In Reference to Murder

FFB: The Cape Cod Mystery

At this time of year, my thoughts turn to summer vacations that bubble up from my memories of bygone days. My family always managed to travel somewhere, like the year we made it up to Cape Cod and rented a beach-side cabin. So naturally, a book I came across in the library titled The Cape Cod Mystery by Phoebe Atwood Taylor ended up in my book bag.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909-1976) was born in Boston, the child of Cape Cod natives who were also descendents of Mayflower Pilgraims. After Taylor married a Boston surgeon, they had a summer home on the Cape, which explains why the author would choose that setting for her first novel, published in 1931 when she was all of 22. She puts that inside knowledge to good use in recreating the local culture there in the 1930s and 1940s.

Taylor has my undying respect for her work ethic of writing her novels between midnight and three a.m. after her "housekeeping day" had ended, although her habit of waiting to start a book until three weeks before the publisher's deadline would give me a heart attack.

The Cape Cod Mystery was fairly successful in its day, selling 5,000 copies, and introduced  the "Codfish Sherlock", Asey Mayo, who went on to star in 24 of Taylor's novels. Mayo retired in Cape Cod, following his world travels as a sailor,  to serve as a general assistant to the heir of Porter Motors. He uses his wits and wit to solve murders with the help of a very fast car.

In the novel, the muckraking author, philanderer and occasional blackmailer Dale Sanborn is murdered one hot August weekend, leaving behind a long list of enemies, including an old girl friend, his fiancee, an outraged husband, a long-lost brother and a few more. Asey Mayo gets involved when his friend and mentor Bill Porter is accused of the crime, even though Mayo only has one clue to go on:  a sardine can.

There are a few oddities, such as the narrator being not Mayo but rather Prudence Whitsby, who has a cottage on Cape Cod she shares with her niece and a cook (and also serves as the sight where the victim was murdered). Taylor wrote Mayo with a very heavy Coddish (Codlian?) accent that sometime a bit difficult to wade through, particularly when he's offering up his homespun sayings like "They ain't many whys without becauses."

The earlier Mayo titles are a little darker (it's been suggested this was due to the Depression at the time), but as the series went on, the tone apparently lightened enough that critic Dilys Winn called Taylor "the mystery equivalent to Buster Keaton," and one reviewer added that Asey Mayo does for Cape Cod what Travis McGee does for Southern Florida. Apparently Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) was even a fan of Taylor's Mayo character, encouraging Taylor to "pack the books with Cape Cod details."

Countryman Press re-issued several of Taylor's novels, including The Cape Cod Mystery, in 2005.

Mystery Melange

Former British police officer turned author Clare Mackintosh won the 2016 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for her thriller I Let You Go. The announcement was made during the opening-night event at the 14th Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. Also shortlisted for the award were Time of Death, by Mark Billingham; Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith; Tell No Tales, by Eva Dolan; Disclaimer, by Renée Knight; and Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty. In addition, Scottish writer Val McDermid became the seventh winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award, following in the footsteps of Sara Paretsky, Lynda La Plante, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Colin Dexter, and Reginald Hill.

The 2016 Dashiell Hammett Prize—awarded each year by the International Crime Fiction Festival, la Semana Negra de Gijón—has been bestowed on the novel Subsuelo, by the Argentine writer Marcelo Luján. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet and Jose Ignacio Escribano.)

The UK crime fiction website Dead Good announced the winners of the 2016 Dead Good Reader Awards. Winners were announced on July 22 at Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.  (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The winners of the 2016 Scribe Awards, given out by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, included Best Original Novel (General) that was handed out to a TV thriller-oriented tie-in novel, 24: Rogue, by David Mack (Forge). In addition, the 2016 Best Short Story prize went to "Fallout," a Mike Hammer tale by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, originally printed in The Strand Magazine (November 2014-February 2015).

The Australian Crime Writers Association announced the shortlists for the 2016 Ned Kelly Awards for the best in Australian crime writing. The roster inludes five former winners and two multiple winners, Garry Disher and Candice Fox, who is aiming to win for her third award in a row. 

Meanwhile, Sisters in Crime Australia also announced the shortlists for this year’s Davitt Awards, celebrating the best in crime writing by Australian women. Australian crime writer Liane Moriarty will present the awards at a gala dinner at Melbourne’s Thornbury Theatre on August 27.

Many of you probably know of Texas author Bill Crider (the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery series), whose 75th birthday is coming up on July 28. He reported in his blog last week that he has an aggressive form of cancer, which Janet Rudolph updated on her Mystery Fanfare blog. Crider has entertained many of us via his books and online presence (Facebook and his blog), and I hope you will join me in sending him warm thoughts and hopes for better days ahead.

The Detection Club will publish in November a new collection of short stories, Motives for Murder, to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of the Club's most distinguished members, Peter Lovesey. The book will be published in Britain as a paperback original by Little, Brown and in the US (with a limited hardback edition as well) by Crippen & Landru. Each of the nineteen stories and one sonnet was written specially for the book, with each prefaced by a few words from the author about Peter's contribution to the genre. Contributors include Ann Cleeves, Andrew Taylor, Len Tyler, Michael Ridpath, Liza Cody, and more, and a foreword by the legendary Len Deighton. (Hat tip to Martin Edwards.)

Elizabeth Foxwell announced that the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series she edits is bringing out a book on Sara Paretsky penned by Margaret Kinsman, former executive editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection. The publication date is slated for this fall.

The Killers of the Week blog wrapped up a two-week celebration of John D. MacDonald's centennial with a gallery of 76 vintage covers from his novels.

The new world of publishing allows for almost unlimited possibilities when it comes to concepts, genre mashups, and creative ways of looking at the business. Andrez Bergen is a case in point, taking a 12-issue comic book run of his Bullet Gal series and bundling it into a dystopian and "vaguely traditional kind of noir/crime/sci-fi novel."  Bullet Gal will be published in print and eBook by Roundfire Fiction in the UK in November.

Writing for Flavorwire, Alison Nastasi noted "10 Times Television’s Female Detectives Shamelessly Put Men in Their Place."

There are many things I will do as an author in writing and promoting my books, but getting a tattoo inspired by my books probably isn't one of them. That hasn't stopped these ten authors, though (and more power to 'em).

For your next animal-related mystery novel idea:  "When a crow dies, other crows investigate."

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Miscalculated" by Michael A. Arnzen.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People welcomed Andrew Hilbert to talk about his latest novella, Bangface And the Gloryhole, which starts out as a hard-boiled if absurdist private eye novel; the MPs also sat down for an interview with Amy Gentry about her debut thriller, Good as Gone; author Alex Clare stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss her debut novel of suspense, the first in a new series; and the Book Fan quizzed Megan Abbott about her new gymnastics-themed suspense novel, You Will Know Me.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Universal Pictures has optioned rights to Matt Ruff’s psychological thriller Bad Monkeys. The 2007 novel centers on Jane Charlotte, who has been arrested for murder, but says she’s a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil and is working with the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons — aka "Bad Monkeys." Her confession lands her in the jail’s psychiatric wing and earns her countless hours of poking, probing, and questioning by a professional. Is Jane crazy or lying? Or is she playing a whole different game altogether?

Nancy Cartwright’s Spotted Cow Entertainment has acquired worldwide motion picture and television rights to Rachel Grant’s thriller novel Body of Evidence. The story centers on an archaeologist and a U.S. attorney who find themselves on a globe-spanning chase full of political intrigue and legal drama.

The second trailer for The Girl on the Train, the movie based on Paula Hawkins' best-selling 2015 thriller, barreled into the station last week, giving viewers a closer look at Emily Blunt’s depressed alcoholic Rachel Watson.

TELEVISION

Following the success of John Le Carré's spy novel adaptation The Night Manager, Paramount TV is tackling another of the author's works for the BBC, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, (Le Carré’s 1963 breakthrough novel). The book tells the story of Alec Leamas, a veteran British spy tasked with bringing down one of the most senior figures in the East German Intelligence Service, and is regarded a classic of its genre that was made into a film in 1965 with Richard Burton in the lead role.

Last week, it was announced that the premiere of the new USA crime drama series Shooter was belng delayed for a week due to the recent shooting events in Dallas, but after the Baton Rouge attacks, the network decided to push the premiere all the way back to the fall. Shooter follows Bob Lee Swagger (Phillippe), a former Marine sniper who is tasked with saving the president from an assassination, and ends up becoming wrongly accused of a crime. It's based on the 2007 movie starring Mark Wahlberg, which was in turn based on the Stephen Hunter novel Point of Impact.

Netflix has renewed its acclaimed original series Bloodline for a third season to consist of 10 episodes that will air sometime in 2017. The thriller drama follows a family of adult siblings who find that their past secrets and scars are revealed when their black sheep of a brother returns home.

Stefanie Martini has been chosen to play the young Jane Tennison in ITV’s new drama Tennison, a prequel to the series Prime Suspect that starred Helen Mirren as the iconic police officer.

The cast was announced for BBC One’s The Moonstone, an adaptation of the classic early crime novel by Wilkie Collins. Leading the cast are John Thomson, playing the legendary Sergeant Cuff, and Sarah Hadland as the pious and unwittingly hilarious Miss Clack.

Paget Brewster is returning to CBS' Criminal Minds for multiple recurring episodes in Season 12. The actress, who originated the role of Emily Prentiss in Season 1 and was promoted to series regular in Season 2, then left the show full time after Season 7. Brewster’s Prentiss is back with the BAU this time when they need her most, with the escape of 13 serial killers.

Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) has a new partner in True Blood alumna Janina Gavankar who is set for a recurring role in Fox’s drama series Sleepy Hollow. She'll play Diana, a new character who will help fill the void left by the controversial departure of female lead Nicole Beharie (who played Detective Abbie Mills), killed off at the end of Season 3. Gavankar’s Diana is described as a single mom and former military officer who’s currently a Special Agent for Homeland Security.  

Quantico alum Li Jun Li is joining the NBC drama Chicago PD for Season 4 as a guest star for three episodes, but may become a series regular. Li, who played Iris Chang on Quantico, has been cast as Burgess' new partner Julie Tay.  

Telenovela star Aaron Diaz (Los Miserables) is joining the cast of the FBI drama Quantico as "thrill-seeking journalist" Leon Velez.

Netflix has greenlighted a new installment of the Emmy-nominated documentary series Making A Murderer. The new chapter will go back inside the story of convicted murderer Steven Avery and his co-defendant, Brendan Dassey, as their respective investigative and legal teams challenge their convictions and the State fights to have the convictions and life sentences upheld. The new installment will provide an in-depth look at the high-stakes post-conviction process, as well as, the emotional toll the process takes on all involved.

A trailer was released for season 4 of the BBC's Sherlock, and star Benedict Cumberbatch, co-star Amanda Abbington, and co-creator Mark Gatis teased the season will be the darkest thing the showrunners have ever written for the show – "a real emotional roller coaster," according to Cumberbatch.

In the first trailer for the second season of the Netflix drama Narcos, a war breaks out between Colombian law enforcement and the hired army of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The series stars Wagner Moura alongside Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal as real-life DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The podcast 'zine I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, hosted by Scott Monty (who is also Editor-in-Chief) and Burt Wolder, just marked its 100th episode. The event gave them "a chance to reflect on exactly what turning 100 means, and to dive back into our murky and fuzzy origins. We try to answer some of your queries and we celebrate those who joined us previously before launching into our top memories of the show, as represented in audio clips. Our Gas-Lamp features two readings, including a new one created just for this episode." 

Criminal Justice professor and mystery author Frankie Bailey spoke with WAMC about the history of crime and how it's covered in the media, especially in the light of the recent shootings by and against police officers in the U.S.

This week's Suspense Radio podcast featured two hours of interviews with author Christine Carbo, Joe Clifford, Lily Gardner, and Susan Shea.

It's a Mystery to Me welcomed Shaun Harris to chat with host Stacy Verdick Case about his new book from Seventh Street Books, The Hemingway Thief.

FFB: Victorian Tales of Mystery & Detection

Historical crime fiction has been popular since the likes of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. And of course Victorian fiction is right in the thick of it all, thanks to the popularity of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. This particular 1992 volume of Victorian Tales, edited by Michael Cox, is an Oxford anthology that includes writers who actually lived and created stories during the reign of Queen Victoria, as opposed to present-day writers looking back on the era. The roster starts off with an Edgar Allan Poe tale from 1845 and works its way up chronologically through writers Sax Rohmer and Robert Barr (1904).

Editor Cox, who selected all the included stories, opens his Introduction with a G.K. Chesterton quotation about crime writers being divided into two types, "poisoners," who prolong the agony of anticipation or bewilderment in novel form, leaving the reader writhing on a sick-bed of baffled curiosity, or "cut-throats," writers who realize that the murder story cuts lives short and therefore chooses to startle readers via the quick stabs of the short story.

Cox goes on to add that, although the short-story form has inherent limitations, in capable hands these are turned into triumphant effect with pleasures for the reader that the detective novel can't provide. And the tools of those capable hands? An engaging narrative voice; a flamboyance of invention and an economy of style, compression and well-paced plot; and characters sketched swifly, but decisively, and tied back to the simple and surprising main idea. That's really not so much to ask, it is?

The 31 stories included more than meet the task, penned by masters, all. In addition to Poe, Rohmer and Barr, there are also offerings by J.S. Le Fanu, Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, Wilkie Collins, Barones Orczy and Arthur Conan Doyle. The protagonists include police detectives, gentleman amateurs, lady detectives, one psychic detective and even an "anti-detective," in the form of Guy Boothby's Klimo, who devises a crime for himself to solve.

Stories range from M. McDonnell Bodkin's "Murder By Proxy," in which a gentleman is shot in the head at close range—by a murderer who wasn't in the same room, to J. S. Le Fanu's double-locked-room mystery "The Murdered Cousin," where gambling habits prove to be fatal. Conan Doyle's contribution is "The Lost Special," in which cunning Herbert de Lernac commits the "inexplicable crime of the century" by making a train and its passengers vanish into thin air.

If you're a fan of the Victorian era and the more genteel crime writing of the day, this anthology is certainly one you'll enjoy and want to add to your collection.

Mystery Melange

The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal awarded Attica Locke with the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Pleasantville as the best legal fiction "that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change." She will receive the prize on September 22 at the Library of Congress' Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D. C. during the National Book Festival.

The finalists for the 2016 T. Jefferson Parker Mystery and Thriller Award presented by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association have been announced and include: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley; Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz; The Promise by Robert Crais.

Romance Writers of America (RWA) announced the winners of the 2016 RITA and Golden Heart Awards, including the categories of RITA Romantic Suspense (Flash Fire by Dana Marton) and Golden Heart Romantic Suspense ("In the Wrong Sights" by Tracy Brody).

Authors and readers of the cozy mystery genre have been hit recently with the loss of several series being dropped by Penguin Random House/Berkeley/NAL and Five Star. Several of these authors and their colleagues are teaming up for some giveaways to help promote and celebrate this more lighthearted side of crime fiction. One of the largest is a chance to win more than 40 cozy mystery novels from award-winning authors plus a Kindle Fire. (Hat tip to Nancy Cohen)

Starting this October, Hard Case Crime's Titan Comics imprint will bring Hard Case Crime's gritty, sexy, violent world to life with a brand new line of comic books. The first shots to be fired include Prohibition epic Triggerman by the legendary director of The Warriors, Walter Hill, and punky neo-noir Peepland from celebrated crime authors Christa Faust and Gary Phillips.

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 32:3) will focus on mysteries featuring Small Town Cops. Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays. Reviews: 50-250 words; Articles: 250-1000 words; Author! Author! essays: 500-1500 words.

Last week, I mentioned that Bouchercon was making nominees for the Anthony Best Short Story Award available online, and it appears that the Harrogate Crime Festival in the UK also featuring short stories ahead of the conference, with BBC Radio 4 sharing a series of audio stories written for the festival. First up is "The Queen of Mystery," by Ann Cleeves, with more to come from  Sarah Hilary, Val McDermid, and David Mark. But these are only up for a month, so better hurry and listen while you have the chance.

Aaron Sorkin, creator such shows as The West Wing, The American President, A Few Good Men, and The Social Network, is offering a five-hour screenwriting course on MasterClass. He'll cover “rules of storytelling, dialogue, character development, and what makes a script actually sell.”

Author John Verdon set out to compile a listing of the "10 Best Whodunits" for Publishers Weekly, but his choices may surprise you.

Fans of the TV show Get Smart from the 1960s will remember the bumbling Agent 86 (Maxwell Smart) and his "Cone of Silence." Now scientists say they have essentially created the real thing.

After 45 years, the FBI has finally closed the books on the still-unsolved case of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a passenger plane and parachuted out to freedom with the ransom money, never to be seen again, allegedly. It remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the United States and has captured the American imagination through the years, inspiring songs, movies, TV shows, and books.

The BBC announced it had solved a mystery by getting to the bottom of a Lucian Freud painting puzzle. For years, experts believed it to be an original Freud despite the artist's claims that it wasn't his.

Meet the only library in the world that operates in two countries at once.

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Is It So Hard" by Craig Faustus Buck, and the new story-of-the month at Beat to a Pulp is George R. Johnson's "A Well-Ordered Life." BTAP editor David Cranmer has a touching anecdote about the late George R. Johnson and how this story came to be published.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People welcomed Douglas Graham Purdy, who co-writes a series (with Thomas O’Malley) featuring Boston immigrants Cal and Dante, to chat about gun running, the IRA, loyalty, and the weight of one’s past; the MPs also grilled Peter Spiegelman about his new series featuring Skid Row's Dr. Knox; Ellie Alexander stopped by Criminal Element to chat about her new cozy mystery, Caught Bread Handed; the Mysteristas blog sat down with D.P. Lyle to talk about his Jake Longly series and numerous other works; Jason Michael took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp, Interview" challenge; and Indianapolis Monthly spoke with Ben Winters about his new alternate history novel, Underground Airlines.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and this week's latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Emmy Award nominations announced last week saw FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans achieve a rare feat by breaking into the top ranks of Emmy contenders in its fourth season. As expected, Game Of Thrones led all shows with 23 nods, while The People Vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story came in second with 22, and Fargo third with 18. Along with The Americans, the other Best Drama contenders include Better Call Saul, Homeland, and Mr. Robot. Another fun category is Outstanding Lead Actor In A Limited Series Or Movie, with a roster including Bryan Cranston (All the Way), Idris Elba (Luther), Courtney B. Vance and Cuba Gooding, Jr. (The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story), Tom Hiddleston (Night Manager), and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock). For all the nominees, check out this link, or if you're interested in numbers by show click here, or by network, here.

MOVIES

There are plans afoot to bring the Idris Elba-starring crime drama Luther to the big screen. Luther creator Neil Cross indicated that the Luther movie would play as prequel to the series, meaning that some of the characters from early in the show could return, including Luther’s old partner Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh), and his sidekick Justin Ripley (Warren Brown). Cross added, "It will follow his career in the earlier days when he is still married to Zoe, and the final scene in the film is the first of the initial TV series."

After months of speculation, it has been made (somewhat) official that Colin Firth will be somehow returning for Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the follow up to the adaptation of the comic book The Secret Service created by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar. Firth played the dapper agent Harry Hart who — SPOILER ALERT — met his demise at the end of the first movie. 

Bruce Willis has signed on to star in First Kill, a Steven C. Miller-directed action thriller, with Willis playing a police chief who tries to solve a kidnapping against a ticking clock. After a man and his son witness a thug shooting a bank thief while on a hunting trip, the bank robber takes the boy hostage, in order to recover the key to a locker that contains the loot from the bank heist. 

TELEVISION

Sky is re-teaming with crime fiction author Harlan Coben for The Four, a stand-alone, character-driven thriller that tells the story of an idyllic family community irrevocably shattered by secrets, lies, suspicions and misguided trust. The new series follows the success of Coben's The Five, his first original story for TV, which debuted in April on Sky 1.

In the wake of yet another gun-related tragedy, USA has opted to postpone the premiere of the forthcoming series Shooter to July 26. The sniper drama, which opens with the sound of a gunshot along with real-life images of historical incidents of gun violence, is being held a week given the recent attack by a sniper on police in downtown Dallas. The show stars Ryan Phillippe and Omar Epps and is based on the 2007 Mark Wahlberg film of the same name.

NBC has put in a series order for the latest Dick Wolf-produced spinoff Law & Order: True Crime, with the first season set up to focus on the still-shocking murders committed by brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez.

South African actress Pearl Thusi is set to play a new series regular on Season 2 of ABC drama series Quantico. Thusi will play Dayana Mampasi, a driven, disciplined, type-A lawyer who struggles to fit in. She joins series stars Priyanka Chopra, Jake McLaughlin, Aunjanue Ellis, Yasmine Al Massri, Johanna Braddy, Blair Underwood, and Russell Tovey.

Season 2 of the fantasy police procedural drama Lucifer has begun filming, and the latest rumors reveal that Tom Ellis (who stars as Lucifer Morningstar) will be getting romantically involved with Rush Hour actress Aimee Garcia, who will be playing a forensic scientist Ella Lopez at the LAPD.

Sandrine Holt (Terminator Genisys) has signed on as a series regular opposite Lucas Till and George Eads in CBS’ new fall series MacGyver, a reimagining of the 1985 show about a resourceful and ingenious agent who improvises his way out of sticky situations using everyday items like rubber bands, chewing gum and a Swiss Army knife. Holt will play Patricia Thornton, an ex-field agent turned director of operations for DXS (Department of External Services).

Lori Loughlin and Michael Imperioli will guest-star in the season 7 premiere of Blue Bloods. Imperioli (The Sopranos) will play Miller, a hard-charging lawyer in the attorney general’s office who spearheads an investigation into Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) and the shooting death of serial killer Thomas Wilder. Loughlin (Full House) will play Grace, the widow of a slain police officer who begs Frank (Tom Selleck) to stop her son from becoming a cop.

Blue Bloods alumna Jennifer Esposito has joined the cast of veteran CBS drama NCIS as a series regular. Esposito will play NCIS Special Agent Alexandra "Alex" Quinn, an experienced agent who left field work and became an instructor at the Law Enforcement Training Center. Gibbs (Harmon) will lure her back into the field as part of his team, where he will take advantage of her sharp wit, quick mind and immense talent as a federal agent. Her character will be introduced in the September 20 season premiere. The show also announced that Duane Henry, who guest-starred in the final two episodes of the Mark Harmon-led series last season, has also been promoted to a regular for the upcoming Season 14. 

The Leftovers' Carrie Coon, twice nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award for her role as the complicated Nora Durst in HBO's grim drama, is joining Fargo's third season in a lead role, playing Eden Valley police chief Gloria Burgle, a practical woman coping with a recent divorce.

A first-look photo from the filming of Season 4 of the BBC's Sherlock featured Benedict Cumbatch's titular detective with his new "partner."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Gayle Lynds was interviewed by Libby Fischer Hellman for Authors on the Air. Lynds is a former journalist who turned her hand to spy thrillers and became a bestseller now published in over 20 countries.

THEATER

An opera based on the Swedish detective novels by Henning Mankell premiered Friday at the University of Tübingen, in Germany. Titled W: The Truth Beyond with music by Fredrik Sixten, the production will next ravel to Ystad in Sweden, the fictional Wallander’s home town.

A play based on the novels of Peter James is coming to Glasgow with the world premiere production of Not Dead Enough from April 3rd to April 7th 2017. The plot centers on a man who claims to have been sixty miles away when his wife was murdered. But as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace continues to deal with the mysterious disappearance of his own wife, he starts to dig a little deeper into the chilling murder case and it soon becomes clear that love can be a dangerous thing.

Quote of the Week

FFB: The Midnight Plumber

British author Maurice Proctor (1906–1973) worked faithfully as a Police Constable in Yorkshire for nineteen years, with part of his time spent on motorcycle patrol. He was also involved in the investigation of the Halifax Slasher in 1938. All during his time on the force, however, he harbored a secret desire to write crime novels and kept his hobby hidden from his colleagues until his first book was due to be published, when he promptly resigned.

Being the first British author to specialize in police procedurals would have been enough to make him stand out in the crowd, but his background led an air of credibility and authority to his works that made them popular. His first series didn't appear until 1951 with two back-to-back titles featuring Chief Inspector Philip Hunter, but he reached his peak with a fourteen-book series begun in 1954 with Hell Is a City and ending with Hideaway in 1968, all featuring Chief Inspector Martineau.

Proctor invented cities and towns for settings, chiefly the city of Granchester, likely a stand-in for Manchester or Liverpool. Granchester is an inland port called the "Metropolis of the North," a police force 1,100 strong with its own forensic experts that believes they can hold their own with Scotland Yard. Martineau's superintendent realizes his man is a born detective better at solving cases than merely supervising others, something Martineau puts to the test most of the time.

The Midnight Plumber is the second outing with Inspector Martineau and puts Martineau and his men, including the normally-stalwart Detective Sergeant Devery, in the position of having to track down a swift and ruthless gang of burglars whose leader is known only as "The Plumber." But the police have a problem finding leads among the usual police informants who don't want to get involved for fear of getting killed for their troubles, something The Plumber has already demonstrated he's more than willing to do. Martineau's substantial skills are put to the test, and his patience, too, as he deals with Devery's affair with a criminal's wife on top of everything else.

Proctor uses his work background to good effect in his novels, weaving in procedural tips and insights (from a 1950s UK point of view), although his methods may seem unusual at times, like going undercover as a gypsy. In his foreword to the Black Dagger reprint, Martin Edwards notes that although this may seem outlandish at first, Proctor is careful to point out in the story that Martineau is taking his cues from the police handbook by Dr. Hans Gross, Criminal Investigation. Proctor also manages to maintain a tight pace even after the identity of The Plumber is revealed by using a technique he'd turn to often, the POV reversal: switching back and forth between criminal in flight and the police, leading to what Edwards aptly called "a splendid, savage irony" in the very last sentence of the novel.

Although this particular novel wasn't made into a movie or TV program, a few of Proctor's novels were, including the first Martineau work, Hell is a City, released in 1960 and starring Stanley Baker, Billie Whitelaw and Donald Pleasence. Interestingly Procter's works are collected and available for inspection at the Howard B. Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, Massachusetts, as part of the Sam Wanamaker Collection that contains the actor/director's manuscripts, correspondence, and production files.

Mystery Melange

Congratulations to the winners of the 2016 Thriller Awards, announced at the Thrillerfest banquet this past weekend. They include:

• Best Novel: The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell  
• Best First Novel: Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich  
• Best Paperback Original: Against All Enemies by John Gilstrap
• Best Short Story: "Gun Accident" by Joyce Carol Oats
• Best Young Adult: Pretending to be Erica by Michelle Painchaud  
• Best e-Book Original: The Prisoner's Gold by Chris Kusneski 

The Strand Magazine Strand Magazine Critics Awards were also announced, with Best Novel handed out to The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt, and Best First Novel going to Past Crimes, by Glen Erik Hamilton. As was previously announced, Colin Dexter and Jeffery Deaver received this year’s Strand Critics lifetime achievement awards. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The annual Deadly Ink Conference announced the nominees for the David Award, including Ornaments of Death by by Jane K. Cleland, Big Shoes by by Jack Getze, What You See by Hank Philippi Ryan, Forgiving Maximo Rothman by A. J. Sidransk, and Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter.

The inaugural Whistler Independent Book Awards for Canadian authors announced finalists in the four represented genres including crime fiction. That list will be whittled down by Canadian Authors Vancouver, with the winners handed out at this year’s Whistler Writers Festival during the Literary Cabaret event on October 14.

Although it's sold out, you might keep your eye out for future Crime Scene Live events like the upcoming fest at London's Natural History Museum on July 17. The interactive night combines real science and crime fiction as it allows guests to work with the museum's scientists to solve a murder mystery by gathering and analyzing evidence and trawling through the evidence room to piece together the clues using case files, images, recordings and fingerprint analysis.

Malice Domestic's William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers is open for submissions through November 1, 2016. The program is designed to foster quality Malice Domestic literature and to assist the next generation of traditional mystery authors on the road to publication. Grant winners receive a $2,500 award plus one comprehensive registration for the upcoming Malice convention and two nights’ lodging at the convention hotel. You can visit the website for detailed submission guidelines and a list of previous Malice Grant winners.

Coffin Hop Press and Opal Publishing are teaming up to present the "When Words Collide" edition of Calgary’s only official Noir at the Bar event at the Boomtown Pub on August 12. Authors scheduled to appear so far include  Marty Chan, Julie E. Czerneda, Ian Hamilton, Robert Runté, and Eve Silver.

Minotaur Books / A Thomas Dunne Book and Wordharvest announced that they have joined forces with Western Writers of America, who will now host the Tony Hillerman Prize. The change includes a new submission deadline, an option for electronic manuscript submission, and a new venue for the announcement of the winner at the annual Western Writers of America convention. It also means that competition for 2016 has been suspended, with the new deadline for the 2017 competition January 2, 2017. Interested authors can check out the guidelines and the online submission here. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The summer edition of Suspense Magazine has interviews and profiles featuring authors Brad Meltzer, Graham Masterton, Lisa Unger, L.J. Sellers, Warren C. Easley, debut author, Ezekiel Boone, and more; Joseph Badal and Allison Leotta have cool writing tips in Craft Corner; Dennis Palumbo shares his take on She's Your Agent, Not Your Mother; Anthony Franze and Lois Winston talk writing; and there are over 20 pages of book reviews, short stories, and other articles.  

Carol Westron penned a guest blog post for Promoting Crime about the rise of fingerprinting and forensic science during the Golden Age of crime fiction and how it worked its way into the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, Dorothy L Sayers, and Annie Haynes.

For years, the final resting place of pioneering crime writer Mary Fortune has been a mystery. Now Lucy Sussex, biographer of Fergus Hume and long-time champion of Fortune and her work, has discovered the unmarked grave where the author has lain since 1911. Fortune, who Sussex says "could be the mother of Australian crime writing," was one of the first writers of police procedurals and between 1868 and 1908 wrote more than 500 stories for The Australian Journal. But she used a pseudonym, W.W., standing for Waif Wander, and her identity was revealed only in the 1950s.

The Bouchercon Conference did a nice thing by making all of the Anthony Award Best Short Story finalist entries available for reading online. Check out all of them via this link.

Chet Williamson, writing for The Guardian, picked his "Top 10 novels about deranged killers":  from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter, murderous bogeymen exercise an enduring grip on readers’ imaginations.

Meanwhile, the Decider website decided which crime shows were among the "top 10" of the new millennium.

If you are a die-hard book lover, why not carry your love of books around with you? As in a book-scented perfume. Boing Boing notes there are dozens of such new products, from Demeter Paperback Cologne ("used bookstore": paper, violets and potpourri) to Byredo M/Mink (smells like ink); to Kilian Water Calligraphy ("blended to reflect a scent of Chinese ink sliding over rice paper") to Tokyo Milk Parfumarie Curiosite 17 Paper & Cotton ("coriander, white sage, birch wood, and tundra moss"); and Paper Passion ("the unique bouquet of freshly printed books").

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Dangerous Honesties" by Sara J. Tantlinger.

In the Q&A roundup, Manning Wolfe chats with The Mystery People about her series featuring Austin attorney Merit Bridges; the MP's also sat down for a chat with Billy Kring, who draws from his experiences as a former border agent for his heroine Hunter Kincaid; Omnimystery News welcomed Rick Bylina to discuss his new cozy mystery titled Kill All Cats; and Criminal Element snagged John Farrow, author of the Storm Murders Trilogy, to answer questions about his retired detective, Émile Cinq-Mars, and new book, Seven Days Dead.

Author R&R with Terrence McCauley

Terrence McCauley had success writing short stories featured in Thuglit, Spintetingler Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Big Pulp and other publications before turning his hand to two crime novels set in 1930s New York City, Prohibition and Slow Burn. In 2016, Down and Out Books also published Terrence's World War I novella - The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood, with proceeds going directly to benefit the Semper Fi Fund. His latest work is the techno-thriller, A Murder of Crows, the just-published second installment in his James Hicks spy series, Sympathy for the Devil.

A Murder of Crows opens with every intelligence agency in the world on the hunt for the elusive terrorist known only as The Moroccan. But when James Hicks and his clandestine group known as the University thwart a bio-terror attack against New York City and capture The Moroccan, they find themselves in the crosshairs of their own intelligence community. The CIA, NSA, DIA and the Mossad are still hunting for for The Moroccan and will stop at nothing to get him. The team find themselves in a strange new world where allies become enemies, enemies become allies and the fate of the University - perhaps even the Western world - may hang in the balance. 

McCauley stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R (Reference and Research) on how he went about preparing to write this novel and his other books:

 

Research has always been very important to my work, no matter what genre I may be writing in at the time.

When I wrote my western, I made sure I weeded out many of the inaccuracies created in the collective entertainment consciousness by movies and television. Cowboys didn’t say shucks and darn. They didn’t just drink sarsaparilla and Miss Kitty probably just didn’t run a harmless hotel. Townsfolk weren’t cowardly and almost no one ever had a showdown on Main Street at high noon. Just as people hadn’t travelled all that way and endured all that hardship to let some bully push them around, they certainly weren’t going to stand in the middle of the street and let someone shoot at them in broad daylight.

I did even more research for the first two novels in the University series (PROHIBITION and SLOW BURN). I wanted to capture the flavor of the 1930s without falling prey to the pitfalls of caricature we have come to believe as fact. Anyone who thinks Daymon Runyon’s work accurately chronicled the era is sadly mistaken. If he told the truth about the people he knew and what he saw, his friends would have made sure he took a long walk off a very tall building. For accuracy, one must turn to the photographs of Weegee and the writings of Herbert Asbury (Gangs of New York) and others to attain a better sense of the underworld at the time. Al Capone wasn’t a cigar chomping, Tommy gun-firing mad man. He also wasn’t the charming common man portrayed in archival film footage, either.

If research has taught me anything – whether I’m examining the past or the present – it’s that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The trick is to get close enough to it for the reader to believe it and be entertained by it. As Wesley Gibson, my mentor and friend once told me, ‘You’re not writing a textbook. People don’t care how it’s done. They care about why it’s in your story. Justify it and move on.”

I took the same approach when I researched SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and A MURDER OF CROWS. Just as I sought to avoid the stereotypes of the black hat-wearing villain in my western or the cigar-chomping mad-dog killer of the 1920s, I wanted to avoid the stereotypes that the techno-thriller genre has acquired in the last couple of decades. You know what I mean, even though you might not realize it as they’ve become so commonplace, they’re impossible to notice. I didn’t want to write about the nerdy, socially awkward computer whiz with spiked hair, piercings and tattoos who resents authority, but follows it anyway. I also didn’t want to write about the hacker with the heart of gold or the criminal who reluctantly decides to fight crime or promote national security. And I sure as hell didn’t want to write about the foaming Islamic terrorist or the ex-special forces super-agent who reluctantly gets pulled back in to the fray of serving his or her country.

I wanted to write something different, but also something the reader could recognize. If I wrote an existential spy novel, no one, it meant I had to do my homework. A lot of it.

I started by deciding what kind of story I wanted to tell. Did I want to go the Le Carre route, meaning a book heavy on background and plot but not much action? Did I want a Bourne-like novel, with hyper-action and plot that got filled in along the way? Or did I want a Tom Clancy novel, wherein technology and lingo rule the day while plot and character development take second place?

Never opting for the easy road, I chose a little bit of all three. The collective Snowden and Assange messes helped me with the technological aspects of the story. I replaced the inked-up, rebellious hacker with a standing system called OMNI that gave the members of the mysterious University access to some of the most classified information in the world. Agents could not only access OMNI from their phones, but they could also upload vehicle traces, photographs of suspects and the fingerprints of suspected terrorists with ease. I employed a plot device I’ve dubbed near-technology, wherein I use every day technology and simply expand on our own personal use of it. Can the black box in your car be automatically tracked by satellite? Maybe. Can your fingerprints be scanned and analyzed remotely? They already are by the biometric device on newer iPhones. Can someone listen in to your phone or activate its camera without your knowledge? Certainly.

To a greater extent, could an organization like The University exist, one that isn’t funded by the government but has immense power and reach? That’s for the reader to decide. I certainly hope I’ve painted a convincing world in which the reader cannot only believe, but about which they will want to learn more. Through careful research and a bit of story telling, I strive to strike a balance that strains credulity only far enough for the reader to escape their reality and not fear for their safety. Because, like a wise person once told me, I’m not writing a textbook. I’m telling a story.

 

To find out more about Terrence McCauley and his books, check out his website and follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Grab a copy of A Murder of Crows via online stores or through your local bookstore.