Vote for Your Favorite Masterpiece Mystery Series
By Crime HQ
June 20, 2017Don't see your favorite Masterpiece Mystery series? Let us know which is your favorite in the comments below!
Wallander
Crime/Mystery/Thrillers Coming to (and Leaving) Netflix in September 2016
By Crime HQ
August 29, 2016After an admittedly tepid August, September comes out swinging with a superb list of newly added movies—including the entire Jaws series to help you live every week like it's shark week. Then, Wagner Moura gives you the bump you need to stay up all night and binge-watch Season 2 of Narcos, with his chilling portrayal…
Dear Wallander: Advice for a Concerned Mother
By Guy Bergstrom
August 26, 2016This week's guest columnist is Kurt Wallander, the brooding Swedish police inspector who looks like he hasn't shaved, or slept, for days. Dear Wallander, I'm the mother of three beautiful young boys—ages 3, 6, and 8—and one of them is lying to me. I found Gilly the Goldfish on the rug, ten feet from…
Wallander 4.03: “The Troubled Man” Episode Review
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
May 23, 2016Early morning. Håkan von Enke (Terrence Hardiman) begins his day as he always does, winding the Mora clock in the front hall of his beautiful historic home. Taking the same walk. Thinking the same thoughts. Just as he described to Kurt Wallander in Episode 2: “A Lesson in Love.” Only this time, von Enke doesn’t…
Wallander 4.02: “A Lesson in Love” Episode Review
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
May 16, 2016It’s dark, it’s foggy, and our man is buttoned into a pea coat and looking unsettled. In other words, Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) is back in Sweden where he belongs, and everything’s as it should be—for the moment. Then, a couple of thugs zoom up on a motorcycle, pummel him for no apparent reason, and…
Wallander 4.01: “The White Lioness” Episode Review
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
May 9, 2016The final series of Wallander on Masterpiece Mystery has an uncharacteristic start. For one thing, our Swedish detective friend Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) is in South Africa for some sort of international police conference. More uncharacteristic than that, Wallander is soaking in the sunshine, jogging, inhaling…smiling. “I have been a police officer for 40 years,”…
Q&A with Lily Gardner, Author of Betting Blind
By Crime HQ
April 14, 2016Lily Gardner, author of Betting Blind—the 2nd Lennox Cooper Mystery—was kind enough to answer some of Criminal Element's questions about her beginnings as a writer, her inspirations, and living in Portland, OR.
Where’s Wallander? He’s in Moscow with Jack Ryan
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
October 4, 2012Kenneth 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…
Wallander: “Before the Frost”
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
September 24, 2012Our 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…
Wallander: “The Dogs of Riga”
By Leslie Gilbert Elman
September 17, 2012When’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…