Sunday 20 February 2011

Newsy Stuff

Huge congratulations to Sue Grafton who has received the Lifetime achievement award at Malice Domestic and Janet Rudolph who has been awarded the Poirot Award.


The nominations for the 2011 Dilys Awards have been announced by the
Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The Dilys Award has been given annually since 1992 by IMBA to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling. The Dilys Award is named in honor of Dilys Winn, the founder of the first specialty bookseller of mystery books in the United States.


The winner will be announced during this year's Left Coast Crime.

The nominations are:-

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill (Soho Press)
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur Books)
Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane (William Morrow)
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Once a Spy by Keith Thomson (Doubleday)
Savages by Don Winslow (Simon & Schuster)



The Public Lending Right (PLR) have released the list of the most borrowed authors between July 2009 and June 2010. Children’s authors dominate the top 10 and only three adult authors are amongst them. All the adult authors are American. However, what does come across is that the UK adult borrowing public read a lot of gritty crime and thrillers with all of the top 10 most borrowed books coming from this genre. Unsurprisingly US authors dominate with Lee Child and Ian Rankin the only two British authors in the top 10. The UK’s most borrowed book was Swimsuit by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.


Other crime writers in the top 400 include MC Beaton at 13, Clive Cussler and Alexander McCall Smith at 15 and 16 respectively, Ian Rankin at 18, Michael Connelly at 22, Tess Gerritsen at 26. Positions 32 to 34 are Patricia Cornwell, Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Deaver. 37 and 38 are Harlan Coben and John Grisham. 46,47 and 49 are Jonathan Kellerman, David Baldacci and JD Robb (aka Nora Roberts). Ruth Rendell is at 51, whilst Martina Cole comes in at 53. Positions 56-60 belong to Val McDermid, Dick Francis Quintin Jardine, Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill respectively. Henning Mankell, Karin Slaughter and Chris Ryan are at 69 to 71. Other authors on the list include Robber Goddard, Mark Billingham, Kathy Reichs, Karen Rose, Anne Perry, Robert B Parker, Peter James, Janet Evanovich, John Connolly, Nicci French, PC Doherty, PD James, Simon Kernick, John Harvey, Donna Leon, Linda fairstein, Sue Grafton, Stieg Larsson, Michael Jecks, Linwood Barclay, James Lee Burke, R J Ellroy, Robert Crais, Lindsey Davis and Mo Hayder to name a few.

The Stieg Larsson saga is one that will continue to go on for quite sometime. An article in the New Yorker wonders why people love the Stieg Larsson novels

Another article on Stieg Larsson can be found in the Canadian magazine The Walrus. Paul Wilson writes about how he found Stieg Larsson’s Inner sanctum.


Slate also have an article by Sasha Watson where she discusses the forthcoming memoirs of Steig Larsson’s long-time partner Eva Gabrielsson. The memoir entitled (in English) There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me has recently been published in France and Sweden. The English language version is due to be published in June by Seven Stories Press.

According to an article in the Guardian 15 unpublished short stories by Dashiell Hammett have been found and one of them is due to be published in The Strand Magazine. A boon to fans of Dashiell Hammett and it is hoped that one day all the stories will be published as a collection.

If you have not yet stopped over at the Mullholland Books website and started reading Black Lens the short story collaboration between Ken Bruen and Russell Ackerman, then you must do so at once! Excellent story which is well worth making the time and effort to read.

Channel 4 and More4’s The TV Book Club will be featuring exclusive interview between Val McDermid and Forensic Anthropologist Professor Sue Black. The interview can be seen this Sunday 20th February at 7.30pm on More4 and on Monday 21st February at 12.30pm on Channel 4.


Films, films and more films!


According to Australian Broadcasting News Peter Temple’s award winning crime novel Truth is coming to the big screen. The full article can be found here. In 2010 Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin Award for Truth. It was the first work of genre fiction to ever win the prestigious prize.

It seems that Poe is all the rage at the moment! According to Inside TV ABC has ordered a crime drama pilot where Edger Allen Poe solves mysteries.


According to The Wrap Louis Bayard’s Edgar Alan Poe novel The Pale Blue Eye is also due to be adapted into a film. Crazy Hearts director Scott Cooper is to direct the film. In The Pale Blue Eye a young Poe acts as a detective at West Point.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Dreamworks have acquired an original screen play script Voices from the Dead featuring Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini from Michael J Straczynski. It is a fictional account of the two where they team up with a psychic to solve a set of murders in 1920's New York.


The Hollywood Reporter is also reporting that director Lasse Hallstrom is to direct his first ever thriller. It is to be the adaptation of Lars Kepler’s best selling crime novel The Hypnotist. The Hypnotist is the first of a planned series of eight novels, two of which have been published, following the fraught-filled murder investigations of Stockholm detective Joona Linna.

It looks as if 2011 is Michael Connelly year!

Watch an excellent but brief interview with Michael Connelly discussing some aspects of writing the book, and the film adaptation, in a brief but interesting YouTube piece below



Here in the UK on St Patrick’s Day the film tie in mass paperback for The Lincoln Lawyer will be released to coincide with the film which is released on 18 March. Barely a month later on 14 April the latest Micky Haller series The Fifth Witness will be released. Early in July the mass paperback version of The Reversal will be released. This will be followed 3 months later with The Drop!

According to Collider.com Josh Bazell’s award winning novel Beat the Reaper is due to be directed by D J Caruso for 20th Century Fox. In Beat the Reaper a former mobster turned doctor has his word turned upside down when his past comes back to haunt him.

1 comment:

Adrienne Sparks said...

If you are interested in an advance reading copy for Keith Thomson's follow up to Once A Spy, Twice A Spy please email your mailing address to acsparks at doubleday dot com.