Monday 28 January 2019

The 2018 Agatha Award Nominees


Malice Domestic have announced the 2018 Agatha Award nominees.
Best Contemporary Novel
Mardi Gras Murder by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)
 Beyond the Truth by Bruce Robert Coffin (Witness Impulse)
 Cry Wolf by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press)
 Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
 Trust Me by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Best Historical Novel  
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
 The Gold Pawn by LA Chandlar (Kensington)
 The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
 Turning the Tide by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink)
 Murder on Union Square by Victoria Thompson (Berkley)

Best First Novel
A Ladies Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
 Little Comfort by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
 What Doesn't Kill You by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
 Deadly Solution by Keenan Powell (Level Best Books)
 Curses Boiled Again by Shari Randall (St. Martin's)

Best Short Story
"All God's Sparrows" by Leslie Budewitz (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
 "A Postcard for the Dead" by Susanna Calkins in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)
 "Bug Appetit" by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
"The Case of the Vanishing Professor" by Tara Laskowski (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
 "English 398: Fiction Workshop" by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Best Young Adult Mystery
Potion Problems(Just Add Magic) by Cindy Callaghan (Aladdin) Winterhouse by Ben Guterson (Henry Holt)
 A Side of Sabotage by C.M. Surrisi (Carolrhoda Books)

Best Non-fiction
Mastering Plot Twists by Jane Cleland (Writer's Digest Books)
Writing the Cozy Mystery by Nancy J Cohen (Orange Grove Press)
 Conan Doyle for the Defense by Margalit Fox (Random House)
 Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson (Pegasus Books)
 Wicked Women of Ohio by Jane Ann Turzillo (History Press)

The Agatha Awards will be presented on 4 May 2019 during Malice Domestic 31.    Congratulations to all of the nominees!

A Night with Crime Novelist Bernard Minier 7 February 2019

Meet Bernard Minier, one of the most applauded contemporary French crime novelists and discover his best-selling novel, Night, just launched in the UK by Mulholland Book Trade Paperpack. Night follows detective Kirsten Nigaard and commandant Martin Servaz on a terrifying chase. Winner of the prestigious Prix Polar at the Cognac Crime Festival and translated into twenty languages, Bernard Minier became a sensation in France when his first novel GlacĂ© (The Frozen Dead, 2013) was published. It was made into a very successful television series now available on NETFLIX.

Chaired by Ayo Onatade, freelance crime fiction critic and Associate member of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain.

More information can be found here.

Tickets can be bought here.

Night by Bernard Minier (Mulholland Books) Published 7 February 2019

When a body is found in a church in the far north of Norway, the trail leads to an offshore oil rig. Searching the rooms of one of the rig workers, detective Kirsten Nigaard finds a pile of photos taken with a long-lens camera. The subject of the photos is Martin Servaz. And someone has been watching him.  Signs suggest the killer is none other than Julian Hirtmann, a serial murderer on the run. Martin, after all, has a long and painful history with Hirtmann. Now it seems he has struck again.  Their one clue is in amongst the photos. A picture of a young boy in a beautiful Austrian village, and on the back of it, the name 'Gustav'. Martin and Kirsten set off on the trail and soon find themselves in a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase, not knowing who is chasing whom, and which of them might pay the ultimate price.

Saturday 26 January 2019

Killer Women Panel - The Unstoppable Appeal of Crime Fiction


What is it about crime that makes so many people choose to read and watch it? Join on 5 February 2019 a killer panel of authors, featuring Alison Joseph, Mel McGrath, Kate Rhodes and Laura Wilson, as they discuss the huge, unstoppable appeal of crime fiction and the role that jeopardy so often plays in good storytelling.

Tickets are priced at £6 in advance and can be bought here.

Friday 25 January 2019

2019 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend

We are pleased to announce that the 2019 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend 16/17/18 August is now open for booking.

Our theme this year is 'Gamechangers: writers who have transformed the genre' and our already splendid line-up of authors and their subjects includes:
Graeme Macrae Burnet (Georges Simenon)
Prof Niamh Nic Daeid (Forensics)
Will Dean (Scandi Noir)
Mary Paulson-Ellis (Kate Atkinson)
Nicci French (Suspense Thrillers)
Mick Herron (Reginald Hill)
Sarah Hilary (Patricia Highsmith)
Val McDermid (New Wave Feminists)
Andrew Taylor (Josephine Tey)

We are delighted to confirm that Natasha Cooper will chair and that our Guest of Honour will be Denise Mina.

More authors and programme details to come!

Booking details can be found here.

As regular supporters of the Conference we warmly invite you to take advantage of the early booking offer, otherwise confined to Alumnae

You will see that, as last year, accommodation is separately, and directly, bookable through the Conference Office. This means that the most efficient booking method will be online. If, however, you require a hard copy booking form please contact Triona Adams at triona.adams@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

Thursday 24 January 2019

Books to Look forward to from Sandstone Press

February 2019
This thriller brilliantly evokes 1973 Moscow and a world of diplomacy and counter-espionage. Escaping failure as an undergraduate and a daughter, not to mention bleak 1970s England, Martha marries Kit - who is gay. Having a wife could keep him safe in Moscow in his diplomatic post. As Martha tries to understand her new life and makes the wrong friends, she walks straight into an underground world of counter-espionage. Out of her depth, Martha no longer knows who can be trusted. The Wolves of Lennisky Prospekt is by Sarah Armstrong.

April 2019
Death at the Plague Museum is by Lesley Kelly.  Edinburgh is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic.  One Friday, three key civil servants working on Virus policy hold a secret meeting at the Museum of Plagues and pandemics.  By Monday, two are dead and one is missing.  Mona, Bernard, and their other colleagues at the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team set out to find the missing bureaucrat, their investigation bedevilled by political interference.  The museum has a few deadly secrets of its own.  But not to worry – Bernard is a card-carrying Museum member.

May 2019
July 1932. When a drowned man is found in a freight elevator in Haus Vaterland, the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz, Inspector Gereon Rath is called in to investigate. It's not that Rath hasn't problems enough. His hunt for a mysterious contract killer has been stalled for weeks, and his on-off lover, Charlotte Ritter, has just begun her probationary year with Berlin CID. The corpse in Haus Vaterland looks to be part of a series of murders whose trail leads eastwards to the Polish border - and beyond.  The Fatherland Files is by Volker Kutscher.

June 2019
Finer Things is by David Wharton.  London: 1963. The lives of a professional shoplifter and a young art student collide. Delia needs to atone for a terrible mistake; Tess is desperate to convince herself she really is an artist. Elsewhere in London, the Krays are on the rise and a gang war is in the offing. Tess's relationship with her gay best friend grows unexpectedly complicated, and Delia falls for a man she's been paid to betray. At last, the two women find a resolution together - a performance that is both Delia's goodbye to crime and Tess's one genuine work of art.


Wednesday 23 January 2019

2019 Barry Award Nominations

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the Barry Award Nominees. Winners will be announced on October 31 at the Dallas Bouchercon Opening Ceremonies. Congratulations to all!

Best Novel
November Road by Lou Berney,(Morrow) 
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly, (Little, Brown)
The Shadow We Hide by Allen Eskens, (Mulholland)
Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson, (Viking)
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia,(Atria)
A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee, (Pegasus)

Best First Novel
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite,(Doubleday)
Need to Know by Karen Cleveland, (Ballantine)
Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver,(Pegasus)
Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear, (Harper)
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin, (Ecco)
The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor (Crown)

Best Paperback Original 
A Sharp Solitude by Christine Carbo, (Atria)
Dead Pretty by David Mark, (Blue Rider Press)
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan, (Penguin)
The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas,(Berkley)
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic, (Pushkin Vertigo)

Best Thriller
The Terminal List by Jack Carr, (Atria)
Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman,(Knopf)
London Rules by Mick Herron, (Soho)
Forever and  a Day by Anthony Horowitz, (Harper)
Light it Up by Nick Petrie, (Putnam)
The King Tides by James Swain, (Thomas & Mercer) 

Tuesday 22 January 2019

MWA Edgar Award Nominees

Mystery Writers of America announced the Nominees for the 2019 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honouring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2018. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at the Gala Banquet, on April 25, 2019 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. 

BEST NOVEL
The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard (Blackstone Publishing)
House Witness by Mike Lawson (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
A Gambler’s Jury by Victor Methos (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley (Hachette Book Group - Mulholland)
Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne (Penguin Random House – Hogarth)
A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn (Penguin Random House – Berkley)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
A Knife in the Fog by Bradley Harper (Seventh Street Books)
The Captives by Debra Jo Immergut (HarperCollins Publishers - Ecco)
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin (HarperCollins Publishers - Ecco)
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Hiroshima Boy by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park Books)
Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani (Penguin Random House – Penguin Books)
Under My Skin by Lisa Unger (Harlequin – Park Row Books)

BEST FACT CRIME
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge First and the Rise of Gay Liberation by Robert W. Fieseler (W.W. Norton & Company - Liveright)
Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal by Jonathan Green (W.W. Norton & Company)
The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure by Carl Hoffman (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Penguin Random House - Viking)
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins Publishers - Harper)
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICALThe Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland Publishing)
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin(HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow Paperbacks)
Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)
Mark X: Who Killed Huck Finn's Father? by Yasuhiro Takeuchi (Taylor & Francis - Routledge)
Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson (Pegasus Books)

BEST SHORT STORY
Rabid – A Mike Bowditch Short Story” by Paul Doiron (Minotaur Books)
Paranoid Enough for Two” – The Honorable Traitors by John Lutz (Kensington Publishing)
Ancient and Modern” – Bloody Scotland by Val McDermid (Pegasus Books)
English 398: Fiction Workshop” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Art Taylor (Dell Magazines)
The Sleep Tight Motel” – Dark Corners Collection by Lisa Unger (Amazon Publishing)

BEST JUVENILE
Denis Ever After by Tony Abbott (HarperCollins Children’s Books – Katherine Tegen Books)
Zap! by Martha Freeman (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)
Ra the Mighty: Cat Detective by A.B. Greenfield (Holiday House)
Winterhouse by Ben Guterson (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Company – Henry Holt BFYR)
Otherwood by Pete Hautman (Candlewick Press)
Charlie & Frog: A Mystery by Karen Kane (Disney Publishing Worldwide – Disney Hyperion)
Zora & Me: The Cursed Ground by T.R. Simon (Candlewick Press)

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Contagion by Erin Bowman (HarperCollins Children’s Books - HarperCollins)
Blink by Sasha Dawn (Lerner Publishing Group – Carolrhoda Lab)
After the Fire by Will Hill (Sourcebooks – Sourcebooks Fire)
A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma (Algonquin Young Readers)
Sadie by Courtney Summers (Wednesday Books)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAYThe Box” - Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Teleplay by Luke Del Tredici (NBC/Universal TV)
Season 2, Episode 1” – Jack Irish, Teleplay by Andrew Knight (Acorn TV)
“Episode 1” – Mystery Road, Teleplay by Michaeley O’Brien (Acorn TV)
“My Aim is True” – Blue Bloods, Teleplay by Kevin Wade (CBS Eye Productions)
The One That Holds Everything” – The Romanoffs, Teleplay by Matthew Weiner & Donald Joh (Amazon Prime Video)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD
How Does He Die This Time?” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Nancy Novick (Dell Magazines)
 
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
A Death of No Importance by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur Books)
A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington Publishing)
Bone on Bone by Julia Keller (Minotaur Books)
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (Soho Press – Soho Crime)
A Borrowing of Bones by Paula Munier (Minotaur Books)

Congratulations to all! 

Saturday 19 January 2019

6th Annual Conference of the International Crime Fiction Association

Captivating Criminality 6: Metamorphoses of Crime: Facts and Fictions - 12-15 June 2019
G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy

Call for Papers

The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its sixth conference, which will be held in Italy. Building upon and developing ideas and themes from the previous five successful conferences, Metamorphoses of Crime: Facts and Fictions will examine the ways in which Crime Fiction as a genre incorporates elements of real-life cases and, in turn, influences society by conveying thought-provoking ideas of deviance, criminal activity, investigation and punishment.

Since its inception, the genre has drawn inspiration from sensational crime reports. In early nineteenth-century Britain, for example, Newgate novels largely drew on the biographies of famous bandits, while penny dreadfuls popularized the exploits of criminals and detectives to appeal the taste for horror and transgression of their target audience. In similar ways, notorious cases widely reported in the mid-Victorian press, such as the Road Murder (1860) or the Madeleine Smith trial (1857), exerted a significant influence on the imagination of mid- to late-Victorian novelists, including early practitioners of the sensation genre who laid the premises for the creation of detective fiction. In other cases, criminal actions were triggered by literary texts or turned into appealing fictions by journalists. Suffice it to consider the sensation created by Jack the Ripper’s murders in late-Victorian Britain or the twentieth-century recent cases of murders committed by imitators of criminals and serial killers featured in novels like A ClockWork Orange (1962), The Collector (1963), Rage (1977), and American Psycho (1991). In more recent times, the interaction between reality and other media (TV series, films, computer games, websites, chats, etc.) has raised the question of how crime continues to glamorize perturbing, blood-chilling stories of law-breaking and law-enforcement.

In addition to exploring these complex relations between facts and fictions, the conference will focus on the metamorphoses of crime across media, as well as cultural and critical boundaries. Speakers are invited to explore the crossing of forms and themes, and to ascertain the extent to which canonized definitions suit the extreme volatility of a genre that challenges categorization. From an ideological viewpoint, moreover, crime fiction has proved to be highly metamorphic, as it has been variously used to challenge, reinforce or simply interrogate ideas of ‘law and order’. The enduring appeal of the genre is also due to its openness to historical and cultural movements – such as feminism, gender studies, queer politics, postmodernism – as well as to concepts drawn from specific fields of knowledge, such as sociology and psychology. Similarly relevant to the ‘metamorphoses of crime’ are cultural exchanges among remote areas of the world, which add new perspectives to the genre’s representation of customs and ethnical issues.

Scholars, practitioners and fans of crime writing are invited to participate in this conference that will address these key elements of crime fiction and real crime, from the early modern to the present day. Topics may include, but are not restricted to:
• True Crime, Fictional Crime
• Crime Reports and the Press
• Real and Imagined Deviance
• Adaptation and Interpretation
• Crime Fiction and Form
• Generic Crossings
• Crime and Gothic
• The Detective, Then and Now
• The Anti-Hero
• Geographies of Crime
• Real and Symbolic Boundaries
• Ethnicity and Cultural Diversity
• The Ideology of Law and Order: Tradition and Innovation
• Gender and Crime
• Women and Crime: Victims and Perpetrators
• Crime and Queer Theory
• Film Adaptations
• TV series
• Technology
• The Media and Detection
• Sociology of Crime
• The Psychological
• Early Forms of Crime Writing
• Eighteenth-Century Crime
• Victorian Crime Fiction
• The Golden Age
• Hardboiled Fiction
• Contemporary Crime Fiction
• Postcolonial Crime and Detection

Plenary speakers will be Eric Peter Sandberg (City University of Hong Kong) and Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna).

Please send 200 word proposals to Professor Mariaconcetta Costantini and Dr Fiona Peters to the following email account: captivatingcriminality6@unich.it by 15th February 2019.

The abstract should include your name, email address, and affiliation, as well as the title of your paper. Please feel free to submit abstracts presenting work in progress as well as completed projects. Postgraduate students are welcome. Papers will be a maximum of 20 minutes in length.

Proposals for suggested panels are also welcome.

Thursday 17 January 2019

Harvill Secker acquires new political thriller from A D Miller


Liz Foley, Publishing Director at Harvill Secker, has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Independence Square by A.D Miller, from ZoĂ« Waldie at Rogers, Coleridge and White.  It will be published by Harvill Secker in February 2020.

A young woman scrambles up the icy hill above Independence Square in Kiev, desperate to avert the bloody crackdown that threatens the protesters below. The outcome of a revolution, and her brother’s safety, depend on her.  Though neither of them realise it, so does the fate of the man she is frantic to see.

A decade later, Simon Davey, a disgraced British diplomat, follows Olesya Zarchenko into the Tube in London, convinced she was responsible for his ruin. When he tracks her to a riverside mansion he begins to see that Olesya’s life has not been what he thought it was, and neither has his own.

Independence Square is the story of a man struggling to understand his past and of a country striving to escape its history. It is about grand upheavals of state, agonising affairs of the heart and how they intersect.  It is also a story of how we live now: about thwarted idealism, money and corruption, and where, in the 21st century, power really lies.

Liz Foley, Publishing Director at Harvill Secker, says: ‘At Harvill Secker we’ve long admired A.D. Miller’s work and his command of pace, character and theme in Independence Square makes it both an utterly compelling and deeply thought-provoking read. It is a novel that illuminates both personal and political relationships and reflects powerfully on the world we are living in now. We are over the moon to welcome such an exceptional writer to the Harvill Secker list.’  

A.D. Miller says: Since my time as a foreign correspondent, I've wanted to set a novel during a revolution--with all the vertigo and hope, wild gambles and urgent moral choices that are involved. "Independence Square" is a story about people caught up in that euphoria, and in its aftermath. I'm thrilled to be telling it with Liz Foley and her great team at Harvill Secker, and to be joining their fantastic, worldly list.  

A.D. Miller studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton. His first novel, Snowdrops — a study in moral degradation set in modern Russia — was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the CWA Gold Dagger and the Galaxy National Book Awards; it has been translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist he travelled widely across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor and is based in London.

For more information contact:
Bethan Jones, Head of Publicity, Vintage
Tel: 020 7840 8543 / email: bjones@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk 

Wednesday 16 January 2019

Fuller Award: Sara Paretsky

Huge congratulations go to Grand Master and Cartier Diamond Dagger Winner (CWA) Sara Paretsky for being given the prestigious Fuller Award by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. The award was created to acknowledge Chicago's greatest living writers.

Sara Paretsky will be officially honoured on at a reception on Thursday 9 May 2019 at Ruggles Hall

More information can be found here.

Sara Paretsky also won a CWA Gold Dagger Award in 2004 for Blacklist and was also honoured in 2011 with an Anthony Award Lifetime Achievement Award.  

Her most recent book Shell Game was published in 2018.

More information about Sara Paretsky and her work can be found on her website

Tuesday 15 January 2019

Left Coast Crime - 2019 Lefty Award Nominees


The Left Coast Crime “Lefty” Awards are fan awards chosen by registered members of the Left Coast Crime convention. Nominations for awards to be presented at each annual convention are made by people registered for that convention and also the immediately prior convention. A ballot listing the official nominees is given to each registrant when they check in at the convention, and final voting takes place at the convention. The ballots are tabulated and that year’s Lefty Awards are presented at the Awards Celebration.

Left Coast Crime 2019 will be presenting four Lefty Awards at the 29th annual LCC convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The Lefty awards will be voted on at the convention and presented at the Awards Banquet on Saturday, March 30, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver.

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel
Mardi Gras Murder by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)
Hollywood Ending by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)
Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
Death al Fresco by Leslie Karst (Crooked Lane Books)
The Spirit in Question by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)
Scott Free by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bruce Alexander Memorial) for books covering events before 1960
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley Prime Crime)
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday by David Corbett (Black Opal Books)
Island of the Mad by Laurie R King (Bantam Books)
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
A Dying Note by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
It Begins in Betrayal by Iona Whishaw (Touchwood Editions)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel
Broken Places by Tracy Clark (Kensington Books)
Cobra Clutch by A J Devlin (NeWest Press)
The Woman in the Window by A J Finn (William Morrow)
A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington Books)
What Doesn’t Kill You by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
Deadly Solution by Keenan Powell (Level Best Books)
Give Out Creek by J G Toews (Mosaic Press)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel
November Road by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
Wrong Light by Matt Coyle (Oceanview Publishing)
Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Under a Dark Sky by Lori-Rader-Day (William Morrow Paperbacks)
A Reckoning in the Back Country by Terry Shames (Seventh Street Books)
A Stone’s Throw by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street Books)

To be eligible, titles must have been published for the first time in the United States or Canada during 2018, in book or ebook format. (If published in other countries before 2018, a book is still eligible if it meets the US or Canadian publication requirement.)

Nomination forms will be emailed to all 2018 and 2019 LCC registrants by January 1, 2019. Only nominations received between January 1st and January 14th will be tabulated. The Lefty Award nominees will be announced on January 16, 2019. Final voting will be by paper ballot at the convention in Vancouver.

Monday 14 January 2019

Facing 2019 with Peter May



It has become a tradition for London’s literary critics [who appreciate Crime and Thriller Fiction], to usher a new year with the release of a novel from Peter May.

We’d gather in London’s West-End, to break bread with Peter May; all thanks to Quercus Publishing’s Hannah Robinson, Publisher Jon Riley, facilitied by our very dear bibliophile friend Sophie Ransom.

Over wine we would discuss the books we’d read over the Christmas break, discussing what was coming in terms of exciting work, as well as catching up on our lives, as we’ve all known each other for many years.

We’d also chat about what Peter May had been up to, and as a raconteur he would make us laugh, as we shared tales of the surreal, the curious and the weird.

In previous years, I would record the events, online at both Jeff Peirce’s The Rap Sheet [for US readers] and [via my work with my writing partner Mike Stotter] at Shots Magazine for UK Readers.

In 2014, Peter told us about the Award-Winning ENTRY ISLAND, and you can read more HERE and HERE

In 2015 it was Peter’s RUNAWAY, and you can read more HERE

In 2016, we travelled with Peter on COFFIN ROAD and you can catch us HERE

In 2017, Peter’s novel was CAST IRON and you can read more HERE

Last year, in January 2018 Peter published I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE which is HERE


All the above are now available in Paperback, from the Quercus Imprint riverrun, both US and Europe; as are all of Peter May’s backlist – and remember there is more to Peter May’s work than THE LEWIS TRILOGY that he’s probably best known for, due to the awards those books received, including the Barry Award, presented in 2013 at Bouchercon Albany, by George Easter [as voted for by the readers of Deadly Pleasures Magazine]. I was in the audience when Peter accepted the Barry, and a video clip is available HERE

The gathering Publisher Jon Riley and Hannah Robinson of Quercus / riverun organised, for Peter May’s 2019 novel was most eclectic, and amusing. As avid bibliophiles, writers, journalists, literary people, we often live within our ‘heads’ as well as staring at a PC screen; so when we meet-up in the real world, it is a delight.


To read the full report click here.


Photos © 2019 A Karim, Quercus Publishing, BBC Films [The ABC Murders], Miramax [Rounders] and Baby Films [Ripley's Game]

Saturday 12 January 2019

New Edinburgh University Press Journal Crime Fiction Studies.

Call for Papers: Crime Fiction Studies 

Volume 1, Issue 1: Why Crime Fiction Today?

We are delighted to announce the call for papers for the first issue of our brand-new Edinburgh University Press journal Crime Fiction Studies. Arising out of Bath Spa University’s very successful Captivating Criminality conferences, organised by Fiona Peters, and the establishment of the International Crime Fiction Association in 2016, this journal is the first British university press journal focussing on the broad field of crime fiction studies. Crime Fiction Studies will be the newest addition to EUP’s stable of prestigious journals, and two issues will be published both in print and online each year. The inaugural issue will set the agenda for discussion of the most pressing issues in contemporary crime fiction studies, providing space for reflection on the ways in which this hugely popular, rapidly developing, and extremely influential genre – and the field of study itself – is changing in the twenty-first century. In the issues that follow, we will be encouraging exploration of diverse aspects of this increasingly important field of cultural production. As editors we believe that there is a real need for a new journal in this area to encourage high-calibre research, engender debate, and forge new directions in crime fiction studies.

We are thus asking for abstracts for the inaugural issue of Crime Fiction Studies that provide thought-provoking, innovative answers to the question ‘why crime fiction today?’ We expect contributions to be theoretically and critically informed, and to engage with current scholarly debates in the field.

Possible areas of focus for the first issue include, but are not limited to:
• True crime
• Gender and queer studies
• New approaches to historical crime fiction
• Crime fiction and science
• Crime fiction in the digital age
• Fandom and fan culture
• Generic and cultural status of crime fiction
• Crime fiction on screen
• New forms of crime fiction
• Ethnicity and crime fiction
• Re-Imagining classic/historic crime 
• Detectives and detection in the twenty-first century

Abstracts of 400 words are due by 31 January 2019 and finished articles of 7500 words will be due by 1 July 2019. This issue will be published in 2020.

Please send abstracts and a biographical statement of 150 words to the editors; Fiona Peters (editor), Eric Sandberg (assistant editor) and Ruth Heholt (assistant editor) using the email address: crimefictionstudies@gmail.com.


Friday 11 January 2019

Danish Criminal Academy Awards

Crimean author Jesper Stein has won the Harald Mogensen Award, which The Danish Criminal Academy is awarding for the best crime of the year. The prize goes to Stein's Crimea novel "Solo", which is the sixth volume in his popular and critically acclaimed crime scene with police officer Axel Steen as the protagonist.

The Danish Criminal Academy's debut award goes this year to Søren Sveistrup for the thriller novel "Kastanjemanden" (The Chestnut Man) Søren Sveistrup has also been the creator and author of, among other things, three seasons of "The Crime".  Both "Solo" and "The Crime" have been published by Politikens Forlag.

Credit Mark DeLong Photography
Finally, the Academy has awarded the American writer Michael Connelly the so-called Palle Rosenkrantz Award for this year's best foreign thriller novel for his book "Two Kinds of Truth" which is published by Klim.

All the awards are presented during the Crimean Fair in Horsens on the first weekend in April

The Palle Rosenkrantz Prisen recognizes the best crime fiction novel published in Danish. It is named in honour of Palle Rosenkrantz (1867-1941), who is considered the first Danish crime fiction author; his novel Mordet i Vestermarie (Murder in Vestermarie) was published in 1902. The Harald Mogensen Prisen recognizes the best thriller. It is named after Harald Mogensen (1912-2002), a Danish editor, in recognition of his contribution to the field of literary crime.

Thursday 10 January 2019

CFP: Agatha Christie: Investigating the Queen of Crime

5-6 September 2019, Solent University, Southampton UK

The bestselling novelist of all time, Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is increasingly being recognised in scholarship and popular culture as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. In response to what Martin Edwards calls the ‘lazy critical clichĂ©’ of branding Golden Age Detective Fiction as ‘cosy’, this conference will investigate the significance of the Queen of Crime and her writings within academia and popular culture. In line with previous Agatha Christie conferences, the 2019 conference will further establish and extend Christie Studies as an academic discipline, across and beyond the humanities. 

Responding to Christie’s ever-increasing popularity are the annual television adaptations such as 2018’s The ABC Murders, alongside a growing pool of continuation novels and fiction based around Christie’s life and work. Equally, we have academic texts in the new interdisciplinary field of Agatha Christie Studies, such as Agatha Christie Goes to War (2019). In short, as the centenary of her first novel approaches, Agatha Christie remains a phenomenon. All of this calls for an investigation into the Queen of Crime herself, her fictional works and her legacy. 

We invite 300-word proposals for 20 minute papers. Suggested topics include, but are certainly not limited to: 

• Examining Christie in the context of Golden Age crime fiction
• Analysing the meaning of ‘Queen of Crime’
• Screen adaptations
• The life and person of Agatha Christie 
• The role and influence of religion
• New theoretical perspectives on Christie as a writer of crime fiction
• Agatha Christie’s influence in popular culture
• Agatha Christie positioned against her modernist contemporaries
• Continuation novels and rewriting
• The influence of Christie on her crime writing contemporaries and beyond
• The Detection Club and its influence on the role, writing and significance of Christie
• The context, significance, and influence of war
• Intertextuality and metanarrative
• Reading, studying, and teaching Agatha Christie
• New directions in research and scholarship

In addition to traditional academic paper proposals, we welcome creative presentations and panel proposals.

Please send your 300 word proposal with a short biographical note to agathachristieconference@gmail.com no later than 31 March 2019. Please direct all queries and enquiries to the same address.