Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sony Pictures acquired film rights to the David Baldacci YA fantasy thriller novel The Finisher, which follows a 14-year-old girl in the downtrodden village Wormwood, supposedly surrounded by a forest full of monsters. When the girl's mentor disappears and leaves a secret message about a way out, she discovers that the village is built on dangerous lies.

20th Century Fox has picked up the film rights to Michael Koryta's Those Who Wish Me Dead, even though it won't be published until May 2014. The storyline follows a teenager who witnesses a brutal murder and
is forced to flee into the Montana wilderness for his own protection,
while two assassins follow him as a raging forest fire
consumes the landscape around them. (Hat tip to Omnimystry News.)

Endgame and TWC-Dimension are teaming up for the action-comedy Murder Mystery, scripted by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man), directed by Anne Fletcher (The Proposal) and starring Charlize Theron. The plots follows a married couple on the honeymoon they never had in hopes of saving their struggling marriage, but soon find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery when one of their fellow cruise passengers is found dead. 

Justified's Walton Goggins has signed on to William Monahan's thriller Mojave. The film tells the story of “a near-suicidal artist who escapes into the desert to take an existential crisis head-on, only to encounter a doppelgänger-like antagonist in the form of a brilliant, homicidal drifter."

Former Lubbock Police Chief Thomas Nichols's crime novel Color of the Prism is the basis for a Quentin Tarantin film coming out in December. The story deals with narcotics investigations along the Mexican border.

Fox Searchlight released a trailer for Dom Hemingway, due in theaters next April 4. The crime comedy from writer and director Richard Shepard follows Jude Law playing a notorious safe-cracker back on the streets of London looking for what he’s owed after spending 12 years in prison for keeping his mouth shut.

An extended trailer was also released for director Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, a sci-fi thriller starring Scarlett Johansson as a sexual predator, which is based on the novel by Michael Faber.

TELEVISION

Following the successful NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS is planning yet another spinoff series, this one set in New Orleans. The new show will be introduced in a two-part NCIS episode air in the spring. 

CBS has given a series order to a detective drama from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and House creator David Shore, titled Battle Creek. The series follows two detectives with very different world views who are paired up in Battle Creek, Michigan, and will debut with 13 episodes in 2014.

Martin Freeman has joined the cast of the small-screen adaptation of Fargo, playing the role inspired by William H. Macy's character in the 1996 film. (We're fine with that, as long as it gives him time to work on future Sherlock episodes.)

CBS has renewed Unforgettable for a third season. The once-canceled-then-picked-up-again series has received a new 13-episode third season order, and will return in summer 2014.

CBS also gave the greenlight to a drama project from NCIS: LA creator/showrunner Shane Brennan and video game writer Jesse Stern (Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 1&2). Titled Insecurity, the premise centers on an obsessive compulsive former Federal Agent turned Head of
Security at a Boston art museum who uses his unique professional and
personal background — he was raised by criminals — to help solve complex
local and federal cases across the country.

FX announced it's renewing The Bridge for a second season, to premiere next summer. The show stars Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger as two detectives, one from the U.S. and one from Mexico, who must work together to hunt down a serial killer operating on both sides of the border

ABC has greenlighted a modern-day Houdini procedural from Mandeville, the production company behind the Monk series. That's not the only Mandeville project in the works, however; as Hollywood Reporter notes they also have a high-tech thriller from Danish writer Stefan Jaworski, a military hospital drama, and a mother-daughter crime-solving duo procedural from Castle's David Grae.

TNT has ordered a pilot for an untitled action thriller written by Blake Herron (The Bourne Identity), described as "National Treasure meets The Bourne Identity." It follows an employee in a government position, created by the founding fathers but
unknown to the public, who serves the Vice President and is called upon
to protect the country when traditional methods to solve a crisis either
aren't working or won't work.

The CW has bought an titled conspiracy drama from with Nikita's Albert Kim and executive producer Eva Longoria's UnbeliEVAble Entertainment. The story revolves around a woman unfairly imprisoned for a double
murder who earns her law degree behind bars then joins the high-powered law firm she
believes is at the center of the conspiracy that framed her.

Spartacus executive producers Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing are developing a project titled Gringo for Starz, based on the real-life story of a U.S. immigration officer about a Mexican-American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who infiltrates one of Mexico's most deadly crime cartels.

Omnimystery News reported that the BBC has ordered the crime drama River from Abi Morgan, who won an Emmy Award this year for her work on BBC Two's The Hour. The story follows the brilliant police officer John River, whose state of mind borders on the pathological due to being haunted by the murder victims whose cases he must lay to rest.

NBC has ordered its first pilot for the 2014-15 season, described as a a "Traffic-like thriller" that centers on three families torn apart when a stranded female soldier, a disillusioned corporate attorney and a disrespected political activist are pulled into the same shocking international military conspiracy.

Fox won a bidding war to land the new series Gotham, from Warner Bros. TV and The Mentalist creator Bruno Heller. It explores the origin stories of Batman's Commissioner James Gordon and the villains who made Gotham City famous. In Gotham, Gordon is still a detective with the Gotham City Police Department and has yet to meet Batman (who won't be part of the series).

ABC has ordered a pilot for The Good Thief’s Guide, a drama series project from Bones creator/executive producer Hart Hanson and Andrew Miller, based on the bestselling book series by British author Chris Ewan. The story follows the charming and unpredictable Charlie Howard as he travels the world, blogging about his adventures while stealing for fun and profit.

Mystery Melange

It's always hard to say good-bye to beloved authors in the crime fiction community, but last week we lost another fine writer when Robert Barnard passed away. Martin Edwards has a nice remembrance of his friendship with Barnard over on his blog.

Another Bouchercon mystery conference has come and gone, but that means we now have the winners of the awards presented there, including the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Shamus Awards. You can check out the winners via the Recent Mystery Awards link on the top right-hand side of this blog.

The Crime Writers’ Association and the Margery Allingham Society are launching a competition for previously unpublished short stories with a top prize of £1,000. The contest is open to anyone in the world aged over 18, as long as stories are written in English and under the word limit of 3,500 words. Stories must be submitted by March 2014, with the winner announced at Crimefest in May in Bristol. (Editorial note: there is an entry fee.)

Over at the GeoCurrents website, Asya Pereltsvaig compiled an interesting geographical study on crime rates versus detective fiction, in a state-by-state comparison. It's a fun look at where crime novels are set, showing disparities in settings versus real life statistics. Plus, you can check out where your state stands.

Speaking of geographical fiction, if you've been thinking of getting acquainted with the popular Nordic crime scene, Barry Forshaw compiled his list of the "Top 10 Nordic Classics."

The Q&A roundup this week includes Jeffery Deaver, which is actually a transcription of the speech he gave at the recent Creatures, Crime and Creativity Conference; Richard Lange joined Fiction Writers Review to talk about his literary crime novels, including his latest, Angel Baby; Hank Phillippi Ryan chatted with Kiss and Thrill about The Other Woman; Carla Norton joined My Bookish Ways to talk about her writing and her latest book, The Edge of Normal; and thriller author Barry Eisler was interviewed for the Huffington Post.

Why do some libraries have that "library smell"? According to Popular Science, it's all in the cellulose.

Sorry, librarians. If you were hoping to compete for the title of "cutest librarian," this bow-tie-wearing candidate is a lock.

Fall for the Book

The annual Fall for the Book at George Mason University and other locales in northern Virginia kicked off yesterday and continues through Friday. The festival includes a number of mystery-related events culminating in the presentation of the Mason Award to bestselling thriller writer David Baldacci by Donna Andrews. Here are some of the other upcoming crime fiction highlights:

• Mystery writer Edith McClintock, author of Monkey Love and Murder 
• Mystery writer Charles Todd (Charles and Caroline both!), discussing Proof of Guilt
• Novelists A.X. Ahmad, author of The Caretaker, and Sujata Massey, author of the Rei Shimura mysteries and the new historical novel The Sleeping Dictionary
• Author Daniel Stashower author of The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Abraham Lincoln Before the Civil War, which explores how the famed Allan Pinkerton joined forces with the nation’s first female detective to foil an assassination attempt on the president in 1861
• A panel featuring members of Mystery Writers of America, including Ellen Crosby, Allison Leotta, Brad Parks, and David O. Stewart.

But there is a wide variety of other authors and poets who will be on hand, as well as additional awards including the Fairfax Prize to be given to Dave Barry; the Busboys and Poets Award to be handed out to Sonia Sanchez; and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, with Cheryl Strayed as the honoree. Also helping out this year, is the thriving indie bookstore One More Page, which will host some of the festivities. Best of all,  events are free and open to the public.

 

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

New Regency has optioned Alan Glynn's Wall Street murder thriller Graveland for film, with Brian Koppelman (Runner Runner, Ocean's Thirteen, Runaway Jury) to pen the adapted screenplay, and David Levien on board to direct. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Cate Blanchett has chosen an adaptation of Herman Koch's psychological thriller novel The Dinner for her directorial debut. The story centers on two couples at fancy restaurant and the problems that ensue when they try to talk about their
teenage sons who are under investigation for a horrific act they committed.

Model-actress Emily Ratajkowski is nearing a deal to play Ben Affleck's mistress in David Fincher's adaptation of  the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Kelsey Grammer is in final talks to replace Nicolas Cage in The Expendables 3, playing an ex-mercenary named Bonaparte who helps Sylvester Stallone’s team complete their mission

Teresa Palmer and Luke Hemsworth will round out the ensemble cast of the Aussie crime thriller Kill Me Three Times, to be directed by Kriv Stenders (Red Dog).  Already on board are actors Simon Pegg, Sullivan Stapleton, Alice Braga, Bryan Brown, and Callan Mulvey, in the story that centers on a singer in a surfer town who is the link between three tales of murder, blackmail, and revenge.

Magician, documentarian, and writer Penn Jillette is hoping to crowd-fund a psycho-comic-thriller. He's teamed up with director Adam Rifkin, creator of the dark Showtime mockumentary Reality Show, for a project titled Director’s Cut, which is a movie-in-a-movie about obsessive stalking.

TELEVISION

NBC put in a development order for an untitled drama based on the novel Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay, with screenwriter Matt Venne (A&E's Bag Of Bones) on board to adapt the story for the small screen.

TNT gave the go ahead to the crime drama Murder in the First from Steven Bochco. The project is set in San Francisco and follows a single case across an entire season, centered on Terry English (Taye Diggs) and Hildy Mulligan (Kathleene Robertson) as they investigate the murder of an apparent drug addict.

Meanwhile, TNT canceled King & Maxwell, its freshman private eye series starring Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn, after just one season.

BBC America canceled its period police drama Copper after its second season. The series, which marked the network's first foray into original scripted drama, started out strong in the ratings, but has dropped viewership since. However, co-creator/executive producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and Tom Kelly are considering a movie version.

Marvel is adapting Agent Carter for a potetial TV series. Agent Carter takes place a year after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger and follows Steve Rogers' (Chris Evans) girlfriend Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) as she builds her career as a secret agent while the hero is frozen in ice.

Hulu has inked a deal with BBC Worldwide North America to bring some of the Beeb's iconic TV shows to the service, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sherlock and Luther.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week's Crime and Science podcast via Suspense radio featured Jan Burke and Leslie Klinger talking about the "Science of Sherlock Holmes": what influenced Holmes's scientific and investigative methods? And what influence has Holmes had on forensic science and criminal investigation?

Bestselling author Louise Penny was interviewed on CBC News about her "unexpected career" in crime fiction and her hero, Armand Gamache.

James Patterson joined CBS This Morning to talk about his latest co-authored novel Treasure Hunters and his $1 million fund to help independent bookstores.

The Tartan Noir panel at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival is available for viewing at ABC TV Big Ideas. The session features Scottish crime writers Doug Johnstone and Liam Mcilvanney talking about what "tartan noir" means and the history of Scottish crime writing.

THEATER

Laurence Fox and Jack Huston are set to star in Strangers on a Train,
the new stage adaptation by Craig Warner of Patricia Highsmith's novel of the
same name. Performances will begin at the West End's Gielgud Theatre
Nov. 2.

Omnimystery News reports that mystery novelist Peter James's 2010 novella The Perfect Murder has been adapted for the theater in a production starring Les Dennis as Victor Smiley. The plot follows Smiley and his long-term wife who are bored with each other, leading to affairs and thoughts of murder. A Perfect Murder will open on tour in the the UK at the Dartford Orchard Theater on Saturday, January 11th.

GAMES

A new trailer was released by Her Interactive for the 29th Nancy Drew mystery game, The Silent Spy for both PC and Mac platforms, expected to begin shipping in mid-October 2013.

Mystery Melange

The Wolfe Pack announced that Chris Knopf's Dead Anyway was this year's winner of the Nero Award. The other finalists included Antiques Disposal, by Barbara Allan; Truth of All Things, by Kieran Shields; and Burning Midnight, by Loren D. Estleman. The presentation will take place on December 7 at the traditional Black Orchid Banquet. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Speaking of prizes, this one is a bit of a shocker: the Man Booker prize, which is to the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries what the Pulitzer Prize for Literature is to the U.S., announced it is opening its submission process to books written by American authors. As you can imagine, it's a controversial move.

The Bloody Scotland conference announced that Malcolm Mackay won the 2013 Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year award for his second novel, How a Gunman Says Goodbye. The other finalists were Dead Water, by Ann Cleeves; Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris; The Red Road, by Denise Mina; The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid; and Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)

Here's an interactive project in which anyone can participate: Tweet (using #youdunnit) your ideas for a mystery story, on everything from the victim's name to the actual crime, through this Friday, September 20th. Crime writers Nicci French, Tim Weaver, and Alistair Gunn will then create their own stories based on the suggestions, with free digital and print versions available as a tie-in at the annual Specsavers Crime Fiction Awards in October.

Issue #14 of the award-winning noir journal, Crime Factory, has hit the virtual stands, available in digital, print and PDF formats. Peter Dragovich discusses Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford; Andrew Prentice interviews legendary writer, Peter Corris, author of the Cliff Hardy series; Tom Darin Liskey brings in some true crime reportage from his time as a journalist in Venezuela; Benjamin Welton dissects Georges Franju's overlooked masterpiece Nuits Rouges; John Harrison picks apart the Charles Manson pulps; and the fiction section is jammed-packed with stories from Kevin Burton Smith,
DeLeon DeMicoli, Michael M. B. Galvin, Robert James Russell, and Ryan K.
Lindsay.

The William F Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program is now accepting
submissions for grants to be awarded at Malice Domestic 26
in 2014. Two winners will receive grants in the amount
of $1500 plus comprehensive registration for Malice 27. Submissions are being accepted now through November 15th, 2013.For submission guidelines and complete information regarding the Malice Grants Program website.

The American Comparative Literature Association is soliciting papers for its 2014 conference on the topic of "The Global Detective." The seminar hopes to include papers that explore detective
stories, novellas, and novels from a variety of critical angles. For more information and suggested topics, check out the ACLA site.

 

Altus Press announced a new line to their pulp fiction reprints, called The Dime Detective Library. Each issues will showcase one of the hard-boiled characters that ran in the pages of Dime Detective Magazine over the course of its 20 year history. Seven releases will be included in the first batch this fall, with introductions by pulp historian Ed Hulse.  (Hat tip to Bish's Beat.)

Mega-bestselling author James Patterson is donating $1 million to help independent bookstores, providing those stores also include a children's section. Patterson has supported several literacy programs aimed at kids in the past.

This week's crime poem over at the 5-2 is "A Typical Night in Western Hill" by Terry Trowbridge, and the weekly Beat to a Pulp offering is "Fair Warning" from Hilary Davidson.

The editors of Mystery Scene magazine are putting the finishing touches on the Fall Issue #131. Highlights include an interview with British crime writer Mark Billingham, creator of Detective Inspector Tom Thorne; an appreciation of Margaret Maron, whose long-running Judge Deborah Knott series (The Bootlegger's Daughter, etc.) offer a panoramic portrait of her beloved North Carolina; a look back at Elmore Leonard; Tom Nolan highlights five overlooked authors you should be reading right now; and Kevin Burton Smith looks at the promising future of private-eye fiction.

Mystery Scene online also brought to my attention an art exhibit in the UK that is affiliated with the annual Agatha Christie festival in Devon, held this year from September 15-22. The exhibit features work originally created for the festival in 2010, including many that have thematic tie-ins to various Christie novels.

The Q&A roundup includes two interviews that come to us via Crime Fiction Lover, Jo Nesbo, talking about his latest novel, Police, and Karen Sandler, who's penned YA novels, talks about her new private eye novel; and Noir Nation's Eddie Vega and Absolutely Kate joined the blog A Knife and a Quilll to chat about the 'zine and noir fiction.

Author R&R - Geoffrey Girard

In Reference to Murder welcomes Geoffrey Girard for the latest "Author R&R" (Research and Reference) segment. Geoffrey was born in Germany and raised in New Jersey, earning a degree in literature from Washington College. He is currently the English Department Chair at a famed private boys' high school and also an award-winning author whose works have appeared in several best-selling anthologies and magazines.

Geoffrey's techno-thriller novel Cain's Blood and an accompanying spinoff novel for teens, Project Cain, were just published by Simon & Schuster. Both novels are based on Girard's novella Cain XP11, which ran as four installments in Apex Digest in 2007, and both deal with a secret U.S. Department of Defense project. 

In Cain's Blood, the government scientists use DNA from the world's most notorious serial killers to clone dozens of young men who have no clue as to their evil heritage. Playing a twisted game of nature vs. nurture, scientists raise some of the clones with loving families and others in abusive circumstances. But everything changes when the most dangerous boys are set free by their creator.

Here's Geoffrey's take on the inspiration and research behind the novels:

 

My favorite part of writing has always been the research.  (A genetic bent, perhaps, from my historian father?)  I once wrote an entire book (Tales of the Eastern Indians) because I felt I didn’t know enough about Native Americans and read for a year before writing a single word.

Cain’s Blood and Project Cain (about, in short, cloned serial killers) became my excuse to study everything from the early lives of serial killers to posttraumatic stress disorder. The genetics of violence to statistics of crime. Modern cloning capabilities and laws. Military scientific tests, human-rights violations, and subsequent cover-ups. All very interesting topics told through books, articles, taped interviews, etc.

The trick was (and always is) not to get lost in all that research. While the teen version of the book (Project Cain) is meant more as an “Intro to Serial Killers 101” for readers new to these men, both novels are (or should be) stories about people. And any research achieved needed to go toward that. How does that “fact” help shape a specific character? How does that new technical paper affect a character’s knowledge or reaction/attitude?

Jeff Jacobson is the teenaged clone of Jeffrey Dahmer, so I needed to know Dahmer pretty well. Many books, articles and taped interviews later, I felt I did. Of particular interest were an autobiography by Dahmer’s father and My Friend Dahmer, a graphic novel by a high-school friend.  Because these books discussed Jeff as a teen. I watched hours of tape of in-jail Dahmer. Studied the voice, delivery, mannerisms. How many would he have had at sixteen? How many were genetic in nature? His emotional detachment was, I believe, mostly physiological. How would that look/sound in the 16 year old version? Now I started to imagine this kid. I started to imagine Dahmer in a different place and time. Had (I admit) an old photo of Dahmer as a little kid as my laptop background for a couple weeks. Kept thinking about THAT kid. Before it all went so wrong. That’s the kid I now wanted to write about. Jeff Jacobson was born. I could not have written a word of Jeff Jacobson’s story until I’d done my research first. He just would have become some lame version of ME as a kid. And my kid problems were not the same as Dahmer’s – or Jeff Jacobson’s. For this character to become “real,” I had to fill my head with facts and slowly let the boy within all those facts start to take shape. Add in a dash of studying several real-life teens and Poof! It was like Pinocchio springing to life. There was no stopping him.

Castillo, the main protagonist in Cain’s Blood, was another guy who needed some research before I let him get into too much trouble. Again, he’s not me. I never served in the military, still can’t throw a proper punch, and PTSD wasn’t something to just dress him up some. It was, for me, an important piece in the books’ exploration of Nature versus Nurture. So, I read half a dozen books by vets with PTSD. I talked to real vets about war and coming home. Scoured for the latest books and articles on the treatment our vets are really getting and the most-effective solutions to recovery. Watched countless military training videos on various forms of combat fighting. [Did I still mistakenly call his magazines “clips” a few times, yes. (Learned that one too late!)] But, again, I didn’t let Castillo loose until I’d done my research and combined much of what I’d found with some qualities of real people I know into my new “real” character.

Real people are the products of the facts around us. We live in – are nurtured within -- a world driven by statistics, dates, physical evidence, and narrative history. In what ways has your character been defined by the times and places you’ve lived? The statistics and facts that have touched your life seemingly from afar? It is in those same ways we should hope to help best imbue our characters.

 

To read more about Geoffrey and the novels, and for ordering information, check out his website. You can also follow him on Twitter (@Geoffrey_Girard) and Facebook.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The crime-thriller The Keys to the Street, based on Ruth Rendell's 1996 novel, is closer to reality. It was originally to be a Christopher Nolan project, but has been in limbo after Nolan took a pass. Czech film-maker Julius Sevcik has come on board to direct, with Gemma Arterton and Tim Roth in the lead roles. The story follows a young woman who moves into an exclusive central London home to escape her violent boyfriend but discovers that a series of murders are taking place in the surrounding area.

Dreamsworks acquired an untitled pitch to be penned by Matt Charman that tells the true story of James Donovan. Donovan was an American attorney thrust
into the center of the Cold War after being tasked by the CIA to slip
past the Berlin Wall and negotiate the release of downed
U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers.

20th Century Fox released a new trailer for the upcoming  drug trafficking thriller The Counselor, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel and starring Javier Barden and Michael Fassbender.

TELEVISION

AMC and Sony Pictures Television announced that a long-rumored spinoff of Breaking Bad is going forward. Better Call Saul will feature Bob Odenkirk reprising his role as Saul, the unethical lawyer who represented the meth dealers Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. The concept is seen as a prequel rather than a sequel to Saul's character in the Breaking Bad series.

It's barely been a month since the news that Katherine Heigl was cast in an untitled CIA drama pilot, and now comes word that NBC has picked up the project. Heigl will play a key CIA analyst whose job it is to debrief and strategize with the president on the most pressing global and national matters.

FX is developing an American Psycho sequel series, moving the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel to the small screen. The series would center on a modern-day Patrick Bateman, now in his 50s, as he takes on a protégé to create a next generation American Psycho.

Ben Affleck is taking to the small screen to serve as director for a mob drama on Fox. The period drama The Middle Man is set in 1960s Boston and focuses on FBI agent Rudy MacAteer and his informant,
Irish-American mobster Mickey Flood, as MacAteer finds himself beginning to bend the
rules.

NCIS executive producer Gary Glasberg says that Cote de Pablo's character — Ziva David — will receive a "heart-wrenching" farewell that promises to resolve her storyline and be a "moment in television history." NCIS returns Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. on CBS.

Omnimystery News reported that Fox has ordered a pilot script for Frayed, a drama adaptation of the Dutch miniseries Bellicher (itself based on the novel The Power of Mr. Miller by Charles den Tex). The American version follows an arrogant corporate consultant who gets embroiled in a conspiracy forcing him to go on the run and turn for help to a paranoid former NSA agent.

USA renewed its summer crime drama Graceland for a second season. The show follows a group of undercover agents sharing a beach house and stars Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata.

Grant Gustin of Glee fame has landed the role of Barry Allen in the CW Network's series Flash, which will also serve as a backdoor pilot and potential Flash spinoff for the character. Barry Allen is described a "Central City assistant police forensic investigator who arrives in Starling to look into a series of unexplained robberies that may have a connection to a tragedy in his past."

Danny Glover is set to guest star on the new Ironside series remake for NBC. He'll play the father of wheelchair-bound Detective Robert Ironside.

Endemol Studios has acquired the English-language rights for a US adaptation of the French crime drama Engrenages. The popular series, which is in its fifth season in France and has been renewed for a sixth, is centered on the lives of a prosecutor, police captain, judge, and lawyer.

TNT released a new teaser poster and trailer for its upcoming 1940s Los Angeles-set crime drama, Mob City, which premieres on December 4th at 10 PM ET/PT. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Sue Grafton appeared on NPR's On Point, talking about her latest book in the Kinsey Milhone series, W Is for Wasted.

This week on Pulped! The Official New Pulp Podcast, host Tommy Hancock interviewed author David Foster, the man behind the Permission to Kill blog, as they chatted about his writing, the spy genre, and a lot more.

Conferences Heating Up for 2014

It's really hard for me to believe that summer is almost over, which also means that we're reaching the home stretch for the crime fiction conferences for the year (although there are several still ahead, including Bouchercon). But in updating my Upcoming Conferences page for this blog, I noted that more conferences have posted their websites and rosters a bit earlier than usual, and there's a lot to look forward to. Here are some of the notables:

February 7-9, 2014
Love is Murder Mystery Conference
Chicago, IL
Featured authors include Jamie Freveletti, Heather Graham, Peter Kornbluh, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Marcus Sakey, and Local Featured Author, Shane Gericke.

February 13-16, 2014
San Francisco Writers Conference
San Francisco, CA
Guests include Rhys Bowen and Cara Black

February 27 – March 2, 2014
Sleuthfest
Orlando, FL
Special Guests: Laura Lippman, Ace Atkins, Hank Philippi Ryan

March 20-23, 2014
Left Coast Crime
Monterey, CA
Lifetime Achievement Award to Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini; US Guest of Honor: Cara Black; International Guest of Honor: Louise Penny; "G" is for Guest!: Sue Grafton; Toastmaster: Brad Parks: Fan Guest of Honor: Sue Trowbridge; Ghost of Honor: Colin Wilcox

May 2-4, 2014
Malice Domestic
Bethesda, MD
Guest of Honor: Kathy Lynn Emerson; Toastmaster: Earlene Fowler; Fan Guest of Honor: Audrey Reith; Lifetime Achievement Award: Dorothy Cannell; Lifetime Achievement Award: Joan Hess; Lifetime Achievement Award: Margaret Maron

May 14-18, 2014
RT Booklovers Convention
New Orleans, LA
Special Guests include Tess Gerritsen, Charlaine Harris, and many more

May 14-18, 2014
CrimeFest
Bristol, UK
Participating authors include Ruth Dudley Edwards, Christopher Fowler, Peter James, Laura Wilson and many more.

June 6-8, 2014
Bloody Words
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Canadian Guest of Honor: Vicky Delaney; International Guest of Honor: Paul C. Doherty; Master of Ceremonies: Merlodie Campbell

It's not too early to start planning your conference stops for next year, plus several conferences offer discounts for early-bird registrations.

Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association handed out their annual Ned Kely Awards last week. The award for Best Fiction went to Blackwattle Creek by Geoffrey McGeachin; Zane Lovitt won the prize for Best First Fiction for The Midnight Promise; the nod for True Crime went to The People Smuggler by Robin de Crespigny; and the Sandra Harvey Award for Short Fiction was won by Roger Vickery.

Actress Angela Lansbury has had a long and varied career in film, television and the theater, but to many fans in the crime fiction community, she'll always be Jessica Fletcher on Murder She Wrote. On November 16, she'll join Steve Martin and Piero Tosi in being presented with Honorary Academy Awards during the 5th annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Hollywood & Highland
Center. The awards pay tribute to individuals "who've made indelible contributions in their respective fields."

Shotgun Honey is out with its second anthology of short crime fiction, titled RELOADED: Both Barrels Vol. 2. There are offerings from 25 writers of crime, noir and hard boiled fiction. You can download the ebook version or grab a paperback copy right here.

The week, Gerald So's 5-2 Crime Poetry ezine celebrates the start of its third year with Hartford, Connecticut teacher Tiffany Washington reading her poem "Day 7."

Needle magazine is open for submissions again. I was fortunate to work with Steve Weddle on the Winter 2012 issue with one of my stories and attest that this is a terrific market for dark crime and noir stories (averaging around 2,500 words each).

Dynamite Entertainment is publishing a five-issue comic featuring Sherlock Holmes's arch-nemesis Professor James Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives, written by crime novelist David Liss and illustrated by Daniel Indro. As Liss said, "I've always liked the idea of taking a villain and turning him into the hero of the story, just getting a
different perspective." The first issue comes out in December of this year. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

The first all-digital library in the U.S. opens this week. The BiblioTech Digital Library in San Antonio, Texas, wil have six hundred e-readers and over ten thousand eBooks available at first. The library is based in a predominately Hispanic, low-income neighborhood, where 75% of the population lacks Internet access,

If you've been waiting for a Netflix for ebooks, the new venture Oyster wants to help—at least, eventually. In the short term, it's invitation only, with limited offerings available on only one platform (Apple). It remains to be seen how the program will fare as it continues to develop, but it's something to keep an eye on.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Kate Quinn, who joins Mystery Lovers' Kitchen to talk about her historical series detailing the early years of the Borgia clan and offers up a peach dish borrowed from a
Renaissance menu.

Is all the talk about NSA invasive spying on Americans making you nervous? If you're in New York this month, hop on over to the New Museum. They opened a temporary Privacy
Gift Shop featuring clothing and
accessories that protect against various methods of surveillance.

Mystery Without Murder

Although the phrase "murder mystery" has become synonymous with "mystery novel," there are actually quite a few such books and stories that deal with crimes other than murder. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes comes to mind, since many of his cases (e.g. "The Adventure of the Red Headed League") involved dastardly deeds other than murder.

Some authors have created an entire series that features plots aside from murder, such as the comedic Dortmunder novels by the late Donald E. Westlake, which follow Dortmunder and his gang of eccentric thieves. Several of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries (many of them short stories) don't involve murders, as is the case with Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax series.

Others, like Dorothy L. Sayers, wrote one or more titles in a series that were murder-free, like Gaudy Night, which centers on a rash of bizarre pranks including poison-pen letters threatening murder (although that doesn't happen before Harriet Vine and Lord Peter Wimsey solve the case). In fact, many of the masters of the genre through the years have turned to psychological suspense to fuel their plots, including Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, about a man who poses as a long-missing heir to a fortune.

 Contemporary authors are also just as likely to turn to different plot devices, among them The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith and L is for Lawless in Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series. One of the Mystery Writers of America's annual anthologies, the 1970 edition edited by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, was titled Crime Without Murder.

That's just the tip of the blood-stained iceberg, of course. If you have your own examples, add them to the comments section. I'd love to hear your favorites, although it will probably mean my To Be Read pile will grow to the point TLC's Hoarding show comes knocking on my door.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Oscar winner Bill Condon has been tapped to direct A Slight Trick of the Mind, with Ian McKellen starring as a long-retired Sherlock Holmes haunted by an unsolved case from fifty years ago. The project is based on a novel of the same name by Mitch Cullin, with the screenplay being adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher (The Duchess).

Jared Harris (who played Moriarty in the recent Sherlock Holmes films) has become the latest star to join the cast of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the upcoming adaptation of the classic 1960s spy series being directed by Guy Ritchie.

Cate Blanchett has signed on to star in David Mamet's thriller Blackbird. She'll play a woman who travels to Los Angeles for the funeral of her grandfather, a Hollywood visual effects artist who moonlighted for U.S. special ops agencies. After his death, her grandfather’s secrets become a threat.

Oscar winner Christopher Plummer has signed to star in the heist film The Forger, joining John Travolta and The Sheridan in the cast. Written by Richard D’Ovidio, the project centers on former
child art prodigy and petty thief Ray Cutter (Travolta), who arranges to
buy his way out of prison so he can spend time with his ailing son
(Sheridan). Ray and his father (Plummer) must come together to carry out
one last big job for the syndicate that financed his early release.

Picturesque Films has begun production on Thursday, a psychological thriller that marks the directorial debut of Balazs Juszt. The plot centers on a modern-day Catholic priest from a small town parish in Massachusetts who is thrust into the depths of the Roman underworld. The international cast includes Francois Arnaud (The Borgias), Jordi Molla (Riddick), Ana Ularu (Serena) and Mark Ivanir (A Late Quartet).

Mission Park is one of 23 indie films debuting this weekend in limited release around the U.S. The R-rated crime drama follows a group of four friends, two of whom fall into a life of crime, two who become FBI agents. As part of the AMC Independent program, it will be in 14 theaters in New York, Chicago, L.A. and San Antonio.

TELEVISION

The HBO series True Detective is set to premiere in January. The eight-episode project stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as a pair of detectives who cross paths as they both try to solve a 17-year-old murder mystery in Louisiana. HBO announced that further seasons would introduce new stories and characters, along the lines of what FX has done with its anthology series American Horror Story. HBO is offering a sneak peak of the new show following the new season premiere of Boardwalk Empire.

FX has given a pilot order to the dark comedic crime drama Hoke, based on Charles Willeford's novels and featuring lead character Detective Hoke Mosely (played by Paul Giamatti). The pilot was penned by Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Get Shorty), who will also direct the project, with shooting set for the fall in Miami.

CBS bought an untitled legal drama project from former Friday Night Lights executive producer David Hudgins, which centers on an outrageous and irreverent Federal judge with lifetime tenure who bucks the system.

White Collar returns for its season premiere on Thursday, October 17th on USA Network, which released a sneak peek at the upcoming fifth season. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

The BBC issued an intriguing composite trailer for its various original crime dramas, including Sherlock, Ripper Street, The Musketeers, Quirke, What Remains, The Great Train Robbery and The Great Escape.

The Hallmark Movie Channel pilot The Mystery Cruise has begun production in Vancouver and is scheduled to premiere October 5. Gail O’Grady (NYPD Blue) and Michelle Harrison (Tom Dick & Harriet) star in the project, which is based on the book The Santa Cruise by New York Times bestselling authors Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

Burn Notice creator Matt Nix is in talks with USA Network to pick up his new pilot, the medical drama Complications, which follows an emergency room doctor whose life changes after being involved in a gang shooting.

Midsomer Murders is heading to Denmark for its 100th episode.  In "The Killings at Copenhagen", Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby and his Danish counterpart investigate when a Midsomer resident is found murdered in Copenhagen. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon is joining the cast of Hannibal for the crime drama's second season. She will play an FBI Oversight agent who investigates the events that landed FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) in jail.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The first episode of Crime and Science Radio debuted this weekend. Co-hosts Jan Burke and DP Lyle talked about "Hollywood Storytelling: Science Fact or Make Believe?" Crime and Science Radio will air twice each month.  

Mystery Melange

The shortlists for the remaining three 2013 Crime Writers Association Dagger Awards were announced last week. Finalists for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year include Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer; The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes; Rage Against the Dying by Becky Masterman; and Dead Lions by Mick Herron. Check out the CWA website for all the categories and nominees.

Sisters in Crime Australia also announced the winners of its annual Davitt Awards for excellent in crime fiction. Mad Men, Bad Girls and the Guerilla Knitters Institute, by Maggie Groff, won in both the Best Adult Novel and Best Debut Novel categories. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Crime fiction author Sophie Hannah has been tapped to write a new Agatha Christie novel
featuring the author's famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The book has been fully authorized by the Christie estate and will be published by HarperCollins
in September 2014. It is the first ever Christie "continuation" novel
to be written.

Mike Ripley is back with his latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots Ezine. He has a wrap-up of the recent Crime Fest in the UK where he lead the opening session, and also offers a remembrance of the late Elmore Leonard in addition to all the usual entertaining crime fiction reviews and news.

ThugLit is out with its latest issue for Kindle. Editor Todd Robinson has rounded up crime fiction stories from Joe Clifford, Edward Hagelstein, Christopher E. Long, Marie S. Crosswell, Justin Ordonez , Ed Kurtz , Benjamin Welton, and Michael Sears.

The 5-2's latest crime poem offering is "On Hearing the Supreme Court's Ruling Against the Voting Rights Act," by Robert Cooperman. Beat to a Pulp's weekly feature is a little different, three poems from Kyle J. Knapp, who passed away in June at the age of 24. Proceeds from a collection of his poetry available via Amazon will go to Kyle's family and Tompkins Cortland Community College.

Chris Rhatigan, editor of the ezine All Due Respect, announced that ADR is changing to a quarterly ebook and print magazine published by Full Dark City Press, and will start paying authors. (Hat tip to Kevin Tipple.)

Karin Slaughter will be the next featured guest of the Center for Fiction Masters Program in New York, talking about her craft, her
new novel Unseen, and the elements that have made her one of the most
successful thriller writers today. Details about ticket information for the event on September 11 are available via the CFA's website.

The Q&A this week includes Louise Penny, chatting with BocaRaton Magazine about her latest book, How the Light Gets In; Karen Charlton joins Scene of the Crime to discuss her new novel, The Missing Heiress; Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Short Interview" is Nick Quantrill about his latest private eye novel, Crooked Beat; and Reed Farrel Coleman chats about writing with Robb Cddigan.

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Troubled Daughters

Blogger, journalist and crime fiction reviewer Sarah Weinman has edited a new anthology published just this past week, titled Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense. Weinman selected 14 stories by women authors from the 1940s through the mid-1970s who helped create the domestic suspense genre and paved the way for writers like Gillian Flynn, Tana French and Sue Grafton. Weinman offered up a Q&A about the anthology and the inspiration behind it: 

Q: What inspired you to compile this anthology? Were you working on it before the big splash created by GONE GIRL?

A: TROUBLED DAUGHTERS emerged from an essay I wrote for the literary magazine Tin House. I'd been approached by an editor there to write something for their themed "The Mysterious" issue, and I'd long contemplated why it seemed that a fair number of female crime writers working around or after World War II through the mid-1970s weren't really part of the larger critical conversation. They weren't hard boiled per se, but they weren't out-and-out cozy, either. Hammett and Chandler and Cain, yes; but why not Marie Belloc Lowndes and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Vera Caspary? Why Ross Macdonald but not his wife, Margaret Millar, who published books before he did and garnered critical and commercial acclaim first? I knew after writing the essay that I wasn't done with the subject, and when I had lunch with an editor at Penguin on an unrelated matter and started going on, rather enthusiastically, about this widespread neglect, he said, "sounds like there's an anthology in this. Why don't you send me a proposal?" It took a while to organize, but eventually I did, and Penguin bought the anthology. Publishing being what it is, it's taken a little less than two years from acquisition to release date.

To answer your other question, I had just started putting the anthology together when it became clear that GONE GIRL was going to be a massive hit, and that I had a very easy one-sentence pitch for TROUBLED DAUGHTERS: “If you loved GONE GIRL, here's an entire generation of writers who helped make that book possible, and who deserve to be rescued from the shadows.” Flynn clearly tapped into contemporary anxieties about marriage, identity, high expectations, and whether we can really be true to ourselves and the ones we profess to love. So it's fascinating to explore an earlier time when many of the very same anxieties women had manifested itself, even as the very concept of independent womanhood was perceived to be a great threat.

Q: What is “domestic suspense”? What relationship does it have to other kinds of crime fiction?

A: Domestic suspense is a catch-all term for work largely published by women and describing the plight of women -- wives, daughters, the elderly, spinsters, the underserved, the overlooked, and many other phrases used then but thankfully, not so much now -- as World War II was coming to a close and the feminist movement dawned. Without domestic suspense you couldn't have contemporary psychological suspense. Conversely, the work of people like Gillian Flynn, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Sophie Hannah, Tana French, and many more would not be possible without the likes of Hughes, Jackson, Millar, Highsmith, and -- though not included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS for reasons outside the scope of this interview -- Ruth Rendell, Mary Higgins Clark, Mignon Eberhart, and more.

Q: Which one of the authors in your collection would you like to see get more credit?

A: Bear in mind my answer will change daily, but right now, I'll say Joyce Harrington. She won an Edgar Award for her very first short story – “The Purple Shroud”, included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS – but she spent most of the 70s and 80s writing stories of equal if not greater excellence. Harrington also published three novels: No One Knows My Name (1981), set in a summer stock theater troupe; Family Reunion (1982), a very creepy Southern Gothic with quite the toxic family; and Dreemz of the Night (1987), a terrific mystery set in the then-contemporary New York City graffiti world. I love that book of hers the best because of the window it unexpectedly opened on a nearly unrecognizable version of the five boroughs.

Q: What was the first domestic suspense you ever read?

Mary Higgins Clark’s Where Are The Children?, back in eleventh grade. That book scared the hell out of me, and only later did I realize what a pivotal book that was.

Q: What is the difference between “classic” domestic suspense and the writing of the new generation (Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Gillian Flynn, Tana French, etc.)?

A: Largely the sensibility afforded by contemporary times. But there are many more similarities. For example, Lippman’s most recent novel, And When She Was Good, was about a suburban madam, and the way in which the suspense unfolded and she depicted Heloise’s nose for business and growing internal tensions could have been written by Margaret Millar sixty years ago (albeit with more dated references to technology.) When I first read Megan Abbott I thought immediately of Dorothy Hughes’ In A Lonely Place. The DNA of so many of these earlier writers inserted themselves into those writing today, whether they realize it consciously.

Q: Do you think women write better domestic suspense? If so, why or why not?

A: I'm a big fan of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay’s work, both of whom certainly work in the domestic suspense field. Ira Levin’s books work so well because he knew exactly what domestic anxiety buttons to push – Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives absolutely count as domestic suspense (and, to a certain extent, A Kiss Before Dying.) That said, women are still struggling with the work/life balance, if I may drop in some cliches like “having it all” or “leaning in.” So there are more of them exploring these themes in a fictional universe, and that means more of them are doing so with great success and acclaim. I'd like to see more men write domestic thrillers and more women write traditionally “male” subgenres so that we can blur the lines once and for all. But forty, fifty, sixty years ago, there weren't as many options.

Q: You mention in your intro to TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES that the World Wars, particularly WWII, shaped the lives of domestic suspense writers, and consequently, what they wrote. Is there a similar “seismic event” that might have shaped the new domestic suspense, in your opinion?

A: I think these forces were at work already, but I hope that, twenty years or later from now, someone looks back at the current generation of women writers and edits a fabulous anthology explaining just how much the 2008 Great Recession changed everything. Which is to say, I think it did, and we still don't know by how much.

Q: If this kind of fiction grew out of post-war culture, particularly the idealization of women’s role in the domestic sphere and the anxieties and yearnings hidden behind that glossy picture of the happy home, is there anything analogous being written today?

A: Would that these anxieties could disappear entirely! But it’s pretty clear that any day’s headlines shows how far we still have to go. (Case in point: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.) I do think it’s why Gone Girl was such a massive hit, and why publishers are now on the hunt for that “next Gone Girl” (best current candidate: ASA Harrison's debut The Silent Wife, just published as I write this, and released more than two months after her premature death from cancer.) Now we have domestic suspense mixed with the anxieties associated with technology, and there's a great deal of terrain to explore there. I also don’t want to exclude men unduly here; Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay also write very gripping domestic suspense tales.

Q: At your companion website, domesticsuspense.com, the tagline is “celebrating an overlooked generation of female suspense writers.” Why have they been overlooked? What influence do you think these women writers had, both on the genre and on culture as a whole?

 A: The author Tom Bissell wrote an excellent essay for the Boston Review back in 2000 about his time as an assistant editor at Norton, discovering, and then republishing, the work of Paula Fox, and the tremendous responsibility (and related fear) of being responsible for a writer's renaissance. Fate has a tendency to be cruel and quixotic about who merits posthumous recognition and who does not. I feel much the same way about the 14 writers included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS. So many of them won or were nominated for awards (like the Edgar), sold many thousands of copies, and were well-reviewed. But it's hard not to think that because their subjects were primarily "feminine" and "domestic" they weren't taken as seriously as the men, even though in many cases, the women wrote with less sentimentality and more subtlety.

Some of the writers included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, like Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson, may not need my editorial assistance. But looking at Highsmith’s first-published short story "The Heroine" or Jackson's "Louisa, Please Come Home" in the broader context of what was going on over this three-decade period is what's key, as is seeing the importance of domestic concerns to female noir giants like Vera Caspary, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Margaret Millar.

What I really hope is that the anthology allows readers to sample and be introduced to writers who have fallen by the proverbial wayside. Raymond Chandler held up Elisabeth Sanxay Holding up as his equal. Helen Nielsen is something of an enigma to me, but “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” demonstrates the anxiety of being the other woman-turned-new wife and how it never recedes.  Nedra Tyre was both an avid mystery fan  and passionate about social justice and the poor, stemming from a previous life as a social worker; it’s why “A Nice Place to Stay” packs the punch it does. Barbara Callahan never published a novel during her lifetime, but "Lavender Lady", published early in her career, has the sense of depth and feeling of an experienced practitioner of prose and of emotional stakes.

For more more information about the book, the included authors, promotional events and ordering details, check out the anthology's official website.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, Ocean’s Twelve) is taking over as a last-minute replacement for Philip Seymour Hoffman in the Soviet thriller Child 44, based on Tom Rob Smith's bestseller. The cast also includes Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, and Joel Kinnaman in the story of a military cop investigating a series of child murders in 1950s Stalinist Russia.

Rachel Brosnahan (who played a call girl on Netflix's House of Cards) has signed to star in the indie movie The Sainthood of Bethany Wolfe. Brosnahan takes on the character of a young girl who was taken in by a priest after losing her parents in a bloody murder-suicide but grows up to be a contract killer.

Matt Damon is in preliminary talks to direct The Foreigner for Paramount, which would be the actor's directing debut. The project is based on a New Yorker article by David Grann (with a script by Oscar-winning Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio), and details corruption and high-level murders in
Guatemala that reached all the way to the country's president.

TELEVISION

A&E has decided to renew Longmire, the crime drama based on the novels by Craig Johnson. Unfortunately for fans of  The Glades, the network is canceling that show, which starrred Matt Passmore as a Chicago detective who took a South Florida job with FLDE.

JJ Abrams and HBO are developing a TV adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel Westworld (which was previously made into a film starring Yul Brenner). The sci-fi thriller is based in a futuristic amusement park where humans interact safely with androids, until a power glitch causes the androids to run amok.

Omnimystery News reported that Lionsgate and Munich-based Tandem Communications are teaming up to develop drama series for US and Europe markets. The first such project is Sex, Lies and Handwriting, a crime drama based on a book by Michelle Dresbold and featuring a handwriting expert drawn into solving crimes based on the use of her expertise.

Two Tony-award winners are headed to TV crime dramas for guest stints. Laura Osnes, currently starring in the title role of Broadway's Cinderella, will appear on an upcoming episode of the CBS drama series Elementary; and Sutton Foster will join USA's Psych season finale, titled "A Nightmare on State Street."

FX Networks has ordered a pilot based on a character created by crime novelist Charles Willeford. The show is titled Hoke and stars Paul Giamatti stars as Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley. Screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Get Shorty) is adapting the novel for the small screen. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Former Chuck executive producer Matt Miller and former Chuck writer Zev Borow have sold the cop/family drama Bad Guys to Fox. The show is about an NYPD detective and a single mom raising a
teenage son, and her recently paroled ex-con father who
wants a second chance with his daughter and grandson.

Lisa Kudrow is joining Scandal, Shonda Rhimes' Washington, D.C. drama series for ABC, playing a politician.

Cinemax is close to placing a pilot deal for the gangster drama Blanco, about an uptown gangster who uses his status as a confidential informant to
turn the tables on law enforcement and build his criminal empire.

Steve Lewis of The Mystery File, posted a cheat sheet listing of mysteries, crime dramas, horror and fantasy shows for the upcoming 2013-2014 season.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

It's a Crime radio, hosted by Margaret McLean, welcomed former homicide detective Derek Pacifico, talking about the laws of search seizure.

THEATER

Vertigo Mystery Theatre will stage Gaslight in The Playhouse at The Vertigo Theatre Centre, Calgary, Alberta, January 31 through February 24. The mystery play (a/k/a Angel Street) was written in 1938 by PatRick Hamilton and was adapted into a 1944 film starring Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton and Angela Lansbury in her on-screen debut.