Jim McDonald has been judged a finalist for the prestigious Crime Writers of Canada Best Crime First Novel, sponsored by Melodie Campbell with a $1000 prize for his noir psychological thriller Altered Boy, available on Amazon Kindle. The winner will be announced on May 30, 2025.
Also on Kindle: Smash Palace, a collection of 32 short stories. Coming in 2026, his historical novel Counterculture Revolution, set in 1970, is about the anti-war activist group The Weathermen.
Altered Boy is the featured novel for Humanist Canada’s Book Club online meeting on June 3, 2025. Jim will be in attendance to answer questions.
In addition, Jim’s short story “Ticket Out” is in the anthology Midnight Schemers and Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery and Suspense, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, to be released June 18, 2025.
Cathy Ace’s novel, The Corpse with the Pearly Smile, (published by Four Tails Publishing Ltd.) has been nominated for The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery sponsored by Jane Doe with a $500 prize.
Ace’s Cait Morgan Mysteries feature a globetrotting Welsh Canadian criminal psychologist who solves traditional whodunits alongside her retired-cop husband, Bud Anderson (Eve Myles will portray Cait in the TV production by Free@LastTV). Her WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries feature four softly-poached female PIs solving cosy cases from a Welsh stately home. She's a past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, and is a Bony Blithe, IPPY, IBA and Editor’s Choice CrimeFictionLover Award winner. This is her third nomination for Crime Writers of Canada Awards. She migrated from Wales aged 40, and now lives in Canada.
Melissa Yi is nominated for Best Crime Short Story and Best Juvenile / YA Crime Book sponsored by Superior Shores Press.
Melissa could slice your throat and sew it back up again. Legally. Because she’s an emergency doctor. In her spare minutes, Melissa writes the Hope Sze medical crime series, which Ellery Queen praised for its “nitty-gritty” description and Publishers Weekly for its “darker themes … entertaining and insightful.” The Globe and Mail praises her as a “standout,” having written a best Canadian suspense novel.
Melissa’s mystery stories were finalists for the Award of Excellence (best crime story in Canada) and the Derringer Award (best crime story in the English language) and longlisted for the Staunch Prize (best feminist thriller worldwide).
Brenda Chapman is a Canadian crime fiction author with twenty-six published novels. In addition to short stories and standalones, she has written the lauded Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series, the Anna Sweet mystery novellas, and the Jennifer Bannon mysteries for middle grade. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards including four Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. She is currently writing a new mystery series set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate mysteries, and the forth book in the series, Who Lies in Wait was released 2025, in this podcast we will discuss the third book in this series, Fatal Harvest.
Greg Rhyno is the author of the Dame Polara mystery series from Cormorant Books, including Who by Fire, which was nominated for a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence. His debut novel, To Me You Seem Giant (NeWest Press), was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. He completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario.
Peter Holloway's novel THE ROARING GAME MURDERS has been nominated for the Best Crime First Novel, sponsored by Melodie Campbell, with a $1000 prize.
Peter is married with two children and has lived in Tsawwassen and Ladner for over thirty years. He has cycled the dikes and backroads around Boundary Bay and the Fraser River, where ‘The Roaring Game Murders’ takes place, as well as the many paths between. An avid curler, he leads Learn-to-Curl sessions for adults to introduce them to the roaring game. He has also coached juniors from recreational after school classes to competitive leagues and bonspiels and has organized a Latino Curling Day for local farm workers the last three years.
Peter has a B.A. in English and History from Trent University, and is a member of the Crime Writers of Canada, Delta Literary Arts Society, B.C. Federation of Writers, and Word Vancouver. After a successful career as a senior manager he retired in 2019 and for the last two and a half years has returned to writing. He is currently working on the second installment of the Boundary Detectives series and plans to publish in 2025.
Marcelle Dubé's story, Chuck Berry is Missing, (published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/Aug 2024 issue) is nominated for Best Crime Novella sponsored by Carrick Publishing with a $200 prize.
Marcelle Dubé writes mystery and speculative fiction novels and short stories. Mostly. She grew up near Montreal. After trying out a number of different provinces and living in the Yukon for over 35 years, she now lives in Alberta—which is much like the Yukon in all the ways that count. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies.
She’s won the CWC Award of Excellence twice, in 2021 and 2024, for her short stories, “Cold Wave” and “Reversion.”
The Derrick Murdoch Award is a special achievement award presented at the discretion of the Board Chair of Crime Writers of Canada. It recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to developing crime writing in Canada.
William’s bibliography includes twenty-one novels, many drawing from his extensive legal experience. Notable works include Trial of Passion, which earned the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing in 1997 and Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Canadian Crime Novel in 1998. Trial of Passion introduced readers to Arthur Beauchamp,a character who became central to a series that includes titles such as April Fool which won the 2003 Arthur Ellis award winner) and Stung.
Beyond his writing, he continues to be a pivotal figure in Canadian literature, inspiring readers and mentoring emerging Canadian writers within the crime and mystery genres.
Here is a link to the previous interview with Bill, when we discussed his novel The Long-Shot Trail: Crime Writers of Canada - Podcasts on Crime Writing - William Deverell and The Long-Shot Trial
In this episode, we speak to Jonathan Whitelaw. His book, The Concert Hall Killer, (HarperNorth/HarperCollins Canada) has been shortlisted for The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery, sponsored by Jane Doe with a $500 prize
Jonathan Whitelaw is a writer, award-winning journalist and broadcaster.
After working on the frontline of Scottish politics, he moved into journalism, covering everything from sports tomusic to radioactive waste – and everything in between.
He's also a regular reviewer, podcaster, panellist, commentator and in the near future, he will be an official Calgarian.
He is the author of The Bingo Hall Detectives series, The Parker Sisters Mysteries,
and if that’s not enough, he moonlights as Max Nightingale and wrote: Murder in
Tinseltown: A Choose-Your-Own-Story Mystery.
You can hear an earlier interview we had with Jonathan about The Concert Hall Killer, on the CWC website: here.
SCOTT THORNLEY grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, which inspired his fictional Dundurn. As president and creative director of Scott Thornley + Company, a strategic creative firm, Thornley worked with cultural and health science clients in Canada, the United States and Great Britain.
Over time, his love of graphic and typographic design grew to include writing the stories that would bring his client’s products and services to life. Scott lives with his wife Shirley Blumberg in Toronto and in the southwest of France.
Middlemen
is the latest in the MacNeice series, and follows Erasing Memory, The Ambitious
City, Raw Bone and Vantage Point.
Scott is
published by House of Anansi Press, and represented by Westwood
Creative Artists.