Mystery Melange

The Hollywood Creative Alliance, a professional organization composed of critics, journalists, creators, and industry professionals dedicated to celebrating excellence in film, television, podcasts, and emerging storytelling mediums, announced the finalists for their inaugural Astra Book Awards. The shortlisted authors in the MysteryThriller category include Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden; My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney; Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson; and Strange Buildings by Uketsu. The Best Debut category also included one crime-related title, One Fall by Joe Maldonado (author) and Alien Buddha (contributor). The winners will be revealed at an Awards Ceremony on Monday, April 20, in Los Angeles, California.


The Publishing Triangle, a community of queer professionals (editors, agents, booksellers, designers, publicists, sales staff, educators, librarians, freelancers, writers, and readers) dedicated to advancing books and other works by LGBTQ authors or with LGBTQ themes, has announced the finalists for the 2026 Publishing Triangle Awards, honoring the best LGBTQ+ books published in 2025. The finalists in the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing include:  Crime Ink: Iconic, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West (Bywater Books); Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur Books); A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau (Minotaur Books); The Smallest Day by J. M. Redmann (Bold Strokes Books); and The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan (Viking Canada). Winners will be announced Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 6:30 PM during an in-person ceremony at The New School (66 West 12th Street, New York City).  


The Romantic Novelists Association also announced their 2026 finalists, including those in the Romantic Thriller category:  Encore For Murder by T.A. Belshaw (Independently published); Acting the Nabob by Caitlyn Callery (The Wild Rose Press);  He’s To Die For by Erin Dunn (Pan Macmillan); The Greek House by Dinah Jefferies (HarperCollins); We Both Have Secrets by Emma Robinson (Bookouture); and A Family Affair by Joy Wood (Independently published).


Elizbeth Foxwell, over at The Bunburyist blog, posted about the American Literature Association conference taking place at Chicago's Palmer House on May 20–23, 2026. There will be several presentations that might be of interest to fans of crime fiction and true crime, including several on Edgar Allan Poe and Don DeLillo, and “The Rise of the Working-Class Cop in the Novels of Ed McBain,” via Joseph George (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University). For more information about the conference and registration fees, head over to this link.


With the 50th anniversary of Agatha Christie's death this year, the Iceland Noir conference is scheduling an Agatha Christie Day, to be held on Thursday, November 12, 2026. Special guests will include James Prichard, Chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited (ACL) and Agatha Christie's great grandson; bestselling author Lucy Foley, one of 12 authors who penned a new collection of short stories featuring legendary detective Miss Marple, published in 2022, and will be publishing the first Marple continuation full-length novel, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, 50 years after Agatha Christie's last Miss Marple novel was published; Dr. John Curran, author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks (2009); and Chris Chibnall, creator of the new Netflix series, Seven Dials, based on Christie's 1929 novel. For ticket information, check out this link.


As The Rap Sheet blog noted, April 1 marked the 28th anniversary of Kevin Burton Smith launching the essential online crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective website. His page went live on that date back in 1998 and has been a faithful supporter of detective fiction ever since.


Ron Earl Phillips posted on Bluesky about another anniversary, the 15th for Shotgun Honey. The website has been on a bit of a hiatus the last three months while it was undergoing some restructuring, but it's coming together. As Phillips noted, "Somedays, I’ll admit, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t raised my hand and offered to help Kent Gowran, who brought this beautiful thing to life. The idea of it wasn’t new, but at the time it was needed. And it has been a thrill to work with so many writers and contributors over the years, both as a flashzine and as a publisher/imprint..."


Mystery Readers Journal has published its new edition themed around "Fairs, Fêtes, & Festivals in Mysteries," edited by Janet Rudolph. There are a couple of free "teaser" samples online, including "The Welsh Have a Word for It…" by Cathy Ace; "It Takes a Village Fair: Setting the Stage for Murder" by Paula Munier; and "Crime Seen: Fun—and Fear—at the Fair" by Kate Derie. The issue includes articles, "Author, Author!" essays, columns, and reviews from Lesa Holstine and Aubrey Nye Hamilton.


Janet Rudolph also announced a call for articles, reviews, and author essays about crime fiction set in France for an upcoming issue of Mystery Readers Journal, with a deadline: May 20, 2026. If you have a mystery that fits this theme, you are invited to consider writing an Author! Author! essay: 500–1500 words, first person, up-close and personal about yourself, your books, and the theme connection. There's also a need for reviews and articles.


On Art Taylor's "The First Two Pages" blog feature, he continues the focus on Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society with an essay by Doug Allyn, called by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “one of the best short story writers of his generation—and probably of all time.”  Doug discusses his story “Famous Last Words,” which won the 2010 Derringer Award for Best Long Story.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Basal Cleavage of a Drugstore Dollar" by Hana Kelly.


In the Q&A roundup, Ed Lin, a journalist turned author, applied the Page 69 Test to The Dead Can't Make a Living, the fifth title in the Taipei Night Market series; Leslie Karst also took the Page 69 Test challenge to Murder, Local Style, the third Orchid Isle mystery; Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Steve Higgs, author of the cozy crime series, Albert Smith’s Culinary Capers; and Deborah Kalb spoke with Luke Goebel about his new literary thriller, Kill Dick.

Looking Daggers

 

The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) revealed the longlists for the prestigious 2026 Dagger Awards, celebrating the very best in crime writing. This year’s longlists showcase the breadth of talent from internationally bestselling authors to emerging debuts.The shortlists will be released on May 28, and the winners announced at the CWA gala dinner awards night in July.

Hear are the longlists in full: 

CWA KAA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year

• D.V. Bishop Carnival of Lies (Pan Macmillan/Macmillan)
• James Lee Burke Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie (Orion Fiction/Orion Fiction)
• S. A. Cosby King of Ashes (Headline)
• Abigail Dean The Death of Us (HarperCollins/Hemlock Press)
• Holly Jackson Not Quite Dead Yet (Penguin Random House/Michael Joseph)
• Vaseem Khan Quantum of Menace (Bonnier Books UK/Zaffre)
• Ariel Lawhon The Frozen (River Swift Press)
• Beth Lewis The Rush (Profile Books/Viper)
• Simon Mason A Voice in The Night (Quercus/riverrun)
• Liam McIlvanney The Good Father (Bonnier Books UK/Zaffre)
• Martin Cruz Smith Hotel Ukraine (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Laura Shepherd-Robinson The Art of a Lie (Pan Macmillan/Mantle)
• Sally Smith A Case of Life and Limb (Bloomsbury Publishing/Raven Books)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller ofo the Year

• Tariq Ashkanani The Midnight King (Profile Books/Viper)
• Julie Clark The Ghostwriter (Bonnier Books UK/Zaffre)
• S. A. Cosby King of Ashes (Headline)
• Robert Crais The Big Empty (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Abigail Dean The Death of Us (HarperCollins/Hemlock Press)
• A A Dhand The Chemist (HarperCollins/HQ Fiction)
• Robert Dugoni A Dead Draw (Amazon Publishing/ Thomas & Mercer)
• Mark Ezra A Sting in her Tale (Bedford Square Publishers/ No Exit Press)
• William Hussey Burying Jericho (Bonnier Books UK/ Zaffre)
• Noelle Ihli Such Quiet Girls (Pan Macmillan/ Pan)
• Liam McIlvanney The Good Father (Bonnier Books UK/Zaffre)
• Karin Slaughter We Are All Guilty Here (HarperCollins Publishers)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction

• Jake Adelstein The Devil Takes Bitcoin (Scribe)
• Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee Shadow of The Bridge: The Delphi Murders and The Dark Side of The American Heartland (Pegasus Books/Pegasus Crime)
• David Collins Saffie (Silvertail Books)
• Gordon Corera The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB (HarperCollins/ William Collins)
• John Curran The Murder Game (HarperCollins/Collins Crime Club)
• Charlie English The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War (HarperCollins/ William Collins)
• Caroline Fraser Murderland (Little, Brown Book Group/Fleet)
• Thomas Harding The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini, And A True Story of Murder (Penguin/ Michael Joseph)
• Paul Henderson and David Gardner, A Spy in the Family (Mirror Books)
• Neil Root The Cleveland Street Scandal (The History Press)
• Susannah Stapleton That Dark Spring (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
• Shaun Walker The Illegals (Profile Books)

Historical Dagger

• Nina Allan A Granite Silence (Quercus/riverrun)
• Robin Blake Spoiler's Prey (Severn House)
• Graeme Macrae Burnet Benecula (Birlinn Ltd/ Polygon)
• Kate Foster The Mourning Necklace (Pan Macmillan/Mantle)
• Ariel Lawhon The Frozen River (Swift Press)
• Beth Lewis The Rush (Profile Books/Viper)
• Rob McInroy Barvick Falls (Tippermuir Books)
• Donna Moore The Devil's Draper (Fly on the Wall Press)
• Alan Parks Gunner (John Murray Press/Baskerville)
• SW Perry Cairo Gambit (Atlantic Books/Corvus)
• Laura Shepherd-Robinson The Art of a Lie (Pan Macmillan/Mangle)
• Sally Smith A Case of Life and Limb (Bloomsbury Publishing/Raven Books)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger

• Eva Björg Ægisdóttir Home Before Dark (Orenda Books) translated by Victoria Cribb
• Karsten Dusse Murder Mindfully (Faber) translated by Florian Duijsens
• Johana Gustawsson Scars of Silence (Orenda Books) translated by David Warriner
• Jørn Lier Horst The Lake (Penguin Random House) translated by Anne Bruce
• Kotaro Isaka Seesaw Monster (Penguin Random House) translated by Sam Malissa
• Jurica Pavicic Red Water (Bitter Lemon Press) translated by Matt Robinson
• Satu Rämö The Grave in the Ice (Bonnier Books UK) translated by Kristian London
• Leonie Swann Big Bad Wool (Allison & Busby) translated by Amy Bojang
• Antti Tuomainen The Winter Job (Orenda Books) translated by David Hackston
• Uketsu Strange Pictures (Pushkin Press) translated by Jim Rion

Whodunnit Dagger for Best Traditional Mystery

• Alexandra Benedict The Christmas Cracker Killer  (Simon & Schuster UK)
• SJ Bennett The Queen Who Came in from the Cold (Bonnier Books UK/ Zaffre)
• Anna Fitzgerald Healy Etiquette for Lovers & Killers (Little, Brown Book Group/Fleet)
• Victoria Goldman Little Secrets (Three Crowns Publishing UK/self-published)
• Robert Holtom A Queer Case (Titan Books)
• Richard Hooton The Margaret Code (Little, Brown Book Group/Sphere)
• RL Killmore A Cinnamon Falls Mystery (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Clare Mackintosh Other People's Houses (Little, Brown Book Group/Sphere)
• Jo Middleton Not Another Bloody Christmas (HarperCollins/Avon)
• Guy Morpuss A Trial in Three Acts (Profile Books/Viper)
• Mel Pennant A Murder for Miss Hortense (John Murray Press/Baskerville)
• CJ Wray Bad Influence (Orion Fiction)

Twisted Dagger for Best Psychological Suspense

• Kia Abdullah What Happens in the Dark (HarperCollins/HQ Ficiton)
• Nicci Cloke Her Many Faces (Penguin Random House UK/Harvill)
• Fiona Cummins Some of Us are Liars (Pan Macmillan/Macmillan)
• Fflur Dafydd The House of Water (Hodder & Stoughton/Hodder Fiction)
• Abigail Dean The Death of Us (HarperCollins/Hemlock Press)
• Alice Feeney Beautiful Ugly (Pan Macmillan/Macmillan)
• Carole Hailey Scenes From A Tragedy (Atlantic Books/Corvus)
• Lisa Jewell Don't Let Him In (Penguin Random House/Century)
• Sam Lloyd The Bodies (Transworld/Bantam)
• Liam McIlvanney The Good Father (Bonnier Books UK/Zaffre)
• Sarah Pinborough We Live Here Now (Orion Fiction)
• Holly Seddon 59 Minutes (Orion Publishing Group/ Orion Fiction)#

ILP John Creasey (First Novel) Dagger

• Natalie Jayne Clark The Malt Whiskey Murders (Birlinn Ltd/Polygon)
• Anna Fitzgerald Healy Etiquette for Lovers and Killers (Little, Brown Book Group/Fleet)
• Sam Guthrie The Peak (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Sue Hincenberg The Retirement Plan (Little, Brown Book Group/ Sphere)
• Elspeth Latimer The Lost Detective (Story Machine)
• Laura McCluskey The Wolf Tree (HarperCollins/Hemlock Press)
• Zoë Rankin The Vanishing Place (Profile Books/Viper)
• Bailey Seybolt Coram House (Bloomsbury Publishing/Raven Books)
• Jennifer Trevelyan A Beautiful Family (Pan Macmillan/Mantle)
• Henry Wise Holy City (Bedford Square Publishers/No Exit Press)

Short Story Dagger

• William Boyle ‘Arlene’ in Birds, Strangers and Psychos (No Exit Press)
• SA Cosby ‘Split Your Silver Tongue’ in Birds, Strangers and Psychos (No Exit Press)
• Ragnar Jónasson ‘Chest’ in Birds, Strangers and Psychos (No Exit Press)
• Denise Mina ‘The Karpman Drama Triangle’ in Birds, Strangers and Psychos (No Exit Press)
• Abir Mukherjee ‘Full Circle’ in Playing Dead: Short Stories by Members of the Detection Club (Severn House)
• Ambrose Perry ‘The Apple Falls Not Far’ (Canongate)
• Zoë Sharp and John Lawton ‘Once Upon a Time in New Jersey’ in CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene Celebrating 16 Years (No Exit Press)
• Peter Swanson ‘Strangers on a School Bus’ in Birds, Strangers and Psychos (No Exit Press)
• Michael Wood ‘Waiting’ in Criminal Pursuits: This Is Me (Telos Publishing)

Dagger in the Library for Body of Work

• Ben Aaronovitch
• Damien Boyd
• Reverend Richard Coles
• Rhys Dylan
• Paula Hawkins
• JD Kirk
• Clare Mackintosh
• Freida McFadden
• Abir Mukherjee
• Tim Sullivan
• Robert Thorogood
  

 Best Crime & Mystery Publisher

• Allison & Busby
• Baskerville (John Murray/Hachette)
• Bitter Lemon Press
• Constable (Little, Brown)
• Faber & Faber
• Harvill Vintage (Penguin Random House)
• Muswell Press
• No Exit Press (Bedford Square)
• Pan Macmillan
• Polygon (Birlinn)
• Simon & Schuster
• Viper (Profile Books) 
  

A "Peculier" LIneup

Harrogate International Festivals revealed the full program for the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, one of the world’s largest celebrations of crime fiction, at a special reception at Hachette, Carmelite House in London.

This year’s slate was curated by bestselling psychological thriller writer, Lisa Jewell, and features over 140 crime and thriller writers, making it the biggest event ever in the Festival’s illustrious twenty-three-year history. The all-star line-up of bestselling authors and crime fiction names includes Richard Armitage, Ardal O’Hanlon, Andi Osho, Denise Mina, Adam Kay, Abir Mukherjee, Elly Griffiths, Vaseem Khan, Val McDermid and M.W. Craven join Special Guest headliners Ann Cleeves and Brenda Blethyn, Anthony Horowitz, Holly Jackson, Chris Brookmyre, Chris Whitaker, Jane Harper, LJ Ross, Nadine Matheson, Gillian McAllister, Steve Cavanagh, Alice Feeney, and David Baldacci.

Taking place at Harrogate’s Old Swan Hotel from July 23-26, this year’s Festival offers crime fiction fans even more opportunities to hear from superstar writers and discover new talent with the launch of the Swift Half Stage. This innovative new space seeks to champion brilliant storytellers, rising stars and boundary-pushing creatives in a series of bite-size events. Those scheduled to take part include  Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall, Mick Herron, Ahana Virdi, Will Carver, Clare McGowan, Kia Abdullah and Traitor’s star Harriet Tyce.

Other festival highlights include the prestigious Theakston Old Peculier Crime Awards Ceremony and the much-anticipated Critics’ New Blood panel showcasing four extraordinary debut novelists, Anna Maloney, Leodora Darlington, M.K. Oliver and Mel Pennant, selected by leading crime fiction critics. For aspiring writers, Creative Thursday offers an immersive day of workshops and talks led by industry experts and bestselling writers including A.A Dhand, GR Halliday and Julie Mae Cohen, with the rare opportunity to pitch work in the "Dragon’s Pen."

Evenings offer exclusive opportunities for fans to engage with authors at relaxed events, include the hilarious Interview Bingo and the hotly contested Late Night Quiz, compèred by Val McDermid and Mark Billingham. Two Author Dinners will see readers join forces with crime writers K.T. Nguyen, Sean Watkins, Emma Christie, Rupa Mahadevan, William Hussey and many others to solve a fiendishly twisty murder mystery, hosted by Mel Pennant.

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

Rachel Sennott (I Love LA) has booked a key supporting role alongside Chris Hemsworth, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz, and Alec Baldwin in Matt Ross’s feature Kockroach, which begins filming in Australia next week. The New York-set crime pic, based on the William Lashner novel, is the story of a mysterious stranger who takes on the city’s criminal underworld, transforming himself into a larger-than-life boss in a city where power is everything. Ross directs from a screenplay by Jonathan Ames (You Were Never Really Here).


Chris Hemsworth has closed a deal to reprise his role of Tyler Rake in Extraction 3, the new installment in the hit action-film franchise. Insiders add that Sam Hargrave is back to direct, with Idris Elba and Golshifteh Farahani also back on board to star. David Weil is writing the script, and although plot details are unknown at this time, it's a safe bet there will be another high-octane thrill ride as Rake (Hemsworth) and his team are sent on another dangerous extraction mission. The series is based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks, from a story by Parks, Joe Russo & Anthony Russo, with illustrations by Fernando Leon Gonzalez.


Emma Elle Paterson (Amazon’s The Boys), has signed on to lead and produce a feature titled Candy from filmmaker Jessica Michael Davis. Based on a short story by Mindy McGinnis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Davis, the film has been described as an "elevated genre-bending thriller" and follows a young woman (Davis) who reclaims autonomy through a radical bodily transformation, yet as she adopts the persona of "Candy," empowerment becomes a seductive descent into vengeance and moral ambiguity. Also attached to star in the film is Darius Jordan Lee (Dexter: Resurrection).


Deadline reported that Ride Along 3 is in early development at Universal with stars Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, director Tim Story, and producer Will Packer all in early discussions to return. The news coincides with an announcement that the studio closed a deal with scribe Daniel Gold (Tough Guys) to pen the screenplay. The first Ride Along came out in 2014 and followed security guard Ben Barber (Hart) who must prove himself to his girlfriend’s brother, top police officer James Payton (Ice Cube). In doing so, Ben rides along with James on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta. In 2016's part two, the duo head to Miami to take down a drug dealer who is supplying drugs to Atlanta.


Vertical has acquired U.S. rights to Oscar nominee Andrew Niccol’s crime thriller, Lords of War, from Oscar-winning studio Vendôme Pictures, which produced and financed the film. The sequel to the 2005 movie, Lord of War, which starred Oscar winner Nicolas Cage, sees the actor reprising his role as Yuri Orlov, the world’s most notorious arms dealer. When Yuri discovers he has a son, Anton (Bill Skarsgård), a ruthless mercenary mastermind bent on surpassing his father by building a private army and exploiting America’s wars in the Middle East, he is thrust into a deadly battle for legacy with the global arms trade hanging in the balance.


Anthony Mackie (Captain America) and Dafne Keen (Deadpool & Wolverine) are starring in the action-thriller, Barracuda, which gets underway this week in New Mexico. Neil Burger (Divergent) is directing the movie, which will also star Steven Bauer (Ray Donovan) and Anthony Del Negro (Running Point). The story centers on Karl (Mackie), a former smuggler with a haunted past, who storms a nightclub in Mexico to rescue Jodie (Keen), a kidnapped teenage girl. The breakout turns into a high-speed race when Karl kills the brother of the ruthless club owner and steals his prized 1973 Plymouth Barracuda. Now hunted by relentless criminals, Karl and Jodie tear across the desert with no way to slow down.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Kevin Bacon is set to lead Southern Bastards, a new Hulu drama pilot from director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard). Based on the award-winning graphic novel series by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour, Southern Bastards follows a tenacious military vet into Craw County, Alabama, in search of her estranged father. What she finds is a murderous hornet’s nest of organized crime run by the winningest high school football coach in the South. Bacon plays Earl, the son of the legendary Sheriff Bert, who ruled Craw County with an iron fist. Earl is a tough but humble blue-collar army veteran — eager to mend fences and reconnect with his daughter, and not afraid to stir the hornet’s nest that is Craw County.


Filming has begun on the new series of the acclaimed BBC murder mystery drama Shetland, with Ashley Jensen and Alison O’Donnell reprising their roles as DI Ruth Calder and DI Alison "Tosh" McIntosh. Most of the cast regulars also return, including Steven Robertson (playing DC Sandy Wilson); Lewis Howden (Billy McCabe); Samuel Anderson (Procurator Fiscal Matt Blake); Steven Miller (Rev Alan Calder); Anne Kidd (pathologist Cora McLean); Angus Miller (Donnie, Tosh’s partner); Conor McCarry (PC Alex Grant); and Eubha Akilade (PC Lorna Burns). Originally based on award-winning novels by crime writer Ann Cleeves, the forthcoming new series centers around an historic murder which will forever change the lives of all those connected in the present day.


Fox has renewed Memory of a Killer for a second season. Inspired by the book and the 2003 Belgian film, De Zaak Alzheimer, the drama stars Patrick Dempsey as hitman Angelo Flannery/Doyle, who leads a dangerous double life while hiding an even deadlier personal secret: he is slowly losing his memory. To further complicate things, he discovers his wife’s recent death may not have been an accident. When someone comes after his pregnant daughter Maria (Odeya Rush), it’s clear the wall between his lives has been breached. Angelo must stop whoever’s coming for his family by searching his past hits for clues, and the list is very long. Michael Imperioli plays Dutch Forlanni, whose restaurant is a front for criminal enterprise, and who serves as Angel's employer, giving him the targets for his hits. The cast also includes Richard Harmon, Peter Gadiot and Daniel David Stewart.


The writing team of Tawnya Bhattacharya and Ali Laventhol have a new project in development at Hulu: a TV adaptation of the Trish Lundy YA thriller, The One That Got Away With Murder. The show’s logline is as follows: "When a guarded new girl with a dark past transfers to a high school across the country, she’s drawn to the former golden boy who is now a notorious outcast suspected of killing his girlfriend. Determined to know the truth, she secretly investigates, uncovering a web of secrets and lies, as she closes in on the killer who got away with murder."


Prime Video has given a straight-to-series order to the Texas-set crime thriller, Calamities, from showrunner, writer, and director David Weil (Hunters). Per the streamer: “Calamities is a gripping and propulsive Texas crime thriller like no other. After a drug deal explodes into violence, a quiet border town is thrust into a deadly collision course between a small-town sheriff looking for answers from her past, a sociopathic hit-woman, an overly eager FBI agent, and a ruthless sect of the cartel.”


Paramount+ has added the heist thriller, The Day (working title), to its British slate, to be led by Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting), Luca Pasqualino (The Musketeers), and Louisa Harland (Derry Girls). The eight-part series is based on the Belgian show, De Dag and is set across a single day, following a terrifying bank siege that starts when police stumble across a bank robbery mid-heist, prompting the criminals to barricade themselves inside. The story opens from the police perspective, led by hostage negotiator Sylvia “Vox” Voxley (Driver), as she battles time and rising pressure to save the hostages. But as the crisis hurtles towards a breaking point, the story rewinds, with viewers pulled inside the bank to relive the same events through the eyes of the robbers and their hostages.


Peabody Award-winning producer, showrunner, and writer Gary Lennon (Hightown) is developing the new crime drama Los Feliz at Starz. The show is an emotional high-stakes crime drama about an affair that destroys friendships, marriages, and careers – ultimately leading to a murder case that divides a community and destroys them all. The series is set in the Los Angeles neighborhood of the same name near Hollywood.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

NPR's Scott Simon chatted with V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, the friends and authors who co-wrote the novel The Ending Writes Itself, part mystery and part send-up of the publishing industry.


On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed missing person mysteries and thrillers by Tana French, Tiffany D. Jackson, Jess Kidd, Ginger Reno, Kalynn Bayron, and Luke Dumas.


On the latest Murder Junction, hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee chatted with Anthony Horowitz, creator of the Alex Rider novels and TV shows such as Midsommer Murders and Foyle's War. Anthony discussed his latest crime novel, A Deadly Episode, and what keeps him writing.


Alan Peterson, host of the Meet the Thriller Author podcast, spoke with bestselling author Mark Stevens, creator of the Flynn Martin thriller series, about his latest novel, Two Truths and a Lie.


On the Cops and Writers podcast, Patrick J. O'Donnell interviewed bestselling author and publicist, Deborah Levison, whose first book, The Crate, won several awards and garnered rave reviews including an endorsement from Lee Child, about her newly released title, A Novel Crime.


The Pick Your Poison podcast with Dr. Jen Prosser investigated a toxin so powerful that a little smeared on the tip of a blowgun arrow is enough to silence every muscle in your body, including your diaphragm, stopping your breathing—and how a poison like this became a commonly used drug in modern medicine. She also went inside a Siberian prison cell where one of the most high-profile political prisoners on the planet collapses and dies. Was this a state-sponsored assassination using a poison from the rainforest?

Sunday Music Treat

Renaissance music and interstellar space travel - doesn't seem like they'd make good partners, but actually, they do! One of the pieces included on the Golden Record on the Voyager I spacecraft was "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. This work has many levels of meaning for me, since I was in a top-notch recorder ensemble as a youth, but also because I was a fan of Munrow, who championed and popularized early music but whose life and career were tragically cut short by his suicide at the age of 33. Here's a little legacy he left that is currently 16.1 billion miles or roughly 26 billion kilometers (one light day) from Earth as of April 2026 and will reach the Oort Cloud in about 300 years. (If you want to know what else was included on the record, here's a list.)

 

 

Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Port of London Murders

Josephine Bell, the pen name of  Doris Collier Ball, was born in Manchester in 1897, educated at Cambridge, and became a University College Hospital of London physician. She married a fellow physician who died at a young age in 1936, which is when Bell turned her hand to writing, even as she maintained her medical practice.

She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and also became a member of the Detection Club. She eventually closed her medical practice at age 57 but continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in her more than 40 crime novels (at the rate of two a year), such as AmyTupper, Dr. David Wintingham, Dr. Henry Frost, and Scotland Yard Inspector Steven Mitchell.

Not surprisingly, her novels often feature a strong medical component, not the least of which were two of her doctor-protagonists. She also featured poison and other unusual methods of murder prominently in her plots. Bell and her family were experienced sailors, and the author drew upon this knowledge, too, using many vivid passages in her books that relate to the water and to various nautical details.

Water is certainly at the heart of the setting in Bell's novel The Port of London Murders from 1938, specifically as the title suggests, the port area of London's River Thames. It's a tough neighborhood, but the death of one Mary Holland is still a bit of a shock, even though it appears at first to be a suicide by Lysol poisoning. Tell-tale needle marks on the victim's arm lead Detective Sergeant Chandler to suspect murder tied into a drug ring—which seems even more chillingly apparent when Chandler disappears shortly after he starts to investigate, right before he's due to testify at the inquest. It's up to Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard to unravel the layers of deception and addiction that are exploiting rich and poor alike in a way that hasn't changed much in the seventy years since the book was written.

Bell is particularly good with settings, even the squalid ones that pop up in the novel, no doubt witnessed first-hand in her role as a physician who saw people from every walk of life. Her take on the state of medicine in her day was often somewhat bleak, as in this passage from the book—again, as true today as it was in 1938:

For the great majority of these cases, too poor to have a doctor of their own, there was little he could do...Dr. Freeman could encourage them with a bottle of medicine and help them with a pint of milk a day, but it was not in his power nor that of anyone else to effect a lasting cure of their complaints. There were others, too, not old, but equally hopeless, who attended the dispensary as regular visitors; those struck down in youth or middle age by tuberculosis, rheumatism, heart trouble, and a number of more rare diseases. They had come to the end of their resources, their insurances, and their capacity for earning. The hospitals could do nothing more for them, but they still lived, in the worse possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.