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

KiKi Layne (Vought Rising) and Luke Hemsworth (Westworld) have boarded Deadlocked, the new action film from Amazon MGM Studios, although their character details are being kept under wraps. The duo joins previously announced Jamie Foxx and Sasha Calle. Directed by Nikhil Bhat, Deadlocked follows a grieving former Marine serving jury duty who is forced back into action when the trial of the century turns into a deadly hostage situation as the defendant’s daughter seizes the courthouse to free her father. The film is written by Eric Scot Anderson (The Black Fox) and Matt Takejiro Bosack (CBS’ NCIS: Hawai’i) and based on their original idea. 


Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Peter Facinelli (The Twilight Saga) and Mark Elias (9-11: Lone Star) are starring in the comedy-adventure, We Could Be Heroes, which is soon to wrap in Ontario, Canada. The film follows an unlikely wannabe detective who finds himself pulled into a very real mystery when a young gamer gets into trouble and turns to him for help recovering her stolen gaming rig. What begins as a seemingly straightforward favor soon develops into a much bigger adventure. Elias stars as Miles Bernstein and also wrote the screenplay. Emami is directing the feature and producing alongside Elias.
 

A trailer was released for A Talent for Murder, starring Helen Mirren as legendary novelist Patricia Highsmith. Directed by Anton Corbijn and written by Joanna Murray-Smith, the film sees Alden Ehrenreich (Weapons, Solo) as Edward Ridgeway, a man sent by his New York publisher to Switzerland to convince the Talented Mr Ripley author to pen one last masterpiece in her all-important Ripley series. The thing is, someone from the publisher has already been sent on the mission and nobody's heard from him since. And there are an awful lot of guns and knives around Highsmith's home.  But Highsmith intends to give Ridgeway one night to show her he can "inhabit the mind of a killer," before she puts anything down in print. And so, the pair play Highsmith-style crime writing 101. First up? They'll need to find their mark, a dazzling female lead with a dazzling female name — Clementine Harriet Balfour (House of the Dragon's Olivia Cooke) — who's "destined for money" from her great aunt. But the longer Ridgeway plays the Ripley game with Highsmith, the more the darkness of her literature threatens to get very real. A Talent for Murder hits cinemas October 23.

Denise Richards and Casper Van Dien are teaming up for the first time on-screen since the big-budget 90’s action movie, Starship Troopers, recently wrapping up production in Ontario on the new thriller, No Free Lunch. In the film, a mother-daughter duo (Arcadia Kendal, Lara Daans) fight for their lives after a college drop-off goes awry. Kidnapped by a deranged former surgeon (Sebastian Pigott) pining to fulfill a promise to his dead mother, their relationship is tested through a series of sadistic games as he plots to woo and marry one of them. Before his planned murder-suicide can unfold, detectives and FBI agents (Richards and Van Dien), on the slimmest of leads, race to rescue the two women. The project is directed by Damian Lee and also stars Arcadia Kendal (Sacrifice), Sebastian Pigott (The Order), Lara Daans (King of Sorrow), and Annie Malee (Satisfaction). The film is due to be released in spring of 2027.


Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock) is starring with Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World: Dominion) in the thriller Hystoria, which has recently wrapped production. The film is directed by Batan Silva (After Darkness, Compulsion), from an original screenplay by Jonathan Benecke and P.T. Hylton (Serena). Hystoria is set during a seemingly ordinary retirement party that takes a sinister turn when three former students discover their respected history teacher is secretly plotting to violently reshape the future. The film also stars Jamie Gray Hyder (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) with newcomer Hudson Harden Scheel, who makes his feature film debut.

A first look was revealed for Black Palace, Nick Hamm’s period thriller. Written by Jon Croker (No One Gets Out Alive), the movie stars Freya Allan (The Witcher), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog), Joe Anders (Cape Fear), Raffey Cassidy (The Brutalist), Iain Glen (Game of Thrones), as well as Martin Clunes (Wuthering Heights) and Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply). Black Palace is set in 1888 London as an emerging tabloid media terrifies the public with lurid stories of infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile, a young woman is sent to work at the heart of Queen Victoria’s British Empire: Buckingham Palace. Her task is to spy on Victoria’s wayward grandson who keeps disappearing at night. As she grows closer to the prince, she uncovers secrets that threaten both the Crown and her own survival. 

 
TELEVISION/STREAMING

ABC is moving forward with a new legal drama described as  a mash-up of Suits and The Rainmaker. In the series, a brilliant, high-powered corporate attorney is wrongfully convicted of murdering her husband, losing everything — her freedom, her career, her daughter. Exonerated six years later, she joins a scrappy Brooklyn defense firm and uses the ruthless skills that once protected billion-dollar corporations to fight for others vulnerable of being screwed over by the system — all while searching for the truth behind the crime that ruined her life. As it's still very early in the development process, no cast members have been announced just yet.


Irish broadcaster RTÉ announced that the third season of its family crime drama, Kin, starring Charlie Cox, will be released in 2027 and released a first-look image from the upcoming season. The third season synopsis reads: "In the third season, as the Kinsellas consolidate power, buried betrayals and festering rivalries turn inward, and the greatest threat to the family empire becomes the family itself." In addition to Cox, returning cast include Clare Dunne, Emmett J. Scanlan, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Sam Keeley, Yasmin Seky, and Mark McKenna Jr.  

Jessica Gunning is returning to Netflix following her breakout role in Baby Reindeer, the darkly comedic stalker thriller. Gunning is one of the four leads of the streamer’s Feral, a similarly darkly comedic thriller series based on the 1987 novel by Shirley Conran In the drama, four very different women learn to survive on a lethal tropical island after their mining exec husbands are kidnapped. The question is, can they put aside their differences, their self-doubts and their vanities to stay alive? Gunning plays Annie, a quietly dutiful wife who has sacrificed her ambitions to raise four sons under her domineering husband, Duncan.


Netflix has announced the premiere date of The Law of Beasts as November 18. The four-part drama is inspired by the true events that led to the introduction of what became known as Poland’s “Beast Law.” In 1988, Poland is shaken by the murder of four boys. Major Anna Bersz (Agnieszka Grochowska) leads the investigation, while her friend, psychiatrist Agnieszka Grabska (Agnieszka Zulewska), is tasked with assessing the sanity of the suspect, Mariusz Trynkiewicz (Michal Pawlik). With time running out and a system that leaves no room for doubt, the women make a decision that ends their friendship and affects the rest of their lives.


The BBC and BritBox have announced casting as filming begins on the new detective drama, The Detection Club, a 10-part mystery drama from creator Kit Lambert, inspired by the golden age of detective fiction. The Detection Club follows the mysterious society formed by three of Britain's most celebrated crime writers—Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton—as they are drawn into a series of real-life murder investigations. The Detection Club stars Miles Jupp (Napoleon) as  Chesterton, Bryony Hannah (Call the Midwife) as Christie, and Cara Theobold (Downton Abbey) as Sayers, with Viraj Juneja (Little English) as D.I. Greenway. Created for television by Kit Lambert (Father Brown, Cooper & Fry, Whitstable Pearl) and based on an original idea by author Simon Brett, the series is set in 1930s London and follows the legendary crime writers as they hone their craft within the hallowed walls of a secret London location. After receiving an invitation that leads them to their first real murder case, the famous trio work together to solve a series of exciting mysteries. Their amateur sleuthing brings them into the path of D.I. Greenway, an out-of-his-depth young police detective whose determination to prove himself is both helped and hindered by the writers’ extraordinary instincts.


Sky has ordered a second, currently untitled six-episode season of the crime drama, Under Salt Marsh, in which Rafe Spall plays enigmatic Detective Eric Bull. Following the events of the first season, Bull will move to a remote Scottish mining village that is, per the synopsis, “sinking under the weight of its own secrets” and a murder investigation brings him closer to the truth about his own past. The second chapter of Under Salt Marsh will begin filming in Scotland in 2027.


Apple TV has released a first look at 12 12 12, the heist drama starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan. The show’s premise unfolds across three timelines: the 12 months of planning, the 12 hours of the heist, and the 12 days after the heist. The series follows disgraced FBI agent (Mackie) and an American career criminal (Dornan) who play a zero-sum game of cat and mouse across Europe. At the center of it all is the daring, epic raid on a bank vault deep beneath the streets of Zurich. The ensemble cast also includes Jack Kesy, Agathe Rousselle, Sallie Harmsen, José García, and Kali Reis, among others. The series premieres with two episodes on Friday, November 13. Apple TV will then release one new episode every Friday through December 25.


Catherine Zeta-Jones is on the run in the first trailer for the action series, Kill Jackie. Based on bestselling author Nick Harkaway's acclaimed novel, The Price You Pay, the eight-part series follows Zeta-Jones as Jackie Price, a former international drug smuggler whose carefully constructed new life is thrown into chaos when a team of elite assassins is sent to kill her. Prime Video, AMC+ and Stan have announced a October premiere date for the U.S. with other territories announcing soon.


Based in Los Angeles for the first five seasons and in London for the upcoming sixth season (premiering in December), Only Murders In the Building is likely relocating to New York for Season 7, with the installation of a writers' room in the city. Although there's been no official series renewal, it's common for a writers room to be established prior to such announcements. The series stars the sleuthing trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez), who become friends while investigating a succession of suspicious murders. 


Sir David Suchet (Poirot), David Mitchell, and Anna Maxwell Martin will be joined by an all-star cast in a Ludwig Christmas special, including Jason Flemyng, Joe Wilkinson, Cathy Tyson, Alexandra Roach, and Kiell Smith-Bynoe. The BBC detective series stars John Taylor (David Mitchell) as a reclusive puzzle maker who publishes puzzle books under the pen name "Ludwig." His identical twin brother, James Taylor (David Mitchell), is a successful detective chief inspector in the Cambridge police force. James has gone missing, and his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), a childhood friend of both brothers, enlists John's help to solve the mystery. Pretending to be his brother, John infiltrates the local police station to investigate; inadvertently, he becomes embroiled in solving other cases. Set in Yorkshire, the Christmas episode sees John, Lucy and Henry arrive at a remote Christmas themed hotel for what should have been a much-needed escape, when a sudden blackout turns the festivities into a locked-room murder mystery.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore podcast was recently in conversation with Amy Wilson Maroney, talking about her Miramonde Series and the Sea and Stone Chronicles.


On Spybrary, host Matthew Hurst spoke with author Jinwoo Park about his debut novel, The Oxford Soju Club. The book center on North Korean spies and their Korean American adversaries, who are regulars at an Oxford restaurant run by an oblivious South Korean. The book is as much about the psychology of their ethnic identities as shoot outs and chases.


On the Cops and Writers podcast, retired Milwaukee Police Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell read the Introduction and Chapter 1, "You Don't Have to Be Sherlock Holmes to Solve This Crime," from his upcoming book: Police Stories: Street Cop to Sergeant — True Crime, Chaos, & Life as a Big City Cop.


On the Pick Your Poison podcast, host Dr. Jen Prosser investigated the case of a three-year-old who developed abdominal pain, constipation, profound lethargy, and a sudden seizure after a family gathering. The crucial clue appears in an unexpected place—and points toward a mysterious Civil War artifact. Along the way, discover what movies get wrong about gunshot wounds and how one toxin may have influenced the Roman Empire.

THEATRE

Ted Lasso‘s Nick Mohammed will host The Traitors – Acts of Betrayal, a new West End stage adaptation of the hit BBC One-iPlayer competition series. Written by John Finnemore and directed by Robert Hastie, The Traitors – Acts of Betrayal will actually include five separate plays, each repping a round of the competition. The production’s website explains the premise: “From Monday to Friday, the story begins identically, but develops into five entirely distinct plays. Characters banished or murdered early in one version emerge victorious in another...Then on Saturdays, the audience takes control as they decide who will wear the cloak...” Performances begin May 11, 2027, at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane in London’s West End.

Sunday Music Treat

Yesterday was National Astronomy Day (actually there are two, one in spring and one in fall). English composer Gustav Holst composed the suite The Planets between 1914 and 1916, with eight movements, one for each planet in our solar system as known at the time (Pluto wasn't found until 1930 and has since been reclassified as a "plutoid"). I included the Mars section a couple of weeks ago and now, here's the movement for Jupiter, "The Bringer of Jollity," with Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic:

 

Fans of piano music and Scott Drayco will also be happy to know Holst also composed a version for two pianos, actually before the orchestrations, played here by Richard Markham and David Nettle:Richard Markham and David Nettle

 

 

Quote of the Week

 

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.