B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 174

Mystery Melange

The Long Drop by Denise Mina has won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year. The prize was renamed in 2016 in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the Godfather of Tartan Noir, and is awarded annually at the Bloody Scotland crime fiction conference.



From La Vanguardia, Irish writer John Banville has won the XI RBA Crime Fiction Prize with his novel Pecado, written under the pen name of Benjamin Black with which he signs his crime fiction books.



Some of the authors who will be appearing at the upcoming Noirwich Crime Writing Festival spoke with Crime Time about their take on the event.



Some sad news this week via Mystery Fanfare: Ron Tierney passed away on September 2. Ron wrote 18 mysteries including the Deets Shanahan Mysteries, the Carly Paladino and Noah Lang mysteries, the Peter Strand Mystery Novellas, and also stand-alone crime fiction titles.



Crime writers who invent intricate and illegal plots are perfectly capable of becoming criminals, as evidenced by Tim Watson-Munro who first went to prison when he was 25 – as a prison psychologist. Two decades later he was booted out of the profession for drug offenses, and in his new book, Dancing with Demons, he explains that really there is no such thing as the criminal mind any more than there are criminal classes: there is the potential for criminality in every single one of us.



True crime fans should also head on over to the Criminal Element blog where Philip Jett shared his family's experiences with murder and discussed whether violence can be genetic and Inherited. You can also win a copy of his new book, The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty.



For feline addicts, Sofie Kelly shared a list of her favorite Cat Detectives.



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Under the Bridge of Sighs" by Peter Magliocco.



In the Q&A roundup, David Lagercrantz talked about continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, including the latest installment released this month; Graham Smith takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; South Africa's Deon Meyer, the author of more than a dozen bestselling thrillers and short-story collections stopped by the Globe & Mail to discuss his latest novel, Fever; and Reed Farrel Coleman stopped by Shots Magazine to chat with Ayo Onatade about his latest work, Debt to Pay.

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Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and the post-hurricane edition of the weekly crime drama roundup:

MOVIES



Lionsgate’s Codeblack Films has acquired producer/director/writer Deon Taylor’s thriller Traffik, with a release date set for April 27, 2018. Traffik stars Paula Patton and Omar Epps as a young couple who travels on a romantic getaway to the mountains only to be terrorized by a vicious group of sex traffickers with whom they become locked in a desperate struggle for survival. The film’s cast also includes Laz Alonso, Roselyn Sanchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle, and William Fichtner.



The thriller Three Seconds has been picked up by Aviron Pictures. Adapted from a best-selling Swedish novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, the film follows special ops soldier Pete Hoffman, who has been working undercover for crooked FBI handlers to infiltrate the Polish mob’s drug trade in New York until his cover is threatened when he has to return to prison after a drug deal goes wrong.



Universal Pictures and Working Title Films have released the international trailer for The Snowman based on Jo Nesbø’s global bestseller and starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men series), Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Independence Day: Resurgence). 



TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES



CBS has put in development L.A. Confidential, a drama based on James Ellroy’s noir classic novel and spearheaded by Arnon Milchan, who produced the acclaimed 1997 movie adaptation of the book. L.A. Confidential follows three homicide detectives, a female reporter, and a Hollywood actress whose paths intersect as the detectives pursue a sadistic serial killer through the seedy underbelly of glamorous 1950s Los Angeles.



Netflix has ordered an adaptation of the thriller novel Quicksand as its first Swedish original series, which is from the head writer of The Bridge, Camilla Ahlgren. The project is based on the best-selling novel by Malin Persson Giolito about a mass shooting at a prep school in Stockholm’s wealthiest suburb, after which high-school student Maja Norberg finds herself on trial for murder. When the events of the day are revealed, so too are the private details about her relationship with Sebastian Fagerman and his dysfunctional family.



In competitive bid, Netflix has landed Ratched, a drama series from Ryan Murphy and Michael Douglas starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The project scored a two-season, 18-episode, straight-to-series order at Netflix with production slated to begin sometime in mid-2018. Ratched is an origins story, beginning in 1947, which will follow Ratched’s (Paulson's) journey and murderous progression through the mental health care system from nurse to full-fledged monster.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Scotland's Denise Mina, author of the Garnethill trilogy and three novels featuring Glasgow journalist Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, stopped by the Books+ podcast to discuss crime fiction and true crime.

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Mystery Melange

In the UK's York, this year's Big City Read which runs from September 14 to November 10 will focus on Helen Cadbury's 2013 debut thriller, To Catch A Rabbit. Fiona Williams, chief executive of York Explore, which runs the city's network of libraries sponsoring the event, noted that this year's event will be "joy tinged with sadness" because York native Cadbury died last year at the age of 52.



The new Noireland International Crime Fiction Festival in Belfast has announced some of the lineup for its inaugural program October 27-29, 2017. Some of the team behind the BBC’s award-winning crime drama Line of Duty will be on hand, with plenty more panels and talks by special guest headliners Benjamin Black, Robert Crais, and Sophie Hannah.



If you're in the UK, you can sign up for the Guardian Masterclass "How to write a psychological thriller" and learn how to write a thrilling page-turner at this evening course with Erin Kelly, bestselling author of He Said/She Said and Poison Tree. The course will take place on Wednesday, November 29th, but participation is limited.



Editors Dr. Lucy Andrew (University of Chester) and Samuel Saunders (Liverpool John Moores University) have issued a call for papers on the topic of "A Study in Sidekicks: The Detective’s Assistant in Crime Fiction." This collection aims to explore the changing representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction from the nineteenth century to the present day. If you're interested, submit an abstract of 300-350 words and biography of 50-100 words to Lucy Andrew (l.andrew@chester.ac.uk) and Sam Saunders (S.J.Saunders@2014.ljmu.ac.uk) by Monday 13th November 2017. (HT to Shots Magazine)



Why are literature’s greatest detectives seemingly all obsessed with food? The ezine Eater looked at what it meant to be a "foodie" in a world of crime, from Hercule Poirot to Nero Wolfe.



Writing for The Guardian, Alex Clark explored our fascination for stories of domestic desire, rage and revenge that are personified in the vengeful woman.



Author/blogger Margot Kinberg discussed crime novels featuring unreliable witnesses.



Writing for The Pool, Anne James looked at the role of women in crime fiction as both authors and victims and wondered if crime novels can also be feminist?



The WHSmith blog featured "10 Crime Fiction Novels Inspired by Real Life Crimes."



Real life is indded often much stranger than - and the inspiration for - fictional crime. The Daily Mail took a look at the true crimes and grotesque souvenirs of a Wisconsin bachelor who inspired film villains from Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs.



Sometimes the greatest mysteries aren't murders: what happened to some of the world's greatest treasures?



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Just Us" by John Kaprielian.



In the Q&A roundup, award-winning crime writer Gail Bowen answered eight questions submitted by eight of her fellow writers in the CBC Books' Magic 8 Q&A; Margaret Maron spoke with the LA Review of Books about the final installment in her series with NYPD Lieutenant Sigrid Harald; Cat Hogan was interviewed by Declan Burke about Irish crime fiction and her latest book, There Was a Crooked Man; the Criminal Element spoke with Jussi Adler-Olsen about his Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen police force; and Tess Gerritsen stopped by the Huffington Post to discuss the latest installment in her Rizzoli and Isles series, I Know a Secret.

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Media for Monday

Monday means it's time for the latest roundup of crime drama news:



MOVIES



Peter Nicks is set to direct an adaptation of The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston’s Racial Divide for Fox Searchlight. The project is based on the book by journalist Dick Lehr and recounts the true story of Michael Cox, an African American plainclothes officer who is mistakenly beaten during a police chase and then finds himself on the other side of the “blue wall of silence” as the Boston Police Department covers it up. The book was adapted for the big screen by George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane.



Sony Pictures has picked up The Crow Reborn, the long-in-the-works reimagining of James O’Barr’s graphic novel that was turned into a 1994 movie starring Brandon Lee and directed by Alex Proyas. The Crow Reborn will reboot the franchise and will be more faithful to O’Barr’s novel which tells the story of Eric Draven, a rock musician who is revived from the dead to avenge his own death as well as the rape and murder of his fiancée.



Emmy-winner Michael Badalucco (of David E. Kelley’s The Practice) and Sopranos alum Federico Castelluccio are set as the leads in Marlyn Bandiero’s indie film Blue Betrayal, inspired by true events about a family man who loses everything after he is betrayed by his partners. Set in 1983, the story follows police officer Joe Luppino, who gets shot and comes within an inch of losing his life and begins to fear about supporting his family, which leads him to open a small gym for a second, safer income. He soon discovers his business partner is selling drugs out of the gym and members of his precinct are involved. Luppino has to fight against the betrayal, the set up, and ultimately his own need for revenge.



The first trailer was released for the political thriller Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, which stars Liam Neeson in the title role about the Watergate scandal that took down President Richard M. Nixon.



An international trailer was released for Lynne Ramsay’s thriller, You Were Never Really Here (titled A Beautiful Day in France), where Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe, an ex-FBI agent and soldier who must rescue a politician's daughter from a brothel.



A trailer was also released for the indie noir flick, Death Waits for No Man, the "unnerving and complex chronicle" of a neon art collector who seduces a lone drifter into killing her abusive husband.



If you're a fan of heist films, you should check out this listing of "The 9 Best Heist Scenes in Movie History."



TELEVISION



Justified executive producers Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman are returning to the literary creations of Elmore Leonard, optioning three of the late author’s praised Detroit novels, Unknown Man #89, Pagan Babies, and Mr. Paradise, as the basis for a new TV series targeted for cable and streaming networks. Written by Tod “Kip” Williams (Door in the Floor), the series adaptation is envisioned as focusing on one novel each season, with characters occasionally appearing in multiple seasons as they often did in Leonard’s novels. Additionally, novels may spawn related, but narratively original seasons, based on featured or tangential characters and storylines in the original books.



After a competitive auction, CBS has landed Chiefs, an hourlong drama from David Hudgins, Carol Mendelsohn and Sony Pictures TV Studios, which explores the professional and personal lives of three driven, successful, but very different women who are each Chiefs of Police of their own precincts in L.A. County. They band together to create a task force to catch a dangerous serial killer.



In another highly competitive deal, NBC has landed Closure, a legal procedural drama from Drop Dead Diva creator Josh Berman, Underground executive producer John Legend and Sony Pictures TV Studios with a put pilot commitment. Written by Berman, Closure is based on the inspiring story of Serena Nunn, who at 19 learned about the criminal justice system first-hand after being sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to distribute drugs, despite her being a star student and her negligible role in the crime as the girlfriend of a drug dealer. When Nunn’s sentence was commuted after 11 years, she went on to earn a law degree and started working in the public defender’s office in Atlanta assisting other lawyers because her conviction prevented her from admission to the state bar. That changed when Nunn was pardoned by President Obama last December. Nunn is now a practicing lawyer using her unique perspective to defend her clients.



The This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia is teaming up with NBC for a new police drama centering around an elite task force working to protect their own. The project, titled Greenlit, is about a highly-skilled group of federal agents whose impressive backgrounds include working for the FBI, Secret Service, IRS and SWAT. Their job is to protect members of law enforcement who find themselves targeted for murder (or "greenlit," as they call it) by various criminal organizations.



Last week, I reported that James Gunn was spearheading a reboot of the 1970s TV buddy-cop series Starsky and Hutch, and this week, it was announced that the project had landed at Amazon. It will be the first foray into television for Guardians of the Galaxy's James Gunn and his production company Troll Court Entertainment.



In a previous Media Murder for Monday post, I also noted that True Detective season 3 was looking more possible, and now we have the official word that True Detective will return to the airwaves for a third season. It will take the big mystery back to a rural setting, like that of Season 1, namely in the Ozarks. Mahershala Ali of Moonlight and Luke Cage will star as Wayne Hays, who is a state police detective hailing from Northwest Arkansas.



UKTV – home of channels like Alibi and Drama – announced a brand-new, 11-part series that takes us back to the so-called Golden Age of crime fiction, the 1920s. The Frankie Drake Mysteries will star Lauren Lee Smith as Private Investigator Frankie Drake and Chantel Riley as Trudy, her associate at Drake Private Detectives, Toronto’s only female private detective agency, where the team takes on the cases the police do not want. Guest stars include British actor Laurence Fox as Frankie’s confidante Greg Miller. 



Fox has given a put pilot commitment to Nightfall, a cop drama from Oscar-nominated writer Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) and Emmy-winning producer Howard Gordon (24, Homeland). Written by Turner, Nightfall is about a New York City anti-crime unit headed by a charismatic, often unpredictable detective who works the midnight shift, dealing with all the dangerous and insane things that occur between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM.



In his first major TV role, Orlando Bloom has been tapped to headline Amazon’s eight-episode straight-to-series fantasy drama Carnival Row and will also serve as a producer of the series. Carnival Row is described as a fantasy-noir set in a neo-Victorian city filled with mythical creatures fleeing their war-torn homeland causing tensions between citizens and the growing immigrant population. The series follows the investigation of a string of unsolved murders that are eating away at whatever uneasy peace still exists. Bloom will play the man in the center of it, Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of a faerie showgirl on Carnival Row. The producers also announced that Cara Delevingne is set to join the cast.



Former CBS president Glenn Geller is returning to the network with a new CIA drama alongside Madam Secretary showrunner Barbara Hall. The CBS Studios project, Family Business, is described as a multi-generational CIA spy family show told through the eyes of its youngest generation: three adult siblings — who all struggle with rivalry, secrets, and making their mark in the Intelligence Community.



Mouna Traoré (Murdoch Mysteries) and Ellen Wong (GLOW) are set to recur opposite Max Irons in Condor, AT&T Audience Network's 10-episode straight-to-series drama produced by MGM Television and Skydance TV. The project was inspired by Sydney Pollack's 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, which had been adapted from the book Six Days of the Condor by James Grady. The story, which is being written by Jason Smilovic and Todd Katzberg, "follows Joe Turner (Irons), a young CIA analyst whose idealism is tested when he stumbles onto a terrible but brilliant plan that threatens the lives of millions." William Hurt, Bob Balaban, and Mira Sorvino also star.



Tim Roth’s lawman locks horns with Christina Hendricks’ oil refinery bigwig in the trailer for Tin Star, which is set to premiere all 10 episodes on Amazon Friday, Sept. 29. Tin Star tells the story of Jim Worth, a former British detective who brings his family to the tiny, tranquil town of Little Big Bear, where he is police chief. But when a vast oil refinery, fronted by corporate liaison Elizabeth Bradshaw (Mad Men's Hendricks), opens nearby and inundates their home with workers looking for drugs, gambling and prostitution, Jim must work hard to protect his family and town from organized crime.



Chicago Justice star Monica Barbaro will revive her character for Chicago P.D. beginning in episode four of the new season, titled "Snitch," to help bring down the bad guys. The episode reunites her with Seda for the first time since Justice's cancellation earlier this year. While details on her return are scarce, we do know that Antonio Dawson, who is rejoining the original series, will make his way back to the Intelligence Unit as part of a new case his old team is working on.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Shot Magazine's Ayo Onatade chatted with Louise Penny about the latest installment in her Chief Inspector Gamache series, Glass Houses. Penny also spoke with CBC radio about the healing process of writing her latest novel during her late husband's illness and passing.



KSCJ's Having Read That podcast welcomed T. Jefferson Parker to discuss his new series with private investigator Roland Ford.



Shane Gericke, author of The Fury, was on the Menu at The Blue Plate Special podcast.



Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste discussed Ian Rankin bringing Rebus back, a new BBC adaptation, detectives on TV, and quizshow celebrities Monkman and Seagull. In Reviewer's Corner, Liz Barnsley reviews books Val McDermid and Weste Barnsley, and author Martyn Waites stopped by for a wide-ranging interview.



Book Riot's Read or Dead podcast hosts Katie and Rincey talked about real life mysteries that have surrounded mystery writers.



KGNU's Book Talk welcomed Rachel Howzell Hall to chat about her series featuring LAPD homicide detective Lou Norton.



NPR's Scott Simon spoke with author Nathan Englander about his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, set amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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FFB: Scared to Death

There aren't many biographical details available about British author Anne Morice (1918 - 1989), the pen name of Felicity Shaw, other than she studied in London, Paris, and Munich and married documentary film director Alexander Shaw. But between 1970 and 1982, Morice wrote 25 novels altogether, with 23 books in a series featuring Tessa Crichton, an actress who is the wife of Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Robin Price, and two books featuring Tubby Wiseman.



In the reference book And Then There Were Nine: More Women of Mystery by Jane S. Bakerman, Morice explained her choice of protagonist: "Since numerous members of my family (including my father, sister, two daughters and three nephews) are or were closely connected with the theatre and cinema, in one capacity or another, and I married a film director, this was the background I was most familiar with so created Tessa Crichton for the foreground."



Tessa is clever, confident, intuitive and often sarcastic, with a large circle of family, friends and colleagues that figure in most of her plots as either victim or suspect. Her first-person POV is filled with humorous takes on life and her singular psychological view of the people around her as she pokes her nose into cases, mostly based in London or the fictional small town of Roakes Common in Oxfordshire. Tessa's husband helps from afar while he's working on his own cases, and only steps in on occasion.



Scared to Death (1977) is in the middle of the series and finds Tessa in a different location as she participates in the Storhampton drama festival, starring in a play written by her cousin, Toby Crichton. Tessa has time to take in the local sights and culture, including the very rich and very loathsome Edna Mortimer, often seen around town wearing green velvet turbans and ankle-length mink coats, who says she is seeing her doppelganger everywhere she goes. Everyone attributes the sightings to a practical joke until Edna turns up seemingly scared to death. Tessa begins to wonder if one of the dead woman's greedy heirs was behind the deadly prank and looks for clues in a manuscript Edna was writing—a romanticized autobiography.



Morice's plots focus more on character than plot and legal details, and she once cheerfully admitted she didn't know much about real-life police procedure and didn't "think a crime novel should concentrate on the true stuff." But she always plays fair with her clues as she creates well-rounded characters and quirky settings.

            

Mystery Melange

Although most of the news coming out of Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey has been horrifying, there are a few bright spots, like Murder by the Book, the mystery bookstore that opened its doors to offer free coffee and charging stations to those in need. In an email, the bookstore said it would provide Wi-Fi and restrooms to Houston-area residents who lost power during the hurricane. Simon and Schuster also announced they were donating 250 “Best of” titles to help restore collections for any Texas public or school library damaged by Harvey. Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) is also working with local officials to donate 25,000 new books and educational resources to children displaced by Hurricane Harvey, and Scholastic Books will have a similar effort and make donations to affected teachers and schools and the American Red Cross. And here is some information on how you can help Harvey victims in various ways.



This year's Davitt Award winners from Sisters in Crime Australia for crime writing by Australian women were just announced and include: Best Adult Novel: Jane Harper for The Dry; YA Novel: Shivaun Plozza for Frankie; Childrens Novel: Judith Rossell for Wormwood Mire; Nonfiction, Megan Norris for Look What You Made Me do: Fathers Who Kill; and Debut Novel: Cath Ferla for Ghost Girls.



The Falchion Awards were also handed out at the recent Killer Nashville conference. Winner for the Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Adult Mystery was Fighting for Anna, by Pamela Fagan Hutchins; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Thriller: Clawback, by J.A. Jance; Silver Falchion Award: Best Fiction Action/Adventure, The Medinandi License, by Randall Reneau; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Suspense: Waking Up in Medellin, by Kathryn Lane; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Anthology/Collection: Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reading Now, by Michael Guillebeau. In addition, Max Allan Collins was given the John Seigenthaler Legends Award and Richard Helms received this year’s Magnolia Award, the highest honor presented by the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA), given in recognition of service to the organization. For all the finalists, head on over to the conference website.



A shortlist has been released for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year, with the winner to be announced September 8. The honorees include Out of Bounds by Val McDermid; The Long Drop by Denise Mina; The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid by Craig Russell; Murderabilia by Craig Robertson; and How to Kill Friends and Implicate People by Jay Stringer.



Grab your favorite public radio tote bag and join NPR journalists at the 17th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival this Saturday, September 2. More than 100 authors, illustrators and poets will be gathered at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center for a full day of Q&A sessions, special programs and family friendly activities, and NPR hosts and journalists will lead book chats with writers in a wide range of genres and topics including Don Winslow with NPR's Maureen Corrigan and Megan Abbott with NPR's Elizabeth Blair. Other crime fiction authors who will be participating on the Thrillers & Fantasy Stage include Karin Slaughter, Scott Turow, and Jenny Rogneby. JD Vance and David Baldacci will also be featured during the festival on the Main Stage. For the complete schedule, head on over to the LOC festival page.



Submissions are now being accepted for the 2018 William F. Deeck - Malice Domestic Grants Program, which is designed to foster quality Malice Domestic literature and to assist mystery authors on their path to publication. The Grant includes a $2,500 award and a comprehensive registration to Malice 30 (April 27-29, 2018), including a two night stay in the convention hotel. The deadline to submit your work for consideration is November 1, 2017. For more information on the Grants Program and details about submitting, visit their website or contact Harriette Sackler, Malice's Grants Chair, at MaliceGrants@comcast.net.



In honor of Friday's opening of "Noir City: Chicago," the weeklong festival of film noir presented by Music Box and the Film Noir Foundation, The Chicago Reader analyzed how the long-running TV cop series Dragnet became a PR coup for law enforcement.



The Sleuth Sayers blog welcomed the 2017 Macavity Award Short Story Nominees to talk about their stories and inspiration for their writing.



Bookstore chain WHSmith compiled a listing on its blog of "13 Fierce Female Detectives Every Crime Fiction Fan Should Read."



Fancy a fun way to organize your book reading? Try a "bookish merit badge."



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Last Pair 1844" by Resa Mestel.



Two connoisseurs of spycraft, John le Carré, the master of spy fiction, and Ben Macintyre, the author of a number of riveting nonfiction books on World War- and Cold War-era espionage, sat down with the New York Times' Sarah Lyall to talk about the ongoing fascination with moles and double-crossers.



Otherwise in the Q&A roundup, Matt Hilton, the author of the high-octane Joe Hunter thriller series, and the Tess Grey and Po Villere thrillers, takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; the MysteryPeople held a Q&A with Riley Sagar about his book The Final Girls; The Crime Warp chatted with Katharine Johnson, author of psychological thriller The Silence; and Criminal Element welcomed debut author Roger Johns about his new novel, Dark River Rising.

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Media Murder for Monday

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



MOVIES



Scott Free Films and New Sparta Films are teaming up for Neither Confirm Nor Deny, the true story of the CIA secret mission to recover a nuclear Soviet submarine three miles under the Pacific Ocean. The project is based on the David H. Sharp book, The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation. 



In what will be his first big film for Warner Bros since the 2008 Best Picture nominee Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy is in final talks to write and direct an untitled thriller based on a project that has been at Warner Bros 15 years. That thriller (wt Methuselah) was originated by James Watkins and most recently had Tom Cruise attached to star as a man who has managed to survive for 400 years without showing the physical signs of age. In that time, he has accumulated vast intellectual knowledge, from multiple languages to the sciences, as well as survival skills.



Oscar winner Jeff Bridges is set to star in Drew Goddard’s thriller Bad Times at the El Royale, with Chris Hemsworth in talks to join him. The story is set in the 1960s at a crappy motel near Lake Tahoe in California with Bridges playing a down-on-his-luck priest named Father Daniel Flynn. The cast is also slated to eventually include "a vacuum cleaner salesman, two female criminals, a male cult leader, a desk clerk and an African-American singer."



Sophie Nélisse, Eoin Macken and Game Of Thrones' Indira Varma have been added to the cast of Close, the action thriller that stars Noomi Rapace. Loosely based on the experiences of Jacqui Davis, one of the world’s leading female bodyguards, the pic centers on Sam (Rapace) a close protection officer used to battlefield conditions who is hired to protect Zoe (Nélisse), a rebellious heiress to a billion-dollar company. When a violent kidnapping attempt forces them to go on the run, the women form an unlikely bond, and with the help of Sam’s ex-partner Conall (Macken) work together to clear their names and uncover their enemies. Varma plays Zoe’s stepmother.



Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage has signed on to star in Between Worlds, a supernatural thriller directed by Spain-based filmmaker Maria Pulera. Franka Potente (The Conjuring 2), Penelope Mitchell (Hemlock Grove) and Garrett Clayton (Hairspray Live!) also co-star in the film, which will shoot in Alabama and Sweden. Written by Pulera, the story follows Joe, (Cage), a down-on-his-luck truck driver haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child. He meets Julie (Potente), a spiritually gifted woman who enlists Joe in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter, Billie (Mitchell). But the spirit of Joe’s dead wife Mary proves stronger, possessing the young woman’s body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.



Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman are coming back for the Equalizer sequel to co-star alongside Denzel Washington for Sony Pictures and director Antoine Fuqua. Leo and Pullman are set to reprise their roles as Susan and Brian Plummer, the great friends of Robert McCall (Washington) when he worked in counter-terrorism. 



New Line founder Robert Shaye has picked up the low-budget thriller Nightlight at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, with Tyler MacIntyre directing the screenplay MacIntyre co-wrote with Chris Hill. The plot for the movie is being kept under wraps.



Freestyle Digital Media acquired domestic rights to Don’t Sleep, a thriller written and directed by Rick Bieber that stars Dominic Sherwood, Cary Elwes, Drea de Matteo, Charlbi Dean Kriek and Jill Hennessy. The pic also marks the final onscreen performance from Alex Rocco (Moe Green in The Godfather), who died in 2015 of cancer at 79. The film centers on two lovers (Sherwood and Kriek) who move into a guesthouse on an estate owned by Mr. and Mrs. Marino (Matteo and Rocco). When bizarre events begin to occur with increasing danger, the young couple must confront the horrors of a forgotten childhood. 



Screen Gems has acquired the Peter A. Dowling action spec script Exposure (working title) about a rookie African-American female cop in Detroit who rounds the corner just as corrupt officers are murdering several drug dealers, an event captured by her body cam. They try to kill her, and she is hunted throughout the night by the narcs who are desperate to destroy the incriminating footage and also a criminal gang who have been told she did the killing.



TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES



In a competitive situation, Sony Pictures Television and Neal Moritz’s Original Film have optioned Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds to develop as a TV series. The thriller novel, by the Edgar Award-nominated author of Shovel Ready, was published by HarperCollins on August 1 and is set in a place populated by criminals—people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What’s clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead.



The 1970s buddy cop series Starsky & Hutch is eyeing a TV return with a reboot shepherded by The Guardians Of the Galaxy franchise writer-director James Gunn. Sony Pictures TV Studios is behind the revival series project, which is currently being pitched to broadcast, cable and streaming networks with multiple parties interested. Described as a character driven one-hour procedural, the new Starsky and Hutch will be written by James Gunn as well as his brother Brian and their cousin Mark who often work as a writing tandem.



ABC has put in development a drama from former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, writer-producers Elizabeth Craft and Sara Fain (The 100), ABC Studios and studio-based Mandeville TV. Penned by Clark, Craft and Fain, the untitled project is described as "part legal thriller, part confessional, part revenge fantasy." It centers on a female prosecutor who loses the trial of the century and is shredded by the media in the process. The drama chronicles what happens when 8 years later the murderer who got off strikes again.



CBS TV Studios is developing a drama series based on the hot Israeli drama format Your Honor (Kvodo). The U.S. adaptation, eyed for premium cable and streaming networks, is from the creators of two acclaimed legal drama series, Peter Moffat, whose BAFTA-winning Criminal Justice was the basis for HBO’s praised limited series The Night Of, and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King. Written by British TV writer/playwright Moffat, Your Honor follows the son of a respected judge who involved in a hit and run. Soon after they are both drawn into a high stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices when it comes to light that the victim was the son of a notorious crime boss.



Quantico creator Josh Safran has lined up his next series project, a legal drama at CBS. Written by Safran, the drama centers on a high-powered corporate attorney who joins the Texas legal team defending her wealthy estranged husband after he is arrested for the decades-old unsolved murder of his first wife.



Blindspot creator/executive producer Martin Gero and executive producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter have teamed for an untitled legal family drama written by Gero and Blindspot co-executive producer Brendan Gall for CBS. The drama revolves around five multi-racial adopted siblings who fight for justice in the courtroom amid wildly different legal careers as they delve into the mystery of a family tragedy that exposes the sins of their father.



Edward Burns’ Marlboro Road Gang Productions is teaming with Radar Pictures to develop bestselling author Tosca Lee’s The Progeny as a television series. Lee’s genre-bending books bring a modern twist to an ancient mystery surrounding Elizabeth Báthory, the 16th-century countess known as the world’s most notorious female serial killer. 



BBC One has set new dramas, including The Victim, a contemporary legal thriller told through the eyes of the plaintiff and the accused. BBC One has also ordered a factual drama from Jeff Pope, an Oscar nominee for Philomena, and Neil McKay, The Barking Murders (w/t), which will shed new light on the families of the victims of convicted serial rapist and killer Stephen Port who is serving a life sentence after murdering at least four men. 



British actor Ben Whishaw will be joining Hugh Grant in the three-part BBC One drama A Very English Scandal. Grant will play disgraced British politician Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party in 1979 who was accused of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott, Whishaw’s role. Thorpe became the first British politician in modern times to go to trial for murder. Davies is adapting the book by British journalist John Preston, and the drama will be directed by Stephen Frears, director of The Queen.



Channel 4 has ordered the six-part period espionage epic, Jerusalem, written and created by Bash Doran. This is the Boardwalk Empire writer’s first original commission for British television and is set in the aftermath of WWII, when Britain was struggling to define itself in a new world order.



ABC has given a put pilot commitment to Romeos & Juliets, which centers on a badass, tough-as-nails female CIA operative who is forced to partner with a handsome, self-absorbed agent from the CIA’s elite "Romeo and Juliet" division — agents who are trained to use sex and charm to keep America safe.



The Season 2 trailer for BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Agency was released, which more deeply explores the fantasy genre. 



Epix has ordered a 10-episode second season of the original series Get Shorty for premiere in 2018. The series is based in part on Elmore Leonard’s 1990 bestselling novel and follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a hitman from Nevada who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood with the help of a washed-up producer, Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), as a means to leave his criminal past behind. The cast also includes Sean Bridgers, Lidia Porto, Megan Stevenson, Lucy Walters and Carolyn Dodd.



A trailer was released for Strike--The Cuckoo's Calling, the BBC One series adapted from J.K. Rowling's first novel (writing as Robert Galbraith) in the Cormorant Strike series starring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike, with Holliday Grainger as his assistant Robin.



PODCASTS



Bestseller David McCaffrey joins Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers. McCaffrey is the author of the Hellbound series of books, with the debut voted one of W H Smith's Most Underrated Crime Novels of 2014.



T. Jefferson Parker joined KPBS radio to talk about the first novel in his new private eye series, The Room of White Fire.



Debbi Mack interviewed crime fiction author Seth Harwood on the Crime Cafe podcast.



Anthony Nominated Author, Eric Beetner, who has been described as "the James Brown of noir," is on the Menu at The Blue Plate Special.

            

FFB: A Time for Pirates

Oswald Wynd (1913-1998) was born in Japan, the son of a Baptist missionary from Scotland. Wynd's family moved to the U.S. in the 1930s, where Wynd attended High School in Atlantic City, then later back to Scotland. Wynd's studies at Edinburgh University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, and in 1941 Wynd's unit in Malaysia was attacked and Wynd imprisoned in Hokkaido mines.



Upon the end of the War and Wynd's liberation as a POW, he returned to the U.S. and on a whim decided to enter a "first novel" contest  by publisher Doubleday in 1947. The novel, Black Fountains, about a young American-educated Japanese caught up in the war, won first prize. Another novel, The Ginger Tree, was turned into a television series by the BBC, with NHK, Japan and WGBH Boston.



But it was under the pen name of Gavin Black that Wynd wrote his thrillers, fifteen in all, most featuring Paul Harris, a young man with a Scottish background making a living as an unconventional businessman in Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia. The first, Suddenly At Singapore, was published in 1960, and the last, Night Run From Java, in 1979. A Time For Pirates lies right in the middle of the series.



Set in Kuala Lumpur, A Time for Pirates finds Paul Harris rescuing damsel in distress Jean Hyde from a rioting mob. Unfortunately for Harris, the beautiful blonde damsel is the wife of a geologist looking for oil on behalf of a Chinese company Min Kow Lin, and Harris has been fighting to save Malaysia from Communism. He decides to delve into the oil business to try and find out why Min Kow Lin is disguising its oil exploration as prospecting for less valuable minerals and why it's buying a rubber plantation.



With the assistance of his "humor challenged" Sikh bookeeper Bahadur, Harris investigates whether the nasty business he's stumbled onto is really a Communist plot or a capitalist scheme to deny poor Malaysians the rights and profits from the oil. After two kidnap attempts, a near-fatal fight with a Manchu thug, and an arson attack that burns down his house, Harris begins to suspect that the man who wants him dead isn't an outsider, but a friend.



The Independent said of Black that he wrote "superior and literate thrillers - school of Stevenson and Buchan - which were at the same time witty and clever, and moved at a by no means gentlemanly pace." The intriguing characters and details of the exotic setting of newly-independent but unstable Malaysia and the clashes between the native population, Communists and Western entrepreneurs are well drawn and the writing is descriptive, as in this one passage:

It was a long time since I had walked up my drive. The gradient is steep, an asphalt razor cut on a slope packed with jungle hardwoods...snakes which reach my antiseptic woods are there isn't a stagnant pool anywhere in which mosquitoes can breed. Sometimes monkeys come on excursions from the adjacent public gardens to try out the long drops from high branches, but they never seem to stay long, as though the surrounding intense hygiene is too much for them. I wish they would set up a colony near me; I like them, they are a continuing and salutary rebuke to our pretensions.

Black Dagger Crime reprinted A Time for Pirates in 1971, and a Fontana First Thus edition came out in May 1973, but Black's books are hard to find. 

            

Mystery Melange

The 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists were named last week. Now in their eighth year, the Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate the best New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing for both fiction and non-fiction. For all the honorees in the Best Crime Novel, Best First Crime Novel, and Best Nonfiction Book categories, follow this link.



Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening with award winning author Jesse Kellerman on August 30 in Berkeley. This is a free event, but you must RSVP to attend to janet@mysteryreaders.org. Kellerman is the author of five novels as well as the co-author with Jonathan Kellerman of the Golem novels and Crime Scene.



Killer Women, Killer Weekend 2017 will take place October 28-29 at Browns Courtrooms, Covent Garden, London. Attendees will learn the art and craft of crime fiction from bestselling authors Rachel Abbott, Mark Billingham, Erin Kelly, Mick Herron, Stuart MacBride, Sarah Pinborough, and Cally Taylor. There will also be pitch sessions to senior commissioning editors and agents at HarperCollins, Orion, Penguin Random House, and Headline; masterclasses on thrillers, procedurals, author as brand, self publishing; insider tips from top writers, editors and agents; craft workshops on suspense, character, plotting; and one-to-one research sessions with experts. Tickets go on sale September 1. (HT to Shots Magazine)



The next two issues of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 33:3 & 4) will focus on Big City Cops. Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays, with a deadline for submissions of December 5.



The dollhouse series of model whodunits, used in Baltimore for decades to train generations of police detectives in crime scene investigation, is being cleaned, repaired and stabilized to be showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery beginning in October. It is the first time the collection, built about 70 years ago, will be on public display.



Zoë Sharp, the author of fourteen novels in the Charlie Fox crime thriller series, standalones, and collaborations, took the Page 69 Test for her latest novel, Fox Hunter.



From the true crime is stranger than fictional crime department: Chinese crime writer Liu Yongbiao was working on a novel about a serial-killing author but may have based the book's storyline on his own life. He was recently arrested for four cold-case murders that happened over twenty years ago.



Are you a fan of the Murder She Wrote series starring Angela Lansbury? If so, these "9 mysterious facts" about the show might surprise you.



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "False Confession" by David Spicer.



In the Q&A roundup, Sue Grafton spoke with Parade Magazine about the 24th in her Alphabet mystery series featuring Kinsey Mihone, Y is for Yesterday; and the Mystery People spoke with Mark Pryor about the latest in his Hugo Marston series, The Sorbonne Affair.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with Jack Getze

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Getze is Fiction Editor for Anthony nominated Spinetingler Magazine. Through the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Syndicate, his news and feature stories have been published in over five-hundred newspapers and periodicals worldwide. His screwball mysteries, Big Numbers and Big Money, were first published by Hilliard Harris in 2007 and 2008, and Big Mojo was published by Down & Out Books in 2013. His short stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir and Beat to a Pulp.



In his new book, The Black Kachina, a top-secret weapon goes missing on Colonel Maggie Black’s watch putting her honor and career on the line. There were airmen who said the Air Force’s best female combat pilot would never be the same after losing her arm in Iraq, but state-of-the-art prosthetics have made Maggie better than new, and she’s not about to lose what she battled so hard to regain.



But finding her experimental missile won’t be easy—thanks to the revenge-fueled ambitions of Asdrubal Torres, whose hallucinatory encounter with the Great Spirit challenges him to refill Lake Cahuilla, the ancient inland sea that once covered much of southern California. To fulfill his mission, Torres needs wizardry and weaponry, and the Great Spirit provides both: Magic, in the form of a celebrated shaman’s basket returned to the tribal museum by San Diego reporter Jordan Scott; Might, in the form of Maggie Black’s top-secret weapon that falls from the sky.



From that moment on, it’s a race against time for Maggie and Jordan, who together must stop Torres from destroying Hoover Dam—and turning the Colorado River into a tsunami that would kill hundreds of thousands and wipe out the Southwest’s water supply. In the final showdown, it’s Maggie who must disarm the stolen missile’s trigger—one-handed or not—and save the day.



Getze stops by In Reference today to talk about researching and writing The Black Kachina:



 

It wasn’t always so, but today my writing and research are locked together like new lovers. Mostly because of today’s search engines, curiosity and fact-finding lead the whole creative process. In addition to the ever-present dictionary and thesaurus (now online of course), I keep a window open with Google ready while I write. Very few pages of an early draft pass without checking something on the internet.

Certainly what interests me has always found its way into my stories. And those events, objects, or people who’ve interested me the most have ended up carrying the tale. But my older Austin Carr novels were written in the first person and centered around my miserable, imaginary, and post-journalism life as a bond salesman, mixing wild stories with true events and real people. I didn’t do much research. Maybe a couple of questions to my wife about pantyhose.

I wrote in the 1980s and 1990s by twisting the truth, squeezing out a narrative to entertain myself. As an ex-newspaper reporter, I’d learned to do fact-checking in the library and courthouse, in person, or on the telephone. Who had time for all that, writing first-person fiction? But with the ease of online research, now I get even more jollies basing my fiction on fact. Honest. I always had the curiosity, but the internet has made research so much simpler.

I made this transition during the decades-long, instructive creation of The Black Kachina, my new thriller, which after seven or eight different versions is by now almost completely a product of curiosity and research. I hardly made up anything but the overall premise.

The book came to life in 1994 when I saw a colorful image of Nataska, the Black Ogre, a Hopi kachina, or spirit. Kachinas are portrayed most often as dolls for sale to tourists, or as costumed tribesmen dancing in ceremonies. As one of the Hopi’s “black ogres,” Nataska is known as The Punisher of Wicked Children, and tales of his deeds supposedly frighten Hopi kids into good behavior. My curiosity demanded knowledge about that spirit, and back when I started, that meant buying or renting books and reading. I sucked up all I could about kachinas and the various Cahuilla tribes of Southern California. The story always has featured a half-breed who wants revenge against the white man.

I spent two decades researching, rewriting, researching, improving my craft, writing four, first person Austin Carr novels, and finally more military research. I own a small library of books about -- and by -- Native Americans, B-52 bombers, desert terrain, the flora and fauna. I wanted to walk the same ground as my characters so I traveled to California and spent a week in the deserts around the Salton Sea. I hiked through California’s Imperial sand dunes where they filmed parts of Star Wars and other movies. I visited a military airport and gunnery range. I walked alone in the desert with no sound but the wind brushing my ears. I visited several Cahuilla reservations and sacred sites. In short, I performed my early research the way I’d approached my past career of journalism. Hands on; person-to-person.

“Indian, Native American, and First American are all the white man’s words,” one Cahuilla spokesman told me. “Don’t worry about it. It says Cahuilla Indians on the sign above this trailer.”

But there was always more research to do, especially when writing teachers pointed out serious flaws; again when two agents agreed -- at different times of course -- to represent the novel if changes were made; and once more when a publishing industry editor requested a different protagonist. I had to learn a lot more about female combat pilots, and that’s when I grew especially fond of Google. I found dozens of feature stories on the only gender banned from flying combat missions until 1993; tales and background about their education, craft, diverse lives and experiences.

In summary, my novels grow inside like benign tumors, beginning with an external scratch, bite, or bruise, an irritation-by-information that develops internally -- pressing against flesh and bone until it’s enough of an aggravation to force removal. (Yeah, I don’t like the analogy either. The word tumor never sounds good, benign or not. But at least the expression conveys the kind of urgency I feel when it’s time to write that particular story.) I always have a couple of tales brewing, and when one needs to be written, the thing almost hurts, a tormenting sense of desperation to write the story.

I’m waiting for the research to kick up something as urgent and magic as that first meeting with Nataska; waiting to see which story gives me that nasty pain I can’t ignore.

 

You can read more about Jack Getze and The Black Kachina via Down & Out Books and also follow Jack on Twitter and on Facebook. The Black Kachina is currently available via all major digital and print bookstores.

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