As part of this week’s crime-fiction news round-up for In Reference to Murder, blogger B.V. Lawson submits the following item: In Sarah Weinman’s latest crime fiction column for The New York Times, she made note of two legendary fictional detectives taking their final cases, with Jacqueline Winspear retiring Maisie Dobbs, and Susan Elia MacNeal bidding farewell to Maggie Hope. The Comfort of Ghosts is the 18th outing for Dobbs, the “plucky and resourceful British investigator and psychologist” whom Jacqueline Winspear introduced in 2003, and The Last Hope is the 11th installment for Maggie Hop ..read more

I was a big fan of Linda Barnes’ Boston-set series featuring statuesque, red-headed, and taxi-driving private eye Carlotta Carlyle. However, I’ve only ever read one installment in her earlier, smaller series about Michael Spraggue, a former gumshoe turned actor (introduced in 1981’s Blood Will Have Blood). So it was no surprise when I recently stumbled across the 1984 TV pilot Spraggue: Murder for Two, that I failed to recognize its debt to Barnes’ fiction. Shot as a pilot for ABC-TV, that 90-minute drama starred Michael Nouri, who at the time was deemed to be something of a hot property, hav ..read more

Last evening, during a festive ceremony at ThrillerFest XIX in New York City, the International Thriller Writers organization announced the winners of its 2024 Thriller Awards. Best Hardcover Novel: All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron) Also nominated: Her Deadly Game, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer); It’s One of Us, by J.T. Ellison (Mira); The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime); Fixit, by Joe Ide (Mulholland); and The Drift, by C.J. Tudor (Ballantine) Best Audiobook: The Last Orphan, by Gregg Hurwitz, narrated by Scott Brick (Macmillan) Also nominated: The Peacock ..read more

London, England’s 2024 Capital Crime Festival concluded yesterday. One of the highlights of that three-day event was the announcement of this year’s Fingerprint Award winners, in seven categories. Overall Best Crime Book of the Year: None of This Is True, by Lisa Jewell (Century) Also nominated: The Murder Game, by Tom Hindle (Century); The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Baskerville); In the Blink of an Eye, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster UK); and Strange Sally Diamond, by Liz Nugent (Sandycove) Thriller Book of the Year: The Only Suspect, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster UK ..read more

I only just received this news from In Reference to Murder: It’s a tough game out there in the publishing world, and thus it’s not too surprising when indie publishing companies go under. The latest is Polis Books, founded in 2013 by Jason Pinter (an editor, agent, and author himself, [his works] including the Henry Parker thriller series), which announced it was closing its doors. Polis started out with a strong focus on crime fiction and has published works by Patricia Abbott, Rob Hart, Steph Post, J.D. Rhoades, Alex Segura, Clea Simon, Lily Wang, and others. As Pinter noted on social media ..read more

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more ..read more

Mystery Readers International (MRI) has announced its contenders for the 2024 Macavity Awards, in five different categories. Best Mystery: • Dark Ride, by Lou Berney (Morrow) • Hide, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer) • All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron) • Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim (Hogarth) • Murder Book, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press) • Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) Best First Mystery: • The Peacock and the Sparrow, by I.S. Berry (Atria) • The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua (Minotaur) • Scorched Grace, by Margot Douaihy (Zando/Gillian Flynn) • Murder by ..read more

Author Anthony Horowitz is definitely making the most of his rising renown. Having already brought to the TV screen an adaptation of his 2016 whodunit, Magpie Murders, and with a six-part version of its 2020 sequel, Moonflowers Murders, expected to premiere sometime later this year, Horowitz has embarked on what sounds like a very different TV project, according to In Reference to Murder: Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, MGM+’s upcoming original mystery thriller series, created and executive produced by author Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders), has set its full ensemble cast. In addition to pr ..read more

Organizers of Britain’s annual National Crime Reading Month (NCRM) have announced major elements of this year’s program. Scheduled events will kick off this coming Saturday, June 1, when the Capital Crime Festival opens in London. That evening, at 6:30 p.m., NCRM ambassador and book blogger Stu Cummins will interview authors C.L. Taylor and T.M. Logan. Another highlight for the month, says a press release, will find the Cambridge University Library hosting “a brand-new exhibition, ‘Murder by the Book,’ celebrating 20th-century British crime fiction, curated by the award-winning novelist Nicol ..read more

Like many other people, I shall be working all through Memorial Day. But should you be able to take tomorrow off as a holiday, and wish to do some reading, then check out Janet Rudolph’s catalogue of Memorial Day Mysteries. It’s not a very long list, but it does contain works of interest to adults as well as children, among them David Baldacci’s Last Man Standing, Leslie Budewitz’s Treble at the Jam Fest, Michael Connelly’s Black Echo, and Kathryn Kenny’s Trixie Belden: The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire ..read more