Criminal Splatterings

According to the Bookseller, Selina Walker has bought three crime novels from author and journalist Tony Parsons.  The first novel, titled The Murder Bag, kicks off a crime series featuring detective and single parent Max Wolfe.  In The Murder Bag, Wolfe - father to a five-year-old girl - is called in to investigate a nasty killing, which leads him from the backstreets of London's West End to the corridors of power in Westminster.

Congratulations also go to Paul Finch who has also signed a five-book deal with Avon.  According to the Bookseller, his second book Sacrifice has already had over 10,000 pre-orders in e-book format ahead of its summer release.

If you have somehow managed to miss the results of the awards given at Crimefest then they are as follows-

Sounds of Crime: Standing In Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin; Read by James MacPherson (Orion Audio)

Last Laugh: Killing the Emperors by Ruth Dudley Edwards (Allison & Busby)

eDunnit: Bryant & May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)

H. R. F. Keating Award: British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia by Barry Forshaw, editor (Greenwood World Publishing)

The shortlists for a number of the CWA Daggers were also announced – 

The CWA International Dagger:
Alex by Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne (Quercus)
The Missing File by D.A. Mishani, translated by Steven Cohen (Quercus)
Two Soldiers by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, translated by Kari Dickson (Quercus)
Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas, translated by Siân Reynolds (Harvill Secker)
Death in Sardinia by Marco Vichi, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach, translated by Anthea Bell (Michael Joseph)

The CWA Non-Fiction Dagger:
Midnight in Peking by Paul French (Penguin Viking)
The Boy in the River by Richard Hoskins (Pan Macmillan)
Against a Tide of Evil by Mukesh Kapila, with Damien Lewis (Mainstream)
A Fine Day for a Hanging by Carol Ann Lee (Mainstream)
Injustice by Clive Stafford Smith (Random House)
Murder at Wrotham Hill by Diana Souhami (Quercus)

The CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger:
The Heretics by Rory Clements (John Murray)
Pilgrim Soul by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson (Headline)
Dead Men and Broken Hearts by Craig Russell (Quercus)
The Twelfth Department by William Ryan (Mantle)
The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

The CWA Short Story Dagger:
“Method Murder,” by Simon Brett (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Constable)
“Stairway C,” by Piero Colaprico (from Outsiders, edited by Ben Faccini; MacLehose Press)
“Come Away with Me,” by Stella Duffy (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)
“The Case of Death and Honey,” by Neil Gaiman (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)
“Ferengi,” by Carlo Lucarelli (from Outsiders, edited by Ben Faccini; MacLehose Press)
“Lost and Found,” by Zoë Sharp (from Vengeance, edited by Lee Child; Corvus)

The CWA Dagger in the Library:
• Belinda Bauer
• Alison Bruce
• Gordon Ferris
• Christopher Fowler
• Elly Griffiths
• Michael Ridpath

The CWA Debut Dagger:
The Assassin’s Keeper by Aine Oomhnaill (Ireland)
Call Time by Finn Clarke (UK)
TAG by Sue Dawes (UK)
Working in Unison by Alex Sweeney (UK),
Lesson Plan for Murder by Marie Hannan-Mandel (USA)
Honour or Justice by Ron Puckering (UK)
Torment by David Evans (UK)
When the Bow Breaks by Jayne Barnard (Canada)
Fighting Darkness: The Killer Trail by D.B. Carew (Canada)
Born in a Burial Gown by Mike Craven (UK)
The Journeyman by Emma Melville (UK)
A Cure for All Evils by Joanna Dodd (UK)

The winners will be announced during on July 15 in London. Also included on July 15 will be the presentation, to Lee Child, of this year’s Diamond Dagger and the announcement of CWA’s Gold, Steel, and John Creasey Daggers Nominees. 

Congratulations also go to Liza Marklund whose novel Last Will won the inaugural Petrona Award for Scandinavian Crime Novel of the year.  The winner was announced by Barry Forshaw.

Over in the Guardian the question has been asked why Nordic detective stories / films are so successful.  Lots of interesting responses.  In addition, there is an interesting article on whether crime fiction is the new punk.

Very good article in the independent on Nordicana that took place over the weekend (15 & 16 June 2013).

Madrid is also due to host their sixth crime fiction festival.  The festival is due to take place between 17 to 27 October 2013 and France is due to be the guest country.  Tributes will be given to Georges Simenon and his protagonist Maigret.  More information can be found here (in Spanish)

For those of you that can’t get enough of Icelandic crime fiction will be pleased to note that Iceland are due to host their first festival of crime fiction.  Iceland Noir is due to be held at the Nordic Cultural Centre, Reykjavik on Saturday 23^rd November 2013 and Sunday 24^th November 2013.  Amongst the well-known authors due to attend include Anne Cleeves, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, John Curran and Quentin Bates.

Congratulations also go to Jorn Lier Horst whose novel The Hunting Dogs recently won the Norwegian Glass Key for the best Scandinavian crime novel.  The Hunting Dogs is due to be published  in the Spring of 2014. Jorn Lier Horst is also due to attend the first Iceland Noir crime festival.

In the Independent, Helen Brown talks to Louise Doughty about her psychological thriller.  Apple Tree Yard, which is about a successful, professional woman whose life, is upended by an affair.

The trailer for the new Wolverine film has been released and can be seen below.

Congratulations also go to Peter Robinson.  ITV have commissioned a third DCI Banks series.  According to the Independent, the show will dedicate two episodes each to three stories based on the books and are called Wednesday’s Child, Piece Of My Heart and Bad Boy.  Information from ITV can be found here.

Sad news for all of us that are waiting and looking forward to the sequel to Sin City – Sin City: A Dame to Kill For instead of it being released in October this year, it looks as if it will not be seen now until August 2014.  Still, it looks as if it will be worth waiting for with

Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis and Rosario Dawson all reprise roles, while Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Haysbert, Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple and Stacy Keach are the new recruits.  More information can also be found here and here.

Extremely sad news to hear that author Vince Flynn has passed away.  He was suffering from long-term prostrate cancer.  According to CBS Minnesota, he died on Wednesday morning.  Vince was the author of 15 novels centred on the character of Mitch Rapp, an undercover CIA agent.  More information can be found here.

Also recently and rather sadly, Joan Parker the widow of Robert B Parker passed away (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare for the news).  More information can be found here and here.

The 2013 Nero Award finalists have been announced.  The finalists are –

Antiques Disposal by Barbara Allan
Truth of All Things by Kieran Shields
Burning Midnight by Loren D. Estleman
Dead Anyway by Chris Knopf

The Nero Award is presented each year to an author for the best mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.  It is presented at the Black Orchid Banquet, traditionally held on the first Saturday in December in New York City.  The Nero Award celebrates literary excellence in the mystery genre. More information can be found here.

The Telegraph’s film critic Robbie Collin has chosen his 10 best thriller films of all time.  The list can be found here.  Pleased to see The Third Man on the list along with Taxi Driver and Silence of the Lambs.

Fans of Luther and Idris Elba will be pleased to know that he will be back on our screens shortly.   Elba will star in four new 60-minute episodes, alongside Warren Brown and Ruth Wilson.  The first instalment of series three will feature John Luther (Elba) tackling a "twisted fetishist", who appears to be a copycat killer of an unsolved case from the '80s.

The  trailer for the new series can be seen below –

An interview with Idris Elba can also be found here.

Also according to FirstShowing.net Elba is due to join Javier Bardem, Sean Penn and Ray Winstone in the thriller The Gunman.  The Gunman is based on the novel Prone Gunman by French author Jean-Patrick Manchette.

To celebrate playing Hercule Poirot for twenty-five years, David Suchet gives an fascinating interview in the Scotsman.

According to The Hollywood Reporter Channel 5 have picked up Stephen King’s Under the Dome.  It is due to be shown on Channel 5 in the fall.

According to the Radio Times, the TV series of Fargo which is based on the Coen brother's 1996 film is due to be filmed in Canada.  The series will be a 10 episode series and is due to be released in 2014.

If you are like me and are looking forward to the new Vin Diesel Riddick film then you will be pleased to see that a trailer has been released.  The trailer can be seen below –

Riddick: Rule The Dark is due to be released on September 6 2013.

According to Screenrant, Morgan Freeman is in talks to star in Luc Besson’s film Lucy which also stars Scarlett Johansson.

According to the BBC an all-star cast has been confirmed for the adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley by P D James. The cast includes Jenna Coleman, James Fleet, Penelope Keith, James Norton and Trevor Eve to name a few.

Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Colman are set to star in The Thirteenth Tale by Helen Setterfield. The 90 minute drama will be shown on BBC Two and is a haunting psychological mystery set in the modern day, with poignant flashbacks starting in 1940.  More information can be found here.  Filming started in June and it is due to be shown later on this year.

BBC Four have acquired Belgian thriller Salamander. Everyone has secrets. But these can bring down a nation. In a private Brussels bank, 66 safe-deposit boxes are raided. The owner of the bank wants to keep the thefts under wraps but police inspector Paul Gerardi catches wind of the affair. With his incorruptible, old-school morals and devil-may-care attitude, Gerardi throws himself into the investigation, and when some of the key players are murdered, commit suicide or vanish, soon realises just how big the case is.  Gerardi discovers that the victims are members of a secret organisation called Salamander, made up of the country's industrial, financial, judicial and political elite, and the safe-deposit boxes contained their most intimate secrets - secrets that could bring down the nation. As he becomes the target of both the criminals and the authorities, Gerardi must quickly find out what their agenda is. And who is behind the thefts... Salamander will be shown as 12 x 60 minute drama series.

Various dramas to look out for include Top of the Lake which is due to be shown on BBC Two and is a six part drama about a detective obsessively investigating the disappearance of a twelve year-old pregnant girl. Quirke which is based on the book by Benjamin Black is a three part series which takes us back to the 1950s Dublin.  Quirke, played by Gabriel Byrne, is the chief pathologist of the city morgue.  His attempts to solve sudden deaths take him from smokey damp alleys and whiskey bars to elegant moneyed houses. Quirke is due to be shown on BBC One.  Mark Gatiss is due to adapt The Tractate Middoth, an MR James ghost story for Christmas.  The Tractate Middoth is due to be shown on BBC Two.

Robin Jarossi's CRIMINAL ACTS

SHERLOCK

Regulars at Sherlock Holmes Society get-togethers may have thrown their deerstalkers on the ground and cursed loudly at news of the BBC modernising their hero.

But having seen a preview of Sherlock at a screening this week, I can assure them that storming Television Centre with Holmes’ favourite weapons of canes, swords and riding crops won’t be necessary.

Sherlock is really very good, and co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have done a brilliant job.

Their 21st-century reboot is faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, it’s thrilling, laugh out loud funny and has fiendishly clever twists.

Benedict Cumberbatch as action hero
The casting is even Holmesian in its astuteness. Benedict Cumberbatch has heavy dramatic roles on his CV – Hawking, Stuart: A Life Backwards – but here he’s a fine action hero, with the required disdain, charisma and energy.

Meanwhile, Martin Freeman leaves The Office firmly behind as Dr Watson. He is by turns touching and funny playing second fiddle to the famous violinist cum ‘consulting detective’. He steals quite a few scenes as the nonplussed companion, often irked by Holmes’ bloody annoying smart-alecness. Una Stubbs is irresistible as the mumsy landlady Mrs Hudson.

A Study in Pink is the first of three 90-minute films. This opener, written by Steven Moffat (moonlighting from his day job as showrunner for Doctor Who), echoes Holmes’ first adventure, published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet.

Rupert Graves as Lestrade
So we see Watson returning home broken by soldierly duty in Afghanistan, as in the original, and being introduced to the friendless genius Holmes, who is looking for a flatmate.

Watson is of course irritated and dazzled by his new chum’s presumptuousness, but they bond when Holmes is called upon by DI Lestrade (Rupert Graves), who is stumped – ‘The police are always out of their depth,’ says our hero – by three serial suicides.

Of the crime’s unravelling I can reveal nothing for fear of ruining the fun for viewers (and fear of being slipped Devil’s-Foot Root poison by someone from the Society).

Holmes’ website – The Science of Deduction
But of the update it’s safe to say Moffat and Gatiss (a star and writer of Doctor Who and The League of Gentlemen) were right to think that Holmes could survive without Hansom carriages and London fog if the essential dash of the stories and characters was preserved.

What they’ve cut is the deerstalker, the pipe smoking and the drug taking, which Gatiss points out was always less important than the sheer humour in the adventures. Updates include Holmes having his own website, logically enough The Science of Deduction.

So it’s safe to deduce that Conan Doyles’ detective was always too good to be tied down by period features. He’s survived German versions, Second World War escapades (Sherlock Holmes in Washington, 1943), and most recently Guy Ritchie (not too shabby an effort by the mockney director, as it happens).

007-influenced Score
And of course the creators had the example of other recent and very successful updates of classics such as Clueless and Casino Royale. With inspired direction by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin, Gangster No.1) and a sweeping acoustic score (I spotted 007 composer David Arnold on the credits), Sherlock can now join the club.

After the screening, I nabbed 10 minutes with Steven Moffat and asked him how big a challenge it is to be putting brilliant words into the mouth of a genius who never says a dull thing.

‘Is it a challenge,’ he told me, ‘although I’ve got more notice than Sherlock has. He has to do it in real time and I can take several days. That’s where I make up the shortfall between my intelligence and his.

Holmes’ Deductions
‘Yes, he must always be clever and that’s one of things we’ve set ourselves, Mark and I. We’re very strict about this. In the original stories Doyle does start to get a wee bit lazy about the deductions, and later on he hardly makes any. And we’ve said, look we’re just going to have to think and think and think of stuff you can credibly do. When I was a kid that was the element that absolutely transfixed me. And I got disappointed – “I see you’ve come from Bristol, you’ve got a train ticket.” Come on, Sir Arthur, we want better than that.

‘So we all go around suggesting deductions to each other, Steve Thompson as well [Thompson has written episode three; Gatiss episode two]. My wife even came up with a brilliant one about how to deduce that someone is left-handed. So we’ve got a bank of deductions and if we get stuck we say, here have this one. We did lift some from the books. The one about the mobile phone [in Study in Pink] is quite close to the deductions about the pocket watch in The Sign of Four. I always thought that was an incredibly beautifully written sequence, so I borrowed that one blatantly and with great joy.’

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who
Moffat made some interesting points about the connections between Holmes and Doctor Who. ‘They get it wrong at the very, very beginning of Doctor Who. The Doctor isn’t the hero, he’s a senile old man, a git, he’s not very nice. And [story editor] David Whitaker says, Look, this isn’t working. And I believe there’s a memo where he says let’s make him make him more like Sherlock Holmes, let’s make him a genius, difficult but a genius.

‘So Doctor Who is deliberately patterned on Sherlock Holmes. When people ask me for a comparison I always find myself saying a very odd thing, which is that the Doctor is more human. By which I mean that he is like an angle who aspires to be human, whereas Holmes is a human who aspires to be a god. So the very things the Doctor admires and embraces, the silliness, lovability and huge emotions, are exactly the things Holmes is running away from.’

‘So Long as It Doesn’t Kill Me’
Of his workload writing six Doctor Whos, including the Christmas special, and working on Sherlock, Moffat said, ‘There is no way of balancing this. The last year has been extraordinary. I’ve had about four days off since Christmas. I work every weekend, get up early in the morning, go to bed late at night. It’s extraordinary, but it’s great fun too – so long as it doesn’t kill me.’

For pizzazz and verve, Sherlock will surely be one of the best TV crime-dramas of the year, if not the best. Who needs the CSI professional army of experts when you’ve got a British amateur genius like the man at 221b Baker Street? The game is afoot (or ‘on,’ as Holmes says in 2010).

Photos © BBC TV

Sherlock, BBC1 Sunday July 25 9-10.30pm

7 Heaven

Crime hounds who haven’t sniffed out BBC Radio 7 yet should investigate the channel immediately.

It’s a fascinating realm of great detective dramas and classic crime shows. Recently there’s been a pretty good serialisation of John Harvey’s Inspector Resnick: Wasted Years. Coming up in August is Ruth Rendell’s The Fever Tree and Other Stories (Saturday, 7 August, 11.30pm) and a whole week of PD James’ stories to mark the author’s 90th birthday, including Adam Dalgliesh – Devices and Desires (Saturday, 7 August, 11pm) and A Taste for Death (Monday, 9 August, 11am). The highlight of this week is an exclusive interview with the grande dame of detective fiction (keep an eye out for its broadcast time).

With podcasts and iPlayer it’s easier than ever to dip in at your convenience. Give the channel the once over here.


Forewarned is forearmed

Lewis recently did so well for ITV1 that they’ve just commissioned another four episodes with Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. It’s hard to argue with nine-million viewers for the last series, but it still leaves me cold, having a bland, primetime cop-show-by-numbers feel to it.

Author Colin Dexter, who created the Bafta-winning Inspector Morse, from which this was spun, will still be consulted for the Lewis episodes, but the new shows lack the original’s depth and air of remorse (sorry about the pun).

Garrow’s Law
The Beeb has just started filming a second series of Garrow’s Law, the intriguing drama based on real legal cases from the late 18th century. It stars Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Rupert Graves and was a fascinating look at the life and times of pioneering barrister William Garrow and some very dodgy legal practices at a time when the Old Bailey was something of a judicial circus.

The Shadow Line
Christopher Eccleston has also started filming The Shadow Line for Auntie on the Isle of Man, in which he plays a drug baron. This is a six-part ‘noir thriller’ charting the impact of an underworld figure on a variety of characters. Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sir Antony Sher, Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall, Kierston Wareing and Lesley Sharp.

Written, produced and directed by Hugo Blick (Marion & Geoff). So no pressure on him, then.

Top Boy
C4 is also riding the crime wave with Top Boy, written by Ronan Bennett (who penned the film Public Enemies), about young gang members in East London. This four-parter follows Dushane, a 19-year-old street thug with ambitions of becoming a dealer, and is based on first-hand research by Bennett and story consultant Gerry Jackson, both Hackney residents. Cast yet to be confirmed, but it sounds like one to watch out for.