PaperBack: “The Outcasts”

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



The Outcasts, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1961). Cover illustration by Rudy Nappi.

A March Win in April

Because I couldn’t attend last week’s Edgar Awards banquet, I apparently missed hearing the announcement that New Jersey writer Nev March has won the 2019 St. Martin’s Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition.

A press release delivered to my e-mailbox this afternoon explains: “[March’s] winning novel, tentatively titled The Rajabai Tower Mystery, will be published in 2020. Set in the 1890s, The Rajabai Tower Mystery features a former soldier in the Indian army convalescing from wounds sustained in the fight against Pakistan, who becomes inspired by the Sherlock Holmes novels he’s been enjoying to investigate the supposed suicides of two well-to-do Parsee women in Bombay.”

Minotaur associate publisher Kelley Ragland is quoted as calling March’s book “a vibrant portrait of India just before the turn of the century, [with] an engaging lead character in Captain Jim Agnihotri …”

Previous winners of this Best First Crime Novel Contest include Stefanie Pintoff (in 2008, for In the Shadow of Gotham), Eleanor Kuhns (in 2011, for A Simple Murder), and John Keyse-Walker (in 2015, for The Drowned Land).

Minotaur is already accepting submissions for next year’s award. More information is available here.

Book Nerds, Unite!

(Above) The 2019 Seattle Passport map of bookshops.

Should this page appear quiet tomorrow, it will be because I’m off participating in the week’s premier local literary event: the fifth annual Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. For those keeping track, this is the fourth consecutive year I have taken part in that all-day celebration of reading and retailing. The first occasion was back in 2016.

While many people will likely visit one or two shops, just to feel a part of things, tomorrow’s main feature will be the “Passport Challenge,” or “Champion Challenge.” It begins when you get your hands on a copy of the Passport bookstore map, available free of charge from any of the stores engaged in this contest. As Paul Constant explains in The Seattle Review of Books, the goal is to “pick up a passport stamp at every single participating bookstore in the Seattle area—that’s 26 bookstores, though you only have to visit one location for local chains like Third Place Books and University Book Store, so it’s actually more like 21 stores—in one day.” Accomplishing that task, he notes, will win the passport holder “25 percent off at all the bookstores for the whole next year. Last year, some 500 foolhardy people completed that challenge, and organizers are expecting more this year.” Which is pretty amazing, considering that finishing the lengthy Seattle course can take 12 or more hours. So one has to start early—very early this time around, as there are two additional stores to be reached. (In 2018, the goal was a comparatively meager 19 bookshops.) For the second time, I am running this race with my niece, Amie-June Brumble, who will be picking me up at the thoroughly ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. The first place we plan to visit is a ferry ride away, and opens at 7.

Seattle isn’t the only city taking part in Saturday’s festivities; the event started in California in 2014, and has since spread to other U.S. metro areas, including Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis. But my present hometown—which ranks among the best-read towns in the United States—has become a chief player in this annual salute to indie retailers. And 2019 is a special one for me, in particular, as I have spent time over the last four months helping to launch one of the two new Seattle locations that “book crawlers” will visit during their tour: Madison Books, in the upscale Madison Park neighborhood, which officially opens tomorrow—just in time.

Sadly, none of the shops along our route specializes in crime fiction; the once-terrific Seattle Mystery Bookshop closed in September 2017, and no local replacement has yet been inaugurated. However, mystery bookstores elsewhere in the country are joining these festivities.

To learn more about the birth and development of Independent Bookstore Day, check out this Publishers Weekly report. For a list of (almost) all participating U.S. shops, consult this handy map.

READ MORE: “Bookstore Mysteries: Independent Bookstore Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

The Edgars Find Their Authors

During a “gala banquet” held this evening in New York City, the Mystery Writers of America announced its list of 2019 Edgar Award recipients. Congratulations to both the winners and other nominees.

Best Novel:
Down the River Unto the Sea, by Walter Mosley (Mulholland)

Also nominated: The Liar’s Girl, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Blackstone); House Witness, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press); A Gambler’s Jury, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer); Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne (Hogarth); and A Treacherous Curse, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)

Best First Novel by an American Author:
Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)

Also nominated: A Knife in the Fog, by Bradley Harper (Seventh Street); The Captives, by Debra Jo Immergut (Ecco); The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, by Nova Jacobs (Touchstone); and Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (Putnam)

Best Paperback Original:
If I Die Tonight, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)

Also nominated: Hiroshima Boy, by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park); Under a Dark Sky, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow); The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani (Penguin); and Under My Skin, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)

Best Fact Crime:
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge First and the Rise of Gay Liberation, by Robert W. Fieseler (Liveright)

Also nominated: Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal, by Jonathan Green (Norton); The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure, by Carl Hoffman (Morrow); The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Viking); I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara (Harper); and The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia, by Alex Perry (Morrow)

Best Critical/Biographical:
Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, annotated by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)

Also nominated: The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction, by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland); Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, by Alice Bolin (Morrow); Mark X: Who Killed Huck Finn’s Father? by Yasuhiro Takeuchi (Routledge); and Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, by Laura Thompson (Pegasus)

Best Short Story:
“English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2018)

Also nominated: “Rabid,“ by Paul Doiron (Minotaur e-book); “Paranoid Enough for Two,” by John Lutz (from The Havana Game; Kensington); “Ancient and Modern,” by Val McDermid (from Bloody Scotland, edited by James Crawford; Pegasus); and “The Sleep Tight Motel,” by Lisa Unger (Amazon e-book)

Best Juvenile:
Otherwood, by Pete Hautman (Candlewick Press)

Also nominated: Denis Ever After, by Tony Abbott (Katherine Tegen); Zap! by Martha Freeman (Paula Wiseman); Ra the Mighty: Cat Detective, by A.B. Greenfield (Holiday House); Winterhouse, by Ben Guterson (Henry Holt); Charlie & Frog, by Karen Kane (Disney Hyperion); and Zora & Me: The Cursed Ground, by T.R. Simon (Candlewick Press)

Best Young Adult:
Sadie, by Courtney Summers (Wednesday)

Also nominated: Contagion, by Erin Bowman (HarperCollins); Blink, by Sasha Dawn (Carolrhoda Lab); After the Fire, by Will Hill (Sourcebooks Fire); and A Room Away from the Wolves, by Nova Ren Suma (Algonquin)

Best Television Episode Teleplay:
“The One That Holds Everything,” The Romanoffs, teleplay by Matthew Weiner and Donald Joh (Amazon Prime Video)

Also nominated: “The Box,” Brooklyn Nine-Nine, teleplay by Luke Del Tredici (NBC/Universal TV); “Season 2, Episode 1,” Jack Irish, teleplay by Andrew Knight (Acorn TV); “Episode 1,” Mystery Road, teleplay by Michaeley O’Brien (Acorn TV); and “My Aim Is True,” Blue Bloods, teleplay by Kevin Wade (CBS Eye Productions)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“How Does He Die This Time?” by Nancy Novick (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2018)

The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Also nominated: A Death of No Importance, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur); A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington); Bone on Bone, by Julia Keller (Minotaur); and A Borrowing of Bones, by Paula Munier (Minotaur)

The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
Shell Game, by Sara Paretsky (Morrow)

Also nominated: Perish, by Lisa Black (Kensington); City of Secrets, by Victoria Thompson (Berkley); A Forgotten Place, by Charles Todd (Morrow); and To Die But Once, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

In addition, Martin Cruz Smith was named as this year’s sole Grand Master Award winner (after a second such prize was denied to fellow author Linda Fairstein). New York Times mystery-fiction columnist Marilyn Stasio received this year’s Raven Award (honoring “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing”). And Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine editor Linda Landrigan was presented with the 2019 Ellery Queen Award, which recognizes “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.”

In Pursuit of the Petrona

Half a dozen works of fiction make up the newly announced shortlist of contenders for the 2019 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. This 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. Here are the latest Petrona candidates:

• The Ice Swimmer, by Kjell Ola Dahl,
translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)
• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum,
translated by Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway)
• The Katharina Code, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)
• The Darkness, by Ragnar Jónasson,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland)
• Resin, by Ane Riel,
translated by Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark)
• Big Sister, by Gunnar Staalesen,
translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

As Sarah Ward explains in her blog, “The winning title will be announced at the Gala Dinner on 11 May during the annual international crime fiction convention CrimeFest, held in Bristol on 9-12 May 2019. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize, and the winning author will receive a full pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2020.”

Revue of Reviewers, 4-24-19

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

Small Subjects

• With the presentation of this year’s Edgar Awards coming tomorrow night, CrimeReads invited more than 20 nominees to a roundtable discussion of the state of mystery and crime fiction. UPDATE: Part II of this skull session can now be enjoyed here.

• In his blog, ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?,’ Martin Edwards reflects back on his two-year stint as the head of Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association. “As it turns out,” he writes, “I’m the only person who has served as CWA Chair and Detection Club President at the same time, and I also became the longest-serving Chair of the CWA since our founder, John Creasey, back in the 1950s. So it’s definitely time to step aside and get some more writing done. But I’m going to continue to be involved with the CWA, not least as anthologist and archivist. And I’m very glad to belong to such a thriving and forward-looking organisation.” Author Linda Stratmann has taken over as CWA chair.

• We’re very sorry to hear that Detroit-area writer Patricia “Patti” Abbott has finally lost her husband of 52 years, Dr. Philip Abbott, to colon cancer. She wrote this brief note last evening in her blog: “Died today at 4:00. He reached for my hand, I gave it to him, he died.” Our heartfelt best wishes go out to Patti and her family (including author Megan Abbott) at this difficult time. UPDATE: Patti has more thoughts to offer about Phil and their family here and here.

• Finally, the pseudonymous Nathan Blackwell, author of The Sound of Her Voice (Orion), is Crime Watch blogger Craig Sisterson’s 210th interviewee in his “9mm” series. Read the Q&A here.

Milch’s Memory Misery

This is most unfortunate news. The Hollywood Reporter says that TV writer-producer David Milch, best known for his work on NYPD Blue and Deadwood, “is living with Alzheimer's disease.” It continues:

The 74-year-old Emmy winner, whose long-awaited Deadwood movie premieres on HBO in May, said in an interview that he had a brain scan last year and was diagnosed with the disease.

“As best I understand it, which is minimally, I have a deterioration in the organization of my brain,” Milch told Vulture. “And it's progressive. And in some ways discouraging. In more than some ways—in every way I can think of.”

Milch said he began to suspect something was not right several years ago when he and those close to him noticed “imperfect recall and tardy recall and short temper,”as he put it. Famous for rewriting dialogue up to the moment cameras rolled, he took a more hands-off approach on the Deadwood movie, with director Daniel Minahan and co-executive producer Regina Corrado overseeing day-to-day production, per Vulture.

Click here to read the full THR piece. A trailer for the upcoming Deadwood movie can be enjoyed here.

Bullet Points Mini-Edition

• Former Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany has joined the cast of HBO-TV’s forthcoming Perry Mason mini-series, which I understand will be set in 1930s Los Angeles and star Matthew Rhys (The Americans). Deadline says Maslany will play the Aimee Semple McPherson-like Sister Alice, “the leader of the Radiant Assembly of God, preaching three sermons a day (21 a week!) to a hungry congregation and a radio audience that spans the country. Entertainer, politician, God’s conduit to the City of Angels, Sister Alice wields great power when she speaks, and plans to use it in ways only she can know.”

• In other television news, two popular crime novels—Will Dean’s Dark Pines and Liv Constantine’s The Last Mrs. Parrish—are both headed toward small-screen development.

• The Gumshoe Site brings news that New York author-playwright Warren Adler passed away on April 15 at age 91. Cause of death is given as “complications from liver cancer.” Jiro Kimura writes:

The former owner of [an] advertising and public-relations agency wrote his first novel, Options (Whitmore Publishing, 1974; later reprinted as Undertow; Stonehouse Press, 2001), a thriller, and kept writing novels—mostly crime novels—quite prolifically till his death. He may be most famous as the author of The War of the Roses (Grand Central, 1981) and Random Hearts (Scribner, 1984). The former was adapted into the 1989 movie starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, while the latter [was made] into the 1999 film starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. He created the series character Fiona Fitzgerald, a homicide detective in Washington, D.C., who was introduced in American Quartet (Arbor House, 1982), and featured in eight other novels. The last one was Red Herring (Rosetta Books), and the 2002 TV movie, “Fiona,” was broadcast with Kellie Martin as Fiona Fitzgerald. His last novel was probably Last Call (CreateSpace, 2018).

The New York Times and Variety have further details.

• Back in February, AARP: The Magazine carried a quite moving essay by Adler, which is worth revisiting now. In it, he relates the difficulty of caring for his wife of 67 years, Sonia, who has long suffered from dementia. “I do not believe she suffers emotional distress, but I do,” Adler wrote. “Witnessing her decline is debilitating. I kept her at home with round-the-clock care until two years ago, when it became unsafe for her to stay there because she had become aggressive and would wander. Now I live alone in the home we shared, and I am trying to cope with the bruising experience of loneliness.”

• CrimeReads has posted a variety of interesting pieces lately, including Dwyer Murphy’s look at “20 Crime Novels that Probably, in Retrospect, Overestimated the Dangers of Marijuana”; Nathan Ward’s tribute to the fictional Crimeways magazine; Paul French’s survey of crime fiction set in Kingston, Jamaica (which should also have mentioned David Goodis’ The Wounded and the Slain); and Paul Abbott’s spoiler-filled encomium to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series.

• By the way, that McBain piece led me to a Web resource with which I was not previously acquainted: Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast, dedicated to McBain’s “ground-breaking police procedural series,” and hosted by the aforementioned Paul Abbott. Hard to believe I’d never heard of this before, as it debuted in November 2016.

• Television Obscurities offers up “an unusual 60-second promotional spot” for NBC-TV’s fall 1974 prime-time lineup. It features neither the names of new and returning shows, nor any footage from those programs. Instead, it showcases still photos of its series stars—familiar ones, such as Rock Hudson and Susan St. James (McMillan & Wife), Raymond Burr (Ironside), and Martin Milner (Adam-12); and that season’s newcomers, among them James Garner (The Rockford Files), Jessica Walter (Amy Prentiss), and Barry Newman (Petrocelli). In those days, NBC was the place to find interesting crime dramas.

• Wow! Here’s a CBS-TV pilot I thought I would never see again: The Jordan Chance, starring Raymond Burr, whose third small-screen series—the short-lived Kingston: Confidential—had gone off the air more than a year before this two-hour flick first aired, on December 12, 1978. As Lee Goldberg observes in Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989, The Jordan Chance (produced by Roy Huggins and written by Stephen J. Cannell) starred Burr as Frank Jordan, “an attorney who was once wrongly imprisoned and is now dedicated to helping others who are unjustly accused or punished for crimes they did not commit.” In addition to Burr, the film’s cast includes Ted Shackelford, Jeannie Fitzsimmons, James Canning, and Stella Stevens. At least for the nonce, that full movie is available on YouTube.

• Incidentally, don’t confuse The Jordan Chance with an earlier but equally unsuccessful pilot, 1976’s Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence. Goldberg recalls in his book that it featured a curiously curly haired Burr as Arthur Mallory, “a once-famous lawyer whose career floundered after [he was] unjustly accused of coercing a client to commit perjury. Though cleared by the Bar, his reputation is still tarnished.” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate that particular telefilm (which also starred Robert Loggia and a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill) anywhere online, but a clip from the picture was shown as part of this 1976 Tonight Show interview with Burr.

• The Web site Crime Fiction Lover proposes “12 South African Crime Writers to Add to Your Reading List,” among them Ekow Duker. Lauren Beukes. Imraan Coovadia, and Margie Orford. Sadly, I have not yet read works by any of those four.

• Talk about monetary inflation! The latest of B.V. Lawson’s “Media Murder for Monday” posts says that “Bumblebee director Travis Knight is set to tackle the Mark Wahlberg-starring Six Billion Dollar Man (after helmer and co-writer, Damian Szifron, stepped down in 2017). The long-awaited project stars Wahlberg as Col. Steve Austin, a downed pilot who is saved by an operation that makes him part machine. The project is a big-screen adaptation of the classic 1970s TV show that starred Lee Majors.” Remember, that earlier science-fiction program was titled The Six Million Dollar Man.

• With this being Earth Day, Janet Rudolph has updated her quite lengthy list of “Environmental/Ecological Mysteries.”

• Let’s welcome back Unlawful Acts. David Nemeth’s blog went ominously dark in mid-February, leading to speculation that he had given up the venture. However, he’s been back on the job as of last week, posting daily links to stories about crime and mystery fiction, and less frequent lists of upcoming small-press releases.

• Although it provides no real insight into Hulu-TV’s eight-episode revival of Veronica Mars—due to launch in late July—this short teaser suggests the series hasn’t lost its sassy, sarcastic edge.

• And B.D. McClay of The Hedgehog Review supplies a fine defense of thesauruses as valuable reference works for writers. “To be clear: I am not somebody who is particularly patient about English errors,” McClay explains. “I still insist that ‘begs the question’ should not ever be used in place of ‘raising the question.’ I have very little time for ill-conceived metaphors. But I don’t blame the thesaurus. I blame not thinking about what you’re saying, which you can’t reasonably expect any reference guide to prevent. At least somebody who looks up a word in a thesaurus is putting a little work in.”

Canada Shares Its Crime-Writing Best

The Crime Writers of Canada today announced its finalists for the 2019 Arthur Ellis Awards. These annual commendations (taking their name from the pseudonym of Canada’s official hangman) are given for excellence in Canadian crime fiction and true-crime writing. Winners of this year’s prizes will be declared on Thursday, May 23 during a “gala” event in Toronto. Here are the nominees.

Best Crime Novel:
• Cape Diamond, by Ron Corbett (ECW Press)
• Though the Heavens Fall, by Anne Emery (ECW Press)
• The Winters, by Lisa Gabriele (Doubleday Canada)
• Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Girl in the Moss, by Loreth Anne White (Montlake Romance)

Best First Crime Novel:
• Cobra Clutch, by A.J. Devlin (NeWest Press)
• Operation Wormwood, by Helen C. Escott (Flanker Press)
• Full Disclosure, by Beverley McLachlin (Simon & Schuster Canada)
• Why Was Rachel Murdered?, by Bill Prentice (Echo Road)
• Find You in the Dark, by Nathan Ripley (Simon & Schuster Canada)

Best Crime Novella (aka the Lou Allin Memorial Award):
• The B-Team: The Case of the Angry First Wife, by Melodie
Campbell (Orca)
• Blue Water Hues, by Vicki Delany (Orca)
• Murder Among the Pines, by John Lawrence Reynolds (Orca)

Best Crime Short Story:
• “A Ship Called Pandora,” by Melodie Campbell
(Mystery Weekly Magazine)
• “The Power Man,” by Therese Greenwood (from Baby It’s Cold Outside, edited by Robert Bose and Sarah L. Johnson;
Coffin Hop Press)
• “Game,” by Twist Phelan (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
• “Terminal City,” by Linda L. Richards (from Vancouver Noir, edited by Sam Wiebe; Akashic)
• “Wonderful Life,” by Sam Wiebe (from Vancouver Noir)

Best Crime Book in French:
• Un dernier baiser avant de te tuer, by Jean-Philippe Bernié
(Libre Expression)
• Adolphus—Une enquête de Joseph Laflamme, by Hervé Gagnon
(Libre Expression)
• Ces femmes aux yeux cernés, by André Jacques (Éditions Druide)
• Deux coups de pied de trop, by Guillaume Morissette
(Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur)
• Rinzen la beauté intérieure, by Johanne Seymour (Expression Noir)

Best Juvenile/Young Adult Crime Book:
• Escape, by Linwood Barclay (Puffin Canada)
• The House of One Thousand Eyes, by Michelle Barker (Annick Press)
• Call of the Wraith, by Kevin Sands (Aladdin)
• The Ruinous Sweep, by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press)
• The Rumrunner's Boy, by E.R. Yatscoff (TG & R)

Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
• Dying for a Drink: How a Prohibition Preacher Got Away with Murder, by Patrick Brode (Biblioasis)
• The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale, by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff (BenBella)
• The Boy on the Bicycle: A Forgotten Case of Wrongful Conviction in Toronto, by Nate Hendley (Five Rivers)
• Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer, by Eve Lazarus (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman (Knopf)

Best Unpublished Manuscript (aka the Unhanged Arthur):
• Hypnotizing Lions, by Jim Bottomley
• Omand’s Creek, by Don Macdonald
• The Scarlet Cross, by Liv McFarlane
• One for the Raven, by Heather McLeod
• The Book of Answers, by Darrow Woods

In addition, the CWC will present Ontario author Vicki Delany with this year’s Derrick Murdoch Award for special achievement.

PaperBack: “The Bowstring Murders”

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



The Bowstring Murders, by “Carter Dickson,” aka John Dickson Carr (Berkley, 1959). This is apparently the only one of Dickson’s many books to have been published originally (in 1933) as by “Carr Dickson.” Wikipedia adds that it is also “his only novel with the alcoholic detective John Gaunt.” “The Bowstring Murders,” observes the Golden Age of Detection Wiki,” is a bone of contention between fans of Carr’s writings. Some condemn the book; others … quite like it. Although certainly not one of Carr’s best, there is a great deal of detective interest to be found in this tale of walking suits of armour and strangling by bowstring in a haunted medieval castle which boasts the finest private collection of medieval arms and armour in Britain (Dorothy L Sayers says he got his facts wrong).” Cover art by Robert Maguire.

Speaking Their Piece

Earlier this month The Rap Sheet brought you the lengthy list of finalists for the 2019 Derringer Awards, sponsored by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Now I see that writer, poetry maven, and SMFS member Gerald So has begun posting interviews with the finalists online.

At last check, 10 of the contenders—in assorted short-story categories—had submitted to So’s grilling. The winners of these prizes aren’t due to be announced until May 1. Let’s hope that gives So time to speak with many more of the authors.

Check out all of the interviews here.

Praise on Both Sides of the Pond

Eighteen books feature on the longlist of nominees for 2019’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, according to Britain’s The Bookseller. They are as follows:

• Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
• Our House, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster)
• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Hachette)
• Wild Fire, by Ann Cleeves (Pan Macmillan)
• This Is How It Ends, by Eva Dolan (Bloomsbury)
• Take Me In, by Sabine Durrant (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Dark Angel, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• Broken Ground, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)
• The Way of All Flesh, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)
• East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HarperCollins)
• Hell Bay, by Kate Rhodes (Simon & Schuster)
• Salt Lane, by William Shaw (Quercus)
• The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Penguin Random House)
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton (Bloomsbury)
• Anatomy of a Scandal, by Sarah Vaughan (Simon & Schuster)
• Changeling, by Matt Wesolowski (Orenda)

A shortlist of just six of these titles will be released on Sunday, May 19, with the ultimate winner to be declared during an awards ceremony on Thursday, July 18—the opening night of the 17th annual Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

* * *

While we’re on the subject of prizes being given for crime and mystery fiction, note that The Gumshoe Site carries news about the three winners of the 2019 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award for short stories. Congratulations to all!

First Place: “Duty, Honor, Hammett,” by Stacy Woodson (November/December 2018)
Second Place: “50,” by Josh Pachter (November/December 2018)
Third Place: “Sofee,” by David Dean (March/April 2018)

The victors in this competition were chosen by EQMM subscribers/readers. Learn more here.

Revue of Reviewers, 4-13-19

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

Work of Morbid Humor Victorious

Last evening brought the announcement of the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Award winners. That event preceded the start of the latest L.A. Times Festival of Books, which is being held this weekend on the University of Southern California campus.

There were five nominees in the Mystery/Thriller category, and Oyinkan Braithwaite won with her Lagos-set debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer (Doubleday). The other finalists in that same category were Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown); Green Sun, by Kent Anderson (Mulholland); November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow); and The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani (Penguin).

You will find the full list of winners here.

For Fans of Chan

Let’s welcome a new mystery fiction-oriented blog to the Web. Cleveland, Ohio, author and former U.S. Air Force postman Lou Armagno e-mailed me recently, saying that he’d launched The Postman on Holiday this past January. “It is,” he explains, ‘a place to explore all things surrounding [Honolulu] Detective Charlie Chan, his creator Earl Derr Biggers, and their connection with Hawaii, Cleveland, and mystery fiction.’ I blog once a month, with a lean towards the literary side.”

To date, he’s penned posts about such subjects as Biggers’ references in his fiction to real-life people and places, and the often witty aphorisms to be found in the Chan canon. (That latter subject, by the way, is covered in greater depth on the Chan Family Home Web site, to which Armagno also contributes.)

In addition, Armagno notes, the blog “act[s] as depository for The Charlie Chan Family Home Annual Newsletter. Our 2018 edition is 17 pages, and covers significant events during the year.”

I’ve already gone ahead and added The Postman on Holiday to the blogrolls of both The Rap Sheet and Killer Covers.

Ross Macdonald: An Ongoing Investigation

I don’t often return to a subject after an interval of 20 years, but that’s exactly what I am doing today. Back in April 1999, I assembled—for January Magazine—a diverse collection of articles focused on renowned California detective fictionist Ross Macdonald and his original Lew Archer private eye novel, The Moving Target, which was then celebrating its 50th year in print. Kevin Burton Smith, Gary Phillips, and Frederick Zackel all contributed personal essays to the project; Swedish crime-fiction enthusiast Karl-Erik Lindkvist chose his three favorite Archer stories; I wrote about my single, long-ago meeting with Macdonald (whose real name was Kenneth Millar); and I also interviewed Los Angeles-area journalist and critic Tom Nolan, author of the then freshly published work, Ross Macdonald: A Biography.

Weeks ago, I received the go-ahead from my editor at CrimeReads to write a couple more Macdonald tribute pieces, this time tied in with The Moving Target’s official 70th anniversary on April 11, 2019. One thing I planned to do was assemble a gallery of best and worst covers from the novel’s history; that piece went up online yesterday, right on schedule. In addition, I wanted to interview Nolan once more. He and I have stayed in e-mail touch over the last two decades, and I talked at length with him again (this time for Kirkus Reviews and The Rap Sheet) in 2015, the centennial year of Macdonald’s birth.

In 1999, Tom Nolan had produced only the one book about P.I. Archer’s creator. However, as I explain in this piece posted earlier today in CrimeReads, since that time he

has furthered his Macdonald scholarship by, first, collecting three of the author’s previously unpublished pieces of short fiction in Strangers in Town (2001), and then compiling, in 2007’s The Archer Files, all of the Archer short stories (plus fragments—like this one—of unfinished yarns). With Suzanne Marrs, Nolan edited Meanwhile There Are Letters (2015), which gathered together hundreds of revealing missives Macdonald exchanged with Pulitzer Prize-winning Mississippi author Eudora Welty between 1970 and 1982. And most recently, Nolan edited the Library of America’s three-volume set of Archer mysteries, 11 novels in total.

Although I initially worried that on this third go-round I wouldn’t have any more worthwhile questions to pitch Nolan’s way, as I started thinking about Macdonald and his books and all that Nolan has written about both over the last two decades, I found there was no shortage of things about which I remained curious. During the course of our e-mail exchange, we talked about the endurance of Macdonald’s legacy; the troubles he faced as a boy and as a father, and how those fed his fiction; his sometimes “quarrelsome marriage” to fellow mystery writer Margaret Millar; his mysterious middle-age suicide attempt; his most influential books, and a great deal besides.

Click here to real all about it.

Bullet Points: Rooting About Edition

• Happy birthday to The Mysterious Bookshop. New York City’s famous independent bookstore, founded by Otto Penzler and specializing in crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, will celebrate its 40th anniversary tomorrow, April 13. The latest edition of its newsletter mentions that “We’ll be celebrating this illustrious occasion with a party at the store on Tuesday, April 23rd at 6:00 p.m. This party is free and open to all! In addition to our anniversary, this party doubles as our annual Edgar Awards party (the awards are that Thursday) and many nominees will be in attendance.” Ah, if only I were spending next week in Manhattan ...

• “Acknowledging excellence in the field of tie-in writing,” the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has broadcast the list of nominees for its 2019 Scribe Awards. There are six different categories of contestants, with lots of science fiction represented. The only group that features much crime fiction is “Original Novel – General.” Vying for that commendation are:

— Colt the Outlander: Shadow of Ruin, by Quincy J. Allen
(WordFire Press)
— The Executioner: Dying Art, by Michael A. Black
(Gold Eagle Executioner e-book)
— Killing Town (Mike Hammer), by Mickey Spillane and
Max Allan Collins (Titan)
— Narcos: The Jaguar’s Claw, by Jeff Mariotte
— Tom Clancy’s Line of Sight, by Mike Madden (Putnam)

Winners will be announced during the San Diego ComicCon, July 18-21.

• Meanwhile, the Romance Writers of America has publicized its finalists for this year’s RITA Awards. Among the brackets of contenders is one titled Romantic Suspense, which features these seven works:

— The Bastard’s Bargain, by Katee Robert (Piatkus)
— Before We Were Strangers, by Brenda Novak (Mira)
— Consumed, by J.R. Ward (Gallery)
— Cut and Run, by Mary Burton (Montlake Romance)
— Fearless, by Elizabeth Dyer (Independently published)
— Reckless Honor, by Tonya Burrows (CreateSpace)
— Relentless, by Elizabeth Dyer (Montlake Romance)

You’ll have to wait until this year’s RWA conference (July 24-27), in New York City, to find out which of these books takes the prize.

• Included among this year’s six finalists for the Man Booker International Prize is The Shape of the Ruins (Riverhead), Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s “sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions.”

• Recipients of the 2019 Minnesota Book Awards were announced last weekend. There were nine categories of competitors, but the one of perhaps chief interest to this blog’s readers was Genre Fiction. The winner there was The Voice Inside, by Brian Freeman (Thomas & Mercer). Also nominated were Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories, by Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin); Leave No Trace, by Mindy Mejia (Atria); and The Shadows We Hide, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland). Kudos to all the nominees! (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• Season 5 of the Amazon TV series Bosch will premiere next week—on Friday, April 19, to be exact. What will this 10-episode season have in store for our favorite Los Angeles police detective? His creator, Michael Connelly, offers clues to the Tampa Bay Times.



• How James Bond influenced the CIA.

• Organizers of 2019’s Mystery Fest Key West (June 28-30) are putting out a last call for entries to their latest Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition. “Candidates wishing to compete,” explains a news release, “are invited to submit the first three pages (maximum 750 words) of a finished, but unpublished manuscript to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com no later than April 15. There is no fee to enter, finalists will be notified by May 1, and will have until May 10 to submit full manuscripts.”

• The Gumshoe Site reports that David Fechheimer, “one of the leading private investigators in America,” died in Redwood City, California, on April 2 “from complications of open-heart surgery.” He was 76 years old. The item goes on to explain that Fechheimer “became a shamus the day after he read Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. He worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and with Hal Lipset. He opened his own office in San Francisco in 1976, and handled cases involving many celebrities such as Kobe Bryant, Angela Davis, John Gotti, Daniel Ellisberg, Timothy McVeigh, [and] Roman Polanski to name just a few. He researched … Hammett’s life for Francis Ford Coppola when the latter was preparing to produce the [1982] movie Hammett, based on the novel of the same title by Joe Gores. He owned a tiny vineyard in Healdsburg, Sonoma County, and named his Cabernet Sauvignon Red Harvest.”

• Don Herron has more to say about Fechheimer here.

• Pulp-fiction authority Andrew Nette brings belated notice that writer Victor J. Banis, “who some have called ‘the godfather of modern popular gay fiction,’ died on February 22, after finally succumbing to cancer.” He was 81 years old and lived in West Virginia. Nette notes that “from 1966 to 1968, [Banis] wrote eight pulp-fiction titles in his [The] Man from C.A.M.P. series, an overtly queer takeoff of the television spy series [The] Man from U.N.C.L.E. The central protagonist of the successful series was the openly gay undercover agent, Jackie Holmes, who did battle with B.U.T.C.H. (Brothers United to Crush Homosexuality). The series helped establish that gay audiences were particularly hungry for stories which portrayed characters in a fun and positive light. In doing so, Banis saw himself as playing a consciously activist role.”

• One more obituary: The Spy Command says that “Noah Keen, a veteran character actor whose career ran from the late 1950s into the 2000s, died last month at 98.” Keen’s film and TV appearances were numerous, ranging from roles in Have Gun—Will Travel, Perry Mason, and Judd, for the Defense to The Name of the Game, The Outsider, Mission: Impossible, Ironside, and The Sopranos.

• Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is now 50 years old!

• I’m pleased to see that two mystery/crime-related movies—the brilliantly moving They Might Be Giants (1971) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959)—made it onto Classic Film & TV Café’s list of “The Five Best George C. Scott Performances.”

• Lee Child was in the television business (under his real name, Jim Grant) for many years before he embarked on his fiction-writing career. So it’s no surprise that he should think himself capable of tackling another small-screen project. The Killing Times reports that Child had proposed to “take his Jack Reacher franchise to a streaming service.” Instead, he will be teaming with Australia-based Dancing Ledge Productions to develop Lee Child: True Crime, an anthology series that “dramatizes the stories of real-life men and women from around the world who have been driven to stand up and put their lives on the line, fighting for justice in the face of great danger.”

• The Killing Times also spreads the news that Company Pictures, the independent UK production company behind such TV favorites as Wolf Hall and Shameless, is hoping to reboot the 1972-1992 series Van der Valk, a Netherlands-set crime drama based on Nicholas Freeling’s succession of novels starring Commissaris Simon "Piet" Van der Valk. British actor Marc Warren will fill the title role.

• Being a big fan of mysteries set in the past, I was immediately attracted to Molly Odintz’s CrimeReads picks of “The Best Historical Fiction of 2019 (So Far).” I wasn’t disappointed by her choices. I’ve already read most of the 14 books mentioned—including Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman, Abir Mukherjee’s Smoke and Ashes, and Guy Bolton’s The Syndicate—and have almost all of the remainder in my ridiculously oversized to-be-read pile. In addition to Odintz’s picks, I’d recommend the following: Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson; The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell; The Unquiet Heart, by Kaite Welsh; and The Mathematical Bridge, by Jim Kelly.

• Another recent CrimeReads piece I enjoyed: Rebecca Rego Barry’s look back at Great Britain’s 18th-century-born Newgate Calendar (subtitled The Malefactors' Bloody Register), “which,” she explains, “collected the most notorious tales of those confined to [London’s] Newgate Prison and subsequently hanged at Tyburn. … Needless to say, The Newgate Calendar was popular with a citizenry that turned a public execution into the equivalent of the Superbowl. At the same time, literacy was increasing among the working class, and cheaper printing methods had helped to create a mass readership. Canny novelists took note of this new market and its interests, sparking an alluring but short-lived genre now referred to as ‘Newgate novels.’ These were stories set in the underworld and based, however loosely, on convicts with lurid or melodramatic biographies.”

• In Reference to Murder brings word that “The CW’s Nancy Drew pilot is giving a nod to the TV history of the iconic character by hiring Pamela Sue Martin, who played the brilliant teen sleuth in the first TV series adaptation of the Nancy Drew books from 1977-79 on ABC. Newcomer Kennedy McMann takes on the title role of the amateur detective, while Martin will play a small-town psychic who offers her talents to help Nancy investigate a murder—and ends up delivering an otherworldly clue that neither of them bargained for.”

• Finally, four author interviews worth noticing: Cara Robertson talks with MysteryPeople about her new non-fiction book, The Trial of Lizzie Borden; Lesa’s Book Critiques fires questions at Catriona McPherson (Scot & Soda); the Amazon Book Review chats with Lydia Fitzpatrick on the matter of Lights All Night Long, her novel about “a Russian exchange student [working] to exonerate the brother left behind, a drug addict who has confessed to murder”; and Paperback Warrior “unmasks” Ralph Hayes, the prolific Michigan writer who, at age 91, is still concocting men's action-adventure novels.

Targeting Archer at Readers

As I note in my latest piece for CrimeReads, today marks 70 years since the release of Ross Macdonald’s first Lew Archer private-eye novel, The Moving Target. To commemorate this anniversary, I have gathered together—and commented on—25 of the best and worst front covers that book has carried over its history. Those include the original, 1949 Alfred A. Knopf edition; two British publications that renamed Archer “Lew Arless”; Mitchell Hooks’ 1970s reworking of the series fronts; a couple of Italian giallo versions; and a Czech translation suggesting that the plot is a mash-up of the old TV shows Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and WKRP in Cincinnati.

I also offer this reminder of the tale’s multiple qualities:

All these decades later, The Moving Target still impresses with its vivid prose and carefully rendered characters, plus its plotting mix of greed, broken trust, and festering disillusionments. While it’s tougher and more cinematic than some of Macdonald’s 17 subsequent Archer novels, Target hints at what will become more obvious as the series progresses: the author’s interest in the psychological roots of criminal behavior.

The story finds L.A. private investigator Archer, a 35-year-old ex-cop with a sardonic streak (“Most of my work is divorce. I’m a jackal, you see”), being hired by the dysfunctional family of Ralph Sampson, an oil millionaire from “Santa Teresa” (a fictionalized Santa Barbara). It seems the alcoholic Sampson has vanished. His younger, paraplegic second wife figures he’s off on a bender, rather than having been kidnapped. But Albert Graves, a former district attorney and onetime Archer colleague, asks that she hire the P.I. to at least locate the man. It’s a task more easily assigned than accomplished, leading the shamus into a circle of suspects that include Sampson’s beguiling but drifting daughter, Miranda; Alan Taggert, the tycoon’s pretty-boy pilot and the elder Graves’ rival for Miranda’s affections; a sun-worshipping holy man, Claude, to whom Sampson gave a mountain retreat; as well as a downwardly mobile actress with an astrology bent, a forgotten piano player, low-IQ bruisers, and even human traffickers.

Again, click here to observe how different artists and photographers have introduced The Moving Target to readers.

“Now Old Enough to Drink Legally”

Congratulations to The Thrilling Detective Web Site, which editor Kevin Burton Smith says celebrated its 21st birthday on April 1. That site is a wonderful resource, well worth consulting whenever you have a question about private-eye fiction, old or new.

Finding the Cheery Side of Crime

Because it’s evidently not possible to have too many declarations in one week of contenders for various crime-fiction commendations (we’ve already reported on finalists for both the 2019 Thriller Awards and this year’s CrimeFest honors), the people behind Toronto, Ontario’s Bloody Words Mini-Con have released their list of five rivals for the annual Bony Blithe Award. That prize “celebrates traditional, feel-good mysteries” capable of making the judges smile.

The nominees are:

• The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, by Alan Bradley
(Delacorte Press)
• A Scandal in Scarlet, by Vicki Delany (Crooked Lane)
• The Marmalade Murders, by Elizabeth J. Duncan (Minotaur)
• Darkest Before the Dawn, by Mike Martin (Ottawa Press)
• Haunted Hayride with Murder, by Auralee Wallace
(St. Martin's Paperbacks)

The winner of the Bony Blithe will be announced during the Bloody Words Mini-Con, which is scheduled to be held on Friday, May 24 (from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.) at the High Park Club in Toronto. In 2018, the award went to Dying on Second, by E.C. Bell (Tyche).

Click here to watch a brief but “jolly video” highlighting the shortlist of this year’s prize nominees.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

CrimeFest Honors Coming

Organizers of this year’s CrimeFest (set for May 9-12 in Bristol, England) have announced their nominees for half a dozen prizes, all to be presented during a special dinner on Saturday, May 11.

Audible Sounds of Crime Award
(for the best unabridged crime audiobook):
• Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch; read by Kobna
Holdbrook-Smith (Orion)
• Our House, by Louise Candlish; read by Deni Francis and Paul
Panting (Whole Story Audiobooks)
• The President Is Missing, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson; read by Dennis Quaid, January LaVoy, Peter Ganim, Jeremy Davidson, Mozhan Marnò, and Bill Clinton (Random House Audiobooks)
• Lethal White, by “Robert Galbraith,” aka J.K. Rowling; read by Robert Glenister (Hachette Audio)
• The Wife Between Us, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen;
read by Julia Whelan (Pan Macmillan)
• The Outsider, by Stephen King; read by Will Patton
(Hodder & Stoughton)
• Let Me Lie, by Clare Mackintosh; read by Gemma Whelan and
Clare Mackintosh (Little, Brown)
• I’ll Keep You Safe, by Peter May; read by Anna Murray and
Peter Forbes (Riverrun)
• In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin; read by James MacPherson (Orion)
• Anatomy of a Scandal, by Sarah Vaughan; read by Julie Teal, Luke Thompson, Esther Wane, and Sarah Feathers (Simon & Schuster
Audio UK)

eDunnit Award (“for the best crime fiction e-book first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format”):
• When Trouble Sleeps, by Leye Adenle (Cassava Republic Press)
• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• Gallows Court, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus)
• Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)
• Homegrown Hero, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
• The Fire Court, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
• The Shrouded Path, by Sarah Ward (Faber and Faber)

Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel):
• A Deadly Habit, by Simon Brett (Crème de la Crime)
• Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors, by Christopher Fowler (Transworld)
• Auntie Poldi and the Fruits of the Lord, by Mario Giordano
(John Murray)
• London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• Homegrown Hero, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
• A Shot in the Dark, by Lynne Truss (Bloomsbury)
• Palm Beach Finland, by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda)
• Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, by Olga Wojtas (Contraband)

H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction):
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s Art of Fiction, by Nils Clausson
(Cambridge Scholars)
• Irish Crime Fiction, by Brian Cliff (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Female Corpses in Crime Fiction, by Glen S. Close (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Domestic Noir, by Laura Joyce and Henry Sutton (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Historical Noir, by Barry Forshaw (No Exit Press)
• The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World,
by Steven Powell (Bloomsbury)
• Difficult Lives–Hitching Rides, by James Sallis (No Exit Press)

Best Crime Novel for Children (aged 8-12):
• The Train to Impossible Places, by P.G. Bell (Usborne)
• Murder At Twilight, by Fleur Hitchcock (Nosy Crow)
• A Darkness of Dragons, by S.A. Patrick (Usborne)
• The Book Case, by Dave Shelton (David Fickling)
• Kat Wolfe Investigates, by Lauren St. John (Macmillan
Children’s Books)
• The Last Chance Hotel, by Nicki Thornton (Chicken House)

Best Crime Novel for Young Adults (aged 12-16):
• The Colour of the Sun, by David Almond (Hodder Children’s Books)
• Rosie Loves Jack, by Mel Darbon (Usborne)
• Little Liar, by Julia Gray (Andersen Press)
• White Rabbit, Red Wolf, by Tom Pollock (Walker)
• Run, Riot, by Nikesh Shukla (Hodder Children’s Books)
• Dry, by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman (Walker)

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

Thrills on the Page

Via Mystery Fanfare, we now have the list of finalists vying for the 2019 Thriller Awards. These prizes are sponsored annually by the International Thriller Writers organization.

Best Hardcover Novel:
• November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Paper Ghosts, by Julia Heaberlin (Ballantine)
• Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• Pieces of Her, by Karin Slaughter (Morrow)
• The Cabin At the End of the World, Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

Best First Novel:
• The Terminal List, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Need to Know, by Karen Cleveland (Ballantine)
• Caged, by Ellison Cooper (Minotaur)
• Something in the Water, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine)
• The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)

Best Paperback Original Novel:
• The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• The Good Samaritan, by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Naturalist, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer)
• Gone Dark, by Kirk Russell (Thomas & Mercer)
• Mister Tender’s Girl, by Carter Wilson (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Best Short Story:
• “The Victims’ Club,” by Jeffery Deaver (Amazon Original)
• “10,432 Serial Killers (in Hell),” by Emily Devenport (Alfred
Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
• “Window to the Soul,” by Scott Loring Sanders (Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine)
• “Nana,” by Helen Smith (from Killer Women: Crime Club
Anthology #2; Killer Women)
• “Tough Guy Ballet,” by Duane Swierczynski (from For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, edited by
Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger; Pegasus)

Best Young Adult Novel:
• Girl At the Grave, by Teri Bailey Black (Tor Teen)
• The Lies They Tell, by Gillian French (HarperTeen)
• Warcross, by Marie Lu (Penguin Young Readers)
• People Like Us, by Dana Mele (Penguin Young Readers)
• The Perfect Candidate, by Peter Stone (Simon & Schuster Books
for Young Readers)

Best E-book Original Novel:
• Murder on the Marshes, by Clare Chase (Bookouture)
• Executive Force, by Gary Grossman (Diversion)
• The Reunion, by Samantha Hayes (Bookouture)
• The Memory Detective, by T.S. Nichols (Alibi)
• Pray for the Innocent, by Alan Orloff (Kindle Press)

Winners in each category are scheduled to be announced on July 13, during ThrillerFest XIV in New York City.

PaperBack: “Sleep, My Love”

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



Sleep, My Love, by Robert Martin (Dell, 1954). This is the second Martin novel to star Jim Bennett, a private eye working the mean streets of Cleveland, Ohio. Cover art by Griffith Foxley.

Super “Nanny”

Among the five books shortlisted for this year's Albertine Prize—intended to “introduce American readers to contemporary French literature in translation”—is The Perfect Nanny, composed by Moroccan author Leïla Slimani (and translated by Sam Taylor). Firmly in the category of suspense fiction, The Perfect Nanny’s plot is described this way by Albertine Prize organizers:

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings, cleans and stays late without complaint. But as the couple and the nanny become more co-dependent, jealousy and resentment mount.

Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a riveting and bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, and motherhood.

“The Albertine Prize is presented by Van Cleef & Arpels and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy ...,” explains Mystery Fanfare. “From April 4 to 30, readers all over the world will be able to vote on Albertine.com for their favorite book among the selected titles. On June 5, the winning book will be announced at Albertine Books in New York City.”