Media Murder

 

ABC's spin-off of the BBC show Life on Mars premiers October 9th. The premise finds modern-day NYPD Detective Sam Tyler suddenly hurtled back to 1973 New York City when he's hit by a car while chasing down a criminal, although Tyler doesn't know if he's dreaming, in a coma, losing his mind, or has somehow magically gone back in time. As Executive Producer said in the New York Times, "You have this great concept of a cop from 2008 who is very attuned to DNA evidence and all sorts of technology, and here he is thrust into a world where there’s a whole other kind of ethos to everything. So those stories, I think, will be sort of endless for us."

Here's another take on the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie remake directed by Guy Richie and starring Robert Downey Junior. The article points out that Ritchie's heavily action-oriented version is based on a yet-to-be-published Sherlock Holmes comic book by Lionel Wigram, who pretty much wrote the comic so he could get a movie deal out of it ("sadly a common practice among young comic book writers these days"), and worries that by making Holmes "asskicking, sexy, and a little bit hood," it might seem a betrayal of the character.

Quoting from Britain’s Daily Mail, the final episode of Foyle’s War may have ended conclusively with the characters celebrating VE Day, but it seems the much-loved ITV1 drama is set for a post-war revival. In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, series star Honeysuckle Weeks reveals that Foyle’s War has given way to a new series entitled Foyle’s Peace. Weeks, who plays driver Samantha Stewart to Michael Kitchen’s Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle, said: "I have the contracts so they’ve got quite far with it and, although I haven’t seen scripts, the idea is that it’ll be set after the Second World War."

Reuters and The Boston Herald reviewed Jane Seymour and her new murder mystery movie, Dear Prudence, a cross "Heloise and Jessica Fletcher." Seymour indicated that rumors indicate there may be a couple of sequels (and maybe a series, perhaps?).

For those bummed by the cancellation of the Inspector Lynley series by the BBC, here's an interview with Nathaniel Parker to ease your pain. He seems as bewildered at the sudden demise of the series as the fans are, saying "Well, it’s kind of strange because when we shot it we didn’t know it would be the end. They canceled the series after we finished shooting, so there is no tie-up to it."

The Gemini Awards, recognizing excellence in Canadian television, just announced this year's nominees which include a pair of detective shows, Murdoch Mysteries and Durham County.

ABC has picked up the series Castle, featuring a famous mystery novelist who helps the NYPD homicide department solve crimes. It's directed by Rob Bowman (Day Break, Night Stalker, X-Files).

HBO is set to premiere its series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris's Louisiana vampires, Sunday, September 7.  A comic book version is available online.

Jacob Schroeder, with the Academy Chicago Publishers, announced that his company will be re-releasing all six Charlie Chan novels by Earl Derr Biggers in paperback, starting with The House Without a Key and The Chinese Parrot this fall, and then release the other four over the next two seasons, all with brand new, pulp art covers. The timing coincides with the new Charlie Chan-themed movie allegedly coming out in 2009 penned by Michael Dougherty and starring Lucy Liu as the granddaughter of the renowned detective "who makes a name for herself in the world of crime-busting."

The Wire has been possibly even more popular in Britain than in the U.S. "The Wire Weekend" will be held at the Curzon Soho cinema in London September 20-21, with a showing of season five; an interview with show creator David Simon by journalist and author Misha Glenny; and Q&As between Simon and crime writer Mark Billingham, Guardian columnist and author Charlie Brooker, and several members of the cast including Dominic West. Simon will also appear at the Glasgow Film Theatre on the 18th September and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin on the 19th September.

Grrrl Power

 

It's officially Women's Equality Day, also the anniversary of the the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote (August 26, 1920), so I thought it fitting to highlight a few mystery dames in the news lately:

The Nashville Scene profiled Karin Slaughter, in which the article's author, Michael Ray Taylor, said, "Slaughter's literary depth allows complex characters to probe ugly, brutally realistic crimes in a manner more akin to the PBS series Mystery than to, say, CSI: Miami. The richness of the worlds she creates may be one reason that her novels are enormously popular in England and much of Europe. Slaughter writes crime thrillers for well-read grownups."

The Washingtonian had a brief profile of Martha Grimes, who is also a local girl in the DC area, although as the article pointed out, the internationally known mystery writer goes all but unrecognized around Washington—which is fine with her.

The Guardian wrote about Kate Atkinson, pointing out that "a Literary writer with a capital L (though one with a nicely disreputable sense of fun), Atkinson unexpectedly turned to crime fiction. Perhaps she wanted to see if the limitations of genre were paradoxically liberating, or perhaps she just wanted to play literary pranks of a more subtle variety. Frankly, it's hard to care when the results are this good."

In a Fort Myers News-Press article, they take the case of Lisa Black and her equivalent of a literary "do-over," as sometimes happens in the publishing industry. Elizabeth Becka, author and forensics specialist, had two well-received CSI-style mysteries featuring single mom/forensics specialist Evelyn James published by Hyperion. Unfortunately, her sales didn't impress Hyperion, so she switched publishers, identities and protagonists, and her books now feature single mom/forensics specialist Theresa MacLean under the author's name of Lisa Black, published by William Morrow. Let that be a lesson to authors to never say die...

The Washington Post reported on Brunonia Barry's self-published paranormal mystery, The Lace Reader which later became the subject of a multi-million-dollar bidding war among New York publishers and a publicity campaign most authors just dream about (or is that a nightmare?), including a sweepstakes, a "pitch kit" with a walking tour map of Salem, and something the publisher ominously describes as an "early widget disseminated online in a viral consumer campaign."

The New York Times reviewed Joyce Carol Oates's fictionalized account of the Jon Benet Ramsey tragedy, titled My Sister, My Love, concluding ultimately that the book "could have been a powerful indictment of cultural complicity in child abuse, but Oates emerges as so superior to her characters that complicity isn’t acknowledged, only the most facile sorts of blame. The real transgression isn’t against fictional characters but against Joyce Carol Oates’s unquestionable genius. She is capable of so much more."

And the CSI Effect continues with a surge the number of women choosing forensic science degrees and careers. An Associated Press review of accredited forensic science programs in the United States found about 75 percent of graduates are women, an increase from about 64 percent in 2000. Those in the field estimate that the nation's forensic labs are at least 60 percent female. At Virginia's Department of Forensic Science, 36 of 47 scientists hired since 2005 were women.

A Conference Call

 

There are some new kids on the block in the land of conferences that may be of interest to writers and fans of crime fiction:

Lee Lofland (author of Howdunit Book of Police Procedure and Investigation:  A Guide for Writers ) is joining forces with the Mad Anthony Writers Conference near Cincinnati, Ohio, to host a Police Academy for Writers as part of that conference. As Lee says on his blog, The Graveyard Shift, "All police procedure and forensics workshops will be taught by active and retired police officers, detectives, ATF special agents, and forensics experts (some pretty famous ones, too)." It's not until April 17-19 of 2009, but it's never too early to start planning.

Also next year is the inaugural Killer Con, to be held in September in Las Vegas. It's a new mutli-genre (horror, thriller, and paranormal romance) convention, the brainchild of author Wrath James White. Author and LAPD veteran Paul Bishop has a rundown on his blog, Bish's Beat.

Coming up a little bit sooner are two conferences in September of this year:  the brand-new Sunday Independent's Books 2008 (September 5-7) in Dublin, with an associated Crime Writing festival featuring Tana French, Alex Barclay, John Connolly, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Declan Burke, Declan Hughes, Mick Halpin, and Gene Kerrigan; and the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, with authors including Sandra Brown, Brad Meltzer, Peter Robinson, Alexander McCall Smith, and R.L. Stine.

Ongoing through the Fall is the Thurber House's 2008-09 "Evenings With Authors" season. Although it's already underway, there's still time to catch Louis Bayard on September 19th and Michael Connelly on October 20th. Although not technically a conference, it's a good chance to hear the authors up close and personal, and Connelly will even be reading from and discussing his latest legal thriller, The Brass Verdict about a week after its publication.

Mystery Melange, the Lite Version

 

In case you hadn't heard, Hasbro has reinvented the wheel, i.e., its popular Clue Game.  As NPR reports, the weapons have changed (bye bye lead pipe), as have the characters (Colonel Mustard is now a former football star, and Victor Plum, formerly the professor, was recast as a self-made video game designer and a dot-com billionaire). In response to criticism from purists, game designer Rob Daviau replied, "We wanted something that the mom or dad who's bringing home for the family [could say], 'This is what I remember, and this is what I want to play with my kids...At the same time, we wanted something the kids would feel like it belonged to them." He added, "It plays like Clue, it feels like Clue, but it just feels like Clue that would have been created in the 21st century."

UK crime writer John Mortimer told UK's Guardian newspaper that a glass of Champagne every morning is the secret to a long life. The 85-year-old novelist, had his most celebrated creation, Horace Rumpole, drink 'Chateau Thames Embankment' red wine at his local wine bar.

The Liverpool Philharmonic's 2008-2009 concert season will include the Amadeus Project by trumpeter Guy Barker, an updated version of the Magic Flute reworked into “jazz noir” by thriller writer Robert Ryan.

DC Comics unveiled a new offshoot of its edgy, celebrated Vertigo imprint, Vertigo Crime. The new line will be dedicated to crime titles and launch in 2009 with one offering by Ian Rankin and another by Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets).

And from the department of the Latest in Author Fake-outs, an American book publisher posted an advertisement on Craig's List inviting a team of part-time workers to fake bestselling author signatures and get paid in cash for the privilege.

Mystery Melange

 

Author Robert Crais, a former TV writer for the series Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey and Miami Vice, is adamant that he'll quite possibly "never" option his Elvis Cole novels to Hollywood. Crais told the Associated Press, "I stopped counting at 50 offers....I'm very protective of those characters." He went on to add, "As much as I love television and movies, books are special. My concern is if I allow a film to be made of those guys, that somehow those will have an adverse impact on the collaboration I have with my readers, that somehow Elvis and Joe will be changed in their eyes. I don't know if that's real or not, but so far I've been saying no to all the offers coming my way."

Richard Stark (a/k/a Donald Westlake), on the other hand, is allowing Darwyn Cooke to adapt the first four "Parker" books as a series of graphic novels for publisher IDW. The first title, according to Cooke, is targeted for a late 2009 release, with the successive three titles coming out in two year-intervals after that.

In other melange-y news, Chris Grabenstein, creator of the John Ceepak/Danny Boyle series, was recently featured in the Shelf Awareness "Book Brahmins" corner. When posed the question "What book have you faked reading," he replied, "About half the Oprah books. Anything on that book club table. They just look important. The stuff about geishas and cedar trees and how it affected relationships between overweight twins who used to be in the circus with elephants but were also hermaphrodites in their spare time."

Florida mystery author C.S. Challinor will be donating 15 percent of her royalties from the upcoming book Christmas is Murder to Soldiers' Angels for use in supporting the war wounded who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And a University Daily Kansan article asked, "Why aren’t people afraid of reading books about murder?" The author writes, "Author Agatha Christie recently lured me into the genre, and after devouring her I moved on to others without pause. It took about 120 murders or so before I realized how I was entertaining myself. I was whiling away time with death."

The Wide World of Crime Fiction

 

Remember the Wide World of Sports on ABC? "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat—the human drama of athletic competition"? In light of the Olympics and the spirit of the world coming together, here are some crime fiction news tidbits spanning the globe and hopefully focusing on the thrill-of-victory angle (we writers don't like to talk about "defeat").

The first stop is Turkey, where the Turkish Daily News took a look at crime novels set in Turkey, from The Confessions of Arséne Lupin by French author Maurice Leblanc, to several stories set at least in part in Istanbul: Charlie Chaplin, who became the hero of a 16-volume crime parody series; Hercule Poirot, who boarded the Orient Express in Istanbul; James Bond in From Russia With Love (which also featured the Orient Express) and Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Polifax (The Amazing Mrs. Polifax, where the intrepid sleuth learns to fly a helicopter—you go, girl).

Representing Rome is David Hewson’s Nic Costa series, starting with A Season for the Dead. He's continued with a new title every year since, inclduing the latest, The Garden of Evil. "Rome, to me, is a real city," he says. "It can be a gritty, difficult and a pretty horrible place, but I adore it and its people."

From Ireland we have John Connolly. Although his books are set in America, he divides his time between Maine and his native Dublin. Connolly does not have much time for the English Golden Age detective writers, but admires GK Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers, whose metaphysical themes of religion and retribution appeal to the Irish Catholic in him.

The medal contenders from Scotland inlude Denise Mina, a former criminologist and long-time Glasgow resident, who was recently featured on NPR's Crime in the City; Ian Rankin, who was interviewed by the UK Mirror as a runup to ITV3's new crime fiction awards; and neophyte newsman turned crime writer Tony Black, who some have called the new Ian Rankin, to which Black replies, "Just about every new crime writer from Scotland has been called the 'New Rankin'. I'm obviously delighted to be spoken of in the same breath as him—it's fabulous and flattering—but I take it with a pinch of salt."

The English contingent consists of an article about Harrogate and the "Guess Who Might Be Andy McNab" game. The soldier turned thriller-writer, who for security reasons is never photographed, eventually identified himself and spoke to the Harrogate audience on the subject of what it is like to write about murder and violence from the perspective of somebody who has actually killed people.

From Scandinavia, there's a new kid in town, a web site for Scandinavian crime fiction in English and its companion blog, with author profiles from Karin Alvtegen to Sigurðardottir Yrsa.

AND THIS LATE ADDENDUM:  The Christian Science Monitor featured author Colin Cotterill who uses Laos as a backdrop for his mystery novels featuring an all-Lao cast of characters, and is also lending a hand in a campaign to distribute children’s books to Laotian kids.

Play on!

Crime Fiction of Olympic Proportions

 

The Dorothy-L list has had a discussion lately about mysteries themed around the Olympics in some way. So far, the following have been mentioned (and I've added a few additional):

Alina Adams and her Figuring Skating Mystery series (On Thin Ice, etc). All titles in this series feature aspects of competitive figure skating leading up to international competitions including the Olympics and Adams's protagonist Rebecca "Bex" Levy, figure skating researcher for the 24/7 skating network.

Lindsey Davis, See Delphi or Die. This is #17 in Davis's ancient Roman historical series featuring "informer" Marcus Didius Falco, in which Falco and family travel to Greece and visit the original olympic sites where two women are murdered.

Jefferey Deaver, Garden of Beasts. Set at the 1936 Berlin Games in which a mob hit man is nabbed in the act in New York City but given an alternative to the electric chair--to go to Berlin undercover as a journalist writing about the upcoming Olympics, in order to assassinate Col. Reinhard Ernst, the chief architect of Hitler's militarization.

Philip Kerr, March Violets (the first of his "Berlin Noir" series). Like Deaver's book, this is also set at the '36 Games, where ex-policeman Bernie Gunther has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.

Emma Lathen, Going for the Gold. Takes place at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. New York banker John Thatcher is at the Games to keep the firm's dilettante president out of trouble, but gets involved with the murder of a French ski jumper.

Peter Lovesay (writing as Peter Lear), Golden Girl. This standalone novel surrounds a female athlete at the Moscow Olympics who almost appears too good to be true--and probably is (later became a movie).

Peter May, The Runner. Set in the run-up to the Olympics, where it appears someone is bumping off Chinese medal hopefuls.

Manuel Vazquez Montalban, An Olympic Death. Set in Barcelona on the eve of the '92 Olympics.

Robert B. Parker, The Judas Goat. One of the earlier Spenser mysteries, which involves the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. Spenser's been hired to find the people responsible for killing his client's family in a terrorist attack. The search takes the detective to London, Europe and finally the Olympic Games in Canada.

ALSO:  Charlie Chan movie about the Olympics in 1936, called, unsurprisingly, "Charlie Chan at the Olympics."

Any others anyone out there would like to add?

Poster Boy George

 

Each new book release by crime fiction author George Pelecanos becomes fodder for a media frenzy of sorts, no less the case with his latest novel, Turnaround. Both Janet Maslin and Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times reviewed the book, as did the Chicago Sun Times, among others. Maslin writes "He tells a tight, suspenseful story. And he packs enough of a wallop to put The Turnaround on an express bus of its own." Randy Michael Signor of the Sun Times waxes more rhapsodically, "His truth is love-based and whispers secrets in your ear — but only if you slow down your eyes so your ear hears the words, catches the beat, rides the rhythms and treats you, the reader, with the gift of a tale, the hearing of which will lift your spirit and cause you to say aloud, 'Damn, I've gone to heaven and heard the angels.'"

Then there are the tie-ins:  an interview with The Guardian, in which he notes that "The New York Times didn't review any of my books until my seventh novel. And then I got one paragraph." Was it a favourable write-up? "It was good," he admits. "But it was still a paragraph."

The Philadephia City Paper also snared Pelecanos for an interview. He was asked about a new book by Willy Vlautin called Northline, which he likes, saying "That falls into that category [what he calls proletariat noir], because publishers today don't really want those books. They want high-concept, something with a lot of twists. And Northline to me was one of the best books I'd read in years — and I read a lot of books. What impressed me was that he wrote this very small story about this woman's journey about how these small kindnesses collectively lifted her up. And that's the kind of books I admire."

The Washington City Paper printed a Pelecanos Dictionary, which Sarah Weinman discusses aptly in her blog.

And the New York Times (boy are THEY making up for lost time, George), included a "Living With Music: Playlist" of tunes the author is listening to these days. Play on!

Want Some Fries With Your DNA?

 

As the state of Virginia celebrates its 5,000th DNA hit to its state databank, there is growing concern in some circles that trusty ole DNA isn't as reliable as it used to be and may one day be as helpful in a legal case as, say, a McHappy Meal.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently upon a case in which crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's version of a DNA database, when she discovered something both amazing and disburbing—two felons had remarkably similar genetic profiles, matching nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people. But they weren't twins nor were they related. In fact, was black, the other white. This happened back in 2001, but experts in other states have since found 1,000 other such cases, setting off storms of controversy over whether such DNA evidence should be given closer scrutiny and to what degree, and even prompting claims of an FBI coverup.

It's a longish article, but it brings up some very interesting questions about what's been the gold standard of forensic science over the past few decades. On the other hand, it could also be good fodder for a mystery writer out there.

Media Murder for Tuesday

 

Robert De Niro and Mel Gibson are teaming up for the first time in a new movie, in which Gibson plays a detective who discovers his daughter led a secret life after she is murdered on his doorstep and De Niro plays the operative sent to clean up the evidence. Titled The Edge of Darkness, it will be be directed by Casino Royale filmmaker Martin Campbell and is due for release in 2009.

Seattle's KUOW-FM featured J.A. Jance talking about her three mystery series with J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady, and Ali Reynolds, including her latest novel, Damage Control, the 13th Brady installment—a series she started writing when her publisher offered the chance to write a second series. (Would that all writers could get that lucky...)

The Yorkshire Post interviewed Zoe Sharp about her protagonist Charlie Fox, a bodyguard with special forces background, in which she discusses women in crime fiction, the origins of Fox and just how far she would push her.

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" broadcast a program on "How to Write a Great Mystery" with guests Tana French author of In The Woods and The Likeness, and Louis Bayard, author of Mr. Timothy andThe Pale Blue Eye. French says that although she wanted to write a mystery, she didn't think she could write an entire book, but she figured she could probably write one little section, then another little section, and then the next thing she knew, she had the first chapter. The reason she get kept going was because she wanted to "discover how it turned out." What it turned out to be was a good idea, as her first effort was last year's Edgar Award for best first novel. Since she comes from an acting background, she says she tends to focus on character. Bayard, on the other hand, adds he didn't set out to write mystery, but he realized along the way that mysteries are great for setting change in motion, which fit his unusual idea of making an adult Tiny Tim (from Dickens) set in a more noir environment.

CBS is developing a new action drama hour-long project with CSI vet Josh Berman and non-fiction crime writer Katherine Ramsland, Daily Variety reported, a project titled The CRU which is based on a character from the James Patterson novel, Step on a Crack.

Cold Case star Kathryn Morris, via her Hotplate Productions, has sold her first series pilot which is based on mystery writer Harry Hunsicker's novel Crosshairs.

And in an unusual source for a film project, Paramount has purchased a New York Times article, "Mystery on Fifth Avenue," based on a couple of parents in an Upper East Side luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue that they redesigned to include hidden compartments, messages, puzzles, poems, codes and games for their four preteen kids.