B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 47

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - I'll Sing You Two-O

Anthea Mary Fraser (born 1930) was inspired by her novelist-mother to be a writer, but her own first published novel had to wait until 1970. The 1974 paranormal novel Laura Possessed was her first break-through success, followed by six other books in a similar vein and some romantic suspense titles before she turned to crime fiction.



In addition to several standalone novels (the last published in 2018), she created two mystery series, the first with Detective Chief Inspector David Webb of the Shillingham police, totaling 16 novels in all from 1984 to 1999. The second is a series Fraser debuted in 2003 featuring biographer/freelance journalist Rona Parish, with the last of six books published in 2008. Fraser also served the crime fiction community as secretary of the Crime Writers' Association from 1986 to 1996.



The first twelve in the DCI Webb series all take their titles from the lyrics to the English folk song "Green Grow the Rushes-O," including I'll Sing you Two-O from 1991, the ninth entry in the Webb roster. The case is set in motion when clothing store owner and part-time town magistrate Monica Tovey finds a van abandoned outside her home. But when the van's gruesome contents—the bodies of the football-mad, window washing, petty-thief White twins—are discovered, unsettling events disturb the serenity of the English town of Shillingham, and Monica suddenly finds her own life in danger.



DCI Webb begins to suspect that recent town burglaries, near-riots among soccer fans, low-flying airplanes and mysterious phone calls may not be unrelated to the case. Webb is also an accomplished artist, and he frequently calls upon his skills to record his impressions and hone in on the murderer, as he does here.



Fraser has taken some heat in the past for creating unconvincing and/or unlikely killers but also collected frequent praise for her rendering of small-town settings, with Publishers Weekly noting that "Fraser's rendering of an English community is again impeccable, enabling a reader not only to take pleasure in the mystery itself...but also to feel part of the life of a small, worried town," and Kirkus adding that it's "a competent, civilized police procedural, enhanced by sensitive probing of snarled relationships and a nicely drawn small-town ambiance."



PW also once characterized Fraser's writing as "succinct," with "her plots developed quickly, her prose straight to the point, with neither narrative nor character suffering from this brevity." And the book does fly along at a fairly clipped pace, in a very dialogue-heavy manner, although the investigation and procedural elements often take a back seat to character interactions.



It's interesting to read words the author gave to one character that "We lead container lives nowadays, bound up in our own concerns. It doesn't make for neighborliness." Those words feel even truer today than in 1991, when thanks to technology, we likely know more about some distant celebrity than we do the people on our own street, and people are glued to cellphones even when out "socializing" with others.

          

Mystery Melange

 

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers president Jonathan Maberry today announced the nominees for the Scribe Awards for superior works published in 2022. The IAMTW’s Scribe Awards honor licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. There are some honorees of interest to the crime fiction community, including in the General/Adapted Novel category: Murder She Wrote: Death on the Emerald Isle by Terrie Moran, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow (which was also nominated in the Audiobook category). The winners will be announced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 21. 

Submissions are now open for the 30th Sisters in Crime’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short crime and mystery stories, with a record $12,720 in prizes. The closing date for the awards is August 31, 2023, with an entry fee of $25 (or $20 for Sisters in Crime members), and a maximum length of 5,000 words. The competition is open to all women, whether cisgender, transgender, or intersex, who are citizens/residents of Australia. The first prize winner takes home $2,000, donated by Swinburne University of Technology, plus the coveted trophy, a scarlet stiletto shoe with a steel stiletto heel plunging into a mount. The shortlist will be announced in October, with the awards being presented at a gala ceremony in Melbourne in late November. In the lead-up to the ceremony, all of the winning stories over the past 30 years are being narrated by Susanna Lobez for Sisters in Crime’s very first podcast – Scarlet Stiletto Bites: Scintillating stories by Australian women. The podcast is free and a new episode is available weekly on Fridays on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, and other services.

Volume 13 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, edited by Elizabeth Foxwell, will be on James Sallis (author of Drive, creator of detective Lew Griffin, biographer of Chester Himes, critic, poet, and cross-genre writer). The author of the retrospective is University of East Anglia's Nathan Ashman, who is also editing the Routledge Handbook to Crime Fiction and Ecology. The McFarland Companions book is expected to be issued in fall 2023.

The late Charlie Watts, longtime drummer for The Rolling Stones, was a passionate reader and book collector. Hundreds of his rare books will be put up for sale this autumn, representing the "best collection of modern first editions" to come to Christie's auctions in over 20 years. The offerings include a first edition of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, inscribed inside the front cover to "the original Gatsby," Harold Goldman, a screenwriter friend of Fitzgerald’s in the 1930s, expected to fetch between £200,000 and £300,000; and a first edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles with an inscription reading, "I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book." Conan Doyle’s inscriptions are "often very formulaic," said Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, making this "really quite special."

Here's something to consider for your summer travel plans, via the World of Footprints - Exploring the World of Crime Fiction: Unveiling the Best Destinations for Thriller Enthusiasts From London to Los Angeles, Stockholm to New Orleans, to Baltimore, and more.

And if you need another travel idea, there's the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Lucens, Switzerland, which the International Diplomat recently profiled.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Bar Fight" by Adam Stemple.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Siena Sterling about her new novel, The Game She Plays, and also with L.R. Dorn (the pseudonym of screenwriters Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn) about the new novel, With a Kiss We Die; S. J. Parris stopped by Crime Time to discuss her new book, Alchemy; and multi-award-winning author Reed Farrel Coleman was featured at Author Interviews, discussing his writing and new novel, Sleepless City, featuring NYC "fixer" Nick Ryan.

         Related StoriesMystery Melange 

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

Apple has dropped a new trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, following its premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Adapted from David Grann’s best-selling book and inspired by a true story, the project is told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) against the backdrop of a series of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s after oil was discovered on tribal land. The film also stars Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, and Sturgill Simpson. The film will be released in select theaters on October 6 and wide on October 20 in partnership with Paramount Pictures before streaming globally on Apple TV+. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Nadia Parkes is leading the BBC’s upcoming drama about the terrifying kidnapping of British model Chloe Ayling. Parkes will portray Ayling in the six-parter Kidnapped [working title], and is joined by Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Lindsay, Olive Gray, Eleanor Romandini, Julian Swiezewski, and Christine Tremarco. Further casting will be announced at a later date. Based on Ayling’s book, the series follows her abduction in Italy and subsequent bravery and resilience in captivity, followed by a court case that put her kidnappers in jail. Yet despite their convictions, Chloe faced headlines accusing her of faking her own kidnapping, and found herself at the center of a media storm.

The Patricia Arquette-fronted comedy drama, High Desert, is ending after one season with Apple axing the series, which launched on May 17 and ran through June 21. Arquette plays Peggy, an addict who decides to make a new start by becoming a private investigator after the death of her beloved mother with whom she lived in the small California desert town of Yucca Valley. It also stars Brad Garrett, Weruche Opia, Bernadette Peters, and Rupert Friend with Christine Taylor, Matt Dillon and Eden Brolin among those recurring. Arquette revealed the news on Instagram, adding, "A lot of you have asked about High Desert and if there was going to be a second season, we just found out that it won’t be coming back. That’s a sad bummer for all of us."

Phoenix Waters Productions has released the first trailer for Hong Kong crime drama, Forensic Psychologist, starring Jeannie Chan, and confirmed its world premiere as an official selection at the Festival of Cinema NYC (to be held August 4-13, 2023 at the UA Midway Theater). Set in Hong Kong, the Cantonese-language series stars Chan as a psychologist who investigates suspects to determine if they are mentally fit to stand trial. As she delves into the minds of people charged with heinous crimes, her personal and professional lives start to blur. The 12-episode series also has an English-language version in development.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Alison Gaylin about continuing the story of PI Sunny Randall in Robert B. Parker’s Bad Influence and having Sunny jump into the world of social media with both feet when she’s hired to protect two Instagram influencers and their manager from a series of violent threats.

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with Clay Stafford, author and driving force behind the crime fiction conference, Killer Nashville.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured the first of their series of Vacation Short Stories, "Sand Bar," by Ang Pompany, read by Ann Dark. The story was first published in Stone Cold: The Best New England Crime Stories.

The Spybrary podcast welcomed special guest, David Clark, who worked as a Special Advisor to former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. David has an intellectual and professional interest in intelligence, making him the perfect guest for the episode's theme:  Revealing his 5 Best Spy Books.

Red Hot Chili Writers chatted with historical crime writer, Ambrose Parry; discussed Shakespeare's grammatical legacy; and briefly dissected a game show that is effectively a sort of nude "blind date."

On Crime Time FM, Paul Burke and Victoria Selman spoke with the shortlisted authors for the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

The Pick Your Poison podcast featured a poison that's more potent than cyanide and the famous explorer who survived his exposure to it.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Capital Crime's Fingerprint Awards

The shortlist for the second Fingerprint Awards, the international book awards held as part of the Capital Crime festival, was revealed yesterday. Readers can vote on their favorites via the form on this link, with winners to be announced at the festival on Thursday, August 31st.

Here are the finalists:

The Crime Book of the Year:

The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths
The Botanist by M W Craven
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

Thriller of the Year:

A Good Day to Die by Amen Alonge
Truly Darkly Deeply by Victoria Selman
Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett
Do No Harm by Jack Jordan
Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Historical Crime Novel of the Year:

The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan
The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle

Debut Crime Novel of the Year:

Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead
A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle
Wahala by Nikki May
That Green-Eyed Girl by Julie Owen-Moylan
The Maid by Nita Prose

Genre-Busting Novel of the Year:

Suicide Thursday by Will Carver
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May
The Houses of Ashes by Stuart Neville
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

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Dazzling Daggers

 
 
The Crime Writers Association (CWA) announced the Dagger Awards Winners last night. The prestigious CWA Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!


 
Diamond Dagger (previously announced):  Walter Mosley

Gold Dagger: The Kingdoms of Savannah, by George Dawes Green (Headline)

Other finalists:



The Lost Man of Bombay, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)

A Killing in November, by Simon Mason (Riverrun)

The Clockwork Girl, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)

The Winter Guest, by W.C. Ryan (Zaffre)

The Silent Brother, by Simon Van der Velde (Northodox Press)



Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: Seventeen, by John Brownlow (Hodder & Stoughton)

Other finalists:



Take Your Breath Away, by Linwood Barclay (HQ)

The Botanist, by M. W. Craven

The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith

Alias Emma, by Ava Glass (Century)

May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate)



John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:  Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor

Other finalists:

Breaking by Amanda Cassidy 

The Local, by Joey Hartstone (Pushkin Vertigo)

London in Black, by Jack Lutz (Pushkin Vertigo)

No Country for Girls, by Emma Styles (Sphere)

Outback, by Patricia Wolf (Embla)



Historical Dagger:  The Darkest Sin, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)



The Clockwork Girl, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)

The Homes, by J.B. Mylet (Viper)

The Bangalore Detectives Club, by Harini Nagendra (Constable)

Blue Water, by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)

Hear No Evil, by Sarah Smith (Two Roads)



ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction: Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey, by Wendy Joseph (Doubleday)

Other finalists:



The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery, by Stephen Bates (Icon)

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators, by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)

Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector, by Amit Katwala (Mudlark)

To Hunt a Killer: How I Brought Melanie Road’s Murderer to Justice, by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy (Harper Element)

About A Son: A Murder and A Father’s Search for Truth, by David Whitehouse (Phoenix)



Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger: Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas, translated by Anne McLean (MacLehose Press)

Other finalists:



Good Reasons to Die, by Morgan Audic, translated by Sam Taylor (Mountain Leopard Press)

The Red Notebook, by Michel Bussi, translated by Vineet Lal (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Bad Kids, by Zijin Chen, translated by Michelle Deeter (Pushkin Vertigo)

The Bleeding, by Johana Gustawsson, translated by David Warriner (Orenda)

The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph)



Short Story Dagger: “Cast a Long Shadow,” by Hazell Ward (from Cast a Long Shadow, edited by Katherine Stansfield and Caroline; Honno Welsh Women’s Press)

Other finalists:

“The Disappearance,” by Leigh Bardugo (from Marple; HarperCollins)

“The Tears of Venus,” by Victoria Dowd and Delilah Dowd (from Unlocked; The D20 Authors)

“The Beautiful Game,” by Sanjida Kay (from The Perfect Crime)

“Paradise Lost,” by Abir Mukherjee (from The Perfect Crime)

“Runaway Blues,” by C.J. Tudor (from A Sliver of Darkness, by C.J. Tudor; Michael Joseph)



Best Crime & Mystery Publisher Dagger: Viper (Profile Books)

Other finalists:


 
Harper Fiction (HarperCollins)

Mantle (PanMacmillan)

Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House)

Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin Press)

Quercus (Hachette)


 
Debut Dagger:  Sideways, by Jeff Marsick


 
Other finalists:
 
Bulldog Murphy, by Chris Corbett
Male, Unknown, by Chris Griffiths
Heist, by James Pierson
The Line of Least Resistance, by Jeff Richards
Cradle of Storms, by Margaret Winslow




Dagger in the Library for Body of Work:  Sophie Hannah




Other finalists:
 
Ben Aaronovitch

Mick Herron

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Theakston Shortlist

A shortlist has been released for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which "celebrates crime fiction at its very best" by U.K. and Irish authors. The prize is run by Harrogate International Festivals and sponsored by T&R Theakston. The public can now vote on the books via this link. The winner, to be named July 21 on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, will receive £3,000 and a handmade, engraved beer cask provided by T&R Theakston.

Here are this year's shortlisted titles:

 

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Hanging Doll Murder

It's amazing that Roger Ormerod (1920-2005), a native of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, managed to end up as writer, given his background. Born in 1920, he worked various jobs, including postal worker, shop loader in an engineering factory, clerk in county court, inspector for Department of Social Security, and listed his hobbies as amateur tailoring, wine making, stereo photography, and high fidelity.



But somehow in the middle of that, he wrote some 22 standalone crime novels; four novels in a series featuring Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson; 16 books in a series featuring private detective David Mallin; and 11 in his Richard and Amelia Patton series, a total of 53 books, all penned between 1974 and 1998.



His interest in crime fiction began with Sherlock Holmes stories in Savoy magazines he discovered at his grandmother's house which started him on his path to writing, which went basically nowhere...until what he called a "freak acceptance" of his first TV play as his first sale, which landed an agent who said he wrote better novels. The first of those, Time to Kill, featuring P.I. David Mallin, was published when Ormerod was 54. He once said about his writing philosophy: "I am principally interested in human motivation in respect of crimes, rather than the mechanics of them. My main intention is to entertain rather than to instruct."



Ormerod's creation Detective Inspector Richard Patton is known as a maverick and a pain in the neck by his superiors, who flouts regulations and won't follow orders, which is why they're relieved when he decides to take early retirement. At the start of The Hanging Doll Murder (published in the UK as Face Value), Patton is due to retire in three days. But he's surprisingly ambivalent about the move, especially when the sadistic Clive Kendall, a child-rapist whom he'd jailed years before, is released from prison. Retirement seems even less likely when Patton faces yet another loose end relating to the Kendall case, the husband of Amelia Trowbridge, who's gone missing and whose burned-out car is discovered in a ravine. As Patton navigates around the clues, including a hanging doll with a goatee beard, the case becomes even more personal when he finds himself getting too close to the prime suspect—Amelia.



Trevor Royle, in the St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, summarized Ormerod's writing style as having a "nonchalance . . . reminiscent at times of Raymond Chandler. As well as realism of background, Ormerod's writing is notable for its terse and natural dialogue and for an ability to switch the direction of the narrative." Ormerod has also received positive reviews for his characterizations and insights into complex human relationships and motivations, as in this excerpt, musings from Patton:

That Sunday had been my last rest-day in harness, so I'd decided to treat it as a trial run for all my glorious days of freedom ahead. I'd rolled out of bed. A new day. Tra-la! But it hadn't lasted long. After breakfast, the grey day had seemed insupportable indoors, and all I had to fall back on was the same old routine. It had therefore occurred to me to drive out into the country and dicker around with a couple of minor issues. But Brason had to go and upset the equilibrium by offering interest, and Ted Clayton had presented a clear line of action I wasn't going to be in a position to carry through. It left me tense, my mind racing, and staring out at the wind-blown drifts of heavier flakes past my window. Like my life, I thought in disgust, colourless and insubstantial, and blowing past.

One criticism of Ormerod's work may be what Reginald Hill of Books & Bookmen called an unnecessary twisting and twisting at the tail of Face Value "till the whole thing was bent out of shape." In fact, Ormerod is known for his labyrinthine plots and deep barrel of clues, and by the time he does wind down the denouement, there might be a touch of "it's about time," but all in all, The Hanging Doll Murder is a solid procedural with a pinch of psychological and suspense genres thrown in. Trevor Royle wasn't far off in calling Ormerod "one of Britain's best traditional crime writers."

          

Mystery Melange

S.J. Rozan has won the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award, given by the members of the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan for the best hardboiled novel published in Japan. It's for Paper Son, which was published in the U.S. in 2019 but only recently was published in Japan. This is Rozan's second appearance on that list, having won in 2009 for Winter and Night. Other previous winners include Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, and C.J. Box among others. Rozan is one of only three female authors to have won the award, in addition to Sue Grafton and Nanami Wakatake.

The longlist was announced for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards, which celebrate excellence in New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing. They are named for Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of the Queens of Crime of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, who penned bestselling mysteries that entertained millions of global readers from her home in the Cashmere Hills. You can check out the list of fourteen titles here, which are currently being considered by an international judging panel of crime and thriller writing experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction will be announced in August, with the finalists celebrated and the winners announced as part of a special event held in association with WORD Christchurch later in the year.

Thirty-three books have made it to Sisters in Crime’s longlist for its 23rd Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books published by Australian women in 2022. Six Davitt Awards will be presented at a gala dinner at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel on Saturday, September 2, by award-winning investigative journalist and true-crime author, Debi Marshall: Best Adult Novel; Best Young Adult Novel; Best Children’s Novel; Best Non-fiction Book; Best Debut Book (any category); and Readers’ Choice (as voted the 600+ members of Sisters in Crime Australia).

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2023 Locus Awards on June 24, 2023, during the Locus Awards Weekend. There are a few crime fiction-themed books among the finalists including Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones (The Cemeteries of Amalo Book 2) in the Best Fantasy category, which centers on Thara Celehar, who can speak to the recently departed and works to find the killers of the murdered; and The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal, in the Best Science Fiction category, which follows a brilliant inventor and heiress on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner when her husband is arrested for murder.

HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, has announced the launch of a new £10,000 competition to find an unagented author writing Scotland-set crime novels. A search to discover the next Ian Rankin or Val McDermid has begun via the literary competition, which offers budding crime writers a book deal, a £10,000 advance, and representation by an agent. Any author who is born or raised in Scotland, is a permanent resident, or has a strong and enduring connection with the country can enter with a synopsis and the first 5-10,000 words of their manuscript.

Independent publisher Black Spring Press is launching a new imprint, Black Spring Crime, following the hire of consultant crime editor Luca Veste. The new imprint will publish one crime title a month for the first year beginning with Zephaniah Sole’s A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands, a novel "dripping with rich reality" and fantastical elements. Sole’s novel will be followed by Rob McClure’s "hard-hitting" detective novel, The Scotsman, later this month; J K Nottingham’s Jasper’s Brood, publishing in September 2023; and Clare Grant’s historical crime novel, The Winter of Shadows, publishing in November 2023.

ITW's 10th Annual Online Thriller School begins September 12, with a ten-week program focusing on the craft of thriller writing. Each instructor will teach an aspect of craft during a live Zoom session, will provide written materials for further reading along with study suggestions (when applicable), and will offer live Q&A with the attending students. Classes will be held every Tuesday at 1:00pm Eastern. The series also includes two bonus panels: a Q&A with bestselling authors Clare Mackintosh and Ruth Ware, and "What Makes a Literary Agent Go 'Wow'" with Jenny Bent, Jeff Kleinman, and Barbara Poelle. For more information and registration, follow this link.

Hachette India is spearheading a revival of the legendary Yellowbacks series, first published a century ago by Hodder & Stoughton in the iconic yellow book jackets. Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, has personally curated the list of nearly 200 titles over a period of seven years, with the aim of leading readers on a journey through the history of crime and detective fiction—from the 18th century to the golden age of the 1950s and ’60s. A second release, with another 50 to 70 titles, will be announced at the end of this year (with extensions beyond crime fiction to other categories).

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Osip" by Paul Hostovsky.

         Related StoriesMystery Melange 

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

Phoebe Tonkin (Babylon) has been added to the cast leading the indie crime drama, And On The Eighth Day, from debut feature filmmaker Alexandra Chando. Although the plot details are a bit on the thin side, the story follows the journey of two small-time thieves who find themselves in a remote town in West Texas. The cast also includes Darren Mann, Mustafa Speaks, Valerie Mahaffey, Lindsey Morgan, and Tanner Beard.

NEON has set a December theatrical release for the thriller drama, Eileen, which will debut in New York and LA before going wide on December 8. The movie stars Oscar winner Anne Hathaway and is based on the 2015 debut novel by Otessa Moshfegh. It’s set during a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, when young secretary Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) becomes enchanted by the glamorous new counselor Rebecca (Hathaway) at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret—throwing Eileen onto a sinister path. Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teague also star in the picture, which was adapted for the screen by Moshfegh with Luke Goebel.

Black Widow actress Olga Kurylenko and American Gangster actor Armand Assante are headlining Kevin Lewis’ latest feature thriller, Misdirection, which looks to shoot later this year. The project follows a desperate couple (played by Kurylenko and Oliver Trevena), who have pulled off a string of high-end break-ins to pay off a mob debt. When they attempt to rob their latest victim, they find themselves caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse where the tables are turned and the hunters become the hunted.

Vertical has picked up rights to the crime thriller, Mother’s Milk, directed by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte (As You Are), with plans to distribute it in North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand beginning September 1. Written by Joris-Peyrafitte and Madison Harrison, Mother’s Milk follows journalist Marissa Bennings (Hilary Swank) who, after the murder of her estranged son, forms an unlikely alliance with his pregnant girlfriend Paige (Olivia Cooke) to track down those responsible for his death. Together they confront a world of corruption and drugs in the underbelly of a small city in upstate New York. And as they get closer to the truth, they unearth an even darker secret.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Max has made its first series order in Spain after Max owner Warner Bros Discovery decided to pull out of production in much of Europe except Spain. Max has greenlit When Nobody Sees Us, an eight-part thriller from Zeta Studios and based on the Sergio Sarria novel of the same name. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Spanish Holy Week celebrations, the series centers on two policewomen trying to solve a series of crimes in the Andalusian town of Morón de la Frontera, in the political and cultural region of Seville’s so-called "deep Spain," which is home to one of the biggest international U.S. military bases.

The Disney-backed network Freeform has canceled The Watchful Eye, described as a Hitchcockian contemporary thriller that follows a young woman as she is thrust into a world of old money and deadly secrets. It follows Elena Santos, played by Mariel Molino, a young woman with a complicated past, maneuvering her way into working as a live-in nanny for an affluent family in Manhattan. She quickly learns that everyone in the mysterious building has deadly secrets and ulterior motives. What they don’t know, however, is that Elena has some shocking secrets of her own.

Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology series has found its Erik and Lyle Menendez. The second season of the Netflix anthology series, a follow-up to The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, has cast Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez in the roles. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story chronicles the real-life brothers who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez. Although the siblings eventually confessed to parricide, they have long sustained that the reason for their actions was due to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Lifetime has given a thumbs-up to another ripped-from-the-headlines movie, this time starring network mainstay Sarah Drew. How She Caught a Killer follows Detective Linda Murphy (Drew), a fresh-out-of-the-police academy rookie who overhears her boss, detective David Goodman (Eric Keenleyside) talking about a serial killer in the area who seems to be targeting sex workers. Teaming up with FBI agent Neil Carter (Jamall Johnson), Linda fights to go undercover to help solve the murders and, if all goes accordingly, capture a serial killer. Delilah Hamlin is also set to star as a former sex worker and aspiring nurse who is the killer’s first victim. Inspired by a true story, How She Caught a Killer will debut Saturday, August 19 at 8p/7c on Lifetime.

Disney+ is moving into the contemporary UK thriller space with the greenlighting of a series based on Alex Dahl’s parents-worst-nightmare novel, Playdate, with casting yet to be announced. In Playdate, when Elisa’s nine-year-old daughter asks to go on an overnight playdate with her new best friend, Elisa agrees. But when she goes to pick her up, Elisa discovers that the beautiful house was a holiday rental, while her daughter has disappeared. What follows is a manhunt across Europe, while Elisa and husband Fred find themselves the object of police scrutiny.

Max has released the official trailer for its upcoming Steven Soderbergh-helmed limited series, Full Circle, which features a star-studded cast including Claire Danes, Timothy Olyphant, Dennis Quaid, Zazie Beetz, Jharrel Jerome, and CCH Pounder. The six-episode series, premiering July 13, centers on an investigation into a botched kidnapping that uncovers secrets and connects people from different backgrounds and cultures in New York.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The Listening to the Dead crew returned to Crime Con in London for another live recording. They were joined by renowned forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, to discuss his remarkable career and the first use of forensic gait analysis as expert evidence in criminal law at The Old Bailey in the trial of jewelery thief John Saunders. From Shakespeare to the Usual Suspects, a person's gait is mentioned time and again. But how much can you really tell from a person's gait? More than you might think!

On Crime Time FM, M.W. "Mike" Craven chatted with Paul Burke about his new high octane thriller, Fearless; Lee Child; Tilly & Poe; TV rights; Michael Connelly; and the amygdala.

On Read or Dead, Kendra Winchester and Katie McLain Horner shared some of their favorite scary summer books.

The latest podcast episode from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is the tale, "Twos on That," from Scottish journalist and author Pat Black, whose stories featuring Inspector Lomond have been appearing in EQMM since 2019.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Gideon's Fire

Tell most authors they must write 10,000 words a day — in longhand —toward the goal of creating some 600 books in their lifetime, and they would likely say something along the lines of (in polite terms), "it can't be done." Tell most critics that the author of the book in your hand is indeed that prolific and they'd likely say (in polite terms), "then it must be crap."



John Creasey inspired such amazement and skepticism from other authors as well as critics, but when it came down to the readers, they voted with their wallets. By the time of Creasey's death in 1973, over 80 million copies of his books (written under 28 different pseydonyms) in 5,000 different editions in 28 languages had been sold around the world. It wasn't even as if the man sat chained to a desk all day — he also managed to establish the Crime Writers’ Association, create his very own mystery magazine, and still had time left over to found a political party in his native England. (One note about persistence: Creasey allegedly received 743 rejection slips before he sold his first book.)



When I was a youngster, I was introduced to Creasey's work through his series featuring The Honourable Richard Rollison (a/k/a The Toff), a nobleman and amateur crime solver aided by his manservant, Jolly. Creasey's most critically-acclaimed work, however, came via his police procedurals with protagonist Commander George Gideon of London's Scotland Yard, penned under the name J. J. Marric, which inspired a TV series and movie. According to an apocryphal story, one of Creasey's neighbors, a London police inspector, challenged the author with the words "Why don't you show us as we are?" and the next year Cresey published his first Inspector West police procedural book (the first of forty such novels), the success of which led to Gideon in the 1950s.



In 1955, writing for the New York Times Book Review, Anthony Boucher thought Creasey/Marric's Gideon's Day was the author's best book ever, saying,

''Nobody could make a regular career of presenting in some 75,000 words a half dozen or more plots, plus a technical study of Scotland Yard procedure, plus a realistic analysis of the characters of policemen and criminals. However, the incredible Mr. Creasey has calmly gone on presenting us with a Gideon novel each year, all of high quality." 

Likewise, H. R. F. Keating, the crime books reviewer for the London Times for 15 years, chose Gideon's Week as one of his "100 Best Crime and Mystery Books [from 1845 to 1986]."



The book which finally won Creasey the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, however, was Gideon's Fire, in 1962. George Gideon, Commander of the C.I.D., is met at the office one morning with the beginnings of a very bad day: the news of a sex maniac who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl, and an arson fire in an old tenement building which wiped out a family of seven. In a style which has since become commonplace for police procedurals, Creasey weaves these and other autonomous story lines throughout the book, including a case of stock fraud; a man who is suspected of killing two former mistresses; a bank robbery with the mastermind still at large, and an ugly family crisis building up in Gideon's own home, managing to tie up all plots by the end.



The book also exhibits the authentic earthy police procedural style Creasey used in this particular series, as well as his sympathetic treatment of many of his characters, culminating in the man Gideon, who feels a oneness with his city, London, and an abiding empathy with crime victims. Creasey once said,

"My characters live in my mind...I can see them and hear them much more clearly than most people whom I know in life...it never occurs to me that they don't exist."