Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Death Watch

Author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is a British writer born in 1948 in the Shepherd's Bush area of London. While studying English, history and philosophy at the University College of London in 1972, she wrote her first novel which won the UK's Young Writers Award. She toiled away in the business world as her day job, but continued writing on the side which finally paid off in 1979 with what has become her best-selling series about the Morland Dynasty. She's written over 60 novels in three different genres since then.

She turned to crime fiction in 1991 with Orchestrated Death, the first in her series featuring Detective Inspector Bill Slider, which has grown into 12 novels thus far, with the 13th due out in 2011. Slider is middle-class, middle-aged and, according to his partner Jim Atherton, menopausal, or as reviewer Bill Ott said, "Slider is a beleaguered Everyman, immersed in the dailiness of life." Atherton, on the other hand, is out of place in the Met because he's a gourmand, fancy dresser and womanizer. The give-and-take between the two men is one of the elements that anchors the series.

On the subject of how she came up with the idea for Slider, the author says

"When I originally embarked on ORCHESTRATED DEATH, the first of the Bill Slider books...I had no thought then of having it published. With no preconceived notions of how to write a detective novel, I started with a corpse; and, in order not to make it too easy, I made it a totally naked corpse in a completely empty flat – a clue-free zone! I didn’t have to invent a detective - Bill Slider walked into my head the first day, complete in every respect. Don’t ask me where he came from: he’s not like anyone I know, at least not consciously; but from the first moment I knew everything about him – how he looked, where he lived, where he’d been to school, what he liked and disliked. So Bill and I started investigating our first case. I had no more idea than he did who the corpse was, let alone who had murdered her or why, so we had to work it out as we went along –  not the recommended method for writing a mystery..."

But Harrod-Eagles was apparently a quick-study, thanks to a lot of research spending time with police detectives, reading police in-house magazines, doing legal and forensic studies, as well as reading newspaper reports of real crimes. The result has been a series worthy enough that she's been likened to John Harvey and Ian Rankin.

The second book in the series, Death Watch from 1992, follows Slider and Atherton when they respond to an arson at the Master Baker Motor Lodge and that led to the death of a loudmouthed lothario salesman, Dick Neal, who leaves behind a bitter wife and a bevy of mistresses. Despite the fact that the victim had ligature marks around his neck and trusses on his genitals, Slider's superiors are hoping it's just a suicide, due to budget constraints—but then Slider uncovers a possible link between the death and what is happening to the members of the "Red Watch" who manned the Shaftesbury Street Fire Station in the 1970's.

As Slider digs deeper into the case, he at first loathes then envies the dead man his adulterous life, finding parallels between the victim and Slider's own extramarital affair with a concert violinist. When Slider notes the victim "Seems to me to have been a a sad, pathetic creature," it's as much an indictment of his own situation as it is Neal's. But lest one get the impression that Harrod-Eagles' books are more in the noir vein, she also peppers her writing with wit, a bevy of puns and intelligent dialogue, as well as effective pacing and clever plot twists.

Mystery Melange

At the recent Literacy Partners Evening of Readings and Gala Dinner, crime fiction author Patricia Cornwell received the Lifetime Achievement Award "for her extraordinary career as an award-winning author most famous for her forensic thrillers." To date, over 120 million copies of her books have been sold in thirty-six languages in over 120 countries.


There will be a Noir at the Bar at the Kensington Club on Adams Avenue in San Diego on July 11, with seven featured authors reading from their latest books. Authors scheduled to appear include Marc Carlos, Jonathan Maberry, David Putnam, Caitlin Rother, Terry Shames, Michael Stetz, and Jamie Parker Stickle. The event is scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.


The new bookstore, Once Upon a Crime (not to be confused with the Minnesota store of the same name), opens June 27th in downtown Smithfield, North Carolina. The independent bookstore will specialize in thriller, suspense, mystery, and crime fiction while also offering titles across a variety of genres. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, June 25, ahead of the grand opening.


Residents of the UK can register to win £200 worth of crime books, choosing from bestselling authors including Lisa Jewell, Richard Osman, Lee Child, Claire Douglas, Tim Weaver, Shari Lapena, and many more. To enter, fill out the form on the following link by midnight Sunday, 19 July 2026.


Ian Rankin (of the Inspector Rebus novels) will be the featured guest at the Malta Book Festival from November 4-8, 2026. Attendance to the Festival and to all of its events is free of charge. Now in its 47th edition, last year's event drew 40,000 visitors to its workshops, author talks, family activities, and more.


An episode of the podcast Another Shirt Ruined (focusing on Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody Emerson series) featured Ava Dickerson, an archivist at IU Bloomington's Lilly Library, who catalogued the papers of Peters (aka Barbara Michaels and Barbara Mertz). She discussed aspects of the collection, some fans who wrote to Peters, challenges in cataloguing, and more. (HT to The Bunburyist)


Now that it's winter in the Southern Hemisphere, apparently readers in Australia and New Zealand, readers are curling up with crime fiction, with Kobo reporting thriller reading surging nearly 1,500%. Psychological thrillers led the way, followed closely by mystery novels, police procedurals, and suspense novels.


Art Taylor's "The First Two Pages" blog featured Debra H. Goldstein discussing her story “Musicians of Bremen" from the new anthology, Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson,


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Lunch" by F.I. Goldhaber.


In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Stig Abell, author of the new novel, A Twist in the River, the latest in his Jake Jackson mystery series; Kalb also chatted with Lee Huber about her new novel, A Bitter Cut, the latest in her Lady Darby Mystery series; British crime author Saima Mir stopped by Crime Fiction Lover to discuss her trilogy featuring Jia Khan, an antihero noir with a Muslim woman leading a crime syndicate; and John Connolly was interviewed by The Gloss about his family and writing career.

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

Bradley Cooper is in talks to star in Sean Penn’s next directorial effort, an untitled film that chronicles the early life of a police officer who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Described as an unexpected story about friendship, the film is not specifically a Jan. 6 movie, although it does cover the life of a police officer who was there, and whose identity is being kept under wraps for now. It also marks the first major feature film tied to the Jan. 6 riots to be made at a Hollywood studio. Penn wrote and will direct the movie, but filming won’t begin until 2027 due to Cooper's busy schedule with the upcoming Ocean’s Eleven prequel film for Warner Bros.  


Speaking of that Ocean's Eleven prequel, recent Oscar nominee Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) is in talks to join the project alongside Bradley Cooper and Margot Robbie. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Robbie appeared via video at CinemaCon to confirm she and Cooper will play the parents of Danny Ocean (portrayed in the Steven Soderbergh “Ocean’s” trilogy by George Clooney). Robbie also noted that the movie follows a heist at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix. “Before Danny Ocean ever stepped [sic] foot in Vegas, two masterminds taught him everything he knows: his parents,” Robbie said. “You’ll see them in all their prime in our new movie, pulling off an epic heist.” The film is currently set to release on June 25, 2027.


Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place franchise) has co-written and will star in the crime thriller, Grace. From filmmakers Ari Costa and Eren Celeboglu, who co-wrote the script, Grace centers on a deaf teenager who unravels the violent secrets of her family’s buried past. A passion project they’ve been developing alongside Simmonds for three years, the project marks their follow-up to directorial debut All Fun and Games, a 2023 horror flick starring Asa Butterfield and Natalie Dyer.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

After Peacock's successful series, All Her Fault, based on Andrea Mara‘s bestselling novel, the streamer is set to adapt another of the author's thrillers, Such a Nice Girl. In the story, best friends Siobhan and Grace go to wake their 24-year-old daughters the morning after a glamorous luxury wedding. Opening the door to their shared room, they find a smashed lamp, an abandoned phone, and blood on the carpet. Over the next few days, the truth unravels and tests Siobhan and Grace’s friendship to its limits. As secrets and lies begin to come to light, they realize the girls were not best friends. In fact, they weren’t really friends at all. And now, it looks like one of them is dead and one is a killer. But whose daughter is guilty of murder?


ABC is in development on A Forgotten Kill, a TV adaptation of Isabella Maldonado's 2024 novel of the same name. The show is centered on ex–Army Ranger Dani Vega, now a dauntless FBI Special Agent whose specialty is breaking codes and detecting patterns. As part of a task force, Dani is partnered with NYPD Detective Mark Flint. Their clashing styles give them an edge in solving crimes and expose an undeniable chemistry, but Dani is haunted by a secret: a family tragedy in her past that comes back to put her career and life at risk. Maldonado is a retired police captain and bestselling author of numerous suspense and thriller series. A graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico and the first Latina to attain the rank of captain in her department, she spent over two decades on the force before her final post as the commander of Special Investigations and Forensics.


Grace Gummer (Love Story) has inked a deal to join Dakota Fanning in Apple TV‘s new thriller series from Alex Cary (A Spy Among Friends, Homeland) and Sony Pictures Television. In the untitled series, Fanning stars as an undercover Treasury agent in a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate, with world-changing political and criminal tentacles. She becomes conflicted between her mission and a belief that her principal target, the heir apparent to all that corrupt power, is at his core a good man and worthy of her love. Gummer will play the series regular role of Juliana, the oldest child of Stellan Skarsgård’s Brant, who heads up the conglomerate. Daryl McCormack is also set to star.


The first trailer for the MGM+ crime drama, The Westies, has been released. The drama is set in the early 1980s, when the construction of the Jacob Javitz Convention Center on the Westies’ home turf in Hell’s Kitchen promises a financial windfall for the Irish-American organized crime gang. Despite being outnumbered 50-to-1 by the Five Families of the Italian mafia, the Westies’ legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile détente. However, internal conflict between the brash younger generation and the old-school leadership threatens to set a match to this powder keg, which will sweep the Westies into the FBI’s ever-deepening investigation into the Italian mafia. Oscar winner J.K. Simmons co-leads the 8-episode series as Eamon Sweeney, the charismatic but ruthless leader of The Westies, while Tom Brittney is Simmons’s co-lead, playing the role of James “Jimmy” Roarke, the fiercely loyal, streetwise leader of the younger generation of Westies.


Netflix released the first images from its Dutch crime series, The Perfect Life, based on the bestselling novel, The Dinner Club, by Saskia Noort. The drama will be  available worldwide from September 10, 2026. The leading roles are played by Loes Haverkort, Teun Luijkx, Remko Vrijdag, Rifka Lodeizen, Charlie-Chan Dagelet, Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Noortje Herlaar, and Edwin Jonker. The story follows Karen (Loes Haverkort), who moves with her family to Bergen, where they are warmly welcomed into the dinner club, a seductive group of friends who fully indulge in an extravagant and hedonistic lifestyle—until one of the luxurious villas goes up in flames, their friend Evert is killed, and his wife and children barely survive. Karen soon discovers their close friendship is held together by lies, where everyone has something to hide, and nothing is what it seems. Karen sets out in search of the truth, but at what cost?


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Time FM interviewed five authors shortlisted for CWA Daggers in the run up to Awards Night announcements on July 2, including Nicci Cloke, Victoria Goldman, Rob McInroy, Michael Wood, and Noelle W Ihli.


On the Poisoned Pen Bookstore podcast, Barbara Peters was in conversation with Jaclyn Goldis, author of The Last Time We Saw Her.


Killer Women interviewed Hilary Davidson about her new standalone thriller, Every Lie I Told.


Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was Clay Stafford, author and founder of the Killer Nashville Conference.


House of Mystery Radio welcomed Gregory Stout to talk about Goodbye is Forever, his new novel with Nashville PI Jackson Gamble.


On the Outliers' Get to Know podcast, Kathleen Antrim and DP Lyle spoke with John Dingle, author of the Gus Wheeler FBI Thriller series.


On Criminal Mischief, host DP Lyle MD led a fun discussion of one of the most common questions he receives from crime writers: Is there a drug that will cause a heart attack?

 

Sunday Music Treat

Brazil's most famous composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), was quite prolific, with over 2000 orchestral, vocal, and chamber works, many inspired by Brazilian folk music mixed with European traditions, most notably Bachianas Brasileiras, a series of nine suites written for various combinations of instruments and voices.

Here's Festa no Sertão ("Party in the Country"), played by Brazilian-born pianist Clelia Iruzun:

And here's arguably the composer's best-known work, "Aria" from the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, sung by Anna Moffo:

 

Quote of the Week

 

Capital Crime's Fingerprints

 

Last evening, the Capital Crime festival announced the winners of its annual Fingerprint Awards, which champion the very best in crime writing from the past year across the globe. The shortlists were selected by the festival’s board members from a longlist carefully curated by the Tastemakers Committee, a panel of leading independent bloggers and reviewers, who championed their standout titles across each category.  Readers were then invited to vote for their preferred winners in each category. Congrats to this year's winners and finalists!

Audiobook of the Year:   Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell 

Other finalists:

• King of Ashes by  S A Cosby
• We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough
• Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
• Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver

True Crime Book of the Year:  Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts-Guiffre 

Other finalists: 

• Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser
• A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders by Prof. David Wilson
• A Flower Travelled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland  

Debut Crime Book:  Deadline by  Steph McGovern 

Other finalists: 

• Broken by Jón Atli Jónasson
• Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall
• The Day of the Roaring by Nina Bhadreshwar
• This is Not A Game by Kelly Mullen

Genre-Busting Book:  Kill Them with Kindness by Will Carver 

Other finalists: 

• Little Red Death by A. K. Benedict Book
• Blood Like Ours by Stuart Neville
• Small Fires by Ronnie Turner
• Manhattan Down by Michael Cordy  

Historical Crime Book of the Year:  Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee

Other finalists: 

• The Art of A Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
• The Rush by Beth Lewis
• Dangerous by Essie Fox
• Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz 

Thriller Book of the Year:  Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell 

Other finalists: 

• The Chemist by A A Dhand
• Human Remains by Jo Callaghan
• The Man Made of Smoke by Alex North
• Some of Us Are Liars by Fiona Cummins

Overall Crime Book of the Year:  The Final Vow by M W Craven

Other finalists: 

• The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani
• Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan
• The Good Father by Liam McIlveney
• We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough
  
  

Thalia Procter Lifetime Achievement Award:  Trisha Jackson

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Rising of the Moon

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell (1901–1983) taught English, Spanish, history and games in various schools in and around London and was a lifelong student herself, interested in poetry, archaeology, medieval architecture, Freud, and witchcraft (thanks to the influence of her friend, author Helen Simpson), and she was also a member of the British Olympic Association. She penned sixty-six detective novels under her own name, published between 1929 and a posthumous book in 1984, all featuring Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. She also wrote another series of detective stories under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie (with architect Timothy Herring), as well as historical and children's books. 
 
One of the earliest members of the British Detection Club, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Mitchell is often compared to the other two Grande Dames and included on lists of the brightest lights of the Golden Age of detective fiction. But with 76 books to her credit, critics like to point out that quantity didn't always mean quality in her novels, something the author addressed in an interview published in the Armchair Detective in 1976:  "I know I have written some bad books, but I thought they were all right when I wrote them. I can't bear to look at some of them now...The books I dislike most are Printer's Error and Brazen Tongue—a horrible book." That may be, but her beloved protagonist Mrs. Bradley still stands as one the most unusual and memorable in detective fiction.

The thrice-married Mrs. Bradley is a medical practitioner, psychiatrist, criminologist and consultant to the Home Office. She herself is an author, including A Small Handbook of Psychoanalysis and articles in psychological journals, specializing in the psychology of crime. In the nonfiction book Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Michele Slung wrote that Mrs. Bradley's "detecting methods combine hoco-pocus and Freud, seasoned with sarcasm and the patience of a predator toying with its intended victim." Mrs. Bradley is variously described by other characters in the books as being "dry without being shrivelled, and bird-like without being pretty," "a hag-like pterodactyl," and "Mrs. Crocodile." She is an accomplished player at bridge, pool, snooker, darts and throwing knives, and a dead shot with an airgun.

Although Mitchell always denied she included much blood and violence in her stories, there's plenty of poisoning to be found (such as deadly nightshade grafted onto to a tomato plant) with horrific side effects, lots of throat-cutting, and one victim was even minced into sausages and hung from hooks. The main premise of 1945's Rising of the Moon, one of Mitchell's personal favorite books, involves a a Ripper-like killer wreaking havoc on the streets of the small village Brentford by mutilating young women and slitting their throats when the moon is full.

Reminiscent of the precocious narrator of Alan Bradley's Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie over sixty years before that book's publication, Rising of the Moon is told through the eyes of 13-year-old Simon Innes, who teams up with his 11-year-old brother Keith, becoming junior Hardy Boys trying to solve the bloody crimes. Their task becomes even more urgent when they spy the potential murder weapon at a local junk shop run by their friend—an eccentric old lady who has a "rag and bone man" as a lodger—then realize the knife may belong to their older brother/guardian and worry he'll be accused of murder.

In that same Armchair Detective interview referenced above, Mitchell remarked Rising of the Moon recalled much of her own Brentford childhood, she being Simon in that story and her "adorable brother Reginald" the model for Keith. That may be one reason Mitchell doesn't patronize her young protagonists, painting them as curious, clever and witty in their matter-of-fact observations, such as "All detective work is sneaking. That's why only gentlemen and cads can do it," or Simon's solemn thought after one almost-disastrous attempt at sleuthing:

In this innocent belief, our progress back to the high street was robbed of much of its terror. The moon was now flooding the sky. Her image reflected in the water was no longer a thing of murky terror, for we were vain-glorious; we were heroes. We had been under fire. We had been suspected of being murderers. We had filled some female heart with excessive terror. We felt we had been blooded, and were men.

In Mrs. Bradley they find a sympathetic ear and are immediately put at ease by her confidence in them, as she becomes their greatest ally and supporter. She in turn offers up little insights into life as part of their education, as in "These bestial realities must sometimes be faced...Life is inclined to be sordid. Our friends are not always what they seem." Mrs. Bradley's role in Rising of the Moon is important, although she actually only appears half-way through the book, with the heart of the story carried by the winsome Simon.

The book is at turns darkly tongue-in-cheek, eccentric, warm and ultimately charming. Though the plotting is a bit muddled and disjointed at times, if you're willing to put that aside, the endearing narration and almost dreamy setting pull you in and make you feel a little like you've become immersed in a surrealistic painting. That may be why Christopher Fowler said in the Independent that Mitchell's works are "more interesting than Christie's, if more problematic."

Radio adaptations for the BBC were made of two of her books with Mary Wimbush starring as Mrs Bradley, and five of Mitchell's novels were loosely adapted for the 1990s television series The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries featuring Diana Rigg (Rising of the Moon was one, although the plot barely resembles the novel). One critic groused that the latter turned Mrs. Bradley into a glamorous Miss Marple, but it may have helped rekindle some interest in the author.