10/12/2017 Bouchercon commences today

October 12, 2017. Today is the start of Bouchercon, the international mystery convention.  It is getting underway at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto.  Guests of honor include Louise Penny, Megan Abbott, Christopher Brookmyre, Chris Grabenstein, and Margaret Cannon.  Toast masters will be Twist Phelan and Gary Phillips.   Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine will be honored.  John Buchan, former governor general of Canada and inventor of the good-guy-chased-by-the bad-guys-AND-police subgenre with The Thirty-nine Steps, will be honored as ghost of honor.

Sounds like a ball, doesn't it?

9/17/2011 SleuthSayers gets a clue

September 17, 2011.  Six years ago today the SleuthSayers blog began.  Fourteen mystery writers taking turns with occasional pushing and shoving.  No, we've gotten along wonderfully.

Among our members, some of whom have come to their senses and some who are still with us:
Dale Andrews, John Floyd, Jan Grape, Dixon Hill, Thomas Pluck, Leigh Lundin, David Dean, Angela Zeman, Deborah Elliott-Upton,  Terence Faherty,  Janice Law, R.T. Lawton,  O'Neil De Noux, Fran Rizer, Stephen Ross, Susan Slater, Neil Schofield, Brian Thornton, Louis A. Willis, Jim Winter, Elizabeth Zelvin, Robert Lopresti, Melodie Campbell, Susan Rogers Cooper, Eve Fisher, Steve Liskow, David Edgerley Gates, Barb Goffman, Paul D. Marks, Art Taylor, Melissa Yi, and newbie Mary Fernando.



Special notice of B.K. Stevens, who passed away this summer.  We still miss her.

9/5/2017 George Smiley returns

September 5, 1971. The very first sentence of the very first book John Le Carré published tells us that George Smiley's wife has left him.  Here it is, fifty years later and we are still reading about George and the faithless Lady Ann, among others.

Le Carré has written more than 20 books and this is the ninth loosely described as a George Smiley novel.  The master spy with the guilty conscience and a will of iron is only the main character in four or five of them (depending on whether you think the main character of The Honourable Schoolboy is, uh, the honourable schoolboy.

The narrator and protagonist of A Legacy of Spies,  is Peter Guillam, Smiley's protegé, dragged out of retirement to explain some old cases to a post-Cold War generation of interrogators.  And that reminds me.  I got my filthy hands on a pre-publication copy and I am halfway through it, but I am still trying to figure out when it is set.  INternal evidence says it has to be later than 2000.  In our present day Peter would be mid-eighties and Smiley, if he is still alive (that is under debate in the part I am reading) would be a decade older.  Those would be mighty old spies. 

In any case it is a great read.

8/24/2012 Premium Rush is delivered

August 24, 2012 This date saw the premiere of Premium Rush, a lightweight but fun movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (that year he was almost as ubiquitous as Benedict Cumberbatch  soon became).  A New York bike messenger picks up an envelope and a dirty cop (MIchael Shannon) will do anything to stop him from delivering it.

"Yeah guys, I'll catch up with you.  I forgot my bullets."

I didn't know there were World Stunt Awards, but of course there are, and this movie received three nominations for the Hardest Hit Award.

8/11/2015 Publishing sees the last of Deborah Knott

August 11, 2015.  This was the publication date for Long Upon the Land, the last novel in Margaret Maron's award-winning series about North Carolina judge Deborah Knott.  "When I started writing," Maron said, that year, "all the southern books were southern gothics, and the pigs ate mama."

The adventures of Judge Knott (oh, that pun) were somewhat more elevated.  The first of them Bootlegger's Daughter,won the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards.  The MWA named Maron a Grand Master in 2013.

Publisher's Weekly that the series' final entry "combines strong plotting, a superb cast of recurring characters, and a rare sense of place that transports readers to rural North Carolina."

8/6/2013 Sandrine's Case Published

August 6, 2013.  Thomas H. Cook's novel Sandrine's Case was published on this day.  When Sam Madison's wife Sandrine dies in an apparent suicide he realizes he did not know her as well as he thought.  With the authorities convinced he killed her, Sam tries to figure out what really happened.  Publisher's Weekly called the book a "slow-burning, intricate thriller....one of his best, [which] burns to an unforeseen, but earned climax."  It was nominated for both the Edgar and Barry Awards.

7/17/2015 Greenfellas break in

July 17, 2015.  Today was the official publication date for Greenfellas, a novel by Robert Lopresti.  And here is the first review:

**** Robert Lopresti, GREENFELLAS, Oak Tree Press, $17.95. If Carl Hiassen and Al Gore had collaborated on RESERVOIR DOGS, it might have come out something like GREENFELLAS. Then again, it probably wouldn't. Robert Lopresti, whose stories have appeared in EQMM, AHMM, and THE STRAND, among others, has penned a comic crime novel in which a New Jersey mobster with a bad comb-over decides to use his resources to save the environment for future generations. The dialogue is crisp and the situations darkly funny. - Steve Steinbock, "The Jury Box," ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, August, 2015.

Kings River Life Magazine named it one of the best mysteries of the year.

7/16/2013 Countdown City

7/16/2013. Countdown City was published on this date.  It is the second volume of Ben Winters' brilliant Last Policeman trilogy, which asks the question: how do you deliver justice when an asteroid is about to destroy the world?

7/15/2015 nEvermore! for evermore

July 15, 2015.  On this day nEvermore! was published.  It was a collection of new gothic stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.  Included is the last tale of the late great Tanith Lee, plus new works by Margaret Atwood, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Richard Christian Mathesen.

And also "Street of the Dead House," a sort of steampunk retelling of "Murders in the Rue Morgue," which got me my first and probably only appearance in both Best American Mystery Stories and Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Stories.

7/11/2017 Death on Delos discovered

July 11, 2017.  On this date,which happens to be today, Death on Delos is being published.  It is the seventh novel in Gary Corby's series about the people of classical Athens.

Kirkus Weekly says: "In his brisk seventh mystery set in the world of ancient Greece (The Singer from Memphis, 2016, etc.), Corby highlights the crackling chemistry between the two leads and provides another helpful, amusing list of characters that includes a description of and a quotation from each of them."

7/3/2012 Stacy McLaughlin goes organic

July 3, 2012. This was the publication date for Stacy McLaughlin's Going Organic Can Kill You. It's the first book in a series of cozy mysteries set in Blossom Valley, California.  Dana Lewis,m junk food junkie, has just returned to her home town to be the marketing director for an organic farm and spa.  What could go wrong?  Besides murder.  And tofu...

6/30/2017 When Women Didn't Count is published

June 30, 2017.  This is the date of the release of a new book by award-winning mystery writer Robert Lopresti.  WHEN WOMEN DIDN'T COUNT (Praeger Publishing) is a nonfiction work about the way women have appeared and disappeared in federal documents over the last 230 years.

And that has nothing to do with mystery fiction, but this is Robert Lopresti's blog.  So there.

Here are a few of the facts from the four chapters on crime.

* During World War II the battle against prostitution in the United States was headed by Eliot Ness of the Untouchables.

* In the 1960's the number of women arrested for serious crimes increased at triple the rate for men.

* In 1880 there were 12 men in prison for every one woman.  A statistician explained that one reason was that "if a wicked woman wants a crime committed, it is easy for her to get a man to do it for her."

* The 1990 Census was the first to try to count the number of people in Shelters for Battered Women.  Forsecurity, shelter employees, rather than Census workers, did the count.

* In 2007 the government did its first study of alcohol as a weapon of rapists.  An estimated 2.6 million women had been raped while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

You can read more here.

6/24/2014 Murder on the Mediterranean

June 24, 2014.  This date saw the publication of Murder on the Mediterranean, the fifth novel in Alexander Campion's series about detective Capucine Le Tellier and her husband, Alexandre, a reataurant critic.  There's murder on a sailboat and Publishers' Weekly called it a "zesty stew of a mystery."

6/3/2012 Longmire is ready for his close-up

June 3, 2012.  This date saw the premier of Longmire, based on Craig Johnson's novels about the sherriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming.  The show has had five seasons, first on A&E and then on Netflix.  Australian Robert Taylor plays the laconic Walt Longmire, with backup from Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips, among others.

5/5/2014 Shanks Holds the Line

May 5. 2014.  Trace Evidence, the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine blog, puts up a free short story.  Robert Lopresti offered "Shanks Holds The Line" as a public service, to warn people about a certain scam. 

If you like it you can read 12 more stories about the character in  Shanks on Crime.

4/2/2012 Greenfellas begins

April 2, 2012.  On this date Sal Caetano orders the killing of a member of his New Jersey  mob family who had made a big mistake.  This decision will come back to bite him.

But Sal's life really gets interesting a few days later when he becomes a grandfather - and discovers that climate change might make his little granddaughter's future unlivable.  So Sal decides to use all his Mafia skills to save the environment.  Hey, how hard can it be?

Kings River Life Magazine called Greenfellas one of the best mysteries of 2015.

3/24/2015 MWA gets cooking

March 24, 2015.  This date saw the publication of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook.   It features recipes by such stalwarts as Rhys Bowen, Alafair Burke, Nelson DeMille, Lindsay Faye, BIll Fitzhugh, Sue Grafton, David Housewright, Margaret Maron, Sarah Paretsky, James Patterson, and on and on.

Consdiering how many fictional poisonings they are responsible for I don't know if I want to put them in charge of my dinner.  Maybe you'll be safe with Lee Child's "Coffee, Pot of One."

3/21/2014 The Girl Next Door wins a prize

March 21, 2014.  In this date Brad Parks' novel The Girl Next Door won the Lefty Award, which is given out each year at Left Coast Crime for the best comic crime novel of the year.

The book was part of his series about Carter Ross,a newspaper reporter in Newark, NJ. The Girl Next Door involved union negotiations and Booklist called it a masterpiece.

10/7/2014 Shanks on Crime on time

October 7, 2014.  On this day Shanks on Crime was published.  Leopold Longshanks is a curmudgeonly mystery writer who just wants to create his books in peace, but true crimes keep interfering...  Most of these stories appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but four are new.

7/17/2015 Greenfellas arrive

July 17, 2015.  Today was the official publication date for Greenfellas, a novel by Robert Lopresti.  And here is the first review:

**** Robert Lopresti, GREENFELLAS, Oak Tree Press, $17.95. If Carl Hiassen and Al Gore had collaborated on RESERVOIR DOGS, it might have come out something like GREENFELLAS. Then again, it probably wouldn't. Robert Lopresti, whose stories have appeared in EQMM, AHMM, and THE STRAND, among others, has penned a comic crime novel in which a New Jersey mobster with a bad comb-over decides to use his resources to save the environment for future generations. The dialogue is crisp and the situations darkly funny. - Steve Steinbock, "The Jury Box," ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, August, 2015.

Kings River Life Magazine named it one of the best mysteries of the year.