B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 27

McIlvanney Prize Longlist

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Organizers of the Bloody Scotland international crime writing festival announced the longlist for the 2024 McIlvanney Prize, named after author William McIlvanney, the "Godfather of Tartan Noir," who passed away in 2015. The winner will be revealed on the opening night of the festival, September 13. Congrats to all!

 

A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Pan Macmillan)
The Cracked Mirror, by Chris Brookmyre (Sphere)
Kennedy 35, by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins)
The Girl in the Loch, by Andrew James Greig (Storm)
The Collapsing Wave, by Doug Johnstone (Orenda)
The Winter List, by S.G. Maclean (Quercus)
Past Lying, by Val McDermid (Sphere)
Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)
The Trials of Marjory Crowe, by C.S. Robertson (Hodder & Stoughton)
A Spy Like Me, by Kim Sherwood (HarperCollins)
Blood Runs Deep, by Doug Sinclair (Storm)
The Hollow Mountain, by Douglas Skelton (Polygon)

 

          

Mystery Melange

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Each year, the Bouchercon Crime Fiction Conference Board selects a recipient of the 2024 David Thompson Special Service Award to honor the memory and contributions to the crime fiction community of David Thompson, a much beloved Houston bookseller who passed away in 2010. Winners are lauded for their "extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime fiction field." This year's recipient(s) are Crime Writers of Color, and its founders, Kellye Garett, Walter Mosley, and Gigi Pandian. The award presentation will be part of the Bouchercon 2024 Opening Ceremony in Nashville August 28-September 1, 2024.

Winners of the 2024 Colorado Book Awards were announced, including those in the Mystery and Thriller categories. Best mystery was won by Blood Betrayal: A Detective Inaya Rahman Novel by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur Books). The other finalists were Standing Dead by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane Books) and Take the Honey and Run: A Beekeeping Mystery by Jennie Marts (Crooked Lane Books). The thriller winner was No Child of Mine by Nichelle Giraldes (Sourcebooks). The other thriller finalists include Once Upon a Lie by Rebecca Taylor (Ophelia House) and The Girls in the Cabin by Caleb Stephens (Joffe Books).

Applications are open for Sisters in Crime's SinC Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, which includes a grant of $2,000. Interested applicants need to submit an unpublished work of crime fiction that may be a short story or first chapter of a manuscript in-progress of 2,500 to 5,000 words, a resume or biographical statement, and a cover letter that gives a sense of the applicant as an emerging writer in the genre and briefly states how the award money would be used. (Writers submitting work should have published not more than ten pieces of short fiction or up to two self-published or traditionally published books.) One year after their win, the award winner will be asked to share thoughts on the impact the award has made, and also will be asked to serve as a member of the award selection committee for the year after their win, alongside volunteer judges. For more information, check out the official SinC award website.

The crime fiction festival "Murder Most Yorkshire" is headed to Harrogate in the UK from July 4-6. This is a free event with author panels, interviews, book signings, writing workshops, open mic, and writing challenges. Over a dozen authors are scheduled to attend and participate in such panels as "Tea and Trenchcoats," "Crime by Degree," "Not so Line of Duty," and more.

Kronos Records has scheduled a July release of the soundtrack to the film noir, Cop Hater (1958), the film based on the first 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain (1956) featuring Robert Loggia, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, and Vincent Gardenia. The music was written by composer Albert Glasser (Motorcycle Gang; The Big Caper; The Cisko Kid Returns, and various others), and is rich in both big orchestral moments and jazzy and big band swing style tunes. The CD is strictly limited to 300 copies. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist)

Craig Sisterson offers up "13 fresh, exciting antipodean crime writers to try" if you're interested in checking out crime fiction from Aussie and New Zealand authors.

If you're a fan of both science fiction and crime fiction, Reactor Mag has one list of "5 Underrated Weird Mysteries" and another titled "Five Murder Mysteries Featuring SFF Authors and Fans."

Think you're an expert at femme fatales in crime fiction? Then try your hand at this quiz via Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

In April 2015, B.K. (Bonnie) Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. After Bonnie's death in November 2017, the blog series relocated to Art Taylor's website. This week and next, he'll be hosting Julie Hastrup and Kevin Tipple, both contributors to the new anthology, Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery and Suspense, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, which was published this past week.

In the Q&A roundup, E. B. Davis interviewed Molly MacRae for Writers Who Kill, about Come Shell or High Water, the first book in MacRae’s Haunted Shell Shop mystery series; Crime Fiction Lover chatted with British author Tracy Buchanan about her latest crime novel, Venom in the Blood, which features the forensic entomologist Dr. Vanessa Marwood; and Shots Magazine spoke with Kia Abdullah, whose 2019 debut crime novel, Take It Back, was critically acclaimed, and whose third novel, Next of Kin, was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

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Author R&R with Chris Coppel

[image error]Chris Coppel was born in California and has since split his time between the USA and Europe, living in California, Washington DC, Utah, Spain, France, Switzerland and England. Chris has held senior operations positions for both Warner Bros. and Universal Studios. Chris also held the position of Director of Operations for UCLA’s Film School where he also taught advanced screenwriting. Chris and his wife Clare spent many years helping animal rescue with Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. Before joining Best Friends, Chris was President and Managing Director of the Home Entertainment Division of Testronics in Los Angeles. Following in his father’s footsteps (Alec Coppel wrote Vertigo among many other successful movies) Chris has written numerous screenplays as well as the novels Lifetimes, Lingering, Logistics, Double Down (as C.J. Axelrod), Liner, Lucy, Lakebed, Legacy, Lodge, and Luck. Chris is also an accomplished drummer and guitarist.

[image error]His new book, Latency, just released today, is a riveting blend of police procedural and supernatural thriller. Up until now, the only monsters the LAPD had ever seen were of the human variety. When two down-on-their-luck detectives are forced to work together on a series of cold cases, they slowly begin to uncover a common thread that may hold the key to solving some of their town’s grizzliest unsolved murders. Little do they know that the same key will unlock secrets from a different dimension; one filled with monstrous creatures that should never be disturbed…

Chris stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about his writing process:

First, a little about me and my writing.

I wrote my first book, Lucy, thirty years ago, then managed to not write another word for over twenty-five years. Now I write a minimum of one book a year. While my original novel was a gentle tale (or tail) revolving around a Golden Retriever that gets stolen and has to, along with other fine hounds, escape their capturers and find a way home, most of my other works have been in the horror – ghost genres. Why do I choose to weave tapestries of dark and cloying fear? I have no idea. What I can say for certain is that I have always enjoyed a good horror story. Before I go on, I think I need to point out the sort of tale that I DO NOT define as good horror. I am not a fan of gratuitous orgies of blood and gore that start on page one and maintain that same sordid level until the very end without any benefit to the story or the setting. I find that type of horror to be the genre-equivalent of the bottom shelf romance novels that are all written according to a preordained script that dictates content, romantic interaction timeline and conclusion. Having said that, those books sell in the billions every year, so that just shows how much I know.

Horror for me must be original. I don’t find an axe wielding psychopath targeting young sorority girls to be clever or worthy of even a sample read on Amazon. I like subtlety in my horror. I also like a dash of humour, a drop of pathos and most importantly, I want the feeling of discombobulation. I want the reader to feel the same emotions as the characters. To date, I feel that my books have encompassed all those criteria.

I was questioned about how I deal with research. Firstly, the need for in depth research beyond what my imagination can provide, varies from book to book. In Lucy and in Lingering, for example, I didn’t see the need for any research at all except for a little Google map work seeking out a few locations in Southampton. In Luck and Legacy, I needed quite a lot of science, armament knowledge, Native American lore etc. I found that the internet was all the tool I needed. I also learned not to grab the first data chunk from the landing page and then think that I was, at that point, highly knowledgeable on the subject at hand. Look deeper! For example, I needed to know about sniper rifles from the 1990s. I found that by digging deeply in the Google mine then branching into YouTube for some hands-on visualisations, I was able to get a good understanding of the weapon I needed for the story.

The only book I have written that required in-person research was the one I am editing at this moment. Titled Lusas Naturae, it is set in a small coastal town in England that is close to what was one of the biggest coal mines in England. In addition, the town sits atop a plethora of subterranean tunnels that were used by pirates and smuggles hundreds of years earlier. As my knowledge of tunnels and mines is on a par with my knowledge of quantum physics, I chose to meet local historians as well as volunteer tour guides at the local mine museum. The depth (literally) and breadth of knowledge that these individuals were able to impart to me was priceless and enabled me to add a layer of texture that couldn’t have been achieved otherwise.

You can read more about Chris and his writing via his website and follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  Latency is now available via all major booksellers and via publisher Cranthorpe Millner.

          

Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are attached to star in the thriller, RIP, with Joe Carnahan writing and directing. The plot details are being kept under wraps other than it being described as a crime thriller and that it will begin shooting this fall. No stranger to crime thrillers, Carnahan has made a name for himself over the years with such films as Narc and Smokin’ Aces (which Affleck also appeared in).

David Tennant (Doctor Who), Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes), Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice), Daniel Mays (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget), and Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Killing Eve) are joining The Thursday Murder Club, based on Richard Osman’s 2020 novel of the same name. They join the all-star cast of Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie. Chris Columbus is writer-director on the crime-comedy, which will follow a group of friends in a retirement home who gather to solve murders for fun, but find themselves caught in a real case. The four members of the club will be played by Mirren (ex-spy Elizabeth), Kingsley (ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim) Brosnan (former union activist Ron) and Imrie (ex-nurse Joyce).

Olivia Taylor Dudley (The Magicians) and Riley Dandy (Things Will Be Different) are set to star in Abigail Before Beatrice, a slow-burn psychological thriller marking the sophomore feature of writer-director Cassie Keet. The film follows an isolated woman who must confront her past when a fellow former cult member reaches out with news that their leader has been released from prison early.

Producer Dominic Barlow has teamed up with writer-executive producer Brendan Foley on The Angolan Clan, based on a series of four bestsellers by author Christopher Lowery. The project is an action-drama thriller series centered on two women in their 30s: an English widow and a Spanish-Angolan housekeeper who unexpectedly inherit a Spanish villa and ownership of a clandestine diamond company from the English woman’s father-in-law, who was also the Spanish woman’s employer. Together, they delve into the mystery of their shared inheritance, unraveling its origins amidst present-day London and Spain.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

Masterpiece on PBS has ordered a 10th season of the mystery series, Grantchester, with stars Robson Green and Rishi Nair set to return as DI Geordie Keating and Reverend Alphy Kottaram, respectively. Grantchester airs on Masterpiece on PBS in the U.S. and on ITV1 and ITVX in the UK. In addition to Green and Nair, other returning cast members include Al Weaver as Leonard Finch, Tessa Peake-Jones as Mrs. C, Kacey Ainsworth as Cathy Keating, Oliver Dimsdale as Daniel Marlowe, Nick Brimble as Jack Chapman, Bradley Hall as DC Larry Peters, and Melissa Johns as Miss Scott.

Patrick Dempsey has signed on as a series regular on Showtime's Dexter: Original Sin, playing Aaron Spencer, a Miami Metro Homicide Captain with a long history with the titular serial killer’s (Patrick Gibson) adoptive father, Harry Morgan (Christian Slater). The series also stars Molly Brown as Debra Morgan, James Martinez as Angel Batista, Christina Milian as Maria LaGuerta, Alex Shimizu as Vince Masuka, and Reno Wilson as Bobby Watt. Per the logline: set in 1991 Miami, Dexter: Original Sin follows Dexter as he transitions from student to avenging serial killer. When his bloodthirsty urges can’t be ignored any longer, Dexter must learn to channel his inner darkness. With the guidance of his father, Harry, he adopts a code designed to help him find and kill people who deserve to be eliminated from society without getting on law enforcement’s radar. This is a particular challenge for young Dexter as he begins a forensics internship at the Miami Metro Police Department.

Britain's Channel 4 has picked up the detective series Patience, starring Breaking Bad’s Laura Fraser, about a neurodivergent self-taught criminologist. Fraser plays Detective Bea Metcalf, the first person to spot the talents of Patience Evans (Ella Maisy Purvis), "who works in the criminal records department of Yorkshire Police, cataloguing and filing the evidence produced during major cases. A young autistic woman, she craves routine and order, relishing the solitude and structure her job provides, but she yearns for more." Neurodiversity will play a thematic role in the series, with all neurodivergent characters within the series played by neurodiverse actors — including Purvis.

Sam Neill (Jurassic Park; Apples Never Fall) is set to star opposite Eric Bana in Netflix's limited series Untamed. Written by Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith, Untamed is a mystery-thriller that follows Kyle Turner (Bana), a special agent for the National Parks Service who works to enforce human law in nature’s vast wilderness. The investigation of a brutal death sends Turner on a collision course with the dark secrets within the park, and in his own past. Neill will play Paul Souter who has been the chief park ranger in Yosemite for half his life. He’s a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, and friend to Turner (Bana), who's comfortable in all facets of his job, whether it’s dealing with crime inside the park or with the bureaucracy around it.

Michael Chernus (Dead Ringers) has been tapped for the title role in Peacock’s limited drama series Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy. True crime veteran Patrick Macmanus serves as writer, executive producer, and showrunner on the scripted series, inspired by the 2021 Peacock original docuseries of the same name. It chronicles the harrowing crimes of one of America’s most notorious serial killers and the investigation that ultimately brought him down. From 1972-1978, thirty-three young men were kidnapped, murdered, and buried in a crawl space beneath the house of their killer, Gacy, who went undetected for years because he was charming and funny, had a good, all-American job, was a community leader, and even volunteered to entertain sick kids… while dressed as a clown.

Apple TV+ released a trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Lady in the Lake, a seven-part limited series based on Laura Lippman's lauded 2019 novel, which was inspired by the real disappearances of Esther Lebowitz and Shirley Parker in 1960s Baltimore. Natalie Portman plays Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish woman who wants to become an investigative journalist and explore her potential beyond her home, and Moses Ingram plays Cleo Johnson, a Black woman who's trying to provide for her family while enduring the racism of 1960s America. When Cleo is found dead by Maddie in a lake, Maddie becomes obsessed with what happened to her as well as a missing young girl, and she inserts herself into the police investigation — but there's much more to the story than it seems.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On the latest episode of Red Hot Chili Writers, Australian thriller writer Michael Robotham and British crime writer MW Craven discussed their latest books, Storm Child and The Mercy Chair, as well the recent rise of Aussie Noir.

Crime Time FM featured a National Crime Reading Month special with Antony Johnston introducing Steve Cavanagh, Ilana Berry, Shawn Cosby, and Stuart Neville; Stu Cummins chatted with CL Taylor and TM Logan; and Paul Burke, Barry Forshaw, and Victoria Selman threw in a few reads of their own.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: A Different Kind of Summer

Gwendoline Butler (1922-2013) had limited success as a writer before she began a police procedural series featuring a young Scotland Yard Inspector, John Coffin, penning eight Coffin novels between 1956 and 1962. When Butler's husband took a job teaching in St. Andrews, Scotland, the author decided she wanted a change from Coffin and found her inspiration one day when she saw a young red-haired Scottish policewoman. She later asked the local police chief about the young officer and was told she was a recent graduate on a rapid promotion track. Thus was born the character of Detective Charmian Daniels of the fictional Deerham Hill CID and, as some have given credit to the author (written under her pen name of Jennie Melville), the birth also of the woman's police procedural.

Melville also dipped her pen into the romantic suspense well for a time, evening receiving a Romantic Novelists Association Major Award in 1981, but eventually returned to both Inspector Coffin and Detective Daniels. She went on to write over 70 novels and was a recipient of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger in 1973 and shortlisted for the Golden Dagger for another novel.

One critic elevated Melville/Butler to a status equal to the Four Great Founding Mothers: Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh, not only due to their writing, but in light of how many other elements they had in common: all well-educated (Butler lectured at Oxford), all prolific writers, all wrote on subjects other than detective fiction, and four of the group had supportive husbands. If she is not as well remembered as the others, it may be due to the fact that writers who she helped paved the way for, such as P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, eventually eclipsed her in acclaim.

Melville's writing of her female detective, Charmian Daniels, shows elements of early feminism, and as the character grew through the years, Detective Daniels also reflected the changing roles of women and attitudes toward them, particularly in a traditional man's field, law enforcement. Daniels grows in her career through time and is eventually promoted to Chief Superintendent with a move to Windsor. In an interview with Clues: A Journal of Detection in 2000, Butler said, "I was determined she [Daniels] should be a success and I suppose in a sense I was basing her on what would have happened to me if I'd remained in academic life when on the whole in my day, even more so now, women do climb the ladder. I was in the generation that was expecting to be successful as a woman in whatever field they ventured."  

In Melville's A Different Kind of Summer, dating from 1967, the fifth outing for Detective Daniels, Daniels is still a sergeant when an unidentified body arrives on a train into town in a coffin minus head or hands. It's up to Daniels to figure out which of many missing women this could be, including an increasing number of young girls vanishing in London. As she gets deeper into the case, she tries to stay objective and focused even as she starts receiving menacing phone calls and has to deal with a new young assistant, Christine Quinn, and a hysterical troublemaker who claims she's lost her sister.

There's been a lot of hue and cry lately about the amount of violence against women in crime fiction novels, and a mutilated female corpse would fall into that category, but in a commentary included in the original publication of A Different Kind of Summer, Melville said that she was interested in people committing crimes and why some people, usually women, form the victim syndrome in that the bad guys sense these victims are afraid (a reason why policewomen acting as decoys often fail to lure attackers, because their sense of confidence is too obvious).

Melville has a low-key writing style, blending social commentary with quirky characters, detailed plotting, and thoughtful writing for the most part, although in general, it's her novels with Inspector John Coffin where she's had her greatest success. One wonders if writing from a woman's point of view was too close to home to provide the inspirational distance required or if perhaps the fact the author's brother was Warden of the Toynbee Settlement in London gave her more of a first-hand experience with male protagonists. In either case, with Melvill's Daniels or Butler's Coffin, there's a lot of good material there, enough to show that grouping her with the "Four Great Founding Mothers" isn't that much of a stretch. If you're a fan of the "Golden Age" of detective fiction, then you'll enjoy these series.

          

Mystery Melange

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Book Art by Luciana Frigerio

Since 1986, the Netherlands has awarded an annual "Gouden Strop" ("Golden Noose") to the year's best Dutch-language crime novel and the "Schaduwprijs" ("Shadow Prize") to the best debut crime novel. Three years ago, they also introduced the "Zilveren Strop" ("Silver Noose") for the best Dutch-language short story, and last year that award was renamed the Goeken Prize (after Paul Goeken, who wrote six novels under his own name and nine as Suzanne Vermeer before he passed on in 2011). This year's winners of the Golden Strop and the Shadow Prize were announced late last month at the Neude Library in Utrecht, including Mathijs Deen, who won the Golden Strop 2024 with The Diver, and Lex Noteboom, who was awarded the Shadow Prize 2024 for his thriller, The Man with a Thousand Faces. The Silver Noose winner was revealed online yesterday as "Doodweer" ("Dead Weather") by Jolanda Treffers. The other four finalists (with titles translated into English) were "The Execution" by Marius van Bruggen; "A Short Frenzy" by Josh Pachter; "Walk with Premeditation" by Mark Posma; and "Mise-en-scene" by Patricia Bouwhuis-Ooyevaar. (HT to Josh Pachter via social media)

Noir at the Bar heads to Elaine's, 208 Queen Street, Alexandria, VA, this Friday, June 21, at 7:00 pm. The event will feature award-winning authors reading their eight-minute short stories, including Brendan DuBois, Jackie Sherbow, LynDee Walker, Joe Walker, Stacy Woodson, Adam Meyer, and Tom Milani. On the other side of the Pond, Noir At the Bar, Edinburgh celebrates National Crime Reading Month on Thursday, June 27, at Canons' Gait Pub, with a lineup featuring Guy Hale, Ann Bloxwich, Cristine Tait, Adrian Searle, Rob Briggs, Fiona Quinn, Sandra Ireland, Gillian Duff, and Daniel Aubury.

As part of Dallas-Forth Worth Smith Public Library's summer theme of Only Murders in the Library, there will be a Crime Time Author Panel & Book Signing this Saturday at 2 pm. You can hear mystery and thriller authors talk about the howdunit in whodunits, ask your burning questions about the life of a writer, and help out the library at the same time, with book sale proceeds to benefit the Friends of the Library. The event also includes giveaways and a book signing afterwards with in-person authors Sara Rosett, L. A. Starks, Liese Sherwood-Fabre, and Leanne Kale Sparks. Other authors appearing "virtually" are Carolyn Haines and Carmen Amato.

Details about the upcoming UK Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in July continue to be rolled out, with Orion announcing that its immersive events space, The Incident Room, will be returning to the festival on Friday, July 19th for its eighth year. The space will deliver exclusive events for festival attendees including a celebration of the publication of Murder in Harrogate, a collection of crime short stories edited by Vaseem Khan, publishing with Orion in July. There will also be an Agatha Christie quiz, a live Crime Writers Room and an in-conversation event with Julian Clary about his crime fiction debut, Curtain Call to Murder. The line-up will also include M J Arlidge, Julia Crouch, Steph Broadribb, Vaseem Khan, Elly Griffiths, Ruth Ware, M W Craven and Mark Billingham, alongside other Orion authors. Orion will also provide a limited Harrogate at Home exclusive package for those unable to attend The Incident Room in-person.

Bookselling giant Barnes & Noble is set to become the next owner of Denver bookstore Tattered Cover, marking the end of its 53-year run as an independent business. Tattered Cover filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October and was due to hold an auction last Wednesday to hear bids to buy the bookstore and its assets, but it canceled the event at the last minute. A source familiar with the matter told Denverite last week that Tattered Cover has received three serious bids of varying amounts, but Barnes & Noble won with a bid of $1.8 million to obtain Tattered Cover’s five existing locations and its inventory. Under the agreement, Barnes & Noble will continue to operate the stores under the Tattered Cover moniker and will continue to employ "substantially all" of its current employees. The store has hosted and supported many crime fiction authors through the years, including most recently, Craig Johnson and Elin Hilderbrand.

"Murder Takes a Holiday," the latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal, is out on virtual newsstands. Each quarterly thematic review contains articles, reviews, and author essays on a specific theme, as well as special columns and other mystery related material. You can read the table of contents and learn about subscriptions via this link. There are also a couple of free sample articles from the issue there, including "Please Proceed to Your Gate—To Begin Your (Murderous) Journey" by Cathy Ace; "How I Learned to Write More Than Thirty Pages" by Simon Brett; and "Have Pen, Will Travel" by Tom Straw.

Writing for CrimeReads, James Queally has a retrospective on the late, great crime fiction magazine, ThugLit, and its founder, Todd "Big Daddy Thug" Robinson. The 'zine, self-described as "best damn crime fiction on the planet," lasted for eleven years and was the launching pad for some of the biggest names in crime fiction today.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with Justine Pucella Winans about her YA mysteries; Author Interviews also spoke with Rob Hart, author of the Ash McKenna crime series, a novella with James Patterson, and more, about his latest novel, Assassins Anonymous; E.J. Copperman (aka Jeff Cohen), applied the Page 69 Test to the second installment of his light-hearted cozy mystery series, Same Difference, which sees private investigators Fran and Ken Stein on the trail of a missing nineteen-year-old trans woman; Alex Michaelides chatted with the Hindustan Times about his books, screenwriting, and crime fiction in general; and the Irish Examiner interviewed Jo Spain about her latest novel, The Trial, a big-pharma medical thriller with a different kind of trial.

         Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

[image error]It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Higher Ground, the media company started by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, has extended its creative partnership with Netflix. As part of the deal, Higher Ground will have a multiyear first-look deal with Netflix for all of its film and TV projects. Among those are S.A. Cosby’s bestselling crime thriller, All the Sinners Bleed, which Higher Ground is developing with Amblin Entertainment; and Dyersville, a highly sought after Chicago-set crime thriller inspired by real life events, directed by Grant Singer. Higher Ground is coming off a succession of critically acclaimed and award-winning film and TV productions, including the Will Forte crime drama series, Bodkin, which spent three weeks on the Netflix global Top 10 list.

Black Bear announced the supporting cast for its Matthew McConaughey film, The Rivals of Amziah King: Golden Globe nominee Kurt Russell (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Cole Sprouse (Lisa Frankenstein), Owen Teague (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Scott Shepherd (Killers of the Flower Moon), Rob Morgan (Mudbound), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Jake Horowitz (Bones and All) and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass. The plot is being kept under wraps, though the project is described as a character-focused crime thriller set against the backdrop of rural Oklahoma. The feature is the second from writer-director Andrew Patterson on the heels of The Vast of Night, a sci-fi mystery distributed by Amazon that won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature in its Slamdance debut before going on to win Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

USA Network handed a series order to The Rainmaker, based on John Grisham’s best-selling novel, to be written and executive produced by Code Black creator Michael Seitzman. The official logline for the series is as follows: "Fresh out of law school, Rudy Baylor goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond as well as his law school girlfriend. Rudy, along with his boss and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son." Grisham’s novel was published in 1995 and subsequently adapted into a 1997 action movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Claire Danes, and Jon Voight.

Amazon MGM Studios has launched development on The 500, a series adaptation of the novel from The Night Agent author, Matthew Quirk, with Andrew Sodroski (Manhunt) serving as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. The show follows a former con artist who is plucked from his Harvard Law School classroom to become an associate at Washington’s most high-powered consulting firm. Quickly pulled into a seductive, dangerous web of power and corruption, he struggles to find his way out. Published by Little, Brown and Company in 2014, The 500 marked the debut novel from Quirk, as well as the first in his Mike Ford series.

MGM+ has given an eight-episode series order to The Institute, a thriller based on the 2019 Stephen King novel. Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) are set to lead the drama from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost; Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified; The Stand) and MGM+ Studios. The story follows twelve-year-old genius Luke Ellis, who is kidnapped and awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide. Parker will play Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission, who is convinced history will come to see her as a hero.

Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Jo Joyner (The Wives) will lead an adaptation of Little Disasters, Sarah Vaughan’s novel of the same name, for Paramount+ UK & Ireland. The pair will play friends Jess and Liz in the six-part psychological thriller, which also stars Shelley Conn (Alex Rider) and Emily Taaffe (The Beast Must Die). The four actresses play four friends who were thrown together while expectant mothers with little in common apart from their due dates. "When Jess takes her baby daughter to hospital with a head injury she can’t explain, close friend and on-duty A&E doctor Liz is forced to make the excruciating decision as to whether to call social services on her friend. The decision sets of a chain of events that show how a moment can fracture and nearly destroy families and friendships."

The book When the Night Comes Falling by Howard Blum, which tells the inside story of the mysterious murders of the four University of Idaho students in 2022, is being developed as a scripted series. Village Roadshow Television is working up the adaptation of the book, which is set to be published by HarperCollins on June 25. Bryan Christopher Kohberger has been charged with four counts of murder after Kaylee Concalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin were found stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. Blum has been covering the case from the start and the series will see him go behind the scenes of the police manhunt that uncovered not only the suspected killer, but also larger questions connected to the tragedy.

In a new five-part documentary series, iconic Poirot actor David Suchet will replicate an international expedition that crime writer Agatha Christie took in the 1920s. In Travels with Agatha with Sir David Suchet, the actor will retrace Christie’s journey, which spanned former British Empire territories Canada, Hawaii, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia as part of a trade mission. Each episode will feature one of the five countries, with filming set to begin this summer toward a release date sometime around the end of the year. Suchet noted, "Having spent a quarter of a century personifying Agatha Christie’s iconic character of Hercule Poirot, I now feel so honoured to embark upon a journey around the world, as myself — in the footsteps of possibly the greatest crime writer of all times...I feel that she will be sitting on my shoulders at every moment urging me on to share her passion for knowledge, travel, archeology, and of course, mystery."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The Spybrary Spy Book Podcast welcomed Merle Nygate for a deep dive into her latest espionage novel, Honour Among Spies, the highly anticipated sequel to The Righteous Spy.

Crime Time FM host, Victoria Selman, is joined by authors Melanie Golding (Little Darlings) and Jim Hewitt (The Perfect Village), who use folklore as inspiration for their novels.

The latest episode of the MysteryRats Maze podcast featured the first chapter of Murder at the Oasis by David S. Pederson, as read by actor Sean Hopper.

The Pick Your Poison podcast investigated how the lack of smell might kill you and the lethal poison that routinely kills rescuers, yet is made in your body.

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Theakston's Old Peculier & McDermid Debut Award Shortlists

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(Note: This is a corrected post to replace a mistakenly uploaded draft from yesterday.)

 

Harrogate International Festivals announced this year's finalists for the Crime Novel of the Year and the inaugural McDermid Debut Award for new writers. The winners will be revealed on Thursday, July 18, at the opening evening of this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. Congrats to all the finalists!

 

Crime Novel of the Year:

The Last Dance by Mark Billingham (Sphere; Little, Brown Book Group) 
In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster UK) 
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron (Baskerville; John Murray Press) 
Killing Jericho by William Hussey (Zaffre, Bonnier) 
None of This is True by Lisa Jewell (Century; Cornerstone) 
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent (Sandycove; Penguin Ireland) 

 

McDermid Debut Award:

Crow Moon by Suzy Aspley (Orenda Books) 
Dark Island by Daniel Aubrey (Harper Collins) 
Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin (Bantam, Transworld) 
Mrs Sidhu’s Dead and Scone by Suk Pannu (Harper Collins) 
The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenjé (Sphere, Little Brown) 
Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney (Bonnier Books) 

 

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, now in its 12th year, is presented by Harrogate International Festivals and sponsored by T&R Theakston Ltd, in partnership with Waterstones and the Daily Express, and is open to full-length crime novels published in paperback between May 1, 2023 and April 30, 2024. The Awards Academy chose the longlist, and a public vote helped to determine the shortlist. The winner will receive £3,000 and a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by T&R Theakston Ltd.

The shortlist for the McDermid Debut Award was selected by an academy of established crime and thriller authors, with the winner determined by a judging panel of industry experts, including literary, broadcasting and media figures, with no public voting component. All shortlisted authors receive a full weekend pass to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, where the winner will be announced and receive a £500 cash prize.

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Mystery Melange

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Book Art by Nicola Nobo

The winners of the Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys," were announced at Sony Hall in New York City, including the winner of the LGBTQ+ Mystery category, A Calculated Risk by Cari Hunter (Bold Strokes Books). The other finalists include: Don’t Forget the Girl by Rebecca McKanna (Sourcebooks Landmark); The Good Ones by Polly Stewart (HarperCollins Publishers); Transitory by J. M. Redmann (Bold Strokes Books); and Where the Dead Sleep by Joshua Moehling (Poisoned Pen Press). Lambda Literary nurtures and advocates for LGBTQ writers, and established the Lambda Literary Awards, which recognize the best LGBTQ books published in a given year across dozens of categories, in 1989

Registration is open for the International Thriller Writers' Online School. Participants will learn from the masters, bestselling authors and industry professionals, and gain insights into pacing, dialogue, character development, setting, twists, and more. The court covers seven weeks and 13 individual sessions (nine classes, three Spotlight Interviews and one bonus panel) during a live Zoom session and will offer live Q&A with the attending students. Featured presenters include Sara DiVello, K.J. Howe, Steven James, Andrea Johnson, Angie Kim, Mary Kubica, Jean Kwok, Tosca Lee and Nina Sadowsky. Spotlight interviews will include Lisa Gardner, Heather Graham, Charlaine Harris, Gregg Hurwitz, and Jerri Williams, with Bonus panel discussion via Jeneva Rose, Karen Dionne, and Wanda Morris, as moderated by Sam Octavius. For more information and to register, follow this link.

Mystery Writers of America also has an online learning opportunity via MWA-U 2024, to consist of six online classes taught by top-notch crime writers with live Q & A. Take your writing to the next level by attending these informative classes – free to MWA members (offered to nonmembers for $20/session). Tracy Clark will discuss writing characters; Meg Gardiner will tackle plot; Donna Andrews, dialogue; Daniel Stashower, setting; Jeffery Deaver, writing a commercial thriller; and Sheri Lewis-Wohl will speak on forensics.

Mystery Fanfare has a list of crime fiction and mysteries themed around Father's Day (Sunday, June 16th in the U.S.).

Can you identify these opening lines of classic mystery and crime novels? Test your knowledge with this quiz via Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews welcomed Catriona McPherson, author of the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, and contemporary standalone novels, about her new release, Deep Beneath Us; James Lee Burke chatted with CrimeReads about Hemingway, Orwell, and a new chapter in the American battle against fascism; and Ruth Ware was also interviewed by CrimeReads, talking about her new thriller set on a tropical Indonesian paradise that quickly turns into nightmare, One Perfect Couple.

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Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

The Peaky Blinders movie is officially moving forward, with Netflix giving the go-ahead to a feature film that will star Oscar winner Cillian Murphy in a return to the iconic role of street gang leader Tommy Shelby. Plot details and further casting are being kept under wraps, although Peaky creator Steven Knight has previously told Deadline a movie story would be set during World War II. The original BBC television drama series premiered in September 2013 and presents a fictional story in which the Peaky Blinders (an actual street gang from early 20th century) contend in the underworld with the Birmingham Boys and the Sabini gang in post-World War I Birmingham's Small Heath area.

The murder investigation of Scott Johnson, which highlighted a slew of homophobic killings in Australia in the 1980s, is to be explored in a new feature film. Nicholas Verso (Boys In The Trees) is writing and directing The Surface of Venus for Fremantle and Invention Studios. Scott Johnson, a young gay American man who had recently moved to Australia, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff near Sydney in 1988. Although the case was initially ruled a suicide by Australian police, Scott’s brother Steve didn’t believe it – and spent the next 35 years on the quest for justice for Scott and the truth behind his death. This exposed a massive and decades-long cover-up and a guilty conviction for the man who pushed Scott off the cliff only last year, in 2023.

Germany’s ZDF Studios has teamed up with Iceland’s ACT4 to develop the Nordic crime thriller, Big Brother, based on the award-winning debut novel, Stóri Bródir, by Icelandic author Skuli Sigurdsson. A tale of revenge and justice, Big Brother centers on a mysterious figure in black who, every full moon, viciously attacks a person before vanishing into the night. The victims, all unpunished sexual offenders, are carefully selected. A detective and an investigative journalist team up to solve these crimes, while the story also unfolds from the perspective of this enigmatic assailant, who sees himself as an agent of justice for the victims failed by society.

Netflix is developing a feature adaptation of None of This Is True, the psychological thriller novel from bestselling author Lisa Jewell, with Eleanor Burgess (Perry Mason) tapped to pen the script. The story follows popular podcaster Alix Summer, who has a chance meeting with Josie Fair on their shared birthday. Since she was a teenager, Josie has been controlled by a husband nearly thirty years her senior, while Alix has hit a creative roadblock with her popular podcast amid frustrations with her husband's drinking. Alix decides to feature Josie's story on her podcast, but the more Alix hears, the darker the story becomes and the closer that darkness nears her own doorstep.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

The BBC and BritBox International have signed Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston to lead the cast of their latest Agatha Christie adaptation, Towards Zero, with Huston playing the aunt of lead character Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). The three-part series concerns a murder mystery surrounding a recently divorced British tennis player holidaying at his aristocratic aunt's house on the south coast of England in the 1930s. Huston joins a cast that includes Jackie Clune (Motherland), Grace Doherty (Call the Midwife), Jack Farthing (Rain Dogs), Khalil Gharbia (Mary & George), Adam Hugill (Sherwood), Mimi Keene (Sex Education), Clarke Peters (The Wire), Emmy winner Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and Oliver Award-winner Anjana Vasan (Black Mirror: Demon 79).

James Rollins’s bestselling Sigma Force techno-thriller novels are getting the small screen treatment. A television adaptation of the book series is in development from Absentia creator Matt Cirulnick, Amazon MGM Studios, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, Oakhurst Entertainment and Talaria Media. Sigma Force is a globe-trotting thriller series centered around a top secret U.S. Government program made up of Special Forces operatives They leverage expert military and scientific training to handle global counter-terrorism efforts and investigate scientific matters that could pose a threat to the United States.

Prime Video has greenlit Countdown, a thriller drama series from One Chicago veteran Derek Haas, with Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles attached to star. The project, from Amazon MGM Studios, has received a 13-episode order, somewhat rare for a streaming series. Countdown starts following a suspicious murder in broad daylight, which leads to LAPD officer Mark Meachum (Ackles) being recruited to join a secret task force of undercover agents from all branches of law enforcement to investigate. But as the truth of a more sinister plot comes into focus, the team must overcome their conflicting personal agendas to unite and save a city of millions.

Rochelle Aytes is set for a series regular role on Watson, based on Dr. John Watson of the Sherlock Holmes universe. Aytes will play Dr. Mary Morstan, one of the best surgeons on the East Coast, and the Medical Director of the hospital. She is equally adept at being a voice of reason for and serving reality checks to her ex-husband, Dr. Watson (Morris Chestnut). She has great respect for Watson and, while she appreciates his sleuthing when it comes to medical mysteries, she can also become irritated by his unorthodox approach to the business of medicine. Aytes previously starred in S.W.A.T. and may recur next season.

Succession star Sarah Snook will lead the cast of All Her Fault, based on the novel of the same name by Andrea Mara, which has been greenlit at Peacock. The official logline for the series states, "Marissa Irvine (Snook) arrives at 14 Arthur Avenue, expecting to pick up her young son Milo from his first playdate with a boy at his new school. But the woman who answers the door isn’t a mother she recognizes. She isn’t the nanny. She doesn’t have Milo. And so begins every parent’s worst nightmare."

Max series Tokyo Vice has ended after two seasons. Ansel Elgort played a western journalist who works for a newspaper in Tokyo and winds up taking on one of the city’s most powerful crime bosses. Tokyo Vice creators J.T. Rogers and EP/director Alan Poul said, "We know there is more story to tell. Of course we’ll see what the future holds, but we are indeed grateful to have been able to share this story on Max until now.”

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On Crime Time FM, Ben Pastor chatted with Paul Burke about her new literary historical crime novel, The Venus of Salò; Martin Bora; totalitarianism; Rome; writing in English; growing up in a divided world; and Shaun the Sheep.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with author Jo Callaghan, discussing her crime thrillers featuring an artificial intelligence policing hologram, and debating the transformative impact of new technologies and the possibility of AI Armageddon.

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