Jane Campion is a badass. The New Zealand writer/director has always been fearless in her portrayal of characters pushed to their psychological extremes. More to the point, she’s always had an extraordinary ability to harness that fearlessness and bring it to the screen. It’s one thing to have the vision, it’s another thing to have the talent to turn that vision into art. In films like the brilliantly moving Angel At My Table (still, to my mind, her best film), The Piano, and Holy Smoke! she’s obsessed with taking her characters far beyond their own ideas of themselves. A Campion protagonist (usually, but not always, a woman) will be broken down and taken apart before reaching the end of the story.

Her latest film, the BBC miniseries Top of the Lake, aired just a few weeks ago in the U.S. A labyrinthine crime story set in a close-knit (read: deeply dysfunctional) New Zealand mountain town, Top of the Lake follows a police detective name Robin Griffin who has returned home to see her mother through the final stages of cancer, but shortly after arriving in town she is drawn into the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year old girl named Tui. To complicate matters, Tui is the daughter of a local drug lord named Matt Mitcham, who moves about the mountains and the town as if everything, and everyone, belongs to him.

[We are wading into murky waters...]

Most book clubs start off well, but soon devolve into wine, cheese, and gossip. Not that we have anything against wine, cheese, or gossip, you understand, but we do actually like to talk about books. And just so we're all on the same page (see what we did there?) to get ours started with a bang, we're giving away ONE HUNDRED EARLY COPIES of Sophie McKenzie's forthcoming thriller, Close My Eyes (available to everyone else July 9, 2013).

When Geniver Loxley lost her daughter at birth eight years ago, her world stopped… and never fully started again. Mothers with strollers still make her flinch; her love of writing has turned into a half-hearted teaching career; and she and her husband, Art, have slipped into the kind of rut that seems inescapable. For Art, the solution is simple: Have another child to replace Beth. For Gen, the thought of replacing her first child feels cruel, nearly unbearable. A part of her will never let go of Beth, no matter how much she needs to move on.

But then a stranger shows up on their doorstep, telling Gen the very thing she’s always desperately longed to hear: that her daughter was not stillborn, but was taken away as a healthy infant. That Beth is still out there, somewhere, waiting to be found. A fissure suddenly opens up in Gen’s carefully reconstructed life, letting in a flood of unanswerable questions. How could this possibly be true? Where is Beth? And why is Art so reluctant to get involved?

As Gen delves into the darkest parts of her past, she starts to realize that finding the answers might open the door to something even worse, a truth that could steal everything she holds close. Even her own life.

Our discussions will be held on our own forum at LibraryThing. If you're not familiar, LibraryThing is an online venue where book lovers can catalog their own “shelves” of books, along with their ratings and descriptions, and share information (should they choose) with other readers. You'll see CrimeHQ already has over a hundred books listed on our shelves, ones that we've posted here with Fresh Meat or excerpts, and we'll continue adding those until we're caught up—whew! Already it's been fun to explore the conversations and other readers involved with the books we've listed.

LibraryThing is free to join, and you can participate in our book club discussions without ever adding any virtual books to your shelves. But since it's a great, already-established forum for setting up online book catalogs and discussions, we thought it would be a great place to hold ours, since it has extra fun, bibliophilic features.

And if that has captured your interest, here's a TRULY awesome incentive — if you join our book club discussion, LibraryThing will upgrade your free account (which allows you to list up to 200 of your own books) to a paid account (meaning unlimited books) at no charge for a year! (Usually the unlimited account is $10 per year or $25 for a lifetime membership.)

Here's how we'll get the early reading copies to you. The first 100 people to send an email with their mailing address requesting an ARC of Close My Eyes to CrimeThing@gmail.com will receive one. Don't expect a reply, we'll be too busy mailing like maniacs! But once the 100 copies are gone, we will set up an auto-reply that tells you so.

Once you've sent us the email, head on over to LibraryThing and set yourself up a free account. Then join our Criminal Element Book Club discussion group. Once discussion of the book begins (general discussion will begin June 24), anyone who joins in will get their account upgraded!

Transparent by Natalie Whipple is a debut young adult novel with paranormal elements, including an invisible protagonist (available May 21, 2013).

Fiona was born into one of the largest crime syndicates in the country. Her father runs drugs, steals his millions, and murders whoever gets in his way. When Fiona is born, he sees his chance to become the most powerful man in the world. Because Fiona was born with a special gift.

She’s invisible.

Fiona does anything her father asks, partly because he’s her father and partly because he has his own special gift: he’s a Charmer who can make any woman fall in love with him. At first this means picking pockets—which she learned to do when she was just seven years old. Then she graduates to robbery. Then spying on rival crime syndicates. However, her daddy has an endgame in mind for Fiona.

Assassin.

[Daddy’s Little Girl has big troubles...]

It’s nighttime in Pittsburgh. Tom-Cruise-as-Jack-Reacher has just beaten the tar out of a half-dozen creeps. Now it’s time to scram.

Reacher hops into his vehicle, grabs a gear, and hauls ass. The moaning bad guys can only stare at the yellow BABY ON BOARD sign in the rear window of his Grand Caravan.

Wait. What? Cut cut cut! Get me Props, dammit!

The vehicle in question is not, of course, a homely Dodge Grand Caravan, the minivanniest of all minivans. Rather, it’s a fire-breathing 1970 Chevelle SS, complete with Rally Stripes, a 396-cubic-inch engine, and a 4-speed transmission.

But you know what? Any sane tough guy would rather drive a Grand Caravan. Or maybe a Camry in a nice beige.

[Talk about yer hot wheels...]

Artist Mike Doyle is a genius in Lego, and this piece from his Abandoned Houses Series is all and only Lego, no foreign materials, paint, glue, screws, or altered blocks. It was created over 600 hours of effort out of somewhere between 110,000 and 130,000 blocks in black, white, dark and light bluish gray, transparent clear, and translucent black. Here's what he says about it:

The third installment of this abandoned house series continues its textural exploration of decay with a Victorian home engulfed in mud... For me, this piece speaks to the inherent unpredictability of those things which we call our foundation. Like a little dollhouse, a seemingly secure home is plucked up and set on a new path. This charming home, lovingly embellished with ornamental fancy was no match for nature. The fancy embellishments serve as a reminder of our earlier focus on the material world, while the aftermath removes us from that focus. The piece offers no answers or necessarily any hope, but rather points to life’s fragility.

It’s spooky and amazing, and here’s a close-up of Victorian with Tree, just because!

Hat tip: This is Colossal

At age nine, I became hooked on the legal/mystery series Perry Mason, then in its fourth year on CBS. The first episode of season 4 aired on September 17, 1960. Despite what the calendar said, it was culturally still the 1950s. Dwight Eisenhower was president (John F. Kennedy would be elected six weeks later). Most television, including Perry Mason, was shown in black and white. Mason’s top assistant, the beautiful, intelligent Della Street, would remain a secretary forever, and presumably a virgin though she was pushing forty. Private investigator Paul Drake chain-smoked through each episode. The police didn’t Mirandize arrestees because the Miranda decision wouldn’t come down until 1966. And network television portrayed attorneys as heroic defenders of justice working in a system that was essentially fair. The fictional Mason never represented a guilty client and won every case.

[Everything was simpler in black and white...]

Graveland by Alan Glynn is a thriller set in the world of Wall Street high finance (available May 28, 2013).

Set in the here and now, Graveland is very much a book of its time. It centers on the current financial crisis—and much of the action takes place in and around Wall Street.

The story begins as the CEO of a top Wall Street investment bank is gunned down while jogging in Central Park, and this death is soon followed by another, when a highly successful hedge fund manager is shot and killed outside a glitzy Upper West Side restaurant. Were the pair chosen as orchestrated terrorist targets or is plain old coincidence to blame? Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey has an entirely different theory—and her search for the truth will take her into some decidedly murky waters.

[Greed is not good. In fact, it can get you killed...]

Anyone who knows me will tell you that food is right at the top of my priorities in life. Follow my Twitter feed, and you’ll notice that probably a full 25 percent of my tweets are related to eating. Still, there are things that seem extreme even to me, like beating a chef to death over a $30 meal.

And yet, that’s precisely what happened to celebrity chef Miki Nozawa, whose food didn’t satisfy two customers at his restaurant on the German island of Sylt. The two left without paying, and later that night Nozawa found them at a nightclub and confronted them. A fight ensued, after which the two men escaped and Nozawa was taken to the hospital where he later died from his injuries.

Relax, everyone. It’s just dinner.

The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad is a debut thriller involving scandal, political corruption, and men with pasts they would prefer not to revisit (available May 21, 2013).

In A.X. Ahmad’s masterful, page-turner of a debut thriller, The Caretaker, Ranjit Singh is a disgraced captain of the Indian army who finds himself living with his wife and daughter on Martha’s Vineyard, eking out a living as a summer gardener, and wondering how they will survive the winter.

He stares across the road at the cold, angry ocean. When he first came to the island with his wife and daughter six months ago, the water was warm and shimmering, the beaches were lined with parked cars, and long-tailed kites fluttered in the hot sky. All summer and into the fall he’d worked as a landscaper, feeling his unused muscles stretch and harden, feeling the hot sun beat down on him, and felt a kind of peace.

[A peace you know won’t last...]

Criminal enterprises are dangerous, no, really, I heard that somewhere. The risks of the job, though, are part of the deal. Hardly a criminal would balk at the prospect of being arrested or facing a prison sentence. It’s a risk; always has been, always will be. The job itself isn’t the only risk, though. Criminals have a need to go about their work in secret, and the only thing worse than getting arrested on the job getting arrested before the job.

For that reason criminals have to hide what they’re about, but they still have to talk about it. Talking about a big heist or, worse, a plan to kill someone is a quick way to tip off the police. If the cops don’t outright arrest someone for planning a crime, you can bet they’ll take steps to make sure that the crime goes down in their favor, ending with thieves and other criminals behind bars, or even in body bags.

[Keep your lip buttoned up...]

R.I.P.D. City of the Damned by Jeremy Barlow, Peter M.Lenkov, and Tony Parker is an anthology billed as a prequel to the R.I.P.D. comic book series and the upcoming feature film starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds (available May 28, 2013).

This second collection of R.I.P.D. comic books, based on characters created by Peter M. Lenkov, continues the narrative established in the successful first volume which is soon to be immortalized in film with Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds in starring roles. In City Of The Damned, Roy Pulsipher and Nick Walker are chasing down errant souls for the R.I.P.D. when they come across a place from Roy’s past, a place he has no interest in dragging his new partner into. So Roy plunges into danger alone, warning Nick to turn back, and takes the reader a century into the past, when he himself was first recruited to the R.I.P.D.

Roy’s first memory of his afterlife is of trudging helplessly through the desert while being menaced by a literal dark cloud.

[Look for the silver lining...]

CLICK HERE TO log in or register to enter for a chance to win a book bundle from the Criminal Element Prize Vault complete with signed copies, new releases, award winners, and best sellers!

This is NOT a COMMENTS Sweepstakes—You Must Use the Link Above to Enter.

It’s finally spring and we’re clearing out all the skeletons and, more importantly, books from the Criminal Element Prize Vault! Bring on the thrills, bring on the mystery! 

You can enter for a chance to win a whole box full of books by David Mark, Julia Keller, Charles Cumming, Daniel Stashower and Bill Loehfelm. 

[Find out about the books...]

I tend to get on kicks. I ran through Homeland Season 1 in three days and then moved on. I became obsessed with baseball for a summer and then moved on (mostly). I spent one summer in high school reading every Ian Fleming and Doc Savage book ever. And then I moved on. I saved all of John le Carré’s novels until this last winter. And then I read them all back to back. And I’ve moved on. Now I’m reading every book I can find on the history of Special Operations throughout history. And I’m sure I’ll move on.

A few months ago, I was asked the question that is probably most often asked of authors: What are your influences? And for a minute I was stumped. I love every genre, not just crime. In fact crime is such a broad genre that it’s kind of impossible not to like. I love spies and espionage. And espionage, by its very nature is crime. Crime that is sanctioned by the state, but still criminal, depending on what side you’re on. 

But when I though back I realized that there was a summer in 1988 right before I got to high school that I stumbled upon some reprints of the old Dick Tracy comic strips. They’d been repackaged into regular sized comic books and were being released as issues. Black and white comics? Ugh. What I was used to was full-color superhero comics and Doc Savage up to that point so these rough dark gritty comics were something else all together.

[Turn the page and learn...]

If you like your mysteries with a generous heaping of intrigue, action and great acting, plus a side of sci-fi, BBC America’s Orphan Black is a tasty dish, indeed. The fantastic drama begins when scrappy streetwise orphan Sarah Manning happens to witness the suicide of a woman who looks identical to herself and decides to step into her life to make a little cash. But she soon discovers that the dead woman wasn’t just a long-lost twin…but one of a series of clones.  And someone is trying to kill them.

The series just aired its seventh (of ten) episodes last Saturday, and each installment just keeps getting better and better. In case you missed Christopher Morgan’s introductory post, here’s a handful of reasons to catch up with the show and tune in:

[You can count on this show...]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work for a horror film? Not just any horror film with monsters and the like, but one of those good old-fashioned ’70s grindhouse films, like the original Last House on the Left?

That is exactly the kind of experience that the above trailer for Berberian Sound Studio looks to be. It even has some of the music and sound effects down perfectly. Here’s the official synopsis:

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past. Berberian Sound Studio is many things: an anti-horror film, a stylistic tour de force, and a dream of cinema. As such, it offers a kind of pleasure that is rare in films, while recreating in a highly original way the pleasures of Italian horror cinema.

It looks right up my alley, what about you? Just remember, it’s only a movie.

Smarty Bones by Carolyn Haines is lucky number thirteen in the Sarah Booth Delaney humorous private eye series (available May 21, 2013).

 It wasn’t long ago that I was telling you how much I enjoyed reading the raucously entertaining Bonefire of the Vanities, the twelfth book in the Sarah Booth Delaney series written by Carolyn Haines. I will admit it can give the reader pause when a book is so much fun to read but is number twelve of a series. Will number thirteen prove to be unlucky or will the author move the story and characters along uproariously and at warp speed? But hey, this is Carolyn Haines and Sarah Booth Delaney we’re talking about. And don’t forget Sarah Booth’s best friend and partner in her private investigation business, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond. Not to mention Jitty, the resident Civil War-era ghost who lives at Sarah Booth’s ancestral home, Dalia House.

Fascinating as these ladies may be, I couldn’t imagine that the author would add the Lady in Red to the mix. While on a book tour, Carolyn Haines came across the Lady in Red, a corpse that was approximately one hundred years old when it was found buried in a Mississippi cemetery in 1969. The lady’s body had been preserved in alcohol and the rumors about her past were filled with mystery and legend. What better jumping off point for a paranormal, southern mystery?

[Mysterious women and others...]

As a kid I, along with most of the rest of the country, watched the made-for-TV movie Born Innocent. If you don’t know that film, it’s a 1974 title that stars Linda Blair as a once “normal” teenage girl who, mostly due to her parents’ cruel indifference, goes down a path that leads to the hell of life inside a girls’ reform school. At that time I wasn’t familiar with the concept of camp entertainment, or that there were whole subgenres within that realm that had to do with babes behind bars and reform school girls. Born Innocent was just the big TV movie that everybody was talking about that week, and it starred that girl who’d been in The Exorcist, and I wanted to see it.

The movie devastated me. The tale of a likable kid who was emotionally abandoned by her parents and left to fend for herself, with no place or person to turn to for ultimate security, left me shaken. It was so desolate. It made me realize that things like having parents who cared about you, and protection from bullies, were gifts, not to be taken for granted. I hugged my mom extra hard before going to bed after watching the movie.

[It was no Roller Boogie...]

HBO recently announced it was picking up a 7-part series called Criminal Justice starring James Gandolfini as an “ambulance-chasing New York City attorney who gets in over his head when he takes on the case of a Pakistani accused of murdering a girl on the Upper West Side,” according to Deadline.com.

The series is based very loosely on a 2008 BBC series of the same name that starred Ben Whishaw as the accused murderer. It will be written by Richard Price, who prefers to call himself a novelist (Clockers and Freedomland, among others), but who’s written some major screenplays (The Color of Money and Ransom, among others) and a bunch of episodes of The Wire—which entitles him to call himself whatever he pleases. Steven Zaillian is the director.

No word on broadcast plans yet, but we think we’ll pencil this one in on our watch list. How about you?

In April 1945, the end of World War II was finally in sight. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, recently elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president, was at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, sitting for a painting. He reminded the artist that she only had 15 more minutes to work, then complained of a sudden, blinding headache, lost consciousness, and died.

Quite frankly, even someone as suspicious as I would have bought that story, hook, line, and sinker. Roosevelt had been in bad health for years, after a bout with polio left him dependent upon crutches or a wheelchair. The doctors, seeing no real need for an autopsy, decided that it must have been a cerebral hemorrhage.

And so, FDR was buried and Harry S. Truman became president.

[Nothing suspicious about that... or is there?]