In Reference to Murder

Quote of the Week

FFB: The Best American Mystery Stories, 1997, ed. Robert B. Parker

The history of the "best of" American mystery short story anthology probably dates back to 1931 and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Carolyn Wells, up through David C. Cooke's Best Detective Stories of the Year published from 1947 to 1959. More modern incarnations have been The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, from the editors of Mystery Scene Magazine; The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories edited by Ed Gorman; and Otto Penzler's The Best American Mystery Stories series.

The first Penzler anthology was in 1997 when Houghton Mifflin wanted a mystery version of its already-established Best American Short Stories. They contacted Penzler, who said in the Foreword that "it was his responsibility to identify and read all the mystery stories published in the calendar year," a number which totaled 500 from mystery specialty magazines, small literary journals, popular consumer publications, and anthologies.

The editor for the freshman effort in the Penzler series, Robert B. Parker, first reflects on the Hammett-Chandler origins of the American crime story. Then he introduces the collection with the words "As you will see in this collection, the stories remain the story of the hero's adventure in search of a hidden truth.' They are stories about a hero 'fit for adventure' in a time when stories of far bluer blood are still stuck in their bleak corner of the wasteland where Spade took Hammett. This is no small thing." The 20 stories included cover a wide range of thematic material in a variety of authorial styles: from the high society setting of Elizabeth George to the psychological suspense-with-a-twist by Jeffery Deaver, and from Melodye Johnson Howe's Hollywood banality to the humor-noir of Elmore Leonard.

The collection starts off nicely with "Blind Lemon" by Doug Allyn, draped against a backdrop of the blues and music of real-life musician Blind Lemon Jefferson, in which private eye R.B. "Ax" Axton painfully relives a fateful day a decade earlier  when he and a female singer inadvertently caused the murder of a mutual friend. Other standouts include "A Death on the Ho Chi Minh Trail," by David K. Harford', where an M.P. tries to solve the puzzle of why an American soldier supposedly killed in a firefight with the Viet Cong didn't have bullet holes in his shirt, and "When You're Hungry" by George Pelecanos, a tale of double-crossing and betrayal in the steamy and lawless streets of Brazil.

Ask any author and most will tell you short stories can be harder to write than novels, but when you come across little gems like these, you almost wish the authors would drop the novels and dedicate themselves to the shorter form. The reader benefits, too, from such an anthology, being able to experience one actualized world after another—the literary equivalent of visiting an amusement park, finding some rides more to your liking than others, but having all of them leave you just a little bit breathless.

Mystery Melange

The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year has been announced after being pared down from the longlist of 18 titles. The prize celebrates excellence in UK crime fiction with the winner to be announced on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on July 18. Here are your finalists:

• Snap by Belinda Bauer
• Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
• London Rules by Mick Herron
• Broken Ground by Val McDermid
• The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney
• East of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman

 

Finalists for the annual Maine Literary Awards were also announced, including those in the Crime Fiction category:

• Beyond the Truth by Bruce Coffin
• Stowed Away by Barbara Ross
• Death and a Pot of Chowder by Lea Wait (writing as Cornelia Kidd)
  
  

The 2019 Iceland Noir Award for translated crime fiction released a shortlist this past weekend, including the following:

• James M. Cain: Double Indemnity (translated by Þórdís Bachmann)
• Keigo Higashino: The Devotion of Suspect X (translated by Ásta S. Guðbjartsdóttir)
• Shari Lapena: A Stranger in the House (translated by Ingunn Snædal)
• Pierre Lemaitre: Three Days and a Life (translated by Friðrik Rafnsson)
• Henning Mankell: After the Fire (translated by Hilmar Hilmarsson)
  
  

Ian Rankin and Ann Cleeves will headline this summer's Bute Noir crime writing festival. Authors Mark Billingham, Denise Mina, Stuart MacBride, Chris Brookmyre, Ruth Ware and Mick Herron will also join the line-up for the festival in Rothesay, which takes place from Friday August 2 to Sunday August 4. They join the previously announced list of international authors including Mexico's Oscar de Muriel, Iceland's Lilja Sigurdardottir, Norway's Thomas Enger, the USA's Alexandra Sokoloff, Ireland's Liz Nugent, and Scottish talent including Alex Gray, Lin Anderson and Craig Robertson. Events will be held at Rothesay Library, Bute Museum, Print Point bookshop, and the Discovery Cinema with a crime writers' putting competition on Rothesay’s putting greens for "The Brookmyre Cup." (HT to The Bookseller)

The Sisters in Crime Chessie Chapter and the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Mystery Writers of America are co-hosting a workshop to help authors make the choices involved in reinvention: another traditional publisher, going indie, or both? What pitfalls should you watch out for? How do you protect your legal rights? What about changing genres? Bestselling authors and industry experts discuss what’s worked for them in a day-long program. Speakers include John Betancourt, Ken Budd, Tara Laskowski, Sujata Massey, Julie Moffett, Alan Orloff, Joanna Campbell Slan, Daniel Steven, and Marcia Talley. The event is Sunday, June 2nd, and registration is open to the public.

The Sunday Times Top 100 Crime List has come under fire after women made up just a third of the authors of the listed novels. Authors including Marian Keyes criticized the list, saying "Seeing the chronic conscious and unconscious bias against work by women is enraging." In defense of the list, Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate said that it was mostly compiled by female journalists. Even so, earlier this year, a research project found that new books by men were found to receive 12% more broadsheet review coverage than those of their female counterparts. In response to the controversy over the Sunday Times list, The Guardian tapped Ann Cleeves, Val McDermid, Dreda Say Mitchell and other leading writers to nominate some alternatives for a roster of "50 great thrillers by women."

Writing for CrimeReads, Kellye Garrett penned a profile of Barbara Neely, the activist-turned-crime writer who inspired a generation and bucked the traditions associated with female writers of color.

The LA Review of Books profiled another crime fiction pioneer, Joseph Hansen, who forced publishers to take risks to bring Hansen's brand of gay noir to the literary world.

Author and literacy advocate James Patterson is funding "Buy A Book, Give A Book" to encourage reading in children and families from disadvantaged backgrounds through an initiative between Penguin, Asda and the National Literary Trust (NLT). The partnership is dedicated to inspiring lifelong reading and will help the nationwide charity provide access to books to children, young people and families in the UK’s most disadvantaged communities.

Writing for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's blog, Something is Going to Happen, Chad Baker penned an essay "On Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the Nature of Truth in Detective Fiction."

An essay by Mel McGrath in the National Post wondered "Is reading crime fiction written by women a feminist act?"

Janet Rudolph has a list of Memorial Day-themed crime fiction up at Mystery Fanfare.

The recently re-opened (in a new location) International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., is bigger than ever before. But in addition to the crowd-pleasing Bond gadgets and interactive exhibits, the museum isn't afraid to tackle controversial subjects like torture. Both NPR and the Washington Post had profiles.

Canada's first "body farm" (for research into how human bodies decompose, crucial info for death investigations) is opening its doors, and people are already lining up to be the first donors.

A pocket watch owned by mystery writer Edgar Allen Poe is heading for auction at Christie’s next month. The 18k gold engraved pocket watch will be offered in New York on June 12, with an estimated price of $80,000 – $120,000. Personal items owned by the writer himself rarely appear on the market, and those that do can command big prices. In 2012, a collection of artifacts including a lock of Poe’s hair, his late wife’s engagement ring, photographic portraits and a silver spoon sold at Profiles in History for $96,000, almost doubling their top estimate.

An elementary school in West Valley City, Utah, has become only the fourth school in the U.S. to instill an unusual kind of vending machine—a book vending machine, which can hold 300 to 400 books. School staff believe the novelty of the machine will help instill a love of reading in students, who can earn gold tokens and apply them toward different titles.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Ballad of a Tabby Man" by Howard Ho.

In the Q&A roundup, Jeffery Deaver offered up his secrets of writing a bestseller for the Cambridge Independent; Lee Child spoke with iNews UK about his Jack Reacher thrillers and being a populist writer; James Ellroy spoke with The Guardian on his love of everything big, why he doesn’t rate Raymond Chandler, and reading all 55 of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels; Denise Mina explained to The National how love of podcasts shaped her new novel, Conviction; and the LA Review of Books spoke with Cara Black, author of a series with Parisian private detective, Aimée Leduc, about "the darker side of the City of Light."

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

Lionsgate has picked up North American distribution rights to the cop drama, Semper Fi, starring Divergent actor Jai Courtney. Known internationally as Edge Of Dawn, the film follows Cal (Courtney), a by-the-book police officer who makes ends meet as a reservist in the Marine Corps along with his rowdy and inseparable group of childhood friends. When Cal’s younger, reckless half-brother, Oyster (Nat Wolff), accidentally kills a guy in a barfight and tries to flee, Cal is torn between his family and his job.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Nick Vallelonga is teaming up with Nicolas Cage for the action-thriller, 10 Double Zero. The cop thriller is set in the stifling heat of Louisiana and will follow two police officers who take on a personal vendetta to hunt down cop killers, but as they get closer to solving the crime, they find themselves targets of a conspiracy in the ranks of the police force.

Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek is in talks to join Denzel Washington in the cast of Warner Bros.’ Little Things. Malek would star as a young detective who teams up with a burned-out deputy sheriff (Washington) on the hunt for a serial killer.

X-Men: Apocalypse star Alexandra Shipp and Riverdale's Cole Sprouse are joining the true crime feature, Silk Road, about criminal mastermind Ross Ulbricht (Nick Robinson), who unleashed the Darknet, and the "Jurassic Narc" (Jason Clarke) bent on bringing down the young kingpin’s billion-dollar empire. Darrell Britt-Gibson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri) and Jimmi Simpson (Date Night) also star.

The Navot Papushado-directed action thriller, Gunpowder Milkshake, has cast Carla Gugino as a lethal assassin, starring alongside Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Paul Giamatti. The plot is being kept under wraps but is described as a high-concept assassin story that has a rich mythology and spans several generations.

Famke Janssen (Taken) has joined Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast of the crime thriller, The Postcard Killings. Morgan plays Jacob Kanon, a New York detective intent on capturing his daughter’s murderer, while Janssen plays Valerie Kanon, the mother of their now-deceased daughter.

Twilight's Cam Gigandet is set to star in Marco Ristori’s action-drama Wreckage. The project charts the story of man who finds himself trapped in the rubble of a building following a terrorist attack. His only contact with the outside world is a compassionate counter-terrorism agent on the other end of his cell phone.

The international spy thriller, 355, has added Sebastian Stan and Edgar Ramirez to the cast and set a July 8 production start in Paris, London, and Morocco. The production also stars Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing as spies from international agencies tasked with stopping an event that could thrust our teetering world into total chaos. Along the way, a new faction is formed – code-named "355" (a name they adopt from the first female spy in the American Revolution).

Madelaine Petsch is set to star in Sightless, an indie thriller written and directed by Cooper Karl. She'll play a woman viciously blinded by an unidentified assailant. Now a veritable shut-in, living and working out of her apartment and never venturing outside, she waits for her assailant to make his next move.

A trailer dropped for the third installment of the "Olympus" series, Angel Has Fallen, with Morgan Freeman And Gerard Butler back as Secret Service agent Mike Banning and the President of the United States, respectively.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

At the recent BAFTA Awards in the UK, a couple of crime dramas were big winners, including Killing Eve (Best Drama Series; Best Actress, Jodie Comer; Best Supporting Actress, Fiona Shaw) and A Very English Scandal (Best Director, Stephen Frears; Best Supporting Actor, Ben Whishaw).

Netflix has picked up the Spanish crime pic Eye For An Eye by director Paco Plaza. Luis Tosar stars in the revenge-thriller about a retirement home nurse who becomes entangled with a feared cartel boss discharged from prison and put into his care.

There are cast changes for Get Shorty, the Epix series based in part on Elmore Leonard's 1990 bestselling novel: Isaac Keys has been promoted to series regular and Michaela Watkins (Casual) and Seychelle Gabriel (Sleepy Hollow) have been tapped for recurring roles on the upcoming third season. The series follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a muscle for a Nevada crime ring who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood with the help of a washed-up producer, Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), as a means to leave his criminal past behind.

Rob Lowe is joining Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 television franchise in a spin-off set in Austin, Texas called 9-1-1: Lone Star. The new series will follow Lowe's sophisticated New York cop who, along with his son, re-locates to Austin and must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in his own life.

Season 2 of the AT&T Audience Network's spy thriller, Condor, has rounded out its cast with the additions of Constance Zimmer (House of Cards), Toby Leonard Moore (Billions), Rose Rollins (The Catch), Isidora Goreshter (Shameless), Eric Johnson (Vikings), Alexei Bondar (The Americans) and Jonathan Kells Phillips (Madam Secretary). In season two, Joe Turner (series star Max Irons) is forced to return to the CIA’s tight-knit Virginia community after his Uncle Bob’s death, to find the Russian traitor who’s responsible.

The finale of CBS’s FBI marked the final episode for co-star Sela Ward, an unsurprising move since Ward had a one-year deal for the crime drama series. On FBI, Ward played Special Agent in Charge Dana Mosier. At the end of the Season 1 finale, Dana reveals to her team that she had submitted her resignation.

Breakout true-crime anthology series, Dirty John, will move from Bravo to sister NBCUniversal network USA for its second season, expected to premiere in 2020. With its first season, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, Dirty John became the highest-rated scripted series ever on the network, with ratings growing throughout its run.

True crime is also coming to the BBC:  The controversial Novichok poisonings in the UK are to be the basis for a drama on BBC Two. Titled Salisbury, the show will tell the story of how ordinary people reacted to the crisis as their city became the focus of an unprecedented national emergency.

Here is ABC’s fall 2019-20 schedule, followed by brief analysis and detailed descriptions of the network’s new series, including the new mystery-themed thriller drama, Emergence, on Tuesdays at 10pm; the new crime drama Stumptown Wednesdays at 10; and How to Get Away with Murder, Thursdays at 10. The Rookie also continues in its second season, scheduled for Sunday nights at 10. You can check out a trailer for Stumptown via this link.

With the exception of the courtroom drama All Rise, most of the CBS pilots are dead with one exception, the conspiracy thriller drama, Surveillance, starring Chicago PD alumna Sophia Bush. The pilot has supporters at the network which is actively looking for ways to take it to series, including a possible summer run. Surveillance is described as a complex and timely spy thriller centered around the head of communications for the NSA (Bush), a charming operative who finds her loyalties torn between protecting the government’s secrets and her own.

CBS's recently announced fall schedule includes the usual lineup of crime dramas:  new shows All Rise, FBI: Most Wanted (midseason), and Tommy (midseason); and returning shows Bull, the three NCIS franchises, FBI, Seal Team, S.W.A.T, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, Magnum PI, and "Crimetime Saturday," which will present some of the favorite procedurals from the rest of the week. You can catch trailers for the new shows here.

At NBC's upfront presentation, the network unveiled the fall schedule for returning shows such as the "Chicago" franchises (Med/Fire/P.D.), The Blacklist, Law & Order:SVU, and the new legal drama, Bluff City Law, starring Jimmy Smits. You can watch a trailer for Bluff City Law here.

Fox's fall lineup includes the new cop/serial killer drama, Prodigal Son, starring Tom Payne and Michael Sheen, scheduled for Monday nights after the emergency-responder show, 9-1-1. You can watch trailers for the new series, via this link.

Riley Smith is returning to the CW with a lead role opposite Kennedy McMann in the network’s new drama series, Nancy Drew, based on the novels featuring the iconic female teenage sleuth (McMann). Smith had been quietly cast as a series regular in the pilot in second position to his Fox drama series, Proven Innocent, but became officially available when Fox canceled the legal drama this past weekend. Smith plays the handsome and affluent Ryan Hudson whose trophy wife is the murder victim.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsterland and Gangster Nation, joined Writerly podcast host Panio Gianopoulos to discuss how to write a good psychopath, the morality of art, and why MFA programs need more genre writers.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Sean Carswell to talk about his new novel, Dead Extra, set in post World War II Southern California. It follows a man presumed dead in the war who comes home to find out that his wife has died…and that’s not the worst of it.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with DP Lyle, MD, author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books including the Samantha Cody, Dub Walker, and Jake Longly thriller series and the Royal Pains hit TV show media tie-in novels. Lyle is also the creator and host of the podcast series CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with James Ziskin about his award-winning Ellie Stone series, being a linguist, working in Hollywood as a subtitle expert, researching historical novels, the 7 Criminal Minds blog, and being the "mayor" of basically all of the mystery writer’s conferences.

Beyond the Cover's special guest was Chris Pavone, discussing his new novel, The Paris Diversion, which follows a bored housewife who jumps back into the spy game again.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of licensing your work, how cops deal with an a/k/a, why you should consider a p/k/a, and how detectives handle end of watch.

THEATER

Call The Midwife star Helen George will take the lead in a new stage adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel at the Theatre Royal Bath in November. The psychological thriller is largely set in Cornwall and tells a tale of trust, dark romance, and deception. It was first made into a film in 1952 with Olivia de Havilland in the titular role and again in 2017 with Rachel Weisz as the lead. 

Quote of the Week

FFB: A Bleeding of Innocents

Author Jo Bannister (b. 1951) is a former journalist born in Rochdale, Lancashire, who currently lives in Northern Ireland. She's the author of over 30 novels and has received recognition from the Royal Society of Arts and the British Press Awards and garnered an Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Readers' Award in 1988.

She has several series including the Castlemere books, the very first of which was titled A Bleeding of Innocents, published in 1993, featuring a trio of police detectives. The story opens at a funeral for a dead policeman, soon followed by a case handed to Detective Superintendent Frank Shapiro, who has brought in the ambitious DI Liz Graham to take over after the policeman's death.

The dead policeman's partner, Sgt.Cal Donovan, tries to get over the guilt surrounding his partner's murder, which he blames on a local crime baron. The case they're given is that of a young nurse shot in her car, but it's soon followed by the death of a surgeon who used to work with the murdered nurse. Making things worse, a third member of the same operating-room team, the anaesthetist, seems to be next in line, pointing to a serial killer. Then there's the matter of who killed Cal's partner adding to the mix.

Bannister is particularly known for her skillful plotting and convincing characterization. (The New York Times Book Review said "Jo Bannister scores high on character with her persuasive insights into the psychological responses to pain").

In an interview with Gerard Brennan via his blog Crime Scene NI, the author talked about her writing:

 

"I used to be a lot more disciplined about writing than I am now – working 8 to 12 and 7 to 9 six days a week. One of the advantages of getting older is that you no longer feel the need to do everything yesterday. When I’m in the middle of a book I aim at producing a thousand words a day. Sometimes I struggle; sometimes I’m on a roll and produce a lot more. But I don’t beat myself up if nothing much is happening, just keep trying until it does. There are more than thirty of my books on the shelves: if the next is a little late, people can read one of the earlier ones while they’re waiting."

She also discussed her worst writing experience involving a heavy-handed editor: "She was a zealot. And she thought...that she could improve something on just about every page," and gave her very sage advice for writing greenhorns:  "Do it for your own pleasure. There are easier ways to make a living."

Bannister's other novels include several standalone police procedurals and other non-Castlemere series:  Brodie Farrell who runs Looking for Something?—an eclectic problem-solving agency in Dimmock, England; a series with Gabriel Ash, ex-British Government Investigator and police recruit Hazel Best; a series with Dr. Clio Marsh and her husband, Detective Harry Marsh; a series with photojournalist Mickey Flynn; and a series with Rosie Holland, a newspaper advice columnist.

The Anthony Awards Arrive

Bouchercon 2019 — “Denim, Diamonds, and Death” — announced this year’s Anthony Award finalists for the 50th annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention to be held in Dallas, October 31 to November 3, 2019. The Anthony Awards will be voted on by attendees at the convention and presented on Saturday, November 2.

Best Novel

• Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown and Company)
• November Road by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
• Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur Books)
• Sunburn by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)
• Blackout by Alex Segura (Polis Books)

Best First Novel

• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
• Broken Places by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver (Pegasus Books)
• What Doesn’t Kill You by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
• Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)

Best Paperback Original Novel

• Hollywood Ending by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)
• If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
• Hiroshima Boy by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park Books)
• Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day (William Morrow Paperbacks)
• A Stone’s Throw by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street Books)

Best Short Story

• “The Grass Beneath My Feet” by S.A. Cosby, in Tough (blogazine, August 20, 2018)
• “Bug Appétit” by Barb Goffman, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (November/December 2018)
• “Cold Beer No Flies” by Greg Herren, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)
• “English 398: Fiction Workshop” by Art Taylor, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July/August 2018)
• “The Best Laid Plans” by Holly West, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)

Best Critical or Non-Fiction Work

• Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
• Mastering Plot Twists: How To Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure To Captivate Your Readers by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest Books)
• Pulp According to David Goodis by Jay A. Gertzman (Down & Out Books)
• Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
• The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)

The honored guests this year at Bouchercon in Dallas are Peter Lovesey (Lifetime Achievement), Hank Phillippi Ryan (American Guest of Honor), Felix Francis (International Guest of Honor), James Patterson (Distinguished Contribution to the Genre), Deborah Crombie (Local Guest of Honor), Harry Hunsicker (Toastmaster), McKenna Jordan (Fan Guest of Honor), and Charlaine Harris and Sandra Brown (Special Guests).

For more information about the Anthony Awards, visit the official website, Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram.

Mystery Melange

The international crime fiction convention Crimefest was held this past weekend and included the announcement of the Crimefest Award winners. The Audible Sounds of Crime Award went to Robert Galbraith for Lethal White, read by Robert Glenister; the eDUNNIT AWARD was won by Laura Lippman for Sunburn; The Last Laugh Award went to Lynne Truss for A Shot in the Dark; The H.R.F. Keating Award went to James Sallis for Difficult Lives – Hitching Rides; the Best Crime Novel for Children winner was Lauren St. John for Kat Wolfe Investigates; and the Best Crime Novel for Young Adults winner was Nikesh Shukla for Run, Riot. For all the finalists, head on over to the official Crimefest awards page.

Also at CrimeFest, the 2019 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year was given to The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce. Others on the short list included The Ice Swimmer Kjell Ola Dahl, tr. Don Bartlett; The Whisperer by Karin Fossum, tr. Kari Dickson; The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson, tr. Victoria Cribb; Resin by Ane Riel, tr. Charlotte Barslund; and Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen, tr. Don Bartlett. Eurocrime has the full shortlist of nominated titles.

The Crime Writers Association in the UK announced the longlists for this year's Dagger Awards, celebrating the best in crime fiction and nonfiction. As the term "longlist" implies, the number of nominees is fairly long, but Shots Magazine's Ayo Onatade has an easy quick reference for you to see all the nods in the various categories. Shortlists for the Daggers will be announced in the summer and the winners will be announced at the Dagger Awards dinner in London on October 24.

At this year's British Book Awards, Louise Candlish was the winner in the Crime and Thriller category for her novel, Our House, while the Author of the Year honor was bestowed upon Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series.

The winner for the inaugural Lindisfarne Prize for debut crime fiction was announced. Cressida Downing won for her novel, The Roll Bearer's Daughter, which is set on Holy Island at the turn of the 15th century. The prize was launched this year by author LJ Ross to honor new literary talent as well as celebrating settings in the North East area of the UK.

Strand Magazine announced the 2019 Strand Critics Awards finalists:

Best Mystery Novel:

Lullaby Road by James Anderson
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
November Road by Lou Berney
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly
The Witch Elm by Tana French
Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Best Debut Mystery Novel:

Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver
Star of the North by D.B. John
The Other Side of Everything by Lauren Doyle Owens
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward

The Strand also announced the latest recipients of its latest Lifetime Achievement Awards: Heather Graham and Donna Leon; and Publisher of the Year Award to Dominique Raccah, the publisher/CEO of Sourcebooks. 
 

Ireland's International Crime Writing Festival, Murder One, won't take place until November of this year, but in the meantime, the organizers are launching a series of summer events. Each takes places in Dublin’s historic City Hall where capacity is limited to 200. First up is Jeffery Deaver in conversation with Declan Burke on Friday May 24th; James Ellroy will join a Q&A with Eoin McNamee on Thursday May 30th; and finally, Karin Slaughter will be interviewed by RTE’s Sinead Crowley on Thursday June 13th.

London's Capital Crime Digital Festival (September 26-28) also has a special feature lined up this year. If you are a ticket holder, you can also participate in the Capital Crime Digital Festival to be launched on October 28th. It's also a great opportunity for authors, as Shot Magazine's Ayo Onatade noted, becoming a permanent platform that showcases more than 70 authors with video links and dedicated book pages.

Capital Crime added to the line-up for London's new crime and thriller festival taking place in September at the Connaught Rooms in England's capital city. Martina Cole, Ian Rankin, Ann Cleeves, Mark Billingham, Don Winslow, Robert Glenister, Adenle, Denise Mina, Catherine Steadman, and Mukherjee are among the latest guests announced with further names to be revealed at a later date. Speakers previously announced by organizers David Headley and Adam Hamdy include Kate Atkinson, David Baldacci, Ann Cleeves, Robert Harris, Peter James, Lynda La Plante, Simon Mayo, and Kate Mosse. Dubbed a "diverse, inclusive and socially responsible festival," Capital Crime is running initiatives including social outreach to support students exploring a literary career, an innovative digital festival, and the launch of the New Voices Award. 

This year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival will host an inaugural library conference with speakers including Ann Cleeves and Arts Council England CEO Darren Henley. The festival will also deliver its 11th annual Big Read with current reader-in-residence, author Mari Hannah. It aims to encourage crime fiction fans and entice reluctant readers to read and discuss the same book and utilize their local library service.

On view through June 3 at Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens in West Palm Beach, FL, you can catch the exhibition "The Art of Sherlock Holmes," which features 15 artistic works inspired by the Great Detective. Curated by author Phil Growick, the exhibit brings together 14 pieces of art that are interpretations of different short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, all created by West Palm Beach artists. The artistic styles include abstract, contemporary, digital, realist, minimalist, symbolism, or an amalgam of various forms. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

Writing for The Millions, John Smith investigated the real genesis for the character of Sherlock Holmes:  two leading crime experts of Arthur Conan Doyle's day who had a profound influence upon the author, one who reaped the glory of being named "the real life" Holmes in the press and another who was largely unrecognized in his lifetime.

Speaking of Holmes, the Royal Mint in the UK has released a Sherlock Holmes 50p coin to mark the 160th anniversary of the birth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Designed by Stephen Raw, the coin has been made to encourage people to use their magnifying glass to read the names of the famous cases (listed on the coin in tiny print) in true Sherlock style.

The Washington Post profiled author Thomas Harris, who introduced the world to Hannibal Lecter. Harris has just released his first novel in thirteen years, Cari Mora.

Chris Pavone, whose first novel, The Expats, received both the Edgar and Anthony awards for Best First Novel, as well as a film deal, applied the Page 69 Test to his latest work, The Paris Diversion.

Penguin Random House is offering a "Spruce Up Your Shelves" sweepstakes to win a library of 50 books and more. The contest runs through June 30th.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Cornelia Gale" by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

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

Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, Anson Mount, and Abbie Cornish are set to star in The Virtuoso, a noir thriller directed by Nick Stagliano that will be presented to buyers at Cannes. The story follows a professional assassin (Mount) who must track down and kill his latest target to satisfy an outstanding debt to his mentor (Hopkins). Unlike his other “jobs,” he’s given no name or photo, only that his target will be in a rustic diner in a dying town at 5:00 PM. Bound by obligation, the Virtuoso embarks on a manhunt to find his prey and accomplish the mission. Any one of the patrons in the diner could be the mark, even the enigmatic waitress (Cornish) who, even if she’s not the prey, could prove to be a distraction that threatens to derail his task, and endanger his life.

Annette Bening and Michelle Pfeiffer are boarding director Gideon Raff’s thriller, Turn of Mind, a feature adaptation of Alice LaPlante's New York Times bestseller. Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright is adapting the psychological thriller, which centers on a retired orthopedic doctor (Bening) suffering from Alzheimer’s who is trying to figure out — in her moments of clarity — if she killed the person the police claim she did or if she’s being deceived.

Chris Pine has signed on to star in the thriller, Violence of Action. Tarik Saleh will direct from a script written by J.P. Davis. The story follows a man involuntarily discharged from the Marines who joins a paramilitary organization in order to support his family and travels to Poland with his elite team on a black ops mission to investigate a mysterious threat. Barely into his first assignment, he finds himself alone and hunted in Eastern Europe, where he must fight to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him.

Chris Hemsworth and Tiffany Haddish are teaming for a buddy cop comedy titled Down Under Cover. Hemsworth plays a detective who goes undercover to investigate a group of male, Australian erotic dancers who he suspects are involved in a series of casino heists. Haddish will play a lone wolf cop whom Hemsworth reluctantly accepts as a partner.

Sir Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce are teaming up for the thriller, Long Gone Heroes. Directed by Santiago Manes Moreno (Alfred Hitchcock’s Gun), the film tells the story of a special forces soldier-for-hire who must return to the field of battle with his military team to track down a female reporter entangled in a huge political scandal, while being hunted by the mercenaries’ former comrades.

Academy Award winner Russell Crowe will star in Unhinged, a psychological thriller which starts production July 15 in New Orleans. Unhinged takes an ordinary, everyday incident to its most terrifying conclusion in telling the story of a mother who leans on her horn at the wrong time, to the wrong guy (played by Crowe). “Road rage” doesn’t begin to describe what he’s about to do to her and everyone she knows.

STXinternational has locked up international rights to I Care A Lot, a thriller starring Rosamund Pike and directed by J Blakeson based on his original screenplay. Principal photography will get underway in July in Boston, with Pike playing Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her elderly clients’ detriment, living a life of luxury at their expense. But when her seemingly innocent next victim turns out to have dangerous secrets, Marla must use her wit and cunning to stay alive.

Jamie Bell is set to star in the World War II thriller, Dynamite Room, based on the novel by Jason Hewitt. Set during July 1940, the story opens with 12-year-old evacuee, Lydia, walking through a village in rural England on a baking hot day wearing a gas mask. When she arrives at her abandoned family home, she meets Heiden (Bell), a gun-wielding soldier heralding a full-blown German invasion. He won’t kill Lydia, but she cannot leave the house. What is he looking for? Why is he familiar and how does he already know her name?

Simon Pegg and Lulu Wilson are set to star in Becky, an action thriller directed by Bushwick duo Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion. The film centers on Becky (Wilson), a rebellious 13-year-old who is brought to a weekend getaway at a lake house by her father in an effort to reconnect after her mother’s death. The trip takes a turn for the worse when a group of convicts on the run, led by the merciless Dominick (Pegg), invades the lake house, and Becky decides to take matters into her own hands.

Guy Burnet and Nora Arnezeder are set to star in the psychological thriller, Glorious Empire, written and directed by Matt Szymanowski. The project begins as a love story that turns into a living nightmare as Jeremy (Burnet) suspects his girlfriend, Dagmara (Arnezeder), is gaslighting Jeremy and his family in order to cover up an affair with Jeremy’s brother.  Even Jeremy’s concerned parents question his mental state, until it is revealed that Dagmara may have gotten away with the ultimate deception. The pic is described as a modern day homage to thrillers such as Play Misty for Me, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female.

 

Altitude will launch sales in Cannes for the ’80s homage thriller, Coming Soon, which follows a series of bizarre murders inspired by classic ’80s films that are discovered in the sleepy UK town of Cliff Valley. The inhabitants find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation and three movie-obsessed friends are caught up in the race to catch the killer.

Michelle Yeoh has committed to star in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, and Paul Giamatti. The project is a female driven high-concept assassin film that has a rich mythology and spans multiple generations.

Liam Neeson will star in The Minuteman, an action thriller to be directed by Robert Lorenz, who has three Oscar nominations as a producer for American Sniper, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Mystic River. The film is a fast-paced story of a retired Vietnam vet who finds himself responsible for the life of a young boy being hunted by a cartel (shades of the protector character Neeson nailed in his three Taken films).

Mel Gibson and Kate Bosworth are set to star in Force of Nature. The film centers on a cop who must protect the remaining residents of a building in the midst of a hurricane evacuation while violent criminals attempt to pull off a mysterious heist within the building. Gibson plays the stubborn retired detective who refuses to evacuate, and fights back when the thieves show up at his doorstep

The first trailer was released for Do Not Reply, a gruesome serial killer thriller starring Jackson Rathbone as a VR-obsessed killer and is a cautionary tale of the evils of social media.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ABC has handed its first new drama series pickup to a graphic novel adaptation headlined by Avengers co-star Cobie Smulders. Based on the Stumptown graphic novel series, the project follows Dex Parios (Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police. The production also made the announcement that after the pilot aired, the role played by Mark Webber will be recast after the decision was made to take the character “in a different direction.”

ABC’s NYPD Blue sequel series will not air this fall but remains under consideration for midseason. The police drama will have to undergo some reshoots and retooling before ABC makes a final verdict on the project. Written and executive produced by original series writers Matt Olmstead and Nick Wootton, the new drama centers on Theo (played by Fabien Frankel), the son of Andy Sipowicz’s character (Dennis Franz in the original 1993 series) as he tries to earn his detective shield and work in the 15th squad while investigating his father’s murder.

Another classic show revival attempt, New York Undercover, a reboot of the 1990s Dick Wolf cop drama, will not be going forward at ABC. Wolf and the pilot’s leading studio, Universal TV, are still committed to the project and plan to shop it elsewhere. ABC also cancelled The Fix, the drama series from ex-O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark that centered on Maya Travis (Robin Tunney), an L.A. D.A. who suffers a devastating defeat when prosecuting an A-list actor for double murder.

Nathan Fillion fans will rejoice in news that ABC has renewed The Rookie for a second season. Fillion plays John Nolan, the oldest rookie in the LAPD, who cast aside his comfortable, small town life and moved to L.A. to pursue his dream of being a police officer. ABC also renewed How to Get Away with Murder and Station 19.

 

John Lithgow is set for a lead role opposite Matthew Rhys and Tatiana Maslany in Perry Mason, HBO’s limited-run series. The reimagined Perry Mason is set in 1932 Los Angeles, which is booming while the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression. It's an origin story for one of American fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyers, Perry Mason (Rhys), before he became the iconic attorney.

Kristin Scott Thomas has joined Rebecca, Ben Wheatley’s new adaptation for Netflix of the classic Daphne du Maurier novel. The project also stars Lily James playing the second Mrs. de Winter, who arrives at Manderley with new husband Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer). Kristin Scott Thomas will play Hammer’s longtime housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who was played by Judith Anderson in the original 1940 film of the same name starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

A day after the CW ordered the Nancy Drew pilot to series, producers announced a casting change, with Scott Wolf replacing Freddie Prinze Jr. as Nancy’s dad, Carson Drew. Carson Drew is described as a dynamic attorney who has become estranged from Nancy following the recent death of his beloved wife. But his attempts to reconnect with his daughter run aground when Nancy’s murder investigation reveals unsettling secrets from Carson’s own past.

Levy Tran will be promoted to series regular on the just-ordered fourth season of CBS’s action drama series, MacGyver. Tran was introduced as a recurring new character in the second half of the current third season designed to help fill the void left by the departure of series’ original co-lead George Eads. Tran plays Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

Oxygen Media announced nearly a dozen series projects that embrace the true-crime genre, greenlighting shows featuring the likes of Kim Kardashian, Nancy Grace, Kate Snow, Mark Wahlberg, Ice-T, Jason Blum, and others. The new series don’t have airdates just yet.

CBS has made its first drama series orders of the season, picking up Dick Wolf’s FBI: Most Wanted spinoff and the legal drama, All Rise (fka Courthouse) from writer Greg Spottiswood. Wolf currently has six drama series picked up for next season, the two FBI dramas at CBS, the three Chicago series on NBC and Law & Order: SVU, also on NBC, heading into a record-breaking 21st season. Another pickup recently announced is the police drama, Tommy, starring Edie Falco as the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles.

CBS announced it is renewing the police procedural Hawaii Five-0 for Season 10, with series' current regulars, Scott Caan, Alex O'Loughlin, Chi McBride, and Jorge Garcia, returning to fight crime in the Aloha State. Other crime dramas renewed include SEAL Team, S.W.A.T., and MacGyver. They join previously renewed procedurals NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Magnum P.I., and FBI.

Although Bull was also renewed by CBS, the sexual harassment allegations against star Michael Weatherly has led Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television to walk away from the popular legal drama. A rep for Amblin confirmed to Deadline that Steven Spielberg, Amblin Television, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are no longer attached to Bull, declining further comment.

There are a few other CBS crime dramas that are still on the bubble and yet to be renewed or canceled, including Instinct, based on the James Patterson novel and starring Alan Cumming as a former CIA operative who is lured back to his old life when the NYPD needs his help to stop a serial killer; The Code, in which the military's brightest minds take on the United States' toughest legal challenges; The Red line, which follows the lives of three vastly different Chicago families whose stories of loss and tragedy intersect in the wake of the mistaken shooting of an African-American doctor by a white cop; and Ransom, centered on renowned crisis and hostage negotiator, Eric Beaumont, who employs insight into human behavior to deal with challenging kidnap and ransom cases.

Blindspot fans can breathe a sigh of relief for now. After being on the bubble, the mystery drama starring Sullivan Stapleton and Jaimie Alexander has been renewed for a fifth and final season by NBC. The pickup comes despite NBC’s recent decision to bench Blindspot for the May sweep. NBC also picked up the pilot Emergence to series; the multi-faceted mystery stars Allison Tolman as a police chief who takes in a child with no memory after an accident, which leads to a conspiracy larger than the chief ever imagined. And the peacock network also ordered a full series of Lincoln, the adaptation of the crime fiction novels of Jeffery Deaver about a a quadriplegic forensic criminalist.

 

ABC has canceled the Shondaland legal drama, For the People, after two seasons. Set in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (a.k.a. “The Mother Court”), the Shondaland series centered on six talented young lawyers working on opposite sides of the law. It first debuted as a midseason replacement last year, and has since struggled to gain a foothold in the ratings.

Fox announced its new series pickups, including Prodigal Son, which centers on Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), an acclaimed criminal psychologist, who knows how killers think because his father (Michael Sheen) was one of the worst; neXt, starring John Slattery as a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent and her team to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis; and the police drama, Deputy, headlined by Stephen Dorff.

Fans of Lethal Weapon won't be happy to hear that Fox has cancelled the show after three seasons. The program's fate was essentially sealed when Clayne Crawford was fired in the wake of multiple behind-the-scenes issues, and star Damon Wayans also announced he was leaving the show.

The spring season of show pickups and cancellations can be a bit dizzying, but Deadline has a handy photo gallery of all the cancelled shows (thus far), and TV Guide also has a list.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast features the mystery short story, “Liquor Store Holdup” by K.M. Rockwood, read by Sean Hopper. The story was first published in Jack Hardway’s Crime Magazine, v. 2 # 2, March/April 2015.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham discussed the Edgar Awards, the Agatha Awards, and infuriating cookie giving.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Hanna Jameson about her new novel, The Last.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on “Robbery vs. Burglary, Writer’s Intro to Guns, and Words of Wisdom.”

Spybrary featured the third in their series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of Fiction and Espionage at the University of Edinburgh. This week, the students discussed The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming.

THEATRE

Dublin, Ireland's Bord Gáis Energy Theatre is presenting the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ novel, The Girl on the Train, from June 3-8. Samantha Womack stars in the mystery psychological thriller about a divorcée who becomes entangled in a missing persons investigation that leads to bigger revelations than she could ever have anticipated.

GAMES

Bravo Media is expanding its slate with Spy Games, an espionage-inspired reality competition series hosted by model and martial artist Mia Kang. Spy Games follows ten contestants as they battle it out in the ultimate game of espionage for a $100,000 prize.

There's a John Wick game in the works, based on the film series about the legendary hitman, in what the publishers describe as “fight-choreographed chess brought to life in a video game.” It will be an interactive experience that will implement the “gun fu style” from the movies and expand the universe previously established on the big screen.

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