Telemystery: ABC Developing New Crime Drama, The Defectives

ABC is developing The Defectives, a project from Manny Coto (Dexter) centered on "a female internal affairs investigator, who is tasked with rebuilding the LAPD's special detective unit after she spearheads the probe into a corruption scandal that ultimately brings the department to its knees." She assembles a team of misfit cops, each of whom brings to the table a unique set of talents.

This logline sounds to us to be very similar to the premise of New Tricks, the UK crime drama that features a strong female character, who leads a team of retired male cops in solving cold cases. New Tricks is incredibly popular in the UK — we were sort of lukewarm on the season we saw — so there is clearly potential here.

Winners of the 2012 Crime Thriller Awards Announced

The final three Crime Writers Association literary crime fiction awards of the year were announced earlier this evening, together with winners of a whole host of other awards collectively known as the "Crime Thriller Awards".

The literary winners are … (via press release)

• Gold Dagger (for best novel): The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (Harvill Secker)

• Ian Fleming Steel (for best thriller): A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins)

• John Creasey New Blood (for best debut novel): Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash (Bantam)

Other entertainment awards …

• Bestseller Dagger: Kathy Reichs

• Best Detective Duo: Lewis (DI Robbie Lewis and DS James Hathaway)

• Best Film: Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy

• Best Television Series: Sherlock

• Best International Television Series: The Bridge

• Best Television Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch for Sherlock

• Best Television Actress: Claire Danes for Homeland

• Best Television Supporting Actor: Martin Freeman for Sherlock

• Best Television Supporting Actress: Kelly Macdonald for Boardwalk Empire

Telemystery: BBC America Renews Copper for a Second Season

BBC America announced today that it has renewed its original historical crime drama Copper for a second season.

"Copper is an ambitious series and its success is truly a testament to Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and the creative voices that worked on the production," said Christina Wayne, President, Cineflix Studios, [which produces the series]. "We're absolutely delighted to partner again with BBC America, Tom and Barry. We look forward to working together to make the second season even more compelling."

The 13-episode second season is expected to premiere in Summer 2013.

Keep up to date on the status of your favorite mystery and suspense television with our Telemystery Scoresheet. We've updated it with today's news.

Telemystery: New Promo for Ripper Street

BBC America has released a 30-second promo for its upcoming crime drama, Ripper Street. The eight-part series is set in and around Whitechapel in London's East End in 1889, during the aftermath of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders.

Matthew Macfadyen stars as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid of the infamous H Division, the police precinct charged with keeping order in the district.

Ripper Street airs this Fall in the UK, and will premiere in the US in January 2013.

Winner of the Stylist Search for a Crime Fiction Star Announced

In news we clearly missed from early this year, Stylist Magazine has been holding a competition to "search for a crime fiction star". The UK magazine teamed up with publisher Faber and Faber to find a debut author of a crime novel featuring a female protagonist. And the results were announced today.

Kate Griffin of St. Albans won for her book, Kitty Peck and The Music Hall Murders.

You can read an excerpt from the book on the Stylist website.

Review: What You Wish For by Janet Dawson

A Mysterious Review of …

What You Wish For by Janet Dawson.

Review summary: This is first and foremost a novel of friendship, though there is a thread of suspense running through its parallel storylines spanning decades, involving four lifelong friends, and how events of the past both influence and affect actions in the present. (Click here for text of full review.)

Our rating:

What You Wish For
Janet Dawson
Perseverance Press (September 2012)

Publisher synopsis: History professor Lindsey Page has a quiet, well-ordered life, but it's about to get complicated. Her daughter, with whom she has a troubled relationship, shows up on her doorstep. The immigrant woman Lindsey is interviewing for a book asks her for help in reclaiming the son taken from her during a massacre in her Salvadoran village. And her closest friends, the three women Lindsey has known since their college days in Berkeley where they witnessed the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, are hiding secrets that will forever change those friendships. Lindsey must grapple with questions of family identity, nature vs. nurture, truth in wartime, the ethics of power for latter-day robber barons in the US and Central America, and the law of unforeseen consequences.

Moving back and forth from the 1970s to the present, from the San Francisco Bay Area to El Salvador this sprawling saga follows Lindsey, her friends, and family through tumultuous political, social, and cultural changes and choices.

  

Mysterious Press Releases 14 Stuart M. Kaminsky Inspector Rostnikov Mysteries in eBook Format

Mysterious Press released the first fourteen titles in the "Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov" series by Stuart M. Kaminsky this week in ebook format.

Kaminsky — who died in 2009 — was the author of four series, featuring four very different characters.

Toby Peters is a gumshoe in 1940s Hollywood, featured in 24 books published between 1977 and 2004.

Inspector Rostnikov is a Moscow police inspector — and is the subject of the 14 books being released this week by Mysterious Press. (A total of 16 were written in this series.)

Abe Lieberman, featured in 10 books published between 1990 and 2007, is a Chicago police officer.

Finally, 6 mysteries with Florida process server Lew Fonesca were published between 1999 and 2009.

In addition, Kaminsky wrote two stand-alones, two "The Rockford Files" tie-in novels, and three "CSI: New York" tie-ins.

We're providing a list of the "Inspector Rostnifov" mysteries below, with a synopsis from the first in the series.

— ♦ —

Death of a Dissident
Stuart M. Kaminsky
An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery

On the eve of a show trial, a Soviet dissident is stabbed through the heart …

On a frigid night in silent Moscow, Aleksander Granovsky paces the floor of his government flat. He has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system, and in two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. Granovsky is drafting a speech to deliver in court when an assassin appears and pierces his heart with the point of a rusty sickle.

The case falls in the lap of Porfiry Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector whose three decades on the force have made him an expert in navigating the labyrinths of the Soviet bureaucracy. But it will take every ounce of Rostnikov's skill to find the killer and survive the investigation, as every question he asks takes him closer to the heart of the KGB.

      

(2nd) Black Knight in Red Square — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(3rd) Red Chameleon — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(4th) A Cold Red Sunrise — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(5th) A Fine Red Rain — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(6th) Rostnikov's Vacation — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(7th) The Man Who Walked Like a Bear — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(8th) Death of a Russian Priest — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(9th) Hard Currency — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(10th) Blood and Rubles — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(11th) Tarnished Icons — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(12th) The Dog Who Bit a Policeman — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(13th) Fall of a Cosmonaut — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

(14th) Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express — Amazon | iTunes | Kobo

Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (121018)

Here is today's list of the Bestselling Free Kindle Crime Fiction: the top nine mysteries, novels of suspense, and thrillers.

We're using a script to embed an RSS feed from Amazon.com, which is updated hourly, but if you cannot see the box below — or have scripts blocked — you can click on the image to the right or use this link to see the relevant page on Amazon.com, which includes a list of both the Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Free Kindle Mysteries and Thrillers.

Banshee to Premiere on Cinemax in January 2013

Cinemax has scheduled its original drama series Banshee to premiere on January 11th, 2013.

Antony Starr stars as Lucas Hood, an ex-convict, master thief, and martial arts expert, who assumes the identity of the (murdered) sheriff of the Amish community of Banshee, PA, where he continues his criminal activities even as he's being hunted by the shadowy gangsters he had betrayed years earlier.

The teaser trailer below was released a couple of months ago by Cinemax. EW has a slightly longer, though no more informative, trailer on its site.

This Weekend Only: MCF Madame Fate for 99 cents from BFG

This weekend only, from today through Sunday, October 21st, Big Fish Games is discounting one of the popular games in the Mystery Case Files series, MCF: Madame Fate, to just 99 cents!

The mysterious fortune teller Madame Fate has foreseen her own demise at midnight this very day. She has asked for your help in investigating each quirky carnival worker to determine their whereabouts at midnight. Your investigation will include a multitude of fascinating personalities, from Art the Carny to Lucy the Bearded Beauty, while exploring the magical world of Fate's Carnival. Each suspect has a motive, but only a Master Detective can discover the secrets hidden within Madame Fate's crystal ball.

Visit the BFG website to learn more about the game and to purchase. At checkout, use the coupon code MFATE99 to get the discounted price. This special price is only available through October 21st, 2012.

Watch a trailer for the game below.

Cinemystery: Tyler Perry Planning Second Alex Cross Film

Alex Cross opens in theaters tomorrow but Tyler Perry, who stars as the titular police — and later FBI — consultant/psychologist, is already planning his second film playing the character.

Alex Cross (the film) is loosely based on the 12th book in the series by James Patterson, originally published in 2006 as simply Cross. Now Perry is looking at the 13th in the series, Double Cross (published in 2007) as the storyline for the next film. Apparently all the Is and Ts haven't yet been dotted and crossed, but if Alex Cross opens strong, the studio — and Perry — want to be prepared to quickly move forward with a sequel.

— ♦ —

Double Cross
James Patterson
An Alex Cross Thriller (13th in series)

Just when Alex Cross's life is calming down, he is drawn back into the game to confront a criminal mastermind like no other. The elaborate murders that have stunned Washington, DC, are the wildest that Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, have ever seen. This maniac adores an audience, and stages his killings as spectacles in public settings. Alex is pursuing a genius of terror who has the whole city on edge as it waits for his next move. And the killer loves the attention, no doubt-he even sets up his own Web site and live video feed to trumpet his madness.

And in Colorado, another criminal mastermind is planning a triumphant return. From his supermaximum-security prison cell, Kyle Craig has plotted for years to have one chance at an impossible escape. If he has to join forces with DC's Audience Killer to get back at the man who put him in that cell — Alex Cross — all the better.

      

Please Welcome Matthew Iden, Author of the Marty Singer Mysteries

by Matthew Iden

We are delighted to welcome crime novelist Matthew Iden as our guest.

Matt's second "Marty Singer" mystery is Blueblood (CreateSpace, September 2012 trade paperback and ebook formats).

Today Matt introduces us to retired homicide detective Marty Singer. And he is giving three of our readers a chance to win a copy of his book; details below.

— ♦ —

When I first set out to write a crime fiction thriller series — including creating the main character that would be in the driver's seat for the whole run — I turned to the authors that I most admired for inspiration, the writers that kept me reading until 3 a.m. even though I knew I'd pay for it the following day … then made me pick up the next book in the series and start the process over again.

Photo provided courtesy of
Matthew Iden

Robert Parker, Donald Westlake, Lee Child, Robert Crais. These were writers who had brought characters to life for me and made me a life-long fan of crime and thriller fiction.

But when I sat down to cut my own guy, Marty Singer, from the same cloth, I realized I couldn't do it. Conceptually, it felt like I was trying to jam the wrong key into the right lock.

It took me a while to figure out what was wrong. I was embarrassed to admit that I was stumped. Here I was, failing to create a compelling character from a classic, leading-man blueprint that had been wildly successful. It was as if a group of Renaissance masters had left me a paint-by-numbers set and I couldn't even fill in the "1's." What was wrong with me? The Spensers and Parkers, the Jack Reachers and Joe Pikes of the fictional world were strong, sexy, cynical, funny, smart, unbeatable —

And that's when I knew what the problem was.

I'm a forever-fan of these characters, but I don't actually believe they exist. And, as a reader, I can handle that. In fact, a willing suspension of disbelief is my preferred mental state when I pick up a novel.

But as a writer, I can't believe in a character who's universally liked by beautiful women, tough guys, small children, and dogs while simultaneously being a perfect shot, a martial arts master, with a sideline as a forensic crime scene expert. Who also happens to possess an eidetic memory, volunteers at homeless shelters, and plays jazz piano on the weekends.

I need a flawed character. And the more I drilled down into that concept, I discovered I needed a specific kind of flawed character. Not one that had drunk himself into his troubles, or couldn't keep a woman around because of his inability to cry — staples of hard boiled detectives since time began — but one that had problems that happened to him, not created by him.

That's when I turned to other masters of the genre — Elmore Leonard, Henning Mankell, Michael Connolly. In them, I found a tougher schematic for a main character. One that might not be as universally appealing as the Superman featured in most thrillers, but one that would resonate with readers on a more basic level.

And that's when I really met Marty, the main character in A Reason to Live, Blueblood, and the forthcoming Signs. He's a retired homicide cop from Washington, DC with a wry sense of humor and a pretty good punch, but he's uncomfortable around his own emotions, has trouble communicating with others, and he's retired because he's battling a life-threatening disease. None of this stops him from saving the day, but he does so in spite of his character flaws, not because of them.

Maybe someday I'll try my hand at writing the invincible tough guy. It must be fun, knowing that your hero can do no wrong. But for right now, I'm sticking with Marty. I never have to stretch to complete a scene or a patch of dialogue he's in, because — for me — he truly exists.

Marty's as real as I am.

— ♦ —

Matthew Iden, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, thrillers, crime fiction, and contemporary literary fiction with a psychological twist. An eclectic resume — he's held jobs with the US Postal Service, international non-profit groups, a short stint with the Forest Service in Sitka, Alaska and time with the globe-spanning Semester at Sea program — has given him inspiration for short stories and novel ideas, while trips to Iceland, Patagonia, and Antarctica haven't hurt in the creative juices department, either. A post-graduate education in English Literature wasn't necessary, but it helped define what he didn't want to do with his life and let him read a great deal of good books.

Learn more about the author and his books on his website, Matthew-Iden-com, or find him on Twitter or Facebook.

— ♦ —

Blueblood
Matthew Iden
A Marty Singer Mystery (2nd in series)

Four unrelated murders. Nothing special in Washington DC. Not even good enough to make the evening news. But then a concerned police lieutenant approaches retired homicide detective Marty Singer with a simple fact that changes everything. They were all cops.

In a race to stop the killings, Marty tackles the case from the outside, chasing the killer from deadly Southeast DC to the heart of the Virginia gangland, on a mission to stop the spilling of yet more Blueblood.

          

For a chance to win a copy of Blueblood, courtesy of the author, visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the "Matthew Iden: Marty Singer Mysteries" contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code — 4989 — for a chance to win! (One entry per person; contest ends October 25th, 2012.)

Hope Road by John Barlow is Today's Fourth Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Hope Road by John Barlow as today's fourth free mystery ebook.

This title was listed as free as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.

— ♦ —

Hope Road
John Barlow
A John Ray Mystery
Publisher: Storm Books

John Ray, son of crime boss Antonio "Tony" Ray, is the straight one of the family. With a successful business and a lifestyle to match, he wants nothing to do with his father's criminal world. But what does that world want with him?

A young prostitute is found dead in John's car, and Freddy Metcalfe, his best friend and employee, is framed for her death. Freddy denies everything but it's an open and shut case: he's going down for murder. John sets out to find the real killer.

But things get complicated. A stash of counterfeit money was also found in John's car, and the police seem more interested in that than in the dead girl. Then Lanny Bride turns up; one of the north's most ruthless criminals (and an old friend of the Ray family), Lanny is desperate to know who killed the girl. But why? Meanwhile, Freddy is too scared to talk to anyone, even his lawyer.

John's police detective girlfriend, Denise Danson, has been warned off the case by her boss. But she doesn't believe Freddy is guilty, and secretly helps John look for the murderer. The problem, though, is that uncovering the shocking truth about the girl's death will force John to confront his own criminal past and risk destroying his future, as well as losing the only woman he's ever loved.

  

Important Note: This book was listed for free on the date and time of this post. Prices can and do change without prior notice. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your purchase.

For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.

Maddy's Floor by Dale Mayer is Today's Third Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Maddy's Floor by Dale Mayer as today's third free mystery ebook.

This title was listed as free as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.

— ♦ —

Maddy's Floor
Dale Mayer
A Psychic Visions Novel of Suspense
Publisher: Valley Publishing

The terminally ill fight to get into her ward. Once there, many miraculously … live. So when her patients start dropping and she senses an evil force causing their deaths, she calls on her friend and mentor, Stefan, for help. Together, they delve beyond the physical plane into the metaphysical … only to find terror.

She wants to save everyone, but are some souls not meant to be saved?

Detective Drew McNeil has two family members in need of Maddy's healing care, but his visits to her facility leave him wondering — who cares for Maddy? Bizarre events on her floor raise his professional curiosity. And the more time he spends with Maddy, the more personal everything becomes. When the deaths on Maddy's Floor intersect with one of his cold cases, he realizes an old killer has returned — and Maddy's standing in his path.

  

Important Note: This book was listed for free on the date and time of this post. Prices can and do change without prior notice. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your purchase.

For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.

Soul and Shadow by Susan J. McLeod is Today's Second Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Soul and Shadow by Susan J. McLeod as today's second free mystery ebook.

This title was listed as free as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.

— ♦ —

Soul and Shadow
Susan J. McLeod
A Lily Evans Mystery
Publisher: Imajin Books

In ancient Egypt, a young priestess of the goddess Hathor is laid to rest in a beautiful tomb with everything she needs for her journey into the afterlife …

Three thousand years later, archaeologist Ursula Allingham discovers the mummy of Amisihathor and is confronted by a mystery. Is the man buried with the priestess really her husband? Or was she actually in love with a scribe called Kamenwati and separated from him in life as well as death?

To answer these questions, Dame Ursula turns to Egyptology student and artist Lily Evans, who reluctantly agrees to help. Lily learns that she is psychically linked to Amisihathor and experiences a strange, unsettling phenomenon — the memories and emotions of the Egyptian woman. Luckily, Lily has her beloved pet Cleocatra and her irrepressible friend Katy to keep her grounded in reality. Or so she hopes.

Dealing with the challenges of falling in love with Ursula's grandson Kent, the reappearance of her ex-fiancé Stephen and the demands of her mother and her boss Professor Briggs, Lily soon realizes she has taken on much more than she bargained for.

  

Important Note: This book was listed for free on the date and time of this post. Prices can and do change without prior notice. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your purchase.

For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.