Finalists for the 2011 Canadian Children's Book Centre Awards Announced

The finalists for the 2011 Canadian Children's Book Centre Awards have been announced, including the new category for the John Spray Mystery Award. The winners of the English-language awards will be announced at an invitation-only gala event at The Carlu in Toronto on October 4th, 2011.

The finalists in the mystery category are ...

◊ Borderline by Allan Stratton (HarperTrophy), Non-Series.

◊ Dead Bird Through the Cat Door by Jan Markley (Gumboot Books), a Megabyte Mystery.

◊ The Mystery of the Cyber Bully by Marty Chan (Thistledown Press), a Marty Chan Mystery.

◊ A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee (Candlewick Press), a Mary Quinn Agency Mystery.

◊ Victim Rights by Norah McClintock (Red Deer Press), a Ryan Dooley Mystery.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

OMN Welcomes Barry S. Brown, Author of the Mrs. Hudson Mysteries

Omnimystery News is pleased to welcome Barry S. Brown, whose second mystery to feature Sherlock Holmes's landlady, Mrs. Hudson and the Irish Invincibles (Sunstone Press, May 2011 Trade Paperback, 978-0-86534-819-6), has just been published.

Today Barry asks us, how much do we really know about Mrs. Hudson?

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It is 1881. Victoria rules the British Empire while the domains of nearly all other women extend only to the limits of their kitchens. To make her way in a world that extends beyond cooking and cleaning, a woman needs extraordinary skills and a fool-proof plan. Mrs. Hudson possesses both.

For 29 years she and her "uncommon common constable" husband, Tobias Hudson, spent evenings together planning the steps needed to solve the most complex crime they could find in that day’s news. Days she went to the Reading Room of the British Museum to request such works as Rokitansky’s Treatise of Pathological Anatomy from clerks who scoured the paper the next day for news of a horrendous crime perpetrated by the stub of a woman they had served the day before. All the while she honed skills at inferring mood and background from observation of the behavior and characteristics of people she met or simply passed on the street. When Tobias died she was prepared to open the first of its kind consulting detective agency as tribute to him and to fill the hours made empty by his death. And that was where her fool-proof plan came into play.

Employing the lodgings she and Tobias had leased years before, she advertised "rooms to let, good location, applicant should possess an inquiring mind and a curiosity about human behavior." Of the applicants she interviewed, a tall slender chemist appeared the best of the lot. Sherlock Holmes had a high forehead suggesting intellect and a haughty self-assurance she believed would encourage the confidence of others. He claimed skills in boxing and fencing and, while she doubted there would be a significant role for swordplay, she thought the ability to mix with the toughs they would inevitably encounter could prove useful. Importantly, he brought with him the level-headed Dr. John Watson to whom Mrs. Hudson took immediately.

Knowing these events, and convinced therefore that the great lady had been done irreparable harm by Watson’s accounts, I set forth to re-write and to right the record of Mrs. Hudson’s achievements. The result of those labors was The Unpleasantness at Parkerton Manor, published about a year ago by Sunstone Press.

However, there was a surprise to come after being published and the month-long bacchanal following that event. I discovered to my dismay there was a virtual army of those still writing and still claiming Sherlock Holmes to be the sage of 221B. I had, of course, known of Laurie King, but assumed that Ms. King would move gracefully aside as Mrs. Hudson came on the scene. (To date Ms. King hasn’t seen fit to budge.) Quite simply, I had no idea of all the other writers comfortably enmeshed in 19th and early 20th century London and eager to lead Holmes and Watson yet again through its streets and alleys before returning them in triumph to their sitting room in Baker Street for a quiet pipe or two. Stunned by the crowd of true believers surrounding me, I took comfort from the words of the reviewer for The District Messenger, Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, who reported that I "was the first to suggest that [Mrs. Hudson] was the true detective genius at 221B Baker Street," and further describing her as "a likeable character, ... and disconcertingly credible." The reviewer goes on to describe the adventures I recount as "a gloriously complex and improbable scenario" no doubt inserting the word "improbable" to placate the inevitable diehards who refuse to relinquish their view of Sherlock Holmes.

Nonetheless, I was sufficiently heartened to write a second Mrs. Hudson, the recently published Mrs. Hudson and the Irish Invincibles, leading my publisher to declare the two books the Mrs. Hudson of Baker Street mystery series while others have described them as two books. As in the first of the two, historical characters and events are woven into the story to assure the reader of the accuracy of my reporting.

And so I remain adamant that Mrs. Hudson be given her due, allowing others to champion the investigative skills of the young Holmes and the old Holmes, and of the single Holmes and the married Holmes. We are joined only in paying equal tribute to the country doctor who sold all rights to his first book, A Study in Scarlet, for £25 and received that only after suffering the rejections of the numerous publishers certain that his work would never find a readership.

— ◊ —

When not busy unmasking Sherlock Holmes, Barry S. Brown is engaged in research into social problems in a career that has led to work in mental hospitals, prisons, and drug abuse treatment agencies. He has published two books of non-fiction and more than 100 papers and chapters based on that work. He now lives with his wife, Ann, in North Carolina, a safe distance from the mayhem of Victorian London.

— ◊ —

About Mrs. Hudson and the Irish Invincibles: When Moira Keegan tries to recruit Sherlock Holmes to save her father's life, Holmes, Watson and Mrs. Hudson do their best to convince the 12-year old that she has misunderstood her father's situation. When, a short time later, they read that Moira's father was found dead in a sleazy waterfront inn, the members of London's premier consulting detective agency have a new client and a singular purpose. In this, the second in the Mrs. Hudson of Baker Street series, the part-time housekeeper and full-time sage of 221B will lead her colleagues in a quest for justice that will put them at odds with Scotland Yard, Irish revolutionaries, religious zealots, and even the London Times. Before Mrs. Hudson can bring everything to right she will need to enlist the assistance of Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and his mistress Katharine O'Shea.

Mrs. Hudson and the Irish Invincibles is available as a Trade Paperback.

Three Canadian Crime Novelists Have Their Books Optioned for TV

The works of three Canadian crime novelists have been optioned for television by Bell Media, which owns CTV.

The authors are: William Deverell, whose legal thrillers with a comic twist feature retired lawyer Arthur Beauchamp; Giles Blunt, whose series character is detective John Cardinal; and former criminal defense attorney Robert Rotenberg, who has just published his second stand-alone.

Deverell was the winner of the 1997 Hammett Award for Trial of Passion, while Blunt has been honored with the 2001 CWA Silver Dagger Award for Forty Words of Sorrow and the Arthur Ellis Award in 2004 for The Delicate Storm. Blunt intends to adapt his own novels for television.

"These projects exemplify our commitment to developing great Canadian programming. And we are equally delighted to be working with terrific Canadian screenwriters to adapt these novels and bring them to the screen," said Corrie Coe, senior vice-president of independent production for Bell Media, in a press release.

With the borders between local programming blurring all the more with international video on demand and the like, it's possible that fans of crime dramas here in the US will be able to enjoy these adaptations at some point in the future.

(Source: National Post.)

Review: Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson

Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson. A Walt Longmire Mystery. Viking Hardcover, June 2011.

This is not a typical crime novel, with the Wyoming Sheriff, in pursuit of an escaped killer through mountainous territory during a particularly brutal snowstorm, alone most of the time and, in a twist for a series-based thriller, being the source of much of the suspense.

Read the full text of our review at Mysterious Reviews: Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson.

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Read the first chapter(s) of Hell Is Empty below. Use the Aa settings button to adjust text size, line spacing, and word density.

Another Studio Tries to Bring Harlan Coben's Tell No One to US Theaters

Last summer we posted about a studio project to create an English-language film adaptation of Harlan Coben's thriller Tell No One. (The book has already been adapted as the 2006 French film Ne le dis a personne.)

Now we're learning that the project has taken yet another turn, this time with Ben Affleck attached to direct a screenplay by Chris Terrio for Warner Bros. (Somewhat oddly, Deadline|New York seems to imply that this would be a remake of the French film, not an English language adaptation of the book. It may be a subtle difference, but it seems to be a distinction worth mentioning.)

The book was originally published in 2002 and apparently has been in the hands of several studios since then. It is a stand-alone — Coben is also the author of the Myron Bolitar mystery series — and involves a man, David Beck, whose wife was kidnapped and murdered ... or was she? A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible — that somewhere, somehow, she is alive. Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope. But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret — and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.

(Source: Deadline|New York.)

Watch a Preview of the Fifth Season Opener of Burn Notice

Burn Notice returns for a fifth season on June 23rd, but you can get a preview of the season opener below.

The USA Network crime drama stars Jeffrey Donovan as "burned" spy Michael Westen, who at the end of last season came "in from the cold" (as it were). But is everything as it seems? In an episode titled "Company Man", Westen is now working alongside his old agency to bring down the people who burned him ... and follows a trail that leads them to the heart of Venezuela.

Burn Notice also stars Gabrielle Anwar as Westen's ex-girlfriend and Bruce Campbell as his buddy Sam Axe.

(Source: AOL-TV.)

The Fear Index, a Financial Thriller by Robert Harris, Optioned for Film

Robert Harris's yet-to-be-published financial thriller, The Fear Index, has been optioned for film by Fox 2000.

The title refers to the VIX, the ticker symbol for the Volatility Index that measures implied volatility of the S&P 500; it is also commonly referred to as the "fear index".

The book is set entirely over the course of a single day. Dr. Max Hoffman is a legend, a physicist once employed on the Large Hadron Collider, who now uses a revolutionary and highly secret system of computer algorithms to trade on the world's financial markets. None of his rivals is sure how he does it, but somehow Hoffman's hedge fund -- built around the standard measure of market volatility, the VIX -- generates astonishing returns for his investors.

Late one night, in his house beside Lake Geneva, an intruder disturbs Hoffman and his wife while they are asleep. Over the next few hours, as the markets edge towards another great crash, Hoffman's world disintegrates. But who is trying to destroy him?

The Fear Index is being published in September 2011 by Hutchinson in the UK, and in January 2012 by Knopf in the US.

(Source: Deadline|New York.)

The Watchman by Robert Crais is Today's Featured Free Nook Book Mystery

MystereBooks is pleased to feature a mystery title that is currently available as a Nook Book for free from Barnes&Noble. We don't know how long it will be offered at this special price (typically only until a certain number of downloads have been completed), so download it today!

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The Watchman by Robert Crais
A Joe Pike Mystery (1st in series)
Simon & Schuster (Nook Book)
Download Link

About The Watchman (from the publisher): When the U. S. Marshals and the finest private security firm that money can buy can't protect Larkin Conner Barkley from the men who want her dead, her wealthy family hires the one man money can't buy to protect their daughter - Joe Pike. Joe owes a bad man a favor, and the favor is to protect Larkin, a spoiled, self-centered, rich girl who happens to be a federal witness in a case the feds are putting together to bust a crime cartel linking organized mobsters and West Coast industrialists. And when Pike learns that the man he'll be working for is one of his oldest and most trusted friends - his former LAPD training officer, Bud Flynn - Pike signs on and commits himself to protecting the girl's life.

But Pike and the girl immediately come under intense fire, and Pike realizes that someone is leaking information that could get them both killed. Turning to his friend Elvis Cole for help, Pike's investigation soon reveals a web of lies and deceptions, half-truths and betrayals, and the stunning revelation that even the cops are not who they seem.

Read our Review of The Watchman by Robert Crais at Mysterious Reviews.

New Carina eBook Mysteries for June 2011

Each month, Omnimystery News is pleased to present new mystery and suspense titles from Carina Press, an ebook only publisher. Links are provided to purchase the ebook from, where available, Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, Kobo Books, or the Apple iBookstore; click on the banner to the right to be taken to the CarinaPress.com website to browse for other titles.

New ebooks of mystery and suspense for June 2011 from Carina Press include:

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No One To Trust by Julie Moffett
A Lexi Carmichael Mystery

SWFG: Single, White, Female, Geek.

That's me, Lexi Carmichael, a reformed hacker who was gainfully employed by the National Security Agency. But a series of extraordinary events led me to leave government life behind for a fresh start with a brand-new company and an incredibly sexy boss, Finn Shaughnessy. It may not be kosher to have the hots for your boss, but he seems to have the hots for me, too. If only things didn't get so complicated ...

Darren Greening, a genius researcher from Flow Technologies (our first client!) is missing, and his bosses think I'm involved. And they aren't the only ones—the man who nearly snapped my neck in the parking garage thinks so, too.

Now I'm caught in the middle of a complex and dangerous case. I'll have to use all my geek skills and a little help from my friends to solve the mystery of Darren's disappearance before Neck-Snapping-Man makes a return visit ...

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The First Victim by J. B. Lynn
Non-series

She was like all the other victims. Naked, flawed, helpless ...

Fifteen years ago, Emily Wright barely escaped from a serial killer dubbed the Baby Doll Strangler. She wants nothing to do with the small town where she was abducted, but when her father is hospitalized she reluctantly returns home to care for her teenage sister.

When her sister's friend is killed and left in front of Emily's house, Emily begins to relive the nightmare she endured long ago. Soon she realizes that her sister, too, is in danger from the killer—and the only person who can help is the man Emily left behind: Deputy Bailey O'Neil. Together, Emily and Bailey must discover the killer's identity before he claims his next victim ...

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Carina Press, a division of Harlequin, is a digital-first publisher offering ebooks in a variety of genres, including mystery. eBooks from Carina can be read on the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, B&N Nook, Kobo eReader BlackBerry and mobile phones.

For more mystery, suspense and thriller ebooks, visit MystereBooks.com.

Teaser Trailer for the Fourth Season of Damages

DirecTV has posted a teaser trailer for the fourth season of the legal thriller Damages, which will air exclusively on the satellite provider starting July 13th, 2011. We've embedded the video below.

Glenn Close and Rose Byrne return as attorneys Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons, this season working on "a wrongful-death suit filed against a military contractor over something that happened in a war zone." John Goodman will play the contractor's CEO, who becomes the defendent in the case.

OMN Welcomes Clark Lohr, Author of the Crime Novel Devil's Kitchen

Omnimystery News is pleased to welcome Clark Lohr, whose debut mystery, Devil's Kitchen (Dark Oak Mysteries, June 2011 Trade Paperback, 978-1-61009-012-4), introduces Arizona detective Manual Aguilar.

Today, Clark writes about the border environment in which he has set his book.

— ◊ —

Photo provided courtesy of
Clark Lohr

Manuel Aguilar, my detective hero in Devil’s Kitchen, is, ethnically, what is sometimes called a Mexican-American — a misnomer, considering that most of his ancestors have lived in Arizona, not Mexico, far longer than any Anglo-American. Aguilar would not care to be singled out for his ethnicity, nor does he spend any time worrying about it. He is a middle-class person. He thinks like the American detective that he is — and yet he has a disowned part of his psyche into which only Reina, his passionate, intuitive lover, can guide him.

Manuel Aguilar’s story begins with what he thinks is a routine murder investigation, a human head found in a Pima County landfill. This investigation will lead Manuel Aguilar to the doorsteps of powerful men, lords of the border, who expand their fortunes and protect themselves from consequences by purchasing politicians and police, enslaving other human beings, and destroying those who oppose them.

I began the process of writing Devil’s Kitchen after reading about a human head found in a Pima County landfill, left there by a killer who hoped to get the victim’s retirement checks. A decapitation — an unusual news story at the time. Not now, though. Not in the 21st Century world of the US-Mexico border, where, on the Mexican border and in Mexico itself, there have been some 40,000 drug related murders over a five year period. Mutilations accompanied many of these murders.

In fiction, Place is Character and the Arizona-Mexico borderlands answer to that dictum. Southern Arizona is a landscape of deserts and mountains and it is famous for the Saguaro Cactus. In southwestern Arizona, where elevations go below 1,000 feet, the ground temperature can hit 130 degrees in summer. In south-central and southeastern Arizona, mountain ranges called Sky Islands rise 10,000 feet above the hostile desert floor and are so isolated from each other that animal species, unique to only one sky island, sometimes appear. If you live in an Arizona city like Tucson or Phoenix, you may never know any of this — but you will know the crime that moves from these borderlands to your cities.

In the totality of this environment, we have a war. Casualties include not just US law enforcement officers and drug and human smugglers, but so-called “crossers”, people walking into the US to get work. The Coalicion de Derechos Humanos currently lists over 2,192 “recovered remains” found in the Arizona borderlands since the year 2000. Robert Krentz, whose family has ranched the borderlands for a hundred years, was a recent American victim, shot on his own land by an unknown person. The killer’s tracks led into Mexico. Opinions vary about who is to blame for this war. Either way, it’s brutal, Americans are largely unaware of it, and there’s no end in sight.

This is the milieu in which my heroes operate. Manny Aguilar, the detective; Reina, a whip smart, wisecracking paralegal; Jeff Goldman, a ponytailed criminal defense attorney whose cynical manner belies his outrage at corruption and injustice; and Johnny Oaks, a Cherokee private investigator who knows his way around a sniper rifle. Together, they take on the bad guys, unravel a complex conspiracy, and ride to a border showdown in Arizona’s remote Skeleton Canyon.

 — ◊ — 

Clark Lohr comes from a Montana farm and ranch background. He attended a one-room school through the eighth grade. Most of his friends were old men who told good stories. He is a Vietnam vet and a member of Veterans for Peace. Lohr has drifted considerably in his life, working a variety of dead end jobs. He has traveled in Asia, Europe and Central America, and is trained as a photographer.

 — ◊ — 

About Devil's Kitchen: Pima County Sheriff's Detective Manuel Aguilar investigates an apparently routine murder and soon finds himself in the middle of a hellish conspiracy spanning both sides of the border.

Devil's Kitchen is published as a Trade Paperback.

Tom Cruise to Play Jack Reacher?

We typically don't report on what might happen in Hollywood; after all, what is confirmed so frequently changes that it's hard to keep up!

Still, this bit of potential (emphasize potential) casting news has us intrigued.

Tom Cruise may play the role of Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of Lee Child's One Shot, the fifth thriller to feature the ex-military investigator. Noting that Cruise is nothing physically like the man depicted in the books, Child said, when supporting the actor for the role, "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way."

Christopher McQuarrie is on board to direct his own screenplay adaptation, which is set to film in Pittsburgh.

About One Shot: Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me.

And sure enough, Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter — a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right — and soon the slam-dunk case explodes.

Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning — and then beat him shot for shot.

(Source: Deadline|New York.)

Telemystery: Pretty Little Liars Returns for a Second Season Tuesday, June 14th on ABC Family

Also premiering tomorrow, Tuesday June 14th, is the second season of Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family (8 PM ET/PT).

Rosewood is such a perfect little town that you'd never guess it holds so many secrets. Some of the ugliest ones belong to the prettiest girls in town — Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily — four estranged friends whose darkest secrets are about to unravel.

One year ago, their friend Alison disappeared and the girls swore they'd never tell what really happened that night. They thought their secrets would bond them together, but just the opposite happened. Then again, who's to say what the truth is in Rosewood. It seems everyone in town is lying about something.

Now, as the mystery surrounding Alison's disappearance resurfaces, the girls are getting messages from "A," saying — and threatening — things only Alison would know. But it couldn't be Alison. Could it? Whoever it is, they seem to know all the girls' secrets, and seem to be watching their every move. The girls are friends again, but will they be there for each other if their dark secrets come to light?

In the second season opener, titled "It's Alive", Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer have a lot of explaining to do when Spencer's brother-in-law Ian goes missing and the entire town of Rosewood is questioning what exactly happened the night before at the church. But with the police and their parents not quite sure what to believe, the girls' parents rally together to try and help the four out with the assistance of a therapist. Now being forced to talk out their problems, Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer feel more alone than ever. Even with a reassurance that everything they discuss won't leave the therapist's office, is this the person the Liars can finally tell about "A?"

Telemystery: Second Season of Memphis Beat Premieres Tuesday, June 14th, on TNT

The second season of Memphis Beat premieres tomorrow, Tuesday June 14th, on TNT.

Jason Lee stars as Memphis police detective Dwight Hendricks, a southern gentleman who is protective of his fellow citizens, reverential of the city's history, and deeply rooted in its blues music scene.

In the second-season opener, titled "At the River", the squad is plunged into a case involving the death of an admired police officer who may have been involved with a white supremacist group. The case hits home for Dwight, who relates to the son of the officer left behind. It also introduces Dwight to Claire Ryan (guest star Beau Garrett), a tough investigator from Internal Affairs. Meanwhile, Lt. Tanya Rice (Alfre Woodard) starts riding Charlie "Whitehead" White (Sam Hennings) about taking the lieutenant's exam, but her reasons for wanting him to pass aren't exactly a vote of confidence.

Watch a recap of the first season below.

AMC Renews The Killing for a Second Season

With just one episode remaining in its stellar first season, AMC has -- finally -- renewed its murder mystery series The Killing for a second season.

The series, based on the Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen, which is producing its third season, stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman as Seattle homicide detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl.

"The suspense of the investigation in each episode, and the emotional intensity of the characters over the season give this show a visceral quality that makes for incredibly powerful television," said Joel Stillerman, AMC Senior Vice-President of Original Programming, Production and Digital Content. "A lot of loyal fans made a huge investment in this show this season, and we are thrilled to be able to bring it back next season for all involved."

The Killing airs its thrilling conclusion this coming Sunday, June 19th, on AMC.

(Source: The Hollywood Reporter.)