B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 109

Mystery Melange

The 2020 McIlvanney Prize shortlist for Scottish Crime Book of the Year was announced yesterday, with the winner to be announced in a virtual event on Friday, September 18th. This year's finalist titles include Whirligig by Andrew James Greig; Pine by Francine Toon; A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone; and The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry, the pen name of husband and wife team, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. You can read more about the books and the judges' comments via the Bloody Scotland Conference website.

Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) announced the opening of the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, formerly known as the Arthur Ellis Awards. This will also be the first year for a new category: The Howard Engel Award, for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada, sponsored by the Engel Family with a $500 prize. The late Howard Engel was one of the founders of Crime Writers of Canada, a prolific author, former CBC producer, and the inaugural recipient of the CWC Grand Master Award. Other award categories and prizes include: $1000 for Best Crime Novel, sponsored by Rakuten Kobo; $500 for The Angela Harrison Memorial Award for Best Crime First Novel, sponsored by CWC member and author Maureen Jennings (Murdoch Mysteries); $200 for Best Crime Novella and $300 for Best Crime Short Story, both sponsored by Mystery Weekly; $500 for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book sponsored by Shaftesbury Films; $500 for the Best Unpublished Crime Novel manuscript written by an unpublished author sponsored by ECW Press; and Best French Crime Book and Best Nonfiction Crime Book. Winners will be announced at a gala to be held in Toronto in May of 2021. Full details about the competition can be found on the Crime Writers of Canada website.

This 2020 BAD Sydney Crime Festival is going online and splitting into two parts. The International Festival will take place September 10-13 and feature such authors as Ann Cleeves, Don Winslow, Karin Slaughter, Jo Nesbø, Kathy Reichs, Camilla Läckberg, and Nicci French. The second part will be the Face to Face Festival from November 5-8 when the Danger Prize will be awarded for the best book, TV Series, podcast, or film about Sydney crime released in the previous year. (HT to Shots Magazine)

New York Times bestselling author and thriller writer Ruth Ware will be talking about her latest book, One By One, at the National Writers Series in an online live event to be held at 2 p.m. ET on September 13. The NWS is suggesting a donation for events this fall, to help them overcome the loss of ticket revenue from in-person events at the City Opera House. Money collected will be used for their Raising Writers programs, including Front Street Writers, poetry workshops, writing workshops, and Battle of the Books.

In keeping with many events this year, the International Agatha Christie Festival is going online. The free 2020 virtual festival will be live on the festival's new YouTube channel on September 15. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can subscribe now by visiting this link. Sophie Hannah, Laura Thompson, and Mathew Prichard are among the special guests with topics to include Christie’s Childhood; her home, Greenway; Hercule Poirot; and Christie’s plays, Witness for the Prosecution and The Mousetrap, among other subjects.

If you are a poet, short story writer, or novelist who lives in the United States and have not yet been published by a major publisher, the Key West Literary Seminar and Workshop has an Emerging Writers Award to which nominations may be sent until September 15. Here’s the link for all the information you need: full guidelines and a link to the application here. (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Investigation Discovery and James Patterson have partnered once again for a new series of books written by Patterson and inspired by the network’s library of true crime programming. The first of the three books, Murder Thy Neighbor, is set to be published on Tuesday, Sept. 15. According to ID, the book "profiles two twisted tales inspired by true-crime horrors: the first following a neighbors’ quarrel that turns violent and the second, cyber-bullying that explodes in a double murder." That will be followed by Murder of Innocence on November 17, 2020, and Till Murder Do Us Part on January 19, 2021.

The novel by Agatha Christie known to most people by the title And Then There Were None actually started out with a different title taken from a minstrel song. That original title is now considered offensive, which is why it has been changed everywhere—except in France. However, it was just announced that the book will finally be retitled there, in a decision made by Christie's great-grandson James Prichard, who heads the company that owns the literary and media rights to Christie’s works.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "English Teacher, or an Institutional Nightmare," by Emory D. Jones.

In the Q&A roundup, Emma Cline stopped by The Guardian to discuss Harvey Weinstein, weathering a plagiarism allegation, and her new collection of suspense short stories, Daddy; Dwyer Murphy of CrimeReads chatted with Carl Hiaasen about "Palm Beach, Slithery Characters, and Florida Crime Fiction"; Brad Parks spoke with Deborah Kalb about quantum physics and his latest thriller, Interference; Cuban author Uva de Aragón opened up about her fun, independent, and food-loving female sleuth, María Duquesne; and Denise Mina talked about the fact she couldn't read until she was nine, her current writing projects, and her writing influences.

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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

Director-producer Anthony Hemingway is in talks to helm Train Man, a legal drama based on the true story of Darius McCollum, a man with Asperger syndrome whose fascination with subways and trains led to him posing as various New York City Metro officials in order to operate subway trains. McCollum, who was arrested on several occasions, became a folk hero for people who are on the spectrum. Simon Stephenson wrote the screenplay, which will follow the lawyer hired to defend McCollum. The long-gestating project at one point had Julia Roberts eyeing the lead, but as of now, no cast is attached.

The King’s Man, starring Ralph Fiennes and directed by Matthew Vaughn, is moving its release date from September of this year to February 26, 2021. The period spy action comedy film, written by Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek, is a prequel and the third film in the Kingsman series. The movie features an ensemble cast that includes Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, and Charles Dance.

Frank Grillo (Captain America), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down), and William Forsythe (The Rock) are leading the cast in the crime action-thriller, Ida Red, which has been filming in Oklahoma during the pandemic. Written and directed by John Swab (Body Brokers), the film follows career criminal Ida "Red" Walker (Leo) who is battling a terminal illness while serving a 25-year prison sentence in Oklahoma. Under Ida’s tutelage, her son, Wyatt Walker (Hartnett) has sustained the family business, alongside his uncle, Dallas Walker (Grillo). When a job goes awry, local detective and Wyatt’s brother-in-law, Bodie Collier (Slaine), is joined by FBI agent Lawrence Twilley (Forsythe), to track down the responsible party.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Noel Clarke (Bulletproof) is set to star as a surveillance detective in ITV’s Viewpoint, a Rear Window-esque crime drama based on an idea from Emmy-winning director, Harry Bradbeer. Co-created and written by Ed Whitmore (Manhunt), the five-part drama follows a police surveillance investigation into a tight-knit Manchester community.

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is producing Twenty Four Seven starring rapper T.I. in the role of Derrick Parker who was involved deeply in rap history, including the shooting of Tupac Shakur. The project is inspired by the book, Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD’s First “Hip-Hop Cop,” by Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl.

ABC has ordered a new limited series called Women of the Movement which debuts sometime in 2021. The six-episode series chronicles the journey of Mamie Till Mobley on her long, arduous journey seeking justice for the murder of her son Emmett Till, who, at the age of just 14, was lynched in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

Fox has put in development Interceptor, a one-hour Coast Guard drama written by Katie J. Stone, David Daitch, and John Pruitt. The project follows a rookie Coast Guard Special Forces team, as diverse as the nation they are sworn to protect, who must battle the drug infested waters off the coast of Florida, and navigate the streets of Miami, all while working through the trials of their personal lives.

Taryn Manning (Orange Is the New Black) is set to bring the "Karen" meme to life in a new suspense thriller where she’ll play a Southern white woman who terrorizes her Black neighbors. Karen is from writer-director Coke Daniels and is described as a social commentary with a "powerful message." In the film, Manning will play Karen White, an entitled white woman from the South set on ousting her Black neighbors, who are Black Lives Matter supporters, from her neighborhood.

NBCUniversal is developing Joe Exotic (working title), a limited series starring and executive produced by Kate McKinnon, which has received a joint straight-to-series order by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming divisions. Interest in Joe Exotic skyrocketed this past spring because of the massive popularity of the Netflix docuseries, Tiger King, about the real-life characters depicted in the Joe Exotic limited series. Joe Exotic is one of two high-profile scripted series adaptations of the stranger-than-fiction true story, along with one starring Nicolas Cage as real-life convicted felon, Joe Exotic.

NBC released its fall schedule which includes a three-hour Wednesday block of Dick Wolf dramas, beginning with Chicago Med and capping off the night with Chicago P.D. on November 10. Law & Order: SVU returns on Thursday, Nov. 12, with The Blacklist capping off the week on Friday, Nov. 13 with its Season 8 premiere.

With Hollywood production sideswiped by the coronavirus pandemic for five months, the fall premiere dates for new TV series and new seasons of returning shows are in a state of flux, but Deadline had a list of the currently scheduled lineup including crime dramas such as LA's Finest, which is the Bad Boys spin-off starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba (Spectrum Originals) on September 9; the Kiwi crime drama, One Lane Bridge (Sundance Now) on September 18; Fargo (FX, Season 4) on September 27; Gangs of London and The Salisbury Poisonings (AMC+) on October 1; the sci-fi crime drama neXt (Fox), on October 6; Coroner (The CW) on October 7; and Mystery Road (Acorn, Season 2) on October 12.

However, Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler spin-off, Law & Order: Organized Crime, has been delayed. The anticipated drama was expected to debut this October on NBC, following Law & Order: SVU, but NBC announced Thursday that the show was being pushed until 2021.

A trailer was released for Enola Holmes, based on the book series by Nancy Springer and starring Millie Bobby Brown in the title role, a "wild child," as big brother Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) describes her. When Sherlock’s teen sister, Enola, discovers her mother missing, she sets off to find her, becoming a super-sleuth in her own right as she outwits her famous brother and unravels a dangerous conspiracy around a mysterious young Lord.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone started off a new season by welcoming S.A. Cosby, author of Blacktop Wasteland, to talk about poverty, fruit loops, and drunk heroes.

Read or Dead tackled adaptation news (including the Dan Mallory movie), and took a walk down memory lane with middle grade mystery books.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover spoke with author Laura Griffin about her latest book, Hidden, the first installment in her new Texas Murder Files Series.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Lydia King, a practicing physician and author of young adult fiction, adult fiction and non-fiction, and poetry, as they discussed her latest novel, Opium and Absinthe.

Paul Haynes joined It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club following the sentencing of the Golden State Killer. Haynes conducted research for I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara's book on the subject, and then helped finish the book after Michelle's untimely death.

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Quote of the Week

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Support Your Indies!

Today is Independent Bookstore Day in the U.S., postponed from its previously scheduled date of April 25. Sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, some 600+ stores around the country are planning on participating in the event, which will this year be taking place mostly virtually, although some stores will have limited on-site events. Like many businesses, these indie bookstores have been largely limping along during the pandemic, with many seeing sales drop by as much as 30-60%. So this is a perfect way to help show your support during these difficult times.

Many of the mystery-themed bookstores are planning on joining in the festivities, with some sample features to include Mysterious Galaxy, which is participating in a Virtual San Diego Book Crawl, where you can win pins, prints, totes, and t-shirts by spending money in participating stores; Murder by the Book in Houston is featuring a conversation between James Lee Burke and Stephen King on YouTube; The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale will have two virtual chats, Sophie Hannah discussing The Killings at Kingfisher Hill and Alex Pavesi discussing The Eighth Detective from 1-2 pm, and also Susanna Kearsley, C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber, and Christine Trent discussing the anthology, The Deadly Hours, from 2-3; and Madison, Wisconsin's Mystery to Me is celebrating the day by reopening to in-store customers as well as offering exclusive merchandise and a few special surprises.

But you can support your local indie bookstore just by ordering books (and not just today). For a listing of stores participating in Independent Bookstore Day, follow this link; for a listing of all indie bookstores, click here; and if you'd like to support Black-owned bookstores, here's a helpful list.

            

FFB: A Different Kind of Summer

Gwendoline Butler (b. 1922) had limited success as a writer before she began a police procedural series featuring a young Scotland Yard Inspector, John Coffin, penning eight Coffin novels between 1956 and 1962. When Butler's husband took a job teaching in St. Andrews, Scotland, the author decided she wanted a change from Coffin and found her inspiration one day when she saw a young red-haired Scottish policewoman. She later asked the local police chief about the young officer and was told she was a recent graduate on a rapid promotion track. Thus was born the character of Detective Charmian Daniels of the fictional Deerham Hill CID and, as some have given credit to the author (written under her pen name of Jennie Melville), the birth also of the woman's police procedural.

Melville also dipped her pen into the romantic suspense well for a time, evening receiving a Romantic Novelists Association Major Award in 1981, but eventually returned to both Inspector Coffin and Detective Daniels. She went on to write over 70 novels and was a recipient of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger in 1973 and shortlisted for the Golden Dagger for another novel.

One critic elevated Melville/Butler to a status equal to the Four Great Founding Mothers: Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh, not only due to their writing, but in light of how many other elements they had in common: all well-educated (Butler lectured at Oxford), all prolific writers, all wrote on subjects other than detective fiction, and four of the group had supportive husbands. If she is not as well remembered as the others, it may be due to the fact that writers who she helped paved the way for, such as P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, eventually eclipsed her in acclaim.

Melville's writing of her female detective, Charmian Daniels, shows elements of early feminism and as the character grew through the years, Detective Daniels also reflected the changing roles of women and attitudes toward them, particularly in a traditional man's field, law enforcement. Daniels grows in her career through time and is eventually promoted to Chief Superintendent with a move to Windsor. In an interview with Clues: A Journal of Detection in 2000, Butler said, "I was determined she [Daniels] should be a success and I suppose in a sense I was basing her on what would have happened to me if I'd remained in academic life when on the whole in my day, even more so now, women do climb the ladder. I was in the generation that was expecting to be successful as a woman in whatever field they ventured."  

In Melville's A Different Kind of Summer, dating from 1967, the fifth outing for Detective Daniels, Daniels is still a sergeant when an unidentified body arrives on a train into town in a coffin minus head or hands. It's up to Daniels to figure out which of many missing women this could be, including an increasing number of young girls vanishing in London. As she gets deeper into the case, she tries to stay objective and focused even as she starts receiving menacing phone calls and has to deal with a new young assistant, Christine Quinn, and a hysterical troublemaker who claims she's lost her sister.

There's been a lot of hue and cry lately about the amount of violence against women in crime fiction novels, and a mutilated female corpse would fall into that category, but in a commentary included in the original publication of A Different Kind of Summer, Melville said that she was interested in people committing crimes and why some people, usually women, form the victim syndrome, in that the bad guys sense these victims are afraid (a reason why policewomen acting as decoys often fail to lure attackers, because their sense of confidence is too obvious).

Melville has a low-key writing style, blending social commentary with quirky characters, detailed plotting and thoughtful writing for the most part, although in general, it's her novels with Inspector John Coffin where she's had her greatest success. One wonders if writing from a woman's point of view was too close to home to provide the inspirational distance required or if perhaps the fact the author's brother was Warden of the Toynbee Settlement in London gave her more of a first-hand experience with male protagonists. In either case, with Melvill's Daniels or Butler's Coffin, there's a lot of good material there, enough to show that grouping her with the "Four Great Founding Mothers" isn't that much of a stretch. If you're a fan of the "Golden Age" of detective fiction, then you'll enjoy these series.

            

Mystery Melange

The Killer Nashville conference announced its annual Silver Falchion awards in a virtual ceremony this past weekend, including Book of the Year winner, Queen's Gambit by Bradley Harper; Best Mystery: Lovely Digits by Jeanine Englert; Best Procedural or PI: Paid in Spades by Richard Helms; Best Thriller: Hyperion's Fracture by Thomas Kelso; Best Action or Adventure: The Best Lousy Choice by Jim Nesbitt; Best Cozy: A Sip Before Dying by Gemma Halliday; and Best Suspense: Queen's Gambit by Bradley Harper. For all the awards in the various categories, follow this link to the official conference website.

The McKnight Foundation for its 2020 Distinguished Artist Award—a $50,000 award created to honor a Minnesota artist who has made significant contributions to the state’s cultural life. Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, is a writer whose poems, plays, children’s books, and novels explore the resilience and brilliance of Native peoples. Rendon is the author of the award-winning Cash Blackbear mystery series, set in Minnesota’s Red River Valley. The first novel in the series, Murder on the Red River, earned the 2018 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel, and the second, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America–G. P. Putnam’s Son’s Sue Grafton Memorial Award.

The 2020 BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival is all set to go ahead virtually from September 10-13 in what organizers are describing as a 4-day virtual crime "extravaganza." This year, eight prominent international authors will headline morning and evening events, including Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø, UK star Ann Cleeves, US author Don Winslow and more. Ticket prices are $10 or you can purchase a festival pass for $50 via the conference website.

Every year, Phoenix’s Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter brings together a sensational line-up of bestselling authors, experienced editors, and qualified agents for a one-day festival filled with presentations, panel discussions, and workshops. This year, the WriteNow! 2020 Conference is going virtual on September 11-12, 2020, with free registration for all. Special guest authors are set to include Michael Connelly, Matt Coyle, and Naomi Hirahara; plus top-tier developmental editor Jessica Page Morrell and Literary Agent Kirby Kim (Janklow & Nesbit Associates). To continue supporting authors and local booksellers, organizers are asking that all attendees buy books from our conference bookstore, The Poisoned Pen, which ships across the country.

Also coming to the Interwebs near you is the virtual Bloody Scotland writing festival on September 18, available with free registration. Features include a panel on Pitching Your Story; Jeffery Deaver - My Life in Crime; The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers - Behind the Scenes; and The McIlvanney Prize and Debut Prize announcement. Organizers also recently announced that the entire Bloody Scotland crime fest (running September 17-30) will be available for free online, including events with special guests Lee Child and Ian Rankin.



 

The pandemic has certainly taken its toll on the various crime fiction conferences around the world this year, but apparently, that trend is heading into next year, as well. The Left Coast Crime Conference, originally scheduled for April 7-12, 2021 in Albuquerque, NM, announced it would bypass next year and reschedule for 2022 – same place, same week in April, just a year later. Special Guests were to include Mick Herron, Catriona McPherson, Kristopher Zgorski, and Kellye Garrett, all of whom will apparently be back for the 2022 event. Registration is official open via the following link.

Writers who can boil down a mystery into a half-dozen words are encouraged to enter the fourth annual Six-Word Mystery Contest sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (RMMWA). The contest opens September 15, 2020 with instructions to be posted at www.rmmwa.org, with an entry deadline of midnight, Oct. 31, 2020. Six-word "whodunits" can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard Boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery with Romance or Lust. Last year’s winning entry by Jeffrey Lockwood was "36D, 44 magnum, 20 to life." This year’s esteemed judges include Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Editor Linda Landrigan; New York Times best-selling author Anne Hillerman; award-winning author, lawyer and activist Manuel Ramos; BookBar Denver store owner Nicole Sullivan; and literary agent Terrie Wolf, owner of AKA Literary Management.

Elizabeth Foxwell, Managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, the oldest US scholarly journal on mystery/detective/crime fiction, noted that the latest volume, guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), has been published on the theme "Genre B(l)ending: Crime's Hybrid Forms." The issue includes essays on G. K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Craig Johnson, James Church, Janet Evanovich, Juliet Blackwell, Minette Walters, Gillian Flynn, Mark Haddon, and Ben H. Winters, as well as reviews of new nonfiction books related to crime fiction.

Sydney, Australia, writer Daniel Hatadi founded Crimespace back in 2007 as a social media gathering place for writers and fans of crime fiction. He sent out a note last week that due to fee increases by the hosting company, Ning.com, and the appearance of other social-media groups that have lured participants away, he's shutting down the service. He added, "Thanks to everyone who has donated along the way, it’s much appreciated."

Although voting has ended, Art Taylor offered up links to all the Mystery Readers International Macavity Award-nominated short stories for your reading pleasure. The winning story will be announced at Virtual Bouchercon in October.

The Washington Post reported that people who want to support their local bookstores might be hurting them instead. Although indie stores are doing their best to accommodate well-wishing customers, new stresses of both high demand and inventory slips have led to often-disgruntled patrons. (Note to bookstore customers: don't be that guy.)

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "The Fruit Cellar" by Lindsey Grant.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with Lisa Black, bestselling author of suspense novels including her latest, Every Kind of Wicked; and Red Carpet Crash spoke with Brad Parks, the only author to have won the Shamus, Nero and Lefty Awards, about his new thriller, Interference, that blends quantum physics, espionage, and crime.

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Ned Kelly Awards Shortlist

The Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) has announced the shortlists for this year’s Ned Kelly Awards for Australian crime writing. The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest prizes honouring published crime fiction and true crime writing. For more information about the awards, visit the ACWA website. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The shortlisted works in each category are:

Best crime fiction

Death of a Typographer (Nick Gadd, Australian Scholarly Publishing)
River of Salt (Dave Warner, Fremantle Press)
The Scholar (Dervla McTiernan, HarperCollins)
The Strangers We Know (Pip Drysdale, S&S)
True West (David Whish-Wilson, Fremantle Press)
The Wife and the Widow (Christian White, Affirm)

Best debut crime fiction

Eight Lives (Susan Hurley, Affirm)
Lapse (Sarah Thornton, Text)
The Nancys (R W R McDonald, A&U)
Present Tense (Natalie Conyer, Clan Destine Press)
Six Minutes (Petronella McGovern, A&U)
Where the Truth Lies (Karina Kilmore, S&S)

Best true crime

Bowraville (Dan Box, Viking)
Dead Man Walking: The murky world of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich (Kate McClymont, Vintage)
Shark Arm (Phillip Roope and Kevin Meagher, A&U)
Snakes and Ladders (Angela Williams, Affirm)

Best international crime fiction

Cruel Acts (Jane Casey, HarperCollins)
The Chain (Adrian McKinty, Hachette)
The Last Widow (Karin Slaughter, HarperCollins)
The Night Fire (Michael Connelly, A&U).

 

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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

Village Roadshow Pictures has optioned The Prize, a spec feature written by Chris Sparling (Buried; Greenland), with Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales co-director Espen Sandberg also on board the project. The conspiracy thriller follows an American private investigator who travels to Stockholm after the suspicious death of an old friend, a ranking member of the Nobel Prize selection committee. Once there, he becomes entangled in a dangerous web of corruption and crime that exists beneath the surface of the powerful and rarefied circle.

A trailer was released for Death on the Nile, with Gal Gadot, Letitia Wright, Armie Hammer, Annette Bening, Ali Fazal, and Sophie Okonedo leading an all-star cast that also sees Kenneth Brannagh returning as Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox has given a script commitment with penalty to a one-hour drama based on Joshilyn Jackson’s bestselling suspense novel, Never Have I Ever. Adapted by Nurse Jackie co-creator, Liz Brixius, the project revolves around a friendly book club of suburban moms that becomes the perfect feeding ground for a charismatic new neighbor with a penchant for blackmail.

NBCUniversal's Canadian production company, Lark Productions, has pulled together a female-led creative team that includes Avengers actress Cobie Smulders to adapt Amy Stuart’s "Still" series of novels for TV (including Still Mine, the sequel Still Water, and the recently released third novel in the series, Still Here). The first novel features Clare O’Dey, a woman on the run from an abusive husband who becomes embroiled in the search for the truth about the suspicious disappearance of a local woman in a small mining town; in Still Water, Clare uses her newfound investigative skills to unravel another disappearance from a women’s shelter; and in the third novel Still Here, Clare tracks two missing persons, including the private investigator, Malcolm, who set her on her journey.

Annapurna Pictures has teamed with Janicza Bravo (of the upcoming Zola), to write and direct a series adaptation of Ian Parker’s New Yorker article, "A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions," with Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star. Published in February 2019, Parker’s article explores the complex life of former book editor Dan Mallory, whose debut psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window (written under the pseudonym A.J. Finn), was number one on the New York Times Bestseller list, the first debut novel to do so in twelve years. The author's many false claims will be the inspiration for the series, which will follow an unreliable narrator who nurses brain tumors he does not have and mourns family members who are not dead while preying on people’s sympathy to get away with almost anything.

Aleyse Shannon (Charmed) has been set as a new series regular in IMDb TV’s Leverage reboot, a new incarnation of the 2008 crime drama from Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment. The Leverage sequel is described as "a fresh update of the original concept, about reformed crooks using their unique skills to right corporate and governmental injustices inflicted on common citizens." Shannon will play a hacker and joins fellow new star to the series, Noah Wyle, who will play Harry Sullivan, a corporate lawyer looking for redemption after realizing he’d been on the wrong side of the table for his entire career. Returning cast members include Beth Riesgraf, Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, and Aldis Hodge, although it was announced embattled actor Timothy Hutton will not be returning for the follow-up.

There will be no second season for Penny Dreadful: City of Angels after Showtime cancelled the series. The show was set in 1938 Los Angeles amid social and political tension as a grisly murder shook the city, and was a sequel to the original Penny Dreadful program that aired from 2014-16 on Showtime and Sky. Penny Dreadful: City of Angels starred Nathan Lane, Natalie Dormer, Daniel Zovatto, Kerry Bishé, Rory Kinnear, Adriana Barraza, Michael Gladis, Jessica Garza, and Johnathan Nieves.

World Productions has resumed filming on its BBC One submarine thriller, Vigil, starring Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie. Produced in Glasgow, Scotland, the show was forced to shut down earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but filming is now back underway with safety protocols. The BBC released a first-look image of the six-part series, which tells the fictional story of how the disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler and a death onboard a Trident nuclear submarine create conflict between the police, the Royal Navy, and intelligence services.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

John A. Hoda, the host of My Favorite Detective Show, chatted with Mark Edward Langley about his series featuring ex-marine Arthur Nakai—who spent years as a member of the Shadow Wolves, an ICE tactical unit tasked by the US government to hunt human traffickers and drug smugglers on the US/Mexico border.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast featured the first two chapters of the mystery novel, Homebody, written by Louise Titchener and read by actor Casey Ballard.

The Seattle Public Library's Thrilling Tales podcast recently offered short story readings including such classics as E. Phillips Oppenheim's "The Reckoning with Otto Schreed" (1922), and the G. K. Chesterton story, "The Hammer of God" (1910) featuring Father Brown. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

The Documentary on One podcast profiled Sam Millar, whose life reads like pure fiction: after joining the IRA as a teenager, he spent years on the notorious blanket protest in Northern Ireland and later admitted to taking part in a seven million dollar armed robbery in the US before starting a new life as a writer of award winning crime novels.

Criminal Mischief host, Dr. DP Lyle, took on the topic of "Nasty Deadly Poisons."  Although crime writers have long loved poisons in their plots, especially arsenic, there are other more uncommon, and deadly, options for a murder mystery.

Writer Types welcomed debut thriller writer, David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Winter Counts), along with authors Johnny Shaw (The Southland) and Jospeh Reid (Departure).

This latest special guest on Speaking of Mysteries was Robert Pobi, discussing Under Pressure, the second installment in his series featuring Dr. Lucas Page—an astrophysicist who also happens to be a best-selling author and professor, former FBI agent, and world-class misanthrope.

Meet the Thriller Author was joined by John Gilstrap, the New York Times bestselling author of a series with hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave, and a screenwriter who's been contracted to write and co-produce the film adaptation of his book, Six Minutes to Freedom.

Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, tackled "Vehicle Tampering Clues, Trademarks, and Notice of Warrant Service."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed C. M. Gleason to discuss her novels in the Lincoln's White House Mysteries series.

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Quote of the Week

            

FFB: Five Passengers From Lisbon

Born in 1899, she was called America's Agatha Christie by her biographer, Rick Cypert, and was once the third highest paid female mystery writer (after Christie herself and Mary Roberts Rinehart). Her name is Mignon Good Eberhart and she was nothing if not a prolific writer, with 59 novels and numerous short stories, novellas and plays, many adapted for film in the 1930s and 1940s. It didn't hurt that she got an early start on her career as a teenager, mostly, as she later said,

"because I preferred writing to studying Caesar's Commentaries and algebra. There was one halcyon period during which I traded work on English themes for the solution of geometry problems, with an obliging classmate, but, perhaps for the best, this was very brief. There was a long novel to which I could add chapters at will, and numerous plays, all of which were advisedly destroyed. In my early twenties I gathered up courage and postage stamps and sent a book-length typescript to an editor. It was accepted. The story was a murder mystery and thus started me on a hard but rewarding writing path. The writer hopes that a mystery novel is entertaining to read but it is not easy to write."

That first book was The Patient in Room 18, introducing nurse Sarah Keate and police detective Lance O'Leary (who both appeared in four more novels), later made into a movie starring Ann Sheridan and Patric Knowles. Female sleuths abound today, but it was still somewhat revolutionary for the time. Eberhart wasn't necessarily an early feminist, however—she said of her creation, "I loved her because she had a good sharp tongue." It was only a year after the publication of this book that Agatha Christie followed suit and introduced Miss Jane Marple for the first time in a novel. Another of her popular heroines was Susan Dare, a precursor to Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote. Dare, quite possibly Eberhart's best creation, only appeared in short stories, some of which you'll find in the 2007 Crippen and Landru collection titled Dead Yesterday.



Eberhart's books primarily feature female heroines in often-exotic locations; in fact, her primary contribution is quite probably to the development of the romantic-suspense subgenre in crime fiction, one reason she's often said to resemble more Rinehart than Christie. Another reason for that comparison is Eberhart's dedication to character development and her interest in scientific detection, as seen through her nurse-protagonist and medical themes. Plus, Rinehart herself had her own Nurse Pinkerton.



Some contemporary readers will find formulaic elements and eye-rolling elements in Eberhart's novels, particularly the early ones where female heroines tend to show poor judgement and even faint (does anyone really faint all that often? Did they ever?), but she was adept with the elements of suspense and atmosphere in what Thrilling Detective said was "spare but almost lyrical" writing. Mike Grost added that that "suspense passages in Eberhart often show the heroine with a heightened sensory awareness of her surroundings, and are almost hallucinatory in their intensity."

These qualities are seen in her closed community mystery from 1946, Five Passengers From Lisbon. Five passengers and three crewmen survive a sinking Portugese cargo ship via a lifeboat, but when they're picked up by a U.S. hospital ship, the Portugese mate is found murdered. Against a backdrop of Portugal being a haven for espionage with undertones of Nazi and Resistance alliances, Eberhart spins a claustrophobic web first as the group floats in the darkness:

There were no signs of other lifeboats; although once a barrel floated past and they thought at first it was a man, and another time it was a man, on his face, dead when they reached him. Alfred Castiogne bent down to drag the floating, dark bulk a little out of the water, and to cast it back again. Marcia remembered the way his thick shoulders hunched over, and the moment while the boat drifted and Gili's whimper. But nobody said anything; it seemed too natural an event, so precisely and unexpectedly part of the pattern of the night.

and again along the dim windowless corridors and decks shrouded in fog:

The deck below seemed deserted, too. She reached the last wet black step and turned sharply around the stairway. But the deck was not deserted; it was, instead, horribly inhabited. Marcia stopped, holding the railing. The foghorn began again, so waves of sound broke over the deck, shaking the ship and all the impenetrable grey world about her with dreadful tumult. It kept on sounding, while Marcia stood, looking down at the dark swarthy little man who lay with his eyes no longer suspicious and wary but blankly open, staring upward. He was Manuel Para and his throat had been cut.   

A very long time seemed to have passed when suddenly she knew that someone was coming down the stairway immediately above her, following the steps her feet had taken. She looked up. It was a man in a red bathrobe. She could see him, and he had no face, but only white bandages with holes for eyes.

In H. R. F. Keating's Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books, he describes Mignon Eberhart as the heir and successor to Mary Robert Rinehart and a "star writer" in the first person single feminine tradition. Gertrude Stein described her as one of the "best mystifiers in America." She received the Scotland Yard Prize in 1930, became the Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of American in 1971, and 1979, received a MWA special Edgar to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of her first novel.