An Onscreen Revival of NoirCon

NoirCon is a biennial convention that won’t take place this year—online, rather than in person—until the end of next month. But already, the recipients of its three 2022 prizes have been announced. Those honors will be given out during the October 21-23 virtual event, together with three prizes that were not presented in 2018, due to that year’s convention in Philadelphia being cancelled. (There was no 2020 NoirCon, either, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The six prizeinners are listed below.

2018 Awards
David Goodis Award: Walter Mosley
Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and its Preservation: Dana Polan
Kogan Award For Excellence: Geoffrey O’Brien and Max Rudin

2022 Awards
David Goodis Award: Megan Abbott
Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and its Preservation: Sarah Weinman
Kogan Award For Excellence: Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

According to the NoirCon Web site, this year's three-day symposium will celebrate noir “in all its artistic incarnations with live and pre-recorded events, including panel discussions, award ceremonies, author talks, art exhibitions, movie screenings, and more.” It adds that 2022 sessions “will be held on the Accelevents platform. An all-access pass covering the entire conference is $36. Registration includes access to the Accelevents platform for 30 days after the event, so attendees can re-watch events or catch up on panels they missed.” For more information, click here.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Gathering Up a Few Loose Ends

We’re coming down to the wire on 2018, but let me just squeeze in a post following up on some things I mentioned late last week.

First off, blogs participating in the inaugural mystery-fiction Reprint of the Year Award competition have finally named their winner: it’s Locked Room Murders, an unpretentious-looking book originally published back in 1979 and described on the Amazon sales site as “a bibliography containing a description of the problem and, separately, the solution to locked-room and impossible-crime novels and short stories.” Second place honors went to Bats in the Belfry, E.C.R. Lorac’s 1937 thriller. You’ll find the full results of this contest here.

Second, the UK blog Killing Times has concluded announcing its “top 20 crime dramas of the year.” Here are its five foremost picks:

1. American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
(BBC Two)
2. Unforgotten (Series 3, ITV)
3. The Bridge (Series 4, BBC Two)
4. The Deuce (Series 2, Sky Atlantic)
5. Trust (BBC Two)

Killing Times’ rundown of its favorite TV presentations rolled out in four separate posts—20-16, 15-11, 10-6, and 5-1.

Finally, we have more bloggers late to the game of declaring their favorite crime, mystery, and thriller novels released over the last 12 months. Ayo Onatade’s choices, posted in Shotsmag Confidential, include Michael Connelly’s Dark Sacred Night, Laura Lippman’s Sunburn, and Mick Herron’s The Drop. Lesa Holstine applauds Lou Berney’s November Road, Laurie Loewensteins Death of a Rainmaker, and Brendan DuBois’ The Negotiator, among others. And L.J. Roberts adds her thumbs-up for such works as Allen Eskens’ The Shadows We Hide, Ann Cleeves’ Wild Fire, and G.M. Ford’s Soul Survivor.

Crime in Short Order

In October, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (RMMWA) announced that it was holding its second-annual Six-Word Mystery Contest, and that its panel of judges would include Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine editor Linda Landrigan as well as author Anne Hillerman. The competition opened on October 1, with a deadline for submissions of November 1. Five categories of entries were available to those folks daring enough to share their ideas: Hard-boiled or Noir, Cozy, Thriller, Police Procedural, and Romance or Lust.

The finalists and winner in each category, as well as the overall winner, were declared last Thursday night, December 14. They are as follows:

Cozy:
Winner: Auntie’s needles were not for knitting. (Matthew Porter)
Was picture perfect. I framed him. (Julie Kerr)
Ukulele club. Jealousy. Death by G-string. (C.C. Harrison)
Wedding gown cheap. Red stain discount. (Kris Neri)
Deserted island, our last breakfast together. (Kristin Horton)

Hard-boiled/Noir:
Winner: Concrete boots replaced the blonde’s stilettos. (Margaret Mizushima)
Stole her heart—and ate it. (Julie Kerr)
Dog ate more than her homework. (Julie Kerr)
She confessed. It wasn’t my baby. (Vaibhab Hassija)
One gun. One bullet. Two dead. (Geri Hannah)

Police Procedural:
Winner: Autopsy couldn’t reveal his true heart. (Matthew Porter)
Only witness to murder. Blind teacher. (Vaibhav Hassija)
Cops unearth killer! Paperwork buries cop. (Mo Walsh)
Always check the evidence room again. (Cynthia Kuhn)
His sins blazed like luminol stars. (Sue Hinkin)

Romance:
Winner: Crossed her heart. Helped him die. (Julie Kerr)
“Choose. Him or me.” I chose. (Stina Branson)
Here lies, my love: name unknown. (Franz Margitza)
“He’s dead. Your place or mine?” (Margaret Mizushima)
His smoldering kisses were ruled arson. (Sue Hinkin)

Thriller:
Winner: She took his name. For starters. (Matthew Porter)
The diamond glittered like freedom. Irresistible. (M.A. Monnin)
He raised his gun. I unloaded. (Daniel Sanchez)
The microfilm reely tasted like treason. (Jazz Lawless)
My neighbor smiled between the shades. (Connor McCloskey)

2018 RMMWA Six-Word Mystery Contest Overall Contest Winner:
She took his name. For starters. (Matthew Porter)

Just for the record, last year’s macabre, overall winner was in the Thriller category: “Eyes so lovely I kept them,” by Cindy Marsh.

An RMMWA news release about this contest explained that “According to legend, the first six-word novel was born in the 1920s when Ernest Hemingway, at New York’s Algonquin Hotel or Luchow’s restaurant (depending on whom you ask), won a $10 bet by writing a six-word story. His dark and dramatic submission was: ‘For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.’ Urban legend or no, memorable, heartbreaking, and sublime six-word stories have been penned ever since.”

Like the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which asks that readers and writers submit their worst (that is, most humorous and over-the-top) opening sentences from (thankfully) never-to-be-finished books, the RMMWA’s Six-Word Mystery Contest sounds like a challenge I might wish to take up sometime.

King Rules Again

After three rounds of online voting, beginning on October 30, users of the “social cataloguing” site Goodreads have selected their favorite books of 2018. Stephen King’s The Outsider (Scribner) won in the Mystery & Thriller category, with 62,170 votes. Click here to see the top-20 vote-getters among that group. Or go here to find the honorees in all of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards categories.

READ MORE: “Goodreads Choice Awards: An Annual Reminder That Critics and Readers Don’t Often Agree,” by Ron Charles (The Washington Post).

Nero Favors Jones

Detroit-area author Stephen Mack Jones has won the 2018 Nero Award for his debut novel, August Snow (Soho Crime). That announcement was made last night during the Black Orchid Banquet held at Arno Ristorante in Manhattan. The Nero has been presented annually, ever since 1979, by the New York City-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization, The Wolfe Pack, to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.”

August Snow faced several strong contenders for this year’s prize: The Dime, by Kathleen Kent (Mulholland); The Lioness Is the Hunter, by Loren D. Estelman (Forge); Gone to Dust, by Matt Goldman (Forge); and Blood for Wine, by Warren C. Easley (Poisoned Pen Press).

Jones’ novel was previously honored with the 2017 Hammett Prize, presented this last summer. The author has a sequel, Lives Laid Away, due out from Soho in early January of next year.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

ADDENDUM: Thanks to Les Blatt at Classic Mysteries, we now know who received the 2018 Black Orchid Novella Award, which The Wolfe Pack also presented on December 1, in association with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The winner is California writer Mark Bruce, whose story, “Minerva James and the Goddess of Justice,” will be published in AHMM sometime next summer.

Honorable mention went to a trio of other stories in contention for this year’s Black Orchid prize: “Angling for Justice," by Jennifer Jones; “Spring Fever,” by Jean-Pierce Forget; and “Monday's Mirage,” by Gabriel Valjan. Congratulations to all!

MWA Withdraws Fairstein’s Award

Just two days after the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced that author Linda Fairstein would be one of its two Grand Master Award recipients for 2019 (along with Martin Cruz Smith), the organization has chosen to rescind its award to Fairstein.

This follows complaints, expressed online by Edgar Award-winning novelist Attica Locke and others, that Fairstein—who, prior to her literary career, headed up the sex-crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office—had been instrumental in “the wrongful incarceration of the Central Park Five,” a group of teenage boys who were prosecuted in 1990 for allegedly attacking a woman jogger in New York City’s Central Park. The five boys were African American and Hispanic; the woman was white. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another man admitted to having committed the attack.

The MWA has issued the following statement:

On Tuesday, November 27, Mystery Writers of America announced the recipients of Grand Master, Raven & Ellery Queen Awards, special awards given out annually. Shortly afterwards, the MWA membership began to express concern over the inclusion of Linda Fairstein as a Grand Master, citing controversy in which she has been involved.

When the MWA Board made its selection, it was unaware of Ms. Fairstein’s role in the controversy.

After profound reflection, the Board has decided that MWA cannot move forward with an award that lacks the support of such a large percentage of our members. Therefore, the Board of Directors has decided to withdraw the Linda Fairstein Grand Master award. We realize that this action will be unsatisfactory to many. We apologize for any pain and disappointment this situation has caused.

MWA will be reevaluating and significantly revising its procedures for selecting honorary awards in the future. We hope our members will all work with us to move forward from this extremely troubling event and continue to build a strong and inclusive organization.

To read more about the Central Park Five case and this Grand Master controversy, refer to this story in today’s New York Times.

Nugent’s Double Helping of Accolades

Thanks to this short blog post by our old friend Declan Burke, we now know that author Liz Nugent has been honored with the 2018 Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year prize for her latest psychological thriller, Skin Deep (Penguin Ireland). That same work scored Nugent RTÉ Radio 1’s The Ryan Tubridy Show Listeners’ Choice Award. These wins were two of 16 announced on Tuesday night in association with this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards.

In 2014, Nugent won this same annual contest’s Crime Fiction Book of the Year commendation for her first novel, Unravelling Oliver.

Also vying in the 2018 Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year category were A House of Ghosts, by W.C. Ryan (Zaffre); One Click, by Andrea Mara (Poolbeg Press); The Confession, by Jo Spain (Quercus); The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan (Sphere); and Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion). Click here for a full list of 2018 Irish Book Award winners.

Prize Positions

Three weeks ago, we received the shortlist of nominees for the premiere Staunch Book Prize, designed to honor the best thriller novel “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped, or murdered.” And finally, today brought an announcement that Australian author Jock Serong has captured that prize with his third novel, On the Java Ridge. Text Publishing, that Australian house that handles Serong’s books, offers the following plot synopsis:

On the Java Ridge, skipper Isi Natoli and a group of Australian surf tourists are anchored off the Indonesian island of Dana. In the Canberra office of Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, a federal election looms and a hardline new policy on asylum-seekers is being rolled out.

Not far from Dana, the Takalar is having engine trouble. Among the passengers on board fleeing from persecution are Roya and her mother, and Roya’s unborn sister.

The storm now closing in on the Takalar and the Java Ridge will mean catastrophe for them all.

“This is exactly the quality of thriller that Staunch set out to find, and we’re proud to name it as our winner,” The Guardian quotes Staunch prize founder Bridget Lawless as saying. “It’s a good thriller, with all of the usual jeopardy and ups and downs. There is very strong writing, it’s very brutal, and there is violence, but there is nothing gratuitous. And one of the adversaries is nature, which we don’t see enough of.”

On the Java Ridge faced off against five other contenders in this competition to capture the first Staunch Prize: The Appraisal, by Anna Porter (ECW Press); East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ); If I Die Tonight, by A.L. Gaylin (PRH); The Kennedy Moment, by Peter Adamson (Myriad Editions); and Cops and Queens, by Joyce Thompson (seeking a publisher). In addition to earning bragging rights, Serong’s Staunch Prize win brings him £2,000 in award money.

Text Publishing notes that Serong has some solid history of scoring literary commendations. His novel Quota evidently picked up the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; and The Rules of Backyard Cricket was not only shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, but was a finalist of the 2017 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

* * *

Meanwhile, the shortlist of nominees for the 2018 Costa Book Awards has been announced, and among the quartet of contenders in the First Novel category is a mystery yarn titled The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton (Sourcebooks Landmark). The Costa Book Awards are handed out annually in five categories to works by UK- and Ireland-based authors. Winners in each category are scheduled to be declared in January of next year.

Bullet Points: Media Medley Edition

• Argentina-born pianist and composer Lalo Schifrin, who has scored such films as Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry, and created the theme music for TV productions including Mission: Impossible, Petrocelli, and Mannix, was honored this last weekend with a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition to the 86-year-old Schifrin, two other recognizable Hollywood figures received Governors Awards: 93-year-old actress Cicely Tyson and Marvin Levy, a longtime public relations exec who was once a member of the AMPAS board of governors. You can watch Schifrin accept his award on YouTube.

• The Classic Film and TV Café calls producer-writer Stirling Silliphant “the poet laureate of 1960s television” in this tribute looking back at his scripts for the 1960-1964 CBS series Route 66. “Silliphant, who co-created the series with producer Herbert B. Leonard, wrote an incredible 73 of the 116 episodes over the show’s four-year run,” observes the blogger known as Rick29. “In terms of entertainment value, the plots were consistently above-average, but it’s Silliphant's dialogue that gave Route 66 its unique voice. As David Mamet would do later, Silliphant embellished his characters with dialogue that would never pass for natural—but which conveyed a singular poetry all its own.” In addition to Route 66, Silliphant (shown on the left) is remembered for his work on the TV programs Naked City and Longstreet, and his screenplays for such pictures as In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Marlowe (1969), which starred James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s justly famous Los Angeles private eye, Philip Marlowe.

• While we’re on the subject of bygone boob-tube shows, check out Michael Shonk’s new Mystery*File post about Gavilan, a 1982-1983 NBC series that featured Robert Urich (later of Spenser: For Hire fame) as a former intelligence operative who has gone to work for an oceanographic research organization called the Dewitt Institute, but keeps trying to help people—especially attractive young females—in trouble. Shonk opines:

The series had its good moments, but it also had many of the flaws of 1980s television. The plots were better than average but had to really stretch to connect to the Institute. In “By the Sword” the brilliant beautiful woman was a scientist working on a project to study the krill as a food source, but the plot was about an ancient samurai sword she stole from the Yakuza to regain her family honor.

The stories were entertaining but mindless, predictable and too willing to sacrifice story and character for a joke or twist. In “By the Sword,” the female scientist is trained in the martial arts and had done something her entire family had not done in over a hundred years, got her family’s ancient honored Japanese sword back from the Yakuza. So in the final confrontation for the sword it is Gavilan—as she watched—who sword fights to the death for the sword and her family honor. Of course, Gavilan out duels the unbeatable Master Samurai.

Shonk’s piece includes two episodes of Gavilan found on YouTube. A few of my own thoughts on this show can be found here.

• NBC-TV has reportedly made a script commitment for The Bone Collector, a series based both on Jeffery Deaver’s 1997 psychological thriller of the same name and on the 1990 Denzel Washington movie already adapted from that novel. According to Deadline Hollywood, NBC’s project “hails from writers V.J. Boyd and Mark Bianculli (S.W.A.T.), Universal Television and Sony Pictures Television … Written by Boyd and Bianculli, The Bone Collector follows Lincoln Rhyme, a retired genius forensic criminologist left paralyzed after an accident on the job. When a harrowing case brings him back to the force, Rhyme partners up with an ambitious young detective, Amelia Sachs, to take down some of the most dangerous criminals in the U.S.” There’s no information yet on who might star in this series, but plenty of speculation on what it could draw from Deaver’s 14 existing Rhyme novels, the latest of which is 2017’s The Cutting Edge.

• The Killing Times says that America’s Audience Network has renewed the Stephen King-inspired, David E. Kelley-developed crime drama, Mr. Mercedes, for a third season.

• I’m not surprised by news that Netflix’s Tony Danza/Josh Groban “dramedy,” The Good Cop, hasn’t been picked up for a second season. While I really wanted to like the series—in part because its creator-showrunner was Monk mastermind Andy Breckman—it came off as way too cute too much of the time, with an excess of thin plots and ridiculous turns. I did, however, like Danza’s portrayal of a disgraced ex-New York City policeman as part con man, part reluctant troubleshooter; and dancer-actress Monica Barbaro consistently brightened up the screen playing Grogan’s ballsier partner, Cora Vasquez. I’ve only seen half of the 10 episodes of The Good Cop, but their performances will keep me watching through to the end.

• I’d heard about this before, and was convinced that I’d mentioned it here, but evidently I was wrong. Anyway, Mystery Tribune notes that Christopher Huang’s debut novel, A Gentleman’s Murder—which featured in my recent CrimeReads piece about nine post-World War I mysteries—has been optioned for TV adaptation.

• Deadline Hollywood brings word that Tom Shepherd, who scripted Robert Downey Jr.’s forthcoming The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle, has been signed to pen Matt Helm, based on Donald Hamilton’s long-running series of spy thrillers. Bradley Cooper will star in this Paramount project, with George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci all serving as executive producers.



• Continuing The Rap Sheet’s series on “copycat covers,” book fronts that employ artwork previously displayed on other titles, we offer—above—the façades of Blow Out the Candles and Say Goodbye (Lamplighter Suspense), Linda S. Glaz’s 2017 novel, and 2016’s Stealing People (Europa Editions), the third entry in Robert Wilson’s series starring kidnap consultant Charlie Boxer.

• A new book suggests that Arthur Conan Doyle based the character of Professor James Moriarty, sleuth Sherlock Holmes’ principal nemesis, on a brilliant 19th-century professor of mathematics named George Boole. “A thorough comparison between Conan Doyle’s fictional Moriarty and the real Boole,” writes The Irish Times, “reveals numerous persuasive similarities. Both characters held chairs at small provincial universities; both won appointments on the basis of outstanding early work; both had interests in astronomy; the two were of similar appearance—an illustration of Moriarty in Conan Doyle’s work bears a striking resemblance to a photograph of Boole and may well have been based on it. The major discrepancy between Boole and Moriarty is that Boole was a man of high morals and excellent character, a social reformer, religious thinker and family man.” While Moriarty … well, as Conan Doyle put it in The Valley of Fear, he was “the greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every devilry …”

• Murder & Mayhem picks “11 must-read mysteries set in Los Angeles,” and I’m relieved to discover that I’ve read all but one: Dorothy B. Hughes’ The Expendable Man (1963).

• To his excellent John D. MacDonald blog, The Trap of Solid Gold, Steve Scott has recently added two worth-reading vintage profiles of Travis McGee’s creator—one from Florida’s Tampa Bay Times, dated April 26, 1981; and the other from a 1978 edition of the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s (you’ll find that second piece here).

• Authors are generally quite reticent to reveal which books they prefer among those they have written, so it’s interesting to see Max Allan Collins identify his two favorite entries in his rapidly expanding series about the hit man known as Quarry.

• Which reminds me, I wasn’t aware before reading this piece in The Guardian, that Agatha Christie’s 1967 novel, Endless Night, was her favorite. Sam Jordison says more about that standalone here.

• A weekend spent organizing my late in-laws' long-forgotten boxes of books turned up some surprising and welcome literary gems.

• I am, of course, an enthusiastic follower of the Web site Pulp Covers, with its ever-growing abundance of classic book and magazine fronts. And one of the reasons for my interest is that the site’s unidentified editor frequently posts links to full issues of periodicals such as Dime Mystery Magazine, Detective Book Magazine, Manhunt, and New Detective. Those issues are easily downloaded and can be wonderfully entertaining.

• So much has already been said about the demise, late last week, of 87-year-old novelist and screenwriter William Goldman, that I fear I have nothing to add. Obituaries in The New York Times and in the British Guardian covered the highlights of his career: his scripting of movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Maverick, and Paul Newman’s Harper; his penning of novels that included Marathon Man, The Princess Bride, and Magic; and his late-life success with a memoir titled Adventures in the Screen Trade. CrimeReads adds to those encomia a collection of notable Goldman quotes. My own first experience with Goldman was way back in high school, when I was introduced to Magic … which put me off of ventriloquist’s dummies for the remainder of my mortal life. I’ve often watched Goldman’s motion pictures, with Harper—based on Ross Macdonald’s 1949 private-eye novel, The Moving Target—and Butch Cassidy being my favorites. I never met the man, but the power and precision of his prose, and the pleasure I’ve derived from listening to his dialogue and reading his stories made me care about him nonetheless. Really, a storyteller could hope for nothing better than that.

• The Gumshoe Site reminds us that William Goldman’s first mystery novel was No Way to Treat a Lady. In another blog, Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini recalls that that book was “originally published in 1964 under the pseudonym ‘Harry Longbaugh,’ the real name of the outlaw ‘The Sundance Kid.’ Written in just 10 days, this brief novel is 160 pages long and broken down into 53 chapters and is an exciting, blackly comic work reminiscent of the best of the Ed McBain thrillers of the time.” Adam Groves of The Bedlam Files adds that No Way to Treat a Lady “lacks the slickness and polish of [Goldman’s] later novels, with much slapdash prose and an uncertain grasp of tone (it’s difficult to discern if all the comedic elements were meant to be funny). Yet the wit, verve and imagination that characterize Goldman’s best work are very much evident in this suspenseful and macabre novel that predates everything from Dexter to Natural Born Killers in its furiously inventive account of the fortunes of a mass murderer.” Concludes Groves: “I say it’s one of William Goldman’s finest books.”

• By the way, No Way to Treat a Lady was made into a 1968 film starring Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, and George Segal. As I’ve never read Goldman’s original book, or seen the movie, I guess I have some serious catching up to do.

• Want to learn more about classic New Zealand mystery writer Ngaio Marsh? CrimeReads’ Neil Nyren provides a bit of background as well as recommendations of four works from her oeuvre.

• Here’s something I didn’t know before: Wisconsin-born, Japanese-American crime novelist Milton K Ozaki (1913-1989)—who often wrote under the moniker Robert O Saber—was not only “a newspaperman, an artist, and the operator of a beauty parlor” (per Bill Crider), but also something of a con man, according to Paperback Warrior.

• In The Spy Command, Bill Koenig traces the complicated roots of the 1964-1968 NBC-TV spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and its connections to James Bond creator Ian Fleming. This is a continuing series, but you can find Part I here, with Part II here.

• The New York Times’ Alexandra Alter recently caught up with Megan Abbott, whose commitments both as an author and as the executive producer of a TV pilot film based on her 2012 novel, Dare Me, must leave her little time for relaxation.

• Leo W. Banks has claimed another prize for his 2017 debut novel, Double Wide. His publisher’s Web site says Banks “just received the 2018 Best Mystery Novel award from the New Mexico Book Co-op, announced at a gala awards banquet in Albuquerque on November 16th. Along with this latest honor, Double Wide also has received two Western Writers of America 2018 Spur Awards and [the] Best Crime Novel of the Year Award by True West magazine.”

• Finally, I’ve spent several years now trying to procure copies of the four episodes made of Faraday and Company, a 1973-1974 detective series that starred Dan Dailey and James Naughton, and was part of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie line-up. Then, just today, I happened across a Web site called DVD Planet Store, which offers the full run of Faraday for $16. The trouble is, after reading negative online reviews of this Pakistan-based enterprise, I fear I might never receive the DVDs I sought to purchase. Has anybody else tried to buy from DVD Planet Store? What were your experiences with it?

Bullet Points: Post-Midterm Elections Edition

OK, that’s done. After putting the finishing touches on two different CrimeReads pieces—one of which should be posted tomorrow morning—I can finally return to my regular duties at The Rap Sheet. Let’s start off with a wrap-up of recent news.

• We’ve been talking for some while about the Staunch Book Prize, a brand-new commendation—proposed earlier in the year by author-screenwriter Bridget Lawless—to honor the best thriller novel “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped, or murdered.” It wasn’t until this month, however, that a shortlist of nominees for the first such award was announced:

— The Appraisal, by Anna Porter (ECW Press)
— East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
— If I Die Tonight, by A.L. Gaylin (PRH)
— On the Java Ridge, by Jock Serong (Text)
— The Kennedy Moment, by Peter Adamson (Myriad Editions)
— Cops and Queens, by Joyce Thompson (seeking publisher)

The Bookseller explains that a winner of the premiere Staunch Book Prize will be declared during a special ceremony “at Sony Pictures in central London on 26th November.” Stay tuned.

• The “social cataloguing” Web site GoodReads has launched the voting process for its 2018 Choice Awards competition, and we’re already into the semifinal round of selecting winners (which will run through this coming Sunday, November 11). Among the contenders in the Best Mystery and Thriller category are Sujata Massey’s The Widows of Malabar Hill, Stuart Turton’s The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Tana French’s The Witch Elm, Joe Ide’s Wrecked, and Robert Galbraith’s Lethal White. Click here to cast a ballot. The final round of voting will begin on November 13, with winners in all 20 categories to be announced on December 4.

• Deadline Hollywood reports that Stephen King’s 2013 Hard Case Crime novel, Joyland, will be adapted as a TV series. The site reminds us that “Joyland tells the story of Devin, a college student who takes a summer job at an amusement park in a North Carolina tourist town, confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the way both will change his life forever.” Chris Peña (Jane the Virgin) and Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M.) will pen the script.

• Holliday Grainger, the British actress I so enjoyed watching in the 2013 teleflick Bonnie & Clyde (you can see the trailer here) and the more recent BBC-TV crime series Strike, is preparing to star, with Callum Turner, in a BBC surveillance thriller titled The Capture. The Killing Times offers just a modicum of plot information:

When proud British soldier Shaun Emery’s (Turner) conviction for a murder in Afghanistan is successfully overturned due to flawed video evidence, he begins to plan for his life as a free man with his six-year-old daughter. However, when damning CCTV footage emerges from an incident in London, it isn’t long before Shaun finds himself fighting for his freedom once more, only with lies, betrayal and corruption spreading further than he ever could have imagined.

With DI Rachel Carey (Grainger) drafted in to investigate in what could be a career-defining case, she must discover if there is more to the shocking evidence than first meets the eye. Rachel will soon learn that the truth is merely a matter of perspective—before deciding what hers is.

• Meanwhile, here’s a short new trailer promoting the third season of True Detective. This latest iteration of Nicolas Pizzolatto’s crime anthology series is scheduled to debut in the States on January 13 of next year, with Mahershala Ali starring as Wayne Hays, “an Arkansas state police detective who can’t stop thinking about the two children who went missing 30 years before.”

• And January Magazine notes that HBO-TV has given the go-ahead for a film sequel to the fine 2004-2006 Western series, Deadwood. Viewers are told to expect that movie’s premiere next spring.

• Among the items in B.V. Lawson’s latest “Media Murder for Monday” post for In Reference to Murder is news about turning Howard Michael Gould’s 2018 debut novel, Last Looks, into a big-screen picture:

Mel Gibson is teaming up with Charlie Hunnam and Eiza Gonzalez for Waldo, the action-packed thriller from Brit filmmaker Tim Kirkby, best known for directing episodes of Veep. The film … follows the brilliant but disgraced former LAPD detective Charlie Waldo (Hunnam), currently living the life of a minimalist in the woods. His quiet life comes to a startling halt when he is roped back into working as a private eye to investigate the murder of an eccentric TV star’s wife.

• I was sorry to hear that prolific Illinois-born actor Ken Swofford died on November 1, at age 85. The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary mentions that in addition to his role as “stubborn vice principal Quentin Morloch … on the TV adaptation of Fame,” “the red-headed Swofford … portrayed the reporter Frank Flannigan on the admired but short-lived 1975-76 NBC series Ellery Queen, starring Jim Hutton, and he recurred as Lt. Catalano on several episodes of another sleuthing series, Angela Lansbury’s Murder, She Wrote.” Swofford’s other small-screen credits included roles on Surfiside 6, Columbo, Petrocelli, The Rockford Files, The Fall Guy, Remington Steele, and Diagnosis: Murder. He also played a major in the 1991 film Thelma & Louise. A clip of his performance in Ellery Queen can be enjoyed here.

• Wouldn’t you know it? Shortly after I assembled my revised (and unapologetically biased) rundown of the 95 best English-language crime-fiction blogs and Web sites, another worthy candidate came to my attention: Paperback Warrior. Trading in reviews of hard-boiled crime, mystery, men’s adventure, espionage, and western fiction, Paperback Warrior was launched during the summer of 2013 (which means I really should have discovered it sooner). Its author doesn’t sign his/her reviews, but clearly shares my taste for vintage paperbacks. The main blog and its associated Facebook page are well worth exploring when you have some free time.

• Emily Temple is one of my favorite Literary Hub writers, and she recently put together quite wonderful “list-icles” of books that defined every single decade of 1900s, as well as the first two decades of our present century. Crime, mystery, and thriller novels don’t show up often in the mix, but a couple—Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930)—receive paragraph write-ups, with others (such as Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, and Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal) at least being name-checked in their respective decennia of publication.

• Lee Goldberg, who literally wrote the book on unsold small-screen pilot film projects, points me toward a 10-minute YouTube collection of scenes from Egan, a 1973 pilot commissioned by ABC-TV and starring prolific American actor Eugene Roche. As Golberg relates in Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989, that teleflick—produced by Thomas L. Miller and Edward K. Milkis (who also gave us Barry Newman’s Petrocelli)—was “based on the true exploits of NYPD detective Eddie Egan, whose adventures were dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie The French Connection.” The YouTube clips—embedded below—are rather blurry, but they show the authority-allergic Egan (a master of disguise) leaving Manhattan to become a police detective in Los Angeles. The scenes feature plenty of action and a great theme by Lalo Schifrin. Too bad that ABC didn’t pick up Egan as a series.



• Speaking of YouTube delights, the site’s TV Archive page recently posted complete episodes of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. That short-lived 1996 CBS-TV spy series starred Scott Bakula and Maria Bello as covert operatives who posed as a married couple and worked for a super-secret private security agency known only as “The Factory.” I remember the series fondly, even though it lasted a mere 13 episodes—all of which can be watched, for the time being, by clicking here.

• I also recall watching the 1983 NBC-TV series Casablanca, which gave former Starsky & Hutch co-star David Soul the unenviable task of playing World War II-era Morocco nightclub owner Rick Blaine, the role Humphrey Bogart had filled in the 1941 film of the same name. But I wasn’t even born yet when Charles McGraw featured in a 1955-1956 spin-off of Casablanca, which Roy Huggins produced, and that Mystery*File contributor Michael Shonk calls “a better than average TV noir drama for the early days of television.” Shonk includes a full episode of the show in this post.

• Happy 10th birthday to the blog Pulp International!

• Halloween has passed, but you should still look over CrimeReads’ “25 Most Terrifyingly Beautiful Edgar Allan Poe Illustrations.”

• For anyone wishing to get better acquainted with Edgar Award-winning author Ross Thomas, Neil Nyren provides this handy guide to his novels about “con men, spies, politicians, and double crossers.”

• The Killing Times chooses “15 essential spy TV series,” including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Alias, Callan, and The Sandbaggers.

• Crime Fiction Lover selects what it says are the seven best crime-fiction debuts of 2018. I’ve read a couple of those books already, but have still more reading to do before the year runs its course.

• For Criminal Element, author Tom Wood (Kill for Me) weighs in on “The Top 7 Cinematic Assassins,” a rogues gallery that embraces Nikita from La Femme Nikita, Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, and Martin Blank from Grosse Pointe Blank.

• Another list: Kirkus Reviews picks nine thrilling page-turners.

• And I like Erica Wright’s picks of “9 Mysteries That Challenge Our Expectations of Crime Fighters.” Wright, by the way, wrote recently on this page about Charlotte Armstrong’s A Dram of Poison (1956).

• On the heels of news that the release of Kenneth Branagh’s second Hercule Poirot movie, Death on the Nile, has been delayed until 2020, BookRiot has compiled a “definitive ranking of Agatha Christie movies.” I’m surprised at how many of the 25 I haven’t yet seen.

• Authors interviews and profiles seem to have popped up everywhere you turn on the Internet lately. The writers being questioned include Jonathan Lethem (The Feral Detective), Timothy Hallinan (Nighttown), Tana French (The Witch Elm), Leye Adenle (When Trouble Sleeps), Henry Porter (Firefly), Jon Land (Manuscript for Murder), Libby Fischer Hellmann (High Crimes), Martin Limón (The Line), and Tom Leins (Repetition Kills You!).

• If you wait long enough, every good idea can be used again. That’s certainly the case with a 1958 interview James Bond creator Ian Fleming conducted with Raymond Chandler, who’s of course best known for giving us private eye Philip Marlowe. I wrote about their conversation way back in 2007, but it was only this month that CrimeReads revisited their discussion, which covers “what the two authors thought of one another’s work, as well as how they believed the murder of [mobster] Albert Anastasia was carried out.”

• While we’re on the subject of Fleming, note that British author Anthony Horowitz—whose second Agent 007 novel, Forever and a Day, was released this week in the States—has composed a piece for Criminal Element about James Bond’s influence on him as both a reader and a writer. You’ll find that post here.

• In his blog, Studies in Starrett, Ray Betzner traces the early 20th-century revival of interest in Sherlock Holmes. Betzner proclaims this the opening installment in a multipart report. Watch for the follow-up. POSTSCRIPT: I believe this is the first sequel post.

• Really, do we need a Jonny Quest movie?

• Wow, Toe Six Press debuted just this last April, but editor Sandra Ruttan is already out with her 17th issue, “Living My Best Life.”

• Lynne Truss remarks here on her experience with—and the history of—Britain’s Detection Club. For more about that club, see Martin Edwards’ 2015 non-fiction book, The Golden Age of Murder.

• In a post for In Reference to Murder, Jay A. Gertzman, professor emeritus of English at Mansfield University, tells about writing and researching his new book, Pulp According to David Goodis.

• Finally, while the results of this week’s U.S. midterm elections brought hope to many citizens who want Congress to finally reassert its vital oversight function and curb the more corrupt, anti-democratic antics of the country’s scandal-ridden prez, there were also cases across the country of voter suppression. How timely it was, then, that Curtis Evans should have written earlier this week about The Election Booth Murder, by Milton M. Propper, a 1935 novel having to do with Philadelphia’s “corrupt machine politics” and “the shooting murder of a reform political candidate on Election Day …”

Fighting Irish

Finalists have been selected in 16 categories for the 2018 An Post Irish Book Awards. The half-dozen novels contending for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year honors are as follows:

• A House of Ghosts, by W.C. Ryan (Zaffre)
• One Click, by Andrea Mara (Poolbeg Press)
• Skin Deep, by Liz Nugent (Penguin)
• The Confession, by Jo Spain (Quercus)
• The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan (Sphere)
• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)

As In Reference to Murder explains, “The public are now being asked to cast their votes online for the best books of the year on the Irish Book Awards website—voting runs until Friday, November 23rd.”

Night of the Daggers

The British crime-fiction community was out in force (not to mention in both tuxes and evening gowns) for tonight’s presentation, in London, of the 2018 Dagger Awards. This ceremony was organized, as always, by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), with the ever-versatile Barry Forshaw taking on master of ceremonies duty.

Thanks to Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim (actually, thanks to his Facebook page), we can now bring you all of the winners.

CWA Gold Dagger:
The Liar, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)

Also nominated: London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown); Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail); A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)

Also nominated: London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); If I Die Before I Wake, by Emily Koch (Harvill Secker); An Act of Silence, by Colette McBeth (Wildfire); The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Michael Joseph); and The Force, by Don Winslow (HarperFiction)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
Lola, by Melissa Scrivner Love (Point Blank)

Also nominated: Gravesend, by William Boyle (No Exit Press); IQ, by Joe Ide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Girl in Snow, by Danya Kukafka (Picador); East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)


Diamond Dagger Award recipient Michael Connelly, with Shots editor Mike Stotter. (Photo © Ali Karim 2018.)

CWA International Dagger: After the Fire, by Henning Mankell, translated by Marlaine Delargy (Harvill Secker)

Also nominated: Zen and the Art of Murder, by Oliver Bottini, translated by Jamie Bulloch (MacLehose Press); Three Days and a Life, by Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press); The Frozen Woman, by Jon Michelet, translated by Don Bartlett (No Exit Press); Offering to the Storm, by Dolores Redondo, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garzía (HarperCollins); and The Accordionist, by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)

CWA Historical Dagger:
Nucleus, by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

Also nominated: A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker); Fire, by L.C. Tyler (Constable); Lightning Men, by Thomas Mullen (Little, Brown); Money in the Morgue, by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy (HarperCollins); and Nine Lessons, by Nicola Upson (Faber and Faber)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
“Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” by Denise Mina (from Bloody Scotland; Historic Environment Scotland)

Also nominated: “The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle,” by Chris Brookmyre (from Bloody Scotland); “Second Son,” by Lee Child (from No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories, by Lee Child; Bantam Press); “Smoking Kills,” by Erin Kelly (from Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2: The Body, edited by Susan Opie; Killer Women); and “Accounting for Murder,” by Christine Poulson (from Mystery Tour: CWA Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Martin Edwards; Orenda)

CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction:
Blood on the Page, by Thomas Harding (Heinemann)

Also nominated: Black Dahlia, Red Rose, by Piu Eatwell (Coronet); Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann (Simon & Schuster); The Fact of a Body, by Alexandria Mariano-Lesnevich (Macmillan); A False Report, by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong (Hutchinson); and Rex v. Edith Thompson, by Laura Thompson (Head of Zeus)

CWA Dagger in the Library: Martin Edwards
(Selected by nominations from libraries)

Also nominated: Nicci French; Simon Kernick; Edward Marston; Peter May; and Rebecca Tope

CWA Debut Dagger (for unpublished writers):
The Eternal Life of Ezra Ben Simeon, by Bill Crotty

Also nominated: The Last Googling of Beth Bailly, by Luke Melia; Riverine Blood, by Joseph James; Original Sins, by Linda McLaughlin; and Trust Me, I’m Dead, by Sherryl Clark

In addition, American author Michael Connelly was presented with the CWA’s 2018 Diamond Dagger Award for “sustained excellence” in the crime fiction-writing field. And Red Herring Awards (“for outstanding work in support of the CWA”) were given to Ali Karim, Ayo Onatade, David Stuart Davies, and Mike Stotter.

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s prizes, as well as to all of the other honored nominees.

Hinkson’s Big French Showing

In addition to the news, reported here yesterday, of the winners in two other recent literary competitions, mention should be made of the fact that Chicago author Jake Hinkson’s 2015 novel, No Tomorrow (New Pulp Press), has been chosen to receive the 2018 Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. That French award, established in 1948 by novelist-critic Maurice-Bernard Endrebe, is given out annually to a pair of crime novels published in France during the previous year—one French and the other foreign. No Tomorrow has captured the foreign book honor, while Marion Brunet has claimed the French prize for her 2018 novel, L'été circulaire (The Circle of Summer).

The list of other contenders for both Grand Prix de Littérature Policière prizes this year can be found here. Among Hinkson’s foreign-author rivals for the commendation were Eva Dolan (from Britain), Jørn Lier Horst (Norway), and Fernando Aramburu (Spain).

After noting this latest international win in his blog, The Night Editor (he’d previously picked up the 2016 Prix Mystère de la Critique), Hinkson wrote: “It’s a remarkable honor, and one that I’m going to bask in for a while. If you need me, I’ll be chugging a cheap Bordeaux and singing ‘La Marseillaise.’”

Keeping It All in the Family

Because I was away from my office all of yesterday, it’s only this morning that I am finally able to post the news that Liam McIlvanney, an academic in New Zealand and the son of legendary Scottish crime writer William McIlvanney (Laidlaw), has won the Scottish award named in honor of his late father. It was announced during Friday’s opening reception at the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling, that the younger McIlvanney’s most recent novel, a serial-killer yarn titled The Quaker (HarperCollins), was chosen to receive the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for crime book of the year.

Also vying for this year’s McIlvanney Prize were Follow the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan); Places in the Darkness, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown); and The Man Between, by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins). Congratulations to them, as well as McIlvanney.

Previous recipients of the McIlvanney Prize are Denise Mina (for The Long Drop in 2017), Chris Brookmyre (for Black Widow in 2016), Craig Russell (for The Ghosts of Altona in 2015), Peter May (for Entry Island in 2014), Malcolm Mackay (for How a Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013), and Charles Cumming (for A Foreign Country in 2012).

* * *

Meanwhile, Mystery Fanfare reports, “Abir Mukherjee has won the 2018 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize (£15,000) with his second novel, A Necessary Evil (Vintage). The historical crime tale, set in India in 1920, sees Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force investigate the assassination of a Maharajah's son.”

Now Come the Anthonys

Bouchercon 2018 will be shutting its doors today in St. Petersburg, Florida, after a four-day run. But not before handing out one final set of award winners. Last evening brought the announcement of which books and authors won this year’s Anthony Awards.

Best Novel:
Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)

Also nominated: The Late Show, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper); Glass Houses, by Louise Penny (Minotaur); and The Force, by Don Winslow (Morrow)

Best First Novel:
Hollywood Homicide, by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)

Also nominated: She Rides Shotgun, by Jordan Harper (Ecco); The Dry, by Jane Harper (Flatiron); Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All, by Christopher Irvin (Cutlass Press); and The Last Place You Look, by Kristen Lepionka (Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original:
The Day I Died, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)

Also nominated: Uncorking a Lie, by Nadine Nettmann (Midnight Ink); Bad Boy Boogie, by Thomas Pluck (Down & Out); What We Reckon, by Eryk Pruitt (Polis); and Cast the First Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Bill Crider Award for Best Novel in a Series: Y Is for Yesterday (Kinsey Millhone #25), by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood/Putnam)

Also nominated: Give Up the Dead (Jay Porter #3), by Joe Clifford (Oceanview); Two Kinds of Truth (Harry Bosch #20), by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); Glass Houses (Armand Gamache #13), by Louise Penny (Minotaur); and Dangerous Ends (Pete Fernandez #3), by Alex Segura (Polis)

Best Anthology: The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, edited by Gary Phillips (Three Rooms Press)

Also nominated: Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, edited by Joe Clifford (Gutter); Killing Malmon, edited by Dan and Kate Malmon (Down & Out); Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks (Down & Out); and Passport to Murder, Bouchercon Anthology 2017, edited by John McFetridge (Down & Out)

Best Short Story: “My Side of the Matter,” by Hilary Davidson (from Killing Malmon, edited by Dan and Kate Malmon; Down & Out)

Also nominated: “The Trial of Madame Pelletier,” by Susanna Calkins (from Malice Domestic 12: Mystery Most Historical, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons; Wildside Press); “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” by Jen Conley (from Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, edited by Joe Clifford; Gutter); “Whose Wine Is It Anyway?” by Barb Goffman (from 50 Shades of Cabernet; Koehler); “The Night They Burned Miss Dixie’s Place,” by Debra Goldstein (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017); and “A Necessary Ingredient,” by Art Taylor (from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks; Down & Out)

Best Critical/Non-Fiction Book: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann (Doubleday)

Also nominated: From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon, by Mattias Boström (Mysterious Press); The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press); Chester B. Himes: A Biography, by Lawrence P. Jackson (Norton); and Rewrite Your Life: Discover Your Truth Through the Healing Power of Fiction, by Jessica Lourey (Conari Press)

Best Online Content: Jungle Red Writers

Also nominated: Writer Types Podcast; Do Some Damage; Dru’s Book Musings; and BOLO Books

Lifetime Achievement Award: Ian Rankin

David Thompson Memorial Special Service Award: Lesa Holstine

Congratulations to everyone who was considered for a prize!

Next year’s Bouchercon will be held in Dallas, Texas, from October 31 to November 3. It will mark this convention’s 50th year.

READ MORE: “Bouchercon 2018—The BOLO Books Recap,” by Kristopher Zgorski (BOLO Books).

P.I.s on Parade

Since I am not among the attendees at this week’s Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, Florida, and therefore was absent from last night’s presentation of the 2018 Shamus Awards, I’ve had some difficulty in collecting the results. But here, finally, are the winners.

Best Private Eye Novel:
The Room of White Fire, by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)

Also nominated: Dark Water, by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury USA); Blood Truth, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview); Y Is for Yesterday, by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood/Putnam); and Monument Road, by Michael Wiley
(Severn House)

Best First Private Eye Novel:
The Last Place You Look, by Kristen Lepionka (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Under Water, by Casey Barrett (Kensington); A Negro and an Ofay, by Danny Gardner (Down & Out); Gone to Dust, by Matt Goldman (Forge); and August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones
(Soho Crime)

Best Original Private Eye Paperback:
Lights Out Summer, by Rich Zahradnik (Camel Press)

Also nominated: Play a Cold Hand, by Terence Faherty (Perfect Crime); The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star, by Vaseem Khan (Redhook); Dames Fight Harder, by M. Ruth Myers (CreateSpace); and The Painted Gun, by Bradley Spinelli (Akashic)

Best P.I. Short Story: “Rosalie Marx is Missing,” by Robert S. Levinson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017)

Also nominated: “Out of Business,” by Eric Beetner (Down & Out: The Magazine, Volume 1/Issue 1); “Breakage,” by Reed Farrel Coleman (Down & Out: The Magazine, Volume 1/Issue 1); “Random,” by Brendan Dubois (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2017); and “Windward,” by Paul D. Marks (from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks; Down & Out)

The Shamuses are sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America. Congratulations to all of the nominated authors and books!

Barry Well Done

In addition to the Macavity Awards, the Barry Awards were handed out last evening during opening ceremonies at the 2018 Bouchercon convention in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Barrys are presented each year by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.

Best Novel: The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne (Putnam)

Also nominated: The Late Show, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); Exit Strategy, by Steve Hamilton (Putnam); The Force, by Don Winslow (Morrow); Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (Putnam); and Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)

Best First Novel: The Dry, by Jane Harper (Flatiron Press)

Also nominated: She Rides Shotgun, by Jordan Harper (Ecco); The Lost Ones, by Sheena Kamal (Morrow); The Irregular, by H.P. Lyle (Quercus); A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus); and My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent (Riverhead)

Best Paperback Original: The Deep Dark Descending,
by Allen Eskens (Seventh Street)

Also nominated: Safe From Harm, by R.J. Bailey (Simon & Schuster UK); Hollywood Homicide, by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink); The Day I Died, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow); Blessed Are the Peacemakers, by Kristi Belcamino (CreateSpace); and Super Con, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

Best Thriller: Unsub, by Meg Gardiner (Dutton)

Also nominated: Gunmetal Gray, by Mark Greaney (Berkley); Spook Street, by Mick Herron (Soho); The Freedom Broker, by K.J. Howe (Quercus); The Old Man, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press); and Trap the Devil, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

Congratulations to the winners as well as the other nominees.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

A Macavity Celebration in St. Pete

Tonight brought the opening of Bouchercon 2018, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the announcement of this year’s Macavity Award winners. As Janet Rudolph explains in Mystery Fanfare, “The Macavity Awards are nominated by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, and friends of MRI.”

Best Mystery Novel: Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)

Also nominated: The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne (Putnam); Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Mulholland); Glass Houses, by Louise Penny (Minotaur); The Old Man, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press); and The Force, by Don Winslow (Morrow)

Best First Mystery Novel: The Lost Ones, by Sheena Kamal (Morrow)

Also nominated: Hollywood Homicide, by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink); The Dry, by Jane Harper (Flatiron); She Rides Shotgun, by Jordan Harper (Ecco); The Last Place You Look, by Kristen Lepionka (Minotaur); and Lost Luggage, by Wendall Thomas (Poisoned Pen Press)

Best Mystery-Related Non-Fiction: The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press/British Library)

Also nominated: From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon, by Mattias Bostrom (Mysterious Press); Chester B. Himes: A Biography, by Lawrence P. Jackson (Norton); The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery, by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James (Scribner); Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury); and Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History, by Tori Telfer (Harper Perennial)

Best Mystery Short Story: “Windward,” by Paul D. Marks (from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Paul D. Marks and Andrew McAleer; Down & Out Books)

Also nominated: “As Ye Sow,” by Craig Faustus Buck (from Passport to Murder: Bouchercon Anthology 2017, edited by John McFetridge; Down and Out Books); “The #2 Pencil,” by Matt Coyle (from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea); “Infinite Uticas,” by Terence Faherty (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017); “Whose Wine Is It Anyway?” by Barb Goffman (from 50 Shades of Cabernet: A Mysterious Anthology; Koehler); and “A Necessary Ingredient,” by Art Taylor (from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery: In Farleigh Field, by Rhys Bowen (Lake Union)

Also nominated: Dangerous to Know, by Renee Patrick (Forge); The Devouring, by James R. Benn (Soho Crime); Cast the First Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street); Racing the Devil, by Charles Todd (Morrow); and A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)

Congratulations to the winners and other nominees alike!

Scotland’s Final Four

About two and a half months after announcing their longlist of a dozen contenders for the 2018 McIlvanney Prize, a panel of judges today named the four finalists for that award:

• Follow the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)
• Places in the Darkness, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
• The Man Between, by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins)
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)

The winner will be declared on Friday, September 21, during the opening reception of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling. In addition to the prize itself, the victor will receive £1000 and nationwide promotion by Waterstones.

This annual commendation—recognizing “excellence in Scottish crime writing”—is named in honor of William McIlvanney, author of the novel Laidlaw (and the late father of prize nominee Liam McIlvanney). Previous recipients of the McIlvanney Prize are Denise Mina (for The Long Drop in 2017), Chris Brookmyre (for Black Widow in 2016), Craig Russell (for The Ghosts of Altona in 2015), Peter May (for Entry Island in 2014), Malcolm Mackay (for How a Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013), and Charles Cumming (for A Foreign Country in 2012).

The Night of the Ngaios

Backcountry mysteries made headlines last evening, as both of the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards—celebrating the increasing breadth of New Zealand crime fiction—went to novels described as “involv[ing] deadly deeds set against small towns and rural landscapes.”

Best Crime Novel: Marlborough Man, by Alan Carter (Fremantle Press)

Also nominated: See You in September, by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin); Tess, by Kirsten McDougall (VUP); The Sound of Her Voice, by Nathan Blackwell (Mary Egan); A Killer Harvest, by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press); and The Hidden Room, by Stella Duffy (Virago)

Best First Novel: All Our Secrets, by Jennifer Lane (Rosa Mira)

Also nominated: The Floating Basin, by Carolyn Hawes; Broken Silence, by Helen Vivienne Fletcher (HVF); The Sound of Her Voice, by Nathan Blackwell (Mary Egan); and Nothing Bad Happens Here, by Nikki Crutchley (Oak House Press)

This year’s Ngaio judges called Carter’s Marlborough Man—a novel about an ex-undercover agent from England, relocated to life at the top of New Zealand’s South Island after a job gone wrong back home—“a terrific, full-throated crime thriller that puts the freshest of spins on the cop-with-a-past trope.” They added: “Carter is a first-class wordsmith with a particular talent for authentic dialogue. The novel’s setting wholly embraces the people and action, and the overall effect is powerful and persuasive.”

As to short story-writing veteran Lee’s All Our Secrets—narrated by the adolescent spokesperson for a troubled family, and focusing on the disappearances of children from an Australian cult—the judges said: “A very assured debut sitting somewhere between something aimed at older teen readers and something very readable for adults. All Our Secrets is strongly voiced, has a great sense of place, wonderfully drawn characters, and an excellent plot.”

The Ngaio Awards were given out during New Zealand’s WORD Christchurch Festival. Summing up this year’s competition, its founder, Craig Sisterson, observes: “We had a record number of entries, a big influx of exciting new voices, and the welcome return of some of our great crime storytellers from the 1990s and early 2000s, including Stella Duffy and Edmund Bohan.”

Congratulations to all of the nominees.