This week brought the official announcements of two forthcoming books—including my second short story collection for Crippen & Landru: The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, coming out in February 2023! Here’s the official announcement at Publisher’s Marketplace:
Stay tuned for more information ahead on The Castle Thief, including a cover reveal featuring original artwork by Luke Buchanan, who also created the painting for the cover of The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense.
Even sooner, though, my story “The Invisible Band” will appear in the anthology Edgar and Shamus Go Golden: Twelve Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection, edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer and published by Down & Out Books. That book will be out early December, and below is the official write-up for the collection, which features a recently discovered story by Edgar Award winner John McAleer—80 years after it was first written!
Edgar & Shamus welcomes mystery connoisseurs to the Golden Age of Mystery and Murder…Have we ever really left? Has the Golden Age ever really slipped over the falls? The puzzle, the who-dun-it, the why-dun-it, the how-dun-it, and the unshakable alibi are as much afoot today as they were when Dr. Watson documented Holmes’s exploits under the glow of gaslight. As if picking up where the early masters of detection left off, Edgar & Shamus features twelve original mystery tales written exclusively by Edgar Allan Poe Award and Shamus Award-winning authors.
Edgar winner Martin Edwards promises a few relaxing days at a quiet and respectable English resort with criminologist Darius Fortune—or does he? Shamus winner John Floyd’s private detective Luke Walker reserves a 1940s seat for you in the New Orleans Quarter—paid for with old money. To save a friend from a murder rap Shamus winner P. J. Parrish’s “Salvage Consultant” Mavis Magritte must untangle an unshakable alibi with a set of risqué bunny ears. Shamus winner Brendan DuBois rebuilds Boston’s historic and famed Scollay Square without pulling a single building permit. It’s anybody’s guess which master detective might solve the big caper in Edgar winner Art Taylor’s “The Invisible Band”—Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, and even Mr. Holmes are among the all-star sleuths assembled to solve the baffling mystery. In post WWII Havana, “vices are annuities” for Shamus winner Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s veteran P.I. Sophie Stevenson. Thanks to Tennessee Williams, Shamus winner O’Neil De Noux’s private dick Lucien Caye is up to his hip-pocket in extortion. Edgar winner Doug Allyn’s major crimes detective and WWII combat veteran Dolph LaCrosse returns home only to be called the “new guy” by fellow cops. The war to end all wars may be over, but political skullduggery is still afoot in Shamus winner Lia Matera’s “The Party.” When a “riverboat” gambler washes up dead, Shamus winner Kristen Lepionka’s LA homicide dicks Hewitt and Carmichael are up to their necks in suspects all capable of dealing from the bottom of the deck. It’s trouble with a capital “T” when a Tyrone Power look-a-like saunters into Shamus winner Lori Armstrong’s Marlow Detective Agency.
In Edgar winner John McAleer’s “The Case of the Illustrious Banker,” 1920s London-based detective Henry Von Stray and his able collaborator in the detection of crime Professor John W. Dilpate are up against a “nippy bit of work” in one of their most baffling cases yet. Discovered more than eight decades after first penned, “Illustrious Banker” makes its debut in Edgar & Shamus. McAleer—forty years before he would win the Edgar Award unanimously beating out Christie’s autobiography—created Von Stray and Dilpate in 1937 during the Golden Age of Mystery.