Adding to the recent shower of prize nominations for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction come the 2024 CrimeFest Awards shortlists. The winners of these annual commendations will be announced and their awards presented during this year’s CrimeFest, scheduled to take place in Bristol, England, from May 9 to 12. Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award: • Death Under a Little Sky, by Stig Abell (Hemlock Press) • In the Blink of an Eye, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster) • The Messenger, by Megan Davis (Zaffre) • Thirty Days of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen, translated by Megan Turney (Orenda ..read more

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine has announced that New Jersey author and former police chief David Dean has picked up first-place honors in its 2023 Readers Award contest. He won for his story “Mrs. Hyde,” which appeared in the publication’s March/April 2023 issue. “This is the third time David Dean has placed first in the Readers Award voting,” we’re told. “He’s been writing for EQMM for more than thirty years and his contributions to the magazine have been nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, Barry, and Derringer awards. The final of several collections of his stories from Genius Books, Shadow La ..read more

I wasn’t able to attend this year’s Left Coast Crime gathering, but Bay Area author and photographer Mark Coggins was in attendance. He sent back several of his favorite shots from the four-day event. (Above) Southern California writer Naomi Hirahara won the 2024 Bill Gottfried Memorial Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel for her most recent book, Evergreen. Friday evening saw Christa Faust interviewing Guest of Honor Megan Abbott (right) on stage. During their wide-ranging conversation, Abbott revealed that she is working on a TV series adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929 ..read more

During a banquet last evening at the Left Coast Crime convention, being held this weekend in Bellevue, Washington (just east of Seattle), organizers presented the winners of the 2024 Lefty Awards. Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel: Cheap Trills, by Wendall Thomas (Beyond the Page) Also nominated: Hot Pot Murder, by Jennifer J. Chow (Berkley Prime Crime); The Great Gimmelmans, by Lee Matthew Goldberg (Level Best); A Sense for Murder, by Leslie Karst (Severn House); Hop Scot, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House); and Dying for a Decoration, by Cindy Sample (Cindy Sample) Bill Gottfried Me ..read more

It’s only April, but already George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, is busy compiling an extensive list of 2024’s best crime, mystery, and thriller novels. Those picks are based on recommendations from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers’ Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and of course DP. While Easter already proclaims Chris Whitaker’s All the Colors of the Dark—due out from Crown in late June—to be his “favorite novel of the year so far (having read 46 crime and thriller novels this year),” there are so many more new and forthcoming titles included in DP’s inventory. They r ..read more

Tax Day (April 15) is not ordinarily the cheeriest occasion for Americans. But it can be made considerably more rewarding with the injection into one’s Tax Day schedule of a crime novel having to do with finances, accounting, or April 15, in particular. Blogger Janet Rudolph has updated her list of tax and accounting mysteries. There you’ll find everything from David Dodge's Death and Taxes and Rodney Sexton’s A Little Rebellion: April 15 Surprise to Kate Gallison's Unbalanced Accounts, Vincent Zandri’s The IRS Agent Came Calling for Blood, and Paul Anthony’s Old Accountants Never Die ..read more

We’re still more than a month out from the start of the 2024 Capital Crime festival in London, but organizers have already announced the shortlists for this year’s Fingerprint Awards, in seven divisions. Overall Best Crime Book of the Year: • The Murder Game, by Tom Hindle (Century) • None of This Is True, by Lisa Jewell (Century) • The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Baskerville) • In the Blink of an Eye, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster UK) • Strange Sally Diamond, by Liz Nugent (Sandycove) Thriller Book of the Year: • Fearless, by M.W. Craven (Constable) • The Silent Man, by David Fenn ..read more

All hail The Killing Times, the British blog that today brings us three terrific batches of news about near-future TV productions. It was more than a year ago now that we brought you word of streaming service Disney+ greenlighting a series based on C.J. Sansom’s popular novels starring Matthew Shardlake, a barrister who solves crimes and seeks to avoid political intrigues in 16th-century Britain. Today we learned that the four-part drama Shardlake, based on Sansom’s first novel, Dissolution (2003), will debut on May 1. The program casts Arthur Hughes (from The Innocents and Then Barbara Met ..read more

Is it simply my imagination, or has there been an extraordinary plenitude lately of interesting interviews with authors of crime and mystery noves? Endeavoring to collect them all would be a fool’s errand, but here are a few that caught my eye. • Don Winslow talked with both National Public Radio’s Scott Simon (my favorite morning host, by the way) and CrimeReads’ Nick Kolakowski about City in Ruins, the final book in his trilogy starring “Danny Ryan, who's been a Rhode Island mobster, dockworker and fugitive from the law, is now a pillar of the community in Las Vegas.” • In The Girl with Al ..read more

• The Columbophile Blog reports that David Koenig, author of the 2021 book Shooting Columbo, will be back in print next month with Unshot Columbo: Cracking the Cases That Never Got Filmed (Bonaventure Press), which “focuses on 19 murder mysteries that never made it to our screens—and outline why we never got to see them. ... [T]he many Columbo stories crafted but never filmed include 1970s tales by ‘murder consultant’ Larry Cohen and a young Brian De Palma, an aborted pilot for Mrs. Columbo that was reimagined for the good Lieutenant, and the legendary last case that Peter Falk desperately hop ..read more