Mystery Melange

The Mystery Critics Award (Prix Mystère de la critique), one of France’s most prestigious crime fiction honors, hands out two awards each year, one for best French Fiction, the other going to an international author. This year's winners are Nicolas Mathieu for Aux animaux la guerre and Shannon Burke, for 911.

A collection of letters addressed to crime novelist Agatha Christie have been published for the first time. Dating back to the 1950s and '60s, they not only praise Christie for her writing, they also thank her for helping them through hard times. They include a letter from author PG Wodehouse, as well as a note from a Polish woman in London, who told how one of Christie's novels helped her survive a war-time labor camp in Germany. This is part of the celebrations marking the 125th anniversary of the author's birth, which will also include new BBC novel adaptations later this year.

British historian Walter Elliot may have unearthed the first unseen Sherlock Holmes story in more than 80 years, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to help save a town bridge. The 1,300-word story is titled "Sherlock Holmes: Discovering the Border Burghs and, by deduction, the Brig Bazaar" and is in a collection of short stories written for a local bazaar. There is some controversy over whether the story was actually penned by Doyle, according to The Mirror.

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, HarperCollins has signed two Sherlock Holmes continuation novels by Hollywood screenwriter Bonnie MacBird. Art in the Blood: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure will be published in September, and the sequel to follow is titled Unquiet Spirits. These are separate from the two Sherlock Holmes novels by Anthony Horowitz, both of which had the backing of the Conan Doyle estate.

Book Expo America unveiled the roster for its 2015 Adult Author Breakfast on Thursday, May 28, including bestseller Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher thriller series.

The new double issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine welcomes back Doug Allyn’s Detective Dylan LaCrosse working a cold case; S.J. Rozan’s private detectives Lydia Chin and Bill Smith solve a problem with the help of Lydia’s mother; Julius Katz and Archie are back with a job that proves terrifying and life-changing; plus there are first-rate stories from Mason Cross, Loren D. Estleman, Lucy Ribchester, Meg Opperman, Marilyn Todd, Paul Halter, David H. Hendrickson, and Williams Burton McCormick.

Meanwhile, the new Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine edition features Martin Limón's new series character, Il Yong, an American soldier turned freelance security specialist who operates in the highly contested cultural zone where North Korea and China operate; two Cold War-era stories by Terrie Farley Moran and John C. Boland; and the return of some favorite characters including Madame Selina and her young assistant Nip in Janice Law’s “The Ghostly Fireman,” Eureka Kilburn as a teen in Jay Carey’s “We Are All Accomplices,” and big-hearted fixers Akin and Jones in Dan Warthman’s “Mr. Smartphone.”

The latest issue of the online 'zine Yellow Mama is out, with new crime fiction stories and poetry.

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "Snow over Kabul: The Bagram Airbase Bombing" by Aja Beech.

Sixty percent of folks in Britain poll said their dream job would be "author." According to the poll-sponsor, YouGov, "Instead of actors and musicians, it seems that an aura of prestige still surrounds the quiet, intellectual life enjoyed by authors, librarians and academics." Somehow, though, I imagine they had more of the career and lifestyle of a JK Rowling or James Patterson in mind, since most authors barely eke out a living or are only able to write part time.

The Q&A roundup includes Torquil MacLeod talking about his Scandinavian-based Malmö Mysteries series with Paul D. Brazill at Out of the Gutter; Crime Fiction Lover welcomed James Craig, author of the popular London-based crime thrillers featuring Inspector John Carlyle; Laura Lippman stopped by the Do Some Damage blog to discuss her latest work, Hush Hush; and Craig Sisterson's Crime Watch blog featured a "9mm: interview" with Jeffery Siger, talking about his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series set in Greece.

#TwitterFiction Festival

Last year, the Association of American Publishers and Penguin Random House partnered to sponsor the second industry-wide #TwitterFiction Festival. What exactly is a Twitter Fiction Festival, you may ask? Pretty much like it sounds, as it turns out. Over the course of five days for twenty-four hours a day, authors like Megan Abbott, Alexander McCall Smith, Brad Meltzer, and Ben H. Winters all created experimental fiction as Tweets (140-character snippets).

The event was so successful, it's back again this year from May 11-15, where authors will share their text, photos, and/or videos during a scheduled daily time slot to live-stream their work. Invited participants this year include Margaret Atwood, Matthew Dunn, Lemony Snicket, and Chuck Wendig. But anyone can join in, either by entering the competition for aspiring writers (an open call for submissions begins March 2), or joining in at any time and telling your own stories using the #TwitterFiction hashtag.

If you'd like to see the kinds of offerings that might be in store for you this year, check out some of last year's creative works in the mystery category archived via this link. Maybe I'll Tweet you there.

Media Murder for Monday

Happy Monday to everyone! Here's your latest news from the world of crime dramas on the screen, on the air, and on the stage:

AWARDS

The 87th Academy Awards were handed out last night. Although most of the winners were as expected (at least, according to the odds-setters), there were also a few surprises to be had. For the complete list of winners and nominees in all the categories, head on over to the official Oscars page.

MOVIES

Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to Luca Guadagnino’s thriller A Bigger Splash, starring Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Matthias Schoenaerts. The story focuses on the lives of a high profile couple (Schoenaerts and Swinton) vacationing on the remote Italian island of Pantelleria, and the jealousy, passion and danger that develop with the arrival an old friend and his daughter (Fiennes and Johnson).

Another reboot is on the way, as the Warner Bros. subsidiary New Line Cinemas has picked up the rights to the Shaft franchise. Although there is no creative team attached to the project yet, producer John Davis (I, Robot, Norbit, and Predators) is on board during the early phases.

Paramount Pictures won a bidding war for the rights to Sascha Penn’s spec feature film Bounty, with Will Smith as the star. The story is set in Boston and centers on a wrongly-convicted murderer (Smith) who busts out of prison to prove his innocence even after the widow of the man he supposedly killed puts a $10 million bounty on him, dead or alive.

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have put together the team of screenwriter Kristin Gore, director Jay Roach, and actress Scarlett Johansson for an adaptation of the Jon Ronson's psychological thriller, The Psychopath Test. The project centers on how the medical community tries to diagnose and classify the elusive group known as remorseless, deadly psychopaths.

Author Dennis Tafoya announced an agreement with Wolfgang Petersen and Radiant Productions to develop his novel Poor Boy’s Game as a feature film.

Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno has cast Omar Sy (X-Men: Days Of Future Past) as the leader of the European Center For Disease Control's paramilitary SRS unit. The heart of the story centers on a madman trying to release an old school plague upon Italy.

Apparently, Mission Impossible 5 is having some major difficulties, reportedly due to a less-than-acceptable ending that has to be rewritten. As it stands now, the release date of July 31, 2015, is still on the books.

TELEVISION

Rowan Atkinson (Bean; Johnny English) will star as iconic French detective Jules Maigret in two stand-alone feature-length dramas for ITV, Maigret Sets A Trap and Maigret’s Dead Man, according to Deadline. Stewart Harcourt (Love & Marriage, Treasure Island, Marple) is writing the scripts for the projects.

Fox has given a formal pilot order for Lucifer, based on the DC Comics character, and from the team of Jerry Bruckheimer Television, Aggressive Mediocrity and Warner Bros. The story focuses on Lucifer, the Lord of Hell, as he resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for the “shimmering insanity” of L.A., where he helps the LAPD punish criminals.

Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss is set to star in Madoff, a multi-episode ABC drama centered around the rise and fall of the now-jailed financier Bernie Madoff.

Jaimie Alexander (Thor) will play the female lead in the NBC pilot Blindspot. The story centers on a woman found in the middle of Times Square with amnesia and mysterious tattoos, drawing in the FBI who follow the road map on her body to reveal a larger conspiracy.

Elizabeth Mitchell (Revolution, Lost) and Goran Visnjic (ER) are set to star in the third season of the Europe-set crime drama Crossing Lines, joining Donald Sutherland as series leads. The series revolves around a squad of European law enforcement officers who battle the explosion of international crime that accompanied the opening of borders by the European Union. In the U.S., Season 1 of Crossing Lines aired on NBC; Season 2 was carried by Netflix.

Orange is the New Black is writing out the character of Larry Bloom, played by Jason Biggs. He joins other cast members who have left the storylines and hence the show, including Pablo “Pornstache” Schreiber and Lorraine Toussaint. However, fans will be able to enjoy the talents of new cast additions Blair Brown and Mary Steenburgen.

The Season 3 premiere of BBC America’s flagship series Orphan Black will air simultaneously on all AMC networks – AMC, BBC America, IFC, SundanceTV and WE tv – on Saturday, April 18.

Hulu has acquired the exclusive subscription video on demand rights to all previous seasons of CBS’s crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. All episodes will be available for streaming on Hulu with a Plus subscription beginning early April.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Terry Shames, author of the Samuel Craddock series stopped by the Authors on the Air program to discuss her books.

Novelist William Boyd investigates the case of Helen MacInnes, author of mid-20th-century espionage fiction, for a BBC radio documentary you can listen to online for the next three weeks. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)

THEATER

Benedict Cumberbatch is scheduled to take on the role of Hamlet this summer at London’s Barbican Centre, but it's already sold out. So, a deal was struck with National Theatre Live to telecast the show to venues around the world beginning on October 15 (dates will vary and encore screenings will follow; details will be posted at http://www.ntlive.com). Tickets will go on sale on March 16.

The Off-Broadway return of Patrick Barlow's Tony Award-nominated comedy 39 Steps
will reunite the musical's entire original creative team. The show is a comedic spoof of the classic 1935 film, with four actors portraying more than 150 characters while racing to solve the mystery of The 39 Steps. Performances April 1, prior to an official opening April 13, at the Union Square Theatre.

House of Cards star Nathan Darrow is taking the lead role in NYC's Fourth Street Theatre noirish production of Kill Me Like You Mean It.  Darrow plays a private investigator who discovers that his cases are appearing on the pages of a popular pulp serial, but the crimes are being penned before they happen in real life. The mystery grows darker still when Farrell reads his own death in the prophetic pages.

Mystery Loves Company

nna Quindlen once said "Those of us who read because we love it more than anything, feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers." I've loved hanging out in bookstores since I was old enough to read, and now that I'm on the creative end of the pipeline, I see bookstores from dual perspectives as a reader and author. Bookstores are as important as ever to both.

Bookstore staff are also among the most supportive of crime fiction, which is why I was thrilled to see that Mystery Loves Company, in the town of Oxford on Maryland's Eastern Shore, included my novel Played to Death in their "New Hardbacks" catalog. I'm in some good company, with titles from Alan Bradley, Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini, Paula Hawkins, George Pelecanos, and many more.

If you happen to find yourself in Oxford, please stop by and check out all the great books at Mystery Loves Company, and buy a few for reading during these cold February nights. And if you'd like to buy or order a copy of Played to Death, I'm sure owner Kathy Harig would be happy to oblige.

Mystery Melange

The nine finalists for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel were just announced, and you can check out the longlist via this Facebook link or courtesy or this one, courtesy of the Rap Sheet. The award is named after the author of the Roderick Alleyn mystery series and celebrates excellence in crime, mystery and thriller writing by New Zealand authors.

The Audio Publishers Association released its list of finalists for the 2015 Audie Awards, including the categories of Mystery and Thriller/Suspense. 

The International Thriller Writers has limited space available for their upcoming online Thriller School. Paid participants can take part in the seven-week program, which begins March 2nd, learning the craft with seven bestselling thriller writers. Each instructor will teach an aspect of craft though a podcast, written materials that include further reading and study suggestions, and an entire week of on-line Q&A with the registered students. For more information, check out the ITW website.

Shots Magazine is sponsoring an online contest to win a signed copy of the Amazon Prime promotion brochure for Bosch signed by both Michael Connelly and Titus Welliver. But hurry, because closing date for entries is February 20.

Criminal Element's Jake Hinson has a series on author Margaret Millar in honor of the centennial of her birth. Millar published 27 books in her career, won the Edgar for best novel twice, served as president of the Mystery Writers of America, and won the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement. As Hinson notes, "All of which makes it remarkable that Millar isn’t as well known today as she should be."

Ed Gorman is editing an anthology of stories for PS Publishing culled from the pulp-style girlie magazines of the sixties and seventies and is seeking any authors who have such stories from their past to contribute. He has more details on his blog.

Reviewer Sarah Ward picked her "Top 10 Scandinavian Crime Novels in Translation."

Test your noir knowledge with Declan Burke's "devious" crime fiction quiz, created for The Irish Times.

If you're not already a fan of the regular Omnimystery News Mystery Godoku puzzles, hop on over to to this week's version, whose feature clue comes via Lori Rader-Day's 2014 thriller set in a Chicago college.

The new crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Still Waters" by Phyllis Wax, and the latest story-of-the-month at Beat to a Pulp is "The Hard Side of Heartbreak: A Joe Hannibal Story" by Wayne D. Dundee.

The Q&A roundup includes JD Robb (a/k/a Nora Roberts) chatting with the New York Times; mystery author Lauren Carr stops by Omnimystery News; Lou Berney and Bill Loehfelm visit The Mystery People; and Lawrence Block talked about The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons, the latest in his well-known "Burglar" books series.

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Media Murder for Monday

It's Media Murder for Monday time again, with the latest news on crime dramas on stage and screen, including the Writers Guild of America Awards.

AWARDS

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) handed out their top honors this past weekend. You can get all the winners here, but The Imitation Game, written by Graham Moore (based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges) won for Best Adapted Screenplay, and True Detective, written by Nic Pizzolatto, won for Best TV Drama Series and Best New Series.

MOVIES

Diane Kruger will star opposite Bryan Cranston in the thriller The Infiltrator, to be directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer). The project is based on the Robert Mazur autobiography and revolves around a customs and excise agent (Cranston) and his undercover alias.

ARC Entertainment snapped up North American rights to the thriller The Squeeze from writer-director Terry Jastrow. Christopher McDonald stars as a notorious gambler who discovers a modest young man with uncommon golf skills (Jeremy Sumpter) and convinces him to start playing in high-stakes matches that grow higher and higher until the game becomes life or death.

The Orchard acquired North American theatrical and digital rights to Matthew Heineman’s drug-themed documentary Cartel Land.

The first trailer and publicity photos for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. were released, featuring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as the spy duo.

A trailer was also released for the thriller Regression, about a detective investigating the case of a young woman who accuses her father of an unspeakable crime that leads to a horrifying nationwide mystery.

Daniel Craig had to take a brief period off from filming the next Bond film Spectre, thanks to a knee injury, although it didn't delay production. Meanwhile, the studio released a new photo with 007 in action, along with early behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot in Austria.

TELEVISION

AMC bought a spec political thriller script by Darby Kealey that centers on an award-winning actress who is kidnapped by the dictator of a foreign country and becomes the centerpiece of a covert power struggle.

James Franco is set to star in the adaptation of Stephen King's novel 11/22/63 from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. The plot revolves around an unassuming divorced English teacher who stumbles upon a time portal and goes on a quest to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Revolution co-star David Lyons has come aboard the drama pilot Game Of Silence from CSI's Carol Mendelsohn. Lyons will play a rising attorney on the brink of success who could lose his perfectly crafted life when childhood friends threaten to expose a dark secret from their violent past.

Zach Gilford has been cast in ABC’s untitled drama pilot from Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal alumna Jenna Ban. The story centers on the return of a politician’s young son who was presumed dead after disappearing over a decade earlier, leading to new mysteries.

ABC also hired directors for two more pilots, including British veteran Tom Shankland (Ripper Street) for L.A. Crime, a character-driven, “true-crime” procedural that explores sex, politics and popular culture across various noteworthy eras in Los Angeles history, and fellow Brit Coky Giedroyc (The Hour) for the 1978-set female-cop procedural Broad Squad.

Eric McCormack (Perception) has signed on to play the male lead in Fox’s family dramedy pilot Studio City, written by Krista Vernoff and directed by Sanaa Hamri. The series is  inspired by Vernoff’s real-life experience growing up as the daughter of a drug dealer to the stars

Banshee got the go-ahead from Cinemax for a fourth season. Antony Starr will return as Lucas Hood, ex-con and master thief who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pa., and continues his criminal pursuits while enforcing his own code of justice.

TNT renewed its fantasy crime fighting series The Librarians for a second season. The show stars Rebecca Romijn, Christian Kane, Lindy Booth, John Kim, John Larroquette, and Noah Wyle.

The CW also renewed fantasy-romance-procedural Beauty and the Beast.

THEATER

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is heading to the UK's Ipswich Regent Theatre October 5-10. Last year, the company also produced Christie's The Mousetrap.

Valentine’s Gifts for Crime Fiction Lovers

If you're struggling with ideas for Valentine's Day gifts for your sweetie, and said sweetie happens to be a fan of crime fiction, here are some ideas that just might help. After all, who needs plain, boring chocolate?

Nothing says love like a handgun, or at least a chocolate one. The website chocolateweapons.com has several models to choose from, like this one based on the classic 1911 Colt .45 ACP, a full pound of milk chocolate in its own little carrying case. And if you want, you can add some chocolate ammo.

Or maybe you prefer chocolate handcuffs from The Chocolate Delicacy, boxed with foil wrapped hearts. Because Fifty Shades of Grey, right?

If your beloved is allergic to chocolate, and you have a lot more to spend, why not give a 18k gold plated or rhodium plated curb chain with 18mm rivoli swarovski crystal and a handcuff clasp?

For the budget-minded, this coffee mug will have your lover ready to share a cup of latte with you and possibly quite a bit more.

For a gift that's even a mystery to you, try the Love is Blind Valentine's Day Mystery Box. According to the merchant, it contains a "seriously romantic selection of gifts that are guaranteed to extend your relationship for another 365 days, but it also absolves you of any responsibility because even you don't know what's inside."

For Sherlock fans, you can get a "Sherlock Fan Club Certificate Microscope 221B Baker Street Personalized Sherlock Holmes London England Fan Art Detective Mystery Geekery." Your sweetie's very own certificate to the 221B Fan Club to let everyone know they're Sher-locked.

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writer’s Association announced that Catherine Aird (pen name of Kinn Hamilton McIntosh) will join the likes of P.D. James, Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain in receiving the organization's Diamond Dagger award, one of the highest honors in the crime writing genre. Her first novel, The Religious Game, was published in 1966, and she's since published another 24 novels, the most recent of which, Dead Heading, came out in 2014. (Hat tip to Ayo Ontade at Shots Magazine.)

The Love is Murder Conference handed out the winners of its annual Lovey Awards for Best Series, Best First Novel, and "bests" in several other categories. For all the winners, hop on over to the conference website.

Janet Evanovich, bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series, will be on hand to kick off the Savannah Book Festival on February 12, marking the first time a female author will open the festival.

This past week, the exhibit "Pulp Confidential: Quick & dirty publishing from the 40s & 50s" opened at the State Library of New South Wales. Running through May 10, the exhibit presents a collection of 1940s and 50s vintage Australian pulp cover art, crime story illustrations and original comic books, drawn from the papers of the Sydney publishing house, Frank Johnson Publications.  

Kramer Books in Washington, D.C. are sponsoring a "Noir at the Bar: Dames at Dusk" event on Sunday, March 1st at 7:00 p.m. Ten female writers will be on hand to read from their crime fiction, including Donna Andrews, Meredith Cole, Jen Conley, Ellen Crosby, Barb Goffman, Tara Laskowski, Allison Leotta, Sandra Ruttan, Amber Sparks, and Laura Ellen Scott.

"James Ellroy: Visions of Noir" is the title of a conference July 1-3 at the University of Liverpool, sponsored by the School of English. This conference will examine Ellroy’s influence on the genre, his inspirations as a writer and his achievements in forging an idiosyncratic and unique style. The keynote speaker is journalist and critic Woody Haut, whose works include Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction (1999) and Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War (2014). The conference is seeking proposals for papers from interested speakers.

The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine are once again sponsoring the annual Black Orchid Novella Award Contest. Each entry must be an original unpublished work of fiction that conforms to the tradition of  the Nero Wolfe series (but doesn't include series characters), contains no overt sex or violence, and emphasizes the deductive skills of the sleuth. Stories of 15-20,000 words are due on May 31.

Indie bookstores are an invaluable link in the chain connecting authors to readers, and The Shreveport Times profiled McKenna Jordan, who is not only the owner of Murder by the Book in Houston, she also is a violinist with the Shreveport Symphony. The Line Media also had a listing of "10 Independent Bookstores to Get Cozy with This Winter."

The Telegraph reported on the crimes in miniature reconstructed by Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940s (known as Nutshell Studies), which are still used in police training today.

In the realm of life imitates art (instead of the other way around), San Francisco's KALW public radio station reported on the mysterious disappearance of a plastic Maltese Falcon replica signed by the Hammett family and Humphrey Bogart.

If you're a fan of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series, both in print and on the BBC, you may be surprised to find that the character was based on the real-life detective Sir Jeremy Morse. Forty years after the publication of the first book in the Morse series, the novel's inspiration speaks for the first time about his literary namesake.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The New Woman" by Sharon Lask Munson.

In the Q&A roundup this week, thriller authors Michael E. Rose and Greig Beck chat with Ominimystery News; Tim L. Williams takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; and Crime Watch's 9mm Interview welcomed Attica Locke.

What Makes a Good Mystery Author?

That was the question asked by the agent behind the Mysterious Matters blog (run by a publishing insider) a few years ago after attending one Malice Domestic Conference and being asked—probably for the thousandth time—how to get published, deciding that a better question was how to improve your writing. Toward that end, seven tips that deal more with the attitude end of things were offered up, to wit:

1. A good mystery writer thinks first and foremost about the reader's experience.
2. A good mystery writer balances character and plot.
3. A good mystery writer thinks about the future.
4. A good mystery writer listens to and synthesizes the advice of agents, editors, and readers
5. A good mystery writer takes him/herself seriously, but not too seriously.
6. A good mystery writer pushes and challenges him/herself.
7. A good mystery writer understands the competitive landscape

The annotations provided on the blog flesh out the skeletal list with meaty tidbits, which you can read more about here, and are still as true today in the new publishing landscape as they were then.

On the more creative end of things, the Guide to Literary Agents blog once listed The Top 10 Reasons agents stop reading a manuscript and/or throw it across the room (this time in reverse order):

10. Overdone description that doesn’t move the story forward
9.   Spoon-feeding the reader what the character is thinking
8.   Having the characters address each other repeatedly by name, as in, "John, let’s go!"
7.   Introducing a character with first and last name, as in, “John Smith entered the room.”
6.   Beginning a story with dialogue
5.   Opening with a cliché
4.   Yanking the reader out of the action with backstory
3.   Not giving the reader a sense of place or where the story is going
2.   Characters are MIA until bottom of the second page
1.   Telling instead of showing

 

Do you agree with the lists above? I think the reasons people stop reading a manuscript sometimes differ quite a bit from agents and editors to readers, so your mileage may vary.

Media Murder for Monday

Top o'the week means it's time again for "Media Murder for Monday," with the latest crime drama news from stage and screen:

AWARDS

The BAFTA awards (essentially the "British Oscars") were handed out last night. Congrats to all the winners, and you can read the full list here.

MOVIES

Sony will produce a feature adaptation of The Seven Five, the Tiller Russell-directed and Eli Holzman-produced documentary about one of the most corrupt police forces in 1980s New York. The project is described as "the cop version of Goodfellas."

Director Robert Zemeckis is on board to direct Brad Pitt in an untitled romantic thriller from Paramount and New Regency. Few plot details have been revealed, except that the project will be set during World War II and "is epic in scope."

Jake Gyllenhaal is teaming up with Harvey Weinsten for The Man Who Made It Snow, Antoine Fuqua’s Colombian crime-biopic. Gyllenhaal will star as Max Mermelstein, allegedly the only American in the inner circle of the Colombian drug cartels during the 1980s.

Hobbit star Luke Evans will take a lead role in the prison thriller Three Seconds, based on a Swedish book adapted by screenwriter Matt Cook, to be helmed by British director Otto Bathurst. The story centers on a man forced to go undercover in prison by the FBI, only to be abandoned by the agency, and forced to escape on his own.

Fast And Furious star Tyrese Gibson has made a deal with Universal to executive produce and star in Desert Eagle. He'll play a border patrol agent up against drug cartel that operates out of a Native American casino front.

Sleepy Hollow’s Orlando Jones and his Drive-By Entertainment partner Noam Dromi have optioned the rights to cult deprogrammer Ted Patrick’s story. Patrick was  known as the “father of deprogramming” and seen as savior to many parents who had seemingly lost their children to cults, but his methods found him standing trial several times on kidnapping charges, and he was convicted on a number of felony charges over the years.

A trailer was released for the upcoming tale of Sherlock Holmes as a retired 93-year-old in the film Mr. Holmes starring Ian McKellen, which will see its first screening at the Berlin International Film Festival, later this month.

A promo photo was released for the thriller Go With Me, which stars Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Ray Liotta, and Hal Holbrook. Daniel Alfredson (the Millennium trilogy) directs the adaptation of Castle Freeman Jr’s nove about a young woman who returns to her hometown and is harassed by an ex-cop-turned-violent crime lord (Liota) and enlists an ex-logger (Hopkins) and his sidekick (Alexander Ludwig) to stand up to him.  

TELEVISION

Unforgettable is definitely living up to its name. The twice-cancelled CBS series is getting a new life and 13-episode fourth season on the A&E network. The show stars Starring Poppy Montgomery as a female detective who remembers everything except the events of the day her sister was murdered. Dylan Walsh will also return, playing her boyfriend/partner, NYPD’s Al Burns.

NBC is looking to bring back its long-running drama, Law & Order, as a limited series. The network has been exploring the possibility of re-assembling the cast from the early years of the series, including original cast members Chris Noth and Sam Waterston.

NBC also announced it was renewing The Blacklist, Grimm, Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (for its 17th season).

The Hollywood Reporter has a list of which broadcast series are returning, canceled or have wrapped their run with a guide to the 2015-16 television season.

Mira Sorvino is joining the CBS psychological thiller Stalker in a recurring role. She'll play a respected FBI agent who began her career at LAPD’s Threat Assessment Unit and once ran the division.  

Former Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia has been cast in a recurring role on Fox's Batman prequel series Gotham, playing a character known as the Ogre starting in Gotham's 19th episode.

Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross and the original Man From U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn will guest star on the Feb. 25 episode of NBC’s Law & Order:SVU. They'll play a married couple in a story about the dynamics of family power with adult children and younger wives.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent star Courtney B. Vance has been tapped to play O.J. Simpson's lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran for the upcoming series American Crime Story: People vs. O.J. Simpson.

TV Guide has an exclusive sneak peek of ABC's new drama American Crime premiering Thursday, March 5. The show follows the aftermath of the murder of a war vet and the assault of his wife and the ensuing case that only becomes more complicated and complex as suspects are rounded up.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

BBC Radio is currently offering a six-part production of Strong Poison, the mystery from Dorothy L Sayers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey (Ian Carmichael) and Harriet Vane (Ann Bell).

THEATER

Laura Linney and Seth Numrich will star in Switzerland, a new play by Joanna Murray-Smith about famed crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, at California's Geffen Playhouse. The co-world premiere, first performed at Sydney Theatre Company, will begin performances March 6 prior to an official opening March 13.

Mystery Melange

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers announced the nominees for the annual Hammett prize, awarded to a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a US or Canadian author. This year's list includes Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel, by James Lee Burke; Smoke River, by Krista Foss; Gangsterland: A Novel, by Tod Goldberg; Mr. Mercedes: A Novel, by Stephen King; and Goodhouse: A Novel, by Peyton Marshall.

Congratulations also go to this year's finalists for the Agatha Awards, handed out each year at the Malice Domestic Conference in Maryland. For all the deserving nominees in the various categories, check out the Malice website.

In more awards news, the Love is Murder XVI  Mystery Writers & Readers Conference (to be held in Chicago, February 6-8), announced the Lovey Award nominations. Hat tip to Ayo Onatade at Shots Magazine for posting the complete list.

On Monday, April 27th, Mystery Writers of America will launch the MWA Cookbook, edited by Kate White. The launch party will be held at The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY, with many of the contributors are scheduled to appear. In addition, some of the 2015 Edgar® Award nominees will also be at the bookstore for the event. Visit the Mysterious Bookshop website for more information.

MWA also announced its Edgar Symposium will be returning this year, to be held on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.  All the details will be forthcoming soon, but both of this year's Grand Masters – Lois Duncan and James Ellroy – will be interviewed.

Edgar-winning author Helen Eustis (1916–2015) died last week at the age of 98. She was the last living member of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and known for such titles as The Horizontal Man and The Fool Killer, which was adapted into a movie in 1965 starring Anthony Perkins. Her son has a remembrance on his blog. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell via Sarah Weinman.)

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, is launching a writer-in-residence program with the inaugural author-resident Charles Finch, author of the Charles Lenox mystery novels set in Victorian England. As part of the week-long residency in late February, Finch will host three author events: with Laurie R. King for Dreaming Spies, Priscilla Royal for Satan’s Lullaby, and Tessa Arlen for Death of a Dishonorable Gentlemen. He'll also conduct a workshop and a masterclass.

The latest issue of All Due Respect is out, with an excerpt from author and Needle editor Steve Weddle's upcoming novel Broken Prayer and a Q&A. Plus, you'll find more "mean, gritty crime fiction" from Keith Rawson, Paul D. Brazill, Angel Luis Colón, Garnett Elliott, Gabino Iglesias, and J.J. Sinisi.

Leyla Yvonne Ergil surveyed the world of crime fiction set in Turkey, a country that's long been a destination of intrigue and inspiration for writers of all stripes, including Graham Greene and Agatha Christie.

Mike Ripley's latest Getting Away with Murder column has "The Ripster" hobnobbing with crime fiction elite on the other side of the Pond, including authors from publishers Hodder and Penguin; he also took at look at Kyril (Charles Emmanuel George) Bonfiglioli, author of the Mortdecai books on which the Johnny Depp film is based, and the French cop drama Engrenages (Spiral); and he looks ahead to the second Chianti Crime Festival in Italy in the first week in May, where he will be "officiating."

This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 is "Ramsey" by Mike Wilson.

And did you know author Mary Roberts Rinehart was also a poet? Before she wrote her first mystery novel, The Circular Staircase, she wrote the poem, "The Detective Story," which appeared in the May 1904 Munsey's Magazine. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

The Q&A roundup includes Richard Godwin taking Paul D. Brazill's Short, Sharp Interview challenge; Alyssa Maxwell joined Writers Who Kill to talk about her historical series set in Rhode Island; former Swedish footballer (soccer star) turned crime fiction author Arild Stavrum took part in a "9mm interview" with Craig Sisterson at Crime Watch; Gary Garth McCann stopped by Omnimystery News to give backstory on his new crime novel The Man Who Asked To Be Killed; and Lynn Chandler Willis, who won the PWA First Private Eye Novel Award, joined Writers Who Kill.

Media Murder for Monday

I apologize for Media Monday for Monday being a tad late, but the poor hubster came down with a bad case of the flu. Here is the latest news from the world of crime dramas on the big and small screen:

MOVIES

Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan have signed on to star in the action thriller Sleepless Night, a “reinvention” of the 2011 French film Nuit Blanche. The update focuses on a seemingly corrupt Las Vegas cop (Foxx) who races to save his son's life when gangsters kidnap him in exchange for a shipment of cocaine the cop has lost.

Elijah Wood has been added to the cast opposite Nicolas Cage in Benjamin and Alex Brewer’s film The Trust. The project follows two crooked cops, David Waters (Wood) and Jim Stone (Cage), who discover a hidden safe while working in the evidence unit of the police department that throws them into a deadly well of corruption.

Zoe Graham (Boyhood) has joined the English-language remake of the Argentine thriller The Secret In Their Eyes, playing the daughter of Julia Roberts' character. The cast also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman (who replaced Gwyneth Paltrow) and Breaking Bad's Dean Norris in the tale of a retired criminal investigator who writes a mystery novel in hopes of coming to grips with one of his unsolved cases and his unrequited love for his former superior.

One of the first rights grabs at Sundance is for the thriller Cop Car, with Focus winning the opportunity to distribute the film that follows two 10-year-old boys who steal an abandoned cop car, only to find themselves on a wild ride when the owner, a corrupt cop (Kevin Bacon), begins to hunt them down.

Another Sundance success story was Dark Factory Entertainment’s Reversal, with rights snapped up by IFC Midnight. The revenge thriller is directed by JM Cravioto and stars Tina Ivlev and Richard Tyson in the story of a young woman who fights back and manages to escape a malicious abductor, then decides to turn the tables on her captor after learning she may not be the only victim.

Lionsgate has released a new trailer for Child 44, the adaptation of Tom Rob Smith's novel set in Stalinist Russia in 1952. The project is directed by Daniel Espinosa from a script by Richard Price and stars Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Jason Clarke and Vincent Cassel.

The 27th annual USC Library Scripter Award was handed out to screenwriter Graham Moore and author Andrew Hodges for The Imitation Game, based on Hodges’ book Alan Turing: The Enigma. Crime fiction author Walter Mosley was also presented with the group’s Literary Achievement Award for his body of more than 40 novels, including Devil In A Blue Dress that was made into the 1995 film starring Denzel Washington.

A trailer was released for Kingsman: The Secret Service, the new film from director Matthew Vaughn that follows a Bond-style spy organization as they recruit a promising, but rough, new agent and put him through their "insane training program."

TELEVISION

ABC ordered a mystery drama pilot from Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal alumna Jenna Bans, titled Flesh and Blood. It centers on the return of a politician’s young son who was presumed dead after disappearing over a decade earlier, the release of the neighbor sitting in jail for his murder, and the cop responsible for the arrest who's forced to reexamine what truly happened so many years ago.

Another ABC murder mystery pilot recently announced is Kingmakers, from Revenge producer Sallie Patrick. It follows a young man whose sister is found dead during her freshman year at an elite Ivy League university, and then "adopts a new identity to infiltrate the school and its century-old secret society – consisting of privileged students, ambitious faculty, and high-profile alums – in order to investigate her death."

CBS is moving forward with its second feature film-to-TV pilot adaptation of the season, picking up the 2011 Bradley Cooper thriller Limitless. The plot hinges on a man who discovers the power of the mysterious drug NZT and is coerced into using his newfound drug-enhanced abilities to solve weekly cases for the FBI. The other film-to-TV adaptation is based on the film franchise Rush Hour, which follows a stoic, by-the-book Hong Kong police officer who finds himself partnered with a cocky LAPD officer after he’s assigned to a case in Los Angeles.

Other CBS pilot orders include a project from Bryan Cranston and David Shore, as well as an adaptation of James Patterson novel The Thomas Berryman Number from Rene Balcer and Robert De Niro. The Cranston/Shore Sneaky Pete pilot follows a 30-something con man takes cover from his past by assuming the identity of a cellmate and hides out from his debtors while working for his new “family’s” bail bond business; the Patterson project is For Justice, which centers on a FBI agent working in the criminal section of Department of Civil Rights.

Katie Holmes is joining Showtime's Ray Donovan for its upcoming third season in a major role playing shrewd and chic businesswoman Paige, the daughter of billionaire producer Andrew Finney (the just-cast Ian McShane), who enlists Ray’s services. The producers also announced Fairuza Balk (American History X, Almost Famous) and Shree Crooks (Extant) have been tapped for recurring roles.

Tyler James Williams (The Walking Dead), is set to co-star opposite Gary Sinise in CBS’ Criminal Minds planned spinoff about agents helping American citizens who find themselves in trouble abroad. Anna Gunn (Gracepoint, Breaking Bad) is also joining the cast to play l
inguist and international law expert Aly Lambert.

True Detective actor Glenn Fleshler has been added to the cast of Hannibal, playing the assistant and henchman to the pig-owning meat market magnate Mason Verger.

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