Stitching Up Mickey Haller

We’re now less than a week out from the February 5 Netflix premiere of The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 4. Its 10 episodes will be based on Michael Connelly’s 2020 novel The Law of Innocence, and find Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. As he faces off against a pertinacious district attorney, Dana Berg (Constance Zimmer), he and his friends struggle to prove his his hands clean of the crime.

“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, pretty much,” series co-creator Ted Humphrey told TV Fanatic. “Not just from the obvious legal or professional perspective of facing these charges—that would be terrible for anybody—but also from a personal and family perspective.” While Haller is good at weathering legal dangers on behalf of his clients, he’s less prepared to protect his teenage daughter, Hayley (Krista Warner), from the fallout surrounding his own prosecution. “He sees what it does to his daughter,” explains Humphrey, “and that devastates him. Any parent can relate to having to keep a brave face for your child when you’re facing a situation like that. It’s dire.”

While Garcia-Rulfo is obviously the headline star of this show, the cast also features Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, Angus Sampson, and Cobie Smulders. The Lincoln Lawyer has already been renewed for a fifth season, the script for which will take its cues from Connelly’s 2023 book, Resurrection Walk.

Where Bosch Began

Directly on the heels of Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, and the spin-off Ballard—all TV shows based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels—the world of Los Angeles detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch looks destined to expand further. Deadline reports that Amazon Prime has greenlighted a prequel series from MGM+ Studios titled Bosch: Start of Watch that will explore the protagonist’s original story.

The article goes on to explain that 32-year-old American actor Cameron Monaghan (Shameless, Gotham) will play newbie cop Bosch on the forthcoming drama, with Omari Hardwick (Power, Army of the Dead) “portraying his training officer, police veteran Eli Bridges, a new character not in the book mythology.” What makes this series especially notable is that “There is no direct source material for Start of Watch since Connelly’s novels do not include a Bosch prequel, though bits and pieces from Harry’s early years are planted in various books in the universe.”

So what’s the setup of this franchise addition? Deadline says it

goes back to 1991 Los Angeles and follows 26-year-old Harry Bosch during his earliest days as a rookie cop. The series will explore a city on the edge, teeming with racial tension, gang violence and a fractured LAPD. Amid routine calls and growing unrest, Bosch finds himself drawn into a high-profile heist and a web of criminal corruption that will test his loyalty to the badge and shape his future as the detective who lives by the code, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”

Author Connelly, one of several Start of Watch executive producers, is quoted as saying, “I’m deeply grateful to Michael Wright [head of MGM+] and the team at MGM+ for championing this next chapter in Bosch’s journey with such remarkable care and integrity. Being able to see how Harry Bosch became the man we have loved for 10 seasons is a gift to me and his many fans. I can’t wait to dig in with Cameron and the writers to explore this uncharted character territory.”

(Hat tip to Ali Karim.)

Connelly Mines His Newswriting Days for TV

I’ve been reading Michael Connelly’s crime novels for many years, beginning with The Concrete Blonde (from 1994). Yet despite our having both attended various mystery-fiction events in the past, and my friend Ali Karim knowing him quite well, I don’t believe I had ever actually met him—until last week’s Bouchercon in New Orleans.

One morning, I decided to revisit the convention’s then-quiet book-sales room at the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street, just to see if there was anything else that needed to come home with me, when I heard somebody whisper, “I think that’s Michael Connelly over there.” Sure enough, when I looked up, I recognized the author’s distinctive combination of glasses, beard, and gray locks. I’m not usually one to interrupt celebrities when they’re about other business (though I did once stride boldly up to Jack Lemmon outside his office in Los Angeles, shake his hand, and compliment his movie-making career). And Connelly looked as if he was enjoying his solitude, just browsing the stacks of new and old books on offer.

Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and a chance. I walked over, told him who I was, and asked whether he would please sign his new novel, Nightshade … were I to conveniently have a copy in hand. He responded, with a smile, “That’s my job here.” So I immediately purchased the book, handed it over, and shortly thereafter walked away with a personalized message inside (“To Jeff: Good to meet you in person. Many thanks!”). What I didn’t know, was that there was a lengthy queue of his fans in the lobby outside that room, all waiting patiently for Connelly to ink their own books. I’d subverted the line without knowing it or feeling a moment’s guilt.

That experience came back to mind this morning when I read, in Deadline, about Connelly’s new TV project in the offing:

Before Michael Connelly (Bosch, Ballard) became a famous crime novelist, he was a crime reporter. His experience as a crime beat writer at Florida’s Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel serves as inspiration for a drama series project in development at the new Paramount Television Studios run by former Skydance TV President Matt Thunell.

Connelly is co-creating the Untitled Florida Task Force series with playwright/TV writer Jim Leonard (Ray Donovan), who will serve as showrunner. …

Connelly got into crime reporting after graduating from [the] University of Florida. After the stints at the two Florida papers, he did one more job as a crime reporter, at [the] Los Angeles Times, before segueing to writing books. His Bosch novels have spawned a TV series franchise for Prime Video that includes mothership Bosch and offshoots Bosch: Legacy and Ballard. Connelly has executive produced all three as well as Netflix’s series adaptation of his novel The Lincoln Lawyer.

As a journalist myself, I very much look forward to seeing how Michael Connelly presents the pluses and minuses of that job on screen. To learn more about his reporting career, click here and here.

The Time Is Nigh, Harry

Although it’s been a while now since I last read one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels (blame that on my desire to continually add works by new writers into my diet), I have kept up with both of the police-procedural TV series based on those stories, Bosch (Amazon Prime, 2014-2021) and Bosch: Legacy (which debuted on Amazon Freevee in 2022). The latter’s third and final season debuts later this month, and Collider has some of the details:

The end of an era is near for Bosch: Legacy, tragically. Prime Video has officially released the trailer for the third and final season, set to premiere on March 27. The ten-episode season will debut with four episodes on March 27, followed by two new episodes every Thursday until the series finale on April 17. Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels Desert Star (2022) and The Black Ice (1993), the final season will see Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) facing one of his most challenging cases yet ... The murder investigation of Kurt Dockweiler unearths dangerous secrets, putting Bosch, attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers), and Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz) in grave danger as usual. Come on Harry, give them a break.

The trailer also shows Harry crossing the border for some black ops work, heading back to his days in Afghanistan, and we also get our first introduction to Maggie Q's Renee Ballard, ahead of her offshoot series Ballard, which is filming now.

Meanwhile, Honey is on the verge of becoming the next District Attorney of Los Angeles, but political ambition comes at a cost for the former defense attorney, and Maddie, now fully immersed in her career as an LAPD patrol officer, finds herself entangled in a series of violent follow-home robberies, pushing her to her limits as she begins to question what exactly it is that she's meant to do in her career.

Like millions of other crime-fiction enthusiasts, I’m sure, I shall mourn the passing of Harry Bosch on the small screen.

READ MORE: “The Complete Guide to Bosch on Amazon Prime,” by Sandra Mangan (Crime Fiction Lover).

Three and You’re Out

This is unhappy news, reported by The Killing Times:

Bosch: Legacy, the spin-off of, well, Bosch, is to end after the third season, Amazon Prime Video says.

The series follows Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), a retired homicide detective-turned-private investigator, as he embarks on the next chapter of his career; attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers), who struggles to maintain her faith in the justice system after surviving a murder attempt; and Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz), as she discovers the possibilities and challenges of being a rookie patrol cop on the streets of Los Angeles.

The final, third season will premiere on the streaming service in March 2025, and there will also be a cold case detective Renée Ballard series starring Maggie Q (another Bosch spin-off) in the autumn next year.

Michael Connelly, who created Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch in his novels and has executive produced both series, is quoted as saying, “I am so proud of what we have accomplished with this show. Ten years ago I asked Titus Welliver if he could stick with Harry Bosch for five seasons, and he said he could do it forever. Well, five became 10, and the character, thanks to Titus, will live forever in the hearts of viewers and in the streaming world as the detective who knows that everybody counts or nobody counts. The good news here is that we have not seen the last of Harry Bosch. As in the books, Bosch is part of the Renée Ballard world, and I can’t wait for the next chapter to open.”

Around the Dial

• Mystery Fanfare reports that Beyond Paradise, a spin-off series from the long-running comedy-mystery Death in Paradise, is set to debut simultaneously on BritBox (in the United States) and BBC One (in the UK) on Friday, February 24. It will find actor Kris Marshall returning as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, a role he occupied in the original series for more than three seasons. You’ll recall that Goodman left the police department on the Caribbean island of Saint Marie partway through Season 6 to head back to England with his new girlfriend, Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton). Beyond Paradise finds them “arriving in Shipton Abbott, Martha’s hometown near the beautiful Devonshire coast ... As they embark on their new life whilst temporarily living with Martha’s mum, Anne Lloyd [Barbara Flynn​], the couple is quickly thrown in at the deep end as Martha sets out to pursue her dream of running her own restaurant, and Humphrey joins the local police force. Each week the team will face a new crime with a unique puzzle at its heart. As Humphrey gets stuck into his new job, he and Martha must also navigate life’s ups and downs, as faces from the past, the decisions they make, and the challenges of setting up life in a new town put their relationship to the ultimate test.” Also among this show’s cast will be Dylan Llewellyn (Derry Girls) playing Police Constable Kelby Hartford, and Zahra Ahmadi (Innocent) as Detective Sergeant Esther Williams. UPDATE: The Killing Times says that Season 1 of Beyond Paradise will run just six episodes long.

• Well, I didn’t see this coming: CBS Studios has ordered up a gender-swap reboot of the popular 1986–1995 legal drama Matlock, replacing the late Andy Griffith with Kathy Bates as series lead. “The Matlock reboot,” explains In Reference to Murder, “is centered on Madeline Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who rejoins the work force at a prestigious law firm, where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases and expose corruption from within.” Actress Bates previously played an attorney on the 2011–2012 series Harry’s Law. If this version of Matlock does, indeed, wind up on the CBS schedule, that will be its third television network home. It started out on NBC, but moved over to ABC in 1992.

• Amazon Studios is developing two new small-screen series based on Michael Connelly’s police procedurals. The first would return Jamie Hector to his Bosch role as Detective Jerry Edgar, but send him from Los Angeles to Little Haiti, Miami, on an undercover FBI mission. “In this glamorous city,” says Deadline, “he is forced to balance his new life with the gritty underbelly of the city, while being chased by his mysterious past.” In the meantime, L.A. police detective Renée Ballard, who was first introduced in Connelly’s 2017 novel, The Late Show, is set to star in a different as-yet-unnamed drama that finds her “tasked with running the LAPD’s new cold case division. Beyond simply investigating unsolved crimes, Renée is dedicated to bringing credibility to the department and justice to the community. Having learned from retired ally and mentor Harry Bosch, Renee does things her way—solving cases in unconventional ways while navigating the politics of being a woman on the rise in the LAPD.” There’s no word yet on when or where these new programs might debut.

• Happy Valley, the award-winning BBC One TV series starring Sarah Lancashire, just ended its third-season run in Great Britain. It’s not expected to reach U.S. screens until this coming May. If you can’t wait to learn more, check out the following reviews of individual Season 3 episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

• The blog Crime Fiction Lover is already hoping for the launch of a novel series to continue the character stories from Happy Valley.

• Hallmark Movies & Mysteries has begun filming a brand-new whodunit series titled The Cases of Mystery Lane. It will star Aimee Garcia and Paul Campbell as Birdie and Alden Case, “a married couple who find a new way to keep to keep the mystery alive … quite literally.” Hallmark Media’s director of development, Laura Gaines, is quoted as saying this show will combine “romance, humor, and intrigue, reminiscent of some of my favorite stories of amateur sleuths, in over their heads,” such as McMillan & Wife and the later Hart to Hart. Again, there’s no news regarding a premiere date.​

• And as part of the promotions campaign for his latest Peter Diamond detective novel, Showstopper—which concerns the supposed jinxing of a TV crime drama—author Peter Lovesey recounts here a jumbo-sized case of bad luck that struck Cribb, the 1980-1981 program based on his early Sergeant Cribb mysteries.

Just a Few Things on Our Radar

• Although there’s no word yet on when the 10-episode second season of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer will debut, we do now know—thanks to Deadline—about three actors who’ve won recurring roles. Lana Parrilla (Why Women Kill, Once Upon a Time) will play “a beloved chef and community advocate struggling to keep her restaurant afloat as a predatory real estate developer threatens the neighborhood around her.” Yaya DaCosta (Chicago Med, Our Kind of People) “will portray Andrea Freemann, a cut-throat prosecutor and Mickey Haller’s (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) undefeated courtroom rival, who is also a friend of his ex-wife Maggie (Neve Campbell).” And Matt Angel (Dave) is set to play Henry Dahl, “a cosmopolitan erudite with a hipster haircut and clothes. He is the host of a successful true crime podcast that acts the role of a good Samaritan. Distrustful of Henry’s motives, Mickey … warns him not to interfere with an ongoing case.” The sophomore season of The Lincoln Lawyer is said to be based on Michael Connelly’s 2011 novel The Fifth Witness.

• Mystery Fanfare draws our attention to a couple of British crime dramas set to debut soon in the United States. Season 12 of Vera, the series starring Brenda Blethyn and based on Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope mysteries, will show up this coming Sunday, January 29, on the BritBox streaming channel. Meanwhile, watch for the freshman season of DI Ray, a procedural starring Parminder Nagar as Detective Inspector Rachita Ray of the fictitious Birmingham, England, police force. (Birmingham actually falls under the purview of the West Midlands Police.) DI Ray’s four episodes will be available to those who subscribe to the PBS Passport on-demand service beginning on February 20, with the series’ PBS Masterpiece broadcast premiere coming on July 9. The Killing Times reports that DI Ray has already been renewed for a second season in the UK.

• Shots’ Mike Stotter charts the 20 most popular British TV detective shows, starting with Line of Duty and Unforgotten.

• Max Allan Collins’ latest blog post contains a fine half-hour interview he did with Titan editor Andrew Sumner about his 18th Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle (Hard Case Crime), released this week.

• Peter May gives us the background on his own brand-new novel, a standalone titled A Winter’s Grave, in this piece for Shots.

• Moscow-born author Katja Ivar chats with Crime Fiction Lover’s Garrick Webster on the subject of her writing career and her third Cold War-era-set Hella Mauzer thriller, Trouble (Bitter Lemon Press), now on sale in Great Britain and due out in the States on February 21.

• And one more superior exchange to mention: Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare’s discussion with debut crime novelist Iris Yamashita about the latter’s City Under One Roof (Berkley), a claustrophobic, Alaska-backdropped tale that Publishers Weekly says “heralds the arrival of a major new talent.”

• We’re going to be seeing less of Sarah Weinman in The New York Times. The January edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, includes mention of her “Crime & Mystery” column (which she took over from longtime critic Marilyn Stasio in early 2021) shifting from twice-a-month appearance to only monthly publication. “There are many reasons for this change,” she explains, “including scheduling and print space and making sure all the genre columns get equal play. But from my standpoint, it turns out reviewing eight books a month is hard! And having experienced column burnout in the past, I did not want it to repeat itself. A more sustainable schedule also means more time for other projects, some of which are already in the works.”

• What relationship is there between author John le Carré and serial-lying Republican U.S. congressman George Santos? From Vox:

Sean Wilentz, a Bancroft Prize-winning historian at Princeton University, told Vox that Santos was more a character out of American literature than American history, citing Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. “This is nothing that a historian can be much help on,” he said. “There is no example like it.” It’s not that Santos was an entirely foreign object—the huckster is an American archetype, and nothing is more clichéd than a dishonest politician. As Wilentz put it, he’s “made of materials that one can identify.” But that such a shadowy figure and compulsive liar wound up on Capitol Hill is still remarkable. “Embellishing happens a fair amount that a lot of people get away with,” Wilentz said. “This is a different order because this is a made-up life.”

He noted that “it’s one thing to be Marjorie Taylor Greene and making up all of this crazy stuff, and here you just have a cipher.” Using another literary reference, Wilentz compared Santos to the “kind of nothing man that drips all through the novels” of John le Carré.

• There were plenty of “Best Crime Fiction of 2022” lists pouring in at the end of last year, but that doesn’t mean everyone had their say. Kevin Tipple, of Kevin’s Corner fame, today delivered a rundown of his 10 favorites in the blog Lesa’s Book Critiques. They include Rick Helms’ A Kind and Savage Place, Claire Booth’s Dangerous Consequences, Lee Goldberg’s Movieland, Terry Shames’s Murder at the Jubilee Rally, and Laurie Loewenstein’s Funeral Train.

• If only I could be in Britain on March 4 for Mystery Fest …

• There was an intriguing, if passing, mention in The New York Times’ obituary of veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Kalb earlier this month, having to do with his early journalism experience: “After graduating from the City College of New York in 1942, Mr. Kalb spent two years in the Army, mostly working on a newspaper published out of a Quonset hut in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. His editor was Sgt. Dashiell Hammett, the author of the detective novels ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and ‘The Thin Man.’” More on The Adakian, that daily mimeographed paper Hammett created for the Adak Army Air Base, can be found here. (Hat tip to Mark Coggins.)

• For CrimeReads, Zack Budryk looks back at how the “rampant corruption and incompetency” of U.S. president Warren G. Harding’s 1920s administration “pave[d] the way for a new century of politics.”

• Other recent CrimeReads pieces I’ve enjoyed include this one by Mark Ellis (Dead in the Water), asking whether historical accuracy actually matters in historical fiction; this other one, by Janice Hallett (The Twyford Code), focused on crime yarns featuring “recently released or escaped prisoners”; Samuel Martin’s exploration of what he calls “North Atlantic noir”; and Elizabeth Held’s contemplation of why teenage detectives remain so appealing.

• Devoted Rockford Files fan Jim Suza tells the story of how “several hundred film images” from the photo shoot for that 1970s series’ memorable opening title sequence were lost, almost trashed, and eventually found their way into his possession.

• Finally, if the new Netflix historical film The Pale Blue Eye has left you curious to learn the facts about Edgar Allan Poe’s short, self-sabotaged career at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, click over to this piece from The Washington Post.

Connelly, Fluke Secure Key MWA Honor

It used to be unusual for the Mystery Writers of America to name multiple Grand Master winners in a single year. But beginning in 2008, that practice became more commonplace. A news release issued earlier today shows the trend continuing into 2023. It reports that crime novelists Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke have been chosen by the MWA board to receive next year’s Grand Master commendations.

Previous Grand Masters include Charlaine Harris, Jeffery Deaver, Barbara Neely, Martin Cruz Smith, Peter Lovesey, Jane Langton, Max Allan Collins, Ellen Hart, Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Bill Pronzini, Sara Paretsky, and 2022 winner Laurie R. King.

Three other special prizes will be presented by the MWA during its 77th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which is to take place in New York City on April 27, 2023. The Crime Writers of Color association and Eddie Muller, host of the Turner Classic Movies series Noir Alley and founder/president of the Film Noir Foundation, have been designated to receive Raven Awards (recognizing “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing”). Meanwhile, The Strand Magazine is to be presented with next year’s Ellery Queen Award (honoring “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”).

Congratulations to all of these prize winners!

Bosch Set to Return in May

File this under Damn Good News: Amazon has announced that its free streaming service, IMDb TV, will begin showing Bosch: Legacy—the sequel to Prime’s long-running crime drama, Bosch—on May 6.

TV Line provides this plot framework for the new series:

With Titus Welliver, Madison Lintz and Mimi Rogers reprising their roles as Harry Bosch, his daughter Madeline, and top-notch attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, the offshoot follows Bosch as he embarks on the next chapter of his career as a private investigator and finds himself working with his one-time enemy Honey. “His first job calls him to the estate of ailing billionaire Whitney Vance, where Bosch is tasked with finding Vance’s only potential heir,” per the official synopsis. “Along the way, Bosch finds himself clashing with powerful figures who have a vested interest in the heir not being found. Researching the family tree, he uncovers shocking revelations that span generations, all while billions of dollars remain on the line.”

Meanwhile, Maddie is following in her dad’s footsteps as a rookie patrol officer and grapples with what kind of cop she wants to be. “Her father—who continues to live by the code that everybody counts, or nobody counts—believes the issue is clear: Being a cop is either a mission or just a job” ...

The 10-part first-season run of Bosch: Legacy is based, at least in part, on The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016), American author Michael Connelly’s 19th novel starring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch. Click here to view a trailer for this spinoff series.

A Few Clues to Bosch’s Comeback

In an effort to avoid stumbling across plot spoilers, I tried not to read anything about the future of Titus Welliver’s Bosch until I’d watched the seventh and concluding season of that TV series, released by Amazon Prime in late June. But having now seen those final eight episodes (and what a treat that experience was!), I hopped forthwith on this piece in the British blog Crime Fiction Lover. It offers at least some details of the still-unnamed sequel already in the works for Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, IMDb.TV:

After handing in his badge at the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department], Harry is going it alone as a private investigator in a 10-part series that’s based on The Wrong Side of Goodbye—which just so happens to be a favourite book of Michael Connelly’s and which earned five stars in our review.

He told Newsweek that the show will find inspiration in the pages of the 29th Bosch novel, which was published in 2016.

“It might be my favorite book because I finally get to the thing that inspired me to be a writer and that was the private eye novels of people like Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett,” said Connelly.

For those who haven’t read The Wrong Side of Goodbye (and really, it’s difficult to keep up with Connelly’s output, while also enjoying diverse other authors), what did that story entail? Here’s a chunk of Ryan Steck’s review of Wrong Side in The Real Book Spy:

After being forced to retire from the LAPD where he spent more than three decades as one of the department’s most accomplished detectives, Harry Bosch has found a way to hold onto his badge and gun a little while longer.

The city of San Fernando has a small police force with no budget to expand, so Bosch struck a deal to come on board as a reserve detective working part-time. While he enjoys working with the SFPD, it’s not a paid position. It allows him to keep his foot in the door, solving crimes and using his expertise to put bad guys away, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

To earn a paycheck, Bosch hires out his detective skills as a private investigator. He doesn’t advertise or have an office, and he relies solely on word of mouth from past clients to find new ones. But when a detective with Bosch’s pedigree makes his skill set available, word travels fast. Including to the rich and famous.

Whitney Vance, a reclusive, old billionaire who values discretion, offers Bosch ten thousand dollars to meet with him in secret. It’s immediately apparent to Bosch that Mr. Vance’s living conditions, while extravagant, allow him very little privacy. The billionaire reveals that he has no known next of kin and that he wants to hire Bosch to find out if a past lover might have borne him a child. With his health failing, Vance decides he would much prefer to leave everything he has to his child, even if he’s never met them, rather than to the board of his company.

Apparently, a woman Vance had a relationship with more than sixty years ago had become pregnant. Last he knew, the woman, who might have been an illegal immigrant, was headed to Mexico to have an abortion. The billionaire never saw her again and wants Bosch to track her down and find out if she did, indeed, have an abortion, or if the child was actually born.

Joining Welliver on this new program will be Mimi Rogers, once more in the role of civil-rights attorney—and not-infrequent Bosch antagonist—Honey “Money” Chandler, and Madison Lintz returning as Harry’s daughter, Maddie. Welliver explained in a recent radio interview that other players familiar from Bosch will make less regular appearances in the sequel. “It’s a continuing part of the telling of the Bosch universe,” he said, “and I’m sure we’ll pepper that universe periodically with cameos from the characters from the original show.”

Although no premiere date for this continuation series has been announced, Connelly told Newsweek that it shouldn’t be too far down the road. “IMDb will be ad supported so we won’t drop all ten [episodes] at once,” said the author. “I don’t know when but I think it will be sooner. We’ll try and capitalize on the wave of Season 7. A lot of that stuff is above my pay grade and still not decided.”

READ MORE: “Titus Welliver on Bosch’s Last Chapter—and Harry Bosch’s Next One,” by Dan Reilly (Vulture).

“Bosch” Makes Its Move

Bosch, the oft-lauded Amazon Prime police-procedural series based on Michael Connelly’s novels, is set to return sometime this spring or in early summer for its seventh—and last—season. However, an as-yet-untitled spinoff series is already in the works for Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, IMDb.TV.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,

Titus Welliver, Mimi Rogers and Madison Lintz will continue their roles on the spinoff, and much of the Bosch creative team, including series creator Eric Overmyer and author Michael Connelly, is also involved. …

The new series will follow Harry Bosch (Welliver) to the next phase of his career, where he finds himself working with his former adversary, attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Rogers). The two have a deep and complicated history but work on something they can agree on: finding justice. Lintz will continue playing Harry’s daughter, Maddie.

“I am beyond excited by this and I think the fans that have called for more Bosch will be as well,” said Connelly, who created the Harry Bosch character and executive produces the series. “To continue the Harry Bosch story and see him team up with ‘Money’ Chandler will be more than I could have ever wished for. And to continue our relationship with Amazon and be part of the IMDb TV lineup will ensure our commitment to providing viewers with a high-quality, creative and relevant show. I can’t wait to get started.”

Click here to read that entire Reporter article.

Bullet Points: Justly Overloaded Edition

• Earlier this month, I noted that among the authors whose work I read for the first time in 2020 were Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz, who last year gave us the remarkable—and remarkably sleazy—Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. That non-fiction tale recounts the swift rise and ignominious toppling, in 1973, of Spiro Agnew, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s first vice president. Prior to picking up Maddow and Yarvitz’s book, I had only a vague recollection of the financial kicbacks that had provoked Agnew’s (not wholly voluntary) resignation, just 10 months before Nixon himself quit in the wake of the Watergate scandal. And I had no memory whatsoever of the fact, mentioned in their penultimate chapter, that Agnew had tried his hand at fiction writing after leaving government. They explain that his 1976 political thriller, The Canfield Decision,

centered on a fictional vice president who—and this was not much of a stretch—was eventually crippled by his own ambition. The protagonist, Porter Canfield (“wealthy, handsome and self-assured”), did manage to bed the “beautiful, amber-eyed” secretary of health, education and welfare. Agnew was sarcastically credited for “extreme inventiveness,” in a New York Times review, but that was as good as it got. The book was widely panned as a “mean-spirited piece of work” in which Agnew bitterly took aim at his old targets. “The book is anti-press, anti-Semitic, anti-woman and anti-black,” wrote one reviewer.

A frequent Goodreads reviewer describes The Canfield Decision as “wondrous in its baffling badness.” Nonetheless, if you would like a copy for yourself, I see Abebooks currently has used editions available for as little as $1 for a paperback, and $4 for a hardcover. Before his death in 1996, Agnew penned one more book, this time a memoir, Go Quietly ... or Else (1980), which Wikipedia says “protested his total innocence of the charges that had brought his resignation, and claimed that he had been coerced by the White House to ‘go quietly’ or face an unspoken threat of possible assassination.”

• The British Crime Writers’ Association has a new sponsor for its annual international writing competition for unpublished authors. Crimespree Magazine reports that “ProWritingAid, a platform that operates as a grammar checker, style editor and writing mentor,” will lend its support to the CWA’s Debut Dagger award. Incidentally, submissions to the 2021 contest are currently being accepted. Entrants should “send in their first 3,000 words and a 1,500-word synopsis of their novel. Writers do not need to have completed their novel in order to enter.” The deadline for entries is Friday, February 26.

• With COVID-19 still raging around the globe, is anybody remotely shocked by news that the release of the 25th James Bond picture, No Time to Die, has been delayed—again? As The Hollywood Reporter recalls, that picture “was set to open on April 2. Now, it is planning to hit the big screen on Oct. 8 as Hollywood faces more delays before moviegoing resumes in earnest. No Time to Die is likely to spark another wave of high-profile moves among spring and early summer movies.” There’s one surprise regarding this latest rescheduling, though, writes Bill Koenig in The Spy Command: “The announcement on [production company] Eon’s official website said No Time to Die will be released ‘globally’ on Oct. 8. Typically, Bond films are spread out a bit, often starting in the U.K. but not arriving in the U.S. until days later. We’ll see if a simultaneous release actually happens.”

• I mentioned on this page last summer that the PBS-TV umbrella series Masterpiece is co-producing, with Eleventh Hour Films, a six-part drama based on Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders. Now comes word that 64-year-old British actress Lesley Manville has been cast in the prominent role of Susan Ryeland, a book editor “who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest mystery novel, with little idea it will change her life.” A Masterpiece news release quotes Manville as saying, “I could not be happier to be playing Susan Ryeland—what a fabulous character for me to grapple with!” The actress’ stage, film, and TV career of more than four decades long has made her a critical success, but I’m not sure I would have signed her up to play Ryeland. For one thing, she’s quite a bit older than the character Horowitz describes. In last year’s Magpie sequel, Moonflower Murders, the author gives Ryeland’s age as 48, which means that she would’ve been in her mid-40s in Magpie Murders, not her mid-60s. I might have hesitated over hiring Manville, too, because I see Ryeland as a sympathetic figure, and Manville has made herself synonymous with some demonstrably unsympathetic characters in the past. For instance, she appeared as starchy British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK’s 2009 drama-documentary The Queen; as James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s snobbish mother in the 2014 mini-series Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond; and as the chilly, misanthropic Robina Chase in BBC One’s more recent World on Fire. Still, part of appreciating fiction to the fullest is suspending one’s disbelief in the improbable. So let’s wait and see what Manville can bring to her portrayal of Susan Ryeland. Horowitz is preparing the script for this small-screen rendering, and he’s sufficiently creative to reshape his character to fit whoever plays her.

• A new series based on P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh novels is coming to Acorn TV, according to Mystery Fanfare. “Bertie Carvel will play Detective Chief Inspector Dalgliesh,” explains Janet Rudolph. “The 43-year-old English actor is best known for his roles in Doctor Foster, The Crown, The Pale Horse, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. [This new] Dalgliesh will begin in 1970s England, following Dalgliesh’s career as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets.” Watch for this show’s premiere sometime later in 2021.

• It seems next month is shaping up to be a good one for television viewing. Literary Hub reports that The Luminaries, a six-part adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning 2013 novel of that same name, will finally begin streaming in the States on Valentine’s Day, February 14, via STARZ. This British-New Zealand mini-series starring Eve Hewson, Himesh Patel, and ex-“Bond girl” Eva Green was broadcast last summer in the UK. A trailer is below.



• The recent posting of an official teaser for the CBS-TV psychological thriller Clarice—inspired by Thomas Harris’ best-selling 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs, and debuting on February 11—has Literary Hub wondering when Dr. Hannibal Lecter will make an appearance on this midseason replacement series.

• In Reference to Murder brings word that “Netflix has given a series order to The Lincoln Lawyer, a drama based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, from Big Little Lies and Big Sky creator, David E. Kelley and A+E Studios. This is a new incarnation of the project, which originally was set up at CBS with a series production commitment last season. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven) has been tapped to play the titular character in the Netflix series as it honors the story’s Hispanic origins. The 10-episode first season is based on the second book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, The Brass Verdict.” A big-screen adaptation of Connelly’s 2005 Edgar-nominated novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, debuted in 2011.

• The Fall River, Massachusetts, home in which Lizzie Borden resided when her father and stepmother were murdered in August 1892—allegedly by Lizzie’s own axe-wielding hand—is currently for sale. CNN says that eight-bedroom house, built in 1845, can be yours for the paltry sum of $2 million. Any takers out there?

• Your quirky musical entertainment for this weekend.

• Perfect for Ellery Queen fans: “The American Mystery Classics Book Club”—linked to Otto Penzler’s publishing line of that same name, which last year released a fresh edition of Queen’s The Dutch Shoe Mystery—“will be meeting on Zoom on February 1st at 6:30 p.m. EST to discuss [that] puzzling tale of murder in the hospital …” The event will be free to the public, and feature a special guest: Richard Dannay, the son of Ellery Queen co-creator Frederic Dannay. Simply drop an e-mail note to charles@penzlerpublishers.com to RSVP.

• Well, this should be fun! Down & Out Books will publish, in February, The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett. The collection takes its title from an early and boisterous Buffett song, first released as a single in 1973. (On the flipside was “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”) As Kristopher Zgorski writes in BOLO Books, “editor Josh Pachter presents sixteen short crime stories by sixteen popular and up-and-coming crime writers, each story based on a song from one of the twenty-eight studio albums Jimmy has released over the last half century, from Leigh Lundin’s take on ‘Truckstop Salvation’ (which appeared on Jimmy’s first LP, 1970’s Down to Earth) to M.E. Browning’s interpretation of ‘Einstein Was a Surfer’ (from Jimmy’s most recent recording, 2013’s Songs from St. Somewhere).” Other contributors include Michael Bracken, Don Bruns, Isabella Maldonado, Rick Ollerman, John M. Floyd, Alison McMahan, and Robert J. Randisi. As a veteran fan of Buffett’s music (I was introduced to it by my roommates way back in college), I’m more than likely to procure a copy of this book for my library. There’s no listing for it yet on Amazon, but Down & Out invites you to “pre-order” it here. The book boasts a most eye-catching cover!

• Author Max Allan Collins wrote, in a recent blog post, that he’s working on a “coda” to his popular series about the hired killer known only as Quarry. Since Collins referenced this in association with remarks about Skim Deep (2020), which he says is “a coda”—or concluding entry—“to the Nolan series,” I presumed that his forthcoming Quarry novel, to be titled Quarry’s Blood and published by Hard Case Crime, would also bring the Quarry series to a close. Au contraire! As Collins tells me in an e-mail note, “Quarry’s Blood is a coda but not necessarily the last book. If we know anything about the series, it’s that I don’t write them in chronological order.” Ah, so Quarry’s Blood will follow chronologically from The Last Quarry (2006), but won’t mark an end to the often-sexy adventures of Collins’ hit man. I haven’t seen a publication date yet for Quarry’s Blood, but it will carry cover art (left) by the great Ron Lesser.

• Although Quarry’s end isn’t near, Collins explains that “Quarry production will likely slow” in the near future, because the author is planning to move his longer-running series, about Chicago private eye Nathan Heller (Do No Harm), to Hard Case Crime as well. And HCC editor “Charles [Ardai]—who is incredibly supportive—doesn’t want more than one book a year from me. So I’ll likely do a Heller, a Quarry, a Heller, and so on in a yearly fashion until the show is over.”

• I’m a bit tardy in offering my condolences to the family of Peter Mark Richman, the Philadelphia-born actor who passed away on January 14, aged 93, but am no less sincere because of that delay. If you look at Richman’s credits on the International Movie Database (IMDb), you’ll see he was incredibly prolific during his six-decades-long career. Richman appeared in more than two dozens films and on TV shows ranging from The Wild Wild West, Blue Light, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, Banacek, and McCloud to Barnaby Jones, Starsky and Hutch, T.J. Hooker, Matlock, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He starred in the 1961-1962 TV crime drama Cain’s Hundred (see its opening and closing sequences here), and he played Duke Paige, the friend and occasional employer of blinded insurance investigator Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) on ABC-TV’s 1971-1972 series Longstreet. Richman also produced at least three books: Hollander’s Deal (2000) and The Rebirth of Ira Masters (2001), both novels; and Peter Mark Richman: I Saw a Molten, White Light …: An Autobiography of My Artistic and Spiritual Journey (2018).

• Also now deceased is Gregory Sierra, who—to quote from The Hollywood Reporter—“endeared himself to 1970s sitcom fans as the genial Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and the impassioned Sgt. Miguel ‘Chano’ Amenguale on Barney Miller.” Defined by the Reporter as a “proud Puerto Rican New Yorker,” Sierra died on January 4 at age 83, following “a battle with cancer.” In addition to his aforementioned small-screen roles, Sierra filled guest slots on It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Mission: Impossible, Banyon, Columbo, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, and Murder, She Wrote.

• Before we venture too far from the subject of Longstreet, let me point out that it’s one of seven series highlighted in Keith Roysdon’s CrimeReads piece about “classic TV’s most unusual investigators.” Other shows he recalls include Coronet Blue, The Immortal, and Cannon. I’m only surprised he didn’t bring up Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British series featuring a really offbeat mystery-solver—the ghost of a gumshoe slain in the line of duty.

• Four other CrimeReads pieces worth reading: Olivia Rutigliano’s introduction to Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc, who also inspired the character played by Omar Sy in the new Netflix series Lupin; a second piece by Rutigliano, looking back at how Leblanc endeavored to incorporate Sherlock Holmes into a Lupin story; Neil Nyren’s excellent primer on the 10 Martin Beck detective novels composed in the 1960s and ’70s by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; Camilla Bruce’s mini-biographies of “The Most Notorious Lonely Hearts Killers of All Time”; Sabina Stent’s reassessment of Hollywoodland, the 2006 movie portraying the complex life and alleged 1959 suicide of George Reeves, who starred in The Adventures of Superman; and yet another Rutigliano article (she has been busy of late), this one about how Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin changed detective fiction forever.

• I, for one, am enjoying the new, all-digital, full-color version of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, edited by George Easter. Its latest quarterly edition (#90) was sent out earlier this week. Among the contents can be found a profile of author Louise Penny; George H. Madison’s delightful remembrance of Harold Q. Masur’s Scott Jordan mysteries; another recap of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck tales, this one by Donus Roberts; obituaries of Parnell Hall, John le Carré, Alanna Knight, John Lutz, and DPMM reviewer Sally Sugarman; and the typical abundance of reviews covering books issued on both sides of the Atlantic. The magazine is now e-mailed to subscribers, for the low annual price of $10. Click here for ordering information.

• If you thought critics had long ago finished applauding the crime and mystery fiction of 2020, you would be incorrect. Earlier this month Sons of Spade’s Jochem van der Steen identified his favorite private-eye stories from last year, while Robert Lopresti provides his 12th annual list of best short stories in this SleuthSayers post.

• Finally, Amazon’s online book review, formerly called Omnivoracious, has sadly gone downhill over the last few years, becoming even more celebrity-oriented than it started. I have continued, however, to check out its contents every once in a while, and even included it in Killer Covers’ news-aggregating blogroll. But now I give up. An announcement reached my e-mailbox yesterday, saying that what’s now known simply as The Amazon Book Review (boy, I hope nobody made a dime off that pinheaded name change!) has migrated from its previous location to this one inside the larger Amazon.com sales realm. In the process it abandoned its RSS Web feed, so can no longer be accessed by news-aggregating tools built into blog-publishing services. So arrivederci, Amazon Book Review!

TV Can Be So Fickle at Times

Two items worth repeating, both from In Reference to Murder. First, news about a TV project that seemed like a done deal:

In a big shocker, The Lincoln Lawyer is not moving ahead at CBS. The high-profile legal drama from The Practice creator David E. Kelley, based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, had sold to the network a year ago and was in final stages of pre-production with the cast assembled and two scripts written. Once CBS settles the penalty for cancellation, the producers will likely shop the series elsewhere. The Lincoln Lawyer centers on Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.

Second, an unfortunate turn for our friend Megan Abbott:

There will not be a second season of the USA drama series Dare Me after the network opted to cancel the series. Producer UCP is said to be shopping the series to other outlets. Based on the novel by Megan Abbott, who serves as writer and executive producer along with Gina Fattore, Dare Me is described as an unflinching exploration of teen angst, jealousy, loyalty, and the dynamics of power in a small Midwestern town.

And I Can’t Fail to Mention …

• Criminal Element’s continuing series focusing on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Novel, last Friday showcased Margaret Maron’s The Bootlegger’s Daughter, which captured that prize way back in 1993. In a departure from the norm, on that same day Hector DeJean, the associate director of publicity at Minotaur Books, posted a fine essay in Criminal Element about Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo, which won the 1993 Edgar for Best First Novel and launched the fictional career of Los Angeles homicide detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. Reflecting on that novel and its many sequels, DeJean wrote:

Adjustments have been made to Bosch over the years, as the character and his city have evolved. For one thing, he no longer sports a mustache, that once-standard identifying trait of all veteran cops. His past has been filled in a little more, and on the TV series his military service has been updated to the Gulf War. Connelly has tackled such topics as the Los Angeles Riots and the police department opening up to LGBTQ officers in later books. But what may work so well about Bosch is that he basically fits the mold; he’s a close cousin of several other thick-skinned knights-errant policemen, one brought to fuller life and given a deeper relationship with his city.

• Lawrence Block is already teasing his February release, The Burglar in Short Order (Subterranean), which he describes as “a complete collection” of short-form appearances by his series thief, Bernie Rhodenbarr. He says “its fifteen chapters include four short stories, three extracts from novels, five op-ed columns, and an essay—well, some would call it a rant—about Bernie’s experiences in Hollywood.” The Amazon page for this book adds that “you’ll find every published story, article, and standalone excerpt Bernie has ever appeared in—plus two new, unpublished pieces: an introduction discussing the character’s colorful origins and an afterword in which the author, contemplating retirement, comes face to face with his own creation.”

• Congratulations to The Spy Command, which today celebrates its 11th birthday! Managing editor Bill Koenig’s espionage fiction-oriented blog debuted in 2008 as The HMSS Weblog, but was renamed in 2015, following the failure of its partner Web site, Her Majesty’s Secret Servant. It remains a superior source of news about James Bond projects as well as other crime and cloak-and-dagger works.

• As we move ever closer to New Year’s Day, 2020, these sorts of features are bound to multiply. The Killing Times recently began enumerating what it says have been “the top 20 crime dramas of the decade.” So far, it has rolled out only the first half of its choices—in two parts, here and here—but I presume the balance of that Web site’s selections will soon follow. Watch for updates here.

• The Australia-based Columbophile blog typically celebrates the legacy of Peter Falk’s long-running NBC-TV series, Columbo. But not long ago, its unnamed editor put together a list of “the 10 least-satisfying Columbo ‘gotchas’ of the ’70s.” As he explains: “A Columbo without a magnificent ‘gotcha’ is like a porcupine without quills; a snake without fangs; a cat without claws. In short, it lacks a certain clout. Granted, not every episode can have a rousing finale in the mould of ‘Suitable for Framing’ [1971] or ‘Candidate for Crime’ [1973], but the strength of the gotcha plays a big part in our overall enjoyment of the episode.” Indeed, most of the 10 episodes The Columbophile cites for their disappointing denouements are also among those I remember least well, though I am fond of one: 1973’s “Requiem for a Falling Star,” which features Anne Baxter as a fading actress and includes a cameo by eminent costume designer Edith Head.

• Two CrimeReads pieces worth investigating: Sarah Weinman recalls how, during the summer of 1947, U.S. mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart narrowly escaped being murdered by her longtime chef; and Crawford Smith, the author of this year’s Jackrabbit (Sweet Weasel Words), writes here about persist rumors that John Dillinger—“America’s first celebrity criminal”—escaped being gunned down outside a Chicago theater in 1934, and how such talk has resulted in efforts to disinter Dillinger’s remains from an Indiana cemetery.

• I’ve long been a fan of Ellery Queen, the 1975-1976 series developed for NBC-TV by Richard Levinson and William Link, and starring Jim Hutton. So I was pleased to learn recently that the anonymous blogger “dfordoom” has been slowly reviewing that show’s episodes for Cult TV Lounge. He tackles three of them here, and another trio here. To read his overview of the show, click here.

• Having been a Star Trek enthusiast since childhood, I am naturally thrilled by the prospect of a new series that will bring Patrick Stewart back to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which he created for Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). A new trailer for Star Trek: Picard, released during this month’s New York Comic Con, carries the same adventurous, hopeful spirit that has always drawn me to the Star Trek universe. And the moment in that trailer when Picard revisits his old Enterprise shipmates William Riker and Deanna Troi … well, it brought cheerful tears to my eyes. Although I resisted subscribing to the CBS All Access streaming service in order to watch Star Trek: Discovery (I instead purchased Season 1 on DVD), Star Trek: Picard—slated to debut there on January 23, 2020—may finally compel me to take that step.

• While we’re on the subject of Star Trek (and yes, I’ll get back to matters of crime fiction anon), my fellow fans should check out Trek on the Tube, the YouTube channel created by a Trekkie named Sean and covering what seems like an ever-growing assortment of Star Trek projects. Sean has set up a Patreon page, too, to solicit funds to keep his efforts on track. It seems a worthwhile cause.

• Also deserving of consideration, I think, is a solicitation from “Norman Conquest,” aka Derek Pell, who has published my work in his literary magazine, Black Scat Review. He has established an Indiegogo crowd-funding page in hopes of raising money enough to keep his enterprises afloat. This “Fund-o-Rama,” as he calls it, will continue through Halloween. Please send him treats, not tricks.

• New author interviews of note: Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare fires questions at both Deborah Crombie (A Bitter Feast) and “Nicci French” (aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French), whose latest thriller is The Lying Room; and blogger Lesa Holstine chats with Dana Ridenour about her new novel, Below the Radar.

• Finally, some essay-writing fun for students: The Bunburyist’s Elizabeth Foxwell reports that the Beacon Society, a “scion society” of that well-known Sherlock Holmes fan group, the Baker Street Irregulars, “is sponsoring an essay contest for U.S. and Canadian students in 4th to 12th grades that focuses on the Sherlock Holmes stories ‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League,’ ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,’ and ‘The Greek Interpreter.’ There are cash prizes for first to third place. The submission deadline is February 1, 2020.” Click here to find more entry details.

Of Surveys, Series, and Circus Clowns

• After having solicited numerous nominations online for its annual Dead Good Reader Awards, the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good is now asking people to vote for their favorites in six categories, everything from The Nosy Parker Award for Best Amateur Detective and The Jury’s Out Award for Most Gripping Courtroom Drama to The Cat and Mouse Award for Most Elusive Villain. Included among the candidates this year are The Taking of Annie Thorne, by C.J. Tudor; Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh; The Passengers, by John Marrs; and Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown. Click here to take part in this competition. Polls will remain open through Wednesday, July 17, with winners set to be announced on Friday, July 19, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

• If five seasons of Bosch haven’t already satisfied your craving for Michael Connelly television adaptations, then here’s good news: Deadline reports that CBS-TV “has given a series production commitment to The Lincoln Lawyer.” David E. Kelly, creator of The Practice and Ally McBeal, will apparently write the show and serve as one of its three executive producers, along with Connelly and Ross Fineman (Goliath). As with the 2011 big-screen picture based on Connelly’s novel of the same name, CBS’ The Lincoln Lawyer “centers on Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.” There’s no word yet on who’ll play Haller in the series.

• Believe it or not, there’s still no official news yet regarding which books and authors are finalists for the 2019 Nero Award, to be given out by The Wolfe Pack, a New York City-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization. In mid-June, Mystery Fanfare blogger Janet Rudolph posted a partial list of contenders—The Fallen Architect, by Charles Belfoure, and The Man Who Couldn’t Miss, by David Handler—based solely on Web chatter. However, that’s everything either she or I know so far. I have e-mailed Nero Award chair Stephannie Culbertson in search of information, but have heard nothing back. Last year’s Nero recipient was August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones.

• CrimeReads has released an inventory of what its editors believe are “the best books of the year (so far).” Among those 25 picks are Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, Don Winslow’s The Border, Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman, Lyndsay Faye’s The Paragon Hotel, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Deadly Divide. Several of CrimeReads’ choices also appeared on my own my own list of early 2019 crime-fiction preferences.

• Crime-fiction expert and Financial Times contributor Barry Forshaw selects four novels he thinks every reader of crime and mystery fiction should investigate this summer.

• Tim Mason, author The Darwin Affair, recalls Charles Dickens’ great interest in London’s mid-19th-century police force, which helped give rise to what was “perhaps his greatest novel,” Bleak House (1853). In turn, it was Bleak House that inspired Mason’s excellent new historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, which stars Scotland Yard detective Charles Frederick Field, the often impulsive flesh-and-blood model for Dickens’ famous Inspector Bucket.

• In a two-part post for his blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan (see here and here), attorney Bill Selnes reassess the controversial involvement of New York City prosecutor-turned-novelist Linda Fairstein in the notorious Central Park Five case. It was her role in that pursuit of charges against five alleged teenage rapists (beginning in 1990) that has led of late to the Mystery Writers of America withdrawing her nomination as one of its Grand Masters, and to her publisher booting Fairstein from its stable.

• For Mystery Scene magazine, Ben Boulden surveys the long, colorful history of mysteries set around circuses and carnivals.

• New Zealand actress-singer Lucy Lawless, best known for her ass-kicking role in Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), is returning to television—at least in Australia. According to The Killing Times, she will play Alexa Crowe, “a brilliant, charismatic and ever-so-slightly scruffy ex-homicide detective,” in My Life Is Murder, a 10-part crime drama scheduled to debut Down Under within the next several weeks. Let’s hope this show eventually makes it to the States.

• And who remembers the 1985 made-for-TV movie Izzy and Moe, featuring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (formerly co-stars of The Honeymooners) as a pair of Prohibition-era federal cops, their characters based on highly successful, real-life liquor-law enforcers? At least for the nonce, that 92-minute film is available on YouTube in 10 parts. Watch it now, before it disappears!

Night of the Daggers

The British crime-fiction community was out in force (not to mention in both tuxes and evening gowns) for tonight’s presentation, in London, of the 2018 Dagger Awards. This ceremony was organized, as always, by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), with the ever-versatile Barry Forshaw taking on master of ceremonies duty.

Thanks to Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim (actually, thanks to his Facebook page), we can now bring you all of the winners.

CWA Gold Dagger:
The Liar, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)

Also nominated: London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown); Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail); A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)

Also nominated: London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); If I Die Before I Wake, by Emily Koch (Harvill Secker); An Act of Silence, by Colette McBeth (Wildfire); The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Michael Joseph); and The Force, by Don Winslow (HarperFiction)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
Lola, by Melissa Scrivner Love (Point Blank)

Also nominated: Gravesend, by William Boyle (No Exit Press); IQ, by Joe Ide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Girl in Snow, by Danya Kukafka (Picador); East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)


Diamond Dagger Award recipient Michael Connelly, with Shots editor Mike Stotter. (Photo © Ali Karim 2018.)

CWA International Dagger: After the Fire, by Henning Mankell, translated by Marlaine Delargy (Harvill Secker)

Also nominated: Zen and the Art of Murder, by Oliver Bottini, translated by Jamie Bulloch (MacLehose Press); Three Days and a Life, by Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press); The Frozen Woman, by Jon Michelet, translated by Don Bartlett (No Exit Press); Offering to the Storm, by Dolores Redondo, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garzía (HarperCollins); and The Accordionist, by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)

CWA Historical Dagger:
Nucleus, by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

Also nominated: A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker); Fire, by L.C. Tyler (Constable); Lightning Men, by Thomas Mullen (Little, Brown); Money in the Morgue, by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy (HarperCollins); and Nine Lessons, by Nicola Upson (Faber and Faber)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
“Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” by Denise Mina (from Bloody Scotland; Historic Environment Scotland)

Also nominated: “The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle,” by Chris Brookmyre (from Bloody Scotland); “Second Son,” by Lee Child (from No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories, by Lee Child; Bantam Press); “Smoking Kills,” by Erin Kelly (from Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2: The Body, edited by Susan Opie; Killer Women); and “Accounting for Murder,” by Christine Poulson (from Mystery Tour: CWA Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Martin Edwards; Orenda)

CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction:
Blood on the Page, by Thomas Harding (Heinemann)

Also nominated: Black Dahlia, Red Rose, by Piu Eatwell (Coronet); Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann (Simon & Schuster); The Fact of a Body, by Alexandria Mariano-Lesnevich (Macmillan); A False Report, by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong (Hutchinson); and Rex v. Edith Thompson, by Laura Thompson (Head of Zeus)

CWA Dagger in the Library: Martin Edwards
(Selected by nominations from libraries)

Also nominated: Nicci French; Simon Kernick; Edward Marston; Peter May; and Rebecca Tope

CWA Debut Dagger (for unpublished writers):
The Eternal Life of Ezra Ben Simeon, by Bill Crotty

Also nominated: The Last Googling of Beth Bailly, by Luke Melia; Riverine Blood, by Joseph James; Original Sins, by Linda McLaughlin; and Trust Me, I’m Dead, by Sherryl Clark

In addition, American author Michael Connelly was presented with the CWA’s 2018 Diamond Dagger Award for “sustained excellence” in the crime fiction-writing field. And Red Herring Awards (“for outstanding work in support of the CWA”) were given to Ali Karim, Ayo Onatade, David Stuart Davies, and Mike Stotter.

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s prizes, as well as to all of the other honored nominees.

Connelly Makes the Cut

Congratulations to American author Michael Connelly, who has been chosen by the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) to receive this year’s Diamond Dagger award for “sustained excellence” in the crime fiction-writing field. He will be presented with this commendation during a ceremony in London, England, on October 25.

CWA chair Martin Edwards, explaining his organization’s decision, is quoted as saying: “Michael Connelly’s crime novels have won international acclaim for more than a quarter century, and have given readers, television viewers, and film fans rich entertainment. A combination of wonderful characters, vivid settings, and gripping storylines characterizes his work. The CWA is delighted to celebrate his achievements with the award of the Diamond Dagger.”

For his own part, Connelly—a 61-year-old, Philadelphia-born former newspaper reporter in Los Angeles, and now an executive producer of the TV series Bosch—sounds rather pleased with news of this latest prize win: “How can a writer who writes about a guy trying [to] make sense of things in Los Angeles ever expect to receive recognition from such a fine group from so far away? It’s beyond anything I could have imagined, and I am very honored and humbled.”

Connelly joins a distinguished cadre of previous Diamond Dagger recipients, including Dick Francis, Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, Peter Lovesey, Sara Paretsky, Andrew Taylor, Ian Rankin, and last year’s recipient, Ann Cleeves.