B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 19

Petrona Award Winner Announced

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The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction, but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries. This year's winner of best translated Scandinavian crime novel is Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen translated from the Faroese by Marita Thomsen and published by Norvik Press. This is only Isaksen’s second novel to be translated into English following Walpurgis Tide. 

Other titles on the 2024 shortlist included:

Anne Mette Hancock - The Collector tr. Tara F Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)




Jørn Lier Horst - Snow Fall tr. Anne Bruce (Norway, Michael Joseph)




Arnaldur Indriðason - The Girl by the Bridge tr. Philip Roughton (Iceland, Harvill Secker)




Åsa Larsson - The Sins of our Fathers tr. Frank Perry (Sweden, MacLehose Press)




Yrsa Sigurðardottir - The Prey tr. Victoria Cribb (Iceland, Hodder & Stoughton)

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Mystery Melange

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On Nov 22, NYU's School of Law will be hosting the free event "Poe in New York City," followed by a reception. The school hosts the Poe Room, which features artifacts from Edgar Allan Poe's time and an illustrated timeline of his life. These free and public events (there are two each year) seek to highlight Poe’s influence, and have included performances, scholarly lectures, readings, and creative interpretations of his works. (HT to The Bunburyist)

The Goodreads Choice Awards' opening round has kicked off, including 20 titles in the Mystery & Thriller Category. Readers can vote on their favorite title here, with the top vote-getters making it to the Final Round voting, November 26 - December 1. Winners will be revealed on December 5th.

Crime Fiction Lover posted the shortlists for the Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024 in the categories of Best Crime Novel, Best Debut, Best Crime Novel in Translation, Best Indie, Best Crime Show, and Best Crime Author. Readers can vote for their favorites until noon UK time on Wednesday, December 4, 2024.

Harrogate International Festivals announced that acclaimed thriller writer Mick Herron will be Programming Chair for the 2025 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the world’s largest celebration of crime fiction. Mick Herron is the bestselling author of the Slough House spy thrillers that are the basis of the award-winning TV series, Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman. The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival returns to Harrogate from July 17-20, 2025, offering fans from around the world a unique opportunity to hear from the genre’s biggest stars, discover thrilling new talent, and enjoy a packed program of panels, talks, and creative workshops. The Festival Special Guests will be announced in February 2025, with the full program revealed in Spring of 2025.





If you're really planning your conference schedule way in advance, Left Coast Crime announced the Special Guests for 2026 for the conference to be held in San Francisco, California, February 26-March 1. The Guest of Honors are Robin Burcell and Kwei Quartey; Fan Guest of Honor is Randal Brandt; and Toastmaster is Leslie Karst. Registration is also now open.

The Telegraph profiled Chester Himes, often referred to as "the black Raymond Chandler," and his celebrated cycle of novels that have a wit and a philosophy of their own. Himes is most famous for his hard-boiled "Harlem Cycle" of novels featuring the detectives "Coffin Ed" Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones. Although his work has influenced Ishmael Reed, Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, and Colson Whitehead, as the article notes, he has never received the recognition he deserves.

Here's an interesting idea: a professor at the University of Tennessee is using crime novels to teach critical thinking.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with G.M. Malliet, author of three traditional mystery series and a standalone novel set in England, including her new DCI St. Just mystery, Death and the Old Master; Indie Crime Scene interviewed Lori B. Duff, author of Devil’s Defense (Fischer at Law Series, Book 1); Suspense Magazine spoke with Olivia Blacke about her latest book, A New Lease on Death, the first in a new mystery series; and Lisa Hasleton welcomed Lee Lindauer to chat about his new modern gothic mystery thriller, The Salvation of Henry Maxwell.

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Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

The upcoming feature film, Flavia, based on the books by Alan Bradley, has started principal photography and released a first-look image. The project features Sherlock star Martin Freeman opposite Molly Belle Wright (Deep Water) as the precocious 11-year-old detective, Flavia, Toby Jones (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), Karan Gill (The Decameron), Annette Badland (Ted Lasso), and Jonathan Pryce (Slow Horses) also star. The storyline is set in motion when Flavia finds a dead body at her decaying British manor house and her father is accused of the murder. Flavia dives into her own wild and fearless investigation, unearthing long held family secrets and pitting herself against the true killer.

Alex Pettyfer (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) and Karl Markovics (The Counterfeiters) have joined Clive Owen in the historical thriller, Kristallnacht, which Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) is directing. Set on the brink of World War II in Berlin, the true story unfolds in a city turned into a powder keg after the assassination of a German attaché in Paris, which is wrongfully branded a "Jewish terrorist attack" by Nazi propaganda. Pettyfer plays Kai Lehmann, a young and impressionable police officer, who, alongside his superior Lieutenant Krützfeld, played by Owen, navigates the turbulent streets of Berlin as citizens turn violently against the perceived "enemy within" descending on Jewish neighborhoods. Markovics portrays Isaac Roth, a Jewish man caught up in the day’s terror as he is wrongfully accused of murder. As chaos engulfs Berlin over a harrowing twenty-four hours, Krützfeld and Lehmann are confronted with a profound moral dilemma: uphold the system or take a stand for what is right.

Gabriel LaBelle (Saturday Night) and Isabela Merced (Alien: Romulus) have signed on to star opposite the previously announced Chloë Grace Moretz in Dutch & Razzlekhan, the forthcoming true crime love story directed by BAFTA nominee, Jon S. Baird (Tetris). The pair take over roles originally announced as being played by Lewis Pullman and Ariana DeBose, who have departed the project due to scheduling conflicts. Based on the 2022 Business Insider article, "The $4.5 Billion Question" by Rob Price and Becky Peterson, Dutch & Razzlekhan details the most expensive heist in history, with Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan (Moretz) and Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein (LaBelle) — lovers, hipsters, and aspiring rapper-entrepreneurs — at its center. Merced plays Carla Vargas, the master hacker who was blackmailed by the FBI to help track down the duo. After stealing over $4 billion worth of cryptocurrency, the millennial couple was caught by the Department of Justice and charged with conspiracy to launder the stolen bitcoin in February 2022. The pair were convicted the following year and are set to be sentenced this month.

Gravitas Ventures has acquired writer-director Eric Nazarian’s Los Angeles-set crime thriller, Die Like A Man, for U.S., Canada, and international rights. The coming-of-age journey follows Freddy, a 17-year-old Westsider who is given a gun and asked to prove himself to a veteran gangster he idolizes. Miguel Angel Garcia (The Long Game) stars as the conflicted teen, Cory Hardrict (Tyler Perry’s Divorce in Black) as ruthless gang father figure Solo, and Mariel Molino (NCIS Origins) as love interest Luna. Nazarian called Die Like A Man "an honest tale about the doomed codes of machismo culture that has spiraled into worsening gun violence and inner city warfare. Freddy’s journey explores the destructive power of internalized rage and the road towards atonement."

TELEVISION/STREAMING

CBS has ordered a full season of NCIS: Origins. The freshman drama added a new dimension to the NCIS franchise with an origin story of Leroy Jethro Gibbs and a cinematic ’90s experience that features distinct characters, stories, and crime solving. It stars Austin Stowell as the young Leroy Jethro Gibbs in 1991, years prior to the events of NCIS, and is narrated by Mark Harmon, who played the older character in the original series.

UKTV released a selection of first look images for the upcoming series, Bookish, which will air on specialist crime drama channel, Alibi. The brand-new series has been created by Emmy Award-winning writer Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), with Gatiss starring as the erudite and unconventional Gabriel Book who, from his antiquarian bookshop, helps the police to solve a variety of mysterious crimes. With three main cases in the series, each story line spans two-episode installments. Further cast members include Polly Walker (Bridgerton) as Book’s colorful wife, Trottie, alongside Connor Finch (Everything I Know About Love) as Jack, Elliot Levey (Quiz) as Inspector Bliss, Blake Harrison (World on Fire) as Sergeant Morris, and Buket Kömür (Our House) as Nora.

The BBC announced that Ludwig has been renewed for a second series. The show follows John "Ludwig" Taylor, whose identical twin brother James mysteriously vanishes. John takes on his brother’s identity to uncover the truth behind his disappearance. But there’s a twist: John has lived a quiet, uneventful life, designing puzzles and avoiding the outside world, while his brother is a high-flying DCI leading a major crimes team in Cambridge. Filling in for James leads to hilariously high stakes and serious crime-solving. For the second series, David Mitchell returns as Ludwig, alongside Anna Maxwell Martin as Lucy Betts-Taylor, the wife of John’s missing brother James.





PODCASTS/RADIO

On Crime Time FM, Dominic Nolan chatted with host Paul Burke about character, tone, London, villainy, and his fourth novel, White City.

The Spybrary Spy Podcast featured the untold story of Robert Bruce Lockhart, a Scottish diplomat, spy, and writer, who led a life filled with adventure and intrigue, as told by guest Professor James Crossland, author of the first ever biography on Lockhart, Rogue Agent.

Red Hot Chili Writers interviewed thriller writer, Erin E. Adams, about her debut, Jackal, and discussed the "black horror" genre in film and books.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Noelle West Ihli, an author known for her gripping psychological thrillers, whose latest work, None Left to Tell, is an historical thriller based on the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Two Birds, One Stone" by Roger Johns, as read by actor Ariel Linn.

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Mystery Melange

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Sara Paretsky has been named the 2025 Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Award Winner and Guest of Honor. The award is bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come. The award will be presented at the Killer Nashville Awards Dinner.

Here's another bit of good news, via Lesa Holstine: When Bill Crider died in 2018, he left behind over sixty books published by New York publishers including his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, but beginning with book eleven, they’re now out of print. Bill’s daughter, Angela Crider Neary, and her husband, Tom Neary, have decided to do something about that by republishing the Sheriff Rhodes series. They’re refreshing all twenty-five of those books and also making them available as audiobooks through Audible with a new narrator, Chris Abel. The new books, with Sheriff Dan Rhodes appearing on the covers as Bill Crider described him, will be issued beginning in January with one book issued every four to six weeks.

Scottish company Glencairn Crystal, which produces the whisky glass the Glencairn Glass and has sponsored the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing literary awards since 2020, has launched a new anthology, The Last Dram. The anthology features stories from 16 different authors (including yours truly), all of whom have previously entered the Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story competition over the past three years. All of the profits from the book sales in the run-up to Christmas will go to the UK cancer charity, Maggie’s.

The second Loch Long Crime Writing Residency at Cove Park has been awarded to Callum McSorley. Based in Glasgow, McSorley’s debut novel Squeaky Clean (2023) – inspired by his years working at a car wash in Glasgow’s East End – was praised by the likes of Chris Brookmyre, Peter James, and Kevin Bridges, and featured in 2023 "best of the year" lists in The Guardian, The Scotsman and The Times. He became the youngest ever author to win the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. His second novel, Paperboy, will be published in 2025. Launched in March 2024, the Loch Long Crime Writing Residency is a funded residency for Scotland-based writers developing new work in crime fiction. The first award went to Caro Carver.

The deadline for the 2025 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition is fast approaching. The award is open to writers of any nationality, aged 18 or older, who have never been the author of any published mystery novel (including self-published), with a top prize of a $10,000 advance against royalties. Nominees will be selected by judges chosen by the editorial staff of Minotaur Books, and the winner will be chosen by Minotaur Books editors on the basis of the originality, creativity and writing skill of the submission. To be considered for the 2025 competition, all submissions must be received by 11:59pm EST on November 30, 2024.

Editor Janet Rudolph posted that the deadline for articles, reviews, and author essays for the "London" issue of Mystery Readers Journal has been extended until November 15, 2024. The topics can include crime fiction book both in and out of print that are set in London or have a strong London connection. Author essays and articles should be between 500-1,000 words, with reviews 50-250 words.

Another deadline has been extended, from November 1 to December 15. The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers is designed to foster quality literature in the Malice Domestic tradition and assist the next generation of traditional mystery writers on the road to publication. The grant includes a $2,500 cash award and a comprehensive registration to the Malice Domestic conference, including two nights' lodging at the convention hotel. Applicants need to submit the first three chapters of a work in progress, short synopsis, bio, and statement. For more information, click on over here.

In the Q&A roundup, Wisconsin Public Radio chatted with Gabino Iglesias about his novel, House of Bone and Rain, plus hurt, horror, and hurricanes; and Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis interviewed Heather Weidner about her fourth Glamping Mystery, Deadlines and Valentines.

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Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

William H. Macy (Fargo) has signed to star in the crime comedy, Too Many Crooks, based on a Donald Westlake's short story which won an Edgar Award in 1990. Macy’s character, John Dornhoefer, is a recently released career criminal on parole, set on pulling off another bank robbery. With his trusted, but disheveled sidekick, Andy Karp, the plans start to take shape. The meticulously plotted operation takes an unexpected turn when they discover the bank is already being robbed. The quick-minded Dornhoefer seizes an opportunity to protect the hostages, outsmart the gunmen, and sweet talk FBI Agent Carol Reed who is the lead hostage negotiator. But bad habits die hard and while he may save the day, it’s still the money that could make it all worthwhile.

Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (The Guard) is taking on Fear Is The Rider, an adaptation of the novel, The Hunted, by Gabriel Bergmoser. The project has signed Ben Mendelsohn (Star Wars: Rogue One), Abbey Lee (Horizons: An American Saga), Toby Wallace (The Bikeriders), and Eliza Scanlen (Babyteeth) in lead roles. In a nod to the gore-drenched "Ozploitation" slashers of the 1970s, the film follows a lone woman, searching for her missing mother, who is pursued into the Australian Outback by a terrifying family of serial killers, with only an ex-con and a young girl willing to help her. This is the first installment in a trilogy of thrillers from the production team, to be followed by Fear is the Rider: Australia Day, based on a novel by Kenneth Cook.

Vertical has acquired North American rights to the neo-noir, The Long Game, based on the acclaimed short story by New York Times bestselling author Janet Fitch. Marking the directorial debut of Jace Anderson, who co-wrote the script, The Long Game sees Oscar nominee Kathleen Turner return to the genre in which she burst upon the scene (with Body Heat), alongside Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children), and newcomer Sekai Abenì. Abenì plays ambitious young actress Holly Sloan, who agrees to help her boyfriend Richard Metzger (Haley) scam Hollywood legend Mariah McKay (Turner), but the two women strike up an unlikely friendship instead. It's unclear where Holly’s loyalties lie, or who’s scamming whom, and the game soon turns deadly. Ever Carradine (The Handmaid's Tale) and Chris Mulkey (Boardwalk Empire) round out the cast.

Theo James (The Gentleman) is set to star in The Hole, directed by Kim Jee-woon (I Saw The Devil) and written by Christopher Chen, based on the 2017 Shirley Jackson award-winning novel of the same name by Hye-young Pyun. The Hole follows Owen (James), a successful professor living abroad in South Korea, who is bedridden after a devastating car accident that killed his wife, Sandy. He is left under the care of Yuna, his Korean mother-in-law, but when she starts to unravel the devastating truth behind Owen and Sandy’s marriage, and Owen himself, his road to recovery is threatened.

Jessica Chastain, Brendan Fraser, and Bryan Cranston have joined Al Pacino in the cast of the mystery thriller, Assassination. The film will be directed by Barry Levinson from a script by David Mamet, Levinson, and Sam Bromell. The project offers up a new take on the JFK conspiracy, centering around Dorothy Kilgallen (Chastain), one of the most famous voices in media at the time. When she suspects that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, she uses her fame and influence to find President John F. Kennedy’s real killer. Part murder mystery, part film noir, Kilgallen’s journey will put her up against the CIA, mafia bosses, and the FBI, all who would love nothing more than to make her and this story disappear. "With back-channel sources to the Warren Commission, [Kilgallen] started putting pieces together that no one else did," Levinson said. "She died under very suspicious circumstances, but it was never investigated."

Golden Globe winner Idris Elba (Luther) is set to star in the action-thriller, Hammer Down. Elba plays Mac, the best at what he does, driving a big rig truck across the country with a "no questions asked" policy about the goods he transports. When he takes his tenacious teenage daughter along for a job, they are tracked and attacked by a relentless group of criminals that will stop at nothing to secure the consignment he has been entrusted to deliver. Pursued by merciless killers and with the police hot on their trail, Mac and his daughter must work together to prevent the cargo falling into dangerous hands so they can survive to live another day.

Oscar nominee Dev Patel (The Green Knight) will star in The Journeyman, a new crime thriller from director Tarsem Singh (The Fall) and Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios. Scripted by the husband-and-wife duo of Bryan and Alexis Roberts, The Journeyman is the story of a struggling pro tennis player who is lured into an illegal match-fixing ring to support his family and finds himself trapped in a ruthless world of corruption and violence he may never escape.

Oscar nominees Lily Gladstone (Killers Of The Flower Moon) and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) have been set as the leads in the action-thriller, Lone Wolf. Mark Pellington (Arlington Road) will direct from an original screenplay by Tom Chilcoat. The conspiracy thriller will follow a troubled vet (Gladstone) struggling with addiction who is recruited by a contractor (Cranston) for a covert government plot to assassinate a high-level politician. After learning she’s set to take the fall, she must utilize all of her skills to outwit the shadow agents to protect the future of her son.

Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once) has closed a deal to star in Fairytale in New York, a Lionsgate action thriller from director Jalmari Helander (Sisu). The story takes place on Christmas Eve in New York City, as an unassuming cab driver takes one last ride before going to celebrate the holiday with his estranged son. After a run-in with a gang of criminals, he embarks on a relentless pursuit to retrieve his kid’s priceless Christmas gift.

Emmy winner Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), and The Gentlemen star Daniel Ings will lead crime-thriller Mr. Sunny Sky. The film will follow Leonard Moore, a once chart-topping pop star now lounge singer at a mid-budget Canary Island hotel. One night he meets Shirley, another lost soul with whom he shares an instant connection. But Shirley’s husband is a dangerous man and soon the new couple’s burgeoning romance is thrust into a spiral of paranoia, suspense, and violence. Matt Chambers is directing based on his own screenplay and filming is due to start next year on location in Gran Canaria. This will be Chambers’s second feature after the well-received The Bike Thief which was nominated for a British Independent Film Award.

West Duchovny (Painkiller) and Scott Eastwood (Fast X) are in production in Austin, TX on Pearl, an indie drama written and directed by Marcos Efron (And Soon the Darkness), which will also star the Babylon duo of Lukas Haas and Ethan Suplee, along with Vincent Laresca (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood). Inspired by pictures like Five Easy Pieces, The Sugarland Express, and Hell or High Water, the film follows a young musician, Pearl (Duchovny), who is stuck in an abusive relationship until she meets Eli (Eastwood), a bank robber on the run, who links up with her as he looks to evade law enforcement in rural Texas.

Jefferson White (Yellowstone), Gloria Reuben (E.R.), and Tate Donovan (Argo) have signed on to star alongside Alexandra Doke (City on Fire) and David Nordstrand in Bonding, an independent thriller from Ukrainian-born director Victoria Trofimenko, which is shooting at the historic Stoner Ranch near Telluride, Colorado. Bonding is the story of three disconnected siblings who must confront their personal differences to cover up the murder of a tech millionaire at his remote Colorado ranch. The problem is not just the dead body; it’s that these siblings do not get along. Having grown up in a fractured home, they have a few things in common — checkered pasts and resentment for each other. Faced with an impossible problem of covering up an accidental murder, the family is forced to confront their strong differences and dark secrets.

Director Elegance Bratton (The Inspection) is getting back behind the camera for By Any Means, a true-life crime thriller starring Oscar nominees Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) and Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction). Based on the Black List script CI34 from Sascha Penn and Theodore Witcher, By Any Means is based on the incredible true story of the notorious mafia hitman who was hired by Hoover’s FBI off-the-books and partnered with a young Black special agent to hunt down those responsible for the murders of civil rights leaders in 1966 Mississippi.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Tiya Sircar (The Good Place), Anna Diop (Nanny), Graham Phillips (Riverdale), and Georgia King (Vice Principals) have joined the cast of Prime Video’s Scarpetta in recurring roles. They join the previously announced Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis, who will both executive produce; Bobby Cannavale, Simon Baker, Rosy McEwen, Jake Cannavale, Ariana DeBose, Sosie Bacon, Amanda Righetti, Janet Montgomery, Stephanie Faracy, and Mike Vogel. Based on Patricia Cornwell’s best-selling book series, Scarpetta follows Kay Scarpetta (Kidman), Chief Medical Examiner, as she returns to Virginia and resumes her former position with complex relationships, both personal and professional – including her sister Dorothy (Curtis), with plenty of grudges and secrets to uncover.

Legendary Television has acquired the rights to Murdle, a collection of murder mystery puzzles by G. T. Karber, to develop a scripted series based on the best-selling book. Pacesetter Productions brought the pitch to Legendary, with plans to build out a Murdle universe that will also include films and unscripted series, after acquiring the book in a competitive situation. Paddington writer Jon Croker will pen the television adaptation, which will be the project to launch this expanded universe, but thus far, the logline for the series is still being kept under wraps. Published by St. Martin’s Griffin in the US and Souvenir Press/Profile Books in the UK, Murdle features 100 "simple to impossible" mysteries for readers to solve.

Matt Charman, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, has a new television thriller in the works after British pay broadcaster Sky ordered Prisoner, with Charman set to write and serve as showrunner. The series will be produced by Charman’s own production company Binocular Productions, which was the company behind the Netflix spy series Treason. The project is a relationship drama that dives into what a serial killer can teach an ordinary person about what it takes to survive in his world. Casting is underway, with filming expected to start next year.

Netflix has unveiled a trailer and images promoting its spy thriller series, Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, and revealed a premiere date of December 5. Black Doves, which also stars Sarah Lancashire, is set against the backdrop of London at Christmas. It follows Helen Webb (Knightley), a quick-witted, down-to-earth, dedicated wife and mother — and professional spy. For 10 years, she’s been passing on her politician husband’s secrets to the shadowy organization she works for: the Black Doves. When her secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is assassinated, her spymaster, the enigmatic Reed (Lancashire), calls in Helen’s old friend Sam (Whishaw) to keep her safe.

Apple TV+'s legal thriller Presumed Innocent was based on Scott Turow’s bestselling novel of the same name. Season 2 of the show, executive produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams, and Season 1 star Jake Gyllenhaal and co-exec produced by Turow, is taking a completely different path with a female lead, Leila Reynolds, succeeding Gyllenhaal’s Rusty Sabich. According to sources, Apple TV+ and producing studio Warner Bros. TV have acquired the rights to Dissection of a Murder, the upcoming debut legal thriller by Jo Murray. The book, set for a spring 2026 publication by Pan Macmillan, follows Leila Reynolds who has just been handed her first murder case. She’s way out of her depth but the defendant only wants her – and to make matters worse, her husband is the prosecutor. Soon Leila is fighting to keep her own secrets buried, too.

PODCASTS/RADIO

This week’s guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was historical crime writer Stephen Eoannou.

Crime Time FM featured a live event at Waterstones Colchester with dynamic duo Nicci French (aka husband & wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French) and a fascinating discussion ranging from inspiration to AI.

On the Pick Your Poison podcast, Dr. Jen Prosser profiled a substance that has been used at parties since 1799 and is still popular on sites like TikTok and why it’s used as much as 600 times per day (and can be found in the grocery store).

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Mystery Melange - Halloween Edition

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Halloween Book Art by Blue Anchor Boutique

The Irish Book Awards shortlists for 2024 were announced, including the titles vying for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press); Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld). The public are now being asked to have their say and cast their votes through November 14th for the best books of the year on the An Post Irish Book Awards website.

Scrawl Books, the new indie bookstore in Reston, Virginia, is presenting a Cozy Halloween Mystery Panel on Thursday, October 31 at 7pm. Participating authors include Olivia Blacke (A New Lease on Death); Mindy Quigley (the Deep Dish Mysteries); Donna Andrews (the Meg Lanslow Series); and Korina L. Moss (the Cheese Shop Mysteries).

On November 1, AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland will show the silent film, The Bat (1926), directed by Roland West, with live musical accompaniment by Ben Model. Based on the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood (adapted from the author's 1908 mystery novel, The Circular Staircase), this suspenseful picture sees a masked criminal dressed as a bat spread fear and terror among the guests staying at a lavish mansion rented by a mystery writer. Hidden somewhere in the estate is a vast sum of money aching for the taking. The Bat served as inspiration for the creation of DC Comics' Batman. (HT to The Bunburyist)

Dallas Noir At The Bar returns to The Wild Detectives on Sunday, November 3rd. Authors currently scheduled to read from their mystery, thriller, and suspense works include Jim Nesbitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Trang Vu, Graham Powell, Scott Montgomery, and Harry Hunsicker.

Janet Rudolph has published an updated list of Halloween Mysteries that take place on or around Halloween, from full-length novels to short story anthologies.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the Halloween mystery short story "Floating Past the Graveyard" by Pamela Ebel, read by actor Theodore Fox.

Kings River Life published two free online Halloween short stories, "Clown-O-Phobia" By Bobbi A. Chukran, and "The Mystery of the Mirror" By Shari Held.

The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have some scary treats and reads for the season, including Warm Spiced Cider by Maya Corrigan; Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Bars via Peg Cochran; Halloween Carrot Cake from Alison Roman by way of Lucy Burdette; Edible Witches' Brooms, courtesy of Cleo Coyle; Spooky Blood Orange Spritizer from Leslie Karst; and Mummy Hand Pies from Molly MacRae.

Brian Cleary, a clinical pharmacist in Dublin, was trawling through the archives at the National Library of Ireland when he stumbled across something extraordinary: a virtually unknown short story by Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic masterpiece, Dracula. The story takes place in Surrey, England, at a spot that became infamous when three men who had murdered a sailor were hanged there in the 18th century (a gibbet is a gallows). In it, a young man goes for a stroll and comes upon a trio of eerie children who perform a strange ritual, tie the man up, and menace him with a sharp dagger. Though he passes out and isn’t sure what happens next — they are gone when he wakes up — the unsettling experience has repercussions that do not bode well for his future. 

Robert Lopresti is the latest guest at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, talking about his new anthology, Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, a collection spurred on by his continuing interest in ecological issues. (Taylor took over hosting duties of the column after its originator, B.K. Stevens, passed away in 2017.)

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Author R&R with Alexa Donne

[image error]Alexa Donne is the Edgar nominated author of Pretty Dead Queens, The Ivies, and The Bitter End, young adult thrillers featuring terrible teens and big twists. She loves exploring themes of class and wealth, toxic friendships (especially between young women), and the double-edged sword of trying to keep up with the Joneses in the era of social media and toxic capitalism. By day, she lives in Los Angeles and works in television marketing. The rest of the time, she contemplates creative motives for murder and takes too many pictures of her cats.

[image error]Alexa’s latest young adult thriller, The Bitter End, follows eight students of LA’s elite Warner Prep, who can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. But they can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident. And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

Alexa stops by In Reference to Murder to talk some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

I LOVE isolation trope mysteries. LOVE. In movies, on TV, but especially in books. A ticking clock, no escape, and a limited pool of suspects—the tension in these stories is so high, and the dynamics at play so fun. 

Writing The Bitter End, I challenged myself to set a cast of teens loose on this beloved genre trope. I wanted to see how I could fit the constraints of YA world (there has to be some kind of adult supervision… at least to start) into an adult genre, while also bringing something fresh and exciting to the conceit so that it might surprise and delight seasoned adult readers.

The closed circle mystery is essentially a balancing act: a large cast size, a number of inevitable deaths, and of course the big reveal. It’s a game of teetering precariously to build and sustain suspense as I work to hide the true killer’s identity while not giving short shrift to characters who are not part of the narrative for long. Ultimately, I landed on eight teens rather than the Christie classic ten, and a minimum body count (though I won’t spoil the exact number!). It felt important to have enough personalities to stir up trouble while also not leaving the suspect pool too large at the end.

I chose multi-POV and multi-timeline, in part to stretch myself with a different thriller format, as well as to play with themes of friendship, appearances, and perspective, all of which change over time. I work backwards to construct my thrillers, so I started with a motive. Then built out a cast of spoiled Los Angeles prep school teens to kick the plot mechanics into motion.

But for an isolation trope to work, I needed to figure out how to get my new cast away from their parents and in a remote location. I knew the group should be somewhat disparate to create a lot of conflict and intrigue. They are not all friends, which ruled out a besties Spring Break trip or a post-Prom retreat. Authenticity is important to me in any thriller, but especially YA—it should feel feasible at its heart.

The solution to my problem came at a lunch with some fellow writer friends, including one who’d attended a Los Angeles prep school. She blew my mind when she talked about a program for seniors where for one week they’d get to go on a grand excursion—and real examples from her school included Alaskan dog-sledding and a Hollywood directing workshop! It was so fantastic and sparked my imagination—which is why those real examples are in the book!—and provided the perfect jumping off point for my isolation mystery.

And since I’m an East Coaster who sincerely misses weather (after fifteen years in Southern California), I knew I wanted a mountainous/forest setting with heavy rain or snow. I settled on Colorado for two reasons: first, the state and its glorious 14,000 feet peaks came up in several of the 20+ high-altitude mountaineering tomes I’d read, and second, I had several friends who were either native Coloradans or who had moved there.

And with my setting locked in, I now got to contend with several high-altitude, mountain, and snow-related elements that required some honestly pretty fun, if morbid and mildly terrifying, research. Some highlights:

High altitude sickness

The prep school teens in the book end up stranded in a ski chalet on top of a Colorado mountain of significantly high elevation. The copious amounts of non-fiction and memoir written by and about mountaineers who climb 8,000 meter peaks inevitably all touch upon high altitude sickness and its varying complications, including high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), hypoxia, and their symptoms. My made-up mountain isn’t quite that high, but altitude sickness is likely to strike an Angelino at high elevation for the first time.

Dark Summit by Nick Heil, in particular, went into great detail about a man who survived a near-death experience on Everest. Being able to get inside the mind, with vivid description, of someone experiencing hypoxia and nearly dying from it was invaluable. (Did you know it’s a common phenomenon to hallucinate a person following you/being with you, up high on the mountain? This is stuff made for the thriller genre!)

Cell phone emergency access 

It’s the lynchpin of the modern-day thriller, isn’t it: How to deal with technology? Especially in a closed circle mystery with an isolation trope, the key is to get characters AWAY from technology and any hope of help from the outside world. I’m fascinated by wild, out of the way places and all the terrible things that can happen to you there. The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman reinforced that there are many places in the United States where it’s easy to fall to the elements with ZERO recourse. Often, those searching for you may simply never know what happened.

My editor wanted to be double triple sure these students couldn’t seek help. “Surely they’d just call 9-1-1?” she said. Cellphones have an emergency call function. This led both me and her down a rabbit hole of cell phones and emergency communications in 2024, as technology is constantly evolving and mystery authors must tear their hair out to make their plots work.

Multiple Colorado friends confirmed that there are many spots in the mountains where cell coverage is so spotty to the point that it is nonexistent. I did a deep dive to double confirm: emergency calls require a cell tower within a certain distance to work. But then a wrench in the works, at pass pages, no less: newer models of iPhones and now Androids have emergency satellite texting systems.

Here’s where all those books on mountaineering came in handy—they all have passages on satellite phones. How they work, when they work, and, helpful for me, when they don’t. Satellite phone may not work under heavy cloud cover or during storms. Luckily, I already had a blizzard at play, and used my creative license as the author to make things that much trickier for my poor cast of characters trying to survive a killer.

Sadly, I can’t share some of the juicier bits of research without spoilers! But I can relay one anecdote whose lesson is: sometimes you’ll blank on the silliest thing despite meticulous planning, and it’s important to be scrappy with your edits! With all my planning and research into cell signals and plot mechanics to deprive my cast of their phones, Internet access, and eventually power… I still managed to write an entire plot thread in the first draft that hinged on the characters looking through people’s Instagram DMs.

Then, my editor pointed out to me “but they have no Internet, so how could they check Instagram?” Reader, I died. You have to laugh about it though! I had to get creative in terms of keeping the information gleaned while tossing out most of what I’d written for that subplot. On the plus side—it made the back half of act 2 much tighter! Do the best you can, but you can’t do it alone—and some of your best work will happen in editing (and with your editor!).

 

You can learn more about Alexa Donne via her website and also follow her on Instagram, Goodreads, and YouTube. The Bitter End is now available via Random House Books and all major booksellers.

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Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Stuber have acquired The Girl in the Lake, a proposal for an adult mystery thriller novel by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver. Oliver will write the script for a film that will be developed for United Artists. Scarlett Johansson is eyeing this to star in as the title character and will also co-produce. The logline is being kept under wraps but it's being described as "What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense."

Reacher star Alan Ritchson has found his next action project with Runner, a movie about a high-end courier who has three hours to transport an organ to save a seven-year-old girl in need of an immediate transplant. The seemingly simple mission turns deadly when the leader of a notorious crime syndicate becomes hell-bent on claiming the organ.

Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is set to join Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in the Lionsgate adaptation of the psychological thriller, The Housemaid, with Paul Feig directing from Rebecca Sonnenshine's adaptation of Freida McFadden’s novel. In the film, Sweeney will play Millie, a struggling woman who is relieved to get a fresh start as a housemaid to Nina (Seyfried) and Andrew (Sklenar), an upscale, wealthy couple. She soon learns that the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own. The novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and on the Amazon bestseller list for 98 weeks and counting.

Monica Barbaro has boarded Crime 101, Bart Layton’s adaptation of the Don Winslow novella for Amazon MGM Studios, in an as-yet-to-be-revealed role. Other cast members include Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, and Halle Berry. While official plot details for Crime 101 haven’t been disclosed, the novella follows veteran jewel thief Davis as he plans a high-stakes diamond heist along the Pacific Coast Highway, getting into a cat-and-mouse chase with a dedicated LAPD detective named Lou Lubesnick after executing what he hopes will be his final score before disappearing for good.

In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the first John Wick movie, Lionsgate has several festivities planned including special events, anniversary screenings, new experiences, and new collectible merchandise, culminating in the release of Ballerina: From the World of John Wick next year on June 6. The original film starring Keanu Reeves, directed by Chad Stahelski, and written by Derek Kolstad, flew under the radar at the box office and grossed a relatively paltry $86M worldwide, only to explode on home entertainment and launch a mega franchise across four films for Lionsgate grossing $1.02 billion to date.

Veteran documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Ren Faire) is pivoting to fiction with his next project, Primetime, which will be financed and produced by A24, with Robert Pattinson among the producers. While not much is known about the film’s genre or plot, it’s said to follow a journalist who takes on an underworld of crime and changes television forever. The project allegedly takes inspiration from To Catch a Predator, the NBC program put on as part of Dateline, as well as its host, Chris Hansen. The early indications are that Pattinson is also attached to star.

Catherine Corcoran (Terrifier) and Alex Mandel (Howie Mandel Does Stuff) have joined Bryce Hirschberg's latest film, the thriller, Jackalope. Writer-director Hirschberg, known for the 2017 film Counterfeiters and his appearance on the Netflix dating show, Too Hot to Handle, is also starring. He made the film alongside creative partner David Klassen (Deadpool 2), who co-wrote and serves as producer and director of photography. The plot follows two brothers, whose quiet weekend retreat unravels into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the arrival of a hauntingly enigmatic woman who causes them to question how well they really know each other and themselves.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories has optioned Darling Girls by Sally Hepsworth and has begun work on a TV adaptation. The crime novel, which became an instant bestseller in the U.S. and Hepworth’s native Australia upon release this year, is billed as "a page-turning thriller about sisterhood, secrets and murder." The plot follows Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, who return to the idyllic farming estate where they were raised by a loving foster mother—when a body is discovered under the house. Though always told they were lucky to have gotten a second chance at a happy family life after their own family tragedies, the sisters realize their childhood wasn’t the fairytale everyone thought it was.

CBS has renewed Matlock, starring Kathy Bates, for a second season after only three episodes into its freshman year. Matlock premiered on September 22 with a sneak peak episode that drew the biggest audience for a non-post-Super Bowl series premiere in five and a half years. The show stars Bates as Madeline "Matty" Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who achieved success in her younger years and decides to rejoin the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases, all while investigating a deeply personal secret of her own. Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, David Del Rio, and Leah Lewis also star.

Cineflix scored new international deals for the cozy crime series, Whitstable Pearl. Based on the popular Julie Wassmer novels, the series stars Kerry Godliman (After Life) as Pearl Nolan. She divides her time between serving up seafood in her restaurant in the English seaside town of the title, and solving the crimes and murder brought in by the tide. Howard Charles (The Musketeers) plays a cop, Mike McGuire, and her on/off rival and love interest. The series is from Marcella producer Buccaneer and for AMC Networks’ Acorn TV, which has greenlit three seasons thus far.

An Indian remake of the U.S. drama, Monk, is in production via Disney+ Hotstar. It marks the first adaptation of the series, about a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, in South Asia. The original series ran on USA Network from 2002 – 2009 and spawned a movie that played on Peacock last year. It followed Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) and his assistants, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) and Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), and their work with the San Francisco Police Department on unconventional cases.

Tommie Earl Jenkins has joined the cast of the USA Network drama series, The Rainmaker, based on the John Grisham novel. The series follows Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) who, fresh out of law school, goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond (John Slattery) and his law school girlfriend Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman). Rudy, along with his boss (Lana Parrilla) and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son. Jenkins will play Prince Thomas, owner of Yogi’s Bar where Rudy works as a bartender when we first meet him, who's a mysterious character with motives as murky as his loyalties.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On the Spybrary Spy Podcast, Nick Harkaway discussed his new novel, Karla's Choice and continuing his father John le Carré's George Smiley series.

On Crime Time FM, I S Berry, the only female former CIA field agent writing spy fiction, chatted with Paul Burke about her espionage thriller, The Peacock and the Sparrow, an Edgar First Novel, Barry, and ITW Award Winner.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with BBC broadcaster-turned-crime writer, Louise Minchin, about her debut, Isolation Island, and discussed a one-hundred-year-old frozen foot found on Mount Everest.

Sharon Healy-Yang was the latest guest on the Murder We Write podcast, talking to host Carol Goodman Kaufman about Healy-Yang's latest Jessica Minton Mystery, Shadows of a Dark Past.

On Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini welcomed writer and filmmaker, Liam Dunn, as they explored the late William Friedkin's 1985 dark and dazzling neo-noir, To Live and Die in LA.

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Mystery Melange

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The 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction has been awarded to David Joy for Those We Thought We Knew, a novel about a young Black artist who returns to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains and uncovers the dark underbelly of the community. The Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction was established in 1952 by the Historical Book Club of North Carolina to recognize the year's best book of fiction, drama, short stories, or poetry written by a North Carolinian.

Getting a jump on that end-of-the-year "Best Of" season, Barnes and Noble has posted its list of Best Mystery & Thriller Books of 2024. You can check out all twenty titles (which includes Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice - see the item below) via this link.

The Back Room returns October 27, 2024 at 7pm ET. The brainchild of bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne, who dreamed up the format during Covid lockdowns, the Back Room remains the only online event that allows authors and readers to chat face-to-face. Featured guests this time include Diana R. Chambers (The Secret War of Julia Child); Alex Segura & Rob Hart (Dark Space, a sweeping sci-fi spy thriller); Paula Munier (the Mercy Carr mysteries); and David Rosenfelt (Andy Carpenter mysteries). Each program begins with a fun "get to know you" game followed by the guest authors’ book recommendations, and then breakout rooms where attendees get Q&A time with the authors.

Applications for the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers will be closing soon. Interested writers must not have published a book, short story, or dramatic work in the mystery field, either in print, electronic, or audio form. The Grants Committee is looking for works in progress that are consistent with the Malice Domestic genre of Traditional Mystery, typified by the works of Agatha Christie. These works contain no explicit gore, violence, or sex. Prize: Each grant may be used to offset registration, travel, or other expenses related to attendance at a writers' conference or workshop within a year of the date of the award. In the case of nonfiction, the grant may be used to offset research expenses. Each grant currently includes a $1,500 award plus a comprehensive registration for the following year's convention and two nights' lodging at the convention hotel, but does not include travel to the convention or meals. Deadline: November 1, 2024.

For years, John le Carré’s youngest son, born Nicholas Cornwell, worked on establishing his own literary legacy apart from his father's, using two pen names Nick Harkaway and Aidan Truhen, in works featuring futuristic truckers, steampunk clock repairmen, superheroes and all-seeing techno-states. But after helping bring Silverview, the final le Carré novel to posthumous publication in 2021, he felt he’d stopped being afraid of people comparing their writing. Underscoring that confidence is his latest project, Karla’s Choice, a Cold War espionage novel taking up the characters that people regard as quintessentially le Carré: the rumpled, melancholy spy Smiley and his ruthless Soviet counterpart Karla. As Washington Post columnist, Sophia Nguyen, added in her profile of the work, "By writing it, Harkaway hasn’t just crossed into his father’s literary airspace — he’s descending into the heart of the territory and rolling out the landing gear, fingers crossed for a warm welcome."

Dean Street Press is continuing their murder mystery reissues with the Antony Maitland series by Anglo-Canadian author Sara Woods (1916-1985), set to be published on December 2, 2024. Originally released in the 1960s, these novels were lauded for their intricate plots, courtroom drama, and intellectual depth. Antony Maitland, the central character, was often compared to Perry Mason for his mix of legal expertise and investigative prowess (and was inspired by Sara Woods' brother, Antony Woods Hutton, who tragically lost his life during WWII). Out of print for nearly forty years, the first five novels in this compelling series comprise: Bloody Instructions (1962), Malice Domestic (1962), The Taste of Fears (1963), Error of the Moon (1963), and Trusted Like the Fox (1964).

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine spoke with bestselling author Kate White about her latest book, The Last Time She Saw Him; R. W. Green stopped by Criminal Element to discuss co-writing Mc Beaton's internationally bestselling Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery series; and Karin Smirnoff, the author of several books in the best-selling and award-winning Millennium series originally created by Stieg Larsson, chatted with Cultural Rendezvous about Nordic Noir.

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Author R&R with Mel Harrison

[image error]After graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in Economics, Mel Harrison joined the US Department of State, spending the majority of his career in the Diplomatic Security Service, winning the State Department Award for Valor and its worldwide Regional Security Officer of the Year Award. Following government retirement, Mel spent ten years in corporate security and consulting work with assignments often taking him throughout Latin America and the Middle East, before turning his hand to writing. He’s penned six books in the series featuring Alex Boyd, a State Department special agent and regional security officer with the Diplomatic Security Service, including the latest installment in that series, Crescent City Carnage.

[image error]In Crescent City Carnage, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith are only a day into their long-awaited vacation in New Orleans to join their good friend and colleague, Simone Ardoin, when she is brutally murdered. Simone’s well-connected parents, long-time residents of New Orleans, are devastated by the tragedy and implore both Alex and Rachel to work with the New Orleans Police Department to find her killer. The city is infamous for its laissez-faire attitude, as well as its corruption. Nevertheless, Alex must work with the city's cops to break the case, also drawing support from State Department special agents. Identifying the killer is one thing but locating him proves more complicated than anticipated—Is the killer just lucky or does he have an inside source who is helping him stay one step ahead of the cops? The more Alex and Rachel delve into the case, the more they discover that New Orleans is a unique city full of its own traditions, family ties, and way of life. But the clock is ticking, and they need to capture the killer before he disappears forever.

Mel Harrison stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R today about writing the book:

Toward the end of my twenty-eight year career in the Foreign Service, serving as either a special agent with Diplomatic Security or as an economic officer, I realized that I had experienced a number of adventures in my lifetime that could be turned into intriguing action thrillers. After State Department retirement, I worked another ten years for corporate security, accumulating even more experiences. Finally, in complete retirement, it was time to challenge myself and start the writing process.

I have always enjoyed the action-adventure/thriller genre for my own reading, and so began my writing journey. I decided to write about what I knew and where I had served or visited, rather than struggling with unfamiliar territory. My six novels are based upon my personal experiences, albeit, with embellished characters and scenes to excite the audience. While the books and characters are fiction, they are often composites from real life, either experienced by me, or drawn from situations of which I am aware.

Many of the location settings, such as Rome, London, or Paris, I have visited again and again. Additional places, like Cairo or Islamabad, I also worked there and visited in retirement, even if less frequently than the former set of locations. As an avid photographer, I can research details of sites that my memory is vague on. Also, I use the internet to research technical details on everything from weapons to foreign police structures to plants and vegetation. Finally, nothing beats firsthand knowledge, so I have sought out subject matter experts, as needed.

While most people will say that thrillers are plot-driven, I love to create memorable characters as well. Just as the stories are fictional, so are my characters. Yet, I have drawn on people I have known, put them in different settings than where we met, and added features to their personality or appearance to make the reader feel that they can visualize the character or understand his or her motivation.

Equally important, I always think a long time about how to create villains. Reading how other authors handle this issue can be instructive. No one who buys a book wants to read about cardboard characters, and this includes the bad guys. The villains may be evil or demented, but they also have families and friends. Therefore, they need to be three dimensional and realistic. The reader needs to understand the villain’s motivation. Without excellent villains, the author doesn’t have an interesting story to tell.

I must note that I have a lot of restaurant scenes in my six books. Okay, I admit it, my wife and I are foodies. Here is a tidbit readers should know. Every restaurant in every book is real, and what my protagonist, Alex Boyd, and his wife, Rachel, are eating, my own wife and I have eaten at that very restaurant.

When I began creating my stories, I knew I wanted to put my protagonist, Alex Boyd, in harm’s way. Since he is a trained special agent, I needed to have him carry a firearm. For me, the best solution was the simplest. He either uses the real weapons issued by the Diplomatic Security Service, or in the one book, Moving Target, where is working in the private sector, I gave him a weapon that I personally owned and fired many times. Sometimes authors who are not familiar with guns get tripped up trying to write firearms scenes that just would not work in the real world.

An area that can be difficult to write about involves the sexual relationship of my two main characters, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith. When they first meet in Death in Pakistan, there is an immediate attraction, both physically and intellectually. The question is how far an author should describe this relationship. I took the view that the reader must believe their love for each other is deep and real. It must be based on something more than a casual handshake. Therefore, sex is part of that relationship and needs to be presented to the reader without going over-the-top into pornographic description. Since Rachel is put in harm’s way several times in my novels, the feelings Alex and Rachel have for each other must be based upon the full spectrum of emotions.

I will close with a final point about politics. I try to leave politics out of my books as much as possible. Readers buy novels to escape everyday life. They want to be entertained, not lectured too. Of course, Alex and his colleagues occasionally mock a specific Washington policy as wrong-headed, but that is different than the author taking gratuitous shots at either political party. When I worked in the Foreign Service, the internet had not yet been created. Therefore, there was no social media or even cable TV channels. I honestly did not know the politics of my fellow Foreign Service officer. It wasn’t important to getting the job done or to protecting employees from terrorists, kidnappers, spies, or criminals.

 

You can follow Mel Harrison on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. Crescent City Carnage is now available via all major booksellers.

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