B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 96

Quote of the Week

          

FFB: Death and the Sky Above

Paul Winterton (1908-2001), the son of a journalist and member of Parliament, was educated at the London School of Economics and London University and received his B.Sc. in political science and economics in 1928. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years and worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter and foreign correspondent. He served in the Moscow office from 1942 to 1945, where he was the correspondent of the BBC's Overseas Service.



After the war, he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than fifty books and numerous short stories under the pen names of Roger Bax and Paul Somers, although the majority were published under his Andrew Garve pseudonym. His work, translated into over twenty languages and adapted for TV, included varied backgrounds from his many travels such as Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry. Dr. Robin Winks, Yale historian and an expert on detective fiction, once wrote ''Garve's sense of place is uncanny."



Garve was also known for never repeating a plot, and 1953's Death and the Sky Above follows the plight of Charles Hilary, the henpecked husband of the bitter, alcoholic and vindictive Louise who won't grant Charles the divorce he wants so he can be free of his marital prison. One fateful day, he leaves for a cricket match and makes plans to be with Kathryn Forrester, a successful news reporter who loves Charles so much she's willing to leave her career and move to France to be with him.



But when Louise is found murdered and Charles' many letters pleading for a divorce are discovered, he's arrested for her murder and scheduled to be executed by hanging. A prison fire enables him to escape with Kathryn, but in their attempt to cross the Channel, their boat capsizes and Charles is recaptured. Resourceful journalist Kathryn works feverishly to prove his innocence as the clock ticks away toward her lover's last day on Earth, but no one will listen...



Several of Garve's novels were adapted for the screen, including Megstone Plot, made into the 1959 movie A Touch of Larceny starring James Mason and George Sanders, and one of the author's pseudonymous Roger Bax books became the 1953 movie Never Let Me Go with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney. Death and the Sky Above was made into an installment of NBC's "Kraft Mystery Theater" in December 1961 starring Peter Williams, Petra Davies, and Ursula Howells and directed by Robert Lynn.



Winterton/Garve also served the crime fiction community in another important role, as a founding member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers' Association, along with Elizabeth Ferrars.

          

Mystery Melange

Europe's venerable crime writing convention, Crimefest, announced the shortlists for its annual book awards. The in-person event was rescheduled for May 12-15, 2022, but organizers decided the annual awards must go on. The categories feature the Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award, the winner of which receives a £1,000 prize, with a further £1,000 prize also awarded to the Audible Sounds of Crime Award, sponsored by Audible. Other categories include the H.R.F Keating Award for best 2020 biography or critical book related to crime fiction; The Last Laugh Award for best 2020 humorous crime novel; the eDunnit Award for best 2020 crime ebook; Best Crime Novel for Children (ages 8-12); and Best Crime Novel for Young Adults (ages 12-16). Shots Magazine has a roundup and list of all the finalists, with winners to be announced online in May or June.

The Portland, Oregon-based fan group, Friends of Mystery, recently announced the winner of this year's Spotted Owl Award, given annually to what its members determine is the "best mystery written by an author whose primary residence is in the Pacific Northwest." The Last Agent by Robert Dugoni came out on top, and Dugoni (A Cold Trail) was also in a tie for second place with Percentages of Guilt by Michael Niemann. The Rap Sheet blog has a listing of all the other finalists.

Writers' Police Academy Online will present the workshop, "Forensic Psychiatry, Murder, LAPD Lipstick, and Memorable Characters," on April 24, featuring Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels; former LAPD Senior Lead Officer, Kathy Bennett; former detective sergeant and award-winning author, Bruce Robert Coffin; and perinatal psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman. Registration is open, and you can follow this link to reserve your spot at this day-long seminar. Registration is also open for the Writers' Police Academy virtual Murder Con, August 6-7, and each registered attendee will receive a Sirchie fingerprint kit to be used during an interactive class (delivered to your home in advance).

A new online exhibition from the University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press is titled "Agatha Christie's Poirot" and draws from collections of materials on the iconic Belgian detective. It's presented in conjunction with the Resident Ensemble Players' radio productions of Christie's "King of Clubs" (freely available until May 21) and "The Cornish Mystery" (freely available starting April 23). (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

The magazine Narratively featured a profile of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman ever to earn a living writing...who was also a spy. She traveled to the Low Countries and Suriname on missions for King Charles II, and she took up writing to support herself because he never paid her. She later went on to become one of Restoration London’s most popular, and most controversial, playwrights and poets.

Tasha Alexander, author of the New York Times bestselling Lady Emily mystery series (and the daughter of two philosophy professors), applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Dark Heart of Florence, the 15th Lady Emily mystery.

Who knew that reading "Bullet Journals" was a thing?

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "The Thief Came In" by Michael A. Arnzen.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with attorney turned author Adam Mitzner about his new domestic thriller, The Perfect Marriage; and the New York Times spoke with Paula Mcclain, about her first suspense novel, When the Stars Go Dark, which forced her to face her own demons.

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Author R&R with Michael Kaufman

Photo credit: Paola Kudacki

Michael Kaufman is the author of three novels but over the past decades his focus has been on engaging men to support women’s rights, end violence against women, and positively transform the lives of men. His work as an adviser, educator, and activist with the United Nations, governments, women’s organizations, NGOs, universities, companies and trade unions has taken him to fifty countries. He is the author of The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution. His first mystery, The Last Exit, came out in January. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was named number four in the “22 greatest mysteries and thrillers of 2021” by the influential PopSugar.com.

The Last Exit is the first of the Jen B. Lu series. It’s Washington, DC. 2033. Bad things are happening in the nation's capital, but, then again, you just might say that about the last few years. Climate change is hitting hard, fires are burning, unemployment is high, and a longevity treatment is only available to the very rich. Enter resourceful police detective, Jen B. Lu, and her 'partner', Chandler, an experimental SIM implant tucked into her brain. He's a wannabe tough guy, with a sense of humor and his own ideas about solving crimes. Jen catches wind of a counterfeit version of the longevity drug and the bizarre outbreak of people aging almost overnight. Soon, she puts her own life on the line to stop the people pushing this. The Last Exit is true crossover: a police procedural; a near-future mystery; a novel of political intrigue; a story of personal heroism and change. And page-turning fun.

Michael stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching his new mystery:

How do you research a mystery set twelve years in the future? Given, as the lame joke goes, that my time machine was in the shop, I did what any writer would do: I realized that I was actually writing about the present. My shift into the future was merely so I could sharpen my focus on things that are already happening around us. It would allow me to create drama, excitement and fun by throwing my protagonist, Jen B. Lu, into a situation that doesn’t yet exist but feels completely familiar and possible.

I did not want to write a grim, dystopian future. In part, I’ve gotten sick of those—you know, the utter hopelessness; the fog-bound, puddled streets reflecting neon; the total decimation by war or dictators or climate change. And in part because I really feel that the best way to confront the very real problems that we face—climate change, stark economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, political dysfunction, war, and the incursion of AI and the virtual world into our lives—is by sensing that we as humans can create positive alternatives.

One funny outcome of extrapolating from the present is that it recently led a movie producer to ask me if I wrote or rewrote it during 2020. After all, there’s a virus affecting millions; there are fires sending smoke into a major city; and there is, as part of the backstory, an uprising similar to Black Lives Matter. I had to assure him that it was written in 2018 and 2019.  And, in fact, I actually felt I had to change one thing as I wrote:  In the opening pages, Washington DC is filled with smoke from the Great Shenandoah Blaze. In an early draft, I wrote, “Jen slipped on her N95.”  When I was revising it in late 2019, I thought few readers will know what the hell an N95 is. So I edited it to make it clear she was putting on a mask. How things have changed in the past year.

There’s that old saw that mysteries are plot driven. Up to a point that’s true and, writing The Last Exit (and now its first sequel), I love the discipline that comes with that. There is no room (as there is in a straight-ahead novel) for page long, gorgeous descriptions or for things to happen just because they’re fun or cool. Things need to drive the plot.

At the same time, without a strong and interesting protagonist, what reader will care deeply about what happens? And when I say “strong” I don’t mean a fearless, emotionless, superhero who saves the world. I mean a character who lives and breathes, changes and evolves both in the course of this book and in the series to follow.

In other words for me, and I think for the mystery/thriller writers who I love the most, what creates compelling books is the interplay between plot and character. If plot takes over, you create cartoon page-turners; if characters take over, you create books where the reader might well stop turning the page because it seems that nothing is happening. What’s key is not simply the balance of the two, but the dialectic between the two in the sense that what’s happening (the plot) is challenging and pushing the character; that in turn causes crises and challenges for the protagonist; and her/his/their response further drives the plot.

I’ll let readers decide if I got that right! But so far, I’ve been thrilled with the response I’ve been getting.

 

You can learn more about Michael Kaufman via his website and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. The Last Exit is now available via all major booksellers and from Penguin Random House.

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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:

AWARDS

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) unveiled the winners of their annual SAG Awards for both movies and television last night. Among the crime drama honorees were The Trial of the Chicago 7 which won the award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture (the equivalent of Best Picture), and Daniel Kaluuya won the Best Actor in a Motion Picture prize for his role in Judas and the Black Messiah. On the TV side, Jason Bateman was named Best Actor in a Drama for his role in Ozark.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Netflix will buy the rights to produce two sequels to Knives Out, with director, Rian Johnson, and star, Daniel Craig, set to return to the franchise. The Knives Out sequels have casting underway, and the production team hopes to begin filming in Greece in late June. The original Knives Out was a murder mystery that starred Craig as detective Benoit Blanc investigating the death of the wealthy author, Harlan Thrombey (played by the late Christopher Plummer in one of his last roles).

Salma Hayek has joined the cast of House of Gucci, Ridley Scott’s next film that also stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Jack Huston, and Jared Leto. The film tells the story of how Gaga’s character, Patrizia Reggiani, infamously carried out a hit on her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, after he sold the Gucci fashion empire to an investment group. Hayek will play Pina Auriemma, a friend of Reggiani and a clairvoyant who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly organizing the killing for a fee.

Armie Hammer has been dropped from another film following accusations of sexual assault against him, this time the Cold War thriller, The Billion Dollar Spy. Based on a real-life story, The Billion Dollar Spy was to have starred Hammer as Brad Reid, a fresh arrival at the Moscow station of the CIA, where he’s approached by Soviet engineer, Adolf Tolkachev (Mads Mikkelsen). No re-casting details have been released just yet.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has given a formal order for the revival series, CSI: Vegas, the first new installment in the "CSI" franchise since CSI: Cyber was canceled in 2016. "Vegas" will see original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation stars Wallace Langham, William Petersen, and Jorja Fox reprise their roles alongside new cast members Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, Mel Rodriguez, and Mandeep Dhillon. Per CBS, the new series "opens a brand new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant new team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City."

HBO Max is adapting the true-crime docuseries, The Staircase, into a limited scripted series that will star Colin Firth as American novelist, Michael Peterson, who was on trial in 2001 for killing his wife. The writer claimed his wife died at their home after falling down the stairs, but a medical examiner determined she'd been bludgeoned to death. Peterson was convicted in 2003 for the murder and spent eight years in prison. In 2011, he was granted a new trial, but before it could start, he submitted to an Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time served and set free.

Nicky Torchia, Michael Rivera, and Ibrahim Renno are set for recurring roles opposite Christopher Meloni, Dylan McDermott, Tamara Taylor, and Danielle Moné Truitt in NBC’s Law & Order: SVU spinoff series, Law & Order: Organized Crime. The new series follows Elliot Stabler's (Meloni) return to the NYPD to battle organized crime after a devastating personal loss. Stabler will aim to rebuild his life as part of a new elite task force that is taking apart the city’s most powerful criminal syndicates one by one.

Netflix revealed that Lucifer will return in May for the second half of Season 5. The supernatural procedural series, which initially aired on Fox for three seasons before moving to Netflix, follows Tom Ellis’s Lucifer, who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell. He resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping LAPD detective, Chloe Decker. Lucifer began airing season 5 in August and will come to an end with an upcoming sixth season.

Shout! Studios has acquired worldwide rights to Emmy-winning director Nancy Buirski’s documentary, A Crime on the Bayou, the third in her trilogy of films that explore vital stories from the Civil Rights era. The project revisits the case of Gary Duncan, who as a Black teenager in 1966 was arrested in Louisiana in a racially-charged incident. Duncan’s "crime" was to break up a fight between white and Black youths outside a newly-integrated school, during which he "gently [laid] his hand on a white boy’s arm," setting in motion a prosecution for assault on a minor. Duncan was defended by Richard Sobol, a young Jewish attorney, and the two developed a friendship as they took their fight for Duncan’s exoneration all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, Daniella Bernett, on the Crime Cafe podcast, discussing Bernett's latest novel, Old Sins Never Die.

Writer Types welcomed Peter Robinson, author of the long-running DCI Banks novels series, and also spoke with debut author, Robyn Gigl (By Way Of Sorrow), and French author, Johana Gustawsson (Blood Song).

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "Sweet Tea and Deviled Eggs" by Sandra Murphy, as read by actor, Donna Beavers.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with bestselling author Peter May, who was born in Glasgow, but now lives in France. His latest book, The Night Gate, brings back forensics expert, Enzo Macleod, and spans two murders across three generations: from war-torn London to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020, the coronavirus. And Enzo's investigations reveal an unexpected link between the murders - the Mona Lisa.

Wrong Place, Write Crime had a Q&A with Michael Poo‪l‬, talking about his episode of A Grifter's Song, "Rocky Mountain Lie."

Karen Dionne was the latest guest on My Favorite Detective Stories. Karen is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club celebrated Woman's History Month by featuring four fiction books that include real women of history.

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Marco Carocari, who grew up in Switzerland and worked in a hardware store before traveling the globe working for the airlines and later as an internationally published photographer. His debut crime novel is Blackout.

Lynda LaPlante's Listening to the Dead forensic podcast tackled the topic, "Cause of Death – Poisoning."

         Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Sylvia

Howard Melvin Fast (1914–2003) is perhaps best known for his popular historical fiction like Spartacus (the basis for the 1960 film by Stanley Kubrick) and his television scripts, including such programs as How the West Was Won and the Battle of Lexington and Concord, based on one of his novels. He was also blacklisted by the House un-American activities committee during the McCarthy era and became unpublishable. As a result, he started self-publishing (including Spartacus) and remade himself as the author of thrillers written under the pen name E.V. Cunningham, most featuring Masao Masuto, a Japanese-American detective in the Beverly Hills Police Department who's devoted to growing roses and Zen meditation.



Fast also wrote standalone crime fiction under his pseudonym E.V. Cunningham, including the very first book he published, 1960's Sylvia, made into a film five years later (directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Peter Lawford, George Laharis and Carroll Baker). In his introduction to the 1992 reprint of the novel, published under the author's real name, Fast wrote "It began with a woman's name: Sylvia. I loved the name, I loved the (Franz Schubert) song, 'Who is Sylvia and what is she?' And the other sweet song 'Sylvia's hair is like the night.' Dark hair, raven black, a tall woman and beautiful. I could envision her as I might a living person."



Sylvia is a novel of suspense rather than crime-based detection story, focusing on would-be teacher of ancient history turned private investigator, Alan Macklin, who is handed a tough case by wealthy businessman Frederic Summers: trace the past of a beautiful woman you've never met, with only a book of poems, two lines of handwriting, and a fake story to go on. The mysterious woman in question is Summers's fiancée, Sylvia West, who owns property in Coldwater Canyon, raises prize-winning roses, is independently wealthy and fluent in French, Spanish and Chinese. But the story of her past doesn't check out, which is why the suspicious Summers hires Macklin to investigate.



Despite hating Summers for his cold objectivity and himself for taking the job for the money, Macklin sets out on an elusive trail through Sylvia's past, which grows more sordid yet strangely compelling as he travels to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York City, El Paso, and across the border into Mexico. As he learns more of Sylvia's troubled past and her dark secrets, the down-on-his-luck private eye finds he's not only become obsessed with his phantom target, he's falling in love with her.



As Fast's first foray into the crime fiction genre, his neophyte chops become obvious when his characters tend to over-philosophize, such as Macklin noting, "There can be nothing as cold and deadly as an evening of pedagogues frozen in their timidity of thought and multifold institutional fears, or pompous and irrational in their half-knowledge and their book-bound ignorance...." Yet Sylvia was popular enough at the time to be well received, praised in its reviews and sold to Paramount Pictures for the 1965 film. As an interesting aside, in France, where they didn't care about U.S. blacklists, Sylvia was published under Howard Fast's own name and sold over a hundred thousand copies.

          

Mystery Melange

The Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans announced this year's winners of the Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction. The award was established in 2012 for women writers to honor the memory of Diana Pinckley (1952-2012), a longtime crime fiction columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, and her passion for mysteries. The Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work goes to C.S. Harris ( aka C.S. Graham and Candace Procter), while the Pinckley Prize for Debut Fiction goes to Angie Kim for her Edgar winning novel, Miracle Creek. New this year is the Pinckley Prize for True Crime Writing, won by Emma Copley Eisenberg for The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia. The prizes will be presented during the 2021 Bouchercon which takes place in New Orleans in August.

The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the finalists for this year's Derringer Awards for excellence in short crime fiction (Flash Fiction; Short Story; Long Story; Novelette). The announcement was made in the group's membership forum and as of the press time for this blog post hadn't been posted on the SMFS website just yet. But you can follow this link to my list of Recent Awards for the details.

The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) announced finalists in the prestigious IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award program, the association’s flagship book award program recognizing excellence and innovation in independent publishing. In the Mystery/Thriller category, the three finalists include: A Child Lost: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel by Michelle Cox (She Writes Press); Hanging Falls: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane); and Things to Do When You'd Rather Be Dead by Michael Guillebeau (Madison Press). One finalist in each of the various categories will be named a Gold winner during a set of four online ceremonies the evenings of May 11-14, 2021. The remaining finalists in each category will become Silver winners.

Mystery Readers Journal: Historical Mysteries is now available as a PDF and hardcopy. There are numerous Author! Author! essays, including two available online, "Why I Write Historical Mystery" by Rhys Bowen and "Quo Vadis, Mr. Saylor?" by Steven Saylor; articles including "Thomas Pynchon’s Take on 1970s California Noir" by Sean Day and "Crimes of Authority in Pious 19th Century Poland" by Jay Gertzman; and columns such as "Just the Facts: History’s First Detectives" by Jim Doherty.

Writing for the New York Times, Edmund White discussed the "Talented Mr. Ripley: a Shape-Shifting Protagonist Who’s Up to No Good," and how author Patricia Highsmith embedding her own repression, snobbery and sense of chaos into her psychological thrillers. This essay is part of T’s Book Club, a series of articles and events dedicated to classic works of American literature and will include a virtual conversation about "The Talented Mr. Ripley," to be led by Edmund White on April 22.

Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog has seasonally themed mysteries for Passover (this year, March 27-April 4) and Easter (April 4).

Criminals are getting more creative all the time it seems; now they can pick your locks just by listening.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Wheelie Queen" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Allison Brennan chatted with the Wishful Endings blog about her latest thriller, Tell No Lies, centering on an edgy young female LAPD detective and an ambitious special agent, both part of a mobile FBI unit that is brought in to investigate the unsolved murder of a college activist and its alleged ties to high stakes crime in the desert Southwest; and Stephen Mack Jones was the latest 9mm interview for Craig Sisterson's blog, talking about his award-winning series featuring former marine sniper and Detroit cop, August Snow.

         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

Academy Award winner, Forest Whitaker, is set to co-star with Tom Hardy in the Netflix action film, Havoc, from Gareth Evans, the director of the critically acclaimed martial arts film, The Raid. Hardy stars in the project as a bruised detective who, after a drug deal gone wrong, must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son. In doing so, he unravels a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.

Chris Pratt will team up with brother-in-law, Patrick Schwarzenegger, on Amazon's The Terminal List. The series, which is currently shooting, is based on the Jack Carr novel that follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. However, as new evidence comes to light, Reece discovers dark forces working against him, endangering not only his life but the lives of those he loves. Schwarzenegger will play Reece’s baby-faced youngest team member. 

Derek DelGaudio is set to join the ensemble cast of Steven Soderbergh’s next film, the New Line Max Original feature KIMI, with Zoë Kravitz on board to star. Although a recent Deadline report said that plot details are being kept under wraps, an earlier Variety article indicated the plot centers on an agoraphobic tech worker (Kravitz), who discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime during an ordinary data stream review and tries reporting it up the chain of command at her company. Met with resistance and bureaucracy, she realizes that in order to get involved, she will have to do the thing she fears the most — leave her apartment.

After landing rights to her directorial debut, Netflix is looking to get back into business with Halle Berry. The streamer has set her to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in the thriller, Our Man From Jersey. David Guggenheim penned the script, with Wahlberg and his partner Stephen Levinson producing. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the film is described as a blue-collar James Bond. Insiders say the plan is to shoot the film early next year in London.

Katie Holmes, through her Noelle Productions banner, has optioned The Watergate Girl: My Fight For Truth and Justice Against A Criminal President, the best-selling autobiography by former Watergate prosecutor, Jill Wine-Banks. Holmes will also star in the project as Wine-Banks, then a 30-year-old (and known as Jill Wine Volner), the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought the casual sexism of the day to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts — and prevailed despite her house being burgled, her phones tapped, and her office trashed.

Kenneth Branagh’s mystery ensemble-cast movie, Death on the Nile has seen its premiere date pushed back again, this time to February 11, 2022. The 20th Century Studios production, which also stars Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening, has changed release dates several times due to the pandemic. However, Deadline reports that the new release date has nothing to do with co-star Armie Hammer, who has been besieged by an alleged sex scandal.

Meanwhile, those films that have been able to premiere in theatres with limited seating are doing surprising well. Among the recent successes are the Brad Furman-directed crime thriller, City of Lies, which evolves around the real-life death of hip hop icon Notorious B.I.G.; and the Cold War spy thriller, The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rachel Brosnaha.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS confirmed that Dick Wolf’s FBI franchise is growing and has given a series order to FBI: International, the third iteration of the successful FBI brand, for the 2021-22 broadcast season. The network also announced it is renewing the mothership series, FBI, for a fourth season and FBI: Most Wanted for a third season. FBI: International is scheduled to debut in a crossover episode of those other two shows next year.

The Act creator Michelle Dean is adapting Matthew McGough’s book, The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation, for a TV series. The book tells the story of one of the most infamous murder cases in LAPD history, which remained unsolved until DNA evidence implicated a shocking suspect – Stephanie Lazarus, a detective within the LAPD’s own ranks. McGough, an investigative journalist, met and interviewed Lazarus in 2008, when she was a well-respected detective in the LAPD’s Art Theft Detail. A year later, Lazarus was arrested for a cold case murder she had committed 23 years earlier. McGough researched not only the murder, but also the LAPD’s cover-up and its systemic failure to investigate one of it's own.

Netflix has taken international rights to Steven Moffat’s limited BBC series, Inside Man. Stanley Tucci has been set in the title role, joined by Doctor Who actor, David Tennant, and Dracula star, Dolly Wells. Rounding out the headline cast is Lydia West, who featured in the acclaimed Channel 4/HBO Max series, It’s A Sin. Steven Moffat (Sherlock, Doctor Who) is penning and directing the project, which is said to center around three characters, a prisoner on death row in America, an English Vicar, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar, who all cross paths in the most unexpected way.

The Chelsea Detective will become the latest British crime series to be streamed by Acorn-TV.  Created and co-written by Peter Fincham, The Chelsea Detective stars Adrian Scarborough as Detective Inspector Max Arnold, who plies his trade in Chelsea to uncover the murky underbelly of a well-heeled borough of London.

This is an odd little project: CBS Studios and German producer Syrreal Entertainment are teaming to create a series for RTL streamer TV Now in which David Hasselhoff will star as himself in a fictional international conspiracy story. It follows the actor as he lands a lead role in a German stage show, which plunges him into the center of an international conspiracy of former cold war assassins, while around him the fabric of reality seems to break down. German actor Henry Hübchen also stars as a version of himself.

Evan Peters is set as the title character in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a Netflix limited series co-created by longtime collaborators Murphy and Ian Brennan. Monster chronicles the story of one of America’s most notorious serial killers (Peters), largely told from the point of view of Dahmer’s victims, and dives deeply into the police incompetence and apathy that allowed the Wisconsin native to go on a multiyear killing spree.

David Thewlis has been cast to star opposite Olivia Colman in the HBO and Sky crime drama, Landscapers. The four-part limited series, inspired by real events, tells the story of a seemingly ordinary couple who become the focus of an investigation when two dead bodies are discovered in the garden of a Nottingham house. Additional cast members include Kate O’Flynn, Dipo Ola, Samuel Anderson, Karl Johnson, Felicity Montagu, and Daniel Rigby.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Small press and self-published authors were in the spotlight on the latest episode of Writer Types. Writers including Mick McCrary, Jonathan Brown, Delia C. Pitts, Murphy Morrison, and Greg Hickey all chatted with host, Eric Beetner. Plus Gabriel Valjean, Mark Atley, Eric Dezenhall and Sandra Wells also stopped by.

Read or Dead tackled mysteries and thrillers that transport you to a particular time and place.

Jacqueline Winspear was the featured guest on Speaking of Mysteries, discussing The Consequences of Fear, the 16th installment of Winspear’s addictive series featuring detective and frequent intelligence asset, Maisie Dobbs.

Suspense Radio and Meet the Thriller Author both chatted with master of suspense, Dean Koontz, about his latest book, The Other Emily, which takes readers on a twisting journey of lost love, impossible second chances, and terrifying promises.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Danny Gardne‪r‬ to chat about his newest novel, Ace Boon Coon, and the inspiration behind it.

Queer Writers of Crime spoke with William D. Prystauk about his series featuring a pansexual private investigator who solves crimes in New York City’s BDSM and LGBT communities.

On the Writer's Detective Bureau, host Adam Richardson answered questions about SWAT snipers on rooftops, how the FBI and SEC handle white-collar investigations, and when autopsies are and are not performed

Jackie Flaum joined It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club for a discussion about her first novel, Justice Tomorrow, featuring investigators Madeline Sterling and Socractes Gray, who head a team sent to a Georgia town in 1965 to look into the lynching of a local civil rights leader's son.

After a hiatus, the Alfred Hitchcock Magazine podcast series is back with a tale by Joseph S. Walker, nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story.

American spy author, Paul Vidich, spoke with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about his fascination with the Cold War and his new Moscow-set thriller, The Mercenary, the fourth in the George Mueller series.

THEATRE

Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is set to return to the stage in the UK, to be presented September 11-13 at Royal and Derngate in Northampton ahead of a UK tour. Director Lucy Bailey noted, "Set in 1939, this is Agatha Christie's most popular novel but also one of her darkest, reflecting the impending sense of doom of a world on the brink of war. Its depiction of a group of strangers stranded in a crisis of their own making feels very in tune with today's climate emergency."

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Hammett Honorees

The finalists were announced for the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Prize for literary Excellence in Crime Writing. Since 1991, the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has presented the Hammett trophy to the book of the year that best represents the conception of literary excellence in crime writing. The 2020 reading committee, consisting of Christopher Chan, Marni Graff, Debbi Mack, and Chair J. Madison Davis, made a number of difficult choices, with the following books selected for the short list (the winner will be announced later this year):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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