Revue of Reviewers, 3-5-21

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

“Bosch” Makes Its Move

Bosch, the oft-lauded Amazon Prime police-procedural series based on Michael Connelly’s novels, is set to return sometime this spring or in early summer for its seventh—and last—season. However, an as-yet-untitled spinoff series is already in the works for Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, IMDb.TV.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,

Titus Welliver, Mimi Rogers and Madison Lintz will continue their roles on the spinoff, and much of the Bosch creative team, including series creator Eric Overmyer and author Michael Connelly, is also involved. …

The new series will follow Harry Bosch (Welliver) to the next phase of his career, where he finds himself working with his former adversary, attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Rogers). The two have a deep and complicated history but work on something they can agree on: finding justice. Lintz will continue playing Harry’s daughter, Maddie.

“I am beyond excited by this and I think the fans that have called for more Bosch will be as well,” said Connelly, who created the Harry Bosch character and executive produces the series. “To continue the Harry Bosch story and see him team up with ‘Money’ Chandler will be more than I could have ever wished for. And to continue our relationship with Amazon and be part of the IMDb TV lineup will ensure our commitment to providing viewers with a high-quality, creative and relevant show. I can’t wait to get started.”

Click here to read that entire Reporter article.

Death and the “Green Fairy”

Who knew that today, March 5, was National Absinthe Day in the United States? Or that this occasion would recall persistent rumors of writer-poet Edgar Allan Poe having been brought down by absinthe poisoning? Mystery Fanfare this morning dismisses the Poe myth, employing information from The Virtual Absinthe Museum.

Although the link Mystery Fanfare provides to that story no longer seems to be working, you can still find the piece here.

Readin’ and a-Rockin’

By Fraser Massey
“Nights were the hard part. The days were just a series of routines. That was how prison worked. Doors unlocked. Breakfast. Work. Association. More meals. The day was split into periods, like a school timetable, and so it passed with the tick of the clock and the constant fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. The nights were different, though, because that’s when he heard it …”

That opening fairly crackles with promise. But when Neil White, author of the Laura McGanity detective tales, wrote it 10 years ago at the start of “Stairway to Heaven,” the first entry in a short-story anthology titled Off the Record and published by Guilty Conscience, he couldn’t have known he was kicking off a whole new subgenre of crime fiction. Nor could Luca Veste, that volume’s music- and crime-loving editor (soon afterwards to pen detective novels himself), who had persuaded White and 37 other authors from both sides of the Atlantic to contribute yarns to his book, all based on classic song titles.

Three years later, when editor Joe Clifford put together an impressive array of crime-writing talent—Dennis Lehane, James Grady, Hilary Davidson, Chuck Wendig, Jordan Harper, and many more—for the Gutter Books release Trouble in the Heartland, he took an important step forward in the development of rock music/crime anthologies by pretty much setting up the template on which most have since been modeled: Take a band of classic song titles by a much-loved act or an individual artist, and then convince a bunch of writers to use those as jumping-off points for their own short stories.

For Trouble in the Heartland, the focus was on the music of Bruce Springsteen. In the years since, a virtual cottage industry has grown up to produce additional volumes featuring crime- and mystery-tinged tales inspired by the songs of Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Johnny Cash, The Go-Gos, and others.

While Clifford’s approach is now the accepted formula for creating a rock music anthology, alternative methods are still occasionally tried. For instance, in his collection of stories dedicated to the music of the Canadian band Tragically Hip, 2016’s Tragically Hip, Twisted (published by Back Door Chucks), thriller writer David Sachs opted to compose the whole lot himself. Last year’s Peace, Love, and Crime, edited by Sandra Murphy and published by Untreed Reads, returned to Vesta’s Off the Record format of using song titles popularized by a whole range of different acts, which in this case included everyone from Bob Dylan to Jan and Dean. Murphy’s only stipulation to writers such as Maxim Jakubowski, Mary Keliikoa,and Earl Staggs was that they chose numbers that were popular during the 1960s.

Last month saw two additional rock/crime anthologies reach book retailers within days of one another: The Great Filling Station Holdup (Down & Out) was inspired by the songs of Jimmy Buffett, while Coming Through in Waves (Gutter) features stories that share their titles with Pink Floyd tracks. (Full disclosure: I wrote one of the stories in that Pink Floyd volume.)

Two such works reaching print in such close proximity could be coincidental, but it might also indicate how popular rock/crime anthologies are becoming. Even if the latter is true, though, it’s probably going to be a while yet before Amazon devotes a special bestsellers chart to such collections.

In the case of Buffett, there’s evidence suggesting the singer-songwriter and “mayor of Margaritaville” might actually be a crime-fiction fan. The lyrics to “Incommunicado,” included in his 1981 Coconut Telegraph album, name-check both legendary novelist John D. MacDonald and his most celebrated protagonist, Travis McGee.

On the other hand, none of the members of Pink Floyd has been known to express any particular love for detective fiction. However, their breakthrough hit single in their native Great Britain, 1967’s “Arnold Layne,” celebrated a petty criminal with a specialist interest in stealing freshly laundered ladies’ underwear.

For the Jimmy Buffett anthology, edited by Josh Pachter, Agatha Award-nominated author Bruce Robert Coffin submitted the story based on “Incommunicado.” And Derringer Award nominee Bill Baber fleshes out the Layne character for a tale in the Pink Floyd collection, which was edited by T. Fox Dunham.

Crime fiction, of course, has existed in the DNA of rock ’n’ roll ever since the early days of that popular music genre. Songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wore their hearts on their sleeves for “Searchin’,” their 1957 hit for The Coasters. Its lost love/missing person lyrics pay tribute to the analytical skills of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Earl Derr Biggers’ Honolulu cop, Charlie Chan, Joe Friday of Dragnet fame, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Jack Boyle’s now largely forgotten Boston Blackie, and Bulldog Drummond, created by “Sapper” (aka H.C. MacNeile).

More recently, Robert Crais has crafted a much-loved series of yarns featuring a Los Angeles private eye named after the king of rock ’n’ roll. Ian Rankin titled two novels and one short-story collection featuring his hard-drinking Edinburgh detective, John Rebus, after albums by the Rolling Stones. And Lee Child first introduced his itinerant former military policeman, Jack Reacher, in 1997’s Killing Floor, which took its name from a 1965 Howling Wolf track. That book, by the way, also found Reacher searching for the grave of veteran bluesman and ragtime guitarist Blind Blake.

True connoisseurs of the crossover between crime fiction and contemporary music might want to draw special attention to the novels penned by Texan maverick country singer Kinky Friedman, featuring a thinly disguised fictional version of himself solving murders and righting wrongs between gigs.

But kudos must be given as well to British singer-songwriter Charlie Dore. She pulled off an epic feat, on her 2004 Sleep All Day album, by including a track which managed to work the entire plot of Elmore Leonard’s Maximum Bob into one 5-minute, 54-second song—while still leaving enough time for a trumpet solo.

Taking us back to where we started in this piece, it should be noted that Off the Record compiler Luca Veste nowadays joins regularly with fellow UK crime-fictionists Stuart Neville, Mark Billingham, Doug Johnstone, Val McDermid, and Chris Brookmyre to perform in a band called the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, which (to quote from its own Web site) offers “a full-on rawk experience, murdering songs for fun in front of anyone who will listen.” The group even boasts a wryly knowing repertoire of appropriate material that includes “Paperback Writer” by The Beatles and Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives.” For the most part, the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers play at literary festivals, but in the summer of 2019 they graduated to the stage of Europe’s biggest rock festival at Glastonbury.

I can’t speak to the writing process of any other contributor to these many rock/crime anthology volumes, but I can tell you how I wrote my own story for Coming Through in Waves. I stared at a list of Pink Floyd song titles until inspiration finally hit. After connecting with one of the tunes—“Have a Cigar,” from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here—I played it on repeat while I mapped out the plot of my tale, making sure it reflected—as accurately as it could—the song’s distinctive mood.

Putting it together reminded me of my early days, before I became a daily newspaper staff hack, when I cut my teeth in journalism by writing for many now sadly defunct British music journals. The best of those was the alternative rock mag ZigZag, a sort of UK version of Rolling Stone. That monthly’s founding father, the great Pete Frame, used to say that the purpose of music journalism was to make readers want to listen to the stuff you were writing about.

I like to think part of the fun of rock/crime anthologies lies in the double whammy they provide of well-crafted stories and cleverly curated lists of tunes that demand just one more spin when you’ve finished reading. As David Sachs wrote in his introductory note to Tragically Hip, Twisted, “The stories stand on their own—you don’t need to know the music. But for a unique musico-literary experience, I recommend listening to the respective songs, low, on repeat, while reading … Or don’t. It’s a free country.”

Marks Made His Mark

Although I’m late in mentioning this, I must note the death of Paul D. Marks, the award-winning Los Angeles short-story writer and novelist. According to a note from his wife, Amy, posted on Facebook,

Paul passed away on Sunday, February 28th. He died peacefully listening to Beatles and cowboy music. He loved sharing his film noir alerts, his dog walking pictures, his love of writing and his thoughts on life with you. He used to boast that he could go anywhere in the country and would have a Facebook friend he could have lunch with.

Marks penned the Shamus Award-winning novel White Heat and its sequel, Broken Windows, both published in 2018. His 2016 tale “Ghosts of Bunker Hill” won first place honors in that same year’s Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award competition for short stories. His yarn “Howling at the Moon” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2014) was short-listed for both the 2015 Anthony and Macavity awards for Best Short Story, while another brief tale, “Windward,” was included in the Best American Mystery Stories of 2018, and won the 2018 Macavity Award for Best Short Story. The Blues Don't Care (2020) is Marks’ most recent novel, but he also co-edited (with Andrew McAleer) three short-story anthologies, among them last year’s Coast to Coast: Noir from Sea to Shining Sea. He contributed to the blogs SleuthSayers and Criminal Minds.

A native of L.A., Marks’ Web site says that much of his writing was “inspired by the city’s history and culture. Los Angeles and Southern California is often as much a ‘character’ in his work as the human characters. … His stories often deal with the changing nature of the city and the displacement it causes people. His characters are frequently people who time has passed by or who no longer fit in today’s society.” Marks had at various times served on the boards of both the L.A. chapter of Sisters in Crime and the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

In a Criminal Minds post that went up in mid-January, Marks told readers that he’d “been on forced hiatus for a couple of months now,” after being diagnosed with cancer.

I was in the hospital off and on for several weeks. It was torture in more ways than one. My body reacted strongly to the first dose of chemo. That is, the chemo worked—maybe too well. And threw off all of my other labs and numbers. It was and—to some extent—still is a mess. But I’m home—mostly—these days. With some return hospital visits scheduled. And following up with chemo and other treatments.

There’s a lot to deal with and I’m shorthanding this greatly. It’s going to be a long, tough road, but at least it finally looks like a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Janet Rudolph writes in Mystery Fanfare: “I knew Paul had cancer, but we all thought he'd beat it and continue his long walks with the dogs, writing great stories and novels, illuminating the history and culture of Los Angeles, writing witty comments, and sharing his life with Amy and the dogs and cats.” Apparently that was not to be.

READ MORE: “Remembering Paul D. Marks” (Criminal Minds).

The La-La Land Lineup

Twelve categories of finalists were announced today as being in contention for this year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. Although the Times story about this is sheltered behind a paywall, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph reports the list of Mystery/Thriller rivals:

• A Beautiful Crime, by Christopher Bollen (Harper)
• Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
• Little Secrets, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (Ecco)

Rudolph adds, “Winners will be announced in a live-streamed virtual ceremony on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter on April 16, the day before the 26th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books kicks off its second virtual event during the ongoing pandemic.”

An Essential Second Shot of Columbo

Three years ago on this page, I celebrated the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Prescription: Murder, the figurative first pilot for the NBC Mystery Movie “wheel series” Columbo, starring Peter Falk. Now, thanks to The Columbopile, we mark a second, similarly noteworthy anniversary. It was half a century ago today, on March 1, 1971, that the official Columbo pilot, Ransom for a Dead Man, was broadcast.

As The Columbophile recalls,

[T]here was a lot riding on Ransom for a Dead Man. For Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link, this was a chance to fulfill their dreams of seeing their star creation granted a series of his own after the success of TV movie Prescription: Murder three years prior. For Peter Falk, meanwhile, it was an opportunity to really make his name after years of critically acclaimed roles in commercially unspectacular TV shows and movies.

There was also plenty at stake for Ransom’s leading lady Lee Grant, as she continued her on-screen revival after ending up on the Hollywood Blacklist as an alleged Communist sympathizer from the early 1950s to the mid-’60s.

All the major players have reason to consider Ransom for a Dead Man a big success. Despite that, though, Ransom remains on the periphery of many Columbo fans’ personal list of favourite episodes, and arguably doesn’t garner the appreciation it warrants.

Nonetheless, notes that blog’s anonymous author, Ransom for a Dead Man marked “a large evolution of the Columbo character from the headstrong and dapper detective of Prescription: Murder.

Initially intended as a one-off character, there are only shades of the Columbo we’ll come to know and love in Prescription. By the time Ransom came around, though, Falk was already well on the way to perfecting the good Lieutenant.

Granted, he might not have 100% mastered the character (he arguably didn’t do so until Season 2), but he’s very close. It’s a terrific performance, full of warmth and trickery, and packed with the idiosyncrasies that will come to define the character. It’s a big step up from Prescription and sows the seeds of a character that we’ll truly take to our hearts.

Another memorable element of that pilot was composer Billy Goldenberg’s score for the film, which screenwriter and film historian Gary Gerani says “influenced the ‘elegant beauty’ style of music” employed in later detective shows. (A clip can be heard here.)

If it has been a while since you last watched Ransom for a Dead Man, click on over to The Columbophile to watch the entire movie.

Poe’s Predicament

This seems like good news! From In Reference to Murder:

Christian Bale and director Scott Cooper are set to make their third film together in Cooper’s scripted adaptation of the Louis Bayard novel, The Pale Blue Eye. The thriller revolves around the attempt to solve a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale will play a veteran detective who investigates the murders, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world-famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.

The Pale Blue Eye was one of my favorite crime/mystery novels of 2006. Here’s what I wrote about it in January Magazine:

Edgar Allan Poe has been a frequent presence in mystery and crime fiction—not just as an author (he created the detective protagonist C. Auguste Dupin for the 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), but as a character. However, he’s rarely been interpreted as engagingly or eccentrically as Louis Bayard does in this year’s The Pale Blue Eye.

This historical whodunit is set at the West Point military academy in 1830. A young cadet has been found in the compound, hanged and mutilated, and the academy’s superintendent summons a lonely, retired and alcoholic New York City detective, Augustus “Gus” Landor, from his Hudson Valley home to investigate. Gus recognizes a cover-up when he sees one, but he doesn’t know how to get past the mutual self-protectiveness of the cadets—at least not until he takes on an assistant, the least likely military man I can imagine: the alternately poetic, macabre and romantic Poe, who has wound up at West Point in an effort to appease his foster father, John Allan. With Landor’s encouragement, the young and maverick future wordsmith tries to worm information from within the ranks, while the ex-cop works from the outside. Meanwhile, more corpses turn up, and Poe complicates the investigation by falling—fast and hard, and in a welter of purple prose—for the sister of Landor’s chief suspect in these atrocities.

Bayard, who may be most recognizable as the author of Mr. Timothy (2003), a novel in which Charles Dickens’ Timothy “Tiny Tim” Cratchit, from A Christmas Carol, was skillfully re-imagined as a reluctant sleuth in 1860 London, delivers in The Pale Blue Eye an essentially simple plot strongest on character, and with an ending guaranteed to surprise. Bayard’s writing is appealing throughout, but most memorable in the chapters told from Poe’s perspective—a task that requires Bayard to adopt an idiosyncratic lexicon, and maintain that style over long sections. No easy task.

Bullet Points: Wonders Never Cease Edition

• This coming Monday, March 1, will bring—from The Bagley Brief Web site—the release of Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist, Philip Eastwood’s “painstaking reconstruction” of a previously unpublished memoir by English adventure-thriller writer Desmond Bagley (1923-1983). In advance of that, Shotsmag Confidential has posted the foreword to Eastwood’s work, written by Mike Ripley (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and establishing Bagley’s stature as one of the Big Three among contributors to the”Golden Age of the British thriller,” the other two being Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean.

• Can it really be true, at last? According to Deadline,

Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a character created by author Walter Mosley, is getting another shot on television after Amblin Television signed up to develop a series.

The production company has closed a deal to adapt Mosley’s stories—Rawlins has appeared in 15 novels and short stories—with The Americans and Amazing Stories director Sylvain White on board to direct the pilot episode and exec produce.

The series, based on the gritty detective novels, will center around Easy, a Black WWII Army veteran turned hard-boiled private eye. The show will be set in 1950’s Los Angeles and will honor the great traditions of storytelling in the detective genre, while also exploring the racial inequalities and social injustice experienced by Black people and other people of color.

Deadline observes that this “is the latest attempt to get Rawlins on to the small screen—[screenwriter-producer] John Wells attempted an Easy Rawlins series at NBC back in 2011 and USA Network also attempted a version seven years before that. The character of Easy Rawlins also previously appeared on screen in the 1995 film Devil in a Blue Dress, which starred Denzel Washington.”

• Back in December I mentioned that the often humorous British crime drama McDonald & Dodds, featuring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched cops in modern-day Bath, England, would soon return with a second season. Radio Times now brings word that the first of three new two-hour-long McDonald & Dodds episodes will show in the UK on Sunday, February 28, beginning at 8 p.m. Guest stars this season include Rupert Graves, Doctor Who’s Natalie Gumede, and Saira Choudhry. Radio Times provides cursory synopses of each installment’s storyline. It also frets that “these three episodes could be McDonald & Dodds’ last, since DCI McDonald [Gouveia] firmly stated in the previous series that she would only stay in Bath for two years tops.” But hey, we’re dealing here with a work of pure fiction, and if this ITV program continues to pull in audiences, can we not expect someone in charge to contrive a semi-logical excuse for extending its storyline?

• Shortly in advance of the coronavirus pandemic shutting down movie and television production a year ago, British TV channel BBC One announced that it had greenlighted two additional seasons—Series 6 and 7—of the Scottish crime drama Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall. But only now, says The Killing Times, is work on those fresh episodes finally resuming. Beginning in April, it explains, back-to-back series of the show (six episodes apiece) will commence shooting on the subarctic archipelago that gives this prize-winning drama its name. “Both series will be written and created by David Kane (Stonemouth, The Field of Blood), who originated the first series of Shetland and has written on every series since. The islands’ local newspaper, The Shetland Times, reported that producer Louise Say promised ‘absolutely riveting’ and ‘hard-hitting’ storylines.”

• This will likely be worth watching. B.V. Lawson tells us that “Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series update of the classic thriller, The 39 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s novel, which was turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The TV project of The 39 Steps is being described as ‘a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for our times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order.’”

• Even before TV writer and producer William Link’s death in December, I had been trying to catch up with the proliferation of small-screen movies he developed with his writing partner of 43 years, Richard Levinson. I’ve found a variety of them on YouTube, and bought DVDs of some others online. However, I was in the dark about their 1986 mystery Vanishing Act, until Mystery*File reminded me of its existence. As Steve Lewis relates, it finds “Harry Kenyon (Mike Farrell) … on his honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains after a whirlwind romance in Las Vegas with a woman named Christine Prescott. But their wedded bliss is soon interrupted and Harry reports her disappearance to Lieutenant Rudameyer (Elliott Gould), a New Yorker more interested in eating a corned beef sandwich specially imported from a delicatessen on West 87th Street. It seems to be a fuss over nothing as Christine (Margot Kidder) is quickly found--only Harry doesn’t recognize her and refuses to believe she’s his wife!” At least for the present moment, you can watch that full picture here.

• Shoot! We almost got to watch a Wild Wild West reboot.

• Thirty-nine-year-old Morven Christie (formerly of Grantchester) has quit her role as a detective sergeant family liaison officer on The Bay, making way for actress Marsha Thomason to lead the cast in Series 3 of that British crime drama. Understandably, Christie’s sudden departure has fomented speculation about why she gave up that plum part. The Killing Times thinks it may have a clue.

• Holmes and Watson—villains? That’s just one of the twists in a new, eight-episode horror series debuting on March 26. Writes Olivia Rutigliano: “The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes’s organization of motley street urchins, are going to get their own Netflix series. It’s a dark show, full of supernatural mysteries, but the paranormal activity is not the only modification to the Sherlockian world you know and love. The program, titled The Irregulars, posits that the group is manipulated into solving dangerous supernatural crimes by Dr. Watson (who is evil)—feats for which his sketchy business partner Sherlock Holmes gets all the renown.”

• In Reference to Murder reports that among the among the 25 categories of finalists for this year’s Audie Awards, announced this week by the Audio Publishers Association, are two of potentially special interest to Rap Sheet readers: Mystery and Thriller/Suspense. Below are the five Mystery contenders:

— A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones, narrated by Lorelei King (Macmillan Audio)
— Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, narrated by Vivienne Leheny (HarperAudio)
— Fair Warning, by Michael Connelly, narrated by Peter Giles and Zach Villa (Hachette Audio)
— The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, narrated by Chloe Massey, Olivia Dowd, Sarah Ovens, Rich Keeble, Aoife McMahon, and Jot Davies (HarperAudio)
— Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Dion Graham (Hachette Audio)

The full list of 2021 Audie nominees is here. Winners are to be announced during a virtual “gala” on March 22. The festivities are set to start at 9 p.m. EST, and can be streamed live at this link.

• Blogger Evan Lewis has generously taken the time to dig up, from the deep recesses of the Web, as many publicity materials as he could find related to the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film, The Big Sleep. Look for them in two separate posts, here and here.

• Left Coast Crime already rescheduled its 2021 convention for 2022, due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19. And now Malice Domestic is doing the same. “After careful consideration,” its board of directors declared in a news release, “we have decided to postpone Malice 32/33 to 2022. … Instead of a live event in 2021, we are excited to announce More Than Malice, a virtual (online) festival. More Than Malice will be held on July 14-17, 2021, and will feature special guests, unique panels, and the Agatha Awards. We will have much more exciting information for you in the coming days and weeks.” Everyone who’s currently registered for Malice 2021 should receive an Agatha Award nomination form soon. Keep up with developments by following the Malice Twitter page.

• In CrimeReads, editor Dwyer Murphy ponders that immortal question, Why was Raymond Chandler so venomous in attacking Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller, Strangers on a Train?

• How did Victorian homes “go from celebrated to creepy?”

• Excellent news! UK author Martin Edwards spent his weeks in pandemic lockdown researching and penning a third Rachel Savernake/Jacob Flint historical mystery (following Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall). He writes in his blog that it should be published “early next year,” with a fourth installment to follow in 2023.

• Only days ago I recommended that readers check out—with warranted dispatch—the complete, one-season run of NBC-TV’s City of Angels on YouTube. Now comes Steve Aldous with a short review of that show’s three-part first episode, “The November Plan.” He remarks: “The promise on show here would occasionally surface over the series’ next ten episodes before it was cancelled due to low ratings just as it was building a head of steam.”

• Why the Titanic’s 1912 sinking still makes for a good story.

• And it’s true: Director Tim Burton is set to shoot a live-action, young-adult series for Netflix about Wednesday Addams, the wonderfully creepy little girl familiar from small- and big-screen versions of The Addams Family. Variety describes Wednesday as “a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. She attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago—all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.” Tor.com says there is “no official word on the casting yet, but given how sadly awful the last Addams film was (the animated one from 2019, not the gems we got in the ’90s), this might be a slight improvement?”

Gone Is the “Gracious” Maron

Today brings this announcement: “It is with great sadness that the family of mystery writer Margaret Brown Maron announces her death on February 23, 2021, from complications due to stroke.” Maron was best known for penning two crime-fiction series: one starring Judge Deborah Knott, an attorney and the daughter of a notorious North Carolina bootlegger; the other built around Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, a homicide detective with the New York City Police Department.

The author was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, back in 1938. She attended colleges in her home state as well as in New York, “yet managed not to graduate from any of them,” as the aforementioned obituary explains; wed a U.S. naval officer in the late 1950s; lived in Italy and Brooklyn for years, the latter of which being where she composed her first short story, published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1968; and moved with her family back to North Carolina in 1972. Maron went on to write some 30 novels and dozens more short stories. Her work was recognized for its realistic portrayals of working women, its sympathetic depictions of family relationships, and of course, its wide-ranging tours of her beloved Tar Heel State. As Maron told the North Carolina Star-News—with a chuckle—during the fall of 2002, “I did have one reader in Wisconsin who wrote that he was never going to buy one of my books again, since it was clear I was in the pay of the North Carolina tourism department.”

For her storytelling efforts, Maron was gifted with Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. In 2013, she and fellow writer Ken Follett were named as Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). She was among the founders and earliest presidents of the Sisters in Crime organization, and in 2005 she took on duties as president of the MWA. Her first Knott novel, 1992’s Bootlegger’s Daughter, numbers among the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s “100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century.”

(Above) Margaret Maron, in front, with fellow author Sarah R. Shaber at Bouchercon 2015. (Photo © 2015 by Ali Karim.)

I had only a single opportunity to meet Margaret Maron, during the 2015 Bouchercon convention, held in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was altogether charming and unpretentious and damnably hard not to like at first encounter. But others were much better acquainted with her, both personally and professionally. For instance, her longtime friend Kaye Wilkinson Barley writes in her blog, Meanderings and Musings, that “Margaret Maron was loved, admired, and respected in the mystery community, and she will never be forgotten. She was always accessible, always ready to reach out to new writers and always happy to meet her readers. And always humble. And always, always gracious.” Barley includes in her post links to several pieces—“about everything from her mother's cookbook to over-sexed pine trees”—that Maron contributed to Meanderings and Musings over the years.

Meanwhile, in a piece for Shotsmag Confidential, Mike Ripley recalls meeting Maron for the first time during the 1990 Bouchercon held in London, England. “I arranged a private tour of the House of Commons for her and she gave me a T-shirt,” he says, “which I still have, to induct me as an associate Sister in Crime—an honour I think only Robert Barnard and I held at the time. It was the start of a friendship which was to span more than thirty years.”

Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph remembers Maron, at conventions, as “always so friendly, including [with] people in her panels and chats in the lobby, bar, or book room. When she finally made it to one of my Literary Salons here on the West Coast, she not only gave a great talk, but she identified a special spider that was spinning a web ‘behind my garden gate.’ Who knew she was an expert on arachnia? Margaret was a woman of many talents and interests. She was smart, witty, funny, compassionate, and generous to others. … Margaret was a literary treasure and one of the nicest people I've ever known. I will miss her.”

We offer our condolences to Maron’s family as this difficult time.

(Hat tip to Lesa Holstine.)

The Dagger Comes for Cole

UK crime writer Martina Cole has been announced as the winner of the 2021 Diamond Dagger, a coveted commendation presented by the Crime Writers’ Association. A press release explains:

The long-reigning Queen of Crime Drama is a publishing powerhouse. Martina has written 25 novels, all published by Headline, seventeen of which reached No.1 and her books have collectively spent over 4 years in the bestseller charts. Total sales stand at over 17 million copies, making her Britain’s bestselling female crime writer and with The Faithless [2011] she became the first British female adult audience novelist to break the £50 million sales mark since Nielsen Bookscan records began. Her books have been translated into 31 languages and adapted for multiple stage plays and television series.

That release includes a quote from the author herself: “It means so much to me to be receiving this prestigious award from my peers at the CWA. I can’t believe it’s nearly thirty years since Dangerous Lady was published—some people dismissed me as an Essex girl and a one-book wonder—but as one of my favourite songs goes: ‘I’m still here’!”

The Diamond Dagger is given out annually to fictionists “whose crime-writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to crime fiction writing.” Previous recipients include P.D. James, John le Carré, Sara Paretsky, Peter Lovesey, Andrew Taylor, Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, and last year’s honoree, Martin Edwards.

Cole will receive her commendation during a special Dagger Awards ceremony to take place in October.

From Fan to Fictionist

Three years after her husband, former president Bill Clinton, published his own debut political thriller—The President Is Missing, co-authored with James Patterson—Hillary Rodham Clinton, the onetime U.S. secretary of state and ex-presidential candidate, is teaming up with mystery writer Louise Penny on her own novel, State of Terror, to be published jointly by Simon & Schuster and St. Martin’s Press.

Book Riot provides a brief synopsis of the plot:

State of Terror takes place just after a four-year presidential term that pulled America away from the world stage. A novice Secretary of State is appointed by her political rival, and shortly after, the country is rocked by multiple terrorist attacks. The Secretary must put together a team capable of finding the source of the attacks while also preventing the American government from crumbling.

Clinton’s political experience influences several aspects of the new novel. After losing to former President Barack Obama in the 2008 election, Clinton was appointed by Obama to serve as Secretary of State for four years.

The novel is also influenced by the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy tactics.

Hillary Clinton and Penny, author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series (All the Devils Are Here), have apparently known each other for years. And the Clinton family has vacationed in Quebec, Canada’s Eastern Township as Penny’s guests. “Writing a thriller with Louise is a dream come true,” Clinton enthused in a statement. “I’ve relished every one of her books and their characters as well as her friendship. Now we’re joining our experiences to explore the complex world of high-stakes diplomacy and treachery.”

The New York Times quotes Penny as saying she “could not say yes fast enough,” when the idea came up of their writing a novel together. “Before we started, we talked about her time as Secretary of State. What was her worst nightmare? State of Terror is the answer.”

Their political thriller should arrive in bookshops by October 12.

By the way, a second novel by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President’s Daughter, is scheduled for release this coming June.

PaperBack: “Speak No Evil”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Speak No Evil, by Mignon G. Eberhart (Dell, 1952). Cover illustration by Walter Brooks. This was a late entry in publisher Dell’s famous “mapback” series of softcover editions.

READ MORE: “Mignon G. Eberhart: Death and the Maiden,” by Diana Killian (Girl Detective).

Gearing Up for the Leftys

We’re still almost two months away from presentations of the 2021 Lefty Awards, sponsored by the Left Coast Crime Convention. Although this year’s convention itself has been “rescheduled for 2022,” Lefty winners for 2021 are to be announced online on April 10.

In the meantime, convention organizers have arranged—for next Saturday, February 27—a succession of virtual panel discussions intended to build up interest in those Lefty contenders. Janet Rudolph explains in Mystery Fanfare that those presentations will begin with a 15-minute introduction at 8:30 a.m. PT/11:30 ET. That will be followed by hour-long discussions of nominees for the Lefty Award for Best Debut Novel, the Lefty Award for Best Novel, the Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel, and the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Novel. Lists of the contenders in each of those categories can be found here.

Registration for these Zoom events is free, but registration is required. Go here to fill out the paperwork.

Artful Dodge

Just a quick reminder to all David Dodge enthusiasts: Tomorrow, February 21, will bring librarian Randal S. Brandt’s online address to the Seattle-based Book Club of Washington, recounting the colorful back story of Dodge’s 1952 novel, To Catch a Thief. This event, beginning at 2 p.m., will be free and open to the public. However, you should click here to register in advance.

See Them While You Can

• I’m always leery of directing readers to videos on YouTube, as offerings there tend to be yanked capriciously. But this is too good to miss. Someone employing the handle “Maljardin” has posted the full, 13-episode run of NBC-TV’s City of Angels, a Depression-era private eye drama starring Wayne Rogers. Although some episodes weren’t as well-plotted or as tightly edited as others, this 1976 midseason replacement series—created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell of Rockford Files fame—remains eminently watchable, a Chinatown-inspired program that delivers plenty of suspense, eccentric characters, and 1930s atmosphere. No less than Max Allan Collins has called City of Angels “the best private eye series ever.” If I didn’t already own bootlegged copies of these eps, I would be viewing them all today. Click here to find Maljardin’s full selection of videos.

• OK, since I am already going out on one shaky limb by recommending those YouTube features, why not highlight another? Michael Hayes was a 1997-1998 CBS-TV series starring ex-NYPD Blue hotshot David Caruso as “an Irish Catholic ex-New York City police officer appointed acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.” It was developed by Paul Haggis, before he went off and scripted a couple of films starring some character named James Bond (Casino Royale and Quantum of Silence). The pseudonymous “Panama Mike” has posted the premiere episode of Michael Hayes, originally broadcast on September 15, 1997.

• Finally, if you have never seen the 1994 HBO-TV adaptation of Robert Harris’ what-if novel, Fatherland, starring Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson, then tune in here. Just don’t blame me if, between my writing this and your trying to find the video, it disappears without so much as a hint of explanation.

The Story Behind the Story: “Smothered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery,” by G.P. Gottlieb

(Editor’s note: This is the 87th entry in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Today’s essay comes from Chicago resident G.P. “Galit” Gottlieb, who says she “has worked as a musician, a teacher, and an administrator,” but is “happiest when writing recipe-laced murder mysteries,” such as her brand-new novel, Smothered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery (D. X. Varos). Gottlieb has long been a kitchen experimenter, and notes that she created her “delicious vegan cookies and cakes in direct opposition to what she learned in courses at Chicago’s French Pastry School.” She hosts New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. The mother of three grown children, Gottlieb lives with her husband in a Windy City high-rise that’s more than a bit similar to the building portrayed in her mystery series. Smothered is the second of her tales starring Alene Baron, who owns Whipped and Sipped, a Chicago neighborhood café offering healthy food and drinks. It was preceded by Battered, which came out in 2019. Gottlieb says a third book in this series “will center on a murder that occurs during the city of Chicago’s lockdown in May 2020.”)

I only discovered cozy and culinary mysteries after being diagnosed with cancer. Until then, I’d enjoyed an occasional Agatha Christie or Rex Stout novel about fictional crimes committed long ago, but I couldn’t stomach anything involving violence against women, harm to children, or the sadistic infliction of pain on innocent victims. Suspenseful mysteries of that sort led to several nights of lying awake in bed, rehashing terrifying scenes. Even though the villain was usually caught in the end, I was still roiled by the suffering. That never happens in the world of cozy mysteries, in which we do not hear about the splattering of blood, the victim’s agony, or the warped perversions of the evildoer. Instead, if the cozy mystery is in the subset of “culinary,” we get to hear about the delicious treats everyone, except for the murder victim, is eating.

I love reading literary or historical fiction, biographies, and science, and consumed one or two books a week until I started treatment. After my first round of chemotherapy, already bald and weakened, someone gifted me a couple of Diane Mott Davidson’s culinary mysteries. Lying on the couch, I devoured the charming but suspenseful tales about Goldy, who baked complex, butter-rich concoctions for her wealthy clients while solving murders in a pretend, Aspen-like ski town. The food mentioned in Davidson’s books didn’t appeal to me, either because I don’t eat meat or because chemotherapy made everything taste metallic, even in my thoughts. Despite that, the stories brought me back to Colorado, where my children were born, where I met my husband, where I was awed whenever I lifted my eyes to the mountains. And real murders rarely happened at high altitude.

One day, my mother brought over a few Donna Leon novels, and I was transported to Venice, to the sumptuous three-course lunches Inspector Brunetti and his family enjoyed each day, prepared by his wife, who’d stopped to pick up fresh ingredients on her walk home from her full-time academic position at the nearby university. In real life, I could barely eat, but as I recuperated, I consumed large quantities of fictional pasta.

After my final chemotherapy, I needed to recover before surgery, and that’s when I discovered Martin Walker. I spent a few months in the south of France with the marvelous Bruno, Chief of Police, who always knows the correct wine pairing for whatever meal he’s tucking into. I also stopped in Sicily for a few books and followed Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano as he devoured every meal while solving one crime after another. Then an old friend introduced me to Dr. Frank Tallis, a clinical psychologist whose protagonist, Dr. Max Lieberman, solves crimes in turn-of-the-century Vienna, with help from a colleague, the young Dr. Sigmund Freud, and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt, a fine baritone with whom Max performs classical duets, always followed by a trip to one of the many nearby cafés to devour sumptuous Viennese pastries.

It took months to recover from surgery, but I spent that time in Tasha Alexander’s Tsarist Russia, following beautiful Lady Emily as she charmed all of Europe’s royalty, and in Victorian England, reading Jennifer Ashley. I’m still trying to perfect a vegan version of the seedcake her protagonist, Kat Holloway, enjoys every afternoon with a cup of fragrant tea. Kat, with a nod to Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot, inspired me to graduate from grocery-store teabags to heavenly jasmine teas or herbal tisanes. When I wasn’t reading, I lay on the couch sipping tea and watching the entire Inspector Poirot series on cable television. I also briefly visited New Orleans with Jacklyn Brady, and A Sheet Cake Named Desire is still one of my favorite culinary mystery titles.

(Right) Author G.P. Gottlieb

I spent my six weeks of radiation in early 20th-century New York, reading Rex Stout, who’d been the first author I’d encountered to include enticing descriptions of food in his mysteries. It was delightful to be immersed in the world of the portly Nero Wolfe, who consumes elegant gourmet meals, alone in his fabulous New York City brownstone.

When the cancer was eradicated and I knew that I had a good chance of living many more years, I decided to finally write my dream novel. I planned to write a cozy culinary mystery, the kind I adore, without violence, gratuitous sex, or gross descriptions of blood. And it would include recipes of the kind of food I both needed to eat and liked. The pastry chef would be vegan, so she would never use eggs or butter in her confections, and the café would be the kind of place I wish we had in my neighborhood.

Although I’m a conservatory-trained musician with no formal writing background, I’d written a heap of stories and even a couple of long, blabby manuscripts that got tossed when we last moved. Years before, I’d taken an online writing course with three other students, one of whom continuously proselytized in her stories. I dislike when people try to force their beliefs down my throat, and after having to listen to three stories about bad people who saw the light, I felt like it was time to fight back. My next three submissions involved dishonest, greedy, and otherwise amoral characters who live long, happy lives devoid of theology. Writing was more fun than I’d expected—turns out I really love telling stories.

My first culinary mystery was loosely based on a cryptic news item about a man who is discovered stabbed to death in a neighbor’s apartment. I filled in the hours before the body is found and described the scene from the viewpoint of the person who finds him. But I realized that I needed help, started googling writing teachers and editors, and found S.L. Wisenberg by reading a moving editorial she’d written in the Chicago Tribune. It was about how she’d opted against a bilateral mastectomy, and as soon as she’d conquered breast cancer, had developed blood cancer. Not only did she teach writing at the University of Chicago, she lived nearby. We met at a coffee shop and hit it off. Soon after, she began editing my first chapter. I wrote and rewrote that chapter repeatedly for the first six weeks, and she never gave up on me. After Battered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery was published in 2019, the Tribune published my letter thanking the paper for having printed Sandi’s life-changing editorial.

I call her my teacher in addition to editor, because I learned what needed to be said and what could be left unsaid. Sandi taught me how to get inside a character instead of just describing external characteristics or actions. She helped me create the framework through which my fictional Whipped and Sipped Café could spring to life. She encouraged my portrayal of the protagonist’s building and neighborhood as the small, friendly town I feel it to be in real life. That’s important in a cozy mystery—characters cannot wade around in a sea of unknown faces. They need to say hello to the colorful locals, greet the postman, clink beer mugs with a neighbor. When you read a Whipped and Sipped Mystery, I want you to feel like you’re in Chicago, staying in a Lake Shore Drive high-rise across from Lake Michigan, overlooking one of the harbors. Just like the way I felt I was visiting Colorado, Italy, France, and turn-of-the-century Vienna, Russia, and England, all from my bed.

I loved my imagined travels across the globe during my illness, and indulging metaphorically in rich food and wine, but now that I’m a cancer survivor, I’m supposed to eat healthfully for the rest of my life. So, over the years of writing and rewriting, I took pastry- and bread=baking courses, and created healthful recipes for entrees, dips, and desserts. Friends and family tested them, including my pastry chef niece who showed me how I needed to describe the ingredients with great specificity. The recipes I include in my books are dairy-free, mostly vegan, and more healthful than is usual for a culinary mystery.

I don’t wish cancer on anyone, but if you’ve lost your appetite and you’re facing some recovery time on a couch, or you’re stuck at home during a pandemic, I recommend a little pretend murder, preferably with a side of peach pie. And you’re always welcome at the Whipped and Sipped Café.

“CSI” Returns to Its Roots

Twenty-one years after the then-ground-breaking forensics crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation debuted on CBS-TV, that same network plans a sequel. Writes Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva:

Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria and Mel Rodriguez have been cast as leads in CSI: Vegas, which is nearing a formal straight-to-series order at CBS, I have learned.

I hear William Petersen and Jorja Fox are finalizing their deals to star in CSI: Vegas, ... reprising their roles as Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle, respectively. While billed as an event series, I hear CSI: Vegas, from writer Jason Tracey (Elementary), CBS Studios and Jerry Bruckheimer TV, could become an ongoing series running for multiple seasons.

With CSI: Vegas, the most-watched drama series of the 21st century, CSI, opens a new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

Andreeva adds that “the original idea was for the event series to debut in October 2020, marking the 20th anniversary of the mothership series’ premiere. That plan was thwarted by the coronavirus pandemic-related production shutdown.”

The original CSI premiered in October 2000, and went off the air in 2015, after spawning three sequels: CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, and CSI: Cyber. The last of those was also the final installment of the CSI TV franchise to disappear from the boob tube, in March 2016.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone!

By Love Betrayed, by Evelyn Cornell (Pyramid, 1965).
Cover art by Hector Garrido.

Snowy Saturday Smatterings

• It was three years ago yesterday, on February 12, 2018, that prolific Texas mystery novelist Bill Crider died, brought down by prostate cancer at age 76. But only this week did Down & Out Books release a volume of short stories in tribute to that Anthony Award-winning creator of Sheriff Dan Rhodes. Titled Bullets and Other Hurting Things, and edited by Rick Ollerman, it features 20 original short yarns, all penned by Crider’s friends and fans. As the publisher explains, “William Kent Krueger (Ordinary Grace, the Cork O’Connor series) brings us a story of romance and grift. Bill Pronzini (the Nameless Detective and Carpenter & Quincannon series) offers a taut episode of a midnight raid. Joe R. Lansdale (The Bottoms, the Hap and Leonard series) tells a tale of two hit men working through their differences. James Sallis (Drive, the Lew Griffin series) shows us how a deadly figure once helped out a man called Bill. Charlaine Harris (the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas series) reminds us to be careful of what we wish for. Sara Paretsky (the V.I. Warshawski series) shows how truly deadly a terrible storm can be.” James Reasoner, who describes Crider as “one of my best friends for more than 40 years,” says, “The story I wrote for this anthology is a sequel to ‘Comingor,’ the first story ever published under my name, and my second published story overall, 43 years ago. It’s set in the same part of Texas as Bill’s Dan Rhodes novels, in the next county to the east, in fact. I also think it’s one of the best stories I’ve written.” Angela Crider Neary, the late author’s daughter and a fictionist in her own right, supplies this volume’s introduction.

• Yesterday, February 12, brought us Chinese New Year, marking the start of this latest Year of the Ox. (The last Ox year was 2009.) By way of celebrating, Mystery Fanfare brings us this short list of “mysteries that take place during Chinese New Year.” Included are The Shanghai Moon, by S.J. Rozan, and Kelli Stanley’s City of Dragons, both of which I have enjoyed, without recalling their spring festival links.

• In Reference to Murder notes that submissions to the McIlvanney Prize/Scottish Crime Book of the Year contest are now open, “with a deadline of Friday, April 9. The winner of Crime Book of the Year will receive £1,000, while the winner [of] the Debut of the Year will receive £500. Entries come from full-length novels first published in the United Kingdom between August 1, 2020, and July 31, 2021. When considering the entries the judges will take into account quality of writing, originality of plot and potential durability in the crime genre.”

​• I’m a sucker for posts about vintage paperback covers, so George Easter’s new collection—at the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine site—of dusty softcovers bearing “great titles” drew me immediately. My favorite of his bunch: Don Von Elsner’s Don’t Just Stand There, Do Someone (1962). Von Elsner (1909-1997) was, in fact, known for his clever titles. Among his series of novels starring lawyer David Danning, for instance, are Those Who Prey Together Slay Together (1961), Just Not Making Mayhem Like They Used To (1961), Pour a Swindle Through a Loophole (1964), and A Bullet for Your Dreams (1968).

• In Too Much Horror, Will Errickson brings the sad news that artist Rowena Morrill, known for her science-fiction and fantasy illustrations, has “died at age 76 after a long illness.” (She passed away on February 11.) Not surprisingly, given his blog’s name, Errickson’s post showcases various Morrill horror-fiction fronts, including “her stunning debut, 1978’s Jove paperback original Isobel,” by Jane Parkhurst.

• And was Body Heat, director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 neo-noir picture, really “the greatest erotic thriller ever made”? Literary Hub’s Dan Sheehan certainly thinks so.

Weinman Gets with the Times

Congratulations to books critic and author Sarah Weinman, who is replacing Marilyn Stasio as The New York Times Book Review’s crime-fiction columnist. Weinman’s debut column will appear in this coming Sunday’s paper, but is already available online.

Stasio has been writing her fortnightly column ever since 1988. Although she’s now relinquishing the reins, a news release from the daily explains that she’ll “continue to contribute reviews to the Times on crime, true crime and other related subjects.” This new arrangement should open up Stasio’s leisure reading schedule to at least some degree; in a brief 2009 profile for the newspaper, she said she was in the habit of consuming “maybe 150” mystery and thriller novels annually. She has also critiqued theater for Variety.

Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, An Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece (2018) and the editor of last year’s Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession. She’s been a periodic contributor to CrimeReads, and more of her non-fiction work has featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and of course, the Times. In addition, she once penned crime-fiction reviews for January Magazine, another Webzine with which I have long been associated. (Pieces of hers that I was pleased to edit include this review of William Landay’s Mission Flats, and this piece about Greece-set puzzlers.)

As the Times’ resident judge of current crime fiction, Weinman succeeds not only Stasio, but a pantheon of previous Times critics, as well: “Newgate Callendar” (aka Harold C. Schonberg), Allen Hubin, and Anthony Boucher, who originated the paper’s “Criminals At Large” column. Her new duties are likely to limit her future participation at Bouchercon and other conventions, and can be expected to force some change in her composition of The Crime Lady, a newsletter she has been e-mailing out for the last several years.

All of us here wish Sarah the best in her latest adventure!

Revue of Reviewers, 2-12-21

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.