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60 Articles

All good things come to an end, as they say. Which is why Crime Scene is marking the conclusion of BROADCHURCH with our feature on the third and final series. As well as joining the cast by the seaside, we learned about the cloak-and-dagger measures employed to protect the show from plot leaks. But while some heroes reach the end of the road, others just keep on going. So this issue we salute enduring characters and their creators: REBUS and IAN RANKIN, HARRY BOSCH and MICHAEL CONNELLY, and DR. KAY SCARPETTA and PATRICIA CORNWELL. Plus, Jane Tennison’s back in the PRIME SUSPECT 1973 prequel, and we celebrate 30 years of MORSE on screen. But as we’re getting all emotional over the final case on Broadchurch, this month the team…

“Of course, they are going back to the prison ” CREATED BY: ALEX PINA, IVAN ESCOBAR, ESTHER MARTINEZ LOBATO, DANIEL ECIJA STARRING: MAGGIE CIVANTOS, NAJWA NIMRI, BERTA VAZQUEZ, DANIEL ORTIZ (WALTER PRESENTS) 2016 Thirty minutes north of Madrid, in the small town of Colmenar Viejo, stands a large nondescript building. A former factory, it’s now home to Cruz del Sur, the fictional women’s prison at the heart of Locked Up, titled Vis A Vis (slang for “conjugal visits”) in Spain, where it’s been a runaway hit. British viewers are now about to get the chance to watch the 12-episode second season via Walter Presents, Channel 4’s foreign-language streaming service. It’s early April 2016 and the production has reached the penultimate day of the Series 2 shoot, which began six months…

EVERY EPISODE EVER

BUSY STREET, DAY One of the Criminal Operative Detectives for Gathering Evidence Retrospectively Squad (CODGERS) is crossing the road when a car screeches to a halt. SOMEONE ASSOCIATED WITH THEIR BACKSTORY: I know what happened to your dead wife/ with those backhanders you took/to that prisoner you killed (delete according to team member’s backstory this week). [CODGER looks appalled, car screeches away] CODGERS’ OFFICE, DAY Her Out Of Sexy Beast is pointing at a 1975 picture of a dead person on a whiteboard. The assembled CODGERS look tired – this is, after all, episode 12,946. HER OUT OF SEXY BEAST: This is Victim, who died in mysterious circumstances that are easily solved by modern forensics, but no one’s been bothered. All the victims we investigate were involved in an insular…

EVERY EPISODE EVER

‘‘It’s weird we have so few British films set in Britain that look and feel like contemporary Britain does,” sighs Riz Ahmed. “They all seem to be period dramas. Yet I don’t think our most exciting stories are way behind us in the distant past. I think our most exciting stories are happening right now.” It was one such story that drew the 34-year-old Four Lions star – hotter than hot at present thanks to his recent roles in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and HBO’s The Night Of – to City Of Tiny Lights, an adaptation of Patrick Neate’s 2005 novel about a British Asian private eye solving mysteries from his office above a west London cab firm. “I loved the idea of taking the gumshoe genre and…

1. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD BY JOHN LE CARRÉ John le Carré is a master storyteller, and this gripping novel of love and betrayal is a truly genre-defining Cold War thriller. So it comes as no surprise that the BBC are adapting the book following the huge success of The Night Manager last year. 2. CRISIS BY FRANK GARDNER Crisis is the bestselling debut by BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. Featuring Luke Carlton, an ex-Special Boat Service commando, the book’s fly-on-the-wall insights, fast-paced writing and tense plot guarantee Gardner’s new novel a place in our list of thrillers. 3. CASINO ROYALE BY IAN FLEMING Fleming’s first James Bond novel (published in 1953) is packed with thrills and suspense, showcasing everything we know and love about the…

“I could feel in a visceral way, this guy could actually kill me ” “I’m really excited, I think this second season is going to be really good,” says Melinda Kinnaman when Crime Scene catches up with her as she’s preparing to shoot Modus in Stockholm. It’s good news for fans of the first series, even if the festive crime spree on BBC Four was a chilling experience. It turns out Kinnaman (The Bridge), who plays criminal psychologist and profiler Inger Johanne Vik, even scared herself watching it. “Even though I knew what was going to happen, I was crawling into the corner of the sofa,” she says. Recalling filming her scene with the murderer, she adds: “I could feel in a visceral way, this guy could actually kill me.”…

ICELANDIC CRIME DRAMA COMES OF AGE…

Trapped put Icelandic crime on the map in 2016, but it turns out another of the country’s crime dramas came first. Case, now available for UK viewers, begins with a young ballerina’s apparent suicide in Reykjavik’s National Theatre. The police investigation gradually reveals dark secrets including drugs, computer hacking and teenage sex tapes. The show’s director, Baldvin Zophoniasson, worked on both shows, as did Steinunn Olina Thorsteinsdottir, who plays the razor-sharp detective Gabriela. “What I really liked about Case is its slower pace, and it’s much darker,” says the director. “Trapped is a more typical whodunit.” Zophoniasson brings a queasy, documentary style to the show, which features intriguing characters such as the grizzled, alcoholic lawyer Logi (Magnus Jonsson). “He’s a troubled character with a bad reputation, but he’s a clever…

ICELANDIC CRIME DRAMA COMES OF AGE…

How is the community of Fortitude coping after the traumatic events of Series 1? “I didn’t want people to know too much about Sarah. I liked her secrets, I liked her mystery ” The first series was about surviving and about life and death. In my personal life, I recognise that in any real crisis you use all your resources, but actually it’s the moment after that’s really interesting. Who am I now? Why am I alive? What has happened? That atmosphere of having survived and at the same time being completely lost is fascinating. The community in Fortitude is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s carrying a lot of scars, definitely. What is the emotional state of your character, Hildur, the governor of Fortitude? She’s not in a great…

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

“The books use ideas that won’t work in the show” The show is very much a homage to the Agatha Christie books I read when I was growing up. But it’s also infused with my love of Midsomer Murders, Jonathan Creek, Murder, She Wrote, Monk – basically any kind of murder mystery story. It’s always challenging coming up with the plots, but this is where the TV show really comes into its own: a whole bunch of us sit in a room trying to come up with ideas, and it’s a hugely enjoyable process, while also being very demanding. You have to deliver a satisfying murder mystery, but you also have to have plenty of scenes of comedy, warmth and sunshine. I got the idea after reading that the Pakistan…

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

In The Replacement you play Paula, who’s hired as maternity cover for an architect, Ellen (Morven Christie), though she’s suspicions about Paula during the handover. How do you feel about your manipulative character? I have sympathy for Paula. With a lot of characters I’ve played, viewers are thrown in the deep end. Yes, these characters have got a bad side, but there is always a reason for it. Do you think society encourages women to be rivals? No. Men fall out just as much as women. Some of the dramas I’ve heard from men! It’s the same. If you fall out with girlfriends, it can be overly dramatic when you make up – “I love you so much!” – especially if you’re drunk. So yes, women…

DRILLER THRILLER

“It feels like the real thing. It’s not glamorised. It’s more Ealing than Hollywood ” Soon after the Hatton Garden raid hit the headlines in April 2015, filmmakers started to hatch a plan. Described as the largest burglary in English legal history, the audacious heist netted the gang gold, sapphires and diamonds worth up to £25 million. But it was the profile of the raiders – elderly career crooks looking for one last payday – that captured the attention of writers and directors. Several films are in development but The Hatton Garden Job will be the first to reach cinemas. “With this particular story, everybody said the same: it’s a movie, isn’t it?” says writer and director Ronnie Thompson during a break from filming inside a humid warehouse near London’s…

DRILLER THRILLER

There’s a buzz around The Fact Of A Body (Macmillan, 18 May), the true story of a law student who took a summer job in Louisiana on the retrial defence of a convicted murderer and child molester on death row. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, the daughter of two lawyers, was opposed to the death penalty when she took the case. But as soon as she hears the client speak of his crimes, she’s overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. When Marzano-Lesnevich digs deeper, she’s forced to confront her own family secrets. For a wide-ranging take on true crime illustrated with infographics, The Crime Book (DK, 3 April) is a bloody, engrossing history of criminology, from bandits and serial killers to 21st century cyber predators. Famous cases include Jack The…

HITCHCOCK DOUBLE BILL

He was known as the Master of Suspense, so it’s perhaps no surprise that a pair of authors have been channelling Alfred Hitchcock’s scares in their new novels. Peter Swanson (top right) has followed his twisty thriller hit The Kind Worth Killing with Her Every Fear, a Boston-set novel about an apartment swap that turns into a nightmare. “I did think of it as my take on a gothic tale,” Swanson tells Crime Scene. “I like books that slowly immerse you into a situation and character.” The novel begins with anxiety-prone Kate Priddy travelling from London to the US to stay in her cousin’s plush home. But her arrival coincides with the discovery of a murdered woman in the neighbouring apartment. With the element of voyeurism in Her Every Fear,…

HITCHCOCK DOUBLE BILL

INTERNATIONAL LAW

What’s it like being part of the Criminal Minds TV franchise? It’s crazy. I have made my entire career on procedurals, which is such a gift. So when you join something like Criminal Minds it’s a nice feeling. There’s this comfort level in the fact that it is a procedural, but also you go from country to country, so you’re learning about cultures and language and protocol. The show features global settings, but where’s it filmed? It’s all LA; isn’t that crazy? They do such an incredible job. I travelled a lot when I was younger and so I’m always amazed when I walk on set. I’m like, “that’s India, that’s Thailand, that’s Japan”. It’s so cool. People say to me aren’t you frustrated that you…

INTERNATIONAL LAW

Life OF Crime HEROES OF CRIME WRITING REVEAL THEIR INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS

What’s the very first crime novel you ever remember reading? “I think I’d probably murder someone – that would be great research, wouldn’t it?” Well, my first crime novel – if you discount The Secret Seven and their detective exploits – would have been And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. She’s just the master of plotting, so that was a great grounding. What’s your favourite crime novel ever and why? Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was my first insight into domestic suspense – that would be one that I would read again and again. It’s the characters and the sort of creeping dread that runs through the book that I love. Who has been your role model? I really look up to Mark Billingham and Peter James, not only…

Life OF Crime
HEROES OF CRIME WRITING REVEAL THEIR INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS

BACK TO THE BEACH

The sun is beating down during a summer heatwave, driving tourists to the artisan ice cream van on West Bay’s seafront. Families stroll along the promenade, turning their faces towards the sunshine and admiring the towering sandstone cliffs that form the backdrop to this stunning stretch of Dorset coast. Close to this tableau of Britons at leisure, however, is a hive of bustling activity. A stone’s throw from the centre of the pretty fishing village is Broadchurch HQ, a collection of trailers in a car park where the makers and stars of the ITV hit drama are busying themselves with filming the third and final series of the twisty crime thriller. Crime Scene has been invited on set to interview Broadchurch’s actors and to drink in a stretch of World…

BACK TO THE BEACH

How did you go about writing the novel? I had to audition! There was more than one writer up for the job and we all had to turn the first act of episode one – that’s right up until the heartbreaking moment that Beth sees Danny’s body on the beach – into prose. When I got the gig, it was a tight turnaround – just a few months – but of course the plot, setting and character were all taken care of. It was a joy to write. What sort of reaction did the book get? Well, my favourite compliment was from Chris Chibnall, who said I made him cry. Which was fair enough, as he’d done it to me, too. I’ve had great feedback from readers all over the…

Chris Chibnall might be the most famous TV writer in Britain right now. When Crime Scene is granted an interview with the 46-year-old behind Broadchurch, he’s about to regenerate into the showrunner for Doctor Who. But for a man who has to satisfy the expectations of millions of viewers – of both the ITV crime drama and the BBC sci-fi institution – he’s remarkably laid-back. Our conversation even deviates into Downton Abbey names – a security precaution used on the scripts in case they fell into the wrong hands. Apparently Series 3’s fake title was Returning Home by Margaret Cedars. As Chibnall explains, his Downton name formula is grandmother’s first name followed by primary school. For the record, Crime Scene’s is “Joan Paddock”. “You can then figure out whether you…

“This job takes people into the dark side of humanity every day” When Crime Scene walks onto the LAPD Hollywood Division precinct set used for the Amazon Studios series Bosch, the first thing we see is a statue of Santa Claus. It shouldn’t be that surprising because we’re in November. Yet, it seems out of place when the temperature outside is 29 degrees Celsius and this feels like a perfect day to go to the beach. Later, we are reminded that this is winter in Los Angeles when we pass through the production offices. In one of them, behind the desk, is a wall of neatly typed Post-it notes relating to the shooting schedule that began in late July. Seeing it prompts us to ask what conditions are like in…

SEASON 1 CITY OF BONES (2002) The first season borrows heavily from this book, Connelly’s eighth Bosch novel. Harry and his then partner, Jerry Edgar, investigate the murder of a 12-year-old boy whose bones are found on a hill. Bosch also has a fling with a rookie cop. ECHO PARK (2006) This is the source of Season 1’s serial killer subplot. Raynard Waits confesses to murdering someone who has been missing for years – but Bosch doesn’t buy it. The District Attorney prosecutor’s attempt to capitalise on the case for political gain goes south when Waits escapes from custody. THE CONCRETE BLONDE (1994) This book’s story about Harry defending himself in court after shooting a suspect he’s pursuing for multiple homicides provides Season 1 with a minor subplot. It features…

“The police brutality surprised me. Rules were very much bent” When Lynda La Plante published her Jane Tennison origin story in 2015, a TV series was never going to be far behind. Eighteen months later, Prime Suspect 1973 is reporting for duty on ITV. A gritty, authentically ’70s prequel, the show doesn’t shy away from the era’s institutional sexism, police brutality or garish fashion. Based on La Plante’s Tennison novel, Prime Suspect 1973 stars Stefanie Martini (Endeavour, Doctor Thorne) in her first leading role, a prospect made even more daunting by Oscar-winner Helen Mirren’s performance as the detective from 1991 to 2006. When Crime Scene meets Martini on the 14th floor of ITV’s London TV Centre, the 26-year-old is taking it in her stride. Confident, talkative and given to spontaneous…

THE SINGING DETECTIVE

TELL US ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER… Gibbs is obviously one of Jane’s superiors and he’s [DI] Bradfield’s right-hand man. But the problem with Gibbs is that he’s got a bit of a short fuse. He’s not afraid to be quite heavy-handed with the criminals or junkies – he will go to quite extreme lengths to get any information out of someone. He’s not afraid to bend the rules and then expect help from his colleagues to try and get him out of trouble. IS THAT QUITE A ’70s ATTITUDE? Going back years and years, people were a bit more heavy-handed. What’s also really interesting about this is what Jane has to go through in terms of the chauvinistic side of the police. It’s great that it highlights what WPCs had to…

THE SINGING DETECTIVE

Write what YOU KNOW

“No, they’re not mysteries. You can’t call a dead body on a table a mystery” When Crime Scene meets Patricia Cornwell in London, she’s staying at the Savoy, a reminder that she’s a rare breed of writer: a superstar who’s a household name. Once she’s settled into the chintzy sofa, though, the Florida-born author is generous with her time. As we discuss her remarkable 27-year writing career while the hotel pianist plays in the background, she radiates Southern charm and is surprisingly modest. “I’m trying to learn how to do all this, you know, I’m working at it,” she says without irony. Like all the best thriller authors, Cornwell’s always competing with herself. More than a quarter-century after her smash-hit debut, Postmortem, no one can accuse the Boston-based writer of…

Write what YOU KNOW

“The landscape has become a character in itself, really” If there was a BAFTA award for TV locations, Hinterland would win it every year. The BBC’s Welsh cop show – a Celtic Noir to rival Scandinavian crime – is back for a third series featuring scenery as dramatic as the sinister storylines. When Crime Scene visits the set in mid-Wales at the height of summer, it’s a bewitching, bilingual experience. “You’re taken to places where there are no people for miles and miles,” says Mali Harries, who plays DI Mared Rhys. “The landscape has become a character in itself, really – there are mountains, sand dunes and immense scenery around us. It has a feeling of the [American] Midwest. I think that’s partly why a lot of other countries have…

“An example of unchecked male ego, it’s literally a bar fight gone ultimately wrong” After his hitman horror Kill List, killers-in-a-caravan comedy Sightseers, the LSD-fuelled Civil War tale A Field In England and J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise, Ben Wheatley has fast become one of the most admired British filmmakers of his generation. So much so, he caught the attention of Martin Scorsese. The esteemed director of Mean Streets and Goodfellas was in the UK making Hugo when he encountered Kill List, Wheatley’s 2011 follow-up to his no-budget debut Down Terrace. Understandably, Wheatley was ecstatic when he read an interview with Scorsese waxing lyrical about this discovery. “[Scorsese’s] Taxi Driver was the first film I ever saw where I realised there was a director involved,” he says, fighting off a cold…

MORSE MYTHOLOGY

Get ready for even more Morse. Following strong ratings for the recent fourth series of Endeavour, which marked the 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Inspector Morse, ITV has confirmed that the fifth season of Endeavour will be extended from a quartet of investigations to six feature-length episodes. “As much as it’s obviously a prequel to Morse, Endeavour is its own series” Shooting begins in April in and around Oxford for a series, set in 1968, which will further explore this enduring character in the early stages of his career. It’s a gift for the original show’s fans, who get to see the young Morse in what are essentially six lavishly produced films. “I’m glad you said that, because that’s our intention – we hope that each director will…

MORSE MYTHOLOGY

Coppers who rely on brains not brawn,” announced the TV Times when Inspector Morse arrived on a Tuesday night in January 1987. The three feature-length episodes in the first series quickly established the show – based on Colin Dexter’s novels – as a superior whodunit. Yet the casting of John Thaw as the cerebral detective was a surprise move at the time. The actor was best known for playing Jack Regan, the macho Flying Squad officer in The Sweeney. Morse was a more sensitive soul: a lover of poetry, a romantic and a loner. Opening episode “The Dead Of Jericho” is almost a deliberate rebuke to TV’s cursing coppers who administered slaps to villains. Anthony Minghella’s adaptation, directed by Alastair Reid, begins with a choral recital intercut with a scene…

Hunting high and low

Just because it’s Nordic, it doesn’t have to be Noir. That’s the lesson to take from the hit Danish series Dicte – Crime Reporter, featuring a rule-breaking female reporter who muscles in on police cases, much to the chagrin of the lead detective. Amid the investigations there are family crises, comical moments and a strong sense of sisterhood between the recently divorced Dicte Svendsen (Iben Hjejle) and her female friends. Dicte, which has a second series airing in the UK, may well be the antidote to the bleak Nordic Noir of the Copenhagen-based The Killing. It’s even set in a different part of the country – Aarhus, the second-largest city, located on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula. So if you need a break from relentlessly moody Scandinavian TV…

Hunting high and low

THE INTERROGATION IAN RANKIN

“Rebus is a born detective,” he tells Crime Scene. “It’s how he deals with the world, looking into other people’s problems to stop him looking at his own. He can’t give it up, it’s in his blood, and without it he almost ceases to exist.” Like his fictional detective, Ian Rankin is a man who’s at home in a pub. John Rebus is, of course, a regular at the Oxford Bar in Edinburgh. The real-life pub attracts Rebus tourists and receives fan mail for Rankin, who has a permanent presence alongside the actor who played the detective. “There’s a picture of Ken Stott above the bar, because he came in for a drink once, and there’s a picture of me,” says Rankin. “That’s about as much immortality as they’ll give…

THE INTERROGATION IAN RANKIN

5 GRIPPING READS

1 KNOTS AND CROSSES (1987) Rankin was still finding his voice as he switched from literary fiction to crime, while Rebus is not quite the finished article in this debut outing. But it’s still a must-read that offers a glimpse into the detective’s troubled past in the SAS. 2 BLACK AND BLUE (1997) With a title taken from an album by one of Rebus’ favourite bands, The Rolling Stones, the eighth book in the series was inspired by a true crime case from the 1960s. The detective’s career and life are on the line as he hunts a killer. 3 EXIT MUSIC (2007) Named after a Radiohead song, this novel has Rebus retiring for the first time. But while he’s supposed to be quietly concluding his police career, the dogged…

5 GRIPPING READS

28 APRIL 1960 Ian Rankin born in Cardenden, Fife. He attends Beath High School – now his Twitter handle – and studies literature at Edinburgh University. 19 MAR 1987 Publishes first Rebus novel, Knots And Crosses, while living in Marchmont, Edinburgh – in the same street as his fictional detective. 13 JAN 1997 Publishes the eighth Rebus novel, Black And Blue. It goes on to win the Gold Dagger and receives a US Edgar Award nomination. 26 APRIL 2000 John Hannah (right) appears in the first episode of Rebus, based on Black And Blue. Ken Stott takes over in 2006. 6 SEP 2007 Rebus retires in Exit Music. He returns in 2012 as a cold case consultant and rejoins CID in Saints Of The Shadow Bible (2013). 2 OCT 2009…

THE KILLING BAY

THE AUTHOR Chris Ould is the author of The Blood Strand, the first book in the Faroes series – which Booklist declared “a winner for fans of both Scandinavian and British procedurals” – as well as two Young Adult crime novels. He is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter who has worked on many TV shows including The Bill, Soldier Soldier, Casualty and Hornblower. He lives in Dorset. Faroese detective Hjalti Hentze is called to the scene of a murder, one which he suspects is connected to the violence between the islanders and activists. Ári answered on the sixth ring. “Do we have an identity for the body?” Ári asked. “Not at the moment.” “All right, well you’d better go ahead and see what it looks like,” Ári told him, and Hentze…

THE KILLING BAY

“THE SELF-INDULGENT PSYCHO-PANTO MAKES FOR HEADY ENTERTAINMENT” “In saving my life she conferred a value on it,” says Sherlock Holmes, paying eloquent tribute to a woman who took a fatal bullet for him. “It is a currency I do not know how to spend.” An egomaniac like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes might not acknowledge it (or even realise it), but that currency-based challenge extends beyond Sherlock himself. It stretches to the series, which sets out in season 4 to justify two things: a central character’s death and fans’ long-haul investment in the show. Critics were splintered over its success, but give co-writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss this: they damn well try to challenge their show. Even the choppy Gatiss-written opener, “The Six Thatchers”, improves on 2016’s self-satisfied special “The Abominable…

THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

If you thought 2015’s And Then There Were None was a deliciously dark Agatha Christie adaptation, that was a just a primer for the bleakly compelling The Witness For The Prosecution. Produced by the same team, including writer Sarah Phelps, both of the brutal BBC miniseries shatter any preconceptions of Christie cosiness. For the two-part Witness, Phelps has augmented the original short story with a convincing First World War background. And where Christie gave us a sting in the tail, this goes even further with a genuinely shocking finale. A romantic prelude to the legal drama takes place in the trenches in Belgium – an unlikely place for a couple to fall in love. Several years later, in 1923, Austrian showgirl Romaine Heilger (Andrea Riseborough) and English chancer Leonard Vole…

THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

The burly shadows of Rupert Davies and Michael Gambon loom large over the latest incarnation of Georges Simenon’s iconic detective – to the detriment, alas, of Rowan Atkinson, surely no one’s idea of a pipe-puffing chief inspector in the Paris Police Judiciaire. To his credit, the Bean star does endeavour to put his own ruminative, melancholic stamp on the character. The result is so understated, however, as to make him virtually invisible in a role that offers fleeting opportunities for Atkinson to flex his comic chops. Luckily the two feature-length specials here – “Maigret Sets A Trap” and “Maigret’s Dead Man” – fare somewhat better in the villain department, whether it’s a mother-fixated killer of Montmartre prostitutes or a fur-clad ladies’ man living off the savings of slaughtered farmers. The…

The old-school dynamic between cop and criminal still has legs when it comes to crime drama. Continuing TV’s recent form in period serial killers – Rillington Place, Dark Angel – ITV casts a crack duo in its psycho-study of how a detective gradually nailed ’50s Scottish spiv Peter Manuel, a cop-taunting murderer. Terrific as Manuel, Line Of Duty’s Martin Compston pinpoints the Brylcreem’d beast of Birkenshaw’s vanity, a weakness that would prove crucial – in plain sight – to his eventual capture. Detective William Muncie’s doggedness is equally well captured by Douglas Henshall (Shetland), all beady eyes and soft-spoken steel. Although three episodes isn’t enough to convey Muncie’s long-haul patience, every nicotine-harrowed interior feels lived-in, and director John Strickland’s discreet details bring the story to life: while Manuel’s letters ooze…

JONATHAN CREEK: DAEMONS’ ROOST

Few TV detectives have grown over time as much as Jonathan Creek. In the 20 years since he made his bow, we’ve said goodbye to the windmill, sayonara to the duffel coat and ciao to his employer, chick-chasing illusionist Adam Klaus. Not only that, but we’ve galloped through four sidekicks, with Creek’s wife Polly (Sarah Alexander), introduced in 2013 special The Clue of the Savant’s Thumb, now his partner-in-crime-solving. There was a lot of goodwill lost with the last series in 2014. The wobbly mysteries and a disappointingly domesticated – and downcast – Jonathan suggested the once unconquerable David Renwick had lost heart in his creation. So “Daemons’ Roost” had a lot of convincing to do. Would it be a return to former glories? Would it convince JC diehards that…

JONATHAN CREEK: DAEMONS’ ROOST

RILLINGTON PLACE

The real-life case of Notting Hill mass murderer Reg Christie was famously filmed by Richard Fleischer in 1971 as 10 Rillington Place, featuring Richard Attenborough in one of his finest screen performances as Christie (and John Hurt playing the wretched Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for Christie’s crimes). But in the BBC’s three-parter, Tim Roth equals (maybe even surpasses) Attenborough. Roth’s Christie – round-shouldered, bald and bespectacled, shuffling, smiling apologetically and speaking in a self-effacing whisper – seems to be such an insignificant, harmless little man that his killings are all the more horrifyingly hard to credit. As, apparently, was the case with the real-life killer. The rest of the Rillington Place cast – Samantha Morton as Christie’s manipulated wife Ethel, Nico Mirallegro as poor naive, gullible Tim Evans…

RILLINGTON PLACE

THE TEAM: SERIES 1

When crime no longer stops at international borders, police forces in different countries have to work together. That’s the premise behind Peter Thorsboe and Mai Brostrom’s The Team – which, while lacking the innocent exuberance of 1980s action series The A-Team, is a solid attempt to show how technology and human reason can ensure justice for victims of crime, regardless of geography and judicial borders. Lars Mikkelsen — chilling in Sherlock — here plays good-natured Harald Bjorn, an internationally acknowledged expert in organised crime who links up with Antwerp-based Alicia Verbeeck (Veerle Baetens) and Berlin-based Jackie Mueller (Jasmin Gerat) as they slowly build a case against Marius Loukauskis (Nicholas Ofczarek), a Lithuanian billionaire up to his eyes in human trafficking, forced labour and murder. The narrative pace across the eight…

THE TEAM: SERIES 1

As anyone who watched Series 1 of The Missing knows, intricate plots packed with unexpected twists are the hallmark of Harry and Jack Williams’ writing. But the first run now seems almost simplistically linear beside Series 2, which zips back and forth between three countries and four or five different time zones, tossing in enough clever twists, side-plots, red herrings and rabbit-out-of-hat revelations to keep our minds spinning. Series 2 isn’t a sequel as such, although it has its central theme in common. The first series focused on James Nesbitt’s attempts to track down his young son, who had gone missing from a small town in Northern France. This time around, the only major character to resurface is French police detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo), who helped Nesbitt in his…

You expect high style from a film by a fashion designer, but Tom Ford also brings substance to NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, adapted from Austin Wright’s novel Tony And Susan. When struggling writer Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends his novel to his successful but neurotic ex, Susan (Amy Adams), we’re plunged into a deep-noir nightmare of murder, revenge and marital-meltdown metaphors. Jigsaw plots like this often emerge disjointed or stifled from within, so it’s to Ford’s credit that his layered, lushly mounted meta-mystery packs its themes tight with suspense, feeling and tension. Pulpier pleasures drive JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK... Tom Cruise man-grapples again with the role of Lee Child’s ex-military hero. Being Cruise, he also grapples with superiors over a conspiracy, helped by the woman (Cobie Smulders) in his old job and…

DEAD WOMAN WALKING

“A SLIPPERY, DEVIOUS STORY IN WHICH THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM” Anyone who’s read Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love will have found it hard to forget the book’s traumatic ballooning disaster. With Dead Woman Walking, Sharon Bolton seems determined to top that with a horrific opening that feels like the moment of impending doom in a disaster movie. Over 30 breathless pages, you experience every violent jolt as 12 passengers lose control of their hot air balloon over Northumberland National Park. Their frayed tempers are a prelude to a crash landing in which everything seems to go wrong, from the power lines in the way to the loss of the radio connection that might have saved them. In a malevolent twist, this is a tragedy brought about by one…

DEAD WOMAN WALKING

If you ever thought the Sherlock Holmes stories might benefit from being steeped in gin, caked in grime and then left unwashed for weeks, socio-psychology lecturer Mick Finlay’s 1895-set detective debut is for you. While Holmes took society cases, Finlay’s William Arrowood is your private dick for dirty deeds done dirt cheap: when he isn’t boozing himself senseless, he takes on cases from those who can’t afford Holmes. We meet self-declared Holmes-hater Arrowood and his tough ’n’ ready John Watson-alike pal, narrator Norman Barnett, when a Frenchwoman tasks them with finding her missing brother. The mystery leads them to a grim South London boozer, the Barrel of Beef, and on to darker places, where Fenians, dodgy coppers, lethal gangsters, boiled-to-death corpses, bad memories and ruthless violence await them. Like the…

There’s nothing like a grisly murder to get the old pages turning, so how about six for the price of one? Daniel Cole’s debut novel starts with half a dozen bodies, butchered and sewn together to form the marionette-like ragdoll of the title, and Detective William “Wolf” Fawkes of the Met is at the centre of the mystery. The pace of Ragdoll is breathless – it began life as a prospective TV script, and it shows: it’s stuffed to the gills with action and cliffhangers, the killer releasing a list of names of his next victims with the date they’re due to meet their sticky end. But what makes the book so readable is the gallows humour running through it, a deeply British knack of finding the funnies amid the…

“THE WRITING’S CASUAL AIR MAKES IT FEEL LIKE BEING TOLD A STORY IN THE PUB” Peter Manuel doesn’t like to think of himself as a criminal, although his rap sheet is a laundry list of grotesqueries. No, Peter Manuel likes to think of himself as a storyteller. So when he reaches out to William Watt, a man accused of murdering his wife, daughter and sister-in-law, he’s planning to tell him a story. Watt is desperate for answers about what happened to his family on the night he went on a fishing trip and returned to tragedy; Manuel wants... well, he’s not entirely sure, but it definitely involves being recognised as the writer he thinks he is. The problem for Manuel is that he has no skill for narrative. Happily, though,…

TWO O’CLOCK BOY

Mark Hill has had previous careers as a journalist and as an award-winning producer for BBC Radio 2. Of course, none of this necessarily qualifies him to write the kind of storming debut that is now de rigueur for any fledgling crime writer wishing to make a mark, but that is exactly what he’s done in this ambitious novel. Two O’Clock Boy takes the clichés of the modern police procedural and forges them into something new and impressive. The protagonist is morally ambiguous copper DI Ray Drake – familiar, yes, but this is an interesting variation on the typical crime fiction character. Prior to the narrative, a children’s home, Longacre, was razed to the ground. In the present a sinister figure, the titular “Two O’Clock Boy”, appears to be in…

TWO O’CLOCK BOY

DESPERATION ROAD

The dustbowl towns of Mississippi: a place where the cops are even worse than the criminals, everyone drives all night with beer bottles between their legs, and the lost and desperate are way out on their own. Here we find Russell Gaines, fresh from 11 years in the pen for killing a teenager while drink-driving, and now being hounded by the kid’s vengeful brothers. Meanwhile, social castaway Maben is running from the relentless cruelties of the world with her young daughter, only to find herself shooting down a police officer. The set-up is pure Southern Noir, but Michael Farris Smith’s third novel aspires to the emotional detail and finely traced internal lives of Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy or Harper Lee. Action is brief and brutal, while a good deal of…

DESPERATION ROAD

“THE MISFIT SPOOKS GRIP OUR ATTENTION THROUGHOUT THE OFFBEAT, INTRICATE PLOT” Slough House – as you might guess from the name – isn’t exactly the most prestigious arm of the British Secret Service. In fact it’s by way of MI5’s refuse tip – a shabby, crumbling building accessed via a putrid alleyway in east-central London, staffed by an ill-assorted bunch described as “the catastrophes of the intelligence world”. The team turn out to be a rich gallery of addicts, obsessives and psychological walking-woundeds, dumped in this scummy backwater of the Service for varied misconducts, or simply for having antagonised the wrong person. They’re headed up by the breathtakingly charmless Jackson Lamb (“I don’t think of you as a team, I think of you as collateral damage”), the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking…

Life has not been kind to Lori Anderson. Accustomed to living on her wits and taking care of herself, the Florida-based bounty hunter takes no prisoners – except, of course, when it’s in the line of duty. But she does have an Achilles heel in the form of her nine-year-old daughter, Dakota. Although the little girl is in remission from leukaemia, her medical bills remain sky high. Hence Lori’s reluctance to take her along when she’s tasked with bringing in JT, a fugitive who is also a significant figure from her past. When the job goes very wrong indeed, it explodes into a battle for survival – for both Lori and her child. Zinging with action from the very first page, this debut novel is an absolute firecracker of an…

Despite the prevailing financial crisis in Greece, business is good for Stratos Gazis. The Athenian hit man (he prefers the term “caretaker”) has a steady supply of clients, although his latest job goes awry before he can get near the target: a lawyer who’s apparently been mistreating his wife, a famous model. Soon after she hires Stratos, her BMW is peppered with bullets at a crossroads. But the victim driving the car turns out to be a different woman with a striking resemblance to the glamorous celebrity, who’s apparently gone into hiding. While the average hit man might hold out for a less convoluted case, Stratos has clearly got a thing for his client, despite a film noir obsession that should ring alarm bells where femmes fatales are concerned. Hired…

“YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO DO SOME VERY ILLEGAL THINGS AS WELL AS BEING ENTERTAINED” When Jack Parlabane began his mayhem-filled journalism career more than 20 years ago in Christopher Brookmyre’s debut novel Quite Ugly One Morning, he seemed to be made of Teflon, bounding cheerfully from one disaster to another with no emotional ill-effects. But in the most recent novels, the character has gained more depth. Middle-aged and divorced, his disdain for the niceties of the law when in pursuit of a juicy story has made him persona non grata in the new world of journalism post-Leveson. As Brookmyre puts it, in typically salty fashion, “Parlabane knows what it is to have everyone believe you’re the worst of the worst, a bottom-feeding sleazebag low enough to rim a rattlesnake.” And…

KILL THE FATHER

When a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome and her six-year-old son vanishes, police assigned to the case assume an abusive husband is the culprit. However, the chief of Rome’s Major Crimes unit has his doubts, and lures Deputy Captain Colomba Caselli — on medical leave after surviving a bomb explosion that left her with PTSD panic attacks — to investigate the case. Caselli has the assistance of the cripplingly claustrophobic Dante Torre, a modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes who spent his childhood trapped inside a concrete silo by a man known only as “The Father”. Increasingly unsure of who he can trust, Torre believes his captor to be back and active. The investigative duo end up ever further outside the law as they attempt to find sufficient…

KILL THE FATHER

Jonathan Craine is corrupt. Nominally, he’s employed as a detective with the LAPD, but that’s really just a cover for his role as a “fixer”, a man who ensures that scandal never attaches itself to Hollywood stars and executives. He’s also a man in mourning following the death of his actor wife, an event that’s convinced him to start anew. Shame nobody told MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, who calls on Craine when a producer working on The Wizard Of Oz is found dead in his home. Craine’s role is clear: to have the death declared a suicide and to protect Gale Goodwin, the newly widowed starlet, from the press. Except that’s not how things work out. Partly because a young cop, O’Neill, won’t take short cuts and because he…

HE SAID/ SHE SAID

“THE ELEGANT PLOTTING IS NEAR INVISIBLE AMID THE RICH INTERIOR LIVES ON THE PAGE” As a metaphor in a crime novel, an eclipse has a certain resonance. In Erin Kelly’s sixth book, her characters are kept in the dark about crucial details – much like the reader. Yet the facts would seem to be incontrovertible: a woman has been assaulted during the total solar eclipse of 1999 at a grungy festival in Cornwall. A young couple, Laura and Kit, witness the rape and aftermath – a twist of fate that will affect their lives for the next 15 years. He Said/She Said confronts you with that stark and disturbing scene, followed by the trial several months later. The harrowing nature of the case is compounded by the insensitivity of the…

HE SAID/ SHE SAID

THE OWL ALWAYS HUNTS AT NIGHT

Like its predecessor I’m Travelling Alone, The Owl Always Hunts At Night features a pair of Oslo police detectives: Holger Munch (middle-aged, tubby, dogged) and Mia Krüger (young, intuitive and unconventional). You might anticipate echoes of the teaming of Stieg Larsson’s Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. Krüger in particular, with her tormented past and knack for playing hunches, is strongly reminiscent of Salander. Bjork’s novel hits several more Scandi Noir buttons. His cops – of course – have dark personal issues and troubled private lives: Munch agonises over his broken marriage and Krüger is near-suicidal, while some of their colleagues struggle with drink problems. The killer, too, has a traumatic past; no common-or-garden murderer, he subjects his victims to bizarre rituals and gross humiliations,…

THE OWL ALWAYS HUNTS AT NIGHT

BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA

Inspired by a real-life (and unsolved) case in which an entire family was murdered, as well as a fortuitous channel-hop landing on a shopping network (advertising a CD collection, playing the song that would become this book’s title), British-born writer Nicolás Obregón’s journey to his debut novel was an unusual one. Blue Light Yokohama is an odd read. It frequently feels like four novels in one, with a strong main narrative – the investigation into the murder forming the backbone of the book – supported by several overlapping plotlines that appear mainly in the form of flashbacks and dream sequences. However, these elements aren’t entirely successful, bordering on confusing, with little resonance beyond occasional red herrings, which is a shame – especially as the novel’s central mystery is so compelling.…

BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA

THE SHADOW DISTRICT

“RARELY HAS THE PRESENCE OF A CREAKY DETECTIVE SEEMED SO APPOSITE” On 10 May 1940, a force of Royal Marines landed in Reykjavik. They encountered no resistance. So began five years when Allied troops – first British and Canadian, later American – occupied Iceland as a way to deny Germany from establishing a military presence on an island crucial to control of the North Atlantic. If we Brits have chosen to forget invading a neutral neighbour, perhaps because it doesn’t sit well with our narrative of plucky resistance to Nazi aggression, Icelanders certainly haven’t. It is, after all, difficult to overlook a period in your recent history when 40,000 US troops were stationed in a country with a population of just 120,000 people. It’s these events that form the backdrop…

THE SHADOW DISTRICT

Stav Sherez’s DI Jack Carrigan is one of those fictional cops so dogged by bad luck that one imagines them followed around by their own personal black rainclouds, like Calamity James in The Beano. In this third outing (it follows A Dark Redemption and Eleven Days) for Carrigan and his spunky sidekick DS Geneva Miller, the detective’s enemies are engaged in a devious campaign to get him chucked off the force, he’s having to work alongside his dead wife’s ex-lover, and his mother is dying in hospital. As always, Sherez laces his thrills and spills with a hefty dose of ontological reflection: “In the room there was just him and his mother and the circling array of machines that did what once only God and prayers could.” Sherez really is…

When Norfolk crime lord Richard Goodwin dies after his car ends up in a river, his family’s grief only goes so far. His wife, Tatty, coped with his brazen cheating by dosing herself up on prescription pills, while their grownup children had retreated from the baleful influence of a bullying father and the biggest crook in Great Yarmouth. But when Tatty realises it was murder rather than suicide, the widow’s natural instinct for revenge suggests she’s just as ruthless as the gangster she married. Although the windswept seaside town may be a bit of a backwater, the power vacuum means Yarmouth increasingly feels like the New Jersey of The Sopranos. Drug dealers are executed, bodies are buried under the mud, and Tatty soon starts throwing her weight around, including a…

Famous Last Words

“The extended montage shows who’s up and who’s down ” “Let’s go home” THE WIRE (2008) Some shows end with a bang, others with a whimper. After five compelling and often bleak seasons, The Wire’s finale got it right. As a feature-length conclusion to one of the most acclaimed TV shows of all time, the closing episode had to be something special. Creator David Simon’s masterstroke was an end sequence that felt like a separate mini-series compressed into five minutes. As disgraced cop and boozy philanderer Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) contemplates the Baltimore skyline, a montage reveals the fates of characters you’ve lived with over 60 episodes. Simon created a series that heralded a new Golden Age of television. A former newspaper reporter, his drama had the revelatory impact of…

Famous Last Words

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