In Reference to Murder

Author R&R with Trey R. Barker

Trey R. Barker spent nearly two decades as an on-again/off-again journalist before moving into law enforcement in North-Central Illinois, at the Bureau County Sheriff’s Office. He is currently a sergeant of patrol with a specialty in crisis negotiations and on-line child sexual exploitation and an investigator for the Illinois Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

He's also the author of more than 200 short stories, as well as the Barefield trilogy – 2000 Miles to Open Road, Exit Blood, Death is Not Forever – published by Down & Out Books. The first two books in his Jace Salome novels were published by Five Star (which has since dropped its crime fiction line), but the third installment in the series, When the Lonesome Dog Barks, is being published by Down & Out.

Trey stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing the book and how his day job influenced and inspired the work:

In The Eyes…The Words

By Trey R. Barker

By the time I knocked on his door, I had the evidence.

As always, I’d been gathering it for months.  Peer-to-peer software, his computer constantly sharing specific files with my task force computer; back and forth, request and answer, a digital, forensic version of the call and response liturgy.

By the time I knocked on his door, I knew the man. I knew his public habits, his employment and wife’s name.  I knew his child’s name and where he lived.

I knew, when I knocked on his door, exactly what I would see. I knew exactly the look I would see in his eyes when he saw me and my team. He would know, instantly, why we were there.  I would see tears and anger, eyes darting and looking for a way out, hyperventilating, self-loathing, slivers of relief that it was now over. He would stammer but nod thoughtfully when I told him his IP came up in an internet investigation.  He would offer to help any way he could, but he would give signals that he wanted to talk to us privately, rather than in front of his family.

And when we were talking privately, when I showed him the evidence his computer had already sent me, he would admit to trading child pornography. He would tell me everything and it would be awful for everyone in that house.

It always was and by that time, I had done scores of these cases.

I knew, when I knocked on his door, that I would see him, his wife, his child.

Yet when I actually knocked, I did not see what I expected.  Instead, I saw the nine neighborhood children who attended his wife’s on-site day care.

My heart broke.

* * *

Ultimately, every child who looked at me that day was forensically interviewed and there was exactly zero evidence the man had ever touched a child.  He pleaded guilty and took a lengthy prison sentence.  It played out how it always had in those investigations. I did those investigations for almost five years before I had to stop and with every investigation, my heart broke. Regardless of the outcome—plea or trial—my heart broke for those children in the pictures that my suspects so blithely traded.  There was never a thought for those children by the men who traded, in spite of what those men would eventually tell me (and I promise you the justifications can make you stop breathing). Even if the pictures and videos were decades old, the children long since grown up to be their own monsters or to save others from the monsters or dead from their own hand because they couldn’t fight the monsters anymore, my heart constantly shattered.

That is what I used in When The Lonesome Dog Barks, the third Jace Salome novel (Down and Out Books, November, 2017).

While there is no child pornography in Lonesome Dog, what I learned working on two child sexual exploitation task forces (one state-level and one Federal-level) came to bear. I was basically researching by reaching into my own memory. I took what I had worked with on the task forces, the way files were shared and spread and viewed, and then bent and shaped that knowledge into something I could use to help craft this story.

In terms of the technical end of things, I did tap into the brain of my team’s uber-computer-guru to make sure I hadn’t screwed it up, but for the emotional things, I tapped into the horrors that each and every officer who’s done these kinds of cases can easily dredge up. What I described at the beginning of this piece—everything packed so deeply and tightly into the suspects’ eyes, and their justifications afterward—were what I tried to unpack for When The Lonesome Dog Barks.

Yet the thing I tried the hardest to recreate, the thing that still haunts me the most, were the interviews and the justifications.  Not the words, those were predictable enough (like the man who told me it was the fault of the four-year old girl in the forced-sex videos “…because look how she was dressed!” or the man who told me he and his male cousin were just fooling around trading pictures of their own cocks back and forth and “…it got a little crazy.”), but the utter lack of remorse.

Once caught, they were all remorseful, but it was window dressing—cheap blinds covering the fact that they had not an ounce of actual remorse.  To them, the pictures were fantasy and make-believe; no one really got hurt making those pictures, no one was truly molested, no one was truly damaged to the point of killing themselves.  To those men, the pictures with full color and the videos with stereo sound were nothing more than a means to an end, and as long as that end was pleasure, then who the hell cared about the means?

And yes, it was exactly the same for those men who had been molested themselves.  They had felt the terror in the most visceral way possible and now, years later, cared not at all about that same terror being visited upon someone else.

An odd fact for you…in every single one of my cases that involved the suspect having been molested as a child, the age group the suspects looked at was always the age they themselves had been molested.

 So the research for Lonesome Dog was not geography or cultural norms or street dialect.  It was reaction and emotion, usage of another human being; it was trying to convey to my readers exactly what I heard my suspects say when I looked in their eyes after I had knocked on their doors.

 

You can find out more about Trey R. Barker and his writing via his website and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. His book When the Lonesome Dog Barks is now available via all major online and print booksellers.

Mystery Melange, Thanksgiving Edition

MWA announced the 2018 Grand Master, Raven, and Ellery Queen Award recipients:  Jane Langton, William Link, and Peter Lovesey have been chosen as the 2018 Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America (MWA) - the award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality; the Raven Award for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing will be given to The Raven Bookstore and Kristopher Zgorski, founder of the founder of the crime fiction review blog BOLO Books; and the The Ellery Queen Award that honors “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry,” will be given to publisher/editor/translator Robert Pépin.

Author Michael Redhill has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for the best in Canadian fiction for his novel Bellevue Square. The thriller about a woman on the hunt for her doppelganger was praised Monday by jury members for its “complex literary wonders.”  Past winners of the 100,000 Canadian dollar ($78,000 U.S.) Giller prize have included Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro. The Giller was created in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. 

While you're waiting for family to arrive for Thanksgiving, why not check out of the Thanksgiving-themed crime fiction titles on this list, courtesy of Mystery Fanfare.

Vice offered up its thanks for "Agatha Christie, Murder-Mystery Pioneer and the Original Gone Girl."

Courtesy of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine blog, here's a short short by the late Edward D. Hoch titled "The Thanksgiving Chicken."

The Mystery Lovers Kitchen has several holiday recipes worth checking out, such as this Butternut Squash Quinoa Salad and Maple-Glazed Roasted Acorn Squash with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds.

Apparently, crime fiction books can make excellent travel guides

I always give thanks for libraries, and here's more proof that librarians are heroes and have been for some time: In the 1930s, many people living in isolated communities had very little access to jobs, let alone a good education for their children. In Kentucky, they had isolated mountain communities which could only get their books and reading material from one source… librarians on horseback, part of President Franklin Roosevelt WPA initiative. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The Daily Mail took a peek inside Australia's only "body farm," the secret bush site in Sydney where corpses are left to decompose to help police solve murders - and 500 donors are waiting to get in.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Cruel Poetry" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the abbreviated Q&A roundup, Nick Triplow took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge on the eve of the launch of Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir, Triplow's book about the life and work of the author best known for his novel Jack’s Return Home, adapted as Get Carter in 1971.

Author R&R with Lawrence Kelter

Lawrence Kelter is a resident New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn and residing on Long Island, and often uses Manhattan and Long Island as backdrops for his stories. Early in his career, he received direction from bestselling novelist Nelson DeMille, who put pencil to paper to assist in the editing of his first book, and Kelter was also a member of a private writing workshop led by the late soap opera legend and AFTRA president, Ann Loring. Since then, he's authored three novels featuring street savvy NYPD detective, Stephanie Chalice:  Don't Close Your Eyes, Ransom Beach, and The Brain Vault.

Most recently, he's been tapped to write Back to Brooklyn, the literary sequel to Dale Launer's classic legal comedy film My Cousin Vinny. Kelter answered some burning questions about how that project came to pass:

How did the chance to write BACK TO BROOKLYN come about?

Lawrence Kelter: There was one specific project I always wanted to be involved in, but like the rock star dream and the Super Bowl victory, I thought it was not to be. You might think this silly or lame. And maybe it is. There was a film I enjoyed so much that every time it popped up on TV, it made me late for an appointment because I just couldn’t pull myself away. I knew the script verbatim and often incorporated the better-known lines into my everyday conversation. That movie is My Cousin Vinny.

It popped up on the tube about two years ago, and I decided to email the screenwriter/producer to tell him how much I loved his film, thinking, Hollywood screenwriter—I’m dirt beneath his boot—He’ll never reply.

But he did.

And somehow we forged a connection. Emails led to conversations. He discussed his upcoming projects with me, and I with him. One day he called up and said, “Hey, I read one of your books and you’re pretty f_ _king funny.”

“So how about you let me turn My Cousin Vinny into a book series?”

“Make me an offer.”

Four attorneys and fourteen months later, BACK TO BROOKLYN was delivered to Eric Campbell, publisher of Down & Out Books.

What was the most rewarding part of writing established characters like Lisa and Vincent? The most challenging part?

Lawrence Kelter: Writing BACK TO BROOKLYN was the most fun I’ve ever had sitting in front of a keyboard. I have high hopes for this book. After all, I love the characters and the backstory—not to mention the two years I have invested in the project. But where it goes from here… I've received a great deal of feedback from readers. Almost universally they tell me that that they can hear Lisa and Vinny in their heads playing that cat and mouse game--they visualize Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci as they're reading. Nothing could be more rewarding than that.

At the onset there were two big challenges that gave me pause. 1) I had to get the voices just right--my Vinny and Lisa had to sound exactly like Vinny and Lisa from the film with the same type of smart Alec rhetoric and the same colloquialisms. They had to think alike and  react alike. In the words of Beechum County DA Jim Trotter III, they had to be, "IDENTICAL!" 2) The movie reveal was just so damn clever and startling that it was a real challenge to develop a plot that felt like the original but was completely different, and at the end ... well, it was a serious undertaking to reveal the true villain and his MO without relying on "magic grits" and "Positraction."

Why should fans of My Cousin Vinny read BACK TO BROOKLYN?

 

Lawrence Kelter: Fans of the film will instantly fall back in love with Vinny and Lisa and hopefully laugh just as hard as they did the first time they saw the film. In the words of New York Times bestselling author William Landay: "Like visiting with old friends, BACK TO BROOKLYN captures the fun and spontaneity of every lawyer's favorite legal comedy, My Cousin Vinny. As surefooted as a '63 Pontiac with Positraction." 

 

Have you heard feedback on BACK TO BROOKLYN from the original movie cast?

Lawrence Kelter: Both Ralph Macchio and his wife have both read the novel and reported that they really enjoyed it. I tried to get in touch with Joe and Marisa but was unsuccessful. On a lighter note, Nelson DeMille gave his copy of the book to his mother after he read it and she reported, "Nelson, this guy knows Brooklyn a hell of a lot better than you do!"

What are you working on now? Will we see further adventures with Vinny and Lisa?

Lawrence Kelter: I'm working on four or five new books at once. OMG, it's scary that I can't remember how many books I'm working on. They're all in different states of completion. Next up is (insert drumroll) the novelization of My Cousin Vinny. Why you ask? Because it's bigger, and fresher, with additional scenes, lots of new humor, and sneak peeks into Vinny and Lisa's history that was not revealed in the film. It's due for release in March of next year.

 
You can learn more about Lawrence Kelter on his official website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.  Back to Brooklyn is available via Down & Out Books and from all major online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

 

Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings! Start your week off with this latest roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Sony Pictures won rights to finance and distribute #9, the working title of Quentin Tarantino’s next film. The project is set in Los Angeles in the late ’60s and early ’70s during the Charles Manson crime spree, with Tarantino hoping Margot Robbie will play the role of Sharon Tate. The film is described as featuring an ensemble cast, and Tarantino reportedly has had conversations with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio for the two main lead male roles. 

Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has signed on to star in and executive produce a feature adaptation of A.J. Wolfe’s upcoming true crime thriller Burn. Anonymous Content acquired the book, which will be adapted for the big screen by Fredrick Kotto, a former detective turned screenwriter. Burn is described as a contemporary crime thriller about a Northern California detective who brought a cartel to its knees while working undercover, all while keeping that part of his life from his family. 

The bidding battle to option rights to Riley Sager’s bestselling novel Final Girls was won by Universal Pictures. Sager's book centers around Quincy Carpenter, who 10 years ago went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horrible massacre. The press quickly labeled her as the “Final Girl” coined for the group of similar survivors. Riley Sager’s other mystery thriller Last Time I lied will be released July 10.

Bleecker Street’s second release with Steven Soderbergh, Unsane, will hit theaters on March 23. It's been reported that Soderbergh reportedly shot the project on his iPhone. It stars Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, SNL alum Jay Pharaoh, Juno Temple, Aimee Mullins, and Amy Irving and centers on a young woman (Foy) who is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear — but is it real or is it a product of her delusion?

Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) and Sebastian Stan (I, Tonya) are in negotiations to join Nicole Kidman in Karyn Kusama’s modern crime thriller Destroyer. The story follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman) who, as a young cop, was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert with tragic results. When the leader of that gang re-emerges many years later, she must work her way back through the remaining members and into her own history with them to finally reckon with the demons that destroyed her past.

Circle of Confusion, the production company behind The Walking Dead, has joined forces with Lightning Entertainment and Hindsight Media for a multi-year suspense/thriller genre slate deal, which aims to produce two-three films a year. The first film under this new deal will be Tone-Deaf, written and to be directed by Ricky Bates Jr., which follows millennial Olive who, after a string of bad relationships and work failures, leaves the city for a weekend of peace in the country only to discover the shockingly dark underbelly of rural America.

The 8th Annual Noir City Xmas returns December 20 at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre. The Film Noir Foundation will offer up "a double-feature of rare noir-stained 1940s' yuletide films to darken your spirits," Manhandled and Alias Boston Blackie. The evening will also feature the unveiling of the full schedule for Noir City 16, the world's most popular film noir festival, coming to the Castro Theatre January 26 through February 4, 2018. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge are set to star on Showtime’s drama pilot, City on a Hill, which hails from Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Jennifer Todd. The story is set in the early 90s, when Boston was rife with violent criminals emboldened by local law enforcement agencies in which corruption and racism was the norm. It all changes during the “Boston Miracle,” when District Attorney “Decourcy Ward” (Hodge) forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran, “Jackie Rhodes” (Bacon), who is deeply invested in maintaining the status quo. Together they take on a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown in a case that grows to encompass and eventually upend Boston’s city-wide criminal justice system.

Netflix is nearing a deal for rights to Hummingbird Salamander and plans to tap Sugar23 to produce the picture. The project is based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer, and is "set ten seconds into the future" in a story that deals with bioterrorism, ecoterrorism, and climate change."

Amazon has acquired the Sony Pictures crime thriller drama Absentia headlined by former Castle star Stana Katic in her return to television. The series enters on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic). who disappears without a trace and is declared dead while hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers. Six years later, Emily is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive, and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.

Speaking of Castle, ABC has given a straight-to-series order to the Castle-like procedural Take Two from Castle co-creators Terri Edda Miller and Andrew W. Marlow. Starring Rachel Bilson and Eddie Cibrian, the drama follows a washed-up actress and former star of a hit police drama (Bilson) who, fresh out of rehab, teams up with a private investigator (Cibrian) as research for her comeback role.

Carmen Ejogo is set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective. The new installment tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali plays the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas. 

ABC has given a put pilot commitment to The French Detective, based on James Patterson’s Luc Moncrief mysteries, with The Artist's Jean Dujardin attached to star and EuropaCorp founder and Taken creator Luc Besson set to direct in his TV directorial debut. Written by Assassin’s Creed scribes Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, and Jonathan Collier (Bones), The French Detective is a light procedural drama that centers on Luc Moncrief, a Parisian detective who joins the NYPD in order to leave his previous life behind and start fresh as he and his blue collar female partner solve New York’s most complex and inscrutable crimes.

CBS has put in development the crime drama The Source, from Dr. Phil and Jay McGraw’s Stage 29 Productions and CBS Television Studios. Written by Amanda Green (Lethal Weapon, The Mysteries of Laura), The Source centers on a millennial investigative reporter who teams with an LAPD detective as they make use of her dogged brand of investigating outside the bounds of the law in order to expose crime and wrongdoing.

Fox has given a script commitment plus penalty to Off-Site, an hourlong adventure drama from 20th Century Fox TV and Len Wiseman’s studio-based Sketch Films. Off-Site centers around a former chaos agent for the CIA who’s recruited to Morocco by a UN Investigator to help unearth the mysteries behind a bizarre cult rumored to be in possession of a mystical threat. 

The Wire alum Isiah Whitlock Jr. has been cast as a series regular opposite Tony Danza and Josh Groban in The Good Cop, a 10-episode straight-to-series dramedy crime procedural for Netflix. The Good Cop centers on Tony Sr. (Danza), a disgraced former NYPD officer who never followed the rules. He lives with his son, Tony Jr. (Groban), an earnest, obsessively honest NYPD detective who makes a point of always following the rules. This “odd couple” become unofficial partners as Tony Sr. offers his overly cautious son blunt, streetwise advice on everything from handling suspects to handling women. Whitlock will play veteran homicide detective, Burl Loomis, who’s marking the days left until retirement. 

Streaming giant Netflix is teaming up with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment to produce an eight-episode political espionage series titled Bard of Blood. Based on the bestselling 2015 book of the same name by Bilal Siddiqi, the multilingual series, in Urdu, English, Hindi and other languages, is set in the Indian subcontinent. It will follow Kabir Anand, an expelled spy who is recalled from his new life as a Shakespeare professor to save his country and his long-lost love. 

Fox’s new procedural drama 9-1-1 will bow at 9 PM Wednesday, January 3, following the debut of the 10-episode second season of The X-Files revival. The two series take the Wednesday night slots of the on-hiatus Empire and Star.

FX is developing the “Crimetown” podcast as a scripted series. The project will be written by hosts Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, who are also behind HBO’s The Jinx. The podcast from Gimlet Media centers on the impact of organized crime and corruption on the city of Providence, R.I.

CBS made a back order decision on a few new fall series, including giving a full-season pickup to drama S.W.A.T. after three airings. The procedural stars stars Shemar Moore, Stephanie Sigman, Alex Russell, Jay Harrington, Lina Esco, Kenny Johnson, Peter Onorati and David Lim.

The first trailer was released for The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, the second season of FX's anthology series, American Crime Story.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

BBC Radio Bristol podcast host Steve Yabsley welcomed Thriller writer Sanjida Kay to discuss her gripping new novel, The Stolen Child.

Also via the BBC, author Simon Lelic joined the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss his new psychological thriller, The House.

Boston's public radio station WBUR discussed the newly-discovered Raymond Chandler story that takes on the health care industry.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition's last show of the year "packed in four hours into two hours," as it welcomed Steve Havill, Matt Coyle, Daryl Wood Gerber. and Dr. Mott Sharir.

Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack welcomed Art Taylor, author of On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Taylor has also won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, two Macavity Awards, and three consecutive Derringer Awards for his short fiction.

Thriller Author Jamie Freveletti was the featured guest on Authors on the Air's 2nd Sunday Crime podcast. Her debut thriller Running from the Devil was awarded “Best First Novel” by the International Thriller Writers and Deadly Pleasures Magazine, and nominated for a Macavity Award for Best First Mystery by the Mystery Readers International.

NPR's All Things Considered profiled "The Tiny, Murderous World Of Frances Glessner Lee," a series of tiny dollhouse crime scenes that have been used to train investigators from the 1930s to the present.

THEATER

Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian’s Murder for Two screwball spoof of old-time thrillers is now on stage at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. The show involves "madcap mayhem, involving a cross between (Agathie) Christie contemporaries Preston Sturges and the Marx Brothers," and is framed as a musical melodrama blending the English music hall with ragtime and a dash of diva disco. Murder for Two continues through Jan. 14 at the Stackner Cabaret.

A star-studded cast is taking to the stage in Bath for a performance of Ruth Rendell's classic novel, A Judgment In Stone, adapted by Simon Brett and Antony Lampard. It tells the story of Eunice Parchman, a housekeeper struggling to find her place in the world, but when she begins working for a very wealthy family, the long-standing reason for her awkwardness becomes clear and leads to a horrific Valentine’s Day murder. The show runs at the Theatre Royal in Sawclose through November 25.

 

FFB: The Long Shadow

British author Celia Fremlin (1914-2009), was the daughter of a doctor and the sister of nuclear physicist John H. Fremlin. She studied classics at Somerville College, Oxford, but after her mother died in 1931, she was expected to look after her father. Instead of being content to just stay at home, she took jobs in domestic service, which was unusual for a middle-class woman at that time. She said it was to "observe the peculiarities of the class structure of our society," and those experiences later found their way into her later writing.

Much later, in her sixties, she began to take long walks at night by herself  all over the back streets of London, partly for research and partly to prove a point. Her conclusion was that to make the dark streets lose their terror, "We don’t need more policemen on the beat. We need more grandmothers." Those experiences were compiled into a TV program about challenging people’s fears of urban streets at night and many observations also wound up in her books.

Her life may have seemed like domestic bliss on the surface, but it was filled with its share of tragedy that would be at home in any crime novel:  Not only did she lose her mother at age 17, but her youngest daughter committed suicide, as did Fremlin's husband, rather than live a disabled life after a heart attack. She also outlived her second husband and her other two children, and went slowly blind in her later years, spending her last days in a nursing home, which was a bit ironic, considering she became an advocate for euthanasia late in life.

Fremlin's first mystery novel was The Hours Before Dawn from 1958 which won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and established her style of mystery/horror set mostly around the lives of married women in the 1950s. Some feel that The Long Shadow was an equally fine work, and H.R.F. Keating even included it in his 1987 listing of the 100 best crime and mystery books. It's the story of the Imogen Barnicott, third wife of a celebrated, cruel and egocentric professor, who, despite her unhappy marriage, had never plotted her husband's murder—yet after his supposedly accidental death, she receives a mysterious phone call accusing her of that very thing. Add to that strange happenings like new messages left lying around in his handwriting, work on an unfinished manuscript of his that continues to be written, and shadowy figures seen in the house, and Imogen not only begins to doubt her husband is dead at all, she begins to believe she just might take his place.

Celia Fremlin used to say that she wrote the sort of book she wanted to read, in which a mysterious threat hangs over someone and escalates chapter by chapter; or as, H.R.F. Keating recalled her saying, "to put a plot that is exciting or terrifying against a background that is domestic, very ordinary, humdrum." She used this to great effect in The Long Shadow and others, slowly building an atmosphere of suspense and terror out of the excruciatingly mundane, using the contrasts as a literary canvas like Dali and his surrealistic art.

Her character observations managed to be cutting and yet have a touch of dark humor, as well, as this passage from Imogen's experience at a party a well-wishing friend had encouraged her to attend:

Worst of all, perhaps, was the apparently unending procession of people who, incredibly, still hadn't heard, and had to be clobbered with the news in the first moment of meeting. Had to have the smiles slashed from their faces, the cheery words of greeting rammed back down their gullets as if by a gratuitous blow across the mouth. There they would be, waving from across the road, calling "Hi!" from their garden gates, phoning by chance from Los Angeles, from Aberdeen, from Beckenham...One and all to have their friendly overtures slammed into silence, their kindly voices choked with shock. One after another, day after day, over and over again: sometimes Imogen felt like the Black Death stalking the earth, destroying everything in her path.

Fremlin's books are filled with astute perceptions that no doubt bear the imprint of her first-hand research into human behavior, as Imogen's stepson Robin advises her about taking on boarders:

I'd choose Depressions rather than Anxiety States...From the point of view of a landlady, Depressions are good because they lie in bed until midday and don't eat breakfast. Whereas Anxiety States want grapefruit—All Bran—the lot."

In addition to her 20 novels and nonfiction books, the last dating from 1994, she wrote short stories, poetry and articles and was a member of the Crime Writers Association for many years. The Long Shadow, The Hours Before Dawn, and her other fiction certainly deserves a closer look.

Mystery Melange

Lee Child returns to Dublin November 16th at the O’Reilly Theatre in conversation with Paul Whittington of the Irish Independent. The event marks the publication of his latest novel, The Midnight Line (the 22nd in the Jack Reacher series). (HT to Crime Always Pays)

Book Week Scotland is launching its first virtual festival this year, with the First Minister and crime writer Val McDermid among those taking part. The festival will feature free digital events  between November 27 and December 3, beginning with Crime Writers Play Cluedo on Monday November 27, where bestselling authors McDermid, Stuart MacBride and Doug Johnstone will pit their knowledge of the criminal mind against each other and discuss their own plots and favorite whodunits.

The annual St. Martin's Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition (for unpublished manuscripts) is open for submissions, with the winner to receive a publishing contract and advance. You can find all the details via this link, but note that the deadline is January 12, 2018.

Mystery Writers of America NorCal chapter will be hosting an all-day workshop for the indie writer at Rockridge Public Library in Oakland, California on January 27. From research to cover art and promotion, the Indie writer runs a one-person business, and this one-day NorCal academy will covers the nuts and bolts of getting your Indie career moving. It's free and open to the public, albeit with limited seating and priority will given to MWA members.

Public Radio is one of the few places where you can still find book reviews and features about authors. Capital Public Radio, based in Sacramento, CA, also has a series they call Cap Radio Reads, and on January 29, they're featuring attorney-turned-author Alafair Burke, talking about her latest domestic thriller, The Wife.

More "Best of the Year" lists have been released including Amazon's Best Mystery/Thriller titles, with the top nod going for Jane Harper for The Dry. You can check out all Amazon's "best" books here. Also, Kirkus Reviews published their list of the fourteen Best Mysteries and Thrillers for 2017.

Registration is open for the postgraduate MA program, Crime and Gothic Fictions, to be taught at Bath Spa University in the UK. The international and interdisciplinary program will feature texts from Britain, Europe and the Americas, as well as investigating cutting-edge research and relevant theory. There are also optional field trips to exhibitions, film screenings, and other events relevant to the program, and placement opportunities may be available during the annual Captivating Criminality Conference, held at Corsham Court, and at International Gothic Association symposia in the UK. (Hat tip to Shots Magazine)

It appears that everything old really is new again. As The Guardian reports, a lost story by Raymond Chandler, written almost at the end of his life, has the author taking on a different sort of villain to the hardboiled criminals of his iconic Philip Marlowe stories: the US healthcare system.

If you have teen readers in your family who are looking for some fun reads, check out this list from Barnes & Noble about upcoming YA books featuring sleuthing teens.


This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Squares" by Gerard Sarnat.

In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover interviewed Icelandic author Lilja Sigurdardottir about the third crime novel in Icelandic, and the first to appear in English, Snare; Criminal Element chatted with Wendy Tyson, author of the bestselling Greenhouse Mystery series featuring former lawyer-turned-farmer Megan Sawyer; Mike Craven, author of the DI Avison Fluke series and the new Washington Poe series, took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interivew"; and the Mystery People welcomed David Hansard to discuss How The Dark Gets In, his second novel featuring Porter Hall.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and another roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Oscar winner Russell Crowe and Captain Fantastic actor George MacKay have signed on to star in director Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang, along with Nicholas Hoult and Essie Davis. The script, by Shaun Grant and based on Peter Carey’s Booker prize-winning novel, follows notorious Australian bush-ranger Ned Kelly (MacKay), one of the world’s greatest outlaws, and the colonial badlands from which he rose during the 1870s.

As Deadline reported, in an unprecedented bold move, director Ridley Scott, along with Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas, have decided to remove Kevin Spacey from their finished movie All The Money In The World. Christopher Plummer has been set to replace Spacey in the role of J Paul Getty by using re-shoots of the key scenes. Despite the re-shoots, Scott is also determined to keep the film’s December 22 release date. The project centers on the character of Getty, the oilman who refused to pay a ransom after his grandson, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped. Spacey worked about eight to ten days on the film, but the character is an important presence even if much of the action in the thriller involves the frantic efforts of the kidnapped heir’s mother Gail Harris (Williams), and Getty’s advisor (Wahlberg) to free the youth. The nightmare escalated after the family received his severed ear as proof the kidnappers were going to kill him if the money wasn’t delivered.

Lauren Cohan, best known for playing Maggie on The Walking Dead, has signed on to join Mark Wahlberg in Peter Berg’s action thriller Mile 22. The film centers on an elite intelligence officer who must escort a police officer with sensitive information to a getaway plane at an airport 22 miles away and also co-stars former UFC champ Ronda Rousey, The Raid star Iko Uwais, and John Malkovich. 

Blacklist writer Marissa Jo Cerar has been tapped to do a rewrite of The Other Typist for Fox Searchlight. Keira Knightley has long been attached to star and produce the project, along with Scott Free UK. Based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Rindell, the film is a pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.

A trailer was released for The Post, the political thriller starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Based on the true story of the Pentagon Papers scandal, The Post follows the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they race to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up of government secrets that spanned three decades and four U.S. Presidents. The two must overcome their differences as they risk their careers – and their very freedom – to help bring long-buried truths to light.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox has put in development an hourlong FBI drama pilot titled Mrs. Otis Regrets, which hails from from Empire executive producer/showrunner Ilene Chaiken, Person of Interest writer-producer Melissa Scrivner Love, and Scandal co-executive producer Judy Smith. The project centers on FBI Special Agent Clementine Otis, a wife, mother and patriot who’s in the midst of investigating a domestic terrorism threat when a personal indiscretion – an adulterous affair with a prominent government official – shatters her life and her career at the FBI. While her former lover endures tepid condemnation and a few minor setbacks, Clementine is spectacularly publicly shamed, loses her job, her reputation, her credibility, possibly her family, and her access to the one person that could help her to thwart a major violent incident.

AMC has set Little Drummer Girl as its next John Le Carré miniseries adaptation, with actress Florence Pugh set to star in the lead role of Charlie, a young actress recruited by the head of the Israeli spy agency into becoming a double agent with the goal of tracking down a Palestinian terrorist mastermind. Like its previous le Carré collaboration The Night Manager, the adaptation is produced in partnership with Ink Factory and the BBC, which will get the UK airing rights. 

NBC has put in development Relative Justice, a legal drama from The Boy Next Door writer Barbara Curry, Walter Parkes, and Laurie MacDonald. Written by former prosecutor-turned-writer Curry, Relative Justice is a legal procedural that touches on the theme of sexual harassment and centers on Hannah Hayes, a ambitious young legal analyst for a TV news show who has it all - until she is fired after rebuffing the advances of a popular news anchor and finds herself learning the ropes of practicing law at her mother’s unconventional law firm. Given this new opportunity to work together, Hannah and her mother, Evelyn, will find themselves exploring the joys and complexities of their mother-daughter relationship both at home and in the courtroom.

The British drama series Top Boy is getting a new season on Netflix, with the series chronicling two drug dealers at an East London housing estate returning for a third chapter in 2019 as a Netflix original. The new episodes will pick up as Dushane (Ashley Walters) returns from exile to his home in London to reclaim his throne in the highly lucrative drug market. He teams up with Sully (Kane Robinson), his spiritual brother, partner, and sometime rival who is also returning to the same streets after his own form of exile – prison – comes to an end. Awaiting them both is Jamie, the young, hungry and ruthless gang leader whose ambitions leave no place for Dushane and Sully.

Singer and Tony Award nominee Josh Groban has just signed on to play Tony Danza's son in the new hour-long Netflix dramedy The Good Cop. According to Netflix, the 10-episode season will focus on Tony Jr. (Groban), a dedicated and "obsessively honest" detective for the NYPD who takes great pleasure in always sticking to the many rules of his chosen profession. His dad, Tony Sr. (Danza), however, is actually a disgraced former officer with the NYPD who never followed the rules and will become an unofficial partner with his son as he tries to school Tony Jr. with street smart advice about everything from working his difficult job to dealing with personal relationships.

An Italian TV adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, starring Rupert Everett and John Turturro, has found an international distributor. Turturro plays William of Baskerville and Everett plays Gui, with the series being written by Andrea Porporati, Nigel Williams and Giacomo Battiato, who also serves as director. Principal photography on the historical murder mystery starts this January in Rome, and the project is expected to air in the first quarter of 2019. TMG managing director Herbert L. Kloiber said: "Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose is a monumental masterpiece. We are thrilled to be part of this high-class, state-of-the-art adaptation, which will also resonate well with a young audience that loves the suspenseful story in a gloomy and thrilling medieval setting. Those who are already familiar with the book will see a new modern take and details to this multilayered story that can only be told in a series."

Starz is making its first foray into docuseries, greenlighting four new projects including one that explores the criminal justice system, Wrong Man, a six-part series that dives deep into the investigations that led to the conviction of three people who claim their innocence.

NBC revealed its midseason schedule, which includes returns of several shows that debuted new episodes in the fall and also the premiere of the second season of Taken, in which a young Bryan Mills must fight to overcome personal tragedy and exact revenge on those responsible.

Ahead of its December 1 premiere, Netflix has released the official trailer for Dark, its 10-part German mystery thriller that bowed at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. Written by Jantje Friese and directed by Baran bo Odar, Dark is set in a German town in present day where the disappearance of two young children exposes the double lives and fractured relationships among four families. In ten, hour-long episodes, the story takes on a supernatural twist that ties back to the same town in 1986.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Irish Times Book Club podcast caught up with with Adrian McKinty at the Noireland crime fiction festival in Belfast to discuss McKinty's Sean Duffy series and his writing career.

Bestseller Michelle Richmond joined host Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers, to talk about her books including the 2017 psychological thriller The Marriage Pact, which has been optioned by 20th Century Fox.

Host Terri Lynn Coop served up author Terrence McCauley at The Blue Plate Special to talk about the latest novel in his acclaimed techno-thriller series, A Conspiracy of Ravens.

THEATER

The English National Opera's adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (which is in turn based on the novel by Winston Graham), debuts on November 18 with a run through December 3. Marnie is psychological thriller set in England during the late 1950s when a young woman makes her way through life by embezzling from her employers, before she moves on and changes her identity. When her current boss Mark Rutland catches her red-handed, he blackmails her into a loveless marriage. Marnie is left with no choice but to confront the hidden trauma from her past.

FFB: The Slipper Point Mystery

Augusta Huiell Seaman (1879-1950) graduated from Normal College in New York City in 1900 and went on to teach elementary school. Following her marriage in 1906, she devoted her time to writing books for the children/YA age group, with a focus on mysteries. Between 1910 and 1949, she published 42 books as well as short stories, nonfiction pieces and serialized versions of her novels in popular magazines of the day.

She's considered one of the earliest writers of mystery stories for young girls, and her books remained popular and reprinted even in Scholastic press paperback editions as late as the 1970s. Bookseller Christine M. Volk called her "Nancy Drew for Smart Kids." Unlike the Nancy Drew series, Seaman's books didn't feature recurring characters per se, but typically revolved around two ordinary young girls solving a mystery they happened to stumble on in their hometown, inspired by their intelligence, curiosity and determination.

Also unlike Nancy Drew, who was a globe-trotter, the characters in Seaman's books mostly take place in rural New Jersey locations similar to where the author spent her youth. In fact, a New Jersey newspaper reporter once wrote for the Brick Communicator that he was able to trace the characters' route from The Slipper Point Mystery, matching Seaman's descriptions to area landmarks and buildings. The girls in the stories also reflect Seaman's life in other ways—the girls often have only one surviving parent (in Seaman's case, her father) are often sent to live with other relatives. It's not unusual to find characters who are in poor health (six of the author's eight siblings died young and Seaman's husband died from cancer in 1922).

Book illustrations by C.M. Relyea

The Slipper Point Mystery, which was published by Century Publishing Co. in 1919, was the author's ninth book. The central characters are country girl Sally, who likes to read neglected books of poetry, and big-city Doris, who also loves books and new experiences and is be delighted at the prospect of visiting a resort that is "wild, and different from the usual summer places." The resort Doris refers to is "The Bluffs," the sole exclusive and fashionable hotel on the river where Doris and her parents are staying for the summer. The resort isn't far from where the girls discover a mysterious tunnel from the river to a house at Slipper Point, a tunnel that was used by abolitionists to help fugitive slaves travelling on the Underground Railroad.

Although it can be said that the Nancy Drew series is mostly about solving the puzzle du jour, Seaman's books are equally about character development and relationships. As editor Mary Mark Ockerbloom noted about Sally and Doris, "I doubt that Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys would seriously discuss whether to abandon an inquiry out of concern for its possible impact on another person, as do Doris and Sally. Seaman's characters develop and change."

Although Seaman's books are difficult to track in print, with the exception of a few more recent reprints, there are various free digital versions online, including Google Books and Project Gutenberg.

 

 

The 'Zine Scene

It's been a while since I had a roundup of the latest offerings of crime fiction and news in magazines (both print and digital), but I hope to rectify that with today's blog post - and another next week focusing on anthologies. So, without further ado, here they are (with a hat tip to Peter DiChellis, Sandra Seamans, and Martin Edwards):

The November/December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine features some familiar characters: Special operative cum high-school principal Anne DeWitt returns in “Small Signs” by Charlaine Harris; Elizabeth Zelvin’s sleuth Bruce Kohler is back in a Central Park/Strawberry Fields whodunit (“Death Will Help You Imagine”); Lou Manfredo’s Detective Rizzo takes on a case with a bit of nostalgia (“Rizzo’s Monkey Store”); writer-sleuth Antonia Darcy again stumbles upon a body in “Murder at The Mongoose” by R.T. Raichev; and detectives Hennessey and Yellich return in Peter Turnbull’s procedural “Bad Bargain Lane.” The newcomers include Jim Fusilli, who has his Black Mask debut with the mob story “Precision Thinking,” and John Gastineau’s suspenseful Department of First Stories entry, “A Coon Dog and Love," plus there's much, much more from Dominic Russ-Combs, Tim L. Williams, Tom Tolnay, Penny Hancock, Frankie Y. Bailey, Richard Chizmar, Bill Pronzini, T. J. MacGregor, Zoë Z. Dean, and Doug Allyn.

The new issue of EQMM's sister publication Alfred Hithcock Mystery Magazine includes post-war Manhattan private investigator Memphis Red, who confronts shifting motivations, political alliances, and even identities in L. A. Wilson Jr.’s “Harlem Nocturne; a young woman tries to escape the consequences of a one-time lapse in judgment but finds she can’t escape those determined to find her in S. L. Franklin’s “Damsels in Distress"; and the shadow of calamity, in the form of drought, leaves a western town vulnerable to a charismatic, and dangerous, itinerant preacher in Gilbert Stack’s “Pandora’s Hoax.” There are also plenty of other stories that fit the issue's theme of a landscape of shadows offering many opportunities for both deception and misperception, including those from Eve Fisher, Robert S. Levinson, William Dylan Powell, Susan Oleksiw, Tara Laskowski, Robert Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, Carol Cail, and Anna Castle.The edition also features the second installment of the new feature The Case Files as Steve Hockensmith brings to light some cutting-edge mystery-related podcasts.

I announced this earlier in a Mystery Melange, but it's worth repeating here: Spinetingler Magazine announced it will begin regular publication of a print magazine with the first issue due November 2017 by Down & Out Books. "As is true in life, the events of the past have a tendency to influence our actions in the future," said Sandra Ruttan, co-editor of Spinetingler. "It is the support of our readers that has enabled us to return with this print edition. With their continued support we hope to be able to continue to bring exceptional short fiction and features to you for years to come." The Fall 2017 edition will feature original stories by Tracy Falenwolfe, Karen Montin, Jennifer Soosar, Nick Kolakowski, David Rachels, and yours truly. There are also author snapshots of Con Lehane, Rusty Barnes, Mindy Tarquini, as well as book features and reviews.

Spinetingler is not the only foray into the crime magazine field from Down and Out Books, which also publishes Crimespree, as it just recently launched a new digest, Down & Out, The Magazine, edited by Rick Ollerman. Reed Farrel Coleman contributed an original Moe Prager story, and the editors promise that each issue will feature a story based on a series character. There are also new tales by established and well-known writers including Eric Beetner, Michael A. Black, Jen Conley, Terrence McCauley, Rick Ollerman, and Thomas Pluck. J. Kingston Pierce, fresh off his former beat from Kirkus Reviews, also introduces “Placed in Evidence,” his non-fiction column, and the zine will answer the question of what happened to crime fiction after Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler moved on from the pulps in the essay “A Few Cents a Word.”

The latest issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (#23) from Wildside Press includes new stories and features by Dan Andriacco, Henry W. Enberg, Steve Liskow, Laird Long, Robert Lopresti, Gary Lovisi, David Marcum, Kim Newman, and a classic tale from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, himself. SHMM is a go-to favorite for tales in the more traditional, Holmesian vein.

The latest Mystery Weekly Magazine features the cover story, “The Sugar Witch” by R.S. Morgan, as well as new short fiction from Joseph D’Agnese, Peter DiChellis, Stef Donati, Debra H. Goldstein, R.S. Morgan, Edward Palumbo, Tom Tolnay, and David Vardeman. Mystery Weekly bills itself as offering up every imaginable subgenre, including cozy, police procedural, noir, whodunit, supernatural, hardboiled, humor, and historical mysteries.

Flash Bang Mysteries, edited by BJ Bourg, publishes mystery and crime flash fiction quarterly online, in January, April, July, and October, with a mission to showcase "stories that feature believable characters who speak naturally, realistic situations that bleed conflict, and surprise endings that stay with us long after we reach the final period." The latest issue includes new work by Michael Bracken, Larry W. Chavis, Herschel Cozine, John M. Floyd, and Earl Staggs.

The only American scholarly journal for crime fiction, Clues, has published its latest issues (35.2) in both print form, which can be ordered from McFarland, and digital, available on Kindle and Google Play. As noted in the introduction by executive editor Janice M. Allan, this edition includes analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective. There are also reviews of nonfiction works in the genre, including Out of Deadlock: Female Emancipation in Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski Novels and Her Influence on Contemporary Crime Fiction (Enrico Minardi and Jennifer Byron, eds.) and Susanna Lee's Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority.

The latest issue of CADS (Crime and Detective Stories), Geoff Bradley's "irregular magazine of comment and criticism about crime and detective fiction," includes an article on "Serendip’s Detections XVI: Disjecta Membra by Tony Medawar," the first attempt to provide a definitive and accurate overview of all the unpublished material featuring Lord Peter Wimsey; a look at "Two and Nearly Three, Crime Classics by Andrew Garve" by Pete Johnson; and "Women Detectives in Fiction: The Early Period" by Philip L. Scowcroft, who explores Sayers’ comments on female detectives. (HT to Cross Examining Crime and Martin Edwards)

The third issue of Crime Syndicate Magazine is out with ten fantastic crime fiction short stories from some of the top crime writers on the market today. Guest-edited by Eryk Pruitt, this issue follows its mission of publishing hard-hitting crime fiction of stories "about violence, greed, lust, debauchery, and any combination," from drugged-outmarital problems in the East Texas countryside (Eryk Pruitt's own "The Deplorables") to helping a new college bestie murder a New Orleans local "god" (Nina Mansfield's "Gods and Virgins in the Big Easy"). There are additional offerings from Kevin Z. Garvey, Max Booth, Dennis Day, S.A. Cosby, Travis Richardson, Paul Heatley, Allen Griffin, and David A. Anthony.

Noir Nation No. 6 continues the crime noir tradition by circling back to its 20th Century jazz roots. This issue includes contributions from 14 writers, including "oldtimer" Gary Phillips, and Tatiana Eva-Marie, who is publishing her first story, who use their stories to address "jazz and crime, jazz and temptation, and the startling impulses that give them life and genius." Other stories in the issue hail from JC Hopkins, Tigre Galindo, Tatiana Eva Marie, John Goldbach, Brendan DuBois, Geronimo Horowitz, Gary Phillips, Jonas Kyle, Andrey Henkin, Alfredo Meridee, Jackie Goodwin, and Ted Berg, and Bill Moody.

In case you missed it, the first issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine was launched into the crime fiction universe. The brainchild of Wildside Press publisher John Betancourt and Wildside editor Carla Coupe, the magazine is expected to come out quarterly. The inaugural issue features new stories from Alan Orloff, Art Taylor, Josh Pachter, Barb Goffman, Meg Opperman, Dan Andriacco, John M. Floyd, Jack Halliday, Michael Bracken, Kaye George, James Holding, and Fletcher Flora.

The most recent issue of Mysterical-E features new short fiction by Rosemary and Larry Mild, Rafe McGregor, Leslie Budewitz, Sam Wiebe, Robert Watts Lamon, Justin A. McWhirter, Peter W. J. Hayes, Rita A. Popp, Summer Theron , Andrew Miller, Bern Sy Moss, J. R. Lindermuth, and Leroy B. Vaughn. Plus, Gerald So has his latest "Mysterical-Eye on TV and FIlm" column, Christine Verstraete talks up characters, and Frances G. Thorsen looks at classic crime novels. And there are the usual interviews and reviews.

July/August issue of Suspense Magazine has interviews with Peter James, Tess Gerritsen, Linda Fairstein, Sandra Brown, Brenda Novak, and Jeff Menapace. There's also a new section by bestselling author Alan Jacobson, with “The Writer’s Toolkit," and Dennis Palumbo writes a great article about "Rejection." Plus, Anthony Franze and Barry Lancet's "Rules of Writing with J.A Jance"; D.P. Lyle's Forensic Files; and pages of book reviews and short stories.



The most recent Mystery Readers Journal, "Big City Cops I" has "Author Author" features from Max Allan Collins, J.T. Ellison, Margaret Maron and more, including three that are available online: "Cops These Days Aren’t What They Used To Be" by Rennie Airth; "Chinatown Crime Time" by Henry Chang; and "Are You Feeling Safe?" by Lyndsay Faye. There are also new reviews from Lesa Holstine, Michael Mayo, L.J. Roberts, and Craig Sisterson, and more.

Mystery Melange

The shortlist for the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year was announced and includes:

Can You Keep A Secret?, Karen Perry
Here and Gone, Haylen Beck
Let the Dead Speak, Jane Casey
One Bad Turn, Sinéad Crowley
There was a Crooked Man, Cat Hogan
The Therapy House, Julie Parsons 

On November 18 at the Waterstone's bookstore in Manchester, UK, a Crime Fiction Masterclass will offer advice and tutorials from crime experts including novelist, TV writer, and creative writing tutor, Erin Kelly; senior police officer, writer, and adviser to author Peter James, Graham Bartlett; Crime Scene Investigator and author of The Real CSI, Kate Bendelow; forensic pathologist and adviser to TV's Silent Witness and Midsomer Murders, Dr Stuart Hamilton; and novelist and practicing criminal lawyer, Neil White.

Indies First Small Business Saturday will be held on Saturday, November 25, and authors and local celebrities will volunteer at events in bookstores across the U.S., with publishers also offering special terms on books and exclusives. To find events close to you and help support independent bookstores, head on over to this interactive map.

The Tampa Bay Times asked bestselling crime fiction writers Ace Atkins, Tim Dorsey, and Lisa Unger what true crime they would write about if they wrote a nonfiction true crime book. All three authors will be part of the upcoming Times Festival of Reading November 11 at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

As the Sisters in Crime organization continues to celebrate its 30th anniversary, founder Sara Paretsky spoke with the Chicago Review of Books about the group's origins, obstacles, and offerings for women - and even men - who write and read crime fiction.

Author, editor, and blogger Martin Edwards notes some of the upcoming releases from the British Library's Classic Crime series that are worth keeping on your radar.

Our digital devices are proving to be a boon to modern police detection, but they may also pose a security threat to innocent users.

Amazon-owned audiobook platform Audible is offering up a freebie when you sign up for a 30-day trial: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection narrated by the inestimable, all 71 hours and 58 minutes of it. In addition to narrating duties, Fry also provides introductions to each of the four novels and the five sets of short stories.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Confidence Man" by Peter M. Gordon. And, as Kevin Tipple notes on his blog, 5-2 editor Gerald So is actively seeking new poem submissions for December and beyond.

In the Q&A roundup, the Sons of Spade blog welcomed Ed Robinson, author of the Trawler Trash series featuring Meade Breeze; Criminal Element chatted with Linda Fairstein, author of the Alexandra Cooper novels and the Devlin Quick Mystery series for children, and C.E. also sat down with Ellen Crosby, author of the recently-published The Vineyard Victims; Omnioracious snagged Lee Child to talks about opioids, Jack Reacher, and The Midnight Line; Crime by the Book spoke with Pierre Lemaitre, the author behind the psychological thriller, Blood Wedding and the newly-released Three Days and a Life; and Omni Mystery News had a Q&A with Sheila Lowe, whose seventh mystery in her Claudia Rose Forensic Handwriting series, Written Off, is hot off the press.