In Reference to Murder

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Gideon's Fire

Tell most authors they must write 10,000 words a day — in longhand —toward the goal of creating some 600 books in their lifetime, and they would likely say something along the lines of (in polite terms), "it can't be done." Tell most critics that the author of the book in your hand is indeed that prolific and they'd likely say (in polite terms), "then it must be crap."

John Creasey inspired such amazement and skepticism from other authors as well as critics, but when it came down to the readers, they voted with their wallets. By the time of Creasey's death in 1973, over 80 million copies of his books (written under 28 different pseydonyms) in 5,000 different editions in 28 languages had been sold around the world. It wasn't even as if the man sat chained to a desk all day — he also managed to establish the Crime Writers’ Association, create his very own mystery magazine, and still had time left over to found a political party in his native England. (One note about persistence: Creasey allegedly received 743 rejection slips before he sold his first book.)

When I was a youngster, I was introduced to Creasey's work through his series featuring The Honourable Richard Rollison (a/k/a The Toff), a nobleman and amateur crime solver aided by his manservant, Jolly. Creasey's most critically-acclaimed work, however, came via his police procedurals with protagonist Commander George Gideon of London's Scotland Yard, penned under the name J. J. Marric, which inspired a TV series and movie. According to an apocryphal story, one of Creasey's neighbors, a London police inspector, challenged the author with the words "Why don't you show us as we are?" and the next year Cresey published his first Inspector West police procedural book (the first of forty such novels), the success of which led to Gideon in the 1950s.

In 1955, writing for the New York Times Book Review, Anthony Boucher thought Creasey/Marric's Gideon's Day was the author's best book ever, saying,

''Nobody could make a regular career of presenting in some 75,000 words a half dozen or more plots, plus a technical study of Scotland Yard procedure, plus a realistic analysis of the characters of policemen and criminals. However, the incredible Mr. Creasey has calmly gone on presenting us with a Gideon novel each year, all of high quality." 

Likewise, H. R. F. Keating, the crime books reviewer for the London Times for 15 years, chose Gideon's Week as one of his "100 Best Crime and Mystery Books [from 1845 to 1986]."

The book which finally won Creasey the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, however, was Gideon's Fire, in 1962. George Gideon, Commander of the C.I.D., is met at the office one morning with the beginnings of a very bad day: the news of a sex maniac who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl, and an arson fire in an old tenement building which wiped out a family of seven. In a style which has since become commonplace for police procedurals, Creasey weaves these and other autonomous story lines throughout the book, including a case of stock fraud; a man who is suspected of killing two former mistresses; a bank robbery with the mastermind still at large, and an ugly family crisis building up in Gideon's own home, managing to tie up all plots by the end.

The book also exhibits the authentic earthy police procedural style Creasey used in this particular series, as well as his sympathetic treatment of many of his characters, culminating in the man Gideon, who feels a oneness with his city, London, and an abiding empathy with crime victims. Creasey once said,

"My characters live in my mind...I can see them and hear them much more clearly than most people whom I know in life...it never occurs to me that they don't exist."

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association of North America announced the winner of the 2022 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing is Samantha Jayne Allen for Pay Dirt Road. The novel, described as "Friday Night Lights meets Mare of Easttown" is a small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress. It's Allen's debut novel, which also won the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize and was recently nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. The other Hammett finalists were Copperhead Road, by Brad Smith (At Bay Press); Gangland, by Chuck Hogan (Grand Central); Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime); and What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam).

In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards were established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The awards are voted on by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics and given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Fiction, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology. You can check out all of those nominees via this link. Winners will be presented in-person on Saturday, July 15 at 8pm at Readercon 32, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Noir at the Bar in DC returns tonight, June 29, at 7pm, at the Looking Glass Lounge on Georgia Avenue, with Ed Aymar taking on hosting duties. Authors scheduled to read from their works include S.A.Cosby, Angie Kim, Cheryl Head, Eryk Pruitt, and Art Taylor, along with music by Sara Jones.

New York's Grolier Club will feature the exhibition, "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction," November 30, 2023 - February 10, 2024, showcasing significant and unusual mystery works from the more than 400-piece collection of Grolier Club member, Jeffrey Johnson. The detective novels, mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee, often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice. (HT to The Bunburyist)

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Seventy-Eight Dollars" by Peter Mladinic.

In the Q&A roundup, Chris Brookmyre stopped by the Shots Magazine blog to talk about his writing and offer up some of his favorite books; Indie Crime Scene interviewed Kathleen Kaska, whose novel Murder at the Pontchartrain had its debut on June 28th; and Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Sarah Hilary, winner of Theakston’s 2015 Crime Novel of the Year, about her latest standalone psychological thriller, Black Thorn, set in the south west of England.

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

Raye Levine Spielberg and Sawyer Spielberg are set to star in the indie dark comedy thriller, Pink Flags, written and directed by Misha Calvert. The real-life married couple will play opposite each other as a feisty figure skater named Liberty (Raye), who turns the tables on an inept stalker (Sawyer) while preparing for a high-stakes competition. Production started this month in New York City. "I think it’s so interesting how [Pink Flags] plays with the line between spectator and voyeur," Levine Spielberg said about the themes of the script. "The main character, this fiercely-independent free bird, finds it more comforting to gaslight herself than pronounce herself a victim." The cast is rounded out by Nick Creegan (Batwoman) as Liberty’s best friend and Lana Young (Southpaw) as her skating coach.

Italian artist Marco Perego’s debut feature, The Absence of Eden, will have its world premiere at the upcoming edition of Italy’s 69th Taormina Film Festival, running from June 23 to July 1. The festival will unveil the film in a screening at its landmark Ancient Greek amphitheatre with co-stars Zoe Saldaña, Garrett Hedlund, and Adria Arjona in attendance. Hedlund plays an ICE Agent struggling with the moral dilemmas of his job who unites with an undocumented woman fighting to escape a ruthless cartel (played by Guardians of the Galaxy star and Perego’s wife Saldaña) to save the life of an innocent girl.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

The Quiet Tenant, the debut novel by Clémence Michallon, is set to be adapted for the small-screen by Blumhouse Television. The producer is developing the book, which was recently described by the New York Times as an "expertly paced psychological thriller," as a limited series or streaming movie. The Quiet Tenant is a thriller about a serial killer, narrated by those closest to him: his 13-year old daughter, his girlfriend, and the captive victim he has earmarked for death.

NBC has decided not to go forward with the potential mystery series that would have reunited Retta with Good Girls showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs. Producer Universal Television is expected to shop the project (fka Murder by the Book) to other networks. The series, which was put into development last fall and received a pilot order in January, stars Retta as a woman who reviews murder mystery books for a living and puts her expertise to work as she becomes an unlikely detective to uncover the shocking truths about an eccentric seaside town.

Magnum P.I.'s reprieve at NBC is coming to an end after the network has opted not to order additional episodes beyond the 20-episode fifth season picked up last year. (When CBS canceled the reboot, lead studio Universal Television found a new home for the drama at its sister network NBC.) As Deadline reports, shopping the show around to another network is not likely to happen again, "unless a streamer like Netflix, which has found success with fellow NBC series, Manifest, swoops in." Networks have been very conservative with pickups amid the writers strike as it’s unclear when scripted series could go into production.

ITV has commissioned the "high-octane" thriller, Red Eye, to premiere on ITVX. Per the rather complicated description: After attending a medical conference in Beijing and coming close to dying in a car crash, Dr. Matthew Nolan (Richard Armitage) arrives home and is immediately arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport—accused of murdering a woman in the car he crashed. Despite his protests that he was driving alone, Nolan is set to return to China to face charges, accompanied by DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi). When other deaths occur mid-flight, DC Li begins to suspect foul play and that Nolan is in danger, and after a call from MI5, Hana finds herself embroiled in an escalating conspiracy. Meanwhile, back in London, Hana’s sister, reporter Jess Li (Jemma Moore) is running her own investigation into Nolan’s extradition and becomes the target of an unknown assassin. And in Thames House, the head of MI5, Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp), breaks protocol and risks her career to help Hana and Nolan stay alive and expose an international conspiracy implicating both China and people in her own government.

The BBC acquired the Irish thriller drama, Clean Sweep, for BBC Four and BBC iPlayer. The six-part thriller series is inspired by true events and follows a seemingly ordinary housewife, Shelly Mohan (Charlene McKenna), a mother of three married to a Garda detective (Barry Ward). On the surface, all seems normal until her dark past comes back to haunt her. Shelly makes the fatal decision to kill her former partner in crime when he resurfaces and threatens to expose her. Shelly’s detective husband is assigned the job to find the killer. The pressures mount as the noose tightens, all while Shelly is also trying to deal with her unfaithful husband and an ailing son.

The first trailer and images were released for the second season of AMC's series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman and Anne Hillerman. Deadline reported that the six-episode series, starring Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon, and Jessica Matten, is set for July 30, with new episodes airing weekly on Sundays. Episodes will be available early on AMC+ starting July 27, with new episodes every Thursday. Additional cast members this season include A. Martinez and Joseph Runningfox, joining series regulars Deanna Allison, Elva Guerra, Jeri Ryan, and Nicholas Logan.

Prime Video revealed a first-look image and the premiere date for the adaptation of the thriller series, Harlan Coben’s Shelter, from New York Times best-selling author Harlan Coben. The first three episodes of the eight-episode series will premiere globally on Aug. 18 exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, with new episodes available each Friday, leading up to the season finale on Sept. 22. Harlan Coben’s Shelter follows the story of Mickey Bolitar after the sudden death of his father leads him to start a new life in Kasselton, New Jersey. Mickey quickly finds himself tangled in the mysterious disappearance of a new student at his school, Ashley Kent, which leads to uncovering unimaginable secrets within their quiet suburban community.

MASTERPIECE Mystery! on PBS announced premiere dates for its crime drama series Unforgotten Season 5 (Sunday, September 3rd at 9/8c); Van der Valk Season 3 (Sunday, September 3rd at 10/9c); and Annika Season 2 (Sunday, October 15th at 10/9c). A promotional reel for this season's mysteries, which also includes Grantchester Season 8 (July 9th premiere at 9/8c previously announced) was also released, and you can see it via this link.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

In honor of Pride Month, a new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring an excerpt from Renovated to Death by LGBTQ author, Frank Anthony Polito, read by actor Ian Jones.

On Crime Writers of Color, Alessandra Harris, author of the Last Place Seen, was interviewed by Robert Justice.

On Crime Time FM, Sheila Bugler chatted with Paul Burke about Black Valley Farm; why writing is torture but she loves it; getting it down on the page and avoiding writers block; being mentored by Martin Waites; and writing about Ireland.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with crime fiction legend Mark Billingham about his new book, The Last Dance; discussed Hitler's dream of a Nazi playground in Blackpool, England; and Abir tells us about his "Broken Arse" hell.

On Writers Detective Bureau, Detective Adam Richardson explored the role of artificial intelligence in writing and storytelling and how it's poised to change the way we create and consume content. He also answered writing questions, including the logistics of obtaining phone records in a homicide case and which agencies can use California state crime labs.

Pick Your Poison discussed the drug that has caused the same number of American deaths as World War I and the new adulterant in that drug that's causing horrific non-healing wounds.

THEATRE

Sarah Snook (Succession) will play 26 characters in a new stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde's classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Adapted and directed by Sydney Theatre Company artistic director, Kip Williams, the production's previews will begin January 23, 2024, prior to an official opening January 31 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Snook made her London stage debut in 2016 in Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder, opposite Ralph Fiennes. Snook said. "From Oscar Wilde's remarkable original text to Kip Williams' stunning adaptation, this story of morality, innocence, narcissism, and consequence is going to be thrilling to recreate for a new audience. I can't wait."

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Home is the Prisoner

Jean Catherine Potts (1910-1999) started out writing mystery short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Woman's Day. In 1954 she had her first novel published, Go, Lovely Rose, which won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. That was followed by 14 additional novels published in over seven foreign languages. One of those later novels,The Evil Wish, was an Edgar finalist in 1963 and optioned to be made into a movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and Sir Ralph Richardson, although that project apparently fell through.

Most of Potts' books are out of print now. Home is the Prisoner was released as part of the Black Dagger Crime Series by the Crime Writers' Association and their attempt to make hard-to-find exemplary works in various crime fiction subgenres available. It tells the story of Jim Singley, who spent six years in jail for manslaughter, as he returns to the small town and scene of the crime where almost no one—including his son, ex-wife, and former mistress—are glad to see him. Potts uses shifting third-person POVs, including Singley's friend Judge Mack McVey and thirteen-year-old Cleo, the daughter of the man Singley is supposed to have killed and whose testimony kept him from the death penalty. 

The late Edward D. Hoch, a prolific short-story writer himself, once said that Potts' ''characterization was perhaps her strongest suit, and she was especially good with her small-town, middle-American settings.'' This is certainly the case with Home is the Prisoner, where the shifting POV's allow the reader to see inside the minds and secrets of the various characters, allowing the story to slowly unfold as a rather poetic multi-layered psychological study. As one example, these thoughts from Cleo:

"Because Mother, for all her dependence, was not communicative. Or maybe just not articulate. Anyway, there was a lot of uncharted territory in her geography, great areas that Cleo knew absolutely nothing about. Had not wanted to know about. Jim Singley, for instance. They had both steered clear of him — Cleo out of a rich hash of emotions that included adolescent squeamishness, wrenched loyalties, shame and shock, not to mention her own privately owned nightmare. And Mother out of — what? Cleo discovered in herself a sudden, engulfing curiosity. It broke over her like a wave, carrying, as a wave carries shell fragments, seaweed and sand, its load of remembered gossip and prying, lip-licking questions."

In Potts' fictional world there are no true good or bad characters, just many shades of gray, but she writes them in a way that makes you care about them, warts and all.

Mystery Melange

The winners of the 2023 Colorado Book Awards were recently announced at a ceremony at the historic Penrose House in Colorado Springs. The Colorado Book Awards annually celebrates the accomplishments of Colorado’s outstanding authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers. Volunteer selectors and judges from across Colorado read submissions to choose finalists and winners. Here are the winners in the categories related to crime fiction:

Best Mystery: Aunt Dimity & the Enchanted Cottage by Nancy Atherton (Viking Books)

Also nominated: The Chimera Club by Chuck Greaves (Tallow Lane Books); Where Is Mary Bergen? by Craig Marshall Smith.

Best Thriller: The Wrong Woman by Leanne Kale Sparks (Crooked Lane Books)

Also nominated: Dark of Night by Barbara Nickless (Thomas & Mercer); Deep Waters of Destiny by Peter Carlson (Calumet Editions).

Best Anthology: Denver Noir, ed. by Cynthia Swanson (Akashic Books)

Also nominated: The Long Devotion by Emily Pérez (The University of Georgia Press); Bizarre Bazaar: A Collection of Stories from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

 

Sisters in Crime (SinC) announced the winner of the annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color:  Nicole Prewitt of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her winning submission, "Harts Divided," follows Neema Hart, a black, bisexual thief-turned-P.I., who owns a detective agency and therapy office with her estranged wife, Genie Hart. Established in 2014, The Eleanor Taylor Bland Award is strongly aligned with SinC’s mission to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of current and prospective members and intends to support a recipient at the beginning of their crime writing career. The grantee may choose to apply the grant toward workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities to assist in completion of their work. Prewitt’s story was selected from over 60 submissions by 2023 judges Shizuka Otake — winner of the award in 2022 — plus novelists R. Franklin James and Andrea J. Johnson. In addition to Prewitt’s 2023 achievement, SinC has also awarded five runners-up a year-long membership to the organization. Recipients were Josette Covington (Wilmington, Delaware), Ann Harris (Atlanta, Georgia), Kathryn Harrison (Bingham Farms, Michigan), Karabi Mitra (Toronto, Ontario), and Deena Short (Stonecrest, Georgia).

Author LJ Ross is calling for final entries to be made for this year's Lindisfarne Prize, which will close on June 30. Now in its fifth year, the Lindisfarne Prize is a literary prize recognizing outstanding crime and thriller storytelling by new, emerging and established writers who are from, or whose work celebrates, the Northeast UK. The winner will receive a cash prize of £2,500 and receive mentoring and editorial support to develop their work. Joining LJ Ross on the judging panel will be fellow crime writer Trevor Wood; Dr Jacky Collins, director of Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival; and BBC Look North presenter Carol Malia. To be considered, entrants must submit a short story of no more than ten thousand words or the first two chapters and a synopsis of their work in progress.

Editors at Amazon have compiled a list of their picks for "the 20 best mystery, thriller, and suspense novels of the year" thus far. They also chose S. A. Cosby's All the Sinners Bleed as their pick for the best mystery and thriller of the year released up to this point. Not to be outdone, Barnes and Noble selected their "best of the year thus far" lists in several more whimsical categories, such as Best Unconventional Detective: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley; Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina; and Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery by Margot Douaihy.

Even the Library Journal jumped into the fray with "The Best Thriller Books of the Year (So Far)." You can see which fifteen books made it that list via this link. (HT to Jeff Pierce at The Rap Sheet.)

RIP, Carol Higgins Clark, who has passed away at 66 from rare appendix cancer. Higgins Clark was best known for following in the footsteps of her mother, the best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark, with whom she also collaborated on Christmas-themed anthologies. Ms. Higgins Clark authored more than a dozen novels featuring Regan Reilly, a private investigator who is the daughter of a mystery writer, including Decked, which was nominated for the Agatha Award in 1992 and the Anthony Award for best first novel. Higgins Clark also acted in several film adaptations of her mother's books, beginning with a small role in Where Are the Children? and leading to a leading role in movies such as A Cry in the Night.

Two weeks from tonight, Noir at the Bar Dallas returns to The Wild Detectives at 314 W 8th St in Oak Cliff. Readings will take place from 7 to 9 pm from authors to include Rod Davis, Harry Hunsicker, Kathleen Kent, Keith Lansdale, Scott Montgomery, Sean C. Wright Neeley, Jim Nesbitt, Graham Powell, Opalina Salas, Kevin R. Tipple, Danni Trest, and Trang Vu. (HT to Kevin Tipple)


This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Jealous Guy" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover chatted with RA Cramblitt about his latest book, Like Printing Money, a technological crime novel set in Baltimore; and Writers Who Kill spoke with Krista Davis about The Diva Delivers on a Promise, Davis's sixteenth book in her Domestic Diva Mystery series.

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

Apple Original Films and Matthew Vaughn’s MARV has set the release schedule for Vaughn’s spy thriller, Argylle, based on the yet-to-be-released novel of the same name by first-time author Elly Conway (for more on the mystery behind that, click here). The film will be released in theaters worldwide, in partnership with Universal Pictures, on February 2, 2024, before streaming globally on Apple TV+. Henry Cavill stars as Argylle, the titular troubled agent who takes on one of the most powerful men in the world. Suffering from amnesia, he is tricked into believing he is a best-selling spy novelist. However, once his memories and lethal spycraft skills come back to him, he goes down a path of revenge against the shadowy organization he used to work for, known only as The Division. The cast also features Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by Vaughn, Argylle is scripted by Jason Fuchs.

A trailer was released for Mob Land, the upcoming crime drama starring John Travolta. Directed by Nicholas Maggio, the crime thriller is set deep in the heart of Dixie in a small town struggling with the ravages of addiction, where a local sheriff (Travolta) tries to maintain the peace when a desperate family man, Trey, and his reckless brother-in-law, Shelby (Kevin Dillon and Shiloh Fernandez), rob a pill mill. Trey and Shelby’s actions won’t go unnoticed by the mafia boss as they find themselves - and their families - caught in the crosshairs of vengeance and greed.

Netflix has unveiled Tudum, a global fan event set to provide fans with exclusives and first looks at some of their favorite original titles, with this one being the long awaited Gal Gadot action vehicle, Heart Of Stone. Along with Gadot, the film stars Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt (in her first English language feature), and Sophie Okonedo. Netflix is tight-lipped about the full synopsis but it's reportedly about an intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency who races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon. Described by Gadot and Dornan as "epic in scope," Heart of Stone is an international espionage thriller that incorporates a female perspective into action franchises, comparable to Mission: Impossible and James Bond films.

A trailer was also released for Extraction II, based on the 2014 graphic novel Ciudad by Andre Park, with Chris Hemsworth returning as fearless black market mercenary, Tyler Rake. After barely surviving his grievous wounds from his mission in Bangladesh in the first outing, Rake reassembles his team to save the imprisoned family of a ruthless gangster.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Netflix and Aggregate prevailed in a bidding war to secure the rights to writer David Gauvey Herbert’s 2021 Esquire magazine article, "Daddy Ball." The article starts the way most dad-on-dad youth-sports rivalries do but two fathers, both with complicated pasts, took it all too far. There were claims of stalking, corrupt cops, and mob connections. Determined not to follow in his detached father’s footsteps, Bobby Sanfilippo found himself doing quite the opposite with his son. He became entangled in an epic travel baseball dad-on-dad rivalry with a man named John Reardon that led tabloids to call him one of the worst dads in youth-sports history. It starts in the world of Little League baseball and expands into a Beef-like war between two smalltime criminal fathers. Both Sanfilippo and Reardon have rap sheets of their own, but what went down in the summer of 2012 at Baseball Heaven will define them and their families forever.

NCIS: Sydney has found its agents. The decades-old franchise’s debut international version for Paramount+ and Network 10 has Olivia Swann (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow) playing NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey and Todd Lasance (Spartacus: War of the Damned) playing Sergeant Jim "JD" Dempsey. The duo are joined by Sean Sagar as NCIS Special Agent, DeShawn Jackson; Tuuli Narkle as AFP Liaison Officer, Constable Evie Cooper; Mavournee Hazel as AFP Forensic Scientist, Bluebird ‘Blue’ Gleeson; and William McInnes as AFP Forensic Pathologist, Dr. Roy Penrose.

Bohemian Rhapsody star Lucy Boynton is set to headline the ITV series, Ruth, about the last woman to hang in the UK. Boynton will play Ruth Ellis, a nightclub hostess who was hanged at the age of 28 after fatally shooting her abusive lover, David Blakely. The four-part series is made by ITV Studios-backed Vera producer Silverprint Pictures. It's written by Kelly Jones (The Long Call) and based on Carol Ann Lee’s biography, A Fine Day for Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story. Ruth is told over two parallel timelines, with one half of the story following Ellis’ entry into a dizzying upper-class London and her ultimate downfall. The other follows John Bickford, Ellis’s lawyer, as he unravels secret truths about the case that remained hidden for decades.

FX released a first look at A Murder at the End of the World (f/k/a Retreat). The project is a limited-run mystery series with a new kind of detective at the helm: a Gen Z amateur sleuth named Darby Hart (Emma Corrin). Darby and eight other guests are invited by a reclusive billionaire (Clive Owen) to participate in a retreat at a remote and dazzling location. When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must use all of her skills to prove it was murder against a tide of competing interests and before the killer takes another life.

The BBC has released first-look images for The Sixth Commandment, a brand new four-part true crime drama that explores the deaths of Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, and the extraordinary events that unfolded over the following years. Penned by Sarah Phelps, it stars Timothy Spall and Anne Reid and tells the story of how the meeting of an inspirational teacher and a charismatic student, Ben Field (Éanna Hardwicke), set the stage for one of the most complex and confounding criminal cases in recent memory.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club visited Sweden to talk to author Tove Alsterdal about her book, You Will Never Be Found, which features police officer Eira Sjödin.

Read or Dead hosts Kendra Winchester and Katie McLain Horner discussed mysteries and thrillers for Audiobook Month.

On Crime Time FM, Dreda Say Mitchell and Ryan Carter chatted with Paul Burke about their new psychological thriller Believe Me; new ways of publishing; the Groucho Club; and writing partners.

Bloody Good

This year’s Bloody Scotland crime-writing festival, which will take place in Stirling, Scotland, from September 15 to 17, announced the finalists for their two prestigious awards, the McIlvanney Prize, awarded to the best Scottish Crime book of the year (renamed in 2016 in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the "Godfather of Tartan Noir"); and the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. The winners will be declared at Bloody Scotland on Friday, September 15. Congrats to all!

This list of this year's nominees include:

McIlvanney Prize

• Ritual of Fire, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
• The Things We Do to Our Friends, by Heather Darwent (Penguin)
• The Maiden, by Kate Foster (Mantle)
• Penitent, by Mark Leggatt (Fledgling Press)
• The Bookseller of Inverness, by S.G. Maclean (Quercus)
• Squeaky Clean, by Callum McSorley (Pushkin)
• 1989, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• The Second Murderer, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
• Cast a Cold Eye, by Robbie Morrison (Macmillan)
• A Heart Full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• The Devil’s Playground, by Craig Russell (Little, Brown)
• An Honourable Thief, by Douglas Skelton (Canelo)

Debut Prize

• Unsolved, by Heather Critchlow (Canelo)
• The Things We Do to Our Friends, by Heather Darwent (Penguin)
• The Maiden, by Kate Foster (Mantle)
• Squeaky Clean, by Callum McSorley (Pushkin)
• The Unforgiven Dead, by Fulton Ross (Inkshares)

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Voice Out of Darkness

Ursula Reilly Curtiss (1923-1984) came into the world with fairly impressive crime-fiction genes. Her mother, Helen Reilly, her sister, Mary McMullen, and her brother, James Kieran, all wrote mysteries. Curtis didn't start out that way, working first as a columnist for the Fairfield, Connecticut News in 1942, at age 19, followed by a stint as a fashion copy writer. She began writing mystery/suspense novels, full-time at that, when she married John Curtiss in 1947 (the marriage no doubt helping her financial circumstances enough to give her that opportunity). Her first book, Voice Out of Darkness, won the Red Badge Award for the best new mystery of 1948.

Rather than penning police procedurals like her mother, Curtiss focused on the type of story where an innocent bystander gets pulled reluctantly into becoming an amateur sleuth — against a backdrop of seeming domestic calm, with layers of evil hiding behind family secrets and familiar faces. Her protagonists were usually female, except for works like 1951's The Noonday Devil where the main character is a man who learns his brother's death as a Japanese POW was carefully planned by a fellow prisoner.

Voice Out of Darkness falls into the female-protagonist camp, where we find that thirteen years prior to the events of the book, Katy Meredith lost her foster-sister, Monica, in a skating accident. Although Katy tried to save Monica, Monica's last words were "Katy pushed me." Katy thought she'd escaped both her home town and the horrors of Monica's death by moving to New York, until she starts receiving threatening notes in the mail. At first she wonders if someone else near the ice that day overheard Monica's words and is trying to blackmail her, but when Katy returns to her childhood home, she finds evidence of a calculating killer whose sights are now set on her.

Curtiss has moments of crisp observations in her writing, such as the following character study:

She was disconcerted, in the midst of her apologies for lateness, by Lieutenant Hooper's mild and wren-like appearance; he looked, she thought, like a portrait of a suburban traveller. Rubbers. Plaid woollen muffler, an air of having been assembled, eyed critically, and finally dismissed on the 8:32 by a bustling, dutiful wife. Except for his eyes: shrewd, steady, impartial as jewellers' scales.

or this excerpt about Fenwick, Connecticut, Katy's home town:

[It] had its replicas all over the New England coast. It lay sheltered in a tumble of windy hills, its architecture a blend of pure old Colonial and the raw new bones of housing developments. Its chief prosperity came from the summer visitors who came to splash and play in its wide blue crescent of Sound and laugh delightedly at its ancient moviehouse. Its chief crop was gossip, sown and grown with zest...

Curtiss' strengths are in her characterizations, setting and pacing, the novel being a quick read, which helps make the slight thinness and predictability of the plot (at least by 21st-century eyes looking backward), not much of a distraction. Curtiss later had two of her books, made into movies, I Saw What You Did from 1965, based on Curtiss' novel Out of the Dark, starring Joan Crawford, and 1969's What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, based on the author's novel The Forbidden Garden, featuring Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon. Curtiss also wrote the screenplays for a couple of television episodes of Detective and Climax Mystery Theater.

Mystery Melange

The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, produced by Harrogate International Festivals, has been announced with six bestselling authors competing to win the UK’s most wanted crime writing prize. The public is now invited to vote for the winner via this link. The six novels shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023 are:

• The Botanist by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown Book Group; Constable)
• Into The Dark by Fiona Cummins (Pan Macmillan; Macmillan/Pan)
• The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• Black Hearts by Doug Johnstone (Orenda Books)
• Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (Penguin Random House; Michael Joseph)
• The It Girl by Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster)
  
  

Goldsboro Books, based in London, has announced its longlist of contenders for the 2023 Glass Bell Award, which "celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction, regardless of genre." This year, the list of twelve finalists includes one crime novel, Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel this year), although Metronome by Tom Watson is also technically a sci-fi suspense thriller. You can check out the full list of nominees via this link. A shortlist of candidates will be released on Thursday, July 27, with the winner to be revealed on September 28. The prize includes £2,000 and a handmade glass bell.

The 2023 Lambda Literary Award winners have been announced, including the winner of the Best LGBTQ+ Mystery, Dirt Creek: A Novel by Hayley Scrivenor. The other finalists in that category include: Dead Letters from Paradise by Ann McMan; A Death in Berlin by David C Dawson; And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling; and Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen.

The conference Crime Fiction and Democracy will be held at Paris Nanterre University, June 22-24. This multidisciplinary symposium will explore the complex and multifaceted relationship between the detective novel and democracy, from the end of the 19th century to the present day, and is organized by the Anglophone Research Center (Paris Nanterre University) and Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with the Multidisciplinary Research Center (Paris Nanterre University).

Bruce Lisman is selling a trove of 18th and 19th-century American books and rarities via an auction at Christie's. His collection offers a rare look into the foundations of American literature, including rare and inscribed works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman. Edgar Allan Poe is also represented by such works as an inscribed Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque from 1840, with an estimated bidding range of $300,000-$500,000.

Adam Mitzner is a practicing attorney in a Manhattan law firm and the bestselling author of Dead Certain, Never Goodbye, and The Best Friend in the Broden Legal series as well as the stand-alone thrillers A Matter of Will, A Conflict of Interest, A Case of Redemption, Losing Faith, The Girl from Home, and The Perfect Marriage. Mitzner applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Love Betrayal Murder.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Bae" by Melodie Bolt.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill's Grace Topping interviewed Linda Norlander about Death of a Fox, the latest book in A Cabin by the Lake Mystery Series; Crime Fiction Lover spoke with Danish crime fiction author, Michael Katz Krefeld, who can now be read in English with the recent translation of his novel, Darkness Calls, published in May 2023.

Shamus Supremacy

Via PWA Awards Chairperson John Shepphird, the Private Eye Writers of America announced the finalists for the 2023 Shamus Awards. The annual awards celebrate crime fiction that features as a main character a person paid for investigative work but not employed for that work by a unit of government. These include traditionally licensed private investigators; lawyers and reporters who do their own investigations; and others who function as hired private agents. Congratulations to all this year's finalists!

BEST PI HARDCOVER

• The Wheel of Doll by Jonathan Ames (Mulholland Books)
• The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide (Mulholland Books)
• Holmes Coming by Kenneth Johnson (Blackstone Publishing)
• The Blackmail by M. Ravenel (Chikara Press)

BEST ORIGINAL PI PAPERBACK

• Quarry’s Blood by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• DoubleBlind by Libby Fischer Hellmann (The Red Herrings Press)
• Canary in a Coal Mine by Charles Salzberg (Down & Out Books)
• Dead-Bang Fall by J.R. Sanders (Level Best Books)
• Hush Hush by Gabriel Valjan (Historia/Level Best Books)

BEST FIRST PI NOVEL

• Big Fat F@!k-up by Lawrence Allan (M.S. Wooten Press)
• Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen (Minotaur Books)
• Foote by Tom Bredehoft (West Virginia University Press)
• What Meets the Eye by Alex Kenna (Crooked Lane Books)
• The Goldenacre by Philip Miller (Soho Crime) 

BEST  PI SHORT STORY

• “No Place for a Dame" by Lori Armstrong (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
• “Charlie’s Medicine” by Libby Cudmore (Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon/Down & Out Books)
• “A Jelly of Intrigue” by O’Neil De Noux (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
• “The Pearl of Antilles” by Caroline Garcia-Aguilera (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
• “Bad Actor” by Elliot Sweeney (Nov/Dec 2022, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)