Read Online The World's Finest Mystery... by Ed Gorman - Free Book Online

Second Coming (HarperCollins), featuring messiah turned P. I. Joe Panther. Shane Maloney's fourth Murray Whelan book, The Big Ask (Text), was launched at Readings Bookshop in Melbourne by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, with various state and federal Labor party politicians rubbing shoulders with the crime fans. Peter Doyle has written a prequel to his award-winning books Get Rich Quick and Amaze Your Friends set in Sydney in the 1950s. The Devil's Jump (Arrow) features a young Billy Glasheen and charts his early apprenticeship as a "lurk" merchant at the end of the war. Shamus winner Marele Day made a brief but welcome to the crime fold, by collecting her Mavis Levack short detective stories (an Australian Miss Marple) as Mavis Levack, P. I. (Allen and Unwin), in which her main series detective Claudia Valentine also makes an appearance.
     
     
Janis Spehr won the Scarlet Stiletto Award for the second year running with her story "Dead Woman in the Water." Sydney crime writer Gabrielle Lord presented the awards in Melbourne.
     
     
It was also quite a good year for exhibitions devoted to the subject of crime fiction. The Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, included much crime in its "Sensational Tales: Australian Popular Publishing 1890s–1990s" exhibit. In Sydney, the Justice and Police Museum was host to "Hardboiled: the Detective in Popular Fiction," which ran every weekend until October 2001. A continuing exhibition at the State Library of Victoria is "Cover Girl Cries Murder: Australian Pulp Fiction of the 1950s," largely showcasing the library's important recent acquisition of work by Marc Brody (Melbourne journalist W. H. Williams), a collection of seventy-two novels that were the author's own copies. Other pulp fictions on display were by "Carter Brown," "Larry Kent," and rare items by "K. T. McCall," once billed as "crime fiction's best-selling female author." Text also reprinted a blast from Australian crime fiction's past with The Murder of Madeleine Brown , originally published in 1887 by the socialist poet Francis Adams. The introduction, marred only by a lack of references, was by Shane Maloney.
     
     
The Australian crime-film sensation of the year was Chopper , the true story of criminal Mark Read, which won A.F.I. awards for best direction, best actor, and supporting actor. It was also featured at Sundance Film Festival. The film version of Dorothy Porter's award-winning detective novel-poem, The Monkey's Mask , was released in March 2001, along with a tie-in edition of the book from PanMacmillan. Paul Thomas has had his character Tito Ihaka transferred to the television. New Zealander Thomas, who won the inaugural Ned Kelly Award for Inside Dope , wrote the screenplay for "Ihaka Blunt Instrument" which was screened by Channel Ten. The tough Maori cop visits Sydney, ostensibly on a training exercise, only to find himself solving a long-closed case with the help of a female federal officer.
     
     
Crime Factory is a new Australian crime magazine. The first issue was published in February 2001. Predominantly concerned with crime fiction, it also includes a section devoted to true crime. The first issue has interviews with prolific Melbourne writer Kerry Greenwood, Tami Hoag, Edna Buchanan, and Edward Bunker. For further information see www.crimefactory.net.
     
     
     
    World Mystery Report: Canada
    Edo van Belkom
Although most lovers of mystery and crime fiction might not consider it a work that's truly in genre, the most talked about and celebrated Canadian crime novel of 2000 is probably Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin . Atwood's tenth novel is a family drama that delves into the seedy underworld of the 1930s, replete with references to pulp fiction gin joints and the rest of the period's staples. The book won the coveted 2000 Booker Prize and is a top contender for all of the usual Canadian literary honors, such as the Governor General's Award. A more traditional crime novel that garnered