Mystery Bytes: News

According to Inside TV, Robert Wagner will be playing the voice of Charlie  in an ABC production of Charlie's Angels. He will be replacing the late John Forsythe. When asked if he'll continue to use a speakerphone to communicate with the angels, he said, "I would imagine it will probably be quite different because the technology is quite different. I would imagine it would be on cell phones wherever these gals are." Though Wagner hasn't seen any scripts yet, he adds, "I could be tweeting them, I could be doing a lot of things with them, you know."

Hallie Ephron's Never Tell a Lie has been made into a Lifetime TV Movie as And Baby Will Fall that will air on 1/23 at 8 EST. Her new suspense novel, Come and Find Me, will be out on March 11 from William Morrow.

According to Andrew F. Gulli, Managing Editor of The Strand Magazine, an unpublished Dashiell Hammett story will appear in Strand Magazine. "So I Shot Him," a 19-page crime thriller written by Hammett will appear in the winter/spring issue of Strand Magazine. Gulli found the undated story, and 14 others by Hammett while looking through archives at the University of Texas in Austin. The Strand, a quarterly based in Birmingham, Mich., has recently published little known works by Graham Greene, Mark Twain and Agatha Christie.

For those of you in the Twitterverse, BV Lawson has put together an extensive list of Mystery Authors and related Mystery Folks on Twitter.  Go HERE.

January Magazine says that talks are under way over a TV detective series set in Bath during Jane Austen's time. 8 one hour episodes have been written and will be filmed next year in Bath. The Regency Detective has been created by Bath-based scriptwriters David Lassman and Terence James and is billed as showing the darker side of the period. It will be set in the period between 1800 and 1805 when Austen lived in the city, and the writer may make a cameo appearance in an episode. It will be directed by Giles Foster, whose previous credits includes Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the award-winning Hotel Du Lac and Four Seasons. The series revolves around ex-Bow Street Runner Jack Swann, who moves from London to Bath and each week confronts the city’s villains. Read more HERE.

Doug Levin explores the relationship between Academics and Hardboiled Detective Fiction with Megan Abbott, Ken Wishnia and Bill Crider. Great article on the Mulholland Book Blog.

By now, you've probably heard the sad news that the Mystery Bookstore Los Angeles will close at the end of the month. The Rap Sheet has put together a list of several tributes to the store. “The Mystery Bookstore Will Close,” by Carolyn Kellogg (Los Angeles Times); “The Mystery Bookstore to Close,” by Wendy Werris (Publishers Weekly); “Losing a Legend,” by Eric Beetner; “Some Mystery Bookstore Memories,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “Somebody Kick the Fat Lady Back in Her Dressing Room,” by Stephen Blackmoore (L.A. Noir); “Grim-Lit Serial Killer Strikes Again in Westwood!” by Denise Hamilton (L.A. Observed).