Mystery Melange

 

The musical crime fiction 'supergroup', The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, will perform in Belfast on November 2 as special guests of the NOIReland International Crime Fiction Festival. Group members, which include Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Christopher Brookmyre, Luca Veste, Doug Johnstone, and Stuart Neville, will perform a set of crime-themed hits at Oh Yeah preceded by a Q&A with Belfast author Steve Cavanagh, who will probe the players on their careers, musical passions and latest books.

Midnight Ink Acquisitions Editor Terri Bischoff posted on her Facebook page that the publisher will be shutting its doors after the Spring/Summer 2019 season. Since its launch in 2005, the company has released crime fiction in all subgenres by authors such as Jess Lourey, Brendan DuBois, G.M. Malliet, Steve Hockensmith, Catriona McPherson, E.J. Cooperman and Jeff Cohen, Sue Ann Jaffarian, Kellye Garrett, Keith Raffel, J.D. Allen, Gwen Florio, Leonard Goldberg, Patricia Smiley, and Bill Cameron. (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Mystery Fanfare has a list of Halloween-themed crime fiction to give you all the thrills and chills you want to celebrate the holiday.

The latest issue of Yellow Mama is up on the web, filled with gruesome tales, creepy poetry, and plenty of Halloween noir fitting for October.

Last week marked the passing of author Evelyn Anthony at the age of 92. A prolific author of more than 50 novels, including The Tamarind Seed, which was turned into a hit film in 1974, Anthony also wrote spy thrillers, having spotted a gap in the market for such books. She was aided by contacts made through her father, Lt Commander Henry Stephens, the inventor of a top-secret anti-aircraft gunnery simulator, who'd worked with British intelligence officers in the war. Among them was Desmond Bristow, who, with Kim Philby, had recruited one of the most important double agents of the war, and his stories inspired Anthony's books The Rendezvous (1967) and The Poellenberg Inheritance (1972).

We also lost writer Margaret Hinxman, who has died aged 94. She was one of the influential band of female critics who did much to encourage film in postwar Britain then turned her hand to crime novels at the age of 60. Between 1976 and 1991 she published, under the Collins Crime Club imprint, nine thrillers, including One-way Cemetery (1977), The Night They Murdered Chelsea (1984) and Nightmare in Dreamland (1991).

A group of murder-mystery enthusiasts in Canada's Charlottetown is inviting folks to retrace the steps taken by two men convicted for murdering an elderly shopkeeper in 1941. The group, calling themselves the Mystery Gang, has organized a walk based on the route taken by the two men the night of the murder of Peter Trainor. Earl Lund and Fred Phillips were charged and hanged at the Queens County Jail — also called the 1911 jail — for Trainor's murder. Both men went to the gallows denying they did it. The group will be doing two walks on Oct. 28, with money raised to go toward more research into Peter Trainor's murder and shedding light on other Island mysteries. 

As the New York Times reported, law enforcement has a new tool in the rapidly expanding use of DNA testing services like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, with data poured into a database called GEDmatch. Within two or three years, 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable from their DNA tied to relatives who have used the services even if the individual has not. While this revolution has led to the solving of fifteen murder and sexual assault cases, the privacy questions are numerous and troubling.

I don't think this is surprising at all, but parents take note: a new study reveals that growing up in a home filled with books makes kids smarter.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Nonbeliever, as the Dark of the Year Approaches" by Clarinda Harriss.

In the Q&A roundup, the Los Angeles Review of Books spoke with Sarah Schulman about her new crime novel, Maggie Terry, which follows Maggie, an addict, an alcoholic, and a former police officer who has lost custody of her daughter, as she moves through her first five days back on the job as a private investigator; the Mystery People chatted with Helen Currie Foster about her latest mystery to feature Texas lawyer Alice MacDonald Greer, Ghost Next Door; and the Houston Chronicle interviewed Walter Mosley about his writing, his latest novel, and neighborhood heroes.

 

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a new Monday and a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Lawrence Kasdan (of Star Wars fame) is turning his attention next to the JFK assassination, acquiring the film rights to November Road, the new novel from Edgar Award-winning author Lou Berney. The story follows Frank Guidry, who is connected to the president's murder, and when other loose ends begin dying all around him, Frank knows he’s next. Hunted by a ruthless hitman hired by his ex-boss, Frank heads across the desert where he meets Charlotte Roy, who is running away from her small-town life and abusive alcoholic husband with two young daughters and an epileptic dog in tow. Guidry sees this instant family scenario as the perfect cover, and Charlotte sees him as her best chance at a new life—if they can escape before his past catches up to them.

Liam Neeson and Kate Walsh are set to star in Honest Thief, a film to be directed by Mark Williams, who co-created the hit Netflix series Ozark. Neeson plays a career bank robber who meets the love his life in Annie (Walsh), a clerk at a storage facility where he hid $7 million in stolen loot. They fall head over heels, and he resolves to wipe the slate clean by turning himself in. When the case is turned over to a crooked FBI agent, everything becomes far more dangerous and difficult.

Emmy winner Sarah Paulson (American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson) has been tapped as the lead in the Lionsgate thriller, Run, which will reunite the team behind the Sundance award-winning film, Searching, with its helmer Aneesh Chaganty attached to direct. The story follows a teenaged girl, raised in total isolation by her mother (Paulson), whose life begins to unravel as she discovers her mother’s sinister secret.

Freya Tingley (Hemlock Grove) and Paul Rae (True Grit) will star in the indie thriller Year Of The Detectives, which goes into production this month in LA. Tingley will play Nic O’Connell who inherits her grandfathers’ long-running private detective agency in the heart of Chinatown. She and her co-inheritor must put aside their differences to solve the final mystery of their grandparents’ deaths, with Rae playing the detective who reluctantly joins their effort as the bodies pile up. 

Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan is set to co-star with Benedict Cumberbatch in the Cold War drama, Ironbark. Dominic Cooke is on board to direct the feature from a screenplay by The Hitman’s Bodyguard scribe Tom O’Connor. The project is based on the true story of Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch), a British businessman who helped the CIA penetrate the Soviet nuclear program during the Cold War. Wynne and his Russian source, Oleg Penkovsky, provided the crucial intelligence that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis. Brosnahan will play Emily Donovan, the brilliant, determined CIA agent who runs Wynne and Penkovsky’s espionage operation.

Matthew McConaughey is joining writer/director Guy Ritchie in a return to British crime dramas via Toff Guys. McConaughey will star alongside Kate Beckinsale and Crazy Rich Asians breakout star Henry Golding in the story that explores the collision between old money in Europe and the modern marijuana industrial complex with new gang entrants swarming.

The mystery drama Knives Out keeps filling out its all-star roster. Following the producers' announcement Daniel Craig and Chris Evans were set to co-star, comes news that Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water, The Little Drummer Girl) will also be joining the project, the plot of which is, well, mysterious thus far, but is described "as a modern-day murder mystery in the classic Agatha Christie whodunit style."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Netflix has picked up The Laundromat, the Steven Soderbergh-directed drama about the Panama Papers scandal. David Schwimmer has just joined an all-star cast led by Oscar-winning Darkest Hour star Gary Oldman, The Post's Meryl Streep and Life Itself's Antonio Banderas. The film has a script by Scott Z. Burns, based on the Jake Bernstein book, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite.

Writer-director Leslye Headland will adapt and direct the movie thriller Tell Me Everything for Netflix, which preemptively swooped on screen rights to the project earlier this year. It’s based on Cambria Brockman’s debut novel, which Ballantine acquired at auction for a June 2019 street date. Set at an elite college in small-town New England, it follows the shifting alliances and romantic entanglements of six tight-knit students — until one of them is murdered.

Fox has given a script commitment plus penalty to Saturday Night Special, a police drama from Black List writer Robert Specland. Saturday Night Special is a grounded police soap exploring a tight-knit group of Washington D.C. cops with focus on "the wildest, most dangerous shift of the week, giving us an in-depth look at the police force from the top down, Lieutenant to rookies, and how a job like this affects each of their lives, and their lives affect the job."

Rob Lowe is set to star in the six-part British crime drama Wild Bill for ITV, playing the high-flying US cop, Bill Hixon, who is appointed Chief Constable of the East Lincolnshire Police Force. The story follows follow Lowe’s Hixon as he lands in Lincolnshire with his 14 year-old daughter Kelsey, hoping to flee their recent painful past. Whip-smart, acerbic and unstoppable, Bill is very good at what he does but from the outset Bill isn’t about making friends—until he soon discovers the people of Boston are just as smart-mouthed, cynical and difficult to impress as he is.

Tobias Lindholm, one of the writers behind the Danish TV hit Borgen, is to turn the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall into a six-part TV series – but the killer, the self-taught rocket engineer Peter Madsen, will not feature. The project will instead primarily focus on the police investigation of Wall's murder when she went missing in August 2017 after boarding Madsen’s homemade submarine for a profile she was writing about him. Her dismembered body was found floating in the Copenhagen harbor shortly afterward. Madsen maintains that Wall died in an accident on the submarine, and that he “buried her at sea,” but he was found guilty of her murder in April.

Paris-based company About Premium Content is on board to co-finance The Murders, a gritty eight-part Canadian police thriller series. Gotham's Jessica Lucas stars as Kate Jameson, a rookie homicide detective who searches for redemption in her investigative work after indirectly causing the death of a fellow officer. Jameson is partnered with detective Mike Huntley (Lochlyn Munroe) with whom she navigates the case of a mysterious serial killer who uses music for destructive ends.

A Star is Born's Rafi Gavron is set as a series regular opposite Forest Whitaker and Vincent D’Onofrio in Godfather of Harlem, Epix’s straight-to-series crime drama. Written and executive produced by Chris Brancato (Narcos) and Paul Eckstein, Godfather of Harlem is inspired by the true story of infamous crime boss Bumpy Johnson (Whitaker), who in the early 1960s returned from ten years in prison to find the neighborhood he once ruled in shambles. With the streets controlled by the Italian mob, Bumpy must take on the Genovese crime family to regain control and forms an alliance with radical preacher Malcolm X. Gavron plays Ernie Nunzi, a flashy young mobster with dreams of getting “made,” into the Genovese Family.

Katherine LaNasa (Imposters) has joined the cast of Are You Sleeping, the upcoming Apple thriller drama series starring Octavia Spencer and Lizzy Caplan, in a major recurring role. She'll play a new character that replaces the one previously played by Moon Bloodgood who was cast as a series regular on the show but exited after four of the eight Season 1 episodes were filmed. As part of the recasting, the role of Poppy’s right hand was re-conceived, and LaNasa will play Noa Havilland, Poppy’s (Spencer) producing partner. Are You Sleeping is based on the true-crime novel by Kathleen Barber and takes a look into America’s obsession with true-crime podcasts, challenging its viewers to consider the consequences when the pursuit of justice is placed on a public stage.

Ozark has been renewed for a third season of 10 episodes at Netflix. The crime drama stars Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner, Julia Garner, Jason Butler Harner, Peter Mullan, and Lisa Emery and focuses on the Byrde family, with patriarch Marty (Bateman) working as a financial adviser as well as a money launderer for a Mexican drug cartel.

The first trailer for AMC’s upcoming miniseries Little Drummer Girl was released, and it features Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Shannon and Florence Pugh in an international game of espionage. The 1970s-set thriller is based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name, and tells the story of young actress Charlie (Pugh), who gets caught up in Israeli intelligence officer Becker’s complex and high-stakes plot orchestrated by Spymaster Kurtz (Shannon).

Bravo released a trailer for Dirty John, its upcoming series based on the true-crime podcast of the same name. It follows the twisted story of Debra Newell Stewart, a divorceé in Los Angeles who meets the too-good-to-be-true John Meehan on a dating site. They hit it off and things move at warp speed, but something is amiss from the start.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Suspense Magazine's Story Blender podcast welcomed Karin Slaughter to discuss her passion for sharing empowering and honest stories of women including her latest novel, Pieces of Her.

The legendary Lawrence Block stopped by the Writer Types podcast. Hosts Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden also asked five questions with Stephen Jay Schwartz, and Karen Olson sat down for a chat. Plus this week's Unpanel featured award winners Meg Gardiner, Attica Locke, and Kristen Lepionka.

The latest Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast Featuring the first Haunted Bookshop Mystery by Cleo Coyle, The Ghost and Mrs. McClure, with excerpts read by Max Debbas.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about some casting news, other exciting podcasts, lots of Tana French mentions, plus some book recommendations for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Lou Berney and his new novel November Road, where cataclysmic events, chance encounters, and unintended consequences collide.

THEATER

The Metropolitan Opera will premiere Nico Muhly's Marnie on October 19. The production is a re-imagining of Winston Graham’s thriller novel set in the 1950s about a beautiful, mysterious young woman who assumes multiple identities. Director Michael Mayer and his creative team have devised a fast-moving, cinematic world for the twisty story of denial and deceit, which also inspired a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the enigmatic Marnie, and baritone Christopher Maltman is the man who pursues her—with disastrous results

Author R&R with Rich Zahradnik

Rich Zahradnik served as a journalist for 30-plus years working as a reporter and editor in all major news media, including online, newspaper, broadcast, magazine and wire services. He held editorial positions at CNN, Bloomberg News, Fox Business Network, AOL and The Hollywood Reporter. He's also the author of the Coleridge Taylor Mystery series (A Black Sail, Drop Dead Punk, Last Words). The first three books in the series were shortlisted or won awards in the three major competitions for books from independent publishers. A Black Sail was named best mystery in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and a finalist in the 2016 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards. Drop Dead Punk collected the gold medal for mystery ebook in the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards, while Last Words won the bronze medal for mystery/thriller ebook in the 2015 IPPYs and honorable mention for a mystery in the Foreword Reviews competition.

The latest series installment, Lights Out Summer (Camel Press), is set in March 1977, when ballistics link murders going back six months to the same Charter Arms Bulldog .44, and a serial killer, Son of Sam, is on the loose. But Coleridge Taylor can’t compete with the armies of reporters fighting New York’s tabloid war—only rewrite what they get. Constantly on the lookout for victims who need their stories told, he uncovers other killings being ignored because of the media circus. He goes after one, the story of a young Black woman gunned down in her apartment building the same night Son of Sam struck elsewhere in Queens. The story entangles Taylor with a wealthy Park Avenue family at war with itself. Just as he’s closing in on the killer and his scoop, the July 13-14 blackout sends New York into a 24-hour orgy of looting and destruction.

Rich stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing and research Lights Out Summer:

 

Researching the Coleridge Taylor Mysteries changed in a big way in 2014—in both interesting and embarrassing fashion. Sometime before then, I’d put on my gift list the massive “The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages 1851-2009.” The tome included three DVDs—remember those?—containing 54,693 front pages linking to complete articles.

Taylor is a reporter who always has an acute awareness of the other stories going on around him. He reacts to news and how it’s covered even when it’s not his story. The novels are set in the seventies. From a storytelling standpoint, a headline from a certain day can give readers a feel for the period—or remind them of a crime or political event or cultural incident they’d forgotten and perhaps echoes what’s happening today.

Right, so that’s why I needed the book. My wife gave it to me for Hanukkah. The cost of the giant thing was somewhere between $125 and $165. Within months, the New York Times announced online subscribers would have access to TimesMachine, an online archive of complete issues of the paper as they originally appeared going back to 1865. I never did put one of those DVDs into my computer. You can now buy the DVD/book package on Amazon for $8.27.

I am well past my embarrassment. (The Times could have given me some warning, though.) TimesMachine is indispensible. I can go deeper to see the stories beyond the front page. The ads, too. This helps for all the reasons I mentioned above. And others. My new mystery, Lights Out Summer, is set in 1977 and an important set piece in the plot is the New York blackout of July 13-14. No book was written about those terrible 25 hours when thousands of businesses were looted and destroyed. But I could read all of the articles the Times published during and in the aftermath of the stealing, fires and vandalism. (The Times itself pulled off a miracle by sending editors over to Jersey and getting the paper out.) I’ll admit, the TimesMachine is particularly helpful to me because my books are set in New York, so I can track local politics, cultural and crime. Tidbits are sprinkled throughout the novels.

Each of my books involves a major New York historical event in the plot: the city’s near bankruptcy, the Bicentennial celebrations, Son of Sam’s murder spree. And for each, I’ve found at least a couple of books to go deep on the subject even if the event—like the Bicentennial—serves as a backdrop to the crime story. For “Lights Out Summer,” I was greatly aided by “Son of Sam: Based on the Authorized Transcription of the Tapes, Official Documents and Diaries of David Berkowitz” by Lawrence D. Klausner and “Son of Sam: The .44 Caliber Killer” by George Carpozi Jr. I learned of an earlier New York serial killer, 3X, from the wonderful “Police Reporter: Forty Years One of New York’s Finest Reporters” by Ted Prager. That book also gave me insights into what Taylor’s job was like for one or two generations of reporters before him.

A collection of general histories, timelines and atlases of New York rounds out my library.

Oh, and one last reference is indispensible: “Billboard Top 10 Singles Charts, 1955 to 2000.” Music triggers memories in readers. The seventies were a period of massive change as disco, punk, hairband rock and the sixties survivors fought for listeners’ attention. I could easily pick out a song I remember from 1977 and drop it in. But the charts show me what tunes were hot in a particular week—adding a nice level of detail. They also remind me of songs and bands I’d forgotten.

Disco-Tex and the x-O-Lettes anyone?

You can learn more about Rich and his books via his website and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. Lights Out Summer is available via all major book retailers.

Mystery Melange

 

The Wonderland Ballroom in Washington, D.C., will host an event as part of the "Chilled to the Marrow" Noir at the Bar series on October 27 from 5-6:30. Author Duane Swierczynski is a beloved member of the crime fiction community, and his daughter Evie is currently undergoing treatment for leukemia, which has taken a financial toll. So, Philadelphia crime writer Jon McGoran came up with an idea to have a series of Noir at the Bars as fundraisers, with all the proceeds going to the "Team Evie" GoFundMe. E.A. Aymar will host and wrangle a team of authors including Kathleen Barber, Tara Campbell, Aimee Hix, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Angie Kim, Adam Meyer, Deb Shutika, Erica Wright, and Jenny Yacovissi for readings and book signings. This event will be FREE to attend, but they are asking for donations for Team Evie throughout the night, and all of the book sales will go to that cause.

Also helping out the Swierczynski family is a charity auction thanks to the crime fiction festival Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee. This year's charity auction will raise money for The Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee and make a donation in honor of their daughter "who has been facing her health crisis like a superhero." They're looking for signed books, character names from authors willing to put winners in their next book or anything else you think people might want to bid on. For more information, check out this info from Crimespree Magazine.

Georgia Fancett has been awarded a £20,000 publishing contract with Century for her police procedural The Fifth Girl, her prize after winning the Daily Mail and Penguin Random House's First Novel Competition, now in its third year. The Fifth Girl is described as "a hard-hitting police procedural novel in which four girls have been found murdered in similarly gruesome circumstances" by the Daily Mail, featuring a gay detective, DI Alice Warnes, who is paired with "a lazy, Trump-loving bigot" for her fellow detective partner.

The inaugural Capital Crime festival in London, scheduled to take place September 26-28 of 2019, will begin selling a limited number of specially priced early bird weekend and day passes next week, on October 15. Founded by David Headley and Adam Hamdy, Capital Crime is a new festival dedicated to all things crime and thriller, from book to screen. (HT to Ayo Ontade at Shots)

A bit of sad news this week, as reported by Mystery Fanfare: MaryAlice Gorman, founder and longtime owner of the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Pittsburgh, PA, has passed away. She was a great supporter of the mystery community, and she and her husband Richard Goldman were honored with the Raven Award, handed out annually by The Mystery Writers of America for outstanding achievements and leadership contributions to the mystery genre.

The Five Minute Library blog posted a list of 100 reasons libraries are better than Amazon or Starbucks.

Here are some sites to put on your bucket list: ten of the oldest libraries in the world. Or, maybe you'd prefer some of the "weirdest libraries around the world."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Lesson Plan" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, UK Climbing magazine chatted with 94-year-old Gwen Moffat about her climbing- and mountain-themed crime novels, which are now being released in electronic form (I featured one of Moffat's books as an FFB); Tana French spoke with Entertainment Weekly about her latest novel, The Witch Elm, and why she loves writing mysteries; Tana French was also interviewed on Crimereads, where she made the case that "we're all unreliable narrators"; and the Mystery People spoke with Reavis Wortham about the latest in his Red River mystery series, Gold Dust, which heads off in different directions with plots involving a CIA experiment, modern cattle rustles, and a fake gold rush.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's your weekly roundup of the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

20th Century Fox has optioned the best-selling series Spy School by Stuart Gibbs and attached the author attached to write the screenplay based on the first title in the series. Spy School follows middle schooler Ben Ripley, who dreams of becoming a CIA agent. Even though he is awkward and accident prone, he is brilliant and recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science that actually is a front for a junior CIA academy.

Golden Globe winner Maggie Gyllenhaal has teamed with Pie Films to acquire film rights to Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter, which will mark her Gyllenhaal's first outing as a director. The Lost Daughter follows a woman who experiences a seemingly meaningless event while on a beach vacation that causes her to be overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. What begins as an apparently serene tale of a woman’s pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes a ferocious psychological thriller about a confrontation with an unsettled past.

Captain America's Chris Evans will co-star with Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery movie Knives Out. Johnson, who wrote the script and is producing with partner Ram Bergman, will make the movie before directing a new trilogy in the Star Wars universe. Plot details on the film are largely being kept under wraps, although it's said to be a modern day murder mystery in the classic whodunit style.

Armie Hammer has joined Gal Gadot in the cast of Death on the Nile, 20th Century Fox’s follow-up to last year’s successful Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express. Kenneth Branagh returns to direct and star as master detective Hercule Poirot, and Orient Express scribe Michael Green is back to adapt. The book’s plot centers on Poirot investigating a murder during a luxurious cruise on the Nile River that he just happens to be on. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery.

Ray Donovan's Eddie Marsan has come aboard the Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs and Shaw starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. Chris Morgan will serve as producer and screenwriter for the project that stars Johnson as U.S. Diplomatic Security Agent Luke Hobbs who forms an unlikely alliance with Statham’s Deckard Shaw. The film is scheduled to premiere Aug. 2, 2019.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has put in development Body Cam Cop, a drama series from Madam Secretary executive producer/writer David Grae and former CBS Entertainment president-turned-producer Glenn Geller. The story follows a cop whose heroism inadvertently lands him celebrity status after an on-the-job incident goes viral. He and his new partner are selected to be part of a pilot program that livestreams body cam footage to the public, but they soon find their lives have become more complicated.

Fox has given a script commitment to an untitled FBI cyber security drama from The Resident executive producer/showrunner Todd Harthan, former Prison Break executive producer Vaun Wilmott and 20th Century Fox TV. The project centers on FBI Director Dole Green, who is framed for a brazen, well-orchestrated attack at the agency headquarters where a treasure trove of classified data and agents identities is stolen in one of the worst attacks on national security in US history. With his career in shambles, Dole must fight to protect his family and get his life back through any means necessary.

J.K Rowling's (a/k/a Robert Galbraith) detective Cormoran Strike is heading back to the BBC with four new episodes of the crime drama known as Strike in the UK and C.B. Strike on HBO's sister network Cinemax.Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger will return as Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott.

Nickelodeon announced its latest TV movie, titled Bixler High Private Eye, starring Jace Norman and Ariel Martin. The comedy tells the story of a young sleuth, Xander DeWitt, whose father suddenly goes missing. Xander’s mom then sends him to live with his grandfather — who used to be a private eye — but it’s in his father’s hometown where the mystery really picks up. Xander finds a surprising lead in the case and meets Kenzie Messina, played by Martin, who is a reporter for the school paper.

On the heels of Queen of the South's recent Season 3 finale, the crime drama has been renewed for a fourth season to premiere in 2019. Starring Alice Braga, Queen of the South is based on the bestselling book La Reina Del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and tells the powerful story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. In Season 3, Teresa strikes out on her own, determined to build a new empire for herself. But as enemies old and new close in, she realizes that being Queen will require more work and more sacrifice than she ever imagined.

Black Panther's Winston Duke is set to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in the Netflix crime drama Wonderland, adapted from the novel Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, written by Ace Atkins. The book is part of the Spenser series, named after a fictional character in the series of detective novels initially written by American mystery writer Parker and later by Atkins. The story follows Spenser who, fresh out of prison, is sucked back into Boston’s underbelly as he uncovers the truth about a sensational murder and the twisted conspiracy behind it. Duke will play Hawk, Spenser’s close friend and an equally tough guy and enforcer with a shady past.

Lethal Weapon had barely gotten over the drama of one of the show's two main characters, Riggs (Clayne Crawford), being ousted from the show after the second season due to his reportedly volatile behavior was over, when the other main star of the show, Damon Wayans, added another shock. In an interview with Electronic Urban Report, Wayans announced that he is "going to be quitting the show in December, after we finish the initial 13 [episodes]."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week's Kings River Life Magazine Mystery Rats Maze podcast features an excerpt from Cleo Coyle's novel The Ghost and Mrs. McClure: Book #1 of the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, read by actor Max Debbas.

The Crime Files podcast (via By Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group & Quercus Books) has two new episodes, one looking at "The legacy of Philip Kerr, author of the Bernie Gunther series," and another with a look back at the Harrogate 2018 crime fiction festival.

DP Lyle's Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction took a look this week at "Making Characters Compliant."

Suspense Magazine's Beyond the Cover welcomed Lisa Unger to discuss her new psychological thriller Under My Skin.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste discussed bookshops in paradise, being billionaires, defending big companies on social media, and more. The special guests were the duo Chris Brookmyre and Dr. Marisa Haetzman, who make up the author Ambrose Parry, talking about writing as a duo, becoming a writer, and historical medical facts.

THEATER

Rebus: Long Shadows, the play based on Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series, opens tonight at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh with a run through Saturday, October 13. Adapted by Rona Murno and starring Charles Lawson as John Rebus, the story follows the Detective Inspector who is now retired. But the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat.

Mystery Melange

 

The submission deadline for articles for the Clues: A Journal of Detection issue "Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond" is coming up soon on October 12. Guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester),the issue will look at the important crossroads of mystery, detective, and crime fiction between the two world wars which saw the emergence of new genres like hard-boiled, noir, and true crime.

The St. Martin's Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition is open for submissions. You're invited to submit a manuscript if you've never been published and your novel is at least 40,000 words with a murder or serious crime at the heart of the story. The deadline is January 19, and the winner will receive a publishing contract and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

Noir Nation magazine, a crime fiction journal (available in print and Kindle editions) that was founded in 2011 by Eddie Vega, Alan Ward Thomas, and Cort McMeel, has been on a bit of a hiatus since fall of last year. But the publication recently announced it's ramping up again and will begin opening submissions for Issue #7 by the end of the year.

The New York Times Book Review profiled crime Joe Ide, whose debut 2016 novel, IQ, won widespread critical acclaim and was optioned for a television adaptation. Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Ide's protagonist who's named Isaiah Quintabe draws from the author's rough upbringing as well as his passions for Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood icons like Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Sidney Poitier in The Heat of the Night.

Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes word of CrimeFest’s move to a different venue in 2019; a crowd-funding project to republish Adam Diment’s vintage Philip McAlpine thrillers; reviews of new novels by Dominick Donald, Robert Galbraith, and John Simpson; and a look at forthcoming works by theJane Harper, Christian White, and Ben Pastor. (HT to the Rap Sheet)

Rob Lopresti profiled the new annotated version of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto, which offers literary and geographical context, as well as language and symbolism explications.

Writing for Crimereads, Anna Lee Huber compiled a listing of "10 Female Spies In Historical Mysteries and Thrillers," who take the topic up a notch after real-life women spies of the past have been given short shrift.

Does an obsession with crime thrillers have a psychological impact on readers? Maybe, or maybe not.

More from the "truth is stranger than fiction" department: The French gangster, Rédoine Faïd, who escaped from jail on a hijacked helicopter has finally been captured. Faïd has said he is a fan of gangster films, which he credits with teaching him how to pull off raids from the age of 12, especially Tony Montana from Scarface. He is also a fan of Michael Mann’s crime thrillers and once approached Mann at a Paris film festival and told him, "You were my technical adviser."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "World's Rocky Rim" by Nick Kolakowski.

In the Q&A roundup, the Mystery People spoke with George Pelecanos about his latest novel, The Man Who Came Uptown, something of a bibliomystery; David Nolan took Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge about his debut novel, Black Moss; and Robert Crais spoke with Writers' Digest about "Passion, Process and Plot Twists."

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a new Monday and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Warner Brothers picked up film rights to Annie Ward’s debut thriller, Beautiful Bad, which has a U.S. publication date set for March 2019. Beautiful Bad the tells the devastating story of three friends who come face to face with manipulation, turmoil, and tragedy, unable to outrun their tangled and tumultuous past that culminates in a desperate crime.

Filmula Entertainment has acquired rights to historian James L. Swanson’s upcoming book Lion In Winter, about America’s most prolific Chicago Outfit syndicate mob boss and a key henchman in the infamous "Capone massacres." The book will be adapted into a feature film by Chuck Hogan (13 Hours) and is based on a true story about a criminal who has never been caught. It's described as "an ambitious ensemble piece covering the lives of up-and-coming hitmen, next in line to the title character’s aging, relentless syndicate murderer in an untold tale of American history."

The Ink Factory and Marc Platt Prods. are joining forces to adapt We Were Never Here, the novel from Lara Prescott based on events surrounding the publication of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, as either a film or TV series. The project is a thriller and love story set in the 1950s during the Cold War and centers on a CIA plan to engineer the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Pasternak’s home country of Russia where authorities banned the book.

SK Global (fresh from its box-office hit with Crazy Rich Asians) has nabbed the film rights to the exposé Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World. The book, written by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, recounts a massive U.S. fraud case that ensnared Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio after a wannabe infiltrated his inner circle. The book centers on Jho Low, the heist's alleged mastermind, who remains an international fugitive.

Gal Gadot has signed on to star in Death on the Nile, the latest Agatha Christie adaptation set up at 20th Century Fox with Kenneth Branagh directing and Michael Green (who also adapted Orient Express) set as screenwriter. The project, which already has a December 20, 2019, release date, centers on Poirot investigating a murder during a luxurious cruise on the Nile River that he just happens to be on. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery.

Donald Sutherland is the latest to join the cast of the Giuseppe Capotondi-directed heist film The Burnt Orange Heresy. The film is based on Charles Willeford’s novel, which was adapted for the screen by Scott B. Smith, and follows an art critic and his girlfriend who make a deal with a wealthy man to steal a masterpiece from a famous artist’s studio. But not everything is as it seems and career ambitions soon lead to blackmail, arson, burglary, and even murder.

Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller, and Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch are set to co-star in 17 Bridges, the action thriller starring Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. The plot follows a disgraced NYPD detective (Boseman), who is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred on who he is pursuing, and who is in pursuit of him. When the search intensifies, extreme measures are taken to prevent the killers from escaping Manhattan as the authorities close all 17 bridges to prevent any entry or exit from the iconic island.

Quentin Tarantino has set Bruce Dern to play George Spahn in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, the role that Dern’s longtime friend Burt Reynolds was going to play but was unable to shoot before he died on September 6. Dern joins a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, James Mardsen, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Emile Hirsch, Luke Perry, Scoot McNairy and James Remar. The film is a Pulp Fiction-esque tapestry of stories in an around Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, when Charles Manson and his followers massacred Sharon Tate and others.

Focus Features has set a February 8 limited release for Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben), Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín that opened the Cannes Film Festival in May. It follows Laura (Cruz) on her travels with her two kids from Argentina to her small hometown in Spain for her sister’s wedding. Amid the joyful reunion and festivities, the eldest daughter is abducted. In the tense days that follow, various family and community tensions surface and deeply hidden secrets are revealed.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The team behind Blindspot have landed a new drama at CBS with a pilot production commitment to The Secret to a Good Marriage. The project centers on an elite pair of CIA spies who, in the wake of their fractured marriage, are pushed to their limits both professionally and personally, fighting to save the world while they forge a new kind of relationship for themselves and their son.

CBS also put in development H-Town, a drama series from writer Samantha Corbin-Miller (Law & Order: SVU) that's based on the Echo Media/Sphere Media Plus Canadian cop drama series 19-2. The U.S. version will follow two Houston detectives from opposing sides of a multi-generational family feud who are paired as partners and find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other even as they investigate a case that may have far-reaching ramifications for both their families.

Gomorrah series writers Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli are leading the book-to-TV adaptation of the WWII crime story The Butchers Of Berlin. The murder-mystery story is set in war-torn Nazi Germany 1943 and centers on financial crime investigator August Schlegel, who is assigned to a homicide case and finds himself immersed in a murky world. The book is the first in a developing series following Schlegel through the plotting and paranoia of the Third Reich.

French actress Eva Green (Casino Royale, Penny Dreadful) has signed to star in the BBC television adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Luminaries. The period tale is set on the Wild West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the boom years of the 1860s gold rush and is billed as an "epic story of love, murder and revenge, as men and women traveled across the world to make their fortunes.” The BBC also announced that Eve Hewson (Bridge of Spies) has joined the cast.

Emmy-nominated writer and producer Frank Pugliese (House of Cards) has been set as showrunner for TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to best-selling The Alienist by Caleb Carr. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning, will return for The Angel of Darkness with a new storyline that finds Sara Howard (Fanning), who has opened her own private detective agency, enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and John Moore (Evans) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Last week it was announced Veronica Mars is getting a revival, and the writing staff later revealed by show creator Rob Thomas will include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who penned two mystery novels based on Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft. The writing team will also include David Walpert, Diane Ruggiero, Raymond Obstfeld, and Rick Fox.

The CW has put in development the drama Ruthless from Bull star Michael Weatherly and his Solar Drive Productions and CBS Television Studios. Written by George Olson, Ruthless centers on an ex-CIA operative, desperate for a normal life after a decade spent as a government killing machine, and a slightly unhinged teenage girl craving an escape from the mundane, who are forced into an unlikely alliance.

FX is developing the drama Trashers, loosely based on Rich Cohen’s The Atlantic article "The Mobster Who Bought his Son a Hockey Team.” The story follows a minor league hockey team owned by a small town trash hauler with mob ties and is described “a tale of goons, no-show jobs, and a legendary minor-league franchise that helped land its owner in prison."

French-born author Johana Gustawsson’s Roy and Castells series has been sold to Banijay Studios France and award-winning French actress Alexandra Lamy for a television adaptation. Lamy will adapt it for the screen and play the main character, Emily Roy. The series will include four to six episodes per book beginning with the thriller Block 46, set in Sweden where Chief Inspector Bergstrom and renowned profiler Emily Roy investigate a series of murders of children.

Jonathan Tucker has been added to the Elizabeth Banks-directed Charlie’s Angels reboot, which will focus on the next generation of elite crime-fighting detectives. Tucker joins Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Naomi Scott, Luis Gerardo Méndez, as well as Patrick Stewart and Banks (and the recently announced Djimon Hounsou) playing different Bosley characters. Following the original TV series and films, The Townsend Agency has grown considerably and gone global, providing security and intelligence services to a wide variety of private clients with offices and highly-trained teams worldwide.

Billy Lush (Kingdom) and Juliet Landau (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are set for key recurring roles on the upcoming fifth season of Amazon’s Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels. Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Lush will play Stones, a tough, cold-blooded criminal, heavily involved in the opioid trade. Landau will portray Rita Tedesco, a court reporter living with a secret.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Karin Slaughter went one-on-one with KCTV in Kansas City, talking about her latest novel, Pieces of Her.

National Public Radio affiliate KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, spoke with former Sitka police chief Sheldon Schmitt has published his first crime novel, Bush Blues.

Authors on the Air chatted with writer, lawyer, and former therapist Wendy Tyson about how her background has inspired her two mystery series, the Greenhouse mystery series and the Allison Campbell mystery series.

Suspense Radio Insider Edition welcomed authors Marine Riches (The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die) and Reavis Wortham (Gold Dust) to the show.

Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack spoke with attorney and crime writer Michael Zimecki.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed some mystery adaptations and recommended books with LGBTQ protagonists.