Mystery Melange

 

Real-life private eyes Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman, who operate the blog Guns, Gams and Gumshoes, chose the "Best of 2011: Five of Our Favorite Private Investigator Sites."

There have been several fine anthologies published in the last couple of years to benefit various charities. The latest is Off the Record, with 38 writers from both sides of the Atlantic crafting 38 short stories based on classic song titles. All proceeds will be donated to two children's literacy charities. Patti Abbott (who contributes one story for the project), had guest blog posts from two authors included in the book, Benoit Lelievre and Les Edgerton, discussing the story behind their story.

The Q&A roundup today features Brett Battles (Jonathan Quinn and the "Cleaner" series) talking with the Sons of Spade blog. The Read Me Deadly blog has an interview with Libby Fischer Hellman, author of a series with Ellie Foreman, a video documentarian, and another with Georgia Davis, a police officer turned private eye.

Spinetingler magazine is open again for submissions, and they're making a few changes for 2012, including accepting flash fiction and publishing groups of six stories together in Kindle "issues" before they are posted on the site.

In case you missed the winners of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Awards nominees, the Murder, Mystery & Mayhem blog has the lists for you in the various crime fiction categories.

If you're in the northern Virginia area, you can catch the next free Café Scientifique in Arlington, with Kevin McElfresh, Ph.D. presenting "Forensic Genetics – The Reality of Genomic Science at a Crime Scene," a discussion on how the application of DNA technology to forensic testing in the late 1980's transformed the justice system.

If you want to solve a mystery without leaving the comfort of your desk, try your hand at decoding the Voynich Manuscript. Dating from the 15th or 16th centuries, the manuscript has befuddled countless academics with its botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings and an unknown language. Now, the manuscript has been posted online, and you can check it out on your own.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest post-holiday news of crime dramas and more:

MOVIES

Chris Evans (most recently Captain America), is replacing James Franco in the lead role of the biopic Iceman, based on Anthony Bruno's book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer.

The gadget wizard "Q" in next year's James Bond movie Skyfall will be the first Q in the franchise's history to be younger than 007. Ben Whishaw, recently cast in the role, is 31 to titular star Daniel Craig's 43 years.

TV

All you spy thriller writers and fans, take note: the NSA is allowing cameras in for a rare public peek at the secretive agency. National Geographic TV's Inside the NSA will air in January.

ABC's Castle series is planning a film-noir episode, where Castle and Beckett imagine themselves in the 1940s, with stars Natan Filliion as a Sam Spade-ish private eye and Stana Katic as a gangster's moll.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens next year, BBC television and radio are planning nearly three months of special programs starting today. Among the highlights are a three-part adaptation of Great Expectations written by Sarah Phelps, and writer Gwyneth Hughes is going to finish Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood for BBC Two.

Shaw Media put in an order for ten episodes of Out of Time, about a regular female cop from the future who finds herself trapped in present-day Vancouver. The series is from indie producer Reunion Pictures and starts shooting in Vancouver in early 2012.

Gale Anne Hurd is developing an Area 51 series based on the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. It centers on two men working on the base who are "thrust into danger when they uncover secrets that the government will protect at any cost."

If you were following TVLine's "Male Law Enforcement Crushes Bracket Tournament," the final results are in: NCIS actor Tony DiNozzo (who plays Michael Weatherly on the show) reigned victorious at the end of the 64-player, single-elimination tourney. Now, it's the women's turn.

PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's Audie Cornish talks to writer Richard Preston, who completed the late Michael Crichton's scientific thriller novel Micro, centered around nano-technology, corporate greed and murder.

THEATER

The world premiere of The Game's Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays) debuted November 25 at the Cleveland Play House in Ohio. From the pen of Tony Award-nominated Ken Ludwig, the play centers on famed stage actor William Gillette at his Connecticut Castle, recovering from an attempt on his life following a performance of his renowned play, Sherlock Holmes. When Gillete's home becomes the setting for a murder on Christmas Eve, he must use the Sherlock Holmes crime-solving skills he made famous on stage to catch the culprit.

GAMES

The video game Murder She Wrote was popular enough (a "best-selling game") that game maker Legacy Interactive has announced a Murder She Wrote 2 due in 2012.

A Note of Thanks

 

I am grateful today for all you folks who have read this blog over the past two years. I'm grateful to you for supporting not just me, but crime fiction specifically and reading and literacy in general. I'm grateful people are still interested in books, maybe even more than ever, with publishers selling 2.57 billion books in all formats in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008, according to the New York Times, and that doesn't even include self-published books. I suspect—I hope—we may be in a new Renaissance of reading, and I give thanks that the written word can still provide both entertainment and meaning in an increasingly fast-paced world.

So thank you—readers of this blog and readers of literature everywhere.

Mystery Melange

Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare has a lengthy listing of Thanksgiving mysteries you can settle down with while in the midst of your post-feast food coma.

Mystery Writers of American announced that the 2012 Grand Master is Martha Grimes. The honor is given each year to an author who represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing. The MWA's Raven Award for outstanding individual supporting mystery books goes to M is for Mystery in San Mateo and Molly Weston of Meritorious Mysteries. The 2012 Ellery Queen Award will be given to Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group for his generous and wide-ranging support of the genre.

Arne Dahl won the Swedish crime fiction award with Viskelen (Chinese Whispers), although as yet there are no US or UK rights or editions for the novel. The author's first book in English, Misterioso is finally being released in the U.S. after a long delay. (Hat to Crime Scraps Review.) Meanwhile, the Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year went to Bloodland by Alan Glynn, and over in Japan, Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine was named winner of the 2011 Maltese Falcon Award, given to the best hardboiled/private eye novel published in the previous year in Japan.

Andrew Hunt, professor of history at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is the winner of the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel. Hunt's book, City of Saints, introduces a Mormon sleuth investigating a crime in 1930s Utah and will be published by St. Martin's Press. Sherida Stewart of Farmington, New Mexico, won the 2011 Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Contest for her mystery "Turquoise Remembrance."

The latest short story offering on Beat to a Pulp is titled "Stalker," and was written by award-winning author, faithful blogger and all-around nice guy Ed Gorman.

Noir Nation is starting a series of international weekly posts focusing on a different country or region, with fans and followers invited to pitch in and help with your recommendations and contributions. This week, it's crime writers from India; post a top 10 or 20 list, or just a name or two.

You can register now for the  Mystery Writers of Ameria New England University, scheduled for Saturday, February 11, 2012,  at the Sheraton Boston. It features a day of top-notch classes including:  "After the Idea" with Jess Lourey; "Dramatic Structure & Plot" with Laura DiSilverio; "Setting & Description" with Daniel Stashower; "Character & Dialogue" with Reed Farrel Coleman; "Writing as Re-Writing" with Hallie Ephron; and "The Writing Life" with Hank Phillippi Ryan.

As the lists for "best of" books published during 2011 begin to pour in, Spinetingler is keeping track and has a scoresheet of sorts for you. What's interesting to me is the diversity in the lists thus far, with very little overlap. Does this mean there were more good books published last year, and thus it's harder to choose? At any rate, lots of good reading material there for you.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The film adaptation of the 60s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. may be in jeopardy. Director Steven Soderbergh has left the project after stars George Clooney and Bradley Cooper passed on the starring role of Napoleon Solo. The main sticking point, however, appears to have been budgeting for what was intended to be the first in a series of international spy thrillers.

Garbo the Spy, a true-life documentary tale of espionage during World War II, opened this past week in limited release. The titular "Garbo" was a Spaniard who worked for the Brits while pretending to be a supporter of the Nazis.

The film adaptation of Italian Shoes, based on the novel by Henning Mankell, is getting some serious star power. Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench are in talks to star in the project, with Kenneth Branagh directing.

Director Tarsem Singh (Immortals) has signed on to helm the noir-style fantasy thriller Killing On Carnival Row, which takes place in the future city of Burgue, inhabited by humans, other creatures and a serial killer on the loose.

Bradley Cooper, named the "sexiest man alive" by People magazine for 2011, has several projects in the works including: The Words, a drama thriller set for a 2012 release, where he stars as an aspiring writer who claims another man's work as his own; Outrun, with Cooper as a gang leader; and The Place Beyond the Pines, where Cooper plays a cop-turned-politician opposite Ryan Gosling (who, coincidentally for those keeping track, was a runner-up for "sexiest man").

Walking Dead star Jon Bernthal has joined the cast alongside Susan Sarandon and Dwayne Johnson in the upcoming Ric Roman Waugh-directed Snitch. The movie is about a construction company owner who tries to get his son's prison sentence shortened by becoming a DEA snitch.

Warner Bros. released a new behind-the-scenes featurette ahead of the release of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt cop and Vietnam vet in the drama Rampart opening on Wednesday, and the studio has released several teasers, including this latest video.

Here's your first trailer for Gone, the new thriller from director Heitor Dhali. It stars Amanda Seyfried as a young woman who survived being kidnapped and left in a hole to die by a serial killer, only to have her sister go missing, possibly the work of the same killer out for revenge.

TV

David Suchet will star in ITV's final five films based on Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot from novels and stories not yet adapted. Suchet appeared happy with the news, adding: "I'm more than delighted to be reprising my role as Poirot. It's been my life's ambition to bring this amazing canon of works to completion."

More good news for fans of Agatha Christie and their TV adaptations; ITV also commissioned three additional made-for-TV movies starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Jane Marple. A Caribbean Mystery will be filmed during the summer of 2012 to be followed by the filming of Endless Night and The Seven Dials Mystery. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Canadian TV crime fans can relax. After CityTV canceled the historical crime drama Murdoch Mysteries, the CBC has picked up the series, with production on the sixth season to begin in the spring of 2012.

Elisabeth Shue, nominated for a best-actress Oscar for her role in Leaving Las Vegas, is joining the cast of CSI, taking over the reins of departing actress Marg Helgenberger. Shue's character worked with D.B. Russell (played by Ted Danson) in Seattle.

Film director Paul Greengrass has joined Fox's untitled CIA drama project from writer Joe Weisberg (Falling Skies). The pilot is described as a "high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community," and is set within the walls of the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI and the intelligence components at the White House.

Jeff Eastin (White Collar) has an untitled drama pilot for USA that follows a mash-up of law enforcers from the DEA, FBI and LAPD living together in the same house. The project snagged its first cast member, with Aaron Tveit playing Mike Warren, a freshly minted FBI agent just out of the Academy. (If you think this scenario sounds familiar, re-read the Greengrass project above.)

Melissa Rosenberg (co-executive producer on Dexter) has been tapped by ABC for a U.S. adaptation of Endemol's Dutch crime drama Penoz, about the widow of an assassinated criminal who is suddenly forced to adopt her late husband’s role in order to protect her family. Speaking of Dexter, it was renewed for two more seasons.

FX has decided to take a pass on the pilot Outlaw Country, a combo crime thriller and family drama set against the backdrop of organized crime and
royalty in the south.

NBC announced its mid-season schedule last week, and it's bad news for fans of the Prime Suspect reboot, which doesn't appear on the schedule. Fans of Harry's Law and the new paranormal crime drama Grimm can rejoice, however, as those shows have been given full-season pickups. Meanwhile, ABC also announced its mid-season calendar, giving a full order to Body of Proof, starring Dana Delaney, as well as setting the premier date for Missing, with Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent whose son goes missing in Europe.

Did you miss the PBS Masterpiece Mystery miniseries Case Histories, based on the novels of Kate Atkinson? View them online through Decenber 7th.

PODCASTS/RADIO

KUOW radio talked with Dennis Lehane about writing detective novels in the 21st century.

THEATER

The North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, California, is staging Agatha Christie's classic whodunit murder mystery, The Mousetrap, as part of its 28th season.

The Shadowplay Theatre troupe in St. Paul, Minnesota, is devoted to producing mysteries and thrillers, and they're currently staging Dial M for Murder at the Gremlin Theatre as their inaugural production.

Science is Murder

The Washington Academy of Sciences in D.C. is holding a "Science is Murder" panel on December 14th. Experts include Dr. Janet Sorrentino, lecturer and "authority on science and Harry Potter"; Sandra Parshall, author of the Rachel Goddard mysteries, including the upcoming Under the Dog Star; and Mary Ellen O'Toole, former FBI agent, expert on psychopathy and author of Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us. Kathy Harig, owner of the bookstore Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, Maryland, will serve as moderator. The event starts with a Book Look at 6:30, followed by Discussions at 7:00, and Book Signings at 8:30. There's a minimal charge, and you're advised to register in advance due to limited space.

Mystery Melange

Crime Scene Europe, the Eighth Festival of New Literature from Europe, is taking place now through the weekend in various locations around Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The literature tickets are free, and you don't have to RSVP, but for tickets to the film noir screenings, visit www.movingimage.us. Writers include Caryl Ferey (France), Zygmunt Miloszewski (Poland), Ana Maria
Sandu (Romania), Stefan Slupetzky (Austria), Jose Carlos Somoza (Spain), and Jan Costin Wagner (Germany) joined by U.S. guest author Dan Fesperman.

You have two weeks left for early bird pricing for ThrillerFest VII (scheduled for July 2012), including CraftFest, with authors like Lee Child, Steve Berry and Lisa Gardner teaching classes on the craft of writing and marketing, and AgentFest. Six attendees from last year’s AgentFest have already signed with top agents, so it's a great opportunity to pitch your manuscript.

Mysterious Press has gone digital. Founded in 1975 by Otto Penzler, it has printed many novels and anthologies by bestselling authors, and now they're adding eBooks that were out of print or protected by copyright. Authors whose works are currently available include Ken Bruen, Thomas H. Cook, James Ellroy, Adam Hall, Mark McShane, Ellery Queen, Ross Thomas, and Donald E. Westlake, with many more in the pipeline. Plus, the website plans to add bonus material with exclusive content and video from the authors.

Editor Janet Rudolph is still seeking articles for Mystery Readers Journal upcoming issues, particularly Author! Author! essays about yourself, your books and the topic. Remaining themes for 2011 include "Shrinks & other Mental Health Professionals," with a deadline of November 27.

The Q&A roundup this week includes a conversation between Cort McMeel and Dennis Tafoya about the launch of a new online crime publication Noir Nation. McMeel was the force behind the now-defunct Murdaland zine, and is also launching an e-book press in late November called Bare Knuckles Press.

Your favorite classic literary authors—as Legos! Complete with yellow skin and cup hands, here are Hemingway, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and my favorite, Edgar Allan Poe.

Men of Mystery

The crime fiction conference season is winding down, but as the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore reminded me, we still have the annual Men of Mystery event to look forward to this weekend in Irvine, California. More than 50 male mystery writers in all genres, from legal thrillers to surfer P.I.'s, will be on hand, with William Kent Krueger and Lawrence Block headlining the morning and afternoon sessions. Attendees can also participate in book signings, as well as lunch and table talks with the authors. One of the highlights is the one-minute pitch from the authors that kicks off the day's festivities, as each author introduces himself and his works, "often hilariously," as founder Joan Hansen describes it. This is the 11th year of the festival, which won the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), is helming a drama about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, with a script by Mark Boal. The project just signed its first star, Jason Clarke of the TV series The Chicago Code, as part of the terrorist-hunting team and is also eyeing Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Rooney Mara and Tom Hardy to fill out the cast.

Clive Owen is the go-to-guy when a film project needs an actor to play a spy. He's already protrayed a former MI6 operative (Duplicity), former SAS operative (Killer Elite) and MI5 agent (Shadow Play). Up next is Recall, where Owen will star as an NSA agent trying to piece together the events of a botched hostage rescue operation. The project has director Harold Becker (Mercury Rising) on board, as well as screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Hardcore). 

The first mystery in the Joona Linna series by Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist, is headed to film, and the first stars have been signed, including Tobias Zilliacus, playing Detective Inspector Joona Linna, with Lena Olin as his wife and Mikael Persbrandt as the "hypnotist." (Hat tip to Ominimystery News.)

It appears the rest of the recent movie news is all about remakes:

• If all the stars align, so to speak, Ben Afflect will direct the US remake of Harlan Coben’s standalone mystery Tell No One, first adapted for the 2006 French film directed by Guillaume Canet. Warner Brothers & Universal optioned the movie for American audiences.

• Joshua Marston will direct a remake of Giuseppe Capotondi’s Italian thriller The Double Hour, about an ex-cop who meets a beauty during a speed-dating session, then encounters problems when the couple retreats to a country cottage and secrets from her dark past begin to surface.

• Before two thrillers from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival even get a wide release in the U.S., they're being remade as American versions: Frédéric Jardin's Sleepless Night, about a police officer whose son is kidnapped by drug dealers after the officer steals a bag of cocaine from a Paris nightclub, and Gareth Evans' The Raid, described as "Die Hard in a drug kingpin's lair."

• Spike Lee is remaking the South Korean thriller Oldboy, about a man kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, and upon release, is given a cell phone, clothes and some money, then goes on a mission of revenge. Josh Brolin has already signed on to play the victim, and Colin Firth has been offered the villain role.

TV

Many of you may be too young to remember the 1950s TV series The Rifleman (unless you're like me and saw it in later re-runs). It centered around Civil war hero Lucas McCain, a sharpshooter with a haunted past who moves to the New Mexico territory and joins forces with the Sheriff to protect his new town and become its unofficial guardian. CBS apparently remembers it and has signed up a reboot of the series.

It appears that "Hannibal" the TV series is going to be a real project after all. NBC signed a deal last week with Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Heroes) to create a broadcast series based on Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the fictional creation of Thomas Harris in such books as Silence of the Lambs. There aren't many details just yet, but Entertainment Weekly added it's likely to be a twisted police procedural version of The Mentalist, i.e. a hero solving weekly crimes while a legendary serial killer remains at large.

Criminal Minds is heading for its 150th episode that will feature The Shield‘s Jay Karnes as a suspected serial rapist, with Dina Meyer playing  a potential victim.

Hollywood takes Bollywood, as Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor will take on an Indian version of the Emmy-winning drama 24, with Kapoor both producing and starring as the Jack Bauer character.

With the advent (pun intended) of the holiday season upon us, that also means the networks are putting new episodes of shows on hiatus, in some cases for a couple of months. TV Line has a listing of many of these shows, including the dates of their fall finale and 2012 return.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Crime Beat Radio is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs Thursday at 9 p.m. eastern, with guests running the gamut from ex-mobsters, informants, prisoners and drug dealers to undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, and investigative journalists. If you'd like to see the upcoming schedule check out the cheat sheet here, and for archives, visit ArtistFirst Radio.

Blog Bytes Bonus

I somehow managed to overlook the face that Bill Crider mentioned this blog in one of his "Blog Bytes" columns for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine: "Maybe you'd like a single site where news about the mystery field is udpated often. Take a look at BV Lawson's In Reference to Murder, which as someone used to say, has loads of "news, views, and interviews." Media murders? BV covers movies, TV, the web, and radio. She also writes about marekts and  even contributes to 'Friday's Forgotten Books.' On the left side of her blog she has links to most of the stuff on In Reference to Murder referenced above. Many thanks for the mention, Bill!

In Reference to Murder

I recently mentioned two crime fiction reference books, How to Write a Dick, from real-life PIs Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman, and also Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately about Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure from attorney Leslie Budewitz.

There are a few additional upcoming reference titles you may find both entertaining and enlightening, including Clues to Christie: The Definitive Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Tommy & Tuppence, and all of Agatha Christie's Mysteries, an eBook from Harper Collins (hat tip to Omnimysteries); Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us by Alisa Bowman and former FBI agent Mary Ellen O'Toole, who worked extensively on serial killer cases, a book featured in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune; Crime Fiction from Poe to the Present by Martin Priestman (author of Detective Fiction and Literature and the Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction); and Now Write! Mysteries: Suspense, Crime, Thriller, and Other Mystery Fiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers, by Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson, the fourth in the "Now Write" series.

Looking ahead to April 2012, author, blogger and D. P. Lyle, M.D., has a sequel to his popular book Murder & Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers, this one titled More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered. If you haven't visited Dr. Lyle's helpful Writer's Forensics Blog, you should hop over and take a look.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver have bought the rights to The Galton Case, a novel by Ross Macdonald featuring his iconic private investigator Lew Archer, in hopes of launching a new franchise. Galton Case, in which Archer is hired by a wealthy old woman to try and find her long-missing son and heir to her fortune, is actually the eighth book in the series.

Paramount Pictures has bought the film rights to two Tana French novels, the author's 2008 debut In the Woods, about the investigation into the murder of a 12-year-old girl in Dublin, Ireland, and the sequel, The Likeness, with the same detective, Cassie Maddox, investigating the death of a young woman who is a dead ringer for Cassie herself.

Jason Statham has signed to star as a damaged ex-Special Forces soldier trapped in London's criminal underworld who becomes an avenging angel when he is able to assume another identity. The movie is titled Hummingbird and will serve as the directorial debut of screenwriter Steven Knight, who penned the crime thrillers Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises.

Coming soon to a movie screen near you could be an adaptation of Glen Larson's 1981 TV series The Fall Guy, which starred Lee Majors as a stuntman who moonlighted as a bounty hunter. Rumor has it that director Martin Campbell (who helmed the Bond film Casino Royale) is in talks to take on the project.

Colin Farrell is joining Noomi Rapace, who played Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish-language version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in Niels Arden Oplev's film Dead Man Down. The project, a mob drama about a hitman (Farrell) who falls in love with a "disfigured former beauty" (Rapace) and goes on a killing spree, was written by J.H. Wyman, of Fox TV's Fringe.

Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (the writers behind the Saw movies) are adapting for film their thriller Black Light, just published by Mulholland Books. The novel is about a private eye whose gifts make him suited to solve supernatural cases, at the same time he's obsessed with contacting the parents who were killed while he was a child by using a special "black light.

Alona Tal and Natalie Martinez have signed on to play two female leads in the noir thriller Broken City, to be directed by Allen Hughes (From Hell). They join actor Mark Wahlberg, who stars as a former police officer turned private investigator who "finds himself up to his neck in scandal while tailing the mayor's wife because she's suspected of infidelity." Also signed to the cast are actors Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

TV

Author Patricia Cornwell will appear as herself on an episode of Criminal Minds in January. She filmed the show this past week and tweeted her experiences.

Here's the first trailer for the debut of TNT's new Mystery Movie Night, starting off with a production of Scott Turow's Innocent starring Bill Pullman as a judge charged with the murder of his wife 20 years after he was cleared in the death of his mistress.

TV Line is running a 64-bracket tournament of "Ultimate Male Law Enforcement Crushes." Follow the bracket here and join in the voting as new pairings pop up, e.g. this one.

PODCASTS/RADIO

John Powers talked with NPR's "Fresh Air" program, giving his reasons why Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy is the greatest spy story ever told.

Night and the City

The Los Angeles Poetry Festival "Night and the City" is presenting a variety of noir poetry, fiction and film events through November 13th at various venues. Tonight, it's "A Touch of Naomi," an Evening with Mystery Writer Naomi Hirahara and torchy songs and sax music by Doc & Renee at the South Pasadena Public Library Community Room.  Friday, Judith Freeman, Gary Phillips, Dick Lochte and moderator Richard Modiano take on a panel titled "Sundrenched Dark: Raymond Chandler and His Los Angeles Legacy, at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center at 7 p.m. Following that at 9 p.m, it's an evening of "Darkness Falls" with James Ellroy. Most of these events do charge a minimal admission, so be sure and check the schedule.

There's lots more, too, including Saturday's "Best of the Hardboiled: Selected Readings from Classic Detective and Crime Stories" by actors Dale Raoul (True Blood) and Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Deadwood), poet Laurel Ann Bogen and "surprise guests." The admission for this event at CBS Studios at 1 p.m., is free.

Mystery Melange

The new digital eBook publisher Blasted Heath launches this week by giving away a copy of the five launch novels, All The Young Warriors by Anthony Neil Smith, Dead Money by Ray Banks, Phase Four by Gary Carson, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay, and The Man in the Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh.

Speaking of eBooks, Gerard Brennan's novella The Point, about two Irish brothers tied together by crime, is now available for the Kindle in both the U.S. and UK. Brennan is a fellow blogger over at Crime Scene NI and writer of gritty short stories. Brian McGilloway says of Brennan's novella, that it's "the real deal—the writing is razor sharp, the characters engaging, the ending a blast. From start to finish it's true Northern Noir, crafted with style and wit." 

Omnimystery News is back with its monthly "firsts on the first," a listing of crime fiction novels with new series characters being released during the upcoming month. November's featured "firsts" are by authors Marc Cameron, Diane Kelly, Piper Maitland, Q. R. Markham, Amy Patricia Meade, Alexei Maxim Russel and Rochelle Staab.

From the Zine Scene: Zoom Street's November issue is a special Noir Edition, with art by John Nickle, noir book reviews and a hard-boiled detectives quiz. Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled was released this week, a new anthology billed as "a compilation of uncompromising, gritty tales following in the footsteps of the tough and violent fiction popularized by the legendary Black Mask magazine in its early days." Authors with stories include Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee. And Noir Journal 46 features the No Frills Book Review Marathon, Part 2.

Speaking of Beat to a Pulp: they're now open for submissions again.

The next full Love is Murder conference won't be held until 2012, but they're starting early with two mini-conferences at Chicago-area libraries in mid-November. Featured authors include Featured authors are Andrew Grant, Shane Gericke, Tasha Alexander, Luisa Buehler, Raymond Benson, Michael Harvey, Jeffrey Small and Robert Goldborough. And they're free! (Thanks to Omnimysteries news for the info.)

Crime Scraps had a "Who is your favourite male Swedish crime writer" poll. Although results are in, you may find some new authors there to interest you. And who received the most votes? You might just be surprised.