Mystery Melange

 

Sad news from the writing world last week as we bade farewell to several luminaries, among them Scottish author Ian Banks, who wrote in a wide variety of genres including crime fiction; thriller author Vince Flynn (who penned the counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp series); and Joan Parker,
the widow of author Robert B. Parker, who served as co-author of scripts with her husband and was involved with many philantropic
programs.

Congratulations to the nominees for the 2013 Shamus Award. The annual prize is handed out by the Private Eye Writers of America to the best books and stories in the private eye genre. Janet Rudolph has a listing of all the finalists over at her Mystery Fanfare blog.

The theme for this year's Bloody Scotland Short Story Competition is "Bad Luck and Trouble."
The contest is geared toward previously unpublished writers who have a story in English of 3,000 words or under. But hurry—you only have until midnight July 28 to enter. The winner will receive £1,000, a weekend pass to Bloody Scotland 2013 and a bottle of whisky. Two runners up will
win a selection of tickets for events at the conference.

International Crime Month continues with author events at bookstores around the country including R.J. Julia in Connecticut; Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C.; Centuries and Sleuths in Forest Park, Illionois; and 57th Street Books and the American Library Association convention, both in Chicago.

The poem of the week at the 5-2, edited by Gerald So, is "Public Access" by Stephen D. Rogers. Noirboiled Notes also posted its Pulp Poem of the Week by Warren Moore from Broken Glass Waltzes.

John Kenyon, editor of Grift Magazine, said that the publication of the second issue "is imminent."  The issue includes an interview of Les Edgerton, another with Stuart Neville, and a look a the film noir woodcuts of Loren Kantor. There's also new short fiction from Erik Arneson, Jack Bates, Matthew Brozik, Lawrence Buentello, Holly Day, Salvatore Falco, Andy Henion, Davin Ireland, David Keaton, Jon McGoran, Chad Rohrbacher, Helen Maryles Shankman, and Martin Zeigler. While you're waiting, Grift #1 is still available for purchase.

Fans of Icelandic crime fiction should take note that Iceland will host its first crime fiction festival, Iceland Noir, at the Nordic Cultural Centre in Reykjavik on November 23-24. Special guest authors include Anne Cleeves, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, John Curran and Quentin Bates. (Hat tip to Ayo Onatade at Shots Magazine.)

Speaking of Iceland, Reykjavik City Library announced Húsið (The House) by Stefán Máni is the winner of the 2013 Blóðdropinn — Blood Drop Award — for best crime novel of the year. The book will represent Iceland in the annual Glass Key Award competition for best crime novel written by a Nordic author. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Kon-Tiki star Tobias Santelmann is joining the all-star cast of the Brett Ratner-directed Hercules movie. The project is an update of the Greek mythological tale, ditching the supernatural and protraying Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) as a mortal who leads a team of mercenaries on a job where all is ominously not what it appears. Santelmann will play the main villain, Rhesus. The other cast members include Ian McShane, Joseph Fiennes, John Hurt and Rebecca Ferguson.

Millennium Films acquired the spec script Criminal by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg (the team behind The Rock). The story centers on a last-ditch effort to stop a diabolical plot, in which a dead CIA operative's memories, secrets and skills are implanted into an unpredictable and dangerous prison inmate in hopes he will complete the operative’s mission.

Director Paul Feig, whose female buddy-cop comedy The Heat (starring Sandra Bulloch and Jenny McCarthy) opens this week, is also writing, directing and producing a female spy film titled Susan Cooper. Described as a James Bond-inspired spy comedy inspired by Martin Campbell's Casino Royale, the project is being set up as a potential franchise.

TELEVISION

In a tribute to the inconic Tony Soprano mobster role protrayed by James Gandolfini, who died last week, Hollywood Reporter compiled a listing and some videos of "10 Definitive Tony Soprano Moments."

Amazon Studios ordered its first drama pilot, Bosch, based on Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels. The pilot was scripted by Connelly and Treme co-creator Eric Overmeyer, who are also serving as co-producers.

As Omnimystery News reports, Universal Studios has officially optioned the "Locke & Key" series of graphic novels by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez for film.

Reelz Channel announced that its police procedural series King will make its U.S. premiere Friday, July 5 at 10pm ET/ 7pm PT. The show centers on homicide detective Jessica King (played by Amy Price-Francis of The Cleaner), who is the lead investigator of Toronto's Major Crimes Task Force, the unit that handles the most volatile and challenging cases on the streets.

FOX International Channels recently announced a new entrant – FOX Crime, a channel entirely dedicated to crime and investigation. The lineup includes true-crime documentaries and crime dramas such as The Bridge, the Law & Order franchise, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods and a "Classic Crime" block that launches with Magnum, CHIPS and Streets of San Francisco.

The BBC has signed Dr. Who star Jenna-Louise Coleman to play Lydia Wickham, the sister of Pride and Prejudice protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, in the network's adaptation of PD James' sequel novel, Death Comes to Pemberley.

Former Homeland actress Zuleikha Robinson is moving from one CIA drama to another as she joins the cast of the upcoming season of Covert Affairs.

The first two seasons of the CBS drama series Person Of Interest are finally available via digital download through all digital retailers, including iTunes and Amazon Instant Video.

CBS announced its fall 2013 schedule, which continues with its crime drama-heavy lineup pretty much every night of the week. Omnimystery News has a breakdown of the crime shows and their slots.

NBC also released a fall schedule calendar, including the including long-running drama Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire, Grimm and the new drama Blacklist, starring James Spader as an ex-government agent and criminal mastermind.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Joining CBS This Morning last week as a guest was Janet Evanovich, co-author of The Heist (written with Lee Goldberg).

Mystery Melange

The Nero Wolfe Society announced the nominees for the 2013 Nero Award that recognizes excellence in the mystery genre. They include Antiques Disposal by Barbara Allan; Burning Midnight by Loren D. Estleman; Dead Anyway by Chris Knopf; and The Truth of All Things by Kieran Shields. The winner will be announced at the annual Black Orchid Banquet in December. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Authors often pitch in to help raise money for charitable causes, the latest being the Authors Love Teachers OK Tornado Relief Auction. A group of authors and the Bookgasm site are banding together to help students and teachers at the Plaza Towers Elementary School and Briarwood Elementary School affected by the recent EF5 tornado in Oklahoma. You can bid on items through June 30th including autographed books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Max Allan Collins, Ed Gorman, Lou Berney and William Bernhardt, among many others.

Author Tess Gerritsen has also launched a separate charitable appeal, this one for Alzheimer's research, a disease that claimed the life of her father. For every $5 you donate to her GoFundMe campaign, you’ll be entered into a drawing to have a chance to name a character in the next Rizzoli & Isles book. Three runners up will receive a Rizzoli & Isles prize pack that includes a signed copy of Gerritsen's latest book, Last to Die, plus a pair of handcuff earrings and a Rizzoli & Isles baseball cap.

Another new charitable project is the anthology Grand Central Noir for the Amazon Kindle. The anthology was compiled and edited by Terrence McCauley, with stories from I.A. Watson, Charles Salzburg and Jessica Hall, S.A. Soloman, Matt Hilton, Jen Conley, Amy Maurs, R.J. Westerhoff, J. Walt Layne, Kathleen A. Ryan, Silas Donohue, Marcelle Thiebaux, Ron Fortier, Richie Narvaez and Seamus Scanlon. All proceeds go directly to God's Love We Deliver, a non-profit that delivers meals to those in need.

Madison, Wisconins's new Mystery to Me bookstore (which took over from Booked for Murder) held its grand opening last Saturday. As the newspaper Isthmus noted, Mystery to Me plans on adding Skype sessions with authors, using a large flat-screen TV in the store; is partnering with the nearby public library branch to potentially hold events; and will order any book, mystery or not, with each purchase coming with a free "mystery book" wrapped in white paper (for a limited time).

On Wednesday, September 18, Sisters in Crime is sponsoring their annual SinC Into Great Writing workshop in association with Bouchercon. The one-day workshop features Cathy Pickens leading a session on the creative process, including developing, learning to tap into creativity more deeply, and producing creative work more readily; and Bob Dugoni will lead a session on selling your novel.

Seventeen novels by Stuart Palmer are now available as ebooks by MysteriousPress and Open Road Media. Palmer (1901-1968) is best known for his whodunits starring the humorous spinster sleuth/school teacher, Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who solves mysteries, beginning with The Penguin Pool Mysteries in 1931 and continuing for 13 more novels.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Fox 2000 has hired Michael Sucsy to direct the adaptation of Megan Abbott's novel Dare Me. Described as "Heathers meets Fight Club, with teenage cheerleaders," the studio hopes to sign Natalie Portman to star in the film, which Abbott is scripting.

Actor Ray Winstone (of The Departed and Beowulf) has joined fellow stars Sean Penn, Javier Bardem and Idris Elba in Pierre Morel's film, The Gunman. Winstone will take on the role of mentor to a hitman (played by Penn), who is betrayed and then hunted by the organization he worked for.

After the successful Kickstarter project to bring Veronica Mars back from TV cancellation purgatory with a film adaptation, the show creator Rob Thomas announced that many original cast members will be returning, including Jason Dohring, Percy Daggs III, Tina Majorino, Amanda Noret, Sam Huntington and Daran Norris. The series focused on a young woman (Kristen Bell) who moonlighted as a private investigator under the direction of her detective father. The new film is set 10 years after the original timeline.

Vampire Diaries star Joseph Morgan has joined Walton Goggins, Ron Perlman and Nicole Badaan in the film adaptation of Craig Clevenger's cult novel, Dermaphoria. Described as "Memento meets Breaking Bad," the story follows a brilliant chemist (Morgan) who wakes up with amnesia in jail after a drug-lab explosion and has to piece together his memories to find his missing girlfriend, while dodging the cops and bad guys who want the formula buried in his head.

Open Road Films has acquired U.S. rights to the big-screen adaptation of the 2005 thriller Homefront by Chuck Logan. The project is being directed by Gary Fleder from a screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and will star Jason Statham, James Franco, and Winona Ryder. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

TELEVISION

Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan will direct the 100th episode, in which Michael (played by Donovan) returns to Miami to protect his cover, but things don't go as planned after Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) is kidnapped and Michael is forced to reveal his presence to his old crew. Several of the Burn Notice cast spoke about the road to the 100th episode in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

The Hallmark Channel announced that its new primetime series based on Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove novels will debut Saturday, July 20 at 8 PM. Andie MacDowell stars as Judge Olivia Lockhart, whose Cedar Cove Municipal Court "is where the town's surprises and hidden secrets are unveiled."

PBS's Masterpiece Mystery! released a teaser trailer for its Summer 2013 season, which will include three new episodes of Inspector Lewis; Endeavour's first season of four episodes; the return of Foyle's War; and The Lady Vanishes, a new version of the classic Hitchcock film. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

DirecTV announced the renewal of its original crime drama series Rogue for a second season. The story follows Grace Travis (played by Thandie Newton), an undercover detective who doubles as an agent for a powerful crime boss Jimmy Laszlo (Marton Csokas) who she believes will lead her to her son's killer.

ITV has also ordered a third season of the DCI Banks series, starring Stephen Tompkinson as the character created by crime novelist Peter Robinson.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Walter Mosley was a guest on the PBS Newshour show talking about revising his iconic Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins character.

Carl Hiaasen joined the Today Show and NPR's Fresh Air to talk about his latest novel, Bad Monkey.

Paul. D. Brazill, Frank Duffy, K. A. Laity, Laurence Oneal and Richard Sharp talked about books, films, politics, video ganes and more on the inaugural ORF weekly podcast.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker and Oline Cogdill, mystery fiction reviewer and Mystery Scene blogger, joined the radio show On Point with host Tom Ashbrook to discuss Florida crime fiction.

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers of Canada handed out their annual Arthur Ellis Awards for the best in Canadian crime fiction. The award for Best Novel went to Giles Blunt for Until the Night, while the Best Debut Novel was handed out to Simone St. James for The Haunting of Maddy Clare. For the full list of winners, check out the CWC website.

The Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring an upcoming MWA University in Seattle on Saturday, August 11. The one-day workshop features a day of classes taught by experts who discuss their strategies for all facets of writing and publishing, including: "After the Idea" led by Jess Lourey; "Dramatic Structure & Plot,"  led by Kat Richardson; "Setting & Description," with Reed Farrel Coleman; "Character," with Brian Thornton: "Writing as Re-Writing," taught by Daniel J. Hale; and "The Writing Life," with Hank Phillippi Ryan.

There's a new crime fiction festival coming to Adelaide, Australia, called The Body in the Garden, to be held October 25 to 27. The event will feature a line-up of 22+ writers from Australia and overseas, including Swedish crime writer Hakan Nesser, UK author Anne Cleeves, and Australians Gabrielle Lord, Paul Bangay, Fabian Capomollo and Mat Pember. This is unusual in that it's a free festival and will be held (as the name suggests) at the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

This week's story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Cinderella Myth" from Sandra Seamans, who also operates the very useful and informative My Little Corner blog, with resources and information about markets for short crime fiction.

This month's issue of Suspense magazine includes interviews with Chevy Stevens, Jeffrey Archer, Alafair Burke, Hank Steinberg, Dean James and debut author John Mulhall. Plus, Anthony J. Franze continues his Rules of Fiction with bestselling author Michael Connelly and Lisa Gardner continues her series from the writers toolbox, helping all writers master their craft.

This week's Q&A roundup includes former news cameraman Jon Steele, whose noir fantasy Angelus trilogy tells the story of a high-end call girl and a British tough guy who find themselves in a war between angels and demons; Andy Rivers is the lastest "Short Sharp Interivew" with Paul D. Brazill; and Joanna Campbell Slan joined Omnimystery News to talk about her mystery series featuring literary character Jane Eyre.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Before I move on to this week's "Media Murder" news, I have a correction to make from last week. Although the Internet (Deadline, CinemaBlend, DigitalSpy, Hollywood Reporter, et al.) was abuzz with the report about a movie titled Depravity that was based on a Dennis Lehane script was in production, this is apparently news to Dennis Lehane. In 2010, he noted in an interview that he had no idea about the project, and yet his name is still attached to it in 2013. After checking with a Lehane representative, I can verify that the author has never written such a script, and his name being associated with the project is completely untrue.

Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired the North American rights to the dark comedy crime caper Dom Hemingway, starring Jude Law as a safecracker known for his profane and dangerous ways.

Paramount Pictures acquired film rights to The Testing, a YA novel by Joelle Charbonneau about a group of the best and brightest high school graduates in a post-apocalyptic U.S., who are put through a series of tests to determine whether they have what it takes to become the leaders of future generations.

Sony Pictures and producer Neil Moritz optioned remake rights to A Prophet, the French film about a young man’s rise to the top of a crime syndicate. The original film earned a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee in 2010 and won Grand Prize at Cannes and nine César Awards in France.

Javier Bardem is taking another villainous role, starring opposite Sean Penn in the international assassin thriller The Gunman, from Taken director Piere Morel.

Christoph Waltz has signed to star in True Crimes, a project based on a feature by David Grann in The New Yorker about the case of Krystian Bala, a Polish writer who was convicted of murder in 2007.

Kirsten Vangsness and Joe Mantegna of Criminal Minds are the latest Hollywood celebrities to take to Kickstarter to try to fund pet projects. The CM duo hope to turn the 2009 stage production of the comedy noir Kill Me, Deadly! into a feature film.

In an article roundup of casting additions, Deadline reported that Ken Howard and David Krumholtz have joined Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall in The Judge, a film about the murder trial of Judge Joseph Palmer (Duvall) who is defended by his estranged attorney son (Downey); and Max Ryan has landed a role oin Tokarev with Nicolas Cage and Danny Glover, playing a woman who aids a reformed crook in finding the Russian mobsters who kidnapped his daughter.

TV

MRC and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company are adapting the historical fiction/gritty crime/sci-fi novel The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. The story follows a serial killer who uses a house in Depression-era Chicago to time travel, but has to kill "shining girls," or those with talent and potential, in order to keep traveling.

ITV has ordered a second season of Endeavour, the prequel series to the long-running Inspector Morse based on crime novels by Colin Dexter, with Shaun Evans playing the Inspector as a younger man. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Bridget Regan will appear in a 10-episode arc on USA's White Collar, playing a beautiful rare book scholar who becomes entangled with Neal's (Matt Bomer) latest con and Neal himself.

Christina Ricci has signed on to play Lizzie Borden,
the woman who was accused of killing her stepmother and father with a
hatchet in 1892. The untitled made-for-TV will appear on Lifetime,
although the broadcast date hasn't been set.

BBC America released a "launch trailer" for the upcoming third season of Luther, starring Idris Elba stars as DCI John Luther. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO
 
Jason Matthews, a 33-year veteran of the C.I.A and author of the debut spy thriller Red Sparrow, was a guest on CBS This Morning.

Suspense radio featured James Tabor, David Morrell and Hank Steinberg on June 1st and also a one on one with John Lansing as part of the new Partners in Crime author tour radio series.

Lee Goldberg is the first guest on "Pulp Friction with Paul Levine, " chatting out his new book The Heist, co-written with Janet Evanovich.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

There has been much speculation (and some false reports, alas) of who the director for the next Bond movie will be, but it appears that Skyfall's Sam Mendes may still be in the running, after all. Mendes wanted to do Bond 24, but had prior theater commitments that had seemed to be too much of a conflict.

Katharine McPhee (star of the recently-cancelled Smash) is joining the cast of Depravity, a thriller with a script by Dennis Lehane, and Paul Tamasy on board to direct. The plot follows a  group of roommates who accidentally kill an innocent man they thought was a thrill killer.

Michael C. Hall (who played the serial killer in Dexter) landed the lead role in Cold In July, the adaptation of Joe Lansdale's cult novel. He plays Richard Dane, who shoots and kills an armed burglar in his living room, a move that seems like self defense to everyone but the burglar's father, who vows an eye-for-an-eye justice.

Glenn Close has signed on to play a major role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, potentially as the top cop who heads up Nova Corp, the intergalactic space patrol. In other casting news for the film, Doctor Who's Karen Gillan has been signed to play the lead female villain.

A mere week after it was announced that Tom Cruise was exiting the Man From Uncle film adaptation, it appears that Henry Cavill is the leading candidate to replace him in the role of spy Napoleon Solo.

If you're in San Francisco in mid-June, check out San Francisco's Silent Film Festival, which is airing the first nine films by Alfred Hitchcock with musical accompaniment. The films were recently restored by the British Film Institute and include the film the director considered "the first true Hitchcock picture," The Lodger.

Also in June, the Turner Classic Movies television network is airing Friday Night Noir, with Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation hosting the 16 films scheduled during the month.

Josh Brolin is one of the latest stars to sign on to the cast of Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's film adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon detective novel. The other is Katherine Waterson, who will play one of the female leads, a "free-spirited hippie chick." Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, and Jena Malone are already on board, with Sean Penn also reportedly in talks.

Drafthouse Films has picked up North American rights to the film Borgman, the first Dutch film in the Cannes Film Festival's competition lineup in almost 40 years. The thriller is described as "an allegorical tale exploring the nature of evil in unexpected places. A vagrant enters the lives of an upper-class family, igniting a descent from darkly comic dream to maddening psychological nightmare."

Warner Brothers released a trailer for Prisoners, about two neighborhood girls who go missing.The cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal as a police detective and Hugh Jackman as the father of one of the girls who kidnaps the main suspect  (Paul Dano) with the goal of making him reveal where the girls are.

TV

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys is taking on the role of Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy in a new BBC adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley, a sequel novel by crime writer PD James.

BBC Two's new crime drama The Fall, starring former X-Files star Gillian Anderson as an FBI agent after a serial killer, premiered earlier this month and has done so well, the network quickly renewed it for a second season.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Tracy Letts is being promoted to a regular cast spot on Homeland. The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning actor/playwright plays the role of Senator Andrew Lockhart, the powerful Committee Chairman.

NBC announced that the serial-killer drama Hannibal is getting a second season on the network.The series is based on characters from Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and the working relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen)

British actress Ashley Davenport is leaving ABC's Revenge due to her option not being picked up. She joins fellow regular Connor Paolo, who also won't be returning for the third season.

Skipp Sudduth (The Good Wife) has joined the cast of the Cinemax pilot Quarry, about a Marine marksman who joins a network of contract killers after returning home from Vietnam and being shunned by the public. Sudduth will play the father of Logan Marshall Green's leading man.

THEATER

Via Martin Edwards comes a review of the Agatha Christie-penned play, Go Back For Murder, which began a run at the Regent Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent last week. The production is from the Agatha Christie Theatre Company and continues through June 1st at the theatre before taking the show on the road.