Mysteries on TV: The MacGyver TV Movies and Trial & Retribution, New This Week on DVD

Mysteries on TV, your source for the most complete selection of detective, amateur sleuth, private investigator, and suspense television mystery series now available or coming soon to DVD or Blu-ray disc, is profiling one series and two made-for-television films based on a series being released this week.

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MacGyver starred Richard Dean Anderson as the Angus MacGyver, man who could create useful tools out of everyday items or devise clever solutions to seemingly impossible problems. The series ran for 7 seasons on ABC from September 1985 through May 1992.

Following its cancellation by the network, two made-for-television films based on the character (and starring Anderson) were produced, both airing in 1994.

In "Lost Treasure of Atlantis", which was filmed on location in England and Greece, MacGyver and his former college professor search for (you guessed it!) the lost treasure of Atlantis. In "Trail to Doomsday", also filmed in Europe, MacGyver must stop a terrorist plot to hold the world hostage.

Both of these films are included on the DVD set MacGyver: The TV Movies.

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Created by crime novelist Lynda La Plante, Trial & Retribution is a police procedural that began production in 1997 and ran for 12 series (seasons) on ITV. (We don't think it has been officially canceled, but there seems to be no indication that a 13th series is coming soon.)

The series stars David Hayman as Detective Superintendent Mike Walker and Victoria Smurfit as Detective Inspector Roisin Connor, and has a format similar in style to the original Law & Order series, recently canceled by NBC.

The Trial & Retribution: Set Four DVD set of 3 discs contain three episodes from the 10th series (season) that originally aired in 2007: "Paradise Lost", "Curriculum Vitae", and "Mirror Image".

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Visit our Mysteries on TV website to discover more television mystery series currently available on DVD and Blu-ray disc.

Mystery Godoku Puzzle for June 14, 2010

A new Mystery Godoku Puzzle has been created by the editors of the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books and is now available on our website.

Godoku is similar to Sudoku, but uses letters instead of numbers. To give you a headstart, we provide you a mystery clue to fill in a complete row or column (if you choose to use it!).

This week's letters and mystery clue:

B E I L N O R T U

Mr. Monk is this in the title of the 9th mystery in this TV tie-series by Lee Goldberg (9 letters).

We now have two weeks of our puzzles on one page in PDF format for easier printing. Print this week's puzzle here.

Previous puzzles are stored in the Mystery Godoku Archives.

Enjoy the weekly Mystery Godoku Puzzle from the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, and Thanks for visiting our website!

100 Classic Books Released for Nintendo DS

Tomorrow, June 14th, Nintendo is releasing 100 Classic Books on a disc for the DS.

Released about 6 months ago in the UK and earlier this year in Australia, this collection of one hundred public domain works of literature has proved popular with owners of the game system.

There are (probably not surprising given the average age of DS owners) a lot of adventure stories, but aren't all that many mystery and suspense titles. Still, included are Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe, The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a few others. The entire list can be viewed on a website created for the collection, 100ClassicBooks.com, which also includes 10 bonus titles that can be downloaded.

Mystery Book Review: The Marks of Cain by Tom Knox

Review of The Marks of Cain by Tom Knox

Tom Knox explores controversial historical efforts to identify -- and exploit -- potential -- and speculative -- human speciation in his second religiopolitical thriller The Marks of Cain.

Read the full text of our review at Mysterious Reviews.

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The Marks of Cain
Tom Knox
Non-series

Viking (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-670-02191-1 (0670021911)
ISBN-13: 978-0-670-02191-8 (9780670021918)
Publication Date: May 2010
List Price: $26.95

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Mysterious Reviews is your source for the latest mystery, suspense, thriller, and crime novel reviews, edited by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Third Season of True Blood Premieres Sunday June 13th on HBO

Tomorrow, Sunday June 13th at 9 PM (ET/PT), the third season of True Blood premieres on HBO.

Based on the series of Southern Vampire mysteries by Charlaine Harris, True Blood stars Anna Paquin as telepathic barmaid Sooke Stackhouse, who is "cursed" with the ability to listen in on people's thoughts but is tolerant of vampires who have no brainwave activity. She's also open about the integration of vampires in the community, particularly when it comes to Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a handsome 173-year-old living up the road.

In the third-season premiere, titled "Pack of Wolves", Sookie gets little cooperation from Eric in her frantic search for a missing Bill. Meanwhile, Andy persuades Jason to keep quiet about Eggs' death, which leaves Tara beside herself with grief and Lafayette with the difficult task of consoling his cousin.

HBO airs a "pre-show" preview of the season at 8:45 PM.

Watch a catch-up summary of the series below:

Mystery Book Review: Beachfront "Holiday" by John Howard Reid

Review of Beachfront "Holiday" by John Howard Reid

While on an extended vacation -- furlough, as he later characterizes it -- in Australia, Miami police sergeant Merryll "Merry" Manning finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation -- one in which he is the prime suspect -- in Beachfront "Holiday", the third mystery in this series by John Howard Reid, originally published in 1985 as The Beach-Front Murders, but recently reissued by the author with a new title in trade paperback.

Read the full text of our review at Mysterious Reviews.

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Beachfront "Holiday"
John Howard Reid
A Merryll Manning Mystery

Lulu (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-557-36691-7 (0557366917)
ISBN-13: 978-0-557-36691-0 (9780557366910)
Publication Date: March 2010
List Price: $12.50

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Mysterious Reviews is your source for the latest mystery, suspense, thriller, and crime novel reviews, edited by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Reviews of Mystery and Suspense Books for Kids, New This Week on Book Trends (100612)

Book Trends, a review site for young adult and children books, published several new book reviews this past week. We're presenting here a summary of those in the mystery / suspense category.

The Case of the Wounded Pigeon by Fred Rexroad. The first mystery in the Whiz Tanner series, recommended for readers aged 10 to 12. Lexile measure: N/A. Reviewed by a 6th grade student who writes, "This book is really amazing, and at parts, it actually pushed me of my chair. Literally! I think that Fred Rexroad is an amazing author and that he has a great sense of humor."

For more reviews of children and young adult books of all genres, visit Book Trends; their reviews will amaze you!

Games of Mystery: Midnight Mysteries, the Salem Witch Trials

Games of Mystery is pleased to announce the availability of a new mystery casual game from Big Fish Games released today and available to BFG Club members. You can find out more about these games by visiting our Mystery Games: Big Fish Download Games page or by clicking on the links provided below.

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The spirit of a famous novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne needs your help in this sequel to Midnight Mysteries: The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy! The famed writer has died during a freak snow storm in May, and his ghost has come to you, asking for help. Travel back and forth in time from the scene of the author’s demise to the 17th century, where a town is going mad with rumors of witchcraft and a woman is facing the gallows. Explore the gloomy village of Salem, look for different hidden objects, solve challenging puzzles, and unravel all the secrets of this ill-boding place.

See also the first game in this series, Midnight Mysteries: The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy.

Also available: Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials Strategy Guide.

Midnight Mysteries 2: Salem Witch Trials may be downloaded and purchased for $6.99 with a Big Fish Game Club membership. A demonstration version (100.43 MB) may be downloaded and played for free for one hour.

Watch a preview video below:

Get any standard game for $6.99 with a Big Fish Game Club membership. Other benefits include the $2.99 Daily Deal, Tomorrow's Game Today, and special member rewards. And if you purchase any 6 games within a single month, you earn a free game with the Big Fish Game Club Monthly Punch Card! (Collector's Editions earn 3 punches each, half-way towards your free game!)

Read Ms. Terri's reviews of the adventure and casual mystery games featured on this site, including Midnight Mysteries: The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy, Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses!, Enlightenus, and many more!

Big Fish Games: Bestsellers

Big Fish Games: New releases

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Games of Mystery is your source for mystery-themed video, electronic, and board games, parties for kids and adults, and murder mystery weekends and mystery getaway vacations!

Mystery Book Review: The Name Partner by Carlos Cisneros

Review of The Name Partner by Carlos Cisneros

Houston attorney Guillermo "Billy" Bravo must come to terms with professional and personal conflict when he takes on the defense of a pharmaceutical company implicated in the death of a patient in The Name Partner, a non-series legal thriller that could also serve as the first in a new series.

Read the full text of our review at Mysterious Reviews.

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The Name Partner
Carlos Cisneros
Non-series

Arte Publico Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-55885-594-7 (1558855947)
ISBN-13: 978-1-55885-594-6 (9781558855946)
Publication Date: March 2010
List Price: $24.95

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Mysterious Reviews is your source for the latest mystery, suspense, thriller, and crime novel reviews, edited by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Games of Mystery: This Week's New Titles from Amazon Video Games (100611)

Games of Mystery is pleased to announce this week's new mystery and suspense casual and adventure games available for immediate download from Amazon Video Games.

A complete list of downloadable mystery games is available on our Games of Mystery: Amazon Video Games Download page.

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Rhianna Ford in The Da Vinci Letter

Travel to Rome with Rhianna Ford to confirm the authenticity of a still sealed letter possibly written by Leonardo Da Vinci! Cornelius Blake has demanded that Rhianna pack her things and head across the Atlantic to test the ancient letter. Use your hidden object skills to help Rhianna discover the truth about the letter, and keep her job!

ESRB Rating: Not Specified.

Windows Vista/XP (172 MB download).

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The Sultan's Labryinth: A Royal Sacrifice

Use your hidden object skills to help Tallis escape a mysterious labyrinth, and save Sultan Bahar's soul! An evil genie has appeared the night before the sultan's funeral, and has demanded to take him away. As the next in line to the throne, it is up to Tallis to defeat the genie by escaping his maze and reclaiming his father-in-law's soul! Solve tricky puzzles and mysterious locks to make your way to freedom!

ESRB Rating: Not Specified.

Windows Vista/XP (87 MB download).

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PuppetShow: Mystery of Joyville

The puppet show in Joyville was once a wondrous attraction until the great fire. Now, rusted gears and dark mysteries lay within strange machinations and disheveled puppets. A young boy, Simon, is the most recent in a long line of missing people. You are tasked with solving nefarious puzzles, finding hidden clues, and uncovering the dark secrets of a town that is anything but joyful. WARNING: May contain disturbing imagery and themes.

ESRB Rating: Not Specified.

Windows Vista/XP (174 MB download).

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Luxor Adventures

Travel to the edge of time and back! In this hidden-object adventure, follow John Swift and Jane Graham as they travel through the past to keep history intact. When the archaeology duo uncovers the Osiris Orb just outside of Luxor, they learn that the mythical Stairway to Heaven is more real than they had first believed. Now, they find themselves tumbling through time and space in a race to keep the deceptive, power-hungry Seth Hisster from changing history forever.

ESRB Rating: Not Specified.

Windows Vista/XP (137 MB download).

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Vampire Saga: Pandora's Box

With a chilling crime at the center of its spellbinding story, this game is not intended for the faint of heart. Join Matthew Ward as he steals aboard a cargo ship to escape the violence of the Spanish-American War, passes out and then wakes up to find himself alone with several sinister-looking coffins. Explore eerie locations, search for hidden objects and follow a story full of nerve-pricking encounters. Without a doubt, this captivating mystery thriller will give you the creeps!

ESRB Rating: Not Specified.

Windows Vista/XP (75 MB download).

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Games of Mystery is your source for mystery-themed video, electronic and board games, parties for kids and adults, murder mystery weekends and mystery getaway vacations, and more mysterious fun!

Mystery Book Review: One Man's Paradise by Douglas Corleone

Review of One Man's Paradise by Douglas Corleone

Douglas Corleone introduces criminal defense attorney Kevin Corvelli, who leaves New York City after a media storm to start a new practice in Honolulu, in One Man's Paradise, the winner of the 2009 St. Martin's Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel contest and presumably (hopefully?) the first in a series.

Read the full text of our review at Mysterious Reviews.

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One Man's Paradise
Douglas Corleone
A Kevin Corvelli Mystery

St. Martin's Minotaur (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-312-61158-7 (0312611587)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-61158-3 (9780312611583)
Publication Date: April 2010
List Price: $24.99

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Mysterious Reviews is your source for the latest mystery, suspense, thriller, and crime novel reviews, edited by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

New Poster and Trailer for AMC Original Series Rubicon

AMC's new original drama Rubicon doesn't premiere until August, but this Sunday, June 13th at 11 PM (ET/PT), following the season finale of Breaking Bad, the network is offering viewers a sneak peak at the new series pilot.

Thirteen episodes of the series, a conspiracy thriller starring James Badge Dale as an analyst at a New York City think-tank who is thrown into a story where nothing is as it appears to be, have been ordered.

"Rubicon is an incredible story about trust and power born out of the desire to find a way to capture the intensity and mystery of the best conspiracy thrillers in a series. It is a show that appeals to everyone who has some skepticism about the relationship between big business and our government, which we think is pretty much everybody,” says Joel Stillerman, SVP of original programming, production and digital content for AMC. “Our stellar cast and creative team allow us to continue to present premium television on basic cable."

Watch a trailer for the series below.

Mystery Bestsellers for June 11, 2010

A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending June 11th, 2010 has been posted on the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books website.

Little change within the top 10 with the third and final thriller in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, retaining the top position. One new title moves into the top 15, after debuting just off the list last week.

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Moving into the 10th spot is the 19th thriller in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton.

Anita is back in St. Louis and trying to live a normal life -- as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a U.S. Marshal. There are lovers, friends and their children, school programs to attend. In the midst of all the ordinary happiness a vampire from Anita's past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, killed in an explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, their dark creator. It's hard to kill a god. This dark goddess has reached out to her here -- in St. Louis, home of everyone Anita loves most. The Mother of All Darkness has decided she has to act now or never, to control Anita, and all the vampires in America.

The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with Anita and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to immigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken. Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing her body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can't succeed in taking over Anita's body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to Anita, has sent word: "Run if you can ..."

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The top four mystery bestsellers this week are shown below:

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Nominations for 2010 Barry Awards Announced

Lesa Holstine has posted the nominees for the Barry Awards on her blog Lesa's Book Critiques. These annual awards are presented by the editorial staff of Deadly Pleasures for the best works published in the field of crime fiction, with the winners announced this October during Bouchercon in San Francisco.

The nominees are:

Best Novel:
◊ The Gates by John Connolly (Atria)
◊ The Hidden Man by David Ellis  (Putnam)
◊ Spade & Archer by Joe Gores  (Knopf)
◊ The Last Child by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)
◊ Locked In by Marcia Muller (Grand Central)
◊ Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel:
◊ Beat The Reaper by Josh Bazell (Little, Brown)
◊ The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley  (Delacorte)
◊ A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge)
◊ A Bad Day For Sorry by Sophie Littlefield  (St. Martin's Minotaur)
◊ Black Water Rising by Attica Locke  (Harper)
◊ The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville  (Soho Crime)

Best British Novel:
◊ Awakening by S. J. Bolton  (Bantam Press)
◊ The Lovers by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)
◊ Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill (HarperCollins)
◊ If The Dead Not Rise by Philip Kerr (Quercus)
◊ Still Midnight by Denise Mina (Orion)
◊ Ignorance of Blood by Robert Wilson (HarperCollins)

Best Paperback Original:
◊ Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
◊ Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins (HardCase Crime)
◊ Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley  (Touchstone)
◊ The Weight of Silence by Heather Gutenkauf (Mira)
◊ Fatal Lies by Frank Tallis (Random House Mortalis)
◊ The Herring-Seller'S Apprentice by L. C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem)

Best Thriller:
◊ No Survivors by Tom Cain (Viking)
◊ Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Wm. Morrow)
◊ The Gray Man by Mark Greaney (Jove)
◊ Columbus by Derek Haas (Pegasus)
◊ House Secrets by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly)
◊ Walking Dead by Greg Rucka (Bantam)

Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade:
◊  The Guards by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
◊  The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
◊  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson  (Knopf)
◊  Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (Wm. Morrow)
◊  Still Life by Louise Penny (St. Martin's Minotaur)
◊  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin)

Best Short Story:
◊ "My Mother's Keeper" by Barbara Callahan (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine)
◊ "Erin's Journal" by David Dean (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine)
◊ "Real Men Die" by John H. Dirckx (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
◊ "The High House Writer" by Brendan DuBois (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)
◊ "A Hollywood Ending" by Melodie Johnson Howe (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine)
◊ "Hard Blows" (The Prosecution Rests) by Morley Swingle (Back Bay Books)

 indicates a review by Mysterious Reviews.