Bullet Points: Well-Loaded Tuesday Edition

• Last night brought word of which books have won House of Crime & Mystery’s Second Annual Readers Choice Awards. Montreal blogger Jacques Filippi had organized it as a vote-by-e-mail competition, with novels and authors that attracted the greatest numbers of endorsements topping the list. “Ballots came in mainly from the USA, UK, and Canada, like last year,” Filippi reports, “but votes in Canada alone almost doubled. There were also many more voters from French Québec and France. And a good chunk came from Australia, Germany, Africa, Norway, and Spain. In total, I’ve received 1,117 ballots (compared to 632 last year).” Among this year’s winners:

-- Best International Crime Novel:
Watching You, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)
-- Best Crime Novel in the United Kingdom:
The Wrath of Angels, by John Connolly (Atria/Emily Bestler Books)
-- Best Crime Novel in the USA:
The Black Box, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
-- Best Crime Novel in Canada:
Vigilante Season, by Peter Kirby (Linda Leith)

There are half a dozen other categories in Filippi’s competition, as well. Click here to find the whole lot.

• What with all the Christmas hoopla, I forgot to mention that the winter edition of Plots with Guns has been posted. Stories by Tom Barlow, Marie S. Croswell, Rob Pierce, and others are included.

• Also available now is the 15th issue of Crime Factory. The only disappointing (but inevitable) thing is that this periodical can no longer be read online without charge. As editor Cameron Ashley explains, “Your formerly free PDF download now will cost you $1.99. Your Kindle edition also now costs $1.99. Your print has gone up to $8.99.”

• Sarah Weinman’s excellent piece in the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine, “The Murderer and the Manuscript”--about a convicted killer winning the 2012 St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best Private Eye Novel Contest--has received some well-justified acclaim, both online and off. Britain’s The Guardian newspaper gives this synopsis of the tale: “Alaric Hunt, a convicted murderer who has been jailed since 1988, pieced together a vision of the outside world gleaned from episodes of Law and Order and novels to write a serial killer thriller [Cuts Through Bone] that would go on to win him both a literary award and a publishing deal …” But don’t let that brief suffice; read Weinman’s full piece here.

• In another piece for The Guardian, Manchester writer A.K. Nawaz (author of the 2013 e-book The Cotton Harvest) ponders why it is that “the genre of ‘northern [England] crime’--where it’s recognised at all--has never enjoyed the same traction with audiences” as, say, Scottish or Scandinavian/Nordic crime fiction. He notes that it’s “[a] land where kidnapped policemen are brutalised with medieval devices (Val McDermid’s The Mermaids Singing), drugged journalists shoot paedophile business moguls (David Peace’s Red Riding [Quartet]), and single-mum private eyes challenge the criminal underworld (Cath Staincliffe’s Sal Kilkenny series). Truly it’s grim--but for some reason not grim enough for international audiences.”

• My friend Charlie Smyth will be disappointed to hear this: The FX Network crime drama Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant and inspired by Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens tales, will reportedly end after Season 6. It’s fifth season just kicked off this month.

• Robin Jarossi surveys the field of TV crime dramas set to air in the UK this year, including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Honourable Woman, Sofie Grabol’s Fortitude, Dominic Cooper’s Fleming, and Common, the new 90-minute film by Jimmy McGovern of Cracker fame.

• Harper Lee’s To Kill and Mockingbird and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment are the only two obvious crime/mystery tales on Flavorwire’s list of “50 Novels Guaranteed to Make You a Better Person”--“kinder, cleverer, more productive, and a whole lot more open to the experience of others.”

• The forthcoming movie version of Gone Girl will evidently have a dramatically different ending from the 2012 novel, and author Gillian Flynn has no one but herself to blame for that fact.

• Author Hilary Davidson’s remarks on misogyny and violence in crime fiction, made during last year’s Bouchercon, spurred Library Journal to ask her to elaborate on the subject for this post.

• Had it not been for the fact that my wife and I went to see the big-screen film American Hustle this last weekend (a truly exceptional production, with special kudos deserved by Christian Bale and the ever-lovely Amy Adams), I might not have heard about the forthcoming, six-episode Discovery Channel mini-series Klondike, set to debut next Monday, January 20. However, we arrived at the theater early, and had to sit through all of the pre-feature advertisements, one of them promoting Klondike, which the blog Dark Horizons says “follows two childhood best friends who risk everything to pursue their dream of striking it rich during the 1890s gold rush in the brutal Yukon Territory.” (You can see a preview of that mini-series here, with more information available here.) As somebody who’s written a good deal about the Klondike Gold Rush (including here), you can bet that I’ll give this Discovery drama a shot. How about you?

• Norwegian author-musician Jo Nesbø has been recruited to “retell” William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It’s part of a project mounted by the Penguin Random House Group to recruit authors (also including Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson) to reintroduce Shakespeare’s plays to 21st-century audiences. This new Hogarth Shakespeare line of books will debut in 2016 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the “matchless Bard’s” death. One wonders how differently Nesbø might treat the 17th-century source material from what A.J. Hartley and David Hewson already did in their 2012 novelization, Macbeth (Thomas & Mercer).

• Mystery Scene’s Oline Cogdill laments that 2014 is “a year in which we will not have a [new] novel by the master,” Elmore Leonard, who perished last summer at age 87. “It just doesn’t seem justified.”

• Mystery Fanfare alerts us to London’s upcoming Nordicana 2014, “a two-day event [February 1-2] for anyone interested in--or obsessed with--Scandinavian crime fiction and drama.”

• I haven’t watched NBC-TV’s Today Show in years, but the blog All Things Law and Order has posted a clip from this morning’s broadcast, in which former co-stars Jill Hennessy, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Elisabeth Rohm reminisce about their participation in that very-long-running NBC crime drama.

• Congratulations to The Newsroom, writer Aaron Sorkin’s political drama, which HBO-TV has renewed for a third and final season.

• I don’t remember the 1982 TV movie Rehearsal for Murder, starring Robert Preston, Lynn Redgrave, and The Avengers’ Patrick Macnee. Yet it was penned by none other than Columbo co-creators Richard Levinson and William Link, and the blog Ontos calls Rehearsal “an ensemble piece with great acting and an ingenious solution.” Luckily, that 96-minute teleflick is available in DVD format as well as through Amazon’s “instant video” program. Don’t expect too much time to pass before I’ve plugged this hole in my experience of Levinson and Link’s work. Read more on the film here.

• Speaking of things I must have, you can add to that roster Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene, which the book’s editor, Curtis Evans, describes as “a collection of essays in honor of the seventieth birthday of Professor Douglas G. Greene, biographer of the great Golden Age detective novelist John Dickson Carr, head of Crippen & Landru Publishers, and one of the most accomplished and admired figures in mystery genre criticism over the last thirty-five years.” Mysteries Unlocked is due out in July and will feature contributions by Mike Ashley, Jon L. Breen, Tom Nolan, Julia Jones, Martin Edwards, and many others.

• Of the 10 books author Stav Sherez describes as “crime novels in disguise”--works “originally marketed as literary novels but [that] contain all the ingredients, tropes, and page-turning fury of the best crime books”--I am quite embarrassed to admit I’ve read only three. I did see the 1979 film adapted, by John Huston, from Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, but that probably doesn’t count.

• Crimespree Magazine’s Web site has the first lobby poster for the much-anticipated big-screen version of Veronica Mars, about which I wrote in my last news wrap-up.

• And I am sorry to hear that, after seven years in business, the group blog Poe’s Deadly Daughters will close on what would have been Edgar Allan Poe’s 115th birthday, January 19, 2014. “We’ve never stopped having fun,” writes Elizabeth Zelvin, one of Deadly Daughters’ eight “blog sisters, past and present,” “and the pleasure of interacting with our readers has played an enormous part in that. But as 21st-century life gets more and more hectic, reading a favorite blog daily or even weekly has become harder for even the most devoted followers. And writing a 500-800-word post that’s entertaining, informative, and polished every week for seven years--well, do the math: 52 x 7 = 364 posts from each of us. And 364 x 700 words (let’s be conservative and use an estimated average) = 254,800 words per blogger, or the equivalent of 3½ novels apiece.” The site’s contributors are currently producing good-bye posts to mark this occasion. I am pleased to hear that Poe’s Deadly Daughters will remain available here as an archived resource.

Bullet Points: First 2014 Edition

Now that I’m finally past the feverish activities that surrounded Christmas, and have made peace with the weather woes that cancelled my long-planned-for holiday in beautiful Quebec City, Canada (gggrrrrr!), I can get back to the business of gathering and posting crime-fiction-related news bits. My, how quickly they accumulate …

• We’re now a week into 2014, but bloggers are still busy recapping their last 12 months of reading pleasures. Ayo Onatade gives a hearty thumbs-up to Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls, George Pelecanos’ The Double, Robert Crais’ Suspect, and other works in Shotsmag Confidential. Crimespree Magazine critics identify their favorite reads from 2013 here, while the pseudonymous Admiral Ironbombs at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed & Creased chooses his five top mystery/thriller books (all of them classics) in addition to the same number of science fiction/fantasy titles. Blogger-novelist Patti Abbott has announced her 10 favorite books of 2013, while Australia-based Reactions to Reading has gathered 14 crime-related tales of particular merit. And not incidentally, contributors to January Magazine--who listed their favorite crime-fiction works of 2013 in mid-December--have finally compiled their favorites in four additional categories. You’ll find editor Linda L. Richards’ introduction to the full feature, plus links to all of the posts, here.

• Oh, and Euro Crime has concluded its series focusing on “favorite discoveries” from the last year. All 10 posts are here.

• A new trailer for the big-screen version of Veronica Mars has been circulating lately, and it makes that Kickstarter-funded project look quite appealing. You can watch it here. (A previous version is here.) The Los Angeles Times explains the film’s plot thusly: “It’s been almost nine years since ‘Veronica Mars’ ended, and Veronica [Kristen Bell] is no longer in high school. But to give the characters a reason to congregate again once more, the film involves Veronica going back to her hometown of Neptune, Calif., for a high school reunion.” Veronica Mars, featuring an original screenplay by Rob Thomas and Dianne Ruggiero, is set to open in U.S. theaters on March 14.

• Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) brings news that The Detective’s Daughter (Head of Zeus), by Lesley Thomson, “has been voted eBook of the year following eBooks by Sainsbury’s month-long quest to reveal UK book-lovers’ top digital read for 2013.” (Sainsbury’s, for those of you who don’t happen to reside in Great Britain, is a large supermarket chain.) Thomson’s printed-book sequel, Ghost Girl, is due out in May.

• A big thanks to Sarah Weinman, who had some nice things to say about The Rap Sheet and yours truly in a recent post highlighting blogs that provide “good crime fiction recommendations.”

• The late Siân Busby’s A Commonplace Killing, which was among my favorite crime novels of 2013, is also one of the latest works chosen for W.H. Smith’s Richard & Judy Book Club. Find out more here.

• I love this vintage-style cover for William Boyd’s Solo.

• The organizers of Murder at the Beach, the 2014 Bouchercon to be held in Long Beach, California, are soliciting short stories for inclusion in that event’s anthology. Dana Cameron, a past winner of the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards, has been convinced to edit that compilation. You can find submission details here.

• Oops! From The New York Times: “Chris Gossage, the lawyer whose indiscreet chatter led to the public unmasking of J.K. Rowling as the author of ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’--the detective novel that she published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith--has been fined £1,000 (about $1,645) by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for breaking the authority’s client confidentiality rules. Mr. Gossage, a partner at Russells Solicitors, also received a written rebuke.”

• And happy birthday, Sherlock Holmes!

Everybody Wants in on the Act

Each year at this time we see publications and their individual critics earnestly releasing lists of their favorite crime and thriller novels published during the previous dozen months. (I’ve done it twice already--see here and here.) This can be an enjoyable exercise, at least so long as everyone concerned--and that includes readers--understands that there’s nothing remotely scientific about the list-making. Such picks are a matter of opinion, and each reader is likely to differ about what he or she likes best. With that in mind, here are some additional rundowns of 2013’s “bests” to consider:

• Like me, critic-editor Sarah Weinman takes a couple of shots at identifying her favorite genre novels of the year. For Canada’s National Post newspaper, she catalogues what she thinks were 2013’s top picks in Canadian crime, including works by Owen Laukkanen, A.S.A. Harrison, and Louise Penny. Meanwhile, in her blog, she chooses her 10 favorite mystery and crime novels of the year, regardless of where their authors reside--a rundown that features Alafair Burke’s If You Were Here, Hallie Ephron’s There Was an Old Woman, and Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night (which also figured prominently among my best-of-2013 choices).

• Philadelphia blogger Peter Rozovsky steers clear of the “best” designation by listing “some good books I’ve read so far in 2013”--not all of which were first published during the last twelvemonth, and some of which don’t even fall under the crime-fiction rubric. Included among his choices are J. Robert Janes’ Tapestry, Charlie Stella’s Maifya, and The Hunter and Other Stories, by Dashiell Hammett.

• The Boston Globe today announced its “Best 2013 Crime Fiction” list containing 10 titles, some of which are: Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman; Shoot the Woman First, by Wallace Stroby; and A Tap on the Window, by Linwood Barclay.

• Sarah Ward, who blogs at Crimepieces, delivers what she calls “My Top Five Crime Reads of 2013.” Among her favorites: Leif G.W. Persson’s Linda, As in the Linda Murder, Mark Oldfield’s The Sentinel, and Fred Vargas’ The Ghost Riders of Ordebec.

• The Austin, Texas, bookstore MysteryPeople has posted two separate mystery-fiction lists. First up: Its employees’ choices of the “Top 10 Novels of 2013,” among which can be found George Pelecanos’ The Double and Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Version. Then we’re treated to the shop’s “Top 5 Debut Novels of 2013,” a list that includes Todd Robinson’s The Hard Bounce and Anonymous-9’s Hard Bite.

• London-based journalist and author Woody Haut presents his “Best of 2013” list in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The works that made his cut include Ask Not, by Max Allan Collins; Under the Eye of God, by Jerome Charyn; and Others of My Kind, by James Sallis.

• Australian Andrew Nette, who writes fiction as well as the excellent blog Pulp Curry, reviews his last year of reading and comes up with a list of five books he particularly enjoyed, among them two genre classics: The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley, and Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.

• Scottish crime-fictionist Tony Black asked some of his fellow wordsmiths to submit their “Best of 2013” choices to his blog, Pulp Pusher. Click here to see what releases Matt Hilton, Dave Zeltserman, Paul D. Brazill, and other found most intriguing.

• Over at the Euro Crime blog, editor Karen Meek suggested that her stable of reviewers reveal their favorite crime-fiction discoveries of the past year, whether they were books, films, or television series. Already she’s heard from Rich Westwood, Norman Price, Amanda Gillies, and Geoff Jones, with more lists still to be posted.

• Among its “Editors’ Picks for 2013: Fiction,” the online Barnes & Noble Review features at least three novels that could be designated crime and mystery fiction: Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Philip Kerr’s A Man Without Breath, and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.

• Pynchon’s latest novel also finds a spot on Gizmodo’s “Best Books of 2013” compilation, though most of the choices are from the non-fiction stacks.

• Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) split her “Best of 2013” coverage into three posts. Click here to find her favorite non-fiction release, her favorite discovery, and her commendations for best “developing police procedural series.” Click here for Davies’ remarks about authors and tales that took unexpected directions. And see this post to learn which thriller and debut works she most enjoyed.

• British author John Harvey has announced his four favorite novels of 2013, none of which is a crime- or mystery-related work.

• On the other hand, Curtis Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery) has commenced compiling a rundown of the 20 best classic crime novels he’s reviewed this year in his blog, The Passing Tramp. The first installment appears here; the second is here.

• Oh, there always has to be some contrarian in the bunch. This year it’s the pseudonymous TomCat, who offers up seven of the worst mysteries he read all year. Surprisingly, Ed McBain’s name appears on that list of losers.

• And to finish off this post, let me direct you toward the pseudonymous Puzzle Doctor’s picks of the “top five underappreciated authors” in the mystery/crime field. Mark Billingham and Stuart McBride are included, but you’ll have to click the link to find out which other names earned his respect in 2013.

Have you spotted other lists of what critics claim are the best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2013? Then, please, let the rest of us know about them in the Comments section of this post.

UPDATES: In Beneath the Stains of Time, blogger TomCat now presents his list of “the best mysteries read in 2013”--almost all of them older titles, heavy on locked-room mysteries. Author Heath Lowrance has just “two picks for best novels of the year,” both from the crime-fiction shelves. Over at The Poisoned Martini, Brian Abbott ponders whether the mystery novels most frequently checked out from the library at which he works also qualify as 2013’s “best.” Finally, in Confessions of a Mystery Novelist …, Margot Kinberg shares “some great releases from this year in case you missed ’em.”

Bullet Points: Freezing in Seattle Edition

• It was announced on Friday, during the annual Black Orchid Banquet of the Wolfe Pack in New York City, that Susan Thibadeau won the 2013 Black Orchid Novella Award for “The Discarded Spouse.” As Les Blatt explains in Classic Mysteries, that commendation is “presented in conjunction with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [and] given to the author of a novella, the intermediate-length form employed so effectively so often by Rex Stout for his Nero Wolfe stories. The award includes a $1,000 prize, with the award-winning novella to be published next summer in AHMM.” During the course of those same festivities, Connecticut author Chris Knopf was presented with the 2013 Nero Award for his standalone novel Dead Anyway (Permanent Press). It was announced in September that he’d captured the Nero.

• Tonight brings the debut of Bonnie & Clyde, a new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the rise and bloody fall of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger). The preview--viewable here--demonstrates considerable potential, but I’m not expecting the boob tube to do a better job with the basic story than Arthur Penn did in his 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde. This new picture is set for simultaneous broadcasting tonight on A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime, beginning at 9 p.m.

• One of the more interesting and thoughtful selections of “best crime novels” from 2013 is delivered in the Barnes & Noble Review by Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe. Among her less-than-conventional recommendations are The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton, and Jim Crace’s Harvest.

• Meanwhile, The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2013” rundown features several works that could fit into the field of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, including Herman Koch’s The Dinner and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.

• Laura Wilson chooses her own favorite crime novels of 2013--including Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites--for The Guardian.

• At least two crime-fictiony works make an appearance in Slate’s “best books” picks for the year: Cartwheel, by Jennifer DuBois, and The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harrison.

• And one more post along this same line: Goodreads has announced the results of its Choice Awards 2013 contest. As was expected, the picks made by online voters are unremarkable, but they’re here.

• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura notes the passing, on December 5, of 82-year-old English author Colin Wilson, who he says “became famous at 26 when his first book, The Outsider (Gollancz, 1956), hit the street … He was a prolific writer of philosophy, literature, history, and the occult. He also wrote science fiction as well as crime fiction, including Ritual in the Dark (Gollancz, 1960), The Glass Cage (Barker 1966), and The Schoolgirl Murder Case (Hart-Davis, 1974), which is the first of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet series.”

• Among the subjects covered by Mike Ripley in his December “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots: Peter Guttridge’s recent public interrogation of Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5; the sadly forgotten works of mid-20th-century American novelist Charles Williams; publisher Orion’s “Murder Room” initiative to make classic but out-of-print works of crime fiction available again in e-book format; and the release of David Suchet’s Poirot and Me, “as neat and fastidious a memoir as one might expect from Hercule Poirot.” In addition, Ripley publicizes the winners of his 2013 Shots of the Year Awards, which he’d previously posted here.

• In Criminal Element, Robert K. Lewis applauds the noir aspects of David Janssen’s 1974-1976 TV private-eye series, Harry O.

• I’d somehow missed hearing, until yesterday, about AMC-TV’s historical espionage series, Turn, which is set in the summer of 1778 and based on Alexander Rose’s 2006 book, Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. Wikipedia explains that this program will focus around “a New York farmer and his childhood friends [who] form an unlikely group of spies, called the The Culper Ring, who eventually turn the tide during the American Revolutionary War.” Turn is scheduled to debut next year. Click here to watch a preview.

• Speaking of previews, here’s one for Death Comes to Pemberley, the three-part BBC-TV drama based on P.D. James’ 2011 novel of the same name. UK viewers can begin enjoying Pemberley on December 26 of this year, but Americans will have to be content with the promise that PBS-TV stations plan to air the program sometime in 2014.

• Rob W. Hart, the associate publisher of MysteriousPress.com, has compiled a list of his top 10 crime-fiction clichés for the Mulholland Books blog. Almost as interesting are the additional chestnuts suggested in that post’s Comments section.

• Underground London is endlessly fascinating.

• Declan Burke interviews Lee Child, who he says “is acutely aware of how long [his series protagonist, Jack] Reacher has been on the road, and how implausible his journey grows with each succeeding story.” Well, now we know.

• I’m pleased to hear that the NBC-TV crime drama The Blacklist, starring James Spader and Megan Boone, has been renewed for “a full 22-episode second season.”

• Crime Time Preview has launched a series of posts focusing on “crime shows that blow us away.” His first of 50 picks is Copper, the BBC America historical drama that was cancelled in September.

• Here’s a fun Australian condom ad that’s unlikely ever to be shown in the persistently prudish United States.

• Hurray! The UK TV series Foyle’s War will return in 2015.

• Finally, make a note of this: On Tuesday, January 7, PBS-TV’s American Experience series will broadcast a two-hour episode titled “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” based on Deborah Blum’s terrific 2010 non-fiction book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Here’s the news release synopsis of that show: “In 1918, on the brink of becoming the largest metropolis in the world, New York City hired Charles Norris as its first scientifically trained medical examiner. Over the course of a decade and a half, Norris and his extraordinarily driven and talented chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science, sending impatient heirs, jilted lovers, and desperate debtors to the electric chair.” You’ll find a preview of the show here. American Experience begins at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Coming Out on Top

2013 has produced scores of excellent crime, mystery, and thriller novels--everything from George Pelecanos’ The Double and Louise Penny’s How the Light Gets In to Charles McCarry’s The Shanghai Factor, Jassy MacKenzie’s Pale Horses, J. Robert Janes’ Tapestry, Lyndsay Faye’s Seven for a Secret, Richard Helms’ The Mojito Coast, and Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, by Ace Atkins. So when I sat down to assemble a list of my 10 favorites for Kirkus Reviews, it was no easy exercise. My final selections--posted this morning on the Kirkus Web site--are sure to delight some readers and disappoint others. Feel free to express your opinions in the Comments section below, or on the Kirkus page featuring this week’s column.

Bullet Points: Pre-Turkey Day Edition

Having now concluded my altogether impromptu weeklong vacation, I’m back to (among other things) the business of collecting crime-fiction news bits that don’t necessarily merit their own posts.

• Craig Sisterson, the energetic editor and writer behind New Zealand’s annual Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, reports that “this year has seen the closest results in the history of the award. The winner, by a whisker, will be announced on 2 December.” In the meantime, check that link above for an assessment of all four contestants for the 2013 prize. And click here to learn how you can pick up a free, “personally signed copy of the winning book.”

• Crime Scraps’ Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) brings word that The Missing File, by D.A. (Dror) Mishani, has become the first Israeli work to win Sweden’s Martin Beck Award for best translated crime novel. That book, published in Sweden as Utsuddade spar (and translated by Nils Larsson), had been shortlisted for the prize along with translations of S.J. Bolton’s Immortal, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Jo Nesbø’s Police, and Ferdinand von Schirach’s Case Collini. Meanwhile, Christoffer Carlsson captured the 2013 Best Swedish Crime Novel Award for his book Den osynlige mannen från Salem (The Invisible Man from Salem), beating out works by Arne Dahl, Håkan Nesser, Johan Theorin, and Katarina Wennstam. UPDATE: Shotsmag Confidential adds that Thomas Engström’s novel Väster om friheten (West of Liberty) has picked up the Swedish Crime Academy’s award for Best Debut Novel.

• Kirkus Reviews has proclaimed its favorite mysteries and thrillers of 2013, including novels by Max Barry, James Lee Burke, Meg Gardiner, Stephen King, Maurizio de Giovanni, and Kevin Egan. I didn’t have any input into these selections. My own list of favorites from the last 12 months should be posted on the Kirkus site tomorrow.

• Speaking of Kirkus, another of its contributors, Clayton Moore, offers up a new interview with Charles Ardai, the editor-publisher of Hard Case Crime. The biggest part of their posted exchange covers the “no less than eight under-the-radar novels” Michael Crichton penned as “John Lange,” and which Hard Case is republishing. However, they also talk about some pending releases (including Lawrence Block’s Borderline) and such “lost” works as Charles Willeford’s Grimmhaven.

• Watch for the December 17 debut, on PBS-TV channels, of How Sherlock Changed the World. Described as “a new two-hour special about the world’s most legendary fictional detective,” it “reveals the astonishing impact Holmes has had on the development of real criminal investigation and forensic techniques. From blood to ballistics, from fingerprints to footprints, Sherlock Holmes was 120 years ahead of his time, protecting crime scenes from contamination, looking for minute traces of evidence, and searching for what the eye couldn't see.” Click here to watch a short segment from the special, in which forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee talks about how Holmes’ deductive reasoning has impacted modern crime-scene studies.

• John Harvey has won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize, which celebrates fiction that “breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form.” Congratulations, sir!

• I’m late in noting this, but publisher Open Road Integrated Media is “celebrating mysteries and history from the 1890s to today” with a giveaway contest offering eight titles from its e-book list. According to its posted rules, the contest will end this coming Friday night, November 29. Click here to find out more.

• Spinetingler Magazine picks “10 Underestimated Noir Authors Everyone Should Know.” I’m pleased to say that I have read fiction by most, though not all, of the authors named.

• It’s the crime drama that won’t die! After already being cancelled twice by AMC-TV, The Killing--a pale U.S. version of the popular Danish show Forbrydelsen--is coming back for a “fourth and final limited season,” this time on Netflix. “The six-episode series finale, produced by Fox Television Studios, will be made available only to Netflix streaming subscribers,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

• Crimepieces blogger Sarah Ward has posted a good two-part report about this last weekend’s Iceland Noir festival of crime fiction, held in Reykjavik. Part I can found enjoyed here, while Part II is here. Ward promises to put up a final installment in this series tomorrow.

• Quentin Bates, author of the Sergeant Gunnhildur Gísladóttir mysteries (Chilled to the Bone), delivers his own early thoughts on the Iceland Noir conference here.

• Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg has spent much of the last week looking back appreciatively at vintage TV themes. Here he recalls “12 TV Shows That Changed Their Theme Song,” among them Kojak and Magnum, P.I. Here are 14 more programs that replaced their original themes, including The Bold Ones and Nash Bridges; and look here to find eight more examples, the most infamous of that bunch being Hardcastle and McCormick. Click here to revisit TV series that removed lyrics from their openings, and here to be reminded of shows that changed both their themes and their names.

• Max Allan Collins has reprinted an essay in his blog that originally appeared in Publishers Weekly. Titled “Why I Write,” it’s sure to ring a familiar chord with veteran scribblers. Check it out here.

• Ali Karim reports for Shotsmag Confidential on a recent visit by Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny to Heffers Bookstore in Cambridge, England, where she talked about her writing. “This was the only UK event she is appearing at this year,” says Karim, “due to deadline pressures on her current work in progress.”

• And to keep you busy during any free time you might have in the foreseeable future, note that the first quarterly edition of All Due Respect is now available for Kindles. Also, the third collection of stories from Beat to a Pulp has recently been released.

And So It Begins ...

It’s only early November, but online retailer Amazon has already announced its Best Books of 2013 picks, including 20 choices in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category.

Like Goodreads’ preliminary list of 15 mysteries and thrillers published over the last 11 months that deserve celebrating, there’s nothing particularly wrong with Amazon’s tally; indeed, Stephen King’s Joyland, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, George Pelecanos’ The Double, Alafair Burke’s If You Were Here, and other works named by Amazon are all worthy examples of what can be accomplished in this genre. But for the most part, this is nothing better than a rundown of the year’s crime-fiction best sellers. There’s scant evidence of serious critical judgments having been made in the selections, and there are no unexpected or daring nominees among the bunch. Gone are the days when Amazon made much effort at serious, professional reviewing of books; now the critiquing is left up to unpaid amateurs, most of whom have no style to their writing, lack a broad understanding of the genre’s history, and produce little better than promotional copy. But then, what do we expect from a sales-oriented site?

If you’re interested in presenting only best-selling crime fiction to your friends and family this year, then look for your holiday gift ideas to Amazon’s “best books” lists. Otherwise, wait for the publication of choices by more thoughtful book-review sources. They should be rolling out over the next few weeks.

UPDATE: As reader Ray Garraty points out in the Comments section of this post, Publishers Weekly recently posted its own selection of 2013’s best crime novels. There are a few books on the list that I haven’t read, but PW’s other choices suggest that its editors exercised both thoughtfulness and discretion in creating their list.