Blood-Letter #182

May 2026

In this issue of The Blood-Letter from Friends of Mystery: Bloody Thursday guests Julie Anne Hatcher, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, and Vicki Delany, Award News, and more.

CONTENTS:

• On May 28, 2026, Friends of Mystery Welcomes Julie Anne Hatcher, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, and Vicki Delany
• Spotted Owl Award 2026 goes to: Mike Lawson for Untouchable
• In Memoriam: Jon Talton
• Barry Award Nominees
• Other Awards/Nominations
• For Your Viewing Pleasure…
• New and Noteworthy
• New Mailing Address
• Member News
• Buy Books by FOM Speakers at Annie Bloom’s
• Membership Renewal
• Submissions Needed

BLOODY THURSDAY

On May 28, 2026, Friends of Mystery Welcomes Julie Anne Hatcher, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, and Vicki Delany

Friends of Mystery is pleased to welcome Julie Anne Hatcher, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte and Vicki Delany as our May speakers.

Julie Anne Hatcher is an award-winning and bestselling author of mystery and romantic suspense. She’s published more than sixty novels since her debut in 2013 and currently writes series as herself, as well as under multiple pen names. She is represented by Erin Niumata at Folio Lit and is the winner of numerous awards including the Daphne Du Maurier Award for Mystery & Suspense, and a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award for romantic suspense.

Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte is a bestselling mystery author, creativity coach, and lover of all things magical. She writes the Pawsitively Organic Mysteries as Liz Mugavero and the Cat Café Mysteries and Full Moon Mysteries—filled with magic, witches, mystery, and of course, cats—as Cate Conte. When she’s not plotting fictional murders, she helps writers find their voice and finish their books through her membership, The Creativity Lab, and her Get Writing podcast.

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than forty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: The Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, the Catskill Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane. Our Zoom meeting will open at 6:45 pm, with the formal program beginning at 7:00 pm.

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Spotted Owl Award 2026 goes to: Mike Lawson for Untouchable

The Spotted Owl Committee spent many hours reading mysteries written by authors living in the Pacific Northwest and is pleased to announce their top ten favorites:

1. Mike Lawson – Untouchable
2. Marc Cameron – Deadline
3. Robert Dugoni – A Dead Draw
4. Sam Wiebe – The Last Exile
5. Elizabeth George – A Slowly Dying Cause
6. James Bryne – Chain Reaction
7. Daniel Kalla – The Deepest Fake
8. J.A. Jance – Overkill
9. Phillip Margolin – False Witness
10. Nolan Chase – A Lonesome Place for Murder

If you haven’t already done so, please check out these titles for your reading pleasure.

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IN MEMORIAM

Jon Talton

Newspaperman and novelist Jon Talton passed away on January 28, 2026, at the age of 69. In journalism he was a business reporter, columnist and editor who had written for The Seattle Times since 2007. As a novelist he was the author of 14 mystery stories. Nine mysteries were set in Arizona featuring historian David Mapstone, two were 1930s noir novels featuring Phoenix private investigator Gene Hammons, two novels were set in a Cincinnati hospital, and a stand-alone Seattle thriller, Deadline Man, for which he won the Spotted Owl Award.

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Barry Award Nominees

Best Mystery

• The Impossible Thing, by Belinda Bauer
• Crooks, by Lou Berney
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby
• The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny
• The White Crow, by Michael Robotham
• Presumed Guilty, by Scott Turow

Best First Mystery

• Leverage, by Amran Gowani
• All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman
• Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoe Rankin
• Stilllwater, by Tanya Scott
• Julie Chan Is Dead, by Liann Zhang

Best Paperback Original Mystery

• Crimson Thaw, by Bruce Robert Coffin
• Splintered Justice, by Kim Hays
• Making a Killing, by Cara Hunter
• If Two Are Dead, by Rick Mofina
• Wolf Six, by Alex Shaw
• The Dentist, by Tim Sullivan

Best Thriller

• Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder
• Midnight Black, by Mark Greaney
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron
• Head Cases, by John McMahon
• The Mailman, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

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Other Awards/Nominations

Megan Abbott is the winner of the 2026 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category, for her novel, El Dorado Drive. Also in contention were: Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Ace Atkins; Crooks, by Lou Berney; The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly; and King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby.

The British Crime Writers’ Association has released their longlists of contenders for the 2026 Dagger Awards in 11 categories. Shortlists will be announced May 28, with the winners being announced in July. You can see the books/authors longlisted at the CWA website.

The Crime Writers of Canada have released their shortlist of nominees for the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. The winners in each of the nine categories will be announced on Friday, May 29th. You can see the nominees at the CWC website.

The 2026 Agatha Awards were presented at Malice Domestic. Best Contemporary Mystery Novel went to Mindy Quigley for At Death’s Dough. Best Historical Mystery Novel was The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, by Kelly Oliver. Best First Mystery Novel was awarded to Adrian Andover for Whiskey Business.

The Edgar Awards were announced on April 29th. Some of the winners were: Best Novel – The Big Empty, by Robert Crais; Best First Novel by an American Author – Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr; Best Paperback Original – The Backwater, by Vikki Wakefield; Best Fact Crime – Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser; Best Critical/Biographical – Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, by Richard Kopley; Best Juvenile – Blood in the Water, by Tiffany D. Jackson; Best Young Adult – Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray; The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award to Gwen Florio for A Senior Citizen’s Guide to Life on the Run; The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award to Joanna Schaffhausen for Gone in the Night; and The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award to Hank Phillippi Ryan for All This Could Be Yours.

Check the Mystery Writers of America website for all the awards.

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For Your Viewing Pleasure…

The Capture, Series 1 – Prime, 2019, 6 episodes.

A conspiracy thriller starring Holliday Grainger. Set in contemporary Britain, a former soldier is released from prison after his conviction is overturned on appeal because of flawed video evidence. His barrister is attacked and kidnapped and CCTV evidence indicates he is the culprit. He protests his innocence and DI Rachel Carey is determined the truth – is the footage real or fake? Series 2 is available on Peacock and takes up where series 1 left off. Series 3 was just released in Britain. Keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes you a little paranoid about the use of surveillance cameras!

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New and Noteworthy…

(summaries provided by the publishers)

This Story Might Save Your Life, by Tiffany Crum

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s home one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joyu’s memoir. Benny will stop at nothing to find them, even as the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect.

Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans can guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other.

Illusion of Truth, by James L’Etoile

Detective Emily Hunter is exposed to inhumanity on a daily basis—but it all turns personal when her fellow cop and boyfriend, Brian Conner, is caught in the blast of a targeted church bombing and suffers a traumatic brain injury.

He’s not the only victim—when more officers are attacked, Emily searches for a connection. Could Brian and the other injured officers share a common past? Battling with heartbreak and unsure if Brian will ever return to his former self, Emily must stay focused on finding the criminals who uprooted her life—and making sure that justice is served.

Whidbey, by T Kira Madden

Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it is about as far away as she could get from her own life. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes—and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who’s now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution and plan for revenge.

But Birdie isn’t the only girl that Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin’s loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered.

Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers.

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Friends of Mystery has a new mailing address

If you need to contact us by mail, the new address is:

Friends of Mystery
P.O. Box 332
Sherwood, Oregon 97140

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Member News

Share Your Member News

Friends of Mystery is happy to publish news and press releases from our members in our Member News section, with the following considerations:

• The news must be related to mystery or true crime writing, films, and television, as well as non-fiction examinations of the mystery genre.
• Friends of Mystery will not be able to edit announcements, and will publish them as provided.
• Friends of Mystery will include one image with each announcement, if provided.
• Friends of Mystery is not responsible for the content of news announcements, and we reserve the right to not publish any announcements which we feel will reflect poorly on the organization and do not advance the organization’s mission.

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Buy Books by Friends of Mystery Speakers Online at Annie Bloom’s Books

If you want to order any of our speaker’s books, you can find them at our special Friends of Mystery page at Annie Bloom’s Books!

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Membership Renewal

It’s never too late to consider renewing your membership to Friends of Mystery! Dues are $20.00 annually. FOM is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Dues and additional donations are deductible to the full extent of the law. Please mail your check, made out to Friends of Mystery, to P.O. Box 332, Sherwood, OR 97140. Your newsletter will be sent electronically unless otherwise requested.

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Submissions Needed

Members and readers are encouraged to submit book or film reviews, comments on authors, and recommendations for books to read or questions about mysteries, crime fiction and fact. If you have suggestions of mysteries worth sharing, please contact the editor at: jlvoss48@gmail.com.

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Stay cool this summer with a great mystery!