More Morse-Related Endeavors

Series 7 of the Shaun Evans/Roger Allam historical crime drama, Endeavour—inspired by Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books—is set to debut in Great Britain this coming Sunday night, with the first of three new episodes. While there hasn’t been much information released about this year’s story plots, the blog I Heart British TV offers a small handful of photos from the production, and reports that Episode 1 “begins on New Year’s Eve in 1970, ushering in a new decade. The Castle Gate CID team (where Morse is now working) is called onto the scene when a body is discovered on a canal towpath. The only clue they have is a witness who heard someone whistling.”

Click here to watch a trailer for Series 7, which I found originally on Chris Sullivan’s fine blog, Morse, Lewis and Endeavour.

Speaking of Sullivan, he just brought the news this week that his much-anticipated book, The Complete Inspector Lewis—focusing on the 2008-2015 series Lewis (aka Inspector Lewis), which was also a spin-off from the Morse yarns—has finally become available.

“For the moment,” he writes, “it is only available via Amazon for the Kindle. The paperback version should hopefully be up for sale very soon. The book has been over a year of my life. My only disappointment was not getting all the locations, especially the pubs [into the book]. I think I couldn’t identify four or five pubs. This is tied in with why it took longer than maybe it should have, as I was trying to get as many locations as possible but eventually I had to decide what was more important, getting the book out now after about 18 months of work on it, or keep trying to refine the book for another six months. I chose the former.”

As if this weren’t enough good news for Morse fans, ITV—the UK co-producer of Endeavour (with PBS-TV’s Masterpiece series in the States)—has confirmed that an eight series of that program is slated for development in the near future.

READ MORE: “Endeavour Series 7: British Magazine Articles” and “Endeavour Series 7: MORE, MORE British Magazine Articles,” by Chris Sullivan (Morse, Lewis and Endeavour).

Just Trying to Keep Up

• Variety brings word that “PBS Masterpiece has boarded the remake of classic European detective series Van der Valk and will co-produce and air the show in the U.S. Masterpiece’s Rebecca Eaton will exec produce the project. It is the latest in a healthy line of U.K.-originated drama that Masterpiece has boarded since becoming the U.S. home for British-made hits such as Downton Abbey.” Production of this new Amsterdam-set series is said to be underway, with no firm release date as yet. The original Van der Valk, starring Barry Foster and based on a succession of novels by Nicholas Freeling, was broadcast (on and off) between 1972 and 1992. (Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)

• Meanwhile, Mystery Fanfare reports that Lara Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, along with Adrian McKinty’s acclaimed The Chain are slated for Hollywood film adaptation.

• And Mystery Tribune says Swedish writer Camilla Läckberg (The Girl in the Woods) “has turned her attention into creating a new TV series titled Hammarvik, which can be characterized as a Nordic version of Desperate Housewives with a serial killer on the loose.”

• Not long after the posting of my latest CrimeReads piece, “Detecting During Disasters”—about mystery and detective novels set amid real-life catastrophes, including San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and city-destroying fire—I received a note from Randal S. Brandt, a librarian with the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. He told me of an article he’d written for a 2006 edition of the Bancroft’s newsletter, about novels featuring that trembler—everything from Sara Dean’s Travers: A Story of the San Francisco Earthquake (1908) and Shaken Down (1925), by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry, to Mignon G. Eberhart’s Casa Madrone (1980) and Dianne Day’s Fire and Fog (1996). Titled “The Big Shake,” Brandt’s feature is accessible in this PDF; simply scroll down to page 10.

• I’d never heard mystery-maker Ngaio Marsh speak—until now.

• Houston-born novelist Attica Locke has won the 2019 Texas Writer Award. Sponsored by the Texas Book Festival, this prize is given out annually to authors who have “significantly contributed to the state’s literary landscape.” Locke is, of course, known for penning such books as Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) and its new sequel, Heaven, My Home. She will be presented with her award during an October 26 ceremony in Texas’ state capitol in Austin. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

• I’ll be sorry to miss this presentation. “If you’re going to Bouchercon [in Dallas, October 31-November 3],” writes B.V. Lawson in In Reference to Murder, “you won’t want to miss The Ghost Town Mortuary, a radio play by Anthony Boucher, performed by members of Mystery Writers of America NorCal, Friday, November 1, 11 a.m., at the Landmark Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency. Authors scheduled to participate include Laurie R. King, David Corbett, Kelli Stanley, Reece Hirsch, Randal S. Brandt, Dale Berry, Gigi Pandian, James L’Etoile, and Terry Shames.”

• Looking for a Christmas present for yours truly? This set of 20 Rockford Files trading cards would be a fun choice.

• England’s Daily Telegraph newspaper carries a story—reproduced by Chris Sullivan in his blog—about how actor Laurence Fox, late of Inspector Lewis and currently appearing in Victoria, has found solace in his music, after a divorce and the death of his best friend.

• Comfort TV blogger David Hofstede continues his series of posts about two-part television episodes—good and definitely not so good—with write-ups that mention several crime dramas, such as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Fugitive, and Charlie’s Angels.

• It’s always good to be reminded of ABC-TV’s classic gumshoe series, Peter Gunn, and its “jazz chanteuse,” played by Lola Albright.

• Finally, if you could use some financial assistance to attend next year’s Left Coast Crime convention in San Diego, California (March 12-15), you may be in luck. The LCC National Committee has drummed up funds for five scholarships to the event, plus expense money. More information and application procedures are available here.

Losing Lewis

This Sunday evening will introduce PBS Masterpiece Mystery! viewers to the start of the eighth and final season of Inspector Lewis, the popular British-made TV detective drama starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. That first episode, “One for Sorrow,” will be one of three new stories to be shown on successive Sundays.

Inspired by Colin Dexter’s now classic novels about Oxford police detective Endeavour Morse, and a sequel to the earlier Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis follows the late Morse’s former sergeant, Robert “Robbie” Lewis, as he teams up with a younger cop, Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, to solve new crimes on Morse’s old turf. If you haven’t been keeping up with this usually excellent series, you can find write-ups about past installments on the Criminal Element blog.

Click here to watch previews of all Season 8 episodes.

Bullet Points: Summer’s Gone (Sigh!) Edition

• The best news of the day (so far): The British crime drama Inspector Lewis will return to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series this coming Sunday night, offering the first of three new episodes. The plot of that October 5 installment, “Entry Wounds,” is described this way: “Faced with a crime that bridges the worlds of neurosurgery, blood sports and animal rights, [newly promoted Detective Inspector James] Hathaway works his first case as DI with the help of his new partner, DS Lizzie Maddox [played by Angela Griffin]. [Robbie] Lewis, struggling to adapt to retired life, jumps at the chance to rejoin the force when Chief Superintendent Innocent seeks his help.” The program will begin at 9 p.m. Word is that this is the final season for Inspector Lewis, which means fans like me must appreciate it all the more. Learn more and watch a preview here.

• And it should be noted that following the run of those three Inspector Lewis episodes, Masterpiece Mystery! will present Death Comes to Pemberley, a two-part adaptation of P.D. James’ novel of the same name. Wikipedia offers this synopsis of the show:

It is October, 1803, six years after the events in [Jane Austen’s] Pride and Prejudice which resulted in the marriage of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet. One evening, on their way to Pemberley for a ball, an argument breaks out between George Wickham and Captain Denny in the carriage, with Wickham’s wife (and Elizabeth’s sister), Lydia, also present. The two leave the carriage in anger and disappear into the woodland, where two gunshots are heard. Upon hearing the news, Darcy sends out a search party and Wickham is found distraught and hysterical holding Denny’s body, blaming himself for his murder.

Death Comes to Pemberley will air on successive Sundays, October 26 and November 2, both nights beginning at 9 p.m. on PBS.

• Back in April I mentioned that publisher Titan was working on a handsome new volume highlighting the work of artist Robert McGinnis. Well, that book--The Art of Robert E. McGinnis--is slated for release on October 28. In advance of that, I’m highlighting a month’s work of my favorite McGinnis paperback fronts in my Killer Covers blog. You can enjoy the series’ opening entry here.

• Anthony Horowitz, who has a new Sherlock Holmes novel, Moriarty, due out in Britain in October, has also been recruited to compose ‘the next adult James Bond continuation novel … The new book by Horowitz--a lifelong fan of Ian Fleming--will be set in the 1950s and will be unique among the modern James Bond novels, in that a section will contain previously unseen material written by [Ian] Fleming to which Horowitz has had exclusive access.” The book is due for worldwide release in September 2015.

• Mike Ripley is out with his latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. This month he writes about new novels by Martina Cole, C.J. Sansom, Colin Bateman, and Sergey Kuznetsov; a coming BBC-TV series featuring Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence; a new collection of short stories from Catherine Aird, and much more. Clickety-clack here to find all of Ripley’s news and drollery.

• I missed mentioning, on September 16, that it had been 30 years since the debut of the groundbreaking “TV cops” show, Miami Vice.

• In addition to the 50th anniversary of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s debut--a landmark celebrated right here--last week brought with it several events of particular interest to fans of that spy drama, all recapped in this post from The HMSS Weblog.

• Speaking of that blog, it has officially gone out on its own--with a brand-new logo--after half a dozen years of affiliation with the now-defunct Webzine Her Majesty’s Secret Servant. I’d like to wish managing editor Bill Koenig and his crew the best of luck with this next phase of their venture.

• Via Facebook comes the news that Seattle-area author Bernadette Pajer, who writes the Professor Bradshaw Mysteries, “has been awarded the M & M Grand Prize for Mystery & Mayhem Awards, a division of Chanticleer Blue Ribbon Writing Competitions.”

• Congratulations to Colin Dexter! The author of the Inspector Morse mysteries turned 84 years old this last Monday, September 29.

• As In Reference to Murder reports, the streaming video service Hulu “gave a straight-to-order series thumbs-up to an adaptation of Stephen King's time-travel thriller, 11/22/63, which offers up an alternate-reality take on the JFK assassination.”

• News has been trickling in all month about who will star in the second season of HBO-TV’s popular True Detective series. We heard first about Colin Ferrell and the perpetually goofy Vince Vaughn (an odd choice, if ever there was one) being signed to the project. More recently, Variety declared that lovely Rachel McAdams would join True Detective as well, along with Taylor Kitsch. Variety explains that next season’s episodes will be “set in California and [revolve] around three police officers and a career criminal who navigate a web of conspiracy in the aftermath of a murder. McAdams and Kitsch are expected to play cops alongside Farrell, while Vaughn plays the crime boss whose empire is threatened when his partner is murdered.”

• Margaret Nolan, the now 70-year-old actress who played the role of Dink, James Bond’s masseuse, in the 1964 film Goldfinger--and also features in the distinctive opening sequence to that motion picture--is interviewed briefly by Peter Lorenz of the blog Illustrated 007, while Spy Vibe focuses on her images from the film.

• While yet another new U.S. TV season is still rolling out, the terrific Web site Television Obscurities looks back at the series pilot projects--successful and not so--from 40 years ago, the 1974 season. Its list is broken down between the then Big 3 networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. In addition to the shows that made it onto the air that year, such as The Rockford Files, Harry O, and Sons and Daughters, I remember hearing about--or better yet, seeing--many of the failed pilots, including those for Doctor Domingo, starring Desi Arnez; The Law, with Judd Hirsch; Honky Tonk, featuring Richard Crenna; Purvis, G-Man, starring Dale Robertson; McNeill, with Andy Griffith; and Planet Earth, headlined by John Saxon. Television has changed tremendously since that time, not always for the better. I used to enthusiastically keep track of what programs were in the works. Now I just find myself overwhelmed by too many viewing choices, a good number of which strive to insult my intelligence. Was television-watching better in ’74? Maybe, maybe not. But it was certainly simpler.

• The American Culture Web site features a fine look at Soho Syndicate’s reissuing of Ted Lewis’ three Jack Carter novels, including the 1970 classic Get Carter.

• I look forward to reading J. Sydney Jones’ forthcoming World War I thriller, The German Agent. It’s scheduled for publication on January 1 of next year--though because it’s coming from Severn House, it could be released anytime during December.

• The sad case of literary critic Ed Champion.

• This first trailer from the forthcoming movie Inherent Vice makes it look just as pleasantly weird as Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel of the same name. One reader of the book told me a while back that “it’s the only story I’ve ever read and felt stoned by the last page.” Inherent Vice hits theaters on December 12.

• Learn more about Inherent Vice from The Dissolve.

• Here are three interviews worth reading: Craig Sisterson talks with Aussie Garry Disher; Ben Boulden quizzes Ed Gorman about his Sam McCain series (Riders on the Storm); and Steve Hockensmith chit-chats with blogger Jen Forbus.

• It’s appalling to me that today’s Republicans appear determined to do whatever they can to steal affordable health-care insurance from millions of Americans in need, simply for ideological reasons.

• Well, how about that? “A nearly 100-year-old silent film version of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ starring famed Holmes thespian and American actor William Gillette has been discovered at the Cinémathèque Française, the French film archive announced Wednesday.”

• As part of its just-concluded series, “Classics in September,” the blog Crime Fiction Lover offered its choices of the best Sherlock Holmes novels not penned by Arthur Conan Doyle. Works by Nicholas Meyer, Michael Kurland, and Loren D. Estleman are included. If you missed checking out all of that blog’s month-long “Classics” series, you can still catch up with it here.

• And UK mystery-fiction authority Barry Forshaw profiles, if only briefly, the half-dozen authors who will be added as “Living Legends” this year to the Crime Writers’ Association’s Hall of Fame. I’m led to believe that a formal announcement of these inductions will be made during the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards ceremony on Friday, October 24, in London.

Mind Your Listings

Check your boob tube tonight for “The Mind Has Mountains,” the third and latest episode of Inspector Lewis, starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox, and showing as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. That 90-minute drama is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

After this, there’s only one more episode to go in the U.S. run of Inspector Lewis, Series IV: “The Gift of Promise,” which is set to air on Sunday, October 9. That will be followed on October 16 by Case Histories, a three-part series based on Kate Atkinson’s popular first trio of Jackson Brodie detective novels.

Old School Ties

Series 4 of the British TV drama Inspector Lewis begins this evening on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! In my household, that ranks as outstanding news. Although I never became a great fan of Inspector Morse, the 1987-2000 mystery from which this show was spun off (a fact probably due to my having discovered Morse so late in its run), I’ve been charmed by Lewis since its first episode.

That attraction could be traced to the unlikely pairing of sometimes grumpy Robert “Robbie” Lewis (Kevin Whately) with younger, more intellectual Detective Sergeant (Laurence Fox). Or it might have to do with the cinematography that makes best use of Oxford, England’s imposing architecture and stately public and private grounds. My attraction to Lewis certainly has to do, as well, with the show’s romantic theme and incidental music, composed by Barrington Pheloung (who also worked on Morse). But whatever the diagnosis of my attraction to this series, I have no wish to be cured of it.

Tonight’s episode, titled “Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things” and previewed in the video above, will begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Its plot is described this way on the PBS Web site:

Luminary graduates from Oxford’s last surviving all-female college are on campus to honor beloved professor Diana Ellerby (Juliet Stevenson, Place of Execution). There is the confident lingerie CEO, the provocative newspaper columnist--and then there’s the passive-aggressive Poppy Toynton. Poppy never quite blossomed intellectually like her peers. When Poppy is found dead on the stairs, her seething rage against her fellow graduates exposed, Lewis and Hathaway step into the esteemed circle of women to investigate. But Lewis is haunted by memories of 15-year-old Chloe Brooks, attacked at the college 10 years earlier. Lewis’ work on that case [was] interrupted by the death of his wife; now his deepening obsession with it threatens to derail the Toynton investigation. Is it unresolved grief or detective’s intuition? Lewis and Hathaway get a dizzying education in the scandals and secrets of Lady Matilda’s College, as well as a lesson or two in feminism, as they untangle a new case and bring a far off one back into terrifying focus.

There are still three more 90-minute episodes of Inspector Lewis to be broadcast on Sunday nights this fall: “Wild Justice” (September 18); “The Mind Has Mountains” (September 25); and “The Gift of Promise” (October 9). I would wish for more, but will try to be satisfied until this series’ presumed return in 2012.

Small-Screen Gems

Tonight will bring the debut of The Killing, an AMC-TV miniseries. It’s based on a Danish program, Forbrydelsen, which--with English subtitles--ran over several months on Britain’s BBC 4, to high acclaim.

As Omnimystery News explains, the story “revolves around the Seattle murder of teenager Rosie Larsen, and the gripping police investigation it sparks. The facts of the case unfold against a backdrop of local politics, high-school scandal, and a grieving family flattened by tragedy. As leads turn cold and suspects multiply, the detectives race against time to find the killer. They soon discover that everyone is a suspect, every suspect has a secret, and every hour counts.” Meanwhile, TV Squad critic Maureen Ryan calls The Killing an “enthralling murder mystery” that “trusts its audience to follow along. It trusts that it doesn’t need fake melodrama or overheated intrigue to keep its audience’s interest.” The Killing kicks off at 9 p.m. ET/PT with a two-hour episode, and will continue with 12 one-hour episodes after that. You can learn more about this show here and here.

* * *

Also being broadcast on the boob tube this evening, but only in the UK--beginning at 8 p.m.--is the fifth series premiere of Lewis (or Inspector Lewis, as it’s known here in the States), the outstanding, often moving detective series starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox.“This spin-off from the fondly remembered Inspector Morse is as comfy as an old glove, and the Oxford setting [is] as distantly aspirational as an idealised university town can be,” Robin Jarossi remarks on the program in his blog, Crime Time Preview.

Series five of Lewis comprises four episodes, none of which yet appear on the schedule for PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery!, their usual venue on this side of the Atlantic. However, given the show’s popularity, I expect Americans won’t have to wait too long to see series five for themselves.

More After Morse

Inspector Lewis, the UK TV series spun off from the successful Inspector Morse dramas (1987-2000), returns to the American small screen tomorrow night as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! showcase. This time ’round, Robbie Lewis (Kevin Whately) and his younger, more intellectual partner, Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), tackle seven cases involving everything from stolen rare books and no-rules boxing to assault on a teenage girl and “a prominent Oxford celebrity atheist who years earlier had been the intended target of a botched murder attempt.”

These 90-minute episodes will air from August 30 through October 18. Check your local listings for times and channels.

TV’s Next Inspector Morse?

The London Observer reports that Kurt Wallander, the opera-loving, diabetic, Swedish detective inspector who’s starred in a popular succession of novels (Faceless Killers, The Fifth Woman, etc.) written by Henning Mankell, may soon be brought to British television. “Morten Fisker, managing director of Yellow Bird [Mankell’s film company], confirmed he is in discussions with two major British broadcasters over a multi-million-pound television production, with a British cast, to be set in Ystad, a small, 13th-century port in southern Sweden where Wallander’s beat is centred,” according to the paper.

Meanwhile, speaking of the late Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse, his sidekick in Colin Dexter’s long-running series (and a subsequent British TV serial), Detective Sergeant Robbie Lewis, is set to take the lead himself in a TV movie called Inspector Lewis, which will premiere on PBS-TV’s Mystery! series on Sunday, July 30. Actor Kevin Whately, who portrayed the honest, earnest Lewis in the original Inspector Morse series, will resume the role (with a promotion in rank) in this small-screen film, which producer ITV says will be followed by four more two-hour Lewis episodes.