B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 17

Merry Christmas!

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis is the top choice to star in the Murder, She Wrote movie for Universal. If the deal comes together, she'll play the Jessica Fletcher role popularized by Angela Lansbury in the hit series that ran 12 seasons on CBS. Lansbury starred from 1984 to 1996 in what became one of the most successful and longest-running shows in TV history. Her Jessica Fletcher was a retired schoolteacher turned successful mystery writer, who proves to have an uncanny knack for solving real-life murders. The show was primarily set in the seaside town of Cabot Cove, Maine, though Jessica often travels to other locales as cases unfold.

Greg Kinnear (You Gotta Believe), Kate Berlant (Would It Kill You to Laugh), Nazanin Boniadi (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), Ron Perlman (The Instigators), and Colleen Camp (Amsterdam) have come aboard to support Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler in the cast of The Saviors, a darkly comedic indie thriller. Directed by Kevin Hamedani from a script he co-wrote with Travis Betz, the film is about a suburban couple whose life spirals into paranoia and danger when they rent their garage to mysterious tenants, leading to a shocking revelation with world-altering stakes. Kinnear plays Jim Clemente, an eccentric detective whom the couple hires to investigate their new tenants. Berlant plays Scott’s character’s conspiracy theorist sister, Cleo. Boniadi plays Jahan, one of the mysterious tenants. Perlman and Camp play the parents of Scott’s character, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison.





TELEVISION/STREAMING

Icelandic streamer Síminn has boarded Reykjavik Noir, a series adaptation of Lilja Sigurdardottir's crime novel trilogy. The books, set in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, include Snare, Trap, and Cage. In Snare, a young, divorced mother, Sonja, who is trying to win sole custody of her son, resorts to smuggling cocaine into Iceland and gets caught up in the ruthless criminal world. She clashes with Bragi, an experienced customs officer, and develops a relationship with a woman, Agla.

Matt Nix (Burn Notice) is developing the new drama series, Vacationland, at NBC alongside author Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli & Isles) and Dan Rosen (Dead Man’s Curve). From Universal Television, the series follows top LAPD detective Grace Chen after she resigns from her job in disgust. She retires to the quirky village of Serenity, Maine, determined to put it all behind her. When Serenity’s Sheriff is murdered, Grace finds herself dragged back into crime fighting by Joey, a local veterinarian and amateur sleuth determined to protect the town she loves. Between Grace’s big-city detective skills and Joey’s understanding of Maine, they turn out to be a surprisingly effective team … and a very unlikely pair of friends

Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) is set to write and executive produce a TV adaptation of Swiss-American author Donna Leon’s contemporary Detective Brunetti book series, which is in development at 20th Television. The project was originated and set up at the studio by Fellowes's longtime friend and mentor, producer Ileen Maisel, who died in February at the age of 68. She had been in the 20th Television fold since 2018 when she signed a first-look deal with its former division Fox21. Maisel will be credited as an executive producer on the Brunetti series. Author Leon will co-executive produce, and playwright Felix Legge will serve as co-writer and producer.

Public broadcaster France Télévisions has commissioned an adaptation of Frank Thilliez’s psychological thriller novel, Il Était Deux Fois (Twice Upon a Time). Coproduced by Banijay France’s scripted labels Marathon Studio and Terence Films, the six-part drama is created by Eric Delafosse and France Jacquet and directed by Florian Thomas and Valentin Vincent. The plot focuses on a police captain searching for her missing daughter who wakes in a hotel room with a decade missing from her memory. The cast includes Odile Vuillemin, Hubert Delattre, Nicole Calfan, and Rémi Devilla.

Eddie Redmayne has signed on to return as the Jackal after Peacock and Sky renewed the hitman drama, The Day of the Jackal, for a second season. It comes as little surprise given that Redmayne is the main character of the drama series and [SPOILER ALERT] seemingly emerges relatively unscathed at the end of the first season in the dramatic and twist-heavy finale. Adapted by Ronan Bennett from the hit Frederick Forsyth novel, Season 1 follows an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal (Redmayne), who makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch) who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake. The cast also includes Úrsula Corberó, Charles Dance, Richard Dormer, Chukwudi Iwuji, Lia Williams, Khalid Abdalla, Eleanor Matsuura, Jonjo O’Neill, and Sule Rimi.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Attica Locke, award-winning author of the Highway 59 series, was interviewed by Robert Justice on Crime Writers of Color.

On Crime Time FM, Alison Gaylin chatted with Paul Burke about her new hardboiled thriller, Buzz Kill; a Sunny Randall novel; Robert B Parker's Boston; writing psychological thrillers; and a love of 70s conspiracy movies.

Crime Cafe featured Debbi Mack's chat with journalist, attorney, podcaster, and true crime writer, Kerrie Droban, on writing about psychopaths and more.

Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee, hosts of Murder Junction (fka Red Hot Chili Writers), spoke with Rob Parker about the true mystery of the Yuba County Five, and Rob's new crime series, set in Norfolk, beginning with The Troubled Deep.

The Crime Wave podcast welcomed author Rob Lopresti to talk about his new gig as editor of the short story anthology, Crimes Against Nature.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Mystery Melange - Christmas Edition

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Book Art by BookFoldingSVGMaria

Staffers at Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama, San Francisco’s City Lights Books, and The Nook in Cedar Falls, Iowa, are among 600 booksellers receiving $500 holiday bonuses from author James Patterson, who has been awarding independent store employees since 2015. "Booksellers save lives. Period," Patterson said in a statement released through his publisher, Little, Brown and Company. "I’m happy to be able to acknowledge them and all their hard work this holiday season." Along with his gifts to booksellers, Patterson has given millions of dollars to schools, libraries, and literacy programs. In 2015, the National Book Foundation presented him an honorary National Book Award — the Literarian Award — for outstanding service to the American literary community.

Maureen Jennings received an unusual but well-timed Christmas gift: the mystery author has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Maureen is a prolific author of non-fiction, short stories, and book series featuring Christine Morris, Detective Murdoch, and D.I. Tom Tyler. The Detective William Murdoch series, set in Victorian era Toronto, was optioned in 2003 by Shaftesbury Films, and the resulting TV series, Murdoch Mysteries, is shown in over 120 countries. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

Janet Rudolph posted an updated listing of Crime for the Holidays - mysteries set during Christmas. It's such an extensive list, that she now has to divide it into multiple parts, including Authors A-E; Authors F-L; and Authors M-Z, as well as Christmas shorts—mystery stories, novellas, and anthologies.

I really do wish we could start this tradition everywhere, but in Iceland, the most popular Christmas gifts aren’t gadgets, but books. Each year, Iceland celebrates what’s known as Jólabókaflóðið (pronounced "YO-la-bok-a-flothe"), or the annual Yule Book Flood. In November, each household in Iceland gets a copy of the Iceland Publishers Association’s catalog of all the books published that year, giving residents a chance to pick out holiday books for friends and family. It's probably not too surprising, considering the country reads and publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world,

The authors at Mystery Lover's Kitchen have several tips for holiday reads and recipes, including Gluten Free Christmas Stollen via Libby Klein; Spicy Holiday Cranberry Relish from Deborah Crombie; Christmas Morning Breakfast Cake from Vicki Delany; and much more. You can search them all via this link.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Christmas podcast is up, featuring the Christmas short story, "Some Things Don't Change at Christmas," by KM Rockwood, as read by actor Parker Forrest Lewis. It's not quite a mystery but with a mysterious and heartwarming story for the holidays.

An unpublished manuscript by crime writer John D. MacDonald, a short story narrative of lust, betrayal and dangerous choices, was found in the archives at the University of Florida and published this month in The Strand. MacDonald was still a few years away from his Travis McGee books when he wrote the story, although MacDonald scholar Calvin Branche said that "The Accomplice" did anticipate the moral struggles of McGee and other MacDonald protagonists.

Most people have heard of Charles Dickens's beloved "A Christmas Carol," but as Olivia Rutgliano reminds us over at CrimeReads, we shouldn't forget Dickens wrote other holiday stories of mayhem including "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," published in The Pickwick Papers (1836); "The Mother’s Eyes," published in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840) and more.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Hasleton interviewed Penelope Holt about her new spiritual romantic thriller, The Angel Scroll, and also thriller author Michael Nelson (aka Michael Deeze) about the first in his new Thomas Quinn psychological thriller series, The Deathbed Confessions.

         Related StoriesMystery MelangeMystery Melange, Thanksgiving Edition 

Author R&R with Raemi A. Ray

[image error]Raemi A. Ray is a Boston-based mystery author who enjoys taking inspiration from current New England events when writing about the region. She has a JD with a background in intellectual property and lives in Massachusetts with her two house demons, Otto and DolphLundgren. When not writing or working her much more boring job, she spends her time traveling, or wishing she were traveling.

[image error]A Chain of Pearls, Raemi’s debut mystery and the first in her Martha’s Vineyard Murders series, centers around the mysterious death of a famous journalist and the cover-up that implicates important Martha’s Vineyard residents. When London-based lawyer Kyra Gibson arrives on the idyllic island to settle her estranged father’s affairs, she ends up partnering with world-weary detective, Tarek Collins, as they uncover a web of intrigue and corruption involving a powerful senator, a dubious energy company, and a brutal murder.

Raemi stops into In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the series:

 

Thank you for having me. This is such a cool question and I’m sure everyone approaches it a little differently. I can speak to my personal experience and process, which unsurprisingly starts with college.

I wasn’t particularly studious in college (or before, to be honest). I chose classes where participation and attendance were not a part of the grade. This worked great for about three years until I had to declare a major. I went with the subject I’d already accumulated the most credits in: Medieval European History. Seriously. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision. Most of those classes required some sort of research paper instead of a test. There weren’t any prerequisites or labs, and I liked the stories. The political intrigue, backstabbing, the royal escapades, wars, it was way better than the dry fiction they’d had us reading in British Literature (still cannot stomach Alexander Pope, but adult me does like Chaucer) and, most importantly, I didn’t have to attend lectures. I did have to spend a lot of time in dingy, dusty library basements, though.

This was before Google Books and other private research databases scanned in the collections of academic libraries. I didn’t have the ease of the internet at my fingertips and I had to do research in person. My university’s special collections were stored in these creepy humidity-controlled basements, always with spotty lighting, some with movable stacks on rails that I swear were bespelled to squash snoozing students. In the theology school’s collections (where most of my source material happened to be) I’d have to request what I needed from a bored-out-of-his-mind (read: stoned) freshman, put on these weird gloves, and read through original manuscripts. Fun fact, I had to leave my notebook and pencil in a separate room and walk back and forth. Note-taking became my cardio.

In retrospect, I realize that it’d have been easier just to go to class and take a multiple-choice exam, but I think that experience is where I got my taste for figuring things out on my own.

Nowadays, my research occurs about ninety percent from the comfort of my reading and writing chair, but the other ten percent is going to the places I’m writing about. The Martha’s Vineyard Murders series takes place on a fictional version of the real-life island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ve been traveling there for years and truly love it. When I decided to write a mystery, I knew that the location was half the hurdle. All the greatest mysteries have such an immense yet specific sense of place: Rebecca and Manderley, The Dublin Murder Squad and Ireland, Chandler’s Los Angeles, Sherlock’s London. These books wouldn’t be the same without these settings.  

I conceptualized the Martha’s Vineyard Murders (then titled “My Mystery Book”) in the spring of 2021. The World was still under travel restrictions and I didn’t have the option of traveling to a remote place to study it for my story. (I’d originally wanted to put the book on the isle of Skye.) I knew that to keep it authentic, I had to go with what I knew. Lucky for me, there were a few places conducive to a mystery series that I knew like I knew my own name: Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Of course having this basis of knowledge, didn’t mean I didn’t have to make frequent trips, draw dozens of maps, stalk Facebook groups, or consume local news articles like I was planning to run for a selectperson seat, but it gave me something to start with and I think that first step is the hardest one.

The first two books in the series, A Chain of Pearls and The Wraith’s Return include quite a bit about boats and sailing. Prior to the MVM series, my knowledge of watercraft was limited to Disney Land’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I had to teach myself the lingo, the parts, how it all works, and quite a bit about marinas and harbors generally. Luckily, I know a few boaters who were happy to chat with me, and of course the internet is a goldmine. Now, I’d probably be considered a sailing expert, which is ironic since I get seasick looking at boats, but I need to understand something thoroughly in order to determine what to include and what information is too niche and can be left off the page.

Another part of writing the MVM series is that there is just so much death. I’m happy to say I don’t have first-hand experience with being murdered, or finding any corpses, so I’ve had to learn quite a bit about human anatomy, and how people actually die from the injuries they sustain. I’m confident I’m on an FBI watch list with what I’ve been researching over the past few years. My search history is a terrifying place, and I tend to go down rabbit holes when I’m learning of unique ways of torturing and killing my characters. Much to my surprise, I find that I often lean on my background in Medieval history. Those guys were no joke when it came to creative (horrible) ways of killing people.

I think the biggest challenge for me with regards to research is learning those innate things people do that I don’t have experience with. These aren’t things that one can look up, but are common behaviors. For example, where do men keep their wallets? Their phones? How does it feel to lift a child? What does it take to host Thanksgiving dinner? Do doctors really carry doctor bags? What does an accountant really do? Thankfully, I have friends who have lived these experiences and they’re kind enough to share with me. Probably, the funniest thing I do, is I have a group text with my male friends, where I can ask “guy questions,” like the wallet thing, how they pack a suitcase (packing cubes and the ‘roll method’ seems to be a winner there), pretty much anything about professional sports. They’re very, very supportive.  

That all said, the result of my research, how I internalize and apply the information I’ve gathered is such a subjective process and I’m sure I’ve made errors. Writing in the mystery genre, I probably have more leeway with creative license and the plots can be a bit more fantastical. Making it just believable enough is what I think my readers will engage with. They can see themselves in the same position as my main characters.

 

You can learn more about Raemi Ray via her website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. The books in the "Martha’s Vineyard Murders Series" are available now via Tule Publishing and all major booksellers.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Austin Butler is set to star in Luca Guadagnino's new adaptation for Lionsgate of the book, American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. While there had been rumors Jacob Elordi was being eyed to play Patrick Bateman, that casting didn’t come to pass. The film, which features a script by Scott Z. Burns (The Laundromat), will not be a remake of the 2000 film, but a new adaptation of Ellis’s novel. In the original movie, which came out in 2000 and is set in the 1980s, Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie and serial killer.

Eddie Redmayne is set to join Julia Roberts in the Warner Bros. thriller, Panic Carefully. Elizabeth Olsen is also on board with Sam Esmail directing and writing the script. The film’s logline is being kept under wraps, although it's being described as a paranoid thriller in the vein of Esmail’s Emmy and Golden Globe winner Mr. Robot, as well as The Silence of the Lambs.

Eddie Marsan (Back to Black) and Éanna Hardwicke (Lakelands) are set to star in the upcoming Irish thriller, No Ordinary Heist, inspired by the largest cash heist in UK and Irish history. Colin McIvor (Zoo) will direct from a script he co-wrote with debut screenwriter Aisling Corristine. Inspired by true events that took place in Belfast in December 2004, No Ordinary Heist weaves a gripping fictional tale of two bank employees thrust into a chilling scheme. Forced to orchestrate a £26.5M ($33.8M) robbery to save their family, they are made to execute the crime without the gang ever setting foot inside the bank.





TELEVISION/STREAMING

A new incarnation of Prison Break has taken a major step toward becoming a reality at Hulu with a pilot pickup from Mayans M.C. and The Outlaws co-creator, Elgin James, and 20th Television. Details regarding the new installment’s plot are unknown, although it's said to be "its own thing set within the same universe" and is not expected to involve the characters at the center of the original series and its follow-up on Fox, Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller), and Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell).

ITV has announced a new thriller from barrister and crime novelist, Imran Mahmood, which is a re-imagining of the crime and courtroom drama, Saviour. The story centers on Ben, the son of a police officer, who's charged with murder, and Indy, a criminal barrister, whose perfect world begins to crack when she takes on Ben's case and confronts police corruption, media scrutiny, and her own deeply buried secrets.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Sharon Short to talk about her latest book, Trouble Island, an Agatha Christie-esque And Then There Were None tale of deception, murder, isolation and bad weather set in the 1930’s on a small island in Lake Erie at the beginning of winter.

Cops and Writers chatted with J.D. Barker and Christine Daigle about navigating the ever-changing waters of publishing books and collaborating with other authors.

Crime Time FM featured "The Newcastle Noir Review Show" with Trevor Wood, Sam Holland, Antony Johnstone, Jo Furniss, Rob Parker, Michael Wood, and Paul Burke selecting some of their favorite crime novels of 2024 and looking ahead to 2025.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed their favorite books from 2024.

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Friday's "Forgotten Books" - The Night the Gods Smiled

[image error]Eric Wright was born in London, England in 1929 to a poor working-class family, an experience he later detailed in his memoir, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man. When he was 22, he immigrated to Canada and eventually became an English professor, chair of the English department, then Dean of Arts at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto.



Wright penned dozens of stories, many of them crime fiction, and served as editor of Criminal Shorts: Mysteries by Canadian Crime Writers, published in 1992. He also created not one or two, but four different detective series including police officer Mel Pickett; Lucy Trimble Brenner, who inherits a Toronto private detective agency; and part-time community college English teacher named Joe Barley, who also works part-time as a private eye.



[image error]His most popular literary creation, however, is Charlie Salter, a Toronto cop suffering from middle-aged depression when he's first introduced in The Night the Gods Smiled, the author's debut novel in 1983. The book won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, the Crime Writer's Association's John Creasey Award, and the City of Toronto Book Award.



At the start of the story, Salter's doldrums are compounded by police politics that have left him working what's essentially a desk job. When he's offered the first interesting case to come along in awhile, he jumps at the chance. David Summers, an English professor at a local college, has been murdered in a Montreal hotel room during a conference. Initially, the only clues are a lipstick-marked glass and a whisky bottle used to crush Summer's skull, but Salter soon realizes he has a long list of potential suspects, including a prostitute, mistresses, the victim's bitter wife, his squash partner, his stock-broker and assorted colleagues and students.



Salter is an engaging character, self-righteous, outspoken, and happily married, albeit with an undercurrent of cultural/class friction between his police officer status and his wife's wealthy family. His mid-life crisis sees him taking up squash after meeting the victim's playing partner, and developing a crush on Summer's favorite student, a free-spirited young woman named Molly.



Wright is known for his "lucid and agreeably laconic style," as one reviewer put it, while Kirkus adds that "the balance between sleuthing and gentle character-comedy is maintained beautifully throughout—with superior dialogue, intriguing Canadian specifics, and not a single cliché in sight." There were eleven Salter books in all, first published in hardcover until the series was dropped by Signet. A few reprints are available, including an omnibus of the first three novels in the series, published by Dundurn.

         Related StoriesFriday's "Forgotten" Books: Death on the RocksFriday's "Forgotten" Books: Spence At Marlby ManorFriday's "Forgotten" Books: The Best American Mystery Stories, 1997, ed. Robert B. Parker 

Mystery Melange

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In the Short Mystery Fiction Society forums, Rob Lopresti posted news via Ira Matetsky of the Wolfe Pack that the Nero Award, presented each year to an author for the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, was won by Ariel Lawhon for her novel, The Frozen River. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to celebrate the novella format popularized by Stout, went to T. M. Bradshaw for her novella titled "Double Take." It will be published in the July 2025 issue of AHMM. Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid Novella Award include Peter Hoppock's "Precipice"; Andrew Kass's "Deadline"; Jenny Ramaley's "Workplace Rules for a Fire-Breathing Dragon"; and Ella Rutledge's "Murder at the Y.T.D."

The winners of the UK Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024 were revealed, with a Readers' Choice and Editors' Choice chosen from the shortlists for the categories of Book of the Year, Best Debut Novel, Best in Translation, Best Indie Novel, Best Crime Show, and Best Author. You can read all the winners here and check out all the titles on the shortlists here.

The six titles on AudioFile’s 2024 Best Mystery & Suspense Audiobooks list feature a new voice for a favorite long-running series as well as thrilling tales full of deception and intrigue. The selected titles include: The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, read by Saskia Maarleveld; The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny, read by Jean Brassard; A Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra, read by Soneela Nankani; The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, read by Julia Whelan; Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, read by Jonathan Davis; and You'll Never Find Me by Allison Brennan, read by Hilary Huber.

Alison Flood’s best crime and thrillers of 2024 picks for The Guardian include Guide Me Home by Attica Locke (Viper); Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra (Penguin); Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster); Bonehead by Mo Hayder (Hodder & Stoughton); and We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Penguin).

And if you're craving more "best of" lists for reading fodder (and gifts!), Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has more from BOLO Books blogger Kristopher Zgorski here, Boston-based critic Steve Donoghue here.

The extended deadline of December 15th is fast approaching for The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers. Interested applicants should submit all documents, including the first three chapters of your work in progress, by the deadline via the following link. The grant includes a $2,500 cash award and a comprehensive registration to Malice Domestic, including two nights' lodging at the convention hotel.

Mystery Readers Journal received so many submissions for the London Mysteries issue, that editor Janet Rudolph has divided it into two issues. She has space for more articles, reviews, and Author Author! essays that focus on Mysteries set in London, with a deadline of January 20, 2025. 

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine interviewed Charlaine Harris, author of series including the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, the Lily Bard mysteries, and the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasies; and the magazine also spoke with Emma Kenny, a psychologist, TV presenter, writer and expert media commentator, about her book, The Serial Killer Next Door.

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Author R&R with Lyn Squire

[image error]Lyn Squire was born in Cardiff, South Wales.  During a twenty-five-year career at the World Bank, he published over thirty articles and several books within his area of expertise, and was lead author for World Development Report, 1990, which introduced the metric – a dollar a day – that is still used to measure poverty worldwide. Lyn was also the founding president of the Global Development Network, an organization dedicated to supporting promising scholars from the developing world. He now devotes his time to writing. His debut novel, Immortalised to Death, published by Level Best Books in September 2023, introduced Dunston Burnett, a non-conventional amateur detective. It was a First Place Category Winner in the Mystery and Mayhem Division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards.  Dunston’s adventures continue in Fatally Inferior and The Séance of Murder, the second and third books in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  Lyn lives in Virginia with his wife and two dogs.

[image error]Dunston Burnett, a Victorian-era middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, is not cut out to be a detective, yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries. In Fatally Inferior he must contend with the abduction of a member of Charles Darwin’s family, the missing person inexplicably spirited out of a locked-tight country house. A few days later, a ransom demand arrives at Down House, Darwin’s home in Kent, threatening that the hostage will be killed unless Darwin renounces his theory of evolution in The Times.  Meanwhile, a former maid at Down House dies, or so it seems, giving birth in London’s Shoreditch workhouse.  Believing her dead, her baby son is swiftly dispatched to a hell-hole orphanage in Hampshire. These apparently independent events converge in a vile act of vengeance: a hellish torture for the victim; the perfect revenge for the perpetrator. Will Dunston ever be able to expose the heart of this dark, confounding mystery?

Lyn Squire stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

 

Researching the second book in a mystery series

Is researching the second book in a mystery series easier than researching the first?  To answer this question, I draw on my experience with Fatally Inferior, the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  My answer is mixed.  In some areas, the second book requires less work; in others it can be more challenging and more demanding.

My first book, Immortalised to Death, is set in late nineteenth-century England.  For this book, I researched Victorian dress, furniture, architecture, vernacular, patterns of everyday behavior and so on, to provide period-authentic material for scene-setting and character portrayal.  This task is relatively straightforward, since information on most aspects of Victorian life is readily available on the internet.  Nonetheless, the effort takes time that would otherwise be available for writing.  My second book, Fatally Inferior, is also set in the Victorian era.  Much of the background research for book one was, therefore, of immediate use for book two, a huge labor-saving help. 

Another way in which a prior book can significantly reduce the research required for the current book is through characters that appear throughout the series.  For example, Dunston Burnett, my protagonist, is the glue that binds the three-book series together.  A diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick), he is not cut out to be a detective yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries.  He is fully described when he first enters the story in Immortalised to Death so his presence in book two did not entail the need for additional research.  While the character evolves throughout the series, the associated extra research was minimal.      

A second book, however, invariably introduces new locations and characters which naturally require fresh research.  For example, Down House, Charles Darwin’s home in Kent, is not mentioned in the first book, but it is the venue for several scenes in Fatally Inferior, and its layout is crucial to the execution of the crime at the center of the book’s plot.  Down House is open to visitors.  The ground floor is set out as in Darwin’s time with the great man’s study furnished exactly as it was when he was writing The Origin of Species.  Given the house’s key role in my story and the likelihood that many readers would be well acquainted with the house, I decided I had to visit it myself to make sure that my description stayed true to the original. 

This may sound like an unusually burdensome research demand.  But the house is only an hour and a half’s journey from Central London, and many authors visit more distant locations that figure prominently in their books.  Moreover, I had undertaken a similar research excursion for my first book.  Book two’s new location did entail extra research, but, I judged, no more than I had expended on book one for the same purpose.  The same point holds for new secondary characters like Charles Darwin himself.  Additional research is called for, but, again, no more than I devoted to the same task for book one.

Conjuring up a storyline for my second book, however, proved a much more challenging task than for the first.  The kernel of the idea for the storyline in Immortalised to Death, my first novel, was crystalized in my mind before I began researching the book in any detail.  This, I suspect, is the case for most authors embarking on their first book.  As a result, research for that book was focused and limited.  It is the exact opposite for the second book.

Immersed in drafting the first, I had not allocated time to conceptualizing what I would write about in the second, so that when I wrapped up book-one, there was nothing on hand for book-two.  Instead of having a sparkling gem ready to propel the new novel, my literary cupboard was bare, and I found myself casting about from scratch for a fresh idea that would prove a worthy follow-up.  This, I imagine, happens to many other authors writing a mystery series.

To find the right storyline for book-two, I expanded my research about events and people in the time and place where I set my stories (Victorian England), hoping that something would spark my imagination.  And eventually something did.  I was reading Janet Browne’s two-volume biography of Charles Darwin (Voyaging and The Power of Place, Princeton University Press, 1995 and 2002 respectively) when two aspects of his life jumped out at me.  I had found an intriguing pair of leads for a new story. 

One arose from the uproar that greeted the publication of The Origin of Species on November 24, 1859.  Darwin was immediately bombarded with scathing reviews in academic journals, blistering editorials in the leading newspapers and crude cartoons in the cheaper broadsheets.  This avalanche of disgust and hatred from believers in God’s creation of man, led me to imagine a more malicious assault on the scientist.  Was this an idea I could use in my new novel?  Indeed, it was.  I explored several possibilities, finally settling on the abduction of a Darwin family member and a threat that the kidnap-victim would die unless Darwin retracted his theory in a letter to The Times. 

The other had to do with the blood relationship between Darwin and his wife, Emma.  They were first cousins; they had a common grandfather in the person of Josiah Wedgewood.  In the nineteenth century, the offspring of marriages between such close relatives were thought to suffer loss of vigor and infertility.  This fear weighed heavily on both husband and wife, and brought to mind an image of a couple desperate for a grandchild only to be cruelly robbed of any hope of a happy old age spent in the blissful company of their children’s children by a vile act of revenge.  I was soon picturing a scene in which Emma Darwin is forced to witness the horrific death of the couple’s only grandchild. 

Charles Darwin makes only a few fleeting appearances in Fatally Inferior, but the furor created by his theory of evolution and the consequences of his marriage to his first cousin, motivate and structure my entire story.  After much effort, considerably more than I expended on the first book, I had the pegs on which to hang my story.

Looking back on my experience with the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy and the amount of research that was required compared with the first book, the key take-away is this: The overall quantity of research and background reading may not change that much but its distribution across activities changes significantly.  In my, probably typical, case, the focus of research shifted dramatically from scene-setting and character portrayal, all adequately covered in writing the first book, to the new and challenging task of conceiving a fresh idea for the second book’s storyline and developing it into a full-blown successor novel. 

 

You can learn more about Lyn Squire and his writing by visiting his website and by following him on Facebook and Goodreads. Fatally Inferior is now available via Level Best Books and can be found in all major booksellers.

          

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Filmmaker Wes Miller (A Day to Die) is taking on the legal thriller, Wildcards, as his next feature. The cast stars Leon Preston Robinson (usually credited simply as Leon), Elise Neal (All of Us), Aries Spears (Mad TV), and Stakiah Lynn Washington (Angel City) in lead roles, joined by Crew Morrow, Courtney Grace, Samantha Walkes, and Robert Catrini. Wildcards follows a jury deliberating the case of Theodore Sterling (Morrow), a privileged young man accused of the sexual assault of a 20-something African-American woman (Washington). The prosecution is led by Assistant State Attorney James Jones (Spears), an overworked yet determined prosecutor, who faces off against Greg Sims (Leon), a veteran defense attorney with an unbroken 25-year winning streak. As the jury weighs the evidence, their contrasting backgrounds and beliefs ignite fierce debates, amplifying the tension inside the deliberation room. Meanwhile, the emergence of a Wildcard, an enigmatic witness claiming to know the truth about the night in question, throws the case into turmoil.





TELEVISION/STREAMING

The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures has landed on its next royal project, turning its attention to The Lady, an ITV and BritBox International drama about Jane Andrews, the Duchess of York’s former aide and dresser who was convicted of murder. Moving amongst the highest social circles in Britain, she managed to secure a place in the upper-classes, only to lose her job with the Duchess after nine years of service prior to her conviction for murdering her husband, Thomas Cressman, in 2001. The project will begin filming during the early part of 2025 with news of casting and key production personnel announced closer to that date.

ITV has released the first trailer from the upcoming James Norton thriller, Playing Nice. The four-part series, to be released in January 2025, is based on the best-selling novel by British thriller author JP Delaney and is set against a sweeping Cornish landscape. Two couples discover that their toddlers were switched at birth in a hospital mix-up, and face a horrifying dilemma: do they keep the sons they have raised and loved, or reclaim their biological children? (HT to The Killing Times)

ABC is developing Devil’s Ranch, a one-hour military procedural from Will Trent's Rebecca Murga. Heidi Cole McAdams (Death and Other Details) is set as showrunner. The drama follows a group of ex-military personnel who operate a ranch on the Texas-Mexico border by day and conduct various missions across the globe by night.

ABC's hit procedural, The Rookie, may spawn a second spinoff series, and unlike the first one, it would stay in the cop show arena. The network, Lionsgate Television, and 20th Television are in early development on the offshoot, written by The Rookie creator, Alexi Hawley. Set in Washington state, the potential spinoff follows a male cop who is stepping into a new phase of life in his second act. It keeps the major midlife change concept of the Los Angeles-set original series, which started off with Nathan Fillion's John Nolan switching careers to become the oldest rookie in the LAPD.

Mark Eydelshteyn (Anora) will make his American TV debut as the male lead in Season 2 of Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Created by Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane, Season 1 of Mr. and Mrs. Smith followed two lonely strangers (Glover, Maya Erskine) who have to pose as a married couple as they both begin new careers as spies, taking on new aliases, Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high-risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. The Season 1 finale, which Sloane described as a "nod to a’ 70s cinema cliffhanger," involved John and Jane getting into a gunfight, leaving it unclear whether the two survive. When asked in a Deadline interview whether Mr. & Mrs. Smith may be taking the anthology series route with a different story and different characters each season in the vein of Fargo, which Sloane had worked on, she responded cryptically, "maybe."

Amazon Prime Video debuted a Reacher Season 3 trailer and announced a premiere date of Thursday, February 20, 2025. The third season is based on Lee Child's novel, Persuader.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On Crime Time FM, Paul Burke chatted with Chris McGinley about his new historical thriller, Once These Hills.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed bestselling author and former prosecutor in the L.A. District Attorney’s office, Marcia Clark, to talk about her new book, Trial by Ambush.





A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the Christmas mystery short story, "Gnomes For the Holidays," by Margaret Hamilton, read by actor Donna Beavers.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Mystery Melange

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Winners of the Irish Book Awards were unveiled, including the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press). The other finalists in that category include Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld).

The Saltire Society presented the Scottish Book Awards last week, including the winner for Fiction Book of the Year, which went to What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close. The novel is a police procedural inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders during the late 1970s and early '80s and the subsequent feminist arson campaign that targeted pornography stores. The judges called the novel, "Superb, evocative and enraging, with brilliant characterisation, humour, and a huge sense of tension from the ever-present threat of violence."

Joffe Books announced that the winner of the Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour 2024 is Rupa Mahadevan, for her addictive and atmospheric psychological thriller, The Goddess of Death. She receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize and a £25,000 audiobook deal from Audible for the first book. This is Britain’s biggest crime prize and was established in 2021 to actively seek out writers from communities that are underrepresented in crime fiction and support them in building sustainable careers, while simultaneously discovering brilliant new talent. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Since 2008, the annual CrimeFest conference has brought crime fiction writers and fans together in Bristol, UK, showcasing approximately 150 authors on some 50+ panels, interviews and events over a four day period each year, as well as presenting the CrimeFest Awards and offering an annual bursary for crime fiction authors of color. Sadly, CrimeFest co-hosts Donna Moore and Adrian Muller posted a notice that the next conference, which takes place from May 15th-18th, 2025, will be the final one. Although the statement didn't point to a specific reason per se, the event has been primarily supported by gate proceeds, donations, and volunteers, and run by a small dedicated staff with few corporate supporters aside from Specsavers. With all the good that CrimeFest has done for the crime fiction community, here's hoping some funding entity will step up to keep the conference going.

South Florida Sun Sentinel book critic, Oline Cogdill chose her best mystery book selections for 2024. Her 31 choices are split between general releases, debut novels, and compilations of short mystery and crime fiction. (HT to The Rap Sheet)

The "best" lists keep coming: New York Times thriller critic, Sarah Lyall, picked her list of the top 10 "Best Thrillers of 2024,"while critic Sarah Weinman chose her ten favorite Crime Novels of 2024. Plus, The Guardian's Laura Wilson compiled her own choices for "The best crime and thrillers of 2024."

The largest archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished works to come to auction will go under the hammer at Doyle tomorrow, December 6, including first editions, letters, poems, manuscripts, such as an extensive archive of Raymond Chandler's unpublished drafts of fantasy stories, the original typed manuscript for Chandler's only opera, and Chandler's Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter (the current estimate for that one is $10-20,000, is you happen to have some spare change lying around). The items are from the Jean Vounder-Davis Collection of Raymond Chandler. Vounder-Davis (then Fracasse) was Chandler's personal secretary as well as fiancé and muse.

Writing for The Dial, Julia Webster Ayuso took a look at how forensic linguists are using grammar, syntax, and vocabulary to help crack cold cases.

In the Q&A roundup, novelist GC Brown chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new crime thriller, Sniff: Book 1 of The Sniff, Smoke, Shoot series; Haselton also spoke with mystery author Leonard H. Orr about his new family drama mystery, Entitled; and Catriona McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, about a wickedly funny cozy about a wedding that becomes a crime scene.

         Related StoriesMystery Melange, Thanksgiving EditionMystery Melange