B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 195

Quote of the Week

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FFB: Ah, Sweet Mystery

Celestine Sibley (1914–1999) worked as a journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for more than 50 years, covering the James Earl Ray trial, among her many assignments. She penned more than 10,000 columns, as well as many popular essays on southern culture.



She had a bit of a detour in the early 1950s, working as a Hollywood correspondent and interviewing celebrities like Clark Gable, Walt Disney, and Jane Russell. It was at this point she turned her hand to writing pulp stories, moonlighting as a True Confession and True Detective reporter and selling stories with faux-shocking headlines like "I Wanted to Die" and "I Was a Junkie."



Perhaps motivated by her pulp-experiences, she decided to switch to writing books. Those efforts resulted in the publication of The Malignant Heart (1958), the first book in her mystery series featuring newly-widowed Atlanta newspaper reporter-columnist Kate Mulcay. However, she didn't write her second Kate Mulcay novel, Ah Sweet Mystery, until 1991, some 33 years later, which she followed up with four more before her death.



Bill Kovach, a former editor of The Journal-Constitution, referred to her newspaper writing as "a country-girl-come-to-the-city kind of column" and that Sibley "was the last voice of the white-glove, tea-and-apple-blossom set that had not a sharp edge on it.'' I think that aptly sums up the style of writing in Ah Sweet Mystery.



The novel begins with Mulcay living by herself in a rural log cabin with some reminiscing on life with her husband Benjy, a member of the Atlanta police force who died from cancer. One of the friends Mulcay has made in the area is the elderly Miss Willie, devoted stepmother to the adult Garney Wilcox. Wilcox is a land developer hated by just about everyone who is pushing his stepmother into a nursing home, egged on by his equally-unpleasant wife Voncile.



When Garney is found poisoned, electrocuted and bludgeoned, Miss Willie confesses to the murder, but Mulcay doesn't buy it for a minute. With the help of Atlanta PD Sergeant Mellie Alvarez and some Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald songs, the feisty Mulcay sets out to exonerate Miss Willie and finds that the traditional southern culture in Fulton County hides dark secrets of incest, rape and drug-running.

 

If you're looking for more sleuthing and procedural elements, this novel isn't for you. It's more of a social commentary with detailed painting of the place and the characters who populate it. The mystery takes a back seat, the story ends somewhat abruptly, and the dialect gets laid on perhaps a bit thick at times. However, if you can get past all of that, you will enjoy Sibley's leisurely, folksy style.

            

Coffee Table Crime

 
Before the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 9-11 attacks, New York City was the epicenter of other violent acts. In 1920, Wall Street was targeted by a bomb that killed 39 and injured hundreds; in 1940, a bomb killed two NYPD officers at the World's Fair in Queens; in that same year, George "Mad Bomber" Metesky embarked on a 16-year reign of terror that kept New Yorkers on edge until Metesky was finally caught; and in 1975, the bombing of Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan killed four and injured 63, an act later discovered to be the handiwork of a Puerto Rican nationalist group.
 
Fans of true crime and photojournalism, as well as urban historians, crime buffs, and even crime fiction authors will appreciate a reference book hot off the presses from Hachette that tells those tales and more. Robert Mladinich, an investigative journalist and retired NYPD detective who was named Cop of the Year in the South Bronx in 1985, Bernard J. Whalen, a long-serving lieutenant in the NYPD, and crime reporter Philip Messing have teamed up to cull through over 175 years of true crimes in the NYPD's police blotter. The result is Undisclosed Files of the Police: Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the Present, which looks through some of the most horrific and shocking moments in crime but also turns a lens on the evolution of one of the oldest and largest police departments in the U.S.
 
From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this visual history is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation: arson, gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings. Some of the highlighted cases include:


Architect Stanford White's fatal shooting at Madison Square Garden over his deflowering of a teenage chorus girl.
The anarchist bombing of Wall Street in 1920, which killed 39 people and injured hundreds more with flying shrapnel.
The 1928 hit at the Park Sheraton Hotel on mobster Arnold Rothstein, who died refusing to name his shooter.
Kitty Genovese's 1964 senseless stabbing, famously witnessed by dozen of bystanders who did not intervene.
Son of Sam, a serial killer who eluded police for months while terrorizing the city, was finally apprehended through a simple parking ticket.
The Great Taxicab Robbery of 1912 that was solved with the help of Isabella Goodwin, who became the country's first female detective.


The 320-page chronological tour in coffee table format prevents each case in a succinct but nonetheless riveting manner that offers a step-by-step overview of the events, from the discovery of the crime to how the police went about trying to solve them (and sometimes not succeeding). The narrative offers up a personal take on the otherwise horrific material by letting readers know what happened to the accused after the trial and later in life.
 
The project is well-timed to take advantage of the recent true-crime trend in popular culture, particularly with television documentaries such as those on Investigation Discovery and the award-winning Serial and Making of a Murderer series. In addition to essays and behind-the-scenes analyses of investigations, there are more than 500 photographs rarely seen outside the archives along with mugshots, courtroom sketches, newspaper clippings, and even paintings from the earliest cases that predated modern documentary techniques.
 
For more information and a calendar of book signing events and talks from the authors, visit the book's official website and Facebook page.
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Mystery Melange, Halloween Edition

The winner of the inaugural $25,000 MysteriousPress.com Award was the action-packed heist novel by Mike Cooper, The Downside. Mysterious Press President and CEO Otto Penzler added, "We got some incredible manuscripts but in the end, Mike’s story was everything we were looking for: Fast, exciting, and well-written."



The Irish Book Awards’ Crime Fiction Shortlist was announced yesterday. The list includes: Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard; Little Bones by Sam Blake; Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent; The Constant Soldier by William Ryan; The Drowning Child by Alex Barclay, and The Trespasser by Tana French. (HT to Declan Burke.)



The of the first-ever Whistler Independent Book Awards recognizing self-published Canadian authors were announced at the 15th annual Whistler Writers Festival Oct. 13–16. Ontario writer Gerry Fostaty won the crime-fiction category for Stage Business.



Cecilia Ekbäck has won the 2016 Historical Writers' Association's Goldsboro Debut Crown for her Nordic noir thriller, Wolf Winter, which tells the story of a vicious murder that threatens to tear apart an isolated community during the coldest of winters.



Coming up on November 5 in Paris, the American University of Paris is sponsoring a Noire is the New Noir one-day conference which will tackle the topic of the serie noire and the Franco-American detective tradition.



The deadline is approaching for submissions to the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First competition. If you are an unpublished author and have a cozy mystery manuscript lying around, send it along by November 15 for a chance to be published by Minotaur. Previous winners have included Donna Andrews and Julia Spencer-Fleming.



Janet Rudolph has a listing of Halloween-themed crime fiction on her Mystery Fanfare blog so you can spare the candy and get both tricks and treats from some scary reads.



Did you know that Charles Dickens' pet bird inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"?



In another bit of macabre historical literary lore, the gun that the poet Verlaine used to shoot fellow poet Rimbaud is up for auction at Christies and may fetch up to €60,000 (about $65,000).



Author Ian Rankin (the Inspector Rebus series) chose his list of the best British thriller movies for The Telegraph.



Also in the spirit of Halloween, Electric Literature asked several authors—including James Hannaham, Lynne Tillman, and Teddy Wayne—to share their favorite scary stories.



Bookriot chimed in with "5 Halloween-Appropriate Books to Read If You Don’t Like Horror."



David Morell (the Rambo series, spy novels, and various horror works) joined Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! to discuss what he has learned in his more than four decades as an author.



Milwaukee Public Television is hosting Murder at the Mansion in January with mystery writer Jack Pachuta and the Milwaukee Entertainment Group creating an interactive murder mystery set in 1936 England after the death of King George V. Ask the suspects questions, explore the nooks and crannies of the mansion, then work alone or in a group and solve this nefarious crime.



James Lasdun profiled the "Genius of a Mid-Century Classic  How Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley Rises from Genre to Myth."



Author Tana French selected "6 mind-blowing mystery books" for The Week.



The Guardian's Ben Child scared up a list of "the most horrifying movie monsters of all time," from Alien to Nosferatu.



The ghoulishly delightful new issue of Yellow Mama is out, with plenty of "escape, poetry and some of the most macabre horror stories, ever."



The Mystery Lovers' Kitchen's Cleo Coyle will teach you how to make a Candy Apple Cocktail for Halloween.



Which slasher film killer are you? Take the quiz over at Criminal Element to find out.



This week's devilishly good crime poem at the 5-2 is "Cardboard Justice"  by Karlo Silverio Sevilla



In the Q&A roundup, BK Stephens discussed her young adult mystery novel, Fighting Chance, with Amy M. Reade; and Rob Hart sat down with the Mystery People to chat about his Ash McKenna series.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest in crime drama news to start off your week:

MOVIES



Daniel Radcliffe has landed the starring role in Beast of Burden. The film focuses on Sean Haggerty (Radcliffe), a character who’s used to lying and keeping secrets from everyone, including the feds, the cartel, and even his wife, Julie. But now he’s ready to get out of this illegal business — after he finishes carrying 55 pounds of cocaine across the border in a small aircraft.



Billy Flynn, Chris Mulkey, and D.B. Sweeney have boarded D.O.A. Blood River, the thriller written and helmed by Stephen C. Sepher. Inspired by Rudolph Mate’s 1950 noir thriller, the film follows pharmaceutical salesman Sam Collins as he travels from Los Angeles to a small town in Louisiana to sign the business deal of his career with Dr. Alexander, a doctor specializing in Vaccine Research. However, the outcome is not at all what he expected



Josh Gad has joined the all-star cast of Fox's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. The story centers on a murder onboard the famous train and introduces Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh), who must solve the case while being surrounded by duplicitous passengers. Gad will play Hector McQueen, a skittish man who drinks too much and works as an assistant/translator to Depp's character. 



Ronnie Gene Blevins has been cast in Death Wish, the remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson film. Bruce Willis will take on the starring role about a father seeking justice after his family is torn apart by a violent act. Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Mike Epps, Kimberly Elise and Camilla Morrone are set to co-star. 



TELEVISION



Lee Child is on a roll with his broadcast projects. Just as Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is heading to theaters, NBC has given a script commitment to Last Hope, a drama from Child, former CSI executive producer Andrew Dettmann, EuropaCorp Television, and Universal TV. With a script penned by Dettmann, the project centers on Hope Wesson, a highly trained but disenfranchised former military police investigator leading a team of fallen heroes who get justice for people with nowhere else to turn.



CBS is developing Stingray, a thriller drama from James Patterson, David Marshall Grant (Code Black) and Timberman-Beverly Productions (Elementary), based on Patterson’s upcoming book (which he co-wrote with Duane Swierczynski). Patterson also sold a cop drama based on his best-selling book series NYPD Red (co-written by Marshall Karp) to ABC with writer Michael Horowitz (Burn Notice). Stingray is described as a fun, adrenaline-fueled drama in the tradition of Mission: Impossible and Ocean’s Eleven that centers on a group of ex-con artists who work for the FBI, while NYPD Red centers on the eponymous special division of NYPD tasked with investigating Manhattan’s highest profile crimes.



NBC has put in development the hacker drama Sneakers from former The Mentalist executive producer Tom Szentgyorgyi, that's based on the 1992 movie starring Robert Redford. The storyline centers on computer hacker Martin, who heads a group of specialists that test the security of various San Francisco companies. Martin is approached by two National Security Agency officers who ask him to steal a newly invented decoder, but Martin and his team soon discover the black box can crack any encryption code, posing a huge threat if it lands in the wrong hands. 



CBS has canceled dramas BrainDead and American Gothic after one season each. The Washington, D.C.-set political horror satire BrainDead marked the first post-The Good Wife series for showrunners Robert and Michelle King and starred Elizabeth Winstead, Danny Pino, Tony Shalhoub and Aaron Tveit. American Gothic starred Juliet Rylance and Justin Chatwin in a family drama with a serialized whodunnit twist. The cancellations came the same day CBS handed out full-season orders to three of its new fall shows including crime dramas Bull, starring Michael Weatherly, and MacGyver, starring Lucas Till.



How to Get Away with Murder star Viola Davis is attached to produce thriller drama Head Games for ABC. The series, which is being adapted by Chuck Rose based on his book of the same name, follows Park Avenue psychiatrist Dr. Jonah Hoffman, who is approached by the government to come work for them as a spy, feeding them crucial intel on one of his patients, a potential national security threat. As Jonah enters a duplicitous world filled with danger and paranoia, he begins to realize the only way to save the world is trust himself and take action.



Shades of Blue star Jennifer Lopez is reteaming with NBC for a new series, C.R.I.S.P.R., with a script order. The series is a procedural with a futuristic twist and has Bates Motel’s Anthony Cipriano attached to the script. The title stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" and is set five minutes into the future, focusing on the crime of DNA hacking.



Tony Scott's 1998 film Enemy of the State is getting a sequel series penned by Morgan Davis Foehl for Jerry Bruckheimer and ABC Studios. The drama is set two decades after the film that starred Will Smith and Gene Hackman and follows an idealistic female attorney who must partner with a hawkish FBI agent to stop a global conspiracy that threatens to expose dark secrets and personal mysteries.

 

Fox has put in development a legal drama from producer Neal Baer and writer Robert Specland. The untitled project is set in the San Francisco Bay Area and centers on two attorneys from opposite upbringings facing off on opposite sides of the courtroom, and a young woman between them — an ex-con who joins the law firm in the hopes of putting her troubled past behind her. It explores the many shades of grey in the legal system and keeps you guessing, down to the last minute of each episode, letting the viewer be the judge before the verdict is revealed.



In yet another legal drama pickup, CBS has given a script commitment plus penalty to Incognito, an action-driven legal procedural from writer Rashad Raisani and producers Will Packer and Adam Rifkin. Written by Raisani, Incognito is based on the Swedish series Inkognito and follows a crusading U.S. Attorney who leads a skilled team of misfits into life and death situations to find critical evidence the prosecution needs to even the playing field with the corrupt and the mighty.



The third season of American Crime Story will examine the shocking July 1997 assassination of legendary designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion by sociopath and serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who eight days later killed himself in a house boat as the Miami Dade police force moved in to capture him. The episodes will be based on the book Vulgar Favors by Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth, with Tom Rob Smith (London Spy) set to write the first two and multiple subsequent episodes.



SundanceTV has ordered the four-part true crime documentary series Murder in the Heartland: In Cold Blood Revisited (working title), a reexamination of the crime chronicled in Truman Capote's landmark book and Oscar-nominated film. The series is set to premiere next year, which marks its 50th anniversary of the book.



Veteran showrunner Neal Baer and writer Cathryn Humphris are developing an untitled legal drama at Fox that follows an FBI task force consisting of a cop, lawyer, psychologist, and social media expert as they travel across the country to investigate and solve hate crimes. 



Freeform canceled the crime drama Guilt after just one season. Starring Billy Zane, Daisy Head, Emily Tremaine, Kevin Ryan, Cristian Solimeno and Naomi Ryan, the whodunit series was inspired by real-life murder cases such as those involving Amanda Knox, JonBenet Ramsay and Casey Anthony.

Danish crime author Anna Grue’s Nordic noir Dan Sommerdahl book series is being developed for Denmark’s TV2 with The Bridge (Bron/Broen) co-creator Nikolaj Scherfig attached as head writer. Set in a picturesque coastal town, each episode will revolve around a murder case solved by the titular Dan Sommerdahl and his best friend, Detective Superintendent Fleming Torp. 



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



This week, The Reading Life on WWNO (New Orleans Public Radio) chatted with Tana French, who continues to chronicle the adventures of the Dublin Murder Squad in her new book, The Trespasser, and also James Lee Burke, creator of Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux, who writes about his native Houston in The Jealous Kind.



The latest Suspense Radio podcast featured a trio of bestselling authors: Jon Land, Tasha Alexander and Daniella Bernett.

Mark Billingham, author and host of A Stab in the Dark podcast, interviewed David Morrissey, star of BBC's The Missing, State of Play, Sky1's Thorne and The Governor from The Walking Dead. Paul Hirons also spoke with Lee Child about the forthcoming Jack Reacher novel and film.  



THEATER



The Baltimore Choral Arts Society will present the Baltimore premiere of "Dark Bells," an Edgar Allan Poe-based work for the unusual combination of solo viola, chorus, and orchestra by Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff. The viola soloist will be longtime Baltimore Symphony Orchestra member Peter Minkler, who commissioned the work, which is based on three of Poe's poems: "The Bells," "Eldorado," and "Alone." Click here for more information and tickets about the event, scheduled for October 30.

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Quote of the Week

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FFB: Monkey Puzzle

Paula Gosling was born Paula Osius in 1939, the daughter of an inventor in Detroit, Michigan. She tried her hand at poetry at Wayne State University and later at a Detroit advertising agency, but wasn't happy. In 1964, she headed to England in search of romance, intrigue and adventure, eventually meeting her husband, Christopher Gosling, whom she married in 1968.



Although divorced after only nine years of marriage, she kept the Gosling surname as she started writing her books. Perhaps she felt she owed him her literary start, because it was loneliness when he was away working that led her to start writing to pass the time. The result was A Running Duck in 1974, which won the CWA's John Creasey Award for the best first novel of the year and was named in 1990 as one of the CWA's Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.



Many books followed, mostly standalones at first, including one paranormal book penned under the name Ainslie Skinner. Eventually she created her first series, with Detective Chief Inspector Luke Abbot, and another, the Blackwater Bay series, she set near the Great Lakes with Sheriff Matt Gabriel as protagonist. A third series, which she also set in the U.S., was launched in 1985 with Monkey Puzzle, a police procedural centered around homicide Lieutenant Jack Stryker, which won the 1985 CWA Gold Dagger Award.



Money Puzzle takes place primarily around Grantham University in Ohio, when one of the English professors, Aiken Adamson, is murdered and his tongue cut out. The professor was despised by all of his colleagues for collecting and hoarding secrets about them like the human equivalent of a thieving magpie. Hours before his death, all of the department members were with Adamson at a sherry reception, giving each of them opportunity for murder, in addition to the various motives they had—personal and professional rivalries, envy, sexual intrigue and blackmail.



As Detective Stryker digs deeper into the case, he realizes he has secret ties of his own to one of the professors, Kate Trevorne and starts to fall for her, despite the fact her boyfriend and fellow English prof is the prime suspect. Although at first, the murder is considered a crime of passion (the victim was a homosexual), the case soon takes a different turn when the Chairman of the Department is attacked and his ear cut off. Stryker, recovering from pneumonia, is doggedly determined to nail the culprit no matter what it takes, but when Kate is attacked and the murderer attempts to gouge out one of her eyes, the case becomes personal.



Gosling does a good job of portraying the sometimes cut-throat world of academia with its petty squabbles, jockeying for position and inter-departmental feuds. The characters are also relatively well drawn, although some might find a few cliches that date the book, i.e., the sleazy homosexual (complete with mirrors on the ceiling), an alcoholic Vietnam vet and a cop-hating young professor who participated in campus riots in the 70s. The writing carries you along at a suspenseful clip, but it can also show hints of Gosling's poetry background, like this excerpt following a snowfall that is appropriate for the recent winter weather we've been having:

He loved the city like this, hushed and briefly upended in it headlong run to destruction, mantled with a transient beauty that hid all the dirt and slowed all the hate. In two miles he passed only four cars, and the drivers smiled as they edged past one another in the rutted, twinkling streets. The snow made them momentary partners in adversity, witnesses of that fleeting moment in time when nobody had spoiled anything. Yet.

As a side note, Gosling's novel A Running Duck, written in 1974 (also published as Fair Game), was adapted into two separate films, one starring Sylvester Stallone, titled Cobra, and the second starring Cindy Crawford, titled Fair Game. Unfortunately, like a lot of books-to-film, the results were less than Oscar-worthy; the Stallone version was nominated for a Razzie in 1986 for worst screenplay and Metacritic listed the Cindy Crawford flick as one of its five worst movies based on a novel.



Not that Gosling was particularly worried. In a People interview, she noted she had optioned the film to Warner Bros, for a "mid-five-figure" sum and almost forgotten about it when a friend of her son's alerted her to the fact Gosling's name was in the Stallone film' credits. At the time, she said "I haven't really taken it in yet. It's all very exciting."

            

Mystery Melange

The crime fiction community lost one of its own last week when author, editor, and blogger Ed Gorman died following a long battle with cancer. Ed penned dozens of mystery novels, including the Sam McCain, Jack Dwyer and Dev Conrad series. Tributes have been pouring in since about Ed's decency and his tireless support for and encouragement of newbie authors. You can read some of those tributes via The Rap Sheet, Bill Crider, Mike Stotter, Todd Mason, James Reasoner, Mystery Fanfare, and the Cedar Rapids Gazette. If you'd like to celebrate Ed's life and literary legacy, the Mystery File has an extensive bibliography, and Beat to a Pulp is featuring one of Ed's stories, titled "Stalker."



Sadly, mystery author Larry Karp also died this past week. Karp was the author of medical thrillers and novels based on music, especially ragtime, and lived in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Puget Sound's Sisters in Crime chapter had a tribute on Facebook.



The Noir at the Bar events are coming at a fast and furious pace, which means I sometimes miss a few. But this one looks particularly fun, to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 3 and hosted by Night Owl Mysteries and Crimespree Magazine. The featured authors scheduled to appear include Dana Camera, Matthew Clemens, Ed Kurtz, Nicholas Petrie, Todd Robinson, and Johnny Shaw. Plus, in honor of this Noir at the Bar also being the launch for the Crimespree beer, Cherry Moon, everyone buying a Cherry Moon during the event will get a free hardcover book with their beer.



Irish crime writers Alan Glynn and Declan Hughes will take part in a commemoration of Raymond Chandler's Waterford connections at the city's annual Imagine Arts Festival on October 23, reading from their work and discussing Chandler's influence on their writing and contemporary crime fiction.  



Last week, the CWA handed its annual Dagger Awards, with Bill Beverly's novel Dodgers being the big winner, awarded both the Goldsboro Gold for the best crime novel and John Creasey New Blood for the best debut crime novel. Don Winslow's The Cartel was also honored with the Ian Fleming Steel for the best crime thriller of the year. For the full list of winners, check out the Eurocrime blog or the official CWA website.



Book Riot is celebrating the launch of its new biweekly newsletter for all things mystery and thriller, Unusual Suspects, with a giveaway open through October 23 (the winner will receive 10 new mystery and thriller releases). Unusual Suspects will include crime fiction news, reviews, and interviews, with the first issue scheduled for November.



In honor of its 75th anniversary, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine recently held an anniversary symposium. For those of you who weren't able to attend, EQMM has since made the video and audio from the first panel available online, and you can read more about the celebration via Vicki Weisfeld's piece for Crime Fiction Lover.



Forty years ago, music writer Paul Nelson interviewed the iconic crime fiction author Ross Macdonald (a/k/a Kenneth Millar), creator of one of the most famous fictional private eye in literary history, Lew Archer. Their interaction resulted in forty hours of interviews that have been collected into a book by Kevin Avery and Jeff Wong, and LitHub arranged for Avery to speak with one of Macdonald's surviving friends, New York Times bestselling writer Jonathan Lethem, about Macdonald and how the book came together.  



Ahead of Halloween, the AMC Network is is celebrating the 20th anniversary of FearFest, one of TV’s longest-running annual thematic programming celebrations. As part of the big bash, the network will offer the largest collection of horror and genre film titles in its history.



For the next two weekends, Genesee Country Village & Museum will bring some of Edgar Allan Poe's wonderfully creepy tales to life with its Spirits of the Past theatrical tours. Using the historic village as its canvas, this 75-minute, all-new theatrical tour revisits chilling scenes from such works as "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Berenice," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" and others. Costumed guides lead visitors by candlelight through village where they encounter short vignettes in and around the historic homes.



Strand Magazine compiled a listing of "Ten Great Books by Up-and-Coming Crime Fiction Writers," from traditional hard-boiled to pulpy southern noir to "drug dealers doing battle with inhuman gangbangers."



Lithub profiled "the man who invented bookselling as we know it," James Lackington. If you've ever bought a remaindered book at deep discount, or wandered through the over-stocked shelves of a cavernous bookstore, or spent an afternoon lounging in the reading area of a bookshop, then you’ve experienced some of the ways that Lackington revolutionized bookselling in the late 18th century.



Author Louise Millar talked about the "The creepy truth about being a female crime writer" for the Telegraph.



Placing Literature has created two new digital interactive literary maps: Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes. Site visitors can follow the adventures of Oliver Twist or Edwin Drood in Victorian London and see the locations that the Baker Street detective visited in his stories. The website has been creating literary maps since 2013 and has already created maps for Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, New York City, and others, with more than 3,600 literary places of interest mapped on its site.



Really neat idea: at one store in Ypsilanti, a working-class town just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, kids get a $2 discount if they read a book aloud to their barber.



Hopefully, you'll get to see them in person, but in the meantime, here's your chance to peek inside some truly famous bookshops.



This week's featured crime poem over at the 5-2 is "Midnight Preparation" by Michael Arnzen.



In the Q&A roundup, J.R. Lindermuth stopped by Omnimystery News to chat about his new mystery novel, Shares the Darkness; Crimespree Magazine sat down to talk wth Gary Phillips, the "Hardest Working Man in Crime Fiction"; Stay Thirsty Publications grilled Edgar and Shamus nominated author Duane Swierczynski about his latest noir tale, Revolver, which follows three generations of cops and crimes in his home city of Philadelphia (officer worker cubicle warning: this piece starts off with audio of gunfire); and This is Writing interviewed prolific author O'Neil De Noux about his many books and over 350 short stories.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

Starting off the week with the latest in crime drama news:

MOVIES



Warner Bros. is developing Impossible Odds, based on a memoir written by Jessica Buchanan and her husband Erik Landemalm and set to be adapted by Brian Helgeland and directed by Clint Eastwood (who previously worked with Helgeland on Mystic River). The story centers on Buchanan, an aid worker who was captured and held by Somalia land pirates until President Obama sent in Seal Team 6 to rescue her and a colleague.



Oscar-winning writers Joel and Ethan Coen are developing the techno-thriller Dark Web for Fox. Based on a two-part Wired article by Joshuah Bearman and adapted for the screen by author Dennis Lehane, the story follows Ross William Ulbricht, who developed "The Silk Road" illegal online marketplace for drugs and was eventually arrested in 2013.



Arrival screenwriter Eric Heisserer has been brought on board to put the finishing touches on the script for the Sylvester Stallone action thriller Godforsaken, based on an original treatment from Daniel Casey. The story centers on an aging ex-con (Stallone) who is forced out of his self-imposed isolation to protect the only family he has left and avenge the death of the son he hardly knew.



Netflix has the lead in an auction to acquire The Helicopter Heist, with Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star and produce with his Nine Stories Productions partner Riva Marker. The project is based on a manuscript for a yet-to-be-published book written by Swedish author Jonas Bonnier that follows the true story of the the infamous Västberga robbery of 2009 where a gang of brazen robbers used a stolen Bell 206 Jet Ranger to land on the roof of a building and abscond with more than $5 million.



The first trailer was released for Werner Herzog's Salt And Fire starring Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal in the eco-thriller about a scientist and CEO who must come together as a volcano threatens to explode.



TELEVISION



John Grisham’s novel The Rainmaker is in the works at CBS with a put pilot commitment. The story follows a young lawyer right out of college whose life is turned upside-down as he takes on a fraudulent insurance company. It was previously adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola starring Matt Damon, Claire Danes, and Danny DeVito.



Showrunners and producers David E. Kelley and Jonathan Shapiro are reuniting for a new legal drama for streaming giant Amazon. Goliath, which launched its eight-episode first season this past week, follows Billy (Billy Bob Thornton) and Donald Cooperman (William Hurt) who play former law partners turned courtroom opponents.



Legal dramas are apparently the latest craze:  NBC has put in development Reversible Error, an hourlong legal drama from The Boy Next Door scribe Barbara Curry and Fast & Furious franchise writer Chris Morgan. Written by Curry, Reversible Error follows a former high-powered attorney who is freed from prison after her conviction for murdering her husband is reversed. Now she must piece her shattered life back together and find her husband’s true killer before a vindictive D.A. finds a way to prosecute her again.



Masterpiece will feature a Prime Suspect prequel titled Prime Suspect: Tennison, serving as co-producer alongside ITV Studios and NoHo Film & Television. Created by Lynda La Plante, who wrote the early installments of the original series, the new six-part drama portrays the early career of iconic, tenacious detective Jane Tennison — the role that established Helen Mirren as a household name. Stefanie Martini now stars as the ambitious 22-year-old Jane, a probationary officer in 1970s London who’s starting out in an environment where chauvinism and rule-bending are the norm. No airdate has been announced yet for the show.



After taking on one hot-button issue with the drama Shots Fired which deals with police shootings, Fox is taking on another timely topic: college rape. The network has given a put pilot commitment to Controversy, an investigative thriller drama about a successful crisis-management consultant brought in to advise a university when a co-ed accuses football players of gang-raping her. Facing a crisis of conscience, she partners with a lawyer for the university to seek out the truth.



Scottish novelist Tony Wood’s London-based Buccaneer Media is teaming with Irvine Welsh on the adaptation of Woods' book Crime, with Dougray Scott attached to star in and exec produce the six-part drama. Crime is the sequel to Welsh’s 1998 novel Filth, which was made into a 2013 movie (starring James McAvoy) and is set in Miami with Scott taking on the role of Detective Inspector Ray Lennox who becomes embroiled in a case involving a ring of pedophiles.



Idris Elba is heading to Africa for his next TV series for Brazza, a Narcos-like drama set in the criminal underworld of Brazzaville, the capital of Republic of the Congo. Paul Viragh (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll) is attached to write the series, in which a Congolese man living in Paris is forced to return home after his father dies under suspicious circumstances. Back home he gets drawn into a bloody family feud that threatens the country's uneasy truce.



CBS could be breaking new ground for Asian-American actors with Exhibit A, a legal drama from former Castle co-showrunner Alexi Hawley, Hawaii Five-0 co-star Daniel Dae Kim, and Jane The Virgin producer Ben Silverman. The project, written by Hawley, is based on the South Korean series My Lawyer, Mr. Jo, and centers on a disgraced Korean-American prosecutor who finds redemption as a defense lawyer when he pairs with a young idealistic attorney and the two fight for the underdogs of Los Angeles. The show would be a rare U.S. broadcast drama with an Asian lead and the first U.S. drama series outside of the action genre where the main lead is Asian American.



Milo Ventimiglia, one of the stars of the new NBC/20th TV drama This Is Us, has teamed with Royal Pains co-creator Andrew Lenchewski for Kin, a 20th TV-produced drama project which has been set up at Fox with script commitment plus penalty. Written and co-executive produced by Kevin O’Hare, Kin is loosely based on Cundiff’s extended family growing up and will center on a tight-knit Florida law-enforcement family who become the primary suspects in the disappearance of a notorious drug cartel leader following a DEA plane crash.



Graham Norton's debut novel, Holding, is being produced for television by the former boss of EastEnders, Dominic Treadwell-Collins. He's partnering with Blueprint Television, which won the rights to the chat show host's book about a murder in a rural Irish community.



Netflix’s drama Mute has tapped The Leftovers star Justin Theroux to join previously announced cast members Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgard in the sci-fi thriller, to be directed by Duncan Jones, who also co-wrote the script with Mike Johnson. Set 40 years in the future, the film centers on a mute bartender (Skarsgard) in a world that has become a roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West. His character will be looking for a woman who has disappeared — and when his search takes him deep into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons seem to be the only recurring clue.



TNT has cancelled another one of its staple programs: Murder in the First, the drama starring Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as two homicide detectives who have looked into a different big case each season.  



But fans of Bosch on Amazon have happier news: Amazon renewed the series based on Michael Connelly's books for a fourth season.



PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO



Crime writer Peter James has launched his own "crime-hub" YouTube channel, Peter James TV, promising to feature exclusive interviews with household names in crime including RL Stine, Martina Cole and Paula Hawkins, as well as behind the scenes research footage for his bestselling Roy Grace series.



Lee Child explored the writing and legacy of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series for a Radio 4 program,"21 Shades of Noir: Lee Child on John D MacDonald."



THEATER



Broadway production company The Araca Group and global toy-and-games makers Hasbro Inc. are bringing Col. Mustard and the rest of the suspects from Clue to the stage. The show will mark their second live entertainment collaboration, after the Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Monopoly announced earlier this year. Clue will be adapted by writer/director Jonathan Lynn from his 1985 Paramount Pictures film and premiered at Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Playhouse next May, followed by a U.S. national tour and a potential U.K. tour.  



A play by Rosemary’s Baby and Deathtrap author Ira Levin is being staged by the UK's Norwich based Baroque Theatre Company. Veronica’s Room tells the story of Susan Kerner, a young beautiful Boston college student who is on a date with the charming Larry Eastwood in 1973. The young lovers find themselves at The Brabissant mansion owned by the Mackeys, an elderly Irish couple instantly struck by Susan’s strong resemblance to long since dead Veronica Brabissant. Together they enter Veronica’s room, untouched since 1935, and nothing will ever be the same.



The Playhouse Theatre in Northampton is staging Mindgame through October 22. The play, written by Anthony Horowitz (Foyles War and Midsummer Murders) centers on true crime author Mark Styler who visits Fairfields Hospital to interview the notorious serial killer Easterman - but Dr. Farqhuar, head of the hospital, seems unhelpful and quixotic, and the place hostile and unnerving.



GAMES



Sony Pictures and Google have teamed up to launch the "Inferno Journey Through Hell" online game based on the Robert Landon thriller novel by Dan Brown. Finding clues hidden throughout Google products and the world’s most popular social platforms, players will complete up to three puzzles each week and will have the opportunity to win weekly prizes, culminating in one grand prize – an Italian getaway with stops in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Venice. As each new set of puzzles are unveiled week-to-week, the experience will become increasingly difficult to solve as the 'Inferno Journey Through Hell' progresses to its ultimate mind-bending final challenge.

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