Big Screen, Little Screen, Big Book, Little Book

DreamWorks has acquired The Travelers, the latest thriller by New York Times best-selling author Chris Pavone. Picture Company partners Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman will produce. To be published in March 2016, the book is a Hitchcockian thriller with shades of Mr. And Mrs. Smith and North By Northwest. Will Rhodes is a Gotham-based journalist who unknowingly works for a spy agency posing as a luxury travel magazine called Travelers. After meeting a mysterious and beautiful woman on his latest international assignment, Will finds himself drawn into a tangled web of global intrigue, and it becomes clear that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy — and the people closest to him, including his wife, might pose the greatest threat of all. Pavone also wrote bestsellers The Expats and The Accident.

 

A new period drama for the BBC is SS-GB from the pen of Len Deighton. The drama is likely to end up being a five-part limited series. Kate Bosworth will star in the role Barbara Barga alongside Sam Riley who is set lay the role of Archer. Adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the story takes place in London 1941 and a ‘what-would-have-happened-if’ scenario. The novel, published in 1978, was a popular book and has become an iconic alternate history tome.

CBS has put in development Marple, a drama series featuring a version of Agatha Christie’s iconic character. Inspired by Christie’s Miss Marple 12 novels and 20 short stories, the project will be written by David Wolstencroft, creator of the long-running British spy series Spooks aka MI-5.

... More Christie - 20th Century Fox has acquired the feature rights to Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel And Then There Were None, and the studio has set The Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum to direct. Eric Heisserer will adapt Christie’s 1939 novel, which has sold more than 100 million copies to establish itself as the all-time biggest-selling mystery novel.

BBC One has given a green light to McMafia, an epic drama event series set in the international world of organized crime, from writer-director Hossein Amini (Drive) and director James Watkins (The Woman In Black). Inspired by the 2008 bestseller by Misha Glenny, McMafia feaqtures David Farr (The Night Manager, Spooks, Troy – Fall of a City), Peter Harness (Doctor Who, Wallander, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and Laurence Coriat (Wonderland, Me Without You). Inspired by Misha Glenny’s 2008 bestselling book McMafia, a hard hitting look at global crime and its far reaching influence, Hossein Amini and James Watkins have created a drama event that centres around one Russian family living in exile in London.

 

Working Title’s dynamic duo Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman along with Robyn Slovo and Piodor Gustafsson. Matthew Michael Carnahan penned the script. Martin Scorsese is exec producing alongside Nesbo and Niclas Salomonsson, who reps Nesbo. Working Title’s Liza Chasin and Amelia Granger will also exec produce. The film – and bestselling book series- revolves around idiosyncratic detective Harry Hole in the Oslo police department.  This particular story has Hole investigating the murder of a woman whose scarf is found wrapped around a snowman. Interestingly enough, Nesbo also says he's not dedicated to forcing the film's story to stay located in Oslo, so perhaps Scorsese will move it to a location somewhere in the United States? We'll have to wait and see.

And lastly ....

Why, oh why, oh why? It's another movie that just doesn't need to be remade. Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi's AMBI Pictures have officially announced a remake of Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller Memento, starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss. It's one of many films ("400 additional critical hits, commercial blockbusters and cult favorites") that AMBI acquired in picking up the Exclusive Media Group film library. They claim in the press release that the remake will "stay true to Christopher Nolan’s vision and deliver a memorable movie that is every bit as edgy, iconic and award-worthy as the original." Okay. Do we really need this?

Eleanor Moran on How I wrote A Daughter’s Secret…

Today's guest blog is by author Eleanor Moran who when not writing moonlights as a TV Drama Executive In a previous life she also worked as a TV Executive. Her latest novel is A Daughter's Secret and she has been persuaded to tell Shots how the story came about.

I was running so fast down the grimy North London street that it almost felt like my heart could burst out of my chest, Alien style. I was no athlete - the only reason I was pelting down Archway’s Junction Road was because the much older man I’d been seeing - been obsessed with - liked to jog and lived nearby. He’d disappeared on me, ghosted his way out of my life, and I was so desperate to find out what had gone wrong that I was left here, chasing after a stranger who bore little resemblance to him, almost mad with grief.

I was eighteen years old at the time, and the man I was searching for was the latest in a string of older flames who should’ve come with health warnings stamped across their grizzled faces. This one, fortunately, was the last. The man who pushed me over the edge, and into therapy, where I learned that it wasn’t about any of them: it was all an attempt to understand the most painful relationship of all. The one with my complex, mercurial father.

A Daughter’s Secret, my latest novel, is about how this relationship can define so much of a woman’s life, for good or ill. My heroine, Mia, is a thirty something psychotherapist who looks from the outside like she’s got it all sussed. She’s got a string of letters after her name, a silver fox of a boyfriend - but when thirteen-year-old Gemma Vine walks through the door of her treatment room her stage-managed life starts to fall apart. Gemma was the last person to see her father before he went on the run, fleeing from a major criminal trial. Mia’s there to provide support, but soon the police come knocking, wanting her to secretly elicit information and feed it back. Mia’s past means she’s either the perfect person to help Gemma or the absolute opposite. As the memories of her relationship with her own father start to plague and torment her, she puts herself in terrible danger, prepared to do whatever it takes to help her troubled and manipulative client.

For me, psychotherapy was a lifesaver. I grew up adoring my unpredictable father, and forgiving him his long, painful absences from my life. He was someone who struggled to live a normal life, never marrying or holding down a job. The school holidays I spent with him were precious to me, but his behaviour was erratic and dangerous. When I was ten, he burnt the house down, leaving us to escape from a top floor window, minutes away from asphyxiation. With no home to visit him in, our relationship became even more fractured and complicated. The scars were deep, and psychotherapy gave me the courage to take a time out and give myself the space to heal rather than keep perpetuating the past like it was a choose your own adventure book, always hoping that this time I’d discover a happier ending.

Wrapping up these themes in a muscular crime thriller was a whole new challenge. My earlier novels have had mysteries contained in them, but ones that have largely been driven by emotion. Now I had to work out how a police investigation could push the story forward. Luckily my second job is as an executive producer for TV drama. I was at the BBC for many years, working on everything from Rome to New Tricks to Spooks. Much of my work involves coming up with ideas for new shows, or spotting books to adapt, and I’m experienced in helping screen writers craft a taut plot.

I’d made a legal thriller with Suranne Jones in 2013, Lawless, and met the most extraordinary criminal barrister in the process. Caroline Haughey is a leading expert on people trafficking, leading multi-million pound trials and putting away criminals who have committed sickening crimes. On the side, she offers her services as a story consultant (Mark Billingham’s latest book is dedicated to her). She directed me towards the case of a crime lord who is hiding in plain sight. Despite numerous trials and repeated Sunday Times investigations, he’s still walking the streets. I was even more interested in the people who give such criminals a veneer of respectability, so I made Gemma’s dad a top flight accountant (as Caroline pointed out, the police ultimately snared Al Capone for his dodgy financial dealings). I didn’t want Gemma’s dad to be an out and out villain - I wanted to create a more complicated character that no-one - not the police, not Mia - could get a handle on. These are the characters I want to watch or read about, whether it’s Don Draper or Walter White.

Both Gemma and Mia have to lose their illusions about their fathers to make it to the other side. The same was true for me, and I did ultimately find a fragile kind of peace with my father (he died when I was in my mid-twenties). I hope that creating Mia out of my experiences might demystify therapy for a few of my readers, and help them to befriend the ghosts which can haunt us from deep in our distant pasts. I’m using her for my next book, publishing next summer: bringing that kind of psychological intensity to a crime plot hopefully makes for a compelling mix.

A Daughter’s Secret by Eleanor Moran is published 6th August by Simon & Schuster, price £7.99 in paperback.

You can find more information about Eleanor Moran on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @eleanorkmoran or find her on Facebook.

The Cuckoo's Calling to be televised!

JK Rowling’s Cormoran Strike novels, written under her pen name of Robert Galbraith until she was unmasked as the author, are to be turned into a BBC crime series. Rowling published The Cuckoo’s Calling in April 2013 as Robert Galbraith. Three months later, it emerged that Galbraith and Rowling were one and the same.

The Cuckoo’s Calling will be the first book adapted for BBC One, with filming set to begin in the New Year. Rowling will collaborate on the project, also will include The Silkworm and casting for the lead role is under way.

The Casual Vacancy, has also been adapted for BBC One miniseries, in association with HBO and will be broadcast in February. The confirmed cast includes Michael Gambon, Keeley Hawes, Rory Kinnear, Monica Dolan, Julia McKenzie, and introduces Abigail Lawrie.

The BBC said it was a "coup" to secure the books.

The Cuckoo's Calling -----

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.

Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get - and the closer he gets to terrible danger . . .

Criminal Splatterings!

According to the Bookseller, publishing house Quercus is up for sale!  This is despite less than a week after c.e.o. Mark Smith saying that a merger was not on the cards for the firm.

According to Booktrade.info Harlequin Mira have won the rights to three crime novels by Death in Paradise creator and writer Robert Thorogood.  More information can be read here. Harlequin will publish the first novel in hardback in January 2015, with the paperback edition following in June 2015.

One should not be surprised, but according to USA Today Dan Brown’s novel Inferno was the bestselling novel of the year.  The full article can be found here.

Really good article in the Guardian by Anne Cleeves on crime books in translation.  She talks about her favourite ones which include Simenon and Camillieri. The full article can be read here.

The British Library are to host the biggest British Comic Exhibition this year.  Comics Unmasked Art and Anarchy in the UK is due to take place at the British Library from 2 May until 2014 until 19 August 2014 and will feature some of the biggest names in comics, including Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Mark Millar (Kick-Ass) and Grant Morrison (Batman: Arkham Asylum), the British comics tradition stretches back to the Victorian era and beyond.  More information can be found at the BBC and in the Guardian and The Telegraph.  The British Library are also due to host Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination between 3 October until 27 January 2015 an exhibition that will examine how Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto in 1764 influenced the likes of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker.  Coinciding with the exhibition will be a BBC Four season on gothic literature, due to be broadcast in the autumn.

Laura Wilson’s round-up of crime fiction in the Guardian includes the final book in Malcolm Mackay’s Glasgow trilogy, Eva Dolan and Willey cash.

And if you missed this news in between Christmas and New Year a legal ruling has given film-makers and authors the right to create their own Sherlock Holmes stories in the US without having to pay a licence fee. The article in the Guardian can be read here.

Interesting article in The Telegraph by Jon Stock on what is supposed to be the latest book craze “Chick Noir”. He talks not only about Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl but also Season to Taste by Natalie Young which has just been published by Tinder Press.

According to the BBC and Deadline it appears that the plug has been pulled on the planned remake of Murder, She Wrote.  The new version was due to star Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. 

According to the BBC the hugely successful Father Brown series based on the stories by GK Chesterton, has been recommissioned for a third series by BBC One Daytime in collaboration with BBC Worldwide.

Also for the first time in 20 years Michael Palin is to head the cast of a supernatural thriller.  Remember Me is due to be shown on BBC One and Palin will play Tom Parfitt, a frail, old Yorkshire man seemingly alone in the world, whose admittance to a nursing home triggers a series of inexplicable events.  More information can be found here.

 

Deutscher Krimi Preis have announced the winners of the thirtieth Deutscher Krimi Preis with the German-language prize going to M, by Friedrich Ani, with second place going to Robert Hültner’s Am Endes Des Tages ( At the End of the Day) and third place going to Matthias Wittekindt’s Marmormanner (Marble Men).  The translated prize going to Ladrão de Cadáveres by In Praise of Lies-author Patrícia Melo.  Second plac went to John Le Carré's  Delicate Truth  whilst Jerome Charyn’s Under The Eye of God took third place.

 

According to Booktrade.info Northern Irish crime fiction writer Anthony Quinn's The Blood-Dimmed Tide his first historical crime thriller, featuring W.B. Yeats, to Ion Mills at No Exit Press, in a three-book deal, for publication in 2014, by Paul Feldstein at The Feldstein Agency

 

From Nuns to Air Crashes with Alison Joseph

©Hugo Glendinning

So, why was I walking through a deserted field in somewhere near Aldershot, in the rain, and wondering why there were no road signs?  Moreover, why hadn’t I taken the advice of the Air Crash Investigation Branch and caught a taxi from the station?  In addition, why wasn’t I wearing a coat?

All good questions, as I tramped past a golf course (a golf course?  Where the hell was I?)  knowing I was already late.

The answer was that I’d agreed to write a radio play about an Air Crash Investigator, having been asked by John Taylor of Fiction Factory productions.  And I was doing my homework.

I’m a crime writer.  At the heart of my work is the idea of evidence.  In my Sister Agnes novels, the evidence comes from odd places.  A hunch, maybe.  A sense that someone is lying.  The real forensic evidence happens around the edge of the story.  This is the problem of writing a contemporary amateur detective.  In Sherlock Holmes’ day, the police could be bumbling fools way behind the razor-sharp brilliance of Our Hero, but in the present, to write this kind of detective would just be plain unbelievable.  So Agnes’s work, by definition, relies on the police doing their job just outside the main heart of the story.  And she, because she works in a hostel for homeless kids in a rough old part of London, has access to the kind of privileged information that no one wants to tell to the authorities.  As I say, a hunch, an instinct that someone is hiding something.

But now here I am, at the AAIB, looking at Evidence with a capital E.  There are people sitting by screens, reading the traces left by the Black Box recorders (in fact they’re huge indestructible bright orange things), the computer read-outs of every activity recorded by all the equipment on board the aircraft.  There are cubicles, which play the Cockpit Voice Recorders.  And in the hangars themselves, the wreckage of planes is laid out.  It is forensic but respectful, acknowledging the tragedy of the loss of life.

For this play, I’ve had to learn about fuel injection systems, cargo hold design, the patterns of ice formation in jet engines, the self-igniting dangers of lithium batteries.  Or even, as in one case I researched, a screw coming loose in the engine.

It’s been a challenge, writing Mitchener.  He’s an air crash investigator.  Where he follows real life, he deals with Evidence with a capital E.  Where he’s fictional, he’s a loner, on the outside, following his instincts.  Crime fiction deals with human suffering, with loss, grief, rage, revenge, whether it’s a cop, a nun, or an air crash investigator.  And that’s what I learned, standing in those hangars on that rainy day in Aldershot, that the search for Evidence, as much as it’s about computer read-outs and ice-formation - it’s also all about compassion.

MITCHENER

Black Box Detective

A new radio play to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 2^nd August at 2.15.  It will also be available to hear for a week afterwards on the BBC website.

Alison Joseph is  a crime writer and radio writer.  She is best known for her Sister Agnes books.  Alison also writes plays and adapts fiction and non-fiction for the BBC. More information and her work can be found on her website http://www.alisonjoseph.com

Criminal Splatterings

Goldsboro Books and the Historical Writers' Association are pleased to announce that the shortlist has been selected for the inaugural HWA/Goldsboro Prize for Debut Historical fiction.  Four books were selected from a strong entry in our first year and the names of the authors and their titles will be announced on 14th July at the Festival of Historical Literature which is held at Kelmarsh as part of the Festival of History.  The winner of the £2,000 prize will be announced at History in the Court at Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court in London on the 28th of September.  More information can be found here.

According to Book2Book after 100 years Bram Stoker’s contract for Dracula is about to be made public.  The sprawling, archaic handwriting may be difficult to decipher, but a few of the key words are clear: "The Un-Dead".  The document, seals the publishing pact that gave the world what remains, more than 100 years later, its most celebrated horror novel: Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Publishers Constable & Robinson are to publish the novel in its original form along with the contract.  There is a full article in the Independent.

As reported earlier by Shotsblog Paramount are suing the Puzo Estate over the forthcoming prequel The Family Corleone.  Unsurprisingly, the Puzo Estate are now counter-suing claiming that Paramount interfered with a publishing contract and breached its 1969 copyright agreement with his father.  The Businessweek.com article goes into a bit more detail.

The first poster for one of the most anticipated films this summer the crime thriller Savages, which is adapted from the novel by Don Winslow,  has been released by the studio.  Directed by Oliver Stone from a screenplay co-written by Stone, Winslow, and Shane Salerno, the film features an all-star ensemble cast of Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch and Demian Bichir.

Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben (Johnson), a peaceful and charitable Buddhist, and his closest friend Chon (Kitsch), a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, run a lucrative, home-grown industry — raising some of the best marijuana ever developed.  They also share a one-of-a-kind love with the extraordinary beauty Ophelia (Lively).  Life is idyllic in their Southern California town … until the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners with them.

When the merciless head of the cartel, Elena (Hayek), and her brutal enforcer, Lado (Del Toro), underestimate the unbreakable bond among these three friends, Ben and Chon — with the reluctant, slippery assistance of a dirty DEA agent played by Travolta — wage a seemingly unwinnable war against the cartel.  And so begins a series of increasingly vicious ploys and manoeuvres in a high stakes, savage battle of wills.  Savages opens in the US in July

According to the BBC they are to adapt James Herbert's best-selling ghost story The Secret of Crickley Hall for BBC One and it will star former Coronation Street star Suranne Jones who has been seen lately in the police drama Five Days.

The BBC are also set to do another four new feature length films of the Inspector George Gently police procedurals.  This time the year is 1968 and the first Gently with Class sees a darker side of 1968 as the social landscape of the Western World is being shaken to its core.  In Paris, riots rage as the workers and students take to the streets.  In the United States, thousands rally against the Vietnam War.  And in England, antipathy for the upper class’ outmoded social graces and their abuse of privilege is growing by the day.  The dramas are due to be shown later on this year.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,  Copper the BBC America is due to premier on 19^th  August 2012.  Copper is described as a gripping crime series set in 1860s New York City, and centres on Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones), an intense, rugged Irish-immigrant cop working the city’s notorious Five Points neighbourhood and grappling to maintain his moral compass in a tumultuous world.  He returns from the Civil War to discover his daughter is dead and his wife has disappeared, a storyline that will be explored during the series.  His friendship with two war compatriots — the wayward son of a wealthy industrialist and a physician who secretly assists Corcoran with his work — takes him to the opposing worlds of elegant Fifth Avenue and rural Harlem.  All three men share a secret from their experience on the battlefield that inextricably links their lives forever.

The 24^th Annual Lambada Literary Awards have been announced and the full list and press notice can be found here.  The nominees in the Lesbian Mystery Category are as follows –

Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou, Bold Strokes Books

Hostage Moon, by AJ Quinn, Bold Strokes Books

Rainey Nights: A Rainey Bell Thriller, by R.E. Bradshaw, R.E. Bradshaw Books

Retirement Plan, by Martha Miller, Bold Strokes Books

Trick of the Dark, by Val McDermid, Bywater Books

Congratulations to all the nominees.  Winners will be announced at a Monday evening, June 4th ceremony in New York at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Avenue) with an after-party at Slate (54 West 21st Street).

The Left Coast Crime Convention is an annual event sponsored by fans of mystery literature for fans of mystery literature, including both readers and authors and has recently taken place.  The following awards were given out:-

The Lefty for best humorous mystery novel: The Real Macaw by Donna Andrews (Minotaur) 

The Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award: Mercury's Rise by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
The Golden Nugget is a special award given to the best mystery set in California, in recognition of the location of this year's convention: City of Secrets by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)
Eureka!  is a special award this year for the best first mystery novel.  Nazareth Child by Darrell James, (Midnight Ink)
The Dilys Award given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers was also announced.  The winner was Ghost Hero by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

The nominees for the 2012 Thriller Awards  have been announced by the International Thriller Writers organization, recognizing the best in crime thriller fiction.  The winners will be announced during ThrillerFest VII in New York City this July, 2012.

The nominees are:
Best Hardcover Novel -

Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s Press)
A Hard Death by Jonathan Hayes (Harper)

11/22/63 by Stephen King (Scribner)

The Ridge by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
The Two Deaths Of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton)

Best Paperback Original -
The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott (Sphere)
Threat Warning by John Gilstrap (Pinnacle)
The Glass Demon by Helen Grant (Delacorte Press)
The Queen by Steven James (Revell)   

Already Gone by John Rector (Thomas & Mercer)

Best First Novel -
The Genesis Key by James Barney (Harper)
She Can Run by Melinda Leigh (Montlake Romance)

Spiral by Paul McEuen (The Dial Press)
The Fund by H. T. Narea (Forge Books)

Midnight Caller by Leslie Tentler (Mira)

Best Short Story -
 "One More Lie" by James Scott Bell (Compendium Press)
"Anything to Win" by Michael Lewin (Strand Magazine)
"Happine$$" by Twist Phelan (Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead, Grand Central Publishing)

"Half-Lives" by Tim L. Williams (Dell Magazine)
"A Hostage Situation" by Dave Zeltserman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

According to Variety Inferno Entertainment has optioned Harlan Coben’s 2008 novel Hold Tight.  Hold Tight is the story of a concerned father who must shield his family from criminals and fight for their survival after his son accidentally exposes them via the internet.

Interested in seeing what the new Superman logo will look like?  Then look no further.  Superman: Man of Steel was due to originally be out in cinemas December 2012.  However the release date has been changed to June 2013.  I certainly hope that it will be worth the wait.

Not sure how I missed this originally, but there is an excellent blog post over at CriminalElement.Com where thriller writers Charles Cumming and Olen Steinhauer discuss espionage and especially John Le Carré’s  seminal novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which has recently be remade into a film with Gary Oldman in the lead role of Smiley played originally by Alec Guinness.

Brilliant interview with Lee Child in the International Thriller Writers monthly webzine The Big Thrill where he talks about The Long Game: Lessons on Success.  A really good insight into what it takes to be a successful writer.

According to the Guardian there is to be a sequel to the successful film Woman in Black.  The sequel is to be called The Woman in Black: Angels of Death.  Furthermore, according to the Hollywood Reporter it will be the same team behind The Woman in Black that will be reuniting for the sequel.  The sequel is due to pick up the story 40 years later.  Author Susan Hill will be involved as well.

The Independent’s Invisible Ink No.117 has an excellent article by Christopher Fowler on Sexton Blake and Bulldog Drummond.

Want to know what distracts Donna Leon from writing, what she is currently reading and who her favourite author is?  If you do then read the Independent’s One minute with Donna Leon for the low down.

Elizabeth Haynes second novel Revenge of the Tide was published recently and she talks to Danuta Kean about swapping criminology for pole dancing in her latest thriller.

Interested in knowing how and why James Patterson’s books sell so well despite the fact that most of them are done with collaborators?  The Wall Street Journal’s online Arts and entertainment magazine Speakeasy talks to James Patterson, who explains how his collaborations work and why he has to have a colour coded calendar to keep track of the number of books that are being published each year.

Ahead of the London Book Fair editor Katherine Armstrong at Faber & Faber have acquired a major new crime thriller Playing Dead by American journalist Julia Heaberlin.  Faber will publish the book in two months’ time.  Faber will publish first as an e-book in June, before releasing the mass-market paperback in July 2012.

According to the Bookseller UK-based Reelart Media has bought film rights to Wilbur Smith's Those in Peril (Pan Macmillan), with plans for a release in 2014.  A sequel Vicious Circle is due to be published in 2013 and will once again feature Hector Cross first introduced to readers in Those in Peril.  Next year will mark Wilbur Smith’s 50^th anniversary as a novelist.

According to the BBC, former Dr Who star David Tennant is set to play a French spy in the BBC adaptation of Alan Furst’s best-selling novel The Spies of Warsaw.  The Spies of Warsaw is set in Berlin, Paris, London and Poland in the years leading up to the war.

In more comic news the sequel to Captain America, Captain America 2 is due to be released in 2014.  As opposed to Captain America, which took place in the 1940s, Captain America 2 will carry out in present day, taking place after the events of the upcoming The Avengers and continuing Steve Rogers difficult integration into modern society.  The Avengers movie opens in the US in May.