B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 113

FFB: Windy City

Hubert "Hugh" Holton (1947-2001) grew up in Woodlawn, outside of Chicago, the only son of a police officer. In high school, he started reading detective novels from the school library—Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Arthur Conan Doyle. He later said, "One of the things that I always noticed about the books was that police types were always portrayed as very stupid individuals. My father is now, as he was then, one of the smartest people I ever met. I was saying, 'How in the world are they doing this? Why are they making these officers look so stupid?'"



In July 1964, Holton himself joined the police department's cadet program, then spent a three-year tour of duty (including a seven-month stint in Vietnam) until returning to Chicago to sign up with the police academy in 1969. He was one of the first black officers to work in Wrigleyville, but after a district commander told him, "I don't need any colored tactical officers in my district," he transferred to Wentworth. Six months later, he'd moved up to plainclothes, and eventually was promoted up to commander of the Grand Crossing District.



But those early crime fiction novels continued to haunt him, and he enrolled in writing programs at Columbia College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 1986, he attended a conference at Northwestern sponsored by the midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and two years later took a course taught by mystery author Barbara D'Amato. Thanks to her encouragement, he subsequently published his first novel, Violent Crimes, featuring Larry Cole, a young black police officer at the start of his career, aided by an older and wiser Italian-American partner named Blackie Silvestri. Holton went on to write ten successful novels in the Cole series, but sadly, Holton died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 54.



The second installment in the thriller series featuring Chicago Police Commander Larry Cole is Windy City. While investigating the death of a fellow officer, Cole stumbles across a pattern of killings that leads him to discover that the alleged fun-loving, super rich couple Neil and Margo DeWitt have a gruesome hobby:  they murder women and children using methods from Chicago-area mystery novels. Cole enlists a group of mystery writers to help him figure out where the homicidal couple will strike next. But as the body count rises, the threat hits closer to home:  not only are the DeWitts responsible for killing Cole's best buddy, Margo DeWitt is setting her sights on Cole's young son as her ultimate target.



Kirkus Reviews noted, "It's the rare reader who'll put this one down as it hurtles—one chilling event after the next—to its over-the-top finale...a bravura performance."

            

Mystery Melange

The UK’s book trade magazine, The Bookseller, announced this year's winners of the British Book awards, also known as the Nibbies. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite won top honors in the Crime & Thriller category, with the other finalists including The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley; How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid; The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides; Imposter by LJ Ross; and Blue Moon by Lee Child. Braithwaite was the first Black author to win her category, joining fellow authors Candice Carty-Williams and Bernardine Evaristo who became become the first Black authors to win top British Book awards for book of the year and author of the year, respectively.

Organizers of New Zealand’s annual Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction announced their longlist of nominees for the 2020 best New Zealand crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. You can check out all twelve titles on this list via this link. The finalists for both this Best Novel category and also Best First Novel will be announced later this year with the winners honored at this year’s WORD Christchurch Festival, held from October 29 to November 1.

On July 23, Mark Billingham will be in conversation with Ian Rankin in a special online event. Billingham will discuss the novel, Cry Baby, his 20th novel and the prequel to Sleepyhead, the first installment in the bestselling Tom Thorne series. You can register just for the event on its own or for a little extra, register for both a ticket and a signed copy of the book.

MurderCon organizer, Lee Lofland, announced that the event is going virtual, with two full days of live instruction featuring many of the same in-person event topics taught by the Sirchie’s expert instructors. Classes will include Fingerprints, Chemical Processing of Prints, Presumptive Blood/DNA, Blood Spatter, Footwear Evidence, Lifting Footwear, Homicide Investigations, Murder Case Studies, Toxicology, Forensic Geology, and Entomology, and much more. Full details, including how you can register to attend the 2020 Virtual MurderCon, will be available on the event's website by July 6. The registration period will be very brief and spots are limited on a first come, first served basis.

Austin Camacho, the director of Creatures, Crime & Creativity, made the very tough decision to cancel this year's conference. However, C3 2021 will be September 10th-12th at a new venue, the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Columbia, Maryland, with key note speakers to include bestselling mystery author, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and top fantasy author, Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Norlisha Crawford, associate professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, who guest edited the Clues issue on Chester Himes, will be teaching an online course on African American detective fiction in August via the Rosenbach in Philadelphia. Authors covered will include Himes, Eleanor Taylor Bland, Walter Mosley, and Nichelle D. Tramble. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at the Bunburyist Blog.)

A line of face masks from Out of Print (the Penguin Random House company that creates book-centric apparel and accessory items) and the American Booksellers Association has been the biggest new-product launch in Out of Print's 10-year history. The seven Out of Print Literary Masks sold more than 13,000 in their first week. They are available at outofprint.com and will begin selling at bookstores nationwide next week for $12 each. A portion of each sale is being donated to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) to assist bookstores affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Guardian featured a panel of authors titled "Me and my detective." Lee Child, Attica Locke, Val McDermid, John Connolly, Ann Cleeves, Amer Anwar, Ian Rankin, Sara Paretsky, Abir Mukherjee, Lynda La Plante, Michael Connelly, Mark Billingham, and Jo Nesbø revealed how they came up with their most famous creations, what it’s like to live with them over decades, and if they’ll last the distance.

Mystery Fanfare's Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of mysteries taking place during summer filled with murder and mayhem, whether it's on the beach, at the lake, or in the city.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "I Died a Thousand Times: Death #999" by Richie Narvaez."

In the Q&A roundup, Indie Crime Scene interviewed Michael Pronko, author of Tokyo Traffic; Karin Slaughter chatted with Woman and Home and revealed the secrets behind her best-selling books and her writing success; The Picky Bookworm welcomed Scottish author and former Detective Sergeant with the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, Ian Patrick, about his crime novels; CrimeReads spoke with Ottessa Moshfegh about her novel of metaphysical suspense, Death in Her Hands; and John Grisham had a video chat with The Mystery People to discuss his latest novel, Camino Winds.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with Jane Stanton Hitchcock (winner of the 2019 Hammett Award)

Bestselling author Jane Stanton Hitchcock was born and raised in New York City, where she led a seemingly privileged life. Early on, she learned the trappings of wealth and fame are not nearly all they are cracked up to be, themes she has since explored in her creative works dealing with murder and mayhem in high places. Before turning her hand to crime novels, she actually started her career in screenplays, one of which, Vanilla, was directed by Harold Pinter in London. (Fun factoid: Jane’s mother, actress Joan Alexander, originated the roles of Lois Lane on the radio serial The Adventures of Superman and Della Street on the radio serial Perry Mason).

Jane is also an avid poker player who regularly competes in the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker, and her sixth novel, Bluff (which just won the Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers), plays off that theme. One-time socialite Maud Warner polishes up the rags of her once glittering existence and bluffs her way into a signature New York restaurant on a sunny October day. When she walks out again, a man will have been shot. Maud has grown accustomed to being underestimated and invisible, and she uses her ability to fly under the radar as she pursues celebrity accountant Burt Sklar, the man she believes stole her mother's fortune and left her family in ruins. Her fervent passion for poker has taught Maud that she can turn weakness into strength to take advantage of people who think they are taking advantage of her, and now she has dealt the first card in her high-stakes plan for revenge. One unexpected twist after another follows as Maud plays the most important poker hand of her life. The stakes? To take down her enemies and get justice for their victims. Her success depends on her continuing ability to bluff—and on who will fold. Can she win?

Jane stops by In Reference to Murder for a Q&A:

1) BLUFF grew out of your own mastery of poker. In what ways did the game inspire this book – and how is the idea of bluffing a catalyst for suspense?

First of all, I would never say I had “mastered” poker.  If anything, the game is my master.  It’s taught me a lot about life and how to deal with adversity – namely, there’s no point in dwelling on bad luck or one’s mistakes.  Hard as it is, you sometimes have to say “Next Hand” and get on with it.  I also realized that at the poker table I was being underestimated just as I had been in life.  Players never expect an older woman to play anything but Old Lady Poker, just like the guy who swindled my mother out of millions of dollars never expected me to find out about his larceny and ultimately help put him in jail.  When I made this connection I found a way into the book:  Combine being underestimated in life and in poker and write a twisty tale of murder, revenge, and bluffing.  I hope the reader will be intrigued by the characters and swept up in the twists and turns of the story.  The book is one long poker hand with a Flop, a Turn, and the River.  As they play the hand with me, I want them to be thinking:   “How the hell does she get out of this?”  Only one way:  Bluff!

2) “Mad Maud” Warner is a complex character – and a timely one, given the fervor of feminism and the #MeToo movement. In what ways do you see her as an everywoman of sorts – and how did you balance likability with believability in developing her person? 

I say in the book: “Older women are invisible, and we don’t even have to disappear.”  Power derived from supposed weakness is a theme of the book. In the very first scene, Maud is able to escape because no one can fathom a woman like her – an older, well-dressed socialite – could have had the balls to commit such a shocking crime in a posh and crowded restaurant.  

The book is told in two voices:  Maud’s own, as she recounts what led her to commit murder; and the third person, which details the crime and its aftermath on all the people involved.  My hope is that the reader will be rooting for Maud as she explains what has led her to such violence and why she thinks she can possibly get away with it if she literally plays her cards right!  I guess she’s a #MeToo murderer!

3) You also satirize high society. How do you view humor as a tool for enlightenment – and what’s your rule for achieving a sense of fun (and funny) without crossing the line into farce or offensiveness? 

I like what Abba Eban said: “The upper crust is a bunch of crumbs held together by dough.”  I grew up in so-called “High Society” and, as I say in the book “money is a matter of luck; class is a matter of character.”  Maud knows she can trust some of her dicey poker playing pals much more than the “social” friends she’s known her entire life.  I also say:  “Money exaggerates who people are.  If you’re good you’ll be better, if you’re bad you’ll jump right down on the devil’s trampoline.”  A lot of people think having money makes them better than other people.  I like to aim my pen at such pretension and there’s no better way to do it than with humor.  I’d have to be Dostoevsky to write my own family’s story without humor.  As the book shows, money doesn’t save anyone from addiction, swindling, and death.  In fact, money often makes things worse.  But there’s nothing more exasperating than self-pity.  So telling my family’s story was a challenge.  It took me nineteen drafts!  But the poker theme eventually helped me harness the humor in all the darkness.

4) In addition to a novelist, you are also a playwright and screenwriter. In what ways do these disciplines inform one another – and what are the greatest challenges of the novel in comparison?

 Movies are really a directors’ medium so a writer is blessed if he/she has a good director.  Enough said.  Playwriting taught me about creating scenes and developing characters through dialogue.  In the theatre time on the stage grows more expensive with each minute.  You have to engage the audience.  Therefore, you always have to ask yourself:  What’s at stake?  Why should people care about these characters, this situation?  You have a captive audience sitting there waiting for things to develop in a finite amount of time.  The novel has no such constraints.  But I confess, I love a good, twisty plot. I like every scene to further the story.  But I also think it’s important for the reader not to be one jump ahead of me.  It’s when surprise meets inevitability that I feel I’ve done my job.  I want my readers to say:  Wow I didn’t see that coming, but now it all makes sense!  

I try and give the reader a sense of place without overloading the description.  Action is character and I really like writing dialogue, putting myself into all the characters – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It’s fun to create a good villain and more fun to see the villain get his/her comeuppance.  But in my books, there is usually an anti-heroine who is, herself, operating in an amoral sphere.  In Bluff, I want my audience to be complicit in Maud’s revenge and root for her to get it – otherwise the book doesn’t work.   

5) What does winning the Hammett Prize mean to you?

It’s an incredible honor.  I never expected to win it!  Being nominated was enough, particularly among such a talented group of writers, not to mention the distinguished nominees and winners of past years.  Frankly, just to be favorably mentioned in the same sentence with Dashiell Hammett is a mystery writer’s dream. 

 

You can learn more about Jane Stanton Hitchcock and the Hammett Award-winning book via Jane's website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Bluff is available via all major bookstores.

            

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 Leitch (Deadpool 2; Hobbs & Shaw) has signed on to direct the thriller, Bullet Train, with another action-thriller veteran, Antoine Fuqua (director of the Equalizer movies starring Denzel Washington), on board as producer. Bullet Train, which is based on a popular Japanese manga, centers on a group of assassins with conflicting motives on a train in Tokyo. The film is a contained thriller, which means it can be shot on a contained set and thus fall in line easier under health restrictions than a more sprawling action movie with actual locations.

Vertical Entertainment has picked up North American rights to the mystery-thriller, Viscous, starring Mena Suvari (American Beauty). The film, from debut writer-director Braden R. Duemmler, follows a socially awkward teenager who is blindsided when her mother introduces her new fiancée. At first, his charm, intelligence, and beauty seem too good to be true, and after a series of strange occurrences the teenage daughter realizes that this new member of their family is not exactly who he seems.

Gerard Butler is set to star in the action film, Kandahar, with Ric Roman Waugh directing. (Butler and Waugh also teamed up last year on the hit action pic Angel Has Fallen). Waugh will direct from a screenplay he wrote with former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune. In the film, Butler will play Tom Harris, an undercover CIA operative working in the Middle East. An intelligence leak dangerously exposes his classified mission and reveals his covert identity. Stuck in the heart of hostile territory, Harris and his translator must fight their way out of the desert to an extraction point in Kandahar, Afghanistan, while eluding the elite special forces hunting them.

The Mickey Rourke, Sean Stone, and Eric Roberts crime drama, Night Walk, has secured North American distribution. Directed and produced by Moroccan-born filmmaker Aziz Tazi, Night Walk follows Frank (played by Oliver Stone’s son, Sean Stone), a Western traveler visiting the Middle East, where his girlfriend Sarah lives. After a tragic incident leading to Sarah’s death, Frank is wrongfully imprisoned by corrupt police, and under the guidance of the prison’s top shot-caller (Mickey Rourke) and the protection of his Muslim cellmate, he unravels political corruption at the top seats of government in his quest for justice.

Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) has been cast opposite Alex Pettyfer (Magic Mike) in the thriller, Hunters In The Dark, with veteran theater director, Simon Evans, making his feature filmmaking debut. The project tells the story of 28-year-old English school teacher, Robert Grieve (Pettyfer), who unexpectedly wins a bag full of cash. Adrift in Cambodia and eager for a way out of his life of quiet desperation, he decides to take a journey deeper into the wilder aspects of the country, coming up against a scheming American, a crooked police officer, and a darker side of Cambodia.

Saban Films has bought North American and UK rights to Jared Cohn’s Reactor starring Bruce Willis as the leader of a gang of mercenaries holding a nuclear power plant hostage. Casting is underway for the lead role, a former soldier who takes down Willis and his crew. Cohn wrote the script with Cam Cannon and Stephen Cyrus Sepher.

The estate of Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is suing Netflix, Legendary Films, and author Nancy Springer over copyright and trademark issues associated with the upcoming film, Enola Homes. The suit claims that, despite most of the original pre-1923 Sherlock Holmes tales having been judged to be in the public domain, the author’s last 10 stories about the character — published between 1923 and 1927 — are not. The movie stars Millie Bobby Brown as the much-younger sister of Sherlock Holmes, who proves to be a highly capable detective in her own right. Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, and Adeel Akhtar also star in the film that is set to stream on Netflix.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Langdon, the NBC series based on Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol, has added to its cast. Sumalee Montano (Star Trek: Picard), Arrow alum Rick Gonzalez, and Beau Knapp (The Good Lord Bird) are set as series regulars opposite Ashley Zukerman. Written by Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, Langdon follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy. The project, which hails from Imagine Television, CBS TV Studios and Universal Television, is among five 2020 pilots which NBC has committed to filming later this year, once production can safely begin amid coronavirus restrictions.

ViacomCBS International Studios and Miramax will co-produce The Turkish Detective, a crime series set in modern-day Istanbul based on the 21 inspector Cetin Ikmen novels by Barbara Nadel. Each episode "follows Ikmen and his partner Mehmet Suleyman as they solve a series of crimes, with the stories heavily rooted in the rich culture and history of Istanbul."

AMC will air the British drama, Gangs of London, in the U.S. after HBO’s Cinemax exited the project, which has been renewed for a second season. The ten-part show was a big hit for Sky in the UK, becoming its biggest premiere streaming series this year and the biggest original drama launch on Sky Atlantic in the past five years.

Turner networks TNT and TBS have put four projects in development including The Fall and Liar's Club. The Fall is a paranoid thriller about a woman whose dark secrets start to unravel her seemingly perfect life and is inspired by the Albert Camus tale of the same name. Liar's Club is described as "part comedy, part pulp thriller" or "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Breaking Bad." it follows a woman leading two very different lives, one adorned in the trappings of Connecticut country clubs, and the other drenched in the murkiness of the underground gambling circuit in NYC.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story "Vengeance in Cadmium Blue" by Margaret Mendel as read by actor Ariel Linn.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, talked with authors Michael Elias (You Can Go Home Now); Jennifer Chow (Mimi Lee Gets A Clue); and Richard Prosch (the Dan Spalding series).

Michael Elias was also the guest on Speaking of Mysteries to discuss You Can Go Home Now, a psychological thriller where a woman cop is on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Marc Cameron, author of the New York Times bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed the role SWAT plays in an investigation after they’ve busted the suspect; what a witness or visitor to an FBI Office might see; and what the cocaine production process looks like.

Casey Cep, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was the guest on It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club, chatting about her first book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, an instant New York Times bestseller.

THEATRE

Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, is being adapted for the theatre for the first time, and is set to premiere on April 3, 2021 at the Churchill theatre in Bromley, London, under the direction of Luke Sheppard. The stageplay, which involves the murder of the Louvre’s curator and the race to solve a series of baffling codes left beside his body, is being written by the same team who adapted The Girl on the Train for the stage, Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

FFB: Troublemaker

American author Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) was born in South Dakota, the son of a shoe shop owner who lost the business during the Depression, prompting moves to Minneapolis and eventually a citrus grove in California belonging to the author's married sister. Hansen was to spend the rest of his life in California, making a living as a writer and teacher.



Hansen fell in love with a worker at Lockheed's Los Angeles aircraft plant, Jane Bancroft, and married her in 1943. He was gay, she was a lesbian, and they both had affairs, but as the author later remarked, "something was right about it, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of the world." They remained happily together until Jane's death 51 years later, and had a daughter who later underwent gender reassignment.



Hansen penned over 40 books and other works, many with homosexual themes, not widely accepted during the pre-Stonewall 1960s, prompting him to use a pen name with small West Coast publishers. His breakthrough, and the first of his works to use his own name, came with the detective novel Fadeout in 1970. In the St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, Hansen said that  "Homosexuals have commonly been treated shabbily in detective fiction—vilified, pitied, at best patronized...I wanted to write a good, compelling whodunit, but I also wanted to right some wrongs. Almost all the folksay about homosexuals is false. So I had some fun turning clichés and stereotypes on their heads in that book. It was easy."



Fadeout and 11 subsequent books in the series featured Dave Brandstetter, an openly gay insurance investigator/private eye who still had the tough, no-nonsense qualities of the classic hardboiled protagonist. The novels are also known for their colorful descriptive portrayal of Los Angeles during the late 60's and 70's. Hansen was a fan of Ross Macdonald, "but it bothered me that his detective never had any personal life, and he never changed. My joke was to take the true hard-boiled character in an American fiction tradition and make him homosexual. He was going to be a nice man, a good man, and he was going to do his job well."



Troublemaker, the third book in the series from 1975, finds Brandstetter investigating the murder of Rick Wendell, the owner of a local gay bar and all-around nice guy. Wendell's body had been discovered by his mother, who found a young man, stark naked, wiping off a revolver with Rick lying dead at his feet. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but Brandstetter digs deeper, both in his job as investigator for Medallion Life Insurance and because he doesn't like easy solutions. What happened to the large sum of money Wendell had just withdrawn from the bar's bank account? And why are the only fingerprints on the gun those of the victim's mother--the beneficiciary of her son's insurance policy?



Hansen wrote compelling dialogue and multi-layered characters, as in this description of the victim's mother:

 

"She wore jeans, high-top work shoes, an old pullover with a jagged reindeer pattern. Somebody's ski sweater once, somebody even bigger than she was. Her son? She was sixty, but there was nothing frail about her. The hands gripping the grainy rake handle were a man's hands. Her cropped hair was white. She wore no makeup. Her skin was ruddy, her eyes bright blue. Hearty might have described her. Except for her mouth. It sulked. Something had offended her and failed to apologize. Not lately—long ago. A lifetime probably."

 

The New Yorker said of the Brandstetter series, "Unusual in two respects. One is that the insurance investigator, though ruggedly masculine, is thoroughly and contentedly homosexual, the other is that Hansen is an excellent craftsmen, a compelling writer." And as a nod to Hansen's writing as solid private-eye fiction, not just gay private-eye fiction, the Los Angeles Times called the author, "The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today." In 1992, Mr. Hansen received a life achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

            

Famous Shamus

This news just in, a little late for Mystery Melange earlier this morning, but the Private Eye Writers of America announced the Shamus Award winners today:

Best PI Hardcover

WINNER:  Lost Tomorrows by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)



Also nominated:



The Tower of Songs by Casey Barrett (Kensington)

The Shallows by Matt Goldman (Forge)

Below the Line by Michael Gould (Dutton)

The Cold Way Home by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

Best Original Private Eye Paperback



WINNER:  Behind the Wall of Sleep by James DF Hannah 

Also nominated:

The Skin Game by JD Allen (Midnight Ink)

Paid in Spades by Richard Helms (Clay Stafford Books)

Ration of Lies by M. Ruth Myers (author)

The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)



Best Private Eye Short Story



WINNER:  "Sac-A-Lait Man" by O'Neil De Noux (Sept/Oct EQMM)

Also nominated:



"The Smoking Bandit of Lakeside Terrace" by Chad Baker (May/June EQMM)

"The Dunes of Saulkrasti" by William Burton McCormick (Sept/Oct EQMM)

"The Fourteenth Floor" by Adam Meyer (Crime Travel)

"Weathering the Storm" by Michael Pool (The Eyes of Texas)

           Related StoriesThe Agatha Awards ArriveHammett's HeroesThe LA Times Prime Crime 

Mystery Melange

Even though the Bloody Scotland conference is among the many conferences cancelled this year due to Covid-19, organizers have announced finalists vying for two honors that would have been celebrated at the live event, the McIlvanney Prize for Crime Book of the Year Award and the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Shortlisted debut books include Hold Your Tongue by Deborah Masson; The Crown Agent by Stephen O’Rourke; See Them Run by Marion Todd; and Pine by Francine Toon. You can read the longlist of twelve books nominated for the book of the year via this link. Finalists for the McIlvanney Prize will be revealed at the beginning of September and the winner of both prizes will be revealed on Friday 18 September. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The Scottish "Queen of Crime" author Val McDermid also unveiled the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival's "New Blood" authors for 2020, showcasing the year’s best breakout crime writing talent. Honorees include Deepa Anappara for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line; Elizabeth Kay for Seven Lies; Jessica Moor for Keeper; and Trevor Wood for The Man on the Street.

Amazon announced its editorial choices for the Best Books of 2020 so far including in the Mystery & Thriller category. You can check out the nineteen featured titles via this link.

Once Upon a Crime bookstore and Astoria Bookshop are sponsoring Reading for Relief, an online event tonight and tomorrow night to raise funds for Minneapolis community non-profits. Join the participating fourteen talented Crime Writers of Color and hosts Jessica Lane and Angel Luis Colón beginning at 6pm CT/ 7pm ET each evening for readings and discussion.

A Virtual Noir at the Bar Toronto will also take place this evening, June 25, featuring readings by Ed Aymar, R. Daniel Lester, Tom Pitts, Eryk Pruitt, Peter Rozovsky, and Amy Stuart. Event hosts are Rob Bruner and Hope Thompson.

Coming up on Friday night it's the Queer Noir @ The Bar - Pride Month Edition. Featured authors that will join in the reading and conversation include Brenda Buchanan, John Copenhaver, Kelly J. Ford, Robyn Gigl, Cheryl Head, Greg Herren, Edwin Hill, Kristen Lepionka, Michael Nava, and J. M. Redmann. The event is raising money for Lambda Literary Foundation, an LGBT literary organization that aims to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual. and transgender literature through programs that encourage development of emerging writers

The latest Mystery Readers Journal is out with a focus on Italian mysteries. You can get a sneak peek with online articles by David Hewson ("Working in Italy"), James W. Ziskin ("Turn to Stone: Quarantined in Florence with Ellie Stone"), and Kate Derie ("Crime Seen: Guido and Salvo, the Two Commissari"). The issue is available in print or PDF versions.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Can a Virus Be Criminal" by J.H. Johns.

In the Q&A roundup, the Book People welcomed Steve Weddle and Nick Kolakowski, editors of Lockdown: Stories Of Crime, Terror, And Hope During A Pandemic, with proceeds going to BINC, which helps out independent booksellers; CrimeReads caught up with Leslie Klinger to discuss his "Sherlockian" approach to annotating Neil Gaiman's American Gods; and Writers Who Kill chatted with Nicole Leiren, who has been teaming up with author Elizabeth Ashby for the Danger Cove Mysteries, in the fourth of the Writers Who Kill series of interviews featuring authors who have taken a team approach. 

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and serves on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children. She teaches college writing in Northern California and has also served on the Writers’ Advisory Board for the Belize Writers’ Conference. She's had flash fiction and non-fiction in such journals as Brevity and Cleaver, and she recently published her first novel, Copy Boy.

Copy Boy, which one reviewer called "Raymond Chandler for feminists," is set in the 1930s depression era and centers on Jane Hopper, whose parents are trapped in a loveless marriage. When her mother threatens to leave her father for another man, he becomes violent towards her and Jane, and Jane strikes her father with a crowbar in defense. Leaving him for dead, Jane steals his truck and escapes to San Francisco to start a new life as a copy boy at the local newspaper, the Prospect. But copy boys are just that, boys, so Jane disguises herself as a man, even learning to smoke and swear. When she becomes obsessed with the mystery of a woman found unconscious after being assaulted with a crowbar—a woman who was photographed with Jane’s father—Jane’s old life threatens to come crashing down into her new life and expose her as a fraud.

Shelley stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about the book:

 

On July 18, it will be ten years since I got the call.

I was packing up to head out the door to my neighborhood Sacramento library to lead a book talk on Ann Tyler’s Digging to America. I’d been leading those talks for ten years but it still made me a little nervous, every time. I was last-minute-gathering the snacks, notes, discussion questions, the key card. Hunting a lost sandal. I was late.

When the phone rang, I didn’t expect to pick up—there was no time. But I looked at the handset in its cradle and the digital caller ID read, Monterey Bay Ambulance.

Which one is it?

My husband Andy and two college-age sons were on a scuba diving trip. Our oldest, Will, was a dive master. My husband and youngest, Henry, were getting certified, preparing for adventure.  This was the final step—getting tested in Monterey Bay.

Which one is it?

I picked up the phone and heard twenty-year old Will. “Everything’s okay Mom. But I’m in an ambulance with Dad. It looks like he’s had a heart attack.”

Treading in the Bay’s 56-degree water, Andy felt pressure, everything yellow, a buzzing in his ears. His arms and legs went weak. Will saw how white his face was. He called to the scuba guide, who was treading water over the spot where eighteen-year-old Henry had submerged. The guide told him to get Andy to shore. The guide stayed waiting for Henry to come up.

Will did swim Andy to shore, paddling with one arm, the other hooked around his father’s chest. On the beach, he found a doctor with a phone. At the hospital, they discovered he’d suffered heart failure. He’d had a previous heart attack we’d never even known about. As I was running to his hospital room, five hours later, I could hear Andy down the hall, laughing and joking with the doctor. Acting like himself. Will was pleased with the scrubs the nurse had given him to wear. Henry was shaken, but fine. We were going to be okay. For now.

Ten years later, Andy is fine, he’s great. So why do I share this with you now?

Because it was that weekend, ten years ago, when the two of us really saw how everything could end, just end, before we were finished being who we wanted to be, doing what we wanted to do. That’s when Andy and I agreed, we’d better start doing it now.

That’s when I began to write my novel, Copy Boy, though I didn’t know yet that’s what I was doing. I was just recording family stories in a journal, getting down whatever I could remember seeing, hearing, being told, as I grew up, about my family’s history as Depression-era, Dust Bowl Okies, migrating from Texas and Oklahoma to California’s Central Valley, where they would have to work and fight and hustle themselves into the lives they wanted. Just getting it down.

Then I starting researching the bigger picture, the history all around our family. So many books, so many field trips to the Central Valley, to San Francisco’s neighborhoods, bars from the thirties.

Then I started taking local writing workshops, where I met teachers and other writers—mostly women my age, fiftyish—who encouraged each other to develop a voice. To make syntactical choices, patterns of them, that would become a kind of thumbprint, making each of us recognizable in the print.  There were many such workshops.

Then, I started taking workshops about the science or architecture of story, especially the architecture of mystery. It was a revelation to learn the elements of it, getting under the hood of my own book. I attended the Book Passage Mystery Conference to learn such things and there I met writer friends who would become essential to my preparation. Some of us continue to talk twice a month by Zoom. It was also at this conference where a famous mystery writer told me the chapter I’d shown her was a mess. I had work to do.

So, I worked on it. Then, six months later, five years ago, I sent off a chapter to a couple literary workshops, hoping to get into one. Instead, miraculously, I was accepted by both the Napa Valley Writers Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. (I got into this one off the Wait List.) In those places, I got more literary advice. I made terrific writer friends I’m in contact with now every day. I began to believe that maybe I could do this. At Squaw, a famous writer assigned to read my chapter, told me he was still hung over from the absinthe the night before, and that my kind of writing wasn’t really the kind of thing he liked to read. So that was bad. I was embarrassed. But when I told him one of my family stories, he said, Why don’t you put that in your first chapter? I did. He insulted me but I got over it. I used it.

The next year, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, again off the Wait List. (Did I mention I believe in wait lists?) There I heard brilliant talks on craft, watched authors perform their stories, had my first-ever chance to read one of my stories to an audience in the Blue Parlor. I cried up there as I read it. Some people in the audience cried too. I thought, maybe I belong here.

There were years of revising—I mean head-to-toe revising. The male protagonist turned into a female. The female became a cross-dresser. I moved from first person to third. From YA to adult literary historical mystery. I changed every inch of it. I spent three more years doing this, with feedback from so many freelance editors and critique groups, who made worlds of difference by giving me advice.

Once it got to the place where I was happy, I knew pretty quickly that I would sign with She Writes Press. That part was obvious. I liked the blend of support and control they offered. They’re a writer’s team. I like a team.

So, you’re probably thinking it’s odd that it took me ten years to make this book. But it also took me ten years of library book talks before that to develop a strong sense of what I just enjoy reading.

Ten years of book clubs. Ten years learning to make a book. You’d better believe I’m going to be making a new ten year plan next month.

 

You can read more about Shelley and her work on her website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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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 Joshua Caldwell, whose Bella Thorne crime feature Infamous recently debuted on VOD and drive-ins, has optioned Kyle Rutkin’s psychological thriller novel, She Died Famous, as his next feature. Described as akin to A Star Is Born crossed with Gone Girl, the story follows the death of iconic superstar, Kelly Trozzo, her suspected killer, and the author she commissioned to pen her shocking Hollywood memoir. Caldwell called it "a mind-bending trip into the world of tabloid, murder, and celebrity."

Elijah Wood is to star as Ted Bundy’s FBI analyst in the crime-thriller, No Man Of God. Set largely in a single interrogation room, the film is based on real life transcripts culled from conversations between FBI analyst, Bill Hagmaier (Wood), and serial killer Bundy that took place between 1984 and 1989. The film details the complicated relationship that formed between the two men during Bundy’s final years on death row.

Baby Driver director Edgar Wright will helm a big-screen adaptation of The Chain, based on Adrian McKinty’s 2019 novel. The story follows a mother who gets a call from a stranger that her 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, and the only way she can keep her child alive is by kidnapping another child within 24 hours as part of a sinister chain of abductions. Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle) will write the script based on McKinty’s book.

Another Baby Driver player, Lily James, is set to star in The Paris Trap, a thriller directed by Pablo Trapero. The Hitchcockian thriller revolves around a young American woman on a visit to Paris who becomes the victim of mistaken identity. Caught up in a secret international government operation, she must play the part to save her own life.

Neal McDonough (Yellowstone, Project Blue Book) has signed on to star in Red Stone, an indie thriller written and directed by Derek Presley. The story follows Motley (Dash Melrose), whose life spirals out of control as he’s forced to go on the run from southern crime lord, Jed Haywood (Michael Cudlitz). Boon (McDonough), Haywood’s best henchman and close friend, is tracking Motley, and over the course of one day, both Motley and Boon go on a spiritual journey as their fate brings them together for a showdown.

Antoine Fuqua has been hired to direct Will Smith in Emancipation, an action-thriller penned by Willam N. Collage about the harrowing escape of Peter, a runaway slave forced to outwit cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey north to join the Union Army. The thriller is based on a true story that solidified the cause of abolitionists and prompted many free blacks to also join the Union Army.

Oscar Isaac is set to star in and produce the next film from director Ben Stiller, titled London. Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, A Star Is Born) is adapting the screenplay for London based on "a new short story/high-concept thriller" from crime author Jo Nesbø, though details about the plot are being kept under wraps. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple TV+ has come aboard the Israel-Iran espionage thriller, Tehran, taking the international rights to the series outside of Israel. The eight-part series features young Israeli actress Niv Sultan as Tamar Rabinyan, a Mossad computer hacker-agent undertaking her very first mission in Iran’s capital, which is also her place of birth. Tasked with disabling an Iranian nuclear reactor, her mission has implications not just for the Middle East, but for the rest of the world. But when the Mossad mission fails, Tamar goes rogue in Tehran as she rediscovers her Iranian roots and becomes romantically entwined with a pro-democracy activist.





NBC has cancelled more programs including Bluff City Law, which starred Jimmy Smits as a civil rights lawyer and ran for ten episodes. It's among the latest cancellations at NBC, which earlier this month also axed Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, a series based on the crime novels of Jeffery Deaver.

Another legal drama suffered a happier fate, with ABC renewing its freshman series, For Life, for a second season. Created by Hank Steinberg and produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, For Life is a fictional serialized legal and family drama about an imprisoned man, Aaron Wallace, who becomes a lawyer litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. It is inspired by the life of Isaac Wright Jr., who was wrongfully convicted as drug kingpin but got his conviction overturned while in prison and became a licensed attorney.

Alex Rider, Eleventh Hour Films’ TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s best-selling teen spy novels and starring Otto Farrant, is heading for a second season after the first season was picked up by Amazon in the UK. Producers have also said that the show, which was penned by Guy Burt (Bletchley Circle), is close to finding a home in the U.S., Australia, and China after the 12 books on which it is based sold more than 20M copies worldwide. Stephen Dillane and Vicky McClure also feature in the series as members of The Department, an underworld offshoot of MI6.

The CW has acquired four more series to debut this summer and has also nailed down the rest of its summer premiere dates. Among the new series is a whodunnit competition reality series, titled Killer Camp, which debuts July 16. The Investigative drama, Coroner, will also have its U.S. premiere on August 5.

NBC announced its fall schedule, lining up Christopher Meloni’s new Law & Order spinoff for a Thursday debut. Titled Law & Order: Organized Crime, the new drama will be led by Meloni reprising his role as Elliot Stabler and will air Thursday nights at 10 pm, following the 22nd season of SVU at 9. Many of the returning crime drama series will keep their previous year's slots, including the "Chicago trio" of series on Wednesdays.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone welcomed author Alex North, bestselling author of The Whisper Man, to talk about garden centres; social media; the Russo brothers optioning his book; "being two people," and more.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, chatted with Scottish author Peter May (Lockdown), mystery author Jill Orr (The Full Scoop), and SW Lauden (Good Girls Don't).

Read or Dead hosts, Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, discussed new award nominees that have been recently announced and picked out books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for Pride Month.

The latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries was Craig Robertson. He discussed his new novel, Watch Him Die, in which someone from Glasgow is watching someone else dying on a live video stream in Los Angeles, prompting police departments in both cities to find out where the victim is—and who is watching.

Beyond the Cover welcomed author Lori Radar-Day to talk about her latest book, The Lucky One.

Write Place, Wrong Crime had its Season 3 finale In which host Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway talked about their new book, Never the Crime (a Charlie-316 novel), the impending release of the rest of the books in that story arc by year's end, and also included a discussion about world-building and writing yourself into a corner.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Montreal-based author Liz Freeland about An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen, the third in the Louise Faulk Mystery Series.

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FFB: The Night the Gods Smiled

Eric Wright was born in London, England in 1929 to a poor working-class family, an experience he later detailed in his memoir, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man. When he was 22, he immigrated to Canada and eventually became an English professor, chair of the English department, then Dean of Arts at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto.



Wright penned dozens of stories, many of them crime fiction, and served as editor of Criminal Shorts: Mysteries by Canadian Crime Writers, published in 1992. He also created not one or two, but four different detective series including police officer Mel Pickett; Lucy Trimble Brenner, who inherits a Toronto private detective agency; and part-time community college English teacher named Joe Barley, who also works part-time as a private eye.



His most popular literary creation, however, is Charlie Salter, a Toronto cop suffering from middle-aged depression when he's first introduced in The Night the Gods Smiled, the author's debut novel in 1983. The book won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, the Crime Writer's Association's John Creasey Award, and the City of Toronto Book Award.



At the start of the story, Salter's doldrums are compounded by police politics that have left him working what's essentially a desk job. When he's offered the first interesting case to come along in awhile, he jumps at the chance. David Summers, an English professor at a local college, has been murdered in a Montreal hotel room during a conference. Initially, the only clues are a lipstick-marked glass and a whisky bottle used to crush Summer's skull, but Salter soon realizes he has a long list of potential suspects, including a prostitute, mistresses, the victim's bitter wife, his squash partner, his stock-broker and assorted colleagues and students.



Salter is an engaging character, self-righteous, outspoken, and happily married, albeit with an undercurrent of cultural/class friction between his police officer status and his wife's wealthy family. His mid-life crisis sees him taking up squash after meeting the victim's playing partner, and developing a crush on Summer's favorite student, a free-spirited young woman named Molly.



Wright is known for his "lucid and agreeably laconic style," as one reviewer put it, while Kirkus adds that "the balance between sleuthing and gentle character-comedy is maintained beautifully throughout—with superior dialogue, intriguing Canadian specifics, and not a single cliché in sight." There were eleven Salter books in all, first published in hardcover until the series was dropped by Signet. A few reprints are available, including an omnibus of the first three novels in the series, published by Dundurn.