Media Murder

 

Today is National Radio Day, an appropriate date for the latest roundup of crime fiction in the world of broadcast media. 

As befitting Radio Day, I'll start off with radio tidbits first. Author Lee Lofland (Police Procedure and Investigation, A Guide For Writers) recently joined Clint Van Zandt, former FBI agent and behavioral scientist-turned author, on NPR's Talk of the Nation program, discussing the ethics of criminal investigations.

George Pelecanos continued the media blitz for his new novel Turnaround with a interview on Weekend Edition.

NPR's "Morning Edition" and its Crime in the City feature most recently profiled author Colin Cotterill and his Dr. Siri books, a series of mysteries that follows a 70-something Laotian country coroner.

CBC Radio's Words at Large program asked the question of whether a pair of century-old mystery novels (The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton and The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan) stand the test of time.

Although a little late, NPR's Book Tour in July profiled author Alan Furst who writes historical spy fiction, including his latest, Spies of Warsaw. Asked whether he plots his novels, he replied, "I can't plot. If I try to write a plot it comes out sounding like a plot ... my stories are all true. You want a novelist? Try history."

Director Barry Levinson is boarding Train, an L.A. Confidential-style noir based on Pete Dexter's novel. Another of the journalist-turned-crime writer Dexter's novels, The Paperboy (a Florida-set mystery that takes place in the 1960s) is already in the works with Paul Verhoeven and Jan de Bont.

Robert Randisi's Rat Pack mysteries are also hitting the big screen. Randisi sold the film rights to his first Rat Pack mystery Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime to Sandy Hackett, son of the late Buddy Hackett. Randisi will also pen the screenplay, with production due to get underway in 2010.

In the UK, TV3 is inaugurating its new Crime Thriller Awards with six weeks of specially commissioned documentaries profiling six crime writers, Colin Dexter, Ian Rankin, PD James, Lynda La Plante, Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell. Viewers of ITV3 will then be able to vote between these authors to select the author who will win the first ITV3 Award for Classic TV Crime Drama.