National Book Festival Announces Schedule

The National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, changes venues this year as it moves from the grounds of the Mall over to the Washington Convention Center. The move indoors may be disappointing to some, but it allows for new evening activities such as a "Great Books to Great Movies" pavilion that will explore classic literary adaptations through discussions and screenings, a "super-session" for graphic-novel enthusiasts, and a poetry slam.

Over 100 award-winning authors, illustrators and poets will beon hand to discuss and sign their books on August 30th, including the following from the fiction and mystery realm:

Fiction & Mystery

Time	Author	Signing
10:00-10:45	E.L. Doctorow	11:00-noon
10:55-11:40	Ishmael Beah	noon-1:00
11:50-12:35	Sara Sue Hoklotubbe	1:00-2:00
12:45-1:30	Claire Messud	2:00-3:00
1:40-2:25	Tiphanie Yanique	3:00-4:00
2:35-3:20	Siri Hustvedt	4:00-5:00
3:30-4:15	Lisa See	5:00-6:00
4:25-5:10	Anne Hillerman	2:30-3:30
5:20-6:00	Alice McDermott	3:30-4:30

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Warner Bros acquired the rights to Don Pendleton's novel series featuring anti-terrorist operative Mack Bolan to develop as a star vehicle for Bradley Cooper (with Todd Phillips to potentially direct).

Sony is looking to option film rights to Richard Price’s upcoming crime novel The Whites (being published under the pen name of Harry Brandt). The story centers on a detective "whose tainted past comes back to haunt him when he takes on a harrowing case during one of his graveyard shifts." Price is known for such previous book-to-film projects as The Wanderers, Clockers, and Lush Life.

A24 Films and DirecTV have acquired the thriller Cut Bank, which stars Liam Hemsworth as a dissatisfied small-town Montana mechanic who finds his ticket to the big time when he comes into possession of evidence of a murder.

Ving Rhames has joined the cast of the indie thriller Operator, which also stars Mischa Barton, Michael Pare, and Luke Goss in the story of a 911 operator and her estranged cop husband whose daughter is abducted, forcing them to dispatch the city’s police and fire units to remote locations at the kidnappers’ bidding.

Although the November Man starring Pierce Brosnan has just barely hit theaters, producers are already planning a sequel. The projects are based on a series of spy novels by Bill Granger.

Nicholas Rowe, who played the title character in Steven Spielberg's Young Sherlock Holmes, has a cameo in the upcoming old Sherlock Holmes film A Slight Trick Of The Mind starring Ian McKellan as the senior version of the detective.

Sony Pictures hired Iron Man 3's Shane Black to direct The Destroyer, an adaptation of the book series by Warren Murphy about New Jersey cop Remo Williams who is framed, sentenced to death, survives a botched execution, and then given a second chance in the clandestine U.S. government agency CURE.

The Olympus Has Fallen sequel now has a director. Fredrik Bond is on board to helm the latest adventures of Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), who will be rejoined by President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) as they attend the funeral of a UK Prime Minister.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez has been tapped to direct Stanford Prison Experiment, with Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller and Michael Angarano set to star. The story is based on a real-life 1971 experiment at Stanford University that divided students into role playing prison guards or prisoners. The experiment was meant to last two weeks, but it was cut short due to the level of cruelty and sadism that erupted among the participants.

The British Film Institute is going to screen one of the earliest psychological crime films, Fritz Lang’s M, around the UK and Ireland starting early September.

A trailer was released for The Calling, the indie thriller from Jason Stone that stars Susan Sarandon as Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef who lives in a small town with her elderly mother (fellow Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn) and has to track down a serial killer driven by "a higher calling."

A new trailer was released for The Drop, the upcoming crime drama that features the late actor James Gandolfini's final performance on the big screen.

The first official still was published from the upcoming adaptation of the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, starring Josh Brolin as a hippie-hating LAPD detective and Joaquin Phoenix as a pot-loving private eye.

A new trailer was released for Jake Gyllenhaal's Nightcrawler, in which the actor plays an aspiring L.A. crime reporter who takes matters into his own hands when he can't get hired by a news outlet.

TELEVISION

Barry Eisler's novel series about John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American special forces Vietnam vet who becomes a “contract assassin who specializes in taking out his targets by making it look like death by natural causes," is heading to TV. The show Rain will star Keanu Reeves and be produced by directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, although no broadcast home has been announced.

Ashley Jensen, (Extras and Ugly Betty), is set to play Agatha Raisin in an upcoming adaptation of The Quiche of Death, based on the novel by M.C. Beaton, commissioned for Sky Television.

As Deadline noted, either life is imitating art or vice versa with the news that ABC has put in development a drama series based on the Derrick Storm series of mystery novels written by Richard Castle, the fictional author played by Nathan Fillion on the ABC drama Castle.

The BBC ordered a second season of its crime drama Happy Valley, starring Sarah Lancashire as police sergeant Catherine Cawood.

Showtime also ordered a third season of Ray Donovan, featuring Liev Schreiber as a "fixer" for the powerful law firm Goldman & Drexler, representing the rich and famous.

Sundance renewed Rectify for a third season, the series that stars Aden Young as a man relea
sed from prison after serving nearly 20 years on death row who tries to integrate back into his family and community.

Carol Burnett will be returning to the Hawaii Five-0 for Season 5  playing the aunt of McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin), and this time she'll bring a fiancé with her, to be played by Four Seasons singer Frankie Valli.

Paul Reubens, a/k/a Pee-wee Herman, is headed to The Blacklist for a multi-episode arc playing a man who takes care of "delicate situations in the criminal underworld."

Teri Polo (The Fosters) will guest star on Law & Order: SVU opposite Mike Hammer's Stacy Keach.

NCIS has cast Stephanie Jacobsen as a potential new love interest for Tony DiNozzo. She'll play a former U.S. Marshal turned FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force leader who's "feminine, sexy and single, cool and confident."

Sonya Walger (Lost) has been added to ABC's drama Scandal in a "mystery role" that will likely be a recurring character.

Shad Moss, aka Bow Wow, has signed on as a series regular in the spin-off show CSI: Cyber. He'll play a 19-year-old famous hacker who is under a court order to assist Special Agent Avery Ryan.

Spike TV is reviving the reality series Jail (from the same team behind Cops), but will focus on the lockups in Las Vegas.

CBS has scheduled a sneak preview of its new drama shows for the fall, to be broadcast on September 1st. The preview will include Madam Secretary, NCIS: New Orleans, Scorpion, and the psychological thriller Stalker.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

NPR profiled San Francisco forensic pathologist Judy Melinek, whose new book Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, And The Making Of A Medical Examiner, tells the story of her training as a medical examiner.

The latest Crime and Science Radio discusses "The Changing World of Forensic Science" with Barry A.J. Fisher, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime Australia announced the shortlist for its 14th Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women. Categories include Best Adult Novel, Best YA Novel, Best Children's Novel, Best True Crime Book, and Best Debut Book. For all the nominees, check out the SinC-Aussie website.

After a three-year hiatus, SleuthFest will return to South Florida in 2015, February 26 – March 1 with James Patterson serving as the Keynote Speaker. Other special guests include James W. Hall (Florida Guest of Honor); Dave Barry (Sunday Guest of Honor); Ric Gillespie (Forensic Guest of Honor). Conference attendees can also participate in agent and editor appointments, manuscript critiques, a silent auction and special panels and sessions.

Meanwhile, Martin Edwards has a nice review of the recent 21st annual Crime and Mystery Week-end at St Hilda's College in Oxford, which had a theme this year of "detective fiction and warfare."

The deadline is just over a month away for Perpetual Publishing's anthology, Stay Cool: A Tribute to Elmore Leonard. The editors are looking for stories in the same vein as the late author's writing, of between 1,000 and 10,000 words. The deadline is September 30, with a target release date of Spring 2015.

The British Film Institute wants help in solving the mystery of the whereabouts of A Study in Scarlet, a silent adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first mystery nove. Made in 1914, it was the first Sherlock Holmes film and has has been missing since the First World War.

Lee Lofland is putting up a fun Crime Writers' Mini-Dictionary on his blog The Graveyard Shift. So far, he has A through D and G through H, with more to come.

David Cranmer picks "Eight Essential Science Fiction Detective Mash-Ups" for Tor.com, showcasing that Isaac Asimov was right, mystery and science fiction genres are not incompatible.

Author Dan Fesperman wrote an article for HuffPo about how technology is changing crime fiction forever, especially spy thrillers.

Author Julian Gough launched a literary campaign he calls a "Litcon" to remodel the economics of reading on Kickstarter. As he works on his next novel, he is soliticiting crowdfunds with the promise to send postcards from Las Vegas bearing whisky stains, lipstick, even bullet holes, and even his own blood.

The Rap Sheet has a tribute to Jerry Healy, author of the Boston-based John Francis Cuddy private-eye series and over sixty short stories, who also served as president of the Private Eye Writers of America. Healy, who was also a U.S. Army veteran and former law professor, committed suicide last week in Pompano Beach, Florida.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Slenderman" by Kristina England.

The Q&A roundup includes a profile of William Kent Krueger by the Minneapolis Star Tribune; Mike Miner takes the "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge from Paul D. Brazill; and Omnimystery News welcomed crime writers Dana King, who was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Indie PI Novel for 2014

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Bradley Cooper and Todd Phillips are producing A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite for Warner Brothers, a project based on the nonfiction article by Adam Higginbotham about a 1980 extortion plot in a Nevada casino involving a gigantic bomb and a ransom note.

Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris and Andy Garcia are in negotiations to join Gerard Butler in Geostorm, the sci-fi/adventure thriller about two estranged brothers who have to save the world from a man-made storm of epic proportions, as well as a plot to assassinate the president.

Ving Rhames, the only actor other than Tom Cruise to appear in all four of the series' titles, will once again return for Mission: Impossible 5

Eva Green plays the seductive Dame to Kill For in a racy Sin City trailer, where she tries to rope Josh Brolin into her scheme to escape her abusive marriage.

The first trailer has been released for Mortdecai, directed by David Koepp (Secret Window), with an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Oliver Platt, Aubrey Plaza, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany and Olivia Munn. The film is based on Kyril Bonfiglioli's The Mortdecai crime novel trilogy featuring Charlie Mortdecai, a snobbish art dealer with a thuggish manservant named Jock.

TELEVISION

Starz and the BBC have tapped Colin Callender's Playground production team for the adaptation of  Richard House’s political conspiracy thriller novel The Kills. The plot centers on the global manhunt for a British mercenary who goes on the run after stealing $50 million from an American reconstruction project in Iraq.

David Fulmer reported that he signed a contract with Amazon Studios to option his Storyville novels for use in a series about turn-of-the-century New Orleans. The series is being developed by one of the producers responsible for HBO's Rome, and if the project passes the pilot stage, it will be available on Amazon Prime. The first book in the Storyville series, Chasing the Devil's Trail, won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel in 2002.

Patricia Arquette will appear on CSI once more in November before her spin-off CSI: Cyber premieres.

Yeardley Smith, best known for voicing Lisa on The Simpsons, will guest-star on Revenge this season, playing a patient at the mental institution where Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) was admitted in the Season 3 finale.

USA Television renewed its legal drama Suits for a fifth season.

ITV ordered the limited-run mystery series Black Work, starring Sheridan Smith as a policewoman and mother trying to find out who killed her undercover-cop husband.

Katherine Heigl's new show for NBC has run into a snag, with showrunner Edward Bernero stepping down from the project. State of Affairs stars Heigl as a CIA officer who serves as national securityh advisor for to the President (Alfre Woodard).

Award-winning comedian and actor Mike Birbiglia has been added to the cast of Netflix's Orange Is The New Black in a recurring role, joining other new cast members Mary Steenburgen and Blair Brown.

The Blacklist has cast Lee Tergesen (The Americans) as a love interest for fellow new cast member Mary-Louise Parker.

AMC released the first teaser trailer for its Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul, featuring Bob Odenkirk as the attorney who will become Saul Goodman.

A new teaser trailer was also released for the fifth and final season of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which was inspired by Nelson Johnson's book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City.

VIDEOS/PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's summer Crime in the City feature profiled Mary Lou Longworth and her Provençal mysteries with Inspector Verlaque.

Pauline Rowson chatted with Katie Martin for BBC Radio Solent about writing crime novels and CSI Portsmouth.

Mystery Melange

The shortlist for the Ned Kelly Awards for excellence in Australia crime fiction was announced last week. The nominees include Beams Falling by P.M. Newton; Bitter Wash Road by Garry Disher; Fatal Impact by Kathryn Fox; In The Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty; and One Boy Missing by Stephen Orr.

Over in that same part of the world, Iceland’s Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Scottish New Zealander Liam McIlvanney will talk about their books and their other lives (she's a civil engineer, he's an academic who lectures on Tartan Noir) with crime fiction blogger Craig Sisterson on August 31 as part of the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival.

The recent PulpFest 2014 honored J. Randolph Cox, former editor-publisher of Dime Novel Round-Up and author of the bibliography Man of Magic & Mystery: A Guide to the Work of Walter B. Gibson, with the Munsey Award, “presented annually to a person who has worked for the betterment of the pulp community.” J. Barry Traylor was also presented with the Rusty Award, “designed to recognize those individuals who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)

Writing for Newsweek, Christopher Sylvester penned an essay on European crime fiction in "The Second Coming of 'Euro Noir' Drama."  

A new tour in Savannah, Georgia, called the Dark Crimes of Savannah aims to shed "some light into the murky darkness of the city’s gruesome and ghastly true crime history." The tour is from Savannah Cultural Heritage Tours and Events, the same groupe behind Savannah Ghost Walks, but the new tour has stops taken straight from newspaper headlines and police reports, ranging from 1735 to 2006.

For you fans of history and historical mysteries, Elizabeth Foxwell notes that the summer 2014 issue of Chemical Heritage Magazine has an article by Lee Sullivan Berry about "Forensic Chemistry in Golden-Age Detective Fiction: Dorothy L. Sayers and the CSI Effect."

Criminal Element has a giveaway titled the "Histories and Mysteries Sweepstakes," featuring seven books with the perfect mix of history and mystery.

As part of the latest salvo in the bookseller wars, Google and Barnes & Noble have begun same-day delivery in areas around three B&N stores in New York City, West Los Angeles and San Jose, California, in a bid to compete with Amazon's expanded same-day service.

As the New York Times reported, Scottish crime fiction author Val McDermid signed a deal to advertise on the jerseys of her favorite club, the Raith Rovers with the second division of the Scottish Professional Football League.

An Agatha Christie fan who bought a trunk during a clearance sale at the author's home for £100 found a strongbox full of the crime author's jewels valued at £10,000. The jewels will be sold at Bonhams auction house in Knightsbridge, central London, on October 8.

More sad news to report:  Author Jim Thompson, who was only 49, died unexpectedly last week. Thompson was author of the Inspector Vaara novels, including Snow Angels, named one of Booklist’s Best Crime Novel Debuts of the Year and nominated for Edgar, Anthony, and Strand Critics awards. American by birth, Thompson had lived in Finland for fifteen years with his Finnish wife and two children.  (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

We also lost Dorothy Salisbury Davis on August 3rd, at the age of 98. Davis was nominated for an Edgar Award eight times, served as President of the Mystery Writers of America in 1956 and was declared a Grand Master by MWA in 1985. Davis was known for her psychological suspense tales, including two separate series, several standalone novels and many short stories.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Somewhere in Florida" by Austin Alexis, and the featured story over at Beat to a Pulp is "The Long Drop" by Jake Hinkson.

The Q&A roundup includes Rebecka Vigus chatting with Omnimystery News; and mystery author J.A. Jance talked about her new book, Remains of Innocence, with MLive Media.

Mysterious Amusements

It's summertime, a season synomyous with theme parks of all shapes and sizes. Theme park and Hollywood tie-ins are certainly nothing new. First there was Disneyland (then Disney World), followed by Universal studios. But the movie connection is being taken up a notch with some new additions: Avatar-land under construction at Disney World; an Ice Age park in Kuala Lumpur; and DreamWorks Animation is working on an entertainment center in Shanghai and launching indoor theme parks in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg (with attractions based on movies like Shrek, Madagascar and How to Train Your Dragon).

Not to be left behind, literature is trying to get in on the act, with such sites as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando (and Hogwarts in Osaka) and Dickens World in Kent (complete with a Great Expectations log flume), while Lionsgate is hoping to create a Hunger Games theme park (yes, I know—these are movies, too!). So, I decided to have a little fun and come up with some ideas for attractions that would be appropriate for a literary theme park with a crime fiction focus. Let's call it, say, Mystery Adventure Park. Or maybe Crimetime Carnival.

Here are some suggestions for attractions for our hypothetical theme park:

PARK SECTIONS:

Stephen King's Joyland
Tony Hillerman's Ghostway
Lew Archer's The Barbarous Coast (Ross Macdonald)
Michael Connelly's Echo Park

RIDES:

Train ride: Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express
Tilt-a-Whirl:  The John Ceepak Tilt-a-Whirl (Chris Grabenstein)
Boat ride: Travis McGee's Busted Flush (John D. MacDonald)
Car racetrack: "Barney" Barnaby's Wild Ride (Janet Evanovich)
Log flume: Kate Shugak's Wild Alaska (Dana Stabenow)
Carousel: The Dick Francis Carousel
Pendulum ride:  Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum
Roller coaster:  Amelia Peabody Egyptian-themed indoor coaster (Elizabeth Peters)
Dark ride:  Sherlock Holmes' The Hound of the Baskervilles
Haunted House: Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Mystery House

EATERIES AND SHOPPES:

Nero Wolf's Bistro and Brewery
Death by Chocolate sweets
The Maltese Falcon gift shop
The Moving Toyship (Edmund Crispin)

Now it's your turn:  What ingenious, creative attractions can you come up with to add to our hypothetical mystery amusement park?

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Fifty Shades Of Grey star Jamie Dornan has been cast as the lead in The Siege Of Jadotville, playing Irish Commandant Pat Quinlan in the geo-political thriller.

Alice Eve (Star Trek Into Darkness) will join Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Oldman in the thriller Criminal, about  a dead CIA operative's memories are implanted into a dangerous convict in hopes that he will stop a diabolical plot.

Dakota Fanning is joining Ewan McGregor and Jennifer Connelly in American Pastoral, the adaptation of Philip Roth's novel about a former legendary high school athlete whose daughter rebels by commiting a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War.

As The Hollywood Reporter noted, the release of Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service, starring Colin Firth, is being pushed back to February 13, 2015, which puts it in a head-to-head battle with Fifty Shades of Grey.

A trailer was released for Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's thriller The Guest, about a soldier whose desire to help out a fallen comrade's family may not be as altruistic as it seems.

TELEVISION

Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss is a front-runner to play the female lead in Season 2 of HBO's True Detective, playing either the wife of Vince Vaughn's character or the ex-wife a character played by Colin Farrell, depending upon which rumor you believe.

BBC’s popular six-part crime drama Happy Valley is set to premiere in the U.S. and Canada on Netflix on August 20. The series stars Sarah Lancashire as a dedicated police woman in a small town whose world is turned upside down when the man she thinks is responsible for her daughter’s death is released from prison. Also in the cast are Tommy Lee Royce, Steve Pemberton, Siobhan Finneran, George Costigan, and Joe Armstrong.

Adam Campbell will guest-star in a flashback episode of NCIS playing a younger version of Ducky (David McCallum) this season.

The first six episodes of Sequestered are now available on Crackle, with the second six coming on October 14. The show centers on the trial of a man who is accused of kidnapping and killing the son of a governor. When one of the jurors is attacked outside of a bar, the rest of the jury is sequestered inside of a hotel with very limited access to the outside world.

Lie to Me's Monique Curnen is joining the cast of Person of Interest as Detective Fusco's (Kevin Chapman) new boss.

James Van Der Beek has signed to play a lead role in the spinoff series CSI: Cyber, playing FBI Agent Elijah Mundo, an expert in battlefield forensics.

Aussie David Hoflin (Crossbones) and Julian Works (The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story) have joined the cast of ABC midseason drama American Crime.

Ryan Hansen has been added to the cast of Kate Walsh’s new NBC comedy Bad Judge, playing the role of a psychiatrist who has an on-again, off-again relationship with Walsh's hard-living, sexually unapologetic judge.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

NPR chatted with author Lawrence Block about his Matthew Scudder series and evoking the "Sights, Sound And Grime Of 1970s New York."

The latest Crime and Science Radio show welcomes attorney-author Alafair Burke about "The Criminal Justice System, Real and Imagined."

THEATER

Benjamin Walker (star of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) has landed the title role in the upcoming U.S. premiere of American Psycho the musical, in the role created first by Christian Bale on film and more recently on the London stage by Matt Smith (Doctor Who). The story is based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.

Cate Balnchett is set to star in Jean Genet's The Maids, inspired by the real-life Papin sisters, servants who murdered their employers in 1933 France. The play is being brought to New York by the Sydney Theatre Company to play City Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, August 6-16.

Mystery Melange

The recent Deadly Ink conference announced the winner of this year's David Award for crime fiction:  Dark Music by E. F. Watkins. The other finalists included Lethal Treasure by Jane Cleland; There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron; Condemned to Repeat by Janice MacDonald; and The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan. (With thanks to the Rap Sheet.)

The longlist for this year's Ngaio Marsh Award was whittled down to four finalists: Joe Victim by Paul Cleave; Frederick's Coast by Alan Duff; My Brother's Keeper by Donna Malane; and Where the Dead Men Go by Liam McIlvanney.

Shots Magazine's Ayo Onatade reported that readers will decide the longlist for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award for the first time ever. Fans anywhere can nominate their favorite authors online, with the ten authors receiving the most votes making up the long list. Nominations opened August 1st and close on September 1st, with the winner announced in November.

Thanks to Ayo also for news that the Orion Publishing Group is going to publish the complete collection of Inspector Rebus short stories by bestselling novelist Ian Rankin in October.

This week marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the first world war. David Prestridge picked out "The best World War I crime fiction" for the Crime Fiction Lover blog.

John Curran, author of the Edgar nominated and Agatha award-winning Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks reported that the Torquay Museum in the UK is facing devastating budget cuts that may ultimately cause it to close its doors after 140 years. The museum is the only one of its kind devoted to the Queen of Crime, including such exhibits as the film set of a Poirot production and Agatha Christie’s personal effects. Fans are encouraged to voice their support to help keep the institution going.

Thanks to Sandra Seamans for posting two new short-story markets (here and here):  Fictionvale is looking for punk stories, any kind of punk from steam to diesel and everything in between, and Pulp Core is a new market looking for short genre fiction to be translated from English to German.

Mike Ripley posted his latest Getting Away with Murder column for Shots Ezine, discussing all things crime fiction across the Pond: the first-ever What’s Your Poison? Crime Evening held in Heffers Bookshop; the Commissario Ricciardi mysteries set in Naples in the early 1930s, by Italian crime writer Maurizio De Giovanni; news that bookseller Ralph Spurrier (a.k.a. The Postmortem Man) has been busy shooting second-unit action scenes for the next James Bond film; and his latest book reviews and author news.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Visiting My Great Aunt, Maude" by Louie Clay.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Lee Thompson talking with The Mystery People about his new-this-week hardboiled novel A Beautiful Madness; Terrie Farley Moran stops by Cozy Mystery Book Reviews to talk about her debut novel, Well Read, Then Dead; and Stuart Nevill tells the Irish Post about his inspirations, latest crime novel and the "alien world" of being a writer.

Arresting Anthologies

Summer is often a lull time for story anthologies, but there are three recent releases that feature original crime fiction shorts:

Jochem Vandersteen edited the first Shamus Sampler and has followed it up with Shamus Samper II sequel. As the title would suggest, the book includes 13 international tales of private investigators, pulp fiction and hardboiled detectives. As Tim Hallinan writes in his Foreword, "The private eye, it would appear, is infinitely variable. He/she/it will apparently be with us as long as we read and write stories."

The Untreed Detectives, edited by J. Alan Hartman, includes 12 stories culled from various novels published and distributed by Untreed Reads. As Hartman states, "Whether it's a gritty clown or a children's book author, a pig or an investigator of crimes in the nursery rhyme universe, you'll discover a wide variety of short mysteries here from both best-selling authors and fresh voices."

Exiles, on the other hand, departs from the detective theme with its assortment of 26 short stories all featuring the common theme of "outsiders." Edited by Paul D. Brazill, the book is dedicated to Jeff Luke and Colin Graham, with all proceeds going to the Marfan Foundation in aid of people suffering from Marfan syndrome.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Fifty Shades of Gray star Dakota Johnson is joining Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A Bigger Splash, based on the 1969 French crime drama La Piscine about an uneasy and tragic love triangle between a young woman and an older couple during their vacation.

Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) has joined the cast of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, which also stars Benecio Del Toro and Emily Blunt. Donovan will play a no-nonsense DEA Agent who engages in an all-out firefight at the Juarez border while transferring a prisoner.

Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson have signed on to star in the psychological thriller Meadowland, directed by Reed Morano. Wilde and Wilson will play a couple dealing with their son’s disappearance.

Sony pictures acquired film rights to the book Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA by Morten Storm (with Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister), and have tapped producer Scott Rudin and director Paul Greengrass (the duo behind Captain Phillips). The story centers on an ex-Islamic radical as he became a double agent for the CIA and British and Danish intelligence.

The first trailer was released for The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, and Charles Dance in the film about WWII genius Alan Turing, who broke the enigma code that allowed the Allied Forces to thwart Germany.

The adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired film Stonehearst Asylum also released a trailer for the psychological thriller that stars Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine and Kate Beckinsale.

TELEVISION

Fox picked up a New York-set crime drama from Richard Price (creator of NYC 22 and Criminal Justice). The untitled project centers on a twentysomething Wall Street portfolio manager "who unwittingly becomes a pawn in the DA’s attempts to take down a criminal organization."

TNT ordered a third season of Cold Justice, the real-life crime series that follows former prosecutor Kelly Siegler and former crime-scene investigator Yolanda McClary as they open cold cases.

Showtime is launching webisodes titled "Behind the Fix" for Ray Donovan, its series featuring Liev Schreiber as a "fixer" for the powerful law firm Goldman & Drexler, representing the rich and famous.

Peter MacNicol (Numb3rs, Ally McBeal) is joining Patricia Arquette and Charley Koontz in the cast of the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber.

Claire Holt is joining NBC's Aquarius as a series regular, playing a police officer fighting to be taken seriously in a male-dominated field. The project stars David Duchovny as an undercover cop tracking Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony) and his followers in the '60s.

Krysten Ritte (Breaking Bad, Veronica Mars), will guest-star in the Season 2 premiere of NBC's The Blacklist, playing an analyst who works at a data security firm.

Warren Kole and Erik Stocklin have been cast in recurring roles in the CBS drama Stalker, which centers on a Threat Assessment Unit. Rosenthal, will play Detective Trent Wilkes, a lead detective in the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD, and Stocklin will reprise his role of Perry, an introverted college
sophomore.

Crimetime Preview has a look at ITV's best new crime shows autumn 2014.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

NPR profiled Rachel Howzell Hall about her African-American homicide detective and her novel Land of Shadows that is a tribute to the author's "beloved and much maligned" south Los Angeles.

Marcia Clark appeared on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to talk about her latest book, Killer Ambition.

THEATER

Michael Pennington and Alexander Hanson have joined the revival cast of Alan Bennett's Single Spies, a double-bill stage adaptation of Bennett's television films An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. An Englishman Abroad tells the true story of an actress' chance encounter with a disgraced spy in a Moscow theatre, while A Question of Attribution centers on an esteemed art historian who tries to solve the riddle of an enigmatic painting and finds himself the subject of an official investigation by MI5. The project will play at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, UK, September 25 through October 11.