Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Director-producer Anthony Hemingway is in talks to helm Train Man, a legal drama based on the true story of Darius McCollum, a man with Asperger syndrome whose fascination with subways and trains led to him posing as various New York City Metro officials in order to operate subway trains. McCollum, who was arrested on several occasions, became a folk hero for people who are on the spectrum. Simon Stephenson wrote the screenplay, which will follow the lawyer hired to defend McCollum. The long-gestating project at one point had Julia Roberts eyeing the lead, but as of now, no cast is attached.

The King’s Man, starring Ralph Fiennes and directed by Matthew Vaughn, is moving its release date from September of this year to February 26, 2021. The period spy action comedy film, written by Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek, is a prequel and the third film in the Kingsman series. The movie features an ensemble cast that includes Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, and Charles Dance.

Frank Grillo (Captain America), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down), and William Forsythe (The Rock) are leading the cast in the crime action-thriller, Ida Red, which has been filming in Oklahoma during the pandemic. Written and directed by John Swab (Body Brokers), the film follows career criminal Ida "Red" Walker (Leo) who is battling a terminal illness while serving a 25-year prison sentence in Oklahoma. Under Ida’s tutelage, her son, Wyatt Walker (Hartnett) has sustained the family business, alongside his uncle, Dallas Walker (Grillo). When a job goes awry, local detective and Wyatt’s brother-in-law, Bodie Collier (Slaine), is joined by FBI agent Lawrence Twilley (Forsythe), to track down the responsible party.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Noel Clarke (Bulletproof) is set to star as a surveillance detective in ITV’s Viewpoint, a Rear Window-esque crime drama based on an idea from Emmy-winning director, Harry Bradbeer. Co-created and written by Ed Whitmore (Manhunt), the five-part drama follows a police surveillance investigation into a tight-knit Manchester community.

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is producing Twenty Four Seven starring rapper T.I. in the role of Derrick Parker who was involved deeply in rap history, including the shooting of Tupac Shakur. The project is inspired by the book, Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD’s First “Hip-Hop Cop,” by Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl.

ABC has ordered a new limited series called Women of the Movement which debuts sometime in 2021. The six-episode series chronicles the journey of Mamie Till Mobley on her long, arduous journey seeking justice for the murder of her son Emmett Till, who, at the age of just 14, was lynched in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

Fox has put in development Interceptor, a one-hour Coast Guard drama written by Katie J. Stone, David Daitch, and John Pruitt. The project follows a rookie Coast Guard Special Forces team, as diverse as the nation they are sworn to protect, who must battle the drug infested waters off the coast of Florida, and navigate the streets of Miami, all while working through the trials of their personal lives.

Taryn Manning (Orange Is the New Black) is set to bring the "Karen" meme to life in a new suspense thriller where she’ll play a Southern white woman who terrorizes her Black neighbors. Karen is from writer-director Coke Daniels and is described as a social commentary with a "powerful message." In the film, Manning will play Karen White, an entitled white woman from the South set on ousting her Black neighbors, who are Black Lives Matter supporters, from her neighborhood.

NBCUniversal is developing Joe Exotic (working title), a limited series starring and executive produced by Kate McKinnon, which has received a joint straight-to-series order by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming divisions. Interest in Joe Exotic skyrocketed this past spring because of the massive popularity of the Netflix docuseries, Tiger King, about the real-life characters depicted in the Joe Exotic limited series. Joe Exotic is one of two high-profile scripted series adaptations of the stranger-than-fiction true story, along with one starring Nicolas Cage as real-life convicted felon, Joe Exotic.

NBC released its fall schedule which includes a three-hour Wednesday block of Dick Wolf dramas, beginning with Chicago Med and capping off the night with Chicago P.D. on November 10. Law & Order: SVU returns on Thursday, Nov. 12, with The Blacklist capping off the week on Friday, Nov. 13 with its Season 8 premiere.

With Hollywood production sideswiped by the coronavirus pandemic for five months, the fall premiere dates for new TV series and new seasons of returning shows are in a state of flux, but Deadline had a list of the currently scheduled lineup including crime dramas such as LA's Finest, which is the Bad Boys spin-off starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba (Spectrum Originals) on September 9; the Kiwi crime drama, One Lane Bridge (Sundance Now) on September 18; Fargo (FX, Season 4) on September 27; Gangs of London and The Salisbury Poisonings (AMC+) on October 1; the sci-fi crime drama neXt (Fox), on October 6; Coroner (The CW) on October 7; and Mystery Road (Acorn, Season 2) on October 12.

However, Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler spin-off, Law & Order: Organized Crime, has been delayed. The anticipated drama was expected to debut this October on NBC, following Law & Order: SVU, but NBC announced Thursday that the show was being pushed until 2021.

A trailer was released for Enola Holmes, based on the book series by Nancy Springer and starring Millie Bobby Brown in the title role, a "wild child," as big brother Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) describes her. When Sherlock’s teen sister, Enola, discovers her mother missing, she sets off to find her, becoming a super-sleuth in her own right as she outwits her famous brother and unravels a dangerous conspiracy around a mysterious young Lord.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone started off a new season by welcoming S.A. Cosby, author of Blacktop Wasteland, to talk about poverty, fruit loops, and drunk heroes.

Read or Dead tackled adaptation news (including the Dan Mallory movie), and took a walk down memory lane with middle grade mystery books.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover spoke with author Laura Griffin about her latest book, Hidden, the first installment in her new Texas Murder Files Series.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Lydia King, a practicing physician and author of young adult fiction, adult fiction and non-fiction, and poetry, as they discussed her latest novel, Opium and Absinthe.

Paul Haynes joined It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club following the sentencing of the Golden State Killer. Haynes conducted research for I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara's book on the subject, and then helped finish the book after Michelle's untimely death.

Support Your Indies

Today is Independent Bookstore Day in the U.S., postponed from its previously scheduled date of April 25. Sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, some 600+ stores around the country are planning on participating in the event, which will this year be taking place mostly virtually, although some stores will have limited on-site events. Like many businesses, these indie bookstores have been largely limping along during the pandemic, with many seeing sales drop by as much as 30-60%. So this is a perfect way to help show your support during these difficult times.

Many of the mystery-themed bookstores are planning on joining in the festivities, with some sample features to include Mysterious Galaxy, which is participating in a Virtual San Diego Book Crawl, where you can win pins, prints, totes, and t-shirts by spending money in participating stores; Murder by the Book in Houston is featuring a conversation between James Lee Burke and Stephen King on YouTube; The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale will have two virtual chats, Sophie Hannah discussing The Killings at Kingfisher Hill and Alex Pavesi discussing The Eighth Detective from 1-2 pm, and also Susanna Kearsley, C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber, and Christine Trent discussing the anthology, The Deadly Hours, from 2-3; and Madison, Wisconsin's Mystery to Me is celebrating the day by reopening to in-store customers as well as offering exclusive merchandise and a few special surprises.

But you can support your local indie bookstore just by ordering books (and not just today). For a listing of stores participating in Independent Bookstore Day, follow this link; for a listing of all indie bookstores, click here; and if you'd like to support Black-owned bookstores, here's a helpful list.

Mystery Melange

 

The Killer Nashville conference announced its annual Silver Falchion awards in a virtual ceremony this past weekend, including Book of the Year winner, Queen's Gambit by Bradley Harper; Best Mystery: Lovely Digits by Jeanine Englert; Best Procedural or PI: Paid in Spades by Richard Helms; Best Thriller: Hyperion's Fracture by Thomas Kelso; Best Action or Adventure: The Best Lousy Choice by Jim Nesbitt; Best Cozy: A Sip Before Dying by Gemma Halliday; and Best Suspense: Queen's Gambit by Bradley Harper. For all the awards in the various categories, follow this link to the official conference website.

The McKnight Foundation announced the selection of Marcie Rendon for its 2020 Distinguished Artist Award—a $50,000 award created to honor a Minnesota artist who has made significant contributions to the state’s cultural life. Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, is a writer whose poems, plays, children’s books, and novels explore the resilience and brilliance of Native peoples. Rendon is the author of the award-winning Cash Blackbear mystery series, set in Minnesota’s Red River Valley. The first novel in the series, Murder on the Red River, earned the 2018 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel, and the second, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America–G. P. Putnam’s Son’s Sue Grafton Memorial Award.

The 2020 BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival is all set to go ahead virtually from September 10-13 in what organizers are describing as a 4-day virtual crime "extravaganza." This year, eight prominent international authors will headline morning and evening events, including Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø, UK star Ann Cleeves, US author Don Winslow and more. Ticket prices are $10 or you can purchase a festival pass for $50 via the conference website.

Every year, Phoenix’s Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter brings together a sensational line-up of bestselling authors, experienced editors, and qualified agents for a one-day festival filled with presentations, panel discussions, and workshops. This year, the WriteNow! 2020 Conference is going virtual on September 11-12, 2020, with free registration for all. Special guest authors are set to include Michael Connelly, Matt Coyle, and Naomi Hirahara; plus top-tier developmental editor Jessica Page Morrell and Literary Agent Kirby Kim (Janklow & Nesbit Associates). To continue supporting authors and local booksellers, organizers are asking that all attendees buy books from our conference bookstore, The Poisoned Pen, which ships across the country.

Also coming to the Interwebs near you is the virtual Bloody Scotland writing festival on September 18, available with free registration. Features include a panel on Pitching Your Story; Jeffery Deaver - My Life in Crime; The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers - Behind the Scenes; and The McIlvanney Prize and Debut Prize announcement. Organizers also recently announced that the entire Bloody Scotland crime fest (running September 17-30) will be available for free online, including events with special guests Lee Child and Ian Rankin.

 

The pandemic has certainly taken its toll on the various crime fiction conferences around the world this year, but apparently, that trend is heading into next year, as well. The Left Coast Crime Conference, originally scheduled for April 7-12, 2021 in Albuquerque, NM, announced it would bypass next year and reschedule for 2022 – same place, same week in April, just a year later. Special Guests were to include Mick Herron, Catriona McPherson, Kristopher Zgorski, and Kellye Garrett, all of whom will apparently be back for the 2022 event. Registration is official open via the following link.

Writers who can boil down a mystery into a half-dozen words are encouraged to enter the fourth annual Six-Word Mystery Contest sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (RMMWA). The contest opens September 15, 2020 with instructions to be posted at www.rmmwa.org, with an entry deadline of midnight, Oct. 31, 2020. Six-word "whodunits" can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard Boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery with Romance or Lust. Last year’s winning entry by Jeffrey Lockwood was "36D, 44 magnum, 20 to life." This year’s esteemed judges include Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Editor Linda Landrigan; New York Times best-selling author Anne Hillerman; award-winning author, lawyer and activist Manuel Ramos; BookBar Denver store owner Nicole Sullivan; and literary agent Terrie Wolf, owner of AKA Literary Management.

Elizabeth Foxwell, Managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, the oldest US scholarly journal on mystery/detective/crime fiction, noted that the latest volume, guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), has been published on the theme "Genre B(l)ending: Crime's Hybrid Forms." The issue includes essays on G. K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Craig Johnson, James Church, Janet Evanovich, Juliet Blackwell, Minette Walters, Gillian Flynn, Mark Haddon, and Ben H. Winters, as well as reviews of new nonfiction books related to crime fiction.

Sydney, Australia, writer Daniel Hatadi founded Crimespace back in 2007 as a social media gathering place for writers and fans of crime fiction. He sent out a note last week that due to fee increases by the hosting company, Ning.com, and the appearance of other social-media groups that have lured participants away, he's shutting down the service. He added, "Thanks to everyone who has donated along the way, it’s much appreciated."

Although voting has ended, Art Taylor offered up links to all the Mystery Readers International Macavity Award-nominated short stories for your reading pleasure. The winning story will be announced at Virtual Bouchercon in October.

The Washington Post reported that people who want to support their local bookstores might be hurting them instead. Although indie stores are doing their best to accommodate well-wishing customers, new stresses of both high demand and inventory slips have led to often-disgruntled patrons. (Note to bookstore customers: don't be that guy.)

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "The Fruit Cellar" by Lindsey Grant.

In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with Lisa Black, bestselling author of suspense novels including her latest, Every Kind of Wicked; and Red Carpet Crash spoke with Brad Parks, the only author to have won the Shamus, Nero and Lefty Awards, about his new thriller, Interference, that blends quantum physics, espionage, and crime.