B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 156

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and another crime drama roundup (a little shorter than usual but will return to full form next week):

THE BIG SCREEN

Blue Fox Entertainment has acquired worldwide rights to the psychological thriller Braid, scheduled for an early 2019 theatrical release. Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid’s Tale), Imogen Waterhouse (Nocturnal Animals), Sarah Hay (Flesh and Blood) and Scott Cohen (The 10th Kingdom) star in the film, about a pair of drug dealers who seek refuge inside the mansion of their mentally unstable friend. The three begin to engage in an elaborate and increasingly dangerous game of permanent make-believe.

The Quentin Tarantino-helmed film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has added to its growing cast with Lena Dunham, Austin Butler, Maya Hawke, and Chilean actress Lorenza Izzo. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the film visits 1969 Los Angeles, where one-time TV star Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) make their way in an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The plot features multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age, including a mystery crime film centered around the Manson Family murders.

Annapurna has released a first-look image of Nicole Kidman’s crime thriller Destroyer, which received early attention thanks to Kidman’s extreme transformation for the role. Karyn Kusama is directing from a script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi that centers on a police detective (Kidman) who "reconnects with people from an undercover assignment in her distant past in order to make peace." Sebastian Stan, Tatiana Maslany, Toby Kebbell and Bradley Whitford co-star.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The cult favorite noir mystery drama Veronica Mars starring Kristen Bell is making another comeback, this time as an eight-episode limited series at Hulu. The new installment will see Bell reprising her role as sleuth Veronica Mars, and there have been preliminary conversations about bringing back a number of the other cast members from the original series and follow-up movie.

In a competitive situation, ITV Studios America has acquired the rights to Nina Sadowsky’s novel The Burial Society to develop as a television series. The Burial Society is the first in a series of books about a mysterious, damaged, but highly-skilled woman, Catherine (with no last name), who rescues people from intolerable, abusive and dangerous situations. Her dark-net based "witness protection program," The Burial Society, is the last hope for people who desperately need to disappear.

The Wire alum Chris Ashworth has booked a recurring role on the fifth season of Amazon’s drama series 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 Reddickas Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Ashworth will play Vardy, but no other details are being revealed.

Emmy winner Dana Delany has been tapped for a leading role on CBS’ new drama series The Code. In The Code, whose pilot was penned by Limitless creator Craig Sweeny from a story by him and Craig Turk and directed by Marc Webb, the military’s brightest minds take on our country’s toughest challenges – inside the courtroom and out – where each attorney is trained as a prosecutor, a defense lawyer, an investigator – and a Marine. Delany will play Colonel Eisa Turnbull, the Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps’ Judge Advocate Division. 

Esai Morales is set for a recurring role on the upcoming tenth season of CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles. Morales will play Deputy Director Gaines, described as "smart, authoritative, polished and trustworthy." He accompanies a special prosecutor from the Department of Defense who is investigating the NCIS office and its employees and is there to protect his people and advise them on how to navigate the prosecutor’s interviews.

Chasten Harmon and Vannessa Vasquez will take on recurring roles on ABC’s new legal drama The Fix, from Marcia Clark, Liz Craft, Sarah Fain, Mandeville TV and ABC Studios. Co-written by O.J. Simpson prosecutor Clark, The Fix centers on Maya Travis (Robin Tunney), an L.A. district attorney who suffers a devastating defeat when prosecuting an A-list actor for double murder. With her high-profile career derailed, she flees for a quieter life in Washington. When the same celebrity is under suspicion for another murder eight years later, Maya is lured back to the DA’s office for another chance at justice. Harmon will play Star, daughter of Sevvy (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Vasquez will portray Dia, with details of her character under wraps.

Grimm alum Reggie Lee has booked a major recurring role opposite Scott Bakula on the upcoming fifth season of CBS’ NCIS: New Orleans. Lee will play Assistant Special Agent in Charge Steven Thompson. Thompson will often butt heads with Pride (Bakula) as each have a very different process to approaching and prioritizing their workload. In the same report, Deadline noted that Samantha Sloyan (Grey’s Anatomy) is set for a recurring role opposite Michael Irby on the upcoming second season of SEAL Team.

Former Nurse Jackie star Dominic Fumusa is set for a key recurring role in the upcoming The Purge series for USA Network. Based on the hit movie franchise from Blumhouse Productions, The Purge revolves around a 12-hour period when all crime, including murder, is legal. Fumusa will play Pete the Cop, a keen eyed, no bullshit, ex-military and ex-cop with a mysterious past and a dry sense of humor. He’s extremely connected and respected by the community, and has his finger on the pulse of the city.

AMC has slotted the premiere date for The Little Drummer Girl, a six-part miniseries based on John le Carré’s best-selling spy novel. The miniseries will air over three consecutive nights beginning November 19 with a two-hour episode, followed by additional two-hour episodes November 20 and 21. Set in the late 1970s, the thriller follows Charlie (Florence Pugh), a fiery actress and idealist whose resolve is tested after she meets the mysterious Becker (Alexander Skarsgård) while on holiday in Greece. It quickly becomes apparent that his intentions are not what they seem, and her encounter with him entangles her in a complex plot devised by the spy mastermind Kurtz (Michael Shannon). Charlie takes on the role of a double agent while remaining uncertain of her own loyalties.

Netflix released a trailer for Hold the Dark, based off the psychological thriller novel of the same name by William Giraldi, starring Alexander Skarsgard, Jeffrey Wright, Riley Keough, and James Badge Dale.

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FFB: The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet

Burton E. Stevenson (1872–1962) was an American anthologist and librarian who also penned his own books, around thirty in all, ranging from young adult fiction, to historical adventure tales, to crime fiction. His main (perhaps only) mystery series included five novels that featured a Holmsian/Watson duo consisting of the urbane, shrewd police detective-turned-reporter Jim Godfrey and his lawyer friend Warwick Lester, who narrates the stories.



The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet was published in 1911. The first half of the novel follows a wealthy client of Lester's, Philip Vantine, who collects antiques. When a mysterious piece of 17th-century furniture, a Boule table, is delivered by mistake, Vantine decides he must have it and asks Lester to track down the real owner to see if he would be willing to sell it. When Lester returns the next day, he finds both Vantine and a stranger lying on the floor in Vantine's parlor, both with two small wounds on their hands. Naturally, Lester turns to his detective friend for help, and they work to discover the secrets of the Boule table and solve the seemingly impossible crime.



The first part of the book takes place almost entirely in the victim's New York house, but then the novel switches gears in the second half with the introduction of a French "Moriarty" style master criminal who is adept as disguises. The bad guy tests Godfrey's detection skills as the trail leads all over New York City, and it becomes apparent that the criminal's real intent is to steal the Boule table, which harbors some valuable and deadly secrets.



Reviewer Mike Grost noted that Stevenson's work is the closest he could name to Mary Roberts Rinehart's early, pre-W.W.I books, in tone, plot, and characterizations, not surprising since they are roughly contemporaries. However, there are also some absurdities and puzzling behavior, such as Lester's tendency to get hysterical at times, as well as a few too many coincidences. The first half is probably better than the second, with more claustrophobic tension inside the limited setting. But there is some decent writing throughout, and it's easy to see why the story was entertaining enough to be made into not one, but three separate film adaptations in 1916, 1930, and 1941.

            

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and the latest crime drama roundup:

 

THE BIG SCREEN

Saban Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to The Super, the Stephan Rick-directed genre thriller that stars Val Kilmer and Patrick John Flueger. The film is based on an idea by Law & Order creator Dick Wolf and centers on the mysterious disappearance of several tenants at a luxury New York City apartment building. Phil Lodge (Flueger), the building’s new superintendent and a former NYPD officer, immediately suspects Walter (Kilmer), the strange maintenance man. With his daughters’ lives on the line, Phil must decipher the cryptic riddles in which Walter speaks to solve the disappearances before it’s too late.

Anthony Mackie is the latest to join stars Amy Adams and Julianne Moore in Fox 2000’s adaptation of A.J. Finn’s bestseller The Woman in the Window. Joe Wright is directing with Tracy Letts adapting the screenplay. Gary Oldman, Wyatt Russell, and Brian Tyree Henry are also in the cast.

The Noir City: Chicago film festival continues this week through August 23 with 18 films, all but two were made during the golden era of noir in the dozen or so years following the end of World War II. The programming differs from the past few years, which saw the festival organizers looking for films outside the U.S. and from after the 1950s. The opening night featured a tribute to writer-director Carl Franklin and a double bill of his neo-noir classics and an in-person discussion between films with the director and Noir City host Eddie Muller.

The noir film festival Noir City Detroit is returning to the Motor City for its third event, September 23-25, at the historic Redford Theatre. The festival kicks off on Saturday night with a double bill of Fred Zinnemann's revenge tale Act of Violence (1949) and Stanley Kubrick's heist film The Killing (1956).

Viola Davis stars in the new trailer for Widows, the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

USA Network has given a straight-to-series order to the crime drama Treadstone, an offshoot from Universal’s Bourne franchise, from Heroes creator Tim Kring and Universal Cable Productions. Treadstone explores the origin story and present-day actions of a CIA black ops program known as Operation Treadstone — a covert program that uses behavior-modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins.

NBC has put in development an untitled political murder mystery drama from The Art of More creator Chuck Rose, prolific TV director-producer Julie Anne Robinson and Universal TV. Based on a script Rose will write, the project centers on a series of murders predicted in a radical conspiracy blog that puts the blogger in the crosshairs of an astute NSA agent. But when they find that they may be the next target, an unlikely alliance forms as the blogger and the NSA agent team up to discover the truth, pulling them into a larger mystery than either of them could have imagined.

Jane Corry’s domestic thriller novel My Husband’s Wife has been optioned as a TV series by the makers of Baby Driver. The novel is described as "a female driven story about love, marriage and murder in an ever evolving East London." The plot unfolds over two decades and charts the lives of Lily, a 25-year-old London lawyer, and Carla, her immigrant neighbor’s young daughter who lives in a flat across the hall. The two women form a close bond which will irrevocably change their lives forever.

The Alienist Is coming back to TNT with a new title, Angel of Darkness, but it's essentially the same show with the same cast of Daniel Bruhl, Dakota Fanning, and Luke Evans returning as their same characters. TV Guide notes that the move is likely due to the fact that The Alienist was billed as a limited series — meaning it was a closed story that was supposed to end after the eight episodes that were originally ordered. The series is based on psychological thriller novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr about the hunt for a serial killer responsible for the gruesome murders of boy prostitutes in 19th century New York City.

USA Network has opted not to order a fourth season of the thriller drama series Shooter starring Ryan Phillippe. The decision comes as Shooter has crossed the midpoint mark of its 13-episode Season 3 run, but Paramount Television is shopping the series to other networks. The series is based on the best-selling novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter and the 2007 Paramount film and follows the journey of Bob Lee Swagger (Phillippe), a highly decorated veteran who is coaxed back into action to prevent a plot to kill the President. 

Former Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey and popular Italian actor Alessandro Borghi (star of Netflix’s Suburra) will lead cast in the ten-part thriller series Devils. Based on the best-selling novel by Guido Maria Brera, Devils is a high-stakes financial thriller set during the European debt crisis. Nick Hurran (Sherlock, Doctor Who, Fortitude) will be the series' showrunner and director.

Prolific Emmy-nominated director Phil Abraham is set to executive produce and direct the first two episodes of the second season of Amazon’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. The series a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the famed and lauded Tom Clancy hero, starring John Krasinski and Abbie Cornish.

Luke Mitchell has been cast in the CBS drama The Code, stepping in for Dave Annable, who played the role in the original pilot. Mitchell will play Capt. John "Abe" Abraham, a driven prosecutor operating out of Judge Advocate General Headquarters in Quantico for whom becoming a Marine is a longstanding family tradition and a responsibility he treats with devotion and passion. 

Tully producer Bron Studios has teamed up with Studiocanal’s Tandem Productions on a global television thriller from The Bridge co-creator Måns Mårlind. The gritty, eight-part series Shadow Play is a character-driven period thriller is set in Berlin and centers on Max McLaughlin, an American cop who arrives in the city in the summer of 1946 to help create a police force in the chaotic aftermath of the war. Max’s goal is to take down “Englemacher” Gladow, the Al Capone of post-war Berlin, while also undertaking a secret crusade to find his missing brother, who is killing ex-Nazis in hiding. However, Max is completely unaware that he is being used as a pawn in what is the very beginning of the Cold War.

A trailer was released for the CBS All Access "hillbilly noir" series, One Dollar, a Rust Belt murder mystery with an ensemble that includes John Carroll Lynch, Christopher Denham, and Greg Germann. The series changes point of view from episode to episode as it tracks the movement of a single dollar bill that moves between several people who are connected to a shocking multiple murder at the local mill. The town's deep class and cultural divides are exposed as the investigation continues and long-buried secrets are brought to light.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Vermont Public Radio profiled the 1870s female crime writer who pioneered modern detective fiction, Anna Katharine Green. The featured guest was Claire Meldrum, a professor at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, whose research into Green is the focus of a research project being honored by the Vermont Historical Society.

Writer Types welcomed bestselling thriller writer Ted Bell and romance writer turned suspense novelist Victoria Helen Stone.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed the Bill Clinton and James Patterson book culinary mystery novels.

This week's guest on Meet the Thriller Writer was prison chaplain turned mystery author Michael Lister who talked about his long-running John Jordan mystery series.

THEATER

Phyllis Logan stars in the award-winning thriller Switzerland at the Theatre Royal Bath through September 1. The psychological thriller centers on author Patricia Highsmith, now aging and ailing. Vitriolic, bigoted and alcoholic, her eccentricities are the stuff of legend. A polished young man turns up, sent by her New York publisher to persuade the great writer to pen one final installment of her best-selling series featuring the master manipulator, Tom Ripley. But as day breaks over the mountains, it becomes clear that the charming stranger is set on a far more sinister mission.

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FFB: The Fortieth Door

Mary Hastings Bradley (1882-1976) published a large number of travel books, short fiction and novels, including mysteries and her historical Old Chicago series. Widely traveled, she often lectured on the topic and was inducted into the Society of Women Geographers, an organization that boasted the likes of members Amelia Earhart, Margaret Mead, and Eleanor Roosevelt.



In her younger days, Bradley journeyed to Egypt with a cousin, a trip that inspired The Palace of Darkened Windows (1914) and The Fortieth Door (1920), two books that focused on the veiled, secluded women of Egypt. Both of these stories were later made into films, with The Fortieth Door adapted as a silent film in 1924 starring Allene Ray, Bruce Gordon, David Dunbar.



The plot of The Fortieth Door centers on an anti-social American archaeologist working in Egypt named Jack Ryder, who is reluctantly talked into going to a masquerade ball. He dances with a mysterious veiled woman who he understandably believes to be in costume. The sparks fly between them, but when Jack walks the woman home, he learns she's the daughter of a prosperous Muslim merchant and can't date Westerners.



But he can't get her out of his mind and does a little digging of a more personal sort. He discovers that the woman is named Aimée and is actually the daughter of a Frenchman who vanished fifteen years ago. When Jack also discovers Aimée is headed for a forced marriage her "stepfather" has arranged, he hatches a plan to rescue her that could well put both of their lives in jeopardy.



This is a slight, entertaining action/suspense novel, that includes racism common to its era, with all of the good guys being white, and all the bad guys Egyptian. But the exotic setting, which is drawn fairly nicely, and the earnest characters (if a little too much like Dudley Do Right vs. the mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash) make for a quick read.

            

Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime Australia announced the winners of this year's Davitt Awards at the annual awards dinner this past weekend. Best Adult Crime Novel was won by And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic; the Readers' Choice winner was Force of Nature by Jane Harper; Best Debut, The Dark Lake by Sarah Bailey; Best Non-fiction Book, Whiteley on Trial by Gabriella Coslovich; Best Young Adult, Ballad for a Mad Girl by Vikki Wakefield; and Best Children’s Novel, The Turnkey by Allison Rushby. The awards are named after Ellen Davitt, author of Australia’s first mystery novel Force and Fraud (1865) and as of 2018, are sponsored by Swinburne University of Technology.

Poe Baltimore, in partnership with La Cité Development, will host the first International Edgar Allan Poe Festival and Awards on Oct. 6-7. It's hoped the free two-day festival at the Poe House and Museum will help inaugurate the redevelopment of the Poppleton neighborhood where Edgar Allan Poe once lived. Events will include live performances, poetry readings, vendors, booksellers, and food. Although not much information is available regarding the "award" part of the festival title, it's said to honor the next generation of writers and artists continuing Poe's legacy.

The Detroit Free Press has an emotional profile of Aunt Agathas Mystery Bookstore, which is saying its final goodbyes as it closes after 26 years.

On his blog The Rap Sheet, J. Kingston Pierce reviewed Mickey Spillane's early Mike Hammer thriller Killing Town, which was only recently rediscovered and published.

In the Guardian, Nicci Gerrard and her husband, Sean French, who write psychological thrillers as Nicci French, share tips about writing with a partner with the "new pseudonym on the block," Ambrose Parry – composed of crime writer Chris Brookmyre and his wife, Dr. Marisa Haetzman.

You may not be able to make it in person, but you can take a brief online tour of Agatha Christie’s House in Devon, UK, courtesy of Bookriot.

If you'd like something of a primer on international crime fiction, the New York Times posted a listing of books organized by continents and countries.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "My Way" by Caz Potterton.

In the Q&A roundup, Louise Candlish stopped by the Criminal Element to chat about new novel, Our House; Publishers Weekly spoke with Lou Berney about his new thriller November Road in which a woman determined to start over, links up in late 1963 with a mob fixer who’s involved in the JFK assassination; NPR chatted with David Joy about his new novel The Line That Held Us, described as "noir in Appalachia" that begins with a terrible accident; and the Columbus Dispatch interviewed Lisa Scottoline about her writing and books, which include novels centered on the all-female firm in her Rosato and DiNunzio crime series.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN

Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don't Cry) has been set to star in Deon Taylor’s noir thriller Fatale. The film centers on a married man (yet to be cast) who is tricked into a murder scheme by a seductive female police detective (played by Swank). Production on Fatale will begin next month in Los Angeles.

Voltage Pictures has acquired the spec script, The Fishermen, by screenwriter John C. Richards. The original story centers on a soft-spoken Vietnam-era top sniper now dying of cancer who becomes a vigilante killer with the help of a sympathetic policeman.

Jennifer Lopez has signed up to star in director Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, a film inspired by Jessica Pressler’s New York Magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores,” which details a crew of savvy former strip club employees who band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients. Lopez will play ringleader to the group of ambitious women who take their plans of getting their full cut too far.

Alex Essoe, who just booked a role playing Danny Torrance’s mother in Warner Bros’ The Shining continuation Doctor Sleep, is also set to co-star opposite Luke Hemsworth and Maggie Q in Death of Me. The Darren Lynn Bousman-directed psychological thriller, penned by Ari Margolis, James Morley III, and David Tish, is set on an exotic island where a couple (Hemsworth and Maggie Q) on holiday wake up with no recollection of what transpired the night before. They find a video that shows them as willing participants in a ritual that inexplicably ends with him murdering her.

Ellie Bamber (Nocturnal Animals) and James Frecheville (Animal Kingdom) will take on lead roles in the crime drama, The Seven Sorrows of Mary, directed by Portuguese writer-director Pedro Varela (Os Filhos Do Rock) from his own screenplay. Inspired by true events, the harrowing story follows Mary (Bamber), a 21 year old American exchange student, who is about to finish up her year abroad in Brazil. While out for a night on the town with her boyfriend Gabriel (Frecheville), they are both kidnapped, and Gabriel is repeatedly beaten while Mary is raped by her captors during a six-hour abduction nightmare. After she gets away, Mary is forced to choose between seizing a chance at freedom and letting Gabriel be killed or returning to her brutal attackers.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) has signed on to direct and executive produce a television adaptation of Killer Intent, the debut novel of writer Tony Kent. Kent will adapt for TV his own novel — the first in a series of thrillers following the adventures of intelligence agent Joe Dempsey, Irish lawyer Michael Devlin, and American television journalist Sarah Truman. Killer Intent will be production company Liberty Films' first foray into television.

The Good Wife's Archie Panjabi is returning to the legal drama genre as the star and producer of Adversaries, from Blindspot creator/executive producer Martin Gero and executive producer Alex Berger. Written by Berger, Adversaries is described as "a humorous, aspirational legal drama that argues the path to healing a polarized nation is through listening and empathy."

As part of a deal with NBCUniversal Television and New Media Distribution, the four-part critically praised Australian series Safe Harbour is set to make its U.S. debut on Hulu on August 24. The project tells the story of five Australians on a yachting holiday who come across a broken-down fishing boat full of desperate asylum seekers and decide to help by towing the refugees, but when they wake the next morning the fishing boat is gone. Five years later they meet some of the refugees again and learn that someone cut the rope between the two boats, and seven people died when the fishing boat sank. As each group struggles to find the truth and old secrets come to light, one question hangs over it all – who cut the rope?

The Hallmark Channel has several new mysteries in the pipeline, including an adaptation of the novel Charley’s Web by Joy Fielding, starring Susan Lucci as a columnist who uncovers the truth behind the crimes in the community; Picture Perfect, starring Alexa PenaVega and Carlos PenaVega as a photographer and the local police detective she winds up assisting; The Chronicle Mysteries, starring Alison Sweeney as a novelist and podcaster who researches the cold cases; and Crossword Mysteries, starring Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliott and co-created by puzzlemaster Will Shortz.

Former Timeless star Abigail Spencer is set as the lead in Hulu drama pilot Reprisal, described as "a hyper-kinetic revenge tale following a relentless femme fatale (Spencer) who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a bombastic gang of gearheads."

The Netflix drama Central Park Five has unveiled its leading men, including Chris Chalk (Gotham), Ethan Herisse (Miss Virginia), Marquis Rodriguez (Chicago Fire), Caleel Harris (Goosebumps 2), and newcomers Freddy Miyares and Justin Cunningham. Based on a true story, the four-episode series will chronicle the notorious case of five teenagers of color who were convicted of a rape they did not commit. The series will span from the spring of 1989, when each were first questioned about the incident, to 2014 when they were exonerated and a settlement was reached with the city of New York.

Jovan Adepo (The Leftovers), Jordi Molla (Genius) and Narcos’ Cristina Umaña and Francisco Denis have been cast in the second season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan as series regulars, joining previously announced Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Michael Kelly (House of Cards) and John Hoogenakker (Colony). The project is a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the Tom Clancy hero, to be played by John Krasinski.

Danny Nucci (The Fosters) is set for a key recurring role on ABC’s straight-to-series light crime drama The Rookie starring Castle's Nathan Fillion as John Nolan, the oldest rookie in the LAPD. Nucci will play Detective Sanford Motta, a tough major assault crimes detective in the station.

Mark Tallman is set for a recurring role on the upcoming 20th season of NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing Gavin Riley, the chief of detectives who’s on his way to being governor one day. Law & Order: SVU chronicles the life and crimes of the Special Victims Unit of the New York City Police Department and stars Mariska Hargitay, Ice T, Kelli Giddish, and Peter Scanavino.

Showtime president and CEO David Nevins said at TCA on Monday that Homeland's eighth season will be its last, although he was quick to add, "It’s not a cancellation." The political thriller has won eight Emmys during its run including best drama in 2012, plus two best actress trophies for star Claire Danes.

Showtime released a trailer for the limited series Escape At Dannemora, which stars Patricia Arquette in a story based on the real-life prison escape that made headlines during summer 2015 with the strange odyssey of two convicted murderers and the 51-year-old woman who helped them escape.

BBC One debuted the trailer for the six-part thriller, Bodyguard, which stars Game Of Thrones alum Richard Madden and Line Of Duty's Keeley Hawes. Set in and around the corridors of power, Bodyguard tells the story of a heroic but volatile war veteran assigned to protect the Home Secretary whose politics run contrary to his own.

Showtime released a trailer for Ray Donovan, which returns for its sixth season on Sunday, October 28. Liev Schreiber returns as the titular "fixer," along with Susan Sarandon, who plays media mogul Sam Winslow.

Liev Schreiber is also the featured narrator in the upcoming two-hour documentary Charles Manson documentary called Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes, and Fox just released a September 17 premiere date along with a teaser trailer.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Criminal Element has an online poll soliticing your vote for your favorite true crime podcast.

The Bookshelf podcast included an interview with crime writer Ann Cleeves, known for her Shetland Quartet and Vera Stanhope novels mysteries.

RTE Roundup featured Declan Burke with the with a round-up of the latest crime fiction.

The Australian podcast Sundays with Libbi Gorr, welcomed crime fiction writer Emma Viskic, the award-winning author of the Caleb Zelic series that includes And Fire Came Down and Resurrection Bay.





Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste offered up a live installment of the "Hungover Gameshow." Battling it out for the coveted prize of nothing, the two crime writers were joined by Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Alex Michaelides, Alison Belsham, Chris McGeorge, Emma Kavanagh, Mason Cross, and Richard Osman.

CrimeFriction featured author Rob "Krav Maga Boffin" Hart to discuss Hawaii, movies, and his latest novel, Potter's Field.

The special guest on Speaking of Mysteries was Lori Rader-Day who talked about her latest, Under a Dark Sky, where she sends a character who’s pathologically afraid of the dark to a dark sky park.

The MysteryRats Maze podcast featured excerpts from The Deepest Grave: A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir Mystery by Jeri Westerson.

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Quote of the Week

           Related StoriesQuote of the Week 

FFB: Murderous Schemes

Murderous Schemes was edited by J. Madison Davis and the late, great Donald Westlake and published in 1998 by Oxford University Press. As Westlake notes in his introduction, "The major flaw with the genre under consideration is that no one knows quite what to call it." He himself prefers "detective story," and sets out to show why so many people fall under the spell of the genre, or as he adds, "What are these detective stories, that so enthrall people who should be spending their time on more worthy pursuits? What is this drug anyway?" The "worthy pursuits" quip follows after Westlake pokes fun at people who think worthwhile fiction can't be entertaining.



The anthology is organized into eight themes, including The Locked Room; Only One Among You; The Caper; The Armchair Detective; Come Into My Parlor; I Confess!; Hoist On Their Own Petards; and Over the Edge. Each section includes four short stories from many masters of the crime fiction genre, spanning the 150 years between Edgar Allan Poe and Lawrence Block. But there are some authors making an appearance who one doesn't always see in such anthologies, like Roald Dahl, Isak Dinesen, Jack London, and Damon Runyon.



The offerings include almost every style imaginable, from the hard-boiled detective story to the cozy armchair mystery to hints of horror. American and British authors are included, along with short biographies. As with most such works, there are hits and misses, but the clever idea of grouping the stories into the themes provides a fun  and—yes, entertaining—introduction to some of the common conventions in crime fiction.

            

Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime announced that the 2018 winner of the annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award is Mia Manansala. The award, which honors the memory of pioneering African-American crime fiction author Eleanor Taylor Bland with a $1,500 grant to an emerging writer of color, was created in 2014 to support SinC’s vision statement that the organization should serve as the voice for excellence and diversity in crime writing.

Killer Nashville announced the finalists for the Silver Falchion Awards in several categories, including Best Action Adventure, Best Cozy Mystery, Best Juvenile, Best Mystery, Best Nonfiction, Best Procedural, Best Short Story, Best Suspense, and Best Thriller. The winners will be announced at the annual Killer Nashville conference awards dinner on August 25.

The Edinburgh Book Festival returns August 11-27 with a stellar lineup of crime fiction authors in various talks and conversation. Participating authors include Mark Billingham, Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Jo Nebso, Ian Rankin, Ruth Ware, and many more.

Scottish crime writer Val McDermid will also be heading to the University of Otago next year for a visiting professor role in the humanities division from 2019-2021. For each of the three years of her role, Prof McDermid will spend up to eight weeks a year in Dunedin, where she will be attached to the university's centre for Irish and Scottish studies. McDermid also holds fellowships from the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Parade Magazine compiled a list of "20 Chilling Thrillers by Women to Read This Year."

Saga Cruises has introduced three Canary Islands itineraries including the 14-night "Sunshine in the Canaries" onboard Saga Sapphire, departing Southampton November 13, 2018. With a theme around crime, the guest star is TV detective Stephen Tompkinson (DCI Banks), and passengers can join a mystery-themed book club and watch screenings of crime movies as well as pay visits to the haunts of J.K. Rowling and Agatha Christie. Four Canary Islands ­are featured: El Hierro, La Palma, Lanzarote and Tenerife plus Leixoes and Madeira, in Portugal.

You can't make this stuff up (hint: do check out the headline).

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "That Alternate Universe" by Nancy Scott.

In the Q&A roundup, Sophie Hannah took the New York Times' Book Review "By the Book" challenge; Dan Mallory, a/k/a AJ Finn, spoke with New Zealand's Noted ezine about the runaway success of his debut thriller, The Woman in the Window; and Writers' Digest chatted with Walter Mosley about characterization and the legacy of Devil in a Blue Dress.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox won a heated auction for a new project that will reunite Ben Affleck (as director) and Matt Damon, who is set to star. The film is based on a true crime story, written by Jeff Maysh and published in The Daily Beast, about an ex-cop who rigged the McDonald’s Monopoly game, allegedly stealing over $24 million dollars and sharing it with an unsavory group of co-conspirators who offered kickbacks to the mastermind. Solid detective work unearthed Jerry Jacobson, a head of security for a Los Angeles company responsible for generating the game pieces and led to a wide conspiracy that involved mobsters, psychic, strip-club owners, drug traffickers and a family of Mormons who falsely claimed to have won more than $24 million in cash and prizes.

Mel Gibson and Colin Farrell are set to star in War Pigs, a Millennium Films action thriller that Tommy Wirkola will direct. Scripted by Nick Ball and John Niven, the project centers on a group of disillusioned ex-marines who go on one last mission to get revenge on the cartel that murdered one of their own while making off with millions of dollars in drug money. Farrell plays Drex and Gibson plays The Pastor.

The San Diego noir film festival is focusing on movies with a San Diego connection, with showings each Thursday evening through August. The series complements the yearlong noir film series at Digital Gym Cinema called Noir on the Boulevard. Here's the upcoming lineup to be shown at La Jolla Athenaeum's Flicks on the Bricks:  Tension (1949); The Brothers Rico (1957); The Grifters (1990)

A trailer was released for the thriller Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny as the titular suspected murderess, Lizzie Borden, which takes a closer look at her relationship with Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), the maid who testified at Borden's trial before she was deemed not guilty.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Hulu has given a pilot order to an adaptation of Less Than Zero, based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name. Adapted by Craig Wright, Less Than Zero follows a college freshman (Austin Abrams) returning home for Christmas to spend time with his ex-girlfriend and his friend who struggles with addiction. Less Than Zero presents a look at the culture of wealthy, decadent youth in Los Angeles.

Acorn TV has greenlit Queens of Mystery, created by Julian Unthank, a writer on popular British dramas Doc Martin and New Tricks. The offbeat drama series is about a perennially single female detective and her three crime-writer aunts, who help her solve murders while setting her up on dates. It will run as three feature-length episodes on Acorn TV and also be available as a six-part series.

Fargo creator Noah Hawley is moving forward with a fourth round of his Emmy-winning series, with the new season toplined by Chris Rock who’ll play the head of a crime family. Rock’s character has surrendered his oldest boy to his enemy in a deal with the devil to get ahead in the business, and in turn must raise his son’s enemy as his own. Then the head of the Kansas City mafia goes into the hospital for routine surgery and dies. And everything changes.

HBO Latin America has greenlit a second season of Argentine thriller series The Bronze Garden (El Jardin de Bronce), which has aired across 50 HBO international markets, including HBO Spain and HBO Nordic. The eight-episode thriller centered on an architect in desperate search for his four-year-old daughter who vanished with her babysitter in a Buenos Aires subway. He is aided by a brilliant, if unconventional, private detective. 

Oscar winner Timothy Hutton has signed on as a series regular for the upcoming fifth season of ABC’s legal thriller drama series How To Get Away With Murder. Per standard Shondaland practice, no details about Hutton’s storyline are being revealed. Per ABC’s logline: a new mystery involving one of their own will unfold, as relationships are fractured and new secrets are exposed. 

House of Cards’ Michael Kelly has been cast in the second season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan as a series regular, joining previously announced Noomi Rapace and John Hoogenakker. The series is a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the famed and lauded Tom Clancy hero, starring John Krasinski and Abbie Cornish. It centers on Jack Ryan (Krasinski), an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time. He uncovers a pattern in terrorist communications that launches him into the center of a dangerous gambit with a new breed of terrorism that threatens destruction on a global scale. 

Ryan Hurst (Sons of Anarchy, Bates Motel) is joining the cast of Amazon drama series Bosch for the upcoming fifth season. Hurst will play Hector Bonner, a former client of attorney Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers), currently working as her investigator. Bosch is based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels and stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch.

AMC has announced their new spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl will premiere this November, although no official date has been set. The six part miniseries will be based off of John Le Carre’s novel of the same name and is set to star award winning Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood), Oscar nominated Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) and BAFTA nominee Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth).

A trailer was released for the second season of Audience Networks's adaptation of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes.  Brendan Gleeson stars as Bill Hodges, a retired detective taunted by precocious, superintelligent serial killer Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway). Now, Brady is in a vegetative state and gone... but a medical experiment may bring him back in unexpected ways.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Ellison Cooper, an author with a background in archaeology, cultural neuroscience, ancient religion, colonialism, and human rights whose debut novel, Caged, has been listed as one of the "Best Summer Reads for 2018" by Publishers Weekly.

Author Debbi Mack interviewed crime fiction and noir author Jason Michel on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Crime Syndicate is back after a month off as Michael Pool hosts crime fiction author Mike McCrary reading from and discussing his latest, a psychological thriller titled Relentless. 

THEATRE

Cambridge Arts Theatre and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre announced John Stahl and Cathy Tyson will join Charles Lawson (in the titular role) in Rebus: Long Shadows, a brand new Rebus story written exclusively for the stage by author of the original novels, Ian Rankin, and playwright Rona Munro. The production premieres at Birmingham Repertory Theatre on Thursday September 20 and will then tour in the UK to Edinburgh, Malvern, Nottingham, Manchester, Northampton, and Aberdeen before completing its run in Guildford on November 24.

Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park will begin the 2018-2019 season with an adaptation of the Stephen King thriller Misery in the Marx Theatre. Adapted by the celebrated screenwriter William Goldman, true-life becomes stranger than fiction when an acclaimed romance novelist, Paul Sheldon, wakes up in the home of his "Number One Fan." This "spine-tingling stage adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling novel benefits from the immediacy of the theatre and traps you in a tense cat-and-mouse game that will grip you until the very end." The production runs September 1-29.

The Colin McIntyre Classic Thriller Season is up and running at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, with four mysteries being lined up over the next month. Starting the season is Peter Gordon’s play Sleighed To Death, running from Tuesday, July 31-Saturday, August 4. The rest of the season continues with A Touch of Danger by Francis Durbridge, from August 7-11; Louise Page’s adaptation of Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, from August 14-18; and John Goodrum’s adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Nightmare Room, from August 21-25.

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