May 31, 2017

 

Crime Writers of Canada announced the Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, including Best Novel to Donna Morrissey for The Fortunate Brother and Best First Novel to Elle Wild for Strange Things Done. You can check out all the winners and finalists via the CWC's official website.

The winner of the Bloody Words Light Mystery Award is Elizabeth J. Duncan for Murder on the Hour. The annual Canadian award is handed out to a "mystery book that makes us smile." (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The longlists for Australia Sisters in Crime’s 17th Davitt Awards were announced, with a record 99 books in contention for adult, young adult, children's and nonfiction titles. A short list will be announced in mid to late July, with the winners presented at a gala dinner in Melbourne in late summer.

Mystery Readers NorCal is hosting an International Historical Mystery Literary Salon with Annamaria Alfieri and Michael Cooper in Berkeley, California, on May 31. Mystery Fanfare has more information and reservation details.  

Noir at the Bar travels to Edinburgh on May 31, with authors schedule to appear and read from their works including Vic Watson, May Rinaldi, C J Huntley, Sarah Sheridan, Neil Broadfoot, Ian Skewis, Doug Johnstone, Jake Steele, Mac Logan, Lucy Cameron, Claire McCleary, and Aly Monroe.

London's Heffers Bookshop and British Library Publications are sponsoring a discussion on June 6 of  Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime. This crime novel was written by a great, great niece of Jane Austen – supposedly on the very desk used by her illustrious ancestor – and was shrouded in mystery after it fell out of print. Now the British Library is re-issuing the book as part of the library’s Crime Classics series. (HT to Shots Magazine)

One day later on June 7, Goldsboro Books in London will be the site of a discussion titled "Agatha Christie’s Far-Reaching Influence." The panel will feature Sophie Hannah, author of the first new Hercule Poirot mysteries since Agatha Christie’s death; Ragnar Jónasson, bestselling author of the Snowblind crime series who has translated 14 of Agatha Christie’s titles into Icelandic; John Curran, Edgar-nominated author of Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (2009) which won the 2011 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards and his Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making (2011) was also nominated for all four awards; and Agatha Christie’s own great-grandson, James Prichard.

On June 8, the St. Louis, Missouri central library is hosting its annual Suspense Night, which brings together popular mystery writers from across the country for an evening of readings and a panel discussion on the craft of suspense writing. Featured authors this year include Reed Farrel Coleman, Blake Crouch, Hilary Davidson, and Peter Baluner.

The inaugural CrimeCom is headed to Indianpolis June 9-11. The various demonstrations, meet and greet sessions, and panels will feature such themes as the FBI Diving Team, blood spatter and crime scene reconstructions, and search and rescue dogs. Organizers describe it as "a true crime theme park for adults, minus the rides."  

On July 19, thriller writers Karin Slaughter and Lee Child will discuss their work in a panel hosted by bestselling author and journalist SJ Parris. The event is sponsored by the Sunday Times as an exclusive feature for members of The Times and The Sunday Times. For more information, follow this link.

Noireland is a new international crime fiction festival "with a distinctly Irish accent" in Belfast that will take place at the Europa Hotel from October 27 to 29 of this year. Details are a bit sketchy but organizers promise more info to come.  (HT to Crime Fiction Ireland.)

Profile Books is set to publish nine rediscovered short stories by Ruth Rendell that will be released as A Spot of Bother: New Tales of Murder and Mayhem this October. It is the first time the stories have been collected together under Rendell’s name, with seven out of the nine never before published in book form.

Writing for Radio Times, author Andrew Wilson makes the case for why Agatha Christie was cruel, not cozy - and how the beloved crime fiction writer was appalled by fluffy TV adaptations of her books.

If you're a fan of true crime and looking for good books to read in the genre, this list isn't a bad starting point. Or, if serial killer tales are more your "taste," (please, no fava bean or chianti jokes), this list of 100 books is a good overview on the topic.

If you're a bookstore fan (and if you aren't, you should be!), you might want to add these "12 bookstores every reader should visit in their lifetime" to your bucket list.

As if you didn't already know, literacy matters. And reading is healthy, too.

A castle in Virginia that Mary Roberts Rinehart once visited and inspired her to write the mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, can be yours for $2,199,000.

John Farrow, the pen name of Trevor Ferguson, wh
o writes crime novels featuring Émile Cinq-Mars, applied the Page 69 Test to Perish the Day, the newest novel in the Émile Cinq-Mars series.

This is a timely list of "10 Great Books of Washington Intrigue."

Is Robocop one step closer to reality?

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Godwin" by Angel Zapata.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People were busy interview bees this week, chatting with Scottish author Denise Mina who often uses true crime and scandal as a basis for her stories; the MPs also welcomed Ace Atkins to discuss his latest book featuring Robert B Parker’s Spenser, Little White Lies; and Mystery People's Director of Suspense Molly Odintz spoke with Lori Rader-Day about her new crime novel, The Day I Died.

Media Murder for Monday

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Mystery Melange

 

CrimeFest 2017 announced the winners of its six award categories at the convention’s recent annual gala dinner. The Audible Sounds of Crime Award winner was Clare Mackintosh for I See You, read by Rachel Atkins; eDunnit Award winner was Laura Lippman for Wilde Lake; the H.R.F. Keating Award winner was Barry Forshaw for Brit Noir; the Last Laugh Award winner was Mick Herron for Real Tigers; the Best Crime Novel for Children (8 – 12)  winner was Robin Stevens for Murder Most Unladylike: Mistletoe and Murder; and the Best Crime Novel for Young Adults (12 – 16) winner was Simon Mason for Kid Got Shot.

Also revealed at CrimeFest was news that Sam Hepburn won the CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition with "Box Clever." Also shortlisted for this honor were Bruce Gaston ("The Case of the Unrepentant Killer"), Ryan Bruce ("Division"), Sam Cunningham ("The Silenced Witness"), and Chris Curran ("The Thought of You"). (HT to the Rap Sheet.)

The 2017 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, announced this past Saturday, was won by Where Roses Never Die by Gunnar Staalesen tr. Don Bartlett (Orenda Books, Norway). The other finalists included The Exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto tr. David Hackston (Orenda Books; Finland); The Dying Detective by Leif G.W. Persson tr. Neil Smith (Doubleday; Sweden); The Bird Tribunal by Agnes Ravatn tr. Rosie Hedger (Orenda Books, Norway); Why Did You Lie? by Yrsa Sigurđardóttir tr. Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton, Iceland); and The Wednesday Club by Kjell Westö tr. Neil Smith (MacLehose Press, Finland).

The Crime Writers Association of the UK announced the longlists for its annual CWA Dagger Awards in various categories including the Gold Dagger for best crime novel, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, the International Dagger, Non-Fiction Dagger, Short Story Dagger, Debut Dagger, Endeavour Historical Dagger, and the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Shortlists will come later, with the winners ultimately announced at a gala dinner in the fall. (HT Shots Magazine)

The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for 2016 include: Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre; After You Die by Eva Dolan; Lie With Me by Sabine Durrant; Real Tigers by Mick Herron; Out of Bounds by Val McDermid; and Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner. The winner will be announced July 20 at the annual Harrogate Crime Festival.

Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA) released its list of finalists for the 2017 Maine Literary Awards, including nods in the Crime Fiction category: Straw Man by Gerry Boyle; Solo Act by Richard J. Cass; and Led Astray by Kate Flora.

Mike Pettit's novel Key West Flashpoint was named the winner of the 2017 Mystery Writers Whodunit Award, to be presented at the 4th Annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 16-18 in Key West, Florida.

Crime Fiction/Mystery programming at Queens Book Festival will include Scott Adlerberg moderating an all-star panel of MWA-New York members to discuss the craft of mystery writing, with panelists including Hilary Davidson, Lyndsay Faye, Adam Sternbergh, Dave White, and Alex Segura. Later on, two Queens-based authors, Radha Vatsal and Alex Segura, will talk about their respective mystery series; and at 5 p.m., a Noir at the Bar caps off the day with a stellar lineup of readers, including Sarah Weinman, Jen Conley, Writer Thomas Pluck, Cathi Stoler Author, S.A. Solomon, SJ Rozan, Nick Kolakowski and Scott Adlerberg.

Atlas Obscura has a nice profile of Otto Penzler, the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop (founded 1979) as well as The Mysterious Press.

The Westminster Detective Library has been working to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before 1891. With the help of undergraduate assistants, they've compiled 1,300 such stories from 800 to 10,000 words in length, as well as several poems about detectives. They've even come across detective stories written by Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and Walter Whitman.

For fans of podcasts like Serial and shows like The Making of a Murderer, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich compiled a listing of "The 10 Best True Crime Books" for Publishers Weekly.

The Spectator investigated Mike Ripley's new book on the world of the modern spy thriller where he describes how stiff Edwardian heroics soon gave way to the lurid antics of James Bond.

Speaking of James Bond, RIP Roger Moore, the suave actor who took on the role of the iconic spy in seven feature films.

Australia’s annual list of most borrowed books was revealed - and crime thrillers dominated.

One of the oldest and most enduring mysteries continues.

Another mystery: why do readers send authors their bad reviews?

If you've ever wondered how forensic artists do their thing, here are "15 secrets of forensic artists" to help enlighten you.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Righteous Among the Nations" by Charles Rammelkamp.
 
In the Q&A roundup,
the American Booksellers Association spoke with Anthony Horowitz, author of the ABA's #1 Indie Next List Pick for June, Magpie Murders; the Mystery People chatted with David Swinson about his Frank Marr trilogy; the MPs also sat down for a Q&A with Ausma Zehanat-Khan about the latest book in her series featuring a Canadian police duo; Kings River Life queried Dana Cameron about how one of her books, Site Unseen, is being turned into a movie on the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel; Crime Fiction Lover welcomed Bill Beverly, whose debut novel Dodgers last year won the Gold Dagger at the CWA awards; and Steve Hamilton joined the Mystery People for a discussion of his latest Nick Mason thriller, the follow-up to The Second Life Of Nick Mason.

Media Murder for Monday

It's Monday, which means time once again for a roundup of the latest crime drama news:

MOVIES

Carnaby International has snapped up international sales rights to A Matter of Honor, an action-packed spy thriller based on Jeffrey Archer’s best-selling novel of the same title. Although the cast has yet to be announced, the project has signed on Emmy winner Jon Cassar (24, Forsaken, When the Bough Breaks) to direct and Keith Arnold (The November Man, Some Kind of Beautiful) to pen the screenplay. The story centers on a man who finds himself on the run pursued by Russia's FSB and the CIA after he collects the remnants of his father’s will that hold a secret dating back to the Cold War with more value today than he could have ever have imagined. 

Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company has acquired the feature film rights to Megan Hunter’s hotly anticipated debut novel, The End We Start From. The eco-thriller follows a mother and her newborn who are turned into refugees after London is submerged in flood waters, and they must search for safety in a country thrown into chaos.

Suicide Squad helmer David Ayer is in early negotiations to direct Universal’s Scarface, the new take on the gangster movie the studio has slated for an August 2018 release. (Antoine Fuqua had been in the mix to direct, but had to drop out for scheduling reasons.) Diego Luna is attached to star in the re-imagining of the core immigrant story told in both the 1983 film version directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, and starring Al Pacino. The new film will be set in Los Angeles, with a script by the Coen brothers.

Annapurna will co-produce Jacques Audiard’s The Sister Brothers, with John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed attached to star in the thriller. The story is based on Patrick deWitt’s acclaimed novel of the same name and follows two brothers hired to kill a prospector who has stolen from their boss.

Fox Searchlight officially announced its acquisition of the David Lowery-directed Old Man And The Gun, the drama that stars Robert Redford and Casey Affleck. The film is based on the true story of Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford), from his audacious escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 to an unprecedented string of heists that confounded authorities and enchanted the public. Wrapped up in the pursuit are detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck), who becomes captivated with Forrest’s commitment to his craft, and a woman (Sissy Spacek), who loves him in spite of his chosen profession.

Ben Kingsley, Benno Furmann and Tuva Novotny are set to star in and Daniel Afredson to direct Death Of An Author, the first movie in a planned trilogy based on Swedish writer Hakan Nesser’s Intrigo thriller novels. The books, which have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide in 30 languages, are set in an undefined country somewhere in northern Europe and deal with the problems of escape, "with dark hidden secrets destined to surface – and with the concepts of guilt, revenge and atonement."

Angela Bassett has signed on to Paramount’s Mission: Impossible 6, playing the C.I.A. director. Production on the film starts this week with Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirky, and Alec Baldwin all joining Bassett in the Christopher McQuarrie-directed sequel.

Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock will star in Cash Truck, a film inspired by the 2004 French film Le Convoyeur, for Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures. The story centers on Alex (Bullock), an American who has fallen on hard times, who starts a job at a London armored car company that was the recent target of a deadly heist. She works her way into the confidence of the tight-knit crew and goes to dangerous and morally complicated lengths to pursue her own mysterious agenda.

Robocop star Joel Kinnaman and Oscar-nominated actors Rosamund Pike and Clive Owen are set to star in action thriller Three Seconds, directed by Andrea Di Stefano (Escobar: Paradise Lost).  The film stars Kinnaman as a reformed criminal and former special ops soldier working undercover for crooked FBI handlers to infiltrate the Polish mob’s drug trade in New York, who must return to prison to protect his identity as a mole and earn his freedom to return to his wife and daughter.

Nat Wolff has joined Sam Claflin in the crime thriller Semper Fi.  Claflin leads the cast as Hopper, and Wolff joins as his younger brother Oyster. Hopper is a straight-laced cop who fills his downtime as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps Reservists alongside a close-knit team of life-long friends. When Oyster accidentally kills a man and tries to flee town, Hopper stops him and forces him to face the music. After a stint in Iraq, Hopper battles his guilt and resolves to save his brother by breaking him out of prison, no matter what the cost.

Gary Shore (Dracula Untold) is set to direct thriller Red River, written by BAFTA and Oscar-nominated scribe Ronan Blaney. The story is set in an isolated town in Ireland, where a bloodthirsty drifter befriends an immigrant family and avenges their murdered family.

Zac Efron willl take on the role of Ted Bundy in a new film about the American serial killer. The drama, titled Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, will be told from the perspective of Elizabeth Kloepfer, Bundy’s longtime girlfriend who initially refused to believe the allegations but later reported him to the police. Bundy was executed in Florida in 1989 after confessing to the sexual assault and murder of more than 30 women.

In other films-based-on-true-crime news, two-time Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen will star in the thriller Unabomb. The project centers on one of the largest manhunts in history as FBI agent Jim Freeman, played by Mortensen,
takes on the unsolved case of the Unabomber, who terrorized Americans with 16 bombings over the course of two decades. Randy Brown adapted the screenplay from the book Unabomber by Jim Freeman, Terry Turchi, and Donald Max Noel.

Claire Foy, who stars as Queen Elizabeth on Netflix’s The Crown, is Sony’s choice to play hacker Lisbeth Salander in its adaptation of The Girl in the Spider's Web. Fede Alvarez is attached to direct the project, which is seen as a relaunch of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo franchise.

Saban Films has picked up U.S. rights to Brian Smrz’s 24 Hours to Live starring Ethan Hawke and Chinese actress Xu Qing. Paul Anderson, Liam Cunningham and Rutger Hauer also star in the upcoming thriller, which will receive a theatrical release later this year. The story follows a career assassin who turns rogue after his latest mission goes awry.

Several commissioning editors at the London Book Fair have snapped up film rights to several thrillers. You can read more of the details via this link from The Bookseller.

A trailer was released for You Were Never Really Here, adapted from the Jonathan Ames novella, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a war vet who devotes himself to saving women being exploited by sex traffickers. But things go very wrong when he tries to save a girl from a brothel in New York City.

TELEVISION

One of the shows left in limbo during last week's network upfronts was ABC's FBI drama series, Quantico. Since then, it was announced the show would indeed return with one major change: creator and executive producer Josh Safran will step down from his position as showrunner, and the episode count will be significantly shorter (13 vs. the usual 22).

The new BBC One drama, A Very English Scandal, which is based on the true story of the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder, has found its lead actor. Hugh Grant has been set to return to British television for the first time since the early ’90s as the disgraced center of the tale, MP Jeremy Thorpe. In 1979, Thorpe was tried, but acquitted, of conspiring to murder his ex-lover, Norman Scott. It nevertheless ended his political career.

Catherine Zeta-Jones' latest role will be for the Lifetime Network, starring as drug kingpin Griselda Blanco in the upcoming network movie Cocaine Godmother. The project will be directed by Academy Award winning-cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and is set to go into production this year with a premiere date in 2018.
 
Parks and Recreation alum Paul Schneider has signed on as a series regular opposite Hugh Laurie in the second season of Hulu’s drama series Chance. The psychological thriller based on Kem Nunn’s novel focuses on Dr. Eldon Chance (Laurie), a San Francisco-based forensic neuropsychiatrist who reluctantly gets sucked into a violent and dangerous world of mistaken identity, police corruption and mental illness. Schneider will play Ryan Winter, a tech multimillionaire who Detective Hynes (Brian Goodman) believes to be a serial killer.  

Jessica Meraz has been cast as a series regular and Lourdes Benedicto will recur in the upcoming sixth season of TNT’s hit drama series Major Crimes. Meraz will play Det. Camila Paige, who has made a name for herself inside Criminal Intelligence before her transfer to Missing Persons. Benedicto will recur as the mother of a missing fifteen-year-old son. The duo join an ensemble cast that includes Mary McDonnell, Tony Denison, Michael Paul Chan, Phillip P. Keene and Raymond Cruz.

BBC Two's upcoming futuristic detective thriller City and the City has cast Lara Pulver, known for her portrayal of Irene Adler in Sherlock, as the wife of Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad in the European city-state of Besźeland.

Investigation Discovery has given the green light to a 10-episode second season of original series Murder Chose Me for a 2018 premiere. The show features stories and case files from Rod Demery of Shreveport, LA, that reflect on his 14 years as a homicide detective.

In case you missed all the upfront news, here are the fall schedules for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. Some of the late network decisions include CBS deciding to cancel crime dramas Training Day and Ransom.

The networks are beginning to drop trailers for their new shows in the fall, including one for NBC's Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.

A trailer was also released for TNT's psychological thriller The Alienist, based on the novel by Caleb Carr and starring Luke Evans. Taking place in 1896 New York, the series focuses on two men tasked by Teddy Roosevelt with solving grisly serial murders, who are aided by a police secretary along the way.

Netflix dropped a new clip for the Rainn Wilson-starring crime thriller Shimmer Lake, about a crime in a small town and a sheriff’s attempts to get to the bottom of what happened - told in reverse chron
ological order, so it starts three days after the crime, and slowly works its way backwards to two days after, one day after, to the actual day of the event.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Dennis Lehane joined Boston Public Radio station WGBH to discuss racism and his new psychological thriller, Since We Fell.

Scott Turow was a guest on CBS This Morning, chatting about his latest legal thriller, Testimony.

Inside Thrill Radio featured "Three of Tomorrow’s Hot Authors Today" as host Jenny Milchman spoke with Walt Gragg, Christina Kovac, and Mark Leggatt.

The Writer Types podcast featured special guests Catriona McPherson, Tom Pitts, David Zeltserman, Eddie Muller, and Shaun Harris.

The Great Detectives blog continued its list of the Best American Radio Detective Performances with Part Four: Honorable Mentions.

The 'Zine Scene

The latest Mystery Scene magazine includes a feature on author Donna Leon, who visited Venice as a young woman and fell passionately in love - with the city. For decades, this affair has played out for all to see in her Commissario Guido Brunetti novels, most recently Earthly Remains. Michael Mallory also has a retrospective of television writer Jackson Gillis who spent 40 years writing for shows from Perry Mason to Columbo to Murder, She Wrote; Craig Sisterson takes a look at Fergus Hume who had crime fiction's first global blockbuster ... 130 years ago; Lawrence Block returns with the second installment of his tutorial "How to be a Writer Without Writing Anything," and more.

"Diverse" is how Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is describing its May/June 2017 issue, with stories running the thematic and atmosphere gamut of the crime and mystery field. There are historicals by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Marilyn Todd; Robert L. Fish Award winning author Zoë Z. Dean’s gritty "Charcoal and Cherry"; a mob tale by Robert S. Levinson; and stories set in Hawaii, Barcelona, the Jersey Shore, and Australia. The issue also contains the winners of the 2016 Readers Award.

Reviewer, editor, and author Elizabeth Foxwell also took a look at the "not so simple art" of mystery reviewing for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine blog.

The latest issue of EQMM's sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, features "delights, dangers, and debuts," and is heavy on the humor among its twelve story offerings. Among the highlights are director/writer Paul D. Marks (author of White Heat and Vortex 2015) whose story "Twelve Angry Days" recalls the old Henry Fonda film, Twelve Angry Men, but with a very different outcome; Jason Half introduces one of his favorite mystery classics, "Daisy Bell" by Gladys Mitchell; Jeff Cohen’s nervous dad-to-be/proprietor of a comedy film theater, who has serious doubts about the hospital staff in "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!"; and there are tales featuring commuters, detectives, comedians, and more.

Crimespree Magazine's latest issue features Nick Petrie on the cover. Petrie is an American crime writer and the author of the war veteran Peter Ash series, and his first novel, The Drifter, was nominated for 2016 Edgar, International Thriller Writer and Barry awards for Best First Novel, and the 2016 Hammett Prize for Best Novel. Kristi Belcamino and Chris Holm are back with new columns this month, and there are the usual cornucopia of interviews and great articles.

The new story up at Spinetingler for May is "Liar’s Poker" by Craig Faustus Buck.

The latest (March / April 2017) Issue of Suspense Magazine celebrates crime short fiction and also has reviews, articles, and interviews with Faye Kellerman, Kelly Oliver, Greg Iles, Lisa Unger, and Daryl Wood Gerber. Also, Barry Lancet and Anthony Franze discuss writing with bestselling author Thomas Perry, and Dennis Palumbo writes about how to turn anxiety into creativity.

The new issue of Mystery Readers Journal: Midwestern Mysteries has so many articles, the publication had to increase its size to accommodate them all, starting off with the introductory essay by Lori Rader-Day, "Big Cities Have Nothing on The Mysterious Midwest." The two free online essays this month are "Home: It’s That Simple" by William Kent Krueger and "The Exotic Midwest" by Nancy Pickard.

Mysterical-E's spring issue has new short fiction by Barbara Kussow, Lyn Fraser, Phillip Thompson, Robert Watts Lamon, Garnet Blackwell, Sophia-Karin Psarras, Margaret Karmazin, John M. Floyd, and Jude Roy. New columns include Drewey Wayne Gunn's look at the Wayne Lonergan murder case of 1943–44 that later became the subject of numerous essays, books, and even stimulated the imaginations of several novelists; movie notes by Anita Page and Gerald So; Christine Verstraete interviewing authors Laura Childs and Terrie Farley Moran about their latest mystery, Crepe Factor; and bookseller Frances G. Thorsen talks about Golden Age crime's Grand Dames.

Yellow Mama magazine reported the sad deaths of two former contributors, writer/artist JD Sixsmith and writer Lela Marie de la Garza, and discussed some of their stories, one of which appears in the latest issue. Also featured is the disturbing "Confidential Report on the Disturbance at Big Echo" by NY newcomer William Squirrell, and noir god Richard Godwin’s chilling "Liars of the Laughing City," in additio
n to more fiction and poetry.

The new issue of Pulp Modern is a resurrection of the publication that ceased for a year due to decreasing sales. Volume Two, Issue One features fiction from multiple genres, including crime, horror, and science fiction by writers from Europe, Canada, the United States, Asia, and Australia who contribute a diverse selection of short stories. Editor Alec Cizak reminds readers that in order to help keeping issues coming, buy and review it on Amazon - You'll be rewarded with stories by Stephen Rogers, Mark Adam, Marc Fitch, Lucy Kiff, Calvin Demmer, Joseph Rubas, L.S. Engler, and Myke Edwards.
 
Mystery Weekly Magazine presents original short stories by the world's best-known and emerging mystery writers who span every imaginable subgenre, including cozy, police procedural, noir, whodunit, supernatural, hardboiled, humor, and historical mysteries. Stories in the May issue include new fiction by J.A. Becker, Anna Castle, Katie Ginger, Michael Mallory, Charles Roland, Jude Roy, and James Glass.

Mystery Melange

The finalists for the 2017 Anthony Awards were announced today by the Bouchercon Chairs, Helen Nelson and Janet Costello, with winners to be presented during the annual conference on October 15. For the the categories and nominees, follow this link. (FYI, I'm pleased to see that an anthology I participated in, Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016 edited by Greg Herren for Down & Out books, is a finalist in the Best Anthology category.)

Finalists for the seventh annual Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction were announced. The prize is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. This year's finalists include Gone Again, by James Grippando; The Last Days of Night, by Graham Moore; and Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult. You can help vote for the winner, as audience voting will account for one-fifth of the decision-making process.

The Waterstones bookstore at Piccadilly in London will host an evening of international crime fiction for the Orenda Books Roadshow tonight. Fifteen authors will be on hand to talk about and read from their novels, answer questions, and participate in book signings.

Of the many panels to be featured at this year's CrimeFest event coming up this weekend is the first-ever look at German crime fiction sponsored by Goethe-Institut London. The panel will be moderated by Kat Hall and include top German crime writers Mario Giordano, Merle Kröger, Volker Kutscher, and Melanie Raabe.

Bestselling thriller authors Robert Dugoni, Mike Lawson, Kevin O'Brien, and Ingrid Thoft will talk about murder and mayhem in a lively panel discussion May 20 from 2-4:30 pm at BARN in Bainbridge Island, Washington.

On May 31, New York City's Mysterious Bookshop is sponsoring a Mysterious Women panel featuring authors Jenny Milchman, Triss Stein, Kathleen Kaska, and Cathi Stoler. Attendees will have a chance to win Writer's Wish List items including a chapter critique, query writing lesson, or thirty minute coaching session.

There are several crime fiction related events at this year's Belfast Book Festival, including actor and author Ciarán McMenamin who kicks off this year’s festivities on June 7 discussing his debut novel Skintown. Crime novelist and journalist Declan Burke will host a conversation between fellow Irish crime writers Louise Phillips, Julie Parsons and Stuart Neville in "Trouble Is Our Business" on Saturday 10, and more panels will follow. For more information, head on over to the Crescent Arts website.  (HT to Declan Burke.)

It's Mystery Month at Booklist, and the RA for All blog has a summary of some of the events of particular interest.

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on crime fiction during Wartime, and editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays, which are first person accounts of yourself, your books, and the 'Wartime' connection.
 
The new American Writers Museum opened in Chicago yesterday. Some of the features include interactive touch screens and high-tech multimedia installations such as the Word Waterfall, cozy couches in the children's literature gallery and even the occasional smell of cookies when a visitor pushes the plaque for Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Writing for Johns Hopkins University Arts and Sciences Magazine, Richard Byrne takes a look at a new biography of Chester Himes, best known for his Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson hard-boiled cop series, battling crime in mid-20th-century Harlem. The book places Himes in the context of other brilliant, mid-20th-century black writers and how they navigated "the crisis of day-to-day life" faced by African-American authors at that time.

California bookstore chain Book Passage and co-owner Bill Petrocelli have filed suit against a state law that the plaintiffs say "will make it extremely risky, if not impossible, for stores to sell autographed books or host author events." The new law was passed by the California legislature last year and expanded the state's autograph law, which originally applied only to sports memorabilia, to cover any signed commodity worth more than $5, including books.

Hollywood is snapping up film rights to books by self-published authors, one of the latest being thriller author Mark Dawson.

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is on tour this summer with its ninth Big Read, hosting free reading group events across the UK that will feature Ian Rankin's breakthrough Rebus novel, Black and Blue.

Newly-elected French President Macon has named a man who has served as a mayor, attorney - and an author of psychological thrillers - as his Prime Minister.

While I happen to think that any library is beautiful, these are rather spectacular.

Ever wonder how writers in days of yore made a living (other than writing)?

Turns out, it's hard to give away a copy of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code these days.

Although I'm almost always in a bookish mood, if you need a little help getting there, these candles might help.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Early Dismissal at Burncoat High" by Kristina England.
 
In the Q&A roundup, Marcie Rendon joined The Mystery People to chat about her new book, Murder On The Red River, featuring an American Indian girl, Cash; The Dorset Book Detective welcomed Peter James, who admits he never imagined the global success his protagonist Roy Grace would have; Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis chatted with Rhys Bowen about her first  standalone mystery, Farleigh Field; Craig Johnson sat down with the Dallas News to discuss "ghosts, humor and realism": Dale Phillips welcomed Dave Zeltserman to his blog to talk about his latest works and the major film being made from his book Small Crimes; and the New York Times' latest By the Book guest was Jo Nesbo.

Media Murder for Monday

Lots of news to report on this week's crime drama roundup, thanks to the spring television upfronts where the networks let us know which shows will live and which will not:

MOVIES

Starting off with movies first, TriStar has attached Mark Pellington to direct The Trap, an adaptation of the Melanie Raabe novel that Oscar-nominated Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy is adapting. The book was originally published in German as Die Falle and is a twisted thriller about a reclusive author who sets the perfect trap for her sister’s murderer after she becomes convinced she's seen the killer on TV.

IFC Films acquired domestic rights to Sweet Virginia, the Jamie M. Dagg thriller that screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. The story centers on a motel owner (Jon Bernthal) with a dark past who unknowingly starts a rapport with a young hitman (Christopher Abbott) responsible for a spate of violence that suddenly has gripped a small town.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino has signed on to direct an untitled thriller penned by Steven Knight, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jake Gyllenhaal being courted to star in the project. The story follows two old friends, one a business titan and the other a journalist. Other details are being kept under wraps, although it will allegedly be set in an exotic locale and also have a strong female lead.

Liam Neeson will star in Retribution, a remake of the Spanish thriller El Desconocido. Retribution follows a successful Wall Street executive who discovers on his way to work that a bomb has been planted in his car by an unknown assailant. He is forced to follow a series of orders throughout the day or else the bomb will be detonated - a situation made worse because the man’s family is in the car with him.

Kristin Scott Thomas is set to star in Paramour, inspired by the true story of the BMW heiress Susanne Klatten. When the mysterious and seductive Helg Sgarbi enters her life, they embark upon a passionate, illicit affair – until Helg reveals his sinister true intentions.

Margot Robbie is set to star in Dreamland, a thriller that will be directed by Sundance winner Miles Joris-Peyrafitte and is set in the 1930s amid the devastation of the Dust Bowl. The story centers on a 15-year-old boy and his quest to capture a fugitive bank robber (Robbie) and collect the bounty on her head to save the family farm from foreclosure. Against all odds, he beats out the FBI and the local police to find her, only to discover that she's far more than what the authorities claim her to be.  

TELEVISION

It's upfront season in TV land again, which means fans of various television programs will find out if their favorites will return or have been given the axe. Here are quick rundowns for ABC, CBS, NBC, the CW, and Fox. Variety also has a list of cancellations.

Looking closer at ABC, a mild shocker is the fact that ABC canceled American Crime, the anthology series that debuted in 2015 and went on to win some fourteen Emmy Awards. Also getting the boot is the mystery television series Secret and Lies. At the same time, the network picked up the pilot For the People to series, a project that has been called the legal version of veteran Grey's Anatomy, as well as The Crossing, a futuristic conspiracy thriller, and the magician cop series Deception.

The stalwart CBS franchises such as NCIS will keep chugging along, and Elementary was also renewed. New shows include Alan Cumming starring in Instinct as a former CIA operative who abandons his regular life as a professor to help the NYPD track a serial killer; Wisdom of the Crowd is a drama centering on a tech innovator (Jeremy Piven) who creates a crowdsourcing app to solve his daughter’s murder; S.W.A.T. starring Shemar Moore; and SEAL Team, which stars Boreanaz as a member of the elite Navy group.

NBC made a decision on three of Dick Wolf’s four Chicago dramas, renewing flagship Chicago Fire as well as Chicago PD, and Chicago Med. There is no decision yet on the newest entry in the franchise, freshman Chicago Justice. Veteran drama Law & Order: SVU was also picked up, as well as a renewal order for a third season of Blindspot, a second season of Taken, and a fifth season of The Blacklist. New programs include the heist crime dramedy Good Girls, Law & Order: True Crime – The Menendez Murders and Reverie, featuring a former hostage negotiator.

Fox issued an official renewal for Season 4 for its pre-Batman crime drama Gotham, but canceled its genre-bending supernatural crime drama Sleepy Hollow after four seasons. Also canceled is the Fox network's Rosewood, a police procedural starring Morris Chestnut, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Gabrielle Dennis, Lorraine Toussaint, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Anna Konkle, that just wrapped up its second season.

The CW network canceled Frequency, which starred Peyton list as NYPD Detective Raimy Sullivan, who discovers she is able to speak to her deceased father Frank Sullivan in 1996 via his old ham radio. Her attempts to save his life change the present in unforeseen ways, so she must work with her father across time to solve a decades-old murder case in order to fix the damage she caused. However, since the show ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, the producers are giving fans a mini-epilogue.

The Acorn Streaming Service's lineup next year will include ITV’s atmospheric thriller Loch Ness, the final episodes of hit BBC One detective drama George Gently;  smash hit ITV detective drama Vera, Series 7; the legal drama Janet King, Series 3; and award-winning Canadian cop drama 19-2.

Meanwhile, in other news, UK-based indie Eleventh Hour Films has acquired rights to Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series of detective novels, and attached ’71 writer Gregory Burke to pen a contemporary TV drama adaptation. Executive Producer Jill Green promises "a fresh and revisionist take in every way introducing both Rebus and Edinburgh to a new generation." An earlier Rebus series starred John Hannah and later Ken Stott and aired on ITV.

Psych, one of USA Network’s most popular shows, is set to return to the small screen, with the original cast reuniting for a two-hour holiday film creatively called Psych: The Movie.  The TV movie will pick up three years after the 2014 series finale, and although details are vague, the gang will reunite after a mysterious assailant targets one of their own.

Ben Stiller’s Escape From Clinton Correctional is nearing a series order at Showtime. Benicio del Toro and Patricia Arquette will star in the eight-part limited series based on the prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015. 

Choice Films and Adam Dunn’s Aurelian Productions are teaming to develop Big Dogs, based on Dunn’s futuristic crime books, with director David Platt (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) attached to helm the first two episodes. The series is set in a violent, decaying New York City, where an underworld economy of illegal, debauchery-ridden nightclubs linked by a web of taxicabs is thriving. 

Snowfall, FX's period drama about the birth of the crack epidemic that ravaged communities throughout the nation and changed the culture forever, will premiere Wednesday, July 5, the network announced Monday. 

Judge Dredd is heading to the small screen for a series called Judge Dredd: Mega City One. The futuristic series follows a group of policemen and women who comb their metropolis for criminals and boast their status as "the law" by carrying out curbside executions, if need be. 

Audience Network has set the summer premiere For David E. Kelley’s Stephen King adaptation of Mr. Mercedes for Wednesday, August 9.

The Oxygen Network is getting into crime programming with a slate of true crime shows including Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, hosted by NBC News’ Craig Melvin.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Author Meg Carter discussed her latest psychological thriller The Day She Can’t Forget on the BBC's Steve Yabsley's podcast.

Second Sunday Crime host Libby Fischer Hellman welcomed Texas author Caleb Pirtle to chat about his latest noir suspense thrillers.

The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio blog continued its lists with "Top Ten Greatest American Radio Detective Performances, Part Three."

Author R&R with Brian Klingborg

Brian Klingborg studied Chinese folk religion at Harvard University before plunging into the publishing world, becoming a Sr. Vice President at an educational publisher. He’s penned books on Kung Fu and also wrote for the Winx Club animated TV series before recently turning his hand to crime fiction with his debut novel, Kill Devil Falls, from Midnight Ink.

The book follows U.S. Marshal Helen Morrissey, tasked with collecting a fugitive bank robber from a remote town in the Sierra Nevadas. She braces for a rough trip, but it turns out to be far worse than she imagined. After barely surviving a white-knuckle drive in what she suspects is a sabotaged car, she’s stuck in a virtual ghost town populated by a handful of oddballs and outcasts. But it’s not until her prisoner turns up dead that Helen realizes she’s in real trouble, and there are secrets buried below the surface of Kill Devil Falls—secrets worth killing for.

Brian stopped by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about writing his new novel:

 

In a roundabout way, authorial research is to be credited for my marriage.  But more on that in a moment...

Everyone is familiar with the old adage “write what you know.”  The point being, unless you are intimately acquainted with a subject, your writing will lack those small, yet crucial details which truly bring a story to life.  But what if you, for example, work in children’s educational publishing (like me) and want to write a noir crime thriller (again, like me)?  Then you’d better do your research!

My first novel, Kill Devil Falls, recently published by Midnight Ink, features a female U.S. Marshal who is tasked with collecting a fugitive from a remote town in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  The easy part of writing this book was establishing the setting.  I grew up in the general vicinity and went skiing in those mountains most winters.  In order to flesh out some specifics regarding driving routes and terrain, I used Google Maps.  Especially helpful were the Google Satellite and Street View features, which allowed me to visit actual locations and navigate their surroundings, complete with photographs.

The hard part was accurately describing what a U.S. Marshal does and how he or she does it.  After all, my closest brush with law enforcement thus far is being on the receiving end of a few speeding tickets.  Fortunately, I have a good friend who is a 20 year veteran of the NYPD and he was able to advise me on correct procedure regarding prisoner transport, Miranda rights, use of force, and even how to snoop around a suspect’s home without first obtaining a search warrant (claim “exigent circumstances”). 

My next book, The Knock Down, is an historical thriller set in New York in 1901.  It follows a prisoner as he travels from Sing Sing Prison up the Hudson Valley by train, then back down to Manhattan by tugboat, and finally through a seedy assortment of Lower East Side dive bars, brothels, gambling halls and opium dens.

My research kicked off with two excellent books which cover the 19^th century underbelly of New York in fascinating detail:  Lowlife, Lures and Snares of Old New York, by Luc Sante; and The Gangs of New York:  An Informal History of the Underworld, by Herbert Asbury.  I was also lucky to come across first-person accounts describing life in Sing Sing, both from the point of view of guards and inmates.    Background color was provided by various newspaper article archives, located through online searches.

With respect to period details regarding attire, furnishings and various personal accoutrements, again it was the internet to the rescue.   I discovered a treasure trove of scanned photos from early 20^th century catalogs and advertisements hawking men’s and women’s clothing, kitchen appliances, medicinal remedies and even hygiene products.   

In order to get the vernacular correct, I scoured various slang dictionaries, such as George Matsell’s The Secret Language of Crime, and my favorite, the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose, from which I borrowed fun phrases such as “hanging an arse,” meaning to hesitate, and a number of insults, curses and amusing euphemisms for, ahem, various body parts.

I was briefly stymied, however, when I attempted to find good source material on early 20^th century Hudson Valley train schedules and tugboat information.  Finally, I had the idea to approach enthusiast groups through internet blogs and Yahoo groups.  Trust me, if you’re looking for some arcane bit of data regarding planes, trains, boats, medieval weaponry, Mongolian throat singing, etc., there is a Yahoo Group or blog out there, somewhere, which will prove to be an invaluable resource.  I eventually tracked down some train and tugboat fans who generously shared insights that greatly enhanced the accuracy of my book.

As a reader, I’ve always loved stories that are told well, but also that teach me something.  Anything, really.  The daily routine aboard an 18^th century warship.  What the ancient Greeks ate for breakfast.  How Hong Kong became a British colony.

It was that last tidbit, gleaned from James Clavell’s Tai-Pan, which I alluded to above.  As a freshman in college, I met a young lady who had a poster of Hong Kong, where she had grown up, on her dorm wall.  I was the first person she’d come across at school who even knew where Hong Kong was, let alone details of its history and politics, and she was suitably impressed.  A few years later, we got hitched. 

 Now that, folks, is the power of authorial research!

 

You can find more information about Kill Devil Falls via Midnight Ink's website and can follow Brian on Facebook and Twitter. The book is now on sale from all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association have announced the finalists for the 2017 Dagger in the Library Award, given to a body of work by a crime writer in the UK that users of libraries particularly admire. This year's shortlists include Andrew Taylor, CJ Sansom, James Oswald, Kate Ellis, Mari Hannah, and Tana French.

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced the Scribe Award Nominees for 2017. The awards, which honor licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books, include nods to such crime fiction titles as 24: Trial by Fire by Dayton Ward; Don Pendleton’s The Executioner: Missile Intercept by Michael Black; Murder Never Knocks by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn by Ace Atkins; and Tom Clancy’s True Faith and Allegiance by Mark Greaney.

Booklist has released its annual editors' choices for the best books of the year (i.e., from May 1, 2016, through April 15, 2017). They include the Best Crime Novels, the Best Crime Fiction Audiobooks, and the Best Crime Fiction for Youth.

On 15 May, Dean Street Press will be reissuing six golden age crime novels by Peter Drax, originally published between 1936 and 1944 that have been out of print and unavailable for decades. As the publisher notes, "His approach is somewhat different from many of the well-known authors of the time, vividly evoking London street life of the 1930s and the patient and untiring means by which Scotland Yard detectives got their man – or woman."

May 25 at Hatchards of Piccadily in London is the date and place for the book launch for Taking Detective Stories Seriously, the collected crime fiction reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers. Martin Edwards, who wrote the introduction, has more information about the collection on his blog, noting that "the reviews are a wonderfully informative resource for mystery fiction fans."

Penguin Random House Ireland announced its inaugural crime writing festival, Dead in Dún Laoghaire, in partnership with The Irish Times. The festival will take place over one day on Saturday, July 22nd at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, with featured authors Paula Hawkins, Kathy Reichs, John Banville, Stuart Neville, Liz Nugent, and Karen Perry.

Dr. Mary Brown, writing for The Scotsman, made the case for neglected author John Buchan, only known today because of his First World War adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and his great character, Major-General Sir Richard Hannay. However, Edinburgh-based publisher ­Polygon recently announced plans for a new installment, with Dundee-born author Robert J ­Harris penning the continuation novel The Thirty-One Kings, the first new Hannay book for more than 80 years. If successful, a series featuring Major-General Hannay could follow.

While we're on the subject of continuation novels, New Zealand author Stella Duffy talked about the tricky art of completing an abandoned Ngaio Marsh mystery novel.

James Patterson has certainly had a variety of co-authors through the years, and now he's taking it all the way to the White House. He'll be teaming up former President Bill Clinton to write a new novel, The President Is Missing, that will be co-published by two of the Big Five trade houses.

Following the success of his novel The Martian, made into a popular movie starring Matt Damon, author Andy Weir's next book, Artemis, will be a crime thriller set on the Moon with plans already underway to adapt the work for film.

Dashiell Hammett’s granddaughter Julie Rivett recently visited the Stillwater Public Library in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, to share her grandfather’s legacy and some background on the settings and characters of one of his most famous novels, The Maltese Falcon. She also discussed the author's political activism that landed him in jail for a time.

Writing for The Guardian, Kathryn Harkup used to believe Dorothy L Sayers’ 1930 novel Strong Poison wouldn’t stand up to modern science, until modern genetic research just proved her wrong.

Reader's Digest compiled a listing of "10 True Crime Books That Are So Chilling, You Shouldn’t Read Them at Night."

And speaking of true crime, this Listverse compilation takes a look at "Top 10 Bloody 20th-Century Mysteries We’ll Probably Never Solve."

For a really strange take on true crime, or art-imitating-life or vice versa, there's this story of a TV producer who's accused of hiring hitmen to kill his wealthy partner and tells police he was just "writing a murder mystery novel" after being arrested naked in bed with his 28-year-old mistress.

Author Dan Brown needs your help choosing the book cover for a limited edition of his new novel, Origin, and you may win a limited edition, signed copy of the book with the winning cover design jacket.

Is this the world's first homicide?

If you're looking for a creepy mystery, look no further than this odd real estate posting in South Carolina via Zillow.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "I'm a Rabbit Girl" by Amy Holman.
 
In the Q&A roundup, Authors Interviews spoke with Greg Barth about his writing and his latest book Everglade, the fifth and final book in the Selena series, and also chatted with Robert Crawford, whose latest thriller is Tatterdemalion; and Stuart MacBride visited Hawley Reviews to discuss his new book, A Dark So Deadly.

Author R&R with Brian Freeman

Chicago native and longtime resident of the Twin Cities, Brian Freeman, is an international bestselling author of psychological suspense novels. His books have been sold in 46 countries and 20 languages and have appeared as Main Selections in the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. He is the author of The Cold Nowhere, a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award, Immoral, which won the Macavity Award in 2005, and Spilled Blood, the winner of the 2013 ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. He has also been nominated for many other awards, including the Edgar, the International Dagger, the Anthony, and the Barry.   

Brian's new thriller, Marathon, draws inspiration from recent events to paint a portrait of crime in an American city that is also a dark reflection of national politics. With echoes of the Boston Marathon bombing, when people’s lives were forever changed at the finish line, this timely novel addresses some of the defining issues of our time: terrorism, fear of the other, and the raw power of social media to shape the public’s understanding of events.

When an explosion along the Duluth Marathon racecourse leaves dozens of people dead or injured, Duluth PD homicide detectives Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei get to work sifting the debris for clues as to who’s behind the bombing. Soon the investigation is taken over by the FBI, whose lead agent is certain the act has all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism. Complicating matters, the social media feed of a conservative First Amendment activist immediately floods the community with rumors and unfiltered information about the bombing, and a young Pakistani immigrant becomes the target of a massive manhunt. But are the answers behind the Duluth bombing more complex than anyone realizes? And can Stride, Serena, and Maggie get to the truth before more innocent people are killed in the spiraling confrontation between the Feds and the Islamic community?

Brian stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss research and writing his novels:

Location research means making your setting come alive on the page. Sometimes it also means getting chased down by a guy on a moped.

I’ve always believed that setting enriches the drama of a mystery. The location of each chapter should add depth and atmosphere to the characters and the story. That means capturing what I call the “six senses of place.” I want to give readers a “you-are-there” sensation, in which they’re dropped into every chapter like an invisible observer and can feel, hear, touch, taste, and smell the action happening around them. But place is about more than physical reactions. It’s also about the memories and emotions that a location evokes. What does it feel like to be there? Does it scare you? Does it remind you of a summer romance? Does it fill you with sadness, longing, laughter, or regret? Those are the extra dimensions of a setting that make it come to life for the reader.

For me, there’s only one way to capture that authenticity. I have to be there. If I can stand where my characters stand—and feel what they feel—then I can bring the reader along for the ride. So in researching each book, I scout locations the way a film director would. I use real places—real businesses, real parks and trails, real landmarks, even real homes. In fact, I get e-mails from readers who love to follow along using Google Earth and Google Street View on every chapter of the book.

Usually, this kind of location research is pretty straightforward. I do an outline for the book, but I leave the location of each chapter open—so that I can visit different neighborhoods hunting for the right location to enhance the drama of each scene. That’s true whether I’m in Duluth (with the Jonathan Stride series), San Francisco (with Frost Easton and The Night Bird), or other areas like Florida, rural Wisconsin, or Las Vegas.

I never really considered the fact that the process may look a little strange from the outside. There I am, hiking through cemeteries, farmlands, ruined buildings, and suburban neighborhoods with my camera and voice recorder, making notes on the “feel” of each area and blocking out how the action of the chapter will take place. It works—but sometimes people get the wrong idea.

When I was scouting locations for my Jonathan Stride novella Turn to Stone, I was in the small town of Shawano, Wisconsin. I wanted a scene in an upscale neighborhood, so my wife, Marcia, and I drove up and down a street near the Wolf River, taking pictures and assessing the various homes for the book. For us, that’s normal. However, as we were leaving the area, I noticed a man on a moped behind me. I didn’t really think anything of it—but then I turned, and he turned, and I turned, and he turned again. He followed me all the way to our next location site at a boat landing on the river, and he pulled up right next to my driver’s-side door.

It turns out that he owned one of those homes we’d been scouting, and his daughters had been playing outside and had seen Marcia taking pictures. Well, they were convinced we were “casing the joint” and were going to come back to rob them. So—in a nice display of “Shawano justice”—the homeowner hopped on his moped and laid chase.

Of course, at that point, I had to convince the man that I was an author who was planning to set a book in his area. I’m sure he didn’t believe me for a minute and was ready to call the cops—but fortunately, I had some bookmarks in the car, so I think I was able to convince him that we were on the up-and-up.

I guess not everyone wants to have their home turned into a crime scene—but some people feel just the opposite. In my book The Burying Place, I used a home in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, as the location for a kidnapping—and when the owners sold that house the next year, they mentioned in the MLS listing that it had been “featured” in the book! Apparently, fictional crimes can also drive up your property value. Good to know.

 

Learn more about Brian Freeman and his books via his website, or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Marathon is available now through all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.