And Another Thing …

• The recipients of this year’s Silver Falchion Awards, given out during the recent Killer Nashville convention in Tennessee, have been announced. There were more than two dozen categories of contestants, but below are five winners that may be of particular interest to Rap Sheet readers.

— Best Cozy: Murder in Third Position, by Lori Robbins (Level Best)
— Best Historical: Murder at the Galliano Club, by Carmen Amato (Laurel & Croton)
— Best Investigator: Dead Drop, by James L'Etoile (Level Best)
— Best Mystery: The Bone Records, by Rich Zahradnik (1000 Words A Day Press)
— Best Thriller: One of Us Is Dead, by Jeneva Rose (Blackstone)

A full list of the 2023 Silver Falchion winners is here.

• Scottish writer Claire Wilson’s first novel, Five by Five, has won the inaugural Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers Prize. As In Reference to Murder explains, “The prize, launched in 2022, aims to discover new writers from underrepresented backgrounds in publishing and focuses on a different genre each year, with the first year dedicated to crime fiction. Wilson, who works as an intelligence analyst in a Scottish prison, impressed the judges with her thriller which follows a protagonist on the trail of a corrupt prison officer who might be her lover. Wilson will receive a publishing contract with Penguin Michael Joseph, worth at least £10,000, and representation by the DHH Literary Agency. All shortlisted writers will also receive one-to-one editorial feedback and guidance from an editor or agent.”

• Six years after its original publication, Karen Dionne’s best-selling novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter, has been adapted to the silver screen and is set to debut in U.S. theaters on October 6. It stars Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn. Here’s a plot synopsis from distributors Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions:

In the tense thriller The Marsh King’s Daughter, a woman with a secret past will venture into the wilderness she left behind to confront the most dangerous man she's ever met: her father. In the film, Helena’s seemingly ordinary life hides a dark and dangerous truth: her estranged father is the infamous Marsh King, the man who kept her and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. When her father escapes from prison, Helena will need to confront her past. Knowing that he will hunt for her and her family, Helena must find the strength to face her demons and outmaneuver the man who taught her everything she knows about surviving in the wild.

• Occasional Rap Sheet contributor Randal S. Brandt writes in CrimeReads about the “fascinating and complicated life” of Lange Lewis (aka Jane de Lange Lewis), whose fourth novel about Los Angeles police lieutenant Richard Tuck, The Birthday Murder (1945), has been reissued as part of the American Mystery Classics line.

• Finally, Sweet Freedom’s Todd Mason brings the welcome news that Into the Night, author Cornell Woolrich’s final novel—unfinished at the time of his demise in 1968, but completed by Lawrence Block for publication in 1987—has been purchased by Hard Case Crime and is slated for re-release in May 2024, with beautiful cover art by Gregory Manchess. “Is it the best [Woolrich] ever wrote? No,” says HCC editor Charles Ardai. “But I do feel it deserves to be in print, and at its best I feel it’s a potent distillation of his themes and obsessions.”