B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 68

Mystery Melange

The nominees for the 2022 Strand Critics Awards were announced today. The finalists for Best Mystery Debut include: Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews; The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris; Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka, Translated by Sam Malissa; Lightseekers by Femi Kayode; Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; and All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris. The finalists for Best Mystery Novel are The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly; Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby; The Low Desert by Tod Goldberg; These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall; Dream Girl by Laura Lippman; and 1979 by Val McDermid. This year's Strand Magazine Publisher of the Year Award, which recognizes excellence in publishing, goes to Sandra Brown and Nelson DeMille. The winners will be presented in early September.

Organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland international crime-writing festival, to be held from September 15-18, announced the shortlist for the Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2022. The shortlisted titles will be promoted in bookshops throughout Scotland in the period between the announcement, and the presentation of the winner (as well as the winner of the 2022 McIlvanney Prize) will be on Thursday, September 15 at the conference in Stirling. The finalists include Welcome to Cooper by Tariq Ashkanani; Meantime by Frankie Boyle; The Wolf Hunters by Amanda Mitchison; The Girl, The Crow, The Writer and The Fighter by George Paterson; Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith.

Amazon posted a list of twenty of the "Best mysteries and thrillers of 2022 so far," according to Amazon's editorial staff. The top pick for best mystery and thriller of the year went to Nita Prose for The Maid. (FYI for those concerned that Amazon's own crime imprint, Thomas & Mercer, might dominate the list, I actually saw no T&M titles included.)

The latest Noir at the Bar Dallas returns to the Wild Detectives tomorrow night at 7pm. The "Hap and Leonard" edition will feature Joe R. Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, Keith Lansdale, Jim Nesbitt, Mike McCrary, V.P. Chandler, Williams Dylan Powell, Scott Montgomery, Eryk Pruitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Kathleen Kent, and Henry Hunsicker reading from their work. The event will also include a spoken word/musical duet performance by local artists Trang Vu & Patrick Pombuena.

Orion’s immersive events space, the Incident Room, is returning to Harrogate on July 22 as part of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Running in tandem with the festival’s main program, the line-up includes a UK signing with festival headliner, Michael Connelly; panels with former Met Police officer John Sutherland, authors Sharon Bolton, and Anna Mazzola; and an event on representation in crime fiction with Mari Hannah, Robin Morgan-Bentley, and Winnie M Li. Orion will also be working with podcasts Blood Brothers and CrimeTimeFM to provide two Orion-exclusive Incident Room episodes featuring interviews with authors such as Steve Cavanagh, Joanne Harris, Joe Ide, and M J Arlidge. Clemence Roux, festival manager, added, "We are thrilled to welcome the Orion Incident Room for the sixth year. It’s such a fabulous feeling to bring the festival back to full capacity after an incredibly difficult last two years for our arts charity." 

Sisters in Crime (SinC) recently opened up submissions for their 2022 Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, a $2,000 grant awarded to one-up-and-coming writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. CrimeReads spoke with two of the 2022 award judges, Leslie Karst and Brenda Buchanan, to find out why the Pride Award is so important and the benefits of applying. They noted that publishers have often refused to take a chance on books with queer protagonists. But as Buchanan said, "Old habits are hard to break and some folks in the industry still haven’t adjusted to reality."

Also on CrimeReads, Molly Odintz wrote that, in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, we need more crime novels in which women make choices about reproduction.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Total Immersion" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, E. B. Davis interviewed Barbara Ross for the Writers Who Kill blog about Muddled Through, the tenth book in her Maine Clambake mystery series; and Lisa Haselton interviewed Robert Creekmore about his new dark thriller, Prophet’s Debt.

         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

Warner Bros. won a bidding war over the heist picture, The Sundance Kid Might Have Some Regrets, which Zoë Kravitz (The Batman) is attached to produce and star in. The upcoming film is based on Leyna Krow’s short story of the same name, centered on a pair of twin bank robbers. While one twin, Maggie, boasts supernatural powers including telekinesis and super-strength, her sibling heads up the operation and serves as narrator of the tale. Maggie begins to second-guess the life she and her sister lead when their latest heist goes awry.

Leigh Whannell is in negotiations to direct The Green Hornet and Kato for Universal. The studio optioned rights to The Green Hornet in the spring of 2020, after co-founders Michael Helfant and Bradley Gallo acquired control of the motion picture franchise from the family of the original creator, George W. Trendle, in a competitive bidding war. The Green Hornet was one of early radio’s most popular adventure shows (predating Superman) before being turned into 1940s movie serials and the 1966 TV series that introduced Bruce Lee (Kato) to the U.S. The classic story focuses on Britt Reid, owner-publisher of The Daily Sentinel. Armed with knowledge from his sources, cool weapons, a supercar known as the Black Beauty, and teamed with his trusty aide Kato, Reid became The Green Hornet, a vigilante crime fighter wanted by the police and feared by the criminal world.

Lionsgate has acquired movie adaptation rights to Thieves’ Gambit, an upcoming young adult thriller novel by Kayvion Lewis. Steven Caple Jr., whose directing credits include Creed 2 and the upcoming Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is attached to helm. The book’s plot centers on a young woman, raised by her parents to be an expert thief, who must enter a dangerous, cutthroat competition that pits her against other young, talented thieves where the winner takes all.

Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, Everly Carganilla, and newcomer Connor Esterson are set to star in the upcoming Spy Kids reboot from Netflix, Skydance, and Spyglass. Spy Kids creator, Robert Rodriguez, will write, direct and produce the film, which will introduce the world to a whole new family of spies. The film marks Rodriguez’s second family film with Netflix following the success of the 2020 family action film, We Can Be Heroes. This latest Spy Kids chapter is set after the children of the world’s greatest secret agents unwittingly help a powerful game developer unleash a computer virus that gives him control of all technology, leading them to become spies themselves to save their parents and the world.

Universal offered a glimpse at 2023’s Fast & Furious X, including a first look at new cast members Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The Louis Leterrier-directed 10th installment is currently in production for release next summer.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The BBC is partnering with Rise Films for Thank You & Goodbye, a drama based on the phone hacking scandal that rocked Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The Salisbury Poisonings writers, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, and director, Saul Dibb, are attached to the project. The British phone-hacking scandal was one of the most high-profile and controversial of the past decades and Rise Films gained access to journalists, private investigators, and perpetrators who were involved for the show (which started life as a documentary). Thank You & Goodbye examines the newsroom of the News of the World, the British tabloid that was forced to close due to the scandal, and how journalists hacked the private messages and voicemails of the likes of Steve Coogan, Hugh Grant, and Sienna Miller. The ensuing fallout led to a highly-publicized inquiry that sparked 100 arrests and changed the UK’s relationship with the tabloid press forever.

Paula Malcomson (Redemption) is set as a series regular opposite Giancarlo Esposito in The Driver, AMC’s remake of the British drama series that is set to launch next year on AMC and AMC+. The U.S. series comes from creators Danny Brocklehurst and Sunu Gonera and showrunner, Theo Travers. It stars Esposito as a taxi driver whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to chauffer a New Orleans-based Zimbabwean gangster notorious for exploiting undocumented immigrants at the U.S. southern ports. The 2014 British series similarly followed star David Morrissey as a cabbie whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to be the driver for a criminal gang.

Dark Winds, the Native-led Western noir crime thriller, has been renewed for a second season. The AMC Studios-produced series, which will return next year with another 6-episode installment, follows two Navajo police officers—Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon)—in the 1970s as they investigate a series of seemingly unrelated crimes that bring up their own personal demons. Jessica Matten also stars as Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito. An adaptation of the Leaphorn & Chee book series by Tony Hillerman, the production worked closely with the Navajo Nation to film on location on tribal lands in New Mexico—Tesuque Pueblo and Cochiti Pueblo. Ordered to series last year, Dark Winds was 35 years in the making, with executive producer Robert Redford optioning Hillerman’s book collection more than three decades ago. Along with Redford, the series is executive produced by creator Graham Roland, George R.R. Martin, Anne Hillerman, Chris Eyre, Vince Calandra, Vince Gerardis, Tina Elmo, and Zahn McClarnon (who also is portraying Leaphorn).

Shoshannah Stern, star of Sundance Now’s This Close, the first major U.S. series to be created and written by deaf people, is back at AMC Networks, developing Disquiet, a drama thriller series about a Certified Deaf Interpreter. Deadline reported that the project, which Stern is attached to star in, write, and exec produce, is in the early stages of development at the network. The series follows Cassie Edwards, a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI), who is called back home to assist in a case involving the mysterious death of the former head of the school for the Deaf she herself attended. A former student of the school is the only witness and Cassie may be the only one who is able to understand him, leading her deeper into the case and forcing her to confront her own past.

Kevin Zegers has been tapped as a series regular on ABC’s new series, The Rookie: Feds, headlined by Niecy Nash-Betts. Co-created by Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter, The Rookie: Feds stars Nash-Betts as Simone Clark, the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy. The spinoff was introduced in a two-episode arc on Season 4 of The Rookie, where Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and the LA division of the FBI enlist the help of Simone Clark when one of her former students is a suspect in a terror attack. Zegers joins Nash-Betts, Frankie Faison, and Felix Solis, who guest starred in the Rookie backdoor pilot episodes as Christopher “Cutty” Clark and Special Agent Matthew Garza, respectively, as well as Britt Robertson, who recently joined the project as a new series regular, playing Laura Stensen. Zegers will play Brendon Acres, who is fresh out of Quantico with a lot to prove.

Paramount Global’s streaming service Paramount+ is continuing to invest in original content sourced from international markets, unveiling a slate of seven new titles with plans to commission 150 international originals by 2025. The slate includes several crime dramas, far too many to be summarized in a list, but some of the headliners include a drama with John Leguizamo starring as Mexican drug lord, El Chapo. You can check them all out here. The streamer also revealed casting details for the previously announced The Chemistry of Death, a psychological crime series based on Simon Beckett’s best-selling novels, which will star Harry Treadaway (Penny Dreadful, Star Trek: Picard) as forensic anthropologist David Hunter, alongside Katie Leung, Jeanne Goursaud, Nick Blood, Amy Nuttall, David Hayman, and Hardy Krüger, Jr.

CBS announced its 2022-23 fall season, which will debut on September 19 with four new shows and 18 returning series, including the 20th season of NCIS. New time periods were also assigned to Ghosts, S.W.A.T., NCIS: Los Angeles, and CSI: Las Vegas.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring an excerpt from Pint of No Return by Dana Mentink, read by actor Ariel Linn.

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Dwyer Murphy about his debut novel, An Honest Living, which takes readers on an odyssey through time and space in turn-of-the-21st-century New York City, complete with its own Ulises (Ulysses), who just happens to be a Venezuelan poet. Along this journey, with nods to past noir novelists such as Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, are cases of mistaken identity, missing manuscripts, and doses of wry humor about the nature of cabaret laws in New York City that prevent dancing in bars, even when there’s a Samba band.

Lev Raphael returned to Queer Writers of Crime to talk with Brad about having his full Nick Hoffman Academia Mystery Series republished; historical misquotations; research; the joy of mingling with other mystery authors, and more.

On Wrong Place Write Crime, guest co-host, Colin Conway, joined Frank Zafiro to interview Mark Bergin, who discusses his time as a law enforcement officer, as well as his novel, Apprehension. Also, Lance at Down and Out Books provided a June publishing update.

On Writers Detective Bureau, Detective Adam Richardson talked about sketching a crime scene; how immigration status violations were handled in California circa 1995; and what would happen if a journalist went trespassing to get the scoop on a major crime.

Emilya Naymark stopped by My Favorite Detective Stories to discuss her latest novel, Behind the Lie.

Red Hot Chili Writers discussed serial killer thrillers with crime writer David Fennell; chatted about the Jaipur Lit Fest and the Borders Book Fest; tackled the heatwave; and were rudely interrupted by a famous writer with no opposable thumbs.

On Crime Time FM, Paul Burke spoke with Canadian author, Laurie Petrou, about her new novel Stargazer; toxic friendships; the limits of art; and canoes.

Karen Odden was interviewed on It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club about Down a Dark River, the first book in the Inspector Corravan series.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books:

In 1986, St. Martin's published an anthology edited by Bernard A. Drew with the full title of Hard-Boiled Dames: A Brass-Knuckled Anthology of the Toughest Women From the Classic Pulps. Drew provided the introduction, and Marcia Muller (author of her own tough-broad protagonist, Sharon McCone) added a preface. The 15 stories included were reproduced from the original magazines in double columns on each page, complete with the original campy illustrations and advertisements, as well as biographical notes on the writers.



The offerings include Eugene Thomas's Vivian Legrand in "The Lady From Hell," a woman who works out of Shanghai and pits herself against both the chief of the British Secret Service in the Far East and the underworld leader of Manila; Richard Sale's Dinah Mason in "Double Trouble," featuring the spunky girlfriend of Daffy Dill, "the Whirlwind Reporter for the New York Chronicle"; C.B. Yorke's ruthless Queen Sue Carlton, featured in "Snowbound"; the hard punching Violet McDade, created by Cleve F. Adams; and international adventurer Rosita Storey, from the pen of Hulbert Footner.



The roll call of investigators, crooks, gun molls, and reporters who appeared as ongoing series characters in the classic pulp magazines of the 1930's included in the anthology are below:

 

Carrie Cashin in "Riddle in Silk" / by Theodore Tinsley


Sarah Watson in "Cash or Credit" / by D.B. McCandless 
Trixie Meehan in "The Deadly Orchid" / by T.T. Flynn
Grace Culver in "Hit the Baby" / by Roswell Brown 
Violet McDate in "Flowers for Violet" / by Cleve F. Adams 
Patricia Seaward in "Murder by Mail" / by Frederick Nebel
The Domino Lady in "The Domino Lady Doubles Back" / by Lars Anderson 
Sue McEwen in "Fingers of fear" / by Frederick C. Davis
Katie Blayne in "The Duchess Pulls a Fast One" / by Whitman Chambers 
Dinah Mason in "Double Trouble" / by Richard Sale 
Ivy Trask in "Death to the Hunter" / by Judson P. Philips 
Dizzy Malone in "The Jane from Hell's Kitchen" / by Perry Paul 
Queen Sue Carlton in "Snowbound" / by C.B. Yorke
Vivian Legrand in "The Day from Hell : the Episode of the Secret Service Blackmail" / by Eugene Thomas 
Rosita Story in"Wolves of Monte Carlo" / by Hulbert Footner

          

Author R&R with Mark Rubinstein

Mark Rubinstein served in the Army as a field medic tending to paratroopers, which led him to med school and to becoming a board-certified psychiatrist practicing in New York City. He also developed an interest in forensic psychiatry and has taught psychiatric residents, interns, psychologists, and social workers at New York Presbyterian Hospital as well as becoming a clinical assistant professor at Cornell University’s medical school. He's written nonfiction books and eight novels and novellas, including the Mad Dog trilogy and The Lovers' Tango.

His latest novel, Assassin's Lullaby centers on Eli Dagan, a thirty-nine-year-old man whose traumatic past led to his service as an assassin for the Mossad. He now lives in New York City, where under various assumed names he’s a contract killer. Anton Gorlov, the head of the Brooklyn-based Odessa mafia, has a new and challenging assignment for Eli. Gorlov wants to leave the country permanently, so all loose ends must be eliminated. He’s willing to pay $1 million for a task divided into two parts. The job involves extreme measures along with unprecedented danger for Eli, who has lived a ghostly existence over the last ten years. Is accepting Gorlov’s offer a subliminal death wish? Or is it a way to reclaim part of his damaged soul? For the first time since his pregnant wife and parents were killed by a suicide bomber years earlier, Eli Dagan faces challenges that will reconnect him with his blighted past and may yet offer hope for a new and better life.

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

I cannot envision a novel taking form with no research having been done. 

However, I find that doing too much research can lead to a never-ending quest for more and more information. A famous author like James Rollins, limits the time he devotes to research, even though his novels are immersed in scientific themes and details.

I keep research to a reasonable minimum. I have a few specific  people on whom I depend for some factual details and expertise: a gunsmith for information about weapons; an attorney for legal information; a police chief for any police procedural details (which I try to keep at a minimum); and of course, there's the Internet which I find provides plenty of the information about scientific, medical, legal and other information.  Before computers and the Internet, I spent a good deal of time in libraries which was an arduous way of doing research.

I truly feel that character is mainly responsible for a novel's narrative drive, so I concentrate on the protagonist's emotions (as well as on the antagonist's angst) to provide the story with a relentless push forward. I always want the reader to question "What happens next?" and try not to let the story get bogged down in too much research-oriented description. I've known writers who label a plethora of research-oriented descriptions as "The Tom Clancy Effect" which many readers relish while others love a more quickly paced (and nuanced) approach to storytelling. 

My books fall into the more rapidly paced camp. I also find that brief descriptors (often depending on some research) lend sufficient flavor and color to the story so the novel has richness yet doesn't get bogged down in minutiae. 

While research is necessary for verisimilitude, too much of it can be lethal to the narrative thrust of a story, especially when writing a suspense-thriller where an author wants to reader to keep turning the pages.

You can learn more about Mark and his writing at his website and also follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Assassin's Lullaby is available in ebook format from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, and you can also order a print copy from your favorite bookstore.

          

Mystery Melange

S.A. Crosby's Razorblade Tears has won the 2022 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, North America. The other finalists this year included: Stung by William Deverell; Five Decembers by James Kestrell; Harlem Shuffle by Coleman Whitehead; and The Sacrifice of Lester Yates by Robin Yocum. Crosby's novel was also an Edgar Award finalist and won the Thriller Writers Awards for Best Audiobook and Best Hardcover Novel.

Foreword Reviews announced their Indie Awards 2022 winners. The Gold Winner in the Mystery Category was Shadow Music by Helaine Mario; the Silver Winner was Murder at Greysbridge by Andrea Carter; and the Bronze Winner was Death of a Messenger by Robert McCaw. Honorable Mentions were also handed out to 10 Days by Jule Selbo and Windfall by Bryan TD Smith. In the Thriller Category, the Gold Winner was The Quiet People by Paul Cleave; the Silver Winner was Paradise, WV by Rob Rufus; and the Bronze Winner was The Necklace by Matt Witten. Honorable Mention for thrillers went to Crickets by Lee Chappel.

The longlist was announced for the 2022 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. The award is made for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident, published in New Zealand during the previous year. Decided by a panel of local and international judges, it is named after New Zealand’s most successful crime writer, Dame Ngaio Marsh. Last year's winner was Sprigs by Brannavan Gnanalingam. You can check out all twelve longlisted titles via this link.

Mystery Writers of America announced the establishment of the Lilian Jackson Braun Award for the best full-length, contemporary cozy mystery published by an MWA-approved publisher. This annual award comes with a $2,000 prize as the result of a generous endowment to MWA by the late Lilian Jackson Braun, who died in 2011 at the age of 97. Braun was the New York Times bestselling author of the "The Cat Who…" series of amateur sleuth mysteries which spanned 29 books published between 1966 and 2007. "Lilian Jackson Braun is a legend in the mystery community," stated Greg Herren, the Executive Vice-President of Mystery Writers of America. "Her incredibly generous bequest to MWA was a very pleasant surprise and will enable us to fund some exciting new projects and programs to benefit our membership. It felt appropriate to honor her career and her legacy in this way."

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, the biennial NoirCon is back this year, and it's going virtual from Friday, October 21 through Sunday, October 23. The three-day symposium celebrates noir in all its artistic incarnations with live and pre-recorded events, including panel discussions, award ceremonies, author talks, art exhibitions, movie screenings, and more. "Noir is truly a global phenomenon," said NoirCon co-founder and president, Lou Boxer. "By going fully virtual this year, we can connect with authors and fans from around the world. We’re very excited for what the digital experience can offer." NoirCon 2022 will celebrate the honorees that were unable to receive their awards in 2018, as well as this year’s recipients, including the 2018 David Goodis Award winner, Walter Mosley, and this year's Goodis winner, Megan Abbott. There's also the Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and its Preservation (Dana Plan; Sarah Weinman) and the Kogan Award For Excellence (Geoffrey O’Brien and Max Rudin; Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini). Register now via this link.

Mystery Readers Journal: New England Mysteries II is now available as PDF and hardcopy. Editor, Janet Rudolph, had so many articles, reviews, and author essays that she spread the topic out into two issues. (Mystery Readers Journal: New England Mysteries I is also still available.) You can read a few free articles online including, "An Unlikely Home to Criminal Debuts" by Gabriel Valjan; "The Boston Infrastructure Blues: Or How Geography Is Ruining My Writing Life" by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and "The Dark Side of Boston’s Music Scene" by Clea Simon

The New York Times reported on "How Paintings Lost in a Small-Town Art Heist Were Recovered 50 Years Later" as two sleuths—a curator and a librarian—in New Paltz, N.Y., helped the F.B.I. track down 200-year-old paintings that were stolen from a historical society in 1972. (If you're not a subscriber, you can read more about the story here.)

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Her Shadow" by Kelly Sargent.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton Interviewed Canadian author. Nathalie Guilbeault. about her psychological thriller, Inhaled; over at Writers Who Kill, E. B. Davis spoke with Debra H. Goldstein about Five Belles Too Many, Goldstein’s fifth book in the Sarah Blair mystery series; and novelist Mark Rubinstein chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new suspense thriller, Assassin’s Lullaby.

         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

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel has received a title and a release window. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will hit Netflix "this holiday season," according to Johnson, who made the announcement in a Twitter thread. The director went on to express his excitement to continue his Daniel Craig-fronted franchise in the vein of Agatha Christie’s mystery novels, praising her knack for "stretching the genre conceptually." Johnson seemed to indicate that "Glass Onion" will be tonally different from Knives Out, with Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc at the center of a very different mystery.

Nicole Kidman is reteaming with Amazon Studios for the Mimi Cave-directed thriller, Holland, Michigan. The feature, based on Andrew Sodroski’s (Manhunt) script, topped the 2013 Black List and involves secrets that lurk beneath a Midwestern town, with "a Hitchcock bent." Kidman will star and produce with Per Saari under her Blossom Films.

Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton is boarding Studiocanal and Picture Company’s "high-concept thriller," Role Play, also starring Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo. To be directed by Thomas Vincent on a script from Seth Owen and Andrew Baldwin, the project revolves around a married couple (Cuoco and Oyelowo) whose life turns upside down when secrets come out about each other’s pasts. Not much is known about Thornton’s role, but sources say he will play a key figure in the film—a mysterious stranger who encounters the couple.

Dakota Fanning will star alongside Denzel Washington in The Equalizer 3, the next film in the action franchise from director Antoine Fuqua. The casting reunites Fanning with Washington after the two starred together in the box office hit, Man on Fire, from 2004 when Fanning was ten years old. Sony has already set a release date of September 1, 2023 for The Equalizer 3, although the plot for the new film is being kept under wraps. Richard Wenk, who penned both of the previous films, wrote the screenplay.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Showtime is developing The Whites, a limited crime drama series starring and executive produced by Ethan Hawke. Written by Tony Award-winning playwright and prolific screenwriter Jez Butterworth (Ford v. Ferrari; Spectre), the series is adapted from Richard Price’s novel of the same name. The description of The Whites reads, "Every detective is haunted by their White Whale, the perpetrator who got away because the justice system failed. Billy Graves (Hawke), once a rising star in his department and former member of a group of well-respected cops called the 'Wild Geese,' walks away from NYPD Homicide and joins the Nightwatch division, where his cases end when he clocks out— but his past comes calling when a seemingly straightforward murder case involving a White Whale unfolds, threatening his career, friendships, and family."

Courtney Lauren Penn and Thomas Jane's Renegade Entertainment have acquired Candice Fox's novel, Gathering Dark, for development as a series. Published in March of 2020, Gathering Dark centers on four women—a convicted killer, a gifted thief, a vicious gang lord, and a disillusioned cop—who together are a missing girl’s only hope.

Apple TV+ has handed an eight-episode series order to Criminal Record, a one-hour London thriller starring Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo as detectives in a tug of war over a historic murder conviction. An anonymous phone call draws two brilliant detectives into a confrontation over an old murder case, one a young woman in the early stages of her career; the other a well-connected man determined to protect his legacy. The series touches on issues of race, institutional failure, and the quest to find common ground in a polarized Britain. Capaldi (Doctor Who) portrays Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty, and Jumbo (The Good Wife) plays Detective Sergeant June Lenker.

Ian Duff is set as a lead opposite Michaela McManus and Parker Young in Criminal Nature, ABC’s drama pilot from Rashad Raisani, 20th Television, and A+E Studios. Written by Raisani, Criminal Nature (fka untitled National Parks project) is described as a "propulsive, soapy procedural" set in the stunning world of America’s great outdoors. The story revolves around the agents who work for the ISB (Investigative Services Branch)—an elite law enforcement unit responsible for solving all serious crimes that occur in our country’s 81,000 square miles of protected land. Duff will play Keldon, an ISB agent and Audrey’s (McManus) partner and fiancé. Keldon and Audrey team up to catch the killer — but their partnership is thrown for a loop when Clay, Audrey’s ex, joins their investigation.

Mehcad Brooks is joining Law & Order in season 22 of the NBC drama. He will help fill the void left by Anthony Anderson, who opted not to return after reprising his role in season 21 as Detective Kevin Bernard from the series’ original run. No character name or description is available yet for Brooks. Based on linear and digital viewing, the revival premiere of Law & Order that aired on Feb. 24, 2022 has totaled nearly 13 million total viewers. Like the original, it examines "The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders."

Netflix has renewed The Lincoln Lawyer for Season 2 with Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, and Angus Simpson set to reprise their roles. The 10-episode second season will be based on the fourth book in The Lincoln Lawyer series by Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness. The renewal comes as no surprise following the show’s success on the streaming service, with Season 1 in the Netflix Global Top 10 in 90 countries. The Lincoln Lawyer follows the redemption of Mickey Haller (Garcia-Rulfo), a Los Angeles attorney, who with hard work and hustle, regains much of what he lost due to addiction. His success is also thanks to his devoted supporters: his ex-wives Maggie (Campbell) and Lorna (Newton), his driver and unofficial sponsor Izzy (Raycole), and the best investigator in town—and Lorna’s newly minted fiancé—Cisco (Simpson).

Garret Dillahunt, Jeanine Serralles, Kaya Rosenthal, Michael Drayer, Taja V. Simpson, and newcomer Ellie Barone have signed on for recurring roles in the third season of Starz’s crime drama, Hightown. Created by Rebecca Cutter (Gotham), Hightown is set in the beautiful but bleak world of Cape Cod and follows police officer, Jackie Quiñone (Monica Raymund), as her journey to sobriety is overshadowed by a murder investigation dragging her into its fold.

Britt Robertson has been tapped as a series regular on ABC’s new series, The Rookie: Feds. Co-created by Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter, The Rookie: Feds stars Niecy Nash-Betts as Simone Clark, the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy. The spinoff was introduced in a two-part arc on Season 4 of The Rookie, where Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and the LA division of the FBI enlist the help of Simone Clark when one of her former students is a suspect in a terror attack. The cast also includes Frankie Faison, who plays Christopher "Cutty" Clark, and Felix Solis, who guest-starred as Special Agent Matthew Garza in the two Rookie: Feds backdoor-pilot episodes.

In the first teaser trailer for the upcoming Paramount+ series, Tulsa King, Sylvester Stallone channels Henry Hill in Goodfellas and Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as Dwight "The General" Manfredi, an aging mafioso. Fresh out of prison after a 25-year sentence, Manfredi is sent by his criminal bosses to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he carves out an empire of his own in the buckle of the Bible belt.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Night Shadows) & Will Dean (Bad Apples) were featured on Crime Time FM, discussing Nordic Noir, its appeal and landscape as a character, and the psychological element of Scandinavian fiction.

Author Jeffery Hess stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to talk about his Beachhead Trilogy, short stories, and his latest book.

On Read or Dead, Katie and Nusrah talked about their anticipated mystery and suspense reads for the second half of 2022.

My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed editor, reviewer, and speech writer, Max Folsom, to talk about her journey to writing mystery novels.

On Queer Writers of Crime, Justene shared with Brad a novel by Maya MacGregor she believes is a contender for upcoming awards:  a contemporary queer novel full of diversity, a suspicious death, and a spirit who helps solve the crime.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club showcased Art Kilmer and the two podcasts he hosts, The Bookshelf Odyssey and A Cozy Christmas.

Talkingbooksandstuff chatted with Canadian author Rick Mofina, a former journalist who's written more than 20 crime fiction thrillers and is a two-time winner of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, a four-time Thriller Award finalist, and a two-time Shamus Award finalist.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Widow Cherry: or The Mystery of Roaring Meg

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838–1903) was a British novelist, playwright, printer and journalist. He didn't have formal schooling but trained as a printer at a newspaper office at age 14. He immigrated to Australia in 1854 after a row with his father over religion and spent seven years on the goldfields. He settled in New Zealand, where he established his successful literary career and became assistant editor and part proprietor of the Otago Daily Times of Dunedin. Eventually he returned to England to devote himself to writing.



In a brief biography of Farjeon, Sir George Fenwick described him as being "The quick, alert, restless type, of rather short stature, with beady black eyes." His daughter, Eleanor, herself an author of children's books, once described her father as "Exuberant, impetuous and extravagant...His mood (when it wasn't irascible) was overflowingly generous."



His literary output was prodigious, writing nearly sixty novels in thirty-five years, most with mystery and adventure themes that drew on his colonial experiences in Australia and New Zealand. His books were bestsellers in their day, with the novel Grif in its seventeenth edition as of 1898, but they were gradually forgotten. Widow Cherry: or, The Mystery of Roaring Meg, is short enough to be a novella and first appeared in Tinsley's magazine. It was eventually bound into a volume of three Farjeon Christmas-themed stories, although the Christmas element isn't very present in Widow Cherry.



The story is set in Australia in a mining town named after the river that flows nearby, Roaring Meg. Young Jack Thumbwood has come to town to stake his claim to a potential mine, but needs the help of an elderly Cornish miner nicknamed Star-by-night and a friend from the old country, Fred Mellon, who Jack convinces to join him. From there, the premise is a fairly straightforward tale of romantic suspense when Jack is arrested for the murder of his young love's sister, and Fred has to investigate and defend him, with the help of his own love interest, the "Widow Cherry."



The denouement, or turning point for the murderer, relies upon his guilty conscience as he sees a bottle of his favorite liquor, Red Rum, reflected backward in a window. I haven't seen any quotes from Stephen King that he had ever read this novel before writing The Shining, but it was a bit of fun to find it buried in an obscure book from 1878.

          

Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime announced that Shizuka Otake of Jackson Heights, New York, has been named the winner of the 2022 Eleanor Taylor Bland Emerging Crime Writers of Color Award. Her submission, Murder in Tokyo, is a story of a Japanese American teen's life which is shattered when her boyfriend is arrested as the prime suspect in a classmate's murder. The five runners-up include: Danielle Arceneaux (Brooklyn, NY), Amber Boothe (Crowthorne, England), Jennifer K. Morita (Sacramento, CA), Valerie Kemp (Ann Arbor, MI), and Kathy A. Norris (Los Angeles, CA).

Lambda Literary, the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing LGBTQ literature, announced the winners of the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards, or the "Lammys." This year's winner of the LGBTQ Mystery/Thriller category was The Savage Kind by John Copenhaver. The other finalists include Bath Haus by P.J. Vernon; Finding the Vein by Jennifer Hanlon Wilde; Lies With Man by Michael Nava; and Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood.

The organizers of the annual Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year have announced the 2022 shortlists: The Night Hawks, by Elly Griffiths; True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox; Daughters of Night, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson; Slough House, by Mick Herron; Midnight at Malabar House, by Vaseem Khan; and The Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean. Readers can now vote on the shortlisted titles through Friday July 8, with the winner being crowned at the launch of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on July 21.

Goldsboro Books announced the twelve titles longlisted for the 2022 Glass Bell Award, including some crime fiction titles. Now in its sixth year, the Glass Bell Award celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction, regardless of genre and is awarded annually to "a compelling novel with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realised." The shortlist of six will be announced on July 28th with the winner, who will receive both £2,000, and a beautiful, handmade glass bell, to be announced on September 8th. Last year, debut author Clare Whitfield was announced as the fifth winner of the prize for her historical thriller, People of Abandoned Character, an atmospheric take on the Jack the Ripper story.

Writer's Digest announced that the opening keynote for this year's WD Novel Writing Conference October 20-23 in Pasadena, California, is Attica Locke. Locke's novels have been nominated or won the Edgar Awards, Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence; Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Women's Prize for Fiction, and the NAACP Image Award. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmaker's Lab, Locke works as a screenwriter as well, most recently on Netflix's When They See Us and the Hulu adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. 

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on Art Mysteries, and editor, Janet Rudolph, is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays. Reviews are 50-250 words; articles: 250-1000 words; and Author! Author! essays: 500-1000 words. As Rudolph added, "Author Author! Essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and your unique take on Art Mysteries...Think of it as chatting with friends and other writers in the bar or cafe or on Zoom about your work and your 'Art Mystery' connection."

The New Yorker reported on "Why We’re Living Through an Agatha Christie Renaissance." As the article states, "It is easy to feel that today’s challenges, large and small, offer a surplus of murder-mystery-esque dread without the necessary doses of humanity, nor the vital pleasures of resolution. How reassuring—how resoundingly enjoyable—it is to spend time in Christie’s world, where complexity can be held with confidence, and where even the darkest turns serve only to draw us deeper into the game." The article also references the latest adaptation of Christie's work, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? starring Hugh Laurie, which is streaming now on BritBox.

Speaking of Dame Agatha, The Wall Street Journal noted how young people are discovering a hot new writer...Agatha Christie. "Agatha is sparking with younger readers, and I don’t see that with any other writer from her period," said Devin Abraham, owner of the Once Upon A Crime mystery bookstore in Minneapolis. (HT to The Passive Voice)

Unseen works by the "queen of gothic fiction," Shirley Jackson, have been published in Strand Magazine. In "Charlie Roberts," a couple are planning a dinner party, but beneath their familiar banter is palpable but unexpressed tension. The title refers to the owner of a pocket-knife left behind at the couple’s home, and it’s clear that something has happened to him. The other short, "Only Stand and Wait," touches on isolation, insight and denial – themes found in Jackson’s novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. A previously unpublished story, "Adventure on a Bad Night," was published in 2020 after being discovered by Jackson’s son in boxes of his mother’s papers donated to the Library of Congress.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Nothing is Normal Here" by Jennifer Lagier.

In the Q&A roundup, E. B. Davis at the Writers Who Kill blog interviewed Ellen Byron about Bayou Book Thief, the first installment in the new Vintage Cookbook cozy mystery series; Harini Nagrenda spoke with Sujata Massey about her series featuring The Bangalore Detectives Club; and Indie Crime Scene chatted with Stephen G. Eoannou, whose novel Rook, which is based on the true story of Al Nussbaum, a bank robbing genius from Buffalo, New York, has its debut on June 28.

         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

Sony Pictures has landed rights to the upcoming Run, Rose, Run in a highly competitive situation. Run, Rose, Run is an adaptation of the novel by James Patterson and Dolly Parton also stars Parton in a leading role. The story is about a young woman who heads to Nashville to pursue her music-making dreams and is taken under the wing of a female musical icon. The sources of their heart-wrenching songs are secrets both have tried to hide.

Two-time Primetime Emmy nominee, David Oyelowo, will star opposite Kaley Cuoco in the Studiocanal and Picture Company thriller, Role Play. Amazon Prime Video is in final talks to take the US and several major offshore territories. Role Play centers around a married couple whose life turns upside down when secrets come out about each other’s pasts. Oyelowo will play Cuoco’s husband in the film, which is directed by Thomas Vincent from a screenplay by Seth Owen.

Captain America, The Purge, and Copshop lead, Frank Grillo, is set to star in the action movie, MR-9, which is set to film in the U.S. and Bangladesh. Writer-director Asif Akbar’s spy action-thriller is based on the popular Masud Rana novels written by late novelist, Qazi Anwar Hussain. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Deadline reported that Grillo will play the nemesis of secret agent Rana, code named MR-9, of the Bangladesh Counter Intelligence Agency. The film is adapted from the Hussain's original first novel, Masud Rana: Dhonghsho Pahar (Demolition Hill). Hussain published 550 novels in the series, which is influenced by the James Bond franchise.

Sam Worthington, Burn Gorman, Jean Reno, and Jacob Batalon are set to join Kevin Hart in Lift for Netflix. They join the previously announced cast members, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Magnussen, Úrsula Corberó, Yun Jee Kim, Viveik Kalra, and Paul Anderson. F. Gary Gray will direct, with Dan Kunka and Jeremy Doner penning the script. Hart will play a master thief who is wooed by his ex-girlfriend and the FBI to pull off an impossible heist with his international crew on a 777 flying from London to Zurich.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Lesley Manville is set to appear in Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming Apple series, Disclaimer, joining previously announced series leads Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, as well as other cast members Sacha Baron Cohen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Hoyeon, and Louis Partridge. Based on the psychological thriller of the same name by Renée Knight, Blanchett will star as Catherine Ravenscroft, a successful and respected television documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions. When an intriguing novel written by a widower (Kline) appears on her bedside table, she is horrified to realize she is a key character in a story she'd hoped was long buried in the past. Manville will play Nancy, a woman devastated by her young son’s untimely death. 

Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Jon Hamm (Mad Men), and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Atypical) are set as leads in the upcoming fifth installment of Fargo, FX’s acclaimed limited series created and executive produced by Noah Hawley. As usual, Hawley is not revealing much about the plot of the new season, which is the series’ most contemporary to date. Set in 2019, it answers two questions: When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours? Temple, Hamm and Leigh will play the central characters of Dot, Roy, and Lorraine, respectively. Previous seasons of Fargo have been headlined by Billy Bob Thornton, Kirsten Dunst, Ewan McGregor and Chris Rock, among others.

Lifetime has given a green light to Girl In Room 13, a movie inspired by actual events that will star Emmy winner Anne Heche, Larissa Dias, and Max Montesi. The film, directed by Elisabeth Rohm, explores the dark underworld of the $150-billion-dollar human trafficking industry. The project is part of the Broader Focus initiative and Stop Violence Against Women campaign, and is set to premiere this fall.

HBO Max has ordered a second season of Tokyo Vice. It stars Ken Watanabe and Ansel Elgort and is loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction firsthand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. The series captures Adelstein’s (Elgort) 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. Rinko Kikuchi, Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf, Hideaki Ito, Show Kasamatsu, and Tomohisa Yamashita also star in the series filmed in Tokyo.

Sam Waterston will continue as DA Jack McCoy on Law & Order's upcoming 22nd season on NBC. In doing so, Waterston is extending his Law & Order run to 18 seasons to become the longest-tenured cast member on the mothership series. Waterston and Anthony Anderson both initially signed one-year deals, but as previously announced, Anderson is not coming back for Season 22. The new installment of the series continues the classic bifurcated format and once again examines "The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders." Camryn Manheim, Hugh Dancy, and Odelya Halevi also star.

United States Of Al's Parker Young has been tapped as a lead opposite Michaela McManus in Criminal Nature, ABC’s drama pilot from Rashad Raisani, 20th Television, and A+E Studios. Written by Raisani, Criminal Nature (fka untitled National Parks project) is described as a "propulsive, soapy procedural set in the stunning world of America’s great outdoors." The story revolves around the agents who work for the ISB — an elite law enforcement unit responsible for solving all serious crimes that occur in America's 81,000 square miles of protected land. Young will play Clay, Audrey’s (McManus) ex-boyfriend. As much of a cowboy as he is a cop, Clay been temporarily reassigned to Audrey’s team for the duration of their current investigation into the "Wild Flower Killer."

Prime Video has unveiled the full trailer for its upcoming eight-part series, The Terminal List, the highly-anticipated title starring Chris Pratt set to premiere Friday, July 1 on the streamer. Based on Jack Carr’s best-selling novel by the same name, The Terminal List follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. As Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event, he begins to question his culpability. However, when new evidence begins to surface, Reece discovers dark forces are working against him, endangering his life and the lives of those that he loves the most.

Apple+ TV revealed the first trailer for Black Bird, a six-part series created by celebrated crime novelist, Dennis Lehane. When high school football hero, decorated policeman’s son, and convicted drug dealer Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison, he is given the choice of a lifetime – enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), or stay where he is and serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole. In addition to Egerton and Hauser, the series also stars Sepideh Moafi, Greg Kinnear, and the late Ray Liotta, in one of his final roles.

Gabriela Quezada has been promoted to series regular ahead of the premiere of the Walker prequel, Walker Independence. Starring Matt Barr and Katherine McNamara, Walker Independence is set in the late 1800s and follows an affluent Bostonian named Abby Walker (McNamara), whose husband is murdered in front of her while on their trek out West. Consumed by a need for vengeance, Abby crosses paths with Hoyt Rawlins (Barr), described as a "lovable rogue in search of a purpose." The pair soon find themselves in Independence, Texas, where they encounter a diverse and eclectic cohort of citizens hiding from their demons and chasing their dreams, all while becoming agents of change themselves in the small town.

Sofia Milos (CSI: Miami) is joining the mafia series, Astoria, from actor/writer, Theo Nicholas Pagones (Ten Days in the Valley). Astoria centers on Aristotle Antonopoulos (Pagones), the son of a Greek mob boss who is fighting for control of the drug and shipping cartel. Aristotle rises to the head of the family amidst a power onslaught from his drug-crazed, alienated sister, Chrysanthi (Milos), and the ruthless and deadly Albanian Mafia. The series is set in Queens, New York, and Athens, Greece.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

In honor of Pride month, the Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is featuring an LGBTQ+ author and main character with an excerpt from "The Player" by Joe Cosentino, read by actor Duncan Hodge.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Maureen Jennings, who worked as a psychotherapist before turning her hand to writing. Her first series was set in Victorian-era Toronto and has been adapted for television, first as three movies of the week, and now The Murdoch Mysteries series

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Scott Blackburn to talk about his debut crime fiction novel, It Dies With You, in which Hudson Miller reluctantly returns to his hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina, after his father is shot and killed.

Vaseem Khan, author of the Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation series and Malabar House series, is interviewed by Robert Justice on the Crime Writers of Color podcast.

On Queer Writers of Crime, Philip's June book recommendation is a police procedural by Catherine Maiorisi, a title that passes the "Shreve Series Test" (stands on its own).

Wrong Place, Write Crime featured Jamie Mason discussing her suspense novels, secret talents, and philosophical approach to storytelling.

My Favorite Detective Stories spoke with Shannon Baker, the award-winning author of The Desert Behind Me and the Kate Fox series, along with the Nora Abbott mysteries and the Michaela Sanchez Southwest Crime Thrillers. She is the proud recipient of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2014 and 2017-18 Writer of the Year Award.

On Crime Time FM, Paul Burke reviewed May's new crime fiction releases.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Abandoned Room

Not much is known about Charles Wadsworth Camp (1879-1936). His most famous claim to fame may be as the father of author Madeline L'Engle, and most of the details of his life come from biographies about her. Camp moved to New York soon after his marriage to L'Engle's mother, an American pianist named Madeleine Hall Barnett, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and wrote reviews of plays, concerts, and operas. He also wrote plays of his own as well as at least eight novels of mystery and suspense, and his first novel, The Gray Mask was first published as a serial in Collier's magazine in 1915.



L'Engle described her father as a man who dressed elegantly every evening, whether he was eating dinner at home or taking the horse-drawn trolley a theater or concert hall to support many of his musician-friends. His niece recalled her uncle as a big, handsome man in a white linen suit smoking cigarettes on the porch and drinking whiskey. He served in World War I, and that is the source of some controversy about the author's cause of death. He died of pneumonia at age 57, and a common story was that Camp's lungs were weakened by mustard gas during the war that left him vulnerable to respiratory disease. However, one family member disputes that and attributes the pneumonia more to the smoking and drinking.



There's also not a lot of information about how successful his plays and novels were during his day, although The Gray Mask was made into a black and white silent film in 1915, with four more of his works adapted as silent films and two as black and white talkies. One of the silent films, from 1920, was released with the title Love Without Question, although it was based on Camp's novel The Abandoned Room: A Mystery Story, first serialized in Every Week and The Sunday Post magazine in 1917.



The Abandoned Room features "The Panamanian Sherlock Holmes," Carlos Paredes, who is confronted with a locked-room mystery. The murder of Silas Blackburn occurs in a room of The Cedars, a lonely, dilapidated country house—the same room with a history of people dying from head injuries, a room with both doors locked on the inside and the windows too high for anyone to have climbed up.



The main suspect is the victim's grandson, Bobby Blackburn, whose wastrel ways had angered his wealthy grandfather to the point he was threatening to cut him out of his Will and a rather princely amount (for 1917) of a million dollars. Making matters worse, Bobby was in New York the night of the murder but woke up in a daze in an even-more dilapidated house near The Cedars without any memory of the evening. Finding one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs under the victim's bed and a footprint under the window that fits his shoes doesn't help his case.



Despite Bobby's growing fears he may have somehow entered the locked room and murdered his grandfather in a drugged fog, there is more to meet the eye with strange happenings in the house—haunting cries; hints of ghosts; a woman in black wandering through the nearby woods; and secrets held by Bobby's cousin Katherine Perrine and the servants, allegedly the only ones who were with the victim the night of the murder, as well as the victim himself. Bobby's friend, Carlos Paredes (tall and graceful, with jet-black hair parted in the middle and a carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard), invites himself to stay in The Cedars and eventually solves the crime, with a little twist at the end.



The Abandoned Room isn't available in a regular print edition (except possibly in libraries), and since it's in the public domain, there are several versions on the internet from content-farm companies trying to make a buck. You can download a free copy via Project Gutenberg and Google Books, and Simon & Schuster has an ebook version available via Start Classics.