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

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis is the top choice to star in the Murder, She Wrote movie for Universal. If the deal comes together, she'll play the Jessica Fletcher role popularized by Angela Lansbury in the hit series that ran 12 seasons on CBS. Lansbury starred from 1984 to 1996 in what became one of the most successful and longest-running shows in TV history. Her Jessica Fletcher was a retired schoolteacher turned successful mystery writer, who proves to have an uncanny knack for solving real-life murders. The show was primarily set in the seaside town of Cabot Cove, Maine, though Jessica often travels to other locales as cases unfold.

Greg Kinnear (You Gotta Believe), Kate Berlant (Would It Kill You to Laugh), Nazanin Boniadi (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), Ron Perlman (The Instigators), and Colleen Camp (Amsterdam) have come aboard to support Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler in the cast of The Saviors, a darkly comedic indie thriller. Directed by Kevin Hamedani from a script he co-wrote with Travis Betz, the film is about a suburban couple whose life spirals into paranoia and danger when they rent their garage to mysterious tenants, leading to a shocking revelation with world-altering stakes. Kinnear plays Jim Clemente, an eccentric detective whom the couple hires to investigate their new tenants. Berlant plays Scott’s character’s conspiracy theorist sister, Cleo. Boniadi plays Jahan, one of the mysterious tenants. Perlman and Camp play the parents of Scott’s character, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Icelandic streamer Síminn has boarded Reykjavik Noir, a series adaptation of Lilja Sigurdardottir's crime novel trilogy. The books, set in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, include Snare, Trap, and Cage. In Snare, a young, divorced mother, Sonja, who is trying to win sole custody of her son, resorts to smuggling cocaine into Iceland and gets caught up in the ruthless criminal world. She clashes with Bragi, an experienced customs officer, and develops a relationship with a woman, Agla.

Matt Nix (Burn Notice) is developing the new drama series, Vacationland, at NBC alongside author Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli & Isles) and Dan Rosen (Dead Man’s Curve). From Universal Television, the series follows top LAPD detective Grace Chen after she resigns from her job in disgust. She retires to the quirky village of Serenity, Maine, determined to put it all behind her. When Serenity’s Sheriff is murdered, Grace finds herself dragged back into crime fighting by Joey, a local veterinarian and amateur sleuth determined to protect the town she loves. Between Grace’s big-city detective skills and Joey’s understanding of Maine, they turn out to be a surprisingly effective team … and a very unlikely pair of friends

Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) is set to write and executive produce a TV adaptation of Swiss-American author Donna Leon’s contemporary Detective Brunetti book series, which is in development at 20th Television. The project was originated and set up at the studio by Fellowes's longtime friend and mentor, producer Ileen Maisel, who died in February at the age of 68. She had been in the 20th Television fold since 2018 when she signed a first-look deal with its former division Fox21. Maisel will be credited as an executive producer on the Brunetti series. Author Leon will co-executive produce, and playwright Felix Legge will serve as co-writer and producer.

Public broadcaster France Télévisions has commissioned an adaptation of Frank Thilliez’s psychological thriller novel, Il Était Deux Fois (Twice Upon a Time). Coproduced by Banijay France’s scripted labels Marathon Studio and Terence Films, the six-part drama is created by Eric Delafosse and France Jacquet and directed by Florian Thomas and Valentin Vincent. The plot focuses on a police captain searching for her missing daughter who wakes in a hotel room with a decade missing from her memory. The cast includes Odile Vuillemin, Hubert Delattre, Nicole Calfan, and Rémi Devilla.

Eddie Redmayne has signed on to return as the Jackal after Peacock and Sky renewed the hitman drama, The Day of the Jackal, for a second season. It comes as little surprise given that Redmayne is the main character of the drama series and [SPOILER ALERT] seemingly emerges relatively unscathed at the end of the first season in the dramatic and twist-heavy finale. Adapted by Ronan Bennett from the hit Frederick Forsyth novel, Season 1 follows an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal (Redmayne), who makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch) who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake. The cast also includes Úrsula Corberó, Charles Dance, Richard Dormer, Chukwudi Iwuji, Lia Williams, Khalid Abdalla, Eleanor Matsuura, Jonjo O’Neill, and Sule Rimi.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Attica Locke, award-winning author of the Highway 59 series, was interviewed by Robert Justice on Crime Writers of Color.

On Crime Time FM, Alison Gaylin chatted with Paul Burke about her new hardboiled thriller, Buzz Kill; a Sunny Randall novel; Robert B Parker's Boston; writing psychological thrillers; and a love of 70s conspiracy movies.

Crime Cafe featured Debbi Mack's chat with journalist, attorney, podcaster, and true crime writer, Kerrie Droban, on writing about psychopaths and more.

Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee, hosts of Murder Junction (fka Red Hot Chili Writers), spoke with Rob Parker about the true mystery of the Yuba County Five, and Rob's new crime series, set in Norfolk, beginning with The Troubled Deep.

The Crime Wave podcast welcomed author Rob Lopresti to talk about his new gig as editor of the short story anthology, Crimes Against Nature.

Mystery Melange - Christmas Edition

Staffers at Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama, San Francisco’s City Lights Books, and The Nook in Cedar Falls, Iowa, are among 600 booksellers receiving $500 holiday bonuses from author James Patterson, who has been awarding independent store employees since 2015. "Booksellers save lives. Period," Patterson said in a statement released through his publisher, Little, Brown and Company. "I’m happy to be able to acknowledge them and all their hard work this holiday season." Along with his gifts to booksellers, Patterson has given millions of dollars to schools, libraries, and literacy programs. In 2015, the National Book Foundation presented him an honorary National Book Award — the Literarian Award — for outstanding service to the American literary community.

Maureen Jennings received an unusual but well-timed Christmas gift: the mystery author has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Maureen is a prolific author of non-fiction, short stories, and book series featuring Christine Morris, Detective Murdoch, and D.I. Tom Tyler. The Detective William Murdoch series, set in Victorian era Toronto, was optioned in 2003 by Shaftesbury Films, and the resulting TV series, Murdoch Mysteries, is shown in over 120 countries. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

Janet Rudolph posted an updated listing of Crime for the Holidays - mysteries set during Christmas. It's such an extensive list, that she now has to divide it into multiple parts, including Authors A-E; Authors F-L; and Authors M-Z, as well as Christmas shorts—mystery stories, novellas, and anthologies.

I really do wish we could start this tradition everywhere, but in Iceland, the most popular Christmas gifts aren’t gadgets, but books. Each year, Iceland celebrates what’s known as Jólabókaflóðið (pronounced "YO-la-bok-a-flothe"), or the annual Yule Book Flood. In November, each household in Iceland gets a copy of the Iceland Publishers Association’s catalog of all the books published that year, giving residents a chance to pick out holiday books for friends and family. It's probably not too surprising, considering the country reads and publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world,

The authors at Mystery Lover's Kitchen have several tips for holiday reads and recipes, including Gluten Free Christmas Stollen via Libby Klein; Spicy Holiday Cranberry Relish from Deborah Crombie; Christmas Morning Breakfast Cake from Vicki Delany; and much more. You can search them all via this link.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Christmas podcast is up, featuring the Christmas short story, "Some Things Don't Change at Christmas," by KM Rockwood, as read by actor Parker Forrest Lewis. It's not quite a mystery but with a mysterious and heartwarming story for the holidays.

An unpublished manuscript by crime writer John D. MacDonald, a short story narrative of lust, betrayal and dangerous choices, was found in the archives at the University of Florida and published this month in The Strand. MacDonald was still a few years away from his Travis McGee books when he wrote the story, although MacDonald scholar Calvin Branche said that "The Accomplice" did anticipate the moral struggles of McGee and other MacDonald protagonists.

Most people have heard of Charles Dickens's beloved "A Christmas Carol," but as Olivia Rutgliano reminds us over at CrimeReads, we shouldn't forget Dickens wrote other holiday stories of mayhem including "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," published in The Pickwick Papers (1836); "The Mother’s Eyes," published in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840) and more.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Hasleton interviewed Penelope Holt about her new spiritual romantic thriller, The Angel Scroll, and also thriller author Michael Nelson (aka Michael Deeze) about the first in his new Thomas Quinn psychological thriller series, The Deathbed Confessions.

 

Author R&R with Raemi A. Ray

Raemi A. Ray is a Boston-based mystery author who enjoys taking inspiration from current New England events when writing about the region. She has a JD with a background in intellectual property and lives in Massachusetts with her two house demons, Otto and DolphLundgren. When not writing or working her much more boring job, she spends her time traveling, or wishing she were traveling.

A Chain of Pearls, Raemi’s debut mystery and the first in her Martha’s Vineyard Murders series, centers around the mysterious death of a famous journalist and the cover-up that implicates important Martha’s Vineyard residents. When London-based lawyer Kyra Gibson arrives on the idyllic island to settle her estranged father’s affairs, she ends up partnering with world-weary detective, Tarek Collins, as they uncover a web of intrigue and corruption involving a powerful senator, a dubious energy company, and a brutal murder.

Raemi stops into In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the series:

 

Thank you for having me. This is such a cool question and I’m sure everyone approaches it a little differently. I can speak to my personal experience and process, which unsurprisingly starts with college.

I wasn’t particularly studious in college (or before, to be honest). I chose classes where participation and attendance were not a part of the grade. This worked great for about three years until I had to declare a major. I went with the subject I’d already accumulated the most credits in: Medieval European History. Seriously. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision. Most of those classes required some sort of research paper instead of a test. There weren’t any prerequisites or labs, and I liked the stories. The political intrigue, backstabbing, the royal escapades, wars, it was way better than the dry fiction they’d had us reading in British Literature (still cannot stomach Alexander Pope, but adult me does like Chaucer) and, most importantly, I didn’t have to attend lectures. I did have to spend a lot of time in dingy, dusty library basements, though.

This was before Google Books and other private research databases scanned in the collections of academic libraries. I didn’t have the ease of the internet at my fingertips and I had to do research in person. My university’s special collections were stored in these creepy humidity-controlled basements, always with spotty lighting, some with movable stacks on rails that I swear were bespelled to squash snoozing students. In the theology school’s collections (where most of my source material happened to be) I’d have to request what I needed from a bored-out-of-his-mind (read: stoned) freshman, put on these weird gloves, and read through original manuscripts. Fun fact, I had to leave my notebook and pencil in a separate room and walk back and forth. Note-taking became my cardio.

In retrospect, I realize that it’d have been easier just to go to class and take a multiple-choice exam, but I think that experience is where I got my taste for figuring things out on my own.

Nowadays, my research occurs about ninety percent from the comfort of my reading and writing chair, but the other ten percent is going to the places I’m writing about. The Martha’s Vineyard Murders series takes place on a fictional version of the real-life island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ve been traveling there for years and truly love it. When I decided to write a mystery, I knew that the location was half the hurdle. All the greatest mysteries have such an immense yet specific sense of place: Rebecca and Manderley, The Dublin Murder Squad and Ireland, Chandler’s Los Angeles, Sherlock’s London. These books wouldn’t be the same without these settings.  

I conceptualized the Martha’s Vineyard Murders (then titled “My Mystery Book”) in the spring of 2021. The World was still under travel restrictions and I didn’t have the option of traveling to a remote place to study it for my story. (I’d originally wanted to put the book on the isle of Skye.) I knew that to keep it authentic, I had to go with what I knew. Lucky for me, there were a few places conducive to a mystery series that I knew like I knew my own name: Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Of course having this basis of knowledge, didn’t mean I didn’t have to make frequent trips, draw dozens of maps, stalk Facebook groups, or consume local news articles like I was planning to run for a selectperson seat, but it gave me something to start with and I think that first step is the hardest one.

The first two books in the series, A Chain of Pearls and The Wraith’s Return include quite a bit about boats and sailing. Prior to the MVM series, my knowledge of watercraft was limited to Disney Land’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I had to teach myself the lingo, the parts, how it all works, and quite a bit about marinas and harbors generally. Luckily, I know a few boaters who were happy to chat with me, and of course the internet is a goldmine. Now, I’d probably be considered a sailing expert, which is ironic since I get seasick looking at boats, but I need to understand something thoroughly in order to determine what to include and what information is too niche and can be left off the page.

Another part of writing the MVM series is that there is just so much death. I’m happy to say I don’t have first-hand experience with being murdered, or finding any corpses, so I’ve had to learn quite a bit about human anatomy, and how people actually die from the injuries they sustain. I’m confident I’m on an FBI watch list with what I’ve been researching over the past few years. My search history is a terrifying place, and I tend to go down rabbit holes when I’m learning of unique ways of torturing and killing my characters. Much to my surprise, I find that I often lean on my background in Medieval history. Those guys were no joke when it came to creative (horrible) ways of killing people.

I think the biggest challenge for me with regards to research is learning those innate things people do that I don’t have experience with. These aren’t things that one can look up, but are common behaviors. For example, where do men keep their wallets? Their phones? How does it feel to lift a child? What does it take to host Thanksgiving dinner? Do doctors really carry doctor bags? What does an accountant really do? Thankfully, I have friends who have lived these experiences and they’re kind enough to share with me. Probably, the funniest thing I do, is I have a group text with my male friends, where I can ask “guy questions,” like the wallet thing, how they pack a suitcase (packing cubes and the ‘roll method’ seems to be a winner there), pretty much anything about professional sports. They’re very, very supportive.  

That all said, the result of my research, how I internalize and apply the information I’ve gathered is such a subjective process and I’m sure I’ve made errors. Writing in the mystery genre, I probably have more leeway with creative license and the plots can be a bit more fantastical. Making it just believable enough is what I think my readers will engage with. They can see themselves in the same position as my main characters.

 

You can learn more about Raemi Ray via her website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. The books in the "Martha’s Vineyard Murders Series" are available now via Tule 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

Austin Butler is set to star in Luca Guadagnino's new adaptation for Lionsgate of the book, American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. While there had been rumors Jacob Elordi was being eyed to play Patrick Bateman, that casting didn’t come to pass. The film, which features a script by Scott Z. Burns (The Laundromat), will not be a remake of the 2000 film, but a new adaptation of Ellis’s novel. In the original movie, which came out in 2000 and is set in the 1980s, Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie and serial killer.

Eddie Redmayne is set to join Julia Roberts in the Warner Bros. thriller, Panic Carefully. Elizabeth Olsen is also on board with Sam Esmail directing and writing the script. The film’s logline is being kept under wraps, although it's being described as a paranoid thriller in the vein of Esmail’s Emmy and Golden Globe winner Mr. Robot, as well as The Silence of the Lambs.

Eddie Marsan (Back to Black) and Éanna Hardwicke (Lakelands) are set to star in the upcoming Irish thriller, No Ordinary Heist, inspired by the largest cash heist in UK and Irish history. Colin McIvor (Zoo) will direct from a script he co-wrote with debut screenwriter Aisling Corristine. Inspired by true events that took place in Belfast in December 2004, No Ordinary Heist weaves a gripping fictional tale of two bank employees thrust into a chilling scheme. Forced to orchestrate a £26.5M ($33.8M) robbery to save their family, they are made to execute the crime without the gang ever setting foot inside the bank.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

A new incarnation of Prison Break has taken a major step toward becoming a reality at Hulu with a pilot pickup from Mayans M.C. and The Outlaws co-creator, Elgin James, and 20th Television. Details regarding the new installment’s plot are unknown, although it's said to be "its own thing set within the same universe" and is not expected to involve the characters at the center of the original series and its follow-up on Fox, Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller), and Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell).

ITV has announced a new thriller from barrister and crime novelist, Imran Mahmood, which is a re-imagining of the crime and courtroom drama, Saviour. The story centers on Ben, the son of a police officer, who's charged with murder, and Indy, a criminal barrister, whose perfect world begins to crack when she takes on Ben's case and confronts police corruption, media scrutiny, and her own deeply buried secrets.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Sharon Short to talk about her latest book, Trouble Island, an Agatha Christie-esque And Then There Were None tale of deception, murder, isolation and bad weather set in the 1930’s on a small island in Lake Erie at the beginning of winter.

Cops and Writers chatted with J.D. Barker and Christine Daigle about navigating the ever-changing waters of publishing books and collaborating with other authors.

Crime Time FM featured "The Newcastle Noir Review Show" with Trevor Wood, Sam Holland, Antony Johnstone, Jo Furniss, Rob Parker, Michael Wood, and Paul Burke selecting some of their favorite crime novels of 2024 and looking ahead to 2025.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed their favorite books from 2024.

Mystery Melange

In the Short Mystery Fiction Society forums, Rob Lopresti posted news via Ira Matetsky of the Wolfe Pack that the Nero Award, presented each year to an author for the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, was won by Ariel Lawhon for her novel, The Frozen River. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to celebrate the novella format popularized by Stout, went to T. M. Bradshaw for her novella titled "Double Take." It will be published in the July 2025 issue of AHMM. Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid Novella Award include Peter Hoppock's "Precipice"; Andrew Kass's "Deadline"; Jenny Ramaley's "Workplace Rules for a Fire-Breathing Dragon"; and Ella Rutledge's "Murder at the Y.T.D."

The winners of the UK Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024 were revealed, with a Readers' Choice and Editors' Choice chosen from the shortlists for the categories of Book of the Year, Best Debut Novel, Best in Translation, Best Indie Novel, Best Crime Show, and Best Author. You can read all the winners here and check out all the titles on the shortlists here.

The six titles on AudioFile’s 2024 Best Mystery & Suspense Audiobooks list feature a new voice for a favorite long-running series as well as thrilling tales full of deception and intrigue. The selected titles include: The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, read by Saskia Maarleveld; The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny, read by Jean Brassard; A Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra, read by Soneela Nankani; The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, read by Julia Whelan; Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, read by Jonathan Davis; and You'll Never Find Me by Allison Brennan, read by Hilary Huber.

Alison Flood’s best crime and thrillers of 2024 picks for The Guardian include Guide Me Home by Attica Locke (Viper); Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra (Penguin); Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster); Bonehead by Mo Hayder (Hodder & Stoughton); and We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Penguin).

And if you're craving more "best of" lists for reading fodder (and gifts!), Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has more from BOLO Books blogger Kristopher Zgorski here, Boston-based critic Steve Donoghue here.

The extended deadline of December 15th is fast approaching for The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers. Interested applicants should submit all documents, including the first three chapters of your work in progress, by the deadline via the following link. The grant includes a $2,500 cash award and a comprehensive registration to Malice Domestic, including two nights' lodging at the convention hotel.

Mystery Readers Journal received so many submissions for the London Mysteries issue, that editor Janet Rudolph has divided it into two issues. She has space for more articles, reviews, and Author Author! essays that focus on Mysteries set in London, with a deadline of January 20, 2025. 

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine interviewed Charlaine Harris, author of series including the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, the Lily Bard mysteries, and the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasies; and the magazine also spoke with Emma Kenny, a psychologist, TV presenter, writer and expert media commentator, about her book, The Serial Killer Next Door.

Author R&R with Lyn Squire

 

Lyn Squire was born in Cardiff, South Wales.  During a twenty-five-year career at the World Bank, he published over thirty articles and several books within his area of expertise, and was lead author for World Development Report, 1990, which introduced the metric – a dollar a day – that is still used to measure poverty worldwide. Lyn was also the founding president of the Global Development Network, an organization dedicated to supporting promising scholars from the developing world. He now devotes his time to writing. His debut novel, Immortalised to Death, published by Level Best Books in September 2023, introduced Dunston Burnett, a non-conventional amateur detective. It was a First Place Category Winner in the Mystery and Mayhem Division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards.  Dunston’s adventures continue in Fatally Inferior and The Séance of Murder, the second and third books in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  Lyn lives in Virginia with his wife and two dogs.

Dunston Burnett, a Victorian-era middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, is not cut out to be a detective, yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries. In Fatally Inferior he must contend with the abduction of a member of Charles Darwin’s family, the missing person inexplicably spirited out of a locked-tight country house. A few days later, a ransom demand arrives at Down House, Darwin’s home in Kent, threatening that the hostage will be killed unless Darwin renounces his theory of evolution in The Times.  Meanwhile, a former maid at Down House dies, or so it seems, giving birth in London’s Shoreditch workhouse.  Believing her dead, her baby son is swiftly dispatched to a hell-hole orphanage in Hampshire. These apparently independent events converge in a vile act of vengeance: a hellish torture for the victim; the perfect revenge for the perpetrator. Will Dunston ever be able to expose the heart of this dark, confounding mystery?

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

 

Researching the second book in a mystery series

Is researching the second book in a mystery series easier than researching the first?  To answer this question, I draw on my experience with Fatally Inferior, the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  My answer is mixed.  In some areas, the second book requires less work; in others it can be more challenging and more demanding.

My first book, Immortalised to Death, is set in late nineteenth-century England.  For this book, I researched Victorian dress, furniture, architecture, vernacular, patterns of everyday behavior and so on, to provide period-authentic material for scene-setting and character portrayal.  This task is relatively straightforward, since information on most aspects of Victorian life is readily available on the internet.  Nonetheless, the effort takes time that would otherwise be available for writing.  My second book, Fatally Inferior, is also set in the Victorian era.  Much of the background research for book one was, therefore, of immediate use for book two, a huge labor-saving help. 

Another way in which a prior book can significantly reduce the research required for the current book is through characters that appear throughout the series.  For example, Dunston Burnett, my protagonist, is the glue that binds the three-book series together.  A diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick), he is not cut out to be a detective yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries.  He is fully described when he first enters the story in Immortalised to Death so his presence in book two did not entail the need for additional research.  While the character evolves throughout the series, the associated extra research was minimal.      

A second book, however, invariably introduces new locations and characters which naturally require fresh research.  For example, Down House, Charles Darwin’s home in Kent, is not mentioned in the first book, but it is the venue for several scenes in Fatally Inferior, and its layout is crucial to the execution of the crime at the center of the book’s plot.  Down House is open to visitors.  The ground floor is set out as in Darwin’s time with the great man’s study furnished exactly as it was when he was writing The Origin of Species.  Given the house’s key role in my story and the likelihood that many readers would be well acquainted with the house, I decided I had to visit it myself to make sure that my description stayed true to the original. 

This may sound like an unusually burdensome research demand.  But the house is only an hour and a half’s journey from Central London, and many authors visit more distant locations that figure prominently in their books.  Moreover, I had undertaken a similar research excursion for my first book.  Book two’s new location did entail extra research, but, I judged, no more than I had expended on book one for the same purpose.  The same point holds for new secondary characters like Charles Darwin himself.  Additional research is called for, but, again, no more than I devoted to the same task for book one.

Conjuring up a storyline for my second book, however, proved a much more challenging task than for the first.  The kernel of the idea for the storyline in Immortalised to Death, my first novel, was crystalized in my mind before I began researching the book in any detail.  This, I suspect, is the case for most authors embarking on their first book.  As a result, research for that book was focused and limited.  It is the exact opposite for the second book.

Immersed in drafting the first, I had not allocated time to conceptualizing what I would write about in the second, so that when I wrapped up book-one, there was nothing on hand for book-two.  Instead of having a sparkling gem ready to propel the new novel, my literary cupboard was bare, and I found myself casting about from scratch for a fresh idea that would prove a worthy follow-up.  This, I imagine, happens to many other authors writing a mystery series.

To find the right storyline for book-two, I expanded my research about events and people in the time and place where I set my stories (Victorian England), hoping that something would spark my imagination.  And eventually something did.  I was reading Janet Browne’s two-volume biography of Charles Darwin (Voyaging and The Power of Place, Princeton University Press, 1995 and 2002 respectively) when two aspects of his life jumped out at me.  I had found an intriguing pair of leads for a new story. 

One arose from the uproar that greeted the publication of The Origin of Species on November 24, 1859.  Darwin was immediately bombarded with scathing reviews in academic journals, blistering editorials in the leading newspapers and crude cartoons in the cheaper broadsheets.  This avalanche of disgust and hatred from believers in God’s creation of man, led me to imagine a more malicious assault on the scientist.  Was this an idea I could use in my new novel?  Indeed, it was.  I explored several possibilities, finally settling on the abduction of a Darwin family member and a threat that the kidnap-victim would die unless Darwin retracted his theory in a letter to The Times. 

The other had to do with the blood relationship between Darwin and his wife, Emma.  They were first cousins; they had a common grandfather in the person of Josiah Wedgewood.  In the nineteenth century, the offspring of marriages between such close relatives were thought to suffer loss of vigor and infertility.  This fear weighed heavily on both husband and wife, and brought to mind an image of a couple desperate for a grandchild only to be cruelly robbed of any hope of a happy old age spent in the blissful company of their children’s children by a vile act of revenge.  I was soon picturing a scene in which Emma Darwin is forced to witness the horrific death of the couple’s only grandchild. 

Charles Darwin makes only a few fleeting appearances in Fatally Inferior, but the furor created by his theory of evolution and the consequences of his marriage to his first cousin, motivate and structure my entire story.  After much effort, considerably more than I expended on the first book, I had the pegs on which to hang my story.

Looking back on my experience with the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy and the amount of research that was required compared with the first book, the key take-away is this: The overall quantity of research and background reading may not change that much but its distribution across activities changes significantly.  In my, probably typical, case, the focus of research shifted dramatically from scene-setting and character portrayal, all adequately covered in writing the first book, to the new and challenging task of conceiving a fresh idea for the second book’s storyline and developing it into a full-blown successor novel. 

 

You can learn more about Lyn Squire and his writing by visiting his website and by following him on Facebook and Goodreads. Fatally Inferior is now available via Level Best Books and can be found in 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

Austin Butler is set to star in Luca Guadagnino's new adaptation for Lionsgate of the book, American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. While there had been rumors Jacob Elordi was being eyed to play Patrick Bateman, that casting didn’t come to pass. The film, which features a script by Scott Z. Burns (The Laundromat), will not be a remake of the 2000 film, but a new adaptation of Ellis’s novel. In the original movie, which came out in 2000 and is set in the 1980s, Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie and serial killer.

Eddie Redmayne is set to join Julia Roberts in the Warner Bros. thriller, Panic Carefully. Elizabeth Olsen is also on board with Sam Esmail directing and writing the script. The film’s logline is being kept under wraps, although it's being described as a paranoid thriller in the vein of Esmail’s Emmy and Golden Globe winner Mr. Robot, as well as The Silence of the Lambs.

Eddie Marsan (Back to Black) and Éanna Hardwicke (Lakelands) are set to star in the upcoming Irish thriller, No Ordinary Heist, inspired by the largest cash heist in UK and Irish history. Colin McIvor (Zoo) will direct from a script he co-wrote with debut screenwriter Aisling Corristine. Inspired by true events that took place in Belfast in December 2004, No Ordinary Heist weaves a gripping fictional tale of two bank employees thrust into a chilling scheme. Forced to orchestrate a £26.5M ($33.8M) robbery to save their family, they are made to execute the crime without the gang ever stepping foot inside the bank.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

A new incarnation of Prison Break has taken a major step toward becoming a reality at Hulu with a pilot pickup from Mayans M.C. and The Outlaws co-creator, Elgin James, and 20th Television. Details regarding the new installment’s plot are being kept under wraps, although it's said to be "its own thing set within the same universe" and is not expected to involve the characters at the center of the original series and its follow-up on Fox, Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller), and Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell).

ITV has announced a new thriller from barrister and crime novelist Imran Mahmood, which is a reimagining of the crime and courtroom drama, Saviour. The story centers on Ben, the son of a police officer, who's charged with murder, and Indy, a criminal barrister, whose perfect world begins to crack when she takes on Ben's case and confronts police corruption, media scrutiny, and her own deeply buried secrets.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Sharon Short to talk about her latest book, Trouble Island, an Agatha Christie-esque And Then There Were None tale of deception, murder, isolation and bad weather set in the 1930’s on a small island in Lake Erie at the beginning of winter.

Cops and Writers chatted with J.D. Barker and Christine Daigle about navigating the ever-changing waters of publishing books and collaborating with other authors.

Crime Time FM featured "The Newcastle Noir Review Show" with Trevor Wood, Sam Holland, Antony Johnstone, Jo Furniss, Rob Parker, Michael Wood, and Paul Burke selecting some of their favorite crime novels of 2024 and looking ahead to 2025.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed their favorite books from 2024.

Mystery Melange

Winners of the Irish Book Awards were unveiled, including the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press). The other finalists in that category include Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld).

The Saltire Society presented the Scottish Book Awards last week, including the winner for Fiction Book of the Year, which went to What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close. The novel is a police procedural inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders during the late 1970s and early '80s and the subsequent feminist arson campaign that targeted pornography stores. The judges called the novel, "Superb, evocative and enraging, with brilliant characterisation, humour, and a huge sense of tension from the ever-present threat of violence."

Joffe Books announced that the winner of the Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour 2024 is Rupa Mahadevan, for her addictive and atmospheric psychological thriller, The Goddess of Death. She receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize and a £25,000 audiobook deal from Audible for the first book. This is Britain’s biggest crime prize and was established in 2021 to actively seek out writers from communities that are underrepresented in crime fiction and support them in building sustainable careers, while simultaneously discovering brilliant new talent. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Since 2008, the annual CrimeFest conference has brought crime fiction writers and fans together in Bristol, UK, showcasing approximately 150 authors on some 50+ panels, interviews and events over a four day period each year, as well as presenting the CrimeFest Awards and offering an annual bursary for crime fiction authors of color. Sadly, CrimeFest co-hosts Donna Moore and Adrian Muller posted a notice that the next conference, which takes place from May 15th-18th, 2025, will be the final one. Although the statement didn't point to a specific reason per se, the event has been primarily supported by gate proceeds, donations, and volunteers, and run by a small dedicated staff with few corporate supporters aside from Specsavers. With all the good that CrimeFest has done for the crime fiction community, here's hoping some funding entity will step up to keep the conference going.

South Florida Sun Sentinel book critic, Oline Cogdill chose her best mystery book selections for 2024. Her 31 choices are split between general releases, debut novels, and compilations of short mystery and crime fiction. (HT to The Rap Sheet)

The "best" lists keep coming: New York Times thriller critic, Sarah Lyall, picked her list of the top 10 "Best Thrillers of 2024,"while critic Sarah Weinman chose her ten favorite Crime Novels of 2024. Plus, The Guardian's Laura Wilson compiled her own choices for "The best crime and thrillers of 2024."

The largest archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished works to come to auction will go under the hammer at Doyle tomorrow, December 6, including first editions, letters, poems, manuscripts, such as an extensive archive of Raymond Chandler's unpublished drafts of fantasy stories, the original typed manuscript for Chandler's only opera, and Chandler's Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter (the current estimate for that one is $10-20,000, is you happen to have some spare change lying around). The items are from the Jean Vounder-Davis Collection of Raymond Chandler. Vounder-Davis (then Fracasse) was Chandler's personal secretary as well as fiancé and muse.

Writing for The Dial, Julia Webster Ayuso took a look at how forensic linguists are using grammar, syntax, and vocabulary to help crack cold cases.

In the Q&A roundup, novelist GC Brown chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new crime thriller, Sniff: Book 1 of The Sniff, Smoke, Shoot series; Haselton also spoke with mystery author Leonard H. Orr about his new family drama mystery, Entitled; and Catriona McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, about a wickedly funny cozy about a wedding that becomes a crime scene.

Author R&R with Marlene M. Bell

Marlene M. Bell has never met a sheep she didn’t like. As a personal touch for her readers, they often find these wooly creatures visiting her international romantic mysteries and children’s books as characters or subject matter. Marlene is an accomplished artist and photographer who takes pride in entertaining fans on multiple levels of her creativity. Marlene’s award-winning Annalisse series boasts Best Mystery honors for all installments including these: IP Best Regional Australia/New Zealand, Global Award Best Mystery, and Chanticleer’s International Mystery and Mayhem shortlist for Copper Waters, the fourth mystery in the series.

In Bell's latest mystery, A Hush at Midnight, former celebrity chef Laura Harris, once celebrated for her show-stopping pastries and irresistible desserts, is now making headlines for a far darker reason:  Laura has been accused of murder. How could this petite chef have brutally smothered beloved small-town matriarch and World War II ferry pilot veteran, Hattie Stenburg? Hattie wasn't just a pillar of the community, she was Laura's confidant and mentor. The shocking twist? Hattie’s Will included recent changes, bypassing next-of kin and leaving her entire fortune and historic estate to Laura. As Laura scrambles to clear her name, she uncovers sinister secrets lurking beneath the town’s idyllic surface. The real murderer is always one step ahead, leaving taunting clues and threatening Laura to leave Texas—or face deadly consequences. With time not a luxury, Laura must untangle the web of deceit before the killer makes her the next victim.

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

 

Research for novels has become more of a science for me. After four installments to my Annalisse series, a children’s book, and my new release cozy mystery A HUSH AT MIDNIGHT, I quickly found techniques that didn’t work and gravitated more to those that gave me the true results. Fear of a reader calling a foul on misinformation or bad information in my books has kept me awake many nights. Bottom line: Even though my stories are fiction, the sights, sounds, and actual scenery of the places I write about have to be accurate in order for the reader experience to feel real to that person.

My process begins with a complete outline of my manuscript, scene by scene. I envision each character; where they are, what they’re thinking, and how to leave a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter. Backfilling the sensory information once the outline basics are complete.

When I began to write the first Annalisse novel in 2010, I had no clue where the story was going, nor did I care. My objective was to write a romance. A standalone book. That’s it. It wasn’t until my third draft and wandering subplots I couldn’t keep straight, that a talented developmental editor came to the book’s rescue. She quickly saw the issues and mended my ways. Without an outline as a guide, I couldn’t contain the random elements that did nothing but confuse the reader.

I outline using lined 3 x 5 cards, one card per scene. In a separate diary, I list each character by name and add their characteristics to keep them real and unlike other characters in the book. Also listed are their motivations—what they want from the Main in the book. In my mysteries, I also like to drop a Cast of Characters page in front of the first chapter so that the reader can use it as reference in case they forget a player. A Hush at Midnight has fewer characters than in previous books. The more characters, the harder it is for the reader to recall each one should they show up in the beginning and not again until the mid-point. The Cast of Characters idea was taken from the old Pocket crime books from the 1950s. I hear from readers all the time about that page. It’s an overwhelming success!

How do I make my book locations come to life? Perhaps it’s the generation I grew up in, but I’ve found the old-fashioned methods work best for me. In the age of the internet, I see too many people relying on search results from the giant engines that power the information age. Unfortunately, many top result rankings are paid for by the corporations or individuals who are putting out a narrative. One of their choosing and not always the truth. Sites like Wikipedia and the like are places I tend to steer from because the information is a compilation of information and ideas from others.

Because my books are spiked with sensory details, the best place to obtain images for countries I’ve never traveled to are from the photographers and sightseers who have been there. My favorite place to retrieve the visuals and imagine the landscape are through coffee table books published by photographers who have been on the ground. They explain how it feels to be in the space. Most of the books in the Annalisse series travel to places like Greece, Italy, and New Zealand. Without the visuals and descriptions found in expert’s own published works, I can’t imagine my novels having the realistic feel to them. Readers love to be taken away to places they’ve never been. The more details an author can share, the more their readers will return for the next book.

Many of the stories I write about are based on my own personal experiences. I depend upon the experts to guide me through narratives out of my realm of expertise, such as the next project I’m currently outlining. My husband is an expert in the electric field, and I’ll be relying heavily on his experience—to get it right.

 

You can learn more about Marlene Bell via her website, and follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. A Hush at Midnight is now available via 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

Following a competitive situation, Searchlight Pictures has landed the spec script Clean Break from writer Ryan Brennan and has already begun development on the project. The thriller follows a fiercely independent pool hustler who finally meets her match in a fellow pool shark, and their irresistible but destructive attraction to one another leads to deadly consequences that she can’t outrun.

Focus Features has acquired the sci-fi thriller Hot Spot, the second English-language feature from veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska. Focus will distribute the film in all territories worldwide, excluding Poland, Greece, and France. The project is set in a near-future society ruled by sentient A.I., where a private eye investigates a murder case only to discover a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Another Harlan Coben thriller is coming to Netflix after the streamer gave a series order to I Will Find You. The eight-episode limited series will be adapted from the author’s 2023 novel, by showrunner Robert Hull (Quantum Leap). I Will Find You follows an innocent father serving a life sentence for the murder of his own son. When he receives evidence that his son my still be alive, he is determined to break out of prison to discover the truth. The project is the latest series from Coben under his Netflix deal, following his 2014 thriller Missing You, which is getting the series treatment on Jan. 1, 2025, while other titles Caught and Run Away are in the works. Coben’s other successful series for the streamer include Fool Me Once, Stay Close, The Stranger, The Innocent, Gone for Good, Hold Tight and The Woods. He is also currently writing a thriller novel with Reese Witherspoon, due October 2025.

Prime Video has ordered Silent River, a thriller drama series starring and executive produced by John Krasinski (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans). The project comes from Krasinski and Allyson Seeger’s production company, Sunday Night, whose first-look deal with Amazon MGM Studios has been extended. Told through the viewpoint of two men — played by Krasinski and Rhys — whose lives are far more connected than they realize, Silent River explores the cracks of small-town America in the wake of discovering a serial killer among them.

ITV has reportedly axed two of its primetime crime dramas: The Tower, an adaptation of the novels by Kate London, which starred Gemma Whelan and Emmett J Scanlan and told the story of London-based DS Sarah Collins; and Passenger, which tells the story of what happens in a sleepy Northern village after a local girl disappears, written by Andrew Buchan and starring Wunmi Mosaku, David Threlfall, Rowan Robinson, and Jack James Ryan. (HT to The Killing Times)

Tom Hardy (Venom: The Last Dance), Pierce Brosnan (Die Another Day), and Helen Mirren (The Queen) are officially set as the leads of Guy Ritchie’s new Showtime and Paramount+ series, which is yet untitled. Production of the global crime series, previously known as The Associate (w/t), is currently underway in London. Hardy will star as Harry Da Souza, a professional conciliator on behalf of the Harrigan family; Brosnan will play Conrad Harrigan, the head of a very successful Irish crime family based in London and Harry’s boss; Mirren will play Maeve Harrigan, Conrad’s wife and the Harrigan family matriarch. The logline refers to the project as "an electrifying, new global crime series centered around two warring families based in London whose enterprises stretch to all corners of the planet and the fiercely loyal ‘fixer’ charged with protecting one of them at all costs."

PODCASTS/RADIO

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed books for Indigenous Peoples’ Month.

On Crime Time FM, Maxim Jakubowski, Ayo Onatade, Jake Kerridge, Victoria Selman, Paul Burke, and Barry Forshaw discussed their crime fiction best books of the year in "The Great Christmas Debate 2024."

Pick Your Poison host Dr. Jen Prosser investigated the dangers of mistletoe tea and snow flocking spray and the life-threatening complication alcohol can cause in a person who isn’t drunk.

Mystery Melange - Thanksgiving Edition

The winners of the 2024 Historical Writers Association (HWA) Crown Awards were announced, celebrating the best in recent historical writing, fiction, and non-fiction. The 2024 Gold Crown Award was won by Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle, based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi—the greatest female painter of the Renaissance; the Non-fiction Crown Award was Four Shots In the Night: A True Story of Stakeknife, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland by Henry Hemming; and the Debut Crown Award went to The Tumbling Girl: Variety Palace Mysteries Book 1 by Bridget Walsh. You can read about the other finalists in each category here.

Eddie Muller will host NOIR CITY Xmas at Oakland's historic Grand Lake Theatre, Wednesday, December 18, 7:30 pm. To darken your yuletide spirit, the Film Noir Foundation is presenting Who Killed Santa Claus? (L'Assassinat du père Noël), a 1941 French mystery. The evening will also feature the unveiling of the program for NOIR CITY 22, the 22nd year of the world's most popular film noir festival, coming to the Grand Lake Theatre January 24 - February 2, 2025. Tickets for NOIR CITY Xmas are now available online from Eventbrite for $15 and can also be purchased at the theatre box office on the day of the show. Doors will open at 6:30 pm on the day of the event.

Janet Rudolph posted an updated Thanksgiving Crime Fiction list on the Mystery Fanfare blog, featuring novels and short stories with a mix of cozy, noir, and whodunits. King's River Life also has a few Thanksgiving food-themed mysteries for you to chew on.

The authors at the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog have some reads and recipes to be thankful for, including Libby Klein's Gluten-Free Thanksgiving Pot Pie; Molly MacRae's Red Wine Honey Cake; Cleo Coyle's Dairy-Free Pumpkin Cupcakes; and the infamous Turducken, courtesy of Maya Corrigan.

I'm a sucker for astronomical mysteries, and Phil Plait, writing for Scientific American, has a fun lesson on why the sky is dark at night and how Edgar Allan Poe figured into the answer to that long-standing riddle.

I'm also a fan of classical music mysteries (and this one hits particularly close to him as it ties in with one of the elements of my own novel, Played to Death): A curator in New York City has identified a lost waltz by Frédéric Chopin, marking the first discovery of music by the renowned 19th-century composer since the 1930s. But is it really Chopin?

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine spoke with author Jacqueline Bublitz about her latest thriller, Leave the Girls Behind; Writers Who Kill chatted with Jennifer K. Morita about her debut mystery novel, Ghosts of Waikīkī; and Lisa Haselton interviewed Mark L Dressler about his detective mystery novel, Dying for Fame.

Author R&R with Simon Marlowe

Simon Marlowe is an up-and-coming British crime thriller author, and was a selected author at the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival 2024 (Harrogate International Festivals). A consummate wordsmith, he has excelled as a darkly comic crime author, with his fast paced and action-packed Mason Made trilogy. Like reading a Guy Ritchie movie with a Ken Loach conscience, Simon skillfully blends social and political issues to create a compellingly relevant narrative, on a par with the best in modern crime fiction today. Simon spent his formative years living in South London, indulging in political activism and music, graduating from a number of universities in politics, education and management. He eventually moved back to his home city in Essex, and after studying for a creative writing MA, settled down to developing as a writer. Since 2017, he has been successfully publishing, making people laugh, cry and scream!

In Marlowe's latest darkly-comic-crime-meets-spy-thriller, The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, Steven Mason has an axe to grind and just needs to work out who deserves it. Falling fully into the darkness of Hell, Steven lives a crude, rude, cruel, and heartless life in the streets of Amsterdam, cutting himself off from his old life to indulge in drug-fuelled debauchery. In an attempt to reestablish his criminal career during the coronavirus pandemic, he immerses himself into the blood and guts of conspiracy and Far-Right politics, war crimes, and war criminals. But nothing is as it seems, as Steven is propelled by covert love into festering darkness. When faced with an ultimatum, in the form of becoming a member of the ruthless Bloodaxe gang—knee-deep in dealing and drug trafficking— will he pull himself out of the darkness he’s become so accustomed to? Or will he sink even further down?

Simon Marlowe stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book and series:

The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, is the final installment in my darkly comic crime thriller trilogy Mason Made (so check out, The Dead Hand of Dominique – Book One, and Medusa And The Devil – Book Two). And for my protagonists next little adventure, I have Steven Mason, now a jaded drug-fueled criminal, indulging in extremes: personally, professionally (i.e. illegally) and politically.

It may be bold of me to claim the ‘Cruel Hunter’ has captured the zeitgeist of our time, but with Far Right riots, Far Right parties democratically elected in Europe, and Far Right ultra nationalist wars (I’ll leave you to speculate where you think that might be), I felt I would be failing in my thematic duty if I didn’t integrate the political contemporary issue into a bit of crime, murder and mayhem.

Hopefully, if you indulge in purchasing the ebook or paperback (available online from all major retailers!) and you take the obvious next step to read it, you may be surprised to learn that about 90% of the novel is based on fact. Not that I want to stray into Baby Reindeer territory here, because I will say explicitly that the ‘Cruel Hunter’  is a dramatization of Far Right politics, and the ‘facts’ have been integrated to fit into the narrative.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time where nationalism, power, and propaganda are dominant forces, perhaps pushing the world ever closer to some rather unpalatable governing systems. But you’ll be glad to know all is not lost, not if art and literature can be used to laugh at the thugs, tyrants and demagogues.

Mercifully, my anti-hero, Steven Mason, has sufficient moral ambiguity to indulge in criminality whilst retaining a sense of what is right and wrong. Murder, for Steven, is necessary to survive, crime is a way of life (and also happens to pay his bills), but that is nothing compared to the Far Right characters he encounters on a journey that has an underlying purpose which is gradually revealed. Steven may start off unhinged, but that is nothing compared to the bonkers antics of the Far Right criminals and politicians he needs to pander to, characters who are ideologically maladjusted with one thing in common: they think anything that is different should be systematically exterminated.

Perhaps, if we were not living in such strange times, and we considered the Far Right as a poorly psychiatric patient, we would be able to treat them successfully, integrate them back into the community, following a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and grandiose delusions. However, talking therapies in such cases would be ineffective, and any rational doctor would probably recommend large doses of anti-psychotics, a regime of electroconvulsive therapy followed by an irreversible lobotomy. Although I would still worry, that dulled and subdued, the radical conspiracy supremacist, would still be a danger to themselves and others.

But rest assured, Steven Mason has no liberal constraints holding him back. He knows that if he were to ever find himself reading a book called The Heart Is  A Cruel Hunter, and a rabid dog is running towards him, he will throw the book at it to stop it in its tracks.

 

You can learn more about Simon Marlowe and his books by visiting his website and can follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The Heart is a Cruel Hunter (Mason Made Trilogy Book 3) is now available from the publisher, Cranthorpe Millner, 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

Prime Video’s upcoming German film, The Calendar Killer (original title Sebastian Fitzeks Der Heimweg), will launch on January 16, 2025. Based on Sebastian Fitzek’s bestselling novel, Walk Me Home, the thriller follows Jules (Sabin Tambrea), who starts his shift on the escort phone, a telephone support line for women to get home safely. Everything looks like a quiet Saturday evening, until he receives a call from a young mother named Klara (Luise Heyer), who claims she will die that very night at the hands of a notorious female killer. So begins Klara’s desperate escape from the so-called Calendar Killer – with Jules on the phone, who is her only hope of salvation.

Gal Gadot has been set to star in The Runner, a London-set action thriller that will be directed by Kevin Macdonald. Amazon MGM Studios has acquired worldwide rights to the film which was developed and will be produced by David Kosse under the veteran exec’s new venture, Rockwood Pictures. Gadot plays a high-powered attorney who must race through London, following the cryptic commands of a mysterious Caller, as she fights against time to save her abducted son.

Charlotte Kirk (Duchess) is set to topline Myra, an indie drug thriller from action director R. Ellis Frazier. Currently in production in Tijuana, Myra follows an ex-gang member (Kirk) who escapes to Tijuana, Mexico with $2 million in bearer bond loot after a botched robbery in Los Angeles. When Tony (Gary Daniels), Myra’s gang leader and long-time lover, realizes he's been robbed, he goes hot on Myra’s trail. Myra has 36 hours to cash out the bonds, emancipate herself from the gang, and start her new life. However, Tony isn’t her only adversary. Also trailing her are local gang leader (Roberto Sanchez) and a corrupt cop (Corin Nemec), proving the time-honored point that blood money comes with a heavy price.

Zack Snyder is set to reteam with Netflix on an untitled project about the Los Angeles Police Department, in early development at the streamer. The film co-written by Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, longtime collaborators on projects like 300 and Rebel Moon, is set in a high-stakes world of life and death, watching as an elite LAPD unit is relentlessly confronted with the unforgiving collision of law and morality.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Acorn TV’s fan-favorite detective crime drama, Dalgliesh, returns on Monday, December 2 in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The third season, consisting of six episodes, is based on three of the novels from P.D. James’s bestselling murder mystery series featuring Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, with Bertie Carvel (The Crown) reprising his role as the enigmatic titular investigator. Season 3 is made up of three distinct mysteries, each two episodes long, with the first, Death in Holy Orders, premiering on Monday, December 2; the second, Cover Her Face, which marks Carvel’s directorial debut, premiering on Monday, December 9; and the third, Devices and Desires, premiering on Monday, December 16. Carlyss Peer (The Crown) and Alistair Brammer (House of the Dragon) both return to the series as Detective Sergeants (DS) Kate Miskin and Daniel Tarrant, respectively.

Acorn TV is also co-producing an adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles's bestselling book, Murder Before Evensong. The book was published in 2022 and introduces Canon Daniel Clement, a rector of Champton who becomes embroiled in a murder case when a cousin to a church patron is found stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs. Canon Daniel Clement has gone on to feature in three other of Coles’s cozy crime novels, including Murder at the Monastery and A Death in the Parish.

The new thriller series based on another book by Harlan Coben finally has a Netflix release date. The limited series, Missing You, which will be released on New Year’s Day, is the author’s latest on-screen collaboration with the streamer, following other series Stay Close, Fool Me Once, and The Stranger. Per the logline: Eleven years ago, Detective Kat Donovan’s fiancé, Josh — the love of her life — disappeared, and she hasn’t heard from him since. Now, swiping profiles on a dating app, she sees his face, and her world explodes all over again. Josh’s reappearance forces her to dive back into the mystery surrounding her father’s murder and uncover long-buried secrets from her past.

Gabriel Basso will return as Peter Sutherland in Netflix's The Night Agent for Season 2 on January 23. Based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, The Night Agent's freshman season followed low-level FBI agent Peter Sutherland who works in the basement of the White House, manning a phone that never rings — until the night that it does, propelling him into a fast-moving and dangerous conspiracy that ultimately leads all the way to the Oval Office. The Season 1 finale saw Peter take off from D.C. in a private jet on his first mission as a Night Action spy. Season 2 picks up as he’s shooting through the streets of an Asian city before he, returning Season 1 cast member Luciane Buchanan, and new series regular Amanda Warren, are seen against New York’s skyline in subsequent episodes. Warren will portray Catherine Weaver, a veteran of the top-secret Night Action investigative program, who trains and oversees various Night Agents.

CBS has set winter premiere dates for new and returning series on its 2024-25 primetime schedule, including Tracker, Matlock, Elspeth, The Equalizer, and the FBI and NCIS franchises, as well as the new medical drama, Watson starring Morris Chestnut, which premieres January 26 following the AFC Championship game.

CBS has revealed the series finale date for Blue Bloods, which is ending its run after 14 seasons, set to air on Friday, Dec. 13 at 10 p.m. on CBS. The finale will follow a retrospective special, Blue Bloods: Celebrating a Family Legacy, which will look back on 293 episodes of the beloved series, on Friday, Nov. 29 at 9 pm (also live and on-demand for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).

PODCASTS/RADIO

Crime Time FM's latest episode is a review show as host Paul Burke takes a look at a dozen different recent crime fiction releases.

On the latest Pick Your Poison podcast, Dr. Jen Prosser takes a look at a disease that affects both sea lions and humans and a toxin that inspired a horror film and has also been used as a deworming agent.

On Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini was joined by author and critic, Mike Ripley. to look at a tale of two tigers, or rather, two versions of The Tiger in the Smoke: the original 1952 novel by Margery Allingham featuring her sleuth Albert Campion, and its film noir adaptation from 1956 that, despite being mostly very faithful, chose to completely eliminate her recurring protagonist.

Read or Dead's Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed their 2024 holiday gift guide featuring their picks of mysteries and thrillers.

Mystery Melange

In an email to Sisters in Crime members, SinC announced that the winner of the 2024 PRIDE Award for emerging LGBTQIA+ writers is Lori Potvin of Perth, Ontario, Canada. Potvin's winning novel-in-progress is a work of contemporary crime fiction.  According to Potvin, "A Trail's Tears follows the stories of two women who are strangers to each other — youth wellness worker Grace, who's looking for Sonny, a missing Indigenous teen mom, and Anna, a street smart young woman caught in the trap of human trafficking and desperate to escape."  Five runners-up were also chosen: Shelley Kinsman of Ashburn, Ontario; Erick Holmberg of Boston, Massachusetts; Emma Pacchiana of Norfolk, Virginia; Langston Prince of Los Angeles, California; and Shoney Sien of Aptos, California.

Amazon has already released its "best of" lists for the year, including those in the Amazon’s "Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Books of 2024," which seems to be broken down into two categories, one for standalones and one for new or continuing series. I suspect the timing of these lists has as much to do with holiday book sales than anything, but you can check out those forty titles here. Washington Post critic Karen MacPherson also compiled a list of her fave top 10 mysteries for the year. Although it's behind a paywell, The Rap Sheet has broken down the details here.

Next year's CrimeFest in the UK, scheduled for May 15-18, will feature an exclusive John le Carré event featuring the author’s two sons: the eldest, film producer Simon Cornwell, who is the CEO and co-founder of the independent studio, The Ink Factory, currently executive producing The Night Manager for Amazon and the BBC, starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman; and Carré youngest son, Nick Harkaway, who recently brought back one of his father’s most famous literary creations, George Smiley, in the new novel, Karla's Choice. Also confirmed for 2025 is the Canadian mystery writer, Cathy Ace, whose Cait Morgan Mysteries have been optioned for TV by the production company, Free@Last TV, which is behind the hit series, Agatha Raisin. Vaseem Khan, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and author of the Malabar House historical crime series set in Bombay, has also been confirmed as 2025’s Gala Dinner’s "Leader of Toasts" for the 2025 CrimeFest award.

In May 2025, Penguin Random House will publish a graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business (1939) as part of the Pantheon Graphic Library. The creative team behind the project includes writer Arvind Ethan David, illustrator Ilias Kyriazis, and colorist Cris Peter, with a Foreword by Ben H. Winters. In the novella, Philip Marlowe is hired by a female private detective to disentangle a gangster's moll from a rich man's son. (HT to The Bunburyist)

The First Two Pages over at Art Taylor's blog featured Vera Chan with an essay about her story in Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024.

In the Q&A roundup, Alex Kenna, whose debut novel, What Meets the Eye, was nominated for a Shamus Award for best first PI novel, applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Burn this Night; Deborah Kalb chatted with Bonnie Kistler, a former trial lawyer and author of the new psychological thriller, Shell Games; and Writers Who Kill's Paula Gail Benson interviewed Saul Golubcow about his new novel with detective Holocaust survivor Frank Wolf and the narrator, Frank’s lawyer grandson, Joel.