Children’s Books); and When the Ground Is Hard, by Malla Nunn (Allen & Unwin)

Best Children’s Crime Novel:
The Girl in the Mirror, by Jenny Blackford (Eagle)

Also nominated: The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne, by Katrina Nannestad (ABC); Jinxed!: The Curious Curse of Cora Bell, by Rebecca McRitchie (HarperCollins Australia); and Sherlock Bones and the Natural History Mystery, by Renée Treml (Allen & Unwin)

Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate Cover-ups. One Journalist’s Fight for the Truth, by Adele Ferguson (ABC)

Also nominated: Fallen: The Inside Story of the Secret Trial and Conviction of Cardinal George Pell, by Lucie Morris-Marr (Allen & Unwin); Fixed It: Violence and the Representation of Women in the Media, by Jane Gilmore (Viking); Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and Its Human Fallout, by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant); and See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse, by Jess Hill (Black), which received a “highly commended certificate” from SinCA.

Best Debut Crime Book:
Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley (Affirm Press)

Also nominated: Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate Cover-ups. One Journalist’s Fight for the Truth, by Adele Ferguson (ABC); The Bee and the Orange Tree, by Melissa Ashley (Affirm Press); The Drover’s Wife, by Leah Purcell (Hamish Hamilton); Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte (Allen & Unwin); Life Before, by Carmel Reilly (Allen & Unwin); Present Tense, by Natalie Conyer (Clan Destine Press); Six Minutes, by Petronella McGovern (Allen & Unwin); and Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and Its Human Fallout, by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant)

In addition, reports a SinCA news release, “Emma Viskic … for Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing) and Dervla McTiernan … for The Scholar (HarperCollins Publishers Australia), [are] joint winners of the Readers’ Choice Award, as judged by the 500+ members of Sisters in Crime. Both are serial offenders when it comes to the Davitt Awards. Viskic has won an unprecedented five Davitt Awards for the previous two books in her Caleb Zelic series.” The organization’s Facebook page points out further that “This is the first time in the history of the Davitts that there has been a joint winner.”

These prizes are named in honor of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879), Australia’s first crime novelist. Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology sponsored this 20th presentation of the Davitts.

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!