B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 211
June 16, 2014
Media Murder for Monday
MOVIES
Warner Bros has hired Australian actor/filmmaker Kieran Darcy-Smith to direct Blackwater, a fact-based story scripted by Gideon Yago. The story follows the controversial contractor, its role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and four of its employees facing trial in the killings of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 18 others.
Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are in early talks to star in Shane Black's noir film The Nice Guys. The film is set in 1970s Los Angeles and follows mu...
June 14, 2014
June 12, 2014
FFB: Home is the Prisoner
Jean Catherine Potts (1910-1999) started out writing mystery short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Woman's Day. In 1954 she had her first novel published, Go, Lovely Rose, which won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. That was followed by 14 additional novels published in over seven foreign languages. One of those later novels,The Evil Wish, was an Edgar finalist in 1963 and optioned to be made into...
Year's Best Crime Novels (so Spake Booklist)
The American Library Association's review magazine Booklist compiles "best of" lists each year, although their "year" is a "Booklist crime fiction year," from May 1, 2013, through April 15, 2014. The latest list of top ten crime fiction novels included six stand-alones, two series entries, and two books that seem to be the first volumes in new series. There are three historicals and one set in the future; four take place in the U.S., with one each in Budapest, Quebec, Ireland, France, England...
June 11, 2014
Mystery Melange
Yesterday, the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers announced that this year's recipient of the Hammett Prize is Richard Lange for Angel Baby. The award is given to literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a U.S. or Canadian author and was handed out at what was to be the very last (alas) Bloody Words conference. The other finalists were Cataract City: A Novel, by Craig Davidson; Green Light for Murder, by Heywood Gould; Caught, by Lisa Moore;...
June 9, 2014
Media Murder for Monday
MOVIES
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone will be at the helm of a biopic about Edward Snowden, based on The Snowden Files, journalist Luke Harding's account of events surrounding reports about Snowden in The Guardian newspaper.
Universal Pictures is remaking the South African thriller iNumber Number about an undercover police detective who crosses over from cop to robber in order to orchestrate a major heist. David DiGilio has been hired to write the script.
In more remake news, Kamala...
June 7, 2014
June 6, 2014
Mystery Melange
Book art by Anita Francis
The winners of the Lammy Awards from the Lambda Literary society for LGBT fiction were announced on Monday. The nod for Best Gay Mystery went to The Prisoner of the Riviera: A Francis Bacon Mystery, by Janice Law, while the winner of Best Lesbian Mystery was High Desert by Katherine V. Forrest. For all the nominees, click here.
The Audie Awards for excellence in audiobooks handed out top honors last week. Unleashed by David Rosenfelt (read by Grover Gardner) won...
FFB: Gideon's Fire
Tell most authors they must write 10,000 words a day ��� in longhand ���toward the goal of creating some 600 books in their lifetime, and they would likely say something along the lines of (in polite terms), "it can't be done." Tell most critics that the author of the book in your hand is indeed that prolific and they'd likely say (in polite terms), "then it must be crap."
John Creasey inspired such amazement and skepticism from other authors as well as critics, but when it came down to the...
June 5, 2014
Ordinary Grace Redux
William Kent Krueger stopped by In Reference to Murder last year to talk about what was then his new book, Ordinary Grace. That book has since gone on to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for Best Fiction, Dilys Award, Left Coast Crime "Squid" Award for Best Mystery Set Within the United States, and is also nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award, Barrys, and Anthonys. So I thought it fitting to repost Krueger's Q&A about his writing and this extraordinary...
