CSI Portsmouth 2016

Regular attendees at CSI Portsmouth will be pleased to know that the event will take place in 2016 on Saturday 5th March as part of the Portsmouth Book Festival. The event will take place at The Plaza, Pyramids Centre, Southsea.

CSI Portsmouth founder Pauline Rowson will be joined by crime writers Elly Griffiths, Will Sutton, J S Law and Diana Bretherick as well crime expert Simon Mound, a crime scene investigator with Hampshire Police’s Scientific Services Department and Jonathan Smith a forensic scientist.

Tickets cost £15:00 for the day and can be bought from the Box Office, any Portsmouth Library and on online via Eventbrite with effect from 4 January 2016.

Follow CSI Portsmouth on Twitter @CSIPortsmouth

Criminal Splatterings!

According to the Guardian since the news broke about the fact that J K Rowling is actually Robert Galbraith there has been a lot of interest in her novel Cuckoo’s Calling from a number of Hollywood film studios.

If you have never read any of the Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Mordecai novels then you should before the film comes out.  According to the Guardian Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor are set to join Johnny Depp in the comic crime drama which is said to be based on Bonofiglioli’s final novel The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery which was completed by satirist Craig Brown

The adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl into a film is one of the most anticipated.  As can be expected any news about characters and who is set to play them is always going to be newsworthy.  According to the Guardian, Independent and the BBC it looks as if Rosamund Pike is set to play the main female protagonist Amy Dunne opposite Ben Affleck. Cinemabend.com also states that David Fincher has also added Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry to the list of actors due to star in the film.

Fans of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club will be happy to know that there is a sequel on the horizon. However, the sequel is to be a graphic novel according to the Guardian.

According to the Guardian, Penguin Australia have reissued 50 classic crime novels as a new Green Popular Penguins.  Some of the authors include Dornford Yates, Michael Innes, Julian Symonds, Edgar Wallace, Dashiell Hammett, Barbara Vine, Eric Ambler, Raymond Chandler, John Creasey, Charles Willeford, Edgar Allan Poe, Sapper, Margret Yorke,  HRF Keating, Chester Himes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name a few.

Excellent article  in the Telegraph by Jake Kerridge about Raymond Chandler who celebrated what would have been his 125^th birthday on 23 July.

And in other things Raymond Chandler........

An introduction to Raymond Chandler

An interview between two of my favourite writers Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler

According to Deadline.com, Mathew Klein’s novel No Way Back is set to be adapted into a psychological thriller with the title Restart.  Restart centers on an ordinary man who discovers that his entire life is being infiltrated and manipulated by a terrifying criminal network.  Restart is set to be directed by Brad Anderson who is best known for The Call and The Machinist.

David Hewson is to release the next book in his Italian mystery series initially as an audio book .  The Flood will according to Book2Book be available from Thursday 1 August 2013. Florence, 1986. A seemingly inexplicable attack on a church fresco of Adam and Eve brings together an unlikely couple: Julia Wellbeloved, an art student, and Pino Fratelli, a semi-retired detective who longs to be back in the field. Their investigation leads them to the secret society that underpins the city, and back to the darkness in Florence's past: the night of the great flood in 1966...

Information about this year’s CSI Portsmouth has been released. Taking part in CSI Portsmouth 2013 are crime authors S. J Bolton, Natasha Cooper, M.R. Hall, Kerry Wilkinson and Pauline Rowson who will also be acting as participating moderator at the one day event discussing crime fiction and fact at The Princess Royal Gallery at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  More information can be found here.

Very good review of Sabine Durrant’s novel Under Your Skin in the Telegraph.

Congratulations go to both South African author Margie Orford and Head of Zeus.  According to the Bookseller, Head of Zeus have signed a five book deal with the South African crime author.

Fellow crime writer Doug Johnstone interviews Denise Mina in the Independent following her second prestigious Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year win last weekend.

The programme for the 20th Annual St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference has been revealed and can be seen here.  St Hilda's is always a brilliant event.  Very academic but also very laidback. I am looking forward to it very much especially since I not only missed Crimefest this year but also Harrogate. I shall be moderating the final panel of the day where we shall be discussing if there is a future for crime fiction. The panel members are Richard Reynolds from Heffers Bookshop, Agent Broo Doherty and Editor Ruth Tross from Mulholland Books UK.  Bound to be lots of fun!!!

Criminal Splatterings!

According to the BBC, Mark Ryland is due to play Thomas Cromwell in the Television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies.  More information can be found here.  Mantel's Booker-winning novels follow Cromwell, Henry VIII's adviser, and his rise and fall in the Tudor court.  The books are being adapted for a six-part series due to be shown on BBC Two.

The BBC are also due to make two different dramas based on the Great Train Robbery.  The dramas will be told from the point of view of firstly the robbers who committed the offence and secondly the detectives as they solve the crime.  Entitled the Robbers Tale and The Coppers Tale the two 90 minute programmes are due to be shown on BBC One later on this year as part of the 50^th anniversary of the robbery.  More information can be found here.

As a result of the highly successful run of the first series of Father Brown based on the novels by G K Chesterton shown on BBC One, a second series has been commissioned.  The new series of ten forty-five minute episodes will begin shooting towards the end of May 2013.

The BBC have commissioned a new ten-part series on The Musketeers.  Set on the streets of 17th-century Paris where law and order is more an idea than reality, the series follows Musketeers Athos, Aramis and Porthos who are far more than King Louis XIII’s personal bodyguards.  The 10- part drama is due to be shown in 2014 and will feature Peter Capaldi best known for The Thick of It as Cardinal Richelieu.  More information can be found here.

Look out for Shetland a new crime drama based on the novels by “Vera” author Ann Cleeves.

Set against a stunning Scottish backdrop, Shetland, BBC One’s powerful new murder-mystery stars Douglas Henshall as Detective Jimmy Perez, a native Shetlander who has returned home after a long spell away and leads a murder investigation, uncovering secrets and lies from the past.  The first episode is due to be shown today on BBC One at 9:00pm.  An interview with Ann Cleeves can be read here and a clip can be seen here.  Ann also discusses Shetland in the Telegraph as well.

A new series of Perspectives is due to be shown on ITV starting with David Suchet setting out to unravel the mystery surrounding the life and work of Agatha Christie.  David Suchet: The Mystery of Agatha Christie is due to be shown on ITV on Sunday 17 March at 10:00pm.  More information can be found here.

In more Agatha Christie drama news, David Suchet, Pauline Moran, Hugh Fraser and Philip Jackson have been reunited once again in Agatha Christie’s The Big Four. Adapted by award-winning screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss and actor Ian Hallard, The Big Four plunges Poirot into a world of global espionage where he uncovers a theatrical tale of murder, secrets, lies and love, set against the backdrop of the impending World War II.

The trailer for Iron Man 3 has been released and can be seen below.  It is due to be released on 25^th April in the UK.

And in more Christie news, according to Deadline.com and Empireonline, Paramount Pictures have bought the spec screenplay entitled Agatha.  The spec screenplay written by Allison Schroeder is based on a particular period in Agatha Christie’s life.

Congratulations go to David Hewson who is due to write the novelisation of The Killing III.  Hewson wrote the novelisation for The Killing II and according to the Bookseller, The Killing III is due to be published in February 2014.

Pan Macmillan have acquired two novels from debut author Clare Donoghue.  The first novel in series The Watcher is due to be published in March 2014.  The series is set in south London and features DI Mike Lockyer and DS Jane Bennett.  The Watcher follows the hunt for a serial killer preying on young women.

According to Booktrade.info, CSI Portsmouth the annual event that brings together top crime writers from around the UK to face a panel of crime experts have found themselves a new home.  The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard is to be its new home.  This year the event is due to take place on Saturday 2nd November 2013 in The Princess Royal Gallery.  CSI Portsmouth is the brainchild of author Pauline Rowson whose books are set in Portsmouth.

If you have not seen or read it then there is a good article in the Guardian by Alison Flood who interviewed Ruth Rendell about her life in writing.  The article can be read here.  There is also an article in the Independent as well which is more personal and can be read here.

The Independent’s Invisible Ink: No 163 is on Sébastien Japrisot.  The full article can be read here.  Jasprisot is best known for his first crime novel published in 1950, The 10:30 From Marseilles

Interesting article in the Telegraph by Jake Kerridge who talks to French author Fred Vargas.  Whilst she still works as an archaeologist, she manages to writer her novels in three weeks!

Dennis Haysbert has booked a co-starring role in the CBS drama pilot Backstrom, from writer Hart Hanson, based on the Swedish book series that centres on Everett Backstrom, an overweight, hot-tempered detective who tries, and fails, to change his self-destructive behaviour.  Haysbert will play John Almond, a detective working with Backstrom.  Haysbert, most recently seen on the big screen in Sheldon Candis’ Luv, will next appear in a thriller titled Wards Island, alongside Ernie Hudson and Bill Duke, which centres on a viral outbreak in New York City that turns the infected into werewolves; and also he's replaced the late Michael Clarke Duncan in the follow-up film to the 2005 Robert Rodriguez-directed hit, Sin City, based on the comic by Franck Miller titled Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.