You Could Kill Him in the Rain ... or On a Speeding Train

While researching a January Magazine piece about Dr. Seuss to commemorate the date of that late author-illustrator’s birth (on March 2, 1904) and help celebrate the 50th birthday of The Cat in the Hat (but don’t he look swell for being half a century old?), I came across a fun little bit of information. And it was one that had to be shared with you immediately.

It seems that Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Seuss Geisel) and seminal mystery author Raymond Chandler were friends and drinking buddies when both authors lived in La Jolla, California.

One can’t help but wonder what they talked about or, really, what they drank. (Scotch for Chandler. Ooblek for Seuss?) Did they share stories about agents? Editors? Sequels? Or how about their respective concerns around plot and deadlines and story pacing? Did Chandler sometimes say stuff like, “You know, Doc, I really love that elephant character, Horton. But you had him sitting on a whateveritwas for that whole damned book. Readers are fickle, they get bored. You gotta shake things up. See, it’s like this: next time out, let Horton pack some heat. That oughta spice things up. You need the danger; the uncertainty. And see if you can’t weave a rhyme around ‘gams.’”

On the flipside, of course, there’s the possibility that Seuss offered up some tips for Chandler: telling him how he could brighten up his stark prose with the addition of a few carefully chosen rhymes. (“You could knock him over the head, and kill him in his bed.”)

But the idea of these two brilliant, talented and posthumously celebrated authors hanging around together is just delightful, somehow. And while I don’t see the mark of one of them on the work of the other, it’s fun to think of ways in which their relationship might have affected the books they created, and which we continue to enjoy today.

A P.I. in Paree

Cara Black, whose seventh Aimée Leduc detective novel, Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis, was recently published by Soho Crime, submits to Elaine Flinn’s “bubble”-style interrogation at Murderati. During the course of the interview, Black says she would most like to book-tour with Raymond Chandler and Jean-Patrick Manchette; recalls her research trips to Paris; and concedes that she’s had some trouble convincing her publisher to let the charming Ms. Leduc tackle crime beyond the French capital:

I’d like to take Aimée out of my Paris to Marseilles or Lyon for the weekend. There’s lots of crime there, but every time I mention it, my editor shakes her head. So I guess a new series is in order. Or a standalone. People always ask me why I don’t write about San Francisco, where I live--but it feels too close. I don’t feel removed enough to write about it ... at least now. During several years spent traveling--I’ve got experiences to draw on: living in Switzerland and working in a train station, riding a motorcycle across North Africa--Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco--later running out of money and sleeping in a Bangkok temple. It’s all fodder. And there’s an incredible part of London with canals--they call it the London Venice--and it’s so cool and ... I really need to explore.

You can catch their full exchange here.

That’s Not What He Meant by “Red Wind”

I don’t normally spend time reading right-wing political blogs, but while looking for background this morning on Raymond Chandler’s drinking habits, I happened across Red County, which apparently covers “politics from the center right” in Orange County, California. (The opposite camp seems to be represented by The Liberal OC). One would not expect literature to be within Red County’s brief; yet for the last three months, contributor Matt “Jubal” Cunningham has been posting a “Raymond Chandler Quote of the Week.” The collection so far can be found here.

“An Endless, Glamourless, Thankless Job”

I’m rather too young to have appreciated--or even seen--every episode of Jack Webb’s original Dragnet TV series (1951-1959; 1967-1970). What I remember best from that show, unfortunately, are the scenes in which Webb and co-star Harry Morgan ran like a couple of stiffs, arms down at their sides, leaning forward as if into a strong headwind.

However, after screening the DVD set Dragnet 1967, Season 1, Quick Study’s Scott McLemee proclaims that “Jack Webb was so square that he comes out the other side as the coolest hipster ever to appear on network TV.” To prove his point, McLemee links to a scene from that season’s fourth episode, “The Interrogation,” in which Webb’s Sergeant Joe Friday lays out, for a young rookie, the costs and benefits of being a cop. (Click here to watch that scene for yourself; start at the 16:03 mark.) I admit, Webb’s monologue is both powerful and heartfelt, though someone else with law-enforcement experience will have to judge its basis in fact.

Maybe it’s time for me to revisit Dragnet as a rental.

The Disc Detectives

I received an e-mail message yesterday, telling me that a DVD set of The Rockford Files, Season 3, is winging its way to my mail slot. Hot diggity! Even though I still have not finished watching all of the episodes from Season 2, just having more Rockford in my library makes me feel a bit more secure about being entertained through what is now Seattle’s post-snow, “will-we-ever-see-sunshine-again?” season, at a time when the U.S. networks seem to be foundering and clueless. (I mean, why sideline the slowly but smartly developing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to make way, if temporarily, for a Goodfellas-wannabe like The Black Donnellys?)

Sure, I watched every episode of Rockford when the series was first broadcast in the 1970s, but that just means I’ve had three decades to forget its many plotting nuances and story solutions, so now I can see it with (almost) fresh eyes again. What’s more, notes TV historian and critic Ed Robertson, who literally wrote the book on this series (Thirty Years of the Rockford Files: An Inside Look at America’s Greatest Detective Series), Season 3 was an important comeback year for this private-eye drama starring James Garner. At the TV Party Web site, Robertson recalls:

“Rockford” in the first season (1974-75) was to private-eye shows what “Maverick” was to Westerns in the 1950s: fresh, irreverent, and clever.

At a time when network TV was saturated with flatfoots and gumshoes, “Rockford” took all the clichés and turned them inside out. NBC programming executives may not have understood the show’s sophisticated sense of humor, but the viewers certainly did, taking to Garner like a long-lost friend. “Rockford” suddenly made it cool to stay home on Friday nights.

When the first season ended, exec producer Roy Huggins left “Rockford” in the hands of his protégé Stephen J. Cannell ...

Though Cannell understood Maverick/Rockford almost as well as his mentor, and had himself created two of the show’s greatest characters (Rocky, our hero’s salt-of-the-earth dad, and Angel Martin, Jimbo’s former stir mate), he initially lost sight of what made the “Files” work--and the show suffered as a result.

The key to Rockford was that, no matter what, he was smarter than anyone else (especially, the bad guys). But that wasn’t the case in the early going of the second season (1975-76) when, week after week, Jimbo found himself taken advantage of, particularly by his own friends. ...

By Halloween, “Rockford” had lost nearly 20% of its total audience, and was finishing third in a time slot it once owned. Though Cannell recognized the problem with the stories, and was able to steer the series back on track, “Rockford” would never see the Top Ten (or even the Top 20) again.

Then a funny thing happened in the third season (1976-77). Buoyed by the addition of writer/producer David Chase (“The Sopranos”), the stories got better, the audience numbers steadied--and the show started winning awards.

Chase’s versatility breathed new life into “Rockford” with stories tackling everything from social ills to Chase’s own peculiar obsession with the mob. In the process, Jim Rockford became reinvented as a sort of Everyman in a world of absurdities, the lone voice in the wilderness willing to stand up and wonder just what in hell’s going on. The best example of this is the brilliant “So Help Me God” (written by Juanita Bartlett), an indictment of the grand jury system pitting Rockford against a weaselly federal prosecutor not unlike Ken Starr. Lauded by law groups across the country, the episode is also said to be one of James Garner’s personal favorites, with good reason--it won him the Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Actor in 1977.

Knowing how casually I wind my way through new DVD sets, I can probably make Rockford, Season 3, last at least until May, when Season 4 becomes available. (So soon!) But there are also a number of other classic crime dramas making their DVD debuts over these next few months. Hawaii Five-O, Season 1, for instance, is scheduled for release on March 6, while The Streets of San Francisco, Season 1, Volume 1, should finally (after a brief delay) reach video stores by April 10--along with The Untouchables, Season 1, Volume 1. Look for Ironside, Season 1, on April 24; Cagney & Lacey, Season 1, on May 8; and Lovejoy, Season 1, come June 19. Oh, and there are rumors that The Mod Squad, Season 1, Volume 1, will be issued sometime later this year, as well.

Hmm. I had better double-check that my DVD machine is in tip-top working order. It’s going to get a workout.

Every Gorey Detail

Renowned illustrator of the macabre Edward Gorey (Amphigorey Again), who would’ve celebrated his 82nd birthday earlier this month--had he not passed away in 2000--is recalled in a brief but revealing article in the latest edition of Harvard Magazine. Among the things one learns from that piece is the following:

Given his vivid artwork, it may surprise fans to know that Gorey considered himself a writer first. Every book had to begin with the text. He admired classical Japanese literature for “what is left out” and Surrealism for its oddball juxtapositions: “I do tend to ... write the things that would make as little sense as possible.” Still, story was uppermost. “I think of my books,” he once said, “as Victorian novels all scrunched up.” (Gorey didn’t live long enough to keep up with his own literary productivity, leaving some 75 manuscripts, typed and ready for illustrating.)

You can find the whole Harvard Magazine profile here.

Littell’s Big Controversy

We’ve written several times over the last few months about Jonathan Littell, the son of American spy-fictionist Robert Littell, who captured both the Académie Française’s top literary prize and France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt with his literary novel, Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones). But now Salon is getting into the act, publishing a useful wrap-up article that recounts the peculiar furor caused in France by the publication (in French) of this damn Yankee’s “dense 900-page brick of a novel, told from the so-not-welcoming perspective of an incestuous, gay and possibly matricidal Nazi officer, and larded with graphic sex scenes and coolly detailed musings about the most efficient way to put Jews to work before exterminating them.” Read the Salon piece here.

Psycho Silliness?

Though critics seem to have been universally underwhelmed by the new Jim Carrey vehicle, The Number 23--directed by Joel Schumacher (Veronica Guerin, Tigerland, The Lost Boys)--the premise sounds so engaging, I’m going to reserve judgment until I see it myself. You see: it’s a book movie. That is, it’s not based on a work of published fiction. Rather, a book plays a sort of weird evil partner to Walter Sparrow, the luckless lout Carrey portrays in the film.

Here’s what happens: A woman named Agatha (Virginia Madsen) gives her husband, Walter (Jim Carrey), a book. As he reads the strange, self-published novel, the man becomes increasingly convinced that the book is about him and that his life is somehow entwined with that of the novel’s protagonist, a saxophone-playing detective named Fingerling.

“A loud, disorderly mess of a movie,” complains MartiniBoys. “The Number 23 showcases itself as a suspenseful tale with a clever edge but it amounts to nothing more than a high-concept gimmick film about numerology and coincidence.”

“Psycho thriller descends into silliness,” concludes The Sunday Mirror.

Maybe it won’t be that bad (she said optimistically). It’s possible that Carrey’s fans are having trouble seeing the star of such screamers as The Cable Guy and Dumb and Dumber reduced to a pile of quivering manflesh, the likes of which we have not seen since Jack Nicholson took on a haunted hotel in The Shining.

Or maybe, as Tennessee’s WBIR suggests, The Number 23 is “hoping to blind us with enigmas and coincidences to disguise the fact that the film’s story is absurd right from the jump.”

Either way, it looks to be an interesting ride.

Shoot Me Now

Mugshots can be fascinating, whether they show the rich and infamous (Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, and Yasmine Bleeth) or complete and utter unknowns, trapped somehow in today’s legal system. So it seems almost inevitable that someone, sometime would come up with the notion of building fiction around such photographs. That someone turns out to be Los Angeles writer-blogger Stephen Blackmoore, who’s just announced the debut of Mugshots Magazine, an online flash-fiction pub.

Blackmoore lays credit for this idea primarily at the feet of Maine teacher-author Patrick Bagley, who asked, “Wouldn’t it be cool to do fiction based on mugshots? I say, yeah, sure. What do I know? So I put together this little thing over on L.A. Noir.

“Easy, right? I put up the picture, somebody else writes the story. I figure I’ll get one, maybe two. I get six. And they’re good. The real deal.”

It was a short leap from there to creating a Web site. Now, Blackmoore’s soliciting contributions to Mugshots Magazine’s first, Spring 2007 issue. Submission details can be found here.

Loquacity Counts

Two new author interviews worth reading.

At Things I’d Rather Be Doing, Duane Swierczynski (The Blonde) talks about his conscious blending of genres, the impact of his day job (at the Philadelphia City Paper) on his novel-writing, and the camaraderie among crime writers. Meanwhile, David J. Montgomery quizzes Philip Hawley Jr. (Stigma) about his pediatric career, the research he did in order to write a thriller, and the moral and ethical issues raised in his first novel.

Delay of Game

Due to some technical and creative difficulties, Chapter 5 of Dick Adler’s serialized novel, Men’s Adventure, will not appear today, but will instead be posted later this week. In the meantime, if you’ve missed any of the previous four installments, go here to catch up.

Forget the Oscars. Hail the Agathas!

Malice Domestic has announced its nominees for the 2007 Agatha Awards, to be handed out during the Malice Domestic XIX convention in Arlington, Virginia, May 4-6. Featured are books by mostly familiar authors, but with a handful of newcomers thrown in to spice things up. And the nominees are ...

Best First Novel
• Consigned to Death, by Jane Cleland (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Feint of Art, by Hailey Lind (Signet)
• Murder on the Rocks, by Karen MacInerney (Midnight Ink)
• The Chef Who Died Sautéing, by Honora Finklestein and Susan Smiley (Hilliard & Harris)
• The Heat of the Moon, by Sandra Parshall (Poisoned Pen)

Best Novel
• All Mortal Flesh, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Messenger of Truth, by Jacqueline Winspear (Holt)
• The Saddlemaker’s Wife, by Earlene Fowler (Penguin Group)
• The Virgin of Small Plains, by Nancy Pickard (Random House)
• Why Casey Had to Die, by L.C. Hayden (Five Star)

Best Non-fiction
• Don’t Murder Your Mystery, by Chris Roerden (Bella Rosa)
• Mystery Muses: 100 Classics That Inspire Today’s Mystery Writers, by Jim Huang and Austin Lugar (Crum Creek Press)
• The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder, by Daniel Stashower (Dutton)

Best Short Story
• “Disturbance in the Field,” by Roberta Isleib (from Seasmoke: Crime Stories by New England Writers, edited by Kate Flora, Ruth McCarty, and Susan Oleksiw; Level Best Books)
• “Provenence,” by Robert Barnard (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], March/April 2006)
• “Sleeping with the Plush,” by Toni L.P. Kelner (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 2006)
• “The Old Couple,” by Robert Barnard (EQMM, July 2006)
• “Yankee Swap,” by Maurissa Guibord (EQMM, March/April 2006)

Best Young Adult
• Behind the Curtain: An Echo Falls Mystery, by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins)
• Pea Soup Poisonings, by Nancy Means Wright (Hilliard & Harris)
• Room One: A Mystery or Two, by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster)
• Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars: The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas, by Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin (Scholastic)

Just the Wright Touch

I used to think that my reading within the crime and mystery genre was rather impressive. But every day now reminds me of how much I haven’t read. Peter Rozovsky’s fine Detectives Beyond Borders piece of the other day, in which he recalled Fergus Hume’s phenomenally best-selling (for 1886) Australian novel, The Mystery of the Hansom Cab; the recent “rediscovery” by Nathan Cain, at Independent Crime, of Spike Morelli (Coffin for a Cutie, This Way for Hell); and Glenn Harper’s infectious curiosity about International Noir Fiction--all of these help add height to my already teetering to-be-read pile. If only clones of me were able to take up some of this load ...

And now Steve Lewis, from Mystery*File, brings up another little-known author worth noticing: South African John Wright, who--under the pseudonym “Wade Wright”--penned at least 14 books between the early 1960s and early ’80s, many of them private-eye yarns (such as Suddenly You’re Dead and Shadows Don’t Bleed). Armed with questions of his own, plus some supplied by writer Bill Pronzini, Lewis pumps the 73-year-old Wright for information about his anger-infused start as a crime fictionist, why his mysteries are set in the United States, the part he played in early comic books fandom, his role in “saving the South African version of The Avengers for posterity,” and Wright’s own experiences as a radio-drama script-writer.

You’ll find that whole interview here.

Setting the Stage for Murder

Among fiction’s “celebrity detectives,” we’ve already had Groucho Marx, Jacques Futrelle, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Issac Newton, Jack London, Will Porter (aka O. Henry), and Louisa May Alcott, so why not Josephine Tey?

Publishing News reports that Scottish playwright Tey, who also wrote the highly praised historical mystery The Daughter of Time (1951), will herself star in “a new series of [historical] detective novels by Nicola Upson, who has worked in theatre management and been crime fiction reviewer for the New Statesman.” The first of at least two books, An Expert in Murder, will be set in the 1930s and spotlight Tey, “who divided her time between Scotland and the West End, enjoying extraordinary success and launching the career of John Gielgud, among others.”

(Hat tip to Euro Crime.)

Huggins’ Writing Workshop

Now, here’s something that’s just downright cool.

Apparently, author-blogger Lee Goldberg had a chance to talk with screenwriter-producer Roy Huggins--the prolific creator of such TV series as Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, The Outsider, The Rockford Files, and City of Angels--in 1998, less than four years before his death. That six-hour interview, conducted and taped on behalf of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television, is now available online.

Their 10-part exchange covers everything from Huggins’ growing-up years and his idolization of his older brother, to the birth of 77 Sunset Strip and his blacklisting as a “former communist,” to his creation of Maverick and the “Movies of the Week” concept, his habit of driving out into the California desert and dictating seasons’ worth of TV episodes into a tape recorder, and his respect for fellow TV writer Juanita Bartlett. I haven’t yet finished watching all six hours (hey, I do have other things to do, even on a weekend), but already I’m utterly charmed. Huggins was a TV-writing master, and Goldberg does an exceptional job of ... well, not drawing him out exactly, since Huggins pretty much runs away with the interview, but inviting his subject to relive some of the seminal and little-understood experiences from his 87-year-life.

Go here to read Goldberg’s recollections of how this interview came about; and the first installment of the Huggins interview can be viewed here. Any fan of Roy Huggins’ work over the years would be a fool to miss this. Fantastic stuff!

READ MORE: “R.I.P., Adele Mara,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Thrilling Days of Yesteryear); “What’s a Turn-On?” by David Thomson (Salon); “Black List, White Wash,” by Stephen Bowie (The Classic TV History Blog).

Books Before the Bar

English barrister-turned-novelist John Mortimer (Rumpole and the Reign of Terror) picks his five favorite works of legal fiction for The Wall Street Journal. Included is only one straight-forward crime novel--P.D. James’ A Certain Justice (1997)--but it’s his explanations, as much as the books he selects, that are interesting.

(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

“You’re a Good Man, Sister”

It’s not often I get to take credit as a source of inspiration, but I guess I do on this occasion. While relating the background of her newly purchased 1930s crime novel, Blue Murder (her first hardcover book after three Madeline Carter paperback mysteries, including last year’s Calculated Loss), Linda L. Richards, the editor of January Magazine and a Rap Sheet regular, explains on her personal blog that Blue Murder evolved from my suggestion that she pitch her two cents into a 2005 feature celebrating the 75th anniversary of the publication of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

As Linda explains, “it had been so many years since I’d read Hammett, I needed to refresh my memory. I had a copy of The Maltese Falcon, but it was way in the back of a shelf somewhere, with a lot of dust on it. I blew the dust off, settled in and was swept away. It took me all of 45 seconds to remember why I’d been so enchanted all those years before.” That led her to revisit the works of Raymond Chandler, and to realize in the process that California private eyes Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade both drank too much to have accomplished all their creators gave them credit for; and Spade, as a consequence, may have owed at least part of his investigative success to the affection and organizational skills of his lanky, boyish-faced secretary, Effie Perrine. “She was probably dogging her boss’s steps,” Linda suggests, “making sure she did what needed doing, because the only way she could be sure she would see her pay is if she made certain he actually solved a case here and there.”

And thus was born Los Angeles secretary Kitty Pangborn, the bright, resourceful protagonist in Blue Murder, which Linda’s agent has sold to Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, and which will likely see print in the winter of 2008. Pangborn “is not Effie,” Linda explains. “And Kitty’s boss, Dexter J. Theroux, is not Sam Spade. It would be just plain goofy to try and duplicate those two: Hammett did such an exquisite job with them already. But the idea of the youthful secretary surreptitiously helping the gin-soaked P.I. boss, that idea floated to me while reading Hammett.”

It’s more than a little generous for Linda to give me credit here; I had no idea what would become of that long-ago Hammett assignment. But I do find it funny that Linda is excelling as a crime novelist. When I first signed on with January way back in 1997, the online literary mag didn’t make an effort to review crime and mystery fiction. Now, a decade later, the publication boasts a Gumshoe Award-winning crime-fiction section and has spun off The Rap Sheet. Over that same period, I’ve seen Linda Richards grow more curious about the history and potential of this popular genre, to the point where she’s entered it as a much-praised novelist herself. It is odd but gratifying to see that my own love of crime fiction can be so infectious.

Collaboration Is My Game

Ed Gorman’s blog today features a recollection piece that, while small in size is nonetheless an important contribution to the recorded history of American pulp publishing. It’s the work of Stephen Marlowe (né Milton S. Lesser), who rose to some prominence during the mid-1950s on the basis of his science fiction and mystery stories. The Private Eye Writers of America eventually gave Marlowe its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, but this 79-year-old Virginia novelist is probably remembered best for having created Chester Drum, a well-traveled fictional private detective, who was introduced in The Second Longest Night (1955) and was last seen in a short-story collection called Drum Beat (2003).

In the wake of Richard S. Prather’s death, Marlowe recalls for Gorman his colorful experience in the late 1950s of penning--together with Prather--a Gold Medal paperback novel in which their respective series protagonists would both appear. The idea, says Marlowe, was to “write a novel pitting our two private eyes, Shell Scott and Chet Drum, against each other until they could realize, almost too late, that they both were working the good side of the street in a complex case with nationwide implications. This was the novel that would become Double in Trouble, published by Gold Medal in 1959 at just short of double the length of a standard Gold Medal book.”

As Marlowe recalls:

There were circumstances that made the first draft, when we finished it, half again as long as that.

For one thing, until then, we had never met. We developed the plot as we went along, mostly by long-distance phone call. There were telegrams too, including one that went something like “Body of Hartsell Committee lawyer found in Rock Creek Park” that must have startled the Western Union operator.

For another, our work habits couldn’t have been more different. Dick liked to plan carefully as he went along, writing a detailed outline, chapter by chapter, from which he developed a first narrative take and then an expanded one that would become his first draft. I liked to work by instinct, writing as the ideas came, and outlining a chapter only when I’d finished drafting it. I’d got to calling this a post-outline, and it would prepare me for subsequent chapters, and it is still the way I write.

Fortunately, Marlowe and Prather found an agreeable style of working style--thanks to some gin-and-tonics and Prather’s “referee” wife. And Double in Trouble “went through several printings and made an appearance on the [New York] Times softcover best-seller list,” as Marlowe explains. Read all of his post here.

UPDATE: After Stephen Marlowe’s piece was so well received on his blog, Ed Gorman inquired whether the author had “ever considered writing his autobiography.” It turns out that Marlowe’s wife has been coaxing him to do just that, and now Stark House Press is adding its own encouragement. “[W]ith a contract in the offing,” writes Gorman, “it looks as if it may just happen. This would be a major addition to the history of our field and the story of a remarkable man and writer. Stay tuned.”

READ MORE: “Double In Trouble: Shell Scott & Chester Drum,” by Steve Lewis (Mystery*File).

A “General Feeling of Incompleteness”

Today brings the third and final installment of Sarah Weinman’s roundtable discussion with other book critics about Patrick Anderson’s new non-fiction work, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. It seems like this debate could have extended for way more than three parts. Oh, well. Maybe somebody will take up these issues elsewhere.

In Pike We Trust

Just one day after the Los Angeles Times brought us a pretty glowing profile of novelist Robert Crais, January Magazine contributing editor Anthony Rainone delivers a no less laudatory assessment of Crais’ The Watchman.

This new book finds Joe Pike, L.A. private eye Elvis Cole’s ex-marine and part-time mercenary sidekick, in the driver’s seat for once, trying to protect a spoiled, angry rich girl who’s also a federal witness against mobsters and money-launderers. The decision to shift focus from Cole, whose adventures over the years have won him acclaim and honors (including the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award), might have been a risk; but Rainone thinks it was worthwhile. “This reviewer has run out of superlatives to describe Crais’ immense talent,” he writes, “but suffice it to say that The Watchman is a turbo-charged ride that further pushes its author into the stratosphere of crime-fiction immortality.

You’ll find the full critique here.

Mystery Author Wins Canadian Honor

Howard Engel, author of the much-praised Benny Cooperman mysteries, has been named to the Order of Canada.

According to CBC Arts, Engel is “among the 55 new members to the order, which was established in 1967 to honour Canadians whose extraordinary achievements or outstanding service in various fields have made a difference across the country.”

Engel, who lives in Toronto, was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1931. He began the Benny Cooperman series in 1980 with The Suicide Murders. There have been 11 Cooperman novels since, including 2005’s Memory Book, written after Engel had suffered a stroke that left him with a condition that makes dealing with the written word very difficult. According to Wikipedia, in Memory Book Benny Cooperman “suffers a blow to the head and is similarly affected ...”

The Thrilling Detective Web Site, not always known for affection, nonetheless offers an affectionate look at Engel’s creation:

Canada may be under-represented in the private eye field, but we do have Howard Engel’s BENNY COOPERMAN. Walking down the not-so-very-mean streets of sleepy Grantham, Ontario (actually St. Catharines), Benny’s a mild-mannered kinda guy, pretty softboiled, just a nice Jewish boy, content with a good book to read, and a chopped egg sandwich now and then at Diana Sweets. But he’s no dummy. He’s also a shrewd, crafty and tenacious investigator. He doesn’t carry a gun, or even fight very well, but he knows how to hang in there, something someone Jewish in a small, Protestant town in southern Ontario probably has a lot of experience with.

The Toronto Star adds:

He is a founder of the Crime Writers of Canada. Before he began his career as a mystery writer, he was a writer and reporter for the CBC, working out of Paris, London, Spain and Cyprus. But it was his books about a Jewish private investigator that turned him into a Canadian icon of the mystery genre.

Engel has also written two standalone historical mysteries, Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell (1997) and Murder in Montparnasse (1999), and a pair of non-fiction works, Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen and Their Kind (1996) and Crimes of Passion: An Unblinking Look at Murderous Love (2001).

Fat Men, Sunglasses, and Vampires, Oh My

Veteran political reporter Helen Thomas may be losing her seat in the White House briefing room after speaking too honestly and critically about lame duck George W. Bush, but we seem to have retained our front-row outlook on crime-fiction developments. The problem is, however, that today represents one of those occasions when the amount of work far exceeds the number of hours available, so a wrap-up post seems much in order.

• With the publication of Reginald Hill’s latest Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe novel, The Death of Dalziel, due next month in both Great Britain and the United States (where it’s being retitled Death Comes for the Fat Man), critic and columnist Mike Ripley delivers a fine encomium to the English crime writer in Shots:

… I can’t remember the first Reginald Hill book I read, and that has been bugging me of late, ever since I realised that the forthcoming The Death of Dalziel was the 21st novel in the series.

Now twenty-one books featuring the same characters, over a period of 37 years is quite an achievement for a writer, not to mention a strenuous test of loyalty and stamina for the reader. Personally, I can think of only two other writers who have commanded my devotion, respect and failing eyesight for that mystical 21-book marathon: Michael Innes and John D. MacDonald, though both wrote many other books outside of the series-hero envelope.

As has Reginald Hill. In fact until I started this little homage, I hadn’t realised just how many books he had written since his first tentative steps into crime fiction around 1969. When I suggested to him that it might be 48 novels, he said:

That sounds very reasonable. I counted religiously till I got to ten, then in a more secular fashion till I got to 20, and after that I lost interest in keeping a tally. I mean, if twenty doesn’t mean you’re a real writer, then what number does?

Even my very basic skills in mathematics tell me, therefore, that the Dalziel and Pascoe series for which he is best-known, is in fact only about 44% of his output, not counting short stories (at which he’s been known to turn a deft hand).

How does he do it? I mean, physically, what is the secret behind his prolific output? It seems there isn’t one:

I really am very boring and it’s straight on to the old PC. No artificial stimulants, seven-per-cent solutions or communion with the spirits.

You can enjoy all of Ripley’s tribute here.

• Sarah Weinman offers the second installment today of a roundtable discussion she had recently with several other U.S. book reviewers about Patrick Anderson’s new non-fiction work, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. Today’s topic seems to be the work’s inclusiveness, and both Jerome Weeks and The Rap Sheet’s own Dick Adler offer their opinions.

• Lee Goldberg’s Main Title Heaven this week highlights a pair of pretty easily forgotten TV crime dramas: 1981’s McClain’s Law, which placed former Gunsmoker James Arness in the role of a retired, injured cop who returned to active duty in order to avenge the killing of a friend, and then remained on the force--much to his superior’s regret; and A Man Called Sloane, a single-season (1979-1980) Quinn Martin production that imagined The Wild Wild West’s Robert Conrad--absurdly--as a freelance U.S. secret agent who takes on occasional jobs for an intelligence operation called UNIT. Conrad would’ve been better off sticking with the Stephen Cannell series he left in order to make this turkey, The Duke.

• Just in case you’re wondering (though I doubt you are) what ex-James Bond actor Timothy Dalton thinks about his successor in the role, Daniel Craig, skip over the Cinematical for the answer.

• Abraham Lincoln, in reviewing a book that obviously didn’t rock his world, remarked that “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” The same could be said of the latest video compilation of ominous lines delivered by CSI: Miami police protagonist Horatio Caine (David Caruso). If you delighted in a previous selection of Caruso declarations, then this fast-paced “sunglasses edition” of one-liners is for you.



• After Hard Case Crime editor-publisher Charles Ardai sent an e-note around this morning, lamenting last week’s passing of 85-year-old novelist Richard S. Prather, I asked Ardai--who last year republished Prather’s The Peddler (1952)--whether he has any plans to bring back more of that writer’s work. “Not in the near future, since we’re already bought up through mid-’08,” he answered, “but it’s possible we might do another in a year or so ...”

• Following on Susan Mansfield’s piece in The Scotsman about “Tartan Noir” authors, Shots editor Mike Stotter wonders “what other UK Noir Packs we have out there”:

We tend to go for a generic area as opposed to north, south, east or west. Obviously Ken Bruen heads the Irish Noir Gang (although John Connolly might like to lay claim to the crown). Do we have Welsh Noir? I suppose candidates for this would be Malcolm Pryce and Bill James. I don’t think we have Norfolk Noir, West Country Noir or even Essex Noir (come on [Mike] Ripley, make me look a liar). There has been the emergence of London Noir, Dublin Noir and Nottingham Noir. But I can’t really see Oxford Noir or Cheltenham Noir or even Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Noir taking off, can you?

• And Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch reports that a film version of Charlie Huston’s vampire detective novel Already Dead (2005) is one step closer to being made. “Scott Rosenberg has been picked to write the screenplay ...,” Lynch explains. “The film rights are held by Phoenix Films and will be produced by Michael De Luca of De Luca Productions. This actually is a good thing, as De Luca is known for his love of comics and graphic novels. I think his sensibilities will be in line with Houston’s work. No word yet as to who will direct or star in it.” Lynch adds that Already Dead is the first of five planned books featuring bloodsucking private eye Joe Pitt, and “[t]he hope is to turn them into a movie franchise.”

Confronting Frontal Nudity

Regular readers of The Rap Sheet know my fondness for vintage paperback fronts, especially those that Independent Crime’s Nathan Cain might define as “book cover porn.” I find the squeamishness of modern U.S. readers toward provocative novel jackets ludicrous, especially when they’re hit through every other medium by sexy imagery (see this new ad campaign for PETA, as an example), and when they appear more ready to take up arms against bared body parts on the nation’s bookshelves than they are violence in their crime and thriller fiction. I also applaud the willingness of publishers such as Hard Case Crime to bring back the sort of suggestive illustrations (see here and here) that were, interestingly, familiar to pre-Sexual Revolution Americans of the 1940s and ’50s, but are now deemed too risqué. Aren’t we all grown-ups here?

So Steve Steinbock’s post yesterday at Vorpal Blade Online about vintage Dell paperback covers struck me as amusing. Among the many fine examples he showcases of works by Ellery Queen, George Harmon Coxe, John Dickson Carr, and others are two versions of Fools Die on Friday, a Bertha Cool/Donald Lam mystery, originally published in 1947 and credited to “A.A. Fair,” one of the numerous pseudonyms employed by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. It seems that this novel bore two rather dissimilar paperback covers during its early years, one of which (shown on the left above) was distinctly racier than the other. When that original version (Dell #542) was republished (as Dell #1542), the redhead who’d previously been zipping up her skirt and displaying a handsome cleavage was now merely adjusting a shirtcuff. According to Bookscans, a paperback history site,

This is the only Dell cover illustration ever to be altered. The first was published in 1951, the later printing appeared in 1953. Robert Stanley remembers painting over the old illustration, but claims that he was never told the reason, or who the request came from. William Lyles, the Dell bibliographer, believes the change was ordered by either [William] Morrow (the hardcover publisher) or by Erle Stanley Gardner ...

The model in the illustration was obviously one of Stanley’s favorites. She graces the covers of literally dozens of vintage paperbacks. You guessed it ... she’s his wife, Rhoda.

So what happened between 1951 and 1953 that might have prompted such a change? Plenty. In 1952, Congress convened the House of Representatives Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials. They wound up “suggesting” that a list of 60 paperback titles be banned by communities throughout the country, including works by Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck and Irving Shulman, to name only a few. ... Of particular interest to the Committee was the “pornographic” nature of modern book covers. Oddly, the Book Jacket Designers Guild (yes, they had a union, too) agreed with them. They saw no reason to make jacket illustrations overly provocative, especially if the work itself was not particularly sexual in nature.

This book [Fools Die on Friday] was NOT on anybody’s “bad” list, but somebody obviously thought the original cover illustration had crossed the line between good taste and indecency. And so Stanley was told to change the scene. The cover art is actually very true to the story. You will notice the copywriters also changed the dialog at the top of the scene. While they’re both close, neither of the quotes listed on the covers is taken verbatim from the text.

(In the book, Donald Lam, who unwittingly has a knack for attracting ALL women, has stashed a key witness in his apartment. Sgt. Sellers is on his way to search the place. She’s taking a bath when Lam gets there, just ahead of him. He--ever the honorable hero--turns his back as she gets dressed. Hey, whaddya expect in the early 50’s? That’s as risqué as it was allowed to get!)

I guess American Puritanism comes and goes. Thanks to today’s condemnatory, hyper-religious posturing of U.S. conservatives and the dimwitted complacency of everybody else, it seems, the country is enduring another of its prudish periods. Fortunately, those old paperbacks aren’t yet being burned on the White House lawn, and I live with confidence that these priggish times, too, will pass.

(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

A Star, Not Merely a Fugitive

Television historian and author Ed Robertson writes to say that tonight’s edition of Talking Television with Dave White, broadcast on “global radio station KSAV.org,” will pay tribute to David Janssen (1931-1980), who not only starred in Richard Diamond, Private Detective and The Fugitive, but was also the protagonist in Harry O, a 1974-1976 ABC-TV series that I’ve recently rediscovered, thanks to the wonders of videotape.

In addition to covering those subjects, Robertson promises, “we’ll also go behind the scenes: the atmosphere Janssen created on the sets of his TV shows, his sense of humor, that kind of thing. Toward that end, we’ll have audio clips from interviews I’ve done with Henry Darrow and Anthony Zerbe [both of whom co-starred in Harry O], plus a few other surprises.”

Talking Television with Dave White is scheduled to begin tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET, 7:30 p.m. PT. The Janssen tribute is set to commence at 11:15 p.m. ET, 8:15 p.m. PT. To hear the show, simply log on to KSAV.org and click the “Listen Live” button.

Pleasure Cruiser

Walter Mosley is best known for his Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins novels. But over the last few years he’s also penned science-fiction novels (including The Wave), a young adult novel (47), and collections of short stories (such as Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned) that can only marginally be described as mysteries. Now, he’s breaking into a whole new genre: erotica.

Tracy Quan today evaluates Mosley’s “sexistential novel,” Killing Johnny Fry, in January Magazine. Of that book, which finds narrator Cordell Carmel responding to his lover’s infidelity, she writes:

It starts when he spies his longtime girlfriend, Joelle, having rough sex with Johnny on the living room floor. She doesn’t know Cordell is watching, and he doesn’t let on, but he feels emasculated. The trauma of betrayal transforms this middle-aged New Yorker into a depraved (though kindhearted) beast with a relentless erection. He begins having sex in new positions and unusual locations, with neighbors, colleagues, his unfaithful girlfriend and strangers. He’s not exactly liberated, but he’s going places--to body parts that once were off-limits and to recently discovered parts of Brooklyn, exploring the usual taboos that are pornographic staples. Some of his escapades include wrestlers, designer drugs, and a sex clown.

You don't have to be an authority on raunch, kink or (s)existentialism to appreciate what’s happening to Cordell. But it might help to be a Woody Allen fan, a lover of stories about New Yorkers, their manners and the ironies of infidelity.

You can read the whole review here.

Pursuits in Algiers

Peter Rozovsky of the Detectives Beyond Borders blog points me to an interview with Algerian soldier-turned-fictionist Yasmina Kahdra (né Mohammed Moulessehoul), who has so far produced (at least in English translation) two books featuring an Algiers detective-writer, Superintendent Llob, and his devoted lieutenant, Lino: Morituri (2004) and Double Blank (2005). Kahdra has also penned a variety of standalones, including the forthcoming The Sirens of Baghdad.

Over the course of the interview, Kahdra talks about his fondness for books by Chester Himes and Richard Wright, his writing about terrorism and Algerian corruption, his relocation to France, and of course the inspiration for Superintendent Llob:

I created Superintendent Llob as a diversion for the Algerian reader. I have already told you, in Algeria, we did not have a large selection in our bookshops there, and the publications revolved around the political demagogy, nationalist chauvinism and the romantic mediocrity praising the Algerian Revolution in Stalinist speeches. I dreamed of writing station books, books funny and without claim that you could read while waiting for the train or the bus, or while gilding yourself with the sun at the seaside. I dreamed to reconcile the Algerian reader with his literature. I had never thought that Superintendent Llob was going to exceed the borders of the country and appeal to readers in Europe, and America.

I must confess, I haven’t read Kahdra, whose novel The Swallows of Kabul was shortlisted for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. But that will have to change soon.

Again, the interview can be found here.

Not So Thrilled

Critic-blogger Sarah Weinman has started posting the results of a roundtable discussion she had recently with several other U.S. book reviewers (including Rap Sheet contributor Dick Adler) about Patrick Anderson’s new non-fiction work, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. The first installment covers Anderson’s definition of thrillers and his too-short treatment of the subject.

The Outfit Muscles in on the Queen City

Monday night brought The Outfit’s Marcus Sakey and Sean Chercover to Cincinnati, Ohio’s Joseph-Beth Booksellers to discuss their debut novels. Marcus is the author of the well-received The Blade Itself, a book whose very jacket blurb has you longing for the late, lamented Plots with Guns. Sean, a Chicago transplant from Toronto, wrote the new Shamus-worthy Big City, Bad Blood, which reads like it was penned by the bastard child of Loren D. Estleman and Robert Crais and plunked down in the Windy City.

Marcus and Sean spent most of their time on Monday night fielding questions from the crowd in a two-man panel format. Marcus discussed the start of his career as a novelist. It seems that on the day he decided to quit his job, he was fired. With plenty of time on his hands, he got started on The Blade Itself. Prior to becoming a novelist, Marcus worked in advertising, selling everything from pro wrestling to bottled water. (Pro wrestling was more fun.) The idea for his debut novel came to him as he walked home from the train one night, noticing the nice Chicago neighborhood and nice house he had. What, he thought, if that were all taken away? His wife found him on a stoop that evening, scribbling notes.

Sean Chercover parlayed a liberal-arts degree into a career as a private investigator. For him, it was the best way to learn about what he wanted to write.

“Plus,” he says, “I needed a job.”

Sean worked in both Chicago and New Orleans before moving back to his native Toronto a few years ago to work in television production. He now lives in Chicago full-time.

Just six blocks from Marcus Sakey.

Their book-promotion tour together was born of coincidence. They both signed their deals about the same time. At a mystery conference, they met and discovered they lived so near one other. And this year? Their books, from different publishers, debuted on the very same day.

Before the event began, Marcus and Sean did a lot of hand shaking and talking with members of the bookstore crowd, individually. They probably would have spent the whole evening at Joseph-Beth if left to their own devices, and it still would have been a successful event.

As it was, the pair spent more than an hour with the small, but very attentive, group of listeners. Joseph-Beth is always a great, intimate setting for a signing, as Barry Eisler, Walter Mosley, and science-fiction writer John Scalzi can all attest. Marcus was, as always, enthusiastic, and Sean was a trooper, battling a case of tour cold. It was great seeing these two and great to witness the reader interest in their powerful debuts.

Which Page Was That Again?

Ever since last August, Marshal Zeringue of the fine Campaign for the American Reader blog has been conducting an unusual survey of writers and their books. Based on Marshall McLuhan’s conviction that “you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a book and, if you like it, read it,” Zeringue and the authors themselves have been looking at the 69th pages of new or otherwise noteworthy books, just to see if McLuhan’s theory holds up.

Many of the works under consideration have fallen into the crime-fiction category, including: Kevin Guilfoile’s Cast of Shadows, Linda L. Richards’ Calculated Loss, Libby Fischer Hellman’s A Shot To Die For, Brian Freeman’s Stripped, Jason Starr’s Lights Out, Anne Frasier’s Pale Immortal, Bill Crider’s Murder Among the OWLS, Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know, Steve Hamilton’s A Stolen Season, Robert Ward’s Four Kinds of Rain, Dana Stabenow’s A Deeper Sleep, and Mark Coggins’ Candy from Strangers.

But as Zeringue explains, his collection of page 69 posts--more than 170 in number already--“is getting awfully large and starting to crowd out some of the other postings on the blog.” So he’s created a whole new Page 69 Test site.

We look forward to more crime-fiction works making the cut.

Shortening the Shorts List

This is too bad, but unavoidable: Michael Malone’s “White Trash Noir” has been withdrawn from the running in the 2007 Edgar Award competition for best short story. As Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site explains, while Malone’s tale appeared in last year’s collection Murder at the Foul Line (Mysterious Press), edited by Otto Penzler, it had previously been featured in Malone’s own wonderful, 2002 book of short stories about Southern women, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac. “The publisher,” says Kimura, “did not know about this and the writer withdrew his story from the nomination.”

Without “White Trash Noir,” the short-story category is reduced to: “The Home Front,” by Charles Ardai (in Death Do Us Part, edited by Harlan Coben; Little, Brown and Company); “Rain,” by Thomas H. Cook (in Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block; Akashic Books); “Cranked,” by Bill Crider (in Damn Near Dead, edited by Duane Swierczynski; Busted Flush Press); and “Building,” by S.J. Rozan (also in Manhattan Noir).

“Men’s Adventure” Chapter 4: A Voice from Above

A Crime Novel in Installments,
by Dick Adler

Where we left off: While waiting to hear again from Saul Cooperman, who’s out West digging up clues to a murder case, Ivan Davis took dinner with his parents and then received an invitation to Vesuvio’s restaurant from his mob-connected cousin, who said he might know some things Ivan should hear.

* * *

While Ivan, at Vesuvio’s, was hearing about how the mob might have connections to Viking magazine, his colleague Ross Calhoun was getting an earful of another sort of whispers across town, at the Four Seasons Hotel. Writers and editors descended from the Time and Life offices liked to pad out their expense accounts at the Four Seasons’ restaurant--Brock Burns among them. A year ahead of Ross at Dartmouth, Burns had chosen journalism over espionage, but it was a close call. A professor in the history department was a famous CIA talent scout, and Burns was smart and devious enough to catch his attention. Despite turning down the Agency’s offer (Burns liked the ideas of fame and money better), he still kept up with some CIA types in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“Everything alright in the sweat and tits business?” he asked, his grin brimming over the rim of a vodka tonic.

Ross knew that his old classmate was working on something very boring for Time, so he shrugged off his usual jealousy. “I’m busy cutting a murder novel down from 150,000 words to 30,000. It’s a great lesson in brevity.”

“Good. The reason I ask, is that one of my contacts wondered if I knew anyone in the men’s adventure magazine field--especially your rag. Seems there’s been a leak somewhere; some writer for Viking doing the leaking. I thought I’d check with you before giving him your name.”

“What kind of leaking are we talking about here? The odd sex habits of generals and senators?”

“Probably something a bit more serious than that,” Brock said. “My contact is quite high up on the Agency ladder. But why speculate now? I’ll have him call you tomorrow. You might even get a trip to Washington for your efforts.”

Calhoun was still thinking over Brock’s questions and suggestions as he strolled back to the Viking offices, where a pulpish but strong short story written by one of Gold Medal’s hot new novelists awaited his editing. Yet even in the midst of marking up copy, he wondered what to make of all that gab about leaks, and why someone from Viking would stir interest among the clandestine set. As Ivan had said after his cousin’s ominous invitation to lunch at Vesuvio’s, who in hell could possibly care what a Viking writer was up to?

* * *

Me. I cared. That is, the people who paid me cared--especially a lunatic Wisconsin senator riding a very hot white horse. So I shared his concern.

Call me Kid Nickels. My old man ran a newsstand in the Bronx, and that’s how I picked up the nickname--hustling for nickels. Now I was fat and 40, always snappily dressed, usually wearing a blue cashmere suit with a $30 shirt and a tie to match, but in a sense I was still that hustling kid.

What I hustled now, though, was information--mostly rumors, but occasionally the real stuff. Scandalous stuff. Because of my background, I started off as a Red, a communist: I figured it was a way to meet free-thinking girls. But I soon realized that the big money and power were all on the other side. So I hooked up with one of this Republican senator’s rich young helpers--probably a fag, though he never tried to get fresh with me.

My first victory came as a teenager, when I “exposed” a gang of Red collaborators within the Boy Scouts of America. Then, because I’d always thought of myself as a show business type, by the time I turned 20 I was putting out--virtually on my own--a magazine called Counterattack, in which I lobbied hard to establish a blacklist of actors and screenwriters who were obviously on the wrong side, America-haters. Treasonous bastards. Producing Counterattack marked the happiest time in my blacklisting career. It gave me the opportunity to bask in the glamorous limelight of show business. Once I got a top comic actor named Jack Gilford kicked off the Colgate Comedy Hour on TV by dialing up the New York Yankees’ front office and saying that I didn’t think Yogi Berra ought to be on the same show with a known Communist-fronter like Gilford.

Ah, sweet memories.

True, after some of the worst stuff I did eventually came to the light--in a book I wrote myself, believe it or not--I did a soft year at Lewisburg for contempt of Congress. But that’s all behind me now, and I’m right back in the thick of things, even though my profile is a lot closer to invisible than it was in my glory days.

The cost you pay for trying to do the right thing, eh?

* * *

It was two days later that the call finally came in: Saul Cooperman, ringing from New Mexico. Despite the scratchy connection, the once-famous novelist sounded excited, as though whatever story he was working on out West--presumably the Lopez murder case--and whatever lead he was following now, had reawakened his energy and sense self-worth. Ivan fielded the call and tried to find out what was going on, but he didn’t get very far. “I can’t talk much,” Cooperman said. “This guy with the gun says not to. But I’m where I said I would be.” Then the phone went abruptly dead.

Ivan hustled off to the managing editor’s office, where he recalled for McLennon the entirety of his phone call. The M.E. dialed their publisher to pass on the news.

Later that afternoon, McLennon, Ivan, and Ross, along with mystery writer Perry Marcus, who headed up Viking’s Court of Final Justice, a publicity-attracting project that tried to help unjustly convicted prisoners, met in publisher Louis Erickson’s penthouse office. Marcus seemed anxious for immediate action. “We can’t let them push our writers around,” he said in his best courtroom-lawyer voice.

“We don’t even know who ‘they’ are,” Ross reminded everyone. “Whatever trouble Saul is in, we may not be able to get him out of it by ourselves.”

“Maybe we should just call the cops,” Ivan suggested. Nobody seconded his motion.

Erickson rocked back in his leather desk chair, tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment, and then asked the M.E., in a tenor that seemed too calm for the circumstances: “Morgan, how soon can you get out to New Mexico?”

“Not for a while,” answered McLennon, who, like Ivan, thought the Court of Final Justice was little better than an expensive do-gooder project. The fact that Saul Cooperman had gotten into trouble while working on a Court-related assignment only confirmed his doubts about the whole enterprise.

Erickson was visibly annoyed, his bushy eyebrows threatening to become one at the bridge of his bulbous nose. “OK, get out there as soon as possible. Meanwhile”--and here he swung on Davis and Calhoun--“you two will go out there and see what you can find out about this mess.” When the two staffers didn’t immediately leap from their chairs, Erickson added, “Well, what the hell are you waiting for?”

* * *

STAY TUNED: Next Monday, Ivan and Ross discover the depth of danger into which Saul Cooperman has fallen, face a few bullets themselves, and find one of Joseph McCarthy’s henchmen hiding in their own backyard.

© Copyright 2007 by Dick Adler

All previous chapters of Men’s Adventure are being archived here.

Just the Facts, Man

• D.Z. Allen has announced that Muzzle Flash, his “completely independent fiction site featuring the finest in Pulp and Degenerate Flash Fiction,” will begin publishing on a bimonthly schedule (instead of in dribs and drabs, I guess), and that short stories submitted to Muzzle Flash “are now eligible for publication in the brand new 5 Minute Read section of Out of the Gutter magazine!” I recently received a copy of Gutter’s first issue; and though I haven’t had a chance yet to finish reading it, much less make intelligent remarks about it, I did notice that Allen appears on the masthead as a deputy editor. Nothing like a little cross-fertilization and publicity, eh?

• During an online exchange this weekend at Gerald So’s Chatterific site, author Victor Gischler (Shotgun Opera) talked about his “vulgar nonsense” writing, how the novel he’s just finished might be the hardest to sell, bringing back Charlie Swift (from Gun Monkeys), his process of book composition, and how he’s “never read a book on writing.” (Really?) Catch up on the whole discussion here.

• At M.J. Rose’s Backstory site, Ed Lynskey delivers the skinny on why he chose to take private eye Frank Johnson away from his Virginia hometown in The Blue Cheer, and how he had to do much more research for that story than he did for his previous Johnson novel, The Dirt-Brown Derby (2006). “You know the adage telling writers to use what’s at hand to spin their tales?” Lynskey remarks. “Not true for me.”

• And are things really “not looking good for the NBC series Crossing Jordan”? That’s what TV Squad says, after the announcement that the beautiful Jill Hennessy’s medical examiner series will be moved to Wednesday nights in March--just the latest in a string of movies the show has had to endure over its five-year-plus history. I hope the Squaders are wrong, because as I’ve written before, Crossing Jordan is one of the few crime dramas out there that isn’t a CSI or Law & Order franchisee. And it has the leavening humor that both of those much-cloned shows so seriously lack.

Edgars on the Web

Fellow Rap Sheet correspondent Anthony Rainone has already alerted us to the upcoming collection of ceremonies and conferences that seem to pop up each spring like crime-fiction tulips.

I’m pleased to report that the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), sponsor of the Edgar Awards, has unveiled a new Web site devoted to those commendations, which will be given out on April 26 in New York City. MWA administrative manager Margery Flax tells me that the site will be updated periodically as the awards ceremony draws near.

In the meantime, you can hop over to the MWA master Web site and see collections of photos from past ceremonies.

Checking All the Usual Hideouts

After yesterday’s flurry of activity surrounding Richard S. Prather’s death; and with today representing a serious cleaning opportunity here in The Rap Sheet suite, I’m going to have to confine myself to Saturday wrap-up column. Fortunately, it seems to be a quiet day. At least so far. A few things to notice, however:

• An essay by Rachel Donadio, published in tomorrow’s edition of The New York Times Book Review, looks back on the spy-fiction-writing career of CIA agent-turned-Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, who died on January 23 at age 88. Leaving aside the fact that Donadio, an editor at the Book Review, is well behind the pack in addressing this subject, she does offer a few interesting anecdotes about Hunt, including this:

Back in Washington after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hunt wrote increasingly pulpy, glamorous espionage fantasies, far removed from the drudgery of his actual duties. In a column last month, [William F.] Buckley [Jr.] recalled that Allen Dulles, then head of the agency, told Hunt--who wrote more than 70 novels--that he could continue to publish his fiction without clearance, as long as he used a pseudonym. (Hunt’s noms de plume included John Baxter, Robert Dietrich and David St. John.) “Hunt handed me his latest book, ‘Catch Me in Zanzibar,’ by Gordon Davis,” Buckley wrote. “I leafed through it and found printed on the last page, ‘You have just finished another novel by Howard Hunt.’ I thought this hilarious. So did Howard. The reaction of Allen Dulles is not recorded.”

The full Book Review piece can be found here.

• I’m not sure whether this suggests that a new edition of Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals (which hasn’t published anything fresh for a year) might be in the offing, but the site appears to be new with a retrospective on the work of politician-turned-pulpster Dan. J. Marlowe. It’s written by Arizona Republic reporter Charles Kelly, who’s supposedly working on a Marlowe biography (and, meanwhile, has a first novel due out “soon” from PointBlank Press). He presents the creator of bank robber and professional thief Earl Drake as an amalgam of intriguing contradictions:

To some degree, Marlowe remains a mystery. But my research into his life has been quite revealing. Marlowe is a fascinating study--a businessman and city official who also, according to his own account, had been a professional gambler. A Rotarian whose novels often captured sociopathic personalities. An unathletic sports fan who wrote convincingly from the viewpoint of the he-man. A crossword-puzzle junkie, a hard drinker, a lover of the theater who disliked movies, a reserved and not-conventionally-attractive man who still managed to be a womanizer. And, late in life, an amnesiac--though some questioned the nature of that condition.

The full article is well worth reading. You can look it up here. And let’s hope that it’s simply a taste of what’s to come from a (finally) revitalized Noir Originals.

• Victor Gischler will be moderator Gerald So’s guest tomorrow at Chatterific, beginning at 3 p.m. Central Time. If you’d like to weigh in with online questions for the author of Gun Monkey, Shotgun Opera, and other books, you must first register here with Yahoo! Groups. “Once you’ve signed up,” Gischler explains in his blog, “you’ll need to log onto Yahoo! Messenger and contact Gerald So’s Yahoo I.D. (‘g_so’). Then you’ll be invited to the chat.” Although the preliminaries sound troublesome, Gischer is an entertaining fellow (from what I hear), worth chatting up.

• After having picked up, at Left Coast Crime, a Fawcett paperback edition of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise, his 1965 first novel to feature the “dazzling female secret agent” he created for the comics pages, I couldn’t help noticing Steve Lewis’ recollections of O’Donnell’s work at Mystery*File. His piece tipped me to an essay by O’Donnell, featured at the Crime Time Web site, in which the octogenarian author traces his inspiration for the lovely Ms. Blaise. And it reminded me that the pilot for an American Modesty Blaise TV series, starring Ann Turkel, was broadcast in 1982 (though I must’ve missed it) and is remembered by some as being far superior to the 1966 theatrical release Modesty Blaise, which starred Italian actress Monica Vitti. Given the renewed interest in James Bond and actor Hugh Jackman’s hope to create a film franchise around the character of CIA code specialist Charles Heller (from Robert Littell’s The Amateur), perhaps it’s time to resurrect Modesty Blaise for the big screen. Any suggestions on who could play the young and rich spy? I can envisage Charlize Theron or even Natalie Portman in the role.

• Robert B. Parker, closet crooner? In his latest Amazon blog post, the creator of Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall tell readers: “We have begun putting together a CD to be called something like SONGS THAT SPENSER TAUGHT ME, featuring my son Dan singing songs from the books. It may include a guest appearance by Old Golden Throat himself. It’ll take awhile, but I thought I’d warn you early.” Yikes! I’m experiencing flashbacks to William Shatner singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” ...

• Author and Rap Sheet blogger Megan Abbott is the latest interviewee in Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards’ series of podcasts at Behind the Black Mask. Their discussion touches on Megan’s new novel, The Song Is You, her interest in film noir (“which I’ve been watching since I was a kid”), her historical research techniques, and the remarkable Richie Fahey covers of her novels so far. Listen to the full exchange here. Previous Behind the Black Mask podcasts featured Danuta Reah (Bleak Water), Theresa Schwegel (Probable Cause), Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, and others. Still to come on March 15: Allan Guthrie, the British author of the forthcoming novel Hard Man.

• And birthday wishes are due to author Ruth Rendell--aka Barbara Vine, aka the Baroness Rendell of Babergh--who turns 77 years old today. Her 21st and latest Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford novel, Not in the Flesh, is due out in Britain come August.