B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 33
April 1, 2024
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
Last week, I noted that Oppenheimer's Oscar-winner, Cillian Murphy, was gearing up to reprise his starring role in Peaky Blinders for a follow-up film, and this week comes news that he'll also star in the Universal Pictures adaptation of the Mark A. Bradley book, Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America. It tells the epic true story of Tony Boyle, a corrupt union leader in the late 1960s in the coal mines of Pennsylvania who murdered a rival and was taken down by the lawyer son, Chip Yablonski (Murphy), of the slain coal miner. A labor attorney, Chip Yablonski made it his life mission to get justice for his father which led to the union boss being indicted on three counts of murder, convicted in 1974, and sentenced to three life terms in prison.
Scott Derrickson has been set to direct a new adaptation of Davis Grubb’s classic 1953 novel, The Night of the Hunter for Universal Pictures, working from his script written with C. Robert Cargill, his longtime collaborator on The Black Phone, Doctor Strange, and other projects. The Night of the Hunter revolves around Harry Powell, a serial killer posing as a preacher, who marries a widow solely to gain access to her deceased husband’s hidden fortune. Powell’s stepchildren, John and Pearl, become the targets of his relentless pursuit as he seeks the money hidden by their father. An instant bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award, The Night of the Hunter was previously adapted into a classic 1955 film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum.
Sony Pictures has acquired Darren Aronofsky’s crime thriller, Caught Stealing, which will star Austin Butler. The film follows Hank Thompson, a burned-out former baseball player, as he’s unwittingly plunged into a wild fight for survival in the downtown criminal underworld of '90s New York City. Charlie Huston will pen the script, which is based on his book of the same name. Oscar-nominated director Aronofsky added, "I am excited to be teaming up with my old friends at Sony Pictures to bring Charlie’s adrenaline-soaked roller coaster ride to life. I can’t wait to start working with Austin and my family of NYC filmmakers."
After the Hunt, from screenwriter Nora Garrett, has landed at Amazon MGM Studios with Julia Roberts attached to star and Luca Guadagnino on board to direct. The film is an intense dramatic thriller about a college professor (Roberts) who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light. Since landing at Imagine Entertainment, which has been developing it for some time, the project has been one of the more talked-about scripts in recent memory, with several agents telling Deadline it’s one of the better scripts they’ve read since the writers strike ended.
Amazon MGM Studios and Lionsgate made it official that a sequel to the Paul Feig-directed thriller, A Simple Favor, is in the works. According to Amazon, Simple Favor 2 brings back Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) as they head to the beautiful island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman. Amazon added, "Along with the glamorous guests, expect murder and betrayal to RSVP for a wedding with more twists and turns than the road from the Marina Grande to the Capri town square.”
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
Netflix has announced the new project, The Seven Dials Mystery, based on the Agatha Christie novel, with a script penned by Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch, Doctor Who), and Chris Sweeney (The Tourist, Back to Life) set to direct. Originally lambasted by critics on the book’s original release, The Seven Dials Mystery features neither of Christie’s better-known detectives, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Instead, the author returned to a character first introduced in her 1925 book, The Secret of Chimneys, to focus on the young aristocrat and socialite, Lady "Bundle" Brent. Resourceful and headstrong, Brent has often been described as a quintessential 1920s "flapper," known equally for her appeal to the opposite sex and her penchant for fast driving. The Seven Dials Mystery was previously adapted as a 1981 TV movie starring Cheryl Campbell as Bundle Brent.
Elisabeth Moss and Kerry Washington are set to executive produce and star in Imperfect Women, a new Apple TV+ limited series based on Araminta Hall’s novel of the same name. The psychological thriller, which "examines a crime that shatters the lives of a decades-long friendship of three women, is a mystery complicated by perspective that explores guilt and retribution, love and betrayal, and the compromises we make that alter our lives irrevocably. As the investigation unravels, so does the truth about how even the closest relationships can change over time."
Amazon is bringing two of its entertainment divisions closer together in the world of podcasts, film, and TV, with Amazon MGM Studios adapting a number of Audible podcasts for TV and film as part of a deal to co-develop and co-produce projects. Among them will be the podcast heist drama Nut Jobs, developed by Suits duo Aaron Korsh and Rick Muirragui, which takes listeners down a rabbit-hole of crime syndicates, stolen identities and private investigators; and also Oracle, based on the podcast series about an FBI psychic, who helps solve abductions and homicides by touching those close to the missing persons, which was written by Andrew Pyper and performed by Joshua Jackson.
Lifetime announced its latest true crime project, Gaslit By My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story, which will star One Tree Hill actors Jana Kramer and Austin Nichols. Morgan Metzer (Kramer) and Rodney (Nichols) were childhood sweethearts who were married by the time Morgan turned 21. But after Rodney loses his job and goes into debt, tensions begin to arise for this picture-perfect American family. Rodney starts to convince his wife that their fights are the result of her drinking — even if she’d only had one — and that she pushed him down the stairs in a blackout rage. Once they separate, Morgan’s life begins to turn around. At least that’s the case until a masked intruder breaks into Morgan’s house and assaults her.
Hulu has opted not to renew the murder mystery series Death and Other Details for a second season, following its inability to break into Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 streaming ratings. Written by Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams, the visually stylish series stars Mandy Patinkin as "the world’s once greatest detective," Rufus Cotesworth, and Violett Beane as his protégée, Imogene, as they team up to solve a murder on a luxury ocean liner filled with the wealthy and powerful while sailing the Mediterranean.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon talked with best-selling suspense author Don Winslow about what he says is his final novel, City in Ruins.
On Crime Time FM, Sarah Moorhead chatted with Stuart Turton about his new high concept thriller, The Last Murder at the End of the World, and how the old adage of "writing what you know" is rubbish.
The latest episode of Red Hot Chili Writers featured an interview with crime writer Harriet Tyce about her new book A Lesson in Cruelty and also some pontification on Chaucer's unfinished Canterbury Tales.
On the BBC's The Life Scientific podcast, Dr. Sheila Willis, a forensic scientist who was Director General of Forensic Science Ireland for many years, discussed using science to help solve crime.
On another BBC podcast, The Infinite Monkey Cage, Robin Ince and physicist Brian Cox heard how we could all be potential killers, and discovered how fleas and foliage could help us solve murders.
The Pick Your Poison podcast investigated how you might accidentally kill a patient with intubation; a drug Kafka called the only remedy against the misery of being; and the compound that might’ve played a role in Rasputin’s influence over the Romanovs.
Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday
March 29, 2024
Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Ghost of a Chance
[image error]William Roos (1911-1987) was born in Pennsylvania, eventually heading to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study drama, first as an actor, then as a playwright. Audrey Kelley (1912-1982) was born in New Jersey 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.
March 28, 2024
Mystery Melange
The 2024 recipient of the George N. Dove Award for contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction is British author, editor of Crime Time magazine, essayist, journalist, and commentator Barry Forshaw. The Dove Award, named for mystery fiction scholar George N. Dove, is presented by the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association. Past Dove recipients include Frankie Y. Bailey, Martin Edwards, Douglas G. Greene, P. D. James, Christine Jackson, H. R. F. Keating, Maureen Reddy, Janet Rudolph, J. K. Van Dover, and Elizabeth Foxwell. (HT to Foxwell's The Bunburyist blog)
Lambda Liberary announced the finalists in 26 categories for the 36th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, the "Lammys." The finalists were selected by more than 70 avid readers, critics, and literary professionals from more than 1,300 submissions and represent outstanding LGBTQ+ literature from 2023. Those finalists in the Mystery Category include: Calculated Risk by Cari Hunter (Bold Strokes Books); 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). The 2024 Lammy Awards ceremony will be held the evening of June 11, 2024 at New York City’s Sony Hall.
Mystery Writers of America is making the 2024 Symposium Panels featuring the 2024 Edgar Nominees available via ZOOM. All panels are also live-streamed via the MWA YouTube channel and will be archived there. The 78th Annual Edgar® Awards banquet with the announcement of winners will be celebrated on May 1, 2024, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City.
Janet Rudolph has posted her updated annual listing of Easter Crime Fiction, along with some Good Friday mysteries. And Mystery Lovers Kitchen has shared some Easter recipes and reads, including Fancy Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows by Libby Klein; Armenian Sweet Bread via Tina Kashian.
Iceland has its Jólabókaflóð or "Christmas book flood," in which publishers release new titles in time for the holidays so people can give books as gifts and spend Christmas Eve reading. Not to be outdone, Norway has its own book tradition of celebrating crime fiction books over the Easter holiday. As Science Norway explains, to understand why, we need to go back to the 1920s.
The Guardian reviewed The Russian Detective by Carol Adlam, a new "exquisitely illustrated celebration of early crime fiction." The project results from work that Adlam, an associate professor in the Nottingham School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University, and Claire Whitehead, a reader in modern languages at the University of St Andrew’s, have been doing together on the Lost Detective Project: a collaboration that draws on the work of long-forgotten writers of crime fiction who were contemporaries of Dostoevsky.
The latest Mystery Readers Journal features Southern California Mysteries, with articles, reviews, and author essays on the topic, as well as the usual columns and other mystery related material. The issue is now available for purchase, and you can catch some samples via the online features, "Los Angeles Ninja Lily Wong" by Tori Eldridge, "Los Angeles: City of Dreams" by Lee Goldberg, and "Through a Lens Brightly" by Gary Phillips.
In the Q&A roundup, Paul Burke welcomed Neil Lancaster to Crime Time to discuss The Devil You Know, the third Max Cragie installment of the gritty police procedural series set in Scotland; Author Interviews chatted with Heather Gudenkauf, the Edgar Award nominated author of ten novels including Everyone Is Watching; and Lisa Haselton spoke with thriller author Matt Cost about the new installment in his Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Mysteries series, Pirate Trap.
Related StoriesMystery MelangeMystery Melange - St. Patrick's Day Edition
March 25, 2024
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
Hot on the heels of his Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA wins for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy is set to reprise his starring role in Peaky Blinders for a follow-up film to shoot in September, according to series creator Steven Knight. Originally airing on BBC before eventually moving to Netflix, Peaky Blinders takes its name from the Birmingham gang whose exploits it chronicles in the aftermath of World War I. Murphy led the popular British crime drama series as gang leader Tommy Shelby, with the show running for six seasons between 2013 and 2022.
The 1999 cult favorite film, The Boondock Saints, is set for a "universe expansion" of the action film franchise about the fraternal twin Irish brothers who raise holy hell to rid their Boston hometown of all criminals. Both films starred The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery as the MacManus brothers, with Billy Connolly playing their father. Reedus and Flanery will reprise their roles, and the search is on for a new director after Troy Duffy stepped away from that role. Duffy plans to write a series of books about the Saints, continuing their story that way.
Ilfenesh Hadera has been tapped to star opposite Denzel Washington in High and Low, Spike Lee's English-language reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller. Loosely based on the 1959 novel King’s Ransom, written by Evan Hunter under the pen name Ed McBain, the original High and Low watches as a shoe company executive becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom. It’s unclear how closely Lee’s film will hew to the original storyline, and there’s no word yet as to the role Hadera will play.
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
Peacock has picked up The Good Daughter, a limited series psychological suspense thriller starring and executive produced by Jessica Biel. Based on Karin Slaughter's bestselling novel and with the author writing all episodes, the series centers on sisters Charlotte (Biel) and Samantha Quinn, who have spent the last twenty-eight years trying to piece together the lives that were fractured by a single night of violence. When another attack splinters the small town of Pikeville, Charlotte is the first witness on the scene. Now a lawyer like her father, she’s forced to confront her own demons as the case twists through one shocking revelation after another. In the end, both she and Samantha find themselves wondering if the price of being the good daughter was worth it after all.
Netflix is teaming up with Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, whose Harry Hole crime novels have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, for a new "Next on Nordic" noir series, Harry Hole (working title). The project is based on Nesbø’s novel, The Devil’s Star, about the series' titular detective, with Nesbø also writing the script. The story is set In the heat of a sweltering Oslo summer, when a young woman is found murdered in her flat—with one of her fingers cut off and a tiny red star-shaped diamond placed under her eyelid. An off-the-rails alcoholic barely holding on to his job, Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with Tom Waaler, a hated colleague whom Harry believes is responsible for the murder of his partner. When another woman is reported missing five days later, and her severed finger turns up adorned with a red star-shaped diamond ring, Harry fears a serial killer is at work.
Netflix also unveiled other "Next on Nordic" programs including its first Nordic period drama, The New Force, set in 1958 and focused on Sweden's first female police officer graduates. Ridiculed by the public, belittled by the media, and scorned by their colleagues, the pioneering officers are placed in Sweden’s most crime-ridden district, in Stockholm, where they realize their biggest problem isn’t the criminals but resistance from colleagues and their own families. There will also be a standalone sequel to the Danish series, The Chestnut Man, based on a Søren Sveistrup novel, with Danica Curcic and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard starring as detectives Mark Hess and Naia Thulin investigating crimes of a violent murderer who stalks victims before killing them. Plus, Netflix announced a second season of Barracuda Queens, which follows a group of girls who engage in an escalating series of robberies, this time set in the art world.
Narcos creator Chris Brancato is developing a Peaky Blinders-style series about Irish gangs in New York, with the working title, The Westies. Deadline reported that the project is in early development for MGM+, and will focus on "fearsome Irish gangs" with a starting point of the late 1970s.
Maggie Q is set to headline Prime Video's untitled Renée Ballard series, a Bosch spinoff about the LAPD’s Cold Case Division. Based on the work of bestselling author Michael Connelly, the drama follows Detective Renée Ballard, who is tasked with running the LAPD’s new cold-case unit — a poorly funded, all-volunteer unit with the largest case load in the city. Ballard approaches these frozen-in-time cases with empathy and determination. When she uncovers a larger conspiracy during her investigations, she’ll lean on the assistance of her retired ally, Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), to navigate the dangers that threaten both her unit and her life.
Murder In A Small Town, Fox’s psychological crime drama starring Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk, has expanded its cast with new additions James Cromwell (Succession), Stana Katic (Castle), and Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica). Based on the "Karl Alberg" books by L.R. Wright, Sutherland stars as Karl Alberg, a detective who moves to a quiet coastal town in search of peace of mind but finds the paradise has more than its share of secrets. Kreuk plays Cassandra, a local librarian who becomes Alberg’s muse, foil, and romantic interest. Douglas plays Sergeant Sid Sokolowski, Alberg’s second in command, with Cromwell and Katic appearing in guest star roles.
CBS's NCIS: Origins has found its young Mike Franks. Kyle Schmid has been cast as a lead opposite Austin Stowell and Mariel Molino in the CBS Studios-produced Young Gibbs drama, a prequel to the venerable procedural, which has a straight-to-series order for the 2024-2025 broadcast season. Origins begins in 1991, years prior to the events of NCIS, and follows Gibbs (Stowell) as he starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling NCIS Camp Pendleton office where he forges his place on a gritty, ragtag team led by NCIS legend Mike Franks (Schmid).
CBS has picked up NCIS: Sydney for a second season. The procedural will also return for a second year on Paramount+ Australia. NCIS: Sydney marked the first international expansion of the franchise and was the No. 1 new series of the fall and currently ranks as the No. 3 new series of the 2023-2024 season, behind Tracker and Elsbeth.
NBC has renewed all three One Chicago series—Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D.—for the 2024-25 season. The trio of shows returned in January following a long break due to the dual writers' and actors' strikes with shortened seasons. New episodes are released on Wednesdays and are currently the top three shows of the night this season in total viewers. Replays are available the following day via Peacock.
Netflix has set April 25 as the premiere date for its upcoming dark YA genre series, Dead Boy Detectives. Based on the comics of the same name by Neil Gaiman and part of The Sandman Universe, Dead Boy Detectives follows Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), the "brains" and "brawn" behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts…who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell, and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), they crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
On the latest episode of the Spybrary Spy Podcast, Shane Whaley interviewed Michael Frost Beckner, the writer of the movie Spy Game. They discussed Michael's Spy Game book series including a new novella called Kaleidoscope and how it fits into his Spy Game trilogy.
On Crime Time FM, Graham Bartlett chatted with host Paul Burke about his new police thriller, City on Fire, the third Jo Howe novel; Brighton and policing in a modern city; dialing up the drama; Brighton's rebel soul; meeting readers; and supporting 150+ writers with policing matters.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Ron Corbett, a former radio host and newspaper columnist, whose first book of fiction was Ragged Lake, the debut novel in the Frank Yakabuski mystery series, and an Edgar Award nominee for Best Original Paperback. His latest novel, Cape Rage, features undercover agent, Danny Barrett who is in the rugged landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where he is caught between a family of criminals and the psychopath who is tracking them down.
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode is up, featuring the mystery short story, "Charity Begins At Home," by Herschel Cozine, read by actor Sean Hopper.
The Cop and Writers podcast, hosted by Patrick J. O'Donnell, welcomed Rebekah Strong, an active member of law enforcement for over twenty years, working her way up from patrol to Crime Scene Investigator. She also writes crime novels under the pen name of R.J. Strong, including two books in the Luke Marshall series and her latest, Perimortem, the first novel in the Elloree Holt Forensic Crime Thriller Series.
Crime fiction and true crime writer Amanda Lamb joined Debbi Mack on the latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast.
On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed European mysteries and thrillers.
Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday
March 22, 2024
Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Speaking of Murder
[image error]We owe many thanks to Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg for the variety of collections and anthologies they edited through the years. I looked at bibliographies and counted at least 53 edited by Ed Gorman, and one source said Greenberg had edited over a thousand books. Ed was also one of the regular contributors to the Friday's Forgotten Books feature, as well as being an accomplished, award-winning author in his own right.
Two of the Gorman/Greenberg collaborations were books of interviews with well-known crime fiction authors, Speaking of Murder: Interviews with the Masters of Mystery and Suspense, published in July 1998, and Speaking of Murder II, which came out the following year. Some of these authors are still with us, while others have sadly passed on, but their words still echo out to us a quarter of a century later.
I don't have the second volume, but the first is introduced by Ed, who tells the story of how a Chicago talk show producer once told him that writers made dull guests. Ed allowed as how he agreed, since "compared to cross-dressing prostitutes, mothers who sleep with their daughter's boyfriends, and UFO abductees who have mysteriously started to dress like Elvis, I guess most of us writers do lead pretty uneventful lives." He goes on to add that writers are interesting because they're quiet and introspective.
The twenty-one interviews in volume one include some of the best-known names in the genre, including Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Ed McBain, Elizabeth George, Marcia Muller, Mickey Spillane, Ian Rankin, Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, and Anne Perry, each offering up insights into their inner world as well as their personal take on the writing process.
I'm always particularly fascinated by the early stages of a writer's career before they were successful, because that's the "danger time," the period when a writer is most likely to get discouraged and give up. From Carolyn G. Hart we learn that despite having thirteen books published ("nothing exciting happened with any one of them") and teaching journalism, she was depressed and felt like an enormous failure. One agent told her no one was buying mysteries, but after a Mystery Writers of American seminar, she decided she was going to write the mystery she wanted to anyway, the result being her wildly popular Death on Demand series.
The late Tony Hillerman worked as a journalist for seventeen years and taught for twenty-one years, writing a lot of nonfiction. One day he decided he wanted to write the great American novel and decided to start with a mystery because he didn't know if he could do characters or plotting well. He knew he could do descriptions, though, and chose the most beautiful setting he could think of so the readers would at least enjoy the background. He wrote it off and on, thinking it wasn't good enough to be published, until he finally got tired of it and sent it off to an agent. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Other random tidbits: From Bill Pronzini, "Critical, editorial and/or peer misunderstanding or dismissal of my work only makes me more determined to hang around."
From Mickey Spillane: "If you are a writer and you do a scene ten times, the last one probably will sound like the first one, and you're not going to get any better as you revise. The best stuff you put down comes right off the typewriter, bam! ... I don't have a big garbage problem."
From Ian Rankin: "I remember an early attempt at research (at Leith Police Station)...They asked me what the book was about, I said a child killer. What I hadn't realized was that a child had just been abducted in Leith and a murder room had been set up. So they took down my details and added me to their computer. I became suspect number 350 and spent more time answering their questions than they did mine."
From Sharyn McCrumb: "Storytelling was an art form that I learned early on. When I was a little girl, my father would come in to tell me a bedtime story, which usually began with a phrase like, 'Once there was a prince named Paris, whose father was Priam, the king of Troy . . . .' thus I got the Iliad in nightly installments, geared to the level of a four-year-old's understanding."
From Sue Grafton: "I love mystery; it is my favorite form. It is sublimely difficult, and for my money, it encompasses everything that is interesting about writing because you need a strong story, strong characters, and mood and atmosphere. It is also the perfect vehicle for social commentary. Mysteries are about the psychology of crime and the psychology of human nature. It is a form so difficult that I know I'll never conquer it. So it's the perfect place to keep throwing myself into the abyss."
March 21, 2024
Mystery Melange
The shortlists for the British Book Awards were announced, including those in the category of Best Crime and Thriller: The Woman Who Lied by Claire Douglas; The Last Devil To Die by Richard Osman; None of This is True by Lisa Jewell; Damascus Station by David McCloskey; The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith; and The Secret Hours by Mick Herron. The British Book Awards, also called the Nibbies, "celebrate the intimate connection between the books, their makers and their audience." Winners will be honored on May 13, 2024 through both a livestream and at Grosvenor House in London. You can see all the finalists here, which include a few extra crime titles in the Best Audiobook Fiction and Best Children's Fiction categories.
Winners of the inaugural Libby Book Awards, chosen by a vote from over 1,700 librarians and library workers across North America, have been announced, including winners in categories of interest to crime fiction fans: Best Mystery, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto; Best Thriller, Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll; Best Debut Author, The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes; and Best Audio Book, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makka.
Submissions have opened for a new honor sponsored by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the McDermid Debut Award for new writers. Named in recognition of world-famous crime writer, Val McDermid, who co-founded the Festival in 2003 and whose dedication to fostering new voices in crime fiction through the New Blood panel is legendary, this new award seeks to continue her legacy, celebrating and platforming the best debut crime writers in the UK. The McDermid Debut Award is open to full-length debut crime novels by UK and Irish authors published for the first time in hardback or paperback original between May 1, 2023 and April 30, 2024, with submissions closing on March 21. A shortlist of six titles will be announced on June 13, and the winner presented at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Awards event on Thursday, July 18.
International Thriller Writers announced the 2024 scholarship winners, who will each receive a full-access pass to ThrillerFest in addition to $1,000 for travel expenses: Gabbie Hanks, Emi Macuaga, and Karabi Mitra. Their entries stood out amongst the many accomplished submissions and were made possible by the Scholarship Program sponsors, including Douglas Preston, Michael Mayo, Vicki Montet, and Karin Slaughter. ThrillerFest is a five-day conference made up of five different events—a Master Class (May 28), CraftFest (May 29-30), QueryFest (May 29-31), PitchFest (May 30), and ThrillerFest (May 31-June 1), which culminates with a fun-filled Awards Banquet on the evening of June 1.
The inaugural Montreal Mystery/Montréal Mystère Festival takes place March 24-25, bringing together English and French language writers for a weekend dedicated to the mystery and thriller genres in celebration of the blend of languages, cultures, and the timeless appeal of mystery fiction. Authors scheduled to take part include Lilja Sigurðardóttir, J. L. Blanchard, Robyn Harding, Catherine Lafrance, Shari Lapena, Nicole Lundrigan, Catherine McKenzie, Marcie R. Rendon, Robert Rotenberg, Amy Stuart, Steve Urszenyi, and Tessa Wegert.
Writers of short crime fiction are often overlooked at the various festivals and workshops, and a new conference hopes to rectify that. ShortCon, billing itself as "The Premier Conference for Short Crime Fiction Writers," is scheduled to be held in Alexandria, Virginia on Saturday, June 22, 2024. It will offer the opportunity to join acclaimed and award-winning crime fiction professionals for an immersive, one-day event and learn how to write short crime fiction, get your stories published, and develop and sustain a long-term career writing short. It includes three hours of in-depth instruction on how to craft short crime fiction from New York Times bestselling novelist and multiple-award-winning short-fiction author, Brendan DuBois; an insider look at the world’s leading mystery magazines by Senior Managing Editor Jackie Sherbow of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine; career lessons from short-fiction legend and author of more than twelve-hundred short stories, Michael Bracken; and a wrap-up discussion led by short crime fiction rising star, Stacy Woodson.
Speaking of Michael Bracken, he was recently elected to the Texas Institute of Letters, a distinguished honor society established in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement. The membership includes winners of the MacArthur Fellowship, Man Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prizes in drama, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as prizes awarded by PEN, and dozens of other regional and national award and grant-giving institutions.
When Art Taylor took over "The First Two Pages" blog after the passing of its founder, B.K. Stevens in 2017, his first guest was Robert Lopresti, who wrote about his story, "The Chair Thief," in the November/December 2017 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Seven years later, Rob returns to the blog with a story that came out a few weeks ago in Black Cat Weekly, the cover story of that issue. "The First Two Pages" hosts craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work.
The Clues: Journal of Detection's Teaching Forum is seeking submissions of short essays that address the uses of crime fiction to teach both foreign languages and cultures in the classroom. Contributions of 750 to 1,000 words are sought for vol. 43, no. 1 (2025), and accounts from all classroom spaces (high schools, post-secondary institutions, prisons, etc.) and instructors at all stages of their careers are welcome. Submissions are due September 1, 2024.
In the Q&A roundup, Chris Nickson, a music journalist and author of eleven Tom Harper mysteries, eight highly acclaimed novels in the Richard Nottingham series, and six Simon Westow mysteries, applied the Page 69 Test to The Scream of Sins, the newest Simon Westow mystery; and Tana French spoke with Crime Reads about embracing discomfort, Irish wit, and "chosen family" in her new thriller, The Hunter.
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March 18, 2024
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
In a competitive situation, Colombia Pictures has acquired the rights to Teddy Wayne’s upcoming dark thriller, The Winner, with Wayne adapting his own book for the big screen. The story follows law school graduate Conor, who takes a job as a tennis pro in a gated community near Cape Cod, only to find himself torn between an arrangement with a sharp-tongued divorcée and falling in love with her outspoken daughter. He manages to find a way through this tangled web until he makes one irreversible mistake.
Jennifer Garner is set to star with fellow Golden Globe winner Paul Walter Hauser in the movie, Fruitcake. Max Winkler (Flower, Jungleland) is directing the true story about Sandy and Kay Jenkins, a seemingly upstanding middle-class couple who went on to embezzle millions from popular Texas-based business Collin Street Bakery. Hauser will play Sandy, an unassuming accountant who was funneling large sums of money into his accounts and credit card bills to support a lavish lifestyle, with Garner set to play his wife, Kay. The project is based on the Texas Monthly article, "Just Desserts" by Katy Vine, who will serve as a consultant.
Grantchester actor Tom Brittney, Corestar Media, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel author Deborah Moggach are adapting the true story of Mavis Eccleston, who was accused of murder after entering into a suicide pact with her terminally ill husband. The feature, Goodnight Darling, will follow how the 79-year-old Mavis was arrested and tried for murder, only to be unanimously found not guilty, and then began a campaign with her family to change the law to allow people to take the choice of assisted dying. Moggach, whose mother served time in prison in an assisted dying case, is writing the script.
Noir City Hollywood 2024 is headed to the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles March 22-31. The festival, which is co-presented by the Film Noir Foundation, celebrates its 25th anniversary at the American Cinematheque with a killer lineup of twenty-three films. Alongside its classic lineup, the festival will present a series of allegorical double features, pairing international films with more familiar English-language ones. Hosted by the Foundation’s Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode, the event will include twelve 35mm prints (including a "glorious" Nitrate print) and special guests for a splashy, sinister trip back in time, beginning with a duo of suspense stories from the pen of Cornell Woolrich, Never Open That Door (Argentina, 1952) and The Window (USA, 1949).
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
Steven Lightfoot has been tapped to develop a series adaptation of bestseller Brad Thor's Scot Harvath series. Kicking off with The Lions of Lucerne in 2002, the book series is fast approaching over 20 million copies sold worldwide. The novels follow ex-Navy SEAL and intelligence operative, Scot Harvath, as he protects the United States and the world through any means possible. Of the 23 books, 20 are New York Times bestsellers with several debuting at #1, as well as being voted Best Book and Best Thriller of the Year.
Emmy nominee Jurnee Smollett is set to lead the new Apple Original drama series, Firebug, loosely inspired by events surrounding notorious California arsonist John Leonard Orr. She will star alongside Taron Egerton in the project, which is being developed, written, and executive produced by author Dennis Lehane. Firebug will follow a troubled detective and an enigmatic arson investigator as they pursue the trail of two serial arsonists. Orr, the inspiration for the podcast, worked for the Glendale Fire Department in Southern California as a fire captain and arson investigator who later was convicted of being a serial arsonist and mass murderer.
Amanda Peet is set as a lead opposite Jon Hamm in Your Friends and Neighbors, Apple TV+’s upcoming drama series from Warrior creator Jonathan Tropper and Apple Studios. Craig Gillespie (Physical) is set to direct the first two episodes and executive produce. Based on an original idea by Tropper, the project stars Hamm as Coop, a recently divorced hedge fund manager who, after being fired, resorts to stealing from the wealthy residents in his tony upstate New York suburb in order to keep his family’s lifestyle afloat. These petty crimes begin to reinvigorate him until he breaks into the wrong house at the wrong time.
Amazon Prime Video has greenlit the psychological thriller series, Fear, starring Anjli Mohindra and Martin Compston. Excited to make a fresh start away from London, Martyn (Compston) and Rebecca (Mohindra) move into a beautiful house in Glasgow with their two young children. At first the new home seems idyllic, but when neighbor Jan (Solly McLeod) makes unnerving comments to Rebecca, it turns out to be the start of something far more intimidating.
DeVon Franklin, the founder of Franklin Entertainment, is developing the detective drama, Grace, for CBS. Grace follows a true-blue detective, known for his brash, cynical style, and a passionate community-focused pastor who wears her heart on her sleeve. They reluctantly partner to solve complex crimes as they debate their divergent beliefs while attempting to ignore their growing chemistry. It is being written by Devon Greggory and Corey Moore, who has written for series including NCIS: New Orleans.
Jessica Plummer, Richard Armitage, Lenny Henry, Steve Pemberton, Paul Kaye, Samantha Spiro, Lisa Faulkner, and Mary Malone have joined the cast of Netflix‘s Harlan Coben adaptation, Missing You, currently filming in the UK. Missing You tells the story of detective Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar) who stumbles across her estranged fiancé on a dating app, forcing her to delve back into the mystery surrounding her father’s murder, uncovering long-buried secrets from her past.
Unforgotten, the critically acclaimed crime drama created and written by Chris Lang, has started filming a sixth season. Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar reprise their roles as DCI Jess James and DI Sunil "Sunny" Khan as their dynamic on-screen partnership returns to investigate emotionally charged cold cases from the past, unraveling secrets and unearthing buried truths along the way. The new season will be directed by Andy Wilson (Ripper Street, Spooks) who has been the sole director for each of the previous 30 episodes across five seasons of the successful drama.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Linwood Barclay (No Time for Goodbye) talked about the art of writing crime fiction on the CBC Books: Why I Write series.
Amina Akhtar, author of Almost Surely Dead, was interviewed by Robert Justice on Crime Writers of Color.
On Crime Time FM, Tess Gerritsen chatted with Paul Burke about her new spy crime thriller, The Spy Coast; Maggie Bird; living in a CIA retirement town; MK Ultra; standing up for older characters; and British TV.
The latest episode of The Red Hot Chili Writers featured a chat with barrister and thriller writer Tony Kent, as well as a discussion of great legal thrillers, and a peek into the world's most famous courtroom at the Old Bailey.
On Wrong Place, Write Crime, Frank Zafiro welcomed Gabriel Valjan to discuss his multiple series – Shane Cleary, The Company Files, and Roma – as well as his fascination with history and relationships.
The Pick Your Poison podcast took a look at the favorite poison of Agatha Christie, which is also used as a performance enhancer; and a compound used as rat poison and also in doping during the Tour de France.
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March 15, 2024
Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Death of an Old Girl
[image error]Elizabeth Wharton Lemarchand was born in 1906 in Barnstaple, England, and spent most of her life as a headmistress. When she was forced to retire early due to an illness, she turned her hand to short stories, with some success. By this time, she was in her 60s, but long a fan of the Golden Age authors of detective fiction, she decided to give novels a try herself, creating the investigative team of Superintendent Tom Pollard and Sergeant Gregory Toye.
The author once remarked that "I employ only settings of which I have some personal knowledge," which is why it was a no-brainer for her first novel in 1967, Death of an Old Girl, to be set at a boarding school for girls. She may have taken some inspiration, too, from one her Golden Age idols, Agatha Christie, who had penned her own boarding-school mystery, Cat Among the Pigeons, a few years earlier in 1959.
[image error]In this inaugural Pollard and Toye story, the detective pair are called in to investigate when an "old girl" (alumna) of the Meldon School for Girls is found murdered in a puppet theater at the end of the annual Old Girls' Reunion weekend. The old girl in question, Beatrice Baynes, had criticized the new administration, the new teaching staff, and the new curriculum, but that hardly appears motive for murder. But soon the suspects begin piling up, headed by the victim's lazy nephew George and timid god-daughter Madge who both stand to inherit a tidy sum of money, as well as the school's cast of characters, including the headmistress, art teacher, and groundskeeper. As Pollard meticulously pieces together every second of the victim's last moments alive, he begins to learn he's going to have to identify the killer first in order to uncover the motive, with a little help from Pollard's perceptive wife, Jane.
As with most third-person omniscient narratives, Lemarchand's characters aren't fully fleshed out, but it's not surprising there is a great deal of attention to setting; the author once wrote an essay for City and Shore: the Function of Setting in the British Mystery, in which she said"
"I wonder why my books are so WHERE dominated...I think the most likely explanation is that I first came to detective fiction in the Golden Age of the 20s and 30s and have ever since been under the spell of the master craftsmen of the period such as Dorothy L Sayers and Freeman Wills Croft. It was their vivid portrayal of the settings in which their impeccable plots unfolded that made the whodunits of this time to absorbing to me. The action was intimately associated with and conditioned by the milieu in which it took place, and this gave it conviction."
Fans of today's faster-paced crime fiction novels may find this book a bit tedious and difficult to wade into, with a heavy emphasis on timetables and a lot of static discussions, but if you stick with it, it's an entertaining nod to the Golden Age complete with the stereotypical small English village, a closed set of characters, rules of fair play, and a who-dunnit puzzle. FYI, the BBC Afternoon Plays dramatized Death of an Old Girl, with Michael Cochrane as Inspector Pollard and James Taylor as Sergeant Toye, which has been uploaded online thanks to the "magic" of YouTube.
March 14, 2024
Mystery Melange - St. Patrick's Day Edition
Credit: Anextraordinaryday.net
Janet Rudolph has updated her list of St. Patrick's Day Crime Fiction over at Mystery Fanfare, and you can enjoy reading those titles while showing down on recipes from Mystery Lovers Kitchen, including Fully-Loaded Irish Colcannon from Cleo Coyle; Bubble and Squeak, Santa Cruz Style via Leslie Karst; and Gluten-Free Cinnamon Irish Soda Bread by Libby Klein.
The Spur Award winners from Western Writers of America were announced this past weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books. The Longmire Defense (Viking), Johnson’s 19th installment of his Walt Longmire mystery series, won for Best Contemporary Western Novel. The other finalists include: Calico by Lee Goldberg (Severn House) and Standing Dead: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane Books).
With an announcement coinciding with Women's History Month, the longlist for this year's Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was announced. The honor rewards "creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States." Of the fifteen titles under review are two books that may be of interest to crime fiction fans, the psychological thrillers, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makka. The shortlist will be announced on April 9, and the winner on May 13. The unusually well-endowed contest will offer the winner $150,000 and a residency at Fogo Island Inn, with the four finalists each receiving $12,500.
Congratulations to Philip Wilson, winner, ("A Recipe for Stovies") and also to runner-up Elisabeth Ingram Wallace ("The Strange Sheep of Greshonish"), in the annual Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition. Glencairn Crystal, the maker of Glencairn Whiskey Glass and sponsor of the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime writing awards, also sponsors this contest that seeks crime short stories in collaboration with Bloody Scotland and Scottish Field Magazine. This year’s theme was "A Crime Set In Scotland."
Mystery Writers of America-New York are hosting the panel discussion, "Criminal Tendencies: What makes a 'good' villain?" at Harlem Public Library in New York City, March 21, 2024. Moderator Elizabeth Mannion will be joined by panelists Catherine Maiorisi (the NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mystery series), Charles Salzberg (Swann's Last Song), and Cathi Stoler (Murder On the Rocks Series).
Virginians are fortunate to have two crime fiction conferences coming up: The Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival this Saturday, featuring special guest Donna Andrews interviewed by Art Taylor, as well as author panels and signings, and the Virginia Book Festival Crime Wave held in Charlottesville next weekend, March 22-23, with authors Sarah Weinman, Aggie Blum Thompson, Steve Weddle, Meagan Jennett, Polly Stewart, Peter Malone Elliott, Patti McCracken, Jennifer Sutherland, Yasmin Angoe, Cara Black, Alma Katsu, Victoria Gilbert, Laura Sims, and Ashley Winstead.
In forensics news that's out of this world, a new study by Staffordshire University and the University of Hull highlighted the behavior of blood in microgravity and the unique challenges of bloodstain pattern analysis aboard spacecraft. Bloodstain expert Zack Kowalske is a Crime Scene Investigator based in Atlanta, USA, and led the study as part his PhD research. He added, "Studying bloodstain patterns can provide valuable reconstructive information about a crime or accident. However, little is known about how liquid blood behaves in an altered gravity environment. This is an area of study that, while novel, has implications for forensic investigations in space."
In April 2015, B.K. 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. The series relocated to Art Taylor's website after B.K.'s passing in 2017, and Art's latest guest is Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus Award-winning author and founder of Hard Case Crime. Ardai is publishing the first collection of his short stories, Death Comes Too Late, and his contribution to First Two Pages is an essay on his Edgar Award-winning story, "The Home Front."
In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton chatted with thriller author Liz Crowe about her new domestic suspense, Cul-de-Sac, and also with Jack Lowe-Carbell about his new thriller, Arlya; and Deborah Kalb spoke with Loreth Anne White, author of the new novel, The Unquiet Bones, inspired by the true-life 1976 murder of 16-year-old Rhona Duncan.
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March 11, 2024
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
Emmy nominee Mckenna Grace (Handmaid’s Tale) will star in and executive produce the new psychological thriller, Straight Lies, with Alex Kalymnios set to direct. Written by Ren Trella and inspired by true events from Trella's life as a teenager, the script was a semi-finalist in the prestigious Academy Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. The story is set in 1990 and follows a teen girl falsely accused of drug use, who's held against her will and must escape a cult-like drug rehab that is backed by the US Government. Meanwhile, her covert CIA agent father becomes so lost in political influence that he is unaware of the danger his daughter is in.
Karl Glusman (Civil War) has been set as the male lead opposite Samara Weaving in the 20th Century Studios heist thriller, Eenie Meanie, from writer-director Shawn Simmons (The Continental: From the World of John Wick). Produced by the Deadpool franchise’s Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the film follows Edie (Weaving), a former teenage getaway driver who is dragged back into her unsavory past when a former employer offers her a chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend. Glusman plays Edie’s on-again/off-again boyfriend, John.
Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me) is in talks to star in New Regency's Watch Dogs, an adaptation of the popular UbiSoft hit video game. The film is being directed by acclaimed French genre director Mathieu Turi from an original screenplay written by Christie LeBlanc, known for writing the Netflix original sci-fi thriller, Oxygen. While plot details haven't been released, the popular game is set in fictionalized versions of real-life cities at various points in time and follows different hacker protagonists who, while having different goals to achieve, find themselves involved with the criminal underworlds of their respective cities. The antagonists are usually corrupt companies, crime bosses, and rival hackers who take advantage of a fictional computing network that connects every electronic device in a city together into a single system and stores personal information on most citizens.
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
Bestselling author Laura Dave is teaming with her husband Josh Singer, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter currently nominated for Maestro, to adapt Dave's forthcoming novel, The Night We Lost Him, into a feature for Netflix. The pair also collaborated on another of Dave's novels, The Last Thing He Told Me, Apple TV+’s hit limited series adaptation starring Jennifer Garner. The Night We Lost Him watches as the patriarch of a famed hotel empire dies under suspicious circumstances. Thereafter, his daughter and her estranged brother join forces to find out what happened, unraveling a larger mystery about who their father really was.
Austin Stowell (Catch-22 TV series) has been cast as young Jethro Gibbs in CBS's new drama NCIS: Origins, a prequel to the venerable procedural, which has a straight-to-series order for the 2024-2025 broadcast season. Narrated by Mark Harmon, who played the character in the original series, the prequel begins in 1991, years prior to the events of NCIS. In the series, Gibbs (Stowell) starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling Camp Pendleton office where he forges his place on a gritty, ragtag team led by NCIS legend Mike Franks. Mark Harmon and his son Sean Harmon, who portrayed Gibbs in flashbacks on NCIS and was a driving force behind the prequel, executive produce alongside David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal who are co-writing the premiere episode and serving as co-showrunners.
MGM+ has given the green light to the mystery thriller, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue. Eric McCormack (Will & Grace, Perception) is the first actor to be cast, playing one of the leads in the six-part ensemble limited series written, created, and executive produced by Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders). The story follows nine strangers who find themselves lost in a remote Mexican jungle after their small plane traveling from Guatemala to the U.S. crashes. One by one, the survivors are murdered, leaving the remaining passengers to solve the terrifying mystery before they, too, fall victim to the killer. McCormack will play Kevin, a former doctor who has been purchasing medical supplies in Guatemala.
Tracker, the first new broadcast drama to premiere this season, is also the first freshman scripted series to land a renewal for a second season. Boosted by its premiere behind the Super Bowl, Tracker ranked as the #1 most watched show on television. The series is based on the bestselling novel, The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, and stars Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, a lone-wolf survivalist who roams the country as a reward seeker, using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family.
The BBC has bought Viaplay's Rebus reboot. Set in Edinburgh, the series stars Richard Rankin (Outlander) in the title role, playing a young John Rebus as a detective sergeant, who is drawn into a violent criminal conflict that turns personal when his brother Michael, a former soldier, crosses the line into criminality. The show, based on the novels by author Ian Rankin (no relation to the actor), had originally been slated for Viaplay’s UK service but will instead run exclusively on BBC Scotland, BBC One, and BBC iPlayer this spring. The original Rebus series aired on BBC rival ITV between 2000 and 2007.
Netflix has picked up Homicide: New York, a true-crime docuseries from Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, set to debut on the streamer on March 20, and also released a trailer. It will be followed by Homicide: Los Angeles later this year. Both installments consist of five episodes each. Each "Homicide" mini-series tells the stories of a city’s most notorious murder cases by following the detectives and prosecutors who cracked them.
A trailer was released for the new Netflix limited series Ripley, set to premiere on April 4. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels, Andrew Scott portrays the titular character, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York. Ripley is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Ripley’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder.
MASTERPIECE Mystery! on PBS released a trailer for the third and final season of Guilt, beginning Sunday, April 28th, and running through four hour-long episodes. The award-winning TV series is a darkly comic Scottish thriller hailed by The Guardian as "Scotland’s answer to Fargo," and follows polar opposite brothers: unscrupulous lawyer Max McCall (Mark Bonnar, Shetland) and his softer-hearted brother Jake (Jamie Sives, Annika) as they get into and out of trouble. Guilt’s cast also includes Emun Elliott, who plays long-suffering private eye Kenny Burns, Phyllis Logan as Maggie Lynch, a formidable presence in Edinburgh’s crime underworld, and Sara Vickers as Erin Lynch, the daughter trying to distance herself from the family business.
Apple TV+ has released the official trailer for Sugar, featuring Oscar nominee Colin Farrell as John Sugar, an American private investigator on the heels of the mysterious disappearance of Olivia Siegel, the beloved granddaughter of legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel. As Sugar tries to determine what happened to Olivia, he will also unearth Siegel family secrets; some very recent, others long-buried. The first two episodes of Sugar's eight-episode season will drop Friday, April 5 on Apple TV+, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Debbi Mack's guest for the latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast was Southern Gothic mystery writer Faye Snowden, author of A Killing Fire and A Killing Rain, named by CrimeReads as one of the best Southern Gothic mysteries of 2022.
Spybrary Spy Book Podcast host Shane Whaley, author Paul Vidich, and Spybrarian David Craggs discussed Paul Vidich's latest spy thriller, Beirut Station: Two Lives of a Spy, a novel "pulsating with emotional depth and geopolitical intrigue."
On the latest edition of Crime Time FM, Barry Forshaw, Victoria Selman, and Paul Burke chatted about new books, SS Van Dine's Philo Vance on screen, writing to trend and branching out within the genre, the Oxford Literary Festival, and more.
On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed some of their underrated favorites and covered some recent crime fiction news and awards.
The Infinite Monkey Cage, a podcast hosted by Robin Ince and physicist Brian Cox, delved into the murky world of historical poisonings with the help of Hugh Dennis, chemist Andrea Sella, and Agatha Christie aficionado and former chemist Kathryn Harkup.
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured Twist Phelan's reading of "Judge Not," her story of a local judge who faces a serious ethical dilemma, from EQMM's May/June 2023 issue.
THEATRE
Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal are slated to star in Othello on Broadway in spring 2025. The production, which will see Washington in the title role and Gyllenhaal as Iago, will be directed by Kenny Leon, who previously directed Washington in A Raisin in the Sun and Fences, opposite Viola Davis. The new production of the classic Shakespeare tragic drama, scheduled to open at an as-yet unnamed Shubert theater, follows Iago, a junior officer, as he grows jealous about being overlooked for a promotion and seeks revenge on his general, Othello.
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