B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 34

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Death of a Busybody

[image error]In her 67 years, California author Elizabeth Linington (1921-1988) wrote some 82 crime fiction novels, published between 1955 and 1990, under her own name as well as the pen names Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill and Dell Shannon. She started out writing radio and stage dramas in the 1940s, switched to historical novels and finally to mysteries in 1960, winning three Edgar Award nominations almost back to back, in 1960, 1962, and 1963.



Perhaps it was due to her own family's 19th-century Irish immigrant background that many of her protagonists had strong ethnic identities, including an Italian rose-fancier, Glendale police Detective Vic Varallo; New England Sergeant Andrew Clock of the LADP and his sidekick, the Jewish lawyer and amateur detective Jesse Falkenstein, who quotes the Talmud; and Sergeant Ivor Maddox, a Welsh bachelor assigned to Hollywood's Wilcox Avenue station.



Her most successful creation was written under her Dell Shannon name—the dapper Mexican-American LAPD Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, who first appeared in Case Pending, as well as one of her other Edgar-nominated works, Knave of Hearts. Sometimes called the "Queen of the Procedurals," Lininger/Shannon among the first women to write in the police procedural genre, as well as one of the first to feature a Latino police officer.



Some critics have pointed out that Linington/Shannon's earliest works were her best, with more attention to detail and craft, but as she started cranking out as many as four books a year, the quality began to suffer, throwing in more cliches and pot-boiler touches. George N. Dove, author of such nonfiction books as The Reader and the Detective Story, pointed out that Linington/Shannon eventually settled down into a formula characterized by a remarkable number of storylines representing the number of cases on which her police officers like Mendoaza are employed (as many as 24 in Spring of Violence), with one main case surrounded by the other unrelated ones in various stages of investigation.



Mendoza is a single detective, just shy of middle age, when he makes his first appearance in Case Pending, but his character is developed throughout the thirty-eight books published over twenty-seven years. He has an inexplicable attraction to women, since he's not unusually handsome, and often finds their attention to be a personal and professional nuisance. He grew up poor and became a gambler to survive before he ultimately joined the police and was surprised by inherited wealth from his miser grandfather. He has a fondness for racy cars, high-stakes poker, and his Abyssinian cat, Bast, eventually settling down to marry Alison Weir in the early novels (Shannon wasn't shy about killing off characters, so suffice it to say, the cast of characters surrounding him tends to change).



[image error]In Death of a Busybody (first published in 1963, but reissued as a Mystery Guild selection by Doubleday in 1988), Margaret Chadwick is the snoop in question, a serious flaw for someone who had money and a pedigree. When she turns up dead, no one seems to care, something Mendoza begins to understand more clearly as he realizes the extent of the damage this one women did—pitting husbands against wives, children against parents, and sewing seeds of jealousy, suspicion and hatred like other people sew tulips and daffodils. But when a second body turns up, killed on the same night in the same way, things get a little murkier. Unlike her later "formulaic" novels, Busybody focuses on one case only, and even has Mendoza pull the main players together at the end for the "reveal," deciding he "wants to handle it the way they do in the detective novels."



Shannon may have been called the "Queen of the Proceedurals" and compared to masters such as Ed McBain and John Creasey, but by her own admission, she based her knowledge of police routine and law not on direct experience but on the basic texts used by police departments themselves and took plots from detective magazines. By today's standards, that makes for a more genteel investigation, but she manages some interesting character development and snappy dialogue. It's interesting to see her multi-layered handling of racial, gender and sexual prejudices and roles, themes that are just as prevalent and volatile today as they were back when she was writing this, some sixty years ago in 1962-63.

          

Mystery Melange

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This week, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) announced the winners of the 2024 Audie Awards during a ceremony in Los Angeles for the 27 categories of prizes. Best Mystery went to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto, narrated by Eunice Wong (Penguin Random House Audio). The Best Thriller/Suspense honor was snagged by All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White (Macmillan Audio). You can check out all the finalists in those categories as well as the other genres via this link.

If you're in the Washington, DC, area this Saturday, March 9, join global bestselling Icelandic authors Ragnar Jónasson and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, known as the Queen and King of Icelandic crime fiction, for a conversation at the Beverly Snow about their novels and the literature festival they run as a side hustle. Ragnar Jónasson will be discussing Reykjavík, a crime novel he co-authored with Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir will discuss The Legacy, the first book in the Huldar and Freyja series.

It's always good news to hear about the advent of a new bookstore, and this week it was Criminally Good Books, an independent book store specializing in crime writing that opened its doors for the first time in Colliergate, York, in the UK. Owner Isla Coole said she "hoped to promote the best of the genre but also help publicise great books which perhaps did not benefit from a publisher's marketing budget and so might fall under the radar of readers." A range of events are already planned for the store including author book talks and signings.

The last major appearance of Dick Tracy in other media outside of comic books was the 1990 Dick Tracy feature film directed by and starring Warren Beatty. This year, Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and Chantelle Aimée Osman, the holders of the Dick Tracy comic book rights, are looking to change all that with the launch of an all-new, ongoing Dick Tracy series from Mad Cave Studios. The book, written by Segura and Moreci and featuring art by Geraldo Borges, launches in April and will be a noir-tinged "Year One" approach to the famous trench coat-clad, fedora-wearing, intrepid police detective. Moreci noted, "This Dick Tracy is more complex, more modern, and a bit darker than what he's been before. But, and this goes to my second point, longtime Tracy readers will find plenty to love here."

Speaking of Alex Segura, he'll be joined by fellow authors Cassandra Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy) and Cynthia Pelayo (Forgotten Sisters) for the genre author panel, "Mystery! Horror! Mayhem!" on Thursday, March 21 at Kew and Willow Books in Kew Gardens, New York.

Short Story Wednesday is a loosely organized group of bloggers who feature classic short stories each week (something I've been wanting to participate in, but haven't found the time just yet). Among this week's offerings are "Scab Painting" by Yoka Ogawa via Patti Abbott; The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories: Part XXXVII, via George Kelley; "Black Winter," by Ellen Gilchrist, via Todd Mason; and three Captain Leopold stories by Edward D. Hoch via Tracy K.

Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has an embarrassment of riches with a list of crime fiction titles being published March through May of this year in both the U.S. and the U.K. I'm still waiting for my reading clone to help me get through all of these, but they're certainly going to make a lot of ereaders and bookstores very happy.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton interviewed thriller author Piper Bayard about her new thriller co-authored with Jay Holmes, The Caiman of Iquitos, the second full-length novel in the Apex Predator series featuring retired CIA officer John Viera and his network of former military and intelligence operatives; and Cara Black, author of the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series and two World War II-set novels featuring American markswoman Kate Rees, spoke with Writers Read about what's on her reading list right now.

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Author R&R with Brianne Sommerville

[image error]Canadian author Brianne Sommerville studied English literature and theatre at Queen’s University before entering the world of public relations and marketing. She writes news releases and key messages by day, and fiction by night after her three kiddos under five have gone to sleep. Brianne has always been drawn to mysteries and suspense, particularly domestic suspense and psychological thrillers. In 2018, while on maternity leave with her eldest child, Brianne was feverishly scribbling in her notebook, confiding in its pages about her darkest fears as a new mother. It was the infinite days and sleepless nights fraught with anxiety that ended up laying the groundwork for her debut novel. What began as her sleep-deprived stream of consciousness evolved into If I Lose Her, a universal story of a new mother whose mind may or may not be unraveling

[image error]About If I Lose Her: The pregnancy podcasts warned Joanna Baker about the baby blues, but when a near-fatal mistake places the first-time mom under the watchful eye of Child Protective Services, she receives a serious diagnosis: postpartum depression. Jo hears the words, yet they don’t make sense. Nothing does. Her blackouts are increasing, and she can’t recall events she’s been accused of. As she fights to keep her daughter, she discovers cracks in her neighborhood, family, and her own home. With the support of her sisters, she attempts to piece together her traumatic past and uncover who is truly in control. Jo must battle her faltering mind to save what’s most important—her daughter.

Brianne Sommerville stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

With a communications background, sharing the truth is always top of mind but I gravitate towards writing fiction where I can use my imagination and provide escapism for my readers. While my works are largely fictional, I still want my stories to be believable and as authentic as possible, which is why research is still important to my process.

Research usually doesn’t come until I have a strong understanding of where I’d like to take my story. I often begin with my personal experience (write what you know, they say), which was the case with my debut novel.

During the first few months of new motherhood, I was experiencing postpartum anxiety. We had a scare during delivery and a code pink was issued due to my daughter’s slow heart rate. After that, I had a hard time shaking concerns about her health. I found solace in confiding in my journal about the fears I was hesitant to share with friends and family. Those diary entries ended up inspiring the novel and I think it helped with the relatability of my main character Joanna Baker. I wrote the first drafts during the early days of motherhood over two maternity leaves, so my experiences were fresh and uninhibited. Research was easy when I could draw from my own immediate experiences. I’m taking a similar approach with my sophomore novel What She Left Behind, which features a sixteen-year-old diary point of view. I dug out my old teenage journal to help create an authentic teen voice.

Once I have my story shaped (I’m a plotter versus a pantser), then the drafting begins. If I encounter something in the plot that I want to learn more about, I usually put a placeholder in or I’ll take some time to do initial internet research. Like most thriller writers, my search history is alarming. I’d share some examples here but then I would be giving away major spoilers!

I consider myself a visual learner, so sometimes reading about a subject doesn’t cut it. Recently, I spent an hour watching YouTube videos of a dashcam in a snow plough so I could experience what it is like to drive one as I have a character in What She Left Behind who clears snow. That same novel involves renovations of a century home. To prepare, I watched many episodes of This Old House, a longstanding home-improvement show. It is on those days that my writing progress looks minimal but really, spending the time on that research helps ensure I am creating authentic characters and a realistic situation.

I also lean on friends and family who have experience or backgrounds in areas that I want to tap into. For example, I recently picked my sister’s brain who studied art therapy, to ensure a scene depicting a dementia patient’s therapy session was realistic. If I Lose Her references pharmaceuticals, so I consulted my father-in-law who has a pharma background.

A lot of the themes I explore involve mental health and other sensitive topics that require a level of research to ensure characters and their situations are represented appropriately. For If I Lose Her, I drew on my own experience with postpartum anxiety so that the additional research I engaged in complemented my firsthand experience.

 

Connect with Brianne on Instagram, Twitter/X, Goodreads, and TikTok, or visit her website to learn more about If I Lose Her, which arrives on March 5 in e-book, paperback and audio, wherever books are sold.

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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

Paramount announced several new release dates last week, including the Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson, which is set for July 18, 2025. Akiva Schaffer will direct and executive produce the project, which is based on the Naked Gun movies and Police Squad! movies starring Leslie Nielsen. The new film follows the misadventures of Detective Frank Drebin's son, Frank Drebin, Jr. and is said to be a sequel to 1994's Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult."

Among Paramount's news about upcoming release dates was also a note about the action thriller, Novocaine, slated for March 14, 2025. The film is from Robert Olsen and Dan Berk and follows a sheltered bank executive (Jack Quaid) with a rare genetic condition that prevents him from feeling pain. When his bank is robbed and one of his co-workers (Amber Midthunder) is kidnapped, he is forced to act and turn his greatest liability into his greatest strength.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

CBS Studios is expanding its ever growing NCIS franchise by bringing back two fan favorite characters from the mothership series: Tony DiNozzo, played by Michael Weatherly, and Ziva David, portrayed by Cote de Pablo, who will reunite on screen for the first time in a decade. Paramount+ has given a ten-episode series order to the spinoff currently nicknamed NCIS: Europe. Via the logline: "After Ziva’s (de Pablo) supposed death, Tony (Weatherly) left the NCIS team to go raise their daughter. Years later, Ziva was discovered alive, leading her to complete one final mission with NCIS before she was reunited with Tony and their daughter in Paris. Since then – and where we find them in the new Paramount+ original series – Tony and Ziva have been raising their daughter, Tali, together. When Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe, trying to figure out who is after them and maybe even learn to trust each other again so that they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after."

The Donovans, a new series loosely based on Showtime’s popular drama Ray Donovan, is set at Paramount+, with Guy Ritchie attached to direct and executive produce. The Donovans follows two generations of gangsters, the businesses they run, the complex relationships they weave, and the man they call upon to fix their problems.

NBC has handed a series order to The Hunting Party, a high-concept crime procedural from JJ Bailey, The Endgame co-creator Jake Coburn, and Universal Television. The Hunting Party is about a small team of investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers our country has ever seen, all of whom have just escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.

MASTERPIECE on PBS announced that Kate Phillips will return as Miss Eliza Scarlet for a fifth season of investigations, and the series will be retitled Miss Scarlet. Stuart Martin, who played William "The Duke" Wellington in the previous four seasons will not return for Season 5. Miss Scarlet will welcome back many cast members from previous seasons, including Evan McCabe as Detective Fitzroy, Cathy Belton as Ivy, Felix Scott as Patrick Nash, Paul Bazely as Clarence, Simon Ludders as Mr. Potts, and Tim Chipping as Detective Phelps. Series creator Rachael New says, "We will miss our Duke but there is so much in store for Eliza – new crimes, new friends, new foes and new romance. We will be keeping her very busy!"

Breaking Bad star Laura Fraser and Malpractice's Ella Maisy Purvis will play a detective duo in the six-part PBS drama series, Patience. Fraser will play Detective Bea Metcalf, who forms an unlikely duo with Purvis’s young autistic police archivist, Patience Evans. Patience works in the criminal records department of Yorkshire Police, cataloguing and filing the evidence produced during major cases, and is a brilliant, self-taught criminologist with an instinctive eye for crime scenes and a passion for problem-solving. Metcalf is the first person to spot and utilize Patience’s talent, which opens a door into a whole new world for the archivist. Neuro-diversity will play a thematic role in the series, with all neuro-divergent characters within the series to be played by neuro-diverse actors — including Purvis.

Paramount+ has also picked up the UK thriller series, Curfew. Starring Sarah Parish, Mandip Gill, Mitchell Robertson, and singer Alexandra Burke, Curfew is set in a society where all men live under "The Women’s Safety Act," meaning they are bound by a strict curfew from 7PM to 7AM every night, with their movements tracked by an ankle tag 24 hours a day. When a woman’s body is discovered, brutally murdered during curfew hours and left on the steps of the Women’s Safety Centre, veteran Police officer Pamela Green believes that a man is responsible. But in a world where men are bound by the curfew system, her theory is rejected.

Diego Boneta is set to lead the newly greenlit bilingual series, El Gato (w/t), based on the comic book series El Gato Negro by Richard Dominguez. In El Gato, Boneta will play Frank Guerrero, the black sheep of his family, who finds himself at the center of a vast conspiracy when he discovers his father was the titular ‘70s vigilante, El Gato. To survive, he’ll have to solve mysteries decades in the making and unravel the truth about his father’s connections to a modern-day terror plot.

Great American Family network is launching Great American Mysteries, a movie franchise that aims to rival Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. The first movie in the Great American Mysteries series is The Ainsley McGregor Mysteries: A Case for the Winemaker starring Candace Cameron Bure and Aaron Ashmore. Adapted from bestselling novelist Candace Havens’s book of the same name, the project follows Ainsley McGregor (Bure), a former Chicago criminologist who returns to her hometown of Sweet River, Texas. She has chosen to trade full-time crime work to open Bless Your Arts, a market for artisans to sell crafts and wares. But Ainsley cannot deny her first love is crime solving and accepts a position teaching a criminology class at the local community college. Her skills quickly become a major asset to the quaint town, when a murder occurs at a winery owned by her friend, who now stands accused of the crime.

Professor T, the crime series starring Ben Miller (Bridgerton) and set in and around Cambridge University, has been greenlit for a fourth season by ITV and PBS Distribution. In the brand new season, Frances de la Tour, Juliet Stevenson, and Barney White will reunite once more with Professor Tempest (Miller) as he uses his unique insight and analysis to help the police. It returns six months after the shocking finale of Season 3, and the team must overcome their grief to tackle a dangerous crime wave. This time, the gloves are well and truly off for Professor T in his lectures and a new musical pursuit, romance is very much alive for his mother Adelaide Tempest (De la Tour), and the lines between professional and personal become blurred for therapist Helena Goldberg (Stevenson). Meanwhile, DI Maiya Goswami (Sunetra Sarker) takes charge of the police force with series favorite DS Dan Winters (White) fiercely at her side.

John Simm's ITV crime drama Grace, based on the novels by Peter James, has been renewed for a fifth season. The renewal comes ahead of the crime thriller's season four premiere, with the fifth outing set to be made up of four feature-length films each expected to be about two hours long. Specific plot details are being kept under wraps ahead of season four, however, the episodes are reported to be based on the novels Dead If You Don't, Dead at First Sight, Need You Dead, and Find Them Dead.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On CrimeTime FM, Tara Moss chatted with Paul Burke about The War Widow; plus modeling, traveling, human rights activism, CRPS, journalism, post-war Sydney, and more.

The latest episode of the Red Hot Chili Writers featured an interview with bestselling crime writer BA Paris about her new novel, The Guest; plus, a discussion of Arabian Noir and a crime anthology set in the Gulf.

The latest episode of Dr. D.P. Lyle's Criminal Mischief podcast featured a Q&A with Tulsa, OK PD Homicide Detective Lt. Brandon Watkins.

The Pick Your Poison podcast looked at a leaf that can cause symptoms of an opioid overdose and another that has resulted in liver transplants and also causes a rash called crocodile skin.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Dover One

[image error] Joyce Porter (1924-1990) started down a literary path with a degree in English at London University before she veered off and served in the Women’s Royal Air Force as an officer (including confidential work in intelligence), from 1949-63 in the UK and Germany. Somewhere along the line, she developed not only an interest in writing novels, but a sharp sense of humor and the absurd that she wove into protagonists featured in all three of her series—whether it's Edmund "Eddie" Brown, a secret agent who's as much a threat to the British intelligence service as he is to the bad guys, or the Honorable Constance Ethel Morrison Burke, a bit of a bungler who possesses a below-average IQ.



But the most popular of her creations is Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover, who quite possibly has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He's described as having a six-two frame draped in "seventeen and a quarter stone (242 pounds) of flabby flesh"; unhygienic (the only man in the Metropolitan Police Service with underarm dandruff); and "with a moustache of the type that the late Adolph Hitler did so much to depopularize." He's also mean, occasionally violent, but mostly lazy, having been promoted through the ranks as much by colleagues who wanted to get rid of him as any particular investigative skills, relying on luck and the work of others to solve cases.



Dover is aided by his aide and polar opposite, the young, well-dressed, kind, sympathetic, charming and intelligent up-and-coming Sergeant Edward MacGregor. The patient MacGregor does most of the work for which Dover gets the credit, one reason he keeps trying to be transferred away from his boss—to no avail, thanks to the Assistant Commissioner who believes in a "baptism of fire and salvation through suffering" for the younger detectives.



[image error] The first literary outing for Dover and MacGregor was the appropriately-named Dover One, published in 1964. To get him out of the building, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Dover to investigate the disappearance of a promiscuous young housemaid in the small remote town of Creedshire. Once there, Dover and MacGregor find affairs, illegitimate children, homosexuality, drug abuse and seemingly every one of the Seven Deadly Sins, as well as a cast of over-the-top characters who all have motives to kill the housemaid. The problem is—there's no body and this particular body is a rather large young woman who'd be hard to hide. Did she just run off? or is it a case of kidnapping or suicide? Dover doesn't particularly care, he just wants to find a restaurant in town that has a decent meal. Or take a nap.



In Dover One, as well as all the Dover novels, Porter creates an uncultured and slightly titillating world but tempers it via pitch-black humor. Her supporting characters are often repulsively racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and definitely not politically correct, but this is part of her own satirical dig at elitism and classism in the UK of the 1960s. She also doesn't shy away from other touchy subjects, including castration, cannibalism, and terrorism.



Neither does she skimp on plotting, which lead Anthony Boucher to note in a 1965 New York Times review, that Porter's first two novels (Dover One and Dover Two) were "plotted with the technique of a virtuoso.'' Publishers Weekly added that the author "plants clues in the best British whodunit tradition, simultaneously honoring the genre's conventions even as she sends it up." Best-selling author Martha Grimes (the Richard Jury series) once said that Porter was one of the few series she really liked, with Porter perhaps the only writer who has consciously influenced her.



The BBC adapted one of the Dover novels for an episode of the TV series Detective in 1968, and Paul Mendelson and David Neville adapted five books from the Dover collection by Joyce Porter into radio plays for BBC Radio 4, with Kenneth Cranham as Chief Inspector Dover and Stuart McQuarrie as Sergeant MacGregor. (None of these was based on Dover One, but taken from the other 14 Dover novels and 11 Dover short stories.)



If you're in the mood for serious detective fiction, then Dover won't be your cup of tea, but if you like dark humor and satire, then settle down with "Scotland Yard's least-wanted man," some strong British ale, and maybe some tea biscuits. Lots of tea biscuits.

          

Mystery Melange

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The finalists for the 44th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced last week, including those titles in the Mystery/Thriller category: Lou Berney, Dark Ride; S. A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed; Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows; Cheryl A. Head, Time’s Undoing; and Ivy Pochoda, Sing Her Down. The awards ceremony will take place April 19 at USC’s Bovard Auditorium on the eve of the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Longlist was announced, and among the contenders for the £25,000 prize are a few crime fiction titles: Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, a sweeping mystery story of two families colliding in 1940s Trinidad; My Father’s House (The Rome Escape Line Trilogy Book 1) by Joseph O’Connor, inspired by the extraordinary true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who risked his life to smuggle Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy right under the nose of the Nazis; The Fraud by Zadie Smith, set against an infamous legal trial that divided Victorian England; and Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson, about a woman traumatized by the Highland Clearances, where a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands were forcibly evicted from 1750 to 1860.

PulpFest 2024, "Spice, Spies, Shaw," is scheduled for August 1-4 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh in Mars, PA. This year's event will include a celebration of Joe Shaw, editor of Black Mask magazine beginning in 1926, who oversaw the focus on the hardboiled style featuring the prose of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Raoul Whitfield, George Harmon Coxe, Roger Torrey, Forrest Rosaire, Paul Cain, Lester Dent, and others. PulpFest will also have a dealers' room featuring pulps, vintage paperbacks and hardcovers, original art, and more, plus an auction on Saturday night featuring more of the same.

Mystery Readers Journal: Murder Takes a Holiday! is seeking articles, reviews, and author essays about mysteries that take place on vacation: Resorts, Family Reunions, Cruises, etc. Author essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "Murder Takes a Holiday" connection. Author Essays: 500-100 words. Treat this as if you're chatting with friends and other writers in the bar or cafe (or on zoom) about your work and the "Vacation" setting in your mysteries. Be sure and cite specific titles, as well as how you use Murder Takes a Holiday in your books. For more information, follow this link.

This year, independent publisher Crippen and Landru celebrates its 30th anniversary. It was founded in 1994 by Douglas Greene, author of the Edgar–nominated biography, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles, and the editor of several anthologies of short stories. The company specializes in story collections including current authors and "classics" of uncollected stories by great mystery and detective writers of the past. Jeffrey Marks took over as publisher when Greene retired from that role in 2018, although Doug continues as Senior Editor where he works on new Edward Hoch collections and an upcoming Carr collection. (HT to Lesa Holstine and )

In the Q&A roundup, Steve Weddle, former newspaper editor, cofounder of the crime fiction collective Do Some Damage, and co-creator of the noir magazine Needle, was featured on Writer Interviews discussing The County Line, an Amazon First Reads selection; Criminal Element interviewed Christina Estes about her mystery debut, Off the Air; and Jeffrey Siger applied the Page 69 Test to his latest Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery thriller, At Any Cost.

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Tops in Thrillers

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The International Thriller Writers today announced the finalists for the 2024 ITW Thriller Awards. The winners will be revealed at ThrillerFest XIX on Saturday, June 1, 2024 at he Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, New York City. Congratulations to all the finalists!

Best Hardcover Novel

 

S.A. Cosby – All The Sinners Bleed (Flatiron Books)

Robert Dugoni – Her Deadly Game (Thomas & Mercer)

J.T. Ellison – It's One Of Us (Harlequin – MIRA Books)

Mick Herron – The Secret Hours (Soho Crime)

Joe Ide – Fixit (Mulholland Books)

C.J. Tudor – The Drift (Ballantine Books)

 

Best Audiobook

 

I.S. Berry – The Peacock And The Sparrow (Atria); Narrated by Pete Simonelli

Gregg Hurwitz – The Last Orphan (Macmillan); Narrated by Scott Brick

Freida McFadden – The Housemaid's Secret (Bookouture); Narrated by Lauryn Allman

James Patterson, Mike Lupica – The House Of Wolves (Hachette Audio); Narrated by Ellen Archer

Emma Rosenblum – Bad Summer People (Macmillan); Narrated by January LaVoy

 

Best First Novel

 

I.S. Berry – The Peacock And The Sparrow (Atria)

Amy Chua – The Golden Gate (Minotaur)

Margot Douaihy – Scorched Grace (Zando)

Kerryn Mayne – Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder (Bantam Books)

Steve Urszenyi – Perfect Shot: A Thriller (Minotaur)



Best Paperback Original Novel

 

Tracy Clark – Hide (Thomas & Mercer)

Luke Dumas – The Paleontologist (Atria)

Tess Gerritsen – The Spy Coast (Thomas & Mercer)

Lisa Gray – To Die For (Thomas & Mercer)

Jonathan Maberry – Cave 13: A Joe Ledger And Rogue Team Novel (St. Martin's Griffin)

J. Todd Scott – Call The Dark (Thomas & Mercer)



Best Short Story



Chris Bohjalian – Slot Machine Fever Dreams (Amazon Original Stories)

J.T. Ellison – These Cold Strangers (Amazon Original Stories)

Smita Harish Jain – An Honorable Choice (Wildside Press)

Richard Santos – Rush Hour (Akashic Books)

Lisa Unger – Unknown Caller (Amazon Original Stories)

Stacy Woodson – One Night In 1965 (Down & Out Books)

 

Best Young Adult Novel



Sorboni Banerjee, Dominique Richardson – Red As Blood (Wolfpack Publishing LLC)

Darcy Coates – Where He Can't Find You (Sourcebooks Fire)

Courtney Gould – Where Echoes Die (Wednesday Books)

Andrea Hannah – Where Darkness Blooms (Wednesday Books)

Elizabeth Wein – Stateless (Little, Brown & Co.)

 

Best E-Book Original Novel



Jeff Buick – The Vulture Fund (Self-published)

Rona Halsall – The Bigamist (Bookouture)

Matt Phillips – A Good Rush Of Blood (RunAmok Books)

Lisa Regan – Close Her Eyes (Bookouture)

Robert Swartwood – The Killing Room (Blackstone Publishing)

Laura Wolfe – The In-Laws (Bookouture)

 

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The Barry Best

The mystery magazine, Deadly Pleasures, announced this year's finalists for its annual Barry Awards. The honor has been handed out since 1997 for outstanding crime fiction titles and is named after Barry Gardner (1939–1996), an American literary critic. The winners in each category will be announced at the Opening Ceremonies of the Nashville Bouchercon on August 29, 2024. Congrats to all!

Best Mystery or Crime Novel

Lou Berney, Dark Ride (Morrow)

S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed (Flatiron)

Eli Cranor, Ozark Dogs (Soho Crime)

Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows (Mulholland)

Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies (Harper)

Adrian McKinty, The Detective Up Late (Blackstone)



Best First Mystery or Crime Novel

Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly Press)

I.S.  Berry The Peacock and the Sparrow (Atria)

Bruce Borgos, The Bitter Past (Minotaur)

Amy Chua, The Golden Gate (Minotaur)

Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice (Riverhead)

Nina Simon, Mother-Daughter Murder Night (Morrow)

Iris Yamashita, City Under One Roof (Berkley)



Best Paperback Original Mystery or Crime Novel

Mia P. Manansala, Murder and Mamon (Berkley)

Rick Mofina, Everything She Feared (Mira)

Jake Needham, Who the Hell Is Harry Black (Half Penny)

Jesse Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Berkley)

Vanda Symon, Expectant (Orenda)

Scott Von Doviak, Lowdown Road (Hard Case Crime)



Best Thriller

Mark Greaney, Burner (Berkley)

Mick Herron, The Secret Hours (Soho Crime)

John Lawton, Moscow Exile (Atlantic Monthly)

Anthony McCarten, Going Zero (Harper)

T.J. Newman, Drowning (Avid Reader Press)

Ruth Ware, Zero Days (Gallery/Scout Press)

 

          

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

Laura Harrier (White Men Can’t Jump) has been tapped for a major role opposite Bill Skarsgård and Nicolas Cage in Lords of War, the sequel to 2005 crime thriller, Lord of War, which Andrew Niccol (Anon) wrote and is directing for Vendôme Pictures. Lords of War picks up the story of Yuri Orlov (Cage), the world’s most notorious gunrunner, watching as he discovers he has a son, Anton (Skarsgård), who isn’t trying to right his father’s wrongs, he’s trying to top them. Not only selling guns but the "trigger pullers" too, Anton is amassing a mercenary army to fight America’s Middle East conflicts. This is the story of Yuri and Anton’s bitter rivalry — even at odds over the same woman. Who will prevail when father and son go to war?

Lionsgate has acquired world rights to the thriller, Amber Alert, which will star Hayden Panettiere (Scream VI) and Golden Globe winner Tyler James Williams (Abbott Elementary). In Amber Alert, Jaq (Panettiere) is eager to get to her first day at a new job, and her driver, Shane (Williams), is just trying to earn a little extra at his side hustle. An alert of a child abduction on their phones will change all that when they discover they are behind a car that matches the description of the kidnapper’s. Unable to let a possible child trafficker escape, they begin a pursuit that will put their own lives at risk.

Lionsgate‘s John Wick spinoff, Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas as a young female assassin, will be delayed a year from June 7, 2024 to June 6, 2025. The move comes as John Wick architect Chad Stahelski has inked a new deal with Lionsgate to oversee the franchise and is working with Ballerina director Len Wiseman on additional action sequences for the movie, to amp it up even more than it is. Taking over Ballerina's original calendar slot is Rupert Sanders’s The Crow, with Bill Skarsgård assuming the iconic role of The Crow in this modern re-imagining of the original graphic novel by James O’Barr. Soulmates Eric Draven (Skarsgård) and Shelly Webster (played by FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

True Detective has been renewed for a fifth season at HBO. Issa López, who served as showrunner for True Detective: Night Country, the fourth and most successful installment of the crime franchise, will oversee the next series as part of an overall deal she signed with the network. It’s yet to be decided as to whether season five will be related to Night Country or will be an entirely new story. True Detective: Night Country starred Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, detectives who have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice to solve the disappearance of eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in Alaska.

Meryl Streep is returning to Only Murders in the Building for season 4 on Hulu, reprising the recurring role of Loretta Durkin, and will be joined by new cast addition, Eva Longoria. Although many plot details of the new season have not been revealed, the story will focus on "unraveling the murder of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), Charles-Haden Savage’s (Steve Martin) mind-bogglingly identical stunt double from his years on the series Brazzos, and the show's 2020 revival."

Berlin, the prequel to Money Heist and based on the character of the same name, has been renewed at Netflix for Season 2. Pedro Alonso, who portrays Andrés de Fonollosa (aka Berlin) in both the prequel and in the original series, will return for this second season. The rest of Berlin’s heisting gang will also return, including Michelle Jenner, Tristán Ulloa, Begoña Vargas, Julio Peña Fernández, and Joel Sánchez. Berlin takes place several years before the events of Money Heist and the tragic end of the Professor’s (Álvaro Morte) brother. Set primarily in Paris, the series follows Berlin and his gang as they steal €44 million in jewels and frame the security team surrounding the treasure for their crime. But this run-of-the-mill high-stakes heist becomes complicated when Berlin falls for the victim’s wife.

The BBC has ordered two more six-part series of the police drama, Blue Lights, not surprising since the first season became one of the top ten dramas for the broadcaster when it launched in 2023, but news of series three and four even comes ahead of the second installment set to air this spring. Set in Belfast, the drama follows a batch of constables as they navigate policing in a post-conflict Northern Ireland. Season Two will see Siân Brooke and Martin McCann reprise the roles of rookie Grace Ellis and her partner, experienced police officer Stevie Neil. Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff will also be back as Grace's fellow new recruits, Annie Conlon and Tommy Foster, as will Joanne Crawford and Andi Osho as Sergeant Helen McNally and Sergeant Sandra Cliff, respectively.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Mark Edlitz, author of James Bond After Fleming, joined James Bond aficionados Bill Kanas, Brian McKaig, and guest host Matt Raubenheimer on the Spybrary podcast to dissect the evolution of 007 in books.

Read or Dead discussed book picks inspired by True Detective: Night Country.

Crime Time FM featured the latest selection of crime, mystery and thriller fiction reviewed by Paul Burke.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Rising of the Moon

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell (1901–1983) taught English, Spanish, history, and games in various schools in and around London and was a lifelong student herself, interested in poetry, archaeology, medieval architecture, Freud, and witchcraft (thanks to the influence of her friend, author Helen Simpson), and she was also a member of the British Olympic Association. She penned sixty-six detective novels under her own name, published between 1929 and a posthumous book in 1984, all featuring Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. She also wrote another series of detective stories under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie (with architect Timothy Herring), as well as historical and children's books. 

One of the earliest members of the British Detection Club, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Mitchell is often compared to the other two Grande Dames and included on lists of the brightest lights of the Golden Age of detective fiction. But with 76 books to her credit, critics like to point out that quantity didn't always mean quality in her novels, something the author addressed in an interview published in the Armchair Detective in 1976:  "I know I have written some bad books, but I thought they were all right when I wrote them. I can't bear to look at some of them now...The books I dislike most are Printer's Error and Brazen Tongue—a horrible book." That may be, but her beloved protagonist Mrs. Bradley still stands as one the most unusual and memorable in detective fiction.

The thrice-married Mrs. Bradley is a medical practitioner, psychiatrist, criminologist, and consultant to the Home Office. She herself is an author, including A Small Handbook of Psychoanalysis and articles in psychological journals, specializing in the psychology of crime. In the nonfiction book Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Michele Slung wrote that Mrs. Bradley's "detecting methods combine hoco-pocus and Freud, seasoned with sarcasm and the patience of a predator toying with its intended victim." Mrs. Bradley is variously described by other characters in the books as being "dry without being shrivelled, and bird-like without being pretty," "a hag-like pterodactyl," and "Mrs. Crocodile." She is an accomplished player at bridge, pool, snooker, darts, and throwing knives, and a dead shot with an airgun.

[image error] Although Mitchell always denied she included much blood and violence in her stories, there's plenty of poisoning to be found (such as deadly nightshade grafted onto to a tomato plant) with horrific side effects, lots of throat-cutting, and one victim was even minced into sausages and hung from hooks. The main premise of 1945's Rising of the Moon, one of Mitchell's personal favorite books, involves a a Ripper-like killer wreaking havoc on the streets of the small village Brentford by mutilating young women and slitting their throats when the moon is full.

Reminiscent of the precocious narrator of Alan Bradley's Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie over sixty years before that book's publication, Rising of the Moon is told through the eyes of 13-year-old Simon Innes, who teams up with his 11-year-old brother Keith, becoming junior Hardy Boys trying to solve the bloody crimes. Their task becomes even more urgent when they spy the potential murder weapon at a local junk shop run by their friend—an eccentric old lady who has a "rag and bone man" as a lodger—then realize the knife may belong to their older brother/guardian and worry he'll be accused of murder.

In that same Armchair Detective interview referenced above, Mitchell remarked Rising of the Moon recalled much of her own Brentford childhood, she being Simon in that story and her "adorable brother Reginald" the model for Keith. That may be one reason Mitchell doesn't patronize her young protagonists, painting them as curious, clever and witty in their matter-of-fact observations, such as "All detective work is sneaking. That's why only gentlemen and cads can do it," or Simon's solemn thought after one almost-disastrous attempt at sleuthing:

In this innocent belief, our progress back to the high street was robbed of much of its terror. The moon was now flooding the sky. Her image reflected in the water was no longer a thing of murky terror, for we were vain-glorious; we were heroes. We had been under fire. We had been suspected of being murderers. We had filled some female heart with excessive terror. We felt we had been blooded, and were men.

In Mrs. Bradley they find a sympathetic ear and are immediately put at ease by her confidence in them, as she becomes their greatest ally and supporter. She in turn offers up little insights into life as part of their education, as in "These bestial realities must sometimes be faced...Life is inclined to be sordid. Our friends are not always what they seem." Mrs. Bradley's role in Rising of the Moon is important, although she actually only appears half-way through the book, with the heart of the story carried by the winsome Simon.

The book is at turns darkly tongue-in-cheek, eccentric, warm and ultimately charming. Though the plotting is a bit muddled and disjointed at times, if you're willing to put that aside, the endearing narration and almost dreamy setting pull you in and make you feel a little like you've become immersed in a surrealistic painting. That may be why Christopher Fowler said in The Independent that Mitchell's works are "more interesting than Christie's, if more problematic."

Radio adaptations for the BBC were made of two of her books with Mary Wimbush starring as Mrs. Bradley, and five of Mitchell's novels were loosely adapted for the 1990s television series The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries featuring Diana Rigg (Rising of the Moon was one, although the plot barely resembles the novel). One critic groused that the latter turned Mrs. Bradley into a glamorous Miss Marple, but it may have helped rekindle some interest in the author.