In Reference to Murder

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

Nadine Crocker is on board to direct the psychological thriller, Hallow, which is also written by Crocker along with Chris Tardio. Shooting is scheduled to begin in early 2022 in New York and New Jersey. The film follows an event that unearths hidden secrets of corruption in a small East Coast town and forces a priest to look at his past and the trauma that he’s long shut out. He grapples with what kind of man he will become: a man of forgiveness and faith, to which he has dedicated his life, or a man of revenge and justice.

Christina Ricci has signed on to play a supporting role in The Dresden Sun, a cyberpunk indie from writer-director Michael Ryan that also stars Samantha Win. The film is set in motion by a heist that goes south when a brilliant, principled mercenary with a traumatic past works with an insider to steal a valued asset from Peredor Corporation called "the sphere." Meanwhile, a financial analyst finds himself caught in the middle between deadly corporate rivals, financial fraud, and technological espionage, and is ultimately forced to run from the most psychopathic military contractor in the world.

Showtime has unveiled the first trailer for its feature follow-up to the Ray Donovan series starring Liev Schreiber, and announced the release date as Friday, January 14. The movie comes almost exactly two years since the season seven finale aired on the premium network. The film picks up where season seven left off, with Mickey, played by Jon Voight, on the run and Schreiber’s Ray determined to find and stop him before he can cause any more carnage. It will also weave together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey’s origin story from 30 years ago. Original cast members reprising their roles include Eddie Marsan as Ray’s brother Terry, Dash Mihok as Ray’s brother Bunchy, Pooch Hall as the Donovan’s half-brother Daryll, Kerris Dorsey as Ray’s daughter Bridget, Katherine Moennig as Lena, along with Kerry Condon as Molly Sullivan.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan are set as the leads in The Night Agent, Netflix’s political conspiracy thriller series created by Shawn Ryan and based on author Matthew Quirk’s 2019 New York Times bestseller. The story centers on a low-level FBI agent, Peter Sutherland (Basso), who works in the basement of the White House manning an emergency hotline for American spies that never rings—until the night that it does, propelling him into a fast moving and dangerous conspiracy that ultimately leads all the way to the Oval Office.

NBC announced that Anthony Anderson will reprise his role as Detective Kevin Bernard on the revival of Law & Order, becoming the first series alum to officially return to the show. Fellow original star, Sam Waterston, who was also approached early on about returning, is still in discussions. A new franchise addition, Hugh Dancy, has been added to the cast in a lead role playing an assistant district attorney, joining the other previously announced series newcomer, Jeffrey Donovan, who will be playing an NYPD detective.

Jurassic Park star, Sam Neill, is set to lead Foxtel’s Australian TV drama series, The Twelve, which is due to begin production next week. Neill will be joined by Marta Dusseldorp, Kate Mulvaney, Brooke Satchwell, and Hazem Shammas in the 10-part series, which is adapted from the Belgian crime drama of the same name. The Twelve follows 12 jurors—ordinary Australians with struggles of their own—who are tasked with deciding the case of a woman (Mulvaney) accused of killing a child. Neill will play a lawyer involved in the case, while Satchwell and Shammas form part of the jury.

Zuleikha Robinson, Louis Ozawa, and Okieriete Onaodowan have been tapped as series regulars opposite John Krasinski on the upcoming fourth season of the Amazon Prime Video series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Additionally, Derek Cecil and Nancy Lenehan have been cast in recurring roles in the drama series. Production recently wrapped on Season 3 which finds Jack Ryan (Krasinski) on the run and in a race against time. Jack is wrongly implicated in a larger conspiracy and suddenly finds himself a fugitive out in the cold. Now, wanted by both the CIA and an international rogue faction that he has uncovered, Jack is forced underground, crisscrossing Europe, trying to stay alive and prevent a massive global conflict.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed author Iain Parke, creator of the British Biker Noir themed "The Brethren MC" series.

The Red Hot Chili Writers welcomed Mikhail Sen, star of the recent A Suitable Boy adaptation, to talk about his acting life; the audiobook of The Shadows of Men; and to take a Hollywood great quotations quiz.

Author Chris Offutt chatted with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about his latest book, The Killing Hills, featuring a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent. Also discussed:  land and culture; spy fiction; and photography.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Mark Edward Langley about his Arthur Nakai mystery books set in the American Southwest.

The featured guest on Wrong Place, Write Crime was Sarah Gailey, talking about her new book, The Echo Wife (and also killer hippos).

The latest podcast from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine featured Jeff Cohen's "The Question of the Befuddled Judge" from the May/June 2020 issue, read by the author. Jeff Cohen is the author of the humorous Double Feature and Aaron Tucker mystery series. As E.J. Copperman, he writes the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series, the Agent to the Paws series, the Mysterious Detective series, and the Samuel Hoenig series.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club had a True Crime Round-Up for 2021.

Sunday Music Treat

In keeping with the season, here's a little something from Franz Liszt. We're ordinarily more accustomed to his virtuosic style compositions, but this charming piece is "In dulci jubilo" from Weihnachtsbaum (Christmas Tree), a suite of 12 pieces written by Liszt in 1873–76 to his first grandchild, Daniela von Bülow (1860-1940; daughter of conductor Hans von Bülow), who was born on Christmas Eve. The pianist in this Naxos recording is Jeffrey Biegel (Scott Drayco hasn't made a recording of this, alas):

 

Quote of the Week

Friday's "Forgotten" Books

Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930) was born into a prosperous family in West Virginia and practiced criminal and corporate law for several years. However, after the success of his first novel series, he promptly dropped his law career to write full time. He was a prolific writer, penning numerous stories in national magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies Home Journal.

He wrote a couple of series and some standalone novels, but it may have been his twenty-plus stories featuring the mystery-solving and justice dispensing West Virginian backwoodsman, Uncle Abner, which helped make Post popular. Ellery Queen called the stories "an out-of-this-world target for future detective-story writers," and the 1941 review of the mystery genre, Murder for Pleasure, declared that Uncle Abner was, after Edgar Allan Poe's Arsène Dupin, "the greatest American contribution" to the cast of fictional detectives.

Uncle Abner is described as "a big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested Saxon, with all those marked characteristics of a race living out of doors and hardened by wind and sun. His powerful frame carried no ounce of surplus weight. It was the frame of an empire builder on the frontier of the empire. The face reminded one of Cromwell, the craggy features in repose seemed molded over iron but the fine gray eyes had a calm serenity, like remote spaces in the summer sky. The man's clothes were plain and somber. And he gave the impression of things big and vast."

Abner is also a Puritan at heart who always carries a Bible in his pocket and has a knack for finding out the truth. As his nephew, Martin, who frequently narrates the stories, says, "for all his iron ways, Abner was a man who saw justice in its large and human aspect, and he stood for the spirit, above the letter, of the truth." He is a stern authoritarian figure but equally so a kind and compassionate philosopher.

Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries was the first anthology (1918), and contained 18 Uncle Abner stories all told by Martin. The crimes primarily deal with murder or robbery and start after the crime has been committed and the killer thinks he's gotten away with it. "The Doomdorf Mystery," is the first story in the collection and also one of Post's best known. It features more than one possible suspect who all admit to being the killer, as well as a locked-room scenario ("the wall of the house is plumb with the sheer face of the rock. It is a hundred feet to the river ... but that is not all. Look at these window frames; they are cemented into their casement with dust").

The stories are most definitely of their pre-Civil War setting, in that they feature the attitudes toward African-Americans prevalent at the time (NOTE: this means they have the associated language that today's readers might find offensive). If you can get past that, these are entertaining for the shrewd characterizations, tight plots, and for the dispensing of frontier justice in an era that predated American police forces and procedures.

Happy Thanksgiving

Mystery Melange - Thanksgiving Edition

 

The Irish books of the year were announced yesterday, including Crime Fiction Book of the Year, which was awarded to 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard. The other finalists in that category include All Her Fault by Andrea Mara; April in Spain by John Banville; The Dark Room by Sam Blake; The Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh; and The Killing Kind by Jane Casey.

Another award, however, doesn't have similar good news to share as word comes that the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction has been put on indefinite hold. The honor, sponsored by the University of Alabama School of Law, was created in 2010 and had been "awarded annually to a published work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change." (HT to The Rap Sheet)

D.C. Noir at the Bar returns on December 5 in a virtual event online hosted by E.A. Aymar. Authors scheduled to participate with readings from their books include Yasin Angoe, Amy Grech, Silvio Moreno-Garcia, Glen Erik Hamilton, Eliza Nellums, with music via Sara Jones and a custom cocktail from Chantal Tseng. The event is in support of partner store, One More Page Books.

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, the National Centre for the Written Word in South Shields, England, is offering an online version of its exhibition, "Investigating Detectives," (which will be on display until March 2022). The virtual exhibit investigates the greatest fictional detectives and their authors, profiles the best known on-screen detectives, studies crime-busting techniques, and examines the enduring appeal of literary and on-screen detective stories. Some of the sleuths included are Inspector Bucket, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple. Also included are children's mysteries, subgenres such as hardboiled and Nordic noir, and forensic history. (HT to The Bunburyist)

The Winter Issue #170 of Mystery Scene Magazine is out with Kevin Burton Smith's annual "Mystery Scene Gift Guide"; a cover feature of Patricia Cornwell, whose debut Postmortem first appeared in 1990; Craig Sisterson makes the case that the origins of the current gritty Golden Age of television started before The Sopranos with NYPD Blue; John B. Valeri talks to Rhys Bowen about her historical mysteries; Jon L. Breen takes a look at an unlikely sleuth: Edna Ferber, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat and Giant among other works, who's been reimagined by author Ed Ifkovic as solver of mysteries; and Oline Cogdill interviews writer-director Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and many more).

The Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast has a bonus Thanksgiving mystery short story, "The Chicken Pot Pie Fiasco," written by Sandra Murphy and read by actor Duncan Hoge.

Kings River Life has some food mysteries for your Thanksgiving feast and a chance to enter to win a copy of all 5 books.


Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog has an updated list of crime fiction with a Thanksgiving theme.

The writers over at the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog have shared some Thanksgiving recipe ideas for you including No-Churn Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream, courtesy of Peg Cochran; Libby Dodd's Fresh Cranberry Relish; Cornish Hen via Maya Corrigan; and much more.

This is something law enforcement are probably thankful about this year: a hire-a-hitman website that isn't exactly what it seems.

And I would be personally astonished, if not grateful, to discover a secret passageway in a 500-year-old house, like Freddy Goodall of Brighton, England did recently.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Devil Has Gone Home" by Sharon Waller Knutson.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews spoke with Joy Castro, the award-winning author of the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thriller, Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award; Indie Crime Scene interviewed Bobby Nash, author of the SNOW series and more; and NPR's Fresh Air spoke with Ryan Busse, a former gun industry insider who explains why he left to fight for the other side, in his new book, Gunfight.

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

Searchlight Pictures has optioned E. Nicholas Mariani’s script, The Defender, which George Tillman Jr. will direct with three-time Emmy-winning actor, Sterling K. Brown, set to star as heroic lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones. Jones was a courageous attorney who risked his life and career to defend 87 men wrongfully accused of murder in the wake of the Elaine, AR massacre of 1919, when a group of Black sharecroppers meeting in a church about unionization were attacked by a posse organized by white landowners.

Mel Gibson, who starred in the first four Lethal Weapon movies, is in talks to star in and direct the fifth installment. Gibson played cop Martin Riggs in all four films since 1987 (the last was released in 1998). Gibson would be stepping in for the late Richard Donner, director of the first four films in the franchise, who was developing the fifth movie prior to his passing in July. Richard Wenk, best known for writing Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer, penned the latest draft of the script.

Amber Sealey has signed on to direct McFarland Entertainment’s Nod If You Understand. The thriller will tell the true story of heroic stewardess, Tina Mucklow, and the mysterious hijacker known as DB Cooper, perpetrator of the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. When Cooper boards NWA Flight 305 with a bomb on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, Mucklow must cleverly negotiate his demands and the conflicting objectives of the FBI and airline, to save 42 lives. After extorting $200,000 in ransom and demanding the crew return him to the stormy skies with a series of very specific and life-threatening flying instructions, Cooper does the unthinkable, parachuting out of the aircraft with the money. Despite an extensive manhunt and FBI investigation, Cooper has never been located or conclusively identified.

A reboot of the 1992 hit Steven Seagal action movie, Under Siege, is underway at Warner Bros. with Timo Tjahjanto directing and Umair Aleem penning the script. The movie is being planned to stream on HBO Max. There’s no word yet if Seagal will reprise his role as Casey Ryback, the ex-Navy Seal turned cook who was the only person in that movie to stop a group of terrorists from taking control of a U.S. battleship. The movie, directed by Andrew Davis, also starred Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey and spawned a 1995 sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

Mario Bava’s cult crime movie, Rabid Dogs, is getting an English-Language remake from scribes Samuel Franco and Evan Kilgore. The original 1974 feature, an adaptation of Michael J. Carroll's short story, "Man and Boy," followed the bungled robbery by three violent criminals and the hostages they take—including a young woman, a middle-aged man, and his child—as they attempt to make a clean getaway from the police. The new production team has been working out the original film’s sexist tones to reimagine the film as a present-day thriller and the first in a trilogy.

Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, and Chris Cooper are set to join Keira Knightley in 20th Century’s Boston Strangler, written and directed by Matt Ruskin. Based on the infamous Boston Strangler murders, the project tells the true story of Loretta McLaughlin, the first reporter to connect the murders and break the story of the Strangler. She and fellow reporter, Jean Cole, challenged the sexism of the early 1960s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer and work tirelessly to keep women informed. Loretta pursued the story at great personal risk and uncovered corruption that cast doubt on the true identity of the killer.

Daniela Melchior and François Arnaud are the latest to join Liam Neeson in the movie thriller, Marlowe, which is currently filming in Ireland and Spain. Melchior and Arnaud will play the brother and sister, Lynn and Nico Peterson. The movie follows private detective Philip Marlowe (Neeson), who is hired to find the ex-lover of a glamorous heiress. It looks like an open and shut case, but Marlowe soon finds himself in the underbelly of Hollywood’s film industry and unwittingly drawn into the crossfire of a legendary Hollywood actress and her subversive, ambitious daughter. Also starring are Diana Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Ian Hart and Colm Meaney. William Monahan’s script is based on the novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, by John Banville, with Oscar winner Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) aboard to direct.

In case you're still leery of watching a movie in theatres, Daniel Craig's No Time To Die has been given an official Blu-Ray release date of December 21st, which is just in time for the holidays. The Blu-Ray will include several Bond Special Features, including director Baillie Walsh’s documentary Being James Bond: The Daniel Craig Story (but only on the 4K UHD version).

A trailer was released for Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, a noir psychological thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett, which follows a charming but down-on-his-luck man (Cooper). After ingratiating himself with a clairvoyant (played by Toni Collette) and her mentalist husband (played by David Strathairn), he learns new grifting skills that grant him a ticket to mingle with the ultra-wealthy of 1940s New York. This puts him in conflict with a mysterious psychiatrist played by Cate Blanchett and a dangerous tycoon played by Richard Jenkins, all while a virtuous young woman named Molly (Rooney Mara) is at his side.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

An adaptation of Caitlin Rother’s true-crime book, Death On Ocean Boulevard: The Coronado Mansion, is in the works as a scripted limited series. Published by Kensington in April 2021, Death On Ocean Boulevard chronicles the harrowing story of Rebecca Zahau, who was found dead on the morning of July 13, 2011, at the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property owned by her boyfriend, a powerful pharmaceutical tycoon. When authorities arrived, they found the cryptic message SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER scrawled on a door near the victim. Was this a suicide note, or a killer’s taunt? Rebecca’s death came just two days after her boyfriend’s son took a devastating fall while in Rebecca’s care. Authorities deemed Rebecca’s death a suicide resulting from her guilt, but her family insists she was murdered. But who would stage a suicide or a murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way?

The serial killer novel, Dog Rose Dirt, from writer Jen Williams is to be adapted as a drama series by Gaumont UK. The psychological thriller, published earlier this year, follows a young woman whose dead mother’s secret past comes to light through a series of letters to a serial killer.

Alex Wolff has signed on to star opposite the previously announced Kiersey Clemons in Sophie Kargman’s feature directorial debut, Susie Searches. The project is based on Kargman's 2020 short film of the same name, in which she starred alongside Delon de Metz, Sam Lerner, Gabriel Notarangelo, and Alison Rich. The darkly comic thriller follows Susie (Clemons), an awkward college student who seizes the opportunity to bolster her popularity—and her overlooked true-crime podcast—by solving the disappearance of a classmate. But as her investigation proceeds, we realize that the truth and Susie aren’t at all what they seem. Wolff will play Jesse, the charismatic college kid whose disappearance sparks Susie’s investigation.

USA Network’s The Sinner, led by Bill Pullman as Det. Harry Ambrose, will air its final episode on Dec. 1, after the network announced the show's cancellation. Along with Pullman, Season 4 stars Frances Fisher, Alice Kremelberg, Neal Huff, Cindy Cheung, Ronin Wong, Jessica Hecht, and Michael Mosley. In Season 4, still reeling from the trauma of a previous case a year ago, the now-retired Harry Ambrose (Pullman) travels to Hanover Island in northern Maine for a recuperative getaway with his partner, Sonya (Hecht). When an unexpected tragedy occurs involving the daughter of a prominent island family, Ambrose is recruited to help the investigation, only to be thrown into a mystery of mounting paranoia that will turn this sleepy tourist island, and Ambrose’s life, upside down.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

NPR's Book of the Day podcast featured two thrillers, including astronaut Chris Hadfield speaking about his novel, The Apollo Murders, with former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro; and in a rebroadcast from 2015, Robert Siegel chatted with author Anthony Horowitz about his James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, and what it's like giving a classic a 21st century twist.

Read or Dead's Katie and Nusrah discussed read-a-likes for some favorite and popular authors and recommended contemporary works similar to them to make your holiday shopping easier.

Over at the Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast, the second part of the mystery short story, "Harvey and the Redhead," written by Debra H. Goldstein and read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper, is up. You can listen to Part 1 here. 
 

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Abir Mukherjee about The Shadows of Men, the fifth installment in Mukherjee’s series set in post-World-War I Calcutta featuring Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Suran Banerjee. Banerjee has been accused of murdering a Hindu scholar in a same-as-it-ever-was story of political and religious tension.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Yasmin Angoe, a first-generation Ghanaian American who received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime, about Yasmin’s debut, Her Name is Knight; the long hard road to getting published and almost giving up; writing a high-octane thriller that embraces her Ghanaian roots, and a lot more.

Wrong Place Write Crime chatted with Dana Stabenow about her Kate Shugak series, her Liam Campbell books, and a lot about Alaska. Plus Lance Wright from Down & Out Books was on hand to profile some new releases, and there were additional book recommendations from Sebastien Fitzek, Rebecca Rosenberg, Matt FitzSimmons, and William Kent Krueger.

My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, interviewed Colin Conway, the author of The Cozy Up series which pushes the envelope of the cozy genre. Conway is also the creator of The 509 Crime Stories, a series of novels set in Eastern Washington with revolving lead characters, and co-authored The Charlie-316 political thriller series.

All About Agatha spoke with Macavity Award-winning novelist John Copenhaver about his new book, The Savage Kind, in which two lonely teenage girls in 1940s Washington, DC, discover they have a penchant for solving crimes—and an even greater desire to commit them.

John Copenhaver also appeared on the Unlikeable Female Characters podcast to talk about his novel, his favorite femme fatales, and the future of queer crime.

CrimeTime FM welcomed Heather Young to discuss her debut psychological thriller, The Lost Girls, and to talk about storytelling, domestic abuse, ancient lands, and family.

Sunday Music Treat

In honor of Thanksgiving coming up in the U.S. this week, here's a work by Percy Grainger (1882-1961), who was actually an Australian-born composer and pianist, although he lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. This is a short piece titled "Harvest Hymn" and is played here by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner:

 

Quote of the Week

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Death of a Celebrity

Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was born in Canada but emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 19 and lived most of his life in the States. He became a journalist and author after a failed attempt at being an actor, although at least three of his novels were later made into movies. He wrote two mystery series, one featuring the pathbreaking female detective, Madame Rosika Storey, and the other featuring a successful middle-aged mystery writer-turned criminologist named Amos Lee Mappin. But even the latter series showed the author's interest in writing women into his novels, as Mappin's sidekick is his young secretary, Fanny Parran.

Death of a Celebrity dates from 1938 and is one of the last outings for Mappin, who is described as "not a tall man and far from slender." As usual, Mappin finds himself involved in criminal activity among New York's wealthy social circles. The "celebrity" of the title is famous playwright Gavin Dordress, who throws a party for fellow celebrities who all have reasons to hate—and kill—their host: an aging actress is enraged when she finds out Dordress didn't create a role for her in his latest play; the playwright's "best and oldest friend" is jealous because he relies on Dordress for handouts to fund a failed career as a novelist; the suitor of Dordress's daughter feels her father is holding her back from marrying; and Dordress's manager thinks his wife is having an affair with Dordress.

As one of the playwright's former classmates and a friend, Mappin is also invited to the party and brings along his secretary Fanny Parran, whose "littleness, her dimples, her blonde curls and her lisp gave her the artless charm of a child, but a man who assumed to talk baby-talk to her was apt to get a shock." The party is anything but jovial, but when Dordress turns up dead the next morning, the police assume it's suicide from the layout of the victim's body. It's Dordress's daugher and Fanny who convince Mappin to consider murder, and as Mappin digs deeper, he uncovers blackmail, revenge, jealousy and a simmering deep hatred that eventually point to one of the party-goers as the killer.

Like many of Footner's other stories, Mappin's investigation involves discovering clues left at the crime scene, which he uses to recreate the timeline and events of the murder. The writing is serviceable, if not particularly memorable, nor are Footner's plots intricate, often not playing fair with the reader in laying out the clues. But his characterizations and the interactions between the characters are entertaining. Considering Footner's focus on strong women in his novels, it's not surprising that the most interesting characters in Death of a Celebrity are female.