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 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) unveiled the winners of their annual SAG Awards for both movies and television last night. Among the crime drama honorees were The Trial of the Chicago 7 which won the award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture (the equivalent of Best Picture), and Daniel Kaluuya won the Best Actor in a Motion Picture prize for his role in Judas and the Black Messiah. On the TV side, Jason Bateman was named Best Actor in a Drama for his role in Ozark.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Netflix will buy the rights to produce two sequels to Knives Out, with director, Rian Johnson, and star, Daniel Craig, set to return to the franchise. The Knives Out sequels have casting underway, and the production team hopes to begin filming in Greece in late June. The original Knives Out was a murder mystery that starred Craig as detective Benoit Blanc investigating the death of the wealthy author, Harlan Thrombey (played by the late Christopher Plummer in one of his last roles).

Salma Hayek has joined the cast of House of Gucci, Ridley Scott’s next film that also stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Jack Huston, and Jared Leto. The film tells the story of how Gaga’s character, Patrizia Reggiani, infamously carried out a hit on her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, after he sold the Gucci fashion empire to an investment group. Hayek will play Pina Auriemma, a friend of Reggiani and a clairvoyant who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly organizing the killing for a fee.

Armie Hammer has been dropped from another film following accusations of sexual assault against him, this time the Cold War thriller, The Billion Dollar Spy. Based on a real-life story, The Billion Dollar Spy was to have starred Hammer as Brad Reid, a fresh arrival at the Moscow station of the CIA, where he’s approached by Soviet engineer, Adolf Tolkachev (Mads Mikkelsen). No re-casting details have been released just yet.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has given a formal order for the revival series, CSI: Vegas, the first new installment in the "CSI" franchise since CSI: Cyber was canceled in 2016. "Vegas" will see original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation stars Wallace Langham, William Petersen, and Jorja Fox reprise their roles alongside new cast members Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, Mel Rodriguez, and Mandeep Dhillon. Per CBS, the new series "opens a brand new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant new team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City."

HBO Max is adapting the true-crime docuseries, The Staircase, into a limited scripted series that will star Colin Firth as American novelist, Michael Peterson, who was on trial in 2001 for killing his wife. The writer claimed his wife died at their home after falling down the stairs, but a medical examiner determined she'd been bludgeoned to death. Peterson was convicted in 2003 for the murder and spent eight years in prison. In 2011, he was granted a new trial, but before it could start, he submitted to an Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time served and set free.

Nicky Torchia, Michael Rivera, and Ibrahim Renno are set for recurring roles opposite Christopher Meloni, Dylan McDermott, Tamara Taylor, and Danielle Moné Truitt in NBC’s Law & Order: SVU spinoff series, Law & Order: Organized Crime. The new series follows Elliot Stabler's (Meloni) return 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.

Netflix revealed that Lucifer will return in May for the second half of Season 5. The supernatural procedural series, which initially aired on Fox for three seasons before moving to Netflix, follows Tom Ellis’s Lucifer, who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell. He resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping LAPD detective, Chloe Decker. Lucifer began airing season 5 in August and will come to an end with an upcoming sixth season.

Shout! Studios has acquired worldwide rights to Emmy-winning director Nancy Buirski’s documentary, A Crime on the Bayou, the third in her trilogy of films that explore vital stories from the Civil Rights era. The project revisits the case of Gary Duncan, who as a Black teenager in 1966 was arrested in Louisiana in a racially-charged incident. Duncan’s "crime" was to break up a fight between white and Black youths outside a newly-integrated school, during which he "gently [laid] his hand on a white boy’s arm," setting in motion a prosecution for assault on a minor. Duncan was defended by Richard Sobol, a young Jewish attorney, and the two developed a friendship as they took their fight for Duncan’s exoneration all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, Daniella Bernett, on the Crime Cafe podcast, discussing Bernett's latest novel, Old Sins Never Die.

Writer Types welcomed Peter Robinson, author of the long-running DCI Banks novels series, and also spoke with debut author, Robyn Gigl (By Way Of Sorrow), and French author, Johana Gustawsson (Blood Song).

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "Sweet Tea and Deviled Eggs" by Sandra Murphy, as read by actor, Donna Beavers.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with bestselling author Peter May, who was born in Glasgow, but now lives in France. His latest book, The Night Gate, brings back forensics expert, Enzo Macleod, and spans two murders across three generations: from war-torn London to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020, the coronavirus. And Enzo's investigations reveal an unexpected link between the murders - the Mona Lisa.

Wrong Place, Write Crime had a Q&A with Michael Poo‪l‬, talking about his episode of A Grifter's Song, "Rocky Mountain Lie."

Karen Dionne was the latest guest on My Favorite Detective Stories. Karen is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club celebrated Woman's History Month by featuring four fiction books that include real women of history.

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Marco Carocari, who grew up in Switzerland and worked in a hardware store before traveling the globe working for the airlines and later as an internationally published photographer. His debut crime novel is Blackout.

Lynda LaPlante's Listening to the Dead forensic podcast tackled the topic, "Cause of Death – Poisoning."

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

Oscar-nominated actor, Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), is making her feature directing debut with the psychological thriller, Pale Horse, scheduled to shoot this fall. Set in the Pacific Northwest, Pale Horse follows Naia, an esteemed, yet reclusive African-American YA book author who is living with MS. When Naia decides to shelter the man who escaped captivity with her long-missing brother, she finds herself caught up in a diabolical mystery.

According to Deadline, Warner Bros won a "wild spec auction" for the Tyler Marceca script, Stay Frosty, with Idris Elba attached to star and Sam Hargrave to direct. The story follows a man who has to figure out who wants him dead and why after miraculously surviving a bullet to the head. He needs to stop the assassin while still making it back home in time to spend Christmas with his son. As Deadline notes, it gives Elba a franchise play in a vehicle that is a bit of a John Wick-type character in a throwback to ’80s high-action Christmas movies that include Die Hard and Lethal Weapon.

Production has begun in Puerto Rico on Emmett/Furla Films's thriller, The Fortress, with Jesse Metcalfe, Bruce Willis, Chad Michael Murray, and Kelly Greyson starring for director Cullen Bressack. The franchise has been constructed as a trilogy, with the second and third installments shooting back-to-back. The story was written by Alan Horsnail and revolves around a top-secret resort for retired U.S. intelligence officers. A group of criminals led by Balzary (Murray) breach the compound, hellbent on revenge on Robert (Willis), forcing the retired officer and his son (Metcalfe) to save the day.


Blair Underwood (Quantico) is set to direct, produce, and star in Viral, an indie thriller from York Films. Underwood plays Andrew, who falls into paranoia after his wife goes missing. The only way out of the self-destructive cycle seems to be through his new girlfriend Emilia, but she has her own psychological trauma to deal with. Are they strong enough to get past their own nightmares and mental illnesses to find true happiness together? The film originally was set to shoot last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.

Blake Lively (The Rhythm Section) is set to star in and produce the Netflix original film, Lady Killer, based on the Dark Horse Comic of the same name, with Oscar winner Diablo Cody writing the screenplay adaptation. Lively will play Josie Schuller, who gives every appearance of being the perfect 1950 housewife but who leads a secret live as a trained killer for hire when she’s not catering to her family’s needs.

Ben Mendelsohn is set to star opposite Daisy Ridley in Neil Burger’s upcoming psychological thriller, The Marsh King’s Daughter, based on Karen Dionne’s thriller of the same name. Mendelsohn will play Jacob Holbrook, the infamous "Marsh King," who years ago kept his young daughter, Helena, and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. After a lifetime of trying to escape her past, the now grown Helena (Ridley) is forced to face her demons when her father unexpectedly returns.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

MRC Television and Johnson and Bergman’s T-Street banner have optioned Don Winslow’s bestselling debut novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, the first in a five-book series that will be developed for the small screen. Bad Education director, Cory Finley, will write, direct and executive produce, and Winslow will also serve as an executive producer. Winslow was a private detective when he wrote that first novel, long before his bestselling The Cartel trilogy (in production at Fox) or The Force (in production at 20th Century Studios). A Cool Breeze on the Underground introduces Neal Carey as he becomes a private investigator working for a covert New England organization called The Bank, which caters to exclusive wealthy clients. He’s assigned to find the rebellious teen daughter of a prominent senator who has gone underground in the violent London punk scene, rife with crime, drugs and danger.

NBC has picked up another Law & Order spinoff, this time going inside a criminal defense firm. Titled Law & Order: For the Defense, the new series will "take an unbiased look inside a criminal defense firm." Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside franchise boss Dick Wolf. For the Defense joins Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has been renewed through Season 24, and the most recent addition to the franchise, Law & Order: Organized Crime, which marked longtime SVU star Christopher Meloni’s return after ten years away from the show.

Dick Wolf is also moving into half-hour drama with his latest series set at Amazon’s IMDb TV. Deadline reported that the free streaming service has ordered On Call, which follows a pair of police officers on patrol in Long Beach, CA. Each episode will track the duo as they respond to a new radio call, arriving on the scene to resolve an incident.

Elizabeth Olsen will play infamous Texas ax murderer, Candy Montgomery, in a limited series on HBO Max. Love and Death, written by David E. Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, is the second streaming limited series project to revolve around Montgomery, who killed her church-going friend with an ax in the 1980s. (Elisabeth Moss is playing Candy in a Hulu series from Robin Veith with Nick Antosca). The HBO Max version is based on the book, Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, and a collection of articles from Texas Monthly.

The Crown star, Claire Foy, is set to lead a new thriller from streamer BritBox U.K. The eight-part thriller, Marlow, centers on feuding families the Marlows and the Wyatts, who have existed in the "Edgelands" of the Thames Estuary for centuries. Foy stars as Evie Wyatt, who was born and bred in the Estuary and returns to the Edgelands — the place where she lost her father to a firestorm 15 years ago — in search of answers. However, drawn back into conflict with the Marlow clan, Evie finds herself in a battle with its ageing patriarch, Tom Marlow.

Fox has ordered its immigration/mob-crime drama pilot, The Cleaning Lady, to series for the 2021-22 season. The show stars Elodie Yung as a whip-smart doctor who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her ailing son. But when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she becomes a cleaning lady for the mob and starts playing the game by her own rules.

USA Network has firmed up the cast for its upcoming Nash Bridges revival, which will return as a two-hour movie with stars Don Johnson (Nash Bridges), Cheech Marin (Joe Dominguez) and Jeff Perry (Harvey Leek) reprising their roles. Joining them are new cast members Diarra Kilpatrick, Bonnie Somerville, Joe Dinicol, Alexia Garcia, Angela Ko, and Paul James. The movie brings Johnson and Marin back together as elite investigators for the San Francisco Police Department Special Investigations Unit.

The Irregulars has been canceled by Netflix after one season, which is surprising considering it came in at No. 1 on Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD rankings the week after it premiered. Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and set in Victorian London, "The Irregulars" follows a gang of troubled street teens who are manipulated into solving crimes for "the sinister Doctor Watson and his mysterious business partner, the elusive Sherlock Holmes." As the crimes take on a horrifying supernatural edge and a dark power emerges, it’ll be up to the Irregulars to come together to save not only London but the entire world.

ABC renewed the freshman drama, Big Sky, for a second season. The series, which is based on The Highway series of books by C.J. Box, stars Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury. Bunbury plays Cassie Dewell, a private investigator who runs the Dewell & Hoyt agency, while Winnick plays Jenny Hoyt, an ex-cop-turned-private investigator who, despite being separated from her husband (briefly played by Ryan Phillippe), still does freelance work for the agency. The pair have joined forces to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana.

The CW network renewed Kung Fu for a second season. The series follows a young Chinese American woman, Nicky Shen (played by Olivia Liang), whose quarter-life crisis causes her to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to San Francisco, she finds her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption, and her own parents Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Shen relies on friends, her martial arts skills, and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor Pei-Ling (Vanessa Kai) and is now targeting her.

ITV crime drama, Grace, starring John Simm, has been renewed for season two following the broadcast of just one episode. The drama debuted earlier this year with a feature-length episode, and the positive response was enough to warrant a commission for season two. The first episode, based on Peter James’s Roy Grace books, debuted back in March this year, featuring Simm (Doctor Who and Life on Mars) leading the cast as the titular Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.

Chad Rook is set for a recurring role in Joe Pickett, Spectrum Originals’s drama series based on C.J. Box’s bestselling novels. Joe Pickett follows a game warden (Michael Dormann) and his family as they navigate the changing political and socio-economic climate in a small rural town in Wyoming. Surrounded by rich history and vast wildlife, the township hides decades of schemes and secrets that are yet to be uncovered. Rook will play Deputy McLanahan.

Jamie McShane is joining CBS’s CSI: Vegas, a sequel to the mothership CSI series, in a recurring role. Additionally, Paul Guilfoyle, who played Jim Brass on the original, will return to reprise his role in the sequel series, appearing in two episodes. The sequel series 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. McShane will play Anson Wix, a civil attorney.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Suspense Radio welcomed back bestselling author J.A. Jance to talk about her latest book, Missing and Endangered.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast features the short story "Not a Penny More" (Strand magazine) written by Jon Land and read by actor Larry Mattox.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Mariah Fredericks about Death of a Showman, the fourth installment of her series featuring lady’s maid Jane Prescott.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Mia P. Manansala, a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. Her debut novel, Arsenic and Adobo, was released May 4 and is the first in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club highlighted three Hispanic mystery authors.

Literature professor, Tammy Bird, stopped by Queer Writers of Crime to chat about her gritty suspense and thriller stories including her latest novel, The Book of Promises, set in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Matt Fitzpatrick stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his Justin McGee series.

Writers Detective Bureau was back from a hiatus with host, Adam Richardson, interviewing Marc Cameron about his career in the US Marshals Service, advice for a successful writing career, and details on his new book, Bone Rattle.


The Read or Dead podcast looked at crime novels that feature dinner parties gone wrong.

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

Lionsgate has acquired North American rights to Collin Schiffli’s thriller, Die in a Gunfight, with plans to release it as a multi-platform title this summer. The film is described as a modern-day take on "Romeo and Juliet" and centers on two rival families, the Rathcarts and Gibbons. Ben (Diego Boneta), a rebellious young man, falls in love with Mary (Alexandra Daddario), the daughter of his father's enemy, starting a battle full of love, lust, revenge, and betrayal.

Bruce Willis is set to star in the revenge thriller, Soul Assassin. The story begins with a woman’s husband being killed in action as part of an experimental new military program. A former black-ops soldier (Willis) then takes his place to find his killer. Jesse Atlas will direct the script, co-written with Aaron Wolfe based on their short, Let Them Die Like Lovers, which was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country), is boarding the Netflix movie, Lou, as star and executive producer. Smollett joins Oscar winner, Allison Janney, who is also starring (and executive producing) the Anna Foerster-directed film. Written by Maggie Cohn, the story is set in motion when a young girl is kidnapped. Her mother, with no other option, teams up with the mysterious older woman next door to pursue the kidnapper – a journey into the wilderness that will test their limits and expose dark and shocking secrets from their pasts.

This Is Us star, Justin Hartley, is joining Y’lan Noel, Cleopatra Coleman, Lex Scott Davis, and Shamier Anderson in A Lot Of Nothing. The project is described as a "dark comedy-thriller" where things spiral out of control when a married couple is compelled to take dangerous actions after discovering their next-door neighbor (Hartley) is the police officer who just murdered an unarmed motorist.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Noah Centineo has signed on to star in and executive produce a new unnamed spy thriller series for the streaming giant Netflix. Centineo will play a fledgling lawyer at the CIA who becomes enmeshed in dangerous international power politics when a former asset threatens to expose the nature of her long-term relationship with the agency—unless they exonerate her of a serious crime.

Nordic Entertainment Group has ordered the psychological crime drama, Sisterhood. The six-episode series looks into who was really responsible for a young girl’s disappearance in Iceland 25 years ago. Ambitious police detective Vera (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), dissatisfied with the original investigation, zeroes in on an unlikely trio of successful and respectable women.

Danish actress, Clara Rugaard, is to lead the cast for Sky’s The Rising, a supernatural crime thriller that was originally inspired by Belgian drama, Hotel Beau Séjour. The eight-part series has Rugaard starring as Neve Kelly, a woman who discovers she is dead. She’s scared and confused by this new existence at first, but when she realizes she has been murdered, she’s furious. She’s determined to find her killer and get justice, believing that it was someone she knew.

Josh Hartnett is to lead Sky’s four-part adaptation of the Robert Harris financial thriller, The Fear Index, directed by David Caffrey (The Alienist). Hartnett will play Dr. Alex Hoffmann, an American ex-pat physicist, who creates an AI-driven system that exploits fear in the financial markets and operates at lightning speed to make big returns. But on the day of launch, Alex’s sanity is shaken after he is viciously attacked at his home by a man who knows all of his security codes. After more unexplained occurrences, Alex becomes convinced he’s being framed. Other cast includes Leila Farzad, Arsher Ali, and Grégory Montel.

Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars, Harry Potter) will portray John Dean in HBO's upcoming five-part series about the Watergate scandal, The White House Plumbers. At the time of Richard Nixon's reign, Dean was a young and zealous member of the White House Counsel who worked to orchestrate the illegal cover-up that ultimately ended Nixon's presidency. Gleeson joins previously announced cast members Justin Theroux (who will play G. Gordon Liddy) and Woody Harrelson (playing E. Howard Hunt). The project chronicles former President Nixon's downfall, highlighting how the so-called masterminds responsible for protecting Nixon's presidency — Giddy and Hunt — unwittingly sabotaged it. The show is based on public records and Integrity, a novel by Egil "Bud" Krogh and Matthew Krogh.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

In a jam-packed episode of Writer Types, host Eric Beetner spoke with authors Chris Whitaker (We Begin At The End), Amy Suiter Clarke (Girl, 11), and Nicci French (The Other Side Of The Door). 

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Robyn Gigl, an attorney, author, and activist who has been honored by the ACLU-NJ and the NJ Pride Network for her work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. Her debut legal thriller is By Way of Sorrow.

Alyssa Cole, author of the new thriller, When No One Is Watching, was interviewed by Robert Justice for the Crime Writers of Color podcast.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Not a Penny More," written by Jon Land and read by actor Larry Mattox.

The Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast showcased novelist and short-story author, Jeff Soloway, reading his EQMM debut story from the January/February 2021 issue, "The Interpreter and the Killer," which features a central character in a job we don't see often in mystery fiction.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone featured "In Conversation: Don Winslow and Anthony Horowitz with Phil Williams" from last summer's Locked-Up Festival.

Christine Feehan was the featured guest on Suspense Radio, discussing her latest book, Lightning Game, and much more.

My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, welcomed Sheldon Siegel, best-selling author of the critically acclaimed legal thriller series featuring San Francisco criminal defense attorneys Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with UK author, Clare Whitfield, who's been a dancer, copywriter, amateur fire breather, buyer, and mediocre weightlifter. Her debut crime thriller is People of Abandoned Character.

Carmen Jaramillo stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss "Open Up Your Heart," her novella in A Grifter's Song series, and more.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club sat down with award-winning investigative journalist, Caitlin Rother, to discuss her new true-crime book, Death on Ocean Boulevard.

Barry Forshaw hosted a new feature on the Crime Time FM podcast, where he gives insights into the world of crime drama based on the commentaries and sleeve notes he writes for new releases and reissues of books and movies.

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 Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the winners of this year's Oscar Awards last night in a trimmed-down ceremony. Crime drama winners include a Best Supporting Actor nod to Daniel Kaluuya for his role in Judas and the Black Messiah and Best Original Screenplay to Promising Young Woman, written by Emerald Fennel. If you'd like to learn more about some of the lesser-known nominated films with a crime connection including those in the international, documentary, and animated categories, check out this article from Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Universal Pictures bought the rights to the Brian Freeman novel, Infinite, with Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer set to adapt the screenplay. The story follows Dylan Moran, consumed by grief after losing his wife, who begins hallucinating sinister versions of himself lurking in the shadows. When he ends up accused of murder, Moran undergoes a hypnotherapy treatment built on the idea that with every choice he makes, he creates an infinite number of parallel universes. It’s then he discovers he’s not insane at all—there’s another version of himself, from another reality. A psychopath that not only ruined his life, but countless other Dylans. Can Dylan stop this doppelgänger before he strikes again? Or will he lose himself…to himself?

Jason Isaacs, Barkhad Abdi, and Adan Canto have signed on for Agent Game, the indie spy thriller being directed by Grant S. Johnson. The new additions join previously announced cast members, Dermot Mulroney, Katie Cassidy, Rhys Coiro, Annie Ilonzeh, and Mel Gibson. The story centers on CIA officer Harris (Mulroney), who is involved in missions to detain and relocate foreign nationals for interrogation. When Harris’s superior (Isaacs) is murdered, he finds himself the scapegoat for the killing of a detainee (Abdi) and must run from a team of operatives sent to bring him in (Canto, Cassidy, Coiro), led by a ruthless double agent (Ilonzeh). Gibson plays a rogue intelligence official running the off-the-books operation to hunt down and kill Harris.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple TV Plus has ordered to series the bilingual drama, Now and Then. The project, to be shot in both Spanish and English and set in Miami with an all-Hispanic cast, is executive produced by Gideon Raff (Homeland; The Spy), who is set to direct the first two episodes. Now and Then is described as a "multi-layered thriller that explores the differences between youthful aspirations and the reality of adulthood," when the lives of a group of college best friends are forever changed after a celebratory weekend ends up with one of them dead. Now, 20 years later, the remaining five are reluctantly reunited by a threat that puts their seemingly perfect worlds at risk.

Amazon Studios announced it will co-produce the six-part BBC psychological thriller, Chloe, with a cast that features The Crown star, Erin Doherty. The project centers on the character of Becky, who becomes obsessed with the death of her estranged friend, Chloe. Becky assumes a new identity to infiltrate the enviable lives of Chloe’s closest friends as she attempts to establish what happened.

CBS has renewed NCIS: Los Angeles, starring LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell, for Season 13 and ordered a new spinoff, NCIS: Hawaii, to series. The news comes after the recent announcements that the original NCIS had been renewed for a 19th season (with series star Mark Harmon returning), but NCIS: New Orleans, will end its seven-season run.

John Cameron Mitchell has been tapped to play the title character opposite Kate McKinnon in Joe Exotic (working title), based on the Wondery podcast, which is set to air across NBCU’s Television and Streaming Entertainment portfolio (NBC, USA Network, and Peacock). The limited series centers on Carole Baskin (McKinnon), a big cat enthusiast, who learns that fellow exotic animal lover Joe "Exotic" Schreibvogel (Mitchell) is breeding and using his big cats for profit. She sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry. But Carole has a checkered past of her own and when the claws come out, Joe will stop at nothing to expose what he sees as her hypocrisy. The results prove dangerous.

Gemma Whelan (Game Of Thrones, Killing Eve) has been cast as the lead in ITV’s drama series, The Tower, the three-part adaptation of Kate London’s Metropolitan Police novel, Post Mortem, from Homeland writer Patrick Harbinson. Whelan will play Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins, who investigates after a veteran beat cop and teenage girl fall to their deaths from a tower block in south-east London. Collins works to uncover the truth behind the grisly tower-block deaths and the related disappearances of a rookie police officer and a child. 

LisaGay Hamilton has been tapped for a key recurring role opposite Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix’s upcoming drama series based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels. The project 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. Hamilton will play Judge Mary Holder, presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court — the most powerful trial judge in the city and a no-nonsense jurist who doesn’t suffer fools. It was also announced last week that Jamie McShane (playing Detective Lee Lankford) and Reggie Lee (playing Angelo Soto, an intimidating, wealthy businessman) will be recurring characters on the series.

AMC and UK’s Alibi has added new leads to the crime drama series, Ragdoll, with Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Killing Eve) and Thalissa Teixeira (Too Close) joining previously announced Lucy Hale. Adapted for television by Freddy Syborn from the novel by Daniel Cole, the six-part Ragdoll is described as "a modern-day Faustian thriller" that centers on the murder of six people whose bodies have been dismembered and sewn into the shape of one grotesque body — nicknamed "The Ragdoll." Assigned to the shocking case are DS Nathan Rose (Lloyd-Hughes), recently reinstated to the London Met; his best friend and boss, DI Emily Baxter (Teixeira); and the unit’s new recruit, DC Lake Edmunds (Hale). The killer taunts the police by sending them a list of his next victims, with detective Rose’s name at the very end

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Author Kris Calvin joined Eric Beetner as guest co-host of this week's Writer Types podcast. Featured interviews include Alma Katsu (Red Widow) Peter Swanson (Every Vow You Break), and Wallace Stroby (Heaven's A Lie).

Read or Dead hosts, Katie McClean Horner and Nusrah Javed, celebrated the 100th episode of the podcast and talked about books that shaped them as mystery readers.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed William Swanson, a Minneapolis journalist and true crime expert who has authored three true-crime books. Under his pen name of W.A. Winter, he writes crime fiction thrillers including his latest, The Secret Lives of Dentists, inspired by the 1955 case of a Minneapolis dentist tried for the murder of one of his young female patients.

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Derek Farrell, author of five Danny Bird Mysteries all published by Fahrenheit Press, about "redefining the cozy noir mystery." 

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, chatted with Shawn Reilly Simmons about cool jobs she's had, short stories, and her Red Carpet Catering mystery series.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club profiled three Scottish mystery writers you might want to check out.

At Crime Time FM, Ace Atkins spoke with Barry Forshaw about his new Spenser novel, Someone to Watch Over Me.

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 bidding war, Neon has acquired the North American rights to The Actor, a film noir based on Donald E. Westlake's bestselling book, Memory. Directed by Duke Johnson, the project is set in the 1950s and stars Ryan Gosling as Paul Cole, who has been stranded in Ohio after a brutal attack. As he finds himself suffering from severe memory loss, he struggles to find his way back to his life in New York and reclaim what he has lost.

Netflix has acquired Corey Mead’s true crime article, "The Poet," for a feature film adaptation. The article tells the story of Ruth Finley, who escaped a murderer as a teen, only to find herself on the run again decades later as the killer terrorizes her hometown. With a team of police investigators and her devoted husband intent on saving her, the identity of her tormentor is too chilling to believe.

Guy Pearce and Monica Bellucci are set to co-star opposite Liam Neeson in the indie crime thriller, Memory (not related to the Neon/Westlake project above). The project is based on the book, De Zaak Alzheimer, by Jef Geeraerts as well as the Belgian film, The Memory of a Killer, directed by Erik Van Looy. The story follows Alex Lewis (Neeson), an expert assassin with a reputation for discreet precision. When Alex refuses to complete a job for a dangerous criminal organization, he becomes a target and must go on the hunt for those who want him dead. Veteran FBI agents Vincent Serra (Pearce), Linda Amistead (played by Taj Atwal), and Mexican intelligence liaison Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres) are brought in to investigate the trail of bodies, leading them closer to Alex, but also drawing the ire of local tech mogul Davana Sealman (Bellucci).

Killers of the Flower Moon has added four more to the cast: Tatanka Means, Michael Abbott Jr., Pat Healy, and Scott Shepherd have joined Martin Scorsese’s film based on David Grann’s bestseller. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, the long-in-the-works 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. Previously announced cast members include stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, as well as Indigenous actors, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion.

Likewise, the cast of the film adaptation of Delia Owens's book, Where the Crawdads Sing, has recently increased with the additions of Garret Dillahunt, Michael Hyatt, Ahna O’Reilly, Sterling Macer Jr., and newcomer Jojo Regina. Set against the backdrop of the mid-20th century South, the story centers on a young woman named Kya who, abandoned by her family, raises 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

Renegade Entertainment, the production company co-founded by Courtney Lauren Penn and Thomas Jane, has optioned Chuck Hustmyre’s feature screenplay, Relentless, and will develop and produce the project as a starring vehicle for Jane. The action thriller follows a former U.S. Army Green Beret who gets caught between warring crime gangs as he fights to save the life of a young girl. Screenwriter Hustmyre spent 22 years in law enforcement and retired as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). During his career he specialized in violent crime, narcotics, and fugitive investigations.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress, Jane Seymour, will star in and exec produce the Irish mystery thriller, Harry Wild, for Acorn TV. Seymour will play a recently retired English professor who cannot help but take an active interest in the criminal cases assigned to her police detective son, Charlie. She displays her flair for investigation by interfering in her son’s baffling murder case, noticing the murderer has followed a pattern from a well-known play. When she successfully catches the killer by putting herself at great risk, she finds a new lust for life.

NBC has greenlighted two pilot orders, a wedding island disaster thriller exec produced by The Blacklist duo of John Davis and John Fox, and a bank heist drama exec produced by Julie Plec. Getaway centers on a destination wedding at an isolated luxury resort that quickly descends into chaos after a group of dangerous criminals takes the island hostage. The small group of guests, led by a fearless female Army vet, will do everything they can to stay alive. The second untitled project is described as "a high-stakes two-hander featuring two women – a recently captured brilliant criminal mastermind who orchestrates a number of coordinated bank heists for a mysterious purpose, and the principled, relentless and socially outcast FBI agent who will stop at nothing to foil her ambitious plan."

Disney+ has unveiled a slate of UK scripted originals, teaming on projects with the producers behind Killing Eve, Gentleman Jack, and The Night Manager. Two of these have crime-related themes including The Ballad of Renegade Nell, which follows Nell Jackson who is forced into a life of highway robbery, along with her two orphaned sisters Roxanne and George. Aided by a plucky little spirit called Billy Blind, Nell realizes that fate has put her on the wrong side of the law for a reason, "a reason much bigger than she could’ve ever imagined, a reason that goes right up to Queen Anne and beyond, to the struggle for power raging across the battlefields of Europe." The other project is titled Culprits and described as a "whip smart thriller" that follows what happens after a heist when the crew have gone their separate ways but are being targeted by a killer one-by-one.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

James Ellroy, the "Demon Dog" of American literature, is teaming up with the podcast firm, Audio Up, for a five-part podcast series to launch in August. The author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia will produce and narrate the podcast, titled Hollywood Death Trip, which takes listeners on a nocturnal tour of murder and mayhem in Los Angeles with period music, archival radio, and cinematic sound design.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first chapter of Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun by Lois Winston, read by actor Julie Lucido.


Complicit is a new true-crime anthology podcast that follows the story of 29 year old Lauren Dumolo, who vanished from her home in Cape Coral, FL, on June 19, 2020. Her disappearance has baffled her family, friends, and even the police investigating her case. When Lauren's belongings mysteriously begin appearing in a nearby park, the investigation is escalated, and the community rallies to search for the missing woman.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, and guest co-host, Erica Ruth Neubauer (Death At Wedgefield Manor), spoke with the creator of the Maisie Dobbs series, Jaqueline Winspear; debut author and criminal defense attorney, Nadine Matheson; and thriller writer, Ell Marr.

Meet the Thriller Writer welcomed author, Frank H Jordan. Trained in martial arts, and an ex-weekend warrior (Army reservist) with the Australian Defence Force, Frank showcased his interests in combat and all things military in the high-action Jo Modeen series.

The featured guest at Queer Writers of Crime was Joseph R.G. De Marco, author of the Marco Fontana Mysteries including the latest installment, The Vermilion Pursuit.

Wrong Place, Write Crime heard from Tennessee author Sandra Wells; super reader and blog reviewer Colman Keane; and Hawaii-based author Scott Kikkawa, whose Kona Winds is set in the islands' pre-statehood era. There were also book recommendations from Joe Reid, Ryan Sayles, and T.G. Wolff, and Lance Wright had an April update on new releases from Down and Out Books.

My Favorite Detective Stories podcast host, John Hoda, spoke with screenwriter Simon McCleave about his bestselling DI Ruth Hunter crime thriller series.

E.A. Barres (a/k/a E.A. Aymar) stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club to talk about his most recent thriller, They're Gone. Two women's husbands are murdered on the same night in the same way, and the investigation the women undertake to find answers uncovers a terrifying connection.

Anthologist, novelist, and historian, Nick Rennison, spoke with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about the latest anthology of short stories in the rivals to Sherlock Holmes series, American Sherlocks.

NPR's David Bianculli took a look at Mare of Easttown, the new mini-series starring Kate Winslett as Mare Sheehan, an office police investigator in a small Pennsylvania town, who investigates a brutal murder as she tries to keep her life from falling apart.

Forensic psychiatrist and author of The Mind of a Murderer, Dr. Richard Taylor, was featured on the podcast All in the Mind.

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 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) were handed out this past weekend. Crime drama winners included an Outstanding British Film nod for Promising Young Woman, which also won for Best Screenplay (Emerald Fennell); and a Best Supporting Actor win for Daniel Kaluuya for his role in Judas And The Black Messiah.

The Directors' Guild of America also announced winners for their annual awards. Although there weren't many nominees in the crime drama vein, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic TV Series went to Lesli Linka Glatter for the Homeland episode, "Prisoners of War" (Showtime).

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

BAFTA winner Simon Russell Beale (The Hollow Crown) and BAFTA-nominee Nikki Amuka-Bird (NW) have joined the cast of screenwriter Graham Moore’s directorial debut, The Outfit. The crime drama follows Leonard (Mark Rylance), an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. But after a personal tragedy, he ends up in Chicago, operating a small tailor shop in a rough part of town where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters.

It's a bit difficult to keep up with the revolving door on all of the movie schedulings and reschedulings due to the Covid pandemic. The latest to be hit (again) is Mission: Impossible 7, which was slated to be released on November 19. The new plan is for the Top Gun sequel to take Mission: Impossible 7’s November release date, while the next entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise will move to May 27, 2022. Subsequently, Mission: Impossible 8, which is shooting back-to-back with its predecessor, will come out on July 3, 2023 rather than November 4, 2022.

A trailer was released for Those Who Wish Me Dead, the upcoming action thriller starring Angelina Jolie. Adapted from Michael Koryta's novel of the same name, the film follows Jolie's character, Hannah Faber, who is a fire warden and wilderness survival expert assigned to a lookout tower in Montana. Faber is still reeling from the loss of three lives she failed to save in a fire. But her life becomes even more complicated when she crosses paths with a young boy being pursued by assassins.

A trailer was also released for The Woman in the Window, the film based on the novel by A.J. Finn, which stars Amy Adams as a shut-in who feels safest when she’s watching the world from behind her window...until she witnesses a possible murder.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

House and The Night Manager star, Hugh Laurie, has signed up to write, direct, and executive produce an adaptation of Agatha Christie novel, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, for BritBox in North America. The three-part limited series represents the BBC Studios and ITV-owned streamer’s biggest U.S. commission to date. Laurie has apparently been enamored with Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? since he was a child. The book, first published in 1934, tells the story Bobby Jones and his socialite friend Lady Frances Derwent, who discover a dying man while hunting for a golf ball. Jones and Derwent turn amateur sleuths as they seek to unravel the mystery of the man, who has the picture of a beautiful young woman in his pocket, and, with his last breath, utters the cryptic question that forms the series’ title. The amiable duo approach their investigation with a levity that belies the danger they encounter.

Netflix has landed The 39 Steps, a limited-series star vehicle for Benedict Cumberbatch. The project is an update of the classic thriller novel by John Buchan that was famously turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The producers describe the series as "a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for relevance in contemporary times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order: 39 Steps that will change the world as we know it, with only Hannay standing in the way."

The CBS action drama, MacGyver, has been cancelled after five seasons. The reboot of the 1985 series will conclude with a series finale to air Friday, April 30, in the show’s regular 8 pm time slot. The show stars Lucas Till as Angus "Mac" MacGyver, an agent for a clandestine organization within the U.S. government, where he uses his extraordinary talent for unconventional problem-solving and vast scientific knowledge to save lives. The series also features Tristin Mays, Justin Hires, Meredith Eaton, Levy Tran, and Henry Ian Cusick. Original co-lead George Eads left in Season 3, and his character was subsequently killed off.

USA Network’s Nash Bridges revival is getting closer to reality. Series star, Don Johnson, confirmed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that he's in "heavy prep" on the revival, reprising his title role in the project, which has been in development since 2019 as a two-hour movie/backdoor pilot. The actor also confirmed on The Talk in 2019 that his longtime co-star, Cheech Marin, would return for the revival in his role as Inspector Joe Dominguez. The original Nash Bridges series ran on CBS from 1996 to 2001.

The Killing Times reported that ITV has commissioned a third series of the detective drama, McDonald & Dodds. Starring Tala Gouveia as the wildly ambitious Detective Chief Inspector McDonald and Jason Watkins as the shy and enigmatic Detective Sergeant Dodds, the third series will comprise three new murder mysteries for the pair to solve.

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine has been tapped for a major recurring role opposite Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix’s drama series based on Michael Connelly's bestselling novels. Written and executive produced by David E. Kelley and showrunner Ted Humphrey, 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 city of Los Angeles. Ntare will play Detective Raymond Griggs, a character created specifically for the series who develops a wary working relationship with Haller.

Jennifer Jason Leigh has joined Amazon Prime Video’s Hunters for the drama’s upcoming second season. Hunters follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City who have discovered that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the United States. The first season starred Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton. As of now, Lerman and Hinton will be returning, but there’s no word yet on if Pacino will be back.

Michelle Veintimilla and Sebastian Roché are set for recurring roles on David E. Kelley’s hit freshman ABC drama series, Big Sky. The crime thriller series follows private detective, Cassie Dewell (played by 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.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone host, Luca Veste, was joined by guest host, CL Taylor, to discuss Locked Up Festival 2, the news, and one star reviews.

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed intellectual property attorney, Kathryn Goldman, editor of the legal blog, Creative Law Center, a "must-read for writers, artists and other creative people."

Read or Dead hosts, Katie and Nusrah, discussed the Edgar Award Nominees and recommended books for you to prioritize from the list.

Jacqueline Winspear was the featured guest on Speaking of Mysteries, discussing The Consequences of Fear, the 16th installment of Winspear’s series with WWII-era detective and frequent intelligence asset, Maisie Dobbs.

Suspense Magazine's podcast welcomed author Mark Greaney as he talked about his latest Grey Man series book, Relentless.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Michael Kaufman about his new novel, The Last Exit, a near-future thriller where the secret to eternal life is closely guarded by people who will do anything to protect it, even if it means destroying everything in their path.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Dick Wybro‪w‬ about Past Life, the newest installment of his paranormal mystery series featuring Painter Mann.

Queer Writers of Crime welcomed Michael Nava, the author of an acclaimed series of eight novels featuring gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios, who The New Yorker called "a detective unlike any previous protagonist in American noir."

Crime Writers of Color interviewed Alexia Gordon, a physician by day and award-winning crime novelist by night, about her mystery series with Gethsemane Brown, an African-American classical musician and expatriate to an Irish village who solves murders and encounters a snarky ghost.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club discussed Daniel Pyne's Water Memory, the first in a new series with Black Ops specialist, Aubrey Sentro.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's podcast selected a private-eye story for the latest episode, "All Shook Down," from the September/October 2020 issue of EQMM. It’s the first contribution to the magazine by Libby Cudmore, author of the highly acclaimed novel, The Big Rewind.

The latest episode of Lynda LaPlante's forensic podcast, Listening to the Dead, tackled the topic of "Cause of Death – Unknown."

CrimeTime FM host, Edward Wilson, talked to Paul Burke about his new spy novel, The Portrait of the Spy as a Young Man.

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

Academy Award winner, Forest Whitaker, is set to co-star with Tom Hardy in the Netflix action film, Havoc, from Gareth Evans, the director of the critically acclaimed martial arts film, The Raid. Hardy stars in the project 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.

Chris Pratt will team up with brother-in-law, Patrick Schwarzenegger, on Amazon's The Terminal List. The series, which is currently shooting, is based on the Jack Carr novel that follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. However, as new evidence comes to light, Reece discovers dark forces working against him, endangering not only his life but the lives of those he loves. Schwarzenegger will play Reece’s baby-faced youngest team member. 

Derek DelGaudio is set to join the ensemble cast of Steven Soderbergh’s next film, the New Line Max Original feature KIMI, with Zoë Kravitz on board to star. Although a recent Deadline report said that plot details are being kept under wraps, an earlier Variety article indicated the plot centers on an agoraphobic tech worker (Kravitz), who discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime during an ordinary data stream review and tries reporting it up the chain of command at her company. Met with resistance and bureaucracy, she realizes that in order to get involved, she will have to do the thing she fears the most — leave her apartment.

After landing rights to her directorial debut, Netflix is looking to get back into business with Halle Berry. The streamer has set her to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in the thriller, Our Man From Jersey. David Guggenheim penned the script, with Wahlberg and his partner Stephen Levinson producing. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the film is described as a blue-collar James Bond. Insiders say the plan is to shoot the film early next year in London.

Katie Holmes, through her Noelle Productions banner, has optioned The Watergate Girl: My Fight For Truth and Justice Against A Criminal President, the best-selling autobiography by former Watergate prosecutor, Jill Wine-Banks. Holmes will also star in the project as Wine-Banks, then a 30-year-old (and known as Jill Wine Volner), the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought the casual sexism of the day to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts — and prevailed despite her house being burgled, her phones tapped, and her office trashed.

Kenneth Branagh’s mystery ensemble-cast movie, Death on the Nile has seen its premiere date pushed back again, this time to February 11, 2022. The 20th Century Studios production, which also stars Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening, has changed release dates several times due to the pandemic. However, Deadline reports that the new release date has nothing to do with co-star Armie Hammer, who has been besieged by an alleged sex scandal.

Meanwhile, those films that have been able to premiere in theatres with limited seating are doing surprising well. Among the recent successes are the Brad Furman-directed crime thriller, City of Lies, which evolves around the real-life death of hip hop icon Notorious B.I.G.; and the Cold War spy thriller, The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rachel Brosnaha.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS confirmed that Dick Wolf’s FBI franchise is growing and has given a series order to FBI: International, the third iteration of the successful FBI brand, for the 2021-22 broadcast season. The network also announced it is renewing the mothership series, FBI, for a fourth season and FBI: Most Wanted for a third season. FBI: International is scheduled to debut in a crossover episode of those other two shows next year.

The Act creator Michelle Dean is adapting Matthew McGough’s book, The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation, for a TV series. The book tells the story of one of the most infamous murder cases in LAPD history, which remained unsolved until DNA evidence implicated a shocking suspect – Stephanie Lazarus, a detective within the LAPD’s own ranks. McGough, an investigative journalist, met and interviewed Lazarus in 2008, when she was a well-respected detective in the LAPD’s Art Theft Detail. A year later, Lazarus was arrested for a cold case murder she had committed 23 years earlier. McGough researched not only the murder, but also the LAPD’s cover-up and its systemic failure to investigate one of it's own.

Netflix has taken international rights to Steven Moffat’s limited BBC series, Inside Man. Stanley Tucci has been set in the title role, joined by Doctor Who actor, David Tennant, and Dracula star, Dolly Wells. Rounding out the headline cast is Lydia West, who featured in the acclaimed Channel 4/HBO Max series, It’s A Sin. Steven Moffat (Sherlock, Doctor Who) is penning and directing the project, which is said to center around three characters, a prisoner on death row in America, an English Vicar, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar, who all cross paths in the most unexpected way.

The Chelsea Detective will become the latest British crime series to be streamed by Acorn-TV.  Created and co-written by Peter Fincham, The Chelsea Detective stars Adrian Scarborough as Detective Inspector Max Arnold, who plies his trade in Chelsea to uncover the murky underbelly of a well-heeled borough of London.

This is an odd little project: CBS Studios and German producer Syrreal Entertainment are teaming to create a series for RTL streamer TV Now in which David Hasselhoff will star as himself in a fictional international conspiracy story. It follows the actor as he lands a lead role in a German stage show, which plunges him into the center of an international conspiracy of former cold war assassins, while around him the fabric of reality seems to break down. German actor Henry Hübchen also stars as a version of himself.

Evan Peters is set as the title character in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a Netflix limited series co-created by longtime collaborators Murphy and Ian Brennan. Monster chronicles the story of one of America’s most notorious serial killers (Peters), largely told from the point of view of Dahmer’s victims, and dives deeply into the police incompetence and apathy that allowed the Wisconsin native to go on a multiyear killing spree.

David Thewlis has been cast to star opposite Olivia Colman in the HBO and Sky crime drama, Landscapers. The four-part limited series, inspired by real events, tells the story of a seemingly ordinary couple who become the focus of an investigation when two dead bodies are discovered in the garden of a Nottingham house. Additional cast members include Kate O’Flynn, Dipo Ola, Samuel Anderson, Karl Johnson, Felicity Montagu, and Daniel Rigby.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Small press and self-published authors were in the spotlight on the latest episode of Writer Types. Writers including Mick McCrary, Jonathan Brown, Delia C. Pitts, Murphy Morrison, and Greg Hickey all chatted with host, Eric Beetner. Plus Gabriel Valjean, Mark Atley, Eric Dezenhall and Sandra Wells also stopped by.

Read or Dead tackled mysteries and thrillers that transport you to a particular time and place.

Jacqueline Winspear was the featured guest on Speaking of Mysteries, discussing The Consequences of Fear, the 16th installment of Winspear’s addictive series featuring detective and frequent intelligence asset, Maisie Dobbs.

Suspense Radio and Meet the Thriller Author both chatted with master of suspense, Dean Koontz, about his latest book, The Other Emily, which takes readers on a twisting journey of lost love, impossible second chances, and terrifying promises.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Danny Gardne‪r‬ to chat about his newest novel, Ace Boon Coon, and the inspiration behind it.

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with William D. Prystauk about his series featuring a pansexual private investigator who solves crimes in New York City’s BDSM and LGBT communities.

On the Writer's Detective Bureau, host Adam Richardson answered questions about SWAT snipers on rooftops, how the FBI and SEC handle white-collar investigations, and when autopsies are and are not performed

Jackie Flaum joined It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club for a discussion about her first novel, Justice Tomorrow, featuring investigators Madeline Sterling and Socractes Gray, who head a team sent to a Georgia town in 1965 to look into the lynching of a local civil rights leader's son.

After a hiatus, the Alfred Hitchcock Magazine podcast series is back with a tale by Joseph S. Walker, nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story.

American spy author, Paul Vidich, spoke with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about his fascination with the Cold War and his new Moscow-set thriller, The Mercenary, the fourth in the George Mueller series.

THEATRE

Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is set to return to the stage in the UK, to be presented September 11-13 at Royal and Derngate in Northampton ahead of a UK tour. Director Lucy Bailey noted, "Set in 1939, this is Agatha Christie's most popular novel but also one of her darkest, reflecting the impending sense of doom of a world on the brink of war. Its depiction of a group of strangers stranded in a crisis of their own making feels very in tune with today's climate emergency."

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

David Strathairn will join Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, and Harris Dickinson in the film adaptation of Where The Crawdads Sing, based on Delia Owens’s best-selling novel. Directed by Olivia Newman, the project 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.

Jamie Foxx, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, January Jones, Maika Monroe, and Andrew Dice Clay are set to star in the action-thriller, God Is A Bullet. Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the novel of the same name by Boston Teran, the film centers on vice detective, Bob Hightower (Coster-Waldau), who finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a satanic cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force, gets tattoos, and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the cult leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin (Monroe). Foxx will play the pivotal supporting role of "The Ferryman."

Max Beesley has joined the cast of Guy Ritchie’s untitled latest action thriller, formerly known as Five Eyes, opposite Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, and Cary Elwes. The feature follows an MI6 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. Beesley plays a respectable lawyer and consigliere to a billionaire arms broker (Hartnett), who can "also handle himself in a fight."

Signature Entertainment has acquired the mob crime-drama, The Birthday Cake, for UK-Ireland and Australia-New Zealand. The film follows Giovanni (Shiloh Fernandez) who, on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death, reluctantly accepts the task of bringing a cake to the home of his uncle, a mob boss, for a celebration. Just two hours into the night, Gio’s life is forever changed after witnessing a murder and learning the truth about what happened to his late father. The film also stars Ewan McGregor, Val Kilmer, Lorraine Bracco, and William Fichtner.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Spectrum Originals has given a 10-episode order to Joe Pickett, a drama series based on C.J. Box’s bestselling novels. Michael Dorman (Patriot, For All Mankind) has been tapped for the title role. Joe Pickett follows a game warden and his family as they navigate the changing political and socio-economic climate in a small rural town in Wyoming. Surrounded by rich history and vast wildlife, the township hides decades of schemes and secrets that are yet to be uncovered. The series will air for a nine-month exclusive run on Spectrum.

Clive Owen is set to star in Monsieur Spade, a one-hour drama series from Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (City on a Hill). The predominantly French language series centers around writer Dashiell Hammett’s great detective, Sam Spade (Owen) who has been quietly living out his golden years in the small town of Bozuls in the South of France. It’s 1963, the Algerian War has just ended, and in a very short time, so, too, will Spade’s tranquility.

Matthew McConaughey is attached to star in a series adaptation of the John Grisham novel, A Time for Mercy, which is currently in development at HBO. The book, published in 2020, is a follow-up to Grisham’s books, A Time to Kill and Sycamore Row, which center on the character of attorney Jake Brigance. In A Time for Mercy, Brigance must defend a young man who killed his mother’s boyfriend, a deputy sheriff, with the boy claiming the man was abusive towards his mother, himself, and his little sister.

FX is in early development on a drama based on Elmore Leonard's novel, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. The story centers on Raymond Cruz, a Detroit homicide detective, and his quest to bring a killer nicknamed the "Oklahoma Wildman" to justice after the latter kills a judge. Leonard's novella, Fire in the Hole, served as source material for the popular TV series, Justified, and there is some talk of bringing the show's star, Timothy Olyphant, back to play U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in the new project.

Wiip, the independent studio created by former ABC chief, Paul Lee, is developing Young Agatha, a TV series exploring the teenage years of Agatha Christie, the iconic British crime writer behind genre-defining characters including Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The project will tell the story of how a precocious teenager mourning her father’s death became one of the most prolific and beloved mystery novelists of all time. Set in the early 1900s in Devon, England, the series is being described as "an action-packed drama," and a “dynamic and supercharged coming-of-age story."

In a competitive situation, Peacock has landed Poker Face, a mystery drama from Knives Out director, Rian Johnson, set to star Natasha Lyonne. Plot details about the series are being kept under wraps, but Johnson said, "I’m very excited to dig into the type of fun, character driven, case-of-the-week mystery goodness I grew up watching."

BritBox, the BBC and ITV’s joint-venture streamer, has acquired ITV’s John Simm drama, Grace, for the U.S. and Canada, set to premiere on April 27. Told as two feature-length episodes, Grace is from Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, and is an adaptation of the first two of Peter James’s Roy Grace crime novels, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead. The novels introduce Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.

EastEnders actress, Jessica Plummer, has joined Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo in The Girl Before, the limited series for HBO Max and BBC One. Based on JP Delaney’s bestselling psychological thriller, the story follows Jane (Mbatha-Raw), a traumatized woman who falls in love with an extraordinary minimalist house, which remains under the spell of the architect (Oyelowo) who originally designed it. But when she discovers that another damaged woman died in the same property three years earlier, she starts to wonder if her own story is just a rerun of the girl before.

Writer/producer David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) is developing a remake of 1973 feature film, Walking Tall, which is being set up as a two-hour TV movie at the Peacock streaming service with hope of future installments or an ongoing series. The original was based on the life of Sheriff Buford Pusser and starred Joe Don Baker as the professional wrestler turned lawman. The reboot will star WWE's Charlotte Flair playing a Tucson cop who finds herself caught in a web of fraud, exploitation, and murder and is forced to go full vigilante to protect her home town.

Killing Eve is coming to an end with its delayed fourth season (set to premiere in 2022), but BBC America is developing a number of potential spinoffs. The cat-and-mouse thriller stars Jodie Comer as assassin, Villannelle, and Sandra Oh, as British intelligence agent, Eve Polastri. The network and production company didn’t disclose specific spinoff ideas, but some have suggested potential targets might be The Twelve, the shadowy organization that is associated with Villanelle, or The Bitter Pill, a group of investigative journalists that help Polastri investigate.

Canadian series, Burden of Truth, has been canceled and will wrap up with its Season 4 finale. Debuting on CBC in July of 2018, and airing in the U.S. on The CW, the legal drama centered on Joanna Hanley (Kristin Kreuk), a big city lawyer who returned to her hometown to take the case of a number of girls grappling with a perplexing illness. Created by Brad Simpson, the series also starred Peter Mooney, Star Slade, Meegwun Fairbrother, Anwen O’Driscoll, and Nicola Correia-Damude.

AMC Networks streamer, Acorn TV, has renewed its darkly comic British crime series, Queens Of Mystery, for a second season, with production already underway in southeast England. The show follows a perennially single female detective and her three well-known crime writing aunts, who help her solve whodunit-style murders as well as set her up on blind dates. Olivia Vinall played detective Matilda Stone in the first season, but will be replaced by Florence Hall in the second due to a scheduling conflict. Julie Graham, Sarah Woodward, and Siobhan Redmond return as Stone’s aunts.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first two chapters of Out of Time by Cathi Stoler, as read by actor Ian Jones.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, was joined by Greg Levin (author of The Exit Man and Sick To Death) as co-host in the latest episode. They chatted with debut medical thriller author, Tammy Euliano (Fatal Intent), thriller writer, Rio Youers (Lola On Fire), and true crime author, Harold Schechter (Maniac).

Suspense Radio welcomed debut author, Susan Ouellette, to talk about her book, The Wayward Spy, and how her background in the CIA made her the perfect fit to become a writer of spy thrillers.

David Heska Wanbli Weide‪n, a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his Edgar-nominated novel, Winter Counts, as well as exploring the setting for the book, a Native American reservation.

My Favorite Detective Stories spoke with Daniel J. Waters, an open-heart surgeon who's authored several medical books as well as a thriller series featuring Surf City Police Chief, Mickey Cleary.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club discussed books by Irish mystery authors Carlene O'Connor, Olivia Kiernan, and Graham Norton

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with JB Sanders, author of a satirical "Hardy Boys" style mystery series, about the fine balance between suspense and humor.

Rachel Howzell-Hall was interviewed by Robert Justice for Crime Writers of Color. Hall writes the acclaimed Lou Norton series, has been nominated for the Anthony, Lefty, and Thriller Awards, and co-wrote The Good Sister with James Patterson.

Listening to the Dead was joined by pathologist Dr. Brett Lockyer, part of the experienced team at Forensic Access, to reveal how to tell the difference between strangulation and hanging during a post mortem, and where best to look for evidence that a suicide is not what it seems.

On Crime Time FM, Peter May talked about his new Enzo MacLeod thriller, The Night Gate; writing the "new normal" into fiction; why he’s enjoying some well earned down time; and why he's not looking forward to a coming French adaptation of one of his Chinese set novels relocated to Korea.

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 Academy Award nominations were announced this morning and include a few crime dramas. Among the Best Movie nods are Judas and the Black Messiah, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. In the Best Actress category, Andra Day was nominated for The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman. In the Best Supporting Actor category, Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield were nominated for Judas and the Black Messiah and Sacha Baron Cohen for The Trial of the Chicago 7. For all the nominees in the various categories, follow this link.

Likewise, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the nominees for the annual BAFTA awards, which also include nods for several crime dramas. The Best Film category includes The Mauritanian, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. The Best British Film category includes the Irish crime drama, Calm With Horses as well as The Mauritanian and Promising Young Woman. For all the nominees, follow this link.

New Line has picked up the action-thriller, Classified, with Chad Stahelski (John Wick) attached to direct, and Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan set to pen the screenplay. The log line for Classified describes the project as a "high octane, cat-and-mouse thriller, in the vein of Die Hard meets Indiana Jones, set inside a top secret government bunker that contains relics covertly recovered during World War II — that turn out to be more powerful and dangerous than ever imagined."

Elizabeth Banks, who most recently directed the latest Charlie’s Angels installment, has signed on to direct Cocaine Bear for Universal Pictures. Written by Jimmy Warden, the film is a thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985 when a bear's death from ingesting cocaine led to a corrupt narcotics officer and drug smuggling ring.

Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes, and Greg Tarzan Davis have rounded out the cast of Mission: Impossible 7 starring Tom Cruise. They join previously announced new cast members Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Esai Morales, as well as returning actors, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Vanessa Kirby. The most recent installment ramped up production late last year after its filming was put on pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan was to shoot installments seven and eight back-to-back, but Deadline recently reported production on the eighth film will occur in 2022 in order to give cast and crew a break.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple TV+ has given a straight-to-series order for a new limited series from director Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) starring Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o. The project, titled Lady in the Lake, is an adaptation of the 2019 novel of the same name by Laura Lippman. Set in 1960s Baltimore, the series centers on Maddie Schwartz (Portman), a housewife and mother who is pushed by an unsolved murder to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist. The case sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs, and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.

Peacock has given a series order for Dan Brown’s Langdon (f/k/a Langdon), based on Brown’s best-selling thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. The series was originally developed by NBC and ordered to pilot by the network last year. Written by Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, Dan Brown’s Langdon follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Ashley Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.

Patrick Harbinson (Homeland) is adapting author Kate London’s novel, Post Mortem, into a three-part ITV series. The drama will be titled The Tower, in a nod to the novel’s thrilling opening sequence in which a veteran beat cop and teenage girl fall to their deaths from a tower block in south-east London, leaving a five-year-old boy and rookie police officer Lizzie Griffiths on the roof — only for them to go missing. Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins works to solve the disappearances and uncover the truth behind the grisly tower block deaths. Collins and Griffiths later become the central characters in three books written by Kate London, a former Met officer.

Dakota Fanning is joining Ripley, starring opposite Andrew Scott. She'll play Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie the affability of Tom Ripley (Scott). Based on Patricia Highsmith’s books, the series follows Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy man to try to convince his vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), who is living a comfortable, trust-funded ex-pat life in Italy, to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder.

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany are set as the stars of Amazon and BBC One’s A Very British Scandal, a follow-up to the Hugh Grant-led, A Very English Scandal. The three-part series focuses on the divorce of the Duke (Bettany) and Duchess of Argyll (Foy), one of the most notorious, extraordinary, and brutal legal cases of the 20th Century that included accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, secret recording, bribery, and an explicit Polaroid picture.

Queen Latifah is going to hunt more bad guys following the news that CBS has renewed The Equalizer for a second season after only four episodes. The Equalizer stars Latifah as Robyn McCall, an enigmatic woman with a mysterious background who uses her extensive skills as a former CIA operative to help those with nowhere else to turn.

More good nenewal news, this time for the British crime drama series, Bloodlands, which stars James Nesbitt and comes from Bodyguard creator Jed Mercurio. The BBC announced it was renewing that series for a second season. The noir-ish drama follows DCI Tom Brannick (Nesbitt), a veteran detective who delves into his own dark past to try and solve an infamous cold case with enormous personal significance: a series of mysterious disappearances linked to a turbulent period in Northern Ireland history over 20 years ago.

Queen of the South fans aren't as lucky, since USA announced the show will end with its upcoming fifth season. The Alice Braga-led crime drama (an adaptation of the best-selling novel La Reina Del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte) tells the story of Teresa Mendoza, a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. Eventually, she rises to power over her own drug trafficking empire.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode is up, a special bonus episode that features an excerpt from the audio book of Death in Rancho Las Amigas by Gay Toltl Kinman, as read by actor and mystery author, Harley Jane Kozak.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, Laurie Buchanan, on the Crime Cafe podcast. Buchanan's debut novel, Indelible, introduces Sean McPherson, an ex-cop turned handyman at a writer's retreat where the story takes place.

Read or Dead hosts, Katie and Nusrah, chatted about mystery/thrillers that feature revenge and serial killers, and how these narratives uncover stories that often go unheard.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Jess Montgomery, whose protagonist, Sheriff Lily Ross, returns in The Stills, the third installment of Montgomery’s series that takes place in 1920s Prohibition-era southeastern Ohio.

Wendy Heard was the latest guest on the Queer Writers of Crime podcast. Heard is the author of two adult thrillers, The Kill Club and Hunting Annabelle, which Kirkus Reviews praised as "a diabolically plotted creep show."

Suspense Radio bought back bestselling author, Joel Rosenberg, to talk about his latest book in the Marcus Ryker series, The Beirut Protocol.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Ryan Sayles about his latest police procedural, It's Ugly Because It's Personal.

The internationally bestselling Anne Perry stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club. Perry is the author of two long-running series, one with Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte and another featuring private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly. The New York Times selected Perry as one of the "100 Masters of Crime."

The latest In GAD We Trust episode examined the Dr. Thorndyke Stories of R. Austin Freeman.

Listening to the Dead host, Lynda Plante, tackled the topic, "Cause of Death – Gunshot Wound" in the latest episode. She was joined by former Senior Forensic Scientist, David Pryor, an internationally-renowned expert in the field of firearms and wound ballistics.

On the new podcast, Crime Time FM, Tony Parsons interviewed Paul Burke about his new novel, Your Neighbour's Wife. Parsons also discussed his love of the iconic thriller/chiller, Rebecca; tackled topics as diverse as the death of print journalism, David Bowie on drugs, and gambling the pension on becoming a crime writer; and took a look at "why Lee Child bosses it."

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

Robert Duvall and Garret Hedlund are set to star in The Ploughmen, the third film to be directed by actor Ed Harris, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Kim Zupan’s 2014 debut novel of the same name. The Ploughmen centers on a killer, John Gload, awaiting trial in Montana, and a troubled young deputy, Valentine Millimaki, sitting across from each other during the nightshift, talking through the bars of a county jail cell. With a disintegrating marriage further collapsing under the strain of his night duty, Millimaki finds himself seeking counsel from Gload, whose troubled past shares something essential with his own. Their uneasy friendship takes a startling turn with a brazen act of violence that yokes together two haunted souls by the secrets they share.

Dermot Mulroney, Katherine McNamara, Rhys Coiro, Annie Ilonzeh, and Oscar-winner Mel Gibson have signed on for the indie spy thriller, Agent Game, which is being directed by Grant S. Johnson (Nighthawks). The plot follows Harris (Mulroney), a CIA officer involved in missions to detain and relocate foreign nationals for interrogation. When a political shift in Washington turns his allies into enemies, Harris finds himself the scapegoat for a detainee’s murder and must run from a team of operatives sent to bring him in (McNamara and Coiro), led by a ruthless double agent (Ilonzeh). Gibson plays an intelligence official running the unsanctioned covert operation to hunt down the disgraced spy.

Aisha Tyler (Criminal Minds) is set to direct a psychological thriller called Silent John that will begin filming this summer. The film follows a young couple who visit a rustic B&B in County Galway, Ireland, ahead of the birth of their first child, only to discover that their host and his mute groundskeeper share a viciously harrowing secret. Emmett Hughes wrote the script for the socially conscious thriller, which focuses on the historic abuses of the Catholic church against unwed mothers, and explores how a man gets lost between his faith, the church, and his own sanity.

Paul Mescal (Normal People) and Tom Burke (Mank) have been set to lead the Irish thriller, Bring Them Down. Set in the wild landscape of the West of Ireland, the film follows an Irish shepherd who is drawn into violent conflict with a neighboring farm when his sheep are massacred by unknown men.

Magic Mike star Alex Pettyfer is attached to star in The Chelsea Cowboy, based on the colorful life of British actor, tough guy, and lothario, John Bindon. The project will chart the rise and fall of underworld hard-man-turned-actor Bindon, who, despite a successful acting career and passionate romantic liaisons with various socialites, was unable to leave his criminal past behind.

Billy Bob Thornton, Alfre Woodard, and Regé-Jean Page have rounded out the cast of the Russo Brothers’ The Gray Man starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana De Armas. The Gray Man is based on the debut novel by Mark Greaney, published in 2009 by Jove Books, the first novel to feature the Gray Man, freelance assassin and former CIA operative Court Gentry. The action thriller will follow Gentry (Gosling) as he’s hunted across the globe by Lloyd Hansen (Evans), a former cohort at the CIA.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Wire's David Simon and George Pelecanos are returning to Baltimore for a new series based on the book, We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption, by investigative journalist Justin Fenton. The story takes place in 2015 against the backdrop of rising crime rates and riots as citizens demand justice for a 25-year-old Black man who died under suspicious circumstances in police custody. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office and a federal investigation, Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit to help get guns and drugs off the street. Instead, Jenkins and his team skimmed from drug busts, pocketed thousands in cash found in private homes, and planted fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent.

After Amazon announced the end to the Bosch series following its seventh season, IMDb-TV has scooped up the rights and the show's creative team for a spinoff. Based on Michael Connelly's novels, the untitled series follows Harry Bosch, once again played by Titus Welliver, as he embarks on the next chapter of his career and finds himself working with his one-time enemy and top-notch attorney Honey "Money" Chandler (Mimi Rogers). With a deep and complicated history between this unlikely pair, they must work together to do what they can to find justice.

Ray Liotta will return to series television as a lead opposite Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser in Apple’s limited series, In With The Devil, an adaptation of James Keene and Hillel Levin’s 2010 novel titled In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption. The six-episode series, written by bestselling author Dennis Lehane and directed by Michael R. Roskam, is told through the lens of an intimate relationship between two prisoners (Egerton, Hauser), exploring the lengths that people will go to in order to seek redemption, if true absolution is ever really possible. Liotta will play the father of one of the prisoners, a popular former ranking officer in the Kankakee police and fire departments who had influential friends in the highest reaches of state and local government.

Emmy-nominated David Oyelowo has signed on to star alongside Gugu Mbatha-Raw in The Girl Before, a four-episode limited series for HBO-Max and the BBC based on JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller. Created, written and executive produced by Delaney, The Girl Before tells the story of Jane (Mbatha-Raw), who gets the chance to move into a beautiful, ultra-minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect (Oyelowo). There’s just one catch: occupants have to abide by his list of exacting rules. Jane starts to feel the house changing her in unexpected ways but, when she makes the shocking discovery that her predecessor Emma died in the house, she’s forced to confront unnerving similarities. As the two women’s timelines interweave, Jane begins to question if her fate will be the same as the girl before.

The Good Fight is getting a high-profile new cast addition for Season 5. Emmy and Tony winner Mandy Patinkin is joining the Paramount+ drama series as a regular with a one-year deal. Patinkin will play Hal Wackner, a layman with no legal training who spontaneously decides to open a court in the back of a copy shop. Against all odds, the court catches on, and the team at Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart find themselves contending with judgements that mean nothing legally, but are honored by much of the entertained public.

Paul Marquess and Susanne Farrell, who worked together on long-running British cop drama, The Bill, have teamed up on a new British crime drama for the BBC and BritBox North America. Hope Street, set in the fictional town of Port Devine on the Northern Ireland coast, stars Amara Khan as English Detective Constable Alimah Kahn, the first Muslim police officer in the town’s history. Combining a long-running serial narrative with self-contained crime stories in each episode, the cast also includes Brid Brennan, Des McAleer, and Ciaran McMenamin.

Constance Wu is returning to series television as the female lead opposite Chris Pratt in Amazon’s conspiracy-thriller series, The Terminal List, based on Jack Carr’s bestselling novel. The show follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. However, as new evidence comes to light, Reece discovers dark forces working against him, endangering not only his life but the lives of those he loves. Wu will play Katie Buranek, a risk-seeking war correspondent who uses her byline to speak truth to power.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The Poisoned Pen podcast featured Barbara Peters in conversation with C.J. Box, author of the Joe Pickett series.

On the latest Writer's Detective Bureau, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson tackled the topics of when double jeopardy attaches to an investigation; forensic artists; search patterns; and he finally shared "that bloodhound story."

Crime Cafe's Debbi Mack interviewed Frank Zafiro, author of more than 30 novels, including the River City series and the Charlie-316 series. He also hosts his own podcast, Wrong Place, Write Crime.

On Writer Types, Eric Beetner was joined by TV writer Lindsey Allen, winner of the show's co-host for a day contest. They chatted with authors JA Jance and Steve Berry, as well as novelist and screenwriter Daniel Pyne.

Bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman made his debut on Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover, talking about his latest book, Serpentine, the 36th book in the Alex Delaware series. Like his fictional protagonist, Alex Delaware, Jonathan received a Ph.D. in psychology at the age of 24, with a specialty in the treatment of children.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Dana Stabenow, author of science fiction, mystery/crime fiction, suspense/thriller, and historical adventure novels. They discussed the fifth book in her Liam Campbell series that's set in her home state of Alaska.

Wrong Place, Write Crime's Frank Zafiro spoke with Jonathan Brown about his novella, Travel Money, and his latest Lou Crasher novel, Don't Shoot the Drummer.

Jack Dickson was the featured guest on Queer Writers of Crime. Born in a small town on Scotland's West Coast, Dickson is the author of nine novels and a variety of short stories, including the "Jas Anderson Investigates" series of crime thrillers set on the mean streets of Glasgow, his adopted city.

My Favorite Detective Story's latest guest was David Stever, a novelist, screenwriter, and film producer. Stever writes the Johnny Delarosa mystery-thriller series, which pays homage to the great detective fiction of the past and has been called “noir for the 21st Century.”

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Jennifer Dornbush, a screenwriter, author, international speaker, and forensic specialist. As she says, "I grew up around death," as the daughter of a small town medical examiner whose office was in their home. She created an Amazon top-selling mystery novel series, The Coroner’s Daughter.

As part of EQMM's 80th-year anniversary celebration this year (2021), the magazine's podcast offered a seasonally appropriate history-laden mystery by the multitalented writing team of Ellery Queen: "The President's Half Disme [an American silver coin]," originally published in EQMM in February 1947.

The latest topic on the Listening to the Dead podcast, hosted by Lynda LaPlante, was "Cause of Death – Terrorism & Mass Disaster." The show was joined by former anti-terrorism branch and SO13 officer, David Alexander, as he discussed his extraordinary experiences working on IRA bombings, the 7/7 attacks and investigating war crimes in Kosovo.

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.