Author R&R with Ivan Carl

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

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

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

That's the problem.

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

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

The Engineer Who Tried to Solve for Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

Author R&R with Jane Brookwood

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

By Jane Brookwood

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

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

Beyond Fortune Telling: Moving into the Consciousness

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

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

Casting the Archetypes from the Inside Out

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

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

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

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

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

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:


THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

 
TELEVISION/STREAMING

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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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

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


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO/SHORTS

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


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


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


THEATRE

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

Sunday Music Treat

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

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

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

 

 

Quote of the Week

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Dancing Man

Philip Maitland Hubbard, better known as P.M. Hubbard (1910-1980) studied at Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for English verse in 1933.  From Oxford he moved into the Indian Civil Service in northwest India, returning to England in 1947 to work for the British Council. Hubbard then turned to freelance writing — at first, short stories and poetry for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, some articles and, oddly, Parliamentary reports to Punch magazine, before finally focusing on writing novels full time. He penned 16 suspense/mystery titles from 1963 to 1977 with modest success, although one of his novels, High Tide, was adapted for television as part of the ITV network's Armchair Thriller series in 1980.

Hubbard's work is particularly known for his settings, mostly small rural villages or lonely isolated houses in places like secluded woods, along the coast, or in the Highlands. Hubbard once wrote that "As to my planning of a book, the plain answer is that I don't. I have some general theme in my head, and I marry that to a place (always imaginary, but imagined to the last detail and compass-point). The place is generally in fact the principal character in the book, because, again, places mean more to me than people. However, I start with the one or two characters necessary to carry the theme, and then I just start writing and see what happens."

His writing style is direct, minimalist and terse, which Anthony Boucher once noted: "Avoiding clichés as much as possible, interested in people yet devoid of sentimentality, without even any overt physical action, Hubbard can suggest untold horror in a few deft passages." Some may find this type of writing to be slow by today's standards, as Hubbard draws out the suspense quietly and gradually, like slowly playing out a guide rope until it suddenly snaps.

Hubbard didn't create any series characters or detectives, using only three or four main characters in each story, with little dialogue and large chunks of interior monologue narration from the POV character.  The Dancing Man, from1971, is what Tom Jenkins of Mystery File noted was the epitome of Hubbard's style:  a limited cast of characters, his sparse dialogue, and his plot complexities, all woven into the settings of an isolated Victorian house in Wales, a ruined Cistercian abbey and a Neolithic ring larger than Avebury and older than Stonehenge.

The lead character of The Dancing Man is Mark Hawkins, engineer, cynic and loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. Then Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident. A reluctant Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive — gruff professor Roger Merrion, who has more than an academic interest in the ruins, his fearful young wife, and his enigmatic virginal sister, whom Mark starts to fall for.  The Dancing Man of the title is a pornographic carving at the ancient ruins that begins to exert an influence on Mark, but is it witchery, as a mysterious old man he meets tells him, or is something altogether real, but equally sinister? And why was his brother working at an 11th-century monastery, when his specialty was Neolithic archaeology?

It's definitely not the type of novel for fans of more modern, fast-paced punchy fiction, but if you're in the mood for a dark psychological story, then you can allow The Dancing Man to reel you in slowly as you become immersed in the almost claustrophobic pull of the protagonist's frame of mind as he gets closer to a murderous secret.

Mystery Melange

Bloody Scotland revealed the shortlist for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize. The finalist titles will be promoted in bookshops throughout Scotland until the Friday, September 18, when the winner will be announced on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival. This year's finalists include The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); 138 Main Street by Gavin Bell (S&S); A Bad, Bad, Place by Frances Crawford (Bantam); The Diary of Lies by Philip Miller (Polygon); and The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (Viper). (HT to Shotsmag Confidential)

The longlist for this year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction books was recently announced. Several crime-themed titles were among the honorees, including Murder in Paris ’68: A True Story of Death and Glamour by Edward Chisholm (Bloomsbury); The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World by Bojan Pancevski (Penguin Random House); Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre (Penguin Random House); London Falling: and A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe (Penguin Random House). The winner will receive £50,000, with the shortlist of six announced on October 1, and the winner on November 4.

The California Independent Booksellers Alliance (CALIBA) presents the Golden Poppy Awards in recognition of the most distinguished books written and illustrated by creators who have made California their home. Committees for each category are made up of booksellers throughout the state tasked with developing a list of five finalists and one winner. This year's finalists in the Mystery category include A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper (Mulholland Books); Get Lost by Justin Halpern (Cardinal); The Cormorant Hunt by Michael Idov (Scribner); The Tree of Light and Flowers by Thomas Perry (The Mysterious Press); and The Haul by Gary Phillips (Soho Crime).


This weekend, from September 12-13, Herne Bay in southeast England will host its first-ever literary festival, Crime by the Sea, bringing renowned authors, lively discussions and literary events to venues across the town. Presented by The Herne Bay Literary Festival and The Little Green Bookshop, Crime by the Sea will celebrate crime, mystery and thriller writing with special guests including Sophie Hannah (continuation author of Agatha Christie's Poirot series); Jess Kidd (Nora Breen Investigates series); Ian Moore (the Follet Valley cozy crime series); Louise Doughty (Apple Tree Yard and Platform Seven); Cathy Rentzenbrink (The Agatha Christie Cure); Julie Wassmer (Whitstable Pearl mysteries); and Lucy Strange (the Mulberry Hill Murders series). More information, including registration, can be found here.


Also opening this week, from September 12-26, is the annual International Agatha Christie Festival, in Torquay, UK. Highlights will include a special event benefiting the British Red Cross and the Agatha Christie Festival Charity entitled, "What Agatha Did in the Great War." It offers a rare opportunity to step inside the historic Assembly Rooms at Torquay Town Hall, where Agatha Christie served as a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment for the British Red Cross during WWI. Plus, there will be a performance of The Mousetrap as part of the play's 75th Anniversary Tour, with other events focused on "The Forensic Fashion of Agatha Christie"; "A Century of Agatha Christie on Screen"; "Agatha the Photographer"; Roger Ackroyd Day, in celebration of 100 years since the publication of Agatha Christie's classic novel; and lots more.

The Desert Sleuths chapter of Sisters in Crime is presenting WriteNOW! 2026, Friday-Saturday, September 18 & 19. This virtual mystery/crime writers conference for authors, readers, and enthusiasts welcomes writers from all genres. Registration for the CraftNOW! workshop with Clay Stafford, the EditNOW! workshop with Terri Bischoff, Jay Hartman and Anne Rainbow, and the PitchNOW! sessions with Elizabeth Guthrie and Gina Panettieri closes on September 16, 2026 at 11:59 p.m.


Clues: A Journal of Detection has a call for papers on mid-twentieth century American women's crime writing. Guest editors Erin A. Smith (University of Texas at Dallas) and Clare Rolens (Palomar College) welcome proposals for the themed issues that focuses on fostering scholarship on the lesser-known women writers from the 1940s to the 1960s. Potential authors might include (but are by no means limited to) Charlotte Armstrong, Leigh Brackett, Vera Caspary, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Dorothy Cameron Disney, Doris Miles Disney, Helen Eustis, Leslie Ford, Patricia Highsmith, Dolores Hitchens, Dorothy B. Hughes, Shirley Jackson, Margaret Millar, Helen Nielsen, Ann Petry, Evelyn Piper, Craig Rice, and Elisabeth Sanxay. Of interest are inter-sectional analyses of how gender/sexuality, social class, and race/ethnicity are represented in these works. Also welcome are explorations of how these writers navigated various historical traditions of crime writing (noir, the cozy, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century domestic detective fiction, the gothic, etc.) and how they remade or reworked these forms. Proposals are due January 15, 2027, with full essays of 5,000 to 6,000 words due August 1, 2027. Elizabeth Foxwell over at The Bunburyist has more information.


For more news about the latest in short mystery fiction this week, check out Kevin Tipple's Thursday Treats blog, the Short Mystery Fiction Society blog, and also Art Taylor's The First Two Pages blog, which includes 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, "But Was It Murder?" by Robert Donohue, over at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly.


In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover had three recent interviews: they spoke with DS Butler about Lie to Me, that latest in her series featuring Karen Hart, a detective sergeant with the Lincolnshire Police; they also chatted with Christopher Harris about his new novel, Pound Foolish, his second novel to feature Mouse Morrison, an NFL pro who is now a detective; and they interviewed Teresa Solana, whose newly translated crime novel, The Butterfly House, featuring the half-Catalan, half-British police detective, Norma Forester, will be released on September 12. Plus, Promoting Crime Fiction welcomed British author Dave Sivers, whose books include the Archer and Baines contemporary crime novels, the DI Nathan Quarrel series, and the Lowmar Dashiel crime fantasy novels.