B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 60

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

Following a competitive bidding war with several studios and streamers involved, Amazon Studios has landed the film, Red Shirt, to star Channing Tatum. Based on an original pitch by Simon Kinberg (who also produced Sherlock Holmes, among others), the project will also see David Leitch on board to direct. Plot details are being kept under wraps other than the story being described as "an international spy thriller" and a "new spin on James Bond" with the potential to become a franchise.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) will star in and executive produce the upcoming Miramax TV limited series, The Christie Affair, based on Nina de Gramont’s best-selling novel. The story centers around Agatha Christie’s real-life eleven-day disappearance In 1926 when her husband’s affair became public. In this reimagining, told through the eyes of her husband’s mistress, Nan O’Dea (Ridley), Nan and Agatha become entwined in each other’s lives in ways neither expected.

Bestselling author David Baldacci’s Atlee Pine books are headed to television via Amazon Studios, which is developing an untitled drama series based on the novels. The project follows exceptional FBI agent, Atlee Pine, as she finds herself at a crossroads in her life and career and she has to go back and solve the one case that has shaped her entire existence — the disappearance of her twin sister thirty years ago. If the project moves forward, it will mark the second series based on Baldacci books following TNT’s King and Maxwell, which was an adaptation of the Sean King and Michelle Maxwell book series.

A series adaptation of E. Lockhart’s YA suspense thriller, We Were Liars, has also landed at Amazon for development. Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie (Roswell, New Mexico co-creator) are adapting the book. We Were Liars is an amnesia thriller set on a privately owned island off the coast of Massachusetts. Focusing on the theme of consequences of one’s mistakes, the series follows the wealthy, seemingly perfect Sinclair family, who spend every summer sitting gathered on their private island. However, not every year is the same: When something happens to Cadence Sinclair during the summer of her 15th year, she and the other three "liars" — Johnny, Gat and Mirren — re-emerge two years later to prompt Cadence to remember the incident.

The very-busy Amazon Studios strikes again with Scarlett Johansson's first major foray into television as she gets set to star in and executive produce Just Cause, a thriller limited series based on John Katzenbach’s 1992 novel. In the straight-to-series TV adaptation, the book’s male protagonist, Miami newspaper editorial writer, Matt Cowart, is undergoing a gender swap, with Johansson playing the series’ female lead Madison "Madi" Cowart, a struggling reporter for a Florida newspaper sent to cover the final days of an inmate on death row. Johannson, a two-time Oscar nominee and a Tony winner, has a personal connection to the title: at age 10, she appeared in Warner Bros.’ 1995 feature adaptation of Katzenbach’s book in only her second film role, playing the daughter of the main character (portrayed by Sean Connery).

Robert De Niro has signed on to star in the new Netflix limited political thriller series, Zero Day. The project comes from the team behind Narcos (executive producer, writer, and showrunner Eric Newman, and Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News and Jackie screenwriter). There are currently no exact details on the limited series’ plot, although the show is set to center around political themes, with De Niro playing a former U.S. president. 

Paramount’s UK network Channel 5 has unveiled a four-part thriller, Black Cab, with Robert Glenister (Sherwood), Suzanne Packer (In My Skin), and Sean Pertwee (Gotham) starring. Black Cab will follow Glenister as a down-and-out Liverpool taxi driver, who begins to form an unhealthy obsession with a late-night radio talk show host (Pertwee). Nick Saltrese (A Prayer Before Dawn) has penned the series and Diarmuid Goggins (Bulletproof) is directing.

African streamer, Showmax, is producing Crime and Justice Lagos, which follows the activities of the fictional Serious and Special Crimes Unit working in the Nigerian capital, led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Femi Biboye (William Benson). The show will debut on December 8, with Folu Storms and Jammal Ibraham also starring as the heads of an elite team of detectives.

Ryan Eggold (New Amsterdam) and Isaiah Mustafa (It: Chapter 2) will star opposite Aldis Hodge in Amazon’s Alex Cross series, Cross, in series regular roles. Eggold will play Ed Ramsey, who is initially a fan of Cross (Hodge) but soon becomes a formidable adversary. Mustafa will play John Sampson, Alex’s partner on the force and best friend of 30 years. Cross is created by producer and writer Ben Watkins and based on the best-selling book series by James Patterson. The title character of Alex Cross is a detective and forensic psychologist, uniquely capable of digging into the psyches of killers and their victims, in order to identify — and ultimately capture — the murderers.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Louise Penny was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning about her new Inspector Gamache novel, A World of Curiosities and how a painting and forgiveness inspired the 18th novel in the Gamache series.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring an excerpt from the first chapter of Lost and Found in Harlem by Delia C. Pitts, as read by actor Theodore Fox.

The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast featured a 1950s holiday story told by Hollis Seamon, a frequent contributor to EQMM whose story, "Black Swallowtail," finished in third place for 2021's EQMM Reader's Award. "Book Lovers" is a story that is sure to entertain mystery fans and lovers of classic literature alike. 

Crime Time FM welcomed Vaseem Khan (The Lost Man of Bombay) and Janice Hallett (The Twyford Code) to discuss cozy crime; warmth and humor in the murder mystery; how every novel needs an elephant, and more.

Spybrary spoke with the former UK Home Secretary and best-selling author, Alan Johnson, about how his background as Home Secretary helped him to write his fiction books Late Train to Gipsy Hill and One of Our Ministers is Missing.

All About Agatha featured a discussion of Parker Pyne, a detective featured in a series of short stories by Agatha Christie.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed true crime for a (belated) Nonfiction November.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Appleby's End

Michael Innes was the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (1906-1994), an English professor and lecturer at various times in Leeds, Adelaide, Australia, Belfast, and Oxford. He also studied Freudian psychoanalysis for a year in Vienna. Although he wrote novels and books of criticism and essays under his own name, he's best known in the crime fiction community for his detective novels written under the Michael Innes name, primarily his 40 novels and numerous short stories featuring Detective Inspector John Appleby of Scotland Yard, a well-educated man from humble origins who eventually ends up as Commissioner and later Sir John, retired.



His Appleby novels are filled with humor, eccentricity and an air of the fantastic, with a little bit of detecting thrown in for good measure. You probably won't get Appleby confused with the more realistic PD James creation, Inspector Dalgleish, another literate Yard detective. If you happen to have a Ph.D in English literature and ancient mythology, you'll probably feel right at home with the many literary allusions Innes uses, although he himself once referred to these books as mere "entertainments," and "I would describe some of them as on the frontier between the detective story and the fantasy: they have a somewhat 'literary' flavor but their values remain those of melodrama and not of fiction proper."



The novel Appleby's End from 1945 is taken from the name of the train station where the Detective Inspector gets off the train, which sets off a string of coincidences, most based on stories by Ranulph Raven — the same Raven whose mysterious descendants were the ones who invited Appleby to spend the night at their house. One descendant in particular, Judith Raven, catches Appleby's eye and interest after he floats down an icy river on top of a carriage with her and spends part of the night with her in a haystack during a snowstorm. At first the Raven stories-come-to-life seem like pranks — from animals replaced by marble effigies, to someone received a tombstone telling him when he would die — until a servant is found dead buried up to his neck in snow.



Innes's humor is evident here with place names such as the old manorhouse called Dream and the nearby villages titled Abbot's Yatter, Boxer's Bottom, Linger, Sleeps Hill, Sneak and Snarl. Then there are the character names:  Billy Bidewell, Gregory Grope, Hannah Hoobin. There are also touches of what became his almost cliched use of past-their-prime aristocrats in crumbling country manor homes. As for the obscure references, here are a couple of examples:

"A fleeting and hebdomadal mythology called into action by the obscurely working but infinitely potent creativity of the folk. In the green Arcadian valleys Pan is dead but still a numerous Panisci lurk and follow in the parks. ... The rape of Prosperpin - gathering flowers, herself a fairer flower - continues still, and Dis's wagon is a borrowed limousine."

and

"Ranulph's third brother, Adolphus, a person of some talent who had joined the Romish Communion and become a bishop in partibus, but who was later converted on his deathbed to the religious system of the Zend-Avesta"

and

"A companion piece [to the Rape of Europa], in which a bull and a glossy lady were yet more inextricably entangled both with each other and with two astoundingly contorted young men, Appleby identified provisionally as a Punishment of Dirce. He was looking round with some apprehension for a Pasaphae ... "

(There use to be an online annotated list online to help you keep things straightened out, but alas, that website appears to be no more.) The New York Herald Tribune paid Innes an appropriate compliment, to wit:  "Mr. Innes is the most adeptly and allusively elephantine wit presently committed to the English language."

Appleby's End may not be the type of detective novel you turn to when you're in the mood for something gritty or true-to-life, but if you want some escapism in the vein of what Lewis Carroll might have penned had he turned his hand to crime fiction, then this is a nice trip down the rabbit hole.

One interesting publication note: In March 2010, Crippen & Landru released Appleby Talks About Crime, 18 previously uncollected stories, many told by Appleby himself to the fictional six-member Mystery Club.

          

Mystery Melange

At the ceremony revealing the winners of 2022's An Post Irish Book Awards, it was announced the Crime Fiction Book of the Year was won by Breaking Point by Edel Coffey. The other finalists in the category include Remember My Name by Sam Blake; Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard; The Accomplice by Steve Cavanagh; The Interview by Gill Perdue; and Hide and Seek by Andrea Mara.

British author, Stuart Turton, was awarded Germany’s 2022 Viktor Crime Award for The Devil and Dark Water. Other shortlisted authors/titles included Kazltes Herz (Cold Heart) by Henri Faber and Horvath und die verschwundenen Schüler (Horvath and the Missing Students) by Marc Hofmann. The award has been handed out since 2018 and was announced at Mord am Hellweg, which has been dubbed "Europe’s largest international crime film festival.”

Icelandic crime novelist Ragnar Jónasson's novel, Snjóblinda (Snow Blind), was voted the best crime novel published in France in the last 50 years, by French book aficionados. Ragnar accepted the award last Wednesday in Paris. The French publisher, Points, which specializes in paperbacks, and the periodical, Le Point, decided to present special literary awards to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the magazine. In the literary works category, the winner was Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

Voting continues for the final round of the Goodreads Choice Awards competition, which includes ten titles in the Best Mystery & Thriller category. Readers can vote through December 4, with winners announced Thursday, December 8.

Submissions to the 2023 Louie Award competition, sponsored by the Australian Crime Writers Association, will be accepted through Friday, December 30. The Louie prize celebrates microfiction of less than 500 words that is focused on a specific theme, which this year is "Locked." ACWA members can entry for the chance to win a $750 cash prize. Last year's award was won by Hayley Young for her crime story, "I’m Not Telling." (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop will host a virtual cozy mystery event via Zoom on Sunday, December 4th, 2022, at 2:00 pm Eastern. Authors scheduled to participate include Marilyn Levison, Heather Weidner, Jackie Layton, Sarah E. Burr, and Alice Adler. This is a free event although reservations are required so that each person receives the code to sign in.

Kirkus Reviews released its Best Mysteries and Thrillers list for 2022. You can check out all ten titles via this link.

The multidisciplinary conference, Crime Fiction and Democracy, intends to explore the complex, multifaceted relationship between crime fiction and democracy from the late 19th century to the present. It's being organized by the Centre de Recherches Anglophones (Université Paris Nanterre) and Queen’s University Belfast, and will be held Université Paris Nanterre June 22-23, 2023. Conference organizers are inviting proposals for 20-minute papers, either in English or French, focusing on the multiple connections between democracy and crime fiction throughout the world, and seeking, if possible, a broad analytical approach rather than the analysis of single works. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Congrats to Elizabeth Foxwell, whose The Bunburyist blog passed its 1 millionth view since its debut in 2005. You can check out her top ten most-read blog entries, counting to #1, "The dozen best detective short stories ever written," as selected by author-critics such as Anthony Boucher, John Dickson Carr, August Derleth, Howard Haycraft, Ellery Queen, James Sandoe, and Vincent Starrett.





This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "After Party" by Katherine Heil.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton chatted with Mystery author Jessica Stilling about her new literary fiction, Between Before and After. Haselton also interviewed author Jennifer Juvenelle about her new psychological thriller, Daughter of Belial.

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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

Anjelica Huston, who made her John Wick franchise debut as "The Director" in 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, is joining the Ana de Armas-led spinoff movie, Ballerina. Huston is the second John Wick actor to be officially announced for Ballerina, as Ian McShane is also on board to reprise Winston, the manager of The Continental’s New York branch. It’s also been reported that Keanu Reeves’s John Wick will appear in the spinoff, but Lionsgate hasn’t confirmed if that is indeed the case.

Emma D’Arcy has dropped out of the feature thriller Anna about fearless Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya due to a scheduling clash and has been replaced by Naomi Battrick (The Postcard Killings). The project stars two-time BAFTA nominee, Maxine Peake (Black Mirror), in the title role and is directed by Broadchurch’s James Strong from a screenplay by Eric Poppen. Politkovskaya was a world renowned journalist and human rights activist who went from being a local print journalist to braving the Chechen killing fields and exposing Russian state corruption under Vladimir Putin. She refused to give up reporting on the war in Chechnya despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence and was ultimately murdered in the elevator of her block of flats. Battrick will play Politkovskaya’s daughter, Vera, in the cast that also includes Ciaran Hinds, Jason Isaacs, Harry Lawtey, and Ellie Bamber.

Teresa Palmer is set to join Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in the cast of Universal’s The Fall Guy, which has a March 1, 2024 release date. The film is inspired by the 1980s series of the same name and will be directed by David Leitch. Drew Pearce, who worked with Leitch on Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, wrote the script and serves as executive producer. Although plot details are still unknown, the original TV series starred Lee Majors, Douglas Barr, and Heather Thomas as Hollywood stunt performers who moonlight as bounty hunters.

Sony has rounded out its cast for The Equalizer 3, with Eugenio Mastrandrea, Remo Girone, Sonia Ammar, Daniele Perrone, Andrea Scarduzio, and Andrea Dodero boarding the project. The actors join an ensemble led by Denzel Washington which also includes Dakota Fanning, and Gaia Scodellaro, as previously announced. While the film’s plot is being kept under wraps, it’s the third in an action series centered on Washington’s vigilante character, Robert McCall, from director Antoine Fuqua.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Night Manager producer, The Ink Factory, is creating a TV version of John Le Carré’’s A Most Wanted Man almost a decade after making a feature film version, with Snabba Cash writer, Oskar Söderlund, serving as showrunner. No broadcaster is attached as of yet, although Söderlund’s version is said to be updated to a modern day European context. One of Le Carré’s best known works, A Most Wanted Man follows a young Chechen ex-prisoner who arrives illegally in Germany with a claim to a fortune held in a private bank. It was written against the backdrop of George W. Bush’s policy of "extraordinary rendition" and inspired by the real-life story of Murat Kurnaz.

Red Planet Pictures has struck a deal with Louise Candlish, upon whose book ITV’s Our House was based, to develop another two books by the author, 2016’s The Swimming Pool and the upcoming thriller, The Only Suspect, the latter of which will be adapted by Simon Ashdown. The Red Planet team also acquired the rights to Will Dean's novel The Dark Pines, the first in a contemporary Nordic Noir series about a hearing-impaired bisexual detective, and are working with Orphan Black showrunner, Aubrey Nealon, and Amber Alexander on a major adaptation that is close to being greenlighted in Canada.

Felix Herngren, director and writer of Oscar-nominated The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, is creating and directing an adaptation for the Viaplay streaming service of Emelie Schepp’s novel, Jana – Marked for Life. Herngren is pairing with Henrik Björn (Jordskott) on the six-part adaptation, which tells the story of public prosecutor and former child soldier, Jana Berzelius. During an investigation into the murder of a high-ranking official at the Swedish Migration Agency, the main suspect is also found dead, and Jana immediately recognizes something on his scarred body. To understand her own traumatic past, Jana must reach the killer ahead of the police.

Disney+ has unveiled its debut Nordic original, an adaptation of Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s To Cook a Bear. The six-parter takes place in the mid-nineteenth century in the northern Swedish village of Kengis and centers on a runaway Sami boy, Jussi, who develops a deep relationship with Laestadius, the Lutheran revivalist preacher and naturalist. When the body of a shepherd girl is found in a bog, the villagers set out in search of the killer bear they think is on the rampage, but Laestadius believes a worse, and more human, monster is at work. Swedish screenwriter Jesper Harrie is penning the adaptation, and Anagram Sweden is producing.

The BBC's award-winning murder mystery drama, Shetland, will have a new lead actor when it returns next year. Ashley Jensen will star as DI Ruth Calder, a native Shetlander who returns to the isles after 20 years working for the Met in London. The Scottish actor takes on the lead detective role left vacant by the departure of DI Jimmy Perez, played for seven series by Douglas Henshall. Jensen joins series regulars Alison O'Donnell (DS Alison "Tosh" McIntosh), Steven Robertson (Sandy), Lewis Howden (Billy), and Anne Kidd (Cora).

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Writers of Color welcomed Delia C. Pitts, a former university administrator and U.S. diplomat, about her crime fiction writing, which includes Murder My Past and Murder Take Two, the fifth and sixth books in her contemporary noir mystery series. She also has an upcoming novel featuring small town African American private investigator, Vandy Myrick, to be published by Minotaur in 2024.

Spybrary host, Jeff Quest, chatted with Benjamin Cunningham, author of The Liar: How a Double Agent in the CIA Became the Cold War's Last Honest Man, a book the publisher calls "the Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow." Quest also chatted about the Prague Spring, declassified documents, and interviewing difficult subjects.

Six Days of the Condor author, James Grady, spoke with Crime Time FM's Paul Burke about his latest thriller, This Train; the Condor series; the US mid-terms; gauging the pulse of the nation; realism, rebellion and redemption; and enjoying life and art to the fullest.

In the latest episode of Red Hot Chili Writers, hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee spoke with Kate Mosse and debut thriller writer, Greg Mosse, discussing historical fiction; the Cathars; climate grief; eco-terrorism; women pioneers; the Matilda Effect; the Tibetan Joan of Arc; and Granny Rosie.

The new episode of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine's podcast features Merrilee Robson's tale, "Tired of Bath," from the March/April 2022 issue, which imagines what Jane Austen would experience when transported to the current day, and tracks two friends — an English teacher and a filmmaker — as they handle the situation.

THEATRE



Agatha Christie’s stage thriller, The Mousetrap, a London theater staple for 70 years, is finally heading to Broadway at an as-yet-undisclosed venue sometime in 2023. The play, a West End institution and popular tourist destination since 1952, has been performed in the U.S. before but never on Broadway or in New York. Although a new Broadway cast will be assembled for the production, some physical elements of the long-running London staging will make the crossing, according to the producers: "New York audiences will be able to see and hear some of the original sights and sounds from the production as it has appeared in London since 1952. The set will be a loving recreation of Anthony Holland’s design, and for a truly authentic touch, the only surviving piece of the original set — the mantelpiece clock — will be loaned from the London production for the Broadway run. The unique backstage wind machine, imprinted with the original producer’s name and still used today, will also be shipped across the Atlantic."

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Happy Booksgiving

          

Mystery Melange - Thanksgiving Edition

Crime Reads featured an essay by D.M. Rowell about her path to writing a Native American mystery novel, Name the Dead. As a child, Rowell was heavily influenced by her traditional Kiowa Grandfather, C. E. Rowell. He was an artist, master storyteller, recognized Tribal Elder, and one of the last readers of the Sai-guats, winter count deerskin calendars that chronicled a hundred years of Kiowa history. Her grandfather’s stories, memories, and art instilled a deep respect and love for her Kiowa culture and traditions within Rowell. She’s also an award-winning and nominated producer/writer on several documentaries, including Vanishing Link: My Spiritual Return to the Kiowa Way seen on PBS, and winner of TrailDance 2007 Best Oklahoma Documentary.

Salon profiled the Francis writing family who have kept a horse-racing themed thriller series going for 60 years, thanks to the efforts of a talented lineage. The series, which started with Dick Francis's Dead Cert in 1962, was continued by Dick's son, Felix, after his father's retirement and eventual passing (in 2010). But Dick's wife, Mary, also played a large role in the success of the series as a researcher and editor, so much so that some critics often thought she deserved co-writing credit.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode is up featuring the Thanksgiving mystery short story, "They Shoot Pumpkins Don't They?" by Margaret S. Hamilton, as read by actor Donna Beavers.

Janet Rudolph has a running list of Thanksgiving-related mysteries on her Mystery Fanfare blog to keep you busy while you're recovering from gorging on your Thanksgiving feast.

Speaking of Thanksgiving reading, Jenn's Bookshelves will once again be hosting Thankfully Reading Weekend, November 23-27 (Wednesday through Sunday). There are no rules to the weekend, just a pledge to devote a good amount of time to reading, and perhaps meet some of your reading challenges and goals for the year. You can sign up to participate via Jenn's blog and share your reading progress via your own blog or by using the hashtag #thankfullyreading on social media sites.

The authors over at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have plenty of Thanksgiving recipes and reads for you, including Pumpkin Ginger Mousse from Leslie Budewitz; Easy Roasted Thanksgiving Vegetables via Lucy Burdette; and Cocoa Coffee Cake, courtesy of Vicki Delaney. Janet Rudolph also has an alternative to pie over on Mystery Fanfare, Chocolate Pecan Pie Truffles.

While we're on the subject of Thanksgiving fare, did you know that eels almost became the traditional Thanksgiving food instead of turkey?





This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Kitchen Peril" by Amy Ralston Seife.

In the Q&A roundup, since Thanksgiving weekend has always been a big one for Hollywood, I thought it would be appropriate to share a link to an interview at The New Yorker with Rian Johnson, director of Knives Out and the sequel, Glass Onion, which premieres in cinemas for one week only from Wednesday, November 23 - Tuesday, November 29. In the Q&A, Johnson explains that he's been an Agatha Christie fan since he was a kid and decided to set his movies in modern-day America to engage with the culture of today, something Christie did herself.

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Author R&R with Gregor Pratt

Greg "Gregor" Pratt is a former Ohio attorney who retired after 40 years of general practice focused on litigation in the Cincinnati area. But he always wanted to be a fiction writer, and with the winding down of the practice of law, found time over the last several years to write his first novel, Ebola Island, drawing on his experience as a trial lawyer. Ebola Island is the first in a series featuring class action lawyer, Jack Gamble, who is thrust into the middle of a pandemic on an island with a cast of dynamic characters who must grow to trust each other in their dire circumstances if they want to survive.

Pratt's second novel in that series is Dragon's Eye, in which Jack's wife Maddy, a teacher, goes missing. The police think Maddy has run off with one of her students even though there are no clues—she’s simply vanished. When the police and other agents of the New Zealand government begin to pull back the veil on hidden evidence, Jack and friends embark on a harrowing journey to rescue Maddy from the grips of the Chinese government. But how do private citizens challenge an overreaching totalitarian government with limitless resources and connections?

Greg stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching the novel:

 

Each author and each novel are different. Like most authors my very first novel is still in a box under my desk. It needs so much work! Researching it was great fun and I mention it because the research process was so much different than my later novels.

Since most of my first took place in Newport, Kentucky, which was close to my home at the time I was able to go there and see the streets and some of the buildings for myself. Of course that meant I had to separate out the new buildings. Focus was on the buildings that were there in the 1960s when the Kennedy Justice Department investigated Newport, which had been a vice hot spot since the Civil War. But buildings and streets are just a start. What was life like? I read a number of books about Newport in those days. One that I remember is Razzle Dazzle, which described the lives of people back then and how the legal operations were used to mask the illegal ones. Razzle Dazzle was a dice game where the player often appeared about to make a big win and somehow they never did. I was lucky to have an acquaintance whose father had been quite the gambler. He played cards regularly with a character named Sleep Out Louie, who got his nickname because he would sleep out a few hands in his chair while the game went on around me. The shared stories were invaluable. For instance Louie and my friend’s father would play gin for stakes so high that major league baseball players who were in town would come by to watch the action. They would keep score but would not play. And one of my brothers in law had an ancestor who was a member of “the mob” in Newport. The real life touches of those “true” stories helped give feeling to those chapters of the book and helped define the characters and their interactions.

On my second and third books which were actually published I was not so well placed geographically. Ebola Island (2019) takes place largely in Madagascar and Dragon’s Eye (2022) takes place in New Zealand and Vanuatu. Not only does my budget not allow travel to far away places like that , when I was writing Dragon’s Eye New Zealand was not admitting visitors due to COVID. So I had to come up with other methods to develop the background for my stories.

Ebola Island is a pandemic novel and as you have likely guessed the island reference is to Madagascar. The conditions of the people the island in my novel are wholly a product of my imagination: the physical attributes of the island itself I gleaned or tried to from Google Earth and online research. What routes would my characters travel? What is the terrain like? What landmarks would they see or cross? How far could they be expected to travel in a day/how many days would an overland journey take? What were the flora and fauna like? What creatures inhabit those lands? How available is water? What does the countryside look like if viewed from a mountain’s edge? These are all items I want to represent as accurately as possible. From Google Earth I could travel visually across the island from one identifiable place to another and the terrain changed as the journey went on just like it would if we were really traversing the island. Flora, fauna, creatures and water were all subject to research. Before I started writing I purchased several books on Madagascar , read them and went back to them for reference while writing. In that fashion the big issues were largely correctly represented and hopefully realistic with some specific areas crafted to fit the story. This is fiction after all.

The locale for Dragon’s Eye was predetermined at the end of Ebola Island when Jack announced that after he and Maddy married they were going to New Zealand. In 2019 I was hoping to go to New Zealand, research locations and specifics and then start writing. And I planned to do a little sightseeing and some fly fishing while there.

That didn’t exactly work out. Ebola Island is a pandemic novel published just weeks before we heard of COVID for the first time. And I am proud to say I got a number of things right in that scenario. And some not, for instance I did not anticipate face masks. And I definitely did not anticipate New Zealand being essentially closed to visitors. So here using Google Earth again I visited Nelson, New Zealand remotely and I was able to identify Jack and Maddy’s house, the school their children would attend and walking routes to get there as well as many other physical attributes that played into my novel. I find the satellite view most helpful.

Other facts needed research. For instance, how long does it take to fly a small plane from Tauranga, New Zealand to Port Vila, Vanuatu,? Is there an airport there? What is the name of the airfield in Port Vila and what is its condition? What are the politics, economy, population of Vanuatu? What nations are they friendly with? Are there any ongoing international issues? For issues like that I prefer to start with the CIA World Factbook or just World Factbook sites for each country. These sites are very comprehensive and are attributed to the CIA. They are readily accessible online. By way of example the World Factbook site for New Zealand has twelve sections identified covering such things as Geography, People and Society, Energy, Military and Security. It is often a good place to start to get to know a new and remote area. And it can even spark additional issues or twists and turns for your novel or perhaps just accurate historical references to give your work more gravitas. That type of site will give you ideas on what to explore in more detail. It can help you spell place names correctly and alert you to historic and cultural issues. And best of all, it fits right in our budget.

 

You can learn more about Greg and his writing via his website and follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can find the ebook version of Dragon's Eye via Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, with print versions available via most major booksellers.

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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, which is a little on the light side due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

The directing team known as Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez and Chad Villella) will helm the reboot of Escape From New York for 20th Century Studios. Original filmmaker, John Carpenter, will serve as executive producer of the project. The 1981 film was set in the then-near-future world of 1997 in a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum-security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled borough. Ex-soldier and current federal prisoner, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned. The film also starred Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Steven Spielberg has found his Frank Bullitt, according to Deadline. Bradley Cooper has closed a deal to play the no-nonsense San Francisco cop in the new original Bullitt story centered on the classic character famously played by Steven McQueen in the 1968 thriller. Cooper will also produce the movie along with Spielberg and his producing partner, Kristie Macosko Krieger (marking their second collaboration after Maestro), with Josh Singer on board to pen the script. Steve McQueen’s son, Chad, and granddaughter, Molly McQueen, will exec produce the new movie. Sources are adamant this is not a remake of the original film but a new idea centered on the character. In the original film, Frank Bullitt is on the hunt for the mob kingpin that killed his witness. Considered one of McQueen’s more iconic roles, the film delivers one of the most famous car-chase scenes in cinema history.

Christian Gudegast (Den of Thieves) has been hired to direct the thriller, Crown Vic, for MadRiver Pictures. Crown Vic, which is based real events, is described as a "too-insane-to-be-true crime story" set in the early 1980s San Fernando Valley — a world where L.A. cops, mythologized by TV shows from Dragnet to CHiPs, were rock stars who operated with unchecked power. Its protagonists are Richard Ford and Robert Von Villas, two Vietnam War heroes turned superstar LAPD cops, who parlayed their positions to get rich, while cozying up to Hollywood’s biggest TV stars. The duo went on to build an underground criminal operation as thieves, gun runners, and murderers for hire, until their unwilling business partner risked everything to bring them down. Alec Ziff (Narcos: Mexico) conceived the original story with Gudegast and is penning the screenplay.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ABC has reversed course on the drama series, Avalon, opting not to move forward with the show despite giving it a straight-to-series order in February. Avalon hailed from David E. Kelley and executive producer Michael Connelly, with the show based on a short story Connelly wrote. Per the official logline, the show takes place in the main city of Avalon on Catalina Island, where LA Sheriff Department Detective Nicole "Nic" Searcy (Neve Campbell) heads up a small office. Catalina has a local population that serves more than 1 million tourists a year, and each day when the ferries arrive, hundreds of potential new stories enter the island. Detective Searcy is pulled into a career-defining mystery that will challenge everything she knows about herself and the island. A+E Studios is said to still be bullish about the project and are weighing options on how to proceed.

The BBC and Amazon Freevee have commissioned Boat Story, a six-part thriller written by Harry and Jack Williams and produced by award-winning All3Media and Two Brothers Pictures (The Tourist, The Missing, Fleabag). Boat Story will premiere in the UK on BBC One and iPlayer, and in the US on Amazon Freevee. When two hard-up strangers, Janet (Daisy Haggard) and Samuel (Paterson Joseph), stumble across a haul of cocaine on a shipwrecked boat, they can’t believe their luck. After agreeing to sell it and split the cash, they quickly find themselves entangled with police, masked hitmen, and a sharp-suited gangster known only as "The Tailor" (Tcheky Karyo). The project is described as having "off-beat humour [that] contrasts with high-octane action sequences against the spectacular backdrop of the beautiful, windswept Yorkshire coastline."

Amazon Prime Video’s conspiracy thriller drama series, Hunters, created by David Weil and executive produced by Jordan Peele, will end after the upcoming second season. The first season followed a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City. The Hunters, as they’re known, have discovered that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the United States. Season 2, to be focused on a worldwide search for Adolph Hitler (played by German actor Udo Kier), will begin streaming on January 13. Al Pacino, Logan Lerman and Jerrika Hinton star in Hunters, along with Josh Radnor, Kate Mulvany, Tiffany Boone, Greg Austin, Louis Ozawa, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Dylan Baker, and Lena Olin. In addition to Kier, Oscar nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh has joined Season 2, along with Emily Rudd and Tommy Martinez, who recur.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The All About Agatha podcast discussed Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, an anthology of short stories published this fall.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Elly Griffith to talk about her newly published crime fiction novel, Bleeding Heart Yard. The story is set around a high school reunion where London police officer, Cassie Fitzherbert, has to determine if she's experiencing buried memories of having killed someone years ago.

On Crime Time FM, Georgina Clarke chatted with Jenna Gordon about her new historical crime novel, The Dazzle of the Light; the post WWI landscape in 1920; the Forty Thieves; historical accuracy; reflecting on the present through the past - the role of women, class & inequality; dressmaking; and Halloween cocktails.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Lonelyheart 4122

Colin Watson (1920-1983) was a British author who started out in life as a journalist, first as a reporter for the Boston Guardian and later as an editorial writer, theater critic and book reviewer. In 1958, while still working for newspapers, Watson published the first Flaxborough novel, Coffin, Scarcely Used, a book that Cecil Day-Lewis (who also wrote mysteries as Nicholas Blake) called "a great lark, full of preposterous situations and poker-faced wit."



Following the publication of the second book in the series, Watson retired to write full time and published a dozen mystery novels between 1958 and 1982. His mystery series came to known as The Flaxborough Chronicles, set as they were in Flaxborough, a fictional East Anglian city, population 15,000, loosely based on the Lincolnshire area of Boston where Watson worked as a journalist. The lead character in the series is Inspector Walter Purbright, assisted by his somewhat naive sidekick, Sergeant Sidney Love, and the Chief Constable, Harcourt Chubb. Watson's third book in the Chronicles, Hopjoy Was Here, won him a Silver Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association in 1962, and five years later he won a second Silver Dagger with Lonelyheart 4122.



Jeffery Ewener, a fan of Watson's work, wrote for the Mystery Magazine Web that in Watson's fictional world, "you find this...combination of superficial blandness deceptively concealing an uproar of animal spirits - like a hymn book hollowed-out to hold a hip flask. Watson gives us geriatric gentlemen patting bottoms, matronly housewives jumping into orgies, MI5 agents running up huge unpaid bar bills for reasons of National Security, austere solicitors blackmailing the local gentry."



As an example of what Ewener is referring to, take this excerpt from Lonelyheart 4122:

"Well, they didn't seem very pleased to see me, sir. Singleton wouldn't come out of the garden. He was going up and down with a lawn mower all the time. I had to ask each question as he went by one way, and try and catch the answer when he passed on the way back."



"Very trying for you, Sid."



"Not really. The answers were all very short. And him being so busy made it easier to get the writing samples. I just pinched three or four of the labels on his rose bushes. Of course," Love added, nodding at the file,  "I trimmed them down a bit and mounted them properly."



"So I noticed. Most neat. Now I understand why I couldn't make much sense out of "Peace Mrs. Pettifer Brevvitt's Pride Lancashire Ascending."

Lonelyheart 4122 introduces us to the character of Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime, who subsequently appeared in all Flaxborough novels save one. In this outing, Inspector Purbright's investigation into the disappearance of two respectable middle-aged women leads him to a matrimonial bureau where he meets another client, Miss Teatime, whom Purbright fears may also be in danger. But Miss Teatime doesn't want anything to do with his protection, and neither Miss Teatime nor her shady beau, a retired naval officer, are what they appear to be.



Four of The Flaxborough Chronicles were filmed for the BBC's  "Murder Most English" program, including Lonelyheart 4122.

          

Mystery Melange

Six crime novels have been shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year in translation (either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia) published in the UK in the previous calendar year. The winning title will be announced on Thursday, December 8, and both author and translator of the winning title will receive a cash prize. This year's shortlist includes: Maria Adolfsson (Sweden) - Fatal Isles tr. Agnes Broomé; Helene Flood (Norway) - The Therapist tr. Alison Cullough; Ruth Lillegraven (Norway) - Everything is Mine tr. Diane Oatley; Anders Roslund (Sweden) - Knock Knock tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel; Lilja Sigurðardóttir (Iceland) - Cold as Hell tr. Quentin Bates; and Antti Tuomainen (Finland) - The Rabbit Factor tr. David Hackston.

The Crime Bake conference in Maine held this past weekend awarded the annual Al Blanchard Short Story Award to "The Bookings" by Jason Allison. The Honorable Mentions were "Robin's Hope" by Avram Lavinsky; "Steer Clear of the Devil" by Kim Keeline; "The Tattletale Tattoo" by Karen Whalen; and "Seven Women" by Eleanor Ingbretson. (HT to Joseph S. Walker, one of the judges of this year's contest.) The Award is named after Blanchard, who in addition to being a writer himself served as President of MWA-NE Sisters in Crime and co-created the Crime Bake conference.

Over on the other side of the Atlantic on November 27, there's a crime wave in Torquay (the home of Agatha Christie) via Crime at the Coast: A SW Crime Writers’ Convention. Authors from the Crime Writers’ Association South West Chapter, will be talking about crime writing and the secrets of getting published at a special day-long event in support of the Torquay Museum. Participating athors will include Stephanie Austin, Margaret Barnes, Sam Carrington, Jane Corry, Helena Dixon, Elizabeth Ducie, Richard D Handy, S M Hardy, Michael Jecks, K J Maitland. Special guests also making an appearance include Ian Hobbs of the Devon Book Club, and the book blogger Cherry Smith of the Crimepedia podcast.

As we near the end of 2022, it's time for the inevitable "best of the year" lists to start bubbling up. One of the earliest is Amazon's Best mysteries and thrillers of 2022, with Don Winslow's City on Fire chosen as the best of the best. To check out the list of all twenty selected titles, click on over here.

Mystery Readers Journal has a call for articles (500-1,000 word), reviews (50-250 words), and author essays (500-1,000 words) about mysteries set in Africa. Author essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "African Mystery" connection. The deadline is January 5, 2023: Send to: Janet Rudolph, Editor, janet@mysteryreaders.org.

The Guardian reported on The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, the next installment in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series and the first written by a woman. Swedish author Karin Smirnoff takes the reins from David Lagercrantz in continuing the late author's vision for a 10-book series. The first three books — The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest — were written by Larsson and published posthumously after his sudden death in 2004. The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, which continues the adventures of hacker Lisbeth Salander and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, was published in Swedish as Havsörnens Skrik last week, but Sarah Death’s English translation will not be out until August of next year.

The former New Forest retreat of Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has come on the market for just under £3-million. Bignell Wood, a sprawling rural mansion just outside of Cadnam, was owned by Sir Arthur until his death in 1930, and was a birthday present for his wife Jean. Sir Arthur is buried in nearby Minstead, which also featured in his 1891 historical series set in the 14th century, the White Company. The current owner, interior designer Jane McIntyre of Jane McIntyre Design, bought Bignell Wood in 2006 and has restyled the interior.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "It's the Husband" by Sharon Waller Knutson.

In the Q&A roundup, Publishers Weekly spoke with Benjamin Stevenson about his novel, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, where members of a family of killers gather at an Australian ski resort; and Jane Harper, bestselling author of The Dry, was interviewed by Australia's ABC News about exiles, writing in a pandemic, and the rural noir renaissance.

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