Bullet Points: On Heavy Meds Edition

Please pardon my silence of the week, for as tardy schoolchildren worldwide are often heard to say, “I have a good excuse!”

Within an hour of my wife and I returning home last Saturday from a couple of days away, I somehow managed to fall down my back steps and hit the concrete sidewalk below. There were no consequent head or neck injuries, but I did break five ribs on my left side, as well as one small bone in the elbow of my left arm, and I seriously knocked the wind out of myself. Now, I’ve broken ribs on two previous occasions, so I wasn’t terribly worried at first. However, when my left arm started to freeze up, I decided to take my wife’s advice and head for the nearest emergency room. There, it was discovered that my accident offered one further complication: I had a hematoma on my spleen. This combination of ills sent me in an ambulance to an intensive care unit, where I spent Sunday and Monday. After being thoroughly poked and prodded, and reassured that the hematoma was dissipating, I was finally sent home with pain medication and recommendations that I take it easy for a while. That lasted a couple of days, before I felt the need to jump back into at least some modest work schedule.

So look at the “Bullet Points” news compilation below as part of my recovery. I hope to post at least one additional thing on this page before week’s end, but we’ll see how my energy level holds up. Because, of course, I don’t want to tire myself out so greatly that I can’t also spend some of this downtime reading.

• Thirty-one-year-old Swedish actor Adam Pålsson will star as Henning Mankell’s renowned detective protagonist, Kurt Wallander, in a six-episode English-language series for Netflix, due out next year. This Young Wallander, which is apparently hoping to generate some of the same magic that has made a hit of Shaun Evans’ Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour, will explore “Wallander’s first case and the experiences that shaped him as a person,” explains The Killing Times. “When the series begins, Wallander is in his 20s and a recent graduate from university now working as a uniformed police officer.” Beyond Pålsson, the show will feature Richard Dillane as Police Commissioner Hemberg, Leanne Best as Frida Rask, and Ellise Chappell as Mona Wallander. Filming is said to be currently underway.



• The BBC is spreading a trailer—embedded above—to promote its upcoming TV series Dublin Murders, which is based on Tana French’s succession of haunting modern-day mysteries. The eight episodes of Season 1 have been adapted from French’s first two best-sellers, In the Woods and The Likeness, and will star Killian Scott (Ripper Street) and Sarah Greene (Ransom). Dublin Murders will show next month in the UK, but as The Killing Times points out, it won’t premiere in the States until November 10, courtesy of the premium channel Starz.

• By the way, Dublin Murders is just one of many interesting new crime dramas being readied for small-screen broadcast in Britain over the next several months. Also among that bunch will be Vienna Blood, a BBC Two production based on Frank Tallis’ 2007 historical novel of that same name. Here’s a plot précis:

Starring Matthew Beard, and Jürgen Maurer, Vienna Blood is set in 1900s Vienna, a hotbed of philosophy, science and art, where a clash of cultures and ideas play out in the city’s grand cafés and opera houses. Max Liebermann (Beard) is a brilliant young English doctor, studying under the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. When Max comes into contact with Oskar Rheinhardt (Maurer), an Austrian Detective Inspector struggling with a strange case, he offers his assistance. Max’s extraordinary skills of perception and forensics and his deep understanding of human behaviour and deviance help Oskar solve some of Vienna’s most mysterious and deadly cases.

We can only hope that Vienna Blood will make its way to this side of the Atlantic very soon.

• As TV Guide notes, “Sacha Baron Cohen is best known as the comedian and impersonator who has brought to life quirky characters like Ali G, Borat and Bruno, and whose character work in Who Is America? convinced several real-life politicians to say some hilarious and disturbing things. But his next dramatic role—playing real-life Israeli spy Eli Cohen in Netflix’s [new] thriller The Spy—looks like the perfect fit, especially based on the first trailer for the limited series.” You’ll find that preview here; The Spy debuted on Netflix last Friday, though I haven’t yet found time enough to watch it.

• Organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival (to be held in Stirling, Scotland, from September 20 to 22) have announced their list of finalists for the 2019 McIlvanney Prize:

— Breakers, by Doug Johnstone (Orenda)
— Conviction, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
— The Way of All Flesh, by “Ambrose Parry,” aka Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman (Canongate)
— A Treachery of Spies, by Manda Scott (Transworld)

You’ll find the longlist of nominees for that commendation here, together with the five books vying to take home the inaugural Debut Prize. The winners of these two awards will be made known during an opening reception for Bloody Scotland at Stirling’s Church of the Holy Rude on Friday, September 20. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

• Meanwhile, the Australian Crime Writers Association has chosen the recipients of its 2019 Ned Kelly Awards as follows:

— Best Fiction: The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)
— Best True Crime: Eggshell Skull, by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin)
— Best First Fiction: The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan
(HarperCollins Australia)

Click here to see the shortlisted works in each of those categories.

• Could a woman play British spy James Bond in future installments of the still-popular film series? According to two men who have portrayed Ian Fleming’s protagonist in the past, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, the answer is yes. “I think we’ve watched the guys do it for the last 40 years, get out of the way, guys, and put a woman up there,” Brosnan (GoldenEye, Die Another Day) is quoted in The Washington Post as saying. “I think it would be exhilarating, it would be exciting.” Brosnan conceded, though, “that a female James Bond was unlikely, given executive producer Barbara Broccoli’s insistence that ‘Bond is male.’”

• Speaking of Agent 007, The Spy Command reports that French actress Léa Seydoux, who appeared as psychiatrist Dr. Madeleine Swann in 2015’s Spectre, will be given a larger-than-earlier-anticipated part in next year’s 25th Bond flick, No Time to Die. A Google translation of a story published in Brazil says Swann “will also play a considerable role in the plot, as her character will again appear working in a psychiatric clinic.” No Time to Die is due to be released in the UK on April 3, 2020, with its U.S. debut expected on April 8.

• Finally, the James Bond Radio podcast is expected to return sometime in October. Its future had been left in doubt, following the recent departure of co-host Chris Wright. An Apple podcast archive of existing installments can be found here.

• I was saddened to hear this news, in the wake of my being discharged from the hospital: Onetime child model and actress Carol Lynley—known for her roles in such theatrical releases as Under the Yum Yum Tree, Bunny Lake Is Missing and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as in TV programs ranging from Mannix and It Takes a Thief to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Fall Guy—died on September 3 at age 77. I first remember spotting Lynley (who was born in New York City as Carole Ann Jones) in The Night Stalker, a 1972 ABC Movie of the Week in which she played the winsome blonde girlfriend of journalist-turned-monster hunter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin). I later enjoyed her performance in a two-part, 1974 episode of Bill Bixby’s The Magician, and subsequently saw her in Quincy, M.E., Kojak, and Richie Brockelman: Private Eye. Variety says that Lynley (left) perished at her home in Pacific Palisades, California, “after suffering a heart attack.”

• Sorry, but not even the addition of Agent Carter star Hayley Atwell to the expanding cast of Tom Cruise’s next Mission: Impossible picture (the seventh entry in that franchise) will convince me to plunk down real money for the “privilege” of watching Cruise struggle to appear tough again on screen.

• I’m far more likely to enjoy a very different Atwell role. This news item comes from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

The first trailer for Netflix’s new procedural drama, Criminal, is out, with David Tennant and Hayley Atwell starring as uncooperative suspects in the “innovative” police-procedural anthology series. Set entirely in the confines of a police interview suite, the show features 12 distinct stories that take place in four countries: the UK, France, Germany, and Spain.

• The latest edition of Clues: The Journal of Detection was recently published. As managing editor Elizabeth Foxwell explains, it’s a “theme issue on interwar mysteries guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester, UK).” Topics include: “‘The Ghost of Dr. Freud Haunts Everything Today’: Criminal Minds in the Golden-Age Psychological Thriller”; “Capital Punishment and Women in the British Police Procedural: Josephine Tey’s A Shilling for Candles and To Love and Be Wise”; and “Whose Trauma? Dorothy L. Sayers’s Use of Shell Shock and the Role of Memory in Interwar Detective Fiction.”

• Three terrific historical pieces from CrimeReads: “The Spectacle of Degradation,” in which Dominique Kalifa looks back at 19th-century tours of big-city underworlds; Kerri Maniscalco’s essay, “Was H.H. Holmes the Real Jack the Ripper?”; and “100 Years Ago, the Country Debated Arming Women to Combat Sexual Assaults,” by Amy Stewart, whose fifth and newest entry in her acclaimed Kopp Sisters series, Kopp Sisters on the March, will reach bookstores this month.

• Lee Goldberg makes a good point in this Facebook post:

I don’t get why author Carolyn Weston (1921-2001) is never mentioned in articles about ground-breaking female writers in the crime-writing genre. She was the author of three hard-boiled police procedurals in the late 1960s set in Santa Monica, California, and featuring detectives Al Krug, a seasoned veteran, and his partner Casey Kellog, a younger, college-educated surfer. It was a strong pairing … so strong that it led to [TV producer] Quinn Martin optioning the books, and adapting the first one, Poor, Poor Ophelia, into the pilot for The Streets of San Francisco. The [1972-1977] series was a huge hit, and yet (to my knowledge), Weston and her publisher never capitalized on the success. To my knowledge, no Streets of San Francisco tie-in editions of her books were ever released—which is astonishing. Weston also never wrote another book and is forgotten, even though her books became the basis for one of the best-known TV cop shows in history.

Five years ago, Brash Books acquired the copyright to the trilogy, republished them, and hired Robin Burcell to write a new book, The Last Good Place, in the literary series (though we moved the action to present-day San Francisco to better align it with the TV series. …)

• Pay attention, folks: The submission process for Canada’s 2020 Arthur Ellis Awards opened on September 1. Submission rules and entry forms can be found at the link.

• Last but not least, here are a few author interviews worth checking out: CrimeReads interrogates Rachel Moore on the subject of her new non-fiction book, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession; Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare chats with Sherri Leigh James about her two Cissy Huntington whodunits, Blood Red and Iced Blue; and MysteryPeople has a few questions for Reed Farrel Coleman, whose brand-new Jessie Stone novel is Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill.

Tana French Series Heads to TV

As Tana French’s latest novel—a standalone titled The Witch Elm—finds a place on more and more “best crime fiction of 2018” lists, In Reference to Murder blogger B.V. Lawson highlights this news about her series of Dublin Murder Squad yarns:

Starz has acquired the eight-episode crime drama series Dublin Murders, adapted from Tana French’s first two novels in the Dublin Murder Squad crime series, In the Woods and The Likeness. Dublin Murders follows Rob Reilly (Killian Scott)—a smart-suited detective whose English accent marks him as an outsider—who is dispatched to investigate the murder of a young girl on the outskirts of Dublin with his partner, Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene). Reilly is pulled back into another case of missing children and forced to confront his own darkness even as Cassie is sent undercover for another murder case and forced to come face to face with her own brutal reckoning.

U.S. TV viewers should see Dublin Murders premiere in 2019.

READ MORE: “Dublin Murders Makes a Murky Mess of Tana French’s Lyrical Crime Novels,” by Laura Miller (Slate).

Worth Mentioning

• Ian Rankin is quoted by The Star, in Sheffield, England, as joking that he was nervous in the run-up to this month’s UK release of In a House of Lies (Orion), his 22nd John Rebus novel. “When it’s published,” he told the newspaper, “suddenly you get a flood of people who’ve read it and of course now, thanks to social media, they can immediately let you know what they think.” In a House of Lies is due out in late December in the States, from Little, Brown.

• With her new standalone suspense novel, The Witch Elm (Viking), set to appear in bookstores early next week, Dublin fictionist Tana French talks with New York magazine’s pop-culture Web site, Vulture, about “how to write a red herring.”

• Yikes! John D. Macdonald’s 1960 novel The End of the Night is “cited as one of his finest stand-alone novels,” and I have never even read it. Obviously, that situation must be remedied.

• Having watched the trailer for The Cry, a four-part British/Australian crime drama starring Jenna Coleman (Victoria), I’m now very much looking forward to seeing the full program. Unfortunately, that might take awhile. Although The Cry—based on Helen FitzGerald’s 2013 novel of that same name—has already premiered in the UK, and is slated for showing Down Under sometime later this year, there’s still no firm date for its broadcast in the United States, as far as I can tell.

• Such a bookstore sign is especially relevant right now.

• Sadly, this probably won’t be the last we’ll see of such reprehensible characters in fiction. In its report on how Bath, England, resident Georgia Fancett “has picked up a £20,000 publishing contract with Century for her ‘hard-hitting’ police procedural, The Fifth Girl,” The Bookseller adds that Fancett’s story pairs “a gay detective, [Detective Inspector] Alice Warnes,” with “a lazy, Trump-loving bigot” of a police partner. It seems Donald Trump will only reinforce the worldwide cliché of the “ugly American.”

• Author and educator Sean Carswell writes in the Los Angeles Review of Books about how the early 20th-century West Virginia “coal mine wars” inspired James M. Cain to embark on a career penning crime fiction. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• James Bond and Aston Martins belong together.

• For the CrimeReads Web site, Sherry Thomas—author of the Charlotte Holmes series (The Hollow of Fear)—picks seven mystery tales and TV shows that she says “imbue their Sherlock Holmes reinterpretations with far greater emotional resonance” than Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories ever offered.

• And more author interviews worth exploring: MysteryPeople talks with George Pelecanos (The Man Who Came Uptown); Tom Leins quizzes Hector Duarte Jr. about his new short-story collection, Desperate Times Call; The Killing Times chats with Robert Olen Butler about Paris in the Dark, his fourth novel starring early 20th-century newspaper correspondent Christopher Marlowe “Kit” Cobb; and Rick Ollerman, my editor at Down & Out: The Magazine, answers six questions about the publication in Jim Harrington’s blog.

Family Murders, Family Pains

Jim Napier’s review of Broken Harbor (Viking), Tana French’s “compelling tale about the horrific multiple-murder of a family in rural Ireland,” was posted this morning in January Magazine. He offers this synopsis of the main crime at hand:

In a coastal housing estate of half-vacant, jerry-built homes an hour’s drive north from Dublin, a grisly crime has been unearthed: Patrick Spain and his two young children have been brutally stabbed to death. Spain’s wife, the sole surviving member of their immediate family, has been left in critical condition, stabbed multiple times and now barely clinging to life. The bodies of the children show no signs of a struggle; they seem to have been murdered in their beds while they slept.

Pat Spain had been unemployed for months, a victim of the recession that has swept across Ireland. Although he was forced to give up his family’s expensive car, he somehow found the money to stage an elaborate birthday party for his daughter. Everything in this murder investigation points to a family member being responsible, and since he was on the verge of poverty and trying desperately to maintain an image of middle-class respectability, the father is the odds-on favorite for the crimes.

You’ll find the complete critique here.