In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Fox 2000 has hired Michael Sucsy to direct the adaptation of Megan Abbott's novel Dare Me. Described as "Heathers meets Fight Club, with teenage cheerleaders," the studio hopes to sign Natalie Portman to star in the film, which Abbott is scripting.

Actor Ray Winstone (of The Departed and Beowulf) has joined fellow stars Sean Penn, Javier Bardem and Idris Elba in Pierre Morel's film, The Gunman. Winstone will take on the role of mentor to a hitman (played by Penn), who is betrayed and then hunted by the organization he worked for.

After the successful Kickstarter project to bring Veronica Mars back from TV cancellation purgatory with a film adaptation, the show creator Rob Thomas announced that many original cast members will be returning, including Jason Dohring, Percy Daggs III, Tina Majorino, Amanda Noret, Sam Huntington and Daran Norris. The series focused on a young woman (Kristen Bell) who moonlighted as a private investigator under the direction of her detective father. The new film is set 10 years after the original timeline.

Vampire Diaries star Joseph Morgan has joined Walton Goggins, Ron Perlman and Nicole Badaan in the film adaptation of Craig Clevenger's cult novel, Dermaphoria. Described as "Memento meets Breaking Bad," the story follows a brilliant chemist (Morgan) who wakes up with amnesia in jail after a drug-lab explosion and has to piece together his memories to find his missing girlfriend, while dodging the cops and bad guys who want the formula buried in his head.

Open Road Films has acquired U.S. rights to the big-screen adaptation of the 2005 thriller Homefront by Chuck Logan. The project is being directed by Gary Fleder from a screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and will star Jason Statham, James Franco, and Winona Ryder. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

TELEVISION

Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan will direct the 100th episode, in which Michael (played by Donovan) returns to Miami to protect his cover, but things don't go as planned after Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) is kidnapped and Michael is forced to reveal his presence to his old crew. Several of the Burn Notice cast spoke about the road to the 100th episode in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

The Hallmark Channel announced that its new primetime series based on Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove novels will debut Saturday, July 20 at 8 PM. Andie MacDowell stars as Judge Olivia Lockhart, whose Cedar Cove Municipal Court "is where the town's surprises and hidden secrets are unveiled."

PBS's Masterpiece Mystery! released a teaser trailer for its Summer 2013 season, which will include three new episodes of Inspector Lewis; Endeavour's first season of four episodes; the return of Foyle's War; and The Lady Vanishes, a new version of the classic Hitchcock film. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

DirecTV announced the renewal of its original crime drama series Rogue for a second season. The story follows Grace Travis (played by Thandie Newton), an undercover detective who doubles as an agent for a powerful crime boss Jimmy Laszlo (Marton Csokas) who she believes will lead her to her son's killer.

ITV has also ordered a third season of the DCI Banks series, starring Stephen Tompkinson as the character created by crime novelist Peter Robinson.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Walter Mosley was a guest on the PBS Newshour show talking about revising his iconic Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins character.

Carl Hiaasen joined the Today Show and NPR's Fresh Air to talk about his latest novel, Bad Monkey.

Paul. D. Brazill, Frank Duffy, K. A. Laity, Laurence Oneal and Richard Sharp talked about books, films, politics, video ganes and more on the inaugural ORF weekly podcast.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker and Oline Cogdill, mystery fiction reviewer and Mystery Scene blogger, joined the radio show On Point with host Tom Ashbrook to discuss Florida crime fiction.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Dr. Nikola Returns

Guy Newell Boothby (1867-1905) was born in South Australia, the son of a politician and the grandson of a judge. He started out his career as a clerk but soon turned his hand to writing plays and musical comedies and eventually made his way to England by way of Singapore, Borneo and Java. He used his travel-related experiences in his writing, turning to Rudyard Kipling-influenced works and exotic settings, churning out 6,000 words every day.

That prolific word count led to fifty novels in the 14 years between 1894 and 1908, with some of the most popular featuring Dr. Nikola. Nikola is an occultist anti-hero in search of immortality and world domination, who uses hypnotic powers and studies witchcraft and the occult. The Nikola series was launched in 1895 as the serial "A Bid for Fortune" in The Windsor Magazine, a rival to The Strand. The series only amounted to five works in all, but Dr. Nikola became almost as popular as Sir Athur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty in 1890s Britain.

Nikola is described as dressing in "faultless evening dress, slender, having dark peculiar eyes and dark hair, and white toad-coloured skin." He lives in a bungalow on the Rue de Lafayette in Shanghai (leading some to say the character of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu was based on him). John Norris, the host of the Pretty Sinister Books blog, wrote about Stanley L. Woods, who often illustrated the Nikola stories, portraying him in white cravat and fur coat, with his frequent companion, the baleful-eyed black cat Apollyon, perched on Nikola's shoulder.

Dr. Nikola (also known as Dr. Nikola Returns) was a sequel to A Bid for Fortune. In the first book, Nikola tried to obtain a Chinese carved stick said to have almost limitless occult powers. In Dr. Nikola Returns, the doctor continues his pursuit of the powers associated with the Chinese talisman, but enlists the assistance of the penniless but adventurous Wilfred Bruce, who speaks fluent Chinese and also serves as narrator of the tale. Dr. Nikola and Bruce scheme to penetrate the most powerful secret society in China to gain access to a remote Tibetan monastery. 

Although Boothby's output was cut short due to his untimely death from influenza at the age of 37, Dr. Nikola lived on in numerous theatrical productions, beginning with Dr. Nikola on the London stage in 1902. In 1909, a three-roll film based on Dr. Nikola was produced by the Danish director Viggo Larsen and was the first novel-based film in Europe long enough to be able to tell the entire story of a novel. A 1935 project that would have starred Boris Karloff as Dr. Nikola never made it to the screen, but Dr. Nikola made a guest-starring appearance in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula graphic novel series from 1992.

Mystery Melange

Book sculpture by Johwey Redington

The Crime Writers of Canada handed out their annual Arthur Ellis Awards for the best in Canadian crime fiction. The award for Best Novel went to Giles Blunt for Until the Night, while the Best Debut Novel was handed out to Simone St. James for The Haunting of Maddy Clare. For the full list of winners, check out the CWC website.

The Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring an upcoming MWA University in Seattle on Saturday, August 11. The one-day workshop features a day of classes taught by experts who discuss their strategies for all facets of writing and publishing, including: "After the Idea" led by Jess Lourey; "Dramatic Structure & Plot,"  led by Kat Richardson; "Setting & Description," with Reed Farrel Coleman; "Character," with Brian Thornton: "Writing as Re-Writing," taught by Daniel J. Hale; and "The Writing Life," with Hank Phillippi Ryan.

There's a new crime fiction festival coming to Adelaide, Australia, called The Body in the Garden, to be held October 25 to 27. The event will feature a line-up of 22+ writers from Australia and overseas, including Swedish crime writer Hakan Nesser, UK author Anne Cleeves, and Australians Gabrielle Lord, Paul Bangay, Fabian Capomollo and Mat Pember. This is unusual in that it's a free festival and will be held (as the name suggests) at the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

This week's story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Cinderella Myth" from Sandra Seamans, who also operates the very useful and informative My Little Corner blog, with resources and information about markets for short crime fiction.

This month's issue of Suspense magazine includes interviews with Chevy Stevens, Jeffrey Archer, Alafair Burke, Hank Steinberg, Dean James and debut author John Mulhall. Plus, Anthony J. Franze continues his Rules of Fiction with bestselling author Michael Connelly and Lisa Gardner continues her series from the writers toolbox, helping all writers master their craft.

This week's Q&A roundup includes former news cameraman Jon Steele, whose noir fantasy Angelus trilogy tells the story of a high-end call girl and a British tough guy who find themselves in a war between angels and demons; Andy Rivers is the lastest "Short Sharp Interivew" with Paul D. Brazill; and Joanna Campbell Slan joined Omnimystery News to talk about her mystery series featuring literary character Jane Eyre.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Before I move on to this week's "Media Murder" news, I have a correction to make from last week. Although the Internet (Deadline, CinemaBlend, DigitalSpy, Hollywood Reporter, et al.) was abuzz with the report about a movie titled Depravity that was based on a Dennis Lehane script was in production, this is apparently news to Dennis Lehane. In 2010, he noted in an interview that he had no idea about the project, and yet his name is still attached to it in 2013. After checking with a Lehane representative, I can verify that the author has never written such a script, and his name being associated with the project is completely untrue.

Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired the North American rights to the dark comedy crime caper Dom Hemingway, starring Jude Law as a safecracker known for his profane and dangerous ways.

Paramount Pictures acquired film rights to The Testing, a YA novel by Joelle Charbonneau about a group of the best and brightest high school graduates in a post-apocalyptic U.S., who are put through a series of tests to determine whether they have what it takes to become the leaders of future generations.

Sony Pictures and producer Neil Moritz optioned remake rights to A Prophet, the French film about a young man’s rise to the top of a crime syndicate. The original film earned a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee in 2010 and won Grand Prize at Cannes and nine César Awards in France.

Javier Bardem is taking another villainous role, starring opposite Sean Penn in the international assassin thriller The Gunman, from Taken director Piere Morel.

Christoph Waltz has signed to star in True Crimes, a project based on a feature by David Grann in The New Yorker about the case of Krystian Bala, a Polish writer who was convicted of murder in 2007.

Kirsten Vangsness and Joe Mantegna of Criminal Minds are the latest Hollywood celebrities to take to Kickstarter to try to fund pet projects. The CM duo hope to turn the 2009 stage production of the comedy noir Kill Me, Deadly! into a feature film.

In an article roundup of casting additions, Deadline reported that Ken Howard and David Krumholtz have joined Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall in The Judge, a film about the murder trial of Judge Joseph Palmer (Duvall) who is defended by his estranged attorney son (Downey); and Max Ryan has landed a role oin Tokarev with Nicolas Cage and Danny Glover, playing a woman who aids a reformed crook in finding the Russian mobsters who kidnapped his daughter.

TV

MRC and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company are adapting the historical fiction/gritty crime/sci-fi novel The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. The story follows a serial killer who uses a house in Depression-era Chicago to time travel, but has to kill "shining girls," or those with talent and potential, in order to keep traveling.

ITV has ordered a second season of Endeavour, the prequel series to the long-running Inspector Morse based on crime novels by Colin Dexter, with Shaun Evans playing the Inspector as a younger man. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Bridget Regan will appear in a 10-episode arc on USA's White Collar, playing a beautiful rare book scholar who becomes entangled with Neal's (Matt Bomer) latest con and Neal himself.

Christina Ricci has signed on to play Lizzie Borden, the woman who was accused of killing her stepmother and father with a hatchet in 1892. The untitled made-for-TV will appear on Lifetime, although the broadcast date hasn't been set.

BBC America released a "launch trailer" for the upcoming third season of Luther, starring Idris Elba stars as DCI John Luther. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO
 
Jason Matthews, a 33-year veteran of the C.I.A and author of the debut spy thriller Red Sparrow, was a guest on CBS This Morning.

Suspense radio featured James Tabor, David Morrell and Hank Steinberg on June 1st and also a one on one with John Lansing as part of the new Partners in Crime author tour radio series.

Lee Goldberg is the first guest on "Pulp Friction with Paul Levine, " chatting out his new book The Heist, co-written with Janet Evanovich.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Port of London Murders

Since I'm on the road this week, I'm reposting this "classic" FFB, The Port of London Murders, in honor of Crimefest held in the UK this past weekend.

Josephine Bell, the pen name of Doris Collier Ball, was born in Manchester in 1897, educated at Cambridge, and became a University College Hospital of London physician. She married a fellow physician who died at a young age in 1936, which is when Bell turned her hand to writing, even as she maintained her medical practice.

She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and also became a member of the Detection Club. She eventually closed her medical practice at age 57 but continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in her more than 40 crime novels (at the rate of two a year), such as AmyTupper, Dr. David Wintingham, Dr. Henry Frost, and Scotland Yard Inspector Steven Mitchell.

Not surprisingly, her novels often feature a strong medical component, not the least of which were two of her doctor-protagonists. She also featured poison and other unusual methods of murder prominently in her plots. Bell and her family were experienced sailors, and the author drew upon this knowledge, too, using many vivid passages in her books that relate to the water and to various nautical details.

Water is certainly at the heart of the setting in Bell's novel The Port of London Murders from 1938, specifically as the title suggests, the port area of London's River Thames. It's a tough neighborhood, but the death of one Mary Holland is still a bit of a shock, even though it appears at first to be a suicide by Lysol poisoning. Tell-tale needle marks on the victim's arm lead Detective Sergeant Chandler to suspect murder tied into a drug ring—which seems even more chillingly apparent when Chandler disappears shortly after he starts to investigate, right before he's due to testify at the inquest. It's up to Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard to unravel the layers of deception and addiction that are exploiting rich and poor alike in a way that hasn't changed much in the seventy years since the book was written.

Bell is particularly good with settings, even the squalid ones that pop up in the novel, no doubt witnessed first-hand in her role as a physician who saw people from every walk of life. Her take on the state of medicine in her day was often somewhat bleak, as in this passage from the book—again, as true today as it was in 1938:

For the great majority of these cases, too poor to have a doctor of their own, there was little he could do...Dr. Freeman could encourage them with a bottle of medicine and help them with a pint of milk a day, but it was not in his power nor that of anyone else to effect a lasting cure of their complaints. There were others, too, not old, but equally hopeless, who attended the dispensary as regular visitors; those struck down in youth or middle age by tuberculosis, rheumatism, heart trouble, and a number of more rare diseases. They had come to the end of their resources, their insurances, and their capacity for earning. The hospitals could do nothing more for them, but they still lived, in the worse possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.

Mystery Melange

Dragon book sculpture

The Crime Writers of Canada handed out the annual Arthur Ellis Awards, recognizing excellence in Canadian crime fiction. The nod for Best Crime Novel went to Until the Night by Giles Blunt, while the Best First Crime Novel was given to The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James. For all the categories, check out the CWC website.

The Crime Writers Association of the UK announced the shortlists for several of its awards, including the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger; The International Dagger; the Dagger for Non-Fiction; the Dagger in the Library; the Short Story Dagger, and the Debut Dagger.

The inaugural Petrona Award winner, announced at the CrimeFest dinner June 1, went to Last Will by Liza Marklund. The award is handed out for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year and was established in memory of Maxine Clarke, who blogged as Petrona and specialized in Scandinavian crime fiction.

Although Canada's Bloody Words mystery conference is skipping 2013, the conference still presented the Bloody Words Light Mystery Award at the Bony Blithe Gala held in Toronto. The winner was Elizabeth J. Duncan for her fourth Penny Brannigan mystery, A Small Hill To Die On. The full conference will return next year to Toronto and in 2015 to Halifax.

The Audio Publishers Association handed out its 2013 Audie Awards, recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. The Audio Book of the Year Awards went to The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, as read by by Colin Firth; the winner in the Mystery category was The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny, read by Ralph Cosham; and the award for Best Thriller went to Red, White, and Blood by Christopher Farnsworth as read by Bronson Pinchot.

Poisoned Pen announced the winner of their second annual Discover Mystery Contest for unpublished novels. The award went to Eileen Brady for her cozy mystery, Dog Shows Are Murder. Finalists included Peggy McKeep Barnhill, Judy L. Murray, and Carmen Will.

Whodunnit?: Murder in Mystery Manor, from CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker, will hit the airwaves on ABC in June, but Zuiker announced a tie-in novel series based on the show to be released one week before the series premiere. The premise of both is an putting amateur sleuths’ investigative skills to the test in a mystery reality competition, with players employing crime scene investigation techniques to discover who among them is the "killer."

The Q&A roundup this week includes Reed Farrel Coleman joining the Mystery People to talk about their "pick of the month," the author's latest novel Onion Street; and Scandinavian crime writer Jens Lapidus talked with the Wall Street Journal about his Stockholm Noir trilogy and the secret criminal side of Sweden.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

There has been much speculation (and some false reports, alas) of who the director for the next Bond movie will be, but it appears that Skyfall's Sam Mendes may still be in the running, after all. Mendes wanted to do Bond 24, but had prior theater commitments that had seemed to be too much of a conflict.

Katharine McPhee (star of the recently-cancelled Smash) is joining the cast of Depravity, a thriller with a script by Dennis Lehane, and Paul Tamasy on board to direct. The plot follows a  group of roommates who accidentally kill an innocent man they thought was a thrill killer.

Michael C. Hall (who played the serial killer in Dexter) landed the lead role in Cold In July, the adaptation of Joe Lansdale's cult novel. He plays Richard Dane, who shoots and kills an armed burglar in his living room, a move that seems like self defense to everyone but the burglar's father, who vows an eye-for-an-eye justice.

Glenn Close has signed on to play a major role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, potentially as the top cop who heads up Nova Corp, the intergalactic space patrol. In other casting news for the film, Doctor Who's Karen Gillan has been signed to play the lead female villain.

A mere week after it was announced that Tom Cruise was exiting the Man From Uncle film adaptation, it appears that Henry Cavill is the leading candidate to replace him in the role of spy Napoleon Solo.

If you're in San Francisco in mid-June, check out San Francisco's Silent Film Festival, which is airing the first nine films by Alfred Hitchcock with musical accompaniment. The films were recently restored by the British Film Institute and include the film the director considered "the first true Hitchcock picture," The Lodger.

Also in June, the Turner Classic Movies television network is airing Friday Night Noir, with Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation hosting the 16 films scheduled during the month.

Josh Brolin is one of the latest stars to sign on to the cast of Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's film adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon detective novel. The other is Katherine Waterson, who will play one of the female leads, a "free-spirited hippie chick." Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, and Jena Malone are already on board, with Sean Penn also reportedly in talks.

Drafthouse Films has picked up North American rights to the film Borgman, the first Dutch film in the Cannes Film Festival's competition lineup in almost 40 years. The thriller is described as "an allegorical tale exploring the nature of evil in unexpected places. A vagrant enters the lives of an upper-class family, igniting a descent from darkly comic dream to maddening psychological nightmare."

Warner Brothers released a trailer for Prisoners, about two neighborhood girls who go missing.The cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal as a police detective and Hugh Jackman as the father of one of the girls who kidnaps the main suspect  (Paul Dano) with the goal of making him reveal where the girls are.

TV

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys is taking on the role of Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy in a new BBC adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley, a sequel novel by crime writer PD James.

BBC Two's new crime drama The Fall, starring former X-Files star Gillian Anderson as an FBI agent after a serial killer, premiered earlier this month and has done so well, the network quickly renewed it for a second season.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Tracy Letts is being promoted to a regular cast spot on Homeland. The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning actor/playwright plays the role of Senator Andrew Lockhart, the powerful Committee Chairman.

NBC announced that the serial-killer drama Hannibal is getting a second season on the network.The series is based on characters from Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and the working relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen)

British actress Ashley Davenport is leaving ABC's Revenge due to her option not being picked up. She joins fellow regular Connor Paolo, who also won't be returning for the third season.

Skipp Sudduth (The Good Wife) has joined the cast of the Cinemax pilot Quarry, about a Marine marksman who joins a network of contract killers after returning home from Vietnam and being shunned by the public. Sudduth will play the father of Logan Marshall Green's leading man.

THEATER

Via Martin Edwards comes a review of the Agatha Christie-penned play, Go Back For Murder, which began a run at the Regent Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent last week. The production is from the Agatha Christie Theatre Company and continues through June 1st at the theatre before taking the show on the road.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - One Night's Mystery

May Agnes Fleming (1840-1880) was one of the first Canadians to pursue a highly successful career as a writer of popular fiction, reportedly earning $10,000 a year, a princely sum at the time. Her work became so popular that many of her novels were re-issued under different titles, often due to piracy. Her first book was published in her adopted state of New York in 1963, titled Erminie; or The gypsy's Vow: A Tale of Love and Vengeance. Using several pen names, including Cousin May Carleton and M.A. Earlie, she published several serial tales in the New York Mercury, the New York Weekly, the Boston Pilot and the London Journal (and set several of her books in England).

She wrote somewhere around 40 novels and would have written more if she hadn't died prematurely from Bright's Disease at the age of 39. Despite her literary success, she struggled in her personal life, separating from her alcoholic husband and ultimately excluding him from her will and the upbringing of their four children. This misfortune didn't break her but rather may have inspired the many strong female characters in her novels, both good and evil.

One Night's Mystery follows the lives and loves of three young women: Cyrilla Hendrick, the daughter of handsome, penniless, scoundrel; her best friend, Sydney Owenson, a naive heiress; and Dolly De Courcy, a spirited actress. Both Cyrilla and Sydney are engaged, although things aren't as they seem in either case. Sydney's gold-digging fiance is besotted with Dolly, while Cyrilla's is arranged through her aunt, whom Cyrilla calls "the crossest, spitefulest old woman on earth." The one night's mystery of the title refers to the disappearance of Sydney's fiance the day before her wedding, but did he run off with Dolly or was he murdered?

One Night's Mystery was first serialized in New York Weekly and the London Journal before being published in book form by G.W. Carleton in 1876, toward the end of Fleming's life. It is a prime example of the type of work Fleming wrote, romantic suspense with a few Gothic elements thrown in. Her writing style is direct, her characters simple but reasonably well fleshed out, and the complicted relationships between the characters thorny and entertaining, if a tad melodramatic.

Despite the melodrama, Fleming does insert moments of poetic descriptions that are especially effective with settings, such as this one about the grim street that houses the dull and respectable Demoiselles Chateauroy school for young ladies (where Cyrilla and Sydney met):

There were no shops, there were no people; the houses looked at you as you passed with a sad, settled, melancholy mildew upon them; the doors rarely opened, the blinds and curtains were never drawn; prim little gardens, with prim little gravel-paths, shut in these sad little houses from the street; now and then a pale, pensive face might gleam at you from some upper window, spectre-like, and vanish.

Mystery Melange

 

Book sculpture by Jodi Harvey-Brown

I'm very happy to point you over to this week's story at Beat to a Pulp, which is from the pen of Patti Abbott and titled "The Big Lug." Patti is a terrific story writer and also hosts the weekly Friday's Forgotten books feature that I'm happy to be a part of.

Shindig will host video chats with fifty authors live from Book Expo America, Thursday, May 30th through Saturday, June 1st. Featured authors will include Mary Higgins Clark, Andrew Gross, C.J. Lyons and many more. (Hat tip to Galley Cat)

This, via Austin S. Camacho: If you're an author who registered for the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference, they have moved the deadline to June 15 to submit a short story to be included in the collector's anthology that every attendee will receive in a goody bag when you arrive. Don't miss your chance to have everyone read your story alongside the likes of NY Times bestseller John Gilstrap. If haven't registered yet, it's not too late for you to be included in that special volume - but you have to be registered before you can submit your story. Visit the conference website for more details.

Jeff Pierce, over at The Rap Sheet blog and via his column for Kirkus, lists eight crime, mystery, and thriller works due for release between now and September 1 that he thinks would be particularly worth investing your time to read. He also has a long list of other crime fiction books being published this summer that should keep you busy at the beach.

Speaking of Jeff and The Rap Sheet, somehow I missed the blog's recent seventh anniversary celebration. If you aren't familiar with The Rap Sheet (and you should be), hop on over and check out one of the most consistently entertaining and informative crime fiction blogs out there.

Omnimystery News has its monthly list of new hardcover mysteries being published. June's roster ranges from the eighth Cotton Malone novel by Steve Berry to the tenth Lincoln Rhyme book by Jeffery Deaver to the ninth Walt Longmire installment from Craig Johnson. Other authors like Alafair Burke, Meg Gardiner, and Carl Hiaasen introduce new standalone novels this month.

Kobo announced a rise in e-reader sales of 145% in the first quarter of 2013. Its user base grew to 14.5m, with 15% of its new user base coming from the US. The top-selling e-books (in the UK) included Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Karin Slaughter's The Unremarkable Heart and James Patterson's Bloody Valentine.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Crime journalist Steve Lillebuen talking with GalleyCat about digital tools for crime writers; Declan Burke grills Chris Allen about his Alex Morgan series; and Mark Pryor joins the Mystery People.

Book Riot lists the best 15 movies starring bookstores.

Which Shakespeare character are you? Try this interactive PBS feature to find your inner Hamlet or Rosalind.

From the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction department, "10 Craziest Disguises Used To Commit a Crime."

 

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Dennis Lehane has signed on to write the screenplay for 20th Century Fox's adaptation of John D. MacDonald's 1964 mystery novel The Deep Blue Good-by. The film will reteam Lehane and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in the film version of Lehane's novel Shutter Island and is developing Lehane's short story "Running Out of Dog."

Deadline calls it a shocker, and that's an apt description of the news that Tom Cruise has exited as the star of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the remake of the classic TV series that Guy Ritchie is directing for Warner Bros. The official reason is that Cruise had a schedule conflict with the filming of Mission Impossible:5.

Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur, The World’s End) and Swedish actor Fares Fares (Zero Dark Thirty) have been added to the cast of director Daniel Espinosa's adaptation of the Soviet-era novel Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman were already on board.

Magnolia pictures picked up Erik Skjoldbaerg's thriller Pioneer at the recent Cannes film festival. The film stars Aksel Hennie (who also played the lead in the film Headhunters based on Jo Nesbo's novel) as a professional diver working for the oil companies in the 1980s who gets involved in a perilous deep-sea journey.

Universal is developing a remake of Timecop, the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme time travel action movie set in the near future where time travel is regulated by a police force.

TV

As Omnimystery News reminds us, the new seasons of Longmire and The Glades premiere tonight back to back on the A&E network, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

The new King & Maxwell series based on David Baldacci's novels is set to premiere June 10 on TNT. The show was developed by Shane Brennan (NCIS: Los Angeles) with a cast that includes Jon Tenney (The Closer) and Rebecca Romijn (X-Men) as private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.

FX Networks announced that the premiere of The Bridge will be Wednesday, July 10th. The show is based on the Scandinavian crime drama (but moved to the US/Mexico border) and follows two detectives, one from the United States (Diane Kruger) and one from Mexico (Demián Bichir), who must work together to hunt down a serial killer operating on both sides of the border. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News, which also has a trailer.)

Logan Marshall-Green has been signed to star in the Cinemax pilot Quarry, based on the novel by Max Allan Collins. It follows a Marine sniper who returns home from Vietnam to find that he's been shunned by people he cares about and is recruited into a network of contract killers and corruption along the Mississippi River.

Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours, the miniseries Carlos) has ben tapped to direct the film Hubris, which is inspired by a true story and based on an article by Hillel Levin. It follows a crew of thieves who rob a pawn shop and discover it is a front for the most brutal crime boss in Chicago history.

Detective Olivia Benson fans can breathe easier: actress Mariska Hargitay says she is returning to Law & Order: SVU for Season 15.

CMT has picked up an additional 11 episodes of the reality series Dog And Beth: On The Hunt, starring bounty hunters "Dog" and Beth Chapman.