McGee may finally get his place in the sun: New York-based producer Amy Robinson is in the late stages of developing the first McGee novel, “The Deep Blue Good-by,” for production by Fox. Robinson calls McGee “the man every woman wants to be with and every man wants to be.”(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)
Though the project, which puts McGee on the trail of a seductive and dangerous ex-con who’s left a trail of broken women in his wake, is not greenlighted and there is no director or talent attached, supporters are hopeful for the first time in decades. Sources close to the project say the studio is bullish on McGee.
UPDATE: More on the film Darker Than Amber is here.
• Jim Winter reviews Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan, in January Magazine. He calls it “a clever debut novel mixing wishful thinking with a morally ambiguous cast.”
• Novelist Rob Kantner has posted a new private eye Ben Perkins story at his Web site. It’s called “Riddle Run.”
• Meanwhile, the latest short-story offering from Beat to a Pulp is “Nothing You Can Do,” by Jason Hunt.
• For The Barnes & Noble Review, The Rap Sheet’s own Dick Adler has reviewed Megan Abbott’s new Bury Me Deep, which he notes is “already near the top of several Best Crime Novels of 2009 lists.”
• Romantic Times has announced that the winner of its 2008 Toby Bromberg Award for Most Humorous Mystery is “Barbara Allan,” better known as crime novelist Max Allan Collins and his wife, Barbara Collins. The couple are being given this commendation for their third “Trash ’n’ Treasures” mystery, Antiques Flee Market (Kensington). Of that series, Max Allan Collins writes, in a statement to be published on his Web site, that “We would be the first to admit that the mystery itself is of a secondary concern to us. We often comment on the fact that the series we love most--Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels--is one whose entries we can re-visit again and again, rarely remembering ‘who did it,’ but having so much fun with Archie and his boss that we don’t care. In fact, we like it, because we can enjoy the stories again and again. This is not to say we don’t care about the mystery. Just that it’s not our major concern, although we’ve tried to work on that side of things, and the forthcoming Antiques Bizarre (next March, as usual from Kensington) is probably the best mystery we’ve done so far.”
• Am I the only person who hasn’t yet read George Dawes Green’s new novel, Ravens? The Wall Street Journal published a short profile of the author today, while Sarah Weinman has a review of Ravens in this morning’s L.A. Times.
• “The most ludicrous James Bond supervillain plots of all time”? The Web site io9 has compiled a list. (Hat tip to The HMSS Weblog.)
• This Danish ad for a washing machine seems like a perfect complement to Air New Zealand’s recent body-painting promotion. Both may be NSFW. (Hat tip to George Kelley and Art Scott.)
• Two DVD release notes: American fans of the UK edition of Life on Mars will be pleased to hear that the first season of that series is due out on July 28, with the second and final season to come on November 24. And if you’ve been missing Michael Kitchen’s Foyle’s War, take heart: a five-set “collector’s edition” of the full series is set for release on September 29.
• Prolific 20th-century pulp writer Harry Whittington wrote hard-boiled crime novels, more formulaic mysteries, westerns, and soft-core porn under a variety of pseudonyms. At one point in the early 1960s, he was penning one “adult novel” per month. He apparently kept up that pace for more than three years. But the results of his labors were long thought to have been lost. Until now. Click here. (Another hat tip to Bill Crider.)
• Among The Guardian’s list of “the 50 best summer readers ever” are several works of crime and mystery fiction, including Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie; The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler; A Murder of Quality, by John le Carré; and Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene.
• It seems Jeffrey Cohen’s Double Feature Mystery Series is dead.
• And I would be happy to have the lovely Mary-Louise Parker read me bedtime stories anytime.
1 comment:
Can any list of "best" true-crime omit to mention "In Cold Blood," the masterpiece by Truman Capote?
"Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son," by Gordon Burns (Penguin, 1986) is a compelling read about psychopath Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper.
For historical accuracy, read "The London Monster" by Jan Bondeson (Da Capo, 2001), about the "monster" who terrorised London a century before "Jack the Ripper" arrived on the scene.
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