Criminal Snippets

With a three part series of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad being shown on BBC 1 starting on 17^th July 2016 there is a timely piece in the Guardian by Mark Lawson.  The whole article can be read here. You can also here Toby Jones talking about it in a trailer below.

Huge congratulations go to Attica Locke who has won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction with her novel Pleasantville.  The full press release can be read here.  Attica Locke is the sixth winner of the prize.

The ITW have announced the winners of the 2016 Thriller Awards.  They are as follows –

Best Hardcover Novel: The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel: Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich (Putnam)
Best Paperback Original: Against All Enemies by John Gilstrap (Pinnacle)
Best Short Story: "Gun Accident: An Investigation," by Joyce Carol Oates (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2015)
Best Young Adult Novel: Pretending to be Erica by Michelle Painchaud (Viking)
Best E-Book Original: The Prisoner’s Gold by Chris Kuzneski (Chris Kuzneski)
2016 ThrillerMaster Award Recipient: Heather Graham
2016 Silver Bullet Award Recipient: John Lescroart 

The Strand Magazine announced the winners for the 2016 Strand Magazine Critics Awards on July 06 in New York. They are as follows:

Best Novel: The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Henry Holt)
Best First Novel: Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton (HarperCollins)
Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients: Colin Dexter and Jeffery Deaver 

With the rise of literary crime novels Barry Forshaw picks his favourites in the Independent.

In film news according to Bleeding Cool it seems as if Chris Hemsworth will be returning in Star Trek 4.  Read more here.

According to Deadline.com, Sundance TV have renewed Hap and Leonard for a second season. The series is based on the crime novel series by Joe Lansdale and centres on Hap Collins (James Purefoy), a former '60s idealist and an ex-con, and Leonard Pine (Michael K. Williams), a gay Vietnam vet.

The Decider.com have released what they consider to be the top ten crime shows of the Millennium.  The full list can be read here but I will say that it does include Fargo.

With Bouchercon two months away the Bouchercon Conference have made all of the Anthony Award Best Short Story finalist entries available for reading online. The stories can be read here.

The Publishers Weekly have published John Verdon’s 10 best whodunits.  The whole list can be read here. Congratulations to all the authors (dead and alive) who are on the list but this is a very interesting list indeed especially since it lacks any diversity whatsoever.  A list of white male authors! Did they forget that women have also written some very good whodunits.  No women and I am not sure how you can leave out Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I think the list needs to be re-written.

ITV have commissioned a six-part murder Mystery Thriller Loch Ness.  More information can be found here. Loch Ness is written by Stephen Brady (Fortitude, Vera, Silent Witness).

ITV have also snapped up the Lethal Weapon television series which features Damon Wayans and Clayne Crawford.

According to Publishing Perspectives Amazon have also launched a crime imprint in Germany.  Called Edition M it will focus on German language crime titles.

According to the Bookseller Tami Hoag has signed a 2 book deal with Trapeze Books.  Hoag’s The Boy will be published in Summer 2017 and revisits the characters and setting of her "chilling" thriller A Thin Dark Line, set in the Louisiana Bayou.  They have also signed a series of crime novels set in the Channel Islands by debut novelist Lara Dearman.  More information can be read here.

HQ is to publish a Hitchcock-inspired debut thriller titled White Bodies by journalist and author Jane Robins according to the Bookseller.  More information can be read here.