Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jake Gyllenhaal will star as a freelance L.A. crime reporter in Nightcrawler, which will also mark the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Rene Russo has signed on to co-star in the film.

Aldamisa Entertainment has acquired the rights to two spec scripts, Americatown by Ben Poole and Murder City by Will Simmons. Americatown is about an ex-cop who moves from poverty to power in third-world American slums of world leader China after the U.S. economy’s collapse, while Murder City follows an ex-con who becomes the hunter and target of a ruthless Detroit gangster. 

Paramount is picking up Spy's Kid, described as a Catch Me If You Can-style story set in the world of espionage featuring Shia LaBeouf and Robert De Niro as a son-father spy duo. The story is based on a six-part series of articles by Bryan Denson that told the true story of a traitorous spy who enlists his son to continue his work.

Thunder Road Pictures have acquired the rights to remake the foreign film Gang Story, about an aging former gangster who attempts to leave his life of crime behind him and live peacefully with his family. The project has already signed Liam Neeson to star as the gangster.  

Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the action film from Luc Besson titled Lucy, about a woman who is forced to become a drug mule, but the durgs go into her system, making her "an ass-kicking machine."

Larry A. Thompson Entertainment optioned Mark Hudelson's spec script Missing Mona Lisa, based on the true story of an Italian native who steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris and returns it to Italy before he is ultimately arrested. 

George Clooney, Grant Heslo, and Joshuah Bearman, the team behind Argo, are planning a film based on Bearman's upcoming article about the Coronado Club, said to be set in a resort city in Southern California and involving a group of young people who are used to smuggle drugs.

Twentieth Century Fox won a bidding war for film right to the spy-thriller novel Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews. The story is set in contemporary Russia and focuses on a young intelligence officer who goes up against an American counterpart and eventually her own government. 
 
Hugo Weaving is returning to his native Australia to star in the film The Mule (not to be confused with the Scarlett Johansson project mentioned above). The film follows a drug mule who is caught by police and the fallout after his arrest.

TV

FX is developing James Ellroy's novella Shakedown,
a period drama inspired by the life of cop-turned-private eye Fred
Otash and set in the tabloid world and underbelly of Los Angeles circa
the late 1950s. James Ellroy and New Regency are also shopping an L.A. Confidential sequel targeted for the small screen.

Omnimystery News reported that Warner Bros. and  J. J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot are set to option Stephen King's 2011 time-travel thriller 11/22/63 to be adapted for a cable television series or mini-series.

USA is eyeing an expansion of the upcoming eighth (and possibly final) season of Psych and has ordered five more scripts from the "sleuth dramedy."

NBC announced it is renewing Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire and Revolution.

Casey Sherman has sold the rights to his 2005 Boston Strangler book, Search for the Strangler: My Hunt for Boston's Most Notorious Killer, and plans are to develop it into a television series.

USA is giving viewers a free sneak peek of the network's new crime drama Graceland by offering the pilot episode two weeks before its broadcast premiere, from April 29 to May 12, via video-on-demand. The show is about a group of undercover agents from the FBI, DEA and US Customs who all live together in a Southern California beach house.

ITV has renewed Vera, the crime drama based on characters created by Ann Cleeves, for a fourth season of four episodes. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Omnimystery News also reports that DCI John Barnaby (of Midsomer Murders) is getting a new partner. Gwilym Lee is joining the cast as Detective Sergeant Charlie Nelson following the departure of Jason Hughes, who played DS Ben Jones. Lee's debut will be the first episode of the 16th series, scheduled to air in the UK later this year.

The first annual Humphrey Bogart film festival, to be held in Key Largo, Florida, May 2-5, is premiering Warner Bros.' newly restored version of the 1936 noir film The Petrified Forest, which made Bogart a star.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Joining the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: author Philip Kerr, discussing his latest Bernie Gunther novel, A Man Without Breath.

The BBC's Open Book show featured Harlan Coben, talking about his new thriller novel Six Years, as well as Rodge Glass and a look at the London Book Fair.

THEATER

The musical based on the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis has gotten its premiere date at London's Almeida Theatre for December 3, with a run through January 25. The show has been given the tagline "a bloody satire," and is scripted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (TV's Glee and Broadway's Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark), with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will include be a new adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for its 2013-2014 season. Atwood's story is set in a dystopoian near-future where religious and misogynist persecution by the government is rampant.

Casting was announced for the UK West End return of The Ladykillers, the 2011 stage version of the iconic 1955 Ealing film comedy that was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2004 in a film version that starred Tom Hanks. The Ladykillers tells the "classic black comedy tale of a sweet little old lady, alone in her house, pitted against a gang of criminal misfits who will stop at nothing." The new cast will include Ralf Little, Simon Day, Angela Thorne, John Gordon Sinclair and Con O'Neill, and Chris McCalph.

Mystery Melange

Crime Writers of Canada announced the shortlist for the annual Arthur Ellis Awards, celebrating the best in Canadian crime writing. The nominees for Best Novel include Linwood Barclay, Trust Your Eyes; Giles Blunt, Until the Night; Sean Chercover, The Trinity Game; Stephen Miller, The Messenger; and Carsten Stroud, Niceville. Other categories include Best First Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Nonfiction, Best Juvenile/YA, Best Crime Book in French and Best Unpublished First Crime Novel: the Unhanged Arthur.

Congratulations go to Tana French, this year's winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category, for her book Broken Harbor.

Portland, Oregon's Murder by the Book store announced in January it would be forced to go out of business if they couldn't find a buyer by April. Although there was some interest, unfortunately no deal was reached. Co-owner Barbara Tom shared added on the store's Facebook page: "Although we'll just be disembodied virtual voices now instead of real people you can chat with at the store, we re-pledge our allegiance to the wonderful world of mystery books and its community."

In the Q&A Roundup this week, Sophie Hannah talks about World Book Night 2013 and her novel Little Face, one of the few crime fiction works chosen for the 20 recommended titles in the UK and Ireland; NPR interviewed D.A Mishani, an Israeli literature scholar who specializes in the history of detective fiction, about his own debut detective novel; Author and ThugLit editor ("Bid Daddy Thug"), Todd Robinson stopped by Black Gate to discuss his debut novel, The Hard Bounce.

Looking for some of the best of the new crime fiction reads? Check out these titles recommended by by Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times; these from Roberta Alexander for the San Jose Mercury News; Margaret Cannon's choices for The Globe & Mail; and some of the latest historical novels, via Jake Kerridge at The Telegraph. Publishers Weekly also compiled a listing of the summer mystery/thriller books they're looking forward to reading.

A church in Boston is putting a rare copy of the Bay Psalm Book up for auction. The book is the first title printed in America, in 1640, and is thought to be one of only 11 surviving copies. It can be yours for only $30 million dollars, the price the book is expected to fetch when it goes under the gavel in November.

Banned Books Week doesn't begin until September 22, but the American Library Association just released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year.

The Poetry of Crime

Themes of crime and violence in poetry have been around for about as long as poets have been putting paper to pen. Robert Browning wrote "The Ring and the Book," a murder novel in verse; T.S. Eliot's "Sweeney Agonistes" is about the murder of a young woman, while his "Murder in the Cathedral" is a verse drama that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral; and Carl Sandburg's "Killers" is about how war hardens men who learn to distance themselves from their acts of violence.

Writer/educator/editor Gerald So has combined his love of crime fiction and poetry into the website The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, which features a new crime-themed poem each week. An assortment of poems featured on the site were also gathered into anthologies, including the latest, The Lineup 4, edited by Gerald, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez, and R. Narvaez. In celebration of National Poetry Month in the U.S., Gerald is sponsoring the 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour as a way to promote poetry in general and crime poetry on the 5-2 blog in particular.

As an added bonus, all April revenue from 5-2 and Lineup books and merchandise at the 5-2 Shop at CafePress.com will also be donated to the nonprofit Academy of American Poets, to support poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. You can also participate by Tweeting comments and links to your favorite 5-2 poems, tagging them #30OfThe52.

Here's one of the featured poems from the 5-2, in fact the very first poem that was posted back in 2011. It's titled "Smack" and is by Nancy Scott, managing editor of the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, and the author of two books of poetry.

SMACK
by Nancy Scott

Massive head trauma, internal injuries.
The child won't make it to morning.
The mother and the grandmother sit
in the waiting area.
They haven't been told yet.
The boyfriend, the babysitter, denies
he was high on smack, insists the child
was asleep in the playpen,
when he ran to the deli to buy cigarettes.
He can't explain how the toddler
got hit by a car on the highway
seven blocks from the apartment.

Be sure and stop by the 5-2 to read and listen to the other close to 100 poems on the website, and if you're interested in submitting your own, send along your unpublished crime-related poem of  60 lines or fewer in any form or style. To follow Crime Poetry Weekly on Twitter, check out @poemsoncrime.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Crime writer SJ Bolton's debut novel Sacrifice, inspired by her research into Nordic mythology, is finally coming to the big screen, with filming beginning in mid-May (in Ireland, New York and Shetland). Peter A. Dowling has signed on to direct, with the cast including Connie Nielsen, Charles Dance and Rupert Graves.

Omnimystery News reported that Fox 2000 has acquired the film rights to John Grisham's 2011 legal thriller The Litigators; the studio already has another of Grisham's novels, The Racketeer, in production.

Paul Sorvino has joined the cast of the thriller Careful What You Wish For, playing a sheriff. The plot centers on a man named Doug (Nick Jonas), who has an affair with a woman (Isabel Lucas) married to an investment banker (Dermot Mulroney). When the husband dies suspiciously, Doug becomes entangled in the investigation. 

Image Entertainment picked up U.S. and Canadian film rights for Nick Murphy's thriller Blood, which follows the moral collapse of a close police family and stars Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, and Stephen Graham. 

The Weinstein Company optioned Matthew Quick's soon-to-be-published young adult novel of suspense Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock.

Sony purchased a spec thriller script from Tina Gordon Chism. The project, titled Inheritance, focuses on a young female lawyer handling the case of a New Orleans coffee magnate whose passing sparks a deadly chain of events.

Chernin Entertainment bought the rights to Marisha Pessl's unpublished book, Night Film. The story follows an investigative reporter, looking into the death of a beautiful young woman, whose discovery the victim is the daughter of a reclusive horror film director plunges the reporter into a journey of revenge and truth.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Writer/Director Franck Khalfoun's action thriller Motherload was picked-up by producers Alix Taylor and Pav Hatoupis. The story is about a woman imprisoned for murdering her husband who breaks out of prison and goes on a rampage across the country to retrieve her children placed in various institutions.

Director Robert Lorenz is teaming with producer Sam Worthington on the period indie movie, The Broken. The story is set in 1967 Oklahoma, where a war veteran investigating the suspicious death of his estranged son learns it was a covered-up gay bashing and goes on a one-man mission to take down the corrupt sheriff responsible.

TV

Showtime made it official and announced that Season Eight of Dexter, which will premiere June 30, will be the last for the serial-killer series. However, the network hasn't ruled out a spin-off series.

BBC is developing a remake of the 1980s drama Bergerac, which featured Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, an officer in the fictional Le Bureau des Étrangers police department. The network may be envisioning the project as a prequel to the original series. 

AMC has put in an order for a new futuristic procedural series titled Ballistic City. It's described as "Blade Runner meets Battlestar Galactica" and
centers on a former cop thrust into the criminal underworld of a
city housed in a space ship destined for an unknown world.

Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Anthony Head is joining Syfy's Warehouse 13 in a major recurring role as a bad guy, and Joel Gray will guest star in an upcoming episode as a magician.

NCB's supernatural police procedural Grimm, starring David Giuntoli, is moving to a better time slot on Tuesdays, taking over from the recently-cancelled Ready for Love.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Louise Penny and tour guide Marie Legroulx joined Radio Noon Montreal on the CBC to talk about the tour based on her mystery hero to be offered in Quebec this summer.

Mystery Melange

If you live near the North Carolina Research Triangle region, "Making Crime Pay" is a workshop for aspiring mystery writers offered by the Halle Cultural Arts Center in Apex on Saturday, April 20. Authors Marcia Talley and Kate Charles will share their expertise in the intensive, one-day workshop including writing tips, preparing a manuscript for submission, agents, reference books, working methods, and publicity.

Authors M R Hall and William Ryan and literary agent David Headley have teamed up as "Hall Ryan Headley" to offer intro workshops to crime writing. On May 11-12, their two-day course in London aimed at everyone from experienced writers to absolute beginners, takes attendees through the elements of a crime novel, from characterization and plotting to choosing a setting and undertaking research.

ThrillerFest is adding a couple of new events to this year's conference: a FanFest and a Tweeting Contest. The former is a cocktail party with authors and their specially-invited fans, but it's also open to all conference attendees; the latter is for attendees and the general public, with winning Tweeters (just use the hashtag #Thriller13) receiving gift cards.

Dana Stabenow (author of the Kate Shugak series) launched a campaign to raise $1 million to build an Alaskan retreat for female writers, Storyknife Writers Retreat, only the second residency of its kind in the world. When the project is complete, writers will be admitted to the residency after a rigorous application process, including statements of need and samples of work. Upon successful admission, writers will come to Storyknife for two-to-eight-week residencies to focus on their diverse projects in uninterrupted peace, an atmosphere made possible by the Storyknife endowment.

The father and son author team Stephen King and Owen King will headline a
benefit for PEN Canada on Thursday, October 24 in the Fleck Dance
Theatre at Harbourfront Centre,
Toronto. Award-winning mystery writer Louise Penny will moderate the
discussion. Tickets for the general public will be available starting
this Thursday, April 18 by calling the box office or by visiting www.readings.org.

Happy news for libraries and fans of crime fiction: the Library Journal reported that a survey of 232 public libraries found 55% of respondents said mystery continues to be the most
popular genre in terms of circulation. The survey also found that in
print fiction collections, 24.1% of materials are mysteries.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Irish author Marian Keyes, chatting with Mysterious Musings about her latest cozy/traditional novel, The Mystery of Mercy Close; and Dana Haynes joined Lesa's Book Critiques and talked about his novels under the pen name Conrad Haynes.

The Guardian posted "The 10 best real-life spies — in pictures."

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Robert Redford is teaming up with David Lowery to adapt and direct The Old Man and the Gun, a film based on a 2003 New Yorker article about a bank robber who spent almost his entire life either in prison or breaking out of it. Redford would produce and star, while Lowery would direct.

The 15th annual Festival Of Film Noir has returned to the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Sponsored by The American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation, the festival runs through April 21. There's also a special 60th anniversary showing (at the Aero Theatre) of the long-lost noir Man in the Dark in fully restored 3-D.

Hat tip to It's a Crime for noting the BAFTA TV nominations for 2013. Nominees for Best Drama Series included the legal/detective series Ripper Street, Scott and Bailey, and Silk; nominees for Best International Series included crime dramas Homeland (U.S.) and The Bridge (Denmark/Sweden).

Universal released the first stills from the upcoming R.I.P.D., starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges. The film is based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Peter M. Lenkov and follows a young cop (Reynolds) who joins the Rest In Peace Department in the afterlife, a police force dedicated to solving crimes of the undead. The cop teams up with a gun-slinging cowboy from the old west (Bridges) in order to find the guy who killed him (Kevin Bacon).

The remake of the 1991 action thriller Point Break is looking more likely after the announcement that Ericson Core has signed to direct the film. The story follows an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a crime ring in the world of extreme sports. (Hat tip Omnimystery News.)

Sony Pictures won the bidding war for the right to remake the Korean crime film New World.
The script, to be adapted by Will Fetters, is about a mob boss who is
gunned down and the battle among mobsters who want to succeed him,
including an undercover cop.

TV

Omnimystery News reports that Clerkenwell Films is developing an 18-part television adaptation of the nine spy thriller novels by Len Deighton featuring Ex-MI6 field agent Bernard Sampson. 

Tania Raymonde (from Lost) and Scott Eastwood, son of Clint Eastwood, are the first actors cast on the unnamed Chicago Fire spin-off about the Chicago Police Department.

A&E has ordered to series Those Who Kill, based on the Dutch crime drama Den som dræber from a concept by crime novelist Elsebeth Egholm. The 10-episode project stars Chloë Sevigny as a homicide detective James D'Arcy as a forensic psychiatrist.

Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer has signed on to play Irene Adler, the woman Sherlock refers to as "the woman" in the CBS series Elementary.

Homeland star David Marciano is leaving the show as a regular and is developing a cable drama based on a real criminal enterprise that operates out of a prison.

Patricia Arquette is joining the cast of Boardwalk Empire, playing Sally Wheet, a tough-as-nails Tampa speakeasy owner with connections to local gangsters.

Alfre Woodward is leaving True Blood to join the second season of Copper, BBC America's period police drama set in the 1860s in New York City.

Lifetime is producing a sequel to their recent human trafficking drama, this one to star Kirstie Alley and Jennifer Finnigan in a story about "the dark international crime enterprise of infant trafficking under the guise of seemingly regulated adoption."

Crime Time Preview has a first look at Gillian Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson in BBC2's The Fall. The series is set in Northern Ireland and follows Anderson's character who is called in to track down a serial killer terrorizing Belfast.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Nightline featured Mark Geragos, co-author of Mistrial: An Inside Look at How the Criminal Justice System Works…and Sometimes Doesn't.

Joining Imus in the Morning last week: Mary Higgins Clark, author of Daddy's Gone a Hunting.

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Mystery Melange

Suspense Magazine's April issue features Andrew Gross, T. Jefferson Parker, Joshua Graham, Jeremy Robinson and Adam Baker; Lisa Gardner's writing toolbox with tips for authors; Anthony Franze interviews John Gilstrap for his next installment of his "On Writing" section; and, there's a list of the winners of the short story contest plus an announcement of the recipient of the 1st annual Armstrong Award for best short story, as picked by Suspense Magazine staff. 

The latest issue, #4, of Blood and Tacos is out, and you can view it free via the website or download a copy for the Kindle. The issue marks the first-year-anniversary of the zine, and they've decided to make some changes in honor of that milestone. Gone are reviews and nonfiction pieces, giving more room for fiction. The magazine will also go from being a quarterly to more sporadically, probably twice a year, although this will ultimately mean more total stories and more pay for the authors.

This week's featured story on Beat to a Pulp is "Yusan" by Jim Wilsky. BTAP David Cranmer has also opened up submissions again, so send along your best hardboiled story of 4,000 words or under for consideration.

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on Chicago Mysteries. Editor Janet Rudolph says that if you have a mystery that takes place in Chicago, consider writing an author! author! essay for this issue, 500-1500 words, first person, upclose and personal about yourself, your books and the "Chicago" connection. She's also looking for reviews and articles. The deadline for articles and reviews is June 1, and there are more details on the journal's website.

The Deadly Ink conference-sponsored short story contest has extended the deadline for submissions to May 1. Stories must be under 5,000 words, be set in New Jersey, and focus on a crime. The winner will received publication in an anthology, $25 and free conference registration.

In the Q&A roundup this week, Donna Leon chats with the Yorkshire Evening Post; Jamie Mason visits MysteryPeople to discuss his novel Three Graves Full, which is catching a lot of buzz; 24-year-old debut author Roger Hobbs stopped by Crime Watch; and Mark Edwards had a Q&A with Crime Fiction Lover about his partnership with Louise Voss in the self-publishing realm before they were picked up HarperCollins.

Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook for mystery authors, talked about the history of poisoning in crime fiction in an article titled "The Chemistry of the Murder Mystery" for Wired.

Another fun read for authors and fans of crime fiction is "5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes" (thanks to TV and the movies).

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jim Sturgess has signed on to star opposite Kate Beckinsale in Eliza Graves, the psychological thriller loosely based on one of Edgar Allan Poe’s early works.

Kimberly Peirce, director of Boy’s Don’t Cry and the soon to be released Carrie reboot, has signed on to direct the film The Brand, an adaptation of a New Yorker article on the Aryan brotherhood in prisons. 

Chloe Moretz is in talks to join Charlize Theron in the cast of the upcoming adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel Dark Places, about a woman forced to re-face the massacre of her family after twenty years.

Benedict Cumberbatch has a jam-packed schedule these days. His latest commitment is the upcoming project from Guillermo Del Toro, Crimson Peak. The details of the plot are being kept under wraps, but it is said to be a haunted house thriller and co-stars Emma Stone and Charlie Hunnam.

Susan Sarandon and Topher Grace are set to star in the indie thriller, The Calling, directed by Jason Stone. The story, written by Scott Abramovitch, follows a small-town Canadian detective (Sarandon) who tracks down a serial killer with the help of an ambitious police officer from Toronto (Grace)

The confusing casting for the outlaw film Jane Got a Gun continues. On the first day of shooting, Lynne Ramsay exited the project, causing Jude Law to leave, as well. Bradley Cooper has now stepped in to take Law's role as the antagonist, joinng other stars Natalie Portman and Joel Edgerton

Jason Clarke and Omar Sy are set to star in Stephen Gaghan’s film Candy Store. The plot follows a former covert operative (Clarke) teams up with a disgraced local cop to investigate a king pimp (Sy), a Cold War consigliere and a beautiful woman, all wrapped up in a terror plot against Manhattan.

TV

Cinemax has ordered a pilot for a period crime drama based on the Max Allan Collins books featuring Quarry, a military marksman veteran recruited into a network of contract killers. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Syfy has bought an untitled drama spec written by Alfonso H. Moreno (NCIS), about two survivors of a plane crash who wake up with no memory of their actions and have to prove their innocence when they're suddenly on the run from the government.

Steven Weber has joined the cast of TNT's Murder In The First drama pilot co-created by Steven Bochco and Eric Lodal. The show is billed as a murder mystery set in contemporary San Francisco that centers on two SFPD homicide detectives, Terry Seagrave (Taye Diggs) and Hildy Mulligan (Kathleen Robertson), as they take on a case that seems more like a maze.

The CBC announced its renewing Murdoch Mysteries, based on a character created by Maureen Jennings, for an expanded seventh season. It's also giving a second-season order for Cracked, about a detective and psychiatirst in a Psych Crimes Unit, and an expanded fifth-season order for Republic of Doyle, featuring the rogue PI Jake Doyle. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

If you're a fan of true-crime documentaries, Investigation Discovery is adding 15 new series to its 22 returning series next season. The new projects include Southern Fried Homicide, about crime south of the Mason-Dixon Line; Darkness Out of Town, which chronicles murder that takes place in the countryside; The First Kill, about initial murders that inspired killing sprees; and The Bad Old Days, about real-life killings from the 1950s and 1960s.

The USA Network announced summer premiere dates including Burn Notice (which will hit its landmark 100th episode this season) on June 6, followed immediately by the new series Graceland, starring Daniel Sunjata and Aaron Tveit as part of a group of undercover agents who live together. Other shows given broadcast dates include Season 4 of Covert Affairs and Suits.

Omnimystery News reported that BBC One has commissioned a second season of Shetland, based on the crime novels by Ann Cleves.

Pilot season is heating up and Deadline has an analysis of the "early buzz" for the various networks.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

This week on KCRW's Bookworm: Joyce Carol Oates, author of The Accursed and an incredibly prolific bibliograhy of stories and books that includes many crime fiction titles.

The British Library posted a podcast from its panel on the history of literary female detectives, held in conjunction with the exhibition "Murder in the Library." The event featured Lindsey Davis, Natasha Cooper, and former Clues executive editor Margaret Kinsman. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

THEATER

The Innocence of Father Brown, adapted by Patrick Rieger and based on stories by G.K. Chesterton about the clerical sleuth, is having its wor
ld premiere at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena, California. Performances are Thursday through Sunday, running through April 28.

GAMES

Looking Glass Studios released a full trailer for the upcoming Thief game, in which players will take on the role of Garrett, a criminal with a Robin Hood streak who only steals from the city's wealthiest aristocrats.

Mystery Melange

Another week, another award! The winner the 2013 Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award winner is Mike Lawson for House Blood. You can find the other finalists via this link (which includes 11 total this year due to ties). Friends of Mystery is a non-profit literary/educational organization headquartered in Portland, Oregon, dedicated to promoting educational study in all realms related to mystery

The British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel this year was handed out to author Adam Roberts for his space-set riff on golden-age detective fiction titled Jack Glass. The book "plays on the tropes of classic science fiction and crime fiction, such as the locked room mystery, with the story of a serial murderer living in a future solar system where Earth is only inhabited by the rich."

Crime Fiction Lover blog has a special report from Lyon's Quais du Polar crime fiction festival, which is also one of the world's largest such events, with 60,000 crime fiction lovers in one place. At the festival, Athens-based author Petros Markaris was honored with the 2013 Quais du Polar Festival Award.

If you're not familiar with the magazine Shock Totem, now is a good week to get acquainted. The 'zine is offering free downloads of issues for the Kindle, with a different free issue every day this week. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans via her blog.)

Each year, the Writers Police Academy sponsors the "Golden Donut" short story contest, and anyone can participate, not just conference attendees. There are two main stipulations – the story must be exactly 200 words, and it must be inspired by the photo on the contest information website. There *is* an entry fee, but all proceeds go to the Writers' Police Academy fund to benefit the GTCC criminal justice foundation.

This week's Q&A roundup includes a "short sharp interview" with Steve Weddle, editor of the wonderful magazine Needle: A Magazine of Noir (via Paul D. Brazill's blog); and Mo Hayder discusses her latest Jack Caffery novel, Poppet. 

From the Double O Section blog comes word about a book that was news to both of us: James Bond in verse! Canadian poet Kimmy Beach has concocted an epic poem about 007 entitled The Last Temptation of Bond, published by the University of Alberta Press.

The Atlantic offers up "10 (wacky and wonderful) Chair Designs for People Who Really Love Their Books."

Finally, we offer up a sad but fond farewell to fellow crime fiction blog, Murderati. The authors involved will continue to work on their own projects, of course, and they will continue to have a collective Murderati Facebook page.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam, has nabbed his first lead role in a feature film. He'll co-star with Jonathan LaPaglia in The Reckoning, a film about a cop's search for two teenagers who shot video footage of a murder.  The project is due to begin shooting April 29 in Australia.

Charlize Theron's Denver and Delilah production company and producer Ian Bryce are behind a mysterious new crime thriller at Paramount. The unnamed project is being written by Dan Nowak, who has scripted several episodes of the crime-drama series The Killing.

Production company Nasser Group North is preparing a film version of The Virginian, about an enforcer for a cattle baron in Wyoming, preparing to stay closer to the original Owen Wister novel from 1902 than the 1960s TV series.

Twentieth Century Fox beat out Universal in acquiring worldwide distribution rights to Matthew Vaughns film The Secret Service, based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar. The project centers on a veteran secret agent who trains a young protege into the business. 

Brady Corbet (star of the upcoming film Simon Killer) has joined actors Benicio Del Toro and Josh Hutcherson in Paradise Lost, a dramatization of the life of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

The James Bond producers confirmed talks are ongoing with Sam Mendes (the director of Skyfall) and that they are confident in his return. According to Barbara Broccoli, "We will get him back… Maybe not for the next one… but we will get him back again."

Dermot Mulroney has been added as a co-star in Careful What You Wish For, the thriller directed by Elizabeth Allen. Mulroney will play an investment banker whose wife is having an affair; when Mulroney’s character dies and a hefty life insurance policy is reveled, everyone becomes a suspect.

Rock Paper Scissors has bought the rights to the Robert Goolrich novel Heading Out to Wonderful, to be directed by Angus Wall. It's set in the summer of 1948 when a handsome, charismatic stranger returns from the war to a sleepy village in the Valley of Virginia with two suitcases, one full of a fine set of butcher knives, the other full of money. 

The star-studded cast of David O. Russell's next film, an untitled Abscam project, has added another star to the firmament. Boardwalk Empire starJack Huston is joining Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper for the project, based on the true story of how a con artist and his partner/mistress help an ambitious FBI agent con a group crooks.

Although this sounds more horror/sci-fi than crime, it has a fun premise for author-types:  Dimension Films picked up Zak Olkewicz's spec script Ink and Bone, which follows an editor dispatched to help a reclusive horror writer finish his latest book, only to discover he's being held prisoner in his house by everything he's ever written.

Universal released a trailer for its upcoming action thriller 2 Guns, starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as two undercover federal operatives
from competing bureaus forced on the run together.

TV

America's Most Wanted has been cancelled, again; after being with the Fox network from 1988 to 2011 and helping law enforcement capture 1,202 fugitives worldwide, the network ended the show, but Lifetime picked it up. Now, Lifetime is cancelling the series, after 44 episodes resulting in 36 captures. Lifetime hasn't ended its partnership with host/producer John Walsh, however, and is developing a pilot, tentatively titled John Walsh Investigates, taking a different approach to Walsh's ongoing crime fighting and victims' advocacy work.

Omnimystery News reported that Martin Scorsese and Miramax are teaming up to develop a television series based on the 2002 crime film Gangs of New York, although no details regarding a network or pilot schedule was released.

NBC is apparently so pleased with Chicago Fire's hot ratings, they're considering a spin-off, but instead of featuring firefighters, it would focus on police officers in Chicago.

Burn Notice is adding Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) for a recurring role in a multi-episode arc, playing a charismastic yet unpredictable former special ops soldier now suspected of running a freelance terrorist ring.

ITV has begun filming the third and final episode, "Endless Night," of the upcoming sixth season of their Miss Marple series starring Julia McKenzie as the popular Agatha Christie sleuth. The other episodes already in the can are "A Caribbean Mystery", adapted from a Miss Marple novel, and "Greenshaw's Folly", based on a Christie short story.

Sherlock producer Steven Moffat has teased that one of the key words for the upcoming third season of the series is "wedding," and we may have more indications of why: the BBC has added British TV veteran Amanda Abbington to the cast in an unidentified recurring role, although it's said to have a "significant impact" on the lives of Sherlock and Watson – and Abbington also happens to be Freeman's longtime real-life partner. Coincidence?

The Ironside remake has added Kenneth Choi (Sons Of Anarchy, Glee, 24) to the cast, playing Captain Ed Rollins, Ironside's supervisor. Blair Underwood was already signed up in the title role of the tough, acerbic police detective relegated to a wheelchair after a shooting.

Season 3 of The Killing just got its premiere date: AMC announced the show will be back this summer on Sunday, June 2. BBC America also announced that the second season of Copper, about an Irish-American cop who seeks justice for the powerless in the notorious Five Points area of New York in 1965, will premiere June 23.

ReelzChannel has acquired U.S. broadcast rights for the Canadian crime drama Cracked. The series stars David
Sutcliffe as Detective Aidan Black, a seasoned officer dealing
with post-traumatic stress disorder, and Stefanie von Pfetten as
psychiatrist Dr. Daniella Ridley, who leaves her prominent position at a
downtown hospital to partner with the police in the newly formed Psych Crimes Unit. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

FX annouunced that Justified will be getting a fifth season. The network also picked up a small-screen adaption of Fargo, based on the Coen Brothers film, as its first limited-run series. Also under development are the movie/limited-run projects Grand Hotel, about an international luxury hotel that becomes the center of a terrorist attack; Mad Dogs, about a deadly reunion in Belize; and Sutton, based on the novel by J.R. Moeringher, based on the most prolific bank robber in
American history.

The fall TV schedules are beginning to firm up, with CBS announcing 14 returning shows. Not included on that listing are the veteran drama Criminal Minds and bubble shows CSI: NY, Vegas, Golden Boy or Rules of Engagement.

Fox released a trailer for Axe Cop, one of the
four quarter-hour series that will launch Fox's late-night alternative
animated programming block Animation Domination High-Def, (premiering July 27). The show is based on the web
comic of the same name, created by five-year-old Malachai Nicolle, who did the
writing, and his 29-year-old brother, Ethan, who drew it, about the adventures of "an axe-wielding police officer and his loyal team of
allies as they fight bad guys."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, visited NPR's Diane Rehm Show.

Beth Rudetsky joined It Matters Radio to talk about combining her music background and passion for reading crime-fiction novels to create a new niche where she composes and sings original songs for author's novels. Her first venture was with UK author Zoe Sharp.

Thriller writer Owen Laukkanen chatted with Minnesota Public Radio about the criminal underground of Minnesota in his second book, Criminal Enterprise.

THEATER

Rupert Holmes' A Time to Kill, based on the novel by John Grisham, is hoping for an October opening on Broadway. The play, about a man who takes the law into his hands following a crime against his daughter, had its world premiere in May 2011 at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Ethan McSweeny directed that version and will also helm the Broadway production.

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