In Reference to Murder

Mystery Melange

Real-life private eyes Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman, who operate the blog Guns, Gams and Gumshoes, chose the "Best of 2011: Five of Our Favorite Private Investigator Sites."

There have been several fine anthologies published in the last couple of years to benefit various charities. The latest is Off the Record, with 38 writers from both sides of the Atlantic crafting 38 short stories based on classic song titles. All proceeds will be donated to two children's literacy charities. Patti Abbott (who contributes one story for the project), had guest blog posts from two authors included in the book, Benoit Lelievre and Les Edgerton, discussing the story behind their story.

The Q&A roundup today features Brett Battles (Jonathan Quinn and the "Cleaner" series) talking with the Sons of Spade blog. The Read Me Deadly blog has an interview with Libby Fischer Hellman, author of a series with Ellie Foreman, a video documentarian, and another with Georgia Davis, a police officer turned private eye.

Spinetingler magazine is open again for submissions, and they're making a few changes for 2012, including accepting flash fiction and publishing groups of six stories together in Kindle "issues" before they are posted on the site.

In case you missed the winners of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Awards nominees, the Murder, Mystery & Mayhem blog has the lists for you in the various crime fiction categories.

If you're in the northern Virginia area, you can catch the next free Café Scientifique in Arlington, with Kevin McElfresh, Ph.D. presenting "Forensic Genetics – The Reality of Genomic Science at a Crime Scene," a discussion on how the application of DNA technology to forensic testing in the late 1980's transformed the justice system.

If you want to solve a mystery without leaving the comfort of your desk, try your hand at decoding the Voynich Manuscript. Dating from the 15th or 16th centuries, the manuscript has befuddled countless academics with its botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings and an unknown language. Now, the manuscript has been posted online, and you can check it out on your own.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest post-holiday news of crime dramas and more:

MOVIES

Chris Evans (most recently Captain America), is replacing James Franco in the lead role of the biopic Iceman, based on Anthony Bruno's book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer.

The gadget wizard "Q" in next year's James Bond movie Skyfall will be the first Q in the franchise's history to be younger than 007. Ben Whishaw, recently cast in the role, is 31 to titular star Daniel Craig's 43 years.

TV

All you spy thriller writers and fans, take note: the NSA is allowing cameras in for a rare public peek at the secretive agency. National Geographic TV's Inside the NSA will air in January.

ABC's Castle series is planning a film-noir episode, where Castle and Beckett imagine themselves in the 1940s, with stars Natan Filliion as a Sam Spade-ish private eye and Stana Katic as a gangster's moll.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens next year, BBC television and radio are planning nearly three months of special programs starting today. Among the highlights are a three-part adaptation of Great Expectations written by Sarah Phelps, and writer Gwyneth Hughes is going to finish Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood for BBC Two.

Shaw Media put in an order for ten episodes of Out of Time, about a regular female cop from the future who finds herself trapped in present-day Vancouver. The series is from indie producer Reunion Pictures and starts shooting in Vancouver in early 2012.

Gale Anne Hurd is developing an Area 51 series based on the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. It centers on two men working on the base who are "thrust into danger when they uncover secrets that the government will protect at any cost."

If you were following TVLine's "Male Law Enforcement Crushes Bracket Tournament," the final results are in: NCIS actor Tony DiNozzo (who plays Michael Weatherly on the show) reigned victorious at the end of the 64-player, single-elimination tourney. Now, it's the women's turn.

PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's Audie Cornish talks to writer Richard Preston, who completed the late Michael Crichton's scientific thriller novel Micro, centered around nano-technology, corporate greed and murder.

THEATER

The world premiere of The Game's Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays) debuted November 25 at the Cleveland Play House in Ohio. From the pen of Tony Award-nominated Ken Ludwig, the play centers on famed stage actor William Gillette at his Connecticut Castle, recovering from an attempt on his life following a performance of his renowned play, Sherlock Holmes. When Gillete's home becomes the setting for a murder on Christmas Eve, he must use the Sherlock Holmes crime-solving skills he made famous on stage to catch the culprit.

GAMES

The video game Murder She Wrote was popular enough (a "best-selling game") that game maker Legacy Interactive has announced a Murder She Wrote 2 due in 2012.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Fool's Gold

Patti Abbott, organizer of the Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature, wanted a focus on Canadian authors and themes today, so I offer up Edward John "Ted" Wood, who was born in Sussex, England in 1931 and served in the RAF during the Second World War. In 1954 he emigrated to Canada and was a Toronto police officer for three years before switching to advertising and copyrighting. The dual law enforcement/writing experience prompted him to pen several published crime fiction (and non-genre) short stories and a teleplay.

His first novel was Dead in the Water in 1984, a police procedural that won the Scribner's Crime Novel Award and was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. It was the first of what became a series featuring policeman Reid Bennett, an ex-marine and Vietnam vet, who relocated to the small fictional Canadian resort town of Murphy's Harbour after he took a bad rap for murdering two guys to prevent a rape. He's aided by his trusty German Shepherd, Sam, who serves as companion and protector.

In Fool's Gold, the fourth novel in the series (also nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award), gold found in the mountains of Canada prompts a sudden influx of prospectors, chopper pilots, construction workers and drifters, all hoping to get rich quick. It also brings the dead body of geologist Jim Prudhomme, who's found mauled beyond recognition presumably by a bear, even though bear attacks in that area are rare. But the mystery increases when a witness claims to have seen Prudhomme days after the murder, and then Prudhomme turns up dead for real. As Bennett digs deeper, he doesn't discover gold but rather a plot to defraud the gold mine. With the help of the local police chief out for one last big case and a beautiful motel keeper with secrets of her own, Bennett races to get to the bottom of the scheme, dodging blackmailers, vengeful miners and a mounting body count.
 
A tendency to skirt the rules makes Bennett take chances that aren't always credible, but Woods' plots are known for their many twists and turns, and also witty dialogue and elements of suspense. Fans of the series are particularly fond of Sam, who Publisher's Weekly described as "…a multitalented utility infielder who can 'keep,' 'track,' 'seek,' 'fight,' 'guard,' sniff out cocaine and corpses, save lives and generally pinch-hit for a dozen patrolmen."

Woods went on to write 10 Bennett novels in all (from 1984 to 1995) and three novels featuring private eye John Locke from 1986 to 1991 (written under the pen name Jack Barnao). Woods also also served as president of the Crime Writers of  Canada from 1987 to 1988.

Check out the other FFB links, hosted today by Todd Mason.

A Note of Thanks

I am grateful today for all you folks who have read this blog over the past two years. I'm grateful to you for supporting not just me, but crime fiction specifically and reading and literacy in general. I'm grateful people are still interested in books, maybe even more than ever, with publishers selling 2.57 billion books in all formats in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008, according to the New York Times, and that doesn't even include self-published books. I suspect—I hope—we may be in a new Renaissance of reading, and I give thanks that the written word can still provide both entertainment and meaning in an increasingly fast-paced world.

So thank you—readers of this blog and readers of literature everywhere.

 

 

 

Mystery Melange

Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare has a lengthy listing of Thanksgiving mysteries you can settle down with while in the midst of your post-feast food coma.

Mystery Writers of American announced that the 2012 Grand Master is Martha Grimes. The honor is given each year to an author who represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing. The MWA's Raven Award for outstanding individual supporting mystery books goes to M is for Mystery in San Mateo and Molly Weston of Meritorious Mysteries. The 2012 Ellery Queen Award will be given to Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group for his generous and wide-ranging support of the genre.

Arne Dahl won the Swedish crime fiction award with Viskelen (Chinese Whispers), although as yet there are no US or UK rights or editions for the novel. The author's first book in English, Misterioso is finally being released in the U.S. after a long delay. (Hat to Crime Scraps Review.) Meanwhile, the Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year went to Bloodland by Alan Glynn, and over in Japan, Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine was named winner of the 2011 Maltese Falcon Award, given to the best hardboiled/private eye novel published in the previous year in Japan.

Andrew Hunt, professor of history at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is the winner of the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel. Hunt's book, City of Saints, introduces a Mormon sleuth investigating a crime in 1930s Utah and will be published by St. Martin's Press. Sherida Stewart of Farmington, New Mexico, won the 2011 Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Contest for her mystery "Turquoise Remembrance."

The latest short story offering on Beat to a Pulp is titled "Stalker," and was written by award-winning author, faithful blogger and all-around nice guy Ed Gorman.

Noir Nation is starting a series of international weekly posts focusing on a different country or region, with fans and followers invited to pitch in and help with your recommendations and contributions. This week, it's crime writers from India; post a top 10 or 20 list, or just a name or two.

You can register now for the  Mystery Writers of Ameria New England University, scheduled for Saturday, February 11, 2012,  at the Sheraton Boston. It features a day of top-notch classes including:  "After the Idea" with Jess Lourey; "Dramatic Structure & Plot" with Laura DiSilverio; "Setting & Description" with Daniel Stashower; "Character & Dialogue" with Reed Farrel Coleman; "Writing as Re-Writing" with Hallie Ephron; and "The Writing Life" with Hank Phillippi Ryan.

As the lists for "best of" books published during 2011 begin to pour in, Spinetingler is keeping track and has a scoresheet of sorts for you. What's interesting to me is the diversity in the lists thus far, with very little overlap. Does this mean there were more good books published last year, and thus it's harder to choose? At any rate, lots of good reading material there for you.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The film adaptation of the 60s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. may be in jeopardy. Director Steven Soderbergh has left the project after stars George Clooney and Bradley Cooper passed on the starring role of Napoleon Solo. The main sticking point, however, appears to have been budgeting for what was intended to be the first in a series of international spy thrillers.

Garbo the Spy, a true-life documentary tale of espionage during World War II, opened this past week in limited release. The titular "Garbo" was a Spaniard who worked for the Brits while pretending to be a supporter of the Nazis.

The film adaptation of Italian Shoes, based on the novel by Henning Mankell, is getting some serious star power. Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench are in talks to star in the project, with Kenneth Branagh directing.

Director Tarsem Singh (Immortals) has signed on to helm the noir-style fantasy thriller Killing On Carnival Row, which takes place in the future city of Burgue, inhabited by humans, other creatures and a serial killer on the loose.

Bradley Cooper, named the "sexiest man alive" by People magazine for 2011, has several projects in the works including: The Words, a drama thriller set for a 2012 release, where he stars as an aspiring writer who claims another man's work as his own; Outrun, with Cooper as a gang leader; and The Place Beyond the Pines, where Cooper plays a cop-turned-politician opposite Ryan Gosling (who, coincidentally for those keeping track, was a runner-up for "sexiest man").

Walking Dead star Jon Bernthal has joined the cast alongside Susan Sarandon and Dwayne Johnson in the upcoming Ric Roman Waugh-directed Snitch. The movie is about a construction company owner who tries to get his son's prison sentence shortened by becoming a DEA snitch.

Warner Bros. released a new behind-the-scenes featurette ahead of the release of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt cop and Vietnam vet in the drama Rampart opening on Wednesday, and the studio has released several teasers, including this latest video.

Here's your first trailer for Gone, the new thriller from director Heitor Dhali. It stars Amanda Seyfried as a young woman who survived being kidnapped and left in a hole to die by a serial killer, only to have her sister go missing, possibly the work of the same killer out for revenge.

TV

David Suchet will star in ITV's final five films based on Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot from novels and stories not yet adapted. Suchet appeared happy with the news, adding: "I'm more than delighted to be reprising my role as Poirot. It's been my life's ambition to bring this amazing canon of works to completion."

More good news for fans of Agatha Christie and their TV adaptations; ITV also commissioned three additional made-for-TV movies starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Jane Marple. A Caribbean Mystery will be filmed during the summer of 2012 to be followed by the filming of Endless Night and The Seven Dials Mystery. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Canadian TV crime fans can relax. After CityTV canceled the historical crime drama Murdoch Mysteries, the CBC has picked up the series, with production on the sixth season to begin in the spring of 2012.

Elisabeth Shue, nominated for a best-actress Oscar for her role in Leaving Las Vegas, is joining the cast of CSI, taking over the reins of departing actress Marg Helgenberger. Shue's character worked with D.B. Russell (played by Ted Danson) in Seattle.

Film director Paul Greengrass has joined Fox's untitled CIA drama project from writer Joe Weisberg (Falling Skies). The pilot is described as a "high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community," and is set within the walls of the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI and the intelligence components at the White House.

Jeff Eastin (White Collar) has an untitled drama pilot for USA that follows a mash-up of law enforcers from the DEA, FBI and LAPD living together in the same house. The project snagged its first cast member, with Aaron Tveit playing Mike Warren, a freshly minted FBI agent just out of the Academy. (If you think this scenario sounds familiar, re-read the Greengrass project above.)

Melissa Rosenberg (co-executive producer on Dexter) has been tapped by ABC for a U.S. adaptation of Endemol's Dutch crime drama Penoz, about the widow of an assassinated criminal who is suddenly forced to adopt her late husband’s role in order to protect her family. Speaking of Dexter, it was renewed for two more seasons.

FX has decided to take a pass on the pilot Outlaw Country, a combo crime thriller and family drama set against the backdrop of organized crime and royalty in the south.

NBC announced its mid-season schedule last week, and it's bad news for fans of the Prime Suspect reboot, which doesn't appear on the schedule. Fans of Harry's Law and the new paranormal crime drama Grimm can rejoice, however, as those shows have been given full-season pickups. Meanwhile, ABC also announced its mid-season calendar, giving a full order to Body of Proof, starring Dana Delaney, as well as setting the premier date for Missing, with Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent whose son goes missing in Europe.

Did you miss the PBS Masterpiece Mystery miniseries Case Histories, based on the novels of Kate Atkinson? View them online through Decenber 7th.

PODCASTS/RADIO

KUOW radio talked with Dennis Lehane about writing detective novels in the 21st century.

THEATER

The North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, California, is staging Agatha Christie's classic whodunit murder mystery, The Mousetrap, as part of its 28th season.

The Shadowplay Theatre troupe in St. Paul, Minnesota, is devoted to producing mysteries and thrillers, and they're currently staging Dial M for Murder at the Gremlin Theatre as their inaugural production.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Troublemaker

American author Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) was born in South Dakota, the son of a shoe shop owner who lost the business during the Depression, prompting moves to Minneapolis and eventually a citrus grove in California belonging to the author's married sister. Hansen was to spend the rest of his life in California, making a living as a writer and teacher.

Hansen fell in love with a worker at Lockheed's Los Angeles aircraft plant, Jane Bancroft, and married her in 1943. He was gay, she was a lesbian, and they both had affairs, but as the author later remarked, "something was right about it, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of the world." They remained happily together until Jane's death 51 years later, and had a daughter who later underwent gender reassignment.

Hansen penned over 40 books and other works, many with homosexual themes, not widely accepted during the pre-Stonewall 1960s, prompting him to use a pen name with small West Coast publishers. His breakthrough, and the first of his works to use his own name, came with the detective novel Fadeout in 1970. In the St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, Hansen said that  "Homosexuals have commonly been treated shabbily in detective fiction -- vilified, pitied, at best patronized...I wanted to write a good, compelling whodunit, but I also wanted to right some wrongs. Almost all the folksay about homosexuals is false. So I had some fun turning clichés and stereotypes on their heads in that book. It was easy."

Fadeout and 11 subsequent books in the series featured Dave Brandstetter, an openly gay insurance investigator/private eye who still had the tough, no-nonsense qualities of the classic hardboiled protagonist. The novels are also known for their colorful descriptive portrayal of Los Angeles during the late 60's and 70's. Hansen was a fan of Ross Macdonald, "but it bothered me that his detective never had any personal life, and he never changed. My joke was to take the true hard-boiled character in an American fiction tradition and make him homosexual. He was going to be a nice man, a good man, and he was going to do his job well."

Troublemaker, the third book in the series from 1975, finds Brandstetter investigating the murder of Rick Wendell, the owner of a local gay bar and all-around nice guy. Wendell's body had been discovered by his mother, who found a young man, stark naked, wiping off a revolver with Rick lying dead at his feet. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but Brandstetter digs deeper, both in his job as investigator for Medallion Life Insurance and because he doesn't like easy solutions. What happened to the large sum of money Wendell had just withdrawn from the bar's bank account? And why are the only fingerprints on the gun those of the victim's mother--the beneficiciary of her son's insurance policy?

Hansen wrote compelling dialogue and multi-layered characters, as in this description of the victim's mother:

 

"She wore jeans, high-top work shoes, an old pullover with a jagged reindeer pattern. Somebody's ski sweater once, somebody even bigger than she was. Her son? She was sixty, but there was nothing frail about her. The hands gripping the grainy rake handle were a man's hands. Her cropped hair was white. She wore no makeup. Her skin was ruddy, her eyes bright blue. Hearty might have described her. Except for her mouth. It sulked. Something had offended her and failed to apologize. Not lately--long ago. A lifetime probably."

 

The New Yorker said of the Brandstetter series, "Unusual in two respects. One is that the insurance investigator, though ruggedly masculine, is thoroughly and contentedly homosexual, the other is that Hansen is an excellent craftsmen, a compelling writer." And as a nod to Hansen's writing as solid private-eye fiction, not just gay private-eye fiction, the Los Angeles Times called the author, "The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today." In 1992, Mr. Hansen received a life achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

Science is Murder

The Washington Academy of Sciences in D.C. is holding a "Science is Murder" panel on December 14th. Experts include Dr. Janet Sorrentino, lecturer and "authority on science and Harry Potter"; Sandra Parshall, author of the Rachel Goddard mysteries, including the upcoming Under the Dog Star; and Mary Ellen O'Toole, former FBI agent, expert on psychopathy and author of Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us. Kathy Harig, owner of the bookstore Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, Maryland, will serve as moderator. The event starts with a Book Look at 6:30, followed by Discussions at 7:00, and Book Signings at 8:30. There's a minimal charge, and you're advised to register in advance due to limited space.

Mystery Melange

Crime Scene Europe, the Eighth Festival of New Literature from Europe, is taking place now through the weekend in various locations around Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The literature tickets are free, and you don't have to RSVP, but for tickets to the film noir screenings, visit www.movingimage.us. Writers include Caryl Ferey (France), Zygmunt Miloszewski (Poland), Ana Maria
Sandu (Romania), Stefan Slupetzky (Austria), Jose Carlos Somoza (Spain), and Jan Costin Wagner (Germany) joined by U.S. guest author Dan Fesperman.

You have two weeks left for early bird pricing for ThrillerFest VII (scheduled for July 2012), including CraftFest, with authors like Lee Child, Steve Berry and Lisa Gardner teaching classes on the craft of writing and marketing, and AgentFest. Six attendees from last year’s AgentFest have already signed with top agents, so it's a great opportunity to pitch your manuscript.

Mysterious Press has gone digital. Founded in 1975 by Otto Penzler, it has printed many novels and anthologies by bestselling authors, and now they're adding eBooks that were out of print or protected by copyright. Authors whose works are currently available include Ken Bruen, Thomas H. Cook, James Ellroy, Adam Hall, Mark McShane, Ellery Queen, Ross Thomas, and Donald E. Westlake, with many more in the pipeline. Plus, the website plans to add bonus material with exclusive content and video from the authors.

Editor Janet Rudolph is still seeking articles for Mystery Readers Journal upcoming issues, particularly Author! Author! essays about yourself, your books and the topic. Remaining themes for 2011 include "Shrinks & other Mental Health Professionals," with a deadline of November 27.

The Q&A roundup this week includes a conversation between Cort McMeel and Dennis Tafoya about the launch of a new online crime publication Noir Nation. McMeel was the force behind the now-defunct Murdaland zine, and is also launching an e-book press in late November called Bare Knuckles Press.

Your favorite classic literary authors—as Legos! Complete with yellow skin and cup hands, here are Hemingway, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and my favorite, Edgar Allan Poe.

Men of Mystery

The crime fiction conference season is winding down, but as the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore reminded me, we still have the annual Men of Mystery event to look forward to this weekend in Irvine, California. More than 50 male mystery writers in all genres, from legal thrillers to surfer P.I.'s, will be on hand, with William Kent Krueger and Lawrence Block headlining the morning and afternoon sessions. Attendees can also participate in book signings, as well as lunch and table talks with the authors. One of the highlights is the one-minute pitch from the authors that kicks off the day's festivities, as each author introduces himself and his works, "often hilariously," as founder Joan Hansen describes it. This is the 11th year of the festival, which won the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America.