In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sony Pictures acquired film rights to the David Baldacci YA fantasy thriller novel The Finisher, which follows a 14-year-old girl in the downtrodden village Wormwood, supposedly surrounded by a forest full of monsters. When the girl's mentor disappears and leaves a secret message about a way out, she discovers that the village is built on dangerous lies.

20th Century Fox has picked up the film rights to Michael Koryta's Those Who Wish Me Dead, even though it won't be published until May 2014. The storyline follows a teenager who witnesses a brutal murder and is forced to flee into the Montana wilderness for his own protection, while two assassins follow him as a raging forest fire consumes the landscape around them. (Hat tip to Omnimystry News.)

Endgame and TWC-Dimension are teaming up for the action-comedy Murder Mystery, scripted by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man), directed by Anne Fletcher (The Proposal) and starring Charlize Theron. The plots follows a married couple on the honeymoon they never had in hopes of saving their struggling marriage, but soon find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery when one of their fellow cruise passengers is found dead. 

Justified's Walton Goggins has signed on to William Monahan's thriller Mojave. The film tells the story of “a near-suicidal artist who escapes into the desert to take an existential crisis head-on, only to encounter a doppelgänger-like antagonist in the form of a brilliant, homicidal drifter."

Former Lubbock Police Chief Thomas Nichols's crime novel Color of the Prism is the basis for a Quentin Tarantin film coming out in December. The story deals with narcotics investigations along the Mexican border.

Fox Searchlight released a trailer for Dom Hemingway, due in theaters next April 4. The crime comedy from writer and director Richard Shepard follows Jude Law playing a notorious safe-cracker back on the streets of London looking for what he’s owed after spending 12 years in prison for keeping his mouth shut.

An extended trailer was also released for director Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, a sci-fi thriller starring Scarlett Johansson as a sexual predator, which is based on the novel by Michael Faber.

TELEVISION

Following the successful NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS is planning yet another spinoff series, this one set in New Orleans. The new show will be introduced in a two-part NCIS episode air in the spring. 

CBS has given a series order to a detective drama from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and House creator David Shore, titled Battle Creek. The series follows two detectives with very different world views who are paired up in Battle Creek, Michigan, and will debut with 13 episodes in 2014.

Martin Freeman has joined the cast of the small-screen adaptation of Fargo, playing the role inspired by William H. Macy's character in the 1996 film. (We're fine with that, as long as it gives him time to work on future Sherlock episodes.)

CBS has renewed Unforgettable for a third season. The once-canceled-then-picked-up-again series has received a new 13-episode third season order, and will return in summer 2014.

CBS also gave the greenlight to a drama project from NCIS: LA creator/showrunner Shane Brennan and video game writer Jesse Stern (Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 1&2). Titled Insecurity, the premise centers on an obsessive compulsive former Federal Agent turned Head of Security at a Boston art museum who uses his unique professional and personal background — he was raised by criminals — to help solve complex local and federal cases across the country.

FX announced it's renewing The Bridge for a second season, to premiere next summer. The show stars Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger as two detectives, one from the U.S. and one from Mexico, who must work together to hunt down a serial killer operating on both sides of the border

ABC has greenlighted a modern-day Houdini procedural from Mandeville, the production company behind the Monk series. That's not the only Mandeville project in the works, however; as Hollywood Reporter notes they also have a high-tech thriller from Danish writer Stefan Jaworski, a military hospital drama, and a mother-daughter crime-solving duo procedural from Castle's David Grae.

TNT has ordered a pilot for an untitled action thriller written by Blake Herron (The Bourne Identity), described as "National Treasure meets The Bourne Identity." It follows an employee in a government position, created by the founding fathers but unknown to the public, who serves the Vice President and is called upon to protect the country when traditional methods to solve a crisis either aren't working or won't work.

The CW has bought an titled conspiracy drama from with Nikita's Albert Kim and executive producer Eva Longoria's UnbeliEVAble Entertainment. The story revolves around a woman unfairly imprisoned for a double murder who earns her law degree behind bars then joins the high-powered law firm she believes is at the center of the conspiracy that framed her.

Spartacus executive producers Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing are developing a project titled Gringo for Starz, based on the real-life story of a U.S. immigration officer about a Mexican-American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who infiltrates one of Mexico's most deadly crime cartels.

Omnimystery News reported that the BBC has ordered the crime drama River from Abi Morgan, who won an Emmy Award this year for her work on BBC Two's The Hour. The story follows the brilliant police officer John River, whose state of mind borders on the pathological due to being haunted by the murder victims whose cases he must lay to rest.

NBC has ordered its first pilot for the 2014-15 season, described as a a "Traffic-like thriller" that centers on three families torn apart when a stranded female soldier, a disillusioned corporate attorney and a disrespected political activist are pulled into the same shocking international military conspiracy.

Fox won a bidding war to land the new series Gotham, from Warner Bros. TV and The Mentalist creator Bruno Heller. It explores the origin stories of Batman's Commissioner James Gordon and the villains who made Gotham City famous. In Gotham, Gordon is still a detective with the Gotham City Police Department and has yet to meet Batman (who won't be part of the series).

ABC has ordered a pilot for The Good Thief’s Guide, a drama series project from Bones creator/executive producer Hart Hanson and Andrew Miller, based on the bestselling book series by British author Chris Ewan. The story follows the charming and unpredictable Charlie Howard as he travels the world, blogging about his adventures while stealing for fun and profit.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder

Today is Patricia Highsmith day for Patti Abbott's Friday's "Forgotten" Books. Although Highsmith (1921-1995) was best known for her psychological thrillers with some two dozen film adaptations (Strangers on a Train, for one), she also wrote many short stories. One of her most unusual outings is The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder from 1975. Each story revolves around an abused animal who gets revenge in one way or another, or as one recent reviewer put it, the "anti-Marley & Me."

Highsmith may have been a misanthropist (or even misogynist, a la another satirical collection, Little Tales of Misogyny), but she was a little more sympathetic toward animals. Beastly Murder builds on a Kafka-esque premise of anthropormophic animals, and in some cases, the effect is poignant, as in the case of a lonely circus elephant who bonds with a sympathetic handler for 30 years then has to deal with his cruel replacement.

But these aren't sentimental tales, with the likes of a truffle-hunting pig, a goat who gives rides in an amusement park, a Siamese cat, a dog named Baron, cockroaches, hamsters, and chickens on an automated farm all getting their due in ways that are often grisly and filled with black—and bleak—humor. Some are written from the animal's POV, some from the human's, and some of them, like "The Bravest Rat In Venice" are downright horrific. (Maybe appropriate, then, that Terry Castle wrote how Highsmith commented creepy ideas came to her as "frequently as a rat has orgasms").

CONTENTS
Chorus Girl’s Absolutely Final Performance
Djemal’s Revenge
There I Was, Stuck with Bubsy
Ming’s Biggest Prey
In the Dead of Truffle Season
The Bravest Rat in Venice
Engine Horse
The Day of Reckoning
Notes from a Respectable Cockroach
Eddie and the Monkey Robberies
Hamsters vs. Websters
Harry: A Ferret
Goat Ride

Mystery Melange

“Good as Gold” book installation by Donald Lipski at a branch of the Kansas City Public Library.

It's always hard to say good-bye to beloved authors in the crime fiction community, but last week we lost another fine writer when Robert Barnard passed away. Martin Edwards has a nice remembrance of his friendship with Barnard over on his blog.

Another Bouchercon mystery conference has come and gone, but that means we now have the winners of the awards presented there, including the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Shamus Awards. You can check out the winners via the Recent Mystery Awards link on the top right-hand side of this blog.

The Crime Writers’ Association and the Margery Allingham Society are launching a competition for previously unpublished short stories with a top prize of £1,000. The contest is open to anyone in the world aged over 18, as long as stories are written in English and under the word limit of 3,500 words. Stories must be submitted by March 2014, with the winner announced at Crimefest in May in Bristol. (Editorial note: there is an entry fee.)

Over at the GeoCurrents website, Asya Pereltsvaig compiled an interesting geographical study on crime rates versus detective fiction, in a state-by-state comparison. It's a fun look at where crime novels are set, showing disparities in settings versus real life statistics. Plus, you can check out where your state stands.

Speaking of geographical fiction, if you've been thinking of getting acquainted with the popular Nordic crime scene, Barry Forshaw compiled his list of the "Top 10 Nordic Classics."

The Q&A roundup this week includes Jeffery Deaver, which is actually a transcription of the speech he gave at the recent Creatures, Crime and Creativity Conference; Richard Lange joined Fiction Writers Review to talk about his literary crime novels, including his latest, Angel Baby; Hank Phillippi Ryan chatted with Kiss and Thrill about The Other Woman; Carla Norton joined My Bookish Ways to talk about her writing and her latest book, The Edge of Normal; and thriller author Barry Eisler was interviewed for the Huffington Post.

Why do some libraries have that "library smell"? According to Popular Science, it's all in the cellulose.

Sorry, librarians. If you were hoping to compete for the title of "cutest librarian," this bow-tie-wearing candidate is a lock.

Fall for the Book

The annual Fall for the Book at George Mason University and other locales in northern Virginia kicked off yesterday and continues through Friday. The festival includes a number of mystery-related events culminating in the presentation of the Mason Award to bestselling thriller writer David Baldacci by Donna Andrews. Here are some of the other upcoming crime fiction highlights:

• Mystery writer Edith McClintock, author of Monkey Love and Murder 
• Mystery writer Charles Todd (Charles and Caroline both!), discussing Proof of Guilt
• Novelists A.X. Ahmad, author of The Caretaker, and Sujata Massey, author of the Rei Shimura mysteries and the new historical novel The Sleeping Dictionary
• Author Daniel Stashower author of The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Abraham Lincoln Before the Civil War, which explores how the famed Allan Pinkerton joined forces with the nation’s first female detective to foil an assassination attempt on the president in 1861
• A panel featuring members of Mystery Writers of America, including Ellen Crosby, Allison Leotta, Brad Parks, and David O. Stewart.

But there is a wide variety of other authors and poets who will be on hand, as well as additional awards including the Fairfax Prize to be given to Dave Barry; the Busboys and Poets Award to be handed out to Sonia Sanchez; and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, with Cheryl Strayed as the honoree. Also helping out this year, is the thriving indie bookstore One More Page, which will host some of the festivities. Best of all,  events are free and open to the public.

 

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

New Regency has optioned Alan Glynn's Wall Street murder thriller Graveland for film, with Brian Koppelman (Runner Runner, Ocean's Thirteen, Runaway Jury) to pen the adapted screenplay, and David Levien on board to direct. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Cate Blanchett has chosen an adaptation of Herman Koch's psychological thriller novel The Dinner for her directorial debut. The story centers on two couples at fancy restaurant and the problems that ensue when they try to talk about their teenage sons who are under investigation for a horrific act they committed.

Model-actress Emily Ratajkowski is nearing a deal to play Ben Affleck's mistress in David Fincher's adaptation of  the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Kelsey Grammer is in final talks to replace Nicolas Cage in The Expendables 3, playing an ex-mercenary named Bonaparte who helps Sylvester Stallone’s team complete their mission

Teresa Palmer and Luke Hemsworth will round out the ensemble cast of the Aussie crime thriller Kill Me Three Times, to be directed by Kriv Stenders (Red Dog).  Already on board are actors Simon Pegg, Sullivan Stapleton, Alice Braga, Bryan Brown, and Callan Mulvey, in the story that centers on a singer in a surfer town who is the link between three tales of murder, blackmail, and revenge.

Magician, documentarian, and writer Penn Jillette is hoping to crowd-fund a psycho-comic-thriller. He's teamed up with director Adam Rifkin, creator of the dark Showtime mockumentary Reality Show, for a project titled Director’s Cut, which is a movie-in-a-movie about obsessive stalking.

TELEVISION

NBC put in a development order for an untitled drama based on the novel Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay, with screenwriter Matt Venne (A&E's Bag Of Bones) on board to adapt the story for the small screen.

TNT gave the go ahead to the crime drama Murder in the First from Steven Bochco. The project is set in San Francisco and follows a single case across an entire season, centered on Terry English (Taye Diggs) and Hildy Mulligan (Kathleene Robertson) as they investigate the murder of an apparent drug addict.

Meanwhile, TNT canceled King & Maxwell, its freshman private eye series starring Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn, after just one season.

BBC America canceled its period police drama Copper after its second season. The series, which marked the network's first foray into original scripted drama, started out strong in the ratings, but has dropped viewership since. However, co-creator/executive producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and Tom Kelly are considering a movie version.

Marvel is adapting Agent Carter for a potetial TV series. Agent Carter takes place a year after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger and follows Steve Rogers' (Chris Evans) girlfriend Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) as she builds her career as a secret agent while the hero is frozen in ice.

Hulu has inked a deal with BBC Worldwide North America to bring some of the Beeb's iconic TV shows to the service, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sherlock and Luther.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week's Crime and Science podcast via Suspense radio featured Jan Burke and Leslie Klinger talking about the "Science of Sherlock Holmes": what influenced Holmes's scientific and investigative methods? And what influence has Holmes had on forensic science and criminal investigation?

Bestselling author Louise Penny was interviewed on CBC News about her "unexpected career" in crime fiction and her hero, Armand Gamache.

James Patterson joined CBS This Morning to talk about his latest co-authored novel Treasure Hunters and his $1 million fund to help independent bookstores.

The Tartan Noir panel at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival is available for viewing at ABC TV Big Ideas. The session features Scottish crime writers Doug Johnstone and Liam Mcilvanney talking about what "tartan noir" means and the history of Scottish crime writing.

THEATER

Laurence Fox and Jack Huston are set to star in Strangers on a Train, the new stage adaptation by Craig Warner of Patricia Highsmith's novel of the same name. Performances will begin at the West End's Gielgud Theatre Nov. 2.

Omnimystery News reports that mystery novelist Peter James's 2010 novella The Perfect Murder has been adapted for the theater in a production starring Les Dennis as Victor Smiley. The plot follows Smiley and his long-term wife who are bored with each other, leading to affairs and thoughts of murder. A Perfect Murder will open on tour in the the UK at the Dartford Orchard Theater on Saturday, January 11th.

GAMES

A new trailer was released by Her Interactive for the 29th Nancy Drew mystery game, The Silent Spy for both PC and Mac platforms, expected to begin shipping in mid-October 2013.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Weekly Roundup

I'm the home base for Friday's "Forgotten" Books this week, while some lucky folks head off to Bouchercon, and Patti Abbott takes a much-needed break. But Patti will be back next week in time for Patricia Highsmith Day.

First off, a look at Ernest William Hornung (1866–1921) an English poet and author who also happened to be the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle. He also worked as a journalist in England, France and  Australia, and centered many of his stories around Aussie settings and culture. He's perhaps best known for his series featuring gentleman thief A. J. Raffles, who first appeared in a story in Cassell's Magazine in 1898.

Raffles may have been one of the earliest anti-heroes in crime fiction, spending his days playing cricket and his nights carrying out ingenious burglaries, aided by his sidekick Harry "Bunny" Manders, a man he once saved from suicide and disgrace. Raffles the "Amateur Cracksman" appears in several stories that divide into two periods, one before he was unmasked while plying his trade on board a cruise ship and presumably jumped overboard and drowned, and the other following his return where he and Manders continue their thieving ways in disguise.

The stories were collected into several volumes, including A Thief in the Night, published in 1905. They include "The Criminologists," about a society of crime experts who invite Raffles and Manders to discuss crime in sport, but have more nefarious purposes in mind, beliving him to be the notorious gentleman thief; "A Trap to Catch a Cracksman," in which Raffles attempts to rob American heavyweight boxing champion Barney Maguire, only to have it backfire on him; and "The Raffles Relics," where Ruffles--now in hiding--hears about an exhibit dedicated to his "work" at Scotland Yard's Black Room, and decides to steal back his trophies.

Raffles is a cynical character, whose philosophy is "we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is all wrong anyway." Still, he has his own code of honor, once stealing money from a miserly man to make a donation to their former school and volunteering for the Boer War, where he dies in battle after exposing an enemy spy. The stories in A Thief in the Night are actually told from Bunny's point of view, a la Watson and his accounts of Holmes, as Bunny reflects back on their adventures prior to the master thief's demise.

Several of Hornung's stories were later adapted for the theater, television and film, including protrayals by John Barrymore, David Niven, and as recently as 2001, a production starring Nigel Havers (Dangerfield, Coronation Street, Downton Abbey).

HERE ARE THIS WEEK'S LINKS:

• Sergio Angelini, Jigsaw by Ed McBain
• Frederic Taber Cooper via Steve Lewis, The Mystery of No. 47 by J. Storer Clouston
• Brian Busby, Flee from Terror (The Final Run) by Martin Brett (Douglas Sanderson)
• Bill Crider, The Kill by Douglas Heyes
• Scott A. Cupp, Creature from the Black Lagoon by Vargo Statten (John Russell Fearn)
• Martin Edwards, Death Comes to Cambers by E.R. Punshon
• Curt Evans, Give a Corpse a Bad Name by Elizabeth Ferrars
• Ray Garraty, Half of Paradise by James Lee Burke
• Ed Gorman, The Plastic Nightmare by Richard Neely
• Jerry House, The Collected Strange Papers of Christopher Blayre by Edward Heron Allen
• Randy Johnson, Pulp Fiction by Robert Turner
• Nick Jones, The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald
• George Kelley, The Compleat Boucher by Anthony Boucher
• Rob Kitchin, All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards
• Evan Lewis, Hidden Blood by W.C. Tuttle
• Nik Morton, Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
• Steve Nester via The Rap Sheet, They Don’t Dance Much, by James Ross 
• John O'Neil, The Drums of Fu Manchu, Part One by Sax Rohmer
• J.F. Norris, They Can't Hang Me by James Ronald
• James Reasoner, The Black Bulls by John Benteen (Ben Haas)
• Kelly Robinson, My First Book by Jerome K. Jerome, Arthur Conan Doyle, et al.
• Richard Robinson, The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes by Donald Thomas
• Gerard Saylor, The Million Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins
• Ron Scheer, Sierra by Richard Wheeler
• Kerrie Smith, Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
• Patrick Ohl and Barry Ergang via Kevin Tipple, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Anthony Boucher
• TomCat, Painted for the Kill by Lucy Cores
• Prashant Trikannad, The Mysterious Card and The Mysterious Card Unveiled by Cleveland Moffett
• James Winter, Hard Rainby Barry Eisler / Lawyers, Guns and Money by JD Rhoades

Mystery Melange

Book Sculpture "Les petites filles modèles" by AnemyaPhotoCreations

 

The Wolfe Pack announced that Chris Knopf's Dead Anyway was this year's winner of the Nero Award. The other finalists included Antiques Disposal, by Barbara Allan; Truth of All Things, by Kieran Shields; and Burning Midnight, by Loren D. Estleman. The presentation will take place on December 7 at the traditional Black Orchid Banquet. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Speaking of prizes, this one is a bit of a shocker: the Man Booker prize, which is to the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries what the Pulitzer Prize for Literature is to the U.S., announced it is opening its submission process to books written by American authors. As you can imagine, it's a controversial move.

The Bloody Scotland conference announced that Malcolm Mackay won the 2013 Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year award for his second novel, How a Gunman Says Goodbye. The other finalists were Dead Water, by Ann Cleeves; Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris; The Red Road, by Denise Mina; The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid; and Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)

Here's an interactive project in which anyone can participate: Tweet (using #youdunnit) your ideas for a mystery story, on everything from the victim's name to the actual crime, through this Friday, September 20th. Crime writers Nicci French, Tim Weaver, and Alistair Gunn will then create their own stories based on the suggestions, with free digital and print versions available as a tie-in at the annual Specsavers Crime Fiction Awards in October.

Issue #14 of the award-winning noir journal, Crime Factory, has hit the virtual stands, available in digital, print and PDF formats. Peter Dragovich discusses Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford; Andrew Prentice interviews legendary writer, Peter Corris, author of the Cliff Hardy series; Tom Darin Liskey brings in some true crime reportage from his time as a journalist in Venezuela; Benjamin Welton dissects Georges Franju's overlooked masterpiece Nuits Rouges; John Harrison picks apart the Charles Manson pulps; and the fiction section is jammed-packed with stories from Kevin Burton Smith, DeLeon DeMicoli, Michael M. B. Galvin, Robert James Russell, and Ryan K. Lindsay.

The William F Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program is now accepting submissions for grants to be awarded at Malice Domestic 26 in 2014. Two winners will receive grants in the amount of $1500 plus comprehensive registration for Malice 27. Submissions are being accepted now through November 15th, 2013.For submission guidelines and complete information regarding the Malice Grants Program website.

The American Comparative Literature Association is soliciting papers for its 2014 conference on the topic of "The Global Detective." The seminar hopes to include papers that explore detective stories, novellas, and novels from a variety of critical angles. For more information and suggested topics, check out the ACLA site.

 

Altus Press announced a new line to their pulp fiction reprints, called The Dime Detective Library. Each issues will showcase one of the hard-boiled characters that ran in the pages of Dime Detective Magazine over the course of its 20 year history. Seven releases will be included in the first batch this fall, with introductions by pulp historian Ed Hulse.  (Hat tip to Bish's Beat.)

Mega-bestselling author James Patterson is donating $1 million to help independent bookstores, providing those stores also include a children's section. Patterson has supported several literacy programs aimed at kids in the past.

This week's crime poem over at the 5-2 is "A Typical Night in Western Hill" by Terry Trowbridge, and the weekly Beat to a Pulp offering is "Fair Warning" from Hilary Davidson.

The editors of Mystery Scene magazine are putting the finishing touches on the Fall Issue #131. Highlights include an interview with British crime writer Mark Billingham, creator of Detective Inspector Tom Thorne; an appreciation of Margaret Maron, whose long-running Judge Deborah Knott series (The Bootlegger's Daughter, etc.) offer a panoramic portrait of her beloved North Carolina; a look back at Elmore Leonard; Tom Nolan highlights five overlooked authors you should be reading right now; and Kevin Burton Smith looks at the promising future of private-eye fiction.

Mystery Scene online also brought to my attention an art exhibit in the UK that is affiliated with the annual Agatha Christie festival in Devon, held this year from September 15-22. The exhibit features work originally created for the festival in 2010, including many that have thematic tie-ins to various Christie novels.

The Q&A roundup includes two interviews that come to us via Crime Fiction Lover, Jo Nesbo, talking about his latest novel, Police, and Karen Sandler, who's penned YA novels, talks about her new private eye novel; and Noir Nation's Eddie Vega and Absolutely Kate joined the blog A Knife and a Quilll to chat about the 'zine and noir fiction.

Author R&R - Geoffrey Girard

In Reference to Murder welcomes Geoffrey Girard for the latest "Author R&R" (Research and Reference) segment. Geoffrey was born in Germany and raised in New Jersey, earning a degree in literature from Washington College. He is currently the English Department Chair at a famed private boys' high school and also an award-winning author whose works have appeared in several best-selling anthologies and magazines.

Geoffrey's techno-thriller novel Cain's Blood and an accompanying spinoff novel for teens, Project Cain, were just published by Simon & Schuster. Both novels are based on Girard's novella Cain XP11, which ran as four installments in Apex Digest in 2007, and both deal with a secret U.S. Department of Defense project. 

In Cain's Blood, the government scientists use DNA from the world's most notorious serial killers to clone dozens of young men who have no clue as to their evil heritage. Playing a twisted game of nature vs. nurture, scientists raise some of the clones with loving families and others in abusive circumstances. But everything changes when the most dangerous boys are set free by their creator.

Here's Geoffrey's take on the inspiration and research behind the novels:

 

My favorite part of writing has always been the research.  (A genetic bent, perhaps, from my historian father?)  I once wrote an entire book (Tales of the Eastern Indians) because I felt I didn’t know enough about Native Americans and read for a year before writing a single word.

Cain’s Blood and Project Cain (about, in short, cloned serial killers) became my excuse to study everything from the early lives of serial killers to posttraumatic stress disorder. The genetics of violence to statistics of crime. Modern cloning capabilities and laws. Military scientific tests, human-rights violations, and subsequent cover-ups. All very interesting topics told through books, articles, taped interviews, etc.

The trick was (and always is) not to get lost in all that research. While the teen version of the book (Project Cain) is meant more as an “Intro to Serial Killers 101” for readers new to these men, both novels are (or should be) stories about people. And any research achieved needed to go toward that. How does that “fact” help shape a specific character? How does that new technical paper affect a character’s knowledge or reaction/attitude?

Jeff Jacobson is the teenaged clone of Jeffrey Dahmer, so I needed to know Dahmer pretty well. Many books, articles and taped interviews later, I felt I did. Of particular interest were an autobiography by Dahmer’s father and My Friend Dahmer, a graphic novel by a high-school friend.  Because these books discussed Jeff as a teen. I watched hours of tape of in-jail Dahmer. Studied the voice, delivery, mannerisms. How many would he have had at sixteen? How many were genetic in nature? His emotional detachment was, I believe, mostly physiological. How would that look/sound in the 16 year old version? Now I started to imagine this kid. I started to imagine Dahmer in a different place and time. Had (I admit) an old photo of Dahmer as a little kid as my laptop background for a couple weeks. Kept thinking about THAT kid. Before it all went so wrong. That’s the kid I now wanted to write about. Jeff Jacobson was born. I could not have written a word of Jeff Jacobson’s story until I’d done my research first. He just would have become some lame version of ME as a kid. And my kid problems were not the same as Dahmer’s – or Jeff Jacobson’s. For this character to become “real,” I had to fill my head with facts and slowly let the boy within all those facts start to take shape. Add in a dash of studying several real-life teens and Poof! It was like Pinocchio springing to life. There was no stopping him.

Castillo, the main protagonist in Cain’s Blood, was another guy who needed some research before I let him get into too much trouble. Again, he’s not me. I never served in the military, still can’t throw a proper punch, and PTSD wasn’t something to just dress him up some. It was, for me, an important piece in the books’ exploration of Nature versus Nurture. So, I read half a dozen books by vets with PTSD. I talked to real vets about war and coming home. Scoured for the latest books and articles on the treatment our vets are really getting and the most-effective solutions to recovery. Watched countless military training videos on various forms of combat fighting. [Did I still mistakenly call his magazines “clips” a few times, yes. (Learned that one too late!)] But, again, I didn’t let Castillo loose until I’d done my research and combined much of what I’d found with some qualities of real people I know into my new “real” character.

Real people are the products of the facts around us. We live in – are nurtured within -- a world driven by statistics, dates, physical evidence, and narrative history. In what ways has your character been defined by the times and places you’ve lived? The statistics and facts that have touched your life seemingly from afar? It is in those same ways we should hope to help best imbue our characters.

 

To read more about Geoffrey and the novels, and for ordering information, check out his website. You can also follow him on Twitter (@Geoffrey_Girard) and Facebook.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The crime-thriller The Keys to the Street, based on Ruth Rendell's 1996 novel, is closer to reality. It was originally to be a Christopher Nolan project, but has been in limbo after Nolan took a pass. Czech film-maker Julius Sevcik has come on board to direct, with Gemma Arterton and Tim Roth in the lead roles. The story follows a young woman who moves into an exclusive central London home to escape her violent boyfriend but discovers that a series of murders are taking place in the surrounding area.

Dreamsworks acquired an untitled pitch to be penned by Matt Charman that tells the true story of James Donovan. Donovan was an American attorney thrust into the center of the Cold War after being tasked by the CIA to slip past the Berlin Wall and negotiate the release of downed U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers.

20th Century Fox released a new trailer for the upcoming  drug trafficking thriller The Counselor, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel and starring Javier Barden and Michael Fassbender.

TELEVISION

AMC and Sony Pictures Television announced that a long-rumored spinoff of Breaking Bad is going forward. Better Call Saul will feature Bob Odenkirk reprising his role as Saul, the unethical lawyer who represented the meth dealers Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. The concept is seen as a prequel rather than a sequel to Saul's character in the Breaking Bad series.

It's barely been a month since the news that Katherine Heigl was cast in an untitled CIA drama pilot, and now comes word that NBC has picked up the project. Heigl will play a key CIA analyst whose job it is to debrief and strategize with the president on the most pressing global and national matters.

FX is developing an American Psycho sequel series, moving the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel to the small screen. The series would center on a modern-day Patrick Bateman, now in his 50s, as he takes on a protégé to create a next generation American Psycho.

Ben Affleck is taking to the small screen to serve as director for a mob drama on Fox. The period drama The Middle Man is set in 1960s Boston and focuses on FBI agent Rudy MacAteer and his informant, Irish-American mobster Mickey Flood, as MacAteer finds himself beginning to bend the rules.

NCIS executive producer Gary Glasberg says that Cote de Pablo's character -- Ziva David -- will receive a "heart-wrenching" farewell that promises to resolve her storyline and be a "moment in television history." NCIS returns Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. on CBS.

Omnimystery News reported that Fox has ordered a pilot script for Frayed, a drama adaptation of the Dutch miniseries Bellicher (itself based on the novel The Power of Mr. Miller by Charles den Tex). The American version follows an arrogant corporate consultant who gets embroiled in a conspiracy forcing him to go on the run and turn for help to a paranoid former NSA agent.

USA renewed its summer crime drama Graceland for a second season. The show follows a group of undercover agents sharing a beach house and stars Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata.

Grant Gustin of Glee fame has landed the role of Barry Allen in the CW Network's series Flash, which will also serve as a backdoor pilot and potential Flash spinoff for the character. Barry Allen is described a "Central City assistant police forensic investigator who arrives in Starling to look into a series of unexplained robberies that may have a connection to a tragedy in his past."

Danny Glover is set to guest star on the new Ironside series remake for NBC. He'll play the father of wheelchair-bound Detective Robert Ironside.

Endemol Studios has acquired the English-language rights for a US adaptation of the French crime drama Engrenages. The popular series, which is in its fifth season in France and has been renewed for a sixth, is centered on the lives of a prosecutor, police captain, judge, and lawyer.

TNT released a new teaser poster and trailer for its upcoming 1940s Los Angeles-set crime drama, Mob City, which premieres on December 4th at 10 PM ET/PT. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Sue Grafton appeared on NPR's On Point, talking about her latest book in the Kinsey Milhone series, W Is for Wasted.

This week on Pulped! The Official New Pulp Podcast, host Tommy Hancock interviewed author David Foster, the man behind the Permission to Kill blog, as they chatted about his writing, the spy genre, and a lot more.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Crimson Blind

Frederick Merrick White (1859-1935) was an English author who wrote a number of novels and short stories under the name Fred M. White, including the six "Doom of London" science fiction stories about various catastrophes that afflict the British capital. Although he apparently didn't start publishing his work until the age of 43, over the next 30+ years, he wrote approxiately 90 novels and short-story collections and is considered by some to be a pioneer of spy stories.

In 1905's The Crimson Blind, set primarily in the coastal city of Brighton, bestselling detective novelist David Steel finds himself in dire financial straits. He's contacted by a mysterious young woman who tells him she will pay his debt in exchange for helping her concoct a plan to get out of a sticky situation. After a late-night meeting to seal the deal, with the woman's identity kept hidden from Steel, the author returns to his home to find it's been broken into, and a near-dead man has been left bleeding on the floor of his conservatory.

The police suspect Steel, thanks to an incriminating cigarette case that points to Steel as the culprit. As Steel battles to clear his name, he falls in with Dr. Hatherly Bell, "a small, misshapen figure, with the face of a Byron—Apollo on the bust of a Satyr," a man possessed of marvelous intellectual powers and a secret past, who also happens to have a personal connection to the mysterious woman and offers to help Steel.

The investigation soon leads to the benevolent millionaire philanthropist Gilead Gates and his right-hand man, the villainous Reginald Henson, who aspires to become a member of Parliament. The myriad subplots and plot twists involve a faked death, a missing ring, blackmail, dog attacks, a decaying country estate and a stolen Rembrandt. White pens some passages of evocative writing, such as the opening lines:

David Steel dropped his eyes from the mirror and shuddered as a man who sees his own soul bared for the first time. And yet the mirror was in itself a thing of artistic beauty—engraved Florentine glass in a frame of deep old Flemish oak. The novelist had purchased it in Bruges, and now it stood as a joy and a thing of beauty against the full red wall over the fireplace. And Steel had glanced at himself therein and seen murder in his eyes.

He dropped into a chair with a groan for his own helplessness. Men have done that kind of thing before when the cartridges are all gone and the bayonets are twisted and broken and the brown waves of the foe come snarling over the breastworks. And then they die doggedly with the stones in their hands, and cursing the tardy supports that brought this black shame upon them.

Overall, The Crimson Blind is a decent and entertaining Victorian mystery, which just happens to be available free via Project Gutenberg.