B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 77

Mystery Melange - Early Valentine's Day Edition

 

CJ Sansom has been announced as the recipient of the highest honor in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger. He combined both history and law in his debut novel, Dissolution, a darkly fascinating novel of monastic murder and politics. This success sparked the bestselling Shardlake series, set in the reign of Henry VIII and following the sixteenth-century lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak. Sansom joins icons of the genre who have been recognized with the accolade, including Ruth Rendell, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, PD James, Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, Lindsey Davis, Peter Lovesey, John Le Carré and Martina Cole.

Saima Mir was announced as the first recipient of the Crimefest bursary for a crime fiction author of colour. Saima Mir’s debut novel, The Khan, was a Times and Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year in 2021 and has been longlisted for The Portico Prize. This year, three runners-up were also chosen to receive complementary passes to this year’s convention: Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Amita Murray, and Stella Oni. Hosted in Bristol, Crimefest is one of the biggest crime fiction events in Europe, and one of the most popular dates in the international crime fiction calendar, with 60 panel events and 150 authors over four days.

To celebrate the opening of Lee Child's Archive at the University of East Anglia and twenty-five years since the publication of the first Jack Reacher novel, the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing and the British Archive for Contemporary Writing are hosting two landmark events on March 31 to explore Child's legacy and the evolution of the crime thriller. You can find out more about the events and get your tickets via this link. (HT to Shots Magazine.)

Iceland Noir 2022, which will take place in person in Reykjavik November 16-19, has opened up a limited number of Early Bird tickets that are on sale now. Event organizers also announced the first two headliners, Richard Osman, the internationally bestselling author of the Thursday Murder Club books, and veteran crime writer, Mark Billingham. Iceland's Prime Minister, Katrin Jakobsdóttir and Iceland's First Lady, Eliza Reid, will also be participating in two of the headline events.

The Upper Hudson Chapter of Sisters in Crime, The Mavens of Mayhem, are presenting the online event, Murderous March, on Friday, March 4. Catriona McPherson and Hank Phillippi Ryan will serve as the Guests of Honor for the one-day crime writing festival. Other panelists include Tina deBellegarde, Alexia Gordon, Terrie Farley Moran, Ovidia Yu, Carol Pouliot, Connie Berry, Jessica Ellicott, Marni Graff, Clara McKenna, Frankie Bailey, Bruce Coffin, Mary Keliikoa, Bob Knightly, Gabriel Valjan, L.A. Chandlar, Erica Ruth Neubauer, Kelly Oliver, Lori Rader-Day, Eleanor Kuhns, Mally Becker, Tori Eldridge, Leanna Renee Hieber, and Alex Segura.

Over at the Mystery Fanfare blog, Janet Rudolph has updated her Valentine's Day Crime Fiction list with novels that take place on or around Valentine's Day.

Over at CrimeReads, Molly Odintz featured "Bad Love, Good Sex: The Best Thirst Traps in Crime Fiction," or an anti-Valentine's Day round-up of the sexiest mysteries to read with your "friends with benefits."

The authors over at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have offered up many Valentine's recipes through the years, including Cleo Coyle’s Pretty in Pink Coffeehouse Cookies; Ellie Alexander's Valentine’s Day Chocolate Heart Cookies; and Valentine’s Chocolate Cake – two ways, via Mary Jane Maffini.

The Guardian urged us to "Forget Wordle!" and take a hand at cracking the Dickens Code, as apparently an IT worker from California just did. Although you might not want to chuck Wordle just yet, as it apparently helped save an 80-year-old woman from a home invasion.

What's not to love about a story like this: An 8-year-old surreptitiously slid his handwritten book onto a library shelf. It now has a years-long waitlist.

Some clever folks have created little book covers to use as wrappers for Hershey's miniature candies, which you can check out here and here. If you'd something a little larger for your literary Valentine, this company has you covered.





Here's a tool from Clive Thompson that is goofy, enjoyable, and can suck you down a rabbit hole pretty quickly: the Weird Old Book Finder. Thompson explains how to use it here. (HT to Jane Friedman) When I typed in "Valentine," it turned up first Valentines in America: 1644-1874 by T.W. Valentine. The second was Valentine's Manual of the City of New York for 1916-1917 edited by Henry Collins Brown. The third was a little more on the mark for the holiday, namely, Kemmish's Annual and Universal Valentine Writer; or, The Lover's Instructor, and Whole Art of Courtship for 1805. (It has a much longer title than that, but it's too hysterically and accidentally NSFW.) As for the poetry? Well, it's pretty much what you'd expect, but fun.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Dark Sparrow Winter" by John D. Nesbitt.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Brendan Slocumb, a musician and author of the debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy; Kalb also pinned down Wendy Corsi Staub, author of the Lily Dale Mystery series, to discuss her latest novel, The Other Family; Gregg Hurwitz, author of the Orphan X series, chatted with Criminal Element about his inspiration for Orphan X, his research, his latest book, Dark Horse, and more; Writers Who Kill's Grace Topping chatted with Ellen Byerrum about her Crime of Fashion mystery series; and William McGinnis stopped by Lisa Haselton's blog to chat about his newest action-adventure novel, Slay the Dragon: An Adam Weldon Thriller.

         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

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to the dramatic thriller, 892. The film stars John Boyega and the late Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire) and marks the feature directorial debut of Abi Damaris Corbin. The film recently made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. Based on a true story, it picks up with former U.S. Marine Brian Brown-Easley (Boyega) as his disability check from Veterans Affairs fails to materialize, leaving him on the brink of poverty. Desperate and with no other options, he walks into a Wells Fargo Bank and says he has a bomb. "What ensues is an edge-of-your-seat narrative that reminds us of the social responsibility we have to our soldiers, our colleagues, our families as well as to strangers."

Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, Yellowstone star Cole Hauser, and Blindspot actress Jaimie Alexander are set to star in the thriller, The Minute You Wake Up Dead, currently filming in Mississippi. The film follows a stockbroker (Hauser) in a small southern town who gets embroiled in an insurance scam with a next-door neighbor (Alexander) that leads to multiple murders when a host of other people want in on the plot. Sheriff Thurmond Fowler (Freeman), the by-the-book town sheriff for over four decades, works earnestly to try to unravel the town’s mystery and winds up getting more than he bargained for.

Jamie Dornan is set to join Gal Gadot in the international spy thriller, Heart of Stone, from Netflix and Skydance. Plot details are being kept under wraps, although it's said it's possibly being set up as an action franchise in the vein of the Mission: Impossible series. The Old Guard writer, Greg Rucka, penned the screenplay with Allison Schroeder. Tom Harper, known for The Aeronauts and Wild Rose, is set to direct.

Actor-producer Noree Victoria (Queen Sugar; American Crime Story) is making her feature directorial debut with An Arrangement, a psychological thriller marking the first produced film from TV writer, Helen Shang (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power; Hannibal). The indie, currently shooting in Northern California, follows a politician’s wife whose drug addiction threatens to derail her husband’s gubernatorial campaign. Tensions rise when she is forced to secretly undergo rehab at the couple’s secluded summer home, and her husband’s interest in their unconventional nurse puts the couple’s marriage—and all of their lives—on the line.

Ryan Phillippe, Kat Graham, and Jim Gaffigan are starring in the thriller, Collide. The film, written and directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil (Retribution) is billed as is "an edge-of-your-seat, noirish thriller" where three interlocking stories hurtle towards an explosive end. It follows an ensemble of characters whose paths intersect over the course of a single evening inside an L.A. restaurant. Rounding out the cast are David Cade, Dylan Flashner, Drea de Matteo, Aisha Dee, David James Elliot, and Paul Ben-Victor.

Quintessa Swindell has been tapped to lead the cast of Paul Schrader’s next film, Master Gardener, alongside the previously announced Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton. Also joining the cast of Schrader’s crime thriller is Esai Morales. The film, being shot in Louisiana, stars Edgerton as Narvel Roth, the master gardener of an American estate who is forced to confront his dark past when he meets Maya (played by Swindell). Morales will star as Roth’s witness protection officer.

Nina Dobrev has joined Aaron Eckhart in the action-thriller, The Bricklayer, which will start production next month in Europe. Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 filmmaker, Renny Harlin, is directing the movie, which The Expendables outfit Millennium Media is producing with Gerard Butler after both teamed up with Eckhart on the lucrative Has Fallen franchise. The plot is set in motion when someone blackmails the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it look like the agency is responsible. As the world begins to unite against the U.S., the CIA must lure its most brilliant—and rebellious—operative out of retirement, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy.

Boies Schiller Entertainment snagged film rights to the real-life story of Abdullahi Tumburkai, a farmer in Nigeria who was in a desperate race to save the lives of his two brothers and successfully negotiated their freedom from kidnappers. Kidnapping has become a cottage industry in regions of Nigeria amid poverty and the inability to make a living in the farming region of Kaduna. After getting his brothers back—he'd sold his farm and paid around $13,000 to free them after 33 days—he became the neighborhood go-to guy for others desperate to recover kidnapped love ones.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Scott Turow’s best-selling novel, Presumed Innocent, is becoming a limited series on Apple TV+. Veteran writer David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside Dustin Thomason, J.J. Abrams, and Ben Stephenson. Presumed Innocent is described as "the story of a horrific murder that upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorneys’ office when one of its own is suspected of the crime." The novel was previously made into a hit film in 1990 with Harrison Ford in the lead role. There was also a 1992 TV miniseries spinoff, The Burden of Proof, and a TV movie sequel in 2011 titled Innocent. Kelley plans to reimagine Presumed Innocent to explore "obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together."

ABC has given a cast-contingent pilot order to Will Trent, a crime drama based on Karin Slaughter’s bestselling book series. The books center on Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who 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 feels as abandoned as he was, Trent has the highest clearance rate in the GBI.

CBS has made its first order of the 2022 pilot season. The network has handed a pilot pickup to a mother-and-son legal drama from Scott Prendergast, who wrote on FX’s Wilfred and appeared in HBO’s Silicon Valley, and Dr. Phil McGraw. The untitled drama follows a talented-but-directionless P.I. who is the black sheep of his family. Despite their opposing personalities, he agrees to work as the in-house investigator for his overbearing mother, a successful attorney reeling from the recent dissolution of her marriage.

Paramount+ has given out more details of its upcoming spy series starring Kiefer Sutherland. The streamer revealed that the eight-part series is titled Rabbit Hole and centers on private espionage operative, James Weir (Sutherland), who finds himself in the midst of a battle over the preservation of democracy in a world at odds with misinformation, behavioral manipulation, the surveillance state, and the interests that control these extraordinary powers.

Marg Helgenberger is eyeing a possible return to the CSI franchise with a reprisal of her role as Catherine Willows. Helgenberg would appear in the upcoming second season of CSI: Vegas, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2000 series, in which Helgenberger starred for the first 12 seasons. Season 1 opened with an existential threat that could bring down the entire Crime Lab and release thousands of convicted killers back onto the neon-lit streets of Vegas. A brilliant new team of investigators led by Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome) enlisted the help of old friends, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), to investigate a case centered around former colleague, David Hodges (Wallace Langham).

AMC is moving forward with its series adaptation of Invitation to a Bonfire. Based on the novel by Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire is a psychological thriller set in the 1930s at an all-girls boarding school in New Jersey. Inspired by Vladimir and Vera Nabokov’s co-dependent marriage, the series follows Zoya, a young Russian immigrant and groundskeeper, who is drawn into a lethal love triangle with the school’s newest faculty member—an enigmatic novelist—and his bewitching wife.

NBC has picked up two pilot projects including Dean Georgaris’s agent drama, The Blank Slate, and The Irrational (Arika Mittman’s adaptation of Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational). Blank Slate is a high-concept procedural about a government agent who may not be what he seems. Special Agent Alexander McCoy is a legend in law enforcement, the agent we all hope is out there, the agent we’d all like to be. The only issue is … he doesn’t actually exist. He’s a ghost, a phantom. So what happens when a man claiming to be Alexander McCoy walks through the door with all of his skills and knowledge, but with an agenda nobody will see coming? The other pilot pickup, The Irrational, is an investigative thriller that follows a world-renowned professor of behavioral science, who lends his expertise to an array of high-stakes cases involving governments, law enforcement, and corporations with his unique and unexpected approach to understanding human behavior.

Denis Leary is joining the Law & Order: Organized Crime family in a recurring role. The actor is set to play Frank Donnelly of the NYPD. His character will interact with Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), with Leary’s debut episode airing March 3. The Leary casting comes a little over a week after the news that Dylan McDermott is leaving Organized Crime (where he played baddie/mob boss Richard Wheatley) and heading to another Dick Wolf series, FBI: Most Wanted on CBS, as Julian McMahon exits that program March 17.

The David Boreanaz-led SEAL Team will be back for another go-round on Paramount+ after the streamer renewed the military drama series for a 10-episode sixth season. SEAL Team is a military drama that follows the professional and personal lives of the most elite unit of Navy SEALs as they train, plan, and execute the most dangerous, high-stakes missions our country can ask of them.

ABC’s drama pilot, L.A. Law, a revival of the Steven Bochco legal drama, expanded its cast with the addition of John Harlan Kim. He joins original cast members Blair Underwood and Corbin Bernsen, who are reprising their respective roles as Johnathan Rollins and Arnie Becker. He also joins Toks Olagundoye, Hari Nef and Ian Duff, who will play new characters in the revival. In the pilot, written by Marc Guggenheim and Ubah Mohamed and to be directed by Anthony Hemingway, the venerable law firm of McKenzie Brackman—now named Becker Rollins—reinvents itself as a litigation firm specializing in only the most high-profile, boundary-pushing and incendiary cases. Kim joins L.A. Law as Chad Park, an up-and-coming attorney at the firm described as a "shark-in-training" whose ambition sometimes gets ahead of his ethical standards.

Athena Pictures, Starlings Television, and Propagate Content’s Ben Silverman will co-produce Shadowland, a female-driven wildlife crime thriller series based on real events. The series follow two wildlife crime operatives, both former U.S. special operations counter-terrorism specialists with decades of combined experience working in some of the most dangerous places in the world, now dedicated to uncovering the real drivers behind Africa’s wildlife crime crisis. The duo uncover a plot to ambush a rhino translocation caravan and expose a massive web of corruption, taking it apart piece by piece.

Jennifer Beals is set to recur on NBC’s Law & Order: Organized Crime. She will play the wife of a new antagonist that was introduced on the NBC series this season, Preston Webb (Mykelti Williamson), a drug kingpin in New York and the head of the Marcy Corporation. Seals is boarding the Dick Wolf series as another big-name recurring player, Dylan McDermott, will be wrapping his arc to take on the lead of another Wolf drama, FBI: Most Wanted. This marks Beals’s return to the Law & Order franchise; she did a guest-starring turn on the mothership series in 2007. Law & Order: Organized Crime brought SVU's Elliot Stabler character (played by Christopher Meloni) back to the fold as the head of the NYPD organized crime unit.

Almost a year after the Criminal Minds revival for Paramount+ was announced, six fan favorite cast members, Joe Mantegna, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler, and Paget Brewster, have agreed to come back, subject to closing their deals and availability. Deadline also reported that a license agreement for a 10-episode new season of Criminal Minds has been reached between Paramount+ and the studios behind the crime drama, ABC Signature and CBS Studios.

The six-episode series, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, premieres Friday, March 11 on Apple TV+. The streamer unveiled a trailer for the series, which is based on the novel of the same name by Walter Mosley, and follows the title character, a dementia-ridden 90-plus-year-old man who agrees to an experimental medical treatment to regain all his memories. But the effect is only temporary, and he’s now in a race against time to solve the murder of his nephew before his restored memory fades.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features Debbi Mack's interview with Jennifer Graeser Dornbush, screenwriter, author, speaker, and forensic specialist. Along with her crime fiction, she's published a book on forensics called Forensic Speak: How to Write Realistic Crime Dramas.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Scotti Andrews to talk about her mysteries, horror, and romance offerings.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode is up featuring the mystery short story, "A Virtuous Thief," written by JR Lindermuth and read by actor Sean Hopper.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured poet and author, Anna Scotti, who's been contributing a series to EQMM featuring a sleuth in the Witness Security program. Scotti reads her story “What the Morning Never Suspected,” the second in her WITSEC series, from the September/October 2020 issue.





My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, chatted with Sybil Johnson about her short crime fiction and Aurora Anderson Mystery Series.

The 200th episode of It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured snippets from some of the podcast's favorite interviews from the past.

Crime Time FM spoke with Tim Lucas, one of the pioneers of serious genre film criticism, now in his 50th year as a published writer. He’s an award-winning biographer, magazine founder/editor, and novelist (the cult classic Throat Sprockets).

The Red Hot Chili Writers chatted with Dean Koontz about his new novel, Quicksilver; discussed dogs in literature; found out what a dude ranch is; and host, Abir Mukherjee, took on Dean in a canine-inspired quiz.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Book: The Notting Hill Mystery

The Notting Hill Mystery is an English-language detective novel published in 1863, which crime writer Julian Symons and others called "the first detective novel," preceding Wilkie Collilns's The Moonstone by several years. However, as fellow blogger John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books noted, historian Brian Stableford has taken exception to that claim, stating that Jean Diable by Paul Féval, published as a serial in 1862, was actually the first detective novel (featuring the Scotland Yard detective Gregory Temple). Another novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Trail of the Serpent, published in 1861, could also make a good case for being the "first," but so could other works of fiction that had detectives in them (e.g. Charles Dickens' Bleak House from 1852). 



As to the author? Notting Hill also started out as an eight-part serial, with illustrations by George du Maurier, that ran in Once a Week magazine, but the author was listed as "anonymous." Paul Collins, writing in the New York Times Book Review, believes the author was actually Charles Warren Adams (1833-1903), a lawyer, author and publisher who wrote novels under a pseudonym, including a crime novel titled Velvet Lawns from 1964. Collins also pointed out that Adams was also notably religious, which is why the novel has strong moral undertones.



The story is set in London, where the wife of a myterious and sinister Baron R dies after allegedly sleepwalking into her husband's laboratory and drinking from a bottle of acid. Insurance investigator Ralph Henderson, working on behalf of several companies, is called into investigate. At first, it seems the Baron had no part in his wife's death, and is referred to by many as a good-hearted man and a loving husband. But Henderson soon learns the husband had taken out at least five life insurance policies on his wife. Henderson eventually comes to the conclusion that Baron R has committed not one but three crimes, but he can’t prove it.



The narration is written in seven sections—memoranda to his corporate bosses—as a series of maps, medical and chemical analysis reports, illustrations, eyewitness interviews, family letters and diary entries, all features that were groundbreaking in style. Henderson details them all, because the evidence is "not only circumstantial but so delicate and complicated that the failure of a single link would render the remainder worthless." Ultimately, the disposition of that evidence is left up to the reader as to whether they are enough to convict Baron R beyond reasonable doubt.

  

The reception of Notting Hill, and its tale of poisoning, hypnotists, gypsies, and kidnappers, was positive when it was first published: the Guardian called it "very ingeniously put together", the Evening Herald said "the book in its own line stands alone", and the London Review described it as "a carefully prepared chaos, in which the reader, as in the game called solitaire, is compelled to pick out his own way to the elucidation of the proposed puzzle."



After long being out of print, the British Library issued a new edition for the book's 150th anniversary that includes the original illustrations by du Maurier (the grandfather of author Daphne du Maurier), as well as an introduction by Mike Ashley.

          

Mystery Melange

 

The Audio Publishers Association announced the finalists for its annual Audie Awards, with plans to name the winners in a virtual ceremony on March 4 at 9 p.m. ET / 14:00 GMT. The Best Audio Drama category included two crime dramas, The Coldest Case: A Black Book Audio Drama (written by James Patterson, Aaron Tracy, and Ryan Silbert) and Sherlock Holmes – The Seamstress of Peckham Rye (written by Jonathan Barnes). Best Mystery included The Bucket List by Peter Mohlin and Peter Nystrom; Later by Stephen King; Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March; The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie; and The Midnight Man by Caroline Mitchell. The Thriller and Suspense nominees include The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave; Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica; Never Far Away by Michael Koryta; Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell; and Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby

The Minnesota Book Award finalists were also announced, including those in the Genre Fiction category. Three crime fiction titles made that list, including Insurrection by Tom Combs; Lightning Strike: A Novel by William Kent Krueger; and The Stolen Hours by Allen Eskens. The winners in all categories will be announced on Tuesday, April 26 at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts in Saint Paul.

Submissions are now open for Sisters in Crime's Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, an annual grant of $2,000 for an emerging writer of color. This grant is intended to support the recipient in crime fiction writing and career development activities. The grantee may choose to use the grant for activities that include workshops, seminars, conferences, and retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of the work. For more information about requirements and application materials, follow this link.

The Henri Peyre French Institute and the Ph.D. Program in French at The Graduate Center of CUNY are hosting the virtual roundtable, Eclectic Detective & Noir Fiction in French, on Friday February 11th from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Featured presentations include Antoine Dechêne, talking about "What’s Left of the Metaphysical Detective Story?"; Alice Jacquelin, "Country Noir: Transnational and Intermedial Circulation between France and the USA"; Ciara Gorman, "Gender and Genre: Representing the criminal woman in crime fiction, with particular reference to the work of Fred Vargas"; and Iziar De Miguel, "Metaphysical Noir Fiction: from the hard-boiled classics to the French roman noir."

Hilary Davidson will be leading a reading group at the Center for Fiction this spring, titled, "Agatha Christie’s Heirs: Modern Mysteries Inspired by the Queen of Crime Fiction." Discussions will include an eclectic, diverse array of authors and books, including The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji; The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey Sujata Massey; Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz; They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall; and The 7-1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. The sessions are via Zoom, and the first will be on Thursday, March 10th, from 7pm to 8:30pm EST. You can sign up via the Center's Facebook page.

The conference, Golden Age of Crime: A Reappraisal, will be held June 22-23 at Bournemouth University in the UK. As well as interrogating the staples of "Golden Age" crime (the work of Agatha Christie and/or Ellery Queen), this conference will look at under-explored elements of the publishing phenomenon. Keynotes will be given by Shedunnit creator, Caroline Crampton, and Alistair Rolls of the University of Newcastle. This is a hybrid event, taking place both at Bournemouth University and online. Conference organizers are inviting proposals for 20-minute papers or panel presentations of one hour. You can email your 200-word proposal and short biographical note to goldenageofcrime@gmail.com no later than April 18.

Three mystery-themed exhibitions just opened at the Toronto Public Library: "Meddling Kids: A Children's Mystery Book Exhibit" that runs through April 16; "Cracking the Case: Sleuths in Speculative Fiction", which runs through April 2; and "A Study in Sherlock and His Creator: 50 Years of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection." (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist blog.)

Don Blyly, owner of Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore and Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis, which were burned in 2020 during the protests after George Floyd's murder, has found a new site for the stores. The new building is about two miles east of the old location and a short block and a half from Moon Palace Books. Blyly noted that "the Moon Palace people and I believe that having two bookstores with such different selections so close will do good things for both stores." Blyly sold the stores' destroyed old site and has some insurance money. In addition, the stores' GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $191,000. Blyly hopes to open for business in June. (HT to Shelf Awareness)





This is the Year of the Tiger, and to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Janet Rudolph put together a list of mysteries that take place during that annual event.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Santa Monica Scares" by Joel Bush.

         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

After a bidding war with multiple potential buyers, New Republic Pictures has won the rights to John Glenn’s spec script, Cut & Run, which has Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star and produce through his Nine Stories Productions banner. Cut & Run centers on a group of thieves using high powered speedboats to rob superyachts, but complications ensue when the thieves end up stealing the wrong thing from the wrong group of people.

In the first major casting for the next installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, Jason Momoa has joined the cast for the tenth film in that series. Vin Diesel is set to return as the headliner, with Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sung Kang also expected to return and Justin Lin on board to direct. Plot details are unknown at this time, but the film is currently set to debut on May 19, 2023. The most recent pic, F9, bowed this past summer, grossing more than $720 million at the global box-office, making it one of the biggest films of the year.

Daniel Craig’s Knives Out 2 update should make fans of the first movie very happy. In an interview with Variety, Craig reported, "We did the second one this summer, in Greece, and then we filmed studio work in Serbia. It’s in the can. Rian [Johnson] is editing now, and it’ll be out, I think, in the fall of this year."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

HBO may have found their next murder mystery limited series obsession, landing the rights to Australian comedian/author Benjamin Stevenson’s new novel, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone. The plot follows teacher, Ernie Cunningham, who witnessed his brother, Michael, kill someone three years ago and immediately turned him in to the police. Shunned by his well-known criminal family for this betrayal, they have now invited him to a reunion at a snowbound mountain retreat. But when the dead body of an unidentified man is found frozen on the slopes, Ernie decides to investigate the truth behind his death—and the suspicious involvement of his murderous family.

Blumhouse Television has snapped up the rights to Stephen King’s novel, Later, which they will transform into a limited series starring Lucy Liu. Raelle Tucker (True Blood), the series creator, wrote the pilot. Later is about a kid named Jamie who can communicate with the dead, but for whatever reason, the dead people he talks to can’t lie to him—and for many reasons, the adults in his life take advantage of his ability. Jamie’s literary agent mother, Tia, has her son talk to her recently deceased star client in order to get enough info on his unfinished book to finish it herself, while Tia’s cop girlfriend also has need of Jamie’s skills. The book was called "something of a genre hybrid: part detective tale, part thriller, with a horror story filling in the seams."

BBC Four has acquired the Faroe Island-set drama, Trom, for broadcast in the UK. The six-part series is based on Jógvan Isaksen's crime novels and follows journalist Hannis Martinsson (Ulrich Thomsen), who unexpectedly receives a message from Sonja, his estranged daughter, claiming that her life is in danger. Hannis reluctantly returns home to the Faroes to investigate, and discovers Sonja’s body in the bloody waters of a whale hunt. His search for answers soon brings him into conflict with the local police, and he uncovers a web of secrets within the close-knit community.

Peacock has cancelled Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol after one season. Season 1 served as a complete adaptation of Brown’s novel, and thus the show was technically out of source material, but that generally isn’t a death sentence for adapted series if the ratings are high. The series follows the early adventures of young Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon, who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.

Hulu is adapting Alexis Schaitkin’s novel, Saint X, giving an eight-part series order to the project from writer Leila Gerstein and director Dee Rees. The psychological drama, which is told via multiple timelines and perspectives, explores and upends the girl-gone-missing genre. It follows a young woman’s mysterious death during an idyllic Caribbean vacation that creates a traumatic ripple effect, eventually pulling her surviving sister into a dangerous pursuit of the truth.

Dylan McDermott, who's been recurring on NBC’s Law & Order: Organized Crime, has been tapped as the lead of another Dick Wolf series, CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted. McDermott will succeed Julian McMahon, who is exiting FBI: Most Wanted after almost three seasons. There are no details about his role yet but he will play a new character. On Law & Order: Organized Crime, McDermott originally signed on as a one-year series regular to play Stabler’s (Chris Meloni) Season 1 nemesis. His character, Richard Wheatley, was so well received that NBC and Wolf approached The Practice alum about coming back, leading to a blockbuster deal for him to return as a recurring character in Season 2.

Peaky Blinders star, Joe Cole, will be appearing in ITV's new drama, The Ipcress File, as Harry Palmer, and ITV has just released a teaser. Lucy Boynton, Ashley Thomas, and Tom Hollander will also be appearing in the thriller, which is due to premiere in March, though no specific date has been confirmed yet. The show is set against the backdrop of Cold War Europe, with Palmer and the others heading to Berlin to retrieve a missing person.

Juliana Canfield, who plays Kendall’s loyal assistant, Jess, on Succession, has been tapped as the female lead opposite Jeff Wilbusch in The Missing. The eight-episode series is from David E. Kelley and based on Israeli crime writer Dror A. Mishani’s international bestselling novel, The Missing File.  The Missing tells the story of Detective Avraham (Wilbusch), whose belief in mankind is his superpower when it comes to uncovering the truth. Guided by a deep sense of spirituality and religious principles, Avraham is left to question his own humanity when a seemingly routine investigation turns upside down. Canfield will play Janine Harris, a newly minted detective with the NYPD. Looking for a mentor, she begs to be partnered with Avraham, who prefers to work alone, and gets her wish.

The Netflix thriller based on Karin Slaughter’s novel, Pieces of Her, has received its premiere date of March 4. According to Netflix’s logline for the drama, "In a sleepy Georgia town a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver and her mother Laura. Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family." The series stars Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote, with Jacob Scipio, Aaron Jeffery, David Wenham, Calum Worthy, Nicholas Burton, and Terry O’Quinn rounding out the cast.





PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On The Six Degrees of Poe podcast, there was a discussion about Poe's inspiration for "The Raven," related to Charles Dickens. The hosts also announced a new feature to their program coming in February called POE Unplugged, an online monthly gathering of those who love Poe where Jeanie and Carmen will choose a work/works by Poe for you to read before the night of the event, send you a Zoom link to gather, and you will discuss your thoughts, themes, and questions about the work together.

CrimeTime FM spoke with literary legend, Dean Koontz about his new novel, Quicksilver, humor, character, writing organically, keeping it fresh, and the value of reading books.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club profiled the mysterious Green Mount Cemetery, a historic rural cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland, and the last resting place of many powerful and notorious individuals.

Queer Writers of Crime featured an "Interview After the Interview" episode where host, Brad Shreve, ran through a series of quick questions from eight previous guests. Plus, Brad profiled Cupid Shot Me, an anthology of short stories by eleven authors who all have been guests on this show.

On Read or Dead, Katie and Nusrah talked about books featuring women who kill and the nuance that comes with it.

My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed David Hodges, a former superintendent with Thames Valley Police and author of fourteen crime novels plus an autobiography on his life in the police service.

On Wrong Place, Write Crime, David Temple discussed his books, podcast, and film projects.

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Your Sunday Music Treat

Tomorrow (January 31) is the birthday of Franz Schubert, who lived far too short a life, dying at the age of 31 in 1828. Still, Schubert was remarkably prolific in his short career, writing over 1,500 works. The majority of those are for voice and piano, but he also left behind a large body of music for solo piano, including this Impromptu No 4 in A-flat major, D 899 performed by Arthur Rubenstein (which is a little harder for Scott Drayco to play these days after his injury, although he does his best).

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Agatha Accolades

 

The Malice Domestic Conference announced the nominations for the 2022 Agatha Awards. The awards will be presented Saturday, April 23, 2022, during the annual Malice Domestic event in Bethesda, Maryland.  Congrats to all the nominees!

Best Contemporary Novel

Cajun Kiss of Death by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)

Watch Her by Edwin Hill (Kensington)

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Her Perfect Life by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Symphony Road by Gabriel Valjan (Level Best Books)



Best Historical Novel

Murder at Mallowan Hall by Colleen Cambridge (Kensington)

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)

The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Death at Greenway by Lori Rader-Day (HarperCollins)

The Devil's Music by Gabriel Valjan (Winter Goose Publishing)

Best First Novel

The Turncoat's Widow by Mally Becker (Kensington)

A Dead Man's Eyes by Lori Duffy Foster (Level Best Books)

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley)

Murder in the Master by Judy L. Murray (Level Best Books)

Mango, Mambo, and Murder by Raquel V. Reyes (Crooked Lane Books)



Best Short Story

"A Family Matter" by Barb Goffman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Jan/Feb 2021)

"A Tale of Two Sisters" by Barb Goffman in Murder on the Beach (Destination Murders)

"Doc's at Midnight" by Richie Narvaez in Midnight Hour (Crooked Lane Books)

"The Locked Room Library" by Gigi Pandian (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine July/Aug 2021)

"Bay of Reckoning" by Shawn Reilly Simmons in Murder on the Beach (Destination Murders)



Best Non-Fiction

The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston's Struggle for Justice by Jan Brogan (Bright Leaf Press)

Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter by Chris Chan (Level Best Books)

The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders that Stunned Victorian England by Julie Kavanaugh (Atlantic Monthly Press)

How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America by MWA with editors Lee Child and Laurie R. King (Simon & Schuster)

Best Children's/YA Mystery

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

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur (Fiewel and Friends/Macmillan)

I Play One on TV by Alan Orloff (Down & Out Books)

Leisha's Song by Lynn Slaughter (Fire and Ice/Melange Books)

Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche by Nancy Springer (Wednesday Books)

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2022 Barry Award Nominations

Deadly Pleasures magazine announced the finalists of the 2022 Barry Awards. The winners of these awards will be announced at the Opening Ceremonies at the Minneapolis Bouchercon on September 8, 2022. This year's nominating committee members included Larry Gandle, Maggie Mason, Ali Karim, Kristopher Zgorski, Jeff Popple, Oline Cogdill, Steele Curry, Don Longmuir, Donus Roberts, Mike Dillman, Mystery Mike Bursaw and George Easter (another committee member, Kris Schorer, recently passed away). 

 

Best Mystery/Crime Novel

THE DARK HOURS, Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

RAZORBLADE TEARS, S. A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)

LAST REDEMPTION, Matt Coyle (Oceanview)

CLARK AND DIVISION, Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)

BILLY SUMMERS, Stephen King (Scribner)

WE BEGIN AT THE END, Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt)

 

Best First Mystery/Crime Novel

WHO IS MAUDE DIXON?, Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown)

GIRL A, Abigail Dean (Viking)

DOWN RANGE, Taylor Moore (William Morrow)

FALLING, T. J. Newman (Simon & Schuster)

SLEEPING BEAR, Connor Sullivan (Emily Bestler/Atria)

STEEL FEAR, Brandon Webb & John David Mann (Bantam)

 

Best Paperback Original

THE HUNTED, Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)

ARSENIC AND ADOBO, Mia P. Manansala (Berkley)

BLACK CORAL, Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer)

THE GOOD TURN, Dervla McTiernan (Blackstone)

SEARCH FOR HER, Rick Mofina (MIRA)

BOUND, Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

 

Best Thriller

THE DEVIL’S HAND, Jack Carr (Emily Bestler/Atria)

THE NAMELESS ONES, John Connolly (Emily Bestler/Atria)

DEAD BY DAWN, Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

RELENTLESS, Mark Greaney (Berkley)

SLOUGH HOUSE, Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

FIVE DECEMBERS, James Kestrel (HardCase Crime)

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Quote of the Week

          

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Science and the Detective

Dr. Brian H. Kaye (d. 2003) was a professor at Laurentian University who specialized in fine particle science, but as one university tribute mentioned, he also "had a gift for communicating science to those of many different backgrounds," and was known among students and peers for his knowledge, wit, and friendly outgoing manner. It was that ability to popularize science—along with his undergrad courses in forensic anthropology—that led him to write the textbook Science and the Detective: Selected Reading in Forensic Science.



The book takes a look at events in history and analyzes them through the lens of modern forensics: Who really killed Napoleon? Were the witches of Salem high on LSD? Who were the real parents of alleged Russian royal Anastasia? Was WWII Jewish-French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus really guilty of treason?



The author also has sections on how scientific evidence can be used to establish guilt or innocence in the courtroom via the use of voice analysis, methods for developing fingerprints and uncovering art forgeries, and the examination of bullet wounds. He also describes how maggots on a body tell us about the time of death, and extends his reach via topics on fraud, counterfeit money, gunshot residue, doping in sports, and much more.



The book was published in 1995, which means that some of the material in the book is outdated, but it nonetheless remains as an entertaining read. That's not too surprising, given the fact that, as the author explains in the introduction, he was a "detective story addict," that Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie were among his first loves (although he felt Christie cheated in laying false trails), and he watched every Perry Mason episode. But he also wrote this from some first-hand experience in forensic consulting and working with some of the pioneers in fingerprint processing.