Crime Fiction Links of the Week for August 19, 2023

It's time again for Crime Fiction Links of the Week, our weekly round-up of interesting links about crime fiction from around the web, this week with season 3 of Only Murders in the Building, Wolf, Harlan Coben's Shelter, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, Reservation Dogs, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the debate about AI-generated writing and art, tributes to William Friedkin and much more:

Crime fiction in general:  

• Crime Reads shares ten new crime novels coming out this week. 
• Laura Wilson shares a round-up of the best recent crime novels and thrillers.
  
• Molly Odintz shares the best international crime novels coming out in August 2023. 
• Molly Odintz shares fifteen new and upcoming crime novels by women in translation.
  
• Margaret Loudon talks about the enduring appeal of cozy mysteries.
  
• C.J. Connor shares their ten favourite puzzle mysteries.
• Beneath the Stains of Time shares an overview over locked room mysteries in the twenty-first century. 
• Keith Roysdon talks about the appeal of rural crime fiction.
  
• Vicki Delany shares some cozy mystery novels set on Cape Cod, Massachussetts . 
• Allison Brennan shares six crime novels and series that require their unique settings.
  
• Lynn Slaughter shares five memorable mysteries set in the world of theatres, opera houses and concert halls. 
• Lizzy Barber shares a defence of the slow-burn thriller.
  
• Una Mannion shares eight unforgettable books about missing persons. 
• T.M. Dunn talks about crime novels where love drives characters to dangerous extremes.
  
• Molly Odintz shares eleven crime novels featuring influencers. 
• Quentin Bates profiles Icelandic crime fiction writer Stella Blómkvist 
• Happiness is a Book shares their appreciation for the Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth. 
  
• Michael Koryta explains why he's not a Maine writer, even though he lives in Maine and his latest novel is set there. 
• James Patterson recalls how he became a thriller author. 
• Molly Templeton talks about the ritual of rearranging your books. 
• Sammy Gecsoyler reports how authors feel about rewriting older books to match modern sensibilities. 
• Harriet Sherwood shares Jacqueline Wilson's thoughts on rewriting older books. 
• Japanese mystery and non-fiction author Seiichi Morimura has died aged 90. 
  

 

Film and TV:

• Luke Buckmaster calls Mercy Road a strangely surreal thriller unlike anything else.
  
• Lucy Mangan is not particularly thrilled with the documentary The Real Spies Among Friends
• Marlow Stern interviews Randall Park, star of the Ant-Man movies and The Mentalist. 
  
• Tatiana Siegel interviews Alejandro Monteverde, director of Sound of Freedom. 
• Luke Buckmaster revisits the 1950 multiple POV crime drama Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa.
  
• Peter Bradshaw revisits the 1967 Yugoslavian crime movie Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator 
• Peter Bradshaw revisits the 1973 police corruption drama Serpico. 
• Reggie Ugwu reports about the phenomenon of TikTok movie reviews. 
• Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reports about a backlash against Reggie Ugwu's article for comparing TikTok influencers paid to promote movies to serious movie critics.
  
• German voice actor Jürgen Kluckert, who portrayed the lovable elephant Benjamin Blümchen in a long-running series of audio dramas and was the German voice of Morgan Freeman, Chuck Norris, James Brolin and many others, has died aged 79.

 

Comments on season 3 of Only Murders in the Building: 

• Saloni Gajjar shares her thoughts on the latest episode of Only Murder in the Building.
• Melody McCune shares her thoughts on the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building.
  

 

Comments on Wolf:

• Paul Hirons shares his thoughts on the fifth episode of Wolf.
• Paul Hirons shares his thoughts on the final episode of Wolf.
  

 

Comments on Harlan Coben's Shelter: 

• Lucy Mangan calls Harlan Coben's Shelter a twisty thriller that's as charming as The Goonies
• Kayleigh Dray calls Harlan Coben's Shelter a mostly solid YA thriller.
  

 

Comments on Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1: 

• Frank Falisi explains that the politics of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1 are increasingly confused and illegible and that series is now more of a vehicle for Tom Cruise than an actual action series.
• Rebecca Rubin, Brent Lang and Matt Donnelly explain why Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1 struggle so badly at the box office and failed to make a profit. 
  

 

Comments on Reservation Dogs:

• Manuel Betancourt shares his thoughts on the latest episode of Reservation Dogs.
• Meredith Hobbs Coon shares the best musical moments in Reservation Dogs to date. 
  

 

Tributes to William Friedkin: 

• Mark Kermode remembers his friend William Friedkin.
  
• Matthew Walther praises William Friedkin for getting Catholicism right in his 1973 horror movie The Exorcist.

 

Comments on the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike:

• Lesley Goldberg reports about day 100 of the WGA strike.
• Gene Maddaus reports that the WGA has restarted negotiations with the studios. 
• Gene Maddaus reports that one of the main issues is the WGA's minimum staffing demand for writers' rooms and quotes some anonymous showrunners who oppose this. 
• Gavia Baker-Whitelaw shares responses by non-anonymous showrunners supporting the WGA demand for minimum writers room staffing requirements.
  
• Nadia Khomani and Jem Bartholomew report about the impact of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes on film and TV workers in the UK. 
• Gene Maddaus reports that SAG-AFTRA will no longer grant interrim agreements to independent productions produced under a WGA contract to allow them to continue filming in spite of the strike.
  
• Neil Gaiman explains why writers need to be on set. 
• James Whitbrook reports that Joachim Rønning, director of Tron: Ares, which was forced to indefinitely postpone filming, has criticised the lack of negotiation attempts on all sides of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
• Cheryl Eddy reports that actor Stephen Amell, best known for playing Oliver Queen in Arrow, has apologised for criticising the SAG-AFTRA strike.

 

Awards:

• The winners of the 2023 Bulwer-Lytton Contest have been announced. 

 

Writing, publishing and promotion:

• Laura Childs talks about sparking inspiration.
  
• Lauryn Chamberlain talks about the difficulty of juggling many narrative voices. 
• Kiersten White talks about recapturing the power of childhood fears in fiction. 
• Mike Glyer reports that Sean C.W. Korsgaard, editor and publicity manager at Baen Books, was banned from Twitter after publicly fantasizing about travelling back in time to murder directors Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon before they could make movies he disapporves of.
  
• Andrew Albanese shares an update on the lawsuit of the Big Five publishers against the Internet Archive for copyright infringement.  
• Alexandra Alter reports that authors and booksellers are urging the US Department of Justice to investigate Amazon.
  
• Althea Lesgaspi reports that the school district of Mason City, Iowa, has banned nineteen books after an AI review claims to have discovered graphic depictions of sex therein.
  

 

Comments on the AI controversy: 

• Mehul Reuben Das reports that OpenAI is bleeding money and may well go bankrupt next year, to no one's regret.
• Maggie Harrison notes that the AI boom is begining to look a lot like the dot.com bubble of the 1990s. 
  
• Wendy N. Wagner talks about Amazon, social media, artificial intelligence and the threat to creatives. 
• Kyle Barr reports that Associated Press has banned its journalists from using ChatGPT and similar programs to write articles or do research.  
• Jane Sullivan reports about Death of an Author, a novel which is supposedly 95 percent AI written.

 

Interviews: 

• Paul French interviews Adrian McKinty.
  
• Paul Burke interviews Nicola Monaghan.
• Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan interview each other. 
• Michael Colbert interviews Kyle Dillon Hertz.
  
• Shane Whaley interviews I.S. Berry.
  

Reviews:

• Jeff Popple reviews The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty.
• Janet Webb reviews North of Nowhere by Allison Brennan
  
• Blue Book Balloon reviews Expectant by Vanda Symon. 
• Ray Palen reviews The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard.
  
• Maggie Boyd reviews None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell. 
• In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel reviews The Killing Place by Kate Ellis
• Mandie Griffiths reviews Hell Bay by Kate Rhodes
  
• Grab This Book reviews The Wild Coast by Lin Anderson.
  
• BOLO Books reviews Happiness Falls by Angie Kim.
  
• Mandie Griffiths reviews Lady's Well by L.J. Ross.
• In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel reviews Who She Was by Tony Parsons
• Jen Lucas reviews Someone Like Her by Awais Khan
  
• Sharon Richardson reviews To Die For by Lisa Gray
  
• Jay Roberts reviews Dead and Gone by Joanna Schaffhausen. 
• Mandie Griffiths reviews The Botanist by M.W. Craven
  
• Grab This Book reviews The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs. 
• Matt Pechey reviews The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs. 
  
• Publishers Weekly reviews The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton
• Mike Parker reviews The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton
  
• Mary Picken reviews Prom Mom by Laura Lippman. 
• John Valeri reviews Retribution by Wendy Whitman
  
• The Quick and the Dead reviews I Did It For You by Amy Engel. 
• Mandie Griffiths reviews Little Drummer by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett
  
• Adam Colclough reviews Mirror Image by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett.
  
• Jen Lucas reviews The Divinities by Parker Bilal 
• Crossexamining Crime reviews The Launch Party by Lauren Forry
  
• Tzer Island reviews Deadlock by James Byrne
• Jeff Ayers reviews Deadlock by James Byrne
  
• Marlene Harris reviews Blind Fear by Brandon Webb and John David Mann
• Aunt Agatha's reviews The Paris Assignment by Rhys Bowen.
  
• Joseph B. Hoyos reviews Broadway Butterfly by Sarah Divello. 
• Janet Webb reviews The Lady from Burma by Allison Montclair
  
• Mary Picken reviews Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan. 
• Marlene Harris reviews Who Buries the Dead? by C.S. Harris. 
• Lis Carey reviews Sherlock Holmes and the Silver Cord by M.K. Wiseman 
• Janet Webb reviews Murder at a London Finishing School by Jessica Ellicott
  
• Runalong the Shelves reviews Grave Suspicions by Alice James  
• Doreen Sheridan reviews Death of a Clam Digger by Lee Hollis and tries a recipe from the book.
  

 

Classics reviews:

• In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel revisits the 1946 mystery He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr. 
• Happiness is a Book revisits the 1946 Charles Horne detective novel The Chinese Doll by Wilson "Bob" Tucker.
  
• Crossexamining Crime revisits the July 1951 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 
• Crossexamining Crime revisits the 1952 murder mystery play The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. 
  
• Adam Colclough revisits the 1953 noir novel The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb. 
• Paperback Warrior revisits the 1959 87th Precinct police procedural Killer's Wedge by Ed McBain. 
• Joe Kenney revisits the 1969 Mission: Impossible spy novel Code Name: Little Ivan by John Tiger a.k.a. Walter Wager.
• Martin Edwards revisits the 1980 crime novel The Bassington Murder by Charlotte Hough. 
• B.V. Lawson revisits the 1988 anthology Twelve Women Detective Stories, edited by Laura Marcus and Chris Willis.

Con and event reports:

• Teresa Peschel reports about the Murder As You Like It mystery conference in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
• Kate Jackson shares the talk she gave at the Dorothy L. Sayers Society Convention in London, UK.
  
• Linda Codega shares some news about the suspects in the card heist at the 2023 Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana. 
  

 

Research: 

• Josh Halliday reports that a nurse who murdered seven babies in Manchester, UK, was found guilty.
  
• Keith Roysdon talks about cold cases in Muncie, Indiana.
• Ethan Shanfield reports that American football player Michael Oher, whose story was the subject of the movie The Blind Side, has accused the Tuohy family of tricking him into agreeing to a conservatorship in order to scam him out of his earnings.  
• Sandie Jones talks about unscrupulous journalists.
  
  

Free online fiction: 

• "A Bad Day in Boat Repo" by Nick Kolakowski in Tough. 
  
• "Murder At The Ho-Vel Apts" by Martin Zeigler in Mystery Tribune
• "Yours Till Moonlight Falls" by Becky Ross Michael in Mystery Tribune.
• "La Santuzza" by Steven Volynets in Mystery Tribune.
• "The Knife" by Francois Bereaud in Punk Noir Magazine.
• "Build Your Own Disatser" by Stephanie King in Punk Noir Magazine.
• "It's Not Dirt" by Craig Terlson in Punk Noir Magazine.
  
• "Boiled Harder by Cory Flick in Punk Noir Magazine. 
• "The Naked Mechanic" by Albert Tucher in Shotgun Honey.
  
• "Thoughts and Prayers" by Jennifer Lagier in The Five-Two.
  

 

Trailer and videos: 

•  Watch a trailer for Dear Child.
• Watch a trailer for Lawman Bass Reeves. 
• Watch a trailer for Who Is Erin Carter? 
• Watch a trailer for The Other Black Girl.
  
• Watch a featurette about the making of A Haunting in Venice.