B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 118

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

The recent Fast & Furious action-thriller spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw, was met with solid reviews and box office success, making it a given there would be a sequel. Now, the project's co-star, Dwayne Johnson, has now provided confirmation via Instagram that the sequel has indeed been given the green light by Universal. Hobbs & Shaw followed Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw after the events of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. In the film, the two are forced to team up to take down Idris Elba’s Brixton, a cyber-genetically enhanced terrorist. Along the way, the heroes also join forces with Deckard’s MI6 Agent-sister Hattie, played by Vanessa Kirby.

When Austin's annual South by Southwest festival (SXSW) was canceled early last month in response to the coronavirus pandemic, it was one of many blows to the movie industry. But now Amazon Prime is partnering with SXSW to make the event happen. In lieu of the festival taking over Austin, Texas from March 13 to 22 as planned, it will now take place via Amazon Prime for ten days sometime in late April. The online festival will be a "one-time event" that will be free to all audiences, as opposed to being exclusively for Amazon Prime members.

If you're going through James Bond withdrawal after the postponement of the latest superspy's adventure from April to the fall, Cinema Blend has "12 Behind-The-Scenes Facts You Might Not Know About The James Bond Movies" to provide a little "fix."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Spectrum Originals is developing Tinseltown, a period drama series based on William J Mann’s 2014 bestselling book, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, And Madness At The Dawn of Hollywood. Tinseltown is set against the seamy, glamorous backdrop of the silent film era. It explores the lives of four pioneer women filmmakers whose careers were threatened by the brutal patriarchy of Hollywood’s nascent studio system as well as the scandalous murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association.

Nicole Kidman is set to star in and produce a series adaptation of Janelle Brown’s upcoming novel, Pretty Things, which is in development at Amazon Studios. Reed Morano (Handmaid’s Tale, The Power) will serve as director and executive producer. Pretty Things follows two brilliant, damaged women who "try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play" when one of them, a reluctant grifter, befriends the other, a wealthy influencer, on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

Hulu has boarded the drama, The Sister, an adaptation of Neil Cross's thriller novel, Burial. The project is headlined by The Years & Years star, Russell Tovey, with a cast that also includes Bertie Carvel (Doctor Foster), Amrita Acharia (Game of Thrones), Nina Toussaint-White (GameFace) and Paul Bazely (Benidorm) in the four-part series. Tovey plays well-meaning but directionless Nathan, a man trying to escape a terrible secret he’s long prayed would stay buried. Almost a decade into his new and devoted married life, Nathan is rocked to the core when Bob, (Carvel), an unwelcome face from the past, turns up on his doorstep with shocking news, triggering a series of catastrophic decisions.

A beloved TV character is coming back:  NBC gave a 13-episode series order to a new crime drama series starring Christopher Meloni, reprising his Law & Order: SVU role as Elliot Stabler. The SVU spinoff drama will revolve around the NYPD organized crime unit led by Stabler. Like Law & Order: SVU, headlined by Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson, the new drama is set in New York, allowing for potential seamless crossovers with SVU and for Benson-Stabler reunions.

Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are cutting their seasons short as a result of the coronavirus outbreak (via Deadline, which has an updated listing of all the NBC shows affected and their last new episode date for this season).

Although many shows on the CW were forced to shut down production due to the coronavirus, there were still some CW shows that have new episodes to air. Last week, the network announced when those new episodes would be returning, including Nancy Drew (April 8) and the season 2 premiere of In the Dark on April 16.

Fox has canceled the freshman police drama, Deputy, starring Stephen Dorff. The series, which debuted in January as a midseason replacement, centered on Dorff’s Deputy Bill Hollister, a career lawman who becomes acting sheriff of Los Angeles County when the previous sheriff suddenly drops dead. Will Beall, former LAPD detective and showrunner on Fox’s short-lived Training Day adaptation, served as creator and executive producer on the drama

NBC has set Thursday, April 30 at 10 pm for the premiere of the 13-episode fifth and final season of the thriller drama series, Blindspot. The show, starring Sullivan Stapleton and Jaimie Alexander, will move to its normal 9 pm time slot the following week on May 7.

Killing Eve star Jodie Comer’s breakthrough drama, Thirteen, is being adapted in Japan by Tokai Television Broadcasting. The drama centers on a young woman who escapes the clutches of her kidnapper after thirteen years being held captive. It follows her story as she tries piecing back together the version of family life that existed before her ordeal.

The CW has set season premiere dates for its summer series including the dramas Burden of Truth (May 21) and Bulletproof (June 17). Burden of Truth stars Joanna Chang (Kristin Kreuk) and Billy Crawford (Peter Mooney), partners in law and life whose romantic relationship seems as tenuous as their financially strained firm. Bulletproof follows two undercover cops, Bishop (Noel Clarke) and Pike (Ashley Walters) as they chase down hardened criminals in London’s East End.

CBS All Access released a trailer for season 4 of The Good Fight, in which Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart are trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious "Memo 618," which, as Diane (Christine Baranski) explains, "seems to allow rich and powerful people not to comply with judicial rulings."

Need some streamable diversions? TV Guide offered up a list of "The Best British Murder Mystery Shows to Stream Right Now."

If you're wondering about the status of your favorite shows, TV Guide also has an updated list of TV show premiere dates delayed, affected, or rescheduled due to the coronavirus.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Scottish podcast network, The Big Light, is launching The Tartan Noir Show, a brand new crime fiction podcast celebrating the gritty world of "Tartan Noir," the internationally-acclaimed and increasingly popular Scottish crime writing genre. Presented by crime writer and broadcaster, Theresa Talbot, the first guest is "Queen of Crime" Val McDermid, as she discusses the very essence of the tartan noir genre, including her own favorite crime author, William McIlvanney, whose seminal novel, Laidlaw, is often cited as the book that started the whole genre.

Meet the Thriller author was joined by Dean Koontz to discuss his latest book, Devoted, his legendary career, and the surreal experience of going viral for supposedly "predicting" the Coronavirus pandemic.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone welcomed internationally bestselling author Adrian McKinty to talk about escaping New York City, the nutritious value of squirrels vs chipmunks, a 10lb bag of rice, and if he has swapped one nightmare for another.

Writer Types spoke with author Scott Phillips (That Left Turn at Albuquerque), James Queally (Line of Sight), and highlighted indie bookstores and publishers still open for business during the lockdown.

The Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured "Father of the Corpse" by Department of First Stories author Cecilia Fulton.

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story "Two Hundred Miles" by Margaret Lucke, as read by actor Teya Juarez.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a review of The Shaker Mystery Series by Elenor Kuhn and The Other Gloria by L.A. Villafane, as well as a Q&A with Lorie Lewis Ham about the mystery podcast Mystery Rat Maze.

John Hoda (Mugshots: My Favorite Detective Stories) and host Frank Zafiro (Wrong Place, Write Crime) simulcast an "interview each other" episode of their respective podcasts to discuss their professional and writing journeys, including how the job influences the writing career and the ever-changing publishing market.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, answered reader questions about " MasksForDocs, Inmate Release After Acquittal, and CSI the TV Show."

Listening to the Dead host Lynda La Plante tackled the topic of "Forensic Pathology."

Crime Time: A Crime Fiction Podcast discussed Shalini Boland's psychological thriller, The Marriage Betrayal.

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FFB: I'll Sing You Two-O

Anthea Mary Fraser (born 1930) was inspired by her novelist-mother to be a writer, but her own first published novel had to wait until 1970. The 1974 paranormal novel Laura Possessed was her first break-through success, followed by six other books in a similar vein and some romantic suspense titles before she turned to crime fiction.



She created two series, the first with Detective Chief Inspector David Webb of the Shillingham police, totaling 16 novels in all from 1984 to 1999. The second is a series Fraser debuted in 2003 featuring biographer/freelance journalist Rona Parish, with the last of six books published in 2008. Fraser also served the crime fiction community as secretary of the Crime Writers' Association from 1986 to 1996.



The first twelve in the DCI Webb series all take their titles from the lyrics to the English folk song "Green Grow the Rushes-O," including I'll Sing you Two-O from 1991, the ninth entry in the Webb roster. The case is set in motion when clothing store owner and part-time town magistrate Monica Tovey finds a van abandoned outside her home. But when the van's gruesome contents—the bodies of the football-mad, window washing, petty-thief White twins—are discovered, unsettling events disturb the serenity of the English town of Shillingham, and Monica suddenly finds her own life in danger.



DCI Webb begins to suspect that recent town burglaries, near-riots among soccer fans, low-flying airplanes and mysterious phone calls may not be unrelated to the case. Webb is also an accomplished artist, and he frequently calls upon his skills to record his impressions and hone in on the murderer, as he does here.



Fraser has taken some heat in the past for creating unconvincing and/or unlikely killers but also collected frequent praise for her rendering of small-town settings, with Publishers Weekly noting that "Fraser's rendering of an English community is again impeccable, enabling a reader not only to take pleasure in the mystery itself...but also to feel part of the life of a small, worried town," and Kirkus adding that it's "a competent, civilized police procedural, enhanced by sensitive probing of snarled relationships and a nicely drawn small-town ambiance."



PW also once characterized Fraser's writing as "succinct," with "her plots developed quickly, her prose straight to the point, with neither narrative nor character suffering from this brevity." And the book does fly along at a fairly clipped pace, in a very dialogue-heavy manner, although the investigation and procedural elements often take a back seat to character interactions.



It's interesting to read words the author gave to one character that "We lead container lives nowadays, bound up in our own concerns. It doesn't make for neighborliness," words that take on a whole new meaning in the age of a pandemic and social-distancing.

            

Mystery Melange

From May 8-10, the Big Book Weekend will arrive online, a three-day virtual festival bringing together the best of the British book festivals cancelled due to coronavirus. Organizers say it will feature the "biggest names in books alongside unknown debut authors and rising talents," and although the lineup hasn't yet been announced, I imagine it will run the gamut and include some crime fiction folks. Participants can expect interviews, panel discussions, "in conversation" debates, performances, and interactive sessions.

Another casualty of the Covid-19 outbreak is Noir at the Bar, the series of in-person events in various cities where crime fiction authors read from their works. But that's not stopping Virtual Noir at the Bar: Queens, to take place online April 3. Book sales generated from the event will also go to support Kew & Willow bookstore in Kew Gardens, Queens, also hard-hit by business shutdowns. Hosted by hosted by local Queens crime writer, Alex Segura, the lineup of authors includes Sarah Weinman; Megan Abbott; William Boyle; John Vercher; SJ Rozan; Hilary Davidson; Reed Farrel Coleman; Scott Adlerberg; Jill Block; Wallace Stroby; Lyndsay Faye; Richie Narvaez; Kellye Garrett; and Jen Conley.

Empire State Center for the Book is inducting mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) into their Writers Hall of Fame. Author of the landmark mystery novel The Leavenworth Case (1878) and numerous other mystery works as well as a champion of the writing profession, the Brooklyn-born Green was a longtime resident of Buffalo. The ceremony was originally scheduled for June 2 but due to the coronavirus has been moved to September 14. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist blog)

Some sad news to report: Kate Mattes, proprietor of Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge, MA, and a big supporter of mysteries, passed away last week after a long illness. Kate's bookstore launched many a book during its day and hosted the likes of Sue Grafton, Sarah Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane, Katherine Hall Page, and Jane Langton.

Some good news for authors and booksellers: book sales have increased in the UK as readers find they have extra time on their hands. Waterstones reported a 400% increase in online book sales. The American Booksellers Association online bookselling sites also saw a 250% increase in digital book sales.

The International Crime Fiction Association just published the first issue of Crime Fiction Studies, edited by Fiona Peters, an "innovative new journal" that is interdisciplinary and international. It draws scholars together through a series of themed and general issues which explore the status of the genre today, its history, social and cultural influences and current popularity. The current plans are to have two issues per year, published in March and September.

As Lee Lofland noted on Facebook, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine will be including a "Case Files" column from Lofland beginning in the May/June 2020 issue. AHMM stated, "We are delighted to introduce a new feature, knowing that our readers often take a keen interest in the realities behind the fiction: former police detective Lee Lofland will offer in each issue insights into the working lives and daily realities of those involved in law enforcement." 

If you're looking for some escapist crime fiction fare to while away your time indoors practicing social distancing, CrimeReads has a list of 14 very long tomes that will keep you entertained for a while.

The Writers Who Kill blog also had interviews with the authors nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Short Story, as well as story links.

The Journalists’ Charity, founded by Charles Dickens in 1864, has launched a competition to find real modern-day characters who could have provided the basis for one of the author’s classic creations. To mark the 150th anniversary of Dickens's death, the charity is asking for written portraits of a modern-day Dickensian character. The subject could be someone in public life, including a politician or and celebrity, or an NHS worker helping to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Entrants have a 300-word limit and are encouraged to take inspiration from Dickens’s prose to bring to life a contemporary figure who could rank alongside Betsey Trotwood, Miss Havisham or Bill Sykes. The writing competition is free to enter, although organizers encourage entrants to donate to the charity, which will direct support to journalists in need.

Patricia Marcantonio, a journalist and author of children's fiction, applied the Page 69 Test to Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace, her first Felicity Carrol mystery.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Down Like a Hammer" by J Rohr.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element's Book Series Binge continued with interviews featuring Carolyn Haines on her Sarah Booth Delaney Mysteries ; Paul Doiron on his Mike Bowditch series; Jane Cleland on her Josie Prescott antiques mysteries; Joanna Schaffhausen on her Ellery Hathaway series; S.C. Perkins on his ancestry detective series; and Daniel Friedman on his Buck Schatz series.

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Author R&R with Pat McKee

Pat McKee studied at Presbyterian College, Georgia State University, and Emory University School of Law and later founded the law firm McKee & Barge, where he represents educators and educational institutions. Always a lover of the written word, Pat decided in 2010 to enroll in the Masters of Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University where he combined his legal knowledge with imaginative storytelling to craft his debut legal thriller, the futuristic Ariel's Island.

In the book, attorney Paul McDaniel is framed for the murder of a judge and enlists the help of Ariel, a female-presenting AI program, to clear his name. Yet Ariel's lack of a moral code and Paul's inability to guide her result in disaster as Ariel changes from an able assistant to something far more sinister. What will happen when Paul puts his trust in technology? And will he survive when his emotions combine with an already volatile mix?

Ariel's Island takes the reader on an odyssey that reinterprets Shakespeare’s The Tempest, by way of modernizing the classic tale of Prospero, a castaway sorcerer, the spiteful creature, Caliban, and Ariel, the air spirit. The book blends literary mythos with contemporary issues, all set within a future time period that may arrive soon – or may already be here.

Pat stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about researching and writing the novel:

 

My first work of fiction, Ariel’s Island, is a legal/techno thriller inspired by Shakespeare’s Tempest. A young lawyer is framed for the murder of a judge, and he enlists an artificial intelligence program to help him clear his name – so you can tell right away there were multiple directions I would need to pursue research. The real challenge was to resist my inner (and dominant) nerd qualities, not spend all my time chasing arcana, and get some writing done!

So, quickly to lay to rest the part that came easiest to me, the legal stuff: Because I am (still) a practicing lawyer and have been so for over 40 years, I didn’t need to do much research in that area. As the protagonist states at one crucial point in my novel, “Being a lawyer has many benefits. One, not so evident, is that a lawyer’s mind is filled with obscure data which often comes in handy at the most opportune times, such as the knowledge that flight plans of private jets are public information . . .” (I did have to look that one up.) But for the most part I relied on my experience built over decades of litigating cases big and small, from federal courts in major cities to magistrate courts in rural communities, and on my knowledge of the inner workings of law firms – again as my protagonist observes, “a major law firm is no different from law school, the closest thing to swimming naked with great whites one can do on dry land.”

On the other hand, I am completely out of my league concerning the technical aspects of artificial intelligence – or anything else to do with computers for that matter. (I am able to operate this word processor, but don’t try to get me to explain how it works.) Writing about technology presents a more literary challenge than merely understanding how it operates; almost any specific technology one writes about is obsolete before your novel is published – a lot like seeing flip phones in a movie that is more than a few years old. While there is the temptation to put your hard-won knowledge about technology on the page – so many gigabytes about this and so many terabytes about that (and maybe bend toward the sci-fi genre than is otherwise intended) – I decided to describe the technology in my novel mostly by indirection. As when the protagonist is confronted with the computer setup of a GBI agent trained in electronic surveillance, he remarks: “Agent Grey took me inside and opened a pair of doors that appeared to be a hall closet, but instead revealed a small room with a desk, server, large flat screen monitor, and laser printer – all the latest equipment, newer even than what I had at the firm. Agent Grey rattled off some computer-geek talk about how fast and good it was, but as far as I was concerned, he might as well have been speaking in tongues.” In so doing it is my hope that the technology in my novel won’t seem so futuristic as the latest sci-fi magazine nor so soon become as out of place as having a teenage character refer to MySpace.

Where I let my imagination truly run and unloosed my desire to research down every obscure rabbit trail is in the connection of my novel with Shakespeare’s Tempest. I indulged myself with multiple readings and numerous performances of the play, then dove into the secondary sources, thematic analyses, historical investigations – most of which, I must admit, were more enjoyable than productive of words on the page. In the end, it was still Prospero’s final scene – one that convinced scholars that the wizard is a stand-in for Shakespeare himself – that inspired Ariel’s Island. Here Prospero frees the spirit Ariel and gives up his magic to travel back to Italy and claim the Dukedom of Milan. And it is his act of freeing Ariel that is the impetus of the novel: What happens when an all-powerful spirit without a moral compass is loosed upon the world?  No amount of research can help answer that question; in the end, it is all up to the imagination.

 

You can learn more about Pat McKee and Ariel’s Island via his website, or follow him on Facebook and Instagram. Ariel’s Island is available today via all major booksellers. (Note that some of the book launch events listed on his website may have been postponed or canceled due to coronavirus precautions, so check with the hosting organization first.)

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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

Cloudburst Entertainment picked up the distribution rights to Infidel, a crime thriller from screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh. Jim Caviezel, best known for Person Of Interest, stars alongside Claudia Karvan and Hal Ozsan. The film is set in the Middle East and follows an American kidnapped while attending a conference in Cairo, who ends up in prison in Iran on spying charges. After his own government turns its back on him, his wife goes to Iran, determined to get him out.

Neon has taken U.S. rights to Brandon Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller, Possessor, which made its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Possessor follows corporate agent Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), who works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies – ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients

Project Hail Mary, the new space thriller from The Martian author Andy Weir, is on track to be acquired by MGM in a 7-figure deal. The story centers on an astronaut (Ryan Gosling) alone in a space ship who is tasked with saving the planet. 

Wondering when the upcoming movies you were excited about will actually make it to cinemas after the various postponements? CinemaBlend has an "Updated List Of Major Movie Release Delays And Early Digital Releases."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Following the unprecedented Hollywood shutdown over the COVID-19 outbreak, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW have ordered a second script for all their drama and comedy pilots (with ABC picking up more than one extra script on some projects). It's thought that the projects with the strongest pilot and backup scripts might get permission to open a writers room and be considered for a straight-to-series order. That would bring broadcast TV in line with the streaming development model — something the networks had been flirting with, but the pull of the traditional pilot cycle had been too hard to break from.

FBI is one the latest series ending their seasons early. The CBS procedural will close out its sophomore run on Tuesday, March 31, three episodes earlier than its planned 22-episode season. The ensemble cast includes Missy Peregrym, Zeeko Zaki, Jeremy Sisto, Ebonée Noel, Sela Ward and Alana de la Garza

The long-rumored multi-network crossover between two Dick Wolf series, FBI and Chicago P.D. is a reality. During the latest episode of Chicago P.D., Sergeant Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) unexpectedly ordered Officer Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) to serve a temporary assignment at the New York bureau of the FBI. This means Chicago P.D. fans will be able to see Hailey work on her assignment when she makes a guest appearance on the next episode of FBI—bringing viewers of the NBC series over to CBS in the process.

Killing Eve is the latest show to see its new season’s premiere date moved around amid production shutdowns and delays for other series during the coronavirus pandemic. AMC Networks announced that Season 3 of the drama will premiere two weeks earlier than previously scheduled. The third season of the series starring Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, which was set to launch Sunday, April 26, will now debut Sunday, April 12 at 9/8c on both BBC America and AMC. You can watch a trailer here.

How to Get Away with Murder's midseason premiere will air Thursday, April 2 at 10/9 on ABC after delivering its shocking midseason finale in December. The legal thriller series stars Viola Davis as Annalise Keating, a law professor at a prestigious Philadelphia university who, with five of her students, becomes entwined in a murder plot. The ensemble cast also features Alfred Enoch, Jack Falahee, Aja Naomi King, Matt McGorry, and Karla Souza as Keating's students, Charlie Weber and Liza Weil as her employees, and Billy Brown as a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department. 

A trailer was released for Defending Jacob, the upcoming series on Apple TV+ based on the novel by William Landay, starring Chris Evans as a dad pushed to his wit’s end when his son is accused of murder.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone were joined by the internationally bestselling Ruth Ware who chatted about homeschooling, writing during this period, working with editors, and much more.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Bob Hartley on the Crime Cafe podcast about his novel, North and Central, which features a criminal bartender in Chicago's North Austin neighborhood in the late 1970s.

Writer Types spoke with authors Elizabeth Little (Pretty As A Picture); Scott Carson (who is really Michael Koryta in disguise); and Sarah Pinborough (Dead To Her); and also featured an elevator pitch from Faye Snowden.

Read or Dead discussed a new Tana French novel potentially coming this fall and also some great mystery small presses.

Beyond the Cover welcomed Lisa Gardner to talk about her latest book, When You See Me, the eleventh book in the D.D. Warren detective series.

Meet the Thriller Author's special guest was Gregg Hurwitz, bestselling author of twenty-one thrillers, including the Orphan X series and two award-winning thriller novels for teens.

Wrong Place, Write Crime discussed heavy metal, short stories, and the disappearing tenure track, and Lance Wright from Down and Out Books had an update on new titles.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "StayHomeWriMo, Public Health, DEA Cases, and more Counter-Surveillance."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed Marcia Clark, author of The Rachel Knight and Samantha Brinkman mystery series.

Listening to the Dead host Lynda La Plante profiled "Digital Forensics," one of the newest and fastest evolving forensic disciplines.

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: The Cape Cod Mystery

Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909-1976) was born in Boston, the child of Cape Cod natives who were also descendents of Mayflower Pilgraims. After Taylor married a Boston surgeon, they had a summer home on the Cape, which explains why the author would choose that setting for her first novel, published in 1931 when she was all of 22. She puts that inside knowledge to good use in recreating the local culture there in the 1930s and 1940s.



Taylor has my undying respect for her work ethic of writing her novels between midnight and three a.m. after her "housekeeping day" had ended. Although her habit of waiting to start a book until three weeks before the publisher's deadline would give me a heart attack.



The Cape Cod Mystery was fairly successful in its day, selling 5,000 copies, and introduced  the "Codfish Sherlock," Asey Mayo, who went on to star in 24 of Taylor's novels. Mayo retired in Cape Cod, following his world travels as a sailor,  to serve as a general assistant to the heir of Porter Motors. He uses his wits and wit to solve murders with the help of a very fast car.



In the novel, the muckraking author, philanderer and occasional blackmailer Dale Sanborn is murdered one hot August weekend, leaving behind a long list of enemies, including an old girl friend, his fiancee, an outraged husband, a long-lost brother and a few more. Asey Mayo gets involved when his friend and mentor Bill Porter is accused of the crime, even though Mayo only has one clue to go on:  a sardine can.



There are a few oddities, such as the narrator being not Mayo but rather Prudence Whitsby, who has a cottage on Cape Cod she shares with her niece and a cook (and also serves as the sight where the victim was murdered). Taylor wrote Mayo with a very heavy Coddish (Codlian?) accent that sometime a bit difficult to wade through, particularly when he's offering up his homespun sayings like "They ain't many whys without becauses."



The earlier Mayo titles are a little darker (it's been suggested this was due to the Depression at the time), but as the series went on, the tone apparently lightened enough that critic Dilys Winn called Taylor "the mystery equivalent to Buster Keaton," and one reviewer added that Asey Mayo does for Cape Cod what Travis McGee does for Southern Florida. Apparently Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) was even a fan of Taylor's Mayo character, encouraging Taylor to "pack the books with Cape Cod details."



Wildside Press re-issued The Cape Cod Mystery in 2018 along with another Mayo novel, Diplomatic Corpse.

            

Mystery Melange

Killer Nashville announced that Walter Mosley is the 2020 recipient of the Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award. A Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, he has won numerous previous accolades, including an Edgar Award for best novel, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA's Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image awards. The conference is currently scheduled for August 20-23, 2020 (although in light of other conference cancellations, it would be prudent for registered attendees to keep checking the website for updates).

Although the Left Coast Crime conference was canceled (right as it was already underway, I might add), organizers announced the winners of the Lefty Awards in a virtual ceremony. Here are the finalists and winners:

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel

WINNER:  Catriona McPherson, Scot & Soda (Midnight Ink)
Ellen Byron, Fatal Cajun Festival (Crooked Lane Books)
Leslie Karst, Murder from Scratch (Crooked Lane Books)
Cynthia Kuhn, The Subject of Malice (Henery Press)
Wendall Thomas, Drowned Under (Poisoned Pen Press)

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel

WINNER:  Sujata Massey, The Satapur Moonstone (Soho Crime)
Susanna Calkins, Murder Knocks Twice (Minotaur Books)
L.A. Chandlar, The Pearl Dagger (Kensington Books)
Dianne Freeman, A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder (Kensington Books)
Jennifer Kincheloe, The Body in Griffith Park (Seventh Street Books)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel

WINNER: Matt Coyle, Lost Tomorrows (Oceanview Publishing)
Steph Cha, Your House Will Pay (Ecco)
Tracy Clark, Borrowed Time (Kensington Books)
Rachel Howzell Hall, They All Fall Down (Forge Books)
Attica Locke, Heaven, My Home (Mulholland Books)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel

WINNER:  Carl Vonderau, Murderabilia (Midnight Ink)
Tori Eldridge, The Ninja Daughter (Agora Books)
Angie Kim, Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton Books)
Tara Laskowski, One Night Gone (Graydon House)
John Vercher, Three-Fifths (Agora Books)

 

The British Book Awards announced this year's shortlists, including the Crime and Thriller Book of the Year. The finalists include:

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic Books)
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins)
How The Dead Speaks by Val McDermid (Little Brown)
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Orion)
The Imposter by L J Ross (Dark Skies Publishing)
Blue Moon by Lee Child (Bantam Press)

Foreword Reviews announced the finalists in several categories for their annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s INDIE Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 17, 2020.

The shortlists for Best Mystery include:

Gumshoe Rock by Rob Leininger (Oceanview Publishing)
Moonscape by Julie Weston (Five Star)
The Suicide Sonata by BV Lawson (Crimetime Press)
A Plain Vanilla Murder by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)
Below the Fold by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
Boxing the Octopus by Tim Maleeny (Poisoned Pen Press)
In the Clutches of the Wicked by David Carlson (Coffeetown Press)
Survival Can Be Deadly by Charlotte Stuart (Amphorae Publishing Group)
This Will Destroy You by Pedram Navab (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing)
Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter (Oceanview)

The shorlists for Best Thriller/Suspense include:

Green Valley by Louis Greenberg (Titan Books)
Looking for Garbo by Jon James Miller (Blank Slate Press)
A Cross to Kill by Andrew Huff (Kregel Publications)
Angel in the Fog by TJ Turner (Oceanview)
High Stakes by John F Dobbyn (Oceanview)
Passport to Death by Yigal Zur (Oceanview)
Rag and Bone by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)
The Guilt We Carry by Samuel W. Gailey (Oceanview)
The Nine by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg (She Writes Press)
The Unrepentant by E.A. Aymar (Down & Out Books)

BookExpo is one of the latest conferences to fall victim to the coronavirus outbreak, but they decided to postpone the event instead of canceling it outright. It had been scheduled to take place from May 27th to 31st, but it's now been pushed back to July 22nd to 26th at the Jarvis Center in New York City. Event director Jenny Martin did not rule out a further delay, saying if the situation changes between now and July "we will run with it."

Unfortunately, the Malice Domestic Conference, which had originally decided to simply postpone the conference, has canceled the event for 2020. Despite not having an in-person event this year, the Agatha Awards will go on, with electronic voting to take place on the dates it would have during the conference. Winners will then be announced during a special live streamed event.

The Key West Fest has also canceled its event (slated for June 26) this year, although the 2020 Whodunit Writing Contest will go on as planned. The deadline for entries is April 15. For more information, head on over to the official website.

Sharon Tucker, a former faculty at the University of Memphis, offered up an appreciation of the late mystery author, Mary Higgins Clark.

Over at CrimeReads, Karen Dietrich has a celebration of the 21st century masters of misdirection with a sampling of authors who excel at red herrings in crime fiction.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "I Gave Her the Gun" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Elements continued its "Book Binge Series," welcoming Ann Cleeves, author of the Vera Stanhope series, and Phillip Margolin, author of the Robin Lockwood Series.

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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

Paramount Pictures made a preemptive deal for Murder In The White House, a spec script by Jonathan Stokes that's described as being in the style of Knives Out. Set inside the White House, the President is murdered during a private dinner, and a female Secret Service agent has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war.

London-based production outfit Ugly Duckling Films has secured film, TV, and audio rights to the upcoming Danish thriller novel, The Midas Syndrome, which is inspired by the real European money laundering scandal involving Danske Bank. The story centers on Mads Brodersen, who's finally landed his dream job at Nordisk Bank in Denmark, but when he's moved to the bank’s branch in Estonia, he learns his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances. He naively investigates the death only to discover that there is a far bigger cover-up at large, involving several countries and political forces.

Although last week I noted that most movie theatres in the U.S. were still open, while limiting capacity during showings, that has now changed. AMC will keep its theatres dark for six to 12 weeks, while Regal, Landmark, Alamo Drafthouse, Showcase, Harkins, Bow Tie, ArcLight, Cinemark, and Pacific Theaters are closed indefinitely. Some of the movie studios have announced that select movies currently in theaters will be available to be streamed at home. Meanwhile, China (which is reporting a decrease in virus cases), will re-release old blockbusters to help cinemas in that country reopen.

By now, you can pretty much assume that every festival or conference has been canceled or postponed. The latest to fall to coronavirus includes the granddaddy of them all, the Cannes Film Festival (postponed from May to the end of June); the Sydney Film Festival (canceled); and the Edinburgh Film Festival (postponed from June, new dates TBA).

There are more film premiere delays being reported, as well, including the post-Katrina New Orleans-set Cut Throat City, and many more, reported here, here, and here.

An indie murder mystery drama that was supposed to be released in theatres has instead dropped via Amazon Prime. Blow the Man Down takes place in the fictional seaside town of Easter Cove, Maine, but as NPR describes it, it's more Fargo than the Cabot Cove from Murder She Wrote.

A trailer dropped for the thriller, Arkansas (based on John Brandon's book of the same name), starring Liam Hemsworth and Clark Duke as two men who retaliate against their drug-dealer boss. Michael Kenneth Williams, Vivica A. Fox, Chandler Duke, and John Malkovich also star in Clark Duke's directorial debut.

A trailer was also released for The True History of the Kelly Gang, based on the novel by Peter Carey, and starring George MacKay, Essie Davis, and Russell Crowe.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Netflix has set a premiere date of April 16 for Season 3 of the Israeli thriller series, Fauda. The 12-episode series, presented bilingually in Hebrew and Arabic with subtitles, tells the story of an undercover unit in the Israeli Defense Force, focusing on top Israeli agent, Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz). In Season 3, Doron is deep undercover in the West Bank, posing as an Israeli Arab boxing instructor in a sports club belonging to a low-level Hamas member. Following numerous, deadly clashes with Hamas and a tragic incident that all but shatters the team’s morale, Doron and the team find themselves in unfamiliar territory: Gaza.

Quibi has released the official trailer for #Freerayshawn, one of its "Movies In Chapters" lineup. The project tells the story of a young black Iraq War veteran named Rayshawn (Stephen James) who is set up by New Orleans police on a drug deal and takes refuge inside his apartment with his girlfriend and child. With New Orleans PD and the SWAT team outside ready to storm his home, a social media frenzy begins. During this growing mayhem, a sympathetic cop named Steven Poincy (Laurence Fishburne) plays the role of negotiator, and, over the course of one brutally stressful day, tries to get Rayshawn to calmly surrender in order to avoid an escalation of unnecessary violence.

BAFTA has postponed its Television Craft Awards and Television Awards, making it the latest major TV event to succumb to the coronavirus crisis. The announcement of the nominations, scheduled for next Thursday, March 26, will also be postponed until closer to the ceremony, now slated for sometime later in the year.

If you want to see a running list of shows that have been canceled or postponed, TV Guide has you covered.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Bookreporter spoke with Harlan Coben about his new novel, The Boy from the Woods, his writing process, the success of his new Netflix show, and the mysteries we’re all struggling to deal with in our daily lives.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts, Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste, explored some new releases and answered questions galore from listeners.

Dr. DP Lyle's Criminal Mischief podcast featured the third in its series on toxicology, taking a look at common drugs, poisons, and toxins.

In another forensics-themed podcast, Listening to the Dead, Lynda La Plante profiled forensic entomology.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, welcomed Sam Wiebe to discuss Vancouver's Downtown East Side, his PI novels, his Edgar-nominated short story, and TV adaptations.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, tackled "Medicolegal Death Investigators and Swatting."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Chad Dundas about his debut crime novel, The Blaze, in which two deadly acts of arson, over a decade apart, haunt an army veteran who lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury suffered in Iraq.

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Quotation of the Week

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