Bullet Points: Bursting at the Seams Edition

It’s been a good long while since I put together one of these news bits columns, so I have some serious catching-up to do!



• The finalists for 2026’s Hammett Prize have been announced by the International Association of Crime Writers, North American Branch. This commendation is presented annually to a work, published in the previous year, that judges say demonstrates “literary excellence in crime writing.” Here are the five latest candidates:

— El Dorado Drive, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
— Party of Liars, by Kelsey Cox (Minotaur)
— The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
— The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Putnam)
— The Lizard, by Domenic Stansberry (Molotov Editions)

Expect to hear news of the winner later this summer. Lists of previous Hammett Prize nominees and recipients are available here.

• Believe it or not, among the 13 novels on this year’s longlist of Booker Prize nominees is one plucked straight from the crime/thriller category: All Them Dogs (Riverhead), by Irish fictionist Djamel White. The award’s Web site calls it “by turns savage, thrilling and unexpectedly tender, ... a gripping story of violence, lust, and greed that explores one man's struggles to find his place in an unsparing world.” Whether All Them Dogs will find a place on the Booker shortlist, slated to be revealed on September 22, is anybody’s guess.

• Following this year’s release of A River Red with Blood, the 23rd outing for cop-turned-P.I. Charlie Parker, John Connolly explains in his latest newsletter that his next novel—due out in May 2027—will be The Castle, “a standalone thriller with political overtones, set in a Connecticut suburb in 1973.” He goes on to say:

The Castle is a safe haven, a gated community in a U.S. nation troubled by the war in Vietnam, political assassinations, and the growing shadow of Watergate. For the disillusioned publisher Hamer, it is an escape from a world that has disappointed him.

But something is very wrong in the Castle. A teenage boy has gone missing. There are thefts, threats, shootings. Hamer has begun to fear the Castle may not be so safe after all, and he and his neighbors are the targets of a conspiracy with a single purpose: to destroy five families and punish them for the sins of their children. And one of those families could be his own.

Connolly calls this “a book about secrets: the secrets of the state, the secrets of families, and perhaps the secrets we hide even from ourselves. I’ve been working on it for three years now, and I think—I hope—that it’s about as good a thriller as I can write.”

• If you haven’t yet noticed, my Killer Covers blog is currently rolling out a succession of posts celebrating private eyes.

• I’m a huge fan of stories that illuminate small, seemingly insignificant aspects of crime-fiction storytelling. So Olivia Rutigliano’s new CrimeReads piece, “The 8 Best Fake Crime Novels in Film and TV, Ranked,” is right up my alley.

• The debut of Amazon Prime’s Reacher, Season 4, is teed up for Wednesday, August 12. This latest run of eight episodes will be based on Lee Child’s 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow. It finds Reacher (played by Alan Ritchson) having “a chance encounter with a distraught stranger on a train [that] goes horribly wrong,” only to see our hero “drawn into a complex and deadly game that pits him against ruthless foes from the highest echelons of power.” A trailer for Reacher is below.



• The program is already looking ahead to its next season. “Amanda Ip, Jay Baruchel, Ciara Bravo and Kevin Durand will star opposite Alan Ritchson,” says The Hollywood Reporter, “as Reacher in the fifth season ... will be based on Lee Child’s novel Make Me. The series ... will catch up with Ritchson’s title character after his train stops in the mysterious town of Mother’s Rest where he teams with a private investigator in the search for a missing person.”

• Meanwhile, watch for the premiere of Prime’s Reacher spin-off series, Neagley, starring Danish actress Maria Sten as the most dangerous operative among Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators, on Wednesday, September 16. (It has its own trailer here.) And Kill Zone, the third entry in Dan Ames’ Frances Neagley novel series, is due out on August 17, with another, Blow Back, coming in November.

• In other television news, The Chelsea Detective, with Adrian Scarborough and Vanessa Emme, will return to Acorn TV for a fourth season on Monday, August 10. A trailer and brief synopses of the four new 90-minute episodes can be found here.

• Max Allan Collins reports that Death by Fruitcake, his 90-minute indie film that brings to life main characters from the Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series he’s been penning for almost two decades with his wife, Barbara (under their joint pseudonym, Barbara Allan) recently debuted on the streaming TV service Tubi.

• Deadline brings word that “Cooper & Fry are heading to the U.S. after streamer BritBox snapped up the British crime drama. The show has performed well on Paramount-owned broadcast network 5 in the UK and now has a U.S. home. BritBox has snagged Season 1 of the show for U.S. and Canada, while Netflix has taken second window UK rights. Adapted from Stephen Booth’s bestselling detective novels, Cooper & Fry follows unlikely detective duo Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, played by Robert James-Collier (Downton Abbey) and Mandip Gill (Doctor Who). Set in and around England’s picturesque Peak District, the series follows Cooper, who is struggling to emerge from the shadow of his late father, while Fry is an outsider fleeing tragedies in her past. Together, they tackle grisly crimes in the remote countryside.” All eight episodes of Season 1 will drop on Monday, August 17; look for a one-minute trailer here. A second season has already been commissioned, with episodes adapted from Booth’s novels The Devil’s Edge, Fall Down Dead, One Last Breath, and The Murder Road. 

• Maigret, based on Georges Simenon’s many mysteries, will return to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece rotation for a sophomore season beginning on Sunday, October 18. Benjamin Wainwright (Belgravia: The Next Chapter, Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim) reprises his lead role as French police detective Jules Maigret, with Stephanie Martini (The Gold, Last Kingdom) playing his wife, Louise. What can we expect from the half-dozen new episodes? PBS offers this plot brief:

An epic power struggle is happening in La Brigade Criminelle in Maigret Season 2. Maigret’s boss, Director of Police Xavier Guichard, has become suspicious of Maigret’s methods and decides to ‘take him down a peg.’ One of Maigret’s colleagues leaves, another is transferred by Guichard and replaced by George Bonfils, who is immediately unpopular with Les Maigrets. As Maigret investigates new crimes, the line between guilt and innocence is blurred. The unconventional detective will have to work out his own unique form of justice for victims and perpetrators alike.

These stories are adapted from Simenon’s The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, Maigret’s Revolver, and The Yellow Dog.

• Agatha Christie created the characters Thomas Beresford and his wife, Prudence (née Cowley), for her 1922 novel, The Secret Adversary. They carried on their detecting escapades through four more books, into the early 1970s. Their debut on television came in the 10-part, 1983-1984 series Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick. A terrific six-episode show, Partners in Crime, resurrected the pair in 2015, this time portrayed by David Walliams and Call the Midwife’s Jessica Raine in a drama set during the 1950s. Now, Britbox has scheduled a six-part reboot, Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence, to commence airing on Tuesday, September 15. The action in this new TV serial takes place in the present day, with the private detective protagonists reimagined as on-and-off romantic partners. Antonia Thomas (The Good Doctor, Still Up) will play “spirited actress” Tuppence, while Josh Dylan (The Buccaneers, Mamma Mia 2) portrays Tommy, “a meticulous and charming crime writer.” Mystery Fanfare furnishes a video preview.

• According to In Reference to Murder, “Morgan Spector is in talks to headline Netflix’s series adaptation of Dan Brown‘s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets, tackling the role of Professor Robert Landgon played by Tom Hanks in the film versions. Rebecca Hall (The Town) is also in talks for the female lead opposite Morgan. Spector already stars in HBO’s The Gilded Age as railroad tycoon George Russell, but sources say he would be able to do both series with proper scheduling should Gilded Age get renewed for a fifth season. In The Secret of Secrets, symbologist Robert Langdon (Spector) races against ancient forces and time to rescue his girlfriend, missing scientist Katherine Solomon (Hall), and her groundbreaking manuscript whose discoveries have the power to forever change humanity’s understanding of the mind. If the deals come to fruition, it will mark the first TV series acting collaboration for real-life couple Spector and Hall, who have starred together in a handful of plays and movies, including the Broadway revival of Machinal, Christine, and Permission.”

• And Icelandic author Lilja Sigurðardóttir has reached a deal with Germany’s ZDF Studios and Iceland producer Glassriver to translate her five “Áróra Investigation” novels for the small screen. Variety delivers this synopsis of Sigurðardóttir’s popular yarns: “Set across Iceland and London, the series follows Áróra, a tough fraud investigator with Icelandic roots who returns home to search for her missing sister. What begins as a family mission soon expands into a wider criminal investigation as she teams with Daniel, an Icelandic police detective and potential love interest, exposing corruption, betrayal and violence beneath Iceland’s rugged landscape.”

• It seems every time I think about how many free hours I might gain by signing off from Facebook, that social-networking site dispenses some fresh nugget of information I didn’t know I needed. Case in point: A post from somebody named Donald Bishop, who writes:

If you ever wondered who that beautiful young woman was who was running down the beach combing her hair and then turning to face the camera in the opening of [the original] Hawaii Five-O, now you know, her name is Elizabeth Logue. She is a native Hawaiian, apparently still alive. Her full name is Elizabeth Louise Malamalamaokalani White Logue. Apart from that iconic shot in the intro, she has only 2 other screen credits to her name. In 1961, she had a role in a low-budget Italian exploitation film shot in Tahiti called Nude Odyssey. Her only other part was in the Julie Andrews/Max Von Sydow film Hawaii, based on James Michener’s novel of the same name. She also did a short promotional film for the state of Hawaii to lure tourists to the island paradise.

Below is a compilation of opening sequences from Hawaii Five-O’s 12 seasons as part of CBS’s prime-time line-up (1968-1970).



• Speaking of Facebook, Frederick, Maryland-based publisher Level Best Books declared there weeks ago that it has formed Level Best Books UK, “a wholly owned subsidiary based in London that will serve as the publisher's official presence in the United Kingdom and represent the company's interests throughout Great Britain.” The venture “will be led by Shawn Reilly Simmons, publisher and CEO of Level Best Books, and internationally acclaimed mystery author Martin Edwards, who will serve together as co-directors.”

• This “collaborative mystery” from Britain’s Detection Club should be fun. Sadly, we must wait until 2028 for its appearance.

• I’m quite behind in drawing reader attention to Frank Gregorsky’s fine Detective Drama Gems. Issue 18 marks the start of that publication’s sixth year, and contains background on the 1961-1962 ABC-TV series The New Breed, as well as the Canadian cop drama Night Heat (1985-1989) and “Fade in to Murder,” a memorable 1976 episode of Columbo that pitted Peter Falk’s shabby but clever Los Angeles police lieutenant against former Star Trek captain William Shatner, who played the self-obsessed star of a TV detective show. Issue 19 celebrates the radio version of Dragnet, the 1966-1969 ABC program Felony Squad, and another episode of Night Heat. The next edition of Gems is expected in November.

• Published and unpublished works alike have achieved wins in this year’s contest for the Daphne du Maurier Awards for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, sponsored by the Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Click here to see the full results.

• A new crime-fiction periodical is to be launched soon! Beginning in October (so, in time for it to be heavily promoted at Bouchercon in Calgary), SMFS Mystery Magazine will appear three times a year featuring content from some familiar members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. In addition to short stories, the mag is expected to incorporate interviews by Kevin Tipple and M.E. Proctor, and reviews by June Lorraine Roberts and Mat Coward. I’m guessing we will hear more about buying subscriptions once we get closer to the publication date. The cover of Issue 1 is embedded on the left.

• Hot off the presses (or at least still warm) is the Summer 2026 “Mysteries Set in France” edition of Mystery Readers Journal. Grab a copy for yourself here. And note that this follows a similarly themed number of the magazine from the spring of 2012, which looks to be available now only in PDF format.

• The next issue of MRJ will address the topic of “Cross-Genre Mysteries.” Submissions of articles, reviews, and author essays are due by August 20. Guidelines can be accessed here.

• This is good news, indeed! Scottish novelist Peter May wrote recently on Facebook (yeah, damn Facebook again!): “I know that I indicated strongly that The Black Loch [2024] would be my last book. But I also said, never say never. So there’s going to be just one more.” His post also drops “some visual clues” to a location he suggests is “very similar” to an imaginary one featured in Island of the Dead, set to go on sale from Riverrun next January.

• Sometime Rap Sheet contributor Peter Handel hatched his own blog almost a year ago. It’s called Carnivorous: A Steady Diet of Crime Fiction and has of late brought forth a couple of interviews destined to reward your scrutiny. The first is with Amy Bloom and focuses around Blunt Instrument (Mysterious Press), which marks her entry into the mystery-fiction world. The second finds Handel talking with Greg Shepard, the director of vintage publisher Stark House Press. Bookmark Carnivorous, if you have not already done so.

• Finally, we must say good-bye to some people who greatly impacted this field of fiction. Gail Bowen, the Canadian author of more than 20 novels starring Joanne Kilbourn, a political science professor in Saskatchewan with a sideline in solving crimes, passed away on June 25 at age 83, “following a brief battle with cancer.” Japanese writer Keigo Higashino, who reportedly produced 106 books during his lifetime, but may be remembered best for his Detective Galileo mysteries (The Devotion of Suspect X, etc.), perished on July 23 as a result of colorectal cancer; he was 68 years old. And Joanna Pettet may have been a London-born actress, rather than a wordsmith, but her contributions to crime and mystery fiction were still important. She guested on such boob-tube series as The Fugitive, Mannix, The Delphi Bureau, Banacek, Harry O, and Murder, She Wrote, and played “the scantily clad Mata Bond,” daughter of David Niven’s James Bond, in the 1967 spy parody Casino Royale. Pettet was 83 when she died in Temecula, California, on July 7.

Aussie Women Show Their Stuff

Sisters in Crime Australia has announced its shortlists of books being considered for the 2026 Davitt Awards. The winners will be revealed on Friday, September 12, during a special ceremony in Melbourne.

Adult Fiction:
• At Café 64, by Shaeden Barry (Echo)
• Learned Behaviours, by Zeyneb Gamieldien (Ultimo Press)
• Unbury the Dead, by Fiona Hardy (Affirm Press)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Australia)
• The Bluff, by Joanna Jenkins (Allen & Unwin)
• Melaleuca, by Angie Faye Martin (HQ Fiction)

Non-fiction:
• Groomed, by Sonia Orchard (Simon & Schuster)
• Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son, by Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex (Black Inc.)
• The Red House, by Kate Wild (Allen & Unwin)

Young Adult:
• What Have They Done to Liza McLean? by Amy Doak (Penguin
Random House Australia)
• A Murder Is Going Down, by Kate Emery (Allen & Unwin)
• We Saw What You Started, by Carla Salmon (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Children’s Books:
• Run, by Sarah Armstrong (Hardie Grant Children’s)
• The Girl and the Ghost, by Jacqueline Harvey (Penguin Random
House Australia)
• Oceanforged: The Wicked Ship, by Amelia Mellor (Simon &
Schuster Australia)
• True South, by Gisela Ervin-Ward (Midnight Sun)

Following the Scribes and Claymores

These days, there are so many prizes given in the field of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, that it’s easy to fall behind in reporting them all. So consider this essentially a catch-up post.

Yesterday, the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers announced the winners of its 2026 Scribe Awards for “excellence in the field of writing tie-in fiction for media franchises.” There were seven categories of contenders this year, but the one that seems most pertinent to Rap Sheet readers is General Fiction. Among those nominees, the winner is Raymond Benson’s The Hook and the Eye (Ian Fleming), which employs ex-CIA op Felix Leiter—familiar from several James Bond novels—as the lead in a story that finds him tangling with spies in Manhattan and tasked with safely transporting an “impossibly beautiful and impossibly secretive” woman to Texas.

Also vying for top honors in General Fiction were Murder, She Wrote: Snowy With a Chance of Murder, by Barbara Early (Berkley); Cwej: The Midas Touch, by James Hornby (Independently published); Return of the Maltese Falcon, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime); Thunder’s Edge: Echoes of Memory, by Sarah Cawkwell (Aconyte); and Murder, She Wrote: The Body in the Trees, by Terrie Farley Moran (Berkley).

* * *

In addition to the Silver Falchion Awards, next month’s Killer Nashville conference will see presented the Claymore Awards, “given to a diverse collection of the top unpublished manuscripts submitted in 2026.” Below are the finalists in just two of 19 divisions.

Best Mystery:
• Exit, Wound, by Mark Dillman
• The Mystery of the Wolf, by David Goodlett
• Answers Will Come, by Henry James Kaye
• All the Buried Secrets, by Kim Nuesse
• The Holiday Slayer, by Janet Shawgo
• The End of Us, by Elissa Thompson

Best Investigator (includes procedural, serious private eye, detective, and noir):
• In Plain Sight, by Jacquelyn Dohoney
• Hunting the Archer, by John Foley
• Victim’s Voice, by Henry James Kaye
• Reflections in the Mist, by Avram Lavinsky
• Centaur Standing, by Clare Monteschio
• Return to Newstead Hills, by CJ Prince

Click here to see the full lineup of 2026 Claymore candidates. The winners of these commendations as well as the Silver Falchions will be revealed in the Tennessee capital on Saturday, August 22.

A Warm Reception for “Frozen”

Last evening brought the news that British crime novelist Elly Griffiths (aka Domenica de Rosa) has won this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for The Frozen People (Quercus).

Also contending for that prize were The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press); Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Pan); Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Baskerville); and Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre).

The announcement of Griffiths’ victory was delivered on the opening night of the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

Awaiting the Falchions and Scribes

The organizers of this year’s Killer Nashville conference, scheduled to take place in the Tennessee capital from August 20 to 23, have announced the finalists for their Silver Falchion Awards. There are 18 categories of nominees in all, but two that might be of particular interest to Rap Sheet readers are featured below.

Best Mystery:
• The Demonologists’ Legacy, by K. Scott Culpepper (Scotland)
• A Dead Draw, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• Rule One, by Michael Lucker (Wordeee)
• Hard Town, by Adam Plantinga (Grand Central)
• Damage Control, by Kirsten Shuford (Kirsten Shuford)
• Broke Road, by Matthew Spencer (Thomas & Mercer)

Best Thriller:
• Welcome to Cottonmouth, by Jay S. Bell (Blackstone)
• Line of Succession, by David Bruns and J.R. Olson (Severn River)
• Seraph, by Cheryl Fallin (Waterfowl)
• The Forbidden Strain, by Brian Montross (Independently published)
• The Butcher and the Liar, by S.L. Woeppel (Books Fluent)
• All That Lies Beneath, by D.L. Wood (Independently published)

Click here to see the full rundown of 2026 Silver Falchion candidates. The winners will be revealed on Saturday, August 22.

* * *

Meanwhile, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has released its contenders for the 2026 Scribe Awards. A press release on Facebook says these prizes are meant to acknowledge and promote authors “working in this often overlooked and underrepresented facet of publishing and the entertainment industry.”

In the General Fiction category are several crime-fiction titles:

• Murder, She Wrote: Snowy With a Chance of Murder, by
Barbara Early (Berkley)
• Cwej: The Midas Touch, by James Hornby (Independently published)
• Return of the Maltese Falcon, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• The Hook and the Eye, by Raymond Benson (Ian Fleming)
• Thunder’s Edge: Echoes of Memory, by Sarah Cawkwell (Aconyte)
• Murder, She Wrote: The Body in the Trees, by Terrie Farley
Moran (Berkley)

The recipient of this and other Scribe Awards will be made known later this month during the 2026 San Diego ComicCon.

Macavitys Hunt for Homes

Nominees were announced today for the 2026 Macavity Awards, sponsored by Mystery Readers International.

Best Mystery Novel:
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• River of Lies, by James L’Etoile (Oceanview)
• The White Crow, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)
• All This Could Be Yours, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur)

Best First Mystery:
• Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur)
• Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
• Voices of the Elysian Fields, by Michael Rigg (Level Best)
• Stillwater, by Tanya Scott (Grove Atlantic)
• History Lessons, by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Press)

Best Mystery Non-fiction:
• Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide to New England, by Dawn M. Barclay (Level Best)
• Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation, by Michael Cannell (Minotaur)
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)
• V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death, by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury Sigma)
• Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, by Richard Kopley (University of
Virginia Press)
• Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard, by C.M. Kushins (Mariner)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, and Michael Bracken; Wildside Press)
• “Hollywood Prometheus,” by Christa Faust (from Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West; Bywater)
• “Finding Jimmy Baldwin,” by Cheryl Head (from Crime Ink: Iconic)
• “The Devil Himself,” by Vaseem Khan (from Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren, and Art Taylor;
Crippen & Landru)
• “The Skies Are Red,” by Richie Narvaez (from On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, edited by Curtis Ippolito; Rock and a Hard Place Press)
• “Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush,” by Dave Zeltserman (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery:
• Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best)
• A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• City Lights, by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best)
• The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, by Kelly Oliver (Boldwood)
• The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington)
• No. 10 Doyers Street, by Radha Vatsal (Level Best)

The Macavitys are named after Macavity the Mystery Cat, a character in T.S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry book, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ballots for this year’s prize will be cast by a members of MRI, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, and “friends of MRI.” Winners are to be announced sometime this coming fall.

Dispensing Daggers

A bit over a month after announcing its shortlist of candidates, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has revealed the winners of its 2026 Dagger Awards, “celebrating the very best in crime writing.”

KAA Gold Dagger: The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)

Also nominated: King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline); Not Quite Dead Yet, by Holly Jackson (Michael Joseph); The Girl in Cell A, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder Fiction); The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (River Swift Press); and The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)

Also nominated: The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster UK); A Sting in Her Tale, by Mark Ezra (No Exit Press); Such Quiet Girls, by Noelle Ihli (Pan); The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre); and We Are All Guilty Here, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction: That Dark Spring, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)

Also nominated: Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland, by Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee (Pegasus Crime); The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by Gordon Corera (William Collins); The Murder Game, by John Curran (HarperCollins/Collins Crime Club); Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet); and The Illegals, by Shaun Walker (Profile)

Historical Dagger: A Granite Silence, by Nina Allan (Riverrun)

Also nominated: Barvick Falls, by Rob McInroy (Tippermuir); The Devil’s Draper, by Donna Moor (Fly on the Wall Press); Gunner, by Alan Parks (Baskerville); The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle); and A Case of Life and Limb, by Sally Smith (Raven)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger: The Winter Job, by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Orenda)

Also nominated: Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse, translated by Florian Duijsens (Faber & Faber); The Lake, by Jørn Lier Horst, translated by Anne Bruce (Penguin Random House); Red Water, by Jurica Pavičić, translated by Matt Robinson (Bitter Lemon Press); Big Bad Wool, by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang (Allison & Busby); and Strange Pictures, by Uketsu, translated by
Jim Rion (Pushkin Press)



Whodunnit Dagger (for “cosy crime, traditional mysteries, and Golden Age crime” stories): A Murder for Miss Hortense, by Mel Pennant (Baskerville)

Also nominated: The Christmas Cracker Killer, by Alexandra Benedict (Simon & Schuster UK); Little Secrets, by Victoria Goldman (Three Crowns Publishing UK); Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet); A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan); and Bad Influence, by C.J. Wray (Orion)

Twisted Dagger (for “psychological and suspense thrillers”): We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)

Also nominated: What Happens in the Dark, by Kia Abdullah (HQ Fiction); Her Many Faces, by Nicci Cloke (Harvill Secker); Some of Us Are Liars, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan); Scenes from a Tragedy, by Carole Hailey (Corvus); and The Bodies, by Sam Lloyd (Bantam)

ILP John Creasey (First Novel) Dagger: The Wolf Tree, by Laura McCluskey (Hemlock Press)

Also nominated: The Peak, by Sam Guthrie (HarperCollins); The Lost Detective, by Elspeth Latimer (Story Machine); The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper); Coram House, by Bailey Seybolt (Raven); and Holy City, by Henry Wise (No Exit Press)

Short Story Dagger: “The Apple Falls Not Far,” by Ambrose Perry (Canongate)

Also nominated: “Split Your Silver Tongue,” by S.A. Cosby (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos: New Stories Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; No Exit Press); “The Karpman Drama Triangle,” by Denise Mina (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos); “Full Circle,” by Abir Mukherjee (from Playing Dead: Short Stories in Honour of Simon Brett by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards; Severn House); “Strangers on a School Bus,” by Peter Swanson (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos); and “Waiting,” by Michael Wood (from Criminal Pursuits: This Is Me, edited by Samantha Lee Howe; Telos)

Emerging Author (for unpublished novels): Blind Side of the Sun,
by Michael Nikitin

Also nominated: Ill Met by Murder, by Rod Cookson; The Man Who Fit the Case, by Sophia Georghiou; Just a Simple Wedding, by Kate Koester; The Fixer, by Lorna Mathew; The Madam of Morningside, by Rebecca McFarland; and The Pattern of Absence, by Melisssa Tonkin

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established
crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”): Tim Sullivan

Also nominated: Paula Hawkins; J.D. Kirk; Clare Mackintosh; Freida McFadden; and Abir Mukherjee

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”): Bitter Lemon Press

Also nominated: Faber & Faber; No Exit Press (Bedford Square); Pan Macmillan; Simon & Schuster; and Viper (Profile)

Red Herring Award Recipient: Fiona Veitch Smith (for service
to the CWA)

Diamond Dagger Recipient: Mark Billingham

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and runners-up!

Grading Sleuthhounds

I spent the last few days out of town, so missed the announcement of this year’s Shamus Award nominees, made by the Private Eye Writers of America. Below are those contenders, in four categories.

Best P.I. Hardcover:
• The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
• Photograph, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• Hatchet Girls, by Joe R. Lansdale (Little, Brown)
• Gray Dawn, by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown)
• Mirage City, by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur)

Best First P.I. Novel:
• Chase Harlem, by Elise Burke Brown (Rising Action)
• Miles in Time, by Lee Mathew Goldberg (Wise Wolf)
• Where the Bones Lie, by Nick Kolakowski (Datura)
• Shadow of the Eternal Watcher, by Josh Mendoza (Inkshares)
• The Witch’s Orchard, by Archer Sullivan (Minotaur)

Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel:
• The Hook and the Eye, by Raymond Benson (Ian Fleming)
• Sunday or the Highway, by Cindy Fazzi (Thomas & Mercer)
• City Lights, by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best)
• Midnight Streets, by Phil Lecomber (Titan)
• Catch Me on a Blue Day, by M.E. Proctor (Shotgun Honey)

Best P.I. Short Story:
• “The Roosevelt Affair,” by Adam Meyer
(from Crimeucopia: A Coterie of Dicks; Murderous Ink Press)
• “The One Cry,” by F.H. Batacan
(from Accidents Happen, by F.H. Batacan; Soho Crime)
• “Dr. Bones,” by Libby Cudmore
(Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], May/June)
• “Hours on the Phone,” by Gregory Fallis (EQMM, July/August)
• “The Shadows,” by Charles John Harper (EQMM, May/June)

The winners will be declared during the opening ceremonies at Bouchercon 2026, to be held in Calgary, Alberta, from October 21 to 25. Click here to learn more about that convention.

Who’s Ready to Party in Stirling?

Organizers of the international crime-fiction event Bloody Scotland today released their longlist of nominees for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize:

• The Hollow Boys, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• 138 Main Street, by Gavin Bell (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Quite Ugly One Evening, by Chris Brookmyre (Abacus)
• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Bantam)
• Unknown, by Heather Critchlow (Canelo Crime)
• Solitary Agents, by David Goodman (Headline)
• We Know What You Did, by Kirsty Lockwood (Orion)
• Rat Race, by Callum McSorley (Pushkin Vertigo)
• The Diary of Lies, by Philip Miller (Polygon)
• The Pinnacle, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper)
• Liar Thief, by May Rinaldi (Black Spring Crime)

This award is named for novelist William McIlvanney (Laidlaw) and is intended to honor “the best Scottish Crime book of the year.” It’s sponsored by The Glencairn Glass.

The winner will be announced on Friday, September 18, along with this year’s recipient of the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. There are five contenders for that latter commendation, all penned by women and all but one of them also a candidate for the McIlvanney:

• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Bantam)
• Original Sins, by Linda Duncan McLaughlin (Into Books)
• We Know What You Did, by Kirsty Lockwood (Orion)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper)
• Liar Thief, by May Rinaldi (Black Spring Crime)

These presentations are elements of the schedule for the 2026 Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, which will take place in Stirling, Scotland, from September 18 to 20.

Revealing Fingerprints

It seems like yesterday—and indeed, it was just a bit over a month ago—that we were announcing the finalists for this year’s Fingerprint Awards, to be presented at London’s 2026 Capital Crime festival. Well, that event has been taking place over the last three days, and we now have the winners of those prizes. They come in eight categories.

Audiobook of the Year:
Don’t Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell (Simon & Schuster Audio)

Also nominated: King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline); We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion); Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Macmillan); and Artificial Wisdom, by Thomas R. Weaver (Transworld Digital)

True Crime Book of the Year:
Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, by Virginia Roberts-Guiffre (Doubleday)

Also nominated: Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday); Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet); A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders, by Professor David Wilson (Sphere); and A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, by Haley Cohen Gilliland (Avid Reader Press)

Debut Crime Book:
Deadline, by Steph McGovern (Macmillan)

Also nominated: Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson (Corylus); Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall (Michael Joseph); The Day of the Roaring, by Nina Bhadreshwar (Hemlock Press); and This Is Not a Game, by Kelly Mullen (Century)

Genre-Busting Book:
Kill Them with Kindness, by Will Carver (‎Orenda)

Also nominated: Little Red Death, by A.K. Benedict (Simon & Schuster UK); Blood Like Ours, by Stuart Neville (Simon & Schuster UK); Small Fires, by Ronnie Turner (Orenda); and Manhattan Down, by Michael Cordy (Bantam)

Historical Crime Book of the Year:
The Burning Grounds, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill)

Also nominated: The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle); The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Viper); Dangerous, by Essie Fox (Orenda); and Marble Hall Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Century)

Thriller Book of the Year:
Don’t Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell (Century)

Also nominated: The Chemist, by A.A. Dhand (HQ); Human Remains, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster UK); The Man Made of Smoke, by Alex North (Michael Joseph); and Some of Us Are Liars, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan)

Overall Crime Book of the Year:
The Final Vow, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

Also nominated: The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre); The Good Father, by Liam Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre); and We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)

Thalia Procter Lifetime Achievement Award: Trisha Jackson, publishing director for fiction at publisher Pan Macmillan

Publishing Crime Book Campaign of the Year: Pan MacMillan, for The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Commending the Best of This Genre

Harrogate International Festivals this morning announced its shortlist of nominees for the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which is intended to recognize the “most prestigious crime fiction” published in the UK and Ireland. From an original list of 18 titles, the following six remain:

• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Pan Fiction)
• The Frozen People, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Baskerville)
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)

Readers are now invited to choose their favorite from among these books by clicking here. Voting will close on Thursday, July 16, at 23:59 GMT. The winner is to be revealed on Thursday, July 23, the opening night of this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

* * *

Meanwhile, Lambda Literary offers the recipients of its 38th Annual Lambda Awards (the “Lammys”) for excellence in LGBTQ+ books. Taking top honors in the Best LGBTQ+ Mystery category is A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan). The other finalists were Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter, by Samantha Crewson (Crooked Lane); Girl Falling, by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron); Mirage City, by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur); and The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington).

“Bold and Brave” Win the Day

Sisters in Crime Australia recently released its longlists of books being considered for the 2026 Davitt Awards, “celebrating excellence in crime writing by Australian women.”

Adult Fiction:
• At Café 64, by Shaeden Barry (Echo)
• Lyrebird, by Jane Caro (Allen & Unwin)
• Unfinished Business, by Shankari Chandran (Ultimo Press)
• Skull River, by Pip Fioretti (Affirm Press)
• When She Was Gone, by Sara Foster (HarperCollins Australia)
• Revelation Beach, by Susan Francis (Wild Dingo Press)
• Learned Behaviours, by Zeyneb Gamieldien (Ultimo Press)
• Unbury the Dead, by Fiona Hardy (Affirm Press)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Australia)
• The Canvas Killings, by Elise Janes (JETT)
• The Bluff, by Joanna Jenkins (Allen & Unwin)
• Melaleuca, by Angie Faye Martin (HQ Fiction)
• The Wolf Tree, by Laura McCluskey (HarperCollins Australia)
• The Prospect, by Fleur McDonald (HarperCollins Australia)
• Stillwater, by Tanya Scott (Allen & Unwin)
• Nemesis, by Patricia Wolf (Echo)

Non-fiction:
• Groomed, by Sonia Orchard (Simon & Schuster)
• Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son, by Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex (Black Inc.)
• The Red House, by Kate Wild (Allen & Unwin)

Young Adult:
• What Have They Done to Liza McLean? by Amy Doak (Penguin Random House Australia)
• A Murder Is Going Down, by Kate Emery (Allen & Unwin)
• We Saw What You Started, by Carla Salmon (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Children’s Books:
• Run, by Sarah Armstrong (Hardie Grant Children’s)
• The Girl and the Ghost, by Jacqueline Harvey (Penguin Random
House Australia)
• Oceanforged: The Wicked Ship, by Amelia Mellor (Simon &
Schuster Australia)
• True South, by Gisela Ervin-Ward (Midnight Sun)
• Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend (Hachette Children’s)
• Promises and Other Lies, by Sue Whiting (Walker)

Ruth Wykes, who chairs the Davitt Awards judging panel, is quoted as saying these works “were the ones that entertained, challenged, taught us, and stayed with us long after we had read the final chapters. Stories that were bold and brave, or beautifully nuanced.”

This year’s shortlists are to be announced in July, and at that same time, voting will commence for the 2026 Readers’ Choice Award. All of the winners are to be declared in August or September.

The Davitt Awards are named for Ellen Davitt (1812-1879), the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud (1865).

Supporting Indie Publishers

There are several dozen category winners in this year’s INDIES Book of the Year Awards program, coordinated by Foreword Reviews and designed to “celebrate outstanding books published in 2025 by small, independent, and university presses.” Four novels have been honored as outstanding examples of adult mystery fiction:

Gold Medal — A Murder in Zion, by Nicole Maggi (Oceanview)
Silver Medal — Garbage Town, by Ravi Gupta (Greenleaf Book Group Press)
Bronze Medal — Killer Tracks, by Mary Keliikoa (Level Best)
Honorable Mention — Dying Cry, by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane)

Four others have won in the adult thriller and suspense division:

Gold Medal — The Mean Ones, by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (Creature)
Silver Medal — The Art of Greed, by Hans Peter Brunner (Greenleaf Book Group Press)
Bronze Medal — Novel Threat, by Traci Hunter Abramson (Shadow Mountain)
Honorable Mention — The Haunting of Emily Grace, by Elena Taylor (Severn House)

Click here for the full record of this year’s INDIES recipients.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Bullet Points: No AI Content Here Edition

• Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh, David Suchet, Alfred Molina, John Malkovich, even Tony Randall—over the decades, they have all portrayed Agatha Christie’s most famous fictional private detective, Hercule Poirot, on the large or small screens. But now 33-year-old English actor Edward Bluemel (Killing Eve, My Lady Jane, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials) is stepping into the role of that fastidious, mustachioed Belgian in Hercule, a BBC/Britbox TV reboot set to start filming in Liverpool, England, this summer and expected to premiere with six episodes in the latter half of 2027. Deadline says “there is a three-season commitment to Hercule,” though that has not been confirmed by either of the production partners. The show is being described as “an intimate study of Hercule the man and an epic portrait of Britain between the wars. The series takes a magnifying glass to three of Christie’s most celebrated stories, while also charting Hercule’s burgeoning friendship with Captain Arthur Hastings, his early encounters with Scotland Yard’s James Japp, and introducing him to one particular nemesis.” Deadline adds that “Responsibility for adapting Christie’s work has fallen to Benji Walters, a relatively unknown writer who has credits on BBC series Noughts + Crosses and spent time developing an adaptation of Brideshead Revisited with Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino in 2020.”

• By the way, did you know that Christie’s third and probably most famous Poirot novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, celebrates its centennial this month? The story was serialized as Who Killed Ackroyd? in the London Evening News between July and September 1925, then released in book form by UK publisher Williams Collins, Sons in June of 1926. (An American edition soon followed.) While Ackroyd—with its deliberate subversion of reader expectations—may not be the perfect place to start in exploring Christie’s extensive oeuvre (instead, try And Then There Were None or a later Poirot tale such as Death on the Nile), it is nonetheless acclaimed for its shell-game plotting and final twist. In his well-respected 1941 study of this genre, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, American writer-editor Howard Haycraft placed Ackroyd in the 16th spot on his list of “the best and most influential” crime novels in print, right behind Christie’s first Poirot yarn, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920).

• Although the “news” is less than timely, let me just point out that Mike Lawson has won 2026’s Spotted Owl Award for Untouchable (Atlantic Monthly Press ), his 18th novel about Washington, D.C., troubleshooter Joe DeMarco. By my count, this is the third occasion on which Lawson has scored the Owl, an honor handed out annually by the Portland, Oregon-based Friends of Mystery fan organization to what it deems was the Best Pacific Northwest Crime Novel published during the previous year. Also in contention were Marc Cameron’s Deadline, Robert Dugoni’s A Dead Draw, Sam Wiebe’s The Last Exile, Elizabeth George’s A Slowly Dying Cause, James Bryne’s Chain Reaction, Daniel Kalla’s The Deepest Fake, J.A. Jance’s Overkill, Phillip Margolin’s False Witness, and Nolan Chase’s A Lonesome Place for Murder.

• As you have probably heard, Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer will end its run after Season 5, which is due for streaming next year. The concluding 10 episodes are “inspired by” Michael Connelly’s Resurrection Walk (2025), the seventh installment in his series about L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller, played on the show by Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. Netflix supplies this plot description:

Mickey Haller’s world is upended when the half-sister he never knew existed, Emi [Cobie Smulders], comes to him with a plea to help free a wrongfully convicted woman. In a season defined by blood ties and buried secrets, Mickey takes on a grueling habeas petition to overturn a six-year-old murder conviction, but the deeper he digs, the more nefarious the forces arrayed against him become.

Meanwhile, the stakes rise for his trusted team as Lorna [Becki Newton], Izzy [Jazz Raycole], and Cisco [Angus Sampson] step up to tackle high-profile challenges of their own. Having just saved himself from a wrongful conviction in Season 4, Mickey is now determined to set right an enormous miscarriage of justice. But as he unravels a dangerous web of corruption and lies, he must grapple with the fractured legacy of his family—both his chosen family and the family he never knew he had.

Lincoln Lawyer’s departure from its schedule has left Netflix looking for a legal-drama replacement to satisfy viewers. One option might be And Justice for All, a series based on Al Pacino’s powerful, Emmy-nominated 1979 film of that same name. Deadline depicts it as “a gritty look at an idealistic attorney’s flawed life as he struggles to fight a corrupted legal system until he finally snaps.” The program will be scripted by Jeremy Miller and Dan Cohn (That Was Then).

• Concurrently, Lincoln Lawyer creator David E. Kelley is adapting another Connelly work for television, the 2025 novel Nightshade. Deadline says, “The project, titled Welcome to Catalina, is in development at HBO Max under the streamer’s model for drama procedurals intended to return each year with sizable orders and moderate cost. … Written by Kelley, Welcome to Catalina centers on Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell who has been ‘exiled’ to a low-key post policing [Southern California’s] rustic Catalina Island. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor.” There’s no word yet on when Welcome to Catalina might be welcomed to your big-screen set, but if it proves a winner, there’s at least one other Stilwell story to turn into a screenplay: Connelly’s Ironwood, which reached U.S. bookstores only last month.

• Sherlock Holmes’ arch-rival, Professor James Moriarty, is finally getting a TV series of his own, in which he will demonstrate his previously undisplayed array of sleuthing skills.

• Are these really the 20 greatest film sleuths of all time?

• It’s always great to see Donald E. Westlake’s storytelling mastery recognized, as The Daily Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge does in this recent essay reprinted by MSN. But how fragile is fame, that the headline labels Westlake—who just died back in 2009 (see our tributes here and here)—“The greatest crime novelist you have probably never heard of.”

• And the crime-fiction community has seen other deaths of late. Actress-turned-writer Sheila Keating (née Mitchell), who for almost six decades was wife to the English crime novelist H.R.F. Keating (creator of the Inspector Ganesh Ghote series), passed away on June 4 just short of her 101st birthday. Canadian fictionist Alan Bradley, the author of a dozen books in the Flavia de Luce mystery series (beginning with 2009’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) died on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea on May 18 at age of 87. Finally, Dennis McMillan, a San Francisco small-press publisher of “the hard-boiled, the noir, and the strikingly unusual,” met his end on May 5 in a Phoenix, Arizona, hospital. Among the authors McMillan published over the years were Kent Anderson, Michael Connelly, Fredric Brown, Leigh Brackett, James Crumley, and Rick DeMarinis.

(Hat tips to In Reference to Murder and Mark Coggins.)

Yap Seizes the Bland Prize

A cozy, Manila-set young-adult mystery titled “Isabelle Gomez Is Innocent, She Swears!” has won the 2026 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color award. Its author is Jackie Yap, who calls herself a “neurodivergent Australian-born, Malaysian-Chinese-Filipina emerging writer on Gadigal Country (Sydney), Australia.”

Administered by the worldwide organization Sisters in Crime, this annual commendation is intended to promote “an emerging female or male writer of color.” It was established in 2014 and named for Eleanor Taylor Bland, the much-acclaimed Black author of the police detective Marti McAllister series. In addition to any psychological boost it can give an aspiring fictionist, this prize includes a $2,000 grant to further the recipient’s writing career.

Yap’s victorious tale is described as “part-murder mystery, part-fish-out-of-water, part coming-of-age—with universal themes of humor, heart, and belonging.” In a press release, she goes on to say it’s a “love letter to diaspora kids everywhere—to those who live in the liminal space between worlds, still discovering who they are, where they fit, and what ‘home’ truly means. I hope for Izzy Gomez to become a fresh, modern-day Filipina-Aussie Nancy Drew for readers everywhere, offering a protagonist who reflects their experiences against the backdrop of a (cozy) YA murder mystery.”

In addition to Yap, Sisters in Crime named five other would-be crime writers as runners-up in this contest. They are Uju Asika of London, England; Billie Hanson-Dupree of Oakland, California; Nina Michiko Tam of Houston, Texas; D.S. Mori of Orange County, California; and DeAnna Yvette of Chicago, Illinois.

Congratulations to all participants in this year’s competition!

Prevailing Canucks

We now know which authors and books have won the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing.

Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel:
The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Also nominated: The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenbergs (HarperCollins); The Hunger We Pass Down, by Jen Sookfong Lee (McClelland & Stewart); Into the Fall, by Tamara L. Miller (Thomas & Mercer); and The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (Viking Canada)

Best Crime First Novel:
The Beltane Massacre, by Ray Critch (Breakwater)

Also nominated: Yesterday’s Lies, by Jan Field (La Cloche); The Broken Detective, by Joel Nedecky (Run Amok Crime); A Painting to Die For, by David L. Tucker (Otter & Osprey Press); and Too Dark for the Light, by A.L. Wahdel (Butterfly 80)

Best Crime Novel Set in Canada:
Salt on Her Tongue, by C.S. Porter (Vagrant Press)

Also nominated: That Other Family, by Lis Angus (Next Chapter); Every Fall, by Angela Douglas (Rising Action); Detective Aunty, by Uzma Jalaluddin (HarperCollins); and The Hitchhikers, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)

The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery:
The Cost of a Hostage, by Iona Whishaw (TouchWood Editions)

Also nominated: The Engineer’s Nemesis, by Shelley Adina (Moonshell); Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu, by Mel Anastasiou (Pulp Literature Press); A Dark Death, by Alice Fitzpatrick (Stonehouse); and Some Justice, by Laury Silvers (Independently published)

Best Crime Short Story:
“Polly Wants a Freakin’ Cracker,” by Sylvia Maultash Warsh (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)

Also nominated: “Under the Circumstances,” by Lis Angus (from A Capital Mystery Anthology, edited by Bernadette Cox and Mike Martin (Ottawa Press); “The Lost Diner,” by Madeleine Harris Callway (Pulp Literature, Summer 2025); “Cold Shock,” by Barbara Fradkin (from A Capital Mystery Anthology); and “The Headache,” by Billie Livingstone (Dark Yonder, November 2025)

Best French Language Crime Book:
Une nuit d’été à Littlebrook, by Maureen Martineau (Héliotrope)

Also nominated: Le regard des autres, by Chrystine Brouillet (Druide); Jeux d’ombres, by André Jacques (Druide); La mémoire du labyrinthe, by Steve Laflamme (Libre Expression); and Delta Zéro, by Martin Michaud (Libre Expression)

Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book:
The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall, by Charis Cotter (Tundra)

Also nominated: Death by Whoopee Cushion, by Vicki Grant (Tundra); A Skeleton in the Closet, by Claire Hatcher-Smith (Tundra); The City of Lost Cats, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi (Tundra); and Bark Twice for Murder, by John Lekich (Orca)

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Non-fiction Crime Book: Hitman: The Untold Story of Canada’s Deadliest Assassin, by Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman (HarperCollins)

Also nominated: The Many Names of Robert Cree: How a First Nations Chief, Brought Ancient Wisdom to Big Business and Prosperity to His People, by Robert Cree with Therese Greenwood (ECW Press); Acts of Darkness: Notorious Criminals, Their Defenders, Prosecutors, and Jailers, by John L. Hill (Durvile & UpRoute); Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North, by Kathleen Lippa (Dundurn Press); and On the Lam: Great (and Not So Great) Escapes from Prison, by Lorna Poplak (Dundurn Press)

Best Unpublished Crime Novel (manuscript written by an unpublished author): Val’s Story, by Anne Burlakoff

Also nominated: The Less You Know, by William Hall; Lens Flare, by Francis K. Lalumière; Death Scent, by Barbara Stokes; and Blistered, by Isabelle Zimmermann

In addition, Ontario-born crime and thriller author Rick Mofina has been given this year’s Grand Master Award. “This prestigious biennial honor,” says the CWC, “recognizes a Canadian crime writer with a substantial body of work who has garnered significant national and international acclaim while demonstrating a steadfast commitment to the crime-writing community. CWC selected Mofina for this distinction based on his prolific output, professional integrity, and years of dedicated service to both the organization and the genre.”

Cutting Down the Daggers

Six weeks after releasing its longlists of nominees for the 2026 Dagger Awards, in 12 categories, Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association has announced its shortlisted contenders.

KAA Gold Dagger:
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• Not Quite Dead Yet, by Holly Jackson (Michael Joseph)
• The Girl in Cell A, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder Fiction)
• The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (River Swift Press)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster UK)
• A Sting in Her Tale, by Mark Ezra (No Exit Press)
• Such Quiet Girls, by Noelle Ihli (Pan)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• We Are All Guilty Here, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland, by Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee (Pegasus Crime)
• The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by Gordon Corera (William Collins)
• The Murder Game, by John Curran (HarperCollins/Collins Crime Club)
• Murderland, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet)
• That Dark Spring, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)
• The Illegals, by Shaun Walker (Profile)

Historical Dagger:
• A Granite Silence, by Nina Allan (Riverrun)
• Barvick Falls, by Rob McInroy (Tippermuir)
• The Devil’s Draper, by Donna Moor (Fly on the Wall Press)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Baskerville)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• A Case of Life and Limb, by Sally Smith (Raven)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger:
• Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse,
translated by Florian Duijsens (Faber & Faber)
• The Lake, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Penguin Random House)
• Red Water, by Jurica Pavičić,
translated by Matt Robinson (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Big Bad Wool, by Leonie Swann,
translated by Amy Bojang (Allison & Busby)
• The Winter Job, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Orenda)
• Strange Pictures, by Uketsu,
translated by Jim Rion (Pushkin Press)

Whodunnit Dagger (for “cosy crime, traditional mysteries, and Golden Age crime” stories):
• The Christmas Cracker Killer, by Alexandra Benedict (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Little Secrets, by Victoria Goldman (Three Crowns Publishing UK)
• Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet)
• A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan)
• A Murder for Miss Hortense, by Mel Pennant (Baskerville)
• Bad Influence, by C.J. Wray (Orion)

Twisted Dagger (for “psychological and suspense thrillers”):
• What Happens in the Dark, by Kia Abdullah (HQ Fiction)
• Her Many Faces, by Nicci Cloke (Harvill Secker)
• Some of Us Are Liars, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan)
• Scenes from a Tragedy, by Carole Hailey (Corvus)
• The Bodies, by Sam Lloyd (Bantam)
• We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)

ILP John Creasey (First Novel) Dagger:
• The Peak, by Sam Guthrie (HarperCollins)
• The Lost Detective, by Elspeth Latimer (Story Machine)
• The Wolf Tree, by Laura McCluskey (Hemlock Press)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper)
• Coram House, by Bailey Seybolt (Raven)
• Holy City, by Henry Wise (No Exit Press)

Short Story Dagger:
• “Split Your Silver Tongue,” by S.A. Cosby (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos: New Stories Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; No Exit Press)
• “The Karpman Drama Triangle,” by Denise Mina (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos)
• “Full Circle,” by Abir Mukherjee (from Playing Dead: Short Stories in Honour of Simon Brett by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards; Severn House)
• “The Apple Falls Not Far,” by Ambrose Perry (Canongate)
• “Strangers on a School Bus,” by Peter Swanson (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos)
• “Waiting,” by Michael Wood (from Criminal Pursuits: This Is Me, edited by Samantha Lee Howe; Telos)

Emerging Author (for unpublished novels):
• Ill Met by Murder, by Rod Cookson
• The Man Who Fit the Case, by Sophia Georghiou
• Just a Simple Wedding, by Kate Koester
• The Fixer, by Lorna Mathew
• The Madam of Morningside, by Rebecca McFarland
• Blind Side of the Sun, by Michael Nikitin
• The Pattern of Absence, by Melisssa Tonkin

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”):
• Paula Hawkins
• J.D. Kirk
• Clare Mackintosh
• Freida McFadden
• Abir Mukherjee
• Tim Sullivan

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”):
• Bitter Lemon Press
• Faber & Faber
• No Exit Press (Bedford Square)
• Pan Macmillan
• Simon & Schuster
• Viper (Profile)

All of the winners will be declared during a CWA gala dinner in July.

Particularly Promising Premieres

I spent the better part of this week entertaining a friend who’d flown in from Minneapolis, so I wasn’t exactly on top of the crime-fiction news. That meant I missed alerting readers to the half-dozen nominees for the 2026 McDermid Debut Award. They are:

• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Penguin Random House)
• The Exes, by Leodora Darlington (Michael Joseph)
• Innocent Guilt, by Remi Kone (Quercus)
• The Quiet, by Barnaby Martin (Pan Macmillan)
• A Murder for Miss Hortense, by Mel Pennant (John Murray)
• How to Get Away With Murder, by Rebecca Philipson (Penguin Random House)

According to a news release, “The shortlist for this year’s McDermid Debut Award, named in recognition of world-famous crime writer Val McDermid, showcases ‘original and assured’ new voices writing across a broad range of subgenres … Now in its third year, the award has established a successful track record for discovering emerging talent, with the two previous winning books, Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney (2024) and A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman (2025), going on to become bestsellers.”

The latest prize recipient is set to be announced on Thursday, July 23, which is opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

How Nice for “Mice”

The 2026 British Book Awards—aka the “Nibbies”—were handed out this week in 17 categories. Sally Smith’s A Case of Mice and Murder (Raven, 2024) took top honors in the Crime & Thriller division, with judges calling it “exquisitely written” and labeling its protagonist, Edwardian barrister Gabriel Ward KC, a “memorable sleuth.”

Smith’s novel beat out four others to claim that prize. They were: Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall (Michael Joseph); The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Borough Press); The Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman (Viking); The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown (Bantam); and The Tenant, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press).

The British Book Awards are administered by The Bookseller.

Fingered for Favor

Organizers of this year’s Capital Crime festival in London, England, have announced their finalists for the 2026 Fingerprint Awards. These prizes are said to “champion the very best in crime writing from the past year across the globe, as voted for by readers.”



There are seven categories of contenders for the Fingerprints, but below are three of the most interesting.

Overall Crime Book of the Year:
• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• The Final Vow, by M.W. Craven (Constable)
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)
• The Good Father, by Liam Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)

Debut Crime Book:
• Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson (Corylus)
• Deadline, by Steph McGovern (Macmillan)
• Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall (Michael Joseph)
• The Day of the Roaring, by Nina Bhadreshwar (Hemlock Press)
• This Is Not a Game, by Kelly Mullen (Century)

True Crime Book of the Year:
• Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)
• Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, by Virginia Roberts-Guiffre (Doubleday)
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers,
by Caroline Fraser (Fleet)
• A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders, by Professor
David Wilson (Sphere)
• A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, by Haley Cohen Gilliland (Avid Reader Press)

Click right here to see the shortlists of nominees in all seven Fingerprint Award divisions for 2026. Between now and Saturday, May 30, readers are invited to vote online for their favorites. The winners will be revealed during a special presentation on Capital Crime’s opening night, Thursday, June 18.