Once upon a time, years, maybe decades ago, there used to be the TV Movie of the Week.

Every channel had one and, if I remember correctly, a lot of them were pretty good.

Movies that excited us and entertained us, even if many of them didn't make us think too much.

But as quick as they came, those TV Movies of the Week disappeared. Of course, back then channels were limited and the vast number of cable networks, many of which now have their own original films, didn't exist.

But the TNT Network not only is reviving the movie of the week, but the upcoming program should appeal to many mystery fiction lovers.

Scott Turow's Innocent launched TNT’s “Mystery Movie Night,” which will be weekly adaptations of novels by Sandra Brown, Lisa Gardner, Richard North Patterson, April Smith, Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark, and Patricia Cornwell.

And judging by the advance screenings, these are first-rate productions with good scripts. TNT also has landed some intriguing actors such as Dermot Mulroney, Anne Heche, Judd Hirsch, and Jane Alexander.

Although Innocent first aired Nov. 29, it will have frequent encores. Innocent picks up years after Turow's breakout 1990 novel Presumed Innocent ended.

Presumed Innocent made it to the big screen with Harrison Ford as Chicago attorney Rusty Sabich who was accused of killing a colleague with whom he'd had an affair.

On the small screen, Bill Pullman aptly takes over as Rusty who's now accused of killing his wife, played by Marcia Gay Harden.

No spoilers, but if you are the 10 people who have never read Presumed Innocent, do so before you see the TNT version of Innocent. Of course, I recommend reading the books first anyway.

I guess technically these aren't movies of the week because Ricochet, based on the novel by Sandra Brown premieres at 9 p.m. Nov. 30. Ricochet follows two homicide detectives whose careers – and lives – are on the line during a case of murder and betrayal in high-society Savannah. (I actually saw the crew filming portions of Richochet when I was last in Savannah.)

Emmy nominee John Corbett (Sex and the City, Northern Exposure) stars as Det. Sgt. Duncan Hatcher, who is investigating a corrupt judge, played by Gary Cole. Hatcher also becomes romantically involved with the judge’s wife, played by Julie Benz (Dexter).

I am especially looking forward to Hide, based on Lisa Gardner's novel airing at 9 pm, Dec. 6. (I loved the novel). Hide stars the ever-reliable Carla Gugino as Boston Police Detective D.D. Warren, who is called to the grounds of an abandoned mental hospital where a buried chamber with the remains of six young women is discovered. The case leads D.D. to Annabelle (Bridget Regan), who spent her childhood moving from city to city in hiding. Mark-Paul Gosselaar (TNT’s Franklin & Bash, NYPD Blue) plays Alex Wilson, and Kevin Alejandro (True Blood, TNT’s Southland) is Det. Bobby Dodge.

Richard North Patterson's Silent Witness airs at 9 pm, Dec. 7, starring Dermot Mulroney as defense attorney Tony Lord, who returns to his hometown to defend his friend (Michael Cudlitz of TNT’s Southland), a teacher accused of murdering one of his students. The case will force Tony to relive his past when, as a high school student, he was accused of murdering his first love. Silent Witness also stars Anne Heche and Judd Hirsch.

April Smith's Good Morning, Killer airs at 9 pm, Dec. 13, starring Catherine Bell, Cole Hauser, William Devane, Titus Welliver and Suleka Mathew. (Loved that novel, too)

And, appropriately, Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark will take us to the holidays with Deck the Halls, airing 9 pm, Dec. 20 with Kathy Najimy, Scottie Thompson, Jane Alexander and Larry Miller.

TNT also is looking ahead toward next Spring with an adaptation of Patricia Cornwell's Hornet’s Nest. This novel is not part of Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series but was the first in her mini-series featuring reporter Andy Brazil (Robbie Amell), Police Chief Judy Hammer (Virginia Madsen) and her top deputy, Virginia West (Sherry Stringfield). Set in Charlotte, N.C., Hornet's Nest follows the investigation of a serial killer who targets out-of-town businessmen.

Leave it to the channel that gives us Leverage, Rizzoli & Isles, The Closer and Southland to find new ways to entertain us.

And don't forget, reading these novels will make seeing the movie version even better.

Photos: Top, Hide with Mark Gosselaar, Carla Gugino and Kevin Alejandro; Center, Silent Witness with Dermot Mulroney and Judd Hisch; Bottom photo, Good Morning Killer with Catherine Bell and Cole Hauser. Photos courtesy TNT.

Learning is a lifelong occupation. I don’t care how old you are or how many degrees you have, we never stop learning.

At least we shouldn’t stop.

I think this is especially true of mystery writers—and readers—as each time we delve into a novel we learn something new.

The Crime Fiction Academy is designed for aspiring writers who want to keep learning about the genre,
especially from teachers who lead by example, making us want to succeed.

The Crime Fiction Academy’s dream faculty includes some of today’s top mystery/thriller writers: Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, left, Lee Child, Thomas H. Cook, Linda Fairstein, Susan Isaacs, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, Val McDermid, Joyce Carol Oates, SJ Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, Karin Slaughter.

And you can learn in the very building in which Edgar Allen Poe wrote.

This is the first ongoing, rigorous program exclusively dedicated to crime writing in all its forms. The
curriculum includes a 14-week writing workshop; monthly master classes; a crime fiction reading seminar; special lectures and discussions with editors, agents and others involved with crime fiction and publishing.

How intense will the workshops be? Each workshop will include about 12 students for 14 weekly two-hour sessions. The writer/teacher will set the tone for the workshops but expect in-class writing and analysis of student work. Some students may want to develop short stories or a novel. Spring 2012 workshops will be taught by Jonathan Santlofer, SJ Rozan, left, and Thomas H. Cook.

Megan Abbott is scheduled to lead the 2012 spring’s monthly seminar designed to make students well versed in the genre, focusing on historically significant crime fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries and on contemporary works of note. Students will be encouraged to read and analyze crime fiction as writers and to improve their own work.

Lee Child, Dennis Lehane and Laura Lippman, and others, are scheduled to lead the master classes series.

During these lectures, award-winning authors will each focus on one aspect of crime writing—plot, pacing, dialogue, research, etc., and how this relates to their own work.

All classes, workshops, and lectures will be during the evening at the Center for Fiction, 17 E. 47th St.,
Manhattan. That’s in the Mercantile Library, where Edgar Allen Poe wrote.

Students may enroll for one term, but a year-long commitment is suggested to take full advantage of the
program.

The Crime Fiction Academy costs $2,800 for the 14-week term. Partial scholarship support may be available.

Admission is limited and competitive and is based on work samples. Applications are now being accepted for the term beginning in February 2012. Visit www.centerforfiction.org/crimefiction for details.

Few mystery writers or readers would question the influence that Raymond Chandler, left, has had on the genre.

His Philip Marlowe novels such as The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely are classics that are still read today, as timely as ever for his insights into the human condition, his strong plotting and his beautiful prose.

Chandler's impact also translated to the movies with his contributions to the screenplays for Double Indemnity (written with Billy Wilder) and Strangers on a Train. (For trivia buffs, who knows in what scene Chandler appeared during Double Indemnity?)

His only original screenplay was The Blue Dahlia (1946). According to several sources, the author had not written an ending for the script but the studio wanted to rush the film's production because it was rumored that the star, Alan Ladd, might have to return to the Army. Chandler agreed to finish the script only if he was drunk, which producer John Houseman agreed to. Apparently this worked because the script earned Chandler's second Academy Award nomination for screenplays.

Clues to Chandler's legacy and his influence will be on display when a sale of books and papers from his personal collection are auctioned off Dec. 13 at Sotheby's in New York.

Among the items will be a first edition of The Big Sleep, inscribed to Chandler’s wife, Cissy, and a copy of The Big Sleep dedicated by Chandler to himself, with the inscription, “For me without my compliments.”

There also will be a copy of The Blue Dahlia script; a first edition of the James Bond novel Goldfinger, inscribed to Chandler by its author, Ian Fleming; and a copy of James M. Cain’s novel Three of a Kind, with a personal note from Cain.

Mystery writers are among the nicest people. I have said that so many times before and probably will say it many times in the future.

Take Jeff Abbott, left, and Harlan Coben, below left.

Two nice guys who write solid crime fiction novels. Both started out writing quite good paperbacks before moving on to quite good hardcovers.

Both also have been supportive of each other throughout their careers. Panels with the two of them are non-stop laughter.

This past year, the two of them were working on young adult novels at the same time. Again, mutual support came up.

Several months ago, I was interviewing Jeff for a profile in Mystery Scene. That interview was in issue No. 120, Summer 2011.

During the interview, Jeff mentioned that his European publisher noticed that many teenage boys were reading his stand-alone thriller Panic about the exploits of Evan Cashier, the novel’s 24-year-old hero.

So Jeff’s publishers asked to do something radical to draw even more young readers. Could he re-imagine Panic, rewriting it to make Evan a 15-year-old school boy?

“My first thought was this was not a simple search and replace since age 24 is a lot different than being age 15,” said Jeff.

“But my sons had been begging me to write a book they could read. My oldest said, ‘If you do this, I want to read this first.’ So he and his 15-year-old cousin were my first readers.”

The result is Panic: The Ultimate Edition with new characters and different interaction between the characters. The novel is only available, at present, in Europe.

“I had a lot of fun with it and it was an invigorating experience. It was a new challenge, and I am glad to get a Young Adult book done for my sons.”

While Jeff was working on Panic, Harlan Coben also was working on Shelter, his first YA novel. Shelter continues the story of Mickey Bolitar, Myron's very bright nephew.

And Jeff's sons entered the writing process again.

"Harlan asked my sons to vote on covers of his YA book. My sons are listed as cover consultants," said Jeff.

Peter Bowen, author of the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries set in Montana, knew he wanted to write from a young age, but also knew he couldn’t start too early.

Photo: Dorothy Bradley

“You have to be in your middle thirties before you have anything worth saying,” he says. Bowen grew up in Montana, and moved to Michigan after finishing high school. He started a degree in fine arts but moved back to Montana before finishing.

“I couldn’t see myself graduating and becoming a professor in some East Jesus state,” he says. “So I went home and started doing whatever I had to do to feed myself.” Bowen is an accomplished guitar player and folk singer, a carpenter, and an outdoors guide.

Bowen started writing in the early ’80s but had bad luck with his first novel. “That book was bought by publishers four different times, but each time something went wrong and it’s never been published.”

Shortly thereafter Bowen found success with his Yellowstone Kelly series of historical novels, and then started writing the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries. Du Pré is a cattle inspector and sometime sheriff’s deputy, and solves crimes with a combination of local knowledge, smarts, and a soupçon of mysticism. He’s an expert fiddler, and mingles with a large and boisterous group of family and friends in bars and in Montana’s beautiful outdoors.

Du Pré is also a member of the Métis, a people of mixed Native American and European heritage who fascinate Bowen, and the books are filled with earthy dialogue in the lilting rhythms of Métis speech. He’s learned about the Métis in various ways.

“I’ve spent a lot of time among them, going to powwows. I’m considered an outsider there—I’m a blond, blue-eyed white boy—so I’ve also spent a lot of time sitting in bars listening to people talk.” Bowen doesn’t always just listen. “I’ve had to crawl out my share of bathroom windows to avoid a fight,” he admits.

The mysticism in the stories comes largely from the key character of Benetsee, a medicine man who has visions and who is often instrumental in Du Pré’s solution of a crime, or in helping someone overcome a personal obstacle. Although Benetsee is not based on a particular medicine man, Bowen is familiar with their work firsthand.

“I grew up around Indian medicine people,” says Bowen. “They know a lot of things about living that we don’t have good explanations for. They’re often unexpectedly funny, and they know things they shouldn’t.”

A recurring theme is the sometimes unintended results of the work of amateur environmentalists. “A lot of them are romantics, and they get used by other people. One example is the reintroduction of the wolf to the wild. It was a Trojan horse move by the Republicans. They knew that Democrats would get blamed for any environmental issue that went wrong, so Reagan told the Park Service that if they would lobby for the wolf reintroduction, they’d get more budget. Meanwhile most people here, especially the ranchers who are hurt most by the wolf population, were asking, ‘Why do you want to turn this place into a zoo?’”

Something else that Bowen observes about Montana is the vast change in the number of people and towns. “Half the towns in Montana in the 1950s are now gone. Mainly it’s because the ranchers and lumber companies can do more work with machinery and need fewer people. There are towns here that used to have 10,000 people, and now have 400,” he says. “The last thing to go is usually the bar.”

There were 13 books in the Du Pré series, beginning with Coyote Wind in 1994, and ending with Nails 12 years later. Happily for his fans, Bowen has written the next two books in the series, and his agent is working on selling them to a new publisher.

Bowen has many ideas for more novels in the series, and is also excited about a historical novel he’s written about the wilder days of Montana during Prohibition. “In the 1920s the amount of hooch coming over the border from Canada was amazing. There were three paint factories in the town of Havre, even though there was nothing around to make paint with. Chinese immigrants, who were despised, moved to underground quarters beneath the streets and ran brothels, opium dens, and breweries. One time something went wrong, there was an explosion, and manhole covers went flying like tiddly-winks.” Bowen pauses. “Montana used to be a lot more fun.”

A Peter Bowen Reading List

Gabriel Du Pré Novels
Coyote Wind (1994)
Specimen Song (1995)
Wolf, No Wolf (1996)
Notches (1997)
Thunder Horse (1998)
Long Son (1999)
The Stick Game (2000)
Cruzatte and Maria (2001)
Ash Child (2002)
Badlands (2003)
The Tumbler (2004)
Stewball (2005)
Nails (2006)

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Holiday Issue #122.

“My father was a psychopath,” says K.J. Erickson, writer of the acclaimed Marshall Bahr series, about a divorced homicide detective in Minneapolis.

Regarding her father Erickson says, “He was a first-class liar, like John le Carré’s father. I inherited the tendency, and I think a lot of writers have this in their lineage.”

“But as soon as I learned to print I stopped lying.”

From then on Erickson was a writer, fascinated with narrative and stories. Unlike many, she has always enjoyed the process of writing itself. (“I really love it,” she emphasizes.) By the time she became Vice-President of Risk Management at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in the late 1990s, she had many fragments of books written and stored in file cabinets. Then she started thinking about becoming a professional.

“I’d been at the Federal Reserve awhile and I could see myself dying with my boots on in there.” So Erickson decided she would quit by the year 2000.

“I didn’t want to leave and then have to write a whole book, so I started right away.” Erickson wrote on weekends and had the book ready before the year 2000. A friend knew William Kent Krueger, so she sent it to his agent.

St. Martin’s eventually saw and rejected the book, but gave Erickson a detailed critique of the story’s structure.

“It was the same kind of dumb thing that I imagine first writers do all the time,” she says. “I had envisioned a series of three books, taking place over the course of years, with eight separate plotlines that didn’t converge until the third book.”

“I spent the day of the rejection kicking furniture, but in less than two months I revised the book down to a six-week time period with only two plotlines.” St. Martin’s accepted it and offered a two-book deal.

The Bahr series eventually ran to four books, each featuring Bahr, his partner and computer expert Nettie, and his son Chris, a remarkably precocious preteenager who manages his father’s life in many ways.

“I got a lot of complaints about Chris not being believable. He was based on my daughter and her best friend, and anything he did in the books, they had done, although of course I realize it’s the writer’s responsibility to make a character believable.” Erickson went to many conventions, and was questioned about Chris’ precociousness every time—except once.

“I was on a panel in California and I didn’t get the question. So at the end, I asked the audience if they didn’t find him too advanced for his age. They just looked at each other and said, ‘No, all kids in California are like that.’”

Erickson continually referred to Marshall as “Mars” throughout the series, and she even gave him the nickname “Candy Man,” a slur bestowed by other cops who resent his close relationship with the chief of police. So it was inevitable that reviewers and publicists would refer to it as the “Mars Bahr” series. But Erickson never intended this.

“I don’t like cute names, and I never noticed the play on words until after I’d submitted the book.” The nickname, which belies the serious and suspenseful tone of the stories, may have prevented the Bahr series from reaching the audience it deserved.

By the end of Alone at Night (2004), serious changes had taken place. Mars gains full custody of Chris from his wife, he’s transferred to the Cold Case squad, and a main character dies. “If I was going to keep the series fresh, someone had to go,” says Erickson.

After that fourth book in the series, real life intervened. “I had a whole series of family crises that took me out of being able to focus on a book.”

After things settled down Erickson wrote The Thirteen Steps, a non-Bahr novel, which was rejected. “They were right,” she concedes. “There were some serious structure problems.” She plans to rewrite it for her own satisfaction.

Erickson does have a new Bahr series book in the works, tentatively called A Lesser Evil, and she expects to finish it by 2012. In this one she’s challenging herself to maintain the recently deceased character as a presence in the book.

“If you talk to people who have suffered losses, you find that they stay connected to those who have passed. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to do that in a book.”

At the same time, she’s working on a book about the last killing fog in London, in 1952, a novel supposing that Leonard and Virginia Woolf had a child, and a children’s book called The Gliss Girls.

Erickson may or may not finish or submit these books, since she is now writing mainly for her own pleasure.

“I just love stories.”

A K.J. Erickson Reading List

Marshall “Mars” Bahr Series
Third Person Singular (2001)
The Dead Survivors (2002)
The Last Witness (2003)
Alone at Night (2004)

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Winter Issue #118.

In the late 1990s Douglas Whiteway wrote three mysteries in the Her Majesty Investigates series featuring the detecting duo of Jane Bee, royal housemaid, and Queen Elizabeth herself. He used the pseudonym C.C. Benison.

“I always thought it would be fun to have a pseudonym, and my editor told me I should pick a name that started with A, B, or C, so the books would be at eye level in the bookstore. She suggested the name Blessing, and I changed it to Benison, which is an archaic version.”

Whiteway says the idea for the series came about during a conversation with his sister about Rex Stout’s books. “We were talking about how Wolfe is circumscribed in his movements, while Archie Goodwin, a kind of dogsbody, is free to roam. Certainly the Queen is very circumscribed in her movements and Jane Bee, as a housemaid and a kind of dogsbody, is not.”

He sent his idea to literary agent Janet Irving (novelist John Irving’s wife), who replied that it sounded promising, but explained he would need to actually write the book if he wanted to get a contract. “So I wrote the book, and sent it to her, and she sold it very quickly.”

Death At Buckingham Palace won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for best novel by a Canadian, and was followed by Death at Sandringham House and Death at Windsor Castle. Each book is set in one of the Queen’s official residences, and in each one Bee assists the Queen in solving a murder. The comic series is full of British jargon, features lots of royal lore and descriptions of the royal palaces, and has Jane meeting a great many interesting and eligible men.

Whiteway found the research easy. “I visited each site. After I finished the first draft of the first book, I walked my character through the public section of Buckingham Palace to make sure I had it right. But most of the material came from books. I think it would be hard to imagine anyone more written about than the Royal Family.”

Whiteway had timing on his side. “When I started writing the books, the Royals were extremely popular. I was catching a zeitgeist.”

He had originally envisioned a five-book series: one for each of the official Royal residences. But after the third book came out, the Princess of Wales died.

“That changed attitudes a little, and I think my publisher was unsure what the reception would be to more books.”

After that Whiteway continued his journalism career, which started years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba, his home and near-lifelong residence. Whiteway was a member of Canada’s United Church and a student of religious studies when he wrote in to his local paper to complain about their religion column.

“I basically told them it was crap,” he says a little sheepishly. “But they agreed with me, and asked me to take it over!”

After a graduate degree in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Whiteway spent a year in Toronto before returning to his hometown and a job at the Winnipeg Free Press. Later he was editor of the magazine Canada’s History and the writer-in-residence at the Winnipeg Public Library.

In 1992, before writing the Jane Bee series, Whiteway wrote a novel about a journalist. “It was very long, very dense. Something to learn on. I just put it away after I wrote it.” But Death in Cold Type was eventually published in 2005.

It was also in 2005 that Whiteway had an idea for a new mystery series about an English priest. “I went to Devon for reconnaissance, and found the perfect setting. Then in 2007 I left Canada’s History and started working on it in earnest.”

Readers will be happy to hear that Whiteway has a new three-book deal with Bantam for his Twelve Days of Christmas series, beginning with Twelve Drummers Drumming, to be released in 2011. He has a June deadline to finish Eleven Pipers Piping, and the third book will be Ten Lords a Leaping.

Whiteway says the new series is still humorous, but “I wanted to make a book that’s more psychologically rich, with deeper characterizations.” His new character is village priest Thomas Christmas, whose nickname is “Father Christmas.”

And what about Her Majesty Investigates? Will there ever be another book in the series?

Whiteway says no. “I think the time has passed. It would be hard to imagine bringing that back.”

But Jane Bee fans should not despair.

“Ms. Bee does appear in the new series. And she’s now married—to a famous person.”

A C.C. Benison (aka Douglas Whiteway) Reading List

Her Majesty Investigates Series
Death at Buckingham Palace, 1996
Death at Sandringham House, 1997
Death at Windsor Castle, 1998

Standalone Novel
Death in Cold Type, 2005

The Twelve Days of Christmas Series
Twelve Drummers Drumming, 2011

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Fall Issue #116.