Mystery Melange, Thanksgiving Edition

In celebration of Thanksgiving, Janet Rudolph posted holiday-themed mysteries from A to Z (author-wise) on her Mystery Fanfare blog. How can you go wrong with such titles as The Diva Runs Out of Thyme and One Foot in the Gravy.

As usual, the authors over at Mystery Lovers Kitchen can be counted on for some great food suggestions to go along with their terrific books, from Sheila Connolly's Thanksgiving Cranberry Pound Cake to Krista Davis' Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (you can tell I have a sweet tooth). If you want something more "potent" that might please the more hardboiled tastes, try one of these "Boozy Thanksgiving Recipes."

Want more dessert recipes? I participated in the book Bake, Love Write: 105 Authors Share Dessert Recipes and Advice on Love and Writing, edited by Lois Winson. Lots of yummy Thanksgiving meal-toppers in there.

Mashable offers up a Spotify Thanksgiving playlist, based on your turkey's cook time, and also 28 songs for your holiday travel home. (If you want some extra suggestions, check out the playlist for Scott Drayco from Played to Death.)

Open Road Media has a quiz for you: "Which Thanksgiving Dish Are You?" (Turns out, I'm a sweet potato casserole: A little sweet, a little savory.)

Kings River Life magazine featured a Thanksgiving-themed short story, "Busted!" by Gail Farrelly.

Just in time for your holiday shopping, iindependent bookstores across the U.S. will celebrate Small Business Saturday on November 29, hosting author and illustrator appearances and other fun events. For a participating store near you, check out the IndieBound website.

In more serious news, a number of film and TV stars are getting behind St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's annual “Thanks and Giving” campaign in an effort to encourage holiday shoppers to donate to St. Jude's treatment and research programs in the fight against pediatric cancer and other catastrophic children's diseases. You can help via your contribution to St. Jude's or by purchasing something from their gift shop.

In the Q&A roundup this week, Keith Nixon takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" test about his new book Russian Roulette; The Sons of Spade blog welcomes Tom Hilpert to discuss his novel Superior Justice featuring hard-boiled pastor, Jonah Borde; and author Russ Hall stopped by Omnimystery News to talk about his suspense thriller To Hell and Gone in Texas.

Media Murder for Monday

Here’s a wrap-up of the latest news about crime dramas and podcasts:

MOVIES

Jason Reitman and Nick Hornby are developing the bank heist film I Would Only Rob Banks for My Family for Fox Searchlight, which is based on a true-life story (and Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth) about a seemingly ordinary Texas family who pulled off two bold heists before they were caught attempting a third.

Proving that heist films are big right now, director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) is taking on a big-screen adaptation of the 1983 British TV series Widows, originally penned by Lynda La Plante (Prime Suspect). The plot deals with female empowerment in the form of widows of armed bank robbers killed during a heist who use a cache of books detailing the men’s past robberies to pull off their own raid.

Alexander Ludwig (Hunger Games) is joining Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, and Ray Liotta in the Pacific Northwest thriller Go With Me, directed by Daniel Alfredson (The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest). The story follows a young woman, newly returned to her hometown, who becomes the subject of harassment by a local crimelord and turns to an ex-logger (Hopkins) and his laconic young sidekick (Ludwig) for help.

Ahna O’Reilly (The Help) and Richard Armitage (The Hobbit) are set to star in the psychological thriller Sleepwalker, which is about a grad student who goes to a campus sleep clinic to treat her insomnia and nightmares, but instead starts experiencing unsettling changes in her waking reality every time she wakes up. With the help of a doctor, she attempts to unravel the tangled knot of her dreams, reality, and shockingly tragic past.

Austin Stowell is joining Steven Spielberg’s untitled Cold War thriller based on the true story of an American lawyer (played by Tom Hanks) who agrees to help the CIA rescue Francis Gary Powers, a pilot being detained in the Soviet Union (Stowell).

Universal has picked up the rights to “The Hunt for El Chapo,” a New Yorker article about the capture of notorious drug cartel leader Joaquin Guzman, to be directed by Peter Berg (Lone Survivor and The Kingdom).

Haley Bennett has joined Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel in the untitled psychological thriller that adapts the Patricia Highsmith novel The Blunderer. Set in early 1960s New York, the story follows Walter Stackhouse (Wilson), a successful architect married to the beautiful Clara (Biel) who seemingly perfect life uuntil Walter’s fascination with an unsolved murder leads him into a spiral of chaos as he is forced to play cat-and-mouse with a clever killer and an overambitious detective while at the same time lusting after another woman.

Tony-nominated actress Sanaa Lathan has signed on to play FBI agent Natalie Austin in the magician caper sequel Now You See Me 2, joining the film’s original cast members Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine, as well as newcomers Lizzy Caplan, Jay Chou and Daniel Radcliffe.

A new trailer was released for the psychological thriller The Captive (formerly Queen Of The Night) from Oscar-nominated Atom Egoyan. The film stars Ryan Reynolds and Mireille Enos as a couple plagued by the unsolved disappearance of their young daughter Cassandra until years later, mementos of Cassandra’s start mysteriously appearing and two detectives (Rosario Dawson and Scott Speedman) discover recent images of the girl online.

A trailer was released for American Heist, (did I mention heist films were big?) starring Adrien Brody and Hayden Christensen as brothers from the wrong side of the tracks – Brody playing the brother who can’t stay out of trouble, and Christensen playing the one trying to go clean who gets sucked in for one last ride.

Director Paul Anderson released a trailer he cut himself for the upcoming Inherent Vice, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel.

TELEVISION

It’s official: Netflix will broadcast Longmire’s fourth season for a total of ten episodes.

FX is developing From Hell, a drama series based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, later adapted into the 2001 20th Century Fox movie starring Johnny Depp and Robbie Coltrane. The story follows Jack the Ripper, detailing the events leading up to the Whitechapel killings and the cover-up that followed.

The popular and acclaimed BBC crime drama Luther is getting a U.S. remake from Fox, to be written/executive produced by the original series’ creator Neil Cross, with the British series’ star, Idris Elba, on board as executive producer.

Meanwhile, the BBC announced it’s going to broadcast a two-hour Luther miniseries that brings Idris Elba’s character back temporarily to the other side of the Pond.

In other BBC programming news, the network is commissioning several new shows, including a five-part 1940s thriller SS-GB from Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade based on the novel by Len Deighton; the police drama Cuffs, an eight-part series that portrays the everyday rollercoaster of being a police officer in the UK; The Secret Agent, a three-part adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel set in 1886 London where a shopkeeper works as a secret agent for the Russian government; and Undercover, a six-part series written by Peter Moffat about a woman who’s set to become the first black Director of Public Prosecutions, just as she discovers that her husband and the father of her children has been lying to her for years.

AMC is scheduling a two-part Better Call Saul premiere on consecutive nights, Sunday, February 8th and 9th. The Breaking Bad prequel will then continue to air on Mondays for the remaining eight episodes in its first season.

FX has ordered a new drama series, Taboo, from producer Ridley Scott. The project stars Tom Hardy as an adventurer who returns from Africa with 14 “ill-gotten diamonds” and seeks revenge for his father’s death by refusing to sell his family’s business to the East India Company and instead building his own trading empire.

The second season of True Detective keeps adding to its cast, including recent hire Riley Smith (True Blood) who will play a Sheriff’s deputy.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Hardboiled author James Ellroy was featured on the Guardian Books podcast, talking about profanity, political correctness and the horrors of real-life crime.

A Visit to Will Poole's Island

Based in Vermont, author Tim Weed teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and in the MFA Creative & Professional Writing program at Western Connecticut State University. He is the winner of a Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Award and a Solas Best Travel Writing Award and also has published many short stories and essays. In addition to his writing work he has more than two decades’ experience developing and directing educational travel programs around the world and is currently a featured expert for National Geographic Expeditions on traveling programs to Cuba, Spain, and Patagonia/Tierra del Fuego.

Tim Weed’s first novel, Will Poole’s Island is set in New England, 1643. A meeting in the forest between a rebellious young Englishman and a visionary Wampanoag leads to a dangerous collision of societies, an epic sea journey, and the making of an unforgettable friendship. Will Poole's Island is a tale of adventure, wonder, and mystery in which a young man discovers that he is destined for more than his narrow upbringing led him to expect.

Tim Weed stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about how his interest in family history led him to research that inspired the events of this novel:

 

Several years ago I got interested in family history. Tracing the Weeds back through the decades and the centuries, I found that the first Weed, Jonas, had come to America in 1630, on the ship Arbella, with Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Another ancestor was a young widower named Thomas Trowbridge, who crossed the Atlantic with three young sons and a household servant in 1637 to become one of the founders of New Haven, Connecticut. In 1645, Thomas Trowbridge sailed back to England to help Oliver Cromwell fight against king Charles in the English Civil War. He was killed in battle, leaving the three young Trowbridge orphans in the trust of their father’s servant, Henry Gibbons. Gibbons turned out to be corrupt, and basically swindled the boys out of their fortune.

Left on their own to survive in the wilds of America, the boys became merchant sea captains. One, William Trowbridge, was captured by the French and later became the subject of a sermon by the famous Puritan cleric Cotton Mather. Anyway, all of this was fascinating to me, and those who have read the book may recognize echoes of these ancestral histories in the story of my protagonist, Will Poole, his brother Zeke, and their legal guardian, the servant James Overlock.

I also have Native American ancestors – my great grandmother was half Cherokee – and I was fascinated by that heritage. So I wanted to find out more about the New England Indians too. I started reading a lot of primary resources, mostly accounts written by early English travelers and colonists. These books were very interesting, but they were of course written purely from the English perspective. Most of the observations of Indians by these early English described them as tall, handsome, healthy, with exceptionally good teeth. And then there was the fact that English captives, especially young ones, were often reluctant to return to the settlements after they’d been ransomed or rescued – because the freedom and ease they found in Indian society compared favorably to the strictness and repression of Puritan society. I found this most provocative, and it gave me an important insight into the character of my protagonist, Will Poole.

In 1614, six years before Plymouth Rock, an English sea captain named Thomas Hunt kidnapped twenty-seven Algonkian-speaking Indians from different spots along the New England coast and sold them as slaves to the Spanish. Among this group was a Patuxet Wampanoag who called himself Tisquantum, a name that was later shortened to “Squanto.” Tisquantum managed to escape slavery in Spain and made his way to England, where he was taken up by a group of investors interested in colonizing the New World. Tisquantum spent five years in England and found his way home in 1619, only to discover that his entire band had perished in a devastating plague. There is a character in my book, Squamiset, who has a very similar story.

Anyway, in the course of all this research I was beginning to develop a mental picture of New England in the 17^th century. The thing was, the picture wasn’t complete. It wasn’t vivid or alive in my mind. And so in a sense the novel came to me because I passionately wanted to know more about the time and place, and I was only getting a dry and limited vision from my research.

And when it came time to transition from the research phase to the novel-writing phase, I began to get a feeling of accumulating energy, as if the story were telling itself. It was as if my early American characters had an important message they wanted to communicate - a new way of thinking, perhaps, or a reminder of a very old way of thinking. Novels are obviously limited in what they can achieve, of course, and in the end this is just a story. It’s a story about the friendship between a young man and an old man, their adventures and struggles and the landscapes they travel through, and the people and beings they interact with. I hope you enjoy it!

 

You can find out more about Tim and the book via the author's website. Will Poole's Island is available via Amazon US and Amazon UK in digital and print formats.

Mystery Melange

Bouchercon 2014 wrapped up this past weekend, which also means we now know this year's winners for the Anthony Awards, the Barry Awards, the Macavity Awards, and the Shamus Awards. William Kent Krueger scored close to a sweep by winning the Best Novel Anthony, Best Novel Barry, and Macavity Best Novel nods for Ordinary Grace, while the Shamus for Best Hardcover PI Novel went to Brad Parks for The Good Cop. (For all the winners, check out the Shots Ezine blog.) For all the finalists, check out these websites for the Anthonys, the Barrys, the Macavitys, and the Shamus Awards (via Crimespree).

RT Book Reviews also announced the finalists for their annual awards in various categories, including a general Mystery, Suspense, Thriller category and Romantic Suspense.

Kirkus Reviews named their "Best of 2014" fiction selections, including several mysteries and thrillers.

Martin Edwards notes on his blog that the British Library's Crime Classics series are publishing two anthologies of Golden Age fiction edited and introduced by Edwards that he hopes will "introduce a new generation of readers to some of the marvellous short stories published between the wars." The two books are Resorting to Murder, which focuses on holiday mysteries, and Capital Crimes, a collection of stories set in and around London, with each volume including include one or two rare stories. Edwards has also been named Series Consultant for the Crime Classics initiative, which has several more interesting titles in the publishing pipeline.

The latest Mystery Readers Journal is devoted to bibliomysteries, mystery stories set in the world of books (publishing, bookselling, libraries, academia, etc.).

India's first Crime Fiction Festival debuts January 17-18, 2015, featuring crime and thriller writers from across the world, as well as noted scriptwriters and directors, who will "dissect the genre in visual medium and performing arts."

Law enforcement officer and author B.J. Bourg's blog Righting Crime Fiction aims to help authors get the details in their fiction just right. His latest offering is about spent casings and crime scenes.

Author Val McDermid takes a look at the brillliant unconventional crime novels of Josephine Tey, the "enigmatic writer whose dark, unsettling stories dragged the crime novel into the modern age."

An essay in The New York Times claims that modern technology has led to "The Death of the Private Eye," although the P.I. team Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman have a different take on the subject.

Paul Dickson selects his top 10 favorite "authorisms"  – neologisms coined by authors which have entered the wider language, from Shakespeare to Joseph Heller.

The Guardian profiled the tiny books in the famous Queen Mary's Doll House collection, including the 503-word Sherlock Holmes story "How Watson Learned The Trick" that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created for the Doll house. The newspaper is giving away five tiny replicas of the book to lucky winners who enter by November 24 November.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Escape From Dallas" by William G. Rector.

The Q&A roundup this week includes an interview over at The Mystery People blog with Paul Oliver, founder of Syndicate Books, a new independent publisher dedicated to bringing back the works of great and influential crime authors back in print; Mark S. Bacon stops by Omnimystery News to talk about his new mystery Death in Nostalgia City; and Preston Lang takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge.

Progeny of a Killer

Today's guest post is from British author JM Shorney, author of Progeny of a Killer.

Undercover agent and assassin, Aidan McRaney, is sent to infiltrate the lair of fellow Irishman, Daniel Corrigan, by his boss, wheelchair-bound Sir George Treveleyan. Only Corrigan and Treveleyan know of McRaney’s secret past. Aidan has no idea of his mother’s affair with wanted I.R.A man, Connor McMartland, who was also Corrigan’s father. This shocking news triggers a chain of unprecedented events that sends Aidan into the world of white slave trafficking and puts Aidan's own son in harm's way.

Shorney stops by In Reference to Murder today to share her inspiration for her books and some insights into her research:

 

As three of my novels Stalking Aidan, The Devil in Soho and Staying Out are related to gangsters, what better way of recounting my experiences in the area of research, than to actually revisit  the early years when I once dated a man actively involved in gangland. This was before marriage and children, but it was an experience I have drawn upon for my novels.

As I was about to become engaged to him, he had gone from being penniless and unemployed, to throwing his money around. It turned out that he, and other members of his hoodlum fraternity, had held up and robbed a post office in Chesterfield. It was this incident that perhaps led me to immerse myself in the gangster/crime genre. Watching countless movies and reading non-fiction crime books has also acquainted me with this twilight world of nightclubs, drugs and prostitution.

Of course, visiting the places has added more feeling and sensation to my writing. Nothing is more powerful and atmospheric than to visit the places you write about. I have to admit I've worn out much shoe leather walking the streets of London, particularly the East End and South London, where my stories are set.

For Progeny of a Killer I had researched Irish history extensively for many years, and gone through many Kleenex tissues due to being upset by this bloody history. I have been able to construct this story of revenge and desperate sorrow, experienced by one man, Danny Corrigan, for what he sees as acts of insurgency against the Irish nation.

In Dublin, prior to writing the novel, I visited Kilmainham gaol. I saw that small, lonely black cross over the mound of earth and knew I had to write about it. Particularly the death of James Connolly, the last of the rebel leaders of the1916 Easter Uprising. Connolly was propped up by a chair and shot, which is referred to by Danny Corrigan in Progeny. Corrigan's hatred of the British is such, that he has a plan is to bring them down, not with bombings or assassinations, but paedophilia and white slave trafficking. In the murder and torture of children lies the machinations of this man. Visiting Kilmainham and seeing the small barred cells, gave me the first hand experience no Wikipedia entry or Google search could ever offer.

To get to real grips with your story, write what you know, what you feel and what you see.

 

For more information about Storney and Progeny, check out her AuthorAmp website.

 

 

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest news wrap-up for crime-related movies, television shows, podcasts, and the theater:

MOVIES

At last week's Hollywood Film Awards, David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel Gone Girl took home the top prize. Benedict Cumberbatch snagged the Best Actor honor for his role as WWII codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, and his co-star Keira Knightley won Best Supporting Actress.

Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz has signed on to join Daniel Craig in Sam Mendes’ Bond 24, and speculation is that he will be playing the villain.

Production on the Jake Gyllenhall-starring film The Man Who Made It Snow (based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Max Mermelstein) may be in jeopardy due to a production company lawsuit. The the film tells the story of an American who cracked the inner circle of the Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s and helped build Pablo Escobar's empire.

Sundance Selects picked up North American broadcast rights to three popular Danish "Department Q" thrillers (The Keeper Of Lost Causes, The Absent One, A Conspiracy Of Faith), all adaptations of the bestselling Department Q series of novels written by Jussi Adler-Olsen. The stories focus on chief detective Carl Mørck who’s banished to a basement office to run a cold case division, and star Nikolaj Lie Kaas (A Second Chance) and Fares Fares (Child 44, Zero Dark Thirty).

A trailer was released for the film adaptation of Mordecai, based on the books by Kyril Bonfiglio. The film stars Johnny Depp on a globe-spanning adventure to recover a stolen painting.

TELEVISION

Longmire fans take note: the series based on the stories and characters by author Elmore Leonard is reportedly close to a deal for a new life on Netflix.

Fans of Perception aren't as lucky, however, as TNT announced it was axing the show after three seasons. The show starred Eric McCormack as a neuroscience professor who consults with the FBI on various cases.

CBS has given a production commitment to Sneaky Pete, a drama written and executive-produced Bryan Cranston and David Shore, about a con man in his thirties who assumes the identity of a cellmate to escape his darker past after leaving prison.

ABC put into development Emma Cavendish, a legal procedural written by NCIS co-executive producer Chris Silber about a young attorney who discovers a long-buried secret about her family.

Sundance TV greenlighted the drama series Hap and Leonard, based on the book series by Joe Lansdale. The six-episode series centers on a pair of best friends and martial arts experts who struggle through misadventure in a bid to stay on the right side of the law in 1980 East Texas. Production is scheduled to begin in 2015 for a 2016 broadcast.

NBC is looking to add to its recent foray into live productions with a live version of Aaron Sorkin’s famous play A Few Good Men, which was turned into a film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.

The creators of Justified are creating a new series for CBS that's set in a Texas suburb. It centers on a prosecutor named Gaby Ortiz, nicknamed “The Beast,” who's tasked with taking down the rampant crime rate in the area, following the disturbing death of the district attorney.

Elizabeth Perkins (Weeds) will costar in TNT’s untitled Miami-set project from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay about the wild and unpredictable world of the Florida drug trade in the 1970s.

Lolita Davidovich and Intruders star James Frain have been added to the cast for the second season of HBO’s True Detective.

Jessy Schram (Veronica Mars) and Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) have joined the cast of Lifetime’s six-episode limited series The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, based on the life of the notorious murderess.

Girl Meets World actor Ben Savage is set to guest star in an episode of Criminal Minds on CBS, playing a young version of Mandy Patinkin's character.

Ron Perlman has signed on to play The Blacklist's next mega criminal when the show returns on February 1st behind the Super Bowl. He'll play a meticulous thief who plans his international heists over the course of several months or years, creating diversions and chaos to get what he wants — until he faces off with Red Reddington (James Spader).

BBC Two has ordered a third series of the Steven Knight-created period crime saga Peaky Blinders, with Netflix set to air Season 3 in the U.S. after BBC Two airs the series first.

NBC, Nat Geo and Discovery are teaming up to launch The Justice Network, dedicated to solving crime and “make a difference.” Programming will feature stories of true crime and aim to make communities safer by empowering viewers to take action.

Showtime renewed Homeland, starring Clare Danes, for a fifth season.

USA renewed its law-enforcement drama Graceland, starring Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata, for a t
hird season. The series centers on a group of diverse law-enforcement agents from the DEA, FBI and Customs forced to live together in an undercover beach house in Southern California.

TNT announced it's pulling the plug on the legal dramedy Franklin & Bash, which just wrapped up its fourth season on the network.

Amazon released a trailer for its upcoming new TV series Bosch, based on the Harry Bosch books by Michael Connelly.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

What's the state of the art in forensic science? Find out on the latest Crime & Science Radio: Improving Forensic Science with Kevin Lothridge Of The NFSTC.

THEATER

Garrison Keillor's Midwestern private eye Guy Noir from Prairie Home Companion was the inspiration for a ballet by James Sewell Ballet in the Twin Cities. Although it's too late to catch the show, here's hoping it might spur other companies to take on this new production. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

A Look at "The Rightful Owner"

Hemmie Martin has spent most of her professional life as a nurse, including being a Community Nurse for people with learning disabilities and a Forensic Nurse working with young offenders. She spent six years living in the south of France, and currently lives in Essex in the U.K. She writes crime fiction with a dark edge, including a series with D.I Eva Wednesday novel, second of which, Rightful Owner, was published this week.

When a murder occurs in an exclusive swingers’ club, D.I. Wednesday and D.S. Lennox find themselves immersed in a murky world of sex and secrets. It doesn’t take long for the members to turn on one another, and for their clandestine affairs to come crashing into their everyday lives. As Wednesday experiences the pressures of work and caring for her mother’s mental illness, and Lennox’s ex-wife has him worrying about the sustainability of his role as a father, their case brings about questions of personal freedom and they begin to wonder if we are all, in fact, owned in one way or another.

Martin stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about "Being Close to Crime":

 

I had always wanted to be a policewoman, but life took me down the nursing route, after a volunteering placement. Years down the line, I found myself working as a Forensic Nurse with young people between ten and eighteen, who had committed crimes. Their offences ranged from theft, drug or alcohol use, assault, to murder. I visited the young people in their homes, schools, hostels, or young offender institutes (prison). I was finally working alongside the police.

My experiences of visiting prisons, police cells and courts, add some (I hope) realism to my novels. I remember vividly the pressure of the job, the claustrophobic feeling of the cells, and the general malaise clinging to the atmosphere in the prisons. I was visiting an offender once, when the prison alarm rang. A fight had broken out, and lock-down was being enforced. Although I was completely safe, adrenaline riddled by body. I also remember taking a group of male adolescents to a male adult prison, with the idea of dissuading them from a life of crime. Walking within the grounds, men were hurling obscenities at myself and my female colleague, which was an uncomfortable experience.

I obviously do not use real people or their actual crimes in my novels, but I do liaise with a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police Force, who advises me on procedural issues, which is a great help. As he is the same rank as my female DI, he is able to see things as she would. However, I reserve the right to use artistic licence, as sometimes the police procedure is quite a drawn-out process, which could be quite boring to read. I want an element of realism in my work, but not an out-and-out- procedural novel. I like to study the human aspects of crime, and the people behind the Detective Inspector and Detective Sergeant badges.

I am due to attend jury service in a week, which I hope will add another dimension to my writing. I’m used to being in Court with an offender, but never on the side of a jury, so I’m excited to see what that is like.

I have a plethora of books on policing, forensics, poisoning, true crime, and criminal psychology, to name but a few. I read a variety of male and female authors of crime fiction, such as Ian Rankin and P.D. James, but nothing beats human intervention, in my opinion.

When I write, I have the idea of the crime in mind, but sometimes the perpetrator changes from who I originally intended it to be, as once I start, things I could not see before writing suddenly develop. It is then I see who else would be better suited as the perpetrator, which often affords me the twist in the denouement, which hopefully thrills the reader.

This has taught me that over-planning a novel could stifle such hidden gems. I will write a mind-map as I move through the story, to check where people were when the crime took place, but I only use this overview as a guide, not a testament to follow religiously, as things always have a potential to change. But that makes a story interesting for me to write, and for a reader to devour.

 

Rightful Owner is available via Amazon. For more information about the author, check out her website, Twitter account, and Facebook page.

Mystery Melange

Amazon's editorial staff chose its "Best Books of 2014" including those in the Mystery/Thriller/Suspense Category. You can check out all of the twenty chosen titles via this link.

Five authors were shortlisted for the CWA 2014 Dagger in the Library award, which honors an author’s body of work to date. The top vote-getters include Sharon Bolton, Elly Griffiths, Mari Hannah, James Oswald, and Mel Sherratt.

John Fortunato's Dark Resrvations won the 2014 Tony Hillerman Prize for a best first mystery novel set in the desert southwestern U.S. (Hat tip to Ali Karim.)

The deadline for submission to the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers has been extended to December 15, 2014. (HT to Donna Andrews.)

Via Mystery Fanfare: If you're going to the Bouchercon crime fiction conference this weekend, you can download the official Bouchercon app for Android and iPhones.

One thousand International Thriller Writers authors are donating a book so that lucky winners can read a book each week for a year. Simply sign up on the ITW website to receive The Big Thrill magazine, and you'll be be entered to win. Winners drawn November 30, 2014 (and prizes mailed in time for holiday gift giving, if you prefer to share the spoils).

Joshua Rothman takes on "A Better Way to Think About the Genre Debate" in fiction, noting the "genrification" of fiction today and how it remains unclear exactly what the terms “literary fiction” and “genre fiction” mean.

Charles Finch chose "Classic mysteries every fan should read" for USA Today.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against heirs of Arthur Conan Doyle over a copyright battle in a decision expected to clear way for wave of new Sherlock spin-offs.

RIP to Seymour Shubin, 93, who died this past week. He was a best-selling author of 15 mystery novels and won numerous awards, including the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award.

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Felony Adultery" by Robert Cooperman.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Terry Shames chatting with The Mystery People; John Connolly discussed his Charlie Parker series with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; Raymond Benson was interviewed at Omnimystery News abou his fifth and final book in The Black Stiletto series, Endings & Beginnings; Lawrence Block talked with the UK's The Skinny publication about his life and writing career; The Independent took on the "the self-styled 'Demon Dog' of American crime fiction," James Ellroy.

Wounded Warriors

Today is Veteran's Day, and the traditional parades and ceremonies are a great way to celebrate the veterans of our armed forces. However, many veterans who have returned from tours of duty are still suffering from physical and psychological wounds that can take a lot of time and money to treat. The Wounded Warrior Project takes as part of its mission:

• To raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members.
• To help injured service members aid and assist each other.
• To provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members.

The physical support is important, but as a 2012 New York Times article reported, the emotional and psychological support is every bit as crucial, since for every soldier killed in war, about 25 veterans take their own lives.

The organization not only provides a support system and helps provide for physical needs, it also helps veterans with job training and in securing jobs. You can help by giving financial donations, by participating in one of their 8K runs and hundreds of other sports events throughout the country, or by shopping with affiliate companies.

For more information about the program and how to help, check out their website, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

This charity meets all of the qualifications for the Wise Giving Alliance Seal from the Better Business Bureau.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's your latest news about upcoming crime fiction movies, TV shows, and podcasts.

MOVIES

A24 and DirecTV picked up all rights to the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Dark Places. The film is directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and stars Charlize Theron as a woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child and is forced to revisit the events years later that left her life in shambles and put her brother in jail

Actor Henry Cavill's production company has chosen the action thriller Stratton for their first project. Based on an eight-novel series by Duncan Falconer (a pseudonym for an author who used his own military background to inform the lead character), the plot centers on John Stratton, an operative of the SBS who works with the Intelligence Detachment in Northern Ireland.

ARC Entertainment has picked up all U.S. rights to The Barber, a character-driven thriller directed by Basel Owies and starring Scott Glenn and Chris Coy. The film centers on Glenn, a suspect in a serial-murder case released due to insufficient evidence, an act that prompts the detective who locked him up, played by Thomas Calabro, to kill himself in despair. Twenty years later, the detective's son (Coy) tracks down the supposed killer, now working as a barber in a small town, to see if he can find out the truth.

Lotus Entertainment is getting behind director Sacha Gervasi’s thriller November Criminals, adapted from Sam Munson’s 2011 novel. The project stars Chloë Grace Moretz and Catherine Keener in the murder mystery about two teenagers thrown into the dangerous underbelly of Washington, D.C. when they investigate the murder of their friend while falling in love for the first time.

The heist thriller Idol's Eye, starring Robert De Niro, Robert Pattinson, and Rachel Weisz, was shut down just as filming was set to commence in Toronto. Benaroya Pictures says they decided to discontinue financing the motion picture after other producers on the project failed to meet financing deadlines.

Nice Guys, the detective drama starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, has picked up international rights in most markets. The U.S. premiere is scheduled for June 17, 2016.

Rialto has acquired North American rights to Black Souls, a mafia drama from Italian director Francesco Munzi.

Matt Damon made it official by announcing he's returning to the Bourne franchise in 2016.

Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Alba, and Michelle Yeoh have joined the cast of The Mechanic: Resurrection, the sequel to 2011's The Mechanic. The story centers on  hitman Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) as he struggles to complete a list of assassinations of the most dangerous men in the world.

Udo Kier and James C. Burns have signed on to star in Courier X, a conspiracy drama that looks at supposed CIA involvement in the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800.

Naomi Watts is on board to star in the drama Shut In, the psychological thriller about a woman who discovers a shocking secret about her catatonic son.

Country music star Faith Hill completed filming on the indie crime drama Dixieland, where she played the mother of a young man, newly released from prison, who falls for the troubled girl next door and takes a big risk to give them a shot at a better life.

TELEVISION

CBS is developing American Gothic with Good Wife writer and executive producer Corinne Brinkerhoff. The murder mystery series is set in Boston and follows a prominent family who learn their recently deceased patriarch might have been a serial killer and one of their own his accomplice.

PBS’s “Masterpiece,” the long-running Sunday night British drama and mystery franchise, will expand by at least 20 hours next year, an approximate 50 percent increase. The new hours start January 18, with the additional shows being broadcast either before or after the program’s traditional time slot of 9 p.m. Eastern time. Starting off the expanded schedule is the six-part mystery Granchester, and Wolf Hall, adapted from two Hilary Mantel novels, follows in April, with other imports later in the year.  

Mark Gordon is adapting Ingrid Thoft's family legal drama book series, Fina Ludlow, for ABC, with The Glades creator Clifton Campbell penning the script and serving as showrunner. The untitled drama is described as a sophisticated and emotionally complex family drama set in the Ludlow family business: a high-powered law firm in Chicago, Ill. The story is told through the black sheep of the family, 31-year-old Fina Ludlow, the brash, intelligent, hot-mess daughter who left Harvard Law School and becomes the firm's brash and controversial legal investigator.

Fox is developing The System, described as "a character driven crime procedural," executive produced by Jason Winer and written by award-winning playwright Jon Caren (The Recommendations) in his first TV effort.

The team behind ABC Family’s series Pretty Little Liars is creating a new show, The Perfectionists, based on the latest young-adult book series by Sara Shepard. The Perfectionists is a murder mystery that features five girls who plot the perfect revenge on a handsome womanizer ruins their lives. But when he's murdered and they didn't do it, they try to find out who did.

A&E IndieFilms and BBC Storyville are teaming up w
ith Vice Media's Films division and UK production company Raw to produce a documentary about the online illegal drugs marketplace, the Silk Road.

NCIS has cast Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager) playing Rebecca, the never-before-seen ex-wife of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

Justified has cast Lost star Jeff Fahey for the show's final season. Fahey will play Zachariah Randolph, a man "weathered and a little shaky, a man beaten down by hardship and drink."

Marcia Gay Harden is joining the cast of How to Get Away with Murder for an unnamed mutli-episode arc during the second half of Season 1.

NBC announced midseason finale dates for several of its shows, including The Blacklist, Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Law & Order: SVU, and Mysteries of Laura.

CBS announced the dates for what is saying is the seventh and last season of The Mentalist.

TNT released premiere dates for Rizzoli &Isles (February 17), Perception (February 17), and Cold Justice (January 9).

Cinemax’s Emmy-winning series Banshee will return for its 10-episode third season January 9. The series stars Antony Starr as Lucas Hood, an ex-con and master thief who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pa., where he continues his criminal pursuits while enforcing his own code of justice.

Although the return of Orphan Black is still three months away, fans can enjoy a trailer for Season 3 to tide them over.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Michael Connelly joined CBS This Morning to discuss his latest Bosch novel, The Burning Room.

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Joe Hill stopped by to chat about his novel Horns.

Ready for Some Influence

Chris Parker is a specialist in Communication and Influence, a Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and instructor, an experienced martial artist, and columnist and features writer. He's also written, or contributed to, over 20 fiction and nonfiction books.

His new thriller, titled Influence, centers on internationally-renowned consultant, Marcus Kline, who shares his expertise with world leaders, corporate giants and global media stars. Arrrogant, self-assured and controlling, Marcus revels in his unparalleled skill. Yet when a series of murder victims bear the horrific hallmarks of an intelligent and remorseless serial killer, Detective Inspector Peter Jones turns to Marcus for help – and everything changes. As the killer sets a deadly pace, the invisible, irresistible and terrifying power of influence threatens friendships, reputations, and lives. When events appear to implicate the great Marcus Kline himself, everyone learns that the worst pain isn’t physical.

Parker stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss the power of influence:

 

Influence...It’s inevitable

by Chris Parker, author of Influence

 

We are all subject to influence. That’s what the research tells us. People, places, memories, expectations and a whole host of other stimuli influence us. In the main they influence us subconsciously. In other words they get into our heads and into our psyche, they affect the ways we feel, the things we say and the decisions we make without us even realising it.

This isn’t a one-way street, though. We influence others, too. Whether we mean to or not. Sometimes we create influence – either positive or negative - and we are oblivious to the fact. Sometimes we set out to create a specific type of influence and we achieve the exact opposite. Just because we influence inevitably doesn’t mean that are particularly good at it. Just because we are influenced inevitably doesn’t mean that we recognise and/or manage those influences well.

I decided to write my crime thriller series based on a Master of Influence. His name is Marcus Kline. I don’t know why that is his name. It just is. I do know why I chose to create him. It’s because I have been studying communication and influence since the mid 1970s. When I returned to writing fiction I took the easy and obvious option. I based it on what I know. I teach people in all walks of life how to use language to influence deliberately and positively. So when I began the process of creating Marcus Kline and his world I was pretty sure that there was only one thing I didn’t know. That was just who precisely my killer was and what precisely his motive was.

I figured – guessed, hoped – that it would all become clear as I developed Marcus’s world and immersed myself in it fully. Thankfully that is what happened. Eventually the killer just stepped out from the shadows and gave me a knowing look. I recognised precisely what that look meant because, well, because I have been studying and teaching this stuff for decades. The killer knew that I would read between the lines. The killer was right.

From that moment on I felt in complete control of my novel. The feeling lasted less than a week. Why? Because influence is inevitable. Because Marcus Kline had had enough life breathed into him to start making his own decisions. Now it was time for him to take the lead. All I could do was create the situations and let him work his way through them. He led. I followed. To be honest, I found it quite frightening at first. This wasn’t at all how I had planned to write the book. I adapted, though. After all, if you create a Master of Influence what do you expect them to do? I, of all people, should have worked that out. I cope with it by telling myself that we are a team.

So, right now, we are working together on the second book in the trilogy. I’m doing my best to recognise all the different ways Marcus Kline is influencing me. Part of me – the competitive part – feels tested by him. I’d like to show him that I know at least some things that he doesn’t. I suspect that I am doomed to failure. There is one thing, however, that I do know for sure.

He hasn’t finished with me yet. 

Influence is published by Urbane Publications (http://urbanepublications.com) and is available from Amazon and lots of other lovely booky places http://georiot.co/21DG

Marcus Kline has his own website at http://marcuskline.co.uk

Head there if you dare!

Mystery Melange

If you're near Suffolk, Virginia, this Saturday, check out the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts. Authors schedule to appear include Ellery Adams; Maggie Sefton; LynDee Walker; Mollie Cox Bryan; Wendy Lyn Watson (who also writes as Annie Knox); Mary Burton; Linda O. Johnston; Gayle Trent (who also writes as Amanda Lee); Erika Chase; Vicki Delany (who also writes as Eva Gates); and Joyce and Jim Lavene (who also write as J.J. Cook and Ellie Grant).

The just wrapped-up NoirCon handed out its biannual awards as part of the festivities. Bronwen Hruska received the Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Constant Excellence in the Field, thanks to her tireless dedication to the advancement of crime/mystery fiction as publisher of Soho Press; Fuminori Nakamura of Tokyo, Japan, received the David Goodis Award for excellence in writing; and "The Czar of Noir," Eddie Muller, received the Anne Friedberg Award for his contribution to noir education and preservation. (HT to Janet Rudolph.)

The Irish Book Award finalists were announced last week, including the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award Shortlist:

Can Anybody Help Me? by Sinéad Crowley
Last Kiss by Louise Phillips
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville
The Kill by Jane Casey
The Secret Place by Tana French
Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

The public is encouraged to vote for their favorites through November 21st.

Speaking of voting, it's time once again for the Goodreads Best Books of the Year polls, including the Mystery/Thriller Category. If you're a Goodreads member, log in and cast your vote for your favorite of the 15 nominated titles.

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots Ezine includes a look at crime fiction themed around soccer (a/k/a football in the UK); musings about the "East Anglian crime-writing Bermuda triangle" that hosted the likes of Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Jonathan Gash and, for a portion of the 1960s, Patricia Highsmith; and also profiles of “frenemy thrillers," new historical crime titles, and the new anthology Bodies in the Bookshop edited by L. C. Tyler and Ayo Onatade.

The first edition of Jack Hardway's new Crime Magazine is available online. In addition to new crime stories from Kaye George, Jack Bates, Nick Sweeney, John H. Dromey, Stephen D. Rogers, and Jack Hardway, you can read Elliott Chaze's legendary noir masterpiece Black Wings Has My Angel, hear the second-most famous radio drama of all time, and watch a film noir classic you might not be familiar with.

The latest issue of Yellow Mama online includes new stories by Salvatore Ritchie, Justin Swartz, Roy Dorman and more.

The new ThugLit (Issue Fourteen) for the Kindle features new short crime fiction from Neil Krolicki, Albert Tucher, Eddie McNamara, S.A. Cosby, Blair Kroeber, CT McNeely, Scott Loring Sanders, and Dan J. Fiore.

November's Big Click magazine takes at a look at "Crime in Oakland: A Personal History" by Lori Selke; has three new short fiction pieces this month, and offers up the latest book reviews.

Syndicate Books has reached an agreement with the estate of Margaret Millar to publish the MWA Grandmaster’s complete works in North America. Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books, a pioneer of the modern psychological thriller, and was honored with an Edgar Award for Best Novel and the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award.

Daniel Miller of the LA Times went on a search for the possible inspiration for Philip Marlowe, the the city’s first licensed black private detective, Samuel B. Marlowe.

Michael Kaminer compiled a list of "6 Jewish Crime Novels With Female Protagonists Everyone Should Read."

Publisher Le French Book announced its new book release line-up of top mysteries and thrillers in translation for 2015, "with a full range of different styles, from mysteries set in France to international thrillers." Le French Book is dedicated to bringing commercial fiction from France to a wider audience.

Ronald Tierney profiled some of the new and relatively new independent publishers that are bringing out some exciting crime fiction titles.

The Los Angeles Daily news featured "Six Great Crime Novels Set in Southern California."

Biography TV Online examined the curious relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and magician Harry Houdini.

If you are already thinking to Christmas, look no further than the Paddington Bear designed by Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch. He joins several other actors who had the chance to help craft the bears based on characters they play.

The featured poem at the 5-2 this week is "Kevin" by Matt Hohner. Also, Editor Gerald So has compiled The Five-Two Vol. 3 for Amazon Kindle, featuring all 52 poems from the third year of the 5-2 in one anthology.

The Q&A roundup includes Kim Zupan, chatting with the Mystery People about his debut, The Ploughmen, which is also the MysteryPeople blog's Pick of the Month for October; JA Jance was another Mysterious People guest, discussing her J.P. Beaumont, Johanna Brady and Ali Reynolds series; Jeffrey Siger stopped by Omnimystery News for a Q&A to discuss his sixth mystery in his Andreas Kaldis series, Sons of Sparta; Otto Penzler talks about how he selected the stories for the anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor; and Michael Connelly chats with Newsday about his new Harry Bosch installment, The Burning Room.

Blood of the Rose

Kevin Murray began his writing career 40 years ago, working on the Star, Johannesburg's biggest daily newspaper. He soon became chief crime reporter in what was considered to be the crime capital of the world. He once achieved a record of more than 30 consecutive days of front page crime stories, including an aircraft hijacking, several murders, numerous armed robberies and even drug-related gang wars. Since then, his successful career has spanned magazine publishing, public relations, and strategic communications.

His new novel Blood on the Rose is set in London, 1986, where a newspaper editor is horrifically murdered, his death quickly followed by a series of more brutal, and often bizarre, slayings. The police are baffled, the only clear link between the murders being a single blood red rose left at the scene of every killing. Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey. As the body count rises, Jennifer Chapman, renowned investigative journalist and daughter of the murdered newspaper editor, sets out on a personal quest for revenge. Drawn together in their pursuit of a deadly quarry, Winters and Jennifer unwittingly face a fatal surprise, for the killer is closer than they think.  

Murray stopped by In Reference to Murder to talk about where he finds his inspiration:

 

Inspiration? It’s criminal!

Writers are often advised to write what they know. This in itself could be a rather troubling piece of advice when you’re embarking on a novel about a remorseless, barbaric serial killer. But much of the world’s greatest fiction, particularly crime fiction, is driven by fact, and the real crimes perpetrated by others, the mysteries that haunt and challenge us. Perhaps that’s the thrill of crime fiction, the relationship with the darker side of the world.

My own fascination stems from earlier in my career when I was the crime reporter for the The Star newspaper in Johannesburg. In the mid-80s violent crime was rife in South Africa and there was no shortage of material to feed the imagination of a crime writer. Yet it wasn’t the more lurid or sensational aspects of the criminal act that fascinated me, but the forensic analysis – the careful accumulation and examination of even the most trivial of physical evidence to build, and ultimately solve, a case. You have to remember techniques and technology were far removed from the slick, almost mercurial, presentation of forensics we see now, particularly through popular shows such as CSI. You couldn’t perform a tissue analysis with a smartphone, or find DNA traces with a tablet. But this was the fascination for me, that a case could turn on tracing a partial fingerprint, discovering the relevance of an item of clothing, or matching ballistics to tie a weapon to the person who fired it.

There was one compelling mystery in particular that became the genesis for Blood of the Rose. The case? The Boksburg Suitcase Murder of the mid-late Sixties. A suitcase containing a middle-aged woman’s decapitated torso was fished from Boksburg Lake. Further badly decomposed body parts, including the unrecognisable head, were found in other suitcases. But the body could not be identified, even after pathologists worked with artists to painstakingly produce a likeness of the victim’s features. I won’t go into all the details here – they can easily be found on the internet – but it eventually took four years to formally identify the body as that of Catherine Burch. The final piece of proof? An expert in the police fingerprinting bureau found a fingerprint on a letter written by Catherine that matched those of her corpse.  

As a journalist this case was vital in sparking my interest in forensics, and how the most trivial or innocuous of items can hold the key to unlocking a seemingly indecipherable mystery. Forensic investigation was progressing rapidly and more and more cases, like this one, were being solved thanks to the unique combination of progressive science and human ingenuity. Throw in a large dose of intuition and curiosity and any crime could be solved…eventually. I simply felt compelled to take my interest from the pages of the newspaper into a fictional world – a world where a faceless, remorseless and brutal killer is pursued doggedly by a police team using every clue, no matter how small, to try and break the case. But I didn’t leave any bodies in a suitcase. Or did I? You’ll have to read Blood of the Rose to discover that for yourself….

 

Blood of the Rose by Kevin Murray, June 2014, 320 pages, Urbane Publications, ISBN: 1909273120 is available via Amazon and Urbane

Media Murder for Monday

Here's your latest crime-related news about upcoming movies, television shows, podcasts, theatre, and more.

MOVIES

Liu Lu (currenty starring as Watson in CBS' Elementary) is set to star in Snakehead, a New York-set drama about the international underworld of human smuggling. She'll play a Chinese immigrant mentored in the business of human smuggling by the powerful bosses—called Snakeheads—and rises to the top of Chinatown’s smuggling business.

The biopic crime drama The Godmother has rounded out its cast with Jon Bernthal (The Wolf of Wall Street), Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace), Oscar Jaenada (The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) and Mehdi Dehbi (A Most Wanted Man). The film stars Zeta-Jones as the real-life infamous Columbian cocaine drug lord Griselda Blanco.

Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul plays a morally burdened drone pilot in a teaser poster for Eye in the Sky, Gavin Hood‘s modern warfare thriller set for a 2015 release.

TELEVISION

ABC is developing Wire In The Blood, an adaptation of the British psychological crime drama created by Scottish suspense novelist Val McDermid. The story follows detective Elizabeth Chase who recruits the help of unconventional clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill to track down a serial killer.

TNT has given a 10-episode series order to action drama Agent X starring Sharon Stone, with a premiere date in the second half of 2015. Agent X centers on John Case (Jeff Hephner), a top secret agent hidden from the view of the public – and even from the President – who is trained and ready to serve, deployed only at the careful discretion of the Vice President (Stone). Gerald McRaney is also in the cast, playing the Chief Steward of the Vice President’s mansion and the keeper of its many secrets.

ABC picked up the hour-long crime drama Nola Hart, which centers on a woman who wakes up in an airport with mnesia and hires a dysfunctional father-son detective agency to find out who she is. "When to her own surprise she shows near-genius detective skills, the guys hire the woman to help them as they take on her ever-deepening missing person case."

AMC is developing the espionage thriller miniseries The Night Manager, an adaptation of the 1993 John le Carré novel. Tom Hiddleston will play a former British soldier given incriminating evidence about the crimes of a gun runner on the black market (played by Hugh Laurie) and goes on an undercover sting to try and take him down.

TNT has given a pilot order to the supernatural crime drama Breed, from writer/novelist John Scott Shepherd (Life or Something Like It), director Scott Winant (Fargo) and producer Nicky Weinstock. The story deals with a series of brutal murders in the Pacific Northwest and the mysterious race of creatures who may be committing them. A gifted, but troubled detective is forced to enlist the help of a powerful and alluring female assassin to track down the killers.

Taylor Kitsch confirmed he's been added to the cast for season two of True Detective, joining Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn. HBO also announced other actors recently hired for the show, including Kelly Reilly, Abigail Spencer, Michael Irby and Leven Rambin.

Hayley Kiyoko (The Fosters) has been cast as a regular opposite Patricia Arquette, Bow Wow, and James Van Der Beek in in the CBS midseason drama series CSI: Cyber. She'll play a rookie techie working in the Cyber Crime Division.

CBS has given full-season orders to all of its new fall dramas including Scorpion, NCIS: New Orleans, Madam Secretary and Stalker.  

NBC announced it was giving a full-season order for The Mysteries of Laura, starring Debra Lessing as a New York City homicide detective struggling to balance her demanding job with her hectic life at home.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the BBC's production of the Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie starring actress Joan Hickson, BBC Home Entertainment released a brand new, completely restored high-definition version of four episodes (with more hopefully to come).

If you're a Bogie fan, Reel TV is offering a Humphrey Bogart tribute of sorts during November, airing The Caine Mutiny, The Big Sleep, and The Maltese Falcoln on Saturday nights.

FX released a teaser trailer for the sixth season of Justified, the series based on Elmore Leonard's stories and his literary creation, Raylan (played by Timothy Olyphant). The show starts its final season in January.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest Crime & Science Radio fetured hosts DP Lyle and Jan Burke in a Q&A with forensic anthropologist Marilyn London, discussing what we can learn from skeletal remains, what forensic anthropologists do at the scene, where remains are found, and more.

BBC Radio is featuring a radio adaptation of Conan Doyle's Holmes story "The Hound of the Baskervilles" wih Roger Rees as Sherlock Holmes and Crawford Logan as Dr. Watson.

WAMC's Roundtable Program had a segment on "Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts Of Edgar Allan Poe."

HarperCollins has launched a new global podcast network, HarperCollins Presents, showcasing authors talking about books, inspiration, the creative process
and more. The podcasts will include Patricia Cornwell (The Kay Scarpetta series) and Alexander McCall Smith (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series). The shows are available via iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher.

WCSH-TV interviewed Kate Flora, a former Maine assistant attorney-general who has published 14 mystery and crime books, most which involve Maine, including the non-fiction work Finding Amy, a 2007 Edgar nominee that she co-wrote with a Portland deputy police chief.