EQMM 1981-06 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Newsletter

Crime Beat

by R. E. Porter

© 1981 by R. E. Porter

MYSTERY CONTEST: Prize contests sponsored by publishers were once a fairly common part of the business, and at least one publisher even held an annual contest for the best mystery novel. We haven’t seen many contests lately, and that’s why it’s a special pleasure to note the announcement of the Scribner Crime Novel Award, to be given to the best first novel by an American author or a permanent resident of the United States.

The award will be $7,500, consisting of a $2,500 cash prize and a $5,000 advance against royalties, with the winner announced early in 1982. Books may be classic detective stories, historical reconstructions, fictionalized true crime, espionage, police procedural, or private-eye novels. The only categories specifically ruled out are the supernatural and pastiches or parodies — Sherlockian or otherwise. The manuscripts submitted must be complete, and addressed to Charles Scribner’s Sons, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Envelopes should be marked for the Scribner Crime Novel Award. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 1981.

Scribners has a long history of launching successful mystery novelists, having published S. S. Van Dine, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Simon Brett, and P. D. James. The publisher hopes its contest will encourage new authors, and will offer to publish other acceptable first novels in addition to the prize winner.

LITERARY DETECTIVE WORK: Until now it was generally believed that only three novels were published by the highly regarded pulp writer Raoul Whitfield (one of whose stories was reprinted in EQMM’s April 22nd issue). Now author Bill Pronzini has engaged in some literary detective work to establish that Whitfield published two other mystery novels during his lifetime — Five (1931) and Killer’s Carnival (1932) — both under the pseudonym of “Temple Field.”

Pronzini thought the characters in a Black Mask serial, “Laughing Death” by Raoul Whitfield, sounded familiar. He compared the text with a copy of Five and found the stories were identical. Further investigation revealed that the second Temple Field novel, Killer’s Carnival, was also serialized in Black Mask as “The Skyline Murders” by Whitfield. No doubt they’ll be joining Whitfield’s previously known mystery novels, Green Ice, Death in a Bowl, and The Virgin Kills, in future bibliographies.

FATHER BROWN DISCOVERY: Speaking of discoveries, the G. K. Chesterton Society has come up with a dandy — an unknown Father Brown story written by Chesterton in collaboration with a British magazine publisher back in 1914. The publisher, Sir Max Pemberton, wrote part one of “The Donnington Mystery” for the October 1914 issue of his magazine, Premiere. Chesterton wrote part two the following month, in which Father Brown solves the mystery.

Both parts were reprinted for the first time in the February 1981 issue of The Chesterton Review. Subscription to the quarterly journal is $12.00 a year, from The Chesterton Review, 1437 College Drive, Saskatoon, Canada S7N OW6.

TELEVISION PILOTS: Ed McBain is working on the pilot show for a possible new television series about the 87th Precinct. An earlier series ran for thirty weeks on NBC-TV back in 1961.

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