Indie-fatigable

As sales of digital books and eReaders continue to climb and bookstores continue to close, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that many independent bookstores are not only hanging in there, they're thriving. I fully believe bookstores will be with us for some time to come, because they provide a continuing, stable service you can't get anywhere else—knowledgeable staff who can recommend titles, promote local authors and also a place to meet and greet authors in person. As Rob W. Hart said, indie stores contribute to the fabric of a neighborhood and help drive local economies.

There are hurdles to overcome as indies fight for market share, and toward
that end, J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch offered up an impassioned blog post on some ideas that could help, as well as reasons why eBooks and print books aren't mutually exclusive. The American Booksellers Association just announced yesterday that they're teaming up with Kobo to allow their member stores to offer a full line of eReaders, eReading accessories, and ebooks from Kobo's catalog of nearly 3 million titles, giving stores a cut of proceeds. (Kobo replaces GoogleBooks, which pulled out of a similar deal with ABA).

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has over 30 brick-and-mortar member bookstores that specialize in crime fiction, and the American Booksellers Association's IndieBound site lists 2,000 stores that cover the gamut of both fiction and nonfiction. Hop on over to a store near you and get a recommendation for an author who may become your new favorite, join a book club, or stop by for an author's talk and signing.

Mystery Melange

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards Shortlists 2012, including those for the Gold, Steel and John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Awards were announced last Friday. The Gold Dagger is the highest honor the Crime Writers Association hands out each year, and the nominees are Vengeance in Mind by N.J. Cooper, The Flight by M.R. Hall, The Rage by Gene Kerrigan, and Bereft by Chris Womersley.

Congrats also to the winners of the Killer Nashville conference awards, including 2012 Claymore Award Winner: Jonathan Stone for Again and the Silver Falchion Award winner, C.Hope Clark for Lowcountry Bribe.

Coming soon: the anthology Beat to a Pulp: Superhero, featuring 12 short stories from Keith Rawson, Sandra Seamans, Kevin Burton Smith, Steve Weddle and other prime author fine authors of short crime fiction.

Submissions are now open for the seventh annual Black Orchid Novella Award. Stories must be original works of 15,000 to 20,000 words in the tradition of the ratiocinative detective, as exemplified by Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. Your entry should also emphasize the deductive skills of the sleuth, contain no overt sex or violence and not include characters from the original series. You've still got time; submissions must be postmarked by May 31, 2013. The winner receives $1,000 plus publication in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Otto Penzler of the Mysterious Press (and bookshop) wrote an essay titled "What is Hardboiled Crime? Five Ways to Know It When You Read It."  The Open Road Media blog also created a handy infographic and other articles as part of their week-long Hardboiled Genre Spotlight.

September isn't only back-to-school month, it's also a month of some great new paperback and hardcover mystery novels, including Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel and new titles from Laurie R. King, Val McDermid, and J.D. Robb. Thanks to Omnimystery News for compiling these lists each month.
 
The Q&A roundup this week includes Laura Lippman chatting with the Seattle Mystery Bookshop about her writing and the most interesting question she's ever been asked; and Kieran Shea interviewed Sean Chercover for Spinetingler about Chercover's new book The Trinity Game.

If you're a fan of Louise Penny and her Inspector Gamache series (and live in the U.S.), here's your chance to win one of 10 copies in a giveaway from the Criminal Element blog:

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Kevin Costner has signed a deal to star in not one, but two Tom Clancy pictures playing William Harper, the spy boss who recruits Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine) into the CIA.

Writer-director Stephen Gaghan penned a script titled Candy Store, which is attracting actors Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington. The plot centers on a highly trained deep-cover operative who starts his life over in Brooklyn as a beat cop, only to discover the global organization he was dedicated to fighting is operating in his new backyard.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, the sequel to the American film version of  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, is still in the works—but since the script isn't finished, the film won't be shot any time soon, let alone released in 2013 as originally hoped.

Gary Oldman may have dropped out of the thriller Motor City (playing the villain against protagonist Gerard Butler), but the film's producers didn't take long to sign Adrien Brody in his stead. The story is about a man released from prison for a crime he didn't commit who goes on the hunt for the people who framed him.

Hugh Laurie (House, MD) has dropped out of the Robocop reboot, but Clive Owen is at the top of the list of possible actors to replace Laurie as the villain in the crime drama.

For the latest release times for upcoming fall movies, here's a handy list. Among the crime drama notables: Alex Cross, based on the James Patterson novels, in which a homicide investigator (Tyler Perry) squares off against a serial killer (Matthew Fox), coming in October and Jack Reacher, the film adaption of Lee Child's novels, scheduled for December. 

TV

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Award nominees for excellence in movies and television were announced and include several heavy-hitters, including Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker, Taylor Soldier Spy for Best Picture and Wallander and Sherlock for Best TV series.

The CW network has ordered the project Wrecking Ball, a case-of-the-week procedural drama from Richard Hatem (Grimm). The concept reported  involves "a John F. Kennedy Jr.-type character who teams with a young campaign strategist to solve underdog cases."

ITV has recommissioned three crime dramas to add to its schedule, including Vera, based on the novels of Ann Cleves, to once again star Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope; Scott & Bailey, starriang Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp as DS Ronnie Brooks and DS Sam Casey with the Manchester Metropolitan Police; and Law & Order UK, with a cast not yet specified. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC's procedural drama Hannibal, based on the novels by Thomas Harris, has added Hettienne Park to the cast as a forensic scientist. The series centers on FBI profiler Will Graham (played by Hugh Dancy) and the psychiatrist/serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelson). The cast also includes Laurence Fishburne as Senior Agent Jack Crawford.

AMC's upcoming police procedural Low Winter Sun has added Sprague Grayden (from 24) and David Costabile (Breaking Bad) to the cast of already-signed Mark Strong, Lennie James and James Ransone. The show is based on a 2006 British miniseries and is described as a story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption that starts with the murder of a cop by fellow Detroit detective Frank Agnew (Strong) that leads into the heart of the Detroit underworld.

CBS has given the go-ahead for a pilot by David Mamet that's a remake of the 1957 Western drama Have Gun – Will Travel. The original series starred Richard Boone as Paladin, a top-notch gunfighter who "preferred to settle problems without violence but stood his ground when provoked."

AMC's canceled show The Killing may find a new home on either Netflix and DirecTV, both of which are in negotiations to land the show for its third season.

ABC Family ordered a pilot from Gavin Polone titled Socio, about a charismatic 16-year-old alleged sociopath who reconnects with his two childhood best friends and becomes the prime suspect when a fellow student is murdered.

Fans of the BBC's Sherlock series waiting for the next trilogy of the series (sometime in 2013) will have to be content with the teaser that teven Moffat tossed out this past week, Tweeting three clue words for the themes of the episodes: Rat, Wedding, Bow. Last year Moffat did the same thing, with his cryptic clues, Woman/Hound/Fall referring to last season's triology of episodes based on "Scandal in Bohemia," "Hounds of the Baskervilles," and "The Final Problem."  Confused? Omnimystery News will fill you in.

The BBC is adapting a new TV series based on the novels of Benjamin Black featuring his one-name Dublin pathologist, Quirke. Gabriel Byrne, star of The Usual Suspects, is slated to star in the title role.

Producers of the HBO Hitchcock biopic drama The Girl
, with a premiere in October, released a first trailer for the film.

PODCASTS

The Suspense Radio podcast this week featured Brian Knight, D.P. Lyle, Jaden Terrell & Michael Crisp. The previous week's show welcomed guest authors Karin Slaughter, Jeffrey Wilson and Allison Leotta.

THEATER

Actor/writer/director Chazz Palminteri will bring his play Human to New York in 2013. He'll play a Wall Street banker in the production, which has also signed actors Jeremy Shamos, Mira Sorvino and Australian pop singer Sophie Monk. The plot is described as "Wall Street meets Good-fellas."

 

The CSI Effect

Infographics can be fun, although the data included should be treated with as much suspicion as when using Wikipedia. Colorado Technical Institute compiled this one that's a fun little look at the "CSI Effect," so called because the rise of CSI-style shows has often made it harder for attorneys in dealing with jurors' unrealistic expectations about instant crime solving. However, I did find the sharp rise in law-related undergraduate majors quite interesting.

Mystery Melange

The "Six Questions For. . ." blog is ramping up to post new interviews beginning on September 4th. According to a recent blog announcement, they have the editors of Downer Magazine, First Stop Fiction, MicroHorror, Noir Nation, Short-Story.me, The Abstract Quill, The New Verse News, and Thrice Fiction lined up to participate with their advice and expertise.

New York's Crime Fiction Academy is enrolling students for its Fall 2012 semester, with some slots still left open for the course. Would-be crime authors will attend writing workshops, monthly masterclasses with top authors, reading seminars and special lectures and discussions over a course of 12 weeks. The impressive roster of authors will include Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Thomas H Cook, Linda Fairstein, Susan Isaacs, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman, Val McDermid, Joyce Carol Oates, Jason Pinter, SJ Rozan and Karin Slaughter. Topics they’ll be discussing include the perfect kill, writing about trails of evidence, and creating heinous villains and believable heroes.

Need a little writerly pick-me-up? Here are "30 Indispensable Writing Tips from Famous Authors" at a glance.

This week's Q&A roundup includes Ellen Byerrum, author of the Crimes of Fashion series, talking about her writing and choosing the six writers (living or dead) she'd invite to a mystery-author dinner party; and At the Scene of the Crime hooks up with Peter Lovesey, author of several series including the Victorian detective Sargeant Cribb, Bertie Prince Of Wales, and Superintendent Peter Diamond.

Did you think Baby Boomers are the most-active readers? Think again – Generation Y (those born between 1979 and 1989) spent the most money on books in 2011, according to a new study. One reason why: the same study noted that eBooks rose from 4 percent of all book sales in 2010 to 14 percent in 2011.

The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has announced the finalists for the 2012 SCIBA Book Awards. The T. Jefferson Parker Book Award for Mystery nominees include:

• Getaway by Lisa Brackmann, Soho Press
• Kings of Cool by Don Winslow, Simon & Schuster
• Taken by Robert Crais, Putnam

The annual LitQuake festival in San Francisco just announced its schedule for the October 2012 eight-day event. The 800+ local and international authors spread out over dozens of venues will include mystery writer Zoe Ferraris, thriller writers David Corbett and Michelle Gagnon, and panels like "Dangerous Dolls, Bad Men & Smoking Guns: A Night of Noir & Burlesque" and "Cowboy Noir: A Conversation with Bruce Holbert."

Registration for the California Crime Writers Conference in June 2013 is now open. The conference took this year off, but will return with a bang next year when it features keynote speakers Sue Grafton on Saturday and Elizabeth George on Sunday. Other highlights include an array of workshops on the business and craft of writing as taught by high-profile agents, bestselling authors, editors, academics and forensics experts.

If you know of someone living in the UK (outside of London) looking for a publishing internship? Author Ann Cleves (author of the Vera Stanhope series) is sponsoring such a gig in the Pan Macmillan press department.

Not Lost in Translation

Scandinavian crime fiction has been the rage for a few years now, epitomized by Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But the vast majority of those books weren't written in English and had to be translated for publication in English-speaking countries. These translators are often the unsung heroes of such global crime fiction treasures, but this Thursday, One More Page bookstore will throw the spotlight on one such individual when the store hosts an event titled "Scandinavian Noir in Translation."

The special guest for the evening is translator K.E. Semmel, who has played a key role in bringing the works of popular Scandinavian crime novelists to the U.S., including two upcoming publications, Karin Fossum's The Caller and Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Absent One. After a reading, author and book critic Art Taylor will interview K.E. Semmel on the craft of translation and in particular these two novels. The event is free and begins at 7 p.m. at the store in Arlington, Virginia.

120 Books to Die For

Although I hate the bullet-trajectory speed of summer passing by, here's something to look forward to in the fall: Books to Die For, a new anthology edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke. It includes personal essays from 120 (that's not a typo – 120!) of the world's top crime writers on the mysteries and thrillers they admire the most. The project also has the objective of helping readers to learn about the classics of the genre and find hidden gems.

Tana French writes about The Secret History by Donna Tartt; Jo Nesbø chooses Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280; Kathy Reichs discusses her admiration for The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; Michael Connelly picks Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister; Charlaine Harris shares her love of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male; Mark Billingham opines on Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; and Ian Rankin chooses the lesser-known I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond, plus much more.

Look for it in stores on October 2nd, just in time for Bouchercon. In the meantime, check out the website for the book, which includes all the contributors, upcoming events, and some bonus materials, too, such as additional books that almost made the cut.

Mystery Melange

The national Sisters in Crime organization is sponsoring SinC Into Great Writing IV on Wednesday, October 3, 2012. The annual event held at the same time as Bouchercon (this year, in Cleveland), will feature Nancy Pickard leading the "Sensory Self-Editing Workshop."

The new Bloody Scotland crime fiction conference announced the shortlist for the inaugural Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Book of the Year award, including:

• A Foreign Country, by Charles Cumming 
• Dead Men and Broken Hearts, by Craig Russell 
• Gods and Beasts, by Denise Mina 
• The Lewis Man, by Peter May 
• Prague Fatale, by Philip Kerr 
• Redemption, by Will Jordan

CrimeCityCentral is a new site highlighting a weekly podcast of crime fiction-related authors and storytellers. They're also looking for submissions of 3,000 to 10,000 words including short stories, excerpts, a first chapter or collection of short shorts. They prefer published works, but self-pub, ePub and indie pub all count as published. 

The August issue of Yellow Mama is available online, and they're also open for new submissions of stories with themes that are cutting edge, hardboiled, horror, literary, noir or psychological/horror. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

Next year's special issue of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, to be launched in Brisbane at the 2013 conference, is on crime (crime fiction, crime on TV or film, true crime, and so on). The call for papers within the 5,000-6,000 has a submission deadline of September 2012.

The Q&A roundup this week includes "7 questions with…Timothy Hallinan"; Chelsea Cain admits she reads fewer thrillers than people assume she does, reading more non-fiction than anything else (she just went through a Bill Bryson binge); Karin Slaughter chats on the blog Jen's Book Thoughts about writing and researching her latest novel, Criminal; and Megan Abbott had a fun chat with Omnivoracious about her latest book, Dare Me, as well as some memorable moments and her obsessions.

Keep an eye out for the upcoming Murder and Mayhem in Muskego anthology from Down & Out Books to benefit the Muskego public library. The short story anthology features bestselling, Edgar and Shamus award-winning writers who have attended the annual MMM Conference, and will be edited by Jon and Ruth Jordan.

Katherine Neville, author of The Eight and Advisory Board Member of the the Smithsonian Libraries, announced two upcoming special events in Washington, D.C. The first is the Adopt-A-Book benefit taking place on September 13, where participants can browse through the library's special collections and "adopt" a book to help with preservation, while enjoying Italian food and lectures from curators. The other is a Writers' Workshop with author Steve Berry on October 18 at the National Museum of Natural History, followed by an exclusive rare books tour and reception.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company is teaming up with Canadian indie producer Calum deHartog to adapt Dennis Lehane's noir short story "Running Out of Dog." The story is about a Vietnam vet returning home and finding himself in a love triangle with a childhood friend and her husband, whose wealthy family were able to keep him out of Vietnam.

Actor Michael Rapaport has signed on to direct a film version of Jason Starr's novel Tough Luck about unlucky Mickey Prada who gets sucked in over his head in the mob-saturated Italian American community in 1980s New York.

Keira Knightley is in negotiations to star opposite Chris Pine in the Paramount prequel to Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novel series. Kenneth Branagh is directing and also has a supporting role in the film. According to Hollywood Reporter, the story centers on ex-Marine and Moscow-based financial analyst Jack Ryan (Pine), who uncovers a plot by his employer to finance a terrorist attack designed to collapse the U.S. economy. Ryan must race against time to save America and his wife (Knightley).

The film Flight, marking Robert Zemeckis' first live-action film since Cast Away in 2000, was chosen to close the New York Film Festival. The project, billed as "mystery thriller," stars Denzel Washington as a seasoned airline pilot who crash-lands his plane but saves nearly every passenger on board. Initially heralded as a hero, an FAA investigation raises troubling questions that could land him in prison instead.

Tim Robbins inked a deal to direct City of Lies, a film adaptation of Arthur Phillips' short story "Wenceslas Square," about two spies who fall in love while participating in separate missions in Prague.

TV

As Omnimystery News reminds us, tonight we bid farewell to The Closer on TNT with its series finale. But immediately following is the premiere of its spin-off, Major Crimes, which finds Captain Sharon Raydor (played by Mary McDonnell) now in charge of Los Angeles Police Department's Major Crimes division.

Author Michael Koryta's third "Lincoln Perry" mystery, A Welcome Grave, was optioned by CBS Television in hopes of turning it into a series. The plot of A Welcome Grave follows follows the private investigator as he finds himself in the crosshairs of two police investigations when an old rival is brutally murdered.

NBC bought Pariah, a police procedural pilot from Lionsgate Television and Kelsey Grammer’s Grammnet Productions. The show will be wrritten by Kevin Fox (The Negotiator, Law & Order: SVU) and based on characters inspired by the economic theory "Freakonomics" made popular in the book by authors/economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The plot follows a rogue academic with no law enforcement background who the Mayor of San Diego appoints to run a task force using Freakonomics-inspired alternative methods of policing.

Fox is developing a television adaptation of the unpublished thriller Gun Machine by Warren Ellis, the author's second crime novel (after 2007's Crooked Little Vein). Dario Scardapane (Trauma) will write the project's screenplay pilot, a thriller about a beleaguered New York City detective who stumbles upon a cache of hundreds of guns that trace back to a number of seemingly unrelated unsolved murders. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC bought an untitled procedural drama project produced by 20th Century Fox TV. It's described as "an emotionally charged action thriller set in and around the world of Washington DC" that follows an idealistic secret service agent who finds himself at the epicenter of an international crisis on his first day on the job.

FX also has a spy drama in the works, picking up the pilot The Americans for a 13-episode order. The show stars starring Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich in the period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. right after Ronald Reagan is elected President.

Luisa d'Oliveira, Dayo Ade and Karen LeBlanc were added to the all-Canadian cast of the CBC police procedural titled Cracked. The shows follows cops and psychiatric nurses pursuing evildoers among the emotional disturbed, and stars Stefanie von Pfetten.

Thirteen Steps Down, a TV adaptation of the 2004 novel by Ruth Rendell, begins on ITV1 tonight (August 13). This is the first Rendell work to be transferred to the small screen in 12 years.

The U.K.'s satellite network BSkyB will launch a dedicated movie channel, Sky Movies, for the James Bond franchise on October 5 this year. That dates coincides with the 50th anniversary celebrations of the release of the first Bond movie, Dr No.

PODCASTS

NPR's Crime in the City catches up with Peter James to discuss his novels set in Brighton, England.

Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, visited the women of The View on ABC-TV.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson featured the Rock Bottom Remainders, with the band's final performance, plus an interview with Stephen King. This is part of a farewell tour for the literary band, which at times has included authors Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Al Kooper, Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, Cynthia Heimel, Sam Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Joel Selvin, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr., Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Fulghum, Matt Groening, Tad Bartimus and Greg Iles.

THEATER

The new musical Who Murdered Love? opened August 10 and will continue through August 25 at the Players Theatre, as part of the 16th Annual New York International Fringe Festival/FringeNYC. The play is set in 1924 New York City and in a Paris dreamscape and "follows WWI veteran and private eye, 'Sleepy' Sam Speed, Gail Friday and Everett Greene, as they attempt to unravel the disappearance and possible murder of DaDa Love, at the behest of their client, the stunning heiress Honey Potts."

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sad news just announced today: Producer Tony Scott (brother of Ridley Scott), is dead of an apparent suicide. Tony Scott served as producer and/or director on such movies as Prometheus, The A-Team, Spy Game, and many more, as well as TV shows including Numb3rs, The Good Wife and the upcoming series Coma.

CinemaBlend reported that actor Willem Dafoe is taking on two different crime dramas. The first is Whiskey Bay, where Dafoe will play a veteran cop who teams with a former white supremacist (played by Matt Dillon) to go undercover to reveal the Aryan Brotherhood's illegal activities. The other project is A Man Most Wanted, the latest adaptation of a John Le Carre spy novel, which already has Philip Seymour Hoffman in the cast and Robin Wright also in negotiations.

Winona Ryder in talks to join James Franco and Jason Statham in Homefront, a film written by Sylvester Stallone about a ruthless drug dealer and a former DEA agent who go head to head in a small town.

A movie adaptation of the graphic novel The Boys was reportededly picked up by Paramount. The plot of the graphic novel follows a CIA team whose role is to police the superhuman community and prevent them from misusing their powers.

The British Film Institute's comprehensive tribute to Alfred Hitchcock continues into October, with films and special events coming up including panels and talks from actors Bruce Dern (Family Plot) and Martin Landau (North by Northwest).

Another obit of note: Biff Elliot, the actor who first starred as hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer on the big screen, died August 15 at his home in Studio City at the age of 89.

TV

TNT renewed freshman drama Perception for a second season. The drama stars Eric McCormack as a schizophrenic professor-turned-FBI sleuth.

BBC One is planning a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes as a 90-minute made-for-television movie. The remake will star Keeley Hawes as wealthy young socialite Iris Carr, who finds a woman has disappeared from her train while travelling across Europe. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Actress Jodie Foster is developing a female-led mob drama for Showtime. Titled Angie's Body, the series will follow "a hardened but beautiful woman who's responsible for the wellbeing of an entire crime syndicate." Although Foster has directed for the big-screen, this will be her first small-screen project. There's no word on whether she'll also play a role in front of the camera.

Michael Grant Terry, a former Bones squintern (one of the rotating interns on the show), is set to join NBC's supernatural cop drama Grimm for a multi-episode arc. He'll play a "wide-eyed and enthusiastic student" who is (appropriately) starting an internship with the Portland Police Department, looking to model himself after one of Portland's finest: Nick Burkhardt, played by David Giuntoli.

ABC is in negotiations with UK showrunner Simeon Goulden to adapt his Sky 1 comedy Spy for American TV. The original series followed hapless single father Tim (Darren Boyd) who quits his job as a junior sales assistant in a computer shop to impress his son but accidentally gets recruited into the British intelligence agency MI5.

PODCASTS

This week's Crime in the City series on NPR featured Robert Crais, with a revealing, inside look at how he creates the L.A. where Elvis and Joe live. Author Sean Chercover stopped by WGN-Radio to talk about his new novel, The Trinity Game.

Marlowe Resurrected

The estate of Raymond Chandler and publisher Henry Holt & Company have agreed to release a new novel featuring Chandler's iconic detective creation, Philip Marlowe. They've chosen Booker Prize-winning author John Banville to pen the new novel, writing under his crime fiction pen name of Benjamin Black. Holt is also the publisher of Black's series of crime novels featuring a hard-drinking Dublin pathologist named Quirke.

Black said of the new endeavor, "I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels. This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe’s California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper's paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating."

This isn't the first time an effort has been made to continue Chandler's Marlowe series, as Jeff Pierce over at the Rap Sheet notes. Uruguayan author Hiber Conteris and Robert B. Parker wrote Marlowe novels, and various writers contributed Marlowe short stories in the anthology Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration. Time will tell if Black's style is a good mesh with Chandler's literary vision.

In light of the announcement, I thought it would be fun to listen to a program the BBC did about Raymond Chandler on the 100th anniversary of Chandler's birth, in 1988. The first part is mostly introduction, although it includes a Q&A from 1958 with Ian Fleming chatting with Chandler (about a year before his death), which begins about 6:00 into the recording.

Chandler's frustration with being taken seriously as a writer of detective fiction is quite evident, as he once said about the Long Goodbye, "I may be the best writer in this country (the U.S.), and with two exceptions, I think I am. But I am still a mystery writer. For the first time in my life, I was reviewed as a novelist in the London Sunday Times and I was discussed on the BBC, but over here?"

It's a fun interview, including Fleming's admission that he never intended James Bond to be a hero, but more "a blunt instrument wielded by a government department who would get into bizarre and fantastic situations and more or less shoot his way out of them." Whereas Chandler says of Marlowe, "He's always confused. He's like me." Later, in part three, Chandler says of Marlowe, he wasn't based on the author, at least not deliberately. "If so, it just happened."

You can hear the second, third and fourth parts of the interview via YouTube, each segment about seven minutes long.

Mystery Melange

This week, the annual Pulpfest returns to Columbus, Ohio, and Don Herron has a mini-preview and a tale of his own attraction to the pulpy goodness of Dime Detective magazine.

The latest issue of Pulp Metal Magazine is now live, with a "Vengeance" theme and several new stories and other features. PMM bills itself as "A heady smorgasbord of odd fiction, cult celluloid, unreal doodling, lowbrow waffle & heavy, heavy music."

Pulp Modern editor, Alec Cizak, says they're accepting submissions for the Autumn issue, and "stories about autumn, Halloween, chopping up turkeys, etc., will go to the front of the line." Stories should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Cizak also announced Elisha Murphy will be joining Pulp Modern as an assistant editor.  (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

The Ngaio Marsh Award 2012 shortlist was announced yesterday. The award honors the best in crime fiction from New Zealand writers. Nominees include Paul Cleave, Neil Cross, Ben Sanders, and Vanda Symon.

The shortlists for the Ned Kelly Awards were announced last week. The awards are handed out for the best in Australian crime fiction in the categories of True Crime, Best Fiction, Best First Fiction and Short Stories.

More sad bookstore news to report. Last week, it was Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks that went out of business, and now, after 18 years in the spot on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers is closing its doors on September 20th. The store posted a note on Facebook that "We've had a great run and have enjoyed helping a generation of readers find the books they love. We've had a lot of fun, learned a tremendous amount, and enjoyed our time with all of you – customers, authors and publishers."

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots Ezine includes entertaining musings from "The Ripster" on South African crime writer Deon Meyer, the obit for crime fiction supporter Iwan Hedman Morelius, a note about the annual convention of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and much more.

If you're an Australian and a woman writer, you have until the end of this month to enter Sisters in Crime Australia's Crime & Mystery Short Story Competition with a total of $1,500 worth of prizes. The annual contest is sponsored by Melbourne’s famous Athenaeum Library.

The Q&A roundup this week features Michael Koryta talking about his new novel The Prophet with fellow author Dean Koontz; and EuroCrime chats with Jefferson Bass, the writing team of Jon Jefferson and Dr Bill Bass.

Untreed Reads is offering a special summer sale through August 15th at The Untreed Reads Store for 50% off all titles, including my story "Ill-Gotten Games" and the anthology Grimm Tales, in which I'm honored to be included as a contributor. There are hundreds of other titles from the likes of Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle, Victor J. Banis, Nigel Bird, Paul D. Brazill, Denise Dietz, Barb Goffman, John Kenyon, Stephen D. Rogers, Elizabeth Zelvin and many more fine writers.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Amy Berg has signed on to direct Every Secret Thing, a film adaptation of Laura Lippman's 2004 mystery novel, starring Diane Lane. The story focuses on two 11-year-old girls who are convicted of murdering a baby and jailed until they turn 18, but after their release, children start to go missing.

Dark Knight Rises star Christian Bale is in negotiations to join the cast of The Creed of Violence, based on the novel by Boston Teran. The plot follows a small-time assassin and a young Bureau of Investigation agent forced to work together during the Mexican revolution of 1910 to infiltrate the Mexican criminal underground.

Dylan McDermott is set to star in the indie action thriller The Freezer, playing a mysterious man who is abducted and appears to be a victim, but has a past in which he was a ruthless killer for hire.

Trailer time: two new previews for the upcoming Bond film Skyfall starring Daniel Craig, here and here.

DigitalSpy has debuted a new preview clip of Jackpot, a film based on a story by author Jo Nesbo that opens on August 10 in the UK. The plot finds a man, Oscar Svendsen, who wakes up surrounded by eight bodies and a police detective with a gun pointed at his chest.

The studio behind Killing Them Softly released a preview trailer of the film about a professional enforcer (Brad Pitt) who investigates a heist that went down during a mob-protected poker game.

TV

Fox-based producer Hutch Parker optioned James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" novels with an eye toward developing a Fox TV series based on the Vietnam vet-turned police detective who works out of New Orleans. Burke introduced the character in 1987's The Neon Rain. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Hart Hanson (a producer behind Bones), is developing a pilot for CBS based on the Stockholm police inspector Evert Backstrom created by Swedish crime novelist Leif G. W. Persson. Backstrom has been described as "being to investigations what Gregory House was to medical mysteries."

MyAnna Buring and Matthew Goode will star in a new drama for ITV1 based on Erin Kelly's suspense novel The Poison Tree.

Fox ordered an untitled character-driven cop-drama written by Chris Levinson (Touch) about a major crimes detective who starts slowly losing his memory. Faced with the prospect of losing his career and family, the cop ends up putting his entire life under surveillance and ends up opening a window into a world where nothing is as it appears.

Fox has also ordered another unusual pilot, this from the executive producers of House. According to Variety, it's "an ensemble show set in a naval aircraft carrier with an upstairs/downstairs dynamic that separates young men and women in dangerous jobs from a female fighter pilot and her season-long quest to solve a murder that occurs on board."

Athena Karkanis will star in the AMC drama pilot Low Winter Sun, playing an Egyptian-Muslim detective on a Detroit police force that blurs the line between cops and criminals.

The History Channel has partnered with Storyline Entertainment's Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to develop a miniseries based on the true story of Bonnie and Clyde.

BBC America is co-producing a series based on the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. The project will fall under the network's weekly hour-long "Dramaville" slot, which also will add Copper in its debut on August 19th, and The Spies of Warsaw to air sometime in the fall.

Marvel and ABC may be working toward a small-screen version set in the Avengers universe, blending elements of a police procedural with high-tech espionage and superhero action.

Dexter may get a ninth season, according to Cinemablend. Showtime entertainment president David Nevins says the network is leaving the door open to continue some of the upcoming season's "game-changing" storylines.

Zap2It featured an article with Frank Spotnitz (The X Files) about his latest television venture, Hunted, which debuts in the fall on Cinemax. The action-thriller stars Melissa George and is set within the world of corporate espionage.

PODCASTS

NPR's summer series about fictional detectives and the cities where they live takes a look at Karin Slaughter and her books set in Georgia. Last week's installment featured Norwegian author Jo Nesbo showing that Oslo really does have a seedy side.

THEATER

Casting was finalized for the Broadway-bound production of Jekyll & Hyde, starring Tony nominee Constantine Maroulis, Deborah Cox and Teal Wicks. Directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun, the musical will open on Broadway in the spring of 2013 after a 25-week national tour.

Theatrical impresario Zev Buffman is staging his production of four of Agatha Christies "lost" radio plays as a show titled Agatha Christie's The BBC Murders. The four plays were the result of a bit of detective work on Buffman's part and first collected and performed at the International Mystery Writers' Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 2009. The new production will be staged at several venues in South Florida next year.

Mystery Melnage

It's Bloody Book Week in Johannesburg, South Africa. The country (and continent's) first crime fiction festival is back this year with authors Mandy Wiener, Mark Gimenez, John Connolly and Jeffery Deaver, as well as experts in crime, investigation and forensics. One of the highlights of the week is "The Bloody Book Week Masterclass: how to write your own crime fiction and make a fortune", hosted by Mike Nicol with significant input from both Jeffery Deaver and John Connolly.

The Spring/Summer edition of Mysterical-E is out, including 20 new stories; columns by Gerald So (a look at new crime TV shows of summer and fall), Jim Doherty (his 10 favorite private-eye movies), Chris Verstraete, Byron McAllister, and Jan Christenson; plus interviews and reviews galore.

This week's short story offering on Powder Burn Flash is "The House Always Wins" by Tom Darin Liskey, while Darkest Before the Dawn features Gary Clifton's "The Law of Expectation."

In the Q&A roundup this week, Laura LIppman interviews fellow author Megan Abbott about her latest novel, Dare Me; and here's a link to a video interview from earlier this year with author Lee Child interviewing Marcus Sakey about Sakey's latest book The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes.