B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 224

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The film remake of the 1960s TV spy show The Man From Uncle (originally starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum) has filled out its main cast. Tom Cruise is taking on the role of older spy Napoleon Solo and Armie Hammer (The Social Network and Lone Ranger) will play Russian secret agent Ilya Kuryakin. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair) is also in talks to play the female lead. 

Speaking of Tom Cruise, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions have signed up the actor to star in and produce a fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) is adapting Len Deighton’s classic Cold War novels featuring iconic spy Bernard Samson for an 18-episode television series. The novels followed the exploits of an ex-MI6 field agent drawn back into active duty in a quest to uncover the truth about his wife’s defection to the KGB.

Benicio Del Toro is in talks to star in the upcoming film adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's noir novel Inherent Vice.

Pre-production has started on Ben Affleck’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane's 2013 Edgar Award-winning novel Live By Night with an eye to an August or September filming start date. 

TV

Downton Abbey producer Carnival Films and BBC Two are to produce the final two TV movies in writer/director David Hare's The Worricker Trilogy. The first installment, Page Eight,
starred Bill Nighy as MI5 officer Johnny Worricker, with an all-star
supporting cast. Some of those actors are also due to return in the next
two projects, including Ralph Fiennes and Ewan Bremner, with the
additions of Christopher Walken, Winona Ryder, Helena Bonham Carter and
more.

Criminal Minds is being renewed, although it was close for two of the stars, Kirsten Vangsness and A.J. Cook. They were holding out on initial contract offers due to the poor treatment of female cast members and the fact the show's female stars are paid less than half of what their male co-workers receive.

Upfront season is upon us, wherein the networks announce their fall schedules and the pilots they've picked up for full series orders. Fox picked up four new dramas including the legal drama Rake starring Greg Kinnear; Gang Related, starring Ramon Rodriguez as a rising star in the Los Angeles elite Gang Task Force; Sleepy Hollow, a modern retelling of the Washington Irving story; and Almost Human, from the Fringe/Star Trek team of J.H. Wyman and J.J Wyman and starring Karl Urban, Michael Ealy and Lili Taylor in a police drama set 35 years in the future.

Fox is looking to bring back its popular drama 24 as a limited series, with Kiefer Sutherland in talks to reprise his Emmy-winning role as Agent Jack Bauer.

TNT has ordered a second season of the unscripted police-centric docudrama Boston's Finest, which joined the schedule in March. CNN (owned by the parent company of TNT) also announced plans to encore the eight-episode freshman run of the show.

TNT has also ordered 10 episodes of the drama Legends, starring Game of Thrones actor Sean Bean. The project is based on the a book by the same name by Robert Littell, and follows an undercover agent named Martin Odum who works for the FBI's Deep Cover Operations division

A&E picked up news shows, including the serial killer drama Those Who Kill, based on a Danish series and produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. It stars Chloe Sevigny and James D'Arcy and will premiere in 2014.

NBC has placed a full series order for the reboot of Ironside, starring Blair Underwood as wheelchair-bound Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside, played in the original NBC series by Raymond Burr. The network also gave the go-ahead to the Chicago Fire spinoff, Chicago PD, about -- you guessed it -- the Chicago police department.

USA announced that the seventh season of Burn Notice, which premieres June 6, will be its last. Creator Matt Nix is developing a new medical drama for the network titled Complications, about an emergency room doctor whose life drastically changes following a traumatic experience

NBC cancelled Deception, the series starring Megan Good as a detective who goes undercover in a wealthy family to solve a murder.

Everyone has been expecting ABC to pick up its popular quirky procedural Castle starring Nathan Fillion for another season, but it appears the network may actually be working on a two-year pickup.

Omnimystery News reported that ITV has renewed The Bletchley Circle for a second season. The show, which is based on the lives of four brilliant women who worked at top-secret HQ Bletchley Park during World War II, airs on PBS stations in the U.S.

Speaking of Omnimystery News, check out the site's scoresheet on all the mystery and suspense TV renewals and cancellations, including some of the latest shows to get the axe: Body of Proof, CSI New York, Vegas and Southland. The Hollywood Reporter also as an updated "who's winning and losing" look at the upfront season so far, including CBS's surprising rejection of the Beverly Hills Cop reboot.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Mary Higgins Clark, author of Daddy's Gone A Hunting, was a guest on CBS This Morning.

Margaret Atwood, winner of the Innovator's ward in this year's Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, joined KCRW's Bookworm to talk about her exploration of digital literary innovations

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction

Hofstra University hosted an Agatha Christie interdisciplinary conference in 1991 in honor of the centennial of Christie's birth. The result of that conference was the book Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, published in 1997 and edited by Hofstra professors Jerome H. Delamater and Ruth Prigozy. The editors were attempting to offer "a variety of new and innovative approaches to classic detective fiction," by including essays of a theoretical approach to the genre, then tracing the genre back to Agatha Christie and traditional British detective fiction.

Part I looks at the nature of and the audience for detective fiction, as well as at the genre as a literary form. This first half of the book includes an inquiry into the role of the detective, applications of psychology to the genre, and a look at literary criticism positing that "traditional detective fiction contained the seeds of its own subversion." Part II focuses on the writing of Agatha Christie and her heirs in the British ratiocinative tradition.

The 16 essays include topics such as "Shamus-a-um: Having the Quality of a Classical Detective" by Timothy W. Boyd and Carolyn Higbie; "Parody and Detective Fiction" by Janice MacDonald; "Christie's Narrative Games" by Robert Merrill; "The Game's Afoot: Predecessors and Pursuits of a Postmodern Detective Novel by Kathleen Belin Owen; and "Class, Gender, and the Possibilities of Detection in Anne Perry's Victorian Reconstructions" by Iska S. Alter.

Some of the themes underlying the book are the way the genre reflects important social and cultural attitudes, contributes to a reader's ability to adapt to the challenges of daily life, and provides alternate takes on the role of the detective as an investigator and arbiter of truth. As one of the essays notes, thanks to the detective novels of Tony Hillerman, set among the Native American population around New Mexico, "many American readers have probably gotten more insight into traditional Navajo culture from his detective stories than from any other recent books."

Mystery Melange

Standard Circle book sculpture by Brian Dettmer


There was a lot of award news during this past week:


First, congratulations to all the recent Edgar Award winners, including Best Novel, Live by Night by Dennis Lehane; Best First Novel, The Expats by Chris Pavone; Best Paperback Original, The Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben H. Winters; and the Mary Higgins Clark Award, The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan. For all the winners and nominees, check out the Mystery Writers of America website.


The Agatha Awards handed out at the annual Malice Domestic Convention included Best Novel for The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny and Best First Novel to Lowcountry Boil by Susan M. Boyer. (Hat tip Crimespree Magazine.)


Spinetingler Magazine also announced its awards last week, including Best Novel: Rising Star/Legends to The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty; and Best Novel: New Voice to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; also the 2013 IPPY Awards, recognizing outstanding books from independent authors and publishers announced winners in the Mystery and Suspense categories.


Booklist announced its ten Best Crime Novels and ten Best Debut Crime Novels (which span publication dates from May 2012 to April 2013).


The Crimefest Award nominees were announced last weekend, with winners to be presented at the CrimeFest Gala Dinner on June 1. They include the categories Audible Sounds of Crime Award,  Goldsboro Last Laugh Award for humorous mysteries, eDunnit Award for digital books, and the H.R.F. Keating Award for best biography or critical book related to crime fiction. (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph.)


The long-list for the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award was also announced, with the 18 nominees to be featured in a four-week voting campaign through early June at WHSmith stores and 1,645 library branches. The longlist will be whittled down to a shortlist of six titles to be announced on July 4.

It's time again for what has become the annual Brenda Novak charity auction to benefit diabetes research. This year the monthly and daily literary items up for auction include manuscript critiques, a scholarship to the Salt Cay Writers Retreat, manuscript formatting, website design, publicity and marketing and much more. There are hundreds of terrific items to bid on.

The latest Thuglit Issue, edited by Todd Robinson, is out and available for the Kindle. It includes original stories by Chris Mattix, Justin Porter, Ed Kurtz, Rob W. Hart, Edward Hagelstein, Shannon Barber, Chris Murphy and Brian Leopold.

The May issue of Suspense Magazine includes exclusive interviews with David Morrell, Lisa Scottoline and M.J. Rose, all talking about their latest novel and writing styles. There also looks at new authors Thomas M. Malafarina and Lisa Mannetti; Lisa Gardner's writing toolbox has tips for authors; and Anthony J. Franze interviews Heather Graham for his next installment of his "On Writing" section.

New story up at Shotgun Honey, titled "Hell's Belle - Pell Mell" by Jim Wilsky, and a new story at Beat to a Pulp from Josh Stallings, "The Blow Jobs."

We've lost a great many indie bookstores over the past few years, so it's alway good news to welcome a new addition. Last year, co-owners Jason and Stacey Harris opened Books & Boos of Colchester, Connecticut, to "cater to those of us who enjoy a good book, a good time, and a good scare." They feature mysteries, thrillers, romance, non-fiction and, of course, horror.

Omnimystery News published its monthly list of Firsts on the 1st, introducing readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious American debut in print during May.

The latest "Getting Away with Murder" column by Mike Ripley for Shots eZine is out with news and reviews from across the Pond.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Todd Robinson visiting Grift Magazine to discuss The Hard Bounce, recently published by Tyrus Books; and Kate Atkinson chats with Omnivoracious her lates novel Life After Life and her writing in general.

Good news for book fans: the Association of American Publishers released 2012 sales figures, showing a substantial increase in overall book sale totals, a net gain of 7.4 percent over the previous year. The figures also showed that eBook sales are about are holding steady at about 20-25 percent of the total market.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Millennium Trilogy producer Yellow Bird is developing a 10-part original series based on an idea by bestselling Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø. The political thriller will be titled Occupied and is described as a political thriller set in a not so distant future where Russia has staged a "silk-glove" invasion of Norway to officially secure the oil import for the rest of the world.

Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct American Sniper, an adaptation of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's autobiography that will star Bradley Cooper in the title role.

Colin Firth is in talks to star in The Secret Service, Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of a comic he co-created. The story follows a young man from the rough neighborhoods of London who gets recruited by his uncle (the role Firth would play) into a British spy school of the sort that churns out suave, sophisticated gentlemen-agent types in the 007 mold.

Stephen King's next thriller, Joyland, due to be published next month by Hard Case Crime, has been optioned for film, with Tate Taylor adapting the book and also directing. The project deals with a murder in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Daniel Radcliffe has been signed to star as American investigative reporter Jake Adelstein in the upcoming film adaptation of Adelstein's 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice. The plot follows the reporter's time working at the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper in Tokyo covering the crime beat and gangsters, including the “John Gotti of Japan."

Film4 has landed a script from Jacob Kostoff and Todd Louiso that adapts the classic Shakespeare play Macbeth about the ambitious Scotttish lord who seizes the throne with the help of his scheming wife and three witches. Michael Fassbender is in talks to star in the project.

Joe Carnahan (The Grey, The A-Team) has signed on to direct the film adaptation of Chuck Hogan's 2010 crime thriller Devils in Exile. Hogan's previous book Prince of Thieves (released as The Town) was made into a movie in 2010 starring Ben Affleck. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

TV

Former X-Files star Gillian Anderson's brand new crime series The Fall will launch on the BBC and Netflix this month. The show is set in Northern Ireland and follows a police officer investigating a string of murders.

BBC America has renewed the thriller Orphan Black for a second season. The show stars Tatiana Maslany as Sarah, a woman who adopts the identity of a woman whom she witnesses committing suicide, and then learns that they are actually clones of each other.

Tom Berenger is joining Season 2 of TNT's successful Closer spin-off, Major Crimes, playing the estranged spouse of Mary McDonnell's Capt. Sharon Raydor.

Former NCIS regular Mike Franks (Muse Watson) will make his second posthumous appearance as an otherworldly sounding board for Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in the season finale the show. Also guest-starring on the episode is John M. Jackson, who was a regular on JAG when that series launched NCIS as a spinoff 10 years ago.

NBC's supernatural police procedural Grimm saw its ratings climb in its new time slot of Tuesday evenings at 9 pm ET.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

In honor of this weekend's Edgar Awards, the Mystery Writers of America posted a video with Edgar winners and nominees such as Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, David Handler and Caroline B. Cooney discussing their craft and sharing their thoughts about the genre’s highest accolade and mystery’s biggest night of the year.

Adrian Raine, author of The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime, chatted with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.

THEATER

This year's Tony Award nominations include nods to The Mystery of Edwin Drood for Best Revival of a Musical and Stephanie J. Block as Best Lead Actress in the play.

Ian Rankin (author of the Inspector Rebus series), is joining Mark Thomson, artistic director of Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum, in writing the stage play Dark Road, which will premiere at the theatre during its 2013-14 season. The play explores the disturbing world of serial killers and marks Rankin's first foray into the playwriting realm.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time, based on the 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon, was the big winner at the Olivier Awards, the British theater's highest honor. It won for best new play, best actor for Luke Treadaway, best supporting actress for Nicola Walker and best director for Marianne Elliott.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Comfortable Coffin

Richard S. Prather was a former WWII Merchant Marine and author of some fifty books, including forty novels and story collections featuring his Tinseltown detective Shell Scott. He served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Private Eye Writers of America, in 1986. In 1960, the MWA was ready to publish their 13th anthology and chose Prather to serve as editor.

The result was The Comfortable Coffin, which had the same wisecracking and wacky sense of humor reflected in Pather's own writing. Prather chose the 15 stories to make the reader "smile, and chuckle, and—more than once—laugh out loud." They vary from Robert Arthur's "A Coffin for Mr. Cash," about the supervisor of a crematorium who becomes involved in an intricate plan to steal a fortune; to Stanley Ellin's "The Faith Of Aaron Menefee," about a shady faith healer, later made into an episode of Alfred Hithcock Presents; to Michael Gilbert's "Mr. Portway’s Practice," about an unexpected fall from grace by a staffer at the British Inland Revenue Service.

The chosen stories include a mix of well-known and more obscure (now) authors:



The Bottled Wife (Michael Fessier)
A Coffin for Mr. Cash (Robert Arthur)
The Faith Of Aaron Menefee (Stanley Ellin)
My Queer Dean! My Queer Dean! (Ellery Queen)
Your Cake And Eat It (Berkley Mather)
Squeakie’s Second Case (Margaret Manners)
First Man At The Funeral (Dion Henderson)
The Strange Case Of Mr. Elsie Smith (Dana Lyon)
The Live Ones (Richard S. Prather)
The Gentleman Caller (Veronica Parker Johns)
Mr. Portway’s Practice (Michael Gilbert)
Fin de Siecle (William O’Farrell)
Kiss Me, Dudley (Evan Hunter)
To Strike A Match (Erle Stanley Gardner)
It Wouldn’t Be Fair (Jack Finney)

Mystery Melange

Sculpture Made of 25,000 Dr. Seuss Books at NYPL


The conference season is heating up, including the RT Booklovers Convention that starts today in Kansas City .
Guest authors in the mystery/thriller track include Ethan
Cross, Heather Graham, Bob Mayer, Cherry Adair, Robin
Perini, Caridad Piñeiro, Evonne Wareham, Genita Low, R. Scott Pearson and
James Rollins. Coming up this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland, it's the annual Malice Domestic Convention, with Guest of Honor: Laurie R. King; Toastmaster: Laura
Lippman; Lifetime Achievement: Aaron Elkins; Malice Remembers: Dick
Francis; International Guest of Honor: Peter Robinson; Amelia Award:
Carolyn Hart; Fan Guest of Honor: Cindy Silberblatt.

There's a new press setting up for neo-noir, speculative, and literary fiction called The Dark House Press. The new venture is an imprint of Curbside Splendor Publishing and will be headed up by editor-in-chief Richard Thomas. DHP's first book will be The New Black, an anthology featuring the best of "new noir," edited by Thomas, coming out Spring 2014 (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans via her blog.)

Mystery Scene's Spring Issue #129 features a cover story on the novels of C.J. Box. Other goodies include Kevin Burton Smith's ode to the "Hot Rides of Private Eyes Past"; Martin Edward's examination of Dorothy L. Sayers' real-life detective skills; a talk with former journalist-turned-novelist Brad Parks; Lynn Kaczmarek chatting with Erin Hart about her atmospheric mysteries set in Ireland; Brian Skupin catching up with Linda Barnes, who is making a welcome return to crime writing after ending her Carlotta Carlyle series a few years ago; and for Old Time Radio fans, a tribute to the Inner Sanctum Mystery program from Michael Mallory.

Blood and Tacos , edited by Johnny Shaw, recently published Issue #4 on Amazon, which is also a celebration of the 'zine's first anniversary. Check out stories from  Brad Mengel, Bart Lessard, Nick Slosser, Thomas Pluck and Oren Brimer.

This week's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "Howling," by Jen Conley, and the featured short fiction at Shotgun Honey is "Last Bit of Dirt" by John L. Thompson.

Also, last month, Thrillers, Killers, 'n' Chillers ezine announced it was closing the door to submissions, but editor David Barber softened the blow by announcing he was creating a new site called Thrills, Kills, 'n' Chaos for flash fiction up to 1000 words. The first two stories on the site are now up, including "Green Green Grass" by Matt Hilton and "Hand In Mine" by Erin Cole.

In 2012, Penguin Group USA launched Read Humane to fight animal cruelty and support the Humane Society. It was a tie-in with National Pet Month in May, and the publisher is holding the drive again this year. Six animal-themed Penguin titles will highlight the campaign with Read Humane seals on their covers, including mysteries Hounds Abound by Linda O. Johnston; Till Death Do Us Bark by Judi McCoy; The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon by Leann Sweeney; File M for Murder by Miranda James; Double Booked for Death by Ali Brandon; and the romance Rescue My Heart by Jill Shalvis.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Alexander Soderberg, stopping by Declan Burke's blog for the latest of his fun interviews titled "Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?"; and Duane Swierczynski spoke with Boing Boing about his new book, Point & Shoot.

Everyone loves librarians (and if you don't, you should!), and here are "25 Vintage Photos of Librarians Being Awesome." (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jake Gyllenhaal will star as a freelance L.A. crime reporter in Nightcrawler, which will also mark the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Rene Russo has signed on to co-star in the film.

Aldamisa Entertainment has acquired the rights to two spec scripts, Americatown by Ben Poole and Murder City by Will Simmons. Americatown is about an ex-cop who moves from poverty to power in third-world American slums of world leader China after the U.S. economy’s collapse, while Murder City follows an ex-con who becomes the hunter and target of a ruthless Detroit gangster. 

Paramount is picking up Spy's Kid, described as a Catch Me If You Can-style story set in the world of espionage featuring Shia LaBeouf and Robert De Niro as a son-father spy duo. The story is based on a six-part series of articles by Bryan Denson that told the true story of a traitorous spy who enlists his son to continue his work.

Thunder Road Pictures have acquired the rights to remake the foreign film Gang Story, about an aging former gangster who attempts to leave his life of crime behind him and live peacefully with his family. The project has already signed Liam Neeson to star as the gangster.  

Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the action film from Luc Besson titled Lucy, about a woman who is forced to become a drug mule, but the durgs go into her system, making her "an ass-kicking machine."

Larry A. Thompson Entertainment optioned Mark Hudelson's spec script Missing Mona Lisa, based on the true story of an Italian native who steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris and returns it to Italy before he is ultimately arrested. 

George Clooney, Grant Heslo, and Joshuah Bearman, the team behind Argo, are planning a film based on Bearman's upcoming article about the Coronado Club, said to be set in a resort city in Southern California and involving a group of young people who are used to smuggle drugs.

Twentieth Century Fox won a bidding war for film right to the spy-thriller novel Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews. The story is set in contemporary Russia and focuses on a young intelligence officer who goes up against an American counterpart and eventually her own government. 
 
Hugo Weaving is returning to his native Australia to star in the film The Mule (not to be confused with the Scarlett Johansson project mentioned above). The film follows a drug mule who is caught by police and the fallout after his arrest.

TV

FX is developing James Ellroy's novella Shakedown,
a period drama inspired by the life of cop-turned-private eye Fred
Otash and set in the tabloid world and underbelly of Los Angeles circa
the late 1950s. James Ellroy and New Regency are also shopping an L.A. Confidential sequel targeted for the small screen.

Omnimystery News reported that Warner Bros. and  J. J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot are set to option Stephen King's 2011 time-travel thriller 11/22/63 to be adapted for a cable television series or mini-series.

USA is eyeing an expansion of the upcoming eighth (and possibly final) season of Psych and has ordered five more scripts from the "sleuth dramedy."

NBC announced it is renewing Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire and Revolution.

Casey Sherman has sold the rights to his 2005 Boston Strangler book, Search for the Strangler: My Hunt for Boston's Most Notorious Killer, and plans are to develop it into a television series.

USA is giving viewers a free sneak peek of the network's new crime drama Graceland by offering the pilot episode two weeks before its broadcast premiere, from April 29 to May 12, via video-on-demand. The show is about a group of undercover agents from the FBI, DEA and US Customs who all live together in a Southern California beach house.

ITV has renewed Vera, the crime drama based on characters created by Ann Cleeves, for a fourth season of four episodes. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Omnimystery News also reports that DCI John Barnaby (of Midsomer Murders) is getting a new partner. Gwilym Lee is joining the cast as Detective Sergeant Charlie Nelson following the departure of Jason Hughes, who played DS Ben Jones. Lee's debut will be the first episode of the 16th series, scheduled to air in the UK later this year.

The first annual Humphrey Bogart film festival, to be held in Key Largo, Florida, May 2-5, is premiering Warner Bros.' newly restored version of the 1936 noir film The Petrified Forest, which made Bogart a star.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Joining the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: author Philip Kerr, discussing his latest Bernie Gunther novel, A Man Without Breath.

The BBC's Open Book show featured Harlan Coben, talking about his new thriller novel Six Years, as well as Rodge Glass and a look at the London Book Fair.

THEATER

The musical based on the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis has gotten its premiere date at London's Almeida Theatre for December 3, with a run through January 25. The show has been given the tagline "a bloody satire," and is scripted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (TV's Glee and Broadway's Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark), with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will include be a new adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for its 2013-2014 season. Atwood's story is set in a dystopoian near-future where religious and misogynist persecution by the government is rampant.

Casting was announced for the UK West End return of The Ladykillers, the 2011 stage version of the iconic 1955 Ealing film comedy that was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2004 in a film version that starred Tom Hanks. The Ladykillers tells the "classic black comedy tale of a sweet little old lady, alone in her house, pitted against a gang of criminal misfits who will stop at nothing." The new cast will include Ralf Little, Simon Day, Angela Thorne, John Gordon Sinclair and Con O'Neill, and Chris McCalph.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Abandoned Room

Not a lot is known about Charles Wadsworth Camp (1879-1936). His most famous claim to fame may be as the father of author Madeline L'Engle, and most of the details of his life come from biographies about her. Camp moved to New York soon after his marriage to L'Engle's mother, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and wrote reviews of plays, concerts and operas. He also wrote plays of his own as well as at least eight novels of mystery and suspense, and his first novel, The Gray Mask was first published as a serial in Collier's magazine in 1915.

L'Engle described her father as a man who dressed elegantly every evening, whether he was eating dinner at home or taking the horse-drawn trolley a theater or concert hall to support many of his musician-friends. His niece recalled her uncle as a big, handsome man in a white linen suit smoking cigarettes on the porch and drinking whiskey. He served in World War I, and that is the source of some controversy about the author's cause of death. He died of pneumonia at age 57, and a common story was that Camp's lungs were weakened by mustard gas during the war that left him vulnerable to respiratory disease. However, one family member disputes that and attributes the pneumonia more to the smoking and drinking.

There's also not a lot about how successful his plays and novels were during his day, although The Gray Mask was made into a black and white silent film in 1915, with four more of his works adapted as silent films and two as black and white talkies. One of the silent films, from 1920, was released with the title Love Without Question, although it was based on Camp's novel The Abandoned Room: A Mystery Story, first seralized in Every Week and The Sunday Post magazine in 1917.

The Abandoned Room features "The Panamanian Sherlock Holmes," Carlos Paredes, who is confronted with a locked-room mystery. The murder of Silas Blackburn occurs in a room of The Cedars, a lonely, dilapidated country house—the same room with a history of people dying from head injuries, a room with both doors locked on the inside and the windows too high for anyone to have climbed up.

The main suspect is the victim's grandson, Bobby Blackburn, whose wastrel ways had angered his wealthy grandfather to the point he was threatening to cut him out of his Will and a rather princely amount (for 1917) of a million dollars. Making matters worse, Bobby was in New York the night of the murder but woke up in a daze in an even-more dilapidated house near The Cedars without any memory of the evening. Finding one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs under the victim's bed and a footprint under the window that fits his shoes doesn't help his case.

Despite Bobby's growing fears he may have somehow entered the locked room and murdered his grandfather in a drugged fog, there is more to meet the eye with strange happenings in the house—haunting cries; hints of ghosts; a woman in black wandering through the nearby woods; and secrets held by Bobby's cousin Katherine Perrine and the servants, allegedly the only ones with the victim the night of the murder, as well as the victim himself. Bobby's friend Carlos Paredes (tall and graceful, with jet-black hair parted in the middle and a carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard), invites himself to stay in The Cedars and eventually solves the crime, with a little twist at the end.
 .
The Abandoned Room isn't available in a regular print edition (except possibly in libraries), and since it's in the public domain, there are several versions on the Web from content-farm companies trying to make a buck. You can download a free copy via Project Gutenberg and Google Books, and Many Books also has four other Camp works.

Mystery Melange

Lorem Ipsum II by Jacqueline Rush Lee


Crime Writers of Canada announced the shortlist for the annual Arthur Ellis Awards, celebrating the best in Canadian crime writing. The nominees for Best Novel include Linwood Barclay, Trust Your Eyes; Giles Blunt, Until the Night; Sean Chercover, The Trinity Game; Stephen Miller, The Messenger; and Carsten Stroud, Niceville. Other categories include Best First Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Nonfiction, Best Juvenile/YA, Best Crime Book in French and Best Unpublished First Crime Novel: the Unhanged Arthur.

Congratulations go to Tana French, this year's winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category, for her book Broken Harbor.

Portland, Oregon's Murder by the Book store announced in January it would be forced to go out of business if they couldn't find a buyer by April. Although there was some interest, unfortunately no deal was reached. Co-owner Barbara Tom shared added on the store's Facebook page: "Although we'll just be disembodied virtual voices now instead of real people you can chat with at the store, we re-pledge our allegiance to the wonderful world of mystery books and its community."

In the Q&A Roundup this week, Sophie Hannah talks about World Book Night 2013 and her novel Little Face, one of the few crime fiction works chosen for the 20 recommended titles in the UK and Ireland; NPR interviewed D.A Mishani, an Israeli literature scholar who specializes in the history of detective fiction, about his own debut detective novel; Author and ThugLit editor ("Bid Daddy Thug"), Todd Robinson stopped by Black Gate to discuss his debut novel, The Hard Bounce.

Looking for some of the best of the new crime fiction reads? Check out these titles recommended by by Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times; these from Roberta Alexander for the San Jose Mercury News; Margaret Cannon's choices for The Globe & Mail; and some of the latest historical novels, via Jake Kerridge at The Telegraph. Publishers Weekly also compiled a listing of the summer mystery/thriller books they're looking forward to reading.

A church in Boston is putting a rare copy of the Bay Psalm Book up for auction. The book is the first title printed in America, in 1640, and is thought to be one of only 11 surviving copies. It can be yours for only $30 million dollars, the price the book is expected to fetch when it goes under the gavel in November.

Banned Books Week doesn't begin until September 22, but the American Library Association just released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year.

The Poetry of Crime

Themes of crime and violence in poetry have been around for about as long as poets have been putting paper to pen. Robert Browning wrote "The Ring and the Book," a murder novel in verse; T.S. Eliot's "Sweeney Agonistes" is about the murder of a young woman, while his "Murder in the Cathedral" is a verse drama that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral; and Carl Sandburg's "Killers" is about how war hardens men who learn to distance themselves from their acts of violence.


Writer/educator/editor Gerald So has combined his love of crime fiction and poetry into the website The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, which features a new crime-themed poem each week. An assortment of poems featured on the site were also gathered into anthologies, including the latest, The Lineup 4, edited by Gerald, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez, and R. Narvaez. In celebration of National Poetry Month in the U.S., Gerald is sponsoring the 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour as a way to promote poetry in general and crime poetry on the 5-2 blog in particular.


As an added bonus, all April revenue from 5-2 and Lineup books and merchandise at the 5-2 Shop at CafePress.com will also be donated to the nonprofit Academy of American Poets, to support poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. You can also participate by Tweeting comments and links to your favorite 5-2 poems, tagging them #30OfThe52.

Here's one of the featured poems from the 5-2, in fact the very first poem that was posted back in 2011. It's titled "Smack" and is by Nancy Scott, managing editor of the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, and the author of two books of poetry.

SMACK
by Nancy Scott

Massive head trauma, internal injuries.
The child won't make it to morning.
The mother and the grandmother sit
in the waiting area.
They haven't been told yet.
The boyfriend, the babysitter, denies
he was high on smack, insists the child
was asleep in the playpen,
when he ran to the deli to buy cigarettes.
He can't explain how the toddler
got hit by a car on the highway
seven blocks from the apartment.

Here's Nancy reading her poem:

Be sure and stop by the 5-2 to read and listen to the other close to 100 poems on the website, and if you're interested in submitting your own, send along your unpublished crime-related poem of  60 lines or fewer in any form or style. To follow Crime Poetry Weekly on Twitter, check out @poemsoncrime.