B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 55

Author R&R with Angela Greenman

Angela Greenman is an internationally recognized communications professional. Her career has spanned the spectrum from community relations in Chicago to US and world governments’ public communications on nuclear power. She has been an expert and lecturer with the International Atomic Energy Agency for over a decade, a spokesperson for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a press officer for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the City's civil rights department. After traveling to twenty-one countries for work and pleasure, she decided it was time to seriously pursue her love of writing. She wants to share the exciting places she has visited, and the richness of the cultures she has experienced.

In Greenman's debut novel, The Child Riddler, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl. The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever "invisibility" nanoweapon. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child, and when enemies reveal the weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world want to find that little girl. Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. The agency-prescribed pills—the ones that transform her into the icy killer she must become to survive—are threatening her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness. Can she protect the young girl and still protect the one thing she cares more about than anything else?

Today Angela stops by In Reference to Murder for Author R&R about writing and researching.

 

My approach to research is the same as my approach to life: find the truth. Is that deal really good, or are there hidden charges? Can I trust what this person is saying? What really happened between them? Is this news report factual?

For me, life always seems to involve a quest for truth. So, when I sat down to seriously write The Child Riddler, I realized my research required more than just a technical search to find the correct facts and descriptions. It also involved seeking the truth in a character’s sensory and emotional moments. When I say “truth,” I mean a truth in life—what the description or event needs to be believable. Belief requires a commonality in feeling or experience. If readers believe what I write, they will connect to it and respond.

For example, when I write about a character walking on the beach, I want readers to feel as if they are on the beach too, hearing the waves crashing, smelling the salt water, feeling the grainy particles between their toes as their feet sink into the sand.

Creating a sensory immersion requires collecting the textures, colors, and scents of all that surrounds me. It’s building a giant mental toolbox so I can select that exact truth, the one that brings the scene alive as readers experience what the character’s senses are sharing.

Because I’ve been fortunate to have traveled extensively internationally, my sensory toolbox is stocked with many rich experiences. Here are two passages from The Child Riddler to illustrate what I mean by sensory immersion.

In this first passage, a character is in Vienna, Austria, touring the Habsburg Historic Staterooms in the Albertina Museum:

“His leather loafers silent on the exquisite rose and ebony inlaid parquet floor, Xavier strolled through the deserted staterooms. Greeted by brilliant turquoise, bright canary, and rich burgundy silk wallpaper, under grand chandeliers, surrounded by exquisite furniture and shiny gilded ornaments, he breathed in opulence. This was where he belonged.”

In this second passage, the same character is visiting a home in Petrich, Bulgaria.

“They entered a large garden. Wooden trellises, draped with gnarled grapevines that looked to be more than a century old, stood tall at the entrance. Plump, deep-red grape clusters hung from the thick vines. Red and pink rose bushes, apple and peach trees, and assorted vegetables—cabbage, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and peppers—lined the neatly planted garden.

Xavier took a deep breath. The roses’ sweet fragrance, used in the specialty essential oil and perfume of Bulgaria, floated in the light breeze, a pleasurable incense after being in the stuffy car.

Folk music played in the background. He scanned the garden but didn’t see a speaker or sound system.”

To research emotional immersion—really diving into the soul of a character—I like to ask lots of questions. Why do people make the choices they do? Why do they hold certain attitudes? Why did something happen to them?

From these questions, I learn about the reactive forces in people’s relationships. Reactive forces are all the varied roles we play. Our roles in the different environments we inhabit make us respond to a particular situation in a certain way. These life dynamics shape our psyche and mold our emotional core.

Understanding the threads woven into the individual tapestries of our lives helps to weave an emotional scene. Readers respond to this scene because of its truth—they too have kicked a chair in anger at betrayal by a friend or lover. The truth can also be a sweet gesture or an emotional trigger that touches our heart—as when your dog, knowing you’re sad, comes to you and licks the tears from your face.

Here are three passages from The Child Riddler where I sought to convey emotional truth in actions and feelings.

“The video went black. Zoe raised her hands and pressed her heels down on the floor, violently pushing herself away from the computer with her feet. Revulsion crawled over her. She didn’t want to touch anything related to that vile scene she’d just witnessed.”

Further down the page:

“Her heaves subsiding, her gaze bored into the blackness of the computer screen, its darkness deepening with every second.”

Another passage:

“Warmth spread through Zoe. A special warmth, a deep tenderness that seeped into her every pore. Now she knew what it felt like when someone said their heart melted.”

Delving into the sensory and emotional constructs of writing may be fun, but you can’t escape the dog work of technical research. Identifying the “most lethal weapon on earth” for my book took considerable investigation. Fascinated by the future technology of warfare, I chose a cloaking spider bot. Cloaking technology has elements of nanotechnology—the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale—and this is the future of warfare. Countries are already spending billions on researching cloaking and nanotechnology.

My career with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency gave me knowledge of technical organizations and sources. Even so, I still spent half the time it took to craft my book on research. I scoured the internet for articles and technical pieces that I found through keyword searches.

But to research character development, there is nothing like studying real people. In The Child Riddler, the director of the spy agency, Easton, is a strong manager. To make sure I’d captured the true essence of a tough senior manager, I asked a former high-level executive from a major government organization to review my Easton passages. This beta read was well worthwhile as his critique gave me great insight in writing realistic “Easton” dialogue.

For the character of the gifted child, nine-year-old Leah, I found internet videos of genius children who had won spelling contests. I studied personal interviews that followed their win, paying particular attention to how they spoke and the words they used.

Now as I write my second book, a sequel—where I’m striving to make Zoe even more human, more flawed—I recognize that all my research for The Child Riddler was technical. I may have divided it into categories, like sensory and emotional, to create a plot and believable characters. Devising a plot that the reader connects to because of its truths requires accuracy—not only in data and location but also in describing the human experience. This is where we grow and change, adapting all the while.

 

You can learn more about Angela and her books via her website. You can also connect with Angela on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Child Riddler is available in digital, print, and audiobook formats via Bella Books and all major booksellers.

 

          

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

Principal photography has begun in Calgary, Canada on the dark western thriller, The Thicket, based on Joe R. Lansdale’s novel of the same name, starring and produced by Game of Thrones alum, Peter Dinklage. Set at the turn-of-the-century, The Thicket follows an innocent young man, Jack (Levon Hawke), who goes on an epic quest to rescue his sister Lula (Esmé Creed-Miles) after she has been kidnapped by the violent killer, Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis), and her gang. To save her, Jack enlists the help of a crafty bounty hunter named Reginald Jones (Dinklage), a grave-digging alcoholic son of an ex-slave (Gbenga Akinnagbe), and a street-smart prostitute (Leslie Grace). The gang tracks Cut Throat Bill into the deadly no-man’s land known as The Big Thicket — a place where blood and chaos reign. Playwright Christopher Kelly will pen the adaptation, with Elliott Lester (Nightingale) directing and co-producing.

Screen Media has taken all North American rights to the crime picture, Bad Hombres, directed by John Stalberg Jr. The thriller follows the story of two immigrants who take a simple job, but when their employers reveal themselves to be criminals, surviving becomes the most difficult job of their lives. The ensemble cast includes Luke Hemsworth (Westworld), Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Nick Cassavetes (Face Off), Tyrese Gibson (The Fast and The Furious), Diego Tinoco (On My Block), Hemky Madera (Queen of the South) and Paul Johansson (One Tree Hill).

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Amazon Studios has partnered with The Tornante Company to develop The Better Liar, a drama series based on the book by the same name by Tanen Jones. Daisy Ridley is set to star in and executive produce the adaptation, written and executive produced by Raelle Tucker (True Blood). According to the logline, "When a woman hires a lookalike in an effort to conceal her sister’s death and claim their shared inheritance, her deception exposes a web of dangerous secrets." This would mark the first starring TV role for Ridley, probably best known for playing Rey in the Star Wars franchise. She has also been filming the noir thriller, Magpie, based on a story she had developed, and will next be seen in The Marsh King’s Daughter and Young Woman and the Sea.

After years of rumors and speculation, a second season of the thriller series, The Night Manager, is now in the works at Amazon Prime Video, with Tom Hiddleston returning as lead protagonist, Jonathan Pine. Both Amazon Studios and the BBC, who launched the critically acclaimed first season back in 2016, are reportedly ready to green light "a two-season order," meaning there could be a lot more from The Night Manager to come. The next adventure for Jonathan Pine will take him out of Cairo, the primary setting of the first outing, and pick up several years after the dramatic events of the first season's finale.

Following the critical acclaim of the debut season, the BBC is moving forward with a second season of The Tourist, with leads Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald set to return. Producers say the off-beat thriller will continue with the same dark comedy that had viewers hooked from the beginning. In the inaugural season, a Northern Irish man (Dornan) wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital and must use what few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.

Ving Rhames is set as the lead of Legacy, a three-episode original series for BET+, playing Guy Simmons, a notorious mobster and patriarch of the Simmons family, the ruling crime family in the southern underworld. Simmons has created a legacy he wants to pass on to his two sons, Kevin and Tysean. However, his womanizing ways have spilled over and jeopardized all he’s worked for. AJ Johnson, Lisa Raye and Clifton Powell also star.

Soji Arai (Dead Ringers) has been tapped for a substantial role in the second season of HBO Max's crime drama series, Tokyo Vice. The Max Original, led by Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, was renewed for a second season last June, after airing its first season in April. It’s loosely based on the book of the same name by journalist Jake Adelstein, a firsthand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat by American journalist Jake Adelstein (Elgort) and captures his daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo in the late ’90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem. Arai will play Shingo, the lover and former colleague of Jake’s supervisor, Emi (Rinko Kikuchi). Tokyo Vice is created, executive-produced, and written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers

Skye P. Marshall will star opposite Kathy Bates in CBS’s drama pilot, Matlock, a new take on the classic legal TV drama starring Andy Griffith, which comes from Jane the Virgin creator, Jennie Snyder Urman, and NCIS: Los Angeles star, Eric Christian Olsen. After achieving success in her younger years, the brilliant septuagenarian Madeline Matlock (Bates) rejoins the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases and expose corruption from within. Marshall will play Olympia, a formidable attorney and a key rainmaker at New York’s most prestigious law firm.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed bestselling author Freida McFadden, a practicing physician specializing in brain injury, who has penned multiple bestselling psychological thrillers including her latest,The Housemaid's Secret.

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with crime writer Saralyn Richard, author of the Detective Parrott Mystery series.

It Was a Dark and Storm Book Club had a conversation with Gary Edgington, author of Outside The Wire (not the science fiction film of the same name), in which a retired LA counterterrorism cop and a fearless Army doctor risk everything, including their burgeoning romance, as they battle clandestine Iranian operatives bent on the slaughter of thousands of innocents and ultimately the destruction of America.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke to crime writer, Andrew Taylor, who discussed Restoration England, Edgar Allen Poe in London, and the TV crime show, Ozark.

John Sayles chatted with Crime Time FM's Paul Burke about his historical novel, Jamie MacGillivray; the dialogue of Peter Cooke & Dudley Moore; British grub; and perspectives of history and historical fiction.

On the Writer's Detective Bureau, Detective Adam Richardson answered questions about a fictional FBI undercover story involving a prisoner release; pyromania; and gun types.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features the first chapter of Murder at the Menger by Kathleen Kaska, read by actor Ariel Linn.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's podcast welcomed Joseph Goodrich, an Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning playwright whose productions have been shown from New York to San Francisco, to read from his short story, "Shame the Devil."

          

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Habit of Fear

Dorothy Salisbury Davis (1916-2014) was born in Chicago and raised as a Roman Catholic but left the church when she married her husband, actor Harry Davis. Now considered one of the Grand Dames of crime fiction, she didn't start out as a writer, working first in advertising and as a librarian, publishing her first novel in 1949 with the encouragement of her husband. Her 20 novels and numerous short stories went on to receive seven Edgar Award nominations, and her novel Broken Vows was also made into a 1987 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones.



She had a clear influence on the crime fiction community, serving as Mystery Writers of America grandmaster in 1985 and on the initial steering committee for the formation of Sisters in Crime (along with Charlotte MacLeod, Kate Mattes, Betty Francis, Sara Paretsky, Nancy Pickard and Susan Dunlap). She was Guest of Honor at Malice Domestic VI, quoting Hilaire Belloc, that "It will not matter if my sins are scarlet, if only my books are read."  

          

By her own account, Davis felt she was an "odd fit" in crime fiction, unhappy with her perceived inability to create a memorable series character and uncomfortable with violence and murder. But she was very happy creating villains, and often commented that villains are much more fun to write about than heroes. Her themes trended more toward psychology than out-and-out detection, and religious tensions are often found in her work, not surprising considering her own background.



That religious undercurrent can be found in The Habit of Fear, the fourth and last in her series featuring Julie Hayes, a former actress and fortuneteller-turned New York City tabloid reporter, but the religious theme is only a small part of the deftly-knit threads of the plot that begin with her husband Jeff telling her he wants a divorce. Angry and hurt, she storms out of their apartment where she's tricked into a nightmare scenario of rape and sodomy by two mysterious men. Although she's reluctant to help the police, preferring to try and put as much emotional distance between her and the events as possible, she's drawn into the case, as well as a search for the Irish father she never knew, a journey that eventually takes her to the land of her beloved Yeats.



But her troubles only follow her, as a strange "Gray Man" seems to be stalking her, there's an appearance by her two attackers who escaped New York on bail, and she finds herself in the middle of tensions involving the Irish Republican Army and a splinter group. Underlying it all is a NYC gangster who watches over Julie as a protective, yet violent, avenging guardian angel. The plot threads ultimately do tie together into a hopeful but bittersweet conclusion.



Salisbury once contributed the chapter "Background and Atmosphere" to the Writer's Digest Mystery Writer's Handbook in 1975, and she is certainly adept with creating atmosphere in The Habit of Fear, first in the seedy side streets, police precincts and courts of New York and then in the bucolic but war-torn landscapes of Dublin, Wicklow, Ballina and Sligo:

Julie climbed the narrow street to where the village came to an abrupt end at a gate to the ruins. The wind gusted fiercely. The river became rapids alongside the ruins and rushed noisily down the hillside. Looking down, she could see boats at anchor, heaving in the heavy waters. Beyond the inlet was the Atlantic, blue and white-capped and dappled with dark patches where the clouds threw their shadows. As she went on, she could see the coast road with an occasional cottage and bits of color where the stacked turf was tucked around with plastic tarps.

Her characterizations are also rich and multi-layered, with no character completely evil or saintly. In an interview with Don Swaim on the CBS Radio studio show "Wired for Books," she talked about this novel and how she created the character of Julie Hayes during a period when the author herself was in therapy. She made Hayes a defender of street people due to Davis's own walking through city areas frequented by prostitutes, where she said she was accepted as "this little old lady with white hair in a raincoat," talking to various people from all walks of life.

          

Mystery Melange

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Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the Barry Award Nominations for 2023 in the categories of Best Mystery or Crime Novel, Best Debut Mystery Novel, and Best Thriller. Winners, which are voted on by the readers of Deadly Pleasures, will be announced at the Opening Ceremonies of the Bouchercon Conference in San Diego, California on August 31, 2023.

The Audio Publishers Association‘s announced the finalists for the annual Audie Awards, which recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. There are 26 categories this year, including Best Mystery and Best Thriller, but you'll also find some crime fiction-themed titles in the various other categories. For a look at the full list, click on over here. The winners ceremony will be streamed online from Chelsea Piers’ Sixty in New York City on March 28.

"The Mysterious Mrs Christie: Evidence, Elusion, Afterlives" is the theme of an upcoming international conference at the University of Exeter September 12-13, 2023. Keynote Speakers include Dr. Mark Aldridge of Solent University and Prof. Michelle M. Kazmer of Florida State University. For this seventh international Agatha Christie conference, organizers are seeking research and/or creative papers that consider under-explored aspects of Christie’s work, life, and legacies. Interested participants should submit a short (up to 200 words) abstract for a 20-minute presentation and a brief biographical note to agathachristieconference@gmail.com no later than 1 May 2023. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Mystery Readers Journal has issued a call for articles on the topic of Hobbies & Crafts in Mysteries. They're looking for articles (500-1,000 words), reviews (50-250 words), and author essays (500-1,000 words) about mysteries that focus on Hobbies & Crafts. The deadline is April 10, 2023. Send to: Janet Rudolph, Editor.

A second John le Carré biography, The Secret Life of John le Carré, is in the works from Adam Sisman, who previously published an authorized biography in 2015. As The Guardian reported, Sisman promises "a hidden life of secrecy, passion and betrayal" focusing on the turbulent private life of crime writer John le Carré. Sisman added that the new book will include information that he was "obliged to withhold" from the previous book when Le Carré was "very much alive and looking over my shoulder." It is being published with the approval of Le Carré’s estate and will be released in October this year by independent publisher Profile Books. Le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell, died in 2020, aged 89, of pneumonia. He was famous for spy novels including those featuring the character George Smiley, such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series "The First Two Pages," hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. After her death in 2017, the blog series relocated to Art Taylor's website, and Taylor is "taking host’s prerogative" to write a First Two Pages essay on his own most-recent story—the title novella of Taylor's new collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions. The new collection is available now from Crippen & Landru.

James Bond is getting "censored, not stirred." We'll have to see if this literary news generates the same controversy and pushback from all sides that an announcement about similarly edited versions of Roald Dahl's books recently did. Protests about the latter forced the publisher, Penguin Random House, to partially back down by announcing it would publish "classic" unexpurgated versions along with the new versions that removed passages relating to weight, mental health, gender, and race. Ian Fleming Publications, the company that owns the literary rights to Fleming’s James Bond novels and other works, commissioned a review by "sensitivity readers," and decided to remove a number of racial references in the new editions.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is " With All My Heart I Still Love the Man I Killed" by Shirley J. Brewer.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb welcomed Rick Bleiweiss, who has worked as a record company executive, music producer, musician, songwriter, activist, and journalist before turning his hand to writing his Pignon Scorbion mystery series; and thriller author Sean M. Christopher joined Lisa Haselton to discuss his new novel, The White House, about a terrorist attack occurs at an Ivy League university.

         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

Emmy and Honorary Oscar winner, Tyler Perry (A Jazzman’s Blues), has set another new film, titled Mea Culpa, starring Kelly Rowland (Think Like A Man), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), Sean Sagar (The Gentlemen), Nick Sagar (The Princess Switch trilogy), and RonReaco Lee (Nappily Ever After). The film, which is written, directed, and produced by Perry for Netflix, follows a criminal defense attorney who, in the hopes of becoming partner, takes on the case of an artist who may or may not have murdered his girlfriend.

Prime Video has secured the return of Dave Bautista (Knock at the Cabin), Chloe Coleman (Avatar: The Way of Water), Kristen Schaal (What We Do in the Shadows), Ken Jeong (The Afterparty) and others for their My Spy sequel, My Spy: The Eternal City. The original My Spy told the story of JJ (Bautista), a hardened CIA operative who found himself at the mercy of precocious nine-year-old Sophie (Coleman), after being sent undercover to surveil her family. Schaal played JJ’s tech specialist colleague Bobbi, with Jeong as his boss, David. In the sequel from Amazon Studios, a now-teenage Sophie convinces JJ to chaperone her school choir trip to Italy where they both unwittingly end up pawns in an international terrorist plot targeting CIA Chief, David Kim, and his son, Collin — who also happens to be Sophie’s best friend.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Author Harlan Coben is back at Netflix with his fifth novel adaptation, as the streamer takes on Fool Me Once for a limited thriller series starring Michelle Keegan, Richard Armitage, and Joanna Lumley. The story follows Maya Stern (Keegan), a woman who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband Joe (Armitage). But when Maya installs a nanny-cam to keep an eye on her young daughter, she is shocked to see a man she recognizes in her house — her husband. Detective Sergeant Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar) is leading the homicide investigation into Joe’s death while grappling with secrets of his own. Meanwhile, Maya’s niece and nephew, Abby and Daniel, are trying to find the truth about their mother’s murder, several months earlier, and uncovering the possible connections between both cases. In keeping with previous Coben adaptations, Fool Me Once will relocate the story from the U.S. to the U.K.

The BBC has unveiled a two-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy. The thriller, which will get two hour-long episodes, will film this summer and be adapted by screenwriter Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and directed by Meenu Gaur (Zinda Bhaag, World on Fire). Casting details will be announced later. The story is set in 1954 on a train to London, where a man going by the name of Luke Fitzwilliam meets Miss Pinkerton, who tells him that a killer is on the loose in the sleepy English village of Wychwood under Ashe. The villagers believe the deaths are mere accidents, but Miss Pinkerton knows otherwise – and when she’s later found dead on her way to Scotland Yard, Luke feels he must find the killer before they can strike again.

Mandalay Television has optioned Mike Grist’s series of action thriller novels, including Saint Justice, for television. The six-book series follows ex-CIA operative Christopher Wren, as he chases down the worst cult leader in history who is trying to destroy American democracy by dividing and pitting the US population against each other. Only Wren can stop the anarchism when he discovers the leader of the cult is his father, whom he escaped from as a young teenager. Wren’s internal battlefield leads him to finding redemption and atoning for the dark events of his own past.

Sweden’s Jens Jonsson will direct The Doctrine, a political thriller series adapted from Magnus Montelius’s novel, Eight Months. The novel, published in 2019, presented a then-far-fetched idea that Sweden would join NATO; given world events, the premise is now eerily contemporary. Jonsson said the series was a spy thriller about "how Russia could infiltrate Swedish politics." The cast will feature Anna Sise, Josefine Neldén, and August Wittgenstein.

In a competitive situation, Hae Wons’s bestselling Korean novel, Sad Tropic, will be adapted as a TV series in the U.S. This comes on the heels of the novel being adapted as a Web Toon in Korea. The action-packed, female-centric novel follows Sunny Kwon, a North Korean defector and decorated assassin, who double crosses a crime syndicate to rescue a child from her abusive captors. Now the two of them are on the run from the world’s most dangerous organization.

CBS has renewed its flagship drama series NCIS, along with NCIS: Hawai’i and CSI: Vegas for the 2023-2024 season. They join previously announced renewals for drama series Fire Country, The Equalizer, FBI, FBI: International, and FBI: Most Wanted. The renewals also follow the new-series order for The Never Game, based on the novels of Jeffery Deaver and starring Justin Hartley as a lone-wolf survivalist, who roams the country as a "reward seeker."

The Flight Attendant star, Deniz Akdeniz, has been cast as a series regular opposite Kaitlin Olson and Daniel Sunjata in ABC's character-based procedural drama pilot based on TF1’s popular detective series HPI ("High Intellectual Potential"). The untitled HPI remake centers on Morgan (Olson), a single mom with three kids and an exceptional mind who helps solve an unsolvable crime when she rearranges some evidence during her shift as a cleaner for the police department. When they discover she has a knack for putting things in order because of her high intellectual potential she is brought on as a consultant to work with a by-the-book seasoned detective, Karadec (Sunjata), and together they form an unusual and unstoppable team

ITV has ordered a second season of Karen Pirie, based on Val McDermid’s books and starring Lauren Lyle as the young and fearless Scottish investigator with a quick mouth and tenacious desire for the truth. Series Two will be based on A Darker Domain, with Karen reopening the investigation into the unsolved kidnapping of a wealthy young heiress and her baby son back in 1985.

Nordic programmer Viaplay has launched a subscription streaming service in the U.S., delivering subscribers thousands of hours of programming including so-called "Nordic noir" series like Trom, a crime drama starring Ulrich Thomsen (The Blacklist, Banshee), and the Norwegian thriller, Furia. Subtitles will be provided for the series, films, and documentaries on the platform, and new subscribers will be eligible for a 7-day free trial. The offering, which is available across an array of digital platforms and connected-TV providers, will expand to Canada on March 7.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On Read or Dead, hosts Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester featured crime books by Black authors.

Esme Addison was interviewed by Robert Justice on Crime Writers of Color about her Enchanted Bay Mysteries, a seaside cozy series full of humor and heart, mermaids and magic.

Chris Lloyd stopped by Crime Time FM to chat with Paul Burke about his new historical thriller, Paris Requiem; Eddie Giral; wartime Paris; living in Catalonia; and the little people of history.

Criminal Element featured a video talk by Mark Greaney, author of Burner (the Gray Man series), as he discussed research into money laundering, foreign intelligence operations, visiting sites on location across the globe, and more.

On Meet the Thriller Author, Freida McFadden, a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels, discusses her latest novel, The Housemaid's Secret.

Dr. DP Lyle has started a new series for his Criminal Mischief podcast titled Forensics For Crime Writers, discussing various aspects of forensic science and how it might be used in crime fiction. The first episode deals with the coroner.

On the latest episode of It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club, author Ann Claire chatted about her book, Dead and Gondola, the first in her Christie Bookshop Mystery series.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Mystery Melange

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes announced this year's honorees, highlighted by the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement recipient, James Ellroy. The award is given to an author with a substantial connection to the American West whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition. Ellroy is perhaps best known for his Los Angeles-based crime novels such as L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. The finalists in the Mystery/Thriller category also include Rachel Howzell Hall, We Lie Here; Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden; Tracey Lien, All That’s Left Unsaid; Alex Segura, Secret Identity; and Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers.

CrichtonSun, the estate of Michael Crichton led by the author's widow, Sherri Crichton, has made a seven-figure deal with Blackstone Publishing to acquire the worldwide print, eBook and audiobook rights to Crichton’s first series of novels, which he wrote under the pseudonym John Lange. The books were penned long before Jurassic Park and include the unconnected Odds On (1966), Scratch One (1967), Easy Go (1968), Zero Cool (1969), The Venom Business (1969), Drug of Choice (1970), Grave Descend (1970) and Binary (1972). All the books are set in the late 1960s and 1970s and were Crichton's tribute to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and to one of his favorite Alfred Hitchcock films, To Catch a Thief. The subjects range from secret treasures to heists, archaeology, unlikely heroes, classic villains and seductive and at times treacherous lovers. Sherri Crichton said. “In these eight early adventure books, Michael was honing his skills and themes that would later make him one of the most successful authors of all time. It is such an honor and pleasure to see the John Lange books freshly and newly published by Blackstone, to reintroduce these books to fans and also present them to a whole new generation of readers.” The titles will also be shopped to studios and streamers for potential film/television adaptations.

Last week, the Theakston Old Peculier crime fiction conference announced its headliners, and this week, CrimeFest 2023 announced Mark Billingham and Elly Griffiths will be the Featured Guests at the CrimeFest conference, one of Europe’s biggest crime fiction conventions. CrimeFest, sponsored by Specsavers, will take place from May 11-14 at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel in the UK, with up to 150 total authors currently scheduled to take part in over 50 panels. Billingham worked as an actor and stand-up comedian before publishing his first crime novel Sleepyhead in 2001, and his novels have now sold over 6 million copies. He has had 21 Sunday Times bestsellers and two TV series have been made of his books, Thorne on Sky starring David Morrissey, and In the Dark by the BBC. Griffiths is best known for her Dr. Ruth Galloway series as well as The Brighton Mystery series, set in the 1950s and 1960s. Also returning is last year’s featured guest, Andrew Child, brother of Lee Child and co-writer of the iconic Jack Reacher series.

The Back Room, an online program of virtual author panels spearheaded by Karen Dionne and Hank Phillippi Ryan during the pandemic lockdowns, will continue with new presentations this spring including bestselling and debut authors. The new lineup begins March 5 at 7 PM ET with a panel on "Bestselling Suspense" with Lyn Liao Butler, Eli Cranor, Adele Parks, and Shelby Van Pelt. These free events begin with authors playing a quick "get to know you" game of 20 questions, followed by the authors’ book recommendations, and then attendees are divided into 4 breakout rooms with one author assigned to each room. Attendees remain in their breakout room for the rest of the program, while the authors rotate through each room in turn. You’ll get fifteen minutes with each author to chat about whatever you like, similar to a virtual cocktail party. For more information and to register, head on over to the official website.

New York Times bestselling author Kyle Mills, who first took over the late Vince Flynn’s iconic Mitch Rapp series in 2015 and has since contributed eight consecutive bestsellers, is set to depart the Mitch Rapp franchise following his ninth and final book in the series, Code Red, later this year. Taking over franchise duties will be Don Bentley, who has a background in both the army and FBI, and is best known in crime fiction for his own Matt Drake series and the work he’s done in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Jr. series. As Mills noted on his Twitter feed and website, Mills wants to devote time to a new project based on his 2003 book, Fade, featuring former Navy SEAL Salam al-Fayed.

I've written about Cain's Jawbone before, the 1934 puzzle book dreamed up by The Observer’s first cryptic crossword inventor, Edward Powys Mathers, which requires sleuths to place its out-of-order 100 pages in the right order to solve six murders depicted within. The puzzle has only been successfully solved four times, and the most recent solver, John Finnemore, is penning his own murder-mystery sequel. It's currently known as "Untitled Mystery," though people who pledge during the crowdfunding campaign will learn what the actual title of the book. Finnemore's version, according to The Guardian, is a locked-room mystery that challenges readers to rearrange one hundred picture postcards to explain why a person was found dead in a locked study of a complete stranger. For those readers who don't want to take the time to solve the original, an official Cain's Jawbone Handbook will come out in late 2024 or 2025 with step-by-step instructions for solving the puzzle.

What to do if you're an author who spent fourteen years writing a crime novel that finally got published with Thomas & Mercer—but only sold a handful of copies? Turns out, it helps if you have a daughter who is active on TikTok.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Gather Together Who I Am" by Faye Turner-Johnson.

In the Q&A roundup, Thomas White, author of mystery/horror titles, chatted about his latest, The Siren’s Scream, on the Dark Phantom blog; and Author Interviews chatted with Peggy Rothschild about her new novel, Playing Dead.

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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

Golden Globe nominee, Aaron Eckhart, is set to lead Midair, an action thriller set in the skies, which starts production in July. Magnus Martens (SAS: Red Notice), is directing from a script penned by George Mahaffey (Chief of Station; Heatseekers). After flying rogue missions for the CIA, a cargo pilot’s flight goes haywire when he’s stalked, midair, by a terrorist who forces him to overcome a series of deadly obstacles. To outsmart him and keep everyone alive, he must outmaneuver the terrorist and uncover the truth.

Director James Hawes has found his next major studio project, boarding the 20th Century thriller, Amateur, starring Oscar winner Rami Malek. The story follows a CIA cryptographer whose wife is tragically killed in a London terrorist attack. When he demands his bosses go after them, it becomes clear they won’t act due to conflicting internal priorities. So he blackmails the agency into training him and letting him go after the terrorists himself.

Universal Pictures has acquired Too Dead to Die, the forthcoming graphic novel from renowned writer/artist team Marc Guggenheim and Howard Chaykin. A prolific screenwriter, showrunner, and producer outside of his comic book and graphic novel credits, Guggenheim has also signed on to adapt the screenplay, as well as executive produce. The story centers on Simon Cross, who in the 1980s was America’s top super spy. But that was long ago, in a very different world. His allies have forgotten him, but his enemies never will. Uncertain of the future and confronted by a past come back to haunt him, a legend of espionage comes out of retirement for one final adventure.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Universal Television is developing a TV adaptation of the novel, Stone Cold Fox, by Rachel Koller Croft, who will also pen the series. The novel is about an ambitious woman, raised by a con artist mother, who wants to escape her dark past for good. As she aims to marry into a classic American dynasty for one last con, unexpected opponents could threaten everything she’s worked so hard to achieve.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead, a book based on real events and described as "a mix between The Godfather and Chinatown," could be heading to the small screen after A24 won the rights in a bidding war. The Snakehead investigates the secret world run by a surprising criminal, the charismatic middle-aged grandmother, Sister Ping, from New York’s Chinatown, who manages a multi-million dollar business smuggling people and providing safe passage to America. Keefe's book recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. It also follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, paints a portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them.

Social Distance creator, Hilary Weisman Graham, has been brought in as executive producer and co-showrunner of the new CBS drama series, The Never Game, starring and executive produced by Justin Hartley. Graham will share showrunning duties with executive producer, Ben H. Winters (author of The Last Policeman), who wrote the pilot based on the bestselling novel by Jeffery Deaver. The Never Game, slated for launch during the 2023-24 season, features Hartley as lone-wolf survivalist Colter Shaw, who roams the country as a "reward seeker," using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family. In addition to Hartley, the cast also includes Robin Weigert, Abby McEnany, Eric Graise, and Fiona Rene.

Rachel Hilson (The Good Wife; This is Us) will star alongside Josh Holloway in J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan’s period drama, Duster, after HBO Max handed the project an official series order. Hilson will portray Nina, the first Black female FBI agent, who in 1972 heads to the Southwest and recruits a gutsy getaway driver (Holloway), the first in a bold effort to take down a growing crime syndicate. Keith David, Sydney Elisabeth, Greg Grunberg, Camille Guaty, Asivak Koostachin, Adriana Aluna Martinez, and Benjamin Charles Watson also star.

The Resident creator, Amy Holden Jones, is turning to crime. Holden Jones, whose medical drama has just finished its sixth and possibly final season on Fox, has teamed up with The Gifted and Burn Notice creator, Matt Nix, to develop a new crime procedural for the network. Archie & Pete follows an explosive, rule-breaking, and fearless female detective who solves cases for the Los Angeles Violent Crimes Unit with the help of a polite and gentle brainiac who studies the biology of evil.

NBC has commissioned writers rooms for two hourlong crime drama projects, Grosse Pointe Garden Society (from Good Girls creator Jenna Bans and her frequent collaborator Bill Krebs), and The Hunting Party (from writer-producer JJ Bailey). Grosse Pointe Garden Society follows four members of a suburban garden club, all from different walks of life, who get caught up in murder and mischief as they struggle to make their conventional lives bloom. The Hunting Party revolves around 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. Bans and Krebs also have the crime drama, Murder by the Book starring Good Girls' Retta, in the works at NBC.

A new version of the 1970s buddy cop series Starsky & Hutch is in the works at Fox, with a female twist: the modern re-imagining will revolve around two female detectives, Sasha Starsky and Nicole Hutchinson. The duo solve crimes in the offbeat town of Desert City "while staying true to their friendship, their awesomeness, and somehow also trying to unravel the mystery behind who sent their fathers to prison 15 years ago for a crime they didn’t commit." The original series, which aired on ABC from 1975-1979, centered on two detectives — the streetwise David Michael Starsky (played by Paul Michael Glaser) and the by-the-book Kenneth Richard "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul) — traversing the streets of the fictional Bay City, California in a two-door Ford Gran Torino.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a lively interview with Gregg Hurwitz, author of The Last Orphan, #8 in the Orphan X series.

On the Writers Detective Bureau podcast, Detective Adam Richardson did a deep dive into why your character might want to be a police detective; plus he discussed police batons and martial arts in law enforcement.

On Crime Time FM, Simon Mason spoke with Paul Burke about his new novel, A Broken Afternoon: a DI Ryan Wilkins Mystery; Oxford; Morse; and publishing.

The Red Hot Chili Writers chatted with bestselling crime writer Laura Wilson; discussed Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival; and looked at the ins and outs of French publishing.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Through a Glass Darkly

Author Helen Worrell Clarkson McCloy (1904-1994) was part of the Golden Age era of crime fiction. Her mother was writer Helen Worrell McCloy and her father, William McCloy, longtime managing editor of the New York Evening Sun. She was educated at a Quaker school before heading off to France in 1923 to study at the Sorbonne, then finally working in journalism for Hearst's Universal News Service and as a freelancer and art critic.



McCloy began to write mysteries in the 1930s, with her first novel, Dance of Death, published in 1938. In 1946 she married Davis Dresser, famous for his Mike Shayne novels written under the pseudonym Brett Halliday (McCloy herself also wrote one book under a pen name, Helen Clarkson). The couple founded the Torquil Publishing Company and the literary agency Halliday and McCloy prior to their divorce in 1961. In 1950 she became the first woman to serve as president of Mystery Writers of America, and her contributions to the genre are recognized today by the annual Helen McCloy/MWA Scholarship for Mystery Writing.



Her most famous series character, Dr. Basil Willing debuted in Dance of Death and appeared in 12 novels and several short stories. Willing became interested in psychiatry upon seeing the shell-shocked soldiers during his World War I service, then studied psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, then in Paris and Vienna, where he acquired his knowledge of Freudian psychoanalysis and his belief that "every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints, and he can't wear gloves to hide them."



Willing's actual literary debut was in the short story "Through a Glass Darkly," published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in September 1948 and later expanded into the 1950 novel by the same title. It's a quasi-locked-room a la John Dickson Carr, with a seemingly supernatural twist invovling a Doppelganger in which art teacher Faustina Crayle is fired from Brereton School for Girls mid-term but not given a reason why. Faustina's friend and fellow teacher, Gisela von Weber, also happens to be the fiancee of Basil Willing, who draws him into the case, fearing an injustice has been done.



Willing soon learns that students have seen Faustina appear in places she couldn't have been and when the drama coach has a fatal accident, Faustina is suspected—before Willing discovers that she was the only woman who could never have an alibi.



Author, editor and columnist Nicholas Fuller feels that Through a Glass Darkly, is among the top twenty best detective stories ever written, "both for the way in which its horror arises almost entirely from Jamesian understatement (suggestion and the incongruous presence of the normal create the feeling of something terribly wrong) and for the ambiguous solution."



McCloy spins the Doppleganger theme effectively through her characterizations and prose:

"You enter a room, a street, a country road. You see a figure ahead of you, solid, three-dimensional, brightly coloured. Moving and obeying all the laws of optics. Its clothing and posture is vaguely familiar. You hurry toward the figure for a closer view. It turns its head and - you are looking at yourself. Or rather a perfect mirror-image of yourself only - there is no mirror. So, you know it is your double. And that frightens you, for tradition tells you that he who sees his own double is about to die . . ."

In 1959, John Hopkins adapted the story into a teleplay as part of the Saturday Playouse series that aired on the BBC from 1958 to 1961.

          

Mystery Melange

A new Bouchercon Scholarship Award Program has been established to help mystery fans and writers with a financial subsidy. This subsidy covers registration fees for the annual Bouchercon convention, scheduled to be held in San Diego in 2023, as well as travel and lodging costs, reimbursed up to $500.00 (for up to five awardees). Interested applicants will need to write a 300 to 500 word essay on the applicant’s interest in attending Bouchercon and in the mystery genre and be willing to volunteer for no less than four hours at the event. The deadline is May 1st, with scholarship winners announced June 1.

Harrogate International Festivals the Festival Programming Chair and Special Guests for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2023, July 20-23. Multi award-winning crime novelist Vaseem Khan will be acting as this year’s Festival Programming Chair, following in the footsteps of Ian Rankin, Elly Griffiths, Denise Mina, and Lee Child. Vaseem is known for his Baby Ganesh Agency series set in modern Mumbai and the Malabar House historical crime novels set in 1950s Bombay. Special guests include Val McDermid, Lee Child, Andrew Child, Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware, Ann Cleeves, Jeffery Deaver, Lucy Worsley, S. A. Cosby, and Chris Hammer.

US publisher Inkshares is launching its UK imprint this summer with two new crime novels by Fulton Ross (The Unforgiven Dead) and Christopher Huang (Unnatural Ends). Founded in 2014, Inkshares uses a "community analytics model," in which readers provide feedback on incomplete manuscripts, to source literary début novels for publication. Over the past 10 years, the independent publisher said it has had single title sales of more than 100,000 units and sold to the major houses for translation in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. Later this year, its first completed adaptation will stream on Apple TV, Mrs. American Pie, based on the 2018 novel by Juliet McDaniel, and starring Laura Dern, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Bibb, Allison Janney, Ricky Martin, Josh Lucas and Carol Burnett.

Here's an exhibit you don't see every day: a "Scooby-Doo Mansion Mayhem" exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, in Dearborn, Michigan, where visitors can solve mysteries alongside Scooby, Shaggy, and gang through April 9, 2023. A jewel-thieving ghost has dodged the police and was last seen in this spooky mansion. Can you meddling kids (and grown-ups, too!) help the gang solve the mystery in this immersive exhibit? (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Valentine's Day Blind Date - Paulie" by Robert Cooperman.

         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

Oscar winner Helen Mirren is set to star as celebrated author Patricia Highsmith in the new movie, Switzerland, with filmmaker and celebrated music video director, Anton Corbijn, on board to direct. In Switzerland, Highsmith’s late-life solitude in the Swiss Alps is interrupted by Edward, a young literary agent sent by the writer’s publishing company to convince her to pen one last novel in her wildly popular Ripley series (which includes the classic The Talented Mr. Ripley). Highsmith uses her famously macabre imagination to scare Edward away, but before they know it, a collaboration ensues, leaving the world they’ve constructed indistinguishable from their own. The script comes from Melbourne-based playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Joanna Murray-Smith, based on her play of the same name.

As his next project, actor-turned-filmmaker, Alex Winter, is tackling the murder mystery, The Adults, starring Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld), Josh Gad (Avenue 5), and Anthony Carrigan (Barry). The film, penned by novelist Michael M.B. Galvin (who has previously adapted his own works Fat Kid Rules the World and Freak Talks About Sex for the big screen) follows siblings Megan (Wood) and Nathan (Gad), who are barely hanging on in present-day America. Their lives are completely upended when they discover a dead body long buried in their parent’s basement, sending them down a rabbit hole of crime and murder.

Two-time Oscar winner, Anthony Hopkins, will team with Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell in Locked, a remake of the Argentinian action thriller, 4X4, with David Yarovesky set to direct, and Michael Arlen Ross (Oracle) writing the script. Locked is described as "an intense, character-driven thriller about a thief who breaks into a luxury SUV, only to realize that he’s stumbled into a complex and deadly trap set by a mysterious figure." 

Liam Neeson (Taken, Schindler’s List) is set to re-team with director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) on the upcoming thriller, The Riker’s Ghost. Neeson will play a convict set for release who is forced to break a terrorist out of prison. Sean O’Keefe (Spenser Confidential) and Brian Rudnick (Dungeons & Dragons) wrote the script. Jordan said of the project, "This is a unique take on the prison escape. A bare knuckle ride from incarceration to freedom, by someone who just wants to finish his term."

Netflix has released the official trailer for Luther: The Fallen Sun, its long-in-the-works Luther stand-alone follow-up movie that returns Idris Elba as John Luther, the complicated detective behind the crime drama that ran for five seasons on the BBC. The plot: A gruesome serial killer is terrorizing London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary. Andy Serkis also stars as the tech mogul serial killer, David Robey.

Bridgerton actress, Phoebe Dynevor, will lead the thriller, Witchita Libra, as a woman trying to solve a dark historic crime that tore apart her family and rural Kansas hometown. The triple murder caused her to flee to Chicago and start a new life. A decade later, she is drawn back home after her brother’s death to decode a cryptic letter he left behind, suggesting the wrong man was charged with the crime and that an anonymous missing woman could clear his name.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books are finally being adapted for the small screen as a series, starring Oscar winner Nicole Kidman in the title role and Oscar nominee Jamie Lee Curtis as the famous forensic pathologist’s flighty sister, Dorothy. The drama, from writer-showrunner Liz Sarnoff (Barry) and Blumhouse Television, is reportedly nearing a two-season straight-to-series order at Prime Video. Kidman’s Kay Scarpetta is a brilliant forensic pathologist, inspired by former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Farinelli Fierro, who uses forensic technology to solve crimes.

Ripley, an upcoming drama starring Andrew Scott, was initially scheduled for streaming on Showtime but has instead found a new home at Netflix. The limited series from The Night Of’s Steven Zaillian, which is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling quintet of Tom Ripley novels, is still targeting a late 2023 or early 2024 launch. The eight-episode Ripley, based primarily on the The Talented Mr. Ripley novel, was designed as a limited series, but there is a possibility to go beyond the first installment if it’s a hit. Ripley follows Tom Ripley (Scott), a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy man to try to convince his vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), who is living a comfortable, trust-funded ex-pat life in Italy, to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder. Dakota Fanning will play Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability.

Expanding TV universes are definitely a hot trend at the moment. Bosch is the latest example following its initial spin-off, Bosch: Legacy, as two more police dramas inspired by the work of bestselling author Michael Connelly are in development at Amazon Studios. The first, the "Untitled J. Edgar" project, follows Harry Bosch’s former partner, Detective Jerry Edgar, who is tapped for an undercover FBI mission in Little Haiti, Miami. Jamie Hector, who starred opposite Titus Welliver on the original Bosch series, is in talks to reprise his role in the offshoot. The second drama, the "Untitled Renee Ballard" project, centers around a character that has not appeared on the two Bosch series to date, Detective Renee Ballard, who is tasked with running the LAPD’s new cold case division. Beyond simply investigating unsolved crimes, Renee is dedicated to bringing credibility to the department and justice to the community. Having learned from retired ally and mentor Harry Bosch, Renee does things her way – solving cases in unconventional ways while navigating the politics of being a woman on the rise in the LAPD.

It appears that the Dexter franchise is also expanding with the potential addition of three new series. Alongside the currently titled Dexter: Origins series, which will follow a young Dexter Morgan as he transitions into the notorious serial killer he would eventually become, Showtime also announced it is developing a new version of Dexter: New Blood, which centers on Dexter’s son Harrison as he reckons with his father’s sinister past. The streamer is also considering another Dexter prequel series about the Trinity Killer, focusing on the makings of the notorious serial killer played by John Lithgow in the original series.

Showtime has given a straight-to-series order to the political thriller series, The Department, with George Clooney attached to direct. The show is based on the French series, Le Bureau des Legendes. Per the official logline, the original show centers on "the daily life and missions of agents within France’s principal external security service," specifically the "Bureau of Legends," responsible for training and handling deep-cover agents on long-term missions in areas with French interests.

Prime Video has renewed The Terminal List, the conspiracy thriller headlined by Chris Pratt, for a second season and also ordered an untitled prequel series focusing on fan-favorite Ben Edwards, portrayed by Taylor Kitsch. Season 2 of The Terminal List, whose first installment was based on Jack Carr’s bestseller of the same name, will be based on Carr’s novel True Believer. The untitled prequel is described as an elevated espionage thriller that takes viewers on Edwards’ journey from Navy SEAL to CIA paramilitary operator, exploring the darker side of warfare and the human cost that comes with it.

Hugh Laurie (The Night Manager and House, M.D.) is headed to Tehran after the Israeli espionage drama was renewed for a third season by Apple TV+. He’ll play a South African nuclear inspector. The show follows Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan) as a hacker agent who infiltrates Iran’s capital Tehran under a false identity.

Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Peaky Blinders) has been tapped to star opposite Annette Bening in Peacock’s upcoming limited series, Apples Never Fall, based on author Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel. Apples Never Fall centers on the Delaneys, who from the outside appear to be an enviably contented family. Former tennis coaches Joy (Bening) and Stan (Neill) are parents to four adult children. After decades of marriage, they finally have sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. But after Joy disappears, her children are forced to re-examine their parents’ marriage and their family history with fresh eyes.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Thrilled No More" by Chuck Brownman, read by actor Theodore Fox.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured the Mike O’Shea Series by Desmond P. Ryan, who served as a Detective with the Toronto Police Service for three decades before turning his hand to writing crime fiction.

On the latest Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's podcast, Susan Breen read her story from the May/June 2022 issue, "Detective Anne Boelyn," where she brings one of the most iconic figures in English history to life.

Katja Ivar spoke with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about her new novel Trouble, the third Hella Mauzer mystery; growing up in Russia and the US; Finland; and women in the police force.

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