Mystery Melange

 

Although most of the news coming out of Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey has been horrifying, there are a few bright spots, like Murder by the Book, the mystery bookstore that opened its doors to offer free coffee and charging stations to those in need. In an email, the bookstore said it would provide Wi-Fi and restrooms to Houston-area residents who lost power during the hurricane. Simon and Schuster also announced they were donating 250 “Best of” titles to help restore collections for any Texas public or school library damaged by Harvey. Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) is also working with local officials to donate 25,000 new books and educational resources to children displaced by Hurricane Harvey, and Scholastic Books will have a similar effort and make donations to affected teachers and schools and the American Red Cross. And here is some information on how you can help Harvey victims in various ways.

This year's Davitt Award winners from Sisters in Crime Australia for crime writing by Australian women were just announced and include: Best Adult Novel: Jane Harper for The Dry; YA Novel: Shivaun Plozza for Frankie; Childrens Novel: Judith Rossell for Wormwood Mire; Nonfiction, Megan Norris for Look What You Made Me do: Fathers Who Kill; and Debut Novel: Cath Ferla for Ghost Girls.

The Falchion Awards were also handed out at the recent Killer Nashville conference. Winner for the Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Adult Mystery was Fighting for Anna, by Pamela Fagan Hutchins; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Thriller: Clawback, by J.A. Jance; Silver Falchion Award: Best Fiction Action/Adventure, The Medinandi License, by Randall Reneau; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Suspense: Waking Up in Medellin, by Kathryn Lane; Silver Falchion Best Fiction Adult Anthology/Collection: Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reading Now, by Michael Guillebeau. In addition, Max Allan Collins was given the John Seigenthaler Legends Award and Richard Helms received this year’s Magnolia Award, the highest honor presented by the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA), given in recognition of service to the organization. For all the finalists, head on over to the conference website.

A shortlist has been released for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year, with the winner to be announced September 8. The honorees include Out of Bounds by Val McDermid; The Long Drop by Denise Mina; The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid by Craig Russell; Murderabilia by Craig Robertson; and How to Kill Friends and Implicate People by Jay Stringer.

Grab your favorite public radio tote bag and join NPR journalists at the 17th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival this Saturday, September 2. More than 100 authors, illustrators and poets will be gathered at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center for a full day of Q&A sessions, special programs and family friendly activities, and NPR hosts and journalists will lead book chats with writers in a wide range of genres and topics including Don Winslow with NPR's Maureen Corrigan and Megan Abbott with NPR's Elizabeth Blair. Other crime fiction authors who will be participating on the Thrillers & Fantasy Stage include Karin Slaughter, Scott Turow, and Jenny Rogneby. JD Vance and David Baldacci will also be featured during the festival on the Main Stage. For the complete schedule, head on over to the LOC festival page.

Submissions are now being accepted for the 2018 William F. Deeck - Malice Domestic Grants Program, which is designed to foster quality Malice Domestic literature and to assist mystery authors on their path to publication. The Grant includes a $2,500 award and a comprehensive registration to Malice 30 (April 27-29, 2018), including a two night stay in the convention hotel. The deadline to submit your work for consideration is November 1, 2017. For more information on the Grants Program and details about submitting, visit their website or contact Harriette Sackler, Malice's Grants Chair, at MaliceGrants@comcast.net.

In honor of Friday's opening of "Noir City: Chicago," the weeklong festival of film noir presented by Music Box and the Film Noir Foundation, The Chicago Reader analyzed how the long-running TV cop series Dragnet became a PR coup for law enforcement.

The Sleuth Sayers blog welcomed the 2017 Macavity Award Short Story Nominees to talk about their stories and inspiration for their writing.

Bookstore chain WHSmith compiled a listing on its blog of "13 Fierce Female Detectives Every Crime Fiction Fan Should Read."

Fancy a fun way to organize your book reading? Try a "bookish merit badge."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Last Pair 1844" by Resa Mestel.

Two connoisseurs of spycraft, John le Carré, the master of spy fiction, and Ben Macintyre, the author of a number of riveting nonfiction books on World War- and Cold War-era espionage, sat down with the New York Times' Sarah Lyall to talk about the ongoing fascination with moles and double-crossers.

Otherwise in the Q&A roundup, Matt Hilton,
the author of the high-octane Joe Hunter thriller series, and the Tess Grey and Po Villere thrillers, takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; the MysteryPeople held a Q&A with Riley Sagar about his book The Final Girls; The Crime Warp chatted with Katharine Johnson, author of psychological thriller The Silence; and Criminal Element welcomed debut author Roger Johns about his new novel, Dark River Rising.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to another Monday and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:

MOVIES

Scott Free Films and New Sparta Films are teaming up for Neither Confirm Nor Deny, the true story of the CIA secret mission to recover a nuclear Soviet submarine three miles under the Pacific Ocean. The project is based on the David H. Sharp book, The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation. 

In what will be his first big film for Warner Bros since the 2008 Best Picture nominee Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy is in final talks to write and direct an untitled thriller based on a project that has been at Warner Bros 15 years. That thriller (wt Methuselah) was originated by James Watkins and most recently had Tom Cruise attached to star as a man who has managed to survive for 400 years without showing the physical signs of age. In that time, he has accumulated vast intellectual knowledge, from multiple languages to the sciences, as well as survival skills.

Oscar winner Jeff Bridges is set to star in Drew Goddard’s thriller Bad Times at the El Royale, with Chris Hemsworth in talks to join him. The story is set in the 1960s at a crappy motel near Lake Tahoe in California with Bridges playing a down-on-his-luck priest named Father Daniel Flynn. The cast is also slated to eventually include "a vacuum cleaner salesman, two female criminals, a male cult leader, a desk clerk and an African-American singer."

Sophie Nélisse, Eoin Macken and Game Of Thrones' Indira Varma have been added to the cast of Close, the action thriller that stars Noomi Rapace. Loosely based on the experiences of Jacqui Davis, one of the world’s leading female bodyguards, the pic centers on Sam (Rapace) a close protection officer used to battlefield conditions who is hired to protect Zoe (Nélisse), a rebellious heiress to a billion-dollar company. When a violent kidnapping attempt forces them to go on the run, the women form an unlikely bond, and with the help of Sam’s ex-partner Conall (Macken) work together to clear their names and uncover their enemies. Varma plays Zoe’s stepmother.

Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage has signed on to star in Between Worlds, a supernatural thriller directed by Spain-based filmmaker Maria Pulera. Franka Potente (The Conjuring 2), Penelope Mitchell (Hemlock Grove) and Garrett Clayton (Hairspray Live!) also co-star in the film, which will shoot in Alabama and Sweden. Written by Pulera, the story follows Joe, (Cage), a down-on-his-luck truck driver haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child. He meets Julie (Potente), a spiritually gifted woman who enlists Joe in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter, Billie (Mitchell). But the spirit of Joe’s dead wife Mary proves stronger, possessing the young woman’s body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.

Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman are coming back for the Equalizer sequel to co-star alongside Denzel Washington for Sony Pictures and director Antoine Fuqua. Leo and Pullman are set to reprise their roles as Susan and Brian Plummer, the great friends of Robert McCall (Washington) when he worked in counter-terrorism. 

New Line founder Robert Shaye has picked up the low-budget thriller Nightlight at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, with Tyler MacIntyre directing the screenplay MacIntyre co-wrote with Chris Hill. The plot for the movie is being kept under wraps.

Freestyle Digital Media acquired domestic rights to Don’t Sleep, a thriller written and directed by Rick Bieber that stars Dominic Sherwood, Cary Elwes, Drea de Matteo, Charlbi Dean Kriek and Jill Hennessy. The pic also marks the final onscreen performance from Alex Rocco (Moe Green in The Godfather), who died in 2015 of cancer at 79. The film centers on two lovers (Sherwood and Kriek) who move into a guesthouse on an estate owned by Mr. and Mrs. Marino (Matteo and Rocco). When bizarre events begin to occur with increasing danger, the young couple must confront the horrors of a forgotten childhood. 

Screen Gems has acquired the Peter A. Dowling action spec script Exposure (working title) about a rookie African-American female cop in Detroit who rounds the corner just as corrupt officers are murdering several drug dealers, an event captured by her body cam. They try to kill her, and she is hunted throughout the night by the narcs who are desperate to destroy the incriminating footage and also a criminal gang who have been told she did the killing.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

In a competitive situation, Sony Pictures Television and Neal Moritz’s Original Film have optioned Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds to develop as a TV series. The thriller novel, by the Edgar Award-nominated author of Shovel Ready, was published by HarperCollins on August 1 and is set in a place populated by criminals—people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What’s clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead.

The 1970s buddy cop series Starsky & Hutch is eyeing a TV return with a reboot shepherded by The Guardians Of the Galaxy franchise writer-director James Gunn. Sony Pictures TV Studios is behind the revival series project, which is currently being pitched to broadcast, cable and streaming networks with multiple parties interested. Described as a character driven one-hour proce
dural, the new Starsky and Hutch will be written by James Gunn as well as his brother Brian and their cousin Mark who often work as a writing tandem.

ABC has put in development a drama from former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, writer-producers Elizabeth Craft and Sara Fain (The 100), ABC Studios and studio-based Mandeville TV. Penned by Clark, Craft and Fain, the untitled project is described as "part legal thriller, part confessional, part revenge fantasy." It centers on a female prosecutor who loses the trial of the century and is shredded by the media in the process. The drama chronicles what happens when 8 years later the murderer who got off strikes again.

CBS TV Studios is developing a drama series based on the hot Israeli drama format Your Honor (Kvodo). The U.S. adaptation, eyed for premium cable and streaming networks, is from the creators of two acclaimed legal drama series, Peter Moffat, whose BAFTA-winning Criminal Justice was the basis for HBO’s praised limited series The Night Of, and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King. Written by British TV writer/playwright Moffat, Your Honor follows the son of a respected judge who involved in a hit and run. Soon after they are both drawn into a high stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices when it comes to light that the victim was the son of a notorious crime boss.

Quantico creator Josh Safran has lined up his next series project, a legal drama at CBS. Written by Safran, the drama centers on a high-powered corporate attorney who joins the Texas legal team defending her wealthy estranged husband after he is arrested for the decades-old unsolved murder of his first wife.

Blindspot creator/executive producer Martin Gero and executive producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter have teamed for an untitled legal family drama written by Gero and Blindspot co-executive producer Brendan Gall for CBS. The drama revolves around five multi-racial adopted siblings who fight for justice in the courtroom amid wildly different legal careers as they delve into the mystery of a family tragedy that exposes the sins of their father.

Edward Burns’ Marlboro Road Gang Productions is teaming with Radar Pictures to develop bestselling author Tosca Lee’s The Progeny as a television series. Lee’s genre-bending books bring a modern twist to an ancient mystery surrounding Elizabeth Báthory, the 16th-century countess known as the world’s most notorious female serial killer. 

BBC One has set new dramas, including The Victim, a contemporary legal thriller told through the eyes of the plaintiff and the accused. BBC One has also ordered a factual drama from Jeff Pope, an Oscar nominee for Philomena, and Neil McKay, The Barking Murders (w/t), which will shed new light on the families of the victims of convicted serial rapist and killer Stephen Port who is serving a life sentence after murdering at least four men. 

British actor Ben Whishaw will be joining Hugh Grant in the three-part BBC One drama A Very English Scandal. Grant will play disgraced British politician Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party in 1979 who was accused of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott, Whishaw’s role. Thorpe became the first British politician in modern times to go to trial for murder. Davies is adapting the book by British journalist John Preston, and the drama will be directed by Stephen Frears, director of The Queen.

Channel 4 has ordered the six-part period espionage epic, Jerusalem, written and created by Bash Doran. This is the Boardwalk Empire writer’s first original commission for British television and is set in the aftermath of WWII, when Britain was struggling to define itself in a new world order.

ABC has given a put pilot commitment to Romeos & Juliets, which centers on a badass, tough-as-nails female CIA operative who is forced to partner with a handsome, self-absorbed agent from the CIA’s elite "Romeo and Juliet" division — agents who are trained to use sex and charm to keep America safe.

The Season 2 trailer for BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Agency was released, which more deeply explores the fantasy genre. 

Epix has ordered a 10-episode second season of the original series Get Shorty for premiere in 2018. The series is based in part on Elmore Leonard’s 1990 bestselling novel and follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a hitman from Nevada who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood with the help of a washed-up producer, Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), as a means to leave his criminal past behind. The cast also includes Sean Bridgers, Lidia Porto, Megan Stevenson, Lucy Walters and Carolyn Dodd.

A trailer was released for Strike--The Cuckoo's Calling, the BBC One series adapted from J.K. Rowling's first novel (writing as Robert Galbraith) in the Cormorant Strike series starring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike, with Holliday Grainger as his assistant Robin.

PODCASTS

Bestseller David McCaffrey joins Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers. McCaffrey is the author of the Hellbound series of books, with the debut voted one of W H Smith's Most Underrated Crime Novels of 2014.

T. Jefferson Parker joined KPBS radio to talk about the first novel in his new private eye series, The Room of White Fire.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime fiction author Seth Harwood on the Crime Cafe
podcast.

Anthony Nominated Author, Eric Beetner, who has been described as "the James Brown of noir," is on the Menu at The Blue Plate Special.

Mystery Melange

 

The 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists were named last week. Now in their eighth year, the Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate the best New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing for both fiction and non-fiction. For all the honorees in the Best Crime Novel, Best First Crime Novel, and Best Nonfiction Book categories, follow this link.

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening with award winning author Jesse Kellerman on August 30 in Berkeley. This is a free event, but you must RSVP to attend to janet@mysteryreaders.org. Kellerman is the author of five novels as well as the co-author with Jonathan Kellerman of the Golem novels and Crime Scene.

Killer Women, Killer Weekend 2017 will take place October 28-29 at Browns Courtrooms, Covent Garden, London. Attendees will learn the art and craft of crime fiction from bestselling authors Rachel Abbott, Mark Billingham, Erin Kelly, Mick Herron, Stuart MacBride, Sarah Pinborough, and Cally Taylor. There will also be pitch sessions to senior commissioning editors and agents at HarperCollins, Orion, Penguin Random House, and Headline; masterclasses on thrillers, procedurals, author as brand, self publishing; insider tips from top writers, editors and agents; craft workshops on suspense, character, plotting; and one-to-one research sessions with experts. Tickets go on sale September 1. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The next two issues of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 33:3 & 4) will focus on Big City Cops. Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays, with a deadline for submissions of December 5.

The dollhouse series of model whodunits, used in Baltimore for decades to train generations of police detectives in crime scene investigation, is being cleaned, repaired and stabilized to be showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery beginning in October. It is the first time the collection, built about 70 years ago, will be on public display.

Zoë Sharp, the author of fourteen novels in the Charlie Fox crime thriller series, standalones, and collaborations, took the Page 69 Test for her latest novel, Fox Hunter.

From the true crime is stranger than fictional crime department: Chinese crime writer Liu Yongbiao was working on a novel about a serial-killing author but may have based the book's storyline on his own life. He was recently arrested for four cold-case murders that happened over twenty years ago.

Are you a fan of the Murder She Wrote series starring Angela Lansbury? If so, these "9 mysterious facts" about the show might surprise you.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "False Confession" by David Spicer.

In the Q&A roundup, Sue Grafton spoke with Parade Magazine about the 24th in her Alphabet mystery series featuring Kinsey Mihone, Y is for Yesterday; and the Mystery People spoke with Mark Pryor about the latest in his Hugo Marston series, The Sorbonne Affair.

Author R&R with Jack Getze

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Getze is Fiction Editor for Anthony nominated Spinetingler Magazine. Through the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Syndicate, his news and feature stories have been published in over five-hundred newspapers and periodicals worldwide. His screwball mysteries, Big Numbers and Big Money, were first published by Hilliard Harris in 2007 and 2008, and Big Mojo was published by Down & Out Books in 2013. His short stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir and Beat to a Pulp.

In his new book, The Black Kachina, a top-secret weapon goes missing on Colonel Maggie Black’s watch putting her honor and career on the line. There were airmen who said the Air Force’s best female combat pilot would never be the same after losing her arm in Iraq, but state-of-the-art prosthetics have made Maggie better than new, and she’s not about to lose what she battled so hard to regain.

But finding her experimental missile won’t be easy—thanks to the revenge-fueled ambitions of Asdrubal Torres, whose hallucinatory encounter with the Great Spirit challenges him to refill Lake Cahuilla, the ancient inland sea that once covered much of southern California. To fulfill his mission, Torres needs wizardry and weaponry, and the Great Spirit provides both: Magic, in the form of a celebrated shaman’s basket returned to the tribal museum by San Diego reporter Jordan Scott; Might, in the form of Maggie Black’s top-secret weapon that falls from the sky.

From that moment on, it’s a race against time for Maggie and Jordan, who together must stop Torres from destroying Hoover Dam—and turning the Colorado River into a tsunami that would kill hundreds of thousands and wipe out the Southwest’s water supply. In the final showdown, it’s Maggie who must disarm the stolen missile’s trigger—one-handed or not—and save the day.

Getze stops by In Reference today to talk about researching and writing The Black Kachina:

 

It wasn’t always so, but today my writing and research are locked together like new lovers. Mostly because of today’s search engines, curiosity and fact-finding lead the whole creative process. In addition to the ever-present dictionary and thesaurus (now online of course), I keep a window open with Google ready while I write. Very few pages of an early draft pass without checking something on the internet.

Certainly what interests me has always found its way into my stories. And those events, objects, or people who’ve interested me the most have ended up carrying the tale. But my older Austin Carr novels were written in the first person and centered around my miserable, imaginary, and post-journalism life as a bond salesman, mixing wild stories with true events and real people. I didn’t do much research. Maybe a couple of questions to my wife about pantyhose.

I wrote in the 1980s and 1990s by twisting the truth, squeezing out a narrative to entertain myself. As an ex-newspaper reporter, I’d learned to do fact-checking in the library and courthouse, in person, or on the telephone. Who had time for all that, writing first-person fiction? But with the ease of online research, now I get even more jollies basing my fiction on fact. Honest. I always had the curiosity, but the internet has made research so much simpler.

I made this transition during the decades-long, instructive creation of The Black Kachina, my new thriller, which after seven or eight different versions is by now almost completely a product of curiosity and research. I hardly made up anything but the overall premise.

The book came to life in 1994 when I saw a colorful image of Nataska, the Black Ogre, a Hopi kachina, or spirit. Kachinas are portrayed most often as dolls for sale to tourists, or as costumed tribesmen dancing in ceremonies. As one of the Hopi’s “black ogres,” Nataska is known as The Punisher of Wicked Children, and tales of his deeds supposedly frighten Hopi kids into good behavior. My curiosity demanded knowledge about that spirit, and back when I started, that meant buying or renting books and reading. I sucked up all I could about kachinas and the various Cahuilla tribes of Southern California. The story always has featured a half-breed who wants revenge against the white man.

I spent two decades researching, rewriting, researching, improving my craft, writing four, first person Austin Carr novels, and finally more military research. I own a small library of books about -- and by -- Native Americans, B-52 bombers, desert terrain, the flora and fauna. I wanted to walk the same ground as my characters so I traveled to California and spent a week in the deserts around the Salton Sea. I hiked through California’s Imperial sand dunes where they filmed parts of Star Wars and other movies. I visited a military airport and gunnery range. I walked alone in the desert with no sound but the wind brushing my ears. I visited several Cahuilla reservations and sacred sites. In short, I performed my early research the way I’d approached my past career of journalism. Hands on; person-to-person.

“Indian, Native American, and First American are all the white man’s words,” one Cahuilla spokesman told me. “Don’t worry about it. It says Cahuilla Indians on the sign above this trailer.”

But there was always more research to do, especially when writing teachers pointed out serious flaws; again when two agents agreed -- at different times of course -- to represent the novel if changes were made; and once more when a publishing industry editor requested a different protagonist. I had to learn a lot more about female combat pilots, and that’s when I grew especially fond of Google. I found dozens of feature stories on the only gender banned from flying combat missions until 1993; tales and background about their education, craft, diverse lives and experiences.

In summary, my novels grow inside like benign tumors, beginning with an external scratch, bite, or bruise, an irritation-by-information that develops internally -- pressing against flesh and bone until it’s enough of an aggravation to force removal. (Yeah, I don’t like the analogy either. The word tumor never sounds good, benign or not. But at least the expression conveys the kind of urgency I feel when it’s time to write that particular story.) I always have a couple of tales brewing, and when one needs to be written, the thing almost hurts, a tormenting sense of desperation to write the story.

I’m waiting for the research to kick up something as urgent and magic as that first meeting with Nataska; waiting to see which story gives me that nasty pain I can’t ignore.

 

You can read more about Jack Getze and The Black Kachina via Down & Out Books and also follow Jack on Twitter and on Facebook. The Black Kachina is currently available via all major digital and print bookstores.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The film rights to Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game have been acquired by The Gotham Group, which is also set to produce Ware’s first two novels: The Woman in Cabin 10 and In A Dark, Dark Wood. The Lying Game follows four best friends from boarding school who are brought back together when a morbid discovery threatens to expose the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of one of their teachers. The group was notorious for playing a game involving an elaborate ruse that created consequences they never imagined.

Veteran producer Uri Singer is developing a movie based on Jess Walter’s 2006 sci-fi detective novel The Zero. The story centers on a cop who wakes up to find he’s shot himself in the head during a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, he finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn’t seem to be living his own life at all. 

Daniel Craig finally confirmed the rumors on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that he'll be back for his fifth appearance as 007 in the upcoming film, which is slated for release in 2019, adding "I couldn't be happier."

Channing Tatum is attached to star in Bloodlines, a crime movie involving the Mexican drug cartels that is based on the upcoming book by Melissa Del Bosque, Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty. Tatum will play Scott Lawson, a rookie FBI agent assigned to the sleepy border town of Laredo, Texas, where he writes reports about the drug war. Lawson finally gets some action when he discovers that Miguel Trevino, the leader of a brutal Mexican drug cartel, has bought a racehorse for the purpose of laundering drug money, and with the help of a more experienced female agent, he attempts to infiltrate the cartel.

The Shaft movie reboot Son of Shaft, with Tim Story attached to direct, is eyeing Samuel L. Jackson to reprise his role from the 2000 Shaft movie as John Shaft II, the nephew of the original. Richard Roundtree, a.k.a. the original John Shaft himself, is also angling to return as the man who started it all. Independence Day: Resurgence's Jessie T. Usher is in talks to play the youngest of the Shaft men, i.e. the son of Jackson's Shaft, in what will turn out to be a "family" affair.

A trailer was released for Good Time, starring Robert Pattinson as a young bank robber whose latest botched job lands his younger brother, Nick (played by co-director Benny Safdie), in jail. Connie's efforts to break him out takes him on a disturbing journey through New York's criminal underworld. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ABC Signature, the cable/digital division of ABC Studios, has landed the hot hourlong spec Julia, a darkly comedic dramedy about celebrity chef Julia Child from writer Benjamin Brand and ABC Signature Studios. The fictional project is based on a true fact: before she was the world’s first celebrity chef, Julia Child was an agent for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, during World War II. The new drama re-imagines a world where the CIA takes advantage of Julia Child’s newfound celebrity status and drags the French Chef back into action as a covert operative.

Every Cloud Productions, which produces the female-produced, written and lead show, Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries, is not letting Miss Fisher fade away. A movie is confirmed to be in the works, with a planned release date in the back half of 2018, once again starring Essie Davis in the 1920 flapper era-set action.

BBC has commissioned two new eight-part drama series for its flagship channel BBC One. The Three, based on a trilogy of books by Sarah Lotz, is adapted by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy scribe Peter Straughan and is described as a multi-stranded, international thriller with a supernatural twist that sees four planes crash on the same day in four different countries. The Serpent is written by Ripper Street scribe Richard Warlow and is based on the true story of how one of the most elusive criminals of the 20th century – con man and escape artist Charles Sobhraj – was caught and brought to trial. The series will be directed by Tom Shankland (The Missing) and produced by Poldark’s Mammoth Screen.

Patrick Dempsey, who made viewers swoon for 11 seasons as Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy, is returning to television via the cable network Epix to headline The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, a 10-episode series based on the 2014 Joël Dicker novel of the same name. Dempsey will play Harry Quebert, a college professor who is accused of the murder of a 15-year-old girl in a coastal New Hampshire town. One of Harry's former students, author Marcus Goldman, comes to see Quebert before the murder to find inspiration for his next novel, but winds up using the murder investigation as his focus. Damon Wayans Jr. and Virginia Madsen were also cast in the series, as a police sergeant and a local diner owner, respectively.

Russell Tovey has closed a deal to return as a series regular for Season 3 of Quantico, which returns to ABC’s lineup in midseason. He joins fellow returning series regulars star Priyanka Chopra, Jake McLaughlin and Johanna Braddy as well as Season 2 addition Blair Underwood. 

Rizzoli & Isles alum Bruce McGill has landed a pivotal recurring role on the upcoming third season of NBC’s
hit police drama series Shades of Blue, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta. McGill will play Jordan Ramsey, a ruthless and resourceful man who runs a unit out of the Intelligence Division. Capable of going to extreme measures to ensure the success of his agenda, Ramsey is not burdened by an over-active moral compass. He knows what he wants, and he pushes the limits to get it.

Barbara Hershey has been tapped for a recurring role on the 10-episode 11th season of the Fox sci-fi drama The X-Files. It’s the show’s second run as an event series, following last season’s six-season revival.  Hershey, an Oscar nominee for The Portrait of a Lady, will play Erika Price, a powerful figure who represents a mysterious organization. She joins returning stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and co-star Mitch Pileggi.

After a teaser two weeks ago along with the revelation of Bobby Cannavale’s used car salesman character Irving, USA Networks dropped a small teaser on Twitter from Mr. Robot's season 3.0, featuring Rami Malek’s Elliot at the world series for hackers.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed Duane Swierczynski, the author of several crime thrillers including the Edgar-nominated and Anthony Award-winning Expiration Date, as well the Charlie Hardie series.

Author, lawyer, and columnist J.D. Rhoades joined The Blue Plate Special podcast to discuss his Jack Keller novels.

Big Blend Radio chatted with author Michael H. Rubin about his new book, Cashed Out, that combines both the allure of and the inherent danger in Louisiana’s bayous with the rush of a legal thriller.

Mystery Writer Loretta Ross was on the Menu at The Blue Plate Special podcast.

Mystery Melange

 

The Australian Crime Writers Association announced the shortlist for the 2017 Ned Kelly Awards in three categories, Best Fiction, Best First Fiction, and True Crime. Winners will be announced on September 1 during the annual Ned Kelly Awards presentation in Melbourne. For all the shortlisted finalists, head on over to the Australia CWA website. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.)

Kill Your Darlings and the Australian Crime Writers Association also announced the shortlist for this year’s S D Harvey Short Story Competition. The $1000 award, which honors the late true-crime writer and television producer Sandra Harvey, is presented annually for a work of short crime fiction as part of the Ned Kelly Awards for Australian crime writing. The winner and runner-up of the competition will be announced at the Ned Kelly Awards on 1 September at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

The 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists were likewise announced this week after the initial longlists were whittled down for the annual contest that celebrates the best New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing (fiction and non-fiction). The winners will be announced at a special WORD Christchurch event to be held on October 28. Check out all the honorees via organizer/blogger Craig Sisterson's Crime Watch.

Lizzy Barber from north London has won the Daily Mail and Penguin Random House's First Novel Competition with My Name is Alice, a book Century will publish in 2018. The crime writing competition, now in its second year, invited first-time novelists to submit 5,000 words of their book alongside a 600-word synopsis, with the winning novel chosen from over 700 crime and thriller entries.

Women’s crime writing organization Sisters in Crime announced that Latina author Jessica Ellis Laine is the winner of the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award. This annual prize honors a "writer of color, male or female, who has not yet published a full-length work."

Diversity in fiction is a hot topic these days, and Kellye Garrett, writing for Criminal Element, profiled the relatively unknown subgenre of the black woman amateur detective.

The Malice Domestic conference announced that Brenda Blethyn will be the Poirot Award Honoree for the 2017 conference. Ms. Blethyn is an Academy Award and Emmy nominated, Golden Globe winning actress who stars as DCI Vera Stanhope in the series Vera, based on the books by Ann Cleeves. She joins the already-announced lineup that includes Guest of Honor, Louise Penny; Toastmaster Catriona McPherson; LIfetime Achievement Award winner, Nancy Pickard; Amelia Award winner, David Suchet; and Fan Guest of Honor, Janet Blizard.

Unfortunately, I have bit of sad news to report this week: retired professor and mystery author B.K. (Bonnie) Stevens passed away suddenly in the midst of preparations for a presentation at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival. Known for her support and activism in the crime fiction community, she was also a superb short story craftsman, and was a finalist for the Derringer, the Agatha, and the Anthony Awards this year for her Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine short story "The Last Blue Glass."

The Strand Magazine's latest issue includes the publication of a long-lost play by J.M. Barrie that spoofs Sherlock Holmes and the mystery genre. Barrie is believed to have co-written the play with humorist E.V. Lucas around 1912, the year after Barrie wrote his iconic novel, Peter Pan, but the play was never published or performed. Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli said one of his researchers discovered the play at the University of Texas where some of Barrie’s papers are held. Conan Doyle and Barrie were close friends and members of a cricket team that also included contemporary writers Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne.

Anders Roslund is an award-winning investigative journalist and internationally bestselling author, as part of the crime writing duo Roslund & Hellström, looks at the "Growth of the Global Super-Genre of Scandinavian Crime Fiction," which is particularly poignant follow the death this year of his writing colleague, Börge Hellström, to cancer.

Scientific American took a look from the forensics angle at Agatha Christie’s mysterious amnesia when she stayed in a hotel for eleven days under an assumed name, supposedly because she had suffered from a loss of memory. How plausible is her story? Was it real or revenge on her cheating spouse?

Worried about getting a fair trial should you find yourself in court? A computer might be able to help.

Unfortunately, I saw this listing too late for you to have a chance to buy (for almost 3 million) the Spanish-style house that was briefly home to crime novelist-screenwriter Raymond Chandler in the early 1940s. The house was recently listed by its current owner, bassist John McVie of Fleetwood Mac fame, and although it sold pretty quickly, you can still see the photos of the place via the realtor's website.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Wolf of Moscow" by Sara Tantlinger.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People's Scott Montgomery chatted with the mother-daughter writing duo P.J. Tracy about their new novel, Nothing Stays Buried, featuring a gang of crime-solving programmers in rural Minnesota; the Digital Media Ghost welcomed Anthony Award-nominated author Eric Beetner to discuss his varied career as a as a TV editor and producer and writer of hardboiled crime; in The Interrogation Room, Tom Leins caught up with Canadian crime writer Beau Johnson to discuss his brand new short story collection, A Better Kind of Hate from Down & Out Books (Johnson was also the subject of Paul D. Brazill's latest Short, Sharp Interview).

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jennifer Garner is in talks to star in the Pierre Morel-directed action thriller Peppermint, which has been likened to "John Wick with a female protagonist." When her husband and daughter are gunned down in a drive-by, the heroine wakes up from a coma and spends years learning to become a lethal killing machine. On the 10th anniversary of her family’s death, she targets everyone she holds responsible, the gang that committed the act, the lawyers that got them off, and the corrupt cops that enabled the murderous incidents.

The Gotham Group has just optioned Janelle Brown’s recently published suspense thriller Watch Me Disappear. The novel follows a woman who vanishes on a hike in Berkeley, CA and is presumed dead. However, the questions over her disappearance brings up an unsettling thought for her husband: how well can you ever really know another person?

Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is in talks to star in director Karyn Kusama’s L.A. crime thriller Destroyer. Plot details remain vague, but it’s known that Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi wrote the script and are producing with Kusama, with whom they previously worked on The Invitation and Aeon Flux.

Bestselling author Don Winslow has optioned screen rights to the non-fiction book The Last Good Heist: The Inside Story Of The Biggest Single Payday In The Criminal History Of The Northeast. Winslow plans to write the screenplay, and Shane Salerno will produce through The Story Factory. The Last Good Heist tells the story of how eight armed robbers took down a fur storage company in Providence in 1975 - only their loot happened to include cash, gold, silver, stamps, coins and jewelry that belonged to the local mafia. Winslow’s script will focus on the robbery, the police investigation, and the brutal fallout of a score that rocked the mob to its crooked core.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Fox chairman Dana Walden revealed that network and producing studio 20th Century Fox TV have started preliminary discussions with 24 executive producers Howard Gordon and Brian Grazer and co-creator Joel Surnow about the next iteration of the series. Plans are to include more anthology storytelling, using the same kind of ticking clock format and apply it to other venues and themes.

In one of its first major buys for next season, CBS has put in development Trident, a submarine drama from writer David Wilcox and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek: Discovery). Written by Wilcox, Trident centers on a mysterious death aboard an American nuclear submarine that tests the mettle of the crew, the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA and causes a crisis that threatens to expose a conspiracy that could trigger World War III.

WGN America has acquired three more international drama series in the crime/thriller genre. They include the 2015 Swedish-American thriller 100 Code, from Oscar winner Bobby Moresco (Crash) and starring Dominic Monaghan (Lost) and the late Michael Nyqvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo); the 2016 Canadian police series Shoot the Messenger starring Elyse Levesque (Orphan Black), Lyriq Bent (She’s Gotta Have It), Lucas Bryant (Haven), and Alex Kingston (Doctor Who); and the 2017 Canadian drama Pure, starring Ryan Robbins (Warcraft), Alex Paxton-Beesley (The Strain), A.J. Buckley (CSI: NY) and Rosie Perez (Search Party). All three ran for one season on their original networks.

CBS Reality is delving deeper into the true crime genre. The broadcaster’s fall lineup includes two new original crime series, Click for Murder and Written in Blood, as well as the second season of Murderers and their Mothers. Click For Murder explores murder cases where social media or the internet played an integral role in the crime, while Written in Blood features thriller writer Simon Toyne, who meets other top UK crime writers to discuss how their works of fiction have been inspired by true crime.

FX's birth-of-crack-cocaine crime drama Snowfall has been renewed for Season 2. Set in Los Angeles in 1983, the series follows several people on both sides and at different levels of the drug industry, including entrepreneurial street-level dealer Franklin Saint (Damson Idris); Gustavo "El Oso" Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a Mexican wrestler who gets in too deep while running errands for a crime family; Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), a CIA operative who starts an ill-advised, unsanctioned operation to use drug money to fund the Nicaraguan Contras and Lucia Villanueva (Breaking Bad's Emily Rios), a crime lord's daughter with grand ambitions of her own.

Fans of the 2012 film Dredd got good news earlier this year with the announcement that the character would be coming to television. Now, the star of the recent film version, Karl Urban, has revealed that he'll probably be back as Judge Dredd in the new series. Joseph Dredd is a law enforcement officer in the dystopian future city of Mega-City One in North America, who is a "street judge", empowered to summarily arrest, convict, sentence, and execute criminals.

APB star Tamberla Perry has booked a recurring role on the fourth season of Amazon drama series Bosch, playing Gabriella Lincoln, a career Internal Affairs detective. The series is based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Harry Bosch novels and stars Titus Welliver in the title role.

David Barrera (NYPD Blue) has signed on for a recurring role 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. Barrera will play Sid Velerio, a weary police detective in charge of an investigation into a body dump on the headlands.

James Carpinello, who guest-starred in the Season 4 finale of NBC’s The Blacklist, will return this upcoming fifth season in a recurring story arc. Carpinello plays Henry Prescott, the handsome, charming, and cool "fixer" who calmly solves problems for powerful and elite clients.

Annabeth Gish's post on Instagram confirmed her FBI character, Monica Reyes, will return in Season 11 of The X-Files. Annabeth Gish isn't the only supporting actor who has signed on for the upcoming season, as Mitch Pileggi has joined up as well, reprising his role as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner.

TNT has slotted Halloween, October 31 for the Season 6 premiere of its hit crime drama series Major Crimes, and also released a first-look promo. Season 6 will see Cmdr. Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell) growing accustomed to her new boss, Assistant Chief Leo Mason (Leonard Roberts) and preparing to face the inexplicable but increasingly undeniable return of Phillip Stroh (guest star Billy Burke), the defense attorney and serial rapist turned serial killer.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Noir on the Radio host Greg Barth welcomed author Eric Van Lustbader, who has published more than twenty five best-selling novels, including The Ninja, in which he introduced Nicholas Linnear.

Debbi Mack interviewed thriller author Lawrence Kelter on the Crime Cafe podcast about his writing, which has included the Stephanie Chalice and Vincent Gambini thriller series.

The Story Blender chatted with author Douglas Preston about exploring lost civilizations in South America, being the first to enter a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, and researching one of the cruelest serial killers in the world.

Second Sunday Crime host Libby Hellman spoke with Marcus Sakey about his new genre-bending thriller, Afterlife.

Author R&R with Michael Pronko

Michael Pronko has won numerous awards for his three collections of writings about life in Tokyo. He has written about Japanese culture, art, jazz, society, architecture, and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, Artscape Japan, as well as other venues. He has appeared on NHK and Nippon Television and runs his own website, Jazz in Japan. He teaches American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and after class wanders Tokyo contemplating its intensity.

His most recent novel is The Last Train, a mystery-thriller set in Tokyo. (The second in the series, Japan Hand, will be out in February 2018.) When The Last Train opens, Hiroshi Shimizu is perfectly settled into his life investigating white-collar crime in Tokyo. But after an American businessman turns up dead, Hiroshi’s mentor Takamatsu drags him out to the notorious and intriguing hostess clubs and futuristic skyscraper offices of Tokyo in search of a possible killer. When Takamatsu goes missing, Hiroshi teams up with ex-sumo wrestler Sakaguchi as they scour Tokyo’s sacred temples, corporate offices, and industrial wastelands to find out where Takamatsu went and why an average-seeming woman could have been driven to murder. The novel takes an intense look at the nuances of Japanese interpersonal relationships and the power dynamics of gender roles and how women—and men, too—are treated in this ancient society.

Michael stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss the book and how he goes about researching: 

 

As a writer, I don’t, thankfully, suffer from writer’s block, but I do sometimes suffer from research blockade. That’s the moment where I have to stop to find out what I need to know before I can go forward. That’s not a bad thing, but a natural and necessary part of creating a narrative. Writing my first Hiroshi detective novel, The Last Train, research blockade often put a hold on production to focus on content.

Even though I’ve lived in Tokyo for twenty years, it was sometimes impossible to produce clear, strong sentences (i.e. a “form”) without knowing certain cultural and non-cultural details (i.e. “content”). For example, I can’t elegantly and succinctly describe what a machine lathe looks like without looking at one. I can’t describe a night in a net café without knowing the cost, and I can’t put in a fatal wound without looking at images of a sword cut. I think of research as finding the right content to fill out and improve the form.

It would be nice if all research could be done ahead of time, but it rarely works like that for me. Working on Japan Hand, the second in the Hiroshi series, I first read extensively about America’s military bases in Japan and the history of Japan and America’s military alliance. But, that was not enough. Small details still needed to be checked and added while writing. I can’t just load up the research cart and let it flow. It’s a back and forth process.  

Ongoing research, as I think of it, is not just information about history, dates, or facts, though. It involves much more. To me, in addition to the background textual and informational input, research involves different kinds of content: experience, sensory details, specialized and arcane knowledge, and a lot of self-examination. All these are necessary to produce a good, solid base of research upon which to build prose with energy and clarity and believability.

Experiential research

I love to stand and look and feel places. Since Tokyoites rarely do that, I often look a bit foolish, but that’s OK. It takes time to sink in. Other experiences can be difficult and expensive. An evening at a hostess club can set you back a week’s salary. But to not experience firsthand what it’s like to have beautiful women pouring your drinks and making small talk is to not have done the research. (And for the record, it’s very weird.) For other experiences, like ramen noodle restaurants, I like to sit at the counter slurping and imagining the novel’s characters there. All that ‘research’ soaks into your unconscious and influences the writing of scene, setting, character, and conflict. Other experiential research can be pure chance. I came across the cleaning up of a train suicide twenty years ago. That experience stayed with me and became part of the novel.

Sensory research

This is similar to experiential, but more focused. I often take photos of places I’ll use in my novels. I also search for photos of specific things online. Sensory details put readers in a place and make them feel it more deeply. The smell of a canal, the texture of a rusted staircase, the taste of sake—if I see an image of it, I can more easily conjure it in words. The real world is a hard thing to describe, but sensory input can make a scene come alive, or in the case of a murder scene, become dead. Looking online for photographs or images of places or objects often spurs my sensory memory. That may not seem like research in the traditional sense, but sensory impressions can be as powerful as historical facts.

Specialized research

For my novel Japan Hand, the killer uses a short sword. So, I wanted to experience a sword in person, which was terrifying. I also did a lot of traditional research, like reading the history of swords in Japan, and texts of swordsmen like Takuan Soho and Miyamoto Musashi. But that potentially passive history of swords and theory of swordsmanship was activated by experiencing swords up close. I also ask people who know. One of my friends who studied aikido for decades dropped me to the tatami when I asked him how you flip someone. He just twisted my arm—somehow—and I was down. And yes, it hurt. But, it made it clear how powerful martial arts are. Reading about it or watching a YouTube video doesn’t cause any pain.

Internal research

Inside everyone is a library of emotions, confusions, memories and reactive tendencies. Tapping into that internal catalogue helps to ground the story in an internal world as well as an external world. That can be difficult when a character is entirely different, like the killer in The Last Train, who is a Japanese woman from a working-class background working as a hostess. I’m none of those things, but to achieve emotional veracity, writers must look deeply inside themselves to find human truths and values. Though the protagonist is so different from me, she’s similar in her respect for hard working people, her outrage at unfairness, and her ability to trust herself. (Actually, she’s better at that self-trust thing than me). Except for intimate friends, where else could one research emotions and values except inside oneself?  

Over-research

With any kind of research, there’s the danger of over-research. I know much more about hostesses, swords, train schedules and making ramen (I helped on a couple programs for NHK TV) than I really care to. Research is always inefficient. You end up with too much detail and end up editing out the vast majority. But I think exclusion and editing are part of the writing process. You can’t use it all, but it’s important to know it, so you can choose what has the greatest impact from that research. Choosing well is as important as knowing a lot. As a professor of literature, I know just how to kill students’ interest—tell them everything. Research is more like a spice than the main meat.

Too fresh research

I think there’s also a danger with fresh research. When I started researching swords, I became so enthusiastic I’d write long paragraphs describing the details of the fittings, the way of polishing, the exact way to swing a sword, the long history and fascinating Zen theories. But do readers want to wade through all that? Of course not. Readers want their research contextualized, focused, clarified and juicy. I think researching needs to cure or ferment to have the right flavor.

Fermenting research

Research takes time to reveal its meanings. The researched information itself is maybe less important than the meanings and resonances of the information. When it’s in the conscious mind only, it can end up as an info dump. When it’s put into the unconscious mind, the relevance and deeper meaning of it comes out. Then, it can be succinctly delivered. Research mixed with character, feeling and story is meaningful. Research tends to push my mind into rational, cognitive mode, and I push back to get my mind into narrative flow mode.

Mystery novels draw a lot of their power from the tension of competing elements—researched and non-researched. It’s not knowing all the stops on a Tokyo train line, but setting a chase scene there. It’s not the economics of the night-time world of bars and clubs, but how that affects the characters. Research makes mystery novels gripping by mooring the story to reality. If well-done and thoughtfully included, the researched components keep the story humming with a strong pace, a sincere manner, a balance of emotions and a deep feeling for the world.

 

To find out more about Michael and his new book, The Last Train, check out his website and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. The book is available via Amazon and all major book retailers.