B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 178
July 1, 2017
June 30, 2017
FFB: The Summer School Mystery
Josephine Bell is the pen name of Doris Collier Ball (1897-1987), who became a University College Hospital of London physician and married fellow doctor Norman Dyer Ball. After her husband died in a car accident in 1936, the tragedy pushed Bell to try her hand at writing, although she also maintained her medical practice until the age of 57. She continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in over forty novels and several short stories, including Amy Tupper, Dr. Henry Frost, and Dr. David Wintingham. She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and a member of the Detection Club.
It's the idealistic Dr. David Wintringham who is featured in Bell's novel from 1950, The Summer School Mystery. The school in the title refers to the summer music school at Falconbury, which proves to be more eventful than any of the students or lecturers could have imagined. The school is in the country, but many of the pupils and their instructors have traveled from the Royal School of Music in London. Derek Fox and his fiancée Belinda Power fail to turn up on time and nobody knows where they are. When the body of Belinda is discovered inside one of her own timpani, suspicion falls on Derek, who turns to Dr. Wintringham for help. But Derek is not forthcoming with information leaving David with little to go on. What is Derek hiding? And who killed Belinda if Derek is innocent?
It's been said that Bell's fiction marks a transition from British Golden Age style, in a society facing prewar industrial depression, wartime restrictions, and postwar austerity at the time that Bell began writing, which also served as the backdrop in many of her books. Dr. Wintringham is the type of professional working-man sleuth featured in such works, a physician at Research Hospital in London, who is married with four children and a frequent consultant to his friend Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard. Wintringham appeared in 18 novels and proved his skill at spotting incorrect medical diagnoses as well as clues left at crime scenes.
Bell was popular in her native England, but her novels didn't cross the Pond until 1955. Black Dagger Crime has brought back a few of her novels in print over the past several years, but in general, her books aren't easy to find.
June 28, 2017
Mystery Melange
The winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library for 2017 is Mari Hannah, recently announced at a reception at the British Library. The Dagger in the Library is a prize for a body of work by a crime writer that users of libraries particularly admire and is unique among crime-writing awards in that only library staff are able to make the original author nominations. Mari will also be honored at the CWA Dagger Awards Dinner in London on October 26. (HT to Eurocrime)
The Foreword Reviews Indie Book Awards were announced, including the titles in the Mystery and Thriller/Suspense Categories where A Girl Like You by Michelle Cox won for Mystery and Revelation by Carter Wilson won the Thriller category.
At the Western Writers of America Conference in Kansas City, MO, Minotaur Books announced that Carol Potenza’s Hearts of the Missing won the 2017 Tony Hillerman Prize for a best first mystery novel. Minotaur Books is planning to publish Potenza’s debut in the fall of 2018. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)
Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 classic detective novel Red Harvest is expected to be the leading feature in The KoKo Collection, part of the Rare Books Auction at Heritage Auctions on September 14. That title is expected to fetch up to $30,000, while Hammett’s 1930 follow-up, The Maltese Falcon, is estimated to go for $20,000.
Florida International University's Wolfsonian is hosting the student-curated exhibition "In the Shadows; American Pulp Cover Art" through July 9. Included are covers from Argosy, Detective Fiction, Detective Novels Magazine, G-Men Detective, and Popular Detective. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)
The Atlantic reported on the downfall of The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon for becoming involved with an arms dealer, noting that "reporters have often been unable to resist getting their hands dirty with the topics they cover."
This summer, Mersey Ferries are offering crime fiction fans the chance to step aboard their iconic vessels in Liverpool, UK, for an evening with a difference: the murder mystery cruise events invite passengers to solve a case as it unfolds before their eyes.
Joseph Finder wrote for the Chicago Tribune that "Spy novels can't stay ahead of headlines."
Think you know everything there is to know about feminist icon Nancy Drew? Here are twelve fascinating facts that might surprise you.
Brian McGilloway listed his "Top Ten Northern Irish Crime Novels" for Strand Magazine, while Otto Penzler chose "Five Crime and Mystery Picks for Summer" for Lithub.
From the department of forensic science advancements comes news that DNA left behind by a rapist who attacked five women in Montgomery County has provided police with what could provide a breakthrough in the unsolved cases: a sketch depicting what the unidentified man might look like.
Planning a trip to Denmark? You can take a mini-tour online with some insider tips from Sara Blaedel, the Danish "Queen of Crime."
Speaking of settings ... authors like Sophie Hannah explain why they're important in a novel.
This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Live! With a Ceramic Kitchen Knife and Kathie Lee" by Nathan Lauer.
In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element chatted with Barry Lancet, Author of The Spy Across the Table; the Irish News spoke with crime writer Anthony Quinn on Schubert, Beckett, and the perils of social media; debut author Roz Nay sat down with the Calgary Herald to talk about her new crime thriller novel, Our Little Secret; and Meg Gardiner discussed her new thriller that was inspired by the Zodiac Killer with Bookpage.
Related StoriesMystery Melange
June 27, 2017
Author R&R with Stephen Hillard
Before settling into his current career as an author and private equity entrepreneur, Stephen "Steve" Hillard was a teacher at Rikers Island Prison, a welder, a carpenter, and a practicing lawyer. Publication of his first book in 2011, Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien, resulted in controversy when the Tolkien Estate sought to ban the book, to which the author responded with a lawsuit in federal court. After the dispute received international attention and the case was later settled, the book went on to become an Amazon Fantasy Best Seller, recipient of a national IPPY Award, and was published world-wide in Spanish by an imprint of Planeta. An epic spin-out of the book's main fantasy character led to another series that is in development as a TV project by The Ovation Network.
Stephen's latest novel is KNOLL: The Last JFK Conspiracist, which follows a young protégé of Edward Snowden who flees the NSA after she learns that her project (KNOLL) is designed to detect and destroy any person with new facts about the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. The project’s latest target: a small-town attorney, son of a mysteriously murdered cop, who has just discovered his family’s involvement with deceased Mafia Kingpin Carlos Marcello, and the events that day in Dallas. All paths lead to a small Louisiana town that still hides its secrets, and converge on the doorstep of Marcello’s still-active savant of assassins. He is unstoppable. His creed: Omerta Is Forever.
Stephen stops by In Reference to Murder today to chat about writing and researching the book:
As the author, let me first confess: I am among the majority of Americans who believe that JFK was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.
From that public view have flowed somewhere between 4,000 and 40,000 books, movies, TV shows, comics, songs, websites and, of course, questions. The topic has incredible legs. Most, if not all, of the perspectives in those sources tend to look backwards.
In writing KNOLL, I wanted to explore things looking forward, but with a sense that time is running short. As the subtitle, The Last JFK Conspiracist, suggests, I wanted to explore the subtext of whether this ultimate murder mystery is now becoming The Ultimate Cold Case, forever unresolved and therefore forever disquieting, or whether it could still be solved.
How might such a solution happen? After researching the non-fiction sources, the videos, the movies. and the really great but limited number of novels covering the assassination, as well as archives and transcripts of oral histories of people involved, I interviewed cold-case forensic experts. Not surprisingly, their common view was that a solution would most likely happen in one, or both, of two ways: the proverbial “lucky break” and/or the application of new technology.
I had known for years where the story would take place — a very closed Mafia world circa 1963 that was off the beaten path of JFK conspiracists. I had a wealth of information. In 1963, my brother was playing in the house band at the nightclub owned by Mafia Kingpin Carlos Marcello in Bossier City, Louisiana. Bossier City was the notorious “Sin City of the South” that catered to the secret vices of Dallas. Marcello was friendly with the band and my brother saw and heard a lot. Elvis, dressed down, also showed up at that nightclub one rainy night. At the same time, my father was the night manager at the main downtown Shreveport hotel across the Red River where vice and Mob connections were part of room service. One of my boyhood friends in Bossier City was the son of a made Mafia guy. This town, secretive and a key getaway for the Louisiana Mob, became the locus for the logistics of the “shooting” part of the conspiracy in the book.
I also grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado, boyhood home of blacklisted, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo penned and largely produced Executive Action (1973), the first movie to portray the assassination to murder JFK. Trumbo was convinced that there was a conspiracy. My affinity for Trumbo and his work led me to include him as a character
Finally, as a lawyer, I had the professional experience of spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. lobbying on the Hill. This included working closely with senior Senators on intelligence and defense committees. With the right access, it doesn’t take long to recognize how things work.
Given the location and this milieu of place and time and certain key events, I needed characters. I didn’t really create them — they walked up to me in my head and introduced themselves. Of the two protagonists, each personified a solution path. One was caught up in the dilemma of discovering that his family just might have been involved in the assassination. The other is a fugitive NSA analyst who discovers that her project (KNOLL) was designed not to uncover the truth about the murder, but to finally bury it, to eliminate any last sources of evidence, human or otherwise. She updates the JFK dialogue and brings it into the present, with the almost unfathomable capabilities of modern intelligence gathering. Those capabilities are currently missing from the world of JFK conspiracists research.
I then allowed each character to develop their own sets of passions, foibles, flaws and history. That, of course, is the interesting part in writing fiction. How does someone react react when they discover that their father (himself the victim of an unsolved murder) was part of a murder conspiracy, particularly one in which the President was assassinated? How does one decide to flee the NSA and the country, Edward Snowden-like, with a cache of information and insights about the purge of clues and witnesses (and, secretly, with ongoing access to the main NSA computer system)? And what forces are still out there, inexorably moving to destroy each of these protagonists?
These, along with a myriad set of true facts that begin to fit together in new ways, were the key writer’s ingredients. I hope the book stirs reflection on the basic question: might this case still be solved, or are we the last real JFK conspiracists?
You can read more about Stephen Hillard and the book via his website, LinkedIn profile, or his Amazon profile or book page.
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June 26, 2017
Media Murder for Monday
MOVIES
Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively have boarded the murder mystery A Simple Favour, which is being touted as the next Gone Girl. The project is directed by Ghostbusters' Paul Feig and is based on the novel of the same name by Darcey Bell about a mommy blogger in a small town and her best friend who suddenly vanishes.
Justin Theroux and Gillian Anderson are joining the cast of Lionsgate’s action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, joining already-signed stars Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan, and Hasan Minhaj. Kunis and McKinnon will play best friends who become entangled in an international conspiracy once they discover that one of their ex-boyfriends was a spy. When he’s killed in the middle of a mission, they decide to take up the cause and finish it. Anderson will play an M-like figure who serves as Heughan’s boss, while Theroux’s role is being kept under wraps.
Cristal Pictures has acquired an original pitch entitled The Steward from John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad. Not much is known about the details, but the project is described as an action thriller that is "driven by a charismatic male lead, [and] possesses the kind of proven genre appeal that has resonated in both the domestic and worldwide markets."
CBS Films has released a new trailer for the superspy thriller American Assassin, based on the best-selling novel by Vince Flynn, which stars Dylan O’Brien as CIA black ops recruit, Mitch Rapp.
TELEVISION
Tony Danza is returning to television in the Netflix dramedy The Good Cop for ten one-hour episodes. Danza will play a disgraced former NYPD officer who never followed the rules and lives with his son - who is currently a detective for the NYPD and the complete opposite personality type from this father. Andy Breckman, who created Monk, will be the showrunner and executive producer for the series, and Randy Zisk, who worked on Bones, will direct the first episode.
The upcoming Psych movie has managed to snag all the original cast (James Roday, Dulé Hill, Timothy Omundson, Maggie Lawson, Corbin Bernsen and Kirsten Nelson) for the revival, but the producers announced that Ballers actress Jazmyn Simon will also be joining the movie as a new love interest for Gus.
Finn Wittrock is boarding FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The La La Land star will play Jeff Trail, who is friends with serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and becomes his first victim.
Criminal Minds is snapping up a star from the cancelled spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders to join the cast of the original program. The Beyond Borders actor Daniel Henney has been tapped to join the flagship BAU squad when it returns for a 13th season.
The ABC action-based FBI series Quantico has been going through a shakeup after losing Joshua Safran as showrunner and cast members Yasmine Al Massri and Pearl Thusi. Now, the Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Aunjanue Ellis and Russell Tovey will also be leaving the show, although there are hints the duo may return for occasional appearances. The program has signed a new showrunner, Michael Seitzman, creator of Code Black, who will somehow manage to head both series simultaneously.
Prime Suspect: Tennison heads to PBS Masterpiece for a three-part series beginning Sunday night June 25 for three episodes. This project is the backstory to the highly acclaimed series Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren and turns back the clock to spotlight the early career of policewoman Jane Tennison. Stefanie Martini takes on the role of the rookie WPC. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)
CBS will give the remaining eleven episodes of Doubt a new home on Saturday nights over the summer, which will give fans a chance to see how the short-lived drama turned out. Doubt starred Katherine Heigl as an attorney who falls in love/lust with a client, played by Steven Pasquale, who was the target of new accusations that he murdered his girlfriend almost 25 years earlier.
Fox is getting an early jump on development season with its first drama order, a partnership with wrapper-actor-producer Tip "T.I." Harris and Jerry Bruckheimer. The police procedural is titled Atlanta's Most Wanted and stars T.I. as Marcus Armstrong, the son of an infamous Atlanta criminal kingpin who is recruited to be part of a new vice squad that tackles the growing criminal elements in his hometown. Marcus' involvement will jeopardize his own long-held secret that threatens to upend his entire life.
Fox also set the fall premiere dates for its program lineup, which includes Lethal Weapon and Gotham.
Not to be outdone, NBC announced its fall lineup premiere dates, with the vast majority of programs premiering the week of September 25. Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders bows on Tuesday, September 26, Law & Order: SVU and Chicago P.D. on the 27th, and Chicago Fire on the 28th. Both The Blacklist and Blindspot return in early October.
A sneak peek clip was released by Epix for the upcoming original series Get Shorty, based in part on the 1990 Elmore Leonard novel that became a hit 1995 film. The 10-episode series stars Chris O'Dowd, Ray Romano, Sean Bridgers, Lidia Porto, Megan Stevenson, Carolyn Dodd, Goya Robles and Lucy Walters and premieres August 13 on Epix.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
The View welcomed David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
Capital Public Radio hosted a Q&A with author Barry Lancet, who just published his fourth novel in the Jim Brodie thriller series, The Spy Across The Table, which follows an antique dealer and private eye investigating a double murder connected to the most powerful people in Washington D.C.
CPR also grilled John Lescroart on his latest thriller, Fatal, an explosive story of infidelity, danger, and moral ambiguity in the vein of Fatal Attraction.
The Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast featured guest co-host Stuart Neville chatting about writing advice and how much of it is ridiculous, writers block, and his forthcoming novel Here and Gone (under his pen name Haylen Beck); and also author Erin Kelly, who talked about being a bestseller, courtroom research, series vs standalone, influences, and more.
The special guest on the most recent Story Blender podcast was Jon Land, discussing his latest novel Strong Cold Dead, which sees the return of Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong.
Crime Corner host and author Matt Coyle welcomed former policewoman and award-winning author Robin Burcell to his debut broadcast. Burcell spent nearly three decades working in law enforcement as a police officer, hostage negotiator, criminal investigator and FBI Academy-trained forensic artist, and currently co-writes with international best-selling author Clive Cussler on the Fargo series.
A Stab in the Dark host Mark Billingham was joined by David Simon, creator of The Wire, and his bestselling author-wife, Laura Lippman. David and Laura talked about their wedding (officiated by John Waters), how newspaper journalism has changed over the years, and how the lines between fiction, reality and truth are becoming blurred. Plus, Paul Hirons spoke with award-winning crime writer, Megan Megan Abbott.
Book Riot's Read or Dead podcast talked about the difference between mysteries, thrillers, and suspense books and provided some recommendations for each genre and sub-genre.
North Carolina Public Radio sat down with Margaret Maron, who is retiring from novel writing after 35 years and 31 titles by coming full circle with her character NYPD homicide detective Sigrid Harald.
THEATER
Bruce Kimmel will serve as director on the Group Rep's upcoming production of Frederick Knott's mystery thriller Dial "M" for Murder which opens on the Main Stage, June 30th, at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in North Hollywood. The show will run weekends from June 30 - August 19.
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June 23, 2017
FFB: The Grand Babylon Hotel
English novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) began his working life employed by his father, engaged in the joy of rent collection. He managed to work in a little journalism in his spare time out of boredom, but his breakthrough didn't come until he moved to London and won a literary competition in 1889 in Tit-Bits magazine (no, no porn; a weekly features magazine, albeit with a focus on drama and sensation).
He was ambitious and hardworking, and—like the future King George VI—had to overcome a stammer. When Bennett became assistant editor of the periodical Woman and noticed the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine wasn't terribly good, he wrote his own serials, one of which turned into The Grand Babylon Hotel.
Novels came next, and plenty of them, one to two per year, as well as various nonfiction books, articles, essays, some short stories and plays, even during the outbreak of World War I. He once allegedly admitted he often wrote out of financial considerations, saying "Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself? Not me. If anyone imagines my sole aim is art for art’s sake, they are cruelly deceived."
But he eventually developed enough of a reputation that Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda Bureau, asked twenty-five leading British authors to a meeting to discuss how to promote Britain's interests during the war. Bennett joined the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells. Bennett also served on the British War Memorial Committee and was appointed Director of British Propaganda in France.
He wasn't particularly known for crime fiction per se, but his second fiction work, the 15-part serial Grand Babylon Hotel was in that vein (written in 15 days, purchased for all of 100 pounds) and first appeared in The Golden Penny in 1902, which described it as "the most original, amusing, and thrilling serial written in a decade." On the other hand, another of his quasi-detective-themed novels, Teresa of Watling Street, drew reviews such as "It is a farrago of improbable detective adventure that the merest tiro might write" and "readable trash." He also wrote a column, entitled "Books and Persons," that included his criticism and analysis of the detective novel at the end of the 1920s.
The plot of Babylon centers around Theodore Racksole, a rich American multi-millionaire, who buys the luxurious Grand Babylon Hotel in London on a whim after his 23-year-old daughter wants a steak and a beer, but is refused. Racksole soon finds there are strange goings on in his new hotel: first, a German prince is supposed to arrive but never turns up; a hotel clerk disappears; then the body of a retainer sent to prepare for a visit by Prince Eugen is found murdered, but that body also disappears. Aided by his independent revolver-wielding daughter Nella (this is 1902, remember) and another German prince, Racksole sets out on an international hunt to solve the mystery that includes early archetypes of evil villains, physical danger, kidnapping, plot twists and even secret passages.
The book is a fluffy read that the author subtitled "a fantasia on modern themes" and Mike Grost referred to as "a Nancy Drew story for adults" that you can read for free via Project Gutenberg, perhaps while munching on an "Omelette Arnold Bennett" that the Savoy Hotel in London created for the author. He liked it so much, he had it prepared wherever he traveled, and the Savoy officially named it the "Omelette Arnold Bennett," and has been serving it ever since.
June 21, 2017
Mystery Melange
The Deadly Ink conference handed out its annual David Award (named for David Sasher, Sr.) to the novel Yom Killer, by Ilene Schneider. The other finalists for the award, given to the best mystery published in 2016, included Blonde Ice, by R. G. Belsky; Written Off, by E. J. Copperman; Death of a Toy Soldier, by Barbara Early; and Seconds to Live, by Melinda Leigh. (HT to Classic Mysteries)
The Lambda Awards for LGBT fiction announced its annual winners, including Best Lesbian Mystery to Pathogen by Jessica L. Webb, and Best Gay Mystery to Speakers of the Dead: A Walt Whitman Mystery by J. Aaron Sanders.
Bloody Scotland revealed the longlist for the 2017 McIlvanney Prize Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award, which has crime-fiction heavyweights such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid competing with debuts writers like Helen Fields, Claire MacLeary and Owen Mullen. The twelve longlisted books will be whittled down to a list of five finalists at the beginning of September, with the winner announced at the festival's Opening Gala reception on September 8th.
This past week, the longlist for the 2017 Ngaio Marsh award for best New Zealand crime fiction was also announced. A panel of seven crime fiction experts from five countries will choose the shortlist, to be announced alongside the finalists for the best first novel and the inaugural best true-crime book. The winner will be announced at a WORD Christchurch event in October.
Carleton University recently conferred a Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, on Louise Penny in recognition of her career as an award-winning broadcaster and author of detective fiction.
The Lilly Library of Indiana University has created an online version of its 1973 exhibition "The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941," which provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected. You'll find the usual items by Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, but there are hidden gems by less well-known authors in both England and the U.S. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell).
Veteran Nordic Noir writer Kjell Ola Dahl, whose latest novel Faithless came out earlier this year, outlined seven essential reads for any fan of the genre.
Why do some people believe so strongly they've committed a murder even when they haven't? The New Yorker investigated the perils of relying on memory and false confessions in criminal cases.
It's summer and that means vacation time (at least, for some of you!). If you need some inspiration as to where to travel, here are a few "vacation ideas for book lovers."
The June issue of Yellow Mama is out with new fiction from J. Brooke featuring a lesbian P.I./bounty hunter; Part 1 of Kenneth James Crist’s “Run, Robby, Run"; and other shorts by Kip Hanson, Gary Lovisi, Sean Daly, Liz McAdams, Rick McQuiston, and Paul Beckman. There's also new poetry and illustrations.
This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Silencers" by Robert Cooperman, and the new short fiction at Beat to a Pulp is "Closing Time" by William E. Wallace.
In the Q&A roundup, the LA Review of Books spoke with noir author Lisa Brackmann about her latest book, Hour of the Rat; Olen Steinhauer interviewed fellow author Mark Mills about his new historical crime novel Where Dead Men Meet set in Europe on the cusp of World War Two; and thriller writer Paula Hawkins revealed what book she'd take to a desert island in a chat with the Daily Mail.
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June 19, 2017
Media Murder for Monday
Monday means it's time again for the weekly roundup of the latest crime drama news from stage and screen:
MOVIES
In a deal from the Los Angeles Film Festival, Vertical Entertainment acquired U.S. rights to the psychological thriller Never Here, with plans for a theatrical release in fourth-quarter 2017 followed by a pay TV debut on Starz in early 2018. The project is written and directed by Camille Thoman and centers on Miranda (Mireille Enos), an installation artist who follows, photographs and documents the lives of strangers to create her art. One night her secret lover witnesses a violent act from Miranda’s apartment window, so to protect his identity, Miranda poses as the primary witness, making statements to the police about a crime she did not see. Also in the cast are Sam Shepard, Goran Visnjic, Vincent Piazza, Nina Arianda, Ana Nogueira, and Desmin Borges.
Michelle Monaghan, whose character married Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III and who made another appearance in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, is returning for Paramount and Skydance’s next installment of the franchise. The announcement was made by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie vis his Instagram account.
At the End of the Tunnel, a thriller described as a Spanish-language Rear Window homage, was the big winner at the 43rd annual Seattle International Film Festival. Attendees of the festival named it both best film and best director (Rodrigo Grande) in the audience-voted Golden Space Needle awards.
A new trailer was released for Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit, the thriller starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Jacob Latimore, Jason Mitchell, John Krasinski and Anthony Mackie. The film is based on the true story of the terrifying 1967 civil unrest, which took plays over five summer days in the Michigan city.
TELEVISION
Lionsgate is developing a TV series spin-off of the John Wick film franchise called The Continental. The prequel will be a "cool, Wick-ian, magical, and mysterious world" built around the Continental, a hotel chain for training and supporting assassins.
USA is returning to the character-based comedic crime genre where it had a lot of success early on with series like Monk and Psych, with Olive Forever, which follows the exploits of Olive, a mysterious high school student with an affection for cat burglary-type shenanigans, mostly because she is a cat burglar. New to a sleepy town with a criminal underbelly, Olive must navigate new foster parents, new boyfriends, new gangsters…and new crime opportunities.
FX has picked up the hour-long drama Honey from Gerard Barrett, according to Deadline. Details about the drama haven't been released, but the story will take place in the world of corporate espionage.
Two cast members are leaving Quantico. Yasmine Al Massri, who played twin FBI recruits Nimah and Raina on the first two seasons of ABC drama series Quantico, will not return for Season 3. The actress announced her departure on Instagram earlier this week. Shortly afterward, the show announced that Pearl Thusi, who joined Quantico last season, will also not be returning.
When Criminal Minds brought Season 12 to a close last month, the fates of several major characters were up in the air. Thanks to last-minute contract negotiations, fans can breathe a sigh of relief since Criminal Minds announced that actresses Kirsten Vangsness and A.J. Cook have both successfully negotiated raises for their contracts, confirming their returns.
James Martinez (House of Cards) is set for a recurring role in TNT’s crime-drama series Major Crimes, playing the sociopathic father of a potential kidnap victim, a man who started a second family without ever informing them he had a son from another marriage. He joins an ensemble cast that includes Mary McDonnell, Tony Denison, Michael Paul Chan, Phillip P. Keene and Raymond Cruz.
TNT’s Snowpiercer just added Alison Wright to the cast as a series regular, joining the already-hired Jennifer Connelly. The new show was ordered to pilot by TNT and will center around the same premise as the acclaimed 2013 thriller of the same name, which was adapted from the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the only remaining humans are aboard the globe-circling Snowpiercer train.
Grey’s Anatomy alum Sandra Oh has landed the title role in BBC America’s original eight-part scripted series Killing Eve. Oh’s Eve is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade security services operative whose desk-bound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. The other main character is Villanelle (not yet cast), an elegant, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her.
FX is reshuffling the order of the upcoming two installments of American Crime Story. The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which is far along into production, will now air as a second season of the anthology series, with a premiere date tentative slated for early 2018, followed by Katrina, whose filming has been pushed to early 2018. It is unclear whether all big-name actors who had been locked for Katrina, including Annette Bening, Dennis Quaid, and Matthew Broderick, will still be available to do the series on the new timetable.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
The Guardian books podcast featured Scottish crime fiction with Ann Cleeves and Chris Brookmyre as they investigated the murky world of tartan noir.
A CBC panel of Margaret Cannon, J D Singh, and P K Rangachari discussed the best crime fiction for summer reading.
Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed best-selling author Tim Hallinan to the studio to discuss his new book Pulped, which features his private eye Simeon Grist, with a twist: Grist has found out he's a fictional character, the books he's featured in are going out of print, and one of his last remaining readers in the real world has just been murdered. So he sets out to solve the crime.
Episode 6 of the Writer Types podcast featured interviews with Meg Gardiner, Jordan Harper, John Rector, and Thomas Pluck; book recommendations from indie booksellers; an a short story by Angel Luis Colon.
The latest installment of A Stab in the Dark included best-selling authors Sarah Hilary and Belinda Bauer, who discussed the creation of Sarah’s complex heroine Marnie Rome and Belinda’s unique and vulnerable heroes.
THEATER
In Degrees of Error's interactive Murder, She Didn't Write, the audience becomes the author as they are invited to help to create their very own Agatha Christie-inspired masterpiece - and to watch it unfold on stage. Every night, the company creates a unique space where audiences can unleash their literary prowess and create an original improvised murder-mystery. Founded in 2010, Degrees of Error have recently been appointed as the first resident theatre company at the brand new Bristol Improv Theatre, the first theatre in Britain dedicated to the art of improv. Murder, She Didn't Write runs through August on Sunday nights as part of Edinburgh Festival's Fringe.
GAMES
Sony announced a new social multiplayer experience for its PlayStation 4 console called PlayLink, which will use iOS and Android devices as extensions of gameplay happening on the console. The games offered through PlayLink include "Hidden Agenda," which tasks up to six friends with navigating a gritty crime drama by guiding a detective and a district attorney through dangerous traps left behind by a serial killer called "The Trapper." Similar to Supermassive's PS4 game Until Dawn, players will have to use quick-thinking decision making to help each character survive to the end of the story, but a voting mechanic will weigh the characters' decisions toward whichever option receives the most votes.
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June 17, 2017
June 16, 2017
FFB: The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla
At one time, Stuart Palmer (1905-1968) was considered one of the best authors in the mystery genre, writing dozens of stories, books and screenplays. No less than John Dickson Carr, Anthony Boucher and Fred Dannay (one-half of the writing duo Ellery Queen), rated Palmer right up there with the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and Georges Simenon.
The heart of Palmer's success revolved around his most popular creation, the spinster schoolteacher and amateur sleuth Miss Hildegarde Withers, said to be an American version of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, if Miss Marple were more comedic and caustic. She was aided and abetted by Inspector Oscar Piper, a gruff police detective in Manhattan, during the early years of the Great Depression. The first book featuring Withers was 1931's The Penguin Pool Murder, and of her genesis, the author once said:
The origins of Miss Withers are nebulous. When I started Penguin Pool Murder, I worked without an outline, and without much plan. But I decided to ring in a spinster schoolma’am as a minor character, for comedy relief. Believe it or not, I found her taking over. She had more meat on her bones than the cardboard characters who were supposed to carry the story...She was based to some extent on Fern Hackett, an English teacher in Baraboo High School who made my life miserable for two years...Fern was a horse-faced old girl, preposterously old-fashioned, fine old New England family run to seed, hipped on Thoreau and Emerson."
The Penguin Pool Murder was made into a film in 1932 starring Edna May Oliver as Hildegarde and James Gleason as Oscar. The movie was successful enough to spawn six more (only three with Oliver). Palmer moved to Hollywood and collaborated on scripts for movie sleuths like Bulldog Drummond, the Falcon, and the Lone Wolf, and during World War Two he served as a liaison chief for official U.S. Army film production.
The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla is one of Palmer's rarer non-NYC settings, as Inspector Oscar Piper sets off on a junket to Mexico City on a train, where a customs inspector sniffs a bottle of cheap perfume and promptly drops dead. When Oscar telegraphs Hildegarde in Manhattan about the mystery, she packs her bags and heads south of the border. Everyone assumes the real intended victim is a self-made rich American woman whose husband was spotted giving cash to a pretty young redhead.
Other suspects include two Americans who figured to get rich buying all the gasoline-powered generators in Mexico on the eve of a strike by utility workers—especially after one of their shady associates becomes the second victim when a blue banderilla (used to slow bulls down during bullfights) is driven through his back. The main mystery in Blue Banderilla is more of a "howdunit," as Withers and Piper have to try to figure out the exact murder method, with Miss Withers re-creating a stunt from a Sherlock Holmes story and earning the respect and help of a tough Mexican cop.
Anthony Boucher called Miss Hildegarde Withers "one of the first and still one of the best spinster sleuths." Mike Grost at GA Detction noted that the collaboration of an amateur sleuth and the New York Police recalls the work of the Van Dine school of the 1930's and that "Palmer had a special skill of sheer storytelling, in which he could spin the actions of his characters into a continually unrolling plot. He does a good job of making some characters constantly at the center of suspicious looking mysteries."
Palmer also wrote a few detective novels featuring ex-newspaperman Howie Rook and collaborated on stories and novels with the also equally-famous-at-the-time author Ms. Craig Rice, whose sleuth was the hard-living, hard-drinking John J. Malone. Palmer served for a year as President of the Mystery Writers of America, during 1954-55.
