Editable Chandler, Filmable Silva

With the next few days promising to be even more hectic than usual at Rap Sheet headquarters, we will be operating on a lighter-than-normal schedule. However, we won’t abandon our post entirely, and will continue to keep at least one eye on developments in the crime-fiction world, such as these:

• Mark Coggins, author of the August Riordan private-eye series (which includes the forthcoming Runoff), had the opportunity not long ago to look through Oxford University’s special collection of Raymond Chandler papers at the Bodleian Library. He examined “some 200 pages of original typescript with excised or rewritten scenes,” including the first version of Chandler’s 1953 Philip Marlowe novel The Long Goodbye, which many people insist was his best work, and which won the Edgar Award in 1955. In the course of it all, Coggins discovered a number of alterations and excisions Chandler made while preparing Goodbye for publication. On top of his discovery that “Chandler’s method of rewriting was radical” (“Rather than keeping most of what was in his current draft and making accretive changes to it, he started nearly from scratch, saving only the few words or phrases that resonated from the previous draft.”), Coggins found that Chandler went through a number of permutations of The Long Goodbye’s ending before he settled on the one with which we’re now familiar. You can read all of Coggins’ findings here. And for readers who’ve been too long away from the novel, or have never read it (shame on you!), he provides a handy synopsis of Goodbye here.

• Wasn’t I just remarking on how it seems everybody now wants to get into the blogging game? Well, Robert J. Randisi, author and founder of the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA), is no different. He’s debuted PWA News and Views, a blog that he says will carry “News of PWA, and the Views of members who do not have their own blogs.” Welcome aboard, Bob.

• Two interesting new additions to Marshal Zeringue’s “network” of literary blogs: Texas novelist Michael Simon subjects his fourth police detective Dan Reles novel, The Last Jew Standing, to the Page 69 Test (read the results here); and Scribe Award-winning novelist Christa Faust, who will soon become Hard Case Crime’s first female author, muses on who might star in a film adaptation of her 2004 novel, Hoodtown--even though she herself considers that story “essentially unfilmable by current Hollywood standards.” (Her casting picks are here.)

• Elizabeth Zelvin interviews Rhys Bowen (Her Royal Spyness) for the Poe’s Deadly Daughters blog.

• Material Witness’ Ben Hunt is getting something of a late start on his summer reading, but he’s determined to catch up with at least three crime novels before the fall hits, including John Connolly’s The Unquiet and Nicola Monaghan’s The Killing Jar. You’ll find all of his initial picks here.

• Sadly, it’s not available online. But the August issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, one of two half-hearted attempts at giving Washington’s largest city a monthly slick it can be proud of, carries a surprisingly good profile of Michael Gruber, the author most recently of The Book of Air and Shadows and, for many years, the unacclaimed ghostwriter for his attorney cousin, Robert K. Tanenbaum. (They first worked together on 1987’s No Lesser Plea.) Explains freelancer Jim Gullo:

For Gruber the relationship was “a great collaboration,” and the feeling seemed mutual. “They had a good relationship,” says Los Angeles literary agent Michael Hamilburg, who represented Tanenbaum, “and they both profited from it.” More than that, says Gruber, “I thought we were great friends. I stayed at his house and played with his kids.”

And then, in the late 1990s, this two-cousin dream team began to unravel. Gruber wanted to work directly with Tanenbaum’s editors in New York. “I said, I’m starving here. I need a relationship with an editor. Having you call me once a year and say, ‘This is what the editor says,’ isn’t enough. I want to have a literary life. He said, ‘No, I want you to spend your time writing. They don’t want to talk with you.’”

Tanenbaum’s obstinacy eventually ruptured the cousins’ literary partnership, with Tanenbaum turning to other collaborators, and Gruber setting off on his own to publish, first, Tropic of Night (2003), and then four other novels under his own name (with a five, The Forgery of Venus, due out next year).

Although Seattle Metropolitan refuses to post its contents on the Web, even for a proscribed period of time or after publication, you can go here to purchase a single copy of the August issue containing the Gruber profile.

• Daniel Silva’s spy novels have been optioned for filming by Universal Pictures, according to Cinematical. The studio “has forked over a seven-figure sum to get the rights to the author’s award-winning spy series that focus on a Mossad agent-turned art restorer Gabriel Allon,” reports Monika Bartyzel. “So far, they’re not too interested in chronology, and won’t be focusing on the first, The Kill Artist, which details the guy getting pulled out of retirement to stop the assassination of Yasir Arafat. Instead, they’re looking to start with The Messenger.” More on these deals from Jeremy Lynch at Crimespree Cinema.

• And Ali Karim alerts me to the fact that editor Barry Forshaw’s Crime Time magazine can now be read online, at no cost. The latest issue of this estimable UK publication (No. 51) features cover subject Robert B. Parker. Download the full issue in PDF format here, or you can flip through it page by page here.