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:

AWARDS

The winners of the Golden Globe Awards, handed out annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were presented last night via a virtual ceremony. This year's awards have been tempered by both the Covid-19 pandemic and several controversies, including the lack of diversity and antitrust accusations. But the show must go on, apparently. The winners of note for crime drama fans include Best Performance By An Actress In A Motion Picture: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday; Best Supporting Actress, Jodie Foster for The Mauritanian; Best Supporting Actor, Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah; Best Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin for The Trial of the Chicago 7.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Director David Fincher and actor Michael Fassbender are teaming up for The Killer, Fincher’s long-gestating assassin drama that may finally go before cameras this year, according to Hollywood Reporter. In a deal that is still coming together, Fassbender would star as an assassin who begins to psychologically crack as he develops a conscience, even while his clients continue to demand his skills. The story is based on a hardboiled-noir French graphic novel of the same name written by Alexis Nolent (under the pen name Matz) and artist Luc Jacamon.

Ryan Gosling is set to star in and produce an upcoming thriller called The Actor from director Duke Johnson. The film is based on Donald Westlake's novel, Memory, with Johnson and Stephen Cooney penning the screenplay. The story centers on New York actor Paul Cole (Gosling), who's beaten and left for dead in 1950s Ohio. Stripped of his memory and stranded in a mysterious small town, Paul struggles to get back home and reclaim what he’s lost.

Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan are set to star in a thriller called Black Flies that will be directed by filmmaker, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. The project is based on Shannon Burke’s novel of the same name and follows two paramedics driving the streets of New York in an ambulance — one a young student who dreams of going to medical school and the other a grizzled veteran and one of the city’s best medics. Black Flies is described as "a thriller about the toll that saving lives inflicts on paramedics, and the film aims to give a street-view look at one paramedic’s struggle to feel he’s making a difference."

Christian Bale and director Scott Cooper are set to make their third film together in Cooper’s scripted adaptation of the Louis Bayard novel, The Pale Blue Eye. The thriller revolves around the attempt to solve a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale will play a veteran detective who investigates the murders, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.

Ray Donovan fans will finally get a satisfactory ending to their favorite Showtime series. Donovan's fixer character is returning in a feature-length film that will pick up where season seven left off after its surprise cancellation last year. Liev Schreiber will return as Donovan and will co-write the script with series showrunner, David Hollander, who will also direct. Jon Voight will reprise his role as Mickey Donovan, as will Kerris Dorsey as Ray’s daughter, Bridget. Production is tentatively scheduled to begin later this year in New York.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins will be sleuthing his way back to the screen. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television has closed a deal to develop and produce a television series adapted from Walter Mosley’s bestselling gritty historical fiction mystery series starring Rawlins, one of literature’s most popular Black investigators. The drama, based on Mosley’s fifteen novels and collection of short stories centered on the WWII army veteran turned hard-boiled private eye, will be set in 1950s Los Angeles. The last time Rawlins fans saw the P.I. off the pages and on the screen was Denzel Washington’s rendition of the protagonist in the 1995 neo-noir crime thriller, Devil in a Blue Dress.

ViacomCBS has several series adapted from Paramount’s library of films in the pipeline for the streaming service Paramount+. The adaptations that Paramount Television Studios will produce include a series based on the psychosexual thriller, Fatal Attraction; another on the heist film, The Italian Job; and a third on the political thriller, The Parallax View. The projects also join a previously announced series based on The Godfather. Most of these are described as "reimagining" storylines, with the Italian Job series going so far as to center on the grandchildren of Michael Caine’s Charlie Croker character in the 1969 film.

Jeremy Renner is set as the lead in Paramount+’s anticipated drama series, Mayor of Kingstown, from Yellowstone co-creator, Taylor Sheridan. Mayor of Kingstown follows the McLusky family – power brokers in Kingstown, Michigan - where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. Tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality, the series provides a stark look at their attempt to bring order and justice to a town that has neither.

Taylor Kitsch has been cast to star alongside Chris Pratt in the Amazon thriller series, The Terminal List. The series, based on the Jack Carr novel of the same name, follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Kitsch will play Ben Edwards, a former SEAL and James Reece’s best friend. Now a member of CIA Ground Branch, Edwards uses his intelligence access and operator skill set to help Reece seek his vengeance.

Last week, it was announced that a Criminal Minds reboot might be in the works, and this week brings word that Paramount+ also has plans for a companion unscripted series. Tentatively titled The Real Criminal Minds, the true-crime docuseries will feature a real former FBI profiler and examine real cases and real criminal behavior, illustrated by clips from the fictional Criminal Minds series.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys, a novel about a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and had its history of abuse exposed by a university's investigation, was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes program.

It was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a tribute to Black mystery authors.

Crime Writers of Color welcomed Bianca Sloane, author of the suspense novels What You Don’t Know, Sweet Little Lies, Every Breath You Take and Killing Me Softly (previously published as Live and Let Die).

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Still Life" by Lori Rader-Day, as read by actor Cha Yang.


A second season of Lynda La Plante's Listening to the Dead true crime podcast launched with an episode titled, "Cause of Death - Blunt Force Trauma."

Read or Dead hosts, Katie and Nusrah, talked about mystery and thriller reads featuring romance gone right, and romance gone very wrong.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with bestselling author Mark Greaney, whose debut international thriller, The Gray Man, was published in 2009 and became a national bestseller and a highly sought-after Hollywood property. Ten subsequent Gray Man novels have been released to date, including his latest, Relentless. Mark is also the author or coauthor of seven Tom Clancy novels and collaborated with Tom Clancy on three Jack Ryan novels before Tom’s death in 2013.

Eliza Lentzski was this week's featured author on Queer Writers of Crime. Eliza is a historian by day who has also authored lesbian fiction and romance novels, including the best-selling series Winter Jacket and Don’t Call Me Hero.

Criminal Mischief took on the topic of "Setting As Character." Can a story be set just anywhere? Some can, but most rely on the location and time period to underpin and amplify the story.

Wrong Place, Write Crime chatted with Martin Roy Hill about his latest book, The Fourth Rising.

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.

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.

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:

AWARDS

The Golden Globe Awards announced the nominees for 2021, in a year severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and theatre closings/production delays. There weren't a lot of crime drama nods among the film selections, although The Trial of the Chicago 7 made the list for Best Drama, with Aaron Sorkin also nominated for Best Director. The dark comedy thriller, Promising Young Woman, also was nominated for Best Drama, as was its director, Emerald Fennell, and lead actress, Carey Mulligan. The other Best Actress nods included Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday, in which the FBI launches an undercover sting operation against the legendary jazz singer, and on the Best Actor side, Tahar Rahim was nominated for his role in The Mauritanian, a true story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi's experience of being held for fourteen years without charge in Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

The TV side also had a few crime drama honors, notably Ozark and Ratched for Best Drama Series, and the dark crime comedy, The Flight Attendant, for Best Musical/Comedy Series. For Best Actor in a Drama Series, Bryan Cranston was nominated (Your Honor) as was Hugh Grant (The Undoing). Best Actress in a Drama Series nods included Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), Laura Linney (Ozark), and Sarah Paulson (Ratched). 

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) also announced the nominees for their annual awards. Among the crime/thriller dramas there are Da 5 Bloods and The Trial of the Chicago 7 competing for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and on the TV side, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series includes Better Call Saul and Ozark.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Following the successful launch of The White Tiger, filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, author Aravind Adiga, and Netflix have set their next collaboration for the big screen, Adiga's 2020 novel, Amnesty. Set in Australia, the story centers on Danny, an undocumented immigrant who cleans houses and realizes he has information about the murder of one of his employers. Over the course of one tense summer day, Danny plays a cat-and-mouse game with the man he suspects to be the murderer, but he realizes that if he speaks up, he will be deported.

Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films and New Republic Pictures (NRP) have signed on to produce Queen Bitch & The High Horse, which will be directed by the female writing/directing team Bert & Bertie. The project is inspired by the largest municipal fraud in American history and follows Penny Banks, an ambitious woman whose passion for civic duty was eclipsed by her love for horses. As she rises the ranks of city hall, she embezzles millions to fund a show horse empire.

Ruth Wilson is set to co-star in Searchlight’s untitled murder mystery, to be directed by Tom George and to co-star Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, David Oyelowo, and Adrien Brody. Written by Mark Chappell, the script is set in 1950s London where a desperate Hollywood film producer sets out to turn a popular West End play into a film. When members of the production are murdered, world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and overzealous rookie Constable Stalker (Ronan) find themselves in the midst of a puzzling whodunit within London’s glamorous Theatreland and sordid underground.

Jennifer Lopez is reteaming with Netflix to star in and produce the action feature, The Mother, which Mulan director Niki Caro is in talks to direct. Lopez will play a deadly female assassin who comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men. 

Warner Bros. has announced that Those Who Wish Me Dead, a neo-Western film starring Angelina Jolie, has slotted its release date for May 14 (debuting both in theaters and on HBO Max). Based on Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel of the same name, the film follows a teenager who witnesses a murder and finds himself being pursued by twin assassins in the Montana wilderness. Though there is a survival expert tasked with protecting him, a forest fire threatens to destroy them all.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox has put in development Red Widow, a one-hour CIA thriller based on Alma Katsu’s forthcoming book. The story revolves around the lives of two female CIA agents that become intertwined around an internal threat to the Agency’s Russia Division, as they navigate the mostly male world of intelligence. Author and former NSA/CIA senior intelligence analyst, Katsu, is attached as an executive producer

Stone Village Television has acquired TV rights for Alex Michaelides' second thriller, The Maidens, which will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in June 2021. The Maidens is said to weave together Greek mythology, psychology, and murder to deliver a "spellbinding" literary thriller. Michaelides first novel, The Silent Patient, debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list at No.1 in 2019.

Amazon has commissioned its first true-crime series, Gefesselt (working title). Produced by Neue Bioskop and directed by Florian Schwarz, the six-part show describes the search for the so-called "acid barrel killer," who terrorized Hamburg between 1986 and 1992. He was finally hunted down only by the courageous efforts of a woman who was not part of the actual investigating team, but who, as a contact person for the relatives of the victims, picked up the trail of the perpetrator and had to assert herself against resistance within the police.

ABC has handed a pilot order to National Parks, a drama written by actor Kevin Costner, Aaron Helbing, and author Jon Baird. The one-hour drama, formerly known as ISB, follows a small group of elite National Park 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.

In her broadcast debut, two-time Oscar winner, Renée Zellweger, is set to headline and executive produce the limited series, The Thing About Pam, which has been greenlighted by NBC with a six-episode straight-to-series order. The project is based on the real-life murder of Betsy Faria, which resulted in her husband Russ’s conviction. He always insisted that he did not kill her, and his conviction was later overturned as the brutal crime set off a chain of events exposing a diabolical scheme involving Pam Hupp (Zellweger).

Becki Newton is set as a lead opposite Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix’s drama series based on Michael Connelly's bestselling novels. Additionally, Jazz Raycole and Angus Sampson, who had been cast in the project’s previous incarnation at CBS, have made deals to continue in their roles on Netflix. The moves round out the main adult cast, which also includes Neve Campbell, who had started the casting process with an offer for the CBS pilot. The Lincoln Lawyer revolves around Mickey Haller (Garcia-Rulfo), an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.

Eddie Izzard, Jo Joyner, and Andi Osho are joining Cush Jumbo and James Nesbitt in the cast of Harlan Coben’s Netflix drama, Stay Close. Other previously announced cast members include Richard Armitage, Sarah Parish, Daniel Francis, Bethany Antonia, Rachel Andrews, Poppy Gilbert, and Hyoie O’Grady. The eight-part drama will follow three key characters whose dark secrets resurface and set off a chain of events that threatens to destroy their lives.

Newcomer Candace Grace has been tapped as the lead in Sam Esmail’s ABC drama pilot, Acts of Crime. Also joining as series regulars are Molly Price, Peter Mark Kendall, and newcomer Josiah Cross. Written and directed by Esmail, Acts of Crime is described as "a unique spin on the crime procedural," although no other details have been revealed. Grace will play Vivien Lamonte, a Black police detective working homicide in suburban New Jersey, whose early years were spent on the wrong side of the law. Price plays Captain Gunn, while Kendall will play Todd, a spry rookie detective who went to law school but decided that he wanted to "catch the bad guys" instead of prosecuting them.

Bones alumna Tamara Taylor is set as a lead opposite Christopher Meloni and Dylan McDermott in Law & Order: Organized Crime, NBC’s Law & Order: SVU spinoff series slated to premiere later this year. In Law & Order: Organized Crime, Elliot Stabler (Meloni) returns to the NYPD to battle organized crime after a devastating personal loss. Stabler will aim to rebuild his life as part of a new elite task force that is taking apart the city’s most powerful criminal syndicates one by one. NBC has set April 1st as the premiere date, which is a two-hour crossover with SVU.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest Crime Writers of Color podcast featured E. A. Aymar (a/k/a E. A. Barres), author of They’re Gone, as interviewed by Robert Justice.

Meet the Thriller Author's special guest this week was Walter Mosley, whose books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages. Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, James H. Roby, a former Air Force officer and author of the Urban Knights thriller series, for the Crime Cafe podcast.

Writer Types chatted with German best seller, Sebastian Fitzek, about his new novel, The Package and Isabella Maldonado about her new series starter, The Cipher; debut author Fiona King Foster also chatted about her novel, The Captive; and in a new segment, Jason Pinter and Nick Petrie discussed long-running series and how to keep up the quality.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Daniel Pyne to dicsuss his new thriller, Water Memory, featuring former black ops expert turned private security contractor, Aubrey Sentro.

Suspense Magazine's podcast sat down with Victoria Thompson, as she talked about her latest book, City Of Schemes, the fourth installment in her Counterfeit Lady series.

The featured guest on My Favorite Detective Stories was James D.F. Hannah, Shamus Award-winning author of the Henry Malone series, as well as the novel, The Righteous Path.

Mick Herron returned to the Spybrary Podcast to discusses his latest novel, Slough House, which takes a look at the corrupt web of media, global finance, spycraft, and politics that power our modern world.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Lawrence Maddo‪x about his new novella, The Down and Out.

Queer Writers of Crime welcomed Edwin Hill, the author of critically-acclaimed crime novels Watch Her, The Missing Ones, and Little Comfort. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha Awards and was recognized as one of "Six Crime Writers to Watch" in Mystery Scene magazine

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club podcast offered a roundup of romantic suspense titles.

The latest episode of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's podcast included a story by Edward D. Hoch, who had a thirty-five-year streak of unbroken publication in each issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine until his death in early 2008. EQMM editor Janet Hutchings read his story "The Man Who Drowned in Champagne," from the April 1998 issue.

On The Writer's Detective Bureau, host and veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, talked about transporting an inmate from federal custody to testify in state court, creating realistic clandestine drug lab scenes, and the realities of cops using drones for an aerial search.

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.

Gerard McMurray, who directed Burning Sands for Netflix, is set to return to the studio to direct The Formula, starring John Boyega and Robert De Niro. The Formula follows a Formula One racing prodigy who is forced to become a getaway driver to save the only family he has left.

Alyssa Milano will star in Netflix's feature film adaptation of Nora Roberts's romance thriller, Brazen Virtue. Milano plays Grace, a prominent mystery writer and crime expert, who hurries back to her family home in Washington, D.C., after her estranged sister summons her. When her sister is killed and her double life as a webcam performer is revealed, Grace ignores the warnings of a cool-headed detective and gets involved in the case. Unfortunately, the casting choice of Milano caused a bit of controversy that Roberts felt compelled to defend publicly.

Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson are set to join Daisy Edgar-Jones in the film adaptation of the bestselling novel, Where The Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. Set up at Sony, the film is being directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay written by Oscar-nominated scribe Lucy Alibar. The story takes place in the mid-20th century South and centers on Kya, a young woman who is abandoned by her family and has to raise herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. However, when her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is thrust into the spotlight, instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Critics Choice Association, the largest critics organization in the U.S. and Canada, representing more than 400 television, radio and online critics and entertainment reporters, announced the nominees for the 26th annual Critics Choice Awards for television (the film nominees will be revealed on February 8). Crime dramas nominated in the Best Drama Series category include Better Call Saul (AMC), The Good Fight (CBS All Access), Ozark (Netflix), and Perry Mason (HBO). Best Actor noms include Jason Bateman for Ozark; Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul; and Matthew Rhys for Perry Mason. Best Actress nominees include Christine Baranski for The Good Fight (CBS All Access) and Laura Linney for Ozark.

HBO has acquired the rights to adapt Alex Marzano-Lesnevich's book, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, as a limited series. Jeremiah Zagar (Hustle) will co-write the script, exec produce, and direct. The drama revolves around a young lawyer whose opposition to the death penalty is shaken when she's assigned the case of a child murderer—whose complicated life story parallels the long-suppressed trauma of her past.

Dylan McDermott is heading to New York to star in Law & Order: Organized Crime. McDermott, best known for his role on ABC’s long-running drama, The Practice, will star alongside Christopher Meloni in the NBC drama. Meloni is reprising his role as Elliot Stabler, who returns to the NYPD to battle organized crime after a devastating personal loss. Stabler will aim to rebuild his life as part of a new elite task force that is taking apart the city’s most powerful criminal syndicates one by one.

French mystery thriller, Lupin, is returning to Netflix for its second half of season one this summer. The series has become a surprising hit for the streamer, with 70M households projected to watch since its launch on January 8, making it easily Netflix's biggest French original. The project is a contemporary adaptation of the novels penned by French writer Maurice LeBlanc and stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop, who uses the world famous gentleman thief and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin, as his inspiration as he tries to get revenge on those responsible for his father's death.

Jamie Dornan has been cast as the lead of The Tourist, a limited series from BBC One and HBO Max. Along with Dornan, the six-episode show will star Danielle Macdonald, Shalom Brune-Franklin, and Hugo Weaving. The Tourist centers on a British man (Dornan) who finds himself in the heart of the Australian outback being pursued by a vast tank truck trying to drive him off the road. An epic cat and mouse chase unfolds and the man later wakes in the hospital, hurt, but somehow alive. Except he has no idea who he is. With merciless figures from the man’s past pursuing him, his search for answers propels him through the vast and unforgiving outback.

The Canadian legal drama, Diggstown, is heading to the U.S. after Fox acquired the series. Diggstown follows Marcie Diggs (Vinessa Antoine Antoine), as a corporate lawyer who reconsiders her priorities and moves to work in a legal-aid office after her beloved aunt takes her own life following the pressures of a malicious prosecution. The team of lawyers that Marcie works with are a curious band of do-gooders, cynics, and scrappers – messy souls struggling to keep personal disappointment and demons out of their practice. The cast also includes Natasha Henstridge, C. David Johnson, Stacey Farber, Brandon Oakes, Shailene Garnett, Tim Rozon, and Dwain Murphy.

lan Cumming has been tapped for a recurring role opposite Michael Sheen and Tom Payne on Fox’s serial-killer thriller drama, Prodigal Son. The series follows Malcolm Bright (Payne), son of "The Surgeon" (Sheen), who as a child was responsible for enabling the police to arrest his father. Now a profiler, who formerly worked for the FBI until he was fired, he currently consults for the New York Police Department. Bright is forced to confront his father after a copycat serial killer uses his father's methods of killing, and then uses his father's insights to help the police solve particularly horrible crimes and battle his own inner demons.

Scandal actor, Dan Bucatinsky, is returning to ABC’s Thursday lineup, joining the cast of ABC’s new Katey Sagal-starring series, Rebel, which was slotted in the Thursday 10 PM slot starting April 8. Created by Krista Vernoff and inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich, Rebel centers on Annie "Rebel" Bello (Sagal), a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree. She’s a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves. Bucatinsky will play Jason Erickson, an edgy, somewhat bitter university professor from whom Rebel (Sagal) seeks help.

Jen Landon (Yellowstone, Animal Kingdom) is set for a recurring role opposite Yaya Gosselin on the second season of CBS’s drama series FBI: Most Wanted. Landon will play Sarah Allen, Tali’s (Gosselin) riding instructor. The FBI spinoff, from Universal Television and Wolf Entertainment, stars Julian McMahon, Kellan Lutz, Roxy Sternberg, Keisha Castle-Hughes and Nathaniel Arcand.

David E. Kelley’s hit freshman ABC drama series, Big Sky, continues to bulk up its cast with the addition of five high profile recurring guest stars, Michelle Forbes, Britt Robertson, Michael Raymond-James, Ryan Dorsey and Omar Metwally. They join recently cast new series regular Ted Levine, who plays powerful ranch owner Horst Kleinsasse, and Kyle Schmid, who will recur as his second-born son John Wayne Kleinsasse. The crime thriller series, created by Kelley based on C.J Box’s book, follows private detective Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) and ex-cop Jenny Hoyt (Katheryn Winnick) who join forces to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana. But when they discover that these are not the only girls who have disappeared in the area, they must race against the clock to stop the killer before another woman is taken.

Netflix’s drama-thriller series, Pieces of Her, starring Oscar nominee Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote, has added Jessica Barden, Omari Hardwick, David Wenham, Joe Dempsie, and Jacob Scipio to its ensemble cast. The series adaptation is based on the author Karin Slaughter’s thriller novel of the same name. Pieces of Her will be set in a sleepy Georgia town where a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver (Heathcote) and her mother Laura (Collette). Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family.

David Magidoff has been added to the cast of Showtime’s Dexter revival set in the upstate New York town of Iron Lake. He will co-star opposite Michael C. Hall, Clancy Brown, Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, and Jack Alcott in the 10-episode limited series, which begins production next month in Massachusetts. Magidoff will play Teddy, a quirky new cop who is a little scared of his boss, Police Chief Angela Bishop (Jones). The original series, which ran from 2008-13, followed Dexter Morgan (Hall), a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department who moonlighted as a serial killer.

Apple TV+ has renewed its first non-English language original series, the Israeli espionage thriller drama, Tehran, for a second season. Tehran tells the story of Mossad agent, Tamar Rabinyan, who goes deep undercover on a dangerous mission in Tehran that places her and everyone around her in dire jeopardy.

Just three episodes into The Blacklist’s eighth season, NBC’s long-running drama has been picked up for a ninth season. The series stars James Spader as Raymond "Red" Reddington, a former U.S. Navy officer turned high-profile criminal who voluntarily surrenders to the FBI after eluding capture for decades. The cast also includes Megan Boone, Diego Klattenhoff, Amir Arison, Hisham Tawfiq, Laura Sohn, and Harry Lennix.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the mystery short story, "The Bucket List," written by Ang Pompano and read by actor Teya Juarez.

Read or Dead discussed books that make use of unique formats to tell their story.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Gregg Hurwitz, bestselling author of 22 thrillers including the ORPHAN X series.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Julie Holmes to discuss her novel, Murder in Plane Sight.

On the latest It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club, New York Times bestseller author, Ellery Adams, stopped by for a look at Ink and Shadows, No. 4 in her Secret, Book & Scone Society Series.

The featured guests on Queer Writers of Crime were authors C.S. Poe and Gregory Ashe, who put their heads together and co-wrote A Friend in the Dark (An Auden O'Callaghan Mystery).

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

Josh Hartnett is set to star opposite Jason Statham, Cary Elwes, and Aubrey Plaza in the latest Miramax/STX feature spy thriller from Guy Ritchie, which originally went by the title Five Eyes. The movie, which is now temporarily untitled, follows MI6 guns-and-steel agent (Statham) who is recruited by a global intelligence agency to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order. Reluctantly paired with a CIA high-tech expert, Fortune sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use all of his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate a billionaire arms broker's network.

In other "Five Eyes" news, Hugh Grant is also in preliminary talks to join Guy Ritche’s action thriller, although the deal has not been finalized. One would think that would have to happen soon, though, since preliminary filming is already underway in Qatar and Turkey.

Four actors have been added to the cast of the Michael Bay-directed action thriller, Ambulance, with Garret Dillahunt, A Martinez, Keir O’Donnell, and Moses Ingram coming on board. The four join current cast members Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza Gonzalez in a feature that’s based off the original Danish film, Ambulancen. While the plot is being kept under wraps, the pic is said to be in the same vein as such 1990s action pictures, Speed and Bad Boys.

This isn't exactly crime drama, but interesting nonetheless; in an interview with People magazine, actor Liam Neeson said he'd been approached by Seth McFarlane and Paramount Studios to maybe resurrect the Naked Gun films, adding "It'll either finish my career or bring it in another direction. I honestly don't know." The original Naked Gun film series was from the late '80s and early '90s (based on the Police Squad! TV show) and followed Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), a bumbling official who always seems to figure out the crime despite wisecracking hijinks.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Sony-backed Eleventh Hour Films has signed up The Crown star Lesley Manville to lead the cast of its PBS/BritBox crime series, Magpie Murders, with Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) set as the director. Manville will star as Susan Ryeland, an editor who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest novel but has little idea it will change her life. The six-part series is based on Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling novel of the same name, with the author adapting his own work for the screen.

Don DeLillo’s novel, Libra, a speculative account of the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy interwoven with the life story of his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, is being adapted for television. First published in 1988, Libra blends fact and fiction to tell the story of the JFK assassination, one of the most mythologized events in American history, and explores the U.S.’s obsession with and relationship to conspiracy. The book was shortlisted for the National Book Award, and the New York Times called it "DeLillo’s richest novel."

Channel 5 and Acorn TV have jointly commissioned new six part thriller, The Reluctant Madame Blanc (working title), written by Sally Lindsay and Sue Vincent. The new six-part series follows Jean White, a renowned and respected antiques dealer, running a successful business in leafy Cheshire with her husband, Rory. Jean learns that Rory has tragically died on his way home from their vintage treasure-trove stomping grounds in the South of France. Things take a darker turn when she discovers all of their money has disappeared, their shop re-mortgaged to the hilt, and their assets pawned off...except for their cottage in French antiques hub, Saint Victoire. She quickly realizes something is amiss and heads to Saint Victoire, but will Jean get the answers she's seeking?

Swedish crime drama, Bäckström, has been renewed for a second series. The series is based on the books by Leif GW Persso and premiered in Sweden before being picked up by Acorn TV for UK broadcast. It will once again see Kjell Bergqvist play the titular character of homicide detective, Evert Bäckström.

Hit BBC drama, Peaky Blinders, will end after its sixth and final season, but creator and writer Steven Knight has promised the story will "continue in another form." The series follows the story of Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his notorious family’s rise to power against the backdrop of working class, post-WWI Birmingham.

AMC has acquired six-part British revenge thriller, The Beast Must Die. Based on the novel by Nicholas Blake (pen name of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, CBE), it stars Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo and tells the story of a grieving mother who infiltrates the life of the man she believes killed her son.
 

Matt Hamilton, Paul Campbell, and Cristina Rosato are set for recurring roles in Turner & Hooch, Disney+’s reboot of the classic 1989 buddy-cop comedy feature. The TV series, which has a 12-episode order, centers on Scott Turner (Josh Peck), who now is a U.S. marshal, versus the police detective played by Tom Hanks in the film. When the ambitious, buttoned-up marshal inherits a big, unruly dog, he soon realizes the dog he didn’t want might be the partner he needs.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, chatted with crime writer Cathi Stoler about her latest novel, Bar None, from the Murder on the Rocks mystery series.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Cecilia Ekbäck to discuss her new historical mystery, The Historians. The book is set in a Sweden rife with dangerous crosscurrents that young, well-connected Laura Dalgren gets caught up in when Britta Hallberg—her best friend from university—is found murdered. Did Britta sign her own death warrant with the subject of her post-grad thesis?

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with David Rohlfing about his debut crime novel, Deliberate Duplicity.

Queer Writers of Crime chatted with Timothy Jay Smith, who has turned his thrilling life into thrilling fiction.

Robert McCaw was the featured guest on Wrong Place, Write Crime, discussing his Hawaii-based series starring Detective Koa Kane, including the newest release, Death of a Messenger.

Robert Dugoni stopped by the My Favorite Detective Story podcast. The multiple-award-winning Dugoni is the author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, the Charles Jenkins espionage series, and the David Sloane legal thriller series, among many more novels.

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

In a competitive situation, Paramount Players has won the adaptation rights to the new novel from bestselling author S.A. Cosby. Titled Razorblade Tears, the book is set for release this July and is described as a Southern noir about two men who team up to seek vengeance for their murdered sons in the face of intolerance and prejudice in the rural South, finding redemption along the way. Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman are producing the feature, which has yet to attach a director.

Netflix has prevailed in a competitive auction for worldwide rights on Heart of Stone, the espionage thriller developed by Skydance Media with Gal Gadot starring. Tom Harper, who helmed The Aeronauts and Wild Rose, will direct the film that aspires to hatch a female-centric franchise with the action and global scale of film series like Mission: Impossible and James Bond. The script is by Greg Rucka (The Old Guard) and Allison Schroeder, the latter of whom was Oscar-nominated for Hidden Figures.

British rapper, Bugzy Malone, has joined Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, and Cary Elwes in Guy Ritchie’s untitled thriller movie currently filming in Qatar. The story centers on the MI6 "guns-and-steel agent," Orson Fortune (Statham), who is recruited by a global intelligence agency to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order. Reluctantly paired with CIA high-tech expert, Sarah Fidel, Fortune sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate the network of billionaire arms broker, Greg Simmonds. Ritchie will direct and produce from a screenplay written by Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies.

Warner Bros is moving The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, from March 12 to September 24. Alan Taylor directs from a script by Sopranos creator David Chase, with James Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, playing the younger version of Tony Soprano, the role his father played.

James Bond is also on the move again. No Time to Die appears set to switch from its Easter weekend release of April 2 to some time in the fall, as the world waits for the pandemic to come under control. The film was originally slated for a fall 2019 release but has been moved several times since.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

This Is Us star, Justin Hartley, has teamed with the series’ director/executive producer, Ken Olin, to option the rights to Jeffery Deaver’s 2019 thriller novel, The Never Game. The story follows Colter Shaw (Hartley), who travels the country in his old-school RV to help police and private citizens solve crimes and locate missing persons, until his latest case finds him caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims. Hartley’s Shaw is a reward seeker raised by survivalists off the grid and taught the rules of survival, or "The Never Game," as their father called it before he was murdered.

Netflix has given a series order to The Lincoln Lawyer, a drama based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, from Big Little Lies and Big Sky creator, David E. Kelley and A+E Studios. This is a new incarnation of the project, which originally was set up at CBS with a series production commitment last season. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven) has been tapped to play the titular character in the Netflix series as it honors the story’s Hispanic origins. The 10-episode first season is based on the second book in The Lincoln Lawyer series, The Brass Verdict.

ABC is moving forward with Sam Esmail’s procedural drama, Acts of Crime, handing the project a pilot pick-up. The network didn’t offer much detail of the project, which is described as a "unique spin" on the crime procedural.

Dawnn Lewis and Jude Elizabeth Mayer are set as series regulars opposite Tate Donovan and Melissa Leo in the Fox drama pilot, Blood Relative, in recastings. The forensic genealogy-themed crime drama is based on James Renner’s 2018 article "Beyond the Jungle of Bad: The True Story of Two Women from California Who Are Solving All the Mysteries." The article featured Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick and Dr. Margaret Press, who combined their genealogy expertise to push the boundaries of forensic science and help law enforcement identify Joe and Jane Does and track down serial killers.

Slumdog Millionaire star, Freida Pinto, is set to star in and executive produce Spy Princess, a limited series based on Shrabani Basu’s book, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. Noor was the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France in 1943 – a role with a life expectancy of just six weeks. She was the most unlikely heroine of World War II, a Sufi mystic who won’t use a gun and the daughter of a long-haired Indian Guru who preaches love and peace.

FX has opted not to move forward with Redeemer, a drama series that was to have reunited True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto and one of the series’ original stars, Matthew McConaughey. The project had landed a script-to-series commitment at the network in January but was axed after McConaughey decided to exit the project. Created by Pizzolatto and inspired by Patrick Coleman’s debut novel, The Churchgoer, Redeemer was to star McConaughey as a minister-turned-dissolute security guard whose search for a missing woman in Texas leads him through a corruption-steeped criminal conspiracy.

Demetrius "Lil Meech" Flenory Jr. and Da’Vinchi are set to star in Starz’s drama series, Black Mafia Family, from executive producer, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Black Mafia Family is inspired by the true story of two brothers who rose from the decaying streets of southwest Detroit in the late 1980’s and created one of the most influential crime families in this country.

Showtime has set the cast of the upcoming Dexter revival. Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, and Jack Alcott have joined Michael C. Hall and Clancy Brown in the 10-episode limited series, which begins production next month in Massachusetts. The original series, which ran from 2008-13 and remains one of Showtime’s signature dramas, followed Dexter Morgan (Hall), a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department who moonlighted as a serial killer.

CBS has dropped the trailer for Clarice, its Silence of the Lambs sequel series. The drama picks up with Clarice Starling (played by Rebecca Breeds) one year after the events of the 1991 film, in which the FBI agent-in-training (then played by Jodie Foster) seeks the assistance of cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter, to catch another killer. As the trailer shows, things only get worse for Agent Starling as she returns to the field.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first chapter of Dead to the Last Drop by Tonya Kappes, read by actor Ariel Linn.

Read or Dead looked ahead to the "Most Anticipated Releases of 2021."

Suspense Radio welcomed bestselling author, Brad Taylor, to talk about his latest book, American Traitor, book fifteen in the Logan Pike series.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Edwin Hill, the Edgar- and Agatha-award nominated author of Little Comfort, The Missing Ones, and Watch Her.

Wrong Place, Write Crime featured Alan Orloff talking about his books, including his new release, I Know Where You Sleep. Host Frank Zafiro also celebrated reaching the 100-episode milestone with some reminiscing and messages from past guests, including updates on what they're been doing since appearing on the show.

The Crime Writers of Color podcast interviewed David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts, nominated for Best Debut Novel and Best Mystery & Thriller in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards, and also nominated for Book of the Year by the Book of the Month Club.

Writers Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson. talked about how detectives find peoples’ addresses; detective caseloads and what happens during a murder investigation; and the differing responsibilities a detective may have based on duty assignments.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a "What we are reading" show, talking about books by Rosemary Simpson, Louise Penny, Mary Burton, Anna Lee Huber, and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.

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

Jovan Adepo is boarding FilmNation’s serial killer thriller, Misanthrope, starring opposite Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn. The movie follows a talented, but troubled cop, who is recruited by the FBI to help profile and track down a mass murderer. Adepo will play MacKenzie, a young FBI agent, who is deeply involved in hunting down the murderer. Damián Szifron is directing off a screenplay he co-wrote with Jonathan Wakeham.

Isabella Amara (Avengers: Infinity War) has joined the Blumhouse thriller, Vengeance, B.J. Novak’s directorial debut. Besides directing, Novak also penned the script and will star in the feature, along with Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher, and Boyd Holbrook. As is customary with any Blumhouse project, the logline is being kept under wraps.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

In a competitive situation, ABC has landed August Snow, a drama starring and executive produced by Keegan-Michael Key. Written by Paul Eckstein and based on Stephen Mack Jones’s "August Snow" novels, the drama centers on the titular character (Key), a biracial former detective who grew up in Detroit’s Mexicantown. After a distinguished military career, he joined the force like his father, only to be drummed out by a conspiracy led by corrupt cops and politicians. August becomes a private investigator, a Robin Hood from the hood, gathering a group of unexpectedly talented misfits to help him solve cases.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is set to be cast as the lead in a four-part BBC adaptation of JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller, The Girl Before. The novel was originally optioned for a feature by Universal Pictures in 2015 with Ron Howard attached to direct, but now looks set to make its screen debut on television instead in 2021. The Girl Before follows Jane, a traumatized woman who falls in love with an extraordinary minimalist house. But when she discovers that another damaged woman died in the same One Folgate Street property three years earlier, she starts to wonder if her own story is just a rerun of the girl before.

Oscar and Tony winner Catherine Zeta-Jones is set to star opposite Michael Sheen on the upcoming second season of Fox’s serial-killer thriller drama, Prodigal Son. Zeta-Jones will appear in the latter half of the season as Dr. Vivian Capshaw, Claremont Psychiatrics’s resident MD. Prodigal Son follows Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), a criminal profiler with a rare talent for getting inside the minds of killers. He learned how they think because his father, Martin Whitly (Sheen), was a notorious serial killer known as "The Surgeon." Now he’s using his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve their most puzzling murders. Bright’s team, led by his longtime mentor, NYPD Lieutenant Gil Arroya (Lou Diamond Phillips), includes Detectives Dani Powell (Aurora Perrineau), JT Tarmel (Frank Harts) and medical examiner Dr. Edrisa Tanaka (Keiko Agena).

Daniel Francis, the British actor who recently starred in Education, the fifth and final film of Steve McQueen’s hugely-celebrated Small Axe anthology series, has landed a recurring role in the Netflix drama, Stay Close, based on Harlan Coben's bestselling novel. A new eight-part thriller from the same team behind the Netflix series, The Stranger — also from Coben and released in early 2020 — the drama will co-star Cush Jumbo (The Good Wife, Vera), Richard Armitage (The Hobbit), James Nesbitt (Cold Feet) and Sarah Parish (Broadchurch). Adapted by Danny Brocklehurst, Stay Close flips the book's location from the U.S. to the U.K. and follows three people whose dark secrets resurface, threatening to rip their lives apart.

Clancy Brown is joining Showtime’s Dexter revival as a lead opposite Michael C. Hall. Brown will play villain, Kurt Caldwell, "a true man of the people. If he’s got your back, consider yourself blessed. But should you cross Kurt, or hurt anyone that he cares for… God help you." The original followed Dexter Morgan (Hall), who was a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department but moonlighted as a serial killer.

Daytime Divas alumna, Camille Guaty, is set for a multi-episode arc on ABC’s The Rookie. Guaty will play Sandra De la Cruz, a businesswoman with nefarious connections who has been the target of a murder attempt. Her character will be introduced in the Sunday, January 17 episode titled "La Fiera." Created by Alexi Hawley, The Rookie stars Nathan Fillion as John Nolan, the oldest rookie at the Los Angeles Police Department.

Rebekah Graf (S.W.A.T.) is set for a recurring role opposite Keegan Allen and Jared Padalecki in the CW’s Walker, a reimagining of CBS’s long-running 1990s action/crime series, Walker, Texas Ranger. Graf will play Crystal, a bright eyed, wild and charming woman, the type who married an unhinged criminal because he promised her an exciting life. She is reckless and lies with ease, but there is a humanity beneath her.

Two new documentaries about Agatha Christie are set to premiere on PBS this month. Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie airs Sunday, January 17, at 10PM ET, and Agatha Christie’s England premieres Sunday, January 24, at 10PM ET. (HT to Crime Fiction Lover)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with author Lee Goldberg about his thriller, Bone Canyon, the latest in a series featuring Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Suspense Magazine welcomed bestselling author, John Connolly, to talk about his latest book, The Dirty South, which goes back to the very beginning of Private Investigator Charlie Parker's career.

My Favorite Detective Story host, John Hoda, chatted with British author, copywriter, and blues guitar-player Andy Maslen about his Detective Ford mystery series.

Marshall Thornton was the latest guest on the Gay Mystery Podcast; Thornton writes two popular mystery series, the Boystown Mysteries and the Pinx Video Mysteries, for which he has won three Lambda Awards.

The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast featured Terence Faherty reading his story, "The Noble Bachelor," from EQMM's January/February 2018 issue.

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 Hollywood Reporter compiled a list of twenty movies now set for 2021 that were supposed to be released in 2020. They include The King's Man (Release date: March 12) about the origins of the first independent intelligence agency that stars Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Daniel Brühl and Djimon Hounsou; the latest James Bond outing, No Time to Die (Release date: April 2); and Death on the Nile (Release date: Sept. 17), the Kenneth Branagh-directed follow-up to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

BBC Four has acquired the six-part Finnish drama, Man In Room 301 (Huone 301), its first-ever series from Finland. The drama is written by British actress and writer Kate Ashfield and directed by Mikko Kuparinen. Man In Room 301 is a psychological thriller that weaves between the past and present to tell the story of the Kurtti family, whose lives are irrevocably changed when two-year-old Tommi was killed by a gunshot. When on a family holiday in Greece twelve years later, they come across a man that looks just like the boy’s alleged killer.

The BBC premieres a new crime drama tonight, Traces, which is based on an original idea by crime writer Val McDermid and written by Amelia Bullmore. Traces is set in the world of forensic science in Dundee, Scotland, and centers on Emma Hedges (Molly Windsor), a lab technician at the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science and Anatomy (SIFA) who learns that the "fictional" murder case in an online course is actually her mother, murdered when Emma was seven. The six-part series also stars Laura Fraser as the director of SIFA and a professor of forensic chemistry; Jennifer Spence as a professor of forensic anthropology; and Michael Nardone as DI McKinven.

Also in the UK, Channel 4 premieres the stylish Norwegian thriller, Monster, set in a bleak northern town after a young girl vanishes and her boyfriend dies from stab wounds. Local cop Hedda Hersoug is assigned to the case with a detective from the south, Joel Dreyer. But the two detectives also try to keep a lid on their own secrets as they pursue the brutal killer.

ITV has slated Monday, January 11th, as the premiere date for The Pembrokeshire Murders, adapted from the true-crime book, Catching the Bullseye Killer, written by Senior Investigating Officer, Steve Wilkins, and ITV news journalist, Jonathan Hill. Luke Evans takes the role of Wilkins, who decides to reopen two unsolved double murders from the 1980s.

CBS Studios has pushed back the return-to-production dates for several shows coming off the current holiday hiatus, including NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, and SEAL Team. The news comes a day after Deadline reported that the L.A. County Department of Public Health had urged the film and TV industry to consider pausing production for a few weeks during the ongoing surge in coronavirus cases throughout the county (and hours after the stay-at-home order for Southern California was extended to Jan. 16).

Prolific television writer-producer William Link, co-creator of classic TV series including Columbo and Murder She Wrote, died December 27 of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at the age of 87. Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of Columbo in 1971, "Murder by the Book," shared a personal remembrance of Link: "Bill’s truly good nature always inspired me to do good work for a man who, along with Dick Levinson, was a huge part of what became my own personal film school on the Universal lot. Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers and, more than anything, I learned so much from him about the true anatomy of a plot." Other television series created by Link and Levinson include Jericho (1965); Mannix (1967); Tenafly (1973, one of the first TV shows featuring an African American lead); Ellery Queen (1975); and Blacke’s Magic (1986).

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first chapter of The Roman Heir by Zara Altair as read by actor Kelly Ventura.

In GAD We Trust discussed contemporary authors who make life difficult for themselves by upholding the traditions of Golden Age detective fiction in their own works.

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed Avanti Centrae, author of the VanOps thriller series.

Nev March stopped by Speaking of Mysteries to talk about her debut historical crime novel, Murder in Old Bombay. The very real unexplained deaths of two women more than 100 years ago in Bombay become the focus of the compelling Anglo-Indian protagonist, Captain Jim Agnihotri.

Jon Land was the featured guest on Meet the Thriller Author hosted by Alan Petersen, discussing his critically acclaimed Caitlin Strong series and writing the Murder, She Wrote book series based on the hit CBS television show starring Angela Lansbury.

The Spybrary podcast featured a book review of The Power of the Dog and The Cartel by Don Winslow, with a discussion of the various sub-genres that make up the spy genre and why Winslow fits both the cerebral and action spy genres.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, chatted with Matt Phillips about his contribution to A Grifter's Song, the subscription series of novellas from Down & Out Books.

The Gay Mystery podcast welcomed J.S. Strange, an author from Wales who writes crime, mystery and horror. His upcoming novel, Murder on the Rocks, is the first in a cozy crime mystery series featuring a leading gay male detective.

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

Blumhouse Productions won the screen rights to a December 13, 2020, New York Times story that chronicled one desperate mother’s revenge spree in Mexico, where she avenged her daughter’s murder by taking on the drug cartels and tracking down the perpetrators by herself. She saw ten of them apprehended by police before she was shot and killed in front of her home on Mother’s Day, 2017. The story, titled "She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One," ignited a heated bidding war immediately after it was published, with over 16 production companies and studios interested in taking on the project.


A trailer was released for The Little Things, starring Denzel Washington as Kern County, CA, Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon who is sent to Los Angeles for what should have been a quick evidence-gathering assignment. Instead, he becomes embroiled in the search for a killer who is terrorizing the city. Leading the hunt is L.A. Sheriff Department Sergeant Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), who's impressed with Deke’s cop instincts and unofficially engages his help. But as they track the suspected killer (Jared Leto), Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke’s past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Shield creator, Shawn Ryan, is adapting Matthew Quirk's 2020 novel, The Night Agent for television. Published in October to strong reviews, The Night Agent has drawn comparisons to the early novels of John Grisham and David Baldacci. It centers on FBI Agent Peter Sutherland who is thrown into a vast conspiracy and must stop a Russian mole at the highest levels of the US government. To save the nation, Peter plunges into a desperate hunt for the traitor and must take the law into his own hands, question everything, and trust no one.

Netflix has preemptively acquired a feature thriller pitch from screenwriter Sean O’Keefe. The project is billed as being in the spirit of Ron Howard’s 1996 action kidnap thriller hit, Ransom, but with a female bent. The new project is a reteaming of Netflix and O’Keefe, who partnered for the Mark Wahlberg action-comedy, Spenser Confidential (based on the characters from Robert B. Parker's books), which was the third most-watched movie on the streamer (after Sam Hargrave’s Extraction and Susanne Bier’s Bird Box starring Sandra Bullock).

Christiane Seidel (The Queen's Gambit) has joined the cast of Boon, the sequel to the indie crime drama, Red Stone, from Yellowstone's Neal McDonough, who will serve as the project's producer, co-writer, and will take on one of the lead roles. Boon picks up with henchman Nick Boon (McDonough), who is trying to get on with his life. At the same time, the widowed Catherine (Seidel), is busy trying to protect herself and her son from a local criminal organization that's using her land for some unusual activities. When Boon and Catherine’s lives cross paths, they find themselves leaning on each other to protect everything they stand for.

The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and Netflix have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the author’s estate, which alleged that the Enola Holmes film infringed copyright by depicting a warmer and more emotional version of Sherlock Holmes. The lawsuit, brought against Netflix, the film’s producers Legendary Pictures, the Enola Holmes author, Nancy Springer, and others associated with the adaptation, argued that Conan Doyle created "significant new character traits for Holmes and Watson" (including a more emotional Holmes) in the 10 stories still under copyright in the US, which were written between 1923 and 1927." The agreement opens the way for a sequel, although details haven't been firmed up just yet.


PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Simon Mayo's Books Of The Year podcast had a chat with Ian Rankin, who talked about his favorite books and authors.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Robert B. McCaw, a former army lieutenant and an attorney who has a home on the Big Island of Hawai’i and studies the state's history, culture, and peoples. His latest novel, Death of a Messenger, the third book in his Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery series, will be published on January 5, 2021.

Wrong Place, Write Crime chatted with Connie DiMarco about her Zodiac Mysteries series.

My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, spoke with Steve Berry, the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of nineteen novels.

The latest Crime Writers of Color podcast featured Tori Eldridge, author of the Lily Wong thriller-mystery series, as interviewed by Robert Justice.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, tackled the topics of "Lost Person Behavior, a Rogue Investigation, and the Difference between Probation and Parole."

Media Murder for Murder

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

French-American actress, writer, and producer, Anna Chazelle, is set to direct a film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's The Trespassers, a crime novel which wasn't published until after Leonard’s death in 2013. Written in 1958, the story is told from the POV of a young wife who becomes increasingly frustrated with her mild-mannered husband. When the husband refuses to confront some men who are illegally hunting on the couple’s remote homestead, his wife takes matters into her own hands. Troy Blake adapted the screenplay which is being produced by Megan Freels Johnston, the granddaughter of the late crime novelist, while executive producers include Stephen Gary and the author's son, Peter Leonard.

Jennifer Lopez is set to star in and produce a feature adaptation of the Isabella Maldonado novel, The Cipher. Lopez will play FBI agent Nina Guerrera, who is pulled into a serial killer’s case after he leaves complex codes and riddles online, which are linked to his recent murders.

Canadian author Silver Donald Cameron's book, Blood in the Water, is to be adapted for the big screen by Pictou Twist Pictures. Blood in the Water is based on the true story of the 2013 murder of Philip Boudreau, a notorious outlaw – equally loved and hated – who was killed while vandalizing the lobster traps of three Cape Breton fishermen.

Neal McDonough has signed on to star in, produce, and co-write Boon, the sequel to the actor’s movie Red Stone. In Red Stone, McDonough plays Boon, a henchman for Southern crime lord Jed Haywood (Michael Cudlitz). Boon is assigned to track Motley (Dash Melrose), who is on the run from Jed as their fate brings them together for a climactic showdown.

Primetime Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee, Ben Mendelsohn, has joined FilmNation’s thriller, Misanthrope. He'll be playing a detective assigned to a disturbing serial killer case, who receives help from the lead character played by Shailene Woodley, "a talented but troubled cop who is recruited by the FBI to help profile and track a murderer."

Recording artist and Latin Grammy winner, Bad Bunny, will join Brad Pitt’s action-thriller, Bullet Train. Logan Lerman, Joey King, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, Michael Shannon and Andrew Koji round out the rest of the cast. David Leitch is set to direct the project, which is based on the Japanese novel, Maria Beetle, by Kotaro Isaka.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Left Bank is closing a deal to adapt Louise Penny’s bestselling Chief Inspector Gamache crime novels for Amazon in a series titled Three Pines. Left Bank has attached The Tunnel and Law & Order: UK writer Emilia di Girolamo to pen the show, while The Crown and Humans director Sam Donovan will be the lead director, helming four episodes. The title, Three Pines, is a reference to the fictional French Canadian village in which Chief Inspector Gamache operates. The French-speaking detective probes crimes in his Quebec community, digging up long-buried secrets and discovering his own ghosts. Among his quirks is speaking English in an English accent thanks to his Cambridge education.

Sven Hjerson, the debonair Scandinavian master detective invented by crime writer Ariadne Oliver, a character in Agatha Christie’s novels, will get his own series, set in modern-day Stockholm. In Agatha Christie’s Sven Hjerson, Hanna Alström plays Klara Sandberg, a former trash-TV producer who successfully pitches a true-life crime show starring Hjerson (Johan Rheborg), who would solve a real crime each week. The new show may reset Sandberg’s career and life, but the only problem is that she has never met Hjerson.

The best-selling, Costa award-winning debut novel by Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is being adapted for Netflix UK. The plot is a mind-bending murder mystery set within the grounds of a sprawling country estate. It presents an intriguing puzzle – how do you solve a murder when every time you are getting close to the answer, you wake up in someone else’s body?

UKTV continues to expand its catalogue of original dramas for the crime drama channel, Alibi, with Annika, a co-commission along with PBS's Masterpiece. The six-part series is based on the hugely successful Radio 4 drama, written by Nick Walker and will see Olivier-award-winner Nicola Walker bringing the leading character to screen. Annika follows the sharp, witty and enigmatic DI Annika Strandhed (Walker), as she heads up a new specialist Marine Homicide Unit that is tasked with investigating the unexplained, brutal, and seemingly unfathomable murders that wash up in the waterways of Scotland. Throughout the series, Annika makes the audience her confidante by breaking the fourth wall and sharing her wry observations on the case and her life, as she manages her brilliant yet unconventional team and her equally brilliant yet complex teenage daughter.

Fox has put in development Daylight, a one-hour thriller series based on Marion Pauw’s bestselling Dutch novel, Daglicht. The project follows Iris, a high-powered Korean American lawyer, who makes the shocking discovery that a local convicted murderer is her estranged brother. When she learns the prisoner shares the same developmental disability as her son, she gets pulled into the case and ends up exposing a web of corruption and shocking family secrets that lead her to a truth she never expected.

A sequel to NBC’s L.A. Law starring Blair Underwood is in development, but this time at ABC. The project would see Underwood reprise his role as attorney Jonathan Rollins alongside a new crop of young lawyers. Jesse Bochco, the son of the late Steven Bochco (who co-created the original series), would co-executive produce. Here is the logline for the new version: "The venerable law firm of McKenzie Brackman reinvents itself as a litigation firm specializing in only the most high-profile, boundary-pushing and incendiary cases. Blair Underwood reprises his role as attorney Jonathan Rollins, who has gone from idealistic to more conservative as he clashes with millennial JJ Freeman to decide the best path forward for the firm to effect political and legal change." The original L.A. Law ran for eight seasons on NBC from 1986-1994, and spawned a reunion movie in 2002. Along with Underwood, it starred Corbin Bernsen, Richard Dysart, Alan Rachins, Jill Eikenberry, Michael Tucker, Susan Ruttan, Harry Hamlin, Susan Dey, Jimmy Smits, Michele Greene, Larry Drake and John Spencer.

NBC has put in development Heirs, a thriller drama from East Los High co-creator Carlos Portugal, Davis Entertainment (The Blacklist) and Universal Television. Written by Portugal, Heirs is set in Miami Beach’s exclusive Star Island. It revolves around the heirs of a Latin American ex-dictator who face an unexpected dilemma when a young girl is kidnapped from their home on the night of their own daughter’s lavish quinceañera.

In his first lead role on British television, Oscar winner Christopher Walken has been tapped to star in The Offenders (working title), a six-part series for BBC and Amazon Prime Video, from The Office co-creator, Stephen Merchant, and Mayans M.C. co-creator, Elgin James. Walken is one of seven leads in the project, starring alongside Merchant, Rhianne Barreto, Gamba Cole, Darren Boyd, Clare Perkins, and Eleanor Tomlinson. Described as crime thriller-meets-state-of-the-nation commentary, the series follows seven strangers, "The Offenders," from different walks of life forced together to complete a Community Payback sentence in Bristol. As they become involved in each other’s lives, they also become involved with a dangerous criminal gang. 

Apple TV+’s Gary Oldman spy drama, Slow Horses, has rounded out its cast, with Olivia Cooke and Jonathan Pryce joining a lineup that also includes Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden. The adaptation of Mick Herron’s espionage novels stars Oldman as Jackson Lamb, a brilliant but irascible leader of a group of spies who end up in MI5’s Slough House, having been exiled from the mainstream for their mistakes. Scott Thomas features as Diana Taverner, a formidable high-ranker at MI5, while Lowden is on board as River Cartwright, a talented agent who is desperate to claw his way up and out of Slough House.

Condor is heading to Epix for its second season. The spy thriller series aired its first season on the now-defunct AT&T Audience Network until AT&T announced in January the network would cease operations. Season one will run on Epix starting in early March, followed by the U.S. debut of season two later in the year. Based on the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady and the screenplay, Three Days of the Condor by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel, Condor follows CIA analyst Joe Turner (Max Irons) who stumbles onto a plan that threatens the lives of millions.

HBO Max has renewed The Flight Attendant for a second season. The first season was based on Chris Bohjalian’s novel of the same name, following the story of how an entire life can change in one night. It starred Kelly Cuoco as flight attendant Cassie Bowden, who wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man – and no idea what happened. Season 2 will feature Cassie in a new adventure, per HBO Max.


PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed author Nev March to discuss her debut historical crime fiction novel, Murder in Old Bombay.

The latest episode of Suspense Radio featured Rachelle Dekker, the daughter of bestselling author Ted Dekker and an author in her own right, out with her latest thriller, Nine.

For the last Read or Dead episode of 2020, hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about their favorite reads of the year.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Les Edgerton, creative writing professor, writing coach, and author of over twenty books including his latest, Hard Times.

Bruce Robert Coffin stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to talk about his John Byron mystery series and his long police career, including a stint on the Joint Terrorism Task Force with the FBI.

Smith Henderson & Jon Marc Smith stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club to discuss their co-written novel, Make Them Cry, featuring DEA agent Diane Harbaugh.

In GAD We Trust decided to tackle a little controversy by looking at "Criticising the Golden Age."