In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The Guardian has the trailer for the adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock. The film, directed by Rowan Joffe, opens in the U.K. on February 4th and is less a remake of the 1947 film than an update set in the 1960s. The all-star cast includes Sam Riley, Helen Mirren and Andrea Riseborough.

The first image from Sherlock Homes 2 has been posted by Screen Rant. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return for the sequel, joined by Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish film version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

Actor Jeremy Renner confirmed that he's being groomed to take up the Mission Impossible reins from Tom Cruise after the upcoming Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Disney has signed up Gore Verbinski to direct the new Lone Ranger film directed by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Johnny Depp as Tonto. The project gives Verbinski, Bruckheimer and Depp the chance to work together again after the successful Disney franchie Pirates of the Caribbean.

TV

Fox is developing a show titled In Deep, said to be a cross between "the crime and corruption of The Sopranos and the soap opera pseudo-romantics of Desperate Housewives." The series will follow the life of a female FBI agent played by Kathleen "Bird" York on an assignment in Chicago's organized crime syndicate. York is also writing and co-producing the pilot.

Neal Baer, one of the executive producers and a driving force behind NBC's Law & Order: SVU for over a decade, is leaving the show and heading over to CBS as part of a three-year contract. Baer feels CBS respects the writing process and adds that "I admire their insight and passion for storytelling . . . I think that's a good combination."

TNT's untitled pilot based on Marshall Karp's novel The Rabbit Factory has filled its lead roles. The Hollywood-based police procedural features Steven Webber (Wings) and D.L. Hughley as the main cops, with Blake Clark (Toy Story 3's Slinky Dog) as a father figure. Rhea Seehorn and Bradford Anderson fill out the cast as a female medical investigator and a computer forensics expert. 

PODCASTS/RADIO

The BBC's "Open Book" program has author Philip Kerr talking about his new book Field Grey. It features Kerr's detective, Bernie Gunther, who works the homicide beat in Germany around World War II. Kerr was awarded the lucrative RBA International Prize for Crime Writing for his novel If the Dead Rise Not.

THEATER

Matthew Fox (Lost) and stage and screen actress Olivia Williams will take the lead roles in Neil LaBute's psychological thiller play In a Forest, Dark and Deep, at the London West End's Vaudeville Theatre March through June 2011. The drama surrounds a brother and sister who find hidden truths as they clean out her cottage in the forest on a stormy night. Fox may be best known for his Lost role, although he graduated from the Atlantic Theater Company's acting conservatory, founded by playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy.

 

Noir Friday (and Saturday)

Although I'm taking the day off due to the holiday, there may be a few folks who are offering up selections for Friday's Forgotten Books. Be sure and hop on over to Patti Abbott's blog where you'll find any potential links. And, as the biggest (or second biggest, apparently) shopping weekend descends upon us, don't forget that books make most excellent gifts. Saturday the 27th also happens to be "Small Business Saturday," a great time to patronize your local indie bookstore or other independent shop.

Thanks for Giving

Although I try to be grateful for life's many blessings great and small every day, I don't often voice those thoughts out loud — like a lot of people, I would suspect. So, perhaps we do need one special day set aside to remind us that, although it's important to be thankful, it's also a good idea to let other people know how you feel.

Of course, I count myself lucky to have such a supportive family including my always-patient, long-suffering husband, Charles.

I've met a lot of crime fiction folks online via this blog, counting among their ranks the likes of the delightful Patti Abbott, Gerard Brennan, Hilary Davidson, Martin Edwards, Barbara Fister, Jen Forbus, Elizabeth Foxwell, Ed Gorman, George Kelley, Lee Lofland, Todd Mason, Terrie Moran, Robert Randisi, Peter Rozovsky, Janet Rudolph, Sandra Seamans, Kelli Stanley, Lance Wright, the many fine folks over at the Rap Sheet blog, and so many more, far too numerous to mention, but all greatly appreciated.

I'm also glad there are wonderful editors out there working on print and online magazines who support short fiction and the crime fiction genre in general, even though their publications may be money-losing labors of love. I've enjoyed working with many of these talented and thoughtful editors over the past few years.

And last but certainly not least, I'm thankful for and appreciate all you folks who follow this blog and provide feedback and support. May each of you have a happy, healthy holiday season.

Mystery Melange for Turkey Week

If you need a breather from the annual Thanksgiving madness, here are a few fun links for your holiday amusement:

Janet Rudolph has posted her listing of Thanksgiving-themed mysteries (and those set in and around the season) on her blog Mystery Fanfare.

Not to be outdone (or is that overdone?), Murder, Mystery and Mayhem offer up their roster of culinary mysteries.

Mystery Lovers Kitchen is always cooking up interesting fodder for the culinarily-inclined fan of all things crime fiction. This week, there are a few recipes that might help make your meal a little more savory.

George Kelley reviews the sequel to Harold McGee's classic, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, a book titled Keys to Good Cooking.

Hallie Ephron and the other authors over at Writing Well is the Best Revenge have a posting about monster turkeys terrorizing innocent Americans.

Not holiday-themed, but fun all the same, Patti Abbott's La Ronde flash fiction round-robin buffet is already up to part 8, but if you've missed the others, she has links to those, too.

If you also missed this month's conference Murder and Mayhem in Muskego (as I did), Publishers Weekly has a smorgasbord roundup of all the highlights.

Sisters in Crime reminds us to think about independent bookstores when heading out on "Black Friday" for Christmas shopping. The IndieBound site has links to locations near you. Many an author's career has been launched at such stores.

And, finally, the real way to a man's heart and his . . . well, um, interest.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

It looks like the film adaptation of the 1960s classic NBC TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum) is now on the fast track. Director Steven Soderbergh appears set to direct, and George Clooney may also be attached to the project, although what role he'd play isn't yet clear.

Leonardo DiCaprio is going to both produce and star in the movie Legacy of Secrecy, an adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann. It's based on an FBI informant Jack Van Laningham (DiCaprio) who allegedly witnessed the confession of Mafia godfather Carlos Marcello to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

TV

For those of us who know Pierce Brosnan from the 1980s crime show Remington Steele, it seems like old-home week to hear he's signed up to star in a new thriller series about a private detective, based on the experiences of real life international investigator Logan Clarke (head of the Los Angeles-based Clarke International Investigations). The untitled television drama is from ER writer Jack Orman and Sony Pictures Television.

Actress Clare Danes is in talks to return to TV for Homeland, a pilot for Showtime about U.S. Marine Sergeant Scott Brody, who's found 10 years after going missing during the invasion of Baghdad. Danes would play Carrie Anderson, a CIA case officer who gets a tip that Brody has turned up and is leading a strike against the United States.

The 2008 Mafia film Gomorrah, based on Roberto Saviano's book, is to be adapted for television as a 12-part series in a joint deal between Fandango, Cattleya and Sky Italia. The movie Gomorrah was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival following its release.

Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck) is going to star in an untitled FBI procedural drama from veteran drama writer Julie Hebert that's set in D.C. He'll be reuniting with CBS and producers Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly for the project.

PODCASTS/RADIO

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson this week featured Dennis Lehane, author of Moonlight Mile. The video should be available on the web site this week.

Friday's Forgotten Books -- The Hanging Doll Murder (Face Value)

It's amazing that Roger Ormerod, a native of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, managed to end up as writer, given his background. Born in 1920, he worked various jobs, including postal worker, shop loader in an engineering factory, clerk in county court, inspector for Department of Social Security, and lists his hobbies as amateur tailoring, wine making, stereo photography and high fidelity.

But somehow in the middle of that, he wrote some 22 standalone crime novels; four novels in a series featuring Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson; 16 books in a series featuring private detective David Mallin; and 11 in his Richard and Amelia Patton series, a total of 53 books, all penned between 1974 and 1998.

His interest in crime fiction began with Sherlock Holmes stories in Savoy magazines he discovered at his grandmother's house which started him on his path to writing, which went basically nowhere...until what he called a "freak acceptance" of his first TV play as his first sale, which landed an agent who said he wrote better novels. The first of those, Time to Kill, featuring P.I. David Mallin, was published when Ormerod was 54. He once said about his writing philosophy: "I am principally interested in human motivation in respect of crimes, rather than the mechanics of them. My main intention is to entertain rather than to instruct."

Ormerod's creation Detective Inspector Richard Patton is known as a maverick and a pain in the neck by his superiors, who flouts regulations and won't follow orders, which is why they're relieved when he decides to take early retirement. At the start of The Hanging Doll Murder (published in the UK as Face Value), Patton is due to retire in three days. But he's surprisngly ambivalent about the move, especially when the sadistic Clive Kendall, a child-rapist whom he'd jailed years before, is released from prison. Retirement seems even less likely when Patton faces yet another loose end relating to the Kendall case, the husband of Amelia Trowbridge, who's gone missing and whose burned-out car is discovered in a ravine. As Patton navigates around the clues, including a hanging doll with a goatee beard, the case becomes even more personal when he finds himself getting too close to the prime suspect—Amelia.

Trevor Royle, in the St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, summarized Ormerod's writing style as having a "nonchalance . . . reminiscent at times of Raymond Chandler. As well as realism of background, Ormerod's writing is notable for its terse and natural dialogue and for an ability to switch the direction of the narrative." Ormerod has also received positive reviews for his characterizations and insights into complex human relationships and motivations, as in this excerpt, musings from Patton:

That Sunday had been my last rest-day in harness, so I'd decided to treat it as a trial run for all my glorious days of freedom ahead. I'd rolled out of bed. A new day. Tra-la! But it hadn't lasted long. After breakfast, the grey day had seemed insupportable indoors, and all I had to fall back on was the same old routine. It had therefore occurred to me to drive out into the country and dicker around with a couple of minor issues. But Brason had to go and upset the equilibrium by offering interest, and Ted Clayton had presented a clear line of action I wasn't going to be in a position to carry through. It left me tense, my mind racing, and staring out at the wind-blown drifts of heavier flakes past my window. Like my life, I thought in disgust, colourless and insubstantial, and blowing past.

One criticism of Ormerod's work may be what Reginald Hill of Books & Bookmen called an unnecessary twisting and twisting at the tail of Face Value "till the whole thing was bent out of shape." In fact, Ormerod is known for his labyrinthine plots and deep barrel of clues, and by the time he does wind down the denouement, there might be a touch of "it's about time," but all in all, The Hanging Doll Murder is a solid procedural with a pinch of psychological and suspense genres thrown in. Trevor Royle wasn't far off in calling Ormerod "one of Britain's best traditional crime writers."

Mystery Melange

The Mystery Writers of American has named Sara Paretsky as the 2011 Grand Master, a title MWA created to honor the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing, important contributions to the genre, and a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. The MWA also handed out the 2011 Raven Award, for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing, to the bookstores Once Upon a Crime, in Minneapolis, MN, and Centuries & Sleuths in Chicago, IL.

The Washington Academy of Sciences and the bookstore Mystery Loves Company are sponsoring the 2nd Annual Science is Murder Event featuring authors Louis Bayard, Dana Cameron, Ellen Crosby, Lawrence Goldstone in a reception, panel and book-signing at the Washington Academy of Sciences, 1200 New York Avenue, Washington, D.C., December 21st form 6:30pm to 9:00pm.

Maxim Jakubowski, author, editor, reviewer, and former proprietor of the UK's Mystery One Bookshop, named his top 10 crime fiction locations in a article for The Guardian. Number 10 starts off the list with New York in Lawrence Block's Small Town and works its way up to...(you'll have to read the article!). This is a follow-up to the 2010 anthology of essays Jakubowski edited, Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, with contributions including many expert crime fiction bloggers such as Declan Burke, Oline Cogdill, Sarah Weinman, Martin Edwards, J. Kingston Pierce, and Peter Rozovsky, who has a write-up of the book.

If you're a fan of the growing field of speculative fiction, Lisa Seddon offers up some mystery books that cross over into that domain, as well as some links for more information, if you're new to the genre.

As the publishing industry struggles with the influence of e-books, Publishers Weekly reports that declines in the sales of print books haven't been offset by the explosive rise in the sales of digital books.

'Zine Scene

Mystery Readers Journal is out with its Fall 2010 issue, featuring Island Mysteries. Michael Gora takes us on an overview tour, and Gay Toltl Kinman offers up "The Island Mystery Primer." There are also various essays and updates from writers on their own island-based works or those of others, as well as review and true-crime columns. Articles accessible online include "The Bleak and Beautiful Islands" (Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear) by Ann Cleeves; "Islands in the Stream of Consciousness" (St. Michel Loubejou, France) by Peter May; and "My Mykonos" by Jeffrey Siger. With the weather already turning nasty and dumping several feet of snow in the midwest and the Rockies, we could all probably use a little literary vacation.

Mystery Scene's Holiday Issue #117 is now available, with author Dennis Lehane discdussing the much-anticipated return of Boston PIs Angie Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie in Moonlight Mile. Tasha Alexander also talks about her new novel Dangerous to Know and her Victorian heroine Lady Emily, a woman truly before her time. There's also a look at Stuart Neville's tough, morally complex Irish thrillers The Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion.  Author Carolyn Hart discusses the solace that good books can provide in hard times, and Lawrence Block remembers the colorful bank-robber-turned-crime-writer Albert Nussbaum. If you need gift ideas, you can check out the annual Mystery Scene Gift Guide.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Producer David Barron and Fork Films are planning a film adaptation of Bulldog Drummond, based on the 1920s-era books featuring the British action hero by Sapper, the pen name of author Herman Cyril McNeile. Drummond has been named as one of the inspirations for James Bond.

Director Oren Peli has been attached to the film Eliza Graves, based (loosely, apparently) on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe in which a Harvard Medical School graduate takes a job at an insane asylum, unaware of the fact that it has been taken over by its occupants.

Warner Bros. picked up the rights to develop Brad Thor's Scot Harvath novels for the big screen, starting with The Lions of Lucerne, with the hopes of building a Bourne-style franchise. Harvath is a former Navy Seal involved in Counterterrorism Ops in the world of underground intelligence. Thor's movie deal also includes The Athena Project, based on a book due to be published
later this month, first in a series about a team of female agents trained in black ops.

TV

TV icon Bob Newhart is set for a guest-starring role on NCIS, playing Dr. Walter Magnus, an "eccentric-but-charming" medical examiner who comes out of retirement to help the NCIS team, working closely with ME Ducky.

Producer Gale Anne Hurd and Sony TV are teaming up for an action thriller movie for Lifetime, known more for its softer romance-style films. Catherine Bell (Army Wives) stars as a happy suburban wife and mother with a dark past as a military-trained special-ops agent. When her husband is mysteriously kidnapped, Abby's past returns to haunt her and she risks everything to protect her daughter and save the man she loves.

Steven Weber (Wings) and D.L. Hughley (The Hughleys) will star in the as-yet untitled TNT pilot based on The Rabbit Factory novel by Marshall Karp, following recently widowed police LAPD Detective Mike Lomax (Weber) and his newly married partner, Terry Biggs (Hughley), who delve into "a world of mystery, intrigue and occasional hijinks."

Tisha Campbell-Martin, Chris Payne Gilbert and Ally Walker are set to star in the Lifetime drama pilot Exit 19, about single mother Gloria Shepherd (Walker) as she juggles her demanding personal and professional lives raising two children while working as a New York Police Department homicide detective. Campbell-Martin will play Gloria’s smart and vivacious partner, while Gilbert will play Gloria’s younger brother, a recovering alcoholic.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Minnesota Public Radio featured Troy Patterson and Sarah Weinman answering the question "Why do we love anti-heroes" like Lisbeth Salander?

Dennis Lehane visited NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday to talk about his latest book Moonlight Mile, the first addition to his Kenzie-Gennaro detective series in 12 years.

Friday's Forgotten Books - Ghost of a Chance

William Roos was born in Pennsylvania in 1911, eventually heading to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study drama, first as an actor, then as a playwright. Audrey Kelley was born in New Jersey in 1912, and also ended up at Carnegie Tech at the same time as Roos to study acting. They met, fell in love, and like many wannabe actors and playwrights, moved to New York City.

What followed was a less-than-successful effort on both their parts initially, until Audry decided to try mystery writing as a career. It's unknown how she and her husband decided to collaborate, but collaborate they did, using a combination of their surnames as a pen name, Kelley Roos. According to their son, one of his parents would work on the even-numbered chapters, the other the odd-numbered chapters, then they would turn their chapters over to the other for rewrites.

Their first book, Made Up To Kill, was published in 1940 by Dodd, Mead, and featured husband-and-wife sleuth team, Jeff Troy, a photographer and jack-of-all-trades and Haila Troy, actress, who live in Greenwich Village. Son Stephen adds that "The Troys were a lot like my parents. They laughed a lot, drank a lot too. They worked very hard at their writing, but they never looked on their work as art. It was fun. They were entertainers."

In addition to the novels, William continued to write plays, including January Thaw and the book for the long-running 1948 Mike Todd musical, As the Girls Go. He and Audrey took their collaboration to the stage for the mystery play, Speaking of Murder, which had only a month's run in New York but longer when it moved to London. In 1961, their adaptation of John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court was televised by the National Broadcasting Company and picked up the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Ghost of a Chance from 1947 was the sixth of nine novels featuring the Troy duo, and starts off with a cryptic phone call to Jeff from a mysterious stranger who wants Jeff's help because an unnamed woman is going to be murdered. The Troys follow the strangers's instructions to meet him, hopping through bars and on to Times Square—only to find the stranger dead beneath a subway train. Believing the man was pushed to his death, but unable to convince anyone else, the Troys begin a suspenseful hunt to find the identity of the woman who is being targeted before the murderous gang behind the plot gets to her first, even as the Troys themselves are followed, shot at, and held virtual captives in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

As with the other Troy novels, Jeff does most of the detecting (something New York homicide cop Lt. George Hankins prefers to call "meddling") with Haila narrating the action, spotting clues, and proving she's far from a typical damsel-in-distress, all the while engaging in non-stop cheery banter along with her wry asides:

 

Jeff whistled a merry tune while we waited. I, too, felt fine. Actually, it wasn't much. Locating a man who owned a hansom cab that was driven years ago by a man who knew the name of a woman who was slated to be murdered was still a long way from finding that woman. But it was something, a little something. After hours and hours of nothing but high, thick stone walls it was worth whistling about. I joined Jeff, supplying some doubtful harmony to his doubtful melody of that recorded cantata in praise of Piel's light beer of Broadway fame.

Ghost of a Chance was filmed as Scent of Mystery (1960) starring Denholm Elliott, Beverly Bentley and Peter Lorre (with Elizabeth Taylor making an uncredited cameo). The location was changed to Spain, and the film was scripted by William Rose, but Kelley Roos turned around and created a novelization of the film, published to coincide with the movie release. Interestingly, the movie was made in the short-lived technology Smell-O-Vision, where the theatre was equipped with a system that gave off various odours synched up with the film, such as the opening scene with a butterfly flitting through a peach grove that called up peach scents, and later a smashed barrel of wine.

Other Roos novels were made into films (sans Smell-O-Vision), including The Frightened Stiff, which became A Night to Remember (1942), with Haila and Jeff portrayed by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne; Dangerous Blondes in 1943 starring Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes; The Blonde Died Dancing, filmed in France as Do You Want to Dance With Me? in 1959 and starring Brigitte Bardot and Henri Vidal; And To Save His Life made into the TV-Movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales in 1971.

Following in the tradition of Nick and Nora Charles, Pam and Jerry North (written by another husband-and-wife duo, Richard and Frances Lockridge), it's a shame that the Troys have been largely forgotten, although thanks to Rue Morgue Press, four of the Kelley Roos/Troy novels have been reissued in paper within the past five years, including Made Up to Kill, If the Shroud Fits, The Frightened Stiff and Sailor Taking Warning.