Crime Fiction Links of the Week for October 12, 2024

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 4 of Slow Horses, season 4 of Only Murders in the Building, Sweetpea, Tom Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, Joker: Folie á Deux, The Penguin, The Platform 2 and much more:

Crime fiction in general:  

• Crime Reads shares ten new crime novels coming out this week.  
• Anna Rasche shares her favourite medieval crime novels. 
• Matthew Fitzsimmons lists his favourite and most cynical fixers in crime fiction. 
• Maxie Dara explains how she incorporates humour into her crime novels.
  
• Harry Hunsicker shares the best books for fans of Jack Reacher. 
• Molly Odintz shares four upcoming books featuring the much maligned Lady Macbeth.
  
• Jason Rekulak wonders why there are so few fathers as protagonists in psychological thrillers. 
• Julia Dahl shares her favourite crime novels featuring children. 
  
• Kate Summerscale talks about her fascination with true crime in general and with British serial killer John Christie in particular. 
• Olivia Rutigliano takes a look at Charles Dickens' unfinished murder mystery The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the speculations it has inspired over the years 
  
• Mystery, western and fantasy writer Robert R. Randisi has died aged 73.
  

  

Film and TV: 

• Rebecca Nicholson calls season 2 of Showtrial an outrageous legal drama. 
• LaToya Ferguson calls the season 2 premiere of The Irrational mostly business as usual.
  
• Phil Hoad calls Take Cover a hitman thriller that makes Fast & Furious look like Gilbert and Sullivan 
• Jesse Hassenger calls Nickel Boys an immersive visual experience unlike any other
  
• Leslie Felperin calls Stuntman a spirited appreciation for the golden age of Hong Kong action movies.
  
• Jacob Oller declares that Caddo Lake first loses a little girl, then loses the plot
  
• Joel Golby notes that Disclaimer is either beautiful … or a schlocky nightmare 
• Peter Bradshaw calls In Her Place a true crime drama with glamour and style, but no intensity 
• Garrick Webster shares his thoughts on the Welsh crime drama Cleddau. 
• Jack Seale shares his thoughts on the documentary Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher 
• Ben Child wonders what the future might hold for James Bond.  
• Steve Rose interviews Lennie James, best known for his appearances in The Walking Dead and its spin-offs, Line of Duty, Jericho, Human Target and others. 
• Ryan Gilbey interviews Anna Kendrick, director and star of Woman of the Hour.
  
• Eva Wiseman interviews Stanley Tucci, best known for his appearances in the Hunger Games movies, Captain America: The First Avenger, Prizzi's Honor, Road to Perdition, The Devil Wears Prada and many others. 
• Rich Pelley interviews Matthew Modine, who appeared in Married to the Mob, Pacific Heights, Cutthroat Island, Full Metal Jacket, Stranger Things and many others.  
• Germain Lussier interviews Greg Jardin, director of It's What's Inside. 
• Mark Sweney interviews Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke about the state of the search for the next James Bond.
  
• Chris Broughton interviews Robert Harmon and C. Thomas Howell, director and one of the stars of the 1986 horror thriller The Hitcher. 
  
• Sandy Ferber revisits the 1963 horror thriller Violent Midnight and the 1966 horror thriller Theatre of Death. 
• Martin Edwards revisits the 1965 crime series A Man Called Harry Brent. 
• Sandy Ferber revisits the 1975 slasher film Black Christmas and the 1981 slasher film The Prowler.   

Comments on season 4 of Slow Horses:

• Diana Keng shares her thoughts on the latest episode of Slow Horses. 
• Paul Hirons shares his thoughts on episode 5 and 6 of season 4 of Slow Horses.
  
• Tim Lowery interviews Gary Oldman who plays Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses.
• Paul Hirons reports that Slow Horses has been renewed for season 5.
  

 Comments on season 4 of Only Murders in the Building: 

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

 

Comments on Sweetpea: 

• Brian Tallerico declares that Sweetpea is packed with pitch-black humor and shocking violence and praises the performance of Ella Purnell.
• James Crookes calls Sweetpea a deliciously dark comedy series
  
• Lucy Mangan calls Sweetpea a deathly dull serial killer show that reeks of cowardly decision-making
  

 

Comments on Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft:

• Kayleigh Dray declares that Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a feminist reinvention of the classic video game heroine.
• Ryan Gaur calls Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft a vibrant, globetrotting Saturday morning cartoon 
• Manuel Betancourt calls Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft a delightfully straightforward binge

 

Comments on Joker: Folie à Deux: 

• Jesse Hassenger calls Joker: Folie à Deux a perverse joke aiming to dissatisfy everyone and more of an affectionless slog than anything else.
• Emmet Asher-Perrin declares that it’s hard to talk about Joker: Folie à Deux without skewing into hyperbole about how patently awful it is. 
• Johnny Oleksinski calls Joker: Folie à Deux a pointless sequel. 
• Richard Lawson calls Joker: Folie à Deux a grim sequel that gives the middle finger to everybody who liked the first Joker.
  
• Erin Underwood calls Joker: Folie á Deux a prime example of why studios need to rethink their current approach to filmmaking when a film that should have been a slam dunk is just getting slammed
  
• Jesse Hassenger discusses Joker: Folie a Deux's unwillingness to commit to the fact that it is a musical. 
• Inspired by Joker: Folie à Deux, James Mottram notes that musicals have been getting darker in recent times. 
  
• Germain Lussier discusses the ending of Joker: Folie à Deux 
• Jim Vejvoda interviews director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix to explain the ending of Joker: Folie à Deux.
  
• James Whitbrook reports that the ending of Joker: Folie à Deux was actually an idea for the ending of Joker that was scrapped.
  
• Richard Newby argues that the ending of Joker: Folie à Deux, which most people hated, was actually its finest moment.
  
• Joel Nolfi reports that a scene of Harley Quinn kissing a woman was cut from Joker: Folie à Deux, supposedly because it got in the way of a musical number.
  
• William Hughes reports that moviegoers dislike Joker: Folie À Deux and gave it the worst ever exit poll score for a comicbook movie.
  
• Tatiana Siegel reports about attending an opening day screening of Joker: Folie á Deux, where the moviegoers were mostly uninterested in the movie and more interested in themselves.
• The Guardian wonders whether Joker: Folie à Deux could have possibly been worse than it is.
  
• Rebecca Rubin reports that Joker: Folie à Deux flopped even worse than expected and grossed less on its opening weekend than what the first Joker grossed in a single day. 
• Gordon Jackson wonders what went wrong to make Joker: Folie à Deux bomb so spectacularly.
• Tatiana Siegel reports that Joker: Folie à Deux director Todd Phillips rejected all feedback and wanted nothing to do with DC Studios, even though Joker is a DC character.
• Mary Kate Carr notes that Warner Bros and DC Studios knew exactly what they were getting when they hired Todd Phillips. 
  
• Pamela McClintock and Aaron Couch explain why no one will get fired over Joker: Folie à Deux, even though the movie was a complete disaster.
  
• Pamela McClintock reports that Francis Ford Coppola has praised Joker director Todd Phillips, from the director of one megaflop to another. 
• Rachel Leishman declares that people should rather be watching the 2020 movie Birds of Prey, which also features Harley Quinn dumping Joker, than Joker: Folie à Deux.
  

 

Comments on The Penguin: 

• William Hughes shares his thoughts on the latest episode of The Penguin.
• Keith R.A. DeCandido shares his thoughts on the latest episode of The Penguin. 
• Germain Lussier shares his thoughts on the latest episode of The Penguin. 

 

Comments on The Platform 2: 

• Jesse Hassenger calls The Platform 2 an inferior sequel to the 2020 dystopian horror film. 
• Matt Donato calls The Platform 2 a second, less satisfying helping of the same meal

 

Awards:

• The winners of the 2024 Macavity Awards have been announced
• The shortlist for the 2024 Petrona Award has been announced.
  
• The winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature has been announced. 
  

 

Writing, publishing and promotion: 

• Steve Wasserman talks about the environmental and philosophical factors behind literary creation 
  
• M.L. Rio talks about the connection between writing and dreams.
  
• Lincoln Michel shares tips for writing horror. 
• Mike Glyer reports about an uproar inside the HWA about the organisation's proposed AI policy 
• Mary SanGiovanni shares some suggestions for reforming the HWA. 
• Alexandra Alter reports about a start-up which plans to legally licence authors' works in order to train AI large language models. 
  
• John Yang and Laura Baldwin explain why typewriters are experiencing a renaissance. 
• Locus reports that Sarah Guan is leaving Erewhon Books.
  
• Laura Miller interviews Rosalie Stewart who has been hired by Penguin Random House to combat book bannings.
  
• Andrew Albanese reports that a federal judge has ordered the Crawford County Public Library in Arkansas to stop segregating books deemed inappropriate by some local residents into special “social sections,” and to return the books to general circulation.

 

Interviews: 

• Alex Clark interviews Attica Locke.
• The BBC interviews Ian Rankin. 
• The Guardian interviews Stephen King. 
  
• Rick Pullen interviews Robert Dugoni. 
• Suspense Magazine interviews John Connolly.
  
• Paul Burke interviews Kate Summerscale. 
• Alan Petersen interviews Jenny Milchman. 
• Garrick Webster interviews Ian Moore.
  
• Lisa Haselton interviews Richard E. Synder. 
• John Valeri interviews Matt Murphy.
  

 

Reviews:

• Rob Bedford reviews Murder Road by Simone St. James.  
  
• Jen Lucas reviews Westwind by Ian Rankin 
• In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel reviews Nobody’s Hero by M W Craven 
• Jen Lucas reviews Nobody’s Hero by M.W. Craven 
• Mandie Griffiths reviews Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell
• John Valeri reviews Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell
  
• Paul Burke reviews Opal by Patricia Wolf
  
• Mike Parker reviews House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias
  
• Matt Pechey reviews Blood and Fire by Dharma Kelleher
  
• Joseph B. Hoyos reviews Bitter is the Heart by Mina Hardy
• Lesa Holstine reviews Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon 
• Sandra Mangan reviews Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty 
• Paul Burke reviews A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet  
• Vick Weisfeld reviews The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni  
• Doreen Sheridan reviews The Examiner by Janice Hallett
  
• Jen Lucas reviews The Assistant by S.K. Tremayne 
• Doreen Sheridan reviews William by Mason Coile
  
• Jen Lucas reviews The Wicked Cometh by Laura Carlin
  
• Marlene Harris reviews Murder at King’s Crossing by Andrea Penrose
  
• Mary Picken reviews Murder in the Sauna: The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston  
• Lesa Holstine reviews The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose
  
• Janet Webb reviews I Did Something Bad by Pyae Moe Thet War
  
• Joseph B. Hoyos reviews The Grim Steeper by Gretchen Rue 
• Lesa Holstine reviews The Night Woods by Paula Munier 
  
• Marlene Harris reviews The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood 
• Kevin Tipple reviews Some Like It Hot-Buttered by Jeff Cohen
  
• Jen Lucas reviews Dead Ends by Jeffery Deaver
   
  

Classics reviews:

• Happiness is a Book revisits the 1939 mystery The Case of the Advertised Murders by Minna Bardon
  
• James Davis Nicoll revisits the 1946 Kalle Blomkvist children's mystery Master Detective Blomkvist by Astrid Lindgren, translated by Susan Beard. 
• Martin Edwards revisits the 1946 Chief Inspector French mystery Death of a Train by Freeman Wills Crofts.
• Matt Pechey revisits the 1952 Hercule Poirot mystery Mrs. McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie
• Paperback Warrior revisits the 1956 Simon Ark occult mystery The Wolves of Werclaw  
  
• In Search of the Classics Mystery Novel revisits the 1969 mystery Food For Felony by Belton Cobb 
• Joe Kenney revisits the 1977 crime novel The Numbers Man by David J. Gerrity
  

 

Con and event reports:

• Philip Oltermann reports that eighteen theatregoers became sick and required medical treatment after watching an intensely graphic performance of Florentina Holzinger's take on the Paul Hindemith opera Sancta Susanna in Stuttgart, Germany.

 

Research: 

• Jaima Fixsen talks about medical professionals as serial killers. 
• Laurie Notaro talks about Winnie Ruth Judd murdering and dismembering two of her friends in Arizona in 1932.
  
• J.W. Ocker shares seven red flags that indicate a cult.
• Zoe Williams reports about the rise of mobile phone thefts in the UK.
• David Burnham, the New York Times reporter who exposed police graft and whose work was the basis for the crime movie Serpico, has died aged 91.
  

 

Free online fiction: 

• "The Last Labor of Larry Lizard" by Aeryn Rudel in Shotgun Honey.
  
•  "Rustic Getaway" by Michelle Tang in Shotgun Honey.
• "No Regular John" by James Patrick Focarile in Guilty. 
  

 

Trailers and videos: 

• Watch a trailer for The Order.