B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 138

Mystery Melange

The Killer Nashville conference announced the twenty finalists for the annual Claymore Award. The honor goes to an unpublished crime fiction manuscript, with the winner receiving discounted admission to the conference and a potential publishing contract. According to conference organizers, almost all top finalists usually land a publishing contract within the next year, most through contacts made at Killer Nashville.

Jack Reacher author Lee Child is being made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to literature. Child has written twenty-three thrillers featuring American hero Jack Reacher, with sales somewhere around the 100 million mark. He was also named author of the year at the British Book Awards in May.

The owner of the Waterstones bookstore chain in the UK, the hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., is buying U.S. bookstore chain Barnes & Noble. Elliott is likely to maintain Barnes & Noble and Waterstones as two separate companies, with Waterstones Chief Executive James Daunt leading both. Under Mr. Daunt's direction, Waterstones rebounded from a period of losses and has even been opening new stores, which it fashions to feel like independent shops. Among the changes he implemented at Waterstones: restructuring duties so that booksellers can spend more time selling books; making bookshops more reflective of their distinct communities; instituting campaigns to promote specific titles chosen by its booksellers; and de-emphasizing front-of-shop co-op campaigns.

In other bookstore news, The Guardian reported on why customers are returning to small bookstores and purchasing more print books.

And in even more good book "store" news, retired teacher Melanie Moore founded The Book Bus, a mobile bookstore based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that she built out of a 1962 VW Transporter truck. The bus sells new and gently used books, and Moore uses a portion of all the profits made from the Book Bus to purchase new books for children and classrooms in low income areas. Depending on the weather, Moore typically sets up shop at farmers markets, flea markets or other outdoor events, and when the weather isn't favorable, she can most often be found at area coffee shops.

Slate wrote about a debut author controversy surrounding the new Scarlet suspense imprint from Pegasus Books aimed at a primarily female audience. Was this new author actually real? Or just a front for a male author taking on a female pseudonym? The Twitterverse was thick with intrigue.

Via Atlas Obscura, a fascinating look at pioneering criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who turned everyone into voyeurs at the end of the 19th century.

Cambridge University archivists are cataloguing records of the Isle of Ely courts, revealing offenses ranging from the tragic to the ridiculous, dating from 1557 to 1775. The database of charges and convictions, which the archivists hope to make available soon online, includes witchcraft, murder, highway robbery, forgery, trespass, and vagrancy. (A potentially helpful resource to authors of historical fiction.)

If you find yourself in Scotland this summer (or just want to visit vicariously), author Val McDermid listed her "top Scottish crime fiction locations."





This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Rusty" by Wayne F. Burke.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox Searchlight is making a deal to acquire Solitary. The film is based on a memoir by Albert Woodfox about the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola Prison following the 1972 murder of a prison guard he steadfastly denied committing. Woodfox was released in 2016 and used the $90,000 he was paid for reparation for cruel and unusual punishment from the state of Louisiana to buy a house in New Orleans, where he lives quietly today. Much of the tale is about his kinship with two other wrongly accused men with whom he managed to communicate and organize protests and hunger strikes and eventually reforms at Angola. Mahershala Ali is attaching to be executive producer of the film, with the intention to play Woodfox.

Peter Dinklage, coming off his run on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is in talks to star opposite Rosamund Pike in the thriller, I Care a Lot. Pike plays Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry-picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks are deceiving. Details on Dinklage’s potential role are being kept under wraps.

Adam Nagaitis (Terror and Chernobyl) has landed a significant part in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Paul Giamatti, Lena Headey, and Michelle Yeoh in the cast. Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski wrote the screenplay, with Papushado directing the action-thriller about a group of female assassins that come together after a hit goes wrong.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has given a production commitment to Langdon, a prequel drama based on Dan Brown’s thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. A joint project of Daniel Cerone, CBS Studios, Universal TV, and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, the project follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who finds himself pulled into a series of deadly puzzles when his mentor is kidnapped. 

Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort is set to headline the crime drama, Tokyo Vice, which has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. It is based on the book by Jake Adelstein with a script from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (Oslo) and Endeavor Content. The project centers around Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of an American journalist (Elgort) who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption.

Fox Networks Group has picked up the UK rights to the action drama, L.A.’s Finest, which stars Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. The 13-episode series, based in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Bad Boys universe, follows Burnett (Union), who last was seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel. She leaves her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective and is paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna (Alba), a working mom with an equally complex past. These two women don’t agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.





ITV is bringing the six-part thriller Tenacity, based on J.S. Law's novel, to the small screen. When a dead submariner is discovered aboard the British nuclear submarine, Tenacity, the disgraced military detective Danielle ‘Dan’ Lewis is sent to investigate the accident. But when the case turns to murder it puts her in conflict with Tenacity’s crew, her Navy superiors, and into the crosshairs of an assassin who has infiltrated her nuclear base with an agenda that will not only destroy national security but kill Dan and everyone she loves. 

Lucifer has been renewed for a fifth and final season on Netflix. Based on the Vertigo comics character, Lucifer follows the fallen angel (Tom Ellis) to Los Angeles when he grows bored of being the Lord of Hell and teams up with LAPD detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to help stop criminals. The series also stars Rachael Harris, Aimee Garcia, Kevin Alejandro, and Lesley-Ann Brandt.

The first three seasons of cult favorite Veronica Mars will stream on Hulu starting July 1, ahead of the Hulu Original returning for its fourth season on July 26. Veronica Mars is a noir mystery set in Neptune, California, and stars Kristen Bell as a student who moonlights as a private investigator, working under her detective father to solve cases and an overarching mystery tied to them.

Syfy has opted not to renew Happy! for a third season and Deadly Class for a second, although both shows are being shopped to other broadcasters. Happy! follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), an intoxicated, corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is forever changed by a tiny, relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (Patton Oswalt). Deadly Class follows the story of Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth), a teen living on the streets who is recruited into Kings Dominion, an elite private academy where the world’s top crime families send their next generations. 

Amazon has opted not to order a fourth season of drama series, Sneaky Pete. Created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, Sneaky Pete stars Emmy nominee Giovanni Ribisi as con man Marius, who left prison only to find himself hunted by the vicious gangster he once robbed. With nowhere else to turn, he took cover from his past by assuming the identity of his cellmate Pete.

Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is debuting two new movie premieres in June:  Picture Perfect Mysteries, about a small-town wedding photographer who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery when the groom is shot dead during the first dance; and Mystery 101: Playing Dead, about a crime fiction professor and a detective who join forces to solve the murder of an actor.

Melanie Field (Heathers) has been cast in a regular role in TNT's The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to Caleb Carr's bestselling novel, The Alienist. Newcomer Rosy McEwen is also set for a recurring role in the follow-on series, which includes returning lead cast members from The Alienist, Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning. The new storyline follows Sara Howard (Fanning), who has opened her own private detective agency, enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and John Moore (Evans) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Newly picked up CBS drama series, Tommy, starring Edie Falco, is making a casting change for David Fierro, who co-starred in the pilot. The series, from the creators of Bull, stars Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. The character played by Fierro in the pilot, which will be recast, is Buddy, the brilliant, manipulative mayor of Los Angeles, who becomes a rival for power with the city’s first female police chief. The series-regular cast also includes Michael Chernus, Adelaide Clemens, Russell G. Jones, Olivia Lucy Phillip, and Joseph Lyle Taylor.

Kim Dickens (Deadwood) has been cast as a series regular in Briarpatch, the USA Network’s crime anthology series based on the Ross Thomas novel. The project centers on Allegra "Pick" Dill (Rosario Dawson), a tenacious and highly skilled investigator working for an ambitious young senator in Washington, D.C. When her 10-years-younger sister, a homicide detective, is killed by a car bomb, Allegra returns to her corrupt Texas hometown. Dickens will play Chief of Police Eve Raytek, an authoritative firecracker who is committed to finding out who killed Allegra’s sister.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Strahan & Sara show on ABC welcomed bestseller James Patterson, co-author of Unsolved (written with David Ellis).

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham spent some time talking about mystery books by LGBTQ+ authors, in honor of Pride month.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Israel-based Mike Omer, the journalist and game developer turned author of the Zoe Bentley Mystery Series and the Glenmore Park Mystery Series. 

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Matt Phillips about his latest book, Countdown.

The Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, had the tables turned as he was interviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast.

GAMES & GRAPHIC NOVELS

DC Comics announced a new comic book series from their DC Black Label imprint, Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, written by #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kami Garcia (author of Unbreakable, X-Files: Agents of Chaos) and artists Mike Mayhew (Star Wars) and Mico Suayan (Bloodshot: Reborn). The nine-issue psychological thriller follows Harley Quinn, the young and brilliant forensic psychiatrist and profiler consulting for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), as she pursues a vicious killer terrorizing the city. She has no idea the investigation will bring her face-to-face with the most notorious serial killer in Gotham’s history—the Joker.

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Exeunt Murderers

Author, editor, and reviewer Anthony Boucher (1911-1968) seemed headed into the sciences until he was bitten by the literature bug, selling his first story when he was 15, "Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie," published in Weird Tales in January 1927. He would later add that in retrospect the story was so bad, the editor must have had a "sadistic grudge against the readers."



After his college career, he turned his hand to detective fiction in 1937, with a standalone followed by one series with amateur criminologist Fergus O'Breen and the other Sister Ursula of the Order of Martha of Bethany (published under the pen name H.H. Holmes). Although a moderate success as a novelist, he found his true calling when he started reviewing mysteries and science fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle (another node of connection with this year's conference), followed by editing anthologies and translating other books. He landed a job as the regular mystery fiction critic for the New York Times in 1951, a job he held for close to 17 years.



His contributions to the genre didn't end there—he was a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America, a charter member of the Baker Street Irregulars in San Francisco and wrote scripts for Sherlock Holmes and Ellery Queen radio programs, co-edited the True Crime Detective magazine, wrote a monthly review column for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and created a regular mystery-review show for the public radio station KPFA.



His dozens of short stories reflect his multi-faceted interests outside literature, with one of the editors to the Boucher collection Exeunt Murderers, Francis M. Nevins, Jr., adding that Boucher wrote mysteries delving into "religion, opera, football, politics, movies, true crime, record collecting and an abundance of good food and wine along with clues and puzzles and detection." (Nevin's co-editor for this collection was the prolific Martin H. Greenberg.)



Many Boucher stories pivot around talented and brilliant amateur sleuths, although the first third of Exeunt consists of nine stories featuring former police Lieutenant Nick Noble, once a rising star in the force until he took the rap for a bad cop. The second part is a series of Sister Ursula stories grouped under the title "Conundrums for the Cloister." Although technically an amateur, Sister Ursula is the daughter of a police chief who'd once planned on entering the field herself until poor health changed her plans. These stories mirror Boucher's own life in two ways—he was a devout Catholic who also struggled with poor health his entire life, ultimately dying of lung cancer at the age of 57. Part Three of Exunt is "Jeux de Meurtre," narrated by both cops and amateurs, and in one case, the murderer.



These are thoroughly enjoyable stories, and it's almost a shame that he spent so much of his time on other projects (in a poll in 1981, Boucher's novel Nine Times Nine was voted in the top ten "best locked room mysteries" of all time). But it is that very legacy of support to the crime fiction community that his namesake annual Bouchercon convention celebrates, and so we'll just have to be content with the body of work we have from someone who managed to pack more into a half-century than most people do with decades more.

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Marsh Madness

After a tough judging process by crime fiction experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the Ngaio Marsh Award committee has revealed the longlist for the 2019 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. The finalists for the 2019 Ngaios (across the Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction categories) will be announced on August 2, with the winners revealed at a special WORD Christchurch event on September 14.

Event founder, Craig Sisterson, noted one particularly interesting title in this year's competition:  "It’s surreal and strangely fitting that in our tenth season of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, and almost forty years after Dame Ngaio’s passing, our judges are considering a story that she began writing herself during the Second World War." He's referring to Money in the Morgue, a Inspector Alleyn mystery set during World War II that was left unfinished at the time of Marsh's death in 1982, which was recently completed by Stella Duffy.

Here's the Best Novel longlist for 2019 (HT to Craig Sisterson):

NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU by Nikki Crutchley (Oak House Press)
CASSIE CLARK: OUTLAW by Brian Falkner (OneTree House)
THIS MORTAL BOY by Fiona Kidman (Penguin)
MONEY IN THE MORGUE by Ngaio Marsh & Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)
THE QUAKER by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)
CALL ME EVIE by JP Pomare (Hachette)
THE STAKES by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin)
MAKE A HARD FIST by Tina Shaw (OneTree House)
THE VANISHING ACT by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan Publishing)
RAIN FALL by Ella West (Allen & Unwin)

            

Mystery Melange

The winners of the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards for LGBT fiction were announced, including Best Lesbian Mystery, which went to A Study in Honor: A Novel, by Claire O’Dell, and Best Gay Mystery, won by Marshall Thornton for Late Fees: A Pinx Video Mystery. For all the winner and finalists, check out the official Lambda website.

The Private Eye Writers of America announced the finalists for this year's Shamus Awards, with winners to be announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon in October:

Best Original Private Eye Paperback

She Talks to Angels by James D. F. Hannah 

No Quarter by John Jantunen

Shark Bait by Paul Kemprecos 

Second Story Man by Charles Salzberg

The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone 

Best First Private Eye Novel

The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco 

Broken Places by Tracy Clark

Last Looks by Howard Michael Gould

What Doesn't Kill You by Aimee Hix 

Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne 

Best Private Eye Short Story

"Fear of the Secular," by Mitch Alderman, AHMM

"Three-Star Sushi," by Barry Lancet, Down & Out

“The Big Creep,” by Elizabeth McKenzie, Santa Cruz Noir

"Game," by Twist Phelan, EQMM

"Chin Yong-Yun Helps a Fool," by S.J. Rozan, EQMM

Best Private Eye Novel

Wrong Light by Matt Coyle 

What You Want to See by Kristen Lepionka

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey 

Baby’s First Felony by John Straley

Cut You Down by Sam Wiebe 

J.E. Irvin has been named First Place winner for "The Strange Disappearance of Rose Stone" in an international competition to claim the 2019 Mystery Writers Whodunit Award, to be presented at the 6th annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 28-30 in Florida. This is the second time in five years that Irvin has taken top honors in the blind-judged competition.

We lost four figures in the crime fiction community in the last few weeks:

Anthony Price, 91, author of the Dr. David Audley spy novels, including Labyrinth Makers (1970), which won the CWA Silver Dagger, and Other Paths to Glory (1974), which won a CWA Gold Dagger (HT);

Also, we mourn the passing of Sandra Seamans, the force behind the My Little Corner blog, which has been indispensible to writers of short crime fiction. Albert Tucher has a remembrance on Do Some Damage;

Paul Bishop reported that W. Glenn Duncan died in Australia after a long struggle with health issues. The former journalilst and pilot wrote six books featuring Rafferty, a tough ex-cop private eye in Dallas, Texas, and won the 1991 Shamus Award for best paperback. Duncan was 78;

And Jutta Motz, Swiss crime fiction author and former president of the International Association of Crime Writers, passed away after a brief bout with cancer. 

Amazon Publishing has joined forces with Capital Crime to sponsor the festival's inaugural awards. The London-based crime and thriller festival, which will take place for the first time later this year, will acknowledge achievements of authors, TV and filmmakers within the crime and thriller community. The shortlists will be announced and voting will open on 1st July, and the winners will be presented at a drinks party on Saturday 28th at the festival.

Debut author Richard Osman will join Ian Rankin, David Baldacci, Denise Mina, and Shari Lapena for this year's Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, as organizers announced the full event schedule. Bloody Scotland "remains an open and welcoming international festival despite all the chaos at Westminster," this year welcoming authors from Spain, France, Iceland, Norway and Ireland as well as the US, Canada, Australia, India, and Mexico.

Ian Rankin is also in the news for an annual visit to Fife College last Friday to award scholarships to creative students. This year’s scholarship was open to students studying a wide range of courses that include elements of creative writing such as Journalism, TV, Radio, Acting and Performance and Higher English. To take part, students had to submit a piece of creative writing and their work was read and judged by Rebus author Rankin, himself.

Simon & Schuster fiction publishing director Jo Dickinson is leaving the firm to become Hodder’s crime and thriller publisher. During her six years in the S&S role, Dickinson has had a string of successes including Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan, Caroline Kepnes’s You, which has become a Netflix hit, number one bestseller Chris Carter, and the award-winning Louise Candlish.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's blog featured a post by award-nominated fiction writer and short-story contributor to EQMM, Kevin Mims, who offered some reflections in homage to Herman Wouk and the decade he helped to define.

Fans of the beloved Golden Age author and creator of the Inspector Roderick Alleyn novels, Ngaio Marsh, should take note of a new companion volume by Bruce Harding in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series (edited by Elizabeth Foxwell). The volume joins other subjects in the series including John Buchan, E. X. Ferrars, Ed McBain/Evan Hunter, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Andrea Camilleri, James Ellroy, Sara Paretsky, and P. D. James.

Apparently, James Bond is still a remarkably good recruiter for the British secret intelligene agency, MI6. 

Edinburgh brewers Innis & Gunn have a limited edition beer bottle for fans of Ian Rankin's Rebus detective series, one that's based on his latest novel, In a House of Lies.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "MXYZPTLK."

In the Q&A roundup, Lesa Holstine chatted with J.A. Kazimer about her upcoming mystery, A Shot of Murder; Criminal Element chatted with Sara Paretsky, who is celebrating the launch of Shell Game, the 19th V.I. Warshawski book, and also John Douglas, a groundbreaking FBI profiler who looks back at the darkest cases in his new book, The Killer Across the Table; author and veteran journalist  R.G. Belsky stopped by Criminal Element to discuss his latest work, Below the Fold, continuing the adventures of news reporter Clare Carlson; and Shots Magazine's Ayo Onatade interviewed Scottish author Mary Paulson-Ellis, whose debut novel The Other Mrs Walker was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year in 2017. 

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Author R&R with Shalini Boland

Shalini Boland is a USA Today bestselling author of psychological thrillers The Secret Mother, The Girl from the Sea, The Best Friend, The Millionaire's Wife, and The Child Next Door. Shalini lives in Dorset, England with her husband, two children, and their cheeky terrier mix. Before kids, she was signed to Universal Music Publishing as a singer/songwriter, but now she spends her days writing suspense thrillers in between school runs and endless baskets of laundry. She is also the author of two bestselling young adult series as well as a children's World War II novel with a time-travel twist.

Boland's domestic thriller novel, The Secret Mother, focuses on Tessa Markham who returns home one evening to find a child in her kitchen. He thinks she's his mother. But, here’s the thing: Tessa doesn't have any children. Not anymore. She doesn't know who the little boy is or how he got there. After contacting the police, Tessa is suspected of taking the mystery child. Her whole life is turned upside down. And then her husband reveals a secret of his own...Tessa isn't sure what to believe or who to trust. Because someone is lying. To find out who, she must first confront her painful past. But is the truth more dangerous than Tessa realizes?

Shalini stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R and discuss researching and writing The Secret Mother:

Writing a book about killer from Barton-On-Sea? No problem! Let me tap a few words into my old friend Google and, hey presto, I can see the beach, the road layouts, the property styles. I can read about the town’s history, its economy, its schools and businesses. Absolutely everything about the place is laid bare for me to pick and choose exactly what elements I need for my story. Job done.

And yet… is searching online really a good enough substitute for actually visiting a place? I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve written books set in locations that I’ve never been to. And, yes, I used the internet to familiarise myself with that setting. I read memoirs and first-hand accounts of the locations I’d chosen. But I’ve also written settings where I’ve visited places in person; and the experience is so much richer. You get a sense of space, of light and smell. You soak up the ambience. You get to see if the locals are friendly or closed off. If the place is well-maintained or neglected. There are all these other elements that come into play when you’re actually in a place rather than reading about it or scrolling through images on a screen.

That’s why I try as far as possible to set my psychological thrillers in my local area, or in places I’ve visited or lived in. I grew up in London, spent a lot of years in Gloucestershire, but now I live in Dorset, a beautiful county on the south coast of England. We have glorious beaches, countryside and forests, pretty villages and bustling towns. I know, I sound like the tourist board now. But I love mixing this gentle, innocent beauty with the darkness of a twisted plot.

In The Secret Mother, my main character Tess lives in London. The area is a little run-down and shabby, but she works in a beautiful Italian garden centre that’s her haven within the busy city. The other part of the novel is set in Cranborne, a village in Dorset that dates to the Middle Ages, back when King John was a regular visitor during his hunting trips to Cranborne Chase.

I spent a few interesting research trips walking around the village and across the fields, soaking in the medieval atmosphere of the place, jotting down observations in my notebook. It made me even more excited to get back home and continue writing. Because visiting a place can also be inspiring, triggering off even more ideas to incorporate into the plot. Plus – bonus points – I get to take the husband and kids with me and combine work with a family day out.

So, I guess my take on internet research versus physically pounding the streets, would be that a Google search is perfectly fine, but if you have the opportunity to visit a place in person, then absolutely do that. It will enrich your writing, give depth to your plot and, even better, you’ll have a day or two away from your screen.

 

You can read more about Shalini Boland and her books via her publisher's website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. The Secret Mother is available from all major book retailers.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN

Shout! Studios and Unique Features have teamed up for a multi-platform distribution of Ambition, the suspense thriller directed by Bob Shaye that will now hit select U.S. theaters in the fall. Ambition stars Katherine Hughes as Jude Hunter, an intensely driven musician preparing for the biggest audition of her life. As a series of deaths surround her, she recognizes the pattern that seems to connect her with the deaths and her ambition. One night, her suspicions are confirmed: she becomes the target of a murderer fueled by the jealousy of her success.

The inspiration for Denzel Washington’s drug-dealing mogul in the 2007 film, American Gangster, has died. Frank Lucas and his wife, Julianna Farrait-Rodriguez (played by Lymari Nadal in the film), were once referred to as the "black Bonnie and Clyde" for their close alliance. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas was the chief purveyor in New York City of a type of heroin called Blue Magic, a concoction which was 10 percent pure compared to the standard 5 percent of the day. His clientele allegedly included celebrities, top business people, and politicians.

Noir City Boston runs this weekend, Friday, June 7 – Sunday, June 9. Sponsored by the Film Noir Foundation, with host Eddie Muller on hand for introduction, the theme is "Film noir of the 1950s," with that decade’s preoccupations – from racial tension to nuclear terror to the price of defying conformity – on full display across the five double features, starting off with Trapped (1949) and The Turning Point (1952).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard), Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale), Sam Riley (Control) and Ben Crompton (Game of Thrones) are to join Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic novel, Rebecca. The actors join Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, and Armie Hammer in the film, which is produced by Working Title for Netflix. Rebecca tells the story of a newly-married young woman who, on arriving at her husband’s imposing family estate on a bleak English coast, finds herself battling the shadow of his dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca, whose legacy continues to haunt the house.

Acorn TV has partnered with Irish broadcaster RTÉ on its latest drama co-production, the period mystery Dead Still. The U.S. SVOD service will launch the six-part series in 2020. Set in 1880s Ireland in the Victorian era heyday of postmortem photography, the period drama follows a renowned memorial photographer as he investigates the murders of his recently deceased subjects

Burden of Truth's second season doesn’t premiere until Sunday on the CW, but the network has already greenlighted a Season 3 of the investigative drama. No plot details for the third session were announced, but production on the eight new episodes for 2020 will begin this summer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Season 2, corporate attorney Joanna Chang (Kristin Kreuk) gets drawn into the shadowy world of hackers, activists and a political movement that won’t take any prisoners.

NBC announced three additional cancellations, including the psychological thriller, The Enemy Within. The program tells the story of Erica Shepherd (Jennifer Carpenter), "a brilliant former CIA operative, now known as one of the most notorious traitors in recent American history serving life in a Supermax prison" and FBI Agent Will Keaton (Morris Chestnut), who must enlist Shepherd to help track down a dangerous and elusive criminal she knows all too well.

Brendan Fraser will co-star with Tom Welling in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune, for the Scandinavian SVOD service Viaplay. The ten-part English-language series is set against a backdrop of international espionage and corporate sabotage in the 21st century’s privately-funded space race.

A casting change has landed Jake Johnson a prime role in the upcoming ABC drama Stumptown, stepping in for Mark Webber, who starred opposite Cobie Smulders in the private-eye drama’s original pilot, as Grey McConnell, Smulders’ character’s best friend. Based on the “Stumptown” graphic novel series, the drama follows Dex Parios (Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police.

Rita Volk has been set for a recurring role on the upcoming second season of AT&T Audience Network’s spy drama, Condor. She joins fellow newcomers Constance Zimmer, Toby Leonard Moore, Rose Rollins, Isidora Goreshter, Eric Johnson, Alexei Bondar, and Jonathan Kells Phillip. In Season 2, in the wake of the death of his Uncle Bob (William Hurt), Joe Turner (Max Irons) is forced to return to the CIA’s tight-knit Virginia community to find the Russian traitor who’s responsible, and face the demons of his past.

CBS will air the entire first season of The Good Fight starting at June 16. The Good Wife spinoff, starring Christine Baranski from creators Robert and Michelle King, had been previously only been available only on the CBS All Access SVOD service. It will mark the time a CBS All Access show has aired on the broadcast network since the Star Trek: Discovery premiere in September 2017.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed DP Lyle M.D., author of many non-fiction books and the Samantha Cody, Dub Walker, Jake Longly and upcoming Cain/Harper thriller series, as well as the Royal Pains media tie-in novels.

Writer's Routine chatted with Mel Sherratt, author of the DS Grace Allendale' series, about moving through genres, letting characters dictate plot, and the Kindle revolution that helped her success. 

Two Crime Writers And A Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh & Luca Veste discussed finishing books, the new work from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the furor over inaccuracies in Naomi Wolf's new book, and they also chatted with special guest Jeffery Deaver about his latest book, The Never Game.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast episode featured the first chapter of What We Found by Kris Bock, read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper.

Writer Types spoke with Susanna Calkins, author of Murder Knocks Twice; Harry Hunsicker about his new Arlo Baines thriller, Texas Sicario; and cozy author Sherry Harris schooled them on why cozies are worthy of respect.

The Spybrary Spy Book podcast featured the fourth in the series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of Fiction and Espionage at the University of Edinburgh, this week discussing Liar's Candle written by August Thomas.

Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction took a look at the "Elements Of A Thriller."

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Jim Wilsky about his novella, Losing Streak (the sixth installment of A Grifter's Song).

The latest episode of Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "Vehicle Searches, Case Law, and Org Charts."

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Quote of the Week

            

FFB: The Yellow Turban

Charlotte Jay was the pen name of Australian mystery author Geraldine Halls (1919-1996). Her marriage to Albert Halls of UNESCO enabled her to travel the world to exotic locations like Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, England, Lebanon, India, Papua New Guinea, and the Trobriand Islands, many of which she used in her books. Jay penned nine standalone crime fiction novels (as well as other works under her married name), and although largely forgotten today, she was in fact the very first winner of the Mystery Writers' Association of America's Edgar Award of the for Best Novel of the Year, Beat Not the Bones, in 1954. Another of her books, The Fugitive Eye, was adapted for television in 1961 as an episode starring Charlton Heston of the also largely-forgotten TV series Alcoa Premiere, hosted by Fred Astaire with music by John Williams.



Jay was something of a late bloomer as a writer, working as a shorthand typist in Australia and England and then as a court stenographer in New Guinea, before turning her hand to novels. Her first was published in 1951, when Jay was in her early 30s. She wrote crime novels until around 1970, when she switched to writing romantic suspense and mainstream novels, for reasons which aren't very clear.



Jay uses a first-person male narrative for The Yellow Turban, something not all that common for women authors when the book was written in 1955. The central character is William Brooke, a vagabond Englishman who is lulled by a high fee (only a third of which is paid in advance) to find and retrieve an old friend, Roy Finlay, from Karachi and bring him back to England. Brooke's instructions include cryptic warnings about "secrecy" and "trouble," which Brooke largely ignores as he checks in at a seedy hotel and starts to work.



When Brooke tries to find Finlay, who has disappeared, he begins to realize his missing friend's job wasn't exactly what Brooke had thought, while every step of his investigation is dogged by a sinister man in a yellow turban. Misgivings and confusion turn to outright terror when he climbs into bed one night and finds a blood-drenched corpse. He ends up on the run from the police, who think he's the murderer, and shadowy men who want to kill him for reasons unknown to Brooke, in a journey that takes him to the Kurat mountains and into the heart of Pakistan.



The 1950s Pakistani settings of The Yellow Turban are particularly relevant to current events of our day, and it's fascinating to catch a glimpse of the country's culture that Jay would surely have witnessed first-hand on her own travels. No doubt, some of the villages and cultures have changed little during the intervening half-century, with insights into corruption, a disintegrating civilization and the relentless misery of just trying to surive from one day to the next. But there are also glimpses of the Pakistani people, of various faiths, political views, classes and backgrounds, that Jay manages to convey through her descriptive writing:

On a kong seat covered by red plastic, a thin, dirty young man, wearing baggy white trousers and a buttoned-up gray coat, lay curled up with his eyes closed and his naked toes twiching like a dreaming dog.



Conversation in Pakistan, I was to learn, was frequently only a means of self-expression. The idea of communication between man and man gets lost somehow.



I suppose you can get used to bribing people. Maybe you get an exaggerated idea in your had that money will corupt anyone, and maybe, after you've lived in the East ong enough, it will. Customs are like diseaases, you can breathe them in from the air, soak them through your skin. 



And still the great crowd merged on, a white boiling mass speckled with black dots like grains of dust blown onto a bowl of foam. The flagellants moved on and a group of drummers approached, heralding a tower made from green and crimson tinsel paper. It stopped directly in front of us, the crowd formed a circle around it and a group of ragged little boys danced forward, each with a knife in his hand.



This landscape was disordered, certainly, but without force or intension, like a disordered room when clothes are left lying around. The objects on it appeared to have some prescribed place to stand or go, some sense of prupose and direction, and had just dropped in their tracks out of lassitude of frustration before they took up their positions.

Ultimately, the plot and setting of The Yellow Turban end up merging age-old themes of man's war with himself and others into the insanity mankind has created with 20th (and 21st) century technological evils. The novel's denoument near a crumbling monastery proves to be a fitting symbol for the crumbling worlds of William Brooke, Roy Finlay, and perhaps even the people of Pakistan.

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