TNT announced today that Rizzoli & Isles has been renewed for a 15-episode fourth season.
"Rizzoli & Isles has proven itself to be a strong and enduring hit, not only in terms of the great storylines and performances, but also in terms of the show's stellar ratings," said Michael Wright, head of programming for TNT. "We're thrilled that Rizzoli & Isles will continue to be a vital part of the TNT lineup."
Based on characters created by crime novelist Tess Gerritsen, the series stars Angie Harmon as Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Alexander as medical examiner Maura Isles.
Rizzoli & Isles is currently airing on Tuesdays on TNT.
Friday, June 29, 2012
TNT Renews Rizzoli & Isles for a 4th Season
Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (120629)
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.
French Political Thriller Les Hommes de l'Ombre being Adapted for US Television
Endemol Studios is adapting the French political thriller Les Hommes de l'Ombre ("The Men of Shadows" or maybe "The Shadow Men") for US television under the working title of Kingmakers. The 6-episode series aired earlier this year on France 2, with a second season having already been commissioned.
The storyline follows the aftermath of the assassination of the President of France. An early election is scheduled, and two men are vying for the position. But the key roles are the men behind the men, the "shadow men", who will do anything to get their respective candidate elected.
"Les Hommes de l'Ombre offers a unique and ambitious format to develop a relevant, timeless and compelling American drama with original characters that bring the audience behind the scenes of high-stakes politics, starting with a presidential political campaign," said Endemol's CEO Philippe Maigret.
Death Before Facebook by Julie Smith is Today's Fourth Featured Free MystereBook
MystereBooks is pleased to feature Death Before Facebook by Julie Smith as today's fourth free mystery ebook.
This title was listed as free as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.
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Death Before Facebook by Julie Smith
A Skip Langdon Mystery
Publisher: booksBnimble
Originally published in 1994 as New Orleans Beat, the author has renamed this fourth in series to the present title.
About Death Before Facebook (from the publisher): An unclassified death on the coroner's daily record is nothing special: a healthy young man found dead after an apparent fall from a ladder. Yet in a neglected old house set inside a jungle of greenery, Detective Skip Langdon listens to an unusually listless mother talk about her son's death and his empty life … and wonders. It seems the shy thirty-one-year-old victim, Geoff Kavanagh, was a computer genius who often frequented the TOWN, a computer network of some 10,000 faceless voices. Within this extraordinary community, strangers achieve an odd type of intimacy, sharing the darkest of secrets.
Skip learns that Geoff confessed his own deep secret: he saw his father murdered. Now the TOWN believes Geoff, too, was murdered--and Skip must follow the electronic trail of a killer …
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):
For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.
Inadvertent Disclosure by Melissa F. Miller is Today's Third Featured Free MystereBook
MystereBooks is pleased to feature Inadvertent Disclosure by Melissa F. Miller as today's third free mystery ebook.
This title was listed as free as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.
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Inadvertent Disclosure by Melissa F. Miller
A Sasha McCandless Mystery
Publisher: Brown Street Books
Tiny dynamo Sasha McCandless returns in this second mystery of the series.
About Inadvertent Disclosure (from the publisher): It's been six months since an airplane crash altered the course of attorney Sasha McCandless's professional and personal life. She's busy building her solo law practice and tending her budding relationship with federal air marshal Leo Connelly, who helped her stop a madman. When Sasha drives from Pittsburgh to rural Clear Brook County to argue a run-of-the-mill discovery motion, she finds a town bitterly divided over the issue of hydrofracking the Marcellus Shale beneath it. Outsiders from the oil and gas industry and environmental activists threaten to rip apart the fabric of the small town. Then the town's only judge is murdered, and Sasha can't just walk away. But, as she works to find the killer, she must race to save the town before it fractures beyond repair.
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):
For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.
Crooked Man by Tony Dunbar is Today's Second Featured Free MystereBook
MystereBooks is pleased to feature Crooked Man by Tony Dunbar 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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Crooked Man by Tony Dunbar
A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery
Publisher: booksBnimble
This first in series was originally published in 1994 by Putnam.
About Crooked Man (from the publisher): A simple man with a refined palate, maverick New Orleans lawyer Tubby Dubonnet has a penchant for fishing, Old Fashioneds, off-track betting, and fighting evil while passing a good time.
His clients are all renegades from the asylum, including a transvestite entertainer with curious medical issues, a buxom deadbeat blonde, a doctor who refers his own patients to a malpractice lawyer, and the driver of a Mardi Gras float shaped like a giant crawfish pot. He also has his hands full with an ex-wife and three teenage daughters, who are experts in the art of wrapping Tubby around their little fingers. And somehow, between work and family, Tubby finds time to sample the highs and lows of idiosyncratic Crescent City cuisine, from trout meuniere amandine and French roast coffee with chicory to shrimp po-boys and homemade pecan pralines.
Tubby is asked to take on a new client: Darryl Alvarez, the manager of a local nightclub, who has been caught unloading fifteen bales of marijuana from a shrimp boat. At their first meeting, Darryl entrusts Tubby with an ordinary-looking blue gym bag. But when Darryl is later found shot at the nightclub, Tubby realizes he must tighten his grasp on the gym bag — and its million-dollar contents.
Tubby can't just give up the cash. But if he gets caught, he'll be in jail. And if the wrong people catch him, he'll wish he was.
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):
For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.
Snipe Hunt by Sarah R. Shaber is Today's Featured Free MystereBook
MystereBooks is pleased to feature Snipe Hunt by Sarah R. Shaber 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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Snipe Hunt by Sarah R. Shaber
A Simon Shaw Mystery
Publisher: Minotaur Books / Sarah R. Shaber
The discovery of an old corpse dredges up the past for a small town with a lot to hide in this second mystery of the series.
About Snipe Hunt (from the publisher): Professor Simon Shaw wants nothing more than to spend a peaceful Thanksgiving with friends, staying in Pearlie Beach, a small town on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But even has the turkey roasts, he finds himself embroiled in a fifty-year-old mystery of strange disappearances, suspicious deaths, and treasures lost and found.
The holiday disruption begins with the body of a local man is dredged from the waters of Pearlie Beach. In his hand, several rare Confederate coins; in his decaying ribs, the sharp blade of a knife. Soon Simon, aided by Julia McGloughlin, a mesmerizing police attorney, discovers that secrets in this small town run as deep as the waterways that surround it.
Simon knows that finding another cache of coins is about as likely as getting the guarded residents of Pearlie Beach to talk. But he also knows that if he doesn't continue to investigate, a decades-old murder will remain unsolved — and another may be close at hand …
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):
For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.
Mystery Bestsellers for the Week Ending June 29, 2012
A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending June 29th, 2012 has been posted by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.
The stand-alone thriller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn again tops the bestseller list, and again by a slim margin over the spy thriller Mission to Paris by Alan Furst.
Otherwise it was a quiet week, with some shuffling of titles but no new books entering our list. We actually track the top 40 books, publishing only the top 15, and there isn't a new title among them. We expect next week, which includes the 4th of July, to be quiet as well.
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For more mystery books news, 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.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
US Trailer for Looper
"The only thing to fear … is yourself."
You might not think you want to see the time travel crime thriller Looper, but after watching this trailer, you might change your mind.
Yesterday we had the first UK trailer for the film, and today we have the US version — which is far superior in terms of story-telling and visuals.
At some point in the future, time travel will be invented — but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a "looper" — a hired gun like Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good … until the day the mob decides to "close the loop", sending back Joe's future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination.
Directed by Rian Johnson from his own original screenplay, Looper opens in theaters September 28th, 2012.
This Week's Bestselling Mystery and Suspense Television and Film Blu-ray Discs (120628)
Here is this week's list of the top bestselling mystery and suspense television and film Blu-ray discs available from Amazon.com.
We're using a script to embed an RSS feed from Amazon.com, which is frequently updated, 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.
Rehearsal for Murder, Free to Watch on OpenFlix
For the past two weeks we've featured free mystery movies available from Hulu. This week we're moving over to the OpenFlix channel on YouTube, which also has a large selection of free titles to watch … albeit with oddly placed ads, which you can skip through after a few seconds.
This week's title: Rehearsal for Murder.
We sometimes use the term "movie-of-the-week" in a rather less than flattering manner, but there really are some terrific made-for-television movies out there. With respect to mystery movies, one clue as to whether or not you should consider it is if Richard Levinson and William Link's names are associated with it. They co-created and/or co-produced some create mystery television: Columbo; Murder, She Wrote; Ellery Queen; Mannix; Blacke's Magic. In 1979, the Levinson and Link received a special Edgar Award in recognition of their work on Columbo and Ellery Queen … and that's in addition to the regular Edgars they received over the years for screenplays, one of which was for, you guessed it, Rehearsal for Murder (in 1983).
Playwright Alex Dennison (Robert Preston) is on the verge of marrying glamorous film star Monica Wells (Lynn Redgrave). But a scant few hours after her Broadway debut, Redgrave is found dead, an apparent suicide. Convinced that Redgrave was murdered, Preston contacts the most likely suspects and assembles them in an empty theatre, ostensibly to read through his latest play. But Preston locks the doors and uses his play as a means to, in the words of Hamlet, "catch the conscience" of the killer.
Rehearsal for Murder is not rated, but is comparable to TV-13. The film is also available on DVD.
Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (120628)
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.
Review: Last Will by Liza Marklund
We've just published our Review of Last Will by Liza Marklund. An Annika Bengtzon Mystery. Atria Books Hardcover, April 2012.
Our rating:
Available to purchase from …
Please Welcome Author Kathleen Kaska
We are delighted to welcome Kathleen Kaska as our guest blogger.
Kathleen writes both fiction and non-fiction, the "Sydney Lockhart" mysteries and a series of trivia books collectively titled "Triviography and Quiz Books", respectively.
Today she is sharing with us some of the stories from her The Alfred Hitchcock Triviography and Quiz Book (LL-Publications, May 2012 trade paperback and ebook editions). All three books in the series are shown below … and our readers can enter to win a copy of one of them! Details at the end of this post.
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To entertain his guests at cocktail parties, Alfred Hitchcock would sometimes paint a sailor's face on his stomach and draw a circle around his navel to represent the sailor's mouth. Then he would whistle a jaunty tune and shake his belly, making it appear as if the sailor was whistling.
Photo provided courtesy of
Kathleen Kaska
Surprised? That's okay. Most people remember Alfred Hitchcock as a shy, serious figure who directed and produced suspense films. But a few people knew that Hitch was a practical joker. He was infamous among the Hollywood crowd for his behind-the-scenes pranks. After the filming of his 1928 movie, The Farmer's Wife, which contained a dinner party scene wherein the farmer's guests are served by a boisterous butler, Hitchcock invited the entire cast and crew to an upscale West End restaurant to celebrate the film's conclusion. Unbeknownst to his guests, he instructed the waiters to be rude and insulting, mimicking the scene in the movie. Reportedly, they did not appreciate the joke as much as he did.
During the filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 version), Peter Lorre, who played the part of the kidnapper, complained to Hitchcock that the studio had ruined one of his best suits. Hitchcock told Lorre he was acting childish; and to emphasis his point, Hitch ordered Lorre a replacement suit, but it was tailored to fit an infant. Lorre was miffed, but not enough to turn Hitch down when the director offered the actor a part in The Secret Agent two years later.
So Hitchcock's sense of humor was not always appreciated. Moreover, it often leaned toward the sadistic. One time, after a day of filming, Hitchcock bet his prop man, Rodney Ackland, a week's salary that he could not spend that night alone in the dark, deserted studio. Ackland took the bet. He should have been suspicious when Hitchcock offered to help Ackland win the bet by handcuffing him to the camera. And even more suspicious when Hitchcock left a glass of brandy for Ackland in case he needed to steady his nerves. What Ackland didn't know was that the brandy had been laced with a strong laxative. The next morning the entire crew arrived at a messy scene, starring one angry and humiliated colleague.
While filming Rich and Strange (1932), Elsie Randolph complained about Hitch's cigarette smoking, a habit she detested. The next day, Randolph was instructed to sit in a phone booth so Hitchcock could shoot an extra scene. She didn't know was that the booth had been rigged. As the door closed, it locked. Cigarette smoke began to fill the booth. By the time the actress was rescued, she had nearly collapsed.
Even Patricia Hitchcock, his only child, was not immune to her father's antics. She fell victim to one of his jokes while on a carnival set during the filming of Strangers on a Train, in which Patricia had a minor role. Hitchcock had arranged for her to ride a Ferris wheel alone at night. When she reached the top, he ordered the operator to stop the wheel and turn off the lights. Not until she became hysterical, was she was brought down.
It is rumored that before Hitchcock's death in 1980, he requested the following epitaph on this gravestone: "This is What We Do To Bad Little Boys." But don't bother searching for his grave because the Master of Suspense was cremated. Imagine the fun he'd have with that one.
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When she is not writing, Kathleen spends much of her time traveling the backroads and byways around the country, looking for new venues for her mysteries and bird watching along the Texas coast and beyond. It was her passion for birds that led to writing The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane, a true story set in the 1940s and 50s about Audubon ornithologist Robert Porter Allen, set for publication in September 2012.
You can learn more about Kathleen and her books by visiting her website, KathleenKaska.com.
For a chance to win a copy of The Alfred Hitchcock Triviography and Quiz Book, courtesy of the author, visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the Kathleen Kaska: Triviography contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code — 4191 — for a chance to win! (One entry per person, US residents only. Contest ends July 5th, 2012.)
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Scam by Parnell Hall is Today's Sixth Featured Free MystereBook
MystereBooks is pleased to feature Scam by Parnell Hall as today's sixth 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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Scam by Parnell Hall
A Stanley Hastings Mystery
Original Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published in 1997, this is the 12th mystery in this popular and long-running series.
About Scam (from the publisher): Stanley Hastings' investment firm partner, Cranston Pritchert, is a living, breathing, paying client. But when Stanley tries to unravel the set-up which Pritchert claims is being staged against him, all roads seem to lead to Pritchert himself — and ultimately to murder.
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):
For more free mystery ebooks, visit our Free MystereBooks page.
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