B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 44

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Vertical has snapped up North American rights to Miranda’s Victim, a courtroom drama starring Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), which had its world premiere as the opener for the 2023 Santa Barbara Film Festival and is slated for release on October 6th. Based on true events, the film tells the story of 18-year-old Trish Weir (Breslin), who in 1963 was kidnapped and sexually assaulted. After a voluntary confession, her assailant, Ernesto Miranda (Sebastian Quinn), is convicted. But the verdict is later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court since his confession was made without an attorney present. In the resulting retrial, a determined prosecutor (Luke Wilson) seeks to hold Miranda fully accountable, notwithstanding a rigorous defense from Miranda’s attorney (Ryan Phillippe). What follows is a legal proceeding that will forever change the nation’s justice system. Weir’s case notably resulted in the establishment of the Miranda rights afforded to criminal suspects taken in police custody, to ensure the admissibility of statements made during interrogation, as part of subsequent criminal proceedings.

Buffalo 8 picked up worldwide rights to Rule of Thirds, an indie thriller written by and starring Will Hirschfeld, which it plans to release this fall. Also starring Ashley Moore (I Know What You Did Last Summer), the film is directed by Patrick Flaherty (Dyad) and centers on a successful high-end fashion photographer (Hirschfeld), scouting a new model (Moore), who watches as their instant connection leads to dangerous consequences. Additional cast includes Jonathan Kowalsky, Darren Pettie, George Carroll, Deneen Tyler, Ron Yuan, and Twan Kuyper.

A trailer was released for Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Palme d’Or (and also the Palme Dog) at the Cannes Film Festival this past summer, and opens in the U.S. on October 13. The story centers on a woman (played by Sandra Hüller) who lives alone with her husband and young son in the French Alps. When her husband dies in the snow, seemingly from a fall, she goes from being a grieving widow to a prime suspect. Who can you trust—especially when the only "eyewitnesses" are the couple’s blind son and the dog?

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Nicola Walker returns for an all-new season of Annika, a police procedural that follows a marine homicide detective in Scotland. The six-episode season premieres Sunday, October 15 at 10/9c on Masterpiece on PBS. Walker stars as DI Annika Strandhed, the head of Glasgow’s Marine Homicide Unit who darts around on a speedboat when she’s not raising an unruly teenage daughter. Walker works alongside DS Michael McAndrews (Jamie Sives) along with DC Blair Ferguson (Katie Leung), who’s an expert in forensics, and DS Tyrone Clark (Ukweli Roach) who is a new cop at the station.

FX has set Tuesday, November 14 for the premiere of A Murder at the End of the World, the seven-episode limited series that stars Emma Corrin, Clive Owen, Harris Dickinson, and Brit Marling. The Disney-owned network earlier had pushed the date from its original August 29 slot to November due to the Hollywood strikes. Created by Marling and Zal Batmanglij, A Murder at the End of the World is set at the remote compound of a reclusive billionaire and stars Corrin as the amateur sleuth Darby Hart, a Gen Z tech-savvy hacker. Darby and eight other guests are invited by a reclusive billionaire (Owen) to participate in a retreat. When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must use all of her skills to prove it was murder against a tide of competing interests and before the killer takes another life.

FX also announced that the fifth season of multi-award-winning series, Fargo, is returning at 10 p.m. Tuesday, November 21. The network unveiled first-look images from the new season and revealed more details on the plot of the Noah Hawley-created show (spawned from the Best Picture Oscar-nominated 1996 Coen Brothers movie). In the 10-episode drama, an unexpected series of events lands Dorothy "Dot" Lyon (Juno Temple) in hot water with the authorities and plunges this seemingly typical Midwestern housewife back into a life she thought she'd left behind. Jon Hamm also stars as North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman, who has been searching for Dot for a long time. A rancher, preacher and a constitutional lawman, Roy believes that he is the law and therefore above the law.

The BBC has announced the return of hit drama Showtrial, with a brand new cast and explosive murder investigation. The fictional drama, written and created by Ben Richards, stars BAFTA award-winner Adeel Akhtar, Nathalie Armin, and Michael Socha, and will once again center around a hotly contested criminal trial that divides the nation and takes place in the full glare of the media spotlight. When the high-profile climate activist, Marcus Calderwood, is left for dead in a violent hit and run, he uses his dying moments to identify his killer—an unnamed serving policeman. From the victim's last breath to the jury’s final verdict, Showtrial takes us into the worlds of the charismatic and cocky officer, Justin Mitchell (Michael Socha); Sam Gill (Adeel Akhtar), an anxious defense solicitor; and Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin), a rigorous prosecutor leading the case against the accused. As public outrage reaches fever-pitch, Showtrial questions what happens when a trial is dominated by contentious issues and whether the truth is ever clear cut. Is a fair trial possible when tensions are riding so high?





PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Graham Hurley chatted with Crime Time FM's Paul Burke about his new war novel, The Blood of Others; the Spoils of War series; Operation Jubilee: the raid on Dieppe; re-imagining WWII and Stalin and Mountbatten; writing "ogres"; and coming over from TV documentaries.

In the latest episode of The Red Hot Chili Writers, thriller writer Simon Toyne discussed how to avoid wild animal attacks; the etymology of famous phrases; Hilda's Crime Weekend; and a crime writers rap battle in Bute, Scotland.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with bestselling true crime author, John Glatt, about his book Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege and the Murdaugh Family Murders, a reconstruction of the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh.

On the latest episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine podcast, find out what happens when a photographer gets wrapped up in a murder case involving a very famous guitar and a sports memorabilia collector in "The Beano" by Floyd Sullivan, from the September/October 2021 issue.

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Sunday Music Treat

August 25 will mark the birth anniversary of conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who is featured in the upcoming film Maestro starring Bradley Cooper. Although best known as a composer for larger works such as Broadway musicals like West Side Story, Bernstein also wrote chamber music and solo pieces primarily (and unsurprisingly) for pianists. One such work is the short Non troppo presto, sometimes alternatively entitled Music for the Dance No. 1, dating from 1937. Although only a little over a minute and a half, the "perpetual motion" aspect of it might make it tricky for Scott Drayco with his injured arm, but here it is played masterfully by Leann Osterkamp:

 

          

Quote of the Week

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Twelve Women Detective Stories

Oxford University Press put out a series of "twelve-themed" anthologies in the 1990s, including Twelve American Detective Stories (1997), Twelve English Detective Stories (1998), and Twelve American Crime Stories (1998). The only one devoted to female protagonists is Twelve Women Detective Stories, also published in 1988, and edited by Laura Marcus (of Birkbeck College, London), with assistance from Chris Willis. Interestingly, over half of the writers were male and date from the late 19th to early 20th centuries when women detectives came into fashion. The heroines in these stories range from a housekeeper to a secretary, and a pawn-broker in a seedy area of Victorian London to Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard.



Arranged in roughly chronological order, the stories included are

W. S. Hayward's "The Mysterious Countess" (1864)
Catherine Louisa Pirkis's "Drawn Daggers" (1893)
Fergus Hume's "The First Customer and The Florentine Dante" (1897)
Grant Allen's "The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady" (1898)
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace's "Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will" (1899)
Baroness Orczy's "The Man in the Inverness Cape" (1910)
Hugh C. Weir's "The Man with Nine Lives" (1914)
Anna Katherine Greene's "An Intangible Clue" (1915)
Arthur B. Reeve's "The Clairvoyants" (1916)
F. Tennyson Jesse's "Lot's Wife" (1931)
Gladys Mitchell's "A Light on Murder" (1950)
Henry Cecil's "On Principle" (1948)

Many of these authors are unfamiliar to the average reader (and a few even to me), so this volume serves also as an introduction to their writing. As with all anthologies, the quality of the stories varies quite a bit, with the better stories toward the latter part of the book, including Baroness Orczy's "The Man in the Inverness Cape" (with Lady Molly of the Yard); F. Tennyson Jesse's "Lot's Wife," where her Frenchwoman detective Solange (who has psychic powers that enables her to sense evil) becomes entranced with another woman's beauty; Hugh C. Weir's "The Man with Nine Lives" about a poor devil who has survived eight attempts on his life until famous detective Madelyn Mack discovers there's more to his story than meets the eye; and Henry Cecil’s amusingly cynical "On Principle."



Other female-themed anthologies have superceded this one in quality and scope. But this is still an entertaining read and a good, if limited, overview to the types and styles of female protagonists penned before and during the two world wars.

          

Mystery Melange

A "Noir at the 'Voir" event is coming up Tuesday, August 22 at The Boathouse at Sunday Park in Midlothian, Virginia. Host Josh Pachter will be joined by authors Maya Corrigan, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Ken Lawrence, Hugh Lessig, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Lane Stone in reading from their works. Attendees can also enjoy dinner, cocktails, and the view of the beautiful Swift Creek Reservoir. Come early to make sure you get a seat and a ticket for a free raffle, with bags of books donated by event co-sponsors, including Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Crippen & Landru Publishers, Destination Murders, Genius Book Publishing, Atria Books, the Lifelong Learning Institute in Chesterfield, and more.

Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival, Tasmania's International Crime and Mystery Festival, returns Thursday, October 26 to Sunday, October 29 at the Kermandie Hotel in Port Huon. This year's theme is Tassie Vice (think 80s detective shows, the rise of the amateur sleuth, and How to Host a Murder dinners). The panels will include featured authors such as Ann Cleeves, Garry Disher, Vanda Symon, David Owen, and a host of others. The event is partnering with the Way Down South Arts production team and is supported by Regional Arts Australia, RANT Arts, the Tasmanian Government, and the Australian Government.

Murder by the Book, a crime fiction-focused independent bookstore in Houston, TX, is partnering with Abby Endler from Crime By The Book to curate a new book subscription service. Crime by the Box will deliver a hand-selected, newly-released signed hardcover mystery, thriller, or suspense novel to readers on a monthly basis plus some little extras like further reading recommendations and exclusive author content. As an added bonus, Murder by the Book will also host in-store events with each of the Crime by the Box featured authors.

Seiichi Morimura was a Japanese author reported to have written about 300 books, nearly all of them mystery novels. But he might be most widely known for his 1981 nonfiction book, Akuma no Hoshoku (The Devil’s Gluttony), a searing exposé of the Japanese Army’s secret biological warfare program during WWII. The New York Times had an obituary of Morimura, who died this month at the age of 90.

The Bookseller reported that Severn House has scooped Playing Dead, a new anthology from members of the Detection Club, including Ann Cleeves, Elly Griffiths, Felix Francis and Lynne Truss, edited by novelist Martin Edwards. The anthology is due to be published in spring 2025 in celebration of the 80th birthday of the Detection Club’s seventh president, Simon Brett. Edwards is the eighth and current president of the Detection Club, the world’s oldest social network of crime writers, formed in 1930. Previous members include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, G K Chesterton, and John le Carré.

The blog, Beneath the Stains of Time, compiled an overview of "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century: A Brief Historic Overview of the First Twenty (Some) Years." Although the crime fiction subgenre dates all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), the Covid-era lockdowns prompted a bit of a resurgence.

Writing for The Daily Yonder, Keith Roysdon turned a spotlight on rural crime fiction, while Molly Odintz over at CrimeReads looked outward for "The Best International Crime Fiction of August 2023."

I'm a member of several writer forums, and the hottest topic these days is artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential impact it will have—and is already having—on writing and publishing. It's a very controversial and highly charged issue, with a case in point being Death of an Author, a crime novel "written" almost entirely by three different AI programs (ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Cohere). The Sydney Morning Herald wonders if this is the beginning of the end for human authors.

If you have a New York Times subscription, check out the essay by Amor Towles, "All Hail the Long-Suffering Cadaver." Once at the center of the murder mystery, Towles argues that the cadaver has become increasingly incidental to the action and now figures as little more than a prop.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Thoughts and Prayers" by Jennifer Lagier.

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Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Oscar-nominated actor Alec Baldwin and Blade actor Stephen Dorff are starring in the indie action-thriller, Cold Deck. The movie, directed by Brian Skiba and produced by Corey Large and Eric Bromberg, completed production before the SAG-AFTRA strike commenced on July 14. The story, from Joe Perruccio, follows a team of loggers who stumble upon a meth cook site deep in the forest and find themselves in a fight for survival as they’re hunted down by a drug cartel. Cold Deck also stars Clive Standen (Vikings), Tom Welling (Smallville), Jesse Metcalfe (Fortress franchise), Lochlyn Munro (Riverdale), and Lucy Martin (Vikings).

TELEVISION/STREAMING

With two Hollywood strikes, it’s unclear when CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted will return for a fifth season, but when it does, it will be without series regular, Alexa Davalos, who plays Special Agent Kristin Gaines, a former Office of Naval Intelligence officer. When she came on board the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force, the team was led by Jess LaCroix, played by Julian McMahon who exited during Season 3 and was succeeded by Dylan McDermott as the squad’s new leader, Remy Scott. In the Season 4 finale, Gaines was part of the all-hands-on-deck team that helped Remy (McDermott) capture his brother’s real killer, Benji, who was trying to escape to Canada by train. It is unclear how Gaines’s exit will be explained in the upcoming fifth season, which has not been written because of the WGA strike, or whether Davalos would be invited back to wrap up her character’s arc.

Although there isn't a lot of news about new programming in the pipeline, thanks to the ongoing dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in Hollywood, programs that were already produced prior to the strikes are releasing teasers for their upcoming premieres. Case in point are the production photos from the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, which Netflix has slated for Thursday, October 12. Starring Bruce Greenwood (who replaced Frank Langella as the lead back in April 2022 after Langella was fired following a misconduct investigation), the story centers on ruthless siblings Roderick (Greenwood) and Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell) who have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth. The cast also includes Carl Lumbly as Detective C. Auguste Dupin (with Malcom Goodwin playing the detective as a young man), as well as Carla Cugino, Mark Hamill, and more.

Netflix also revealed an official trailer for Dear Child, a new crime series from Germany, based on Romy Hausmann's bestselling novel of the same name, which follows a woman being held captive who finally escapes―but can she ever really get away?

Paramount+ released the first teaser trailer for Taylor Sheridan’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which stars David Oyelowo as the titular character. Reeves (Oyelowo), a former slave, was known as the greatest frontier hero in American history, working in the post-Reconstruction era as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory and capturing over 3,000 of the most dangerous criminals without ever being wounded. Future iterations will follow other iconic lawmen and outlaws who have had an impact on history.

Peacock dropped a trailer for the John Wick prequel series, The Continental, which is set to hit the streamer next month as a three-part event debuting September 22. The project follows Colin Woodell as a young Winston Scott in his path to becoming the proprietor of The Continental, a chain of hotels that are safe havens for legal assassins.





PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On Crime Time FM, Nicola Monoghan chatted with Paul Burke about her new thriller, Wish You Were Here, and its protagonist, DNA analyst Doctor Sian Love; the city of Nottingham, where Monoghan is studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham; fellow Nottingham author, Alan Sillitoe; and DNA.





Spybrary interviewed debut novelist and ex-CIA officer, I.S. Berry, whose new book is titled The Peacock and the Sparrow, "the best spy novel published in 2023."

On the Read or Dead podcast, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester talked about books by women in translation.

On Criminal Mischief, Dr. D.P. Lyle discussed "Victimology," i.e., how evaluating the victim can add to the offender profile and might offer valuable information to narrow the search for the killer.

The Pick Your Poison podcast discussed the nerve agent Novichok; how a man dropped dead in minutes of a potent toxin applied by people wearing no PPE—without the poisoners suffering any symptoms; and what the antidote might to these poisons.

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Quote of the Week

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Thinking Machine

Today's Friday's "Forgotten" Books post comes by way of guest contributor, Charles Lawson:

 

“Nothing is impossible!”

So declares The Thinking Machine, aka Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, M.D., Ph.D, LL.D., F.R.S., M.D.S, etc.  (And if you don’t know what all those letters stand for, just let them be a reminder that “Dr. Dr.” Van Dusen is a lot smarter than you are…or anyone else for that matter!)  The Boston-based crime consultant is the creation of American writer Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912) and, as a protagonist, he is often compared to his English contemporary, Sherlock Holmes.  Let me be blunt, though: Van Dusen is no Sherlock Holmes.

I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.  Both sleuths use their considerable intellects to solve thorny, seemingly impossible crimes beyond the understanding of ordinary mortals, but Holmes fans will likely appreciate the more nuanced and fleshed-out character drawn by Arthur Conan Doyle via his literary surrogate, Dr. John Watson.  Holmes, after all, is a skilled musician with a theatrical flair and ability to assume another character in his quest for a case’s solution.  Van Dusen, in contrast, strikes one as even more clinically, relentlessly cold and aloof than Holmes is sometimes described.  In the interest of full disclosure, though, I must admit that I have read only a small subset of Futrelle’s more than forty Van Dusen stories―those contained within this collection released in 2023 by the Library of Congress in conjunction with Poisoned Pen Press: The Thinking Machine (based on the 1907 first edition held by the LoC).  It is quite possible that you will get a much more detailed character portrait by delving into the complete oeuvre.  However, as painted in these stories, Van Dusen is the very opposite of “affable” and is clearly incapable of suffering fools gladly.

The notable first story in this collection, “The Problem of Cell 13,” has been reprinted in numerous anthologies over the decades with many authors and editors praising its challenging premise: Van Dusen’s promise to escape from an “inescapable” prison cell.  The story was first serialized in The Boston American late in 1905 as part of a contest for readers.  The best guess for a solution submitted prior to publication of the sixth and final installment won a prize of $50!  (That’s equivalent to more than $1700 in 2023 according to Web-based calculators.  [Note to publishers: revive this practice and, perhaps, revive your industry!])  I fretted for quite some time trying to figure out precisely how The Thinking Machine (as Futrelle frequently refers to Van Dusen) was accomplishing the seemingly inexplicable acts he was performing while incarcerated, and I was pleasantly surprised by his ingenuity when finally fully revealed.  Harlan Ellison, in the introduction to a previous Futrelle collection, called this particular work a “once-in-a-career jackpot of a story.”  While I did manage to suss out certain aspects of the solution, I don’t think I would have won the $50 jackpot in 1905.  Perhaps you will fare better.  I encourage you to try, bearing in mind Van Dusen’s maxim, “Nothing is impossible!”

The other stories in this collection vary somewhat in quality and complexity.  I found myself a little ahead of The Thinking Machine on a couple of occasions yet briefly baffled on a few others.  One character aspect I found puzzling is how rarely the string of letters after Van Dusen’s name actually gets pressed into scientific service.  For someone with that much academic training, he is not called upon to use it extensively…at least in these particular stories.  Van Dusen’s approach, like Holmes’s, is nearly entirely intellectual…yet Holmes was an expert in chemistry and his training served him well when considering physical evidence.  I often found myself wishing that The Thinking Machine would draw more hard science into his investigations.  If Jacques Futrelle were alive and writing stories today, he might have a great deal more fun incorporating the scientific revelations from the last hundred years or so.

It’s a great misfortune that Futrelle’s life was cut short by his ill-fated voyage aboard the Titanic.  Could the rumors be true that Futrelle’s luggage, still aboard that doomed ship, contains many more stories featuring his most famous creation?  Alas, that is one mystery that will probably never be solved.

But nothing is impossible.

          

Mystery Melange

A M Heath literary agency, the Orion Publishing Group and Crime Monthly have teamed up to launch Criminal Lines 2023, a new £3,500 crime writing prize open to unagented debut (i.e. no traditionally published crime novel) authors, born or resident in the UK and Ireland who are 18 and over. From psychological thrillers, to cozy crime, to serial killer thrillers, entrants are invited to submit the opening 5,000 words of a novel with "criminal intent" plus a synopsis of no more than 1,000 words. Entries close on December 7, 2023. The winner will be selected by a panel of judges including A M Heath agents Euan Thorneycroft and Oli Munson, Crime Monthly assistant editor Lisa Howells, Orion Fiction editors Leodora Darlington and Sam Eades, and authors Vaseem Khan and Mari Hannah. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Five writers have been shortlisted for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, currently in its fifth year after being established by LJ Ross, writer of the North East-based DCI Ryan series. The prize aims to celebrate outstanding crime and thriller storytelling of those who are from, or whose work celebrates, the North East of England. This year's finalists include Robert Meddes, Those Men, Those Faces; Sarah Jeffery, The Perfect Alibi; Alan Sendall, Double Infidelity; Karys Frank, Stone Cold Truth; and Sarah Williams, Vacancy for Murder. The winner will be announced on September 6 and will receive a cash prize to support the completion of their work, alongside funding for membership of the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLI).

Twelve crime novels from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland have made the longlist for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The longlist contains a mix of new and established authors including previous Petrona Award winner, Gunnar Staalesen. The shortlist will be announced on September 7, 2023. The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries. The award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

Antony Johnston’s cozy crime murder mystery, The Dog Sitter Detective, has won the Barker Book Award for fiction. Antony’s previous work includes the film Atomic Blonde and the Brigitte Sharp spy thrillers, which are being developed for TV. The Dog Sitter Detective is the first in a series of mysteries starring semi-retired actress Guinevere "Gwinny" Tuffel and a varied cast of dogs, with a different breed planned to feature in each book. Now in their second year, the Barker Book Awards are billed as "The bark of excellence for dogs in literature." This year’s head judge is the actor and animal advocate Peter Egan, famous for his roles in Downton Abbey and Ever Decreasing Circles. The fiction award includes prize money of £2,000 and encompasses all genres, not only crime.

HitchCon '23 is an international Alfred Hitchcock conference to be held October 7-8, both online and in person at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY. The organizers are planning a weekend of all-new insights from leading Hitchcock experts "that will change the way you look at film and provide inspiration to improve your own creative skills." There will be talks and panels, Q&A sessions, breakout groups, social events and networking both in person and online, and film screenings including an 80th anniversary screening of Shadow of a Doubt. Special guests include authors William Rothman, Murray Pomerance, Thomas Leitch, Richard Allen, and Paula Marantz Cohen. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The inaugural Chiltern Kills festival heads to Gerrards Cross in the UK on Saturday, October 7, featuring 70 of the industry’s best crime fiction authors delivering 20 panels and talks. Special guests include Frederick Forsyth, Ruth Ware, Mark Billingham, and Sarah Pinborough, who will be joined by celebrity names from TV moderating panels, as well as real-life professionals from the world of law and order, and many more. Visitors to the festival can also enjoy a specially written play written by and starring the authors themselves; karaoke led by writer Mark Edwards; one-to-one interviews; signed books; a one-off festival short story anthology; a beer tent; and a huge array of food and drink stalls. All ticket sales in aid of Centrepoint, a youth homeless charity.

An imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide, Hyperion Avenue, is debuting new fiction under Marvel Crime. The new endeavor will feature three original novels by bestselling authors S.A. Cosby, Lisa Jewell, and Alex Segura. The stories will be gritty crime novels geared towards adults and will use familiar Marvel characters. The first, due out in 2024, will be written by Jewell and is inspired by Jessica Jones. Cosby’s Luke Cage book and Segura’s Daredevil will both be released out in 2025. Sven Larsen, Vice President of licensed publishing at Marvel, said, "We are always looking for new ways to tell stories about Marvel’s beloved superheroes, and working with Hyperion Avenue on the Marvel Crime novels will showcase these characters in an exciting new light. We know that lifelong Marvel fans and crime fiction enthusiasts alike will enjoy this inventive new series."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "L.A. Nocturne" by Libby Cudmore.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Rhys Bowen, author of the the Molly Murphy historical mystery series, about her new historical novel, The Paris Assignment; and Lisa Haselton welcomed Thriller Award-nominated author Allen Wyler to chat about his new medical thriller, Dead End Deal.

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Ngaio Marsh Awards 2023 Shortlists Announced

Craig Sisterson, founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards for New Zealand crime, mystery, or thriller writing, announced the 2023 finalists, which celebrate "outstanding Kiwi storytellers whose tales, fictional and factual, explore the investigation of crime or the impact or effects of crime on people and society." The winners will be revealed during the Christchurch WORD writers festival, which runs from 23–27 August. Best wishes to all!

 

Best Nonfiction

The Devil You Know: Encounters in forensic psychiatry (Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne, S&S)
The Fix: The story of one of New Zealand’s biggest swindles (Scott Bainbridge, David Bateman)
Missing Persons (Steve Braunias, HarperCollins)
Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay (Paul Diamond, Massey University)
A New Dawn (Emeli Sione, Mila’s Books)

Best Debut Novel

Paper Cage (Tom Baragwanath, Text)
Better the Blood (Michael Bennett, S&S)
Surveillance (Riley Chance, CP Books)
The Slow Roll (Simon Lendrum, Upstart)
One Heart One Spade (Alistair Luke, self-published)
Too Far From Antibes (Bede Scott, PRH SEA)

Best Crime Novel

Better the Blood (Michael Bennett, S&S)
The Slow Roll (Simon Lendrum, Upstart)
Remember Me (Charity Norman, A&U)
Blood Matters (Renée, The Cuba Press)
Exit .45 (Ben Sanders, A&U)
The Doctor’s Wife (Fiona Sussman, Bateman)
Blue Hotel (Chad Taylor, Brio).

 

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