“The Maid” Cleans Up

Yesterday brought the announcement of the winners in this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards competition. In the “Best Mystery & Thriller” category, the prize goes to The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine).

The other nine finalists in that field were All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam); The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press); Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron); Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley); A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur); Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow); The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley (Morrow); The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James (Berkley); and The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking).

Click here to find the victors in all 17 of this contest’s divisions.

North Sea Tale Earns Petrona

From a shortlist of six novels competing for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, a winner has finally been selected. It’s Fatal Isles (Zaffre, 2021), written by Swedish author Maria Adolfsson and translated by Agnes Broomé. That announcement was made this morning.

The judges issued this statement in regard to Adolfsson’s book:

This captivating winning novel is the first in a proposed trilogy featuring the beautifully flawed protagonist Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby, whose take on life and work make for a strong down-to-earth and modern heroine in the relicts of a man’s world.

Set in the fictional yet completely credible location of Doggerland, this three-islands archipelago in the North Sea reflects Scandinavian, North European and British heritages. Doggerland is shaped and influenced by its geographical position; the atmospheric setting, akin to the wind- and history-swept Faroe and Shetland Islands, and Nordic climes, enhances the suspenseful and intriguing plot of a police procedural that combines detailed observations and thoughts on the human condition. A brutal murder sets in motion an investigation into layers of hidden secrets and of societal attitudes, and the interaction between the superbly portrayed characters creates a thrilling tension and believable environment.

Also in contention for this year’s coveted Petrona Award were The Therapist, by Helene Flood, translated by Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press); Everything Is Mine, by Ruth Lillegraven, translated by Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing); Knock Knock, by Anders Roslund, translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker); Cold as Hell, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda); and The Rabbit Factor, by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Finland, Orenda).

The original longlist of 12 nominees can be found here.

The Petrona Award memorializes Maxine Clarke, the British editor, crime-fiction blogger, and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction” who passed away in December 2012 (Petrona was the name of her long-running blog). Previous recipients include Mikael Niemi’s To Cook a Bear (2021), Antti Tuomainen’s Little Siberia (2020), and Jørn Lier Horst’s The Katharina Code (2019). To learn more about this prize and its history, refer to the Petrona Award Web site.

And the Results Are In!

The British Web site Crime Fiction Lover this morning announced the lineup of winners in its second annual Crime Fiction Lover Awards competition. There were six original categories, but in the end, CFL editors doubled that number by selecting their own favorites.

Best Crime Novel:
The Locked Room, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)

Also nominated: The Accomplice, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion); The Twist of a Knife, by Anthony Horowitz (Penguin); City on Fire, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins); The Shadows of Men, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage); and The Twyford Code, by Janice Hallett (Viper)

Best Novel, Editor’s Choice:
The Shadows of Men, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)

Best Debut Crime Novel:
A Christmas Murder of Crows, by D.M. Austin (Whitefox)

Also nominated: Breaking, by Amanda Cassidy (Canelo); The Redeemer, by Victoria Goldman (Three Crowns); Bad for Good, by Graham Bartlett (Allison & Busby); Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Press); and More Than You’ll Ever Know, by Katie Gutierrez (Michael Joseph)

Best Debut, Editor’s Choice:
Bad for Good, by Graham Bartlett (Allison & Busby)

Best Crime Novel in Translation:
The Dark Flood, by Deon Meyer, translated by K.L. Seegers
(Hodder & Stoughton)

Also nominated: Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight, by Riku Onada, translated by Alison Watts (Bitter Lemon Press); Turf Wars, by Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor (MacLehose Press); Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas, translated by Anne McLean (MacLehose Press); The Old Woman with the Knife, by Gu Byeong-Mo, translated by Chi-Young Kim (Canongate); and The Reptile Memoirs, by Silje Ulstein, translated by Alison McCullough (Grove Press)

Best Crime Novel in Translation, Editor’s Choice:
The Old Woman with the Knife, by Gu Byeong-Mo, translated by
Chi-Young Kim (Canongate)

Best Indie Crime Novel:
The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill (Ultimo Press)

Also nominated: How to Murder a Marriage, by Gabrielle St. George (Level Best); Unjust Bias, by Liz Mistry (Liz Mistry); The Corpse with the Turquoise Toes, by Cathy Ace (Four Tails); Five Moves of Doom, by A.J. Devlin (Newest Press); and A Mourning Song, by Mark Westmoreland (Shotgun Honey)

Best Indie Crime Novel, Editor’s Choice:
Five Moves of Doom, by A.J. Devlin (Newest Press)

Best Crime Show: Shetland (BBC One)

Also nominated: Dahmer – Monster (Netflix); Bosch: Legacy (Freevee); Slow Horses (Apple TV+); Black Bird (Apple TV+); and Reacher (Amazon Prime)

Best Crime Show, Editor’s Choice: Bosch: Legacy (Freevee)

Best Crime Author: Elly Griffiths

Also nominated: Steve Cavanagh; Ann Cleeves; S.A. Cosby; Michael Connelly; and Val McDermid

Best Crime Author, Editor’s Choice: Steve Cavanagh

There are no great upsets here. Yes, it’s a bit odd that Mukherjee’s The Shadows of Men—as excellent as it is—should have triumphed in the “Best Crime Novel” category, since it premiered (on both sides of the Atlantic) in 2021, not this year. But that book’s UK paperback release did come this last June, so I guess that qualifies it. And the odds were certainly in Shetland’s favor to win “Best Crime Show,” if only for sentimental reasons: the recent seventh season was star Douglas Henshall’s last one playing Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez.

Irish Eyes Are Definitely Smiling

The winners of this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards have been announced, and Edel Coffey’s first novel, Breaking Point (Sphere), was named as the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year.

Also shortlisted for that same prize were Remember My Name, by Sam Blake (Corvus); Run Time, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus); The Accomplice, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion); The Interview, by Gill Perdue (Sandycove); and Hide and Seek, by Andrea Mara (Transworld).

There were 17 categories of contenders for the 2022 Irish Books Awards, chosen to represent the best Ireland has to offer in the literary arts. You will find all of the winners listed here.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Bullet Points: World Cup Edition

• We’ve now entered the final round of voting in this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards competition. The original collection of 20 books vying for “Best Mystery & Thriller” honors has now been chopped in half, with the following candidates remaining:

— All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam)
— The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)
— Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron)
— The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
— Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
— A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur)
— Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
— The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
— The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James (Berkley)
— The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)

Click here to select your favorite from among those, but tarry not—voting in this round will end on December 4, with winners in this and other categories to be announced on Thursday, December 8.

• Just when you thought you had heard the last of Lisbeth Salander, she’s back. The antisocial and troubled computer hacker, who made her initial appearance in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2007) and was last spotted in David Lagercrantz’s third series continuation novel, The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019), returned earlier this month in Swedish author Karin Smirnoff’s Havsörnens Skrik, a thriller that’s set to be published in English next August 29 as The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons. The Guardian reported recently that “Smirnoff’s book moves Salander’s story from Stockholm to northern Sweden, which [the yarn’s] UK publisher MacLehose Press said was ‘an area vast and beautiful, but also dealing with economic and social problems and the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation,’” American readers should be pleased to learn that The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be brought out simultaneously on this side of the Atlantic under the Alfred A. Knopf imprint.

• English author Stuart Turton has won Germany’s 2022 Viktor Crime Award for The Devil and Dark Water, a standalone historical thriller first released in English in 2020—and one of my favorite books of that year. This announcement was made earlier in November at Mord am Hellweg, described as “Europe’s largest international crime film festival.” Also shortlisted for the 2022 Viktor Award were Kazltes Herz (Cold Heart), by Henri Faber, and Horvath und die verschwundenen Schüler (Horvath and the Missing Students), by Marc Hofmann. The Viktor Crime Award has been presented ever since 2018, when Michaela Kastel won it for her thriller So Dark the Forest.

• Double or Nothing, Kim Sherwood’s first (of three) Double 0 agents thrillers, hit the shelves in Britain early this last September; it won’t see print in the United States until April 2023. However, the author says she has already completed work on her second installment, which runs 101,042 words in length (before editing). That sequel’s title—if it even has one yet—has not been publicly circulated.

• Entries in next year’s Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition are due by Saturday, December 31. Those stories should not exceed 2,000 words in length, and must not have been published previously in any format. The theme for this year’s brief yarns is “A Crime Story Set in Scotland.” Writers from anywhere in the world are eligible to take part in this contest, but all must be over 16 years old. Prizes of £1,000 and £500 will go, respectively, to the First Place winner and a Runner-up. “The overall winning entry,” says the Glencairn Glass Web site, “will be published in Scottish Field Magazine and online at www.whiskyglass.com.” Click here to enter.

• Well, this is unfortunate TV news. From Variety:

ABC has reversed course on the drama series “Avalon,” opting not to move forward with the show despite giving it a straight-to-series order in February.

“Avalon” hailed from David E. Kelley and executive producer Michael Connelly, with the show based on a short story that Connelly wrote. Neve Campbell was set to star in the lead role. Other cast members included Demetrius Grosse, Alexa Mansour, Steven Pasquale, and Roslyn Ruff.

Per the official logline, the show “takes place in the main city of Avalon on Catalina Island, where LA Sheriff Department Detective Nicole “Nic” Searcy (Campbell) heads up a small office. Catalina has a local population that serves more than 1 million tourists a year, and each day when the ferries arrive, hundreds of potential new stories enter the island. Detective Searcy is pulled into a career-defining mystery that will challenge everything she knows about herself and the island.”

According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, ABC opted not to move forward with the series order for “Avalon” after screening the pilot. A+E Studios is said to still be bullish about the project and are weighing options on how to proceed.

• Adam Graham, host of The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, shares his authoritative opinions about “The Top Ten Police Foils In Old Time Radio” (click here and here), and “The Four Worst Old Time Radio Detective Police Characters.”

• The mid-November edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes observations on the annual Richard Lancelyn Green lecture; Francis Clifford’s 1976 novel, Drummer in the Dark; this year’s “ultimate Christmas mystery,” Alexandra Benedict’s Murder on the Christmas Express; a quartet of Czechoslovakian thrillers; plus fresh releases from Louise Penny, Ant Middleton, and B.A. Paris. Read about all of that and more here.

• Congratulations to The Bunburyist for having clocked its one-millionth pageview! As I wrote in a brief comment attached to blogger Elizabeth Foxwell’s post yesterday about this achievement, “I check The Bunburyist regularly, and consider it a great source of both information and enjoyment.”

• Max Allan Collins’ 18th Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle, isn’t due out until January (a month later than expected, because of shipping issues). But he says he’s already completed the writing of his 19th series entry, Too Many Bullets, which finds private eye Heller investigating Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination. “It’s a big book,” he writes in his blog, “on the lines of [1983’s] True Detective, and in a sense it’s the bookend to that first Heller memoir. It’s been very difficult, in part because of my health issues (doing better, thanks) but also because it’s one of the most complicated cases I’ve dealt with.” The 74-year-old author says his next Heller tale for publisher Hard Case Crime will tackle the mysterious 1975 disappearance of labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa. After that? Collins admits he’s “wrestling with … how long I should to stay at it with Heller. The degree of difficulty ... is tough at this age. Right now I am considering a kind of coda novel (much like Skim Deep for Nolan and Quarry’s Blood for Quarry) that would wrap things up. … Should I go that direction, and should my health and degree of interest continue on a positive course, I might do an occasional Heller in a somewhat shorter format. Of course, the problem with that is these crimes are always more complex than I think they’re going to be.”

• On the subject of forthcoming works, English professor and author Art Taylor mentions in his blog that he has a new short-story collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, due out from Crippen & Landru in February 2023 (though I see no Amazon ordering link yet). Packing in 14 abbreviated yarns, plus an introduction by the esteemed Martin Edwards, Castle Thief will be Taylor’s second book from Crippen, following 2020’s The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense. Taylor was generous enough to send me an advanced readers copy of his new collection, but I’ve had to hold off opening it until after I get The Rap Sheet’s end-of-the-year features organized.

• Seriously, Universal Pictures is going to shoot a big-screen flick based on the 1981-1986 Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy? Deadline reports Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and Teresa Palmer are all in the cast, and that this movie will premiere in March 2024. The original series was about Hollywood stunt people who moonlight as bounty hunters. Click here to watch that show’s opening title sequence.

• Crime by the Book’s Abby Endler attended this month’s Iceland Noir festival in Reykjavik, and she wants to tell us all about it.

• Having greatly enjoyed the six-part, 2016 BBC One/AMC TV drama The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel of that same name, I look forward to seeing how this project from the same producer turns out. As stated In Reference to Murder:

The Night Manager producer, The Ink Factory, is creating a TV version of John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man almost a decade after making a feature film version, with Snabba Cash writer, Oskar Söderlund, serving as showrunner. No broadcaster is attached as of yet, although Söderlund’s version is said to be updated to a modern-day European context. One of le Carré’s best known works, A Most Wanted Man follows a young Chechen ex-prisoner who arrives illegally in Germany with a claim to a fortune held in a private bank. It was written against the backdrop of George W. Bush’s policy of “extraordinary rendition” and inspired by the real-life story of Murat Kurnaz.

• In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore asks that immortal question, “Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation?”

• There’s no topping George Easter when it comes to tracking down lists of 2022’s best crime, mystery, and thriller works. Just over the last few days, the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor has pointed us toward collections in The Financial Times (by both Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor), Crime Time (by columnist Maxim Jakubowski), The Irish Times (by author Jane Casey), New Zealand Listener magazine, and a couple of Web sites that are new to me: The List and Lifehacker AU. He has also helpfully edited National Public Radio’s original list of what it calls this year’s 46 best mysteries to remove horror fiction, young-adult works, non-fiction books, and others that exceed the limits of the genre.

• The only picks I don’t think Easter has mentioned yet are those from British blogger Rekha Rao, at The Book Decoder. She’s assembled a long post of book covers that lead to reviews written over the last 12 months. Her many categories of choices include Best Cozy Mystery (Series Debut), Best Crime and Mystery (in a Series), and Best Standalone Mysteries and Thrillers. There are also selections in the fields of general fiction and romance, if you swing that way.

• Although The New York Times hasn’t yet revealed its crime, mystery, and thriller “bests” of this year, it did recently come out with a rundown of “100 Notable Books of 2022.” Featured there are Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detectives Club, Percival Everett’s Dr. No, and Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road.

• Mere days after announcing that Scottish actress Ashley Jensen will assume the helm of BBC One’s Shetland, now that Douglas Henshall has left his role on that TV series as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, The Killing Times asks: Was this new hire really a good idea? After all, it’s noted, viewers expected Perez’s number two, Detective Sergeant Alison “Tosh” McIntosh (played by Alison O’Donnell) to step into the breach. Editor Paul Hirons writes that “it felt like she was primed for a promotion—she had just become a mum, had come through a sticky moment after surviving a bomb attack in series seven, and had seemed to have accrued and soaked up all the knowledge and expertise from Jimmy she needed. Many will be disappointed that Tosh is not the show lead.” We’ll have to wait until Shetland’s eighth-season debut to see how Tosh herself views this surprising turn of events.

• This seems right: Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster’s 2022 Word of the Year is … gaslighting. “In our age of misinformation—‘fake news,’ conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time,” explains M-W editor at large Peter Sokolowski. “From politics to pop culture to relationships, it has become a favored word for the perception of deception.” Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman reflects here on the recent history of gaslighting in politics.

• And Mystery Fanfare notes the death, on November 10, of Shelley Singer. It goes on to say that she was “the author of 12 novels, including the Jake Samson mystery series. She taught fiction writing and worked one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant on non-fiction, literary novels, and in every genre from memoir to mystery to science fiction to horror.” A resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Singer was 83 when she died of “heart failure and other complications.”

Which Books Made the Petrona Shortlist?

Just two weeks after they released the longlist of 12 nominees for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, organizers of that prize have released this tally of finalists:

• Fatal Isles, by Maria Adolfsson,
translated by Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)
• The Therapist, by Helene Flood,
translated by Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)
• Everything Is Mine, by Ruth Lillegraven,
translated by Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)
• Knock Knock, by Anders Roslund,
translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)
• Cold as Hell, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir,
translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda)
• The Rabbit Factor, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Finland, Orenda)

As a news release explains, “The winning title will be announced on Thursday 8 December 2022. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize.”

Emerging and Engaging

The Sisters in Crime organization has announced that Sarah St. Asaph, a resident of London, England, has won its 2022 Pride Award, a commendation given to “emerging LGBTQIA+ writers.”

A news release goes on to explain that St. Asaph’s “winning novel-in-progress is a contemporary medical-legal crime mystery where a young lawyer is given the chance to re-examine the evidence against a former hospital doctor that has been convicted as Britain’s worst-ever female serial killer. The novel explores how women are treated within the criminal justice system and plays with the prejudices and preconceptions they face as perpetrators of crimes.”

St. Asaph’s submission was chosen from among 58 entries to this year’s Pride Award competition. As part of that honor, St. Asaph—who describes herself as “a lifelong lover of crime and mystery literature”—is set to receive a $2,000 grant “intended for a beginning crime writer to support activities related to career development, including workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of their work.” In addition, she will be given a Sisters in Crime membership, and her manuscript will be critiqued by Crooked Lane Books editor Terri Bischoff.

There are also five runners-up in this contest. Each of them will be put in contact with “an established Sisters in Crime member author” who can help them develop their own manuscripts. They are: C. Jean Downer of White Rock, British Columbia (to be matched with Cheryl Head), Diane Carmony of La Quinta, California (Jeffrey Marks), Roy Udeh-Ubaka of Gainesville, Florida (Anne Laughlin), Marle Redfern of New England (John Copenhaver), and Elaine Westnott-O’Brien of Tramore, County Waterford, Ireland (Catherine Maiorisi).

Congratulations to all of this year's contenders!

Translated Titles Touted

Organizers of the annual Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year today announced their longlist of nominees for the 2022 prize. Those books and authors are:

• Fatal Isles, by Maria Adolfsson, translated by Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)
• The Assistant, by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda Books)
• The Butterfly House, by Katrine Engberg, translated by Tara Chace (Denmark, Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Therapist, by Helene Flood, translated by Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)
• The Commandments, by Óskar Guðmundsson, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus)
• Smoke Screen, by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, translated by Megan Turney (Norway, Orenda)
• Everything Is Mine, by Ruth Lillegraven, translated by Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)
• Silenced, by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus)
• Knock Knock, by Anders Roslund, translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)
• Cold as Hell, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda)
• Geiger, by Gustaf Skördeman, translated by Ian Giles (Sweden, Zaffre)
• The Rabbit Factor, by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Finland, Orenda)

From these dozen titles (all released in Great Britain in 2021), a shortlist will be developed and released on November 16.

The Petrona Award memorializes Maxine Clarke, the British editor, crime-fiction blogger, and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction” who passed away in December 2012 (Petrona was the name of her long-running blog). Previous winners include Mikael Niemi’s To Cook a Bear, Antti Tuomainen’s Little Siberia, and Jørn Lier Horst’s The Katharina Code. To learn more about this prize and its history, refer to the Petrona Award Web site.

* * *

Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder carries the news this morning that “When Women Kill, by Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán (translated by Sophie Hughes), has won the 2022 British Academy Book Prize.” Blogger B.V. Lawson goes on to explain: “Novelist Zerán has long been fascinated not only with the root causes of violence against women, but by those women who have violently rejected the domestic and passive roles they were meant by their culture to inhabit. Choosing as her subject four iconic homicides perpetrated by Chilean women in the twentieth century—intertwining true crime, critical essays, and research diaries—she spent years researching this complex work of narrative nonfiction detailing not only the troubling tales of the murders themselves, but the story of how society, the media, and men in power reacted to these killings, painting their perpetrators as witches, hysterics, or femmes fatales.”

Four in One

• Sweet Freedom blogger Todd Mason has just posted the winners of the 2021 Shirley Jackson Awards, in half a dozen categories. Those prizes—handed out in-person on October 29, during a ceremony at the Boston Book Festival—celebrate “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” Not to keep you in suspense any longer: Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Saga Press) captured Best Novel honors.

• There are just a few days left now to nominate books, authors, and television programs in the second annual Crime Fiction Lover Awards competition. Polls will close at noon (UK time) on Wednesday, November 2. Learn more here.

• Just in time for Halloween, CrimeReads carries author W. Scott Poole’s account of how, during the mid-20th century, the FBI investigated actor Bela Lugosi—most renowned for his film role as Dracula—for alleged communist sympathies.

• And William Shatner makes a surprise guest appearance (well, sort of) on The Columbophile. In extended excerpts from the new book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder (Atria), the now 91-year-old actor reflects on his two roles—both times as the killer, naturally—on the TV crime drama Columbo, first in 1976, when that show was still part of the NBC Mystery Movie, and then in 1994, after it was revived as an element of The ABC Mystery Movie. The blog’s anonymous Australian author introduces Shatner’s recollections thusly: “So, how did Mr. Shatner enjoy working with Peter Falk? How does he feel knowing he’s part of a select group of actors who played multiple Columbo killers? And, most pertinently, what did he make of the ludicrous, colour-changing moustache he was sporting in ‘Butterfly in Shades of Grey’? Was he in on the joke, or an innocent victim of a makeup malfunction? Those questions will be answered below …”

Hibernian Title-seekers

After a few days spent (rather blissfully) offline, I have returned to my office to discover that the shortlists of nominees for this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards have been announced. There are 17 categories of contenders in total, chosen to represent the best Ireland has to offer in the literary arts. The divisions include these half-dozen nominees for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year:

• Remember My Name, by Sam Blake (Corvus)
• Run Time, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus)
• Breaking Point, by Edel Coffey (Sphere)
• The Accomplice, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• The Interview, by Gill Perdue (Sandycove)
• Hide and Seek, by Andrea Mara (Transworld)

Readers are encouraged to vote for their favorites among those six works. To do so, click here. On that same page, you may weigh in as well on non-fiction releases, cookbooks, children’s titles, and other category prize seekers. Only one vote per e-mail address.

Voting in this competition will end on Thursday, November 10, with the winners to be declared on November 23.

Take Your Best Shot

For the second year in a row, the British Web site Crime Fiction Lover is asking genre fans to choose the contenders for its Crime Fiction Lover Awards. “All year,” it remarks, “you’ve been reading our opinions on crime novels and seeing the verdicts we give at the bottom of our reviews. Now it’s your turn to have your say. You get to decide who wins a Crime Fiction Lover Award in 2022.”

Nominations will be accepted between now and noon (UK time) on Wednesday, November 2, in six separate categories:

• Best Crime Novel
• Best Debut
• Best in Translation
• Best Indie Novel
• Best Author
• Best Crime Show

The official nominating form can be filled out here. You need not enter a title or name in every division.

To qualify, books must have reached print—in English—between November 1, 2021, and October 31, 2002. Best Author contestants must have had their crime fiction published during that same period. Following the balloting cut-off date, and the tallying of results, a shortlist of finalists will be released on Crime Fiction Lover, and a new online form posted to select this year’s winners.

Again, this is where you should go to register your votes. And look here for a full roster of the 2021 CFL Award recipients.

The Jackson Six

Mystery Fanfare today posted the lists of nominees for half a dozen 2021 Shirley Jackson Awards. These prizes celebrate “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” Below are the contenders for Best Novel.

• All the Murmuring Bones, by A.G. Slatter (Titan)
• Hummingbird Salamander, by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD)
• My Heart Is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press)
• No Gods, No Monsters, by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone)
• Nothing But Blackened Teeth, by Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire)

Click here to find the full rundown of 2021 aspirants.

This year’s prizes will be handed out in-person on October 29, during a ceremony at the Boston Book Festival. Said event will also include the presentation of a special award to New York author Ellen Datlow in recognition of her editing the anthology When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson (Titan).

Hand It to the Fingerprint Champs

This year’s Capital Crime Festival began in London yesterday, September 29, and will continue into tomorrow, October 1. But already news has been made with the announcement of which books and authors have won the festival’s inaugural Fingerprint Awards.

Crime Book of the Year:
The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse (Transworld)

Also nominated: 1979, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown); The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Viper); Girls Who Lie, by Eva Björg Ægisdottir (Orenda); and Slough House, by Mick Herron (John Murray Press)

Thriller Book of the Year:
Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)

Also nominated: A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins (Transworld); Dead Ground, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown); The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell (Cornerstone); and Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton)

Historical Crime Book of the Year:
The Shape of Darkness, by Laura Purcell (Bloomsbury)

Also nominated: A Net for Small Fishes, by Lucy Jago (Bloomsbury); Daughters of Night, by Laura-Shepherd Robinson (Pan Macmillan); The Shadows of Men, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage); and A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsay Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)

Debut Book of the Year:
Girl A, by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)

Also nominated: Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner (Bloomsbury); Welcome to Cooper, by Tariq Ashkanani (Thomas & Mercer); How to Kidnap the Rich, by Rahul Raina (Little, Brown); and Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Pan Macmillan)

Genre-Busting Book of the Year:
The Burning Girls, by C.J. Tudor Penguin)

Also nominated: The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Bloomsbury); How to Kill Your Family, by Bella Mackie (HarperCollins); Eight Detectives, by Alex Pavesi (Penguin); and What Abigail Did That Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion)

Audiobook of the Year: The Girl Who Died, by Ragnar Jónasson, narrated by Amanda Redman (Orenda)

Also nominated: People Like Her, by Ellery Lloyd (Pan Macmillan); True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Transworld); A Line to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz (Cornerstone); and I Know What I Saw, by Imran Mahmood (Bloomsbury)

Industry Award of the Year: HarperCollins for Girl A, by Abigail Dean

Lifetime Achievement Award (Posthumous): Thalia Proctor

Books eligible for the Fingerprints were all published in Great Britain in 2021. English actor and author Paul Clayton revealed this year’s winners during a special event on Thursday night.

(Hat tip to Promoting Crime Fiction.)

The Strand Selects Its Stars

I wasn’t available to watch last evening, when The Strand Magazine’s 2022 Critics Award winners were announced on Zoom. But Mystery Fanfare carried the news this morning. It seems fortune was determined to shine fondly once again on Virginia author S.A. Cosby, whose 2021 tale, Razorblade Tears, recently also picked up the Anthony Award for Best Novel, plus the Barry and Macavity awards for Best Mystery Novel. Below are this year’s Strand critics’ picks.

Best Mystery Debut: Bullet Train, by Kōtarō Isaka;
translated by Sam Malissa (Abrams)

Also nominated: Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown); The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria); Lightseekers, by Femi Kayode (Mulholland); Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey); and All Her Little Secrets, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Best Mystery Novel: Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)

Also nominated: The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); The Low Desert, by Tod Goldberg (Counterpoint); These Toxic Things, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer); Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); and 1979, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly)

Publisher of the Year: Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic in New York City

Lifetime Achievement Awards: Sandra Brown and Nelson DeMille

Congratulations to every one of the 2022 nominees!

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.)

“Forgive” Not So Easy to Forget

Less than a week after publicizing the shortlist of contenders for the 2022 McIlvanney Prize, organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival—which began today in Stirling, Scotland, and will continue into Sunday—have identified the winner of that competition: May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate).

Released in the States this last spring, May God Forgive is the fifth installment in Parks’ series starring too-often self-abusive but nonetheless determined Glasgow police detective Harry McCoy. A Publishers Weekly review says the story “finds McCoy just out of hospital after a four-week stay to rest a perforated ulcer. Subsisting on a diet of Pepto-Bismol and alcohol, he fumbles around the edges of a fire-bombing case that killed five women and children in a hairdressing salon. Three young men are charged with the crime. Their subsequent kidnapping from the van driving them to prison raises the stakes. McCoy pulls at loose threads until connections to other murders—and to a longtime gangster friend of his—appear. Throughout the unrelenting violence and the pathos of abject mid-city poverty, Parks keeps the focus on McCoy. Deeply flawed and battered by life, he doggedly persists in the hope things will turn out well for him, though the reader realizes they likely won’t.” PW ends by stating that May God Forgive “ranks with the best of Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride.”

Parks’ latest tale came out on top in this contest against four worthy challengers: The Heretic, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins); A Corruption of Blood, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate); and The Second Cut, by Louise Welsh (Canongate).

The annual McIlvanney Prize, named in honor of writer William McIlvanney, who died in 2015, celebrates “the best Scottish crime book of the year.” Previous recipients include Hyde, by Craig Russell; Pine, by Francine Too; and A Treachery of Spies, by Manda Scott.

In addition to news of Parks’ victory, it was announced today that Tariq Ashkanani has won the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize for his Nebraska-set yarn, Welcome to Cooper (Thomas & Mercer), described as an “explosive thriller of bad choices and dark crimes.” Arusa Qureshi, chair of the Debut Prize judges, called the novel “well-structured, bleak and just the right amount of disturbing,” adding: “I found myself going back and re-reading once I’d finished to make sure I had every detail right, which I think is the mark of a really clever and riveting story.”

For more information about these awards, click here.

We Certainly Know Bublitz’s Name Now

Something unusual happened in New Zealand during last night’s presentation of the 2022 Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction: the same book, Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name (Allen & Unwin), scooped up both Best Novel and Best First Novel honors.

“Ngaio Marsh Awards founder Craig Sisterson noted,” according to a news release, “that while a few excellent debuts have been shortlisted for both categories over the past several years, Before You Knew My Name is the first book to ever win two Ngaio Marsh Awards. [Taranaki author] Bublitz also joins Christchurch author and international bestseller Paul Cleave, a three-time Best Novel winner, as the only Kiwi storytellers with multiple Ngaios. So far.” That same press alert goes on to mention that “The two Ngaio Marsh Awards add to a list of accolades for Bublitz’s debut that include winning General Fiction Book of the Year at the ABIA Awards, being shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger in the UK, and winning the Debut Crime and Readers’ Choice prizes at the Davitt Awards of Sisters in Crime Australia.”

So what does Bublitz’s yarn entail? Here’s the synopsis: “While Before You Knew My Name shares an inciting incident familiar to any viewer of U.S. cop shows—a jogger in New York City finds the body of a young woman—in her debut Bublitz flips the script by taking readers deep into the lives of Alice and Ruby, the victim and the jogger, rather than the detectives.” The book was first published in May 2021, but an American edition won’t reach stores until November 1.

Although Bubitz’s tale grabs today’s headlines, let us recognize as well the other works pitted against Before You Knew My Name. Also nominated in the Best Novel category were The Devils You Know, by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin); She’s a Killer, by Kirsten McDougall (Te Herenga Waka University Press); Quiet in Her Bones, by Nalini Singh (Hachette); The Quiet People, by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press); and Nancy Business, by R.W.R. McDonald (Allen & Unwin). Contending, too, for Best First Novel recognition were Isobar Precinct, by Angelique Kasmara (Cuba Press); Waking the Tiger, by Mark Wightman (Hobeck); Small Mouth Demon, by Matt Zwartz (Poetry in Motion); and Shadow Over Edmund Street, by Suzanne Frankham (Journeys to Words).

Congratulations to all of this year’s Ngaio Marsh nominees!

Best Showings in Blighty

I’m a bit tardy in reporting this, but I only just happened upon the news (in The Bookseller) that “Northumberland-based author Jacqueline Auld has won the [2022] Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, an award which celebrates the outstanding crime and thriller storytelling of those who are from, or whose work celebrates, north-east England.” The Lindisfarne is given annually to a work that has not yet been published in any form.

The Bookseller goes on to explain that “Auld’s submission, The Children of Gaia, was selected by the prize’s panel of judges, featuring crime writer Nicky Black, founder of Newcastle Noir festival Dr. Jacky Collins, last year’s winner of the prize Robert Scragg, and [the prize’s founder, author L.J.] Ross,” whose publishing imprint, Dark Skies Publishing, sponsors this honor together with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival and Newcastle Libraries. Auld is slated to be given £2,500 in prize money “to support the completion of her work, and funding towards a year’s membership of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors.”

As I noted in August, there were four rivals for this commendation: Clare Sewell’s Can't Hide, Duncan Robb’s Sharp Focus, Katherine Graham’s Salted Earth, and Ramona Slusarczyk’s The Taste of Iron.

Learn more about Auld and the Lindisfarne Prize here.

* * *

Meanwhile, today’s e-mail brings the announcement, from London’s Goldsboro Books, that TV journalist and author Elodie Harper has won the 2022 Glass Bell Award for The Wolf Den, “the first novel in a new trilogy re-imagining the lives of the forgotten women of Pompeii’s brothels, published by Head of Zeus.” As this year’s victor, Harper has received £2,000 and “a beautiful, handmade glass bell.”

There were five other contenders for the Glass Bell this year: We Are All Birds of Uganda, by Hafsa Zayyan (Merky); Sistersong, by Lucy Holland (Macmillan); Ariadne, by Jennifer Saint (Wildfire); Mrs. March, by Virginia Feito (Fourth Estate); and Daughters of Night, by Laura Shepherd Robinson (Mantle). Of those, only Daughters of the Night (one of my favorite books of 2021) can be deemed a crime/mystery novel. But the Glass Bell covers broader ground. As press materials explain, it is “awarded annually to a compelling novel, of any genre—from romance and thrillers, to historical, speculative and literary fiction—with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realized.”

The Glass Bell Award was created in 2017 by Goldsboro Books co-founder David Headley. Last year’s winner was Clare Whitfield’s People of Abandoned Character (Head of Zeus), which provided an unusual perspective on the 19th-century’s Jack the Ripper slayings.

Cosby’s Southern Noir Triumphs Up North

Bouchercon 2022 has shaped up as a most favorable convention for Gloucester, Virginia​, author S.A. Cosby, so far as prize wins go. Not only did his book Razorblade Tears receive the Barry and Macavity awards for Best Mystery Novel, but it has also now collected the Anthony Award for Best Novel. In addition, Cosby picked up the latest Anthony for Best Short Story. Below is the full complement of this year’s Anthony champs.

Best Novel:
Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)

Also nominated: Runner, by Tracy Clark (Kensington); The Collective, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow); Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime); and These Toxic Things, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)

Best First Novel:
Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley Prime Crime)

Also nominated: Her Name Is Knight, by Yasmin Angoe (Thomas & Mercer); The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria); Walking Through Needles, by Heather Levy (Polis); and All Her Little Secrets, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Best Short Story:
“Not My Cross to Bear,” by S.A. Cosby (from Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues, edited by Mark Westmoreland; Down & Out)

Also nominated: “The Search for Eric Garcia,” by E.A. Aymar (from Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color, edited by Abby L. Vandiver; Crooked Lane); “The Vermeer Conspiracy,” by V.M. Burns (from Midnight Hour); “Lucky Thirteen,” by Tracy Clark (from Midnight Hour); “Doc’s at Midnight,” by Richie Narvaez (from Midnight Hour); “The Locked Room Library,” by Gigi Pandian (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021); and “Burnt Ends,” by Gabriel Valjan (from This Time for Sure: Bouchercon Anthology 2021, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan; Down & Out)

Best Children’s/YA:
I Play One on TV, by Alan Orloff (Down & Out)

Also nominated: Cold-Blooded Myrtle, by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Algonquin Young Readers); Bury Me in Shadows, by Greg Herren (Bold Strokes); The Forest of Stolen Girls, by June Hur (Feiwel & Friends); and Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche, by Nancy Springer (Wednesday)

Best Anthology:
This Time for Sure: Bouchercon Anthology 2021, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan
(Down & Out)

Also nominated: Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S.A. Cosby (Rock & A Hard Place Press); Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color, edited by Abby L. Vandiver (Crooked Lane); Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues, edited by Mark Westmoreland (Down & Out); and When a Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta (Hanover Square Press)

Best Paperback/EBook/AudioBook (paperback publishers listed):
Bloodline, by Jess Lourey (Thomas & Mercer)

Also nominated: The Ninja Betrayed, by Tori Eldridge (Agora); Warn Me When It’s Time, by Cheryl A. Head (Bywater); Bury Me in Shadows, by Greg Herren (Bold Strokes); and The Mother Next Door, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)

Best Critical/Non-fiction:
How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child and Laurie R. King (Simon & Schuster)

Also nominated: The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, by Jan Brogan (Bright Leaf Press); Murder Book: A Graphic Memoir of a True Crime Obsession, by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Andrews McMeel); Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, by Elon Green (Celadon); and The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story, by Kate Summerscale (Penguin Press)

Lifetime Achievement Award: Ellen Hart

International Lifetime Achievement Award: Alexander McCall Smith

This year’s Bouchercon concludes early tomorrow afternoon. The 2023 convention, “Murder at the Marina,” is slated to take place in San Diego, California, from next August 30 to September 3.

READ MORE: “The State of the Crime Novel: A Roundtable Discussion with Crime Authors,” by Molly Odintz (CrimeReads).

Twice the Honors in the Twin Cities

This week’s Bouchercon convention, being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has already brought the announcement of two different sets of crime-fiction awards, with more prizes to come.

* * *

First up are the Barry Awards, presented annually by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, and named in honor of Barry W. Gardner, a longtime crime-fiction fan and book reviewer, who passed away in 1996.

Best Mystery/Crime Novel:
Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)

Also nominated: The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); Last Redemption, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview); Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime); Billy Summers, by Stephen King (Scribner); and We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt)

Best First Mystery/Crime Novel:
Sleeping Bear, by Connor Sullivan (Emily Bestler/Atria)

Also nominated: Who Is Maude Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown); Girl A, by Abigail Dean (Viking); Down Range, by Taylor Moore (Morrow); Falling, by T.J. Newman (Simon & Schuster); and Steel Fear, by Brandon Webb and John David Mann (Bantam)

Best Paperback Original:
The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan (Blackstone)

Also nominated: The Hunted, by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins); Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley); Black Coral, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer); Search for Her, by Rick Mofina (Mira); and Bound, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)

Best Thriller:
Five Decembers, by James Kestrel (HardCase Crime)

Also nominated: The Devil’s Hand, by Jack Carr (Emily Bestler/Atria); The Nameless Ones, by John Connolly (Emily Bestler/Atria); Dead by Dawn, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur); Relentless, by Mark Greaney (Berkley); and Slough House, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

* * *

Next come the Macavity Awards, named for T.S. Eliot’s “mystery cat” (in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), with winners selected by members of Mystery Readers International.

Best Mystery Novel:
Razorblade Tears, by S. A. Cosby (Flatiron)

Also nominated: The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); 1979, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly Press); Bobby March Will Live Forever, by Alan Parks (World Noir); We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt); and Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

Best First Mystery Novel:
Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley)

Also nominated: Who is Maude Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown); Girl A, by Abigail Dean (Viking); Deer Season, by Erin Flanagan (University of Nebraska Press); and All Her Little Secrets, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Best Mystery Short Story:
“Sweeps Week,” by Richard Helms (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], July/August 2021)

Also nominated: “Lucky Thirteen,” by Tracy Clark (from Midnight Hour, edited by Abby L. Vandiver; Crooked Lane); “Curious Incidents,” by Steve Hockensmith (EQMM, January/February 2021); “The Road to Hana,” by R.T. Lawton (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May/June 2021); “The White Star,” by G.M. Malliet (EQMM, July/August 2021); “The Locked Room Library,” by Gigi Pandian (EQMM, July/August 2021); and “Julius Katz and the Two Cousins,” by Dave Zeltserman (EQMM, July/August 2021)

Best Non-fiction/Critical:
How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child with Laurie R. King (Scribner)

Also nominated: Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World, by Mark Aldridge (HarperCollins); The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History, by Margalit Fox (Random House); The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene, by Richard Greene (Norton); Tony Hillerman: A Life, by James McGrath Morris (University of Oklahoma); The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science, by John Tresch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); and The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense, by Edward White (Norton)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery:
Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)

Also nominated: The Venice Sketchbook, by Rhys Bowen (Lake Union); The Hollywood Spy, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam); The Bombay Prince, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime); Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey); and Death at Greenway, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)

A hearty congratulations to double prize recipient S.A. Cosby and all the rest of this year’s Barry and Macavity nominees!