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:

AWARDS

The Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) award nominations were announced this past week. Among the crime drama nods are House of Gucci (based on the true story of Patrizia Reggiani and the events leading up to her conviction for murdering her ex-husband), which was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (essentially, "Best Picture"); in the Best Actor category, Benedict Cumberbatch was nominated for his role in Power of the Dog, and Denzel Washington was nominated for The Tragedy of Macbeth; and in the Best Actress category, Lady Gaga was nominated for House of Gucci. On the TV side, Mare of Easttown received several acting nods, including Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series (Kate Winslet; Jean Smart) and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series (Evan Peters). You can check out all the SAG honorees via this link.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) also unveiled longlists that narrowed the field in 24 different categories at the British Academy Film Awards. Among the crime dramas in the Best Film category are House of Gucci; No Time to Die; The Power of the Dog; and The Tragedy of Macbeth. House of Gucci and No Time to Die were also nominated in the Best British Film category, along with The King’s Man. The Wrap has a wrap-up of all the categories and longlisted honorees.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Gal Gadot is attached to star in and produce a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, To Catch a Thief, for Paramount Pictures, with Eileen Jones writing the script. Plot details about the remake are being kept under wraps, but the original 1955 film starred Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar who has to save his reformed reputation by catching an impostor preying on the wealthy tourists of the French Riviera. The film also starred Grace Kelly, who played the daughter of a wealthy widow.

Denzel Washington revealed he’s gearing up to return for The Equalizer 3, a sequel to his action franchise with director Antoine Fuqua, who is also in talks to return to direct the sequel. The Equalizer was first released in 2014 and starred Washington as a former marine named Robert McCall who tries to rescue a young girl from violent Russian mobsters. The original film and the follow-up were based loosely on the 1980s TV series, which has also been more recently adapted as a CBS series starring Queen Latifah.

Aaron Eckhart has been set as the lead in Renny Harlin’s action-thriller, The Bricklayer, which is due to get underway in March in Europe. Millennium Media is producing with Gerard Butler after both teamed up with Eckhart on the lucrative "Has Fallen" franchise. In The Bricklayer, someone is blackmailing the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it look like the agency is responsible. As the world begins to unite against the U.S., the CIA must lure its most brilliant – and rebellious – operative out of retirement, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy.

Snake Eyes star Andrew Koji is set for the ensemble cast of the action-fantasy Boy Kills World, joining Bill Skarsgård, Samara Weaving, and Yayan Ruhian, with first-time feature director Moritz Mohr helming the project. Boy Kills World is described as a one-of-a-kind action spectacle set in a dystopian fever-dream reality and follows a boy who is a deaf mute with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, he escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.

A new take on the cult 2012 martial arts film, The Raid: Redemption, is coming to Netflix from producers Michael Bay and Gareth Evans, with Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) on board to direct. The original 2012 movie, written and directed by Evans, was heralded for its "hyper-kinetic and violent action sequences and unrelenting pacing." The film followed an Indonesian S.W.A.T. team trapped inside a tenement run by a mobster who sends his endless army of killers and thugs to stop them from climbing to the top of the building. The new film is set in Philadelphia’s drug-infested "Badlands"” and follows an elite undercover DEA task force as they climb a ladder of cartel informants to catch an elusive kingpin.

Netflix is planning to shoot back-to-back sequels for Red Notice in early 2023. Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, Red Notice stars Dwayne Johnson as an FBI agent who is forced to team up with a thief (played by Ryan Reynolds) in order to best another thief (Gal Gadot). Thurber is also writing both sequels, with production subject to the availability and deals of its three principal stars.

RLJE Films has unveiled the brand new poster and trailer for Last Looks. Previously titled Waldo, the comedy-crime film stars Charlie Hunnam as ex-LAPD superstar Charlie Waldo and Mel Gibson as Alastair Pinch, an eccentric actor who spends his days drunk on the set of his TV show. When Pinch’s wife is found dead, he is the prime suspect and Waldo is convinced to come out of retirement to investigate what happened. The case finds Waldo contending with gangsters, Hollywood executives, and pre-school teachers, all in pursuit of clearing Pinch’s name … or confirming his guilt.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Justified: City Primeval has been greenlighted at FX, with Timothy Olyphant reprising his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens for the limited series. Seven years after the end of FX’s Justified, Sony Pictures Television and FX Productions are producing their latest Elmore Leonard adaptation, based on the author’s novel City Primeval: High Noon In Detroit. The show returns to Givens’s story eight years after he’s left Kentucky and now is based in Miami, balancing life as a marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. A chance encounter on a Florida highway sends him to Detroit where he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, aka The Oklahoma Wildman, a violent sociopath who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and wants to do so again.

HT to Crime Fiction Lover for reminding me that the new crime drama, The Responder, is coming to BBC One later this month. Best known to crime fiction lovers for his starring roles in the likes of Sherlock and Fargo, Martin Freeman stars in the series, taking on a very different role as Chris, who is described as "a crisis-stricken, morally compromised, unconventional urgent response officer tackling a series of night shifts on the beat in Liverpool."

Actor and filmmaker Mark O’Brien is set to star in season 2 of HBO’s Perry Mason in the recurring guest star role of Thomas Milligan. Thomas is Los Angeles’s ambitious Deputy District Attorney, described as "an aggressive attack dog in court as he strives to make his mark and ascend to greater heights, no matter whose blood he has to spill to get there." Season 2 will be eight episodes long with Matthew Rhys returning to the title role in the Emmy-nominated series.

Acclaimed author Daniel Woodrell’s The Bayou Trilogy crime novels are getting a TV series adaptation. The Bayou Trilogy novels—Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do—chronicle business-as-usual corruption in the fictitious Louisiana parish of St. Bruno. In the eye of the storm stands Detective Renee Shade, whose sense of duty collides with a violent underbelly of Dixie Mafia, ex-cons, dirty cops, and political grifters, along with pesky personal demons and a web of family entanglements.

Season 2 of The Flight Attendant has added Sharon Stone in a recurring role opposite Kaley Cuoco's Cassie Bowden. Stone will play Lisa Bowden, Cassie’s estranged mother who would prefer to stay estranged. The second-season storyline has Cassie living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time. But when an overseas assignment leads her to inadvertently witness a murder, she becomes entangled in another international intrigue.

Domhnall Gleeson has been tapped as the title character in FX’s 10-episode limited series, The Patient, playing a serial killer who holds a psychotherapist hostage and demands the doctor cure him of his homicidal urges. Steve Carell was previously announced to star as the therapist when the show was first ordered to series in October. Also joining the series are Linda Emond, Andrew Leeds, and Laura Niemi.

Zorro is headed to the CW as a gender-swapped reimagining of the classic masked vigilante character. Co-penned by Sean Tretta and the brother-sister team of Robert and Rebecca Rodriguez (Rebecca will also serve as director), Zorro centers on a young woman seeking vengeance for her father’s murder who joins a secret society and adopts the outlaw persona of Zorro.

A series adaptation of Hell or High Water is in the works at Fox. The one-hour drama is based on the 2016 western crime drama that starred Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, and Ben Foster. In that film, Pine and Foster starred as two brothers who rob banks in order save their family ranch, with Bridges playing one of the Texas Rangers who was trying to hunt them down. Here’s the logline for the Fox version: "When a ruthless oil tycoon attempts to plunder a West Texas ranching community, two local brothers dodge a zealous Texas Ranger and fight to keep what’s theirs, one bank robbery at a time, come hell or high water."

Two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali will star in and produce Onyx Collective’s limited series, The Plot, as a struggling author who finds success with an act of literary theft and finds himself playing a game of cat and mouse with someone who knows his secret. The series landed at Disney’s Onyx Collective after a bidding war across multiple streaming platforms. It will air on Hulu in the U.S., Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in all other territories. The Plot is based on the 2021 best-selling novel of the same name by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Another Korelitz book, You Should Have Known, was adapted into HBO’s 2020 limited series, The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.

Lyndon Smith, Zuri Reed, Jake Austin Walker, Antonio Cipriano, and Jordan Rodrigues are set as series regulars opposite Lisette Alexis in National Treasure for Disney+. The project is an expansion of the National Treasure movie franchise told from the point of view of young heroine Jess (Alexis), a DREAMer in search of answers about her family who embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover the truth about the past and save a lost Pan-American treasure. Smith will play FBI Agent Ross, while Reed, Cipriano, and Rodrigues play Jess's friends and cohorts. Walker takes on the role of a fellow treasure hunter who's magnetically drawn to Jess.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

NPR's Scott Simon talked to author Elizabeth George about her new mystery, Something to Hide, the 21st Inspector Lynley novel.

The Sopranos star, Michael Imperioli, is joining season two of true-crime podcast, Deep Cover, this time focusing on the Chicago mob. Deep Cover: Mob Land, which is narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern, centers around Chicago’s corruption in the 1970s and 1980s. The first season, which featured Walton Goggins, followed a Detroit FBI agent as he goes undercover in an outlaw motorcycle gang and his bizarre series of discoveries that inadvertently lead to the U.S. invasion of a foreign country. The ten-episode series premieres on January 24 and you can listen to the trailer via this link.

Aaron Philip Clark, author of Under Color of Law, was interviewed by Robert Justice for the Crime Writers of Color podcast.

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with forensic pathologist and crime writer, Ellery Kane.

On Wrong Place, Write Crime, Frank Zafiro chatted with Vikki J. Carter about her role as The Author's Librarian; the importance of research; her books in progress; and her own podcast (Authors of the Pacific Northwest).

My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed Jule Selbo, a screenwriter and playwright whose debut crime novel is 10 Days: A Dee Rommel Mystery.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Lorie Lewis Ham about her debut novel, One of Us (Tower District Mystery #1).

The latest trio of featured authors on Crime Time FM included Jane Casey, Liz Nugent, and Jefferey Deaver.

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

With the final season of her hit series Ozark set to premiere later this month on Netflix, Emmy winner Julia Garner is already setting up her next big project, with a starring role in Paramount Players’s Apartment 7A. John Krasinski and Allyson Seeger are producing via Sunday Night along with Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller via their Platinum Dunes company. Natalie Erika James is attached to direct and co-wrote the latest script with Christian White, based off a draft by Skylar James. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but it is being described as a psychological thriller.

Michael Cudlitz and Jake Abel and have signed on to star alongside Zhang Hanyu and Vivienne Tien in Unspoken, a dramatic feature from writer-director Daming Chen that's currently in production. Unspoken tells the story of Xu (Zhang), an estranged father separated from his deaf daughter and her new life at an American university, whose murder reunites them in a way neither could have foreseen. The tragedy pierces Xu with grief and guilt that he couldn’t be present to protect his child. An ex-cop himself, he becomes convinced the local authorities are pursuing the wrong suspect – and that racism is compromising the investigation.

Mena Suvari will star alongside Steven Ogg, Christina Ricci, and Samantha Win in The Dresden Sun, the upcoming cyberpunk film from writer-director Michael Ryan. A heist goes south when Crilenger (Ogg)—a brilliant, principled mercenary with a traumatic past—works with an insider to steal a valued asset from Peredor Corporation called "the sphere." Meanwhile, a financial analyst, who despises his job at the powerful investment firm Mutual One, finds himself caught between deadly corporate rivals, financial fraud, and technological espionage, and is ultimately forced to run from a psychopathic military contractor.

Thornbyrd Films has launched production on Healed, a psychological thriller starring Guinevere Turner, Shantell Yasmine Abeydeera, Emily Goss, Benjamin Barrett, and Todd Lowe, which has been awarded the coveted ReFrame Stamp from the Sundance Institute and Women in Film for gender-balanced hiring. The film, written by Abeydeera, follows former pop icon Jazz Powers (Abeydeera) and her pregnant wife Olivia (Goss) as they attend an intimate meditation retreat at the invitation of renowned mindfulness expert, Georgia Chambers (Turner). A string of unorthodox therapy sessions and unusual events involving Georgia’s neighbor (Barrett) evoke memories of Jazz’s father (Lowe) and leave her questioning Georgia’s practice. Additional probing later reveals that the women are unknowing participants in an experiment that could change the course of their lives forever.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Keanu Reeves is in talks to star in Hulu’s The Devil In The White City, an adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 book that tells the true story of two men, an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It follows Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to make his mark on the world, and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical "Murder Castle" on fair grounds–a palace built to seduce, torture, and mutilate young women. It marks a significant step forward for the adaptation, which has been in various stages of development since Leonardo DiCaprio bought the film rights to the book in 2010 and previously set it up as a feature at Paramount with Martin Scorsese to direct. The project would mark Reeves’ first major U.S. TV role.

The Crown's Tobias Menzies will star in Manhunt, a new limited drama series for Apple TV+ from Lionstage and 3 Arts. He'll play Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s War Secretary and friend, who was nearly driven to madness by the need to catch assassin John Wilkes Booth and to carry out Lincoln’s legacy. The project is based on James Swanson’s book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.

The CW is expanding the cast for Season 2 of Kung Fu, its reboot of the classic series, adding Vanessa Yao, Annie Q., and JB Tadena in recurring roles. Following the explosive Season 1 finale, Season 2 picks up with Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang) and her family in a great place: Nicky’s been using her kung fu skills to keep Chinatown safe, and she and Henry (Eddie Liu) are only deeper in love with each other. Everything’s fine ... until the reemergence of villainous businessman, Russell Tan, and the surprise appearance of Nicky’s enigmatic cousin, Mia (Yao).

NCIS stars Wilmer Valderrama and Katrina Law will be visiting Vanessa Lachey and the rest of the NCIS: Hawai’i gang as part of a crossover special event airing via CBS on March 28. Details regarding the storyline are being kept under wraps by CBS, but according to Law, "Viewers can certainly expect an action-packed episode."

Channel 4’s foreign crime streaming service, Walter Presents, will debut four Scandinavian crime series between January and March 2022. First up is the Norwegian procedural, Outlier, which will air on Channel 4 from January 9. It will be followed by Cry Wolf (Denmark) starting January 30; The Truth Will Out season 2 (Sweden) on February 13; and Snow Angels (Sweden) on March 13.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Murder and Money," by Jacqueline Seewald, read by actor Larry Mattox

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Sebastien Fitzek to talk about the English translation of Das Packet (The Package) and his new project, The Playlist.

Jason King returned to the Spybrary Podcast for his annual appearance to share his best espionage novels of 2021.

My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, chatted with Marcy McCreary about her latest novel, The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon.

On the first Red Hot Chili Writers episode of the new year, hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee looked back at 2021; took a look forward to 2022; and talked about Abir's "crime-writing teapot."

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

SP Releasing has acquired worldwide rights to the psychological thriller, Nightshade, starring Lou Ferrigno Jr. (S.W.A.T.), Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers) and Jason Patric (Wayward Pines), with plans to release it in theaters across North America and on VOD platforms on January 4. The film, which is directed by Landon Williams, follows a homicide detective (Ferrigno Jr.) on the hunt for a serial killer, who experiences a series of disturbing dreams leading him to seek hypnotherapy and the aid of a psychiatrist (Meyer). The treatment reveals undeniable parallels between his nightmares and the murders, sending him into a spiral of paranoia and distrust.

A trailer dropped for the Tamil-language Indian thriller, Valimai, starring Ajith Kumar as Arjun, an IPS officer who sets out on a mission to hunt down illegal bikers involved in theft and murder. Huma Qureshi and Kartikeya Gummakonda also star. Ajith Kumar, known to his fans as "Thala" (Leader), is one of the most bankable stars from South India’s Tamil-language film industry and has a following across India. Valimai is due a release on Jan. 14, 2022.

Wondering when your favorite blockbuster action movie or thriller is slated for release in the new year? Deadline offered up a list of release dates for the "Most Anticipated 2022 Movies."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Chris Noth is out of the CBS drama, The Equalizer, as the actor faces allegations of sexual assault. "Chris Noth will no longer film additional episodes of The Equalizer, effective immediately," CBS and Universal Television, which produces the series, said in a statement. He will appear in one more episode of the show that has completed production. Noth played William Bishop, the former CIA handler and longtime friend of lead character, Robyn McCall (Queen Latifah).

In an interview with Deadline, crime author Harlan Coben said that "The worst TV adaptations are slavishly devoted to the [original] text." Coben also indicated he hopes to continue working with Netflix as his five-year deal draws to a close. Coben's unusual contract with the streamer saw him mostly adapting his own novels for shows around Europe, even relocating Stay Close from Atlantic City to the British seaside resort of Blackpool for the TV version. The author has plans for at least two more shows, which would bring him up to nine of the planned 14 when the deal was struck in 2018.

The creators and stars of the upcoming Stephen Merchant-starring BBC1 factual drama, Four Lives—about serial killer Stephen Port’s crimes—have slammed London’s Metropolitan Police and the UK justice system for "monumental failings" over the case. An inquest into the Met’s investigation into Port’s four murders concluded in December that three of them "probably" could have been avoided if the police hadn’t missed opportunities, while a group of UK MPs has called for a public inquiry into claims of institutional homophobia that beset the case.

The official Twitter account for the BBC America drama series, Killing Eve, posted a 30-second teaser trailer, offering a preview of the season’s February 27, 2022 premiere. The storyline will see MI6 agent Eve Polastri’s (Sandra Oh) obsession with serial killer, Villanelle (Jodie Comer), come to a head in the fourth and final season. The show has racked up much critical acclaim in its short run, with Comer and Sandra Oh taking home an Emmy and Golden Globe, respectively, for their acting work.

A trailer was also released for the BBC's award-winning period gangster saga, Peaky Blinders, which will end with its upcoming sixth season. An air date has not yet been announced, although it has been teased for early 2022. Peaky Blinders features an ensemble cast led by Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory (who passed away in April of 2021), and Paul Anderson, starring as Tommy Shelby, Elizabeth "Polly" Gray, and Arthur Shelby, respectively. Sam Neill, Iddo Goldberg, Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Adrien Brody, Aidan Gillen, Annabelle Wallis, Charlotte Riley, Sam Claflin, Stephen Graham, Sophie Rundle, and Anya Taylor-Joy also have had recurring roles at various times of the series.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Writers Detective Bureau host, Detective Adam Richardson, discussed finding last wills for a homicide investigation; and he also answered two queries about historical crime scenarios: a murder in 1912, and a character in a romance who works for the NYPD in the late 80s/early 90s.

The Wrong Place, Write Crime podcast welcomed Janet Lynn and Will Zeilinger to talk about their solo work and their collaborations, which include the Skylar Drake Mystery Series.

The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast ushered in 2022 with a reading of a New Year’s story from EQMM’s Department of First Stories. New writer Ken Linn begins his tale on July 4th—but follows his protagonist up to the turn of a new year.

On Crime Time FM, Craig Sisterson chatted with Peter Papathanasiou about his dark outback thriller, The Stoning.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club had a recast of episode 163 featuring an interview with Caitlin Rother about her book, Death on Ocean Boulevard: Inside the Coronado Mansion Case.

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

Oliver Trevena has signed on to star in and executive produce the indie feature film, Wire Room, which recently began principal photography in Birmingham, Alabama. Written by Brandon Stiefer and to be directed by Matt Eskandari, Wire Room features Trevena as Eddie Flynn, an infamous Irish arms dealer who smuggled high-powered Russian-made weapons for South American rebels. He ends up on the run after a bloody gang war and winds up in the U.S. where he’s a middleman for the Baja cartel. The film also stars Bruce Willis and Kevin Dillon.

After Paramount recently scheduled Tom Cruise’s long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, for Memorial Day weekend this coming year, Lionsgate posted a teaser-video indicating it was moving John Wick: Chapter 4 from that same weekend to March 24 the following year (2023). However, the real reason may be due to shooting setbacks. Although principal photography wrapped up this summer in France, Germany, and Japan, production was recently halted due to unspecified reasons. John Wick: Chapter 4 stars Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Skarsgård, and Ian McShane.

A new trailer dropped for the Agatha Christie adaptation, Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express. The project sees Branagh reprising his role as detective Hercule Poirot, this time investigating a murder aboard a glamorous river steamer boat in 1930s Egypt where Gal Gadot and her new husband, played by Armie Hammer, embark on an exotic honeymoon voyage. The current opening for the film is February 11, 2022.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

A team that includes Academy Award-nominated Chocolat producer, Kit Golden, has secured the rights to Giles Milton’s non-fiction work, Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat. Netflix will air the 10-episode adaptation which follows the work of an international group of soldiers, spies, and saboteurs from all walks of life who devised unconventional new weapons and tactics to "set Europe ablaze" per Churchill’s orders. From their base in the Scottish Highlands, these resistance forces from across Europe led daring yet largely unknown missions throughout Europe that hastened the end of World War II. (Note that this project is different from Paramount Pictures’ forthcoming pic The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which has Guy Ritchie attached to write and direct and is based on a different book by Damian Lewis.)

Author John Scalzi's The Dispatcher, which started life as an Audible original audiobook narrated by Zachary Quinto, is now being adapted for the small screen by producer Uri Singer, who's also behind Netflix’s feature film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Underworld. The Dispatcher takes place in Chicago in a distant future in which it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone – 999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. The ongoing series follows Tony Valdez, a Dispatcher – "a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those about to die, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. He teams up with Chicago PD detective, Nona Langdon, to help save those in death’s crosshairs and solve the crimes that put them there."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with Rod Sadler, who had a 30-year career in law enforcement before turning his hand to writing true crime.

The Pune International Literary Festival featured Dr. Mark Aldridge, an Agatha Christie historian and author, in conversation with Helen Smith about his "journey" with Dame Agatha.

On the most recent episode of Spybrary, Le Carré Cast host Jeff Quest tackled some of the most serious and silly questions faced by spy fans. He was joined by an all-star panel of guests – Jeremy Duns, Hannah Cooper and Spybrary host Shane Whaley – as they tackled a wide range of espionage enigmas.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Michael Penncavage to discuss his short stories and new novel, Person Unknown.

Crimetime FM had their season-ending show with a yearly wrap-up with Paul Burke, Victoria Selman, and Barry Forshaw.

The Red Hot Chili Writers chatted with Finnish crime writing superstar, Antti Tuomainen; spoke with Tracy Fenton of the Facebook group, The Book Club, about her five favorite recent reads; discussed the world pillow fighting championships, and more.

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

Sony has picked up film rights to the Gabino Iglesias novel, The Devil Takes You Home, which Cuban filmmaker, Alejandro Brugués, will adapt and direct. While the project and its storyline are still in early development, the Iglesias novel follows Mario, who has to be a hitman to cover his family’s bills, especially his daughter’s medical tab. He’s presented with an offer: One last score that will either pull him out of poverty forever or put a bullet in the back of his skull. A man named Juanca needs help stealing $2 million dollars from a drug cartel. Together, they begin a journey to an underworld where unspeakable horrors happen every day.

Lionsgate is developing the thriller, Prey, with John Glenn and Alex Davidson co-writing the script. Although details on the plot are a bit limited, Deadline notes that "In the film, a man is dropped off, naked, at the Dodger Stadium parking lot with a $2 million open bounty on his head. He has to make it to Long Beach on foot by dawn, or his family will be killed."

Tom Sizemore has boarded Bruce Bellocchi’s female revenge thriller, The Legend of Jack and Diane. The story is set in motion when Diane (Lydia Zelmac) decides to leave Indiana for a new life in Los Angeles. But after she and her friend, Jack (David Tomlinson), discover secrets about the death of Diane’s mother, they are forced on the run as they create a hit list to exact revenge on everyone involved. While the story and screenplay are original, the film’s title is inspired by John Mellencamp’s song "Jack & Diane." Although there aren't any details about Sizemore's role, he'll be joining other additions to the cast including Robert LaSardo and Alvaro Orlando.

Chaley Rose, Pete Ploszek, and Heather Morris have been set to star in the indie thriller, The Bodyguard. The plot centers on pop star Eden Chase (Rose), who is almost kidnapped by a crazed fan. She enlists the help of handsome, brooding bodyguard, Jackson Reed (Ploszek), to move into her home and become her full-time security. When Jackson develops an unhealthy attachment to Eden, she soon realizes the one person with access to her life and the man she’d called her protector, has now become a predator harboring a dark secret from the past. With the help of her tenacious best friend (Morris), Eden realizes she must outwit him or become prey. Bayardo De Murguia, Malaya Rivera Drew, James C. Burns, Nikki Tuazon, and Rafael Molina also star.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Wilmer Valderrama is developing a TV series based on the Disney western, Zorro, for Disney Branded Television. Valderrama is set to executive produce and star as Don Diego de la Vega and his alter ego, the titular masked horseman. "We’re reimagining this Disney classic as a compelling period piece, set in Pueblo de Los Angeles, but told in a very modern telenovela style — with richly drawn contemporary characters and relationships set against the action, drama, suspense, and humor of the original, iconic Zorro," said Ayo Davis, President of Disney Branded Television.

A series adaptation of TJ Middleton’s quirky English novel, Cliffhanger, is in the works at Fox. The book follows Al Greenwood, a maverick taxi driver, who decides to kill his wife and has planned the perfect murder. But things don’t turn out quite the way he hoped and Al finds himself committing more crimes to cover his tracks. The series will gender swap the main character and will follow the exploits of rideshare driver, Audrey Greenwood, who emerges from the pandemic with a startling realization: she never wants to see her husband Al’s face again. So, one dark and stormy night, fueled by rage and tequila, she tries to kill him.

Carol Mendelsohn, the former showrunner of the original CSI series, has scored a pair of broadcast development sales. Mendelsohn is remaking the Swedish legal drama, Heder, for NBC and also developing the coroner crime drama, Body Farm, for CBS. Heder is being adapted as Honor and follows four brilliant, brash legal minds willing to fight for the underdog. The quartet will be battling a brutal crime, spiraling mystery, and a shocking discovery about the truth that threatens to unravel their very carefully constructed lives. The Body Farm series follows a talented but acerbic New York City forensic pathologist, who after a public fall from grace that renders her nearly unemployable, takes a job with an old-school coroner on his body farm in rural Texas where they covertly investigate mysterious deaths.

CBS is developing Five Point, a drama from Muse Entertainment and FBI co-creator, Craig Turk. When a legendary U.S. marshal goes missing, his committed daughter steps in as head of the service’s most elite team, tackling the toughest law-enforcement assignments across the country—while investigating her father’s disappearance and wrestling with a family legacy more complicated than she ever imagined.

AMC+ has picked up ITV’s big-budget adaptation of Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File. The show is set in the Cold War era, as British army sergeant Harry Palmer (played by Joe Cole) is stationed in Berlin before being sentenced to eight years in a military jail in England. To avoid prison, he becomes a spy, cutting his teeth on the Ipcress File. The Deighton novels achieved worldwide fame when they were turned into a 1965 film starring Michael Caine.

The CW is developing the murder mystery drama, Clubhouse (working title). When a popular podcast features the grisly unsolved murder that took place in their childhood clubhouse, four young women are pulled back into each other’s lives just in time for the killer to strike again. iZombie writer, Christina de Leon, will serve as co-executive producer and also write the series.

It's finally official: Sam Waterston, longtime Law & Order veteran, will be returning for his 17th season as District Attorney Jack McCoy on the famed Dick Wolf show for its revival. Waterston joins previously announced Law & Order alum Anthony Anderson, who will return to the cast as Detective Kevin Bernard, along with new cast members Jeffrey Donovan, as an NYPD detective; Hugh Dancy as an assistant district attorney; Camryn Manheim as Lieutenant Kate Dixon; and Odelya Halevi as Assistant District Attorney Samantha Maroun. Law & Order premieres on NBC on Thursday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. ET.

Eva De Dominici has been tapped for a major recurring role opposite Adan Canto on The Cleaning Lady, Fox’s adaptation of the Argentinean drama. The Cleaning Lady stars Elodie Yung as Thony, 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 refuses to be beaten down and marginalized. After accidentally witnessing a murder, Thony is recruited by mobster Arman Morales (Canto) to use her medical skills as a "cleaner", erasing evidence of the mob's crimes. Crossing into a world of moral grey, Thony begins to live a double life, keeping secrets from her family while cleaning crime scenes and dodging the law, playing the game by her own rules in a dangerous criminal underworld. De Dominici will play Arman’s (Canto) wife, Nadia Morales, gorgeous and sultry, she manages the exclusive cigar club La Habana with her husband.

CSI: Vegas is returning for a second season. The series saw original CSI castmembers Wallace Langham, William Petersen, and Jorja Fox return alongside new cast members Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, Mel Rodriguez, and Mandeep Dhillon. Peterson will not return for the second season as Gil Grissom, as he had only signed on for the initial 10-episode revival, but will remain as an executive producer. According to sources, Fox’s contract allows her to continue as Sara Sidle if she chooses to, and the series’ producers are hopeful that she may come back.

Fernando Coimbra (Narcos), Jessica Lowery (Heels), Marialy Rivas (La Jauría) and Nina Lopez-Corrado (A Million Little Things) have been tapped to direct Season 2 of HBO’s Emmy-nominated Perry Mason reboot, starring Matthew Rhys in the titular role. Each will direct two episodes of the eight-episode series. The new season takes place months after the end of the Dodson trial where Perry (Rhys) has moved off the farm, ditched the milk truck, and even traded his leather jacket for a pressed suit. It’s the worst year of the Depression, and Perry and Della (Juliet Rylance) have set the firm on a safer path pursuing civil cases instead of the tumultuous work criminal cases entail. Unfortunately, there isn’t much work for Paul (Chris Chalk) in wills and contracts, so he’s been out on his own. An open-and-closed case overtakes the city of Los Angeles, and Perry’s pursuit of justice reveals that not everything is always as it seems.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Vannessa Cronin, who arrived in the U.S. from Ireland over two decades ago and has spent the intervening years working in the book industry as a book buyer, a sales rep, an Amazon Bookstore curator, and now an Amazon Books senior editor. Vannessa came on the podcast to talk about the Amazon Books Editors’ picks for best mysteries and thrillers of 2021.

On the Read or Dead podcast, Katie and Nusrah talk about their year-end favorites and reflect on reading goals for 2022.

On the Spybrary podcast, host Shane Whaley learned more about How to Betray Your Country, the latest novel from spy fiction writer, author James Wolff.

In a bonus mini-episode of Crime Writers of Color, Rachel Howzell Hall, author of These Toxic Things, was interviewed by Robert Justice.

H.B. Lyle chatted with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about his latest historical thriller, The Year of the Gun; Sherlock Holmes and the Irregulars; Nabokov; historical accuracy in fiction; and how Lyle's protagonist, Wiggins, narrowly avoids going down with the Titanic.

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

Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, is re-teaming with Edward Neumeier, the screenwriter behind Verhoeven’s classic genre movies Robocop and Starship Troopers, on a political thriller titled Young Sinner. Verhoeven said the project would be "an innovative version of movies like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct...and it would not be adding all kinds of digital elements." Young Sinner is set in Washington, D.C. and follows a young staffer, who works for a powerful Senator, who gets drawn into a web of international intrigue and danger.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Yellowstone creator, Taylor Sheridan, is developing the mob drama, Kansas City, for Paramount with Sylvester Stallone set to star, marking the actor's first regular series TV role in his 50-year career. Sheridan will write and produce the series with Terence Winter, who will serve as showrunner. The story, set in the present day, follows legendary New York City mobster Sal (Stallone), who is faced with the task of re-establishing his Italian mafia family in the modernized, straight-shooting town of Kansas City, Missouri. There, Sal encounters surprising and unsuspecting characters who follow him along his unconventional path to power.

Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) is set to star in a series adaptation of Dean Koontz’s thriller books based on his "Nameless" character. Koontz’s series of 12 short thrillers, which were first published in 2019 as Amazon Original Stories, follow Nameless, a man with amnesia who knows only the mission—assigned by a shadowy agency—and travels the country turning predators into prey and dispensing justice when the law fails. As he moves from town to town, the pain of his past can’t hold him back, until dark and splintered visions lead him toward his greatest test yet.

ABC is developing Only to Deceive, a contemporary TV series adaptation of Tasha Alexander’s bestselling novel And Only to Deceive. Although Alexander’s book, the first in the Lady Emily Mysteries, is set in Victorian England, the series adaptation, written by Paul Sciarrotta, is set in modern-day America. As Lady Emily Ashton, the toast of New York City’s high society, tries to make sense of her late husband’s mysterious death, she stumbles into a secret career as a private investigator alongside her polar opposite, Long Island ex-cop Colin Hargreaves.

Frank Langella has been tapped to lead the cast of The Fall of the House of Usher, Mike Flanagan’s eight-part limited series for Netflix based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Also starring are Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly, and Mark Hamill. Langella will play Roderick Usher, the towering patriarch of the Usher dynasty; McDonnell will play Roderick’s twin sister and the hidden hand of the Usher dynasty; Lumbly will take on Poe’s legendary investigator, C. Auguste Dupin; and Gugino and Hamill will portray yet-to-be disclosed characters. First published in 1839, Poe's story features themes of madness, family, isolation, and identity.

Marlon James, the Man Booker Prize-winning author behind A Brief History of Seven Killings, has landed a series order from HBO and the UK’s Channel 4 for Get Millie Black, a crime drama set in Jamaica. The project follows ex-Scotland Yard detective, Millie-Jean Black, who returns to Kingston to work missing persons and soon finds herself on a quest to save a sister who won’t be saved; to find a boy who can’t be found; and to solve a case that will blow her world apart and prove almost as tough to crack as Millie Black, herself.

The CW is developing a prequel series to Walker set in the 1880s, from Walker star, Jared Padalecki, and Walker series creator, Anna Fricke. Titled Walker: Independence, the prequel project centers on Abby Walker, an affluent Bostonian whose husband is murdered before her eyes while on their journey out West. On her quest for revenge, Abby crosses paths with Hoyt Rawlins, a lovable rogue in search of purpose. Abby and Hoyt’s journey takes them to Independence, Texas, where they encounter diverse, eclectic residents running from their own troubled pasts and chasing their dreams.

Also in development at the CW is Hipster Death Rattle, described as "a drama/satire with comedic elements." The one-hour series from CBS Studios—based on the novel of the same name by Richie Narvaez—is set in a historically Latino neighborhood that’s falling victim to aggressive gentrification. According to the show’s logline, "Someone is killing the ‘woke’ yet pretentious new hipsters. But who? And worse – do the locals even care? The victims were just hiking up rent anyway!'"

Camryn Manheim will be a series regular on NBC’s revival of Law & Order, playing a new character, Lt. Kate Dixon. Lt. Dixon is a successor to Lt. Anita Van Buren, played by S. Epatha Merkerson in Seasons 4-20 of the Emmy-winning series. (Merkerson is not available as she is a series regular on another Dick Wolf series, Chicago Med.) Manheim joins fellow new Law & Order main cast additions, Jeffrey Donovan, who plays an NYPD detective, and Hugh Dancy, who plays an Assistant District Attorney. Law & Order alum, Anthony Anderson, is also reprising his role as Detective Kevin Bernard, while Sam Waterston remains in negotiations to return as DA Jack McCoy.

Actor and musician, Eliot Sumner (No Time to Die), has been tapped for a recurring role opposite Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn in Ripley, Showtime’s drama series based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling quintet of Tom Ripley novels. The series follows Tom Ripley (Scott), a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York until he's hired by a wealthy man to convince his vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Flynn), who is living a comfortable, trust-funded 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. Dakota Fanning also stars as Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability. Sumner will play a friend of Dickie’s who becomes suspicious of Tom.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Writers of Color featured a discussion of host Robert Justice's new debut novel, They Can't Take Your Name, which pits three characters in a race against time to thwart a gross miscarriage of justice and a crooked detective.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Franz Zafiro, chatted with Kevin Tipple about his fiction and his review blog, Kevin's Corner.

S A Cosby spoke with Craig Sisterson on Crime Time FM about Cosby's novel, Razorblade Tears; winning the Crime Time FM Novel Award; being the "bard of broken men"; TV rights; and entertaining readers.

Sunday Times journalist and Spybrary contributor, Tim Shipman, chatted with author, Matthew Richardson. They discussed Matthew's spy novels, his writing style, and his literary influences, and paid tribute to the new generation of spy writers.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Yasmin Angoe about her new book, Her Name Is Knight, which centers on Nena Knight, a highly trained assassin for The Tribe – a clandestine international organization dedicated to the protection and advancement of the peoples and countries of Africa around the world.

This week's episode of the Red Hot Chili Writers featured an interview with Stuart Turton, author of the mind-bending novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle; a quiz with Imran Mahmood about his adapted BBC show, You Don't Know Me; and a discussion of where the word "tomfoolery" comes from.

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 Dastmalchian (Dune) has joined the cast of the true-crime film, Boston Strangler, which tells the story of the Boston Strangler murders in the 1960s. Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, and Chris Cooper are also attached to star. Knightley will portray Loretta McLaughlin, who was the first reporter to connect the murders and break the story of the Strangler. She and fellow reporter, Jean Cole, challenged the sexism of the early ’60s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer and worked tirelessly to keep women informed. McLaughlin pursued the story at great personal risk and uncovered corruption that cast doubt on the true identity of the killer.

The Pale Blue Eye, Netflix’s mystery thriller that follows a young Edgar Allan Poe, has added an impressive supporting cast that includes Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, and Robert Duvall. Christian Bale and Harry Melling star in the fictional Gothic thriller, which is being directed by Scott Cooper. Bale plays a detective in 1830 tasked with investigating a series of murders at the United States Military Academy in West Point, and who takes a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Melling) under his wing to help him solve the case.

Charlie Weber (How to Get Away with Murder) will star alongside Ryan Phillippe and Kate Bosworth in The Locksmith, a crime thriller directed by Nicolas Harvard, which is currently in production in New Mexico. The film centers on Miller (Phillippe), a thief fresh out of prison after a job gone bad who tries to work his way back into the life of his daughter as well as his ex-girlfriend, Beth (Bosworth), who is now a police detective. Determined to make a clean start, he is forced to use the only skills he has as a gifted locksmith to make ends meet. But things soon get complicated after an unexpected kidnapping, and from there take a tumultuous turn. Weber will play Garrett, a real estate developer with a dark secret who keeps dirty cops and politicians on his payroll.

Rob Schneider has joined the cast of writer-director Rick Bieber’s indie film, Dead Wrong. He’ll star alongside Cress Williams, Katrina Bowden, Derek Smith, Chelsea Debo, Rosalie Ward, Chet Hanks, and Joshua Bitton. The crime drama is based on K.E. Clark’s novel, Deadly Instinct, and follows Billy Evans (Smith), a narcissist of psychotic proportions who is blinded with jealousy over the wealth accumulated by his best friend and local mob boss (Hanks), and schemes to steal his infant son to obtain a multi-million dollar settlement from the hospital’s insurance company. In so doing, he ignites a chain reaction that overwhelms the lives of his now suicidal wife (Bowden), her nymphomaniacal younger sister (Debo) with whom he’s having an affair, a deeply indebted gambling and alcoholic lawyer (Schneider), a Brooklyn born bookmaker/pimp/murderer (Bitton), a rural ex-con (Shields) seeking redemption from his angelic wife (Ward), and a hard-nosed insurance investigator (Williams).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Miramax TV has optioned the rights to Nina de Gramont’s upcoming novel, The Christie Affair, with British writer Juliette Towhidi set to pen the adaptation. In 1926, when her husband’s affair became public, Agatha Christie vanished for eleven days. This reimagining is told through the eyes of her husband’s mistress, Nan O’Dea (a fictionalized version of his real-life paramour, Nancy Neele). Agatha and Nan transform from competitors to unlikely allies while the world around them remains cloaked in the dark. Set mostly in the beautiful and historic British spa town of Harrogate, The Christie Affair is part sweeping love story, part exploration of the bonds of womanhood, and part murder mystery to rival one of Christie’s own famous stories.

Alfonso Cuarón is adapting Renee Knight’s novel, Disclaimer, as a series for Apple TV+ with Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline starring. Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, a successful and respected television documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions. When an intriguing novel written by a widower, played by Kline, appears on her bedside table, she is horrified to realize she is a key character in a story that she had hoped was long buried in the past—a story that reveals her darkest secret she thought was hers alone.

Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters is returning to screens, this time as a TV series for Sweden’s C More and TV2 Norway, starring Axel Bøyum (Betrayed) and Martin Wallström (Mr. Robot). Headhunters, which was made into a highly-rated Norwegian film 10 years ago, follows the successful but insecure corporate recruiter, Roger Brown, who lives a double life as an art thief to fund his lavish lifestyle. He finds out that one of his job prospects is in possession of a valuable painting and sets out to steal it.

AMC Networks' Acorn TV announced a second season of the popular British crime drama, Whitstable Pearl. Based on the "The Whitstable Pearl Mysteries" by Julie Wassmer, the second six-part series sees the return of Kerry Godliman in the lead role as Pearl Nolan. Howard Charles also returns as DCI Mike McGuire and Frances Barber as Dolly Nolan, Pearl’s mother. Whitstable Pearl explores the dark undercurrents of murder and debauchery swirling beneath the surface of the picturesque 16th century English seaside town of Whitstable, famous for its native oysters and buffeted by the prevailing winds and spray of the North Sea.

Ahead of the final run of the popular Spanish series, Money Heist, Netflix announced a spinoff centered on Pedro Alonso’s character, Berlin. Money Heist revolves around a group of would-be robbers brought together by a man known as "The Professor" to break into the Royal Mint of Spain to steal millions of Euros in untraceable cash. Berlin (every character goes by the name of a city to hide their identities) is the de facto leader of the group on the ground. The new series will be an origin story on the character and will premiere in 2023. Outside of "Squid Game," the crime thriller is Netflix’s most popular foreign-language series.

Bianca Santos will star alongside Mischa Barton and Seamus Dever in Stephen Shimek’s indie thriller, Invitation to a Murder. The film sees a reclusive billionaire invite six seemingly random strangers to his island estate, including aspiring detective Miranda Green (Barton). When another guest turns up dead, Miranda must get to the bottom of the plot behind the gathering to prove herself and maybe save her own life. Santos will play Carmen Blanco, a poor waitress from Seville who joins Green and Dever’s attorney, Lawrence Kane, as a guest at the mansion. She gets swept up in a romance with another guest, but when things take a deadly turn, she must decide whose side she’s on.

Amazon has debuted the first trailer for its upcoming series based on Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, called simply Reacher, featuring Alan Ritchson in the title role. Jack Reacher is a veteran military police investigator who has just recently entered civilian life. He's also a drifter, carrying no phone and the barest of essentials as he travels the country and explores the nation he once served. When Reacher arrives in the small town of Margrave, Georgia, he finds a community grappling with its first homicide in 20 years. The cops immediately arrest him and eyewitnesses claim to place Reacher at the scene of the crime. Lee Child has apparently given his blessing to the casting of Ritchson, who more closely follows the character described in the novels as being 6'5", 235 pounds, and with hands "the size of dinner plates." The character was previously played in a pair of movies by the diminutive Tom Cruise, which infuriated many fans of the novels.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Luke McCallin chatted with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about his new historical thriller, Where God Does Not Walk, featuring Gregor Reinhardt, a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front during WWI. When Reinhardt uncovers a murderous conspiracy at the heart of the German army, it opens his eyes to the corruption and callousness all around him.

Scottish author, Val McDermid, best known for her Tony Hill novels, spoke with ABC Radio National about how her time as a newspaper journalist inspired a new crime series.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Wanda M. Morris, who worked in the legal departments of American top Fortune 100 companies and established a signature female empowerment program known as the Women’s Initiative, to discuss her debut novel, All Her Little Secrets.

Read or Dead hosts Katie and Liberty chatted about their favorite new and backlist historical mystery titles.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Spencer Fleury about his new release, How I'm Spending My Afterlife.

Writers Detective Bureau host, Detective Adam Richardson, tackled the topics of stake-out locations; when cases go cold; the upcoming Writer's Detective School Cohort; and a debrief of what he learned at the 2021 20BooksVegas conference.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

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

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

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

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

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

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

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

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

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

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

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

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

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

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jake Gyllenhaal is in talks to star in a remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze movie, Road House, with Doug Liman also in discussions to direct. In the original film, Swayze played Dalton, a tough bouncer with a mysterious past who is hired to clean up one of middle America’s rowdiest bars and ends up taking down one of its most corrupt individuals in the process. It is currently unknown if Gyllenhaal would be playing Dalton or a new character.

Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Ian Hart, and Colm Meaney have joined Liam Neeson in the noir thriller, Marlowe, which is now filming in Ireland and Spain. The script from William Monahan is based on John Banville's novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde (a continuation of the Raymond Chandler iconic series featuring Philip Marlowe) with Oscar winner Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) aboard to direct. In Marlowe, when private detective Philip Marlowe (Neeson) is hired to find the ex-lover of a glamorous heiress, it looks to be open and shut case. But Marlowe soon finds himself in the underbelly of Hollywood’s film industry and unwittingly drawn into the crossfire between a legendary Hollywood actress and her subversive, ambitious daughter.

Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment have co-acquired North American rights to The Forgiven, a thriller written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, which premiered at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival. The Forgiven is based on the novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne and centers on wealthy Londoners David (Ralph Fiennes) and Jo Henninger (Jessica Chastain), who are involved in a tragic accident with a local teenage boy, after speeding through the Moroccan desert to attend an old friend’s lavish weekend party. Arriving late at the grand villa with the debauched party raging, the couple attempts to cover up the incident with the collusion of the local police. But when the boy’s father arrives seeking justice, the stage is set for a tension-filled culture clash in which David and Jo must come to terms with their fateful act and its shattering consequences.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Paramount+ has handed a series order to Happy Face, a crime drama series based on a hit podcast that tells the story of a notorious serial killer who was infamous for drawing smiley faces on letters to the media and prosecutors. The project centers on Melissa Jesperson-Moore, who at age 15 discovered that her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was the serial murderer known as the Happy Face Killer. As an adult, Melissa changed her name, guarded her secret, and cut off all ties to her father, who is currently serving life in prison. The scripted series will tell Melissa’s true-life story as her father contacts her to take credit for another victim, which pulls Melissa into an investigation of her father and his crimes.

The Apple TV+ limited series, The Last Thing He Told Me, has had a major recasting with Jennifer Garner taking over a role originally set for Julia Roberts, who had to depart due to scheduling conflicts. The Last Thing He Told Me is an adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Laura Dave and follows a woman who forms an unexpected relationship with her 16-year-old stepdaughter while searching for the truth about why her husband has mysteriously disappeared.

Jeff Wilbusch is set to star in David E Kelley’s The Missing for NBC's Peacock streaming service. The adaptation of Israeli crime writer Dror A. Mishani’s The Missing File focuses on the unusually named Avraham Avraham, an NYPD detective with the 77th precinct whose belief in mankind is his superpower when it comes to uncovering the truth. Guided by a deep sense of spirituality and religious principles, Avraham is left to question his own humanity when a seemingly routine investigation turns upside down.

Lizzy Caplan will star in a Fatal Attraction TV series at Paramount+, playing the role of Alex that Glenn Close made famous in the 1987 movie. Described as a deep-dive reimagining of the classic psychosexual thriller and '80s cultural touchstone, the new series "will explore themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes toward strong women, personality disorders and coercive control." As in the movie, Caplan’s Alex becomes obsessed with her lover after a brief affair. That role, which was played by Michael Douglas, is currently being cast.

Peter Greene, Ayomide Adegun, and Jeremy Bobb are set as leads opposite Colin Woodell and Mel Gibson in Starz’s The Continental, the prequel to the Keanu Reeves/John Wick film series. The Continental will be presented as a three-night special event and explore the origin behind the hotel-for-assassins, which increasingly has become the centerpiece of the John Wick universe. This will be told through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott (Woodell), who is dragged into the Hell-scape of a 1975 New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind.


Ruth Wilson is teaming with Lena Dunham and Dennis Lehane for an HBO limited series based on the Stitcher podcast, Mob Queens. Wilson will play Anna Genovese (Wilson), the second wife of infamous crime boss Vito Genovese and a fixture in the Village’s drag bar scene in the 1930s who later broke Cosa Nostra law—when she spilled the illegal dealings of her husband in divorce hearings.

Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) is set to star in and executive-produce the thriller series, Ballistic. Lihi Kornowski and Bosch's Jonathan Ohye will also star in the six-part series about a secret operative (Carpenter) who, after a mission is compromised, is forced into a psychological game of cat and mouse with her own mind while being hunted down by the very program that created her. Series creators Spenser Cohen (Moonfall) and Anna Halberg (Distant) will serve as showrunners and executive producers.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze podcast is up featuring Part 1 of the mystery short story, "Harvey and the Redhead," written by Debra H Goldstein and read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper. (Part 2 will go up next week.)

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with H.Y. Hanna, who writes fun cozy mysteries "filled with humor, quirky characters, clever twists—and cats with big personalities."

On the Crime Writers of Color podcast, Midnight House anthology editors Abby Vandiver, Marla Bradeen, Steph Cha, and Alafair Burke were interviewed by Robert Justice; plus Carolyn Wilkins and Alex Segura read from their included short stories.

The Spybrary podcast welcomed the former director of the CIA’s Technical Service, Robert Wallace, to discuss his time in the CIA and the various non-fiction books he has co-authored since leaving the agency.

The Red Hot Chili Writers interviewed spy thriller writer, Charles Cumming and discussed his latest book, Judas 62; they also chatted with Vic Watson and Simon Berwick about the upcoming Bay Tales festival.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with S.F. Kosa about her most recent book, The Night We Burned.

Writers Detective Bureau host, Det. Adam Richardson, talked about how police deal with teenagers as missing persons and as suspects in a murder.

Crime Time FM chatted with Dominic Nolan about his new novel, Vine Street; 1930s Soho; obsession; history versus the past; and believing in your work.