B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 193

Media Murder for Monday

Start off your Thanksgiving week with the latest crime drama news:



MOVIES



Awesomeness Films is adapting Teresa Toten’s YA novel Beware That Girl, eyeing Elle Fanning for the starring role. Cut from the same cloth as psychological thrillers Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, the film follows two girls at an elite Manhattan private school as they manipulate each other in a game of cat and mouse: Kate is a scholarship student who survives by lying her way into friendships with wealthy classmates while Olivia is the "it" girl of the Upper East Side with a dark and mysterious past. When a charming and handsome new faculty member joins their school, the girls are forced to bring their secrets to light.



Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey is in negotiations to take a critical role in White Boy Rick from director Yann Demange. The film is based on a spec script by Logan and Noah Miller that's based on the real-life story of Richard Wershe Jr. Set in the mid-1980s, the story follows Wershe Jr. when he became an undercover informant for local and federal law enforcement agencies at the age of 14 only later to become a major drug dealer, arrested after officers found 17 pounds of cocaine on him (at the age of 17), receiving a sentence of life in prison.  McConaughey is being eyed for the role of the senior Wershe, a blue-collar factory worker, struggling with the collapse of the auto industry as he tries to keep his family together.



Screenwriter Derek Kolstad is teaming up with Alan and Peter Riche to take on an adaptation of Tim Lebbon's novel Endure. Pitched as an intense and relentless action thriller in the vein of Deliverance and The Most Dangerous Game, the story centers on a female lead out to get revenge on a group that organizes human trophy hunts for the elite and wealthy, and may be responsible for the disappearance of her husband. It’s being pitched as a potential franchise-starter that could introduce the world to a female John Wick.



Laurence Fishburne is set to star alongside Royalty Hightower in the indie film Ruby In Murdertown, a crime thriller that marks the feature directorial debut of Leah Rachel, who also wrote the script. Production on the indie is slated for next year. Hightower, the 11-year old who had a breakout turn in the Sundance film The Fits (and was just nominated by the Gotham Awards in the Breakthrough Actor category), plays a young drifter driving around in her '77 Chevy Caprice, who decides to take action after her father (Fishburne) is framed for murder in a crime-ridden Midwest wasteland. 



Scott Adkins, who was recently seen in Doctor Strange, has joined the cast of Accident Man, based on a character from the graphic novel by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner. He joins Ray Stevenson, Ashley Greene, David Paymer, Amy Johnston, Ray Park and Michael Jai White in the film, which is directed by Jesse Johnson and set to go into production this month in the UK. Stu Small co-wrote the script (with Adkins) which follows the story of hitman Mike Fallon, known for making assassinations look like unfortunate accidents. His cavalier attitude changes the day his ex-girlfriend, Beth, is murdered by his own crew.



Forest Whitaker is in talks to join Johnny Depp in Labyrinth, the real-life drama based on the criminal investigation behind the murders of rap legends Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.  Whitaker would play a journalist who teams with Depp's disgraced LAPD detective, who has been unable to solve the mysterious deaths of two of hip-hop's biggest stars. The project is based on journalist Randall Sullivan’s book LAbyrinth - A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal.



At least one of the original male stars from Ocean's Eleven is headed to the (mostly) all -female spinoff in the franchise, Ocean's Eight. Matt Damon will have a bit part in the upcoming film, which stars an army of illustrious A-listers ranging from Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock to Anne Hathaway and Rihanna.



Mark Wahlberg, J.K. Simmons, John Goodman and Kevin Bacon go on a manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers in the new trailer for Patriots Day, based on the true story of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.



TELEVISION



Amazon Studios picked up the Hitchcockian spec script Holland, Michigan, with Peter Dealbert attached to produce. Written by Andrew Sodroski, the thriller centers on a housewife in the midwest who suspects her husband is having an affair, but as the story unfolds, she learns that her husband might be leading a secret life. Errol Morris was previously announced as director and Bryan Cranston, Naomi Watts, and Edgar Ramirez are attached to star. Amazon is looking to start production in the spring.



The team behind fantasy procedural drama Grimm are developing a new series for NBC titled Treasure. The mystery series follows a group of grad students in Washington, DC who accidentally uncovers a 40-year-old secret which leads them on a wild ride through real history as they attempt to unravel an unsolved murder, find hidden blood money, and avoid being killed by an assassin from the past.

 

Fox has put in development the legal drama Hawk from Rosewood executive producer Andy Berman and creator/executive producer Todd Harthan.Written by Berman, Hawk is described as a law show with a twist, centering on a con man with special skills, who tries to reconcile his criminal past when he becomes the in-house legal investigator for the glossy LA firm he almost took down.



BBC America greenlit an eight-episode dramatic thriller series Killing Eve to premiere in 2018. Based on the novellas by Luke Jennings, Killing Eve revolves around Villanelle, a psychopathic assassin, and Eve, the woman charged with hunting her down. Eve is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade security services operative whose desk-bound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. Villanelle is an elegant, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. The two fiercely intelligent women, equally obsessed with each other, go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse. 



In other news from The Beeb, AMC has closed a co-production deal with BBC Worldwide North America for BBC One's drama series McMafia created and written by Oscar-nominated Hossein Amini (Drive) and James Watkins (The Woman in Black) and starring James Norton (Grantchester, War & Peace). Inspired by Misha Glenny's 2008 best-selling book, the organized crime series that centers on the English-raised son of Russian exiles with a mafia history, who has spent his life trying to escape the shadow of that criminal past, building his own legitimate business and forging a life with his girlfriend Rebecca. But when his family’s past murderously returns to threaten them, Alex is drawn into the criminal world and forced to confront his values to protect those he loves. The series will also star David Strathairn, Juliet Rylance, Aleksey Serebryakov, Marie Shukshina, and Faye Marsay.



Meanwhile, UK's ITV has given the green-light to Bancroft, a four-part police thriller with two women at its heart: Elizabeth Bancroft, a respected DCI who has given her life to the police force and is trusted and adored by her colleagues; and DS Katherine Stevens, an ambitious, fast-tracked recruit whose assignment to cold cases disturbs the ghosts of the past including those among the lives of her colleagues.



Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU) is set to star in an unusual drama for Syfy titled Happy!. Meloni will play Nick Sax, once the top detective in a big city police department but after losing everything he holds dear, he becomes a hit man for the mob and uses his earnings for drugs and booze on the wrong side of town. Sax manages to survive a hit that goes horribly wrong...only to have his life changed forever when he begins to see an imaginary blue-winged horse.



One longtime cast member of Hawaii Five-0 is moving on, as Masi Oka, who plays Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Max Bergman on the CBS police procedural, will be leaving the show after seven seasons as a series regular. The show's creative team insist that Max's story arc will be given a proper conclusion on the show as he rides off to greener pastures. 



The CW network announced its midseason schedule, and things don't look good for the freshman show Frequency, which has essentially been canceled and will have its finale Wednesday, Jan. 25. Peyton List stars as NYPD Detective Raimy Sullivan who discovers she is able to speak to her deceased father Frank Sullivan in 1996 via his old ham radio. Her attempts to save his life trigger the "butterfly effect", changing the present in unforeseen ways and to fix the damage, she must work with her father across time to solve a decades-old murder case.



Fox released a trailer for the final season of Bones, which premieres January 3.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Libby Fischer Hellmann, who hosts the Second Sunday Crime podcast, had the tables turned as Authors on the Air host Pam Stack interviewed Libby about her thirteen thrillers and numerous short stories, as well as what it's like to be a writer in this brave new world of publishing.



The Thrill Seekers podcast welcomed Charles Belfoure,the bestselling author of The Paris Architect and House of Thieves, who is also an architect by profession.



A Stab in the Dark's Mark Billingham chatted with Michael Connelly as the two crime writers discussed U.S. crime drama, Raymond Chandler, jazz versus country and Michael's adaptations which star Titus Welliver, Matthew McConaughey and Clint Eastwood. Paul Hirons also spoke with to Rosewood's leading man Morris Chestnut, who reveals what it's like to work with co-star Jaina Lee Ortiz and what a location gives to a crime drama.



Crime Cafe host and author Debbi Mack interviewed thriller author Reece Hirsch on the Crime Cafe podcast.

 

THEATER



The Vertigo Theatre, located at the base of the Calgary Tower in the heart of downtown Calgary, is staging a production of Agatha Christie’s mystery classic The Hollow, as part of the company's BD&P Mystery Theatre series. The story follows an unhappy game of romantic follow-the-leader that explodes into murder one weekend at The Hollow, home of Sir Henry and Lucy Angkatell.  



A pairing of one-act thrillers by Agatha Christie, The Rats and The Patient, are heading to the West Valley Playhouse in Canoga Park, California, opening on November 26 with a run through December 18. The Rats is about an adulterous pair of lovers who are asked individually, to a London flat for drinks but soon realize that they have been set up as victims, while The Patient deals with a woman severely injured in a fall (an accident, attempted murder, or suicide?) who's unable to speak, but with the aid of Dr Ginsberg's ingenius device, tries to solve the attempted murder.



GAMES



Put your detective skills to the test with Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders, a point-and-tap mystery adventure that seamlessly moves participants through the classic murder novel in the shoes of Christie’s famous protagonist, Hercule Poirot. Players take on the role of Poirot, an eccentric Belgian detective with a Watson-like assistant and a sharp mind, and are tasked with figuring out the identity of a serial killer who chooses his victims based on the first three letters of the alphabet.

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Your Sunday Music Treat

In the Thanksgiving spirit, here is Percy Grainger's Harvest Hymn performed by the Joyful Company of Singers and City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Hickox:

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Murder at the Villa Rose

British author Alfred Edward Woodley (A.E.W.) Mason, born in 1865, spent much of his career serving in Parliament and in World War I where he worked in naval intelligence. Although his first novel was A Romance at Wastdale, Mason is credited with one of the earliest fictional police detective protagonists, Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté. The novel in which Hanaud made his debut was Murder at the Villa Rose, published in 1910.



Mason created Hanaud as an anti-Sherlock Holmes, at least in appearance, a short, broad man who resembles a "prosperous comedian." Hanaud's Watson-esque sidekick is Julius Ricardo, a fussy English dilettante. It's quite possible that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings (or possibly Christie's Mr. Satterthwaite) were modeled on the characters of French-speaking Hanaud and Englishman Ricardo.

The plot is based loosely on real cases (a wealthy French widow found murdered in her villa and an English shopkeeper murdered for jewels), and Mason also drew on procedural details from the memoirs of French policemen. Basically, when the elderly and eccentric Mme. D'Auvray is murdered in her home, the Villa Rose, and suspicion falls on her young companion, Celia Harland who's gone missing, Hanaud is called onto the case. But Hanaud solves the crime midway through the book, with the latter half told in flashback as the readers are left to piece together what exactly happened and are challenged to guess the solution to the murder mystery from the clues provided.

Several of Mason's works were later adapted for the silver screen, including four versions of Murder at the Villa Rose, a silent film in 1920 and two "talkies" from 1930 (one in English, one in French), and another in 1940. Mason went on to write four other books featuring Inspector Hanaud, but he's perhaps best known for his novel The Four Feathers (not a crime fiction novel per se), which is one of the most-filmed novels of the 20th century, including the latest incarnation from 2002 with Heath Ledger in the role of Harry Feversham.

A few interesting trivia bits about Mason: England's King George V was a friend and one of his most avid readers; although Mason penned little in the way of spy stories, he was a successful agent for years in Spain and Northern Mexico (it's said he may have foiled a German plot to move anthrax infected livestock into France during WWI); Mason was a failed actor, although he appeared in a small number of works on the London stage during the late 1880s; his story "The Crystal Trench" was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, one of the few episodes directed by Hitchcock himself; and Mason was offered a knighthood for his literary work, but declined it, saying such honors meant nothing to a childless man.

            

Mystery Melange

Ana Ballabriga and David Zaplan's Ningún Escocés Verdadero—a thriller that involves religion, mystery, art and deception—has won the Third Indie Literary Prize for Spanish-language authors worldwide, awarded by Amazon. More than 1,400 authors from 39 countries participated using Amazon’s self-publishing service Kindle Direct Publishing platform.



While we're on the subject of Spanish crime fiction, The Mystery People's "Director of Suspense," Molly Odintz, noted that 2016 has been a prolific year for crime fiction set in Spain, ranging from tales of 16th century rebellion against the Inquisition to 1970s punk protests of Franco’s fascist regime, which make fascinating backdrops to murder.



The Black Week Festival returns to Istanbul this December 1-3 for its second year of celebrating crime fiction. Last year's event was in honor of Agatha Christie, while this year's fest will commemorate Georges Simenon. The setting will be the historic and luxirious Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah, where Simenon stayed in 1933 on a visit that impressed him so much, he wrote two novels set in Turkey.



Moving over to India, Arjun Raj Gaind posits that "Indian historical crime fiction has come of age, as these sleuths prove."



The November issues of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine are now available. The EQMM issue, the penultimate in the 2016 celebration of the 'zine's 75th anniversary, honors those who have contributed to the mystery-fiction world in areas other than fiction writing: the historians, critics, reviewers, and biographers of the field; and AHMM offers up the theme of criminals and writers who employ misdirection, as a number of this month’s stories demonstrate.



The holiday season is a time for being thankful and giving to others, so you might take a look at Bookriot's list of "Bookish Charities You Can Donate to Right Now."



UK law enforcement officer Stefan Kyriazis pointed out "Seven huge mistakes crime novels make" regarding police procedures.



If you're a fan of mysteries, the UK, and remote settings, you'll have fun with a list compiled by author Ann Cleves of "Britain's 10 most mysterious islands."



This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "There is a Thief Amongst Us" by J.H. Johns, and the featured story at Beat to a Pulp is an excerpt from Christmas in the Lone Star State by Jason Manning.



In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element spoke with Rebecca Zanetti, author of Deadly Silence; SFF World talked with Bullet Gal author Andrez Bergen about the work, originally a 12-issue comic series that was turned into a novel; Benedict J. Jones took Paul D. Brazill's Short, Sharp Interview challenge about his latest book The Devil's Brew; Timothy Hallinan stopped by Julia Buckley's blog, Mysterious Musings, to discuss his Christmas mystery, Fields Where They Lay, featuring his burglar/private eye protagonist, Junior Bender; Big Issue North snagged writer, musician and journalist Doug Johnstone for a chat about his new novel, Crash Land; and the Mystery People welcomed Lance Hawvermale to discuss his new thriller Face Blind.

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Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

I came across some articles recently containing fascinating tales from historical crime blotters, and since true crime dramas are popular right now, I thought I'd share:

 

Ireland’s Eye mystery - A murder that gripped Victorian Dublin as the small, picturesque island off Howth was once synonymous with "one of the foulest and strangest murders that have ever been perpetrated" (according to The Weekly Irish Times in 1904), in a case involving infidelity and a secret double life.

 

Edgar Allan Poe's death is still his greatest unsolved mystery. The author's death was devoid of answers and filled with disturbing possibilities, with literary theorists and experts blaming everything from alcohol to carbon monoxide poisoning and even one doctor posthumously diagnosing Poe with rabies.

 

The Mystery Behind the Missing Corpse of one of the richest men ever: In the mid-19th century, Alexander Stewart ran a vast business of factories and stores selling clothing and dry goods in New York City, leaving behind a fortune worth $46 billion dollars in today's money. when he died in 1876. Two years later, the grave was unearthed by unknown persons, and Stewart's corpse was missing.   

 

 

            

Media Murder for Monday

I just updated the post to add the 22nd annual Critics’ Choice Award nominations, handed out by the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, which were just announced this morning:



AWARDS

The People v. O.J. Simpson led all programs in television nominations for the Critics’ Choice Awards (in the movie or limited series categories) with a program nomination and five acting nominations including lead actors Cuba Gooding Jr. and Courtney B. Vance, lead actress Sarah Paulson and supporting actors Sterling K. Brown and John Travolta. AMC's miniseries The Night Manager, based on the spy thriller by John le Carré, also landed five nominations (including lead actor Tom Hiddleston). The Best Drama crime drama nods included Better Call Saul and Mr. Robot, with acting nominees led by Rami Malek and Christian Slater, Mr. Robot; Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul; Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, The Americans; Liev Schreiber and Jon Voigt, Ray Donovan; Viola Davis, How to Get Away with Murder; and Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.



MOVIES



Warner Bros., Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment, and producer Denise Di Novi are teaming up to adapt Gin Phillips' thriller novel, Beautiful Things. The story is set over three hours and tells of a mother and son who are trapped in a zoo with a gunman on the loose.



Sylvester Stallone has signed on to play a Chicago mob boss in Idol's Eye, the upcoming heist thriller from French director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper). Stallone will replace Robert De Niro, who was originally attached to the film, and star alongside Robert Pattinson and Rachel Weisz. The story centers on Pattinson's thief who unknowingly steals a blue diamond from Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo (Stallone), setting off a war between the two men as they both try to keep one step ahead of the FBI. 



Imperative Entertainment acquired the film rights to Tangerine, Christine Mangan’s debut novel, with Scarlett Johansson attached to star. Publishing rights were sold to Ecco (HarperCollins) only last week for the psychological thriller, which is set against the simmering political climate of 1950s Morocco.



Jessica Chastain will star in and produce the drama Painkiller Jane, based on the graphic novel series by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada. In the original 1995 story, the lead character is an undercover police officer infiltrating a mob who doesn’t realize an explosive device has been planted on her. She’s severely injured, but her target manages to revive her and give her superhuman regenerative powers that turn her into the vigilante "Painkiller Jane." The graphic novel was previously adapted into a Syfy channel TV movie starring Emmanuelle Vaugier and later Kristanna Loken.



The cast for the Kenneth Branagh remake of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express just added another A-lister in the form of Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz. Branagh takes on the role of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, with other train passengers to be played by Johnny Depp (the man who is murdered), Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Michael Pena, Judi Dench, Leslie Odom Jr., and Josh Gad. Cruz’s role has yet to be revealed.



Focus Features announced it's moving the release of David Leitch’s The Coldest City starring Charlize Theron to July 28, 2017, two weeks earlier that originally slated. The spy thriller now will bow against Sony’s Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower and Disney’s untitled live-action fairy tale film. Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a top-level MI6 spy who heads to Berlin on the eve of the Wall’s collapse to take down an espionage ring that just killed an undercover agent, and has to form an uneasy alliance with Berlin station chief David Percival (James McAvoy).



Lionsgate has released the trailer for its upcoming psychological thriller Solace, directed by Afonso Poyart with a script from Sean Bailey and Ted Griffin. The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Abbie Cornish and Colin Farrel in the tale of a retired physician with psychic powers who partners with an FBI special agent to stop a vicious murderer.



A24’s Free Fire, the thriller directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Oscar-winner Brie Larson, is now scheduled for release nationwide on March 17. The distributor released a poster for the action film, which also stars Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Armie Hammer and Sharlto Copley, that's set in a warehouse full of guns after an arms deal goes wrong in 1978 Boston.



The heavy metal group Slipknot and Mark Neveldine, co-director of the cult action film Crank, partnered together to adapt the hyper-violent graphic novel, Officer Downe, for the big screen. A trailer was released for the film which stars Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) as Officer Downe, a deceased police officer resurrected from the dead to keep fighting crime.



Live by Night got its final trailer ahead of its Christmas Day launch date. The thriller is based on the book by Dennis Lehane and stars Ben Affleck (who also directs) in the Prohibition Era story centered around a group of individuals and their dealings in the world of organized crime.



TELEVISION



Amazon has landed a drama series package from David O. Russell that stars Oscar winners Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore. The untitled drama, said to be a mafia crime project, received a two-season order of eight episodes each, with Russell himself serving as writer-director.



USA Network is jumping into the true crime drama genre with a pilot order for Unsolved, with the pilot directed and exec produced by Anthony Hemingway, who spearheaded The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Written by Kyle Long (Suits), Unsolved is based on the experiences of former LAPD Detective Greg Kading, author of the book Murder Rap: The Untold Story of Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations, who led multiple law-enforcement task forces investigating the murders.



ABC announced it has decided not to move forward with the struggling Hayley Atwell series Conviction. The network will go ahead and produce and air all thirteen episodes that were initially ordered, but has no plans of ordering additional episodes at this time. ABC had also previously trimmed the episode order for fellow freshman legal drama Notorious from thirteen to nine. Conviction stars Atwell as a former first daughter who is blackmailed into running the Conviction Integrity Unit, an organization dedicated to investigating and overturning wrongful convictions. Shawn Ashmore, Merrin Dungey and Emily Kinney also star.  In an interview with TVGuide.com, Dungey, who plays Conviction Integrity Unit investigator Maxine Bohen, said that the finale will be "open-ended."



The CW has put in development Criminal Magic, an hourlong drama from iZombie writer Graham Norris, creator/executive producer Rob Thomas and executive producers Danielle Stokdyk and Dan Etheridge. The Los Angeles-set project is described as "The Departed meets The Vampire Diaries," and revolves around two warring street gangs who fight the cops and each other to corner the market on the most lucrative contraband of all: magic. A young woman hiding spectacular magical powers and an undercover cop must try to survive this glamorous world of speakeasies, crime and danger. 



Jonathan Howard has booked a recurring role on TNT’s drama series The Last Ship, based on William Brinkley’s novel. The story chronicles the aftermath of a global catastrophe that nearly decimates the world’s population where Captain Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) and his crew must confront the reality of their new existence in a world where they may be among the few remaining survivors. Howard will play James Fletcher, a British Royal Navy commander and MI-6 agent who must work with the crew of USS Nathan James to recover stolen items that are crucial to the survival of the planet.



The Good Wife and The Walking Dead alum Dallas Roberts has been cast opposite Felicity Huffman on the upcoming third installment of John Ridley’s ABC anthology drama series American Crime. Roberts will recur as Carson Hesby, the husband of Jeanette Hesby (Huffman) in the new season that will explore labor issues, economic divides and individual rights in North Carolina.



Leonard Roberts (American Crime Story: The People v O.J. Simpson) has joined the cast of TNT’s drama series Major Crimes for a key recurring role in Season 5 that may turn into a regular position if the series is picked up for a sixth season. Roberts will play charismatic Commander Leo Mason, who heads up the Criminal Intelligence Division of the LAPD and, along with Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), is being considered for the job of New Assistant Chief.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



John Grisham stopped by the Diane Rehm show on NPR to talk about his new book, The Whistler.



Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed Mike McCrary, to discuss his noir crime fiction novels, "stories about questionable people who make questionable decisions."



Ryan Aldred was also a guest of Authors on the Air recently, discussing his debut novel Rum Luck.



The latest Crime and Science Radio podcast was titled "Should We Abandon Use of Lie Detector Tests As Junk Science?" and features an Interview With Morton Tavel, M.D.

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Your Sunday Music Treat

Most people know Andrew Lloyd Webber for his mega-blockbuster musicals, but did you also know he wrote a Requiem? Here's the "Pie Jesu" section performed by Sarah Brightman, Paul Miles-Kingston, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Winchester Cathedral Choir, conducted by Lorin Maazel (in a music video created in 1985):

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Detective Fiction

Today is Friday, which means it's time for another edition of the Patti Abbott's Friday's "Forgotten" Books." Although too recent (2005) to be forgotten per se, Charles J. Rzepka's Detective Fiction (Cultural History of Literature) is an interesting read and not just for its quasi-intended audience, college students.

Author Rzepka teaches English at Boston University, but one of his specialties is also detective fiction. In addition to this book, he's published several articles on subjects from Elmore Leonard to Charlie Chan, and most of his works-in-progress are related to detective fiction, including a biographical essay on Earl Derr Biggers (creator of Charlie Chan); an essay on the theme of "nostos" in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories; another on the detective fiction of Todd Downing (part-Choctaw writer, editor, and translator; and two book length studies: of the coterminous rise of formal detective fiction and the development of the lyric from Romanticism to Modernism (working title Lyrical Forensics), and the origins of ethnic and multicultural detective literature in the interwar period, 1920-1940, titled Two-Faced.

Yes, this is more of a scholarly look at the history of detective fiction—focusing primarily on the UK and America up to the latter part of the 20th century—but it's also entertaining. Thomas Paul (Modernism/Modernity) even went so far as to call it "cool, savvy, and utterly compelling." What is most interesting to me is the premise, i.e., the cultural context in which Rzepka places both authors and readers as the genre and society evolve together. As Rzepka points out, it's not surprising that the publication in 1841 of what is considered the first modern detective story, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morge" coincided with the growing tension between religion and the physical sciences, where path-breaking discoveries were giving rise ultimately to modern forensics.

Another cause-and-effect in the genre's history took place in England where English sympathizers with the American Revolution were beginning to agitate for reforms in the "old corruption" of rule and law enforcement by the landed classes. One such sympathizer, William Godwin (1756-1836) went on to write the book Caleb Williams (1794, a Forgotten Book in its own right), considered one of the first English detective novels, which featured a murder, cover-up, and framing and execution of two innocent people by a wealthy landowner.  Rzepka adds, "Godwin intended to show how, given the current political situation, absolute power corrupts turning the former into outright bullies or conscience-tormented hypocrites and the latter into obsequious toadies or celebrity-obsessed curiosity-seekers." (Sound familiar? Some things never change.) Caleb Williams was a portent of things to come in other ways: "the terror and mystery of crime; the obsessive nature of suspicion; the paranoid thrills of flight, pursuit, arrest, and escape; and the daring use of incognito and disguise."

Rzepka has studies on Holmes, the Golden Age of Detection, and the rise of hard-boiled fiction in America, all tightly woven into the fabric of their particular time and place in history. The book isn't exactly "light" reading, but having read it once, I look forward to revisiting it again in the not-too-distant future and hopefully absorb more of the details I missed the first time around. Such nonfiction books are often quite neglected in general (although personally I enjoy them), but this particular nonfiction title is definitely recommended.