In honor of Valentine's Day, Mystery Scene surveyed our romantic readers on their favorite couples of mystery and crime. And the winning couple is...
Mystery Scene is giving away a free book to one Facebook follower a week for the rest of the summer, now through September 22, 2011! Just post your favorite read to the MS Wall. We'll choose one recommendation each week and send the winner a FREE BOOK.
So zip on over to the Mystery Scene Facebook Page, and tell us what you're reading!
www.facebook.com/mysteryscene
CONGRATS TO OUR FIRST WEEK'S WINNERS!
In our first 24 hours of the Mystery Scene Summer Book Giveaway we've received so many great recommendations that we had trouble picking just one. So, we decided to kick off this summer reading fun in style with FIVE WINNERS.
KELLEY CREASEY DWORACZYK said, "My all time favorite mystery would probably have to be Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout. I have read and re-read this book so many times, but I will never get tired of it."
DARRELL MORING wrote to say, "A fantastic novel is In a Lonely Place by mystery writer Dorothy B. Hughes. It is a compelling portrait of a psychopathic serial killer written in 1947. It is of particular interest because the killer's psychological inner thoughts closely mirror what we know of today as to how psychopaths view themselves and the world around them."
CLAUDIA FITCH wrote, "At this exact moment I'm reading CSI: The Burning Season, but in the past week I've read Tahoe Hijack by Todd Borg, I've started A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Larry Block, and I'm in the middle of Without Fail by Lee Child. Wow!"
JACK GOODWIN recommended P.S. Your Cat is Dead by James Kirkwood saying, "Just enough desperation and just enough wonder at repeated burglaries, and then sweet revenge. But then it transforms completely into something else."
CARL CHRISTENSEN wrote, "Just finished The Silent Girl, Tess Gerritsen's first book that has a basis in her Chinese-American roots. A great read, and it was good to find that Tess did not let the TV success of Rizzoli and Isles alter her own depiction of her characters."
"Kathy Reichs: Bones and Beyond" by Oline Cogdill, William Kent Krueger interview by Lynn Kaczmarek; "Murder on the Menu" by Kevin Burton Smith; "Lester Dent: The Man Behind Doc Savage" by Michael Mallory; "The Write Stuff: Authors in Crime Films" by Art Taylor; "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Sister" by Cheryl Solimini; "The Murders in Memory Lane: Charles Willeford" by Lawrence Block; "The Hook: First Lines That Caught Our Attention"; "What's Happening With... C.C. Benison" by Brian Skupin.
Join Mystery Scene Editor Kate Stine and authors Jeff Stone and Larry D. Sweazy for a panel discussion led by MS Contributor Jim Huang about "The Future of the Mystery Novel" this Saturday, April 23, at the Indianapolis Clearwater Crossing Barnes and Noble.
In a sea of change, there isn't anything that we knew about books yesterday that we can be confident will remain true tomorrow. We'll tackle a wide range of questions about how readers, writers, publishers and booksellers are adapting. We'll look at technology, of course, but especially at how technology might change the nature of the fiction itself. We'll talk about the preferences of today's readers—including young readers—and we'll look at the ways in which change is serving or failing book lovers.
Our panel features:
- Kate Stine, editor of Mystery Scene Magazine, the premier guide to the genre. www.mysteryscenemag.com
- Jeff Stone, author of the very successful Five Ancestors series of historical suspense novels for younger readers—over 500,000 copies sold. readjeffstone.com
- Larry D. Sweazy, a 2010 Best Books of Indiana nominee whose third Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger novel, The Badger's Revenge, was published earlier this month. www.larrydsweazy.com
The conversation will begin at noon on Saturday, April 23, at Barnes & Noble at 3748 E. 82nd St, Indianapolis. (Store map page.)
The program is sponsored jointly by The Midwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and the Indiana Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The program is free and open to the public.
Hope you'll join us!
The audience was fairly mixed with men and woman, of all ages; fans who had come to hear Crais talk about Elvis Cole, Joe Pike and his latest novel, The First Rule.
But during the question and answer session, a man in his mid-thirties made a comment that almost got him thrown out of the bookstore.
“I didn’t expect to see all these old people here,” said the man who was clearly a fan. “I thought it would be more people my age and more guys. I always thought you wrote young.”
Crais does write young. And Elvis and Joe do appeal to a young audience. They also appeal to a middle-aged audience, retirees and, well, just about anyone who can read.
I bring up this age issue because it is a factor in the cover profile of Michael Koryta in the latest Mystery Scene, No. 115. Kevin Burton Smith captures Koryta so well.At age 27, Koryta is among the youngest of crime fiction authors. That he started his career at age 21 with the excellent Tonight I Said Goodbye is pretty amazing.
Yeah, he’s a whiz kid, all right.
But more importantly, he is an excellent writer. And the only reason his age should made a difference or even be a factor is it means that readers will have more years of enjoyment from his novels.
We’ve already had a good taste of Koryta’s talent. His stand-alone novel Envy the Night won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. (Full disclosure, I was one of the judges that year.)
One of the constants about crime fiction is that age, sex, race, sexual orientation and locale matter little to readers.
What crime fiction readers care about – and all they should care about – is if the story grabs them, if the characters are believable, the action realistic or, if it’s not realistic, at least makes them want to go along for the ride.
Mystery readers are sophisticated and are willing to follow an author just about anywhere if the story is worth it.
Sure, Koryta is young.
But he isn’t the only author to start early and continue to write intriguing crime fiction.
Greg Rucka was 27 when Finder was published. Dennis Lehane was 29 when A Drink Before the War came out. Tom Rob Smith was 29 when Child 44 was published.
Michael Connelly was 35 when Black Echo hit the stores, the same age as Dashiell Hammett when Red Harvest was published.
And Lawrence Block was just 23 when his first novel was published; by the time his first Matthew Scudder novel, The Sins of the Fathers, came in 1976, Block was 38 years old.
Good storytelling is ageless.
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