Mystery Readers International

Announces Macavity Nominees

Mystery Readers International last week announced the nominees for the Macavity Awards in five mystery categories. Here are some of the nominees:

Best Mystery Novel:

• Michael Connelly, The Dark Hours (Little, Brown)
• S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears (Flatiron Books)
• Val McDermid, 1979 (Atlantic Monthly)
• Alan Parks, Bobby March Will Live Forever (World Noir)
• Chris Whitaker, We Begin at the End (Henry Holt)
• Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday)

Best First Mystery:

• Alexandra Andrews, Who is Maude Dixon? (Little, Brown)
• Abigail Dean, Girl A (Viking)
• Erin Flanagan, Deer Season (University of Nebraska Press)
• Mia P. Manansala, Arsenic and Adobo (Berkley)
• Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets (William Morrow)

See the full list of nominees here. Note: The Macavity Award is named for the “mystery cat” of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats).

Fritz Lang’s 1928 Spione Set The

Stage For Today’s Spy Thrillers

When we think of the top espionage motion pictures ever made, rarely does Fritz Lang’s 1928 silent movie Spione come to mind. Yet the brilliant Austrian filmmaker laid much of the groundwork for today’s spy flicks with this deeply atmospheric, paranoia-drenched story that followed on the heels of his visionary but commercially disastrous Metropolis. As noted by film reviewer Shari Kizirian in Sense Of Cinema, Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou co-wrote this low-budget thriller in an attempt to keep the UFA studio from cancelling Lang's contract. “[He] thought of it as ‘a small film,’ but it's big on action,” Kizirian says. “It begins like any good spy thriller should, with a fast-paced action-filled set-up, done in a style so clipped and cryptic it leaves us breathless. When the German secret service sets about bringing down the head of an organized crime outfit, the operative they put onto it falls in love with his quarry. Things ramp up with the theft of an international peace treaty, and there's a brilliantly tense train crash sequence, and the crescendo at a music hall clearly had an impact on Alfred Hitchcock – he riffed on it in The 39 Steps.” With UFA’s promotional help, Spione had a splashy premiere, and critics reportedly hailed the long-anticipated return of the German suspense film. Now streaming on Amazon.

COLD CASE

'75 Murder Was Solved After Cops Got

Alleged Killer’s DNA From Airport Cup

A Pennsylvania man was charged last week with fatally stabbing a 19-year-old woman 47 years ago in Lancaster County after investigators obtained his DNA from a coffee cup at an airport. David Sinopoli, 68, had never been considered a suspect in the 1975 slaying of Lindy Sue Biechler until Cece Moore, a genetic researcher, used DNA from the crime scene to determine that the likely killer’s ancestors were from Gasperina, a small village in the Calabria region of southern Italy. After scouring century-old records and developing Sinopoli as a person of interest, Moore turned the information over to authorities. Biechler's body was found at her apartment on the night of Dec. 5, 1975 in what police at the time described as a "horrific scene." Blood was spattered on the inside and outside of the front door, as well as on the carpet and a wall, and a knife was sticking out of her neck. Dozens of people were cleared in the killing, and the case eventually went cold. DNA pulled from semen in her underwear was submitted to a national law enforcement database in 1997, but the profile yielded no matches. 

Check Out This List Of The Best

Neo Noir Books With Dark Intrigue

Noir is a tried-and-true subgenre of crime fiction, typically involving hard-boiled detectives and sleuths caught up in criminal enterprises. Although we tend to associated noir with the 1930s and '40s, in recent years, modern authors have added their own spin to this classic genre. As Grace Felder recently noted for Murder-Mayhem, “Neo-noir certainly has all the hallmarks of classic noir, but with a modern twist. Each author has the freedom to put their own spin on it, whether that be bringing noir’s best tropes to a modern audience or subverting the genre as a whole. Neo-noir can also include elements of other genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, and horror.” If you’ve been looking to get into neo-noir, or you’ve just been looking for your next crime fiction obsession, look no further than this list of what she considers the best neo-noir books.

10 Underappreciated Neo Noir

Films From The Early 1970s

The domestic blowback of the Vietnam War. The sleaze and corruption of Watergate. The incipient rollback of the counterculture and reversal of many gains of the 1960s. Upheaval and uncertainty may have been tough on America’s collective psyche in the 1970s, but it resulted in some incredibly good crime cinema, particularly prior to Jaws in 1975, which helped to usher in the culture of the cinematic blockbuster. We tend to define this period in American cinema with a handful of films—e.g. The Godfather I and II, The French Connection, Chinatown—all of which are masterful neo noirs that in some way enlarged the culture’s notion of what crime cinema could be. As Andrew Nette wrote in a Crime Reads article last week, however, the wellspring of American neo noir on the screen in the first half of the decade runs very deep, and it pays major viewing dividends to explore it more widely. With that in mind, he compiled a list of ten underappreciated neo noirs from the first half of the seventies, from Save The Tiger to Harry In Your Pocket. Every one of them is worth your time.

Coming In January 2023:

Greenwich Mean Time

When photojournalist Monica Cross literally stumbles into the site of an old airplane crash at the edge of a Himalayan glacier, she is exposed to a dark and deadly secret that was meant to remain hidden forever. Unaware that her life is in grave danger, she attempts to get home to New York while the Greenwich Global Group—a dark-web, murder-for-hire outfit—pulls out all stops to make sure she never gets there. Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a sinister plot designed to change the course of history for all time.