Smiley Books Passage for America

Following the success of Karla’s Choice, Nick Harkaway’s 2024 novel continuing the espionage adventures of George Smiley—the series protagonist introduced by his late father, John le Carré, in Call for the Dead (1961)—the author has concocted a sequel, The Taper Man, to be published in 2026. Shotsmag Confidential reports that

In his new novel, Nick Harkaway will send George Smiley for the first time on an operation to America, pursuing an old communist network across the West Coast. It’s 1965, eighteen months after the events of Karla’s Choice, and within the missing decade between the two instalments in the Smiley Saga, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold [1963] and ...Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [1974]. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War, Smiley finds himself dealing with a crisis involving the ‘Cousins’, which throws him once again in a struggle to find a path in the dark. To whom does he owe his allegiance? To this investigation in America or to the wider geopolitical gameboard?

In related news, a stage adaptation of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is set to premiere this fall in London’s West End. “Adapted by award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin,” writes Shotsmag’s Ayo Onatade, “this is the first novel by the undisputed master of the modern spy genre to be brought to life on London’s stage. Following a sold-out premiere at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2024, the play will be produced by Ink Factory and Second Half Productions in association with Nica Burns.”

Revue of Reviewers: 5-18-25

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Back to Baker Street

I generally avoid mentioning vintage crime and mystery TV dramas that have suddenly become available online, because they have the tendency to disappear just as quickly. But I cannot resist pointing out here that all 39 half-hour episodes of the 1954 syndicated series Sherlock Holmes, starring Ronald Howard and Howard Marion Crawford, were uploaded to YouTube late last week by the New York-based streaming network FilmRise. As Wikipedia notes, this series “was the first American television adaptation of [Arthur Conan] Doyle’s stories, and the only such version until 2012’s Elementary.”

You can find the whole set here.

Most of this program’s installments were original Holmes and Watson adventures, though a number of its non-canonical tales are said to have been “loosely inspired” by Conan Doyle’s fiction.

The Last Laurels in Bristol

After 17 years spent saluting the best crime fiction, crime non-fiction, and crime TV that Britain and the world have to offer, the final CrimeFest will conclude tomorrow in Bristol, England. Today brought announcements of the 2025 CrimeFest Award winners.

Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award: The Night of Baba Yaga, by Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett (Faber & Faber)

Also nominated: Paper Cage, by Tom Baragwanath (Baskerville); Love Letters to a Serial Killer, by Tasha Coryell (Orion Fiction); The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, by C.L. Miller (Pan Macmillan); Nightwatching, by Tracy Sierra (Viking); and Five by Five, by Claire Wilson (Michael Joseph)

eDunnit Award (for the best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format): The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Faber & Faber)

Also nominated: Hemlock Bay, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus); The Lantern’s Dance, by Laurie R. King (Allison & Busby); What a Way to Go, by Bella Mackie (Borough Press); The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Borough Press); and A Talent for Murder, by Peter Swanson (Faber & Faber)

H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction): Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness, by Mark Aldridge (HarperCollins)

Also nominated: Allusion in Detective Fiction, by Jem Bloomfield (Palgrave Macmillan); Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction, 1841-1920, by Ashley Bowden (Fabula Mysterium Press); Writing the Murder: Essays on Crafting Crime Fiction, by Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst (Dead Ink); The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective, by Sara Lodge (Yale University Press); and Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel): Mr. Campion’s Christmas, by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

Also nominated: The Case of the Secretive Secretary, by Cathy Ace (Four Tails); The Light and Shade of Ellen Swithin, by D.G. Coutinho
(Harvill Secker); What a Way to Go, by Bella Mackie (Borough Press); Knife Skills for Beginners, by Orlando Murrin (Transworld); and The Burning Stones, by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda)

Best Crime Fiction Award for Children (aged 8-12): Rosie Raja: Undercover Codebreaker, by Sufiya Ahmed (Bloomsbury Education)

Also nominated: The Secret of Golden Island, by Natasha Farrant (Faber & Faber); Mysteries at Sea: The Hollywood Kidnap Case, by A.M.
Howell (Usborne); The Twitchers: Feather, by M.G. Leonard (Walker); The Swifts: A Gallery of Rogues, by Beth Lincoln (Penguin Random House Children’s UK); and The Floating Witch Mystery, by Nicki Thornton (Faber & Faber)

Best Crime Fiction Award for Young Adults (aged 12-16): Heist Royale, by Kayvion Lewis (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books)

Also nominated: A Cruel Twist of Fate, by H.F. Askwith (Penguin Random House Children’s UK); It All Started With a Lie, by Denise Brown (Hashtag Press); Lie or Die, by A.J. Clack (Firefly Press); All the Hidden Monsters, by Amie Jordan (Chicken House); and Such Charming Liars, by Karen M. McManus (Penguin Random House Children’s UK)

Thalia Proctor Memorial Award for Best Adapted TV Crime Drama: Slow Horses (series 4), based on the Slough House books by Mick Herron (Apple TV+)

Also nominated: Bad Monkey, based
on the book by Carl Hiaasen (Apple TV+); Dalgliesh (series 3), based on the Inspector Dalgliesh books by P.D. James (Channel 5); Lady in the Lake, based on the book by Laura Lippman (Apple TV+); Moonflower Murders, based on the book by Anthony Horowitz (BBC); and The Turkish Detective, based on the Inspector Ikmen books by Barbara Nadel (BBC)

Congratulations to all of the 2025 prize nominees!

READ MORE: “CrimeFest 2025—The End of an Era,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).

Cameron Scores a Double

For the second year running, Alaska thriller writer Marc Cameron has won the Spotted Owl Award. That prize is given out annually by the Portland, Oregon-based Friends of Mystery organization to celebrate crime fiction produced by authors living in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, British Columbia, Canada, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington).

The 2025 Owl honors Cameron’s Bad River, the seventh book in his series about Anchorage’s Arliss Cutter, a deputy U.S. marshal. His previous Cutter adventure, Breakneck, picked up this same commendation in 2024. He has an eighth installment, Dead Line, due out from Kensington in July.

The Friends of Mystery says its Spotted Owl judging committee considered 71 nominees for the 2025 prize. Runners-up were:

2. Baron Birtcher for Knife River
3 (tie). Rene Denfeld for Sleeping Giants and Warren Easley for
Deadly Redemption
4. J.A. Jance for Den of Iniquity
5. Phillip Margolin for An Insignificant Case
6. Katrina Carrasco for Rough Trade
7. Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway for The Silence of the Dead
8. Kerri Hakado for Cold to the Touch
9. Eric Redman for Death in Hilo

The choice of Bad River for this honor was announced during the March meeting of Friends of Mystery. The Spotted Owl Award was established in 1995. A list of previous recipients can be found here.

Nibbies Endorse Tense Tale

The winners of this year’s British Book Awards—also known as the “Nibbies”—were named earlier this week, in 15 divisions. Abir Mukherjee took top honors in the Crime and Thriller category with his twisted first modern-day action thriller, 2024’s Hunted (Harvill Secker).

Other Crime and Thriller contenders were All the Colours of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker (Orion); Guilt by Definition, by Suzy Dent (Zaffre); Has Anyone Seen Charlotte? by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster); The Wrong Sister, by Claire Douglas (Michael Joseph); and We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman (Viking).

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Finding Forgotten Fleming Works

Wealthy British writer Ian Fleming died from a heart attack more than 60 years ago, yet he’s suddenly back in the news, thanks to the discovery of two different works he left behind.

The first is a short story titled “The Shameful Dream,” which appears in the latest edition of Strand Magazine. As the Associated Press explains, that tale dates back to 1951, just two years prior to the publication of Fleming’s first James Bond spy novel, Casino Royale. It focuses on a character named Caffery Bone, who is “the literary editor of Our World, a periodical ‘designed to bring power and social advancement to Lord Ower,’ its owner. Bone has been summoned to spend Saturday evening with Lord and Lady Ower, transported to them in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.”

Bone is more than a bit anxious at the prospects for this encounter, fearing Lord Ower is preparing to dismiss him, as he has done to so many others on his payroll. “For Lord Ower sacked everyone sooner or later,” Fleming writes, “harshly if they belonged to no union or with a fat check if they did and were in a position to hit back. If one worked for Lord Ower one was expendable and one just spent oneself until one had gone over the cliff edge and disappeared beneath the waves with a fat splash.”

The quarterly Strand says “The Shameful Dream” finds Fleming “dryly amused by power and its excesses,” casting “a wry eye on the world of newspapers and tabloids, and a media tycoon whose flair for cruelty carries unmistakable shades of Blofeld and Fleming’s other iconic villains—calculating, merciless, and unsettlingly absurd.”

You can order a copy of that issue, the magazine’s 75th, here. Also inside is “Reading at Night,” an obscure Graham Greene yarn that was his “sole venture into the supernatural-themed genre.”

* * *

In the meantime, The Spy Command reports that UK journalist-novelist Jeremy Duns “has found an Ian Fleming-penned pilot script for a proposed television series to be called James Gunn—Secret Agent.” Duns describes Gunn as “an American secret agent operating in Jamaica using a boat as his base, pretending he is looking for treasure” while pursuing a powerful gang boss called Dr. No (a likely precursor to the Dr. No from Fleming’s 1958 novel of the same name).

Bill Koenig goes on to write in The Spy Command that this 28-page script was the result of efforts by U.S. TV producer Henry Morgenthau III “to develop a show to be called Captain Jamaica beginning in late 1955. Morgenthau contacted Ian Fleming concerning the project, according to Duns. Eventually, Fleming wrote the outline and script.” Sadly, by the end of 1956, the Gunn project was shelved.

Duns offers a two-part article on his Web site that supplies additional background on James Gunn and tells more about both the pilot’s storyline and the nine-page outline Fleming wrote for the proposed spy series. Part I is here, with Part II being available here.

Remarkable Reruns

As part of a lengthy crime-fiction news wrap-up in April 2024, I mentioned that I had been in touch with Frank Gregorsky, a non-fiction editor in northern Virginia who writes a free, PDF-formatted Web quarterly called Detective Drama Gems—and has been doing so ever since April 2020, revisiting episodes of vintage mystery and crime shows broadcast via both the TV and radio waves. At the time, he had recently published a piece about a 1976 episode of the NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife, and wanted me to know it was available. (I being a huge NBCMM fan!)

Back then, it was difficult to access old Gems issues and be alert to new ones appearing. There was no dedicated Internet page where they were catalogued and easily accessible. However, Gregorsky e-mailed me last week to report that changes have been made. He and his “Web guy” have created a Gems contents page—“simple, concise, no graphics, no selling, and no sounding like a classic ‘reviewer’ or anyone with a long track record in this field,” as he put it. The page currently features all back issues of Detective Drama Gems, #0 through #16; it will soon add a slightly delayed 17th issue. The three series spotlighted in each edition are listed there, along with links to background information on the shows, available elsewhere online.

Over the last half-decade, Gregorsky has showcased weekly installments from still-popular shows such as 77 Sunset Strip, Columbo, Naked City, and The Streets of San Francisco along with largely forgotten programs on the order of Rocky Jordan, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator. Write-ups generally include plot and character details, together with trivia and notes about principal cast members and guest stars. Gregorsky’s comments are thoughtful and clearly express his enthusiasm for these dusty crime and mystery dramas. Don’t be surprised if you end up trying to locate and watch the episodes under consideration.

I’ve added a Detective Drama Gems link to this blog’s right-hand column (under the heading “General Crime Fiction”), so you can check up on it easily in the future.

The Further Adventures of Charles Todd

It seems that like me, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter has been wondering what would become of “Charles Todd” (aka David Watjen), half of the mother-son writing partnership that created historical mystery series around both Inspector Ian Rutledge and nurse Bess Crawford. His mother, Caroline Watjen (aka Caroline Todd), passed away in 2021, and there have not been any new entries in either line since 2023.

However, Easter reports Charles Todd contacted him recently with news that “Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford live on. I signed a four-book contract with Mysterious Press. A Christmas Witness, a Rutledge Christmas novella, will be released October 21, 2025, and A Day of Judgment [the 25th Rutledge novel] will be released on February 17th of 2026. I am hard at work on the [manuscript] for the new Bess Crawford that will be released next.”

So, good news at last.

PaperBack: “Journey Into Terror”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Journey Into Terror, by Peter Rabe (Gold Medal, 1957).
Cover illustration by Mitchell Hooks.

READ MORE: “A Too Brief Conversation with Peter Rabe,” by George Tuttle (Mystery*File).

From the TV Front

• Deadline reports that “The BBC and BritBox International have landed on Endless Night as their latest Agatha Christie adaptation from Sarah Phelps. Set in 1967, the book is neither a Poirot [n]or a Marple but follows man-of-many-trades Michael Rogers, who finds himself working as chauffeur for the enigmatic designer du jour Rudolf Santonix. Transfixed by Santonix’s latest project, a beautiful house in the English countryside, Mike dreams of meeting the love of his life and taking up residence. But unbeknownst to Mike, the house that he has set his heart on has a dark past that goes back for centuries.” There’s no casting news yet, but filming is expected to begin later this year.

• With the debut of Netflix’s Department Q expected on May 29, a trailer for that crime drama—based on Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s police procedural series (The Keeper of Lost Causes, etc.)—was released earlier in the week. This British adaptation, set in Edinburgh, Scotland, follows a previous series of Danish films adapted from Adler-Olsen’s novels about a once-respected homicide cop, Carl Mørck, demoted to cold-case investigations. Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, Ordeal by Innocence) stars in the new program as detective Morck (now without the “ø”). The International Movie Database (IMDb) says nine episodes will comprise Department Q’s opening season.

• We learned last fall that Scottish actress Phyllis Logan (another Downton Abbey regular) will play Cora Felton, the author of a syndicated puzzle column, in The Puzzle Lady from UK broadcaster Channel 5. As The Killing Times says, this six-episode mystery—derived from the late Parnell Hall’s eight Puzzle Lady books—“begins when a strange murder takes place in the sleepy market town of Bakerbury. The local police are baffled by a crossword puzzle left on the body. With their case going nowhere, they turn reluctantly to Cora Felton, a recent arrival in Bakerbury; whose fame as the eponymous Puzzle Lady suggests she can help DCI Hooper [to be played by Adam Best] and the Bakerbury police solve its first murder case. But the eccentric Cora isn’t who she claims to be, and as she throws herself into a murder case that has the town’s residents baffled, she starts to gather allies and enemies in equal measure.” No premiere date has been announced, but it’s expected to be sometime in 2025.

• And though this has sod all to do with crime fiction … Did you know that a third and last Downton Abbey theatrical release is coming in September of this year? I first heard about it while looking for information about Logan and The Puzzle Lady. With the exception of Maggie Smith, who died in late 2024, the majority of Downton cast members are to return in the coming movie, appropriately titled Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. While I was slightly disappointed in the second picture (2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era), you can bet that as a longtime fan of the original 2010-2015 TV program, I shall be buying tickets as soon as possible to see this third sequel.

It’s “Game” Time

I mentioned recently that the film and TV Web site Modcinema is now offering a DVD version of 1966’s Fame Is the Name of the Game, the 95-minute NBC-TV movie that gave birth to the “wheel series” The Name of the Game. Shortly after posting said news, I remembered that I had in my computer files this TV Guide “Close Up” preview of Fame, which was broadcast for the first time on November 26, 1966.



One day I hope all 76 episodes of The Name of the Game will become available for viewing once more, either in DVD format or via a streaming TV service. I have had a chance over the decades to see most of them (with those starring Gene Barry and Tony Franciosa being my favorites), but their print quality has been ... well, uneven. I would be happy to binge-watch that landmark drama sometime!

Thursday Trifles

• The 100th anniversary of Elmore Leonard’s birth will be October 11 of this year. Despite the fact that the author died in 2013 at age 87, this coming centenary provides an ideal excuse to reissue some of his best-remembered works. As Barry Forshaw notes in Crime Time, publisher Penguin will bring out new editions of Swag, The Switch, and Rum Punch in June, with more works to follow in its Penguin Modern Classics Crime series. (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

• Dashiell Hammett’s time spent as a soldier in Alaska is not a subject with which most readers are familiar. Which is undoubtedly why historian David Reamer looked into that story for the latest entry in his weekly series for the Anchorage Daily News.

• In CrimeReads, author Danielle Teller (Forged) makes the case that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby was a con artist. “He seeks cheat codes for acquiring wealth,” she explains, “and takes on a false persona at a young age ..., and he displays many of the narcissistic and psychopathic features associated with con artists, including glib charm, grandiosity, need for admiration, impulsivity, egotism, manipulation, and of course, a willingness to lie.”

• Fictionist and genre historian Martin Edwards has published what he says is his “first ever obituary written for a national newspaper”: a choice remembrance of Peter Lovesey for The Guardian.

• In a new pair of posts, Paul Vidich (The Poet’s Game) first celebrates the career of now 95-year-old spy novelist Len Deighton, and then selects “six novels to highlight Deighton’s considerable talent.”

• Another Miami Vice movie? I hope this one, to be directed by Joseph Kosinski (Spiderhead, F1), will be better than Michael Mann’s underdeveloped 2006 filmed based on his 1980s TV series Miami Vice.

• Reporter and animal rights activist Cleveland Amory spent 13 years (1963-1976) as a television critic for TV Guide magazine. I remember reading and often enjoying his columns (which I have occasionally drawn quotes from for The Rap Sheet). But Amory, himself, did not always enjoy the subjects of said critiques. A case in point: his “scorchingly bad [1965] review of the cult-classic television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” which Ben Bolden posted recently in his blog.

• This coming Sunday, May 11, Americans will be celebrating Mother’s Day. Time again for Janet Rudolph to update her list of crime and mystery novels linked to that annual holiday. Kathi Daley’s The Mother's Day Mishap, Jane Haddam’s Murder Superior, and Selma Eichler’s Murder Can Upset Your Mother are among the many titles (novels and short-story collections) mentioned. More here.

• Finally, here are two interviews worth your attention: Sarah Weinman talks with Kate Summerscale, author of the new-in-the-States true-crime history The Peepshow, which revisits the bizarre case of London serial killer Reg Christie; and Jeri Westerson chats up audiobook narrator Noah James Butler, whom she calls the “Man of a Thousand Voices.”

Facing Off for the Anthonys

Bouchercon organizers today announced the finalists for their 2025 Anthony Awards, in 10 categories. Winners will be announced during a special event at the convention, which is scheduled to take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from September 3 to 7.

Best Hardcover Novel:
• Missing White Woman, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)
• The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Riverhead)
• The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Alter Ego, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)
• California Bear, by Duane Swiercynski (Mulholland)

Best First Novel:
• The Mechanics of Memory, by Audrey Lee (CamCat)
• Ghosts of Waikiki, by Jennifer K. Morita (Crooked Lane)
• You Know What You Did, by K.T. Nguyen (Dutton)
• Good-Looking Ugly, by Rob D. Smith (Shotgun Honey)
• Holy City, by Henry Wise (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Best Paperback/E-book/Audiobook:
• The Last Few Miles of Road, by Eric Beetner (Level Best)
• Echo, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer)
• Served Cold, by James L’Etoile (Level Best)
• Late Checkout, by Alan Orloff (Level Best)
• The Big Lie, by Gabriel Valjan (Level Best/Historia)

Best Historical:
• The Lantern’s Dance, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Witching Hour, by Catriona McPherson (Mobius)
• The Bootlegger’s Daughter, by Nadine Nettmann (Lake Union)
• The Murder of Mr. Ma, by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan
(Soho Crime)
• The Courtesan’s Pirate, by Nina Wachsman (Level Best/Historia)

Best Paranormal:
• A New Lease on Death, by Olivia Blacke (Minotaur)
• Five Furry Familiars, by Lynn Cahoon (Kensington Cozies)
• Exposure, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
• Lights, Cameras, Bones, by Carolyn Haines (Minotaur)
• Death in Ghostly Hue, by Susan Van Kirk (Level Best)

Best Cozy/Humorous:
• A Cup of Flour, a Pinch of Death, by Valerie Burns (Kensington Cozies)
• A Very Woodsy Murder, by Ellen Byron (Kensington Cozies)
• Ill-Fated Fortune, by Jennifer J. Chow (Minotaur)
• Scotzilla, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)
• Cirque du Slay, by Rob Osler (Crooked Lane)
• Dominoes, Danzón, and Death, by Raquel V. Reyes (Crooked Lane)

Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel:
• The Big Grey Men of Ben MacDhui, by K.B. Jackson (Reycraft)
• The Sasquatch of Harriman Lake, by K.B. Jackson (Reycraft)
• First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet, by Josh Proctor (Level Elevate)
• The Sherlock Society, by James Ponti (Aladdin Paperbacks)
• When Mimi Went Missing, by Suja Sukumar (Soho Teen)

Best Critical/Non-fiction:
• Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors’ Perspectives on Their Craft, edited by Phyllis M. Betz (McFarland)
• Some of My Best Friends Are Murderers: Critiquing the Columbo Killers, by Chris Chan (Level Best)
• On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett, by Ashley Lawson (Ohio State
University Press)
• Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder, by Greg Lilly (History Press)
• The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, by Katherine Ramsland and Tracy Ullman (Crime Ink)

Best Anthology/Collection:
• Murder, Neat: A Sleuthslayer’s Anthology, edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman (Level Short)
• Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson
(Down & Out)
• Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir, edited by Tod Goldberg (Soho Crime)
• Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024, edited by Heather Graham (Down & Out)
• Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, edited by Josh Pachter (Down & Out)

Best Short Story:
• “A Matter of Trust,” by Barb Goffman (from Three Strikes—You’re Dead, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley (Wildside Press)
• “Twenty Centuries,” by James D.F. Hannah (from Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir, edited by Tod Goldberg;
Soho Crime)
• “Something to Hold Onto,” by Curtis Ippolito (from Dark Yonder, Issue 6, edited by Katy Munger and Eryk Pruitt; Thalia Press)
• “Satan’s Spit,” by Gabriel Valjan (from Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024, edited by Heather Graham; Down & Out)
• “Reynisfjara,” by Kristopher Zgorski (from Mystery Most International, edited by Rita Owen, Verena Rose, and Shawn Reilly Simmons; Level Short)

Congratulations to all of this year’s contenders!

AND THERE’S MORE: I neglected to mention that Wyoming’s Craig Johnson, author of the popular Walt Longmire mystery series, will be this year’s Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.

Revue of Reviewers: 5-6-25

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.