B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 93

FFB: Murder at the Foul Line

In honor of the NBA finals starting on May 22, 2021, I thought it would be appropriate to choose a little basketball-themed murder for this week's FFB feature. In 2006, Otto Penzler released the anthology Murder at the Foul Line, with stories contributed by a Who's Who of crime fiction: Lawrence Block, Jeffery Deaver, Sue DeNymme, Brendan DuBois, Parnell Hall, Laurie R. King, Mike Lupica, Michael Malone, Joan H. Parker and Robert B. Parker, George Pelecanos, R. D. Rosen, S. J. Rozan, Justin Scott and Stephen Solomita.



Michael Malone's winningly deadpan "White Trash Noir," about domestic violence from a former NCAA star that seemingly drives his wife to murder, was nominated for the 2007 Edgar Award for best short story, but had to be withdrawn because it had been previously published in a collection by the author. There are other winners, though: Lawrence Block's hitman character Keller takes in a Pacers game in "Keller's Double Dribble," but the assignment doesn't go as planned and we get glimpses into Keller's past; "String Music" by George Pelecanos focuses on a streetwise D.C. kid trying to escape his troubled life by playing pickup basketball; Laurie R. King's "Cat's Paw" features the coach of a girl's junior high basketball team who is haunted by repressed memories and whose life is shaken up after she runs over a cat; and Jeffery Deaver's "Nothing But Net" is filled with Deaver's trademark twists and turns, featuring con men trying to swindle a naive NBA player.



Penzler would probably argue there's plenty more fodder for murderous takes on professional basketball. As he notes in his Introduction, "Perhaps the biggest difference in the game is the level of criminal activity. One of the big crime stories of the 1950s was when some Manhattan College, CCNY, and Long Island University players conspired to fix games so that certain gamblers could make a killing. The scandal rocked the sport for years, and those teams, then national powers, never recovered. Today, of course, that would be looked upon as kid stuff. Now we're really talking. Stars are commonly arrested for drug abuse, drunk driving, wife (and girlfriend) battering, barroom brawling, rape, and so many other acts of violence and criminality that it is difficult to keep track."



Murder at the Foul Line is the fifth installment in Penzler's sports mystery anthology series, so if you're not a fan of basketball, instead try Murderer's Row (baseball), Murder on the Ropes (boxing), Murder is My Racquet (tennis) and Sudden Death (football). I should point out that these books were published by the defunct New Millennium publishing arm, and that Penzler (and author David Baldacci) successfully sued the company claiming breach of contract. It's an unfortunate conclusion to what was originally an intriguing collaboration, but that doesn't change the fact the stories still stand on their own, with many sparkling three-pointers among them.

          

Mystery Melange

The British Book Awards announced the winners of this year's contest last week. Top honors went to Robert Galbraith (a/k/a JK Rowling) for Troubled Blood. The other finalists included: The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child; The Patient Man by Joy Ellis; The Guest List by Lucy Foley; The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; and A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin.

The International Crime Fiction Research Group posted an overview of crime fiction in Argentina, noting that Argentinian fiction has been characterized as peripheral in the global domain even though this country presents a vigorous and complex tradition in the genre."

Rachel Mills Literary Agency and adult education centre Morley College are launching the BME Unpublished Fiction Prize, a contest for aspiring writers from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds seeking to break into publishing. The annual prize will award £500 to a previously unpublished author, and is intended to nurture and provide opportunities for aspiring novelists, promote diverse fiction across the broader literary landscape of Britain, and support Morley College’s ambitions to build an annual festival celebrating diversity in Britain. Applicants should submit a manuscript of the first 30 to 50 pages of an original novel, as well as a three-page maximum outline of the whole plot of the novel. Applications close on August 22.

A literary auction raising money to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus offer opportunities for book lovers to win signed novels by authors including Hilary Mantel and Robert Galbraith, as well as mentoring sessions from star publishers and agents. Bidding at Books for Vaccines runs until May 21. Since the auction is UK based, physical prizes can only be shipped to UK addresses, but the digital prizes such as Zoom calls, mentoring, and online critiques are open internationally. All money raised is going to Care International, a charity working to tackle vaccine inequality in poorer nations. (HT to The Guardian)

The American University in Dubai is hosting a Zoom conversation with Jasper Fforde (creator of Thursday Next), Leigh Perry (creator of Sid the Skeleton) and award-winning short story writer and editor, Josh Pachter, this Sunday, May 23, at 11 AM Eastern time. Registration is required but free, and you can sign up via this link.

One last final John le Carré novel, Silverview, is set to be published in October. Finished before his death in December, le Carré gave his blessing to publish the novel, which follows a bookseller who becomes embroiled in a spy leak. "The book is fraught, forensic, lyrical, and fierce, at long last searching the soul of the modern Secret Intelligence Service itself. It’s a superb and fitting final novel," said his youngest son Nick Cornwell, a novelist who writes under the pen name of Nick Harkaway. "This is the authentic le Carré, telling one more story."

Since my late mother was a librarian, I'm rather pleased to see Janet Rudolph's list of Library/Librarian Mysteries over at the Mystery Fanfare blog.

Nick Pirog, bestselling author of the Thomas Prescott series, the 3:00 a.m. series, and The Speed of Souls, applied the Page 69 Test to his new thriller, Jungle Up.

Art thieves have a new reason to look over their shoulder. Interpol’s new ID-Art app allows amateur sleuths, collectors, and dealers to access the international organization’s database of 52,000 stolen artworks. This official catalogue runs the gamut from looted antiquities to the subjects of well-known heists, such as Vincent van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884), which was stolen from a Netherlands museum during Covid-19 lockdown.

I didn't know that book nook shelf inserts were a thing, but apparently they are; and some of them are actually pretty clever.

This sounds like it came right out of a crime caper novel: A man suspected of burglarizing a Milwaukee bakery has been arrested after the owners of the establishment cooked up a scheme to identify the thief by printing his image on their sugar cookies.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Food Shopping in a Time of Pandemic" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, Megan Abbott chatted with CrimeReads about her writing process, making "weird" choices, and her Diet Coke habit; and Author Interviews spoke with Linda L. Richards about her new novel, Endings, which follows a woman who reinvents herself as a killer for hire.

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Dagger Delights

The Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger Awards, the premier literary crime-writing awards in the United Kingdom, announced this year's shortlists. There are four Daggers which are not nominated by publishers: the Debut Dagger for unpublished works; the Dagger in the Library, nominated by librarians; the Publishers’ Dagger, nominated by an industry committee; and the Diamond Dagger for a lifetime contribution to crime writing, nominated by CWA members. Winners in all categories will be announced in a virtual live ceremony on Thursday, July 1. Here are the finalists:

CWA GOLD DAGGER

S A Cosby: Blacktop Wasteland (Headline, Headline Publishing Group)
Ben Creed: City of Ghosts (Welbeck Fiction, Welbeck Publishing Group)
Nicci French: House of Correction (Simon & Schuster)
Robert Galbraith: Troubled Blood (Sphere, Little, Brown Book Group)
Elly Griffiths: The Postscript Murders (Quercus)
Thomas Mullen: Midnight Atlanta (Little, Brown, Little, Brown Book Group)
Chris Whitaker: We Begin at the End (Zaffre, Bonnier)

CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

Robert Galbraith: Troubled Blood (Sphere, Little, Brown Book Group)
Michael Robotham: When She Was Good (Sphere, Little, Brown Book Group)
Catherine Ryan Howard: The Nothing Man (Atlantic Books)
Stuart Turton: The Devil and the Dark Water (Raven Books, Bloomsbury Publishing)
Ruth Ware: One by One (Vintage, Harvill Secker)
Chris Whitaker: We Begin at the End (Zaffre, Bonnier Books UK)

CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: The Creak on the Stairs (Orenda), Translator: Victoria Cribb
Ben Creed: City of Ghosts (Welbeck Publishing)
Egan Hughes: The One That Got Away (Sphere, Little, Brown Book Group)
S W Kane: The Bone Jar (Thomas & Mercer, Amazon Publishing)
Stephen Spotswood: Fortune Favours the Dead (Wildfire, Headline)
John Vercher: Three-Fifths (Pushkin Press)

CWA SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER

John Banville: Snow (Faber)
Vaseem Khan: Midnight at Malabar House (Hodder & Stoughton)
Chris Lloyd: The Unwanted Dead (Orion Fiction, The Orion Publishing Group)
Michael Russell: The City Under Siege (Constable, Little, Brown Book Group)
David Stafford: Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons (Allison & Busby)
Ovidia Yu: The Mimosa Tree Mystery (Constable, Little, Brown Book Group)

CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

Sue Black: Written in Bone (Doubleday, Penguin)
Becky Cooper: We Keep the Dead Close (William Heinemann, Penguin)
Andrew Harding: These Are Not Gentle People (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Debora Harding: Dancing with the Octopus (Profile Books Limited)
Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
Ben MacIntyre: Agent Sonya (Viking, Penguin)

CWA CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER

Fredrik Backman: Anxious People, translated by Neil Smith (Michael Joseph, Penguin)
Roxanne Bouchard: The Coral Bride, translated by David Warriner (Orenda Books)
Yun Ko-eun: The Disaster Tourist, translated by Lizzie Buehler (Serpent's Tail)
D A Mishani: Three, translated by Jessica Cohen (Riverrun, Hachette Book Group)
Mikael Niemi: To Cook a Bear, translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Agnes Ravatn: The Seven Doors, translated by Rosie Hedger (Orenda Books)

CWA SHORT STORY DAGGER

Robert Scragg: ‘A Dog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas’ in Afraid of the Christmas Lights, edited by Miranda Jewess (Criminal Minds Group)
Elle Croft: ‘Deathbed’ in Afraid of the Light, edited by Robert Scragg & Various (Criminal Minds Group)
Dominic Nolan: ‘Daddy Dearest’ in Afraid of the Light, edited by Robert Scragg & Various (Criminal Minds Group)
Victoria Selman: ‘Hunted’ in Afraid of the Christmas Lights, edited by Miranda Jewess (Criminal Minds Group)
Clare Mackintosh: ‘Monsters’ in First Edition: Celebrating 21 Years of Goldsboro Books (The Dome Press)
James Delargy: ‘Planting Nan’ in Afraid of the Light, edited by Robert Scragg & Various (Criminal Minds Group)

CWA PUBLISHERS DAGGER

Faber & Faber
Head of Zeus
Michael Joseph
No Exit Press
Raven 
Viper

CWA DEBUT DAGGER

Ashley Harrison – The Looking Glass Spy
Fiona McPhillips – Underwater
Biba Pearce – Rough Justice
Hannah Redding – Deception
Edward Regenye – Lightfoot
Jennifer Wilson O’Raghallaigh – Mandatory Reporting

CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

C L Taylor
Peter May
Lisa Jewell
James Oswald
Denise Mina
LJ Ross

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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

Bruce Willis and John Travolta are teaming up for the first time since Pulp Fiction in the Chuck Russell-directed action film, Paradise City. Willis plays renegade bounty hunter, Ryan Swan, who must carve his way through the Hawaiian crime world to wreak vengeance on the kingpin who murdered his father (played by Travolta). Deadline noted that the project is billed as "being similar to Miami Vice but with bounty hunters instead of cops." Thai actress and model, Praya Lundberg, has landed the lead female role.

Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, and Kathryn Hahn are set to join Daniel Craig in the next Knives Out installment from Netflix. Dave Bautista was also recently cast, joining Craig who is reprising the role of super sleuth Benoit Blanc. Rian Johnson is back to write and direct the pic and will produce with his partner Ram Bergman. Plot details for the sequel are unknown at this time, other then Craig’s Blanc returning to solve another mystery revolving around a large cast of suspects. It is also unknown who Norton, Bautista, Monáe, and Hahn will be playing in the project.

Russell Crowe has committed to star in Poker Face, a Gary Fleder-directed thriller. The film has Crowe playing Jake, a tech billionaire who gathers his childhood friends to his Miami estate for what turns into a high stakes game of poker. Those friends have a love-hate relationship with the host, a master game-player/planner who has concocted an elaborate scheme designed to bring a certain justice to all of them. However, Jake finds himself re-thinking his strategy when his Miami mansion is overtaken by a dangerous home invader whose previous jobs have all ended in murder and arson.

Focus Features has set The Northman for release in April 2022. The film is a Viking revenge drama directed by Robert Eggers that stars Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Björk, the Icelandic singer who is appearing in her first film since 2005. It was shot in Iceland and is described as an "epic revenge thriller" that explores how far a Viking prince will go to seek justice for his murdered father.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Working Title Television has nabbed rights to Stacey Abrams’s new novel, While Justice Sleeps, to adapt as a television series. The legal thriller follows Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, who is doing her best to excel in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Wynn – the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases – has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Wynn has left her with power of attorney and instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian.

Netflix and Legendary Productions are moving forward with a sequel to Enola Holmes, and Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill are set to reprise their roles as Enola and Sherlock Holmes. Harry Bradbeer is returning to direct, with Jack Thorne, who penned the first, writing the script for the sequel. The film is based on Nancy Springer’s Edgar Award-nominated book series, The Enola Holmes Mysteries, which comprises six books in total.

Peacock is back for more of the dramedy private eye series, Psych, ordering a third movie based on the cult favorite USA series. Psych 3: This Is Gus will be the second film to be available on the NBCUniversal-backed streaming service. In preparation for a shotgun wedding before the birth of Baby Guster, Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) and Groomzilla Gus (Dulé Hill) go rogue in an attempt to track down Selene’s (Jazmyn Simon) estranged husband, as Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) grapples with the future of his career.

24's Kiefer Sutherland will play a private spy in his latest TV series in an untitled espionage drama that has been ordered by Paramount+. It is Sutherland’s latest small-screen role after a brief stint on Quibi’s The Fugitive, which premiered on the short-lived shortform service last August. The series stars Sutherland as private espionage operative, James Weir, 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.

In more Paramount+ news, CBS announced that the dramas SEAL Team and Clarice will be moving from CBS to the streaming service in their next seasons. Clarice, based on the character from The Silence of the Lambs by author Thomas Harris, will move to Paramount+ beginning with its upcoming second season. SEAL Team, currently in its 4th season, will kick off season 5 in the fall with a run of episodes aired on CBS, before making the jump to Paramount+.

CBS also announced it is cancelling All Rise after two seasons. All Rise followed the chaotic, hopeful, and sometimes absurd lives of its judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, as they work with bailiffs, clerks, and cops to get justice for the people of Los Angeles amidst a flawed legal process. It starred Simone Missick as Judge Lola Carmichael.

ITV announced lead casting for the adaptation of Val McDermid’s DS Karen Pirie series (based on the author's first Pirie novel, The Distant Echo). Outlander actress, Lauren Lyle, will play Pirie, who is tasked with reopening an historic murder investigation that has been the subject of a provocative true crime podcast.

Betty Gilpin and Dan Stevens have joined the cast of Starz’s upcoming Watergate series, Gaslit. Based on Slate’s "Slow Burn" podcast, Gaslit stars Sean Penn as Richard Nixon’s loyal attorney general, John Mitchell, with Julia Roberts playing Mitchell’s Arkansan socialite wife, Martha. Gilpin and Stevens will play the infamous couple, Mo and John Dean, the young duo who were wrapped up in the political scandal while John was serving as a White House lawyer under the Nixon administration. Also joining the cast as series regulars are Shea Whigham as G. Gordon Liddy and Darby Camp as Marty Mitchell.

Brian Van Holt has been tapped for a key role opposite Kate McKinnon’s Carole Baskin and John Cameron Mitchell’s Joe "Exotic" Schreibvogel in Joe Exotic (working title), Peacock’s limited series based on the Wondery podcast. Holt will play John Reinke, the zoo manager at Joe’s (Mitchell) zoo, a loyal worker and friend until things go too far.

Amazon announced that the seventh and final season of the acclaimed cop drama, Bosch, will launch all eight episodes on Amazon Prime June 25. The series is based on the novels by Michael Connelly and stars Titus Welliver as Detective Harry Bosch.

ABC cancelled the legal drama, For Life, but Sony Pictures TV, which co-produces the show with ABC Signature, said they will shop the series to other buyers including Hulu. The series was inspired by the life of Isaac Wright Jr., who was wrongfully convicted as a drug kingpin but got his conviction overturned while in prison and became a licensed attorney. The show centers on an imprisoned man, Aaron Wallace (played by Nicholas Pinnock), who becomes a lawyer litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.

Five episodes into its freshman run, ABC’s Katey Sagal-starring drama Rebel has also been cancelled. Inspired by the life of activist Erin Brockovich, the series centers on Annie "Rebel" Bello (Sagal), a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree. She’s a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves.

ABC also took a pass on the crime drama pilot, Acts of Crime, written and directed by Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. The project was described as "a unique spin on the crime procedural," although no other details had been revealed.

However, ABC has picked up a fourth season of cop drama, The Rookie. Created by Alexi Hawley, The Rookie stars Nathan Fillion as John Nolan, the oldest rookie at the Los Angeles Police Department.

NBC has given a second-season order to Law & Order: Organized Crime, the series that brought Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler character back to the venerable franchise for the first time in 10 years. The show revolves around the NYPD organized crime unit led by Stabler, with Danielle Moné Truitt, Tamara Taylor, Ainsley Seiger, and Dylan McDermott also starring.

Fox has ordered the anthology series, Accused, from Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, and Alex Shore, the minds behind House and 24. The project is based on the BBC’s BAFTA-winning crime anthology, where each episode opens in a courtroom, with the accused not knowing their crime or how they ended up on trial, and is told from the defendant’s point of view.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Gar Anthony Haywood, author of In Things Unseen, was interviewed by Robert Justice on the Crime Writers of Color podcast.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast features the first chapter of the mystery novel, In Dog We Trust, by Neil Plakcy, as read by actor Thomas Nance.

Suspense Radio welcomed Phillip Margolin to the show for the first time to talk about his latest book, A Matter of Life and Death.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Carter Wilson, author of seven critically acclaimed, standalone psychological thrillers, including his latest, The Dead Husband.

P. J. Vernon was the featured guest on Queer Writers of Crime. Called a "rising star thriller writer" by Library Journal, Vernon's debut, When You Find Me, was both an Audible Plus #1 Listen and an Associated Press Top Ten U.S. Audiobook.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Abir Mukherjee about his award-winning historical Wyndham and Banerjee series, his podcast (The Red Hot Chili Writers), tolerance, laziness, and a little bit of both Scottish and British history.

My Favorite Detective Stories sat down virtually with Lisa Gray, who previously worked as the Chief Scottish Football Writer at the Press Association and books columnist at the Daily Record Saturday Magazine. Her debut novel, Thin Air, was a besteseller, with the follow-up novel, Bad Memory, long-listed for the McIlvanney Prize.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, Adam Richardson, talked about processing a crime scene in a car when it's raining; who works a homicide case involving a white-collar crime suspect; strategies for writers to engage with cops about writing; and details about the two new courses he's launching this summer.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club discussed The Last Tea Bowl Thief by Jonelle Patrick.

Edgar Award Winner, Rosalie Knecht, talked to Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about her new novel, Who is Vera Kelly; New York in the 60s; CIA and US foreign policy; and noir fiction.

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Quote of the Week

         Related StoriesQuote of the Week 

FFB: The Summer School Mystery

Josephine Bell is the pen name of Doris Collier Ball (1897-1987), who became a University College Hospital of London physician and married fellow doctor Norman Dyer Ball. After her husband died in a car accident in 1936, the tragedy pushed Bell to try her hand at writing, although she also maintained her medical practice until the age of 57. She continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in over forty novels and several short stories, including Amy Tupper, Dr. Henry Frost and Dr. David Wintingham. She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and a member of the Detection Club.



It's the idealistic Dr. David Wintringham who is featured in Bell's novel from 1950, The Summer School Mystery. The school in the title refers to the summer music school at Falconbury, which proves to be more eventful than any of the students or lecturers could have imagined. The school is in the country, but many of the pupils and their instructors have traveled from the Royal School of Music in London. Derek Fox and his fiancée Belinda Power fail to turn up on time and nobody knows where they are. When the body of Belinda is discovered inside one of her own timpani, suspicion falls on Derek, who turns to Dr. Wintringham for help. But Derek is not forthcoming with information leaving David with little to go on. What is Derek hiding? And who killed Belinda if Derek is innocent?



It's been said that Bell's fiction marks a transition from British Golden Age style, in a society facing prewar industrial depression, wartime restrictions, and postwar austerity at the time that Bell began writing, which also served as the backdrop in many of her books. Dr. Wintringham is the type of professional working-man sleuth featured in such works, a physician at Research Hospital in London, who is married with four children and a frequent consultant to his friend Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard. Wintringham appeared in 18 novels and proved his skill at spotting incorrect medical diagnoses as well as clues left at crime scenes.



Bell was popular in her native England, but her novels didn't cross the Pond until 1955. Black Dagger Crime has brought back a few of her novels in print over the past several years, but in general, her books aren't easy to find.

          

Mystery Melange

This year's Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, which celebrates the work of crime and thriller writers who are from or whose work celebrates the North East region of the UK, has been won by writer Robert Scragg for his novel, Helix. The judges took the unprecedented decision to also formally award Newcastle author Barbara Scott Emmett with the award's first ever runners-up prize, for her submission, Dog Leap Stairs.

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance has announced the slate of finalists for the 2021 Maine Literary Awards. The nominees for the Book Award for Crime Fiction include Claire Ackroyd for Murder in the Maple Woods; Bruce Robert Coffin for Within Plain Sight; and Barbara Ross for Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door.

After a year’s hiatus, the Wilbur Smith Award for Best Published Adventure Novel award has returned with a 12-strong longlist. The Prize is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English, and this year the award covers the best adventure fiction published between May 1, 2020 and April 30, 2021. Six titles will be selected by a panel of librarians and library staff for a shortlist to be announced on May 20, with the winner announced September 8. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Joffe Books, in conjunction with bestselling crime writer Dorothy Koomson and literary agent Susan Yearwood, is launching a new writing prize for unagented crime fiction writers of color to turn their unpublished manuscripts into bestsellers. The winner will receive a two-book publishing contract with Joffe Books. Entrants are invited to submit their full-length manuscript, written in English, along with a synopsis of the book and author biography, to prize@joffebooks.com before the closing date of September 30. (HT to Shots Magazine)

New editions of five hardboiled detective novels by Chester Himes, featuring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, have been released as a set of Penguin Classics. As Crime Fiction Lover notes, Himes was an American crime fiction genius who is still underappreciated, and it's hard not to conclude that over the years racism has played a part in African-American Himes not being accorded the same status as Chandler and Hammett.

During the Covid-19 era, there has been a lot of sad news in the book world, especially with many bookstores having to close. So it's especially cheering to hear that there's a new indie bookstore that opened in Berlin, Pennsylvania, in the middle of the pandemic:  Poe's New & Used Bookstore, which specializes in fantasy and mystery titles (as you might gather from the name). The building also has space for local artists and crafters to sell their products, and the owners hope to have events such as poetry nights, literary events and fun community events. They also recently announced the Poe's Rainbow Grant for Young Writers. (HT to Shelf Awareness)

Martin Edwards to crime writer, Annabel Donald, who passed away recently at the age of 76. Donald created a female TV researcher and detective called Alex Tanner in her Notting Hill series, beginning with An Uncommon Murder in 1992.

Writing for CrimeReads, Otto Penzler profiled Mary Roberts Rinehart, "America's answer to Agatha Christie." One of the mystery writers from Golden Age (the years between the two World Wars), Rinehart made the list of top ten bestselling books for each year in the 1920s five times, a feat matched only by Sinclair Lewis during that same period.

A real-life crime worthy of a mystery novel: a man in Tennessee allegedly paid a hitman with bitcoin to murder his wife (and even the BBC is involved).

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Finis" by Rena J. Worley.

In the Q&A roundup, Indie Crime Scene interviewed J. Luke Bennecke, whose newly released novel Waterborne is set during a pandemic - but was written two years ago; NPR spoke with Stacey Abrams about how a constitutional quirk inspired ner new thriller, While Justice Sleeps; author Amy Rivers talked about craft and her new thriller, Complicit, with the Dark Phantom blog; and Hank Phillippi Ryan offered up some writing advice in a chat with Keri-Rae Barnum.

         Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Oscar-nominated actor, Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), is making her feature directing debut with the psychological thriller, Pale Horse, scheduled to shoot this fall. Set in the Pacific Northwest, Pale Horse follows Naia, an esteemed, yet reclusive African-American YA book author who is living with MS. When Naia decides to shelter the man who escaped captivity with her long-missing brother, she finds herself caught up in a diabolical mystery.

According to Deadline, Warner Bros won a "wild spec auction" for the Tyler Marceca script, Stay Frosty, with Idris Elba attached to star and Sam Hargrave to direct. The story follows a man who has to figure out who wants him dead and why after miraculously surviving a bullet to the head. He needs to stop the assassin while still making it back home in time to spend Christmas with his son. As Deadline notes, it gives Elba a franchise play in a vehicle that is a bit of a John Wick-type character in a throwback to ’80s high-action Christmas movies that include Die Hard and Lethal Weapon.

Production has begun in Puerto Rico on Emmett/Furla Films's thriller, The Fortress, with Jesse Metcalfe, Bruce Willis, Chad Michael Murray, and Kelly Greyson starring for director Cullen Bressack. The franchise has been constructed as a trilogy, with the second and third installments shooting back-to-back. The story was written by Alan Horsnail and revolves around a top-secret resort for retired U.S. intelligence officers. A group of criminals led by Balzary (Murray) breach the compound, hellbent on revenge on Robert (Willis), forcing the retired officer and his son (Metcalfe) to save the day.





Blair Underwood (Quantico) is set to direct, produce, and star in Viral, an indie thriller from York Films. Underwood plays Andrew, who falls into paranoia after his wife goes missing. The only way out of the self-destructive cycle seems to be through his new girlfriend Emilia, but she has her own psychological trauma to deal with. Are they strong enough to get past their own nightmares and mental illnesses to find true happiness together? The film originally was set to shoot last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.

Blake Lively (The Rhythm Section) is set to star in and produce the Netflix original film, Lady Killer, based on the Dark Horse Comic of the same name, with Oscar winner Diablo Cody writing the screenplay adaptation. Lively will play Josie Schuller, who gives every appearance of being the perfect 1950 housewife but who leads a secret live as a trained killer for hire when she’s not catering to her family’s needs.

Ben Mendelsohn is set to star opposite Daisy Ridley in Neil Burger’s upcoming psychological thriller, The Marsh King’s Daughter, based on Karen Dionne’s thriller of the same name. Mendelsohn will play Jacob Holbrook, the infamous "Marsh King," who years ago kept his young daughter, Helena, and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. After a lifetime of trying to escape her past, the now grown Helena (Ridley) is forced to face her demons when her father unexpectedly returns.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

MRC Television and Johnson and Bergman’s T-Street banner have optioned Don Winslow’s bestselling debut novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, the first in a five-book series that will be developed for the small screen. Bad Education director, Cory Finley, will write, direct and executive produce, and Winslow will also serve as an executive producer. Winslow was a private detective when he wrote that first novel, long before his bestselling The Cartel trilogy (in production at Fox) or The Force (in production at 20th Century Studios). A Cool Breeze on the Underground introduces Neal Carey as he becomes a private investigator working for a covert New England organization called The Bank, which caters to exclusive wealthy clients. He’s assigned to find the rebellious teen daughter of a prominent senator who has gone underground in the violent London punk scene, rife with crime, drugs and danger.

NBC has picked up another Law & Order spinoff, this time going inside a criminal defense firm. Titled Law & Order: For the Defense, the new series will "take an unbiased look inside a criminal defense firm." Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside franchise boss Dick Wolf. For the Defense joins Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has been renewed through Season 24, and the most recent addition to the franchise, Law & Order: Organized Crime, which marked longtime SVU star Christopher Meloni’s return after ten years away from the show.

Dick Wolf is also moving into half-hour drama with his latest series set at Amazon’s IMDb TV. Deadline reported that the free streaming service has ordered On Call, which follows a pair of police officers on patrol in Long Beach, CA. Each episode will track the duo as they respond to a new radio call, arriving on the scene to resolve an incident.

Elizabeth Olsen will play infamous Texas ax murderer, Candy Montgomery, in a limited series on HBO Max. Love and Death, written by David E. Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, is the second streaming limited series project to revolve around Montgomery, who killed her church-going friend with an ax in the 1980s. (Elisabeth Moss is playing Candy in a Hulu series from Robin Veith with Nick Antosca). The HBO Max version is based on the book, Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, and a collection of articles from Texas Monthly.

The Crown star, Claire Foy, is set to lead a new thriller from streamer BritBox U.K. The eight-part thriller, Marlow, centers on feuding families the Marlows and the Wyatts, who have existed in the "Edgelands" of the Thames Estuary for centuries. Foy stars as Evie Wyatt, who was born and bred in the Estuary and returns to the Edgelands — the place where she lost her father to a firestorm 15 years ago — in search of answers. However, drawn back into conflict with the Marlow clan, Evie finds herself in a battle with its ageing patriarch, Tom Marlow.

Fox has ordered its immigration/mob-crime drama pilot, The Cleaning Lady, to series for the 2021-22 season. The show stars Elodie Yung as a whip-smart doctor who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her ailing son. But when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she becomes a cleaning lady for the mob and starts playing the game by her own rules.

USA Network has firmed up the cast for its upcoming Nash Bridges revival, which will return as a two-hour movie with stars Don Johnson (Nash Bridges), Cheech Marin (Joe Dominguez) and Jeff Perry (Harvey Leek) reprising their roles. Joining them are new cast members Diarra Kilpatrick, Bonnie Somerville, Joe Dinicol, Alexia Garcia, Angela Ko, and Paul James. The movie brings Johnson and Marin back together as elite investigators for the San Francisco Police Department Special Investigations Unit.

The Irregulars has been canceled by Netflix after one season, which is surprising considering it came in at No. 1 on Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD rankings the week after it premiered. Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and set in Victorian London, "The Irregulars" follows a gang of troubled street teens who are manipulated into solving crimes for "the sinister Doctor Watson and his mysterious business partner, the elusive Sherlock Holmes." As the crimes take on a horrifying supernatural edge and a dark power emerges, it’ll be up to the Irregulars to come together to save not only London but the entire world.

ABC renewed the freshman drama, Big Sky, for a second season. The series, which is based on The Highway series of books by C.J. Box, stars Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury. Bunbury plays Cassie Dewell, a private investigator who runs the Dewell & Hoyt agency, while Winnick plays Jenny Hoyt, an ex-cop-turned-private investigator who, despite being separated from her husband (briefly played by Ryan Phillippe), still does freelance work for the agency. The pair have joined forces to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana.

The CW network renewed Kung Fu for a second season. The series follows a young Chinese American woman, Nicky Shen (played by Olivia Liang), whose quarter-life crisis causes her to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to San Francisco, she finds her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption, and her own parents Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Shen relies on friends, her martial arts skills, and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor Pei-Ling (Vanessa Kai) and is now targeting her.

ITV crime drama, Grace, starring John Simm, has been renewed for season two following the broadcast of just one episode. The drama debuted earlier this year with a feature-length episode, and the positive response was enough to warrant a commission for season two. The first episode, based on Peter James’s Roy Grace books, debuted back in March this year, featuring Simm (Doctor Who and Life on Mars) leading the cast as the titular Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.

Chad Rook is set for a recurring role in Joe Pickett, Spectrum Originals’s drama series based on C.J. Box’s bestselling novels. Joe Pickett follows a game warden (Michael Dormann) and his family as they navigate the changing political and socio-economic climate in a small rural town in Wyoming. Surrounded by rich history and vast wildlife, the township hides decades of schemes and secrets that are yet to be uncovered. Rook will play Deputy McLanahan.

Jamie McShane is joining CBS’s CSI: Vegas, a sequel to the mothership CSI series, in a recurring role. Additionally, Paul Guilfoyle, who played Jim Brass on the original, will return to reprise his role in the sequel series, appearing in two episodes. The sequel series opens a new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City. McShane will play Anson Wix, a civil attorney.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Suspense Radio welcomed back bestselling author J.A. Jance to talk about her latest book, Missing and Endangered.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast features the short story "Not a Penny More" (Strand magazine) written by Jon Land and read by actor Larry Mattox.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Mariah Fredericks about Death of a Showman, the fourth installment of her series featuring lady’s maid Jane Prescott.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Mia P. Manansala, a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. Her debut novel, Arsenic and Adobo, was released May 4 and is the first in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club highlighted three Hispanic mystery authors.

Literature professor, Tammy Bird, stopped by Queer Writers of Crime to chat about her gritty suspense and thriller stories including her latest novel, The Book of Promises, set in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Matt Fitzpatrick stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his Justin McGee series.

Writers Detective Bureau was back from a hiatus with host, Adam Richardson, interviewing Marc Cameron about his career in the US Marshals Service, advice for a successful writing career, and details on his new book, Bone Rattle.





The Read or Dead podcast looked at crime novels that feature dinner parties gone wrong.

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Quote of the Week

          

FFB: Monkey Puzzle

Paula Gosling was born Paula Osius in 1939, the daughter of an inventor in Detroit, Michigan. She tried her hand at poetry at Wayne State University and later at a Detroit advertising agency, but wasn't happy. In 1964, she headed to England in search of romance, intrigue and adventure, eventually meeting her husband, Christopher Gosling, whom she married in 1968.



Although divorced after only nine years of marriage, she kept the Gosling surname as she started writing her books. Perhaps she felt she owed him her literary start, because it was loneliness when he was away working that led her to start writing to pass the time. The result was A Running Duck in 1974, which won the CWA's John Creasey Award for the best first novel of the year and was named in 1990 as one of the CWA's Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.



Many books followed, mostly standalones at first, including one paranormal book penned under the name Ainslie Skinner. Eventually she created her first series, with Detective Chief Inspector Luke Abbot, and another, the Blackwater Bay series, she set near the Great Lakes with Sheriff Matt Gabriel as protagonist. A third series, which she also set in the U.S., was launched in 1985 with Monkey Puzzle, a police procedural centered around homicide Lieutenant Jack Stryker, which won the 1985 CWA Gold Dagger Award.



Money Puzzle takes place primarily around Grantham University in Ohio, when one of the English professors, Aiken Adamson, is murdered and his tongue cut out. The professor was despised by all of his colleagues for collecting and hoarding secrets about them like the human equivalent of a thieving magpie. Hours before his death, all of the department members were with Adamson at a sherry reception, giving each of them opportunity for murder, in addition to the various motives they had—personal and professional rivalries, envy, sexual intrigue and blackmail.



As Detective Stryker digs deeper into the case, he realizes he has secret ties of his own to one of the professors, Kate Trevorne and starts to fall for her, despite the fact her boyfriend and fellow English prof is the prime suspect. Although at first, the murder is considered a crime of passion (the victim was a homosexual), the case soon takes a different turn when the Chairman of the Department is attacked and his ear cut off. Stryker, recovering from pneumonia, is doggedly determined to nail the culprit no matter what it takes, but when Kate is attacked and the murderer attempts to gouge out one of her eyes, the case becomes personal.



Gosling does a good job of portraying the sometimes cut-throat world of academia with its petty squabbles, jockeying for position and inter-departmental feuds. The characters are also relatively well drawn, although some might find a few cliches that date the book, i.e., the sleazy homosexual (complete with mirrors on the ceiling), an alcoholic Vietnam vet and a cop-hating young professor who participated in campus riots in the 70s. The writing carries you along at a suspenseful clip, but it can also show hints of Gosling's poetry background, like this excerpt following a snowfall:

He loved the city like this, hushed and briefly upended in it headlong run to destruction, mantled with a transient beauty that hid all the dirt and slowed all the hate. In two miles he passed only four cars, and the drivers smiled as they edged past one another in the rutted, twinkling streets. The snow made them momentary partners in adversity, witnesses of that fleeting moment in time when nobody had spoiled anything. Yet.

As a side note, Gosling's novel A Running Duck, written in 1974 (also published as Fair Game), was adapted into two separate films, one starring Sylvester Stallone, titled Cobra, and the second starring Cindy Crawford, titled Fair Game. Unfortunately, like a lot of books-to-film, the results were less than Oscar-worthy; the Stallone version was nominated for a Razzie in 1986 for worst screenplay and Metacritic listed the Cindy Crawford flick as one of its five worst movies based on a novel.



Not that Gosling was particularly worried. In a People interview, she noted she had optioned the film to Warner Bros, for a "mid-five-figure" sum and almost forgotten about it when a friend of her son's alerted her to the fact Gosling's name was in the Stallone film' credits. At the time, she said "I haven't really taken it in yet. It's all very exciting."