In Reference to Murder

"Forgotten" Books: The Labours of Hercules

The prolific Agatha Christie is best known for her 66 detective novels, but she also penned romance novels, plays, and some 157 short stories. Of the latter category, 22 collections were published with stories culled from fiction magazines, over half of which first appeared in the 1920s. The collections were themed around her various detective heroes, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver, Mr. Harley Quin, as well as several standalones. At least five featured Christie's most popular fictional creation, Hercule Poirot.

The 1947 collection The Labours of Hercules (with all stories save one first published in The Strand between 1939 and 1947) uses an unusual literary device: Poirot is at the end of his career and ready to retire, but before he does, he decides to solve 12 more cases that correspond to the mythological Twelve Labours of Hercules. As Poirot himself states in the "Foreword," as he looks as his reflection in a mirror:

Here, then, was a modern Hercules – very distinct from that unpleasant sketch of a naked figure with bulging muscles, brandishing a club. Instead a small compact figure attired in correct urban wear with a moustache – such a moustache as Hercules never dreamed of cultivating – a moustache magnificent yet sophisticated.

Yet there was between this Hercule Poirot and the Hercules of Classical lore one point of resemblance. Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests … Each of them could be described as a benefactor to the Society he lived in.

The 12 stories feature appearances by Poirot's occasional sidekicks including his secretary, Miss Lemon, his valet, Georges, Chief Inspector Japp, and even the love of Poirot's life, Countess Rossakoff. The "labours" start off with "The Nemean Lion," in which Miss Lemon finds a letter from businessman, Sir Joseph Hoggin, whose wife's Pekingese dog has been kidnapped. Poirot is reluctant to take on the case, calling such dogs "bulging-eyed, overpampered pets of a rich woman," but when he digs deeper, he uncovers and prevents a much worse crime.

Other stories place Poirot in uncharacteristic situations involving travel and even the dreaded physical activity, as in "Erymanthian Boar," where the sleuth sets out to capture an infamous gang leader and violent murderer in the Swiss Alps. In "The Horses of Diomedes"—based on the eighth labour of Hercules in which the hero has to capture the wild horses that were fed on human flesh—Poirot has to tame the "wild horses" who are actually human beasts supplying cocaine to impressionable young people.

If you're not a fan of Poirot in general, these little bite-sized morsels may be more palatable and enjoyable, with half the fun seeing how Christie (and Poirot) manage to tie in a case to the Hercules task on which it's based. The Sunday Express called the collection, "Twelve little masterpieces of detection. Poirot and Agatha Christie at their inimitable best."

Plus, you can even buy the Labours of Hercules tea towel.

Mystery Melange

Martina Cole is the latest recipient of the highest honor in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger. The long-reigning Queen of Crime Drama has written 25 novels and become Britain’s bestselling female crime writer and the first British female adult audience novelist to break the £50 million sales mark. Her books have been translated into 31 languages and adapted for multiple stage plays and television series. Previous Diamond Dagger winners include Ruth Rendell, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, PD James, Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, Lindsey Davies, Peter Lovesey, and John Le Carré.

The nominees for the 2021 Norwegian Silver Knife for outstanding crime fiction have been announced. The contenders include The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl; So It Got Cold by Frode Eie Larsen; and Fate Stone by Sven Petter Næss. The winner will be announced on 16 March 2021. (HT to Shots Magazine) Previous winners include Lars Helle (2018), Kurt Aust and Kin Wessel (2019) and Agnes Matre (2020).

In an email this week, the Malice Board of Directors announced they'd decided to postpone Malice 32/33 to 2022. Instead of a live event in 2021, they will be sponsoring MORE THAN MALICE, a virtual (online) festival to be held on July 14 - 17, 2021. The event will feature special guests, unique panels, the Agatha Awards, and much more. Agatha Award nomination forms will also be sent out this week to everyone who is currently registered for Malice Domestic.

Hillary Clinton is teaming up with award-winning author, Louise Penny, to write an international political thriller in which a secretary of state joins the administration of "a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage." The book will be published in the UK and worldwide by Pan Macmillan, and by Simon & Schuster and St Martin’s Press in the US. In a statement, Clinton described writing with Penny as "a dream come true." The move follows a partnership between President Bill Clinton and James Patterson to pen the thriller, The President is Missing.

Scotland's Granite Noir conference just wrapped up February 19-21, and organizers have put online several of the virtual author events, with sign language included for the hearing impaired. Participating authors include Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride, Attica Locke, Jo Nesbo, David Baldacci, and more.

On Al-Fanar Media, M. Lynx Qualey chatted with Nadia Ghanem, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University of London's SOAS, about the evolution of crime fiction in the Maghreb (discussing, for example, works by authors from Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia). (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

Mystery Writers of America shared the sad news that Margaret Maron (1938-2021), a past president, former Grand Master, Edgar winner, and a truly kind and generous writer, has passed away from a stroke. Maron is the author of numerous short stories and more than twenty mystery novels, including the Judge Deborah Knott series and another series with Sigrid Harald, a loner lieutenant in the NYPD whose policeman father was killed in the line of duty when she was a toddler. Maron was also one of the founders of Sisters in Crime and the American Crime Writers' League.

Featured at the Page 69 Test was The Missing Passenger by Jack Heath. From the publisher: Jarli only narrowly escaped death after his world-shattering app made him infamous. Now there’s a new foe afoot and Jarli is far from safe in this thrilling sequel to The Truth App.

If you're like moi and many others, the pandemic lockdowns have led to quite a bit of comfort-food noshing. So it's probably appropriate that Criminal Element's Amy Pershing took on the topic of mysteries in which food, both for good and evil, features so prominently that it’s virtually a character itself—or at least a character witness. Perhaps it’s because food (the cooking of it, the eating of it, the sharing of it) offers so many lovely options for the mystery writer. Apparently, classic crime fiction was also obsessed with fashion.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "The Snap" by James Lilley.

In the Q&A roundup, Dana Stabenow chatted with Criminal Element about her long-running Kate Shugak series and also a series with Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell; the Sons of Spade blog welcomed Alexandra Amor, a podcaster and author of the Freddie Lark series, to chat about her work and PI fiction in general; and Writers Who Kill's E.B. Davis spoke with Barbara Ross about Shucked Apart, the ninth book in the Maine Clambake mystery series.

Audio Accolades

The Audio Publishers Association released the list of finalists for the annual Audie Book Awards. The honorees include:

 

Mystery

• A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones, narrated by Lorelei King, published by Macmillan Audio
• Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, narrated by Vivienne Leheny, published by HarperAudio
• Fair Warning, by Michael Connelly, narrated by Peter Giles and Zach Villa, published by Hachette Audio
• The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, narrated by Chloe Massey, Olivia Dowd, Sarah Ovens, Rich Keeble, Aoife McMahon, and Jot Davies, published by HarperAudio
• Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Dion Graham, published by Hachette Audio

 

Thriller/Suspense

• If It Bleeds, by Stephen King, narrated by Will Patton, Danny Burstein, and Steven Weber, published by Simon & Schuster Audio
• The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett, published by Simon & Schuster Audio
• The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child, narrated by Scott Brick, published by Penguin Random House Audio
• When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole, narrated by Susan Dalian and Jay Aaseng, published by HarperAudio
• Yard Work, by David Koepp, narrated by Kevin Bacon, published by Audible Originals

In addition, there were also some crime drama nods in other categories, including Best Male Narrator: All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny, narrated by Robert Bathurst, published by Macmillan Audio, and Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen, narrated by Scott Brick, published by Penguin Random House Audio; as well as Best Female Narrator, One by One by Ruth Ware, narrated by Imogen Church, published by Simon & Schuster Audio.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

The Writers Guild of America unveiled the movie nominations for its 2021 WGA Awards, honoring outstanding achievement for original and adapted screenplays and documentary films during 2020. Winners will be announced March 21 in a virtual ceremony. Among the crime drama nods in the Best Original Screenplay category are Judas and the Black Messiah, written by Will Berson & Shaka King, and The Trial of the Chicago 7, written by Aaron Sorkin.

Amazon Studios is taking on an adaptation of All the Old Knives, based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Chris Pine and Thandie Newton as ex-lovers Henry and Celia, one a CIA spy, the other an ex-spy, who meet over dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea to reminisce about their time in Vienna. As the conversation continues, it becomes clear that one of them is not going to survive the meal.

Daisy Ridley is attached to star in the psychological thriller, The Marsh King’s Daughter, that will be directed by Divergent filmmaker, Neil Burger. The film is based on Karen Dionne’s 2017 book of the same name and tells the story of Helena, who was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands. Following years of trying to escape her past, she must now hunt her father down after he escapes from prison.

Tom Hardy is set to star in the Netflix action film, Havoc, from Gareth Evans, the director of the critically acclaimed martial arts film, The Raid. Hardy stars as a bruised detective who, after a drug deal gone wrong, must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son. In doing so, he unravels a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.

After playing an FBI agent in Judas and the Black Messiah, Jesse Plemons is looking to stay in the bureau, joining the film, Killers of the Flower Moon. Based on David Grann’s bestseller set in 1920s Oklahoma, the story depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a time that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Martin Scorsese is directing, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in lead roles. Plemons will play the lead FBI agent investigating the murders

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series update of the classic thriller, The 39 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s novel, which was turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The TV project of The 39 Steps is being described as "a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for our times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order."

Producers Webster Stone and Robert Stone have acquired rights to Anthony Bourdain’s crime novel, Gone Bamboo, for a scripted series based on a TV pilot. The 1997 book was the celebrity chef’s second published work of fiction. Set on the island of St. Martin, Gone Bamboo follows sharpshooting hedonistic assassin Henry Denard, who botches a career-capping hit. Denard must enlist the help of his skilled, stunning, and volatile wife to save their skins, dispatch the villains, and keep the peace — at all costs — in their tropical paradise. Bourdain, who died in 2018, also wrote several episodes of David Simon’s HBO series, Treme.

CBS is developing a third “FBI” series based on Dick Wolf’s crime drama franchise, this one set within the bureau’s many international branches. The series has a working title FBI: International and is in the early stages of development, according to Deadline. Longtime Dick Wolf vet, Derek Haas, is the writer and executive producer on the series; Haas was recently co-executive producer on the flagship FBI and created Wolf’s Chicago Fire NBC series, which birthed its own “Chicago” franchise. If it goes forward, it would be the third “FBI” series on the network, joining the original series and FBI: Most Wanted.

CBS is also looking to expand its lucrative “NCIS” franchise with a fourth series, this one set in Hawaii, according to TVLine. The network is closing in on a straight-to-series order for a spinoff set in the youngest U.S. state, which would be led by NCIS: New Orleans showrunner, Chris Silber.

Meanwhile, NCIS: New Orleans, the youngest series in CBS’s long-running NCIS franchise factory, is coming to an end. The current seventh season will be the drama’s last, with the series finale slated for May 16, the show’s 155th episode. The NCIS offshoot stars and is executive produced by Scott Bakula and revolves around the local field office that investigates criminal cases involving military personnel in the Big Easy, a city known for its music, entertainment and decadence.

Paramount+ is eyeing a comeback for the popular long-running CBS procedural, Criminal Minds. According to Deadline, the idea is in very early discussions, and a creative team is currently being assembled. Created by Jeff Davis, Criminal Minds aired on CBS for 15 seasons from 2005 to 2020 and followed a group of criminal profilers who work for the FBI as members of its Behavioral Analysis Unit. Over the course of its run, cast members included Mandy Patinkin, Shemar Moore, Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler, Matthew Gray Gubler, Thomas Gibson, Lola Glaudini, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster, among others. The show spawned two spinoffs, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.

A new Constantine series is in the works at HBO Max and J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot company. British novelist Guy Bolton is attached to write the script. First introduced in The Saga of Swamp Thing in 1985, John Constantine is an occult con man and detective, a character brought to life on screen twice before, with Keanu Reeves portraying him in a 2005 film and Matt Ryan leading a series reboot at The CW in 2014.

AMC+ has picked up a trio of foreign crime dramas to premiere in the U.S. on the streaming service. The first, Kin, stars Charlie Cox, Clare Dunne, and Aidan Gillen and charts the lives of a fictional Dublin family embroiled in a gangland war. The second, Too Close, stars Chernobyl alum Emily Watson as Emma Robinson, a forensic psychologist who falls victim to a criminal suspect’s insightful and manipulative nature. Finally, Cold Courage, starring John Simm, Caroline Goodall, and Arsher Ali, is an adaptation of the series of novels by Finnish journalist Pekka Hiltunen and centers on Mari, a fierce psychologist, and Lia, a shy graphic artist, who are drawn together through the “Studio” — a clandestine group of like-minded people operating off the grid, dedicated to righting the wrongs of the powerful, influential and corrupt.

Billy Campbell has been tapped as the lead in National Parks, ABC’s drama pilot from executive producer, Kevin Costner. Co-written by Costner, Aaron Helbing, and Jon Baird and set to be directed by Anthony Hemingway, National Parks follows a small group of elite national parks service agents as they solve crimes while protecting the parks — which, while being known for their sweeping, beautiful landscapes, also attract a vast array of criminal activity. Campbell plays Cal Foster, an experienced ISB special agent who has worked in the field for years but is now stepping into a new leadership role.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Suspense Magazine's podcast interviewed Vincent Zandri, winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel, about his latest book, The Girl Who Wasn’t There.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone were back after a hiatus with an interview with Linwood Barclay, talking about his early life, his background's influence on his novels today, trains, and much more.

Writer Types welcomed author Julia Dahl (writer of the Rebekah Roberts series) as co-host to talk with Dana Stabenow (the Kate Shugak series and Liam Campbell series); cold war spy novelist Paul Vidich; and author and forensics expert Jennifer Graeser Dornbush (Hole In The Woods). Plus the Malmons reviewed the latest from Jess Lourey and Matthew Iden.

The latest guest on Queer Writers of Crime was Rick R. Reed, bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Charles Finch about his latest novel, In An Extravagant Death, featuring his English protagonist Charles Lenox on a road trip (an ocean voyage, actually) to America.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Sebastian Fitzek, one of Europe’s most successful authors of psychological thrillers.

TG Wolf‪f‬ stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss Suicide Squeeze, her latest book in her Diamond mystery series, as well as her Cleveland-based procedural series; her love of puzzles; how waste water gets cleaned; and her podcast that features musically backed readings of mysteries.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club continued their conversation with Dr. Mark Aldridge about Agatha Christie, including her abilities to cement characters.

FFB: A Time for Pirates

Oswald Wynd (1913-1998) was born in Japan, the son of a Baptist missionary from Scotland. Wynd's family moved to the U.S. in the 1930s, where Wynd attended High School in Atlantic City, then later back to Scotland. Wynd's studies at Edinburgh University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, and in 1941 Wynd's unit in Malaysia was attacked and Wynd imprisoned in Hokkaido mines.

Upon the end of the War and Wynd's liberation as a POW, he returned to the U.S. and on a whim decided to enter a "first novel" contest  by publisher Doubleday in 1947. The novel, Black Fountains, about a young American-educated Japanese caught up in the war, won first prize. Another novel, The Ginger Tree, was turned into a television series by the BBC, with NHK, Japan and WGBH Boston.

But it was under the pen name of Gavin Black that Wynd wrote his thrillers, fifteen in all, most featuring Paul Harris, a young man with a Scottish background making a living as an unconventional businessman in Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia. The first, Suddenly At Singapore, was published in 1960, and the last, Night Run From Java, in 1979. A Time For Pirates lies right in the middle of the series.

Set in Kuala Lumpur, A Time for Pirates finds Paul Harris rescuing damsel in distress Jean Hyde from a rioting mob. Unfortunately for Harris, the beautiful blonde damsel is the wife of a geologist looking for oil on behalf of a Chinese company Min Kow Lin, and Harris has been fighting to save Malaysia from Communism. He decides to delve into the oil business to try and find out why Min Kow Lin is disguising its oil exploration as prospecting for less valuable minerals and why it's buying a rubber plantation.

With the assistance of his "humor challenged" Sikh bookeeper Bahadur, Harris investigates whether the nasty business he's stumbled onto is really a Communist plot or a capitalist scheme to deny poor Malaysians the rights and profits from the oil. After two kidnap attempts, a near-fatal fight with a Manchu thug, and an arson attack that burns down his house, Harris begins to suspect that the man who wants him dead isn't an outsider, but a friend.

The Independent said of Black that he wrote "superior and literate thrillers - school of Stevenson and Buchan - which were at the same time witty and clever, and moved at a by no means gentlemanly pace." The intriguing characters and details of the exotic setting of newly-independent but unstable Malaysia and the clashes between the native population, Communists and Western enterpreneurs are well drawn and the writing is descriptive, as in this one passage:

It was a long time since I had walked up my drive. The gradient is steep, an asphalt razor cut on a slope packed with jungle hardwoods...snakes which reach my antiseptic woods are there isn't a stagnant pool anywhere in which mosquitoes can breed. Sometimes monkeys come on excursions from the adjacent public gardens to try out the long drops from high branches, but they never seem to stay long, as though the surrounding intense hygiene is too much for them. I wish they would set up a colony near me; I like them, they are a continuing and salutary rebuke to our pretensions.

Black Dagger Crime reprinted A Time for Pirates in 1971, and a Fontana First Thus edition came out in May 1973, but they're hard to find, unless you're lucky enough to pick up a copy, as I did, from your local library.

Mystery Melange

Will Rogers was a respected writer and cowboy entertainer whose work embodied the traditions of the American cowboy. The Will Rogers Medallion Award was originally created to recognize quality works of cowboy poetry that honored the Will Rogers heritage, but has expanded to include other works of Western literature and film. Winners of the 2020 awards include fiction winner, Land of Wolves: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson; a second place tie for The Last Warrior: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, by W. Michael Farmer, and Blood-Soaked Earth: The Trial of Oliver Lee, by W. Michael Farmer; third place to Death Stalks Apache Oro by Sam Judd Fadala; fourth place to Cut Nose by Ron Schwab; and fifth place to Promised Land: Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey by Mark Warren. For all the finalists in the various categories, click on over here.

On February 22, the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut will offer the virtual "Script in Hand: A Sherlock Carol," a reading of a play by Mark Shanahan in which Tiny Tim asks the Great Detective to look into the death of Ebenezer Scrooge. If you can't make the live event, you catch the show on-demand from February 23 through February 28. (Ht to Elizabeth Foxwell)

On February 27, Left Coast Crime will present four virtual panels to introduce the 2021 Lefty Award Nominees and their books. This Zoom Webinar is free, but advance registration is required. Participating authors will include nominees for the Lefty Award for Best Debut Novel, Best Novel, Best Historical Novel, and Best Humorous Novel.
 

Hosted by NY Times bestselling author, Lisa Black, a virtual Noir at the Bar on March 12 will showcase ten Sisters in Crime authors offering readings from the darker side of crime fiction. Noir a the Bar is presented by the Florida Gulf Coast Sisters in Crime chapter as a Main Stage event of Southwest Florida Reading Festival, hosted by Lee County Library System.

After a thirty-three year run (1988-2021) as crime fiction critic for the New York Times, Marilyn Stasio is stepping down. Blogger, reviewer, and nonfiction author/editor, Sarah Weinman, is taking the reins from Stasio with her first column reviewing new releases by Walter Mosley, Belinda Bauer, Catie DiSabato, and Elle Cosimano. The column will run every other week. Stasio said in her email newsletter "The Crime Lady" that "There isn’t enough gratitude to express, stepping in the shoes of Stasio (who will still write for the paper after an iconic 3-decade-plus run with the column), 'Newgate Callendar' (aka Harold C. Schonberg), Allen Hubin, and Anthony Boucher, the original 'Criminals At Large' columnist."

Over at the Venetian Vase blog, James Ellroy aficionado, Jason Carter, continued his fascinating series exploring the connections between Ellroy and the true crime history of Wisconsin.

In honor of President's Day, Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of Presidential Crime Fiction, and also a list of mysteries for the Chinese New Year, while the Indie Crime Scene put together a roundup of "Indie Mardi Gras Mysteries."

The latest "victim" of the Page 69 test is Emilya Naymark, author of Hide in Place. The story follows a former NYPD undercover cop who escaped the Big Apple when her cover was blown only to land in a small town where she takes on a case that could expose her identity to her old enemies.

Experts have devised a novel approach to selecting photos for police lineups that helps witnesses identify culprits more reliably.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "I Want a Film Noir Femme Fatale" by Peter M. Gordon. The 5-2 Weekly editor, Gerald So, is also seeking new poems and poem critiques to help celebrate National Poetry Month coming up in April.

In the Q&A roundup, NPR spoke with law professor and human rights activist, Rosa Brooks, whose new memoir, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing The American City, details how she volunteered to join the police force in order to understand police reform; Author Interviews chatted with Allison Epstein about her Elizabethan mystery, A Tip for the Hangman; Author Interviews also welcomed Gwen Florio about her new book, Best Laid Plans, the first installment of a new mystery series featuring Nora Best as she flees her old life and cheating husband and takes to the road with an Airstream trailer; Lida Sideris was interviewed by Grace Topping for Writers Who Kill to discuss her book, Slightly Murderous Intent: A Southern California Mystery; Laura Shepherd-Robinson, author of the award-winning debut novel, Blood & Sugar, stopped by the Shots Magazine blog to talk about her latest book, Daughters of the Night; and Scottish crime writer, Val McDermid, told The Guardian why "To survive, you had to be twice as good as the guys."

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Veteran producers Bruce Hendricks and Galen Walker have optioned the rights to the late Stanley Kubrick’s unmade film, Lunatic At Large, and have plans to bring the film-noir storyline to the big screen. The project was one of three film stories found in Kubrick’s archives after his death. Production is expected to start this fall.

Several studios got into a bidding war over a flight attendant's first novel. According to the flight attendant, T.J. Newman, she wrote the thriller, Falling, on the backs of airplane napkins and on iPads during her red-eye route. The story follows 140-plus passengers on a crowded flight from New York to LA who don’t yet know that a half-hour before takeoff, their pilot’s family was kidnapped. Now, in order for his family to live, the pilot must follow orders and crash the plane. While much of the story takes place in the air, there is also said to be a relentless FBI agent trying to save the family on the ground. Falling is already being described as "Speed at 35,000 feet."

Paul A. Kaufman is set to adapt the screenplay and direct Nicole Trope’s novel, The Boy in the Photo. The story is a gripping psychological thriller which centers on Megan, whose life was turned upside down when her ex-husband kidnapped their six year old son, Daniel. Six years later, a twelve-year-old boy shows up claiming to be Megan’s missing child, following his father being killed in a deadly fire. As Megan tries to bond with Daniel, he is not the sweet little boy that she lost. Instead, he’s terse, erratic, condescending and dangerous. Fear strikes as she struggles with strange things happening around her while she begins to doubt Daniel is her real son. As Daniel holds a very dark secret and things escalate, can Megan find out the truth and save herself?

Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs Kong) has been hired to direct a reboot of John Woo’s 1997 action hit, Face/Off. The original Face/Off starred John Travolta as Sean Archer, a federal agent bent on revenge after terrorist, Castor Troy (Nicholas Cage), killed his son. After another incident puts Troy in a coma, Archer agrees to a bizarre plan that involves using experimental surgery to give him Troy’s body, face, and voice, and then going to a max security prison to convince Troy’s partners to reveal the location of a bomb.

Sandra Bullock is the latest star to come aboard Sony Pictures’s action thriller, Bullet Train. She joins an ensemble cast jam-packed with stars, including Brad Pitt, Joey King, Lady Gaga, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Bad Bunny, Andrew Koji, Brian Tyree Henry, Masi Oka, Michael Shannon, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Karen Fukuhara. The details of Bullock’s role in the film are currently unknown. Based on the novel, Maria Beetle, by Kotaro Isaka, Bullet Train follows five assassins who find themselves on a bullet train in Japan and realize that their assignments are related. David Leitch (John Wick) is set to helm the film from a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz.

Lily Gladstone is set to star in Apple Original Films’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro also are attached to star in the pic, with Martin Scorsese directing. Based on David Grann’s praised best-seller and set in 1920s Oklahoma, Killers of the Flower Moon depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Gladstone will play Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), who is nephew of a powerful local rancher (De Niro).

The James Bond film, Die Another Day, introduced Halle Berry’s Giacinta Johnson as a Bond woman who would help save the day in Pierce Brosnan’s final film as the superspy. A spin-off was being developed for her character, better known to her friends/foes as Jinx, and while it never happened, the scrapped script for the film has apparently made its way online.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

FX has picked up a pilot for a series adaptation of Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The 1969 novel tells the fictional story of the first Black CIA officer hired by the agency in the late 1960s. It was previously adapted for the screen in 1973, with Lawrence Cook starring as the novel’s protagonist, Dan Freeman.

True Lies, a TV series adaptation of James Cameron’s hit 1994 action comedy movie, has taken a major step toward becoming a reality. CBS has given a pilot order to the project, which is from the team of Cameron, the director McG, and Burn Notice creator Matt Nix. Shocked to discover that her bland and unremarkable computer consultant husband is a skilled international spy, an unfulfilled suburban housewife is propelled into a life of danger and adventure when she’s recruited to work alongside him to save the world as they try to revitalize their passionless marriage.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover are rebooting the feature film Mr. & Mrs. Smith as a television series for Amazon. The pair revealed via Instagram stories that they were working on the project for 2022. The 2005 feature film starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a married couple who were rival spies.

James Graham, writer of the Emmy-nominated, Brexit: The Uncivil War, has created a crime drama titled Sherwood for the BBC. Inspired in part by real events, the six-part series is set in the Nottinghamshire mining village where Graham grew up. The contemporary series sees two murders shatter an already fractured community leading to one of the largest manhunts in British history. Suspicion is rife and the tragic murders threaten to inflame historic divisions sparked during the miners’ strike that tore families apart three decades before.

Guy Pearce will reunite with his Mildred Pierce co-star, Kate Winslet, for another upcoming HBO miniseries, Mare of Easttown. Pearce will co-star alongside Winslet, who plays Mare Sheehan, a small-town Pennsylvania detective whose life crumbles around her as she investigates a local murder.

Carla Gugino, who recently starred in The Haunting of Bly Manor, will front Leopard Skin, a television crime thriller for AGC Television. The cast also includes Amelia Eve, Gentry White, Philip Winchester, Margot Bingham, Gaite Jansen, Nora Arnezeder, and Ana de la Reguera. Leopard Skin kicks off when a criminal gang fleeing a botched jewelry heist is forced to hide out in a beachside estate where two women live in seclusion. Their world turns into a tension filled hothouse of secrets, betrayal and desire — all of which will come to the surface as the gang awaits their fate.

HBO Max has opted not to proceed with Red Bird Lane, its drama pilot starring Susan Sarandon. Written by Sara Gran and directed by David Slade, the project is a psychological thriller that follows eight strangers who arrive at an isolated house, all for different reasons. Upon their mysterious and coincidental arrival, the strangers realize that something sinister and terrifying awaits them.

Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, and Mel Rodriguez have been cast as leads in CSI: Vegas, which is nearing a formal straight-to-series order at CBS. William Petersen and Jorja Fox are finalizing their deals to star in the project, which serves as a sequel to the mothership series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (reprising their roles as Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle, respectively). While billed as an event series, reports indicate it could become an ongoing series running for multiple seasons. CSI: Vegas opens a new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

This isn't exactly a live-action crime drama per se, but it's an interesting move on Fox's part: the network is developing an animated series based on the iconic board game, Clue. Clue is conceptualized on the murder of Mr. Boddy, the host of the game’s "dinner party," during which players must untangle various clues to determine who among the party’s six guests — Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green and Dr. Orchid — committed the crime. Clue was also being rebooted for the big screen with Ryan Reynolds attached to star and executive produce, although there hasn't been much of a progress report on that project lately.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest Mystery Rats Maze podcast features an excerpt from Leave It to Cleaver by Victoria Hamilton, as read by actor Ariel Linn.

Read or Dead discussed reads that feature true crime and social justice, honoring Black History Month.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Paul Vidich to chat about his fourth novel, The Mercenary.

Joseph Rei‪d stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his latest Seth Walker thriller, Departure.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Mark Aldridge, a senior lecturer at Solent University, Southampton, about his new nonfiction book, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World.

The featured guest on Queer Writers of Color was Steve Neil Johnson, the author of the bestselling Doug Orlando mysteries.

Quote of the Week

FFB: Let's Talk of Graves, Worms and Epitaphs

Robert Furneaux Jordan (1905–1978) was an English architect, architectural critic for The Observer, taught as Hoffmann-Wood Professor of Architecture in the University of Leeds, and was a visiting Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University in the U.S. If you conduct a bibliographical search under his given name, you'll find he penned the nonfiction reference books A Concise History Of Western Architecture and Victorian Architecture, among others.

In 1945, Jordan published a detective novel under the pen name Robert Player, and eventually wrote four more standalone mystery novels over the next 32 years. In the Foreword to the Black Dagger edition of Player's novel Let's Talk of Graves, of Worms and Epitaphs, author and past Crime Writers Assocation Chairman Robert Richardson noted that Player's name rarely appears in standard works about the genre, but "there is an inescapable feeling that, had he devoted himself to writing, he would be recognized as, if not a master, then certainly a gifted and entertaining talent. Literate and ingenious, his books have originality and a capacity to attract."

The novel opens with the line, "It is not every man whose father was both a pope and a murderer." The pope in question is Barnabas Barbellion, a distinguished Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholocism and later became Pope Paschal the Fourth. But years prior, Barbellion was married with two children and also having an affair with Philippa, the wife of his neighbor, Harold Gatsby. When Gatsby is poisoned to death at a croquet party, Philippa is accused of the murder a sensational trial ensues, but no one dares to connect the case with the fact that Barbellion's ailing wife had also died suddenly, except for the narrator, Barbellion's son, Augustine Xavier.

The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare's play Richard II about the British king whose greed, thirst for greater power, and disdain for both friends and subjects prove to be his undoing. Despite the darkness of that tragedy, Player's novel is actually rather wickedly funny satire, chock-full of intricate details and tricky plotting and character development that culminates in a twist ending. The density of the writing can bog a bit at times, and it's not the type of book that makes for a quick read, but if you're a fan of historical mysteries and religious lampoonery, Player's novel may be to your taste.

Mystery Melange

 

Registration is open for the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, which goes all digital this year for the all-day event on March 6. There will be live panels on topics from "Humor Has It: Keeping the Fun in Mystery" to "A Song of Ice and Fire: Writing Strong Women," with close to forty authors participating.

Submissions for the McIlvanney Prize / Scottish Crime Book of the Year are also now open, with a deadline of Friday, April 9. The winner of Crime Book of the Year will receive £1,000, while the winner the Debut of the Year will receive £500. Entries come from full length novels first published in the United Kingdom between August 1 2020 and July 31, 2021. When considering the entries the judges will take into account quality of writing, originality of plot and potential durability in the crime genre.

Take the upcoming long weekend to apply to PEN America's Writing for Justice Fellowship, which commissions writers to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. Submissions close on February 15.

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies has a call for papers on the topic of "Giallo! The Long History of Italian Television Crime Drama." The special issue will be edited by Luca Barra (Università di Bologna) and Valentina Re (Link Campus, Rome) who are seeking abstract submissions through April 30. There's more info on the Shots Magazine blog, including some suggested topics for consideration.

Shots also took a look ahead at the Chester Himes - Harlem Detective Series being released by Penguin Modern Classics on March 25, 2021. The stories of the pathbreaking Himes, one of crime fiction’s most overlooked writers, take the reader through the criminal underbelly of New York alongside hardboiled Harlem detectives "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones.

Valentine's Day isn't always about love, as Janet Rudolph's updated Valentine's Day Crime Fiction list will attest.

Writing for The Guardian, Alison Flood investigated "Why Sherlock Holmes Has Become One Of Our Most Enduring Literary Characters." She takes note of some of the more recent entries, including Anthony Horowitz’s sequels; Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes; basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling; James Lovegrove's combining the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the Cthulhu Casebooks; Nicholas Meyer’s forthcoming The Return of the Pharaoh, drawn "from the Reminiscences of John H Watson, MD"; and Bonnie MacBird’s The Three Locks, a new Holmes adventure, which is out in March.

In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series for the Paris Review, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers. In her latest installment, she tackles Inspector Montalbano, the creation of one of Italy’s best-loved contemporary authors, Andrea Camilleri (1925–2019).

Over at the Venetian Vase blog, Steven Powell continued his series examining the musical influences in James Ellroy’s work, this time focusing on a single novel, Because the Night, Ellroy’s second novel in his Lloyd Hopkins trilogy.

Allison Epstein applied the Page 69 Test to her debut historical thriller, A Tip for the Hangman, which centers on Christopher Marlowe, a brilliant aspiring playwright, who is pulled into the duplicitous world of international espionage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I; and Gwen Florio also applied the same test to Best Laid Plans, the first installment of a new mystery series.

The trend of celebrities writing crime fiction seems to have no end in sight, it seems. Even astronauts are jumping into the act.

If you're a fan of Nordic Noir novels, check out this list from Forbes on "Nordic Noir Travel: Scandinavia’s Top Crime Fiction Locations."

Here's a little throwback for you spy fans: a new phishing attack uses Morse code to allow hackers to hide malicious URLs.

Speaking of spying, one man learned the hard way that if you're going to commit a crime, you might be a little more aware of the apps you load onto your cellphone.

Ever wonder about where the term "bookworm" came from?

Will artificial intelligence ever take over the jobs of authors?

The latest flash fiction story at Shotgun Honey is "Remittences" by Pamela Ebel

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Anything Goes" by Tom Barlow.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews's Marshal Zeringue spoke with Jeri Westerson, the author of fifteen Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels, and also chatted with former teacher and linguist, Carol Wyer, about her new novel, An Eye for an Eye, which introduces DI Kate Young; and Walter Mosley offered up some background on his first thriller and how he went from working as a computer programmer in 1980's New York City to writing the iconic Devil in a Blue Dress.