In Reference to Murder

FFB: Dr. Nikola Returns

Guy Newell Boothby (1867-1905) was born in South Australia, the son of a politician and the grandson of a judge. He started out his career as a clerk but soon turned his hand to writing plays and musical comedies and eventually made his way to England by way of Singapore, Borneo and Java. He used his travel-related experiences in his writing, turning to Rudyard Kipling-influenced works and exotic settings, churning out 6,000 words every day.

That prolific word count led to fifty novels in the 14 years between 1894 and 1908, with some of the most popular featuring Dr. Nikola. Nikola is an occultist anti-hero in search of immortality and world domination, who uses hypnotic powers and studies witchcraft and the occult. The Nikola series was launched in 1895 as the serial "A Bid for Fortune" in The Windsor Magazine, a rival to The Strand. The series only amounted to five works in all, but Dr. Nikola became almost as popular as Sir Athur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty in 1890s Britain.

Nikola is described as dressing in "faultless evening dress, slender, having dark peculiar eyes and dark hair, and white toad-coloured skin." He lives in a bungalow on the Rue de Lafayette in Shanghai (leading some to say the character of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu was based on him). John Norris, the host of the Pretty Sinister Books blog, wrote about Stanley L. Woods, who often illustrated the Nikola stories, portraying him in white cravat and fur coat, with his frequent companion, the baleful-eyed black cat Apollyon, perched on Nikola's shoulder.

Dr. Nikola (also known as Dr. Nikola Returns) was a sequel to A Bid for Fortune. In the first book, Nikola tried to obtain a Chinese carved stick said to have almost limitless occult powers. In Dr. Nikola Returns, the doctor continues his pursuit of the powers associated with the Chinese talisman, but enlists the assistance of the penniless but adventurous Wilfred Bruce, who speaks fluent Chinese and also serves as narrator of the tale. Dr. Nikola and Bruce scheme to penetrate the most powerful secret society in China to gain access to a remote Tibetan monastery. 

Although Boothby's output was cut short due to his untimely death from influenza at the age of 37, Dr. Nikola lived on in numerous theatrical productions, beginning with Dr. Nikola on the London stage in 1902. In 1909, a three-roll film based on Dr. Nikola was produced by the Danish director Viggo Larsen and was the first novel-based film in Europe long enough to be able to tell the entire story of a novel. A 1935 project that would have starred Boris Karloff as Dr. Nikola never made it to the screen, but Dr. Nikola made a guest-starring appearance in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula graphic novel series from 1992.

Mystery Melange

Reed Farrel Coleman’s novel Where It Hurts, which introduced former Suffolk County cop Gus Murphy, was named winner of the 2017 Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel. This marks the fourth time Coleman has scored a Shamus; the first was in 2006, when his Moe Prager novel The James Deans received Best Private Eye Paperback Original honors. For all the category nominees and winners, head on over to the Private Eye Writers of America official home. (HT Gumshoe site)

The Bouchercon National Board of Directors has selected George Easter as the recipient of its 2017 David Thompson Special Service Award for “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime fiction field.” The David Thompson Special Service Award was created by the Bouchercon Board to honor the memory and contributions to the crime fiction community of David Thompson, a much beloved Houston bookseller who passed away in 2010. Past recipients of the award include Ali Karim, Marv Lachman, Len & June Moffatt, Judy Bobalik, Otto Penzler, and Bill and Toby Gottfried. (HT to Bill Crider.)

A new literary prize named Svartfuglinn (The Auk) was launched in Iceland. The prize is for crime fiction by previously unpublished Icelandic authors, and is named after a 1929 novel by Gunnar Gunnarsson about a notorious 19th century double murder, making the novel one of the earliest examples of Icelandic crime fiction. The prize is founded and moderated by crime writers Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, author of the Thora Gudmundsdottir books, and Ragnar Jónasson, author of the Dark Iceland Series, who are both supplying the prize money. But the reward also includes a contract with Veröld, their Icelandic publisher, and with David H. Hedley, Ragnar’s UK agent, who was named as one of the 100 most influential people in British publishing in 2015 by trade magazine Bookseller.

Mystery Writers of America NorCal's Mystery Week returns October 14-20. The six days of events start off with a Noir at the Bar at the Latin American Club in San Francisco and also includes several panels, with participating authors including Laurie R. King, Catriona McPhersonm Sheldon Siegel, and Kelli Stanley. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

The International Crime Fiction Association in the UK has posted a call for papers dealing with "Crime Fiction: Insiders and Outsiders" and how they affect each other to change the genre. Proposals of 200 words are due by February 3, 2018, and accepted projects will take part in the Captivating Criminality 5 Crime Fiction conference June 28-30, 2018, Corsham Court, Bath Spa University, UK. You can find all the details here. (HT to Sandra Seamans)

Dr. Brian Cliff, Assistant Prof of Irish Studies in the School of English at TCD, profiled the book Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State by Andrew Pepper, asserting that the author convincingly makes the case for seeing “new ways of understanding the crime novel’s capacities for imaginatively intervening in the world” and, crucially, “the limits of those interventions.”

Sarah Hilary took a closer look at the enduring legacy of iconic crime fiction author Patricia Highsmith.

The Los Angeles Times profiled a growing trend for a sub-genre of sci-fi, namely sci-fi with crime stories and mysteries that blur the two genres.

The Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. (in my own "back yard") is getting a trove of cool artifacts from the world’s largest private collection of spycraft - more than 5,000 of them, to be specific: everything from a portion of the spy plane flown by pilot Gary Powers that was shot down over Russia, to the axe used to hack exiled Soviet communist Leon Trotsky to death, to a 13-foot-long spy submarine from World War II.

There's a new Agatha Christie in town after the Duke Lemur Center recently welcomed the first aye-aye to be born at the center in six years. Named after the best-selling mystery writer Agatha Christie, the infant is one of only 24 aye-ayes in the United States.

Vincent Van Gogh: crime drama? Filmmakers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman are behind the new animated film Loving Vincent, in which they've not only created thousands of new oil paintings in his style, but also made him the subject of a murder-mystery.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Boom" by Susan Montag.

In the Q&A roundup, Vicki Delaney was interviewed by the Huffington Post about her new mystery Body on Baker Street, the second in the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series; the Mystery People welcomed Glen Erik Hamilton to chat about his latest novel to feature Afghan vet and “retired” heistman Van Shaw; Nigel Bird takes Paul D. Brazill's latest "Short Sharp Interview" challenge about his latest Southsiders novel, By The Time I Get To Phoenix; Attica Locke chatted with the Mystery People about her latest crime novel, the topical Bluebird, Bluebird that centers on white supremacy in a small town; and Harlan Coben sat down with the Huffington Post's Mark Rubenstein to talk about his latest novel, Don’t Let Go, which is told through the eyes of New Jersey Detective, Napoleon (Nap) Dumas.

Media Murder for Monday

Yes, it's Monday again! And that means it's time for the weekly roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Matt Damon is set to play John R. Brinkley in the new film, Charlatan, based on Pope Brock’s non-fiction book Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. The infamous “Dr.” Brinkley started up a Kansas clinic in 1918 where he promised to cure male virility problems by implanting goat testicles via surgery on men suffering from impotence. This get-rich scheme led to a number of court cases after patients died during botched operations

Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot may have found her next major movie, as she’s in talks to join Bradley Cooper in the Max Landis-scripted thriller Deeper. Although Gadot's potential role has yet to be disclosed, Cooper will play a former astronaut who’s hired to lead an expedition to the deepest part of the ocean, where supernatural activity lurks. Production on the film is slated to start early next year.

Rob Morrow is set to join Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgård in The Kill Team, the Afghanistan War drama from writer-director Dan Krauss based on his 2013 documentary. Inspired by a true story, The Kill Team centers on Adam (Wolff), an eager American soldier who doesn’t fit in with his rowdy, trigger-happy squad and is coerced by his new sergeant (Skarsgård) into killing civilians against his will — or be killed by his own comrades if he blows the whistle on the scheme. Morrow will play Adam’s father, a former Marine who is proud of his son but becomes concerned when he learns that Adam’s unit is not what he signed up for.

A new trailer was released for 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Murder on the Orient Express, produced by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in the classic Agatha Christie tale.

Just for fun, here are "18 Things You Never Knew About LA Confidential," the iconic adaptation of James Ellroy's epic noir novel of corruption and paranoia in 1950s La-La Land; and if you're a fan of noir films like LA Confidential, here's another list for your binge-watching weekends.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

In a very competitive situation, Showtime has acquired the rights to The President Is Missing, the upcoming thriller novel by President Bill Clinton and bestselling author James Patterson, to be developed as a TV series. In The President Is Missing, published by Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown & Co., Clinton and Patterson tell the story of a sitting U.S. president’s disappearance, with the level of detail that only someone who has held the office can know.

Dick Wolf, who already has five drama series on the peacock network (in the Chicago PD family), has received a 13-episode order at CBS for a new procedural drama slated for launch during the 2018-2019 season. It will be Wolf’s first drama series to launch on a network other than NBC in 15 years, since the 2003 Dragnet reboot on ABC. The new series, tentatively titled F.B.I., will chronicle the inner workings of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Big Talk Productions has optioned Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. young adult series with plans to adapt the books for television. The deal comes as the fifth and final installment, The Empty Grave, is set to be published this week by the Penguin Random House imprint Corgi. Big Talk's head of film Rachael Prior and CEO Kenton Allen said they "feel a great affinity" with the Lockwood books' "distinct Britishness, innovative world building, vibrantly drawn characters and joyful command of genre," and that the series will be "a highly original, distinctively authored, ghost-detective show to enthrall audiences of all ages."

Netflix has acquired U.S. and some international rights to the thriller Anon, starring Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried, Colm Feore, and Sonya Walger, following a pre-festival screening in Toronto. Andrew Niccol directed from his own script about a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance, or anonymity. Owen portrays a man who, while investigating a series of unsolved murders, finds a young woman (played by Seyfried) who has disappeared with no identity or history.

BBC Four announced new drama series acquisitions including Crimes Of Passion, which is based on the popular crime novels of author Maria Lang and set in the beautiful region of Bergslagen, Sweden; and Hostages, an intense psychological crime-thriller that follows a renowned surgeon about to perform a routine operation on the president of Israel. But there is nothing routine about it when the night before the procedure, her family is taken hostage and she is ordered to sabotage the operation and kill the president – or her family will die.

Martin Clunes will take the role of former DCI Sutton, who determinedly and tenaciously pursued serial killer Levi Bellfield, in the new series Manhunt. Written by Ed Whitmore (Silent Witness, Rillington Place, Strike Back) and produced by Buffalo Pictures, Manhunt is the real life story of how the murder of French National, Amelie Delagrange, on Twickenham Green in August 2004 was eventually linked to the murders of Marsha McDonnell in 2003 and the abduction and murder of Milly Dowler as she traveled home from school in 2002.

One of the original Law and Order franchise stars is set to reprise his role in Season 19 of SVU. Sam Waterston will be back once more as Jack McCoy, although no details about how or why McCoy comes back are yet available. Waterson, who currently stars on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, played prosecutor Jack McCoy for 16 seasons on Law & Order.

PBS' American Masters issued a trailer for an episode in its upcoming season on Edgar Allan Poe. Best known for his Gothic horror/suspense tales and narrative poem "The Raven," Poe’s stories are the basis of countless films and TV episodes, and he's also credited with having invented the detective protagonist with his character C. Auguste Dupin.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Podcast host Terri Lynn Coop serves up bestselling author Chuck Wendig on The Blue Plate Special. Wendig is author of the Miriam Black thrillers, a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the co-writer of the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus.

The Beyond the Cover podcast welcomed special guest Eric C. Anderson to chat about his new thriller, Osiris, which takes readers on a twisted path from the glittering palaces of Qatar to the dusty hell of central Iraq, replete with drunken Russian pilots, conniving American politicians, and unlikely heroes.

THEATER

The thriller Wait Until Dark comes to Exeter next month. Written by Frederick Knott, author of Dial M Murder, and the producers behind Night Must Fall and Birdsong, Wait Until Dark will play at UK's Exeter Northcott Theatre from October 3-7. Set amidst the social turbulence of 1960s London, the play follows the story of Susy, a blind woman who, left alone in her apartment, becomes the victim of an elaborate scam hatched by a group of conmen. Susy is left to fend for herself, and eventually finds a way to turn the tables on the conmen and give them a taste of life in the dark.

FFB: The Comfortable Coffin

Richard S. Prather was a former WWII Merchant Marine and author of some fifty books, including forty novels and story collections featuring his Tinseltown detective Shell Scott. He served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Private Eye Writers of America, in 1986. In 1960, the MWA was ready to publish their 13th anthology and chose Prather to serve as editor.

The result was The Comfortable Coffin, which had the same wisecracking and wacky sense of humor reflected in Pather's own writing. Prather chose the 15 stories to make the reader "smile, and chuckle, and—more than once—laugh out loud." They vary from Robert Arthur's "A Coffin for Mr. Cash," about the supervisor of a crematorium who becomes involved in an intricate plan to steal a fortune; to Stanley Ellin's "The Faith Of Aaron Menefee," about a shady faith healer, later made into an episode of Alfred Hithcock Presents; to Michael Gilbert's "Mr. Portway’s Practice," about an unexpected fall from grace by a staffer at the British Inland Revenue Service.

The chosen stories include a mix of well-known and more obscure (now) authors:

• The Bottled Wife (Michael Fessier)
• A Coffin for Mr. Cash (Robert Arthur)
• The Faith Of Aaron Menefee (Stanley Ellin)
• My Queer Dean! My Queer Dean! (Ellery Queen)
• Your Cake And Eat It (Berkley Mather)
• Squeakie’s Second Case (Margaret Manners)
• First Man At The Funeral (Dion Henderson)
• The Strange Case Of Mr. Elsie Smith (Dana Lyon)
• The Live Ones (Richard S. Prather)
• The Gentleman Caller (Veronica Parker Johns)
• Mr. Portway’s Practice (Michael Gilbert)
• Fin de Siecle (William O’Farrell)
• Kiss Me, Dudley (Evan Hunter)
• To Strike A Match (Erle Stanley Gardner)
• It Wouldn’t Be Fair (Jack Finney)

Mystery Melange

The next Noir at the Bar in Edinburgh will take place September 26 at Canon’s Gait. Authors scheduled to participate include Ann Bloxwich, Neil Broadfoot, Tana Collins, Jessica Fairfax, Carol Walker, Andrew Ferguson, Amanda Fleet, Les Wood, Robert Parker, Mac Logan, and the addition of wildcard picks.

The 2nd Annual Miss Fisher Con (celebrating the 1920s-set TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) will be held June 28-30, 2018 in Portland, Oregon at the Embassy Suites Downtown. The committee is working out the specifics, including special room rates for con attendees. More information will be coming soon, including how to register. ​(HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

The Crime Fiction Lover blog "rediscovered" the crime novels of Desmond Bagley, who was arguably the hottest thriller writer in the UK during the 1970s. Five of his novels were made into films and TV series, the best known being The Mackintosh Man (1973) starring Paul Newman.

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring the inaugural Six-Word Mystery Contest. To win a $10 bet, Ernest Hemingway allegedly wrote the first six-word novel in the 1920s, which read: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Though its origins are disputed, the story is one of the most famous, and shortest, examples of flash fiction. The contest will open Oct. 1 and continue through Nov. 26. Writers 18 and older can submit stories for one or all five categories: hard-boiled/noir, cozy mysteries, thriller mysteries, police-procedural mysteries, and romance and lust.

Mystery Writers of America is unveiling a new "brand" titled MWA Presents Classics. The introductory volume of the MWA Presents Classics line is A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, a 2003 collection chosen and edited by current MWA President, Jeffery Deaver. MWA has produced anthologies since its earliest days, starting with Murder Cavalcade in 1946; now, the MWA Publications Committee, working with general editor John Helfers, intends to re-introduce the world to a series of these great out-of-print anthologies at the rate of four per year both for their first time as e-books and in new paperback editions.

Speaking of classics, over at Mystery Scene Magazine, Gary Lovisi profiled the Dell Map Backs of the 1940s and 1950s, which were special not just for their content but also because quite simply, they were beautiful books.

Musician and author Gerald Alias took the Page 69 Test for his latest crime novel, Spring Break.

The New York Times investigated the medical examiner's office in the city, which has been a pioneer in analyzing complex DNA samples. However, two methods that were recently discontinued are raising questions about thousands of cases from scientists and courts alike.

Marin Cogan profiled a group of "real life Nancy Drews" at the University of Pittsburgh, where a student club run by young women devoted to solving crimes is being taken seriously by law enforcement.

Gloria Fickling, who helped create Honey West, TV’s first female detective, recently celebrated her 91st birthday, and the Orange County Register had a retrospective about her pathbreaking series.


Sometimes criminal justice can be much stranger than fiction, as these "5 Police Cases That Basically Solved Crimes Using Magic" can attest. (HT to Bill Crider)

Think you know detective fiction? Check out these "Top 10 facts about crime-solvers and their stories."

John Keyse-Walker took at look at "Second Acts: The Second Novels of Six Great Crime Writers."

Writing for Strand Magazine, Eric Rickstad picked a list of the "Top 10 Springsteen Crime Songs."

Things to add to your reading list if you loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

If you're a fan of psychological thrillers, here's a list to help you pick out your next read.

On what would have been the 127th birthday of the queen of crime, David Barnett investigates why we still love Agatha Christie's "cozy crime" novels.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Helper" by Nancy Scott.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People's Director of Suspense Molly Odintz interviewed Stephanie Gayle about her latest Detective Thomas Lynch novel, Idyll Fears; and Crime by the Book chatted with Jane Robins about her latest psychological thriller, White Bodies.

Media Murder for Monday

It's Monday and time for another weekly roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Domenick Lombardozzi has been cast in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix film The Irishman, along with Jeremy Luke and Joseph Russo. They join the all-star ensemble cast of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Jack Huston. The drama is about Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran (De Niro), a reputed hitman suspected of involvement in the disappearance and murder of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. It’s based on the 2003 novel I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Lombardozzi will play Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family.

Nuala Ellwood’s thriller, My Sister’s Bones has been optioned by Bill Kenwright Films. The novel tells the story of two sisters, Kate, a war reporter, and Sally, a recluse who never left their childhood home of Herne Bay. When their mother dies, Kate returns from Syria to Herne Bay and grows concerned about what is going on in the house next door. But, as it becomes apparent Kate is a victim of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the reader struggles to know who to believe, or who is actually guilty.

Claire Foy has officially been announced as the new Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel, The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The new installment of Sony Pictures’ Millennium franchise, created by author Stieg Larsson and continued for his estate by David Lagercrantz, will start production in January in Berlin and Stockholm, and the film will be released on October 19, 2018.

A trailer was released for Red Sparrow, starring Jennifer Lawrence as a young Russian ballerina who enters the Sparrow spy program. After a harrowing training period, she emerges as one of the agency's top recruits then meets an American CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) whose fateful encounter has the potential to throw both of their lives in jeopardy. Red Sparrow will be released in theaters March 2, 2018.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The annual Emmy Awards were handed out last night and included a few nods to crime dramas, including The Night Of, which saw a Lead Actor in a Movie or Limited Series nod to Riz Ahmed and for cinematography; Big Little Lies was also a big winner, grabbing the Outstanding Limited Series title and Best Actress for Nicole Kidman and Best Director for Jean-Marc Vallée, as well as Supporting Actor for Alexander Skarsgård. The big winner of the night could said to be streaming services, with several wins for Netflix (The Crown and Stranger Things) and Hulu (The Handmaid's Tale).

E! has put in development One Of Us Is Lying, based on Karen M. McManus’ bestselling mystery-thriller young adult novel, from Universal Cable Productions and John Sacchi’s 5 More Minutes Productions banner. Described as Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One Of Us Is Lying follows what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive.

Netflix subscribers in the U.S. and Canada will be able to tune in mystery thriller Harlan Coben’s The Five after the streaming service scored the North American rights to the series, originally produced and set in the U.K., where it went out on pay-TV service Sky. It marked bestselling author Coben’s move into TV, and follows a group of friends as they discover that the brother of one them, who vanished years earlier, may still be alive after his DNA turns up at a murder scene.

Two decades after its debut in theaters, True Lies is headed for the small screen after Fox handed out a put-pilot commitment to a reboot of James Cameron's 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis action drama. Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim will pen the script for the potential series, said to be a modern version of the story about how a suburban couple adjusts when one of them is revealed to be a spy.

Hari Nef is set for a recurring role opposite Penn Badgley and Elizabeth Lail in Lifetime’s straight-to-series psychological thriller drama You, from Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble. Written by Berlanti and Gamble based on Caroline Kepnes’ best-selling novel, You is described as "a 21st century love story that asks, 'What would you do for love?'" When a brilliant bookstore manager Joe (Badgley) crosses paths with an aspiring writer, Beck (Lail), his answer becomes clear: anything. Nef will play Blythe, a talented and competitive peer in Beck’s MFA program.

Alexandra Billings (Transparent) is set for a key recurring role opposite Billy Bob Thornton, Morris Chestnut, and Ana De La Reguera in the upcoming second season of Amazon’s original drama series Goliath. Billings will play Judge Martha Wallace, a seasoned professional who is meticulous and controlled, who presides over the trial of a teenager accused of a double murder.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste presentend a special live episode recorded at the Bloody Scotland crime festival, featuring Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Eva Dolan, and Stuart Neville.

The Story Blender podcast welcomed special gust Sandra Brown, who owns the distinction of being on the New York Times bestseller list with her thrillers sixty-eight times.

Debbie Mack's Crime Cafe featured an interview with crime fiction author Dave White about the latest installment in his Jackson Donne series.

THEATER

Rivendell Theatre in Chicagoland is presenting the world premiere production of Alias Grace, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's 1996 novel that was loosely based on a notorious 1843 murder case. Jennifer Blackmer penned the adaptation, with Karen Kessler directing the story of 16-year-old Grace Marks, accused of brutally murdering her employer and his housekeeper. Imprisoned for years, Grace still swears she has no memory of the killings until a doctor in the emerging field of mental health arrives to try to find out the truth of the matter.

Canada's Vertigo Theater Mystery Series is presenting the world premiere of Jovanni Sy's play, Nine Dragons, through October 15. When an upper-class European girl is found murdered on the seedy side of Kowloon, ambitious Chinese police detective Tommy Lam is on the case. But faced with corruption and the prejudice of his superiors, how far will Tommy go in the pursuit of justice?

The Swan Theatre in Worcester is presenting the world premiere of the play Where Is Mrs Christie? from September 19-23. The one-woman show stars The Second Best Bed actor, Liz Grand, and delves into the mysterious 11-day disappearance of the iconic mystery author in 1926.

FFB: The Moonshine War

Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) penned dozens of novels and a large number of stories, garnered many awards and had his work adapted for film and television, including the series Justified, formerly part of the FX Network lineup. As I mentioned in a recent Media Murder for Monday post, Justified executive producers Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman are returning to the literary creations of the author, optioning three of the late author’s praised Detroit novels, Unknown Man #89, Pagan Babies, and Mr. Paradise,

Leonard's 1969 novel, The Moonshine War, had a subject of peculiar interest to me. Prejudice can take many forms, and I will never forget my trip to New York City some years ago when I was around 13, and a taxi driver, upon learning I was from Tennessee, sincerely wanted to know if I had a moonshine still in my back yard (and if we went barefoot a lot, but that's another story.) Moonshine holds a certain fascination with many people to this day, as evidenced by the recent Moonshiners reality-TV show on Discovery. Of course, you can buy moonshine legally these days, and there are several distilleries in East Tennessee now.

The "war" of the book's title refers to the days of Prohibition in the back hills of Kentucky that pits a hell-raising country boy named Son Martin against a gang of city slickers hoping to to steal thousands of dollars worth of homemade whiskey made by Son's father. The gang is hired by Son's old war buddy, Frank Long, now a crooked prohibition agent, who was willing to look the other way in exchange for a percentage of Son's business. But when Son wouldn't play ball, Long called in the big guns in the form of Dr. Taulbee, who is not afraid to use violent methods such as busting up the stills of Son's neighbors. But after Taulbee and his goons go too far by committing a double murder, Long decides to help Son fend off the gang.

The Moonshire War is something of a crossbreed between Leonard's westerns and his crime fiction, but it has Leonard's trademark tough outlaws, sharp dialogue, twist ending, and he sets up the stakes in a concise, sharp way:

"People did crazy things where whiskey was concerned. It being against the law to drink wasn't going to stop anybody. They'd fight and shoot each other and go to prison and die for it..."

Like many of Leonard's books and stories, The Moonshire War was adapted to the screen in the form of a star-studded 1970 movie directed by Richard Quine with Alan Alda as Son Martin (!), Patrick McGoohan as Frank Long, and Richard Widmark as Dr. Taulbee.

Mystery Melange

The Long Drop by Denise Mina has won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year. The prize was renamed in 2016 in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the Godfather of Tartan Noir, and is awarded annually at the Bloody Scotland crime fiction conference.

From La Vanguardia, Irish writer John Banville has won the XI RBA Crime Fiction Prize with his novel Pecado, written under the pen name of Benjamin Black with which he signs his crime fiction books.

Some of the authors who will be appearing at the upcoming Noirwich Crime Writing Festival spoke with Crime Time about their take on the event.

Some sad news this week via Mystery Fanfare: Ron Tierney passed away on September 2. Ron wrote 18 mysteries including the Deets Shanahan Mysteries, the Carly Paladino and Noah Lang mysteries, the Peter Strand Mystery Novellas, and also stand-alone crime fiction titles.

Crime writers who invent intricate and illegal plots are perfectly capable of becoming criminals, as evidenced by Tim Watson-Munro who first went to prison when he was 25 – as a prison psychologist. Two decades later he was booted out of the profession for drug offenses, and in his new book, Dancing with Demons, he explains that really there is no such thing as the criminal mind any more than there are criminal classes: there is the potential for criminality in every single one of us.

True crime fans should also head on over to the Criminal Element blog where Philip Jett shared his family's experiences with murder and discussed whether violence can be genetic and Inherited. You can also win a copy of his new book, The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty.

For feline addicts, Sofie Kelly shared a list of her favorite Cat Detectives.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Under the Bridge of Sighs" by Peter Magliocco.

In the Q&A roundup, David Lagercrantz talked about continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, including the latest installment released this month; Graham Smith takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; South Africa's Deon Meyer, the author of more than a dozen bestselling thrillers and short-story collections stopped by the Globe & Mail to discuss his latest novel, Fever; and Reed Farrel Coleman stopped by Shots Magazine to chat with Ayo Onatade about his latest work, Debt to Pay.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and the post-hurricane edition of the weekly crime drama roundup:

MOVIES

Lionsgate’s Codeblack Films has acquired producer/director/writer Deon Taylor’s thriller Traffik, with a release date set for April 27, 2018. Traffik stars Paula Patton and Omar Epps as a young couple who travels on a romantic getaway to the mountains only to be terrorized by a vicious group of sex traffickers with whom they become locked in a desperate struggle for survival. The film’s cast also includes Laz Alonso, Roselyn Sanchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle, and William Fichtner.

The thriller Three Seconds has been picked up by Aviron Pictures. Adapted from a best-selling Swedish novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, the film follows special ops soldier Pete Hoffman, who has been working undercover for crooked FBI handlers to infiltrate the Polish mob’s drug trade in New York until his cover is threatened when he has to return to prison after a drug deal goes wrong.

Universal Pictures and Working Title Films have released the international trailer for The Snowman based on Jo Nesbø’s global bestseller and starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men series), Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Independence Day: Resurgence). 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has put in development L.A. Confidential, a drama based on James Ellroy’s noir classic novel and spearheaded by Arnon Milchan, who produced the acclaimed 1997 movie adaptation of the book. L.A. Confidential follows three homicide detectives, a female reporter, and a Hollywood actress whose paths intersect as the detectives pursue a sadistic serial killer through the seedy underbelly of glamorous 1950s Los Angeles.

Netflix has ordered an adaptation of the thriller novel Quicksand as its first Swedish original series, which is from the head writer of The Bridge, Camilla Ahlgren. The project is based on the best-selling novel by Malin Persson Giolito about a mass shooting at a prep school in Stockholm’s wealthiest suburb, after which high-school student Maja Norberg finds herself on trial for murder. When the events of the day are revealed, so too are the private details about her relationship with Sebastian Fagerman and his dysfunctional family.

In competitive bid, Netflix has landed Ratched, a drama series from Ryan Murphy and Michael Douglas starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The project scored a two-season, 18-episode, straight-to-series order at Netflix with production slated to begin sometime in mid-2018. Ratched is an origins story, beginning in 1947, which will follow Ratched’s (Paulson's) journey and murderous progression through the mental health care system from nurse to full-fledged monster.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Scotland's Denise Mina, author of the Garnethill trilogy and three novels featuring Glasgow journalist Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, stopped by the Books+ podcast to discuss crime fiction and true crime.

Mystery Melange

In the UK's York, this year's Big City Read which runs from September 14 to November 10 will focus on Helen Cadbury's 2013 debut thriller, To Catch A Rabbit. Fiona Williams, chief executive of York Explore, which runs the city's network of libraries sponsoring the event, noted that this year's event will be "joy tinged with sadness" because York native Cadbury died last year at the age of 52.

The new Noireland International Crime Fiction Festival in Belfast has announced some of the lineup for its inaugural program October 27-29, 2017. Some of the team behind the BBC’s award-winning crime drama Line of Duty will be on hand, with plenty more panels and talks by special guest headliners Benjamin Black, Robert Crais, and Sophie Hannah.

If you're in the UK, you can sign up for the Guardian Masterclass "How to write a psychological thriller" and learn how to write a thrilling page-turner at this evening course with Erin Kelly, bestselling author of He Said/She Said and Poison Tree. The course will take place on Wednesday, November 29th, but participation is limited.

Editors Dr. Lucy Andrew (University of Chester) and Samuel Saunders (Liverpool John Moores University) have issued a call for papers on the topic of "A Study in Sidekicks: The Detective’s Assistant in Crime Fiction." This collection aims to explore the changing representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction from the nineteenth century to the present day. If you're interested, submit an abstract of 300-350 words and biography of 50-100 words to Lucy Andrew ([email protected]) and Sam Saunders ([email protected]) by Monday 13th November 2017. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Why are literature’s greatest detectives seemingly all obsessed with food? The ezine Eater looked at what it meant to be a "foodie" in a world of crime, from Hercule Poirot to Nero Wolfe.

Writing for The Guardian, Alex Clark explored our fascination for stories of domestic desire, rage and revenge that are personified in the vengeful woman.

Author/blogger Margot Kinberg discussed crime novels featuring unreliable witnesses.

Writing for The Pool, Anne James looked at the role of women in crime fiction as both authors and victims and wondered if crime novels can also be feminist?

The WHSmith blog featured "10 Crime Fiction Novels Inspired by Real Life Crimes."

Real life is indded often much stranger than - and the inspiration for - fictional crime. The Daily Mail took a look at the true crimes and grotesque souvenirs of a Wisconsin bachelor who inspired film villains from Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs.

Sometimes the greatest mysteries aren't murders: what happened to some of the world's greatest treasures?

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Just Us" by John Kaprielian.

In the Q&A roundup, award-winning crime writer Gail Bowen answered eight questions submitted by eight of her fellow writers in the CBC Books' Magic 8 Q&A; Margaret Maron spoke with the LA Review of Books about the final installment in her series with NYPD Lieutenant Sigrid Harald; Cat Hogan was interviewed by Declan Burke about Irish crime fiction and her latest book, There Was a Crooked Man; the Criminal Element spoke with Jussi Adler-Olsen about his Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen police force; and Tess Gerritsen stopped by the Huffington Post to discuss the latest installment in her Rizzoli and Isles series, I Know a Secret.