Cartoon of the Day: Writing

 From the amazing Tom Gauld:

AGATHA AWARDS: Malice Domestic

The Agatha Award Winners were announced at Malice Domestic tonight. Congratulations to all.

Best Contemporary Novel

A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best Historical Novel

Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Amanda Flower (Berkley)

Best First Novel

Cheddar Off Dead, Korina Moss (St. Martin’s)

Best Short Story

"Beauty and the Beyotch," Barb Goffman (Sherlock Holmes Magazine, Feb. 2022)

Best Non-Fiction 

 Promophobia: Taking the Mystery Out of Promoting Crime Fiction, Diane Vallere Ed. (Sisters in Crime)

Best Children's/YA Mystery

Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, Nancy Springer (Wednesday Books)

TOM JONES: PBS MASTERPIECE starts Sunday

Tom Jones starts Sunday night, April 30, on PBS Masterpiece. This is a lavish period drama/comedy/romance. It’s a big-hearted story of two young people finding love against all odds and through many humorous mishaps. Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is one of the greatest novels in the English language and his epic story has been reimagined for today’s audience: a “rom-com” set in the beautiful English countryside and London of the late 1700s.

Gwyneth Hughes, who adapted The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Vanity Fair for TV, takes on Henry Fielding’s randy satire of 18th-century English values. Also cast: Solly McLeod as the foundling Tom, and Sophie Wilde as his true love, Sophia, who’s now an Anglo-Caribbean immigrant.

This is a four episode series and will be available on PBS Masterpiece, PBS Passport, and Masterpiece Prime.

5 Reasons Tom Jones will steal your heart

 

2023 EDGAR AWARD WINNERS: Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2022. The 77th Annual Edgar® Awards took place April 27, 2023, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square (and on YouTube). I loved following along!

BEST NOVEL

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
 Or Else by Joe Hart (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
 
BEST FACT CRIME

Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse (Flatiron Books)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins – Collins Crime Club)

 
BEST SHORT STORY

"Red Flag," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Gregory Fallis (Dell Magazines)

BEST JUVENILE

Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Seaside Corpse by Marthe Jocelyn (Penguin Random House Canada - Tundra Books)


BEST YOUNG ADULT

The Red Palace by June Hur (Macmillan Children’s Books – Feiwel & Friends)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

“Episode 1” – Magpie Murders, Written by Anthony Horowitz (Masterpiece/PBS)

 
 ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"Dogs in the Canyon," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Mark Harrison (Dell Magazines)
 

* * * 

 
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD
 Hideout by Louisa Luna (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – Doubleday)

 
THE LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN MEMORIAL AWARD

Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)
 

SPECIAL AWARDS

 
GRAND MASTER
 
Michael Connelly
Joanne Fluke
 
RAVEN AWARD
 
Crime Writers of Color
Eddie Muller for Noir Alley and The Noir Foundation
 
ELLERY QUEEN AWARD
 
The Strand Magazine

2023 THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR LONGLIST

Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year announced their 2023 Longlist. Great books. The winner of the award will be announced at Harrogate. Everyone is invited to vote for their favorite long listed book to make the shortlist. Vote here. 

This award celebrates excellence, originality, and the very best in crime fiction from UK and Irish authors. Awarded annually as part of Harrogate International Festivals’ Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the winner of the most wanted accolade in crime fiction receives a cheque for £3000, and an engraved oak beer cask, hand-carved by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakstons Brewery. 

THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023 LONGLIST

Lupin, Season 3 News

Heads up!

Lupin: Part 3 will premiere on October 5, 2023. Yay! I love this French TV series.

In the cliffhanger finale of Lupin: Part 2, Gentleman Thief Assane (Omar Sy) finally got revenge on Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre). Where does Assane go from there? Season 3 of the hit French thriller answers that question.

From Netflix, "Now in hiding, Assane must learn to live far from his wife and son. With the suffering they endure because of him, Assane can’t stand it any longer and decides to return to Paris to make them a crazy proposal: leave France and start a new life elsewhere. But the ghosts of the past are never far away, and an unexpected return will turn his plans upside down."

Can't wait.

NATIONAL BOOKMOBILE DAY!

Today is National Bookmobile Day! What a great source of library outreach. I've posted several photos of Bookmobiles before, but thought in honor of the day, I'd post a few more!

National Bookmobile Day celebrates our nation's bookmobiles and the dedicated library professionals who provide this valuable and essential service to their communities every day. We honor the access to information and resources our nation’s bookmobiles make available to our communities and the professionals who work diligently to provide these services. For more than 100 years bookmobiles have brought a library to those that otherwise may not have access to one.

The first American bookmobile was actually a wagon. Mary Titcomb, a Maryland librarian, recgonized that having books was only one part of the library’s job: the other part was making the books accessible. The Washington County Library Wagon took books around the county, making scheduled stops in addition to impromptu dispersals. This first “bookmobile” served until 1910, when it was hit by a train (no one was injured, though the fate of the books it was carrying is unknown).  

Read more about the history of American Bookmobiles at Book Riot.

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: Guest Post by Stephanie Kane

Stephanie Kane:
 
Is it harder to get away with murder now than, say, fifty years ago? Put another way, why are so many decades-old cold cases suddenly being solved? The most obvious answer is familial DNA, the gene-tracing tool that seems to have turned anyone with a computer and an ancestry.com subscription into a crime buster. But it’s not just genealogy. In the crime-solving arena, technological advances, from security cameras to surveillance videos to cellphone data, have been gamechangers too.
 
Forensic science has a long and colorful history. 
 
In the 700s in China, fingerprints were first used to verify the identity of documents. In 1248, a Chinese text described how to distinguish drowning from strangulation. In 1784, Englishman John Toms was convicted of murder based on physically matching the torn edge of a wad of newsprint in a pistol with a piece of newsprint in his pocket. In the next two centuries the microscope was invented, fingerprints were scanned into computers, and DNA databases were established. Each innovation made it harder to get away with crime.
 
In 2005, tracing metadata in a floppy disk that was sent to a news station back to a computer at a church was how Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, was caught. In 2020, Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, was the first murderer to be nabbed through forensic genealogy. Genetic DNA, security cameras, surveillance videos and cellphone data all played roles in Bryan Kohberger’s arrest for murdering four Idaho college students in 2022. And who could forget the cellphone video Alex Murdaugh’s son Paul took of his dad moments before he killed Paul? Not the jury that convicted Murdaugh of murder in 2023.
 
Of the who, what, when, where and why required to prove a crime, some of the most dramatic changes have related to time. With implications for alibi and time of death, establishing when a murder occurred is crucial to identifying the killer and securing a conviction. But time is only as reliable as the means by which it is measured. As the case of Betty Frye illustrates, when was significantly harder to prove fifty years ago. Engaged (and later married) to Betty’s son, I had a front row seat to how those challenges played out then and in her cold case thirty years later. 
 
Betty, a Denver-area housewife, was bludgeoned to death in June 1973. Her body was found in her suburban garage, sprawled facedown near barrels of loot taken from the house. It looked like a burglary gone wrong, but attention soon turned to her husband Duane. The case against Duane turned on proving he was home when Betty was killed. It would pit wristwatches against alarm clocks and radio DJs, and ultimately turn on an unexpectedly unimpeachable source. 
 
The first challenge was proving Betty’s time of death. When she was attacked, she fell onto her left hand and the crystal face of her watch cracked. The watch stopped at 10:03. In 1973, a jeweler examined the watch and found no internal damage; because it needed to be cleaned, he thought it had been running intermittently, stopping and starting again, before she was killed. Ignoring the watch, and without measuring rigor or livor mortis, or taking Betty’s temperature at the crime scene or the morgue, in 1973 the coroner inexplicably concluded she died around noon. Luckily, there was other evidence. 
 
Betty had eaten breakfast around 8:30 a.m. She was last seen alive by Randy Peterson, a carpenter on a roof with a bird’s-eye view of the Frye backyard, who saw her shake out her mop. Randy thought it was 10:00 a.m. because, shortly after, he lost a contact lens. After scrambling around on the ground looking for it, he got his glasses from his car. The dashboard clock said 10:10 or 10:12 a.m.
 
Based on Randy’s sighting, and remnants of meat found in her stomach, in 2006 the cold case coroner concluded Betty died at 10:30 a.m. at latest. Digestion stops at death, and Betty died within minutes of being attacked. The meat in her stomach established she died an hour or two after breakfast.
 
Randy also saw a man who looked like Duane come out the back of the Frye garage, ten or twenty minutes before the DJ on Randy’s radio announced it was 11:30 a.m. This tallied with the most graphic and chilling evidence in the case: a clock-radio, an alarm clock and a kitchen clock found with the loot in the garage. Frozen at 11:22, 11:23 and 11:27 a.m. when the killer unplugged them to stash them in the barrels by Betty’s body, their GoPro-like documentary of the killer’s minute-by-minute trek through the house became a linchpin of the case. But the cops still needed to place Duane at the scene. 
 
Enter a thirteen-year-old kid. 
 
Bret Wacker was best friends with Duane’s youngest son, Greg. Bret lived on the next block, a three-minute walk. The morning Betty was killed, he wanted Greg to go with him to the 7-Eleven. He rang the Frye doorbell twice before Duane answered. Bret insisted this happened shortly after 11:30 a.m. If Bret was right, according to the clocks in the garage, Duane’s house was being burglarized while Duane was answering his own front door.
 
Bret was certain of the time because he’d been watching The Monkees on TV and switched the channel to Sherlock Holmes for his brother right before he left. Bret told his mother he’d be home in an hour, and she looked at the clock and thought, he better be back by 12:30. But to corroborate Bret’s testimony, the cops needed an unimpeachable source. They found one close at hand: that week’s T.V. Guide. The Monkees ran from 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 on local Channel 9, and Sherlock Holmes began at 11:30 on Channel 2.
 
Is it harder to get away with murder now? Technology has changed the landscape, but some things never change: Killers make mistakes, and dedicated cops work with whatever they have. Who needs a time-stamped cellphone video if you’ve got TV Guide?

***

Stephanie Kane is a lawyer and award-winning author of seven crime novels and one true crime memoir. After graduating from law school, she was a corporate partner at a top Denver law firm before becoming a criminal defense attorney. She has lectured on money laundering and white-collar crime in Eastern Europe and given workshops throughout the country on writing technique.

Her crime novels have won a Colorado Book Award for Mystery and two Colorado Authors League Awards for Genre Fiction. She belongs to the Mystery Writers of America, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and the Colorado Authors League.

In True Crime Redux (May 2, 2023) Kane revists the murder of her then mother-in-law-to-be Betty Frye shortly before Kane and her fiancé’s wedding and how the dramatic events forever fractured the lives of the Frye family — and her own. 

GRANTCHESTER, Season 8 air date

GRANTCHESTER, Season 8, premieres on Sunday, July 9 at 9/8C on PBS Masterpiece

Grantchester returns with Will (Tom Brittney) happily married to Bonnie (Charlotte Ritchie), and Geordie (Robson Green) and Cathy (Kacey Ainsworth) content in their rebuilt relationship. But an accident and shocking announcements threaten the stability and happiness found by Grantchester’s vicar and police detective duo. Exploring faith, forgiveness, and redemption, this explosive season of Grantchester tests Will and Geordie to the limit.

The new season of Grantchester premieres Sunday, July 9, 9/8c on MASTERPIECE on PBS, and continues Sundays through August 6, 2023. On Sunday, August 6, fans will get a double dose of Grantchester, with the final two episodes of Season 8 airing in one night. Episode 5 begins at at 9/8c, and Episode 6, the season finale, premieres at 10/9c.

Also available on PBS Passport (all episodes available on July 9) and Masterpiece Prime Video.

Crime Writers Association Dagger Awards Longlists 2023

The Crime Writers Association announced the Dagger Longlists.  2023 Debut Dagger longlist will be posted online on April 26. 
Shortlists in all Dagger categories will be announced Friday, May 12, at CrimeFest 2023 in Bristol, England.

Congratulations to all.

Diamond Dagger (previously announced)

Walter Mosley

Gold Dagger

Oxblood, by Tom Benn (Bloomsbury)
Shoot the Moonlight Out, by William Boyle (No Exit Press)
The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
The Kingdoms of Savannah, by George Dawes Green (Headline)
The Lost Man of Bombay, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Bookseller of Inverness, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)
A Killing in November, by Simon Mason (Riverrun)
The Clockwork Girl, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
The Winter Guest, by W.C. Ryan (Zaffre)
A Killing Rain, by Faye Snowden (Flame Tree Press)
The Bone Road, by N.E. Solomons (Polygon)
The Silent Brother, by Simon Van der Velde (Northodox Press)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger

Opera, by Julie Anderson (Claret Press)
A Kiss After Dying, by Ashok Banker (Michael Joseph)
Take Your Breath Away, by Linwood Barclay (HQ)
Seventeen, by John Brownlow (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Match, by Harlan Coben (Century)
The Botanist, by M.W. Craven (Constable)
Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (PanMacMillan)
The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
Alias Emma, by Ava Glass (Century)
A Loyal Traitor, by Tim Glister (Point Blank)
Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (Phoenix)
May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate)

John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger

A Good Day to Die, by Amen Alonge (Quercus)
Better the Blood, by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster UK)
Breaking, by Amanda Cassidy (Canelo)
Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Headline)
The Local, by Joey Hartstone (Pushkin Vertigo)
The Truth Will Out, by Rosemary Hennigan (Orion)
London in Black, by Jack Lutz (Pushkin Vertigo)
Dirt Town, by Hayley Scrivenor (Macmillan)
No Country for Girls, by Emma Styles (Sphere)
Nobody But Us, by Laure Van Rensburg (Michael Joseph)
Outback, by Patricia Wolf (Embla)
The Partisan, by Patrick Worrall (Bantam Press)

Historical Dagger

The Darkest Sin, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
Blackstone Fell, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus/Aries)
Two Storm Wood, by Philip Gray (Harvill Secker)
The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys, by Jack Jewers (Moonflower)
The Bookseller of Inverness, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)
The Clockwork Girl, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
Death at the Dolphin, by Gretta Mulrooney (Joffe)
The Homes, by J.B. Mylet (Viper)
The Bangalore Detectives Club, by Harini Nagendra (Constable)
Blue Water, by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)
Hear No Evil, by Sarah Smith (Two Roads)
The Mushroom Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu (Constable)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction

The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery, by Stephen Bates (Icon)
Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry, by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel (Atlantic)
What We Fear Most: Reflections on a Life in Forensic Psychiatry, by Ben Cave (Seven Dials)
Scandal at Dolphin Square: A Notorious History, by Simon Danczuk and Daniel Smith (The History Press)
The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators, by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)
Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey, by Wendy Joseph (Doubleday)
Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector, by Amit Katwala (Mudlark)
To Hunt a Killer: How I Brought Melanie Road’s Murderer to Justice, by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy (Harper Element)
The Real Special Relationship: The True Story of How the British and U.S. Secret Services Work Together, by Michael Smith (Simon & Schuster)
The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Learning to Be Free, by Andy West (Picador)
About A Son: A Murder and A Father’s Search for Truth, by David Whitehouse (Phoenix)
Stitched Up: Stories of Life and Death from a Prison Doctor, by Shahed Yousaf (Bantam Press)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger

Good Reasons to Die, by Morgan Audic, translated by Sam Taylor (Mountain Leopard Press)
The Red Notebook, by Michel Bussi, translated by Vineet Lal (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas, translated by Anne McLean (MacLehose Press)
Bad Kids, by Zijin Chen, translated by Michelle Deeter (Pushkin Vertigo)
Impossible, by Erri De Luca, translated by N.S. Thompson (Mountain Leopard Press)
Femicide, by Pascal Engman, translated by Michael Gallagher (Legend Press)
The Bleeding, by Johana Gustawsson, translated by David Warriner (Orenda)
The Corpse Flower, by Anne Mette Hancock, translated by Tara Chace (Swift Press)
The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph)
The Dark Flood, by Deon Meyer, translated K.L. Seggers (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Tattoo Murder, by Akimitsu Takagi,translated by Deborah Boehm (Pushkin Vertigo)
Lady Joker, by Kaoru Takamura, translated by Allison Markin Powell and Marie Iida (Baskerville)

Short Story Dagger

“The Disappearance,” by Leigh Bardugo (from Marple; HarperCollins)
 “The Tears of Venus,” by Victoria Dowd and Delilah Dowd (from Unlocked; The D20 Authors)
“Strawberry Moon,” by John Grisham (from Sparring Partners, by John Grisham; Hodder & Stoughton)
“Clout Chaser,” by Rachel Howzell Hall (from The Perfect Crime, edited by Vaseem Khan and Maxim Jakubowski; HarperCollins)
“The Beautiful Game,” by Sanjida Kay (from The Perfect Crime)
“Death in Darjeeling,” by Vaseem Khan (from The Perfect Crime)
“Just One More,” by Laura Lippman (from Seasonal Work and Other Killer Stories, by Laura Lippman; Faber and Faber)
“Paradise Lost,” by Abir Mukherjee (from The Perfect Crime)
“Auld Bride,” by Judith O’Reilly (from Gone, edited by Stephen J. Golds; Red Dog Press)
“Runaway Blues,” by C.J. Tudor (from A Sliver of Darkness, by C.J. Tudor; Michael Joseph)
“The Lake House,” by Ferdinand von Schirach (from Punishment, by Ferdinand von Schirach, translated by Katharina Hall; Baskerville)
“Cast a Long Shadow,” by Hazell Ward Cast (from Cast a Long Shadow, edited by Katherine Stansfield and Caroline; Honno Welsh Women’s Press)

Publishers’ Dagger

Bitter Lemon Press
Bookouture (Hachette)
Canelo
Harper Fiction (HarperCollins)
Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette)
Mantle (PanMacmillan)
Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House)
Raven (Bloomsbury)
Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin Press)
Quercus (Hachette)
Simon & Schuster
Viper (Profile Books)

Dagger in the Library

Ben Aaronovitch
Sophie Hannah
Mick Herron
Erin Kelly
Angela Marsons
Brian McGilloway
Tim Weaver

HT: TheRapSheet

EARTH DAY: ENVIRONMENTAL/ECOLOGICAL MYSTERIES & RESERVOIR NOIR (Drowned Towns)

Earth Day: Climate change, environmental issues, and how we can save our planet. A few years ago I started posting a list of environmental/ecological mysteries. The list has grown. Crime fiction is an excellent way to make readers aware of issues.

Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 36:1) focuses on Environmental Mysteries. This issue is available as a PDF download and hardcopy. Take a look at the Table of Contents and order here. 

For Earth Day 2023, I updated my Earth Day/Environmental Mysteries list. There are many more authors, and certainly more books by many of the authors on the list. As always, I welcome additions of your favorites. I took a few liberties on the list, too, but I think they all fall under the umbrella of environmental/ecological mysteries. Scroll down for a second list that deals exclusively with Drowned Towns aka Reservoir Noir.

Be kind to the Earth. It's the only one we have!

ENVIRONMENTAL/ECOLOGICAL MYSTERIES

Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang' Hayduke Lives!
P.D. Abbey's H2Glo
Liz Adair's Snakewater Affair
Glyyn Marsh Alam's Cold Water Corpse; Bilge Water Bones
Grace Alexander's Hegemon 
Lou Allin's Northern Winters Are Murder; Blackflies Are Murder: Memories Are Murder

Christine Andreae's A Small Target
Suzanne Arruda's Stalking Ivory
Sarah Andrews' Em Hansen Mystery series
Lindsay Arthur's The Litigators
Anna Ashwood-Collins' Deadly Resolution; Red Roses for a Dead Trucker
Sandi Ault's Wild Inferno; Wild Indigo; Wild Penance; Wild Sorrow
Shannon Baker's Tainted Mountain; Broken Trust; Tattered Legacy; Skies of Fire
J. G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise
Michael Barbour's The Kenai Catastrophe; Blue Water, Blue Island
Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat; Ill Wind; Borderline; and others
Lee Barwood's A Dream of Drowned Hollow?
Pamela Beason's Sam Westin wildlife biologist series
Robert P. Bennett's Blind Traveler's Blues

William Bernhardt's Silent Justice
David Riley Bertsch's Death Canyon
Donald J Bingle's GreensWord
Michael Black's A Killing Frost 
Jennifer Blake's Shameless
Claire Booth's Another Man's Ground
C J Box's Winterkill; Open Season; Below Zero; Savage Run; Out of Range; Trophy Hunt; Free Fire; In Plain Sight; Dark Sky
Lisa Brackmann's Hour of the Rat
Alex Brett's Dead Water Creek
Tobias S. Buckell's Artic Rising

Joe Burcat's Drink to Every Beast
James Lee Burke's Creole Belle
Rex Burns' Endangered Species
Steve Burrow's A Siege of Bitterns
David Butler Full Curl; No Place for Wolverines; In Rhino We Trust
Chester Campbell's The Surest Poison
Christine Carbo The Wild Inside, Mortal Fall, The Weight of Night, A Sharp Solitude
Ann Cleeves' Another Man's Poison; Wild Fire; Blue Lightning; The Crow Trap
Eileen Charbonneau's Waltzing in Ragtime

Rajat Chaudhuri: The Butterfly Effect
Margaret Coel's The Dream Stalker
Anna Ashwood Collins's Metamorphis for Murder; Deadly Resolutions
Kathleen Concannon's A Deadly Bluff
Robin Cook's Fever
Dawn Corrigan's Mitigating Circumstances
Peter Corris's Deep Water
Donna Cousin's Landscape
Michael Crichton's State of Fear

James Crumley's Dancing Bear
Rich Curtin's Final Arrangements; Deadly Games
Christine D'Avanzo Cold Blood, Hot Sea; Devil Sea; Secrets Haunt the Lobsters' Sea; Glass Eels, Shattered Sea
Cecil Dawkins' Rare Earth
Janet Dawson's Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean

Mark de Castrique's Fatal Scores
Barbara Delinsky's Looking for Peyton Place
Lionel Derrick's Death Ray Terror
William Deverell's April Fool
Karen Dionne's Boiling Point; Freezing Point; The Marsh King's Daughter, The Wicked Sister
Paul Doiron's The Poacher's Son; Trespasser; Bad Little Falls; The Bone Orchard; One Last Lie, Almost Midnight, Dead by Dawn, and others
David Michael Donovan's Evil Down in the Alley
Mark Douglas-Home's The Sea Detective
Rubin Douglas' The Wise Pelican: From the Cradle to the Grave
Jack Du Brul's Vulcan's Forge; River of Ruin; and others
Robert Dugoni & Joseph Hilldorfer's Cyanide Canary
Toni Dwiggins' Badwater; Quicksilver
Kerstin Ekman's Blackwater
Aaron J Elkins' The Dark Place; Unnatural Selection
Howard Engel's Dead and Buried
Kathleen Ernst's High Stakes in a Great Lake
Eric C. Evans' Endangered

Nicholas Evans' The Divide
Nancy Fairbanks's Acid Bath; Hunting Game; and others
Kate Fellowes' Thunder in the Night
Cher Fischer's Falling into Green
Bill Fitzhugh's Pest Control; The Exterminators
Michael J. Fitzgerald's The Fracking War
Mary Flodin's The Death of the Gecko
G M Ford's Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca?
Clare Francis's The Killing Winds (Requiem)
Jamie Freveletti's Dead Asleep 
Sara Hoskinson Frommer's Death Climbs a Tree

Abby Geni's The Lightkeepers
Jean Craighead George's The Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo; Who Really Killed Cock Robin?; The Case of the Missing Cutthroats; The Fire Bug Connection (young readers)
Matthew Glass's Ultimatum
Kenneth Goddard's Double Blind; Prey; Wildfire
Chris Goff's A Rant of Ravens; Death of a Songbird; A Nest in the Ashes
Jean Craighead George's The Case of the Missing Cutthroats

Steven Gould and Laura J. Mixon's Greenwar
Alexander M. Grace's Hegemon
Scott Graham's Mountain Rampage, Yellowstone Standoff; Mesa Verde Victim
Robert O. Greer's The Devil's Hatband
John Grisham's The Pelican Brief; The Appeal; The Litigators; Gray Mountain
Beth Groundwater's Deadly Currents; Wicked Eddies
Elizabeth Gunn's Eleven Little Piggies
Jean Hager's Ravenmocker
William Hagard's The Vendettists
James W. Hall's Bones of Coral
Patricia Hall's The Poison Pool
Joseph Hall's Nightwork
Karen Hall's Unreasonable Risk, Through Dark Spaces

A.M. Halvorssen's The Dirty Network
Matt Hammond's Milkshake
Vinnie Hansen's Fruit of the Devil 
Jane Harper's The Dry; The Lost Man
Alice Henderson's A Solitude of Wolverines, A Blizzard of Polar Bears, and more.
Sue Henry's Termination Dust
Robert Herring's McCampbell's War
Joseph Heywood's Blue Wolf in Green Fire, Ice Hunter, Chasing a Blond Moon; Buckular Dystrophy; Bad Optics
Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip; Stormy Weather; Sick Puppy; Strip Tease; Scat; Star Island

Anne Hillerman's Song of the Lion
Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way
Tami Hoag's Lucky's Lady
John Hockenberry's A River out of Eden
Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow
John Holt's Hunted
Dave Hugelschaffer's Day into Night, One Careless Moment
Judy Hughes' The Snowmobile Kidnapping
Mary Ellen Hughes' A Taste of Death
Dana Andrew Jennings' Lonesome Standard Time
Craig Johnson's Hell is Empty; Dry Bones

Sylvia Kelso's The Solitaire Ghost; The Time Seam
Emily Kimelman's Unleashed
Thomas King's Cold Skies
M.T. Kingsley's With Malicious Intent

Henry Kisor's Hang Fire
Linda Kistler's Cause for Concern
Lisa Kleinholz's Dancing with Mr. D. 
Bill Knox's The Scavengers, Devilweed, and others in the Webb Carrick series
Dean Koontz's Icebound
William Kent Krueger's "Cork O'Connor" series, including Manitou Canyon, Sulfur Springs
Janice Law's Infected Be the Air

P.J. Lazos' Oil and Water
Leena Lehtolainen's Fatat Headwind
Stephen Legault's The Cardinal Divide, The Glacier Gallows, The Vanishing Track, The Darkening Archipelago
Donna Leon's Death in a Strange Country; About Face; Earthly Remains; Acqua Alta
David Liss' The Ethical Assassin
Sam Llewellyn's Deadeye
Charles & Lidia LoPinto's Countdown in Alaska; Nukes
Robert Lopresti's Greenfellas
Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide
John D MacDonald's Barrier Island (and other titles)
Ross Macdonald's Sleeping Beauty
Jassy Mackenzie's The Fallen
Larry Maness' A Once a Perfect Place
Elizabeth Manz's Wasted Space
John Marsden's A Killing Frost
Margaret Maron's High Country Fall, Shooting at Loons, Up Jumps the Devil, Hard Row
John Martel's Partners
Steve Martini's Critical Mass

Jean Matthews' Bet Your Bones
Keith McCafferty's The Royal Wulff Murders, Dead Man's Fance; A Death in Eden; The Bangtail Ghost; Buffalo Jump Blues
Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves

M.J. McGrath's The Boy in the Snow
John McGoran's Drift, Deadout, Dust Up
Karin McQuillan's Deadly Safari, Cheetah Chase, Elephant's Graveyard

Mindy Meija's Leave No Trace
Anne Metikosh's Undercurrent 
Deon Meyer's Blood Safari, Thirteen Hours; Fever
Shannon Michaud's Still Water
Penny Mickelbury's What Could Be More Than Dead? 
Susan Cummins Miller's Chasm
Kirk Mitchell's High Desert Malice, Deep Valley Malice
Laura J. Mixon & Steven Gould's Greenwar

Margaret Mizushima's Killing Trail; Stalking Ground
Skye Kathleen Moody's Blue Poppy, and other Venus Diamond mysteries
C. George Muller's Echoes in the Blue
Marcia Muller's Cape Perdido
Sandy Neill's Deadly Turn; Deadly Trespass

Judith Newton's Oink
Michael Norman's Skeleton Picnic; On Deadly Ground
Dan O'Brien's Brendan Prairie
Michael Palmer's Fatal
Sara Paretsky's Blood Shot
Brad Parks' The Player
T. Jefferson's Parker's Pacific Beat

Ridley Pearson's Killer View
Louise Penny's A Better Man

Cathy Pickens' Southern Fried
Carl Posey's Bushmaster Fall
David Poyer's As the Wolf Loves Winter, Winter in the Heart
Katherine Prairie's Thirst
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Reliquary
Kwei Quartey's Murder at Cape Three Points; Gold of our Fathers
Peter Ralph's Dirty Fracking Business

Ben Rehder's Bum Steer; Holy Moly; Hog Heaven; Fat Crazy, and more
Bob Reiss's Purgatory Road
Ruth Rendell's Road Rage 
Geoffrey Robert's The Alo Release
Carolyn Rose's An Uncertain Refuge
Leonard Rosen's The Tenth Witness
Rebecca Rothenberg's The Shy Tulip Murders; The Bulrush Murder
Patricia Rushford's Red Sky in the Mourning
Alan Russell's The Forest Prime Evil 
Kirk Russell's Shell Games
Nick Russell's Big Lake Blizzard

Louis Sachar's Fuzzy Mud
Brenda Seabrook's The Dragon That Slurped the Green Slime Swamp (Children's)
Frank Schätzing's The Swarm
L.J. Seller's Crimes of Memory
Paige Shelton's Cold Wind
Patricia Skalka's Death Stalks Door County

Barry Siegel's Actual Innocence
Sheila Simonson's An Old Chaos 
Jessica Speart's Bird Brained, Blue Twilight, Gator Aide, Tortoise Soup
Dana Stabenow's A Cold Day for Murder, A Deeper Sleep, A Fine and Bitter Snow, Midnight Come Again, A Taint in the Blood, and many others
John Stanley's The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Curious Eat Themselves, 
Neal Stephenson's Zodiac
Mark Stevens' Buried by the Roan; Antler Dust; Lake of Fire 
David Sundstrand's Shadow of the Raven
William Tapply's Cutter's Run
Peter Temple's The Broken Shore

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood
Craig Thomas's A Wild Justice
Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Antti Tuomainen's The Healer
Judith Van Gleson's "Neil Hamel" series, including The Wolf Path & Parrot Blues
David Rains Wallace's The Turquoise Dragon
Lee Wallingford's Clear-Cut Murder; Cold Tracks
Joseph Wambaugh's Finnegan's Week
Sterling Watson's Deadly Sweet
Betty Webb's Desert Wind; The Anteater of Death 
Randy Wayne White's White Captiva
Robert Wilson's Blood is Dirt

K.J.A. Wishnia's The Glass Factory; 23 Shades of Black; Red House Soft Money
Qiu Xialolong's Don't Cry, Tai Lake
John Yunker's The Tourist Trail; Where Oceans Hide Their Dead
Greg Zeigler's Rare as Earth; Some Say Fire; The Straw That Broke

Reservoir Noir

Crime Fiction that deals with intentional flooding of towns and villages because of building dams and reservoirs for water supply, irrigation, power and other reasons--a sad addition to the environmental crime fiction list.

Scott Carson's The Chill
Alan Dipper's Drowning Day
Eileen Dunlop's Valley of the Deer (YA)

Lee Harris's The Christening Day Murder
Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height
Donald James' Walking the Shadows
James D. Landis' The Taking (Artist of the Beautiful)
Jane Langton's Emily Dickenson is Dead

Julia Wallis Martin's A Likeness in Stone
Sharyn McCrumb's Zombies of the Gene Pool
Michael Miano's The Dead of Summer
Ron Rash's One Foot in Eden
Rick Riordan's The Devil Went Down to Austin
Peter Robinson's In a Dry Season
Lisa See's Dragon Bones
Paul Somers' Broken Jigsaw
Julia Spencer-Fleming's Out of the Deep I Cry
John Milliken Thompson's The Reservoir Reservoir 13
Donald Westlake's Drowned Hopes
John Morgan Wilson's Rhapsody in Blood
Robert Wilson's Blood is Dirt
Stuart Woods's Under the Lake

Let me know any other author/titles that should be included. Make a comment below.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZES 2023

The winners of the 43rd Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced yesterday. 

Winners in three special categories previously announced. 

  

James Ellroy: Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement

The American Library Assn.’s Freedom to Read Foundation: Innovator’s Award

Javier Zamora: Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose. 

Ellroy, who will accept the Robert Kirsch Award for bodies of work focused on the American West, is best known for his L.A.-based crime novels such as “L.A. Confidential” and “The Black Dahlia” — both part of his bestselling L.A. Quartet. Ellroy also has written an investigative memoir, “My Dark Places,” as well as dozens of novels, many of them adapted into films, graphic novels and podcasts. “We are pleased to recognize L.A. noir iconoclast James Ellroy with this year’s Kirsch Award,” said Times Books Editor Boris Kachka. “James’ writing life was shaped by the tragic, unsolved murder of his mother when he was 10, fostering an obsession with crime and the underworld that has animated his fiction and nonfiction across the decades.” 

Of particular interest to readers of this blog:. Congratulations to all. 

Mystery/Thriller

Alex Segura, Secret Identity 

Also Nominated

 

Rachel Howzell Hall, We Lie Here: A Thriller 

Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden 

Tracey Lien, All That’s Left Unsaid 

Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers 

Biography

Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

Nicola Griffith, Spear

See Winners in all Categories here