Media Murder for Monday

 

MOVIES

Director Martin Scorsese is reportedly eyeing Jo Nesbo's thiller The Snowman for an upcoming movie project. Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom) is in talks to adapt the screenplay of Nesbo's book, which centers on Detective Harry Holes' investigation of a serial killer after women go missing on the day of a first snowfall.

Director George Isaac is taking on the film project All Things to All Men, billed as a fast-paced, London-based crime thriller, with one character trapped in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a police chief and a crime lord. The cast includes Rufus Sewell as the maverick law enforcement official and Gabriel Byrne as the sadistic crime boss.

The novel Strip by Thomas Perry is being adapted for film by Aaron Stockard (Gone Baby Gone, The Town). It's about a strip club owner robbed by a masked gunman who takes revenge on his attacker—only he targets an innocent man, who tries to turn the tables and ends up in the middle of a brewing gang war. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Ben Affleck is set to direct his friend Matt Damon in a biopic of notorious South Boston crimelord Whitey Bulger, with Sopranos writer Terence Winter writing the screenplay. Boston locals reacted to the news with mixed feelings, some worrying the film will glamorize Bulger and his gang.

Ed Brubaker is adapting his own noir graphic novel Coward for Jamie Patricof's Hunting Lane Films. It's the story of a professional pickpocket and legendary thief named Leo who ends up on the run from the cops and criminals who double-crossed him. Director David Slade said, Coward is "a great modern story. It harkens back to an era of crime stories where there's really a gritty reality to it, but there's a kind of underworld haze of noir."

TV

NBC has been trying to compete, mostly unsuccessfully, with the CBS crime drama juggernaut. Their latest effort appears to be a reboot of 80s TV series Wiseguy by Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo. Wiseguy featured a disgraced cop (played by Ken Wahl) who makes a deal to work undercover as part of the fictional FBI division the Organized Crime Bureau in exchange for time off his jail sentence. The new series will be penned by Alex Cary (of Showtime's Homeland).

Another new NBC purchase is Afterthought, described as "a closed-ended procedural in the vein of CSI by way of Inception and The Cell." The concept has an unconventional team within the FBI using the six-hour window between clinical death and cellular death to solve murders by entering the memories of the recently deceased. The pilot was created by writers Evan Daugherty (Snow White and the Huntsman) and Melissa Rosenberg (The Twilight Saga).

Ellen Pompeo, star of ABC's Grey's Anatomy, started her own production company Calamity Jane that has sold an untitled crime-related drama to the network. The plot surrounds diplomatic security/special agents who follow American officials around the world in order to keep them safe.

Showtime has renewed freshman drama Homeland for a second season. The series centers on Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, who returns home eight years after going missing in Iraq, and Carrie Anderson, a driven CIA officer who suspects Brody might be plotting an attack on America.

The Hollows series of novels by Kim Harrison, detailing the misadventures of a witch who works as a runner (private investigator) in Cincinnati, may be heading to television. Producer Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) is developing the series for CW, with a pilot written by Jordan Hawley (Smallville, Moonlight).

PODCASTS/RADIO

Val McDermic chatted with the BBC on camera about violence in her books and whether there are lines she will not cross.

THEATER

If you live in the northern Ohio area, there are several crime drama theatrical productions to choose from. Clague Playhouse in Westlake is featuring A Christmas Cactus, Eliott Byerrum's detective comedy about a struggling female private eye Cactus O'Riley, who has a bad case of the holiday blues; the Workshop Players in Amherst are producing Murder by the Book, in which a thriller writer indulges in bitter word duels with his estranged wife until she shoots him, and an amateur detective from the next flat attempts to solve the murder; and the Huntington Playhouse in Bay Village is offering Sherlock Holmes: the Final Adventure.

The Fountain Hills Theater in Fountain Hills, Arizona, has a new production of the cat-and-mouse play Sleuth.

GAMES

Ubisoft is behind video game versions of popular TV shows including CSI, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. Now the company is creating a full suite of social online games using Facebook and based on NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and House, M.D. for starters. Facebook games based on NCIS: Los Angeles and CSI
: New York will follow in late 2012.

Operation Warrior Library

When novelist Paul Malmont received fan email from a soldier shipping out to Iraq and hoping for a signed bookplate before he left, Malmont decided to ship boxes of his books to troops, with the help of his publisher. That gave him the idea to get other authors to donate boooks, and he got the support of the Army for the project, dubbed Operation Warrior Library. Now Malmont is adding to that effort by launching a holiday book drive to send books to troops overseas. They're looking for boxes of new books from authors and publishers, and audiobooks are also welcome for injured soldiers in hospitals. If you are an author/publisher and can help, send an e-mail to warriorlibrary@gmail.com. Other folks can help, too, by buying books from authors involved in the project from the Operation Warrior Library Shop, where all proceeds go to cover OWL costs.

Mystery Melange

 

Quebec is hosting its first (but hopefully annual) crime fiction festival this week. The event, called QuebeCrime, features a workshop on "CSI: Wrong Watson! Chemistry for Justice," as well as various panels with authors Lawrence Block, John Brady, Hilary Davidson, Anne Emery, Trevor Ferguson, Tom Henighan, Ian Hamilton, Craig McDonald, Denisa Mina, Louise Penny, Andrew Pyper, Ian Rankin, Simon Toyle and Daniel Woodrell.

Several authors gathered together to write short stories featuring a Navy SEAL hero. It all started with a photo in the New York Times of U.S. Navy SEALs as they prepared for a night mission to capture Iraqi insurgent leaders near Fallujah, Iraq. The result is SEAL of My Dreams, to be released in paperback and eBook formats on 11/11/11 (Veteran's Day) with proceeds from sales of the anthology pledged to the Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit foundation supporting veterans medical research

Attorney Leslie Budewitz has been assisting authors for years with getting legal details in fiction just right, primarily through her website. But now she's added to that pedigree with her new Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately about Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure. The Five Scribes blog has a Q&A with Leslie, where she says the book will help writers use the law accurately while telling a good story and learn how to use legal issues to develop plots, character and setting.

Issue #8 of Crimefactory has new stories and features from Julia Madeleine, Seth Harwood, Heath Lowrence, Matthew C. Funk, and many more. And in case you missed it, issue #45 of Noir Journal is featuring its No Frills Book Review Marathon, Part 1.

The Wolfe Pack is holding its 34th annual Black Orchid Banquet and Weekend December 2-4. The event has an added significance this year, since December 1, 2011 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Rex Stout, and several members of the author's family will attend the banquet. The finalists for this year's Nero Award for best novel of the year, to be presented at the banquet, are Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen; The Book of Spies by Gayle Lynds; Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny; The Midnight Show Murders by Al Roker & Dick Lochte; and Think of a Number by John Verdon. For more information about how to register visit The Wolfe Pack's web site.

As blogger Nathanael Booth notes, if you're an Ellery Queen fan, Otto Penzler's Mysterious Press acquired the rights to issue Calamity Town and The Roman Hat Mystery in e-book format, and they're available for pre-order now on Amazon.

Media Murder for Monday

 

MOVIES

American director James Mangold is eyeing a drug thriller titled City State that he hopes to develop and direct. It would be a remake of Icelandic writer-director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson's original film, which follows four strangers involved with Iceland's criminal underworld—both criminals and cops—who find their lives connected once a mafia syndicate tries to take over Iceland's drug trade.

Producers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith have bought movie rights to Alive in Necropolis, the 2008 debut noirish detective story by Doug Dorst set in the real-life cemetery-filled town of Colma, California. According to Grahame-Smith noted, "The book is about a murder mystery, told through the eyes of a young detective who may or may not be going crazy, and may or may not be seeing ghosts that are helping him."

An American version of Occupied, the European TV series based on author Jo Nesbo's novels, is possibly in the works. Although the Norwegian TV original has yet to be filmed, Swedish producer Marianne Gray hinted that it would include American actors and a director in order to make it more "transferrable" to U.S. television later. Gray added that the new strategy in Hollywood seems to be to identify bestselling crime novel series and then convert them into high-end television drama, often giving them a theatrical outing first.

Writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) is teaming up with Fox Searchlight to direct and adapt The Man In The Rockefeller Suit, based on the nonfiction book by Mark Seal about a German-born conman who passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller clan for decades.

George Clooney is out and Bradley Cooper is in as Napoleon Solo in Steven Soderbergh's film adaptation of the iconic 1960s TV series Man from U.N.C.L.E. Glooney had to withdraw due to back problems. In the original series, Robert Vaughn played expert spy Solo, with David McCullum ("Ducky" on NCIS) playing his partner Illya Kuryakin. No word yet on who will play Illya in the movie version.

Here's another trailer for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes sequel, again starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson. And let's hope the movie is successful, because Warner Brothers has already hired Drew Pearce to write the third installment in the franchise, even before the open of this second movie, titled Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, on December 16

Cinema Blends also has a preview of the film London Boulevard based on the novel by Ken Bruen. It was released in November 2010 in the UK, but will finally get a limited release run in the U.S. starting November 11 of this year.

TV

A true-life crime fiction subject, if there ever was one: HBO is planning a movie about Bernie Madoff starring Robert De Niro as the disgraced financier.

Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica, Law and Order: UK) will appear in a multi-episode arc on Body of Proof, playing Scott Decker, a potential love interest for medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt (Dana Delany). Perhaps this will soften the blow after he landed the lead role in Ron Moore's fantasy drama pilot 17th Precinct, which failed to picked up by NBC.

A&E renewed The Glades for a third season. The cop series starring Matt Passmore as Jim Longworth, a brilliant Chicago homicide detective forced to relocate to the sleepy, middle-of-nowhere town of Palm Glade near the Florida Everglades.

It appears that Person of Interest and Unforgettable are doing well enough in the ratings that CBS is eyeing a full-season rollout for both of the freshmen crime drama series. Person of Interest stars Jim Caviezel as an ex-CIA hitman who teams with a scientist (played by Michael Emerson) to prevent crimes before they happen. Unforgettable stars Poppy Montgomery as a police detective who has a rare medical condition that gives her the ability to remember everything

Fox has acquired an hour-long drama pilot from from Criminal Minds veteran Ed Bernero and ABC Studios. It's based on the Marvel Comics character Punisher, a police procedural with Frank Castle as an NYPD homicide detective by day, vigilante seeking justice by night. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/RADIO

Keith Rawson interviewed James Sallis at the Poisoned Pen bookstore, discussing his latest novel, The Killer is Dying, as well as the  release of the film adaptation of his novel Drive.

George Smiley fans, rejoice: As Elizabeth Foxwell notes, this week BBC Radio 4 Extra features The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. Go here for the schedule (episodes can usually be heard online for up to a week after broadcast).

THEATER

Seattle's ACT Theatre is l
aunching a new stage production of Double Indemnity, based on the James M. Cain novel that also inspired the 1944 noir film classic directed by Billy Wilder. The play opens this Thursday under the direction of Kurt Beattie and runs through November 20th.

Learn From the Best

If you are serious about learning the craft of writing crime fiction and have the time and money, the new Crime Fiction Academy may be just for you. The Center for Fiction in New York City is launching the academy in February 2012 to include a 14-week workshop, a monthly Master Class, a Crime Fiction Reading seminary, special lectures and discussions with editors and agents, and access to the Center's book collection (which received a Raven Award for its comprehensive library of mystery and thriller titles). The admission process is fairly rigorous and limited to a few participants, the organizers prefer a year's commitment, and the workshop costs $2,800. However, if you're accepted, you'll be taught by the likes of Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Lee Child, Thomas H. Cook, Linda Fairstein, Susan Isaacs, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, Joyce Carol Oates, SJ Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, Karin Slaughter and more. Give it a shot, but make sure all application materials are received by November 28th.

Mystery Melange

 

The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal: Animal Mysteries is now available to PDF subscribers, with the hardcopy out late this week. Animal fans rejoice: there are "lots of dogs and cats, but some birds, pigs, horses and insects." Three online articles you can read to whet your appetite include Watching Eagles Soar by Margaret Coel, When Wild Pigs Fly by Bill Crider and Animals In and Out of Books by Deborah Crombie.

Janet Rudolph, the editor of Mystery Readers Journal, is also the driving force behind the Mystery Fanfare blog and offers up a list of Halloween mysteries for you.

Patti Abbott posted a flash fiction challenge on her blog for stories based on Reginald Marsh paintings. The results are in, and Patti has links to all 23 stories.

If you're not familar with the magazine Yellow Mama, check out their latest issue for October with offerings from the likes of Richard Godwin and AJ Hayes. The online zine publishes cutting edge, hardboiled, horror, literary, noir and psychological/horror short stories and poems and book reviews, too. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

As Terrie Moran notes, fellow author/blogger Ed Gorman just released his latest Sam McCain novel, Bad Moon Rising. Set in a 1968 hippie commune just outside Sam’s hometown of Black River Falls, the plot involves the murder of troubled daughter of a prominent citizen with the social and moral upheavals of the day.

Another fellow writer/blogger, Nigel Bird, released a digital collection of his short stories earlier this year, titled Dirty Old Town (And Other Stories), downloadable from Smashwords and Amazon. He also has a print version available via the art house press KUBOA. If you're on Goodreads, you can enter by the end of the month to win a print copy of the collection. The giveaway celebrates the arrival of Nigel's debut novella, "Smoke", a spin off of a story included in this year's Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime.

Early bird registration is now open for both Thrillerfest and Malice Domestic conferences for 2012. For Thrillerfest, scheduled for July 11-14 in NYC, this includes the CraftFest writers workshop and AgentFest pitch sessions, as well as the regular conference with special guests Jack Higgins, R.L. Stine, Lee Child, John Sandford and Catherine Coulter. You have until December 31st to register for Malice Domestic and still get the cheapest registration rate, as well as a nomination form for the Agatha Awards. You can also register from now through January to get an early-bird discount for the Public Safety Writer's Conference held in July.

The Q&A roundup this week includes author Denise Mina (The End of the Wasp Season), who was interviewed by fellow author Kate Atkinson (Case Histories and Started Early, Took my Dog) talking about genre, character and the best place to write.

The Appalachian Prison Book Project is a program trying to rehabilitate inmates by giving them free books to read. Unfortunately, their funding was cut. The West Virginia University Department of English is accepting donations on the program's behalf, with the most requested books being dictionaries, auto repair manuals, psychology textbooks and fiction (for security purposes, all donations must be paperback).

Monkey Justice: New Crime to Kindle Your Fancy

If you've been following the weekly Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature on this blog, you'll know that it was the brainchild of blogger Patti Abbott, who coordinates all the entries. But Patti is also a very fine writer of short crime fiction and has a new collection of twenty-three of her stories all in one place from Snubnose Press, titled Monkey Justice.

Patti passed along the following note about her brand-new project:

I want to thank Bonnie for inviting me to say a few words about my collection of stories, Monkey Justice, on her blog.  In Reference to Murder is a daily stop for my on blog travels. This is also a good opportunity to thank Bonnie for her support of Forgotten Friday books reviews with such wonderfully researched reviews.

I had never given too much thought to putting a collection of stories together until Brian Lindenmuth, publisher of the newly created SNUBNOSE PRESS, contacted me about it. Before ebooks, it was unlikely a press would be interested in publishing a collection of stories that had mostly appeared online. And also a collection from a writer who had not published a novel. I did not feel particularly sad about this, but once the opportunity arose, I was pretty excited and grateful that Brian was interested. Zines come and go, so many of my stories only exist as a memory now, but this would allow them to perhaps have a permanent home online. It was fun choosing the stories and hopefully they are representative without them being too similar.

“The Tortoise and the Tortoise” is one of my favorites. I have rarely written about my family (although my husband’s shows up fairly regularly) because my family was so ordinary. But a few years ago, my father was facing a peculiar situation in the assisted living facility where he lived. As one of the few men ambulatory and with his wits still somewhat intact, he had been cock of the walk at the place for a year or so. Women clambered to sit next to him and he led their Mardi Gras parade. He was catered to for the first time in his life (he was one of nineteen children). My father, at 95, was still good looking and in fact, looked a decade younger.

And then, it all changed. The room next door became vacant and before he knew it, he had a new neighbor.

His new neighbor inspired even more attention. He was a priest who’d suffered a stroke leaving him mute and somewhat helpless. Suddenly the nurses and aides were at his beck and call. He had only to lift his hand in the dining room and someone rushed over.  A constant stream of visitors turned up and my Dad could hear their jabber through the wall.

My Dad could never understand any of this. Especially not as his dementia grew worse. He couldn’t understand that the man raised his hand in the dining room because he couldn’t speak, not because he thought he was the Pope. That’s what Dad always said, “He thinks he’s the pope.” It also bothered him that so many women flocked to his room.

 “They’re nuns who worked with him,” I told Dad repeatedly.

“Then why don’t they dress like nuns,” he would say.

“Because nuns don’t wear habits anymore,” I would tell him but he wasn’t having any of it. He had lost his role as the cock of the walk—and only the man’s eventual death restored it.

“Something’s going on in there,” he stubbornly insisted.

Of course, writing this story for Pulp Pusher, I needed a more dramatic ending. So in the story “Dad” took matters into his own hands. Literally.

Thanks for asking me here, Bonnie and thanks to those who bought the book or read my stories online. I do love writing them.

The collection is getting rave reviews, too:
"Patricia Abbott proves that there are many shades of noir as she expertly layers her stories with melancholy, loss and the frailness of the human psyche" – Dave Zeltserman

"Patti Abbott is a master when it comes to short stories." - Anne Frasier

"In this collection of short contemporary noir fiction, Patti Abbott distinguishes herself as an extraordinary storyteller of the dark recesses of the human heart. Abbott’s characters hit hard, fight dirty, and seek a brand of hardscrabble justice that will leave you both wincing and wishing for more." – Sophie Littlefield

"There are few writers who have been more instrumental in my development as a short story writer as Patti Abbott. Her dark, explosive, and yet intensely humane stories leave me breathless and Monkey Justice is nothing less than brilliant." - Keith Rawson

I'm getting ready to download a copy, and you can too.

Media Murder for Monday

 

MOVIES

Sony Pictures is partnering with British crime writer John Burdett to adapt at least four of his novels into films, including Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts, The Godfather of Kathmandu and Vulture Peak (due next year). The novels are known as "The Sonchai Jitpleecheep" series, named for the Thai Buddhist detective in the books who solves bizarre, often sordid crimes.

Fresh off his starring turn as J. Edgar Hoover, actor Leonardo DiCaprio is eyeing a biopic about Alan Turing. Turing was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist, criminally prosecuted homosexual and tortured soul who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple. He was also the man who cracked the Germans' Enigma code during WWII. The movie project will be based on first-time screenwriter Graham Moore's The Imitation Game (snapped up by Warner Bros in a 7-figure deal). Graham is also the author of the critically acclaimed crime fiction debut novel The Sherlockian.

Swedish production company Yellow Bird has sold the English-language movie rights for Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo's Headhunters novel to Summit Entertainment. However, there's no director or cast set yet, and any prospective film would take at least three years to produce and release, so don't expect to see it before 2014 (give or take).

Javier Bardem is the new Bond villain for the upcoming untitled Bond 23 film starring Daniel Craig as 007. No word yet on the identity of the village, but rumors are flying it may have 007 facing off against classic adversary Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE.

TV

ABC announced it is picking up a full season of its new drama Revenge, inspired by the storyline of The Count of Monte Cristo. Emily Vancamp stars as Emily Thorne, who has vowed revenge on those who took her father away when she was a child and wrongly convicted him of a long list of felonies, based on false evidence. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Fans of the BBC contemporary-set Sherlock Holmes series can rejoice: Starting May 6th, 2012, the next three-episode season starring Benedict Cumbersnatch and Martin Freeman will air in the U.S. as part of Masterpiece Mystery.  

Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) is set to star in a TNT drama pilot Scent of the Missing, based on the book Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson. Gerald McRaney will co-star as Helfer's father.

The USA network released a promo for John Sandford's Certain Prey, the TV drama starring Mark Harmon as Lucas Davenport that will premiere November 6th at 9 p.m.

A&E Network released a trailer for its upcoming four-hour movie (aired over two nights in December) based on the 1998 Stephen King murder mystery novel Bag of Bones. The project stars Pierce Brosnan as troubled writer Mike Noonan, with Melissa George, Jason Priestley, Annabeth Gish and Anika Noni Rose rounding out the cast.

Looks all those folks who thought a reboot of the Charlies Angels series from the 70s was a bad idea were right. ABC cancelled the series after airing four episodes. They plan on running the remainder of the four shows produced, but haven't set a broadcast date. TNT has also opted not to renew the off-beat cop drama Memphis Beat starring Jason Lee for a third season. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News and Crimespree.)

Are you a paranormal detective? Might be your chance to be on T.V.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Thanks to Elizabeth Foxwell, I found out that BBC Radio 4 Extra offers an Ian Rankin short story in which Rebus uncovers more than simple theft, and Sheila Hancock reminisces about her late husband, the actor John Thaw, who played Inspector Morse. But you'd better hurry—episodes generally can be heard online for up to a week after broadcast.

GAMES

It was announced at NY Comic-Con that Christopher McQuarrie is planning on writing, directing and producing (along with Mark Long and Dan Capel) the multimedia project Rubicon, a Navy SEALs story described as "being in the vein of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and will be set in modern Afghanistan."  The multiplatform properties of a movie, graphic novel and video game will be created and released simultaneously, but with separate storylines.

The Pen (Name) is Mightier than the Sword

Publishers Weekly recently had a quiz about author pseudonyms, which got me thinking about crime fiction authors. So, in that same vein and spirit, I've assembled a little mystery quiz with the real author names that you can try and match with their alter-ego pseudonyms (noting that sometimes authors switch genders with their new identities). The author's real name is on the left. Can you match it with their pen name on the right? (The answers are below…)

 

(1) Harriet Stratemeyer Adams	(a) Carolyn Keene
(2) Dennis Lynds	(b) Rosamund Smith
(3) Elizabeth Linington	(c) Tucker Coe
(4) Frederic Dannay, M.B. Lee	(d) Anthony Gilbert
(5) Lawrence Block	(e) Dell Shannon
(6) Michael Crichton	(f) William Jeffries
(7) Jeffery Deaver	(g) Michael Collins
(8) H.R.F. Keating	(h) Barbara Vine
(9) Salvatore Lombino	(i) Alisa Craig
(10) Charlotte McLeod	(j) Elizabeth Peters
(11) Ralph McInerny	(k) John le Carré
(12) Barbara Mertz	(l) John Lange
(13) Joyce Carol Oates	(m) Mary Westmacott
(14) Edith Pargenter	(n) Evelyn Hervey
(15) Ruth Rendell	(o) Monica Quill
(16) Donald Westlake	(p) Ed McBain
(17) Eleanor Marie Robinson	(q) J.D. Robb
(18) Agatha Christie	(r) Chip Harrison
(19) David John Moore Cornwell	(s) Ellery Queen
(20) Lucy Beatrice Malleson	(t) Ellis Peters

Ready to cheat?  Here are the answers:

(1) Harriet Stratemeyer Adams (a) Carolyn Keene
(2) Dennis Lynds (g) Michael Collins
(3) Elizabeth Linington (e) Dell Shannon
(4) Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (s) Ellery Queen
(5) Lawrence Block (r) Chip Harrison
(6) Michael Crichton (l) John Lange
(7) Jeffery Deaver (f) William Jeffries
(8) H.R.F. Keating (n) Evelyn Hervey
(9) Salvatore Lombino (p) Ed McBain (slight trick question: Lombino legally changed his name to Evan Hunter)
(10) Charlotte McLeod (i) Alisa Craig
(11) Ralph McInerny (o) Monica Quill
(12) Barbara Mertz (j) Elizabeth Peters
(13) Joyce Carol Oates (b) Rosamund Smith
(14) Edith Pargenter (t) Ellis Peters
(15) Ruth Rendell (h) Barbara Vine
(16) Donald Westlake (c) Tucker Coe
(17) Eleanor Marie Robinson (q) J.D. Robb
(18) Agatha Christie (m) Mary Westmacott
(19) David John Moore Cornwell (k) John le Carré
(20) Lucy Beatrice Malleson (d) Anthony Gilbert

Mystery Melange

 

Tomorrow, October 13, is Mystery Day at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. People's Choice Award nominee Donna Andrews joins other featured authors including Mollie Bryan, Meredith Cole, Ellen Crosby, Jan Neuharth, Alan Orloff, Brad Parks, Sandy Parshall, JB Stanley, Andy Straka, and Irene Ziegler. Moderators for the panels include Art Taylor, Steve Weddle, Katherine Neville and Meredith Cole. There's a fee for the luncheon, but the panels are free (you're asked to register in advance, though, so you'll have to hurry).

The Fall 2011 issue of Needle Magazine is out, edited by Steve Weddle and featuring a story by Gil Brewer (1922-1983), author of dozens of "wonderfully sleazy sex/crime adventure novels of the 1950's and 60's." Also included are other new lean and mean hardboiled and noir tales by contemporary writers Daniel Davis, Andrew Hook, David James Keaton, Nolan Knight, Alan Leverone, Michael Moreci, Peter Morin, Mike Oliveri, Keith Rawson, Michael Sheedy, Art Taylor and Holly West.

Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal, is calling for submissions for the next issue focusing on "Shrinks & Other Healthcare Professionals." She needs Author! Author! essays, reviews and articles. Looking ahead to 2012, the issue themes are Mysteries set in France; Military Mysteries; Mysteries set in Florida; and Legal Mysteries (revisiting some previous and new topics). For submission information, send Janet an e-mail.

In the Q&A roundup this week, Sons of Spade interviewed Lawrence Block about his Matt Scudder series and how he keeps the series from running out of steam by "allowing Matt Scudder to age in real time, and to be changed in one book for having lived through the preceding one." Author Tim Hallinan interviewed Bruce DaSilva about his novel Rogue Island, winner of the Anthony, Edgar and Macavity Awards for debut novel. DaSilva also discusses his background in print journalism: "Journalism taught me how vital reporting – especially investigative reporting – is to the health of the American democracy."

The Cape Fear Crime Fesival coming up February 2012 in Wilmington, North Carolina, is seeking authors to serve on panels. For more information or just to register as an attendee, check out the conference web site.

Lee Lofland offers an amazing Writers' Police Academy held in North Carolina (registration details for 2012 coming soon, with special guest Lee Child). Many lucky authors have had the opportunity to participate in Lee's terrific event. For west coast writers who might not be able to travel that far, there's an opportunity to experience something similar with the Crime Writers Homicide School.

More crime fiction/suspense authors are turning to graphic novels. Charlaine Harris, author of the bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series (upon which the HBO TV show True Blue is based), signed a deal with Penguin's Ace Books imprint to publish Cemetery Girl, an original graphic novel trilogy. Meanwhile, DC Entertainment's Vertigo imprint announced plans to publish graphic novel adaptations of the late Steig Larrson's bestselling Millenium trilogy.

Got an extra $20,000 lying around? Then you can bid on the leather-bound boxed set of Stieg Larsson's internationally award-winning Millennium Trilogy as part of the Sotheby's English Literature Sale on December 15th. The set includes the books, the original letter of rejection sent to a young Larsson in 1972 by the Joint Committee of Colleges of Journalism and an original pencil portrait by the author himself, never before seen by the public. The sale will benefit Expo, the anti-discrimination foundation set up in 1995 by Larsson and his peers.

Some New Shorts

 

Last week, I mentioned the new short fiction anthology from Pulp Metal Magazine, titled Pulp Modern. But fans of short fiction can rejoice at even more new anthologies being released this month (and David Cranmer has additional suggestions):

  The anthology A Study in Sherlock is the result of Laurie King and Leslie Klinger asking twenty top writers who don't normally write about Sherlock Holmes to come up with pastiche stories about the iconic detective. Alan Bradley, Lee Child, Neil Gaiman, Laura Lippman, Margaret Maron, Jacqueline Winspear and more serve up creative new spins on Arthur Conan Doyle's famous sleuth in this anthology, available October 25th.

West Coast Crime Wave, edited by Brian Thornton with an intro by Ken Bruen, is the first in a series of crime anthologies and other fiction works published in e-book format by BSTSLLR.Com, a new e-book press founded by Michael Wolf. This anthology includes original short stories from some of the US west coast's most popular crime fiction writers including Bill Cameron, Naomi Hirahara, Steve Hockensmith, Simon Wood.

  Just in time for Halloween, 13 Tales of New American Gothic, edited by Linda Landrigan, includes short stories from Alfred Hitch Mystery Magazine. Featured authors are Terry Black, John C. Boland, Rhys Bowen, Shelley Costa, O'Neil De Noux, Jean Femling, Martin Limón, Steve Lindley, Elaine Menge, Joyce Carol Oates, Elaine Viets, James Lincoln Warren, and L. A. Wilson, Jr.

Media Murder for Monday

 

MOVIES

Warner Bros. and Robert Downey Jr. are looking to adapting Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason franchise into a feature film, with Downey Jr. starring as Mason. They plan on keeping the early 1930s Los Angeles setting from the novels, which were also popularized in the 1960s TV show starring Raymond Burr.

Don Winslow penned a prequel to the classic Nicolai Hel spy novel Shibumi, which Warner Bros has acquired to develop as a star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio. Winslow's novel, Satori, centers on an American raised as a highly-skilled assassin in Japan who gets involved with the CIA. 

Frankenstein, P.I:  Lionsgate is adapting the Darkstorm Studios graphic novel that re-imagines Mary Wollstonecraft's Gothic tale with the creature working as a private investigator and encountering other famous movie monsters. Aaron Eckhart, who also played a monster of sorts in The Dark Knight, has been signed to star.

It appears there may be another iteration of Zorro (after the 2005 pic starring Antonio Banderas). Sony Pictures says it's not a remake "but an origin tale of the comic book icon based on the 2005 Isabel Allende novel."

Writer-producer Michael Kerr is making his directorial debut with the new film Napa, based on a novel Fulbright scholar Hans Ostrom published through the small imprint Cliffhanger Press back in 1991. The project has signed Rose McGowan to star as Scarlett Harding, who gets a job as Sheriff in her hometown of Napa after returning from three military tours of Afghanistan. The rest of the plot is sketchy, but the author calls his story a mystery novel and Kerr calls it a romantic thriller.

Paramount has acquired an untitled project from screenwriter Billy Ray and JJ Abrams that is also light on details, but called "a mystery adventure." Ray is also currently working on the screenplay for a film adaptation of the TV series 24.

Here's your first trailer for the Edgar Allen Poe movie The Raven, starring John Cusack.

TV

Stefanie von Pfetten (Battlestar Galactica) will star in Cracked, the White Pines Pictures police procedural pilot for the CBC. She'll play Daniella, a psychologist in the Abnormal and Violent Crime Unit, and a partner to Aiden, a veteran sergeant played by David Sutcliffe.

Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters (Law & Order: SVU, Hawaii Five-0) have sold the pilot Notorious to CBS, a "character-based procedural" about a LAPD detective basking in the spotlight after solving a murder case that made national headlines.The pair also sold an untitled alien bounty hunter project to the CW Network.

USA Network has tapped White Collar creator Jeff Eastin for a pilot that follows agents from various federal and local agencies (DEA, FBI, LAPD) who all live at an undercover house in Southern California.

ABC has bought Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives, an hourlong project from Jerry Bruckheimer Television. It's inspired by Josie Brown's 2010 novel described as a thriller/dramatic soap that centers on a murder and the secrets exposed in its aftermath.

Cinemax renewed Strike Back for a second season. The network's first primetime drama series is about a charismatic former U.S. Special Forces operative who joins a stealth British military unit to prevent an international terrorist attack. Don't expect favorite characters to be back for the second season, however, due to several deaths in the upcoming season finale and a possible change of storyline for next year.

The BBC has acquired two Danish/Swedish crime drama series The Bridge and Sebastian Bergman, which are "character-based, suspense-filled murder mysteries, with a cinematic atmosphere and style, following in footsteps of Spiral, Wallander and The Killing." (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/RADIO

Max Allan Collins joins Reject Radio to talk about collaborating with the ghost of Mickey Spillane, hard crime, and different writing techniques.

Barry Eisler was featured on NPR's Morning Edition program, talking about his decision to walk away from legacy publishing and go indie at first, and then with Amazon afterward. He says, "If a better way comes along … of course I'm going to take it," he says. "Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology."

Mystery Melange

 The new Fall issue of Mystery Scene magazine includes Oline H. Cogdill's feature on Val McDermid, an article on "pioneer feminist" Arthur B. Reeve, a timely pre-Halloween feature by Steve Hockensmith on supernatural crime fiction, and much more.

The Fall/October Plots With Guns issue is due any day, with new fiction by Patti Abbott, M. James Blolod, Matthew C. Funk, Chris Gordon, Ryan Jackson, Stephen Graham Jones, Thomas Pluck, Pee Risley, Art Taylor and Charles Dodd White. 

A new short fiction anthology from Pulp Metal Magazine (bringing you the "Noir-est genre-bending fiction to come from the imaginations of the best authors out there") features stories from Ian Ayris, Paul Brazill, Melanie Browne, Charlie Coleman, Frank Duffy, Richard Godwin, Michael Gonzalez, Danny Hogan, Heath Lowrence, Jodi McArthur, UV Ray, Chris Rhatigan, and BR Stateham.

Mike Ripley (a/k/a "The Ripster") published the most recent version of his always-entertaining "Getting Away With Murder" column for Shots Ezine with his latest news and reviews, including his take on the long-awaited "officially sanctioned" new Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz.

Lawrence Block is the latest bestselling author to go the self-publishing eRoute, with eBook and POD versions of The Night and the Music, a collection of short stories featuring his iconic private eye Matthew Scudder. Block has written novels, novelettes and short stories about Scudder since the early 1970s, and this particular collection contains the nine stories he's published over the years plus two new ones.

We're hearing more lately about South African crime fiction authors, but mostly about the fellas. Here's a list with a few suggestions for female writers from South Africa.

The interview roundup this week features Shamus award winner Gar Anthyony Haywood in a Q&A with the Sons of Spade blog, telling how he came up with his Aaron Gunner character by "deciding over time what I DIDN'T want him to be." Over at Shockya, Max Allan Collins discusses his new novel The Consummata, based on a manuscript by legendary late crime writer Mickey Spillane.

The University of California-Berkeley library is currently featuring the exhibit "Bullets Across the Bay: The San Francisco Bay Area in Crime Fiction," exploring the rich history of mystery, detective, and crime novels set in the San Francisco area. In association with the exhibit, the Library will present a special mystery edition of the Story Hour in the Library series featuring a panel discussion with authors Kelli Stanley, Eddie Muller, and Lucha Corpi, moderated by Janet Rudolph. The event  is Friday, October 14, 2011 from 4:00-6:00pm and is free and open to the public.

There is still time to register for the last Mystery Writers of America University of 2011, to be held in San Francisco on October 15th. Sessions include "Dramatic Structure & Plot," "Setting & Description," "Character & Dialogue" and more.

A free evening presentation about espionage will open the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference on November 10 at the Hotel Santa Fe, The Hacienda and Spa. Created by Edward Held (author of A Spy's Guide to Santa Fe and Albuquerque), the program will reveal some of the locations used by KGB operatives to meet with informers and gather information on atomic secrets. The KGB's single greatest intelligence and counterintelligence coups and the planning of their most infamous assassination all took place within one mile of Saint Francis Cathedral in historic Santa Fe.

Media Murder for Monday

 

MOVIES

The first book in author Adrian Magson spy thriller franchise, Red Station (published this past June), may be headed to the big screen. Production company Benderspink optioned the rights to the story about MI5 agent Harry Tate, who takes the fall for a drug bust gone bad. When he's sent to an outpost in Georgia for washed up operatives, he becomes entangled in a plot involving a Russian invasion of England.

John Le Carre's two sons, Stephen and Simon Cornwell, have launched their own production company the Ink Factory. Their goal: to see more of their father's novels adapted to film. A Most Wanted Man, scripted by Andrew Bovell and directed by Anton Corbijn, starts shooting next spring. Others in the pipeline include Our Kind of Traitor and The Mission Song. As for the 79-year-old Le Carre, he is serving as an executive producer and consultant.

Mira Sorvino has been cast in a film based on The Class Project: How To Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls, written by Toronto Star reporter Bob Mitchell back in 2008. Sorvino will play the emotionally abusive mother of two girls who plot to knock off their mom and live off the life insurance payout.

The documentary The Man Nobody Knew was released to limited markets this past week. It's based on the life of William Colby, one of the more infamous Directors of the CIA, and was made by his son, son Carl Colby. It's "at once a probing history of the CIA, a personal memoir of a family living in clandestine shadows, and an inquiry into the hard costs of a nation's most cloaked actions."

Omnimystery posted a link to a trailer for the new film based on Janet Evanovich's books featuirng her Stephanie Plum character.

TV

NBC has acquired a project from Numb3rs creators Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton based on a Elmore Leonard short story from the collection When the Women Come Out to Dance. The project will revolve around a Colombian mail-order bride who moves to Miami and struggles to move on from her past.

Another NBC acquisition is an untitled cop drama project set in Shanghai, China, from writers Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, centered on a pair of fugitive recovery agents working in the world's largest city.

Author Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death) is teaming up with the FX network for a project titled Furlough, a crime drama featuring a detective/prison storyline. Michael Dinner (The Wonder Years) is on board to direct the pilot.

Chris Carter, the creative force behind the X-Files, is hoping to return to TV with a new supernatural police thriller series. The female-lead mystery police show is called Unique, and Carter will serve as both writer and producer.

Barry Schindel (Law & Order, Castle, Criminal Minds) will write and executive produce Turner Loose, about disgraced Wall Street banker turned jailhouse lawyer Bobby Turner who seeks a chance at redemption working for the female prosecutor who locked him up.

TV's crime drama Castle about a crime writer who assists the police, and whose fictional author already has a  real novel series in print, is also publishing a graphic novel, available in stores at the end of September.

PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's Morning Edition interviews Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy, which remains one of the signal narratives about life in the Mafia 25 years after its publication. Adapted by Pileggi and director Martin Scorsese into the 1990 film GoodFellas, it follows the rise and fall of true-life Brooklyn gangster Henry Hill who turned FBI informant after a drug arrest.

GAMES

I received a notice about a part game, part TV feature, namely an interactive mystery-web series that challenges the viewer to help the detectives find the missing person. Season one is airing Monday nights at 7:45 pm PST. You can also watch the series via BlipTV and YouTube. At the end of each episode, viewers have 72 hours to vote for where the detectives go next, who to interrogate or what evidence to follow. I foresee this type of project becoming more common online as TV and the web become ever more integrated.

The makers of the popular game L.A. Noire, until now only available on platforms like Playstation and X-Box, announced a release date for a PC version coming November 8th in the U.S. and November 11th in Europe.