The Rap Sheet

Thrill Seeking Rewarded

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:26:00 +0000

Southern California crime-fictionist Robert Crais has been enjoying a great deal of good news lately. The Big Empty (2025), the 20th installment in his long-running series about Los Angeles private eye Elvis Cole, recently won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. Now it has also picked up a 2026 Thriller Award.

That news was trumpeted just last night during Thrillerfest XXI in New York City. Here are all six of the authors who carried off prizes from the International Thriller Writers (ITW) organization:

Best Standalone Novel: Cross My Heart, by Megan Collins (Atria)

Also nominated: Zigzag Girl, by Ruth Knafo Setton (Black Spring Press); The Burning Library, by Gilly Macmillan (Morrow); The Locked Ward, by Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press); and So Happy Together, by Olivia Worley (Minotaur)

Best Series Novel: The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

Also nominated: Chain Reaction, by James Byrne (Minotaur); Head Cases, by John McMahon (Minotaur); The Tourists, by Christopher Reich (Thomas & Mercer); and Terminal Moonlight, by Vincent Zandri
(Down & Out)

Best First Novel: Party of Liars, by Kelsey Cox (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall (Pamela Dorman); Count My Lies, by Sophie Stava (Scout Press); History Lessons, by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Crime); and Julie Chan Is Dead, by Liann Zhang (Atria)

Best Audiobook: The White Crow, by Michael Robotham; narrated by Katy Sobey (Simon & Schuster)

Also nominated: King of Ashes, by S. A. Cosby; narrated by Adam Lazarre-White (Macmillan); The Wasp Trap, by Mark Edwards; narrated by John Hopkins and Anna Burnett (Simon & Schuster); Best Offer Wins, by Marisa Kashino; narrated by Cia Court (Macmillan); When Devils Sing, by Xan Kaur; narrated by Michael Crouch, Anjali Kunapaneni, Jennifer Pickens, and Landon Woodson (Macmillan); and The Cheaters Wife, by C.N. Mabry and N’Dia Rae; narrated by Ruffin Prentiss and Machelle Williams (Simon Maverick)

Best Young Adult Novel: The Silenced, by Diana Rodriguez
Wallach (Delacorte Press)

Also nominated: Murder Between Friends, by Liz Lawson (Delacorte Press); This Stays Between Us, by Margot McGovern (Penguin Young Readers); Shiny Happy People, by Clay McLeod Chapman (Delacorte Press); and The Thrashers, by Julie Soto (Wednesday)

Best Short Story: “The Violent Season,” by Jessica Van Dessel (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2025)

Also nominated: “Level Up,” by Katrina Carrasco (from Crime Ink: Iconic, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West (Bywater); “The Seduction of Dr. Dimension,” by Scott William Carter (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November/December 2025); “Eleven Numbers,” by Lee Child (Amazon Original Stories); and “False Note,” by David Lagercrantz (Amazon Original Stories)

In addition, an ITW news release says the following people received “special recognition” during the convention’s awards banquet:

• 2026 ThrillerMaster, Lisa Scottoline
• 2026 ThrillerMaster, Harlan Coben
• 2026 Silver Bullet Award, Douglas Preston
• 2026 Spotlight Guest, Rachel Howzell Hall
• 2026 Spotlight Guest, Luis Alberto Urrea
• 2026 Thriller Legend, Barbara Peters
• 2026 ThrillerFan, Jordon Moblo
• 2026 Thriller Volunteer of the Year, James L'Etoile

Revue of Reviewers: 5-7-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 07 May 2026 23:44:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

“Ghost” Rises to Claim Crown

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 06 May 2026 00:33:00 +0000

Here’s something I missed: Along with the announcement last week of which authors won this year’s Edgar Awards, Minotaur Books and Mystery Writers of America revealed the victor in their 2026 First Crime Novel Competition. It’s Ghost of a Clue, by Maryland attorney Sharon Roth, who also writes as “Shannon Taft.”

A post in Shotsmag Confidential explains that

Roth has written over twenty published short stories, including a Derringer Award finalist and a story that appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense. Her debut novel, Ghost of a Clue, is a cozy mystery featuring a protagonist named Lexi, who as a child witnessed the killing of her mother and sister. As a result of the attack, Lexi hears her sister’s voice in her head. Now an adult, Lexi is trying to put the past behind her and buy a B&B in the Poconos. But when the true-crime journalist intent on bringing all of Lexi’s secrets into the open is murdered, Lexi is the prime suspect.

We’re told Ghost of a Clue will be released in the fall of 2027.

This annual competition for authors who have not previously published novels dates back to 2008. Winners receive a one-book, $10,000 Minotaur contract. The first recipient of said honor was Stefanie Pintoff, who went on to publish historical mysteries (among them the 2010 Edgar Award-winning In the Shadow of Gotham) as well as modern thrillers. Additional winners are showcased here.

Short Stories That Stand Tall

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 03 May 2026 19:02:00 +0000

On Friday, America’s Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) revealed the winners of its 2026 Derringer Awards, in half a dozen categories.

Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words): “The Man Under the Bridge,” by Bern Sy Moss (Spillwords, 6/1/2025)

Also nominated: “Bradycardia,” by Elizabeth Dearborn (Punk Noir, 2/4/2025); “Check Rear Seat,” by Carl Tait (Exquisite Death, 5/1/2025); “It All Comes Out in the Wash,” by James Patrick Focarile (Gumshoe Review, 10/31/2025); and “Just Like Old Times,” by Shari Held (Yellow Mama, 2/15/2025)

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words): “Blind Pig,” by Michael Bracken (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)

Also nominated: “Chains,” by Frank Vatel (All Due Respect, 9/1/25); “Hollywood Prometheus,” by Christa Faust (from Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by by John Copenhaver and Salem West; Bywater); “The Artist,” by Linda Ann Bennett (from Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, edited by by Judy Penz Sheluk; Superior Shores Press); and “Wax On, Wax Off,” by Nina Mansfield (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words): “Whatever Kills the Pain,” by C.W. Blackwell (from Whatever Kills the Pain, by C.W. Blackwell; Rock and a Hard Place Press)

Also nominated: “A Sign of the Times,” by Tom Milani (from Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, edited by Michael Bracken; Down & Out); “Masterpiece,” by Mark Thielman (Black Cat Mystery Magazine, September 2025); “Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous); and “Zebra Finch,” by donalee Moulton (from The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy; Level Short)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words): “The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe,” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, January 2025;
audio version)

Also nominated: “Aswarby Hall,” by David Dean (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2025); “Loose Change from a Mini Cooper,” by Frank Zafiro (Chop Shop Episode 10, Down & Out); “Saint Bullethead,” by Nick Kolakowski (from Fighting Words: Bruisers, Brawlers, & Bad Intentions, edited by Scott Blackburn; Leonardo Audio); and “The High Priest of Low Men,” by C.W. Blackwell (Myopic Duplicity: Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?, edited by Jeff Circle; Leonardo Audio)

Best Anthology: Tie — Hollywood Kills: An Anthology, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff (Level Short); and On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, edited by Curtis Ippolito (Rock and a Hard Place Press)

Also nominated: Crimeucopia—The Not So Frail Detective Agency, edited by John Connor (Murderous Ink Press); Gone Fishin’: Crime Takes a Holiday, edited by James M. Jackson (Wolf's Echo Press); Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk (Superior Shores Press); and SoWest: Danger Awaits! edited by Claire A. Murray, Eva Eldridge, Suzanne E. Flaig, Denise Ganley, and Sarah Smith (DS)

In addition, this year’s Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer was presented to retired Chief of Police and author David Dean.

(Photo of Derringer Award medals by Art Taylor.)

Read Away This May Day

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:50:00 +0000

Today being May Day—yet another chance to applaud summer’s imminent arrival—Janet Rudolph has posted an updated list of crime fiction linked to the occasion. Everything from Octavus Roy Cohen’s The May Day Mystery and Anna Castle’s The Case of the Tangled Maypole to Wayne Hancock’s 30 Days in May and May Day in Magadan, by Anthony Olcott. She’s also inventoried mysteries that feature Morris dances, which are often performed at May Day events.

If you’re looking for still more ideas of what to read as the weather turns warmer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), look to The Rap Sheet’s updated selections of crime, mystery, and thriller works due out from now until the start of June. Since that post went up in March, more than a dozen titles have been added, including Neil Albert’s Death in November (the 11th installment in his series about Philadelphia private eye Dave Garrett), Sara Foster’s debut psychological thriller, Come Back to Me, and Holy F*ck, Joseph Incardona’s tale of a saintly hooker targeted by twin contract killers. Learn about those and many more releases by clicking here.

Basking in Edgars Glory

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:18:00 +0000

Last evening finally brought the announcements, in New York City, of which authors, books, and short stories have won the 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. These prizes honor “the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television published or produced in 2025.”

Best Novel:
The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

Also nominated: Fagin the Thief, by Allison Epstein (Doubleday); The Dream Hotel, by Laila Lalami (Pantheon); Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron); Hard Town, by Adam Plantinga (Grand Central); The Inheritance, by Trisha Sakhlecha (Pamela Dorman); and Presumed Guilty, by Scott Turow (Grand Central)

Best First Novel by an American Author: Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr (Bantam)

Also nominated: Killer Potential, by Hannah Deitch (Morrow); All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman (Putnam); Johnny Careless, by Kevin Wade (Celadon); and History Lessons, by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Crime)

Best Paperback Original:
The Backwater, by Vikki Wakefield (Poisoned Pen Press)

Also nominated: Listen, by Sacha Bronwasser (Penguin); The Sideways Life of Denny Voss, by Holly Kennedy (Lake Union); Broke Road, by Matthew Spencer (Thomas & Mercer); and One Death at a Time, by Abbi Waxman (Berkley)

Best Fact Crime:
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)

Also nominated: They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, by Mariah Blake (Crown); Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation, by Michael Cannell (Minotaur); Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home, by Gregg Olsen (Thomas & Mercer); and Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Dutton)

Best Critical/Biographical:
Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, by Richard Kopley (University of Virginia Press)

Also nominated: V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death, by Kathryn Harkup (Sigma); The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, by Andrew Klavan (Zondervan); Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard, by C.M. Kushins (Mariner); and Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train, by Stephen Rebello (Running Press)

Best Short Story:
“Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush,” by Dave Zeltserman (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September-October 2025)

Also nominated: “Reading at Night,” by Graham Greene (The Strand Magazine, August 2025); “The One That Got Away,” by Charlaine Harris (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], January-February 2025); “Orphan X: A Mysterious Profile,” by Gregg Hurwitz (Mysterious Press); “Lucky Heart,” by Tim Maleeny (from Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed, edited by Don Bruns; Down & Out); and “The Kill Clause,” by Lisa Unger (Amazon Original Stories)

Best Juvenile: Blood in the Water, by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic Press)

Also nominated: Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum, by Alasdair Beckett-King (Candlewick Press); What Happened Then, by Erin Soderberg Downing (Scholastic Press); A Study in Secrets, by Debbi Michiko Florence (Aladdin); The Midwatch Institute for Wayward Girls, by Judith Rossell (Dial); and Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave, by Ally Russell (Delacorte Press)

Best Young Adult:
Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers)

Also nominated: Catch Your Death, by Ravena Guron (Sourcebooks Fire); This Is Where We Die, by Cindy R.X. He (Sourcebooks Fire); The Scammer, by Tiffany D. Jackson (Quill Tree); and Codebreaker, by Jay Martel (Wednesday)

Best Television Episode Teleplay:
“Pilot,” Paradise, written by Dan Fogelman (Hulu)

Also nominated: “End of the Line,” Ballard, written by Michael Alaimo and Kendall Sherwood (Amazon/Fabel); “Episode 101,” The Lowdown, written by Sterlin Harjo (FX on Hulu); “These Girls,” Long Bright River, written by Nikki Toscano and Liz Moore (Peacock); and “Ye’iitsoh (Big Monster),” Dark Winds, written by John Wirth and Steven Paul Judd (AMC)

* * *

ADDITIONAL AWARDS

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“How It Happened,” by Billie Kay Fern (EQMM, July-August 2025)

Also nominated: “A Textbook Example,” by Luis Avalos (from Sacramento Noir, edited by John Freeman; Akashic); “Baggage,” by Rick Marcou (EQMM, January-February 2025); “Bloodsurf,” by Tiffany D. Plunkett (from Hollywood Kills, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff; Level Short); and “Grand Theft Auto in the Heart of Screenland,” by Robert Rotstein (from Hollywood Kills)

The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
All This Could Be Yours, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Five Found Dead, by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press); Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur); No Comfort for the Dead, by R.P. O’Donnell (Crooked Lane); and Last Dance Before Dawn, by Katharine Schellman (Minotaur)

The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
Gone in the Night, by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Cold as Hell, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur); Rage, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur); Fallen Star, by Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer); and The Red Letter, by Daniel G. Miller (Poisoned Pen Press)

The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award: A Senior Citizen’s Guide to Life on the Run, by Gwen Florio (Severn House)

Also nominated: Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, by Amandah Chapman (Berkley); The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective, by Jo Nichols (Minotaur); Murder Two Doors Down, by Chuck Storla (Crooked Lane); and Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man), by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Berkley)

In addition, Donna Andrews and Lee Child were named as this year’s Grand Master winners. The 2026 Raven Award went to Corte Madera, California, bookshop and café Book Passage, and John Scognamiglio, the editor-in-chief of Kensington Books, was selected to receive the Ellery Queen Award.

READ MORE: “State of the Crime Novel, Part 1: Routines, Problem-Solving, and Faithful Companions” and “State of the Crime Novel, Part 2: Issues and Recommendations,” by Molly Odintz (CrimeReads).

Newcomers Versus Old Hands

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:29:00 +0000

After a busy Wednesday spent out of my office, I’m catching up with two different prize-related announcements. The first concerns the longlist of contenders for the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. Here are the 18 nominees:

• What Happens in the Dark, by Kia Abdullah (HQ Fiction)
• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• The Impossible Thing, by Belinda Bauer (Bantam)
• What the Night Brings, by Mark Billingham (Sphere)
• Human Remains, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• The Chemist, by A.A. Dhand (HQ Fiction)
• Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Pan Fiction)
• The Frozen People, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• The Examiner, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
• The Blue Hour, by Paula Hawkins (Doubleday)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Baskerville)
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)
• Paperboy, by Callum McSorley (Vertigo)
• The Good Liar, by Denise Mina (Harvill Secker)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Baskerville)
• We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion Fiction)
• A Schooling in Murder, by Andrew Taylor (Hemlock Press)

Sponsored annually by British brewery T&R Theakston, these commendations are designed to showcase the finest crime and mystery fiction offered by the UK and Ireland.

As a press release explains, “Crime fiction fans are now invited to help whittle 18 down to 6 by voting for their favourite novels to reach the shortlist, with the winner of the coveted award announced on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on Thursday 23rd July.” Go ahead and cast your ballot here.

Three of Spades

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 22:47:00 +0000

Having read and very much enjoyed Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon, his 2026 sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 Sam Spade novel, I was stoked to find this bit of news in Collins’ blog:

I’m pleased to announce I’ve signed with Hard Case Crime to do two more Sam Spade novels.

Launching a new Spade series wasn’t my intention in writing Return of the Maltese Falcon. I merely wanted to be out there first with a sequel to the classic original, now that it was in the public domain, and was presumptuous enough to think I could get it right.

As I’ve mentioned here, when I finished writing the book, and was pleased with it, my wife, Barb, warned me to brace myself –she said, Not everyone would like me appointing myself to a task that some might think ought never have been attempted. My thinking was, Somebody’s going to do this, and it might as well be me.

And I was surprised and pleased that the reactions were overwhelmingly favorable, generating some of my best reviews ever. A few naysayers weighed in, though were very much in the minority. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t feel vindicated, I felt relieved.

Only when I saw how well Return of the Maltese Falcon was doing did I begin thinking about writing more Sam Spade. Spade is a character about whom Hammett might well have written another dozen or two novels, like Gardner with Perry Mason, Christie with Hercule Poirot or Rex Stout with Nero Wolfe. And of course Hammett, before turning his back on mystery writing, had written three Spade short stories, plus there’d been the popular Spade radio show with Howard Duff.

But what came to my mind was offering my publisher a trilogy, the first of which would be the already existing Return. I found it interesting to suggest two more Spade novels, each separated by ten years or so—to see what Spade was up to in the war years and then the McCarthy-era ’50s (which obviously have resonance with Hammett’s life).

I wrote a fairly lengthy proposal and Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, with support from parent company Titan’s Nick and Vivian Landau and my editor Andrew Sumner, responded favorably. I am now about to begin work on Prey for the Maltese Falcon, set in 1939.

In some ways it’s more challenging than Return, which gave me the luxury of working within the parameters of the original novel—its characters, its locations, its themes. Now Spade is ten years older, and the case I’ve constructed takes him all sorts of places that the original novel and my sequel didn’t.

Wish me luck.

So when might readers be able to procure copies of Prey for the Maltese Falcon? Collins tells me to look for it in the fall of 2027, “no more specific than that as yet.”

With Agatha’s Endorsement

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:31:00 +0000

This last weekend brought the annual Malice Domestic conference back to Bethesda, Maryland, during which the winners of the 2026 Agatha Awards were announced. As you likely know already, the Agathas champion “traditional mysteries,” those containing no sex or gratuitous violence, and that are best exemplified by the stories of Agatha Christie. Prizes were given out in six categories.

Best Contemporary Mystery Novel:
At Death’s Dough, by Mindy Quigley (Minotaur)

Also nominated: A Grave Deception, by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane); Murder in the Fifth Position, by Lori Robbins (Level Best); The Devil Comes Calling, by Annette Dashofy (One More Chapter); and Waters of Destruction, by Leslie Karst (Severn House)

Best Historical Mystery Novel:
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, by Kelly Oliver (Boldwood)

Also nominated: Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best); The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur); Murder at the Moulin Rouge, by Carol Pouliot (Level Best); and The Hindenburg Spy, by L.A. Chandlar (Oliver Heber)

Best First Mystery Novel:
Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover (Chestnut Avenue Press)

Also nominated: Murder in the Crazy Mountains, by K.L. Borges (Epicenter Press); Player Elimination, by Shelly Jones (Tule Press); Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur); and Voices of the Elysian Fields, by Michael Rigg (Level Best)

Best Mystery Short Story:
“Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley Ruth-Bernier (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)

Also nominated: “Baby Love,” by Barb Goffman (from Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren, and Art Taylor; Crippen and Landru); “Boss Cat Rules,” by Nikki Knight (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous); “Lola’s Last Dance,” by Kerry Hammond (from Celluloid Crimes, edited by Deborah Well; Level Short); and “When the Iron Is Hot,” by Maddie Day (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March-April 2025)

Best Non-fiction:
Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States, by Dawn M. Barclay (Level Best)

Also nominated: Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida, by Gilbert King (Flatiron); Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Dutton); and The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Putnam)

Best Children’s/Young Adult Mystery Novel: Death in the Cards, by Mia P. Manansala (Delacorte Books for Young Readers)

Also nominated: Missing Mom, by Lynn Slaughter (Fire & Ice Young Adult Books); Risky Pursuit, by Nancy G. West (Fire & Ice Young Adult Books); Rufus and the Dark Side of Magic, by Marilyn Levinson (Level Best); and Hurricane Heist, by James Ponti (Aladdin)

Lifetime Achievement Honoree: Jacqueline Winspear
Poirot Award Honoree: Jim Huang
William F. Deeck Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers: Tess C. Bernard

READ MORE: “Malice Recap 2026,” by Art Taylor.

Dominion Distinction

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:06:00 +0000

Crime Writers of Canada has released it shortlists of nominees for the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. The winners in each of the following nine categories will be announced on Friday, May 29.

Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel:
• 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)
• The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (Viking Canada)

Best Crime First Novel:
• The Beltane Massacre, by Ray Critch (Breakwater)
• 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)
• Too Dark for the Light, by A.L. Wahdel (Butterfly 80)

Best Crime Novel Set in Canada:
• That Other Family, by Lis Angus (Next Chapter)
• Every Fall, by Angela Douglas (Rising Action)
• Detective Aunty, by Uzma Jalaluddin (HarperCollins)
• Salt on Her Tongue, by C.S. Porter (Vagrant Press)
• The Hitchhikers, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)

The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery:
• 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)
• Some Justice, by Laury Silvers (Independently published)
• The Cost of a Hostage, by Iona Whishaw (TouchWood Editions)

Best Crime Short Story:
• “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)
• “The Headache,” by Billie Livingstone (Dark Yonder, November 2025)
• “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)

Best French Language Crime Book:
• Le regard des autres, by Chrystine Brouillet (Druide)
• Jeux d’ombres, by André Jacques (Druide)
• La mémoire du labyrinthe, by Steve Laflamme (Libre Expression)
• Une nuit d’été à Littlebrook, by Maureen Martineau (Héliotrope)
• Delta Zéro, by Martin Michaud (Libre Expression)

Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book:
• The Mystery of the Haunted Dancehall, by Charis Cotter (Tundra)
• 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)
• Bark Twice for Murder, by John Lekich (Orca)

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
• 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)
• On the Lam: Great (and Not So Great) Escapes from Prison, by Lorna Poplak (Dundurn Press)
• Hitman: The Untold Story of Canada’s Deadliest Assassin, by Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman (HarperCollins)

Best Unpublished Crime Novel (manuscript written by an unpublished author):
• Val’s Story, by Anne Burlakoff
• The Less You Know, by William Hall
• Lens Flare, by Francis K. Lalumière
• Death Scent, by Barbara Stokes
• Blistered, by Isabelle Zimmermann

In addition, crime and thriller author Rick Mofina has been selected to receive 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.”

Revue of Reviewers: 4-19-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 18:15:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

“Drive” Races to Win

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:54:00 +0000

Megan Abbott has won the 2026 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, in the Mystery/Thriller category, for her novel El Dorado Drive (Putnam), described as “a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.” That announcement was made on Friday night and marked the opening of the the annual L.A. Times Festival of Books.

Also contending for top Mystery/Thriller acclaim were Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Ace Atkins (Morrow); Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow); The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); and King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Pine & Cedar).

To glance over all of the finalists and winners in this year’s L.A. Times prize competition, simply click here.

Ridpath’s New Path Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Ali Karim) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:23:00 +0000

By Ali Karim
I first learned about Michael Ridpath’s latest historical thriller, Operation Berlin (Boldwood), during a conversation with the author at last year’s final CrimeFest convention in Bristol, England. Having long been a fan of World War II-set crime novels, thanks in part to my admiration for the late Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, I was an ideal audience for Ridpath’s tale. As a student of 20th-century history, I am fascinated by the machinations that lead to the creation and then fall of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), and the period between the two world wars in Europe. Operation Berlin is rooted in that era.

Here’s a plot synopsis:

Berlin, 1930. Historian Archie Laverick, scarred mentally and physically by the Great War, travels to Berlin to research a famed Prussian general. His quiet study is shattered when he crosses paths with Esme Carmichael, a spirited young American intent on making her name as a foreign correspondent. When a shooting at a Saxon castle leaves a young Jewish woman accused of murder, Archie and Esme are drawn into a perilous hunt for the truth.

Their investigation cuts through the glittering façades and lingering scars of a nation still reeling from war—where resentment simmers, political alliances shift, and the first shadows of a new conflict fall across Europe. Amid whispers of blackmail and betrayal, the pair must navigate intrigue and danger to unmask a killer hiding in plain sight.

Released just this week in Great Britain, Ridpath’s first “Foreign Correspondent Mystery” lives up to my expectations. Here’s the start of a review I penned for Shots, in which I called Operation Berlin

one of the most engrossing narratives I have had the good fortune to read this year—or rather live through. I found myself immersed completely in this Golden Age mystery, escaping the anxieties of today ...

Vivid characterisation is on full display with the two main protagonists, (Sir) Archie Laverick and Esme Carmichael. Laverick is the heir to Yarmer Hall in Yorkshire’s West Riding—a British aristocrat who survived the horrors of trench warfare in World War One, but returned with both physical and mental scars. His muscular manservant-cum-batman, Arthur Lister, is always by his side, managing his episodic fugues (induced by ‘shell-shock’). Haunted by his war service, which claimed the life of his brother Fred, Archie manages his demons by researching and writing about former historical wartime generals (which he publishes to much acclaim).

Via his cousin Duncan Mandeville, Archie travels to Berlin (with Lister) to research a biography of a Prussian general [Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher] who fought the French forces during the Napoleonic Wars. ...

Archie requires an [English- and] German-speaking assistant to help him research the Prussian general. This secretarial support comes in the form of Esme Carmichael, a young American woman ... aspiring to become a foreign correspondent for a Chicago newspaper. What better place than the hotbed of political and social intrigue [that is] 1930s Berlin for an aspiring young journalist from Montana?

Operation Berlin marks a significant change for this English author, who in the past has given us tense thrillers set in the generally un-thrilling finance industry, and others that feature a Boston-reared homicide detective sent to solve crimes in the place of his birth, Iceland. Wanting to know more about where Ridpath comes from and where his career might be headed in the near future, I recently e-mailed him some queries that he was kind enough to answer.

Ali Karim: Before we talk about your new series, can you tell us a little about your childhood? And were you a reader at an early age?

Michael Ridpath: I was brought up in a very small village at the foot of Nidderdale, [a valley] in Yorkshire. I fantasized about traveling the world and I read books that fed this fantasy, such as Willard Price’s Adventure series, Biggles, [Leslie Charteris’] Saint stories, and the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons children. I devoured dozens of Enid Blyton books. Although they are disappointing to read now, I’m sure that I absorbed much of the pace of mysteries and adventure stories from those.

AK: And your family?

MR: There were loads of books in my house. My father didn’t go to university, but he did subscribe to the Penguin Classics as a young man in the 1950s. We had, and I still have, a bookshelf of them in the various colors for each country—green for France, purple for Latin. I loved the orange ones—Russian.

My mother read all the time, and I scoured her bookshelves for material. She loved thrillers: she was particularly keen on Dick Francis.

A perceptive German interviewer once asked me whether there were writers in my family whose example I was following. I told her there weren’t: my compulsion to write was my own thing. Then she asked me whether my parents had passed on their passion for books to me. I realized that I was just trying to write books that my mother would like to read!

(Left) Michael Ridpath.

AK: Were there any specific adult-level books you read early on that led to your own creative writing career?

MR: There were two. The first was Liar’s Poker (1989), by Michael Lewis—an exposé of the life of traders at the U.S. investment bank Salomon Brothers. I knew Michael well—I was one of his clients [back when he was a bond salesman]—and I was impressed not only by the quality of his writing, but also by the way in which he had abandoned a lucrative career in investment banking to become a writer.

The other inspiration was the books of Dick Francis. So much about them appealed to me: the sense of pace; the integrity of the main characters; the way Francis wove horse racing into wider stories; and most of all, the sheer enjoyment I felt in reading them.

So, when I decided to write a book, I tried to combine Dick Francis and Michael Lewis—to write a “Dick Francis in the City.”

AK: What about your education? How did that lead you to seek employment in the financial sector?

MR: I studied History at Oxford University. Many historians at Oxford ended up in the world of banking in the 1980s.

I don’t think this is as ridiculous as it first sounds. History, when well taught, teaches you to analyze cause and effect and to explain and persuade readers of your analysis. A lot of understanding financial markets and businesses involves these skills. I was also good at sums, which probably helped.

AK: Your first novel to see print, Free to Trade, starred an ex-Olympic runner immersed in London’s financial jungle, whose lovely colleague is eventually pulled lifeless from the Thames. How did that book’s publication come about?

MR: Free to Trade was never supposed to be more than a bit of fun. I was a bond trader writing little more than my initials on a dealing ticket, so I decided it would be good for me to take up “creative writing.” The first exercise I did was to write the first chapter of a novel. So I wrote about a bond trader who gets involved in a massive trade that first goes wrong ... and then goes right. I absolutely loved writing that chapter—which became the first chapter of Free to Trade. So I decided to forget about the exercises and just carry on with the book. Three years and three drafts later, I had the novel, a thriller set in the City.

I sent it off to a list of agents. At that point, I had moved to a venture capital firm and I knew all about rejection, being responsible for rejecting business plans myself. But, to my surprise, the second agent I sent it to, the late Carole Blake, accepted it with alacrity and set up auctions in the UK, the U.S., and Germany for the book. When Free to Trade was published in 1995, it got to No. 2 on the UK bestseller lists and was translated into 35 languages.

AK: Did you continue working in the financial sector while your writing career was taking off?

MR: I tried to continue working in finance, but there was a lot of publicity involved with the publication of Free to Trade and it wasn’t really possible. Sadly, I was a single father of two small girls at the time, so the flexibility that writing offered came in very useful.

AK: The adage “write about what you know” seems to apply, as you followed your debut work with a string of successful financial thrillers. Can you tell us a little about that period?

MR: In my opinion, “write what you know” is a great help when you start out as an author, but over time, writing what you don’t know begins to sound more interesting. So, for about 10 years after the publication of Free to Trade, I searched for financial topics that interested me, researched them, and wrote thrillers based on them. For example, I wrote books about a virtual reality start-up (Trading Reality), bond trading in Brazil (The Marketmaker), and the dot-com boom and bust (Fatal Error).

AK: You seem to be a natural storyteller, and my experience is that successful writers are usually also avid readers. So can you please tell us a little about your own reading habits?

MR: There’s no doubt you can learn something of the craft of writing from reading “how-to books,” which have become ever more sophisticated. But I’m still learning how to write from writers who are better at it than I am.

I try to split my reading 50/50 between crime/thrillers and as wide a range of fiction as I can find. In 1994, I started writing notes on every novel I read—the first was Disclosure, by Michael Crichton. I try hard to avoid looking for what’s wrong with a book; it’s too easy and teaches you nothing. Rather, I look for what’s right with it. It’s amazing what you can learn from a writer like John Grisham, for example, with this frame of mind.

It’s not just craft, though. I trust my instinct when writing or, in particular, when reading through drafts of my own books. Some things just feel right. I try to figure out why, but if I can’t figure it out, I will usually stick with whatever feels good, even if it seems to break the rules of the craft.

AK: Archie Laverick, one of the main protagonists in your new Operation Berlin, is—like a number of characters you’ve created—a lover of libraries, and of collecting books. Tell us a little about your own thoughts on literacy, libraries, and book collecting.

MR: I have spoken about how I loved reading as a child. Like so many writers and readers, I borrowed many of my childhood books from libraries. I still enjoy the reference libraries I work in, like the British Library or the London Library or the Duxbury library in Massachusetts—I spend half my year in America. [Editor's note: Michael Ridpath is also married to an American.]

Book collecting is partly about libraries and beautiful leather-bound books. But, frankly, it’s more like collecting football stickers as a child. It’s competitive; there are arbitrary rules framing the collection; it’s expensive (football stickers took far too high a share of my pocket money), and it’s essentially pointless. This is especially true of Archie’s collection of early printed books, where he is seeking one from each town that printed books in Europe in the 15th century. The more I have found out about book collectors, the more this initial impression has been reinforced.

I have one not-quite-incunable, a collection of sayings by Valerius Maximus printed in Mainz in 1544. I hope that will be my only one; otherwise, I really will be in trouble.

AK: Until recently, you may have been best known for your Icelandic detective series featuring “fish out of water” Magnus Jonson, a Boston homicide cop seconded to the Icelandic Police Force (and introduced in 2010’s Where the Shadows Lie). You also penned the 2021 non-fiction book Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer’s Guide to Iceland. So tell us, why does Iceland appeal to you as a crime-fiction backdrop?

MR: Iceland is an extraordinary country. It’s a mixture of old and new. Although the landscape looks ancient, that is only because it is so new—the lava fields, the volcanoes, the fjords were all created relatively recently in geological time. Its society, too, is a mixture of the old and the new. It’s a modern, progressive, highly educated, and technologically sophisticated country. Yet every farm has a rock at the bottom of a field inhabited by elves; the sagas of the Norse settlers live on in the landscape and the minds of its inhabitants. Plus, they have a really well-developed sense of irony.

The problem with writing about Iceland is that everything that seems so extraordinary to a foreigner seems just normal to, say, your average Icelandic detective. Which is why my man Magnus left Iceland when he was 12, moved to America, and became a homicide detective there. So, when he returns to Iceland [partly to investigate the unsolved murder of his father], the Icelandic expression glöggt er gests augad applies—clear as a guest’s eye.

AK: You started out writing finance-world thrillers set in the 1990s, which many readers might now consider a historical period, and then went on to concoct modern Icelandic mysteries. But amid the Magnus Jonson series, you penned a couple of spy novels (2013’s Traitor’s Gate and 2015’s Shadows of War) starring a well-educated and well-connected young Englishman, Conrad de Lancey, and in 2021 you delivered The Diplomat’s Wife, a standalone that finds an older woman visiting Europe in 1979, hoping to solve a mystery that remains from her days as a foreign service officer’s wife four decades before. Now, in your mid-60s, you have begun this Foreign Correspondent series. Would it be fair to say you’ve come full circle, as far as your time-period interests are concerned?

MR: From my perspective, there isn’t a circle. I like to write about foreign worlds which require some research and some effort to understand not only the setting but the people in it. This could be the financial world in the 1990s, Iceland in the 2010s, or Europe in the 1930s. And I like to write about foreigners, or outsiders, or expatriates in these worlds.

AK: Where did the idea originate for Operation Berlin’s detective duo, Esme Carmichael and Archie Laverick, and how did it then gestate?

MR: I like the 1930s, and I liked the idea of a detective solving crimes around the capitals of Europe in the 1930s. But who should this detective be?

I came across a book: Last Call at the Hotel Imperial (2022), by Deborah Cohen, about the young men and women who left America in the 1920s and ’30s to travel to Europe to become foreign correspondents, people like Ernest Hemingway, John Gunther, Bill Shirer, and Dorothy Thompson. The women in Cohen’s book particularly grabbed my interest. My detective could be a young woman with no money and a one-way ticket to Europe, determined to find a story to make her name.

That was Esme. But I decided she should have a sidekick or partner. Someone different to her. British then, and a man. I mentioned earlier that my childhood was in a Yorkshire village; perhaps this man could be a minor landowner in Nidderdale. With shell shock. I have long been fascinated by how, in the ’20s and’30s, millions of men were walking around London and Paris and Berlin with shell shock. No one mentioned it; everyone knew it. Archie has it. As a historian writing military biographies, he has a reason to spend time in European capitals and a reason to look for research help from someone like Esme.

AK: Your new novel contains a vast array (or perhaps “cabal” would be a better word) of characters. Beyond your two main protagonists, we have supporting as well as secondary players, and “walk-ons.” I applaud how deftly they were each portrayed; they stood upright, distinct on the page. So how difficult was it to manage such a large cast but still keep the novel pacey?

MR: Good characterization in thrillers or crime novels is really difficult. You don’t have time to stop the action for a couple of pages to explain the backstories of newly introduced characters. I’m still learning how to do it. It’s one of the things I focus on when I’m taking notes of other writers’ books. Somerset Maugham is brilliant at it. There are certain techniques: pick a trait and repeat it; make a character’s motivation clear and repeat that; show a character who seems to be one person, but actually has a second hidden personality that is revealed. Repeat that. And try to do all this in chunks of single sentences rather than single paragraphs.

I believe that repetition is important when describing people or places. After the third repetition, the reader feels as if they are familiar with the character (or the place). They recognize them.

But I still have more to learn here.

AK: You’ve been quite a busy guy. Operation Berlin is just out this month, but you have also made a novella sequel, Operation Lost Hours, available to download for free here. And next year will bring us the sophomore Foreign Correspondent novel, Operation Vienna. Can you tell us a little about how you see this series shaping up in the future?

MR: It turns out I really enjoy spending my mornings in a big city in Europe with Archie and Esme. I have just finished lounging about the cafés in Montparnasse in Paris in 1932, and I am starting to research Moscow in 1933. There was all sorts of fascinating stuff going on in Russia in 1933. I’m happy; I think I’ll be doing this for a while.

AK: Finally, what recent books have passed over your desk that you have found interesting?

MR: I recently read Luke Jennings’s latest book, Medusa, the latest in his Killing Eve series [the inspiration for BBC America’s popular 2018-2022 spy drama of that same name]. It’s brilliant! I love his wit and the way he deals with the extraordinary relationship between his two heroines, Eve and Oxana. Who would have thought that a nanny on a super-yacht could be so dangerous? It’s the first of the series I have read: I need to go back to the beginning.

Dagger Designees

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:42:00 +0000

The British Crime Writers’ Association today released its longlists of contenders for the 2026 Dagger Awards, in 11 categories. Coming next in this process will be the revelation of shortlists on May 28, followed by an announcement of the year’s Dagger winners in July.

KAA Gold Dagger:
• Carnival of Lies, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
• Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie, by James Lee Burke (Orion)
• 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)
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)
• The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (River Swift Press)
• The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Viper)
• A Voice in the Night, by Simon Mason (Riverrun)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• Hotel Ukraine, by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• A Case of Life and Limb, by Sally Smith (Raven)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• The Ghostwriter, by Julie Clark (Zaffre)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• The Chemist, by A.A. Dhand (HQ Fiction)
• A Dead Draw, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• A Sting in Her Tale, by Mark Ezra (No Exit Press)
• Burying Jericho, by William Hussey (Zaffre)
• 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:
• The Devil Takes Bitcoin, by Jake Adelstein (Scribe)
• Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland, by Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee (Pegasus Crime)
• Saffie, by David Collins (Silvertail)
• 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)
• The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War, by Charlie English (William Collins)
• Murderland, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet)
• The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini, and a True Story of Murder, by Thomas Harding (Michael Joseph)
• A Spy in the Family, by Paul Henderson and David Gardner (Mirror)
• The Cleveland Street Scandal, by Neil Root (The History Press)
• That Dark Spring, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)
• The Illegals, by Shaun Walker (Profile)

Historical Dagger:
• A Granite Silence, by Nina Allan (Riverrun)
• Spoiler’s Prey, by Robin Blake (Severn House)
• Benecula, by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon)
• The Mourning Necklace, by Kate Foster (Mantle)
• The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (Swift Press)
• The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Viper)
• Barvick Falls, by Rob McInroy (Tippermuir)
• The Devil’s Draper, by Donna Moor (Fly on the Wall Press)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Baskerville)
• Cairo Gambit, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)
• 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:
• Home Before Dark, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Orenda)
• Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse,
translated by Florian Duijsens (Faber & Faber)
• Scars of Silence, by Johana Gustawsson,
translated by David Warriner (Orenda)
• The Lake, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Penguin Random House)
• Seesaw Monster, by Kotaro Isaka,
translated by Sam Malissa (Penguin Random House)
• Red Water, by Jurica Pavičić,
translated by Matt Robinson (Bitter Lemon Press)
• The Grave in the Ice, by Satu Rämö,
translated by Kristian London (Bonnier)
• 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)
• The Queen Who Came in from the Cold, by S.J. Bennett (Zaffre)
• Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet)
• Little Secrets, by Victoria Goldman (Three Crowns Publishing UK)
• A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan)
• The Margaret Code, by Richard Hooton (Sphere)
• A Cinnamon Falls Mystery, by R.L. Killmore (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Other People’s Houses, by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere)
• Not Another Bloody Christmas, by Jo Middleton (Avon)
• A Trial in Three Acts, by Guy Morpuss (Viper)
• 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)
• The House of Water, by Fflur Dafydd (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Macmillan)
• Scenes from a Tragedy, by Carole Hailey (Corvus)
• Don’t Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell (Century)
• The Bodies, by Sam Lloyd (Bantam)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)
• 59 Minutes, by Holly Seddon (Orion)

ILP John Creasey (First Novel) Dagger:
• The Malt Whiskey Murders, by Natalie Jayne Clark (Polygon)
• Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet)
• The Peak, by Sam Guthrie (HarperCollins)
• The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenberg (Sphere)
• 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)
• A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan (Mantle)
• Holy City, by Henry Wise (No Exit Press)

Short Story Dagger:
• “Arlene,” by William Boyle (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos: New Stories Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Maxim Jakubowski;
No Exit Press)
• “Split Your Silver Tongue,” by S.A. Cosby (from Birds, Strangers
and Psychos)
• “Chest,” by Ragnar Jónasson (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos)
• “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)
• “Once Upon a Time in New Jersey,” by Zoë Sharp and John Lawton (from CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene Celebrating 16 Years, edited by Adrian Muller; No Exit Press)
• “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)

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”):
• Ben Aaronovitch
• Damien Boyd
• Reverend Richard Coles
• Rhys Dylan
• Paula Hawkins
• J.D. Kirk
• Clare Mackintosh
• Freida McFadden (aka Sara Cohen)
• Abir Mukherjee
• Tim Sullivan
• Robert Thorogood

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”):
• Allison & Busby
• Baskerville (John Murray/Hachette)
• Bitter Lemon Press
• Constable (Little, Brown)
• Faber & Faber
• Harvill Vintage (Penguin Random House)
• Muswell Press
• No Exit Press (Bedford Square)
• Pan Macmillan
• Polygon (Birlinn)
• Simon & Schuster
• Viper (Profile Books)

In addition, actor-turned-novelist Mark Billingham is slated to receive the 2026 CWA Diamond Dagger, a prize that “recognises authors whose crime-writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.”

Bullet Points: Long Overdue Edition

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:30:00 +0000

During the four days I spent in San Francisco this last February, attending the latest Left Coast Crime convention, more than one fellow attendee came up to me to say how much they like my periodic, multiple-subject “Bullet Points” posts. While that gladdened my heart, it also reminded me of how long it had been since I’d produced such a compilation. I think the last one went up in October, which in these tense, turbulent times seems like a lifetime ago.

With a few free hours on my hands today, I went trolling through my computer bookmarks to find new subjects worth sharing.

• Well, what do you know: In Reference to Murder reports that the American author who, since 2013, has published best-selling psychological thrillers (such as The Housemaid, The Tenant, and The Divorce) under the name Freida McFadden has finally revealed her true identity. She is “in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn’t want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. ‘My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was [ready to] step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn’t be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job,’ McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time.” But even her nom de plume is rooted in the medical profession; Cohen told the BBC that “She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke—after a hospital training registry, the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database.”

• April 1 marked the 28th anniversary of Kevin Burton Smith launching that essential online crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective Web Site. His page went live on that date back in 1998! Congratulations to my old friend Kevin for sticking with this project for so long and growing it so expertly.

• Speaking of milestones, it was half a century ago this year—on September 22, 1976, to be precise—that the hour-long “jiggle TV” crime drama Charlie’s Angels debuted on America’s ABC network. In early commemoration of that fact, three of the show’s stars, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd, “reunited” earlier this week at PaleyFest in Los Angeles (“an annual television festival hosted by the Paley Center”). According to the Associated Press, “They were greeted with a standing ovation and whoops and cheers from an audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.” Smith, now 80 years old (!), may have delivered the occasion’s best line: “I knew the show was different, special and unique. Three women chasing danger instead of getting rescued.” Charlie’s Angels aired for five seasons and was a pop-culture hit (despite talk of it undermining feminism), but underwent several cast changes over time, the first of those coming in 1977, when Fawcett left amid a contract dispute. She was replaced by Ladd.

• London’s two-day Capital Crime festival has issued its full program of 2026 events, which are set to kick off at the Leonardo Royal Hotel on Thursday, June 18. Among the headliners will be authors Elly Griffiths, Jeffrey Archer, Jane Harper, and Sophie Hannah, with Irish comedian and actor Ardal O’Hanlon (formerly of Death in Paradise) also participating. An overview of events can be found here. Winners of the annual Fingerprint Awards, celebrating the foremost crime and thriller fiction in more than half a dozen categories, will be honored in a special ceremony on the 18th.

• Erle Stanley Gardner’s The D.A. Calls It Murder (1937)—the first of his legal mysteries starring small-town California district attorney Douglas Selby—was reissued last summer through Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics imprint. What I hadn’t realized until recently, however, was that publisher Open Road Integrated Media has also returned to print seven of the eight other entries in the Selby line. Which is good news! As I wrote in CrimeReads, “While those stories never enjoyed the same level of reader enthusiasm Perry Mason’s escapades did, and were neither as humorous nor as briskly paced as another series Gardner launched in 1939, built around mismatched L.A. gumshoes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, they certainly offered plenty in the way of knotty plots, ill-starred suspects, and razzle-dazzle legal shenanigans.” Click here for more about those paperbacks.

• By the way, the remaining Selby novel, 1948’s The D.A. Takes a Chance, was last reprinted in 2014 by The Murder Room, an imprint of UK publisher Orion. Although The Murder Room is evidently now defunct, Open Road hasn’t yet added it to its catalogue. Maybe soon?

• There seems be no end of television-related news lately, beginning with word that the ITV and BritBox “reimaginging” of Dalziel and Pascoe has begun filming in the North of England. This sex-switching update of characters born in novels by Reginald Hill—and made additionally famous in a 1996-2007 BBC One series—finds grumpy, intransigent, and very politically incorrect Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (played in the original show by Warren Clarke) being transformed into Detective Inspector Andrea Dalziel and portrayed by Kerry Godliman, while Dalziel’s more forward-thinking police partner, DI Peter Pascoe (Colin Buchanan) becomes Detective Sergeant Paige Pascoe, brought to the small screen by Nina Singh. The opening season of this new crime drama will comprise six episodes; there’s no official debut date at present. Jon Farrar, executive vice president of programming, BritBox, is quoted in Variety as assuring fans of the earlier production that this one will hew to familiar themes: “Dalziel and Pascoe has always been about friction, intellect, and the uneasy bond of opposites, forged in pursuit of truth. Dalziel and Pascoe’s chemistry, wit, and moral clarity perfectly complement this richly layered mystery. It’s timeless crime storytelling that not only honours but sharpens its legacy.” I look forward to judging for myself.

• For all of those people who, like me, watched and enjoyed the slow-burning “cat-and-mouse thriller” The Game, and thought its ambiguous but not unsatisfying ending offered zero chance of a sequel … well, what the hell do we know? Even the Web site TVGuide.co.uk concedes this is “rather surprising” news; Channel 5 thrillers are usually one-season wonders, “self-contained nuggets of deliciously daft drama” (e.g., The Au Pair and The Rumour). But The Game, which had its UK airing in 2025 and found Jason Watkins (McDonald & Dodds) playing Huw Miller, a recently retired police detective who becomes convinced that his suave new neighbor, Patrick Harbottle (Grantchester’s Robson Green), is the repeat killer he’s long pursued, “left viewers wanting more,” says TVGuide.co.uk. At the close of Series 1, Patrick was being arrested and Huw was seriously injured. The follow-up is set a year on. It sees Huw having survived and thinking himself free of the psychological grip Patrick held him in. “Retreating with his wife, Alice (Sunetra Sarker), to an isolated house by the sea,” The Killing Times explains, “Huw is determined to rebuild a quiet life, far from the violence that nearly destroyed them. But peace, he soon realises, is an illusion.” Channel 5 says The Game will return in 2027.

• Robson Green is much in demand. The Killing Times reports that, with his work done on Grantchester’s 11th and final season (set to premiere on PBS Masterpiece come June 14), he will assume one of the leading roles in an eight-part BBC serial, The Northumbria Mysteries.

Set against the sweeping Northumberland coastline and its surrounding market towns, the series centres on an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Green will star as Joe Ruby, a jack-of-all-trades whose life has been shaped by mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities, alongside Oxford-educated DI Rose O’Connell (casting to be announced), a rarefied intellectual, a deep thinker with a brilliant mind and an ice-cool disposition. In a classic odd-couple pairing, Joe and Rose combine their talents as they frustrate, confound, and ultimately surprise one another while unravelling a series of compelling crime mysteries.

• Something I should have mentioned long ago: HBO-TV has ordered an eight-episode drama based on Adrian McKinty’s best-selling 2019 child-abduction novel, The Chain. Behind this project is Damon Lindelof, who previously gave us Lost and The Leftovers, and was once a writer on Nash Bridges and Crossing Jordan. As The Wrap recalls, Irish author McKinty’s chilling tale “follows Rachel, a divorcée who is undergoing treatment for cancer, who gets a call that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and is now part of The Chain. To get Kylie back, she must kidnap another child after paying a ransom. Kylie will be released when the parents of the child Rachel has kidnapped take yet another child and continue the chain.” The Wrap notes, however, that “Lindelof is said to be expanding the mythology of McKinty’s award-winning thriller.”

• Blogger Lou Armagno points me toward a piece in Variety that’s likely to delight fans of Earl Derr Biggers’ renowned Charlie Chan. It says actor Tzi Ma (Mulan, Kung Fu) will executive produce and headline a possible new Canadian Chan TV series reimagining Biggers’ Chinese-American Honolulu policeman as a Hong Kong immigrant to Vancouver, British Columbia, “who, after retiring from the Vancouver police department in frustration, quietly launches a private investigation agency, taking on cases for the city’s overlooked and forgotten.”

• Meanwhile, Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke has signed up to play a criminal investigator in Netflix’s adaptation of Liz Moore’s 2024 hit novel, The God of the Woods. … Actor-writer Stephen Fry will star as a quirky but brilliant former MI6 agent in a forthcoming Fox-TV show called The Interrogator. … See-Saw films, the production company behind Slow Horses, has acquired the rights to develop a fresh TV series from Jonathan Gash’s novels about a British antiques dealer-cum-sleuth known only as Lovejoy—books that were already the source material for a 1986-1984 BBC1 comedy-drama featuring Ian McShane. … Filming is underway on the sophomore season of Lynley, based on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley yarns. … And Murder, She Wrote, a Universal Pictures film inspired by the 1984-1996 CBS-TV series starring Angela Lansbury as a mystery writer and amateur crime-solver, is slated to reach theaters just in time for Christmas, 2027. Jamie Lee Curtis will play Fletcher in this version.

• My other blog, Killer Covers, returns from a too-long hiatus with proof that there are simply too many crime, mystery, and thriller novels fronted by silhouettes of people in windows.

• We still await any information regarding the next James Bond feature film (now under the control of Amazon). But in the meantime, we can look forward to a new Bond novel for adults. Titled King Zero, it’s by Charlie Higson, the author of a half a dozen Young Bond yarns, as well as the 2023 007 adventure, On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Shotsmag Confidential provides this plot précis:

Beginning with the murder of an agent in Saudi Arabia by a weapon never before seen by the Secret Service and spanning the globe in an epic race against time to avert global catastrophe, the novel brings the literary Bond squarely into the twenty-first century, where the old world that made him is crumbling and a terrifying new order emerges while a dangerous villain—the most distinctive since Goldfinger –moves in the shadows. Higson explores themes of power, technology, and international tensions over resources in an extraordinarily timely story.

UK publisher Michael Joseph has promised to deliver King Zero to bookshops on the other side of the pond by September 24.

• Wow, a Kickstarter campaign to create action figures based on monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak and other characters featured in two 1970s teleflicks (The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler) and a subsequent TV series collected way more money than was sought! I guess old Carl hasn’t been forgotten, after all.

• Finally, this CrimeReads piece by writer and artist Frank Ladd, comparing the oeuvres of American private eye novelists Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, deserves attention from fans of both. He concludes that “In a way, Macdonald is writing moral ghost stories. The present is haunted by the past, and the novel becomes a kind of exorcism. Chandler is writing moral fever dreams, hallucinatory journeys through corruption. There is no past worth redeeming.”

Pithy and Powerful

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:08:00 +0000

I was apparently so distracted by other editorial projects, that I failed to notice the Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) releasing its complete lists of finalists for the 2026 Derringer Awards earlier this week. Let me now post those contenders.

Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words):
• “Bradycardia,” by Elizabeth Dearborn (Punk Noir, 2/4/2025)
• “Check Rear Seat,” by Carl Tait (Exquisite Death, 5/1/2025)
• “It All Comes Out in the Wash,” by James Patrick Focarile (Gumshoe Review, 10/31/2025)
• “Just Like Old Times,” by Shari Held (Yellow Mama, 2/15/2025)
• “The Man Under the Bridge,” by Bern Sy Moss (Spillwords, 6/1/2025)

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words):
• “Blind Pig,” by Michael Bracken (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)
• “Chains,” by Frank Vatel (All Due Respect, 9/1/25)
• “Hollywood Prometheus,” by Christa Faust (from Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by by John Copenhaver and Salem West; Bywater)
• “The Artist,” by Linda Ann Bennett (from Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, edited by by Judy Penz Sheluk; Superior Shores Press)
• “Wax On, Wax Off,” by Nina Mansfield (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words):
• “A Sign of the Times,” by Tom Milani (from Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, edited by Michael Bracken; Down & Out)
• “Masterpiece,” by Mark Thielman (Black Cat Mystery Magazine, September 2025)
• “Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous)
• “Whatever Kills the Pain,” by C.W. Blackwell (from Whatever Kills the Pain, by C.W. Blackwell; Rock and a Hard Place Press)
• “Zebra Finch,” by donalee Moulton (from The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy; Level Short)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words):
• “Aswarby Hall,” by David Dean (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2025)
• “Loose Change from a Mini Cooper,” by Frank Zafiro (Chop Shop Episode 10, Down & Out)
• “Saint Bullethead,” by Nick Kolakowski (from Fighting Words: Bruisers, Brawlers, & Bad Intentions, edited by Scott Blackburn; Leonardo Audio)
• “The High Priest of Low Men,” by C.W. Blackwell (Myopic Duplicity: Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?, edited by Jeff Circle;
Leonardo Audio)
• “The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe,” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, January 2025; audio version)

The half-dozen nominees for this year’s Best Anthology Derringer Award were announced at the beginning of February.

As the SMFS explains, the winners in all of these categories “will be determined by member vote in April and announced May 1.”

Spring in the Air, Books in the Bag

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:12:00 +0000

Incredible as this seems, The Rap Sheet will turn 20 years old in 2026. (Its actual “birth date” is May 22.) And throughout most of those two decades, I've assembled lists of forthcoming crime, mystery, and thriller releases to help readers choose what they should pick up next. Those started as just occasional lists, but they quickly evolved into quarterly offerings. Rarely since then have I failed to deliver my selections on schedule and at rather intimidating length. My fall 2025 rundown, for example, extended to more than 425 reading recommendations from both sides of the Atlantic.

But last summer I found I was desperately short of time and unable to post my usual seasonal selections. Then the computer crash I experienced at the end of 2025 put an end to my hope of compiling picks for the first three months of this year. I promised myself I would get back on track again come spring; yet here we are near the close of March, and my suggestions of which new books from our favorite genre deserve special attention remain incomplete.

Rather than wait any longer, I’ve decided to go with what I have so far: more than 200 works of note due out in the United States between now and the end of May. Those include fresh novels by headliners in the field such as Charles Todd, Tana French, Anthony Horowitz, Jane Harper, Vaseem Khan, Sujata Massey, John Katzenbach, and Michael Connelly, together with stories from less-familiar fictionists on the order of Nicola Whyte, Joshua Moehling, Libby Klein, Jeff Boyd, and A. Rae Dunlap. The next three months will deliver to bookshops the late Anne Perry’s Death Times Seven, her concluding case for attorney Daniel Pitt; Craig Johnson’s The Brothers McKay, his 22nd Sheriff Walt Longmire novel, inspired by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; Murder and Acquisitions, “a gripping story of greed, rivalry, and revenge in the publishing industry” by veteran publisher Thomas Dunne; the third and last installment in Kim Sherwood’s Double O Trilogy, Hurricane Room, which imagines a perhaps “broken” James Bond joining his fellow British secret agents to head off a worldwide cyberattack; Alison Gaylin’s Booked, her latest lively yarn featuring Sunny Randall, Robert B. Parker’s other Boston private invetigator; and Michael Crichton’s never-before-published Tinseltown thriller, Murder in Hollywood.

Beyond all those, expect three more George Gross police procedurals by Tim Sullivan; Jordan Harper’s new portrayal of Los Angeles' criminal underbelly, A Violent Masterpiece; Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth’s clever tale of a cantankerous 81-year-old woman with a “shady past,” who becomes entangled in her neighbor’s dubious demise; and Thomas Perry’s The Tree of Light and Flowers, the presumably final outing for trouble-tackling Native American “guide” Jane Whitfield (as that Edgar-winning author perished last September).

While I regret not including here my customary myriad listings of coming attractions from UK publishing houses, it cannot be helped. The time necessary to gather all of those as well might delay the posting of The Rap Sheet’s list until mid-April, when it would be signally less useful. I shall simply have to find another way, either through a separate compilation or perhaps by including more British titles in my “Revue of Reviewers” posts, to get the word out about near-future releases from the opposite side of the pond.

As it is, I suspect there are a few fine U.S.-published works of crime fiction absent from the lengthy catalogue below, which I shall endeavor to find and add in updates over the next two and a half months. (Please let me know in the Comments section at this post’s end if you are already aware of any I have missed.) For now, though, I invite you to explore the following 200-plus. Non-fiction works are marked here with asterisks (*); the rest are novels or short-story collections.

MARCH (U.S.):
• Agatha Christie Seek-and-Find: Find Clues and Criminals in 20 Classic Mysteries! by Sarah Dvojack (Chronicle)
• The Antique Hunter’s Murder at the Castle, by C. L. Miller (Atria)
• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Soho Crime)
• The Baffle Book, by Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• Beatrice Ophelia Is Flickering Out, by Megan Gerig (Lamplighter)
• The Best Little Motel in Texas, by Lyla Lane (Harper Perennial)
• Bloodlust, by Sandra Brown (Grand Central)
• The Boy in the Wall, by Jeffrey B. Burton (Severn House)
• Bright and Tender Dark, by Joanna Pearson (Bloomsbury)
• Buried in a Book, by T.C. LoTempio (Severn House)
• Chaos Man, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer)
• A Crime Through Time, by Amelia Blackwell (Pan)
• Crimeucopia: A Coterie of Dicks (Murderous-Ink Press)
• The Dark Time, by Nick Petrie (Putnam)
• The Daughters, by Joanna Margaret (Mysterious Press)
• A Day of Judgment, by Charles Todd (Mysterious Press)
• A Defiant Woman, by Karen E. Olson (Pegasus Crime)
• The Delivery, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)
• The Dreadfuls, by A. Rae Dunlap (Kensington)
• The End of the Sahara, by Saïd Khatibi (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Enemy of My Enemy, by Alex Segura (Hyperion Avenue)
• Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief, by Benjamin Stevenson (Mariner)
• Everything on Black, by F.T. Grant (Vigilante Crime & Pulp)
• Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago, by Randy E. Barnett (Encounter)*
• Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line, by Elle Cosimano (Minotaur)
• Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder: The Creation and Evolution of an Iconic Thriller, by Richard Weill (McFarland)*
• From the Dust, by David Swinson (Mulholland)
• A Ghastly Catastrophe, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• Girl in a Shroud / The Girl Who Was Possessed / The Lady is Available, by Carter Brown (Stark House Press)
• A Good Person, by Kirsten King (Putnam)
• A Grave Mistake, by Kate MacLean (Kate MacLean)
• The Guilty Daughter, by Victoria Jenkins (Bookouture)
• Hard Times, by Jeff Boyd (Flatiron)
• The Harvey Girl, by Dana Stabenow (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• The Hiding Season, by Ava Glass (Bantam)
• I Came Back for You, by Kate White (Thomas & Mercer)
• I Did Not Kill My Husband, by Linda Keir (Blackstone)
• The Imposter, by Adriane Leigh (Podium)
• Incidentals, by Sheila Yasmin Marikar (Little A)
• The Jewish Policeman, by Jonathan Dunsky (Lion Cub)
• Judge Stone, by Viola Davis and James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• The Keeper, by Tana French (Viking)
• Killing Me Softly, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)
• The Last Celebrity, by Madeleine Henry (Little A)
• A Lie for a Lie, by Ren DeStefano (Berkley)
• Little Sins, by Clifford Beal (Little Brigand)
• London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday)*
• Missing, by E.A. Jackson (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Missing Sister, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)
• The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris, by Mark Pryor (Kensington)
• Murder As a Fine Art, by Carol Carnac (Poisoned Pen Press)
• My Grandfather, the Master Detective, by Masateru Konishi (Putnam)
• Never Spar with a Viscount, by Lindsay Lovise (Forever)
• No Good Deed, by Katherine Kovacic (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Perfect Girl, by Andy Maslen (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Pie & Mash Detective Agency, by J. D. Brinkworth (Berkley)
• A Place to Die For, by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Plans I Have for You, by Lai Sanders (Simon & Schuster)
• The Politician, by Tim Sullivan
(Atlantic Crime)
• Poured Out, by Steve Exeter (Independently published)
• The Primrose Murder Society, by Stacy Hackney (Morrow Paperbacks)
• The Pryce of Fame, by Kari Bovée (Vinci)
• Robbie McNeil’s Hit List, by Brianna Heath (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Ruby Falls, by Gin Phillips (Atlantic Crime)
• The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, by Elizabeth Arnott (Berkley)
• Served Him Right, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)
• She Fell Away, by Lenore Nash (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Sisters in Yellow, by Mieko Kawakami (Knopf)
• Society Women, by Adriane Leigh (Harper Perennial)
• Sorry for Your Loss, by Georgia McVeigh (Dutton)
• Stakeouts and Strollers, by Rob Phillips (Minotaur)
• The Star from Calcutta, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• Storm Warning, by Alice Henderson (Morrow)
• Strange Buildings, by Uketsu (HarperVia)
• Strangers in the Villa, by Robyn Harding (Grand Central)
• The Survivor, by Andrew Reid (Minotaur)
• The Tree of Light and Flowers, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
• The Story of Marceau Miller, by Marceau Miller (Blackstone)
• This Story Might Save Your Life, by Tiffany Crum (Pine & Cedar)
• To Sleep, Perchance to Kill, by James Quentin (Over It)
• Two Kinds of Stranger, by Steve Cavanagh (Atria)
• Vanished in the Crowd, by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles (Minotaur)
• Vengeance in Venice, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
• Want to Know a Secret? by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• What the Fields Saw, by Linda Norlander (Severn River)
• Where the Truth Lies, by Katherine Greene (Crooked Lane)
• Whidbey, by T. Kira Madden (Mariner)
• Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke (Knopf)

APRIL (U.S.):
• Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, by Patrick Cottrell (Ecco)
• Agnes Sharp and the Wedding to Die For, by Leonie Swann
(Soho Crime)
• All Them Dogs, by Djamel White (Riverhead)
• The Architect of Deception, by Debbie Baldwin (Gatekeeper Press)
• As Far as She Knew, by Diana Awad (Mindy’s Book Studio)
• Brenda, by Samuel S. Taylor (Stark House Press)
• The Caretaker, by Marcus Kliewer (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Woof, by Spencer Quinn (Minotaur)
• Cats Don’t Need Coffins, by Dolores Hitchens (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• The Chambermaid’s Key, by Genevieve Graham (Simon & Schuster)
• City of the Muse, by Kate Hilton
(Simon & Schuster)
• Come Back to Me, by Sara Foster (Blackstone)
• Confessions of an Amateur Sleuth, by Lynn Cahoon (Kensington Cozies)
• Countdown, by Sara Driscoll (Kensington)
• A Cruise to Die For, by Heather
Graham (Mira)
• Dark Hazard / The Quick Brown Fox, by W.R. Burnett (Stark House Press)
• The Dead Can’t Make a Living, by Ed Lin (Soho Crime)
• A Deadly Episode, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
• Deadly Truths, by Paul Gitsham (Straw Hat Crime)
• The Dead Ringer, by Dane Bahr (Counterpoint)
• Death in November, by Neil Albert (Independently published)
• Death Times Seven, by Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim (Ballantine)
• Double Shadow, by Andrew Ludington (Minotaur)
• The Edge of Darkness, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Ending Writes Itself, by Evelyn Clarke (Harper)
• An Enigma by the Sea, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini
(Bitter Lemon Press)
• Everyone Is Perfect Here, by Jane Haseldine (Severn House)
• The Faces of the Dead, by Chris Nickson (Severn House)
• Fair Chase, by Travis Mulhauser (Grand Central)
• Gimme Shelter, by Libby Klein (Kensington)
• The Girls Trip, by Ally Condie (Grand Central)
• Guilt, by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Pegasus Crime)
• Harmless Women, by Rebecca Sharpe (Minotaur)
• Her First Lie, by Lucinda Berry (Thomas & Mercer)
• Hollywood Payback, by Jon Lindstrom (Crooked Lane)
• Holy Island, by L.J. Ross (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Hope Rises, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
• Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, edited by Josh Pachter (Level Short)
• How to Cheat Your Own Death, by Kristen Perrin (Dutton)
• The Insomniacs, by Allison Winn Scotch (Berkley)
• In the Spirit of French Murder, by Colleen Cambridge (Kensington)
• Kill Dick, by Luke Goebel (Red Hen Press)
• A Killing Breath, by Faye Snowden (Flame Tree Press)
• Last One Out, by Jane Harper (Pine & Cedar)
• Liar’s Creek, by Matt Goldman (Minotaur)
• The Lost Angels, by Michele Domínguez Greene (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, by Jennifer N. Brown
(St. Martin’s Press)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Missing Ones, by A.R. Torre (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Monk, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)
• Mrs. Hudson and the Whitechapel Murders, by Edith Barron (Independently published)
• Mrs. Shim Is a Killer, by Kang Jiyoung (Harper Perennial)
• Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse (Soho Crime)
• Murders and Acquisitions, by Thomas Dunne (Blackstone)
• The Museum of Unusual Occurrence, by Erica Wright (Severn House)
• Obelists Fly High, by C. Daly King (Penzler/American
Mystery Classics)
• One Second Away, by Rick Mofina (Doubleday Canada)
• The Patriot’s Daughter, by Brittany Butler (Crooked Lane)
• The Plunge, by Lila Raicek (Park Row)
• Pomona Afton Can Totally Catch a Killer, by Bellamy Rose (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Raskin’s World, by Charlie Stella
(Stark House Press)
• Reasonable Suspicion, by James Chandler (Severn River)
• Redbelly Crossing, by Candice Fox (Crooked Lane)
• Revenge Prey, by John Sandford (Putnam)
• The Samurai’s Octopus, by Jonelle Patrick (Seventh Street)
• Sanctuary, by James Cleary (Berkley)
• The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church, by Indrek Hargla (Pushkin Vertigo)
• The Secrets of the Abbey, by Jean-Luc Bannalec (Minotaur)
• The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy, by Steven J. Ross (Bloomsbury)*
• Short Circuit, by Wolf Haas (HarperVia)
• The Silent Ones, by Anna McPartlin (Canelo)
• The Silver Fish, by Connor Martin (Mysterious Press)
• The Sound, by Ruth McIver (Blackstone)
• Spies and Other Gods, by James Wolff (Atlantic Crime)
• Staged Evidence, by Traci Hunter Abramson (Shadow Mountain)
• The Summer House Murder, by Ava Roberts (Crooked Lane)
• The Ten Teacups, by Carter Dickson (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Thanks for Watching, by Kate Cavanaugh (Inimitable)
• This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone, by Catherine
Mack (Minotaur)
• Too Close to Home, by Seraphina Nova Glass (Park Row)
• To the End of Reckoning, by Joseph Moldover (Mysterious Press)
• Two Truths and a Lie, by Mark Stevens (Thomas & Mercer)
• Vanessa’s Men, by Jason Starr (Jason Starr)
• A Violent Masterpiece, by Jordan Harper (Mulholland)
• The Washashore, by Christopher Mirabile (Slack Tide Press)
• The Weight of Regret, by Ken Harris (Independently published)
• We Would Never Tell, by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane?: A Memoir and a Murder Investigation, by Kate Crane (Hanover Square Press)*
• What Happened Next, by Edwin Hills (Thomas & Mercer)
• When the Wolves Are Silent, by C.S. Harris (Berkley)
• Yours Always, by Corinne Sullivan (Thomas & Mercer)

MAY (U.S.):
• Against Their Will, by Karina Kilmore (Blackstone)
• An Accidental Death, by Peter Grainger (Union Square)
• And the Corpse Wore Tartan, by Stuart MacBride (Macmillan)
• The Anniversary, by Alex Finlay (Minotaur)
• The Architect, by John Katzenbach (Blackstone)
• The Author Weekend, by Laura Zigman (Blackstone)
• Beneath a Broken Sky, by Joshua Moehling (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Brothers McKay, by Craig Johnson (Viking)
• Caller Unknown, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
• City on Fire, by Simon Elegant (Pegasus Crime)
• Days of Feasting and Rejoicing, by David Bergen (Blackstone)
• Dissection of a Murder, by Jo Murray (Dutton)
• The Divorce, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Dreadful Summit, by Stanley Ellin (Penzler/American
Mystery Classics)
• Echoes of the Lost, by Cindy Brown (Ooligan Press)
• The Echo of Crows, by Phil Rickman (Atlantic)
• The Fine Art of Lying, by Alexandra Andrews (Harper)
• Five, by Ilona Bannister (Crown)
• A Fortune of Sand, by Ruta Sepetys (Ballantine)
• Going, Going, Gone, by Nasheema Lennon (HarperNorth)
• The Great Houses of Pill Hill, by Diane Josefowicz (Soho Crime)
• Hawai’i Rage, by Tori Eldridge
(Thomas & Mercer)
• Hidden in Lies, by Viveca Sten
(Amazon Crossing)
• Holy F*ck, by Joseph Incardona (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Hot Wings and Homicide, by Carmela Dutra (Crooked Lane)
• Hurricane Room, by Kim Sherwood (Morrow)
• Ironwood, by Michael Connelly
(Little, Brown)
• I, Spy, by L.M. Kemp (Minotaur)
• The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright: The True Story of Mass Murder in Paradise, by Casey Sherman (Sourcebooks)*
• The Last Mandarin, by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung (Minotaur)
• The Lemon Twist, by Élan Les Vies (Keylight)
• The Library After Dark, by Ande Pliego (Bantam)
• A Little Bit Bad, by Cassandra Neyenesch (S&S/Summit)
• The Lost Soldiers, by Andrey Kurkov (HarperVia)
• Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders, by Claudia Verhoeven (Verso)*
• The Mediator, by Robert Bailey (Thomas & Mercer)
• Men Like Ours, by Bindu Bansinath (Bloomsbury)
• Moonlight Murder, by Uzma Jalaluddin (Harper Perennial)
• Murder at the Hotel Orient, by Alessandra Ranelli (Gallery/
Scout Press)
• A Murder in Hollywood, by Michael Crichton (Blackstone)
• Murder Like Clockwork, by Nicola Whyte (Union Square)
• Murder on the Rocks, by T.E. Kinsey (Thomas & Mercer)
• My Name Was Gerry Sass, by Tiffany Hanssen (Atlantic Crime)
• Not to Be Taken: A Puzzle in Poison, by Anthony Berkeley
(Poisoned Pen Press)
• Ode to the Bones, by Carolyn Haines (Minotaur)
• The One Day You Were My Husband, by Rosie Walsh (Pamela Dorman)
• An Ordinary Sort of Evil, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)
• Red Verdict, by James Comey (Mysterious Press)
• Robert B. Parker’s Booked, by Alison Gaylin (Putnam)
• Reverse, by Steven F. Havill (Severn House)
• Safari Murder Party, by Rachel Moore (Berkley)
• The Silent House of Sleep, by Allan Gaw (Mysterious Press)
• Storm Warning, by James Byrne (Minotaur)
• The Teacher, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)
• This Town Won’t Tell, by Rhodi Hawk (Crooked Lane)
• True Crime: A Memoir, by Patricia Cornwell (Grand Central)*
• The Tuxedo Society, by Paul Rudnick (Atria)
• 26 Beauties, by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• The Vampyre Client, by Jeri Westerson (Old London Press)
• A Very Vexing Murder, by Lucy Andrew (Morrow)
• A Wasp in the Beehive, by Mary Logue (University of Minnesota Press)
• You Can Tell Me, by Melinda Leigh (Montlake)

Wish me luck in trying to get things back in order here, so I can produce a full summer books list for early June.

How About Some Prizes?

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:59:00 +0000

This last week brought word of which books have been chosen as finalists for the 2026 Lambda Literary Awards, “celebrating outstanding LGBTQ+ voices in literature.” There are 26 categories of contenders, with five works vying for top LGBTQ+ Mystery honors:

• A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan)
• Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter, by Samantha Crewson (Crooked Lane)
• Girl Falling, by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron)
• Mirage City, by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur)
• The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington)

Recipients of this year’s “Lammys,” as they’re familiarly known, are to be announced on Friday, June 12, during the 38th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City.

* * *

Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder reports that four popular works are competing for the 2026 Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction.

• Apostle’s Cove, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• Broken Fields, by Marcie Rendon (Soho Crime)
• The Codebreaker’s Daughter, by Amy Lynn Green (Bethany House)
• The Quiet Librarian, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland)

The winners in all nine Minnesota Book Award divisions will be revealed during a ceremony on Wednesday, May 6.

* * *

Finally, a commendation I somehow failed to mention until now. From Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist:

The latest recipient of the Dove Award—which is awarded by the Popular Culture Association’s Mystery and Detective Fiction Area and recognizes contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction—is Stewart King, associate professor of European languages at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). King, a specialist in Spanish and Catalan crime fiction, has edited or co-edited 6 books (e.g., The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction, 2022), produced 35 book chapters and 28 articles, as well as co-edits the journal Crime Fiction Studies. He previously served on the editorial board of Clues: A Journal of Detection (I am managing editor of the journal).

Past Dove Award winners include Martin Edwards, Barry Forshaw, Douglas G. Greene, H.R.F. Keating, Janet Rudolph, and Foxwell herself.

Revue of Reviewers: 3-20-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:27:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

A Modest Man, a Masterful Career

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:46:00 +0000

Just a month after celebrating his 97th birthday, British spy novelist Len Deighton—author of The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, SS-GB, and other classics of the genre—died Sunday at his home on the island of Guernsey. No cause for his passing has yet been specified.

In his excellent obituary for The Guardian, Mike Ripley recalls,

When he made the remark that he was “the most illiterate writer ever”, in an interview with Argosy magazine in 1969, Len Deighton ... had already published five bestselling spy novels, starting with The Ipcress File, three of which had been made into successful films. He had also written two cookbooks and a comic novel, edited an iconic guide to London in the swinging 60s and a book on fine wines and spirits, written a television play for the Armchair Theatre [TV anthology] series and two film scripts, become travel editor for Playboy and produced two films. He was to go on to write a further 21 novels and a collection of short stories, and to establish a reputation as a military historian.

Deighton was an established and “quite comfortable” freelance graphic artist when he began writing The Ipcress File “for a lark” while living in France in 1960, completing it the following year while on holiday, but it was not until he met the literary agent Jonathan Clowes at a party in London that he was persuaded to submit it for publication.

Rejected by two publishers, one of whom remarked sniffily that there was no market for spy stories, it was taken by a third and published in November 1962 after serialisation in the London Evening Standard. It was an instant success, the first print-run of 4,000 copies selling out on the day of publication, and its impact on spy fiction has been called seismic.

The New York Times mentions that the London-born Deighton regarded The IPCRESS File (as its title appeared originally) as “a riposte to the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming.

Instead of Bond’s cartoonish and morally simplistic take on spycraft, Mr. Deighton offered a shadow world through which his unnamed hero—christened Harry Palmer for the film versions—made his way, beset by disinformation, triple-crosses and dim bureaucrats.

Unlike the impossibly suave, action-oriented Bond or George Smiley, John le Carré’s dumpy, cerebral, upper-class spy hero, Mr. Deighton’s central character is self-consciously proletarian, with a jaded, frequently hostile attitude toward his superiors, a droll sense of humor and a love of cooking.

Mr. Deighton took a sardonic view of his sudden achievement as a brand-name writer. “All you need is a profound inferiority complex, no training as a writer and growing up a victim of the English class system,” he told Publishers Weekly in 1993.

In its own posthumous tribute, The Washington Post adds,

Mr. Deighton dismissed writing as a “goof-off profession,” but he said he thrilled at the impact his novels had on readers. “When you make a book, it’s like making a hand grenade,” he told the Telegraph. “It’s a dull process but when you throw it, the person at the other end gets the effect.”

His spy works are marked by elliptical narratives short on explanatory details, reflecting the mysteries of espionage, yet filled with unforgettable moles, traitors and other characters who double- and triple-cross one another.

“Deighton’s wry and ironic recognition of the realities of espionage and the crackling energy that motivates his fiction place him in the first rank of spy novelists,” critic George Grella wrote in the 1985 edition of Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. “He writes thrillers that are witty, thoughtful, authentic, and entertaining, a rare combination of merits.”

In his later years, Mr. Deighton’s shyness and his pivot to historical fiction and nonfiction works left him more removed from public awareness. “I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid,” he once said. “I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me.”

“Fiercely protective of his private life, he rarely gave interviews and avoided public appearances at festivals and conventions,” Ripley observes. “He was elected to the Detection Club in 1969, but turned down the offer of a Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement from the Crime Writers’ Association on three occasions, maintaining that ‘two things destroy writers—alcohol and praise.”

Len Deighton was a fictionist of distinction, for sure.

READ MORE: “Len Deighton, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Len Deighton Dies at 97,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “Len Deighton: A Personal Appreciation,” by Mike Ripley (Shotsmag Confidential); “Len Deighton (1929-2026) Remembered,” by Chris Connor (Crime Fiction Lover).

Barry Tough Choices

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:31:00 +0000

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has released its list of contenders for the 2026 Barry Awards, in four separate categories.

Best Mystery:
• The Impossible Thing, by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly)
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The White Crow, by Michael
Robotham (Scribner)
• Presumed Guilty, by Scott Turow
(Grand Central)

Best First Mystery:
• Leverage, by Amran Gowani (Atria)
• All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman (Putnam)
• Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë
Rankin (Berkley)
• Stillwater, by Tanya Scott (Atlantic Monthly)
• Julie Chan Is Dead, by Liann Zhang (Atria)

Best Paperback Original Mystery:
• Crimson Thaw, by Bruce Robert Coffin (Severn River)
• Splintered Justice, by Kim Hays (Seventh Street)
• Making a Killing, by Cara Hunter (Morrow)
• If Two Are Dead, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
• Wolf Six, by Alex Shaw (Boldwood)
• The Dentist, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)

Best Thriller:
• Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh (Atria)
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder (Harper)
• Midnight Black, by Mark Greaney (Berkley)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• Head Cases, by John McMahon (Minotaur)
• The Mailman, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)

To select the winners, we are told that “Readers of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine are eligible to vote. One vote per category. Send votes to george@deadlypleasures.com.” The results will be announced on October 22, during the opening ceremonies at this year’s Bouchercon in Calgary, Alberta.

The Barry Awards, established in 1997, are named in honor of Barry Gardner, a longtime DP “fan reviewer.”

Sam, Scarlett, and the Tarts All Weep

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:05:00 +0000

This wasn’t the sort of news I was longing to receive on a Thursday morning. As Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade reports,

It is with deep sadness that the crime writing community have learned of the recent death of the award-winning crime writer Lauren Milne Henderson. As well as being an author, Lauren worked as a journalist for a number of well-known newspapers and magazines. [She was 59 years old.]

Under the name of Lauren Milne Henderson, she was the author of the Sam Jones series featuring sculptor-turned-sleuth Sam Jones. The first book in the series is Dead White Female [which] was published in 1995 and … was followed by six more books: Too Many Blondes (1996), The Black Rubber Dress (1997), Freeze My Margarita (1998), The Strawberry Tattoo (1999), Chained (2001) and Pretty Boy (2002).

Following on from her Sam Jones series, she also wrote the Young Adult Kiss/Scarlett series starting with Kiss Me Kill Me in 2008, which featured 16-year-old Scarlett Wakefield, who must clear her name after the last boy she kisses dies in her arms and she is accused of his death. There were 3 more books in this series published: Kisses and Lies (2009), Kisses in the Dark (2010) and Kisses of Death (2011). Kiss Me Kill Me was nominated for an Anthony Award in 2009. ...

Under the name Rebecca Chance she was also the author of 10 glamourous thrillers and what was known as ‘Bonkbusters’. Whilst all standalones, previous characters could be found in other books. The first book in the series was Divas (2009), and the last book Killer Affair (2017). Killer Heels (2012), Bad Angels (2012), Killer Queens (2013) and Bad Brides (2014) all made the Sunday Times best-seller list.

Wikipedia adds that Henderson helped establish Tart Noir, “a branch of crime fiction that is characterized by strong, independent female detectives with an amount of sexuality often involved. The books in the genre also occasionally feature a murderer protagonist and are sometimes presented in a first person point of view.” What I hope is a full list of her books can be found here.

Eliza’s Mettle Is No Longer in Doubt

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:14:00 +0000

This is rather sad news, but was certainly expected at some point: PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella series has announced that the upcoming Season 7 of Miss Scarlet will bring an end to that well-written Victorian-era mystery drama. Filming of the six episodes to comprise this final run has already begun in Belgrade, Serbia.

Miss Scarlet, you will recall, debuted in Great Britain in March 2020 as Miss Scarlet and the Duke (and made its way to Masterpiece early the following year). It starred Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet, London’s resourceful first female private detective, with Stuart Martin cast as her childhood friend and reluctant Scotland Yard ally, Inspector William “the Duke” Wellington. But Martin left the show after Season 4, Tom Durant-Pritchard joined the ensemble as Inspector Alexander Blake, and the drama’s title was necessarily shortened.

So what might we expect to see in Miss Scarlet’s concluding installments? According to a news release, “Eliza Scarlet has found love, but with it comes a new set of challenges, both on a professional and personal level. As she faces mounting pressures both at work and at home, she is reunited with familiar friendly faces, as well as a powerful new crime boss who has arrived in town—and it’s not who you might expect. Meanwhile, Blake’s promotion brings its own complications, as he finds himself answering to a surprising new boss with whom he shares a complicated history. Season 7 raises the stakes, deepens the drama, and brings Eliza and Blake’s journey to a thrilling and satisfying close.”

“What a journey this has been,” Kate Phillips is quoted as saying. “Miss Scarlet has been one of the greatest joys of my career, and I will forever be grateful to Rachael New for creating such a witty, sharp, and delightful character in Eliza. It’s been a privilege to work on a show crafted with so much love and dedication and as we prepare to say goodbye, I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved and the memories we’ve made. Thank you to everyone who has supported us—I can’t wait to share the farewell Miss Scarlet deserves.”

Despite a bit of unevenness in its early years, Miss Scarlet will be remembered as a delightful blend of whodunit, humor, and thoughtful character study. I, for one, will miss it greatly.

A Hammett-Seasoned Assembly

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:53:00 +0000

(Above) R-Evolution, American artist Marco Cochrane’s 47-foot-tall, steel rod-and-mesh sculpture of a nude woman, rises from Embarcadero Plaza on the San Francisco waterfront. It has stood there in front of the Ferry Building since April 2025.

Time was when I visited San Francisco regularly—maybe once a year, or at least once every couple of years. However, before last week, a full decade and a half had elapsed since my previous call on Northern California’s most colorful and captivating metropolis; the last time was back in 2010, when Bouchercon took over the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero, directly across from the historic Ferry Building. During the interim, I’d seen stories about how that City by the Bay had fallen into social and financial decline. Elon Musk, the South Africa-born right-winger who founded Tesla and destroyed Twitter (today’s X)—and who is a product of Silicon Valley, the high-tech hub located just to the south—had portrayed San Francisco as “a crime-ridden wasteland where homeless drug addicts freely roam.”

So I was fully prepared to see this place I have loved for so long reduced to a shadow of its erstwhile glory. Yet that isn’t what I found. In fact, central San Francisco looked pretty much like every other big city I’ve traveled to since the COVID-19 pandemic. There were scattered empty storefronts along Market Street, and one of my all-time favorite breakfast venues—Dottie’s True Blue Café, formerly on Jones Street but moved since my last drop-by to a larger, Sixth Street location—had shut its doors. Yes, there were some unhoused residents on sidewalks, benefiting from this burg’s moderate climate and extensive public services, but no more than I see nowadays in Seattle or Portland ... and none of them were shooting up in the gutters. San Francisco struck me as a locale that’s weathered bad economic times and is on its way to finding its footing again.

It certainly did a superb job of hosting the 2026 Left Coast Crime convention, which was held last week (Thursday, February 26, to Sunday, March 1) in the same Hyatt Regency I’d frequented 15 years ago.

Not surprisingly, given that (1) we were in Dashiell Hammett country and (2) this year brought an end to copyright restrictions on the author’s detective-fiction masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, there was considerable attention paid to that 1930 novel. Falcon statuettes were presented to all four of LCC 2026’s guests of honor. One of the gathering’s Thursday panel discussions found Bay Area author Mark Coggins and Randal S. Brandt—who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library—examining the book’s still-enduring impact on crime fiction. And that same night, Coggins and Brandt appeared together at a downtown used bookshop to chat with other mystery enthusiasts about Poltroon Press’ recent re-release of The Maltese Falcon, to which both contributed.

One of this convention’s first panel exchanges was “Let’s Talk About the Black Bird,” which addressed Dashiell Hammett’s best-known novel, The Maltese Falcon. Participating were—left to right—authors Elizabeth Crowens (Bye Bye Blackbird), Domenic Stansberry (the North Beach mysteries, The Lizard), and Kelli Stanley (the Miranda Corbie series, The Reckoning), as well as librarian Randal Brandt, who moderated the colloquy. Not shown, but also part of the group, was Mark Coggins. He took this shot and e-mailed it to me with a note that joked, “Looks like someone photobombed them.”

Hours after that panel presentation concluded, Brandt and Coggins (shown above on the left and right, respectively) joined San Francisco author and philanthropist Robert Mailer Anderson (center) at Kayo Books, a treasury of used works on Post Street downtown, to celebrate Hammett’s considerable influence on today’s detective fiction. Afterward, Anderson—who rents the pocket-edition apartment at 891 Post where Hammett lived from 1927 to 1929 and penned his first three novels—escorted a few members of the audience on a brief tour of those rehabbed digs.

Yes, that’s me, Jeff Pierce, seated in the very apartment (#401) where ex-Pinkerton operative Hammett crafted his earliest novels and many of his short stories. Neither the wooden desk nor the typewriter are original fixtures, but they certainly add to the crib’s Jazz Age ambiance. (Photograph by Mark Coggins)

In a memorable treat for yours truly, immediately prior to the Kayo Books event, Coggins and I accompanied local novelist Robert Mailer Anderson (Boonville) to the fourth-floor apartment Hammett once rented at 891 Post Street, one block east of the bookshop. It was there, in the late 1920s, that Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon were all batted out noisily on a typewriter, the author likely working longer into the night than his neighbors would have preferred. For many years, architect and Hammett fan Bill Arney lived in those 275-square-foot lodgings, but after his passing in 2021, Anderson took over the rent. He has since restored the apartment to how it might have looked during Hammett’s time. Anderson is also working on a project that will bring modern authors into the place and film them reading excerpts from Hammett’s prose.

For a guy like me, who discovered Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade, and the Continental Op during college, and who’s been re-reading their adventures ever since, this opportunity to stand where their fictional lives began was nothing short of electrifying.

Those four days in mostly sunny San Francisco were a whirlwind of activities, from genre panel discussions and serendipitous encounters in hallways with friends to the discovery of new attractions the city has to offer. A few of my other favorite experiences:

• My daily morning walks around downtown, during which I not only got exercise and fresh air, but made a point of reaching buildings and monuments familiar to me from my years of writing about SF history.

• Sitting down with local author Kelli Stanley and talking about her efforts to relocate from the United States to Europe; her latest novel, The Reckoning; and how she couldn’t relax at LCC because she needed to get home and finish her sequel to that book by its deadline.

• Chatting up the friendly doorkeepers at the Hyatt Regency and finally questioning them about where to find the best Mexican food in the Mission District. This provoked much debate and research, until they finally directed me to Gallardos at 3248 18th Street (corner of 18th and Shotwell). I took the BART train down to the 16th and Mission station, then walked south on Mission and left on 18th for three more blocks. My being the only white guy in the restaurant suggested authenticity, as did the fact that credit cards weren’t accepted—Gallardos is cash-only. And the food? Well, I ordered the Guadalajara Dinner, a combination plate featuring an enchilada, a chili relleno, and a taco. With a side of house-made tortillas! It was savory and filling, and more than I could eat, but I had no refrigerator in my hotel room to hold the leftovers. I’ll definitely go back there the next time I’m in the Bay Area.

• Finding myself at the hotel bar next to Chicago’s Lori Rader-Day, an hour before Saturday night’s Lefty Awards banquet was to commence. I first met Lori during an airport shuttle ride into Raleigh, North Carolina, for Bouchercon 2015—back when she was just starting her career composing fiction. Since then, she’s produced six more novels, among them this year’s Wreck Your Heart, and survived breast cancer. I have done … well, nothing even remotely so courageous or dramatic. But it was good to catch up for a spell over gin-and-tonics.

• And then after the banquet and prize dispersals, joining Los Angeles author Gary Phillips at that same bar. He told me about the delights of rearing his late daughter’s young child, and briefed me on his soon-forthcoming novel, The Haul, which recounts the story of a professional thief coming out of retirement to engineer “a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker.” Gary and Lori are such kind and generous people; I’m sorry I live so far from them.

When Sunday rolled around, I was not close to being ready for departure. I mused on how wonderful it might be to spend another week roaming San Francisco, just photographing sidewalk scenes and the elegant decorations of old buildings. I hadn’t had a chance during my stay to wander out to spacious Golden Gate Park. Or to hop a Powell-Hyde Cable Car to The Buena Vista café, which is credited with introducing Irish coffees to the United States in 1952. Nor had I stopped at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, where Spade ordered “chops, baked potatoes, [and] sliced tomatoes” in The Maltese Falcon.

But I had to be back home the next day, so couldn’t stay. Next time, I told myself. And next time would be sooner than 15 years off!

Thursday’s “Thoughts on Podcasting” session was moderated by Jaime Parker Stickle (far left), author of the Corey in Los Angeles series and host of The Girl with the Same Name. Tackling the topic with her were Sabrina Thatcher (Slaying the Craft: Inside the Mind of a Thriller Writer), Jim Fusilli (Writers at Work), Mike Adamick (Crime Adjacent), and Dan White (OutWithDan).

“The Liars Panel” on Friday was one of this convention’s more unusual offerings, but its title says it all. Five writers told stories of their encounters with famous people, and the audience was charged with identifying which were factual and which were fabricated. Shown from left to right: Lee Matthew Goldberg (The Great Gimmelmans), Holly West (The Money Block), the legendary Sara Paretsky (creator of the V.I. Warshawski series), Lori Rader-Day (this panel’s moderator), and Lina Chern (Tricks of Fortune).

Guest of Honor Gary Phillips was interviewed onstage Friday afternoon by fellow fictionist Christa Faust (The Get Off). During their engaging 45-minute exchange, Phillips was asked which of all his books he would like to have outlast him. His answer: Violent Spring, his 1994 debut novel (featuring private eye Ivan Monk), and his 1999 standalone, The Jook.

Finally, Lori Rader-Day’s selfie showing the two of us enjoying chilled libations in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby bar.

Sometimes Only a Wrap-up Will Do

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:46:00 +0000

Three recent news items that might have passed through your radar unnoticed, as they almost passed through ours:

• The Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition is now open for submissions. “The official glass for Scotch whisky, Glencairn is once again raising a toast to crime fiction with the return of its popular annual competition, in partnership with the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival,” explains Crime Fiction Lover. “Experienced and novice writers from around the world are invited to submit an original crime story of under 2,000 words. You don’t have to be Scottish to enter, but your protagonist must be a Scot.” Entries are to be accepted through March 31. “The overall winner will receive £1,000, publication of their story on the Bloody Scotland website, and the chance of a guest appearance at the Bloody Scotland Festival in September 2026. The runner-up will win £500, with both winning stories also published on the Glencairn Glass website.”

• Lee Child, Jane Harper, Peter James, and Lucy Foley, are among the authors announced as headliners for this year’s Capital Crime festival, set to take place in London from June 18 to 20.

• And Season 15 of the Robert Thorogood-created series Death in Paradise is scheduled to debut in the States on BritBox come March 24. (It has already been airing in Great Britain.) There will be eight new episodes. Mystery Fanfare has a trailer here.