In Reference to Murder

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

Paramount Pictures is rebooting Face/Off, the 1997 John Woo-directed action thriller that starred John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, and has hired Oren Uziel to write the script. In the original film, Travolta played FBI agent Sean Archer, obsessed with catching a homicidal sociopath named Castor Troy who's responsible for killing the fed’s son. The agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and takes the mug of his nemesis so he can be sent to prison to find out a bomb’s whereabouts and stop an attack. The plan goes awry when the bad guy wakes up and takes the face of the FBI agent.

Lionsgate is in final talks to acquire the action spec script, Shadow Force. Kerry Washington and Sterling K. Brown will star in and produce the Leon Chills-scripted action drama that is described as "a two-hander action picture reminiscent of films like Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction) has signed on to star in the indie drama, Chicago 1919, with Julie Dash (The Rosa Parks Story) set to direct. The project follows two young African American brothers and their involvement in the Chicago race riot of 1919, an extremely violent racial conflict provoked by ethnic White Americans against Black Americans that began on the south side of Chicago. During the riot, thirty-eight people died, and it was the worst of the nearly twenty-five riots in the United States during the "Red Summer" of 1919.

Con O’Neill (Chernobyl) and Sarah Jane Potts (Kinky Boots) will lead the cast in the UK revenge-thriller, Don’t Leave Me. The project follows a suicidal man, now working as a church handyman and soup kitchen worker, as he tracks the killers of his wife and daughter.

Teresa Ruiz (Narcos: Mexico) has been added to the cast of The Minuteman, an action thriller starring Liam Neeson. Ruiz also joins actors Katheryn Winnick and Juan Pablo Raba in the story of a rancher (Neeson) on the Arizona border who becomes the unlikely defender of a young Mexican boy desperately fleeing the cartel assassins (led by Raba) who’ve pursued him into the U.S.

According to the LA Times, two venerable institutions are throwing their energies behind a search for lost Sherlock Holmes films. The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Baker Street Irregulars are on a mission to recover and restore missing Holmes films from the silent era and beyond. Finding the bygone works will involve the Library of Congress, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and historians, collectors, and national film archives in Britain, Germany, France and other countries. Previous such efforts have located a missing 1916 Holmes production starring American actor William Gillette, which turned up in 2014 in Paris.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Netflix is adapting Harlan Coben’s mystery thriller, The Woods, as a Polish original. It's the latest international adaptation of a Coben book for Netflix, with the digital platform also remaking El Inocente in Spain with Oriol Paulo, and The Stranger and Safe in the UK. Set in two time spans, 1994 and 2019, The Woods tells the story of a Warsaw prosecutor, Pawel Kopinski, who is still grieving the loss of his sister from twenty five years ago – the night she walked into the woods at a summer camp and was never seen again. But now, the discovery of a young homicide victim – a boy who vanished along with Pawel’s sister – reveals evidence that links him to her disappearance. 

Production company, Bad Wolf, is developing a gritty drugs, sex, and nightclubs drama set in the aftermath of World War One. Soho 1918 follows the birth of the nightclub scene in Soho and tells the true story of a conservative, god-fearing 42-year old single mother, Kate Meyrick, who builds a nightclub empire and criminal family enterprise. She eventually becomes the most dangerous woman in London as well as a competitor to Brilliant Chang, the baron of Soho’s gritty underworld.

Six-time Emmy winner John Lithgow is set as a lead along with Jeff Bridges in FX’s drama pilot, The Old Man. FX has also tapped Jon Watts, who directed and co-wrote blockbusters Spider-Man: Homecoming and its sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home, to direct and executive produce. The project is based on the eponymous novel written by Thomas Perry and centers on Dan Chase (Bridges), who absconded from the CIA decades ago and has been living off the grid since. When an assassin arrives and tries to take Chase out, the old operative learns that to ensure his future he now must reconcile his past. Lithgow will play Harold Harper, who is called back to service by the FBI after suffering a terrible personal loss. He has a complicated past with rogue fugitive Chase (Bridges), which makes him uniquely suited for hunting him down.

Swedish actor Adam Pålsson has been tapped by Netflix to star as Henning Mankell’s renowned detective protagonist, Kurt Wallander, in a six-episode English-language series due out next year. A prequel series of sorts, the "young Wallender" tells the story of detective Kurt Wallander’s first case when he is in his 20s working as a uniformed police officer. The cast also includes Richard Dillane as Police Commissioner Hemberg, Leanne Best as Frida Rask, and Ellise Chappell as Mona Wallander. The streaming network is hoping for the same success that has made a hit of Shaun Evans’ Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour.

Ken Watanabe has signed on to executive produce and also star opposite Ansel Elgort in Tokyo Vice, a drama series for HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. Based on the book by Jake Adelstein with a script by Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers, the project is based on Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police vice squad where an American journalist embeds himself to reveal corruption.

Game of Thrones star Richard Dormer is set to lead the cast in BBC America’s The Watch, based on Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Dormer stars as Sam Vimes, Captain of The Watch, disempowered by a broken society that’s reduced his department’s jurisdiction to almost nothing. The eight-part series, set in the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork where crime has been legalized, follows a group of misfit cops who rise up from decades of helplessness to save their corrupt city from catastrophe.

Victoria’s Jenna Coleman, Dunkirk’s Billy Howle and Nocturnal Animals’ Ellie Bamber will topline the BBC/Netflix drama, The Serpent. The trio join Tahar Rahim, who plays Charles Sobhraj, one of the most elusive criminals of the 20th century. Sobhraj was the chief suspect in the unsolved murders of up to 20 young Western travelers across India, Thailand, and Nepal’s "Hippie Trail" in 1975 and 1976. A psychopath, con man, thief, and master of disguise, he slipped repeatedly from the grasp of authorities worldwide and had arrest warrants on three different continents.

Chernobyl’s Emily Watson will star in the psychological thriller, Too Close, for British broadcaster ITV. Written by actress and author, Clara Salaman, the three-part drama is based on the novel of the same title under the pseudonym Natalie Daniels. Watson plays a forensic psychiatrist assigned to work with a woman accused of a heinous crime but who claims she can’t remember a thing.

Mitch Silpa, perhaps best known for his comedic work in Bridesmaids, is taking on a dramatic role in CBS’s new legal drama series, All Rise. The series follows the lives of judges, prosecutors, and public defenders as they work with bailiffs, clerks, and cops to get justice for the people of Los Angeles amidst a flawed legal system. Silpa will play DDA Clayton Baker, a shrewd Deputy District Attorney who is willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead.

Amanda Peet (The Romanoffs) and Christian Slater (Mr. Robot) are set to headline the second season of USA Network's anthology series, Dirty John. Like the first installment, which aired on Bravo and starred Connie Britton and Eric Bana, the second will be based on a true crime story featuring an epic tale of love gone wrong. Season 2, titled Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story, focuses on convicted murderer Betty Broderick (Peet) and her ex-husband (Slater) that spans the 1960s to the ’80s and chronicles the breakdown of their marriage that Oprah deemed one of "America’s messiest divorces" even before it ended in double homicide.

Liv Tyler is set to star opposite Rob Lowe in Fox’s spinoff series 9-1-1: Lone Star. Set in Austin, it follows Owen (Lowe), a sophisticated New York firefighter who, along with his son, relocates to the Texas capital and must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in his own life. Tyler will play Chief Paramedic Michelle Blake, the only one who can match wits with Owen in the station, where she often will put him in his place.

Emmy and Golden Globe nominee, Hope Davis, is set as a series regular opposite Michael Stuhlbarg in Your Honor, Showtime’s limited-run project starring Bryan Cranston and based on the popular Israeli drama, Kvodo. Lilli Kay (Chambers) has also come aboard the project and will recur in multiple episodes. The 10-episode legal thriller hails from Peter Moffat (Criminal Justice) and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King and features Davis as Gina, who might be even more dangerous than her husband, the feared crime boss Tommy (Stuhlbarg). Kay plays their daughter, Fia, whose relationship with her new boyfriend might threaten her family.

Emmy winner Uzo Aduba has signed on for a lead role, and Corey Hendrix and newcomer Matthew Elam have also been cast as regulars, opposite Chris Rock on the upcoming fourth season of FX’s Fargo. Set in Kansas City in 1950, the city serves as the crossroads and collision point of two migrations, Italian emigrants versus African Americans fleeing the south to escape Jim Crow, both fighting for a piece of the American dream as two controlling crime syndicates.

Dermot Mulroney, Anthony Welsh, Severine Howell-Meri, Cherelle Skeete, and newcomer Gianna Kiehl have all joined the season 2 cast of Amazon’s Hanna. They join Esmé Creed-Miles, who returns for the second season in the title role, along with Mireille Enos, who reprises her role as CIA operative Marissa Wiegler. Written by David Farr (The Night Manager), Hanna is equal parts high-concept thriller and coming-of-age drama, which follows the journey of an extraordinary teenage girl determined to escape from the grasp of the shadowy Utrax organization and its ruthless agenda.

Starz has set the premiere date for the European crime drama, Dublin Murders, for Sunday, November 10, and unveiled the first trailer. Based on the novel by Tana French, the psychological drama follows Rob Reilly (Killian Scott), a smart-suited detective whose English accent marks him as an outsider when he's tasked with investigating the murder of a young girl on the outskirts of Dublin. He's aided by his partner, Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene), who has his back when's pulled into another case of missing children and forced to confront his own darkness.

Apple TV is cranking up its new service and programming, and you can find a handy guide of current and upcoming shows here, which include Defending Jacob, based on William Landay’s best-selling legal thriller; an untitled series starring Brie Larson as a CIA agent in a new drama that’s said to be based on the real-life experiences of CIA undercover operative Amaryllis Fox; and another untitled series, this one a mystery, that follows a girl who moves to a small town where she gets involved in uncovering a cold case the community has tried to bury.

If you want a chronological listing of new and returning shows to be on the lookout for, the New York Times has you covered (free subscription required).

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

On the latest edition of Kansas Public Radio's Conversations, T. Jefferson Parker talks about his latest novel, The Last Good Guy, the third to feature private investigator Roland Ford.

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Tony Knighton, a lieutenant with the Philadelphia Fire Department, whose new crime novel is titled Three Hours Past Midnight.

Read or Dead's Rincey Abraham was joined by guest co-host Liberty Hardy to talk about the trailer for the Tana French TV adaptation; Emily St. John Mandel's new mystery book; and World War I mysteries.

The latest Criminal Mischief podcast, hosted by Dr. D.P. Lyle, focused on how investigators narrow their suspect list and completely exonerate some suspects by using the population distribution information for the four ABO blood types.

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up with the first chapter of Spirit Wind by Marilyn Meredith, read by actor Julia Reimer.

The Mystery People podcast honored the 20th anniversary of Stark House Press with a discussion on hard boiled crime fiction, featuring a great collection of historians, editors, and authors including Jeff Vorzimmer, Rick Ollerman, Tim Bryant, Josh Stallings, and Joe R. Lansdale.

Adam Hall received the Spybrary treatment on episode 85, with guest host Jeff Quest starting off a two-parter on Hall's Quiller spy books.

This week, the Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Career-Long Fitness, Amateur Sleuths, and the Future of Policing."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club focused on the factual side of mysteries with an interview of Rich Cohen and his latest historical true crime, The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation.

The Crime Time podcast reviewed books by Gilly MacMillan & C.J. Tudor and took at look at Stephen King’s 80’s masterpiece, Christine.

THEATRE

Buffalo Theatre Center near Chicago is presenting Holmes and Watson through October 13. Three years following the mysterious "death" of Sherlock Holmes at Richenbach, there have been many who’ve claimed to be Holmes, all de-bunked as imposters by the faithful partner of the sleuth, Watson. But now three separate men insist that they are the infamous detective, having survived that encounter at the Falls. Full of twists and turns, this is "a riveting and clever adventure" from award-winning playwright Jeffrey Hatcher.

Chicago's Lifeline Theatre is staging a production of Whose Body, based on the book by Dorothy L. Sayers, with a run through October 27. When a dead body turns up in a bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez glasses, amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey assigns himself to the case. However, when the mystery becomes labyrinthine, he enlists the help of close friend Inspector Parker to follow his only lead, a teaching hospital near the scene of the crime. Could it be a harmless prank by a medical student or something more sinister?

Coming soon to the Theatre Royal Plymouth, UK, is the Agatha Christie play, A Murder is Announced. Starting September 23 with a run through the 28th, the story follows residents of Chipping Cleghorn who are astonished to read an advert in the local newspaper that a murder will take place this coming Friday at Little Paddocks, the home of Letitia Blacklock. Unable to resist, the group gather at the house at the appointed time, when the lights go out and a gun is fired. Enter Miss Marple, who must unravel a complex series of relationships and events to solve the mystery of the killer.

Agatha Christie’s mystery play, The Mousetrap, the longest continuously running play in the world, is coming to the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso. The play, about a group of strangers stranded in a boarding house during a snowstorm who must figure out which one of them is a murderer, will have performance dates of Sept. 27-29, Oct. 4-6, and Oct. 11-13.

FFB: The Bait

Before there was Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell, even before Joseph Wambaugh, Dorothy Uhnak was patrolling the streets of New York City in the 1950s and early 1960s as a New York City Transit Authority policewoman, with 12 of her 14 years as a detective. She later hinted she left police work due to sex discrimination, officially resigning to finish her college degree at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Uhnak had also been interested in writing since she was a child, and was the one who typed up reports for the male police officers because she knew how to type quickly and accurately. She initially had problems getting her autobiographical memoir Police Woman published until editors began to recognize her from newspaper articles as the real-life 125-pound female officer who knocked down and arrested an armed mugger.

Police Woman ushered in Uhnak as the first woman officer to write a police-lady procedural (and was later used as the basis for a series by the same title starring Angie Dickinson), and the book's success led to the first in a trilogy featuring Detective Second Grade Christie Opara, titled The Bait, which won the Edgar Award as the best first mystery novel of 1968 (in a tie with E. Richard Johnson's Silver Street). It later became the basis for the Get Christie Love series, although Uhnak's protagonist was changed from a blond white female to an African-American female, the first time an African American woman was the sole star of a TV series.

The Bait was followed by the other two books in the trilogy featuring Christie Opara, The Witness (1969) and The Ledger (1970), but at the urging of her editors, Uhnak switched to writing a sweeping police novel Law and Order about three generations of a police department family, published in 1973. The latter was her breakout book and became a television move in 1976, with Uhnak helping write some of the dialogue. More fame followed after her 1977 novel The Investigation served as the basis for a 1987 television movie, Kojak: The Price of Justice.

Uhnak says she began notes and doing character sketches for The Bait while still in uniform, with the protagonist, Christie Opara, largely based on the author. She also took characters from her experiences such as the "great bunch of guys" in her squad and the antagonist, Murray Rugoff, who was patterned on a suspect she remembered arresting who had no hair. Her last assignment with the D.A.'s Special Investigations Squad may have been given her the most story fodder, where she "found out the dirty little secrets about the police department."

In The Bait, 26-year-old Christie Opara is on her way to an undercover drug bust when she makes an unexpected arrest of a hairless man who's exposing himself to schoolgirls on the subway. After a female dancer who has been receiving anonymous phone calls is murdered and Opara herself begins to receive similar phone calls, she realizes her suspect and the killer may be one and the same. Realizing there's only one way to prove it, she offers herself up as bait. Her boss, Supervising Assistant District Attorney Casey Reardon, who finds Opara getting under his skin in more ways than one, reluctantly agrees to her idea even knowing that part of Opara's determination to go through with the plan is based on her desire to exorcise demons left behind from the on-duty murder of her cop husband five years ago.

The Bait debuted to mixed reviews when it was published, but it's filled with realistic characterizations and interactions, as you'd expect from someone who walked the walk:

Christie looked from face to face, admiring them; this was all by-play, yet it was essential. An establishing of lines of communication, of reading and responding. No one really knew what story Marty was about to tell, yet each would help him filling in, building on it. It was more than time-passing, it was an interacting on a light and unimportant level: it was a rehearsal.

and

Johnnie Devereaux had a fantastic acquaintance with people in all areas of the city...He could blink his eye and tell in which section of the city, which small, hidden, unknown pocket, you could find a particular group of people, what the ethnic makeup was three blocks to the west or one block to the east. Where to eat authentic Cantonese food, not the American chop suey junk; where to get real Northern Italian cooking or a non-commercial, absolutely pure Kosher meal like someone's Grandma used to put in front of someone's Grandpa. People and their strange quirks of behavior and the fascinating customs and remnants of blood-culture were Johnnie's hobby and a knowledge he enjoyed sharing.

The Bait is an entertaining insider look at police work, especially through the eyes of a woman cop at a time when there weren't many women cops, without getting bogged down into overly technical slang or extraneous procedural details. (One bit of Uhnak/Bait trivia: In 1973, a pilot more faithful to the book, titled The Bait, was filmed. Despite an all-star cast that included Donna Mills, Michael Constantine, William Devane, Arlene Golonka, June Lockhart, it was never produced into a series.)

Sadly, Teresa Graves, star of Get Christie Love, died in a house fire in 2002 at the age of 53, and Uhnak herself  in 2006 of a deliberate drug overdose that may have been suicide, according to her daughter.

Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association announced this year's winners of the Ned Kelly Awards:  2019 Best Fiction, The Lost Man by Jane Harper; 2019 Best True Crime, Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee; and 2019 Best First Fiction, The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan. For all of this year's shortlisted winners, head on over to the ACWA website.

This year's recipients of the 2019 Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction are Megan Abbott (for Distinguished Body of Work) and Sarah St. Vincent (Debut Novel). The awards, which will be presented October 10 at the Louisiana Humanities Center in New Orleans, were established for women writers to honor the memory of Diana Pinckley (1952-2012), a longtime crime fiction columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, and her passion for mysteries. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

The four finalists were revealed for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year:  Breakers by Doug Johnstone; A Treachery of Spies by Manda Scott; Conviction by Denise Mina; and The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry. The winner will be presented at the opening reception of Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival at the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling on September 20. (HT to Shots Magazine)

In conjunction with the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity (C3) Con in Columbia, Maryland, ten authors will read from their work at the latest Noir at the Bar event this Friday, September 13, which is free and open to the public. Hosted by E.A. Aymar, the event will include readings from Debbi Mack, Adam Meyer, Alan Orloff, Ellen Butler, Austin S. Camacho, David Mack, S.A. Cosby, Matty Dalrymple, and Weldon Burge - all of whom are competing for an engraved trophy, with attendees choosing the winner.

Gallery 88 in Mount Ephraim, New Jersey, is hosting an exhibit by Chris Cote, titled "Neo Noir Philadelphia," and there will be an opening reception this Friday from 6-9 pm. Chris Cote is an art director and graphic designer by day and street photographer by night, who is known for his cover art and production design for Philadelphia area comic book publisher Zenescope Entertainment, as well as his street photography project inspired by the neo-noir genre.

Speaking of things noir-ish and pulp-ish, Pulp Adventurecon is coming up on November 2 in Bordentown, New Jersey. Pulp Adventurecon (a one-day show held annually in two locations: Fort Lauderdale in February and Bordentown in November), hosts collectors and vendors of rare pulp magazines, vintage paperbacks, golden age comic books, movie memorabilia, and related paper collectibles.

Kirkus Reviews's mystery correspondent, Radha Vatsal, took at look at how Sisters in Crime is helping to diversify crime fiction by supporting and promoting under-represented voices.

In a plot straight out of a crime novel, Richard Danney, the son of author Frederic Dannay (who, along with his cousin penned the Ellery Queen mystery series), discovered his late mystery-novelist father’s signed books had been stolen, after seeing them go up for auction at Soetheby’s. Richard Danney claims 33 of his dad’s signed books were stolen by his step-mom Rose, passed to her son Terry Koppel and eventually given to Sotheby’s for auctioning, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed last week. After Frederic died in 1982, his third wife, Rose, allegedly fought his will but ultimately gave her right to Frederic’s literary works and agreed to turn over property from their house including "all Literary papers," the court documents claim. Sotheby’s is safeguarding the books and agreed to suspend any sales until the dispute was worked out.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Hunt" by Larry Chavis.

In the Q&A roundup, Hallie Ephron interviewed Lee McIntyre, an author best known for his nonfiction books, about his first work of crime fiction, The Sin Eater; Hank Phillippi Ryan and Paddy Hirsch sat down for a conversation on journalism and writing fiction; Alexander McCall Smith chatted with Event about his writing routine and the "value of civilisation"; and the Mystery People interviewed Reed Farrel Coleman about The Bitterest Pill, his latest continuation of Robert B. Parker’s character, Paradise Massachusetts Police Chief Jesse Stone.

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

Paramount Pictures has acquired Brilliance, and will turn the Marcus Sakey novel adaptation into a vehicle for Will Smith to star and Akiva Goldsman to write. The story is set in a future where non-neurotypical people ("Brilliants") are demonized by society who fear they will threaten the status quo of the "normal" population with their unique gifts. Smith will play the book series hero, Nick Cooper, a federal agent who works for the Department of Analysis and Response and whose job it is to track down and terminate criminal abnorms who use their gifts for ill. 

New Line Cinema has won an auction for Shut In, a spec script by first-time scribe Melanie Toast. The story is an edgy thriller centered on a single mother who is held captive by her violent ex, leaving her two young children at risk - and she must do everything to protect them and survive.

Saban Films has taken U.S. rights to the Aaron Eckhart action thriller, Line of Duty, from director Steven C. Miller. The pic follows Eckhart as a disgraced cop who finds himself in a race against time to find a kidnap victim whose abductor he accidentally killed. The film will be receiving a November theatrical release.

Vikings star, Katheryn Winnick, and Narcos star, Juan Pablo Raba, have joined the cast of The Minuteman, the action thriller starring Liam Neeson that begins production next week in New Mexico and Ohio. The project follows a rancher (Neeson) on the Arizona border who becomes the unlikely defender of a young Mexican boy desperately fleeing the cartel assassins (led by Raba) who’ve pursued him into the U.S.

Marvel veteran Hayley Atwell as been cast alongside Tom Cruise in the new Mission: Impossible movie, the seventh in the franchise and the first of two being directed back-to-back by Christopher McQuarrie. However, there is no word yet on the role that Atwell will play.

An upcoming Matt Damon thriller has been given a 2020 awards season release date with a limited release on November 6, 2020, before going wide on November 13. The untitled film follows Damon as Bill, an "oil-rig roughneck," who leaves his familiar Oklahoman environs to be with his daughter, who has been studying in France but was recently imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn't commit. In addition to Damon, the film also stars Abigail Breslin and Camille Cottin.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox has put in development The Perfect Couple, a one-hour mystery drama based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling novel. The story centers around wedding season on Nantucket, where one lavish wedding ends in disaster before it can even begin when a body is discovered hours before the ceremony. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash digs into the backgrounds of the bride, the groom, the groom’s famous mystery novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, Kapenash discovers every wedding is a minefield – and no couple is perfect.

Monk creator and executive producer, Andy Breckman, has re-teamed with the series’ director, Randy Zisk, for another hour-long procedural that CBS has put in development. Titled Einstein (and based on the German series), the action follows the brilliant but directionless great-grandson of Albert Einstein, who spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor. That is, until his bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law, and he's pressed into service helping a local police detective solve her most puzzling cases.

Black Ops producer World Media Rights is developing a true crime series with the real-life inspiration for Amazon’s Bosch after securing access to two Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Cold Case Unit veterans. The ten-part documentary series, Catching the Cold Killers, will follow officers Rick Jackson and Adam Bercovici as they re-open cold cases from LA’s law enforcement community. Jackson, who is a founding member of the LAPD cold case unit, was the inspiration for Michael Connelly’s fictional character, Harry Bosch, which was adapted into the eponymous Amazon cop drama.

Hulu has opted not to proceed with an ambitious two-series drama project based on two of John Grisham’s novels, 1995's The Rainmaker and 2015's Rogue Lawyer. Deadline reported that there is interest from other potential buyers in the project, which had been envisioned as the first chapter in a larger franchise, tentatively titled The Grisham Universe.

Oscar-winning actor Christoph Waltz is set to co-star opposite Liam Hemsworth in the untitled action thriller from Scorpion creator Nick Santora, producer Gordon Gray, Silver Reel Pictures, and CBS Television Studios. In the series, desperate to take care of his pregnant wife before a terminal illness can take his life, Dodge Maynard (Hemsworth) accepts an offer to participate in a deadly game where he soon discovers that he’s not the hunter…but the prey. The action-thriller explores the limits of how far someone would go to fight for their life and their family

Glynn Turman (Mr. Mercedes) is set for a recurring role opposite Chris Rock on the upcoming fourth season of FX’s Fargo, which will be set in Kansas City in 1950. The city will serve as the crossroads and collision point of two migrations, Italians coming from Italy and African Americans fleeing the south to escape Jim Crow, both fighting for a piece of the American dream as two controlling crime syndicates. Rock plays the head of one family, while Turman will recur as Doctor Senator.

Amazon has set the return date for John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan. The series, based on the CIA officer from Tom Clancy’s books, will premiere its second season on Nov. 1. Amazon also released the full-length trailer for the upcoming season,

The first trailer for Netflix's new procedural drama, Criminal, is out, with David Tennant and Hayley Atwell starring as uncooperative suspects in the "innovative" police procedural anthology series. Set entirely in the confines of a police interview suite, the show features 12 distinct stories that take place in four countries: the UK, France, Germany, and Spain.

Facebook Watch has dropped the first trailer for Limetown, its adaptation of the hit podcast starring and exec produced by Jessica Biel. Limetown follows Lia Haddock, played by Biel, a journalist for American Public Radio, as she unravels the mystery behind the disappearance of over 300 people at a neuroscience research community in Tennessee.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Crime author Walter Mosley spoke with WBUR in Boston about his new reference work, Elements of Fiction.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed author Sherri Leigh James to discuss her series featuring interior decorator Cissy Huntington, the protagonist in Blood Red and Iced Blue.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, a podcast hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Exigent Circumstances, Becoming a PI, and Confidential Informants."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Bookclub chatted with Ann Aguirre, an American author of speculative fiction, about her new crime novel, The Third Mrs. Durst.

THEATER

The Vertigo Theatre Mystery Series in Calgary, Canada, will present Strangers on a Train, September 15 - October 13, 2019. The thriller play, by Craig Warner that's based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, was made famous by the classic Alfred Hitchcock film.

FFB: A Dram of Poison

American author Charlotte Armstrong Lewi (1905-1969) wrote poetry, plays, short stories and 28 novels under the name Charlotte Armstrong and the pen name Jo Valentine, as well as working in the worlds of fashion, advertising and accounting. Her first success as a novelist came in 1942 with the fairly conventional detective offering Lay On, MacDuff! (featuring an early series character MacDougall Duff). Her stories were frequently adapted for TV, and she also penned the teleplays for several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

She won the Edgar Award in 1957 for her novel A Dram of Poison, sort of a Hitchcockian version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It all starts when 55-year-old Kenneth Gibson, a professor and confirmed bachelor, falls for a helpless and penniless woman twenty-three years younger. When his overbearing sister convinces him his wife only married him out of pity and is really in love with their young, handsome neighbor, Gibson decides suicide by poison is the only logical solution. But Gibson accidentally leaves the vial of poison, which looks like harmless bottle of olive oil, on a public bus. Terrified some innocent person could die due to his actions, a madcap search ensues, as more and more characters are brought into the hunt.

It's a difficult book to classify, less of a mystery and more of what can only be defined as "comic suspense," or perhaps a psychological portrait of a man discovering his true nature and seeing people around him as they really are for the first time. Anthony Boucher said it was one of his favorites and that "Reading it is an experience as delightful as it is unclassifiable" (I'm not the only one!), and called Armstrong a cross between Cornell Woolrich and Shirley Jackson. It's a short book, almost novella-length, filled with sly humor and quirky characters.

Other Armstrong books and stories are less whimsical and more noirish, often disguised as political allegories (e.g. commentaries on McCarthyism). Others were social commentaries or psychological studies, with the author herself once saying, "Maybe we are all potential murderers and reading stories about that crime releases us in some way."

Although Armstrong wrote a screenplay based on A Dram of Poison, and got Spencer Tracy interested in it at one point, it was never made into a movie. She had much better luck with her novel The Unsuspected, made into a Claude Rains-starring vehicle in 1947.

Mystery Melange

Congrats to this year's winner of the Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel by Australian women (presented by Sisters in Crime), Dervla McTiernan’s novel, The Ruin. The winners in the other categories include:

Young Adult Novel: Small Spaces by Sarah Epstein
Children’s Novel: Wakestone Hall by Judith Rossell
Nonfiction: The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper
Debut: Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee
Readers’ Choice: The Lost Man by Jane Harper

See all the shortlisted titles here.

The shortlist has been announced for the inaugural CWA Dagger for the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year. The award is the first new Dagger category created in over a decade. The finalists include:

Faber & Faber
Harper Fiction (HarperCollins)
HQ (HarperCollins)
No Exit Press (Oldcastle Books)
Orenda Books
Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin)
Raven (Bloomsbury)

Congrats also to the 2019 Munsey Award Winner, which I missed last month (while on vacation), that was presented at PulpFest in Pittsburgh on August 17 to George Vanderburgh. Named for Frank A. Munsey, publisher of the first pulp magazine, the award recognizes someone who has "contributed to the betterment of the pulp community through disseminating knowledge, publishing, or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest pulp magazines."

The Celtic Noir Crime Writing Festival is set to hit Dunedin Saturday, October 12, and Sunday, October 13. Presented by the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies (CISS), Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival, Dunedin Public Libraries, and Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature, the event will features workshops, master classes, and Q&As led by Liam McIlvaney, Fiona Kidman, Majella Cullinane, Adrian McKinty, Vanda Symon, Liz Nugent, and Val McDermid.


The Popular Culture Association invites proposals for their upcoming annual conference to be held in Philadephia, Wednesday, April 15 – Saturday, April 18, 2020. The event's theme is "Mystery & Detective Fiction," and organizers welcome academic discussions on all aspects and periods of mystery and detective fiction, including history, criticism, and theory, as well as explorations of social justice, diversity, inclusivity, and other current trends in scholarship. Abtracts of 100 to 250 words outlining both your object of analysis and your primary argument are due by November 1, 2019. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The volume 37, no. 2 (2019) issue of Clues: The Journal of Detection has been published, which is a themed issue on interwar mysteries guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester, UK). Articles include such topics as "Detecting Histories, Detecting Genealogies: The Origins of Golden Age Detective Fiction" and "Capital Punishment and Women in the British Police Procedural."

Do you think you an craft a crime-fiction plot in only half a dozen words? That’s the challenge in the third annual Six-Word Mystery Contest, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Entries must be received by midnight, October 31, 2019, and six-word novels can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard-boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery with Romance or Lust. If you need a hint, here's last year's winning entry (by Matthew Porter): "She took his name. For starters." (Hat to The Rap Sheet)

Writing for CrimeReads, Olivia Rutigliano remembered the "Gilded Age's Long-Lost Lady Detectives." In an era which restricted women's advancement, a handful of women beat the odds and became investigators.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is was contributed by Lauren Reynolds, and the most recent Beat to a Pulp story (which I'm also a little late noting), is "Scot" by Garnett Elliott.

In the Q&A roundup, Lesa Holstine interviewed Sara E. Johnson as they chatted about her first mystery, Molten Mud Murder, which is set in New Zealand; the Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis chatted with police officer-turned author, Bernard Schaffer, about his latest thriller, An Unsettled Grave; CrimeReads spoke with Lisa Lutz, author of The Spellman Files; Ali Karim snagged debut novelist Gareth Rubin for the Shots Magazine blog to discuss alternate history novels and his book, Liberation Square; and Rob Hart talked with CrimeReads's Lisa Levy about ending his private eye series featuring PI Ash McKenna, as well as the juggernaut that his new book,The Warehouse, has become.

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

Colin Farrell is teaming up with producer Lee Magiday (The Favourite) and Hopscotch Features on a screen adaptation of the Irish crime novel, The Ruin. Irish writer Dervla McTiernan’s thriller, set in Galway, follows detective Cormac Reilly as he is thrown back into a case from 20 years before involving two children whose mother died of an overdose. Through the eyes of the detective, we see into dark corners of Ireland including police corruption and abuses in the church.

Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo will star in Daniel Adams’ action film, Panama, inspired by true events. Set in 1989, the film follows James Becker (Grillo), a rugged ex-marine who is sent undercover by his former commander (Freeman) to execute a high-value deal. He must navigate through the local civil war to fight assassins and court femme fatales.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 has added Frank Langella to the cast and is also in negotiations with Mark Rylance. Langella joins the cast as U.S. District Court Judge Julius Hoffman, and Rylance would play the defense lawyer for the Chicago 7, William Kuntsler. They join a previously announced cast that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jonathan Majors and Alex Sharp. Based on Sorkin’s screenplay, the film is based on the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more after they were arrested during the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton are in talks to star in the untitled body-swapping thriller that Chris Landon (Happy Death Day) is directing. The film follows a teenager (Newton) who, after swapping bodies with a deranged serial killer (Vaughn), discovers she has less than 24 hours before the change becomes permanent.

Simon Pegg and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons have been set to star in My Only Sunshine, a comedy heist thriller being directed by Mark Palansky. The film, written by J.T. Petty and K. Reed Petty, revolves around a passionately dysfunctional couple who orchestrate a bank robbery as an unconventional act of bloodthirsty marriage counseling. They try to make peace with the shocking mystery of their relationship throughout the violent hostage situation, discovered by a cop hostage negotiator who previously investigated a past related crime.

Anna Kendrick is set to star in Unsound, a new crime thriller film to be directed by Bharat Nalluri from a screenplay by Matthew Ross and Christopher Edwards. The Oscar-nominated Kendrick will play a New England state trooper, privately struggling with irreversible hearing loss, who’s tasked with investigating the prison break of a notorious gang leader. As she digs deeper into the most dangerous case of her career, she uncovers a vast conspiracy that, coupled with her deteriorating condition, threatens to end her career — and her life.

Shailene Woodley has signed to star alongside Robert De Niro and Shia LaBeouf in After Exile, the Joshua Michael Stern-directed drama. Anthony Thorne and Michael Tovo wrote the script, based on true events from Tovo's life. After Exile is the story of Mike Delaney (LaBeouf) who, after being released from prison for killing an innocent man after a violent robbery, must re-enter his old life where he and his ex-criminal father (De Niro) attempt to save his younger brother from a dead end future of drugs and crime. Woodley will play Dana, a woman who has a shared past with Delaney and is seeking her own redemption.

Martin Scorsese's mob drama, The Irishman, has been given its release date, hitting select theaters on November 1 before heading to Netflix on November 27. Based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, the film stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci. It was also revealed that the runtime will be 210 minutes (well over three hours).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ITV-backed producer Silverprint Pictures is to adapt the crime novel, The Long Call, from the creator of Vera and Shetland, for television. The book is the first novel in Ann Cleeves’ Two Rivers series featuring the reserved and complex Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and evoking the stark beauty of the North Devon coastline and a community where murder and intrigue bubble just beneath the surface.

Emily St John Mandel’s upcoming mystery thriller novel, The Glass Hotel, will be turned into a television series by NBCUniversal International Studios. Mandel will write the pilot, her first television screenplay, about the disappearance of a woman from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania. This mysterious, but seemingly isolated, incident opens a window into a massive ponzi scheme which implodes in New York, destroying countless fortunes and lives with it.

Sophie Rundle (Gentleman Jack) and Martin Compston (Line of Duty) are set to headline BBC One’s forthcoming five-part thriller, The Nest. They play a couple who've been trying to have a baby for years and meet Kaya (Mack), an 18-year-old who agrees to carry their baby. It feels like they were meant to meet, but was it really by chance? Who is Kaya and what has brought her to this couple?

Naomie Harris (Moonlight) will star opposite Jude Law in the HBO and Sky mystery drama, The Third Day, a story told over six episodes and in two distinct halves. The first, "Summer," sees Sam (Law), a man drawn to a mysterious island off the British coast where he encounters a group of islanders set on preserving their traditions at any cost. The second, "Winter," follows Helen (Harris), a strong-willed outsider who comes to the island seeking answers, but whose arrival precipitates a fractious battle to decide its fate.

Abby Brammell (9-1-1, The Unit) has booked a recurring role on the upcoming sixth season of Amazon’s Bosch, the series based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels. Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Brammell will play Heather Strout, a tough, smart, blue-collar woman who may or may not be mixed up in some of her husband’s issues.

ABC has posted the first nine minutes of supernatural drama, Emergence, online. Emergence follows Jo (Allison Tolman), a police chief who takes in a young child (Alexa Swinton) she discovers near the site of a mysterious accident who has no memory of what has happened. The investigation draws Jo into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined, and the child’s identity is at the center of it all.

A trailer was released for Netflix's upcoming thriller, The Spy, which stars Sacha Baron Cohen in a dramatic role playing real-life Israeli spy Eli Cohen. Cohen was an Israeli clerk who was recruited as a Mossad agent and, in the early 1960s, tasked with infiltrating the Syrian regime.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new episode of the Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features the mystery short story "Murderous Lies" by Peter DiChellis, read by actor Rene A. Ponce.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Tony Knighton on the Crime Cafe podcast about his writing, including the novella, Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties.

On the latest Read or Dead podcast, hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about some interesting adaptations coming soon; survivalist thrillers; and their love (or lack thereof) for the outdoors.

Dr. DP Lyle's latest Criminal Mischief episode looked at "Storytelling In Dixie."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of "Victim Visas, One-Way Mirrors, and HIDTA."

The featured guest on It Was a Dark & Stormy Book Club was Edwin Hill, discussing his latest novel, The Missing Ones, featuring missing-persons expert, Hester Thursby.

Quote of the Week

FFB: Wycliffe and the Three Toed Pussy

For all the writers out there who are getting a late start in life, the author of my FFB pick for today should be an inspiration. W.J. Burley started his career as an engineer before going back to college to study zoology and becoming head of the biology department at Newquay School in Cornwall. But he'd always wanted to write, and finally saw his first novel published when he was 51.

He said his intention was "to write interesting detective fiction which did not exploit extreme forms of violence or sex and was relatively free of four-letter words. In doing this I thought I might help fill a gap that was left in the market by the gradual disappearance of the traditional whodunnit." His first effort, Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy, was published in 1968, but it's clear Burley continued in the traditions of the Golden Age of detective fiction from the decades preceding.

The Wycliffe of the title is Detective Chief Superintendent Charles Wycliffe, a man who admits he'd never really felt like a policeman and often wondered why he joined, hating discipline, regimentation, and sometimes order—although he hates violence more. He also loses confidence in himself at the beginning of a case, "avoiding his subordinates for fear of earning their mute criticism, and, forced into their company, he became agressively dictatorial. Those who knew him shrugged. 'He'll be all right when he's run in.'"

Many of the Golden Age hallmarks are present in the novel: fair play, a rural country setting, a whodunnit-style murder, a small, closed group of suspects and the denouement at the end with Wycliffe gathering the prime suspects together. True to Burley's philosophy, there are no four-letter words and no extreme violence or sex, although sex does play a starring role in the form of the titular victim, Pussy Wells, both by her lifestyle and the double-entendre of her name.

The book opens with Wycliffe examining the body of Wells, an attractive 26-year-old who writes crossword puzzles for a living. She's been shot, and only one of her shoes and stockings removed, revealing a deformed foot with three toes. It doesn't take long in the investigation for Wycliffe to discover that Wells was a very complicated and troubled young woman, intelligent but manipulative and cruel. She was also quite promiscuous, using men as her puppets, thereby creating a ready pool of suspects in the small village of Kergwyns. As Wycliffe digs deeper, he links another murder, an attempted murder and an alleged suicide to Pussy's death, all leading to the ultimate resolution and one which leaves "a deeper impression on the superintendent than any in his experience."

Burley went on to publish another seventeen Wycliffe books, as well as six other books including one sci-fi title that Martin Edwards has mentioned in his blog (where he aptly refers to Wycliffe as the "English Simenon").  In 1993, one of the Wycliffe stories was made into a television pilot starring Jack Shepherd, and proved successful enough to inspire 37 episodes over the next five years. Unfortunately, as Edwards notes, people tend to remember Shepherd and his portrayal of Wycliffe, yet have largely forgotten W.J. Burley.

Bad is Good

The Bad Sydney Crime Writers Festival has announced the shortlist for this year’s Danger Prize, awarded for the best book, film, podcast or TV drama about Sydney and crime. Two true crime books and a short fiction collection were shortlisted for the prize, along with the podcasts The Teacher’s Pet and Who the Hell is Hamish?  

The shortlisted books are:

• Sydney Noir (ed. John Dale, Xoum)
• The Suicide Bride: A mystery of tragedy and family secrets in Edwardian Sydney (Tanya Bretherton, Hachette)
• Reasonable Doubt: Spies, police and the Croatian Six (Hamish McDonald, Doosra Media).

The Danger Prize is open to work first published or screened in the 2018/19 financial year. The winner will be announced on opening night of the Bad Sydney Writers Festival, which runs from September. 6-8 in Sydney, Australia. Also announced at the awards night will be this year’s Ned Kelly Awards for Australian crime writing. For more information on the prize and the festival, see the website.