B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 99

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

The Writers Guild of America unveiled the movie nominations for its 2021 WGA Awards, honoring outstanding achievement for original and adapted screenplays and documentary films during 2020. Winners will be announced March 21 in a virtual ceremony. Among the crime drama nods in the Best Original Screenplay category are Judas and the Black Messiah, written by Will Berson & Shaka King, and The Trial of the Chicago 7, written by Aaron Sorkin.

Amazon Studios is taking on an adaptation of All the Old Knives, based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Chris Pine and Thandie Newton as ex-lovers Henry and Celia, one a CIA spy, the other an ex-spy, who meet over dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea to reminisce about their time in Vienna. As the conversation continues, it becomes clear that one of them is not going to survive the meal.

Daisy Ridley is attached to star in the psychological thriller, The Marsh King’s Daughter, that will be directed by Divergent filmmaker, Neil Burger. The film is based on Karen Dionne’s 2017 book of the same name and tells the story of Helena, who was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands. Following years of trying to escape her past, she must now hunt her father down after he escapes from prison.

Tom Hardy is set to star in the Netflix action film, Havoc, from Gareth Evans, the director of the critically acclaimed martial arts film, The Raid. Hardy stars 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.

After playing an FBI agent in Judas and the Black Messiah, Jesse Plemons is looking to stay in the bureau, joining the film, Killers of the Flower Moon. Based on David Grann’s bestseller set in 1920s Oklahoma, the story depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a time that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Martin Scorsese is directing, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in lead roles. Plemons will play the lead FBI agent investigating the murders

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series update of the classic thriller, The 39 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s novel, which was turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The TV project of The 39 Steps is being described as "a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for our times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order."

Producers Webster Stone and Robert Stone have acquired rights to Anthony Bourdain’s crime novel, Gone Bamboo, for a scripted series based on a TV pilot. The 1997 book was the celebrity chef’s second published work of fiction. Set on the island of St. Martin, Gone Bamboo follows sharpshooting hedonistic assassin Henry Denard, who botches a career-capping hit. Denard must enlist the help of his skilled, stunning, and volatile wife to save their skins, dispatch the villains, and keep the peace — at all costs — in their tropical paradise. Bourdain, who died in 2018, also wrote several episodes of David Simon’s HBO series, Treme.

CBS is developing a third “FBI” series based on Dick Wolf’s crime drama franchise, this one set within the bureau’s many international branches. The series has a working title FBI: International and is in the early stages of development, according to Deadline. Longtime Dick Wolf vet, Derek Haas, is the writer and executive producer on the series; Haas was recently co-executive producer on the flagship FBI and created Wolf’s Chicago Fire NBC series, which birthed its own “Chicago” franchise. If it goes forward, it would be the third “FBI” series on the network, joining the original series and FBI: Most Wanted.

CBS is also looking to expand its lucrative “NCIS” franchise with a fourth series, this one set in Hawaii, according to TVLine. The network is closing in on a straight-to-series order for a spinoff set in the youngest U.S. state, which would be led by NCIS: New Orleans showrunner, Chris Silber.

Meanwhile, NCIS: New Orleans, the youngest series in CBS’s long-running NCIS franchise factory, is coming to an end. The current seventh season will be the drama’s last, with the series finale slated for May 16, the show’s 155th episode. The NCIS offshoot stars and is executive produced by Scott Bakula and revolves around the local field office that investigates criminal cases involving military personnel in the Big Easy, a city known for its music, entertainment and decadence.

Paramount+ is eyeing a comeback for the popular long-running CBS procedural, Criminal Minds. According to Deadline, the idea is in very early discussions, and a creative team is currently being assembled. Created by Jeff Davis, Criminal Minds aired on CBS for 15 seasons from 2005 to 2020 and followed a group of criminal profilers who work for the FBI as members of its Behavioral Analysis Unit. Over the course of its run, cast members included Mandy Patinkin, Shemar Moore, Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler, Matthew Gray Gubler, Thomas Gibson, Lola Glaudini, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster, among others. The show spawned two spinoffs, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.

A new Constantine series is in the works at HBO Max and J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot company. British novelist Guy Bolton is attached to write the script. First introduced in The Saga of Swamp Thing in 1985, John Constantine is an occult con man and detective, a character brought to life on screen twice before, with Keanu Reeves portraying him in a 2005 film and Matt Ryan leading a series reboot at The CW in 2014.

AMC+ has picked up a trio of foreign crime dramas to premiere in the U.S. on the streaming service. The first, Kin, stars Charlie Cox, Clare Dunne, and Aidan Gillen and charts the lives of a fictional Dublin family embroiled in a gangland war. The second, Too Close, stars Chernobyl alum Emily Watson as Emma Robinson, a forensic psychologist who falls victim to a criminal suspect’s insightful and manipulative nature. Finally, Cold Courage, starring John Simm, Caroline Goodall, and Arsher Ali, is an adaptation of the series of novels by Finnish journalist Pekka Hiltunen and centers on Mari, a fierce psychologist, and Lia, a shy graphic artist, who are drawn together through the “Studio” — a clandestine group of like-minded people operating off the grid, dedicated to righting the wrongs of the powerful, influential and corrupt.

Billy Campbell has been tapped as the lead in National Parks, ABC’s drama pilot from executive producer, Kevin Costner. Co-written by Costner, Aaron Helbing, and Jon Baird and set to be directed by Anthony Hemingway, National Parks follows a small group of elite national parks service agents as they solve crimes while protecting the parks — which, while being known for their sweeping, beautiful landscapes, also attract a vast array of criminal activity. Campbell plays Cal Foster, an experienced ISB special agent who has worked in the field for years but is now stepping into a new leadership role.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Suspense Magazine's podcast interviewed Vincent Zandri, winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel, about his latest book, The Girl Who Wasn’t There.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone were back after a hiatus with an interview with Linwood Barclay, talking about his early life, his background's influence on his novels today, trains, and much more.

Writer Types welcomed author Julia Dahl (writer of the Rebekah Roberts series) as co-host to talk with Dana Stabenow (the Kate Shugak series and Liam Campbell series); cold war spy novelist Paul Vidich; and author and forensics expert Jennifer Graeser Dornbush (Hole In The Woods). Plus the Malmons reviewed the latest from Jess Lourey and Matthew Iden.

The latest guest on Queer Writers of Crime was Rick R. Reed, bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Charles Finch about his latest novel, In An Extravagant Death, featuring his English protagonist Charles Lenox on a road trip (an ocean voyage, actually) to America.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Sebastian Fitzek, one of Europe’s most successful authors of psychological thrillers.

TG Wolf‪f‬ stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss Suicide Squeeze, her latest book in her Diamond mystery series, as well as her Cleveland-based procedural series; her love of puzzles; how waste water gets cleaned; and her podcast that features musically backed readings of mysteries.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club continued their conversation with Dr. Mark Aldridge about Agatha Christie, including her abilities to cement characters.

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FFB: A Time for Pirates

Oswald Wynd (1913-1998) was born in Japan, the son of a Baptist missionary from Scotland. Wynd's family moved to the U.S. in the 1930s, where Wynd attended High School in Atlantic City, then later back to Scotland. Wynd's studies at Edinburgh University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, and in 1941 Wynd's unit in Malaysia was attacked and Wynd imprisoned in Hokkaido mines.



Upon the end of the War and Wynd's liberation as a POW, he returned to the U.S. and on a whim decided to enter a "first novel" contest  by publisher Doubleday in 1947. The novel, Black Fountains, about a young American-educated Japanese caught up in the war, won first prize. Another novel, The Ginger Tree, was turned into a television series by the BBC, with NHK, Japan and WGBH Boston.



But it was under the pen name of Gavin Black that Wynd wrote his thrillers, fifteen in all, most featuring Paul Harris, a young man with a Scottish background making a living as an unconventional businessman in Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia. The first, Suddenly At Singapore, was published in 1960, and the last, Night Run From Java, in 1979. A Time For Pirates lies right in the middle of the series.



Set in Kuala Lumpur, A Time for Pirates finds Paul Harris rescuing damsel in distress Jean Hyde from a rioting mob. Unfortunately for Harris, the beautiful blonde damsel is the wife of a geologist looking for oil on behalf of a Chinese company Min Kow Lin, and Harris has been fighting to save Malaysia from Communism. He decides to delve into the oil business to try and find out why Min Kow Lin is disguising its oil exploration as prospecting for less valuable minerals and why it's buying a rubber plantation.



With the assistance of his "humor challenged" Sikh bookeeper Bahadur, Harris investigates whether the nasty business he's stumbled onto is really a Communist plot or a capitalist scheme to deny poor Malaysians the rights and profits from the oil. After two kidnap attempts, a near-fatal fight with a Manchu thug, and an arson attack that burns down his house, Harris begins to suspect that the man who wants him dead isn't an outsider, but a friend.



The Independent said of Black that he wrote "superior and literate thrillers - school of Stevenson and Buchan - which were at the same time witty and clever, and moved at a by no means gentlemanly pace." The intriguing characters and details of the exotic setting of newly-independent but unstable Malaysia and the clashes between the native population, Communists and Western enterpreneurs are well drawn and the writing is descriptive, as in this one passage:

It was a long time since I had walked up my drive. The gradient is steep, an asphalt razor cut on a slope packed with jungle hardwoods...snakes which reach my antiseptic woods are there isn't a stagnant pool anywhere in which mosquitoes can breed. Sometimes monkeys come on excursions from the adjacent public gardens to try out the long drops from high branches, but they never seem to stay long, as though the surrounding intense hygiene is too much for them. I wish they would set up a colony near me; I like them, they are a continuing and salutary rebuke to our pretensions.

Black Dagger Crime reprinted A Time for Pirates in 1971, and a Fontana First Thus edition came out in May 1973, but they're hard to find, unless you're lucky enough to pick up a copy, as I did, from your local library.

          

Mystery Melange

Will Rogers was a respected writer and cowboy entertainer whose work embodied the traditions of the American cowboy. The Will Rogers Medallion Award was originally created to recognize quality works of cowboy poetry that honored the Will Rogers heritage, but has expanded to include other works of Western literature and film. Winners of the 2020 awards include fiction winner, Land of Wolves: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson; a second place tie for The Last Warrior: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, by W. Michael Farmer, and Blood-Soaked Earth: The Trial of Oliver Lee, by W. Michael Farmer; third place to Death Stalks Apache Oro by Sam Judd Fadala; fourth place to Cut Nose by Ron Schwab; and fifth place to Promised Land: Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey by Mark Warren. For all the finalists in the various categories, click on over here.

On February 22, the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut will offer the virtual "Script in Hand: A Sherlock Carol," a reading of a play by Mark Shanahan in which Tiny Tim asks the Great Detective to look into the death of Ebenezer Scrooge. If you can't make the live event, you catch the show on-demand from February 23 through February 28. (Ht to Elizabeth Foxwell)

On February 27, Left Coast Crime will present four virtual panels to introduce the 2021 Lefty Award Nominees and their books. This Zoom Webinar is free, but advance registration is required. Participating authors will include nominees for the Lefty Award for Best Debut Novel, Best Novel, Best Historical Novel, and Best Humorous Novel.

 

Hosted by NY Times bestselling author, Lisa Black, a virtual Noir at the Bar on March 12 will showcase ten Sisters in Crime authors offering readings from the darker side of crime fiction. Noir a the Bar is presented by the Florida Gulf Coast Sisters in Crime chapter as a Main Stage event of Southwest Florida Reading Festival, hosted by Lee County Library System.

After a thirty-three year run (1988-2021) as crime fiction critic for the New York Times, Marilyn Stasio is stepping down. Blogger, reviewer, and nonfiction author/editor, Sarah Weinman, is taking the reins from Stasio with her first column reviewing new releases by Walter Mosley, Belinda Bauer, Catie DiSabato, and Elle Cosimano. The column will run every other week. Stasio said in her email newsletter "The Crime Lady" that "There isn’t enough gratitude to express, stepping in the shoes of Stasio (who will still write for the paper after an iconic 3-decade-plus run with the column), 'Newgate Callendar' (aka Harold C. Schonberg), Allen Hubin, and Anthony Boucher, the original 'Criminals At Large' columnist."

Over at the Venetian Vase blog, James Ellroy aficionado, Jason Carter, continued his fascinating series exploring the connections between Ellroy and the true crime history of Wisconsin.

In honor of President's Day, Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of Presidential Crime Fiction, and also a list of mysteries for the Chinese New Year, while the Indie Crime Scene put together a roundup of "Indie Mardi Gras Mysteries."

The latest "victim" of the Page 69 test is Emilya Naymark, author of Hide in Place. The story follows a former NYPD undercover cop who escaped the Big Apple when her cover was blown only to land in a small town where she takes on a case that could expose her identity to her old enemies.

Experts have devised a novel approach to selecting photos for police lineups that helps witnesses identify culprits more reliably.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "I Want a Film Noir Femme Fatale" by Peter M. Gordon. The 5-2 Weekly editor, Gerald So, is also seeking new poems and poem critiques to help celebrate National Poetry Month coming up in April.

In the Q&A roundup, NPR spoke with law professor and human rights activist, Rosa Brooks, whose new memoir, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing The American City, details how she volunteered to join the police force in order to understand police reform; Author Interviews chatted with Allison Epstein about her Elizabethan mystery, A Tip for the Hangman; Author Interviews also welcomed Gwen Florio about her new book, Best Laid Plans, the first installment of a new mystery series featuring Nora Best as she flees her old life and cheating husband and takes to the road with an Airstream trailer; Lida Sideris was interviewed by Grace Topping for Writers Who Kill to discuss her book, Slightly Murderous Intent: A Southern California Mystery; Laura Shepherd-Robinson, author of the award-winning debut novel, Blood & Sugar, stopped by the Shots Magazine blog to talk about her latest book, Daughters of the Night; and Scottish crime writer, Val McDermid, told The Guardian why "To survive, you had to be twice as good as the guys."

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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

Veteran producers Bruce Hendricks and Galen Walker have optioned the rights to the late Stanley Kubrick’s unmade film, Lunatic At Large, and have plans to bring the film-noir storyline to the big screen. The project was one of three film stories found in Kubrick’s archives after his death. Production is expected to start this fall.

Several studios got into a bidding war over a flight attendant's first novel. According to the flight attendant, T.J. Newman, she wrote the thriller, Falling, on the backs of airplane napkins and on iPads during her red-eye route. The story follows 140-plus passengers on a crowded flight from New York to LA who don’t yet know that a half-hour before takeoff, their pilot’s family was kidnapped. Now, in order for his family to live, the pilot must follow orders and crash the plane. While much of the story takes place in the air, there is also said to be a relentless FBI agent trying to save the family on the ground. Falling is already being described as "Speed at 35,000 feet."

Paul A. Kaufman is set to adapt the screenplay and direct Nicole Trope’s novel, The Boy in the Photo. The story is a gripping psychological thriller which centers on Megan, whose life was turned upside down when her ex-husband kidnapped their six year old son, Daniel. Six years later, a twelve-year-old boy shows up claiming to be Megan’s missing child, following his father being killed in a deadly fire. As Megan tries to bond with Daniel, he is not the sweet little boy that she lost. Instead, he’s terse, erratic, condescending and dangerous. Fear strikes as she struggles with strange things happening around her while she begins to doubt Daniel is her real son. As Daniel holds a very dark secret and things escalate, can Megan find out the truth and save herself?

Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs Kong) has been hired to direct a reboot of John Woo’s 1997 action hit, Face/Off. The original Face/Off starred John Travolta as Sean Archer, a federal agent bent on revenge after terrorist, Castor Troy (Nicholas Cage), killed his son. After another incident puts Troy in a coma, Archer agrees to a bizarre plan that involves using experimental surgery to give him Troy’s body, face, and voice, and then going to a max security prison to convince Troy’s partners to reveal the location of a bomb.

Sandra Bullock is the latest star to come aboard Sony Pictures’s action thriller, Bullet Train. She joins an ensemble cast jam-packed with stars, including Brad Pitt, Joey King, Lady Gaga, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Bad Bunny, Andrew Koji, Brian Tyree Henry, Masi Oka, Michael Shannon, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Karen Fukuhara. The details of Bullock’s role in the film are currently unknown. Based on the novel, Maria Beetle, by Kotaro Isaka, Bullet Train follows five assassins who find themselves on a bullet train in Japan and realize that their assignments are related. David Leitch (John Wick) is set to helm the film from a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz.

Lily Gladstone is set to star in Apple Original Films’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro also are attached to star in the pic, with Martin Scorsese directing. Based on David Grann’s praised best-seller and set in 1920s Oklahoma, Killers of the Flower Moon depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Gladstone will play Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), who is nephew of a powerful local rancher (De Niro).

The James Bond film, Die Another Day, introduced Halle Berry’s Giacinta Johnson as a Bond woman who would help save the day in Pierce Brosnan’s final film as the superspy. A spin-off was being developed for her character, better known to her friends/foes as Jinx, and while it never happened, the scrapped script for the film has apparently made its way online.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

FX has picked up a pilot for a series adaptation of Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The 1969 novel tells the fictional story of the first Black CIA officer hired by the agency in the late 1960s. It was previously adapted for the screen in 1973, with Lawrence Cook starring as the novel’s protagonist, Dan Freeman.

True Lies, a TV series adaptation of James Cameron’s hit 1994 action comedy movie, has taken a major step toward becoming a reality. CBS has given a pilot order to the project, which is from the team of Cameron, the director McG, and Burn Notice creator Matt Nix. Shocked to discover that her bland and unremarkable computer consultant husband is a skilled international spy, an unfulfilled suburban housewife is propelled into a life of danger and adventure when she’s recruited to work alongside him to save the world as they try to revitalize their passionless marriage.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover are rebooting the feature film Mr. & Mrs. Smith as a television series for Amazon. The pair revealed via Instagram stories that they were working on the project for 2022. The 2005 feature film starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a married couple who were rival spies.

James Graham, writer of the Emmy-nominated, Brexit: The Uncivil War, has created a crime drama titled Sherwood for the BBC. Inspired in part by real events, the six-part series is set in the Nottinghamshire mining village where Graham grew up. The contemporary series sees two murders shatter an already fractured community leading to one of the largest manhunts in British history. Suspicion is rife and the tragic murders threaten to inflame historic divisions sparked during the miners’ strike that tore families apart three decades before.

Guy Pearce will reunite with his Mildred Pierce co-star, Kate Winslet, for another upcoming HBO miniseries, Mare of Easttown. Pearce will co-star alongside Winslet, who plays Mare Sheehan, a small-town Pennsylvania detective whose life crumbles around her as she investigates a local murder.

Carla Gugino, who recently starred in The Haunting of Bly Manor, will front Leopard Skin, a television crime thriller for AGC Television. The cast also includes Amelia Eve, Gentry White, Philip Winchester, Margot Bingham, Gaite Jansen, Nora Arnezeder, and Ana de la Reguera. Leopard Skin kicks off when a criminal gang fleeing a botched jewelry heist is forced to hide out in a beachside estate where two women live in seclusion. Their world turns into a tension filled hothouse of secrets, betrayal and desire — all of which will come to the surface as the gang awaits their fate.

HBO Max has opted not to proceed with Red Bird Lane, its drama pilot starring Susan Sarandon. Written by Sara Gran and directed by David Slade, the project is a psychological thriller that follows eight strangers who arrive at an isolated house, all for different reasons. Upon their mysterious and coincidental arrival, the strangers realize that something sinister and terrifying awaits them.

Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, and Mel Rodriguez have been cast as leads in CSI: Vegas, which is nearing a formal straight-to-series order at CBS. William Petersen and Jorja Fox are finalizing their deals to star in the project, which serves as a sequel to the mothership series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (reprising their roles as Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle, respectively). While billed as an event series, reports indicate it could become an ongoing series running for multiple seasons. CSI: Vegas 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.

This isn't exactly a live-action crime drama per se, but it's an interesting move on Fox's part: the network is developing an animated series based on the iconic board game, Clue. Clue is conceptualized on the murder of Mr. Boddy, the host of the game’s "dinner party," during which players must untangle various clues to determine who among the party’s six guests — Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green and Dr. Orchid — committed the crime. Clue was also being rebooted for the big screen with Ryan Reynolds attached to star and executive produce, although there hasn't been much of a progress report on that project lately.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest Mystery Rats Maze podcast features an excerpt from Leave It to Cleaver by Victoria Hamilton, as read by actor Ariel Linn.

Read or Dead discussed reads that feature true crime and social justice, honoring Black History Month.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Paul Vidich to chat about his fourth novel, The Mercenary.

Joseph Rei‪d stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his latest Seth Walker thriller, Departure.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Mark Aldridge, a senior lecturer at Solent University, Southampton, about his new nonfiction book, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World.

The featured guest on Queer Writers of Color was Steve Neil Johnson, the author of the bestselling Doug Orlando mysteries.

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Quote of the Week

            

FFB: Let's Talk of Graves, Worms and Epitaphs

Robert Furneaux Jordan (1905–1978) was an English architect, architectural critic for The Observer, taught as Hoffmann-Wood Professor of Architecture in the University of Leeds, and was a visiting Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University in the U.S. If you conduct a bibliographical search under his given name, you'll find he penned the nonfiction reference books A Concise History Of Western Architecture and Victorian Architecture, among others.



In 1945, Jordan published a detective novel under the pen name Robert Player, and eventually wrote four more standalone mystery novels over the next 32 years. In the Foreword to the Black Dagger edition of Player's novel Let's Talk of Graves, of Worms and Epitaphs, author and past Crime Writers Assocation Chairman Robert Richardson noted that Player's name rarely appears in standard works about the genre, but "there is an inescapable feeling that, had he devoted himself to writing, he would be recognized as, if not a master, then certainly a gifted and entertaining talent. Literate and ingenious, his books have originality and a capacity to attract."



The novel opens with the line, "It is not every man whose father was both a pope and a murderer." The pope in question is Barnabas Barbellion, a distinguished Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholocism and later became Pope Paschal the Fourth. But years prior, Barbellion was married with two children and also having an affair with Philippa, the wife of his neighbor, Harold Gatsby. When Gatsby is poisoned to death at a croquet party, Philippa is accused of the murder a sensational trial ensues, but no one dares to connect the case with the fact that Barbellion's ailing wife had also died suddenly, except for the narrator, Barbellion's son, Augustine Xavier.



The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare's play Richard II about the British king whose greed, thirst for greater power, and disdain for both friends and subjects prove to be his undoing. Despite the darkness of that tragedy, Player's novel is actually rather wickedly funny satire, chock-full of intricate details and tricky plotting and character development that culminates in a twist ending. The density of the writing can bog a bit at times, and it's not the type of book that makes for a quick read, but if you're a fan of historical mysteries and religious lampoonery, Player's novel may be to your taste.

            

Mystery Melange

 

Registration is open for the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, which goes all digital this year for the all-day event on March 6. There will be live panels on topics from "Humor Has It: Keeping the Fun in Mystery" to "A Song of Ice and Fire: Writing Strong Women," with close to forty authors participating.

Submissions for the McIlvanney Prize / Scottish Crime Book of the Year are also now open, with a deadline of Friday, April 9. The winner of Crime Book of the Year will receive £1,000, while the winner the Debut of the Year will receive £500. Entries come from full length novels first published in the United Kingdom between August 1 2020 and July 31, 2021. When considering the entries the judges will take into account quality of writing, originality of plot and potential durability in the crime genre.

Take the upcoming long weekend to apply to PEN America's Writing for Justice Fellowship, which commissions writers to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. Submissions close on February 15.

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies has a call for papers on the topic of "Giallo! The Long History of Italian Television Crime Drama." The special issue will be edited by Luca Barra (Università di Bologna) and Valentina Re (Link Campus, Rome) who are seeking abstract submissions through April 30. There's more info on the Shots Magazine blog, including some suggested topics for consideration.

Shots also took a look ahead at the Chester Himes - Harlem Detective Series being released by Penguin Modern Classics on March 25, 2021. The stories of the pathbreaking Himes, one of crime fiction’s most overlooked writers, take the reader through the criminal underbelly of New York alongside hardboiled Harlem detectives "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones.

Valentine's Day isn't always about love, as Janet Rudolph's updated Valentine's Day Crime Fiction list will attest.

Writing for The Guardian, Alison Flood investigated "Why Sherlock Holmes Has Become One Of Our Most Enduring Literary Characters." She takes note of some of the more recent entries, including Anthony Horowitz’s sequels; Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes; basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling; James Lovegrove's combining the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the Cthulhu Casebooks; Nicholas Meyer’s forthcoming The Return of the Pharaoh, drawn "from the Reminiscences of John H Watson, MD"; and Bonnie MacBird’s The Three Locks, a new Holmes adventure, which is out in March.

In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series for the Paris Review, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers. In her latest installment, she tackles Inspector Montalbano, the creation of one of Italy’s best-loved contemporary authors, Andrea Camilleri (1925–2019).

Over at the Venetian Vase blog, Steven Powell continued his series examining the musical influences in James Ellroy’s work, this time focusing on a single novel, Because the Night, Ellroy’s second novel in his Lloyd Hopkins trilogy.

Allison Epstein applied the Page 69 Test to her debut historical thriller, A Tip for the Hangman, which centers on Christopher Marlowe, a brilliant aspiring playwright, who is pulled into the duplicitous world of international espionage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I; and Gwen Florio also applied the same test to Best Laid Plans, the first installment of a new mystery series.

The trend of celebrities writing crime fiction seems to have no end in sight, it seems. Even astronauts are jumping into the act.

If you're a fan of Nordic Noir novels, check out this list from Forbes on "Nordic Noir Travel: Scandinavia’s Top Crime Fiction Locations."

Here's a little throwback for you spy fans: a new phishing attack uses Morse code to allow hackers to hide malicious URLs.

Speaking of spying, one man learned the hard way that if you're going to commit a crime, you might be a little more aware of the apps you load onto your cellphone.

Ever wonder about where the term "bookworm" came from?

Will artificial intelligence ever take over the jobs of authors?

The latest flash fiction story at Shotgun Honey is "Remittences" by Pamela Ebel

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Anything Goes" by Tom Barlow.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews's Marshal Zeringue spoke with Jeri Westerson, the author of fifteen Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels, and also chatted with former teacher and linguist, Carol Wyer, about her new novel, An Eye for an Eye, which introduces DI Kate Young; and Walter Mosley offered up some background on his first thriller and how he went from working as a computer programmer in 1980's New York City to writing the iconic Devil in a Blue Dress.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with Joscelyn Godwin

Educated at Cambridge and Cornell, Joscelyn Godwin, Ph.D., is the author, editor, and translator of more than 30 books, including The Greater and Lesser Worlds of Robert Fludd, and was a professor of music at Colgate University for more than 40 years until his retirement in 2016. In addition to being a composer, musicologist, and translator, he's also known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult.

In this edition of Author R&R (Research and Reference) for In Reference to Murder, Joscelyn Godwin, co-author of Forbidden Fruits, discusses the inspiration behind writing this "occult novel": a murder mystery with themes of European high life, enthogenic drugs, and ancient archaeology. 

WRITING THE FORBIDDEN FRUITS    

Guido Mina di Sospiro and I started writing Forbidden Fruits while our first collaborative novel, The Forbidden Book was appearing in seven languages, but before it came out in English (Disinformation Books/RedWheel Weiser, 2013). As before, we plotted the novel in long phone conversations, after which each would write a section—anything from a paragraph to a chapter— then send it to the other for criticism and improvement. We did spend a few momentous days together in the DC area, during which we brainstormed with abandon and, among other things, decided to incorporate two engravings from Johann Georg Gichtel’s 1682 edition of the works of Jacob Böhme, which can be found in the book itself. The plot, of course, changed as we went and brought us some surprises as we got to know the characters better. Over a year the pieces were assembled, smoothed over, and given a unified voice. Then, under the aegis of a literary agent in London, the whole thing was cut down by a third. One lesson I have learned is that if I especially admire something I’ve just written, it should be instantly ditched, like that luscious dessert one really shouldn’t have eaten.

Guido has written many novels as well as what the French call belles lettres: articles, opinion pieces, and the unclassifiable The Metaphysics of Ping Pong, a work of narrative non-fiction. His oeuvre leans toward fantastic realism and contrarian philosophy, which appeal to me too. I have mostly written the lighter sort of academic book, on subjects like Renaissance paganism, the Harmony of the Spheres, the myths of Atlantis, eccentric religious and spiritual movements. My job seems to be to digest difficult but fascinating materials, often in foreign languages, for the benefit of curious readers with less time on their hands.

The occult themes in both novels draw on this experience. For instance, in this book the Maltese “Society of Harmony” that experiments with child mediums (cringe!) has parallels in real occult orders. The “Golden Pomegranate” (one of the “forbidden fruits”) is inspired by the current revisioning of prehistory. And the characters’ use of entheogenic fungi re-enacts rituals of the ancient alchemists and esoteric religious groups.

Together with a very unexpected murder, and the dual setting in Malta and Rome, this makes for what we hope is an alluring mix. But hovering over it, or as we might say the book’s moral backbone, is a truly serious matter: the immigration crisis, as people flee from poor and war-torn countries in the hope of a better life. How all this is woven together remains for the reader to discover.

 

You can learn more about the author's writings and other work via this link. Forbidden Fruits is available from Simon & Schuster and via all major booksellers.

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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 Golden Globe Awards announced the nominees for 2021, in a year severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and theatre closings/production delays. There weren't a lot of crime drama nods among the film selections, although The Trial of the Chicago 7 made the list for Best Drama, with Aaron Sorkin also nominated for Best Director. The dark comedy thriller, Promising Young Woman, also was nominated for Best Drama, as was its director, Emerald Fennell, and lead actress, Carey Mulligan. The other Best Actress nods included Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday, in which the FBI launches an undercover sting operation against the legendary jazz singer, and on the Best Actor side, Tahar Rahim was nominated for his role in The Mauritanian, a true story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi's experience of being held for fourteen years without charge in Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

The TV side also had a few crime drama honors, notably Ozark and Ratched for Best Drama Series, and the dark crime comedy, The Flight Attendant, for Best Musical/Comedy Series. For Best Actor in a Drama Series, Bryan Cranston was nominated (Your Honor) as was Hugh Grant (The Undoing). Best Actress in a Drama Series nods included Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), Laura Linney (Ozark), and Sarah Paulson (Ratched). 

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) also announced the nominees for their annual awards. Among the crime/thriller dramas there are Da 5 Bloods and The Trial of the Chicago 7 competing for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and on the TV side, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series includes Better Call Saul and Ozark.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Following the successful launch of The White Tiger, filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, author Aravind Adiga, and Netflix have set their next collaboration for the big screen, Adiga's 2020 novel, Amnesty. Set in Australia, the story centers on Danny, an undocumented immigrant who cleans houses and realizes he has information about the murder of one of his employers. Over the course of one tense summer day, Danny plays a cat-and-mouse game with the man he suspects to be the murderer, but he realizes that if he speaks up, he will be deported.

Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films and New Republic Pictures (NRP) have signed on to produce Queen Bitch & The High Horse, which will be directed by the female writing/directing team Bert & Bertie. The project is inspired by the largest municipal fraud in American history and follows Penny Banks, an ambitious woman whose passion for civic duty was eclipsed by her love for horses. As she rises the ranks of city hall, she embezzles millions to fund a show horse empire.

Ruth Wilson is set to co-star in Searchlight’s untitled murder mystery, to be directed by Tom George and to co-star Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, David Oyelowo, and Adrien Brody. Written by Mark Chappell, the script is set in 1950s London where a desperate Hollywood film producer sets out to turn a popular West End play into a film. When members of the production are murdered, world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and overzealous rookie Constable Stalker (Ronan) find themselves in the midst of a puzzling whodunit within London’s glamorous Theatreland and sordid underground.

Jennifer Lopez is reteaming with Netflix to star in and produce the action feature, The Mother, which Mulan director Niki Caro is in talks to direct. Lopez will play a deadly female assassin who comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men. 

Warner Bros. has announced that Those Who Wish Me Dead, a neo-Western film starring Angelina Jolie, has slotted its release date for May 14 (debuting both in theaters and on HBO Max). Based on Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel of the same name, the film follows a teenager who witnesses a murder and finds himself being pursued by twin assassins in the Montana wilderness. Though there is a survival expert tasked with protecting him, a forest fire threatens to destroy them all.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox has put in development Red Widow, a one-hour CIA thriller based on Alma Katsu’s forthcoming book. The story revolves around the lives of two female CIA agents that become intertwined around an internal threat to the Agency’s Russia Division, as they navigate the mostly male world of intelligence. Author and former NSA/CIA senior intelligence analyst, Katsu, is attached as an executive producer

Stone Village Television has acquired TV rights for Alex Michaelides' second thriller, The Maidens, which will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in June 2021. The Maidens is said to weave together Greek mythology, psychology, and murder to deliver a "spellbinding" literary thriller. Michaelides first novel, The Silent Patient, debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list at No.1 in 2019.

Amazon has commissioned its first true-crime series, Gefesselt (working title). Produced by Neue Bioskop and directed by Florian Schwarz, the six-part show describes the search for the so-called "acid barrel killer," who terrorized Hamburg between 1986 and 1992. He was finally hunted down only by the courageous efforts of a woman who was not part of the actual investigating team, but who, as a contact person for the relatives of the victims, picked up the trail of the perpetrator and had to assert herself against resistance within the police.

ABC has handed a pilot order to National Parks, a drama written by actor Kevin Costner, Aaron Helbing, and author Jon Baird. The one-hour drama, formerly known as ISB, follows a small group of elite National Park Service agents as they solve crimes while protecting the parks — which, while being known for their sweeping, beautiful landscapes, also attract a vast array of criminal activity.

In her broadcast debut, two-time Oscar winner, Renée Zellweger, is set to headline and executive produce the limited series, The Thing About Pam, which has been greenlighted by NBC with a six-episode straight-to-series order. The project is based on the real-life murder of Betsy Faria, which resulted in her husband Russ’s conviction. He always insisted that he did not kill her, and his conviction was later overturned as the brutal crime set off a chain of events exposing a diabolical scheme involving Pam Hupp (Zellweger).

Becki Newton is set as a lead opposite Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix’s drama series based on Michael Connelly's bestselling novels. Additionally, Jazz Raycole and Angus Sampson, who had been cast in the project’s previous incarnation at CBS, have made deals to continue in their roles on Netflix. The moves round out the main adult cast, which also includes Neve Campbell, who had started the casting process with an offer for the CBS pilot. The Lincoln Lawyer revolves around Mickey Haller (Garcia-Rulfo), an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.

Eddie Izzard, Jo Joyner, and Andi Osho are joining Cush Jumbo and James Nesbitt in the cast of Harlan Coben’s Netflix drama, Stay Close. Other previously announced cast members include Richard Armitage, Sarah Parish, Daniel Francis, Bethany Antonia, Rachel Andrews, Poppy Gilbert, and Hyoie O’Grady. The eight-part drama will follow three key characters whose dark secrets resurface and set off a chain of events that threatens to destroy their lives.

Newcomer Candace Grace has been tapped as the lead in Sam Esmail’s ABC drama pilot, Acts of Crime. Also joining as series regulars are Molly Price, Peter Mark Kendall, and newcomer Josiah Cross. Written and directed by Esmail, Acts of Crime is described as "a unique spin on the crime procedural," although no other details have been revealed. Grace will play Vivien Lamonte, a Black police detective working homicide in suburban New Jersey, whose early years were spent on the wrong side of the law. Price plays Captain Gunn, while Kendall will play Todd, a spry rookie detective who went to law school but decided that he wanted to "catch the bad guys" instead of prosecuting them.

Bones alumna Tamara Taylor is set as a lead opposite Christopher Meloni and Dylan McDermott in Law & Order: Organized Crime, NBC’s Law & Order: SVU spinoff series slated to premiere later this year. In Law & Order: Organized Crime, Elliot Stabler (Meloni) returns 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. NBC has set April 1st as the premiere date, which is a two-hour crossover with SVU.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest Crime Writers of Color podcast featured E. A. Aymar (a/k/a E. A. Barres), author of They’re Gone, as interviewed by Robert Justice.

Meet the Thriller Author's special guest this week was Walter Mosley, whose books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages. Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, James H. Roby, a former Air Force officer and author of the Urban Knights thriller series, for the Crime Cafe podcast.

Writer Types chatted with German best seller, Sebastian Fitzek, about his new novel, The Package and Isabella Maldonado about her new series starter, The Cipher; debut author Fiona King Foster also chatted about her novel, The Captive; and in a new segment, Jason Pinter and Nick Petrie discussed long-running series and how to keep up the quality.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Daniel Pyne to dicsuss his new thriller, Water Memory, featuring former black ops expert turned private security contractor, Aubrey Sentro.

Suspense Magazine's podcast sat down with Victoria Thompson, as she talked about her latest book, City Of Schemes, the fourth installment in her Counterfeit Lady series.

The featured guest on My Favorite Detective Stories was James D.F. Hannah, Shamus Award-winning author of the Henry Malone series, as well as the novel, The Righteous Path.

Mick Herron returned to the Spybrary Podcast to discusses his latest novel, Slough House, which takes a look at the corrupt web of media, global finance, spycraft, and politics that power our modern world.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Lawrence Maddo‪x about his new novella, The Down and Out.

Queer Writers of Crime welcomed Edwin Hill, the author of critically-acclaimed crime novels Watch Her, The Missing Ones, and Little Comfort. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha Awards and was recognized as one of "Six Crime Writers to Watch" in Mystery Scene magazine

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club podcast offered a roundup of romantic suspense titles.

The latest episode of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's podcast included a story by Edward D. Hoch, who had a thirty-five-year streak of unbroken publication in each issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine until his death in early 2008. EQMM editor Janet Hutchings read his story "The Man Who Drowned in Champagne," from the April 1998 issue.

On The Writer's Detective Bureau, host and veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, talked about transporting an inmate from federal custody to testify in state court, creating realistic clandestine drug lab scenes, and the realities of cops using drones for an aerial search.

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

FFB: Aristotle Detective

Margaret Anne Doody (born 1939) is a professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, helping to found the PhD in Literature program there. Her interest in history spurred her to write a historical mystery in 1978, at a time when historical mysteries weren't nearly as popular as they are now. The book was titled Aristotle Detective, and became the first in a series of eight books set at the time of Greek philosopher Aristotle in 32 B.C. Athens.



As the book opens, Athens is unhappy under the rule of the Macedonian Alexander the Great, now fighting the King of Persia for control of the East. In the middle of the unrest, the eminent citizen, Boutades, is brutally murdered by a bow and arrow. Suspicion falls on young Philemon, an exile formerly guilty of manslaughter. By Athenian law, his nearest male relative, 23-year-old Stephanos, must conduct Philemon's defense.



Out of desperation, Stephanos turns to his former mentor, Aristotle, who turns detective and soon has Stephanos disguising himself as a vegetable seller to investigate undercover in harbor towns. Together their investigations culminate in a gripping trial where Stephanos has to muster all the powers of rhetoric and oratory Aristotle has taught him to clear his family's name of the bloody murder.



Doody said in an interview with Shots Magazine that the idea came to her after reading Aristotle's Rhetoric and thinking "how Aristotle was so un-illusioned about human behaviour." She decided that somebody should write a detective story in which Aristotle was Sherlock Holmes. In her novel, Aristotle is to Holmes what Stephanos is to Watson, although a more apt description for Aristotle during the first part of the book would be Nero Wolfe, since he does his detective work remotely from his "armchair."



Doody's details are well researched, with technical terms limited to bare essentials, and she manages to inject some dry wit and a playful tone that helps offset the somewhat predictable plot. As Colin Dexter says in a Foreword to the 1996 reissue, "the author wears her scholarship lightly, and the authenticity of the settings—the dirt, smell, noise, throng, of Piraeus, for example—is eminently enjoyable in its own right."



Doody didn't publish the second book in the series, Aristotle and the Poetic Justice, until 2002 (24 years after the first book) due to a sequence of events involving a change in agents, editors and publishers, an all-too-familiar story for a lot of authors. The last installment, A Cloudy Day in Babylon, was published in 2013, but the University of Chicago Press reissued the first three books in the series in 2014.