Crime Fiction News

Congratulations go to Quercus Publishers and author Peter May whose book The Blackhouse has been chosen as the winner of the Richard and Judy Autumn Book Club after an online vote by the public on the WH Smith website. The sequel The Lewis Man is due to be published in January 2012.

For those of you waiting with anticipation for the new Batman film, you will be pleased to know that the full The Dark Knight Rises trailer has been released.

The Dark Knight Rises is due for release on 20 July 2012.

According to The Bookseller Little, Brown Book Group UK is launching a new imprint focusing on commercial crime, suspense and thriller titles in translation, in a joint venture with fellow Hachette Livre company, Grand Central Publishing in New York. The two houses will jointly acquired and publish up to six titles a year under the Trapdoor imprint in the UK, and under the Grand Central name in the US. Sphere associate publisher Dan Mallory will head up Trapdoor in the UK, with the US programme to be directed by Grand Central executive editor Mitch Hoffman. The first title will be Dark Secrets by Hjorth-Rosenfeldt, a Swedish bestseller featuring psychological profiler Sebastian Bergman. BBC4 have picked up Sebastian Bergman as one of the two Scandinavian crime dramas that they are due to show in 2012.

According to Booktrade Info, Corvus has acquired the rights to a three new books by Robert Fabbri in his epic 'sword-and'sandals' saga charting the rise of Vespasian to become imperial throne of Rome. It has acquired the rights to two new Vespasian titles, and an e-book only novella, based on the story of Magnus, one of the supporting characters in the Vespasian sequence of novels. The e-book novella, entitled The Crossroads Brotherhood, will be published on Christmas day 2011. The third new Vespasian book, False God of Rome will be published in spring 2013; the fourth, currently untitled, Vespasian novel, will be published in spring 2014. Toby Mundy, CEO and Publisher at Atlantic Books and Nic Cheetham, Corvus's publishing director, bought World English Language rights from Ian Drury at the Sheil Land agency. Robert Fabbri's first volume in the series, Tribune of Rome, has sold more than 50,000 copies to date; the second volume Rome's Executioner will be published in May 2012 and Atlantic anticipate increasing Fabbri's sales. Toby Mundy commented: 'Robert Fabbri's seven-volume series on the incredible rise of Vespasian from humble donkey herd to Emperor of Rome is an epic piece of world building. Judging from the responses we have had from Robert's legions of readers they are hungry for more, and I am delighted we will be publishing the next volumes in this exhilarating series.

The Library of Congress have announced the list of films to be Preserved for All Time as part of the National Film Registry. One of the films to make the list is Jonathan Demme's 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs. Also on the list Disney's 1942 tearjerker film Bambi.

According to The Bookseller Anthony Cheetham's new venture Head of Zeus have acquired their first fiction buy. The novel The Babylon Gene is a thriller by an established author under a pseudonym. It will be published as an e-book in January 2012 before being published in print form in the autumn.

Want to know a good place where to start with Scandinavian crime fiction? If so then have a look at the following. A brief introduction to all things Scandinavian crime. Barry Forshaw's book Death in a Cold Climate is due to be published in early January 2012. Watch this space for a guest blog from Barry around publication day.

There are a number of good crime dramas to look forward to in 2012. These include BBC 4's adaptation of Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw, The Bridge and Sebastian Bergman two scandinavian crime series also on BBC4. Falcon a four episode drama based on Robert Wilson's bestselling Javier Falcon novels. One can also not forget the new series of Sherlock which is due to be shown on Sunday 1 January 2012. More information about these dramas and others can be found on the Crimetimepreviewwebsite –

Interesting article in The Telegraph about The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie which is about to enter its 60th year. Laura Thompson Christie's biographer comments on the fact that whilst The Mousetrap is steeped in gentility, it also has its dark side.