In Reference to Murder

FFB: Murder Intercontinental

The theme of Patti Abbott's Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature today is short story collections and anthologies. (You can check out all the other entries via her blog link.)

Long before the current wave of crime fiction started flooding in from all parts of the world, authors from countries outside the U.S. and the U.K. were writing stories and novels set in a variety of locales. Even in the two mystery-mainstay countries, American and British authors have often used exotic settings to inspire and entertain. One anthology that takes a look at this globe-hopping in crime fiction stories is Murder Intercontinental, published in 1996.

Editors Cynthia Manson and Kathleen Halligan culled their choices from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and decided on twenty authors with stories spanning seven continents taking place over the course of a century. The book starts off with "the Missing House" by Hayford Peirce, set in Tahiti (which the editors mistakenly label as being part of the Caribbean), in which a Kansas-born PI, who is scrounging a living in Tahiti, must find a house the owner swears was stolen. That's followed by geographical sections divided into North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Middle East, although some areas are only represented with one story.

There are well-known authors included: Agatha Christie's Poirot in Egypt, Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford in London, Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret in a small French village. Others are less familiar, such as Kenneth Gavrell's P.I. Carlos Banon investigating a drive-by shooting linked to a senatorial candidate in Puerto Rico; Shizuko Natsuki's Lieutenant Soto investigating a bank robbery in a Japanese resort town he links to the suicide of a temple employee; and Josh Pachter's Mahboob Chaudri solving a crime on the Muslim holy day of Ramadan in Bahrain.

Even the settings in North America are more exotic, with Native American-themed tales from Manly Wade Wellman and William T. Lowe, and a haunting little story from James Sarafin titled "The Word for Breaking August Sky," set in a remote Eskimo village in Alaska and featuring an African-American chief of police, that might best be described as lyrical paranormal noir (and was also later included in the 2002 anthology The Mysterious North, edited by Dana Stabenow).

Here are the regions with their various contributions:

• The Caribbean: The Missing House / Hayford Peirce
• North America: A Knife Between Brothers / Manly Wade Wellman; There are No Snakes in Hawaii / Juanita Sheridan; The Word for Breaking August Sky / James Sarafin; Corollary / Hughes Allison; Kaddish / Batya Swift Yasgur; All Indians are Warriors / William T. Lowe
• Latin America: There are No Stars over San Juan / Kenneth Gavrell; The Hair of the Widow / Robert Somerlott
• Asia: The Sole of the Foot / Shizuko Natsuki; The Courage of Akira-kun / Ron Butler
• Africa: To Catch a Wizard / Walter Satterthwait
• Eastern Europe : Hide-and-seek, Russian style / Patricia McGerr
• Europe: Journey into Time / Georges Simenon; Who Killed that Son of a Doge? / David Braly ; Suspect / Patricia Highsmith; The Mists of Ballyclough / Barbara Callahan; Inspector Wexford and the Winchurch Affair / Ruth Rendell
• The Middle East: The Adventure of the Egyptian tomb / Agatha Christie; The Night of Power / Josh Pachter

Mystery Melange

Mystery Readers NorCal is hosting an evening Literary Salon with William Kent Krueger on Thursday, October 6 in Berkeley, CA. Krueger is the author of the Cork O’Connor series set in the north woods of Minnesota and has received Edgar, Anthony, Barry, and Dilys Awards, among many other honors, for his writing. For more information and how to RSVP, check out the Mystery Fanfare blog.

The Iceland Noir festival released the full program for this years event, to be held November 17-20 in Reykjavik. In addition to a full schedule of panels, there will be extra events like the Reykjavík Crimewalk, leaving the Nordic House and ending at Iða Zimsen in downtown Reykjavík, stopping off at criminally significant points along the way with authors reading from their work at each stop. (Crime Fiction Lover has a look at highlights of the festival via this link.)

Writing for Ireland's Independent newspaper, Myles McWeeney posited that female thriller writers are once again dominating the bestseller lists, just as in the Golden Age of crime fiction, with three Irish authors helping to lead the way.

David Hare wrote an essay for The Guardian on the genius of crime fiction author Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Hare is bringing the play The Red Barn, based on Simenon's novel La Main, to the National Stage, and he revealed why he loves the "pithy, power-obsessed creator of Inspector Maigret."

The Crime Fiction Lover blog has been celebrating the best crime fiction of years gone by during this month, a feature they titled "Classics in September." One recent post turned the spotlight on Bloomsbury Reader, a publisher that has been unearthing Golden Age crime fiction and reprinting it for modern audiences, with writers like Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin and Ann Bridge.

As Martin Edwards notes on his blog, collecting crime fiction has become a bit of "a thing," especially for rare - and often quite expensive - books, like an illustrated copy of Poirot Investigates. He also cites a recent blog post from Panmacmillan about some of the genre’s most sought after items.

Among the intriguing items in the online collection Recollection Wisconsin is the "Sherlock Holmes Mystery Map" (1987) created by Jim Wolnick and Susan Lewis and published by Aaron Blake Publishers. Complete with a "Dancing Men" border, it provides a visual guide to 130 locales in the Holmes canon.  (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

Have you ever wondered how the FBI handled fingerprints before the digital age? By 1943, there were more than 20,000 employees sorting through 70 million fingerprints in an 8,000 square foot facility in the National Guard Armory in Washington D.C., affectionately called the "Fingerprint Factory."

Welcome to the new model of book clubs: silent reading parties where participants gather together just to read the books rather than talk about them.

Maybe they should start such a club for boys. After hearing depressing statistics lately about how boys read less than girls, it's no surprise to have a study find that parents spend 25% less on books for sons than for daughters.

This week's new crime poem at the 5-2 is "Borders" by Aja Beech.

In the Q&A roundup, Graeme Macrae Burnet talked with the Wall Street Journal about his book that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, His Bloody Project, which revolves around a triple murder in a quiet crofting community in 1860s Scotland; the Mystery People welcomed Beth Lewis to chat about her debut novel, the psychological thriller, The Wolf Road; Karin Slaughter spoke with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the new book in her series with GBI agent Will Trent and why it's been three years since the last installment; and Chris Holm stopped by the MP blog to discuss his new novel in the series with Michael Hendricks, a hit man who kills other hitmen.

Banned Books Week

Sunday marked the beginning of the annual Banned Books Week in the U.S., a project created by "a national alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read." The program was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. In case you may wonder if it's still relevant today, more than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982, according to the American Library Association.

Because it's estimated that over half of all banned books are by authors of color or contain events and issues concerning diverse communities, this year Banned Books Week will celebrate literature written by diverse writers that has been banned or challenged, as well as explore why diverse books are being disproportionately singled out in the first place.

Individual books showcased during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read, most of these books still remained available.

If you would like to participate, there are events spread through the country. Check this listing for one near you or participate in one of the online webcasts. For further reading and resources, you can also visit the ALA's website.

Media Murder for Monday

Can it really be Monday again? Why yes, it can, but to soften the blow, here's a wrap-up of news about upcoming crime dramas:

MOVIES

Fox has bought the movie rights to an untitled crime thriller by novelist Don Winslow (to be released next June) and set it up with Ridley Scott to produce through his Fox-based Scott Free company. The book centers on a corrupt sergeant at the NYPD’s most elite crime-fighting unit who must choose between his family, his partners and his life. The preemptive deal follows another deal with the studio and Scott to develop Winslow’s bestseller The Cartel, which  centers on two former friends whose paths diverged when one went to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency and the other joined the Sonora drug cartel.  

For some time now, there have been rumors circulating around a sequel to the 2014 crime thriller The Equalizer, but producer Todd Black has finally confirmed that The Equalizer 2 is happening, with director Antoine Fuqua directing and Denzel Washington set to reprise his role as the "fixer" Robert McCall. Equalizer 2 will start shooting in September of next year and will mark Washington’s first sequel in a franchise.

Studio 8 has picked up the rights to New York Times bestseller Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim, the eight book urban fantasy series, which are being eyed as a potential franchise. The series revolves around James "Sandman Slim" Stark, a fast talking, hard-boiled, supernatural vigilante who escapes from Hell to avenge his girlfriend’s murder and hunt down the magicians responsible for getting him sent "downtown."

Gina Gershon has signed on to the Jonathan Baker-directed thriller Inconceivable opposite Nicolas Cage, Faye Dunaway, Nicky Whelan and Natalie Eva Marie. Written by Chloe King, the film follows Katie (Whelan), who moves to town with her young daughter in order to start a new life after enduring abuse in her past and quickly befriends another mother, Angela (Gershon), and her husband Brian (Cage). Angela notices odd behavior from Katie, and begins to question whether Katie’s intentions are as innocent as she makes them out to be, or if something dark is lurking beneath the surface.

Three new trailers were dropped for the upcoming Jack Reacher sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, once again starring Tom Cruise as Lee Child's iconic protagonist.

TELEVISION

In a competitive deal, NBC landed The Last Policeman, an adaptation of Ben H. Winters’ sci-fi mystery novel, with a put pilot commitment. Winters will also pen the series adaptation, which follows a detective in New Hampshire during the final years of civilization as a catastrophe-level asteroid hurtles toward the planet. Despite the social, political and economic effects of preparing for impact, he keeps his head down and hope alive by solving cases amidst the ever-increasing chaos.

Another famous 1980s TV show is eyeing a comeback, with ABC snapping up Magnum, a sequel to the classic series Magnum P.I. that starred Tom Selleck. The new project, from Leverage creator John Rogers and Eva Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, will follow Magnum’s daughter, Lily "Tommy" Magnum, who returns to Hawaii to take up the mantle of her father’s PI firm. She and her tribe of friends "mix tropical beaches with the seedy underbelly of international crime and modern espionage, even as she tries to unravel the mystery of the blown spy operation that ended her career in Navy Intelligence."

ABC has put in development a drama procedural from British writer-actress Lizzie Mickery and Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner’s Bad Wolf production company. Written by Mickery, the untitled drama is about a team of female detectives in the vein of Cagney and Lacey.

After it recently ended its seven-year run, CBS's hit lawyer drama The Good Wife is getting its own spin-off that will hit the CBS All Access online venture in February 2017. The series will center on Christine Baranski's character Diane Lockhart, who is forced out of Lockhart & Lee and ends up joining Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago’s preeminent law firms. Joining Baranski will be original cast members including Cush Jumbo (Lucca Quinn) and Sarah Steele (Marissa Gold).

The cast and crew of ABC's Secrets and Lies teased the second season of the show, which picks up a year and a half after the events in Episode 1, with Det. Andrea Cornell (Juliette Lewis) having a new murder case on her hands: Eric Warner (Michael Ealy), a private equity heir who's accused of murdering his wife (Jordana Brewster) on the night he's set to officially take over his family's firm

Tiffany Hines is joining the cast of Fox’s 24: Legacy in a major recurring guest star role. 24: Legacy follows a structure similar to the original counter-terrorism thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, with the updated version revolving around a military hero’s (Corey Hawkins) return to the U.S. and the chaos that follows him, forcing him to ask the Counter Terrorist Unit for assistance in stopping a large-scale terrorist attack in the Unites States.

Jane Lynch is set to reprise her role as Reid's schizophrenic mother Diana on Criminal Minds this season for the first time since 2008. She'll appear in two episodes early next year for a "heavy Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) story," according to executive producer Erica Messer.

Phoebe Dynevor (Dickensian) has been cast as a series regular on Snatch, the drama series for Sony’s streaming network Crackle that’s based on the 2000 Jason Statham-Brad Pitt movie. Rupert Grint and Luke Pasqualino star in the series, which revolves around a group of up-and-coming twenty-something hustlers who stumble upon a truckload of stolen gold bullion and suddenly are thrust into the high-stakes world of organized crime.  

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Harlan Coben was a guest on CBS This Morning to talk about his new book, Home, which brings back his iconic character, Myron Bolitar, to try and unravel the mystery behind the kidnapping of two boys 10 years after the crime.

On NPR's Morning Edition, author Thomas Mullen discussed his book Darktown, a riveting police procedural set in 1948 Atlanta that explores a murder through the lens of corrupt police, and strained race relations.

Host Alex Dolan of the Thrill Seekers podcast welcomed Alex Marwood, the bestselling author of The Wicked Girls, The Killer Next Door, and the recently released The Darkest Secret. 

Your Sunday Music Treat

If you watch a lot of movies and TV, you've probably heard the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and didn't even know it. The Russian composer was born on this date in 1906 (d. 1975) and was one of the giants of 20th century classical music. Despite his tortured life that pitted him against the Soviet Union, his music lives on in ways he probably couldn't even have imagined (although one of Shostakovich's songs was sung by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin over the radio from his spacecraft to Mission Control down on earth). You can check out this list of movies/shows that have used his music.

Here's the watlz from the Second Jazz Suite, which was used in Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut:

 

And here's the composer himself playing the Andante movement form his Piano Concerto #2, excerpts of which were used most recently in the Cold War film Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks:

 

Quote of the Week

FFB: First Come, First Kill

Richard Lockridge was born in Missouri in 1898 and became a journalist and drama critic for the New York Sun. In 1922, he married his wife Frances, a reporter and music critic for the Kansas City Post, and the duo eventually developed two comedic characters from newspaper vignettes and radio comedy that they modeled on themselves—the amateur detectives Mr. and Mrs. North. That particular series was so popular, it ultimately inspired 40 books in the North series, a movie starring George Burns and Gracie Allen, a long-running play on Broadway, a radio drama and a TV show with Richard Demming and Barbara Britton.

The prolific husband-and-wife writing team also created another mystery series featuring the sleepy-eyed Captain Merton Heimrich of the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Identification. In 1962's First Come, First Kill, a shabby, elderly man is shot on the driveway of the house where Heimrich and his wife Susan live, managing to say only one word before he dies: "well." As Heimrich digs into the background of the victim, "Old Tom"—an eccentric but harmless itinerant gardener—it quickly becomes evident that the case of the murdered man is linked to an unsolved disappearance of a New York Supreme Court Justice who'd vanished years before. The trail leads even farther afield to London and Mexico, until Heimrich realizes the murderer is uncomfortably closer to home.
 
Of the Richard and Frances authorial collaboration, Richard once noted, "We had story conferences and wrote a summary. As we both insisted, the writing was entirely mine."  Frances was primarily a force in the plotting stage, which Richard would then turn into a 200-page manuscript. This was especially true with the Lt. Merton Heimrich books; the authors were billed as "Frances and Richard" for the North novels and "Richard and Frances" for the Heimrich series. In fact, after Frances died in 1963 (First Come, First Kill was their last book together), Richard continued the Heimlich line on his own with eight more books and penned several other series, as well.

A few trivia notes: The Lockridges served as co-presidents of the Mystery Writers of America in 1960 and received a special Edgar Award in 1962. Francis Richards was a pseudonym for the Richard & Francis Lockridge books used exclusively in the UK.

Mystery Melange

The annual Boucheron conference held this past weekend included the usual slate of award presentations, with the announcement of the Anthony, Shamus, Barry, and Macavity honors.

The Anthony Awards, voted on by attendees at the convention, were handed out to:

Best Novel: The Killing Kind, Chris Holm
Best First Novel: Past Crimes, Glen Erik Hamilton
Best Paperback Original: The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney
Best Critical or Nonfiction Book: Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime, Val McDermid
Best Young Adult Novel: Need, Joelle Charbonneau
Best Anthology or Collection: Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015 - Art Taylor, Editor
Best Short Story: "The Little Men: A Bibliomystery," Megan Abbott
Best Crime Fiction Audiobook: The Nature of the Beast, Louise Penny - Robert Bathurst, narrator

The winners of the Shamus Awards were announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon and include:

Best Hardcover Private Eye Novel: Brutality by Ingrid Thoft
Best Original Private Eye Paperback: Circling the Runway by  J.L. Abramo
Best First Private Eye Novel: The Do-Right by Lisa Sandlin
Best Private Eye Short Story, “The Dead Client” by Parnell Hall in Dark City Lights: New York Stories (edited by Lawrence Block)
The Eye Lifetime Achievement Award: S.J. Rozan.

The Macavity Awards are nominated by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal and friends of MRI:

Best Mystery: The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
Best First Mystery: Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton   
Best Critical/Biographical: The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards  
Best Short Story" "The Little Men" by Megan Abbott   
Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award: The Masque of a Murder by Susanna Calkins

Finally, we have the Barry Awards from Deadly Pleasures Magazine:

Best Novel: C. J. Box, Badlands
Best First Novel: Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead
Best Paperback Original: Lou Berney, The Long and Faraway Gone
Best Thriller: Taylor Stevens, The Mask

The annual National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, heads to the nation's capital this Saturday for a free one-day event at the Washington Convention Center. This year's festivities will include appearances by Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen, and Harlan Coben.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, but as as editor Janet Hutchings notes on the EQMM blog, this year also marks another milestone - the Private Eye Writers of America is celebrating its 35th anniversary. Author, editor, critic, and recent PWA vice-president, Ted Fitzgerald, wrote a guest post for the blog about the organization and its storied history. 

Crime writer Agatha Christie's murder mystery novels are getting a new outing - as stamps. The Royal Mail in the UK has issued six stamps to mark the centenary of the year Christie wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced Belgian detective Hercule Poirot to the world. But these aren't just ordinary stamps - they contain hidden clues and references, printed in special inks and microtext, to murders and key scenes in Christie's most famous novels. Amateur sleuths will be able to use UV light, body heat and a magnifying glass to uncover hidden elements and key scenes in the stamps.

Speaking of Dame Agatha, Bookbub staffer Chanel Cleeton compiled a list of  "11 New Mysteries to Read if You Love Agatha Christie."

Agatha Christie has been getting quite a bit of press this year, thanks to the 125 anniversary of her birth. But there's another author celebrating a big anniversary, Mary Stewart, and just in the nick of time comes a forgotten novella that The Guardian calls "the perfect celebration of her centenary year."

Author Ann Cleeves has written a murder mystery script for libraries and booksellers to use in "author-less" events, as a way of thanking librarians and booksellers for their support during her career and also an acknowledgement of the funding gap left by cuts to libraries that can make such public events and outreach work difficult or impossible. The murder mystery script, Blood on the Bannocks, will equip public libraries with everything they need to hold murder mystery nights for readers.  

Fans of noir crime comics should check out this piece by Maika Keuben for Dirge Magazine.

This Tokyo-based Japanese craftsman brings old books back to life by making them look brand new through techniques obtained after more than three decades of experience in his shop from the Suidobashi area of Japan’s capital. Okano, the old Japanese craftsman, can reverse almost any deterioration process that a book has witnessed, bringing back the joy of reading old novels and stories to anyone who visits his repair shop.

Turns out, it's a good week for "old" things:  Melville House celebrated the "oldest book in the Americas," while word came that the world's oldest library, Morrocco's Khizanat al-Qarawiyyin, is set to reopen after a complete restoration.

Listverse takes a tour into "10 Creepy Mysteries Involving Abandoned Vehicles."

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "The Porn-Phone Caper" by Paula Willis.

In the Q&A roundup, Zoe Sharp visited with The Mystery People to talk about her latest book featuring Kelly Jacks, a former Crime Scene Investigator turned crime scene cleaner; the MPs also welcomed Mike McCrary, whose new book, Genuinely Dangerous, is about a failed writer-director who decides to restart his career by embedding himself with a gang of bank robbers; and Frances McNamara stopped by Omnimystery News to chat about her sixth mystery featuring amateur sleuth Emily Cabot, Death at the Paris Exposition.

Storypalooza

There are several fun, new anthologies that have come to my attention lately I thought I might pass along. The first two will delight fans of Sherlockiana, with new short fiction by a variety of today's best authors from crime fiction, suspense, sci-fi, and fantasy, while the third is sure to brighten your day.

Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, has a release date of October 4, which is just around the corner. Edited by Laurie R. King, it starts with one premise, "What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories?" It features 17 new stories including Tony Lee and Bevis Musson's "Mrs. Hudson Investigates," a post-Reichenbach mystery in comic book format; John Connolly opts for satire in "Holmes on the Range," set in the Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository, a home for fictional characters who have "assumed an objective reality" (including Holmes and Watson); William Kent Krueger contributed "The Painted Smile," which centers on a therapist who treats a child determined to have his identification with Holmes taken seriously. Plus, there are other fine contributions from David Morrell, Anne Perry, Hallie Ephron, and Gary Phillips.


The other Sherlock-themed offering is titled Associates of Sherlock Holmes and is edited by George Mann. In this anthology, famous associates of the Holmes – clients, colleagues, and of course, villains – tell their own stories of the Great Detective. Follow Inspector Lestrade as he and Sherlock Holmes pursue a killer to rival Jack the Ripper; sit with Mycroft Holmes as he solves a case from the comfort of the Diogenes Club; take a drink with Irene Adler and Dr. Watson in a Parisian café; and join Colonel Sebastian Moran on the hunt for a supposedly mythical creature. Author Lyndsay Faye, a well-known Sherlockiana adherent, starts off the proceedings with Police Inspector Stanley Hopkins, who appeared in Doyle's "The Adventure of Black Peter" in a brand new tale as he works with Holmes and Watson to investigate body parts dredged from the Thames in "River of Silence."

The other story treasure trove comes in the form of Sunshine Noir, edited by Annamaria Alfieri and Michael Stanley, and features seventeen writers from around the globe telling of dark doings in sunny places. Hot spots include the Dominican Republic, the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, chic Mykonos, Seville at midnight, and on the morning beachfront of Ghana where a man has revenge on his mind. Follow an NGO worker kidnapped in Yemen, an engineer repairing a dam in turmoil-torn Ethiopia, a foolish young Englishman hitchhiking across the Sahara. You will visit historic Istanbul and Mombasa and learn the secrets of family conflicts in Singapore, in Puerto Rico, in New Orleans. Tim Hallinan provides a Foreword for the American edition, with Peter James doing the honors in the British version, and Peter Rozovsky penning the book's introduction.

 

Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings to all, with the latest news from the world of crime drama on stage and screen:

MOVIES

Toni Collette, Gillian Anderson, Joanna Lumley and Riccardo Scamarcio have all signed on to star in Andorra, joining previously-cast Clive Owen. The project is based on Peter Cameron's novel of the same name, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called "part thriller, part comedy of manners, part surrealistic dream." The story follows  a man who forsakes his American life and arrives in a strange country called Andorra, settling into the grand (and only) hotel in its seaside capital, gradually making the acquaintance of this tiny city's most prominent residents. But amid the mystery of his origins, a mutilated dead body appears in the harbor and everyone becomes a suspect.

Gillian Anderson is also one of the stars who've come aboard the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Crooked House, along with Glenn Close, Christina Hendricks, Max Irons,Terence Stamp, Honor Kneafsey, and Stefanie Martini. Irons is set to play Charles Hayward, a private detective trying to solve a murder whose suspects include Sophia, his former lover, played by Martini, while Stamp takes on the role of the chief inspector. Hendricks, Close, Kneafsey, and Anderson are members of the dead man’s household. The film is to be directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah’s Key) and is being written by Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey).

Production on Mission: Impossible 6, recently halted due to an issue with back-end fees, has settled its financial problems with Tom Cruise and is back on track. The original production plan for an early 2018 release was jeopardized by last month’s pay dispute, but with Cruise's new deal, the original timeline could still be a reality.

TELEVISION

The Emmy Awards were handed out last night, with big crime drama winners including The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which had nods for Best Actor (Courtney B. Vance) and Best Actress (Sarah Paulson) in a Limited Series or Movie; Mr. Robot, with an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series nod to Rami Malek; Orphan Black, Outstanding Lead Actress to Tatiana Maslany; The Night Manager, Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie (Susanne Bier); Making a Murderer, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series; and Sherlock: the Abominable Bride, Outstanding Television Movie.

CBS has put in development Body Politic, a procedural drama from former Dexter co-executive producer Lauren Gussis, director Marc Webb, and Dark Horse Entertainment. The show is inspired by the work of real-life D.C. examiner Dr. Roger Mitchel and follows a newly minted, brutally honest female chief medical examiner in Washington D.C. who gets recruited by the CIA to help solve the most high-stakes, politicized cases in the world.  

Sheldon Turner has teamed with Charlie’s Angels director McG for a buddy cop drama with a twist, which Fox has handed a script commitment plus significant penalty. Written by Turner and to be directed by McG, the untitled drama (working title Good Cop/Bad Cop) centers on a meek San Francisco detective struggling with psychological trauma who conjures up an imaginary rogue partner who helps him get the job done.

Fox has also given a script plus penalty commitment to Justice, a  legal drama from Scandal co-executive producer and former Assistant United States Attorney Judy Smith, who was the inspiration for the lead character in Shonda Rhimes’ Washington drama. Written by Jeremy Miller and Daniel Cohn (Entourage) and inspired by Smith’s own story, Justice centers on a high-powered African American woman who is made the new U.S. Attorney and her team of attorneys who take on cases while trying to fix the problems in their own lives before secrets unravel.

Legal drama continues to be a red-hot genre this broadcast buying season with another high-profile entry heading to Fox from Empire co-creator/executive producer Danny Strong and Jessica Sharzer (American Horror Story). The untitled project centers on a team of civil rights lawyers who take on the most newsworthy cases of our time, balancing the high stress of their jobs with sex, drugs, and assorted other vices.  

ABC has has given a pilot production commitment to Deception, an FBI crime drama procedural from Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak and magician, puzzle creator and writer/producer David Kwong, who serves as consultant on NBC’s FBI drama Blindspot. Written by Fedak, Deception centers on a superstar magician whose career is ruined by scandal and turns to practice his art of deception with the FBI, becoming the world’s first consulting illusionist.

Actress and Grammy-winning singer LeToya Luckett and Camille Spirlin have booked recurring roles on the second season of Fox's Miami-set medical procedural Rosewood. The series centers on top private pathologist Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr. (Morris Chestnut) and tough-as-nails Detective Annalise Villa (Jaina Lee Ortiz) as they investigate East Miami PD’s most challenging cases. Luckett will play Tawnya, a new love interest for Rosewood, while Spirlin will portray Kayla, Tawyna’s daughter. In addition to Chestnut and Ortiz, they join Lorraine Toussaint, Gabrielle Dennis, Anna Konkle and Domenick Lombardozzi and new cast addition Eddie Cibrian.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is heading to Fargo, joining Ewan McGregor and Carrie Coon for Season 3 of the dark comedy crime drama. She will play Nikki Swango, a "crafty and alluring recent parolee with a passion for competitive bridge playing." She is described as bring a focused woman with a plan, who always likes to be one step ahead of her opponent.  

Christopher Backus has booked a recurring role on Amazon’s drama series Bosch, playing Woody Woodrell, a former Army Special Forces soldier who now works for a private security firm. Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Harry Bosch novels, Bosch stars Titus Welliver as the idiosyncratic, tough, jazz-loving cop. The third season, set to premiere in 2017, will draw from Connolly’s 1992 The Black Echo and 2001 A Darkness More Than Night books.

AcornTV will premiere new crime drama seasons in October, including episodes of the Australian political thriller The Code, starring Ashley Zukerman and Dan Spielman; and the third season of the Montreal-set series 19-2, which the New York Times called on par with the best American police dramas like The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

BBC Radio has recordings of John le Carré reading from his new memoir The Pigeon Tunnel (including an explanation for the title and the intersections of his life between real-life espionage and fiction). (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

Suspense Radio welcomed two very special guests, authors Julia Diana Robertson (Beyond The Screen Door) and and Cate Holahan (The Widower's Wife).

Former sex crimes prosecutor and author Allison Leotta chatted with author/screenwriter Debbi Mack about her Anna Curtis thrillers for the Crime Cafe podcast.

THEATER
 
A new production of The Big Sleep is kicking off the 40th season of Calgary, Canada's Vertigo Theater. Graham Percy stars as Raymond Chandler's iconic detective Philip Marlowe in the classic tale of a millionaire who is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and wants P.I. Marlowe to make the problem go away. The production also stars Stephen Hair as Los Angeles police detective Nulty. The show opened September 17 and runs through October 16, 2016.