B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 154

Media Murder for Monday

Here's your weekly roundup of the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

20th Century Fox has optioned the best-selling series Spy School by Stuart Gibbs and attached the author attached to write the screenplay based on the first title in the series. Spy School follows middle schooler Ben Ripley, who dreams of becoming a CIA agent. Even though he is awkward and accident prone, he is brilliant and recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science that actually is a front for a junior CIA academy.

Golden Globe winner Maggie Gyllenhaal has teamed with Pie Films to acquire film rights to Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter, which will mark her Gyllenhaal's first outing as a director. The Lost Daughter follows a woman who experiences a seemingly meaningless event while on a beach vacation that causes her to be overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. What begins as an apparently serene tale of a woman’s pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes a ferocious psychological thriller about a confrontation with an unsettled past.

Captain America's Chris Evans will co-star with Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery movie Knives Out. Johnson, who wrote the script and is producing with partner Ram Bergman, will make the movie before directing a new trilogy in the Star Wars universe. Plot details on the film are largely being kept under wraps, although it's said to be a modern day murder mystery in the classic whodunit style.

Armie Hammer has joined Gal Gadot in the cast of Death on the Nile, 20th Century Fox’s follow-up to last year’s successful Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express. Kenneth Branagh returns to direct and star as master detective Hercule Poirot, and Orient Express scribe Michael Green is back to adapt. The book’s plot centers on Poirot investigating a murder during a luxurious cruise on the Nile River that he just happens to be on. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery.

Ray Donovan's Eddie Marsan has come aboard the Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs and Shaw starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. Chris Morgan will serve as producer and screenwriter for the project that stars Johnson as U.S. Diplomatic Security Agent Luke Hobbs who forms an unlikely alliance with Statham’s Deckard Shaw. The film is scheduled to premiere Aug. 2, 2019.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has put in development Body Cam Cop, a drama series from Madam Secretary executive producer/writer David Grae and former CBS Entertainment president-turned-producer Glenn Geller. The story follows a cop whose heroism inadvertently lands him celebrity status after an on-the-job incident goes viral. He and his new partner are selected to be part of a pilot program that livestreams body cam footage to the public, but they soon find their lives have become more complicated.

Fox has given a script commitment to an untitled FBI cyber security drama from The Resident executive producer/showrunner Todd Harthan, former Prison Break executive producer Vaun Wilmott and 20th Century Fox TV. The project centers on FBI Director Dole Green, who is framed for a brazen, well-orchestrated attack at the agency headquarters where a treasure trove of classified data and agents identities is stolen in one of the worst attacks on national security in US history. With his career in shambles, Dole must fight to protect his family and get his life back through any means necessary.

J.K Rowling's (a/k/a Robert Galbraith) detective Cormoran Strike is heading back to the BBC with four new episodes of the crime drama known as Strike in the UK and C.B. Strike on HBO's sister network Cinemax.Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger will return as Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott.

Nickelodeon announced its latest TV movie, titled Bixler High Private Eye, starring Jace Norman and Ariel Martin. The comedy tells the story of a young sleuth, Xander DeWitt, whose father suddenly goes missing. Xander’s mom then sends him to live with his grandfather — who used to be a private eye — but it’s in his father’s hometown where the mystery really picks up. Xander finds a surprising lead in the case and meets Kenzie Messina, played by Martin, who is a reporter for the school paper.

On the heels of Queen of the South's recent Season 3 finale, the crime drama has been renewed for a fourth season to premiere in 2019. Starring Alice Braga, Queen of the South is based on the bestselling book La Reina Del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and tells the powerful story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. In Season 3, Teresa strikes out on her own, determined to build a new empire for herself. But as enemies old and new close in, she realizes that being Queen will require more work and more sacrifice than she ever imagined.

Black Panther's Winston Duke is set to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in the Netflix crime drama Wonderland, adapted from the novel Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, written by Ace Atkins. The book is part of the Spenser series, named after a fictional character in the series of detective novels initially written by American mystery writer Parker and later by Atkins. The story follows Spenser who, fresh out of prison, is sucked back into Boston’s underbelly as he uncovers the truth about a sensational murder and the twisted conspiracy behind it. Duke will play Hawk, Spenser’s close friend and an equally tough guy and enforcer with a shady past.

Lethal Weapon had barely gotten over the drama of one of the show's two main characters, Riggs (Clayne Crawford), being ousted from the show after the second season due to his reportedly volatile behavior was over, when the other main star of the show, Damon Wayans, added another shock. In an interview with Electronic Urban Report, Wayans announced that he is "going to be quitting the show in December, after we finish the initial 13 [episodes]."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week's Kings River Life Magazine Mystery Rats Maze podcast features an excerpt from Cleo Coyle's novel The Ghost and Mrs. McClure: Book #1 of the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, read by actor Max Debbas.

The Crime Files podcast (via By Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group & Quercus Books) has two new episodes, one looking at "The legacy of Philip Kerr, author of the Bernie Gunther series," and another with a look back at the Harrogate 2018 crime fiction festival.

DP Lyle's Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction took a look this week at "Making Characters Compliant."

Suspense Magazine's Beyond the Cover welcomed Lisa Unger to discuss her new psychological thriller Under My Skin.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste discussed bookshops in paradise, being billionaires, defending big companies on social media, and more. The special guests were the duo Chris Brookmyre and Dr. Marisa Haetzman, who make up the author Ambrose Parry, talking about writing as a duo, becoming a writer, and historical medical facts.

THEATER

Rebus: Long Shadows, the play based on Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series, opens tonight at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh with a run through Saturday, October 13. Adapted by Rona Murno and starring Charles Lawson as John Rebus, the story follows the Detective Inspector who is now retired. But the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat.

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Sunday Music Treat

The Leeds International Piano Competition just wrapped up, and the winner was 20-year-old American Eric Lu. Lu is about the same age as Scott Drayco when his career was cut short by tragedy, but I'm hoping that Lu has a much longer, successful, and rewarding career ahead of him. For the finals, Lu played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, and here's the third movement from that work performed by pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the Philharmonia Orchestra:

 

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: The Cape Cod Mystery

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



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



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



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



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



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

            

Mystery Melange

The submission deadline for articles for the Clues: A Journal of Detection issue "Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond" is coming up soon on October 12. Guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester),the issue will look at the important crossroads of mystery, detective, and crime fiction between the two world wars which saw the emergence of new genres like hard-boiled, noir, and true crime.

The St. Martin's Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition is open for submissions. You're invited to submit a manuscript if you've never been published and your novel is at least 40,000 words with a murder or serious crime at the heart of the story. The deadline is January 19, and the winner will receive a publishing contract and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

Noir Nation magazine, a crime fiction journal (available in print and Kindle editions) that was founded in 2011 by Eddie Vega, Alan Ward Thomas, and Cort McMeel, has been on a bit of a hiatus since fall of last year. But the publication recently announced it's ramping up again and will begin opening submissions for Issue #7 by the end of the year.

The New York Times Book Review profiled crime Joe Ide, whose debut 2016 novel, IQ, won widespread critical acclaim and was optioned for a television adaptation. Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Ide's protagonist who's named Isaiah Quintabe draws from the author's rough upbringing as well as his passions for Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood icons like Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Sidney Poitier in The Heat of the Night.

Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes word of CrimeFest’s move to a different venue in 2019; a crowd-funding project to republish Adam Diment’s vintage Philip McAlpine thrillers; reviews of new novels by Dominick Donald, Robert Galbraith, and John Simpson; and a look at forthcoming works by theJane Harper, Christian White, and Ben Pastor. (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Rob Lopresti profiled the new annotated version of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto, which offers literary and geographical context, as well as language and symbolism explications.

Writing for Crimereads, Anna Lee Huber compiled a listing of "10 Female Spies In Historical Mysteries and Thrillers," who take the topic up a notch after real-life women spies of the past have been given short shrift.

Does an obsession with crime thrillers have a psychological impact on readers? Maybe, or maybe not.

More from the "truth is stranger than fiction" department: The French gangster, Rédoine Faïd, who escaped from jail on a hijacked helicopter has finally been captured. Faïd has said he is a fan of gangster films, which he credits with teaching him how to pull off raids from the age of 12, especially Tony Montana from Scarface. He is also a fan of Michael Mann’s crime thrillers and once approached Mann at a Paris film festival and told him, "You were my technical adviser."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "World's Rocky Rim" by Nick Kolakowski.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People spoke with George Pelecanos about his latest novel, The Man Who Came Uptown, something of a bibliomystery; David Nolan took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge about his debut novel, Black Moss; and Robert Crais spoke with Writers' Digest about "Passion, Process and Plot Twists."

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Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a new Monday and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Warner Brothers picked up film rights to Annie Ward’s debut thriller, Beautiful Bad, which has a U.S. publication date set for March 2019. Beautiful Bad the tells the devastating story of three friends who come face to face with manipulation, turmoil, and tragedy, unable to outrun their tangled and tumultuous past that culminates in a desperate crime.

Filmula Entertainment has acquired rights to historian James L. Swanson’s upcoming book Lion In Winter, about America’s most prolific Chicago Outfit syndicate mob boss and a key henchman in the infamous "Capone massacres." The book will be adapted into a feature film by Chuck Hogan (13 Hours) and is based on a true story about a criminal who has never been caught. It's described as "an ambitious ensemble piece covering the lives of up-and-coming hitmen, next in line to the title character’s aging, relentless syndicate murderer in an untold tale of American history."

The Ink Factory and Marc Platt Prods. are joining forces to adapt We Were Never Here, the novel from Lara Prescott based on events surrounding the publication of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, as either a film or TV series. The project is a thriller and love story set in the 1950s during the Cold War and centers on a CIA plan to engineer the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Pasternak’s home country of Russia where authorities banned the book.

SK Global (fresh from its box-office hit with Crazy Rich Asians) has nabbed the film rights to the exposé Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World. The book, written by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, recounts a massive U.S. fraud case that ensnared Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio after a wannabe infiltrated his inner circle. The book centers on Jho Low, the heist's alleged mastermind, who remains an international fugitive.

Gal Gadot has signed on to star in Death on the Nile, the latest Agatha Christie adaptation set up at 20th Century Fox with Kenneth Branagh directing and Michael Green (who also adapted Orient Express) set as screenwriter. The project, which already has a December 20, 2019, release date, centers on Poirot investigating a murder during a luxurious cruise on the Nile River that he just happens to be on. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery.

Donald Sutherland is the latest to join the cast of the Giuseppe Capotondi-directed heist film The Burnt Orange Heresy. The film is based on Charles Willeford’s novel, which was adapted for the screen by Scott B. Smith, and follows an art critic and his girlfriend who make a deal with a wealthy man to steal a masterpiece from a famous artist’s studio. But not everything is as it seems and career ambitions soon lead to blackmail, arson, burglary, and even murder.

Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller, and Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch are set to co-star in 17 Bridges, the action thriller starring Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. The plot follows a disgraced NYPD detective (Boseman), who is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred on who he is pursuing, and who is in pursuit of him. When the search intensifies, extreme measures are taken to prevent the killers from escaping Manhattan as the authorities close all 17 bridges to prevent any entry or exit from the iconic island.

Quentin Tarantino has set Bruce Dern to play George Spahn in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, the role that Dern’s longtime friend Burt Reynolds was going to play but was unable to shoot before he died on September 6. Dern joins a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, James Mardsen, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Emile Hirsch, Luke Perry, Scoot McNairy and James Remar. The film is a Pulp Fiction-esque tapestry of stories in an around Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, when Charles Manson and his followers massacred Sharon Tate and others.

Focus Features has set a February 8 limited release for Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben), Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín that opened the Cannes Film Festival in May. It follows Laura (Cruz) on her travels with her two kids from Argentina to her small hometown in Spain for her sister’s wedding. Amid the joyful reunion and festivities, the eldest daughter is abducted. In the tense days that follow, various family and community tensions surface and deeply hidden secrets are revealed.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The team behind Blindspot have landed a new drama at CBS with a pilot production commitment to The Secret to a Good Marriage. The project centers on an elite pair of CIA spies who, in the wake of their fractured marriage, are pushed to their limits both professionally and personally, fighting to save the world while they forge a new kind of relationship for themselves and their son.

CBS also put in development H-Town, a drama series from writer Samantha Corbin-Miller (Law & Order: SVU) that's based on the Echo Media/Sphere Media Plus Canadian cop drama series 19-2. The U.S. version will follow two Houston detectives from opposing sides of a multi-generational family feud who are paired as partners and find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other even as they investigate a case that may have far-reaching ramifications for both their families.

Gomorrah series writers Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli are leading the book-to-TV adaptation of the WWII crime story The Butchers Of Berlin. The murder-mystery story is set in war-torn Nazi Germany 1943 and centers on financial crime investigator August Schlegel, who is assigned to a homicide case and finds himself immersed in a murky world. The book is the first in a developing series following Schlegel through the plotting and paranoia of the Third Reich.

French actress Eva Green (Casino Royale, Penny Dreadful) has signed to star in the BBC television adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Luminaries. The period tale is set on the Wild West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the boom years of the 1860s gold rush and is billed as an "epic story of love, murder and revenge, as men and women traveled across the world to make their fortunes.” The BBC also announced that Eve Hewson (Bridge of Spies) has joined the cast.

Emmy-nominated writer and producer Frank Pugliese (House of Cards) has been set as showrunner for TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to best-selling The Alienist by Caleb Carr. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning, will return for The Angel of Darkness with a new storyline that finds 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.

Last week it was announced Veronica Mars is getting a revival, and the writing staff later revealed by show creator Rob Thomas will include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who penned two mystery novels based on Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft. The writing team will also include David Walpert, Diane Ruggiero, Raymond Obstfeld, and Rick Fox.

The CW has put in development the drama Ruthless from Bull star Michael Weatherly and his Solar Drive Productions and CBS Television Studios. Written by George Olson, Ruthless centers on an ex-CIA operative, desperate for a normal life after a decade spent as a government killing machine, and a slightly unhinged teenage girl craving an escape from the mundane, who are forced into an unlikely alliance.

FX is developing the drama Trashers, loosely based on Rich Cohen’s The Atlantic article "The Mobster Who Bought his Son a Hockey Team.” The story follows a minor league hockey team owned by a small town trash hauler with mob ties and is described “a tale of goons, no-show jobs, and a legendary minor-league franchise that helped land its owner in prison."

French-born author Johana Gustawsson’s Roy and Castells series has been sold to Banijay Studios France and award-winning French actress Alexandra Lamy for a television adaptation. Lamy will adapt it for the screen and play the main character, Emily Roy. The series will include four to six episodes per book beginning with the thriller Block 46, set in Sweden where Chief Inspector Bergstrom and renowned profiler Emily Roy investigate a series of murders of children.

Jonathan Tucker has been added to the Elizabeth Banks-directed Charlie’s Angels reboot, which will focus on the next generation of elite crime-fighting detectives. Tucker joins Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Naomi Scott, Luis Gerardo Méndez, as well as Patrick Stewart and Banks (and the recently announced Djimon Hounsou) playing different Bosley characters. Following the original TV series and films, The Townsend Agency has grown considerably and gone global, providing security and intelligence services to a wide variety of private clients with offices and highly-trained teams worldwide.

Billy Lush (Kingdom) and Juliet Landau (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are set for key recurring roles on the upcoming fifth season of Amazon’s Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels. Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Lush will play Stones, a tough, cold-blooded criminal, heavily involved in the opioid trade. Landau will portray Rita Tedesco, a court reporter living with a secret.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Karin Slaughter went one-on-one with KCTV in Kansas City, talking about her latest novel, Pieces of Her.

National Public Radio affiliate KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, spoke with former Sitka police chief Sheldon Schmitt has published his first crime novel, Bush Blues.

Authors on the Air chatted with writer, lawyer, and former therapist Wendy Tyson about how her background has inspired her two mystery series, the Greenhouse mystery series and the Allison Campbell mystery series.

Suspense Radio Insider Edition welcomed authors Marine Riches (The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die) and Reavis Wortham (Gold Dust) to the show.

Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack spoke with attorney and crime writer Michael Zimecki.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed some mystery adaptations and recommended books with LGBTQ protagonists.

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FFB: Voice Out of Darkness

Ursula Reilly Curtiss, born in 1923, came into the world with fairly impressive crime-fiction genes. Her mother, Helen Reilly, her sister, Mary McMullen, and her brother, James Kieran, all wrote mysteries. Curtis didn't start out that way, working first as a columnist for the Fairfield, Connecticut News in 1942, at age 19, followed by a stint as a fashion copy writer. She began writing mystery/suspense novels, full-time at that, when she married John Curtiss in 1947 (the marriage no doubt helping her financial circumstances enough to give her that opportunity). Her first book, Voice Out of Darkness, won the Red Badge Award for the best new mystery of 1948.



Rather than penning police procedurals like her mother, Curtiss focused on the type of story where an innocent bystander gets pulled reluctantly into becoming an amateur sleuth — against a backdrop of seeming domestic calm, with layers of evil hiding behind family secrets and familiar faces. Her protagonists were usually female, except for works like 1951's The Noonday Devil where the main character is a man who learns his brother's death as a Japanese POW was carefully planned by a fellow prisoner.



Voice Out of Darkness falls into the female-protagonist camp, where we find that thirteen years prior to the events of the book, Katy Meredith lost her foster-sister, Monica, in a skating accident. Although Katy tried to save Monica, Monica's last words were "Katy pushed me." Katy thought she'd escaped both her home town and the horrors of Monica's death by moving to New York, until she starts receiving threatening notes in the mail. At first she wonders if someone else near the ice that day overheard Monica's words and is trying to blackmail her, but when Katy returns to her childhood home, she finds evidence of a calculating killer whose sights are now set on her.



Curtiss has moments of crisp observations in her writing, such as the following character study:

She was disconcerted, in the midst of her apologies for lateness, by Lieutenant Hooper's mild and wren-like appearance; he looked, she thought, like a portrait of a suburban traveller. Rubbers. Plaid woollen muffler, an air of having been assembled, eyed critically, and finally dismissed on the 8:32 by a bustling, dutiful wife. Except for his eyes: shrewd, steady, impartial as jewellers' scales.

or this excerpt about Fenwick, Connecticut, Katy's home town:

[It] had its replicas all over the New England coast. It lay sheltered in a tumble of windy hills, its architecture a blend of pure old Colonial and the raw new bones of housing developments. Its chief prosperity came from the summer visitors who came to splash and play in its wide blue crescent of Sound and laugh delightedly at its ancient moviehouse. Its chief crop was gossip, sown and grown with zest...

Curtiss' strengths are in her characterizations, setting and pacing, the novel being a quick read, which helps make the slight thinness and predictability of the plot (at least by 21st-century eyes looking backward), not much of a distraction. Curtiss later had two of her books, made into movies, I Saw What You Did from 1965, based on Curtiss' novel Out of the Dark, starring Joan Crawford, and 1969's What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, based on the author's novel The Forbidden Garden, featuring Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon. Curtiss also wrote the screenplays for a couple of television episodes of Detective and Climax Mystery Theater.

            

Mystery Melange

Liam McIlvanney has won the Scottish crime fiction award named in honor of his father, William McIlvanney, the late "godfather of tartan noir," with his novel The Quaker, based on the Bible John murders. McIlvanney won over the other shortlisted writers including Lin Anderson and former winners Chris Brookmyre and Charles Cumming.

The annual ThrillerFest conference announced that early bird registration is open for next year's event and also that Harlan Coben will be the 2019 recipient of the Silver Bullet Award. For more info and to keep track of all the special guests and participating authors as they are posted, check out the official conference website.

Mystery Writers of America NorCal and Lit Quake are sponsoring a Noir at the Bar on October 20 as part of MWANorCal's Mystery Week. Authors scheduled to appear include moderator Laurie R. King, Heather Haven, Terry Shames, Mary O’Shaughnessy, Pamela O’Shaughnessy, Gigi Pandian, Kirk Russell, Sheldon Siegel, and Jacqueline Winspear.

On Sunday October 21st, the historic Courtrooms above Browns Restaurant in Covent Garden will be the site of a series of panels devoted to crime novels, crime audio, crime television, and true crime, for the Killer Women Festival 2018. In addition to bestselling authors, events will include true crime documentaries and podcasts, a live CSI, and talking to police experts, forensic scientists and criminologists.

Terry Gilman and Maryelizabeth Yturralde, longtime owners of Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, have put the 25-year-old store up for sale to "pass the torch to a new owner, someone who can write the next chapter of Mysterious Galaxy's story." They reassured customers there was no threat of store closure, and they will be available to help the new owner through the transition. Gilman and Yturralde plan to focus on their other main venture, an events business and bookstore in Redondo Beach that brings books and authors to various community and corporate venues. (HT to Shelf Awareness)

London’s newly launched crime and thriller festival Capital Crime is preparing a new social outreach initiative to provide school students with insights into how they might be able to pursue careers in writing or publishing. In early 2019 Capital Crime will ask ten London comprehensive schools to each select two sixth-form students with "some recognised ability in creative writing." In spring 2019, those 20 students will then be invited to attend a seminar evening in central London where they will have the opportunity to hear from authors and publishing professionals and be given an insight into how they might be able to pursue writing/publishing careers.

Being a forensic pathologist can be very rewarding work and is a much-needed service for the community and families of victims, but the UK's Richard Shepherd points out the darker side, noting that his career let him to a diagnosis of PTSD. During his 30 years of work on some of the most high-profile cases, he says it's hard to describe the steady buildup of emotional damage from putting 23,000 dead bodies under the knife.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Terracide" by Gerard Sarnat.

In the Q&A roundup, Felix Francis, son of legendary crime writer Dick Francis, spoke with the Daily Record about the "daunting task" to keep his father's crime legacy alive; Craig Johnson chatted with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle about how he's not all that far removed from his his character Walt Longmire; Liam McIlvanney, the newly-crowned winner of the Bloody Scotland festival's McIlvanney Prize (named after the author's father), stopped by the Live and Deadly blog to talk about his prize-winning book, The Quaker; and the Mystery People welcomed Sara Gran to chat about her latest Claire DeWit novel, The Infinite Blacktop.

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Media Murder for Monday

It's Monday again and that means it's time for the latest crime drama roundup:

THE BIG SCREEN

Sony is developing the film, Storming Las Vegas, based on the 2008 book from John Huddy. Dennis Lehane has been hired to adapt the book that follows a series of daring Las Vegas casino robberies masterminded by Jose Vigoa over the span of 16 months. The Cuban-born Vigoa and his crew evaded police as they stole millions from some of the biggest players on the strip until Lt. John Alamshaw and a team of Vegas' robbery detectives brought Vigoa to justice.

Another Tom Clancy character is headed to Hollywood after Paramount Pictures tapped Michael B. Jordan to play Clancy hero John Clark in a new two-film series. The studio is developing the two pics based on the Clancy books Rainbow Six and Without Remorse, both novels in which Clark is the main star. Without Remorse will be the first film of the two, serving as an origin story for the character of Clark, a.k.a. John Terrence Kelly, an ex-Navy Seal-turned-operations officer for the CIA.

Last Monday, I noted that the latest James Bond movie seemed to be back on track following the departure of director Danny Boyle, after longtime Bond sreenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade had been tasked with crafting a new script. On Thursday, producers announced that True Detective director Cary Joji Fukunaga had been hired to direct the still-untitled 25th film in the franchise, becoming the first American filmmaker to take on that role. The new film, in which Daniel Craig returns for his fifth (and likely final) outing as secret agent 007, will begin shooting on March 4, 2019 with a current release date of February 20, 2020.

Angelina Jolie is attached to star in The Kept, a period revenge thriller based on the 2014 James Scott novel of the same name, with Alice Birch (who wrote the Florence Pugh-starring period drama Lady Macbeth), to pen the screenplay. Set in the winter of 1897 in rural New York, the story is set in motion when a woman returns to her isolated homestead to discover that her husband and four of her children were murdered. The woman is shot and tended to by her remaining son, Caleb, who survived by hiding in the pantry. With her 12-year-old by her side, the woman sets out to find those responsible, but the gritty journey in blizzard conditions to a lake town will reveal secrets that will test the bond of mother and son.

Cinemablend reported that Fox's untitled Kingsman movie (the third in the franchise) is set for release just over a year from now, on November 8, 2019. Writer-director Matthew Vaughn is returning to return to pen the screenplay and direct the film, thus completing the trilogy. There isn't an official plot description yet, but the director has spoken in the past about the third film in the franchise taking the characters on a journey to a place we've never seen them before, and it would presumably conclude the Harry Hart-Eggsy relationship.

Oscar-winner Allison Janney will play trailblazing feminist lawyer Susan Estrich in an untitled project about the women who took on Fox News kingpin Roger Ailes and the toxic male culture at the network. Author and liberal commentator Estrich, who was the first female President of the Harvard Law Review and the first woman to manage a presidential campaign, surprised many by representing Ailes even after a slew of sexual harassment allegations surfaced against him. I, Tonya and Mom star Janney bolsters an A-List cast which already includes Charlize Theron (as Megyn Kelly), Nicole Kidman (as Gretchen Carlson), Margot Robbie (as a Fox News associate producer) and John Lithgow (as Ailes).





Andie MacDowell has signed on to co-star in the genre thriller Ready or Not, joining Samara Weaving in the cast. Ready or Not tells the story of a young woman, who on the night of her wedding, is invited to her new in-laws time-honored tradition which turns into a lethal game of survival. MacDowell will play the mother-in-law to Weaving’s protagonist.



TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple has given an eight-episode straight-to-series order to Defending Jacob, headlined and executive produced by Chris Evans. Created and written by Mark Bomback (Planet of the Apes trilogy) and based on William Landay’s bestselling novel, the project tells the story of a father dealing with the accusation that his son is a 14-year-old murderer.

Hulu has given a direct-to-series eight-episode order to a Veronica Mars revival slated to premiere in 2019, with Kristen Bell reprising her role as the title character. Hulu also landed streaming rights to the complete series in a new deal with original series producer Warner Bros. TV, as well as SVOD rights to all past episodes of the original Veronica Mars. The revival hails from the cult favorite’s original’s creator Rob Thomas, who will pen the first episode in which spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. 

NBC has put in development Strong Justice, an hourlong drama from Wendy Calhoun (Empire), Elizabeth Banks, and Max Handelman’s Brownstone Productions and Warner Bros. TV. Written by Calhoun, Strong Justice centers on FBI’s first-ever mother-daughter duo, Special Agents Etta and Memphis Strong, who strive to be exceptional investigators despite sexist and racist hurdles.

Fox has put in development Switch, an hourlong drama from former Underground executive producers Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell, Len Wiseman and Warner Bros. TV. The "adrenaline-fueled procedural" deals with the exploits of the FBI’s newest undercover unit, the Switch Division, a task force created to allow an agent to go undercover inside the body of another human being. Although hard pressed at first to find anyone insane enough to try the new technology, a former undercover burnout named Harry “Mac” Macallister takes up the challenge and the opportunity to spend each week inside the bodies of various criminals.

CBS is developing the drama Far Rockaway, from writer David Wilcox (CBS’ Bull), Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek: Discovery) and CBS TV Studios. Written by Wilcox, Far Rockaway is based on the Spanish format titled Estoy Vivo and is set in Far Rockaway, where a workaholic NYPD detective killed in the line of duty is granted a second chance to return to earth in the body of another cop in order to bring his killer to justice and heal the fractured family he left behind.

What do Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the disembodied voice of Bosley (as first seen in the original TV Charlie's Angels) have in common? Patrick Stewart, it seems. Stewart has joined the Charlie's Angels project to play the familiar role of Bosley. While that in itself isn't unusual, director Elizabeth Banks was, and still is, planning to play the same role. So, it appears that the plan is for the new Charlie's Angels to have multiple Bosleys, with Banks playing one and Patrick Stewart playing another, and perhaps other actors playing the role as well.

The breakout BBC One drama Bodyguard is headed to Netflix. The streaming network will carry the terror thriller starring Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden and Line of Duty’s Keeley Hawes outside of the UK and Ireland with a premiere set for October 24. Set in and around the corridors of power, Bodyguard tells the fictional story of David Budd (Madden), a heroic but volatile war veteran now working as a Specialist Protection Officer for the Royalty and Specialist Branch (RasP) of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. When he is assigned to protect the ambitious and powerful Home Secretary Julia Montague (Hawes), Budd finds himself torn between his duty and his beliefs. Responsible for her safety, could he become her biggest threat?

Sony Crackle's original streaming series StartUp has added Mira Sorvino for its upcoming third season and released a trailer. Mira Sorvino appears in the 10-episode season in a guest star role as NSA Agent Rebecca Stroud, who is investigating the show’s centerpiece outfit ArakNet. Stroud, as the trailer shows, is prepared to go to any lengths to try to bring down ArakNet, the creation of a group of tech entrepreneurs. The show will begin streaming on Crackle on November 1, after a preview period on Amazon devices starting October 22.

Netflix has handed a Season 2 renewal to its gritty Indian crime drama Sacred Games. Based on Vikram Chandra’s best-selling novel, it’s described as a tale of betrayal, crime, passion and a thrilling chase through Mumbai’s underbelly.

ITV is bringing back hit cop drama Unforgotten for a fourth season. The series (which is being developed in the U.S. for ABC by Josh Berman, Sony Pictures Television and BBC Worldwide Productions), has been handed a six-episode run following the success of the third season. Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar return as two London detectives, who work together to solve cold case murders and disappearances.

Tiya Sircar, who currently recurs on NBC’s The Good Place, has been tapped as the lead in Good Sam, a Netflix feature based on the mystery book series of the same name by Dete Meserve. The film follows Intrepid TV news reporter Kate Bradley who is assigned to uncover the identity of a mysterious Good Samaritan—Good Sam—who has been anonymously leaving $100,000 cash gifts on the doorsteps of seemingly random New Yorkers. As interest in the extraordinary gifts sweeps across the country, as Kate seeks to unravel the identity of Good Sam and the powerful and unexpected reasons behind the extraordinary gifts.

Coming off a key recurring role on The Americans, Laurie Holden is set for another major recurring part opposite Kelsey Grammer on Fox’s new legal drama series Proven Innocent, from Empire co-creator Danny Strong and writer David Elliott. Written by Elliott, Proven Innocent follows a criminal defense firm led by Madeline Scott (Rachelle Lefevre), a fierce and uncompromising lawyer with a hunger for justice. Holden will play Greta Bellows, the wife of Gore Bellows (Grammer), the hard-as-nails and tough-on-crime state’s attorney, a "Lady Macbeth type" who wants her husband to win the Attorney General race, possibly even more than he does.

Ahead of the Season 3 premiere of Live PD, A&E gave another massive order to its flagship series, picking up an additional 150 episodes of the hit real-time reality police docuseries. Totaling 450 hours, the deal extends the series’ run into 2019, with the new order bringing the number of commissioned episodes to date to 293. Hosted by Dan Abrams with analysis from Tom Morris Jr. and Sgt. Sean ‘Sticks’ Larkin, Live PD follows diverse police departments from across the country in real time as they patrol their communities.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Val McDermid chatted with the BBC's A Point of View podcast to make the case that "crime fiction isn't really about murder at all."

Beyond the Cover welcomed special guests Boyd Morrison (co-author with Clive Cussler of Shadow Tyrants) and PJ Tracy (The Guilty Dead).

Criminal Mischief, hosted by DP Lyle, investigated the POV authors choose for crime fiction manuscript and how it can make or break your story.

The Mysteryrats Maze Podcast podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel Murder at the Driskill by Kathleen Kaska, read actor Casey Ballard.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for MondayMedia Murder for Monday - Labor Day Edition 

FFB: Death of a Dutchman

Magdalen Nabb was born in Lancashire in 1947 but lived in Florence, Italy, from 1975 until her death in 2007. She wrote both children's fiction and crime fiction, the latter featuring her literary creation Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia. She modeled the Marshal on a real Florentine law officer who used to keep the author up to date on crimes in the city being investigated by the Carabinieri, the national Italian police force. Critic Susanna Yager of the Sunday Telegraph once noted that "The mystery for me is why Magdalen Nabb is not better known," certainly not as well as Michael Dibdin (Aurelia Zen) and Donna Leon (Commissario Guido Brunetti).



After the first book featuring Guarnaccia appeared in 1981, it impressed Georges Simenon so much that he wrote to congratulate Nabb. After the publication of the sequel, Death of a Dutchman, he said, "Your first novel was a coup de maitre, your second is a masterpiece." That second book (she wrote 14 Guarnaccia installments in all) opens as Marshal Guarnaccia finds a jeweler dying in an apparent suicide from slashed hands and a barbiturate overdose, uttering his last words, "It wasn't her." The only witnesses to the crime are a blind man and a notoriously untruthful 91-year-old woman.



Although the case seems to be a dead end, the Marshal refuses to let it go, fighting his way through bureaucratic red tape, hordes of tourists, the soggy July heat, the secret police known as Digos and the dead Dutchman's troubled past in order to reach the truth. The dead man is known as a "Dutchman" even though his father was Dutch and his mother Italian. This neither-here-nor-there sense of belonging echoes the life of the Marshal himself, a Sicilian stationed in Florence, living at the station barracks without his wife and sons, as they care for his invalid mother back home.



Marshal, lower down the police hierarchy than a Lieutenant or Magistrate, is nonetheless a dedicated, sensitive and caring officer, not particularly articulate but with a subtle humor who patiently helps the young and inexperienced officer in charge of the case. The city and culture that is Florence becomes another character, focusing on the importance of family, place and tradition. Or as the Washington Post added, "The richest scene here, however, is Florence itself, whose intricate politics and class structure Nabb parses with precision and wit."