B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 145

Mystery Melange

The International Association of Crime Writers, North America announced this year's Hammett Prize nominees for best crime fiction title of the past year. The finalists include William Boyle, The Lonely Witness; Lisa Unger, Under My Skin; Sam Wiebe, Cut You Down; Lou Berney, November Road; and Robert Olen Butler, Paris in the Dark.

BYT Media announced programming for the New York City edition of Death Becomes Us - A True Crime Festival. The multi-day event is the second edition of the festival, which saw its inaugural program in Washington D.C. in 2018. The program features live podcasts, storytellers, screenings, and author talks, taking place across a variety of venues. It kicks off Tuesday, March 19 with An Evening of Women Who Kill including authors Cara Robertson (The Trial of Lizzie Borden) and Harold Schechter (Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men), with moderator Leah Carroll, author of Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory, and Murder.

The International Thriller Writer's Sixth Annual Online Thriller School is set to begin March 25. In this eight-week program, instructors will teach an aspect of craft though a Facebook Live video, written materials that include further reading and study suggestions, and an entire week of on-line Q&A with the registered students. Authors expected to participate include Steve Berry, Grant Blackwood, F. Paul Wilson, Hank Phillippi Ryan, David Corbett, Gayle Lynds, James Scott Bell, and Kathleen Antrim. Registration is still open for the course, but attendance is limited.

The EuroNoir conference, to be held at Aalborg University in Denmark September 30 to October 2, has put out a call for papers on the top of the production, distribution, and reception of explicitly transnational European crime narratives. The deadline for submissions is April 15, and you can find out more details via this link at the International Crime Fiction blog.

The Winter Issue of Mystery Scene Magazine is out with a cover feature/interview by Oline Cogdill with author Laura Benedict about her latest suspense novel, The Stranger Inside; there's a profile of Daphne du Maurier's short stories, including the story that led to Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds; Michael Mallory has a case to make for Horace McCoy as one of the founding fathers of the hardboiled fiction genre; columnists and reviewers offered up a list of their "Fave Raves," and much more.

Writing for the BBC Online, Nasim Asl took a look at Tartan Noir, the name often given to Scottish crime fiction, trying to discover what makes Aberdeen a criminally good inspiration for writers.

Criminal Element is revisiting every Edgar Award winner for Best Novel with a new posting each Friday up until the Edgar banquet. They kicked things off with the very first winner, 1954's Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay, and will work their way up through the historic list (the Edgar Awards have been around since 1946, but 1954 marked the first time an award was given out for Best Novel).

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Legacy" by Andrée Gendron.

In the Q&A roundup, the Sleuthsayers spoke with retired police officer and crime fiction author Frank Zafiro about his writing, including the River City novels and the Stefan Kopriva series and more; Off the Shelf Books welcomed Kate Rhodes to talk about her latest novel, Ruin Beach, and her Alice Quentin and Ben Kitto series; Hanan Daqqa of the Fairfax County Times interviewed Walter Mosley ahead of his appearance at the Alden Theater there; and Leslie Lindsay chatted with crime writer Cara Hunter about researching and writing her latest psychological thriller, In the Dark.

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Media Murder for Monday

The start of a new week means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Oscars were handed out last night in Los Angeles, and although this was a light year for crime dramas, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Congrats also go to Green Book for Best Picture; Best Director, Alfonso Cuarón for Roma; Best Actress, Olivia Coleman for The Favorite; and Best Actor, Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Last week, the Writers Guild handed out their annual awards for excellence in television and film. On the film side, the crime dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me won Best Adapted Screenplay (screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, based on the book by Lee Israel). On the TV side, The Americans won for Best Drama Series Writing (Peter Ackerman, Hilary Bettis, Joshua Brand, Joel Fields, Sarah Nolen, Stephen Schiff, Justin Weinberger, Joe Weisberg, Tracey Scott Wilson); and Long-Form Adapted Writing went to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (writers: Maggie Cohn, Tom Rob Smith, based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth).

THE BIG SCREEN

A remake of the 1965 crime thriller, Bunny Lake is Missing, is in early development stages via Sony’s Screen Gem label. The original, based on the novel of the same name by Merriam Modell, was directed and produced by Otto Preminger and starred Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, and Keir Dullea. The story follows a mother who comes to pick up her daughter Bunny from school only to find her missing. When the police start investigating, they can’t find any evidence of a child ever living at the home and learn that Bunny was the name of the mother’s imaginary childhood friend. It’s not clear whether the mother is crazy or she is being set up.

Gunpowder & Sky is working with screenwriters Nora Kletter and Grainne Belluomo to adapt Cristin Terrill’s suspense novel Here Lies Daniel Tate, although they’re adding a gender twist, making the film’s protagonist a teen girl rather than a boy. The film’s plot will kick off when 10-year-old Danielle Tate goes missing from an elite California community, only to resurface six years later in Vancouver before being reunited with her family as she tries to recover lost memories.

Gerard McMurray (The First Purge, Burning Sands) has been tapped to write and direct the Michael B. Jordan action thriller, The Silver Bear. The feature adaptation of Derek Haas’s best-selling book series centers on Columbus (Jordan), the most feared and respected hit man in the criminal underworld, who takes on everyone from drug dealers to Czech crime lords.

Two-time Oscar winner, Kevin Costner, and Diane Lane are set to star in Let Him Go, a suspense thriller written and directed by Thomas Bezucha and based on the novel by Larry Watson. Costner and Lane star as retired sheriff George Blackledge and his wife Margaret who leave their Montana ranch after the death of their son to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas, headed by matriarch Blanche Weboy. When they discover the Weboys have no intention of letting the child go, George and Margaret are left with no choice but to fight for their family.

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace) and Matt Smith (The Crown, Dr. Who) have joined the cast of the psychological thriller, Last Night in Soho. The duo joins Anya Taylor-Joy in the project which Edgar Wright co-wrote with Penny Dreadful scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Details about the plot of the film are currently being kept under wraps.

After nearly a decade in development, Todd Field’s adaptation of Boston Teran’s novel, The Creed of Violence, is on the fast track, with Daniel Craig tapped to star in the indie film. Set in 1910 during the Mexican Revolution, The Creed of Violence follows an assassin named Rawbone (Craig) and a young government agent named John Lourdes as they travel from Texas to Mexico to stop a smuggling ring.

The first trailer dropped for Dragged Across Concrete, starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as two police detectives suspended after a video of their strong arm tactics is leaked to the media. With little money and no options, the embittered cops descend into the criminal underworld and find more than they wanted waiting in the shadows. The cast also includes Tory Kittles, Michael Jai White, Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden, Fred Melamed, Thomas Kretschmann and Don Johnson.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

UK production company Ugly Duckling Films is developing the crime series We Are Your Children based on the 1970s San Francisco “Doodler” serial killer. The murderer, who targeted San Fran’s gay community, became known as the “Doodler” from the elaborate drawings of his victims that he’d leave behind at the scenes of his crimes. Two of his victims survived and identified a man but refused to testify in court, and the man was never charged.

Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer, co-creators of hit podcast Criminal, are turning the true crime audio program into a scripted series for AMC. Criminal tells stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.

Colin Farrell is to star in the BBC’s adaptation of The North Water, written and directed by Andrew Haigh. Farrell plays Henry Drax in the drama, a harpooner and brutish killer who will set sail on a whaling expedition to the Arctic with Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as the ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath.

Malik Yoba, star of Dick Wolf’s 1990s series New York Undercover, has been tapped to star in the contemporary reboot of the cop drama for ABC. Yoba will reprise his role as J.C. Williams from the original series, who is now overseeing the unit and the next generation of detectives.

Filming has begun on the new Australian contemporary mystery series, My Life Is Murder, starring iconic actress Lucy Lawless. Lawless stars as Alexa Crowe, a charismatic and complex homicide detective whose unique skills and insights into the darker quirks of human nature allow her to provoke, comfort, and push the right buttons as she unravels the truth behind the most baffling of crimes.

Nathaniel Arcand (Cold Pursuit) has been cast opposite Julian McMahon, Alana de la Garza, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Roxy Sternberg and Kellan Lutz in FBI: Most Wanted, the spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. The spinoff has a series commitment, making an episodic pickup for next season likely. Arcand will play Agent Clinton Skye, a marksman with a law degree.

Ramon Rodriguez (Iron Fist) is set as a lead opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Written by Daniel Barnz, who also directs, Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as “a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved.”

The Office alum Rainn Wilson is set to co-star opposite Sasha Lane in Utopia, Amazon’s adaptation of the British series written by Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn. Utopia follows a group of young adults who meet online and are mercilessly hunted by a shadowy deep state organization after they come into possession of a cult underground graphic novel.

Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse) is set as a lead opposite Kyle Gallner in CBS All Access’s straight-to-series true-crime drama, Interrogation. The project is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man (Gallner) was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Since the episodes are made to be watched in any order, the audience will jump back and forth in time, witnessing this man’s story unfold in multiple timelines. Smit-McPhee will play a troubled and homeless teen who meets Gallner’s character at a drug-rehabilitation center, where they became quick friends.

Gabriel Ebert and Rarmian Newton are set as series regulars and Glynn Turman (How To Get Away With Murder) will recur on the upcoming third season of AT&T Audience Network’s critically praised drama series, Mr. Mercedes, based on the Stephen King novels. Ebert will play Morris Bellamy, a failed writer and volatile and charismatic wolf in sheep’s clothing. Newton plays Peter Saubers, whose picturesque Midwestern life was derailed when his father was disabled during the Mr. Mercedes massacre. Turman recurs as Bernard Raines, the no-nonsense judge presiding over Lou Linklatter’s murder trial.

Alicia Witt has landed a recurring role on the upcoming seventh and final season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, playing Zelda, a professional fundraiser for various high-end non-profit organizations. The series follows the inmates of Litchfield Minimum Security Prison, with Season 6 seeing many of the main cast move to the Maximum Security Prison mentioned frequently in the series.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

There is a new podcast by the Granite Noir Literature Festival that will include interviews with previous guests as well as information about forthcoming events. In the first episode, festival ambassador Stuart MacBride chats to Granite Noir’s Lesley Anne Rose about his motivations and books, and what we can look forward to at Granite Noir this year.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book podcast focused on Detective Rick Jackson, the “king of cold cases.”

Kings River Life magazine's Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel, Murder Gone Missing, by Lida Sideris, read by actor Casey Ballard.

On the latest CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction, host DP Lyle took a look at “Alice in Wonderland” syndrome.

On Writer’s Detective Bureau, Det. Adam Richardson answered questions about virtual private networks (VPNs), his personal story, and how police academies have changed.

20th Century Geek podcast host, Scott Weatherly, chatted with Caroline Crampton of Shedunnit podcast fame about the period between 1920 and 1940, regarded as the golden age of detective fiction.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover featured Steve Barry, discussing his latest international Cotton Malone thriller that follows a deadly race for the Vatican’s oldest secret.

On this episode of the Spybrary Spy Podcast, John Koenig sent in a brush pass review of two spy novels written in the early 80s, Chess Player and Button Zone. (A brush pass is a first impression review sent in by Spybrary listeners with their first impressions of a spy book, spy movie or spy tv show soon after finishing it.)

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FFB: Death Watch

Author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is a British writer born in 1948 in the Shepherd's Bush area of London. While studying English, history and philosophy at the University College of London in 1972, she wrote her first novel which won the UK’s Young Writers Award. She toiled away in the business world as her day job, but continued writing on the side which finally paid off in 1979 with what has become her best-selling series about the Morland Dynasty. She’s written over 60 novels in three different genres since then.



She turned to crime fiction in 1991 with Orchestrated Death, the first in her series featuring Detective Inspector Bill Slider, which has grown into 21 novels thus far. Slider is middle-class, middle-aged and, according to his partner Jim Atherton, menopausal, or as reviewer Bill Ott said, “Slider is a beleaguered Everyman, immersed in the dailiness of life.” Atherton, on the other hand, is out of place in the Met because he's a gourmand, fancy dresser and womanizer. The give-and-take between the two men is one of the elements that anchors the series.



On the subject of how she came up with the idea for Slider, the author says

"When I originally embarked on ORCHESTRATED DEATH, the first of the Bill Slider books...I had no thought then of having it published. With no preconceived notions of how to write a detective novel, I started with a corpse; and, in order not to make it too easy, I made it a totally naked corpse in a completely empty flat – a clue-free zone! I didn’t have to invent a detective - Bill Slider walked into my head the first day, complete in every respect. Don’t ask me where he came from: he’s not like anyone I know, at least not consciously; but from the first moment I knew everything about him – how he looked, where he lived, where he’d been to school, what he liked and disliked. So Bill and I started investigating our first case. I had no more idea than he did who the corpse was, let alone who had murdered her or why, so we had to work it out as we went along –  not the recommended method for writing a mystery..."

But Harrod-Eagles was apparently a quick-study, thanks to a lot of research spending time with police detectives, reading police in-house magazines, doing legal and forensic studies, as well as reading newspaper reports of real crimes. The result has been a series worthy enough that she's been likened to John Harvey and Ian Rankin.



The second book in the series, Death Watch from 1992, follows Slider and Atherton when they respond to an arson at the Master Baker Motor Lodge and that led to the death of a loudmouthed lothario salesman, Dick Neal, who leaves behind a bitter wife and a bevy of mistresses. Despite the fact that the victim had ligature marks around his neck and trusses on his genitals, Slider's superiors are hoping it’s just a suicide, due to budget constraints—but then Slider uncovers a possible link between the death and what is happening to the members of the “Red Watch” who manned the Shaftesbury Street Fire Station in the 1970’s.



As Slider digs deeper into the case, he first loathes then envies the dead man his adulterous life, finding parallels between the victim and Slider’s own extramarital affair with a concert violinist. When Slider notes the victim “Seems to me to have been a a sad, pathetic creature,” it's as much an indictment of his own situation as it is Neal’s. But lest one get the impression that Harrod-Eagles’ books are more in the noir vein, she also peppers her writing with wit, a bevy of puns and intelligent dialogue, as well as effective pacing and clever plot twists.

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Mystery Melange

The Los Angeles Times’ annual Book Award finalists were announced, including those in the Mystery/Thriller category:

Megan Abbott, Give Me Your Hand
Kent Anderson, Green Sun
Lou Berney, November Road: A Novel
Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, The Serial Killer: A Novel
Leila Slimani, The Perfect Nanny: A Novel

Winners will be handed out at the LAT Festival of Books on April 12 at the University of Southern California, and tickets for the event go on sale March 7.

The Mystery Writers of America announced the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award will be given at Mystery Writers of America’s 73rd Annual Edgar Awards in New York City on April 25, 2019, the day after what would have been Sue’s 79th birthday. Nominees for the award were chosen by the 2019 Best Novel and Best Paperback Original Edgar Award judges from the books submitted to them throughout the year:

Lisa Black, Perish
Sara Paretsky, Shell Game
Victoria Thompson, City of Secrets
Charles Todd, A Forgotten Place
Jacqueline Winspear, To Die But Once

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is honoring Lisa Gardner with their CrimeMaster Award for Distinguished Achievement. Fellow author and previous CrimeMaster Award winner, Tess Gerritsen, will introduce Gardner at the ceremony Friday, May 1 at 6:00 p.m. at USM’s Glickman Library in Portland. The event is part of the kickoff to the 2019 Maine Crime Wave conference (HT to Shelf Awareness). As part of the conference, readers and writers can participate the 2019 CrimeFlash Contest where you’re invited to finish Gardner’s opening line (written exclusively for this contest) with your own flash fiction of no more than 500 words.

BookExpo announced the lineup for its Adult Book & Author Breakfast series, which this year will include crime author Karin Slaughter discussing her upcoming thriller, The Last Widow. The annual conference will take place May 29-31, 2019, at the Javits Center in New York City.

A new biennial festival in Tasmania focused on crime fiction has announced the first guests for its inaugural program. Taking place in Cygnet and locations around Tasmania’s Huon Valley over Halloween in 2019, the inaugural Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival will feature writing workshops and masterclasses, panel sessions, a NaNoWriMo program, a murder mystery dinner, a 1920s-themed dress up dinner with jazz and spoken word poetry, and a day-long “hall of writers.” Headlining authors include Tara Moss, Kerry Greenwood, Sulari Gentill, Meg Keneally, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Jack Heath, and Joanna Baker.

The Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts in the UK is hosting Crime in the North East this weekend, a festival which celebrates murder, mayhem and mystery in the region. Scottish crime author Val McDermid kicks off the event Saturday in a Q&A with festival curator Dr Stacy Gillis.

Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime announced a new collection of the classic cult character Ms. Tree, said to be inspired by Velda, the assistant to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and often hinted to be the daughter of Dragnet’s Joe Friday. The concept behind the character is that she’s a widow carrying on her dead husband’s private detective business, but is even more capable and more deadly than he ever was. The new collection will be written by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty and published later this year.

An article in The Atlantic profiled a scientist who specializes in “book DNA”: specifically the animal materials used in old parchment, book covers, and even the beeswax used in seals is rich with data about the past, including the flowers that grew in that region year to year.

The Telegraph had an article about crime writers through the years (starting with Ian Fleming) who have appeared on the British radio program Desert Island Discs where celebrities riff on the theme of what they'd want to have on a desert island in music and books. It's a subscription-only piece, alas, but if you’re a member, check it out. The article mentioned the latest “victim” of the show, crime author Ann Cleeves, and you can hear her choices via this link.

The latest edition of Yellow Mama is available online for reading here. It's the Valentine’s Day issue, with a little bit of everything: romantic love; romantic hate; parental obsession; love of animals; revenge served both steaming-hot, and ice-cold, in new stories and poems.

Switchblade #8 is available for purchase online with fourteen new stories, including some from seven Switchblade veterans plus many more newcomers, plus the poetry of Doug Knott. The ’zine promises to offer up “no-luck tales from the dark corners of some of the most cutting edge criminal minds.”

Laura Benedict, the Edgar- and ITW Thriller Award- nominated author of seven novels of suspense, applied the Page 69 Test to her newly released title,The Stranger Inside.

Many “cozy” crime authors include recipes in their books, and James Patterson has jumped on that bandwagon with his latest thriller, although you can guess why he took this tactic from the title of the book, Chef. Woman's World chatted with Patterson and included links to the recipes.

A woman recently returned an overdue library book - hardly newsworthy except that it was 72 years overdue. Mora Gregg, now 75 and a retired librarian herself, checked out the children’s book The Postman by Charlotte Kuh during a library visit with her mother. Instead of a fine, however, Gregg has received interview requests and internet glory.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Kim Wall Speaks" by Sally Weston Ziph.

In the Q&A roundup, Declan Burke interviewed Dublin author Jo Spain for the Irish Times, talking about her bestsellers and hit TV series, Taken Down; Rolling Stone magazine snared Don Winslow to talk about “about writing a trilogy, the War on Drugs and what’s it like to delve so deeply into the narco world for so long”; the Mystery People chatted with Ian Rankin about his latest novel featuring John Rebus, In a House of Lies, which has the now retired inspector drawn into an old missing persons case; and Criminal Element welcomed author Charles Finch and his longtime editor, Charles Spicer, as the pair discussed Finch’s newest Charles Lenox mystery, The Vanishing Man, as well as Shakespearean London, England’s class system, and the what-ifs of time travel.

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Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a new week and a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Cold Case Hammarskjöld, the documentary from journalist Mads Brügger that delves into the investigation surrounding the unsolved death of UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival where it had its world premiere.

Paramount Pictures is developing Kyle Starks’ graphic novel Kill Them All and has set the action project up with Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse producers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. The story, first published in 2015, centers on a betrayed murderess seeking revenge who partners with a hard-drinking former cop who wants his job back. They have to fight their way through fifteen floors of criminals, assassins, drug lords, murderers, and accountants in a Miami high-rise.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to Collin Schiffli’s thriller All Creatures Here Below, which stars Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan, Bird Box’s David Dastmalchian, and Once Upon a Time’s Jennifer Morrison. The film is having its international premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month and is slated for a spring release. The film centers on Gensan (Dastmalchian) and Ruby (Gillan) who struggle to thrive in the face of abject poverty. When Gensan loses his job and gambles his last pay check, he sets in motion a series of events with dire consequences.

Oscar winners Mira Sorvino and Richard Dreyfuss are set to star in Reckoning, the Dark Castle Entertainment crime thriller written and directed by Adam Lipsius. The indie centers on Ben Myers (Dreyfuss), a temperamental, take-no-prisoners tough guy with a terrifying dark side who, despite suffering from leukemia while nursing his dementia-ridden wife, decides to seek revenge on the thieves who have destroyed his life. Sorvino will play Police Detective Nick Wallace, Ben’s semi-estranged daughter who rebukes his attempts to buy her affections.

Rising Asian actor Mike Angelo has joined veteran action director Renny Harlin’s heist pic The Misfits. Pierce Brosnan stars along with Hermione Corfield and Jamie Chung in a tale centered on renowned criminal Richard Pace (Brosnan) who finds himself caught up in an elaborate gold heist that promises to have far reaching implications on his life and the lives of countless others

Sebastian Stan will replace Chris Evans in The Devil All The Time, the Antonio Campos-directed drama, after Evans dropped out over a problem with scheduling. The Devil All The Time is an adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 mid-western gothic novel set in the forgotten backwoods of a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio, where a storm of faith, violence and redemption brews.

Rebecca Ferguson, who joined the Mission: Impossible franchise as the enigmatic agent Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015, has confirmed she will return for the next installment. Director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise are both expected to be on board for two more Mission: Impossible movies, shooting back-to-back for release in 2021 and 2022.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have partnered with Hulu to adapt Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City, which tells the true story of two men, an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It follows Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to make his mark on the world and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical “Murder Castle” on fair grounds – a palace built to seduce, torture and mutilate young women.

New details about the Breaking Bad movie indicate the feature-length film will be a sequel revolving around Aaron Paul, who will reprise his Emmy-winning role as Jesse Pinkman. Sources also confirm Netflix will have first-run rights to the top-secret project, which will then air on AMC. The movie will be written by original series creator Vince Gilligan and follows the escape of a kidnapped man (Paul’s Jesse) and his quest for freedom. Speaking on The Dan Patrick Show, Bryan Cranston (who starred as Walter White) said it was unclear if Walter White would appear in the sequel but said he would “absolutely” appear in the movie if Gilligan were to ask him.

Acorn TV has signed up two spin-offs of Australian period drama, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The Modern Murder Mysteries series moves the setting to the 1960s and follows Phryne Fisher's niece (Geraldine Hakewill), who sets out to become a world-class private detective in her own right with the guidance of The Adventuresses’ Club, a group of exceptional women of which her celebrated aunt was a member. The feature film, Miss Fisher and The Crypt of Tears, continues the story of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which aired for three seasons between 2012 and 2015, and starred Essie Davis, who will return along with series regulars Nathan Page as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Prudence, and Ashleigh Cummings as her loyal assistant and maid Dorothy ‘Dot’ Collins.

NBCUniversal International Networks has acquired the gritty crime drama The Murders across multiple European markets as well as for Africa. The eight-part series follows a determined but fallible rookie homicide detective (Jessica Lucas) in Vancouver. After a fatal error on the job which costs the life of a fellow officer, she is driven to rectify her mistake and measure up to her late father, a highly decorated detective killed in the line of duty, searching for redemption in her investigations.

USA Network has given the green light to Psych: The Movie 2, a follow-up to its successful Psych: The Movie, starring original cast members James Roday, Dulé Hill, Maggie Lawson, Kirsten Nelson, Corbin Bernsen, and Tim Omundson. The movie picks up with Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter (Omundson) ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn (Roday) and Gus (Hill) return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural.

UK broadcaster Alibi, which is operated by Discovery and BBC-backed UKTV, is creating its first original scripted program, a crime drama described as “Happy Valley-meets-Silent Witness.” Traces is a six-part series based on an original idea from crime writer Val McDermid, whose Hill/Jordan books were turned into the hit crime drama Wire in the Blood. It’s set in Scotland and explores the world of SIFA, the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science, with a focus on Emma Hedges, Prof. Sarah Gordon, and Prof. Kathy Torrance – who will use the rigors of forensics to uncover the truth about an unsolved murder case.

Avengers: Endgame directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, are creating a “groundbreaking, action-packed, character-driven spy series” for Amazon Studios. The show will be built around an international series that will then be followed by multiple connected local-language series starting with India and Italy. You can read even more about it via this Q&A over at The Wrap.

Amazon has confirmed the cast for The Hunt, a vengeance-driven Nazi hunting series, executive produced by Oscar-winning Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele. Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton have closed deals to star in the series, along with Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Greg Austin, and Dylan Baker. The Hunt follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City, known as The Hunters. After discovering hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S., the eclectic team of Hunters will set out on a bloody quest to bring the Nazis to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans.

Hulu has picked up the femme fatale thriller Reprisal, from Handmaid’s Tale exec producer Warren Littlefield and Josh Corbin (StartUp). The series centers on a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a "bombastic gang of gearheads." The drama stars Abigail Spencer in the lead role alongside Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, and Gilbert Owuor.

Emmy winner Edie Falco is set to star in the CBS drama pilot, Tommy, from the Bull team of co-creator Paul Attanasio and Amblin TV. Falco will play the titular character, Abigail “Tommy” Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who’s just been hired as the first female Chief of Police for the LAPD.

Law & Order alum Alana de la Garza and Roxy Sternberg have been tapped to star opposite Julian McMahon and Keisha Castle-Hughes in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. De la Garza will play Assistant Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castile, and Sternberg will play FBI Agent Sheryll Barnes, an ex-NYPD detective with "elevated street smarts."

The CW has found its Nancy Drew. The network cast newcomer Kennedy McMann to play the title role in its pilot, based on the beloved YA novels. The series will follow Nancy whose college plans and sense of self have been derailed by a recent family tragedy – but when she ends up a suspect in a murder, it rekindles her love for detective work, even though the clues lead her to believe a long-dead local girl may be the killer. Charmed's Leah Lewis co-stars as George, a tough, tattooed girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who’s forced to team up with Nancy to track the culprit and clear their names.

Starz has opted not to renew Counterpart, the J.K. Simmons-starring sci-fi espionage thriller, for a third season. In the series, Simmons plays Howard Silk, a lowly cog in a Berlin-based bureaucratic UN spy agency who discovers his organization safeguards a crossing into a parallel dimension. He’s thrust into a shadow world in which the only man he can trust is his near-identical counterpart from this parallel world.

Ken Marino is the latest of the Veronica Mars cast to confirm his return for the Kristen Bell-led series’ upcoming eight-episode revival on Hulu. Marino will reprise his role as sleuth Vinnie Van Lowe.

Investigation Discovery has ordered a six-part series following a detective with a photographic memory titled Deadly Recall. It features Detective Pat Postiglione, who remembers every single detail of the crimes that he’s tasked to solve.

Will Packer is producing a documentary series for Investigation Discovery about the murder of 29 African American children in Atlanta. The three-part special will air on the cable network on March 23.

Amazon announced that the John Krasinski-fronted Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is coming back for a third season. The series is a small-screen reinvention with a modern sensibility of the iconic Tom Clancy hero, starring Krasinski as Jack Ryan, an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time.

The first trailer was released for Season 2 of the BBC America drama, Killing Eve, which also will be simulcast on AMC this year. The series revolves around Eve (Sandra Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer).

If you're trying to keep score about how your favorite shows stand in the renewal wars or what new favorites might be forthcoming, this updating list from The Wrap may help.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

CBS Sunday Morning profiled crime author Don Winslow about his writing career and latest novel, The Border.

The featured guest authors on this week’s Speaking of Mysteries were Charles Todd (the writing team of Charles and Caroline Todd), talking about The Black Ascot, the 21st installment in their series featuring WWI veteran, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham chatted about adaptations coming of Karin Slaughter’a and Bill Clinton’s books, and the bizarre story about Dan Mallory, a.k.a. AJ Finn.

Best sellers Steph Post, Gregg Hurwitz, and debut author SA Cosby stopped by Writer Types.

The third episode of Michael Connelly’s new true crime podcast, Murder Book, focused on Pierre Romain, a member of the 1960s gang, Rollin’, who beat a murder charge and later became a cop, only to be arrested thirty years later for the murder.

The topics on this week’s Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, were “Therapist Confidentiality, Gladys R. Questionnaires, and Police vs. Medical Examiners.”

The Nightlife podcast welcomed author and Agatha Christie fan Stuart Turton, whose novel The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle aims to shake up the mystery genre.

The Writer’s Routine podcast featured Fiona Barton, journalist turned psychological thriller author, talking about her new book, The Suspect.

The latest guest on Meet the Thriller Author was William L. Myers, Jr. who chatted about his Philadelphia Legal Series.

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: The Spoilt Kill

Mary Theresa Coolican Kelly was born in London in 1927, but ended up a Scotland gal, received an M.A. degree from University of Edinburgh in 1951, married Dennis Charles Kelly in 1950, and became a teacher. Her first mystery series featured Inspector Brett Nightingale of Scotland, starting with A Cold Coming in 1956. But after only three entries in that series, she switched to a series with freelance detective, Hedley Nicholson, as protagonist, with the first installment, The Spoilt Kill, earning the Gold Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers Association in 1961. She's also a member of the Detection Club and has served as secretary.



Apparently, starting on a new literary track worked well for her, because after only two books in the Hedley Nicholson series, she switched to standalone novels, the first three (beginning with March to the Gallows) all nominated for the Gold Dagger in 1964, 1966 and 1969. She also tried her hand at a short story in 1971, "Judgment," chosen for inclusion in 1984's anthology The Best Crime Stories published by Hamlyn, putting in her the same company as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Unfortunately, in 1976 she stopped writing for good.



In The Spoilt Kill, P.I. Nicholson is hired to discover who is copying new pottery designs from the Shentall Pottery Company of Stoke-on-Trent and selling them to foreign competitors. It seems fairly straightforward until a body is found in a closed "kill" (local dialect for "kiln") filled with liquid clay. Nicholson soon finds himself falling for the chief suspect in both crimes, talented designer Corina Wakefield, the only employee not native to the area—who also has a drinking problem and a failed marriage that turns out to be relevant to the case.



Kelly structures the plot to start off with the discovery of the body in the first section ("What Happened"), just one chapter, in essence a prologue, then doubles back to a prequel of events ("What Happened Before") in the middle section, before returning to the denouement in part three's "What Happened After." The author does a nice job of immersing the reader into the atmospheric setting of the industrial area in the Midlands and of the pottery world, with passages such as the following:

"...A row of bottle kilns blocking the gap between blackened brick buildings, and beyond them a factory chimney and the peak of a slag heap, wraiths even in the middle distance. There was no far distance, only a grey blankness of cleaned smoke mixed with the drizzle that seeped from low-lying clouds."

Kelly had a foot in the very end of the Golden Age of detective fiction, and was a somewhat rare example of a female British writer penning a professional male private eye. As such, Spoilt Kill has the feel of a hybrid cozy/traditional mystery blended with the P.I. form. Some may quibble that Kelly doesn't quite nail the male first-person POV all the time, and the ending a tad telescoped, but the characters are well drawn and engaging, and the true mystery Kelly portrays is the psychological puzzle underlying human relationships.

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Mystery Melange, Valentine's Edition

Murder Mystery Texas is holding its upcoming gala in Dallas, TX on February 16, 2019. Titled St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the event is described as a "360 degree immersive theatrical experience, designed especially for amateur sleuths with a twisted sense of humor." The themed gala consists of an evening of delicious cuisine, enlivened with a despicable crime enacted by professional stage, TV, and film actors. The company said that it is up to guests to figure out who carried out the grisly murders.

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts, according to Raymond Chandler and also Matthew Coleman Turbeville, writing for Crime Reads, who offers up some tips on "How To Use Crime Fiction to Recover from Heartbreak."

Barbour Publishing is launching a new fiction series titled True Colors, which will explore true, riveting stories of American criminal activity layered in historical romantic suspense. This six-book series will kick off in March 2019 with the release of The White City by debut author Grace Hitchcock, involving disappearances during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (and based on crimes of infamous serial killer H. H. Holmes).

It's not too late to celebrate your Valentine's Day with some Valentine's themed mysteries, courtesy of this list from Janet Rudolph over at Mystery Fanfare.

The Mystery Lovers' Kitchen had some yummy Valentine's Day treats for mystery fans, including this Happy Valentine's Cake from Krista Davis and Pretty in Pink Coffeehouse Cookies via Cleo Coyle.

The Brandeis National Committee, Tucson Chapter, is presenting its 23rd annual Book & Author event on February 27 and 28 with four acclaimed authors: internationally best-selling mystery writer Elizabeth George, author of the Inspector Lynley series; Reed Farrel Coleman, called the "noir poet laureate" by the Huffington Post; Lauren Grossman, writing her third mystery featuring a globe-trotting author-turned-sleuth; and trailblazing television sitcom writer Susan Silver, author of a candid Hollywood memoir.

On February 22, 2019, mystery author Laurie R. King and journalist Wallace Baine will be featured in conversation during an evening of food, drinks, and music at the Food Lounge in Santa Cruz, CA to raise money for the Young Writers Program. The writers initiative began in 2012 and has worked steadily to support students in their writing with projects that culminate in a publication of student work or a public reading.

Belfast’s NOIRELAND crime fiction festival returns March 8-10, with a line-up of international and domestic writers that includes Belinda Bauer, Stuart Neville, Ann Cleeves, Adrian McKinty, Eoin McNamee, Andrea Carter, Anthony Horowitz, Olivia Kiernan, Stuart MacBride, Denise Mina, Jo Spain, William Ryan, Steve Cavanagh, and many more. A new addition to NOIRELAND this year is Jack-A-Noir-Y, billed as a "bedtime story for grown-ups," in which Irish actor Adrian Dunbar will be reading an exclusive except from A Book of Bones, the forthcoming new novel from best-selling author John Connolly. (HT to Declan Burke via Crime Always Pays)

The Leonardslee Crime Festival in the UK on March 2-3 still has tickets for some of its events, although they are selling out quickly (including the Killer Women Murder Mystery tea). The weekend-long affair, created by the Book Lovers’ Supper Club, combines the exceptional food of Leonardslee’s award-winning chefs with the talents of local crime writers. Authors scheduled to participate include Erin Kelly, Dorothy Koomson, Graham Bartlett, Simon Brett, Debbie Howells and Julie Corbin.

The Mystery Writers of America's annual Edgar Awards Symposium is now open for registration. It's to be held in conjunction with the awards ceremony and is scheduled for Wednesday, April 24, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. The day-long event will feature panels on topics like "Suspicion: The Shady Characters of Crime Fiction," with an all-star author lineup of Meg Gardiner, Mike Lawson, Sujata Massey, Alex Segura, Lisa Unger, Paul Doiron, and many more.

Hat tip to The Rap Sheet for a bit of sad news this week: William E. Butterworth III—better known as military thriller writer "W.E.B. Griffin"—has died at age 89, following a lengthy battle with cancer. The author's bibliography includes more than 250 books published under more than a dozen pseudonyms, all of which have made The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and other best-seller lists. More than fifty million of the books are in print in more than ten languages, including Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian.

Amazon Crossing, the translation imprint of Amazon Publishing, has announced its purchase of The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin by Jan Stocklassa. The work is translated by Tara F. Chace and is scheduled for release on October 1. Ten years after Larsson’s 2004 death at age 50, Stocklassa, a journalist, gained exclusive access to Larsson’s private archive, uncovering an unknown project by the late author investigating the unsolved 1986 assassination of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. The author also executive-produced a documentary on Larsson’s research into extreme right-wing groups, which was was directed by Henrik Georgsson and premiered at Sundance last month.

A landmark mystery fiction collection owned by editor and Mysterious Bookshop owner Otto Penzler will be offered by Heritage Auctions. The initial offering includes 231 lots, including rare volumes such as the 1845 first printing of "Tales" by Edgar Allan Poe and James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, a coveted 1934 first edition association copy, inscribed by the author. Other highlights include Penzler's 1929 first edition copy of Hammett's Red Harvest, which may sell for at least $60,000, and a first edition of The Big Sleep, signed by Chandler himself, may sell for more than $30,000. The entire collection on offer March 6 is now open for preview and bidding.

The Winter 2018/2019 issue of Mystery Readers Journal, with the theme "Mystery in the American South," is now available as a PDF and and soon-to-be hardcopy. Editor Janet Rudolph said they had so many articles, reviews, and author essays, the themed issue had to be split into two, and the second volume, Mystery in the American South II, will be available later this year. Online articles from the first edition include "Making Peace with the 'Southern Writer' Label" by Donna Andrews; "Over the River and Through the Woods" by J.T. Ellison; and "On a Sunny Sea Island" by Carolyn Hart.

The latest edition of Occult Detective is out, with new tales by Tim Waggoner, Brandon Barrows, Cliff Biggers, Cody Shroeder, Megan Taylor, Loren Rhodes and many more including new book reviews. (HT to Sandra Seamans)

A new book, A Lie Too Big to Fail, alleges that the CIA may have used a contractor who inspired Mission: Impossible to kill RFK. The book's author, Lisa Pease, spent 25 years researching her book that posits Howard Hughes aide Robert Maheu was such a colorful character, the television show Mission: Impossible was based on him and his private investigative agency—and the CIA tasked him with jobs it wanted to steer clear of, including the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Writing for Mystery Tribune, Nick Kolakowski made the case for why "Real Serial Killers Are Dumber Than Their Fictional Equivalents."

Laura Benedict, the Edgar- and Thriller-nominated author of The Stranger Inside, profiled "The Best Unreliable Narrators in Suspense Novels" for Novel Suspects.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Tomcat" by Ben Szakovits.

In the Q&A roundup, the Sacramento Bee snagged Greg Hurwitz to talk about his writing and his quirky hero, the Nowhere Man; the Mystery People welcomed David Swinson to chat about, Trigger, the final installment of David Swinson’s trilogy featuring Frank Marr, a private detective who is also a drug addict.

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Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and a new update of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out their annual BAFTA awards yesterday. Crime drama winners include Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director of Producer, which was won by the psychological thriller Beast for Michael Pearce (Writer/Director) and Lauren Dark (Producer); and Best Adapted Screenplay went to BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott).

THE BIG SCREEN

Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has been cast in Julius Berg’s ’90s thriller, The Owners, based on the comic book from Hermann Huppen and Yves H. The story is set in rural England in the early 1990s and follows Nathan and Terry, who are tracked down by an out-of-town sociopath names Gaz and forced to rob an elderly doctor and his wife.

Ezra Miller (Justice League and Fantastic Beasts) is attached to star in thriller The Mourner, based on the Japanese novel by Arata Tendo, with Casper Kiriya (Last Knights) set to direct from a script by Robin Shushan. The Mourner follows a jaded and embittered homicide detective on the trail of murderous sex traffickers, who discovers new spiritual meaning in her life when she comes across a mystical young man (Miller) whose calling in life is to mourn the dead who have no one else to mourn them.

Lily Collins will join Simon Pegg to star in the thriller Inheritance, taking over the role that Kate Mara was originally set to play. From a script by Matthew Kennedy, Inheritance explores what happens when the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.

Anne Heche and Jason Patric are joining Thomas Jane in the cast for the upcoming action-thriller, Hour Of Lead, from writer-director Peter Facinelli (Breaking & Entering). The story charts the fallout after a ten-year-old girl goes missing from an RV park. The girl’s father (Jane) and mother (Heche) take justice into their own hands, stopping at nothing to track their daughter down, but as they fall deeper into the search, a tragic revelation is uncovered, deepening the mystery of the girl’s disappearance.

Bella Thorne is set to star in writer-director Joshua Caldwell’s crime feature Southland, about two young lovers who rob their way across the southland, posting their exploits to social media and gaining fame and followers as a result. Obsessed with their rising number of followers, they embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases and murder.

Ruby Rose is attached to star in the action-thriller Doorman for director Ryuhei Kitamura. The film tells the story of an officer in the Marines who becomes traumatized while serving her country and returns home looking for an opportunity to heal. She seeks refuge as a doorman at a labyrinthine, historic, New York apartment building but discovers that mercenaries are intent on destroying everything in their way to retrieve precious art hidden in the building walls.

Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey's next project is Gunpowder Milkshake, which Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado will direct for Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Headey joins Karen Gillan in the high-concept action thriller with a rich mythology that revolves around a multi-generational ensemble cast.

Paramount has announced that Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse will hit theaters on Sept. 18, 2020. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as John Kelly, one of the recurring characters in the Jack Ryan universe who is a former NAVY Seal turned CIA ops guy. The role was played in previous adaptations by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears.

Warner Brothers released the first trailer for the Shaft reboot directed by Tim Story and written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree reprise their roles as the slick detective John Shaft to usher in the next generation, Shaft’s son, as played by Jesse T. Usher.

A trailer dropped for writer-director Rohit Karn Batra’s crime thriller, Line Of Descent, starring Brendan Fraser, Abhay Deol, Ronit Roy, Neeraj Kabi, Prem Chopra and Max Beesley. The film follows an established Indian mafia family after the death of their patriarch.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie and Anthony Peckham have boarded The President Is Missing, the drama series adaptation of the novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The story centers on a powerless and politically aimless who Vice President unexpectedly becomes President and walks right into a secret world-threatening crisis, both inside and outside the White House.

Netflix has placed a series order for an eight-episode adaptation of crime author Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her. Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter will direct the series, with writer Charlotte Stoudt (Homeland and House of Cards) penning the scripts and acting as showrunner. As the logline states, "When a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall with her mother suddenly explodes into violence, an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood."

HBO has put into development a new drama series from Power creator Courtney A. Kemp about a group of dirty cops in New York City. Titled Dirty Thirty, the project is inspired by the true story of a gang of cops operating out of New York’s 30th Precinct in the 1990s and follows a crime wave infecting the highest levels of municipal government, corrupting the justice system and defining a city.

Fox has ordered more drama pilots, including Deputy and the AI thriller drama neXT. Deputy is an hour-long police procedural from Bright helmer David Ayer and Aquaman writer Will Beall and centers on Deputy Bill Hollister, a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors and utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the LA County Sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff of Los Angeles County, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. neXt is described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research and features a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis.

AMC has opened a writers' room for 61st Street, a potential new series executive produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society and exec produced by Peter Moffett, who wrote the British drama Criminal Justice (the basis of the HBO series The Night Of). Set in present-day Chicago, 61st Street follows Moses Johnson, a promising high school athlete, who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a gang member, he soon finds himself in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.

A reboot of classic British police procedural Bergerac is being developed by Paramount Network International. The series previously starred John Nettles, later known for his role in Midsomer Murders, as a detective on the small island of Jersey. It ran for nine seasons and 87 episodes on the BBC between 1981 and 1991 and was created by Robert Banks Stewart. Updated for the present day, it will deal with "contemporary stories-of-the-week that run alongside a strong serial spine.”

Julian McMahon and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes are set to star in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. McMahon will play Jess LaCroix, an "agent’s agent" who’s at the top of his game and oversees the team from the FBI’s Most Wanted Unit, which is assigned the most extreme and egregious cases. Castle-Hughes will play Lynn Khanna, a cowboy boot-wearing FBI analyst from a conservative Dallas family who is a master of data-mining and social engineering.

Mykelti Williamson has been tapped to co-star opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as "a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved. Each new version of the facts ratchets up the mystery and the suspense, calling into question everything we have seen so far and asking, Is the right person on trial?"

Levy Tran (Shameless) has been cast in a major recurring role on CBS’ action drama series, MacGyver, playing a new character that would help fill the void left by the departure of series co-lead George Eads. Tran, whose first episode airs February 15, will play Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant will topline the British crime drama The Barking Murders, along with Sheridan Smith and Jaime Winstone. The BBC One drama tells the true story of the notorious Essex crime spree, with Merchant playing serial rapist and killer Stephen Port, while Smith plays Sarah Sak, the mother of Anthony Walgate, his first victim. Winstone, daughter of Ray Winstone, plays Donna Taylor, sister of victim Jack Taylor.

Rosanna Arquette has joined Ratched, Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Arquette will have a multi-episode arc in the origins story that begins in 1947 and follows Ratched’s (Paulson) journey and evolution from nurse to full-fledged monster. The all-star cast also includes Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

For Novel Suspects, bestselling author Megan Abbott discussed her latest book, Give Me Your Hand, female friendship, and the interesting ways that women communicate and exert power differently from men.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book true-crime podcast focuses on a reputed gang member who beat a murder charge decades ago and went on to land a job as a police officer but was convicted of the 30-year-old killing of Jade Clark after DNA evidence put him at the crime scene.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition featured Keven James Breaux and Lisa Gardner. Gardner's latest, Never Tell, is the latest in her series with D.D. Warren and Flora Dane; Breaux writes in several genres including horror, suspense, and fantasy.

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "The Way to a Man's Heart," a twisted take on Valentine's Day written by mystery author Merrilee Robson and read by actor Sean Hopper.

Words and Nerds welcomed author Stuart Turton to chat about his novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and the murder mystery genre.

Amanda Knox will host a true-crime podcast series, “The Truth About True Crime,” that will serve as a companion to SundanceTV’s upcoming documentaries. Knox was profiled in her own true-crime documentary for Netflix in 2016, which looked at her conviction and acquittal by Italian courts of the brutal killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The latest Criminal Mischief: the Art & Science of Crime Fiction, hosted by DP Lyle took a look at "Fentanyl—A Most dangerous Game."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused this week on "Diamond Jubilee, Grand Juries, and Cultural Diversity."

On Episode 67 of the Spybrary Podcast, author David Holman shares more about his Alex Swan trilogy novels.

THEATER

The King's Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a new adaptation of the much-loved film The Lady Vanishes (directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave). The story centers on socialite Iris, who's traveling home to England on the train when an accident introduces her to the mild-mannered Miss Froy. After her companion suddenly disappears, Iris is perplexed to find that all the other passengers deny ever having seen her. With the help of urbane musician Max she turns detective and together they become drawn into a complex web of European intrigue as they try to solve the mystery of why the lady vanished.

The Cambridge Arts Theatre is presenting Ian Rankin's Rebus: Long Shadows through February 16. Detective Inspector John Rebus is retired but the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh. Whisky helped but now he’s denying himself that pleasure, but when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat, he’s back on the case and off the wagon.

Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap is currently being staged at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with a run through March 16. In the longest-running play in London’s West End, a group of strangers become stranded in an English country boarding house, cut off by a sudden snow storm. They soon discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst.

The Sarasota, Florida, Studio Theatre's latest production is a staging of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the play by Simon Stephens adapted from Mark Haddon's novel. The story revolves around an autistic teenager who sets out to investigate the bizarre death of a neighbor’s dog, inspiring a series of events that expose far greater mysteries. The production runs through March 29.

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Quote of the Week

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