Who Will Land the Marshes?

Today brings the announcement of which books and authors have been nominated for New Zealand’s 2019 Ngaio Marsh Awards, in three categories. The winners are set to be declared on Saturday, September 14, as part of this year’s WORD Christchurch Festival.

A press release quotes awards founder Craig Sisterson saying, “It’s been a really remarkable year for our international judging panels across all three categories. For one, we never could have envisaged when we began in 2010 and chose to honour our legendary Kiwi queen of crime with our awards name that years later a book that Dame Ngaio herself began more than 75 years ago would become a finalist.”

Here’s the list of a dozen nominees:

Best Novel:
• This Mortal Boy, by Fiona Kidman (Penguin)
• Money in the Morgue, by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)
• Call Me Evie, by J.P. Pomare (Hachette)
• The Vanishing Act, by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan)

Best First Novel:
• One for Another, by Andrea Jacka (Red River Pony)
• Crystal Reign, by Kelly Lyndon (Remnant Press)
• Call Me Evie, by J.P. Pomare (Hachette)

Best Non-fiction:
• The Great New Zealand Robbery, by Scott Bainbridge (Allen & Unwin)
• The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Jane Furlong, by Kelly Dennett (Awa)
• Behind Bars, by Anna Leask (Penguin)
• The Cause of Death, by Cynric Temple-Camp (HarperCollins)

Congratulations to all of the contenders!

Berney Takes the Hammett

Oklahoma City author-educator Lou Berney will receive the 2018 Hammett Prize for his latest novel, November Road (Morrow). The Hammett, named of course for Sam Spade creator Dashiell Hammett and given out annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers, recognizes “literary excellence in the field of crime-writing, as reflected in a book published in the English language in the U.S. and/or Canada.” Berney will be given his prize on November 1 at Bouchercon in Dallas, Texas.

Also nominated for this commendation were The Lonely Witness, by William Boyle (Pegasus Crime); Under My Skin, by Lisa Unger (Park Row); Cut You Down, by Sam Wiebe (Random House Canada); and Paris in the Dark, by Robert Olen Butler (The Mysterious Press).

Previous winners of the Hammett Prize include Stephen Mack Jones (August Snow), Domenic Stansberry (The White Devil), Lisa Sandlin (The Do-Right), and Stephen King (Mr. Mercedes).

Revue of Reviewers, 7-28-19

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

Fast Finds

• Pennyworth, which “explores the youth of Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon), who would grow up to become the proper and ultra-loyal adult companion of young Bruce Wayne, better known as Batman,” will premiere tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Epix.

• Today’s edition of The New York Times Book Review offers a variety of pieces bound to delight fans of crime and thriller fiction. Look especially for a “bloody map of 50 true-crime killings” and a “survey of writers’ favorite murders.”

• R.I.P. Orania Papazoglou, better known as mystery author Jane Haddam, and Sarah Andrews, “a geologist who wrote 11 mysteries about forensic geologist Em Hansen.”

• Jeff Bridges will star in The Old Man, an FX-TV series “based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Thomas Perry.”

• Author-publisher Lee Goldberg announced on Facebook yesterday that he’s found a version of a new Jim Hardman novel.

• The podcast Wrong Place, Write Crime talks with Brian Thornton, editor of the new anthology Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan (Down & Out).

• And the next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on mysteries featuring private investigators. Submissions are invited, with a due date of September 1.

Let Fly the Daggers!

Nine shortlists of contenders for the 2019 Dagger Awards were announced today by the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). The winners will be broadcast during a special ceremony to be held at the Grange City Hotel in London, England, on October 24.

CWA Gold Dagger:
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven: (Constable)
• What We Did, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)
• Unto Us a Son Is Given, by Donna Leon (Heinemann)
• American by Day, by Derek B Miller (Doubleday)
• A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, by Benjamin Wood (Scribner)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood):
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Boy at the Door, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)
• Scrublands, by Chris Hammer (Wildfire)
• Turn a Blind Eye, by Vicky Newham (HQ)
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• Overkill, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)

CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black (Doubleday)
• An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere,
by Mikita Brottman (Canongate)
• Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime,
by Claire Harman (Viking)
• The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Hutchinson)
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre (Viking)
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott (Picador)
• Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Head of Zeus)
• Killing Eve: No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings (John Murray)
• Lives Laid Away, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)
• To the Lions, by Holly Watt (Bloomsbury)
• Memo from Turner, by Tim Willocks (Jonathan Cape)

CWA Sapere Books Historical Dagger:
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (Harper Fiction)
• Destroying Angel, by S.G. MacLean: (Quercus)
• Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• The House on Half Moon Street, by Alex Reeve (Raven)
• Tombland, by C.J. Sansom: (Mantle)
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)

CWA International Dagger:
• A Long Night in Paris, by Dov Alfon;
translated by Daniella Zamir (MacLehose Press)
• Weeping Waters, by Karin Brynard;
translated by Maya Fowler and Isobel Dixon (World Noir)
• The Cold Summer, by Gianrico Carofiglio;
translated by Howard Curtis (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino;
translated by Giles Murray (Little, Brown)
• The Root of Evil, by Håkan Nesser;
translated by Sarah Death (Mantle)
• The Forger, by Cay Rademacher;
translated by Peter Millar (Arcadia)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
• “Strangers in a Pub,” by Martin Edwards (from Ten Year Stretch, edited by Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller; No Exit Press)
• “Death Becomes Her,” by Syd Moore (from The Strange Casebook,
by Syd Moore; Point Blank Books)
• “The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing,” by Danuta Reah (from The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and Other Fantastic Female Fables,
by Danuta Reah [aka Danuta Kot]; Fantastic)
• “I Detest Mozart,” by Teresa Solana (from The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, by Teresa Solana; Bitter Lemon Press)
• “Bag Man,” by Lavie Tidhar (from The Outcast Hours,
edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin; Solaris)

Dagger in the Library:
• M.C. Beaton
• Mark Billingham
• John Connolly
• Kate Ellis
• C.J. Sansom
• Cath Staincliffe

Debut Dagger
(for the opening of a crime novel by an uncontracted writer):
• Wake, by Shelley Burr
• The Mourning Light, by Jerry Krause
• Hardways, by Catherine Hendricks
• The Firefly, by David Smith
• A Thin Sharp Blade, by Fran Smith

Diamond Dagger Recipient: Robert Goddard

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Checking for Macavitys

Mystery Readers International today announced its nominees for the 2019 Macavity Awards. The winners are to be declared on October 31 during the opening ceremonies of Bouchercon 2019 in Dallas, Texas.

Best Novel:
• November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• If I Die Tonight, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)
• The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Flatiron)
• Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• Hiroshima Boy, by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park)
• Under My Skin, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)

Best First Novel:
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
• Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus)
• Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (Putnam)
• Something in the Water, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine)
• The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)

Best Non-fiction:
• The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction, by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland)
• Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer, by Margalit Fox
(Random House)
• Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, annotated by Leslie S.
Klinger (Pegasus)
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
• Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, by Laura Thompson (Pegasus)
• The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman (HarperCollins)

Best Short Story:
• “Race to Judgment,” by Craig Faustus Buck (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], November/December 2018)
• “All God’s Sparrows,” by Leslie Budewitz (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2018)
• “Bug Appétit,” by Barb Goffman (EQMM, November/December 2018)
• “Three-Star Sushi,” by Barry Lancet (Down & Out:
The Magazine, Vol.1, No. 3)
• “The Cambodian Curse,” by Gigi Pandian (from The Cambodian Curse & Other Stories, by Gigi Pandian; Henery Press)
• “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (EQMM,
July/August 2018)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery:
• A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• City of Ink, by Elsa Hart (Minotaur)
• Island of the Mad, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• A Dying Note, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
• A Forgotten Place, by Charles Todd (Morrow)

The Macavitys take their name from the “mystery cat” in T.S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Members of Mystery Readers International and its periodical, Mystery Readers Journal, are eligible to vote in this competition; they should receive their ballots by August 15.

Measuring Up to Expectations

This is going to be a quiet week here at The Rap Sheet, as I have an old college friend in from out of town, and am doing my best to provide entertainment. However, I do want to mention the preliminary or final results of three different awards competitions.

First up are the 2019 Dead Good Reader Awards. Organized by the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good, these honors are presented to recent works in half a dozen categories. Here are the winners:

The Nosy Parker Award for Best Amateur Detective:
The Suspect, by Fiona Barton

Also nominated: A Clean Canvas, by Elizabeth Mundy; The Brighton Mermaid, by Dorothy Koomson; Red Snow, by Will Dean; The Stone Circle, by Elly Griffiths; and The Taking of Annie Thorne, by C.J. Tudor

The Jury’s Out Award for Most Gripping Courtroom Drama:
Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh

Also nominated: Anatomy of a Scandal, by Sarah Vaughan; Blood Orange, by Harriet Tyce; Marked for Death, by Tony Kent; No Further Questions, by Gillian McAllister; and Our Kind of Cruelty, by
Araminta Hall

The Dish Served Cold Award for Best Revenge Thriller:
My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing

Also nominated: Do No Harm, by L.V. Hay; Final Betrayal, by Patricia Gibney; Marked for Death, by Tony Kent; The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven; and Sticks and Stones, by Jo Jakeman

The Cancel All Plans Award for the Book You Can’t Put Down:
Skin Deep, by Liz Nugent

Also nominated: The Brighton Mermaid, by Dorothy Koomson; Her Name Was Rose, by Claire Allan; The Night Olivia Fell; by Christina Mcdonald; The Passengers, by John Marrs; and Sleep, by C.L. Taylor

The Cat and Mouse Award for Most Elusive Villain:
Last of the Magpies, by Mark Edwards

Also nominated: Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown; Do No Harm, by L.V. Hay; The Infirmary, by L.J. Ross; The Rumour, by Lesley Kara; and Twisted, by Steve Cavanagh

The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book:
The Stone Circle, by Elly Griffiths

Also nominated: The Death of Mrs. Westaway, by Ruth Ware; Now You See Her, by Heidi Perks; The Passengers, by John Marrs; Skin Deep, by Liz Nugent; and Sleep, by C.L. Taylor

These results were announced late last week at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

* * *

Meanwhile, B.V. Lawson reports in In Reference to Murder on the results of this year’s contest for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, sponsored by the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal. The fortunate 2019 recipient is The Boat People, by Sharon Bala (Doubleday). Two other novels were vying for that same accolade: Class Action, by Steven B. Frank (HMH Books for Young Readers); and The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime).

According to a press release, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction “was authorized by the late Harper Lee [and was] established in 2011 by the University of Alabama Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. It is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.”

* * *

And this year’s longlist of 13 Man Booker Prize nominees includes one novel drawn from the mystery/thriller stacks: My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday). A shortlist of contenders will be released on September 3.

Revue of Reviewers, 7-19-19

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

Chasing Silver in Nashville

With just over a month still to go before the opening of this year’s Killer Nashville conference (August 22-25), organizers today released their registers of finalists for the 2019 Silver Falchion Awards. There are 10 categories of contenders, including the following two.

Mystery:
• Unholy Secrets, by Delphine Boswell (CreateSpace)
• The Burial Place, by Larry Enmon (Crooked Lane)
• The Shadows We Hide, by Allan Eskens (Mulholland)
• Star Struck, by Mike Faricy (Credit River e-book)
• Killing in C Sharp, by Alexia Gordon (Henery Press)
• A Knife in the Fog, by Bradley Harper (Seventh Street)
• River of Secrets, by Roger Johns (Minotaur)
• A Dying Note, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Deadly Solution, by Keenan Powell (Level Best)
• Dying for a Deal, by Cindy Sample (CreateSpace)

Thriller:
• Yesterday’s News, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
• The War Beneath, by Timothy S. Johnston (ChiZine)
• Fractured, by Thomas Kelso (Jolly Robin Press)
• Illegal Holdings, by Michael Niemann (Coffeetown Press)
• The Consultant, by Tj O’Connor (Oceanview)
• City of Grudges, by Rick Outzen (SelectBooks)
• A Knife’s Edge, by Eliot Parker (Headline)
• Scourge, by Charley Pearson (Ingram Spark)
• Naked Truth, by Rick Pullen (Koehler)
• The Dark and the Dead, by Dana J. Summers (CreateSpace)

You can find the full list of Silver Falchion nominees here.

According to press materials, “Since 2008, the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards have recognized the best stories from the previous year told through various media utilizing the elements of mystery, thriller, and/or suspense. Judges are professional writers, book reviewers, librarians, academics, and—in specialized cases—specific industry peers. Focus is on quality, not popularity.”

Today’s news about the Silver Falchion nominees comes six weeks after Killer Nashville announced its nominees for the annual Claymore Award, given to the authors of “unpublished English-language manuscripts containing elements of thriller, mystery, crime, or suspense …”

Lucky “Thirteen”

This evening, during opening ceremonies for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England, it was announced that Northern Ireland writer Steve Cavanagh’s latest book, Thirteen (Hachette), has won the 2019 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. As Mystery Fanfare explains, “The prize was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction and is open to UK and Irish crime authors …” 2019 marks the 15th year this commendation has been presented.

The other five paperbacks shortlisted for the 2019 award were Broken Ground, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown); Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Transworld); London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins); and East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HarperCollins).

The longlist of this year’s nominees was broadcast in April, with the shortlist disseminated a month later.

Cavanagh’s Thirteen, a legal thriller, is scheduled to be released in the States on August 13, by Flatiron Books.

Engel’s End

Canada has lost one of its most honored detective novelists. Quill & Quire reports that “Howard Engel, the author of the beloved Benny Cooperman series of mysteries,” died this last Monday night at age 88. Cause of death was apparently pneumonia, which Engel caught while he was recovering from a stroke. Q&Q goes on to recall:

Born in 1931 in the Ontario city of St. Catharines, Engel worked as a producer at the CBC before publishing the first of the Cooperman mysteries, The Suicide Murders, in 1980. “No crime fiction novel had ever been set in Canada with a Canadian hero before Howard did it,” wrote Cynthia Good in 2010 on the occasion of his being presented the Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. East of Suez, the 14th Cooperman mystery, was published in 2008. Engel’s final novel, the historical fiction City of Fallen Angels, appeared in 2014.

In addition to his Cooperman mysteries, Engel also wrote fiction and non-fiction, including a memoir, The Man Who Forgot How to Read, detailing his experience suffering alexia sine agraphia, a neurological condition that robbed him of the ability to read while retaining the ability to write.

Engel was the recipient of the Arthur Ellis Award and the Derrick Murdoch Award, and was the first crime writer to receive the Writers’ Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award. In 2007, he was invested into the Order of Canada. He was also the recipient of the Grand Master Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, an organization he founded.

Two other Engel novels I think are worth mentioning, if only because they feature prominently on my office bookshelves: Murder in Montparnasse (1992) and Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell (1997). He also produced the 1996 non-fiction work Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind.

FOLLOW-UP: There’s some confusion as to how many Benny Cooperman novels Engel wrote. Goodreads puts the number at 14, but Toronto-based Cormorant Books—which published the last entry in the series, Over the River (2018)—calls that work the 15th Cooperman yarn. Can anyone out there clear up this mystery?

READ MORE: “Howard Engel, Author of the Benny Cooperman Detective Series, Dead at 88,” by Jane van Koeverden (CBC).

A Midweek Mixed Bag

• Sad news from The New York Times: “Andrea Camilleri, who took a late-career stab at writing a mystery novel and came up with the Inspector [Salvo] Montalbano detective series, which became wildly successful in Italy and was the basis for a popular television series, died on Wednesday morning in a hospital in Rome. He was 93.” (This comes a month after the author experienced cardiac arrest.) The International Crime Fiction Research Group calls Camilleri “one of the most influential authors of crime fiction in Europe. With his novels widely translated and adapted across the continent, he has come to represent the quintessential European Author.” Mark Lawson, in The Guardian, recalls that Camilleri “considered it his duty to speak out against the dark politics by which his country was often seduced, regularly appearing as a pundit on Italian TV shows where he was torrentially opinionated, intelligent and witty. Camilleri became so recognisable that, unusually for a novelist, he was impersonated by satirists and comedians.” Lawson adds: “There will be at least one more novel. In our [2012] interview, he told me that—as Agatha Christie did with Hercule Poirot in Curtain—he had deposited with his publisher Riccardino, a final novel in which Montalbano is ‘finished off’ that was to only be published posthumously.”

• Our condolences go out, too, to the family of Seattle resident and writer Andi Schecter, who passed away earlier this week at age 66 as a result of glioblastoma. Editor-blogger Janet Rudolph observes: “Andi was a powerful force in both the mystery and science fiction communities,” who had chaired both a Bouchercon convention (in Seattle in 1994) and two different Left Coast Crime gatherings (in 1997 and 2007). January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards, for whom she wrote several book reviews over the years, offers this remembrance. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

• Florida journalist Craig Pittman has an excellent new piece in CrimeReads, which looks back at the 1984-1990 NBC-TV series Miami Vice and how changed the future of the city in which it was shot.

• Late fall, I mentioned here that screenwriter Todd Alcott had assembled a gallery of “digital mash-ups” combining vintage paperback covers with classic songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and others. What I failed to notice was that the Web site on which those covers appeared, Open Culture, later posted a second set of reimagined covers, based on Bob Dylan songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Check those out here.

• In May, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine contributor Kevin Mims examined author Herman Wouk’s contributions to the legal-thriller genre. Now, Mims has posted a remembrance of Arkansas author Douglas C. Jones and how he created the “alternate history trial novel.” To learn more about Jones’ career, see this entry I wrote about him for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

• Bouchercon 2019 is still more than three months away (October 31-November 3, in Dallas, Texas), but word is already out that Jenn and Don Longmuir will receive the 2019 David Thompson Memorial Special Service Award during that convention. “The Longmuirs have been fixtures in the crime fiction community for more than a quarter-century,” reads a news release carried by Mystery Fanfare. “The couple owns and runs Scene of the Crime Books in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, and they have been book room organizers, book sellers and attendees at mystery conventions across North America. Don also served on the Bouchercon Board for five years.” The David Thompson Award, named in honor of a Texas bookstore owner and crime-fiction publisher who died in 2010, will be presented to the Longmuirs during Bouchercon 2019’s opening ceremonies, on Thursday, October 31.

• This comes from In Reference to Murder:

There’s a call for papers for “The Absurdity of Racism: an International Chester Himes Conference” to be held June 4-5, 2020, at the American University of Paris. As the organizers note, “always controversial, combative and daring, Himes carved a niche for himself in the worlds of crime fiction and protest literature while negotiating the ‘quality of hurt’ of his black American and European expatriate worlds.”

Abstracts of 250 words, accompanied by a very brief bio, should be sent by October 15.

• You knew something like this was inevitable, right? “In a competitive situation,” reports Deadline, “Amazon has landed the rights to develop a script-to-series drama based on the Jack Reacher character from Lee Child’s bestselling book series, from Scorpion creator Nick Santora. The project will be a co-production of Amazon Studios, Skydance Television and Paramount Television.”

• The Killing Times says Luther creator “Neil Cross, has had a new drama commissioned by ITV. Because the Night is described as a ‘chilling and suspenseful four-part story of murder—and perhaps ghosts—which exposes the quiet terror of a man trying to escape his past.’ The series is inspired by the novel Burial, also written by Cross.”

• And Episode 2 of Paperback Warrior’s new podcast recalls “the origins of the paperback book in 1939. Our feature is the widely successful publisher Fawcett Gold Medal, a cornerstone of crime-noir in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. We also look at Black Wings Has My Angel, by Lewis Elliott Chaze, and the debut ‘MacMorgan’ novel by Randy Wayne White.” Listen here.

Sisters Act

To my knowledge, there’s no agreed-upon limit as to how many works can appear on a “shortlist” of nominees for book awards. But to judge by its press materials, Sisters in Crime Australia is feeling a tad guilty about putting 25 titles into the running for its 19th Davitt Awards, honoring crime books by Australian women. “[W]ith 127 books in contention,” says Davitt judges “wrangler” Jacqui Horwood, “the six judges were overwhelmed with so much outstanding writing to choose from. Many authors are serial offenders.”

I won’t list all of this year’s award rivals (there are five categories), but here are the nine works vying for the Adult Crime prize:

• This I Would Kill For, by Anne Buist (Text)
• Second Sight, by Aoife Clifford (Simon & Schuster)
• Redemption Point, by Candice Fox (Penguin Random House)
• Mine, by Susi Fox (Penguin Random House)
• The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Pan MacMillan Australia)
• Wintering, by Krissy Kneen (Text)
• The Killing of Louisa, by Janet Lee (University of Queensland Press)
• The Rúin, by Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Australia)
• Live and Let Fry, by Sue Williams (Text)

Click here to find the full inventory of 2019 Davitt Award nominees.

Winners will be declared during a “gala dinner” on Saturday, August 31, at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel.

Thrilled to Beat You

Sadly, the closest I got to this year’s ThrillerFest in New York City (July 9-13) was viewing the many photos from there that author Lee Goldberg posted on his Facebook page. But at least I can fill you in on who won the 2019 Thriller Awards, given out during a celebratory banquet last evening. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Best Hardcover Novel: Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)

Also nominated: November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow); Paper Ghosts, by Julia Heaberlin (Ballantine); Pieces of Her, by Karin Slaughter (Morrow); and The Cabin At the End of the World, Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

Best First Novel:
The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)

Also nominated: The Terminal List, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler); Need to Know, by Karen Cleveland (Ballantine); Caged, by Ellison Cooper (Minotaur); and Something in the Water, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine)

Best Paperback Original Novel:
The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Also nominated: The Good Samaritan, by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer); The Naturalist, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer); Gone Dark, by Kirk Russell (Thomas & Mercer); and Mister Tender’s Girl, by Carter Wilson (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Best Short Story:
“Nana,” by Helen Smith (from Killer Women: Crime Club
Anthology #2; Killer Women)

Also nominated: “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); and “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)

Also nominated: The Lies They Tell, by Gillian French (HarperTeen); Warcross, by Marie Lu (Penguin Young Readers); People Like Us, by Dana Mele (Penguin Young Readers); and The Perfect Candidate, by Peter Stone (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Best E-book Original Novel:
Pray for the Innocent, by Alan Orloff (Kindle Press)

Also nominated: Murder on the Marshes, by Clare Chase (Bookouture); Executive Force, by Gary Grossman (Diversion); The Reunion, by Samantha Hayes (Bookouture); and The Memory Detective, by T.S. Nichols (Alibi)

ThrillerMaster Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient:
John Sandford

Silver Bullet Award Recipient: Harlan Coben

Thriller Legend Award Recipient: Margaret Marbury

ThrillerFan Award Recipient: Bookseller “Mystery Mike” Bursaw

Congratulations to the victors and other contenders alike!

READ MORE: “From the Front Lines of ThrillerFest 2019,” by Joe Brosnan (Criminal Element).

French Confections

Today is Bastille Day (aka French National Day), commemorating the July 14, 1789, public storming of Paris’ Bastille Saint-Antoine, a fortress-prison that was seen as symbolizing King Louis XVI’s increasingly oppressive and oblivious monarchy. Consider this a perfect occasion to revisit the large collection of beautiful French book fronts I put together four years ago for my other blog, Killer Covers.

Bullet Points: Lots o’ Links Edition

• In The Rap Sheet’s last news wrap-up, I noted that Season 4 of Grantchester will premiere in the States this coming Sunday night, July 14, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. Now comes word, courtesy of The Killing Times, that ITV, the British network behind that cozyish historical crime series, has renewed Grantchester for yet another year. “The show’s fifth season,” says The Killing Times, “is set in 1957, the year Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the British people that they had ‘never had it so good.’ For many of the residents of Grantchester, it really will feel like they’re in a delightful new Eden, but for all the talk of paradise on earth and faith-in-action, Geordie Keating (Robson Green) knows that trouble is never far away.”

• American film director Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, The Black Dahlia, etc.) will release his first novel—to be published by Hard Case Crime—in March 2020, according to Entertainment Weekly. Titled Are Snakes Necessary?, and co-authored with Susan Lehman, the book is said to be a “‘a blistering political satire’ that doubles as a female revenge thriller.” Hard Case provides this plot brief:

When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should’ve known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator’s fixer. He’s already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman—how hard could this new one turn out to be? Pursued from Washington, D.C., to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn’t realize is that her life might be as well …

EW quotes Hard Case editor Charles Ardai as calling Are Snakes Necessary? “not just a great crime story, it’s a sharp, ruthless look at the state of affairs—both political and extramarital—in our turbulent modern era.” That certainly sounds promising.

• Margery Allingham’s renown lives on, thanks i part to a decision regarding the future of an annual short-story competition named after her. This note comes from Shotsmag Confidential: “The Margery Allingham Society has agreed with the [British] Crime Writers’ Association that the popular short mystery competition will run for at least another five years, until 2024. The Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition that opens for entries in the autumn on the CWA’s website and closes every February.” It was only this last May that the winner of the 2019 Margery Allingham Short Story Competition was announced: Ray Bazowski, for “A Perfect Murderer.”

• Blogger, genre historian, and author Curtis Evans seems more than moderately thrilled by news that Freeman Wills Crofts’ Golden Age mysteries starring Inspector French are the inspiration for a forthcoming TV series. “I have read the script of what is to be the first episode,” Evans explains in The Passing Tramp, “based on a Crofts novel which I write about extensively in my 2012 book about Crofts, John Street, and JJ Connington, and I am excited about the whole thing. Crofts readers will be able to tell just from this article that there are changes being made for the adaptation, changes which will be forthrightly aired here, but I think fans of the book will be pleased, as well as mystery fans more generally.” In a follow-up to that original post, Evans interviews Brendan Foley, the program’s writer.

• With Donald Trump’s outrageous and dangerous “nationwide immigration enforcement operation … targeting migrant families” apparently taking place this weekend—his latest ploy to gin up support among his radical base, no matter the damage it does to families as well as America’s reputation—it seems an appropriate time to point readers toward Oline H. Cogdill’s list of “mysteries that include immigrants in their solid plots.” Included among her choices are works by Ragnar Jónasson, Denise Hamilton, and Dennis Lehane.

• And while we’re on the subject of lists, check out Mystery Tribune’s picks of the “Top 10 Great Brazilian Crime Fiction Books.” Several of those works were composed by two authors well represented on my own bookshelves: Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza and Leighton Gage.

• Oh, and author John Galligan offers this CrimeReads piece identifying “8 Novels You Won’t Find in the Crime Section,” but that nonetheless belong there, given their subject matter. Yes, Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog (2013) is among them.

• HBO has chosen September 9 as the date on which its gritty George Pelecanos/David Simon-created drama series, The Deuce, will return for its third and final season. As Deadline explains, the show “chronicles the establishment of the porn industry in the decidedly pre-Disney Times Square of the early 1970s through legalization, the rise of HIV, the cocaine epidemic and the big business of the mid-1980s, with the changing real estate market about to bring the deadly party to a close.” James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal star.

• A premiere date has been set, too, for Stumptown, the ABC-TV detective series I wrote about not long ago. Based on graphic novels by Greg Rucka, this hour-long show stars Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, Friends from College) as Dex Parios, “a sharp-witted army veteran who becomes a private investigator in Portland, Oregon.” ABC will premiere Stumptown on September 25, at 10 p.m.

• Way to kick a dead man while he’s down! In its newest installment of a series revisiting Edgar Allan Poe Award winners from the past, Thomas Wickersham recalls The Rheingold Route, Arthur Maling’s 1979 “espionage novel without spies.” Wickersham remarks: “It is a pity when a book’s place in history is to languish all but forgotten besides its title on a list of awards. It is sadder still to revisit such a book and find that its place in obscurity is earned.” Maybe, though, as Wickersham himself suggests, The Rheingold Route “was a book of its time.” Back in ’79, Kirkus Reviews was much more generous to the novel, calling it “tautly plotted, distinctively populated, convincingly romantic—perfect material for a Hitchcock film or an all-in-one-sitting late-night read.” Author Maling passed away in 2013.

• The Staunch Prize, launched last year to salute thriller novels “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped, or murdered,” has been criticized recently by authors objecting to organizers’ insinuations that their fiction may bias rape juries and trials. In the UK’s Guardian, prize-winning author Sarah Hilary (Never Be Broken) calls the Staunch Prize “not a prize so much as a gagging order,” and she goes on to say: “Violence against women takes many forms, perhaps the most insidious of which is censorship. We’re discouraged from going to the police in case we’re not believed, taught to expect resistance to our version of events, silenced by shame or fear. This prize reinforces all those negative messages, and ignores the very real good that crime fiction can do by reflecting the violent reality of many women’s lives.” Meanwhile, Edinburgh’s Kaite Walsh (The Unquiet Heart), who was herself raped as a younger woman, opines: “I can’t write about a world without rape because I don’t live in one. I won’t sanitise my writing in service of some fictional, feminist utopia. And while I indulge in fictional universes that let me escape, write the world the way I wish it was, my work lies in marrying my imagination with the ugly truth, challenging myself to explore the friction in the places where they collide. I wanted to write someone whose story didn’t end with rape, or even begin with it—but included it as just another bump in the road that has to be dealt with, worked through and lived with.”

• I wouldn’t normally bother with the right-wing “news” site Breitbart. But Gigi Garner, daughter of the late actor James Garner, recommended this Independence Day Breitbart tribute to her father, which touts his 1974-1980 NBC-TV series The Rockford Files as “the most American television show ever made.” Contributor John Nolte lays out a variety of reasons why he believes Garner’s private eye, Jim Rockford, was “TV’s great American,” including:

He’s a gentleman and chivalrous to the ladies—a real Neanderthal who opens car doors, lights cigarettes, steps into harm’s way to protect them, and yet still treats them as equals.

He’s a reluctant hero who keeps his virtues to a minimum “because they’re easier to keep track of.” In other words, he’s not a pompous virtue-signaler. …

Above all, Jim Rockford is first, last, and always his own man. His independence, his unwillingness to conform to anyone’s idea of how he should live his life, work his profession, or bow to authority is as American as it gets. He doesn’t tell anyone else how to live their life, and as long as you don’t cross that busybody line with him, there won’t be a problem.

Nolte goes out of his way to suggest that Rockford was one of those government-hating “real Americans” Sarah Palin was always spouting off about. I wonder if he realizes Garner was a self-described “‘bleeding-heart liberal,’ one of those card-carrying Democrats that Rush Limbaugh thinks is a communist. And I’m proud of it.”

• OK, a show of hands: Who remembers actor George Kennedy’s 1975-1976 CBS-TV series, The Blue Knight, based on Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 novel of the same name? I just noticed that five of that program’s two-dozen episodes are available on YouTube. It’s best to watch them now, before they’re scrubbed from the site.

• Registration is already open for readers and writers hoping to attend the 2012 Left Coast Crime convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Guests of Honor that year will be novelists Mick Herron and Catriona McPherson. Don’t forget about LCC 2020, either, which is scheduled to be held in San Diego, California.

• In advance of the Veronica Mars TV revival series, which begins airing on July 26 on Hulu, the Web site Vox chooses the best and worst episodes from among the show’s original, 2004-2007 run; the 2014 film based on the program also joins the ranking. When you’re done reading through all of those, look back at Cameron Hughes’ 2008 piece about Veronica Mars, posted in The Rap Sheet.

• Finally, a belated (and posthumous) “happy birthday” to composer Earle Hagan, who “would have turned 100 years old on July 9,” as Variety notes. Among his many contributions to popular culture, Hagan gave us the themes for The Andy Griffith Show, I Spy, The Mod Squad, and The New Perry Mason.

Deadly’s David Race

This year’s Deadly Ink Mystery Conference is scheduled for August 2-4 in Parsippany, New Jersey. Among the highlights of that convention will be the presentation of the 2019 David Award, named in honor of early Deadly Ink supporter David G. Sasher. Here are the nominees:

• Yesterday’s News, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
• Died in the Wool, by Peggy Ehrhart (Kensington)
• The Consultant, by Tj O’Connor (Oceanview)
• Misty Treasure, by Linda Rawlins (Riverbench)
• Second Story Man, by Charles Salzberg (Down & Out)
• Feral Attraction, by Eileen Watkins (Kensington)

Just one mystery here: Deadly Ink’s Web site says this commendation will be given to “the best mystery published in 2018.” Yet according to Amazon, Salzberg’s novel came out in November 2017. Maybe the eligibility period isn’t quite as rigid as it seems.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Strand Touts Stand-Outs

During a glitzy cocktail party last evening, The Strand Magazine announced the winners of its 2019 Strand Critics Awards.

Best Mystery Novel: Tie—Transcription, by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown), and Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins)

Also nominated: Lullaby Road, by James Anderson (Crown); November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow); Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); and The Witch Elm, by Tana French (Viking)

Best Debut Mystery Novel: The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)

Also nominated: Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus); The Other Side of Everything, by Lauren Doyle Owens (Touchstone); The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton (Sourcebooks Landmark); and Beautiful Bad, by Annie Ward (Park Row)

In addition, the Strand presented Lifetime Achievement Awards to two prominent authors: Heather Graham and Donna Leon. And it gave Dominique Raccah, the publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks, its Publisher of the Year Award.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

PaperBack: “Wiretap!”

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



Wiretap!, by Charles Einstein (Dell First Edition, 1955).
Cover illustration by Robert Schulz.

Worthy of Notice

Having just finished work on another piece for CrimeReads, I have time to highlight a few genre-related stories I’ve seen lately.

• There’s big news from U.S. publisher Soho Crime. In a press release, it declares it’ll release a brand-new novel by James Sallis this coming October: Sarah Jane, about “a good cop with a complicated past,” whose “life takes an unexpected turn when she is named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she’s filling—and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.” No less exciting is word that, beginning this fall, Soho will reissue Sallis’ six novels starring Lew Griffin, a sometime private eye in New Orleans with a particular interest in locating lost children. The first of those short books, The Long-Legged Fly (1992), should reach stores in mid-September, with the last, Ghost of a Flea, going on sale in early December.

• London’s Goldsboro Books has announced its 2019 longlist of nominees for the Glass Bell Award, given “annually to an outstanding work of contemporary fiction, rewarding quality storytelling in any genre.” The dozen contenders include several plucked from the crime/mystery shelf: Our House, by Louise Candlish; Memo from Turner, by Tim Willocks; The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven; The Poison Bed, by Elizabeth Fremantle; Snap, by Belinda Bauer; and The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Shelf Awareness says, “The shortlist, judged by Goldsboro Books founder and managing director David Headley and his team, will be announced on August 1, and the winner named September 16.”

• This comes from the Los Angeles Times:

Publisher Harper Collins will release a novel by filmmaker Michael Mann featuring the characters from his iconic 1995 film “Heat” next year, the director revealed on Twitter.

The novel, which has been in the works for years, is being co-written with Reed Farrel Coleman, the crime author best known for his series of novels featuring Moe Prager, an ex-police officer turned private eye.

“Heat,” written and directed by Mann, gained critical acclaim upon its release and remains one of the best-known films of the 1990s. The movie follows a Los Angeles police detective, played by Al Pacino, on the trail of a crew of robbers led by a longtime thief, played by Robert De Niro.

The Times goes on to explain that “Mann first indicated his interest in writing a novel inspired by ‘Heat’ in 2016, when Harper Collins announced that the director would be getting his own imprint with the publisher. Deadline reported that the planned novel would be a prequel, covering ‘the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), McCauley’s accomplice Nate (Jon Voight), and other characters ...’” No title or release date has yet been set for Mann’s novel.

• In Reference to Murder reports that “The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association has scheduled a July 21 walking tour of areas in South Berkeley, California, that are associated with mystery/sci fi author, editor, and critic Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White). The walk will be guided by Randal Brandt, a librarian who curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of Southern California at Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. The tour will also cover sites associated with Boucher’s fellow mystery writer Mary Collins, the California Writer’s Club, pioneering film critic Pauline Kael, and others.” If only I lived in the Bay Area …

• I have to admire Tom Simon’s ambition. Not only does he write the excellent Paperback Warrior blog, focused on 1950s-1990s soft-cover novels, but this week he launched a companion podcast. In the premiere episode, he and a colleague “discuss the goldmine of paperback treasure, the famed Chamblin’s Book Mine in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as two novels—Sins of the Fathers, by Lawrence Block, and Penetrator #14, by Chet Cunningham.” When I finally get around to adding a list of podcasts to The Rap Sheet’s already lengthy blogroll, I’ll definitely have to include this new one.

• With Season 4 of Grantchester set to debut this coming Sunday night, July 14, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup, The Killing Times has posted a list of what it contends are “the most dangerous villages in British crime drama.” Grantchester, of course, makes the cut, as do Kembleford (Father Brown), Carsley (Agatha Raisin), and St. Mary Mead (Miss Marple).

• By the way, if you’ve forgotten, this season of Grantchester will be star James Norton’s last. His “charismatic, jazz-loving clergyman Sidney Chambers” will be eased out during the coming half-dozen episodes to make way for the Reverend Will Davenport, played by Tom Brittney. Click here to watch the official series trailer.

• Speaking of Masterpiece Mystery!, I was sorry to bid adieu last Sunday to Series 6 of Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam. This season comprised only four episodes—two fewer than last year. And as Chris Sullivan points out in his excellent Morse Universe blog, scenes were either eliminated or truncated in the U.S. broadcasts of those latest eps. Here are the links to Sullivan’s posts featuring the material cut from individual Season 6 installments of the series: “Pylon” (see here and here), “Apollo,” “Confection,” and “Degüello.” I have to say, “Degüello” would have been even more satisfying than it already was had the scene Sullivan embeds last in his post—showing Fred Thursday and Reginald Bright talking about how they met their wives—remained intact.

• Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review blog chooses what it claims are the five “best mysteries and thrillers of 2019 so far.” Interestingly, I’ve read only one of them. So far.

• I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken with people impressed by their own collections of electronic books on one device or another. But the Microsoft Store’s recent decision to close its books department—in the process “disappearing every single e-book from every one of its customers” —should cause them to consider the transient nature of such libraries. NPR has more on the story.

• Finally, keep in mind that Dead Good, the British crime-fiction Web site, is still asking for assistance in choosing the winners of its 2019 Reader Awards. Click here to take part in this competition. Polls will remain open through Wednesday, July 17, with winners set to be announced on Friday, July 19, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

A “Force” to be Reckoned With

Don Winslow’s The Force—one of my favorite novels of 2017—has won this year’s Falcon Award, presented by Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society to a superior work of hard-boiled crime fiction. It’s far from Winslow’s first such victory; as The Gumshoe Site explains, this “is his fifth Falcon Award following [those given for] Missing: New York (no English version), The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, and A Cool Breeze on the Underground.”

Other previous Falcon recipients include Robert Crais (The Promise), Dennis Lehane (Live by Night), S.J. Rozan (Winter and Night), and Stephen Greenleaf (Book Case).

Revue of Reviewers, 7-5-19

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