Mystery Melange

Mystery Readers NorCal is hosting an evening Literary Salon with William Kent Krueger on Thursday, October 6 in Berkeley, CA. Krueger is the author of the Cork O’Connor series set in the north woods of Minnesota and has received Edgar, Anthony, Barry, and Dilys Awards, among many other honors, for his writing. For more information and how to RSVP, check out the Mystery Fanfare blog.

The Iceland Noir festival released the full program for this years event, to be held November 17-20 in Reykjavik. In addition to a full schedule of panels, there will be extra events like the Reykjavík Crimewalk, leaving the Nordic House and ending at Iða Zimsen in downtown Reykjavík, stopping off at criminally significant points along the way with authors reading from their work at each stop. (Crime Fiction Lover has a look at highlights of the festival via this link.)

Writing for Ireland's Independent newspaper, Myles McWeeney posited that female thriller writers are once again dominating the bestseller lists, just as in the Golden Age of crime fiction, with three Irish authors helping to lead the way.

David Hare wrote an essay for The Guardian on the genius of crime fiction author Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Hare is bringing the play The Red Barn, based on Simenon's novel La Main, to the National Stage, and he revealed why he loves the "pithy, power-obsessed creator of Inspector Maigret."

The Crime Fiction Lover blog has been celebrating the best crime fiction of years gone by during this month, a feature they titled "Classics in September." One recent post turned the spotlight on Bloomsbury Reader, a publisher that has been unearthing Golden Age crime fiction and reprinting it for modern audiences, with writers like Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin and Ann Bridge.

As Martin Edwards notes on his blog, collecting crime fiction has become a bit of "a thing," especially for rare - and often quite expensive - books, like an illustrated copy of Poirot Investigates. He also cites a recent blog post from Panmacmillan about some of the genre’s most sought after items.

Among the intriguing items in the online collection Recollection Wisconsin is the "Sherlock Holmes Mystery Map" (1987) created by Jim Wolnick and Susan Lewis and published by Aaron Blake Publishers. Complete with a "Dancing Men" border, it provides a visual guide to 130 locales in the Holmes canon.  (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

Have you ever wondered how the FBI handled fingerprints before the digital age? By 1943, there were more than 20,000 employees sorting through 70 million fingerprints in an 8,000 square foot facility in the National Guard Armory in Washington D.C., affectionately called the "Fingerprint Factory."

Welcome to the new model of book clubs: silent reading parties where participants gather together just to read the books rather than talk about them.

Maybe they should start such a club for boys. After hearing depressing statistics lately about how boys read less than girls, it's no surprise to have a study find that parents spend 25% less on books for sons than for daughters.

This week's new crime poem at the 5-2 is "Borders" by Aja Beech.

In the Q&A roundup, Graeme Macrae Burnet talked with the Wall Street Journal about his book that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, His Bloody Project, which revolves around a triple murder in a quiet crofting community in 1860s Scotland; the Mystery People welcomed Beth Lewis to chat about her debut novel, the psychological thriller, The Wolf Road; Karin Slaughter spoke with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the new book in her series with GBI agent Will Trent and why it's been three years since the last installment; and Chris Holm stopped by the MP blog to discuss his new novel in the series with Michael Hendricks, a hit man who kills other hitmen.

Banned Books Week

Sunday marked the beginning of the annual Banned Books Week in the U.S., a project created by "a national alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read." The program was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. In case you may wonder if it's still relevant today, more than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982, according to the American Library Association.

Because it's estimated that over half of all banned books are by authors of color or contain events and issues concerning diverse communities, this year Banned Books Week will celebrate literature written by diverse writers that has been banned or challenged, as well as explore why diverse books are being disproportionately singled out in the first place.

Individual books showcased during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read, most of these books still remained available.

If you would like to participate, there are events spread through the country. Check this listing for one near you or participate in one of the online webcasts. For further reading and resources, you can also visit the ALA's website.

Media Murder for Monday

Can it really be Monday again? Why yes, it can, but to soften the blow, here's a wrap-up of news about upcoming crime dramas:

MOVIES

Fox has bought the movie rights to an untitled crime thriller by novelist Don Winslow (to be released next June) and set it up with Ridley Scott to produce through his Fox-based Scott Free company. The book centers on a corrupt sergeant at the NYPD’s most elite crime-fighting unit who must choose between his family, his partners and his life. The preemptive deal follows another deal with the studio and Scott to develop Winslow’s bestseller The Cartel, which  centers on two former friends whose paths diverged when one went to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency and the other joined the Sonora drug cartel.  

For some time now, there have been rumors circulating around a sequel to the 2014 crime thriller The Equalizer, but producer Todd Black has finally confirmed that The Equalizer 2 is happening, with director Antoine Fuqua directing and Denzel Washington set to reprise his role as the "fixer" Robert McCall. Equalizer 2 will start shooting in September of next year and will mark Washington’s first sequel in a franchise.

Studio 8 has picked up the rights to New York Times bestseller Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim, the eight book urban fantasy series, which are being eyed as a potential franchise. The series revolves around James "Sandman Slim" Stark, a fast talking, hard-boiled, supernatural vigilante who escapes from Hell to avenge his girlfriend’s murder and hunt down the magicians responsible for getting him sent "downtown."

Gina Gershon has signed on to the Jonathan Baker-directed thriller Inconceivable opposite Nicolas Cage, Faye Dunaway, Nicky Whelan and Natalie Eva Marie. Written by Chloe King, the film follows Katie (Whelan), who moves to town with her young daughter in order to start a new life after enduring abuse in her past and quickly befriends another mother, Angela (Gershon), and her husband Brian (Cage). Angela notices odd behavior from Katie, and begins to question whether Katie’s intentions are as innocent as she makes them out to be, or if something dark is lurking beneath the surface.

Three new trailers were dropped for the upcoming Jack Reacher sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, once again starring Tom Cruise as Lee Child's iconic protagonist.

TELEVISION

In a competitive deal, NBC landed The Last Policeman, an adaptation of Ben H. Winters’ sci-fi mystery novel, with a put pilot commitment. Winters will also pen the series adaptation, which follows a detective in New Hampshire during the final years of civilization as a catastrophe-level asteroid hurtles toward the planet. Despite the social, political and economic effects of preparing for impact, he keeps his head down and hope alive by solving cases amidst the ever-increasing chaos.

Another famous 1980s TV show is eyeing a comeback, with ABC snapping up Magnum, a sequel to the classic series Magnum P.I. that starred Tom Selleck. The new project, from Leverage creator John Rogers and Eva Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, will follow Magnum’s daughter, Lily "Tommy" Magnum, who returns to Hawaii to take up the mantle of her father’s PI firm. She and her tribe of friends "mix tropical beaches with the seedy underbelly of international crime and modern espionage, even as she tries to unravel the mystery of the blown spy operation that ended her career in Navy Intelligence."

ABC has put in development a drama procedural from British writer-actress Lizzie Mickery and Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner’s Bad Wolf production company. Written by Mickery, the untitled drama is about a team of female detectives in the vein of Cagney and Lacey.

After it recently ended its seven-year run, CBS's hit lawyer drama The Good Wife is getting its own spin-off that will hit the CBS All Access online venture in February 2017. The series will center on Christine Baranski's character Diane Lockhart, who is forced out of Lockhart & Lee and ends up joining Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago’s preeminent law firms. Joining Baranski will be original cast members including Cush Jumbo (Lucca Quinn) and Sarah Steele (Marissa Gold).

The cast and crew of ABC's Secrets and Lies teased the second season of the show, which picks up a year and a half after the events in Episode 1, with Det. Andrea Cornell (Juliette Lewis) having a new murder case on her hands: Eric Warner (Michael Ealy), a private equity heir who's accused of murdering his wife (Jordana Brewster) on the night he's set to officially take over his family's firm

Tiffany Hines is joining the cast of Fox’s 24: Legacy in a major recurring guest star role. 24: Legacy follows a structure similar to the original counter-terrorism thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, with the updated version revolving around a military hero’s (Corey Hawkins) return to the U.S. and the chaos that follows him, forcing him to ask the Counter Terrorist Unit for assistance in stopping a large-scale terrorist attack in the Unites States.

Jane Lynch is set to reprise her role as Reid's schizophrenic mother Diana on Criminal Minds this season for the first time since 2008. She'll appear in two episodes early next year for a "heavy Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) story," according to executive producer Erica Messer.

Phoebe Dynevor (Dickensian) has been cast as a series regular on Snatch, the drama series for Sony’s streaming network Crackle that’s based on the 2000 Jason Statham-Brad Pitt movie. Rupert Grint and Luke Pasqualino star in the series, which revolves around a group of up-and-coming twenty-something hustlers who stumble upon a truckload of stolen gold bullion and suddenly are thrust into the high-stakes world of organized crime.  

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Harlan Coben was a guest on CBS This Morning to talk about his new book, Home, which brings back his iconic character, Myron Bolitar, to try and unravel the mystery behind the kidnapping
of two boys 10 years after the crime.

On NPR's Morning Edition, author Thomas Mullen discussed his book Darktown, a riveting police procedural set in 1948 Atlanta that explores a murder through the lens of corrupt police, and strained race relations.

Host Alex Dolan of the Thrill Seekers podcast welcomed Alex Marwood, the bestselling author of The Wicked Girls, The Killer Next Door, and the recently released The Darkest Secret.

Bouchercon Bounty

The annual Boucheron conference held this past weekend included the usual slate of award presentations, with the announcement of the Anthony, Shamus, Barry, and Macavity honors.

The Anthony Awards, voted on by attendees at the convention, were handed out to:

• Best Novel: The Killing Kind, Chris Holm
• Best First Novel: Past Crimes, Glen Erik Hamilton
• Best Paperback Original: The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney
• Best Critical or Nonfiction Book: Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime, Val McDermid
• Best Young Adult Novel: Need, Joelle Charbonneau
• Best Anthology or Collection: Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015 - Art Taylor, Editor
• Best Short Story: "The Little Men: A Bibliomystery," Megan Abbott
• Best Crime Fiction Audiobook: The Nature of the Beast, Louise Penny - Robert Bathurst, narrator

The winners of the Shamus Awards were announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon and include:

• Best Hardcover Private Eye Novel: Brutality by Ingrid Thoft
• Best Original Private Eye Paperback: Circling the Runway by  J.L. Abramo
• Best First Private Eye Novel: The Do-Right by Lisa Sandlin
• Best Private Eye Short Story, “The Dead Client” by Parnell Hall in Dark City Lights: New York Stories (edited by Lawrence Block)
• The Eye Lifetime Achievement Award: S.J. Rozan.

The Macavity Awards are nominated by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal and friends of MRI:

• Best Mystery: The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
• Best First Mystery: Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton   
• Best Critical/Biographical: The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards  
• Best Short Story" "The Little Men" by Megan Abbott   
• Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award: The Masque of a Murder by Susanna Calkins

Finally, we have the Barry Awards from Deadly Pleasures Magazine:

• Best Novel: C. J. Box, Badlands
• Best First Novel: Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead
• Best Paperback Original: Lou Berney, The Long and Faraway Gone
• Best Thriller: Taylor Stevens, The Mask

Mystery Melange

The annual National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, heads to the nation's capital this Saturday for a free one-day event at the Washington Convention Center. This year's festivities will include appearances by Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen, and Harlan Coben.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, but as as editor Janet Hutchings notes on the EQMM blog, this year also marks another milestone - the Private Eye Writers of America is celebrating its 35th anniversary. Author, editor, critic, and recent PWA vice-president, Ted Fitzgerald, wrote a guest post for the blog about the organization and its storied history. 

Crime writer Agatha Christie's murder mystery novels are getting a new outing - as stamps. The Royal Mail in the UK has issued six stamps to mark the centenary of the year Christie wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced Belgian detective Hercule Poirot to the world. But these aren't just ordinary stamps - they contain hidden clues and references, printed in special inks and microtext, to murders and key scenes in Christie's most famous novels. Amateur sleuths will be able to use UV light, body heat and a magnifying glass to uncover hidden elements and key scenes in the stamps.

Speaking of Dame Agatha, Bookbub staffer Chanel Cleeton compiled a list of  "11 New Mysteries to Read if You Love Agatha Christie."

Agatha Christie has been getting quite a bit of press this year, thanks to the 125 anniversary of her birth. But there's another author celebrating a big anniversary, Mary Stewart, and just in the nick of time comes a forgotten novella that The Guardian calls "the perfect celebration of her centenary year."

Author Ann Cleeves has written a murder mystery script for libraries and booksellers to use in "author-less" events, as a way of thanking librarians and booksellers for their support during her career and also an acknowledgement of the funding gap left by cuts to libraries that can make such public events and outreach work difficult or impossible. The murder mystery script, Blood on the Bannocks, will equip public libraries with everything they need to hold murder mystery nights for readers.  

Fans of noir crime comics should check out this piece by Maika Keuben for Dirge Magazine.

This Tokyo-based Japanese craftsman brings old books back to life by making them look brand new through techniques obtained after more than three decades of experience in his shop from the Suidobashi area of Japan’s capital. Okano, the old Japanese craftsman, can reverse almost any deterioration process that a book has witnessed, bringing back the joy of reading old novels and stories to anyone who visits his repair shop.

Turns out, it's a good week for "old" things:  Melville House celebrated the "oldest book in the Americas," while word came that the world's oldest library, Morrocco's Khizanat al-Qarawiyyin, is set to reopen after a complete restoration.

Listverse takes a tour into "10 Creepy Mysteries Involving Abandoned Vehicles."

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "The Porn-Phone Caper" by Paula Willis.

In the Q&A roundup, Zoe Sharp visited with The Mystery People to talk about her latest book featuring Kelly Jacks, a former Crime Scene Investigator turned crime scene cleaner; the MPs also welcomed Mike McCrary, whose new book, Genuinely Dangerous, is about a failed writer-director who decides to restart his career by embedding himself with a gang of bank robbers; and Frances McNamara stopped by Omnimystery News to chat about her sixth mystery featuring amateur sleuth Emily Cabot, Death at the Paris Exposition.

Storypalooza

There are several fun, new anthologies that have come to my attention lately I thought I might pass along. The first two will delight fans of Sherlockiana, with new short fiction by a variety of today's best authors from crime fiction, suspense, sci-fi, and fantasy, while the third is sure to brighten your day.

Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, has a release date of October 4, which is just around the corner. Edited by Laurie R. King, it starts with one premise, "What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories?" It features 17 new stories including Tony Lee and Bevis Musson's "Mrs. Hudson Investigates," a post-Reichenbach mystery in comic book format; John Connolly opts for satire in "Holmes on the Range," set in the Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository, a home for fictional characters who have "assumed an objective reality" (including Holmes and Watson); William Kent Krueger contributed "The Painted Smile," which centers on a therapist who treats a child determined to have his identification with Holmes taken seriously. Plus, there are other fine contributions from David Morrell, Anne Perry, Hallie Ephron, and Gary Phillips.

The other Sherlock-themed offering is titled Associates of Sherlock Holmes and is edited by George Mann. In this anthology, famous associates of the Holmes – clients, colleagues, and of course, villains – tell their own stories of the Great Detective. Follow Inspector Lestrade as he and Sherlock Holmes pursue a killer to rival Jack the Ripper; sit with Mycroft Holmes as he solves a case from the comfort of the Diogenes Club; take a drink with Irene Adler and Dr. Watson in a Parisian café; and join Colonel Sebastian Moran on the hunt for a supposedly mythical creature. Author Lyndsay Faye, a well-known Sherlockiana adherent, starts off the proceedings with Police Inspector Stanley Hopkins, who appeared in Doyle's "The Adventure of Black Peter" in a brand new tale as he works with Holmes and Watson to investigate body parts dredged from the Thames in "River of Silence."

The other story treasure trove comes in the form of Sunshine Noir, edited by Annamaria Alfieri and Michael Stanley, and features seventeen writers from around the globe telling of dark doings in sunny places. Hot spots include the Dominican Republic, the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, chic Mykonos, Seville at midnight, and on the morning beachfront of Ghana where a man has revenge on his mind. Follow an NGO worker kidnapped in Yemen, an engineer repairing a dam in turmoil-torn Ethiopia, a foolish young Englishman hitchhiking across the Sahara. You will visit historic Istanbul and Mombasa and learn the secrets of family conflicts in Singapore, in Puerto Rico, in New Orleans. Tim Hallinan provides a Foreword for the American edition, with Peter James doing the honors in the British version, and Peter Rozovsky penning the book's introduction.

 

Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings to all, with the latest news from the world of crime drama on stage and screen:

MOVIES

Toni Collette, Gillian Anderson, Joanna Lumley and Riccardo Scamarcio have all signed on to star in Andorra, joining previously-cast Clive Owen. The project is based on Peter Cameron's novel of the same name, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called "part thriller, part comedy of manners, part surrealistic dream." The story follows  a man who forsakes his American life and arrives in a strange country called Andorra, settling into the grand (and only) hotel in its seaside capital, gradually making the acquaintance of this tiny city's most prominent residents. But amid the mystery of his origins, a mutilated dead body appears in the harbor and everyone becomes a suspect.

Gillian Anderson is also one of the stars who've come aboard the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Crooked House, along with Glenn Close, Christina Hendricks, Max Irons,Terence Stamp, Honor Kneafsey, and Stefanie Martini. Irons is set to play Charles Hayward, a private detective trying to solve a murder whose suspects include Sophia, his former lover, played by Martini, while Stamp takes on the role of the chief inspector. Hendricks, Close, Kneafsey, and Anderson are members of the dead man’s household. The film is to be directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah’s Key) and is being written by Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey).

Production on Mission: Impossible 6, recently halted due to an issue with back-end fees, has settled its financial problems with Tom Cruise and is back on track. The original production plan for an early 2018 release was jeopardized by last month’s pay dispute, but with Cruise's new deal, the original timeline could still be a reality.

TELEVISION

The Emmy Awards were handed out last night, with big crime drama winners including The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which had nods for Best Actor (Courtney B. Vance) and Best Actress (Sarah Paulson) in a Limited Series or Movie; Mr. Robot, with an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series nod to Rami Malek; Orphan Black, Outstanding Lead Actress to Tatiana Maslany; The Night Manager, Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie (Susanne Bier); Making a Murderer, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series; and Sherlock: the Abominable Bride, Outstanding Television Movie.

CBS has put in development Body Politic, a procedural drama from former Dexter co-executive producer Lauren Gussis, director Marc Webb, and Dark Horse Entertainment. The show is inspired by the work of real-life D.C. examiner Dr. Roger Mitchel and follows a newly minted, brutally honest female chief medical examiner in Washington D.C. who gets recruited by the CIA to help solve the most high-stakes, politicized cases in the world.  

Sheldon Turner has teamed with Charlie’s Angels director McG for a buddy cop drama with a twist, which Fox has handed a script commitment plus significant penalty. Written by Turner and to be directed by McG, the untitled drama (working title Good Cop/Bad Cop) centers on a meek San Francisco detective struggling with psychological trauma who conjures up an imaginary rogue partner who helps him get the job done.

Fox has also given a script plus penalty commitment to Justice, a  legal drama from Scandal co-executive producer and former Assistant United States Attorney Judy Smith, who was the inspiration for the lead character in Shonda Rhimes’ Washington drama. Written by Jeremy Miller and Daniel Cohn (Entourage) and inspired by Smith’s own story, Justice centers on a high-powered African American woman who is made the new U.S. Attorney and her team of attorneys who take on cases while trying to fix the problems in their own lives before secrets unravel.

Legal drama continues to be a red-hot genre this broadcast buying season with another high-profile entry heading to Fox from Empire co-creator/executive producer Danny Strong and Jessica Sharzer (American Horror Story). The untitled project centers on a team of civil rights lawyers who take on the most newsworthy cases of our time, balancing the high stress of their jobs with sex, drugs, and assorted other vices.  

ABC has has given a pilot production commitment to Deception, an FBI crime drama procedural from Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak and magician, puzzle creator and writer/producer David Kwong, who serves as consultant on NBC’s FBI drama Blindspot. Written by Fedak, Deception centers on a superstar magician whose career is ruined by scandal and turns to practice his art of deception with the FBI, becoming the world’s first consulting illusionist.

Actress and Grammy-winning singer LeToya Luckett and Camille Spirlin have booked recurring roles on the second season of Fox's Miami-set medical procedural Rosewood. The series centers on top private pathologist Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr. (Morris Chestnut) and tough-as-nails Detective Annalise Villa (Jaina Lee Ortiz) as they investigate East Miami PD’s most challenging cases. Luckett will play Tawnya, a new love interest for Rosewood, while Spirlin will portray Kayla, Tawyna’s daughter. In addition to Chestnut and Ortiz, they join Lorraine Toussaint, Gabrielle Dennis, Anna Konkle and Domenick Lombardozzi and new cast addition Eddie Cibrian.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is heading to Fargo, joining Ewan McGregor and Carrie Coon for Season 3 of the dark comedy crime drama. She will play Nikki Swango, a "crafty and alluring recent parolee with a passion for competitive bridge playing." She is described as bring a focused woman with a plan, who always likes to be one step ahead of her opponent.  

Christopher Backus has booked a recurring role on Amazon’s drama series Bosch, playing Woody Woodrell, a former Army Special Forces soldier who now works for a private security firm. Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Harry Bosch novels, Bosch stars Titus Welliver as the idiosyncratic, tough, jazz-loving cop. The third season, set to premiere in 2017, will draw from Connolly’s 1992 The Black Echo and 2001 A Darkness More Than Night books.

AcornTV will premiere new crime drama seasons in October, including episodes of the Australian political thriller The Code, starring Ashley Zukerman and Dan Spielman; and the third season of the Montreal-set series 19-2, which the New York Times called on par with the best American police dramas like The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

BBC Radio has recordings of John le Carré reading from his new memoir The Pigeon Tunnel (including an explanation for the title and the intersections of his life between real-life espionage and fiction). (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell)

Suspense Radio welcomed two very special guests, authors Julia Diana Robertson (Beyond The Screen Door) and and Cate Holahan (The Widower's Wife).

Former sex crimes prosecutor and author Allison Leotta chatted with author/screenwriter Debbi Mack about her Anna Curtis thrillers for the Crime Cafe podcast.

THEATER
 
A new production of The Big Sleep is kicking off the 40th season of Calgary, Canada's Vertigo Theater. Graham Percy stars as Raymond Chandler's iconic detective Philip Marlowe in the classic tale of a millionaire who is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and wants P.I. Marlowe to make the problem go away. The production also stars Stephen Hair as Los Angeles police detective Nulty. The show opened September 17 and runs through October 16, 2016.

Mystery Melange

A new award named in honor of the late crime writer William McIlvanney has been won by author Chris Brookmyre for his novel Black Widow. The McIlvanney Prize was previously known as the Scottish Crime Book of the year and was presented at the recent Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling. The other short-listed authors were Doug Johnston, Val McDermid and ES Thomson. Judges described Brookmyre's novel as being "like watching Olympic diving...even the twists have twists."

The RBA International Prize for Crime Writing (known in Spanish as the Premio RBA de Novela Negra) has been awarded this year to Ian Rankin for his translated novel Perros salvajes (Even Dogs in the Wild). The award is a Spanish sales promotion literary award said to be the world’s most lucrative crime fiction prize at €125,000.  (HT to Jose Ignacio and A Crime is Afoot.)

Contraband, the crime fiction imprint of the tiny independent Scottish press Saraband, has produced a title on the Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2016, with Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project. The list also included a debut novel from the American writer Ottessa Moshfegh, who at 35 is the youngest author on the shortlist for her psychological thriller Eileen.

San Antonio's Gemini Ink is inviting bookworms to “roam humanity’s psycho-social depths” via spirited discussions about classic noir titles such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and The Third Man during its Wednesday Nights of Noir series which runs through December. The series kicks off with a free cocktail party tonight.

Noir At the Bar will be back in action Tuesday, September 20th at Threadgill’s South in Austin, Texas. Featured authors on hand for readings will include "local author, musician and man-about-town" Jesse Sublett, as well as fellow Yanks Rick Ollerman, Todd Robinson, and Brits Zoe Sharp and John Lawton. As always, Jesse will begin the night with a rousing murder ballad.  (HT to the Mystery People.)

Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles announced that it will award up to three grants to attend the 2017 California Crime Writers Conference coming up June 10-11, 2017 in Culver City, California. The Sisters in Crime/LA Educational Grant serves to further the education of published and aspiring mystery/crime writers on the path to writing excellence, and membership in Sisters in Crime is not required. The deadline for applications is midnight PST, January 31, 2017.

The latest edition of the UK magazine Crime Scene is out, with a 17-page special feature dedicated to the grand dame of British crime, Agatha Christie. It takes in a new film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express with Kenneth Branagh, Sophie Hannah’s upcoming Poirot novel Closed Casket, David Suchet’s Poirot, Antony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (an homage to Christie), and the new theatre production of The Mousetrap. There is also a feature looking at the acclaimed BBC production The Fall, with Gillian Anderson who faces off in the third series against the ultra creepy serial killer played by Jamie Dornan, as well as looks at other TV shows including DCI Banks, Making a Murderer, Rectify, Gomorrah, and more. (HT to Crime Fiction Lover.)

Unfortunately, another bit of news from the crime magazine world isn't as rosy:  editor/publisher Alex Cicak announced that Pulp Modern is closing their doors after five years of publishing stories by 91 amazing writers who contributed stories to the journal between 2011 and 2016.   (HT to Sandra Seamans.)

The Guardian continued the focus on Agatha Christie during her 125th anniversary year with a look at how the "cozy" genre Christie made popular may be having something of a renaissance, "giving new inspiration to a genre tired of alcoholic divorcees and goth hackers." Of course, David Brawn, estates publisher at HarperCollins, notes that there are economic factors at work, too, adding "One of the main reasons behind the sudden popularity of crime from this period is that modern publishing and new technology allows for shorter runs in printing, which means that we can now mine backlists that would previously have been unprofitable."

American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, invites submissions for a special 2017 issue on Contemporary Crime Fiction, guest edited by Dr. Charlotte Beyer of University of Gloucestershire. The Special Issue will explore the diversity and proliferation of American, British and Canadian crime fiction in the contemporary period, and trace thematic and formal priorities that have emerged in crime writing during the late 20th to early 21st century. 

After a dozen novels and 70 million book sales, British writer Frederick Forsyth says he's giving up on thrillers because his wife told him he can no longer travel to adventurous places. “I’m tired of it and I can’t just sit at home and do a nice little romance from my study,” said the 78-year-old, who revealed in a memoir last year that he had worked extensively for the MI6 spy service.

Think you know everything about the Grand Dame of crime writing? You might want to check out Parade Magazine's list of "10 Things You Didn't Know About Agatha Christie."

Alex Segura compiled a list of "9 Mysteries by Female Authors You May Not Have Read Yet" for Bookbub.

Did you know Taiwan has a mystery-oriented independent bookstore? Murder Ink, established in 2014, collects a variety of mystery stories, encompassing romance, crime, realism, suspense and detective genres from around the world.

Did you also know that they make Sherlock Holmes temporary tattoos?  (HT Seattle Mystery Bookshop)

A
nd this is possibly the best mugshot ever.

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Reek: Soberanes Fire, Day 13, 25% Containment" by Jennifer Lagier, and this month's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Key Man" by Jon McGoran.

In the Q&A roundup, Frank Westworth takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interivew" challenge to talk about his new thriller, Fifth Columnist; E. B. Davis, with the Writers Who Kill, interviewed Judy Penz Sheluk about Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in her Marketville series; Omnimystery News welcomed Diane Capri to discuss the seventh book in her popular Hunt for Reacher series; Craig Sisterson's Crime Watch blog hosted Laura Lippman as part of his latest "9MM Interivew" feature; and the MysteryPeople held a Q&A with Craig Johnson about the latest installment in his Sheriff Walt Longmire series.

Media Murder for Monday

To paraphrase the Mamas and the Papas' song, "Monday, so good to me" ... well, at least, it's good for one thing and that is the weekly roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

First Look Media, one of the financiers behind last year’s Best Picture winner Spotlight, is spearheading We Do Not Forget, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zachary Quinto and directed by Zach Helm. The project is a fictionalized account of a real battle between the "hacktivist" organization Anonymous and the Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas.

Director Jeff Nichols signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to write and direct a new big-screen version of Alien Nation. The original film followed a racist cop (James Caan) forced to team with a member (Mandy Patinkin) of an alien race that came to Earth after a ship carrying enslaved aliens crashed, with the newcomers assimilated in Los Angeles. It also spawned a TV series that lasted one season from 1989-90.

Two days after acquiring Sean Penn’s The Last Face, Saban Films picked up U.S. distribution rights to Jonathan Mostow’s The Hunter’s Prayer, based on the critically acclaimed Kevin Wignall novel and starring Sam Worthington and newcomer Odeya Rush. The action thriller follows a solitary assassin (Worthington) hired to kill a young woman (Rush) who is unaware her family’s questionable business dealings have cost them their lives. However, when he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger, the two form a bond and escape across Europe together, hunted by those responsible for her family’s murder.

British actor Tom Bateman is in negotiations to join Fox's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh. The classic Christie story centers on special detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh), who boards a train from Jerusalem to Europe only to have a murder committed in the car next to his during a snowstorm. Bateman will play Bouc, Poirot's companion and sidekick, who works at the train company that runs the Orient Express.

After playing gangster Whitey Bulger in last year’s Black Mass, Johnny Depp is taking on another true-life figure, this time on the opposite side of the law. Depp is attached to star in Labyrinth, playing Detective Russell Poole, the Los Angeles police detective who investigated the murders of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Poole was a decorated detective who spent months investigating the murder of B.I.G., eventually coming to believe that " group of gangsta cops" in his own force were not only involved but were also tied to Death Row Records and the Bloods street gang.

Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly's Game has added to its cast with Michael Cera who would join previously cast Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba. The film stars Chastain as a skier whose Olympic dreams are dashed and heads to Los Angeles to become a cocktail waitress but rises through the social circuit to organize underground poker games for the Hollywood elite. Cera will play Player X, an elite celebrity player who develops an interesting relationship with Chastain’s character. The film is based on the real-life skier Molly Bloom and is adapted from her book Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.

Jason Mitchell, who starred as late rapper Eazy-E in Straight Outta Compton, has joined Kathryn Bigelow's untitled drama about the 1967 Detroit riots. The film is currently in production and also features John Boyega, Will Poulter, Jacob Latimore, Algee Smith, Ben O’Toole, Jack Reynor, Kaitlyn Dever and Hannah Murray.

It must be nice to be loved: Despite recent speculation about who might replace Daniel Craig as James Bond, Sony has reportedly offered the actor $150m for two more Bond films. Craig has already starred in four Bonds, and despite seeming skeptical about returning for more installments, has also said he reserved “the right to change my mind” about quitting the series.

Scooby-Doo and the gang have been solving mysteries on television since the late 1960s, but two live action movies didn't fare so well. Now the show is being resurrected as a fully-animated film with actor/comedian Dax Shepard said to be in talks to direct the project.

A new poster and photos were released for the suspense thriller Nocturnal Animals, based on the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright. Starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal, the film centers around an art gallery owner haunted by her ex-husband’s novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a veiled threat and a symbolic revenge tale. 

TELEVISION

The Creative Arts Emmys announced this weekend included an armful of awards for Netflix's nonfiction serial Making of a Murderer. Hank Azaria also picked up another Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series due to his performance in an episode of Ray Donovan, and the award for Outstanding Casting for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special went to The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. You can check out all the winners via this link.

Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan has signed on to write and executive produce Raven, a limited series for HBO about Jim Jones, the infamous leader of the Peoples Temple cult who led his followers to a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. This is the second Jim Jones/Peoples Temple show in the works after A&E's previously-announced anthology series in development focused on American cults (with the first episode centered on Jones).

Filming has begun on season seven of Game of Thrones, and according to the German site Bild, another esteemed British actor may feature in the HBO show: Angela Lansbury. Perhaps best known for her role in Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury is said to be filming a minor cameo role that will feature across two of the season’s seven episodes. HBO has yet to confirm whether Lansbury has a role in the show.

CBS has bought an hourlong legal drama from True Jack Productions to be written by TV writer/playwright Annie Weisman. The series would center around two sisters on opposite sides of the political spectrum who come together to save their father’s law firm when scandal puts him behind bars.

Vin Diesel is developing a new procedural drama at NBC, currently entitled First Responders, which focuses on young veterans struggling to reintegrate into society, while saving civilian lives along the way. The team is the best search-and-rescue operation in the country, and is run by husband-and-wife duo, Doc and Lil Pierce, but the pair struggle as they have been unable to find their own son, who disappeared years earlier.

In a pre-emptive buy, NBC has given a put pilot commitment to a drama from The Family creator Jenna Bans, an untitled project that follows three good-girl mothers and wives from the suburbs of Detroit as they descend together into a life of crime.

Narcos will continue beyond Pablo Escobar.  After two seasons following the Colombian kingpin's story, Netflix is moving ahead with a third and fourth season of the drug cartel drama. Exec producer Eric Newman said the show was never just about the Medellin cartel and its leader, it's "about cocaine and cocaine continues beyond Escobar."

War and Peace star Tom Burke has been hired to play Cormoran Strike in the BBC’s upcoming adaptations of JK Rowling’s adult crime novels written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The first in the series, The Cuckoo’s Calling, will be split into three one-hour-long dramas, with the adaptations of second and third books The Silkworm and Career of Evil both divided into two one-hour parts.

Camryn Manheim is joining the cast of Major Crimes in a recurring role as the deputy chief of operations at the LAPD. She'll also be one of the top contenders for the assistant chief position, after Russell Taylor (Robert Gossett) was killed in the episode "White Lies, Part 1."  Executive producer James Duff also noted that in addition to Manheim's character, Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney) and another new character will be weighed as possible replacements for Taylor, and the ensuing competition will create "tension and rivalry" among their colleagues.  

USA Network has given a pilot order to The Sinner, a crime thriller executive produced by and starring Jessica Biel (The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea). Created and written by Derek Simonds and based on Petra Hammesfahr’s book, the project centers around a young mother (Biel) who commits a startling and very public act of violence. The event launches an inverted and utterly surprising crime thriller whose driving force is not the who or the what – but the why. A rogue investigator finds himself obsessed with uncovering the woman’s buried motive, and together they travel a harrowing journey into the depths of her psyche and the violent secrets hidden in her past.

The 1967 Australian novel Picnic At Hanging Rock is being made into a new TV drama for Foxtel. Joan Lindsay's book followed the disappearance of three schoolgirls and their governess on Valentine’s Day in 1900 and has already had the big-screen treatment in Peter Weir’s 1975 film, which featured Jacki Weaver and Wolf Creek star John Jarratt.

Law & Order: SVU ended on a game-changer in Season 17 with the death of Special Victims Unit's own Mike Dodds. New showrunner Rick Eid has big plans for how Benson and Co. move on from Dodds' death, with Season 18 picking up a month or so after Dodd's death and the ensuing emotional fallout.

Hulu Japan has announced an original six-part drama, Daisho ("Compensation"), based on a novel of the same title by award-winning mystery writer Jun Ioka. The series focuses on the relationship of a hotshot lawyer (Shun Oguri) and a psychopathic client (Tsutomu Takahashi), a former boyhood friend who occupies a dark chapter in the lawyer’s past. The series will begin streaming this fall in both Japan and the U.S.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest Crime and Science Radio podcast was titled "Crime Scenes, Criminalistics, and the Cutting Edge in Los Angeles: An Interview with Former LASD Criminalist Professor Donald Johnson of California State University, Los Angeles."

2nd Sunday Crime with host Libby Hellmann welcomed James Ziskin, the author of the Ellie Stone Mysteries, nominated for Anthony, Barry, and Lefty Awards.

Crime Cafe featured author Terry Ambrose chatting with author/screenwriter Debbi Mack about his Wilson McKenna mysteries set in Hawaii.

NY Times Bestseller Aleatha Romig joined Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers to talk about her new "The Light" series.

THEATER

City of Glass, Paul Auster’s meta-detective novel about a thriller writer who finds himself playing sleuth, will be staged in Manchester and London next year in a new hi-tech adaptation. The play will land in Manchester March 4-18, 2017 and then at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, from April 20 to May 13, followed by an international tour.

Peninsula Players Theater opens the run of its final show of its 81st season on September 7 with the wildly comic adventure The 39 Steps, first published by  John Buchan in 1915 and followed by various movie adaptations including Hitchcock's 1939 thriller.

Mystery Melange

Sisters in Crime announced the winner of the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award for 2016 is Stephane Dunn. Dunn is a writer and professor at Morehouse College where she directs the Cinema, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program (CTEMS) as well as teaching courses in film, creative writing, popular culture, and literature.

If you're a Margaret Margon fan, check out  the Wake County Public Libraries two-month program "Close to Home: Celebrating Margaret Maron’s North Carolina," which begins this Sunday, September 11 with a kick-off event.  More than 90 additional programs are scheduled at six branches of the library system as part of the celebration. (HT to Art Taylor.)

On September 13, authors John Connolly, Declan Hughes and Stuart Neville will be taking part in the New York launch of the academic collection of essays The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel. Edited by Elizabeth Mannion, The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel considers the detective genre’s position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition. Besides Connolly, Hughes and Nevile, it explores the work of Peter Tremayne, Ken Bruen, John Banville (as Benjamin Black), Brian McGilloway, Tana French and Jane Casey. The free event is begins at 7 pm in the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University.  

The second annual Murder by the Book, a mystery festival for readers and writers, will fly into the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Friday, September 30 and Saturday, October 1.  Participating writers confirmed to date include Hank Phillippi Ryan, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dorothy Cannell, Gayle Lynds, Kate Flora, Bruce Coffin, Vaughn Hardacker, Chris Holm, Maureen Milliken, Lynne Raimondo, Roger Guay, John Sheldon, Brendan Rielly, Katherine Hall Page and Lea Wait.

On Saturday, October 8th, the Mysterium conference will feature a day of mystery, workshops, and intrigue, with special guest Laura Lippman and three dozen other mystery authors. The one-day event takes place at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT, with registration required.

Hard Case Crime has dug up a James Bond novel Donald Westlake wrote as a treatment several years ago that was part of a project to develop a story to follow-up Goldeneye. Best known for his Parker books (under his pseudonym of Richard Stark), Westlake also worked as a screenwriter off and on and even received an Oscar nomination for the 1990’s-era The Grifters. Now Hard Case Crime has resurrected this lost spy story, which Westlake rewrote as a novel titled Forever And A Death, with plans to publish the work next June.

Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph posted that the response to the call for articles for an issue on small town cops was so overwhelming, they've decided to split the themed issue into two. But there's still time to write an author essay for Mystery Readers Journal: Small Town Cops II, if you send it along by October 15 to janet@mysteryreaders.org. Janet is also seeking essays for the 2017 themed issues, Midwest Mysteries; Murder in Wartime, and possibly Big City Cops.

The ACLA conference has put out a call for papers for the upcoming seminar in Utrecht from July 6-9, 2017, titled "Worlding Crime Fiction: From the National to the Global." (HT to Shots)

First Monday returns October 3rd to the City University of London with a top notch foursome of crime authors including SJ Watson, (Before I Go To Sleep), Stuart Neville, (the Serena Flanagan series), Antonia Hodgson (A Death at Fountains Abbey), and William Ryan (The Constant Soldier).  Karen Robinson, editor of the Sunday Times Crime Club. will serve as moderator.  

London is also the place to be on Tuesday, October 11 at Heffers Bookshop for a panel on Agatha Christie. Featured participants include Sophie Hannah, who was hired by the Christie Estate to pen new Hercule Poirot novels; John Curran, editor of the official Agatha Christie newsletter and driving force behind the Agatha Christie Archive; and Julius Green, the founder of The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2015. Tickets will be available at the door. (HT to Ayo Onatade at Shots.)

The New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America will hold an evening of crime featuring readings by its members. President Laura K. Curtis will be moderating the event, which is free and open to public and begins at 6:30 p.m. on October 18  at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York.

The Red Line Book Festival and New Island Books are hosting an evening of crime writing on October 12th in Tallaght, featuring four leading Irish crime authors. Declan Burke will chair the event at the Civic Theatre at 8 pm with Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes and Alex Barclay, discussing the crime-writing process, gripping plots and characters, and Irish crime fiction past and present.

Writing for The Guardian, Jonathan Coe took a look at "Whodunnit and whowroteit: the strange case of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor," which chronicles the real mystery of this 1930s cult thriller - not its murder, but the identity of its writer.

The literary journal Books From Finland profiled an author not well known outside his native country, Matti Yrjänä Joensuu (born 1948), a policeman by profession, who won the Nordic Crime Novel Competition in 1976 and began a realistic crime and police novel in the style of the Swedish writers Sjöwall and Wahlöö. He is the only crime writer to have received a government literature prize and was on the shortlist for the new Finlandia Prize, Finland’s equivalent of the Booker, in 1985.

A new Pew study showed that some 65% of adult Americans have read a
print book in the last year while just 28% had read an e-book. All told, 73% of respondents had read a book in some form, whether printed or digital, during that time frame. Among other findings: about 40% of respondents read only print books, while 6% read e-books exclusively, and 14% had listened to an audiobook. But Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader takes exception to the structure of the survey, feeling that how readers consume the various genres and categories is even more important.

In 1971, Max Collins was a student in the University of Iowa’s Writers' Workshop where his thesis project was to develop three novels that demonstrated that crime fiction could be written using a common Midwestern small town. One of them featured a hitman named Quarry, and Collins went on to publish three Quarry novels in 1976, 1977, and 1987. Twenty years later the character was revived by Hard Case Crime and now Titan Comics is set to publish a comic book mini-series based on those novels.

Meanwhile, Silvertail Books is set to bring four classic military thrillers by Mike Lunnon-Wood back into print. Published collectively as The British Military Quartet, the titles are: Long Reach, King’s Shilling, Let Not the Deep, and Congo Blue, which was previously published as Heraklion Blue. Silvertail publisher Humfrey Hunter added: "Mike Lunnon-Wood’s books are truly great thrillers. They are gripping stories full of authenticity but, best of all, they are object lessons in how to write characters into a kind of fiction which depends as much on its portrayal of people as that of sophisticated details."

A New York Times investigative report took a look at a small Indiana county with a disturbing claim to fame: it sends more people to prison than San Francisco and Durham, North Carolina, combined.

One of the big news stories in publishing recently has been Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith being sued by his publisher to return his advance. But as The Guardian notes, from Julian Assange to Amy Schumer, Grahame-Smith isn't alone.

Fans of the legendary spy thriller author John le Carré will want to check out The Guardian's exclusive extract from his new memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.

Bookweb had a warm fuzzy piece about warm fuzzy bookstore companions, from cats to dogs to guines pigs, birds, and potbellied pigs (and even some chickens, ferrets, and chinchillas, for good measure).

It really does pay to be a librarian: for nearly 50 years, Robert Morin worked quietly at the library of the University of New Hampshire until he quitely passed away a little over a year ago at the age of 77. But then, to the surprise of many, Morin left a small fortune to his employer and alma mater — $4 million.

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Trump's Sacrifice" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, Rosemary and Larry Wild stopped by Omnimystery News to talk aobut the third mystery in their Dan and Rivka Sherman series, Death Steals a Holy Book; author John Gilstrap spoke with The Washington Post about what makes a thriller; the winner of Best Crime Novel at The Irish Book Awards, Alex Barclay, talked with Sophie Grenham about the magic of West Cork, iconic FBI agents, and how great crime fiction should always have one extra twist; The Missourian had an extensive profile and Q&A with James Lee Burke, who reflected on his life and work including The Jealous Kind, the end-cap to the Holland trilogy set in the 1950s; and Ominimystery News welcomed Shannon Baker to chat about her new mystery series that starts off with Stripped Bare.

Author R&R with Douglas Perry

Douglas Perry is a journalist and the award-winning author of the true-crime books The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago and also Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Oregonian, Tennis, and many other publications. His first crime novel is Mammoth, released today via Amberjack Publishing.

Mammoth is set in the small, isolated town of Mammoth View, California, which is hit with the news of an attack on a summer morning. It’s not clear what happened, but it’s bad. And it’s not over. As residents panic and leave town, the police chief and his deputy set off into the woods to investigate. The campsite attack is the perfect coincidence for Billy Lane. Looking for the biggest score of his career, he’s targeted the local bank. The robbery does not go well – and the aftermath unfolds catastrophically. Over the next twenty-four hours, chaos descends on Mammoth View. What really happened at that campsite outside of town?

Douglas Perry stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about about the inspiration and background for his new novel:

 

I am an historian by training and trade. My three previous books are all histories. So when I launched into writing Mammoth – my first novel – I knew I wanted to stay in the past. Making the setting a little unfamiliar adds an inherent sense of dislocation; it makes the characters and plot pop more.

My last two nonfiction books – The Girls of Murder City and a biography of Eliot Ness – take place primarily in the 1920s and ’30s. I know that era very well. But I didn’t want to go that far back for Mammoth. I ultimately decided on the year 1977. Because of the march of technology, it can seem very far away. There was no Internet. No smart phones. For most people, there wasn’t even cable TV. This is a valuable background for my story, which revolves around a mysterious incident outside a small ski-resort town in California. Something terrible and dangerous has happened, and our protagonists must figure out what it is – and survive. All without Google or 24-hour TV news.

1977 is also a good year to set the novel because you don’t have to be too old to remember it. I did a lot of research into the time period – there have been quite a few good histories of the era, such as David Frum’s How We Got Here – but I also have memories of that year. One of the main characters in Mammoth is a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being an Olympic runner. She could have been my babysitter in 1977.

The 1970s don’t get the credit they deserve as a turning point. Popular culture – That ’70s Show, Boogie Nights, the Studio 54 movie, etc. – reinforces the idea that it was the self-absorbed Me Decade, the vapid, fashion-challenged Disco Age. But that’s just the surface sheen. The politics were radical, bizarre, and outrage-driven. The idealism of the 1960s had curdled into something darker. The economy was tanking; crime was exploding. Mammoth is set in 1977 in California. So in the next year, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk will be murdered. The Jonestown Massacre will happen. (Remember, Jim Jones built his following in California.) The Zodiac Killer is still on the loose in the Golden State. The Hillside Strangler, also in California, is about to start his murder spree. The Prop 13 tax revolt is brewing.

Three years earlier, in 1974, Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley. During much of the decade, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, co-founders of the Weather Underground terrorist group, are hiding out in Marin County. (As it turns out, the house where they secretly spent a few years was three miles from the one where I grew up. They probably shopped at the same grocery as my mom.)

So there was a lot going on, in California and in the culture in general. It’s a fertile backdrop for a crime novel. And that’s what Mammoth is: a straightforward, old-school crime story. The 1970s were a great time for that, too. The decade produced a lot of first-rate crime novels. It’s my hope that Mammoth harkens back to the best of them, with the added benefit of historical perspective.

 

You can read more about the author and the book via Douglas Perry's website (with purchase links), and you can also follow him on Goodreads.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's your Labor Day version of Media Murder for Monday featuring the latest in crime drama news:

MOVIES

David Lancaster’s Rumble Films has signed Dark Night writer/director Tim Sutton to adapt and direct the crime thriller Donnybrook. Based on the novel by Frank Bill, the story follows two men as they try to get to the Donnybrook - a legendary backwoods bare knuckle brawl where the winner gets $100,000. Lancaster noted, "I was knocked out when I read 'Donnybrook,' the most raw, out of control, nasty piece of business I have ever come across."

The producers of Rock Paper Dead have announced that the cast for the serial killer flick will include Jennifer Titus, Tatum O’Neal, Michael Madsen, Anna Margaret, Maureen McCormick, and Gabrielle Stone. The film centers on serial killer, Peter "the Doll Maker" Harris, who returns to his ancestral family estate after being released from the state's hospital for the criminally insane after twenty years - ostensibly a "cured" man until anguished memories from a tortured childhood and the visitations from past victims shake his resolve.

Kaitlyn Dever and Hannah Murray are the latest additions to Kathryn Bigelow's untitled project set against the Detroit race riots of a half-century ago, joining Jacob Latimore, Algee Smith, Will Poulter, Ben O’Toole, Jack Reynor, and John Boyega in the cast. Penned by Mark Boal, the crime drama explores the systemic racism that led to the city’s devastating riots over five summer days in 1967.

A trailer was released for Paul Verhoeven's rape/revenge thriller Elle, based on Phillipe Djian's novel Oh. The story follows the head of a video game company, whose efforts to track the unknown assailant who attacked her at home threatens to spiral out of control.

TELEVISION

BBC1 has commissioned a three-part adaptation of Jessie Burton’s period thriller novel, The Miniaturist, which is set to air in 2017. The project is being adapted by scriptwriter John Brownlow and centers on a 17th-century teenager who begins a new life as the wife of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant, but quickly realizes that nothing is quite right in the new household - especially when her new husband gives her a doll's house replica of their home that is to be furnished by an elusive Miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror what is happening within the house in unexpected ways.

BBC2 is prepping an eight-part contemporary political/psychological thriller MotherFatherSon, which re-teams Child 44 author Tom Rob Smith and producer Alan Poul. Their previous crime drama mini-series, London Spy, was nominated for five BAFTAs last year and won one.

Fox is looking to put a new spin on King Arthur, re-imagining the legendary tale as a police procedural. When an ancient magic reawakens in modern-day Manhattan, a graffiti artist named Art must team with his best friend Lance and his ex, Gwen - an idealistic cop - in order to realize his destiny and fight back against the evil forces that threaten the city.  

Not to be outdone, NBC is putting a new twist on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist as a crime drama. The project is described as a gender-bending, modern take on Dickens' second novel that follows struggling 20-something female (Twist) who finally finds a true sense of family in a strange group of talented outcasts who use their unique skills to take down wealthy criminals.  

ABC is developing a new drama with Scandal star Kerry Washington, who will exec produce Patrol, a workplace drama about four female LAPD officers who attended the police academy together five years ago and are forced to reconnect after a high-stakes, traumatic secret returns to haunt them.  

Family Honor, a drama series project from Rosewood co-executive producer Nkechi Carroll and Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves, has landed at NBC with a put pilot commitment. The project is said to be an ensemble police procedural explored through the eyes of four diverse foster sisters who fall on both sides of the law.

Weinstein Television is producing a star-studded take on the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff, with Taylor Kitsch starring as cult leader David Koresh and Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire) set to play lead FBI negotiator Gary Noesner. The limited TV series is based on the harrowing true story of the 51-day FBI standoff and ultimate siege surrounding the religious sect in Waco that led to the complex being burned down and the deaths of 76 people.

The upcoming sixth season will be the last for NBC supernatural crime drama series Grimm, set to premiere January 6. Last season, the supernatural procedural was down from the Season 5 averages, but Grimm still ranked as one of the highest-rated scripted series on Friday despite being a self-starter with very little lead-in support.

A brief return of Paget Brewster to the CBS series Criminal Minds had already been in the works before the recent firing of actor Thomas Gibson. But now, the network says that Brewster and her character special agent Emily Prentiss will be returning to the series full time. "We're all so excited to have Paget with us full time," said executive producer Erica Messer in a statement. "The BAU family has definitely missed her, on screen and off. Having her back on set has been great, it's like she never left."

True Blood alum Anna Paquin is set to star in the CBC's Bellevue, an eight-part detective drama set in a blue-collar Canadian town that will also star Downton Abbey's Allen Leech and Shawn Doyle (House Of Cards). The story centers on Detective Annie Ryder (Paquin), a cop who's always been at odds with her small hometown, but when a transgender teen goes missing, Annie finds herself in a difficult position as she must cast suspicion on people she has known all her life.

Saving Grace alum Leon Rippy has booked a recurring role on the fourth season of NBC’s hit drama series The Blacklist. Rippy will play Hunter, a mysterious survivalist who stumbles upon a secret that will have dire consequences. He's an enigmatic character whose unhinged behavior makes him hard to pin down as friend or foe.

The Unit alum Audrey Marie Anderson has landed a series regular role opposite Cam Gigandet in Ice, Antoine Fuqua’s 10-episode drama for A&T’s Audience network. The mini-series follows the Green family as they plunge into the underbelly of the L.A. diamond trade, with Anderson playing Ava Pierce, who’s strong-willed, independent, fiercely loyal and just can’t seem to shake her ex-husband Jake (Gigandet). She joins previously cast Raymond J. Barry, Jeremy Sisto, Ray Winstone, Donald Sutherland, Judith Shekoni, Ella Thomas, Rey Gallegos and Chloe East.

Netflix released a trailer for season 5 of Longmire, which premieres on September 23. The new season picks up after the dramatic cliffhanger of Season 4, where Walt Longmire (series star Robert Taylor) and his girlfriend Dr. Donna Sue Monaghan (Ally Walker) are shot by an armed intruder in Walt’s house. Laying in a hospital bed attempting to make sense of the attack, their fate and relationship both seem uncertain.  

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A recent BBC podcast featured "sneaky tips for writing a crime novel" from authors Val McDermid, Lucy Ribchester, and Abir Mukherjee.

Jill Dawson joined the Australia radio show RN to discuss her novel The Crime Writer, which weaves fact and fiction about famed author Patricia Highsmith together to create a tale of suspense and psychological intrigue.

Noir on the Radio presented a new "Dames in the Dark" show featuring crime authors Shawn Reilly Simmons, LynDee Walker, Sandra Ruttan, Jen Michalski, and Marietta Miles.