Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings to all and hope you enjoy the latest roundup of crime drama news: 

MOVIES

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners is planning a film of the psychological thriller The Wife Between Us by the writing duo of Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (the novel hits bookstores Jan. 9 from St. Martin’s Press). Described as being in the same vein as Girl on the Train, the female-centered thriller tells the tale of Vanessa, whose hot, hedge-fund husband Richard abandons their marriage, spinning her into wine-soused financial straits. When Vanessa learns that Richard is newly engaged to a woman she thinks of as her "replacement," it seems like the novel is headed straight for familiar erritory. But Hendricks and Pekkanen "flip expectations when they reveal exactly why Vanessa wants to stop the wedding ... and then they flip them again and again."

Scott Rudin Productions has acquired rights to the bestselling Jennifer Egan novel Manhattan Beach. Egan's book has the atmosphere of a noir thriller and follows a young woman named Anna into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. After her father disappears under mysterious circumstances and the country is at war, Anna goes to work at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to the men who have gone off to fight. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. But one evening at a nightclub, she meets an old associate of her father with ties to New York’s criminal underworld, and she begins to uncover why and how he might have vanished.

Lionsgate acquired rights to E. Lockhart’s New York Times bestseller Genuine Fraud and tapped the Girls duo of Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner to adapt the book and produce the film. The plot of Genuine Fraud is said to be a bit tricky to summarize, but it’s essentially a psychological suspense novel about Jule West Williams, an orphaned young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life as she travels around the world and tries to stay one step ahead of those who have underestimated her skills ... which include a knack for accents and disguises.

Mads Mikkelsen will star in the action-thriller Polar, set in the gritty underworld of political assassins. Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund is helming Jayson Rothwell’s adaption of the Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came With the Cold by Victor Santos. Mikkelsen will play the world’s top assassin Duncan Vizla, a/k/a the Black Kaiser who is retiring when his former employer marks him as a liability to the firm. Against his will, he soon finds himself being hunted by an army of younger, faster, ruthless killers who will stop at nothing to have him silenced. Having no choice but to return to the shadowy life he thought he’d left behind, he must use his arsenal of deadly skills to outsmart his enemies and protect an innocent woman.

Nicolas Cage is set to star in Highland Film Group’s action thriller A Score To Settle, from Beautiful Boy director Shawn Ku. Cage stars as Frank, a convicted mob enforcer battling a terminal illness who is released from prison many years after taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. Now free, he sets out on a path for revenge against the people who wronged him.

In the new trailer for the Jaume Collet-Serra-directed thriller The Commuter, Liam Neeson once again makes use of his special set of skills to get out of a life-or-death situation — and this time it’s a Hitchcockian trip on a train as a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) proposes an enticing opportunity to Neeson’s unassuming character. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has put in development the police drama Chasers, based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s bestselling novel of the same name, from NCIS: Los Angeles creator Shane Brennan, Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS TV Studios. Written by Brennan, Chasers centers on a renegade vigilante law enforcement unit made up of "broken badge" ex-cops – those forced into early retirement – who unite to bring down the most vicious criminals in New York City.

Nathan Fillion is back on the beat at ABC in the cop drama The Rookie from writer Alexi Hawley, who previously worked with Fillion as an executive producer on ABC’s Castle. The Rookie is inspired by a true story and centers on John Nolan (Fillion), who leaves behind his cushy small-town life and moves to Los Angeles to become a police officer, where he finds himself as the oldest newbie in the LAPD. 

Fox is developing a one-hour police procedural that hails from Virgil Williams, the co-writer and executive producer of Criminal Minds. Titled Hard Knocks, the series would follow a brilliant, male ex-con turned university criminology professor and a tenacious female detective who team up to tackle crime by combining unique insight into the criminal mind and superior investigative skills.

Ahead of this Sunday’s Season 5 finale, Showtime has ordered a 12-episode sixth season of its hit drama series Ray Donovan. A change of location also is in the works with Hollywood’s favorite celebrity fixer moving to the Big Apple from Los Angeles, where it has been based for the past five seasons.

A hat tip to The Rap Sheet for noting that lovers of Nordic crime fiction on television should be happy to hear that Season 2 of the Icelandic series Trapped — which producers promise will feature "an even more complex and challenging murder case" than the initial 10 episodes — has started filming in northern Iceland. Meanwhile, more plot details were forthcoming for the concluding season of the Swedish drama The Bridge, plus a trailer. The Bridge is scheduled to return to Nordic TV screens in January 2018.

Jeff Kober (Sully) is set for a key recurring role in CBS’ veteran crime drama series NCIS: Los Angeles. Kober will portray Harris Keane, who will play an important part in Hetty’s (Linda Hunt) past and their meeting will change Hetty’s future. His first episode will air November 5.

Netflix has released a new trailer for the upcoming original film Bright. Scripted by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer (Suicide Squad), the action-thriller takes place in an alternate present day in which humans live alongside magic folk like elves and orcs. Joel Edgerton plays the first orc to join the LAPD, and he’s paired with a human character played by Will Smith. Together, the two must navigate their own personal differences while uncovering a conspiracy that threatens the future of the world as they know it.

Ahead of the season 3 premiere, Blindspot has dropped an action-packed new trailer that spans the globe as well as offering a look at Jane’s (Jaimie Alexander) new, super-cool bioluminescent tattoos that will lead her and Kurt on thrilling new worldly adventures. The premiere kicks off in Venice and goes on to additional locations in Spain, Australia, and Morocco.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

CBS This Morning featured John Grisham talking about the student debt crisis inspired his latest legal thriller, The Rooster Bar.

Two Crime writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste celebrated 50 episodes of the podcast by sharing audio of an event during a recent tour of Northern Ireland libraries; welcomed Noelle Holten of crimebookjunkie.com for book reviews; chatted with special guest David Torrans of No Alibis Bookshop; and talked about the brand new crime fiction festival "Noireland."

On Inside Thrill Radio, authors Micki Browning, J.J. Hensley and Isabella Maldonado discussed inside details from their high ranking police and Secret Service positions, as well as the paths that led them to turn to fiction.

Author R&R with Brian Stoddart

Brian Stoddart is Professor Emeritus at La Trobe University where he served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and as Vice-Chancellor. He took his first two degrees at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand where he first became interested in India, then completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia that looked at the rise of nationalism in south India. Along with his work on India, Brian has been a pioneering writer in sports culture and has produced books on Australian sport, Caribbean cricket and other related subjects. In addition, Brian Stoddart writes the Superintendent Le Fanu crime fiction series set in British India. A Madras Miasma and The Pallampur Predicament attracted excellent reviews and recognition while the third, A Straits Settlement, was longlisted for the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Award for best New Zealand crime novel.

In A Straits Settlement, the third installment of the Chris Le Fanu Mystery series, the intrepid superintendent is promoted to Inspector-General of Police in 1920s Madras, which proves to be more boring than he had envisaged. Instead of pushing papers across his desk, Le Fanu focuses on the disappearance of a senior Indian Civil Service officer and an apparently unrelated murder. As the two incidents intertwine, the world-weary detective is drawn into the worlds of indentured labor recruitment and antiquities theft.

Brian Stoddart stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing and research his novels: 

 

Looking For Le Fanu

When the first book in the Chris Le Fanu series appeared, many readers loved its atmospherics of 1920s Madras in colonial India, and the city itself being as much a character as the protagonist and his colleagues on both sides of the crime fence. Even the Madras/Chennai media critics thought I had it “right”, a source of great satisfaction.

All those readers marvelled at the research behind the book and its successors, wondering how I had done it all.

Well, I cheated, in a sense.

I began writing, badly, at school in New Zealand, then went to the University of Canterbury in Christchurch to become an historian. Two things that happened back then now mark the Le Fanu series. First, I began re-reading all my sports books as an historian, realising that since the later nineteenth century sport has had a deep and meaningful impact on life globally. That began my pioneering sports history and culture work, but also determined that Le Fanu be a golfer and one of his assistants a cricketer. They reference that intellectual journey.

The second impact was even bigger. In first year I took a course in Pacific and Asian History at its first time of offering. That began a lifelong fascination with Asia. Then I took a specialist intensive course on modern India with Ian Catanach, one of those teachers and mentors who change your life. That led to a Masters degree, a fixation with India, and a high school teaching job. A year later Ian engineered a PhD scholarship for me at the University of Western Australia where I began researching the growth of nationalist politics in south India.

That research put me physically into what was then still called Madras, now renamed Chennai, and indirectly began the Le Fanu story thread. By the time I got there, I “knew” the city, its suburbs, streets, highlights and lowlights because I had studied it so closely. When I got off the ship in the Port of Madras, I knew where to go despite never having been there before. Years later I had the same sensation in Venice, “knowing” the place simply from having read Donna Leon.

I spent months then, over time, years in the Madras archives opposite Egmore Railway Station, ransacking files that recounted clashes between nationalists and police, and the ruminations of British Raj officials  trying to handle it all. By definition I learned about police processes, methods, thinking and organisation in the British India context. That included the evolving, difficult relations between European officers and Indian other ranks.

Fortuitously, the archival work was supplemented by an important personal one. By complete chance the patriarch in the house where I stayed turned out to have been one of the first Indian Inspectors-General of Police in post-Independence Madras, and began his career during the period I was studying. So every night I returned to the house, sat outside and discussed the files I had been reading while he reminisced about being amidst the action.

My thesis was not about the police but I read everything possible on the Indian Police Service, an academic colleague wrote a book on the Madras Presidency police service that graced my shelves alongside a growing line of Indian police histories and autobiographies.

Then I went off and write about sport but retained the interest in India. A string of academically-oriented works followed, but that police interest remained while I read all the crime fiction I could for fun. Eventually I wrote the biography of an Indian Civil Service maverick, something I thought I would never do. Then came a memoir of living in Damascus just before the start of the present troubles, another literary form I had thought beyond me.

I never thought to write fiction, either, but with time to spare on foreign assignment in Cambodia, instead of reading crime fiction I decided to write some, so Le Fanu emerged.

At one level I followed that rubric of “write what you know”. I had always considered India a great potential crime fiction site for both historical and contemporary settings. All that research from all those archives and conversations was still sitting there, I “knew” Madras. My Indian Civil Service biography sprang the idea of having someone “odd” as protagonist to set up tensions and complexities. A Le Fanu had been in the Indian Civil Service in Madras during the nineteenth century and, of course, there was the twist provided by Sheridan Le Fanu who had rivalled Edgar Alan Poe as a mystery writer. Besides, a Le Fanu had also played rugby for England, so there was another strand.

While I returned physically to Madras, as I still call the place, to “see” it again as a crime setting, the Le Fanu cases, locations, combatants and all the rest were just there waiting to be disinterred. Some of the characters are even real historical ones, while the main “fictionalised” ones all have people and personalities discovered long ago lurking in behind.

Strictly speaking, then, years of research sits behind Chris Le Fanu. But the passage of time has allowed me to re-approach that research more dispassionately, allowing the story and stories to take precedence rather than that research. As people say, the biggest problem is that having done all that “research” you feel compelled to use it. That is less of a problem for me now because even though I am revisiting it, the research has settled in my mind.

The great bonus? A lot more people like Le Fanu than read the thesis on which he is based! 

 

You can learn more about the author and his books (both fiction and nonfiction) via his website or follow him on Facebook and Twitter. His crime novels are available from Crimewave Press and all major booksellers.

Mystery Melange

 

The Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, Maine, will become a crime scene for murder, mayhem and more at the third annual “Murder by the Book” mystery festival October 27-28. Tess Gerritsen (the Rizzoli & Isles series) will be the keynote speaker, joined by fellow authors Brenda Buchanan, Dorothy Cannell, Richard Cass, Sarah Graves, Vaughn Hardacker, Maureen Milliken, Katherine Nichols, Stephen Pickering, and Lynne Raimondo.

The 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards will be followed by the first-ever Great Lit Quiz at Scorpio Books this Saturday, October 28. To celebrate NZ Bookshop Day, a team of book-enthusiasts will join together for an entertaining quiz of crime novels and other genres, and ticket holders will also be able to participate in the invitation-only Ngaio Marsh Awards cocktail party, where the finalists will be celebrated and the winners announced.

On October 29 from 8-11pm, Writerspace will be holding an online 2017 Halloween Mash with chances to win great prizes such as a Kindle, autographed advance copies plus special treats like gift cards and more. Plus, dozens of mystery and suspense authors will be dropping in to chat all during the evening.

The Mystery and Crime features coming up at the Texas Book Festival November 4-5 include Meg Gardiner and Jan Reid talking about "The Long Reach of Crime"; Attica Locke and Adam Sternbergh discussing "Small Towns, Simmering Tensions and Modern Western Crime"; Jeff Abbott and Bradley Spinelli on the "Accidental Detective"; and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich and Ben Blum chatting about "True Crime Close to Home."

November and December will bring two Mystery Author Extravaganzas hosted by the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime. At each meeting—one in Maryland, one in Virginia—authors from SinC’s Chessie Chapter will talk about their publications in 2017, and Mystery Loves Company Booksellers will have copies of these titles on hand. The first of these events takes place Saturday, November 4 at the Howard County Public Library’s Miller Branch in Ellicott City, Maryland, with participating authors to include Donna Andrews, Maya Corrigan, Barb Goffman, Sherry Harris, Mary Ellen Hughes, Tara Laskowski, Alan Orloff, Kathryn O’Sullivan, Josh Pachter, Penny Clover Petersen, Susan Reiss, KM Rockwood, Verena Rose, Laura Ellen Scott, Harriette Sackler, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Art Taylor.

 

The city of Kingston upon Hull in the UK will host Hull Noir 2017 from November 17-19, celebrating crime fiction from far and wide, including both local and international authors. Brit Lit author Ted Lewis is to be a key focus of the event, and Catherine Turnbull has a sneak peak of the author's legacy via a new biography of Lewis' pioneering writing and short and self destructive life.

Spinetingler Magazine announced it will begin regular publication of a print magazine with the first issue due November 2017 by Down & Out Books. "As is true in life, the events of the past have a tendency to influence our actions in the future," said Sandra Ruttan, co-editor of Spinetingler. "It is the support of our readers that has enabled us to return with this print edition. With their continued support we hope to be able to continue to bring exceptional short fiction and features to you for years to come." The Fall 2017 edition will feature original stories by Tracy Falenwolfe, Karen Montin, Jennifer Soosar, Nick Kolakowski, David Rachels, and BV Lawson. There are also author snapshots of Con Lehane, Rusty Barnes, Mindy Tarquini, as well as book features and reviews.

Berkeley's Bancroft Library has a very impressive California Detective Fiction Collection, numbering about 3,000 mystery novels set in the Golden State or written by California authors. For curator Randal Brandt, it's not hard to enjoy his work when he's surrounded by a first-edition copy of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Anthony Boucher’s first novel, 1937’s The Case of the Seven of Calvary, and much more.

Just in time for Halloween, Mystery Fanfare has a listing of spooky crime fiction titles that are themed around All Hallows' Eve.

With Kenneth Brannagh's new film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express due in theaters November 10 in the U.S. (November 3 in the UK), journalist Caroline Frost stopped by the Crime Fiction Lover blog to point out some of the spots in Agatha Christie's native Devon where fans can spot the many clues to her books found around every corner of this deceptively tranquil spot on the English Riviera.

The long-running (33 years!) BBC show Crimewatch has been brutally dispatched and forensic television criticism suggests that several issues combined to end the life of the veteran franchise.

Although arsenic is often the poison of choice in popular whodunits from Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie, scientists are finding that in ultra-low dosage, and in the right form, this naturally occurring chemical element can be a potent force against cancer.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Mars Night" by Robert Arellano.

In the Q&A roundup, Celeste Ng spoke with the South China Morning Post about her follow-up book to her critically-acclaimed debut suspense novel Everything I Never Told You, which won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature; and Marcie Rendon, author of Murder on the Red River, chatted with the Stiletto Gang about switching from children's books to mysteries.

Author R&R with Elka Ray

Elka Ray is a Canadian/UK author and editor, whose first novel, Hanoi Jane, was published by Marshall Cavendish in English and DT Books in Vietnamese. That was followed by the suspense novel, Saigon Dark, which came out with Crimewave Press in November 2016, as well as a collection of short crime stories, What You Don’t Know: Tales of Obsession, Mystery & Murder in Southeast Asia. Elka is also the author and illustrator of a popular series of bilingual children’s books about Vietnam and lives with her family near Hoi An.

Elka stops by In Reference to Murder to today to take some Author R&R and talk a bit about her writing:

My childhood was nomadic. No stranger to homesickness, I looked forward to growing up - and being in control of where I lived. As a result, place is important to me, both in life and in fiction. 

Looking back on books I read long ago, the settings often remain clearer to me than the plots - that misty graveyard in Dickens' Great Expectations, the ominously dark Canadian lakes of Andrew Pyper's Lost Girls, the secret passages of Hogwarts in J.K Rowling's Harry Potter series... Little annoys me more than a book set in a place I know well and the author clearly doesn't. 

The three books I've published so far - Hanoi Jane, Saigon Dark and What You Don't Know: Tales of Obsession, Mystery & Murder in Southeast Asia - are all set in Southeast Asia, where I've lived for over 20 years. As a journalist and travel writer I used to cover a fair bit of ground. All these stories take place in spots I've lived, worked or holidayed. 

My crime/romance novel Newly Wed, Nearly Dead will be published by Seventh Street in early 2019. It's set in another place I know well, on Canada's beautiful Vancouver Island.

I once tried to set part of a story in a country I'd never been - Syria, I think it was. I read news reports and travel blogs. I watched Youtube videos. I googled everything from the weather  in July to the smell in the market to the most common boys' and girls' names. I quizzed friends who'd worked there.

The scene sounded authentic - at least to me, who'd never been near the place. But how would I know? I ended up scrapping it. 

I write fiction by instinct and fear too much research will bog me down. If I know the setting, I trust the story will fall into place - and the internet is there for the rest. Imagine having to go to the library and pore through dusty encyclopedias to confirm place names or the most popular bands in 1977. Imagine lugging home heavy medical textbooks to find appropriate causes of death. Google is both a writer's best friend and potential worst enemy, providing the ultimate excuse to procrastinate. Divorce law in Canada. Fast acting poisons. Fatal head wounds. How long until human hair rots away.

I hope I'm never connected to a real crime as the police would have a field day with my internet history. 

 

You can read more about Elka and her books on her website at www.elkaray.com, or follow her on Facebook, Twitter or at elka.ray on Instagram. Elka's book Saigon Dark is available from Crimewave Press and via all major booksellers.

Media Murder for Monday

Monday means it's time once again for the latest weekly roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

20th Century Fox bought the film rights to Taylor Adams' thriller, No Exit, with Logan scriptwriter Scott Frank attached to produce. The story follows college student Darby Thorne, who gets stranded in a blizzard at a highway rest stop for a night with four strangers. During the night, Thorne discovers a little girl locked in the trunk of one of the cars but she doesn’t know whose car. Without cell or phone reception and trapped by the snow, she must figure out who is the kidnapper.

Production has begun in New Orleans on Carol Morley’s crime drama Out Of Blue, which stars Jacki Weaver, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, and Toby Jones. Billed as a neo-noir detective story and metaphysical mystery, the story centers on homicide detective Mike Hoolihan (Clarkson) who is called to investigate the shooting of a leading astrophysicist and black hole expert, and is affected in ways she struggles to comprehend. The film is originally based on Martin Amis’ novel Night Train, although the script penned by Morley has "taken on its own life." Aaron Tveit, Mamie Gummer, Yolanda Ross, Jonathan Majors and Devyn A Tyler round out the cast.

Naomi Watts has been set to star in The Wolf Hour, a psychological thriller from writer-director Alistair Banks Griffin. The project centers on June Leigh (Watts), a cultural icon and activist during the 1960s, now fallen from grace and a shell of her former self. An unseen tormentor begins exploiting her weaknesses and she must face her demons at the height of one of the darkest points in New York history: the summer of the the Son of Sam murders.

Brenton Thwaites (Oculus) and Ben Robson (The Boy) have signed on as the leads in the crime thriller A Violent Separation. The story is set in a quiet Midwestern town where Norman (Thwaites), a young deputy sheriff, covers up a murder at the hands of his older brother, Ray (Robson), but neither of the young men are prepared for what’s to come, including the passionate romance that blossoms between Norman and the victim’s younger sister, Frances (Alycia Debnam-Carey). As the investigation wears on, family bonds are tested with everyone desperately trying to do the right thing, all while doing the wrong thing.

Komixx Entertainment Ltd has optioned the worldwide screen rights to the "electrifying" YA thriller Captured by Kelly Anne Blount, featured on Wattpad. It is the second novel the independent production company has optioned from the author, the first being Under in 2016. Captured follows 17-year-old Abriana Vega who ends up blindfolded in a trunk of a car during a first date with a man she met online. 

Melanie Liburd, who co-stars on Netflix’s Gypsy, has been set to join the cast of Brian Banks, a biopic starring Aldis Hodge and Greg Kinnear. The project tells the story of Banks (Hodge), an All-American high school football player committed to USC whose life was upended in 2002 when he was falsely accused of rape. Despite maintaining his innocence, Banks was railroaded through the system and sentenced to a decade of prison and parole. Kinnear plays his lawyer, while England-born Liburd will play Karina, a personal trainer Banks meets at the gym. After freaking out when he reveals he was accused of rape, she eventually believes in his innocence and helps clear his name.

A new trailer for Hangman features Al Pacino playing a detective chasing down a serial killer who likes to play a twisted version of Hangman. The pic also stars Karl Urban as profiler Will Ruiney.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ABC has put in development an hourlong gumshoe/family drama from Mila Kunis’ Orchard Farm Productions, Grey’s Anatomy executive producer William Harper, and ABC Studios. Written by Harper, the untitled project centers on a housewife who feels invisible to her husband and shunned by her teenage daughter but finds new purpose and confidence when she becomes the indispensable protégé of the sexy private investigator who moves in next door.

CBS is planning a reboot of Magnum P.I., an update of the classic 1980s Tom Selleck series set in Hawaii, which hails from Peter Lenkov, who has successfully revived Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver. Co-written by Lenkov and fellow Hawaii Five-0 executive producer/showrunner Eric Guggenheim, the new Magnum P.I. will feature the same central quartet of characters but, instead of four guys, it will consist of three men and a woman, with Higgins (originally played by John Hillerman) reconceived as Juliet Higgins, a disavowed former MI:6 agent. The series will once again follow Thomas Magnum, a decorated ex-Navy SEAL who, upon returning home from Afghanistan, repurposes his military skills to become a private investigator with help from fellow vets Theodore "TC" Calvin and Orville "Rick" Wright as they take on the cases no one else will.

A "Nancy Drew" TV series is once again in the works, with NBC developing a new series based on the iconic novel series after CBS attempted such a project last season. The new series still hails from writers and executive producers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater and executive producer Dan Jinks, who developed the CBS version, but the new series follows the author of the most famous female teen detective book series who is thrust into a real-life murder mystery. In need of help, she turns to her two best friends from childhood, who were the inspiration for all those books, and the women who have a real axe to grind about the way their supposed best friend chose to portray them all those years ago. This will be a completely different version than the original at CBS. That project would have focused on Drew, now an adult who works as a detective for the NYPD. Sarah Shahi, who starred in the CBS’ drama Person of Interest since its second season, starred in the pilot as Drew but isn't currently attached to the NBC version.

Netflix recently announced it had picked up the script for Kate, a female-led action movie, and given it a $25 million budget. The concept is described as being in the same vein of Kill Bill and La Femme Nikita and centers on a woman who has 24 hours to solve her own murder. The project eyes a start date in April as Netflix quickly searches for the right director and star.

Bron Studios’ TV group has acquired rights to Danish author Sara Blaedel’s bestselling crime fiction book series centered on police detective Louise Rick. The plan is to adapt the novels as a TV series, with the first published Rick book The Forgotten Girls to serve as the backdrop for Season 1. The plot of that 2015 book from Grand Central Publishing kicks off when fresh corpse of an unidentified woman with a large scar on her face is discovered in the woods. Rick, the new Commander of the Missing Persons Department, and her partner set out to find her identity and killer. This leads them on a journey to uncover a de­cades-long unsolved mystery tied to a mental asylum. 

The CW has put in development Dead Inside, an hourlong drama from writer Katie Lovejoy, Warner Bros. TV and Bill Lawrence’s studio-based Doozer Productions. Penned by Lovejoy, the story centers on an underachieving beat cop who survives an explosion that killed her hotshot detective big brother. When she starts seeing his ghost, it flips their sibling dynamic on its head and allows her to truly live her life for the first time, as they work together to help crime victims both living and dead, and figure out the unfinished business keeping his spirit on Earth.

Adding to its range of local-language offerings, Netflix has picked up The Mantis, a French serial killer thriller starring Carole Bouquet. The series centers on Jeanne Deber (Bouquet), aka The Mantis, a famous serial killer who terrorized France more than 25 years ago and is forced by the police to come out of solitary confinement to help hunt down a copycat. Deber agrees to collaborate with the investigation, but only on one condition: if her son, now a cop, will work by her side.

TNT’s The Alienist has a new trailer and a premiere date of January 22, 2017. The series is based on the best-selling novel by Caleb Carr and stars Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning as 19th century investigators on the trail of a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer. True Detective creator Cary Fukunaga wrote all eight episodes of the first season, and also executive produced. 

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Crime Corner host Matt Coyle welcomed USA Today bestselling Author Allen Eskens, who is also the recipient of the Barry Award, Minnesota Book Award, Rosebud Award, and the Silver Falchion Award and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, Thriller Award, and Anthony Award. His debut novel, The Life We Bury, has been published in 16 languages and is being developed for a feature film.

Two great authors were featured on the latest Suspense Radio Inside Edition, as Daniella Bernett and Jeff Gulvin stopped by. Daniella Bernett's series features journalist Emmeline Kirby and the charming jewel thief Gregory Longdon, while Jeff Gulvin is the author of a series featuring John Quarrie, a Texas Ranger working in the 1960s.

Laura Caldwell, an author, attorney, educator, and motivational speaker, visited  2nd Sunday Crime with Libby Hellmann to discuss Caldwell's work and most recent anthology, Anatomy of Innocence, stories of the wrongfully convicted that are brought to life in collaboration with best-selling mystery and thriller writers.

THEATER

The Queen’s Theatre in Barnstaple will welcome the Classic Thriller Theatre Company from October 23-28 for their performance of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone. The tale of deceit, despair and cover-up tells the story of Eunice, an illiterate housekeeper who joins a wealthy family and is forced to hide her shortcomings from her new employers with potentially fatal consequences. The impressive cast list includes Chris Ellison as Detective Superintendent Vetch; Robert Duncan as George Coverdale; Sophie Ward as Eunice Parchman; Antony Costa as Rodge Meadows; Deborah Grant as Joan Smith; and Ben Nealon as Detective Sergeant Challoner.

Mystery Melange

 

The annual Bouchercon conference was held this past weekend in Toronto, with winners of several awards handed out during the event, including the Macavity, Anthony, and Barry Awards.

The Anthony Award winners included:

Best Novel, Louise Penny for A Great Reckoning
Best Paperback Original, James W. Ziskin for Heart of Stone
Best First Novel, IQ by Joe Ide
Best Anthology, Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016 - Greg Herren (editor)
Best Short Story, “Oxford Girl” by Megan Abbott, Mississippi Noir
Best Children’s/YA Novel, April Henry for The Girl I Used to Be
Best Novella, B.K. Stevens for The Last Blue Glass
Best Critical Nonfiction Work, Ruth Franklin for Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

 

The Macavity nods went to

Best Novel, A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny
Best First Novel, IQ, by Joe Ide
Best Short Story, “Parallel Play,” by Art Taylor (Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning)
Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Novel, Heart of Stone, by James W. Ziskin
Best Nonfiction, Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, Margaret Kinsman

The Barry Awards were handed out to:

Best Novel, A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny
Best First Novel, The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie
Best Paperback Original, Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty
Best Thriller, Guilty Minds, by Joseph Finder

Writing for Mental Floss, Meg Van Huygen profiled Elizebeth Friedman, America's unsung wartime codebreaker whose accomplishments have been (sometimes deliberately) kept from the spotlight.

Fancy some stellar Canadian crime ficttion? Quill and Quire has profiles of six women mystery writers to add to your reading list.

And here's a list for fans of forensic crime thrillers.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "When I Crossed Into Canada" by Robert Cooperman.

In the Q&A roundup, at the Guildford Book Festival, bestselling crime author Peter James talked about the school poetry prize that kick-started his career; the Mystery People Q&A with Joe Ide burst onto the mystery scene last year with his debut Isaiah Quintabe mystery, IQ, a Holmesian puzzler set in South Central LA; the MP's also sat down with Thomas Mullen, whose Darktown found critical acclaim when it came out last year, and Simon Maltman spoke with the Dorset Book Detective about crime writing and how it "gives you something dramatic to hang whatever else you want to write about on to."

Author R&R with David Malcolm

David Malcolm was born in Aberdeen and educated in Ab­erdeen, Zürich, and London. He's lived and worked in Japan, the USA, and currently calls Sopot, Poland home, where he is professor at the Institute of English and American Studies at the University of Gdańsk. His collection of short fiction, Radio Moscow and Other Stories, was published by Blackwitch Press in 2015 and republished by Artizan in 2016.

His new novel, The German Messenger (Crime Wave Press) is set in late 1916 when Europe is tearing itself apart in the Great War. Harry Draffen, a part Greek and part Scottish British secret agent, becomes part of a daring attempt by British and German spies to stop the gratuitous bloodletting of WWI. Draffen journeys from the slums of East London to an Oxford college, from the trenches on the Western Front to an isolated house on the Scottish coast, and then on to a bloody showdown in the North of England, to chase a phantom and elusive German messenger.


David Malcolm stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing and researching the novel:

 

Most of the fiction that I write is set in the past. I find the past – places, people, events – much more interesting than the present. The German Messenger is set in late 1916 and early 1917. I’ve also written other crime stories that take place during the Great War or in the early 1950s.

The problem for me is not so much the grand historical events. They can be tricky however. For example, like many even moderately well-read people, I had heard very little of the Salonika campaign in which the British Army was involved, alongside Allied forces, between 1915 and 1918. It was complicated, bloody, not very successful – and largely forgotten. I realized as I was writing The German Messenger that my hero Draffen – because he is part-Greek – has to have been involved somehow in it. I may have to juggle with time-lines in sequels to the Messenger.

However, the grand events are not so much a problem. It’s the smaller details that a writer setting stories in the past  also needs to get right. Exactly how short were women’s skirts in 1917? Did British officers wear uniforms to civilian dinner parties in 1916? What did a Habsburg infantry unit look like in 1915? (The answer to that is: in field-grey, very tough, and very scary.) How were train carriages laid out in southern England in the winter of 1916 (with a corridor running the length of the carriage, or with doors opening directly on to the platform)? The problem is not just with the distant past. How much had Hamburg been rebuilt by 1951? What did that part of Warsaw look like in 1953? What was it like to be in that kind of bar in Tokyo in 1984?

But of course there are loads of books and magazines in libraries, and many that you can get to read at home if you haven’t got the British Library twenty minutes down the road. (I am very jealous of those who do.) For example, I have collections of wonderful pictures of the third arrondissement in Paris that give you a sense of the streets there from 1900 through 1940. A book that I looked at by chance in the British Library contains a railway map of the Baltic area in 1908, so I now know how my hero gets from Warsaw to Reval/Tallinn. Books, too, give you ideas for stories. Alex Butterworth’s splendid The World That Never Was  tells you more about the anarchists and the policemen of Europe between 1870 and 1914 than you probably ever wanted to know. (In fact, it’s a very depressing book – folly on all sides.) Do you need to write a novel about the Habsburg secret services? Have a look at Albert Pethö’s Agenten für den Doppeladler (Agents for the Double-Eagle). It has the kernels of more plots than you can shake a stick at. Museums, too, can be of assistance, and can inspire. A visit to the marvelous Nissim de Camondo museum in Paris gave me the background to a whole subplot for the next German Messenger novel.

Zoppot 1910 Plan

Then there’s the internet. Pictures everywhere. Snippets of stories. Maps. Street plans of Zoppot in 1902. Fashion pictures. Film of Hamburg streets in 1955. It’s almost like being there sometimes. It’s not cheating at all. If only it had all been there twenty years ago.

But sometimes, of course, you just invent. When I wrote a thriller set in Japan in the 1980s, I decided I might as well invent the bar where the hero meets an important female character. I had lived in Tokyo for two years, so I had lots of surrounding details right. But I’d never been to that kind of bar. I couldn’t do the local research, and – to be honest – I didn’t want to. I don’t care for that kind of place, and it’s wise to know your limitations. So I imagined it. European and American readers who’ve looked at the typescript say it’s completely authentic and believable. I haven’t dared show it to any Japanese ones. I did the same in The German Messenger with The Cherry Tree nightclub (do all my stories take place in bars, you ask). I made it up. When I read it again, I think to myself even – how authentic! But I believe the author should do that kind of invention very sparingly. All fictions are precisely that – fictions. But you owe, I believe, a debt to reality, to the past, to the people of the past, and you should do your best to get it right. I try. For readers, too, there has to be a certain density of historical detail to make the story feel real (not too much, not too little). The most accurate is usually the best.

Fortunately, I love libraries. My work has taken me to some of the best in the world. I’m very happy in them, even in indifferent ones. But the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Boston, and Warsaw give you ideas, give you settings, make you imagine. They’re kinds of libraries too. Dusty second-hand bookstores in provincial cities, too, are still sources of ideas, atmosphere, details.

Photograph copyright Jennifer Zielinska

Then there is serendipity. I was in Łódź (Lodz in German, Russian, and Yiddish) a couple of years ago in a second-hand bookstore (also one of my favorite places, as you can guess). I bought a book about Łódż in the Great War, and the bookseller said to me, “Oh, my grandmother was a girl during the First War.” She remembered one of the first battles of the War that was fought around the city. The local bourgeoisie stood out on the roof of the Grand Hotel on the main street and watched as the Russians and Germans lobbed shells at each other from either side of the city. Who could invent that?

 

Find out more about David Malcolm and his books via the Crime Wave Press site and Amazon. The German Messenger is now available from all major booksellers.

Media Murder for Monday

 

Monday greetings to all! Welcome to the latest roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Keira Knigthley is set to produce and star in an untitled spy drama written by Camilla Blackett (The Newsroom and New Girl). The film will be produced by K Period Media’s Kimberly Steward and Josh Godfrey, along with Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky from Bristol Automotive who co-produced The Imitation Game, which landed Knightley her second Oscar nomination.

Jay Roach has signed to direct 67 Shots, a film that recaptures the circumstances behind the fatal shootings at Kent State University in 1970 where guardsmen from the Ohio National Guard fired 67 shots into a crowd of students protesting the war in Vietnam, killing four students and injured nine others. Roach sparked to numerous parallels to the contemporary political landscape and specifically the collision between law and order and the fundamental right to protest.

Gal Gadot is in talks to co-star in Ruin, a Justin Kurzel-directed a gritty period revenge-thriller drama said to be "in the vein of Inglorious Basterds and Fury." The story follows a nameless ex-Nazi captain who navigates the ruins of post-WWII Germany, determined to atone for his crimes during the war, as he hunts down the surviving members of his former SS Death Squad. It's unclear what role Gadot would play in the movie or when it would shoot since the actress has the Wonder Woman sequel on her schedule for late 2018.

Ohad Knoller, Greg Hill, Torben Liebrecht, Mike Hernandez, Greta Scacchi, and Pêpê Rapazote have joined the cast of MGM’s thriller Operation Finale, which is currently filming in Argentina. Chris Weitz is directing the project that sees Oscar Isaac starring as legendary Mossad agent Peter Malkin and is based on a true story of the 1960 covert mission where Malkin infiltrates Argentina and captures Adolf Eichmann (Oscar winner Ben Kingsley), the Nazi officer who masterminded the transportation logistics that brought millions of innocent Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. 

Will Smith and Tom Holland will voice the lead characters in the animated film Spies in Disguise, based on Lucas Martell’s original short Pigeon: Impossible and set in the high-octane, globe-trotting world of international espionage. Smith will voice the super-killed spy Lance Sterling, and Holland is Walter, a scientific genius who invents the gadgets Lance uses on his missions. When events take an unexpected turn, Walter and Lance suddenly have to rely on each other in a whole new way. And if this odd couple can’t learn to work as a team, the whole world is in peril.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has bought a drama based on Edgar-winning Meg Gardiner’s novel UNSUB. The book follows a female detective on the trail of an infamous serial killer – inspired by the still-unsolved Zodiac case – who breaks his silence and begins killing again. The detective, who grew up watching her father destroy himself and his family as he chased the killer, now finds herself confronting the same monster her father never caught. 

Most of the team behind CBS/CBS TV Studios’ 2015 series Limitless have reunited for another crime drama with a sci-fi twist titled Recall. Written by Craig Sweeny, who also penned the Limitless pilot, the plot follows the NSA as it assembles a group of investigators to make use of the agency’s newest tool: a machine that allows the user direct access to the memories of witnesses, victims, and suspects – but the detectives must resist the temptation to use the device on themselves.

CBS has put in development the FBI crime drama Unthinkable from Jerry Bruckheimer The project is based on Chuck Wendig’s 2016 novel Invasive about a brilliant futurist, trained to see danger around every corner, who’s recruited by an uncharacteristically optimistic FBI Agent to identify the threats only she can see coming – and stop them before it’s too late.

A bomb squad drama written by Carol Mendelsohn and starring Morris Chestnut has landed at Fox with a big put pilot commitment. The project, The Long Walk, is based on the upcoming novel The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry that deals with a killer with a deadly vendetta who sets a trap and blows up half of the LA Bomb Squad. Private security expert and retired bomb tech Dick Stahl (Chestnut) reluctantly returns to the team he left behind and must confront his past head-on as he trains, recruits and rebuilds the best bomb squad in the country – all while working to catch the killer, and responding to the diverse calls of an elite Bomb Squad. 

One day ahead of its Season 1 finale, Mr. Mercedes was renewed for a 10-episode second run next year on AT&T Audience Network. David E. Kelley again will write the script and Jack Bender direct the Stephen King adaptation starring Harry Treadaway and Brendan Gleeson. The series follows Brady Hartsfield (Treadaway), a demented killer who taunts a retired police detective Bill Hodges (Gleeson) with a series of lurid letters and emails, forcing the ex-cop to undertake a private, and potentially felonious, crusade to bring the killer to justice before he is able to strike again.

The internationally-produced hostage negotiator drama Ransom has been picked up for a second season on CBS, a surprising reversal since the series was canceled in May. The show stars Luke Roberts as expert hostage negotiator Eric Beaumont, whose team is brought in to save lives when no one else can, and is inspired by French crisis negotiator Laurent Combalbert. The 13-episode second season will be filmed in Hungary and will air in 2018.

David Boreanez and his new TV team are going to be suiting up for a few more episodes after CBS announced it's giving a full season order to SEAL Team, the military drama starring Boreanaz as Jason Hayes, the head of a Tier 1 operator military unit. The series follows Jason and the brave men and women he fights with into the deadliest missions on the planet and then tracks how they deal with maintaining their regular lives once they're back home.

There is good and bad news regarding Canadian TV crime dramas:  The CBC TV's espionage drama The Romeo Section, which follows Professor Wolfgang McGee (Andrew Airlie) as he secretly manages a number of Canadian spies involved in obtaining information about gangs and the drug trade, was cancelled after only two seasons; however, another crime drama, Blood and Water, starring Steph Song as detective Jo Bradley, was renewed for a third season.

TNT is rounding out the cast for its new six-episode drama series One Day She’ll Darken, hiring India Eisley and Jefferson Mays (Law & Order: SVU) to star opposite Chris Pine. The project tells the story of Fauna Hodel (Eisley), given away at birth, who investigates the secrets to her past and follows a sinister trail that swirls ever closer to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel (Mays), a man involved in the darkest Hollywood debauchery. Pine will play Jay Singletary, a former Marine-turned-hack reporter/paparazzo who was disgraced over his story about Hodel years ago, but now sees a glimmer of redemption.

Derek Morgan is returning to the BAU. Shemar Moore is set for a guest spot on CBS’ Criminal Minds to reprise his role as Morgan, appearing in the fifth episode which airs Wednesday, October 25. Moore was an original Criminal Minds cast member from 2005-2016 until his character survived a harrowing kidnapping and left the BAU to focus on life and family.

Paddy Considine, Bel Powley and Nabhaan Rizwan have been set to star in Neal Street Productions’ Informer for BBC One. The six-part contemporary thriller will air on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S., after the UK broadcast and centers on Raza (Rizwan), a young, second generation Pakistani man from East London who is coerced by Gabe (Considine), a Counter-Terrorism officer, to go undercover. Gabe, who has a past he is unwilling to expose, is joined by Holly (Powley), his ambitious and endlessly curious partner. As the investigation heats up, the stakes for all three get higher and higher. 

Fox released a trailer for the upcoming 11th season of the supernatural FBI procedural The X-Files, and show creator Chris Carter chatted with Deadline about the original series and bringing it back. However, fans shouldn't expect star Gillian Anderson to return for a potential 12th season, if there is one, since she recently announced the current 10-episode series would be the end of her participation in the project.

A new trailer was released for Mindhunter, the new Netfix project from David Fincher and Charlize Theron that's based on the book of the same name by famed FBI agent John Douglas and stars Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany as FBI agents on the trail of serial killers.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed TV/movie director and Anthony-nominated author John Shepphird to the show to discuss his crime fiction.

The It's a Mystery Podcast chatted with Edgar nominated mystery author Victoria Thompson, who has written twenty books in her Gaslight Mystery series set at the end of the 19th century in New York City.

Beyond the Cover spoke with special guest Linwood Barclay about his new, standalone blockbuster thriller, Parting Shot, which spins off from the events of the explosive Promise Falls trilogy.

Debbi Mack interviewed mystery author Daniella Bernett on the Crime Cafe podcast; Bernett has just released the third novel in her Emmeline Kirby/Gregory Longdon mystery series.

Book Riot's Read or Dead podcast discussed the upcoming Tana French BBC adaptation, which they used as an opportunity to "fawn over her books."

Author R&R with Rich Zahradnik

Rich Zahradnik was a journalist for 30-plus years working as a reporter and editor in all major news media, including online, newspaper, broadcast, magazine and wire services. He held editorial positions at CNN, Bloomberg News, Fox Business Network, AOL and The Hollywood Reporter. He's also the author of the Coleridge Taylor Mystery series (A Black Sail, Drop Dead Punk, Last Words). The first three books in the series were shortlisted or won awards in the three major competitions for books from independent publishers. A Black Sail was named best mystery in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and a finalist in the 2016 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards. Drop Dead Punk collected the gold medal for mystery ebook in the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards, while Last Words won the bronze medal for mystery/thriller ebook in the 2015 IPPYs and honorable mention for a mystery in the Foreword Reviews competition.

The latest series installment, Lights Out Summer (Camel Press), is set in March 1977, when ballistics link murders going back six months to the same Charter Arms Bulldog .44, and a serial killer, Son of Sam, is on the loose. But Coleridge Taylor can’t compete with the armies of reporters fighting New York’s tabloid war—only rewrite what they get. Constantly on the lookout for victims who need their stories told, he uncovers other killings being ignored because of the media circus. He goes after one, the story of a young Black woman gunned down in her apartment building the same night Son of Sam struck elsewhere in Queens. The story entangles Taylor with a wealthy Park Avenue family at war with itself. Just as he’s closing in on the killer and his scoop, the July 13-14 blackout sends New York into a 24-hour orgy of looting and destruction.

Rich stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing and research Lights Out Summer:

 

Researching the Coleridge Taylor Mysteries changed in a big way in 2014—in both interesting and embarrassing fashion. Sometime before then, I’d put on my gift list the massive “The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages 1851-2009.” The tome included three DVDs—remember those?—containing 54,693 front pages linking to complete articles.

Taylor is a reporter who always has an acute awareness of the other stories going on around him. He reacts to news and how it’s covered even when it’s not his story. The novels are set in the seventies. From a storytelling standpoint, a headline from a certain day can give readers a feel for the period—or remind them of a crime or political event or cultural incident they’d forgotten and perhaps echoes what’s happening today.

Right, so that’s why I needed the book. My wife gave it to me for Hanukkah. The cost of the giant thing was somewhere between $125 and $165. Within months, the New York Times announced online subscribers would have access to TimesMachine, an online archive of complete issues of the paper as they originally appeared going back to 1865. I never did put one of those DVDs into my computer. You can now buy the DVD/book package on Amazon for $8.27.

I am well past my embarrassment. (The Times could have given me some warning, though.) TimesMachine is indispensible. I can go deeper to see the stories beyond the front page. The ads, too. This helps for all the reasons I mentioned above. And others. My new mystery, Lights Out Summer, is set in 1977 and an important set piece in the plot is the New York blackout of July 13-14. No book was written about those terrible 25 hours when thousands of businesses were looted and destroyed. But I could read all of the articles the Times published during and in the aftermath of the stealing, fires and vandalism. (The Times itself pulled off a miracle by sending editors over to Jersey and getting the paper out.) I’ll admit, the TimesMachine is particularly helpful to me because my books are set in New York, so I can track local politics, cultural and crime. Tidbits are sprinkled throughout the novels.

Each of my books involves a major New York historical event in the plot: the city’s near bankruptcy, the Bicentennial celebrations, Son of Sam’s murder spree. And for each, I’ve found at least a couple of books to go deep on the subject even if the event—like the Bicentennial—serves as a backdrop to the crime story. For “Lights Out Summer,” I was greatly aided by “Son of Sam: Based on the Authorized Transcription of the Tapes, Official Documents and Diaries of David Berkowitz” by Lawrence D. Klausner and “Son of Sam: The .44 Caliber Killer” by George Carpozi Jr. I learned of an earlier New York serial killer, 3X, from the wonderful “Police Reporter: Forty Years One of New York’s Finest Reporters” by Ted Prager. That book also gave me insights into what Taylor’s job was like for one or two generations of reporters before him.

A collection of general histories, timelines and atlases of New York rounds out my library.

Oh, and one last reference is indispensible: “Billboard Top 10 Singles Charts, 1955 to 2000.” Music triggers memories in readers. The seventies were a period of massive change as disco, punk, hairband rock and the sixties survivors fought for listeners’ attention. I could easily pick out a song I remember from 1977 and drop it in. But the charts show me what tunes were hot in a particular week—adding a nice level of detail. They also remind me of songs and bands I’d forgotten.

Disco-Tex and the x-O-Lettes anyone?

You can learn more about Rich and his books via his website and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. Lights Out Summer is available via all major book retailers.

Mystery Melange

 

This past weekend, the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers announced that The White Devil, by Domenic Stansberry, was the winner of the annual Hammett Prize for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a US or Canadian author. The other finalists included The Second Life of Nick Mason, by Steve Hamilton; The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie; Revolver, by Duane Swierczynki; and The Big Nothing, by Bob Truluck.

Tonight at 7 p.m. at the Center for Fiction in New York City, Paul Vidich (An Honorable Man; The Good Assassin) and Joseph Kanon (Defectors; The Good German) will explore the literary spy novel, its trademarks, place in history, and interplay between fact and fiction.

It's rare that we have two posthumous works from legendary crime fiction authors being released at the same time, and even rarer still when those works are story collections. As The Guardian notes, collections from the late queens of crime fiction, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, each spanning 40 years of publication, are not only terrific stories but " are ideal for long autumn evenings."

Sisters in Crime has been celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and Francine Paino had a brief retrospective of the national organization as well as one of the many chapters around the country that have formed during the group's three decades.

As someone who writes a music-related crime fiction series, I'm always interested in music-writing connections such as this piece from the New York Times which profiles Gregory Brown, the brother of author Dan Brown, and how Dan's latest novel features one of Gregory's works, "Missa Charles Darwin."

Did the deerstalker-wearing Dr William Neale inspire Sherlock Holmes? A photo from July 1880 may offer an important clue.

There are many subgenres of crime fiction, but some don't get quite as much attention as others - in fact, you may not be aware of the fantasy crime novel category, but Mulholland Books can get you started with a list of ten such titles work checking out.

Is there someone rotten in Denmark? If news reports are to be believed, the bizarre case of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard a submarine may end up leading police to a serial killer.

Writers, here's something for your next spy thriller project: In order to tempt nuclear scientists from countries such as Iran or North Korea to defect, US spy agencies routinely send agents to academic conferences – or even host their own fake ones.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "On the Road" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Mystery People Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery chatted with Adam Sternberg about his novel, The Blinds, described as "if Sheriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction was Twin Peaks" and also sat down with J. M. Gulvin to discuss his new novel featuring Texas Ranger John Q; Tess Gerritsen, the author of the "Rizzoli & Isles" thriller series, spoke with WBUR public radio about writing crime fiction; and Mystery Lovers Kitchen welcomed Ellen Byron, author of the Cajun Country Mysteries.

Author R&R with Rebecca Marks

An attorney, musician, and owner of dog-show champion Belgian Tervurens, Rebecca Marks is also the author of the Dana Cohen Mystery Series, which deal with a woman who has retired at age 42 from her post as detective with the NYPD and relocated to the North Fork of Long Island. She plans on helping her elderly father manage his winery but soon finds she can't stop solving mysteries. Following the first two installments, On the Rocks and Four Shots Neat, she's just released the third book in the series, Stone Cold Sober, from Black Opal Books.

In the novel, Dana's best friend, Marilyn, is directing a local musical theater production. Dana's estranged lover, Alex Frasier, the father of the child she's carrying, is a Morris dancer in the show, but Dana has no theatrical talent at all. So Marilyn cooks up a way to get the two former lovebirds together, hiring Dana to work security for the production. When Dana discovers a gruesome murder during one of the show's rehearsals, her "detective gene" overtakes her, and she can't resist the urge to throw herself into this case. But as she investigates, she uncovers some dark secrets and realizes, too late, how far someone will go to keep them hidden...

Rebecca stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing her books:

 

In our current culture, sophisticated readers have access to the most updated information about most everything, and they are not shy about finding the information and complaining about errors. So I’ve always felt that it’s very important to make sure that as an author, I do my homework and research all of the parts of the story that entail factual legal procedures. In a mystery, it’s common to talk about police work, legal process, and much of what happens between the crime and the solution.

Although I am a Massachusetts lawyer, I have never been licensed to practice in New York, and the rules and procedures can vary greatly from state to state. The Dana Cohen mystery series takes place entirely in New York. So I followed several different routes to ensure that I got the facts right.

First of all, Google has been a tremendously important tool for me. There is a great deal of information posted online by the state of New York, detailing police procedure, court process, medical examiner rules, and grand jury proceedings, to name a few. I read extensively about all of the following: 

• Police conduct legal searches, but to do so, they need the proper warrants and implements to conduct their searches. The Consolidated Laws of New York’s CPL code provide all of the information about what property police can seize during a search, who and what are subject to such search, when the warrants are executable, and how they are obtained, to name a few of the procedures.
• Because Dana operates mostly in Suffolk County, I consulted the Suffolk County Government Medical Examiner website. It provides extensive information about how the ME operates in Suffolk County, including timing, autopsy policy, and when the ME is called in.
• Grand juries are convened by the county prosecutor to ascertain whether the perpetrator of a crime should be indicted. Although these procedures are similar from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, I researched how it works in Suffolk County, to make sure I didn’t write something that wasn’t true. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office provides complete information about criminal justice procedures, which were invaluable to me in writing Dana’s stories.
• Finally, court cases also follow the procedure of the jurisdiction where the crime occurred, and New York publishes extensive articles about how criminal procedure works in that state. Luckily, my law background enabled me to understand the gist of the NYS CPL Law Code.

In addition to the rich availability of information on the Internet, there are other extremely useful tools out there for authors to use in the quest to do accurate research. There are several Yahoo groups that provide useful information volunteered by other authors who have already done the research. I have found that the Yahoo group “Crimescene Writer” is extremely useful. On that site, writers can ask questions about absolutely everything they might be planning to write about in their crime novels. Recently, someone asked about a gunshot wound, and how it would affect a victim. Many people answered this question and provided information about where to learn more. There are reports about how the FBI operates, what police do, what is legal and illegal for the police, warrants, and any other questions an author might have about their book.

I have asked several questions of this group in the course of my writing the Dana Cohen mystery series, and I always receive excellent information. Then I am able to refine that information even more carefully by digging into its accuracy.

Finally, there are several organizations that support mystery writers, and I am a member of two of those: Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and International Thriller Writers (ITW). These organizations provide not only a venue for writers to meet other writers, but also give members a place to seek relevant information. 

Research is not only interesting and fun, but doing it thoroughly gives me the confidence that although I am writing fiction, the procedures and actions of agencies involved in my mysteries are correct and believable. 

 

You can learn more about Rebecca and her books via her website, or follow her on Twitter or on Facebook.