Mystery Melange

Mystery Writers of America will present the first MWA-U session of the year on February 5, via a Zoom webinar at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. In this presentation, AuthorBytes will share key insights it has gleaned from 25 years of creating websites for bestselling, mid-list, and debut authors. AuthorBytes’ Creative Director, Steve Bennett, will cover topics such as the elements of an effective website and how you can incorporate them into your web presence. A registration link is available here, which is free for MWA Members and $20 for non-members.

Mystery Readers International is supporting the victims of and responders to the devastating LA Wildfires by donating funds from the sale of PDFs of the Southern California issue and two Los Angeles issues of Mystery Readers Journal. Buy the Southern California and/or Los Angeles issues of MRJ for $5/each, and the money (including PayPal fees) will be donated to World Central Kitchen and Pasadena Humane. Both charities are on the ground helping victims and responders of the Los Angeles area fires.

Harrogate International Festivals has announced the special guests for this year’s festival, which takes place in the town in July. Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh, the author behind Trainspotting, as well as Lee and Andrew Child, Attica Locke, Kate Atkinson, Paula Hawkins, Kate Mosse, Steph McGovern, Val McDermid and Mark Billingham, will feature in the line up of crime writing icons, TV talent, and reader favorites in a program curated by 2025 festival chair Mick Herron. The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival takes place from July 17 to 20 at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. The full program will be announced on April 1.

Noir at the Bar heads to Chicago on February 20 at the ERIS Brewery and Cider House. The roster of authors currently scheduled to read from their works includes Lina Chern, Tracy Clark, Kelsey Rae Dimberg, Michelle Falkoff, Jake Hinkson, Lindsay Hunter, Regan MacArthur, Juan Martinez, Lori Rader-Day, and Banca Sloane.

Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of crime fiction reads for the Chinese New Year, the annual 15-day festival also celebrated in many other Asian communities and across the U.S.

As part of the weekly Short Story Wednesday, George Kelley reviewed "Missing in Miskatonic" by JP Behrens; Patti Abbott profiled "Torch Song" John Cheever; and Todd Mason (who collects the links), looked at Gregory Shepard's Stark House Anthology.

In the Q&A roundup, CrimeReads interviewed Kevin Shinick, voice actor, comic book creator, and co-writer of The Mike Tyson Mysteries, about his upcoming project, Host Mortem, in which two game show hosts from the 90s get together to investigate mysteries from the 1940s; Author Interviews spoke with Kemper Donovan, host of the All About Agatha podcast, about his new novel, Loose Lips, described as "Knives Out meets high seas intrigue on a literary cruise to nowhere"; and Deborah Kalb chatted with veteran screenwriter and Blue Bloods showrunner, Kevin Wade, about his debut novel, Johnny Careless.

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

Tom Blyth, star of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, has landed a role alongside Mia McKenna-Bruce, Matt Dillon, and Isaach De Bankolé in The Cry of the Guards, the forthcoming drama from renowned French filmmaker Claire Denis (Stars at Noon). Based on Bernard-Marie Koltes’s play, Black Battles with Dogs, the story unfolds over the course of one night near a construction site in Senegal, where a group of workers is confronted by a man seeking justice for the cover-up of his brother’s murder at the site.

Colman Domingo is joining the cast of Gus Van Sant’s hostage thriller, Dead Man’s Wire. Austin Kolodney’s original screenplay is based on the story of Tony Kirtsis, who one frigid day in February 1977, took Indianapolis mortgage broker Dick Hall hostage in his office. He attached a steel wire that was hooked to a sawed-off, double barrel shotgun around his captive’s neck. (This "dead man's line" meant that if a policeman shot Kirtsis, the shotgun would go off and shoot Hall in the head.). Domingo joins previously announced cast members, Bill Skarsgård (Nosferatu) and Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things).

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio may be set to make their seventh film together, as the director-actor duo are in talks to respectively direct and star in an adaptation of Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City for Disney’s 20th Century Studios. DiCaprio first acquired the rights to Larson’s bestselling book in 2010, with the project bouncing from studio to studio. It was last set up at Hulu as a big-budget miniseries in 2019 but was later dropped. First published in 2003, Devil in the White City follows H.H. Holmes, a notorious criminal regarded as the first American serial killer, for the lurid tabloid pieces published around his crimes. The story is set in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, and contrasts Holmes’s killings against the efforts of architect Daniel Burnham to make the World’s Fair a reality.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Minnie Driver, Ruth Jones, and James Nesbitt are set to star in Run Away, Harlan Coben's next Netflix series. The story centers on Simon Greene (Nesbitt), who had the perfect life with a loving wife (Driver) and kids, great job, and beautiful home. But everything fell apart when his eldest daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) ran away. Simon's search to find her will take him into a dangerous underworld, revealing deep secrets that could tear his family apart forever. In keeping with previous Coben adaptations Fool Me Once and Missing You, Run Away will relocate the story from the U.S. to the U.K. Filming will begin around Manchester and the North West of England this month.

Netflix has greenlit a fourth season of its popular legal drama series, The Lincoln Lawyer, with production set to begin next month. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo will return as Mickey Haller in Season 4, based on the sixth book in The Lincoln Lawyer series by Michael Connelly, The Law of Innocence. Also coming back are Becki Newton (Lorna), Jazz Raycole (Izzy), and Angus Sampson (Cisco), as well as Neve Campbell (Maggie McPherson). Created for television by David E. Kelley and developed for television by Ted Humphrey, the drama follows Mickey Haller (Garcia-Rulfo), an iconoclastic idealist who runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln as he takes on cases big and small across Los Angeles.

Rhona Mitra has landed the female lead opposite Joel Kinnaman in Debriefing the President (wt), the four-hour miniseries for TNT, which comes as part of the network’s renewed focus on premium event programming. Mitra plays Polly Stevens, a colleague of Kinnaman’s real-life CIA analyst, John Nixon, whose book of the same name inspired the series. Delving into the 2003 interrogation of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Debriefing the President explores a CIA analyst’s relentless search for truth, the complexities of justice on the global stage, and the deeply personal father-son connections woven into a turbulent period of history.

As Deadline noted, it was probably inevitable the worlds of FBI and CIA would eventually collide on a TV show from Dick Wolf, the king of crime procedurals. The result is FBI: CIA, a spinoff from Wolf's hit CBS drama FBI, which is targeting a potential series order for the 2025-2026 season. The proposed offshoot follows a dedicated, strait-laced FBI agent and a street-smart CIA agent who are part of a new, clandestine taskforce charged with solving and preventing domestic terrorism in and around New York City. Three characters, including the FBI and CIA agent leads, will appear in the spinoff episode airing this spring and would become series regulars should the project go forward. Casting is currently underway for the roles.

Uma Thurman (Kill Bill; Pulp Fiction) has been cast as a series regular opposite Michael C. Hall in the new Showtime original series, Dexter: Resurrection. Thurman will play Charley, who works as the head of security for mysterious billionaire Leon Prater. She worked as a Special Ops officer and in the world of private security before becoming the right-hand woman for Prater. Hall is set to reprise the titular role of Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter expert who doesn’t just solve murders but also commits them. The actor played Dexter for eight seasons during the show’s original run from 2006-13, followed by Dexter: New Blood in 2021, and he currently narrates origin story, Dexter: Original Sin.

Melissa Joan Hart is set to continue her long-standing partnership with Lifetime in the upcoming thriller, Killing the Competition. Debuting March 1st, the film is inspired by actual events of an overbearing mother (Hart), once her high school's star dancer and prom queen, who descends from meddling to menacing after her daughter is cut from the dance team of her own high school alma mater. In a desperate attempt to reclaim what she believes is rightfully theirs, she becomes involved in a shocking kidnapping plot. Lily Brooks O'Briant, Valerie Loo, Anzu Lawson, and Eddie Mills also star.

Fans of the ITV drama McDonald & Dodds were upset to learn it has been cancelled after four seasons. McDonald & Dodds, which debuted its first season in March 2020, followed Jason Watkins and Tala Gouveia's titular characters of DS Dodds and DCI Lauren McDonald as they solved crimes in Bath. Other regular cast members include Outnumbered's Claire Skinner and EastEnders's Charlie Chambers as Chief Superintendent Mary Ormond and DC Samuel Goldie. While fans won't be seeing Watkins back in the role of DS Dodds, it was recently announced he has been cast in a new detective drama from Death in Paradise boss, Toby Frow.

PODCASTS/RADIO

Authors on the Air spoke with Robert Crais about the twentieth novel in the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series, The Big Empty.

Cops and Writers had the first of a special two-part show with Kansas City Police Detective Brent Cartwright, who dedicated over 25 years to serving as a US Army veteran and police officer, spending more than a decade as an undercover detective. His book, Undercover Junkie: Chasing Highs, Confronting Killers, and Unraveling in the Chaos, is due out February 15, 2025.

The latest Crime Time FM featured "The Review Show January 2025," with a look at the latest round up of new releases in the world of crime fiction.

The Audies Have It

The Audio Publishers Association announced the finalists across 28 categories for the 30th annual Audie Awards for audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment, including the mysteries and thrillers. You can check out all of the shortlisted titles here, which include some crime-related titles sprinkled throughout the various categories.

 

MYSTERY FINALISTS

• Still See You Everywhere (Audio) By Lisa Gardner, Narrated by Hillary Huber, Published by Hachette Audio
• The Midnight Feast (Audio) By Lucy Foley, Narrated by Joe Eyre, Sarah Slimani, Roly Botha, Laurence Dobiesz, and Tuppence Middleton, Published by HarperCollins Publishers
• This Is Why We Lied (Audio) By Karin Slaughter, Narrated by Kathleen Early, Published by HarperCollins Publishers
• Listen for the Lie (Audio), By Amy Tintera, Narrated by Will Damron and January LaVoy, Published by Macmillan Audio
• Rough Pages (Audio), By Lev AC Rosen, Narrated by Vikas Adam, Published by Macmillan Audio

THRILLER FINALISTS

• The Forest of Lost Souls (Audio) By Dean Koontz, Narrated by January LaVoy, Published by Brilliance Publishing
• The Little Drummer Girl By John le Carré, Narrated by Adjoa Andoh, Published by reamscape Media LLC
• Lone Wolf (Audio) By Gregg Hurwitz, Narrated by Scott Brick, Published by Macmillan Audio
• First Lie Wins (Audio) By Ashley Elston, Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld, Published by Penguin Random House Audio
• The Return of Ellie Black By Emiko Jean, Narrated by Mizuo Peck, Tessa Albertson, full cast, Published by Simon & Schuster Audio

Edgar Award Nominations Set for 2025

Mystery Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced in 2024. The 78th Annual Edgar® Awards will be celebrated, with winners revealed, on May 1, 2025, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. Congrats to all the finalists!

BEST NOVEL

• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Penguin Random House – Random House Worlds/Del Rey
• Rough Trade by Katrina Carrasco (Farrar, Straus and Giroux – MCD)
• Things Don’t Break on Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins (Penguin Random House – Crown)
• My Favorite Scar by Nicolás Ferraro (Soho Press – Soho Crime)
• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Penguin Random House – Riverhead Books)
• Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera (Macmillan Publishers – Celadon Books)
• The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell (Penguin Random House – Doubleday)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

• Twice the Trouble by Ash Clifton (Crooked Lane Books)
• Cold to the Touch by Kerri Hakoda (Crooked Lane Books)
• The Mechanics of Memory by Audrey Lee (CamCat Books)
• A Jewel in the Crown by David Lewis (Kensington Books – A John Scognamiglio Book)
• The President’s Lawyer by Lawrence Robbins (Simon & Schuster – Atria Books)
• Holy City by Henry Wise (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

• The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle (Harlequin Trade Publishing – Park Row Books)
• The Vacancy in Room 10 by Seraphina Nova Glass (Harlequin Trade Publishing – Graydon House)
• Shell Games by Bonnie Kistler (HarperCollins – Harper Paperbacks)
• A Forgotten Kill by Isabella Maldonado (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
• The Road to Heaven by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson (Dundurn Press Ltd.) 

BEST FACT CRIME

• Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi (HarperCollins – Mariner Books)
• The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson (Penguin Random House – Crown)
• A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton by Deb Miller Landau (Pegasus Books – Pegasus Crime)
• The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy that Let a Killer Go Free by Gregg Olsen (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
• Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second Slavery by Earl Swift (HarperCollins – Mariner Books)
• The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Wolraich (Union Square & Co.)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

• James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Nathan Ashman (McFarland Publishing)
• American Noir Film: From The Maltese Falcon to Gone Girl by M. Keith Booker (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
• Organized Crime on Page and Screen: Portrayals in Hit Novels, Films, and Television Shows by David Geherin (McFarland Publishing)
• On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett by Ashley Lawson (The Ohio State University Press)
• Ian Fleming; The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare (HarperCollins – Harper)

BEST SHORT STORY

• “Cut and Thirst,” Amazon Original Stories by Margaret Atwood (Amazon Publishing)
• “Everywhere You Look,” Amazon Original Stories by Liv Constantine (Amazon Publishing)
• “Eat My Moose,” Conjunctions: 82, Works & Days by Erika Krouse (Bard College)
• “Barriers to Entry,” Amazon Original Stories by Ariel Lawhon (Amazon Publishing)
• “The Art of Cruel Embroidery,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine – July-August 2024 by Steven Sheil (Dell Magazine)

BEST JUVENILE

• The Beanstalk Murder by P.G. Bell (Macmillan Publishers – Feiwel & Friends)
• Mystery of Mystic Mountain by Janet Fox (Simon & Schuster BFYR)
• Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Stolen Key by Margaret Peterson Haddix (HarperCollins – Quill Tree Books)
• The Spindle of Fate by Aimee Lim (Macmillan Publishers – Feiwel & Friends)
• Find Her by Ginger Reno (Holiday House)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

• Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell (HarperCollins – Heartdrum)
• The Bitter End by Alexa Donne (Random House Books for Young Readers)
• A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur (Macmillan Publishers – Feiwel & Friends)
• Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper Teen)
• 49 Miles Alone by Natalie D. Richards (Sourcebooks – Sourcebooks Fire)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

• “Episode Five” – Rebus, Written by Gregory Burke (Viaplay)
• “Episode One” – Monsieur Spade, Written by Tom Fontana & Scott Frank (AMC)
• “Episode One” – Moonflower Murders, Written by Anthony Horowitz (Masterpiece PBS)
• “Mirror” – Murderesses, Written by Wiktor Piatkowski, Joanna Kozłowska, Katarzyna Kaczmarek (Viaplay)
• “Episode Two” – The Marlow Murder Club, Written by Robert Thorogood (Masterpiece PBS)

SPECIAL AWARDS – PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED IN JANUARY 2025

Grand Master

• Laura Lippman
  
• John Sandford
  

Raven Award

• Face in a Book Bookstore & Gifts

Ellery Queen Award

• Peter Wolverton of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

Author R&R with J.W. Jarvis

J.W. Jarvis lives in sunny California but is originally from the suburbs of the Windy City. After working in the IT and AI fields, he turned his hand to writing young adult action novels, including the First Responder series. When he’s not thinking of ways to create inspiring characters and nonstop action stories, you can find him reading, golfing, traveling, or just sipping a hot vanilla latte.

Jarvis's latest novel is the adult technothriller, Artificial Age. Determined to escape a wheelchair-bound existence, paralyzed Navy SEAL Michael Cooling undergoes surgery to integrate an untested hi-tech endoskeleton into his ravaged human flesh. And as he trains tirelessly to adapt to his new synthetic body, he develops an unprecedented strength and speed he hopes will help him crush those who would see the USA fall. But while technology gives him new life, it may also prove to be the world's undoing. Inspired by The Six Million Dollar Man, J.W. Jarvis imagines a thrilling next chapter in which a highly decorated Navy SEAL is given a second chance to serve his country through technology.

J.W. Jarvis stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the book:

 

Researching: Readers want to be taken away, not taken for granted.

When I plotted my technothriller, I knew my main character was going to be a worldly man. He has years of military experience and has received many decorations. He commands an elite navy unit, and his missions have no borders or barriers to entry. The problem—I’ve only visited countries in three of the seven continents. To be fair, I have no desire to visit Antarctica in my lifetime. That still leaves three. How can I write about a well-traveled super-agent? One word, research.

For example, my research helped when one of my book characters visited an Eastern Europe restaurant. Every country has certain dishes that are part of the local cuisine. The reader wants to feel like they are right there enjoying it, too. I knew I hit the mark when my editor told me his mouth started watering. Readers crave facts despite reading fiction. Using accurate information to describe a location helps take the reader there. That place may just end up on their bucket list someday. If they’ve already visited, nostalgia is an incredible page-turner.

My new thriller book’s plot is part fan fiction. Fan fiction is creative writing that builds on popular works from the past. In my case, it was a TV series from 50 years ago. At the time of its airing, the bionic man dazzled viewers with its unprecedented technology. Even today, people use the iconic sounds of the bionic man in video clips. Fast forward five decades and humans are now receiving bionic arms to aid with their disabilities. I wanted to break the technology barriers with a new story. My advanced prosthetics would not only be believable, but also achievable. The good news about fiction is you just need an eccentric billionaire character to make the money problem go away. And so, I investigated superior technology. Derived from natural resources that are not only efficient but sustainable.

I wrote Artificial Agent with a rigorous mindset. Everything I wrote must be possible. It didn’t matter if I was writing about the latest military technology, material science advancements, or the location of a train yard. For example, in today’s world, carbon fiber materials are very popular. Compared to steel, carbon fiber weighs much less and is significantly stronger. These benefits make the material an excellent candidate for aerospace, automotive and sports applications. I could have used those materials in my book but dug even deeper. Carbon fibers are 3-D crystalline materials. The future, however, is 2-D allotropes. Essentially, allotropes highlight how a single element can have its atoms restructured for unique applications. Such is the case with the element boron. The nanotechnology mentioned in my book enhanced my protagonist’s weaponry.

The pace of thriller books is unmatched by other genres. To guide the reader to the next suspenseful scene, the writer must elaborate efficiently. That means more research than the typical book. Plot scenes change frequently. This keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Alternate book genres don’t require as many locations or physical references from the real world. Consider romance novels. They can have an entire chapter devoted to a sensual encounter. Fantasy novels have world building that is more imaginative than researched. Thriller readers need to believe that ordinary characters are thrust into extraordinary situations. Thrillers prey on readers’ fears that could happen in everyday life.

Book research can also be extremely rewarding. Authors can identify plot variants they may have never imagined. It can expose weaknesses in areas such as government, technology, and medicine. Evil characters can capitalize on those deficits. Good characters can protect them. In Artificial Agent, I investigated the military might of many of the Eastern European countries. I also determined if a country would act as my antagonist’s friend or foe. Last, I found some countries lacked key weaponry to put up a proper fight. This made it all too easy for my bad guy.

In closing, try approaching a person born between 1997 and 2012, otherwise known as Generation Z. Ask them what an encyclopedia is? We have it easy today compared to the past. Methods of research are literally at our fingertips. The days of opening a thick encyclopedia labeled (Aa - Al) or heading to the library to scroll through microfilm readers are gone. Those research venues are hard to maintain. The information is as old as the paper it’s printed on. The internet, search engines, and now GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture gives people easy access to massive amounts of information. Updating technology is relatively easy. The only downside to so many ways to get information is the onset of mass misinformation. The research may have gotten easier, but the validation of that research has gotten harder. Perhaps that’s a good thing, so book readers get what they paid for. An economical way to go somewhere new or experience things they may never see in the real world.

 

You can learn more about J.W. Jarvis via his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Bookbub. The Artificial Agent is now available via all major booksellers. 

Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Finalists 2025

The Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Awards are fan awards chosen by registered members of the Left Coast Crime conventions since 1996. A ballot listing the official nominees is given to each registrant when they check in at the convention, and final voting takes place during the event, which this year takes place in Denver Colorado from March 13-16. 2025. The winners will be revealed at the Lefty Awards Banquet on Saturday, March 15th.

Congratulations to this year's finalists:

Lefty Nominees for Best Humorous Mystery Novel

• Ellen Byron, A Very Woodsy Murder (Kensington Books) 
• Jennifer J. Chow, Ill-Fated Fortune (St. Martin’s Paperbacks)
• A.J. Devlin, Bronco Buster (NeWest Press)
• Catriona McPherson, Scotzilla (Severn House)
• Rob Osler, Cirque du Slay (Crooked Lane Books)
• Richard Osman, We Solve Murders (Pamela Dorman Books / Viking)

 

Lefty Nominees for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bill Gottfried Memorial) for books covering events before 1970

 

• John Copenhaver, Hall of Mirrors (Pegasus Crime)
• Robert Dugoni, A Killing on the Hill (Thomas & Mercer)
• Dianne Freeman, An Art Lover’s Guide to Paris and Murder (Kensington Books)
• Laurie R. King, The Lantern’s Dance (Bantam Books)
• Laura Jensen Walker, Death of a Flying Nightingale (Level Best Books / Historia)

 

Lefty Nominees for Best Debut Mystery Novel

• Peter Malone Elliott, Blue Ridge (Level Best Books)
• Cindy Goyette, Obey All Laws (Level Best Books)
• Audrey Lee, The Mechanics of Memory (CamCat Books) 
• Jennifer K. Morita, Ghosts of Waikiki (Crooked Lane Books)
• K.T. Nguyen, You Know What You Did (Dutton)

 

Lefty Nominees for Best Mystery Novel

• Claire Booth, Home Fires (Severn House)
• Margot Douaihy, Blessed Water (Zando, Gillian Flynn Books)
• Rob Hart, Assassins Anonymous (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
• Leslie Karst, Molten Death (Severn House)
• James L’Etoile, Served Cold (Level Best Books)
• Duane Swierczynski, California Bear (Mulholland Books)

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:

WILDFIRE UPDATE

Due to the recent wildfires in the greater Los Angeles area, production on some TV shows and movies has been put on hold temporarily. Affected shows include NCIS, NCIS: Origins, and The Rookie, among others. The LA County Fire Department announced that all permits issued for filming in the communities of Altadena, La Crescenta, La Canada, Flintridge, and unincorporated Pasadena had been withdrawn, with other permit revocations possible. Though most studio sites or soundstages are not directly in the path of the various fires, the air quality has been deemed dangerous to health, and residents are being asked not to leave their homes unnecessarily. Of course, Hollywood is not the only entity affected, as many other businesses, schools, churches, animal shelters, and homes have been destroyed. If you'd like to help victims of the fires, CBS compiled a helpful list of resources.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Tom Holland is set to star in and produce The Partner, a drama based on the John Grisham 1997 bestseller that Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) is scripting for Universal. The story follows Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a white shoe Biloxi law firm who fakes his own death in a burning car. He’s left behind a wife, newborn daughter, and a secret—he’s actually faked his death to create a new life by stealing $90 million from a client of his crooked law firm, and ultimately finds happiness and love in South America. When the client who worked so hard to defraud the government finds the money is missing from his offshore accounts, he becomes determined to hunt down the lawyer he doesn’t believe is dead. That leads the attorney to have to turn himself in to the FBI and face up to the wife, child, and life he left behind.

Ali Afshar’s ESX Entertainment is developing the western, Day of Reckoning, starring Billy Zane, Zach Roerig, and Cara Jade Myers, and directed by Shaun Silva. The project centers on put-upon lawman John Dorsey (Roerig), on the verge of losing his wife and his job as sheriff, who sets up a posse with bullish U.S. Marshall Butch Hayden (Zane) to hold outlaw Emily Rouse (Myers) hostage. A battle of wills ensues as Emily turns the posse on themselves, but as her marauding husband and his gang approach, Emily and John realize they will need each other to survive.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer is set to lead the thriller series, Minotaur, alongside Assaad Bouab (Call My Agent). Celyn Jones will write and direct the six-part Welsh/French drama, which he created and will be produced via Mad As Birds, the production company he runs with Sean Marley. Minotaur follows Luc (Bouab), a cold-blooded killer who escapes Paris’s criminal underbelly for the more prosaic North Wales. There he meets Angel (Dormer) who lives in a struggling community she feels she can never belong to, raising her son Joe alone. Whilst fighting addiction, Angel gravitates towards the mysterious Luc as a new start for both, but the past looks determined to drag Luc back into a dangerous underworld.

In the wake of the success of Polish drama, Śleboda, which has become SkyShowtime’s best performing scripted series ever in the country, the streamer is rolling out the series across its footprint — meaning its services in Northern Europe, Iberia, and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, starting February 20. Śleboda is an adaptation of the first installment of the acclaimed crime novels by Małgorzata Fugiel-Kuźmińska and Michał Kuźmiński, and turns on the story of cultural anthropologist Anka Serafin, played by Maria Dębska. She embarks on a journey of self-discovery in the mountains but stumbles upon a dead body and becomes embroiled in a twisty murder mystery. She crosses paths with shameless journalist Sebastian Strzygoń (Maciej Musiał), and Jędrek Chowaniec (Piotr Pacek), a local police officer, with whom she once had a teen romance.

David Zayas (Dexter), Jack Alcott (Dexter: New Blood), and James Remar (Oppenheimer) will join Michael C. Hall in the Paramount+/Showtime Original series, Dexter: Resurrection in series regular roles. Production begins on the new series this month and will premiere in the summer. Zayas and Remar will return to the roles they made famous in the mothership series, Detective Angel Batista and Harry Morgan, Dexter’s fathery. Alcott will play Dexter’s son, Harrison Morgan, who he originally portrayed in Dexter: New Blood. As Deadline noted, how Remar will return on a series regular basis will be interesting to see considering his character has been dead for quite some time. No official synopsis for Dexter: Resurrection has been revealed, but it will be a follow-up to Dexter: New Blood and set in the present day.

A new trailer was released for Season 3 of Reacher, based on the novels of Lee Child. The trailer starts with Reacher (Alan Ritchson) being recruited for another mission, this time one involving the owner of a rug import business and the DEA. But this mission has a wrinkle: Quinn (Brian Tee), a former military officer who committed a horrific crime, is involved.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On Crime Time FM, Wes Browne chatted with Scott Blackburn and Paul Burke about his noir, They All Fall the Same; why it wasn't called Spoon; the Appalachians; North Carolina; pizza; and community.

Authors on the Air interviewed Edgar nominee, Alafair Burke, about her new twisty, layered novel, The Note.

Cops and Writers welcomed Richard Rybicki, a retired Chicago Police Department detective and teacher of Crime Scene Technology, who turned to his lifelong passion of writing with a series featuring Sam Laska, a disgraced former Chicago Police detective living in Florida.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed their most anticipated thriller and mystery books of 2025.

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

Josh Duhamel (Shotgun Wedding), Dylan Sprouse (The Duel), and Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) have just wrapped on the Mississippi production of The Neglected, an action thriller co-written, directed, and produced by David Lipper (Murder at Hollow Creek). In the film, Detective Shaw (Duhamel) is about to retire when he finds out on his last day of work that a serial killer has buried his son alive. He then races against the clock to solve three murders and find his son’s location before he runs out of air.  The project is co-written by Adam G. Levine and Lipper and also stars Jeremy and Jason London and Elena Sanchez. 

The Viola Davis-led political thriller, G20, has set its Prime Video premiere date for April 10. Davis is set to play U.S. President Danielle Sutton after she’s been targeted by a militia group at the G20 summit. In an effort to save herself, her loved ones, and the country, she must keep one step ahead of her enemy. The film also stars Anthony Anderson as Derek Sutton, Marsai Martin as Serena Sutton, Ramón Rodríguez as Agent Manny Ruiz, Douglas Hodge as Oliver Everett, Elizabeth Marvel as Joanna Worth, Sabrina Impacciatore as Elena Romano, Christopher Farrar as Demetrius Sutton, and Antony Starr as Rutledge. 

A trailer was released for Flight Risk, director Mel Gibson’s suspense thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace. The story follows a government witness (Grace) being escorted by an FBI agent (Dockery) on a flight piloted by a hitman (Wahlberg).

 
TELEVISION/STREAMING

AMC Networks dropped a new teaser trailer for Season 3 of its noir drama, Dark Winds, based on the crime novel series by Tony Hillerman. Set to premiere on March 9 with an expanded eight-episode season, Dark Winds Season 3 picks up six months after the events of Season 2. It follows Navaho investigators Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) as they investigate the disappearance of two boys, with only an abandoned bicycle and blood-stained patch of ground left in their wake. Meanwhile, Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) attempts to settle into her new life 500 miles from home with the Border Patrol, but stumbles across a conspiracy involving human and drug smuggling with far-reaching implications. 

A first look teaser-trailer was also released for Grosse Pointe Garden Society, NBC‘s upcoming drama series from Good Girls creator Jenna Bans, Bill Krebs, and Universal Television. Written by Bans and Krebs, the series follows four members of a suburban garden club — Birdie (Melissa Fumero), Alice (AnnaSophia Robb), Brett (Ben Rappaport) and Catherine (Aja Naomi King) — who find their lives intertwined by scandal, mischief and a shared secret – a murder no one wants to talk about. As dark truths begin to rot their lives under the surface, they struggle to remain as perfect as the flowers blooming in their garden above.

PODCASTS/RADIO

In the latest episode of Meet the Thriller Author, host Alan Petersen closed out 2024 by welcoming Vannessa Cronin, a Senior Editor for Amazon Books. She offered an insider’s perspective on how the Amazon Editors curated their list of the Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense Books of the year and also highlighted key industry trends—from genre-blending to increased diversity in authorship—that defined 2024’s top picks.

Johana Gustawsson and Thomas Enger chatted with Paul Burke for Crime Time FM at Newcastle Noir about their upcoming crime thriller, SON, featuring psychologist Kari Voss, a consultant to the Oslo Police; also psychoanalysis; memory; and scheduling,