B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 184

Mystery Melange

Paper Sculpture by Malena Valcárcel

The 2017 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year announced the shortlist of outstanding crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The winning title will be announced at the Gala Dinner on May 20 during the annual international CrimeFest held in Bristol.



The Short Mystery Fiction Society posted the finalists for this year's best in short crime fiction, from flash length all the way to novelette. For all the lists, head on over to the official SMFS website.



The Daily Mail First Novel competition is launching its second annual event which offers the prize of a £20,000 publishing deal with Penguin Random House. Last year's contest attracted 5,000 entries, with the winner being Amy Lloyd for her thriller Red River. Since most of the best entries last year (according to the judges) were crime and thrillers, this year organizers are asking for entries in that genre only, from detective crime to spy thrillers to psychological chillers. Interested first-time authors who have never been published can send in the first 5,000 words and a short synopsis.



Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Bloch (1917-1994), best known for his book Psycho which became an even more famous film by Alfred Hitchcock. Although he wrote primarily in horror and sci-fi, Bloch also penned crime fiction works, and served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America (1970). Todd Mason has being including retrospectives on his blog this week in honor of the occasion as well as a partial bibliography.



The Writers Who Kill blog hosted interviews with the finalists for the Agatha Award for Best Short Crime Story and also has links to the stories so you can read them for yourself.



Agatha Christie's books and stories have been translated into over 100 languages, but writer Ragnar Jónasson recounted for The Guardian how he came to be a primary translator of the Queen of Crime's books into Icelandic and why one clue took ten years to translate.



In Mike Ripley's latest Getting Away with Murder column for Shots Magazine, he tells us that his long-simmering project Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a "reader’s history" of the boom in British thriller writing 1953-1975, has been given a home by HarperCollins in their famous Crime Club imprint; plus he has a profile of Cuban crime-writing superstar Leonardo Padura; a look at new re-releases from Ostara Crime, reviews of two new debut thrillers, and plenty more reviews of note.



The escape-room event, in which groups of players are locked into a room and have to solve puzzles and complete a mission to escape, may have started in Kyoto in 2007, but they have since spread around the globe with such features as Escape The Room in New York City. Apparently, the film and TV business has also embraced the trend as a marketing tool to stand out in a crowded marketplace and give fans an immersive experience - shows such as Game of Thrones, Prison Break: Resurrection, and Murdoch Mysteries have all offered their take on an escape room.



Do you love the television spy series The Americans on FX? If so, here are "10 Books to Read If You Love Watching The Americans."



Rabeea, a Karachi-based book critic presently writing for Chicago Review of Books, Wales Art Review, Brooklyn Mag, and elsewhere, was getting a little tired of "the girl who" crime novel trend, prompting this subjective list of "5 Psychological Thrillers That Aren’t Formulaic."



Looking for the perfect place to stage the perfect crime? You might want to consider taking a little cruise.



Speaking of all things criminal, it appears that hair strands could reveal lifestyle secrets of criminals.



This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Sins to Forgive" by J.H. Johns



In the Q&A roundup, Henry Brock (Vicious Dogs) is the latest author to take Paul D. Brazill's Short Sharp Interview challenge; the Mysteristas welcomed Marilyn Larew, author of Aftermath; Sarah Pinborough stopped by Anne Bonny Book Reviews about her bestselling thrillers; Needham Local spoke with Dave Zeltserman about the upcoming movie adapted from his book, Small Crimes; and Crime Readers chatted with Seven Womack to discuss his series featuring Nashville PI, Harry James Denton.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

Happy Monday to all! Here's an update of the latest crime drama news:

MOVIES



Liam Neeson has signed on to play the lead role in Marlowe, which is based on the iconic Raymond Chandler character Philip Marlowe. The film is being adapted from The Black-Eyed Blonde follow-on novel by Benjamin Black, which centers on the private eye during the early 1950s where Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. That is, until a beautiful blonde client comes in and asks Marlowe to find her ex-lover, which soon has Marlowe wrapped up with one of the more powerful families in Bay Cities who are willing to go to any lengths to protect their fortune.



Fox Searchlight , a Jeff Maysh eBook published under the Amazon Kindle Single label. The book tells the true story of Erwin van Haarlem, a Cold War secret agent whose stolen identity broke the heart of an innocent woman who thought she’d found her long-lost son.



Doctor Strange actor Scott Adkins has been tapped as the lead in the sci-fi action thriller Incoming, about an International Space Station that now serves as a prison. When the imprisoned terrorists take over the Station and turn it into a missile aimed at Moscow, only a shuttle pilot and a rookie doctor can stop them.



Ron Howard’s production outfit Imagine Entertainment has optioned the novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, with British author Jason Arnopp to adapt the screenplay of his own 2016 debut. The plot follows titular pop culture journalist Jack Sparks who is researching a book on the occult, but after sparking a Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism, Sparks is found dead in mysterious circumstances.



Throttle, the novella by Stephen King and his son, novelist Joe Hill, is getting the big-screen treatment. Throttle tells of a motorcycle gang riding across a stark Nevada desert after a deal gone bad, who become pursued by a faceless trucker hell-bent on revenge.  



Logan Lerman and Olivia Cooke are in final negotiations to star in The Tracking Of A Russian Spy, the thriller based on real events and based on Mitch Swenson’s memoir. The plot centers on a secret romance between journalist Swenson (Lerman) and a mysterious Russian woman named Katya (Cooke) he met in a New York nightclub who disappears suddenly after the arrest of 10 Russian-Americans charged with spying for the Kremlin.  



Amber Heard is attached to topline the crime thriller The Kind Worth Killing based on Peter Swanson’s 2015 novel, with Christopher Kyle adapting the screenplay. The book follows Lily, a mysterious and stunning killer who meets Ted Severson on a late-night flight from London to Boston. When Ted confesses he’s had thoughts about murdering his unfaithful wife, Lily offers to help, and the two form a strange, twisted bond while plotting his wife’s demise.



Eric Roberts (The Dark Knight) has boarded the indie Never Saw It Coming, playing Wendell Garfield, the husband of a missing woman (Diane D'Aquila) whose disappearance is investigated by a psychic (Emily Hampshire). The book is based on the 2013 novel by Linwood Barclay, who also wrote the screenplay.



Mission: Impossible 6 has announced its cast with several returning members including Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, Alec Baldwin as Alan Hunley, and Sean Harris as Solomon Lane. One notable absentee from the group is Jeremy Renner, who played William Brandt in Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, who is reportedly committed to other projects.



TELEVISION



HBO is in talks with veteran David Milch to join True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto for a potential third season of the crime drama franchise. Pizzolatto, who created the show and has written every episode so far (sharing co-writing credit with Scott Lasser for two episodes in Season 2), has reportedly finished the first two scripts for a prospective third season.



Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter is set to direct the first two episodes of Dick Wolf’s limited series Law & Order: True Crime — The Menendez Murders for NBC, which is scheduled to begin production this spring in Los Angeles. The series will center on Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents and sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without parole.  



Film actor Miles Teller is headed to the small screen for Amazon's upcoming original drama series Too Old to Die Young, a crime-thriller project from Drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn that explores a hidden world of assassins. Teller will play the lead role of Martin, a police officer entangled in the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles.



Investigation Discovery has given a greenlight to The Von Bulow Affair, the network’s first scripted limited series, and has set premiere dates for its first two scripted movies, The Dating Game Killer and Fatal Vision. The network is also planning a new three-part documentary event series based on the serial killer known as Son of Sam.



Mark Strong is set to star in the Fox Networks' espionage thriller Deep State. The eight-episode hourlong original series follows Strong's character who is brought back into the game to avenge the death of his son, only to find himself at the heart of a covert intelligence war and a conspiracy to profit from the spread of chaos throughout the Middle East.



Hidden Figures star Aldis Hodge is heading to The Blacklist to guest-star as a high-end thief who's on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for stealing luxury items, but "with his powerful physique and violent tendencies, he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty."



Chris Pine will guest-star on the police/procedural parody Angie Tribeca as Dr. Thomas Hornbein, a serial killer nicknamed "The Zookeeeper" that Tribeca (Rashida Jones) brought to justice many years ago.  



ABC has pulled freshman drama series Time After Time from its schedule after five low-rated episodes, effectively canceling the new series. Based on the novel by Karl Alexander and the movie, Time After Time followed science fiction writer H.G. Wells as he was transported to modern day Manhattan in pursuit of Jack the Ripper.  



The animated spy-parody Archer, which has been the focus of a series on FX, is switching gears to re-imagine the Sterling Archer character navigating post-war L.A. as a hard-boiled, hard-drinking gumshoe straight out of classic noir a la Raymond Chandler.



CBS announced the season finale dates for its primetime dramas, comedies and unscripted series. Follow this link to find out when your favorites are ending their seasons and what's coming back next season.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



The latest Crime and Science Radio included a discussion of facial recognition and other biometrics with FBI Senior Photographic Technologist, Richard W. Vorder Bruegge.



This week's Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast featured special guest Angela Marsons, author of the bestselling Kim Stone series.



Host Debbi Mack welcomed thriller author Michael Parker on the Crime Cafe podcast.



KQED radio spoke with Jerry Miller, who spent more than 25 years behind bars for kidnapping, rape and robbery — crimes he didn't commit. Miller's story is now part of a new book called Anatomy of Innocence, which fleshes out personal accounts of wrongful convictions, with a twist: in each chapter, a mystery or thriller writer (Lee Child, Sara Paretsky, Laurie R. King, and more) tells the story of a real-life exoneree.



The Center for Fiction in NYC has been inviting bestselling authors to participate in its Crime Fiction Academy for the past several years. You may not have known, however, that you can access all those archived video talks via the Center for Fiction's website.



THEATER



Sherlock Holmes returns to the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park with a comedic twist in Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, with a run from April 22 to May 20 in the Marx Theatre. The play features five actors, with two playing Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and three others playing more than 40 different roles.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Quote of the Week

           Related StoriesQuote of the Week 

FFB: The Long Shadow

Celia Fremlin was born in 1914 in Kingsbury, England, the daughter of a doctor and the sister of nuclear physicist John H. Fremlin. She studied classics at Somerville College, Oxford, but after her mother died in 1931, she was expected to look after her father. Instead of being content to just stay at home, she took jobs in domestic service, which was unusual for a middle-class woman at that time. She said it was to "observe the peculiarities of the class structure of our society," and those experiences later found their way into her writing.



Much later, in her sixties, she began to take long walks at night by herself over the back streets of London, partly for research and partly to prove a point. Her conclusion was that to make the dark streets lose their terror, "We don’t need more policemen on the beat. We need more grandmothers." Those experiences were compiled into a TV program about challenging people’s fears of urban streets at night and many observations also wound up in her books.



Her life may have seemed like domestic bliss on the surface, but it was filled with its share of tragedy that would be at home in any crime novel:  Not only did she lose her mother at age 17, but her youngest daughter committed suicide, as did Fremlin's husband, rather than live a disabled life after a heart attack. She also outlived her second husband and her other two children, and went slowly blind in her later years, spending her last days in a nursing home, which was a bit ironic, considering she became an advocate for euthanasia late in life.



Fremlin's first mystery novel was The Hours Before Dawn from 1958 which won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and established her style of mystery/horror set mostly around the lives of married women in the 1950s. Some feel that The Long Shadow was an equally fine work, and H.R.F. Keating even included it in his 1987 listing of the 100 best crime and mystery books. It's the story of the Imogen Barnicott, third wife of a celebrated, cruel and egocentric professor, who, despite her unhappy marriage, had never plotted her husband's murder—yet after his supposedly accidental death, she receives a mysterious phone call accusing her of that very thing. Add to that strange happenings like new messages left lying around in his handwriting, work on an unfinished manuscript of his that continues to be written, and shadowy figures seen in the house, and Imogen not only begins to doubt her husband is dead at all, she begins to believe she just might take his place.



Celia Fremlin used to say that she wrote the sort of book she wanted to read, in which a mysterious threat hangs over someone and escalates chapter by chapter; or as, H.R.F. Keating recalled her saying, "to put a plot that is exciting or terrifying against a background that is domestic, very ordinary, humdrum." She used this to great effect in The Long Shadow and others, slowly building an atmosphere of suspense and terror out of the excruciatingly mundane, using the contrasts as a literary canvas like Dali and his surrealistic art.



Her character observations managed to be cutting and yet have a touch of dark humor, as well, as this passage from Imogen's experience at a party a well-wishing friend had encouraged her to attend:

Worst of all, perhaps, was the apparently unending procession of people who, incredibly, still hadn't heard, and had to be clobbered with the news in the first moment of meeting. Had to have the smiles slashed from their faces, the cheery words of greeting rammed back down their gullets as if by a gratuitous blow across the mouth. There they would be, waving from across the road, calling "Hi!" from their garden gates, phoning by chance from Los Angeles, from Aberdeen, from Beckenham...One and all to have their friendly overtures slammed into silence, their kindly voices choked with shock. One after another, day after day, over and over again: sometimes Imogen felt like the Black Death stalking the earth, destroying everything in her path.

Fremlin's books are filled with astute perceptions that no doubt bear the imprint of her first-hand research into human behavior, as Imogen's stepson Robin advises her about taking on boarders:

I'd choose Depressions rather than Anxiety States...From the point of view of a landlady, Depressions are good because they lie in bed until midday and don't eat breakfast. Whereas Anxiety States want grapefruit—All Bran—the lot."

In addition to her 20 novels and nonfiction books, the last dating from 1994, she wrote short stories, poetry and articles and was a member of the Crime Writers Association for many years. The Long Shadow, The Hours Before Dawn, and her other fiction certainly deserves a closer look.

            

Mystery Melange

Newcastle Noir 2017 announced the program for the event April 24-27, which includes panels, a Noir @ the Bar, plus a special Fringe Festival kick-off with Denise Mina talking about and reading from her work. (HT to Shots Magazine.)



Meanwhile, Echoland, the first novel in Joe Joyce’s spy series set during the second World War in Dublin, was launched this week as Dublin’s One City One Book 2017.



The Metrowest Mystery Festival is expanding on last year's mystery writers' panel and book signing by adding a mystery feature film and a writers' workshop focusing on the theme "New England Crime," to be held April 7 and 8 in the Ashland, Massachusetts Library. The featured panel includes authors Leslie Wheeler, Ray Daniel, Hallie Ephron, and Leslie Wheeler.



The Guardian's David Barnett took a look at how pulp noir and the hardboiled gumshoe are attracting new voices and audiences and getting a 21st-century reboot, thanks in part to contemporary political corruption, violence, and gender politics.



The Guardian also noted how the late Colin Dexter changed the face of crime fiction after his Inspector Morse novels created a boom time in crime fiction on television and in bookshops.



Adam Lerner and Bill Boyle have launched a fund-raising IndieGoGo campaign to get Raymond Chandler a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the approval of the Chandler Estate and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. This would make Chandler the first writer (who is not also a director, producer, or animator) to get a star. They argue that "If there were no Raymond Chandler there would certainly be no Philip Marlowe. And if there were no Philip Marlowe there would arguably be no Hollywood Noir or Hollywood Walk of Fame."  (HT to Kevin Burton Smith of The Thrilling Detective Web Site)



A couple of weeks ago a Twitter hashtag was born that sparked the re-imagining of numerous classic novels as murder mysteries. Inspired by that trend, Book Rio's Kate Scott picked three classics she thought would be amazing as murder mysteries.



Bookstores, bookstores, we all love bookstores! Even the unusual, as in this group of the "most unconventional bookstores in the world."



If you're a fan of historical mysteries, as in really ancient, check out this list of "10 Mysterious Hidden Texts," some buried under monuments and secreted away in machinery or concealed in later works. But modern technology such as X-rays, CT scans, multispectral imaging, is bringing these long-lost works to light. Or maybe, mysterious buildings are more your type of thing. (HT to Bill Crider.) 



Speaking of things ancient - forensic science is helping to uncover all sorts of criminal enterprises, including one of the coldest cases of all: how was Ötzi, the five thousand year old mummy found frozen in ice murdered and whodunnit?



This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nuclear Gift: Mrs. Keitlyn Konou From Bikini Atoll Talks About Her Jellyfish Babies," by Kimo Armitage.



In the Q&A roundup, the Huffington Post spoke with Greg Iles about his Natchez Burning Trilogy featuring Penn Cage and his new novel Mississippi Blood, the last volume in the trilogy; Nancy Pickard spoke with with Parade magazine about her Jenny Cain and Marie Lightfoot series; Thomas Pluck chatted with S.W. Lauden about his Jay Desmarteaux crime thriller series; Kevin Berg took Paul D. Brazill's Short, Sharp Interview Challenge; and Writers Who Kill snagged Edith Maxwell about her various traditional mystery series.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings! To celebrate, here's a roundup of crime drama news:

 

MOVIES



Emily Hampshire has landed the lead role in Never Saw It Coming, a suspense thriller to be directed by Gail Harvey that's based on Linwood Barclay’s 2013 novel. Hampshire will star as Keisha Ceylon, an opportunistic psychic, who finds herself too much in the middle of a murder case in a small town and must find a way out unscathed.



Fox Searchlight is closing a deal for distribution rights in the U.S., Canada and UK to Old Man And The Gun, the David Lowery-directed drama that stars Robert Redford and Casey Affleck. Based on a true story that originated in a 2003 New Yorker magazine feature written by David Grann, the story revolves around Forrest Tucker (Redford) who's been on the wrong side of the law since he was a teen and became a career bank robber who broke out of prison 18 times, including a daring escape from San Quentin at age 70. Wrapped up in the chase are a detective (Affleck) who becomes captivated with Forrest’s commitment to his craft, and a woman (Sissy Spacek) who loves him in spite of his chosen profession.



Robert Rodriguez has been hired to direct Escape From New York, the 20th Century Fox remake of John Carpenter’s iconic 1981 film, with hopes of launching a Planet Of The Apes-like franchise. The original version was set in a futuristic Gotham circa 1997 with Kurt Russell playing Snake Plissken, an eyepatch-sporting tough guy who is conscripted to rescue the President of the United States after Air Force One — en route to a summit that could head off World War III — goes missing after it crashes in New York, which has been relegated to a maximum security prison. Plissken, a former special forces operative convicted of trying to rob the Federal Reserve, is given 22 hours to liberate the president and a tape he carries which holds the key to peace, but if he fails, he’s wired to explode.



Fifty Shades Darker's Dakota Johnson is in talks to star in Sony Pictures’ adaptation of Suketu Mehta’s GQ article "Queens of the Stoned Age," which followed the Green Angels, a high-end weed delivery service that hired models to work as drug dealers. The group operated for nearly a decade without being busted, all while growing into a multi-million dollar operation.



Laura Dern has been tapped to play Liam Neeson character’s wife in the revenge thriller Hard Powder, joining Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Tom Bateman in the English remake of the 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance. The American adaptation follows snowplow driver Nels, whose son is murdered by the powerful local drug kingpin, and then seeks to dismantle the cartel and navigate a turf war between a local gangster and a Native American mafia boss.



Chris Evans will star in Red Sea Diving Resort, a true-life Mossad spy drama to be written and directed by Gideon Raff, which follows the Israeli spy agency’s effort to rescue and bring home Ethiopian Jews that were trapped in Sudan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Evans will play Ari Kidron, an agent who puts together a team that took over a deserted resort in Sudan as they began their multiyear mission. Variety also reported that Girl on the Train’ Actress Haley Bennett is in talks to join the cast.



Julianne Nicholson, Emma Roberts, and Zachary Quinto have been set to star in Who We Are Now from writer-director Matthew Newton. The drama centers on convicted felon Beth (Nicholson), and her unlikely alliance with a young public defense lawyer Jess (Roberts), who does everything she can to get Beth’s young son back from her sister after Beth went into prison 10 years earlier for manslaughter. Beth finally lowers her guard enough to meet a former U.S. soldier (Quinto) unfazed by her checkered past.



Noir City: Hollywood returns to the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre this week with a program that replicates the movie-going experience of the classic noir era – ten double bills, each featuring a major studio "A" paired with a shorter "B" movie. The full schedule and program notes can be found on the American Cinematheque's website. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)



Fox released the first official trailer for My Cousin Rachel, based on the dark psychological romance-thriller by Daphne du Maurier. Sam Claflin stars as a young Englishman seeking revenge against his cousin Rachel, believing that she is the one behind the murder of his guardian. But when the beautiful and alluring Rachel (Rachel Weisz) comes and visits his large estate, he starts to have a change of heart, leading to tragic consequences.



TELEVISION



CBS has renewed five freshman and eleven returning series, Including MacGyver, Hawaii Five-0, Bull, Blue Bloods, Scorpion, and the three NCIS franchises. Shows that are still on the bubble include Elementary, Criminal Minds, and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.



Last week, it was reported that Jim Caviezel would lead CBS' Navy SEAL pilot but this week, the network has replaced him with Bones star David Boreanaz after Caviezel left over "creative differences." For the still untitled project, David Boreanaz will play a character named Jason, a dedicated and talented commander of a team of Navy SEALs as they train, plan and execute their dangerous, high-stakes missions.



Chris Messina (Live by Night) will play the male lead, Kansas City Detective Richard Willis, opposite Amy Adams in HBO's eight-episode drama series Sharp Objects, which is based on the book by Gone Girl's Gillian Flynn. Taylor John Smith was also added to the cast playing John Keene, who has barely slept since the murder of his 13-year-old sister, Natalie, but his sensitive and temperamental nature raises eyebrows and causes him to become a prime suspect in the murder investigation.



John Leguizamo has been cast opposite Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitsch in Waco, a six-part event series produced by Weinstein TV, set to air on Paramount Network in 2018. The project tells the story of the 51-day Texas standoff in 1993 between the FBI, ATF and David Koresh’s spiritual sect (The Branch Davidians) which resulted in a deadly fire. Leguizamo will play ATF agent Robert Rodriguez who was sent into Koresh’s Mount Carmel to gather evidence and build a federal case against the Branch Davidians but forged a bond with the people inside.



Brian Stokes Mitchell is set for a series-regular role opposite Noah Wyle in Perfect Citizen, CBS’ legal drama pilot from The Good Wife executive producer Craig Turk. Perfect Citizen centers on Deck (Wyle), the former general counsel for the NSA who, after his involvement as a whistleblower in an international scandal, embarks on a new career at a storied law firm in Boston. Once there, he must face the reality that half the country thinks he’s our greatest patriot and the other half thinks he’s a traitor. Mitchell will play Deck’s best friend since law school and a powerful ally.



Penelope Cruz has landed a lead role in the third season of Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story, which centers on the murder of famous fashion designer Gianni Versace. Penelope Cruz will play Versace's sister Donatella and joins stars Edgar Ramirez and Darren Criss, who will play Versace and his murderer, Andrew Cunanan.



Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse) will join CBS’ Bull beginning Tuesday, May 9. Dushku will play J.P. Nunnelly, the savvy head of the best criminal defense firm in New York, who is hired by Dr. Jason Bull (Michael Weatherly) when a member of his Trial Analysis Corporation team faces prison time. She will appear in three episodes of Season 1 with an option to become a series regular in Season 2.



Rebecca Henderson (Mistress America) joins Discovery Channel’s upcoming anthology FBI crime drama series Manhunt: Unabomber, which tells the story about the hunt for Ted Kaczynski, who terrified the nation with a letter bombing campaign in the 1980s and early 1990s. Henderson will play Judy Clarke, Ted’s defense attorney and the object of Ted’s affection, a seasoned and savvy defense attorney who has made a career of defending high-profile death-penalty cases.  



Olivia Sandoval (Medium) has booked a key recurring role on the upcoming third season of FX’s Fargo that features Ewan McGregor (in dual roles), Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and David Thewlis. The network recently released a trailer that has Ewan McGregor making his impressive debut as curly haired and successful Emmit Stussy and bald-headed and pot-bellied Ray Stussy.



Dick Wolf has another new show coming, but this one’s not an NBC procedural. The docuseries Inside the FBI: New York will premiere April 27 on USA Network, which also released the first promo for the series that takes an unprecedented look at the Bureau’s New York field office.



Fox is going to hold the final four episodes from the current second season of the supernatural procedural Lucifer for next season, which will air on top of the original Season 3 order of 22 newly produced episodes. Lucifer executive producer Joe Henderson said the four episodes can “stand on their own, but also pick up plots we’ve introduced and bring in new stuff we’ll play with season 3."



The premiere date of April 23 was set for El Chapo, the Univision series starring Marco de la O as drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán.



The first trailer was released for the docudrama Casting JonBenet, which is an unusual hybrid of a true crime drama and a "peek at the actors who auditioned for roles in a dramatic retelling of the world’s most sensational child-murder case."



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Best-selling author CJ Box stopped by KGWN-TV to talk about his latest book, Vicious Circle, once again featuring Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett.



Jimmy Kimmel Live welcomed Noah Hawley, author of Before the Fall.



Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed crime fiction author James L'Etoile to the studio talking about his writing and stories influenced by men doing life behind bars.



Hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste of Two Crime Writers and a Microphone profiled the London Book Fair and were joined by Russel D McLean, author of the new noir tale Ed's Dead, to talk about famous relatives, road signs, crime fiction, and B movies.



Suspense Radio's Inside Edition featured a Q&A with crime fiction authors Brad Parks (Say Nothing), Anthony Franze (The Outsider), and Dale Wiley (Southern Gothic).



The most recent Writer Types (Episode 3) included interviews with Johnny Shaw and Sue Ann Jaffarian and a special audio documentary from the latest Noir at the Bar in L.A. with Glen Erik Hamilton, John Lansing, Nolan Knight, Travis Richardson, and Sarah M. Chen.



John Lescroart (the Dismas Hardy series of legal thrillers) and Steph Broadribb (author of the debut novel, Deep Down Dead) stopped by Next Steps LIVE.



Award-winning author Elizabeth Heiter (the profiler series) joined Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Quote of the Week

           Related StoriesQuote of the Week 

FFB: Death of a Busybody

In her 67 years, California author Elizabeth Linington wrote some 82 crime fiction novels published between 1955 and 1990 under her own name as well as the pen names Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill, and Dell Shannon. She started out writing radio and stage dramas in the 1940s, switched to historical novels and finally to mysteries in 1960, winning three Edgar Award nominations almost back to back, in 1960, 1962, and 1963.



Perhaps it was due to her own family's 19th-century Irish immigrant background that many of her protagonists had strong ethnic identities, including an Italian rose-fancier, Glendale police Detective Vic Varallo; New England Sergeant Andrew Clock of the LADP and his sidekick, the Jewish lawyer and amateur detective Jesse Falkenstein, who quotes the Talmud; and Sergeant Ivor Maddox, a Welsh bachelor assigned to Hollywood's Wilcox Avenue station.



Her most successful creation was written under her Dell Shannon name—the dapper Mexican-American LAPD Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, who first appeared in Case Pending, as well as one of her other Edgar-nominated works, Knave of Hearts. Sometimes called the "Queen of the Procedurals," Lininger/Shannon among the first women to write in the police procedural genre, as well as one of the first to feature a Latino police officer.



Some critics have pointed out that Linington/Shannon's earliest works were her best, with more attention to detail and craft, but as she started cranking out as many as four books a year, the quality began to suffer, throwing in more cliches and pot-boiler touches. George N. Dove, author of such nonfiction books as The Reader and the Detective Story, noted that Linington/Shannon eventually settled down into a formula characterized by a remarkable number of storylines representing the number of cases on which her police officers like Mendoaza are employed (as many as 24 in Spring of Violence), with one main case surrounded by the other unrelated ones in various stages of investigation.



Mendoza is a single detective, just shy of middle age, when he makes his first appearance in Case Pending, but his character is developed throughout the thirty-eight books published over twenty-seven years. He has an inexplicable attraction to women, since he's not unusually handsome, and often finds their attention to be a personal and professional nuisance. He grew up poor and became a gambler to survive before he ultimately joined the police and was surprised by inherited wealth from his miser grandfather. He has a fondness for racy cars, high-stakes poker, and his Abyssinian cat, Bast, eventually settling down to marry Alison Weir in the early novels (Shannon wasn't shy about killing off characters, so suffice it to say, the cast of characters surrounding him tends to change).



In Death of a Busybody (first published in 1963, but reissued as a Mystery Guild selection by Doubleday in 1988), Margaret Chadwick is the snoop in question, a serious flaw for someone who had money and a pedigree. When she turns up dead, no one seems to care, something Mendoza begins to understand more clearly as he realizes the extent of the damage this one women did—pitting husbands against wives, children against parents, and sewing seeds of jealousy, suspicion and hatred like other people sew tulips and daffodils. But when a second body turns up, killed on the same night in the same way, things get a little murkier. Unlike her later "formulaic" novels, Busybody focuses on one case only, and even has Mendoza pull the main players together at the end for the reveal, deciding he "wants to handle it the way they do in the detective novels."



Shannon may have been called the "Queen of the Procedurals" and compared to masters such as Ed McBain and John Creasey, but by her own admission, she based her knowledge of police routine and law not on direct experience but on the basic texts used by police departments themselves and took plots from detective magazines. By today's standards, that makes for a more genteel investigation, but she manages some interesting character development and snappy dialogue. It's interesting to see her multi-layered handling of racial, gender, and sexual prejudices and roles, themes that are just as prevalent and volatile today as they were back when she was writing this, almost decades ago in 1962-63.

            

Mystery Melange

The Lefty Awards from this year's Left Coast Crime conference were announced and include the Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel: Ellen Byron, Body on the Bayou; the Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bruce Alexander Memorial) for books covering events before 1960: Catriona McPherson, The Reek of Red Herrings; the Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel: Alexia Gordon, Murder in G Major; and the Lefty for Best Mystery Novel: Louise Penny, A Great Reckoning.



The inaugural Jhalak prize, set up to address UK publishing’s long lack of diversity, has been awarded to Jacob Ross’s crime novel The Bone Readers, topping a varied shortlist to take the £1,000 prize.



Foreword Reviews announced the finalists for their annual INDIES Book of the Year Awards, including those in the Mystery and Thriller categories.



The Independent Book Publishers Association announced finalists for that organization's Benjamin Franklin Awards for literary excellence, including Mystery & Suspense titles.



Ian Rankin announced details of the program for RebusFest, a weekend of literature, music, art and film in Rebus’s hometown of Edinburgh, which takes place from June 30 to July 2, 2017. The three-day festival, curated by Rankin, marks the thirtieth anniversary of John Rebus, one of crime fiction’s greatest and best-loved creations.



Mystery Fest Key West has announced a call for submissions for this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition. The winner will claim a book-publishing contract with Absolutely Amazing eBooks, free Mystery Fest Key West 2017 registration, airfare, hotel accommodations for two nights, meals, and a Whodunit Award trophy to be presented at the 4th Annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 16-18 in Key West, Florida. For more information and deadlines, follow this link.



There is a call for papers for the panel Criminal Heritage: Crime, Fiction, and History to be held September 5 at Leeds Beckett University. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore, analyse, and debate the relationship between crime, narrative, and history. They invite proposals (of 200 words or less) for 20-minute papers relating to the conference theme. (HT to Shots Magazine)



One bit of sad news to report: Colin Dexter, author of the popular Inspector Morse novels that were later made into a TV series featuring John Thaw as the detective, has died at the age of 86. Several authors paid tribute with remembrances and affection for their late colleague.



Some happy publication news: Down & Out Books, publisher of literary and award-winning crime fiction, is teaming up with author and critic Rick Ollerman to edit and produce an all new quarterly magazine showcasing the best of the short crime fiction market. Debuting in June 2017, Down & Out: The Magazine promises it "will include something for all fans of the genre."



And some not-so-happy publication news: The editors of the small press Blasted Heath, in business since 2011, announced they were shutting down. The press published authors such as Anonymous-9, Ray Banks, Nigel Bird, Gerard Brennan, Douglas Lindsay, and Anthony Neil Smith.



Fans of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys might not recognize their latest iteration as a cross-over graphic novel, The Big Lie. When the teenage brothers Frank and Joe Hardy are accused of the murder of their father - a detective in the small resort town of Bayport - they must team up with the femme fatale Nancy Drew to prove their innocence.



Researchers planned to exhume a grave in Leytonstone, East London, hoping to find remains of the final Jack the Ripper victim, Mary Jane Kelly, but they concluded it would be a "Herculean effort" and would cost too much. Lead researcher Dr. Turi King was part of the team that confirmed a skeleton found beneath Leicester car park in 2012 belonged to Richard III.



Book Riot posted a list of "5 Japanese Crime Writers that Should Be On Your Radar."



Every time writers believe the tired and antiquated "literary vs. genre" fiction trope has been laid to rest, it rears its ugly head once more. This time, in was in the form of William O’Rourke, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, who dissed crime fiction in recent remarks and prompted thirteen authors to take him to task for dismissing them and their readers.



Jacob Stone (the pen name chosen by award-winning author Dave Zeltserman for his new Morris Brick series of serial-killer thrillers) took the Page 69 Test to Deranged, the first Morris Black thriller.



This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Cursed and Captured Highwayman" by Kelli Simpson.



In the Q&A roundup, British/Canadian writer Peter Robinson stopped by Australia's Daily Review to promote the latest novel in his DCI Banks crime series, When the Music’s Over; and Paul D. Brazill had a flurry of "Short, Sharp Interview" Q&As with Matt Bay (Bay of Martyrs); Paul Heatley (Fat Boys), and Gerald M. O'Connor (The Origins of Benjamin Hackett).

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with Sherri Smith

Sherri Smith wrote two historical fiction novels for Simon & Schuster UK before deciding to try her hand at crime fiction. Her debut thriller is Follow Me Down, which she says is the type of book she also enjoys reading, namely, one filled with small town secrets, a troubled main character, guilt, addiction, and the complexities of sibling relationships. Inspired by the long, cold winters of Winnepeg, Canada that nurture her dark side, the book is set in the chilly fictional town of Wayoata, North Dakota.





Follow me Down centers on Mia Haas, who has built a life for herself far from the small town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she’s forced to return home. Once hailed as the golden boy of their small town, Lucas Haas disappeared the same day the body of one of his high school students is pulled from the river. Trying to wrap her head around the rumors of Lucas’s affair with the teen, and unable to reconcile the media’ portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories, Mia is desperate to find another suspect. All the while, she wonders, "if he’s innocent, why did he run?" As Mia reevaluates their difficult, shared history and launches her own investigation into the grisly murder, she uncovers secrets that could exonerate Lucas—or seal his fate. In a small town where everyone’s history is intertwined, Mia will be forced to confront her own demons, placing her right in the killer’s crosshairs.



Sherri stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R on how she went about researching and writing the book:

 

When I started writing Follow Me Down, the last thing I wanted to do was research. I was completely research-fatigued (if that’s a thing?) I had previously written two historical fiction novels for Simon and Schuster UK and both required a grueling amount of investigation into the customs, daily life and politics of the two very different periods they were set in. My methods were the same for each. I read from the era, about the era, I’d make contact with PhD professors who specialized in some aspect of said era. This part was fairly enjoyable because I do love history, specifically those everyday life details, but when I got to the writing part I’d seize up. I became nearly paralyzed at the thought of getting something wrong and undoing the research I’d done. Or ruining the believability of the time period because I’d inadvertently included something that shouldn’t be there (and it happened anyway.) Very quickly, writing in this genre became too stifling and clinical for me.  I was too panicky about all the wrong things.

So for Follow Me Down, I was practically going out of my way to do as little research as possible. But of course I wasn’t off the hook completely. My main character, Mia Haas has a pill addiction and because I am not personally a pill-popper, I had to do some reading.

Straight off, there’s the Internet of course. I looked up everything Mia takes in the novel there first, poring over the fine print (AKA dire warning labels) and this gave me an initial feel for whatever medication Mia tosses back. The sort of side effects she might get, or what meds might not mix well.

That of course wasn’t enough. I wanted to get a better sense of what she was actually experiencing when those pills fizzed away in her stomach and let loose in her blood stream. So from there I turned to forums where people freely discussed their drug use. How it made them feel, what they recommended to one another and what one might want more of and why. I lurked around those forums a lot. Probably way too much.

The Internet is a dangerous place to do your research though, it drags you in and next thing you know, you’ve lost countless hours chasing after some bit of information that didn’t matter anyway. I remember spending way too much time one afternoon reading all about Viagra’s origin story, which didn’t show up in my book at all.

Because my main character is also a pharmacist, I followed a few grumbling blogs by pharmacists. These gave me amazing insight into what these particular people felt like working in a chain pharmacy. What their hours were like, what made them mad, how overworked they felt. How they got along with co-workers in a relatively closed space. It definitely helped me get inside Mia’s head.

I’d also call my local Safeway pharmacy a lot. A LOT. I struck up a great friendship with a certain lovely pharmacist (let’s just call her Phyllis the pharmacist because it sounds suitably fake) who patiently answered all my very sketchy questions. Of course not before establishing I didn’t need an ambulance or poison control. I really can’t extoll the virtues of pharmacists enough. They really pick up serious slack in the health care system.  

And while I can’t say Mia is what you’d call a shining example of the pharmaceutical profession, she definitely epitomizes the smarts it takes to be in that line of work. She’s got meds and she knows how to use them (and yes, I am typing this with the tune of She’s Got Legs going off in my head.) This is where my research actually became fun. It was like being in a druggie’s candy-shop, getting to choose whatever I wanted but without any of the risk. I got to pump my character full of pills that would enhance her best (and sometimes worst) qualities. She gets to stay up longer, numb herself to mounting dread and keep herself sharp on stimulates so she can eventually get to the truth. It was a bit like writing a super-hero, but one who gets hangovers.

Unlike my earlier dealings with research, I now know when to stop and how to better dodge getting too embroiled in it. But still, going forward I will continue to avoid it as much as possible.

 

Follow Me Down was released today and is available from all major booksellers. You can read more about the book and follow Sheri via her website, Twitter, or Facebook.

           Related StoriesClimate of Fear & a Giveaway!Author R&R with Michael MayoEd, We Hardly Knew Ye