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

Rachel Sennott (I Love LA) has booked a key supporting role alongside Chris Hemsworth, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz, and Alec Baldwin in Matt Ross’s feature Kockroach, which begins filming in Australia next week. The New York-set crime pic, based on the William Lashner novel, is the story of a mysterious stranger who takes on the city’s criminal underworld, transforming himself into a larger-than-life boss in a city where power is everything. Ross directs from a screenplay by Jonathan Ames (You Were Never Really Here).


Chris Hemsworth has closed a deal to reprise his role of Tyler Rake in Extraction 3, the new installment in the hit action-film franchise. Insiders add that Sam Hargrave is back to direct, with Idris Elba and Golshifteh Farahani also back on board to star. David Weil is writing the script, and although plot details are unknown at this time, it's a safe bet there will be another high-octane thrill ride as Rake (Hemsworth) and his team are sent on another dangerous extraction mission. The series is based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks, from a story by Parks, Joe Russo & Anthony Russo, with illustrations by Fernando Leon Gonzalez.


Emma Elle Paterson (Amazon’s The Boys), has signed on to lead and produce a feature titled Candy from filmmaker Jessica Michael Davis. Based on a short story by Mindy McGinnis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Davis, the film has been described as an "elevated genre-bending thriller" and follows a young woman (Davis) who reclaims autonomy through a radical bodily transformation, yet as she adopts the persona of "Candy," empowerment becomes a seductive descent into vengeance and moral ambiguity. Also attached to star in the film is Darius Jordan Lee (Dexter: Resurrection).


Deadline reported that Ride Along 3 is in early development at Universal with stars Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, director Tim Story, and producer Will Packer all in early discussions to return. The news coincides with an announcement that the studio closed a deal with scribe Daniel Gold (Tough Guys) to pen the screenplay. The first Ride Along came out in 2014 and followed security guard Ben Barber (Hart) who must prove himself to his girlfriend’s brother, top police officer James Payton (Ice Cube). In doing so, Ben rides along with James on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta. In 2016's part two, the duo head to Miami to take down a drug dealer who is supplying drugs to Atlanta.


Vertical has acquired U.S. rights to Oscar nominee Andrew Niccol’s crime thriller, Lords of War, from Oscar-winning studio Vendôme Pictures, which produced and financed the film. The sequel to the 2005 movie, Lord of War, which starred Oscar winner Nicolas Cage, sees the actor reprising his role as Yuri Orlov, the world’s most notorious arms dealer. When Yuri discovers he has a son, Anton (Bill Skarsgård), a ruthless mercenary mastermind bent on surpassing his father by building a private army and exploiting America’s wars in the Middle East, he is thrust into a deadly battle for legacy with the global arms trade hanging in the balance.


Anthony Mackie (Captain America) and Dafne Keen (Deadpool & Wolverine) are starring in the action-thriller, Barracuda, which gets underway this week in New Mexico. Neil Burger (Divergent) is directing the movie, which will also star Steven Bauer (Ray Donovan) and Anthony Del Negro (Running Point). The story centers on Karl (Mackie), a former smuggler with a haunted past, who storms a nightclub in Mexico to rescue Jodie (Keen), a kidnapped teenage girl. The breakout turns into a high-speed race when Karl kills the brother of the ruthless club owner and steals his prized 1973 Plymouth Barracuda. Now hunted by relentless criminals, Karl and Jodie tear across the desert with no way to slow down.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Kevin Bacon is set to lead Southern Bastards, a new Hulu drama pilot from director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard). Based on the award-winning graphic novel series by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour, Southern Bastards follows a tenacious military vet into Craw County, Alabama, in search of her estranged father. What she finds is a murderous hornet’s nest of organized crime run by the winningest high school football coach in the South. Bacon plays Earl, the son of the legendary Sheriff Bert, who ruled Craw County with an iron fist. Earl is a tough but humble blue-collar army veteran — eager to mend fences and reconnect with his daughter, and not afraid to stir the hornet’s nest that is Craw County.


Filming has begun on the new series of the acclaimed BBC murder mystery drama Shetland, with Ashley Jensen and Alison O’Donnell reprising their roles as DI Ruth Calder and DI Alison "Tosh" McIntosh. Most of the cast regulars also return, including Steven Robertson (playing DC Sandy Wilson); Lewis Howden (Billy McCabe); Samuel Anderson (Procurator Fiscal Matt Blake); Steven Miller (Rev Alan Calder); Anne Kidd (pathologist Cora McLean); Angus Miller (Donnie, Tosh’s partner); Conor McCarry (PC Alex Grant); and Eubha Akilade (PC Lorna Burns). Originally based on award-winning novels by crime writer Ann Cleeves, the forthcoming new series centers around an historic murder which will forever change the lives of all those connected in the present day.


Fox has renewed Memory of a Killer for a second season. Inspired by the book and the 2003 Belgian film, De Zaak Alzheimer, the drama stars Patrick Dempsey as hitman Angelo Flannery/Doyle, who leads a dangerous double life while hiding an even deadlier personal secret: he is slowly losing his memory. To further complicate things, he discovers his wife’s recent death may not have been an accident. When someone comes after his pregnant daughter Maria (Odeya Rush), it’s clear the wall between his lives has been breached. Angelo must stop whoever’s coming for his family by searching his past hits for clues, and the list is very long. Michael Imperioli plays Dutch Forlanni, whose restaurant is a front for criminal enterprise, and who serves as Angel's employer, giving him the targets for his hits. The cast also includes Richard Harmon, Peter Gadiot and Daniel David Stewart.


The writing team of Tawnya Bhattacharya and Ali Laventhol have a new project in development at Hulu: a TV adaptation of the Trish Lundy YA thriller, The One That Got Away With Murder. The show’s logline is as follows: "When a guarded new girl with a dark past transfers to a high school across the country, she’s drawn to the former golden boy who is now a notorious outcast suspected of killing his girlfriend. Determined to know the truth, she secretly investigates, uncovering a web of secrets and lies, as she closes in on the killer who got away with murder."


Prime Video has given a straight-to-series order to the Texas-set crime thriller, Calamities, from showrunner, writer, and director David Weil (Hunters). Per the streamer: “Calamities is a gripping and propulsive Texas crime thriller like no other. After a drug deal explodes into violence, a quiet border town is thrust into a deadly collision course between a small-town sheriff looking for answers from her past, a sociopathic hit-woman, an overly eager FBI agent, and a ruthless sect of the cartel.”


Paramount+ has added the heist thriller, The Day (working title), to its British slate, to be led by Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting), Luca Pasqualino (The Musketeers), and Louisa Harland (Derry Girls). The eight-part series is based on the Belgian show, De Dag and is set across a single day, following a terrifying bank siege that starts when police stumble across a bank robbery mid-heist, prompting the criminals to barricade themselves inside. The story opens from the police perspective, led by hostage negotiator Sylvia “Vox” Voxley (Driver), as she battles time and rising pressure to save the hostages. But as the crisis hurtles towards a breaking point, the story rewinds, with viewers pulled inside the bank to relive the same events through the eyes of the robbers and their hostages.


Peabody Award-winning producer, showrunner, and writer Gary Lennon (Hightown) is developing the new crime drama Los Feliz at Starz. The show is an emotional high-stakes crime drama about an affair that destroys friendships, marriages, and careers – ultimately leading to a murder case that divides a community and destroys them all. The series is set in the Los Angeles neighborhood of the same name near Hollywood.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

NPR's Scott Simon chatted with V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, the friends and authors who co-wrote the novel The Ending Writes Itself, part mystery and part send-up of the publishing industry.


On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed missing person mysteries and thrillers by Tana French, Tiffany D. Jackson, Jess Kidd, Ginger Reno, Kalynn Bayron, and Luke Dumas.


On the latest Murder Junction, hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee chatted with Anthony Horowitz, creator of the Alex Rider novels and TV shows such as Midsommer Murders and Foyle's War. Anthony discussed his latest crime novel, A Deadly Episode, and what keeps him writing.


Alan Peterson, host of the Meet the Thriller Author podcast, spoke with bestselling author Mark Stevens, creator of the Flynn Martin thriller series, about his latest novel, Two Truths and a Lie.


On the Cops and Writers podcast, Patrick J. O'Donnell interviewed bestselling author and publicist, Deborah Levison, whose first book, The Crate, won several awards and garnered rave reviews including an endorsement from Lee Child, about her newly released title, A Novel Crime.


The Pick Your Poison podcast with Dr. Jen Prosser investigated a toxin so powerful that a little smeared on the tip of a blowgun arrow is enough to silence every muscle in your body, including your diaphragm, stopping your breathing—and how a poison like this became a commonly used drug in modern medicine. She also went inside a Siberian prison cell where one of the most high-profile political prisoners on the planet collapses and dies. Was this a state-sponsored assassination using a poison from the rainforest?

Sunday Music Treat

Renaissance music and interstellar space travel - doesn't seem like they'd make good partners, but actually, they do! One of the pieces included on the Golden Record on the Voyager I spacecraft was "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. This work has many levels of meaning for me, since I was in a top-notch recorder ensemble as a youth, but also because I was a fan of Munrow, who championed and popularized early music but whose life and career were tragically cut short by his suicide at the age of 33. Here's a little legacy he left that is currently 16.1 billion miles or roughly 26 billion kilometers (one light day) from Earth as of April 2026 and will reach the Oort Cloud in about 300 years. (If you want to know what else was included on the record, here's a list.)

 

 

Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Port of London Murders

Josephine Bell, the pen name of  Doris Collier Ball, was born in Manchester in 1897, educated at Cambridge, and became a University College Hospital of London physician. She married a fellow physician who died at a young age in 1936, which is when Bell turned her hand to writing, even as she maintained her medical practice.

She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and also became a member of the Detection Club. She eventually closed her medical practice at age 57 but continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in her more than 40 crime novels (at the rate of two a year), such as AmyTupper, Dr. David Wintingham, Dr. Henry Frost, and Scotland Yard Inspector Steven Mitchell.

Not surprisingly, her novels often feature a strong medical component, not the least of which were two of her doctor-protagonists. She also featured poison and other unusual methods of murder prominently in her plots. Bell and her family were experienced sailors, and the author drew upon this knowledge, too, using many vivid passages in her books that relate to the water and to various nautical details.

Water is certainly at the heart of the setting in Bell's novel The Port of London Murders from 1938, specifically as the title suggests, the port area of London's River Thames. It's a tough neighborhood, but the death of one Mary Holland is still a bit of a shock, even though it appears at first to be a suicide by Lysol poisoning. Tell-tale needle marks on the victim's arm lead Detective Sergeant Chandler to suspect murder tied into a drug ring—which seems even more chillingly apparent when Chandler disappears shortly after he starts to investigate, right before he's due to testify at the inquest. It's up to Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard to unravel the layers of deception and addiction that are exploiting rich and poor alike in a way that hasn't changed much in the seventy years since the book was written.

Bell is particularly good with settings, even the squalid ones that pop up in the novel, no doubt witnessed first-hand in her role as a physician who saw people from every walk of life. Her take on the state of medicine in her day was often somewhat bleak, as in this passage from the book—again, as true today as it was in 1938:

For the great majority of these cases, too poor to have a doctor of their own, there was little he could do...Dr. Freeman could encourage them with a bottle of medicine and help them with a pint of milk a day, but it was not in his power nor that of anyone else to effect a lasting cure of their complaints. There were others, too, not old, but equally hopeless, who attended the dispensary as regular visitors; those struck down in youth or middle age by tuberculosis, rheumatism, heart trouble, and a number of more rare diseases. They had come to the end of their resources, their insurances, and their capacity for earning. The hospitals could do nothing more for them, but they still lived, in the worse possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.

Mystery Melange

The festival schedule was revealed for Capital Crime 2026, set to return to London's Leonardo Royal Hotel June 18th-20th, with the Fingerprint Awards hosted by Ryan Tubridy on the 18th. Newly confirmed authors include Jeffrey Archer, MJ Arlidge, Chris Brookmyre, AA Dhand, Sabine Durrant, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Janice Hallett, Lisa Jewell, Vaseem Khan, T.M. Logan, Abir Mukherjee, Catriona Ward. They will be joining the previously announced headliners Jane Harper, Lee and Andrew Child, Claire Douglas, Andrea Mara, Ardal O’Hanlon, and Andi Osho, joining in panels and discussions around closed communities, Agatha Christie, courtroom dramas, and much more.


Likewise, the Whitby Lit Festival in the UK  announced the first authors confirmed for its 2026 program, as the event returns from November 19–22 following a highly successful inaugural year. Leading the first wave of announcements are Ann Cleeves OBE (creator of the Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez/Shetland series), Joanne Harris OBE (best known for her bestselling novel Chocolat), Dr. Sian Williams (an award-winning broadcaster and chartered counseling psychologist), and Mark Billingham (the Tom Thorne crime series). Set against Whitby’s dramatic coastline and historic streets, the festival will once again feature author talks, panel discussions, workshops, book signings, and special events across multiple venues.


There are only a handful of free tickets left for the upcoming Noir at the bar Sunderland in the UK on May 13. This in-person event brings together some of the best crime writers from the North East and beyond as well as some fresh new talent to share extracts from their novels. Authors currently scheduled to attend include Trevor Wood, Michael Wood, Marisse Whitttaker, David Mark, Helen Aitchison, L.M. Milford, Iain Rowan, Tom Sibson, Pam Plumb, and Kellie Appleby.


The sixth edition of the International Santiago Noir Festival will be held from September 22nd to 25th, 2026, in a fully in-person format, at the premises of the Faculty of Letters at Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, the Faculty of  Communication and Letters at Universidad Diego Portales, and Centro Cultural of Spain. The main objective of the Congress will be to bring together all kinds of specialists and creators who will contribute new perspectives on themes related to the noir genre. For more information about attending or submitting papers (due June 26), follow this link.


There are some other new calls for papers on crime fiction themes, including Crime Narratives on Screen for a conference in Durham in July, which invites papers that explore how crime narratives engage with social, political, and cultural issues within rapidly transforming screen industries (due May 31st);"Economic Crime in Practice" for the Journal of Economic Criminology (due January 27, 2027); and chapter proposals for "Tana French and Ireland," offering commentary chapters on each of French’s novels, including her Dublin Murder Squad series (due May 1st).


Here's a competition that hadn't crossed my radar before: The Association of Thriller Writers (UPiT) has officially opened the application process for the second annual Golden Thriller award, a regional competition across Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro aimed at identifying the most compelling crime fiction published in the previous calendar year. Interested participants must submit three printed copies and an electronic version of their manuscript to the association by the May 1, 2026, deadline. The five finalists will be revealed on October 15, 2026, before the final award ceremony in December.


The bestselling author of psychological thrillers like The Housemaid has revealed her true identity. Freida McFadden has used a pseudonym, wig and glasses to maintain her privacy in public but she says "it's time" to reveal her identity. McFadden is in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn't want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. "My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was (ready to) step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn't be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job," McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time. "But I have stepped away from my job. I'm only working like once or twice a month." McFadden was the second best-selling author of 2025 in the UK, selling 2.6 million books, and sold six million print copies in the U.S.


The BBC investigated seven places around the world where Agatha Christie found inspiration for murder, from South Devon in the UK to Petra, Jordan.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Right" by Craig Kirchner.


In the Q&A roundup, Mark Stevens, author of The Flynn Martin Thriller series, applied the Page 69 Test to Two Truths and a Lie, his latest novel with reporter Flynn Martin; another intrepid author to take the Page 69 Test was Susan Furlong, talking about her new novel, Amish Country Homicide; and the Self-Publishing Review interviewed Anthony Lee, who has a background in clinical medicine and health technology assessment, about his new medical thriller, Poison Pill.

30 Years of Short Crime Fiction Excellence

The recently announced Derringer Award finalists from the Short Mystery Fiction Society marks the 30th year of the organization and the 28th anniversary of the awards. The honors currently include the categories of Best Flash Story (up to 1000 words), Best Short Story (1001-4000 words), Best Long Story (4001-8000 words), Best Novelette (8001-20,000 words). (Best Anthology was added last year.) I've been fortunate to have been a four-time finalist and also a winner in the Short Story category.

On Art Taylor's "The First Two Pages" blog feature this week, I was featured as part of the new anthology, Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, which was just released. Editor Josh Pachter chose one story from each of the 28 years the SMFS has handed out Derringers for the anthology. I was thrilled to have my 2012 winning story, "The Touch of Death," chosen for inclusion, especially to be slotted alongside such luminaries as Doug Allyn, Michael Bracken, Bill Crider, John Floyd, Slesar, Cathi Stoler, Art Taylor, Melissa Yi, and many more.

For some of the best short crime fiction, from hardboiled to cozy, check out this celebratory anthology and enjoy some fun, thrilling quick reads. And if you're a writer in this genre, consider joining the SMFS. Membership is free and is open to writers, editors, publishers, and anyone with an interest in the subject.

Short, But Sweet

 

The Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) announced the finalists for the annual Derringer Awards. The SMFS is a group of writers, readers, editors, publishers, and others dedicated to the promotion and celebration of mystery and crime short stories. Since 1998, the SMFS has awarded the annual Derringers to outstanding published short stories and people who've greatly advanced or supported the form. The Best Anthology Derringer was also presented for the first time in 2025. The winning short stories will be revealed on May 1, and winners will receive medals that are presented during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. Congrats to all the finalists!

Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)

• "Bradycardia" by Elizabeth Dearborn (Punk Noir Magazine, 2/4/2025)
• "Check Rear Seat" by Carl Tait (Exquisite Death, 5/1/2025)
• "It All Comes Out in the Wash" by James Patrick Focarile (Gumshoe Review, 10/31/2025)
• "Just Like Old Times" by Shari Held (Yellow Mama, 2/15/2025)
• "The Man Under the Bridge" by Bern Sy Moss (Spillwords, 6/1/2025)

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)

• "Blind Pig" by Michael Bracken (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)
• "Chains" by Frank Vatel (All Due Respect, 9/1/25)
• "Hollywood Prometheus" by Christa Faust (Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, Bywater Books)
• "The Artist" by Linda Ann Bennett (Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, Superior Shores Press)
• "Wax On, Wax Off" by Nina Mansfield (Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, Wildside Press)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)

• "A Sign of the Times" by Tom Milani (Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, Down & Out Books)
• "Masterpiece" by Mark Thielman (Black Cat Mystery Magazine 16, September 2025)
• "Six-Armed Robbery" by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, Wildside Press)
• "Whatever Kills the Pain" by C.W. Blackwell (Whatever Kills the Pain, Rock and a Hard Place Press)
• "Zebra Finch" by donalee Moulton (The Most Dangerous Games, Level Best Books - Level Short)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)

• "Aswarby Hall" by David Dean (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2025)
• "Loose Change from a Mini Cooper" by Frank Zafiro (Chop Shop Episode 10, Down & Out Books)
• "Saint Bullethead" by Nick Kolakowski (Fighting Words: Bruisers, Brawlers, & Bad Intentions, Leonardo Audio)
• "The High Priest of Low Men" by C.W. Blackwell (Myopic Duplicity: Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?, Leonardo Audio)
• "The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe" by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, January 2025) (audio version)

Best Anthology (previously announced)

• Crimeucopia - The Not So Frail Detective Agency edited by John Connor (Murderous Ink Press)
• Gone Fishin': Crime Takes a Holiday, The Eighth Guppy Anthology edited by James M. Jackson (Wolf's Echo Press)
• Hollywood Kills: An Anthology edited by Adam Meyer & Alan Orloff (Level Best Books - Level Short)
• Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense edited by Judy Penz Sheluk (Superior Shores Press)
• On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology edited by Curtis Ippolito (Rock and a Hard Place Press)
• SoWest: Danger Awaits! A Desert Sleuths Anthology edited by Claire A. Murray, Eva Eldridge, Suzanne E. Flaig, Denise Galley, and Sarah Smith (DS Publishing)

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

Production is due to begin in June on the crime-thriller, Tommy Karate, starring Pete Davidson. The project is based on the non-fiction true crime book, The Butcher: Anatomy Of A Mafia Psychopath by Philip Carlo will chart the pursuit and capture of one of America’s most ruthless mobsters and serial killers by notorious DEA Agent Jim Hunt (who also helped take down El Chapo) played by Paul Walter Hauser. Camila Mendes (Masters of the Universe) and Simon Rex (Red Rocket) also star with Justin Chon (Pachinco) directing. Pitera was an American mobster in the Bonanno crime family of New York City, suspected by law enforcement of as many as 60 murders. He was known for his use of karate and other martial arts when fighting, a skill he learned at a young age and which earned him the nicknames Tommy Karate, and The Karate Guy. He is currently serving a life sentence at USP Big Sandy in Inez, Kentucky, after going down in 1992 for murder and heading up a massive drug operation.

 
Frankie Shaw (SMILF) will star opposite Jeff Ward (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) in Strangers, a romantic crime thriller he’s directing from a script by Dan Schimpf. Currently in production, the film follows two lonely strangers who, after a chance encounter at a bar, fall in love while hatching a plan to rob the bank she’s being laid off from. Further details are under wraps, but the project has been described as "Before Sunrise descending into Good Time." Others set for key roles include Eric Lange (Escape at Dannemora) and Katie Finneran (The Gilded Age).


Universal Pictures has locked in a release date for their Murder, She Wrote movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis. The film will go wide ahead of Christmas on Wednesday, December 22, 2027. Universal’s adaptation of the Emmy-winning Murder, She Wrote has Jason Moore attached to direct, with Dumb Money‘s Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo writing the script. An iconic crime drama series produced by Universal Television, which ran on CBS for 12 seasons from 1984-1996, Murder, She Wrote starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a retired schoolteacher-turned-successful mystery writer, who proves to have an uncanny knack for solving real-life murders. The show was primarily set in the seaside town of Cabot Cove, Maine, though Jessica would often travel to other locales as cases unfolded.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Hulu is developing Opposing Counsel, based on Sheldon Siegel’s critically acclaimed book series, from Lauren Fields (The Flash), Morgan Faust (The Company You Keep, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow) and Rideback. Written by Fields and Faust, Opposing Counsel is described as a character-driven legal drama set in modern-day San Francisco. The show centers on newly elected District Attorney Rosie Fernandez and her ex-priest-turned-defense-attorney husband Mike Daley as they navigate their marriage living on opposite sides of the law. Mike, Rosie, and their teams of richly drawn colleagues regularly face off in court as they each fight for what they believe is right in an unpredictable legal climate. In season one, the couple is forced to face off in court when their best friend is accused of a brutal double homicide. What begins as a high profile murder trial becomes a collision course between marriage and justice, pushing them to their professional and personal limits.


Saturday Night Live veteran Colin Jost has teamed up with writer-producer Alex Barnow (The Goldbergs, Power: Origins) for a crime drama, which has landed at Peacock for development. The untitled project will be written by Barnow, based on Season 1 of the Audacy podcast Wolves Among Us. By day, Larry Lavin (Jost) was a respected Ivy League dentist and family man – by night, the East Coast’s most elusive cocaine kingpin. This series is inspired by the shocking and absurd true story of the suburban dentist who built a drug empire behind the façade of the American dream.


The MGM+ series Bosch: Start of Watch has added six to its cast including Raphael Sbarge (Task), Seamus Dever (Castle), Kenneth Miller (Presumed Innocent), Marco Rodriguez (Nightcrawler), Rafi Gavron (A Star Is Born) and Ryan McPartlin (Chuck). Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling Bosch books, the prequel series is set in 1991 Los Angeles and follows 26-year-old Harry Bosch (Cameron Monaghan) during his earliest days as a rookie cop. The series will explore a city on the edge, teeming with racial tension, gang violence, and a fractured LAPD. Amid routine calls and growing unrest, Bosch finds himself drawn into a high-profile heist and a web of criminal corruption that will test his loyalty to the badge and shape his future as the detective who lives by the code, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”


Sheridan Smith is teaming with two Australian stars on an ITV-Stan mystery thriller from the producer behind Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Smith will star in Two Birds opposite Stephen Peacocke (The Newsreader) and Judy Davis (Nitram). Two Birds centers on British Police Constable Izzie Cornwell (Smith), who arrives in the small fictional town of Dugdale having been recently widowed and intent on a fresh start in Australia. Izzie is assigned to investigate a murder alongside her new boss Matt (Peacocke). When the victim is revealed to be part of a notorious local crime family, led by the formidable Mrs Baxter (Davis), the stakes intensify. The show is written by Helen FitzGerald (The Cry) and directed by BAFTA nominee James Griffiths (The Ballad of Wallis Island).


Lee Byunghun (Squid Game) and Han Jimin (Heavenly Ever After) are set to star in The Koreans, a reimagining of FX’s The Americans, at Disney+. Production has begun on the series, which will stream exclusively on Disney+ internationally and Hulu in the U.S. Set during the wave of democratization and cultural modernization that swept across South Korea in the early 1990s, The Koreans will follow a middle-class family hiding a treasonous secret: While seemingly ordinary citizens in the eyes of their friends, neighbors, and even their children, both parents actually are elite North Korean spies working to bring down the South from within. Highlighting the stark difference between these two formerly united countries, the series will follow the spies as they wrestle with conflicting feelings of patriotism, loyalty, identity, and love, while a ruthless South Korean counterintelligence agent draws ever closer to discovering their identities.  Byunghun and Jimin will play the undercover spies.


A new BBC TV crime drama starring Robson Green (Grantchester) is to be set and produced in north-east England. The Northumbria Mysteries will star Green as jack-of-all trades, Joe Ruby, unraveling a series of crimes in Northumberland. In the series, Joe Ruby, an ex-convict and gambler with links to the criminal world, teams up with Oxford-educated DI Rose O'Connell (casting to be announced) to solve mysteries. The 10-part series was announced in November and will be filmed at The Northern Studios in Hartlepool and on location in the town and Sunderland.


The BBC has also commissioned Old Town Murders, a brand-new, twisty crime series written, created and executive produced by Matthew Barry (Men Up). Mark Lewis Jones (The Crown) and Steffan Rhodri (Steeltown Murders) lead the cast as DI Glyn Walsh and DS Sion Dearden, old friends and partners who should be on their last legs following their personal hardships, but find new purpose and hope as they work together to solve perplexing murders in the idyllic seaside town of Tenby. Joining DI Glyn Walsh and DS Sion Dearden on their investigations will be DC Neil Miller played by James Bamford (Masters of the Air), Bethan Mary-James (Death Valley) as DC Remy Jones and Catherine Ayers (Missing You) playing Chief Superintendent Melanie Morris. Julie Graham (This City is Ours) also joins the cast as forensic biologist Pamela Thomas.


Phoebe Dynevor is set to star in the UK Amazon original drama Dirty, an eight-episode series that will appear on Prime Video. Matt Charman created the show and will serve as showrunner, writer, and executive producer alongside Foz Allan. The show is set in Manchester, England and follows a mother and daughter (Dynevor) who also serve on the police force and see each other as their biggest obstacle on the job. Charman is currently on a search for the actor to play Dynevor’s mom.


Brian Cox (Succession, Nuremberg) has joined Season 2 of Dexter: Resurrection taking on the series regular role of The New York Ripper, a serial killer who terrorized the City years ago. Though no longer active as a killer, he’s found a new way to perpetuate his infamy by continuing to taunt the survivors of his long-ago murder spree.  It was revealed in the Season 1 finale that Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) had discovered the identity of the New York Ripper when he found a folder belonging to last season’s baddy, Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage), emblazoned with the name "Don Frampt, New York Ripper."


Jamie Bell and Charlie Heaton are set to lead a new era of Peaky Blinders. Bell (All of Us Strangers) will step into the role of Duke Shelby, the eldest son of Tommy Shelby, played by Cillian Murphy. The character was previously portrayed by Conrad Khan in the final season of the original series and by Barry Keoghan in the recent Netflix film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Heaton (Stranger Things) is confirmed to join the cast, but his role is still being kept under wraps.  The forthcoming series, written and created by original Peaky Blinders originator Steven Knight, takes the story into the 1950s, a decade after the events of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.


HBO Max's cop drama pilot, American Blue, has added to the cast of major roles. American Blue follows native son Brian "Milk" Milkovich (Milo Ventimiglia), who returns to his hometown of Joliet, IL, to rescue a beleaguered police force while seeking redemption of his own. The series hails from Jeremy Carver (Supernatural), with David Ayer directing the pilot. The new hires include Kelly Jenrette (The Handmaid’s Tale) who will play Meg Jackson, a seasoned Watch Commander fighting for respect for herself and her officers; Carlito Olivero (East Los High) playing Mike Ortiz, a hard-charging, hard-headed TAC officer; Onye Eme-Akwari (The Good Doctor) playing Darryl Andrews, a Haitian-born patrol officer; Jess Gabor (Shameless) playing Suze Dombrowski, a rookie patrol officer; and Eddie Kaye Thomas (The Beauty) playing Sergeant Paul “PJ” Booker, JPD’s desk sergeant and Watch Commander Meg Jackson’s loyal second in command.


Noel Fisher (Shameless, Castle Rock) and Devin Sampson-Craig (Rez Ball) have joined the recurring cast of AMC's Dark Winds for Season 5, which is currently in production in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fisher will portray the recurring role of Michael Jorie, a dangerous killer with a warped sense of righteousness and piety to his beliefs that fuel his involvement in a southwestern gang with a long history of violence. Sampson-Craig is set to play the recurring role of Daniel Ironwater, Jr., a skilled ranch-hand whose time in Vietnam has left him conflicted and heading down the wrong path. Based on the Leaphorn & Chee book series by Tony Hillerman, Dark Winds is set in 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley and follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn (McClarnon) of the Tribal Police as a series of seemingly unrelated crimes besiege him. He is joined on this journey by his new deputy, Jim Chee (Gordon).


Daryl McCormack (Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery) has landed a key role alongside Dakota Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård in Apple TV’s untitled thriller series from Emmy-winning creator Alex Cary (A Spy Among Friends, Homeland). In the new series from Sony Pictures Television, Fanning plays an undercover Treasury agent in a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate, with world-changing political and criminal tentacles, who becomes conflicted between her mission and a belief that her principal target, the heir apparent to all that corrupt power, is at his core a good man and worthy of her love. McCormack will play Kar, the reluctant heir to the international conglomerate, with Skarsgård playing its head, Brandt, as previously announced.


Taylor Bloom is the latest to be cast in the NBC drama pilot Protection, from creator and executive producer Josh Safran (Quantico). In Protection, written by Safran, when a U.S. Marshal falls in the line of duty, a seemingly cut-and-dry case turns into a deadly conspiracy as a family of law enforcement agents becomes the target of a mysterious assassin. Bridging personal differences and crossing professional boundaries, the Thornhill family must use the expertise from a lifetime of protecting civilians and politicians to protect one another and bring the killer to justice — even if it means betraying their sworn code. Bloom will play Russ Thornhill, a former Marine now working at the Department of Justice. He joins previously announced Peter Krause as Mike Thornhill; Hope Davis as Joan, a federally appointed U.S. Marshal; Tommy O’Brien as Secret Service agent Micah Thornhill; and Kat Cunning as Clare Thornhill, an agent on her way to being a profiler.


John Kim (Cruel Intentions, The Librarians) has joined Hunter Page-Lochard and Kate Stewart in the Australian TV drama, Fortitude Valley. Per the synopsis, the suspense thriller is "set in the sunshine and shadow of Queensland’s capital, exploring family secrets, the corrupting force of power and the complicated truths behind the lies we tell." Kim will play Gavin Chang, a Detective Senior Constable seconded to an operation to solve two cold-case murders.  The series will launch on ABC TV (Australia TV) and ABC iView in 2027.


Apple TV’s Cape Fear unveiled a teaser for the highly anticipated new psychological horror thriller starring Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, and Patrick Wilson. The limited series adaptation from creator and executive producer Nick Antosca and Academy Award winning executive producers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg premieres globally on Apple TV Friday, June 5. Inspired by the 1991 remake directed by Scorsese and produced by Spielberg, a storm is coming for happily married attorneys Anna (Adams) and Tom Bowden (Wilson) when Max Cady (Bardem), the notorious killer they are responsible for putting behind bars, is let out of prison — and he wants vengeance.


The airdate and a preview have been revealed for June 14th at 9/8c, for Grantchester's final season on PBS MASTERPIECE Mystery!. Grantchester is based on The Grantchester Mysteries, collections of short stories written by James Runcie. First broadcast in 2014, the series originally featured Anglican vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton); subsequent series have featured vicar William Davenport (Tom Brittney) and vicar Alphy Kottaram (Rishi Nair). Each of them develops a sideline in sleuthing with the help of Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, played by Robson Green.


The U.S.-based networks and streaming services are beginning to firm up their 2026-2027 seasons with renewals and cancellations. NBC has renewed Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D., while CBS has renewed CIA, the FBI spinoff series starring Tom Ellis and Nick Gehlfuss as teammates on a clandestine CIA/FBI task force. Paramount+ also announced they were renewing Criminal Minds: Evolution for Season 20. One of the few crime dramas to be cancelled is Watson, a medical mystery drama set in the Sherlock Holmes universe and starring Morris Chestnut. You can read more about the cancellations, renewals, and shows still on the bubble here, here, and here.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

The Get to Know podcast, hosted by DP Lyle and Kathleen Antrim, welcomed Craig Johnson, bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire.


Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was Liz Lazarus, the author of several legal thrillers, including her latest, Dawn Before Darkness.


On the latest episode of the Spybrary podcast, guest host Matthew Hurst sat down with author Michael Dylan to explore his debut spy thriller, The New Spy.


On Crime Time FM, Antonia Senior chatted with with host Paul Burke about her new history of the Cambridge Five, Stalin's Apostles; Albania; radio games; spy rings; and more.  

 
THEATRE

Richard Gere’s legal thriller hit Primal Fear, which saw Edward Norton win an Oscar nomination in his screen debut, is getting a first stage adaptation. Bill Kenwright Ltd, the company of the late UK theatre stalwart, has licensed the rights and is now eyeing a 2027 launch in London’s West End and ideally a run on Broadway after that. Talks are underway with a writer and director. Based on the novel by William Diehl, Primal Fear charts the story of a Chicago defense attorney who believes that his altar boy client is not guilty of murdering a Catholic bishop.

Sunday Music Treat

We lost Pierre Boulez ten years ago in 2016 after he passed away at the age of 90. It will remain for history to determine whether his compositions, his conducting, or his influence in promoting 20th-century music will be considered his greatest legacy. Most people probably haven't heard much of his work (although he won 26 Grammy Awards for both his composing and conducting), but here's a little taste from once of his earlier pieces, the Douze Notations for piano solo (something Scott Drayco has played a time or two):

 

Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Suddenly at His Residence

Christianna Brand was born Mary Christianna Milne in 1907 in Malaya, spending her early years in India. When at age 17 she learned her father had lost all his money, she took on a series of jobs including governess, nightclub hostess, ballroom dancer, dress shop model, and secretary. She didn't turn her hand to fiction until 1939, with her first novel making it to print after being rejected by fifteen publishers. Death in High Heels was the title of that book, and in an apocryphal story, she got the idea while working as a salesgirl fantasizing about killing a co-worker.

She went on to write several crime fiction novels and short stories, but achieved her peak with the series featuring Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police who was modeled on her father-in-law, William Lewis, a doctor. One Cockrill novel, Green for Danger, was hailed by H.R.F. Keating as "the last golden crown of the Golden Age detective story" and made into a movie in 1946 starring Alastair Sim. Unfortunately for crime fiction fans, she mostly dropped the genre, at least in novel form, in the 1950s and concentrated on children's books, most notably Nurse Matilda, which Emma Thompson adapted in 2005 for as the film Nanny McPhee.

Brand was nominated three times for Edgar Awards, twice for short stories, and once for a nonfiction work about a true-crime Scottish murder case. She also served as Chair of the Crime Writers Association in 1972-73. She penned essays including some of the best accounts available form the early days of London's Detection Club including remembrances of members Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkely.

Brand has been called the "female John Dickson Carr" for her locked-room style mysteries, one of which was Suddenly at His Residence (a/k/a The Crooked Wreath, in the U.S.), from the Inspector Cockrill series. Cockrill is another in the long line of eccentric detectives, insightful yet shabby, often called "sparrow-like," or, as he was introduced in his first novel (Heads You Lose):

"He was a little brown man who seemed much older than he actually was, with deep-set eyes beneath a fine broad brow, an aquiline nose and a mop of fluffy white hair fringing a magnificent head. He wore his soft felt hat set sideways, as though he would at any moment break out into an amateur rendering of ‘Napoleon’s Farewell to his Troops’; and he was known to Torrington and in all its surrounding villages as Cockie. He was widely advertised as having a heart of gold beneath his irascible exterior; but there were those who said bitterly that the heart was so infinitesimal and you had to dig so deep down to get to it, that it was hardly worth the trouble. The fingers of his right hand were so stained with nicotine as to appear to be tipped with wood."

In Suddenly at His Residence, the plot starts off in a fairly traditional way, where patriarch Sir Richard March is found dead in a Grecian lodge on his estate and suspicion falls on the family members gathered who he was getting ready to disinherit. After Cockrill begins to investigate, another body turns up, and the Inspector will also learn just how far World War II can reach from the battlefield into the countryside. He's also faced with a double "impossible crime" scenario: no footprints or marks at one crime scene involving sand and in another involving dust. Brand's writing is wry and engaging, with plenty of twists and the traditional British Golden Age red herrings, and in fact, her intricate plotting is generally considered the greatest strength of her novels.

Mystery Melange - Easter/Passover Edition

The Quais Polar crime fiction conference returns to Lyon, France this weekend, from April 3-5. This year's Special Guests include Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, Chris Brookmyre, SA Cosby, Peter James, Abir Mukherjee, and Don Winslow. The event also includes meetings, screenings, games, puzzles, and walks.


The tradition of Påskekrim, or Easter crime, when Norwegians immerse themselves in crime fiction every spring, has become a unique and cherished aspect of Norwegian culture, dating back to the early 1920s when a publishing house, Gyldendal, launched a marketing campaign that coincided with the Easter holiday. The tradition has expanded beyond reading to include television adaptations, films, and themed events. Two of the most prominent Norwegian crime authors whose books are eagerly sought out during this season are Jo Nesbø, whose Harry Hole series are now global bestsellers (with a TV adaptation on Netflix), and Karin Fossum, often referred to as the "Queen of Norwegian Crime.".


Janet Rudolph has lists of Easter-themed crime fiction titles and also Passover-themed crime fiction on her Mystery Fanfare blog for some holiday reading.


Kings River Life has classic Easter-themed short stories to read for free, including: "Easter Haunting" by Margaret Mandel; "In Your Easter Bonnet" by Gail Farrelly; and "Never Miss a Chick" by Madeline McEwen.


The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have shared both Passover and Easter recipes, including Seven Minute Apple Doughnuts and Italian Malfatti using Matzo Meal from Cleo Coyle for Passover; and for Easter, Armenian Sweet Bread or Choereg via Tina Kashian, Gluten-Free Hot Cross Buns from Libby Klein, Make-Ahead Easter Cupcakes by way of Krista Davis, and a Strawberry Tart via Peg Cochran.

Sunday Music Treat

There are many violin concertos that have become crowd pleasers, but I have a fondness for Samuel Barber's only concerto for the instrument. The somewhat apocryphal story about the work is that it was commissioned by Samuel Fels, a rather demanding fellow who thought the work was too simplistic. Barber’s solution was to add a fiendishly challenging finale, to which Fels’s response was that it had become too complex and impossible to play. Although the work is probably best known for the heart achingly beautiful middle movement, here's that "fiendish" finale, titled "perpetual motion," as played by Joshua Bell and the Baltimore Symphony, with David Zinman conducting:

 

 

Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Murder at the Villa Rose

British author Alfred Edward Woodley (A.E.W.) Mason, born in 1865, spent much of his career serving in Parliament and in World War I where he worked in naval intelligence. Although his first novel was A Romance at Wastdale, Mason is credited with one of the earliest fictional police detective protagonists, Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté. The novel in which Hanaud made his debut was Murder at the Villa Rose (aka At the Via Rose), published in 1910.

Mason created Hanaud as an anti-Sherlock Holmes, at least in appearance, a short, broad man who resembles a "prosperous comedian." Hanaud's Watson-esque sidekick is Julius Ricardo, a fussy English dilettante. It's quite possible that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings (or possibly Christie's Mr. Satterthwaite) were modeled on the characters of French-speaking Hanaud and Englishman Ricardo.

The plot is based loosely on real cases (a wealthy French widow found murdered in her villa and an English shopkeeper murdered for jewels), and Mason also drew on procedural details from the memoirs of French policemen. Basically, when the elderly and eccentric Mme. D'Auvray is murdered in her home, the Villa Rose, and suspicion falls on her young companion, Celia Harland who's gone missing, Hanaud is called onto the case. But Hanaud solves the crime midway through the book, with the latter half told in flashback as the readers are left to piece together what exactly happened and are challenged to guess the solution to the murder mystery from the clues provided.

Several of Mason's works were later adapted for the silver screen, including four versions of Murder at the Villa Rose, a silent film in 1920 and two "talkies" from 1930 (one in English, one in French), and another in 1940. Mason went on to write four other books featuring Inspector Hanaud, but he's perhaps best known for his novel The Four Feathers (not a crime fiction novel per se), which is one of the most-filmed novels of the 20th century, including the latest incarnation from 2002 with Heath Ledger in the role of Harry Feversham.

A few interesting trivia bits about Mason: England's King George V was a friend and one of his most avid readers; although Mason penned little in the way of spy stories, he was a successful agent for years in Spain and Northern Mexico (it's said he may have foiled a German plot to move anthrax infected livestock into France during WWI); Mason was a failed actor, although he appeared in a small number of works on the London stage during the late 1880s; his story "The Crystal Trench" was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, one of the few episodes directed by Hitchcock himself; and Mason was offered a knighthood for his literary work, but declined it, saying "such honors meant nothing to a childless man."

Mystery Melange

This Saturday, March 28, the Coronado Public Library will host the San Diego Writers Festival. One of the panels included in this one-day event is "Mystery Authors Writng Across Genres," moderated by Matt Coyle, with authors AC Adams, Dennis Crosby, Gary Phillips, and Caitlin Rother.


Also on March 28, the Northland Local Author Fair in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will feature author talks, panels, and signings. One of the featured panels is "Writing Can Be Murder," a chat with mystery authors Annette Dashofy, Liz Milliron, and Joyce Tremel. Registration is free.


On Tuesday, March 31, the Goshen Publish Library and Historical Society will present "Dangerous Minds: Women Who Write Crime." Mystery writers will talk about how mystery writers imagine the perfect crime, how they craft the ultimate whodunit, plotting murder (fictionally, of course!), building suspense, and bringing unforgettable characters to life.


The deadline is fast approaching for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, an annual grant of $2,000 for an emerging writer of color administered by Sisters in Crime. This grant is intended to support the recipient in crime fiction writing and career development activities. The grantee may choose to use the grant for activities that include workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of the work. Grant information and submission requirements can be found via this link, but you'd better hurry since submissions are due by March 31.


Although I haven't seen such news hit the crime fiction community just yet, the AI controversy is already taking its toll on other genres. Case in point, the publisher Hachette cancelled the US release of the horror novel, Shy Girl, by Mia Ballard and withdrew the UK edition after weeks of online speculation about the novel’s origins, as reported by both the New York Times and The Guardian. Plus, late last year, two novels up for the prestigious Ockham New Zealand Book Award were disqualified on the basis of their AI cover art (which the authors in question claimed they weren't aware of).


The Guardian's Laura Wilson had a roundup of its recommended list of the latest crime fiction books, including Whidbey by T Kira Madden; Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan; Killing Me Softly by Christie Watson; The Dangerous Stranger by Simon Mason; and Astronaut! by Oana Aristide. Sarah Weinman did the honors for the New York Times, reviewing A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford; My Grandfather, the Master Detective by Masateru Konishi; Still Life by Malin Persson Giolito; and The Tree of Light and Flowers by Thomas Perry. Plus, Paula L. Woods profiled new mystery titles for the Los Angeles Times, including Jackson Alone by Jose Ando; Cruelty Free by Caroline Glenn; The Exes by Leodora Darlington; and To Kill a Cook by W.M. Akers. Finally, Jordan Snowden profiled new mysteries and thrillers for the Seattle Times, including Masateru Konishi’s My Grandfather, the Master Detective, translated by Louise Heal Kawai; Sujata Massey’s The Star from Calcutta; Avery Curran’s Spoiled Milk; J.R. Thornton’s Lucien; Frances Crawford’s debut A Bad, Bad Place; and Kirsten King’s A Good Person.


This fall, Titan Comics is publishing Ian Fleming’s James Bond Signature Comic Strip Collection Vol. 1, a brand-new book bringing together the first seven feature-length James Bond newspaper comic-strip adventures, that originally ran from July 1958 to May 1961 and helped inspire the James Bond cinematic universe. The comics by acclaimed artist John McLusky gather Ian Fleming’s earliest literary adventures in comic strip form compiled into a hardcover edition with some additional unique features. The new James Bond book can already be pre-ordered directly through Titan Comics or via Ian Fleming's official website.


Writing for the Sleuthsayers blog, John Floyd shined a light on Pulpwood Fiction, which he notes "isn't an established genre, but it's a definite—and different—area of storytelling, one that focuses on the gritty, blue-collar people of the rural South, where the setting plays a central role."


Fans of crime fiction related to art heists may enjoy reading about the real-life Arthur Brand, a Dutch art detective who tracks down stolen masterpieces, sometimes called the "Indiana Jones of the art world."


In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews welcomed Rob Phillips, an Emmy-winning sportswriter covering the Dallas Cowboys, whose debut novel, Stakeouts and Strollers, won the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Award; Deborah Kalb spoke with J.R. Thornton about his new novel, Lucien, a psychological drama in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt, and Kalb also interviewed Michelle Kaminsky about her new book, Murder on the Trail: Mysteries, Deaths & Disappearances in National Parks.

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
 
Benjamin Bratt (Andor) has signed on to star alongside Viola Davis and Jason Clark in Ally Clark, the new thriller from Amazon MGM Studios. The film will take viewers from the towering skyscrapers of New York City to the sweltering bayous of Louisiana and the icy peaks of Alaska, following investigator Ally Clark (Davis) as she embarks on a perilous inquiry into an international conglomerate following the suspicious death of a close friend. Phillip Noyce is directing from a script by Jose Ruisanchez and Irwin Winkler.


Netflix announced a new feature film, The Cackling of the Dodos, which will be directed by Jason Bateman (Ozark). The project follows small-town farmer George, who has a truly terrible day when he discovers a corpse chilling out in a grain bin and he is unwittingly forced into a chaotic, sloppy cover-up by his boss Denny. Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Woody Harrelson (The People vs. Larry Flynt) will star in the movie, which is based on an original screenplay by novelist Rye Curtis (Kingdomtide).


Prime Video has unveiled a teaser for the sequel movie, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, in which the everyday hero played by John Krasinski returns to the world of espionage for what its creators have called his “most personal and dangerous mission yet.” He is joined in the feature by new cast member Sienna Miller. Operating in real time with lives on the line and the threat escalating at every turn, Jack reunites with battle-tested CIA operative Mike November (Michael Kelly) and former CIA boss James Greer (Wendell Pierce). Their combined experience is the only edge they have against an enemy who knows their every move. Backed by an unlikely new partner – razor-sharp MI6 officer Emma Marlowe (Miller) – Jack and the team navigate a treacherous web of betrayal, facing a past they thought was long put to rest.


Searchlight Pictures has released the trailer for Wild Horse Nine, the latest film from Oscar winner Martin McDonagh. Per the official logline, "shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, CIA agents Chris and Lee are dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ. Amongst the Island’s iconic statues, and as the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies, Chris’s newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students threatens to send everyone’s trust to this remote island paradise sideways." John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell lead the cast as CIA agents Chris and Lee, respectively, while Steve Buscemi plays their bureau chief. Other cast members include Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas, Tom Waits, and Parker Posey.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

South Africa’s International Emmy-nominated production house Both Worlds and Paris-based Paradoxal have entered into an exclusive rights agreement with bestselling South African author Deon Meyer to develop two of his most celebrated properties as premium TV series. Umzingeli (The Hunter) is a contemporary, multi-territorial spy thriller centered on Thobela "Tiny" Mpayipheli, a KGB- and Stasi-trained assassin whose character spans four of Meyer’s novels. Now living under a false identity in Bordeaux, he’s put his past behind him — or so he believes. Noah Stollman (Fauda, Our Boys) is attached as lead writer and showrunner. The other project is Dead at Daybreak, an adaptation of Meyer’s breakthrough novel and winner of the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policère. A noir series set in Cape Town in 1996, at the cross-section of the old South Africa and the new, it centers on Zatopek van Heerden, a former cop turned private investigator — a man trying to rebuild himself in a country doing the same.

James McAvoy is leading a Sky adaptation of comedian Frankie Boyle’s novel, Meantime. McAvoy is joined by Benedict Wong, Mark Bonnar, and Christopher Eccleston in the project, which follows Felix McAveety (McAvoy), a full-time addict whose best friend is found murdered in a Glasgow park, leaving him as the police’s most convenient suspect. In a fog of intoxication and paranoia, Felix sets out to clear his name, enlisting the help of an aging former Detective Inspector turned crime novelist (Josette Simon) and a chaotic friend (Jamie Michie).

Universal Television has optioned Lights Out, the bestselling sports thriller by former national TV reporter-turned-author Elise Hart Kipness, for development as a series. The story follows a former Olympic athlete and sports reporter who isn’t sure how much more tumultuous her life can get. She’s been put on temporary leave from her job, then NBA superstar Kurt Robbins is killed, and the prime suspect in his murder is none other than his wife…and Kate’s best friend. Kate knows that Yvette’s marriage wasn’t exactly stable, but her friend is no murderer, and Kate is determined to prove it with her own investigation. While she tries to salvage Yvette’s life, Kate’s own personal and professional lives continue to unravel—and then her estranged father suddenly reenters her life as a detective assigned to Kurt’s homicide case.

Krysten Ritter has teamed with writer-producer Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant, Dead Boy Detectives) and Berlanti Productions for Retreat, a series adaptation of her novel of the same name. Retreat is an ongoing hourlong darkly comedic thriller featuring Liz Dawson (the role intended for Ritter) — a chameleon-like grifter who is always in control — until she’s cornered into assuming the identity of a wealthy dead woman in Punta Mita, Mexico. Suddenly, Liz finds herself in the middle of a sun-bleached Hitchcockian mystery, desperate to keep up her act. And then people start dying.

Lang Fisher (The Four Seasons, Never Have I Ever) is currently in development on a TV adaptation of the Elle Cosimano novel, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, at Peacock. The story follows a struggling novelist and single mom, on the verge of losing custody of her kids, who is mistaken for an assassin and offered life-changing money for one kill. Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first book in Cosimano’s popular book series, “Finlay Donovan Mysteries,” which has a total of six books, with a seventh due to hit stores this month.


Prime Video has renewed the hit thriller series Cross for an eight-episode third season. Created by Ben Watkins and based on James Patterson’s bestselling novels, Cross stars Aldis Hodge as the brilliant and complex detective Alex Cross. Season 3 will continue to expand the high-stakes world of the iconic character, according to Prime. In addition to Hodge, Matthew Lillard, Isaiah Mustafa and Alona Tal, Season 2 cast includes Jeanine Mason and Wes Chatham, alongside Samantha Walkes, Juanita Jennings, Caleb Elijah, Melody Hurd, and Johnny Ray Gill.


Production has begun on Season 5 of Netflix‘s The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the books by Michael Conelly, with eight new recurring stars: Diane Guerrero (Doom Patrol) as Natalia, Teresa Maria (Narcos Mexico) as Tina Perez, Richard Cabral (Mayans) as Benny Perez, Steve Howey (Shameless) as Brian Cunningham, Patty Guggenheim (Twisted Metal) as Allison Finch, Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law) as Richard Finch, Chris Diamantopoulos (The Sticky) as Frank Silver, and Iker Garcia (The Pitt) as Rafa Wagner. Additionally, Cobie Smulders has been promoted to series regular. In Season 5 of The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller’s world is upended when the half-sister he never knew existed, Emi (Smulders), comes to him with a plea to help free a wrongfully convicted woman. In a season defined by blood ties and buried secrets, Mickey takes on a grueling habeas petition to overturn a six-year-old murder conviction, but the deeper he digs, the more nefarious the forces arrayed against him become.


Lorenza Izzo (Hacks) is set as a lead opposite Taylor Schilling and Michiel Huisman in NBC‘s crime drama pilot, What The Dead Know, from Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. Written by Beth Rinehart, the procedural is based on former New York City death investigator Barbara Butcher’s memoir of the same name. What the Dead Know centers on highly intelligent, hyper-vigilant death Investigator Ava Ledger (Schilling) as she teams with the NYPD to solve their toughest cases. Izzo will play Det. Danielle Castillo, a computer crimes specialist with the NYPD who has recently been reassigned to homicide. Huisman portrays William Grant, an experienced NYPD homicide detective who thinks justice is simple – black and white.


Felix Solis (The Rookie, Ozark) is the latest to join the cast of NBC‘s The Rockford Files reboot pilot, which also includes the previously announced cast led by David Boreanaz, and also includes Michaela McManus and Jacki Weaver. The project is a contemporary update on the classic series of the same name. Newly paroled after doing time for a crime he didn’t commit, James Rockford (Boreanaz) returns to his life as a private investigator using his charm and wit to solve cases around Los Angeles. It doesn’t take long for his quest for legitimacy to land him squarely in the cross-hairs of both local police and organized crime. Solis will play Rockford’s best friend, Nitty, who turned his life around and became a successful South L.A. defense attorney. Weaver plays Rockford’s longtime trailer park neighbor; she’s a tough, outspoken activist and think-tank analyst. McManus plays Kate, an East Hollywood detective whose romantic relationship with Rockford got complicated after he publicly accused fellow officers of framing him.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

DP Lyle and Kathleen Antrim interviewed best-selling author Adam Plantinga on the Get to Know podcast about his life, career, and his latest book which is nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.


Murder Junction hosts Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee welcomed  bestselling thriller writer Sabine Durrant to discuss her latest novel Dead Heat, and her delight in setting her murder thrillers in sun-soaked destinations.


Samantha Dooey-Miles chatted with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about her debut thriller, Under the Hammer; satire; the housing crisis; daytime TV; para-social relationships; marketing; stalkers; rage and humor.

NPR's Book of the Day podcast featured two new murder mystery novels that let readers into hidden worlds: one underground (Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips) and the other among the wives of serial killers (The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives by Lizzie Pook).


Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was Graciela Kenig, discussing her debut novel, The Plans They Made.


Michael Frost Beckner joined Bruce Dravis on the Spybrary podcast to unpack Kaleidoscope; the Spy Game universe; CIA family legacies; his influences; moral ambiguity; and the hidden machinery of intelligence.


In the latest episode of Meet the Thriller Author, Alan Petersen interviewed Chad Boudreaux, a former U.S. Department of Justice insider turned thriller novelist, including his latest novel, Mob Justice: A Scavenger Hunt Thriller, which takes readers into the modern Chicago mafia.


On the Poisoned Pen podcast, host John Charles interviewed two different authors, Mark Stevens discussing Two Truths and a Lie, and Megan Chance talking about her latest, The Vermillion Sea.