Compendium of Mystery News 080119

A compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• In a press release, the Mystery Writers of America have announced the nominees for the 2008 Edgar Awards honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television and film published or produced in 2007. The Edgar Awards will be presented at a banquet on May 01, 2008, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. (MBN note: See a list of previous winners in major categories at the Mystery Awards website.

• Sue Grafton has been awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for her Kinsey Millhone series of mysteries. Grafton wins the Cartier Diamond Dagger in its twenty-third year. Previous winners include John Harvey, Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, John Le Carré and P. D. James. The award presentation will take place in London on May 07, 2008.

• Reuters is reporting that the web yields deadly tricks for crime writers, such as street layouts, building locations, or the latest in guns, poisons and nuclear bombs. They can also learn how victims would react to acid or bullets or being pushed from a helicopter. Seasoned or aspiring writers also track blogs run by police officers where they can read tales and learn jargon -- something that was not possible a few years back.

• Adventure Gamers is reporting that two Japanese mystery adventures may be headed for the Nintendo DS. According to gaming magazine Famitsu, Flower, Sun, and Rain, an adventure game first released for the Playstation 2 in 2001, is being remade for the DS. In Flower, Sun, and Rain, players take the role of an assassin who relives the same day over and over again. Only when he can find a way to stop a bomb from exploding at an airport, the day will stop repeating. And The Silver Case, a detective adventure game originally released for Playstation in 1999, is being remade for Nintendo DS with a targeted release date sometime this year. (MBN note: Find more mystery games for the Nintendo DS at Games of Mystery.)

• Here's something we'd never thought we'd hear (and aren't quite sure what to make of it now that we've heard it): Comedienne Joan Rivers wants to fulfill a life-long ambition to write crime stories. She says, "I want to write mystery stories. There's a series of books I want to write. There's so much work to do. That's what gets me up every morning and makes me crazy when I have more than two days off at a time." (MBN note: while this story was widely reported outside the US, we cannot find any local source to confirm this information. Here's the link from Metro.co.uk with all the details.)

• Nathalie Atkinson, writing in the National Post, reports on a new crop of Canadian mystery writers who've traded in gimmicks and gadgets for character-driven tension and sense of place.

• The Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle is reporting that mystery writer Edward D. Hoch has died. He was 77. Hoch's first published story appeared in 1955 in Famous Detective Stories. Though he wrote several novels, short stories were Hoch's passion. In 2001, Hoch received the Grand Master Award, the highest honor given annually by the Mystery Writers of America.

• Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal talks to Walter Mosley on book publishing, mysteries, and Yiddish.

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