Fresh Meat: Wounded Prey by Sean Lynch
When hunting pure evil, nothing is sacred.
Fresh Meat: Transparent by Natalie Whipple
Even an invisible girl can’t hide forever...
Fresh Meat: Graveland by Alan Glynn
Who is killing the Wall Street elite?
Fresh Meat: The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad
A fresh start brings fresh troubles...
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest…
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the role of Yorick the court jester is little more than a cameo (you couldn’t properly call it a “walk-on”); a nonspeaking role that wouldn’t even qualify you for membership in Actors’ Equity. Yet plenty of people have wanted to play him, even though “poor Yorick” is nothing more than a skull that Hamlet holds and muses upon in Act V, Scene 1.
After all, Yorick is a role you could play…forever.
Blood Makes Noise, the debut novel by Gregory Widen, is an action-packed thriller based on the events before and after the death of Eva Perón (available April 30, 2013).
It’s hard to articulate the effect Eva Perón had on Argentina. Her combination of charisma and chutzpah took her from what we could gently call an unfortunate childhood, to an undistinguished career as an actress, to the position of First Lady. In a different time, she’d have been running the country herself. (There were plenty of people who figured she pretty much was.) But this was 1946, and while her husband Juan Perón was serving as president of Argentina, Evita was traveling around the country charming the pants off everyone. By 1951, there was strong and unprecedented public sentiment toward making her a candidate for vice president in the next election.
The fact that she died of cancer in 1952 at the age of 33 merely ensured Evita’s place in the pantheon of the great gone-too-soon and elevated her popularity to a galactic scale. Weirdly, her body was embalmed and meticulously preserved by a Dr. Pedro Ara in a process that took about a year to complete. Her remains became what could only be described as a holy relic.
And then they disappeared…
Never underestimate the power of a bored housewife.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from The Bletchley Circle, a three-part miniseries that premiered on Public Television on April 21, it’s that a woman with a sharp, lively mind and too much time on her hands will naturally gravitate toward something that keeps her intellect occupied. The Cryptic Crossword can only fill the gap for so long. Eventually she’ll require a more complicated puzzle to solve; one with higher stakes. And you won’t find higher stakes than an investigation to identify and capture a serial murderer before he kills again.
[Solve your murder if you must; just be home in time for tea…]
People who go out walking in springtime are likely to spot the first flowers coming into bloom, birds busy feathering their nests, woodland creatures showing their faces after a long winter. In New York City at this time of year, you’ll see all of those things: flowers, birds, and creatures (possibly not woodland creatures, but still…). Plus, you might catch a glimpse of a Haddad’s truck, known locally as a harbinger of TV pilot filming season.
Last week I was lucky enough to spot two separate clutches of Haddad’s vehicles (they almost never travel alone), both marking film locations for TV shows in gestation.
First is Murder in Manhattan, now shooting an hour-long pilot for ABC starring Annie Potts and Bridget Regan as Blythe and Lex Sutton, Park Avenue-type mother-daughter amateur sleuths. Brendan Hines (from Lie to Me and Scandal) plays Annie Potts’s son, an assistant district attorney. Enver Gjokaj plays an NYPD officer who’s Lex’s friend/potential romantic interest. The writer is Maria Maggenti, who’s also written for Without a Trace. Ryan Reynolds is an executive producer. Read more at Deadline.com.
Second is Ironside, an NBC recasting of the classic Raymond Burr series from the 1960s and ’70s, about a canny detective who’s been left wheelchair-bound after a shooting. This time it will be Blair Underwood taking the role of Robert T. Ironside, who is described in the show’s prospectus as “tough, sexy, and acerbic.” (So, not a precise recreation of the Raymond Burr show then...) Kenneth Choi will play his supervisor. The cast includes Spencer Grammer (daughter of Kelsey), Pablo Schreiber from Weeds, and Brent Sexton from The Killing and Justified. Michael Caleo, who worked on The Sopranos, is the show’s creator. Read more at Deadline.com.
Whether either of these shows will sprout wings and fly into a full season of crime drama is anyone’s guess, but it could be interesting to watch them as they grow.
The Annals of Unsolved Crime by Edward Jay Epstein “re-investigates” notorious, mysterious, and unsolved crimes from the past 200 years (available March 12, 2013).
You might be forgiven for wondering how investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein sleeps at night. The man has made a career of reporting on murky, unsettling, often unsolved murders and other crimes—most of them high-profile—and even after a case has been brought to an official conclusion, he just can’t let it go. It’s as if he’s perpetually living that moment right before you drop off to sleep, when your brain suddenly floods with worries, fears, and unanswered questions destined to plague you into a bout of insomnia.
Many of us possess a healthy degree of instinctive skepticism about what we’re offered as the “official story” on just about any subject. If we’re mystery and crime fiction fans we tend to question even more—Did it really happen that way? Isn’t there another explanation?—because there’s a budding detective inside us all.
Epstein goes us one better since, as a journalist writing for publications such as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, he has access to sources and documents the general public does not. Thus, his skepticism is based on more than gut instinct and common sense.
Baksheesh by Esmahan Aykol is the second book in the contemporary mystery series featuring Istanbul bookseller Kati Hirschel (available March 5, 2013).
Kati Hirschel tells a great story. She’s funny, smart, observant, and self-effacing. The fact that she’s the proprietor of Istanbul’s only bookstore devoted exclusively to crime and mystery fiction just adds to her appeal. If you’ve read Hotel Bosphorus, Esmahan Aykol’s first Kati Hirschel mystery, you already know about Kati, her free-spirited style, and her vast network of friends and acquaintances. (The woman knows everybody!)
Now Kati’s back and she has a problem; her landlady is raising the rent and Kati needs to find a new place to live. Maybe she’ll buy a place. A friend floats the idea and it’s tempting, but in Istanbul a very specific set of rules apply to this endeavor. It all starts with “finding a man” with the right connections and access to an unpublished list of available properties, then giving him money to facilitate the transaction.
The Day is Dark by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is the fourth mystery featuring attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (available February 26, 2013).
At an author event in the spring of 2012, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir was talking about the power of place for an author working on a mystery novel. The place in question was Greenland, which she had visited only briefly—but long enough to gather inspiration for a new book. “I looked at the sled dogs and I asked, ‘What would happen if you put a dead body in front of those dogs? Would they eat it?’” she recalled.
Hmm…
I came away from the event with two thoughts: 1) be very careful if you travel with a crime fiction author; and 2) keep an eye out for Yrsa’s next book. That book is The Day is Dark, and it is indeed set in Greenland, perhaps the only inhabited place on earth that Icelanders would consider too darned cold, dark, and inhospitable to live in.
Fans of Yrsa’s previous books will know that Greenland is absolutely not the place for main character attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir to be spending any time. She’s Icelandic, but Thóra is hardly the rugged outdoors type. Yet she is always game for a challenging case—and this one’s lucrative to boot. So, if it means traveling to Greenland to investigate a potential breach of contract on a mining project, so be it. At least she’ll be traveling with her handsome banker boyfriend Matthew Reich.
Killer’s Art by Mari Jungstedt is the latest U.S. release in the Swedish crime series featuring police inspector Anders Knutas and TV journalist Johan Berg (available February 25, 2013).
On a cold Sunday morning, a man is found hanged on the old city wall that surrounds Visby, the capital of Gotland, an island off Sweden’s east coast. The victim is well-known art gallery owner, Egon Wallin and the crime sends a chill throughout the area. Days later, a famous painting is stolen in Stockholm and disturbing links to Wallin’s murder start to surface, bringing police inspector Anders Knutas and TV journalist Johan Berg into the picture—working against time, and sometimes against each other, to find the killer.
You can understand why Mari Jungstedt’s novels are adapted for Swedish TV. With chapters that typically span three pages at most, they read like a teleplay delivering just the right amount of information scene by scene. I point this out because some readers enjoy this style and others sincerely do not, so it’s worth noting. But I’ll add that in this case the pacing serves the story well, jumping from thought to thought the way a person’s mind naturally does.
One moment Knutas is focusing on a suspect, the next he’s wondering why his second-in-command Karin Jacobsson has such an affinity for the gluttonous Inspector Kihlgård, and the next he’s peeved that Johan Berg has more information about the case than a journalist should.
One moment Johan Berg is coaxing an unsuspecting source into revealing information, the next he’s behaving like a teenager in love and contemplating a lifelong commitment to his partner Emma, and the next he’s plotting a career move.
A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miłoszewski is the second in the procedural series featuring Teodor Szacki, a State Prosecutor in Poland (available January 8, 2013).
A victim is found brutally murdered, her body drained of blood. The killing resembles a Jewish ritual slaughter, prompting a wave of anti-Semitic paranoia in the closely knit community of Sandomierz, Poland. State Prosecutor Teodor Szacki has recently relocated from Warsaw to Sandomierz to start a new life. Instead, he finds himself investigating a strange murder case in unfamiliar and unfriendly surroundings.
Every legend contains a grain of truth. Or so people wish to believe. Even a legend as fantastic as the Loch Ness Monster originated in some sort of fact and not merely in what a lonely Highlander swears he saw once upon a foggy twilight. Right?
So if the good people of Sandomierz, Poland, have heard legends of evil deeds perpetrated by its Jewish community—no matter how horrifying, no matter how inhuman—they choose to believe, because there must be a grain of truth hidden somewhere within. Right?
No, it’s not right!
For everyone who is weary of watching sweet young things solving crime while flitting about in tight skirts and high heels, I give you DCI Vera Stanhope.
Her heels are never high, because you can’t trudge the Northumberland countryside in high heels. If her skirts are tight it’s because she’s gained too much weight. She’s a mass of personality flaws, few of which are endearing or adorable. With every step she takes she totes the baggage of her life alongside her; uncomplainingly, as one does. And you root for her and you rely on her, because—like the rugged old vehicle she drives—she might not look like much, but she’s deceptively strong and able.
Author Ann Cleeves created Vera, and ITV created a TV series based on her books. Now, that series, starring Brenda Blethyn, has been picked up for broadcast by a bunch of public television stations (hopefully with more to come).
Find Vera. Watch Vera. She’s the ideal palate cleanser after you’ve had your fill of impossibly perfect—or adorably imperfect—TV detectives.
Everyone has a wish list. This is mine.
I’ve been reading with undisguised envy about various TV series that aired in the U.K. during the past year or that are scheduled to debut in 2013. Some of them, I’ve heard, are heading our way. (Where? When? Tell me!) Others are up for grabs if any wise U.S. TV programming folks were so inclined to grab ’em.
Here then is a brief rundown of a few programs that struck my fancy. I haven’t watched any of them so my selections are based on the subject, the source material, the creators, and the cast.
It would be possible for me to find a way to watch said programs on my computer or via some other technological means, but I want to sit on my couch and watch them on my TV. Is that too much to wish for?
The whispers became full-on conversation last week when it was announced that The Killing might be back for a third season on AMC and/or via Netflix. Chris Morgan mentioned this yesterday, and in my mind the conversation was drowned out by the sound of head-scratching. Seriously. Is anyone going to come back for this?
I was completely, totally, insufferably behind The Killing in season 1. Sure it was lugubriousness made manifest. And the rain! My lord, the rain! But I liked Mireille Enos (Linden) with her nervous energy and Joel Kinnaman (Holder) with his protective big-brother charm. I knew the show was based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen, which was doing gangbusters in Europe. (Now in its third season there, it still is.) And at the beginning I felt the American version had captured the glacial pacing and ambience that would set it apart from typical U.S. TV fare. So while most everyone I knew thought it was BOR-ing, I found The Killing tantalizing and I kept watching.
Math has never been my strong suit, which might be why the following equation doesn’t make sense to me:
Classic Work + Supernatural Stuff = Fresh Idea
Call it the Mashup Theorem. It gave us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I know was very popular, but still seems a little silly to me. It also gave us Little Women and Werewolves. (Exactly.) Thus, while I understand why smart people revel in the absolute nature of mathematics, I have to insist that even established theorems should not be applied to every situation.
To wit: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, in which Gretel’s a head-butting, crossbow-wielding girl in tight clothing (Gemma Arterton in a role that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Noomi Rapace apparently decided to forgo) and Hansel’s Jeremy Renner. (Never mind, Jeremy, we’ll always have The Hurt Locker.) The writer-director is Tommy Wirkola whose previous credits include Dead Snow. (Two words: Nazi zombies.)
H+G:WH is set to come out in January 2013.
Does the concept add up for you?
Hat tip to Filmofilia
Kenneth Branagh, minus his stubble and scruffy Kurt Wallander togs, was photographed last week in Moscow on the set of Jack Ryan, a new thriller based on Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst hero. Sir Kenneth is directing and playing the main bad guy opposite Chris Pine, who stars as Jack Ryan early in his career. The cast also includes Keira Knightley and Kevin Costner. Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for his Schindler’s List screenplay, is listed as a writer for the film, which is expected to be in theaters December 2013.
Our last Wallander of series III begins on the shore of a peaceful lake in autumn. A quartet of wild swans flies gracefully into view and settles happily on the lake’s surface. It’s the most serene moment of the episode. Right up until a man sets them on fire then whacks an unsuspecting witness over the head with a tree limb.
This guy’s a bad one: a paranoid schizophrenic arsonist who’s escaped from a mental health facility in Odense, Denmark. Kurt Wallander is in for a difficult time.
The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler is a historical crime novel set in early-20th-century Mexico (available October 2, 2012).
When we meet Christopher Marlowe “Kit” Cobb, war correspondent for a Chicago newspaper, he’s in Veracruz, Mexico. The nation is in turmoil. General Victoriano Huerta, who seized power during a recent coup, is running things, but his position is not secure. He’s already made an enemy of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and he has plenty of opposition in his own country, including the revolutionary resistance fighter Pancho Villa.
Meanwhile, the German government has begun cozying up to various opposition leaders—whoever they think might wind up in charge and might sympathize with their anti-American sentiments. All in all, Mexico in 1914 is a dangerous place, particularly if you’re an American reporter digging around for information you’re not supposed to have.
When the creators of Elementary wanted to promote the show’s debut with a Sherlock-themed scavenger hunt, New York-based Watson Adventures (Yes, that’s their real name!) was the natural choice for the job. So if you happen to be in lower Manhattan this Saturday, September 22, and you run into a bunch of sleuths hunting for clues to solve a murder mystery, you’ll know they’re the lucky contestants competing for a grand prize visit to the Elementary set. (The show premieres September 27 on CBS. You might have seen us mention that before.)
Although the Elementary Scavenger Hunt was a one-of-a-kind free event—and dang it booked up quick!—Watson Adventures also runs Murder Mystery Scavenger Hunts open to the public at fourteen museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the DeYoung Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian. Choose your crime scene and bring your own Watson.
When’s the last time you watched a really good Latvian thriller?
I watched one last night.
To be fair, last night’s episode of Wallander on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery was about the famous, fictional Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, but it was filmed almost entirely in Riga, Latvia. And it was a really good thriller. So, as far as I’m concerned it qualifies.
The suspense level was high, there was just enough pathos, and best of all it showed me places and faces I’ve never seen before. It’s a tribute to Wallander that the series is so beautifully photographed and acted you can almost overlook the gruesome corpses that surface all over the place.
Dear Whoever Decides These Things:
Please may we have Kenneth Branagh as Kurt Wallander forever and ever?
I know there’s a well-received Swedish TV series that starred Swedish actor Krister Henriksson as Wallander, but I can’t believe he’s better than Kenneth Branagh. And that’s saying something, for I did not always feel this way.
Series I of Wallander didn’t overwhelm me and I approached series II with ambivalence, wooed back largely because of the fantastic David Warner, who played Wallander’s father Povel and whom I’ve watched since the 1979 film Time After Time (and will always adore because of 1981’s Time Bandits).
By the end of Wallander series II, however, things had jelled. And in “An Event in Autumn,” the first of three episodes in Wallander series III now airing on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery, Kenneth Branagh so fully embodies the Ystad detective that I feel foolish for ever doubting him.
A Fistful of Collars is the fifth in the Chet and Bernie canine mystery series by Spencer Quinn, in which the dog deservedly takes top billing (available September 11, 2012).
Private eye Bernie Little never had a better friend than Chet. Man’s best friend, to coin a phrase. Yep, Chet’s a dog—a tag-wearing, tail-wagging member of the “nation within” who live among us, smelling, tasting, and observing everything.
A dog’s a walking detective kit, if you think about it, picking up clues a human like Bernie might miss. True, Chet lacks a bit in the attention span department—he takes the idea of living in the moment to a new level—but he usually makes up for that with his judgment about people. Chet’s instincts are pretty reliable when it comes to determining who’s okay and who’s not.
