B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 240

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company is teaming up with Canadian indie producer Calum deHartog to adapt Dennis Lehane's noir short story "Running Out of Dog." The story is about a Vietnam vet returning home and finding himself in a love triangle with a childhood friend and her husband, whose wealthy family were able to keep him out of Vietnam.

Actor Michael Rapaport has signed on to direct a film version of Jason Starr's novel Tough Luck about unlucky Mickey Prada who gets sucked in over his head in the mob-saturated Italian American community in 1980s New York.

Keira Knightley is in negotiations to star opposite Chris Pine in the Paramount prequel to Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novel series. Kenneth Branagh is directing and also has a supporting role in the film. According to Hollywood Reporter, the story centers on ex-Marine and Moscow-based financial analyst Jack Ryan (Pine), who uncovers a plot by his employer to finance a terrorist attack designed to collapse the U.S. economy. Ryan must race against time to save America and his wife (Knightley).

The film Flight, marking Robert Zemeckis' first live-action film since Cast Away in 2000, was chosen to close the New York Film Festival. The project, billed as "mystery thriller," stars Denzel Washington as a seasoned airline pilot who crash-lands his plane but saves nearly every passenger on board. Initially heralded as a hero, an FAA investigation raises troubling questions that could land him in prison instead.

Tim Robbins inked a deal to direct City of Lies, a film adaptation of Arthur Phillips' short story "Wenceslas Square," about two spies who fall in love while participating in separate missions in Prague.

TV

As Omnimystery News reminds us, tonight we bid farewell to The Closer on TNT with its series finale. But immediately following is the premiere of its spin-off, Major Crimes, which finds Captain Sharon Raydor (played by Mary McDonnell) now in charge of Los Angeles Police Department's Major Crimes division.

Author Michael Koryta's third "Lincoln Perry" mystery, A Welcome Grave, was optioned by CBS Television in hopes of turning it into a series. The plot of A Welcome Grave follows follows the private investigator as he finds himself in the crosshairs of two police investigations when an old rival is brutally murdered.

NBC bought Pariah, a police procedural pilot from Lionsgate Television and Kelsey Grammer’s Grammnet Productions. The show will be wrritten by Kevin Fox (The Negotiator, Law & Order: SVU) and based on characters inspired by the economic theory "Freakonomics" made popular in the book by authors/economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The plot follows a rogue academic with no law enforcement background who the Mayor of San Diego appoints to run a task force using Freakonomics-inspired alternative methods of policing.

Fox is developing a television adaptation of the unpublished thriller Gun Machine by Warren Ellis, the author's second crime novel (after 2007's Crooked Little Vein). Dario Scardapane (Trauma) will write the project's screenplay pilot, a thriller about a beleaguered New York City detective who stumbles upon a cache of hundreds of guns that trace back to a number of seemingly unrelated unsolved murders. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC bought an untitled procedural drama project produced by 20th Century Fox TV. It's described as "an emotionally charged action thriller set in and around the world of Washington DC" that follows an idealistic secret service agent who finds himself at the epicenter of an international crisis on his first day on the job.

FX also has a spy drama in the works, picking up the pilot The Americans for a 13-episode order. The show stars starring Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich in the period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. right after Ronald Reagan is elected President.

Luisa d'Oliveira, Dayo Ade and Karen LeBlanc were added to the all-Canadian cast of the CBC police procedural titled Cracked. The shows follows cops and psychiatric nurses pursuing evildoers among the emotional disturbed, and stars Stefanie von Pfetten.

Thirteen Steps Down, a TV adaptation of the 2004 novel by Ruth Rendell, begins on ITV1 tonight (August 13). This is the first Rendell work to be transferred to the small screen in 12 years.

The U.K.'s satellite network BSkyB will launch a dedicated movie channel, Sky Movies, for the James Bond franchise on October 5 this year. That dates coincides with the 50th anniversary celebrations of the release of the first Bond movie, Dr No.

PODCASTS

NPR's Crime in the City catches up with Peter James to discuss his novels set in Brighton, England.

Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, visited the women of The View on ABC-TV.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson featured the Rock Bottom Remainders, with the band's final performance, plus an interview with Stephen King. This is part of a farewell tour for the literary band, which at times has included authors Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Al Kooper, Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, Cynthia Heimel, Sam Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Joel Selvin, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr., Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Fulghum, Matt Groening, Tad Bartimus and Greg Iles.

THEATER

The new musical Who Murdered Love? opened August 10 and will continue through August 25 at the Players Theatre, as part of the 16th Annual New York International Fringe Festival/FringeNYC. The play is set in 1924 New York City and in a Paris dreamscape and "follows WWI veteran and private eye, 'Sleepy' Sam Speed, Gail Friday and Everett Greene, as they attempt to unravel the disappearance and possible murder of DaDa Love, at the behest of their client, the stunning heiress Honey Potts."

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Death and the Sky Above

Paul Winterton (1908-2001), the son of a journalist and member of Parliament, was educated at the London School of Economics and London University, receiving his B.Sc. in political science and economics in 1928. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years and worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter and foreign correspondent. He served in the Moscow office from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC's Overseas Service.

After the war, he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than fifty books and numerous short stories under the pen names of Roger Bax and Paul Somers, although the majority were published under his Andrew Garve pseudonym. His work, translated into over twenty languages and adapted for TV, included varied backgrounds from his many travels, such as Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry. Dr. Robin Winks, Yale historian and an expert on detective fiction, once wrote ''Garve's sense of place is uncanny."

Garve was also known for never repeating a plot, and 1953's Death and the Sky Above follows the plight of Charles Hilary, the henpecked husband of the bitter, alcoholic and vindictive Louise who won't grant Charles the divorce he wants so he can be free of his marital prison. One fateful day, he leaves for a cricket match and makes plans to be with Kathryn Forrester, a successful news reporter who loves Charles so much she's willing to leave her career and move to France to be with him.

But when Louise is found murdered and Charles' many letters pleading for a divorce are discovered, he's arrested for her murder and scheduled to be executed by hanging. A prison fire enables him to escape with Kathryn, but in their attempt to cross the Channel, their boat capsizes and Charles is recaptured. Resourceful journalist Kathryn works feverishly to prove his innocence as the clock ticks away toward her lover's last day on Earth, but no one will listen...

Several of Garve's novels were adapted for the screen, including Megstone Plot, made into the 1959 movie A Touch of Larceny starring James Mason and George Sanders, and one of the author's pseudonymous Roger Bax books became the 1953 movie Never Let Me Go with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney. Death and the Sky Above was made into an installment of NBC's "Kraft Mystery Theater" in December 1961 starring Peter Williams, Petra Davies and Ursula Howells and directed by Robert Lynn.

Winterton/Garve also served the crime fiction community in another important role, as a founding member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers' Association, along with Elizabeth Ferrars.

Marlowe Resurrected

The estate of Raymond Chandler and publisher Henry Holt & Company have agreed to release a new novel featuring Chandler's iconic detective creation, Philip Marlowe. They've chosen Booker Prize-winning author John Banville to pen the new novel, writing under his crime fiction pen name of Benjamin Black. Holt is also the publisher of Black's series of crime novels featuring a hard-drinking Dublin pathologist named Quirke.

Black said of the new endeavor, "I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels. This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe’s California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper's paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating."

This isn't the first time an effort has been made to continue Chandler's Marlowe series, as Jeff Pierce over at the Rap Sheet notes. Uruguayan author Hiber Conteris and Robert B. Parker wrote Marlowe novels, and various writers contributed Marlowe short stories in the anthology Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration. Time will tell if Black's style is a good mesh with Chandler's literary vision.

In light of the announcement, I thought it would be fun to listen to a program the BBC did about Raymond Chandler on the 100th anniversary of Chandler's birth, in 1988. The first part is mostly introduction, although it includes a Q&A from 1958 with Ian Fleming chatting with Chandler (about a year before his death), which begins about 6:00 into the recording.

Chandler's frustration with being taken seriously as a writer of detective fiction is quite evident, as he once said about the Long Goodbye, "I may be the best writer in this country (the U.S.), and with two exceptions, I think I am. But I am still a mystery writer. For the first time in my life, I was reviewed as a novelist in the London Sunday Times and I was discussed on the BBC, but over here?"

It's a fun interview, including Fleming's admission that he never intended James Bond to be a hero, but more "a blunt instrument wielded by a government department who would get into bizarre and fantastic situations and more or less shoot his way out of them." Whereas Chandler says of Marlowe, "He's always confused. He's like me." Later, in part three, Chandler says of Marlowe, he wasn't based on the author, at least not deliberately. "If so, it just happened."

You can hear the second, third and fourth parts of the interview via YouTube, each segment about seven minutes long.

Mystery Melange

 

Book maze, photo by Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features

This week, the annual Pulpfest returns to Columbus, Ohio, and Don Herron has a mini-preview and a tale of his own attraction to the pulpy goodness of Dime Detective magazine.

The latest issue of Pulp Metal Magazine is now live, with a "Vengeance" theme and several new stories and other features. PMM bills itself as "A heady smorgasbord of odd fiction, cult celluloid, unreal doodling, lowbrow waffle & heavy, heavy music."

Pulp Modern editor, Alec Cizak, says they're accepting submissions for the Autumn issue, and "stories about autumn, Halloween, chopping up turkeys, etc., will go to the front of the line." Stories should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Cizak also announced Elisha Murphy will be joining Pulp Modern as an assistant editor.  (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

The Ngaio Marsh Award 2012 shortlist was announced yesterday. The award honors the best in crime fiction from New Zealand writers. Nominees include Paul Cleave, Neil Cross, Ben Sanders, and Vanda Symon.

The shortlists for the Ned Kelly Awards were announced last week. The awards are handed out for the best in Australian crime fiction in the categories of True Crime, Best Fiction, Best First Fiction and Short Stories.

More sad bookstore news to report. Last week, it was Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks that went out of business, and now, after 18 years in the spot on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers is closing its doors on September 20th. The store posted a note on Facebook that "We've had a great run and have enjoyed helping a generation of readers find the books they love. We've had a lot of fun, learned a tremendous amount, and enjoyed our time with all of you - customers, authors and publishers."

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots Ezine includes entertaining musings from "The Ripster" on South African crime writer Deon Meyer, the obit for crime fiction supporter Iwan Hedman Morelius, a note about the annual convention of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and much more.

If you're an Australian and a woman writer, you have until the end of this month to enter Sisters in Crime Australia's Crime & Mystery Short Story Competition with a total of $1,500 worth of prizes. The annual contest is sponsored by Melbourne’s famous Athenaeum Library.

The Q&A roundup this week features Michael Koryta talking about his new novel The Prophet with fellow author Dean Koontz; and EuroCrime chats with Jefferson Bass, the writing team of Jon Jefferson and Dr Bill Bass.

Untreed Reads is offering a special summer sale through August 15th at The Untreed Reads Store for 50% off all titles, including my story "Ill-Gotten Games" and the anthology Grimm Tales, in which I'm honored to be included as a contributor. There are hundreds of other titles from the likes of Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle, Victor J. Banis, Nigel Bird, Paul D. Brazill, Denise Dietz, Barb Goffman, John Kenyon, Stephen D. Rogers, Elizabeth Zelvin and many more fine writers.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Amy Berg has signed on to direct Every Secret Thing, a film adaptation of Laura Lippman's 2004 mystery novel, starring Diane Lane. The story focuses on two 11-year-old girls who are convicted of murdering a baby and jailed until they turn 18, but after their release, children start to go missing.

Dark Knight Rises star Christian Bale is in negotiations to join the cast of The Creed of Violence, based on the novel by Boston Teran. The plot follows a small-time assassin and a young Bureau of Investigation agent forced to work together during the Mexican revolution of 1910 to infiltrate the Mexican criminal underground.

Dylan McDermott is set to star in the indie action thriller The Freezer, playing a mysterious man who is abducted and appears to be a victim, but has a past in which he was a ruthless killer for hire.

Trailer time: two new previews for the upcoming Bond film Skyfall starring Daniel Craig, here and here.

DigitalSpy has debuted a new preview clip of Jackpot, a film based on a story by author Jo Nesbo that opens on August 10 in the UK. The plot finds a man, Oscar Svendsen, who wakes up surrounded by eight bodies and a police detective with a gun pointed at his chest.

The studio behind Killing Them Softly released a preview trailer of the film about a professional enforcer (Brad Pitt) who investigates a heist that went down during a mob-protected poker game.

TV

Fox-based producer Hutch Parker optioned James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" novels with an eye toward developing a Fox TV series based on the Vietnam vet-turned police detective who works out of New Orleans. Burke introduced the character in 1987's The Neon Rain. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Hart Hanson (a producer behind Bones), is developing a pilot for CBS based on the Stockholm police inspector Evert Backstrom created by Swedish crime novelist Leif G. W. Persson. Backstrom has been described as "being to investigations what Gregory House was to medical mysteries."

MyAnna Buring and Matthew Goode will star in a new drama for ITV1 based on Erin Kelly's suspense novel The Poison Tree.

Fox ordered an untitled character-driven cop-drama written by Chris Levinson (Touch) about a major crimes detective who starts slowly losing his memory. Faced with the prospect of losing his career and family, the cop ends up putting his entire life under surveillance and ends up opening a window into a world where nothing is as it appears.

Fox has also ordered another unusual pilot, this from the executive producers of House. According to Variety, it's "an ensemble show set in a naval aircraft carrier with an upstairs/downstairs dynamic that separates young men and women in dangerous jobs from a female fighter pilot and her season-long quest to solve a murder that occurs on board."

Athena Karkanis will star in the AMC drama pilot Low Winter Sun, playing an Egyptian-Muslim detective on a Detroit police force that blurs the line between cops and criminals.

The History Channel has partnered with Storyline Entertainment's Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to develop a miniseries based on the true story of Bonnie and Clyde.

BBC America is co-producing a series based on the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. The project will fall under the network's weekly hour-long "Dramaville" slot, which also will add Copper in its debut on August 19th, and The Spies of Warsaw to air sometime in the fall.

Marvel and ABC may be working toward a small-screen version set in the Avengers universe, blending elements of a police procedural with high-tech espionage and superhero action.

Dexter may get a ninth season, according to Cinemablend. Showtime entertainment president David Nevins says the network is leaving the door open to continue some of the upcoming season's "game-changing" storylines.

Zap2It featured an article with Frank Spotnitz (The X Files) about his latest television venture, Hunted, which debuts in the fall on Cinemax. The action-thriller stars Melissa George and is set within the world of corporate espionage.

PODCASTS

NPR's summer series about fictional detectives and the cities where they live takes a look at Karin Slaughter and her books set in Georgia. Last week's installment featured Norwegian author Jo Nesbo showing that Oslo really does have a seedy side.

THEATER

Casting was finalized for the Broadway-bound production of Jekyll & Hyde, starring Tony nominee Constantine Maroulis, Deborah Cox and Teal Wicks. Directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun, the musical will open on Broadway in the spring of 2013 after a 25-week national tour.

Theatrical impresario Zev Buffman is staging his production of four of Agatha Christies "lost" radio plays as a show titled Agatha Christie's The BBC Murders. The four plays were the result of a bit of detective work on Buffman's part and first collected and performed at the International Mystery Writers' Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 2009. The new production will be staged at several venues in South Florida next year.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Johnny Under Ground

Patricia Pakenham-Walsh (1923-1977) was born in Dublin, the daughter of a father who served in the Indian civil service, retiring as a high court judge in Madras. Patricia joined the WAAF in 1939 during WWII as a a flight officer, experience which led Peter Ustinov to hire her as a technical assistant on his film Secret Flight in 1946.

She was Ustinov's personal assistant for eight years and penned her own screenplay, School for Scoundrels in 1960 (made into a film with Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, and Alastair Sim). She married John Moyes in 1951, and although they divorced and she later remarried, she kept her married name of Patricia Moyes as the pen name for novels featuring C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett and his cheerful Dutch wife, Emmy.

The Tibbett duo appeared in 20 novels, beginning with Dead Men Don't Ski in 1958 and wrapping up with 1993's Twice in a Blue Moon. The sixth entry in the series, Johnny Under Ground from 1965, further put the author's WWII training to use via the plot and Emmy Tibbett's background, with Emmy uneasily planning to attend her twentieth Royal Air Force reunion. Emmy had been a naive nineteen year-old auxiliary officer at Dymfield Air Base during the war, when she fell in love with the handsome RAF hero pilot Beau Guest. She was later devasted when Guest seemingly committed suicide by deliberately crashing his plane into the North Sea.

When Emmy attends the reunion, she learns Guest's widow wants to publish a book about the history of her husband's former military unit, which Emmy reluctantly agrees to help research. That isn't the only surprise in store—Emmy is shocked to find out she was the very last person to see Beau Guest alive, and that everyone connected with the fatal flight seems to have something to hide. Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett gets drawn into the mystery and realizes his wife has stumbled onto something sinister. But Emmy is determined to dig into the past, even after the other collaborator on the book is murdered and anonymous letters make it clear someone won't hesitate to kill in order to keep old secrets buried.

Although the Tibbett series technically falls into the police procedural category, the crimes are off-stage and the feel is more of a "cozy" or traditional mystery. As The New York Times Book Review noted, Moyes "handles indecorous events with a minimum of violence and fuss and makes drug dealing seem more like bad manners than bad morals.''

Writing Goes to the Dogs

Cartoon of the day...

Mystery Melange

It's Bloody Book Week in Johannesburg, South Africa. The country (and continent's) first crime fiction festival is back this year with authors Mandy Wiener, Mark Gimenez, John Connolly and Jeffery Deaver, as well as experts in crime, investigation and forensics. One of the highlights of the week is "The Bloody Book Week Masterclass: how to write your own crime fiction and make a fortune", hosted by Mike Nicol with significant input from both Jeffery Deaver and John Connolly.

The Spring/Summer edition of Mysterical-E is out, including 20 new stories; columns by Gerald So (a look at new crime TV shows of summer and fall), Jim Doherty (his 10 favorite private-eye movies), Chris Verstraete, Byron McAllister, and Jan Christenson; plus interviews and reviews galore.

This week's short story offering on Powder Burn Flash is "The House Always Wins" by Tom Darin Liskey, while Darkest Before the Dawn features Gary Clifton's "The Law of Expectation."

In the Q&A roundup this week, Laura LIppman interviews fellow author Megan Abbott about her latest novel, Dare Me; and here's a link to a video interview from earlier this year with author Lee Child interviewing Marcus Sakey about Sakey's latest book The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Vince Vaughn optioned film rights to The Risk Agent, the first in a new series by author Ridley Pearson. The books and film are set in China and follow a firm specializing in the recovery of hostages.

Nate Parker and Keith Carradine joined the cast of the thriller Ain't Them Bodies Saints. They join stars Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Casey Affleck and Ben Foster in the Bonnie and Clyde-style film.

Breaking Bad star Dean Norris was added to Ridley Scott's crime drama The Counselor. Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz were already on board the project about a lawyer (Fassbender) who becomes involved in cocaine trading on the Mexican border.

Omnimystery News posted the brief teaser trailer the BBC recently released with scenes from six of its upcoming dramas, all of which have a crime or suspense element.

TV

TNT optioned the "Rachel Knight" series of legal thrillers by Marcia Clark for television. The series follows Los Angeles district attorney Knight, who was introduced in the first novel, Guilt by Association.

The TV/film production company di Bonaventura Pictures is in negotiations for the rights to The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters for a TV series. The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse as a killer asteroid heads toward earth.

FX Networks has ordered a pilot for The Bridge, based on a Nordic crime drama set in Malmö and Copenhagen. The original project follows the investigation of a murder victim found in the middle of a bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark, forcing the Swedish and Danish police to work closely together. The American version will take place in El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Chihuahua, where the American and Mexican police must cooperate to hunt down a serial killer.

AMC has opted not to renew The Killing for a third year. Producer Fox TV Studios said it "will proceed to try to find another home for the show."

TV Guide notes that when Body of Proof returns to ABC this fall, it may feel more like Castle and Bones. Mark Vallly, (Human Target, Fringe and Boston Legal) is in discussions to play Detective Tommy Sullivan, a will-they-or-won't they sparirng partner for Dr. Megan Hunt, played by series star Dana Delany.

Former CSI star Laurence Fishburne will play Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI's behavioral sciences unit, on NBC's upcoming Hannibal, based on the Thomas Harris novels.

The BBC revealed a new trailer for the suspense thriller Hunted. Written and created by American writer Frank Spotnitz (The X Files, Strike Back) and from the producers of Spooks, Hunted is a mini-series set in the world of international espionage.

Netflix acquired rights to air the French crime drama Engrenages, which follows the actions of a police department headed by a female captain. An American version of the series is in development by Sam Mendes. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

The 2012 Television Critics Association Award winners announced last week include: Outstanding New Program, Homeland (Showtime); Individual Achievement in Drama, Claire Danes (Homeland); and Outstanding Achievement in Drama, Breaking Bad (AMC).

Also announced this week: the winners of the 38th annual Saturn Awards, presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was named best horror thriller; Breaking Bad was named best syndicated/cable TV series, and also received Saturns for best actor on television (Bryan Cranston) and best supporting actor on television (Aaron Paul). The Saturn for best network series went to Fringe, and Fringe star Anna Torv picked up the prize for best actress. The Killing’s Michelle Forbest received best supporting actress, while Tom Skerritt was awarded best guest star for his appearance on Leverage.

From Hollywood Reporter, here's the complete broadcast premiere calendar for fall.

PODCASTS

Don Winslow appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition to discuss his new book, The Kings of Cool, a prequel to Savages, set in 2005 when Ben, Chon and O are just starting their business. He talks about how he develops his characters and his early days as a private investigator.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books

(This is a "classic" FFB from 2010....)

William Roos was born in Pennsylvania in 1911, eventually heading to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study drama, first as an actor, then as a playwright. Audrey Kelley was born in New Jersey in 1912, and also ended up at Carnegie Tech at the same time as Roos to study acting. They met, fell in love, and like many wannabe actors and playwrights, moved to New York City.

What followed was a less-than-successful effort on both their parts initially, until Audry decided to try mystery writing as a career. It's unknown how she and her husband decided to collaborate, but collaborate they did, using a combination of their surnames as a pen name, Kelley Roos. According to their son, one of his parents would work on the even-numbered chapters, the other the odd-numbered chapters, then they would turn their chapters over to the other for rewrites.

Their first book, Made Up To Kill, was published in 1940 by Dodd, Mead, and featured husband-and-wife sleuth team, Jeff Troy, a photographer and jack-of-all-trades and Haila Troy, actress, who live in Greenwich Village. Son Stephen adds that "The Troys were a lot like my parents. They laughed a lot, drank a lot too. They worked very hard at their writing, but they never looked on their work as art. It was fun. They were entertainers."

In addition to the novels, William continued to write plays, including January Thaw and the book for the long-running 1948 Mike Todd musical, As the Girls Go. He and Audrey took their collaboration to the stage for the mystery play, Speaking of Murder, which had only a month's run in New York but longer when it moved to London. In 1961, their adaptation of John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court was televised by the National Broadcasting Company and picked up the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Ghost of a Chance from 1947 was the sixth of nine novels featuring the Troy duo, and starts off with a cryptic phone call to Jeff from a mysterious stranger who wants Jeff's help because an unnamed woman is going to be murdered. The Troys follow the strangers's instructions to meet him, hopping through bars and on to Times Square—only to find the stranger dead beneath a subway train. Believing the man was pushed to his death, but unable to convince anyone else, the Troys begin a suspenseful hunt to find the identity of the woman who is being targeted before the murderous gang behind the plot gets to her first, even as the Troys themselves are followed, shot at, and held virtual captives in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

As with the other Troy novels, Jeff does most of the detecting (something New York homicide cop Lt. George Hankins prefers to call "meddling") with Haila narrating the action, spotting clues, and proving she's far from a typical damsel-in-distress, all the while engaging in non-stop cheery banter along with her wry asides:

 

Jeff whistled a merry tune while we waited. I, too, felt fine. Actually, it wasn't much. Locating a man who owned a hansom cab that was driven years ago by a man who knew the name of a woman who was slated to be murdered was still a long way from finding that woman. But it was something, a little something. After hours and hours of nothing but high, thick stone walls it was worth whistling about. I joined Jeff, supplying some doubtful harmony to his doubtful melody of that recorded cantata in praise of Piel's light beer of Broadway fame.

Ghost of a Chance was filmed as Scent of Mystery (1960) starring Denholm Elliott, Beverly Bentley and Peter Lorre (with Elizabeth Taylor making an uncredited cameo). The location was changed to Spain, and the film was scripted by William Rose, but Kelley Roos turned around and created a novelization of the film, published to coincide with the movie release. Interestingly, the movie was made in the short-lived technology Smell-O-Vision, where the theatre was equipped with a system that gave off various odours synched up with the film, such as the opening scene with a butterfly flitting through a peach grove that called up peach scents, and later a smashed barrel of wine.

Other Roos novels were made into films (sans Smell-O-Vision), including The Frightened Stiff, which became A Night to Remember (1942), with Haila and Jeff portrayed by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne; Dangerous Blondes in 1943 starring Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes; The Blonde Died Dancing, filmed in France as Do You Want to Dance With Me? in 1959 and starring Brigitte Bardot and Henri Vidal; And To Save His Life made into the TV-Movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales in 1971.

Following in the tradition of Nick and Nora Charles, Pam and Jerry North (written by another husband-and-wife duo, Richard and Frances Lockridge), it's a shame that the Troys have been largely forgotten, although thanks to Rue Morgue Press, four of the Kelley Roos/Troy novels have been reissued in paper within the past five years, including Made Up to Kill, If the Shroud Fits, The Frightened Stiff and Sailor Taking Warning.