B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 191

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and this week's look at the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS



The Screen Actors Guild nominees announced last week featured a few crime-related roles, including: Best Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series nods to Sterling K. Brown and Courtney B. Vance for The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and John Turturro for The Night Of; Felicity Huffman and Sarah Paulson also received nominations for American Crime in the Best Actress/Limited Series category; and in the category of Best Actor, TV Series, Rami Malek was nominated for Mr. Robot. For the complete lists of nominations, click here.



MOVIES



Mauro Borrelli has sold the action thriller script, Trigger, to Cronton Media, a division of China’s Huace Film & TV. Borrelli will also direct with production taking place between China and Thailand. Trigger centers on an aging hitman who goes rogue after his employer gives him a final contract — to kill his own daughter. Borrelli is best known for his collaborations with director Tim Burton, working as illustrator and artist on such films as Sleepy Hollow, Planet Of The Apes and Dark Shadows.



Rogue One: A Star Wars Story bad guy Ben Mendelsohn is eyeing another villainous role, currently in negotiations to play the Sheriff of Nottingham in Lionsgate’s Robin Hood: Origins. The movie stars Taron Egerton as the titular character, a war-hardened crusader who joins a Moorish commander in an audacious revolt against the corrupt English monarchy. Also in the cast are Jamie Foxx as Little John, Eve Hewson as Maid Marian, and Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan playing Will Scarlett, Robin Hood’s half-brother.  



Orion Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired U.S. rights to the Israeli thriller Past Life, written and directed by Avi Nesher. The story is set in 1977 and based on the true story of two Israeli sisters who delve into the dark mystery of their father’s story of surviving World War II and discover that it may be more complicated than they originally believed. The revelations that come to light threaten to tear their family apart.



A trailer was released for the heist comedy Going In Style, which stars Oscar winners Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin as retirees on a mission for justice. Zack Braff helmed the film, which is a remake of the 1979 picture of the same name.



The first trailer was released for Unforgettable, a thriller from producer and rookie director Denise Di Novi that stars Katherine Heigl as an unstable stalker.



TELEVISION



Bates Motel series lead Freddie Highmore has lined up his next project, taking on the role of real life gangster George Nelson. Bates Motel executive producer Kerry Ehrin is behind the project, which takes place during the Great Depression in the 1930's and depicts the life of the notorious gangster George Nelson, who was nicknamed "Baby Face" for his youthful appearance and short stature. The drama is being described as a love story that will chronicle Nelson's rise from a small-time bank robber in Chicago to the FBI's Public Enemy No. 1.



ABC has given a straight-to-series order to Somewhere Between. The murder drama is based on a Korean project and follows Laura Price, who is certain her daughter Serena is going to be murdered. She doesn't know who the murderer is or why she's killed, but she knows exactly when, where, and how it will happen. Despite this, her attempts to keep her daughter safe fail, and Serena's fixed, unmovable, terrifying fate keeps her directly in the path of her killer.



NBC is developing an hour-long drama based on the thriller Single White Female, the 1992 movie that starred Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda. The story follows Allie Jones, a software designer living in New York City, who advertises for a roommate after she discovers her live-in fiancé has been cheating on her. She soon finds something very strange is going on with the tenant, who decides to move in—on Allie's life.



Fox TV picked up a script commitment for an adaptation of James Renner’s book The Man From Primrose Lane, with feature director-producer Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) helming the project. Renner also penned the script, which tells the story of a bestselling true-crime author who investigates the murder of an old man, leading to an  understanding of the reality-altering power of his own obsessions — and how they may be connected to the deaths of the old hermit and David’s beloved wife.



British actress Clare-Hope Ashitey has signed on to star in the forthcoming crime drama Seven Seconds from Killing creator Veena Sud for Netflix. When tensions run high between African-American citizens and Caucasian police officers in Jersey City after a teenage African-American boy is critically injured by a cop, an assistant prosecutor (Ashitey) is caught up in the tragic case. Ashitey joins a cast that includes two-time Emmy winner Regina King, David Lyons, Michael Mosley, Russell Hornsby, Raul Castillo, and Beau Knapp.



Reba McEntire is returning to television as the star of a potential new Marc Cherry drama series at ABC. The untitled drama project, which was picked up with a script-plus-penalty commitment, is described as "a Southern Gothic soap opera," set in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a small town. The action kicks off when an FBI investigator arrives and has to team up with the town's local sheriff.



The Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight announced another of the GW characters is joining the new show; Carrie Preston is currently slated to return as Elsbeth Tascioni in a multi-episode arc.  Meanwhile, CBS Access released the first trailer for The Good Fight.



Canada's CTV network is anchoring their mid-season lineup with the thriller series Cardinal, which premieres on January 25th. Cardinal was adapted for television by Canadian Screen Award-winner Aubrey Nealon (Orphan Black) from the award-winning novel Forty Words for Sorrow, the first of the John Cardinal Mysteries by author Giles Blunt. The series stars Billy Campbell (The Killing) as Detective John Cardinal and Karine Vanasse (Revenge) as his rookie partner, Detective Lisa Delorme.



The Oxygen network is allegedly eyeing a crime-themed makeover, according to Deadline. Oxygen's Crime Time programming block, recently expanded from three to four nights a week, boosted the network's total-day ratings on those days by 44% in 4Q vs. the same period last year. Talks are underway with prolific crime drama producer Dick Wolf (of the Chicago PD franchise), as well as other producers, about being part of the new Oxygen.



Showtime released the full Season 6 trailer for Homeland, which tackles the topic of Islamaphobia head-on. Clare Danes returns, who is joined by a new president (new cast member Elizabeth Marvel), and also features Saul (Mandy Patinkin) taken against his will and brings back Quinn (Rupert Friend) after his near-death experience in Season 5.



PODCASTS/VIDEOS/RADIO



The latest Stab in the Dark podcast featured host Mark Billingham talking to actor Kris Marshall about his early career starring in comedy film and television before ending up as the star of the popular crime drama Death in Paradise.



Authors on the Air podcast host and thriller author Jenny Milchman interviewed authors Nichole Christoff, Michael Niemann, Hollie Overton, and Amy Shojai about why getting published is the best gift they could imagine.



Mental Floss compiled a listing of "10 Must-Listen True Crime Podcasts" for true-crime junkies.



THEATER



Actor Bill Ward, a star of ITV's Emmerdale, will be taking over the role of Peter James' famous literary Detective Superintendent Roy Grace after its initial run. The play will receive its world stage premiere at the Orchard Theatre, Dartford, in January 2017, with Shane Richie playing Grace until Ward takes over the reins in April.

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Your Sunday Music Treat

Friday was the anniversary of Beethoven's birth (December 16, 1770), a time to celebrate his timeless music. But I'll bet even the Great One himself never foresaw his "Moonlight" piano sonata (or excerpts thereof) being played on eight floppy disk drives. Take a listen:

 

Of course, if you'd rather hear the original version, here's Claudio Arrau:

 

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller Day

Patti Abbott's special theme for this week's edition of Friday's "Forgotten" Books is the husband-and-wife writing duo of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. Muller is best known for her series featuring female private eye Sharon McCone, while Pronzini's best known works are those in his Nameless Detective series of novels and short stories, although he is also the editor 100+ anthology series - of which The Ethnic Detectives is one (co-edited with the late Martin Greenberg), that also happens to include a short story by Marcia Muller.



Obviously, Pronzini and Greenberg had to determine how exactly to define "ethnic" for inclusion in this book. In the introduction, they say that such a distinction isn't all that simple and point out how in one sense, even Edgar Allan Poe's C. August Dupin qualifies. The principal definition is that the sleuth is a member of a minority group within a dominant culture, and whose mannerisms, world view, and approach reflect upon his background.



The reasons for writing such a character are many and varied, but as Pronzinis point out, "These are particularly interesting characters because their adventures frequently concern problems of identity, of the search for one's roots, and of reconciling different heritages — problems that are the stuff of emotion and high drama." And, as the editors ultimately conclude, "Vive le roman policier! Vive la difference!"



This particular group of stories were chosen to represent different ethnic groups, without duplications. Thus, we have one each of the Chinese detective (Judge Dee by Robert van Gulik); one of a couple of different Native American tribal detectives (David Return by Manly Wade Wellman and also Tony Hillerman, mentioned below); the Czechoslovakian detective (Dr. Jan Czissar by Eric Ambler); the Filipino detective (Jo Gar by Raoul Whitfield) and so forth. Most of these authors will be new to the majority of crime fiction readers, with only a handful well-known, such as Georges Simenon (Inspector Maigret), Tony Hillerman (Jim Chee), and Marcia Muller (Elena Oliverez).



Muller's Elena Oliverez is Director of the fictional Museum of Mexican Arts in Santa Barbara and a Chicana amateur sleuth. In the story "The Sanchez Sacraments," Oliverez investigates the hidden meaning of a group of pottery figures representing the five Catholic sacraments, which leads to a difficult decision about their future. Muller penned three novels featuring Oliverez, the last one co-written with Pronzini in a tale spanning a hundred years, with Elena as the present-day detective and Pronzini's John Quincannon, a nineteenth-century sleuth. Muller would later say in an interview that "Although another Elena was under contract, I simply couldn't come up with anything that could top or even equal Beyond the Grave, and I eventually persuaded the publisher to release me from the obligation."



Reading The Ethnic Detectives is something akin to eating at an international food fair, with little tastings that may satisfy, but leave you wanting more. The most effective stories are those from the authors who have lived the longest with their characters, primarily Hillerman and his Navajo Corporal, Jim Chee, and for the most intense banquet of all, a novella-length story from Ed McBain featuring the various multi-cultural detectives of his 87th Precinct series the author featured in dozens of novels and stories.



The Ethnic Detectives is a fascinating look at the various ways writers slip into worlds not their own and try to create fiction that conveys the spirit of people who live there. Like most such efforts, some of these attempts are successful, others a little less so. But it's an easy way to travel around the world vicariously and be pleasantly entertained at the same time.

            

Mystery Melange

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival has announced its 2017 line-up that will mark the 15th annual celebration of the genre. The Special Guests announced to date are "titans of the genre" Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Peter May, Stuart MacBride, and Kathy Reichs. Last year's successful event sold-out with 14,000 individual tickets over four days, so you might want to nail down your tickets now.



The upcoming conference Agatha Christie: A Reappraisal has issued a call for papers on the topic. The two day conference will take place June 19-20 at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, with keynote speakers Julius Green, author of Curtain Up: Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre, and Merja Makinen, author of Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity. For more details and a list of possible themes, check out this posting from Shots Magazine.



The Detection Club, Britain’s oldest club for crime writers, has honored award-winning Chichester crime writer Peter Lovesey with an 80th birthday tribute, a collection of short stories by its members. The book, Motives for Murder, was edited by Martin Edwards and comes with a foreword by Len Deighton. 



Speaking of short stories, Transworld is publishing a collection of Jack Reacher short stories in June 2017, set to be the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher have been collected into one volume.



Scottish crime author Denise Mina undertook her own investigation into the tragic story behind a pensioner who lay undiscovered for years after dying alone. The man's story became national symbol of social isolation.



By rights, author Ian Rankin should have been an accountant, and if not for a poor exam performance and giving up on a PhD, we might never have had Inspector Rebus.



John Clarkson is the author of several thrillers and crime novels who applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Bronx Requiem.



Agatha Christie was also an inveterate traveler, visiting countries in nearly every continent on the map, from the Canary Islands to New Zealand, and found inspiration for some of her most famous novels abroad. If you’re looking to travel in Christie's shoes, you have plenty of options all over the world, as this rundown from Book Riot attests.



Crime writer Ian Rankin is set to appear in the BBC spoof police show Scot Squad in a cameo playing himself. Scot Squad sends up "Scotland’s first united police force" as it follows a "new brand of Bravehearts, there to protect and serve."



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Poisoned" by Daniel D'Arezzo, and this month's featured pulp story over at Beat to a Pulp is "Labor Pains" by Scott Adlerberg.



In the Q&A roundup, Debbie De Louise stopped by Omnimystery News today to chat about the second mystery in her Cobble Cove series, Between a Rock and a Hard Place; Ryan Bracha took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; and The Writers Life blog welcomed Malia Zaidi to discuss the latest book in her Lady Evelyn mysteries series, A Darker Shore.

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Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest wrap-up of news from the world of crime dramas:



AWARDS



The Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning, with a few crime-related movies picking up nods. Hell or High Water, a film about a divorced father and his ex-con older brother who resort to a desperate scheme to save their family's Texas ranch, was included in the Best Drama category. Deadpool, about a mercenary with a morbid sense of humor who's subjected to an experiment leading to accelerated healing powers and a quest for revenge, was nominated in the Best Comedy/Musical category (with star Ryan Reynolds nominated for Best Comedic Actor). Isabelle Huppert was nominated in the Best Dramatic Actress category for Elle, a film about a successful businesswoman who gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her. Jessica Chastain was also nominated in that category for Miss Sloane, a paranoid political thriller about a lobbyist who takes on gun control.

In the TV category, nods for Best Drama series included the supernatural thriller Stranger Things, as well as two other crime-fantasy shows, Game of Thrones and Westworld. The Best Series Actor category honored Rami Malek for Mr. Robot; Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul; Matthew Rhys for The Americans; Liev Schreiber for Ray Donovan, and Billy Bob Thorton for Goliath. Best Actress nods included Kerri Rusell, The Americans; Winona Ryder, Stranger Things; and Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld.



MOVIES



The Film Noir Foundation celebrates the holidays by "tossing aside the Christmas treacle for a headlong dive into a double bill of danger and darkness" On Wednesday, December 14th. Eddie Muller will host the seasonally themed program at San Francisco's Castro Theatre, with the lineup including Quentin Lawrence's Cash on Demand (1961) at 7:30 and Harold Ramis' Ice Harvest (2005) at 9:30. Muller will also reveal the theme and complete film schedule for the upcoming NOIR CITY 15 festival coming to the Castro Theatre January 20-29, 2017. (A bonus note: Holiday Giving at NOIR CITY Xmas will have collection bins for both the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program and the SF-Marin Food Bank at the event.)



Twentieth Century Fox has picked up the spec script The State, a project hailing from the writing duo of Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani. David Lonner and Ben Rowe from Oasis Media are set to produce the international action thriller that follows a father in a desperate race to rescue his son.



Matt Duffett has come on board to pen the feature film adaptation of the popular and violent graphic novel 39 Minutes. The original comic, published in 2013 and written by William Harris and illustrated by Jerry Lando, is a brutal take on the heist genre, with the main character a disgraced ex-Marine in the employ of the FBI who embarks on a vicious crime spree with his former unit, now bitter and jaded towards the country they once served. They have 39 minutes to pull off their robberies and anyone can become a target in that time.



Matthias Schoenaerts and Jeremy Irons have signed on to join Jennifer Lawrence in the film Red Sparrow. The story, an adaptation of the Jason Matthews espionage novel, follows a Russian intelligence officer (Lawrence) who is ordered against her will to become a "Sparrow," a trained seductress, and to operate against a young CIA agent who handles the agency’s most important Russian mole. Joel Edgerton is also attached to star.



Damian Lewis is in final negotiations to play the villain in Ocean’s 8. Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson all star in the film, with Bullock playing the leader of the gang and Lewis starring as her ex-lover and the target of the group's big heist.



A teaser-trailer was released for the upcoming science-fiction thriller movie The Circle, written and directed by James Ponsoldt and starring Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Patton Oswalt, Bill Paxton, Karen Gillan, and Ellar Coltrane. Based on the bestselling book by Dave Eggers, the story follows a young woman as she rises through the ranks of the world’s largest tech and social media company and is encouraged to live her life with complete transparency - but no one is really safe when everyone is watching.



TELEVISION



ABC has put in development Down in the Valley, an hourlong crime drama from writer-directors David Posamentier and Geoff Moore (Better Living Through Chemistry) and TriStar Television. The project is described as a darkly comedic hourlong crime drama and family soap told from the perspective of a talented female police officer who returns home to Napa Valley to support her struggling family after her troubled sister disappears and leaves her infant daughter in need of care. When she joins the Napa County Sheriff’s Department to make ends meet, she quickly realizes that this posh, bucolic, small town paradise has more than its fair share of big-city problems.



Fox has given a script commitment plus penalty to Basket Case, an hourlong drama based on the bestselling 2002 book by Carl Hiaasen. Basket Case centers on former hotshot investigative reporter Jack Tagger, who’s now an obituary writer — and a mess, "consumed by his own mortality. Joined by a dysfunctional group of friends, this redemptive crime drama uncovers the sun, fun, and seedy underpinnings of South Florida."



TNT and John Wells (Animal Kingdom) are joining forces again for the mystery thriller pilot The Deep Mad Dark. The story follows Detroit neurosurgeon Polly Lewis whose once closest friend comes home after living many years in a strange, off-the-grid community in Belize only to insinuate herself into Polly's life in audacious ways that threaten everything Polly has achieved.



Rowan Atkinson will reprise his role as Georges Simenon's eponymous Inspector in the new film Maigret's Dead Man, airing on ITV at 9pm on Christmas Day. Inspector Maigret receives calls from a mysterious man who seeks police protection, but when the man’s body turns up, Maigret's investigation takes him from the slums of Paris to a series of vicious, murderous attacks on three wealthy farms in Picardy.



CBS announced the premiere date for the upcoming Good Wife spin-off. The Good Fight will debut on CBS on Sunday, Feb. 19 at 8/7c, with all subsequent episodes airing exclusively on the network's streaming service, CBS All Access. Picking up one year after the events of the Good Wife finale, The Good Fight begins after a financial scam destroys the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie), and all the savings of her mentor, Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski). Forced out of Lockhart & Lee, Maia and Diane join Lucca Quinn's (Cush Jumbo) law firm. The Good Fight also stars Bernadette Peters, Justin Bartha, Sarah Steele, Delroy Lindo, Paul Guilfoyle and Erica Tazel.



The BBC released a trailer for Season 4 of Sherlock, with the first episode, "The Six Thatchers," premiering January 1 in both the U.S. and the U.K. The producers have also partnered with Fathom Events to broadcast the finale of the season (and possibly the series) on January 16 and January 18 in roughly 350 movie theaters all across the country, including 15 minutes of extra footage.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Noir on the Radio host Greg Barth welcomed crime fiction author Paul Bishop, who brings his experience as a nationally renowned interrogator and behaviorist during his 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department to his latest novel, Lie Catchers.



NPR's Art Silverman reads a lot of crime thrillers, and in the last year, he's noticed "The Internet of Things" seems to being playing a big role as the weapon of choice in mystery plots, as he explains in this All Things Considered clip.



Award-winning author Belinda Bauer joined Alex Dolan on the Thrill Seekers podcast to discuss her latest novel, The Beautiful Dead.

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Your Sunday Music Treat

I posted this not to long ago on Facebook, but I must share here because it's so amazing and entertaining and hysterical, too - it's Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" played by a 100+ year old fairground organ:

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Speaking of Murder

We owe many thanks to the late Ed Gorman (1941-2016) and Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) for the variety of collections and anthologies they edited through the years. I looked at bibliographies and counted at least 53 edited by Ed Gorman, and one source said Greenberg had edited over a thousand books. Ed was also one of the regular contributors to the Friday's Forgotten Books feature, as well as being an accomplished, award-winning author in his own right.



One of the Gorman/Greenberg collaborations were two books of interviews with well-known crime fiction authors, Speaking of Murder: Interviews with the Masters of Mystery and Suspense, published in July 1998, and Speaking of Murder II, which came out the following year.



I don't have the second volume, but the first is introduced by Ed, who tells the story of how a Chicago talk show producer once told him that writers made dull guests. Ed allowed as how he agreed, since "compared to cross-dressing prostitutes, mothers who sleep with their daughter's boyfriends, and UFO abductees who have mysteriously started to dress like Elvis, I guess most of us writers do lead pretty uneventful lives." He goes on to add that writers are interesting because they're quiet and introspective.



The 21 interviews in volume one include some of the best-known names in the genre, Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Ed McBain, Elizabeth George, Marcia Muller, Mickey Spillane, Ian Rankin, Tony Hillerman Sue Grafton, Anne Perry, each offering up insights into their inner world as well as their personal take on the writing process.



I'm always particularly fascinated by the early stages of a writer's career before they were successful, because that's the "danger time," the period when a writer is most likely to get discouraged and give up. From Carolyn G. Hart we learn that despite having 13 books published ("nothing exciting happened with any one of them") and teaching journalism, she was depressed and felt like an enormous failure. One agent told her no one was buying mysteries, but after a Mystery Writers of America seminar, she decided she was going to write the mystery she wanted to anyway, the result being her wildly popular Death on Demand series.



Tony Hillerman worked as a journalist for 17 years and taught for 21 years, writing a lot of nonfiction. One day he decided he wanted to write the great American novel and decided to start with a mystery because he didn't know if he could do characters or plotting well. He knew he could do descriptions, though, and chose the most beautiful setting he could think of so the readers would at least enjoy the background. He wrote it off and on, thinking it wasn't good enough to be published, until he finally got tired of it and sent it off to an agent. And the rest, as they say, is history.



Other random tidbits: From Bill Pronzini, "Critical, editorial and/or peer misunderstanding or dismissal of my work only makes me more determined to hang around."



From Mickey Spillane: "If you are a writer and you do a scene ten times, the last one probably will sound like the first one, and you're not going to get any better as you revise. The best stuff you put down comes right off the typewriter, bam! ... I don't have a big garbage problem."



From Ian Rankin: "I remember an early attempt at research (at Leith Police Station)...They asked me what the book was about, I said a child killer. What I hadn't realized was that a child had just been abducted in Leith and a murder room had been set up. So they took down my details and added me to their computer. I became supsect number 350 and spent more time answering their questions than they did mine."



From Sharyn McCrumb: "Storytelling was an art form that I learned early on. When I was a little girl, my father would come in to tell me a bedtime story, which usually began with a phrase like, 'Once there was a prince named Paris, whose father was Priam, the king of Troy . . . .' thus I got the Iliad in nightly installments, geared to the level of a four-year-old's understanding."



From Sue Grafton:  "I love mystery; it is my favorite form. It is sublimely difficult, and for my money, it encompasses everything that is interesting about writing because you need a strong story, strong characters, and mood and atmosphere. It is also the perfect vehicle for social commentary. Mysteries are about the psychology of crime and the psychology of human nature. It is a form so difficult that I know I'll never conquer it. So it's the perfect place to keep throwing myself into the abyss."

            

Mystery Melange

At the Wolfe Pack's annual Black Orchid Banquet (an event held each year to honor the birth anniversary of Rex Stout), the Nero Wolfe Award for the best American mystery novel was handed out to David C. Taylor for Night Life, the first novel in a series of historical mysteries set in 1954 NYC. Also announced was the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, which this year went to author Steve Liskow for "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma."  (HT to Classic Mysteries.)



Goodreads announced the winner of this year's Goodreads Choice Awards, with Stephen King's End of Watch winning in the Mystery/Thriller category. For the other finalists, click on over here.



Noir at the Bar returns to Glasgow on January 19, hosted by Jay Stringer and Russel D McLean. The lineup of participating authors announced thus far include Louise Welsh (The Bullet Trick and The Girl on the Stairs) and ES Thomson (Dark Asylum).



Also on January 19 in the UK, the Crime Writers Association's Forensic Outreach program will present its very first Candlelit Crime Writing Salon. For the inaugural event, Jade Chandler, the Editorial Director of Crime Thriller Fiction at Vintage, Penguin Random House UK, and Hellie Ogden, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit UK, will be on hand to share their expertise and insights into the world of publishing. Participants will also be able to enter a Two Sentence Crime Fiction Story Competition. For more information, check out this link.



Continuing the lists of end of the year "best books," The Library Journal posted its picks for the best mystery and thriller novels of 2016.



Mike Ripley's December issue of his Getting Away with Murder column for Shots Magazine has a recap of The Winter Lunch of the Margery Allingham Society; a look at crime fiction set against the backdrop of the Second World War; a mini-profile of author Walter Satterthwait who uses historical figures in his crime fiction such as the recent two-book series featuring Lizzie Borden; a look at international crime fiction, some holiday offerings, and much more.



Writer Vikas Datta profiled Sir Basil Home Thomson (1861-1939), who served as a colonial administrator, prison governor, intelligence officer, head of the CID at New Scotland Yard in the early 20th century — and was one of the first victims of an alleged sting. He was also among the first individuals to pen police procedurals.



Criminal Element took a look at the brutal real-life crime in Salem, Massachusetts, which inspired author Edgar Allan Poe to write his famous psychological murder mystery, "The Tell-Tale Heart."



The C.E.'s Dave Richards also profiled "5 Current Crime Comics You Should Be Reading."



The new issue of Crime Scene, the UK’s only glossy magazine devoted to crime fiction, includes a preview of the upcoming installment of the BBC's Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman; interviews with author Lee Child, creator of Jack Reacher, and Jamie Dornan, who played Paul Spector in the BBC’s TV series The Fall, and much more. (HT to Crime Fiction Lover.)



The latest issue of the online 'zine Mysterical-E is out, with 11 new short stories; a new Crime Chronicles column by F. G. Thorsen; a look at Fargo by Anita Page; Gerald So's TV wrap-up; Edward W. L. Smith's character study of Nero Wolfe; author interviews, and more.



Patti Abbott has a new flash fiction story at Shotgun Honey, titled "Chemo Demo."



This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Citation" by Jay Frankston.



In The Q&A roundup, The Strand Magazine interviewed Hank Phillippi Ryan about her Charlotte McNally series and the exact moment when she told her husband she wanted to write novels; the Mystery People welcomed author Adi Tantimedh to talk about his latest book, Her Nightly Embrace; and Criminal Element chatted with Duane Swierzynski about his painkiller-addicted, vigilante series, The Black Hood and what it's like writing novels vs. comics.

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