Mystery Melange

Mick Herron, author of the Slough House and Zoë Boehm series, has been awarded the 2026 Pepe Carvlho Award, given annually as part of the BCNegra literary festival in Barcelona. Herron received the honor for his "essential contribution to crime fiction, thriller, and contemporary espionage" fiction, and is the latest in a line of winners that includes Jo Nesbø, Don Winslow, Dennis Lehane, Donna Leon, Michael Connelly, P. D. James, and more.


In other international award news, Dominic Nolan won the Lauréat Du Prix Mystére De La Critique 2026 for his novel, White City, in the Best Foreign Novel category. The Critics' Mystery Prize was created in 1972 by the journal Mystère, published by OPTA from 1948 to 1976, and continues to be awarded annually by its founder, Georges Rieben, and his team. The Critics' Mystery Prize is one of the oldest French prizes awarded to a detective novel and is divided into two categories, French novel and foreign novel. This year, Benjamin Dierstein's Bleus, Blancs, Rouges won in the "Best French-language novel" category.


The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes announced finalists in various categories. The top nods in the Mystery/Thriller realm include El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott (G.P. Putnam’s Sons); The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company); Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Ace Atkins (William Morrow); King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar); and Crooks by Lou Berney (William Morrow).  Winners will be revealed during the LA Times Book Festival, Friday, April 17, 2026 at 7 p.m. at the Bovard Auditorium (USC Campus).


There will be a Noir at the Bar event in New York City on March 1 at the Shade Bar, 241 Sullivan Street. Authors scheduled to appear to read from their works include James McCrone, Wil Medearis, Linda Sands, Brian Silverman, John Shepphird, Jason Starr, Albert Tucher, Scott Adlerberg, and Jen Conley.


A little farther down the road on April 15, Baramoor in Newton, Massachusetts will be the setting for a Noir at the Bar to benefit the Alzheimer's Association. It was organized by Nancy McCreary in honor of her husband, Lew McCreary, a critically acclaimed author of literary and crime fiction, including Mount’s Mistake, The Minus Man, and The 13th Step, who is suffering from this cruel disease. Participating authors include Hank Phillipi Ryan, Tracy Sierra, Liza Tully, Edwin Hill, Emily Ross, Sara Divello, Nicole Asselin, Trisha Blanchet, and Jonathan Payne, with Joanna Schaffhausen serving as host.


Registration is open for the 2026 Edgar Week Symposium set for Tuesday, April 26. Panels include "Murder by Death: Where crime, art and literature intersect," "Composite Sketch: Creating unforgettable characters," and more, featuring a lineup of bestselling authors. There will be also be an interview by Oline Cogdill of the 2026 Grand Masters, Donna Andrews and Lee Child.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Allow Me" by Caleb Merritt.


In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Deborah Goodrich Royce, author of the new psychological thriller, Best Boy. Kalb also interviewed Sandra K. Griffith about her new thriller, One Beautiful Year of Normal.

Nonpareil Nonfiction for 2025

Last year's awards season honored a bumper crop of nonfiction mystery and crime titles, as I mentioned yesterday. Today, I'll note the top honorees that garnered the most nominations, starting with the four titles that had three nominations each, followed by the six books with two nominations each. They run the gamut from true crime investigations and reporting, to biographies and memoirs, to a book on writing cozy mysteries. And, with the 2026 awards season just beginning to ramp up, I fully expect another year ahead of fascinating reading and much-deserved recognition for all the reference and research efforts that go into writing these books. 

THREE NOMINATIONS EACH

Abingdon's Boardinghouse Murder by Greg Lilly (History Press). On a bitter November night in 1945, a widow shot her young boarder, a WWII veteran, and left him to die on the floor of his room. Helen Clark tossed the gun under the neighbor's porch and then took a taxi to join her teen daughters at a movie in Bristol. When the body was found, after several conflicting statements, she settled on the claim that he shot himself-four times, twice in the back. The Commonwealth of Virginia called it murder in a jealous rage. The trial enthralled the nation. Author Greg Lilly uses newspaper coverage of the murder, the investigation and the trial to reveal the facts of the Abingdon boardinghouse murder.

On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett by Ashley Lawson (The Ohio State University Press).  Ashley Lawson’s On Edge presents a new picture of postwar American literature, arguing that biases against genre fiction have unfairly disadvantaged the legacies of authors like Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. Each of these women navigated a male-dominated postwar publishing world without compromising their values. Their category-defying treatment of gender roles and genre classifications created suspense in their work that spoke to the tensions of the “Age of Anxiety.” Lawson engages with foundational voices in American literature, genre theory, and feminism to argue that, by merging the dominant mode of literary realism with fantastical or heightened elements, Brackett, Jackson, and Highsmith responded to the big questions of their era with startling and unnerving answers.

Some of My Best Friends are Murderers: Critiquing the Columbo Killers, by Chris Chan (Level Best). Can you enjoy a crime television show if you already know whodunit? As Columbo proved, definitely! In nearly every episode, Lieutenant Columbo, played by Peter Falk, is paired off against a murderer who’d supposedly committed the perfect crime. Columbo would question, trick, and even befriend the very different killers in order to make an arrest. But despite the standard formula for the episodes, each guest murderer was very different. This book explores the killers who believed they were too clever to be caught, only to be undone by a detective who kept asking about just one more thing…

Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors' Perspectives on Their Craft, edited by Phillis M. Betz (McFarland). This book brings together essays written by a number of well-known writers of cozy mysteries, including Sherry Harris, Amanda Flower, Leslie Budewitz, and Edith Maxwell, among others, who provide insight into their approaches to writing. Topics covered include how they work with the form, develop characters and settings, and utilize the particular hook, skill or business that establishes the protagonist's ability to solve crimes. In addition to discussing these traditional aspects of writing, several authors focus on how they have expanded the direction the contemporary cozy mystery has taken with the inclusion of more diverse characters and social issues.

TWO NOMINATIONS EACH

Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert in Wickedness by Mark Aldridge  (HarperCollins). In Agatha Christie’s Expert on Wickedness, "Agathologist" Dr Mark Aldridge looks at nearly a century of St Mary Mead’s most famous resident and uses his own detective skills to uncover new information about Miss Jane Marple’s appearances on page, stage, screen, and beyond. Drawing on a range of material, some of which is newly discovered and previously unpublished, this book explores everything about Miss Marple, from her origins in a series of short stories penned by Christie, to the recent bestselling HarperCollins collection Twelve New Stories. This accessible, entertaining and illustrated guide to the world of Miss Marple pieces together the evidence in order to tell you everything you need to know about the world’s favorite female detective.

Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre). From her early days in Liverpool to her unexpected acceptance into RADA, joining peers Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt and Ian McShane; from beginning her scriptwriting career with Widows and Prime Suspect and becoming a BAFTA award-winning writer and producer, Lynda's tales of stage and screen will have you gasping in shock as well as laughing in the aisles. Lynda has an important story to tell, one of breaking down stereotypes and blazing a trail for others along the way. Starting her writing career in the eighties, an era of entrenched gender inequality both in front of and behind the camera, Lynda faced innumerable obstacles to her vision. Getting Away with Murder shows how she overcame them to create generation-defining television and become a multi-million-copy Sunday Times bestselling author

The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson (Penguin Random House - Crown). When Arthur Woods took command of the NYPD in April of 1914, the institution was still largely the corrupt, low-tech organization of the Tammany Hall era. To the extent the police were stopping crime—as opposed to committing it—their role had been almost entirely defined by the brawn of the cop on the beat keeping criminals at bay with nightsticks and fists. The solving of crimes was largely outside their purview. Woods was determined to change that, but he couldn’t have anticipated the maelstrom of violence that would test his science-based approach to policing. The Infernal Machine is the complex pre-history of our current moment, when decentralized anarchist networks have once again taken to the streets to protest law enforcement abuses, right-wing militia groups have attacked government buildings, and surveillance is almost ubiquitous.

The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop by Neil Mercer (Allen & Unwin). Roger Rogerson captured Australia's attention as its most notorious cop in the golden age of graft and violence. But who was the real Rogerson? And who was his principal partner in crime, the underworld kingpin, heroin dealer and armed bandit Arthur "Neddy" Smith? Now Rogerson and Smith are both dead, and the full truth can be revealed. Crime reporter Neil Mercer knew Roger and Neddy since early 1980s, when the men were at the height of their powers. He followed their careers for major news outlets, met with them and was given exclusive interviews and insider information. Rogerson even wrote to him from jail. With key witnesses finally coming forward, Mercer has uncovered astonishing new evidence that will rewrite the story of the Australian underworld. The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop is the definitive account of Roger and Neddy, and the era that made them. As compelling as any crime novel, it is filled with color, violence and inside stories not seen or read before.

The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (HarperCollins). In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and now faces 20 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day. The Lasting Harm is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome. Centering the stories of four women and their testimonies, and supplemented by extra material to which Osborne-Crowley has exclusive access, The Lasting Harm brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice.

The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury Circus). London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man? The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press the public watches on like never before. Who is the chief suspect, the former policeman Reg Christie? Why did he choose to kill women, and to keep their bodies near him? As reporters Harry Procter and Fryn Tennyson Jesse start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realize that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice in plain sight. In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie's victims, the tabloid frenzy their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house.

In Reference to Research

In keeping with the original focus of this blog, I decided to highlight the nonfiction books nominated for major mystery awards during 2025 (with winners indicated by an asterisk). Tomorrow, I'll focus more on those books that garnered the most accolades during the year, but I encourage readers and fans of true crime and crime reference to dig into this list and support these authors and their painstaking research. I haven't personally read all of them (yet), but this is a fine list of some of the best recent fact crime and nonfiction studies, all of which are available from most bookstores and libraries. (Winners are denoted with an asterisk.)

AGATHA AWARDS 2025

Best Non-fiction

• * Writing The Cozy Mystery: Authors' Perspectives On Their Craft Edited by Phyllis M. Betz (McFarland) 
• Abingdon's Boardinghouse Murder by Greg Lill (The History Press) 
• Agatha Christie, Marple: Expert On Wickedness by Mark Aldridg (HarperCollins) 
• Some Of My Best Friends Are Murderers: Critiquing The Columbo Killers by Chris Cha (Level Best Books) 
• The Bookshop: A History Of The American Bookstore by Evan Fris (Viking)

ANTHONY AWARDS 2025

Best Critical/Non-fiction:

• * The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, by Katherine Ramsland and Tracy Ullman (Crime Ink) 
• Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors’ Perspectives on Their Craft, edited by Phyllis M. Betz (McFarland) 
• Some of My Best Friends Are Murderers: Critiquing the Columbo Killers, by Chris Chan (Level Best) 
• On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett, by Ashley Lawson (Ohio State University Press) 
• Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder, by Greg Lilly (History Press)

BAD SYDNEY CRIME FESTIVAL DANGER AWARDS (Australia) 2025

Best Crime Nonfiction

• * Black Witness by Amy McQuire (UQP)
• In the Dead of Night by Greg Haddrick (Allen & Unwin)
• The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop by Neil Mercer (Allen & Unwin)
• Dark City by John Silvester (Pan Macmillan)
• The Outback Court Reporter by Jamelle Wells (HarperCollins)

CAPITAL CRIME FINGERPRINT AWARDS 2025

True Crime Book of the Year

• * Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre) 
• The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World, by Ben Macintyre (Crown) by Ben Macintyre (Crown) 
• The Murder Of Judith Roberts: The Mark Of Peter Sutcliffe, by Chris Clark & Tanita Matthews (Pen and Sword True Crime) 
• The Peepshow: The Murders at Rillington Place, by Kate Summerscale (Penguin Press) 
• The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer by Ulrik Skotte (WH Allen)

CRIMEFEST AWARDS 2025

H.R.F. Keating award

• * Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert in Wickedness by Mark Aldridge (HarperCollins) 
• Allusion in Detective Fiction by Jem Bloomfield (Palgrave Macmillan) 
• Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction 1841-1920 by Ashley Bowden (Fabula Mysterium Press) 
• Writing the Murder: Essays in Crafting Crime Fiction by Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Dead Ink) 
• The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female by Sara Lodge (Yale University Press) 
• Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA AWARDS 2025

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book

• * (tie) Out of Darkness: Rumana Monzur's Journey through Betrayal, Tyranny and Abuse, by
•  Denise Chong (Random House Canada)
  * (tie) The Knowing, by Tanya Talaga (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.) 
• Atrocity on the Atlantic: Attack on a Hospital Ship During the Great War, by Nate Hendley (Dundurn Press) 
• The Rest of the [True Crime] Story, by John L. Hill (AOS Publishing) 
• A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue, by Dean Jobb, (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.)

CWA DAGGER AWARDS 2025

Gold Dagger For Non-Fiction

• * The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury Circus) 
• Unmasking Lucy Let by Jonathan Coffey & Judith Moritz (Seven Dials)    
• The Lady in the Lake by Jeremy Craddock (Mirror Books)    
• Framed by John Grisham & Jim McCloskey (Hodder & Stoughton)   
• The Criminal Mind by Duncan Harding (PRH/Michael Joseph)    
• Four Shots in the Night by Henry Hemming (Quercus)   

DAVITT AWARDS (Australia) 2025

Nonfiction books

• * The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (4th Estate GB) 
• In Bad Faith:Inside a secret ultra-Orthodox sect and the brutal betrayal it tried to hide by Dassi Erlich (Hachette Australia)- 
• Crimes of the Cross: The Anglican Paedophile Network of Newcastle, Its Protectors and the Man
• Who Fought for Justice by Anne Manne (Black Inc.)

EDGARS 2025

Best Critical/Biographical Work

• * James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Nathan Ashman (McFarland Publishing)
• American Film Noir: From the Maltese Falcon to Gone Girl by M. Keith Booker (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) 
• Organized Crime on Page and Screen: Portrayals in Hit Novels, Films, Television Shows by David Geherin (McFarland Publishing) 
• On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett by Ashley Lawson (The Ohio State University Press) 
• Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare (HarperCollins)

Best Fact Crime

• * The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson (Penguin Random House – Crown) 
• Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi (HarperCollins - Mariner Books) 
• A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton by Deb Miller Landau (Pegasus Books - Pegasus Crime)                       
• The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy that Let a Killer Go Free by Gregg Olsen (Amazon Publishing - Thomas & Mercer)                           
• Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second
• Slavery by Earl Swift (HarperCollins - Mariner Books) 
• The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Wolraich (Union Square & Co)

KILLER NASHVILLE SILVER FALCHION AWARDS 2025

Best Nonfiction 

• * Tilghman: The Legendary Lawman And The Woman Who Inspired Him by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss (TwoDot) 
• There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish by Anna Akbari (Grand Central Publishing) 
• Lovers In Auschwitz: A True Story by Keren Blankfeld (Little, Brown and Company) 
• Ask Not: The Kennedys And The Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan (Little, Brown and Company)

MACAVITY AWARDS 2025

Best Mystery Critical/Biographical

• * Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder by Greg Lilly (History Press) 
• Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors’ Perspectives on Their Craft edited by Phyllis M. Betz (McFarland)
• Some of My Best Friends Are Murderers: Critiquing the Columbo Killers by Chris Chan (Level Best Books)\
• Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice by Alex Hortis (Pegasus Crime)
• The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson  (Crown)
• On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett by Ashley Lawson  (Ohio State University Press)

NED KELLY AWARDS (Australia) 2025

Best True Crime:

• * A Thousand Miles from Care: The Hunt for My Brother’s Killer – A Thirty-Year True-Crime Quest for Justice , by Steve Johnson (William Collins)
•  They’ll Never Hold Me: The life and crimes of Kevin John Simmonds, Australia's most daring fugitive, by Michael Adams (Affirm Press)
• The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop, by Neil Mercer (Allen & Unwin) 
• Meadow’s Law: The life and crimes of Kevin John Simmonds, Australia's most daring fugitive , by Quentin McDermott (HarperCollins) 
• * The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (4th Estate GB), by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (HarperCollins)

NGAIO MARSH AWARD (New Zealand) 2025

Best Nonfiction

• * The Crewe Murders: Inside New Zealand's most infamous cold case by Kirsty Johnstone & James Hollings (Massey Uni Press)
•  The Trials Of Nurse Kerr: The anatomy of a secret poisoner by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman Books)
• The Survivors: Stories of Death and Desperation by Steve Braunias (HarperCollins)
• The Last Secret Agent: The untold story of my life as a spy behind Nazi enemy lines by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
• Gangster’s Paradise by Jared Savage (HarperCollins)
• Far North by David White & Angus Gillies (Upstart Press)

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
 
Incline Studios unveiled key members of the ensemble cast for its upcoming newsroom thriller, Red Ink. Unfolding in real time, using uninterrupted one-shot takes to mirror the urgency of a breaking story, the film is set over the course of a single morning in November 1949, inside the bustling New York headquarters of the respected Verity Press. Toby Leonard Moore (John Wick) plays Bob Hoover, Verity’s editor-in-chief and a celebrated war photographer whose Pulitzer-winning photograph helped sway public opinion at the end of World War II. His calm authority, wit, and quiet moral certainty is challenged by escalating reports of a mysterious affliction hitting the inhabitants of New York and beyond. As the clock races toward the deadline, he and his team scramble to shape the narrative before rival papers and government officials do. Pressure mounts from the publisher, Walter Nash (D.B. Sweeney), and Senator Conrad (Mike Doyle), a political operative attempting to steer the narrative toward fear, control, and propaganda. Other cast members include Siobhan Fallon Hogan (Men in Black), Tommie Earl Jenkins (Wednesday), Eugene Cordero (Loki), Rose Reid (Finding You), Kyle Selig (Welcome to Flatch), Oona Laurence (The Beguiled), Josh Plasse (iCarly), Michael Barra (The Amazing Spider-Man), Max von Essen (Dexter: Resurrection), and Melissa Putterman-Hoffman.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Twenty one years after Fox cast David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel as the leads of a crime drama procedural pilot, Bones, NBC has tapped the duo to each headline a crime drama procedural pilot for the network. Last week, it was announced that Boreanaz will play the lead in NBC’s The Rockford Files reboot, and now it appears that Deschanel will star in an untitled one-hour crime drama written by The Brave creator Dean Georgaris and longtime Davis Entertainment President John Fox. The series is inspired by the work of expert profiler and author Dr. Ann Burgess, subject of the 2024 Hulu docuseries Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer. It centers on Professor Georgia Ryan (Deschanel), a trailblazing psychologist who challenges the field of criminology by shifting the investigative focus to the victim rather than just the perpetrator in order to uncover the crucial clues that more traditional methods leave behind.  


Taylor Schilling has been tapped as the lead of NBC‘s crime drama procedural pilot, What The Dead Know, from Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television. Written by Beth Rinehart (FBI: Most Wanted), the project is based on former New York City medical examiner Barbara Butcher’s memoir, What the Dead Know, and centers on highly intelligent, hyper-vigilant death Investigator Ava Ledger (Schilling) who is really good with dead bodies. It’s the living that give her trouble. The series follows Ava as she teams with the NYPD to solve their toughest cases.


Damon Wayans Jr. (Let’s Be Cops, New Girl) has been set as the lead of the NBC and Universal Television drama pilot, Puzzled, based on the Danielle Trussoni novel, The Puzzle Master, from Joey Falco (Charmed). In Puzzled, after barely escaping a tragic fire, once promising college athlete Mike Brink (Wayans Jr.) is transformed by a traumatic brain injury that gives him the unique ability to see the world in an unexpected way and helps him solve crimes with local police. Mike makes his living by betting on sports and is uniquely equipped to do this because he developed Acquired Savant Syndrome as a result of the injury, a rare condition that gives him exceptional skills in puzzle-solving, higher math functions, and pattern recognition.


Beta Film has snapped up international rights for Northern Traces, one of the most-watched shows of the last five years on French-language streamer illico+ in Canada. Set in a snowbound rural town, Northern Traces centers on seasoned Montreal investigator Sergeant Guillaume Pelletier, played by Danny Gilmore. His quiet getaway ends when a friend’s ex-wife is found murdered. Guillaume partners with meticulous local officer Évelyne, and as they investigate and uncover shocking secrets as they face a race against time. The cast also includes Robert Naylor, Catherine Bérubé, and Léa Roy


The BBC has set the cast for its Killing Eve prequel, Honey. Ann Skelly (House of Guinness) takes on the lead role of Martha Schmitt, a deep cover agent for MI6. Surrounded by enemies and constantly under threat of her cover being blown, she tries her hardest to avoid detection by Friedrich Bauman (Jannis Niewöhner), the new Stasi Head of Counterespionage against British Targets. Also starring are Nate Mann (Masters of the Air, Licorice Pizza) as Kurt Fischer, and Rory Kinnear (The Diplomat, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power) as Graham Anderson. The Martha Schmitt character is a younger version of Carolyn Martens, who was played by BAFTA-winning Fiona Shaw in Killing Eve. In the original series, young Carolyn was played in one episode by Black Mirror actor Imogen Daines, but the BBC has opted for up-and-comer Skelly to take on that role in Honey.


The BBC also announced the award-winning Gaelic drama series An t-Eilean (The Island) will return following a successful debut series last year. An t-Eilean was the UK’s first high-end Gaelic drama series and the biggest, most high-profile drama in BBC ALBA’s history. Created by Nicholas Osborne and co-written with Mairead Hamilton, the new series will feature a gripping new mystery and will see Sorcha Groundsell (The Innocents, His Dark Materials) return in the lead role of Detective Sergeant Kat Crichton. The new series opens with Kat frustrated both at work and home, caring for her ill father and dealing with petty local crime. However, when the body of a young woman is washed up, Kat is thrust into the hunt for a killer stalking the islands. When her former nemesis, Ruaraidh MacLean (Sam James Smith), now running the local youth group, shares his suspicion there are other missing young islanders, he finds himself drawn back in to Kat’s world as the case tightens around those closest to home.


Mistletoe Murders will be back for a third season, after Hallmark Media announced it has renewed the mystery series starring Sarah Drew (Grey’s Anatomy) and Peter Mooney (Rookie Blue). Season 3 is set to begin production later this year and will premiere during Hallmark’s annual Countdown to Christmas programming event. Mistletoe Murders follows Emily Lane (Drew), the outwardly friendly, and optimistic shop owner of a charming, year-round Christmas-themed store, who has been harboring a big secret. Residing in the quaint tourist town of Fletcher’s Grove, Emily finds herself compelled to investigate not-so-quaint local murders. As Emily works with Detective Sam Wilner (Mooney), a smart local cop, he discovers that the bigger mystery is Emily herself. Season 3 picks up following the Season 2 finale cliffhanger, which found Emily and Sam finally sharing a romantic moment and agreeing to be honest about their pasts. The drama is adapted from the Audible Original series Mistletoe Murders starring Cobie Smulders, Raymond Ablack, Anna Cathcart, and a full ensemble cast.

The BBC has axed acclaimed thriller Virdee after one series, deeming ratings not sufficient for a renewal. The six-part thriller, adapted from A A Dhand's best-selling crime novel series, followed DCI Harry Virdee (Staz Nair) hunting down a killer targeting a West Yorkshire city's Asian community. It also saw the detective's Sikh family feel outraged that Harry decided to marry Saima (Aysha Kala), who is Muslim. Virdee also starred Tobias Jowett (young Harry Virdee), Vikash Bhai (Riaz Hyatt), Danyal Ismail (DS Amin), Elizabeth Berrington (DS Conway), Sudha Bhuchar (Jyoti Virdee), and Kulvinder Ghir (Ranjit Virdee).


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester recommended crime fiction and nonfiction books for Black History Month on the Read or Dead podcast.


John Charles was in conversation with authors Susan Elizabeth Phillips (And the Crowd Went Wild) and Susan Walter (Murder at 30,000 Feet) on the Poisoned Pen podcast.


On Crime Time FM, Howard Linskey chatted with host Paul Burke about Howard's new novel, Muse Of Fire; love of Shakespeare and the Globe; picking up a theatre and moving it across the river, and more.


The Outliers University Get to Know podcast featured Nicholas Harvey, author of the AJ Bailey Adventure and Nora Sommer Caribbean Suspense series, and Douglas Pratt, author of the Chase Gordon Tropical Thriller and Max Sawyer books. On a separate Get to Know episode, hosts DP Lyle and Kathleen Antrim were in conversation with best-selling author Linda Castillo, a Sue Grafton Award nominee and author of the Kate Burkholder series, set in the world of the Amish.


House of Mystery Radio interviewed Humphrey Hawksley, author of the Major Rake Ozenna thrillers.