Saturday, December 4, 2010

Crime on the 'Net: Weekly Round-up

Kia ora everyone. I hope you've all had a great week. It's been a very busy one down here, as we finally presented the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. It was quite a journey from the first stirrings of the concept many, many months ago, to seeing the eventual award being presented to Louise Crisp of Penguin (accepting on behalf of an absent Alix Bosco, for the pseudonymed author's excellent debut, CUT & RUN) this week.

You can read more about the Ngaio Marsh Award result, including comments from the judges and Dame Ngaio's family, here. As you can imagine, there has been a fair bit of speculation following the announcement, about the potential identity of 'Alix Bosco'. Along with the discussions on Crime Watch earlier this year (read here), you can check out some more speculation (and comments from the authors agent) on Beattie's Book Blog here and here, and other theories or comments here, here and here.

Finalist Vanda Symon has also just published her thoughts on the evening, along with some photos, here. I will do the same shortly. It was fantastic to get a whole group of crime fiction writers and readers together in this way, and hopefully it will be the start of something even bigger down here in Aotearoa. Just wait for 2011.

But now, onto the weekly round-up. Once again there have been some more great crime fiction stories on the Internet this past week - from newspapers, magazines, and several of my fellow bloggers. As usual, I've listed a few that have caught my eye below. Hopefully you will all find an interesting article or post or two linked here, that you enjoy reading.
Do you agree with R. Scott Bakker that literature is dead? What do you think of Cosmo editor Kate White's theories and advice on finding the time to follow you 'back-pocket dream'? Will/have you read the Castle books? What do you think of the mystery serial beer label promotion? Thoughts and comments welcome.

2 comments:

  1. Craig - Thanks, as ever, for this update. It's funny you'd include a mention of Kate White's "back pocket dream." I can empathise with that, as that's the way I started writing mysteries. Pursuing the dream takes an awful lot of hard work, and I give Kate a great deal of credit.

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  2. Craig,

    Thanks for the listing.

    Every decade or so, someone decides that literature is "dead." There's a brief fuss about it, and then everybody goes back to doing what they were doing before the earthshaking pronouncement: writers write, readers read, critics criticize, publishers publish . . .

    Scott Bakker ain't the first and he ain't the last.

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