In Reference to Murder

Mystery Melange

Book sculpture by Jonathan Callan

The holiday issue of Mystery Scene magazine takes a look behind the inspiration for Michael Connelly's latest book, The Black Box, with roots back in the horrifying Los Angeles riots of 1992; Scottt K. Ratner reviews The Return of the Thin Man, two previously unpublished novellas by Dashiell Hammett; Jon L. Breen takes a look at current legal thrillers and courtroom procedurals; Joseph Goodrich takes us on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work in the mystery genre; Ed Gorman shines a light on often underappreciated character actors in crime films; and Kevin Burton Smith gives Santa a helping hand with the annual Mystery Scene Gift Guide.

This week's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "The True Story of Boy Kaleen" by the fabulous writer Patti Nase Abbott (who is also the driving force behind Friday's "Forgotten" Books and her own excellent blog).

Coming up February 1-2 is the Cape Fear Crime Festival, featuring writers, editors and publishers conducting various workshops and panels, as well as special guests via Skype on the big screen. Proceeds from the event are donated to the New Hanover Library in Wilmington. This year, for the first time, the conference will be giving away the Gunny Award for the best book in mystery and suspense for 2012. Registration for that award will end on December 31st.

The Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring Sleuthfest on Saturday, February 16, 2013, at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, FL. The conference will feature intense, hands-on workshops led by bestselling authors Elaine Viets and Kristy Montee (writing as P.J.Parrish), and if you're one of the first 50 registrants, you'll be eligible for a drawing to win one of two 50-page manuscript critiques. Registration is open, but the price will increase after December 15th.

Winners of the National Book Awards in the UK were announced, and included Crime & Thriller of the Year handed out to Lee Child for his Jack Reacher novel, A Wanted Man.

Thanks to Sandra Seamans for noting that Cemetery Dance Publications has opened submissions for their new ebook line and are looking for novels, novellas and short story collections in a variety of genres. Manuscripts should be at least 10,000 words (20,000 for collections).

If you haven't had a Noir at the Bar event near you, hang in there, because these popular events are popping all over the place. Handsome Willy's in New Orleans will host the next event on January 12th, featuring Greg Herren, Jason Stuart, Bill Loehfelm, Peter Farris, Ted O'Brien and Kent Westmoreland.

This week's Q&A roundup includes J.D. Rhoades over at Chuck Wendig's Terible Minds blog; and Michael Connelly stops by Omnivoracious, giving his the elevator pitch for The Black Box as well as listing his favorite books of all time.

Santa Biblio-Style

It's time once again for my almost-annual Christmas gift guide for bibliophiles, in which I collect some quirky and some actually useful gifts for writers and readers on your list. But mostly because I'm a sucker for whimsy.


Tired of someone always teasing you about being on the grammar police force? Here's a way to prove it, with the Grammar Police T-Shirt: To Serve and Correct.


The Bulletin Mouse Pad and Pencil Cup, both made out of cork will add a touch of whimsy to any writer's desk. Now you have a use for all those push-pins lying in the back of your drawer.


Dishware that not only looks like lined memo pads, you can even write on it with a removable-ink marker pen. Plus, the high-fired ceramic is both dishwasher and Microwave safe. Try to do that with your paper legal pad.


A mug with the motto: Write Drunk and Edit Sober. Yep, that about sums up the writing process. Also a great gift for writers who like some whine with their wine.


These Haikubes includes a set of 63 word cubes that you roll and use the words that come up to create an "expressive" haiku. (Note, that the "expressive" part is courtesy of the manufacturer. Your poetic mileage may vary.)


A genuine "novel" bookrest - it's a pillow made of shaped polyester suede that props your book at the perfect reading angle. Plus, it's lightweight and even comes with an attached bookmark cord. For you eBook fans, looks perfect for eReaders, too.


Speaking of pillows, why relegate your favorite social-networking icons to bits and bytes when you can snuggle up to them on your sofa? Best of all, you get that "social atmosphere" thing minus the time-vampire suck of actually being on the Internet.

For those of us who can remember using a typewriter, here's a vintage sterling silver typewriter key necklace. You even get to choose the letter you want.


Typing on a modern keyboard make you a tad peckish? The Chocolap is a cardboard laptop with keys made of chocolate. You won't be able to surf the web with it, but can you eat a regular laptop? Didn't think so.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn has been chosen to helm the upcoming film adaptation of The Equalizer. The project is based on a television series from the mid-to-late 1980s starring Edward Woodward as a retired intelligence agent turned private detective who helped clients "equalize" threatening situations. Denzel Washington is in talks to play the lead.

Warner Bros has acquired Boston Strangler, a thriller project Casey Affleck and fellow Boston native screenwriter Chuck Maclean, about the desperate search for the murderer who terrorized the Boston area during the early 1960s. Affleck has plants to star as one of the detectives who were part of the Strangler Squad responsible for solving the crime, and will also serve as executive producer.

Actors Sullivan Stapleton and Ryan Kwanten will play ex-cons who set fire to a nightclub that kills 15 people in Cut Snake, an Australian thriller to be produced by Matchbox Pictures. The film was inspired by inspired by a real-life incident in 1973.

Katheryn Bigelow's hunt-for-Bin-Laden pic Zero Dark Thirty has yet to premiere in most U.S. markets, but it's already racking up the awards, including the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Oscar Isaac and Jason Clarke have signed on to star in William Monahan's thriller Mojave. Plot details are being kept under wraps, although the story is said to involve a desert escape by a criminal.

George Clooney's Monuments Men is being scheduled for a Christmas 2013 release date. The project, which has already signed Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin (and possibly Matt Damon), is a World War II-era thriller about art historians called into Germany to retrieve valuable works stolen by the Nazis.

Silver Pictures has picked up the remake rights to the French crime-thriller Le Convoyeur that starred Jean Dujardin as a father who takes a job with an armored car company after an inside-job robbery kills the man's son.

TV

Karin Slaughter's three "Will Trent" novels featuring the agent with the George Bureau of Investigation are being adapted for made-for-television movies by Yellow Bird, the same production company behind the Swedish film versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC is planning a reboot of the classic crime drama Ironside, which aired 1967-75 and starred Raymond Burr as a San Francisco cop confined to a wheelchair after suffering a paralyzing gunshot wound. Person of Interest's Dave Semel will direct the pilot, and Michael Caleo (The Sopranos) will script the project.

Yet another remake, this one of the classic British spy series The Saint (played by Roger Moore in the original TV version and Val Kilmer in a later movie version) is still moving forward, and the project just signed actor Adam Rayner to star as Simon Templar.

ABC has bought a pilot for a half-hour police comedy called Rookie, which follows a woman in her twenties who decides to switch up careers and join the police force and begin to think of her oddball co-workers as family.

Meanwhile, Fox bought a 13-episode animated crime comedy titled Murder Police, from Family Guy's David Goodman and newcomer Jason Ruiz. The project centers on a dedicated but bumbling detective and his partner as they attempt to get to the bottom of crime.

TNT is developing the buddy cop drama Hit, based on an idea by Jamie Foxx. The project centers on two former high school football teammates and best friends who are "drafted" years later by the Miami P.D. and assigned to the HIT (High Impact Team) unit.

Although two series have aired in the U.K. and a third has been ordered of DCI Banks, the series featuring Peter Robinson's Inspector Alan Banks, will air for the first time in the U.S. on public television in January.

Sean Bean has signed on to star in a TNT spy drama from Homeland creator Howard Gordon. Bean will play Martin Odum, an undercover agent with the uncanny ability to assume different personas.

FX announced the official premiere date for The Americans, a cold-war drama that follows two KGB spies posing as Americans during the Reagan administration, as January 30 at 10 p.m.

The CW has set the premiere date of February 19 for its midseason replacement drama Cult. The suspense drama centers on investigative journalist Jeff Sefton (Matt Davis), who teams with the young research assistant (Jessica Lucas) on a popular TV show when his younger brother goes missing and someone starts re-creating the show's gruesome plot twists in reality.

CBS also has a midseason replacement crime drama, the cop series Golden Boy, which will eventually fill the spot vacated by the cancelled freshman drama Made in Jersey on Friday nights. The series stars Theor James as Walter William Clark, Jr., an ambitious cop who becomes the youngest police commissioner in New York City history, and Chi McBride as a veteran detective and James' character's mentor and partner.

Thanks to Omnimystery News for the poster and trailer for the upcoming Cinemax crime series Banshee. The show stars Antony Starr as an ex-con and master thief who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pennsylvania, where he continues his criminal activities while being hunted by the shadowy gangsters he betrayed years earlier.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Michael Connelly chatted about his book The Black Box on MSNBC's Morning Joe show and also on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS.

University of Toronto professor Wesley Wark and International Spy Museum historian Mark Stout discuss the history of spy fiction in a SpyCast podcast (with a hat tip to Elizbeth Foxwell over at The Bunburyist).

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Vintage Bradbury

Patti Abbott chose Ray Bradbury to be the focus of this week's Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature. Although best known for his science fiction classics like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury also wrote numerous stories of suspense and crime, as well as a trilogy of surreal, noirish mystery novels, Death is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics and Let's All Kill Constance.

William F. Nolan compiled  "The Crime/Suspense Fiction of Ray Bradbury: A Listing," for Armchair Detective in the April 1971 issue (unfortunately, I don't have a copy, and it's hard to find now). Of course, Bradbury continued to write prolifically until his death this year, so Nolan's listing is hardly complete.

Many of Bradbury's 600+ stories were published in dozens of collections including A Memory of Murder (which fellow author/blogger Bill Crider chose for a previous "Forgotten" Books day). Another early collection was The Vintage Bradbury (subtitle: The greatest stories by America's most distinguished practioner of speculative fiction), with 22 classic stories plus four chapters excerpted from his first mainstream novel, Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury chose all the stories for the 1965 publication by Vintage, even though his career as an author was only 15 years old at the time. Stories include "The Small Assassin," one of Bradbury's most re-published stories about a couple whose new baby may be a killer, later adapted as an episode of the television series The Ray Bradbury Theater; and "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl," in which a murderer becomes obsessed with evidence he may have left behind.

Bradbury once had this to say about his contributions to crime fiction (In his preface to A Memory of Murder), "I floundered, I thrashed, sometimes I lost, sometimes I won . . . I hope you will judge kindly, and let me off easy." In an interview with CBC Radio, he talked about dedicating his novel Death is a Lonely Business to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald and James M. Cain. He said (about 17:50 into the interview) that he wasn't intending the book itself to be a hardboiled novel, but he simply wanted to dedicate it to them out of love. "I re-read their things every year just about. I go back through Macdonald, Cain, Chandler, Hammett, and the stuff holds up . . . It's good American literature, it's not mystery writing, it's just good literature. I'd rather read them than Norman Mailer, quite frankly."

Boxed In for Christmas

Boxed sets are a mainstay of Christmas present giving, so now is a good time to take note of some recent (and a few slightly older) boxed sets for the mystery lover on your list.


The "Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set: The First Four Novels" was just released at the end of November. If you've discovered Sheriff Longmire from the TV series, here's your chance to get to know the character from the novels that inspired it all. (Format: paperback)


Three of legal thriller master John Grisham's most famous novels are included in the "John Grisham 3-Copy Boxed Set: The Firm, The Appeal, The Chamber." Grisham is a recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. (Format: paperback)


"The Ellie Foreman Mysteries - Boxed Set" bundles together the first four novels in Libby Fischer Hellman's series about a documentary producer in Chicago, described as "a cross between Desperate Housewives and 24."  (Format: Kindle digital)


"J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2" features the authors's series with ex-newscaster and divorcee Ali Reynolds set in the desert Southwest. (Format: Kindle digital)



As the blurb says, meet Detective Dave Robicheaux again for the first time in "A Dave Robicheaux Ebook Boxed Set" by James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and a former Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. (Format: Kindle digital)


If you've yet to read a novel by perennial bestseller and multiple award-winner Michael Connelly, you can start at the very beginning with a "Harry Bosch Box Set" that includes the first three Detective Bosch books, as read by Broadway veteran Len Cariou. (Format: audio)

 

Mystery Melange

Illuminated books art installation by Korean artist Airan Kang

Congratulations to Ken Follett and Margaret Maron, newly-named as Mystery Writers of America Grand Masters, an award for contributions to the genre that are significant and of consistently high quality. Winners of the 2013 Raven Award (recognizing outstanding achievement in the mystery field other than fiction writing), are the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore and Oline Cogdill, longtime journalist and the mystery columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The MWA also honored Johnny Temple, founder and editor of Akashic Books, as the winner of the 2013 Ellery Queen Award given to editors or publishers who have distinguished themselves in support of the genre.

The Wolfe Pack society handed out its annual Nero Award for best crime fiction novel of the past year to Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, went to Robert Lopresti for "The Red Envelope."

Goodreads members also voted on their favorite authors and books of 2012, and the winner in the Mystery & Thriller category is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

Suspense Magazine's end-of-the-year issue is out, with the awarding of "The Crimson Scribe," given to the Best Book of 2012, and winners in eleven other suspense/thriller/mystery/horror categories. The issue also includes Richard Belzer, talking about his latest book Dead Wrong, and Simon Tolkien, back with "Order from Berlin." 

If you are attending next year's Cape Fear Crime Festival on February 1-2 and have a suspense or mystery novel you'd like to have considered for the Gunny Award, time is running out. Nominations for the award, given to the best mystery or suspense novel published in 2012, will be taken until December 31st. Send the title, ISBN and book cover to [email protected] after paying festival registration fee.

Omnimystery News has posted its latest "Firsts on the 1st," in which they introduce readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious American debut in print during December.

If you're a short story writer, take note that several 'zines have reopened for submissions, including Bete Noire, The Crime Factory and Suspense Magazine, while CrimeSpree is temporarily closed (but don't worry; they'll be open again in January). Unfortunately, the news isn't as rosy for Sniplits, the audio story website (and one of the few remaining paying markets). According to Sandra Seamans via her blog My Little Corner, Sniplits publisher Anne Stuessy said that SnipLits is closing up shop as of December 15.

This week's interview roundup includes Lawrence Block, who joined the Mystery Fanfare blog talking his series featuring the hitman Keller and how it all started; and Zoë Sharp interviews fellow author Libby Fischer Hellman about her writing and the current state and future of publishing.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

George Clooney and Grant Heslov's production company Smoke House is teaming up with Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio on a crime thriller that takes place in the world of New York's crime syndicates. Paul Greengrass (Bourne movies, United 93) is in talks to direct the untitled project, while Clooney is attached to star.

Cross Creek Pictures optioned feature film rights to Lori Roy's Edgar Award-winning mystery novel Bent Road. The project, to be adapted by Mark Mallouk, centers on a man who left home in Kansas as a boy after the mysterious death of an older sister, then returns with his family 20 years later when another little girl goes missing. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Chris Meloni (Law & Order: SVU) has been added to the cast of White Bird in a Blizzard, from writer-director Gregg Araki. The film follows a young woman (Shailene Woodley) whose life is thrown into absolute chaos when her mother vanishes.

Screenwriter Todd Phillips (of the Hangover movies) is in talks to adapt Linwood Barclay's novel Trust Your Eyes, a hriller about a schizophrenic savant who witnesses a murder, but is not trusted by the authorities as a credible source.

TV

Orange is the New Black, the Netflix original drama based on based on a book by Piper Kerman, has added Taryn Manning (Hawaii 5-0, Sons of Anarchy) to the cast. The show follows Taylor Schilling as Piper, a Brooklyn woman who finds herself behind bars in a federal penitentiary as a result of her former college relationship with a drug runner, played by Laura Prepon. Manning will play another of the inmates, Tiffany Doggett, a born-again Christian with major anger problems who doesn't get along well with the other inmates.

Author Dennis Lehane is being added to the fourth season of HBO's Boardwalk Empire as a writer and creative consultant, joining fellow author George Pelecanos, who will executive produce the show. The duo have worked together before on HBO's The Wire.

ABC Family is developing a television series adaptation of Barry Lyga's young adult novel I Hunt Killers. The book follows the likeable teenage daughter of an imprisoned notorious serial killer, who herself becomes a suspect after a string of copy-cat murders.(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Details are coming out about the characters (not yet the actors) for the spin-off of the spinoff, i.e., a new series to be launched on NCIS: Los Angeles.

AMC ordered a pilot for a scripted drama based on Alexander Rose's book, Washington's Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring.

AMC canceled the series The Killing, despite a passionate outcry from its devoted fans, and months later news came that Netflix was trying to work out a deal to revive the show for a third season. Now it appears that AMC may be changing its mind and *could* bring the show back to the network. Still, it's mostly rumors at this point.

MTV is developing the scifi-mystery drama Blackwood, based on a YA book of the same title by Gwenda Bond. DC Comic book and television writer Peter Calloway (Brothers & Sisters) will write the adaptation of the novel, which has a tie-in between mysterious contemporary disappearances on Roanoke Island and similar disappearances in the 16th-century "Lost Colony."

FX has scheduled the premiere date of season four of Justified, to begin on January 8th. (Hat tip to Crimespree.)

Sienna Guillory is joining the cast for the third series of BBC's procedural Luther, playing Luther's love interest.

Fox has cancelled its freshman drama, The Mob Doctor, scheduling its last episode for late December.

BBC America has a new trailer for its historical crime drama Ripper Street. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Think you're a rapid fan of the former, long-running Law & Order series? Well, one watcher helped put together a list and graphs of how all 456 episodes of Law & Order ended.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

NPR talks with Mathew Prichard, the grandson of Agatha Christie about his new book, The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery. In it, Prichard edited and published the letters the famous author wrote while on on a trip around the world in 1922