Mystery and Suspense Films, New This Week on DVD (120605)

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.

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Purchase/Rental Options

Safe House (2012)

Film Synopsis (from the studio): Denzel Washington stars as Tobin Frost, one of the CIA’s brilliant officers turned dangerous traitor, who stuns the intelligence community when he resurfaces in South Africa. While being interrogated in a safe house, brutal mercenaries attack, forcing rookie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) to take the infamous Frost on the run. As the masterful manipulator toys with his reluctant protégé, shaking the young operative’s morality and idealism, the two unlikely allies must fight together to uncover who wants them both dead.

Directed by David Espinosa from an original screenplay by David Guggenheim, the film runs 115 minutes and is rated R for strong violence throughout and some language.

Watch a trailer for the film below:

Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (120604)

Here is today's list of the top bestselling free Kindle mysteries, suspense novels 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 use this link to see the relevant page on Amazon.com.

Telemystery: Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, New Tricks, Pretty Little Liars, and White Collar, New This Week on DVD

Telemystery, your source for one of the most comprehensive listings of crime drama, amateur sleuth, private investigator, mystery and suspense television series, mini-series and made-for-television movies, now available on or coming soon to DVD or Blu-ray disc, is profiling five series being released this week.

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A new day breaks for Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) when he's reinstated by the CIA, but his good fortune is impossibly short-lived in this season of Burn Notice.

Framed for murder and blackmailed by a diabolical foe, Michael and his team must do whatever it takes to clear his name and catch a killer. As the danger builds, Michael finally comes face-to-face with the man who burned him, leading to an explosive finale, after which nothing will ever be the same.

Burn Notice: Season Five is available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes and consists of episodes that originally aired on USA Network during the Summer and late Fall of 2011. The sixth season premieres on June 15th.

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Mary McCormack stars as tough, smart and sexy U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon, who works for the Witness Protection Program in In Plain Sight. The witnesses she helps to relocate—whether they’re career criminals or innocent people who have witnessed a crime—all share one thing in common: somebody wants them dead.

Putting her life on the line as she relocates and protects both innocent people and ruthless criminals, Mary struggles to find a balance between work and her personal life. Hiding in plain sight was never so much fun.

In Plain Sight: Season Four is available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes and consists of episodes that originally aired on USA Network during the Summer of 2011.

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Aging cops and traditional sleuthing trump high-tech gadgets and modern criminology in the British crime series New Tricks.

James Bolam, Alun Armstrong, and Dennis Waterman star as three detectives pulled out of retirement to unravel cases that stumped the Metropolitan Police. Their beautiful boss, Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman), keeps them on track — and mostly out of trouble — as they follow their hunches and bend the rules.

New Tricks: Season Seven is available on DVD and consists of episodes that originally aired on BBC during the Fall of 2010.

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Based on the best-selling series of young adult books by Sara Shepard, Pretty Little Liars returns for a second suspenseful season.

As four 16-year-old girlfriends — Aria, Hanna, Spencer and Emily — dealt with the aftermath of their best friend Alison's mysterious death, they believed their secrets were safe forever. Yet they began to receive threatening messages from someone named "A" who seemed to know their most private details — threatening everything they held dear in their picturesque suburban community. Now, the girls are the talk of the town — and not in a good way. Whoever said that change is good has never visited Rosewood, PA … or come across four pretty little liars.

Pretty Little Liars: Season Two is available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes and consists of episodes that originally aired on ABC Family during the Summer of 2011 and Winter of 2012. The third season premieres tomorrow, June 5th.

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Matt Bomer is back as con man turned FBI consultant Neal Caffrey for another thrilling season of high-class capers and criminal intrigue in White Collar.

Racing to stay one step ahead of the feds even as he helps his partner, Agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), bring down some of the world's most clever criminals. The stakes are at an all-time high as Neal struggles to come to terms with his own checkered past, but will his greatest con cost him everything?

White Collar: Season Three is available on DVD, Amazon Instant, and iTunes and consists of episodes that originally aired on USA Network during the Summer of 2011 and Winter of 2012. The fourth season premieres on July 10th.

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Visit the Telemystery website to discover more television mystery series currently available on and coming soon to DVD, Blu-ray disc, or video on demand.

The Last Justice by Anthony J. Franze is Today's Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature The Last Justice by Anthony J. Franze 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.

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The Last Justice by Anthony J. Franze
Publisher: Sterling & Ross

We said of this debut legal thriller that "it's the action-packed storyline that will keep readers turning the pages, trying to anticipate how it will all come together in the end."

About The Last Justice (from the publisher): Chaos erupts at the Supreme Court when an assassin guns down six justices as they are hearing a case.

Solicitor General Jefferson McKenna, the government's top lawyer in the Supreme Court, is appointed to the multiagency commission investigating the murders. As Congress draws battle lines over who will replace the slain justices, the commission follows clue after clue, each one pointing to an unlikely suspect: McKenna himself.

In a desperate bid to prove his innocence, McKenna, on the run with his deputy, Kate Porter, must track down a disgraced law clerk with ties to hidden Saudi assets. But their search leads to unexpected alliances, unearthing dark secrets and corruption at the highest levels — and the people with clues to the riddle keep turning up dead. From the marble halls of the high court to the inner corridors of the West Wing, from the D.C. housing projects to the desolate back roads of a New York Indian reservation, McKenna and Porter are on a collision course with a shadowy enemy who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

Read our review of The Last Justice by Anthony J. Franze.

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.

Download Link(s):

Amazon Kindle Edition Download Link.

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

Mystery Godoku Puzzle for June 04, 2012

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!).

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This week's letters and mystery clue:

A D E G N O R S U

This adjective describes a lady in Martina Cole’s debut thriller, which was later adapted for a television mini-series (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!

Nominees for the 2012 Nero Wolfe Award Announced

The nominees for the 2012 Nero Award have been announced by The Wolfe Pack. The award is presented each year to an author for the best mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, with the winner anounced at the Black Orchid Banquet, traditionally held on the first Saturday in December in New York City.

The finalists are …

• Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark (Mulholland Books)
• The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen (Ballantine Books)
• The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (Mulholland Books)
• Spiral by Paul McEuen (The Dial Press)
• Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow (Minotaur Books)
• Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker (Akashic Books)

Winner of Inaugural Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award Announced

The winner of the inaugural Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award was announced last night at a banquet during the Bloody Words conference in Toronto.

And that winner is Gloria Ferris for her debut mystery Cheat the Hangman (Imajin Books).

Thanks to Caro Soles for tweeting the result!

The Mystery Bookshelf: The Celtic Conspiracy by Thore D. Hansen

The Mystery Bookshelf, where you can discover a world of mystery and suspense, is pleased to feature a new crime novel we recently received from the publisher.

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The Celtic Conspiracy by Thore D. Hansen
AmazonCrossing (Trade Paperback)
Publication Date: May 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1-61218-347-3

About The Celtic Conspiracy (from the publisher): In the final days of World War II, an Irish soldier discovers a cache of artifacts in an Austrian cave that threatens to expose long-buried secrets of the Catholic Church. Secrets that prove the Druids of Ireland did not die out; they were systematically exterminated in cold blood. However, the secret will stay buried within the walls of the soldier’s home for another fifty years before it is brought to light by his son, a modern-day proponent of the Druids’ enlightened, pacifist culture.

Armed with the evidence and the conviction to expose the Church’s conspiracy, the soldier’s son, a Supreme Court justice forms an unlikely alliance with a healer, a linguist and a Boston attorney to bring the Vatican to trial. As the action races from the corridors of the White House and the United States Supreme Court to Dublin’s halls of academia and the secretive back passages in Rome, the Church will stop at nothing to silence the voices of the past.

(Originally published in 2011 as Die Hand Gottes.)

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About the author: Thore D. Hansen, a Scandinavian born in Northern Germany in 1969, is a political journalist and communications consultant based in Germany and Austria. An avid student of both monotheistic and pagan religious history, he studied political science and sociology, doing research at MIT on US foreign affairs and international policy.

Purchase Options for The Celtic Conspiracy:

Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (120603)

Here is today's list of the top bestselling free Kindle mysteries, suspense novels 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 use this link to see the relevant page on Amazon.com.

Winner of the 2011 Hammett Prize Announced

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has announced that the winner of the 2011 Hammett Prize is The Killer is Dying by James Sallis. The author was presented with a bronze trophy at a ceremony during this weekend's Bloody Words conference in Toronto.

Jame Sallis's Driven "in the Movie Pipeline"

In an interview yesterday with The Independent, crime novelist James Sallis commented that a film adaptation of his new book Driven is in the movie pipeline. An adaptation of Drive, the first book by Sallis to feature an unnamed character simply known as "Driver", was released in 2011 starring Ryan Gosling.

"It was difficult not to visualize Ryan Gosling playing the role when I wrote the sequel," admits Sallis. "I think he really made the character his own. [Driver] is someone who doesn't really have much personality. You never really know him or his motives, however much backstory I give. In the film, Ryan Gosling's long looks with no expression on his face sums this state up perfectly."

We were among the few who weren't wildly enthusiastic about the film Drive, mostly taking exception not to Gosling's performance but to the whole story arc about his star-crossed relationship with Irene. (You can read Mr. E.'s review of Drive here.) In Driven, the storyline opens with the murder of his fiancée Elsa — we're not sure if this is the same character as in Drive or not — and Driver's need to track down her killer. We enjoyed this book quite a bit — you can read our review of Driven here — and, without a silly romantic element to weigh it down, believe it would make for a fine crime thriller film.

Murder by Magic by Lesley Cookman is Today's Second Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Murder by Magic by Lesley Cookman 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.

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Murder by Magic by Lesley Cookman
A Libby Sarjeant Mystery
Publisher: Accent Press

This tenth in the series is newly published in the UK this month. It won't be available in print until September in the US.

About Murder by Magic (from the publisher): Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran Wolfe are asked to look into the sudden and unexplained death of a devoted churchgoer. The police appear to have lost interest, but the villagers are certain that their new lady vicar has something to do with it! But if it is murder, how was it done? Could it be … magic?

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.

Download Link(s):

Amazon Kindle Edition Download Link.

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

The Death Contingency by Nancy Lynn Jarvis is Today's Featured Free MystereBook

MystereBooks is pleased to feature The Death Contingency by Nancy Lynn Jarvis 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.

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The Death Contingency by Nancy Lynn Jarvis
A Regan McHenry Mystery
Publisher: Good Read Mysteries

Santa Cruz real estate agent Regan McHenry is introduced in this first mystery (of four to date).

About The Death Contingency (from the publisher): Murder and mystery come to Santa Cruz and Bonny Doon. A seller disappears before signing the grant deed. He turns up dead; and his nephew, a realtor Regan has known for years, becomes a person of interest in his death. She's convinced the authorities focus is all wrong and sets out to prove it.

Then there's a second death in the neighborhood. When it's ruled accidental, Regan again finds herself at odds with the police. She thinks it's murder and even thinks she knows who the murderer is — but she has to unravel past secrets before anyone will take her seriously. And, the problem is — she doesn't want to be right.

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.

Download Link(s):

Amazon Kindle Edition Download Link.

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

He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond is Today's Barnes&Noble Nook Daily Find

MystereBooks is pleased to feature He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond as today's Barnes&Noble Nook Daily Find. The deal price of $2.99 is valid only for today, Sunday, June 03, 2012.

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He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond
Publisher: Melville International

Derek Raymond was a pseudonym used by Robert Cook, who also published under the name Robin Cook. This is the first mystery in the "Factory" series, narrated by an unnamed detective sergeant at the London Metropolitan Police's Department of Unexplained Deaths, also known as A14.

About He Died with His Eyes Open (from the publisher): Murders are a dime a dozen in Margaret Thatcher's London, and when it comes to the brutal killing of a middle-aged alcoholic found dumped outside of town, Scotland Yard has more important cases to deal with.

Instead it's a job for the Department of Unexplained Deaths and its head Detective Sergeant. With only a box of cassette-tape diaries as evidence the rogue detective has no choice but to listen to the haunting voice of the victim for clues to his gruesome end.

Important Note: Barnes&Noble updates its Nook Daily Find every day at approximately midnight PT. The title referenced above is available at a discounted price for Sunday, June 03, 2012 only.

Download Link(s):

B&N Nook Daily Find.

Amazon Kindle Price Match (today only).

Cypress Grove by James Sallis is Today's Amazon Kindle Daily Deal

MystereBooks is pleased to feature Cypress Grove by James Sallis as today's Amazon Kindle Daily Deal. The deal price of $1.99 is valid only for today, Sunday, June 03, 2012.

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Cypress Grove by James Sallis
Publisher: Walker Books

About Cypress Grove (from the publisher): The small town where Turner has moved is one of America's lost places, halfway between Memphis and forever. That makes it a perfect hideaway: a place where a man can bury the past and escape the pain of human contact, where you are left alone unless you want company, where conversation only happens when there's something to say, where you can sit and watch an owl fly silently across the face of the moon. And where Turner hopes to forget that he has been a cop, a psychotherapist, and, always, an ex-con.

There is no major crime to speak of until Sheriff Lonnie Bates arrives on Turner's porch with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a problem: The body of a drifter has been found—brutally and ritualistically— murdered and Bates and his deputy need help from someone with big-city experience who appreciates the delicacy of investigating people in a small town. Thrust back into the middle of what he left behind, Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.

Important Note: Amazon.com updates its Kindle book deal every day at approximately midnight PT. The title referenced above is available at a discounted price for Sunday, June 03, 2012 only.

Download Link(s):

Amazon Kindle Daily Deal.