B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 114

Mystery Melange

The winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing from the International Association of Crime Writers is Bluff by Jane Stanton Hitchcock. Also nominated this year: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer; Blood Relations by Jonathan Moore; The Murals by William Bayer; Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History by Peter Houlahan. The location of the presentation is to be determined at a later time.

Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards announced this year's winners, including in the Mystery Category. The Gold winner was Below the Fold by R. G. Belsky; Silver winner was A Plain Vanilla Murder by Susan Wittig Albert; and Bronze winner was Moonscape by Julie Weston. In the Thriller Catetory, the Gold winner was The Nine by Jeanne Blasberg; the Silver winner was The Unrepentant by E.A. Aymar; and the Bronze winner was Green Valley by Louis Greenberg. The Guilt We Carry by Samuel W. Gailey was also a Thriller Honorable Mention.

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers announced the nominees for the 2020 Scribe Awards. The winner in each category would have been announced at the San Diego ComicCon, but due to its cancellation, there will be an online ceremony on July 15. Particularly of interest is the Original Novel-General category which includes nods for The Bitterest Pill by Reed Farrel Coleman; Murder, My Love by Max Allan Collins; and Murder, She Wrote: A Taste For Murder by John Land.

The nominees for the Shirley Jackson Awards were also announced. The awards were established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic and include categories for best Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Criminal Element is offering a chance to win eight summer thrillers: The Half Sister by Sandie Jones; The Safe Place by Anna Downes; One Last Lie by Paul Doiron; Outsider by Linda Castillo; Cut to the Bone by Ellison Cooper; Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich; Reasonable Doubt by Philip Margolin; and Into the Fire by Gregg Hurwitz. Entries are open through June 28 (U.S. only).

Aretha Phiri, with Rhodes University, interviewed fellow professor and author, Sam Naidu, for The Conversation about how African crime and detective fiction reshapes the genre.

The latest in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, edited by Elizabeth Foxwell, is Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Erin E. MacDonald (who wrote the companion on Ed McBain/Evan Hunter). The volume delves into the life and works of Scottish novelist Rankin, the creator of Inspector John Rebus

Also via Elizabeth Foxwell's blog: The University of Minnesota Libraries have digitized the catalog from the 2007 exhibition "Victorian Secrets and Edwardian Enigmas," which featured re-creations of the sitting room at 221B Baker Street.

From necessity is the mother of invention department: The Story House in Rockville, Maryland is both a pop-up bookstore (with a location in the Dawson's Market) and a mobile bookstore in a converted tourist trolley. Owner Debbie Cohen began selling face masks, and the response has been tremendous. The masks, which she sews herself with the help of two seamstresses also now feature literary quotes. (HT to Shelf Awareness.)

Researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Essex in the United Kingdom found boys' poor reading skills in adolescence, combined with the social attitudes about women attending college, can help explain why fewer men than women enroll in higher education or other types of post-high school education.These disparities continue into adulthood with women being more likely to read books than men. One way to combat this is to read to boys when they're young, and there are many mystery books that can help, including the Scholastic list, 10 Best Mystery Series for Boys. Scholastic also addressed how the suspense mature of whodunits makes them fun to read but are also great tools for skill-building.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Jury Rule" by Rena J. Worley.

In the Q&A roundup, the Songs of Spade blog welcomed John Ryder, the pen name of a British crimewriter who just came out with the first book in a new series of thrillers starring tough guy loner Grant Fletcher; Writers Who Kill's E.B. Davis interviewed Kaye George about the second book in her Vintage Sweets mystery series, Deadly Sweet Tooth; Davis also chatted with Annette Dashofy about Til Death, the author's tenth novel in the Zoe Chambers mystery series; Crime Fiction Lover spoke with Paul D. Brazill about his noir-ish detective novel, The Blues Don’t Care, set in Los Angeles in the midst of World War II; and the Murder is Everywhere blog held a freewheeling NOT CrimeFest Indie Alternative panel with Elizabeth Hill, James D Mortain, Caroline Goldsworthy, and Dawn Brookes, as moderated by Zoë Sharp.

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Author R&R with Robert McCaw

Robert McCaw grew up in a military family traveling the world. After graduating from Georgetown University, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army before earning his law degree from the University of Virginia. After law school he spent a year as a judicial clerk for Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. Thereafter, he was a partner in a major international law firm with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing clients in complex civil and criminal cases. For a number of years, McCaw maintained a home on the Big Island of Hawai'i, studying its history, culture, and people, which was the inspiration for his crime fiction series featuring Chief Detective Koa Kāne. Putting himself in the shoes of Kāne, he has walked the streets, courthouse corridors, and parks of Hawai'i’s Big Island. (You an read more about another title in the series we featured here.)

Having killed his father's nemesis and gotten away with it, Hilo, Hawai'i Chief Detective Koa Kāne is not your ordinary cop. Estranged from his younger brother, who has been convicted of multiple crimes, he is not from a typical law enforcement family. Yet, Koa's secret demons fuel his unwavering drive to pursue justice. In Fire and Vengeance, never has Koa's motivation been greater than when he learns that an elementary school was placed atop a volcanic vent, which has now exploded.

The subsequent murders of the school's contractor and architect only add urgency to his search for the truth. As Koa's investigation heats up, his brother collapses in jail from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor. Using his connections, Koa devises a risky plan to win his brother's freedom. As Koa gradually unravels the obscure connections between multiple suspects, he uncovers a forty-year-old conspiracy. When he is about to apprehend the perpetrators, his investigation suddenly becomes entwined with his brother's future, forcing Koa to choose between justice for the victims and his brother's freedom.

Robert McCaw stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing Fire and Vengeance:

 

One need not look further than the current coronavirus pandemic to know that health issues often play a dramatic role in life. Yet, for those of us not trained as physicians, making sense of medical research is challenging. In Fire and Vengeance, the latest story in the Koa Kāne Hawaiian mystery series, medical issues play a critical role in one of the book’s pivotal threads. Koa’s incarcerated brother Ikaika blacks out and collapses in jail. Doctors diagnose him with a slowly growing, frontal lobe brain tumor he’s almost certainly had since childhood and recommend immediate surgery. Koa learns that frontal lobe brain injuries frequently affect behavior, making those affected more impulsive and less able to control themselves. He then embarks on a seemingly quixotic effort to win parole for Ikaika by establishing that his brother’s pre-surgery medical condition contributed to his criminal behavior.

After outlining this part of the plot, I had many questions. Was the scenario I envisioned credible? How should I describe the tumors? How would doctors establish that the tumors had been present since childhood? How often do such tumors occur? Exactly how do they affect behavior? How could the connection to behavior be proved? Where might one find knowledgeable doctors? What diagnostic tools would they use? How should I describe corrective surgery? What is the recovery time?

As a layperson, I could have spent months overwhelmed by the medical literature attempting to ferret out answers through a maze of unfamiliar medical terminology. I was willing to make the effort, but only if the plot was credible. So, I turned to my own physician, who had read the first books in the series, and he put me in touch with a specialist who validated the concept and pointed me in the right direction. I later had dinner with a psychiatrist friend who encouraged me to pursue the plot idea and offered suggestions.

Then began a journey of discovery. Through medical journals, I learned that such tumors are rare—about one in 4 million people—and picked up some useful medical jargon. More importantly, I discovered a growing body of literature discussing the behavioral problems of soldiers returning from the Afghan and Iraq wars with brain injuries. Many of these patients suffer from impulsive behavior like that behind Ikaika’s criminal acts. Those sources also led me to research the miraculous developments in real-time brain imaging, allowing physicians to “see” the actual electrochemical workings of the brain under various stimulations. This research offered the possibility of proof that Ikaika’s thinking processes post-surgery would differ from his previous inability to control his actions.

My review of case studies in medical journals and on the Internet suggested that children suffering from the early stages of such tumors might have absence seizures where they stare off into space and drop things. During the relevant period, doctors often prescribed the drug Depakote for such conditions. Based on this research, I imbued Ikaika with those childhood symptoms, had him treated with Depakote, and thus found a plausible way to tie his tumors back to his childhood.

My need to describe the surgery itself took my research into the world of robotic and image-assisted brain surgery, where I developed some understanding of the processes and timetables. Most relevant to the plot, these sources outlined the most likely outcomes and prospective recovery times for this type of medical procedure. I drew on this background in creating the dialog between the doctor and Koa, and subsequently between Koa and Ikaika.

My story needed a world-class neurosurgeon to consult with Koa about the medical issues, so I researched the country’s leading brain clinics, ultimately creating Dr. Kepler, a fictional specialist at the Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Brain Tumor Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. To add context to a meeting between Koa and Dr. Kepler at the Cochran Center, I make a virtual visit to the facility using Internet images and Google street view.

Perhaps as much as one-hundred-fifty hours of research went into about twenty pages or 6 percent of the final manuscript. Even then, I struggled to limit my use of medical terminology by having Koa insist that the doctors speak in plain English. You might be thinking it was a long run for a short slide, but it’s thorough research that informs the little details that make a story both captivating and believable.

 

You can read more about Robert McCaw and his books on his website and also follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Fire and Vengeance is available in ebook and audiobook formats from all major bookstores now, with the hardcover edition to follow in September.

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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

Baby Driver star Lily James is set to headline director Phillip Noyce's film, Peggy Jo. James will play Peggy Jo Tallas, a real-life Texan who took to robbing banks while posing as a man. The story is "loosely based" on the true story account and was adapted for the screen by Appaloosa writer Robert Knott. The film project is described as a playful take on the films of the ’70s and ’80s and will specifically be filled with references to George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film that the character Peggy Jo Tallas grew up admiring and inspired her to assume her famous alter-ego "Cowboy Bob" and begin robbing banks.

Olivia Munn is attached to star in the action feature, Replay, which will be introduced to buyers at this year's Cannes Virtual Marché, part of the "virtual" Cannes Film Festival that will take place instead of an on-site event due to Covid-19. Written and directed by Jimmy Loweree (Absence), Replay is the story of Erin Staffer, (Munn), whose husband is kidnapped and murdered. Now, armed only with illegal, bleeding-edge tech and a desperate plan, Erin must do everything in her power to change the past and save him.

Universal and Blumhouse are taking their Kevin Bacon-Amanda Seyfried psychological thriller, You Should Have Left, straight into homes on Friday, June 19 for a North American video-on-demand release. The pic was directed by Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible scribe David Koepp which he adapted from the German novel by Daniel Kehlmann. Bacon and Seyfried star as a couple seeking a restful vacation on an isolated edge of the world in the Welsh countryside. At first their vacation with their six-year-old daughter seems like a perfect retreat, but distorts into a perfect nightmare when Theo’s (Bacon) grasp on reality begins to unravel and he suspects that a sinister force within the house knows more than he or Susanna (Seyfried) have revealed, even to each other. You can check out the trailer via the above link.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The U.K. production firm Castlefield has acquired the TV rights to Cara Hunter's bestselling crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Adam Fawley. Although the company has yet to find a home for the adaptation, it's planning the series around Hunter's four books, with each novel following DI Fawley as he investigates a domestic tragedy or crime that demands answers from the victim’s family and friends. In the first book, Close To Home, he looks into the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl from a family party.

The long-running docuseries, Cops, is ending its run on Paramount Network in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. The show premiered on Fox in 1989 and aired for 25 seasons then was resurrected in 2013 when Spike TV (since rebranded as Paramount Network) ordered new episodes. Likewise, A&E on June 5 pulled episodes of its hit docuseries Live PD due to the civil protests and a report that the March 2019 death of Javier Ambler during a police stop was allegedly captured by the Live PD crew but the video was destroyed.

Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector will not be returning to NBC. The show, which launched in January, ran for 10 episodes and is based on Jeffrey Deaver’s Bone Collector book series. It starred Russell Hornsby as Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant but hardheaded forensic criminologist who suffers near-fatal injuries while on the job, leaving him a tetraplegic. He nevertheless continues his work remotely, working with others to solve cases. It also starred Arielle Kebbel, Roslyn Ruff, Ramses Jimenez, Brooke Lyons, Tate Ellington, Brian F. O’Byrne, Courtney Grosbeck, and Michael Imperioli.

Also canceled was Hulu's femme fatale thriller, Reprisal, which won't return for a second season. Reprisal is a hyper-kinetic revenge tale following a relentless femme fatale (Abigail Spencer) who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a bombastic gang of gearheads. The show also starred Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, and Gilbert Owuor.

HBO has released the trailer for I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, its six-part documentary series about the hunt for the Golden State Killer undertaken by crime writer Michelle McNamara. Episode 1 debuts June 28 at 10 PM and new episodes debut each subsequent Sunday.





PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Author Faye Snowden joined Eric Beetner for co hosting duties on Writer Types as they talked with writers Nikki Dolson (Love and other Criminal Behavior) and Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians). Plus the Book People bookstore in Austin, Texas, had some staff picks to share.

Beyond The Cover chatted with bestselling author C.J. Tudor as she discussed her latest book, The Other People. Tudor is also the author of The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Magazine Award for Best Debut Novel.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with T.R. Ragan (Theresa Ragan) about her writing process; the publishing industry; her Lizzy Gardner series; her new book in a new series, Don’t Make A Sound; and much more.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast featured the first chapter of Death Over Easy by Maddie Day a/k/a Edith Maxwell, read by actor Julia Reimer

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Tom Pitts to talk about his latest thriller, Coldwater.

My Favorite Detective Stories chatted with Michael Koryta, a former newspaper reporter and private investigator whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won or been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar Award, Shamus Award, Barry Award, Quill Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the Golden Dagger.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed Laurie R. King to talk about Riviera Gold, the 16th in her series featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

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FFB: Murder Before Matins

John Reeves was born in British Columbia in December 1926, but was raised and educated in England where he studied music at St John's College, Cambridge. Eventually, he found himself back in Canada as a music and documentary producer for the CBC, where he was responsible for several technical innovations and a wide variety of musical, religious, literary, and dramatic series. He also composed his own music, over thirty pieces of religious works and several opera librettos. 



Reeves didn't turn to writing literary works until later in his career and is primarily known for his inventive radio plays, noteworthy for their use of verse, prose, music and shifting points of view. One even won the Prix D'Italy for tbe world's best radio play in play in 1959. But he also tried his hand at writing books, choosing to pen mystery novels featuring Inspector Andrew Coggin and Sergeant Fred Sump of the Metro Toronto Police. From the author's background, it's not terribly surprising the first book in the series was titled Murder by Microphone, while the second is 1984's Murder Before Matins, which was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award.



The story of Murder Before Matins is set in the cloistered world of Tathwell Abbey where the Prior is found murdered and suspicion falls on the entire order of Gilbertine nuns and monks who live in seclusion there. When Coggin, Sump and Constable Nancy Pringle are assigned to the case, they learn the victim was destined to be made Abbot and that even allegedly holy people are capable of dark ambition and violence.



In an interview from 1986 in Books in Canada, Reeves acknowledged that he lost his faith gradually, partly because of a "disillusionment with the institution of the Church." Even so, Murder Before Matins is a sympathetic portrayal of monastic life and includes a subplot of Constable Nancy Pringle's own struggles with her faith. Reeves added that, "Religion when I was a practising Christian was a very important part of my life, and the fact that I am no longer one has not reduced its emotional impact upon me. I think that to have a strong faith and then lose it leaves a particular hole in your life that cannot be replaced by anything else."



Reeves' mysteries are less about suspense typical of other police procedurals and more in the traditional puzzle-solving detective fiction (he even works in lists, diagrams, puns and one crossword puzzle in each novel). The Canadian Book Review Annual aptly noted that "Almost as entertaining as the detectives' unravelling of clues is Reeves' delightfully crisp yet cultivated prose style, and the frequency, in both the omniscient narration and the opinions of Coggin and Sump, of wry humour, dry wit, biting satire, and sometimes an outrageously amusing waspishnes."



Books in Canada wrote that "If Sherlock Holmas and Dr. Watson are respectively brilliant and dim, Andrew Coggin and Fred Sump shed light on crime about equally, less like a priest and acolyte than a happily married couple. Coggin is good at sifting details and making deductions; Sump is intuitive, disarming, a shrewd judge of character."



The follow-up Coggins/Sump novel, Murder With Muskets, was also a finalist for the 1986 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, and there was one more book in the series in 1988, Death in Prague. There was supposed to be a fifth book, set in a Toronto track and field club, but it was either never finished or not published.

            

Author R&R with John Bishop

Photo credit: Greg Moredock

Author John Bishop, MD, practiced orthopedic surgery in Houston, Texas, for 30 years. An avid golfer and accomplished piano player, Bishop is honored to have once served as the keyboard player for the rhythm and blues band Bert Wills and the Crying Shames. Bishop's Doc Brady medical thriller series is set in the changing environment of medicine in the 1990s. Drawing on his years of experience as a practicing surgeon, Bishop entertains readers using his unique insights into the medical world with all its challenges, intricacies, and complexities, while at the same time revealing the compassion and dedication of health care professionals.

Bishop's series featuring Houston orthopedic surgeon Doc Brady debuted in August of 2019 with the medical thriller, Act of Murder. In the follow-on novel, Act of Deception, just released this week, Brady has been sued for medical malpractice after a mysterious infection caused a knee replacement to end up as an amputation. Donovan Shaw, a ruthless plaintiff’s attorney, has taken the case and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that he and Brady share a number of friends.

But Brady isn’t the only one in his practice being sued. How is Shaw getting his inside information? Can the patients afford to say no to filing lawsuits, even if the claims aren’t valid? Through a series of twists and turns, and with the support of his wife Mary Louise and their professional-investigator son J.J., Brady once again doggedly goes into “sleuth mode” to get to the truth of the matter—even after his life is put in jeopardy.

John Bishop stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

I began writing in the mid-1990s, and created a character named Dr. Jim Bob Brady, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston, Texas, who had a penchant for getting himself involved in sordid murders and mysteries, and ultimately being able to solve them. I wrote a series of novels about Doc Brady, which didn't make the cut back then, but which are being published now after all this time.

ACT OF MURDER involves the hit-and-run death of Brady's neighbor's child. ACT OF DECEPTION, out June 10th, revolves around a questionable lawsuit filed against Doc Brady for medical malpractice. The third, ACT OF REVENGE, out September 10th, centers around the murder of the CEO of an insurance company who has cancelled the medical malpractice insurance of a large number of Houston plastic surgeons over the breast implant debacle. 

To update and edit these novels to current times became an almost impossible task. After a period of soul searching and hand wringing, the decision was made to update the writing, but to leave the setting in the 1990s. That meant that that restaurants, so much a part of the Houston scene, would remain intact. Also so would the sports teams, their victories and defeats in all their glory relived for the world to see. The bars and the music venues, so much a part of Houston back then, would come alive again, and the Bluesmen that entertained us at that point in history would return to the forefront. It was a good move for me because all the details about the city of Houston were already in the books. I had to update the stories and the characters but leaving the setting in Houston during that time frame allowed the reader to relive a glorious time in Houston, Texas. 

I don't remember every detail of the research I had to do back then, since it was over twenty years ago. but even though the internet began around 1991, there was not the information nor the detail available to a writer as it is today. Being an orthopedic surgeon myself, I knew most of the medical details involved in the mysteries I wrote about. Of course, there was still extensive library research time involved because I had to gain extensive but forgotten knowledge about metabolic diseases, such as Osteogenesis Imperfecta, at the center of ACT OF MURDER. A great deal of legal research was involved for ACT OF DECEPTION, to the extent of lawyer thinking and behavior, including a vicious malpractice trial at the end of the novel.

In ACT OF REVENGE, I had to research the breast implant lawsuit business extensively, and again, that was mostly library time, plus some necessary knowledge gained from lawyer friends over glasses of wine.

I have started writing again, influenced by the publication of the first three Doc Brady books, and have a few more Doc Brady novels in the wings. While I won't say it is any easier writing a novel, the research is vastly easier with the internet. There is so much information available that I sometimes find myself "clicking" details on a subject and then find myself so embedded in information that I've lost my original train of thought. But the internet saves a great deal of time and effort in leg work. I have also found that once I've educated myself on a subject, my lawyer, scientific, and law enforcement colleagues are more than willing to share information, and bring me up to date on subjects out of my purview. As these friends of mine say, "If you're buying, we're talking.”

 

You can learn more about John Bishop M.D. and his fictional protagonist, Dr. Jim Bob Brady, via the author's website. His books Act of Murder and Act of Deception are available in both ebook and paperback formats through the Amazon store. 

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Mystery Melange

The shortlists were announced for the 2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year:

My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Worst Case Scenario by Helen Fitzgerald

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Joe Country by Mick Herron

The Chain by Adrian McKinty

Smoke And Ashes by Abir Mukherjee

Readers can vote online for the novel they feel most deserves to be crowned the 2020 best of the best up through July 19, with the winner to be revealed in a digital awards ceremony on July 23.

Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, announced the nominees for its annual Anthony Award. Due to the cancellation of the conference in Sacramento, this year's voting will take place during Virtual Bouchercon, October 16–7, 2020, with the awards presented as part of an online ceremony on October 17. You can see all of the nominated books and authors via the official Bouchercon website, including those for Best Novel: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha; They All Fall Down, by Rachel Howzell Hall; Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman; The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura.

The Private Eye Writers of America announced the Shamus Award Finalists for titles published in 2019. Winners will be determined from those listed in the categories of Best Original Private Eye Paperback, Best Private Eye Short Story, and Best Private Eye Novel. The ceremony is usually held in conjunction with the annual Bouchercon Conference, although since that event has been canceled due to the coronavirus, there will likely be a virtual ceremony later in the year.

Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers, among the oldest awards in the genre, announced the longlists for 2020, with shortlists to be narrowed down later in the year before the awards ceremony takes place on October 22. The 2020 Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement, the highest honor in British crime writing, has already been chosen and will be awarded to Martin Edwards on that night. The CWA has also announced that Della Millward won the 2020 CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Prize for "A Time to Confess." (Also "highly commended" were Lauren Everdell for "Voices" and Laila Murphy for "Sting in the Tail").

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone (the podcast team of Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste) are presenting The Locked Up Festival! online July 2-4, raising money for the Trussell Trust. There will be a host of panels, streamed live on Zoom, featuring the world's best crime writers including Anthony Horowitz, Val McDermid, Abir Mukherjee, Richard Osman, Ruth Ware, Don Winslow, Alex North, Mark Billingham, S J Watson, Chris Brookmyre, Denise Mina, Shari Lapena, Adrian McKinty, and Linwood Barclay, among others. The panels will include a few on the light-hearted side such as "The Worst Book Event of My Life," "TV Heaven and Hell," and "The Zoom of Blues." Tickets are limited, so to register, follow this link.

Sadly, we lost another member of the crime fiction community recently. Mystery author Grace Edwards published her first mystery when she 64 and went on to write five more detective stories set in Harlem against a backdrop of jazz, featuring a savvy, style-conscious amateur sleuth named Mali Anderson. Edwards was 87 and had suffered from declining health and dementia.

Book organizations and bookstores have been offering support during the recent black lives matter demonstrations. Jeannine Cook, owner of Harriett's Bookshop in Philadelphia, headed to City Hall to offer free books (Kate Clifford Larson's Bound for the Promised Land; Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero; and The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley) to the hundreds of protesters who poured into the streets. John Evans and Allison Reid, co-owners of DIESEL, A Bookstore highlighted numerous options for helping the cause, as well as some suggested reads and for those interested in donating, a list of organizations "that have maintained a mostly decades-long commitment to exactly these issues, working in the trenches to improve fatally unjust structures of our society." Publishers Weekly also has a list of black-owned bookstores you can help promote and support. (HT to Shelf Awareness)

The official Help Save Uncle Hugo's Fund has raised some $123,000 of its goal of $500,000 to help build Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore and Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore which were burned to the ground in the early days of the Minneapolis protests against the murder of George Floyd. The bookstore owner's son, Sam Blyly-Strauss, has been providing updates, noting that his father isn't sure yet whether he's going to rebuild on the same site, buy or rent a different building and relocate, or switch to a mail-order business from his home. Blyly-Strauss added that in the next week his father plans to start selling Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's T-shirts and sweatshirts that were ordered before the fire and arrived at his house this week.

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on Senior Sleuths, and editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays. The deadline for submissions is July 1st.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Edward G. Robinson in Public Domain" by Matthew Sorrento.

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Author R&R with Vee Kumari

Vee (Vijaya) Kumari is known for her work as executive producer and lead on HALWA, which received HBO's 2019 APAV award. She has also been a co-star in TV shows that include GLOW, Anger Management, Teachers, and Criminal Minds, among others. Vee spent over three decades as a neuroanatomy professor, a neuroscience researcher and for ten of those years was an Associate Dean for Medical Education at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. In 2012, she retired to pursue a career of acting and writing and calls this "a journey from the left side of my brain to the right."

In her debut novel, Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery, Rekha Rao is a thirty-something Indian American professor of art history who becomes disillusioned by academia and is haunted by the murder of her father. She believes police convicted the wrong person and moves away from her match-making family. As she tries to manage her PTSD and heal her broken heart from a previously abusive boyfriend, she gets entangled in a second murder, that of her mentor and father figure.  Rekha is attracted to the handsome detective Al Newton, who is investigating the murder but steers clear of him because of her distaste for cops and fear of a new relationship. When police arrest one of her students and accuse her mentor of theft, Rekha is left with no other choice but to look for the killer on her own. 

 

Vee stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book:

 

In my novel, Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery, Rekha’s beloved mentor, Professor Faust is murdered.

I’m unclear how I came up with the name ‘Faust’ for the murdered professor.

Once I did, I looked up what I could find of the details of the story, FAUST by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808,1832). If you read the novel, you’ll realize that the name truly doesn’t fit the man my protagonist revered, because he was gentle, kind and humble despite his many achievements. However, one of Rekha’s students, Neil, clearly perceives him as evil.

The original 1808 German title page of Goethe's play read simply: "Faust. / Eine Tragödie" ("Faust. / A Tragedy"). The addition of "erster zweiter Teil" (in English, "Part One") was retrospectively applied by publishers when the sequel was published in 1832 with a title page which read: "Faust. / Der Tragödie zweiter Teil" ("Faust. / The Tragedy's Second Part").

The two plays have been published in English under a number of titles, and are usually referred to as Faust, Parts One and Two.

I was able to find the English version online and it provided the source for the verse that Neil’s mother includes in the book she left for him.

“Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands

To carry me to distant lands,

I should not trade it for the choicest gown,

Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.”

I Googled the verse innumerable times to make sure that it would bring up the original text and it did. In the novel, Neil not only figures out his father’s name using the verse, but also considers it an apt inscription for his mother’s tombstone and a meaningful farewell to him before she dies.

The idea of Neil’s mother leaving a cryptic message for him came from a less well-known mystery novel by P. D. James, An Unsuitable Job For A Woman, in which a private detective, Cordelia Gray, embarks on a journey to find the killer of the son of a prominent scientist. The son receives a book from his nanny left for him by his mother. And it has an inscription that he doesn’t decipher, but Cordelia uses it to find the identity of the killer.

 

You can learn more about Vee via her website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery is available via Amazon in both digital and paperback formats.

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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

During the Covid-19 pandemic and social-distancing, drive-in movie theaters have made something of a comeback. Now, Vertical Entertainment will premiere the Bella Thorne action-crime thriller, Infamous, in close to three dozen drive-ins on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and in the South. The film will also be available in digital virtual cinemas, all starting on Friday, June 12. Thorne plays Arielle, a young woman who lives in a small Florida town, stuck in a diner job. Arielle has always wanted more: fame, popularity and admiration. But when she falls for a recently paroled young criminal named Dean, she drags him back into a life of danger, learning that posting their criminal exploits on social media is an easy way to viral fame. They embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases, and murder.

Quiver Distribution has secured the North American distribution rights to Money Plane, the Andrew Lawrence-helmed action-thriller starring WWE Superstar Adam "Edge" Copeland, Denise Richards, Thomas Jane, and Emmy award winner Kelsey Grammer. Co-written by Lawrence and Tim Schaaf, the film will debut on digital platforms on July 10. The plot follows Jack Reese (Copeland), a professional thief who’s $40 million in debt. Underworld kingpin Darius Emmanuel Grouch (Grammer) offers to forgive his debt if Reese will commit one final heist – rob a futuristic airborne casino filled with the world’s most dangerous criminals. If he fails, his family’s lives are on the line.

Mission: Impossible 7 is preparing to resume filming in September after the Paramount feature was forced to radically change its shooting plans in February because of the coronavirus pandemic. First assistant director Tommy Gormley said, "We hope to restart in September, we hope to visit all the countries we planned to and look to do a big chunk of it back in the UK on the backlot and in the studio..." Gormley added that it would not be without significant challenges given the scale of the shoot, its multiple locations, and giant crew, but added that it will be possible if "we break down all the procedures very carefully."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the list of nominees for its annual BAFTA Awards. Among the crime show nods were a Best Drama Series nomination for Giri/Haji, a thriller set in Tokyo and London that explores the butterfly effect of a single murder across two cities; International Award nominations for When They See Us, based on the real-life case of the Central Park Five, and Unbelievable, about a series of rapes in Washington State and Colorado; Best Dramatic Actor nods for Callum Turner (The Capture) and Takehiro Hira (Giri/Haji); and Best Dramatic Actress nominations for Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth is Missing) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve). Also nominated were A Confession and The Victim in the Best Mini-Series category.

The BBC has commissioned a second season of the spy drama, The Capture. The surveillance thriller, which will premiere on NBCUniversal streamer Peacock in the U.S. on July 15, was a hit in the UK, becoming BBC iPlayer’s biggest new title of 2019. Season 1 began with the unjust arrest of an innocent man (Callum Turner) and escalated into a multi-layered conspiracy of manipulated evidence. Holliday Grainger’s Detective Inspector Rachel Carey is drafted in to investigate the case and she quickly learns that the truth can sometimes be a matter of perspective. Grainger returns as Carey for the six-part second season, with events picking up from the end of Season 1 when the detective seemingly joined forces with a shadowy correction team she had previously sought to expose.

The CW has acquired an Italian thriller series starring Patrick Dempsey and is shifting around its previously announced 2020-21 broadcast season schedule to accommodate it. Devils is based on the novel, I Diavoli by Guido Maria Brera, and is set in the London office of a major U.S. bank, where the ruthless Head of Trading, Massimo Ruggero (Alessandro Borghi) from Italy, has been welcomed and introduced to the world of finance by Dominic Morgan (Dempsey), the bank’s CEO. When Ruggero ends up involved in an intercontinental financial war rocking Europe, he has to choose whether to ally himself with his mentor or fight him. The book was partly inspired by the financial crisis that swept global markets in 2008.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about the new James Patterson and Bill Clinton book; a new Lisbeth Salander adaptation; and mystery short story collections.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover welcomed bestselling author Greg Hurwitz to discuss his Orphan X series and his latest book, Into The Fire.

This week's guest on Meet the Thriller Author was Barbara Nickless, whose latest book is Gone to Darkness, the fourth installment in her bestselling Sydney Rose Parnell book series.

Barbara Nickless also stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime, chatting about her "many and varied pursuits."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed Elly Griffiths to chat about her forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway novels that are inspired by Elly's husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's Fiction Podcast turned its attention to poetry for the latest episode. EQMM has a long history of including occasional poems, from humorous limericks to serious free verse, since poetry gives another lens through which to view the crime and mystery genre. Included in the show are a story in epic verse by John F. Dobbyn and poems by James Sallis, Stephen D. Rogers, Kevin Mims, Marilyn Todd, John V. Mercurio, and more.

For the final episode of the first series of The Tartan Noir Show, Peter May joined host Theresa Talbot from his home in France. He spoke about his brand new book, Lockdown, written 15 years ago about a global pandemic which closes down London; about digging deep in writing; the importance of research; and about his best-selling Lewis Trilogy, his China Thrillers series, and the Enzo Files series.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

FFB: Death on the Rocks

So many authors seem to pop out of nowhere, bring us several very fine works—even award-winning titles—only to disappear from the writing world. Michael Allegretto is one such example of a mysteriously vanishing writer. There is scant biographical information about Allegretto except that he grew up listening to the real-life stories of crime and detection from his father, a Denver police detective. This one tidbit at least explains the setting for Allegretto's novels featuring Jacob Lomax, an ex-cop turned private investigator in Denver.



Allegretto's first novel in the Lomax series, Death on the Rocks, was published in 1987 to critical acclaim, eventually nominated for the 1988 Anthony and Macavity Awards and winning the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel that year. The author went on to pen four more Lomax installments, four standalones, and a few short stories (one included in Justice For Hire: The Fourth Private Eye Writers of America Anthology), with his last book published in 1995. One of his standalone thrillers, Terror in the Shadows, was made into a TV movie.



Death on the Rocks finds wealthy oilman Phillip Townsend dead in a car crash west of Denver after he allegedly drove his Jaguar off a cliff. The police chalk the death up to drunk driving, but Townsend's widow doesn't agree and hires Lomax to uncover the truth. Lomax soon learns more than the widow may have wanted him to: the dead man acted in pornographic movies and may have raped a minor, and he had ties to a call girl named Cassandra. As Lomax digs deeper, he finds that someone doesn't want him digging up more of Townsend's shameful past and is willing to kill again to stop him, targeting Lomax and the victim's wife and young daughter.



The novel's protagonist, Jake Lomax, left his police job and became a private eye after his wife's murder, a history that has left him understandably scarred. His tough-guy exterior is full of cynicism and one-liners, but he's also charming, quite intelligent, even a masterful chess player. Bill Pronzini had this to say about Death on the Rocks:

"(It) is brash and tough in the Hammett/Chandler tradition. But it is more than that, too, because Michael Allegretto is his own writer and Jake Lomax is his own detective. A twisty plot, crackling dialogue, and some knife-sharp observations are just three of the elements that make it something special. The Allegretto-Lomax team has the potential to become a front-runner in today's crowded and competitive private-eye sweepstakes."

Unfortunately, just seven years later, Allegretto and Lomax disappeared off the literary scene as quickly as they came. Recently, however, Mysterious Press has reprinted nine of the author's books, including Death on the Rocks and four other Lomax books, as well as four standalone thrillers.

            

Author R&R with Thomas O’Callaghan

After a successful career in insurance, Thomas O'Callaghan turned his hand to writing his debut novel, Bone Thief and its sequel, The Screaming Room, which were published by Kensington Books and translated for markets in Germany, Slovakia, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, China, and Italy. The series features Homicide Commander Lieutenant John W. Driscoll and his dedicated team as they track the darkest killers in New York City.

The third installment, No One Will Hear Your Screams, was recently released by WildBlue Press:  Is there a sociopathic killer murdering prostitutes in New York City? NYPD's top cop, Homicide Commander Lieutenant John Driscoll, believes there is. Someone who calls himself "Tilden" claims to have been sexually abused as a child by his mother's john. But what could have triggered Tilden's rage to place him on a mission to eradicate all of New York's prostitutes? Tilden is not your run-of-the-mill sociopath. After all, would a common murderer take the time to embalm his victims—determined as the cause of all the deaths by the medical examiner? Driscoll is on mission to put an end to the madness. A man haunted by the events of his own unstable childhood, he teams up with Sergeant Margaret Aligante and Detective Cedric Thomlinson to stop the killings and bring Tilden to justice before he kills again.

 

O'Callaghan stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels: 

 

Though my novels depict fictional murder I feel it’s important to accurately and definitively describe all aspects of the heinous killings. The reader, though he or she knows what’s being read is an imaginary tale must have a sense that the murders, meticulously depicted, could be real. Otherwise well crafted fiction becomes fantasy.  With that writing style in mind, I invite the reader to board a rollercoaster of sorts on page one. I then keep them on that rollercoaster until the last page. The key is to never let them off.  My dedication to clearly describe the killings must carry over into how I depict the procedures employed by my fictional team of homicide investigators who must track down these psychotic misfits terrorizing New York City.  But, since I’m neither a killer nor a detective I rely on in-depth research to get both factions right.  Failing to do so brings credibility into question.

When I created the villain in BONE THIEF it was important to depict an individual who not only craved bones, but had a wealth of knowledge about them.  Who better than a radiologist?  There are 206 bones in the human body, by the way. I know this because I looked it up.  And not being a radiologist myself, I was able to ascertain what a normal workday looked like for such a medical practitioner by searching the web.  Admittedly, most of the research for BONE THIEF was done via my laptop.  I did rely on an assist from an actual NYPD homicide commander to get the investigative procedure right, but I failed to ask what weapons a police officer routinely carries.  In the first edition of the book I had Lieutenant Driscoll release the safety on his Glock revolver.  Had I done a tad more research I would of realized Glock, Incorporated only manufactures pistols and none of them have a safety.  On a bright note, my mistake led to an entertaining conversation with a New York Times bestselling thriller writer who admitted to making the same mistake.  She suggested I simply arm Driscoll with a semi-automatic in the second book.  Which I did! 

In THE SCREAMING ROOM, which features a set of demonic fraternal twins, I wanted to add a unique twist to the investigation.  After reading several articles online that detailed interesting information about twins in general, I happened upon one particular article that spoke of something called the Turner Syndrome.  I knew nothing about the condition until my random online search of “Twins” produced that link.  It’s an extremely rare genetic disorder that only affects the female.  But, what I found fascinating was that their DNA would be identical.  A great find!  By adding it to my storyline, Lieutenant Driscoll was baffled.  How could two people have the same DNA?  The information I’d gathered through my online research thickened the plot!

The most memorable research I’d conducted while writing NO ONE WILL HEAR YOUR SCREAMS began when I happened upon a website called BlueLips.com.  My killer in this one is an embalmer by trade who uses those skills in an extremely shocking way to commit murder.  Because it was important to get the details right on precisely what that entailed I purchased a DVD from BlueLips.com that depicted the procedure in vivid detail.  Morbid?  A tad.  Informative and helpful to me as a thriller writer?  Absolutely!

 

You can learn more about Thomas O’Callaghan and his fictional protagonist Lieutenant John Driscoll via his website, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter. No One Will Hear Your Screams is available in both ebook and paperback formats through the Amazon store.

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