Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Gideon's Fire

Tell most authors they must write 10,000 words a day — in longhand —toward the goal of creating some 600 books in their lifetime, and they would likely say something along the lines of (in polite terms), "it can't be done." Tell most critics that the author of the book in your hand is indeed that prolific and they'd likely say (in polite terms), "then it must be crap."

John Creasey inspired such amazement and skepticism from other authors as well as critics, but when it came down to the readers, they voted with their wallets. By the time of Creasey's death in 1973, over 80 million copies of his books (written under 28 different pseydonyms) in 5,000 different editions in 28 languages had been sold around the world. It wasn't even as if the man sat chained to a desk all day — he also managed to establish the Crime Writers’ Association, create his very own mystery magazine, and still had time left over to found a political party in his native England. (One note about persistence: Creasey allegedly received 743 rejection slips before he sold his first book.)

When I was a youngster, I was introduced to Creasey's work through his series featuring The Honourable Richard Rollison (a/k/a The Toff), a nobleman and amateur crime solver aided by his manservant, Jolly. Creasey's most critically-acclaimed work, however, came via his police procedurals with protagonist Commander George Gideon of London's Scotland Yard, penned under the name J. J. Marric, which inspired a TV series and movie. According to an apocryphal story, one of Creasey's neighbors, a London police inspector, challenged the author with the words "Why don't you show us as we are?" and the next year Cresey published his first Inspector West police procedural book (the first of forty such novels), the success of which led to Gideon in the 1950s.

In 1955, writing for the New York Times Book Review, Anthony Boucher thought Creasey/Marric's Gideon's Day was the author's best book ever, saying,

''Nobody could make a regular career of presenting in some 75,000 words a half dozen or more plots, plus a technical study of Scotland Yard procedure, plus a realistic analysis of the characters of policemen and criminals. However, the incredible Mr. Creasey has calmly gone on presenting us with a Gideon novel each year, all of high quality." 

Likewise, H. R. F. Keating, the crime books reviewer for the London Times for 15 years, chose Gideon's Week as one of his "100 Best Crime and Mystery Books [from 1845 to 1986]."

The book which finally won Creasey the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, however, was Gideon's Fire, in 1962. George Gideon, Commander of the C.I.D., is met at the office one morning with the beginnings of a very bad day: the news of a sex maniac who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl, and an arson fire in an old tenement building which wiped out a family of seven. In a style which has since become commonplace for police procedurals, Creasey weaves these and other autonomous story lines throughout the book, including a case of stock fraud; a man who is suspected of killing two former mistresses; a bank robbery with the mastermind still at large, and an ugly family crisis building up in Gideon's own home, managing to tie up all plots by the end.

The book also exhibits the authentic earthy police procedural style Creasey used in this particular series, as well as his sympathetic treatment of many of his characters, culminating in the man Gideon, who feels a oneness with his city, London, and an abiding empathy with crime victims. Creasey once said,

"My characters live in my mind...I can see them and hear them much more clearly than most people whom I know in life...it never occurs to me that they don't exist."

Mystery Melange

The 2026 Pulp Factory Awards finalists have been announced, voted on by members of Pulp Factory, a professional association of pulp writers, artists, editors and publishers. Although most of the nominees fall under the pure fantasy/horror/sci-fi umbrella, the Best Pulp Novel category includes A Walking Shadow (Paradise Investigations Book 2) by Teel James Glenn (Author) and Lissanne Lake (Illustrator), a supernatural private investigator mystery; and finalists in the Best Anthology category include The Lost Adventures of Captain Hawklin Vol-3 (The Captain Hawklin Adventures); Mystery Men (& Women) Vol. 10; and Pulp Reality No. 5 – Stormgate Press. (Hat tip to Mike Glyer's File 270). Voting for the winners is open to the public and available via this link. The awards will be handed out at the traditional ceremony at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention in Lombard, IL, March 27, 2026.


On February 13, from 6-7:30 PM, Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California will present "It's a Mystery: Five Authors on the Perfect Whodunit." Five masters of mystery fiction—Cara Black, M.M. Chouinard, Carmela Dutra, Laurie R. King, and Gigi Pandian—will reveal their latest titles; where they get their inspiration; and how they decide which clues to divulge and which to keep hidden until you turn to the very last page. For ticket information, follow this link.


The next MWA University from Mystery Writers of America will be on Wednesday, February 18th, titled "Killer Love Letters." Join senior editor for Atlantic, Joe Brosnan, and literary manager Liza Fleissig as they share what makes them fall in love with a query letter. There is a fee for non-members of MWA, but the online discussion is free for members.


The Midwest Mystery Conference announced the author lineup for this year's event, to be held in Chicago on April 11. Previous speakers have included Sara Paretsky, Scott Turow, Gillian Flynn, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Hannah, Rachel Howzell Hall, William Kent Krueger, S.A. Cosby, and more. (NOTE: I've recently updated the Conferences section in the right sidebar on this blog - linked here.)


For the more academically inclined, there are a couple of calls for papers with submission deadlines coming up soon. The National Conference 2026 to be held in April at SAGE University Indore, India, has a theme this year of "Towards 2050: Reimagining Crime and Criminal Justice System in the Era of AI & ML." Abstracts are due February 20th (and there are financial prizes for the top three papers). The 10th Workshop on the Economics of Organized Crime will take place at the University of Catania in Italy in May and is seeking theoretical and empirical studies on the topic, with abstracts due February 16th.


Janet Rudolph posted a list of Olympic-themed mysteries on her Mystery Fanfare blog, including both summer and winter games.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Say Her Name" (For Renée Nicole Good) by Jennifer Lagier.


In the Q&A roundup, Jeffrey Siger, a former Wall Street lawyer turned author of the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series of mystery thrillers, applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Study in Secrets; and Author Interviews chatted with Will Shindler, who spent years working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist and on various dramas as a writer and script editor, about his critically acclaimed DI Alex Finn novels and his latest book, The Bone Queen.

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
 
In a competitive situation, Netflix has acquired the action thriller Kill Switch from Harrison Query, with Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star. As Deadline noted, it's been described as falling somewhere between Collateral and Sicario, although the film’s logline is being kept under wraps. 6th & Idaho’s Matt Reeves & Lynn Harris will produce along with Gyllenhaal & Josh McLauglin’s Nine Stories banner and Scott Glassgold and his 12:01 Films. Kill Switch is the second hot package to sell recently from the same team. Last June, Query set up his political thriller short story, "Code Black," at Amazon MGM, with Gyllenhaal set to star, and the triumvirate of 6th & Idaho, Nine Storiesm and 12:01 aboard to produce.


Writer-director Kevin Interdonato’s indie feature, Dirty Hands, has been picked up by Saban Films for domestic release in the U.S. starting April 24. The action-packed thriller stars Patrick Muldoon, Kevin Interdonato, Michael Beach, Denise Richards, and Guy Nardulli. The film’s synopsis reads: Dirty Hands kicks-off in the underbelly of Chicago when a routine drug deal goes south for the Denton brothers, Richie (Muldoon) and Danny (Interdonato). Richie’s girlfriend, Sheila (Richards), struggles between her loyalties to Richie and his boss (Michael Beach), as rival leader, Rodney (Nardulli), and his gang are out for blood. With a Kingpin’s son murdered, the brothers must fight for their lives if they’re going to survive the night.


Quantify has launched international sales on the thriller, Blood Behind Us, one of the last films made by the late actor Michael Madsen. The movie also stars Tanner Beard, Jaime King, Michael Aaron Milligan, Russell Quinn, Ramsey Krull, and Katie Leclerc, and is directed by Brendan Gabriel Murphy. The storyline follows a troubled war veteran drawn back into violence through a motorcycle gang and a fractured relationship with his father, played by Reservoir Dogs actor Madsen in what producers describe as "a raw, commanding final turn."


TELEVISION/STREAMING

MASTERPIECE on PBS announced it will be co-producing the upcoming six-part police procedural, Winter. The series features an unconventional forensic pathologist, played by Richard Armitage (Missing You, Fool Me Once). Set in Bristol, England, Winter follows Dr. Ethan Winter (Armitage), one of the most gifted pathologists of his generation. He possesses an extraordinary analytical mind, capable of impeccable deductive reasoning which perfectly complements DI Lauren Bell, played by Annabel Scholey (The Sixth Commandment, Rivals), a meticulous, no-nonsense detective who is as driven as Winter when working on a case. Together they make a formidable team, as Winter’s genius and insight into the victims is invaluable to Bell and her murder squad detectives. Yet Winter is harboring a secret: the unsolved murder of someone close to him still haunts his every move, and he’s intent on unofficially investigating the death to bring the murderer to justice.


Channel 4 in the UK announced that production has commenced on the four-part thriller, Careless, an original drama by Australian broadcaster and streamer, Stan, produced in association with Channel 4 and others, and led by Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon), Robyn Malcolm (After The Party), Katie Leung (Bridgerton), and Richard Roxburgh (Rake). From creators Helen Fitzgerald (author of The Cry) and Louise Fox (Broadchurch), Careless will also star Mabel Li (The Testaments), Thomas Weatherall (The Narrow Road To The Deep North), and Alison Peebles (Dept. Q). The story centers on Scottish backpacker Robbie (Solly McLeod), who finds himself in Sydney, determined to become a live-in carer for a notorious rock’n’roll legend, Mike (Richard Roxburgh), who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. To his delight, he nails the interview and gets the gig.  But, as he grows closer to Mike, he also grows closer to Mike’s wife Angela (Robyn Malcolm) and becomes a confidante to both Mike and Angela. As Robbie integrates himself further in their relationship, it becomes clear there’s something in Robbie’s past which may put Mike and Angela in serious danger.


Apple TV has set a release date for its upcoming drama series, Cape Fear. The 10-episode psychological thriller will arrive on the streamer on June 5, 2026 with the first two episodes, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31. Cape Fear is based on the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, which inspired Gregory Peck’s 1962 film and the 1991 remake directed by Martin Scorsese and produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Billed as a tense, Hitchcockian thriller and an examination of America’s obsession with true crime, the description reads: a storm is coming for happily married attorneys Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson) when Max Cady (Javier Bardem), the notorious killer they are responsible for putting behind bars, is let out of prison — and he wants vengeance. In addition to Bardem, Wilson and Adams, the cast includes CCH Pounder, Anna Baryshnikov, Jamie Hector, Lily Collias, Joe Anders, and Malia Pyles.


Kate Mara, Kerry Washington, and Elisabeth Moss have some dark secrets they’re keeping behind closed doors in the first official teaser for Apple TV’s Imperfect Women. The new psychological thriller, which is executive produced by Moss and Washington, was adapted from Araminta Hall’s 2020 novel of the same name. Per a description of the series, Imperfect Women examines a crime that shatters the lives of a decades-long friendship of three women. As the investigation unfolds, so does the truth about how even the closest friendships may not be what they seem.


Dark Winds has scored an early Season 5 renewal on AMC Networks. Season 5 begins filming in Santa Fe, New Mexico in March and will also consist of eight hour-long episodes set to debut in 2027. Based on Tom Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee book series, the drama follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) of  the Navajo Tribal Police solving mysteries on their reservation as it is besieged by increasingly violent crimes in the 1970s. The series is created for television by Graham Roland. Season 4 focuses on the search for a missing Navajo girl, which takes Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito from the safety of Navajo Nation to the gritty terrain of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer with ties to organized crime.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest episode of Meet the Thriller Author featured crime novelist Jonathan Kellerman, the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the iconic Alex Delaware series.

 
On Crime Time FM, Louise Welsh chatted with Paul Burke about her new novel, The Cut Up; Rilke; Glasgow; Scottish PEN; academia; and being decent people.


On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester recommended some of their favorite historical mysteries.

Mystery Melange

 Author James Sallis passed way last week after a long illness. Sallis was 81 years old. He began writing science fiction for magazines in the late 1960s and later branched out into crime fiction, penning a series of novels featuring the detective character Lew Griffin set in New Orleans, and the 2005 novel Drive, which was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name. He received the Grand Prix de Littérature policière (for 2012's The Killer is Dying), a Bouchercon lifetime achievement award, and the Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing.


The inaugural Newberry Crime Writing Workshop (NCWW), an intensive 4-week writers’ workshop for developing crime and mystery authors, will take place July 6-31, 2026, on the historic campus of Newberry College in Newberry, SC. Applications are open through March 15. This year's instructors are Joe R. Lansdale, Michael Bracken, Cheryl Head, and Warren S. Moore III. To apply, complete the workshop application form and pay the application fee; more information is available via this link.


International bestselling crime writer, Denise Mina, has been revealed as the guest programmer for the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival 2026, which will return to the historic city of Stirling from September 18-20. She follows the success of Sir Ian Rankin, who as the first ever guest programmer brought a host of big names to the 2025 festival including Kate Atkinson, Kathy Reichs, and the Reverend Richard Coles. Denise is working alongside festival director, Bob McDevitt, and the programming team of fellow authors, Abir Mukherjee, Lin Anderson, Craig Robertson, and Gordon Brown, to bring another world class line-up of authors and special guests to the prestigious Festival. The complete program will launch in June 2026.


Harrogate International Festivals have announced the full lineup of Special Guest headliners for the 2026 UK Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, taking place July 23-26 2026. Ann Cleeves, Brenda Blethyn, Anthony Horowitz, Holly Jackson, Chris Brookmyre, Chris Whitaker, Jane Harper, and LJ Ross join previously announced headliners Nadine Matheson, Gillian McAllister, Steve Cavanagh, Alice Feeney and David Baldacci in a line-up of crime writing legends and international bestsellers from the UK, Australia, Ireland and the US, curated by 2026 Festival Programming Chair, Lisa Jewell. An unmissable event for Vera fans will be writer Ann Cleeves and actor Brenda Blethyn, who played DCI Vera Stanhope for fourteen years, taking an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the much-loved TV series, as Cleeves unveils her latest Vera Stanhope novel. Plus Festival Chair Lisa Jewell will be conversation with Lee Child, iconic creator of the Jack Reacher novels.


The deadline for scholarships to this year's Thriller Fest, which takes place May 5 – May 9, 2026 at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City, is coming up soon. The Fresh Perspectives Scholarship is offered to any underrepresented author, published or unpublished, while the Undiscovered New Voices Scholarship is for any unpublished author who is writing a mystery/thriller novel (80-100k words). Plus, there's a new opportunity this year, the Poisoned Pen / Barbara Peters Scholarship, which is open to any International Thriller Writer member (full members only) who has, at the time of submission to the scholarship, been published or is under contract for at least one novel of at least 80K words and has no more than three published novels. The deadline for all three scholarships in February 15th. For more information, check out the Thriller Fest website via this link.


The Museum of the Moving Image will pay tribute to HBO‘s iconic mob drama The Sopranos with an exhibition, opening February 14 in the NYC Museum’s Amphitheater Gallery, and three special screenings featuring showrunner and series creator David Chase and cast members Steven Van Zandt, Dominic Chianese, Edie Falco, and Annabella Sciorra. Stories and sets for The Sopranos will trace how the series’ narrative and visual worlds were established. Drawing from Chase’s personal archive, the exhibition features scripts, notes, and research that document the development of the series’ story arcs and character trajectories as it moved from a pilot into the first season. It also examines the design of the four principal sites where the series’ central action was set —Dr. Melfi’s office, the Soprano home, the Bada Bing strip club, and Satriale’s Pork Store—through concept art, construction drawings, and ground plans by production designers Edward Pisoni (pilot) and Dean Taucher (season one) .


In honor of Super Bowl this Sunday, Janet Rudolph posted a list of some Super Bowl and football (American style) themed mysteries.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Break the Cycle: A Fibonacci Poem" by F.I. Goldhaber.


In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Robert Dugoni (author of the Tracy Crosswhite mysteries) about his new novel, Her Cold Justice, the latest in the Keera Duggan series; writer and former police officer and attorney, Terrence P. Dwyer, chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new true crime memoir, The Badge Between Us: Duty, Marriage, and Family; and Simon Lewis spoke to Crime Time about No Exit: An Inspector Jian Novel, the latest in his series featuring a Chinese policeman in London.

Topflight Thrillers

 

The International Thriller Writers association announced the finalists for the 2026 ITW Thriller Awards. ITW will announce the winners at ThrillerFest XXI on Saturday, May 9, 2026, at the New York Hilton Midtown, New York City. Congratulations to all!


Best Standalone Novel

Megan Collins – Cross My Heart (Atria)
Ruth Knafo Setton – Zigzag Girl (Black Spring Press)
Gilly Macmillan – The Burning Library (William Morrow)
Sarah Pekkanen – The Locked Ward (St. Martin’s Press)
Olivia Worley – So Happy Together (Minotaur)

Best Series Novel

James Byrne – Chain Reaction (Minotaur)
Robert Crais – The Big Empty (Penguin/Putnam)
John McMahon – Head Cases (Minotaur)
Christopher Reich – The Tourists (Thomas & Mercer)
Vincent Zandri – Terminal Moonlight (Down & Out Books)

Best First Novel

Chris Chibnall – Death At The White Hart (Pamela Dorman Books)
Kelsey Cox – Party Of Liars (Minotaur)
Sophie Stava – Count My Lies (Gallery/Scout Press)
Zoe B. Wallbrook – History Lessons (Soho Crime)
Liann Zhang – Julie Chan Is Dead (Atria)

Best Young Audiobook

S. A. Cosby – King Of Ashes (Macmillan), narrated by Adam Lazarre-White
Mark Edwards – The Wasp Trap (Simon & Schuster), narrated by John Hopkins, Anna Burnett
Marisa Kashino – Best Offer Wins (Macmillan), narrated by Cia Court
Xan Kaur – When Devils Sing (Macmillan), narrated by Michael Crouch, Anjali Kunapaneni,  Jennifer Pickens, Landon Woodson
CN Mabry, N'Dia Rae – The Cheater's Wife (Simon Maverick), narrated by Ruffin Prentiss, Machelle Williams
Michael Robotham – The White Crow (Simon & Schuster), narrated by Katy Sobey

Best Young Adult Novel

Liz Lawson – Murder Between Friends (Delacorte Press)
Margot McGovern – This Stays Between Us (Penguin Young Readers)
Clay McLeod Chapman – Shiny Happy People (Delacorte Press)
Diana Rodriguez Wallach – The Silenced (Delacorte Press)
Julie Soto – The Thrashers (Wednesday Books)

Best Short Story

Katrina Carrasco – “Level Up” (Bywater Books)
Scott William Carter – “The Seduction of Dr. Dimension” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Lee Child – “Eleven Numbers” (Amazon Original Stories)
David Lagercrantz – “False Note” (Amazon Original Stories)
Jessica Van Dessel – “The Violent Season” (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)

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
 
08 Entertainment’s supernatural thriller, Unmerciful Good Fortune, has signed Oscar nominee Antonio Banderas to star opposite Rosario Dawson, Scott Eastwood, and Susan Sarandon in the film from writer-director Tirsa Hackshaw. The project is based on Edwin Sánchez’s stage play and centers on Maritza Cruz (Dawson), a high-end celebrity attorney pulled into a headline-making case involving a young woman accused of multiple murders—only for the defendant to claim she possesses psychic abilities and kills to prevent worse fates, plunging Maritza into a moral and spiritual labyrinth. Banderas takes on the role of Pito Cruz, while Eastwood plays Paul Leslie, and Sarandon is Dr. Irene Charles.


Concourse Media has landed worldwide sales for the heist thriller, The Smack, which has Oscar winners Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, and Marisa Tomei attached to star. Based on Richard Lange’s 2017 novel, the story follows a down-on-his-luck conman (Affleck) who teams up with a casino waitress to execute a high-stakes con targeting a hidden horde of stolen U.S. military cash. What starts off as an easy plan spirals into a deadly game as they collide with dangerous criminals chasing the same score. The film, which was announced a few years ago with a slightly different cast was written by David M. Rosenthal and Keith Kjarval, who adapted the novel.


Kate Beckinsale has signed on to star in The Savior, an action-thriller from director Russell Mulcahy (1986’s Highlander, Resident Evil: Extinction). The story follows a mother, Jordyn Parker (Beckinsale) struggling with addiction who is forced to resurrect a violent past to rescue her kidnapped daughter from ruthless human traffickers. The gritty thriller is billed as "being in the spirit of Man on Fire, Collateral, and Sicario." Marc Furmie (Viper, The Weight of Darkness) and Jason Mavraidis (Viper) wrote the script based on a story by Corey Large.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

HBO has given an eight-episode order to Damon Lindelof’s new limited series, The Chain, based on the Adrian McKinty book of the same name. Lindelof will serve as showrunner and is writing the pilot script alongside Carly Wray, with Breannah Gibson also contributing to the pilot story. The novel follows Rachel, a divorcée who is undergoing treatment for cancer, who gets a call that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and is now part of The Chain. To get Kylie back, she must kidnap another child after paying a ransom. Kylie will be released when the parents of the child Rachel has kidnapped take yet another child and continue the chain.


Ahead of The Lincoln Lawyer's Season 4 premiere on February 5, the Netflix and A+E Studios legal drama has been renewed for a fifth season. Season 5 will consist of 10 episodes and will be inspired by Resurrection Walk, the seventh book in the Lincoln Lawyer series by author Michael Connelly. The Lincoln Lawyer follows the redemption of Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia Rulfo), a Los Angeles attorney who regains much of what he lost due to addiction with hard work and hustle. His success is also thanks to his devoted supporters: his ex-wives Maggie (Neve Campbell) and Lorna (Becki Newton), his driver and unofficial sponsor Izzy (Jazz Raycole) and the best investigator in town — and Lorna’s newly minted fiancé — Cisco (Angus Sampson).


Dalziel and Pascoe, the iconic British crime drama that ran on the BBC from 1996 until 2007, is getting a reboot, with BritBox ordering a "contemporary reimagining" of the show. Based on the novels of the same name by Reginald Hill, Dalziel and Pascoe was a classic odd couple detective drama, pitting the blunt, old-school and frequently insensitive sleuthing style of detective superintendent Andrew Dalziel against the more methodical and modern techniques of his partner, detective inspector Peter Pascoe. The books and series were set primarily in the fictional town of Wetherton in the North English county of Yorkshire.


Sherlock & Daughter creator Brendan Foley has landed his next project, returning to the Nordic region to pen an adaptation of Finnish geopolitical thriller, Operation: Arctic Fox, by journalist and former army officer Helena Immonen. Set against escalating Arctic ambitions by Russia and China, the story follows a Finnish family of operatives navigating military conflict, biological warfare, and global espionage as geopolitical tensions reach a breaking point. 


Rachel Keller (Fargo, Tokyo Vice) has secured a key leading role in the new CBS legal drama Cupertino, from Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, The Good Fight). Cupertino is a David vs. Goliath legal drama set in the heart of Silicon Valley that follows Michael (Mike Colter), a lawyer who is being cheated out of his stock options by his former employer, a tech start-up. Refusing to back down, he joins forces with Olivia (Keller), another recently fired attorney, to represent those taken advantage of by the tech elite and help them fight back in a high-stakes battle against the Goliaths controlling Silicon Valley. 


Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjian (The Big Sick) and Tze Chun (Gotham, Once Upon A Time), are behind an adaptation of Image Comics’ Sex Criminals, which has landed an eight-episode series order at Amazon. Nanjiani also will appear in the series. Sex Criminals is centered around Suze, a normal girl with an extraordinary ability: when she has sex, she stops time. One night, she meets Jon, who has the same gift. And so they do what any other sex-having, time-stopping couple would do: they rob banks. The comics, which were written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Chip Zdarsky, were originally published in 2013, and there have been six volumes.


Anjli Mohindra, Shaun Parkes, and Aidan Gillen will lead the cast of ITV’s six-part legal thriller, Saviour, written by criminal barrister, novelist, and screenwriter Imran Mahmood. The production follows Ben (Archie Fisher), who, after borrowing his dad’s police uniform for a costume party, gets into an altercation that results in a man’s death. Called to represent Ben is brilliant criminal defense solicitor Indy Sangar (Mohindra). In defending Ben from an allegation of murder, Indy is confronted with a world of police corruption and a defendant who is keeping secrets from her, but what she doesn't know is that deeply personal secrets of her own are finally coming to the surface and threatening to tear her career and her family apart. Indy is also up against a formidable adversary in Detective Inspector Jon Creasy (Parkes) who butts heads with Eddie (Gillen), his colleague and Ben’s father, who is ruthlessly intent on clearing his son’s name.


Netflix has renewed Danish crime series The Asset for a second season. The series follows the work of a young agent, who goes undercover and befriends a drug smuggler’s wife. Season 1 launched in October last year, and hit the number one position in 52 countries and top 10 in 90. Lead cast members Clara Dessau, Maria Cordsen, Afshin Firouzi, and Nicolas Bro are all returning. Details on Season 2 are scarce, with Netflix saying only the agents “will encounter their greatest challenges yet in the fight for survival and justice.”

 
Netflix also revealed a teaser-trailer for Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole (Norwegian title: Jo Nesbøs Harry Hole). This is the first series based on Nesbø’s global bestselling books and will make its global debut on March 26. Tobias Santelmann (Exit, The Last Kingdom) is leading the cast as detective Harry Hole, alongside Joel Kinnaman (Altered Carbon, The Suicide Squad) as Tom Waaler, and Pia Tjelta (Made in Oslo, State of Happiness) as Rakel Fauke.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO
 
On Crime Time FM, Simon Beckett chatted with Paul Burke about his new Dr. David Hunter novel, The Bone Garden; writing series fiction as standalones; the psychological, gothic thriller, and more.


Elizabeth Camden joined John Charles to discuss Camden's new novel, Beyond the Clouds, on the Poisoned Pen podcast.


Murder Junction hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee interviewed crime writer Louise Welsh about her career and her latest novel, The Cut Up. They also discussed some of the most expensive books to be sold secondhand, and the death of playwright Christopher Marlowe.


Authors on the Air spoke with Wendy Walker and how her personal experiences played into writing her new psychological thriller, Blade.


On Pick Your Poison, Dr. Jen Prosser tackled a real-life scenario where a person can be found dead in an enclosed space, without evidence of trauma, intrusion, or even another person.