Mystery Melange

 

Twenty-eight writers have made the Dead Good Reader Awards shortlists, following a record number of nominations. The awards, a mainstay of the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival, are now in their fifth year with six new categories including best amateur detective, best revenge thriller, and most recommended read. After being voted on by the community of crime fans in the UK, the winners will be announced on Friday July 19 at the Harrogate festival. Here's the link for readers to vote for their favorite shortlisted authors and books.

St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend announced a special prize to be awarded at the event, which takes place August 16-18. For the past few years the PD James dinner at the Crime Fiction Weekend has featured a specially written after-dinner play, challenging guests to figure out "whodunnit." This year the amateur sleuth to crack the mystery crafted by author Natasha Cooper (a Crime Weekend’s Emeritus Fellow) will win a subscription to Blackwell’s Crime Fiction Gift Club.

The Center for Fiction in New York City has a couple of crime fiction events coming up in July as part of the "Crime Fiction Masters" series. On July 10, authors Alison Gaylin and Alifair Burke will explore the themes of misunderstood women and dark family secrets, and on July 12, Harlan Coben and John Sandford will talk about the inspiration for their most recent books, their writing process, and answer audience questions.

In honor of June being LGBT Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, History took a look back at the 1940s, '50s and '60s when police arrested LGBTQ people based on an informal "three-article" rule.

Writing for the Washington Post, crime author Laura Lippman addressed the topic of white authors writing black characters.

The PBA Galleries is auctioning off a roster of "Fine Literature with Mystery & Detective Fiction" today, in 519 lots. One of the pricier items is a first edition, signed, of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, estimated at $3,000–5,000. Some of the crime fiction titles up for bidding include three wrapper-bound first editions of Raymond Chandler mysteries; a first edition of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel, Dr. No; a first edition of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock; several works by the "laureate of American lowlife," Charles Bukowski, and much more.

Publishers Weekly profiled Minotaur Books, the mystery imprint of St. Martin's Press that is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Summer means travel, and travel for many means beach reads and those beaches are often in Florida. Writing for Bookriot, Matt Coleman is touring the country by way of its best crime fiction, beginning with the Sunshine State.

Rapid DNA machines roughly the size of an office printer have helped solve rape cases in Kentucky, identified California wildfire victims, and verified family connections of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Now a state board in Texas has asked a growing government provider of the DNA equipment used in those high-profile projects to halt work amid concerns of potentially jeopardized criminal cases.

Fans of David Baldacci's thrillers, take note: you can enter for your chance to win the complete "Memory Man" series signed by Baldacci. The promotion ends July 7th.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "First Degree Murder" by Roseanne Fahey.

In the Q&A roundup, Writer's Digest interviewed Karin Slaughter, who talked about what led to her Save the Libraries nonprofit, social media for authors, and what the future holds for her beloved characters; The National Writers Series, a year-round book festival in Traverse City, welcomed authors Steve Hamilton, Bryan Gruley and Daniel H. Pink to the City Opera House stage, and the three participated in a Q&A online; Sisters in Crime Australia chatted with Joanne Baker about her latest book, The Slipping Place, a murder mystery about mystery.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Paramount Pictures has acquired the screen rights to Adrian McKinty’s novel, The Chain. The Chain tells the story of Rachel, who learns that her 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, and the only way to get her back is to kidnap another child. Her daughter will be released only when that next victim’s parents kidnap another child. If Rachel doesn’t kidnap another child, or if that child’s parents don’t kidnap a child, her daughter will be murdered. She is now part of The Chain, a terrifying and meticulous chain letter-like kidnapping scheme that turns parents from victims into criminals.

Lionsgate has acquired global film rights to Gerard de Villiers’ best-selling action-spy series, S.A.S. The project will be titled Malko and is a project for Michael Fassbender to star in and produce, with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle) writing the screenplay. With the deal, Lionsgate has secured the full rights to de Villier’s catalogue of best selling espionage thrillers, serialized through 200 books that have been translated into multiple languages and sold north of 120M copies worldwide. Fassbender will play the super spy-for-hire, Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a special Nazi work camp for captured spies.

The Spanish box office hit, The Body (El Cuerpo), is set to get an English-language remake with Isaac Ezban directing. The thriller centers on a detective searching for the body of a femme fatale which has gone missing from a morgue.

Sean Penn's next directorial venture, Flag Day, is heading into production as it rounds out its cast; Penn will be joined onscreen by his daughter and son, Dylan and Hopper, along with Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Norbert Leo Butz, Dale Dickey, Eddie Marsan, Bailey Noble, and Katheryn Winnick. Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth (behind Broadway’s The Ferryman) penned the screenplay, which is based on Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father's Counterfeit Life. The book tells the story of a daughter coming to terms with her perceptions of her criminal father, a bank robber and career counterfeiter who evaded arrest for six months.

Cary Elwes has joined the cast of Black Christmas, the Blumhouse Productions remake of the 1974 slasher cult classic for Universal Pictures. Elwes will play a main part in the film, but details of the role were not disclosed. The updated version of Black Christmas is set at Hawthorne College over the holidays when, one by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish.

Ice Cube is negotiating to team with Dave Bautista in The Killer’s Game, the Simon Kinberg and Rand Ravich-scripted adaptation of the Jay Bonansinga novel. Bautista plays an elite hitman named Joe Flood who learns he has a terminal disease. A devout Catholic, he won’t kill himself, and instead takes out a contract on himself and makes sure the woman he has fallen in love with is financially set. When Flood gets word he was misdiagnosed and is fine, his new mission is to protect his lover and try to call off the hit even though several assassins are now vying for the bounty, with Ice Cube playing the best of those assassins.

Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver) is joining I Care A Lot, the Black Bear Pictures thriller starring Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage. J Blakeson (The Disappearance Of Alice Creed) is directing from his own original screenplay. Oscar-nominee Pike will play Marla Grayson, a highly successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her elderly clients’ detriment, living a life of luxury at their expense. But when her seemingly innocent next victim turns out to have dangerous secrets, Marla must use every ounce of her wit and cunning to stay alive.

Morena Baccarin is the latest to join the cast of the Tim Kirkby-directed action thriller, Waldo, starring Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam. The project is based on the novel, Last Looks, by Howard Michael Gould, and centers around a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam), who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Television Critics Association’s 35th Annual TCA Awards nominations were announced last Wednesday. Up for Best Drama Series are the crime dramas Better Call Saul (AMC); The Good Fight (CBS All Access); and Killing Eve (BBC America). Best Movie or Miniseries also includes Escape at Dannemora (Showtime); Sharp Objects (HBO); and When They See Us (Netflix). Among the Best Achievement in a Drama Series nominees are Amy Adams for Sharp Objects (HBO); Patricia Arquette for Escape at Dannemora (Showtime); Christine Baranski for The Good Fight (CBS All Access); and Jodie Comer for Killing Eve (BBC America).

BET Networks has put into development Black Mambas, a one-hour drama from Rebel creator Amani Walker. Black Mambas follows the journey of four powerful women who are bikers. After growing tired of the violent crimes and injustice in their hometown of New Orleans, they decide to take justice into their own hands.

The Killing’s Michelle Forbes has signed on to USA Network’s CIA drama, Treadstone, joining Jeremy Irvine, Brian J. Smith, Patrick Fugit, Michael Gaston, Tess Haubrich, and Shruti Haasan in the cast. The drama hails from Heroes creator Tim Kring and Ben Smith (a producer of the "Bourne" franchise) and explores the origin story and present-day actions of a CIA black ops program known as Operation Treadstone — a covert program that uses behavior-modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously "awakened" to resume their deadly missions.

HBO has scheduled Monday, August 12 for the premiere of the ten-part limited series, Our Boys. The project is set in the summer of 2014, when three Jewish teenagers are kidnapped and murdered by Hamas militants. Two days later, the burned body of a Palestinian teenager from eastern Jerusalem is found in a forest on the western outskirts of the city. In the ensuing days, an agent from the internal terror division of Shin Bet investigates the murder, while the parents of the slain teenager begin their long and anguished journey toward justice and consolation.

The Hallmark Channel posted a trailer for its newest Mystery 101 movie, Playing Dead, where crime fiction professor Amy (Jill Wagner) and Detective Travis (Kristoffer Polaha) team up to solve the latest murder in their small town.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about mysteries by Australian authors, along with some news about Linda Fairstein, women writing in the mystery genre, and more.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Cara Black to discuss Murder in Bel-Air, the 19th installment in Black’s Paris-set series featuring private eye, Aimée Leduc.

Spybrary's latest episode featured a guest panel discussing the works of James Bond continuation author, John Gardner.

On this week's Writer's Detective Bureau, host Adam Richardson, a veteran police detective, took on topics including "Character Arc, Detective Sergeant Demotion, and Sex Offenders."

Mystery Melange

 

The Finalists for the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction have been announced, and readers will now have a chance to vote. The prize, which was authorized by the late Harper Lee, was established in 2011 by the University of Alabama Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. The books nominated for the ninth annual award are: The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey; Class Action, by Steven B. Frank; and The Boat People, by Sharon Bala.

The Maine Literary Awards were handed out at a ceremony held at the Bangor Public Library recently. This year's winner of the Book Award for Crime Fiction was Stowed Away by Barbara Ross.

Foreword Reviews announced the winners of the Foreword Indies Book Awards, celebrating the best from independent presses and authors. The winners in the Mystery category were:

Gold: One for the Rock by Kevin Major
Silver: A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang
Bronze: Burning Ridge by Margaret Mizushima
Honorable Mention: Uncivil Liberties by Bernie Lambek

In the Thriller & Suspense category:

Gold: The Eighteenth Green by Webb Hubbell
Silver: Speed the Dawn by Philip Donlay
Bronze: The Astronaut's Son by Tom Seigel

Amazon announced its selections for the Best Books of the Year So Far, including those in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category. Check out the twenty books that made the list.

The Mystery Writers of America’s board of directors recently approved new procedures for selecting the Special Edgar Awards—including the Raven, the Ellery Queen, and the Grand Master awards. The new procedures are designed to make the process more open and transparent to the entire membership. They also encourage participation from all members of MWA, who are asked to submit nominations for all three awards by July 31.

A record $10,060 is up for grabs in Sisters in Crime Australia’s 26th Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short crime and mystery stories by Australian women. For the first time there is an award that speaks directly to Australia’s criminal past – the Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival Award for the Best Bushranger Story. The closing date for the awards is August 31, 2019. The Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival is a brand-new biennial celebration of crime fiction, to be held between October 31 and November 5 in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.

Crime author Linda Fairstein has been in the news lately after a rescinded Mystery Writers of America honor (hence the MWA rules change above) and the recent TV mini-series When They See Us that casts her in an unfavorable light as the prosecutor of the infamous Central Park Five rape case. The controversy has renewed cries of proseutorial injustice on Fairstein's behalf and has led to the author being dropped by her agent, publisher, and several boards on which she served. Sarah Weinman penned an article for The Washington Post, which offers up a more nuanced take on the case and Fairstein's role. Weinman concludes that "canceling Fairstein herself may be emotionally satisfying. But it doesn’t account for the very real change she helped bring about. And without concerted effort and work, it won’t prevent other prosecutors from making the same terrible decisions that inflicted such a dreadful cost on the Central Park Five and on Matias Reyes’s (the real rapist) other victims.

Peter Harrington, the UK’s largest rare bookseller, is celebrating its 50th anniversary by offering up for sale an exceptional collection of Ian Fleming material for £2.5m, which it will be exhibiting at this year’s Masterpiece London. It is the most significant Fleming Collection to ever appear on the market and contains inscribed first editions of every James Bond book published in the author’s lifetime. 

Is China about to witness a crime wave? CrimeReads notes that readers in China are showing an appetite for crime stories like never before, especially among younger audiences in China. Article writer Paul French adds that there was always an enthusiastic market for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, but now Chinese fans are becoming more diversified in their crime tastes.

The Daily Mail reported on the real No. 1 Lady Detective, Maud West, a real-life female Sherlock Holmes who caught adulterers, blackmailers and thieves in early 20th century Edwardian London. Susannah Stapleton has a new book about the ground-breaking shamus, whose social circle is known to have included fellow crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers, creator of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.

Jeff Pierce at the Rap Sheet has compiles his annual curated list of more than 400 books, all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months⁠—just in time for beach-reading season.

The most controversial landmark in New York City may now be the Strand Bookstore.

The nation's capital of the U.S., Washington, D.C., may be known for its monuments and federal politics, but it's also the "City of Secrets": an estimated 10,000 people in DC are spies.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nothing New Under the Sun" by Dan A. Cardoza.

In the Q&A roundup, crime writer Simon Kernick told the Daily Mail what book he'd take to a desert island; the Bath UK Magazine interviewed Mick Herron ahead of the publication of his latest spy thriller, Joe Country, about why he wouldn’t make a good spy, how he creates memorable characters and how writing feels like an addiction; Harlan Coben spoke to The Guardian about the book that explains why writers are "plain nuts," and the William Goldman novel that started him on his career path; Kate Atkinson also spoke with The Guardian about why she's enjoying writing more as she gets older – and the return of detective Jackson Brodie fter nearly 10 years in the novel, Big Sky; and Alexander McCall Smith, author of the From the beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, spoke with CrimeReads about his new pivot to Scandi-Noir with The Department of Sensitive Crimes, the first in McCall Smith’s new series, where we meet a Ulf Varg, a Swedish detective who investigates particularly strange crimes in the city of Malm.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Bradley Cooper is in talks to star in Guillermo del Toro's retelling of William Lindsay Gresham's noir novel, Nightmare Alley. Cooper would replace Leonardo di Caprio after the actor couldn't come to an agreement with the film's producers. The 1947 adaptation starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

Entertainment One has set Jon Turteltaub to direct Insane, a film based on "Crazy" Eddie Antar, the late consumer electronics king who wound up serving six years in prison for perpetrating one of the greatest securities frauds in history.

Dominic Monaghan (Lost) and Clancy Brown (Brilliance; Emergence) are joining Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam in the upcoming action-thriller, Waldo, directed by Tim Kirby. Based on the novel by Howard Gould, the story centers around a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam), who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife. There’s no information on who exactly Monaghan will be playing in the film, but Brown will play the role of plain clothes detective Big Jim Cuppy.

Emile Hirsch is joining Mel Gibson in Force of Nature. Hirsch will play a cop who must protect the remaining residents of a building in the midst of a hurricane evacuation while violent criminals attempt to pull off a mysterious heist within the structure. Gibson plays a stubborn retired detective who refuses to evacuate and fights back when the thieves show up at his doorstep.

Chad Michael Murray, Shea Buckner, Tyler Olson, Lydia Hull, and Jessica Abrams are set to co-star opposite Bruce Willis in the action thriller, The Long Night. Directed by Matt Eskandari, the film follows two ruthless criminals who break into a disgraced doctor’s home to be given medical attention after one of them is shot during a robbery gone wrong. Knowing that he lacks the expertise to patch up the injured trespasser, the doctor must protect his family at all costs.

Crime Fiction Lover posted a list of "The top five crime films at Cannes 2019." The list doesn't include Martin Scorsese’s Jimmy Hoffa assassination film, The Irishman, since Cannes refused to allow Netflix a place in the main competition.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

BBC One, Victoria outfit Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited are teaming up on The Pale Horse, a TV drama adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel first published in 1961. Sarah Phelps (The Witness For The Prosecution) has scripted the two-part drama which has Amazon Prime Video on board as U.S. co-production partner. In the novel, a mysterious list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman, and one of those named, Mark Easterbrook, begins an investigation into how and why his name came to be there. He is drawn to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches in the small village of Much Deeping. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives using dark arts, but as the bodies mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.

BBC One is also adapting Emma Healey’s novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, as a TV movie. Oscar winner Glenda Jackson is set to star as an elderly woman descending into dementia who embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared. Her search for the truth goes back decades with shattering consequences.

Amazon Studios will release the political thriller, The Report, in movie theaters on Sept. 27 and then drop the film on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 11. The film, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm, takes place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on people they think were behind it. The film follows one man’s pursuit of justice and chronicles not only the CIA’s secret torture program but also the struggle to release the report that tested the nation’s separation of powers and the rule of law.

Netflix has begun production on the ten-part UK-Spanish crime drama, White Lines, which is written by Money Heist creator Álex Pina. Laura Haddock leads the cast in the English-language series in which the body of a legendary Manchester DJ is discovered twenty years after his mysterious disappearance from Ibiza. When his sister returns to the beautiful Spanish island to find out what happened, her investigation leads her through a world of dance clubs, lies and cover-ups. Also starring are Marta Milans, Juan Diego Botto, Nuno Lopes, Daniel Mays, Laurence Fox, and Angela Griffin.

Cinemax is adapting Trackers, a thriller drama series based on the novel by bestselling South African author Deon Meyer. James Gracie, Rolanda Marais, and Ed Stoppard are set to star. The project interweaves three storylines set in Cape Town that center around a violent conspiracy involving organized crime, smuggled diamonds, state security, black rhinos, the CIA, and an international terrorist plot.

Spectrum Originals has ordered a second season of L.A.'s Finest, the streaming service's first original series. The project stars Gabrielle Union, who reprises her character from Bad Boys II, Syd Burnett, as she leaves life in Miami behind and becomes an LAPD detective, partnered with Nancy McKenna (Jessica Alba).

Jude Law is set to star in The Third Day, a six-part limited series from HBO and Sky. Law plays Sam, who after being drawn to a mysterious Island off the British Coast, is thrown into the unusual world of its secretive inhabitants. Isolated from the mainland, the rituals of the island begin to overwhelm him, and he is confronted by a trauma from his past. As the line between reality and fantasy blurs, Sam finds himself immersed in an emotional quest which puts him at odds with the islanders and begins to threaten their way of life.

DGA-Award winning director Dennie Gordon has been tapped to direct the Season 2 finale of Warrior, Cinemax’s Tong Wars drama series from Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper. Warrior is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set in 19th century San Francisco during the time of Chinatown’s most powerful organized crime families, or tongs.

Nicholas Pinnock (star of ABC’s forthcoming legal drama For Life), David Tennant (Doctor Who), and Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) are to star in Netflix’s police interrogation drama, Criminal. The format bending series consists of 12 episodes of 45 minutes with three episodes each set across four countries – France, Spain, Germany and the UK. The drama takes place exclusively within the confines of a police interview suite, a stripped down, cat-and-mouse drama focusing on the intense mental conflict between the police officer and the suspect in question.

The Flash alum Matt Letscher is set to recur as newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst on TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, the network’s upcoming limited series sequel to The Alienist (based on Caleb Carr’s bestselling book). Brittany Batchelder, a guest star on The Alienist, has also been elevated to a recurring role for Season 2. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Evans, Daniel Brühl and Dakota Fanning, all return for the new storyline, which finds Fanning’s Sara Howard with her own private detective agency and enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Former Iron Fist star Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Frances Dukes are set as new series regulars on the upcoming third season of Netflix’s Ozark. Season 2, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, continued to follow Marty Byrde (Bateman) and his family as they navigate the murky waters of life within a dangerous drug cartel. Joseph Sikora and Felix Solis will recur in regular roles, while Lisa Emery and Janet McTeer have been promoted to series regulars for Season 3. 

Arliss Howard (Moneyball), Desmond Harrington (Dexter), Kelly Jenrette (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Ness Bautista (Sense8) are set as series regulars for season 2 of Spectrum Originals’s anthology series, Manhunt. They join previously announced Jack Huston, Cameron Britton, Carla Gugino, Judith Light, Gethin Anthony, and Jay O. Sanders. Season 2, Manhunt: Lone Wolf, will chronicle one of the largest and most complex manhunts on U.S. soil — the search for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Bomber, Eric Rudolph (Huston) — and the media firestorm that consumed the life of Richard Jewell (Britton) in its wake.

Paul Wesley, who co-starred in the first season of Tell Me a Story, will be back to star in the second season of the CBS All Access anthology series, playing a new character in the drama. Tell Me a Story, based on a Spanish format, takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and re-imagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Season 2 will feature the tales of three iconic princesses – Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. (Season 1 weaved together dark stories based on The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel.)

The mystery/thriller/sci-fi series, Orphan Black, has been resurrected from the dead with audiobook and ebook forms, thanks to a partnership with digital fiction startup Serial Box. Tatiana Maslany has signed on to voice the cloned sisterhood in Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, which is set eight years in the future from where the series left off.

CBS has announced the premiere dates for its 2019-2020 fall season, including returning crime drama favorites such as the NCIS franchises, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, and Magnum, P.I.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Crime Fiction in Oxford is a series of podcasts offering two overviews - of detective fiction in general and of Oxford crime fiction in particular - as well as offering the opportunity of hearing celebrated crime writer Colin Dexter.

The latest Writer Types, hosted by Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden, is back with two of their favorite writers:  Blake Crouch, who's just released his new novel, Recursion, and Brian Panowich, who recently published the follow-up to his novel, Bull Mountain. Plus they interviewed Steve Lauden about his new novelette, That'll Be The Day.

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up with the first two chapters of A Baker Street Wedding by Michael Robertson, read by Kelly Ventura.

In the latest edition of Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction, host DP Lyle delved into the "Autopsy of a Thriller."

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Colin Conway, who discussed his new release, Charlie-316.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on his latest topics of "Writer's Detective Bureau Female Suspects, Writing Research, and Police Cars."

Crime Writers On... featured an episode recorded before a live audience at PodX in Nashville, where the panel discussed the stylized, semi-serious Netflix documentary, The Legend of Cocaine Island, and the team played a few rounds of "Crime Writers Against Humanity."

THEATER

A production of Agatha Christie's classic, The Mousetrap, moves to Theatre Royal, Brighton, from Monday, July 1 through Saturday, July 6. The scene is set when a group of people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow discover, to their horror, that there's a murderer in their midst. 

The Hayes Theater in Sydney is presenting the Australian premiere of The Razorhurst, with book and lyrics by Kate Mulley and music by Andy Peterson. From the 1920s until the 1930s, two vice queens, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, ruled the Darlinghurst underworld. Their rivalry was infamous, leading to a litany of violent crimes enacted by their razor gangs as each struggled to gain dominance in a world of sly grog (a/k/a bootleg liquor), narcotics, and prostitution.

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival is producing the classic Agatha Christie tale, Witness for the Prosecution, at the Idaho Shakespeare Amphitheater in Boise though July 28. The story revolves around a woman who hatches a desperate plan to save her husband from jail when he's accused of murder.

Mystery Melange

 

The Killer Nashville conference announced the twenty finalists for the annual Claymore Award. The honor goes to an unpublished crime fiction manuscript, with the winner receiving discounted admission to the conference and a potential publishing contract. According to conference organizers, almost all top finalists usually land a publishing contract within the next year, most through contacts made at Killer Nashville.

Jack Reacher author Lee Child is being made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to literature. Child has written twenty-three thrillers featuring American hero Jack Reacher, with sales somewhere around the 100 million mark. He was also named author of the year at the British Book Awards in May.

The owner of the Waterstones bookstore chain in the UK, the hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., is buying U.S. bookstore chain Barnes & Noble. Elliott is likely to maintain Barnes & Noble and Waterstones as two separate companies, with Waterstones Chief Executive James Daunt leading both. Under Mr. Daunt's direction, Waterstones rebounded from a period of losses and has even been opening new stores, which it fashions to feel like independent shops. Among the changes he implemented at Waterstones: restructuring duties so that booksellers can spend more time selling books; making bookshops more reflective of their distinct communities; instituting campaigns to promote specific titles chosen by its booksellers; and de-emphasizing front-of-shop co-op campaigns.

In other bookstore news, The Guardian reported on why customers are returning to small bookstores and purchasing more print books.

And in even more good book "store" news, retired teacher Melanie Moore founded The Book Bus, a mobile bookstore based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that she built out of a 1962 VW Transporter truck. The bus sells new and gently used books, and Moore uses a portion of all the profits made from the Book Bus to purchase new books for children and classrooms in low income areas. Depending on the weather, Moore typically sets up shop at farmers markets, flea markets or other outdoor events, and when the weather isn't favorable, she can most often be found at area coffee shops.

Slate wrote about a debut author controversy surrounding the new Scarlet suspense imprint from Pegasus Books aimed at a primarily female audience. Was this new author actually real? Or just a front for a male author taking on a female pseudonym? The Twitterverse was thick with intrigue.

Via Atlas Obscura, a fascinating look at pioneering criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who turned everyone into voyeurs at the end of the 19th century.

Cambridge University archivists are cataloguing records of the Isle of Ely courts, revealing offenses ranging from the tragic to the ridiculous, dating from 1557 to 1775. The database of charges and convictions, which the archivists hope to make available soon online, includes witchcraft, murder, highway robbery, forgery, trespass, and vagrancy. (A potentially helpful resource to authors of historical fiction.)

If you find yourself in Scotland this summer (or just want to visit vicariously), author Val McDermid listed her "top Scottish crime fiction locations."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Rusty" by Wayne F. Burke.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox Searchlight is making a deal to acquire Solitary. The film is based on a memoir by Albert Woodfox about the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola Prison following the 1972 murder of a prison guard he steadfastly denied committing. Woodfox was released in 2016 and used the $90,000 he was paid for reparation for cruel and unusual punishment from the state of Louisiana to buy a house in New Orleans, where he lives quietly today. Much of the tale is about his kinship with two other wrongly accused men with whom he managed to communicate and organize protests and hunger strikes and eventually reforms at Angola. Mahershala Ali is attaching to be executive producer of the film, with the intention to play Woodfox.

Peter Dinklage, coming off his run on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is in talks to star opposite Rosamund Pike in the thriller, I Care a Lot. Pike plays Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry-picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks are deceiving. Details on Dinklage’s potential role are being kept under wraps.

Adam Nagaitis (Terror and Chernobyl) has landed a significant part in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Paul Giamatti, Lena Headey, and Michelle Yeoh in the cast. Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski wrote the screenplay, with Papushado directing the action-thriller about a group of female assassins that come together after a hit goes wrong.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has given a production commitment to Langdon, a prequel drama based on Dan Brown’s thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. A joint project of Daniel Cerone, CBS Studios, Universal TV, and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, the project follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who finds himself pulled into a series of deadly puzzles when his mentor is kidnapped. 

Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort is set to headline the crime drama, Tokyo Vice, which has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. It is based on the book by Jake Adelstein with a script from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (Oslo) and Endeavor Content. The project centers around Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of an American journalist (Elgort) who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption.

Fox Networks Group has picked up the UK rights to the action drama, L.A.’s Finest, which stars Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. The 13-episode series, based in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Bad Boys universe, follows Burnett (Union), who last was seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel. She leaves her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective and is paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna (Alba), a working mom with an equally complex past. These two women don’t agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.

ITV is bringing the six-part thriller Tenacity, based on J.S. Law's novel, to the small screen. When a dead submariner is discovered aboard the British nuclear submarine, Tenacity, the disgraced military detective Danielle ‘Dan’ Lewis is sent to investigate the accident. But when the case turns to murder it puts her in conflict with Tenacity’s crew, her Navy superiors, and into the crosshairs of an assassin who has infiltrated her nuclear base with an agenda that will not only destroy national security but kill Dan and everyone she loves. 

Lucifer has been renewed for a fifth and final season on Netflix. Based on the Vertigo comics character, Lucifer follows the fallen angel (Tom Ellis) to Los Angeles when he grows bored of being the Lord of Hell and teams up with LAPD detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to help stop criminals. The series also stars Rachael Harris, Aimee Garcia, Kevin Alejandro, and Lesley-Ann Brandt.

The first three seasons of cult favorite Veronica Mars will stream on Hulu starting July 1, ahead of the Hulu Original returning for its fourth season on July 26. Veronica Mars is a noir mystery set in Neptune, California, and stars Kristen Bell as a student who moonlights as a private investigator, working under her detective father to solve cases and an overarching mystery tied to them.

Syfy has opted not to renew Happy! for a third season and Deadly Class for a second, although both shows are being shopped to other broadcasters. Happy! follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), an intoxicated, corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is forever changed by a tiny, relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (Patton Oswalt). Deadly Class follows the story of Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth), a teen living on the streets who is recruited into Kings Dominion, an elite private academy where the world’s top crime families send their next generations. 

Amazon has opted not to order a fourth season of drama series, Sneaky Pete. Created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, Sneaky Pete stars Emmy nominee Giovanni Ribisi as con man Marius, who left prison only to find himself hunted by the vicious gangster he once robbed. With nowhere else to turn, he took cover from his past by assuming the identity of his cellmate Pete.

Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is debuting two new movie premieres in June:  Picture Perfect Mysteries, about a small-town wedding photographer who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery when the groom is shot dead during the first dance; and Mystery 101: Playing Dead, about a crime fiction professor and a detective who join forces to solve the murder of an actor.

Melanie Field (Heathers) has been cast in a regular role in TNT's The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to Caleb Carr's bestselling novel, The Alienist. Newcomer Rosy McEwen is also set for a recurring role in the follow-on series, which includes returning lead cast members from The Alienist, Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning. The new storyline follows Sara Howard (Fanning), who has opened her own private detective agency, enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and John Moore (Evans) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Newly picked up CBS drama series, Tommy, starring Edie Falco, is making a casting change for David Fierro, who co-starred in the pilot. The series, from the creators of Bull, stars Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. The character played by Fierro in the pilot, which will be recast, is Buddy, the brilliant, manipulative mayor of Los Angeles, who becomes a rival for power with the city’s first female police chief. The series-regular cast also includes Michael Chernus, Adelaide Clemens, Russell G. Jones, Olivia Lucy Phillip, and Joseph Lyle Taylor.

Kim Dickens (Deadwood) has been cast as a series regular in Briarpatch, the USA Network’s crime anthology series based on the Ross Thomas novel. The project centers on Allegra "Pick" Dill (Rosario Dawson), a tenacious and highly skilled investigator working for an ambitious young senator in Washington, D.C. When her 10-years-younger sister, a homicide detective, is killed by a car bomb, Allegra returns to her corrupt Texas hometown. Dickens will play Chief of Police Eve Raytek, an authoritative firecracker who is committed to finding out who killed Allegra’s sister.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Strahan & Sara show on ABC welcomed bestseller James Patterson, co-author of Unsolved (written with David Ellis).

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham spent some time talking about mystery books by LGBTQ+ authors, in honor of Pride month.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Israel-based Mike Omer, the journalist and game developer turned author of the Zoe Bentley Mystery Series and the Glenmore Park Mystery Series. 

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Matt Phillips about his latest book, Countdown.

The Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, had the tables turned as he was interviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast.

GAMES & GRAPHIC NOVELS

DC Comics announced a new comic book series from their DC Black Label imprint, Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, written by #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kami Garcia (author of Unbreakable, X-Files: Agents of Chaos) and artists Mike Mayhew (Star Wars) and Mico Suayan (Bloodshot: Reborn). The nine-issue psychological thriller follows Harley Quinn, the young and brilliant forensic psychiatrist and profiler consulting for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), as she pursues a vicious killer terrorizing the city. She has no idea the investigation will bring her face-to-face with the most notorious serial killer in Gotham’s history—the Joker.

Mystery Melange

 

The winners of the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards for LGBT fiction were announced, including Best Lesbian Mystery, which went to A Study in Honor: A Novel, by Claire O’Dell, and Best Gay Mystery, won by Marshall Thornton for Late Fees: A Pinx Video Mystery. For all the winner and finalists, check out the official Lambda website.

The Private Eye Writers of America announced the finalists for this year's Shamus Awards, with winners to be announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon in October:

Best Original Private Eye Paperback

She Talks to Angels by James D. F. Hannah 
No Quarter by John Jantunen
Shark Bait by Paul Kemprecos 
Second Story Man by Charles Salzberg
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone 

Best First Private Eye Novel

The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco 
Broken Places by Tracy Clark
Last Looks by Howard Michael Gould
What Doesn't Kill You by Aimee Hix 
Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne 

Best Private Eye Short Story

"Fear of the Secular," by Mitch Alderman, AHMM
"Three-Star Sushi," by Barry Lancet, Down & Out
“The Big Creep,” by Elizabeth McKenzie, Santa Cruz Noir
"Game," by Twist Phelan, EQMM
"Chin Yong-Yun Helps a Fool," by S.J. Rozan, EQMM

Best Private Eye Novel

Wrong Light by Matt Coyle 
What You Want to See by Kristen Lepionka
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey 
Baby’s First Felony by John Straley
Cut You Down by Sam Wiebe 

J.E. Irvin has been named First Place winner for "The Strange Disappearance of Rose Stone" in an international competition to claim the 2019 Mystery Writers Whodunit Award, to be presented at the 6th annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 28-30 in Florida. This is the second time in five years that Irvin has taken top honors in the blind-judged competition.

We lost four figures in the crime fiction community in the last few weeks:

Anthony Price, 91, author of the Dr. David Audley spy novels, including Labyrinth Makers (1970), which won the CWA Silver Dagger, and Other Paths to Glory (1974), which won a CWA Gold Dagger (HT to Martin Edwards);

Also, we mourn the passing of Sandra Seamans, the force behind the My Little Corner blog, which has been indispensible to writers of short crime fiction. Albert Tucher has a remembrance on Do Some Damage;

Paul Bishop reported that W. Glenn Duncan died in Australia after a long struggle with health issues. The former journalilst and pilot wrote six books featuring Rafferty, a tough ex-cop private eye in Dallas, Texas, and won the 1991 Shamus Award for best paperback. Duncan was 78;

And Jutta Motz, Swiss crime fiction author and former president of the International Association of Crime Writers, passed away after a brief bout with cancer. 

Amazon Publishing has joined forces with Capital Crime to sponsor the festival's inaugural awards. The London-based crime and thriller festival, which will take place for the first time later this year, will acknowledge achievements of authors, TV and filmmakers within the crime and thriller community. The shortlists will be announced and voting will open on 1st July, and the winners will be presented at a drinks party on Saturday 28th at the festival.

Debut author Richard Osman will join Ian Rankin, David Baldacci, Denise Mina, and Shari Lapena for this year's Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, as organizers announced the full event schedule. Bloody Scotland "remains an open and welcoming international festival despite all the chaos at Westminster," this year welcoming authors from Spain, France, Iceland, Norway and Ireland as well as the US, Canada, Australia, India, and Mexico.

Ian Rankin is also in the news for an annual visit to Fife College last Friday to award scholarships to creative students. This year’s scholarship was open to students studying a wide range of courses that include elements of creative writing such as Journalism, TV, Radio, Acting and Performance and Higher English. To take part, students had to submit a piece of creative writing and their work was read and judged by Rebus author Rankin, himself.

Simon & Schuster fiction publishing director Jo Dickinson is leaving the firm to become Hodder’s crime and thriller publisher. During her six years in the S&S role, Dickinson has had a string of successes including Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan, Caroline Kepnes’s You, which has become a Netflix hit, number one bestseller Chris Carter, and the award-winning Louise Candlish.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's blog featured a post by award-nominated fiction writer and short-story contributor to EQMM, Kevin Mims, who offered some reflections in homage to Herman Wouk and the decade he helped to define.

Fans of the beloved Golden Age author and creator of the Inspector Roderick Alleyn novels, Ngaio Marsh, should take note of a new companion volume by Bruce Harding in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series (edited by Elizabeth Foxwell). The volume joins other subjects in the series including John Buchan, E. X. Ferrars, Ed McBain/Evan Hunter, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Andrea Camilleri, James Ellroy, Sara Paretsky, and P. D. James.

Apparently, James Bond is still a remarkably good recruiter for the British secret intelligene agency, MI6. 

Edinburgh brewers Innis & Gunn have a limited edition beer bottle for fans of Ian Rankin's Rebus detective series, one that's based on his latest novel, In a House of Lies.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "MXYZPTLK."

In the Q&A roundup, Lesa Holstine chatted with J.A. Kazimer about her upcoming mystery, A Shot of Murder; Criminal Element chatted with Sara Paretsky, who is celebrating the launch of Shell Game, the 19th V.I. Warshawski book, and also John Douglas, a groundbreaking FBI profiler who looks back at the darkest cases in his new book, The Killer Across the Table; author and veteran journalist  R.G. Belsky stopped by Criminal Element to discuss his latest work, Below the Fold, continuing the adventures of news reporter Clare Carlson; and Shots Magazine's Ayo Onatade interviewed Scottish author Mary Paulson-Ellis, whose debut novel The Other Mrs Walker was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year in 2017. 

Marsh Madness

 

After a tough judging process by crime fiction experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the Ngaio Marsh Award committee has revealed the longlist for the 2019 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. The finalists for the 2019 Ngaios (across the Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction categories) will be announced on August 2, with the winners revealed at a special WORD Christchurch event on September 14.

Event founder, Craig Sisterson, noted one particularly interesting title in this year's competition:  "It’s surreal and strangely fitting that in our tenth season of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, and almost forty years after Dame Ngaio’s passing, our judges are considering a story that she began writing herself during the Second World War." He's referring to Money in the Morgue, a Inspector Alleyn mystery set during World War II that was left unfinished at the time of Marsh's death in 1982, which was recently completed by Stella Duffy.

Here's the Best Novel longlist for 2019 (HT to Craig Sisterson):

• NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU by Nikki Crutchley (Oak House Press)
• CASSIE CLARK: OUTLAW by Brian Falkner (OneTree House)
• THIS MORTAL BOY by Fiona Kidman (Penguin)
• MONEY IN THE MORGUE by Ngaio Marsh & Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)
• THE QUAKER by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins)
• CALL ME EVIE by JP Pomare (Hachette)
• THE STAKES by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin)
• MAKE A HARD FIST by Tina Shaw (OneTree House)
• THE VANISHING ACT by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan Publishing)
• RAIN FALL by Ella West (Allen & Unwin)

Author R&R with Shalini Boland

Shalini Boland is a USA Today bestselling author of psychological thrillers The Secret Mother, The Girl from the Sea, The Best Friend, The Millionaire's Wife, and The Child Next Door. Shalini lives in Dorset, England with her husband, two children, and their cheeky terrier mix. Before kids, she was signed to Universal Music Publishing as a singer/songwriter, but now she spends her days writing suspense thrillers in between school runs and endless baskets of laundry. She is also the author of two bestselling young adult series as well as a children's World War II novel with a time-travel twist.

Boland's domestic thriller novel, The Secret Mother, focuses on Tessa Markham who returns home one evening to find a child in her kitchen. He thinks she's his mother. But, here’s the thing: Tessa doesn't have any children. Not anymore. She doesn't know who the little boy is or how he got there. After contacting the police, Tessa is suspected of taking the mystery child. Her whole life is turned upside down. And then her husband reveals a secret of his own...Tessa isn't sure what to believe or who to trust. Because someone is lying. To find out who, she must first confront her painful past. But is the truth more dangerous than Tessa realizes?

Shalini stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R and discuss researching and writing The Secret Mother:

Writing a book about killer from Barton-On-Sea? No problem! Let me tap a few words into my old friend Google and, hey presto, I can see the beach, the road layouts, the property styles. I can read about the town’s history, its economy, its schools and businesses. Absolutely everything about the place is laid bare for me to pick and choose exactly what elements I need for my story. Job done.

And yet… is searching online really a good enough substitute for actually visiting a place? I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve written books set in locations that I’ve never been to. And, yes, I used the internet to familiarise myself with that setting. I read memoirs and first-hand accounts of the locations I’d chosen. But I’ve also written settings where I’ve visited places in person; and the experience is so much richer. You get a sense of space, of light and smell. You soak up the ambience. You get to see if the locals are friendly or closed off. If the place is well-maintained or neglected. There are all these other elements that come into play when you’re actually in a place rather than reading about it or scrolling through images on a screen.

That’s why I try as far as possible to set my psychological thrillers in my local area, or in places I’ve visited or lived in. I grew up in London, spent a lot of years in Gloucestershire, but now I live in Dorset, a beautiful county on the south coast of England. We have glorious beaches, countryside and forests, pretty villages and bustling towns. I know, I sound like the tourist board now. But I love mixing this gentle, innocent beauty with the darkness of a twisted plot.

In The Secret Mother, my main character Tess lives in London. The area is a little run-down and shabby, but she works in a beautiful Italian garden centre that’s her haven within the busy city. The other part of the novel is set in Cranborne, a village in Dorset that dates to the Middle Ages, back when King John was a regular visitor during his hunting trips to Cranborne Chase.

I spent a few interesting research trips walking around the village and across the fields, soaking in the medieval atmosphere of the place, jotting down observations in my notebook. It made me even more excited to get back home and continue writing. Because visiting a place can also be inspiring, triggering off even more ideas to incorporate into the plot. Plus – bonus points – I get to take the husband and kids with me and combine work with a family day out.

So, I guess my take on internet research versus physically pounding the streets, would be that a Google search is perfectly fine, but if you have the opportunity to visit a place in person, then absolutely do that. It will enrich your writing, give depth to your plot and, even better, you’ll have a day or two away from your screen.

 

You can read more about Shalini Boland and her books via her publisher's website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. The Secret Mother is available from all major book retailers.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Shout! Studios and Unique Features have teamed up for a multi-platform distribution of Ambition, the suspense thriller directed by Bob Shaye that will now hit select U.S. theaters in the fall. Ambition stars Katherine Hughes as Jude Hunter, an intensely driven musician preparing for the biggest audition of her life. As a series of deaths surround her, she recognizes the pattern that seems to connect her with the deaths and her ambition. One night, her suspicions are confirmed: she becomes the target of a murderer fueled by the jealousy of her success.

The inspiration for Denzel Washington’s drug-dealing mogul in the 2007 film, American Gangster, has died. Frank Lucas and his wife, Julianna Farrait-Rodriguez (played by Lymari Nadal in the film), were once referred to as the "black Bonnie and Clyde" for their close alliance. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas was the chief purveyor in New York City of a type of heroin called Blue Magic, a concoction which was 10 percent pure compared to the standard 5 percent of the day. His clientele allegedly included celebrities, top business people, and politicians.

Noir City Boston runs this weekend, Friday, June 7 – Sunday, June 9. Sponsored by the Film Noir Foundation, with host Eddie Muller on hand for introduction, the theme is "Film noir of the 1950s," with that decade’s preoccupations – from racial tension to nuclear terror to the price of defying conformity – on full display across the five double features, starting off with Trapped (1949) and The Turning Point (1952).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard), Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale), Sam Riley (Control) and Ben Crompton (Game of Thrones) are to join Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic novel, Rebecca. The actors join Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, and Armie Hammer in the film, which is produced by Working Title for Netflix. Rebecca tells the story of a newly-married young woman who, on arriving at her husband’s imposing family estate on a bleak English coast, finds herself battling the shadow of his dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca, whose legacy continues to haunt the house.

Acorn TV has partnered with Irish broadcaster RTÉ on its latest drama co-production, the period mystery Dead Still. The U.S. SVOD service will launch the six-part series in 2020. Set in 1880s Ireland in the Victorian era heyday of postmortem photography, the period drama follows a renowned memorial photographer as he investigates the murders of his recently deceased subjects

Burden of Truth's second season doesn’t premiere until Sunday on the CW, but the network has already greenlighted a Season 3 of the investigative drama. No plot details for the third session were announced, but production on the eight new episodes for 2020 will begin this summer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Season 2, corporate attorney Joanna Chang (Kristin Kreuk) gets drawn into the shadowy world of hackers, activists and a political movement that won’t take any prisoners.

NBC announced three additional cancellations, including the psychological thriller, The Enemy Within. The program tells the story of Erica Shepherd (Jennifer Carpenter), "a brilliant former CIA operative, now known as one of the most notorious traitors in recent American history serving life in a Supermax prison" and FBI Agent Will Keaton (Morris Chestnut), who must enlist Shepherd to help track down a dangerous and elusive criminal she knows all too well.

Brendan Fraser will co-star with Tom Welling in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune, for the Scandinavian SVOD service Viaplay. The ten-part English-language series is set against a backdrop of international espionage and corporate sabotage in the 21st century’s privately-funded space race.

A casting change has landed Jake Johnson a prime role in the upcoming ABC drama Stumptown, stepping in for Mark Webber, who starred opposite Cobie Smulders in the private-eye drama’s original pilot, as Grey McConnell, Smulders’ character’s best friend. Based on the “Stumptown” graphic novel series, the drama follows Dex Parios (Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police.

Rita Volk has been set for a recurring role on the upcoming second season of AT&T Audience Network’s spy drama, Condor. She joins fellow newcomers Constance Zimmer, Toby Leonard Moore, Rose Rollins, Isidora Goreshter, Eric Johnson, Alexei Bondar, and Jonathan Kells Phillip. In Season 2, in the wake of the death of his Uncle Bob (William Hurt), Joe Turner (Max Irons) is forced to return to the CIA’s tight-knit Virginia community to find the Russian traitor who’s responsible, and face the demons of his past.

CBS will air the entire first season of The Good Fight starting at June 16. The Good Wife spinoff, starring Christine Baranski from creators Robert and Michelle King, had been previously only been available only on the CBS All Access SVOD service. It will mark the time a CBS All Access show has aired on the broadcast network since the Star Trek: Discovery premiere in September 2017.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed DP Lyle M.D., author of many non-fiction books and the Samantha Cody, Dub Walker, Jake Longly and upcoming Cain/Harper thriller series, as well as the Royal Pains media tie-in novels.

Writer's Routine chatted with Mel Sherratt, author of the DS Grace Allendale' series, about moving through genres, letting characters dictate plot, and the Kindle revolution that helped her success. 

Two Crime Writers And A Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh & Luca Veste discussed finishing books, the new work from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the furor over inaccuracies in Naomi Wolf's new book, and they also chatted with special guest Jeffery Deaver about his latest book, The Never Game.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast episode featured the first chapter of What We Found by Kris Bock, read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper.

Writer Types spoke with Susanna Calkins, author of Murder Knocks Twice; Harry Hunsicker about his new Arlo Baines thriller, Texas Sicario; and cozy author Sherry Harris schooled them on why cozies are worthy of respect.

The Spybrary Spy Book podcast featured the fourth in the series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of Fiction and Espionage at the University of Edinburgh, this week discussing Liar's Candle written by August Thomas.

Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction took a look at the "Elements Of A Thriller."

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Jim Wilsky about his novella, Losing Streak (the sixth installment of A Grifter's Song).

The latest episode of Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "Vehicle Searches, Case Law, and Org Charts."