The seventh series will consist of three, brand-new interconnecting feature-length films. Each film will once again be written by Russell Lewis who has penned all 27 Endeavour screenplays to date. …• Here’s one non-fiction book I’m looking forward to reading this fall: Barry Forshaw’s Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide (Oldcastle). As press materials explain, that 448-page work strives to be quite comprehensive in its treatment of the genre: “Every major writer is included, along with many other more esoteric choices. Focusing on a key book (or books) by each writer, and with essays on key crime genres, Crime Fiction: A Reader's Guide is designed to be both a crime fan’s shopping list and a pithy, opinionated but unstuffy reference tool and history. Most judgements are generous (though not uncritical), and there is a host of entertaining, informed entries on related films and TV.” British critic Forshaw’s last, shorter book, Historical Noir, was a splendid resource, and I expect Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to be equally enlightening. Amazon shows that it’s due out in Britain on November 21, and in the States next summer.
The new trilogy of films mark Endeavour [Morse, played by Shaun Evans] and his colleagues entering a new decade and era of change. Opening on New Year’s Eve 1970, normal order has been resumed, and the team reunited at Castle Gate CID, with Chief Superintendent Bright [Anton Lesser] back in charge. However, the events of the past year have left their mark, and the new series will see old friendships challenged and new relationships blossom.
In the dawn of women’s liberation, social progression and scientific growth, the 1970s begin for Oxford’s finest with the discovery of a body at the canal towpath on New Year’s Day. With the only clue in the investigation a witness who heard whistling on the night of the crime, the team have their work cut out to uncover their culprit.
With a strong, overarching plot connecting the three films, the seventh series will test Endeavour’s moral compass to breaking point, both personally and professionally.
• It appears The Seattle Times is doubling up on its crime-fiction coverage. Adam Woog has been writing about this genre for many years, but now arts critic Moira Macdonald has posted the first installment of her new monthly column, “The Plot Thickens.” My initial impression is that she’s interested primarily in best-seller material, but let’s watch to see how her column develops over time.
• Criminal Element’s new entry in its series looking back at 65 years worth of books that have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel focuses on L.R. Wright’s The Suspect (1985). Writes Doreen Sheridan:
The first Canadian winner ... features, perhaps stereotypically, ... a Mountie and a librarian politely declining to discuss a murder where they both know whodunnit. The Mountie is Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, a divorced forty-something who misses his daughters back in Calgary but has no intention of leaving his posting on Canada’s Sunshine Coast, a beautiful if difficult-to-access stretch of shoreline just north of Vancouver. The librarian is Cassandra Mitchell, also in her forties, who moved to the town of Sechelt to be close to her aging mother. Cassandra and Karl connect through a lonely hearts ad she posted but find their burgeoning romance tested by their individual relationships with George Wilcox, the titular suspect who kills a man on the very first page of this novel.”• And William Lampkin is posting photos from PulpFest 2019 in his PulpNet.org blog, Yellowed Perils. PulpFest is currently underway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It strikes me as an annual event I really should attend sometime, though given the number of collectible items on sale, my bank account might be better off if I stay home.
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