Mystery Melange

Tonight at the The Center for Fiction in New York City, Sara Paretsky, author of the iconic V. I. Warshawski series, will conduct a CFA Master Class at Crime Fiction Academy, starting at 7 p.m.

Congrats to this year's finalists for the Arthur Ellis Awards, handed out annually by the Crime Writers of Canada. The shortlist in the Best Novel category includes: Peggy Blair, Hungry Ghosts; John Farrow, The Storm Murders; Andrew Hunt, A Killing in Zion; Peter Kirby, Open Season; and Inger Ash Wolfe, The Night Bell. The CWC has a list of all the finalists in the various categories on their website.

CrimeFest also announced the finalists for their annual awards, including the categories of the Audible Sounds of Crime Award (audio books), the eDunnit Award (ebooks), Last Laugh Award (humorous crime novels), and the H.R.F. Keating Award (critical or biographical works).

Houston's Murder by the Book is asking for "an influx of sales" to help it through some difficult financial times following recent flood damage. Owner McKenna Jordan suggested supporters buy books or gift cards in store or online. "I have no intention of doing any type of crowdfunding campaign, as I strongly believe that bookstores are both cornerstones of their communities and businesses that should be self-sufficient. I don't expect charity in this situation." (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

Gary Phillips, writing for the LA Review of Books, made note of "The Unacknowledged: Black Crime Fiction, the Roaring ’20s to the 1930s," hoping that the work of other crime writers from this group will be uncovered and more widely read.

Dean Street Press is releasing the first ten of the imprint's Patricia Wentworth reissues on May 2. This is part of a major project to republish all 33 of her non-Miss Silver mysteries, some of which haven't been in print or available for many decades (with the remaining 23 to be published in a further two batches in June and July). The first ten include the four Benbow Smith mysteries, featuring Foreign Office Agent Benbow Smith and his loquacious parrot Ananias.

Harper Lee's biographer, Charles J Shields, believes he's found a new previously unknown Harper Lee text, a feature article written for the March 1960 issue of the Grapevine, a magazine for FBI professionals. The article focused on the gruesome murder of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon at their farmhouse in Kansas, the subject of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied Capote, her childhood friend, on his assignment for the New Yorker, reporting on how the community was reacting to the brutal murders.

If you're a fan of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series, you'll enjoy this piece from Radio Times reporter Gary Rose, who takes a tour of Bosch's Los Angeles and winds up chatting with actor Titus Welliver, who plays Bosch in the Amazon TV series, and ultimately Connelly himself who talks up LA noir and his hero, Raymond Chandler.

Author Con Lehane took the Page 69 test for Murder at the 42nd Street Library, the first novel in a new series featuring Raymond Ambler, curator of the 42nd Street Library’s fictional crime fiction collection.

Author Laura Tillman picked a few of her favorite nontraditional true crime books for Publishers Weekly, including an orchid-poacher, a heroin dealer, the book that inspired The Wire, and more.

Alex Segura, author of the Miami crime novels featuring Pete Fernandez compiled a list of "8 Crime Fiction Characters From Florida" for Mental Floss.

If you're a fan of the Millennium Series created by Stieg Larsson and continued (upon the arrangement of his family) by David Lagercrantz, you may be scratching your head at this bit of news: the next sequel in the series by Lagercrnatz will be written in the style of American detective fiction a la Raymond Chandler. In an recent interview, Lagercrantz said finding his voice in this new style had proved tricky and "It's so much harder to write hard-boiled fiction than I thought."

30 Days at the 5-2 continues with the featured poem this week, "Any Second Now" by David Spicer, and check out the other entries here.

In the Q&A roundup, Anonymous-9 visits One Bite at a Time to discuss her short stories and novels and what she's working on now; Omnimystery News welcomed authors Kaylin McFarren (Banished Threads) and the sisters (Pam Burks and Lorraine Campbell) who write as Ellie Campbell, chatting about their new humorous PI mystery, Meddling with Murder; and Criminal Element has a Q&A with Katherine Hall Page, recipient of this year’s Agatha Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malice Domestic Convention.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

David Oyelowo (Selma) will star in and produce Another Day in the Death of America based on an upcoming nonfiction book by Guardian journalist Gary Younge. The book chronicled "the true story of the writer who investigated 10 children shot dead in one random day in America." The day in the title refers to November 23, 2013, when 10 children were shot dead, ranging in age from 9-19. None made the national news, meaning it was "just another day in America," where on average seven children and teens are killed by guns daily.

Film rights to A. A. Dhand's "gritty" Bradford-based thriller Streets of Darkness have gone to FilmWave, the producers behind the recent adaptation of JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy for the BBC and HBO. FilmWave bought rights to Streets of Darkness, the first book in a projected series described by its UK editor as "doing for Bradford (UK) what The Wire did for Baltimore."

Although there has been no official announcement, it's quite possible a Sherlock Holmes 3 starring Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law could begin filming later this year, according to a statement by Downey.

A trailer was released for the adaptation of Paula Hawkins' novel Girl on the Train, starring Emily Blunt as a woman caught up in the mystery of her ex-husband’s (Justin Theroux) missing nanny.

The official trailer was also released for the new Jason Bourne outing once again starring Matt Damon (after a long hiatus and new series featuring Jeremy Renner). The latest film picks up nearly a decade later after the last film, dropping Bourne into a story influenced by everything from Occupy Wall Street, the Greek debt crisis, and the Snowden leak as Bourne's past once again comes back to haunt him. Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles and Ato Essandoh also star in the film cowritten by Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse

TELEVISION

According to the Washington Post, NCIS' Mark Harmon was spotted at the White House and confirmed rumors that First Lady Michelle Obama will be part of a scene in an upcoming episode of the popular CBS series.

UK's Acorn Media Enterprises is partnering on a new series for ITV drama, The Level. The six-part crime thriller centers on Nancy Devlin (Karla Crome), a Detective Sergeant whose exemplary career masks a covert attachment to Frank Le Saux (Philip Glenister), a shady businessman and drug trafficker who is the father of her best friend (Laura Haddock). When she finds herself at the center of an investigation that puts her at risk of exposure and is stalked by a killer intent on destroying her, Nancy’s complicated love life and relationships with colleagues create further tension as she doesn’t know who she can trust.

Idris Elba (Luther) is taking on another leading role on the small screen in Guerrilla, the latest project from John Ridley, who won an Oscar for 12 Years A Slave and was behind the popular TV show American Crime. Elba's role in the show hasn't been announced, but the story centers on a couple in the London '70s political underground who liberate a political prisoner, then target the Black Power Desk, a branch of counter-intelligence aimed at suppressing black activism.  

If Castle gets an order for a Season 9, it will be without star Stana Katic, who plays Beckett, as well as fellow female longtime cast member Tamala Jones. ABC announced that neither actor was asked to continue with the series, which may be due to "budgetary reasons," according to Deadline.

News also came from NBC has cut Grimm's initial order for Season 6, which will now run at least 13 episodes versus the 22 the supernatural crime drama has produced for the previous seasons. The move is in part give the network greater flexibility in its fall schedule, which already includes eight drama series picked up for the 2016-17 TV season and potentially see Grimm return in a mid-season slot.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Suspense Radio's "Beyond The Cover" welcomed Allison Brennan, bestselling author of the Lucy Kincaid series and over two dozen other thrillers.

John Gaspard, magician and author of the Eli Mark’s Mysteries visited It's A Mystery to Me with Stacy Verdick Case to discuss the audio book release of Book 1 in the series The Ambitious Card.

Author R&R with Jean Heller

Author Jean Heller takes some "Author R&R" today on In Reference to Murder. Heller's career has included serving as an investigative and projects reporter and editor for The Associated Press, The Cox Newspapers, Newsday, and the St. Petersburg Times. Heller has won multiple awards, including the Worth Bingham Prize, the Polk Award, and is an eight-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.

Heller's new thriller is The Someday File, which asks the question, "What happens when the profession you’ve known all your adult life threatens to kill you—yet suffocating guilt and insatiable curiosity won’t let you walk away?" That's what happens to Deuce Mora, a columnist for the Chicago Journal, whose encounter with an aging, low-level Chicago mobster throws her into a world of political and criminal intrigue and confronts her with a horrific crime more than 50 years old that she will either solve or die in the trying. 

Heller offered up her take on "Author R&R" (Reference and Research) from her journalist's perspective:

 

Someone Will Notice

Jean Heller

A good friend of mine, a mystery writer of some renown, once spent nearly two weeks researching what type, appellation, and vintage of red wine would have been served with a cassoulet at a fine Parisian restaurant in the 1920s.

When I asked him why he had spent that much time on such a small thing from so long ago, he replied, “Because if I get it wrong, someone will notice.”

Indeed, my friend was not being totally anal. When you write fiction, you are asking readers to suspend disbelief and take a trip with you into their imaginations. But if you hit a pothole along the way, and write as fact something the reader clearly recognizes as an error, the suspension of disbelief bubble bursts, and the trip comes to a crashing end.

So it was for me when a famous writer wrote about a character field-stripping a weapon and got it all wrong.

As a former newspaper reporter, research and adherence to fact are ingrained in me. Like my friend, I don’t want to break the axle of a good story by hitting a pothole.

I believe in the old saw that writers should write what they know, but we can’t know everything about everything. I am a licensed pilot, but not an airline pilot. For MAXIMUM IMPACT, I had a steep learning curve. I have worked in skyscrapers, but when I wrote HANDYMAN I didn’t know enough about the “dirty places” in the buildings, the offices and closets and alcoves that make the building work.

Some of the research I had to do for my current book, THE SOMEDAY FILE, was almost as obscure as identifying a red wine from the 1920s. I had to learn a lot of minutiae about Chicago’s criminal history, current laws, geography, neighborhoods, customs, and Chicagoans’ unique ways of speaking. Fortunately, I live in the city, so I didn’t have to travel terribly far to scout settings or to find experts who could answer my questions, including a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago.

That’s my key to researching a book: I talk to people who know everything there is to know about what I don’t know.

For MAXIMUM IMPACT, I talked to several airline pilots and accepted United Airlines’ invitation to come fly their giant training simulators in Denver – the same mockups you saw on television when reporters were trying to explain the causes of several recent, tragic plane crashes.

For HANDYMAN, the manager of a new skyscraper in Tampa actually spent a day with me crawling around those areas of his building that most people never see.

On one occasion, I actually convinced the director of pharmacy at a large medical center to help me find a drug that would kill without leaving a trace and describe for me how such a drug could be stolen from his hospital.

These experts, even if uncertain initially about taking the time and making the effort to abet a work of fiction, all got into it as the exploration went along. They admitted when we finished that they’d had fun.

The perils of not doing this kind of research are evident:

I once read a novel in which there was a car chase through the streets of Lucerne, Switzerland. If the chase had occurred as the writer conceived it, it would have run along the bottom of Lake Lucerne.

In another novel, the writer blew up a tank farm in Iceland, apparently believing the tanks, in real life, hold petroleum. They don’t. The tanks sit over a lava basin and hold the hot water supply for the city of Reykjavik.

The moral of the story is, if you don’t know, do the research.

Because for every minor detail you get wrong, someone will notice.

 

You can learn more about Jean Heller and her novel The Someday File via her website, Twitter, or on Facebook.

Mystery Melange

Since I was AWOL last week, I almost missed some award news. Here's the latest wrap-up of crime fiction honorees:

The winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced, including a Best Mystery/Fiction title nod to The Cartel by Don Winslow. The other finalists were Lou Berney, The Long and Faraway Gone; Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer; Brian Panowich, Bull Mountain; and Richard Price, The Whites.

The longlist was also released for the 2016 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel, which sees "giants of the genre pitted against a clutch of new voices," with eighteen total nominees, including several repeat honorees.

Crime novels from Finland, Norway and Sweden have made the shortlist for the 2016 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year: The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum; The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto; The Caveman by Jorn Lier Horst; The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz; Satellite People by Hans Olav Lahlum; and Dark as My Heart by Antti Tuomainen.

The Bloody Words Light Mystery Award (a/k/a the Bony Blithe Award), which celebrates humorous Canadian crime fiction announced the finalists for 2016:  Victoria Abbott, The Marsh Madness; Elizabeth J. Duncan, Untimely Death; Eva Gates, Booked for Trouble; Victoria Hamilton, White Colander Crime; and Alexis Koetting, Encore.

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers announced the Scribe Award Nominees for 2016, honoring licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. The shortlist in the Best Original Novel category include, Elementary:The Ghost Line by Adam Christopher; Kill Me, Darling by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins; Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: Desert Falcons by Michael A. Black; and 24: Rogue by David Mack.

The Minnesota Book Award for 2016 in the Genre Fiction category went to Ellen Hart for The Grave Soul.

Author B.J. Bourg won the 2016 EPIC (Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) e-book Award in the category of Mystery for his novel James 516. Also nominated for that prize were Murder on Edisto, by C. Hope Clark; Secrets, Lies, and Homicide, by Patricia Dusenbury; Shadows on Iron Mountain, by Chuck Walsh; and The Old Inn at Punta de Sangre, by Theresa Donovan Brown.

In other crime fiction-related news:

The sixth biennial Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award is open for submissions, with a deadline of June 15. The editors are looking for short stories in the genres of mystery, horror, fantasy, and science fiction of under 5,000 words. Although there is a normal entry fee is $15, if you write the code PXRTM on the memo line of your check, you will receive a $5 discount. For more information, check out the website.

The spring Issue #144 of Mystery Scene magazine features a Q&A with Catriona McPherson, who credits the wildly popular TV series Downton Abbey for persuading a US publisher to take on her 1920s-era Dandy Gilver novels; a profile of pioneering scriptwriter Rita Lakin, one of the few women screenwriters in the 1960s; a chat with Adrian McKinty, the author behind the very funny and very dark Sean Duffy series about a Belfast cop during The Troubles (1969-1997), who discusses his own childhood memories of that tumultuous period in Irish history; author Judith Flanders, formerly a book editor, talks about using her expertise and experience on her series character, Samantha "Sam" Clair, who works in a London publishing company; Megan Abbott's essay, "Girls Like Us," takes a look at the rise of ordinary women in current crime fiction such as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl; plus other takes on new books and reviews.

The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival has launched its annual Big Read, with readers invited to celebrate the life and work of one of the world’s greatest writers, PD James, by reading the author's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Although the Big Read event is aimed at libraries and reading groups in the North of England, it's not a bad place to start for any reader new to the works of the late, great crime fiction master.

Fans of the recently retired, long-running crime series CSI (the original), can take home a piece of the show for real. Over 600 props, including a desk phone seen in Ted Danson's office, a pair of Sara Sidle's sunglasses, and a briefcase belonging to Grissom will be auctioned. But you'd better hurry, as the auction closes on April 22.

The Huffington Post took a look at new and renovated community library spaces awarded AIA’s annual Library Building Award that show us the "future of book lending."

Writing for the Strand Magazine, Mike Dellosso compiled a list of the "Top 10 CIA novels" that give us a peek into the dark world of espionage and double agents and counter-terrorism.

Not to be outdone, Alex Segura picked his choices for "Ten of the Best Private Eyes."

The Classic Mystery blog has been celebrating Agatha Christie's 125th anniversary with a poll to establish the Best Miss Marple Novel and the Best Miss Marple Portrayal, and the final results are in.

Continuing National Poetry Month, this week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "I Walked Into My Own Trap" by Alan P. Marcus. And be sure and check out all the other entries at the 5-2 celebrating National Poetry Month.

The new story-of-the-month from Beat to a Pulp is "The Larcenists" by Kieran Shea.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People spoke with Jessica Knoll to discuss her debut
novel, Luckiest Girl Alive (soon to be made into a feature film), and also Michael Robotham to chat about the latest in his Joe O’Loughlin series; Mayhem and Magic welcomed Steven Saylor to chat about his historical whodunits; former journalist Tim Weaver was the latest victim of the Crime Watch 9mm Interview Challenge to talk about his series featuring missing persons expert David Raker; Omnimystery News spoke with Denison Hatch about his debut thriller, Flash Crash; Chris Rhatigan chatted with Criminal Element about his short stories and his new novel Squeeze, as well as how he ended up living in India; and The Killing Times roped in Harlan Coben for a Q&A about his books and the new British TV show The Five, which is based on his story in collaboration with producing partner Nicola Shindler.

Author R&R with Seth Margolis

Seth Margolis has written six books over the past two decades including Losing Isaiah, made into a feature film in 1995 starring Jessica Lange and Halle Berry. He's also written a number of New York Times articles about travel and entertainment. His latest thriller is The Semper Sonnet, in which a long-lost manuscript, written for Elizabeth I, holds the key to unlocking hidden secrets of the past—and to eliminating the future.

Margolis stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R to discuss how he went about writing and researching the book:

 

My new novel, THE SEMPER SONNET, is a thriller that takes place in contemporary New York and Elizabethan England. I’m pretty well versed in the former, having lived in Manhattan for most of my life, but sketchy on the latter.

THE SEMPER SONNET is about a current-day Ph.D. candidate who comes across what she feels certain is a heretofore unknown sonnet by Shakespeare. But when she reads a portion of it on the air, she’s attacked and quickly realizes that the sonnet contains clues to a long-buried secret involving Elizabeth … and possibly the knowledge needed to cause global destruction.

Fortunately, I came across a marvelous book, ELIZABETH’S LONDON by Liza Picard. It is so well researched and so energetically written, you can practically smell London in the sixteenth century, taste the codlings (baked apples) and sheep lungs (no explanation needed), hear the cries of street vendors along Cornhill and Cheapside. There’s also fascinating information about Elizabethan childbirth, which was useful, since in my novel the Queen does indeed … but I’m giving too much away.

This book, along with a couple of biographies of Elizabeth and some strategic Googling, gave me the confidence to get started. But pretty soon I realized that secondary research just didn’t provide what I needed to set scenes in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.  I wanted readers to see, hear and even smell what it was like to live in Elizabeth’s England. So I booked a flight to London.

My first destination was Hatfield, Elizabeth’s childhood home. After a short train ride from London, I walked from the station up the hill to the palace, having made an appointment with Hatfield’s publicity manager. (It was closed to the public during the time I visited.) I was able to walk the same walk my current-day character would walk as she investigated the meaning hidden in the sonnet, which gave me invaluable perspective. I was given a private tour of the “old palace,” where Elizabeth was essentially imprisoned by her half-sister, “Bloody” Mary. This is where a pivotal – and invented – scene in my novel occurs, and standing in the great hall gave me the information I needed to write it with confidence. I took dozens of photos while I was there and scribbled pages of notes on the train back to London.

My second research visit was to Westminster Abbey, specifically Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, considered last great masterpiece of English medieval architecture. More relevant to my novel, it’s where Elizabeth is entombed. In a great irony of history, her tomb was placed directly on top of her hated half-sister’s. I was planning to set a climactic scene in the Lady Chapel, so I spent several hours there as groups of tourists came and went. I took notes on the architecture, the various memorials lining the walls, the points of access where my characters could enter and leave.

I imagine I looked more than a little suspicious to the beadles standing watch – yes, they really are called beadles. Their suspicions were no doubt confirmed when I queried them at length about the security cameras installed throughout the Chapel. To my relief, they were as knowledgeable about modern heat-sensitive surveillance technology as medieval history. I couldn’t have conceived of the scene without their expertise.

The beadles, and the welcome I received at Hatfield, reaffirmed a lesson that I’ve learned only gradually over the course of writing seven novels: people are eager to share information, not matter how arcane or unexpected. You just have to ask.

 

Find out more about Seth Margolis and how to order The Semper Sonnet via Seth's website, and you can also follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

20th Century Fox has added to the cast of the next Kingsman movie, Kingsman: The Golden Circle. According to a Tweet from Channing Tatum, he is now involved in the project (although his role in the espionage film has yet to be announced), and Variety also reported that Elton John is in talks for a key role. Matthew Vaughn is returning to direct from a script he co-wrote with Jane Goldman, and Halle Berry has been in talks to star as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Tracking Board noted the rise of female villains at the movies and decided to compile a listing of the "Top 10 Trailblazing Female Villains." (So, do you agree with their choices? Any of your favorites left out?)

TELEVISION

Ethan Suplee (My Name Is Earl) has landed a series regular role opposite Hugh Laurie in Hulu’s drama series Chance, based on a novel by Kem Nunn. Chance is described as a provocative psychological thriller that focuses on Eldon Chance (Laurie), a San Francisco-based forensic neuro-psychiatrist who reluctantly gets sucked into a violent and dangerous world of mistaken identity, police corruption, and mental illness. Suplee will play D, ex-military and a powerfully built tattooed man of few words.

Another Firefly reunion is coming to Castle, with Jewel Staite guest starring on the ABC crime drama in the May 2 episode, "Much Ado About Murder," playing a Broadway director whose movie-star lead ends up being murdered. Staite originally played mechanic Kaylee on the short-lived sci-fi series created by Joss Whedon that also featured Castle star Nathan Fillion playing the ship's "captain."

BBC America’s five-part limited series Thirteen will premiere on June 23, taking over the Orphan Black slot after that show’s season finale. Thirteen stars Jodie Comer as Ivy Moxam, who escapes from the cellar that has been her prison for 13 years and is reunited with her family who struggle to piece back together the version of their lives that existed before she disappeared. As police learn that her captor evaded arrest, two detectives are assigned to protect Ivy and one becomes consumed with the job.

ITV has announced new cast members for the third and final season of the crime drama Broadchurch. David Tennant and Olivia Colman will reprise their roles as DI Alec Hardy and DS Ellie Miller, with Jodie Whittaker and Andrew Buchan returning to play Beth and Mark Latimer. Arthur Darvill also returns as local Vicar Paul Coates, Carolyn Pickles as newspaper editor Maggie Radcliffe and Adam Wilson as Ellie's son Tom. The eight-episode season will feature a new case for Miller and Hardy with the detectives reuniting to investigate a serious sexual assault. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries will present a new premiere every Sunday night during the month of June featuring four original mystery movies from the network's favorite franchises Garage Sale Mystery, starring Lori Loughlin; Aurora Teagarden, starring Candace Cameron Bure; Murder She Baked, starring Alison Sweeney; and Flower Shop Mystery, starring Brooke Shields.

AMC released a new trailer for The Night Manager, the six-part miniseries based on John le Carré's novel, which stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki. The Night Manager premieres April 19.

A trailer was also released for Season 2 of the USA series Mr. Robot, starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater, which premieres this summer.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed two noir crime fiction authors, Steve W. Lauden (Bad Citizen Corporation) and Alex Segura, author of the Miami crime novels featuring Pete Fernandez.

Authors on the Air Radio 2 featured a Q&A with Kimberly McCreight, the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

THEATER

The Olney theater in Olney, Maryland (right outside Washington, D.C.) is presenting Dial M for Murder through May. The Frederick Knott play, which won a 1952 Edgar Award (and was later made into an Alfred Hitchcock film), centers on an aging former tennis pro who marries for money and hatches a seemingly foolproof plan to do away with his rich wife.

GAMES

Frogwares released a trailer for its newest action-packed Sherlock Holmes game, a sequel to Sherlock Holmes: Crimes And Punishments. As with the predecessor, players must scavenge for clues and link them together to solve the mystery.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Oscar winner Jared Leto has signed on to star in Martin Zandvliet’s action-thriller The Outsider for Waypoint Entertainment and Linson Entertainment. Written by Andrew Baldwin, The Outsider is set in post-WWII Japan and follows an imprisoned American soldier (Leto) who is released with the help of his Yakuza cellmate. Now free, he sets out to earn their respect and repay his debt while navigating the dangerous criminal underworld.  

TELEVISION

Producer Dick Wolf is planning the next Law & Order franchise as an anthology drama, taking on a different true crime case in each season. The first season will be fully focused on brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who gained notoriety in 1990 after murdering their parents Jose and Kitty in cold blood months before.  

Not to be outdone with the true-crime craze, CBS is looking for its own Making a Murderer/American Crime Story. A day after NBC greenlighted Dick Wolf's Law & Order true-crime scripted anthology, CBS is in final negotiations for an untitled unscripted anthology focusing on a different case each season with the first focusing on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.

Fox renewed the supernatural procedural Lucifer starring Tom Ellis as the devil who tires of life in Hell and materializes in the City of Angels, where he aids the LAPD in rounding up and punishing evildoers. The network also ordered a second season of Rosewood, starring Morris Chestnut as Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr., a private pathologist working in Miami, Florida, in high demand with law enforcement.

As NCIS gets ready to say goodbye to Michael Weatherly, a.k.a. Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, news comes that British actor Duane Henry (The Dark Knight Rises) has been hired for two episodes in Season 13 to play MI-6 Officer Clayton Reeves, a man known for "swagger, confidence and humor."

Brad Garrett will guest-star in Law & Order: SVU's two-part season finale playing Gary Munson, a corrections officer at Rikers who maintains his reputation as a hard-working family man, but hides a long history of corruption and violence against female inmates, both in and out of the prison.

NBC’s Friday night supernatural crime drama Grimm has received another early renewal by the network for a sixth season. The series centers on Detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) and also stars Russell Hornsby, Bitsie Tulloch, Silas Weir Mitchell, Reggie Lee, Bree Turner and Sasha Roiz.

David Simons's upcoming HBO drama The Deuce has tapped novelists Megan Abbott and Lisa Lutz as new writers on the series, joining current writers George Pelecanos, Richard Price and Simon, who together penned the pilot. The project, which was given a series order in January, stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Franco and follows the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s.

Content Television has sold upcoming BBC drama The Secret Agent to RLJ Entertainment’s Acorn in the U.S. The four-part period series is due to air on BBC One later this year and will stream in the U.S via Acorn TV. The Secret Agent is the adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel of terrorism, espionage and betrayal, with BAFTA-winning writer Tony Marchant (Great Expectations) penning the adaptation and Toby Jones, Vicky McClure, Ian Hart and Stephen Graham set to star.

The Blacklist co-star Ryan Eggold has closed a deal to play the male lead opposite Famke Janssen in NBC’s proposed spinoff from the thriller drama series, reprising his role as covert operative Tom Keen aka Jacob Phelps. The spinoff focuses on the relationship between Susan "Scottie" Halsted (Janssen) and Tom (Eggold), which is said to be similar to the one between Raymond "Red" Reddington (James Spader) and Liz (Megan Boone) on the original series, with Scottie as Tom’s handler.

The BBC and Mark Gatiss revealed Wednesday that shooting for the fourth series/season of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman has officially begun. A statement from co-creators, writers and executive producers Gatiss and Steven Moffat gave a few more clues about what to expect: "Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson bringing adventure, romance and terror in their wake. This is the story we’ve been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax...”

Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber as a Hollywood fixer in the Showtime series, received its Season 4 premiere date of June 26 and also a first-look trailer.

Finally, The Telegraph noted that "badass female detectives are finally taking over from middle-aged white men on TV."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest Crime and Science Radio podcast featured an interview with Chief Scott LaChasse of the Burbank Police Department

Authors on the Air welcomed Brian Freeman, the international bestselling author of psychological suspense novels, in conversation with Libby Hellmann.

Mystery Melange

The International Thriller Writers announced this year's finalists for the Thriller Awards, to be handed out at ThrillerFest XI on July 9 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City.

Congratulations also to the winners of this year's Derringer Awards. The annual honors are handed out by the Short Mystery Fiction Society for excellence in short crime fiction writing.

On Tuesday May 10, The Guardian is sponsoring a Master Class with thriller author James Patterson. Patterson will share the secrets of writing a page-turner, from crafting an irresistible plot to writing dialogue that drives a story forward, and offer up advice on staying focused and motivated as a writer. Participation is limited, so if you're interested, you should sign up early.

The Sydney Writers Festival in Australia is featuring several crime writing panels and discussions, starting with Candice Fox sharing tips and tricks for the aspiring crime fiction author on Sunday, May 15, continuing all the way to May 22 with award winning crime writer Michael Robotham discussing the psychology of obsession. Girl on a Train's Paula Hawkins will also be on hand in conversation with ABC RN’s Kate Evans as she chats about her work, her inspiration, and the key ingredients for a compulsive read.

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column is out, with news about the republication of Sir Basil Thomson’s classic Inspector Richardson novels; the recent Essex Book Festival’s celebration of Margery Allingham’s fiction; a one-day crime-fiction conference called Deal Noir, which will take place this Saturday in south-eastern England; and new works by Philip Kerr (The Other Side of Silence), Quentin Bates (Thin Ice), Michael Gregorio (Think Wolf), Ruth Dudley Edwards (The Seven), and more.

Scottish author William McIlvanney has been awarded with the rare honor of a posthumous degree by University of Glasgow, which his daughter Siobhan McIlvanney accepted on his behalf. McIlvanney, dubbed "the father of Tartan Noir," passed away in December after a short illness at the age of 79.

A more recent obituary of note from last week: Stage and screen actor Douglas Wilmer, best known for portraying Sherlock Holmes in the 1960s BBC series, died at Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk, England following a short illness. He was 96.

Although this year's Quais du Polar crime fiction conference in Lyon, France has just wrapped up, Emma over at Books Around the Corner has posted a recap of the festivities including panels with Jo Nesbø, Arnaldur Indridason, Oliver Norek, Sara Gran, Deon Meyer and Craig Johnson, and more.

Writing for The Telegraph, Arts Correspondent Hannah Furness notes how technological changes mean that the cliffhangers of Enid Blyton (and many other authors of the day) 'would not have worked today because of mobile phones.

Sadie Trombetta compiled a listing of "13 of the Best Female Sleuths from Pop Culture," and after reader input, came up with a Part 2 with even more nominees.

New to the works of Agatha Christie? Hard to believe that there are readers out there who've never read a Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot novel, but just in case you haven't, Book Riot compiled a little guide, "Where To Start With Agatha Christie."

Graphic novels have become an attractive format for delivering gritty crime stories, and the Australian Network News compiled a list of the "top five detective graphic novels."

Some readers are so passionate about their favorite books, they cook up specific foods from specific books, from frozen butterbeer in Harry Potter to the chicken Frito pie that Shawna makes for Nick after Amy disappears in Gone Girl.

Crime Factory Issue #18 is out with new stories by Patrick Loveland; Michael Koenig; Bobbie Groth; Jay Helmstutler; Sarah M. Chen; Jacqui Horwood; Paul Heatley; J. M. Taylor; Greg Mollin; Jeff Esterhold; Benjamin Welton; and Adeola Adeniyi.

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "A Page From My Diary (If I Had One)" by Anina Robb. April is Poetry Month, and the 5-2 has organized a celebratory blog tour. Check out the complete schedule here.

In the Q&A roundup, the Africa in Words blog spoke with Margie Orford, "the Queen of South African crime fiction"; Crime Watch welcomed Guy Fraser-Sampson, an investment specialist who just released his debut mystery novel, Death in Profile; Sons of Spade interviewed Grant Bywaters, winner of the Best First Private Eye Novel in the PWA competition, about his debut novel and his own PI work; Edith Maxwell stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss her new first in series mystery, Delivering the Truth; Stuart Woods chatted with the Oklahoman about his newest Stone Barrington novel, Family Jewels; and Laurie R. King discussed her latest Mary Russell novel, The Murder of Mary Russell, with the Mystery People.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Julia Roberts is set to star in Fool Me Once, an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s just-published thriller. The story centers on Maya (Roberts), a Special Ops pilot just home from war who sees something on her nannycam that she can’t understand: her 2-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe — who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier.

Jeremy Saulnier is taking on helming duties for the 20th Century Fox spy thriller Defection. Saulnier will be working from a script by Ken Nolan described as being "cut from the same cloth as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but set in an Edward Snowden era." Defection tells the story of a broken down CIA case officer who uses his calculated Cold War training to go after a mid-level CIA intelligence contractor who has defected to North Korea and has taken a mysterious suitcase with him.  

Principal photography has begun in Park City, Utah, on Wind River, the feature directing debut of Sicario screenwriter Taylor Sheridan that stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. The film follows a rookie female FBI agent (Olsen) who teams up with a veteran local game tracker with a haunted past (Renner) to investigate a murder on a remote Native American reservation in the hope of avenging the girl’s death.

Doug Liman (The Edge of Tomorrow) is in negotiations to direct the sniper thriller The Wall for Amazon Studio. Dwain Worrell wrote the screenplay, which was the first spec script bought by Amazon and follows a sniper and his spotter who are pinned down behind a chunk of wall by a legendary sniper.

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney is taking on narrative moviemaking via the real-life political thriller The Action, penned by The Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Scott Burns. The plot centers on eight anti-war activists who stole and made public classified FBI documents that exposed J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign of spying on and blackmailing troublemakers.

Kevin Bacon has signed on to star in Patriots Day, the CBS Films and Lionsgate pic about the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Bacon (who co-starred as an FBI agent in last year’s Black Mass) will play Richard DesLauriers, the Bureau’s special agent in charge and one of the law-enforcement figures involved with the manhunt for the bombers who carried out the attacks on the city’s annual race.

TELEVISION

HBO has landed the adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams, handing out an eight-episode order with the potential for a second season. Sharp Objects centers on reporter Camille Preaker (Adams) — fresh from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital — who faces a troubling assignment: She must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls and finds herself identifying with the young victims a bit too strongly.

Castle’s Andrew Marlowe and Terri Miller are taking on Take Two, described as a "fun and witty" crime series. The LA-based dramedy follows private investigator Eddie Valetik, who hires Emma Swift, the fresh-out-of-rehab former star of a hit cop show to appear in his late-night TV ads. When calls flood in to hire Emma, she takes on the role of his partner, drawing on her acting skills and the numerous plots she’s experienced in her TV series to help solve their cases.

A Blacklist spinoff starring Famke Janssen in the works at NBC, airing as a back-door pilot on the parent shot on May 12. Directed by Justified's Michael Dinner, the project's plot details are being kept under wraps but it will star Famke Janssen (X-Men, How to Get Away With Murder) as Susan "Scottie" Halsted, with more of the cast to be announced later.

Amazon announced that its original police procedural series Bosch, based on the Michael Connelly novels, will receive a third season. Bosch follows renegade detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) as he cleans up the streets of Hollywood.  

Johnny Kostrey has landed a recurring role on Season 2 of NBC’s Aquarius, the gritty 1960s drama that focuses on a cop (David Duchovny) who goes undercover to track Charles Manson and the Manson Family before their infamous murder spree. Kostrey will play Voytek Frykowski, a loyal friend of director Roman Polanski and an ultimate victim of the Manson Family’s Cielo Drive murders.  

Samuel Barnett (Jupiter Ascending) has been cast as the lead opposite Elijah Wood's sidekick assistant Todd in Dirk Gently, BBC America’s eight-episode series based on the cult Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency novels by Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently is a comedic thriller that follows the bizarre adventures of eccentric “holistic” detective Dirk Gently (Barnett) and his reluctant assistant Todd as they wend their way through one big, seemingly insane mystery a season, crossing unlikely paths with a bevy of wild and sometimes dangerous characters.

Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) has joined the cast of ABC’s new thriller drama series The Catch from Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland production company. Details about her character are sketchy, but she may be playing Leah Wells, a neurotic but formidable counterfeiter.  

Addison Timlin (Californication) has been cast as the female lead opposite Lucas Till in CBS’ drama pilot MacGyver, the reimagining of t
he 1985 series. The pilot, co-written by Paul Downs Colaizzo and Brett Mahoney and directed by David Von Ancken, features twentysomething Angus MacGyver (Till), who is recruited into the clandestine organization from the original series where he uses his knack for solving problems in unconventional ways to help prevent disasters. Timlin will play Mickey, an app developer who’s aggressively progressive in her political views, with a soft spot for MacGyver. Michelle Krusiec was also added to the cast to play Agent Croix who works for Homeland Security.

The BBC announced that Tim Roth and Samantha Morton have been cast in a new three part series of Rillington Place, which will be filmed in Scotland and London. The drama is based on the real-life multiple murders undertaken by John Christie in Notting Hill in the 1940s and '50s. The subsequent tragic miscarriage of justice, which led to Timothy Evans being hanged for a crime he did not commit, contributed towards the abolition of capital punishment in Britain.

ITV has commissioned an eight-part conspiracy thriller Paranoid, which tells the story of a female GP who is murdered in a rural children’s playground with an abundance of eyewitnesses. A group of detectives embark on what seems to be a straightforward murder investigation, but as they delve deeper into the case they are quickly drawn into the twists and turns of an ever-darkening mystery, which takes them unexpectedly across Europe. The cast of detectives will be played by Neil Stuke, Indira Varma, Dino Fetscher, and Robert Glenister.

Acorn TV acquired a new six-part, cinematic noir thriller Jack Irish that is based on the novels of Peter Temple and debuts on May 2. Acorn also reported April 25 as the season 9 premiere of Murdoch Mysteries, which follows the brilliant detective William Murdoch (played by Yannick Bisson), a pioneer of crime-solving technologies in Edwardian-era Toronto. Murdoch is based on the novels of Maureen Jennings.

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders has hired ER vet Sherry Stringfield to join CBS’ just-launched spinoff as the longtime wife of Gary Sinise’s Unit Chief Jack Garrett. Karen is described as "a supportive wife and dedicated mother to the couple’s five children." Their oldest kid, Ryan, is a young recruit for the FBI, and their middle daughter, Josie, is heading into her freshman year at USC.

Gossip Girl star Kelly Rutherford has landed a pivotal recurring role on Quantico, appearing in a multi-episode arc as Laura (read the full article if you don't mind reading spoilers from recent episodes). 

TNT has finalized its plans for summer, reporting that the seventh and final season of Rizzoli & Isles will premiere June 6, followed by Season 5 of Major Crimes on June 13.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Today Show chatted with Harlan Coben, author of his latest thriller, Fool Me Once.

WAMC discussed the long and colorful history of American crime writing with Harold Schecter, professor of English at Queens College, CUNY, and the editor of the Library of America's True Crime volume. A writer of true crime fiction himself, Harold recently served as the scholar-advisor for the New York Council's new Reading and Discussion series "True Crime an American Genre."

Crime and Science Radio welcomed Dr. Katherine A. Roberts, Director of the CSULA Graduate Program in Criminalistics, to talk about research, education, and the future of forensic science.

The Suspense Radio podcast featured authors David Putnam and Elizabeth Heiter.

Author Angela Misri joined CrimeFiction FM to discuss her new book, the third in her Portia Adams mystery series, No Matter How Improbable.