B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 239

Mystery Melange

Aspen Mays' Rainbow Spectrum Book Sculpture


The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards Shortlists 2012, including those for the Gold, Steel and John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Awards were announced last Friday. The Gold Dagger is the highest honor the Crime Writers Association hands out each year, and the nominees are Vengeance in Mind by N.J. Cooper, The Flight by M.R. Hall, The Rage by Gene Kerrigan, and Bereft by Chris Womersley.

Congrat also to the winners of the Killer Nashville conference awards , including 2012 Claymore Award Winner: Jonathan Stone for Again and the Silver Falchion Award winner, C.Hope Clark for Lowcountry Bribe.

Coming soon: the anthology Beat to a Pulp: Superhero , featuring 12 short stories from Keith Rawson, Sandra Seamans, Kevin Burton Smith, Steve Weddle and other prime author fine authors of short crime fiction.

Submissions are now open for the seventh annual Black Orchid Novella Award . Stories must be original works of 15,000 to 20,000 words in the tradition of the ratiocinative detective, as exemplified by Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. Your entry should also emphasize the deductive skills of the sleuth, contain no overt sex or violence and not include characters from the original series. You've still got time; submissions must be postmarked by May 31, 2013. The winner receives $1,000 plus publication in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Otto Penzler of the Mysterious Press (and bookshop) wrote an essay titled " What is Hardboiled Crime? Five Ways to Know It When You Read It ."  The Open Road Media blog also created a handy infographic and other articles as part of their week-long Hardboiled Genre Spotlight.

September isn't only back-to-school month, it's also a month of some great new paperback and hardcover mystery novels, including Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel and new titles from Laurie R. King, Val McDermid, and J.D. Robb. Thanks to Omnimystery News for compiling these lists each month.
 
The Q&A roundup this week includes Laura Lippman chatting with the Seattle Mystery Bookshop about her writing and the most interesting question she's ever been asked; and Kieran Shea interviewed Sean Chercover for Spinetingler about Chercover's new book The Trinity Game.

If you're a fan of Louise Penny and her Inspector Gamache series (and live in the U.S.), here's your chance to win one of 10 copies in a giveaway from the Criminal Element blog:

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Kevin Costner has signed a deal to star in not one, but two Tom Clancy pictures playing William Harper, the spy boss who recruits Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine) into the CIA.

Writer-director Stephen Gaghan penned a script titled Candy Store, which is attracting actors Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington. The plot centers on a highly trained deep-cover operative who starts his life over in Brooklyn as a beat cop, only to discover the global organization he was dedicated to fighting is operating in his new backyard.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, the sequel to the American film version of  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, is still in the works—but since the script isn't finished, the film won't be shot any time soon, let alone released in 2013 as originally hoped.

Gary Oldman may have dropped out of the thriller Motor City (playing the villain against protagonist Gerard Butler), but the film's producers didn't take long to sign Adrien Brody in his stead. The story is about a man released from prison for a crime he didn't commit who goes on the hunt for the people who framed him.

Hugh Laurie (House, MD) has dropped out of the Robocop reboot, but Clive Owen is at the top of the list of possible actors to replace Laurie as the villain in the crime drama.

For the latest release times for upcoming fall movies, here's a handy list. Among the crime drama notables: Alex Cross, based on the James Patterson novels, in which a homicide investigator (Tyler Perry) squares off against a serial killer (Matthew Fox), coming in October and Jack Reacher, the film adaption of Lee Child's novels, scheduled for December. 

TV

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Award nominees for excellence in movies and television were announced and include several heavy-hitters, including Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker, Taylor Soldier Spy for Best Picture and Wallander and Sherlock for Best TV series.

The CW network has ordered the project Wrecking Ball, a case-of-the-week procedural drama from Richard Hatem (Grimm). The concept reported  involves "a John F. Kennedy Jr.-type character who teams with a young campaign strategist to solve underdog cases."

ITV has recommissioned three crime dramas to add to its schedule, including Vera, based on the novels of Ann Cleves, to once again star Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope; Scott & Bailey, starriang Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp as DS Ronnie Brooks and DS Sam Casey with the Manchester Metropolitan Police; and Law & Order UK, with a cast not yet specified. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC's procedural drama Hannibal, based on the novels by Thomas Harris, has added Hettienne Park to the cast as a forensic scientist. The series centers on FBI profiler Will Graham (played by Hugh Dancy) and the psychiatrist/serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelson). The cast also includes Laurence Fishburne as Senior Agent Jack Crawford.

AMC's upcoming police procedural Low Winter Sun has added Sprague Grayden (from 24) and David Costabile (Breaking Bad) to the cast of already-signed Mark Strong, Lennie James and James Ransone. The show is based on a 2006 British miniseries and is described as a story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption that starts with the murder of a cop by fellow Detroit detective Frank Agnew (Strong) that leads into the heart of the Detroit underworld.

CBS has given the go-ahead for a pilot by David Mamet that's a remake of the 1957 Western drama Have Gun – Will Travel. The original series starred Richard Boone as Paladin, a top-notch gunfighter who "preferred to settle problems without violence but stood his ground when provoked."

AMC's canceled show The Killing may find a new home on either Netflix and DirecTV, both of which are in negotiations to land the show for its third season.

ABC Family ordered a pilot from Gavin Polone titled Socio, about a charismatic 16-year-old alleged sociopath who reconnects with his two childhood best friends and becomes the prime suspect when a fellow student is murdered.

Fans of the BBC's Sherlock series waiting for the next trilogy of the series (sometime in 2013) will have to be content with the teaser that teven Moffat tossed out this past week, Tweeting three clue words for the themes of the episodes: Rat, Wedding, Bow. Last year Moffat did the same thing, with his cryptic clues, Woman/Hound/Fall referring to last season's triology of episodes based on "Scandal in Bohemia," "Hounds of the Baskervilles," and "The Final Problem."  Confused? Omnimystery News will fill you in.

The BBC is adapting a new TV series based on the novels of Benjamin Black featuring his one-name Dublin pathologist, Quirke. Gabriel Byrne, star of The Usual Suspects, is slated to star in the title role.

Producers of the HBO Hitchcock biopic drama The Girl, with a premiere in October, released a first trailer for the film.

PODCASTS

The Suspense Radio podcast this week featured Brian Knight, D.P. Lyle, Jaden Terrell & Michael Crisp. The previous week's show welcomed guest authors Karin Slaughter, Jeffrey Wilson and Allison Leotta.

THEATER

Actor/writer/director Chazz Palminteri will bring his play Human to New York in 2013. He'll play a Wall Street banker in the production, which has also signed actors Jeremy Shamos, Mira Sorvino and Australian pop singer Sophie Monk. The plot is described as "Wall Street meets Good-fellas."

Friday's "Forgotten" Books

Welsh-born author Dorothy Simpson (1933-    ) started out her career as a French teacher and then spent many years as a marriage counselor, before turning to writing full time. She's known for the fifteen books in her series featuring Inspector Luke Thanet, the last of which was published in 1999 before a severe repetitive stress injury forced her to stop writing in 2000. One of the Thanet series, Last Seen Alive, received the Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers of America in 1985.

Simpson's very first novel was the 1977 psychological thriller Harbingers of Fear. Although that book was successful, Simpson's next four manuscripts were rejected, which is why she turned to writing the more traditional procedurals, determined to "devote her next efforts to creating an intriguing murder mystery staged around an engaging sleuth." Harbingers of Fear remains Simpson's only standalone thriller.

The plot of the novel centers on pregnant wife Sarah Royd, who finds a strange message left in her purse, BOAST NOT THYSELF OF TOMORROW; FOR THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH, and thinks it might be the work of a religious maniac. But soon she realizes she's also being spied on and more of the sinister white cards with their macabre propecies mysteriously appear and vanish after she has read them, each message more menacing than the last.

Out of fear, she turns to her husband, to friends and to the police, but none of them believes her, all attributing her claims to pregnancy hormones and hysteria. Left to fend for herself, Sarah delves into the mystery, starting to wonder herself if she's really going insane—as everyone seems to believe—until she's driven to a final, fateful confrontation with the source of her terror.

Since the author was a marriage counselor herself, it's not surprisng that the relationship between the introspective, insecure Sarah and her strong-willed, much older husband would be as important to the plot as the mystery of the campaign to terrorize Sarah. Fortunately, the book doesn't read like a marriage manual, with the characters well drawn. Or as Kirkus said of another Simpson title, "Straightforward and absorbing, deftly written and adroitly plotted: another quiet winner."

Harbingers of Fear was reprinted as part of the Black Dagger Crime Series in 1986, and several of the author's works were also published in new editions from the mid-1990s to 2001. But all of Simpson's novels are somewhat difficult to find and will hopefully benefit from the increasing move of backlists to digital versions.

The CSI Effect

Infographics can be fun, although the data included should be treated with as much suspicion as when using Wikipedia. Colorado Technical Institute compiled this one that's a fun little look at the "CSI Effect," so called because the rise of CSI-style shows has often made it harder for attorneys in dealing with jurors' unrealistic expectations about instant crime solving. However, I did find the sharp rise in law-related undergraduate majors quite interesting.

Mystery Melange

The "Six Questions For. . ." blog is ramping up to post new interviews beginning on September 4th. According to a recent blog announcement, they have the editors of Downer Magazine, First Stop Fiction, MicroHorror, Noir Nation, Short-Story.me, The Abstract Quill, The New Verse News, and Thrice Fiction lined up to participate with their advice and expertise.

New York's Crime Fiction Academy is enrolling students for its Fall 2012 semester, with some slots still left open for the course. Would-be crime authors will attend writing workshops, monthly masterclasses with top authors, reading seminars and special lectures and discussions over a course of 12 weeks. The impressive roster of authors will include Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Thomas H Cook, Linda Fairstein, Susan Isaacs, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman, Val McDermid, Joyce Carol Oates, Jason Pinter, SJ Rozan and Karin Slaughter. Topics they’ll be discussing include the perfect kill, writing about trails of evidence, and creating heinous villains and believable heroes.

Need a little writerly pick-me-up? Here are "30 Indispensable Writing Tips from Famous Authors" at a glance.

This week's Q&A roundup includes Ellen Byerrum, author of the Crimes of Fashion series, talking about her writing and choosing the six writers (living or dead) she'd invite to a mystery-author dinner party; and At the Scene of the Crime hooks up with Peter Lovesey, author of several series including the Victorian detective Sargeant Cribb, Bertie Prince Of Wales, and Superintendent Peter Diamond.

Did you think Baby Boomers are the most-active readers? Think again - Generation Y (those born between 1979 and 1989) spent the most money on books in 2011, according to a new study. One reason why: the same study noted that eBooks rose from 4 percent of all book sales in 2010 to 14 percent in 2011.

The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has announced the finalists for the 2012 SCIBA Book Awards. The T. Jefferson Parker Book Award for Mystery nominees include:

Getaway by Lisa Brackmann, Soho Press
Kings of Cool by Don Winslow, Simon & Schuster
Taken by Robert Crais, Putnam

The annual LitQuake festival in San Francisco just announced its schedule for the October 2012 eight-day event. The 800+ local and international authors spread out over dozens of venues will include mystery writer Zoe Ferraris, thriller writers David Corbett and Michelle Gagnon, and panels like "Dangerous Dolls, Bad Men & Smoking Guns: A Night of Noir & Burlesque" and "Cowboy Noir: A Conversation with Bruce Holbert."

Registration for the California Crime Writers Conference in June 2013 is now open. The conference took this year off, but will return with a bang next year when it features keynote speakers Sue Grafton on Saturday and Elizabeth George on Sunday. Other highlights include an array of workshops on the business and craft of writing as taught by high-profile agents, bestselling authors, editors, academics and forensics experts.

If you know of someone living in the UK (outside of London) looking for a publishing internship? Author Ann Cleves (author of the Vera Stanhope series) is sponsoring such a gig in the Pan Macmillan press department.

Not Lost in Translation

Scandinavian crime fiction has been the rage for a few years now, epitomized by Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But the vast majority of those books weren't written in English and had to be translated for publication in English-speaking countries. These translators are often the unsung heroes of such global crime fiction treasures, but this Thursday, One More Page bookstore will throw the spotlight on one such individual when the store hosts an event titled "Scandinavian Noir in Translation."

The special guest for the evening is translator K.E. Semmel, who has played a key role in bringing the works of popular Scandinavian crime novelists to the U.S., including two upcoming publications, Karin Fossum's The Caller and Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Absent One. After a reading, author and book critic Art Taylor will interview K.E. Semmel on the craft of translation and in particular these two novels. The event is free and begins at 7 p.m. at the store in Arlington, Virginia.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sad news just announced today: Producer (brother of Ridley Scott), is dead of an apparent suicide. Tony Scott served as producer and/or director on such movies as Prometheus, The A-Team, Spy Game, and many more, as well as TV shows including Numb3rs, The Good Wife and the upcoming series Coma.

CinemaBlend reported that actor Willem Dafoe is taking on two different crime dramas. The first is Whiskey Bay, where Dafoe will play a veteran cop who teams with a former white supremacist (played by Matt Dillon) to go undercover to reveal the Aryan Brotherhood's illegal activities. The other project is A Man Most Wanted, the latest adaptation of a John Le Carre spy novel, which already has Philip Seymour Hoffman in the cast and Robin Wright also in negotiations.

Winona Ryder in talks to join James Franco and Jason Statham in Homefront, a film written by Sylvester Stallone about a ruthless drug dealer and a former DEA agent who go head to head in a small town.

A movie adaptation of the graphic novel The Boys was reportededly picked up by Paramount. The plot of the graphic novel follows a CIA team whose role is to police the superhuman community and prevent them from misusing their powers.

The British Film Institute's comprehensive tribute to Alfred Hitchcock continues into October, with films and special events coming up including panels and talks from actors Bruce Dern (Family Plot) and Martin Landau (North by Northwest).

Another obit of note: Biff Elliot, the actor who first starred as hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer on the big screen, died August 15 at his home in Studio City at the age of 89.

TV

TNT renewed freshman drama Perception for a second season. The drama stars Eric McCormack as a schizophrenic professor-turned-FBI sleuth.

BBC One is planning a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes as a 90-minute made-for-television movie. The remake will star Keeley Hawes as wealthy young socialite Iris Carr, who finds a woman has disappeared from her train while travelling across Europe. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Actress Jodie Foster is developing a female-led mob drama for Showtime. Titled Angie's Body, the series will follow "a hardened but beautiful woman who's responsible for the wellbeing of an entire crime syndicate." Although Foster has directed for the big-screen, this will be her first small-screen project. There's no word on whether she'll also play a role in front of the camera.

Michael Grant Terry, a former Bones squintern (one of the rotating interns on the show), is set to join NBC's supernatural cop drama Grimm for a multi-episode arc. He'll play a "wide-eyed and enthusiastic student" who is (appropriately) starting an internship with the Portland Police Department, looking to model himself after one of Portland's finest: Nick Burkhardt, played by David Giuntoli.

ABC is in negotiations with UK showrunner Simeon Goulden to adapt his Sky 1 comedy Spy for American TV. The original series followed hapless single father Tim (Darren Boyd) who quits his job as a junior sales assistant in a computer shop to impress his son but accidentally gets recruited into the British intelligence agency MI5.

PODCASTS

This week's Crime in the City series on NPR featured Robert Crais, with a revealing, inside look at how he creates the L.A. where Elvis and Joe live. Author Sean Chercover stopped by WGN-Radio to talk about his new novel, The Trinity Game.

Friday's "Forgotten" Book - Sylvia

Howard Melvin Fast (1914–2003) is perhaps best known for his popular historical fiction like Spartacus (the basis for the 1960 film by Stanley Kubrick) and his television scripts, including such programs as How the West Was Won and the Battle of Lexington and Concord, based on one of his novels. He was also blacklisted by the House un-American activities committee during the McCarthy era and became unpublishable. As a result, he started self-publishing (including Spartacus) and remade himself as the author of thrillers written under the pen name E.V. Cunningham, most featuring Masao Masuto, a Japanese-American detective in the Beverly Hills Police Department who's devoted to growng roses and Zen meditation.

Fast also wrote standalone crime fiction under his pseudonym, including the very first book he published as E.V. Cunningham, 1960's Sylvia, made into a film five years later, directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Peter Lawford, George Laharis and Carroll Baker. In his introduction to the 1992 reprint of the novel, published under the author's real name, Fast wrote "It began with a woman's name: Sylvia. I loved the name, I loved the (Franz Schubert) song, 'Who is Sylvia and what is she?' And the other sweet song 'Sylvia's hair is like the night.' Dark hair, raven black, a tall woman and beautiful. I could envision her as I might a living person."

Sylvia is a novel of suspense rather than crime-based detection story, focusing on would-be teacher of ancient history turned private investigator, Alan Macklin, who is handed a tough case by wealthy businessman Frederic Summers: trace the past of a beautiful woman you've never met, with only a book of poems, two lines of handwriting, and a fake story to go on. The mysterious woman in question is Summers's fiancee, Sylvia West, who owns property in Coldwater Canyon, raises prize-winning roses, is independently wealthy and fluent in French, Spanish and Chinese. But the story of her past doesn't check out, which is why the suspicious Summers hires Macklin to investigate.

Despite hating Summers for his cold objectivity and himself for taking the job for the money, Macklin sets out on an elusive trail through Sylvia's past, which grows more sordid yet strangely compelling as he travels to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York City, El Paso, and across the border into Mexico. As he learns more of Sylvia's troubled past and her dark secrets, the down-on-his-luck private eye finds he's not only become obssessed with his phantom target, he's falling in love with her.

As Fast's first foray into the crime fiction genre, his neophyte chops become obvious when his characters tend to over-philosophize, such as Macklin noting, "There can be nothing as cold and deadly as an evening of pedagogues frozen in their timidity of thought and multifold institutional fears, or pompous and irrational in their half-knowledge and their book-bound ignorance. . . ." Yet Sylvia was popular enough at the time to be well received, praised in its reviews and sold to Paramount Pictures for the 1965 film. As an interesting aside, in France, where they didn't care about U.S. blacklists, Sylvia was published under Howard Fast's own name and sold over a hundred thousand copies.

120 Books to Die For

Although I hate the bullet-trajectory speed of summer passing by, here's something to look forward to in the fall: Books to Die For, a new anthology edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke. It includes personal essays from 120 (that's not a typo - 120!) of the world's top crime writers on the mysteries and thrillers they admire the most. The project also has the objective of helping readers to learn about the classics of the genre and find hidden gems.

Tana French writes about The Secret History by Donna Tartt; Jo Nesbø chooses Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280; Kathy Reichs discusses her admiration for The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; Michael Connelly picks Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister; Charlaine Harris shares her love of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male; Mark Billingham opines on Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; and Ian Rankin chooses the lesser-known I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond, plus much more.

Look for it in stores on October 2nd, just in time for Bouchercon. In the meantime, check out the website for the book, which includes all the contributors, upcoming events, and some bonus materials, too, such as additional books that almost made the cut.

Mystery Melange

The national Sisters in Crime organization is sponsoring SinC Into Great Writing IV on Wednesday, October 3, 2012. The annual event held at the same time as Bouchercon (this year, in Cleveland), will feature Nancy Pickard leading the "Sensory Self-Editing Workshop."

The new Bloody Scotland crime fiction conference announced the shortlist for the inaugural Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Book of the Year award, including:

A Foreign Country, by Charles Cumming 
Dead Men and Broken Hearts, by Craig Russell 
Gods and Beasts, by Denise Mina 
The Lewis Man, by Peter May 
Prague Fatale, by Philip Kerr 
Redemption, by Will Jordan

CrimeCityCentral is a new site highlighting a weekly podcast of crime fiction-related authors and storytellers. They're also looking for submissions of 3,000 to 10,000 words including short stories, excerpts, a first chapter or collection of short shorts. They prefer published works, but self-pub, ePub and indie pub all count as published. 

The August issue of Yellow Mama is available online, and they're also open for new submissions of stories with themes that are cutting edge, hardboiled, horror, literary, noir or psychological/horror. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

Next year's special issue of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, to be launched in Brisbane at the 2013 conference, is on crime (crime fiction, crime on TV or film, true crime, and so on). The call for papers within the 5,000-6,000 has a submission deadline of September 2012.

The Q&A roundup this week includes "7 questions with...Timothy Hallinan"; Chelsea Cain admits she reads fewer thrillers than people assume she does, reading more non-fiction than anything else (she just went through a Bill Bryson binge); Karin Slaughter chats on the blog Jen's Book Thoughts about writing and researching her latest novel, Criminal; and Megan Abbott had a fun chat with Omnivoracious about her latest book, Dare Me, as well as some memorable moments and her obsessions.

Keep an eye out for the upcoming Murder and Mayhem in Muskego anthology from Down & Out Books to benefit the Muskego public library. The short story anthology features bestselling, Edgar and Shamus award-winning writers who have attended the annual MMM Conference, and will be edited by Jon and Ruth Jordan.

Katherine Neville, author of The Eight and Advisory Board Member of the the Smithsonian Libraries, announced two upcoming special events in Washington, D.C. The first is the Adopt-A-Book benefit taking place on September 13, where participants can browse through the library's special collections and "adopt" a book to help with preservation, while enjoying Italian food and lectures from curators. The other is a Writers' Workshop with author Steve Berry on October 18 at the National Museum of Natural History, followed by an exclusive rare books tour and reception.