B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 176

FFB - The End of Solomon Grundy

Julian Gustave Symons (1912-1994) was an English poet and biographer and served as a mystery fiction reviewer for The Sunday Times. He also wrote non-fiction books on criminology and one titled Bloody Murder (a/k/a Mortal Consequences), a history of the mystery novel up through the book's publication in 1972,  in which he argued that traditional puzzle-plots were inferior to, and being supplanted by, crime novels focused more on the psychology of criminals.



Yet, Symons was also capable of writing some fine puzzle-type mysteries himself, such as The End of Solomon Grundy, published in 1964. The name of the main character is taken from a British nursery rhyme from the 19th century, but the fictional Solomon Grundy has also appeared as a character in DC Comics, on an episode of Sesame Street, and in other incarnations including an upcoming movie from director Danny Boyle.



The plot of Symons' book centers on a young, self-described "model" who is murdered in Mayfair Mews, although Superintendent Jeffrey Manners isn't sure if the "model" was exactly that or something a little less reputable. His investigations lead him to an exclusive suburban housing estate called The Dell, filled with seemingly law-abiding, upper-class denizens like architect Dick Weldon and wine and food expert Jack Jenifer, who feel "they were on the whole more intelligent, liberal and humane than the majority of their fellow citizens."



The exception to The Dell's civilized enclave is a boorish advertising executive named Solomon Grundy, "ginger-haired and red-faced, arms hanging apelike out of a jacket that seemed too small for him...a terrifying figure." Grundy quickly becomes the chief suspect after it's discovered he had an affair with the victim and is arrested for the murder. Grundy doesn't help his case both during the investigation and the trial with his bluntness and acidic views of his wife, neighbors and colleagues. The trial, which takes up the second half of the book, appears cut-and-dried until a twist ending makes the verdict in doubt.



Symons was awarded various prizes for his writing, and in 1982 was named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association.

            

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association (CWA) announced the Dagger Awards shortlists, with winners to be handed out at the annual dinner in October. The categories include The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, The John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger, The Endeavour Historical Dagger, The International Dagger, The Gold Dagger for Nonfiction, The Short Story Dagger, and The Debut Dagger. For all the lists, head on over to the official CWA website.



The annual Killer Nashville conference also announced its finalists in several categories for the Silver Falchion Awards. Winners will be presented at the Killer Nashville Awards dinner at the conference on Saturday, August 26, in Nashville. A full list of all the shortlists can be found here.



The recipients of this year’s Scribe Awards, sponsored by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, were revealed during the recent Comic-Con International gathering in San Diego. Assassin’s Creed, by Christie Golden, won in the Best Adapted/General and Speculative category, while Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn, by Ace Atkins, won the General Original category. For the full list of finalists, hop on over to the IAMTW website. The winners were posted on the group's Facebook page.



Author David Leadbeater's self-published archaeological thriller, The Relic Hunters, was declared the winner of the first Amazon Kindle Storyteller award. Leadbeater's entry was chosen from thousands of submitted manuscripts from the UK and wins him a prize of £20,000.



I just learned of some very sad bookseller news: the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is up for sale. Founded by Bill Farley 27 years ago, the shop has hosted a veritable who's who of crime fiction authors through the years for talks and signings. The store sells both new and used books within the genre from noir, to cozy, espionage, classics, to historical and also specializes in hard-to-find, collectible, and signed first editions and Northwest mysteries. Current owner JB Dickey hastened to add that the store isn't closing ... yet. But they already had to resort to a Go Fund Me drive which brought in enough funds to pay off overdue bills and sock away enough to last through this past winter. As Dickey noted, "It bought us a year – but barely, and that has taken its toll. While we could do another such fund raiser, that’s not a viable way to continue in business."



Megan Abbott's article for The Paris Review takes a look at "The Origins of American Noir" through the lens of Dorothy B. Hughes’s novel In a Lonely Place from 1947 and how it reversed and upturned the conventions of hard-boiled crime fiction.



The legend of Jack the Ripper endures, with yet another claim about the iconic serial killer's identity.



So does the popularity of Agatha Christie, with The Independent writing about "Christie's alluring paradox: the compatibility of middle-England villages and homicidal maniacs on the rampage."



If you're a fan of British crime fiction, check out Jake Kerridge's list of the best books in the genre from decade through decade.



PBS has ordered "The Great American Read," a new series designed to explore America’s 100 best-loved books. The eight-part series will premiere in spring of 2018 and be paired with a new community program to promote reading, as well as a digital and social-media campaign. The hosted documentary series will feature celebrities from entertainment, sports, news, and literature talking about their favorite books and culminate in a nationwide vote to choose America’s best-loved book.



Since summer is the time for travel for most folks, why not schedule a trip to one of these five "iconic detective sites" from literary classics.



Are these bugs the most gruesome clues in forensic science? Also, it turns out that even microscopic bugs can be helpful in determining time of death.



And in slightly stranger crime news, according to a new study, statistics proves Twitter a powerful tool in forecasting crime.



This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Nature of Crime" by Jeff Bagato.



In the Q&A roundup, Booktopia welcomed the young phenom Christoffer Carlsson who has a PhD in criminology, and In 2013 became the youngest author ever to have won the award for Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year; the Mystery People chatted with Reavis Wortham about his new book, Hawke’s Prey, his first thriller to feature contemporary Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke; and Criminal Element spoke with J.D. Trafford, an award-winning novelist whose debut, No Time to Run, was selected by IndieReader as a bestselling pick.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

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



MOVIES



The New York Times cited unnamed sources that Daniel Craig is returning for one more Bond film, after months of "will he or won't he" speculation. Although neither the actor nor the studio have confirmed that fact, the producers did announced that the next installment will arrive in theaters in North America on Nov. 8, 2019. The script will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have teamed up on the screenplays for the last six Bond installments.



20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment announced an adaptation of Marriage Pact, the upcoming psychological suspense thriller from best-selling author Michelle Richmond. The story centers on newlyweds who decide to join an exclusive and mysterious group known only as the Pact, which they soon discover is not what it seems, and the marriage of their dreams devolves into their worst nightmare.



A bidding war for a new script for a John wick spinoff was just won by Lionsgate, who sees it as a way to expand the John Wick universe. Ballerina is written by screenwriter Shay Hatten and is said to focus on a young girl raised to be an assassin and hunts down the other assassins who are responsible for killing her family.



Jason Eisener is set to direct an untitled techno thriller penned by Simon Barrett (the logline is still under wraps) that will mark the first project from Bad Hombre, the label set up by Fede Alvarez and Good Universe to produce pics in the horror, thriller and sci-fi genres. Basu and Alvarez are also writing the Lisbeth Salander film The Girl in the Spider’s Web at Sony.



A fun fact for film purists: Just like Christopher Nolan, Kenneth Branagh is a celluloid purist who refuses to shoot in digital, so for his upcoming adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, Branagh used the last four 65mm Panavision cameras in the world. Distributor 20th Century Fox hasn't announced a 65/70mm release, although one could certainly make a case for seeing that version in a few selected theaters.



FilmRise has debuted an official trailer for a creepy new indie thriller titled My Friend Dahmer, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. The film is based on an acclaimed graphic novel and tells the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered 17 men and boys in the Midwest United States between 1978 and 1991 before being captured by police.



A trailer was released for the George Clooney-Coen Brothers picture Suburbicon, the 1950s-set film that centers on Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), a husband and father forced to take matters into his own hands after his home is invaded by gangsters and his wife murdered for failing to repay a debt. He then finds the gangsters have gone after his son.



TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES



Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are turning their attention to television again, landing a pilot order at Showtime for the gun violence drama City on a Hill. The project is described as a gritty thriller about severe corruption and gangs in '90s Boston and is a fictional account of the "Boston Miracle," a police operation that helped calm the street.



A drama based on the book The Old Man by Edgar Award-winning crime thriller author Thomas Perry is being pitched to all the major cable TV and streaming platforms. Old Man centers on widower Dan Chase (to be played by Samuel L. Jackson), an average Vermont retiree with a dark secret: following Chase’s involvement as a young army intelligence hotshot in a botched operation in Libya thirty five years ago, he went on the run, trying to escape people who want him dead. Just as he had begun to think he was finally safe, Chase finds himself again in the crosshairs.



Netflix has acquired rights to David Grann’s 2008 New Yorker feature "The Chameleon," in a package that has Mission: Impossible MI6 helmer Christopher McQuarrie developing to direct, with Wolf of Wall Street and The Sopranos' Terence Winter co-writing the script with Carl Capotorto. The project tells the chilling true story of Frédéric Bourdin, a young French con man who was a serial impersonator of missing teenagers. For a time during the mid-1990s, Bourdin lived with a family in San Antonio, Texas under the guise of being their long-presumed missing brother.



Netflix has picked up The Angel to develop into an original spy thriller for the streaming network. Based on Uri Bar-Joseph’s bestselling novel The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, the project will be directed by The Iceman's Ariel Vromen and tell the story of the high-ranking Egyptian official Ashraf Marwan, who became a spy for Israel despite being the son-in-law of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and close adviser of his successor, Anwar Sadat.



Starz has picked up the Stephenie Meyer-produced supernatural spy thriller The Rook to series, the network announced on Friday. Based on the novel by Daniel O’Malley, The Rook follows a young woman who wakes up in a London park with amnesia and is pursued by shadowy paranormal adversaries while grappling with extraordinary abilities of her own. It is set to premiere in 2018.



Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and the film’s male lead Chris Pine are reuniting for the TNT six-episode limited drama One Day She'll Darken. The story centers on Fauna Hodel, who was given away by her teenage mother to a black restroom attendant in a Nevada casino in 1949. As Fauna begins to investigate the secrets to her past, she follows a sinister trailer that  swirls ever close to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel, a man involved in the darkest Hollywood debauchery and a suspect in the infamous "Black Dahlia" murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles 1947. 



HBO president of programming Casey Bloys announced that the network was "much closer" to officially announcing Season 3 of True Detective after the hiring of Mahershala Ali to star. Deadwood's David Milch and True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto are working together on the third season and apparently already have five scripts in the can.



Britt Robertson has signed on to star in ABC's Shondaland drama For the People, a legal drama that follows four brand-new lawyers who work for both the prosecution and defense in the Southern District of New York Federal Court, also know as The Mother Court. Robertson will play a sensible, fiercely intelligent and independent new public defender who was driven to the law because of an injustice perpetrated on her family when she was a child.



Once Upon a Time actress Elizabeth Lail has been cast as Beck, the female lead in Greg Berlanti’s adaptation of Caroline Kepnes' 2015 novel, You. The psychological thriller tells the story of Joe, a bookstore owner played by Gossip Girl alum Penn Badgley, who uses social media and technology to feed his obsession with an aspiring writer (Lail’s Beck).



Maria Bello has joined the cast of CBS’ long-running drama NCIS as a new series regular opposite Mark Harmon for the upcoming 15th season. Bello will play an NCIS agent who was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and served two tours in Afghanistan. After joining NCIS, she built her reputation as the agency’s premier forensic psychologist.



NBC announced that Tracy Spiridakos, who appeared in three episodes of the fourth season of NBC’s Chicago P.D., has been promoted to series regular for Season 5, continuing her role of robbery/homicide Detective Hailey Upton. The network also announced that The Flash's Jessica Camacho has signed on as a series regular in the second season of NBC’s drama series Taken, playing a scary-smart, rule-breaking former Army captain.



ABC released premiere dates for the 2017-2018 season, which includes How to Get Away with Murder, scheduled for September 28, and the new series Ten Days in the Valley on October 1. The latter stars Kyra Sedgwick as a television producer whose life gets complicated after her young daughter disappears in the middle of the night and the two worlds she tries to navigate violently collide.



A trailer was released for Absentia, which stars Stana Katic as an FBI investigator who goes missing while pursuing a serial killer in Boston and wakes up in a mysterious cabin six years later with no idea where she is or how she got there.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



CBS News hosted former NYC prosecutor turned author Linda Fairstein to talk about crime fiction and her latest novel, Deadfall.



Debbi Mack interviewed crime fiction author Timothy Hallinan about his latest novel, Pulped, on the Crime Cafe podcast.



NPR's book reviewer, Maureen Corrigan, took a look at a new biography of pathbreaking African-American crime fiction author Chester Himes, whose life was "as wild as any detective story."



Host Terri Lynn Coop serves up author and publisher Jason Pintner (the Henry Parker thriller series) on The Blue Plate Special podcast.



Award-winning author, playwright and essayist Randall Silvis joined Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers to discuss his latest novel, Two Days Gone.



Author Kathryn Lane visited with Dialogue podcast host Susan Wingate to chat about her book Waking Up in Medellin, about an American woman who partners with a CIA operative in Colombia to investigate fraud in her international corporation.



The Blue Plate Special Podcast also welcomed Steven Konkoly to discuss his espionage thrillers, the Fractured States trilogy, the Black Flagged books, and the Perseid Collapse series.



THEATER



In an unusual staged production of Sherlock Holmes, UK's Nightshade Productions is taking Sherlock Holmes: A Study In Scarlet on the road ... literally. The play will be a 90-minute immersive, promenade theatre performance that begins at the Golden Fleece Inn in York and continues through the streets, as the audience follows the characters through an adventure filled with murder, intrigue, conspiracy and revenge. The project runs nightly through August 13.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

FFB: An Air That Kills a/k/a The Soft Talkers

Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was married to Kenneth Millar, better known as crime fiction author Ross MacDonald, but despite having an Edgar Award and over 25 novels to her credit (and with some critics saying she was the better writer of the two), she never gained the same popularity as her husband. My local public library only had one of her books in the stacks, but several MacDonalds. A likely reason for the neglect is that she didn't have a breakout series character like MacDonald's Lew Archer, writing mostly standalones.



The Millars made a good writing team, such as the times Margaret helped her husband with dialogue. "I did teach him to write better dialogue so that everybody didn't sound like him. In the first two books, all of the characters talked like Ken! I don't even know anybody who talks like Ken. And I told him he had to listen...And we went around to a lot of places: pawn shops, low bars...And he realized how different people talk." Apparently, Kenneth also once said that the best lines usually resulted from the many arguments the couple had. If you want to read a truly indepth article on the writing Millars and how they influenced each other's work, see if you can grab a copy of Mystery Readers Journal from Fall 2001 and read "Ross Macdonald and Margaret Millar: Partners in Crime" by Tom Nolan.



The Soft Talkers is the U.K. title for Margaret Millar's novel from 1957, originally released in the U.S. as An Air That Kills. It follows the seemingly perfect married couple, Harry and Thelma Bream. Harry's best friend Ron Galloway invites his pals to his lakeside hunting lodge for the weekend, but then fails to show up. The worried friends call Galloway's house and speak to his wife, Esther, to find out what's keeping him, but the wife tells them Galloway left a long time ago. Then Thelma drops the bombshell on friend-caught-in the-middle Ralph Turee that she is pregnant with Ron's child. The investigation grows cold, and it isn't until much time has passed, when Ron is found dead buckled into his submerged convertible, that the even colder, twisted truth comes to light.



Millar's attention to dialogue is evident, part of the meticulous detail she gives to building her characters. Although she admittedly wasn't a fan of action-driven plots, her meticulous weaving of plot, clues and misdirection are all in fine form here, as is her zingy prose, examples of which you can find on nearly every page, like these:

He had a sensation that he and Harry were stationary and the night was moving past them swiftly, turbulent with secrets. To the right the bay was visible in the reflection of a half moon. The waves nudged each other and winked slyly and whispered new secrets.

Thelma, the day-dreamer, who fed her mediocrity with meaty chunks of dreams until it was fat beyond her own recognition. Under this system of mental dietetics Thelma became a woman equpped with great psychic powers...

It was merely theh skeleton of the truth. Only an expert could add the flesh and blood and muscle and all the vital organs that would make it a whole, borrowing a little here, a little there...

Although it's a shame Millar isn't as well known as MacDonald, it's nice to see that Syndicate Books via Soho Press is re-releasing all of Millar's novels. Maybe new readers can discover why Anthony Boucher said of her writing, "Devilishly devious trick-plotting given substance by acute and terrifying psychological insight."

            

Mystery Melange

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate announced that Scottish author Chris Brookmyre had won the Crime Novel of the Year Award for his novel, Black Widow. Other finalists included Lie With Me, by Sabine Durrant; Out of Bounds, by Val McDermid; After You Die, by Eva Dolan; Real Tigers, by Mick Herron; and Missing, Presumed, by Susie Steiner.



The winners of the Dead Good Reader Awards 2017 were also announced at the Theakston crime festival, including the The Kathy Reichs Award for Fearless Female Character:

Helen Grace by M J Arlidge; The Case Closed Award for Best Police Procedural: The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly; The Hidden Depths Award for Most Unreliable Narrator: The Escape by C L Taylor; The Page to Screen Award for Best Adapted Book: Never Go Back by Lee Child; and The Cat Amongst The Pigeons Award for Most Exceptional Debut: Baby Doll by Hollie Overton. 



David Llorente has won the Dashiell Hammett Award for Madrid: frontera, awarded last week at Semana Negra (crime week) in Gijon, Spain. The Hammett Award is given by AIEP (Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policíaco) for the best crime novel in Spanish. In addition, journalist and writer Miguel Barrero won the Rodolfo Walsh award for works based on real events with La tinta del calamar, which deals with the still unclarified murder of a homosexual in 1976 in Gijón; and the Silverio Memorial Award for the best debut novel was awarded to José María Espinar Mesa for The Weight of the Soul, featuring Detective Milton Vertebra. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)



Melbourne’s second Noir at the Bar will take place on Tuesday, August 15, at Grub Street Bookshop in Fitzroy. Some of Melbourne’s best noiristas will be on hand to read their crime fiction including Des Barry, Annie Hauxwell (author of the Catherine Berlin crime books), Jessica Curry, Ian Rogers (The Student) and Laura Elizabeth Woollett, whose short story collection, The Love of a Bad Man, has been published by Scribe. Author and Pulp Curry blogger Andrew Nette will be doing MC duties on the night.



Ohio State University's Thompson Library Gallery is presenting the exhibit "Hot on the Trail of Iconic Detectives," through September 17. The exhibition features detectives from dime novels, young adult books, comic books, films, and manga, including the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Dick Tracy, Coffin Ed Johnson, and Grave Digger Jones. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)



This October, Faber will publish Sleep No More, a new collection of short stories from the late "Queen of Crime" P D James. The six murderous short stories all have the "dark motive of revenge" at the heart of them and feature bullying schoolmasters, unhappy marriages, a murder in the small hours of Christmas Day, and an octogenarian exerting "exquisite" retribution from the safety of his nursing home.



The New York Times reported on what will likely be a more common type of crime fiction in the future, the interactive digital novel by David Wise, The Atlas Pursuit. The puzzle-story involves Nazi cryptography and a blackmail plot that could have changed the course of World War II and challenges readers to figure out rhyming riddles to unlock the password-protected chapters. Part of its storyline centers on actress Patricia Neal and author/spy Roald Dahl and sends readers across New York City to solve the story's riddles.



Will an author's next creative partner be a robot?



In honor of Raymond Chandler's birthday this past weekend (July 23), Flavorwire featured many of the snappy one-liners that made him — and his most famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe — a pulp fiction icon.



There's a mystery surrounding a famous letter allegedly written by Abraham Lincoln.



Author Kristen Lepionka chose her picks for "The Top Ten Female Detectives in Fiction" for The Guardian.



Via Strand Magazine: "Five of the Best Villains and Victims in Sherlock Holmes Stories."



Just in case you can't get enough of "listicles," The Telegraph also compiled their list of "The 50 best TV detectives and sleuths." (Your mileage may vary.)



This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Downfall of Duncan Scott Ford" by Tracey Ikerd.



In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People's Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery chatted with Jordan Harper about his debut novel, She Rides Shotgun, which follows an ex-con on a crime spree road trip with his eleven-year-old-daughter; Criminal Element welcomed Kaye George, editor of the anthology Day of the Dark, a new collection of short crime-themed stories inspired by the total eclipse that will occur on August 21st; Sterling and Stone spoke with New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons; the Mystery People spoke with Rob Hart about The Woman From Prague, his latest novel to feature series character Ash Mckenna; and C.J. Box stopped by the Star-Telegram to chat about his new standalone novel, Paradise Valley.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

Happy Monday to all - here's a roundup of the latest crime drama news to start off your new week:

MOVIES



Action-thriller The Hurricane Heist from director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) has landed at Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures with a target release date of the first quarter of 2018. The story follows a team of tech hackers embarking on a $600 million robbery from a coastal U.S. mint facility at the same time a disastrous Category 5 hurricane is set to strike. The remaining people left in the deserted beach town are a meteorologist (Tony Kebbel), a Treasury agent (Maggie Grace) and the meteorologist’s ex-Marine brother (Ryan Kwanten), who must not only must survive the hurricane, but also stop the mastermind thieves from accomplishing the heist of the century.



Chippendales, described as a Magic Mike meets Scarface saga of the '80s male strip club, is finally coming to the big screen. Dev Patel is in talks to play Steve Banerjee, the Bombay-born immigrant who turned an LA dive bar into a multimillion-dollar cultural zeitgeist sensation. Ben Stiller will play Nick DeNoia, an Emmy-winning producer of children’s shows who recruited the musclebound G-string clad dancers, choreographed their routines and ran a touring company of strippers. The film will explore the perversion of the American dream theme, set in the "greed is good" 1980s cultural moment — replete with drugs and excess, and even murder — that mirrored the rise of Chippendales.



Well Go USA Entertainment acquired North American rights to Triple Threat, the action thriller starring a roster of big-name international action stars including Michael Jai White, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Scott Adkins and Michael Bisping. Directed by Jesse V. Johnson, the movie centers on a down-and-out band of mercenaries who take on a trio of assassins hired to take out a billionaire’s daughter intent on bringing down a major crime syndicate.



F. Scott Frazier has been hired to rewrite Tell No One, an adaptation of the bestselling thriller by Harlan Coben, updating an earlier draft was written by Argo Oscar winner Chris Terrio. The book was first turned into a hit French film by filmmaker Guillaume Canet and centers around a Alexandre, a doctor whose wife was murdered. Then, police discover two dead bodies near Alexandre's home and evidence implicating him in the crime - and Alexandre receives an email with a video showing his wife alive and well, along with a simple message: "Tell no one." With the police breathing down his neck, Alexandre goes on the run. Liam Neeson is in talks to play the central role.



Storm Reid, who headlines Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time, will star opposite David Oyelowo in Only You, the latest thriller from Blumhouse Productions. Jacob Estes wrote the script and is directing the film, which features a police officer (Oyelowo) whose family was killed, a niece (Reid) who is in danger, and a plot with time-travel elements.



Michael Fassbender hunts down a killer of women in the first trailer for The Snowman, based on the best-selling thriller by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø. Fassbender, who plays detective Harry Hole, tries to lure the maniac out with the help of a character played by Rebecca Ferguson. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, the project also stars Charlotte Gainsbourg and J.K. Simmons.



Lionsgate has unveiled a new official US trailer for the CIA action thriller Unlocked from veteran English director Michael Apted. Swedish actress Noomi Rapace stars as a CIA interrogator lured into a ruse that puts London at risk of a big biological attack, while Orlando Bloom plays an MI5 agent she works with to help figure out what's going on. The cast also stars Michael Douglas, Toni Collette, Akshay Kumar, and John Malkovich.



In the new trailer for Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Harry and Eggsy meet their American cousins, the Statesman. The trailer has footage of Channing Tatum as Agent Tequila, Halle Berry as Ginger, Pedro Pascal as Agent Whiskey, and Jeff Bridges as Agent Champagne. Julianne Moore plays Poppy, who appears to be Statesman's equivalent to Harry as the two sides team up to take down a new enemy.



The first U.S. trailer dropped for for Egyptian crime thriller The Nile Hilton Incident, a political thriller set against the back drop of the Egyptian Revolution and centering on a police office who investigates a murder at the Hilton hotel and discovers there's much more going on than it seems.



TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES



Amazon has struck a multi-show deal with Agatha Christie Productions for U.S. rights to the upcoming seven dramas based on the author’s works. Ordeal By Innocence is the first adaptation, which will air as a three-part miniseries starring Bill Nighy, Catherine Keener and Matthew Goode.



The Julia Roberts vehicle Homecoming has landed a two season order from Amazon after the streaming service opted to adapt the podcast of the same name from Gimlet Media. The story is described as a political thriller and centers on a caseworker at a secret government facility, her supervisor and a soldier. Roberts would play the government caseworker.



AMC is set to adapt David Cronenberg’s novel Consumed as an hourlong drama series for AMC. The project is described as a mind-bending psychological thriller that follows two journalists who set out to solve the cannibalistic murder of a controversial Parisian philosopher.



Natalie Dormer will star in Amazon's miniseries Picnic at Hanging Rock, a six-episode miniseries drama for Foxtel based on Australian author Joan Lindsay’s 1967 quasi-historical mystery novel. The story takes place in Australia on Valentine’s Day in 1900, depicting the escalating chain of tragic events resulting from the mysterious disappearance of three college girls and a teacher after a trip to the Victoria geological formation.



At Comic Con, Sherlock's executive producer Sue Vertue teased that "There is something we are working on in London," and fellow EP Seve Moffat added "We do have an answer but we’re not telling what it is." As Deadline further reported, Moffat hinted another installment of the BBC/PBS adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories was coming.



Hulu has put in development The Act, a character-based true-crime anthology series from writers Nick Antosca and Michelle Dean. Each season of the anthology series will center on one particular case, with the first installment based on Dean’s 2016 Buzzfeed article "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered."



After the controversial departure of Hawaii Five-0 Actors Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim, the show announced that Ian Anthony Dale has been promoted to series regular and Meaghan Rath and Beulah Koale are set as regulars. Newcomer Rath will play Tani Rey, who McGarrett recruits after finding her working as a lifeguard at a hotel pool after she was kicked out of the Police Academy, while Koale will portray Junior Reigns, a former Navy SEAL.



Two decades after the end of his Emmy-nominated run on NYPD Blue, Jimmy Smits is returning to ABC for a major role opposite Viola Davis on the upcoming fourth season of the network’s drama series How to Get Away With Murder. Details about Smits’ season-long recurring role are not being revealed, but his character will be a prominent figure in Annalise’s (Davis) life and will have a key role in this season’s mystery.



Former Revenge regular Nick Wechsler has copped a recurring role on Season 3 of NBC’s police drama Shades of Blue, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta. He’ll play Detective Cole, but character details are under wraps. Lopez stars as a charismatic single mother and resourceful Brooklyn detective whose lieutenant (Liotta) who often leads the team to step outside the limitations of the law.



Chicago Fire is bringing Fifty Shades of Grey's Eloise Mumford into the cast for Season 6. She'll step into the role of Hope Jacquinot, an old friend of Sylvie Brett (Kara Killmer). Hailing from a small Indiana town, she'll bring her charm, good looks and probably some drama to the Windy City.



Lieutenant Denny Woods is coming back to Chicago P.D. Mykelti Williamson is joining the cast of the NBC cop drama as a recurring in its upcoming fifth season, reprising the role he originated as a guest star in Episode 20 of the the most recent fourth season. In that episode, Voight (Jason Beghe) dug back into an old case under the watchful eye of his former partner (Williamson).



X-Files veteran Mitch Pileggi has closed a deal to return for the recently picked up 10-episode eleventh season of the Fox sci-fi drama and second as an event series. He will reprise his role as Walter Skinner, an assistant director at the FBI, which he played on the original Fox series as well as the 2016 six-episode event series revival, both from creator Chris Carter.



Psych creator Steve Franks isn't willing to settle just one movie reunion, hoping to make five more movies in the world of Shawn Spencer (James Roday). In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Franks revealed he left the series finale of the show open-ended with the intention of returning to make follow-up projects, citing The Fast and the Furious as a precedent.



A trailer for the Netflix movie Bright was shown at Comic-Con 2017. The project stars Will Smith as a human cop who's assigned an orc partner, played by Joel Edgerton. A run-of-the-mill patrol night turns into something far more dramatic when they encounter a force that could change the world. Bright hits Netflix in December.



A new trailer was released for Season 3 of Fox’s supernatural procedural series Lucifer, which will bring former Smallville star Tom Welling on board as Marcus Pierce, an accomplished police lieutenant who is everything Lucifer (Tom Ellis) is not: strategic, reserved and well-respected. But perhaps even more annoying are all the things they have in common. Both men are charming, charismatic and handsome, so when Pierce starts developing a connection with Decker (Lauren German), Lucifer’s devilish traits are inflamed.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



BBC Radio's Rebecca Jones spoke with crime thriller writer Karin Slaughter about her book The Good Daughter.



Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste discussed the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival and wecolmed Liz Barnsley of LizLovesBooks to review new books by Haylen Beck and Karin Slaughter.



Author and former jockey Sasscer Hill joined Player FM to discuss her horse racing thrillers and her admiration for the late author Dick Francis.



Skid Row Chatter host Tom Pitts welcomed Jordan Harper to discuss his first novel, She Rides Shotgun.



Twisted Web Radio presented author Gary Starta in a Q&A about his latest novel, The Killing Collective, featuring longtime detective Stanford Carter and his wife, forensic scientist Jill Seacrest.



A Stab in the Dark host and author Mark Billingham talked to actress MyAnna Buring and award-winning screenwriter, Danny Brocklehurst about Twilight, Ripper Street, and the BBC One series, In The Dark, adapted from Mark's two Helen Weeks stand-alone novels.



Read or Dead hosts Katie and Rincey talked about male writers taking on ambiguous pseudonyms, more adaptations, and gave some true crime recommendations.



Spybrary spoke with Jeremy Duns, creator of a series featuring MI6 agent Paul Dark.



The Crimetime podcast revisited the novels of Sue Grafton, went to the movies to see a film about an infant chauffeur, and talked about what makes great trash.

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Quote of the Week

           Related StoriesQuote of the Week 

FFB: Old Sleuth's Freaky Female Detectives

The theme for Patti Abbott's Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature today is "The Great Heist/Bank Robbery," or books that involve those themes. One of the first books to involve a robbery, let alone one with a female detective, was The Great Bond Robbery or Tracked by a Female Detective, dating from the late 19th century.

The dime novel detective "Old Sleuth" was the creation of Harlan Halsey, a former director of the Brooklyn Education Board, and said to be the first character to use the word "sleuth" to denote a detective. In fact, the owners of the "Old Sleuth" copyright sued over the use of the word "sleuth," claiming exclusive ownership of the term, but they lost (thankfully, for us today). Halsey's original detective, who first appeared in 1872 in the six-cent weekly Fireside Companion, wasn't elderly at all but a young man with almost superhuman abilities who liked to disguise himself as an older, bearded man.



In the 1880s and 1890s, the character Old Sleuth became popular enough to warrant a separate publication of his own, and George Munro began publishing Old Sleuth Library. These series of dime novels (actually they sold for five cents a copy) claimed to be "A Series of the Most Thrilling Detective Stories Ever Published," containing "twice as much reading materials as any other five-cent library." There were 101 issues before the series was bought by a succession of other companies. Several of these issues featured female detectives front and center.



In Old Sleuth's Freaky Female Detectives, published 1990 by Popular Press, the editors (Garyn G Roberts, Gary Hoppenstand and Ray B. Browne) explain the term "freaky" for these female dime novel detectives: freakish as in the usage of the day, as in someone who had unusual talents—knife throwers, trick gun marksmen—people who were both normal and abnormal. These women sleuths used an androgynous, masculine type of heroism in the stories, but at the end embrace their femininity and end their detective careers to get married. As the editors note, "So they [female detectives] were doubly talented; no man of the time could assume the double roles women played as detective hero—hero and weakling, masterful and subservient—or had to. Men did not have to be freaky—women did."



The stories included are:



1) Lady Kate, The Dashing Female Detective

2) The Great Bond Robbery or Tracked by a Female Detective

3) Madge The Society Detective: A Strange Guest Among The Four Hundred



Both the "Lady Kate" and "Robbery" works feature a protagonist named Kate (Kate Goelet in The Great Bond Robbery) who attempts to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused of a crime. They use disguises and end up "physically clobbering male villains left and right," thereby saving the lives and reputations of the accused men before promptly marrying the men they rescued. In the third story, "Madge" more closely resembles modern female detectives and uses her powers of deduction. Madge is described as "one of the most brilliant and clever detectives in the great metropolis" and takes on work for the money as much as the thrill. These female detective stories were popular on their own for a time, but by the end of the Great Depression, the dime novel female sleuth had virtually disappeared.

            

Mystery Melange

Cat Art Print Dandy Cat With Mustache and Monocle by Colla

Congratulations go to Tana French for winning the 2017 Strand Magazine Critics Award for her novel, The Trespasser, and for Heather Young, who won Best Debut award for The Lost Girls. For all the finalists in both categories, head on over to the Strand website. (HT to the Gumshoe Site)



Congrats also to this year's winners of the ITW Thriller Awards announced at the annual Thrillerfest in New York City. Best Hardcover Novel went to Noah Hawley, Before the Fall; Best First Novel, Nicholas Petrie, The Drifter; Best Paperback Original, Anne Frasier, The Body Reader; Best Short Story, Joyce Carol Oates, "Big Momma"; Best YA Novel, A.J. Hartley, Steeplejack; Best E-Book Original Novel, James Scott Bell, Romeo's Way; Thriller Legend Award to Tom Doherty; and Silver Bullet Literary Award for charitable work to Lisa Gardner.  (HT to Mystery Fanfare)



Also just announced was the 2017 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction handed out this year to James Grippando for his book Gone Again, the 12th in the Jack Swyteck series, about the adventures of a Miami criminal defense attorney.



A new writers festival celebrating the crime genre will be held in Sydney September 2-3, 2017. The two-day festival, BAD, is founded by Denis Tracey and writer Michael Duffy, and will feature speakers from crime writing, film, investigative journalism, forensic psychology, legal experts, and law enforcement. Special guest Lee Child will discuss his Jack Reacher series in a session via Skype, with other authors scheduled to appear in person including Michael Finnane, Nikki Gemmell, Caroline Overington, James Phlan, and Michael Robotham. 



Previously unseen Agatha Christie letters, to be exhibited at the upcoming Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate July 20-23, reveal the author's temper, including disputes with her publisher and how she hated unflattering author photos. Letters between Christie and William Collins, former chairman and publisher of Collins, also discuss jacket designs, plots and publishing schedules, showing a relationship that lasted 50 years, until the author’s death in 1976.



Stuart Neville looks at the "big twist" in crime novels and wonders if or when twist fatigue will set in.



If you're a Kathy Reichs fan, Random House is celebrating the release of Two Nights by the bestselling author (best known for her Bones series) with a chance to win a storied stay in Charleston, S.C., where the novel’s mystery unfolds. The sweepstakes ends on ends on July 28, 2017. For more information, click on over here.



Global English Editing compiled a listing of which country reads the most in a study of global reading habits that also include time spent reading around the globe and other worldwide reading facts. Think the U.S. comes out in first? You might be surprised.



Ever wonder where the term "smoking gun" came from? According to Smithsonian Magazine, we might have Sherlock Holmes to thank.



Did librarians lose something special when they did away with card catalogs?



This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Persona" by Karen Peterson.



In the Q&A roundup, Radio Times welcomed Mark Billingham on how being taken hostage informed his crime writing and the process of adapting his novels into a BBC drama series; Tom Leins takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview Challenge"; the Huffington Post spoke with award-winning Walter Mosley about writing imagination, inspiration, and his literary creation, Easy Rawlins; HuffPo also also sat down for a conversation with Richard Lange (Angel Baby, The Smack; the LA Review of Books chatted with Kristen Lepionka about her debut mystery, The Last Place You Look; Rachel Amphlett interviewed fellow author Michael Robotham about his distinguished career spanning journalism, ghost writing, and author of bestselling crime fiction; Marcus Sakey joined Criminal Element for a discussion of his new book, Afterlife; and the Mystery People snared Ace Atkins for a Q&A about his latest, The Fallen.

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Media Murder for Monday

Here's a roundup of the latest crime drama news from the big and small screens:



MOVIES



Quentin Tarantino is developing a film about the notorious Manson Family murders of five people, including pregnant actor Sharon Tate. Tarantino is courting A-list talent for the ensemble cast, including his Inglourious Basterds star Brad Pitt for the role of the detective investigating the crime, and both Margot Robbie and Jennifer Lawrence for the role of Tate. Talks are also underway to snare Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio for roles in the project.



Joe Pesci has officially joined Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Jimmy Hoffa disappearance film The Irishman. Pesci will portray Russell Bufalino, a Mafia boss out of Pennsylvania who has been long suspected of having a hand in the Hoffa’s disappearance. Also in talks are Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale, although their potential roles have not been announced.



Martin Scorsese is reteaming with Leonardo DiCaprio to develop a film adaptation of the true-crime thriller Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The project is based on the bestselling book by David Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a script has reportedly been drafted by veteran Oscar-winning scribe Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). The story focuses on a string of murders of members of the Osage nation in 1920s Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land, a case that became one of the fledgling FBI’s first major homicide investigations.



Blake Lively is set to star in an espionage thriller from James Bond producers EON Productions and IM Global, titled, The Rhythm Section, an adaptation of the first book in Mark Burnell’s four novel series. The story follows heroine Stephanie Patrick, whose family dies in an airplane crash on a flight she was meant to be on. When she discovers the crash was not an accident, she seeks to uncover the truth by adapting the identity of an assassin to track down those responsible.



The Scarface reboot continues to experience a few bumps in the production road. Suicide Squad director David Ayer joined the project in May after Antoine Fuqua dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, but now Ayer, too, has decided to leave the project. Scarface is still scheduled for release on August 10, 2018, and the search for a director will ramp up in the coming days.



TELEVISION



Crime dramas were well represented in the 2017 Emmy Award nominations announced last week, almost sweeping the category of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, which include Ewan McGregor (Fargo); Robert DeNiro (Madoff); Riz Ahmed and John Turturro (The Night Of); and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), along with Geoffrey Rush (Einstein). Felicity Huffman was also nominated in the Best Lead Actress, Limited Series/Movie for her work in American Crime, along with Carrie Coon (Fargo). The list of other crime-related nods is rather long, so check out the full list at the Emmy website.



In competitive bidding, Showtime has landed Guantanamo, a drama series that will start with a 10-episode first season. Oliver Stone is poised to direct the two-hour opening episode in what marks the three-time Oscar winning filmmaker’s first foray in scripted television. Guantanamo focuses on the detainees held in the world’s most controversial prison and those who defend and condemn them.



Netflix and Canal+ in France have ordered Safe, a thriller from author Harlan Coben starring Dextrer's Michael C. Hall. Hall will play a British pediatric surgeon raising two teenage daughters, Jenny and Carrie, alone after the death of his wife. The family is seemingly safe inside a gated community when the elder daughter sneaks out to a party and a murder and disappearance follow, changing all of their lives. Amanda Abbington (Sherlock) will also star in the show.



Toni Collette's Vocab Films and RadicalMedia are adapting Julia Dahl's novel Invisible City into a series, with Collette already writing the pilot script. The actress optioned the book and will serve as executive producer along with Jen Turner. Dahl's novel centers on Rebekah Roberts, whose mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter, but her coverage of a story involving a murdered Hasidic woman takes her into some uneasy truths and dangerous territory.



Micheal Neeson, Lance Henriksen (Alien), and Michael Rabe (The Leftovers) have signed on to the adaptation of Big Dogs, a project based on Adam Dunn’s futuristic crime books. Also joining the cast are Manny Perez (Homeland, Luke Cage) and Brett Cullen (Narcos). The series is set in a violent, decaying New York City torn by financial collapse, race riots, and a surging crime wave, where an underworld economy of illegal, debauchery-ridden nightclubs linked by a web of taxicabs is thriving. Neeson, in his first lead role, will play Renny, a young fashion photographer moving drugs through the taxi network for the party circuit, who’s forced to step up his game to a dangerous degree by his boss, Reza, the local front man for an international crime syndicate that’s looking to take over the city.



Carter, a light-hearted detective procedural starring Jerry O’Connell as a former actor who played a detective on TV, has been picked up to air in Canada on Bravo, the specialty channel owned by Bell Media (not to be confused with the American cable channel owned by NBCUniversal). Carter follows O’Connell’s character, Harley Carter, as somebody who goes back to his small Canadian hometown after a public meltdown. However, everybody back home mistakes him as the detective he played on TV, and while he knows he’s not a real detective, he can’t seem to stop picking up cases.



Netflix revealed new details about the third season of the drug cartel series, Narcos, which is shifting its focus to the successors of Pablo Escobar. Season three of the drug cartel series will not only introduce the successor to Pablo Escobar — Wagner Moura's famous kingpin was gunned down after a two-season manhunt — the Netflix series is also returning without half of the show's buddy-cop duo. Boyd Holbrook, who played the other real DEA agent on which the show is based, won't be returning as Steve Murphy.



Young actress Lulu Wilson has landed a series-regular spot in HBO’s Amy Adams-starring drama Sharp Objects, based on Gillian Flynn’s novel. The plot centers around Camille Preaker’s (Adams) return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. Trying to put together a psychological puzzle from her past, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims a bit too closely. The 11-year-old Wilson will play Marian Preaker, Camille’s dead sister, who appears in flashbacks to their childhood.



One of the stars of Chicago P.D. who left his series to join the new and now canceled spinoff, Chicago Justice, is returning to the fold. Jon Seda will return to Chicago P.D. in the fall when Season 5 kicks off as a regular, reprising his role of Antonio Dawson.



A&E is betting on Live PD in a big way, by ordering 100 additional three-hour live episodes of the real-time reality police docuseries, extending its run into 2018 and bringing its episode total to 142. Hosted by Dan Abrams with analysis from Tom Morris Jr., Live PD follows diverse police departments from across the country in real time as they patrol their communities on a typical Friday and Saturday night.



The first trailer was released for the new adaptation of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes, which follows Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson), a retired police detective who gets drawn back into the field when demented murderer Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) starts taunting him with a series of emails. This sends Detective Hodges on an off-the-books — and at times illegal — quest to bring this criminal, who mowed down a group of people with a Mercedes, to justice.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed award-winning and best-selling thriller author John Gilstrap to discuss his new release, Final Target, the next entry in his Jonathan Grave series.



Award winning Margaret Maron, author of twenty-seven novels and two collections of short stories, discussed her mysteries on Authors on the Air. 



Host Alex Dolan of Thrill Seekers chatted with author Riley Sager, whose debut novel, Final Girls, was called "The First Great Thriller of 2017" by Stephen King.



Player FM interviewed Jeff Cohen, author of the Asperger mystery book series.



Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste welcomed special guest Gerard Brennan to talk about becoming a doctor, writing short stories and how they differ from novels, and whether a MMA star has any chance against an elite boxer in the ring, among other things.



Story Works Round Table hosts Alida and Kathryn welcomed cozy mystery author, Sara Rosett, to discuss plotting mysteries.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday