In Reference to Murder

Eye on Crime

The networks are beginning to release their Fall schedules already, and CBS announced they had ordered a new murder mystery series titled Harper’s Island for mid-season.  It sounds like it has some undertones of Lost, with a plot surrounding friends and family attending week-long festivities at a destination wedding on a secluded and picturesque island off the coast of Seattle, infamous for a homicidal maniac’s rampage seven years ago.

Other new crime-related shows are The Mentalist starring Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, a detective and independent consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI), who once proclaimed himself a pyshic which he now admits was faked, and Eleventh Hour from producer Jerry Bruckheimer (the CSI God) which features the character Jacob Hood (played by Rufus Sewell), a brilliant biophysicist and special science advisor to the government who investigates scientific crises and oddities.

CBS will also continue its popular CSI lineup as well as its Saturday "Crimetime" programming from 8-10:00 PM, followed by 48 Hours Mystery, the night’s top-rated program.

Who Reads Short Shorts?

Released today is the latest installment in the annual anthology of the "finest crime and mystery stories" as selected by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenburg, this year titled A Prisoner of Memory: And 24 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. The short-story authors include a roll call of the bestselling mystery authors today, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, Anne Perry, Marcia Muller, and many others. Publishers Weekly had this review:

"Drawing more than half their selections from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Gorman and Greenberg offer a star-studded lineup of crime and mystery stories published in 2007 in their latest anthology. Among the highlights are Jeffery Deaver's "Making Amends," which plays a deadly twist on a popular TV sitcom; Sandra Scoppettone's "Everybody Loves Somebody," which will fool most readers; and Doug Allyn's "Dead as a Dog," which pits a harried husband against a deadly hunter. Other notable entries include Loren D. Estleman's "The Profane Angel," about Hollywood legend Carole Lombard, and Brendan DuBois's "Country Manners," in which a rural New Hampshire PI gives the FBI a lesson. Jon L. Breen provides a critical overview of the year, while Sarah Weinman, who chose four online stories for the volume, supplies a brief survey of online mysteries."

I have to admit I love these anthologies. I finally got my hands on the first one which was published in 2000, and have been trying to read a few stories each night before bed. Although the quality varies a little bit, there really aren't any clunkers in the lot, and Gorman does a fine job trying to include a wide variety of styles. You do tend to see the same names cropping up from year to year, but whether that's due to salability issues (short stories are notoriously difficult to market), or simply the same cream rising to the surface very year, it's hard to say. But ultimately it doesn't matter, because there's something for everyone to love, even folks who may not think they even like short stories.

Taking a Bite Out of Crime

Time Magazine has a feature on new technology that could lead to a bite-mark database. Forensic odontology has been used in cases in the past, most notoriously with the prosecution of serial killer Ted Bundy, but since 2000, at least seven people in five states who were convicted largely on bite-mark identification have been exonerated. The breakthrough that Marquette University scientists think they've uncovered is a computer program which catalogs characteristics, including tooth widths, missing teeth and spaces between teeth. The program calculates how frequently or infrequently each characteristic appears. Team leader Dr. L. Thomas Johnson acknowledges that the software will probably never turn bite-mark analysis into a surefire identifier like DNA and he'd need tens of thousands of samples before his work would stand up in court.

If the thought of bite marks seems a bit macabre to you, then you probably won't want to read further. (Warning for the faint of heart -- turn back now.) There's a new trend afoot in mortuary science to dissolve bodies in lye as opposed to cremation or burial. The process, called alkaline hydrolysis, was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses and uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers. The process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains, which could be returned to the family, as well as a brownish, syrupy residue which is flushed down the drain--that may have a huge "ick" factor, but the residue is actually sterile and environmentally friendly.

Of course, to the mind of a crime fiction author, this stirs up all kinds of plot possibilities...

Magazines, Media & Monologues

Editor BJ Bourg recently announced that not only is his ezine Mouth Full of Bullets going to have a print edition alongside with the web version, but he's compiled a "best of" anthology covering the publication's first year which ranges from Autumn 2006 to Summer 2007. You can buy it in paperback or download via the following link. Kudos to BJ for helping support and promote short-form mystery and crime fiction when other similar publications are folding.

On to the "Monologues" part, in a relatively rare public appearance, author Robert B. Parker will discuss the upcoming sequel to his 2005 Western novel as well as his 35-year writing career including his most famous creation, Boston private eye Spenser. The talk is free, although advance tickets are required, and will take place at 7 p.m. on June 2 at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas.

In Media Notes, Barbara Barnett reviews the movie OSS-177, Cairo, Nest of Spies, a spy-thriller parody. Barnett says "as much a fan of the [spy thriller] genre that I am, I’ve always been a hard sell when it comes to parodies. But when the satire is subtler, the humor more wry and ironic than cheap and slapstick, and blended with social commentary and great cinematography, la voila, as they say in France, you have success."

And two radio pieces to point out:  NPR's Weekend Edition discusses Louise Erdrich's latest novel, Plague of Doves, a multigenerational murder mystery of sorts, surrounding the 1911 slaughter of a farming family near Pluto, North Dakota; and To the Best of Our Knowledge featured a program titled "Author! Author! Pulp Fiction," with an electic mix including Steve Paulson reporting on the new genre of Scandinavian crime fiction.

More Mystery Morsels

And now for some reviews, interviews, and picks:

Reviews

• The Washington Post recently reviewed two crime fiction novels, Careless in Red by Elizabeth George, which is the latest Inspector Lynley novel, and Quiver by Peter Leonard (best known right now, at least, as the son of bestselling author Elmore Leonard). Quiver is Leonard Jr.'s first published effort, and although the review is overall positive, it concludes that "the son's fictional skills, as demonstrated in his first novel, are not in the same ballpark as his father's. Of course, neither are those of just about anyone else who writes crime fiction." The paper was much kinder to Elizabeth George, however:  "Readers who value writing that is intelligent, surprising, sexy, funny, compassionate and wise should find Careless in Red a delight."
• The Seattle Times featured several new titles, including John Straley's The Big Both Ways ("a thrilling journey"); Donna Leon's new Venetian police commissario Guido Brunetti outing, The Girl of His Dreams ("she's brilliant at bringing to life the city, the people who live there, and their problems and joys"); High Hat by Greg Mandel; Peter Leonard's Quiver (this reviewer thought it was a "strong debut"), C.J. Box's Blood Trail, and Robert Goddard's Past Caring.

Interviews

• The Vacaville, California Reporter interviewed author David Corbett, a former private investigator and author of the Edgar-nominated Blood of Paradise (2007), set in El Salvador which he likens to Iraq (i.e. both countries where America's heavyhandedness has brought social and political turmoil).
• The Manchester UK Confidential "interrogated" crime writer Chris Simms, who is close to publishing his sixth novel, Hell's Fire, the fourth to feature Manchester-based Detective Inspector Jon Spicer and his Major Crime Incident Team. Simms sees his copywriting career, which he still pursues part-time, as being the perfect preparation for a crime writer: "You have to employ economy with words and the novel becomes a sort of elongated ad with an image and a headline that provides the momentum. No one can write crime fiction successfully unless you charge up that momentum."
• Shelf Awareness pinned down Tom Rob Smith, author of the hot new property Child 44 (pre-optioned before publication by Ridley Scott) as part of the site's Book Brahmins series. In answer to "What's on your nightstand right now," he replied, "Robert Conquest's The Great Terror. Conquest was the first historian I read when I decided to write Child 44. His The Harvest of Sorrow was pivotal in making me realize how much I wanted to write my story."

Picks

• The National Book Critics Circle recently chose their Spring Good Reads list, which included among others, Lush Life by Richard Price, an author Publishers Weekly called "one of the masters of American urban crime fiction," and Dangerous Laugher by Steven Millhauser, an anthology which the Washington Post Book World called "a collection of stories that explore these ideas with the mixture of dark suspense and good humor implied by the title." 

A Little Murder for Mom

There have been several mystery series featuring mothers, although most of them are (a) cozies and (b) involve single mothers. If your mother might enjoy a Mom protagonist for Mother's Day, even if Mom doesn't happen to be an amateur sleuth on the side, here's a selected list. No doubt there are many more, and if you know of others, please chime in...

• Jennifer Apodaca -- Protagonist Samantha Shaw runs the Heart Mates Dating Service while raising two boys and keeping track of her ornery magician grandfather
• Jo Bannister -- Single mother Brodie Ferrell starts her own search service, "Looking for Something?" in Dimmock, England
• Lauren Berenson -- Melanie Travis is a special education teacher, divorced mother, and new owner of a standard poodle
• Jill Churchill -- Jane Jeffry, a Chicago housewife and single mother
• Diane Mott Davidson -- Goldy Bear series, featuring a caterer and single mother in Colorado
• Joan Hess -- Claire Malloy, bookstore owner and single mother 
• Jonnie Jacobs -- Kate Austen a recently-divorced young northern California mom
• Faye Kellerman -- L.A. homicide detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus, mother of a troubled teenage son
• Leslie Meier -- Lucy Stone, a Maine three-time mother and part-time mail-order business employee
• Anthony Oliver: Lizzie Thomas, Welsh mother-in-law in an English village who solves crimes with the help of retired Inspector Webber
• Elizabeth Peters -- Amelia Peabody, Victorian Egyptologist and mother of Walter, also known as Ramses 
• Phil Rickman -- Merrily Watkins, single mom and Anglican priest
• Sara Rosett -- Writes  the cozy Mom Zone mystery series
• Alexander McCall Smith -- Precious Ramotswe, #1 Ladies Detective Agency, mother to two adopted orphans
• Ayelet Waldman -- Juliet Applebaum, "mommy-track" mysteries
• Valerie Wolzien -- Josie Pigeon, single mother, carpenter, and owner of a contracting company

If granny gumshoes are more your thing, this link has some suggestions. There are also a few mysteries themed around Mother's Day:

• Mignon F. Ballard - Angel at Troublesome Creek
• Dorothy Cannell - How to Murder your Mother-in-Law
• Wensley Clarkson - Mother's Day Murder
• Nancy Fairbanks - Bon Bon Voyage (Culinary Msytery with Recipes)
• Jane Haddam -  Murder Superior
• Lee Harris - The Mother's Day Murder (Not-To-Miss Series)
• Patricia MacDonald  - Mother's Day
• Dennis McDougal -  Mother's Day 
• Nancy Pickard (Editor) - Mom, Apple Pie & Murder: A Collection of New Mysteries for Mother's Day
• Joshua Quittner, Michelle Slatalla  -  Mother's Day

Take a couple of books, throw in some flowers and chocolate, and you'll make your Mum one happy lady, just like my own mother, a self-proclaimed chocoloholic and mystery addict.  Must be in the genes.

Some Weekend Entertainment

It's raining here in the D.C. area and a bit chilly, perfect weather for indoor entertainment. If you like computer games, check out The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, the first computer game officially licensed by the Conan Doyle Estate. The characters are all there—Holmes, Watson, Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft—woven into 16 cases the user gets to try and solve the case along with Holmes. There are also some bonus puzzles, anagrams, cryptograms, jigsaw, memory, etc.

James Patterson is extending his empire to include video games, as well, with Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet, a cross between his books and the CSI television series.

But if you're tired of sitting in front of a computer, you can sit in front of a movie screen instead. Desson Howe of the Washington Post reviewed Roman de Gare, a French film and a "user-friendly murder mystery" from Claude Lelouch, starring Fanny Ardant as Judith, a crime novelist accused of murder, and Zinedine Soualem as a Paris detective. Howe concludes that "The movie is more entertaining than it is logical; its narrative leaps are sometimes ahead of our ability to believe them. But as the compellingly enigmatic Pierre, Pinon keeps us rapt. And Lelouch keeps us caught up in the intrigue, the mystery and the fun of the film's murderous potential, rather than feeling edge-of-the-seat discomfort and worry on behalf of the characters."

Mystery Morsels

The San Francisco Chronicle Online featured the article "S.F. is crime central - on the printed page," which starts with the premise that modern crime fiction was born in a small apartment at 891 Post St. in San Francisco,  where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon, and proceeds with the sweeping statement that "A case can easily be made that more crime fiction is now produced in the Bay Area than in any other metropolitan region in the world." Well maybe, maybe not, and I'm sure other cities like New York or Chicago might take exception to that, but San Fran does boast Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller, Jerry Kennealy, Joe Gores, Mark Coggins, Renay Jackson, Cornelia Read, Domenic Stansberry, Rhys Bowen, Jim Nisbet, Robin Burcell, Tim Maleeny, Jacqueline Winspear, and David Corbett, among others. Corbett doesn't believe he'd be as productive anywhere else. "I couldn't do this in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio," he says. "I would either have killed myself from boredom by now or gone on a homicidal rampage."

From San Fransisco moving across the Bay (St. Andrew's Bay), Scotland on Sunday interviewed author Stuart MacBride about his latest book, Flesh House, which features a serial killer and some graphic details, unusual procedure for him. "I try to make each novel as different as I can," he explained. "Previously I have done very little 'on-screen' violence. It's been alluded to and then we see the aftermath, and how it affects people. This is the first time it's been done 'on screen' and I'm a little worried to see how it's gone down. One of my test readers had nightmares for weeks afterwards." The article points out how MacBride has been grouped with contemporaries Alan Guthrie and Alex Gray under the "tartan noir" label, which he's come to accept. "There is quite a distinctive feel to Scottish crime fiction," he says. "Very darkly comedic stuff comes through, combined with a strong suspicion of authority."

Tried and True Crime

Was there a conspiracy in the infamous murder mystery of Andrew and Abby Borden? Apparently Lizze Borden continues to fascinate the public over 60 years after her death. There are web sites about her and even The Hatchett, Lizzie Borden's Journal of Murder, Mystery, and Victorian History, which recently ran an article (republished here) about one of the conspriracy theories surrounding the murder of her parents, involving a half-brother. And yes, I am guilty of participating in Lizzie Borden-abilia since during my former life as a singer, I actually sang an aria from Jack Beeson's opera on the subject.

If you want to go back even farther into the world of true crime, Tampa Bay's News10 site reported on a 350-year-old murder mystery in which a skull keeps coming back.

Fast forwarding to the present, 75 students at San Diego State University were arrested as part of a drug sting involving marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy. The arrestees include a young man who was just shy of finishing a master's degree in  homeland security and had worked with the campus police as a security officer and also a criminal justice major who asked officers if this would hurt his chances for a law enforcement career. Hmm...ya think?

The New York Times featured an article on NYPD detective fashions. No, not another calendar, but a look at what the well-dressed detective wears these days while on a case. As the article points out, "proper fit is a matter of survival rather than vanity for men who are more likely to subdue a suspect than to peer at a computer all day." Commander Vernon Geberth explained his philosophy about wearing a suit that would at home on Wall Street,  "It put me in a different mode. It slowed me down: 'Look at this guy. He is all dressed up and he is in an abandoned building.' I am here to put things back together." He added, "I was above the fray. My psychological armor."

I also left out one link from yesterday's media mayhem post, namely The Dana Pretzer Show On Scared Monkeys Radio which recently featured the ladies of the Women in Crime Ink blog who count among their members prosecutors, cops, and novelists.

More Media "Mayhem"

NPR has been busy with crime fiction coverage lately. For "In Character," the series exploring famous American fictional characters, NPR's Mike Shuster takes a look at the quintessential private eye, Philip Marlowe.

As part of NPR's On Point program, host Tom Ashbrook chats with Carl Hiaasen (Strip Tease, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip) about his new nonfiction book, The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport.

On Fresh Air,  Terry Gross interviews Charles Ardai, founder of the founder of the pulp-fiction publishing company Hard Case Crime and an Edgar Award-winning author in his own right under the pen name of Richard Aleas (Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence).

The LA Times profiled the "four-headed directing collective" known as Big Fantastic who have delivered 230 episodes of an Internet TV series in less than two years. Their upcoming title is "Foreign Body," a medical thriller based on the book by Robin Cook, in which all all 50 two-minute episodes were shot in 24 days in Delhi and Malibu.  The article adds that "high-volume nuance and relentless pacing are definitely two features of the series they've produced so far" which include "Prom Queen" and "Sam Has Seven Friends," both of which are basically sexy, soap-operatic murder-mysteries.

And HarperCollins formally announced their new in-house internet broadcast studio, which has been creating author videos from their offices for sales, marketing and promotional opportunities. Marisa Benedetto (formerly with the Wall Street Journal), runs the studio as executive producer. The company says their goal is to produce 500 videos a year.