B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 71

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

Michael Keaton is set to star in and direct the noir thriller, Knox Goes Away, which was written by Gregory Poirier. The film follows a contract killer who, after being diagnosed with a fast-moving form of dementia, is presented with the opportunity to redeem himself by saving the life of his estranged adult son. But to do so, he must race against the police closing in on him as well as the ticking clock of his own rapidly deteriorating mind.

State Street Pictures has optioned Assassin & Son, a graphic novel created and written by the late Shad Gaspard and Marc Copani, for development as a film. The story centers on Donovan Braddock, a one-man killing unit who works with a team of covert assassins known as "The Horsemen." When Braddock finds love, and makes a family of his own, he attempts to leave that life of violence behind. But he discovers that his old life still torments him when his wife is murdered in front of him and his young son. Now, with nothing to live for, this tragic event sends father and son on an epic journey of revenge and consequence.

Actress, model and singer, Bella Thorne (Midnight Sun), has been set to star in the thriller, Saint Clare, co-scripted by Guinevere Turner (American Psycho) and Mitzi Peirone, who will also serve as director. The project follows Clare Bleecker (Thorne), a quiet catholic college student with a divine vocation for killing. The story is based on the novel, Clare At 16, by Don Roff, with its sequel due out in 2023.

Jack Huston (House of Gucci) has signed on to star alongside Isabelle Fuhrman and Don Johnson in Andy Tennant’s thriller, Unit 234, which is currently in production in the Cayman Islands. In the film penned by Derek Steiner, a lone employee at a remote storage facility (Fuhrman) discovers an unconscious man locked inside Unit 234, chained to a gurney and missing a kidney. She must then fight to survive a ruthless gang, dead set on retrieving their precious cargo…at any cost.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Titus Welliver returns as Michael Connelly's ex-cop Harry Bosch to crack more cases on Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV). Amazon's ad-supported streaming service announced the pickup of Season 2 of Bosch: Legacy, a spin-off of the series, Bosch, that ran for seven seasons on Prime Video. Bosch: Legacy follows Welliver’s title character—a retired LAPD homicide detective turned private investigator—as he fights to work cases without the authority his former job provided. Meanwhile, attorney Honey "Money" Chandler (Mimi Rogers) struggles to maintain her faith in the justice system after surviving an attempted murder, and Harry’s daughter, Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz), discovers the challenges of being a rookie patrol cop on the streets of L.A.

Peacock will become the U.S. home of ITV’s thriller, Trigger Point. The high-pressure drama stars Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester as frontline officers who must risk their lives during a terrorist campaign in the heart of London and find out who is behind the bombings before fatalities escalate.

Jake McLaughlin (Quantico) and Iantha Richardson (American Soul) are set as leads opposite Ramón Rodríguez and Erika Christensen in ABC’s drama pilot, Will Trent. Based on Karin Slaughter’s bestselling book series, Special Agent Will Trent (Rodríguez) of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations was abandoned at birth and endured a harsh coming-of-age in Atlanta’s overwhelmed foster care system. But now, determined to use his unique point of view to make sure no one is abandoned like he was, Trent has the highest clearance rate in the GBI. McLaughlin will play Michael, a former Army vet and now a Detective with the APD. Richardson will play Faith, Will Trent's partner.

Scoot McNairy (Narcos: Mexico), Jack Reynor (Midsommar), and Emily Browning (American Gods) are set to lead the cast in the psychological thriller, Brightwater. The story follows a big-city architect who travels to an isolated Maine island with plans to build a sprawling luxury resort. But when his girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he embarks on a desperate search across the unforgiving landscape and into his own psyche. Currently in pre-production, the project is written and directed by Lance Edmands, whose debut feature, Bluebird, was invited to the Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Andrea Savage will play an ATF agent going up against Sylvester Stallone’s mob boss in Paramount+’s upcoming Taylor Sheridan series, Tulsa King. Savage’s character, Stacy Beale, is an ATF agent who transfers from the anti-terror team in New York to an Oklahoma bureau targeting local militia groups. Stallone stars as mob boss Dwight "The General" Manfredi, who must assemble a new crew after being exiled by his mob family following his release from a 25-year prison sentence.

Oderbruch (working title) has added four cast members including André Hennicke, Alix Heyblom, Winfried Glatzeder, Robert Glatzeder, and Jan Krauter. The eight-part series follows Detective Roland Voit (Felix Kramer) on a serial murder case after numerous victims shock the Oderbruch region of Germany. His former colleague and childhood sweetheart, Maggie Kring (Karoline Schuch), joins the police investigation when her family comes under immediate suspicion. The project is from CBS Studios who has partnered with Syrreal Entertainment and ARD Degeto on the "elevated genre-drama" for the latter’s online platform, ARD Mediathek.

B-Reel Films, the Swedish banner behind Midsommar, is set to produce a thriller series based on Jonas Bonnier’s true crime novel, The Helicopter Heist, and has attached Ronnie Sandahl (Borg vs McEnroe) as writer. Rights to the novel were previously acquired by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nine Stories banner in 2016 where it was being developed as a feature, but the project fell through. The eight-part series is based on the true story of four young Swedes who orchestrated one of the most spectacular daylight heists of all time in 2009. They used a stolen Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter to land on the roof of a G4S cash service depot building in Stockholm and stole more than $4 million in cash.

CBS has renewed its hit drama, The Equalizer, starring Queen Latifah, for two more seasons (3 and 4). The series features Latifah as Robyn McCall, an enigmatic woman with a mysterious background, who uses her extensive skills to help those with nowhere else to turn. The character was previously portrayed in the original 1980s TV series by Edward Woodward and in the 2014 film starring Denzel Washington.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast posted its 100th episode this week, which features the first chapter of Maximum Rossi, a Las Vegas Noir Mystery novel by Paul W. Papa, read by actor Sean Hopper.

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features Debbi Mack's interview with crime writer, screenwriter, and producer Sascha Rothchild, who just released her debut novel, Blood Sugar.

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Harini Nagendra about The Bangalore Detectives Club, her debut historical crime fiction novel that takes place in 1921 and follows a recently married headstrong young woman who witnesses the aftermath of a murder at a club where the cream of Indian society can socialize with members of the British Raj.

On Queer Writers of Crime, Justine focused on one of the Lambda Literary Award Mystery nominees, Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood.

My Favorite Detective Stories spoke with Julie Hennrikus, who writes the Clock Shop Mystery series under the name Julianne Holmes and the Theater Cop series as J.A. Hennrikus. She also uses the pen name Julia Henry for the Garden Squad Series, with her fifth installment due out this fall.

Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson, aka Ben Creed, chatted with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about A Traitor's Heart, their new historical thriller set in post-WWII Leningrad and featuring detective Revol Rossel.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed author Stephen Burdick to discuss his novellas set in Florida.

To introduce the May/June 2022 issue, the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast featured Smita Harish Jain's reading of her latest story, "The Manglik Curse."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club attended the recent Malice Domestic conference and snagged several authors for mini-interviews, including Ang Pompano, Raquel V. Reyes, Elaine Viets, S.C. Perkins, and Karen Neary Smithson.

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Port of London Murders

Josephine Bell (1897-1987), the pen name of Doris Collier Ball, was born in Manchester, educated at Cambridge, and became a University College Hospital of London physician. She married a fellow physician who died at a young age in 1936, which is when Bell turned her hand to writing, even as she maintained her medical practice.



She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and also became a member of the Detection Club. She eventually closed her medical practice at age 57 but continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in her more than 40 crime novels (at the rate of two a year), such as Amy Tupper, Dr. David Wintingham, Dr. Henry Frost, and Scotland Yard Inspector Steven Mitchell.



Not surprisingly, her novels often feature a strong medical component, not the least of which were two of her doctor-protagonists. She also featured poison and other unusual methods of murder prominently in her plots. Bell and her family were experienced sailors, and the author drew upon this knowledge, too, using many vivid passages in her books that relate to the water and to various nautical details.



Water is certainly at the heart of the setting in Bell's novel The Port of London Murders from 1938, specifically as the title suggests, the port area of London's River Thames. It's a tough neighborhood, but the death of one Mary Holland is still a bit of a shock, even though it appears at first to be a suicide by Lysol poisoning. Tell-tale needle marks on the victim's arm lead Detective Sergeant Chandler to suspect murder tied into a drug ring—which seems even more chillingly apparent when Chandler disappears shortly after he starts to investigate, right before he's due to testify at the inquest. It's up to Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard to unravel the layers of deception and addiction that are exploiting rich and poor alike in a way that hasn't changed much in the seventy years since the book was written.



Bell is particularly good with settings, even the squalid ones that pop up in the novel, no doubt witnessed first-hand in her role as a physician who saw people from every walk of life. Her take on the state of medicine in her day was often somewhat bleak, as in this passage from the book—again, as true today as it was in 1938:

For the great majority of these cases, too poor to have a doctor of their own, there was little he could do...Dr. Freeman could encourage them with a bottle of medicine and help them with a pint of milk a day, but it was not in his power nor that of anyone else to effect a lasting cure of their complaints. There were others, too, not old, but equally hopeless, who attended the dispensary as regular visitors; those struck down in youth or middle age by tuberculosis, rheumatism, heart trouble, and a number of more rare diseases. They had come to the end of their resources, their insurances, and their capacity for earning. The hospitals could do nothing more for them, but they still lived, in the worse possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.

          

Longlist Revealed for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

The longlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022 has been revealed with debut authors and literary icons vying for the UK and Ireland’s most coveted crime fiction writing award. The award, now in its 18th year, is presented by Harrogate International Festivals and recognizes the best crime novels published in the UK and Ireland in paperback over the past year. Readers can vote online for their favorite book among the listed titles, with voting closing on May 26.

 

 


 


         Related StoriesEdgar ExcellenceAgatha AccoladesKiller Thrillers 

Mystery Melange

 

The Welsh crime fiction conference, Crime Cymru, announced the winners of the inaugural Crime Cymru First Novel Prize in English and in Welsh. Writers were asked to submit the first 5,000 words of a crime novel with an accompanying synopsis of the complete plot. Gwyneth Steddy won top honors for her novel, Do Sleeping Dogs Lie. The other finalists were Dyffryn ap Gwilym for A Mortal Occupation and Joanna Masters for Secrets. Steddy wins a year of mentoring from a Crime Cymru member plus a four-night stay in Nant, the writing retreat on the grounds of Ty Newydd, Wales’s national writing centre.

Bestselling writers Thomas King, Shari Lapena, and Kathy Reichs are set to headline the inaugural Motive Crime & Mystery Festival, a new Toronto-based literary event for crime and mystery writing. Run by the Toronto International Festival of Author, Motive takes place June 3 to 5, 2022 at Harbourfront Centre. Nearly 100 writers will be featured at the event, including English novelist Mark Billingham, Norwegian writer Thomas Enger, American authors Kellye Garrett and E. Lockhart, Scottish writer Val McDermid, Canada's former chief justice Beverley McLachlin, Murdoch Mysteries creator Maureen Jennings, and debut Toronto novelist Nita Prose. Some authors, including American authors Harlan Coben, Walter Mosley and others, will be joining at virtual events. (HT to the CBC)

This year, PulpFest will celebrate its 50th anniversary from August 4 - 7, 2022, in Pittsburgh, PA. Fifty years ago, there were no organized gatherings specifically geared toward pulp fiction and the magazines in which it appeared. That all changed when Ed Kessell, Earl Kussman, and Nils Hardin founded Pulpcon in 1972, now called PulpFest. This year's special guest will be Robert J. Randisi, whom Booklist call  "one of the last true pulp writers." PulpFest 50 will also honor the centennial of Fiction House, the pulp magazine and comic book publisher. Additionally, PulpFest will salute the ninetieth anniversary of Popular Publications’ "Dime" line of pulp magazines, particularly Dime Western and Dime Mystery. Both magazines debuted in 1932 and played a major role in the evolution of popular fiction.

On her Mystery Fanfare blog, Janet Rudolph compiled a list of books for Cinco de Mayo, which is traditionally celebrated on the 5th Of May, and commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. She's supplement the list with Mexican mystery writers and books set in Mexico and on the Mexican-American border. 

A previously unpublished script for Ian Fleming’s James Bond screenplay, Moonraker, reveals a very different 007, as well as no Moneypenny, and no "M." As The Guardian reported, the finished movie could not be more different from the author’s own version of the film. The undeveloped screenplay has come to light as part of a major collection of Bond material amassed by two leading antiquarian bookshops in London, Peter Harrington and Adrian Harrington Rare Books, where Jon Gilbert is the resident Fleming expert. Gilbert noted that the screenplay is "much more serious" than the 1979 film, which reflects the time when it was created with Cold War and nuclear threats.

A study from Clever Real Estate analyzed publicly available data from Libraries.org, IndieBound, the National Center for Education Statistics, Publishers Weekly, and Google Trends to rank the 50 most populous metro areas in the U.S. from the best to the worst cities for book-lovers. Did your city make the list?

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Duper's Delight" by Carolynn Kingyens.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill spoke with Linda Norlander about her Cabin by the Lake Mystery series and her soon-to-be-released book, Death of a Snow Ghost; Tom Mead chatted with Publishers Weekly about his new novel, In Death and the Conjuror, in which he gives magician sleuth Joseph Spector three impossible crimes to solve; and Esquire sat down with Lauren Beukes, who novel The Shining Girls is now an Apple TV+ series, to discuss why she no longer believes in "the fairy tale of justice," and the murder that haunts her.

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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

Netflix is adapting bestselling author Don Winslow’s novels, The Dawn Patrol and The Gentlemen’s Hours, for a feature adaptation. Charlène Favier is aboard to direct, with Chernin Entertainment and The Story Factory’s Shane Salerno producing. The project is said to be "out to high level writers to script the film." Published in 2008 and 2011, respectively, both books focus on Boone Daniels, a San Diego ex-cop-turned-investigator and his motley crew of colleagues who make up the Dawn Patrol, a close-knit group of surfers.

Russell Crowe and Liam Hemsworth are teaming up for the action thriller, Land of Bad, to be directed by Underwater filmmaker, Will Eubank. The project will kick off principal photography in September in Australia. Crowe plays Reaper, an Air Force drone pilot supporting a special ops extraction mission in the South Philippines. When the field team is joined by Kinney (Hemsworth), a green Air Force JTAC, the ground mission suddenly turns upside down after the team is discovered by the enemy. With no weapons and no communication other than the drone, Reaper becomes the young operator’s only ticket out.

Meghan Leathers (Don’t Look Up) and Ismael Cruz Cordova (The Undoing) have signed on for roles in Paramount+’s crime thriller, Finestkind, from Academy Award-winning writer-director Brian Helgeland. They join an ensemble that also includes Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Jenna Ortega, Aaron Stanford, Scotty Tovar, Tim Daly, Lolita Davidovich, and Clayne Crawford, as previously announced. Set in America’s biggest commercial fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Finestkind tells the story of two brothers (Foster and Wallace) from opposite sides of the tracks, who are reunited as adults over one fateful summer. When desperate circumstances force them to strike a deal with a dangerous Boston crime syndicate, a young woman (Ortega) finds herself caught in the middle. Along the way, sacrifices must be made, and bonds between brothers, friends, and a father (Jones) and his son are put to the test. Leathers will play Tom’s (Foster) former girlfriend, Kathy. Cordova will play Costa, a fisherman, dad, and Tom’s best friend.

Mo McRae (The Flight Attendant), Brian Geraghty (Gaslit), Chapel Oaks (The First Lady), Kenneth Miller (12 Strong), and Nicholas Logan (I Care a Lot) are the final additions to the cast of Ian and Eshom Nelms’s action-thriller, Red Right Hand, which is in production in Kentucky. The actors join an ensemble that also includes Orlando Bloom, Andie MacDowell, Scott Haze, and Garret Dillahunt, as previously announced. Red Right Hand finds Cash (Bloom) trying to live an honest and quiet life with his widowed brother-in-law Finney (Haze) and niece, Savannah (Oaks), in the Appalachian hills of Odim County. When the sadistic Queenpin Big Cat (MacDowell), who runs the town, forces him back into her services to pay off Finney’s debts, Cash will use any means necessary—even killing—to protect his town and the only family he has left. As the journey gets harder, Cash is drawn into a nightmare that blurs the lines between good and evil. McRae will play Deputy Duke Parks, with Geraghty as Sheriff Hollister. Miller and Logan will portray Big Cat’s henchman, The Buck and The Doe.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The true-crime story of the Murdaughs, which includes money, power, family drama, corruption, local politics, drugs, and murder, is set to be the subject of a drama series in development at UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group. Michael D. Fuller (Locke & Key) and Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs Spears) will create, write, and executive produce the series based on journalist Mandy Matney’s popular Murdaugh Murders Podcast. The series aims to be the definitive account of Alex Murdaugh’s stranger-than-fiction family drama, based on countless hours of reporting by Matney as well as exclusive, insider knowledge from privileged sources.

Y’lan Noel (The First Purge), Mikey Madison (Better Things), and Brett Gelman (Stranger Things) are set as leads opposite Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o in Lady In The Lake, Apple TV+’s adaptation of Laura Lippman’s book, created and directed by Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) and produced by Endeavor Content. The limited series, which has started production, takes place in 60s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother, Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs, and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.

Chad Lowe, Rob Lowe’s real-life sibling, will guest star in the May 2 episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star as Owen’s half brother. The firefighter captain returns to Los Angeles when their father is hospitalized and the visit stirs up painful childhood memories. Robert Pine, star of 1970s cop show CHiPs, who is also the father of actor Chris Pine, will play their dad. Chad previously directed two episodes of the Fox drama, but this will be his first appearance on camera.

Steven Pasquale of Rescue Me has been cast as a recurring guest star in Peacock’s upcoming crime-drama series, The Missing. Stephanie Szostak (A Million Little Things) and Tony Curran (Your Honor) will also recur. The series, which is based on the bestselling novel, The Missing File, by Israeli author Dror A. Mishani, is produced by David E. Kelley, alongside Keshet Studios and Universal Television. Barry Levinson has been tapped to direct multiple episodes and executive produce the series. The Missing follows Detective Avraham (Jeff Wilbusch), an NYPD detective with the 77th precinct who is left to question his own humanity when a seemingly routine investigation turns upside down. The rest of the previously announced cast includes Juliana Canfield as NYPD rookie detective Janine Harris, Karen Robinson as no-nonsense Captain Helen Davies, and Michael Mosley as veteran cop Detective Earl Malzone.

CBS has renewed Blue Bloods for season 13. The network handed the long-running cop drama the renewal after star and exec producer, Tom Selleck, closed his deal to return. The series has been a rock-solid performer at 10 p.m. on Fridays, where it is currently the No. 4 series on broadcast television. Blue Bloods follows the Reagans, a family of New York City cops. Selleck plays Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, Donnie Wahlberg plays Detective Danny Reagan, Bridget Moynahan plays ADA Erin Reagan, Will Estes plays former Sgt. Jamie Reagan, and Len Cariou plays former Police Commissioner and Frank’s father, Henry Reagan.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Jeremy Scott, a writer and entertainer from Nashville, TN. He is the co-creator and narrator of CinemaSins, a YouTube channel dedicated to movie-related comedy that has amassed over 9 million subscribers. His debut book was a YA novel about teenage superheroes with disabilities who save the world through teamwork. When the Corn is Waist High is his first thriller.

My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed author and editor, Elaine Isaak, whose stories have appeared in anthologies ranging from Warrior Women to Fantasy for the Throne. She also writes The Bone Guard series of thrillers featuring former special ops intelligence officer Grant Casey.

On the latest episode of Queer Writers of Crime, Jeffrey Round, Mark McNease, and Mikel J. Wilson chatted with host, Brad Shreve, about books they recommend.

In two separate interviews on the latest CrimeTime FM, authors Heather Young (The Distant Dead) and Peter Murphy (To Become an Outlaw) discussed their new novels.

The latest Red Hot Chili Writers featured a discussion with 2022 British Crime and Thriller book of the year nominees, Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Abigail Dean. 





THEATRE

Canada's Vertigo Mystery Theatre announced their 2022-23 season, which will feature both the return of the legendary Agatha Christie, whose work will be represented by Murder on the Orient Express (Nov. 12 – Dec. 17), and The Extractionist (Jan. 28-Feb.26) a world premiere presentation by Calgary's Michaela Jeffrey. The season opens with Misery, a theatrical adaptation of the film written by William Goldman from a novel by Stephen King (Sept. 10 to Oct. 15) and will also feature Gaslight, by Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson, and Nevermore – the Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Derringer Masters

 

The Short Mystery Fiction Society has announced the winners of the Derringer Awards for 2022 voted on by the members of the organization. First awarded in 1998, the Derringer Awards consider any mystery or crime stories that first appeared in English in the past year. Congratulations to all of this year's winners!

 

FLASH FICTION

John M. Floyd. "Tourist Trap." Pulp Modern Flash.

SHORT STORY

Trey Dowell. "Yelena Tried to Kill Me." Mystery Weekly Magazine. August 2021.

LONG STORY

Michael Bracken. "The Downeaster Alexa." Only the Good Die Young.

NOVELETTE

Stacy Woodson. "Two Tamales, One Tokarev, and a Lifetime of Broken Promises." Guns + Tacos: Season Three.

EDWARD D. HOCH MEMORIAL GOLDEN DERRINGER FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

S.J. Rozan 

HALL OF FAME

G.K. Chesterton

          

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Dr. Nikola Returns

Guy Newell Boothby (1867-1905) was born in South Australia, the son of a politician and the grandson of a judge. He started out his career as a clerk but soon turned his hand to writing plays and musical comedies and eventually made his way to England by way of Singapore, Borneo and Java. He used his travel-related experiences in his writing, turning to Rudyard Kipling-influenced works and exotic settings, churning out 6,000 words every day.



That prolific word count led to fifty novels in the 14 years between 1894 and 1908, with some of the most popular featuring Dr. Nikola. Nikola is an occultist anti-hero in search of immortality and world domination, who uses hypnotic powers and studies witchcraft and the occult. The Nikola series was launched in 1895 as the serial "A Bid for Fortune" in The Windsor Magazine, a rival to The Strand. The series only amounted to five works in all, but Dr. Nikola became almost as popular as Sir Athur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty in 1890s Britain.



Nikola is described as dressing in "faultless evening dress, slender, having dark peculiar eyes and dark hair, and white toad-coloured skin." He lives in a bungalow on the Rue de Lafayette in Shanghai (leading some to say the character of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu was based on him). John Norris, the host of the Pretty Sinister Books blog, wrote about Stanley L. Woods, who often illustrated the Nikola stories, portraying him in white cravat and fur coat, with his frequent companion, the baleful-eyed black cat Apollyon, perched on Nikola's shoulder.



Dr. Nikola (also known as Dr. Nikola Returns) was a sequel to A Bid for Fortune. In the first book, Nikola tried to obtain a Chinese carved stick said to have almost limitless occult powers. In Dr. Nikola Returns, the doctor continues his pursuit of the powers associated with the Chinese talisman, but enlists the assistance of the penniless but adventurous Wilfred Bruce, who speaks fluent Chinese and also serves as narrator of the tale. Dr. Nikola and Bruce scheme to penetrate the most powerful secret society in China to gain access to a remote Tibetan monastery. 



Although Boothby's output was cut short due to his untimely death from influenza at the age of 37, Dr. Nikola lived on in numerous theatrical productions, beginning with Dr. Nikola on the London stage in 1902. In 1909, a three-roll film based on Dr. Nikola was produced by the Danish director Viggo Larsen and was the first novel-based film in Europe long enough to be able to tell the entire story of a novel. A 1935 project that would have starred Boris Karloff as Dr. Nikola never made it to the screen, but Dr. Nikola made a guest-starring appearance in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula graphic novel series from 1992.

          

Edgar Excellence

Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2022 Edgar Awards at a gala banquet held tonight in New York City. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners!

BEST NOVEL

The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen (Amazon Publishing – Lake Union)

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (Macmillan Publishers – Flatiron Books)

WINNER: Five Decembers by James Kestrel (Hard Case Crime)

How Lucky by Will Leitch (HarperCollins – Harper)

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

WINNER: Deer Season by Erin Flanagan (University of Nebraska Press)

Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian (Harlequin Trade Publishing – Park Row)

Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins (Penguin Random House – Riverhead Books)

The Damage by Caitlin Wahrer (Penguin Random House – Viking Books/Pamela Dorman Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Kill All Your Darlings by David Bell (Penguin Random House – Berkley)

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke (Penguin Random House – Berkley)

The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory (Tom Doherty Associates – Tordotcom)

Starr Sign by C.S. O’Cinneide (Dundurn Press)

WINNER: Bobby March Will Live Forever by Alan Parks (Europa Editions – World Noir)

The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell (Penguin Random House – Penguin Books)

BEST FACT CRIME

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox (Random House Publishing Group – Random House)

WINNER: Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (Celadon Books)

Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away by Ann Hagedorn (Simon & Schuster)

Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice by Ellen McGarrahan (Penguin Random House – Random House)

The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade by Benjamin T. Smith (W.W. Norton & Company)

When Evil Lived in Laurel:  The “White Knights” and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer by Curtis Wilkie (W.W. Norton & Company

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World by Mark Aldridge (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper360)

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by Richard Greene (W.W. Norton & Company)

Tony Hillerman: A Life by James McGrath Morris (University of Oklahoma Press)

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

WINNER: The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White (W.W. Norton & Company)

 BEST SHORT STORY

“Blindsided,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Michael Bracken & James A. Hearn (Dell Magazines)

“The Vermeer Conspiracy,” Midnight Hour by V.M. Burns (Crooked Lane Books)

“Lucky Thirteen,” Midnight Hour by Tracy Clark (Crooked Lane Books)

WINNER: “The Road to Hana,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by R.T. Lawton (Dell Magazines)

“The Locked Room Library,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Gigi Pandian (Dell Magazines)

“The Dark Oblivion,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Cornell Woolrich (Dell Magazines)

BEST JUVENILE

Cold-Blooded Myrtle by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Workman Publishing – Algonquin Young Readers)

WINNER:  Concealed by Christina Diaz Gonzalez (Scholastic – Scholastic Press)

Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Dead Man in the Garden by Marthe Jocelyn (Penguin Random House Canada – Tundra Books)

Kidnap on the California Comet: Adventures on Trains #2 by M.G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman (Macmillan Children’s Publishing – Feiwel & Friends)

Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen (Scholastic – Scholastic Press)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé (Macmillan Children’s Publishing – Feiwel & Friends)

WINNER:  Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Macmillan Children’s Publishing – Henry Holt and Company BFYR)

When You Look Like Us by Pamela N. Harris (HarperCollins – Quill Tree Books)

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur (Macmillan Children’s Books – Feiwel & Friends)

The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe (Penguin Young Readers – G.P. Putnam’s Sons BFYR)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

“Dog Day Morning” – The Brokenwood Mysteries, Written by Tim Balme and Nic Sampson (Acorn TV)

“Episode 1” – The Beast Must Die, Written by Gaby Chiappe (AMC+)

“We Men Are Wretched Things” – The North Water, Written by Andrew Haigh (AMC+)

“Happy Families” – Midsomer Murders, Written by Nicholas Hicks-Beach (Acorn TV)

WINNER:  “Boots on the Ground” – Narcos: Mexico, Written by Iturri Sosa (Netflix)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD



WINNER: “Analogue,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Rob Osler (Dell Magazines)

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley (Tule Publishing – Tule Mystery)

Ruby Red Herring by Tracy Gardner (Crooked Lane Books)

WINNER:  Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

The Sign of Death by Callie Hutton (Crooked Lane Books)

Chapter and Curse by Elizabeth Penney (St. Martin’s Paperbacks)

THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD

Double Take by Elizabeth Breck (Crooked Lane Books)

WINNER: Runner by Tracy Clark (Kensington Books)

Shadow Hill by Thomas Kies (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)

Sleep Well, My Lady by Kwei Quartey (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

Family Business by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus Books – Pegasus Crime)

GRAND MASTER

Laurie R. King

RAVEN AWARD

Lesa Holstine – Lesa’s Book Critiques; Library Journal Reviewer

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Juliet Grames – Soho Press – Soho Crime

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Mystery Melange

The Los Angeles Times announced winners of their annual book awards this past weekend. The top title in the Mystery/Thriller category went to Megan Abbott for The Turnout. Other finalists included Alison Gaylin for The Collective; Michael Connelly for The Dark Hours; S.A. Cosby for Razorblade Tears; and Silvia Moreno-Garcia for Velvet Was the Night.

Mystery Writers of America will announce the 2022 Edgar Award winners tonight at 8:30pm ET at a gala banquet in New York City. But if you can't make it to the gala, MWA will be live-streaming the awards via their YouTube channel.

Jacqueline West was awarded the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Middle Grade Literature for her atmospheric and eerie mystery, Long Lost. Although a romantic comedy won the Best Genre Novel award, the finalists included three crime novels, Insurrection by Tom Combs; Lightning Strike: A Novel by William Kent Krueger; and The Stolen Hours by Allen Eskens.

In addition to the recently announced Dagger longlists from the Crime Writers Association, the list of ten books for the 2022 Debut Dagger 2022 has been announced. The Debut Dagger is a competition for the opening of a crime novel by a writer who isn’t represented by an agent by the time the competition closes, and who has never had a traditional contract for any novel of any length, or who has never self-published any novel of any length in the last five years. Last year's winner was Hannah Redding for Deception.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has also announced the winners of their annual Readers Awards. Taking the top spot this year is Karen Harrington with her story, "Boo Radley College Prep."

The 10th anniversary of Scotland's Crime & Thrillers Weekend from the Cromarty Arts Trust is back in person after recent cancellations due to Covid. The event will be held May 6-8, with talks, booksignings, Q&A sessions, writing workshops, and gala entertainment. The panels and discussion will be led by Ian Rankin, Elly Griffiths, Alex Walters, Nicola White, Mary Paulson-Ellis, Matt Johnson, and Jonathan Whitelaw.

The full program was announced for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival set for July 21-24. Curated by Festival Chair and award-winning crime writer Denise Mina, the 2022 program features familiar faces including Rev. Richard Coles, Frankie Boyle, Bella Mackie, Charlie Higson, and Rosemary Shrager - alongside crime fiction titans such as Ann Cleeves, Lynda La Plante, Adele Parks, Michael Connolly, Val McDermid, Mick Herron, Sophie Hannah, and Abir Mukherjee among others. This year’s lineup will also feature two author dinners attended by popular crime and thriller writers.

Walter Mosley will be the speaker for the Knox College 2022 Commencement on Sunday, June 5. Mosley is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books including his acclaimed series of novels featuring the detective Easy Rawlins. "I am absolutely delighted that Walter Mosley has agreed to speak at Commencement for the Knox College Class of 2022 and to receive an honorary degree. I congratulate him, and our other two honorary degree recipients; all three all have done truly extraordinary work in their fields of expertise to drive inclusivity and equity in our world," said Knox College President C. Andrew McGadney.

CrimeReads held an online roundtable with this year's Edgar Award nominees on the state of the novel and how the pandemic has changed their writing lives. You can read part one of that discussion here, and part two is here.

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series "The First Two Pages," hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. Art Taylor took over the torch after B.K.'s passing, and the latest guests are Denver Noir contributors Francelia Belton and Mario Acevedo, and editor Cynthia Swanson.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Red on Silver" by Harris Coverley.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews welcomed Bonnar Spring, who writes eclectic and stylish mystery-suspense novels with an international flavor; E. B. Davis spoke with Carol J. Perry about ‘Til Death, Carol J. Perry’s twelfth book in the Witch City Mystery series; Anne Trager, founder of Le French Books, talked with international bestselling author Frédérique Molay, who won France’s most prestigious crime fiction award; South Dakota Public Broadcasting chatted with Winter Counts author David Heska Wanbli Weiden; Michael Connelly spoke with California Book Club host John Freeman about his career and writing; and Don Winslow, currently on a book tour, had several interviews including one with Rolling Stone magazine and another with Parade Magazine about his new mob thriller, City on Fire.

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Author R&R with Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg has been a Visiting Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, the Writer's Voice, and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. His freelance work has appeared in such publications as Esquire, New York Magazine, GQ, Elle, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He's also the author of the Henry Swann detective series: Swann Dives In; Swann's Last Song, which was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel; and Swann's Lake of Despair.

In his latest book, Canary in the Coal Mine, PI Pete Fortunato works out of a friend’s real estate office after spending a mysteriously short, forgettable stint as a cop in a small upstate New York town. He lives from paycheck to paycheck, so when a beautiful woman wants to hire him to find her husband, he doesn’t hesitate to say yes.

Within a day, Fortunato finds the husband in the apartment of his client’s young, stud lover—shot once in the head, case closed. But when his client’s check bounces and Albanian gangsters kidnap him in hopes he’ll lead them to a large sum of money the dead man allegedly stole, he begins to realize he’s been set up to take the fall for the murder and theft. In an attempt to get himself out of a jam, Fortunato winds up on a wild ride that takes him down to Texas where he searches for his client’s lover who he suspects has the money and holds the key to solving the murder.

Charles Salzberg stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

 

Researching: My Dirty, Little Secret

Years ago, I became friends with a guy I met when we worked the two lowest jobs at New York magazine. I was in the mailroom; he worked the photostat machine. Both aspiring writers, we quickly bonded and formed a writer’s group. A year or two later, his first novel was picked up by a prestigious publisher and he was, understandably, over-the-moon.

In his novel, which takes place in Alabama where he grew up in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, he mentions blue mailboxes. One day, he gets a call from the copyeditor informing him that during that era all mailboxes around Mobile were grey. They asked him to change it.

It seemed silly to me at the time. It’s fiction, right? So, what difference does it make if the mailboxes in his novel are blue or grey or polka-dot?

Over the years, as I began to get my own novels published, I realized it wasn’t silly at all. Facts do matter, even in fiction and there’s a practical reason why they do. What writer hasn’t received an email from a reader that goes something like, “I read your book and loved it, but on page 137 you said that 88th Street runs east but it really runs west...”

That’s not the only reason accuracy is important. If readers can’t rely on the author to get facts right, it renders the whole work suspect.

Case in point. Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles. On the first page, Dylan writes, “…then down to Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on 58th and Broadway…” Only Dempsey’s wasn’t on 58th Street, it was on Broadway between 49th and 50th streets (I used to pass it every day one summer when I worked as a messenger in the Garment District). If Dylan and his editors can’t get this fact right, how can we trust anything Dylan writes?

This is one reason why doing research, even when it comes to fiction, is essential.

Back when I was making a living as a magazine journalist, I developed my own approach to research. The temptation, especially when starting out, is to research the heck out of everything. But I soon learned there’s a risk with over-researching. The result can be that you get so bogged down in research that when it comes time to write the article, you’re overwhelmed to the point of freezing up, not knowing how you’re going to squeeze everything into your 2,000-word limit. So, you quickly learn to limit the amount of research you do.

I found the less research I did the better interviewer I became. If I knew too much about a subject going into the interview, I ran the risk of not asking the right questions, because I already knew the answers. Instead, I’d keep asking questions until I reached the point where I could successfully channel that information into prose my readers could understand.

I have friends who do just the opposite. They’re more comfortable doing heavy research. Their argument, and it’s a valid one, is that the more they know the less likely they’ll “miss” something important to ask. There’s no right or wrong, but rather it’s a matter of style.

When it comes to fiction, the goal is to create a world that makes sense, while at the same time keeping readers turning pages to find out what’s going to happen next. The last thing you want is readers getting stuck on that “fact” that’s not true, like where Jack Dempsey’s restaurant really was.

And so, if you’re wise, you’re obliged to get the facts right. In Canary in the Coal Mine, for instance, Pete Fortunato, a down and out PI, runs afoul of the mob. I needed to find a group that was especially violent and ruthless. The only way to do that was to research, which ultimately led me to the Albanian mob, a group so violent and unpredictable that even the Mafia won’t deal with them.

Fortunato suffers from anger management issues and insomnia (not a good combination). So, I had to research anger management groups to see the kinds of exercises he would have been put through. I also quizzed friends who suffer from insomnia to find out what that’s like.

For me, research often has to do with geography. I like writing about places I’ve never been—so Wikipedia, Google and Google maps come in very handy. My first crime novel, Swann’s Last Song, was written before the Internet was around. I wanted parts of the novel to take place in Los Angeles, the wilds of Mexico and Berlin. Only trouble was, I’d never been to any of those places. So, I interviewed friends who’d been there. I pored over maps. I read magazine articles. And then I sat down and plunked Swann into those places.

My best friend, who’d actually been to L.A. read the manuscript and asked, “When were you in L.A.?” “Never,” I replied. “Then how did you capture it so well?” Easy. Research. And after the book came out, I was invited to a small book club. One of the women, who was from Mexico, said to me, “you really got the Mexico part so well. When were you there?” She was surprised when my answer was, “Never.” And I can thank the research I did for that.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, I did absolutely no research for this essay.

 

You can learn more about Charles Salzberg at his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Canary in the Coal Mine is now available via Down & Out Books and is available in digital and paperback formats in all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

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