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Set in a small town that receives a sinister visitor, the plot of the new novella from writers / editors Richard Chizmar and Brian James Freeman is sure to perk up the ears and draw the eyes of Stephen King fans. If you missed out on the limited edition of Darkness Whispers, don’t despair, because Cemetery Dance Publications will release an e-book edition soon, and we have a look at the chilling cover art.

Press Release: Baltimore, MD – January, 17, 2017 – Richard Chizmar and Brian James Freeman have a new release coming out in early 2017 titled, Darkness Whispers. And, it’s already sold out! Don’t worry, the e-book is coming soon so you don’t have miss out. Darkness Whispers introduces you to the town of Windbrook. Nothing changes there. Nothing is different. Except… except today something is different. An old man with piercing gray eyes arrives in town. And he isn’t coming alone.

Any fan of cheap paperbacks or blood-curdling cinema has heard of giallo, a term derived from the Italian word for yellow — the color of the cheap, mystery novels most of the genre is based on. Authors like Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, and Agatha Christie were translated into Italian and sold through Il Giallo Mondadori, […]

The post Watch: 3-Minute Beginner’s Guide To ’70s Italian Giallo appeared first on The Playlist.

Even though police procedurals are all the rage on TV right now, I’ve always preferred detective shows and Film Noir movies. This week, let’s take a walk down some mean streets as I tell you about an outstanding Film Noir thriller. You’ll have to listen closely, as there’s no film at all.

Broadway Is My Beat is a crime drama from the Golden Age of Radio. Originally broadcast in the late 40’s and early 50’s, this show follows the homicide caseload of Lt. Danny Clover, a cop assigned to the “Broadway Precinct” of New York City.

Each week Lt. Clover must solve a murder. And it’s all done Ellery Queen/“fair play” style, so the listener can figure out whodunit as well. These stories are pretty clever. It’s always a race for the listener to keep up with the police lieutenant and discover what...

Here's my favorite way to spend the New Year holiday – up at my snow-kissed cabin in the Pennsylvania Poconos where deer, pheasants and chickadees dart between the trees and across a frozen lake while I get snug before a dancing fire inside. I'm reading an old tradepaper book. Remember paper? It's "The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century," which includes short works by literary titans like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, James Thurber and Flannery O'Conner plus spookmeisters Ellery Queen, Harlan Ellison and Ross Macdonald. I'm surprised by who I think has the best work so far in my reading: Stephen King. His "Quitters, Inc." is … wow, yikes, yeowsa. I've made a sorry mistake underestimating this man till now. -Break- Such are the splendid discoveries I enjoy while I put aside my cyber-obsession and Oscarmania for a moment as 2013 winds down. I hope you're doing so.

Most television series hit the fourth season mark with the characters firmly established allowing the creators and performers a chance to stretch a bit, certain they won’t lose their audience. The better shows know just how far to stretch, how far to push the formula, and when to pull back. Thankfully, TNT’s Leverage toed the line carefully by varying the stories told in the two half season comprising the 15 episode fourth season. The series has never been anything less than a delight as the con men turned good guys find corruption everywhere they turn and can’t help themselves, coming to the rescue.

The series features a strong, tight ensemble that is allowed to grow and develop, making us love the characters just a little bit more. The fourth season came out on a four disc set last week, just in time for the fifth season’s debut.

Mickey Spillane grabbed his position in the pop culture pantheon much like his iconic creation, private eye Mike Hammer, made his way through a case: through a sort of literary brute force, blasting away with heavy doses of graphic violence, steamy sex, and a style which reviewers often considered the prose version of a blunt object.

As a mystery writer, Spillane wasn’t as clever as Evan Hunter, nor as introspective as late career Ross MacDonald, nor did he have the insider’s street savvy of George V. Higgins, or the prose command of Raymond Chandler. Read today, some of his stuff seems so familiar and stale and excessive it borders on camp. But, whatever one’s qualitative judgment on Spillane and his canon, there’s no doubt his impact on the mystery genre – and the private eye tale in particular – was both massive and indelible, reaching beyond the printed...

Martin Harry Greenberg, the leading anthologist and packager of short science fiction, fantasy, and superhero prose stories, and senior editor of Tekno Comix, died at his home in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Saturday. He was 70.

Marty’s output was staggering– here’s one partial list of the books that he actually received credit on, and here’s another. Notice how little overlap there is between the two lists, and there are hundreds more where he did back end editorial, production, or most often financial work. Marty’s packaging company, Tekno Books, produced over 2,000 books since its creation, with more than 55 New York Times bestselling authors. His collaborators have included the likes of Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, Deepak Chopra, Robert Silverberg, Jane Yolen, Esther Friesner, Ed Gorman, and the late Isaac Asimov. In the 90s, he lent his corporate name and expertise to Tekno Comix. He packaged the Further...

BookExpo America, the largest industry convention for publishers, booksellers, librarians, and other folks in the industry, runs at the Javits Center in New York this week. It’s often used as a stalking ground for movie and TV studios to snap up properties for adaptations, so one wonders– what books should be adapted into comics form, and by who?

There have been a number of interesting translations over the years. The biggest success story of the past few years have included Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of Richard Stark’s The Hunter and The Outfit and Marvel’s adaptations of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower by Peter David and Jae Lee, but there have been many others, from the recent adaptations of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Marvel’s Wizard of Oz and Ender’s Game, Dynamite’s adaptations of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel Of Time, Boom!’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep,...

NBC’s Ellery Queen Mysteries only lasted one season, but it remains a favorite among fans of TV detective shows in general, and fans of writer-producers Richard Levinson and William Link in particular. Following their success with Mannix and Columbo, Levinson and Link had the clout to pursue a series based on Ellery Queen, whose stories they had bonded over in junior high. “Ellery Queen” was the pseudonym of another mystery-loving pair, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, two cousins who stuck the name on novels, short stories, magazine anthologies, movies, radio dramas, and the protagonist of all the above. Their ...

This reviewer will be killed in a few moments. Who could have done it - the vengeful editor, the infamous JuneL, the mysterious Dana Rae, Frankie Dees, Esq., or maybe someone else? Match wits with Ellery Queen and see if you can guess who done it? The murderer is actually... Argh! It was the Professor Plum, in the ballroom, with the lead pipe. Don.t you hate it when authors throw in characters they never mentioned as the murderer? Oh well, such is the prerogative of the mystery writer. One of the more famous names is Ellery Queen, who was listed as author and was the main sleuth in his series of novels. Queen was actually...

If it's Tuesday it must be time for new DVDs to hit shelves. Below are the best of the week. As always, there is a complete list link at the bottom of this page. TV Box Sets Ellery Queen MysteriesMidsomer Murders: Set 16Legend of the Seeker: The Complete Second SeasonRich Man, Poor Man: The Complete CollectionScrubs: The Complete Ninth And Final Season (Two-Disc DVD)Top Gear: Complete Season 13C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, The Tenth SeasonParanormal State: The Complete Season FourAnthony Bourdain: No Reservations Collection 5 Part 1Scrubs: The Complete CollectionThe Cleveland...

Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.

Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).

Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.

For this reason,...

The Telegraph obit, as linked by Ebert on Twitter, is likely the best online. Chabrol died today at the age of 80. He was, by all accounts, a master, though it...

This weekend C2E2 goes down at the Lakeside Center at McCormick Place in Chicago, and if you're planning to attend, you won't want to miss the "Monster Mash-Up Mayhem" panel, on which all the brains behind the Quirk Classics Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, its prequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls, and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will all be appearing together for the first time!

The panel kicks off on Friday, April 16th, at 8:00 p.m., in Room E351 and will be moderated by Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club. The participants from Quirk Classics (official site here) include:

Seth Grahame-Smith is a film and television writer/producer, semi-frequent blogger, and best-selling author. His first novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (with Jane Austen), debuted at #3 on the New York Times Best-Seller List and has been translated into 25 languages. There are currently more than one million copies in print.

Maurice Schérer, born in either Tulle or Nancy, a former schoolteacher, a gaunt face with an odd lip. A notoriously private man who was in his late 40s before he found any sort of success, and then under a pseudonym. The obituaries say Eric Rohmer has died; that's not really true. Schérer was a real man whom very few people knew well, and yes, he really did die on Monday, aged 89. "Rohmer," who made his first short film in 1950, when Schérer was almost 30, and formally retired from filmmaking 57 years later, can best be described as the product of Schérer's intellect. An Ellery Queen, or maybe an Émile Ajar. Schérer's body is barely cold, and yet it's already necessary, in a certain respect, to defend his Rohmer. The obituaries have a tinge of faint condescension. It's almost as though some other man, who made "sophisticated" and "talky" "low-key" films "about young...