In Reference to Murder

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Comfortable Coffin

Richard S. Prather was a former WWII Merchant Marine and author of some fifty books, including forty novels and story collections featuring his Tinseltown detective Shell Scott. He served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Private Eye Writers of America, in 1986. In 1960, the MWA was ready to publish their 13th anthology and chose Prather to serve as editor.

The result was The Comfortable Coffin, which had the same wisecracking and wacky sense of humor reflected in Pather's own writing. Prather chose the 15 stories to make the reader "smile, and chuckle, and—more than once—laugh out loud." They vary from Robert Arthur's "A Coffin for Mr. Cash," about the supervisor of a crematorium who becomes involved in an intricate plan to steal a fortune; to Stanley Ellin's "The Faith Of Aaron Menefee," about a shady faith healer, later made into an episode of Alfred Hithcock Presents; to Michael Gilbert's "Mr. Portway’s Practice," about an unexpected fall from grace by a staffer at the British Inland Revenue Service.

The chosen stories include a mix of well-known and more obscure (now) authors:

• The Bottled Wife (Michael Fessier)
• A Coffin for Mr. Cash (Robert Arthur)
• The Faith Of Aaron Menefee (Stanley Ellin)
• My Queer Dean! My Queer Dean! (Ellery Queen)
• Your Cake And Eat It (Berkley Mather)
• Squeakie’s Second Case (Margaret Manners)
• First Man At The Funeral (Dion Henderson)
• The Strange Case Of Mr. Elsie Smith (Dana Lyon)
• The Live Ones (Richard S. Prather)
• The Gentleman Caller (Veronica Parker Johns)
• Mr. Portway’s Practice (Michael Gilbert)
• Fin de Siecle (William O’Farrell)
• Kiss Me, Dudley (Evan Hunter)
• To Strike A Match (Erle Stanley Gardner)
• It Wouldn’t Be Fair (Jack Finney)

Mystery Melange

Sculpture Made of 25,000 Dr. Seuss Books at NYPL

The conference season is heating up, including the RT Booklovers Convention that starts today in Kansas City.
Guest authors in the mystery/thriller track include Ethan Cross, Heather Graham, Bob Mayer, Cherry Adair, Robin Perini, Caridad Piñeiro, Evonne Wareham, Genita Low, R. Scott Pearson and James Rollins. Coming up this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland, it's the annual Malice Domestic Convention, with Guest of Honor: Laurie R. King; Toastmaster: Laura Lippman; Lifetime Achievement: Aaron Elkins; Malice Remembers: Dick Francis; International Guest of Honor: Peter Robinson; Amelia Award: Carolyn Hart; Fan Guest of Honor: Cindy Silberblatt.

There's a new press setting up for neo-noir, speculative, and literary fiction called The Dark House Press. The new venture is an imprint of Curbside Splendor Publishing and will be headed up by editor-in-chief Richard Thomas. DHP's first book will be The New Black, an anthology featuring the best of "new noir," edited by Thomas, coming out Spring 2014 (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans via her blog.)

Mystery Scene's Spring Issue #129 features a cover story on the novels of C.J. Box. Other goodies include Kevin Burton Smith's ode to the "Hot Rides of Private Eyes Past"; Martin Edward's examination of Dorothy L. Sayers' real-life detective skills; a talk with former journalist-turned-novelist Brad Parks; Lynn Kaczmarek chatting with Erin Hart about her atmospheric mysteries set in Ireland; Brian Skupin catching up with Linda Barnes, who is making a welcome return to crime writing after ending her Carlotta Carlyle series a few years ago; and for Old Time Radio fans, a tribute to the Inner Sanctum Mystery program from Michael Mallory.

Blood and Tacos, edited by Johnny Shaw, recently published Issue #4 on Amazon, which is also a celebration of the 'zine's first anniversary. Check out stories from  Brad Mengel, Bart Lessard, Nick Slosser, Thomas Pluck and Oren Brimer.

This week's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "Howling," by Jen Conley, and the featured short fiction at Shotgun Honey is "Last Bit of Dirt" by John L. Thompson.

Also, last month, Thrillers, Killers, 'n' Chillers ezine announced it was closing the door to submissions, but editor David Barber softened the blow by announcing he was creating a new site called Thrills, Kills, 'n' Chaos for flash fiction up to 1000 words. The first two stories on the site are now up, including "Green Green Grass" by Matt Hilton and "Hand In Mine" by Erin Cole.

In 2012, Penguin Group USA launched Read Humane to fight animal cruelty and support the Humane Society. It was a tie-in with National Pet Month in May, and the publisher is holding the drive again this year. Six animal-themed Penguin titles will highlight the campaign with Read Humane seals on their covers, including mysteries Hounds Abound by Linda O. Johnston; Till Death Do Us Bark by Judi McCoy; The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon by Leann Sweeney; File M for Murder by Miranda James; Double Booked for Death by Ali Brandon; and the romance Rescue My Heart by Jill Shalvis.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Alexander Soderberg, stopping by Declan Burke's blog for the latest of his fun interviews titled "Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?"; and Duane Swierczynski spoke with Boing Boing about his new book, Point & Shoot.

Everyone loves librarians (and if you don't, you should!), and here are "25 Vintage Photos of Librarians Being Awesome." (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jake Gyllenhaal will star as a freelance L.A. crime reporter in Nightcrawler, which will also mark the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Rene Russo has signed on to co-star in the film.

Aldamisa Entertainment has acquired the rights to two spec scripts, Americatown by Ben Poole and Murder City by Will Simmons. Americatown is about an ex-cop who moves from poverty to power in third-world American slums of world leader China after the U.S. economy’s collapse, while Murder City follows an ex-con who becomes the hunter and target of a ruthless Detroit gangster. 

Paramount is picking up Spy's Kid, described as a Catch Me If You Can-style story set in the world of espionage featuring Shia LaBeouf and Robert De Niro as a son-father spy duo. The story is based on a six-part series of articles by Bryan Denson that told the true story of a traitorous spy who enlists his son to continue his work.

Thunder Road Pictures have acquired the rights to remake the foreign film Gang Story, about an aging former gangster who attempts to leave his life of crime behind him and live peacefully with his family. The project has already signed Liam Neeson to star as the gangster.  

Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the action film from Luc Besson titled Lucy, about a woman who is forced to become a drug mule, but the durgs go into her system, making her "an ass-kicking machine."

Larry A. Thompson Entertainment optioned Mark Hudelson's spec script Missing Mona Lisa, based on the true story of an Italian native who steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris and returns it to Italy before he is ultimately arrested. 

George Clooney, Grant Heslo, and Joshuah Bearman, the team behind Argo, are planning a film based on Bearman's upcoming article about the Coronado Club, said to be set in a resort city in Southern California and involving a group of young people who are used to smuggle drugs.

Twentieth Century Fox won a bidding war for film right to the spy-thriller novel Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews. The story is set in contemporary Russia and focuses on a young intelligence officer who goes up against an American counterpart and eventually her own government. 
 
Hugo Weaving is returning to his native Australia to star in the film The Mule (not to be confused with the Scarlett Johansson project mentioned above). The film follows a drug mule who is caught by police and the fallout after his arrest.

TV

FX is developing James Ellroy's novella Shakedown, a period drama inspired by the life of cop-turned-private eye Fred Otash and set in the tabloid world and underbelly of Los Angeles circa the late 1950s. James Ellroy and New Regency are also shopping an L.A. Confidential sequel targeted for the small screen.

Omnimystery News reported that Warner Bros. and  J. J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot are set to option Stephen King's 2011 time-travel thriller 11/22/63 to be adapted for a cable television series or mini-series.

USA is eyeing an expansion of the upcoming eighth (and possibly final) season of Psych and has ordered five more scripts from the "sleuth dramedy."

NBC announced it is renewing Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire and Revolution.

Casey Sherman has sold the rights to his 2005 Boston Strangler book, Search for the Strangler: My Hunt for Boston's Most Notorious Killer, and plans are to develop it into a television series.

USA is giving viewers a free sneak peek of the network's new crime drama Graceland by offering the pilot episode two weeks before its broadcast premiere, from April 29 to May 12, via video-on-demand. The show is about a group of undercover agents from the FBI, DEA and US Customs who all live together in a Southern California beach house.

ITV has renewed Vera, the crime drama based on characters created by Ann Cleeves, for a fourth season of four episodes. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Omnimystery News also reports that DCI John Barnaby (of Midsomer Murders) is getting a new partner. Gwilym Lee is joining the cast as Detective Sergeant Charlie Nelson following the departure of Jason Hughes, who played DS Ben Jones. Lee's debut will be the first episode of the 16th series, scheduled to air in the UK later this year.

The first annual Humphrey Bogart film festival, to be held in Key Largo, Florida, May 2-5, is premiering Warner Bros.' newly restored version of the 1936 noir film The Petrified Forest, which made Bogart a star.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Joining the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: author Philip Kerr, discussing his latest Bernie Gunther novel, A Man Without Breath.

The BBC's Open Book show featured Harlan Coben, talking about his new thriller novel Six Years, as well as Rodge Glass and a look at the London Book Fair.

THEATER

The musical based on the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis has gotten its premiere date at London's Almeida Theatre for December 3, with a run through January 25. The show has been given the tagline "a bloody satire," and is scripted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (TV's Glee and Broadway's Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark), with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will include be a new adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for its 2013-2014 season. Atwood's story is set in a dystopoian near-future where religious and misogynist persecution by the government is rampant.

Casting was announced for the UK West End return of The Ladykillers, the 2011 stage version of the iconic 1955 Ealing film comedy that was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2004 in a film version that starred Tom Hanks. The Ladykillers tells the "classic black comedy tale of a sweet little old lady, alone in her house, pitted against a gang of criminal misfits who will stop at nothing." The new cast will include Ralf Little, Simon Day, Angela Thorne, John Gordon Sinclair and Con O'Neill, and Chris McCalph.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Abandoned Room

Not a lot is known about Charles Wadsworth Camp (1879-1936). His most famous claim to fame may be as the father of author Madeline L'Engle, and most of the details of his life come from biographies about her. Camp moved to New York soon after his marriage to L'Engle's mother, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and wrote reviews of plays, concerts and operas. He also wrote plays of his own as well as at least eight novels of mystery and suspense, and his first novel, The Gray Mask was first published as a serial in Collier's magazine in 1915.

L'Engle described her father as a man who dressed elegantly every evening, whether he was eating dinner at home or taking the horse-drawn trolley a theater or concert hall to support many of his musician-friends. His niece recalled her uncle as a big, handsome man in a white linen suit smoking cigarettes on the porch and drinking whiskey. He served in World War I, and that is the source of some controversy about the author's cause of death. He died of pneumonia at age 57, and a common story was that Camp's lungs were weakened by mustard gas during the war that left him vulnerable to respiratory disease. However, one family member disputes that and attributes the pneumonia more to the smoking and drinking.

There's also not a lot about how successful his plays and novels were during his day, although The Gray Mask was made into a black and white silent film in 1915, with four more of his works adapted as silent films and two as black and white talkies. One of the silent films, from 1920, was released with the title Love Without Question, although it was based on Camp's novel The Abandoned Room: A Mystery Story, first seralized in Every Week and The Sunday Post magazine in 1917.

The Abandoned Room features "The Panamanian Sherlock Holmes," Carlos Paredes, who is confronted with a locked-room mystery. The murder of Silas Blackburn occurs in a room of The Cedars, a lonely, dilapidated country house—the same room with a history of people dying from head injuries, a room with both doors locked on the inside and the windows too high for anyone to have climbed up.

The main suspect is the victim's grandson, Bobby Blackburn, whose wastrel ways had angered his wealthy grandfather to the point he was threatening to cut him out of his Will and a rather princely amount (for 1917) of a million dollars. Making matters worse, Bobby was in New York the night of the murder but woke up in a daze in an even-more dilapidated house near The Cedars without any memory of the evening. Finding one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs under the victim's bed and a footprint under the window that fits his shoes doesn't help his case.

Despite Bobby's growing fears he may have somehow entered the locked room and murdered his grandfather in a drugged fog, there is more to meet the eye with strange happenings in the house—haunting cries; hints of ghosts; a woman in black wandering through the nearby woods; and secrets held by Bobby's cousin Katherine Perrine and the servants, allegedly the only ones with the victim the night of the murder, as well as the victim himself. Bobby's friend Carlos Paredes (tall and graceful, with jet-black hair parted in the middle and a carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard), invites himself to stay in The Cedars and eventually solves the crime, with a little twist at the end.
 .
The Abandoned Room isn't available in a regular print edition (except possibly in libraries), and since it's in the public domain, there are several versions on the Web from content-farm companies trying to make a buck. You can download a free copy via Project Gutenberg and Google Books, and Many Books also has four other Camp works.

Mystery Melange

Lorem Ipsum II by Jacqueline Rush Lee

Crime Writers of Canada announced the shortlist for the annual Arthur Ellis Awards, celebrating the best in Canadian crime writing. The nominees for Best Novel include Linwood Barclay, Trust Your Eyes; Giles Blunt, Until the Night; Sean Chercover, The Trinity Game; Stephen Miller, The Messenger; and Carsten Stroud, Niceville. Other categories include Best First Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Nonfiction, Best Juvenile/YA, Best Crime Book in French and Best Unpublished First Crime Novel: the Unhanged Arthur.

Congratulations go to Tana French, this year's winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category, for her book Broken Harbor.

Portland, Oregon's Murder by the Book store announced in January it would be forced to go out of business if they couldn't find a buyer by April. Although there was some interest, unfortunately no deal was reached. Co-owner Barbara Tom shared added on the store's Facebook page: "Although we'll just be disembodied virtual voices now instead of real people you can chat with at the store, we re-pledge our allegiance to the wonderful world of mystery books and its community."

In the Q&A Roundup this week, Sophie Hannah talks about World Book Night 2013 and her novel Little Face, one of the few crime fiction works chosen for the 20 recommended titles in the UK and Ireland; NPR interviewed D.A Mishani, an Israeli literature scholar who specializes in the history of detective fiction, about his own debut detective novel; Author and ThugLit editor ("Bid Daddy Thug"), Todd Robinson stopped by Black Gate to discuss his debut novel, The Hard Bounce.

Looking for some of the best of the new crime fiction reads? Check out these titles recommended by by Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times; these from Roberta Alexander for the San Jose Mercury News; Margaret Cannon's choices for The Globe & Mail; and some of the latest historical novels, via Jake Kerridge at The Telegraph. Publishers Weekly also compiled a listing of the summer mystery/thriller books they're looking forward to reading.

A church in Boston is putting a rare copy of the Bay Psalm Book up for auction. The book is the first title printed in America, in 1640, and is thought to be one of only 11 surviving copies. It can be yours for only $30 million dollars, the price the book is expected to fetch when it goes under the gavel in November.

Banned Books Week doesn't begin until September 22, but the American Library Association just released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year.

The Poetry of Crime

Themes of crime and violence in poetry have been around for about as long as poets have been putting paper to pen. Robert Browning wrote "The Ring and the Book," a murder novel in verse; T.S. Eliot's "Sweeney Agonistes" is about the murder of a young woman, while his "Murder in the Cathedral" is a verse drama that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral; and Carl Sandburg's "Killers" is about how war hardens men who learn to distance themselves from their acts of violence.

Writer/educator/editor Gerald So has combined his love of crime fiction and poetry into the website The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, which features a new crime-themed poem each week. An assortment of poems featured on the site were also gathered into anthologies, including the latest, The Lineup 4, edited by Gerald, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez, and R. Narvaez. In celebration of National Poetry Month in the U.S., Gerald is sponsoring the 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour as a way to promote poetry in general and crime poetry on the 5-2 blog in particular.

As an added bonus, all April revenue from 5-2 and Lineup books and merchandise at the 5-2 Shop at CafePress.com will also be donated to the nonprofit Academy of American Poets, to support poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. You can also participate by Tweeting comments and links to your favorite 5-2 poems, tagging them #30OfThe52.

Here's one of the featured poems from the 5-2, in fact the very first poem that was posted back in 2011. It's titled "Smack" and is by Nancy Scott, managing editor of the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, and the author of two books of poetry.

SMACK
by Nancy Scott

Massive head trauma, internal injuries.
The child won't make it to morning.
The mother and the grandmother sit
in the waiting area.
They haven't been told yet.
The boyfriend, the babysitter, denies
he was high on smack, insists the child
was asleep in the playpen,
when he ran to the deli to buy cigarettes.
He can't explain how the toddler
got hit by a car on the highway
seven blocks from the apartment.

Here's Nancy reading her poem:

Be sure and stop by the 5-2 to read and listen to the other close to 100 poems on the website, and if you're interested in submitting your own, send along your unpublished crime-related poem of  60 lines or fewer in any form or style. To follow Crime Poetry Weekly on Twitter, check out @poemsoncrime.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Crime writer SJ Bolton's debut novel Sacrifice, inspired by her research into Nordic mythology, is finally coming to the big screen, with filming beginning in mid-May (in Ireland, New York and Shetland). Peter A. Dowling has signed on to direct, with the cast including Connie Nielsen, Charles Dance and Rupert Graves.

Omnimystery News reported that Fox 2000 has acquired the film rights to John Grisham's 2011 legal thriller The Litigators; the studio already has another of Grisham's novels, The Racketeer, in production.

Paul Sorvino has joined the cast of the thriller Careful What You Wish For, playing a sheriff. The plot centers on a man named Doug (Nick Jonas), who has an affair with a woman (Isabel Lucas) married to an investment banker (Dermot Mulroney). When the husband dies suspiciously, Doug becomes entangled in the investigation. 

Image Entertainment picked up U.S. and Canadian film rights for Nick Murphy's thriller Blood, which follows the moral collapse of a close police family and stars Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, and Stephen Graham. 

The Weinstein Company optioned Matthew Quick's soon-to-be-published young adult novel of suspense Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock.

Sony purchased a spec thriller script from Tina Gordon Chism. The project, titled Inheritance, focuses on a young female lawyer handling the case of a New Orleans coffee magnate whose passing sparks a deadly chain of events.

Chernin Entertainment bought the rights to Marisha Pessl's unpublished book, Night Film. The story follows an investigative reporter, looking into the death of a beautiful young woman, whose discovery the victim is the daughter of a reclusive horror film director plunges the reporter into a journey of revenge and truth.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Writer/Director Franck Khalfoun's action thriller Motherload was picked-up by producers Alix Taylor and Pav Hatoupis. The story is about a woman imprisoned for murdering her husband who breaks out of prison and goes on a rampage across the country to retrieve her children placed in various institutions.

Director Robert Lorenz is teaming with producer Sam Worthington on the period indie movie, The Broken. The story is set in 1967 Oklahoma, where a war veteran investigating the suspicious death of his estranged son learns it was a covered-up gay bashing and goes on a one-man mission to take down the corrupt sheriff responsible.

TV

Showtime made it official and announced that Season Eight of Dexter, which will premiere June 30, will be the last for the serial-killer series. However, the network hasn't ruled out a spin-off series.

BBC is developing a remake of the 1980s drama Bergerac, which featured Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, an officer in the fictional Le Bureau des Étrangers police department. The network may be envisioning the project as a prequel to the original series. 

AMC has put in an order for a new futuristic procedural series titled Ballistic City. It's described as "Blade Runner meets Battlestar Galactica" and centers on a former cop thrust into the criminal underworld of a city housed in a space ship destined for an unknown world.

Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Anthony Head is joining Syfy's Warehouse 13 in a major recurring role as a bad guy, and Joel Gray will guest star in an upcoming episode as a magician.

NCB's supernatural police procedural Grimm, starring David Giuntoli, is moving to a better time slot on Tuesdays, taking over from the recently-cancelled Ready for Love.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Louise Penny and tour guide Marie Legroulx joined Radio Noon Montreal on the CBC to talk about the tour based on her mystery hero to be offered in Quebec this summer.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Widow Cherry: or The Mystery of Roaring Meg

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838–1903) was a British novelist, playwright, printer and journalist. He didn't have formal schooling but trained as a printer at a newspaper office at age 14. He immigrated to Australia in 1854 after a row with his father over religion and spent seven years on the goldfields. He settled in New Zealand, where he established his successful literary career and became assistant editor and part proprietor of the Otago Daily Times of Dunedin. Eventually he returned to England to devote himself to writing.

In a brief biography of Farjeon, Sir George Fenwick described him as being "The quick, alert, restless type, of rather short stature, with beady black eyes." His daughter, Eleanor, herself an author of children's books, once described her father as "Exuberant, impetuous and extravagant...His mood (when it wasn't irascible) was overflowingly generous."

His literary output was prodigious, writing nearly sixty novels in thirty-five years, most with mystery and adventure themes that drew on his colonial experiences in Australia and New Zealand. His books were bestsellers in their day, with the novel Grif in its seventeenth edition as of 1898, but they were gradually forgotten. Widow Cherry: or, The Mystery of Roaring Meg, is short enough to be a novella and first appeared in Tinsley's magazine. It was eventually bound into a volume of three Farjeon Christmas-themed stories, although the Christmas element isn't very present in Widow Cherry.

The story is set in Australia in a mining town named after the river that flows nearby, Roaring Meg. Young Jack Thumbwood has come to town to stake his claim to a potential mine, but needs the help of an elderly Cornish miner nicknamed Star-by-night and a friend from the old country, Fred Mellon, who Jack convinces to join him. From there, the premise is a fairly straightforward tale of romantic suspense when Jack is arrested for the murder of his young love's sister, and Fred has to investigate and defend him, with the help of his own love interest, the "Widow Cherry."

The denouement, or turning point for the murderer, relies upon his guilty conscience as he sees a bottle of his favorite liquor, Red Rum, reflected backward in a window. I haven't seen any quotes from Stephen King that he had ever read this novel before writing The Shining, but it was a bit of fun to find it buried in an obscure book from 1878.

Mystery Melange

 

Poe book sculpture by raidersofthelostart

If you live near the North Carolina Research Triangle region, "Making Crime Pay" is a workshop for aspiring mystery writers offered by the Halle Cultural Arts Center in Apex on Saturday, April 20. Authors Marcia Talley and Kate Charles will share their expertise in the intensive, one-day workshop including writing tips, preparing a manuscript for submission, agents, reference books, working methods, and publicity.

Authors M R Hall and William Ryan and literary agent David Headley have teamed up as "Hall Ryan Headley" to offer intro workshops to crime writing. On May 11-12, their two-day course in London aimed at everyone from experienced writers to absolute beginners, takes attendees through the elements of a crime novel, from characterization and plotting to choosing a setting and undertaking research.

ThrillerFest is adding a couple of new events to this year's conference: a FanFest and a Tweeting Contest. The former is a cocktail party with authors and their specially-invited fans, but it's also open to all conference attendees; the latter is for attendees and the general public, with winning Tweeters (just use the hashtag #Thriller13) receiving gift cards.

Dana Stabenow (author of the Kate Shugak series) launched a campaign to raise $1 million to build an Alaskan retreat for female writers, Storyknife Writers Retreat, only the second residency of its kind in the world. When the project is complete, writers will be admitted to the residency after a rigorous application process, including statements of need and samples of work. Upon successful admission, writers will come to Storyknife for two-to-eight-week residencies to focus on their diverse projects in uninterrupted peace, an atmosphere made possible by the Storyknife endowment.

The father and son author team Stephen King and Owen King will headline a benefit for PEN Canada on Thursday, October 24 in the Fleck Dance Theatre at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto. Award-winning mystery writer Louise Penny will moderate the discussion. Tickets for the general public will be available starting this Thursday, April 18 by calling the box office or by visiting www.readings.org.

Happy news for libraries and fans of crime fiction: the Library Journal reported that a survey of 232 public libraries found 55% of respondents said mystery continues to be the most popular genre in terms of circulation. The survey also found that in print fiction collections, 24.1% of materials are mysteries.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Irish author Marian Keyes, chatting with Mysterious Musings about her latest cozy/traditional novel, The Mystery of Mercy Close; and Dana Haynes joined Lesa's Book Critiques and talked about his novels under the pen name Conrad Haynes.

The Guardian posted "The 10 best real-life spies -- in pictures."

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Robert Redford is teaming up with David Lowery to adapt and direct The Old Man and the Gun, a film based on a 2003 New Yorker article about a bank robber who spent almost his entire life either in prison or breaking out of it. Redford would produce and star, while Lowery would direct.

The 15th annual Festival Of Film Noir has returned to the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Sponsored by The American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation, the festival runs through April 21. There's also a special 60th anniversary showing (at the Aero Theatre) of the long-lost noir Man in the Dark in fully restored 3-D.

Hat tip to It's a Crime for noting the BAFTA TV nominations for 2013. Nominees for Best Drama Series included the legal/detective series Ripper Street, Scott and Bailey, and Silk; nominees for Best International Series included crime dramas Homeland (U.S.) and The Bridge (Denmark/Sweden).

Universal released the first stills from the upcoming R.I.P.D., starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges. The film is based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Peter M. Lenkov and follows a young cop (Reynolds) who joins the Rest In Peace Department in the afterlife, a police force dedicated to solving crimes of the undead. The cop teams up with a gun-slinging cowboy from the old west (Bridges) in order to find the guy who killed him (Kevin Bacon).

The remake of the 1991 action thriller Point Break is looking more likely after the announcement that Ericson Core has signed to direct the film. The story follows an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a crime ring in the world of extreme sports. (Hat tip Omnimystery News.)

Sony Pictures won the bidding war for the right to remake the Korean crime film New World. The script, to be adapted by Will Fetters, is about a mob boss who is gunned down and the battle among mobsters who want to succeed him, including an undercover cop.

TV

Omnimystery News reports that Clerkenwell Films is developing an 18-part television adaptation of the nine spy thriller novels by Len Deighton featuring Ex-MI6 field agent Bernard Sampson. 

Tania Raymonde (from Lost) and Scott Eastwood, son of Clint Eastwood, are the first actors cast on the unnamed Chicago Fire spin-off about the Chicago Police Department.

A&E has ordered to series Those Who Kill, based on the Dutch crime drama Den som dræber from a concept by crime novelist Elsebeth Egholm. The 10-episode project stars Chloë Sevigny as a homicide detective James D'Arcy as a forensic psychiatrist.

Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer has signed on to play Irene Adler, the woman Sherlock refers to as "the woman" in the CBS series Elementary.

Homeland star David Marciano is leaving the show as a regular and is developing a cable drama based on a real criminal enterprise that operates out of a prison.

Patricia Arquette is joining the cast of Boardwalk Empire, playing Sally Wheet, a tough-as-nails Tampa speakeasy owner with connections to local gangsters.

Alfre Woodward is leaving True Blood to join the second season of Copper, BBC America's period police drama set in the 1860s in New York City.

Lifetime is producing a sequel to their recent human trafficking drama, this one to star Kirstie Alley and Jennifer Finnigan in a story about "the dark international crime enterprise of infant trafficking under the guise of seemingly regulated adoption."

Crime Time Preview has a first look at Gillian Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson in BBC2's The Fall. The series is set in Northern Ireland and follows Anderson's character who is called in to track down a serial killer terrorizing Belfast.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Nightline featured Mark Geragos, co-author of Mistrial: An Inside Look at How the Criminal Justice System Works...and Sometimes Doesn't.

Joining Imus in the Morning last week: Mary Higgins Clark, author of Daddy's Gone a Hunting.