Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Ghost of a Chance

William Roos (1911-1987) was born in Pennsylvania, eventually heading to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study drama, first as an actor, then as a playwright. Audrey Kelley (1912-1982) was born in New Jersey and also ended up at Carnegie Tech at the same time as Roos to study acting. They met, fell in love, and like many wannabe actors and playwrights, moved to New York City.

What followed was a less-than-successful effort on both their parts initially, until Audry decided to try mystery writing as a career. It's unknown how she and her husband decided to collaborate, but collaborate they did, using a combination of their surnames as a pen name, Kelley Roos. According to their son, one of his parents would work on the even-numbered chapters, the other the odd-numbered chapters, then they would turn their chapters over to the other for rewrites.

Their first book, Made Up To Kill, was published in 1940 by Dodd, Mead, and featured husband-and-wife sleuth team, Jeff Troy, a photographer and jack-of-all-trades and Haila Troy, actress, who live in Greenwich Village. Son Stephen adds that "The Troys were a lot like my parents. They laughed a lot, drank a lot too. They worked very hard at their writing, but they never looked on their work as art. It was fun. They were entertainers."

In addition to the novels, William continued to write plays, including January Thaw and the book for the long-running 1948 Mike Todd musical, As the Girls Go. He and Audrey took their collaboration to the stage for the mystery play, Speaking of Murder, which had only a month's run in New York but longer when it moved to London. In 1961, their adaptation of John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court was televised by the National Broadcasting Company and picked up the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Ghost of a Chance from 1947 was the sixth of nine novels featuring the Troy duo, and starts off with a cryptic phone call to Jeff from a mysterious stranger who wants Jeff's help because an unnamed woman is going to be murdered. The Troys follow the strangers's instructions to meet him, hopping through bars and on to Times Square—only to find the stranger dead beneath a subway train. Believing the man was pushed to his death, but unable to convince anyone else, the Troys begin a suspenseful hunt to find the identity of the woman who is being targeted before the murderous gang behind the plot gets to her first, even as the Troys themselves are followed, shot at, and held virtual captives in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

As with the other Troy novels, Jeff does most of the detecting (something New York homicide cop Lt. George Hankins prefers to call "meddling") with Haila narrating the action, spotting clues, and proving she's far from a typical damsel-in-distress, all the while engaging in non-stop cheery banter along with her wry asides:

 

Jeff whistled a merry tune while we waited. I, too, felt fine. Actually, it wasn't much. Locating a man who owned a hansom cab that was driven years ago by a man who knew the name of a woman who was slated to be murdered was still a long way from finding that woman. But it was something, a little something. After hours and hours of nothing but high, thick stone walls it was worth whistling about. I joined Jeff, supplying some doubtful harmony to his doubtful melody of that recorded cantata in praise of Piel's light beer of Broadway fame.

Ghost of a Chance was filmed as Scent of Mystery (1960) starring Denholm Elliott, Beverly Bentley and Peter Lorre (with Elizabeth Taylor making an uncredited cameo). The location was changed to Spain, and the film was scripted by William Rose, but Kelley Roos turned around and created a novelization of the film, published to coincide with the movie release. Interestingly, the movie was made in the short-lived technology Smell-O-Vision, where the theatre was equipped with a system that gave off various odours synched up with the film, such as the opening scene with a butterfly flitting through a peach grove that called up peach scents, and later a smashed barrel of wine.

Other Roos novels were made into films (sans Smell-O-Vision), including The Frightened Stiff, which became A Night to Remember (1942), with Haila and Jeff portrayed by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne; Dangerous Blondes in 1943 starring Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes; The Blonde Died Dancing, filmed in France as Do You Want to Dance With Me? in 1959 and starring Brigitte Bardot and Henri Vidal; And To Save His Life made into the TV-Movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales in 1971. Following in the tradition of Nick and Nora Charles, Pam and Jerry North (written by another husband-and-wife duo, Richard and Frances Lockridge), it's a shame that the Troys have been largely forgotten.

Mystery Melange

The Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival will take place in the historic city of Stirling from September 18-20. Headliners this year include chair Denise Mina, Jane Harper, Jane Casey, Lucy Foley, Tana French, S A Cosby, Lee Child, Richard Osman, Liz Nugent, Sarah Pinborough, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Steve Cavanagh, Nadine Matheson, Gregg Hurwitz, Robert Bryndza, Janice Hallett, China’s bestselling crime writer, Cai Jun, Andrea Mara, Jeremy Vinem Harriet Tyce, Abir Mukherjee, Chris Brookmyre, Callum McSorley, Alex Gray, Lin Anderson, Alan Parks, Louise Welsh and Graeme Macrae Burnet, and broadcasters Robert Peston and Olly Smith. There will also be some fascinating nonfiction events including "Where does free speech end and extremism begin?" with Professor Lara Frumkin; "How to Clean a Crime Scene" with Ben Giles; "How to Pitch Your Book" with Sheila M Averbuch; and "A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders" with Professor David Wilson. Plus, there will be a Saturday night game show, an event with the creator and stars of the Netflix hit Dept Q; an interactive murder mystery experience, a screening of the film The Maltese Falcon, introduced by the author’s granddaughter, a True Crime Walking Tour, the annual cabaret night; and much more.


Another great small conference this weekend, also September 18-20, 2026, is Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity in Columbia, MD. The conference offers panels on the craft and business of writing as well as panels tailored to engage and entertain fans. The registration fee includes meals where readers and writers dine side-by-side, plus keynote addresses, author interviews, an onsite bookstore, two giant book signings, and readings open to the public. Special Guests scheduled to take part include SJ Rozan, Ken Bebelle & Julia Vee, K.T. Nguyen, and Jen Furlong. SJ Rozan has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards and received the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award and Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Ken Bebelle & Julia Vee pen the sci-fi The Phoenix Hoard Series and The Seattle Slayers Series. K.T. Nguyen authored the multi-award winning debut, You Know What You Did. Jen Furlong is the author of the young adult supernatural suspense Hidden City series.


Westminster, Colorado's Public Library is hosting MysteryCon2026, a two-day celebration of Colorado mystery writing. The festivities kick off Friday, September 25th from 6-8pm with an author panel discussing emerging trends in contemporary mystery, from new subgenres to emerging female protagonists. On Saturday, September 26th from 5:30-8pm, there will follow a WhoDunIt? evening of activities, prizes, refreshments, a Q&A, and more. If you're in the area and are interested in more information and registration details, follow the links above.


There will be a night of readings and eating at a Noir at the Bar at Barliman’s in Bangor, Maine, on September 30th at 7:00 p.m. Authors scheduled to take part include Lucas Brilliott, Moe Claire, Matt Cost, Mo Drammen, Laura Giebfried, Amber Hathaway, Victoria Hood, Cory Magee, Katie York, Moe Moeller, Gabriela Stiteler, and Stanley R. Wells.

Laurie R. King, Cara Black, Kelli Stanley, and Michelle Chouinard will take part in a panel titled "Cold Cases, Warm Typewriters: How we dig up the fictional past" on Thursday, October 1 at Leigh's Favorite BooksSunnyvale, CA. Laurie R. King writes the historical Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories, the SFPD Inspector Kate Martinelli series, and numerous others, including her new Cold Case series featuring SFPD Inspector Raquel Laing; Cara Black is the author of twenty-one books in the New York Times bestselling Aimée Leduc series; Kelli Stanley is the creator of the Miranda Corbie series, literary PI novels set in 1940 San Francisco. To reserve your spot, follow this link.


Crime on the Coast Returns to Torquay Museum with "A Day of Mystery, Murder, and Literary Insight" on October 4. The event brings together readers, aspiring writers, and seasoned authors for a thrilling day of crime fiction exploration, celebrating the rich tradition of crime writing in the South West UK. In addition to various panels, there will be opportunities to ask questions, meet the authors, and have books signed (available to buy from the Museum Shop). The event also helps raise funds for Torquay Museum and the Torbay Literary Festival. Follow this link for registration information.


For more news about the latest in short mystery fiction this week, check out Kevin Tipple's Thursday Treats blog and also Art Taylor's The First Two Pages, with the latest features from Hooked on Urban Legends—And Murder! edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley. Plus, catch the latest crime poem over at the  5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly.


In the Q&A roundup, Harlan Coben, author of several bestselling thrillers, several of which were adapted into television series, chatted with the New York Times about Plot Twist, his new tough-talking writing guide that doubles as a memoir and explains why and how to beat self-doubt; Margaret Mizushima, author of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, applied the Page 69 Test to her new Timber Creek installment, Fighting Edge; and Vicki Delany also took the Page 69 Test for her new novel, Tis the Season to Be Scary: A Year-Round Christmas Mystery.

Author R&R with Ivan Carl

Ivan Carl is an engineer, educator, and lifelong traveler whose stories begin with questions that refuse to let go. His travels around the world have sparked a lasting curiosity about human behavior, the systems we create, and the choices that shape our lives. Whether exploring unfamiliar places or unexpected ideas, Ivan is drawn to the moments that challenge assumptions and reveal new ways of seeing the world. He continues to travel with his wife and children, always collecting experiences, conversations, and questions that inspire his work.

His new thriller, The Equation, follows Nathan Brooks, a mathematician who has optimized every variable in his life - career, routine, productivity - and still can't say why none of it feels like enough. Then he finds his mentor dead in a locked office, two words written in blood on the floor: THE EQUATION. The drawers are empty. The files are gone. And the brass key in Nathan's pocket is the only thing the killers didn't find.

What Nathan uncovers is a forty-year trail of suppressed research hidden across monasteries, tide archives, and communities quietly living proof that modern life has the variables wrong. At the center of it all: a formula - not for wealth or power, but for human contentment. A formula that works.

That's the problem.

For two centuries, an organization called The Continuum has erased it, silencing seventeen people who came close to sharing it. Now Nathan - with a defected operative at his side - must decode what his mentor died protecting and release it to the world before he becomes the eighteenth name on a list no one was ever meant to see.

Ivan Carl stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

The Engineer Who Tried to Solve for Happiness

I've always liked solving big, complicated problems and solving for the simplest answer that still holds. I don't think there's anything more complicated than the human experience, and the whole messy pursuit of happiness. My engineering brain has been working on that one for decades.

The concept of what shapes human contentment has been on my mind since we lived in Peru twenty-five years ago. I carried the question for a long time after, without any idea it would become a novel.

The moment it did become the seeds of a novel came much later, in the North Cascades. I was hiking, turning the question over in my brain, and my instinct was to simplify it. To reduce it to something essential. To see if the pursuit of contentment could be written down the way you'd write any other relationship between variables. When I finally settled on the equation that sits at the center of the book, I got genuinely excited. I wanted to share it with everyone I could.

The trouble with a message like that is nobody wants to be handed a formula for how to live. So I asked myself a different question: how do you get people to want it? I've always loved a great thriller, the kind you can't put down. It occurred to me that if a formula for human contentment really existed, someone powerful would want to bury it. And there it was. The philosophy could ride inside the chase. I could smuggle a real question about how to live into a story people would want to churn through on a plane.

That became the rule I wrote by: the idea can never stop the momentum. Every philosophical beat had to be earned by tension, a revelation while running for your life, not a lecture in a quiet room. Whenever a passage got too heady, I asked whether a reader on that plane would keep turning pages. If the answer was no, it got cut or it got faster. The thriller is the delivery system. The idea is the payload.

In the end, what I'm really after isn't that a reader agrees with the equation. It's that they close the book and quietly run their own idea of an equation, what's actually working in their life, what's just noise, what they might already have and haven't noticed, what they're grateful for.

If someone takes a long walk a week after finishing, still pondering the equation and their own life, then the book has done its job.

 

To learn more about Ivan Carl and his writing, visit his website and follow him on Facebook. The Equation is now available via Amazon and on Audible.

 

 

Author R&R with Jane Brookwood

Jane Brookwood writes cozy mysteries steeped in tarot symbolism, intuition, and the quiet magic that lingers in small towns. Though she lives just outside the fictional Pineridge Hollow, she knows its back roads and hidden corners by heart. Its shop windows, whispered rumors, and moonlit secrets inspire much of her work — and often feel as real to her as any place on a map. Jane has always been drawn to the moment when an ordinary day tilts into something strange, meaningful, or unexpected. She writes to capture that shift — the sense that something powerful is moving just beneath the surface, waiting for the right person to notice. When she’s not writing, she’s reading tarot, wandering through forests, visiting cafés that remind her of The Velvet Fig, or sharing quiet evenings with her cat, Rosie, who insists on chiming in whenever a mystery gets tense. Jane lives in British Columbia, where Pineridge Hollow grows a little more vivid with every sunrise.

The Hanged Man centers on Fiona Miller, who runs a metaphysical gift shop in Pineridge Hollow. She reads tarot, sells crystals, mixes tea and generally minds her own business. Until she can't. When the son of her long-lost best friend Maggie turns up dead, Fiona has decided she's getting to the bottom of it before she's even aware of the decision. What stops her cold is the timing — moments before the call, she pulls The Hanged Man tarot card on the heels of a monster zoomie rampage by her cat and familiar Rosie.

Maggie's son, found hanging in an eerie echo of the boy on the card. Two blond young men, gone too soon. Accident? Suicide? Murder? The town has already decided. Fiona's tarot deck isn't so sure. In her little corner of nowhere, with only her tarot to guide her through the stickier situations, Fiona is making her way blindly with little or no technology to guide her. The cat though...

Rosie brings some much-needed intuitive skills along with the Chief, who brings something else. With her Pineridge Hollow crew and Rosie at her side, Fiona follows the cards into buried grudges, old money, and secrets the town spent decades hiding. On top of everything, The Hanged Man keeps making himself known. Flip it on its head, he whispers. Look...really look, and then, be prepared to wait. You just might be surprised...

Jane Brockwood stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the book: 

 

Standing on the Shoulders of the Greats: How Tarot and Jung Unlocked My Mystery Voice

By Jane Brookwood

The research for my books, or the true seed of the idea, came from Sara Donati’s Queen of Swords from her Into The Wilderness series. In fact, all my writing comes from every book I’ve ever read. Everything I’ve learned about writing has come from standing on the shoulders of the greats; Dickens, Auel, Sheldon, Bronte, Austen, King and Tolkien, to name a few.

Donati’s book was the spark. She wrote into being an irresistible character who reads Tarot cards, taking the narrative from the card and unspooling it into her immediate circumstances. She used tarot cards to cajole, prompt, needle, and motivate other characters—which was immensely satisfying to me. Her book came a good fifteen years into my own research and study of Tarot. Maybe it was the Catholic school upbringing which gave the cards their own delicious taboo, but I think it has more to do with their symbolic nature. My brain works better with pictures than words, and when I connect a card with a lived situation, the understanding hits harder, in a more visceral way than explanation on its own ever could.

Beyond Fortune Telling: Moving into the Consciousness

Angeles Arrien’s The Tarot Handbook was the first time I’d come across a book which extended beyond the reach of mere fortune-telling. She expanded my view of tarot as a method to peer into consciousness itself, which led me to Carl Jung and his exploration of the shadow self.

The trigger to write came from recent cataclysmic changes in my life which left me without work for a year. I’d moved to a small town from the big city and had nothing but time on my hands. And, of course, there was a cat. It was this specific confluence of events which brought me to the precipice of the idea for this book, but I didn’t know how to write a novel. So, I just began—and, in the writing, I found it. My voice.

Casting the Archetypes from the Inside Out

I’m a Gen X kid raised with television as my babysitter. When I write, I need to find the character first. I look at him or her from the inside out. I put my casting director’s hat on and find the actor who would play them. I write until I can hear their voice and see their motivations, and when I get stuck, I pull the cards.

Tom, one of my long-lost characters from revision four (of six) of The Hanged Man, was a complete puzzle to me. Nothing I wrote felt anywhere close to the truth; there was just no juice in the squeeze. I knew Tom as a bombastic man who needed to oversee everything, but I didn’t understand his internal motivations. Why was this man hiding the truth?

So, as I do with all unanswerable questions in my life, I pulled the cards. They answered with the Wheel of Fortune reversed, the Devil, and the Five of Pentacles. In other words: Tom has a gambling problem, he owes money to the wrong people, and he’s got nothing left to lose. Once I understood him, he came alive, and I was caught in the flow once more.

The books come from a career built from behind a cash register and then a desk, watching people responding to their internal motivations. Maybe it’s enough.

You can learn more about Jane Brookwood via her website and follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Goodreads. The Hanged Man is now available via all major booksellers.

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 Arena production studio has preemptively acquired a Keanu Reeves-led adaptation of Oliver Lowe‘s upcoming novel, Kill Current: A Jon Hendricks Thriller. The book is the first installment in a forthcoming thriller series centered on Jon Hendricks, a burned-out CIA officer who is pulled back in to avenge the protégé he trained and lost. Offering a globe-spanning, edge-of-your-seat action thriller about shifting alliances and the race for the world’s most precious and valuable assets, the first novel from Lowe is slated for publication by Zando in May 2027.

Paul Feig (The Housemaid) is potentially gearing up for a new take on The Italian Job. The filmmaker is in early talks with Paramount Pictures to direct a follow-up film to the studio’s 2003 action hit that starred Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, and Jason Statham, and is looking for a writer for the project. F. Gary Gray’s 2003 heist film was inspired by 1969’s original The Italian Job that starred Michael Caine. The 2003 version centered on Wahlberg as Charlie Croker, a master thief who sets out on a revenge mission that involves rounding up his motley team to track down a cache of gold. 

Black Label Media has added Jason Momoa, Tenoch Huerta, Adria Arjona, and Kiefer Sutherland to the cast of its thriller, Copperhead, starring Miles Teller, although character details are being kept under wraps for the new hires. Written by Chad Feehan and J. Todd Scott, Copperhead‘s plot is thrust in motion when an undercover drug deal explodes into violence in West Texas. A veteran detective is then forced to team with a young federal agent to unravel the conspiracy within their elite task force. The movie was set to begin filming in Oklahoma in late summer.

Laura Linney is set to star alongside Michael Keaton and Morgan Freeman in Rode to Ruin, the Western thriller that Keaton will also direct. Set in the Old West, the thriller follows a retired U.S. Marshal (Keaton) whose 40-year search for his wife’s killer leads him to an aging outlaw losing his memory (Freeman), and to a buried truth neither man may survive. Linney’s character, Hedda Tessman, is "a frontier trader who works the territory alone, all grit and composure, and the one person the aging outlaw has allowed close in years. When violence rides in on both men, she proves to be the reckoning neither of them saw coming."


Paramount Pictures is said to be developing a film version of the '60s TV series Hawaii Five-O, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day helmer Destin Daniel Cretton set to direct and Chris Bremner (Bad Boys for Life) writing the script with Noah Oppenheim (Jackie). Created by Leonard Freeman, the 1968-80 CBS series starred Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett, the no-nonsense lawman who headed a state police task force in Hawaii. There have been previous attempts to adapt the show into a film, but lawsuits with CBS and rights issues instead led to the hit 2010-20 CBS TV series remake that starred Alex Loughlin, Scott Caan, Daniel Dae Kim, and Grace Park.


Fresh off his casting as Cyclops in Marvel’s new X-Men movie, Kit Connor has inked a deal to star opposite Diana Silvers (Booksmart) in PRƎPPY, a true-crime film to be directed by Janicza Bravo. Based on an original screenplay by David Levine and Rose Lichter-Marck, PRƎPPY explores events in the summer of 1986 leading to the murder of recent high school graduate Jennifer Levin at the hands of Robert Chambers, a former Manhattan private-school student, in New York’s Central Park. The shocking crime — in which Chambers was dubbed the “Preppy Killer” — captivated a generation and put privilege, class, and sex on trial.   

Miramax is developing a feature adaptation of Everything We Never Said, the YA romantic thriller novel from Sloan Harlow, with Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer aboard to adapt the screenplay. Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 2024, Everything We Never Said follows Ella Graham, who, in the wake of her best friend Hayley’s death, finds herself falling for Hayley’s boyfriend, Sawyer. But when Ella sorts through her late friend’s belongings and uncovers her diary, she’s rattled by the secrets Hayley kept and learns she might be walking into something much darker than she realized.

 
TELEVISION/STREAMING

AMC and French broadcaster Canal+ have greenlit a series based on the iconic Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves surf heist thriller, Point Break. The TV series is set in the present day, over thirty years after the events of the film, and centered on a new heist crew with ties to the notorious Ex-Presidents gang, while the FBI must rely on a mysterious ex-pro surfer with a checkered past to infiltrate them. The eight-part series will go into production early next year. The original movie, which was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by W. Peter Iliff, starred Reeves as rookie FBI agent Johnny Utah, who infiltrates the Ex-Presidents, a gang of Southern California surfers led by Bodhi (Swayze), who wear masks of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon B. Johnson as they rob banks.


Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead franchise) is the latest to join the series-regular cast of Apple TV‘s Disavowed, the upcoming action-thriller created by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Uncharted). Details regarding who Reedus will play are under wraps for now. Disavowed follows legendary CIA Case Officer Brad Griffin (James Marsden), who is abruptly fired in the middle of a global hunt for an elusive assassin responsible for killing his colleague. Disgraced and outcast from the world of intelligence, all bets are off when Brad decides to go after the $15 million federal bounty on the assassin’s head. Since the series has yet to go into production, no premiere date has yet been announced, although it's unlikely to premiere before 2027.


The BBC revealed first-look photos for Tall Tales & Murder, a dark comedic drama adapted from the novels by Caimh McDonnell. The story mixes a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style adventure with an 8th Century tall tale of monks, Vikings, buried treasure, and a priceless holy book. The series stars Ella-Lily Hyland, Casey Walsh, Philippa Dunne, Brian Doherty, Aisling O'Sullivan, Aidan Gillen, and Packy Lee. The nine-part series premieres September 27 on BBC One Northern Ireland and later in the fall on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.


Netflix finally announced the premiere date of November 5 for the second season of the espionage thriller, Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, and Sarah Lancashire. Season 2 sees Helen (Knightley) still betraying her nation’s secret to the covert organization she serves, known as the Black Doves. After last Christmas’s misadventures, though, and her husband Wallace’s (Andrew Buchan) preparations to become Prime Minister, Helen’s carving an even more treacherous path. Meanwhile, Helen’s handler, Mrs. Reed (Lancashire), is ensnared in a plot to undermine her position in the Black Doves, and Helen is reunited with her best friend, Sam (Whishaw). As the pals search for answers, their loyalties are tested, and trust is shattered as they fight to protect their loved ones.

The Gemma Arterton-led spy drama Secret Service has landed a U.S. home and will stream on MGM+ after the streamer picked up rights for North America, Latin America, and Italy. The five-part series is based on a book by Tom Bradby, a news anchor who hosts the British broadcaster’s News At Ten. The drama stars Arterton as senior MI6 officer Kate Henderson, who's involved in a covert investigation and uncovers evidence a high-ranking UK politician may be working as a Russian asset. Rafe Spall and Alex Kingston also star alongside Mark Stanley, Roger Allam, Amaka Okafor, Aoife Hinds, Avi Nash, Alma Prelec and Khalid Abdalla. The premiere date has not yet been announced.


The BBC has released the first trailer for season 4 of Blue Lights. Three years into their jobs as response officers, Constables Grace Ellis, Tommy Foster, and Annie Conlon are operating at their limit, facing a new threat on the streets that the police can barely control. Meanwhile, the murder trial of Gerry Cliff exposes a dangerous and long-buried secret that leads to chaos both inside the police and across the criminal underworld. The BAFTA-winning crime drama returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer in autumn 2026, with a six-episode fourth series. For viewers in the United States, Blue Lights Season 4 is expected to stream on BritBox.


CBS released first-look photos for NCIS: Origins Season 3, which will see the return of Mark Harmon as Leroy Jethro Gibbs for a season-long arc beginning with the show’s premiere on Tuesday, October 6. Fans will reunite with Gibbs in the premiere episode titled “Don’t You Forget About Me.” Set in the present day, ghosts from the past of Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Harmon) finally catch up to him, shattering his peaceful retirement in Alaska. In 1992, the team races to rescue a kidnapped Randy (Caleb Foote) while Gibbs (Austin Stowell) and Lala (Mariel Molino) deal with the aftermath of their kiss. 

The cozy crime franchise, Trivia Night Mysteries, is expanding and has wrapped production on its second and third installments, Fit for a Murder and A Fatal Lesson. The Trivia Night Mysteries series follows freelance fact-checker and team trivia champion Sara Keane (played by Morgan Bradley), whose exceptional trivia knowledge and instinct for finding the right answer make her an unlikely but highly effective amateur detective. She works closely with charming, new-to-town lawyer Reid Taggart (Alex Trumble), who becomes her increasingly close partner in crime-solving. The first movie in the franchise, Trivia Night Mysteries: A Question of Murder, makes its TV and streaming premiere in 2027. You can view a trailer via this link.


The Behavioral Analysis Unit will have run-ins with two familiar faces in an upcoming episode of Criminal Minds: Evolution. Wayne Brady and Selma Blair are both set to guest star in the eighth episode of Season 20 when the BAU investigates a series of murders in Los Angeles targeting people tied to the skincare industry. Starring Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, Zach Gilford, and RJ Hatanaka with Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster, Criminal Minds: Evolution follows the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, a team of profilers tasked with analyzing and capturing the country’s most dangerous criminals, before they strike again.


Starz has released the trailer for the S.W.A.T. spinoff, Exiles, ahead of its September 25 premiere. Shemar Moore returns from the mothership to reprise his role as LAPD S.W.A.T. Sergeant Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson. S.W.A.T. Exiles revolves around Moore’s Hondo, who spent his career proving that discipline and loyalty can be built, not just born. But after a botched raid ends in the death of a young operator Nico Reyes, Hondo is forced to walk away from the only life he’s known. Until his old commanding officer, Robert Hicks (Patrick St. Esprit), offers him one last shot at redemption: start up a brand-new S.W.A.T. unit, built from LA’s most talented rejects.

Channel 4 has released the first trailer for Pierre, a new six-part crime drama starring Sherwood's David Harewood as the title character, a West London duty solicitor and a force of nature: charming and funny, juggling the pressures of his job, a fragile personal life and just keeping his head above water financially. His resilience is tested when he begins investigating the suspicious death of a young black client whom the police portray as a criminal, leading Pierre to a chilling web of institutional corruption.

ITV confirmed the air date for the new crime drama, The Blame, which is based on the novel of the same name by Charlotte Langley, for September 20th. The story follows DI Emma Crane (Michelle Keegan) and DI Tom Radley (Douglas Booth), who dig deeper into a tragic death that sends shockwaves through the town of Wakestead, only to have their murder inquiry soon spiraling into a tangled web of lies, institutional cover-ups, and moral compromise. As the clock ticks and trust fractures, Crane must navigate both a murder investigation and the treacherous politics inside her own team. The series also stars Ian Hart (Mr Bates vs The Post Office), Nathan Mensah, Nigel Boyle (Peaky Blinders), Joe Armstrong (Black Mirror), Matilda Freeman (How to Get to Heaven from Belfast), Gavin Spokes (House of the Dragon), Josh Bolt (Masters of the Air), and Ceallach Spellman (Cheaters).


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO/SHORTS

An unusual short-form scripted format from New Zealand is headed to MIPCOM. Alibi is a seven-part, 15-minutes-per-episode crime series in which the same story is told from multiple perspectives. The story is set in the fictional town of Awatahi in New Zealand, where 17-year-old Jodie Hunter is found dead. The six main suspects then give then versions of events to provide their alibi, with each followed over an episode. The first six episodes can be watched in any order, with the seventh and final one revealing the truth. The ensemble cast includes Madeleine Adams (Dealbreakers), Joel Tobeck (Avatar: Fire and Ice), Xavier Horan (Westside) and Melanie Vallejo (All Her Fault).


Criminal Mischief host DP Lyle MD had a fascinating discussion of violent crime and serial killers with Dr. Adam Lankford, a criminologist with expertise on mass shootings and targeted violence. His findings have been cited by The White House, by every major media outlet in the United States, and by international media from over 40 countries.


On Spybrary, Shane Whaley was joined by Swedish historian and author Johan Wennström to uncover the extraordinary story of Sweden’s secret Stay Behind resistance network — a clandestine organization created in 1949 to operate behind enemy lines in the event of a Soviet invasion — which he details in his new book, The Stay Behinds: Sweden's Cold War Guardians.


THEATRE

Alex Winter, who costarred with his old Bill & Ted partner Keanu Reeves last year in the Broadway revival of Waiting For Godot, will return to the New York stage next year in an Off Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s 1964 play, Incident at Vichy. Winter will both star in and produce the one-act play, expected to open in spring 2027. Kanika Asavari Vaish will direct, with additional casting, production dates and venue to be announced. First staged on Broadway in 1964 with Harold Clurman directing a cast that included Hal Holbrook and Tony Lo Bianco, Incident at Vichy was set in 1942 and focused on a group of men undergoing “racial inspection” by German military officers and Vichy French police and examines how the Nazis were able to perpetrate the Holocaust with so little resistance.

Sunday Music Treat

I want to thank a couple of readers of Played to Death who pointed out something that seemed to be an error but was more a miscommunication on my part. It's a good case in point of how sometimes the vision in a writer's mind doesn't make it to the page in a coherent way.

In Played to Death, Scott Drayco says that the first time he sat at a piano when he was a small child, he picked out Count Basie's "Take the A Train." Now, the classic jazz piece was composed by Billy Strayhorn, who played piano and wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington's band. But what I didn't point out was that Drayco had heard the piece in the later Count Basie version. My grandfather was a drummer in a Dixieland band, and Basie was also a drummer, so that seemed fitting. Plus, Basie learned how to play the piano from his mother, just like Drayco did.

Anyway, here's the original Duke Ellington version, followed by Count Basie's version and finally Oscar Peterson's solo piano version, which would be more like what Drayco played (in fact, it's fun to image a young Drayco, his feet not able to reach the floor, playing this piece):

 

 

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