B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 22

The Bloody Best

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The winners were revealed for the 2024 McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival friday evening. The McIlvanney Prize is awarded to the best Scottish Crime book of the year (renamed in 2016 in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the "Godfather of Tartan Noir"), and the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize is awarded to the best first-time crime novelist. Congrats to all the winners and finalists!

McIlvanney Prize:  The Cracked Mirror, by Chris Brookmyre (Abacus)

Also shorlisted:

Past Lying, by Val McDermid (Sphere)
Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)
A Spy Like Me, by Kim Sherwood (HarperCollins)
A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Pan Macmillan)

 

Debut Prize:  The Silent House of Sleep, by Allan Gaw (SA Press)

Also shortlisted:

Crow Moon, by Suzy Aspley (Orenda)
Dark Island, by Daniel Aubrey (Harper North)
Blood Runs Deep, by Doug Sinclair (Storm Publishing)
Double Proof, by Martin Stewart (Polygon)

          

Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train), Tom Hardy (Venom), and director Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die) are teaming up for the adaptation of Jo Nesbø's crime thriller, Blood On Snow, with Nesbø scripting the project (and revisions by Ben Power). The story unfolds in 1970’s Oslo and centers on Olav (Taylor-Joynson), a fixer for a high-profile crime kingpin, who falls for the wife of his client, Hoffman (Hardy). When Hoffman orders the wife to be murdered, Olav’s principles clash with his loyalties, and instead of pulling the trigger, he hatches a scheme that makes him Hoffman’s next target. With nowhere safe to turn, Olav forms an uneasy alliance that places him at the heart of Oslo’s deadly gang war. Once a violent enforcer, Olav’s choice makes him an unlikely hero in a world where no good deed goes unpunished.

Nate Mann (Masters of the Air), Shay Mitchell (Pretty Little Liars) and Tony Award winner Andrew Burnap (The Inheritance) have signed on to star in The Up and Comer, a new thriller directed by Chris Long (The Americans). Based on the novel from New York Times bestseller Howard Roughan, who also adapted the screenplay, the film delves into the seemingly perfect life of Philip Randall (Mann), a brilliant attorney poised to become the youngest partner at his prestigious firm. Philip’s idyllic world begins to unravel when a former prep-school classmate (Burnap) threatens to reveal a devastating secret involving another woman (Mitchell). Suddenly caught in a high stakes game of blackmail, murder, and revenge, he’s forced to risk everything, only to face the greatest danger of all — winning.

Radio Silence is producing a feature version of writer-director Colleen McGuinness's Oscar-qualifying short, Loser, which McGuinness will also write and direct. Loser follows Alice, a brilliant but troubled physicist, as she attempts to heal her trauma by using time travel. However, she gets caught in a twisty, cat-and-mouse game of murder and violence in New York City.

Michael B. Jordan, following in the footsteps of Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan, is set to star in and direct a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair for Amazon MGM. The original film starred McQueen as an art thief who falls in love with an insurance investigator, played by Faye Dunaway, hired to track him down. John McTiernan then directed a remake in 1999 starring Brosnan and Rene Russo in the lead roles. Drew Pearce will write the script for the new version from a previous draft by Wes Tooke and Justin Britt-Gibson.

The Third Man returns to U.S. and British movie theaters in September as StudioCanal and Rialto Pictures mark the film’s 75th anniversary. The Carol Reed classic had its world premiere at the Ritz Cinema in Hastings, England, on September 1, 1949. Five months later, The Third Man had its U.S. premiere on February 2, 1950. Directed by Reed and written by Graham Greene, The Third Man stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, an American writer of Westerns, who arrives in post-war Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). On arrival, he learns that his friend has been killed in a street accident. Further, military police chief Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) informs him that Lime was a black marketeer wanted by the police.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

The first contemporary television adaptation of Georges Simenon’s beloved novels about the streetwise Parisian Chief Inspector Jules Maigret is headed to PBS. Maigret will be played by Benjamin Wainwright (Belgravia: The Next Chapter), with Stefanie Martini (Last Kingdom) playing his wife, Madame Louise Maigret. The adaptation reframes Maigret as an unconventional young detective and a rising star in the Police Judiciaire with an uncanny ability to get under the skin of the criminals he is chasing and a matchless knowledge of Paris and its inhabitants. Faithfully and lovingly married to Madame Maigret, Maigret heads the elite police unit known as La Crim, responsible for investigating all serious crime in and around Paris. The previous Maigret TV adaptation aired on ITV for two seasons from 2016, starring Rowan Atkinson.

Michael Harney (Orange is the New Black) has been cast in Prime Video's The Better Sister starring Jessica Beal and Elizabeth Banks. Based on the novel by Alafair Burke, The Better Sister meditates on the terrible things that drive sisters apart and ultimately bring them back together. Biel leads the cast as Chloe, who moves through the world with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky (Banks) struggles to stay clean and hustles to make ends meet. When Adam is brutally murdered, the prime suspect sends shockwaves through the family, laying bare long-buried secrets.

CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker has been tapped as writer, executive producer, and showrunner for The Quiet Tenant, a limited series adaptation of the suspense debut novel by Clémence Michallon. The Quiet Tenant is a psychological thriller about kidnapper and serial killer, Aidan Thomas, narrated by those closest to him: his 13-year-old daughter, his girlfriend, and the one victim he has spared. It explores the psychological impact of Aidan’s crimes on the women in his life — and the bonds between those women that give them the strength to fight back.

Sad news for Bosch: Legacy fans after the announcement was made that the series will end with its forthcoming third season, set to premiere in March 2025. The drama was based on Michael Connelly's novels and featured Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch, a retired LAPD detective now working as a private investigator, and his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), a rookie cop. The show is a sequel to Bosch, which ran for seven seasons on Prime Video. This may not be the last appearance of Bosch, however, as there is another upcoming series starring Maggie Q that's based on Connelly's Detective Renée Ballard series, a spinoff character from the author's Bosch novels.

A new arrival to Netflix is Black Mass, based on Gerard O’Neill’s 2001 book, Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob. It stars Johnny Depp in the biographical crime film as Irish mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger, the brother of a state senator (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), who became an FBI informant to help take down a rival Italian Mafia family invading his turf. The drama was directed by Scott Cooper (The Pale Blue Eye), and features an ensemble cast that also includes Joel Edgerton, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Dakota Johnson, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, David Harbour, Juno Temple, and Bill Camp.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On Crime Time FM, Abir Mukherjee chatted with Paul Burke about his thriller, Hunted, in which two parents facing catastrophe must find their lost children, who are suspects following a terrorist bombing, before the unthinkable can happen.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with writer Gareth Rubin about his new book, Holmes & Moriarty, and examined innovative literary structures such as Tête-bêche and Mise en Abyme.

The Cops and Writers podcast featured guest Marique Bartoldus, a retired 20-year veteran of the NYPD, who discussed her new book about her experiences and what it's like to be a female detective on the mean streets of New York City.

Pick Your Poison host, Dr. Jen Prosser, looked at a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of toxicologists; what was in the state poison Athens used for capital punishment; and how people become sick after eating quail.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Murder at the Villa Rose

(This is a "classic" re-blog post.) British author Alfred Edward Woodley (A.E.W.) Mason, born in 1865, spent much of his career serving in Parliament and in World War I where he worked in naval intelligence. Although his first novel was A Romance at Wastdale, Mason is credited with one of the earliest fictional police detective protagonists, Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté. The novel in which Hanaud made his debut was Murder at the Villa Rose, published in 1910.

Mason created Hanaud as an anti-Sherlock Holmes, at least in appearance, a short, broad man who resembles a "prosperous comedian." Hanaud's Watson-esque sidekick is Julius Ricardo, a fussy English dilettante. It's quite possible that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings (or possibly Christie's Mr. Satterthwaite) were modeled on the characters of French-speaking Hanaud and Englishman Ricardo.

The plot is based loosely on real cases (a wealthy French widow found murdered in her villa and an English shopkeeper murdered for jewels), and Mason also drew on procedural details from the memoirs of French policemen. Basically, when the elderly and eccentric Mme. D'Auvray is murdered in her home, the Villa Rose, and suspicion falls on her young companion, Celia Harland who's gone missing, Hanaud is called onto the case. But Hanaud solves the crime midway through the book, with the latter half told in flashback as the readers are left to piece together what exactly happened and are challenged to guess the solution to the murder mystery from the clues provided.

Several of Mason's works were later adapted for the silver screen, including four versions of Murder at the Villa Rose, a silent film in 1920 and two "talkies" from 1930 (one in English, one in French), and another in 1940. Mason went on to write four other books featuring Inspector Hanaud, but he's perhaps best known for his novel The Four Feathers (not a crime fiction novel per se), which is one of the most-filmed novels of the 20th century, including the latest incarnation from 2002 with Heath Ledger in the role of Harry Feversham.

A few interesting trivia bits about Mason: England's King George V was a friend and one of his most avid readers; although Mason penned little in the way of spy stories, he was a successful agent for years in Spain and Northern Mexico (it's said he may have foiled a German plot to move anthrax infected livestock into France during WWI); Mason was a failed actor, although he appeared in a small number of works on the London stage during the late 1880s; his story "The Crystal Trench" was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, one of the few episodes directed by Hitchcock himself; and Mason was offered a knighthood for his literary work, but declined it, saying "such honors meant nothing to a childless man."

          

Mystery Melange

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Book art by Emma Taylor

The organizers of the annual Bloody Scotland international crime-writing festival announced their shortlist of five titles for this year's McIlvanney Prize, including: A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Pan Macmillan); The Cracked Mirror, by Chris Brookmyre (Sphere); Past Lying, by Val McDermid (Sphere); Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage); and A Spy Like Me, by Kim Sherwood (HarperCollins). The finalists, and also authors shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, will lead a torchlit procession from Stirling Castle to the Albert Halls on the festival’s opening night of Friday, September 13, where the winner will be revealed. Presented annually since 2012, the McIvanney Prize is named in honor of Scottish author William McIlvanney, who passed away in 2015, with previous recipients including Chris Brookmyre, Peter May, Denise Mina, Alan Parks, and last year's winner, Squeaky Clean by Calum McSorley.

The longlist was revealed for the Petrona Award 2024, which honors the best crime fiction from Scandinavia. This year, ten crime novels from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden will be competing for the title, including a mix of newer and more established authors, including previous Petrona Award winners, Jørn Lier Horst and Yrsa Sigurðardottir.

Registration is now open for Mystery Writers of America's MWA-U October 9th online Zoom session with Jeffery Deaver, who will be discussing "Writing a Commercial Thriller." The event is free to current MWA members and offered to nonmembers for $20. Jeffery Deaver is the author of 48 novels, 100 short stories, a nonfiction law book, who has received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards. His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin (retitled Dead Silence). His novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. NBC television recently aired the nine-episode prime-time series, Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, based on Deaver's book series, and the new CBS show, Tracker, is based on his novel, The Never Game, featuring his character Colter Shaw.

A group of 20-plus bestselling crime fiction authors are teaming up for a free online event as they talk about their books and answer your questions about their careers, books, or writing habits. Viewers can view the event live on YouTube Wednesday, September 18th at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET. Anyone who signs up beforehand can let them know if you have a question for one of the participating authors, including Megan Abbott, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosely and more. Note that this is also a politically-themed event, which is why it's titled "Crime Fiction for Harris."

The publisher Hard Case Crime announced that the story of iconic fictional sleuth, Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins. The Return of the Maltese Falcon will be released in January 2026, when the original Dashiell Hammett classic featuring Spade, The Maltese Falcon, enters the public domain. Hammett's novel, released in 1930, is known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and is widely regarded as a model for the modern hard-boiled detective novel. According to Hard Case Crime, Collins’s new book will bring back Spade and Joel Cairo among other Hammett characters, and "a mysterious new femme fatale." Collins, whose Road to Perdition was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, has a long history of working with famous literary detectives. He took over the Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 1970s after creator Chester Gould retired, and he was later authorized to continue Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series. Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog, has more about Collins and his other various latest endeavors.

It's long been a mystery of sorts that the creator of the scientifically minded Sherlock Holmes was also fascinated with the paranormal. Recently, six handwritten letters and notes from Arthur Conan Doyle to Captain John Allen Bartlett sold for £2,800 plus buyers premium of 30% at auction. The archive variously discussed spiritual matters, including one which references a letter to Captain Bartlett from Harry Houdini (1874-1926), and Conan-Doyle's reaction to it. Bartlett used the pseudonym John Alleyne when writing his poetry, lyrics and short stories, and was also an active spiritualist. It was his belief in psychic or paranormal phenomenon that linked Bartlett to Conan-Doyle and Houdini, with whom he almost certainly attended some seances. It was around this time that Houdini was unsuccessfully trying to convince Conan-Doyle that the seances were a magician's "allusions not the conversations with the dead he wanted to believe."

In the Q&A roundup, Matthew D. Saeman chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new suspense thriller, To Preserve, Protect and Destroy, featuring NASA geologist Terrence Sullivan; the New York Times (paywall) interviewed Liane Moriarty, author of the bestselling Big Little Lies and Apples Never Fall, both adapted for television; and Self Publishing Review spoke with Karl Wegener, a former Russian linguist, intelligence analyst, and interrogator who served in the U.S.military and the Intelligence Community during the Cold War, about his new novel, Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies.

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Author R&R with Richard Snyder

[image error]Richard Snyder is a new author and a writer of spy fiction. It’s a good fit for him since he is a former intelligence officer who uses his background and experience to feature the unpredictability and moral chaos of intelligence operations. He is currently working on a trilogy that follows the professional life of a young spy—Owen Roberts—from the beginning of his career to its end. Two of his three novels have been published and the third is being written as we speak.

[image error]In his debut novel, The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts, the Iraq War is a raging storm of blood and violence, the Service is fighting for its survival on and off the battlefield, and an Iranian diplomat in Paris reaches out to a retired spy. What follows is a tale of self-discovery in the ruthless world of espionage as Owen operates in a sphere of deceit and self-delusion, all while trying to come up with a moral code that he can live by.

[image error]The second novel in the Owen Roberts’ trilogy, Defector in Paradise, is a political/spy thriller that takes place during an election year. Tragic circumstances force Owen to team up with a cagey Soviet defector to expose one of the Cold War’s last and biggest secrets: the identity of a high-level mole operating within the US government who has his sights set on the White House.

At its heart, Defector in Paradise is a novel about the unimaginable manipulation of American politics and the actions of those who refuse to believe truths they cannot accept.

Richard Snyder stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels:

Being a new author, one of the first things I had to figure out was the right balance between the use of factual or historical research and just plain old storytelling. Which was more important to me in telling spy stories that merge the past with the present in a believable and dramatic manner? And, believe it or not, two quotes from vastly different personalities helped guide me along the way. One was from Albert Einstein, who once said “that imagination was more important than knowledge.” And the other was from Elmore Leonard, one of America’s best crime fiction writers, who said when asked about the reason for his success: “I just leave out the parts that no one reads.”

In my first novel, The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts, I needed to understand the complexity of life in Baghdad during the war, and I mean every aspect of life in that war-torn city. It was part of the backdrop and the narrative of one of the key characters. I needed an insider’s perspective so I read multiple books written by those with boots on the ground that gave me the authenticity I needed, the kind of stuff where truth is stranger than fiction, where people saw things with their own eyeballs. I didn’t use online resources very much, but I did use online mapping tools to validate physical locations as well as the time and distance traveled by characters in the book. What I learned most about the value of research in writing my first novel was that it helped me connect the dots of my storyline between the past and the present, and that I wanted to use my research in a way where I didn’t lose my reader’s attention. I didn’t want my research to become ‘one of the parts’ that no one reads. 

 In my sequel, Defector in Paradise, I used mostly online resources and my own personal knowledge and experience because of the esoteric origins of some of the key plot lines. I wasn’t going to find the kind of information I needed in libraries or elsewhere for this novel. I came to appreciate how research can be a two-edged sword: too much reliance on research can constrain how your story evolves, but research can also open doors to new storytelling possibilities that you were not aware of previously. I came away with the understanding that your ‘research’ should fit the story and not the other way around. I don’t know if it is that way with everyone, but that is what works for me.

In bringing my comments to a close, I would say that how you use your research is more important than where you get it from as long as you are dealing with trusted sources of information. For the most part, I like folding my historical research into a character’s dialogue when possible because it seems more natural that way and reads less like a history lesson. There are parts of my novels, however, where I strayed from this preference, but only because I thought the reader would find the historical detail of interest.

I know there are many more research sources available to writers that I have not discussed in my post, but I know other writers posting In Reference to Murder have done a good job of doing that. As I said at the beginning, I am a new author, so every time I pick up the pen or type on the computer I am learning something new about myself, my craft, the research that goes into writing a novel, and the difficult but rewarding art of writing fiction.

 

You can learn more about Richard Snyder and his writing via his website. The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts and Defector in Paradise are available via all major booksellers.

          

Davitt Delectations

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Sisters in Crime has announced the winners of the 24th Davitt Awards for the best women’s crime and mystery books by Australian authors. The Davitts are named after Ellen Davitt, the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865. The awards are handsome wooden trophies featuring the front cover of the winning novel under perspex. Congrats to the winners and finalists!

 

Adult Novel: When One of Us Hurts, by Monica Vuu (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Also nominated:

The Chasm, by Bronwyn Hall (HQ Fiction)
The Tea Ladies, by Amanda Hampson (Penguin Random House)
The Half Brother, by Christine Keighery (Ultimo Press)
Prima Facie, by Suzie Miller (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Exquisite Corpse, by Marija Pericic (Ultimo Press)
The Fall Between, by Darcy Tindale Penguin Random House)

 

Young Adult Novel: Eleanor Jones Is Not a Murderer, by Amy Doak (Penguin Random House)

Also nominated:

Some Shall Break, by Ellie Marney (Allen & Unwin)

 

Children’s Novel: The Wolves of Greycoat Hall, by Lucinda Gifford (Walker)

Also nominated:

Copycat, by Kelli Anne Hawkins (HarperCollins Australia)
The First Summer of Callie McGee, by Alison Tait (Scholastic Australia)
This Camp Is Doomed, by Anna Zobel (Penguin Random House)

 

Non-fiction Book:  The Schoolgirl, Her Teacher and His Wife, by Rebecca Hazel (Penguin Random House)

Also nominated:

Reclaim: Understanding Complex Trauma and Those Who Abuse, by Ahona Guha (Scribe)
Ghosts of the Orphanage, by Christine Kenneally (Hachette Australia)
Obsession, by Nicole Madigan (Pantera Press)

 

Debut Book: The Half Brother by Christine Keighery (Ultimo Press)

 

Readers' Choice:  The Benevolent Society of Ill-Manner Ladies by Alison Goodman (Berkley)

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The Barry Best of 2024

Thanks to some recent travel, I'm a bit behind on crime fiction awards news, but the mystery magazine, Deadly Pleasures, announced the winners of its annual 2024 Barry Awards. The honor has been handed out since 1997 for outstanding crime fiction titles and is named after Barry Gardner (1939–1996), an American literary critic. The winners were revealed at the Opening Ceremonies of the Nashville Bouchercon on August 29, 2024. Congrats to all!

Best Mystery or Crime Novel: Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies (Harper)

Also nominated:

Lou Berney, Dark Ride (Morrow)

S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed (Flatiron)

Eli Cranor, Ozark Dogs (Soho Crime)

Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows (Mulholland)

Adrian McKinty, The Detective Up Late (Blackstone)



Best First Mystery or Crime Novel:  I.S.  Berry The Peacock and the Sparrow (Atria)

Also nominated:

Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Bruce Borgos, The Bitter Past (Minotaur)

Amy Chua, The Golden Gate (Minotaur)

Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice (Riverhead)

Nina Simon, Mother-Daughter Murder Night (Morrow)

Iris Yamashita, City Under One Roof (Berkley)



Best Paperback Original Mystery or Crime Novel:  Jake Needham, Who the Hell Is Harry Black (Half Penny)

Also nominated:

Mia P. Manansala, Murder and Mamon (Berkley)

Rick Mofina, Everything She Feared (Mira)

Jesse Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Berkley)

Vanda Symon, Expectant (Orenda)

Scott Von Doviak, Lowdown Road (Hard Case Crime)



Best Thriller:  Mick Herron, The Secret Hours (Soho Crime)

Also nominated:

Mark Greaney, Burner (Berkley)

John Lawton, Moscow Exile (Atlantic Monthly)

Anthony McCarten, Going Zero (Harper)

T.J. Newman, Drowning (Avid Reader Press)

Ruth Ware, Zero Days (Gallery/Scout Press)

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Los Alamos

[image error]It seems fitting, after the recent movie blockbuster Oppenheimer starring Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy, to take a look back at the book, Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon, which received the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1998. In addition to being editor-in-chief, CEO, and president of the publishing houses Houghton Mifflin and E. P. Dutton, Kanon has penned eleven novels, including The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, and Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award from the International Association of Crime Writers.

[image error]Kanon wasn't shy about taking on some of the darkest days and most pivotal moments in the planet's history as the background for a mystery. In an interview he was once asked why he chose the setting of the first atomic bomb test and replied, "What fascinated me was that the place didn't officially exist. I thought:  What would happen if there were a crime in a place that didn't exist?" And so the story hinges on a fictional protagonist, civilian intelligence liaison, Michael Connolly, brought in to investigate the murder of a Los Alamos security officer, his face bashed in and his pants pulled down.

Connolly is asked to discover whether the crime is more than the violent sex crime it appears to be, even while those associated with the project, paranoid over security leaks and the specter of Communists everywhere, would prefer it be just that—nice and tidy. Of course it isn't nice and tidy, and Connolly's dogged determination to pursue the truth to the bitter end, no matter how bitter it turns out to be, carries him through acts of betrayal from all sides and his own growing interest in, and eventual affair with, the wife of one of the Los Alamos scientists.

Kanon has some nice evocations of the tug-of-war of emotions that existed between the project's scientists and their almost abstract view of the war and the ultimate horror of the project's true purpose. But many of those same scientists had fled the Nazis in Europe, so they knew of more personal horrors they'd left behind. Connolly at one point thinks:

Europe seemed to him now like a vast funhouse, dark and grotesque and claustrophobic. You were jerked along from one startling exhibit of horror to the next, rocking in alarm, squirming. Skeletons dangled, monsters leaped out, horrible mechanical scream tore the air, and you would never get out.

At another point, where he attends one of the many parties that were organized to keep everyone grounded, Connolly notes that:

The whole party seemed improbable. The ordinary people stumbling out of time to country music had won Nobel prizes. The young American kid in cowboy boots might be an expert in quantum mechanics. The man in the boxy suit holding a brownie might be--what? A chemist, a metallurgist, a mathematician?...Nothing was farfetched here. People lived in an air as rarified as the altitude. And it must be just as exhilarating for them. Their ideas could leap from one mind to another, racing with the excitement of meeting none of the usual resistance of the ordinary world. The army had strung wires around them to keep the rest out, and it had worked...Everybody was intelligent, everything was possible. Something as ordinary as a murder victim seemed almost vulgar, an unfair intrusion.

Some might quibble the mystery almost takes a back seat to the settings, and a few of the local characters lean a tad toward the clichéd. But those settings, both New Mexico and Los Alamos, are very detailed and well researched. The most enjoyable aspect in many ways is the interaction between Connolly as a fictional character with the real-life Oppenheimer and General Groves, woven together neatly within the framework of the events leading up to the Trinity test in the desert on that fateful day on July 16, 1945.

          

Mystery Melange

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Book art by Pam Langdon

As I previously noted, last week's Bouchercon revealed winners of the Anthony Awards and Shamus Awards. But the top honorees of the Barry Awards were also announced during the opening ceremonies. The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awarded annually since 1997 by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers (from 2007 to 2009 the award was jointly presented with the publication Mystery News). The prize is named after the American literary reviewer, Barry Gardner. As posted on social media, this year's winner of Best Mystery or Crime Novel is Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane; Best First Mystery or Crime Novel is The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry; Best Paperback original is Who the Hell is Harry Black? by Jack Needham; and Best Thriller is Secret Hours by Mick Herron.

The recent Killer Nashville conference in Nashville, TN, revealed the winners of both the Silver Falchion Awards for published works and the Claymore Awards for unpublished manuscripts. You can see the full list winners and nominees here, including the overall Best Book of 2023, Ghost Tamer by Meredith R. Lyons. The conference also handed out the 2024 John Seigenthaler Legends Award to Charles Todd, New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge Series and the Bess Crawford series. (Charles Todd is the pen name of Caorline Todd, who passed away in 2021, and her son, Charles.)

It's always nice to see crime fiction authors supporting their local libraries, including the Chilterns Crime Quarterly, which began last year as a series of "meet the author" events during the UK's National Crime Writing Week, and featured authors Denise Beddows, Joanna Wallace, Dan Malakin, Louise Burfitt-Dons, and JA Marley. It grew out of the decision by Buckinghamshire Unitary Authority to defund local libraries, and Beddows's subsequent idea to make popular writers accessible to readers on a more affordable basis, while also raising much-needed funds to help keep the libraries going. The next event will be Saturday, October 14 with Steph Broadribb, MJ Arlidge, SJ Benett, Dave Sivers and Morgen Bailey taking part.

The National Trust in the UK is hosting a range of writing workshops at Agatha Christie’s holiday home in Greenway in September to encourage the next generation of budding writers. The events will include a crime fiction workshop with Cate Quinn, bestselling thriller writer and journalist. Lauren Hutchinson, Senior Marketing and Communications Officer, noted that "The house and garden at Greenway inspired Agatha Christie in a number of her novels, and it continues to inspire people today."

In the Q&A roundup, Rob Starr spoke with Shots Magazine about the importance of having female led characters in crime novels; and author and journalist Fiona Barton chatted with Deborah Kalb about her new novel, Talking to Strangers, the second installment in Barton's Detective Inspector Elise King series.

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Author R&R with donalee Moulton

[image error]donalee Moulton is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written for print and online publications across North America, including The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Lawyer’s Daily, National Post, and Canadian Business. Her short stories have been shortlisted for a Derringer Award and an Award of Excellence from the Crime Writers of Canada. Other short stories have been published recently in After Dinner Conversation, The Antigonish Review, and Queen’s Quarterly. Her first mystery novel, Hung out to Die, was published in 2023, and the latest, Conflagration!, won the 2024 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense (Historical Fiction).

[image error]Conflagration! is set on a warm spring day in April 1734, as a fire rages through the merchants’ quarter in Montréal. Within hours, rumors run rampant that Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman fighting for her freedom, had started the fire with her white lover. Less than a day later, Angélique is in prison, her lover nowhere to be found. Though she denies the charges, witnesses claimed Angélique was the arsonist even though no one saw her set the fire. In an era when lawyers are banned from practicing in New France, Angélique is on her own. Philippe Archambeau, a court clerk assigned specifically to document her case, believes Angelique might just be telling the truth, but time is running out as Archambeau searches for answers. Will the determined court clerk discover what really happened the night Montreal burned to the ground before it’s too late?

donalee stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

The trial and tribulations of researching life – and death – in 1734

My second mystery novel, Conflagration!, is my first historical mystery. My publisher has a series of historical mysteries than span Canada from coast to coast. When she unexpectedly lost her Quebec writer, she offered me the opportunity to write the book and step back to 1734 when the colony of New France was ruled by King Louis XV. It was an opportunity I embraced. With trepidation.

At readings and book clubs, I joke that I am not from Quebec, I do not speak French as more than 80% of Quebecers do, and I do not write historical mysteries. So, of course, I said “yes” when my publisher offered me the opportunity to write Conflagration!. I am grateful I did.

What scared me most about writing the book was getting something wrong. Misspeaking. Misunderstanding. Misconstruing. The foundation for Conflagration! (and for all historical mysteries) is accuracy.  As a freelance journalist, I am used to writing on topics that I know little (and sometimes, nothing) about. I have written articles on everything from buying cyber insurance to surviving a helicopter crash to paying the tooth fairy. I know how to research, how to interview people, how to find people to interview, and how to find accurate sources of information. For the most part though, the research I’ve done was contemporary or contemporary adjacent. It wasn’t from 300 years ago.

Conflagration! chronicles the arrest, trial, and subsequent execution of Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman accused of setting the lower town of Montreal on fire. When the flames were finally squelched, forty-six homes and buildings were gone. The quarter, where the merchants lived and ran their businesses, was destroyed. Fortunately, no one died.

I had never heard of Angélique, had never read her story in the many history classes I took throughout school and university. I was not alone in this lack of knowledge. That is because Angélique’s story is also the story of slavery in Canada, and for centuries we have avoided the topic or rewritten the facts to shape the narrative. Fortunately, Angélique’s story is more well known in Quebec, where a plaque has been erected in her memory in Old Montreal.

As I delved into the events of April 10, 1734, I discovered others had gone before me. There were books, websites, articles, documentaries, and shorts. I embraced them all. Some of these sources also referenced court documents, meticulously recorded, albeit in French. One site translated those documents although translations from old French to modern English are not always clear and understandable. The golden rule in journalism is you must have at least two sources before you use any information. I also embraced this rule.   

As nerve-wracking as ensuring my story accurately referenced the trial transcripts and sequence of events from the first flames to Angélique’s final breath, I discovered that the justice system was only one element of research required. At one point, I had my main character, Philippe Archambeau, a court clerk assigned specifically to document Angélique’s case, get up early and make himself a cup of coffee. Then I asked myself, “Did they drink coffee in New France in 1734?” (They did, but tea was more common.)

This issue of everyday life came up in a myriad of ways. Philippe goes to put on boots. (Did they wear boots three hundred years ago? What kind?) His wife, Madeleine, is making supper. (How do you make supper when there are no stoves, no ovens, no electricity? What do you eat?)

The answers to these and a multitude of other questions were answered thanks to reliable sources on the internet, books written by authoritative sources, individuals knowledgeable about aspects of the story, the time, the history – and more.

I owe them all a debt of gratitude.

 

You can learn more about donalee and her books via her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. Conflagration! is now available via all major booksellers in ebook and print.

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