MWA Selects Michael Connelly And

Joanne Fluke As 2023 Grand Masters

The Mystery Writers of America last week announced that Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke will be its 2023 Grand Masters, while the 2023 Raven Award will go to both Crime Writers of Color and Eddie Muller, and The Strand Magazine will receive the Ellery Queen Award. All will accept their awards at the 77th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony in New York on April 27, 2023.

“Mystery Writers of America is thrilled to announce the recipients of our special awards for 2023,” MWA Executive Vice President Greg Herren said in a statement. “It’s always such a joy to recognize deserving individuals for their outstanding contributions to our genre. Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke have contributed so much to the genre through their hard work and amazing careers, and they will continue to influence and inspire future generations of writers long after they receive their awards.” Connelly is the author of 31 novels, including the Harry Bosch series and Lincoln Lawyer series, and executive producer of both the Bosch streaming series and The Lincoln Lawyer. Fluke launched her series 21 years ago with Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, and since then has written 30 Hannah Swenson Mysteries, the most recent being 2022’s Caramel Pecan Roll Murder. The series also has the distinction of being turned into five hugely successful Murder, She Baked films for the Hallmark Channel.

Nine Literary Classics For The

Reader Of Contemporary Crime Fiction

Travel to any writers’ conference and eventually someone will ask, “What’s the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction?” What often follows usually is a fierce debate about how literary fiction refers to the “realistic story of human character, meaning over entertainment, and art over commerce.” According to MasterClass, lit fiction features "character-focused narratives; ample symbolism, metaphor, and allegory; advanced vocabulary infused with imagery; ambiguous plot points, including even the work’s conclusion; and lack of adherence to a fixed plot formula." By contrast—and according to the same source—genre fiction "typically places value on entertainment and, as a result, it tends to be more popular with mass audiences... Literary fiction has more carefully-crafted sentences, often relies heavily on symbolism, and is character-driven, while genre fiction uses an accessible writing style to deliver a fast-paced plot." Whether you accept this analysis or not, Crime Reads’ Rebecca Kelley recently compiled a list of nine 9 literary classics every contemporary crime fan should read, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment (pictured, above left) to Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy to John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

How One Woman’s Fitbit Trapped Her

Husband In Premeditated Murder Plot

On the morning of December 23, 2015, Connie Dabate left her family home in Ellington, Connecticut at 8:46 am and drove to the local YMCA for her regular spin class. Her children had already caught the bus to the last day of school before the holiday break, and her husband Richard began his long drive down I-91 to his job in Bloomfield. At 9:04 he emailed his office, saying he’d received a notification on his phone alerting him that he’d forgotten his laptop, and that his home-security system had been tripped, which was a common occurrence. His plan was to go back to the house, reset the security system, and retrieve his laptop, meaning he’d be about an hour late. At just after 10:15 am, an alarm sounded at the Connecticut State Police offices, indicating someone at the Dabate residence had pressed a panic button. When first responders entered the house a few minutes later, they found Richard partially bound by zip ties to a chair, stabbed, and burned. He directed the cops to the basement, where they found Connie fatally shot with a Ruger .357 Magnum that he kept in a safe downstairs. As reported by Air Mail, Richard Dabate told police he’d walked in on a burglar and engaged in a struggle before being tied up. The masked intruder allegedly then shot his wife, tortured Richard with a box cutter and a blowtorch, and then escaped. Unfortunately for Richard, his story began to unravel while investigators were still in the house. A police dog unit repeatedly indicated Richard was the killer, while the email he supposedly sent from his phone was traced to his home computer. The real kicker was that Connie’s Fitbit athletic tracker showed her walking over 1,500 steps after she supposedly was dead. Cut to the chase: Richard Dabate was convicted last year and sentenced to 65 years in prison without parole.

Forget CSI And NCIS: Here Are 8

Movies For The Forensic Mind

Forensic science has become a major part of the American crime fiction experience, whether in books, film, or television programming. If an episode of CSI or NCIS is to be believed, criminals leave their DNA and hair fibers and, to a lesser, more disgusting extent, semen everywhere. Prosthetic ocular devices (aka glass eyeballs) have serial numbers, and pollen on the soles of a shoe can be traced to a specific nursery two time zones away. As the website Empire Herald recently noted, forensic science has become such a pop culture hit that criminals have taken to writing down ways to avoid being tracked by rinsing crime scenes and bodies with bleach to avoid capture. The facts of criminal forensic analysis are much more complicated, however, leading criminals to foolishly manage to leave behind even more evidence than they intended. As previously noted in BunzelGram, the first detective story can be attributed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Murders In The Rue Morgue follows the discovery of a brutalized body, with no visible entry or exit point obvious. Since its publication, general interest in the science behind crimes has led to a deluge of forensic science-based novels and films...and with that in mind, here’s a list of some of the best forensic movies for the analytical mind.

DNA COLD CASE

14-Year-Old Wendy Stephens IDed As

Green River Killer’s Youngest Victim

Authorities in Washington state now believe the notorious serial killer Gary Ridgway was responsible for killing a 14-year-old girl whose remains were discovered in 1984, but only recently positively identified. Two years ago, the King County Sheriff’s Office employed the latest DNA and genealogical technologies to identify the victim known as Jane Doe B-10 as Wendy Marie Stephens, and they now believe she was Ridgway’s youngest victim. Stephens’ remains were found on March 21, 1984, in a swampy area near a baseball field at SeaTac Airport, and a forensic investigation suggested she likely died over a year earlier. The young teen originally was from the Denver area, where she had run away from home multiple times before disappearing permanently in August 1983. From late summer through March of the following year, about 10 women vanished from around Seattle, and almost two decades later detectives used DNA to link Ridgway—who became known as the “Green River Killer,” to the killings. He subsequently pleaded guilty to killing at least 49 victims, though the total number of slayings is likely higher since he confessed to committing 71 murders in all. As part of a deal to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway helped investigators locate the remains of his victims. He said he believed he picked up a girl who later turned out to be Stephens at a K.F.C. restaurant in Seattle, and then strangled her near where her remains were found. The 73-year-old convicted killer is serving a life sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary.

NOW AVAILABLE!!!

Greenwich Mean Time

“A globe-spanning, mind-spinning thriller that will delight fans of Jason Bourne. Rōnin Phythian, an assassin with extraordinary powers and a code of his own, deserves a sequel. Make that sequels.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire

“Greenwich Mean Time is a rollicking good time of thrills and skills.” —New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

"Over-the-top action..." —Publishers Weekly

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.

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