Mystery Melange

The final Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards of the year were handed out last night, including the Goldsboro Gold Dagger for crime novel of the year, won by Michael Robotham for Life or Death. Karin Slaughter was awarded the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (for best thriller) for her novel, Cop Town, and the CWA John Creasey (new blood) Dagger was awarded to Smith Henderson for his novel Fourth Of July Creek.

Otto Penzler, President and publisher of MysteriousPress.com, announced a new contest for the Mysterious Press Award, to be given for the best e-book original mystery novel. The winning entry, which will receive a prize of $25,000 and guaranteed world-wide publication, will be announced at the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Goethe-Institut London and New Books in German are hosting a Krimi (crime fiction) evening on Tuesday November 10 titled "In the Library with the Lead Piping." The event will feature readings and a panel on German and British crime fiction by authors Mechtild Borrmann, Mario Giordano, Michael Ridpath and Louise Welsh. (HT to Mrs. Peabody Investigates)

The International Thriller Writers organization will once again offer an online "Thriller School" with seven weeks of instruction beginning March 14th, 2016. Each week, a bestselling author will teach an aspect of craft though a podcast, with written materials that include further reading and study suggestions, and an entire week of on-line Q&A with the registered students. Participating authors for the course will include David Corbett, Meg Gardiner, F. Paul Wilson, Hank Phillippi Ryan, James Scott Bell, Peter James, and Lee Child.

The International Crime Fiction group posted a look at the history of crime fiction in Greece, from its precursors, the “roman feuilleton” (or serial) that was very popular during the 19th century, through the hard-boiled writers of the 1950s and 60s, and up to the new generation of writers in the 1990s. The new retrospective is part of the AHRC's Visualising European Crime Fiction project.

Francis Wheen, writing for Vanity Fair, reported on the mystery that still surrounds crime novelist Josephine Tey, the author of The Daughter of Time. Tey showed her disdain for formulaic fiction by breaking the commandments of the Detection Club that was at the heart of the Golden Age of Fiction and "divided her life into discrete spheres so that no one could know her too intimately." The latter fact is one reason there are virtually no biographies about her, although one is due out later this fall.

The Weekly Standard's Benjamin Welton discussed "A Brief History of Stationary Sleuthing," i.e., the particularly American invention of the detective who hates to leave the house, a la C. Auguste Dupin and Nero Wolfe.

The True Crime blog took a look at "The Story of the 1930s 'Impossible Murder' That Utterly Fascinated Raymond Chandler." Chandler wasn't alone - the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931 led Dorothy Sayers tor write a long article on the topic, and at least five full length books have dealt with the "unbeatable" case.

Bustle compiled a list of "8 True Crime Books To Read With The Lights On."

BJ Bourg's Righting Crime Fiction is adding Frank Zafiro to its staff. Frank is a retired police captain and a full time writer best known for his River City crime novels. Righting Crime Fiction aims to help authors correct all the inaccuracies that crop up in crime fiction works and write more realistic law enforcement characters and techniques.

All Due Respect Publishing, one of the last remaining paying markets, has closed the doors of its quarterly magazine. Editor Chris Rhatigan announced the news and noted that the company will continue to publish crime novels, novellas, and short story collections.(HT to Sandra Seamans.)

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "Sudden Fear" by Kenneth Pobo.

In the Q&A roundup, Karin Slaughter spoke with The Star Telegram about her latest standalone thriller, Pretty Girls; and Ann Summerville stopped by Omnimystery News to talk about her third Pecan Valley mystery, Night and Day.
 

Buy a Banned Book!

This is Banned Books Week in the U.S., although the problem of censorship remains a problem throughout the world. Banned Book Week has hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country drawing attention to the problem by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. According to the American Library Association, more than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982, plus there were 311 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2014, with many more going unreported.

How can you help? For one, buy a banned book! The official BBW website has a list of the most-challenged titles of 2014. For a list of the events being held in your area, check this link, organized by state. There are also online events you can participate in, and various resources for more ways you can help in an ongoing fashion and get more information.

As the character of Stephen Hopkins, the representative from Rhode Island to the Continental Congress, declared in the movie 1776, "I've never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about. Hell yes, I'm for debating anything!"

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest roundup of crime drama news on screen and on the air:

MOVIES

20th Century Fox has acquired the feature rights to Agatha Christie’s classic mystery And Then There Were None and hired The Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum to direct. The novel follows ten strangers invited for a weekend on Soldier Island only to realize they were brought there under false pretenses and are being bumped off one by one for crimes they committed. The Wrap also had some fun speculating on which actors should be hired for the various roles.

Jared Leto and Chris Evans are in talks to play the lead male roles in the film adaptation of the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Evans will play the ex-husband of the couple, and Leto will play a neighbor, whose wife has gone missing after it's discovered that she was having an affair.

The Jack Reacher sequel starring Tom Cruise in the title role has found its villain, according to Tracking Board, which reported that Patrick Heusinger has now joined the cast as the bad guy.

Adrian Grenier will co-star with Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, and Dave Bautista in Marauders, a Steven C. Miller-directed action thriller. The film focuses on an FBI agent, on the trail of bank robbers who give the stolen loot to charity, who discovers the trail of secrets that a bank’s owner has protected.

Matt Damon teased some plot points for the next Bourne film, hinting that the fifth installment in the franchise will unravel previously unanswered questions. “[Bourne] has his memory back, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything. It’s 12 years since Jason Bourne has been on the grid. So we have to answer the questions, Where’s he been? What’s he doing? What gets him going again? So once we solved all that, then we had a movie.”

The thriller MI-5, based on the hit UK series export, will be getting a theatrical release in North America this December. Starring Game of Thrones' Kit Harington and MI-5 vet Peter Firth, the project tracks the hunt for an escaped terrorist, leading MI-5 agent Will Holloway (Harington) to team up with his former mentor, disgraced MI-5 Intelligence Chief Harry Pearce (Firth), to catch the terrorist before he commits a devastating attack in London.

Liam Neeson will continue his string of suspense-thriller films with his next movie, The Commuter, scheduled to begin filming in New York next spring. Written by Byron Willinger and Phil de Blasi, the project centers on a business executive (Neeson) on his daily commute home who unwittingly gets involved in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only him but people close to him.

Maggie Gyllenhaal has signed on to The Deuce, David Simon's upcoming HBO drama about the rise of the porn industry in New York City in the 1970s and '80s. She'll play Eileen Merrell, aka "Candy," a Times Square prostitute. Gyllenhaal is also producing along with James Franco, who is starring as twin porn kingpins.

Fox Searchlight is moving forward with the true story drama The Man Who Got American High, based on an article in Narratively by Jeff Maysh. The project is based on the true story of Alfred Dellentash Jr., a pilot and music producer who flew acts like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead in lavish private jets but was also one of the key drug smugglers in Pablo Escobar’s empire.

As the Double O Section blog reported, lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode The House That Jack Built, one of a pair of classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank.

TELEVISION

Author Tom Clancy's CIA hero Jack Ryan has been the the subject of a movie franchise, and now he's heading to the small screen. Former Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse and writer Graham Roland are spearheading the project, which won't be a direct adaptation of the novels but rather a "new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative, using the novels as source material."

The latest TV reboot appears to be The A-Team, as 20th Century Fox Television teams up with Fast & Furious writer-producer Chris Morgan to create a contemporary take on the 1980s series. Sleepy Hollow executive producer Albert Kim has been hired to pen the script and original The A-Team creator Stephen J. Cannell's TV-director daughter, Tawnia McKiernan, is also attached to the project. Like the original (and the movie adaptation), the show will revolve around a diverse team of American special-forces operatives, although the new team would include both male and female members.

TNT has given a pilot green light to Robbers, a project based on Christopher Cook’s 2000 debut novel. Described as "being in the literary-noir tradition of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, Robbers tells the story of a cop, two running buddies on a crime spree across Texas, and the girl who becomes the complication in a strange love triangle.

Televisa USA is producing an English-language version of the popular Spanish series, Gran Hotel, an English-language adaptation of the popular Spanish series. The setting for the mystery drama is being shifted from 1905 Spain to pre-Castro Havana, with a focus on a man who's led on a dangerous journey that takes him to the opulent Gran Hotel, a frequent getaway for the rich, powerful, famous and infamous, in the search for his missing sister.

BBC Director-General Tony Hall and BBC One chief Charlotte Moore ordered a raft of new dramas including Rush Of Blood, adapted from the Mark Billingham novel by Matt Charman (also behind Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies). The three-part dram
a focuses on three couples who return from a holiday in Florida and realize one of them must have been responsible for a murder.

Another of the BBC's upcoming slate includes The Cormoran Strike Mysteries based on Robert Galbraith’s (aka JK Rowling’s) best-selling novels The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, and the yet-to-be-published third novel in the series, Career of Evil. The contemporary series focuses on war veteran turned private detective, Strike as he investigates crimes with his female assistant Robin.

Law & Order: SVU is adding Broadway actor Andy Karl as Sgt. Mike Dodds, the son of Deputy Chief William Dodds (guest star Peter Gallagher). He will serve as No. 2 to acting commander Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay).

Tim Matheson and Camila Banus have landed roles in the FX drama pilot Snowfall, directed by John Singleton. The project is set in the early 1980s at the beginning of a crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles and focuses on three main characters: ambitious dealer Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), ex-Mexican wrestler and now gangster Gustavo Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) and prodigal son Logan Miller (Billy Magnussen). Matheson will play Logan’s father, while Banus will play the daughter of a very successful drug dealer.

The Crime Fiction Ireland blog has a roundup of the crime dramas, both new and returning, on BBC One this fall.

BBC One released the first glimpse of Hugh Laurie as Establishment arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, Tom Hiddleston as undercover man Jonathan Pine, Elizabeth Debicki as dream girl Jed, and Olivia Colman as drug enforcement agent Burr in the upcoming miniseries The Night Manager, based on a novel by John le Carré. AMC will broadcast the show at some point in 2016.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

NPR's Diane Rehm welcomed Martin Walker to her show to discuss The Patriarch, the latest in his France-set series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police.

J.A. Jance spoke with Seattle's public radio station KUOW about her 50+ novels and how she became a writer.

In the latest Crime and Science Radio podcast, author Hank Phillippi Ryan turned the tables on host Dr. D.P. Lyle, quizzing him about  thriller series, the Royal Pains media tie-in novels, and his consulting work with novelists and the writers of popular television shows.

A new Speaking of Mysteries podcast featured Rhys Bowen discussing how the work of Tony Hillerman inspired her to write the Constable Evan Evans series.