Mystery Melange

 The Audio Publishers Association announced the 2023 winners of the annual Audie Awards for excellent in audiobooks. The Mystery category winner was The Heron by Don Winslow, narrated by Ed Harris, and the finalists include:  The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra, narrated by Soneela Nankani; The Maid by Nita Prose narrated by Lauren Ambrose; The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray, narrated by Billie Fulford-Brown, and Suspect by Scott Turow narrated by Helen Laser. The Thriller/Suspense category winner was Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulknerm narrated by Laura Kirman. The finalists were The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham, narrated by Michael Beck; The Island by Adrian McKintyn Narrated by Mela Lee; The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley, narrated by Clare Corbett, Daphne Kouma, Julia Winwood, Sope Dirisu, Sofia Zervudachi, and Charlie Anson; Snowstorm in August by Marshall Karp, narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla and Michael Manuel; and Where Secrets Live by S. C. Richards narrated by Jennifer Jill Araya.

Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog reported the sad news of the passing of two mystery authors, Carl Constantine Kosak, better known to readers by his pseudonym, K.C. Constantine (the Mario Balzic series), and Rita Lakin, writer for several popular TV series and also author of mystery novels starring Gladdy Gold, a septuagenarian private eye in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

You can add Agatha Christie's works to the growing list of "udpated" literary properties that are being edited and re-released to remove insensitive language commonly used during their day. First it was Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factor, rewritten to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin, and then the James Bond novels, with the Ian Fleming Estate deleting racist tropes. This weekend, The Guardian noted that Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries (written between 1920 and 1976) have passages edited by sensitivity readers for the latest HarperCollins editions. Most of these instances were related to offensive language, including insults and references to ethnicity. Although this is the first time the content of Christie’s novels has been changed, her 1939 novel, And Then There Were None, was previously published under a different title that included a racist term, which was last used in 1977.

In honor of her birthday (Happy Birthday!), Janet Rudolph posted a list of birthday-themed crime fiction on her Mystery Fanfare blog.

A rare copy of 1655 edition of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello, shows a cast list that includes one actor who was involved in real-life murder drama - slain in an eerie echo of the play.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Vanquished" by Rena J. Worley.

In the Q&A roundup, The Hard Word interviewed Craig McDonald, author of the series with Hector Lassiter, a crime novelist who gets involved with major historical events, often with his friend Ernest Hemingway; Crime Reads spoke with Rhys Bowen, author of the long-running Molly Murphy series, set in turn-of-the-century New York City, about historical fiction and memorable heroines; and Writers Who Kill chatted with Ellen Byron (writing as Maria DiRico) about Four Parties and a Funeral, the fourth book in the Catering Hall mystery series.

Author R&R with Gary Born

Gary Born is a renowned international lawyer and author. He has represented countries and businesses in nearly 1,000 international disputes around the world, including cases involving Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Yemen. Mr. Born has also published widely on international law, including the leading commentaries on international arbitration and litigation. He has taught at universities in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, including Harvard Law School, National University of Singapore, and St. Gallen University. He lives in London, with two Maine Coons, and travels widely. The File is his first novel

The File follows Sara West, a tenacious botany graduate student on a scientific expedition in the heart of the African jungle. During her research, she stumbles upon a cache of WWII Nazi files in the wreck of a German bomber hidden deep within the jungle. Those hidden files reveal the location of a multibillion-dollar war chest, secretly deposited by the Nazis in numbered Swiss bank accounts at the end of WWII. But Sara isn’t the only one interested in the war chest. Former KGB agent Ivan Petronov and Franklin Kerrington III, deputy director of the CIA, both have deeply personal reasons for acquiring the files Sara has found. With two dangerous men — and their teams of hit men — on her trail, will Sara be able to escape the jungle alive? 

Born stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

 

Author’s guest articles are sometimes about the author, so I’ll say a few things about me, and the book I wrote — but I want to start with someone else.

The File is about a young woman, Sara West. She doesn’t seem so different at first glance, and she certainly doesn’t think she’s different from most other people.  But she is.

Working with her father and friends on a research expedition in Uganda, Sara discovers the wreckage of a Nazi bomber from World War II. In the wreck, which has been hidden for 70 years, Sara finds a file of documents, which contain information on secret Nazi accounts in Swiss private banks, holding billions of dollars. They also have the names of the Nazis most important foreign spies, including in the United States. 

Two incredibly different, but equally evil, men almost immediately learn of Sara’s discovery: Ivan Petronov, a former KGB agent who has been hunting for the Nazi bank deposits for decades, and Franklin Kerrington III, the CIA’s deputy director, whose patrician family’s secret support for the Nazis would be revealed by the file. Petronov and Kerrington dispatch rival teams of mercenaries to Africa to retrieve the file — Petronov for the Nazi money and Kerrington to hide his family’s traitorous past.  

Petronov and his lover (a beautiful former Chinese spy) lead a Russian special forces team to Africa and slaughter Sara’s colleagues and father. Sara flees, with the Nazi file in her backpack, and Petronov’s team hunts her through the jungle. And it’s then the reader realizes why she’s so different. 

Using wilderness skills she learned on earlier research expeditions with her father, Sara escapes the Russians, eventually turning the tables and vanquishing many of her pursuers. The Russians nonetheless corner her in a remote African town but then are themselves attacked by Kerrington’s men. Jeb Fisher, a young, ex-CIA operative, is sent to kill Sara, but instead he both discovers Kerrington’s evil secrets and falls in love with Sara.

Sara and Fisher hijack a plane from a nearby U.N. airbase and fly north, before running out of fuel and parachuting into the Libyan desert. After nearly dying of thirst, Fisher commandeers a Libyan militia Jeep, and they make their way to the Mediterranean and board a ship smuggling refugees into Europe. Once in Italy, the two head north, with Sara determined to uncover the secrets of the Nazi file and avenge the killings of her father and friends. Still tracked by Kerrington and a new team of Petronov’s Russian mercenaries, Sara and Fisher make their way to Zurich, where they confront a corrupt Swiss bank director with the files detailing the Nazi bank accounts. Sara plans a bloody showdown on the premises of the Swiss bank and, well, you’ll have to read the book to find what happens — but it’s not necessarily what you would think. Because, well, Sara is different.

I wrote the book about Sara. She inspired me, like she inspired Jeb Fisher, and took me along with her. I think you will like her, too.

I also think that you will like the stories of Sara and Jeb, who start out not trusting each other and then take things from there. It helps — or maybe not — that they are thrown together in the world’s most exciting places: the Rwenzori Mountains (the so-called Mountains of the Moon), where the plants look like the Pandora universe in Avatar, only better; the Sahara Desert, which almost gets the better of Jeb; Italy, which is impossible not to love, especially Rome and Lucca; and finally, Switzerland, which needs no explanation.

This is a story about Sara. Who turns out to be very different. But it’s also about all of us, and the many different pieces that make us whole.

There’s a lot about Sara in The File. But it has pieces of me as well, mostly the places, but some of the people.

The jungle scenes, when Sara finds the wrecked Nazi bomber and then runs from the Russians who are hunting her, were inspired by the couple months that I spent in the jungles of Congo and Uganda some years ago. Hiking along jungle trails that nobody but hunters used, with local guides who never seemed to get lost, provided the raw material for many of the early chapters of the book. I tried to make those scenes, with the forbidden beauty of the jungle, as realistic as I could. 

The U.N. airbase came from Somalia, at the UN peacekeepers’ base outside Mogadishu – where the planes have to bank sharply in from the ocean to avoid missiles and small arms fire from the ground. I visited there for work a few years ago, and the airfield’s barbed-wire fences and security gates were the inspiration for the base where Jeb and Sara hijacked their plane back to Europe.

The scenes in the Libyan desert and along the coastline were drawn from the hitchhiking I did across the Sahara and the Sinai a few years ago. The emptiness of the desert, and the brutal heat of the day, came from the surroundings of Tamanraset and El Golea. The scenes of Jeb and Sara waiting alongside an empty desert road for most of a night and day were borrowed from those same destinations. 

And the scenes in Italy, from Calabria to Rome to Lucca, come from a dozen trips to one of the world’s most beautiful countries. Sara’s trip with Jeb up the Italian boot retraces trips I have done along the exact same roads.

As for the people, Kerrington and Petronov come, unsurprisingly, from Washington and Moscow, respectively. No single person combined all of the traits, evil and otherwise, of either man. But many in both places contributed to both Kerrington and Petronov.

Most important, though, is Sara. She too contains pieces from people I have met. But more than any other character, she is herself and unique — making her own choices, different from what I had started out intending or what others might have chosen. In those chapters, I was really just along for the ride.

 

You can learn more about Gary Born and his books via his Amazon profile and follow him on Goodreads. The File is available via Histria Books and all major bookstores.

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

Paramount Pictures has preemptively acquired a remake of the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock-directed psychological thriller, Vertigo, with Robert Downey Jr eyeing the James Stewart lead role of the former police detective forced to retire after a line of duty trauma that leaves him with fear of heights and vertigo. After he’s shelved by his affliction, the detective is hired by an acquaintance to shadow his wife, whom he feels is behaving erratically. The script will be written by Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders. Paramount was the home for the original film, and the Hitchcock Estate favored the studio as the landing spot for the remake. The original was scripted by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor from the Boileau-Narcejac novel, D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead).

First-look images were revealed for the psychological thriller, My Sister’s Bones, adapted from Nuala Ellwood’s novel of the same name. The film opens in a bleak police station where celebrated war correspondent Kate Rafter (Jenny Seagrove) faces questions from a psychiatrist, Dr. Shaw (Olga Kurylenko), as they work through the painful events of Rafter’s life. A horrific incident in war-torn Iraq and the death of her mother have brought a haunted Rafter home to Herne Bay, a place she believed she had escaped forever. Her resentful sister (Anna Friel) has not made her sister welcome and her forbearing husband Paul (Ben Miles) fails to broker peace. Whilst packing up her mother’s belongings from her childhood home, Rafter comes to believe there is something strange and terrifying happening in the house next door.

Michael Stuhlbarg is set to join Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in The Instigators for Apple Original Films, with Doug Liman aboard to direct. The film follows two thieves who go on the run with the help of one of their therapists after a robbery goes awry. The script was penned by Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck and developed by Robinov, Graham, and Affleck. Also in the cast are Hong Chau and Paul Walter Hauser.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

James Patterson has inked an exclusive first-look deal with Skydance Television, which is already in production on an adaptation of his Alex Cross series starring Aldis Hodge. As part of the deal, Patterson will develop a slate of series based on his top-selling book series:  Women’s Murder Club, which follows a group of women from different professions who work together to solve murders, and also Michael Bennett, which follows NYPD Detective Michael Bennett as he solves crimes and raises his ten adopted children. Other projects in the pipeline will include Private, which centers on a high-end private investigation agency run by former CIA agent Jack Morgan; Jane Smith, a yet-to-be-published series that follows Jane, a brilliant defense attorney and private investigator who, on the eve of a major homicide trial, learns she has just 14 months to live; and Holmes, Miss Marple and Poe, which follows Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple and August Poe, who have formed the most in-demand private investigation firm in present-day New York City, with claims to be distantly related to three of the greatest mystery writers of all time—but who are they really?

The BBC is delving into the history of Soho’s criminal underworld for its a six-part drama series, Dope Girls, inspired by Marek Kohn’s non-fiction book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground. The series will mix elements of the fact-based research of Kohn’s book with fictional characters and storylines, exploring all aspects of the criminal world of Soho in the early 20th Century. Deadline reported it’s partly based on the true story of conservative, god-fearing 42-year old single mother Kate Meyrick, who builds a nightclub empire and criminal family enterprise and becomes the most dangerous woman in London as well as a competitor to Brilliant Chang, the baron of Soho’s gritty underworld. Her nightclubs are fueled by drugs and alcohol that allow for a generation of World War I veterans and survivors to forget their trauma and break through the rigid patriarchal structures of the era to allow women to dance, have sex and do drugs with whomever they want.

Amazon is moving forward with its series adaptation of E. Lockhart’s novel, We Were Liars, a "tragic" love story and an amnesia thriller set on a privately owned island off the coast of Massachusetts. Focusing on the theme of consequences of one’s mistakes, the series follows the wealthy, seemingly perfect Sinclair family, who spend every summer sitting gathered on their private island. However, not every year is the same: When something happens to Cadence during the summer of her 15th year, she and the other three "Liars"— Johnny, Gat and Mirren — re-emerge two years later to prompt Cadence to remember the incident.

Oscar-winning Eddie Redmayne will star in The Day of the Jackal series for Peacock and Sky, playing The Jackal, a professional assassin hired by a French paramilitary dissident to kill French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962. The series is based on the Frederick Forsyth novel and 1973 film adaptation from Universal Pictures. However, it has been reimagined as a contemporary story set amidst the current turbulent geo-political landscape and will delve deeper into the chameleon like "anti-hero." Top Boy creator and writer, Ronan Bennett, will pen the script and serve as showrunner.

CBS Studios is developing The Mysterious Mortons, a detective drama series for CBS from Charmed's Amy Rardin and George Northy and Castle's Laurie Zaks. The show follows a homicide detective who enlists his quirky family of mystery writers to assist him in cracking the cases that perplex the authorities.

Emmy winner Michael Chiklis is set to star alongside Danny Pino in Hotel Cocaine, MGM+’s upcoming crime thriller series from creator Chris Brancato. Hotel Cocaine is the story of Roman Compte (Pino), a Cuban expatriate who fought against Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion and re-made his life in Miami. He is general manager of the Hotel Mutiny, the glamorous epicenter of the Miami cocaine scene of late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The Hotel Mutiny was Casablanca on cocaine, a glitzy nightclub, restaurant and hotel frequented by Florida businessmen and politicians, international narcos, CIA and FBI agents, models, sports stars and musicians. Chiklis will play Agent Zulio who will stop at nothing to shut down the drug trade, even if it means using innocent civilians to accomplish his ends.

Endeavour, the PBS Masterpiece detective drama that stars Shaun Evans and Roger Allam, will return for its ninth and final season June 18. Inspired by Inspector Morse and based on the novels of Colin Dexter, the spinoff set in the ’70s will wrap with Endeavour Morse (Evans) and his superior officer Fred Thursday (Allam) facing new crimes and an unsolved case from the past. Jack Bannon will return as Sam, while other characters from former seasons are expected to appear in the finale. The ensemble cast includes Anton Lesser as CS Reginald Bright, Sean Rigby as Jim Strange, and James Bradshaw as Dr. Max DeBryn. An hourlong documentary titled Morse and The Last Endeavour is planned for June 11.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On Book Riot's Read or Dead podcast, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed noir novels.

All About Agatha chatted with debut author Kitty Murphy about the first book in her "Dublin Drag Mysteries" series, Death in Heels.

Crime Time FM's Paul Burke spoke with Alis Hawkins about her new literary historical mystery, A Bitter Remedy; Welsh history; the Teifi Valley Coroner; the Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival; and a strange male affliction.

Mystery Melange

 

The shortlists for this year’s British Book Awards or "Nibbies" (administered by The Bookseller) have been announced, including those in the Crime & Thriller category: Bamburg by L.J. Ross; Murder Before Evensong by Reverend Richard Coles; The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman; The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley; The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett; and Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister. Winners will be announced on Monday, May 15, both in person and streamed live online.

Martin Edwards, the CWA Diamond Dagger-winning author of the Lake District Mysteries, as well as other novels and nonfiction works such as The Golden Age of Murder, is the recipient of the 2023 George N. Dove Award, named for the past president of the Popular Culture Association (PCA). Presented by the PCA, the prize honors "'outstanding contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction." Previous winners include Professor Doug Greene, Janet Rudolph of Mystery Readers International, P.D. James, H.R.F. Keating, and Julian Symons.

The inaugural Hamptons Mystery & Crime Festival (a/k/a Hamptons Whodunit), debuts April 13–16 in the Village of East Hampton, New York, led by founding Honorary Co-Chairs Alafair Burke and A. J. Finn. There will be a packed schedule of panels including Q&As with Guests of Honor, Anthony Horowitz and Michael Connelly, as well as book signings, the "The Goody Garlick" Tour, a Hamptons Crime Scenes Bus Tour, Free Escape Rooms, a Forensics World-sponsored realistic simulated crime scene challenge, and much more. For information, check out the event's official website.

Good news for book lovers: According to a Forbes Advisor analysis, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends, bookstores are projected to be the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023, followed by PR firms, interior design services, staffing agencies, and marketing consulting services.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "A Few Small Nips" by Jennifer Lagier.

In the Q&A roundup, Ann Cleves, creator of Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez, and Matthew Venn crime fiction series (all of which have been turned into TV productions) stopped by the Crime Fiction Lover blog to chat about her latest installment in the Vera series, The Rising Tide; crime writer Lynda La Plante opened up to The Express about turning 80 and why she's not ready to retire quite yet; and the Austin Mystery Writers chatted with prolific and award-winning crime short story writer, John M. Floyd.

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

Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) is set to join the cast of the crime drama, The Killer, and will star opposite Omar Sy in a leading role. The two are headlining the reimagining of the 1989 John Woo film, which the director is returning to helm and produce. The original film starred Chow Yun Fat and follows an assassin who takes one last assignment in order to use his earnings to pay for the surgery that will restore the sight of a singer he blinded. The screenplay was penned by writing partners Matthew Stuecken and Josh Campbell, as well as Eran Creevy and Brian Helgeland.

Tyrese Gibson (The Fast and Furious franchise) and Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs) have signed on to star in the action thriller, The Wrecker, currently shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Filmmaker Art Camacho is directing from an original screenplay by Niko Foster, who also stars in the film. The plot follows a dishonorably discharged ex-marine named Tony, now turned car mechanic, whose life takes an unexpected turn when his reckless brother makes a bad decision gaining the unwanted attention of a notorious crime boss.

RLJE Films has acquired the psychological thriller, Sympathy for the Devil, and will distribute the film in North America, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, with a release date set for July 28, 2023. Starring Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman, the project tells the story of a man (Kinnaman) who is forced at gunpoint to drive a strange passenger (Cage) in a game of cat and mouse where everything is not as it seems. Yuval Adler (Bethlehem; The Operative) directed from a debut script by Luke Paradise.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Viaplay has found its Inspector Rebus for the latest adaptation based on author Sir Ian Rankin's novels. Outlander star, Richard Rankin (no relation to the author), will play the lead in the Nordic streamer’s debut UK original, titled Rebus. Richard Rankin follows in the footsteps of fellow Scottish actors John Hannah and Ken Stott, who led the ITV version 20 years ago. Viaplay’s reboot, which is planned as a returning series and will soon unveil more of the cast, follows 40-year-old Inspector John Rebus at a psychological crossroads following an altercation with an infamous Edinburgh gangster. At odds with a job increasingly driven by technocrats, involved in a toxic affair he knows he needs to end, and all but supplanted in his daughter’s life by his ex-wife’s wealthy new husband, Rebus begins to wonder if he still has a role to play – either as a family man or a police officer.

Newly minted Oscar winner Ed Berger, director, co-writer and producer of All Quiet On the Western Front, is set to direct and executive produce Helltown, currently in development at Amazon. Oscar Isaac is in discussions to lead the series. According to the logline, the hour-long, eight-episode crime thriller follows the life of Kurt Vonnegut before he became known to the world as a renowned author. Per Amazon, "In 1969 Kurt was a struggling novelist and car salesman living life with his wife and five children on Cape Cod. When two women disappear and are later discovered murdered underneath the sand dunes on the outskirts of Provincetown, Kurt becomes obsessed and embroiled in the chilling hunt for a serial killer and forms a dangerous bond with the prime suspect." Based on the book of the same name written by Casey Sherman, the series comes from Severance co-Executive Producer, Mohamad El Masri, who will also serve as showrunner and writer.

A Monk follow-up movie is coming to Peacock. The NBCUniversal streamer has ordered Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, starring Tony Shalhoub in a reprisal of his titular role from the USA series, along with original series cast members Ted Levine, Traylor Howard, Jason Gray-Stanford, Melora Hardin, and Hector Elizondo. In the follow-up movie, Monk, a brilliant San Francisco-based detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, returns to solve one last, very personal case involving his beloved stepdaughter Molly, a journalist preparing for her wedding.

Christopher Reich’s Simon Riske book series is headed to the small screen on Netflix. Oscar-winning director Edward Berger is set to helm the international spy thriller, which is being written by Rowan Joffe (Tin Star; The Informer). Described as being in the vein of The Day of the Jackal and The Bourne Identity, the first season will be based on the first book in the series, The Take, centering on Simon Riske, a freelance industrial spy. Riske lives largely under the radar above his auto garage in London until he gets involved in the chase for a stolen letter that could upend the balance of power in the Western world, set against the backdrop of the greatest street heist in the history of Paris.

Amazon Prime Video has canceled Three Pines after just one season. Based on the novels by Louise Penny, the series starred Alfred Molina as Inspector Armond Gamache as he investigates cases beneath the idyllic surface of the Quebec village of Three Pines. The series had been left on a cliffhanger, with Gamache’s life on the line as his team tried to find him. The project also starred Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, and the show had garnered praise for its nuanced portrayal of Indigenous people and issues.

CBS is getting a head start on boosting the profile of its new Justin Hartley drama, now named Tracker. Previously known as The Never Game, the series is scheduled to air during the 2023-24 broadcast season, but the network’s marketing department plans to kick off the drama’s promotional campaign this Thursday during March Madness. Tracker, based on the bestselling novel, The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, follows a lone-wolf survivalist named Colter Shaw (Hartley), who roams the country as a "reward seeker," using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family. Robin Weigert, Abby McEnany, Eric Graise, and Fiona Rene also star.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with three of the four crime writers who've published a novel under the name Lee Anne Post, the pen name for co-authors Cathy Baldau, Tara Bell, Ginny Fite and K.P. Robbins. They've worked as reporters and editors covering various types of topics, and they have written a highly relevant novel that entertains and raises important issues, Thoughts & Prayers.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Alma Katsu to discuss her book, Red London, the follow-up to Red Widow. Mildly disgraced CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan is working to rehabilitate her reputation by taking an assignment in London sussing out a potential Russian defector, until she’s loaned out to MI6 in an effort to befriend the wife of a Russian oligarch and convince her to flip on her husband. The clock is ticking though, Putin’s successor in the Kremlin might have a more permanent solution

Kate Hamer, Peter Swanson, Tove Alsterdal, and Charlotte Vassell chatted with Paul Burke for a special episode of Crime Time FM featuring the four Faber authors, who have each just published a new thriller/crime novel.

On the latest Writer's Detective Bureau, Detective Adam Richardrson answered questions about financial crimes, how a detective could go about becoming a police chief in another state, and he explained what it means to be a percipient witness.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with crime writer John Lincoln Williams about his new novel, punk rock [sic]; interviewing Great American Crime Writers; and his biography of pop legend, Shirley Bassey. They also talked about writers who were terrible people.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club visited with Wendy Sand Eckel about her book Mystery at Windswept Farm, the third book in the Rosalie Hart Mystery Series.

Edith Maxwell, who also writes under the name Maddie Day, is the Agatha-winning author of the Quaker Midwife Mysteries. On the latest Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine podcast, she read her story "Peril in Pasadena," which features 1920s private eyes Dorothy Henderson and Ruth Skinner in a case involving a woman astronomer.

Lauding the Leftys

 

During a celebratory awards banquet held Saturday evening at the Left Coast Crime convention in Tucson, Arizona, the winners of the 2023 Lefty Awards were announced in four categories. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Best Humorous Mystery Novel: Bayou Book Thief, by Ellen Byron (Berkley Prime Crime)

Also nominated:

• Death by Bubble Tea, by Jennifer J. Chow (Berkley Prime Crime)
•  Five Moves of Doom, by A.J. Devlin (NeWest Press)
• A Streetcar Named Murder, by T.G. Herren (Crooked Lane)
• Scot in a Trap, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)

Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bill Gottfried Memorial): Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Also nominated:

• A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• In Place of Fear, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)
• Under a Veiled Moon, by Karen Odden (Crooked Lane)
• The Secret in the Wall, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Framed in Fire, by Iona Whishaw (Touchwood)

Best Debut Mystery Novel: Shutter, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)

Also nominated:

• Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
• Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime)
• Other People’s Secrets, by Meredith Hambrock (Crooked Lane)
• The Bangalore Detectives Club, by Harini Nagendra (Pegasus Crime)
• Devil’s Chew Toy, by Rob Osler (Crooked Lane)
• The Verifiers, by Jane Pek (Vintage)

Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories): Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)

Also nominated:

• Back to the Garden, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• Dead Drop, by James L’Etoile (Level Best)
• Under Lock & Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian (Minotaur)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)

   

Author R&R with Mark Edward Langley

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father. After many visits, his connection to the land and its people became irrevocable, but he was appalled at the way he saw Native Americans being treated. After spending almost thirty years working in the corporate world, he retired at the end of 2016 and began to focus on realizing his goal of becoming an author. He created a strong Navajo protagonist, a U.S. veteran who fights for his people and their land. Langley’s first novel, Path of the Dead, was released in August of 2018, and the follow-up, Death Waits in the Dark, was the recipient of the 2021 Gold Medal for Best Mystery of the Year in the Feathered Quill Book Awards.

Here's the description of the book:

In Death Waits in the Dark, as Arthur Nakai is attending the wake for a man he considered a brother while serving in the U.S. Marines, he receives a call from an old girlfriend whose sons have just been murdered. Feeling a deep and responsible obligation, Arthur investigates and soon finds himself embroiled in the multi-billion dollar world of oil and gas, coming face-to-face with an old adversary, Elias Dayton. Their paths crossed when Arthur was a member of the Shadow Wolves, an elite tactical unit within U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Now Dayton runs Patriot Security, a Blackwater clone that keeps the oil rigs, gas wells, and "man camps" secure from the Water Protectors, protesters pushing to stop the fracking and poisoning of Native lands.

While Arthur works through the case from his end, Navajo police chief Jake Bilagody tackles it from another angle, looking into the strained relationship between the oil company and the Navajo people, all while searching for a missing Navajo man who may have become an unwilling pawn on the reservation chess board. But when Arthur learns the identity of the boys' killer, he struggles to make sense of it—because if the clues are right, he will be forced to make a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Today, Mark stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels:

 

I’ve been told by other authors that I do things a little bit backward. I start with a title, then create a story that fits it. Once I decide what the novel will be about, I begin by researching online anything that might fit the narrative. As with Death Waits in the Dark, I looked up everything I could about fracking because there are over 2,500 wells in the ninety-mile stretch of Highway 550 between Bloomfield, NM and Cuba, NM. I thought that would be a great backdrop for the story. Then, since I don’t live out there yet, I researched the pros and cons of it, followed by the native reactions given during meetings at local Chapter Houses to discuss the issue. I don’t like beating people over the head with viewpoints; I give all viewpoints and let the reader make up their own mind.

My reaction from the Navajo people concerning my writing is that they like the fact that I am bringing to light things that affect them on a daily basis—the alcoholism, the drugs, and poverty and the resulting and lingering affect the oil and gas industry is having on their beloved sacred land. With each book, I end up with a large four-inch binder of research to draw from. Since my stories represent life on and off the reservation, I have been lucky enough to develop a contact with the Navajo Nation Police Department, which is headquartered in Window Rock, AZ. They have been very helpful.

It wasn’t until researching my third book in the Arthur Nakai series, When Silence Screams, that my research began to affect me. The novel concerns itself with a fictional 19-year-old girl, April Manygoats, who was befriended by someone online with whom she arranged a meeting in Santa Fe. She was never heard from again. Then a 15-year-old girl goes missing, leaving behind nothing but her bicycle hidden under a bridge over an empty desert wash. To make matters even worse, a 22-year-old woman has been fished out of a power plant cooling lake on the reservation, missing something unthinkable.

Are the cases related? Or are they simply part of a bigger, more horrifying picture plaguing his beloved Dinétah? But—more importantly—will Arthur be able to piece together enough of the sadistic puzzle that will locate April . . . or is he already too late?

This story was sparked by the 5,712 missing and murdered indigenous girls and women who disappeared during 2016 alone on the reservations in the US and Canada. I listened to many interviews with family members, watched news reports, read stories, and printed out all of the fliers created during 2017 for the girls and women who were reported missing. My research then led me to the dark worlds of human trafficking, prostitution, and BDSM torture, all things I knew nothing about and wished to convey accurately.

As you can imagine, a great deal of time is spent plowing through anything that could be used in my novels. In fact, I am always collecting ideas for stories. I have an entire file drawer in my office filled with possible ideas. Since my subject matter is the land that I love, I feel a kinship with the people and the land itself, so my take on things is personal as far as where the stories take place, who is involved, and what the outcome will be.

To me, you can never have enough research. In fact, the next book I’m working on took me to a Zoom meeting with the Deputy Director of the New Mexico Livestock Board. I had emailed him explaining that I am a writer and was looking to develop a new series that would be built around some of their case files I had requested. He answered my initial questions and we set up a time to meet virtually. When I received the detailed case files, I read through them and began shaping how the story would play out and which characters would inhabit this particular world. The Deputy Director even invited me to take ride-a-longs with some of his inspectors so I could experience their daily duties first-hand. I am looking forward to that aspect.

Research is the backbone of your story; it's what drives your characters to do what they do and how they might react. I outline each chapter, but once I begin writing, the characters take over, and no matter how well I plan, they always lead me to a new level of dialogue, action, or outcome.

 

You can find out more about the author and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Bookbub. Death Waits in the Dark is now available via all major booksellers and Blackstone Publishing.

Thrills Galore

The International Thriller Writers announced announce the finalists for the 2023 ITW Thriller Awards. Winners will be announced at the annual conference, ThrillerFest XVIII on Saturday, June 3, 2023 at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, New York City. Good luck to all!

BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL
 
Delilah S. Dawson – THE VIOLENCE (Del Rey)
Jennifer Hillier – THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK (Minotaur)
Alma Katsu – THE FERVOR (Penguin/Putnam)
Jennifer McMahon – THE CHILDREN ON THE HILL (Simon & Schuster)
Chris Pavone – TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON (MCD)
Catriona Ward – SUNDIAL (Macmillan)
 
BEST AUDIOBOOK
 
Kimberly Belle, Fargo Layne, Cate Holahan, Vanessa Lillie – YOUNG RICH WIDOWS (Audible)
        Narrated by Dina Pearlman, Karissa Vacker, Helen Laser, Ariel Blake
Julie Clark – THE LIES I TELL (Audible)
        Narrated by Anna Caputo, Amanda Dolan
J. L. Delozier – THE PHOTO THIEF (CamCat Publishing)
        Narrated by Rachel L. Jacobs, Jeffrey Kafer
Jennifer Hillier – THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK (Macmillan Audio)
        Narrated by Carla Vega
Minka Kent – THE SILENT WOMAN (Blackstone Publishing)
        Narrated by Christine Lakin, Kate Rudd
 
BEST FIRST NOVEL
 
Lauren Nossett – THE RESEMBLANCE (Flatiron Books)
Sascha Rothchild – BLOOD SUGAR (Penguin/Putnam)
Hayley Scrivenor – DIRT TOWN (Pan Macmillan)
Stacy Willingham – A FLICKER IN THE DARK (Minotaur)
Erin Young – THE FIELDS (Flatiron Books)
 
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL NOVEL
 
Mary Burton – THE LIES I TOLD (Montlake Romance)
Mark Edwards – NO PLACE TO RUN (Thomas & Mercer)
Minka Kent – UNMISSING (Thomas & Mercer)
Freida McFadden – THE HOUSEMAID (Grand Central Publishing)
Wanda Morris – ANYWHERE YOU RUN (William Morrow)
Holly Wainwright – THE COUPLE UPSTAIRS (Pan Macmillan)
Loreth Anne White – THE PATIENT'S SECRET (Montlake Romance)
 
BEST SHORT STORY
 
Dominique Bibeau – RUSSIAN FOR BEGINNERS (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Barb Goffman – THE GIFT (Down & Out Books)
Smita Harish Jain – PUBLISH OR PERISH (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Joyce Carol Oates – 33 CLUES INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY SISTER (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Anna Scotti – SCHRÖDINGER, CAT (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Catherine Steadman – STOCKHOLM (Amazon Original Stories)
 
BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
 
Melissa Albert – OUR CROOKED HEARTS (Flatiron Books)
Gillian French – SUGARING OFF (Algonquin Young Readers)
Kate McLaughlin – DAUGHTER (Wednesday Books)
Francesca Padilla – WHAT'S COMING TO ME (Soho Teen)
Courtney Summers – I'M THE GIRL (Wednesday Books)
 
BEST E-BOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL
 
Bill Byrnes – EVASIVE SPECIES (Self-published)
Diane Jeffrey – THE COUPLE AT CAUSEWAY COTTAGE (HarperCollins)
Grant McKenzie – THE SEVEN TRUTHS OF HANNAH BAXTER (Self-published)
Rick Mofina – THE HOLLOW PLACE (Self-published)
Carrie Rubin – FATAL ROUNDS (Self-published)

 

Mystery Melange

 

The International Association of Crime Writers, North America announced the 2022 Hammett Prize Shortlist. This year's honorees include: Copperhead Road, by Brad Smith; Gangland, by Chuck Hogan; Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor; Pay Dirt Road, by Samantha Jayne Allen; and What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline. The Hammett Prize is given for literary excellence in crime writing published in the English language in the U.S. or Canada. The winner will be announced Summer 2023. Past winners have included Elmore Leonard, Alice Hoffman, James Lee Burke, Margaret Atwood, Mary Willis Walker, Martin Cruz Smith, Gil Adamson, Megan E. Abbott, George Pelecanos, Howard Owen, Lisa Sandlin, and others.

The 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards finalists were announced late last week. More than 2,500 entries spread across 55 genres were submitted for consideration, with finalists determined by Foreword Magazine’s editorial team. You can see all the categories here, and also check out the finalists in the Mystery Category and in the Thriller & Suspense Category. Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 15, 2023.

The Lambda Literary Awards (or "Lammys") announced this year's finalists for the finest LGBTQ books of the previous year. The nods in the 2023 Best LGBTQ+ Mystery category include: A Death in Berlin by David C Dawson; And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling; Dead Letters from Paradise by Ann McMan; Dirt Creek: A Novel by Hayley Scrivenor; and Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen. Finalists and winners for the 35th annual Lammy Awards will be celebrated in live in New York at the Edison Ballroom as well as in an immersive virtual platform on Friday, June 9th.

Glencairn Crystal, sponsor of the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime writing awards, announced the winners of this year's crime short story competition, which had the theme of "Scottish Crime," meaning the story must be set in Scotland. More than 100 stories were entered in the competition, each containing no more than 2,000 words. First place went to "Dummy Railway" by Francis Crawford, and the runner up was "The Last Tram to Gorbals Cross" by Alan Gaw. Crawford receives £1,000 and publication in the May issue of Scottish Field Magazine, while Gow receives £500. Both authors will also receive a set of six bespoke engraved Glencairn glasses.

Writers Digest is sponsoring their 9th Annual Mystery and Thriller Virtual Conference March 25-26. The event aims to help authors learn the finer points of how to write within the mystery and thriller genres. The bestselling authors scheduled to lead workshops include Kate White, Jessica Strawser, Jaime Lynn Hendricks, Hank Phillipi Ryan, Jeffery Deaver, Chris Mooney, and Jesse Q. Sutanto, on such topics as "Master Pacing" and "Visual Storytelling. For more information, follow this link.

Good publishers can lift up not only authors and readers, but the entire industry, as well. A case in point is Dean Street Press, which was established in 2015 and specializes in literary, general and crime fiction, particularly golden age mysteries. The company was founded by Richard Heath, who tragically died of a heart attack last week following the death of his wife from cancer. He was only 54. Curtis Evans had a personal remembrance of Heath on Evans's crime fiction blog, The Passing Tramp.

The New York Times has a series called "Overlooked No More," a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. One of the most recent features was for Dilys Winn, who opened Murder Ink, believed to be the nation’s first mystery bookstore, and brought fans together through interactive whodunits and other events. Winn was also the author of Murder Ink, which included offbeat essays by established figures and Winn herself (under various nom de plumes), along with character studies, photographs, quizzes and more. In 1978, the Mystery Writers of America conferred an Edgar Allan Poe award on Winn, and the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association established a Dilys Award in 1992, presented annually to the mystery title its member booksellers most enjoyed selling (an award unfortunately discontinued after 2014).

Do you recall that recent news story about a mysterious thief who stole more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts from various publishers? Once the thief was found and charged, many people in the industry wondered about the motive since the manuscripts were never sold or published. According to court filings, the thief says he merely wanted to read books before they hit stores.

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

In the Q&A Roundup, Joyce St. Anthony spoke with E. B. Davis at Writers Who Kill about her latest book, Death on a Deadline, the second book in the author's Homefront News mystery series set during WWII; and Criminal Element featured a Q&A with P. J. Tracy, author of the Detective Margaret Nolan Series.

CrimeFest Announces the 2023 Award Shortlists

 

CrimeFest, one of Europe’s leading crime writing conventions, has announced the shortlists for its annual awards, now in their 16th year. Eligible titles are submitted by publishers, and a team of British crime fiction reviewers vote to establish the shortlist and the winners. The top prizes will be presented at the convention Gala Awards Dinner on May 13, 2023. Congrats to all!

SPECSAVERS DEBUT CRIME NOVEL AWARD

 

In association with headline sponsor, the Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award is for debut authors first published in the United Kingdom in 2022. The winning author receives a £1,000 prize.

 

- Amen Alonge for A Good Day to Die (Quercus)

- Graham Bartlett for Bad for Good (Allison & Busby)

- Nita Prose for The Maid (HarperCollins)

- Oriana Rammuno (translator: Katherine Gregor) for Ashes in the Snow (HarperCollins)

- Joachim B. Schmidt (translator: Jamie Lee Searle) for Kalmann (Bitter Lemon)

- Hayley Scrivenor for Dirt Town (Macmillan)

- John Sutherland for The Siege (Orion Fiction)

- Stacy Willingham for A Flicker in the Dark (HarperCollins)

 

 eDUNNIT AWARD

 

The eDunnit Award is for the best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format in the United Kingdom in 2022.

 

- Chris Brookmyre for The Cliff House (Abacus)

- Michael Connelly for Desert Star (Orion Fiction)

- M.W. Craven for The Botanist (Constable)

- Sara Gran for The Book of the Most Precious Substance (Faber & Faber)

- Ian Rankin for A Heart Full of Headstones (Orion Fiction)

- Peter Swanson for Nine Lives (Faber & Faber)

 

H.R.F. KEATING AWARD

 

The H.R.F. Keating Award is for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction first published in the United Kingdom in 2022. The award is named after H.R.F. ‘Harry’ Keating, one of Britain’s most esteemed crime novelists, crime reviewers and writer of books about crime fiction.

 

- J.C. Bernthal & Mary Anna Evans for The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie (Bloomsbury Academic)

- John le Carré (edited by Tim Cornwell) for A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020 (Viking)

- Martin Edwards for The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators (Collins Crime Club)

- Barry Forshaw for Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films (Oldcastle Books)

- Sian MacArthur for Gender Roles and Political Contexts in Cold War Spy Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan)

- Lucy Worsley for Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (Hodder & Stoughton)

 

 LAST LAUGH AWARD

 

The Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel first published in the United Kingdom in 2022.

 

- Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May's Peculiar London (Doubleday)

- Elly Griffiths for The Locked Room (Quercus)

- Mick Herron for Bad Actors (Baskerville)

- Cara Hunter for Hope to Die (Viking)

- Mike Ripley for Mr Campion's Mosaic (Severn House)

- Antti Tuomainen for The Moose Paradox (Orenda Books)

 

BEST CRIME FICTION NOVEL FOR CHILDREN

 

This award is for the best crime novel for children (aged 8-12) first published in the United Kingdom in 2022.

 

- Elly Griffiths for A Girl Called Justice: The Spy at the Window (Quercus Children's Books)

- Anthony Horowitz for Where Seagulls Dare: A Diamond Brothers Case (Walker Books)

- Sharna Jackson for The Good Turn (Puffin)

- M.G. Leonard for Spark (Walker Books)

- Robin Stevens for The Ministry of Unladylike Activity (Puffin)

- Sarah Todd Taylor for Alice Éclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble (Nosy Crow)

 

BEST CRIME FICTION NOVEL FOR YOUNG ADULTS

 

This award is for the best crime novel for young adults (aged 12-16) first published in the United Kingdom in 2022.

- Holly Jackson for Five Survive (Electric Monkey)

- Patrice Lawrence for Needle (Barrington Stoke)

- Finn Longman for The Butterfly Assassin (Simon & Schuster Children's)

- Sophie McKenzie for Truth or Dare (Simon & Schuster Children's)

- Ruta Sepetys for I Must Betray You (Hodder Children's Books)

- Jonathan Stroud for The Notorious Scarlett and Browne (Walker Books)

Author R&R with Marie Still

Marie Still grew up a "Navy brat," which meant a lot of moving, but there was one constant: books. From a young age, Marie developed an obsession for the dark and more murdery side of literature, especially Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood. That obsession with words and dark stories translated into a love of writing. Never sticking around one place for too long has given Marie the opportunity to see the world, experience different cultures, and meet many different people—all of which fuel her creativity and the characters and settings in her novels. Marie’s domestic thriller debut We’re All Lying is available March 14, 2023, while her sophomore thriller, My Darlings releases in 2024. She also writes suspenseful book club fiction under Kristen Seeley, whose debut, Beverly Bonnefinche is Dead releases September 2023.

We're All Lying follows Cass, who lives an enviable life: a successful career, two great kids, and a handsome husband. Then an email from her husband’s mistress, Emma, brings the façade of perfection crumbling around her, setting off a chain of events where buried secrets come back to haunt her. A taunting email turns into stalking and escalates into much worse. Ethan and Cass try to move on, then Emma disappears. No longer considered a victim, Cass finds herself the prime suspect and center of the investigation. Her dark secrets—including ones she didn’t know existed—threaten to destroy everything they’ve worked for. 

Marie stops by In Reference to Murder to discuss researching and writing the book:

 

As a thriller author I often get asked, “What’s wrong with you?” In fact, my husband has been scared on many occasions after reading some of my work. It’s always the spouse, though, I’d never be so careless. While a good portion of my research while writing does go into various murder methods, my favorite research is delving into the human psyche. What makes people tick? Snap? How do different personalities process trauma, stress, fear, and being pushed out of their comfort zone?

When I develop my characters, I am very careful to avoid clichés. Real humans with real nuances and flaws and backgrounds don’t act in cookie cutter ways. One of my least favorite phrases is, “I would never…” It’s so easy to observe situations from the outside and make judgement, but the real ‘never’ statement is you never know what you’ll do when emotions (rage, jealousy, deception, etc.) take over.

For this reason, I’m constantly observing humans for what they show on the outside, and who they are on the inside. Social media has made this constant character study much easier. People put more of their lives on the internet than ever before. Sometimes those lives are curated, which is also a fascinating look into the human mind. Quora and Reddit offer anonymity, which makes them two of my go-to sources to better understand people, and create characters with interesting facets.

Preventative mental health care is a subject I feel very passionately about. Additionally, portraying mental health disorders in my stories with compassion and sensitivity. There are several disorders which I have personal, lived experience with. When I don’t, I ensure I’m having conversations with those who do live with whatever I’m writing about. Additionally, I have a sister-in-law who works as a nurse practitioner in a mental health hospital who has been a wonderful resource herself, but also connecting me with psychiatrists when I have additional questions. And, I think it’s important to note, mental illness doesn’t not equate to violence. There are many people living very normal lives with psychopathy, sociopathy, and other mental health disorders.

Whether I’m online or living my life, I’m always watching. Ok that sounds a bit creepy, especially since I started out by saying I was well-versed in ways in which to murder someone. I digress. I pay close attention to how people react to stress, drama, life. I listen with a purpose to people speaking, studying how speech patterns give insight into a person’s personality. Being incredibly nosey has been one of the most useful tools as a writer. And if we ever cross paths, you may just be inspiration for one of my characters. Whether a victim or a villain, I’ll never tell. 

 

You can learn more about Marie Still and her books via her website and also follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. We're All Lying is available via Rising Action Publishing and all major booksellers.

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

Apple Original Films is developing the thriller, Echo Valley, from a script by Mare of Easttown creator, Brad Ingelsby. Sydney Sweeney and Julianne Moore are attached to star, with Michael Pearce directing. Moore plays Kate Garrett, who is reeling from a personal tragedy and spends her days boarding and training horses at Echo Valley Farm, a secluded, picturesque property in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Late one night, her wayward daughter, Claire (played by Sweeney), arrives at her doorstep, frightened, trembling, and covered in someone else’s blood. As the logline states, "from that simple premise, Echo Valley becomes a heart-pounding thriller about just how far a mother will go to save her child."

Jason Clarke, Scott Eastwood, and Chaske Spencer have joined the cast of Wind River: The Next Chapter, the sequel to Taylor Sheridan’s 2017 crime drama. Kari Skogland will direct from a screenplay by writing partners Patrick Massett and John Zinman (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Friday Night Lights). Starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen (who are not returning for the sequel), the 2017 film followed a seasoned hunter who helped an FBI agent investigate the killing of a young woman living on a Wyoming Native American reservation. The sequel also takes place on the Wind River reservation, where a series of ritualistic murders remain unsolved. Chip Hanson (Martin Sensmeier, reprising his Wind River role) is a newly minted tracker for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recruited by the FBI to work on the case. He soon finds himself in the middle of a conflict between the law, a vigilante, and the reservation he calls home.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

David Kane, the lead writer on the BBC’s Shetland, is developing Denise Mina’s Morrow book series into a multi-season TV show. Set in Glasgow, the series consists of five books and follows DS Alex Morrow, a formidable detective who can’t face talking to her husband or bear to sleep in the family home following a recent trauma. In season one, titled Still Midnight, as Morrow investigates a crime with partner Det. Sgt. Grant Bannerman, questions arise about whether their ambitious Machiavellian boss has their backs. Morrow doesn’t have a broadcaster attached yet but Kane envisages it running for multiple seasons.

Scottish producer STV Studios has landed TV rights for Natali Simmonds’s debut, Good Girls Die Last, which will be published later this year. Good Girls Die Last is a darkly comic, feminist thriller, telling the story of Em "who, on the day of a record-breaking heatwave, is in a race against the clock to escape a gridlocked London while a serial killer stalks the streets. Em’s life has always been full of men having their own way and today, the scorched city is teeming with them but, as her troubled past returns to haunt her, she refuses to let them win."

In another blow to Hulu’s series adaptation of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, Todd Field has exited the project on which he was to serve as director and executive producer. News of Field’s departure from the show comes just days after it was reported that series star, Keanu Reeves, had bowed out as well. The book tells the true story of Daniel H. Burnham, a demanding but visionary architect who races to make his mark on history with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and Dr. H. H. Holmes, America’s first modern serial killer and the man behind the notorious "Murder Castle" built in the Fair’s shadow. This is the latest chapter in the long development history of the book, which at various times has seen Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Martin Scorsese attached to the project.

HBO announced that season four of Bill Hader’s Barry will be its last. The series follows the misadventures of the titular character, a hired assassin who dreams of becoming an actor. The more he tries to move away from L.A.’s seedy underbelly the deeper it consumes him — and affects everyone around him. In Season 3, Barry is fully committed to untangling himself from the murder business to follow his passion to act full time. But that proves to be a job in and of itself because he knows too much. The cast also includes Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Michael Irby, Anthony Carrigan, and Sarah Goldberg.

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries will continue its popular Aurora Teagarden Mysteries without longtime star Candace Cameron Bure, giving a green light to the prequel, Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New that will premiere later this year. Skyler Samuels will take over the lead role as young Aurora, while Evan Roderick will play young Arthur and Marilu Henner will reprise her role as Aida Teagarden. Something New is set in Aurora Teagarden’s post-college days when she finds herself back home in Lawrenceton. While her mother, Aida (Henner), struggles to keep her new real estate business, Aurora supports herself by working as a teacher’s assistant in a crime fiction class, and waitresses at the local diner at night, where she shares her love of researching true crime with her friend Sally and police officer Arthur (Roderick). Bure began starring in the films in 2015; her last one, Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted by Murder, aired in February of last year.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured the novel, The Hunter, in which reckless behavior costs former NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell her job and her marriage. The book is by Jennifer Herrera, a former philosophy grad student turned literary agent and now author.

With Katie McLain Horner on vacation this week, Liberty Hardy joined Kendra Winchester on Read or Dead to discuss middle grade mysteries.

Cara Black stopped by Speaking of Mysteries to talk about Night Flight to Paris, the follow up novel to Three Hours in Paris, which introduced readers to Kate Rees, the Oregonian sharpshooter whose considerable skills are put to work by England during World War II.

The latest episode of Criminal Mischief : Forensic Science for Crime Writers featured Dr. DP Lyle discussing "evidence classification."

On the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine podcast, Martin Limón's duo of military detectives George Sueño and Ernie Bascom were on the case again in "Kimchi Kitty," trying to solve the disappearance of a Korean country music star.

Mystery Melange

 

Pulitzer Prize finalist, Megan Kate Nelson, and Emmy Award-winning director, Walter Hill, are among the 2023 Spur Award winners announced by Western Writers of America at the Tucson Festival of Books. Among the crime-themed honorees was the winner of the Original Mass-Market Paperback Novel, Dead Man’s Trail by Nate Morgan (Pinnacle/Kensington); and winner of the Traditional Novel category was The Secret in the Wall: A Silver Rush Mystery by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press). Presentations are scheduled during WWA’s convention June 21-24 in Rapid City, S.D. For more details about all the winners and finalists, head on over here.

As part of the annual Oxford Conference for the Book on the University of Mississippi campus, there will be a "Noir at the Bar" March 31 at Ajax Diner. Ace Atkins will discuss crime fiction with authors Megan Abbott, S.A. Cosby, Eli Cranor, and Tyler Keith, a Southern studies alumnus who will perform with Teardrop City afterward.

Some sad news to share: Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant & May series of detective novels, has died at the age of 69, having been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer three years ago. Fowler was best known for his Bryant & May thrillers, featuring the veteran detectives solving unusual crimes in London from the second world war to the present day. The series began with Full Dark House in 2003, and 17 more novels followed, most recently London Bridge Is Falling Down, published in 2021. Fowler's final words on his blog were: "All fun things have to come to an end. I love you all. Except for that horrible old troll – are there any other kind? There, now you have a smidgen of extra time on your hands, go have fun … and read a book.”

Cara Black, award-winning author of the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, applied the Page 69 Test to Night Flight to Paris, the latest installment in her World War II-set novels featuring American markswoman, Kate Rees.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "The Six-Shooter" by Tony Dawson.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element interviewed Alex Finlay, author of Every Last Fear, which was a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Mystery and Thriller, about his latest release, What Have We Done; and Lisa Haselton spoke with crime author, Wendy K. Koenig, about her new thriller, On The Sly, which follows a young bar owner, also the daughter of a small-town cop, who becomes the suspect in a murder investigation.

 

Author R&R with Angela Greenman

Angela Greenman is an internationally recognized communications professional. Her career has spanned the spectrum from community relations in Chicago to US and world governments’ public communications on nuclear power. She has been an expert and lecturer with the International Atomic Energy Agency for over a decade, a spokesperson for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a press officer for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the City's civil rights department. After traveling to twenty-one countries for work and pleasure, she decided it was time to seriously pursue her love of writing. She wants to share the exciting places she has visited, and the richness of the cultures she has experienced.

In Greenman's debut novel, The Child Riddler, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl. The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever "invisibility" nanoweapon. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child, and when enemies reveal the weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world want to find that little girl. Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. The agency-prescribed pills—the ones that transform her into the icy killer she must become to survive—are threatening her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness. Can she protect the young girl and still protect the one thing she cares more about than anything else?

Today Angela stops by In Reference to Murder for Author R&R about writing and researching.

 

My approach to research is the same as my approach to life: find the truth. Is that deal really good, or are there hidden charges? Can I trust what this person is saying? What really happened between them? Is this news report factual?

For me, life always seems to involve a quest for truth. So, when I sat down to seriously write The Child Riddler, I realized my research required more than just a technical search to find the correct facts and descriptions. It also involved seeking the truth in a character’s sensory and emotional moments. When I say “truth,” I mean a truth in life—what the description or event needs to be believable. Belief requires a commonality in feeling or experience. If readers believe what I write, they will connect to it and respond.

For example, when I write about a character walking on the beach, I want readers to feel as if they are on the beach too, hearing the waves crashing, smelling the salt water, feeling the grainy particles between their toes as their feet sink into the sand.

Creating a sensory immersion requires collecting the textures, colors, and scents of all that surrounds me. It’s building a giant mental toolbox so I can select that exact truth, the one that brings the scene alive as readers experience what the character’s senses are sharing.

Because I’ve been fortunate to have traveled extensively internationally, my sensory toolbox is stocked with many rich experiences. Here are two passages from The Child Riddler to illustrate what I mean by sensory immersion.

In this first passage, a character is in Vienna, Austria, touring the Habsburg Historic Staterooms in the Albertina Museum:

“His leather loafers silent on the exquisite rose and ebony inlaid parquet floor, Xavier strolled through the deserted staterooms. Greeted by brilliant turquoise, bright canary, and rich burgundy silk wallpaper, under grand chandeliers, surrounded by exquisite furniture and shiny gilded ornaments, he breathed in opulence. This was where he belonged.”

In this second passage, the same character is visiting a home in Petrich, Bulgaria.

“They entered a large garden. Wooden trellises, draped with gnarled grapevines that looked to be more than a century old, stood tall at the entrance. Plump, deep-red grape clusters hung from the thick vines. Red and pink rose bushes, apple and peach trees, and assorted vegetables—cabbage, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and peppers—lined the neatly planted garden.

Xavier took a deep breath. The roses’ sweet fragrance, used in the specialty essential oil and perfume of Bulgaria, floated in the light breeze, a pleasurable incense after being in the stuffy car.

Folk music played in the background. He scanned the garden but didn’t see a speaker or sound system.”

To research emotional immersion—really diving into the soul of a character—I like to ask lots of questions. Why do people make the choices they do? Why do they hold certain attitudes? Why did something happen to them?

From these questions, I learn about the reactive forces in people’s relationships. Reactive forces are all the varied roles we play. Our roles in the different environments we inhabit make us respond to a particular situation in a certain way. These life dynamics shape our psyche and mold our emotional core.

Understanding the threads woven into the individual tapestries of our lives helps to weave an emotional scene. Readers respond to this scene because of its truth—they too have kicked a chair in anger at betrayal by a friend or lover. The truth can also be a sweet gesture or an emotional trigger that touches our heart—as when your dog, knowing you’re sad, comes to you and licks the tears from your face.

Here are three passages from The Child Riddler where I sought to convey emotional truth in actions and feelings.

“The video went black. Zoe raised her hands and pressed her heels down on the floor, violently pushing herself away from the computer with her feet. Revulsion crawled over her. She didn’t want to touch anything related to that vile scene she’d just witnessed.”

Further down the page:

“Her heaves subsiding, her gaze bored into the blackness of the computer screen, its darkness deepening with every second.”

Another passage:

“Warmth spread through Zoe. A special warmth, a deep tenderness that seeped into her every pore. Now she knew what it felt like when someone said their heart melted.”

Delving into the sensory and emotional constructs of writing may be fun, but you can’t escape the dog work of technical research. Identifying the “most lethal weapon on earth” for my book took considerable investigation. Fascinated by the future technology of warfare, I chose a cloaking spider bot. Cloaking technology has elements of nanotechnology—the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale—and this is the future of warfare. Countries are already spending billions on researching cloaking and nanotechnology.

My career with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency gave me knowledge of technical organizations and sources. Even so, I still spent half the time it took to craft my book on research. I scoured the internet for articles and technical pieces that I found through keyword searches.

But to research character development, there is nothing like studying real people. In The Child Riddler, the director of the spy agency, Easton, is a strong manager. To make sure I’d captured the true essence of a tough senior manager, I asked a former high-level executive from a major government organization to review my Easton passages. This beta read was well worthwhile as his critique gave me great insight in writing realistic “Easton” dialogue.

For the character of the gifted child, nine-year-old Leah, I found internet videos of genius children who had won spelling contests. I studied personal interviews that followed their win, paying particular attention to how they spoke and the words they used.

Now as I write my second book, a sequel—where I’m striving to make Zoe even more human, more flawed—I recognize that all my research for The Child Riddler was technical. I may have divided it into categories, like sensory and emotional, to create a plot and believable characters. Devising a plot that the reader connects to because of its truths requires accuracy—not only in data and location but also in describing the human experience. This is where we grow and change, adapting all the while.

 

You can learn more about Angela and her books via her website. You can also connect with Angela on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Child Riddler is available in digital, print, and audiobook formats via Bella Books and all major booksellers.