Leaden Skies by Ann Parker is Today's Second Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Leaden Skies by Ann Parker as today's second free mystery ebook (iTunes format only).

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.

Impulse by Frederick Ramsay is Today's Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Impulse by Frederick Ramsay as today's free mystery ebook (iTunes format only).

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.

Authors on Tour: Paul Batista, with an Excerpt from Extraordinary Rendition

with Paul Batista

We are thrilled to welcome novelist Paul Batista to Omnimystery News, courtesy of Blue Dot Literary, which is coordinating his current book tour.

Paul's new novel is the legal thriller Extraordinary Rendition (Astor + Blue Editions, October 2012 ebook; trade paperback to be published in 2013), and we are pleased to feature today an excerpt from the opening chapter.

— ♦ —

 When the guard left, the iron door resonated briefly as the magnetic lock engaged itself. Byron sat in a steel folding chair. Directly in front of him was a narrow ledge under a multi-layered, almost opaque plastic window, in the middle of which was a metal circle.
 Ali Hussein seemed to just materialize in the small space behind the partition. Dressed in a yellow jumpsuit printed with the initials "FDC" for "Federal Detention Center," Hussein, who had been described to Byron as an accountant trained at Seton Hall, in Newark, was a slender man who appeared far more mild-mannered than Byron expected. He wore cloth slippers with no shoelaces. The waistband of his jump suit was elasticized — not even a cloth belt. He had as little access to hard objects as possible.
 He waited for Byron to speak first. Leaning toward the metal speaker in the partition and raising his voice, Byron said, "You are Mr. Hussein, aren't you?"
 The lawyers at the Civil Liberties Union who had first contacted Byron told him that, in their limited experience with accused terrorists, it sometimes wasn't clear what their real names were. There were often no fingerprints or DNA samples that could confirm their identities. The name Ali Hussein was as common as a coin. It was as though genetic markers and their histories began only at the moment of their arrest.
 "I am." He spoke perfect, unaccented English. "I don't know what your name is."
 The circular speaker in the window, although it created a tinny sound, worked well. Byron lowered his voice. "I'm Byron Johnson. I'm a lawyer from New York. I met your brother. Did he tell you to expect me?"
 "I haven't heard from my brother in years. He has no idea how to reach me, I can't reach him."
 "Has anyone told you why you're here?"
 "Someone on the airplane — I don't know who he was, I was blind-folded — said I was being brought here because I'd been charged with a crime. He said I could have a lawyer. Are you that lawyer?"
 "I am. If you want me, and if I want to do this."
 All that Ali's more abrasive, more aggressive brother had told Byron was that Ali was born in Syria, moved as a child with his family to Lebanon during the civil war in the 1980s, and then came to the United States. Ali never became a United States citizen. Five months after the invasion of Iraq, he traveled to Germany to do freelance accounting work for an American corporation for what was scheduled to be a ten-day visit. While Ali was in Germany, his brother said, he had simply disappeared, as if waved out of existence. His family had written repeatedly to the State Department, the CIA, and the local congressman. They were letters sent into a vacuum. Nobody ever answered.
 Byron asked, "Do you know where you've come from?"
 "How do I know who you are?"
 Byron began to reach for his wallet, where he stored his business cards. He caught himself because of the absurdity of that: he could have any number of fake business cards. Engraved with gold lettering, his real business card had his name and the name of his law firm, one of the oldest and largest in the country. Ali Hussein was obviously too intelligent, too alert, and too suspicious to be convinced by a name on a business card or a license or a credit card.
 "I don't have any way of proving who I am. I can just tell you that I'm Byron Johnson, I've been a lawyer for years, I live in New York, and I was asked by your brother and others to represent you."
 Almost unblinking, Ali just stared at Byron, who tried to hold his gaze, but failed.
 At last Ali asked, "And you want to know what's happened to me?"
 "We can start there. I'm only allowed thirty minutes to visit you this week. Tell me what you feel you want to tell me, or can tell me. And then we'll see where we go. You don't have to tell me everything about who you are, what you did before you were arrested, who you know in the outside world. Or you don't have to tell me anything. I want nothing from you other than to help you."
 Ali leaned close to the metallic hole in the smoky window. The skin around his eyes was far darker than the rest of his face, almost as if he wore a Zorro-style mask. Byron took no notes, because to do so might make Ali Hussein even more mistrustful.
 "Today don't ask me any questions. People have asked me lots of questions over the years. I'm sick of questions." It was like listening to a voice from a world other than the one in which Byron lived. There was nothing angry or abusive in his tone: just a matter-of-fact directness, as though he was describing to Byron a computation he had made on one of Byron's tax returns. "One morning five Americans in suits stopped me at a red light. I was in Bonn. I drove a rented Toyota. I had a briefcase. They got out of their cars. They had earpieces. Guns, too. They told me to get out of the car. I did. They told me to show them my hands. I did. They lifted me into an SUV, tied my hands, and put a blindfold on me. I asked who they were and what was happening."
 He paused. Byron, who had been in the business of asking questions since he graduated from law school at Harvard, couldn't resist the embedded instinct to ask, "What did they say?"
 "They said shut up."
 "Has anyone given you any papers since you've come here?"
 "I haven't had anything in my hands to read in years. Not a newspaper, not a magazine, not a book. Not even the Koran."
 "Has anyone told you what crimes you're charged with?"
 "Don't you know?"
 "No. All that I've been told is that you were moved to Miami from a foreign jail so that you could be indicted and tried in an American court."
 There was another pause. "How exactly did you come to me?" Even though he kept returning to the same subject — who exactly was Byron Johnson? — there was still no hostility or anger in Ali Hussein's tone. "Why are you here?"
 In the stifling room, Byron began to sweat almost as profusely as he had on the walk from the security gate to the prison entrance. He recognized that he was very tense. And he was certain that the thirty-minute rule would be enforced, that time was running out. He didn't want to lose his chance to gain the confidence of this ghostly man who had just emerged into a semblance of life after years in solitary limbo. "A lawyer for a civil rights group called me. I had let people know that I wanted to represent a person arrested for terrorism. I was told that you were one of four prisoners being transferred out of some detention center, maybe at Guantanamo, to a mainland prison, and that you'd be charged by an American grand jury rather than held overseas indefinitely. When I got the call I said I would help, but only if you and I met, and only if you wanted me to help, and only if I thought I could do that."
  "How do I know any of this is true?"
 Byron Johnson prided himself on being a realist. Wealthy clients sought him out not to tell them what they wanted to hear but for advice about the facts, the law and the likely real-world outcomes of whatever problems they faced. But it hadn't occurred to him that this man, imprisoned for years, would doubt him and would be direct enough to tell him that. Byron had become accustomed to deference, not to challenge. And this frail man was suggesting that Byron might be a stalking horse, a plant, a shill, a human recording device.
 "I met your brother Khalid."
 "Where?"
 "At a diner in Union City."
 "What diner?"
 "He said it was his favorite, and that you used to eat there with him: the Plaza Diner on Kennedy Boulevard."
 Byron, who for years had practiced law in areas where a detailed memory was essential, was relieved that he remembered the name and location of the diner just across the Hudson River in New Jersey. He couldn't assess whether the man behind the thick, scratched glass was now more persuaded to believe him. Byron asked, "How have you been treated?"
 "I've been treated like an animal."
 "In what ways?"
 As if briskly covering the topics on an agenda, Ali Hussein said, "Months in one room, no contact with other people. Shifted from place to place, never knowing what country or city I was in, never knowing what month of the year, day of the week. Punched. Kicked."
 "Do you have any marks on your body?"
 "I'm not sure yet what your name really is, or who you really are, but you seem naive. Marks? Are you asking me if they've left bruises or scars on my body?"
 Byron felt the rebuke. Over the years he'd learned that there was often value in saying nothing. Silence sometimes changed the direction of a conversation and revealed more. He waited.
 Hussein asked, "How much more time do we have?"
 "Only a few minutes."
 "A few minutes? I've been locked away for years, never in touch for a second with anyone who meant to do kind things to me, and now I have a total of thirty minutes with you. Mr. Bush created a beautiful world."
  "There's another president." Byron paused, and, with the silly thought of giving this man some hope, he said, "His name is Barack Hussein Obama."
 Ali Hussein almost smiled. "And I'm still here? How did that happen?"
 Byron didn't answer, feeling foolish that he'd thought the news that an American president's middle name was Hussein would somehow brighten this man's mind. Byron had pandered to him, and he hated pandering.
 Ali Hussein then asked, "My wife and children?"
 No one — not the ACLU lawyer, not the CIA agent with whom Byron had briefly talked to arrange this visit, not even Hussein's heavy-faced, brooding brother — had said a single thing about Hussein other than that he had been brought into the United States after years away and that he was an accountant. Nothing about a wife and children.
 "I don't know. I didn't know you had a wife and children. Nobody said anything about them. I should have asked."
 It was unsettling even to Byron, who had dealt under tense circumstances with thousands of people in courtrooms, that this man could stare at him for so long with no change of expression. Hussein finally asked, "Are you going to come back?"
 "If you want me to."
 "I was an accountant, you know. I always liked numbers, and I believed in the American system that money moves everything, that he who pays the piper gets to call the tune. Who's paying you?"
 "No one, Mr. Hussein. Anything I do for you will be free. I won't get paid by anybody."
 "Now I really wonder who you are." There was just a trace of humor in his voice and his expression.
 As swiftly as Ali Hussein had appeared in the interview room, he disappeared when two guards in Army uniforms reached in from the rear door and literally yanked him from his chair. It was like watching a magician make a man disappear.

— ♦ —

Photo provided courtesy of
Paul Batista

Paul Batista, novelist and television personality, is one of the most widely known trial lawyers in the country. As a trial attorney, he specializes in federal criminal litigation. As a media figure, he is known for his regular appearances as guest legal commentator on a variety of television shows including, Court TV, CNN, HLN and WNBC. He's also appeared in the HBO movie, You Don't Know Jack, starring Al Pacino.

A prolific writer, Batista authored the leading treatise on the primary federal anti-racketeering statute, Civil RICO Practice Manual. He has written articles for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The National Law Journal.

Batista's debut novel, Death's Witness, was awarded a Silver Medal by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).

Batista is a graduate of Bowdoin College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and Cornell Law School. He's proud to have served in the United States Army. Paul Batista lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.

— ♦ —

Extraordinary Rendition
Paul Batista

When Ali Hussein, suspected terrorist and alleged banker for Al Qaeda, is finally transported from Guantanamo Bay to the US mainland to stand trial, many are stunned when Byron Carlos Johnson, a pre-eminent lawyer and son of a high-profile diplomat, volunteers to represent him. On principle, Johnson thought he was merely defending a man unjustly captured through Rendition and water-boarded illegally. But Johnson soon learns that there is much more at stake than one man's civil rights.

Hussein's intimate knowledge of key financial transactions could lead to the capture of — or the unabated funding of — the world's most dangerous terror cells. This makes Hussein the target of corrupt US intelligence forces on one side, and ruthless international terrorists on the other. And, it puts Byron Carlos Johnson squarely in the crosshairs of both.

Pulled irresistibly by forces he can and cannot see, Johnson enters a lethal maze of espionage, manipulation, legal traps and murder. But when his life, his love, and his acclaimed principles are on the line, Johnson may have one gambit left that can save them all; a play that even his confidants could not have anticipated. He must become the hunter among hunters in the deadliest game.

        

Cinemystery: The Informationist by Taylor Stevens Optioned for Film

James Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, has acquired the film rights to The Informationist, a thriller by Taylor Stevens, for which he intends to direct.

"This is one of the most cinematic books I've ever read," said Jon Landau, Cameron's producing partner. "And it's got all the classic Jim Cameron elements — a female protagonist who is smart, physically adept and skilled, great action, an unexpected love story."

No screenwriter or other production details were released.

Stevens's second book in the series, The Innocent, was published late last year. The third, The Doll, has a scheduled June 2013 publication date.

— ♦ —

The Informationist
Taylor Stevens
A Vanessa "Michael" Munroe Mystery

Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information — expensive information — working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she's never looked back.

Until now.

A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It's not her usual line of work, but she can't resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she's tried for so long to forget.

      

Click on the Amazon.com button to check out the special Whispersync offer associated with this title.

Telemystery: CBS Orders Full 1st Seasons for Elementary and Vegas

CBS has committed to a full season of episodes — that would be 22 — for two of its new series, Elementary and Vegas.

"Vegas and Elementary have opened strong, delivering big audiences and winning performances in important time periods," said Nina Tassler, president, CBS Entertainment. "Each of the shows has rich characters, big stars and a unique visual style that have stood out in the crowd, helping make two of our strongest nights even stronger."

Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (121023)

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.

Review: The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

A Mysterious Review of …

The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen. A Carl Mørck, Department Q Mystery.

Review summary: This Danish crime novel has an intriguing premise and starts strong, with a pair of police investigators, who have an entertaining dynamic between them. But the plot moves along at a glacial speed, taking far too long to cover what is essentially a very short distance. (Click here for text of full review.)

Our rating:

The Absent One
Jussi Adler-Olsen
A Carl Mørck, Department Q Mystery
Dutton (August 2012)

Publisher synopsis: Detective Carl Mørck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads. So he’s naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk: A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects — part of a group of privileged boarding-school students — confessed and was convicted.

But once Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streets, stealing to survive. Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren’t the only ones looking for her. Because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried … as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head.

    

Le French Book: Enter to Win a Trip to France!

Le French Book continues its promotion of a new line of translated French crime novels today with The 7th Woman, winner of the 2007 Prix du Quai des Orfèvres for best unpublished crime novel manuscript and the 2009 Prix du roman policier de la bibliothèque de Petit-Mars as the reader-chosen favorite crime novel of the year.

"The 7th Woman is a taut and terror-filled thriller," says New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni. "Frédérique Molay navigates French police procedure with a deft touch, creating a lightening quick, sinister plot. Chief of Police Nico Sirsky is every bit as engaging and dogged as Arkady Renko in Gorky Park."

From today through October 29th, 2012 you can enter to win a trip to France at The7thWoman.com. Other prizes include "A Taste of France", eighteen bottles of French wine, and one of five different books by bestselling authors.

— ♦ —

Treachery in Bordeaux
by Frédérique Molay
A Nico Sirsky Mystery (1st in series)

There's no rest for Paris's top criminal investigation division, La Crim'. Who is preying on women in the French capital? How can he kill again and again without leaving any clues? A serial killer is taking pleasure in a macabre ritual that leaves the police on tenterhooks.

Chief of Police Nico Sirsky — a super cop with a modern-day real life, including an ex-wife, a teenage son and a budding love story — races against the clock to solve the murders as they get closer and closer to his inner circle.

      

Please Welcome Mark Rubinstein, Author of Mad Dog House

by Mark Rubinstein

We are delighted to welcome novelist Mark Rubinstein as our guest.

Mark's debut novel is the psychological thriller Mad Dog House (Thunder Lake Press, October 2012 trade paperback).

Today Mark tells us about story ideas. And he is giving two of our readers a chance to win a copy of his book; details below.

— ♦ —

Readers often ask how an idea for a novel comes to an author. It's a very strange — almost dreamlike — process for me. I've found it to be this way not only for Mad Dog House but also for the three other novels I've written that will be published over the next several years.

Photo provided courtesy of
Mark Rubinstein

It's as though my mind went through some semiconscious period where things from the past and present coalesced and began building on themselves. In all honesty, once the story was on paper, I was unable to precisely reconstruct its genesis in my own mind. It seemed very curious, almost the way you feel when you wake up some mornings knowing you've dreamed, but the dream dissolves before you're completely resurrected from a sleeping state.

This much I can say: my novel begins with a scene in a classroom in which the class bully (named "Cootie") is "finger-snapping" the ear of the boy in front of him (my protagonist). So how did this become the start of a novel?

When I was in the seventh grade, there was a kid in the class nicknamed "Cootie." He was a good kid and the class clown, unlike the Cootie in the novel. It was a strange nickname, and through all these years, the moniker has somehow stuck with me. Many years later, while at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, tending to paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, I worked with another medical corpsman whose laugh sounded like a hyena's howl or the wailing of an insane dog. We jokingly nicknamed him "Mad Dog." His name also stuck with me, and I often think of him.

So these two very disparate elements wove their ways onto the first page (actually, into the first line) of my novel.

As for the classroom scene, I recall something with great vividness. As a high school freshman, I sat in front of some wise guy who constantly finger-snapped my right ear. At the end of the period, the ear felt like a hot coal. It was, to say the least, annoying. At thirteen years old, I weighed a prodigious 105 pounds, and this bullying kid was far bigger. And very intimidating. I sat there day after day, feeling helpless and humiliated by the enforced passivity of the situation.

One day, after the third or fourth finger-snap of the day, I turned back to the bully and looked him dead in the eye. I was smoldering with rage, so much so that I was virtually fuming. Not thinking, I challenged him to a fight behind the candy store near the school. The guy looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I detected a hint of fear in his eyes. Then he laughed. But somehow, my own animal instinct kicked in, and I could almost smell his fear. He'd never expected so brazen a challenge from such a skinny kid.

When class ended, we walked outside and headed for the candy store. In an empty lot, out of view of the school, we went at it. Long story short: I beat the hell out of him.

That incident sparked the first sentence of Mad Dog House: "When he was twelve years old Mad Dog ripped off Cootie Weiss's ear."

Suffice it to say fist-fighting was a way of life in the neighborhood in which I grew up. I eventually got a degree in business, served in the army, learned plenty about acute medical care and guns, became a physician and then a psychiatrist, and now practice adult and forensic psychiatry. I've always loved and had an interest in restaurants but, wisely, never owned one. However, I never willfully tried to get all these different elements from my life (past and present) to come together, reconfigure them, and eventually coalesce them into part of the plotline of Mad Dog House.

It was a matter of letting one "what if" play off another, and the process of storytelling took over. One thing morphed into another, and the plot began taking unforeseen turns. By the time I got to page 150, I had to go back and change page 35 to make them consistent. Finally, it all turned out to be the novel as it now exists. And I simply cannot recall exactly how I put everything together.

When I look back on the genesis of the novel, it seems clear that on some very basic level, bits and pieces of my own past, my strivings, my knowledge base, my fears, my wishes, and my inner emotional landscape all merged into the narrative. It all came together and told a story — a crime-thriller that seemed somehow to have leaped from my brain and its imaginings.

It's all pure fiction, of course.

— ♦ —

Mark Rubinstein is a physician, a psychiatrist, and assistant professor of psychiatry at Cornell University. In addition to running his private practice he developed an interest in forensic psychiatry because the drama and conflict of the cases and courtrooms tapped into his personality style.

Before turning to fiction, he co-authored five medical self-help books.

Rubinstein lives in Connecticut with his wife and as many dogs as she will allow in the house. He still practices psychiatry and is busily writing more novels.

You can learn more about the author and his new book on Mark's Facebook page.

— ♦ —

Mad Dog House
Mark Rubinstein

Roddy Dolan, a successful suburban surgeon, long ago left behind his past — one that nearly landed him in jail at 17. When he's approached by an old friend about becoming a silent partner in a Manhattan steakhouse, he's understandably wary. So he consults with his lifelong blood brother, Danny Burns.

Danny's convinced this "vanity project" is the perfect trophy to illustrate how far they've traveled. Certain he's buried his checkered past, Roddy joins in this venture with serious reservations. Danny is quickly sucked into the high-energy glitz of the restaurant, but Roddy is suspicious.

Amidst the glitter of New York's nightlife, amongst Mafia honchos and Russian thugs, events spin out of control and the lives Roddy and Danny knew are over. Hidden shady dealings drag them and their families into life-threatening terrain. Struggling with a monster he thought he'd buried, Roddy must make momentous choices, and none are good. But he has a daring plan …

      

For a chance to win a copy of Mad Dog House, courtesy of the author, visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the "Mark Rubinstein: Mad Dog House" contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code — 3017 — for a chance to win! (One entry per person; US residents only. Contest ends October 30th, 2012.)

Cuts Like a Knife by M. K. Gilroy is Today's Nook Daily Find

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Cuts Like a Knife by M. K. Gilroy as today's Barnes & Noble Nook Daily Find.

The deal price of $2.99 is valid only for today, Tuesday, October 23, 2012.

Note: The price has been matched by Amazon.com for today only.

— ♦ —

Cuts Like a Knife
M. K. Gilroy
Worthy Publishing

Detective Kristen Conner goes undercover to find a serial killer who selects his victims — all successful young professional women, in the most unlikely of places — only to find herself as his next favorite target.

When Leslie Reed is found dead in her fashionable townhome, a red flag goes up in Washington, D.C. The FBI knows an elusive "organized killer" on a decade-long crime spree is at work again. The problem is the Feds have only one tenuous lead to assist local police in the manhunt … a most unlikely place the killer likes to find his victims.

Conner is light one her feet and packs a powerful punch — growing up in a cop's home, intense hand-to-hand combat training, and not being able to shoot a handgun straight — all encourage that. Her life is built on faith and family: she coaches her 7-year-old niece's soccer team, the Snowflakes, always shows up hungry for family dinner, and only misses church when she is fighting with her mom and glamorous TV news reporter sister — or relentlessly tracking down a ruthless killer.

 

Important Note: This book was listed at the price mentioned above 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.

Tempest in the Tea Room by Libi Astaire is Today's Second Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Tempest in the Tea Room by Libi Astaire 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.

Bliind Overlook by J. C. Simmons is Today's Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Bliind Overlook by J. C. Simmons as today's 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.

Mystery and Suspense Films, New This Week on DVD (121023)

Checking through our list of films currently scheduled for release this week on DVD and/or Blu-ray disc, shown below are those that fall into the mystery, suspense, thriller and adventure categories.

See also a list of current mystery and suspense DVD, Blu-ray, or VOD deals on Amazon.com.

— ♦ —

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov from an adapted screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith from his own book of the same title.

Film Synopsis (from the studio): The storyline is based on a document recently discovered by the author (screenwriter) titled The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, given to him by a vampire named Henry Sturges. "[H]enceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion," Lincoln writes. "I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose …"

The president (played by Benjamin Walker) has learned that blood-thirsty vampires are planning to take over the United States, and makes it his mission to eliminate them, thus becoming history's greatest hunter of the undead.

Running time: 105 minutes. Rating: R for violence throughout and brief sexuality.

Purchase/Rental Options

          

Watch a trailer for the film below

MystereBooks: Dog On It, the 1st Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn, Now Just 99 Cents

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Dog On It by Spencer Quinn, now available at a special price, courtesy of the publisher, Atria Books.

The ebook format of this title was listed at 99 cents 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.

Telemystery: Showtime Renews Homeland for 3rd Season

Showtime has made the (unsurprising) decision to renew its Emmy Award-winning drama Homeland for a third season.

"The Emmy wins for Homeland have certainly set the stage for a great second season," said David Nevins, Showtime Entertainment president. "The writers, cast and crew of Homeland continue to create a remarkably entertaining and suspenseful roller coaster ride, growing audiences week after week."

Hero or traitor? M.I.A. in Afghanistan for eight years and subjected to unthinkable torture at the hands of al-Qaeda, Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) is finally coming home. CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) believes he has been turned and become part of a plot to be carried out on American soil. But the volatile Carrie has some demons of her own.

In addition to its 2012 Emmy win for Best Drama, both Claire Danes and Damian Lewis won Emmys for their lead performances.

The 12-episode third season will likely premiere in Fall 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.