In Reference to Murder

Mystery Melange

The International Thriller Writers (ITW) announced the winners of the Thriller Awards, handed out this past weekend at the annual Thrillerfest conference in New York City:

• Best Hardcover: Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier
• Best First Novel: The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor
• Best Paperback Original Novel: The Lost Man by Jane Harper
• Best Short Story: "Nana" by Helen Smith (in Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2)
• Best Young Adult Novel: Girl at the Grave by Teri Bailey Black
• Best E-book Original Novel: Pray for the Innocent by Alan Orloff

Previously announced awards included:

• ThrillerMaster: John Sandford
• Silver Bullet Award: Harlan Coben
• ThrillerFan Award: "Mystery Mike" Bursaw
  
  

During a cocktail party last week, The Strand Magazine announced the winners of its 2019 Strand Critics Awards. Best Mystery Novel was a tie: Transcription by Kate Atkinson and Sunburn by Laura Lippman. Best Debut Mystery Novel went to The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The David Award nominees for the best mystery are:  Yesterday's News by R.G. Belsky; Died in the Wool by Peggy Ehrhart; The Consultant by Tj O’Connor; Misty Treasure by Linda Rawlins; Second Story Man by Charles Salzberg; and Feral Attraction by Eileen Watkins. The award is named in memory of David G. Sasher, Sr., a great supporter of the mystery genre and of the early days of the Deadly Ink conference where the award is announced each year.

Ann Cleeves and Michael Fuller are among the writers added to this year's Killer Women Festival of Crime Writing and Drama line-up, as the event moves to a new date. Usually held in October, the next festival will take place on Sunday 15th March, 2020 at Brown’s Courtrooms, Covent Garden, London. Other special guests include Alison Levitt QC, chief counsel to the Crown Prosecution Service in the Savile enquiry; forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop CBE; and top criminologist and TV presenter Professor David Wilson. The festival will also celebrate the Killer Women mentoring scheme, which was launched this year to find and encourage new female voices in crime fiction from BAME and low income or working-class backgrounds.

Entries are now open for the 2019 New England (Australia) Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing. All genres of crime writing are eligible, from hard-boiled to comic, paranormal to rural, historical to contemporary, noir to cozy. Entries welcome from anywhere in Australia, from published or unpublished writers. Deadline for entries is October 7 with winners announced in mid-November.

The Margery Allingham Society has agreed with the Crime Writers’ Association to continue the popular short mystery competition for at least another five years, until 2024. The Society, set up to honor and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition that opens for entries in the autumn on the CWA’s website and closes every February.  The short story can be up to a 3,500 words long and must echo Margery Allingham’s definition of a mystery. (HT to Shots Magazine)

If you're a fan and collector of pulp fiction, check out this auction that ends on July 30. Items being offered up, from a Pleasant Valley, New York private collection of Pulp Art, include magazines such as Argosy,  Detective Fiction, Adventure, Street & Smith's Wild West Weekly, and more. The lot also features framed magazine covers, slides, posters, and photographs.

There's a call for papers for "The Absurdity of Racism: an International Chester Himes Conference" to be held June 4-5, 2020, at the American University of Paris. As the organizers note, "always controversial, combative and daring, Himes carved a niche for himself in the worlds of crime fiction and protest literature while negotiating the 'quality of hurt' of his black American and European expatriate worlds." Abstracts of 250 words, accompanied by a very brief bio, should be sent by October 15.

The summer edition of Suspense Magazine is out featuring new author interviews; articles by Dennis Palumbo, Ellen LaCorte, Natalie Walters, and Patricia Bradley; an Alan Jacobson piece with important information on author income trends ("Have You Heard?"); book excerpts (Patricia Bradley and Laura Elliot); plus authors Keith Raffel, Sheila Lowe and Sharon Love Cook share short stories, and there are also the latest book and movie reviews.

Dynamite Entertainments will continue the adventures of Agent 007 in graphic novel form by adapting Ian Fleming’s second Bond novel, Live and Let Die, with a publication date for this fall. Live and Let Die follows the successful Casino Royale release and agent 007 as he traces stolen pirate treasure from the smoky jazz clubs of Harlem all the way to the formidable shores of Jamaica. Writer Van Jensen returns for this entry following his critically acclaimed Casino Royale graphic novel with Dennis Calero, while Kewber Baal has been enlisted to provide art.

In more bucket-list items to consider for your travel plans this summer, if you find yourself in the rural Eifel area of Germany, check out the "Kriminalhaus" (House of Crime) in the small village of Hillesheim, near the famous racetrack Nuerburgring. Inside this old house there is a bookstore, a German crime fiction archive with over thirty thousand books, and the Cafe Sherlock decorated with memorabilia of Poirot, Mrs. Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Wallace, Alfred Hitchcock, and others. For more info and photos, click on over here.

In more travel things to do this summer, the Asiatic Library in Mumbai, one of the oldest literary societies of India, has been hosting "Night at the Library," a series of immersive experiences that will include readings, discussions, quizzes, and cosplay. On July 20, the subject will be Agatha Christie, with a torchlit tour of the library (which is also home to some priceless titles, like one of the only two original manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy) and other events themed around Dame Agatha.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Scenes From an Ongoing Moment" by Ken Meisel.

In the Q&A roundup, The Guardian spoke with Adrian McKinty about his life-changing phone call that set him on the road to literary success after almost quitting writing altogether; Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo tells the Irish Times why "The details of a murder don’t really disturb me"; and Michael Connelly chatted with The Bronzeville Bee about his Harry Bosch series and his past as a crime beat reporter.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Netflix has picked up Red Notice, which might arguably be seen as its biggest commitment yet to a feature film. The globetrotting action heist thriller, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, was picked up after Universal Pictures passed on the project and has since added Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot to star. After a recent controversy regarding whether Netflix films were eligible for Academy Awards, the academy decided not to change its policy, allowing Netflix to submit films like 2018's Roma, nominated for Best Picture and the winner of three other Oscars.

Dexter Fletcher, who most recently directed Rocketman, has been hired to direct Sherlock Holmes 3 at Warner Bros., with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law returning to star. Fletcher takes over for Guy Ritchie, who directed the previous two "Sherlock Holmes" films, with the third installment expected to hit theaters on Dec. 21, 2021.

Christoph Waltz is set to return as uber-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the still-untitled "Bond 25." Waltz first portrayed the iconic Bond archenemy in 2015’s Spectre (although Donald Pleasence, Max von Sydow, and Telly Savalas have all played the character in previous "Bond" installments). The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig for his fifth (and final) entry in the Bond franchise, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing and Oscar winner Rami Malek set to play the film’s new villain.

Vin Diesel announced on Instagram that Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren are returning for Universal’s Fast & Furious 9. Theron played cyberterrorist Cipher who forced Diesel’s Dom to turn coats on his street family and operate for her. Mirren played Magdalene Shaw, the mother of Deckard (Jason Statham) and Owen (Luke Evans). They join new castmember to the franchise, John Cena, whose role is under wraps. The first franchise spinoff title, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters on August 2, pairing Johnson’s former U.S. Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs and Statham’s ex-MI6 agent Deckard Shaw, who join forces to take on Idris Elba’s international terrorist Brixton. (Mirren also stars in Hobbs & Shaw.)

The psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, has had its release date pushed back to 2020 from its scheduled release date of October 4 of this year, following the decision to rework its structure. Based on a novel of the same name by A.J. Finn, the story follows a child psychologist who has become housebound due to suffering from agoraphobia, and spends her time spying her neighbors. While watching a seemingly perfect family who have just moved in, she witnesses a violent crime in their home but is torn over whether or not to call the police, since she is unable to trust herself enough to be certain of what she saw.

Two-time Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank is set to star in The Hunt, the political action thriller from screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse. Swank joins previously announced co-stars Ike Barinholtz, Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Justin Hartley, and Glenn Howerton, with Craig Zobel set to direct. The Hunt touches on the escalating tensions between the political left wing and right wing in modern-day America. Per Deadline, "Set in the same humans-hunting-humans vein as Battle Royale, The Belko Experiment, and The Purge, The Hunt will use status, political beliefs, and affiliations as the trajectory for the deadly pursuits."

A trailer was released for the espionage thriller, The Operative, based on Yiftach R. Atir's novel, The English Teacher, and starring Diane Kruger as an undercover Mossad agent in too deep and on the run.

A new documentary, Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire, recently screened as part of the sixth Volvo Scandinavian Film Festival, and reveals the man behind the myth of late author Stieg Larsson, who created the Millennium crime trilogy featuring Lizabeth Salander.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s short-form video platform Quibi has put in development The Fugitive, from Scorpion creator Nick Santora, Thunder Road Films, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Warner Bros. TV. In the same vein as the 1993 Harrison Ford-starring film and the 1960s TV series starring David Janssen, The Fugitive centers on blue collar worker Mike Russo, who just wants to make sure his wife, Allison, and 10-year-old daughter, Pearl, are safe, when a bomb rips through the Los Angeles subway train he’s riding on. But the faulty evidence on the ground and "tweet-now, confirm-later" journalism paint a nightmarish picture: it looks to all the world that Mike was responsible for the heinous act. Wrongfully—and very publicly—accused, Mike must prove his innocence by uncovering the real perpetrator, before the legendary cop heading the investigation can apprehend him. 

In further news from Quibi, the short-form service is developing an adaptation of Harriet Tyce’s psychological thriller novel, Blood Orange, with Bodyguard and Line of Duty producer World Productions. The adaptation is being pitched as a twelve-part series consisting of ten episodes. The novel, which was published earlier this year, follows Alison Wood, a criminal barrister taking on her first murder case.

The streaming service eOne has picked up Major Crimes, an original anthology series that will follow the most daring heists, robberies, and crimes in Los Angeles history. Chris Collins (The Wire, The Sopranos) will pen the project and serve as showrunner. Each season of Major Crimes will be built around a single crime and take an in-depth look at both the detectives and criminals behind the case.

British network ITV has renewed Grantchester for another year. The show’s fifth season is set in 1957, the year Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the British people that they had "never had it so good." For many of the residents of Grantchester, it really will feel like they’re in a delightful new Eden, but for all the talk of paradise on earth and faith-in-action, Geordie Keating (Robson Green) knows that trouble is never far away.

Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts) is set for a major role opposite Jude Law in the HBO and Sky drama, The Third Day, penned by Utopia writer Dennis Kelly. In the series, Law plays Sam, who is being drawn to a mysterious island off the British Coast and thrown into the unusual world of its secretive inhabitants. Isolated from the mainland, the rituals of the island begin to overwhelm him, and he is confronted by a trauma from his past. As the line between reality and fantasy blurs, Sam finds himself immersed in an emotional quest that puts him at odds with the islanders and begins to threaten their way of life. Waterston will play Jess, who Sam encounters on the island.

Netflix’s Mindhunter is set to return for its second season on August 16, nearly two years after the launch of the crime drama. The series, which stars Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, initially launched in October 2017 and was quickly renewed for a second season a month after its debut. The second season of the series, which is about the early days of the FBI’s criminal psychology and criminal profiling division, will center on the Atlanta Child Murders, a series of killings between 1979 and 1981 that slain African-American children, teenagers and adults.

Woody Harrelson will star opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Kate, the Netflix thriller about a ruthless criminal operative who, after she’s irreversibly poisoned, has less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her enemies. In the process, she forms an unexpected bond with the daughter of one of her past victims.

Hulu’s upcoming Abigail Spencer-led thriller series, Reprisal, has added four series regulars to its cast, including Craig Tate (12 Years a Slave), Wavyy Jonez (Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.), Shane Callahan (Outsiders) and Rory Cochrane (CSI: Miami). Created, written and executive produced by Josh Corbin, the "hyper-noir" Reprisal follows Katherine (Spencer), a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, sets out to take revenge against her brother and his bombastic gang of gearheads.

Carrie-Anne Moss will join season 2 of CBS All Access’s Tell Me a Story, while Season 1 stars Danielle Campbell, Paul Wesley, Odette Annable, and Natalie Alyn Lind are set for a return to the anthology fairytale series that refashions the tales into darker stories of crime, sex, and murder. Season 2 will feature three iconic princesses: the ladies from "Beauty and the Beast," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella." Moss, the matriarch of the sophomore run, is tied to all of them. 

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club podcast welcomed S.C. Perkins, whose debut mystery novel, Murder Once Removed, was the winner of the 2017 Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery competition, and also Leslie Karst, discussing the latest in her Sally Solari culinary mystery series, Murder From Scratch.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of "Therapy, Overdose, and a Veiled Threat."

Thrill Radio had a ThrillerFest theme this week, including one of the founding members of the International Thriller Writers, bestselling author and creator of Rambo, David Morell, as well as Kimberly Howe, ThrillerFest's Executive Director.

Debbi Mack started off a new season of the Crime Cafe podcast with an interview of Andy Rausch, a film journalist, screenwriter, film producer, actor, graphic novelist, and crime writer of such novels as Elvis Presley, CIA Assassin.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed author Michael Lindley, who latest, Death on the New Moon, continues the story of attorney, Hanna Walsh, and Detective Alex Frank in the Low Country of South Carolina.

THEATER

The Hayes Theater in Australia is presenting Catch Me If You Can beginning July 20th. With book by Terrance McNally, lyrics by Marc Shaiman, and music by Scott Whittman and Marc Shaiman, the production is based on the true story of precocious teenager Frank Abignale, Jr., who ran away from home and posed as a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer using millions in forged checks – until Frank’s lies caught the attention of FBI agent, Carl Hanratty.

The Mars Theater in Lafayette, GA is staging a production of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. The classic tale of eight strangers stranded on an island with a murderer in their midst runs through July 21st.

Quote of the Week

FFB: Rising of the Moon

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell (1901–1983) taught English, Spanish, history and games in various schools in and around London and was a lifelong student herself, interested in poetry, archaeology, medieval architecture, Freud, and witchcraft (thanks to the influence of her friend, author Helen Simpson), and she was also a member of the British Olympic Association. She penned sixty-six detective novels under her own name, published between 1929 and a posthumous book in 1984, all featuring Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. She also wrote another series of detective stories under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie (with architect Timothy Herring), as well as historical and children's books. 
 
One of the earliest members of the British Detection Club, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Mitchell is often compared to the other two Grande Dames and included on lists of the brightest lights of the Golden Age of detective fiction. But with 76 books to her credit, critics like to point out that quantity didn't always mean quality in her novels, something the author addressed in an interview published in the Armchair Detective in 1976:  "I know I have written some bad books, but I thought they were all right when I wrote them. I can't bear to look at some of them now...The books I dislike most are Printer's Error and Brazen Tongue—a horrible book." That may be, but her beloved protagonist Mrs. Bradley still stands as one the most unusual and memorable in detective fiction.

The thrice-married Mrs. Bradley is a medical practitioner, psychiatrist, criminologist and consultant to the Home Office. She herself is an author, including A Small Handbook of Psychoanalysis and articles in psychological journals, specializing in the psychology of crime. In the nonfiction book Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Michele Slung wrote that Mrs. Bradley's "detecting methods combine hoco-pocus and Freud, seasoned with sarcasm and the patience of a predator toying with its intended victim." Mrs. Bradley is variously described by other characters in the books as being "dry without being shrivelled, and bird-like without being pretty," "a hag-like pterodactyl," and "Mrs. Crocodile." She is an accomplished player at bridge, pool, snooker, darts and throwing knives, and a dead shot with an airgun.

Although Mitchell always denied she included much blood and violence in her stories, there's plenty of poisoning to be found (such as deadly nightshade grafted onto to a tomato plant) with horrific side effects, lots of throat-cutting, and one victim was even minced into sausages and hung from hooks. The main premise of 1945's Rising of the Moon, one of Mitchell's personal favorite books, involves a a Ripper-like killer wreaking havoc on the streets of the small village Brentford by mutilating young women and slitting their throats when the moon is full.

Reminiscent of the precocious narrator of Alan Bradley's Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie over sixty years before that book's publication, Rising of the Moon is told through the eyes of 13-year-old Simon Innes, who teams up with his 11-year-old brother Keith, becoming junior Hardy Boys trying to solve the bloody crimes. Their task becomes even more urgent when they spy the potential murder weapon at a local junk shop run by their friend—an eccentric old lady who has a "rag and bone man" as a lodger—then realize the knife may belong to their older brother/guardian and worry he'll be accused of murder.

In that same Armchair Detective interview referenced above, Mitchell remarked Rising of the Moon recalled much of her own Brentford childhood, she being Simon in that story and her "adorable brother Reginald" the model for Keith. That may be one reason Mitchell doesn't patronize her young protagonists, painting them as curious, clever and witty in their matter-of-fact observations, such as "All detective work is sneaking. That's why only gentlemen and cads can do it," or Simon's solemn thought after one almost-disastrous attempt at sleuthing:

In this innocent belief, our progress back to the high street was robbed of much of its terror. The moon was now flooding the sky. Her image reflected in the water was no longer a thing of murky terror, for we were vain-glorious; we were heroes. We had been under fire. We had been suspected of being murderers. We had filled some female heart with excessive terror. We felt we had been blooded, and were men.

In Mrs. Bradley they find a sympathetic ear and are immediately put at ease by her confidence in them, as she becomes their greatest ally and supporter. She in turn offers up little insights into life as part of their education, as in "These bestial realities must sometimes be faced...Life is inclined to be sordid. Our friends are not always what they seem." Mrs. Bradley's role in Rising of the Moon is important, although she actually only appears half-way through the book, with the heart of the story carried by the winsome Simon.

The book is at turns darkly tongue-in-cheek, eccentric, warm and ultimately charming. Though the plotting is a bit muddled and disjointed at times, if you're willing to put that aside, the endearing narration and almost dreamy setting pull you in and make you feel a little like you've become immersed in a surrealistic painting. That may be why Christopher Fowler said in the Independent that Mitchell's works are "more interesting than Christie's, if more problematic."

Radio adaptations for the BBC were made of two of her books with Mary Wimbush starring as Mrs Bradley, and five of Mitchell's novels were loosely adapted for the 1990s television series The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries featuring Diana Rigg (Rising of the Moon was one, although the plot barely resembles the novel). One critic groused that the latter turned Mrs. Bradley into a glamorous Miss Marple, but it may have helped rekindle some interest in the author. Several novels have been recently re-issued and Isis Soundings has plans to produce two Mrs. Bradley books as audiobook recordings.

Author R&R with Robert McCaw

Robert McCaw grew up in a military family traveling the world. After graduating from Georgetown University, he served as a lieutenant in the US Army before earning his law degree from the University of Virginia. Thereafter he practiced as a partner in a major international law firm in Washington, DC, and New York City, and maintained a home on the Big Island of Hawai’i. McCaw brings a unique authenticity to his Koa Kāne Hawaiian mystery novels in both his law enforcement expertise and his ability to portray the richness of Hawai’i’s history, culture, and people.

In Off the Grid, released this month, a scrap of cloth fluttering in the wind leads Hilo police Chief Detective Koa Kāne to the tortured remains of an unfortunate soul left to burn in the path of an advancing lava flow. For Koa, it’s the second gruesome homicide of the day, and he soon discovers the murders are linked. These grisly crimes on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island could rewrite history―or cost Chief Detective Koa Kāne his career as the CIA, the Chinese government, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, attempt to thwart Koa’s investigation and obscure the victims’ true identities.

Undeterred by mounting political pressure, Koa pursues the truth only to find himself drawn into a web of international intrigue. While Koa investigates, the Big Island scrambles to prepare for the biggest and most explosive political rally in its history. Despite police resources stretched to the breaking point, Koa uncovers a government conspiracy so shocking its exposure topples senior officials far beyond Hawaiʻi’s shores.

Robert McCaw stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R and talk about writing and researching his novel:

For me research is a way of life. I’m always in research mode, whether walking the streets of New York or the beaches and villages of Hawaii, eating out in restaurants, online, in libraries, or even in the shower. Research for me is like street photography; it’s about seeing and capturing the moment. But we “see” with more than our eyes, and optimizing the value of our time spent researching, we must use our intellect to process information from multiple sources using all our senses to tease out the informative moment. That moment may be geographic as in the setting for a scene or personal as in transforming acquaintances or strangers into fictional characters. It can also be linguistic as in fashioning dialog or atmospheric as in describing sounds and smells. Often it is intellectual as in remembering a thought or emotion provoked by the immediate company or surroundings.

The seed that grew into the Koa Kāne mystery thriller series sprouted while I was on a star-gazing trip atop the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. In addition to visiting the Keck telescope, the largest optical telescope in the northern hemisphere, I saw quarries where centuries ago ancient Hawaiians manufactured stone tools from particularly hard lava found on the upper slopes of the 14,000-foot mountain. Fascinated by the contrast between the ancient and the modern, I set out to learn everything I could about both.

With respect to the quarries, I hit the Bishop Museum and the UH Manoa libraries, bought archaeological texts, searched online, and, of course, made a trip to the quarries. I studied stone tool-making, examined adzes in museum collections, and traced some of the far-flung places where implements from Mauna Kea have been recovered. In my research, I discovered a mystery the archaeologists have yet to solve: Why after centuries of production did the ancients abandon the Mauna Kea quarries, probably in the sixteenth century, long before the first western contact with the islands? And therein lies one of the central themes just beneath the surface of my first Koa Kāne mystery thriller, Death of a Messenger.

Astronomy is the career I didn’t pursue, and fascinated by the cutting-edge technology of Mauna Kea’s huge Keck telescope, I immersed myself in text books, magazine articles, and observatory websites, delving into segmented mirror technology, adaptive optics, artificial guide stars, and exciting modern discoveries about the cosmos. I visited observatories and talked to astronomers. Standing on the platform at Keck’s prime focus is a form of research that inspires imagination.  From these research moments emerged a whole cast of fictional characters, animated by professional jealousies, populating action scenes atop Mauna Kea in Death of a Messenger.

Newspaper research also yields great fonts of information. Dozens of news stories about a significant international event underpin the plot of Off the Grid, the second in the Koa Kāne series of mystery thrillers. Google maps and satellite views provide useful details. Tourist books often spark ideas about locations, offering brief insights into the history or significance of places that provoke follow-up research. Advertisements can reveal details about vehicles, communications gear, spy equipment, guns, explosives, and other implements of the thriller trade. Sirchie holds itself out as the global leader in criminal investigative solutions, and its catalogs and websites are full of information on forensic equipment and practices. Google images are a great sources of pictures of potential characters, their clothing, and jewelry.

Police and legal procedures differ widely from one jurisdiction to another, and Lee Lofland’s Writers’ Police Academy is a fabulous resource. At these annual conferences, federal, state and local law enforcement officers teach the basics of police work, including fingerprinting, ballistics, undercover operations, hand-to-hand combat, canine unit activities, drug interdiction, warrant execution, traffic stops, bomb disposal, and numerous other police activities. These seminars account for many authentic details in my novels.

The Big Island of Hawaii is a writer’s gold-mine of decisive moments, a place where one researches with one’s eyes, ears, and heart. Hours walking around Hilo, Hawi, Honakaʻa, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and the Green Sand beach lend visual and atmospheric authenticity to scene after scene in my novels. Watch hot lava creep across a barren landscape and it’s not hard to imagine it covering a body as in Off the Grid. Go to dinner at a local favorite restaurant only to find it closed because the law caught up with the owner, a fugitive from justice, and imagine other fugitives hiding out in a remote rain forest as in Off the Grid. Seek out an artist to commission a painting, and get a primer on how real people do in fact live off the grid.

Life is research if you open all your senses to it.

You can read more about author Robert McCaw and his books via his website, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Off the Grid is now available via Oceanview Publishing and can be purchased via all major book retailers.

Mystery Melange

The Force by Don Winslow has won this year’s Falcon Award, presented by Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society annually to an outstanding work of crime fiction. This is Winslow's fifth Falcon Award in addition to Missing: New York (no English version); The Winter of Frankie Machine; The Power of the Dog; and A Cool Breeze on the Underground. Other previous Falcon recipients include Roger Hobbs, S.J. Rozan, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Michael Z. Lewin, Joe Gores, James Crumely, and Robert B. Parker. (HT to The Gumshoe Site)

The longlist titles were announced for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, awarded annually to an outstanding work of contemporary fiction in any genre. Crime fiction books on the list include Our House by Louise Candlish; Memo from Turner by Tim Willocks; The Puppet Show by M.W. Craven; The Poison Bed by Elizabeth Fremantle; Snap by Belinda Bauer; and The 7 ^1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. (HT to Ayo Onatade at Shots Magazine)

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association has scheduled a July 21 walking tour of areas in South Berkeley, California, that are associated with mystery/sci fi author, editor, and critic Anthony Boucher (a/k/a William Anthony Parker White). The walk will be guided by Randal Brandt, a librarian who curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of Southern California at Berkeley's Bancroft Library. The tour will also cover sites associated with Boucher’s fellow mystery writer Mary Collins, the California Writer’s Club, pioneering film critic Pauline Kael, and others. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

A set of "extremely rare" photographs showing crime writer Agatha Christie as a child is to go on public display in conjunction with the annual International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay in September. The pictures, taken between 1895 and 1898, show Christie at her childhood home of Ashfield in Torquay, Devon, where the author spent much of her life.

Lola Okolosie has won the inaugural Novel Studio scholarship from City University for her novel-in-progress, Returnees. The award, sponsored by thriller writer and course alumna Harriet Tyce, was set up to support a talented writer from a low-income household. The Novel Studio is part of City University’s programmes of short courses and has been running since 2004. Each year, the Novel Studio takes on 15 students, who are helped to develop their novels by professional writers and editors.

Up-and-coming authors are being given the chance to take to the stage and share their work with international bestselling crime authors during the Granite Noir festival in February 2020 in Aberdeen, Scotland. Applications have now opened for the "locals in the limelight" program, and those interested in applying should send an extract of their work, a one-paragraph biography and their contact information by noon on September 2.

Clitheroe is now home to one of only two specialized crime bookshops in the UK. Number 10 on Castlegate was recently opened by crime fiction buff Zoe Channing, who has 30 years' experience working in arts development. Number 10 - in the shadow of the castle - will specialize in contemporary and classic crime fiction, murder mysteries, and thrillers. Channing is a Scandi noir fan and is also looking at introducing a new wave of European crime writers to readers, as well as planning to arrange author events ranging from book signings to talks. 

Crime writers didn't react positively to claims from organizers of the Staunch Prize, launched last year to award crime books with no violence against women, that their books could bias rape juries and trials. As Kaite Welsh added in an opinion piece in The Guardian, "I can’t write about a world without rape – because I don’t live in one," adding that women read and write crime fiction as a way to understand real experience. In more fallout, Staunch Prize founder Bridget Lawless defended the prize to The Bookseller, even as authors like Angela Clarke doubled down by saying "Though the original intentions may have been good, it now feels like this prize and their repeated vocal attacks on the crime writing community are yet another way to silence women and not let them talk about the things we suffer and face. It feels like censorship." 

Summer is the time for travel, and CrimeReads has "6 Mysteries That Capture the Essence of England's Capital" as well as crime fiction from Dubai.

Of course, if you're like Clea Simon, you might think that "political chaos and international threats create too much anxiety to make summer thrillers enjoyable."

Life imitates crime fiction: Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn has spoken out about her novel being used as a sensationalized motive in the disappearance of Connecticut mom Jennifer Dulos, who vanished after dropping her kids off at school on May 24. Flynn said she was "absolutely sickened" that lawyers for Dulos’s estranged husband and his girlfriend are using the book as a potential explanation for the disappearance. Both suspects have been charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution in the case and have pleaded not guilty.

More life imitates crime fiction: The suspect in the gruesome slaying of Utah college student Mackenzie Lueck self-published a novel about a teenager who witnessed his friend and his neighbor burn to death, and began advertising the story one year before Lueck was killed.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Denkmal" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, the Sydney Morning Herald spoke with Mick Herron about his six Slough House spy thrillers and what it's like being compared to John le Carre; the Mystery People's Scott Butki chatted with Christina Alger, about her new novel, Girls Like Us, inspired by the real-life Gilgo Beach murders; Crime Fiction Lover welcomed Mike Craven, who had careers in the army, social work, and as a probation officer before turning his hand to a series of books about Cumbrian DI Avison Fluke; and Mark Billingham joined a Q&A with the Sunday Post, discussing how a chilling letter from killer Ian Brady sparked the idea for Billingham’s latest novel.

Author R&R with Sheryl Browne

Author Sheryl Browne writes psychological thrillers and contemporary fiction, and her works include two short stories in Birmingham City University anthologies as well as nine novels. A member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and previously writing for award winning Choc Lit, Sheryl also obtained a Certificate of Achievement in Forensic Science and – according to readers – she makes an excellent psychopath.

In Browne's suspense thriller, The Babysitter, Mark and Melissa Cain are thrilled to have found Jade, a babysitter who is brilliant with their young children. Having seen her own house burn to the ground, Jade needs them as much as they need her. Moving Jade into the family home can only be a good thing, can’t it?

As Mark works long hours as a police officer and Melissa struggles with running a business, the family become ever more reliant on their babysitter, who is only too happy to help. And as Melissa begins to slip into depression, it’s Jade who is left picking up the pieces.

But Mark soon notices things aren’t quite as they seem. Things at home feel wrong, and as Mark begins to investigate their seemingly perfect sitter, what he discovers shocks him to his core. He’s met Jade before. And now he suspects he might know what she wants. Mark is in a race against time to protect his family. But what will he find as he goes back to his family home?

Sheryl Browne stops by In Reference to take some Author R&R about her writing process and research:

 

I’m often asked what prompts me to write psychological thriller. I’ve always been fascinated by what shapes people and I like to strip away the layers and, hopefully, share with readers a little of what lies beneath the surface. A writer’s mind thrives on exploration. Every scenario, every face, every place tells a story. A walk through a cemetery or a glimpsed situation – an argument between a couple, for instance - and I have my stimulus for a book. Once I have an idea of the story I want to tell, I find the character tends to lead me. There are many facets to the human character; no one can be truly good or irretrievably bad. Or can they? The driving force linked to most murders, I’m reliably informed by a former DCI, is humiliation. How many of us haven’t felt humiliated at some point in our lives? Who hasn’t wished for revenge? In writing psych thriller, I’m exploring the darker side of human nature, looking at the nature vs nurture conundrum. Is badness in the genes? Is it brain function or childhood experience that creates a monster? A combination of all three?

In The Babysitter, we have Jade, whose childhood experiences definitely shaped her. Revenge plays a big part in the story, but is she fundamentally bad? I’m always interested to hear readers’ feedback on the subject. This wasn’t the easiest story to write as it does touch on subjects that some might find difficult to deal with, loss and mental issues. Having been a carer to someone struggling with mental illness and therefore very aware of the nightmare that finding the right balance of medication can be, I suppose you could say I’d already done my research. Even then, though, talking to people about their experience is important in order to write about such issues sensitively and honestly.

Similarly, The Affair deals with a particularly sensitive subject: that of the loss of a child. Without going into detail, again this is an area I am familiar with. In the writing, I felt Alicia’s every emotion. I struggled to live them alongside her. I’m not sure this is the right place for a dedication, but I’d like to leave one anyway: to any mother who has had to grieve the loss of a child at any stage from pregnancy and beyond. When the daily pace of life takes over, a short life lived and lost is often grieved silently. That life though, grown inside you, is never forgotten. The Affair obviously isn’t my story, but that was the nucleus that set the story in motion.

So, am I ‘writing what I know?’ To a degree, yes. In writing about people, you do draw on experience, but personally I find it terribly stifling. We have a world of information at our fingertips nowadays. We can travel anywhere. We don’t need to shy away from writing about a character’s job, era, or a situation that might challenge our experience of it. We can research it. The internet is a massive boon to writers nowadays, you can access some fascinating case studies and headline news stories which can spark an idea – I dread to think what my browsing history looks like. All that said, becoming a writer is a learning curve and I honestly think the best tool you have at your disposal is reading. The fact is, Stephen King is so right, “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write”. Other authors can show you how to weave a story and they can be a massive inspiration for your own writing.

 

In regard to location, we have Google Earth, of course. You can’t quite get the real flavour of a place, though, I find. I may have to take a little holiday, therefore. All in the name of research, of course.

Just before I set off, for anyone needing info on story structure (and going cross-eyed on googling it), Into the Woods by John Yorke is a brilliant study of story construction. If you’ve ever had any issues with plotting and the development of your ideas then research no more. This was a subject covered on my MA course, but Into the Woods simplifies it beautifully.

Happy writing and reading all!

 

You can find out more about Sheryl Browne, The Babysitter, and her other writing via her website. You can also follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The Babysitter and the author's other books are available via all major book retailers.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Media entrepreneur and producer David Haring has picked up the rights to NYT bestselling author Kat Martin’s Texas Trilogy book series, with plans on developing the first book, Beyond Reason. Released in 2017, Beyond Reason centers on Carly Drake, a woman who has recently moved home to take over her grandfather’s trucking company but is soon stalked by danger.

Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired world sales rights for Blood On Her Name, a Southern gothic thriller directed by newcomer Matt Pope and starring Bethany Anne Lind (Ozark), Will Patton (Remember The Titans), and Elisabeth Röhm (Joy). The neo-noir feature centers on a single mother and her panicked decision to cover up an accidental killing, a choice that spirals out of control after her conscience compels her to return the dead man’s corpse to his family.

Sam Claflin, perhaps best known for playing Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games films, is the latest to sign on to Legendary’s Enola Holmes movie, based on The Enola Holmes Mysteries books series by Nancy Springer. He'll be joining star and producer Millie Bobby Brown, as well as Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Fiona Shaw, and Adeel Akhtar.

Nigerian-British actress Susan Wokoma has also landed a role in the Harry Bradbeer-directed Enola Holmes adaptation, which follows the adventures of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes’ much younger sister, Enola, a highly capable detective in her own right.

The first trailer for Rian Johnson’s Knives Out was released, and it shows a wild take on whodunits that Johnson says is a tribute to Agatha Christie. The film stars Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Katherine Langford, Noah Segan, Edi Patterson, Riki Lindhome, Jaeden Martell, and Christopher Plummer.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Agatha Raisin producer Free@Last TV and Cold Courage writer Brendan Foley are developing a TV detective drama based on Freeman Wills Crofts’ classic Inspector French novels. Wills Crofts (1857-1957), a railway engineer turned author, was a peer of Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and was thought to be highly regarded by these writers. Set in 1920s Ireland, Scotland and England, Inspector French is a dogged world-class detective banished from Scotland Yard to post-partition Northern Ireland where he battles to introduce modern policing techniques to a reluctant force.

There's to be another remake attempt at Lovejoy, the Ian McShane-starring British television comedy-drama mystery series based on the novels by John Grant (under the pen name Jonathan Gash), which ran from 1986-1994 on BBC1. Blue Sky Pictures acquired the rights to the original novels with plans to "update it for the 21st century for both the millions who followed the original and a whole new generation of viewers." The series centers on roguish antiques dealer Lovejoy, who has a reputation for recognizing exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antiques from fakes.

Paramount Television has put in development Lock Every Door, a thriller drama based on Riley Sager’s just-released novel. The description reads "No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich, famous, or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s oldest, most elite and secretive buildings in the Upper West Side. When a fellow apartment sitter goes missing, Jules begins to dig into the Bartholomew’s mysterious history, discovering sordid secrets hidden within its walls and that her fate may already be doomed like those that came before her."

The Kaley Cuoco-led adaptation of The Flight Attendant has been picked up by WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service. Based on Chris Bohjalian’s New York Times bestseller of the same name (for which Big Bang Theory alum, Cuoco, bought the rights in October 2017), the thriller follows Cassandra Bowden, a flight attendant who wakes up hungover in a Dubai hotel room…with a dead body next to her. Instead of informing the police, she joins her fellow crew members on a flight to NYC, where she is met by FBI agents with a few questions about her recent layover. Unable to piece together what happened, Cassandra begins to suspect that she might be the killer.

Covert Affairs’ Kari Matchett and True Blood’s Stephen Moyer are set to star in the Canadian spy drama, Fortunate Son. The series, which is set in the social and political chaos of the late 1960s, the Vietnam War, and the anti-war protest movement, follows a woman who helps smuggle Vietnam War deserters and draft evaders across the Canadian border. What she doesn’t know is how these actions will unfold and who is watching her.

Amazon is finalizing a third season renewal of the thriller series, Absentia, starring and executive produced by Castle alumna Stana Katic. Created by Gaia Violo and Matt Cirulnick and based on a pilot script originally written by Violo, Absentia centers on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic), who had disappeared without a trace and was declared dead after hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers.

The suspense drama series Ransom, which has aired on CBS in the U.S., Global in Canada and TF1 in France, will not be getting a fourth season. Ransom follows crisis and hostage negotiator Eric Beaumont (Luke Roberts) and his elite Crisis Resolution team who work to balance the demands of their personal lives with their careers as negotiators who handle high-pressure kidnappings and hostage situations.

Shortform video streaming platform Quibi won't launch until spring 2020, but the venture founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg has already lined up a long list of programming including: El Señor de Los Cielos, a three-hour series that will tell the origin story at of the drug lord at the center of Telemundo's top-rated telenovela; #FreeRayshawn, about a young, black Iraq War veteran who is set up by New Orleans police; the comic murder mystery, Mapleworth Murders; Wolves and Villagers, described as a "Fatal Attraction-esque story"; and an untitled Liam Hemsworth thriller.

ABC has set premiere dates for its fall TV series, including the premieres of the mystery-themed thriller drama Emergence, and Stumptown, about a sharp-witted army veteran who becomes a private investigator in Portland, Oregon. Returning crime drama shows also include How to Get Away with Murder and The Rookie.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club podcast welcomed Susan Elia MacNeal, the bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mystery series.

Writer Types hosts Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden chatted with Owen Laukkanen, Stephanie Gayle, Greg Herren, and Carter Wilson.

Read or Dead, hosted by Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, talked about a new seven-figure film deal, as well as Stranger Things and all things Nancy Drew.

Alison Gaylin was the featured guest at Speaking of Mysteries, discussing Never Look Back, her new mystery in which the decades-old murder spree being investigated by Quentin Garrison for Closure, his true-crime podcast, is personal.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of "Mass Shooting Aftermath, Partners, [and]Inside a Detective Office."

THEATER

LA's Geffen Playhouse has extended the run of Mysterious Circumstances through July 22. Inspired by The New Yorker article "Mysterious Circumstances: The Strange Death of a Sherlock Holmes Fanatic" by David Grann, the play focuses on Richard Lancelyn Green, the world's foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is found dead in his London apartment. With multiple suspects and competing motives, Green's death raises questions that may be answered only by Holmes himself.

St. Paul, Minnesota's Park Square Theatre is presenting Rule of Thumb, three one-act murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, beginning July 12 with a run through August 25. In The Wasp’s Nest, Hercule Poirot comes between a bitter triangle of lovers to prevent a sinister murder; in The Rats, adulterous lovers find themselves lured to a flat, only to be trapped like rats and framed for murder; and completing the triple bill is a tense thriller about a woman who is hospitalized after seemingly falling from her balcony in The Patient.

The Theater at Monmouth in Maine has two crime-themed productions: the musical mystery dramedy Murder for Two (running through August 16), in which one actor investigates the crime, the other plays all of the suspects, and both play piano; and a staging of Baskerville, A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, from July 11 through August 15.

Quote of the Week

FFB: Death of a Busybody

In her 67 years, California author Elizabeth Linington wrote some 82 crime fiction novels, published between 1955 and 1990, under her own name as well as the pen names Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill, and Dell Shannon. She started out writing radio and stage dramas in the 1940s, switched to historical novels and finally to mysteries in 1960, winning three Edgar Award nominations almost back to back, in 1960, 1962, and 1963.

Perhaps it was due to her own family's 19th-century Irish immigrant background that many of her protagonists had strong ethnic identities, including an Italian rose-fancier, Glendale police Detective Vic Varallo; New England Sergeant Andrew Clock of the LADP and his sidekick, the Jewish lawyer and amateur detective Jesse Falkenstein, who quotes the Talmud; and Sergeant Ivor Maddox, a Welsh bachelor assigned to Hollywood's Wilcox Avenue station.

Her most successful creation was written under her Dell Shannon name—the dapper Mexican-American LAPD Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, who first appeared in Case Pending, as well as one of her other Edgar-nominated works, Knave of Hearts. Sometimes called the "Queen of the Procedurals," Lininger/Shannon among the first women to write in the police procedural genre, as well as one of the first to feature a Latino police officer.

Some critics have pointed out that Linington/Shannon's earliest works were her best, with more attention to detail and craft, but as she started cranking out as many as four books a year, the quality began to suffer, throwing in more cliches and pot-boiler touches. George N. Dove, author of such nonfiction books as The Reader and the Detective Story, pointed out that Linington/Shannon eventually settled down into a formula characterized by a remarkable number of storylines representing the number of cases on which her police officers like Mendoaza are employed (as many as 24 in Spring of Violence), with one main case surrounded by the other unrelated ones in various stages of investigation.

Mendoza is a single detective, just shy of middle age, when he makes his first appearance in Case Pending, but his character is developed throughout the thirty-eight books published over twenty-seven years. He has an inexplicable attraction to women, since he's not unusually handsome, and often finds their attention to be a personal and professional nuisance. He grew up poor and became a gambler to survive before he ultimately joined the police and was surprised by inherited wealth from his miser grandfather. He has a fondness for racy cars, high-stakes poker, and his Abyssinian cat, Bast, eventually settling down to marry Alison Weir in the early novels (Shannon wasn't shy about killing off characters, so suffice it to say, the cast of characters surrounding him tends to change).

In Death of a Busybody (first published in 1963, but reissued as a Mystery Guild selection by Doubleday in 1988), Margaret Chadwick is the snoop in question, a serious flaw for someone who had money and a pedigree. When she turns up dead, no one seems to care, something Mendoza begins to understand more clearly as he realizes the extent of the damage this one women did—pitting husbands against wives, children against parents, and sewing seeds of jealousy, suspicion and hatred like other people sew tulips and daffofils. But when a second body turns up, killed on the same night in the same way, things get a little murkier. Unlike her later "formulaic" novels, Busybody focuses on one case only, and even has Mendoza pull the main players together at the end for the "reveal," deciding he "wants to handle it the way they do in the detective novels."

Shannon may have been called the "Queen of the Proceedurals" and compared to masters such as Ed McBain and John Creasey, but by her own admission, she based her knowledge of police routine and law not on direct experience but on the basic texts used by police departments themselves and took plots from detective magazines. By today's standards, that makes for a more genteel investigation, but she manages some interesting character development and snappy dialogue. It's interesting to see her multi-layered handling of racial, gender and sexual prejudices and roles, themes that are just as prevalent and volatile today as they were back when she was writing this, almost fifty years ago in 1962-63.