Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Lionsgate has made a preemptive deal for The Second Life of Nick Mason, the first installment in a forthcoming book series by Steve Hamilton. The project has been pitched as "Taken meets The Equalizer," and centers on career criminal Nick Mason who is released from prison but has to deal with a crime lord as well as the determined cop who arrested him.

Robin Stevens’ children’s detective series Murder Most Unladylike has been optioned for television and film by independent production company Pilot Media. The series is set in a 1930s boarding school and features schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong.

Phillip Noyce has been hired to direct Ambulance, a remake of the 2005 Danish thriller, to be scripted by Chris Fedak (co-creator of the cult television show Chuck). The plot follows two desperate brothers who attempt a robbery in order to pay for their dying mother’s health care, but the job takes a worse turn when they steal an ambulance and discover it's occupied by a dying heart patient. The new production is being conceived as "a breathless crime thriller in the vein of Dog Day Afternoon and Heat set in downtown LA."

Haley Bennett has landed the third lead female role in The Girl On The Train to play Megan, starring alongside Emily Blunt and Rebecca Ferguson in the Tate Taylor-directed adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ bestselling novel for DreamWorks.

50 Shades of Grey actor Luke Grimes is set to star in a film about a Polish crime writer convicted in 2007 for a murder similar to one he had described in his debut novel.

A trailer was also released for the upcoming film Legend, based on John Pearson’s 1972 biography, The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins. Tom Hardy takes on both roles, playing the gangster brothers.

TELEVISION

HBO acquired TV rights to Ryan Gattis’ All Involved, set over the six days of the Los Angeles riots after Rodney King's LAPD assailants were acquitted, following 17 people caught up in the chaos. The adaptation will be produced by Alan Ball, whose credits include True Blood and Six Feet Under.

A crime drama pilot from Black Box creator Amy Holden Jones and Burn Notice creator Matt Nix has landed at CBS. The project drama centers on an "explosive, rule-breaking, fearless female detective with no filter who enlists the help of a polite and gentle brainiac who studies the biology of evil to solve cases for the LA Violent Crimes Unit."

Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl is replacing actress KaDee Strickland in the retooled pilot for CBS' legal drama, Doubt, playing the lead role of Sadie, a defense attorney who becomes romantically involved with one of her clients charged with a violent crime. Original cast members Dule Hill, Laverne Cox, Kobi Libii, Elliott Gould and Dreama Walker are still in the cast for the reworked version of the pilot, although male lead Teddy Sears is also likely to be recast.

Betty White is joining Season 11 of Bones where she'll play an unusual role: she’s signed on to play the latest squintern at the Jeffersonian. She'll tackle the role of Dr. Beth Mayer,  who is brought in to assist in a murder linked to fantasy football — which just happens to be one of her many areas of expertise.

Michelle Pfeiffer is joining Robert De Niro in HBO’s Bernie Madoff movie Wizard of Lies, playing Madoff's wife, Ruth, while Alessandro Nivola will play their eldest son, Mark Madoff.

Former Dexter co-stars Desmond Harrington and Jennifer Carpenter will reunite in CBS' series Limitless, based on the Bradley Cooper film of the same name. They'll both play FBI agents who share a working and possible romantic relationship.

Another Dexter alum, Julie Benz, has signed a multi-episode deal to star in the CBS police procedural Hawaii Five-0, playing a detective from San Francisco leading the task force modelled after Five-0, who ends up developing a bond with with Chin, played by Daniel Dae Kim.

David E. Kelley’s high profile new law drama The Trial, headed for Amazon, has added Big Driver’s Maria Bello and Lost actress Tania Raymonde to the cast that already includes Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt and Olivia Thirlby. Bello will play a high-profile lawyer who is the ex-wife of Billy Bob Thornton’s character, while Raymonde will play a former legal secretary who later got into prostitution.

Shameless star Emily Bergl will appear in a recurring role opposite Timothy Hutton in the second season of the anthology series American Crime. She'll take on the role of the mother of Pollari’s character Eric, whose family becomes embroiled in the fallout of an alleged sexual assault.

Investigation Discovery has ordered six episodes of Las Vegas D.A. (working title), which follows Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson and his team in the Clark County D.A.’s office.

Fox unveiled a teaser trailer for Season 2 of its crime drama Gotham.

CBS released still photos from the upcoming CSI series-ending finale, "CSI: Immortality,” which includes the return of fan favorite characters Det. Jim Brass (played by Paul Guilfoyl) and Catherine Willows (played by Marg Helgenberger). Gil Grissom (William Petersen) is also reprising his former role for the two-hour finale event.

Showtime released a 2.5-minute trailer for Homeland, set two years after the previous season. Whereas last year Carrie Matheson (played by Clare Danes) was still busy at the CIA and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) was working in the private sector, in the new season, Saul appears to be back with the CIA while Carrie is now no longer working for a government. Other characters returning from prior seasons include Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) and Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham).

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Suspense Magazine's Story Blender podcast chatted with investigative reporter and author Hank Phillippi Ryan, while the zine's Inside Edition show welcomed Linwood Barclay, Richard Godwin, and Ed Aymar.

The latest Crime Cafe featured host Debbi Mack talking with author TS Hottle about his crime writing and sci-fi fiction.

The latest Speaking of Mysteries podcast, hosted by Noir Magazine's Nancie Clare, welcomed author Belinda Bauer to talk about her award-winning novel Rubbernecker, about an anatomy student with Asperger’s Syndrome who suspects the cadaver he’s dissecting is the victim of murder.  

The guest on the latest Thrilling Reads podcast was J. David Core who discussed his Lupa Schwartz mystery thrillers.

THEATER

Kevin Bacon is heading to Hartford Stage in Connecticut this fall, taking on the iconic role played by Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's Rear Window on the big screen. The stage production, is adapted by playwright/actor Keith Reddin and directed by Hartford Stage chief Darko Tresnjak, is schedule to run from October 22 through November 15.

Lauren Luna Velez, who played a murderer in the hit TV series Dexter with Michael C. Hall, will be featured in the Off-Broadway premiere of Adam Seidel's dark comedy Catch The Butcher, which centers on a single woman's hunt for a serial killer of other single women. The show will begin previews Sept. 23 at the Cherry Lane Theatre with a limited engagement through Oct. 30.

Key Change, a piece devised by women from a prison in the U.K., was awarded the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award after playing at this year's festival. The award means the show will receive a New York run January 6-31, 2016, at New York Theater Workshop's 4th Street Theatre. The play was written by Catrino McHugh based on a concept by women from a prison in the North of England and only uses a few chairs, a "ghetto blaster" and four rolls of masking tape.

Mystery Melange

The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced the 2015 winners of the Ned Kelly Awards, which are voted on by booksellers, book industry luminaries, readers, critics, reviewers and commentators. This year's winner for Best Novel is Eden by Candice Fox; Best First Novel: Quota by Jock Serong; True crime: This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner; and the S.D. Harvey short story award: "Short Term People" by Andrea Gillum.

J. E. Irvin won the inaugural Jeremiah Healy Mystery Writing Award on Saturday, August 15, during the annual Mystery Writers Key West Fest, a three day mystery genre festival set in the tropical paradise of the Florida Keys. The other finalists were Jack Bates for All Hocked Up; Gregory S. Dew for Portside Screw; and Lewis Haskell (a/k/a Crichton Lewis) for Square Grouper.

Tomorrow evening, Mystery Readers NorCal is hosting a Literary Salon featuring international mysteries set in present day China and Thailand with Lisa Brackmann & Timothy Hallinan. There is limited space, but you can RVSP via Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog.

Hat tip to Paul D. Brazill for taking note of ALIBI, the first Slovenian festival of Crime and Noir literature, where Brazill will be one of the featured authors, along with Richard Godwin, Eddie Vega, Andrej Predin, Neven Škrgatić.

The 2016 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel is accepting submissions until December 31 of this year. Any author of a first novel by a North American woman published by an American publisher during the 2015 calendar year is eligible. For more information, check out the award website.

After searching through Agatha Christie's archives, theater producer Julius Green unearthed ten previously unknown plays by the author, which will be published by HarperCollins on September 10 in Green's book, Curtain Up: Agatha Christie - A Life in Theatre.  

This year's Library of Congress National Book Festival (at the Washington Convention Center on September 5) will have increased broadcast coverage. In addition to C-SPAN's Book TV, PBS will offer a live-stream broadcast via PBS.org from noon to 6 p.m. hosted by Jeffrey Brown, senior correspondent and chief arts correspondent of PBS NewsHour, and Rich Fahle of the Detroit public station's Book View Now. The media project is spearheaded by Fahle, who has also brought such coverage to the Miami Book Fair, the Los Angeles Times of Books, BookExpo America, and BookCon. (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

Crime fiction author Laura Lippman penned a heartfelt essay for Tin House about her hometown of Baltimore, noting that it took the city a long time to recover from the riots of 1968 and wondering how long it will take "Charm City" to get anywhere close to that name again after the recent riots and unrest.

BBC Magazine profiled the enduring relevance of Eric Ambler's 1930s spy novels such as The Mask of Dimitrios, which created a new type of thriller and how reading Ambler today, you can't help having a sense of deja vu with the cycles of history returning to something not so very different from Ambler's Europe.

Jezebel investigated Investigation Discovery (ID) and its lineup of grisly true-crime documentary programming, wondering why women are "obsessed" with the network. ID has become the third-most-watched ad-supported network among women ages 25-54 in just seven years on air, according to Nielsen, and is currently the 11th most popular network on all of cable television.

Speaking of true crime, Harold Schecht spoke with the True Clime blog about his new book based on Alfred Packer, the Wild West cannibal who became an unlikely folk hero.

Book Riot's Leila Roy is on a virtual trip around the world via female crime writers. Her first stop is Norway, where she takes a look at the land of canned mackerel for breakfast, fjords and authors Anne Holt, Karin Fossum, Kjersti Scheen, and Pernille Rygg.

Suspense Magazine's August issue has interviews with Gayle Lynds, Todd Moss, Shane Gericke, Sean Chercover, and Sandra Campbell, as well as D.P. Lyle on forensics, a look at social media, and book excerpts, reviews, stories, and more.  

The latest issue of the e-zine Mysterical-E is out, with nine thrilling new short stories and the usual entertaining interviews and columns by Gerald So, Christine Verstraete, and more. You can read it for free via the zine's website.

Also new and free for your reading pleasure is the latest issue of Yellow Mama, with original noir stories, poetry and other dark goodies in an issue "dedicated to the majestic Cecil the lion."

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "A Fall to Grace" by Elizabeth Lash.

In the Q&A roundup, Peter Robinson spoke with the Huffington Post about his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks; Brad Parks was grilled by The Mystery People about his series with New Jersey newspaper journalist Carter Ross; the Mystery People also chatted with Richard Goodfellow about his debut thriller, The Collector Of Secrets, set in Japan; and Omnimystery News welcomed author David Hagerty about his new mystery, They Tell Me You Are Wicked.

Media Murder for Monday

Although the last-minute vacation crunch means an absence of news, here are a few of the latest crime drama tidbits:

MOVIES

Producer Mark Gordon (Ray Donovan, Criminal Minds) is taking on the suspense thriller Paris Trap, based on a script by Daniel Taplitz. The story follow a woman on vacation in Paris who agrees to take part in an elaborate international sting operation after she's mistaken for the infamous mistress of a notorious financial criminal.  

Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) is negotiating to star in The Girl On The Train, the Tate Taylor-directed adaptation of author Paula Hawkins' novel. There are three lead female roles in the thriller, with Emily Blunt already on board to play the narrator of the tale who becomes entangled in a mystery when she sees something shocking on a train that passes by her house. Freguson will take on the role of "Anna."

A trailer was released for the psychological thriller Carol, with Cate Blanchette and Rooney Mara starring in Todd Haynes's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel.

TELEVISION

The family thriller Home from writer Aron Eli Coleite and Jerry Bruckheimer TV has landed a pilot order at TNT. The project delves into the secrets lingering behind the façade of a seemingly idyllic suburban family that is shattered when a wife and mother discovers long-buried secrets that threaten to destroy the very foundation of her life.

Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella are working on a documentary about the late author Elmore Leonard titled Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit. The documentary, from Transmultimedia Entertainment, will explore Elmore Leonard’s life, his more than 40 novels and dozens of short stories, and his impact on crime fiction.

Actors Lance Gross and Zach Appelman have been added as series regulars on the supernatural procedural Sleepy Hollow for Season 3. Gross will play an FBI Agent who will take over the Sleepy Hollow police headquarters, while Appelman will continue his role as Joe Corbin.

Andrew Howard and Manuel Uriza have landed series regular roles in FX’s drama pilot Snowfall, set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Amazon and Open Road Films signed a multi-year licensing deal allowing Amazon Prime subscribers to stream select Open Road titles such as action-thriller Triple 9 and the thriller Sleepless Night.

Ben Robson (Vikings) has landed a lead role in TNT’s drama pilot Animal Kingdom. The pilot centers on 17-year-old Joshua Cody (Finn Cole), who moves in with his wild, freewheeling grandmother (Ellen Barkin) and uncles and soon learns their indulgent lifestyle is funded by bank robberies they commit. Robson will play Craig, the tough, fearless middle son of the Cody crime family.  

Narcos star Stephanie Sigman is joining the cast of American Crime for Season 2, playing an administrator at an Indianapolis public school whose loyalties and values are put into conflict as she’s faced with systemic bias within the school system.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

CrimeFiction.FM hosted Ann Brown to talk about her Psycho Cat and the Landlady cozy mystery series.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest crime drama news to start your week:

MOVIES

The Wolf of Wall Street duo Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorses are re-teaming for The Devil in the White City. The project is an adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 nonfiction book The Devil In the White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America, which chronicled the charming and prolific serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes. Holmes stalked the fairgrounds at Chicago’s World’s Fair in 1893 and is rumored to have killed up to 200 people and studied the remains for science.

The big screen adaptation of Peter Cameron’s 1997 thriller/dark comic novel Andorra is moving closer to a production start with Fred Schepisi hired to direct and James Ivory on board as executive producer, with filming hopefully starting next year in Europe. The project centers on the handsome and charming Alexander Fox, who forsakes his American life and ends up in the tiny eponymous nation - but when a dead body turns up in the harbor, the local detective is convinced Fox is involved.

Matt Dillon is set to star as FBI Agent Hamer in the Zach Braff's remake of Going in Style. Dillon's chracter will be tasked with tracking down three lifelong pals who become bank robbers when their pensions are sold out from under them. The original 1979 film starred George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg, roles that will be handled by Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alak Arkin in the reboot.

Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl will star in Unforgettable, a female-centric thriller marking the directorial debut of veteran producer Denise Di Novi. The script is written by Christina Hodson and David Leslie Johnson and focuses on a woman (Dawson) with a new husband and his daughter who is tormented by the man’s manipulative and mentally unstable ex-wife (Heigl).

Cobie Smulders (who played Agent Maria Hill in the blockbuster Avengers movies) is in early talks to play the female lead opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher 2, based on Lee Child's novels.

New Line is developing an adaptation of the Vertigo comic 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, with Tom Hardy set to produce and possibly star. The story follows a group of victims who are given a gun and 100 untraceable bullets with which to visit consequence-free retribution on the people who wronged them.

Mark Wahlberg has signed on to Partners, a buddy cop comedy movie witha gender twist: he plays an LAPD detective who falls in love with a mysterious woman on a one-night stand, only to learn she's both an FBI agent and his new boss and is assigned to work with him on a case.

TELEVISION

Showtime will premiere The Spymasters, a documentary which looks inside the workings of the Central Intelligence Agency, on November 28 at 9 PM. The program include over 100 hours of "intimate and candid conversations" with all 12 living directors of the CIA, the agency’s top operatives, and unprecedented access to America’s spy network.

Showtime also announced it is renewing crime drama Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber as a professional "fixer" for the rich and powerful. The network also hopes to premiere the Twin Peaks sequel in 2016.

In its two-hour season premiere, NBC's Law & Order: SVU will take on a storyline ripped from the headlines, inspired by alleged killer Robert Durst, who was at the center of the six-part HBO documentary and confessed to multiple murders. 

NBC announced three crossovers are planned for Dick Wolf’s “Chicago” trilogy, which consists of Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and new drama Chicago Med, including a four-way event that will also include Law & Order: SVU in February.

Matt Cohen (Supernatural) has signed on for a three-episode arc on ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder, playing a man described as a "sexy, edgy working class guy."

Sarah Shahi is returning to Person of Interest for the show's upcoming fifth season. Her character was shot in the middle of Season 4, but it was the actress' maternity leave that prompted her hiatus from the show.

Although fans of the supernatural detective series Constantine were disappointed when the show was recently cancelled by NBC, Matt Ryan will reprise his role for an episode of Arrow's fourth season.

Annabeth Gish is returning for The X-Files limited series on Fox, reprising her role as FBI Agent Monica Reyes.

A trailer was released for Longmire Season 4, premiering September 10 at its new home on Netflix.

VIDEOS/PODCASTS/RADIO

KiwiCrime's Craig Sisterson was interviewed by Wallace Chapman on his Sunday Morning programme on Radio New Zealand, discussing the state of New Zealand crime writing, the finalists for the 2015 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, what makes good crime, and more.

CrimefictionFM welcomed former Air Force intelligence officer Lance Charnes to talk about his international spy thriller DOHA 12.

THEATER

David Arquette (Friends, Scream) will star as Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes in a newly imagined Steampunk Sherlock Holmes at Chicago's Oriental Theatre Nov. 24-29,
which also features Michael Trevino as Dr. John Watson.  

The new play Impossible explores the relationship between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the legendary magician Houdini and how it ultimately broke down over their disagreements regarding spirituality, seances, and the afterlife. Impossible is premiering at the Pleasance during Scotland's Edinburgh fringe festival through August 31st.

Mystery Melange

The annual Fall for the Book festival at George Mason University in Virginia announced the lineup for this year's event, including "an evening of mystery (and maybe mayhem)" on Tuesday, September 29. A headline event with Megan Abbott kicks off the evening, followed by a panel moderated by award-winning author Art Taylor with crime authors Sherry Harris, Josh Pachter, B.K. Stevens, and LynDee Walker.

The Chicago Tribune profiled the American Bar Association's new publishing venture, Ankerwycke. Named for the tree that sheltered the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, the new imprint features law-themed true crime and crime fiction, including classics like Perry Mason re-releases to new works such as a novel by a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Future, the company behind Total Film, SFX and GamesRadar+, is launching the quarterly magazine Crime Scene. The UK-based publication will cover TV crime drama, as well as novels from authors such as Ian Rankin and James Ellroy and offer up opinion, analysis, previews, and in-depth articles.

Brown’s Hotel in London will be offering an Agatha Christie Afternoon Tea during September, which is appropriate since the author was a regular hotel guest and her novel At Bertram's Hotel was based on Brown's. The themed tea, which is offered in celebration of Christie's 125th anniversary, will feature a variety of teas and cakes including Miss Marple’s orange and poppy seed cake, which appears in At Bertram’s Hotel; black coffee tiramisu, which makes reference to Miss Marple’s love of coffee cake; clock-face macaroons, referencing Christie’s novel Rosemary Clocks; and plain and fruit scones served with clotted cream, strawberry jam and honey – an all-time favorite of Miss Marple. (HT to Good Housekeeping UK.)

The Sunday Post spoke to ten authors will be appearing at the upcoming Bloody Scotland festival to ask them about their writing inspirations and to name their favorite authors and the stories that scare them.

If you're heading to the Shetland area of the UK, you can read mystery author Ann Cleeves' take why the islands offers the perfect inspiration for crime fiction (for her award-winning series of novels and a hit BBC TV Series starring Douglas Henshall) and her list of "top five things to do in Shetland."

Maureen Corrigan penned an essay for The Washington Post, about how female crime writers handle aging in their series' charaters, titled "In mysteries, does the trail grow cold when the detective grows old?"

An ancient real-life mystery may have been solved: archaeologists in Egypt believe they have found the long-missing tomb of Nefertiti hidden in plain sight - in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The new crime poem over at the 5-2 this week is "Mortal Terror" by Sarah Stockton.

The Q&A roundup includes Steve Hockensmith, who stopped by Ominimystery News to interview himself about his second mystery co-written with tarot expert Lisa Falco; Writers Who Kill snared Susan Froetschel about her Afghanistan-set novel Fear of Beauty; Lisa Unger chatted with the Do Some Damage blog's Alex Segura about her novel Crazy Love You; the Mystery People grilled Jenny Milchman about her latest suspense novel, As Night Falls; and EuroCrime welcomes Lin Anderson, who was just shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year for Paths of the Dead.

Author R&R with Robert Masello

The prolific Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, television writer (for such projects as Charmed, Sliders, and Poltergeist), and the bestselling author of many books, most recently the historical thriller, The Romanov Cross, which Kirkus praised for its "delicious sense of creeping dread."

His new thriller, The Einstein Prophecy, beings around the end of World War II, when an Egyptian sarcophagus is brought to Princeton University for study by army lieutenant and professor Lucas Athan. Assisted by archaeologist Simone Rashid, Lucas soon discovers the box's contents could hold the key to victory in the war and and possibly the downfall of mankind. As they uncover a connection between the mysterious relic and the work of Albert Einstein (then living in Princeton), Lucas and Simone must turn to science and the supernatural to save the world from potential destruction.


Robert Masello stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R:

Now that I think about it, I started researching my new novel, The Einstein Prophecy, about forty years ago.  I just didn’t know it at the time.

I was a freshman at Princeton University, and I was walking past a charming, two-story, white house with black shutters, tucked behind a fence and a small but tidy front garden, on Mercer Street in town.  112 Mercer Street, to be exact.

The house that Albert Einstein bought, and lived in, after fleeing the Nazi tide on the European continent once and for all.  

He had taken up a position at the relatively new Institute for Advanced Study, where he was the brightest star in a firmament that included such other luminaries as the topologist Oswald Veblen, the mathematician Hermann Weyl, and the quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli.  Although he wasn’t thrilled with the provincial attitudes of many Americans, there and elsewhere in the country, he liked the quiet, arboreal feel of the college town, along with its campus dotted with Gothic spires and cloistered walkways, its extensive libraries and massive chapel.  (Although he was Jewish, he had attended Catholic schools in his youth, and harbored a lasting affection and respect for many of the moral lessons and stories that were an integral part of the Christian tradition.)

Anyway, I think those impressions I had of the man, who had walked the same streets I was walking, and possibly under some of the very same ancient trees, stuck with me, and provided a nucleus for the novel I was to write decades later.

As with most of my recent books, this one was to be a dark fantasy steeped in real history and fact.  In Blood and Ice, I had written about the Crimean War.  In The Medusa Amulet, the Italian Renaissance and French Revolution.  In The Romanov Cross, the end of the Russian dynasty and the pandemic of the Spanish Flu.  Most of the time spent writing my books is spent not on writing the story itself, but on the reading and research necessary to make sure that the story, when I do get around to concocting it, feels authentic and convincing.  I don’t ever want to jolt the reader out of the story with some anachronism, or obviously counter-factual element.  I usually tell people that 90 percent of the history, whether it be about art or science or politics, is right, but that that last ten percent is pure conjecture.  In other words, don’t write a term paper based solely on the history you have read in one of my novels.

In the olden days, back when I lived in New York, I would haunt the main library on Fifth Avenue, where there were actually people – live human beings – who would go down into the subterranean stacks and retrieve any arcane text or long out-of-print book you asked for.  And get this – there was a phone line, too, that you could call and ask any question – “When was the Great Wall of China built?” “How many soldiers are there in a platoon?” “How much was a doubloon worth?” – and someone would go off and find the answer for you.  To those hard-working and information-bearing moles, I offer my most heartfelt thanks.

These days, researching is so much easier it’s a joke.  There’s this thing called Google, and I can look up anything, at any time of the day or night (and I tend to write into the wee hours), and nearly always find an immediate answer.  For this Einstein book, I was able to discover everything from a map of the Princeton University campus in 1944 (which is where and when the bulk of the book takes place) to a quick tutorial (and I needed several) on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.  I also wanted to get a sense of who Einstein was as a man, and not simply as the great genius of his age.  I learned that he hated to wear socks, loved to smoke (against his doctor’s orders), played violin to relax, flirted like crazy with the ladies, enjoyed a good joke.

There is a danger, however, to the Google era of research.  It’s easy to get lost, forever, in the endless supply of information, in the countless links to other sources.  There’s the temptation not only to research something endlessly, but to slip all of those gems that you uncover into the book itself.  Yes, readers want a sense of verisimilitude, but that’s not the main reason they’re there – they want a story first and foremost. Otherwise, they’d be reading a biography or a history textbook.

And if you do make a mistake, including some fact that’s just plain wrong, you will most definitely hear from some reader out there - usually in the form of a flame – who is an expert on that particular subject. Trust me on that.

 

Find out more about Robert Masello and his books via his website or you can follow him on Facebook. The Einstein Prophecy is available via all major ebook and print book retailers.

Mystery Melange

If you're anywhere near Durham, North Carolina, catch the latest Noir at the Bar event tomorrow evening, featuring writers Steve Weddle (Country Hardball), Greg Barth (Selena), Eryk Pruitt (Dirtbags, Hashtag), S.A. Cosby (The Brotherhood of the Blade), David Terrenoire (Beneath a Panamanian Moon), Eric Beetner (Rumrunners), and Geraud Staton (Beyond Darkness).

The Australian Crime Writers Association, which hands out Australia’s oldest and most prestigious prizes for crime writing, announced the shortlists for the 2015 Ned Kelly Awards for the best crime fiction and true crime works published in 2014. Winners will be announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Saturday August 2.

The crime writing themed edition of the Human Journal includes a lengthy interview with Michael Connelly and articles on a variety of topics, from an article about John P. Marquand's Mr. Moto series to a look at Japanese Women’s Detective Fiction and a study of the evolving culture surrounding Sherlock Holmes.

Michael Dirda of The Washington Post reviewed the book Meanwhile There Are Letters, edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan. The book focuses on the rich friendship between Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald through their correspondence through the years, as they discussed writing, books, and topics of a more personal nature. As Dirda notes, this book, along with a recent Library of America volume, "may help renew interest in Ross Macdonald’s novels, which have been somewhat overshadowed lately by those of his more noirish contemporaries such as David Goodis and Jim Thompson. At the very least it’s certainly time to reread The Galton Case and The Chill."

Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph notes that the next issue will focus on crime fiction set in Scotland, and she's seeking articles, reviews, and Author! Author! essays on the theme.

As part of conducting research for an upcoming article, Katharina Hall, a/k/a Mrs. Peabody, is compiling a list of Nazi-themed novels that focus extensively on the theme of post-war justice. You can read the titles she's collected to date, and if you have suggestions, she'd welcome those in the comments section on her blog.

Are you good at solving puzzles? If so, the British Library needs your help in solving a real-life mystery: a 13th century sword with a hidden message.

Buzzfeed asked, "Can You Identify The Classic Novel From Its Original Title?"

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 is "Boo Coo" by Charles Rammelkamp, and the new featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "Me and Creature" by Evan V. Corder.

In the Q&A roundup, Tom Larsen takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview; Craig Sisterson's latest 9mm Interview is Brazilian novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, Patricia Melo, whose latest book translated into English is The Body Snatcher (Bitter Lemon, 2015); the Mystery People snagged Lori Rader-Day to talk about her second novel, Little Pretty Things and also screenwriter Jordan Harper to talk about his crime fiction; and Linda Fairstein was interviewed by Crimespree Magazine about her life as a full-time prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s Office and how it informs her crime fiction.

Mystery Melange

Noted true-crime writer Ann Rule died last week, and the Guardian paid tribute by looking into her gift for tapping into our collective obsession with crime, while the Washington Post took a look at the strange relationship between Rule and serial killer Ted Bundy.

The shortlists were announced for the Davitt Awards presented annually by Sisters in Crime Australia. Named in honor of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia's first mystery novel, the awards are presented for Australian crime fiction by women authors.

The Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter will hold its 12th annual Write Now! conference, “Locked and Loaded: Set Your Sights on Writing Success” Aug. 14–15 in Scottsdale, Arizona. This year's keynote speaker is Sara Paretsky (the V.I. Warshawksi series), with other featured authors to include Simon Wood, Hilary Davidson, Christina Cox, Deborah J Ledford and Terri Bischoff.

Crime writer Mark Billingham and the Kirkgate Centre in Cockermouth in the UK are teaming up for a short-story contest. Budding UK crime writers are encouraged to submit stories can be up to 1,000 words centered on the theme of Crime in Cockermouth, with two categories for entries: writers aged 11 to 18 years and writers aged 19-plus. The competition closes on Monday, September 7, and a panel that includes Billingham will judge the submissions.

On September 16, the British Library's Rob Davies and crime author Martin Edwards will discuss the library's recent successes republishing forgotten titles from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

The Crime Writers' Association has launched Dagger Reads, an online literary showcase for the 2015 Dagger Awards shorlist, including the CWA Goldsboro Gold, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel and the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Daggers. Resources will include a comprehensive guide to each book and its author, an explanation of why the judges selected each book, and reading guides. Every two weeks leading up to the awards ceremony in September, Dagger Reads will focus on a different Dagger with an online book club for that book.

Fans of all things Scandinavian will enjoy The Globe and Mail's exploration of Olso, Norway, through the eyes of homegrown crime author Jo Nesbo and a a Harry Hole walking tour.

In a separate northern clime, MPR News profiled "Dark reads: 16 Minnesota murder mysteries," wondering what it is about the land of 10,000 lakes that inspires such dark tales of murder and mayhem.

Ever wondered if there was a secret formula behind Agatha Christie's plotting? Research commissioned by UKTV channel Drama for their Agatha Christie Hour says it looks a little something like this:  
k l,n,s=f[m-lkf+lk+n+s].

The UK-based Sofeminine website put together a list of the "10 Murder Mystery Thriller Novels Every Woman Should Read," focusing, as you might expect, on novels written by women authors.

Meanwhile, Marie Claire Online also compiled a roster of mostly women authors and "The 8 Best Thrillers That Will Keep You Up All Night."

The Sydney Morning Herald's Jane Sullivan took a look at why authors like to kill off their characters, with a look at authors like Karin Slaughter and Tess Gerritsen.

Luke Slattery in The New Yorker took on a Renaissance murder mystery:  the glamorous philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s death and that of his lover may have been murder, after modern scientists found toxic levels of arsenic in their disinterred remains.

If you happen to have a spare $1.6 million, you can buy Jesse Pinkman's Albuquerque, New Mexico, house from Breaking Bad.

In the Q&A roundup this week, author Allan J. Emerson stops by Omnimystery News to discuss the first in a new series, titled Death of a Bride and Groom; the Mystery People snagged Rob Hart to talk about his new novel New Yorked, a quirky take on the the hard boiled crime novel and a heartbroken valentine to his ever-changing city; Ace Atkins talked living in the South and his Quinn Colson series; J.J. Toner takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; and Linwood Barclay stops by the Huffington Post to chat about his new thriller, Broken Promise.

Media Murder for Monday

Catch up on the latest crime drama news while you're in the car/plane/train during your last-gasp summer vacation:

MOVIES

Warner Bros has optioned Ross MacDonald's 1966 crime novel Black Money for Joel and Ethan Coen to write and potentially direct. The novel places private eye Lew Archer knee-deep in a conspiracy when he's hired by a spurned lover to expose the suave Frenchman who ran off with a client’s girlfriend.

William Friedkin has been hired to direct the adaptation of Don Winslow's novel The Winter Of Frankie Machine, with Winslow penning the script. The project once had Martin Scorsese (and then Michael Mann) attached to direct and Robert De Niro to star, while it languished at Paramount before a rights reversion. The story centers on Frank Machianno, a mob hitman who retired to run a bait shop but is forced to return to his old ways when he learns his offer to help resolve a dispute has set him up to be murdered.

Lionel Wigram, the producer of the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock movies, hinted the team is working on a script for a third movie and both Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are "very, very" interested in returning to their respective roles as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, although there are no firm commitments at this point.

A first-look trailer was released for Solace, which features Colin Farrell as a psychic serial killer opposite Anthony, Hopkins, a former doctor with psychic abilities called in to help the FBI catch Farrell's character.

The newest trailer for Agent 47 (which opens in theaters Aug. 21) finds the titular assassin played by Rupert Friend in unfamiliar territory when he must protect a woman named Katia (Hannah Ware) from an evil corporation and its chairman (Zachary Quinto), who wants to create an army of Agents to do his bidding.

TELEVISION

ITV has commissioned a 3-episode special season of the crime drama Scott & Bailey, with Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp reprising their roles of DC Janet Scott and her hot-headed partner DS Rachel Bailey. With DCI Gill Murray in retirement, DC Scott returns to Syndicate 9's Murder Squad to head up a sinister Internet crime investigation.

Fox has given a pilot commitment to Horrorstör, an hour-long dramedy inspired by the supernatural mystery novel by Grady Hendrix. The story centers on a young woman and recovering alcoholic working in a furniture superstore who learns the store "preys upon its customers’ desires to a supernatural degree, selling products that make their wishes and fantasies come true in unexpected and insidious ways."

Fox also announced a limited-run revival of the Prison Break series that will be a sequel to the original project with returning stars Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell.

USA Network’s drama Shooter has tapped Ryan Phillippe (Secrets & Lies) for the lead in the pilot. Written by John Hlavin (Underworld: Awakening) and based on the 2007 Paramount feature starring Wahlberg as well as Stephen Hunter’s novel Point Of Impact, the plot follow an off-the-grid former Marine sniper who is double crossed after being coaxed into action to thwart the killing of the President.

New Castle co-showrunner Terence Paul Winter teased that disgraced senator William Bracken (played by Jack Coleman) will be back "in a surprising way" for the show's new season. The ABC series will return on September 21 with a two-parter and will introduce two new characters: Scotland Yard officer turned security specialist Hayley Vargas (to be played by new series regular/Neighbors alum Toks Olagundoye) and tech analyst Vikram Singh (recurring player Sunkrish Bala). 

Billy Zane, Daisy Head, Zachary Fall, Katrina Law, and Kevin Ryan have landed leading roles in the ABC Family thriller pilot Guilt, a fictional story that draws parallels to the story of Amanda Knox, the American student convicted, acquitted, retried and acquitted again of the gruesome murder of her British roommate.  

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is hiring Bill Hader to replace Andre Braugher as Andy Samberg’s precinct captain. Braugher fans can relax, however, knowing that Braugher's Captain Holt will remain on the show in his new role of NYPD Public Relations officer.

AnnaLynne McCord has landed a recurring role on the second season of ABC’s anthology crime drama series Secrets & Lies. She'll play McCord the outspoken housewife of Patrick Warner, the third child of private equity magnate, John Warner.

24's Kim Raver will appear in the first two episodes of the 11th season of Bones, playing FBI Special Agent Grace Miller, who is involved in the investigation surrounding the disappearance of FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz).  

Patricia Wettig of ABC's Brothers and Sisters is heading to TNT's police procedural Major Crimes for Season 4 to play a character known by colleagues as "Fry-'Em Ryan," a superior court judge famous among lawyers and cops as a very tough woman inside the courtroom.

NFL legend Jerry Rice is heading to Hawaii Five-0 in a guest-starring cameo as himself in upcoming sixth season.

TNT's upcoming mod drama Public Morals offered up a trailer and teaser poster for the show set in 1960s New York that stars Edward Burns as officer Terry Muldoon, a vice cop who knows how to play the game, but doesn't always like it.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Crime Fiction FM welcomed author Tana French to discuss her new book, the fifth book in her Dublin Murder Squ
ad series, The Secret Place.

THEATER

A tour of the Woody Allen musical Bullets Over Broadway will launch in Cleveland, OH, at Playhouse Square with performances beginning Oct. 6, with plans on traveling to more than 40 cities in its first season.

Author R&R with Sean Chercover

Before Sean Chercover turned his hand to writing fiction, he was a TV writer, video editor, support diver, and private investigator in Chicago and New Orleans. His novel Big City, Bad Blood, won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel, and Sean's books have since been nominated for other major crime fiction awards.


His Game Trilogy features Daniel Byrne, an investigator for the Vatican’s secretive Office of the Devil’s Advocate. In the first book, The Trinity Game, Daniel Byrne was searching for a miracle, which led him to his uncle and childhood guardian, the Reverend Tim Trinity, a con man and possible prophet.

In the follow-up novel, The Devil's Game, Daniel teams up with disgraced physician Kara Singh and delves further into the Trinity Phenomenon — the "gift" of prophecy that's spreading like a plague — and infiltrates a covert government facility to expose a conspiracy with potentially devastating global consequences.


Sean is currently on a blog tour promoting The Devil's Game and stopped by In Reference to Murder to discuss his writing, research, and the new book:

 

The plot was inspired by conversations I used to have with a good friend named Sasha Neyfakh. He was a prominent microbiologist who spent his life fighting in the human race's existential struggle against anthrax and other deadly pathogens, which aim to displace humans as top predator on the planet. We talked about the coming pandemic (yes, there will be one) and about how large the depopulation might be when it arrives. And how our criminally negligent overuse of antibiotics is dramatically decreasing our chances of winning this war, and bringing it about sooner. Cheery stuff like that.

 

We shared a love of crime fiction and conspiracy theories, traded clippings and links about various theories that seemed fun. One that caught our attention was the statistically unlikely rash of deaths at the time, among prominent microbiologists around the world. There were some very entertaining conspiracy theories based on the premise that these deaths were actually disguised assassinations, speculating about who could be behind it, and why. We both thought the deaths coincidental, but we also thought the dead microbiologists conspiracy would be a terrific premise for a thriller, and for me, it fit beautifully with the geopolitics of the threat of pandemic.

 

The research was a total blast and also sobering. Some of it involved learning more about what life is like and how power and influence works in Nigeria and Liberia and other places big media chooses to ignore. Learning more about our misuse of antibiotics and how that damages the bacterial biome that keeps us healthy and alive, and about our fight for survival against microscopic pathogens.

 

And then there's the rollicking insane asylum that is the world of conspiracy theorists. There's no shortage of mental illness on the Internet (thank you, Captain Obvious) but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And mental illness aside, at least these people are willing to admit that "History is a set of lies, agreed upon," (Napoleon Bonaparte) and "History is written by the victors," (Winston S. Churchill). Or official histories have to be amended so often now, as we learn of former misdeeds, now leaked or declassified, previously scorned as "wing-nut conspiracy theories."

 

Incorporating both "round-the-bend-crazy" and "maybe-not-so-crazy" conspiracy theories into THE DEVIL'S GAME was so much fun, and I love that people are questioning which is which.

 

 

You can learn more about Sean and his books via his website or follow him in Facebook and Twitter. The Devil's Game is available as an ebook via Amazon, and the print versions are available via all book retailers.

Media Murder for Monday

Happy Monday to all, and hope you enjoy the latest roundup of news from the world of crime dramas:

MOVIES

Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall has been signed to direct EuropaCorp’s upcoming revenge drama The Sentence, a futuristic thriller where a victim is granted 24 hours to take revenge against the person who murdered someone close to them.

Tommy Lee Jones has joined the cast of Universal’s upcoming Bourne sequel (that returns Matt Damon to the franchise), playing a superior officer at the CIA.

Daniel Radcliffe will take the lead role in Imperium, playing a young FBI agent who goes undercover to find and stop white supremacists trying to make a dirty bomb. It’s based on the real-life experiences of Michael German, an FBI undercover agent who spent years inside United States neo-Nazi and militia groups.

While making the rounds to promote his latest Mission: Impossible movie, actor Tom Cruise told Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that another installment is in the works and “We’ll probably start shooting it next summer.” If so, the movie might be released in theaters as early as 2017.

Sherlockian Peter Blau is arranging a screening of William Gillette's long-lost Sherlock Holmes film at the Landmark Bethesda Row theater on September 26. Gillette, a celebrated actor, wrote and starred in a Sherlock Holmes stage play that was popular for decades, but until now it was believed that only photos and a brief audio recording had survived.

San Francisco's Castro Theater will present Elliot Lavine's I Wake Up Dreaming 2015: Hot Summer Noir on five consecutive Thursdays, August 6 through September 3. The films include rarely-screened gems all in 35mm studio prints, starting with Ride the Pink Horse, based on the novel by mystery writer Dorothy B. Hughes.

The third and most involved trailer yet was released for Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as iconic criminal Whitey Bulger.

TELEVISION

BBC America is taking on a new adaptation of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series for television, penned by Chronicle writer Max Landis. However, the new production will be set in the U.S. instead of Britain, with the clairvoyant private eye relocating his Detective Agency to San Diego.

BBC America also ordered two additional new series:  The political thriller Undercover, about the first black woman to hold the highest-ranking public prosecutor role in the UK who learns her husband has been lying to her for years; and Thirteen, a five-part mystery thriller from Marnie Dickens (The Musketeers, Ripper Street), centered on a woman who escapes the cellar that has been her prison for the past 13 years and has to re-learn how to live a normal life.

The upcoming season of Banshee, which is set to begin filming soon for broadcast on Cinemax in 2016, is likely to be the show's last. Banshee centers on a mysterious ex-convict (Antony Starr) who assumes the identity of a murdered small Amish country town sheriff and then learns the town is full of dangers, warring factions and secrets.

AMC renewed the mafia drama Making of the Mob for a second season to premiere in 2016 and focus on the Chicago crime syndicate, which famously included Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel.

Longmire executive producer Greer Shephard teased the upcoming fourth season of the series that is moving to Netflix, which picks up with Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) learning who killed his wife and setting out to avenge her death.  

Starz is developing a series based on Cuban author Leonardo Padura's Havana Quartet novels. Antonio Banderas attached to star as hard-drinking, romantic Cuban Police Detective Mario Conde, who longs to be a writer but settled for a job as a detective in 1990s Cuba.

The FX series American Crime Story has cast Rio Hackford as Investigator Pat McKenna in the project that is based on the Jeffrey Toobin book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson.

André Benjamin has been cast in the second season of the ABC drama American Crime, playing an architect who has to defend his son when he becomes entangled in a scandal at an elite private school.

How to Get Away with Murder has booked X-Men's Famke Janssen for Season 2 of the series, although no details on what role she will play have been released.

In defending the second season of True Detective, HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo made it clear that the network would do a third season and it is writer/producer Nick Pizzolatto’s decision as to whether or not to continue the series.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Short story writer and University of Chicago professor Vu Tran spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about why he chose noir for his first novel, Dragonfish.

The latest Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast features a story by Josh Pachter, "The Night of Power," part of a series set in 1980s Bahrain, recently published in the collection The Tree of Life from Wildside Press.

Suspense Magazine's Beyond The Cover podcast conducted several exclusive interviews at ThrillerFest 2015 in NYC. The first installment of those Q&As include NY Times bestselling authors Sandra Brown and David Morrell, as well as author Mark Alpert.

The most recent Meet the Thrilling Author podcast featured an interview with actor and author Bobby Nash, who writes in a variety of genres including thrillers, graphic novels, ans screenplays, and was named Best Author in the 2013 Pulp Ark Awards.