B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 243

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The on-again, off-again film project The Thin Man, based on Dashiell Hammett's stories about Nick and Nora Charles, appears to be stalled again, due to budget problems and Johnny Depp's busy schedule.

Edward James Olmos is in talks to play the villain in Baltasar Kormakur's Two Guns film, based on a graphic novel. If the deal goes through, he will join Mark Wahlberg playing a Navy SEAL and Denzel Washington as a DEA agent who work together, not knowing each of them is undercover.

Muppets director James Bobin is on board to direct an adaptation of the novel Agent Zigzag, based on the book by Ben McIntyre. The plot centers on a man named Eddie Chapman, a criminal-turned-hero who serves his country by operating as a double agent during World War II, spying on Germany and reporting back to MI5.

Here's one I overlooked last week: Shane Salerno has optioned Steve Hamilton's 2011 Edgar Award-winning Best Novel The Lock Artist  for film. Salerno also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of Don Winslow's Savages. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Director Rob Reiner is getting back into the thriller genre with the project You Belong To Me. It's described as being "in the tradition of Cape Fear," and is about a psychiatrist who makes a mistake when he exposes details about himself to his patients.

Aaron Eckhart has been cast in the upcoming thriller about a former Secret Service agent who has to prevent terrorists from attacking the White House. Titled either White House Taken or Olympus Has Fallen (depending upon the source), Eckhart will play the president and joins previously-cast actor Gerard Butler

New Line has picked up an untitled noir thriller from Allison Burnett, that's filled with sensuality and intrigue and described as "being in the tradition of Body Heat."

TV

BBC2's new five-part police drama Line of Duty begins tomorrow night, starring Lennie James as the much honored and admired Detective Gates. (Hopefully, it will cross the Pond to BBC America in the not-too-distant future.)

Actor Mark Williams has been cast in a new BBC One crime drama based on the Father Brown stories by GK Chesterton about a priest who accidentally finds himself as a crime detective.

CBS is considering bringing back Unforgettable as a mini-series next summer. The recently-canceled police procedural starred Poppy Montgomery as a detective who has the ability to remember everything.

The serial-killer show Dexter will kick off the upcoming Comic Con, while executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa of another Showtime program, Homeland, will debut the first two minutes of the series' second season premiere.

PODCASTS

Don Winslow appeared on CBS This Morning to talk about his new Savages prequel, titled The Kings of Cool.

Thanks to Elizabeth Foxwell for noting that the International Spy Museum offers occasional podcasts, including Christina Shelton discussing her new book Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason.

THEATER

The Broadway production of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca lost its leading man and lady when the show also lost its financial backing. But now funding seems to be in place, two new stars have signed on: Jill Paice (The Woman in White) as a new wife simply known as I, and Ryan Silverman (who played Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway) as her husband, the wealthy Englishman Maxim de Winter.

The Bad and the Better by Derek Ahonen runs through July 21 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in New York. The New York Times called it a "red-herring-stuffed panorama of dime-store pulp," that includes 26 cast members. The plot ultimately centers on two brothers, a disgraced former NYPD cop named Rick Lang (William Apps) and his equally damaged brother, Chuck (David Nash), an undercover agent who infiltrates an anarchist cell by masquerading as an Off Off Broadway playwright.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Summer School Mystery

Josephine Bell is the pen name of Doris Collier Ball (1897-1987), who became a University College Hospital of London physician and married fellow doctor Norman Dyer Ball. After her husband died in a car accident in 1936, the tragedy pushed Bell to try her hand at writing, although she also maintained her medical practice until the age of 57. She continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in over forty novels and several short stories, including Amy Tupper, Dr. Henry Frost and Dr. David Wintingham. She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and a member of the Detection Club.

It's the idealistic Dr. David Wintringham who is featured in Bell's novel from 1950, The Summer School Mystery. (I thought it might be an appropriate choice in this week of the Summer Solistice.) The school in the title refers to the summer music school at Falconbury, which proves to be more eventful than any of the students or lecturers could have imagined. The school is in the country, but many of the pupils and their instructors have traveled from the Royal School of Music in London. Derek Fox and his fiancée Belinda Power fail to turn up on time and nobody knows where they are. When the body of Belinda is discovered inside one of her own timpani, suspicion falls on Derek, who turns to Dr. Wintringham for help. But Derek is not forthcoming with information leaving David with little to go on. What is Derek hiding? And who killed Belinda if Derek is innocent?

It's been said that Bell's fiction marks a transition from British Golden Age style, in a society facing prewar industrial depression, wartime restrictions, and postwar austerity at the time that Bell began writing, which also served as the backdrop in many of her books. Dr. Wintringham is the type of professional working-man sleuth featured in such works, a physician at Research Hospital in London, who is married with four children and a frequent consultant to his friend Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard. Wintringham appeared in 18 novels and proved his skill at spotting incorrect medical diagnoses as well as clues left at crime scenes.

Bell was popular in her native England, but her novels didn't cross the Pond until 1955. Black Dagger Crime has brought back a few of her novels in print over the past several years, but in general, her books aren't easy to find.

Solomon vs. Lord eBook Giveaway

It's giveaway time, and the prize on this occasion is fiction by Paul Levine, who has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and been nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, the International Thriller Writers Award and the James Thurber Humor Prize. He's the author of the critically-acclaimed Jake Lassiter series and the Solomon vs. Lord series. The latter features lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, combative Florida lawyers in a love-hate relationship who can't even agree on "good morning." Victoria is a Coral Gables blueblood who plays by the book, while Steve is a Coconut Grove beach bum who ignores the rules in favor of Solomon's Laws. But they make a good trial team, although there's always the chance they'll kill each other while the jury is still out.

Levine recently released all four books in the series — Solomon vs. Lord, The Deep Blue Alibi, Kill All the Lawyers and Habeas Porpoise (formerly titled Trial & Error) — in Kindle editions and is celebrating by giving away an eBook of the first novel, Solomon vs. Lord, and a short story titled "Sink or Swim." Solomon vs. Lord introduced the two attorneys who bicker and banter as they defend a beautiful young woman accused of killing her wealthy, older husband. With crooks, con men, and a cast of colorful characters swirling around Solomon and an anxious fiancé waiting for Lord, the two attorneys begin to believe their luscious client has been lying through her perfect teeth. Now Solomon and Lord must solve the case before they end up in ruin, in jail…or in bed.

Levine is a former trial attorney who served as a legal commentator for WPLG-TV and WTVJ-TV in Miami, wrote and appeared on You & the Law, a television segment syndicated by Newsweek Broadcasting, and also taught communications law as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Miami School of Law. His writing has been called "Carl Hiaasen meets John Grisham in the court of last retort." The author says he brings "humor to the legal system because I see so much that's absolutely nutty there....I practiced law in front of curmudgeonly judges, and I knew lawyers who could shake your hand and pick your pocket at the same time. There were also judges who were absolutely hilarious, some without meaning to be."

For your chance to win either Solomon vs. Lord in  mobi (Kindle) or PDF versions or the Solomon vs. Lord short story "Sink or Swim" in mobi format, just send along your name and e-mail address to bv@bvlawson.com. I'll take entries until Friday at midnight ET, and post the two winners (drawn at random) over the weekend.

Mystery Melange

The Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, sponsored by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal, announced this year's nominees: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly, Murder One by Robert Dugoni and Breach of Trust by David Ellis. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

If you're looking for some good summer reading from Downunder, the Ned Kelly Award nomination longlists were just released for Best First Fiction, Best Fiction and Best True Crime from Australian authors.

Carolyn Hart is the Amelia Award recipient for the Malice Domestic 25 conference, which will be held May 3-5, 2013 in Bethesda, Maryland. The Amelia recipient is someone who has contributed significantly not only to the Malice Domestic convention but to the Malice Community. Other honorees next year include Laurie R King, Guest of Honor; Laura Lippman, Toastmaster; Aaron Elkins, Lifetime Achievement; Peter Robinson, International Guest of Honor; Cindy Silberblatt, Fan Guest of Honor; and Malice will also remember Dick Francis.

Patti Abbott frequently sponsors writing challenges on her blog, the latest being a "drabble challenge." A drabble is a 100-word story, in this case, based on one of three photos Patti posted for inspiration. These are fun, and maybe they'll inspire you, too.

If you'll be in the U.K. on July 3rd, Ayo Onatade of Shots Magazine notes the second annual Crime in the Court will take place in Goldsboro Books' Cecil Court location in the heart of London. This year's lineup thus far includes close to 40 authors including Mark Billingham, Christopher Fowler, Sophie Hannah, David Hewson, Peter James, Erin Kelly and S J Watson.

Another conference celebrating its second year is the Quebecrime Writers Festival, to be held October 25-27 in Québec City, Canada. Special guests and panelists include Linwood Barclay, Mark Billingham, Laura Lippman, Chelsea Cain, Owen Laukkane, and many more. Plus, the festival holds several "CSI Activity" sessions for festival participants.

Hard Case Crime is publishing its first-ever novel to include interior illustrations. The book is Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins, a whodunit inspired by the real-life crusade against comic books led by Dr. Fredric Wertham in the 1950s. The novel tells the story of how the crusading moralist agitating for censorship is murdered and how a troubleshooter for the comic book industry has to track down his killer. Tthe book features 16 pages of interior art done in the 1950s EC Comics style by veteran comics pro Terry Beatty.

In the Q&A roundup, Eva Dolan of the Crime Fiction Lover blog interviewed Danielle Ramsay, author of the Jack Brady novels set in the north eastern seaside resort of Whitley Bay, who was shortlisted for the CWA’s Debut Dagger in 2009; and K.A. Laity over at the blog A Knife and a Quill pulls a "Rapid Fire Interview" with Paul D. Brazill.

One sad bit of news to impart, this from the Mystery Florida Conference Board of Directors:

After seven wonderful years and conferences, the board of directors of Mystery Florida, Inc. has regrettably decided to end the program. We have not been able to recruit new people to take over the tasks of putting on the conferences, and frankly, seven years of intense activity required to make the conferences so successful has taken a toll on the board.

During the past seven years, Mystery Florida and its participants have contributed thousands of dollars to the support of the two beneficiaries of our non-profit corporation, the Longboat Key Library and the Tingley Memorial Library in Bradenton Beach. We have met great mystery writers and introduced many fans to their favorite authors. It has been a labor of love for the members of the board and we are saddened by the demise of the conference.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to all of our faithful followers for your part in making our conferences so successful.

'Zine Scene

Out of the Gutter, which bills itself as "a fully illustrated, perfect bound journal of pulp fiction, degenerate literature, demented humor and much, much more," is once again open for crime fiction stories, from 500 to 3,000 words. But the good news doesn't stop there: the publishers are promising more platforms (print and digital), more content, fresh staff, and the 'zine's publishing arm, Gutter Books, is releasing W.R. Burnett's classic novels The Asphalt Jungle and High Sierra. Check out Jedidiah Ayres' Hardboiled Wonderland blog for more details about other interesting classic releases.

This follows on the good news I mentioned last week, that ThugLit is once again open for short-story submissions, as a paying market.

The latest issue of Pulp Modern is out and available via Createspace, with stories from Amy Bloom, Garnett Elliott, Matthew C. Funk, Richard Godwin, Edward A. Grainger and Chuck Tyrell, W.P. Johnson, William Dylan Powell, Chris Rhatigan, Stanley Rutgers, Ron Scheer, Jared Yates Sexton, Wendy Velasquez, and Joseph S. Walker.

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine editor Linda Landrigan has joined the blogosphere, including a posting about AHMM myths (no, they don't only publish "cozies"). The latest issue of the 'zine, by the way, includings stories by Martin Limon, Jim Ingraham, Robert Lopresti, Garnett Elliott, Dee Long, and a classic from Georgette Heyer.

The newest Yellow Mama is also available online, with great noir stories by Dana C. Kabel, Chris Rhatighan, Jason Duke and many more, plus some criminally good poetry.

Crime Factory is currently closed to submissions, except for their first-ever "Horror Factory" issue to concide with Halloween. As Liam Jose posted, they're "looking for you to blow our socks off, and then feed them the S&M demon you worship," as long as it's under 5,000 words.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Charlize Theron has signed on as co-producer and is also in talks to star in director John Madden's film project, Murder Mystery. (Madden's most recent film is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.) Penned by Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt, Murder Myster is said to be "an affectionate deconstruction of an Agatha Christie-style thriller," as it follows an American couple honeymooning abroad who are implicated in a murder they witness. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Sometimes it seems as though J.J. Adams must never sleep. One of his many irons in the fire is a movie based on Patrick Aison's script Wunderkind that was the subject of a bidding war. The action thriller is set in the 1970s and follows a pair of Nazi hunters, one a young CIA operative, the other an older Mossad member.

Primarily known for his movie comedies, director Will Gluck has plans to produce, direct and star in the film adaptation of the book Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, by Geoffrey Gray. The book recounts the tale of a man who hijacked a Boeing 727 in mid-flight to demand $200,000 and parachuted out of the plane somewhere over the Pacific Northwest.

Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul is in talks to star in the HBO pilot The Missionary, a Cold War era drama that would feature Paul as a missionary turned CIA spy in the 1960s.

Oscar winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) has joined Martin Scorsese's upcoming film The Wolf of Wall Street, based on Jordan Belfort's memoir. Dujardin will play a Swiss banker involved in laundering illicit funds for Belfort's firm.

Here's a fun bit of casting news: Hugh Laurie (House, MD) is in talks to play the villain in the upcoming Robocop movie reboot.

Omnimystery News brought an indie thriller to my attention. Home Sweet Home stars as Gwen Stevens as a lone woman who battles two psychotic squatters for her home and her life. Don't necessarily look for this one in theaters, however; as ON explains, it may be headed direct to DVD.

TV

The Canadian Broadcasting Company has ordered a project based on Louise Penny's novel Still Life. The book features Penny's protagonist, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sureté du Québec, investigating a murder in the sleepy fictional town of Three Pines.

Thanks to Dr. D.P. Lyle for noting that the Smithsonian Channel is airing a new program titled Forensic Firsts, which looks at the history of forensics and how new tools are changing crime solving.

Jeanne Tripplehorn (formerly of HBO's Big Love) has been hired to replace Paget Brewster in Criminal Minds, who left the show at the end of season 7.

NBC has already unveiled its fall schedule, which is starting early to take advantage of Olympics coverage. Grimm will premiere August 13th in a special time slot before moving to its regular in mid-September; a two-hour premier of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is scheduled for later in September, on the 26th. Oddly, the new Chicago Fire series doesn't premiere until October 10th.

PODCASTS

On Friday's installment of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Don Winslow talked about his novel of The Kings of Cool: A Prequel to Savages.

Elizabeth Foxwell notes that BBC Radio 4 Extra is featuring Colin Dexter reading his story "The Double Crossing" this week.

THEATER

The Olney Theater in Maryland is staging Sleuth, Anthony Shaffer's popular play, through July 8. Broadway veteran Bob Ari plays Andrew Wyke, a mystery writer who finds out a young man, Milo Tindle (played by Jeffries Thaiss), is having an affair with his wife. Wyke invistes Tindle to his house, convinces him to stage a burglary of his wife’s jewelry, and things spin into dark territory from thereon.

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival is producing more than just Shakespeare, with a staging of Agatha Christie's classic play The Mousetrap, still the longest-running play in the history of modern theater, performed continuously in London since 1952.

Michael Walker's whodunit play, Absolutely Dead, won the 2012 competition from the International Mystery Writers' Festival. It was fully staged during the festival at the RiverPark Center in Owensboro, Kentucky.

GAMES

Godfather: the game. Parker Brothers just released a new version of Monopoly based on The Godfather movies. The playing pieces? A horse head (!), cannoli, a Genco Olive Oil tin, the Don's limo, a dead fish and a tommy gun.

Friday's Forgotten Books - The Habit of Fear

This is an oldie-but-goodie from 2010:

Dorothy Salisbury Davis (who turned 96 in April 2012), was born in Chicago and raised as a Roman Catholic but left the church when she married her husband, actor Harry Davis. Now considered one of the Grand Dames of crime fiction, she didn't start out as a writer, working first in advertising and as a librarian, publishing her first novel in 1949 with the encouragement of her husband. Since then, her 20 novels and numerous short stories have received seven Edgar Award nominations; the novel A Gentle Murderer was chosen as one of the Haycraft-Queen cornerstones of detective fiction; and Davis appeared on the "CBS News Nightwatch" program along with Robert Parker and Nicholas Meyer discussing Sherlock Holmes. Her novel Broken Vows was also made into a 1987 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones.

She's had a clear influence on the crime fiction community, serving as Myster Writers of America grandmaster in 1985 and on the initial steering committee for the formation of Sisters in Crime (along with Charlotte MacLeod, Kate Mattes, Betty Francis, Sara Paretsky, Nancy Pickard and Susan Dunlap). She was Guest of Honor at Malice Domestic VI, quoting Hilaire Belloc, that "It will not matter if my sins are scarlet, if only my books are read."  In an interview with J. Kingston Pierce for January Magazine in 2002, no less than Stuart Kaminsky said in regards to his publishing venture called Mystery Vault, "I'm particularly proud of publishing Dorothy Salisbury Davis' 1940s novel Town of Masks..."
          
By her own account, Davis is an "odd fit" in crime fiction, unhappy with her perceived inability to create a memorable series character and uncomfortable with violence and murder. But she's very happy creating villains, and has often commented that villains are much more fun to write about than heroes. Her themes trend more toward psychology than out-and-out detection and religious tensions are often found in her work, not surprising considering her own background.

That religious undercurrent can be found in 1987's The Habit of Fear, the fourth and last in her series featuring Julie Hayes, a former actress and fortuneteller-turned New York City tabloid reporter, but the religious theme is only a small part of the deftly-knit threads of the plot that begin with her husband Jeff telling her he wants a divorce. Angry and hurt, she storms out of their apartment where she's tricked into a nightmare scenario of rape and sodomy by two mysterious men. Although she's reluctant to help the police, preferring to try and put as much emotional distance between her and the events as possible, she's drawn into the case, as well as a search for the Irish father she never knew, a journey that eventually takes her to the land of her beloved Yeats.

But her troubles only follow her, as a strange "Gray Man" seems to be stalking her, there's an appearance by her two attackers who escaped New York on bail, and she finds herself in the middle of tensions involving the Irish Republican Army and a splinter group. Underlying it all is a NYC gangster who watches over Julie as a protective, yet violent, avenging guardian angel. The plot threads ultimately do tie together into a hopeful but bittersweet conclusion.

Salisbury once contributed the chapter "Background and Atmosphere" to the Writer's Digest Mystery Writer's Handbook in 1975, and she is certainly adept with creating atmosphere in The Habit of Fear, first in the seedy side streets, police precincts and courts of New York and then in the bucolic but war-torn landscapes of Dublin, Wicklow, Ballina and Sligo:

Julie climbed the narrow street to where the village came to an abrupt end at a gate to the ruins. The wind gusted fiercely. The river became rapids alongside the ruins and rushed noisily down the hillside. Looking down, she could see boats at anchor, heaving in the heavy waters. Beyond the inlet was the Atlantic, blue and white-capped and dappled with dark patches where the clouds threw their shadows. As she went on, she could see the coast road with an occasional cottage and bits of color where the stacked turf was tucked around with plastic tarps.

 
Her characterizations are also rich and multi-layered, with no character completely evil or saintly. In an interview with Don Swaim on the CBS Radio studio show "Wired for Books", she talks about this novel and her writing and how she created the character of Julie Hayes during a period when the author herself was in therapy (note: the interview contains spoilers). She made Hayes a defender of street people due to Davis' own walking through city areas frequented by prostitutes, where she said she was accepted as "this little old lady with white hair in a raincoat", talking to various people from all walks of life.

Unfortunately, in the interview, she indicated there were a couple of additional Julie Hayes books that were in the works, but alas, that was apparently not to be.

Read a Novel, Boost Your Career

Recent articles in Forbes magazine and the Harvard Business Review cited research that seems to show reading novels can improve your emotional intelligence. The process of reading activates neuronal pathways in your brain that help you better understand real human emotion, thus improving your overall social skills. Because the pace of our hectic contemporary lifestyles makes it less likely we'll have time to interact with other humans on any meaningful level, reading fiction provides both time and opportunity to think deeply about the feelings of others and imagine alternate worlds and lives. So all you MBA schools out there: make sure you include fiction in your reading assignments.

Mystery Melange

Good news for writers of short crime fiction: ThugLit is open again for hard-boiled/noir submissions between 3,000-5,000 words (hat tip to Sandra Seamans).
 
Hard Case Crime is publishing a new edition of Harlan Ellison's first novel, Web of the City. According to publisher Charles Ardai, It will be the first edition of the book to hit bookstores in 30 years "and the first ever to feature the definitive text of the book, correcting errors that have dogged the book since its original publication back in 1958. It's also the first ever to pair the novel up with three thematically linked short stories Ellison wrote for the pulp magazines of the 1950s."

The relatively new digital crime fiction imprint Blasted Heath just released two new books, The Storm Without by Tony Black and The Vanity Game by HJ Hampson, about which author Megan Abbott said, "As black as black comedies come and twice as audacious, HJ Hampson's The Vanity Game eviscerates celebrity culture with the incisiveness of an expert surgeon—but with a giddy, over-the-top pleasure that's exhilarating." Blasted Heath is also publishing and giving away 25 limited-edition signed print copies of Hampson's book. For more information on how to enter to win, check out their website.

Lisa Grossman, writing for The New Scientist, asks, "Are printed books really going the way of the dodo? And what would we lose if they did?" At a recent conference titled Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book, presenters made the case that printed books will live on as art objects and collector's items and others will become more multifaceted, incorporating video, music and interactivity. Meanwhile, print-on-demand books are gaining in popularity and becoming another viable option for self-published authors or an author's backlist.

In the Q&A spotlight this week, Michael Connelly interviewed fellow author Mark Billingham (and here's Part 2) who noted that when men write about violence, they tend to write about how it looks rather than how it feels, whereas he's always tried to write about how it feels, which is more powerful. (Note: A TV mini-series on the UK's Encore network based on Billingham's Inspector Thorne novels debuted last night.)

Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal, also sponsors regular Literary Salons in Berkeley. Coming up next on Tuesday, June 19, the featured guest will be Katherine Hall Page, author of the Faith Fairchild mystery series.

Poisoned Pen Press is offering several of its ebook mystery titles for free for a limited time. Although most are only free on iTunes, PPP is gradually adding some to Amazon, including Artifacts, the first Faye Longchamp mystery by Mary Anna Evans and In the Shadow of the Glacier, the first Constable Molly Smith mystery by Vicki Delany. This is a new campaign by PPP, to offer a select number of titles  rotating on a monthly basis, for free or for only 99 cents.

Summertime, When the Reading is Easy

Looking for a great mystery/thriller read this summer or while you're on vacation? The American Booksellers Association posted their bestselling titles for the eight-week period ending May 20, which is a good place to start, although I'm quite surprised to see so many titles held over from last year:

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Vintage)
2. The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon)
3. Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)
4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, (Vintage)
5. The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor)
6. The Snowman by Jo Nesbø (Vintage)
7. The Affair by Lee Child (Dell)
8. Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon (Penguin)
9. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James (Knopf)
10. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Vintage)
11. A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper Perennial)
12. Beastly Things by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly)
13. Force of Nature by C.J. Box (Putnam)
14. The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark (S&S)
15. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Bantam)
16. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (Penguin)
17. Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George (Dutton)
18. Iron House by John Hart (St. Martin's Griffin)
19. Sixkill by Robert B. Parker (Berkley)
20. Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam)
21. Sister by Rosamund Lupton (Broadway)
22. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur)
23. The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian (Broadway)
24. Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby by Ace Atkins (Putnam)
25. I’ll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark (Pocket)

If you've read all of the above and are hankering for some brand-spanking new titles, then Jeff Pierce over at the most excellent Rap Sheet blog has a handy list of the books due out this summer that he's keeping his eye on (for both the U.S. and U.K.). There are some exciting books and terrific authors on his list, so it 's definitely worth checking out.