Five on the Fly

I haven’t deliberately been taking time off from blogging this week; it just looks that way. But I’m back with these news bits of interest.

• The PBS-TV series Masterpiece Mystery! announced this week that The Marlow Murder Club, its two-part adaptation of Robert Thorogood’s 2021 novel of the same name, will premiere in the States on Sunday, October 27. The cozy whodunit, which stars Samantha Bond, Jo Martin, Cara Horgan and Natalie Dew, has already been renewed for a second season. Watch a trailer here.

• Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder brings news that the fourth, “starriest season yet” of Only Murders in the Building, with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, will debut on Hulu-TV come Tuesday, August 27. In addition, “a third season of [the] Acorn TV and Channel 5 detective drama Dalgliesh, based on the novels by P.D. James, has begun filming in Northern Ireland …”

• Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg dropped me a line this morning, letting me know that he has been busy lately uploading to YouTube a couple of older TV series on which he worked. Click here to revisit the 1992-1993, half-hour Fox crime drama Likely Suspects, described by Wikipedia as “an interactive crime drama where the viewer was treated as a rookie partner.” And look over here for the complete run of Murphy’s Law (“including,” says Goldberg, “the unaired/uncut pilot, unaired final episode and unaired spin-off pilot presentation”), a 1988-1989 ABC-TV show starring George Segal as a recovering alcoholic and San Francisco insurance-fraud investigator, with Maggie Han playing his model-girlfriend. “People keep hounding me for episodes of both short-lived crime series,” Goldberg tells me, “so I decided to share them … So far, YouTube hasn't slapped me down.”

• British publisher Joffe Books “is looking for a talented new crime fiction writer of colour, with one of the UK’s largest literary prizes for the winner,” reports Shotsmag Confidential.

The prize invites submissions from un-agented authors from Black, Asian, Indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds writing in crime fiction genres including: electrifying psychological thrillers, cosy mysteries, gritty police procedurals, twisty chillers, unputdownable suspense mysteries and shocking domestic noirs.

The winner will be offered a prize package consisting of a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize, and a £25,000 audiobook offer from Audible for the first book.

The submission period ends at midnight on 30 September 2024.

• And The Observer’s Tim Adams has filed this delightful piece asking whether “a visit to the Bristol CrimeFest—this year featuring G.T. Karber, creator of the world-conquering whodunnit series Murdle—[can] help pin down why the [crime fiction] genre is booming.”