A Few Tidbits to Share

• Today brings the official release of Lawrence Block’s The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder (LB Productions), plus an interview with the author, whose 85th birthday just happens to be June 24. Kevin Burton Smith, editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, had an opportunity recently to question Block via e-mail, and he combines the results of their exchange with incisive observations about the book itself—and its unlikely existence. Read all about it here.

• Several of PBS-TV’s most-loved Masterpiece Mystery! programs are slated to reappear on U.S. television screens over the next four months. Season 8 of the British historical detective drama Grantchester, starring Tom Brittney and Robson Green, will make its debut on Sunday, July 9. Season 5 of Unforgotten, the cold-case-focused puzzler featuring Sanjeev Bhaskar and this year introducing Sinéad Keenan in the role of Detective Chief Inspector Jessica “Jessie” James, will premiere on Sunday, September 3. On that same date, watch for the Season 3 start of Van der Valk, the Amsterdam-set crime drama starring Marc Warren and Maimie McCoy, and inspired by the novels of Nicolas Freeling. Finally, the sophomore series of Annika—the Scottish mystery featuring Nicola Walker (formerly of Unforgotten) as the head of a Glasgow-based marine homicide unit—is scheduled to begin airing on Sunday, October 15. Click here to see a brief promotional video covering all of these shows.

• This year’s Shirley Jackson Award nominees have been announced. Named for the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, among other works, these prizes recognize “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” There are six categories of contenders, the following works vying for Best Novel:

— Beulah, by Christi Nogle (Cemetery Gates)
— The Dead Friends Society, by Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall (Encyclopocalypse)
— The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland)
— Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
— Unwieldy Creatures, by Addie Tsai (Jaded Ibis Press)
— Where I End, by Sophie White (Tramp Press)

The five remaining divisions of nominees can be found here. Winners are to be declared on Saturday, July 15, at Readercon 32, the Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

• I love cats, but don’t usually gravitate toward mysteries in which they play significant roles. Kate Jackson, the blogger at Cross-Examining Crime, is of quite another mind altogether. Here she lists her 10 favorite crime novels featuring felines, by authors as renowned as Erle Stanley Gardner, Dolores Hitchins, and Stuart Palmer.

• Martin Edwards offers a few comments about (and photos from) last weekend’s Shetland Noir Festival in Lerwick, Scotland.

• Back in late March, CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano enumerated “The 19 Scruffiest Detectives in Crime Film and TV.” Now she’s balanced that out with a rundown of “The 19 Most Polished Detectives in Crime Film and TV.” Andre Braugher’s Frank Pembleton (Homicide), Bertie Carvel’s Adam Dalgliesh (Dalgliesh), Gene Barry’s Amos Burke (Burke’s Law), and both Pierce Brosnan’s Remington Steele and Stephanie Zimbalist’s Laura Holt (Remington Steele) made the cut.

• It seems made-for-TV movies are once more having a moment, thanks to the proliferation of streaming channels. In my younger years, I loved many such one-off wonders, especially those imbued with considerable suspense (The Night Stalker and Duel, for instance), those with a crime or espionage angle (House on Greenapple Road, Assignment: Munich), others focused on natural disasters (The Day After, Hurricane), and those that served as series pilots (Genesis II, Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead). But teleflicks had pretty much fallen out of favor by the 1990s. Now, however, writes Randee Dawn of the Los Angeles Times, “the explosion of content on streamers (along with changes in the theatrical system during and post-pandemic) is causing filmmakers to rethink what a movie made for television can be.”