Smatterings of Intelligence

• What is the real identity of Icelandic crime novelist Stella Blómkvist? It’s a long-standing mystery, though some claim to know the answer. In this piece from Crime Fiction Lover, her (?) translator, Quentin Bates, relates the challenges of working with a pseudonymous writer with whom he has “no direct line of communication.” Murder at His Residence (Corylus), Blómkvist’s 13th book—and the first to appear in English—is being released this week.

• Meanwhile, an interview with translator Bates is featured in Linda’s Book Bag, a blog from Linda Hill. Enjoy it here.

• Also of interest is this brief exchange between busy blogger Marshal Zeringue and Edgar Award-winner Erin Flanagan, whose new novel, Come With Me (Thomas & Mercer), offers a tense tale of female friendship, twisted deceptions, and fiercely guarded secrets.

• A curiosity, indeed. This 1900 silent short, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, is “believed to be the earliest film featuring The Great Detective.”

• FX’s black comedy/crime drama, Fargo, is scheduled to return for its fifth-season run beginning on Tuesday, November 21, and streamable on Hulu. As The Killing Times explains, “The plot ... has been teased with the following questions: ‘When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours?’”

• And I’ll watch pretty much anything that stars British actress Jenna Coleman. So this news, also from The Killing Times, has me smiling: “The BBC has announced a new, four-part crime drama starring Jenna Coleman. In The Jetty, Coleman stars as rookie detective Ember Manning who must work out how a fire in a Lancashire holiday home connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit ‘love’ triangle between a man in his twenties and two underage girls. But as Ember gets close to the truth, it threatens to destroy her life—forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, present and the town she’s always called home.” I don’t see any word yet regarding a transmission date in either the UK or the States.