Mystery Melange - Halloween Edition

The Irish Book Awards shortlists for 2024 were announced, including the titles vying for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press); 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 public are now being asked to have their say and cast their votes through November 14th for the best books of the year on the An Post Irish Book Awards website.

Scrawl Books, the new indie bookstore in Reston, Virginia, is presenting a Cozy Halloween Mystery Panel on Thursday, October 31 at 7pm. Participating authors include Olivia Blacke (A New Lease on Death); Mindy Quigley (the Deep Dish Mysteries); Donna Andrews (the Meg Lanslow Series); and Korina L. Moss (the Cheese Shop Mysteries).

On November 1, AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland will show the silent film, The Bat (1926), directed by Roland West, with live musical accompaniment by Ben Model. Based on the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood (adapted from the author's 1908 mystery novel, The Circular Staircase), this suspenseful picture sees a masked criminal dressed as a bat spread fear and terror among the guests staying at a lavish mansion rented by a mystery writer. Hidden somewhere in the estate is a vast sum of money aching for the taking. The Bat served as inspiration for the creation of DC Comics' Batman. (HT to The Bunburyist)

Dallas Noir At The Bar returns to The Wild Detectives on Sunday, November 3rd. Authors currently scheduled to read from their mystery, thriller, and suspense works include Jim Nesbitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Trang Vu, Graham Powell, Scott Montgomery, and Harry Hunsicker.

Janet Rudolph has published an updated list of Halloween Mysteries that take place on or around Halloween, from full-length novels to short story anthologies.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the Halloween mystery short story "Floating Past the Graveyard" by Pamela Ebel, read by actor Theodore Fox.

Kings River Life published two free online Halloween short stories, "Clown-O-Phobia" By Bobbi A. Chukran, and "The Mystery of the Mirror" By Shari Held.

The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have some scary treats and reads for the season, including Warm Spiced Cider by Maya Corrigan; Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Bars via Peg Cochran; Halloween Carrot Cake from Alison Roman by way of Lucy Burdette; Edible Witches' Brooms, courtesy of Cleo Coyle; Spooky Blood Orange Spritizer from Leslie Karst; and Mummy Hand Pies from Molly MacRae.

Brian Cleary, a clinical pharmacist in Dublin, was trawling through the archives at the National Library of Ireland when he stumbled across something extraordinary: a virtually unknown short story by Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic masterpiece, Dracula. The story takes place in Surrey, England, at a spot that became infamous when three men who had murdered a sailor were hanged there in the 18th century (a gibbet is a gallows). In it, a young man goes for a stroll and comes upon a trio of eerie children who perform a strange ritual, tie the man up, and menace him with a sharp dagger. Though he passes out and isn’t sure what happens next — they are gone when he wakes up — the unsettling experience has repercussions that do not bode well for his future. 

Robert Lopresti is the latest guest at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, talking about his new anthology, Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, a collection spurred on by his continuing interest in ecological issues. (Taylor took over hosting duties of the column after its originator, B.K. Stevens, passed away in 2017.)

Author R&R with Alexa Donne

Alexa Donne is the Edgar nominated author of Pretty Dead Queens, The Ivies, and The Bitter End, young adult thrillers featuring terrible teens and big twists. She loves exploring themes of class and wealth, toxic friendships (especially between young women), and the double-edged sword of trying to keep up with the Joneses in the era of social media and toxic capitalism. By day, she lives in Los Angeles and works in television marketing. The rest of the time, she contemplates creative motives for murder and takes too many pictures of her cats.

Alexa’s latest young adult thriller, The Bitter End, follows eight students of LA’s elite Warner Prep, who can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. But they can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident. And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

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

I LOVE isolation trope mysteries. LOVE. In movies, on TV, but especially in books. A ticking clock, no escape, and a limited pool of suspects—the tension in these stories is so high, and the dynamics at play so fun. 

Writing The Bitter End, I challenged myself to set a cast of teens loose on this beloved genre trope. I wanted to see how I could fit the constraints of YA world (there has to be some kind of adult supervision… at least to start) into an adult genre, while also bringing something fresh and exciting to the conceit so that it might surprise and delight seasoned adult readers.

The closed circle mystery is essentially a balancing act: a large cast size, a number of inevitable deaths, and of course the big reveal. It’s a game of teetering precariously to build and sustain suspense as I work to hide the true killer’s identity while not giving short shrift to characters who are not part of the narrative for long. Ultimately, I landed on eight teens rather than the Christie classic ten, and a minimum body count (though I won’t spoil the exact number!). It felt important to have enough personalities to stir up trouble while also not leaving the suspect pool too large at the end.

I chose multi-POV and multi-timeline, in part to stretch myself with a different thriller format, as well as to play with themes of friendship, appearances, and perspective, all of which change over time. I work backwards to construct my thrillers, so I started with a motive. Then built out a cast of spoiled Los Angeles prep school teens to kick the plot mechanics into motion.

But for an isolation trope to work, I needed to figure out how to get my new cast away from their parents and in a remote location. I knew the group should be somewhat disparate to create a lot of conflict and intrigue. They are not all friends, which ruled out a besties Spring Break trip or a post-Prom retreat. Authenticity is important to me in any thriller, but especially YA—it should feel feasible at its heart.

The solution to my problem came at a lunch with some fellow writer friends, including one who’d attended a Los Angeles prep school. She blew my mind when she talked about a program for seniors where for one week they’d get to go on a grand excursion—and real examples from her school included Alaskan dog-sledding and a Hollywood directing workshop! It was so fantastic and sparked my imagination—which is why those real examples are in the book!—and provided the perfect jumping off point for my isolation mystery.

And since I’m an East Coaster who sincerely misses weather (after fifteen years in Southern California), I knew I wanted a mountainous/forest setting with heavy rain or snow. I settled on Colorado for two reasons: first, the state and its glorious 14,000 feet peaks came up in several of the 20+ high-altitude mountaineering tomes I’d read, and second, I had several friends who were either native Coloradans or who had moved there.

And with my setting locked in, I now got to contend with several high-altitude, mountain, and snow-related elements that required some honestly pretty fun, if morbid and mildly terrifying, research. Some highlights:

High altitude sickness

The prep school teens in the book end up stranded in a ski chalet on top of a Colorado mountain of significantly high elevation. The copious amounts of non-fiction and memoir written by and about mountaineers who climb 8,000 meter peaks inevitably all touch upon high altitude sickness and its varying complications, including high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), hypoxia, and their symptoms. My made-up mountain isn’t quite that high, but altitude sickness is likely to strike an Angelino at high elevation for the first time.

Dark Summit by Nick Heil, in particular, went into great detail about a man who survived a near-death experience on Everest. Being able to get inside the mind, with vivid description, of someone experiencing hypoxia and nearly dying from it was invaluable. (Did you know it’s a common phenomenon to hallucinate a person following you/being with you, up high on the mountain? This is stuff made for the thriller genre!)

Cell phone emergency access 

It’s the lynchpin of the modern-day thriller, isn’t it: How to deal with technology? Especially in a closed circle mystery with an isolation trope, the key is to get characters AWAY from technology and any hope of help from the outside world. I’m fascinated by wild, out of the way places and all the terrible things that can happen to you there. The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman reinforced that there are many places in the United States where it’s easy to fall to the elements with ZERO recourse. Often, those searching for you may simply never know what happened.

My editor wanted to be double triple sure these students couldn’t seek help. “Surely they’d just call 9-1-1?” she said. Cellphones have an emergency call function. This led both me and her down a rabbit hole of cell phones and emergency communications in 2024, as technology is constantly evolving and mystery authors must tear their hair out to make their plots work.

Multiple Colorado friends confirmed that there are many spots in the mountains where cell coverage is so spotty to the point that it is nonexistent. I did a deep dive to double confirm: emergency calls require a cell tower within a certain distance to work. But then a wrench in the works, at pass pages, no less: newer models of iPhones and now Androids have emergency satellite texting systems.

Here’s where all those books on mountaineering came in handy—they all have passages on satellite phones. How they work, when they work, and, helpful for me, when they don’t. Satellite phone may not work under heavy cloud cover or during storms. Luckily, I already had a blizzard at play, and used my creative license as the author to make things that much trickier for my poor cast of characters trying to survive a killer.

Sadly, I can’t share some of the juicier bits of research without spoilers! But I can relay one anecdote whose lesson is: sometimes you’ll blank on the silliest thing despite meticulous planning, and it’s important to be scrappy with your edits! With all my planning and research into cell signals and plot mechanics to deprive my cast of their phones, Internet access, and eventually power… I still managed to write an entire plot thread in the first draft that hinged on the characters looking through people’s Instagram DMs.

Then, my editor pointed out to me “but they have no Internet, so how could they check Instagram?” Reader, I died. You have to laugh about it though! I had to get creative in terms of keeping the information gleaned while tossing out most of what I’d written for that subplot. On the plus side—it made the back half of act 2 much tighter! Do the best you can, but you can’t do it alone—and some of your best work will happen in editing (and with your editor!).

 

You can learn more about Alexa Donne via her website and also follow her on Instagram, Goodreads, and YouTube. The Bitter End is now available via Random House Books 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

Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Stuber have acquired The Girl in the Lake, a proposal for an adult mystery thriller novel by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver. Oliver will write the script for a film that will be developed for United Artists. Scarlett Johansson is eyeing this to star in as the title character and will also co-produce. The logline is being kept under wraps but it's being described as "What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense."

Reacher star Alan Ritchson has found his next action project with Runner, a movie about a high-end courier who has three hours to transport an organ to save a seven-year-old girl in need of an immediate transplant. The seemingly simple mission turns deadly when the leader of a notorious crime syndicate becomes hell-bent on claiming the organ.

Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is set to join Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in the Lionsgate adaptation of the psychological thriller, The Housemaid, with Paul Feig directing from Rebecca Sonnenshine's adaptation of Freida McFadden’s novel. In the film, Sweeney will play Millie, a struggling woman who is relieved to get a fresh start as a housemaid to Nina (Seyfried) and Andrew (Sklenar), an upscale, wealthy couple. She soon learns that the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own. The novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and on the Amazon bestseller list for 98 weeks and counting.

Monica Barbaro has boarded Crime 101, Bart Layton’s adaptation of the Don Winslow novella for Amazon MGM Studios, in an as-yet-to-be-revealed role. Other cast members include Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, and Halle Berry. While official plot details for Crime 101 haven’t been disclosed, the novella follows veteran jewel thief Davis as he plans a high-stakes diamond heist along the Pacific Coast Highway, getting into a cat-and-mouse chase with a dedicated LAPD detective named Lou Lubesnick after executing what he hopes will be his final score before disappearing for good.

In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the first John Wick movie, Lionsgate has several festivities planned including special events, anniversary screenings, new experiences, and new collectible merchandise, culminating in the release of Ballerina: From the World of John Wick next year on June 6. The original film starring Keanu Reeves, directed by Chad Stahelski, and written by Derek Kolstad, flew under the radar at the box office and grossed a relatively paltry $86M worldwide, only to explode on home entertainment and launch a mega franchise across four films for Lionsgate grossing $1.02 billion to date.

Veteran documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Ren Faire) is pivoting to fiction with his next project, Primetime, which will be financed and produced by A24, with Robert Pattinson among the producers. While not much is known about the film’s genre or plot, it’s said to follow a journalist who takes on an underworld of crime and changes television forever. The project allegedly takes inspiration from To Catch a Predator, the NBC program put on as part of Dateline, as well as its host, Chris Hansen. The early indications are that Pattinson is also attached to star.

Catherine Corcoran (Terrifier) and Alex Mandel (Howie Mandel Does Stuff) have joined Bryce Hirschberg's latest film, the thriller, Jackalope. Writer-director Hirschberg, known for the 2017 film Counterfeiters and his appearance on the Netflix dating show, Too Hot to Handle, is also starring. He made the film alongside creative partner David Klassen (Deadpool 2), who co-wrote and serves as producer and director of photography. The plot follows two brothers, whose quiet weekend retreat unravels into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the arrival of a hauntingly enigmatic woman who causes them to question how well they really know each other and themselves.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories has optioned Darling Girls by Sally Hepsworth and has begun work on a TV adaptation. The crime novel, which became an instant bestseller in the U.S. and Hepworth’s native Australia upon release this year, is billed as "a page-turning thriller about sisterhood, secrets and murder." The plot follows Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, who return to the idyllic farming estate where they were raised by a loving foster mother—when a body is discovered under the house. Though always told they were lucky to have gotten a second chance at a happy family life after their own family tragedies, the sisters realize their childhood wasn’t the fairytale everyone thought it was.

CBS has renewed Matlock, starring Kathy Bates, for a second season after only three episodes into its freshman year. Matlock premiered on September 22 with a sneak peak episode that drew the biggest audience for a non-post-Super Bowl series premiere in five and a half years. The show stars Bates as Madeline "Matty" Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who achieved success in her younger years and decides to rejoin the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases, all while investigating a deeply personal secret of her own. Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, David Del Rio, and Leah Lewis also star.

Cineflix scored new international deals for the cozy crime series, Whitstable Pearl. Based on the popular Julie Wassmer novels, the series stars Kerry Godliman (After Life) as Pearl Nolan. She divides her time between serving up seafood in her restaurant in the English seaside town of the title, and solving the crimes and murder brought in by the tide. Howard Charles (The Musketeers) plays a cop, Mike McGuire, and her on/off rival and love interest. The series is from Marcella producer Buccaneer and for AMC Networks’ Acorn TV, which has greenlit three seasons thus far.

An Indian remake of the U.S. drama, Monk, is in production via Disney+ Hotstar. It marks the first adaptation of the series, about a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, in South Asia. The original series ran on USA Network from 2002 – 2009 and spawned a movie that played on Peacock last year. It followed Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) and his assistants, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) and Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), and their work with the San Francisco Police Department on unconventional cases.

Tommie Earl Jenkins has joined the cast of the USA Network drama series, The Rainmaker, based on the John Grisham novel. The series follows Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) who, fresh out of law school, goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond (John Slattery) and his law school girlfriend Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman). Rudy, along with his boss (Lana Parrilla) and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son. Jenkins will play Prince Thomas, owner of Yogi’s Bar where Rudy works as a bartender when we first meet him, who's a mysterious character with motives as murky as his loyalties.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On the Spybrary Spy Podcast, Nick Harkaway discussed his new novel, Karla's Choice and continuing his father John le Carré's George Smiley series.

On Crime Time FM, I S Berry, the only female former CIA field agent writing spy fiction, chatted with Paul Burke about her espionage thriller, The Peacock and the Sparrow, an Edgar First Novel, Barry, and ITW Award Winner.

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with BBC broadcaster-turned-crime writer, Louise Minchin, about her debut, Isolation Island, and discussed a one-hundred-year-old frozen foot found on Mount Everest.

Sharon Healy-Yang was the latest guest on the Murder We Write podcast, talking to host Carol Goodman Kaufman about Healy-Yang's latest Jessica Minton Mystery, Shadows of a Dark Past.

On Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini welcomed writer and filmmaker, Liam Dunn, as they explored the late William Friedkin's 1985 dark and dazzling neo-noir, To Live and Die in LA.

Mystery Melange

The 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction has been awarded to David Joy for Those We Thought We Knew, a novel about a young Black artist who returns to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains and uncovers the dark underbelly of the community. The Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction was established in 1952 by the Historical Book Club of North Carolina to recognize the year's best book of fiction, drama, short stories, or poetry written by a North Carolinian.

Getting a jump on that end-of-the-year "Best Of" season, Barnes and Noble has posted its list of Best Mystery & Thriller Books of 2024. You can check out all twenty titles (which includes Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice - see the item below) via this link.

The Back Room returns October 27, 2024 at 7pm ET. The brainchild of bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne, who dreamed up the format during Covid lockdowns, the Back Room remains the only online event that allows authors and readers to chat face-to-face. Featured guests this time include Diana R. Chambers (The Secret War of Julia Child); Alex Segura & Rob Hart (Dark Space, a sweeping sci-fi spy thriller); Paula Munier (the Mercy Carr mysteries); and David Rosenfelt (Andy Carpenter mysteries). Each program begins with a fun "get to know you" game followed by the guest authors’ book recommendations, and then breakout rooms where attendees get Q&A time with the authors.

Applications for the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers will be closing soon. Interested writers must not have published a book, short story, or dramatic work in the mystery field, either in print, electronic, or audio form. The Grants Committee is looking for works in progress that are consistent with the Malice Domestic genre of Traditional Mystery, typified by the works of Agatha Christie. These works contain no explicit gore, violence, or sex. Prize: Each grant may be used to offset registration, travel, or other expenses related to attendance at a writers' conference or workshop within a year of the date of the award. In the case of nonfiction, the grant may be used to offset research expenses. Each grant currently includes a $1,500 award plus a comprehensive registration for the following year's convention and two nights' lodging at the convention hotel, but does not include travel to the convention or meals. Deadline: November 1, 2024.

For years, John le Carré’s youngest son, born Nicholas Cornwell, worked on establishing his own literary legacy apart from his father's, using two pen names Nick Harkaway and Aidan Truhen, in works featuring futuristic truckers, steampunk clock repairmen, superheroes and all-seeing techno-states. But after helping bring Silverview, the final le Carré novel to posthumous publication in 2021, he felt he’d stopped being afraid of people comparing their writing. Underscoring that confidence is his latest project, Karla’s Choice, a Cold War espionage novel taking up the characters that people regard as quintessentially le Carré: the rumpled, melancholy spy Smiley and his ruthless Soviet counterpart Karla. As Washington Post columnist, Sophia Nguyen, added in her profile of the work, "By writing it, Harkaway hasn’t just crossed into his father’s literary airspace — he’s descending into the heart of the territory and rolling out the landing gear, fingers crossed for a warm welcome."

Dean Street Press is continuing their murder mystery reissues with the Antony Maitland series by Anglo-Canadian author Sara Woods (1916-1985), set to be published on December 2, 2024. Originally released in the 1960s, these novels were lauded for their intricate plots, courtroom drama, and intellectual depth. Antony Maitland, the central character, was often compared to Perry Mason for his mix of legal expertise and investigative prowess (and was inspired by Sara Woods' brother, Antony Woods Hutton, who tragically lost his life during WWII). Out of print for nearly forty years, the first five novels in this compelling series comprise: Bloody Instructions (1962), Malice Domestic (1962), The Taste of Fears (1963), Error of the Moon (1963), and Trusted Like the Fox (1964).

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine spoke with bestselling author Kate White about her latest book, The Last Time She Saw Him; R. W. Green stopped by Criminal Element to discuss co-writing Mc Beaton's internationally bestselling Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery series; and Karin Smirnoff, the author of several books in the best-selling and award-winning Millennium series originally created by Stieg Larsson, chatted with Cultural Rendezvous about Nordic Noir.

Author R&R with Mel Harrison

After graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in Economics, Mel Harrison joined the US Department of State, spending the majority of his career in the Diplomatic Security Service, winning the State Department Award for Valor and its worldwide Regional Security Officer of the Year Award. Following government retirement, Mel spent ten years in corporate security and consulting work with assignments often taking him throughout Latin America and the Middle East, before turning his hand to writing. He’s penned six books in the series featuring Alex Boyd, a State Department special agent and regional security officer with the Diplomatic Security Service, including the latest installment in that series, Crescent City Carnage.

In Crescent City Carnage, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith are only a day into their long-awaited vacation in New Orleans to join their good friend and colleague, Simone Ardoin, when she is brutally murdered. Simone’s well-connected parents, long-time residents of New Orleans, are devastated by the tragedy and implore both Alex and Rachel to work with the New Orleans Police Department to find her killer. The city is infamous for its laissez-faire attitude, as well as its corruption. Nevertheless, Alex must work with the city's cops to break the case, also drawing support from State Department special agents. Identifying the killer is one thing but locating him proves more complicated than anticipated—Is the killer just lucky or does he have an inside source who is helping him stay one step ahead of the cops? The more Alex and Rachel delve into the case, the more they discover that New Orleans is a unique city full of its own traditions, family ties, and way of life. But the clock is ticking, and they need to capture the killer before he disappears forever.

Mel Harrison stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R today about writing the book:

Toward the end of my twenty-eight year career in the Foreign Service, serving as either a special agent with Diplomatic Security or as an economic officer, I realized that I had experienced a number of adventures in my lifetime that could be turned into intriguing action thrillers. After State Department retirement, I worked another ten years for corporate security, accumulating even more experiences. Finally, in complete retirement, it was time to challenge myself and start the writing process.

I have always enjoyed the action-adventure/thriller genre for my own reading, and so began my writing journey. I decided to write about what I knew and where I had served or visited, rather than struggling with unfamiliar territory. My six novels are based upon my personal experiences, albeit, with embellished characters and scenes to excite the audience. While the books and characters are fiction, they are often composites from real life, either experienced by me, or drawn from situations of which I am aware.

Many of the location settings, such as Rome, London, or Paris, I have visited again and again. Additional places, like Cairo or Islamabad, I also worked there and visited in retirement, even if less frequently than the former set of locations. As an avid photographer, I can research details of sites that my memory is vague on. Also, I use the internet to research technical details on everything from weapons to foreign police structures to plants and vegetation. Finally, nothing beats firsthand knowledge, so I have sought out subject matter experts, as needed.

While most people will say that thrillers are plot-driven, I love to create memorable characters as well. Just as the stories are fictional, so are my characters. Yet, I have drawn on people I have known, put them in different settings than where we met, and added features to their personality or appearance to make the reader feel that they can visualize the character or understand his or her motivation.

Equally important, I always think a long time about how to create villains. Reading how other authors handle this issue can be instructive. No one who buys a book wants to read about cardboard characters, and this includes the bad guys. The villains may be evil or demented, but they also have families and friends. Therefore, they need to be three dimensional and realistic. The reader needs to understand the villain’s motivation. Without excellent villains, the author doesn’t have an interesting story to tell.

I must note that I have a lot of restaurant scenes in my six books. Okay, I admit it, my wife and I are foodies. Here is a tidbit readers should know. Every restaurant in every book is real, and what my protagonist, Alex Boyd, and his wife, Rachel, are eating, my own wife and I have eaten at that very restaurant.

When I began creating my stories, I knew I wanted to put my protagonist, Alex Boyd, in harm’s way. Since he is a trained special agent, I needed to have him carry a firearm. For me, the best solution was the simplest. He either uses the real weapons issued by the Diplomatic Security Service, or in the one book, Moving Target, where is working in the private sector, I gave him a weapon that I personally owned and fired many times. Sometimes authors who are not familiar with guns get tripped up trying to write firearms scenes that just would not work in the real world.

An area that can be difficult to write about involves the sexual relationship of my two main characters, Alex Boyd and Rachel Smith. When they first meet in Death in Pakistan, there is an immediate attraction, both physically and intellectually. The question is how far an author should describe this relationship. I took the view that the reader must believe their love for each other is deep and real. It must be based on something more than a casual handshake. Therefore, sex is part of that relationship and needs to be presented to the reader without going over-the-top into pornographic description. Since Rachel is put in harm’s way several times in my novels, the feelings Alex and Rachel have for each other must be based upon the full spectrum of emotions.

I will close with a final point about politics. I try to leave politics out of my books as much as possible. Readers buy novels to escape everyday life. They want to be entertained, not lectured too. Of course, Alex and his colleagues occasionally mock a specific Washington policy as wrong-headed, but that is different than the author taking gratuitous shots at either political party. When I worked in the Foreign Service, the internet had not yet been created. Therefore, there was no social media or even cable TV channels. I honestly did not know the politics of my fellow Foreign Service officer. It wasn’t important to getting the job done or to protecting employees from terrorists, kidnappers, spies, or criminals.

 

You can follow Mel Harrison on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. Crescent City Carnage is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Michael Cohen

Since his retirement from University teaching, Michael Cohen has been writing personal essays about his family, about lifelong pursuits such as golf and birding, about newer interests in flying and amateur astronomy, and above all about six decades of reading. His essays—collected in A Place to Read (2014, IP Press, Brisbane) and And Other Essays (2020, IP Press)—have appeared in Harvard Review, Birding, The Humanist, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, and dozens of other venues. He is the author of six other books, including an introductory poetry text, The Poem in Question (Harcourt Brace, 1983) and an award-winning book on Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Georgia, 1989). Michael Cohen lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tucson, Arizona. His most recent book is The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finding List (Genius Books, 2024)

In 1891, a new London magazine, The Strand, decided to publish short mysteries in connected series. Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories about Sherlock Holmes nearly doubled the magazine’s circulation, and Doyle became rich. Other magazines searched for tales with the same kind of appeal, and dozens of men and women began to write detective stories in the series format of the Holmes Adventures. Michael Cohen’s The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries is a guide to this trove of stories that fascinated readers a century and a quarter ago. In clear and crisp prose, Cohen takes you through the variety of stories with brief descriptions, and he shows you where to find the stories online in their original, illustrated magazine versions. Here you’ll find names you knew such as Chesterton’s Father Brown, and less well-known ones such as Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, Anna Katherine Green’s debutante detective Violet Strange, and Gelett Burgess’s "Seer of Secrets," Astro.

Michael Cohen stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about the book:    

The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries was my Covid book. During the year between the first lockdowns until I was fully vaccinated the following spring, I did a lot of reading, and most of it was detective short stories published from the 1890s to the first decade of the twentieth century in England, the United States, and Europe. These stories were not easily available twenty years earlier, when I wrote my first book on mysteries, Murder Most Fair: The Appeal of Mystery Fiction (Associated University Presses, 2000). The stories first appeared in newspapers and magazines, and most had not been reprinted; a good big library might have a few of the periodicals, but if the stories appeared in New Zealand’s North Otago Times or the English Newcastle Weekly Courant, for example, I wasn’t going to find them.

But in the ensuing twenty years, these periodicals had all been digitized and made available through Gutenberg, Google Books, Hathi Trust, and a score of other internet archives. The stories that entertained our great-grandparents and their parents could now be read by anyone for free, in their original context between news of the day and quaint advertisements; best of all, they could be read with the engravings and lithographs that illustrated them. Moreover, there were new reprints of the stories in book form published by Coachwhip Press, the Library of Congress Crime Classics, the Mysterious Press Crime Classics Series, and others.

I read through hundreds of detective short stories, and though I started without any clear writing plan, a book idea began to emerge as I took notes on my reading. I really needed to tell two stories about this treasure trove of entertainment from a century and a quarter earlier.

One story was about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. In 1891, a new London magazine, The Strand, decided to publish short mysteries in connected series. Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories about Sherlock Holmes nearly doubled the magazine’s circulation, and Doyle became rich. Other magazines searched for tales with the same kind of appeal. Dozens of men and women began to write detective stories in the series format of the Holmes Adventures.

The second story was about those other writers who followed Doyle. They created an enormous flowering of this kind of tale, with stories that featured female and male detectives, professionals and amateurs, young and old, aristocrats, gentlefolk, and plain folk. Detectives went rogue and became burglars and conmen. Others developed occult powers. It was a Golden Era of detective fiction, and it lasted for two and a half decades until the First World War. Nothing of its variety had been seen before.

So, The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finding List starts with the story of Doyle’s phenomenal success with the Holmes stories. I look at Doyle’s storytelling in the first ones published, with an eye to his plot construction and the original turns that he gave to situations that had been in the sensational literature repertoire for decades, as well as those that were brand new with him.

Most of the book is taken up with a closer look at the variety of stories written by those who followed Doyle. I give brief descriptions of the mysteries and how they struck out in new directions and created a range of mystery literature of astounding diversity. Finally, I provide a guide for finding the stories in their original, illustrated magazines. Here you’ll find names you knew such as Chesterton’s Father Brown, and less well-known ones such as Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, Anna Katherine Green’s debutante detective Violet Strange, and Gelett Burgess’s “Seer of Secrets,” Astro.

Once I sat down with the story lines in mind and my notes at hand, the book took only a few months to write, and it was a pleasure to revisit all those tales of detectives at work.

Michael Cohen's book, The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries (Genius Book Publishing, 2024), is available from Amazon and from the publisher. His earlier collections of essays, A Place to Read (Interactive Press, 2014) and And Other Essays (Glass House Books, 2020), are available in print or audiobook form.

 

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

Crystal City Entertainment and Moonshot Films have acquired the rights to Lisa Jewell’s bestselling novel, Then She Was Gone, for a feature film adaptation. This follows news over the summer that Netflix is working on an adaptation of the UK writer’s 2023 book, None of This Is True. The 2017 thriller, Then She Was Gone, tells the story of Laurel Mack and the aftermath of her youngest daughter’s unexplained disappearance. Ten years on, a still grieving Laurel meets a seemingly perfect man, but his nine-year-old daughter’s resemblance to her own lost child soon becomes an obsession, leaving her no choice but to dig deeper into the past…whatever she might find. Actress and writer Catherine Steadman has joined the project as screenwriter.

Bret Easton Ellis's novel, American Psycho, is being adapted for the silver screen once again, with Luca Guadagnino on board to direct off a script by Scott Z. Burns. It’s being said that this isn't a remake of the 2000 film, but rather a new adaptation of the original novel, perhaps indicating it will be more faithful to the source material. Christian Bale starred in the original movie project, playing a wealthy New York City investment banking executive who hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

Lee Pace (the villain Ronan in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy) is set to join Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, and Katy O’Brian in The Running Man, Paramount’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Edgar Wright is directing the feature and co-wrote the script with Michael Bacall. The 1982 novel, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, was set in 2025 in an America under a totalitarian regime that uses violent game shows to placate the disenfranchised masses. The novel centers on one desperate man (to be played by Powell), needing money for his sick daughter, who joins the most popular show, The Running Man, in which teams of killers hunt down contestants. The longer a contestant survives, the more money that person makes. But as the game show’s producers and killers will find out, this desperate man will break all the rules and expose the show’s dark secrets. Pace plays the brutal chief hunter for the network airing the game shows, who's also tasked by the producer with tracking down Powell’s character. Paramount has set a release date of Nov. 21, 2025.

Rebecca De Mornay, Noah Emmerich, Kunal Nayyar, and Sarah Bolger have joined the feature adaptation of Howard Roughan's legal thriller novel, The Up and Comer. The story delves into the seemingly perfect life of Philip Randall (Nate Mann), a brilliant attorney poised to become the youngest partner at his prestigious firm. Philip’s idyllic world begins to unravel when a former prep-school classmate (Andrew Burnap) threatens to reveal a devastating secret involving another woman (Shay Mitchell). Suddenly caught in a high stakes game of blackmail, murder, and revenge, Philip is forced to risk everything only to face the greatest danger of all – winning.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

The BBC has acquired Lynley, an upcoming contemporary adaptation of the bestselling mystery crime novels by Elizabeth George. Leo Suter (Vikings: Valhalla) and Sofia Barclay (Ted Lasso) star as the unconventional detective duo DI Tommy Lynley and DS Barbara Havers in the new series, currently in production in Ireland. They are joined by Daniel Mays (Magpie Murders), Niamh Walsh (The English Game), Michael Workeye (My Lady Jane) and Joshua Sher (Vera). The four-part series focuses on Tommy Lynley, a brilliant police detective but an outsider in the force – simply by virtue of his aristocratic upbringing. He is paired with Barbara Havers, a sergeant with a maverick attitude and a working-class background. With seemingly nothing in common and against all odds, the mismatched duo of Lynley and Havers become a formidable team, bonded by their desire to see justice done.

Downton Abbey star Phyllis Logan is leading a pan-global Channel 5 drama based on Parnell Hall’s Puzzle Lady mysteries. The Puzzle Lady [working title] will see the BAFTA-nominee play Cora Felton, who takes on the title role. When a strange murder takes place in the sleepy market town of Bakerbury, the local police are baffled by a crossword puzzle left on the body. With their case going nowhere, they turn reluctantly to Felton, a recent arrival, who happens to have a nationally syndicated crossword puzzle column. The series is for Paramount-owned Channel 5 and is being distributed in the U.S. by PBS Distribution. The series has begun production in Northern Ireland and is set to air next year. Hall, who died in 2020, wrote numerous puzzle lady books along with his Stanley Hastings mysteries.

The Morris Chestnut-starring Watson has received its premiere date on CBS for January 26 following the AFC Championship game, before the drama takes its regular time slot on Sunday, Feb. 16 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT. Watson, inspired by the characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, takes place six months after the death of the titular character’s friend and partner, Sherlock Holmes, at the hands of Moriarty. The modern take follows the historic detective as he turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries. Chestnut stars as Dr. John Watson, who resumes his medical career as the head of a clinic dedicated to treating rare disorders. Watson’s old life isn’t done with him, though – Moriarty and Watson are set to write their own chapter of a story that has fascinated audiences for more than a century. The series also stars Eve Harlow, Peter Mark Kendall, Ritchie Coster, Inga Schlingmann, and Rochelle Aytes.

Netflix unveiled a slate of images for its upcoming spy thriller series, Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, ahead of its premiere date of December 5. Black Doves, which also stars Sarah Lancashire, is set against the backdrop of London at Christmas. It follows Helen Webb (Knightley), a quick-witted, down-to-earth, dedicated wife and mother — and professional spy. For 10 years, she’s been passing on her politician husband’s secrets to the shadowy organization she works for, the Black Doves. When her secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is assassinated, her spymaster, the enigmatic Reed (Lancashire), calls in Helen’s old friend Sam (Whishaw) to keep her safe.

PODCASTS/RADIO

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with paleontologist and crime writer, Leonard "Kris" Krystalka, whose latest novel is The Bone Field.

Crime Time FM presented a live event from Waterstones Tottenham Court Road, with legends Lisa Jewell and Mark Edwards talking about everything from killing people in sand to Marvel superheroes.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Jeffrey Archer, whose novels, including the Clifton Chronicles, the William Warwick novels, and Kane and Abel, have topped bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 300 million copies.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, spoke with Bill Powers, a fifty-year veteran of law enforcement, as well as being an author, educator, and podcaster.

Mystery Melange

The inaugural BloodShed Crime Fiction Festival heads to Swindon in the UK this weekend. Authors from around the UK will be featured in interviews and panels on historical crime fiction, psychological thrillers, and police procedurals, and deliver writing workshops for visitors at the Delta Hotel Marriott in Old Town from October 18 to 20. The festival also includes an interactive component, giving attendees the chance to show off their sleuthing ability against those who write mysteries for a living.

Also on that side of the Atlantic, Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival, returns to Dublin, October 17th – 20th in Dun Laoghaire’s landmark DLR Lexicon Library & Culture Centre. Now in its seventh year, the conference features Andrea Mara, C.L. Taylor, BA Paris, Vaseem Khan, Jo Spain, Steve Cavanagh, and Peter James, among others, taking part in talks, master classes, and workshops. There's also a special dedicated day set aside for young readers.

The inaugural A Christie for Christmas event will celebrate all things Agatha Christie at the News Building in London on November 19. The evening explores the legacy of Agatha Christie and the publication of the new And Then There Were None mystery edition, a unique issue that presents her story in a format entirely faithful to her original conception, with the final solution presented in a sealed envelope that can only be revealed once you have finished the story. Joining in the festivities are authors Mark Aldridge, Jane Casey, Lucy Foley, Sophie Hannah, Vaseem Kha, Bella Mackie, and Suk Pannu. 

Here's an idea that will hopefully gain more traction: independent Canadian author Peggy Blair is partnering with Little Branches Rural Routes Library Conference 2025 and Vimi Corp to establish the Toby Award, designed to celebrate and amplify the voices of self-published mystery authors who are ineligible to submit their trade paperback novels for existing awards because they do not sell in traditional bookstores or in traditional ways. Submissions are open until Dec. 16, 2024. As Blair noted, "Ian Rankin told me he couldn’t get published now if he was starting over. His first six books didn’t sell. They were remaindered, meaning the covers were torn off and they were tossed out. It was his seventh book that was his breakthrough novel. He told me no publisher these days will give an author the time they need to develop their craft and build up a reader base."

On October 21 at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET, Outliers Writing University is presenting a free live online talk with bestselling authors Lee Child and Andrew Child. The event will include a chance for fans to ask all your burning questions about the Jack Reacher series and get the inside scoop on their newest thriller, In Too Deep, releasing October 22. Lee Child (born James Grant) published the first installment in the Jack Reacher series in 1997, and recently decided to step back from writing full time, handing over the reins to the Reacher series to his younger brother, Andrew Grant, who now writes under the new pseudonym Andrew Child. The award-winning Reacher books currently includes 28 installments and were adapted into the TV series starring Alan Ritchson in the title role.

Crime Fiction Lover is once again sponsoring its annual awards with reader input. The British-based website wants to celebrate the best of the best from 2024, from books to authors to television shows, and they need your help to do so. Nominate your favorites in six main categories: Book of the Year, Best Debut, Best in Translation, Best Indie Novel, Best Author, and Best Crime Show. In addition to the main categories, the Life of Crime Award will be presented again this year, bestowed upon an author the editorial team believes has, over the course of their career, made an outstanding contribution to the genre. Nominations will close at noon UK time on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, with shortlists compiled for final voting at a later date.

Hachette is sponsoring a Killer Reads Sweepstakes which opened yesterday and runs through 11:59 PM ET on 11/1/24. Randomly drawn winners from the pool of entrants will receive copies of six different crime fiction books by Melinda Taub; Patricia Cornwell; Douglas Preston & Lee Child; Doug Brod; Holly Frey; and Mikaelia Clements & Onjuli Datta.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton spoke with mystery author Rhonda Lane about her debut mystery novel with a dash of psychological suspense, Fatal Image: An Avery Sloane Mystery; father-son duo, Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, joined Suspense Magazine to talk about their latest book in the Clay Edison series, The Lost Coast; and Janet Evanovich chatted with People Magazine about how "staying fresh" after 31 books in her Stephanie Plum series Is not the hard part.

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

The upcoming Netflix feature adaptation of the epic BAFTA-winning series, Peaky Blinders, keeps adding to its impressive cast. Alongside the previously announced Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan and Tim Roth are new additions Stephen Graham (Line of Duty) and Jay Lycurgo (The Devil Himself) and returning series stars Sophie Rundle, Ned Dennehy, Packy Lee, and Ian Peck. The film is said to be set later than the series, during the Second World War.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is in negotiations to star opposite Maika Monroe in 20th Century’s new take on the 1992 thriller, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Michelle Garza Cervera will direct the feature, with Micah Bloomberg penning the script. The original film starred Rebecca De Mornay and Annabella Sciorra and followed a woman, played by De Mornay, who after her sex-offender husband gets caught in the act and kills himself, embarks on a mission of vengeance against one of her husband’s victims and the woman’s family. Monroe will step into the role made famous by De Mornay, while Winstead will play the role originated by Sciorra.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan are in final negotiations to star in the Paramount+ series, Guy Ritchie's The Associate (working title). The drama follows two generations of gangsters, the businesses they run, the complex relationships they weave, and the man they call upon to fix their problems. Hardy is up for the role of Harry, the fixer, a man who is as dangerous as he is handsome. Mirren and Brosnan would star as the crime family’s matriarch and patriarch, respectively

Reacher, based on the novels by Lee Child, has been renewed for a fourth season at Prime Video, even though Season 3 won’t debut until next year. The news comes a week after the streamer also revealed it had given a series order to a Reacher spinoff starring Maria Sten, reprising her fan-favorite character from the mothership, Frances Neagley. Season 3 is based on Persuader, the seventh book in Child’s series, in which Reacher (Alan Ritchson) must go undercover to rescue an informant held by a haunting foe from his past. It isn't currently scheduled to debut until some time in 2025.

Netflix renewed the action-thriller, The Night Agent, based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, for a 10-episode Season 3 renewal ahead of its Season 2 debut slated to premiere in winter 2025. The second season was delayed from 2024, but it appears Season 3 will not lag as far behind as its predecessor and begin filming soon with a production unit in Istanbul at the end of this year followed by a New York shoot in 2025.

The Killing Times reports that Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's novel DNA is being adapted for TV, retitled Reykjavik 112. Two young women are brutally murdered, and a radio amateur receives a peculiar message that connects him to both victims—although he doesn't know either of them. His curiosity drives him to begin an investigation of his own. Meanwhile, Huldar, the police officer in charge of the investigation, and Freyja, the female psychologist entrusted with the seven-year-old girl who is their key witness, are forced to work together to solve the two cases. Their collaboration is complicated by the fact they recently spent the night together after meeting in a bar where Huldar claimed he was a carpenter from out of town.

Alicia Silverstone is set to play a hot-shot Los Angeles divorce lawyer searching for her father in a new murder mystery series, Irish Blood, for streamer Acorn TV. The series follows Fiona Sharpe (Silverstone), whose path in life is haunted by her father, Declan, who seemingly abandoned her and her mother on her tenth birthday. After years of channeling anger toward him, a message from her father sends her to Ireland. There she learns key truths about her father as well as a family that doesn’t know she exists—and that the story of abandonment was a lie intended to protect her and her mother from her father’s shady business dealings. Fiona resolves to uncover the full truth about her father and reconnect with the parent she only thought she knew.

Boo Killebrew (Mrs. America) is developing a TV series based on Alexandra Andrews’s debut novel, Who Is Maud Dixon? The book is a thriller set in part in Morocco and was compared by the New York Times to The Talented Mr. Ripley, when it was published in 2021. It follows Florence Darrow, who has always felt she was destined for greatness, but after a disastrous affair with her married boss, she starts to doubt herself. All that changes when she sets off for Morocco with her new boss, the celebrated but reclusive author Maud Dixon. Amid the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence begins to feel she’s leading the sort of interesting, cosmopolitan life she deserves. But when she wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night—and no sign of Maud—a dangerous idea begins to take form.

Rafe Spall will star opposite Kelly Reilly in Sky's upcoming six-part crime thriller series, Under Salt Marsh. As a once-in-a-generation storm begins to gather far out at sea, former detective turned teacher Jackie Ellis (Reilly) discovers the body of her 8-year-old pupil, seemingly drowned. The discovery sends shockwaves through the community, reviving the ghost of an unsolved cold case that rocked the town three years prior—the disappearance of Jackie’s niece, which cost her career. The death summons Jackie’s former partner, Detective Eric Bull (Spall) back to Morfa Halen to lead the investigation into a community he failed once before. Convinced the cases are linked, Jackie and Bull must reconcile and race to uncover long-buried secrets inside Morfa, before the storm breaks and all the evidence is gone for good.

The podcast, My Mom’s Murder, is being adapted into a television series that will star Chloë Grace Moretz. The podcast follows Lauren Malloy, who was just an infant when her mother passed away and who had grown up believing her passing was natural. When she discovers that her mother’s death was actually an unsolved murder, she sets out on a journey to discover the truth. The podcast follows Malloy as she confronts family members, interviews old friends, and unearths hidden evidence about her mother’s life and death. Her investigation leads her to confront shady characters from her mother’s past and navigate conflicting stories and disturbing truths and culminates in potential breakthroughs in the decades-long cold case.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Suspense Magazine spoke with award-winning author, Peter May, about his latest book, The Black Loch.

The Red Hot Chili Writers welcomed bestselling Canadian thriller writer, Shari Lapena, to discuss the fact that Mount Everest is getting taller, and the strange case of the defector who undefects.

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Margaret Mizushima about Gathering Mist, the ninth installment in Mizushima’s series featuring Deputy Mattie Wray and her K-9 partner, Robo.

The Spybrary Spy Podcast featured an interview with Barry Werth, author of Prisoner of Lies: Jack Downey's Cold War. This remarkable account follows the true cold war spy story of the longest-held prisoner of war in American history, John Downey, Jr., a CIA officer captured in China during the Korean War and imprisoned for twenty-one years.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features a fun mystery ghost short story perfect for Halloween listening, "The Codicil," written by Shannon Taft and read by actor Sean Hopper.

The latest Crime Time FM included a review roundup by host Paul Burke of new books by Paula Hawkins, Patricia Cornwell, Lee Child, and more.

On Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini chatted with James Harrison, co-founder of Film Noir UK and director of its first festival, Film Noir Fest 2024. The event will take place in Weston-Super-Mare November 1-3 with a theme of "Dangerous Divas."

The Pick Your Poison podcast's Dr. Jen Prosser investigated a toxin you can find at a haunted house and how it’s responsible for world-wide outbreaks poisoning thousands, with many of the victims children.

Petrona Award Shortlist

The shortlist was announced today for the 2024 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, including six crime novels from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who passed away in December 2012. All entries must be by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, be a translation, and published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year. The winning title will be announced on November 14. Congrats to all the finalists!

• Anne Mette Hancock - The Collector tr. Tara F Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)
• Jørn Lier Horst - Snow Fall tr. Anne Bruce (Norway, Michael Joseph)
•  Arnaldur Indriðason - The Girl by the Bridge tr. Philip Roughton (Iceland, Harvill Secker)
• Jógvan Isaksen - Dead Men Dancing tr. Marita Thomsen (Faroe Islands (Denmark, Norvik Press
• Åsa Larsson - The Sins of our Fathers tr. Frank Perry (Sweden, MacLehose Press)
• Yrsa Sigurðardottir - The Prey tr. Victoria Cribb (Iceland, Hodder & Stoughton)

 

Mystery Melange

 

Robert Randisi has died at the age of seventy-three. Randisi authored more than 650 published books and edited more than 30 anthologies of short stories, with Booklist magazine noting that he "may be the last of the pulp writers." He founded Mystery Scene Magazine and the Private Eye Writers of America, an organization he ran for over 40 years, which also sponsored the Shamus Awards. Author Rick Helms posted a tribute on Facebook, "I knew Bob for over 20 years. He was crusty and blunt and yet unexpectedly generous," adding that "Bob was a true master in the field, and I wish him fair skies, calm seas, and and the pleasantest of journeys. The writing world is poorer this morning for his loss, but we were so privileged to have had him. He will be missed."

David Burnham, the New York Times reporter who exposed police graft, has died at the age of 91. After being tipped off by the detective Frank Serpico, Burnham wrote an explosive series on police corruption in New York City, sparking an investigation by the Knapp commission. His reporting inspired the 1973 movie Serpico, which was adapted from the book Serpico by Peter Maas, and starred Al Pacino as the titular detective.

Audible announced a new Audible Original audiobook release on November 14th of a multi-cast adaptation of Agatha Christie’s iconic debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Peter Dinklage takes on the title role of Hercule Poirot, to be joined by Himesh Patel (Yesterday) who will be playing Poirot’s companion, Captain Hastings. The star-studded adaptation will also feature Harriet Walter (Succession), Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), Rob Delaney (Catastrophe), John Bradley (Game of Thrones), Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane) and Patsy Ferran (A Streetcar Named Desire). The Mysterious Affair at Styles tells the story of an injured and traumatized Captain Hastings (Patel), who has been invited to the large country estate of Styles Court to recover after serving in World War I. With tensions tearing the family apart, what seems like a perfect haven soon turns into a nightmare, as the matriarch of the family Emily Inglethorp (Walter) is brutally murdered.

The Guardian profiled the new book Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother by Robert S Bader, which is probably a shoe-in to become a movie at some point. Zeppo Marx was said to be the funniest of the Marx Brothers off screen, yet he was overshadowed by his siblings Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Zeppo went on to became a successful talent agent but as Bader reports, he mingled as easily with mobsters as with movie stars and may have even been behind a series of 1930s jewellery heists from Hollywood stars.

The latest "First Two Pages" offering on Art Taylor's blog featured David Avallone offering the third essay in a series of First Two Pages posts from contributors to Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, the latest music-themed anthology from editor Josh Pachter. David brings a wide set of backgrounds to the table, including work in film and in comic books in addition to prose fiction—and he has pedigree too, as the son of prolific author Michael Avallone. In the essay below, David focuses on other inspirations and influences for his story, specifically how autobiographical elements feed creativity.

Have you noticed print books getting thinner? It may not be your imagination. Publishers are trying skinnier books to save money and emissions.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element chatted with bestselling author of the Orphan X novels, Gregg Hurwitz, about his upcoming thriller, Nemesis, including what's next for Evan Smoak, and how Evan's moral code will be tested in this novel as it's never been before; Suspense Magazine interviewed John Connolly about his latest book, Night and Day, and what’s next for Charlie Parker; and novelist Richard E. Snyder spoke with Lisa Haselton about his new spy fiction, Defector in Paradise.

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

Kirsten Dunst is joining Channing Tatum in the film, Roofman, with Derek Cianfrance directing. The story is based on the true tale of Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum), an eccentric and charming serial robber who broke into more than 60 McDonald's restaurants overnight via their roofs, then emptied the cash register in the morning after herding staff into freezers. The former U.S. Army Reserve officer became known as the "Rooftop Robber" or "Roofman" and was convicted and imprisoned in 2000 but escaped from jail. He evaded capture by holing up for months in a Toys "R" Us and Circuit City store. After reportedly leaving his fingerprints on a Catch Me If You Can DVD, he was recaptured and sent back to jail. The movie will focus on Manchester’s months-long odyssey on the lam where he meets and forms a bond with a woman (Dunst) who works at the toy store and is struggling to make ends meet and provide for her two girls.

Oscar winner Halle Berry is in negotiations to join the cast of Amazon MGM Studios’ adaptation of Don Winslow‘s short story, Crime 101, written and directed by Bart Layton (American Animals). The project will star Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, and Barry Keoghan and is set to be released in theaters next year. Plot details of the film are under wraps, but the original short story by Winslow has shades of Heat as it follows high-level jewel thefts taking place up and down the Pacific Coast that police have linked to Colombian cartels. Detective Lou Lubesnick has other ideas and he zeroes in on one perp, a thief looking for a final score.

Teyana Taylor and Sasha Calle have joined the ensemble cast of the upcoming Netflix crime thriller, RIP, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, with Joe Carnahan directing from his own script. The plot follows a group of Miami cops whose trust begins to fray after they discover millions in cash in a derelict stash house. As outside forces learn about the size of the seizure, everything is called into question — including who they can rely on.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Prime Video has given a series order to a Reacher spinoff starring Maria Sten, reprising her fan favorite character, Frances Neagley, from the original series based on Lee Child's novels. Sten's Neagley is a private investigator in Chicago and former military colleague of Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) in the Army’s 110th Special Investigations Unit. When she learns that a beloved friend from her past has been killed in a suspicious accident, she becomes hell bent on justice. Using everything she’s learned from Jack Reacher and her time as a member of the 110 Special Investigators, Neagley puts herself on a dangerous path to uncover a menacing evil. Ritchson is expected to appear on the spinoff as a guest star, reprising his role as Reacher.

Former Criminal Minds star, Matthew Gray Gubler, is returning to television as the lead of another CBS crime procedural, Einstein (working title). Gubler is set to play the title role and produce the CBS Studios pilot, from the Monk team of creator/executive producer Andy Breckman and director/executive producer Randy Zisk. The drama follows the brilliant but directionless great grandson of Albert Einstein (Gubler), who spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor until his bad-boy antics land him in trouble with the law and he is pressed into service helping a local police detective solve her most puzzling cases. Gubler’s Lew Einstein is a popular professor at Princeton when he actually shows up for class. Irreverent and misguided, Lew’s genius and famous name weigh heavily on him, but using his gift to help solve homicides may finally offer his life some direction and purpose.

FX has picked up Sterlin Harjo's drama pilot, a follow-up to the network's acclaimed series, Reservation Dogs, to develop into a series starring Ethan Hawke. The untitled series, formerly known as The Sensitive Kind, is set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and said to have a film noir vibe centering on Hawke's character, a "guy who knows too much." The pilot cast includes Keith David, Siena East, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tim Blake Nelson, Scott Shepherd, Tracy Letts, Kyle Maclachlan, and Macon Blair.

Poppy Liu (Hacks) and Chris Bauer (The Wire) have joined the cast of Netflix's limited series, His & Hers, in recurring roles. They will star opposite series lead and executive producer, Tessa Thompson. The six-episode limited series from William Oldroyd and adapted from Alice Feeney’s novel is set in the sweltering heat of Atlanta where Anna (Thompson) lives as a recluse and is fading away from her friends and journalism career. But when she overhears about a murder in Dahlonega – the sleepy town where she grew up – she is snapped back to life, pouncing on the case and searching for answers. Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) is strangely suspicious of her involvement, chasing her into the crosshairs of his own investigation. There are two sides to every story, his and hers, which means someone is always lying.

Colin Farrell is returning to Sugar, Apple TV+’s neo-noir thriller that was hailed for its gripping twists, for a second season. Set after the events of the first season, Season 2 will find Sugar (Farrell) back in Los Angeles to take another missing persons case. At the same time, he will continue to look for answers surrounding his missing sister.

Amazon MGM Studios is not proceeding with the Untitled J. Edgar project, one of two Bosch spinoffs that had been in development at the studio. The other, which centers on Detective Renée Ballard, was picked up to series earlier this year with Maggie Q starring. The Untitled J. Edgar offshoot was to follow Harry Bosch’s (Titus Welliver) former partner, Detective Jerry Edgar, who is tapped for an undercover FBI mission in Little Haiti, Miami. In this glamorous city, he is forced to balance his new life with the city’s gritty underbelly, while being chased by his mysterious past. Jamie Hector, who starred as Edgar opposite Welliver on Bosch, was poised to reprise his role in the potential spinoff.

PODCASTS/RADIO

The BBC chatted with Ian Rankin, who was on a deadline to complete his next Inspector Rebus thriller, and asked: How does a bestselling crime writer breathe new life into his most enduring character?

Kate Summerscale spoke with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about her new true-crime book, The Peepshow; misogyny and male violence; the cultural and wider societal impact of a notorious murder, and more.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Jenny Milchman, the Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of five novels. She is launching a new series with Thomas & Mercer, introducing psychologist Arles Shepherd, a character who fights to save the most vulnerable children while battling her own inner demons. The Usual Silence is the first book in that series, which was just published.

Sergio Angelini, of the Tipping My Fedora blog, has started a new podcast on the topic of film noir, uncovering the secrets behind 100 years of crime movies, radio dramas, hardboiled fiction, and thousands of television episodes. For the inaugural episode, he's joined by crime fiction critic and historian, Barry Forshaw as they look at a selection of some of the home video releases on which Barry has worked, spanning 25 years of Film Noir.

The Pick Your Poison podcast investigated how homemade jewelry can poison you, why some people remain unaffected after exposure to this lethal toxin, and how it was used to assassinate dissidents from Eastern Europe.