I have mentionedbefore that Max Allan Collins has an excellent new book due for release from Hard Case Crime on January 6, 2026. Titled Return of the Maltese Falcon, it is of course a sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon—his only novel featuring San Francisco private eye Sam Spade. But as it turns out, two occasional contributors to The Rap Sheet have an expanded edition of Hammett’s 1929 tale set for release on the very same day Collins’ yarn hits stores.
Expanded in what respect? Well, according to Northern California author Mark Coggins, creator of the August Riordan series, the hardcover version of The Maltese Falcon coming from Berkeley-based publisher Poltroon Press (shown at right) will feature not only the entirety of Hammett’s original story, but as a coda, a couple of Falcon sequels that Coggins produced and published recently in Eclectica Magazine. In the following note, he explains what motivated him to continue Spade’s adventures:
For a crime-fiction devotee like me, some stories never really end. They live in your head, the characters prowling the foggy streets of your imagination long after you’ve turned the final page. For me, and I suspect for many of you, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is chief among them. Sam Spade’s characterization of the black bird as “the stuff that dreams are made of” in the John Huston film is one of the all-time great last lines,* but it leaves a tantalizing question hanging in the air: What happened to the real falcon?
This year, I got the chance to answer that question for myself. When the copyright for Hammett’s masterpiece expired in January 2025, it felt like a door creaked open, inviting a new generation of writers to step into Spade’s world. I didn't hesitate. I sat down and penned a short story, “Mockingbird,” that picks up right where the novel left off, sending Spade back into the labyrinthine hunt for the genuine, jewel-encrusted bird. I’m happy to say the story found a home in Eclectica.
Writing new fiction in a world as richly realized as Hammett’s San Francisco is no small task. Authenticity is everything. My guiding star was Don Herron’s indispensable book, The Dashiell Hammett Tour. It’s a brilliant field guide to the city Hammett knew and wrote about.
To that I added some of my own research. Herron, for example, notes that the novel places gunman Floyd Thursby’s hotel on “Geary near Leavenworth” but doesn’t pinpoint a specific establishment. Armed with a 1928 San Francisco city directory, I went hunting. One establishment stood out as the most likely candidate: the Geary Inn Hotel at 725 Geary. Today, it’s called the Hotel Luz. I reached out to the current owner who told me that a writer who had been a tenant of his had independently come to the very same conclusion.
Once “Mockingbird” was finished, I didn’t let up. A second tale, “The Russian Egg,” followed immediately, continuing Spade’s quest. It was also published in Eclectica Magazine.
Beyond those Falcon follow-ups, Poltroon’s forthcoming edition will include Coggins’ black-and-white photographs of modern-day San Francisco, introducing each chapter. And the shot used on the cover? It’s of the alley where Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, was murdered. “One of the marvels of Hammett’s work,” says Coggins, “is how tangible his city remains. You can still stand outside Spade’s apartment building at 891 Post, look up at his office windows in the old Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter, and even walk into John’s Grill on Ellis Street and order the same meal he ate: ‘chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes.’ My photos will capture these enduring locations, bridging the nearly 100-year gap between his world and ours.”
Randal S. Brandt, who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and is curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, has prepared a new introduction for this edition. And the dust jacket will include a “mapback” showing crime-scene locations from both Hammett’s novel and Coggins’ stories.
All in all, this sounds like a volume that belongs on my shelves—right next to Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon.
* The actual last line is “Huh?” spoken by Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus in response to Spade’s remark.
Organizers of the annual An Post Irish Book Awards have announced their shortlisted nominees for this year’s prizes. There are 18 categories of nominees in total, but here are the eight contenders for Crime Fiction Book of the Year:
•Two Kinds of Stranger, by Steve Cavanagh (Headline) •Burn After Reading, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Bantam) •The Secret Room, by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press) •It Should Have Been You, by Andrea Mara (Bantam) •The Killing Sense, by Sam Blake (Corvus) •The Stranger Inside, by Amanda Cassidy (Canelo Crime) •Fair Play, by Louise Hegarty (Picador) •The Stolen Child, by Carmel Harrington (Headline Review)
The reading public is invited to vote here for their favorite among these works. Winners will be announced on November 27.
Somehow we have now made it to November. Although there have been several favorable turns along the way (my visit to Bouchercon in New Orleans, for instance), 2025 has, in many other respects, been an annus horribilis. At least we have had many satisfying new works of crime and thriller fiction to distract us and provide comfort.
Since mid-September, when I posted my diverse list of books debuting this season—on both sides of the Atlantic—I have added dozens of titles to the more than 425 I recommended originally. Over just the last month, I have extended that inventory to cover such releases as You-Jeong Jeong’s Perfect Happiness (Creature), Jane Thynne’s Appointment in Paris (Quercus), Chuck Storla’s Murder Two Doors Down (Crooked Lane), Jennifer Graeser Dornbush’s What Darkness Does (Blackstone), C.M. Ewan’s Strangers in the Car (Grand Central), Andreina Cordani’s A Scrooge Mystery (Zaffre), Cate Holahan’s The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold (Thomas & Mercer), Johana Gustawsson’s Scars of Silence (Orenda), Cara Black’s Huguette (Soho Crime), Robin Cook’s Spasm (Putnam), and Best of The Strand Magazine, an anthology edited by Andrew F. Gulli and Lamia J. Gulli (Blackstone).
Click here to find my updated list of reading diversions.
With Halloween nigh upon us, I am reminded of one of the most outlandish modern stories linked to this annual celebration. Yes, I’m talking about how the October 30, 1938, radio dramatization of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds caused many listeners to think that Martians were invading Earth … or at least New Jersey.
Because I’ve written about this episode before in The Rap Sheet, I won’t repeat the story, but instead direct you to my previous report here. At that link, you can also listen to the entire, hour-long broadcast by Orson Welles’ The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
In recent decades, there has been considerable debunking of the legend—as appealing as it is—that tens of thousands of gullible Americans panicked at hearing aliens had descended upon our planet. But in the broadcast’s immediate wake, many newspaper stories spread those rumors far and wide, including the one featured atop this post, from the October 31, 1938, edition of The Baltimore Sun.
We have two new bits of crime-fiction awards news.
First off, Scottish author Peter May has won France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policiere 2025 for his novel The Black Loch (Loch Noir), the unexpected fourth installment in his much-acclaimed Lewis Trilogy, set on an island off the northern coast of Scotland. He is one of two recipients of this prize, which is given out annually to both a French author and a foreign author. The second winner is Mathilde Beaussault, being honored for her debut novel, The Willows (Les Saules).
Second, In Reference to Murderbrings word that this year’s PRIDE Award for emerging LGBTQIA+ writers, presented by Sisters in Crime, has gone to Lizabeth Engelmeier of Southern Illinois for her novel-in-progress, Soft Little Monsters. It further explains that “Engelmeier will receive a $2,000 grant to support activities related to career development, including workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of her work.” Runners-up for the prize were Shelley Kinsman of Toronto, Ontario; Derek Puddester of Vancouver, British Columbia; Bryn and Rebecca Michelson-Ziegler of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; A. Mitchell of Detroit, Michigan; and Taryn Stickrath-Hutt of Chicago, Illinois.
George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has begun collecting published lists of the “best” crime, mystery, and thriller lists of 2025. I won’t repeat everything he finds, but I will try to pass on selections I think are worth your attention.
The first two offerings he highlights come from critic Jake Kerridge of England’s Daily Telegraph and from chain retailer Barnes & Noble. Among their picks are William Boyd’s The Predicament, Lindsey Davis’ There Will Be Bodies, Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune, Nita Prose’s The Maid’s Secret, Vaseem Khan’s Quantum of Menace, Louise Penny’s The Black Wolf, Mick Herron’s Clown Town, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Benbecula, and Susie Dent’s Guilty by Definition.
Expect much more on this subject over the next two months.
• Yesterday brought news that The Clues in the Fjord, by Finnish author Satu Rämö, has won the 2025 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. That book, which judges described as “a sophisticated and atmospheric police procedural with a pleasingly unpredictable dark and twisty plot,” was translated by Kristian London and published in Britain by Zaffre. Also nominated for the Petrona were Dead Island, by Samuel Bjørk, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Norway, Bantam); The Widows, by Pascal Engman, translated by Neil Smith (Sweden, Legend Press); Deliver Me, by Malin Persson Giolito, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Sweden, Simon & Schuster UK); The Dancer, by Óskar Guðmundsson, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus); The Sea Cemetery, by Aslak Nore, translated by Deborah Dawkin (Norway, MacLehose Press); and Pursued by Death, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda). Incidentally, the annual Petrona Award memorializes Maxine Clarke, the British editor, crime-fiction blogger, and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction” who passed away in December 2012 (Petrona was the name of her long-running blog).
• And so it begins—the annual roll out of “best books of the year” lists. First up comes Publishers Weekly, which today revealed its dozen favorite mystery and thriller novels of 2025:
— Cape Fever, by Nadia Davids (Simon & Schuster)
— Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
— The Doorman, by Chris Pavone (MCD)
— Fever Beach, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
— The Human Scale, by Lawrence Wright (Knopf)
— Listen, by Sacha Bronwasser (Viking)
— A Murder in Paris, by Matthew Blake (Harper)
— Saint of the Narrows Street, by William Boyle (Soho Crime)
— Salt Bones, by Jennifer Givhan (Little, Brown)
— The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Putnam)
— We Don’t Talk About Carol, by Kristen L. Berry (Bantam)
— Your Steps on the Stairs, by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Other Press)
I have read only a few of those, but own a couple more that I should probably now move up in my TBR stack.
• Variety reports that BAFTA nominee John Hannah (The Last of Us, Rebus, Four Weddings and a Funeral) will lead a new, Death in Paradise-like detective drama titled Death in Benidorm, expected to debut next year on the Paramount Skydance-owned UK network Channel 5. This six-part series finds Hannah playing Dennis Crown, “a former detective trying to escape his past who swaps the chaos of the UK for a quieter life running a bar in Benidorm [on Spain’s Mediterranean coast]. But when tourists start turning up dead, he’s reluctantly drawn back into detective work — egged on by his barmaid Rosa, a crime drama superfan. … [W]ith Dennis’ real-world experience and Rosa’s encyclopaedic TV knowledge, ‘each episode sees the duo tackling a new murder in paradise, whilst trying to remain on the right side of the local Spanish cops.’” Spanish actress Carolina Bécquer (8 años, On/Off) has the role of Rose, with Ariadna Cabrol Damian Schedler Cruz also helping to fill out the cast.
• Speaking of television, I’m currently watching Season 2 of Keri Russell’s political thriller The Diplomat on Netflix, and will soon sign up for BritBox in order to see the six-episode third season of Kris Marshall’s Beyond Paradise. But I’m looking forward as well to the Season 2 premiere—on Thursday, November 20—of A Man on the Inside. You’ll recall that it stars Cheers alumnus Ted Danson as Charles Nieuwendyk, a retired and widowed college engineering professor who works undercover for a San Francisco private investigator. The opening season of this half-hour Netflix comedy-drama found Nieuwendyk trying to solve mysteries at an assisted-living facility on Nob Hill. The latest batch of eight episodes will send him to probe dubious doings on a college campus. Danson’s real-life wife of three decades, Mary Steenburgen, is among the guest stars we will see this time around.
• The location for Left Coast Crime 2027 has been chosen, and it’s … Santa Fe, New Mexico, which last hosted that convention in 2011.
• With Halloween coming right up, on Friday, October 31, I’ve noticed some new attention being paid to American artist Edward Gorey, famous for his oft-macabre pen-and-ink illustrations. Clues magazine editor Elizabeth Foxwell recently posted in her blog about visiting the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, which she says a docent quipped was “the house that Dracula built.” Meanwhile, Ohio’s Ironton Gazette notes that Gorey, who died back in 2000 at age 75, had his ashes interred in that southern Ohio town’s Woodland Cemetery (near his maternal ancestors), but only recently has the gravesite been given “its first proper marker.” The white, two-part headstone features an appropriate quote, taken from Gorey’s 1969 surrealist country-house mystery, The Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley: “The monuments above the dead / Are too eroded to be read.”
(Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a series comparing noteworthy crime, mystery, and thriller novels against their Hollywood feature adaptations—for better or worse.)
By Randal S. Brandt
Book:Phantom Lady, by Cornell Woolrich (as “William Irish”), 1942 Movie:Phantom Lady—Robert Siodmak (director), Bernard C. Schoenfeld (screenplay), 1944
“Robert Siodmak is the greatest director of film noir. Ever.”—Eddie Muller
“La bonne fée de Siodmak … s’appelle Joan Harrison.”—Hervé Dumont
Film director Robert Siodmak, a German expatriate whose Hollywood career coincided perfectly with the rise of the style of American filmmaking that would eventually be called film noir, has earned his fair share of accolades from movie historians. But, when “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller declares you the “greatest … ever,” that’s saying something. After a promising early start in his profession, Siodmak left his native Germany in 1933 as Adolf Hitler rose to power. He emigrated first to Paris, where he made several French films between 1933 and 1939, and then to United States, arriving in Los Angeles in 1940. Working within the Hollywood studio system, his initial American efforts were a series of forgettable B-pictures made first for Paramount and then for Universal. But it was at Universal that Siodmak’s fortunes finally took a positive turn. In her landmark, 1998 biography of this director’s life and career, Deborah Lazaroff Alpi wrote:
[Siodmak] was beginning to feel somewhat downcast at the thought that his career would develop no further, that he would be doomed to bread-and-butter pictures for the rest of his life. But it was at this point that he met someone who would change forever the course of his life and his work. Her name was Joan Harrison.
Siodmak’s previous biographer (in 1981), film historian Hervé Dumont, went so far as to call Joan Harrison the director’s fairy godmother.
And the picture that set the course for both Siodmak’s and Harrison’s groundbreaking careers was Phantom Lady.
If Robert Siodmak was a master of film noir, Cornell Woolrich was equally a master of noir novels and stories. He knew how to toss a character into an impossible situation, light the fuse, and then take him or her to hell and back. In Phantom Lady, published under Woolrich’s nom de plume William Irish, the reader knows from the chapter titles alone that the fuse has already been lit and that it’s going to burn fast—Chapter 1 is called “The Hundred and Fiftieth Day Before the Execution” and Chapter 22 is “The Hour of the Execution,” for goodness sake!
The novel starts, 150 days before the execution, when Scott Henderson—who had quarreled with his wife just before they were due to head out for the evening—goes into a saloon with a sour look on his face, orders a Scotch, and sits down next to a woman at the bar. The first and, as it turns out, only thing he notices about her is her chapeau.
The unusual thing about her was the hat. It resembled a pumpkin, not only in shape and size but in color. It was a flaming orange, so vivid it almost hurt the eyes. It seemed to light up the whole bar, like a low-hanging garden-party lantern. Stemming from the exact center of it was a long thin cockerel feather, sticking straight up like the antenna of an insect. Not one woman in a thousand would have braved that color. She not only did, but got away with it. She looked startling, but good, not funny.
Impulsively, Henderson invites this woman to have dinner with him and then attend a show. She agrees, but before they leave the bar they make a pact: no names, no addresses, no personal details about each other. They are just “two people seeing a show together, companions for an evening.” They take a cab to a restaurant, have dinner, then go to a nightclub to see Estela Mendoza, “the South American sensation.” It’s there that Henderson’s companion catches the attention of the orchestra drummer. She also catches the attention, and not in a good way, of Mendoza, who appears on stage wearing the exact same hat as hers! After the show ends, Henderson and the woman return to the bar where they met, have a nightcap, and go their separate ways.
But when Henderson returns to his apartment, the cops are there, waiting for him. His wife, Marcella, has been found murdered, strangled with one of Henderson’s neckties. Naturally, Henderson is the prime suspect in his wife’s slaying. Yet he has an alibi! The police know the time of Marcella’s death, and it was the precise time he was at the bar meeting that woman in the odd hat. She can prove he didn’t do it … if only he knew what her name was, where she lived, what she looked like … Alas, all he can remember is that hat.
Scott Henderson makes a perfect murder suspect. He had asked Marcella for a divorce; she refused. He actually was having an affair, and in order for him to be with the woman he really loved, he needed to be free from the one he was married to. Unfortunately for him, the mysterious lady who could alibi him has vanished, and everyone who Henderson can remember interacting with that fateful night remembers him, alone; no one claims to recall his companion at all.
Following his trial, he is convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair. No surprise, really. Remember the countdown chapter titles?
Phantom Lady in paperback (left to right): From Pocket Books, 1944, with cover art by Leo Manso (later famous for his collages); Graphic Mystery, 1955, with an uncredited illustration; and Ace Books, 1968, featuring a cover painting by Stan Hunter. Afterward, though, Henderson is visited by Inspector Burgess, the lead homicide detective in his case, who only found evidence to convict him, but none to exonerate him. Regardless, Burgess has become convinced that Henderson is innocent—a guilty man, he reasons, would have done a much better job of alibi-ing himself. Unable to do anything more for Henderson, at least officially, Burgess convinces him that he should appeal to his best friend, John Lombard, to continue searching for the phantom lady. Burgess also enlists Henderson’s girlfriend, Carol Richman, to conduct a parallel investigation.
Yet every time John or Carol get close to someone who—finally—admits to seeing Henderson and the mystery woman together on the night in question, that witness ends up dead. Clearly the murderer is somewhere nearby, making sure that Henderson stays in the frame. Slowly—at times excruciatingly slowly—they get nearer and nearer to tracing the unidentified woman, and when the real murderer is finally revealed, it is shocking. But has that killer been found too late?
(Above) Thomas Gomez, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone. The novel was such a commercial success that Universal Pictures acquired it and lined it up to be the studio’s first noir film (although the term “film noir” hadn’t been coined yet). It was also the first noir to be directed by German émigré Robert Siodmak and the first film produced by Joan Harrison. Harrison had started her motion-picture career in 1933 as Alfred Hitchcock’s secretary, but she quickly advanced up the ranks to become a screenwriter (at the 1941 Academy Awards she was double-nominated for Oscars for her work on Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent) and Hitchcock’s most trusted advisor outside of his wife, Alma Reville. In 1943, after she had left Hitchcock and struck out on her own, Harrison adapted Woolrich’s novelPhantom Lady and pitched it to Universal. Although it initially rejected her treatment, Universal later changed course and offered her the opportunity to produce it herself—making her the first female producer at a major Hollywood studio.
(Left) Joan Harrison at Universal, 1943.
According to Christina Lane, in her 2020 biography of Harrison (also titled, not-so-coincidentally, Phantom Lady), it was she who changed the narrative focus of the film by placing Carol Richman at the center of the story. In the film version, Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is an engineer and Carol (now nicknamed “Kansas,” and played by Ella Raines) is his secretary. Kansas is in love with Henderson—a fact of which he is utterly oblivious here—and determined to do everything she can to exonerate him. The majority of this black-and-white film follows Kansas’ investigations, as she relentlessly tries to extract the truth from people Henderson saw on the night of his wife’s demise: the bartender, the drummer, the nightclub singer, the hat-maker, and, finally, the elusive phantom lady herself. Another major shift from the novel is the revelation of the killer’s identity. It’s no spoiler to tell you that it is Franchot Tone, the film’s top-billed star, who plays Henderson’s friend Jack Marlow (renamed from John Lombard in the novel). However, the audience does not yet know who he is when he arrives in his introductory scene and basically announces “It’s me. I did it.” This revelation turns the narrative from a whodunit (which the novel carries out to the very end) to a howcatchem. Kansas and Burgess (Thomas Gomez), of course, still have no clue, so the audience knows more than they do, and Siodmak keeps the tension building until the nerve-wracking climax.
The official, 1944 trailer for Phantom Lady.
Although the screenplay is credited solely to Bernard C. Schoenfeld, Joan Harrison really deserved at least a share of recognition for its writing. (Universal offered her either screenwriting or producing credit, but not both. She wisely chose producer.) Schoenfeld’s scripting experience up to that point was in radio and he had never tried his hand at a motion-picture screenplay before. Author Lane surmises that hiring Schoenfeld actually worked to Harrison’s benefit, as she could guide and shape the screenplay in the way she wanted it, without much pushback from her novice scribe. As a radio writer, Schoenfeld’s contributions played to his strength—dialogue. As the film’s producer, it was also Harrison who hired Robert Siodmak to direct Phantom Lady, setting him on his course to becoming one of film noir’s greatest directors—and Eddie Muller’s favorite.
Cornell Woolrich’s strength as a crime writer was in devising setups that placed characters in seemingly impossible situations. He was also very good at tying everything up at the end, pulling all the plot threads together and leaving the reader satisfied, if not exhausted. However, he frequently had trouble in the middle. The book version of Phantom Lady is no exception. There are long sections of exposition and monologue that sometimes seem like they are going on forever without moving anything forward. The film does not have that problem. At a brisk 87-minute running time, there is no room for lengthy diversions. The casting is also spot-on, with Ella Raines (in her first featured role) stunning as Kansas, Franchot Tone suitably creepy as Marlow, and Alan Curtis sympathetic as Henderson. Elisha Cook Jr. also turns in a terrific cameo as the frenetic trap drummer. And, doing her best Carmen Miranda impression as the nightclub singer, Estela Monteiro (renamed from Mendoza), is Aurora Miranda—Carmen’s sister!
Two set pieces in the movie are taken directly from the novel. The first shows us Carol/Kansas, during her independent investigation, staking out the bartender who served Henderson and the mystery woman, and who now claims to only remember Henderson alone. After several nights of her sitting quietly in the saloon, constantly staring at him and then following him home after closing time, the stakeout finally ends tragically, inadvertently turning Carol into another of Woolrich’s avenging “black angels.” In the film version of this sequence, the direction and camera work (by ace cinematographer Woody Bredell) are top-notch; in particular, the scene of Kansas trailing the barkeep onto a deserted subway platform absolutely drips “noir.”
Here’s the jazz-club cellar scene from Phantom Lady, showcasing Elisha Cook Jr. (remember him from The Maltese Falcon?) as a sexually-charged drummer.
The second is one of the most famous (infamous?) scenes in all of film noir. In the novel, Henderson had testified that while attending the nightclub act, his companion had drawn the persistent, unwanted notice of the drummer in the orchestra. Set on getting that drummer, whose name is Cliff Milburn, to admit he’d seen the lady in the orange hat, Carol dresses provocatively, sits in his direct line of sight, and flirts with him while he plays. After the performance, she lets him take her out. When he proposes accompanying her to a late-night jam session, she initially hesitates. “Come on, you don’t want to miss this, snooks,” Milburn urges. When they reach the basement where the band is playing, Woolrich makes it clear that the musicians are all stoned, with marijuana smoke “filling the air with haze and flux.” This time Carol’s plan actually works. Milburn finally breaks down and admits that he had watched the lady in the hat and had later been paid $500 by somebody to forget that fact if the cops asked about it.
When Siodmak shot this scene, he subverted the Motion Picture Production Code censors by playing down the drug angle. In the movie, Kansas and Cliff rendezvous after the show and Cliff asks, “You dig jive?” “You bet,” she replies, “I’m a hep kitten.” Arriving at the jam session, they find the drummer-less band already in full swing. There are open bottles all around, and smoke in the air, yet there is no hint that it is anything illicit. But were the censors so focused on the reefers that they completely missed the orgasmic frenzy that Elisha Cook Jr., as Cliff, works himself into behind his drum kit, with Ella Raines seductively egging him on?
(Right) Author Cornell Woolrich.
Phantom Lady is a great example of a novel and the film based upon it that both stand the test of time. Although key changes were made to Woolrich’s yarn, most of them work very well on the big screen. And many of the essential elements from Woolrich’s book remain intact. The only creative change in the cinematic version that is hard to understand is the decision to ignore Woolrich’s description of the hat—especially as it was featured prominently in the cover design of the original novel. To be sure, the headwear in the movie is large, gaudy, and hard-to-miss. But it is no orange pumpkin. Surely, some Hollywood milliner could have made something that resembled the novel’s version, even if the color would have been lost in a black-and-white film.
The Hollywood adaptation of Phantom Lady was a breakthrough in numerous ways. As an early example of dark and suspenseful storytelling and chiaroscuro cinematography, it provided a blueprint for the further development of film noir. It showed Hollywood that Cornell Woolrich was a reliable source of original material (reaching a high-water mark in 1954 when Hitchcock adapted one of his short stories as Rear Window). And it gave Ella Raines, according to film noir scholar Imogen Sara Smith, “her defining, and perhaps her greatest role, allowing her to try on several personae while playing a distaff version of the white knight detective pounding the mean streets.”
Perhaps most significant of all, though, was the impact this motion picture had on the future careers of Robert Siodmak and Joan Harrison, he as a director (The Killers, Criss Cross) and she as a producer (Ride the Pink Horse, Alfred Hitchcock Presents). In 2015, Eddie Muller echoed Dumont’s assessment of the mutual benefits they gained from this collaboration: “With [the] 1944 release [of Phantom Lady], Joan Harrison not only helped foster the film noir movement, she set the course of Siodmak’s career. From then on he was synonymous with moody, psychologically complex thrillers—competing with Hitchcock throughout the 1940s for the mantle ‘Master of Suspense.’”
SOURCES
Alpi, Deborah Lazaroff. Robert Siodmak: A Biography, with Critical Analyses of His Films Noirs and a Filmography of All His Works. McFarland & Company, 1998.
Dumont, Hervé. Robert Siodmak: Le maître du film noir. Editions L’Age d’Homme, 1981.
“Eddie Muller on Robert Siodmak.” Phantom Lady, DVD. Turner Classic Movies, 2012.
Lane, Christina. Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock. Chicago Review Press, 2020.
Muller, Eddie. “Murder, She Made: The Exceptional Career of Joan Harrison.” Noir City Annual 8 (2015): 88-101.
Smith, Imogen Sara. “A Light in the Dark: Ella Raines and Film Noir’s Working Girls.” Noir City Annual 8 (2015): 103-111.
Terrall, Ben. “Book vs. Film: Phantom Lady,” Noir City Annual 8 (2015): 226-229.
We have a week and a half yet before vampires, goblins, and Taylor Swift wannabes descend upon our homes and offices. Yes, that’s right: Halloween is just ahead. And it is time to prepare—time to buy a pumpkin for carving, time to purchase just enough but not too much candy for trick-or-treaters, and time to decide whether some Halloween-related reading material might be called for.
Mystery Fanfare can help with that last need. Editor Janet Rudolph has updated her lengthy catalogue of “mysteries that take place on or around Halloween.” Seriously, who knew there we so many? Everything from Joyce Tremel’s A Room with a Brew, Leo Bruce’s Death on All Hallowe’en, and Maya Corrigan’s Crypt Suzette to Addison Moore’s Bobbing for Bodies, E.J. Copperman’s Night of the Living Deed, Summer Prescott’s Pumpkin Spice Murder, Loren D. Estleman’s The Witchfinder, and Daryl Wood Gerber’s Stirring the Plot. Let us not forget, either, Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party (adapted most recently into the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice).
Reading while also listening for the insistent knocks of children on your front door might be difficult, but surely you can handle the task.
ABC Radio National, Australia’s public service network, recently released the results of a poll asking listeners to choose Oz’s “Top 100 Books of the 21st Century” (not necessarily written by Australians). A variety of crime, mystery, and thriller works made the cut, among them Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, and—unsurprisingly—Jane Harper’s outback-set yarn The Dry.
Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.
It Ain’t Hay, by David Dodge (Dell, 1949). This is the last of four novels Dodge wrote about hard-boiled San Francisco tax accountant-cum-detective James “Whit” Whitney, a character he had introduced originally in 1941’s Death and Taxes. It Ain’t Hay was published as part of the now-famous Dell “mapbacks” series, with a cover painting by Gerald Gregg.
Directly on the heels of Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, and the spin-off Ballard—all TV shows based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels—the world of Los Angeles detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch looks destined to expand further. Deadline reports that Amazon Prime has greenlighted a prequel series from MGM+ Studios titled Bosch: Start of Watch that will explore the protagonist’s original story.
The article goes on to explain that 32-year-old American actor Cameron Monaghan (Shameless, Gotham) will play newbie cop Bosch on the forthcoming drama, with Omari Hardwick (Power, Army of the Dead) “portraying his training officer, police veteran Eli Bridges, a new character not in the book mythology.” What makes this series especially notable is that “There is no direct source material for Start of Watch since Connelly’s novels do not include a Bosch prequel, though bits and pieces from Harry’s early years are planted in various books in the universe.”
So what’s the setup of this franchise addition? Deadline says it
goes back to 1991 Los Angeles and follows 26-year-old Harry Bosch during his earliest days as a rookie cop. The series will explore a city on the edge, teeming with racial tension, gang violence and a fractured LAPD. Amid routine calls and growing unrest, Bosch finds himself drawn into a high-profile heist and a web of criminal corruption that will test his loyalty to the badge and shape his future as the detective who lives by the code, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”
Author Connelly, one of several Start of Watch executive producers, is quoted as saying, “I’m deeply grateful to Michael Wright [head of MGM+] and the team at MGM+ for championing this next chapter in Bosch’s journey with such remarkable care and integrity. Being able to see how Harry Bosch became the man we have loved for 10 seasons is a gift to me and his many fans. I can’t wait to dig in with Cameron and the writers to explore this uncharted character territory.”
The Black List, which was established in 2005, is a platform that allows screenwriters to upload their scripts for review by industry professionals for a fee, which has led to the production of several projects by studios, some that even went on to win Academy Awards. In 2024, the website expanded to include novels as a way to offer a unique entryway to potential industry exposure and connections with agents and publishers for fiction writers with unpublished novel-length manuscripts. The very first book snapped up for a project has been revealed as the crime thriller, Then He Was Gone, from Isabel Booth, which is set to be published in February of next year by Crooked Lane Books. The Black List for Fiction has also established the Unpublished Novel Award to celebrate excellent manuscripts in seven genres including Crime & Mystery and Thriller & Suspense, with a winner in each genre to receive a $10,000 grant to support it on the journey to publication.
Being the curious sort, I went looking for some information about Booth’s Then He Was Gone. It has been described as “a nail-biting and unsettling thriller” about desperate parents searching for their missing son. And the 2025 winner of that Unpublished Novel Award is to be announced in December. I’ll be watching for the results.
A brief break from my usual crime-fiction coverage …
While Republicans struggle to portray this coming Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings Day” protests as “hate-America rallies,” that couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, these peaceful demonstrations will make clear once more just how strong public opposition is to Donald Trump’s reckless, authoritarian policies and the corruption pervading his administration.
Participation is expected to be heavy. “Across the country,” reports The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper, “2,000 No Kings protests are scheduled for ... Saturday, according to a post from the Indivisible project. There are plans in major cities like Los Angeles; Boston; Washington; Chicago; Atlanta; New Orleans; Kansas City, Mo.; and Bozeman, Mont. Planned protests stretch into Canada and as far south as Madrid, a town in Mexico.” Organizers estimated that the last No Kings Day demonstrations, on June 14, 2025, drew in excess of five million people in more than 2,100 U.S. cities and towns.
My aim is to join a march, beginning at 11 a.m., that will lead north from Seattle’s Pier 52 ferry terminal to Seattle Center, a distance of a little over 1.5 miles. Like so many other Americans, I believe it’s important to resist Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in his own hands; his increasingly violent anti-immigration tactics; his economy-weakening tariffs; his incessant lying and his hostility toward the news media that would hold him accountable; his animosity toward women’s rights and voting rights; his intention to undermine our education system and steal away affordable health care; his efforts to hollow out the federal workforce and consequently increase unemployment; his destruction of America’s international alliances; and his moves to turn both the U.S. justice system and the military into partisan tools he can employ for personal protection and to shut down dissent.
A bully, a con man, and a convicted criminal, Trump has shown no respect for American democracy or the rule of law. We cannot sit idly by and watch him tear down our nation in pursuit of his own gains. As President Thomas Jefferson reportedly said, “When tyranny becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” We must be the resistance.
Click here to find out how you can take part in these No Kings Day rallies in your own area—not because you hate America, but because you love it too much to see its ideals sabotaged by a greedy, disrespectful man and his fellow right-wing ideologues.
• Back in July, San Francisco Bay-area author Mark Coggins published a short story in Eclectica magazine titled “Mockingbird,” which revitalized Dashiell Hammett’s best-recognized shamus, Sam Spade, and sent him chasing once more after the elusive bejeweled Maltese falcon. Now, Coggins is back with “The Russian Egg,” appearing in the October/November edition of Eclectica. Picking up where “Mockingbird” left off, it finds the “hard and shifty” Spade being employed by Rhea Gutman, supposedly the daughter of the late and corpulent criminal Casper Gutman, one of the principal antagonists in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930). She wants him to find a different missing treasure: a Fabergé egg, once the property of Russian Dowager Empress Maria, which, like the falcon, may also have been smuggled into California, and may have drawn the covetous notice of real-life former U.S. senator James D. Phelan. Coggins’ two yarns—best read back to back—have Spade being threatened and shot at by guns; taking what turns out to be a deadly ferry ride; dining on broiled sturgeon steak with mushroom sauce at the now-famous Tadich Grill; and rolling far too many cigarettes to ensure his continued health. They provide a welcome opportunity to renew our acquaintance with a private eye who made a scant four appearances in Hammett’s fiction—in Falcon and three subsequent short stories.
• By the way, note that the “pale and petite” Rhea Gutman makes an early appearance, too, in Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon, due out from Hard Case Crime in January 2026. I already have a copy of that 224-page novel, but haven’t yet read it, preferring to wait until one day (soon) when I can truly savor the experience. Meanwhile, I’m thinking it might be fun to re-read Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer, his 2009 prequel to The Maltese Falcon.
• One more Spade-related item: In his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West, Evan Lewis features a program guide by one Elizabeth McLeod that recounts how Hammett’s “blond Satan” of a gumshoe became an old-time radio star.
• Season 6 of the Victorian-era sleuth seriesMiss Scarlet—formerly Miss Scarlet and the Duke—starring Kate Phillips and Tom Durant-Pritchard, will make its broadcast debut as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup on Sunday, January 11, 2026 (though PBS Passport members can begin streaming its half-dozen episodes on December 7). The Masterpiece Web site offers a few “first-look images” to tantalize the show’s longtime fans.
• From now through April 6, 2026, Oxford, England’s Bodleian Libraries are hosting “Tradecraft,” an exhibition based on the late author John le Carré’s private archive that “offers unique insights into the working methods of the writer who shaped the modern spy novel. ‘Tradecraft’ is a word le Carré used to describe the techniques of espionage, but it might also be applied to his own skilled craft as a writer and social commentator.” Among the materials spanning le Carré’s life are “research, drafts, and corrections for his novels, non-fiction, and adaptations, as well as personal correspondence. Highlights include annotated manuscripts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, and The Little Drummer Girl; previously unseen family photographs; original sketches and watercolour paintings; and letters to fans and friends.”
• For Spybrary, Shane Whaley interviews professor Federico Varese and Dr. Jessica Douthwaite, who co-curated “Tradecraft.” A write-up on the Web site explains that “They explore how the exhibit reveals le Carré’s working methods, personal life, and research habits. From manuscript drafts and scribbles on hotel stationery to his mother’s abandoned suitcase, the conversation explores how le Carré meticulously researched his books, how he conceives characters like George Smiley, and what the curators hope visitors take away.”
• Author talks worth checking out: Sarah DiVello fires questions at Walter Mosley about his latest book, Gray Dawn; Jeffrey James Higgins chats with Reed Farrel Coleman (Sleepless City); Chicago Review of Books’ Lori Rader-Day quizzes Jake Hinkson on the subject of his brand-new novel of “dirtbag decisions,” You Will Never See Me; and with Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper, Julia Kelly discusses her Evelyne Redfern series (A Dark and Deadly Journey, etc.).
• Finally, congratulations are in order for two blogs prominent on my radar. “Puzzle Doctor” Steve Barge celebrates 15 years of helming In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, while Peter Hanson counts the same number of years writing Every ’70s Movie.
• I mentioned last spring on this page that Raymond Benson, the author of several James Bond continuation novels published between 1997 and 2003, had penned a thrilling adventure for Ian Fleming Publications (IFP) titled The Hook and the Eye, set back in 1952 and centered on ex-CIA op Felix Leiter. A Bond cohort familiar from several of Fleming’s novels, Leiter has become, in Benson’s yarn, a Pinkerton detective tangling with spies in Manhattan and tasked with safely transporting an “impossibly beautiful and impossibly secretive” woman to Texas. Hook was originally intended for release in 10 digital installments, beginning in May, and was then supposed to debut in print in October—this month. So far, however, it seems to be available in book form only for direct purchase from IFP. I don’t see the same edition listed on Amazon in either the United States or the UK, though that online retailer is still satisfying orders for the Kindle version. I asked Benson for an update on this situation. Here’s his reply:
IFP became their own publisher recently and they wanted Hook to be exclusive from them (for the time being). So, yes, right now, while the e-book is on Amazon and other retailer outlets, the print book can only be ordered from IFP. They will likely expand this rollout in the future like the old roadshow movie attractions, slowly offering it on Amazon and such, an audiobook, maybe a U.S. publication, maybe a limited-edition hardcover. It’s all new to them and they’re trying things out, like the e-book serialization that ultimately didn’t work technically (so they released the full e-book at once).
As to the possibility of The Hook and the Eye becoming the initial entry in a whole new Leiter series, Benson answers only, “Not known yet.” That isn’t a “no,” so keep your fingers crossed.
(Above) The full paperback cover of Raymond Benson’s The Hook and the Eye, designed by Thomas Gilbert. • By the way, Terrance Layhew recently spoke with Benson about The Hook and the Eyefor his podcast, Suit Up!
• I missed this news, so thanks to In Reference to Murder for bringing it to my attention. Writes B.V. Lawson: “The winners of the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards (fondly known as the Lammys), established in 1989 to garner national visibility for LGBTQ books, were announced this past weekend. The winner of the Best LBGTQ+ Mystery was Rough Trade by Katrina Carrasco (MCD). The other finalists include: Charlotte Illes is Not a Teacher by Katie Siegel (Kensington); One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole (William Morrow); Rough Pages by Lev AC Rosen (Tor Publishing Group); and The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett (Soho Crime).”
• Chicago Review of Books last week announced its shortlist of contenders for the 2025 Chicago Review of Books Awards (what other name did you think they would have?), and among the five fiction rivals is one that might be especially interesting to this blog’s readers: Vanishing Daughters (Thomas & Mercer), by Cynthia Pelayo, a novel of psychological suspense focusing on a Chicago journalist haunted—in more ways than one—by mysteries surrounding her mother’s death and her own hunt for a fiendishly successful serial killer.
• On October 1, Crime Writers of Canada opened the submissions process for its 2026 CWC Awards of Excellence, “celebrating the best in Canadian crime, mystery, and suspense writing.” Eligible for consideration are works published in 2025 by Canadian citizens and permanent residents. There are 10 award categories:
— The Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel ($1,000 prize)
— Best Crime First Novel ($1,000)
— Best Crime Novel Set in Canada ($500)
— The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery ($500)
— Best Crime Short Story ($200)
— The Best French Language Crime Book ($500)
— Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book ($250)
— The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Non-fiction Crime Book ($300)
— Best Unpublished Crime Novel Manuscript written by an unpublished author ($500)
Submission deadlines are here. Shortlisted nominees will be publicized next April 24, with the winners to be announced on May 29.
• Meanwhile, writers hoping to contribute articles or reviews to the Winter 2025 edition of Mystery Readers Journal will want to get cracking: the deadline is November 1. This will be the second issue in a row devoted to Northern California mysteries, tying them both in nicely to next year’s Left Coast Crime convention, which is set to take place in San Francisco from February 26 to March 1, 2026.
• Max Allan Collins has been noodling for years with a novel that would embroil his famous series private eye, Nathan Heller, in a 1960s-era investigation involving both labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He’s even suggested that such a book might be the last one he writes about Heller. Now, though, Collins says he “might not write it at all,” or might instead pen two more Hellers. He explains the situation in his blog:
I was watching TV and saw Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and wondered if he had, if not damaged, the Kennedy name, brought it into a kind of doubt. He strikes me as a crank, and a dangerous one; some smart people disagree, but enough people share that view—that as Secretary of Health and Human Services he is a threat to health and human services—that the Robert F. Kennedy name is not something I dare, at the moment, hang a Heller on. It may already have hurt Too Many Bullets [2023], my Heller RFK assassination novel.
I don’t do this lightly. I first asked [my wife] Barb if she agreed that this was a bad time to embark on an RFK novel (the theme was to be RFK/Hoffa, as my previous Kennedy-oriented novels have more than hinted at). She immediately agreed and said, “Write something else.” I called my editor, Charles Ardai, at Hard Case Crime and asked if he thought I should do a different, non-Kennedy novel instead of the one we’d been planning (and that I was contracted to deliver). He was thrilled I was setting that subject aside (for now anyway). I asked my longtime researcher, George Hagenaur, what he thought. He, too, said it was a bad time to do a Kennedy book.
So. I am instead going to write [an early 1970s] Watergate novel, which was already one of two Heller novels I was considering doing, for quite a while now. It seems like a good time to deal with a cover-up.
Indeed, revisiting the paranoia and drive for power that led to the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex and Republican President Richard M. Nixon’s subsequent concealment of that crime, would draw obvious parallels to Donald Trump’s paranoia, corruption, and autocratic scheming. Personally, I prefer to see Collins’ Heller tackling older cases (the 1934 murder of bank robber John Dillinger, the 1937 disappearance of aviatrix Amelia Earhart, Los Angeles’ 1947 Black Dahlia murder, etc.), and Too Many Bullets did imply that an RFK/Hoffa story was next. Yet any new Heller novel is better than none.
• With The Last Death of the Year, her sixth Hercule Poirot novel, coming out on both sides of the Atlantic later this month, British author-poet Sophie Hannah talks to CrimeReads “about how she writes the Poirot novels, the taunting challenge at the beginning of this new novel, and what crime fiction and poetry have in common.”
• And the Web site Spybrarymentions that John le Carré’s fourth son, who pens fiction as “Nick Harkaway,” is encouraging other writers to “continue the adventures of his father’s famed spymaster George Smiley, opening the way for a potential new wave of espionage novels. Harkaway, who has already published one continuation novel, Karla’s Choice, and has another due next year, said the morally ambiguous world created by le Carré was ‘richer and wider than the original books ever had a chance to show.’ He urged writers to enter the Smiley universe ‘with due deference and due fearlessness.’”
• We’ve known for some while that a spin-off from Reacher, the Amazon Prime TV series based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, was in the works and that its protagonist would be Frances Neagley (played by Maria Sten), once a member of Reacher’s army special-investigations unit and now a partner with a Chicago private security firm. But not until the author was interviewed by Shots had we heard a recent update on that program’s development. Child revealed that Season 4 of Reacher, based on his 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow, “is almost done … and the Neagley spin-off is almost through post-production.” As to Neagley’s Season 1 plot, Wikipedia says it will find the character “seek[ing] the truth after an old friend dies in a suspicious accident.”
• Since we’re talking TV, note that Season 2 of Karen Pirie, the ITV show based on Val McDermid’s now eight books about a young Scottish police investigator, will have its U.S. premiere on BritBox come Thursday, October 2. This new season will comprise three 90-minute episodes and is adapted from the second of McDermid’s Pirie tales, A Darker Domain. Mystery Fanfareprovides a trailer.
• Lauren Lyle, who plays Karen Pirie, also headlines The Ridge, a six-part drama coming to BBC Scotland and Sky Open on Tuesday, October 21. The Killing Timesexplains that The Ridge “sees Lyle in the lead role of Mia, who is fleeing addiction and leaving behind a professional life in tatters in Scotland. She accepts a wedding invitation from her estranged sister in New Zealand—only to find the would-be-bride dead upon arrival. Caught up in grief and pulled by a dark attraction to her late-sister’s fiancé Ewan, played by New Zealand star Jay Ryan, Mia soon finds that familiarity among a small community breeds secrets and tensions, endangering the brittle fabric of the town itself.”
• Man From U.N.C.L.E. fans, pay attention! Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has scheduled eight telefilms, all edited from that 1964-1968 TV series but frequently boasting extra footage, to show back to back on Monday, October 13. Click here to learn more.
• One hundred fifty years after Edgar Allan Poe was reburied in Baltimore, Ed Simon considers his legacy, his interest in premature burials, and his Americanism in this splendid essay for Literary Hub.
• Included among Columbia University linguist John McWhorter’s choices of “10 Old Television Series Every Kid Needs to Watch”—prepared partly with his “tween daughters” in mind—is CBS’s Mannix (1967-1975). “Weird choice, I know,” he remarks in The New York Times. “But my girls should know the conventions of the once ubiquitous hourlong private-eye genre, including the way it reduced female characters to just dolls. I found that weird even when I was a kid, and I want my girls to see what we have gotten at least partly beyond. Plus, the look and sound of Mannix were a delight. The fashions, sets and even jazzy three-quarter waltz time theme song are groovy. Especially after the first season, when [Joe] Mannix has left a detective agency and goes it alone, the episodes are pleasingly interchangeable; choose the one with your favorite guest star.”
• “Why Do Priests and Vicars Make Perfect Detectives?” asks a headline in the TV-oriented blog The Killing Times. Editor Paul Hirons submits that it’s because mystery-solving clergy—whether G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Sidney Chambers in Grantchester, or Daniel Clement in Murder Before Evensong—“offer not just the satisfaction of seeing a puzzle solved, but a meditation on what it means to be good, or to fall short. The crimes may change, but the questions of conscience, guilt and grace remain timeless.”
• We have a cover already for Hurricane Room, Kim Sherwood’s third and final Double O novel. Its tagline is certainly suggestive: “James Bond Is Alive.” Hurricane Room is being readied for release in the States and UK next May.
• Finally, let us wish a tardy but justly appreciative farewell to Ann Granger, the Portsmouth, England-born author of more than three dozen books in four different mystery series (her first being 1991’s Say It With Poison). She was 86 years old at the time of her death on September 7. An obituary in The Daily Telegraphobserves that “Ann Granger’s mysteries were popular with British readers, but she secured her largest readership abroad, feeding the voracious global appetite for the gentle English style of violent crime. Translated into 10 languages, her novels were especially popular in Germany—where she sold millions of copies, with some 30 of her books entering the top-five bestseller list—and the United States. “The village mystery plot should be ingenious, the style witty, the setting picturesque and the characters amusingly idiosyncratic,” the New York Times Book Review declared in 1995. “Ann Granger knows the drill so well she could write a manual.” According to the Web site Fantastic Fiction, she has one further entry—currently untitled—in her series starring Victorian police inspector Ben Ross that’s still in the publishing pipeline.
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but as a coda, a couple of Falcon sequels that Coggins produced and published recently in Eclectica Magazine. In the following note, he explains what motivated him to continue Spade’s adventures:
up at his office windows in the old Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter, and even walk into John’s Grill on Ellis Street and order the same meal he ate: ‘chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes.’ My photos will capture these enduring locations, bridging the nearly 100-year gap between his world and ours.”
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