The future is looking bright

Anglophiles among mystery readers got some good news recently.

The March 17 edition of Publishers' Weekly announced that Anne Perry had just penned an agreement with Random House to deliver four more mysteries. There will be two new Thomas and Charoltte Pitt books (that will bring the total to 27) and two new William Monk titles (bringing that series up to 18 titles). But they won't show up until after Perry's The Sheen on the Silk, a stand-alone due out in 2010.

Meanwhile, I was trolling the U.K. bookwebs and found something that really excited me. After nearly a decade away, John Harvey's latest novel Cold In Hand brings back D.I. Charlie Resnick. What could be better? Now that the early Resnick's have found a champion in Bloody Brits (four Resnicks already reissued with the rest to come), Cold In Hand will be published here in the States in September, the same month we get a reissue of Easy Meat (let's hope we see Last Rites soon) and a week before Gone to Ground hits paperback.

Life is good.

Strand-ed

Nominees for the Strand Magazine Critics Award have been announced. They are:

Best Novel
Down River by John Hart (St Martin’s Minotaur)
The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books)
The Strangler by William Landay (Delacorte Press)
The Watchman by Robert Crais (Simon and Schuster)
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)

Best First Novel
The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin's Minotaur)
In the Woods by Tana French (Viking)
The Mark by Jason Pinter (Mira Books)
Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (William Morrow)
When One Man Dies by Dave White (Crown Publishing)

Awards will be presented July 9. For more information, go to:
http://www.strandmag.com/

Size doesn't matter

Size doesn't matter, at least where good writing is concerned. That's why short stories are so popular among mystery fans.

This year's Agatha Awards has nominated four stories and each can be found online for your perusal. Simply click on the links and enjoy.

Donna Andrews, "A Rat's Tale"
http://www.themysteryplace.com/eqmm/excerpts/excerpt1.shtml

Rhys Bowen, "Please Watch Your Step"
http://home.comcast.net/~rhysbowen/pleasewatch.html

Nan Higginson, "Casino Gamble"
http://homepage.mac.com/adept/CasinoGambleMNYS.pdf

Elizabeth Zelvin, "Death Will Clean Your Closet"
http://www.elizabethzelvin.com/PDF/DeathWillCleanYourCloset.pdf

The thrill of it all

International Thrillers Writers has announced nominees for this year's Thrillerfest.

Here are the nominees:

BEST NOVEL
No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (Bantam)
The Watchman by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster)
The Ghost by Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster)
The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz (Viking)
Trouble by Jesse Kellerman (Putnam)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell (Dutton)
Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover (William Morrow)
From the Depths by Gerry Doyle (McBook Press)
Volk's Game by Brent Ghelfi (Henry Holt and Co.)
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (William Morrow)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL 2008
The Last Nightingale by Anthony Flacco (Ballantine)
A Thousand Bones by P.J. Parrish (Pocket)
The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam)
The Queen of Bedlam by Robert McCammon (Pocket)
Shattered by Jay Bonansinga (Pinnacle)

Interestingly, Harris' The Ghost seemed to fly under the radar of the reading public. Maybe this nod will cause some to give it a closer look.

For more information, go to: http://www.thrillerwriters.org/thrillerfest/

Lambda Literary mystery finalists

The 20th annual Lambda Literary Awards finalists have been announced and, happily, they have a mystery category.

This year's finalists are:

WOMEN'S MYSTERY
Wall of Silence, 2nd Ed., Gabrielle Goldsby (Bold Strokes Books)
Mortal Groove, Ellen Hart (St. Martin's Press)
In the Name of the Father, Gerri Hill (Bella Books)
Selective Memory, Jennifer L. Jordan (Spinsters Ink)
Laura's War, Ursula Steck (Bella Books)

MEN's MYSTERY
Double Abduction, Chris Beakey (J. Boylston/ ibooks, Inc.)
Stain of the Berry, Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac Press)
Pierce, Roberto Ferrari (Haworth)
Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren (Alyson Books)
Mahu Surfer, Neil Plakcy (Alyson Books)
Drag Queen in the Court of Death, Caro Soles (Haworth)

Good luck to all.

For more information, go to: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/current_finalists.html

What's cooking

Berkley Prime Crime has just published the first of a new bookstore series, Lorna Barrett's Murder is Binding. And while I'm not immediately drawn to books illustrated with a cat on the cover and a blurb that states "Includes Recipes," I always give them a cursory look just to get the flavor of book.

Imbedded in the copyright page is the following:

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

I can only wonder whether a recipe book should have that warning. Or if murder mysteries should state: The murder techniques and alibis used in the perpetration of the crimes in this book are fictional. Criminals should consult their lawyer prior to the commission of a crime. The publisher is not repsonsible for the reader getting caught attempting a similar crime.

I guess we do live in a litigious society.

What are publishers thinking (...if at all)?

When I first began putting together my list of the authors I wanted to carry in my store, the list was clear. Along with Chandler, Hammett, Christie and Sayers, I had written in names like Nicholas Blake, Ellery Queen and Cyril Hare.

Little did I know that many of them had gone completely out of print or were, in poultry terms, as scarce as hen's teeth.

Here is a short list of some titles currently out of print:
The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake: Written under a pseudonym by poet Cecil Day-Lewis (yep, Daniel's daddy), it is among the series of Nigel Strangeways novels that boast great plots and wit. Beast ... and Smiler with a Knife are two classics languishing somewhere in publisher's limbo.

The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr: Does anyone remember Gideon Fell? It would appear that few responsible with keeping good mysteries in print, do. Well, that's finally about to change. Kudos to Rue Morgue Press for bringing back The Crooked Hinge back into print later this month and Carter Dickson's (aka John Dickson Carr's) The Judas Window along with it. Now, if we could just have The Hollow Man again.

Ellery Queen: Most of Ellery Queen is gone. Okay, we do have Thunder Mouth's The Hollywood Murders which contain three Queen cases -- The Devil to Pay, The Four of Hearts, and The Origin of Evil. But where is The Greek Coffin Mystery, and for that matter, where are The Spanish Cape Mystery, The French Powder Mystery, The Chinese Orange Mystery?

No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase: He wrote this tale of abduction, ransom and rape in 1938 and it was a hit. It was a stage play. It was a movie. Try to find it in print.

Of course, I guess you can't expect publishers to keep old books in print. But it doesn't explain why, at least here in the states, these are out of print: King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine (1990), Popcorn by Ben Elton (1996), The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale (2001) and Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark (1999). The first two won the Crime Writers Association's Golden Dagger, the latter two won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award.

Pitiful. Just pitiful.