Crime fiction news

With Sherlock Holmes currently riding high in the charts the Observer sets out whom they
consider the most brilliant detective minds. Of course, one can expect Sherlock Holmes to be on the list, but who else is on it. To find out read here.

The long awaited film version of Susan Hill’s excellent gothic supernatural thriller The Woman in Black is finally being released on 10 February staring Daniel Radcliffe as a haunted lawyer.

March is also the 20th anniversary of the death of Philip K Dick and to celebrate BBC 1 is set to screen a Ridley Scott mini-series adapting (with Dick's own title, unusually) The Man in the High Castle.

Those of you that attended Theakston’s Crime Festival in Harrogate 2011 will remember the
interview that took place with Lee Child. Of course, at the same time there was the furor (still ongoing) over the fact that it became known that Tom Cruise’s production company had bought the rights to One Shot and that he would be playing the main character Jack Reacher. The World Street Journal online has the scoop on the long and tortious route to it being made into a film. The article can be read here.

For those of you that missed the Twitter announcement by Don Winslow announcing the prequel
title to the novel Savages it is of course The King of Cool. According to Deadline News, to coincide with this the Oliver Stone directed film of Savages will also be released. Savages stars Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro and Oscar nominee’s Uma Thurman, John Travolta and Salma
Hayek.

More 4 TV Book Club have announced the books for the book club. The have started with the award winning novel Before I go to Sleep by S J Watson. The other books on the list can be found here.

The Spring 2012 reading list for the Richard and Judy Club has also been released. The full list is here and once again S J Wastson makes the list along with Mons Kallentoft’s Midwinter Sacrifice.

Not sure how I managed to miss this but lovely people at Bitter Lemon Press have just launched the internet's first collaborative crime fiction map and they are looking for additions for the map. Contact them at map@bitterlemonpress.com or tweet the relevant details by using the hashtag #intcrimeficmap.

Eoin McNamee has written an excellent article in the Guardian about Adrian McKinty’s novel The Cold Cold Ground. McNamee talks about how he uses the tools of the crimewriter's trade to examine and reshape the recent past. Certainly well worth reading.

With Borgen the new Danish political thriller currently being shown on BBC 4, Gerald Gilbert discusses the new thriller and the similarities with The Killing. They are both as he comments not only political thrillers but also police procedurals. The full article which is in the Independent can be read here.

With the recent publication of Barry Forshaw’s Death in a Cold Climate Time Out have managed to persuade Mr Forshaw to explain to readers how to write a Nordic bestseller like The Killing.

The shortlist for the 2011 Independent Literary Awards have been announced and thanks to Elizabeth A White’s blog Musings of an All Purpose Monkey for the information. The following
have made the mystery shortlist –

Missing Daughter, Shattered Family by Liz Strange (MLR Press)
The Cut by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown)
A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (St.Martin’s Press)
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton)
Fun & Games by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown)