B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 181

Mystery Melange

 

The finalists for the 2017 Anthony Awards were announced today by the Bouchercon Chairs, Helen Nelson and Janet Costello, with winners to be presented during the annual conference on October 15. For the the categories and nominees, follow this link. (FYI, I'm pleased to see that an anthology I participated in, Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016 edited by Greg Herren for Down & Out books, is a finalist in the Best Anthology category.)



Finalists for the seventh annual Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction were announced. The prize is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. This year's finalists include Gone Again, by James Grippando; The Last Days of Night, by Graham Moore; and Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult. You can help vote for the winner, as audience voting will account for one-fifth of the decision-making process.



The Waterstones bookstore at Piccadilly in London will host an evening of international crime fiction for the Orenda Books Roadshow tonight. Fifteen authors will be on hand to talk about and read from their novels, answer questions, and participate in book signings.



Of the many panels to be featured at this year's CrimeFest event coming up this weekend is the first-ever look at German crime fiction sponsored by Goethe-Institut London. The panel will be moderated by Kat Hall and include top German crime writers Mario Giordano, Merle Kröger, Volker Kutscher, and Melanie Raabe.



Bestselling thriller authors Robert Dugoni, Mike Lawson, Kevin O'Brien, and Ingrid Thoft will talk about murder and mayhem in a lively panel discussion May 20 from 2-4:30 pm at BARN in Bainbridge Island, Washington.



On May 31, New York City's Mysterious Bookshop is sponsoring a Mysterious Women panel featuring authors Jenny Milchman, Triss Stein, Kathleen Kaska, and Cathi Stoler. Attendees will have a chance to win Writer's Wish List items including a chapter critique, query writing lesson, or thirty minute coaching session.



There are several crime fiction related events at this year's Belfast Book Festival, including actor and author Ciarán McMenamin who kicks off this year’s festivities on June 7 discussing his debut novel Skintown. Crime novelist and journalist Declan Burke will host a conversation between fellow Irish crime writers Louise Phillips, Julie Parsons and Stuart Neville in "Trouble Is Our Business" on Saturday 10, and more panels will follow. For more information, head on over to the Crescent Arts website.  (HT to Declan Burke.)



It's Mystery Month at Booklist, and the RA for All blog has a summary of some of the events of particular interest.



The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on crime fiction during Wartime, and editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays, which are first person accounts of yourself, your books, and the 'Wartime' connection.

 

The new American Writers Museum opened in Chicago yesterday. Some of the features include interactive touch screens and high-tech multimedia installations such as the Word Waterfall, cozy couches in the children's literature gallery and even the occasional smell of cookies when a visitor pushes the plaque for Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.



Writing for Johns Hopkins University Arts and Sciences Magazine, Richard Byrne takes a look at a new biography of Chester Himes, best known for his Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson hard-boiled cop series, battling crime in mid-20th-century Harlem. The book places Himes in the context of other brilliant, mid-20th-century black writers and how they navigated "the crisis of day-to-day life" faced by African-American authors at that time.



California bookstore chain Book Passage and co-owner Bill Petrocelli have filed suit against a state law that the plaintiffs say "will make it extremely risky, if not impossible, for stores to sell autographed books or host author events." The new law was passed by the California legislature last year and expanded the state's autograph law, which originally applied only to sports memorabilia, to cover any signed commodity worth more than $5, including books.



Hollywood is snapping up film rights to books by self-published authors, one of the latest being thriller author Mark Dawson.



The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is on tour this summer with its ninth Big Read, hosting free reading group events across the UK that will feature Ian Rankin's breakthrough Rebus novel, Black and Blue.



Newly-elected French President Macon a man who has served as a mayor, attorney - and an author of psychological thrillers - as his Prime Minister.



While I happen to think that any library is beautiful, these are rather spectacular.



Ever wonder how writers in days of yore made a living (other than writing)?



Turns out, it's hard to give away a copy of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code these days.



Although I'm almost always in a bookish mood, if you need a little help getting there, these candles might help.



This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Early Dismissal at Burncoat High" by Kristina England.

 

In the Q&A roundup, Marcie Rendon joined The Mystery People to chat about her new book, Murder On The Red River, featuring an American Indian girl, Cash; The Dorset Book Detective welcomed Peter James, who admits he never imagined the global success his protagonist Roy Grace would have; Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis chatted with Rhys Bowen about her first  standalone mystery, Farleigh Field; Craig Johnson sat down with the Dallas News to discuss "ghosts, humor and realism": Dale Phillips welcomed Dave Zeltserman to his blog to talk about his latest works and the major film being made from his book Small Crimes; and the New York Times' latest By the Book guest was Jo Nesbo.

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Media Murder for Monday

Lots of news to report on this week's crime drama roundup, thanks to the spring television upfronts where the networks let us know which shows will live and which will not:

MOVIES



Starting off with movies first, TriStar has attached Mark Pellington to direct The Trap, an adaptation of the Melanie Raabe novel that Oscar-nominated Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy is adapting. The book was originally published in German as Die Falle and is a twisted thriller about a reclusive author who sets the perfect trap for her sister’s murderer after she becomes convinced she's seen the killer on TV.



IFC Films acquired domestic rights to Sweet Virginia, the Jamie M. Dagg thriller that screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. The story centers on a motel owner (Jon Bernthal) with a dark past who unknowingly starts a rapport with a young hitman (Christopher Abbott) responsible for a spate of violence that suddenly has gripped a small town.



Italian director Luca Guadagnino has signed on to direct an untitled thriller penned by Steven Knight, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jake Gyllenhaal being courted to star in the project. The story follows two old friends, one a business titan and the other a journalist. Other details are being kept under wraps, although it will allegedly be set in an exotic locale and also have a strong female lead.



Liam Neeson will star in Retribution, a remake of the Spanish thriller El Desconocido. Retribution follows a successful Wall Street executive who discovers on his way to work that a bomb has been planted in his car by an unknown assailant. He is forced to follow a series of orders throughout the day or else the bomb will be detonated - a situation made worse because the man’s family is in the car with him.



Kristin Scott Thomas is set to star in Paramour, inspired by the true story of the BMW heiress Susanne Klatten. When the mysterious and seductive Helg Sgarbi enters her life, they embark upon a passionate, illicit affair – until Helg reveals his sinister true intentions.



Margot Robbie is set to star in Dreamland, a thriller that will be directed by Sundance winner Miles Joris-Peyrafitte and is set in the 1930s amid the devastation of the Dust Bowl. The story centers on a 15-year-old boy and his quest to capture a fugitive bank robber (Robbie) and collect the bounty on her head to save the family farm from foreclosure. Against all odds, he beats out the FBI and the local police to find her, only to discover that she's far more than what the authorities claim her to be.  



TELEVISION



It's upfront season in TV land again, which means fans of various television programs will find out if their favorites will return or have been given the axe. Here are quick rundowns for ABC, CBS, NBC, the CW, and Fox. Variety also has a list of cancellations.



Looking closer at ABC, a mild shocker is the fact that ABC canceled American Crime, the anthology series that debuted in 2015 and went on to win some fourteen Emmy Awards. Also getting the boot is the mystery television series Secret and Lies. At the same time, the network picked up the pilot For the People to series, a project that has been called the legal version of veteran Grey's Anatomy, as well as The Crossing, a futuristic conspiracy thriller, and the magician cop series Deception.



The stalwart CBS franchises such as NCIS will keep chugging along, and Elementary was also renewed. New shows include Alan Cumming starring in Instinct as a former CIA operative who abandons his regular life as a professor to help the NYPD track a serial killer; Wisdom of the Crowd is a drama centering on a tech innovator (Jeremy Piven) who creates a crowdsourcing app to solve his daughter’s murder; S.W.A.T. starring Shemar Moore; and SEAL Team, which stars Boreanaz as a member of the elite Navy group.



NBC made a decision on three of Dick Wolf’s four Chicago dramas, renewing flagship Chicago Fire as well as Chicago PD, and Chicago Med. There is no decision yet on the newest entry in the franchise, freshman Chicago Justice. Veteran drama Law & Order: SVU was also picked up, as well as a renewal order for a third season of Blindspot, a second season of Taken, and a fifth season of The Blacklist. New programs include the heist crime dramedy Good Girls, Law & Order: True Crime – The Menendez Murders and Reverie, featuring a former hostage negotiator.



Fox issued an official renewal for Season 4 for its pre-Batman crime drama Gotham, but canceled its genre-bending supernatural crime drama Sleepy Hollow after four seasons. Also canceled is the Fox network's Rosewood, a police procedural starring Morris Chestnut, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Gabrielle Dennis, Lorraine Toussaint, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Anna Konkle, that just wrapped up its second season.



The CW network canceled Frequency, which starred Peyton list as NYPD Detective Raimy Sullivan, who discovers she is able to speak to her deceased father Frank Sullivan in 1996 via his old ham radio. Her attempts to save his life change the present in unforeseen ways, so she must work with her father across time to solve a decades-old murder case in order to fix the damage she caused. However, since the show ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, the producers are giving fans a mini-epilogue.



The Acorn Streaming Service's lineup next year will include ITV’s atmospheric thriller Loch Ness, the final episodes of hit BBC One detective drama George Gently;  smash hit ITV detective drama Vera, Series 7; the legal drama Janet King, Series 3; and award-winning Canadian cop drama 19-2.



Meanwhile, in other news, UK-based indie Eleventh Hour Films has acquired rights to Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series of detective novels, and attached ’71 writer Gregory Burke to pen a contemporary TV drama adaptation. Executive Producer Jill Green promises "a fresh and revisionist take in every way introducing both Rebus and Edinburgh to a new generation." An earlier Rebus series starred John Hannah and later Ken Stott and aired on ITV.



Psych, one of USA Network’s most popular shows, is set to return to the small screen, with the original cast reuniting for a two-hour holiday film creatively called Psych: The Movie.  The TV movie will pick up three years after the 2014 series finale, and although details are vague, the gang will reunite after a mysterious assailant targets one of their own.



Ben Stiller’s Escape From Clinton Correctional is nearing a series order at Showtime. Benicio del Toro and Patricia Arquette will star in the eight-part limited series based on the prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015. 



Choice Films and Adam Dunn’s Aurelian Productions are teaming to develop Big Dogs, based on Dunn’s futuristic crime books, with director David Platt (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) attached to helm the first two episodes. The series is set in a violent, decaying New York City, where an underworld economy of illegal, debauchery-ridden nightclubs linked by a web of taxicabs is thriving. 



Snowfall, FX's period drama about the birth of the crack epidemic that ravaged communities throughout the nation and changed the culture forever, will premiere Wednesday, July 5, the network announced Monday. 



Judge Dredd is heading to the small screen for a series called Judge Dredd: Mega City One. The futuristic series follows a group of policemen and women who comb their metropolis for criminals and boast their status as "the law" by carrying out curbside executions, if need be. 



Audience Network has set the summer premiere For David E. Kelley’s Stephen King adaptation of Mr. Mercedes for Wednesday, August 9.



The Oxygen Network is getting into crime programming with a slate of true crime shows including Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, hosted by NBC News’ Craig Melvin.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Author Meg Carter discussed her latest psychological thriller The Day She Can’t Forget on the BBC's Steve Yabsley's podcast.



Second Sunday Crime host Libby Fischer Hellman welcomed Texas author Caleb Pirtle to chat about his latest noir suspense thrillers.



The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio blog continued its lists with "Top Ten Greatest American Radio Detective Performances, Part Three."

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Your Sunday Music Treat

Wednesday marks the anniversary of the birth of Erik Satie, an eccentric French composer, pianist and writer. His works have bits and pieces of Impressionism, Surrealism, and Dadaism, and his compositional style influenced Debussy and Ravel. Since he worked for a while as a music hall pianist in various Montmartre cafes and also writing music for the Rosicrusianism religious sect, you can often hear some strains of that in his works, too. He's best known for his short piano pieces, and you've probably heard one of them but didn't know who wrote it. Here's the lilting and slightly melancholy Gymnopédie No.1:

 

 

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Blue Octavo

Bibliomysteries are a subgenre of crime fiction in which manuscripts, books, libraries, bookstores or publishing houses (or any employees thereof) play a large role. They date back at least to The Lost Library by Fredric Perkins in 1874, and many well-known authors have used the theme since, even Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) with its rare book dealer who is fronting for something entirely different.



It's rarer to find an author of the genre who is a real-life book dealer, but John Blackburn is one example. Born in Northumberland in 1923, he was the brother of poet Thomas Blackburn, although the writing bug didn't bite John early. He served in the British merchant navy during World War II and then as a schoolmaster, before becoming director of Red Lion Books.



In 1958 he published his first work, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, which is a blend of science fiction and horror, themes that permeated many of his novels. He also penned several international espionage thrillers, including those with General Charles Kirk of British Intelligence and his sidekicks, scientist Sir Marcus Levin and his Russian wife Tania.



Blackburn's Blue Octavo (titled Bound to Kill in the U.S.), was published in 1963, and is a departure from most of his other books, but is likely the one most rooted in his own life and the biblio world. The hero is John Cain, a young bookseller who inherits the stock of a curmudgeonly antisocial dealer, James Roach, after he appears to have committed suicide. Or so the police soon conclude.



Cain is unconvinced, especially considering the alleged suicide followed the dead man's strange behavior at an auction where Roach had grossly overbid on a thin blue volume about mountain climbing. The book appeared to be as exciting as its title, Grey Boulders, but why had Roach been so obsessed with owning it and why is it now missing from Roach's collection?



As Cain digs deeper, he realizes Roach was murdered over that book, and in his bumbling attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery, he crosses paths with an unconventional young heiress, Julia Lent, and the noted author and mountaineer J. Moddon Mott. The three join forces in a hectic quest to uncover why a book with fewer than 50 remaining copies is worth three murders, attempted murder and blackmail. And where do a dying millionaire and a tortured clergyman with burned feet fit into the puzzle?



As you'd expect from a bookseller/author writing a bibliomystery, Blue Octavo is filled with details about  bookselling (at least as it was in Britain in the early 1960s). John Kennedy Melling notes, in his foreword to the Black Dagger reprint, that the novel gives "a revealing insight into the world of books, with a clear explanation of how the Ring works in bidding at public auctions, descriptions of bookseller's shops and stocks which immediately conjure up pictures of shops known to all book collectors, and some useful tips on collecting the editions—to say nothing of how to deal with auctioneers who won't cooperate."



Still, the thriller elements are enough to inspire author and Shots Magazine columnist Mike Ripley to include the work (along with Blackburn's A Ring of Roses) on his list of favorite thrillers. Maybe it has to do with the Hitchcockian climax in a factory tower.

            

Author R&R with Brian Klingborg

Brian Klingborg studied Chinese folk religion at Harvard University before plunging into the publishing world, becoming a Sr. Vice President at the educational publisher Kumon. He’s penned books on Kung Fu and also wrote for the Winx Club animated TV series before recently turning his hand to crime fiction with his debut novel, Kill Devil Falls, from Midnight Ink.



The book follows U.S. Marshal Helen Morrissey, tasked with collecting a fugitive bank robber from a remote town in the Sierra Nevadas. She braces for a rough trip, but it turns out to be far worse than she imagined. After barely surviving a white-knuckle drive in what she suspects is a sabotaged car, she’s stuck in a virtual ghost town populated by a handful of oddballs and outcasts. But it’s not until her prisoner turns up dead that Helen realizes she’s in real trouble, and there are secrets buried below the surface of Kill Devil Falls—secrets worth killing for.



Brian stopped by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about writing his new novel:

 

In a roundabout way, authorial research is to be credited for my marriage.  But more on that in a moment...

Everyone is familiar with the old adage “write what you know.”  The point being, unless you are intimately acquainted with a subject, your writing will lack those small, yet crucial details which truly bring a story to life.  But what if you, for example, work in children’s educational publishing (like me) and want to write a noir crime thriller (again, like me)?  Then you’d better do your research!

My first novel, Kill Devil Falls, recently published by Midnight Ink, features a female U.S. Marshal who is tasked with collecting a fugitive from a remote town in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  The easy part of writing this book was establishing the setting.  I grew up in the general vicinity and went skiing in those mountains most winters.  In order to flesh out some specifics regarding driving routes and terrain, I used Google Maps.  Especially helpful were the Google Satellite and Street View features, which allowed me to visit actual locations and navigate their surroundings, complete with photographs.

The hard part was accurately describing what a U.S. Marshal does and how he or she does it.  After all, my closest brush with law enforcement thus far is being on the receiving end of a few speeding tickets.  Fortunately, I have a good friend who is a 20 year veteran of the NYPD and he was able to advise me on correct procedure regarding prisoner transport, Miranda rights, use of force, and even how to snoop around a suspect’s home without first obtaining a search warrant (claim “exigent circumstances”). 

My next book, The Knock Down, is an historical thriller set in New York in 1901.  It follows a prisoner as he travels from Sing Sing Prison up the Hudson Valley by train, then back down to Manhattan by tugboat, and finally through a seedy assortment of Lower East Side dive bars, brothels, gambling halls and opium dens.

My research kicked off with two excellent books which cover the 19th century underbelly of New York in fascinating detail:  Lowlife, Lures and Snares of Old New York, by Luc Sante; and The Gangs of New York:  An Informal History of the Underworld, by Herbert Asbury.  I was also lucky to come across first-person accounts describing life in Sing Sing, both from the point of view of guards and inmates.    Background color was provided by various newspaper article archives, located through online searches.

With respect to period details regarding attire, furnishings and various personal accoutrements, again it was the internet to the rescue.   I discovered a treasure trove of scanned photos from early 20th century catalogs and advertisements hawking men’s and women’s clothing, kitchen appliances, medicinal remedies and even hygiene products.   

In order to get the vernacular correct, I scoured various slang dictionaries, such as George Matsell’s The Secret Language of Crime, and my favorite, the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose, from which I borrowed fun phrases such as “hanging an arse,” meaning to hesitate, and a number of insults, curses and amusing euphemisms for, ahem, various body parts.

I was briefly stymied, however, when I attempted to find good source material on early 20th century Hudson Valley train schedules and tugboat information.  Finally, I had the idea to approach enthusiast groups through internet blogs and Yahoo groups.  Trust me, if you’re looking for some arcane bit of data regarding planes, trains, boats, medieval weaponry, Mongolian throat singing, etc., there is a Yahoo Group or blog out there, somewhere, which will prove to be an invaluable resource.  I eventually tracked down some train and tugboat fans who generously shared insights that greatly enhanced the accuracy of my book.

As a reader, I’ve always loved stories that are told well, but also that teach me something.  Anything, really.  The daily routine aboard an 18th century warship.  What the ancient Greeks ate for breakfast.  How Hong Kong became a British colony.

It was that last tidbit, gleaned from James Clavell’s Tai-Pan, which I alluded to above.  As a freshman in college, I met a young lady who had a poster of Hong Kong, where she had grown up, on her dorm wall.  I was the first person she’d come across at school who even knew where Hong Kong was, let alone details of its history and politics, and she was suitably impressed.  A few years later, we got hitched. 

 Now that, folks, is the power of authorial research!

 

You can find more information about Kill Devil Falls via Midnight Ink's website and can follow Brian on Facebook and Twitter. The book is now on sale from all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

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Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association have announced the finalists for the 2017 Dagger in the Library Award, given to a body of work by a crime writer in the UK that users of libraries particularly admire. This year's shortlists include Andrew Taylor, CJ Sansom, James Oswald, Kate Ellis, Mari Hannah, and Tana French.



The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced the Scribe Award Nominees for 2017. The awards, which honor licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books, include nods to such crime fiction titles as 24: Trial by Fire by Dayton Ward; Don Pendleton’s The Executioner: Missile Intercept by Michael Black; Murder Never Knocks by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn by Ace Atkins; and Tom Clancy’s True Faith and Allegiance by Mark Greaney.



Booklist has released its annual editors' choices for the best books of the year (i.e., from May 1, 2016, through April 15, 2017). They include the Best Crime Novels, the Best Crime Fiction Audiobooks, and the Best Crime Fiction for Youth.



On 15 May, Dean Street Press will be reissuing six golden age crime novels by Peter Drax, originally published between 1936 and 1944 that have been out of print and unavailable for decades. As the publishers notes, "His approach is somewhat different from many of the well-known authors of the time, vividly evoking London street life of the 1930s and the patient and untiring means by which Scotland Yard detectives got their man – or woman."



May 25 at Hatchards of Piccadily in London is the date and place for the book launch for Taking Detective Stories Seriously, the collected crime fiction reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers. Martin Edwards, who wrote the introduction, about the collection on his blog, noting that "the reviews are a wonderfully informative resource for mystery fiction fans."



Penguin Random House Ireland announced its inaugural crime writing festival, Dead in Dún Laoghaire, in partnership with The Irish Times. The festival will take place over one day on Saturday, July 22nd at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, with featured authors Paula Hawkins, Kathy Reichs, John Banville, Stuart Neville, Liz Nugent, and Karen Perry.



Dr. Mary Brown, writing for The Scotsman, made the case for neglected author John Buchan, only known today because of his First World War adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and his great character, Major-General Sir Richard Hannay. However, Edinburgh-based publisher ­Polygon recently announced plans for a new installment, with Dundee-born author Robert J ­Harris penning the continuation novel The Thirty-One Kings, the first new Hannay book for more than 80 years. If successful, a series featuring Major-General Hannay could follow.



While we're on the subject of continuation novels, New Zealand author Stella Duffy talked about the tricky art of completing an abandoned Ngaio Marsh mystery novel.



James Patterson has certainly had a variety of co-authors through the years, and now he's taking it all the way to the White House. He'll be teaming up former President Bill Clinton to write a new novel, The President Is Missing, that will be co-published by two of the Big Five trade houses.



Following the success of his novel The Martian, made into a popular movie starring Matt Damon, author Andy Weir's next book, Artemis, will be a crime thriller set on the Moon with plans already underway to adapt the work for film.



Dashiell Hammett’s granddaughter Julie Rivett recently visited the Stillwater Public Library in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, to share her grandfather’s legacy and some background on the settings and characters of one of his most famous novels, The Maltese Falcon. She also discussed the author's political activism that landed him in jail for a time.



Writing for The Guardian, Kathryn Harkup used to believe Dorothy L Sayers’ 1930 novel Strong Poison wouldn’t stand up to modern science, until modern genetic research just proved her wrong.



Reader's Digest compiled a listing of "10 True Crime Books That Are So Chilling, You Shouldn’t Read Them at Night."



And speaking of true crime, this Listverse compilation takes a look at "Top 10 Bloody 20th-Century Mysteries We’ll Probably Never Solve."



For a really strange take on true crime, or art-imitating-life or vice versa, there's this story of a TV producer who's accused of hiring hitmen to kill his wealthy partner and tells police he was just "writing a murder mystery novel" after being arrested naked in bed with his 28-year-old mistress.



Author Dan Brown needs your help choosing the book cover for a limited edition of his new novel, Origin, and you may win a limited edition, signed copy of the book with the winning cover design jacket.



Is this the world's first homicide?



If you're looking for a creepy mystery, look no further than this odd real estate posting in South Carolina via Zillow.



This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "I'm a Rabbit Girl" by Amy Holman.

 

In the Q&A roundup, Authors Interviews spoke with Greg Barth about his writing and his latest book Everglade, the fifth and final book in the Selena series, and also chatted with Robert Crawford, whose latest thriller is Tatterdemalion; and Stuart MacBride visited Hawley Reviews to discuss his new book, A Dark So Deadly.

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Author R&R with Brian Freeman

Chicago native and longtime resident of the Twin Cities, Brian Freeman, is an international bestselling author of psychological suspense novels. His books have been sold in 46 countries and 20 languages and have appeared as Main Selections in the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. He is the author of The Cold Nowhere, a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award, Immoral, which won the Macavity Award in 2005, and Spilled Blood, the winner of the 2013 ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. He has also been nominated for many other awards, including the Edgar, the International Dagger, the Anthony, and the Barry.   



Brian's new thriller, Marathon, draws inspiration from recent events to paint a portrait of crime in an American city that is also a dark reflection of national politics. With echoes of the Boston Marathon bombing, when people’s lives were forever changed at the finish line, this timely novel addresses some of the defining issues of our time: terrorism, fear of the other, and the raw power of social media to shape the public’s understanding of events.



When an explosion along the Duluth Marathon racecourse leaves dozens of people dead or injured, Duluth PD homicide detectives Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei get to work sifting the debris for clues as to who’s behind the bombing. Soon the investigation is taken over by the FBI, whose lead agent is certain the act has all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism. Complicating matters, the social media feed of a conservative First Amendment activist immediately floods the community with rumors and unfiltered information about the bombing, and a young Pakistani immigrant becomes the target of a massive manhunt. But are the answers behind the Duluth bombing more complex than anyone realizes? And can Stride, Serena, and Maggie get to the truth before more innocent people are killed in the spiraling confrontation between the Feds and the Islamic community?



Brian stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss research and writing his novels:

Location research means making your setting come alive on the page. Sometimes it also means getting chased down by a guy on a moped.

I’ve always believed that setting enriches the drama of a mystery. The location of each chapter should add depth and atmosphere to the characters and the story. That means capturing what I call the “six senses of place.” I want to give readers a “you-are-there” sensation, in which they’re dropped into every chapter like an invisible observer and can feel, hear, touch, taste, and smell the action happening around them. But place is about more than physical reactions. It’s also about the memories and emotions that a location evokes. What does it feel like to be there? Does it scare you? Does it remind you of a summer romance? Does it fill you with sadness, longing, laughter, or regret? Those are the extra dimensions of a setting that make it come to life for the reader.

For me, there’s only one way to capture that authenticity. I have to be there. If I can stand where my characters stand—and feel what they feel—then I can bring the reader along for the ride. So in researching each book, I scout locations the way a film director would. I use real places—real businesses, real parks and trails, real landmarks, even real homes. In fact, I get e-mails from readers who love to follow along using Google Earth and Google Street View on every chapter of the book.

Usually, this kind of location research is pretty straightforward. I do an outline for the book, but I leave the location of each chapter open—so that I can visit different neighborhoods hunting for the right location to enhance the drama of each scene. That’s true whether I’m in Duluth (with the Jonathan Stride series), San Francisco (with Frost Easton and The Night Bird), or other areas like Florida, rural Wisconsin, or Las Vegas.

I never really considered the fact that the process may look a little strange from the outside. There I am, hiking through cemeteries, farmlands, ruined buildings, and suburban neighborhoods with my camera and voice recorder, making notes on the “feel” of each area and blocking out how the action of the chapter will take place. It works—but sometimes people get the wrong idea.

When I was scouting locations for my Jonathan Stride novella Turn to Stone, I was in the small town of Shawano, Wisconsin. I wanted a scene in an upscale neighborhood, so my wife, Marcia, and I drove up and down a street near the Wolf River, taking pictures and assessing the various homes for the book. For us, that’s normal. However, as we were leaving the area, I noticed a man on a moped behind me. I didn’t really think anything of it—but then I turned, and he turned, and I turned, and he turned again. He followed me all the way to our next location site at a boat landing on the river, and he pulled up right next to my driver’s-side door.

It turns out that he owned one of those homes we’d been scouting, and his daughters had been playing outside and had seen Marcia taking pictures. Well, they were convinced we were “casing the joint” and were going to come back to rob them. So—in a nice display of “Shawano justice”—the homeowner hopped on his moped and laid chase.

Of course, at that point, I had to convince the man that I was an author who was planning to set a book in his area. I’m sure he didn’t believe me for a minute and was ready to call the cops—but fortunately, I had some bookmarks in the car, so I think I was able to convince him that we were on the up-and-up.

I guess not everyone wants to have their home turned into a crime scene—but some people feel just the opposite. In my book The Burying Place, I used a home in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, as the location for a kidnapping—and when the owners sold that house the next year, they mentioned in the MLS listing that it had been “featured” in the book! Apparently, fictional crimes can also drive up your property value. Good to know.

 

Learn more about Brian Freeman and his books via his website, or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Marathon is available now through all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

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Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday, my friends! Start off your week with the latest in crime drama news from stage and screen:

MOVIES



Lotus Entertainment and Paperchase Films are adapting Rick Bowers’ 2012 YA nonfiction book Superman vs. the KKK for a general audience. Bowers’ book (full title: Superman Versus The Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate) chronicled the creation of a real-life 1946 radio drama in which Superman took on a thinly-veiled version of the actual Klan. The book will be adapted for the screen by Katherine Lindberg.



PalmStar Media has optioned a pair of novels about legendary gunslinger Doc Holliday to be developed as a starring vehicle for two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner, who will also produce the untitled film. PalmStar optioned Mary Doria Russell’s books Doc and Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral, which  chronicle the life and times of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, an Atlanta dentist-turned-Wild West gunfighter who sealed his place in Old West lore by making a stand alongside Wyatt Earp in a famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the Arizona territory in 1881.



Triple Frontier has been in development for years, with Paramount, director Kathryn Bigelow, and various actors all leaving the project at one time or another. The most recent departures were Tom Hardy and Channing Tatum, leaving only Mahershala Ali, fresh off winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Moonlight, attached to the film. But it appears the project may have new life in the form of Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck who are being eyed as the new leads, with J.C. Chandor on board to direct after Bigelow's departure. The thriller is set in the notorious border zone with Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil where the Iguazu and Parana rivers converge — making "la triple frontera" difficult to monitor and a haven for organized crime.



Sam Claflin is set to star in the upcoming crime thriller Semper Fi, playing Hopper, a straight-laced cop who fills his downtime as a sergeant in the Marine Corps Reservists alongside a close-knit team of lifelong friends. The rowdy but inseparable group look out for each other, including keeping an eye out for Hopper’s younger, reckless brother Oyster. When Oyster accidentally kills a man in a bar-room brawl and tries to flee town, Hopper stops him and forces him to face the music. But, after being deployed to Iraq, Hopper feels wracked with guilt when he returns home, and he and his friends hatch a plan to break Oyster out of jail.



Chris Pine and Michelle Williams are in negotiations to star in All The Old Knives, a spy thriller that would be directed by James Marsh (The Theory Of Everything). The movie is based on the 2015 novel The Tourist by author Olen Steinhauer, who will also adapt the screenplay. The story revolves around a pair of CIA spies once romantically involved who reconnect in Carmel-by-the-Sea six years after a failed mission and both have moved on — or so it seems.



Jacki Weaver is the latest to join the all-star cast of Steve McQueen's heist thriller Widows. The two-time Oscar nominee will share the screen with Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Collin Farrell, Robert Duvall, and Michelle Rodriguez. Based on the 1980s British TV series, Widows centers on the wives of armed robbers gunned down, who decide to finish the job their spouses started.



A trailer was released for action thriller The Hunter's Prayer, based on the 2004 novel For the Dogs by author Kevin Wignall. The film centers on a professional assassin (Sam Worthington) who finds out that his latest mark is none other than a young girl and reluctantly goes from Terminator to her protector.  



Epic Pictures has acquired North American rights to Dwight Little’s true-crime thriller Last Rampage, which stars Robert Patrick, Heather Graham, and Bruce Davison, and will release the film wide on September 22. Patrick takes on the role in the true story pic, portraying psychopath Gary Tison.



20th Century Fox screened footage from the Kenneth Branagh-directed adaptation of Agatha Christie classic Murder On The Orient Express in London recently for a group of execs, talent and press. Branagh, who also stars as Hercule Poirot, revealed here would be "some surprises" in his feature film version. For more on how this version is different from previous incarnations, check out this report from Cinema Blend.



TELEVISION



ION Television has closed a deal with Entertainment One for a new original crime drama series, The Detail. The cast includes Shenae Grimes-Beech as street-smart Detective Jacqueline "Jack" Cooper, Angela Griffin as Detective Stevie Hall, a sharp, quick-witted interrogator who is Jack’s mentor, and Wendy Crewson as Staff Inspector Fiona Currie, the homicide unit’s formidable boss, who works overtime to secure justice no matter what the cost.



SundanceTV announced Monday that it has renewed its buddy-crime anthology series Hap and Leonard, starring James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams, for Season 3. The third season will take inspiration from The Two-Bear Mambo, the third book of author Joe Landsdale's Hap and Leonard series, similar to how Seasons 1 and 2 were based on the first two novels, Savage Season and Mucho Mojo.



Fox's reality TV series You the Jury was pulled after only three episodes due to "very low ratings."  Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro hosted each episode where six top attorneys who’ve represented some of the nation’s biggest celebrities argued their cases for America’s vote.



Just as the popular BBC police procedural series Line of Duty was finishing its fourth season, the Beeb announced the show would return for not one, but two new series. Although he cliff-hanging events of the dramatic fourth series suggested that a fifth round of Line of Duty was likely to be in the works, a sixth series is somewhat of a surprise for viewers. The show revolves around AC-12, the police anti-corruption unit lead by superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar).



Showtime has released a new promo for its Twin Peaks revival that finally reveals some of the characters who will be returning to David Lynch’s iconic mystery drama later this month, including Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill), Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie), Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz), Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill (Michael Horse), and of course, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).



RADIO/PODCASTS/VIDEO



Thrillseekers host Alex Dolan welcomed Jill Orr, whose first novel in the Riley Ellison mysteries series will be released by Prospect Park Books.



The new A Stab in the Dark podcast features guest host Paul Hirons taking a closer look at the Nature Vs Nuture debate when it comes to the development of criminals. As part of that discussion, he homed in on the new series Born to Kill and talked to writer Kate Ashfield and series star, Daniel Mays, to try to understand the nuances of portraying a teenage psychopath in a TV setting.



Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomes Joe Ide to talk about his critically-acclaimed crime fiction novel, IQ.



Beyond The Cover was joined by special guest Steve Hamilton, who chatted about the follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Second Life of Nick Mason.



Kings River Life had a behind-the-scenes view of the new mystery online author Q&A web series, Solved! Hosted by Libby Fischer Hellmann, the show originates out of the Author’s Voice studio, with author interviews featured on their website and then archived via YouTube.



The Great Detectives website posted a listing of the "Top Ten Greatest American Radio Detective Performances, Part Two."



THEATER



Calgary, Canada's Vertigo Theatre continues its Mystery Series with The Drowning Girls beginning May 13. The play centers on Bessie, Alice, and Margaret, three women who thought George Joseph Smith was the man of their dreams - but now all three are dead. The Drowning Girls is described as "a lyrical exploration of a trio of murdered wives who gather evidence against their murderous husband by reliving the shocking events leading up to their deaths."



Hitchcock’s masterpiece Dial M for Murder has a run at Newcastle's New Vic theatre in the UK until May 20. Set in post-war Britain, ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice (William Ellis) is married to wealthy socialite, Sheila (Nicole Bartlett), who has had an affair with crime writer, Mark Halliday (Daniel Eaton). Sheila sends the men off for a night out while she has an early night in. However, the previous night Tony had planned with a former acquaintance to murder Sheila in order for him to receive her fortune. Unfortunately for Tony, his plans turn awry and he is forced to come up with a new plan and cover his tracks.

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FFB: Movie Poster Art of the Film Noir

 

In honor of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, which returns for its 18th annual event in sunny Palm Springs, May 11-14 at the Camelot Theatres, I decided to highlight Crime Scenes: Movie Poster Art of the Film Noir, The Classic Period (1941-1959).



The Foreword has an interview with Robert Wise and the book itself is filled with images from the collection of film-art buff Lawrence Bassoff—171 movie posters, lobby cards, and pressbooks, which are used to tell the development and history of the film genre and movie poster printing processes. There are images, including many rare editions, for 100 classics such as The Maltese Falcon, You Only Live Once, Out of the Past, This Gun for Hire and Double Indemnity. Bassoff even includes price ranges for aspiring collectors (in 1997 terms).

 

  



Lobby card for The Big Sleep.



 

From the foreword with Robert Wise.   

A spread from the "fifty stars of the film noir rogues gallery" section.