Bullet Points: Procrastination Saturday Edition

• Novelist Len Deighton turned 80 years old on the 18th of this month. Not quite two weeks later, the British e-zine Shots has published a fine appreciation of Deighton and his genre-shaping contributions over the years. The package includes Rob Mallows’ fond tribute to the author, whose work he recalls discovering because of a teenage illness, and a selection of notes about Deighton’s books, written by Shots’ many contributors. The whole shebang can be read and enjoyed here.

• The Winter 2009 edition of Plots with Guns has finally been posted. Among the offerings are stories by Mark Raymond Falk (“Mikey’s Old Man”), Jason Hunt (“Avenging Angel”), and Neil Richter (“Skin Deep”). Lots of good stuff there.

• Here’s an interesting find. Most Rap Sheet readers, I’m willing to wager, think of Mike Connors as the star of Mannix (1967-1975) and maybe as the lead in Today’s F.B.I. (1981-1982). But how many remember his performance as a police undercover agent in the 1959-1960 CBS series Tightrope? If you need a reminder of that show, check out Mike Justice’s I Was a Bronze Age Boy blog.

• I haven’t yet received the February/March issue of Mystery News, but author Craig McDonald (Toros & Torsos) informs me that he penned the cover story: an interview with the too-darn-cute-to-be-so-devious-minded Megan Abbott, whose next novel, Bury Me Deep, is due out in July. An excerpt from their exchange is available here.

• Peter Rozovsky alerts me to the fact that the next Noir at the Bar author event will be held in Toronto, Ontario, on Tuesday, March 10. Featured stars of that show are authors Sean Chercover (Big City, Bad Blood and Trigger City) and Howard Shrier (Buffalo Jump and High Chicago). The venue this time will be the Scotland Yard Pub, 56 The Esplanade, beginning at 7:30 pm.

• Veteran detective novelist Robert B. Parker (Night and Day) talks with The Wall Street Journal about “mystery, marriage, and the American hero.” Meanwhile, Thin Ice, the fifth Tom Selleck teleflick to be based on Parker’s Jesse Stone character, will be shown on Sunday night on CBS, beginning at 9 p.m.

• While explaining the roots and intentions of his newly released detective novel, Last Days, author Brian Evenson recalls his discovery of Dashiell Hammett’s fiction:

[Raymond] Chandler has become so much a part of popular culture that even if you haven’t read him, he feels familiar. The amazing thing about Hammett is that at his best he doesn’t feel familiar. There are moments in Red Harvest that are beautifully brutal, other moments that are quite stark, stripped down in a different way than Chandler. You get the sense that Hammett is making his genre up as he goes, that almost anything could happen, and that he’s not interested in pulling his punches. The other books were buzzing in my head, but Red Harvest was buzzing louder. Then the cult he creates in The Dain Curse started buzzing too. Those two books seemed to be calling out to me to do something of my own, but I still didn’t have my big idea.

The full load of Evenson’s comments can be found in author John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever.

• How many lightbulbs does it take to constitute a trend?

• No surprise here: author-screenwriter Stephen J. Cannell tells Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays that the fictional character he “would ... most like to have been” was private eye Jim Rockford.

• How did I miss this? Atlantic Books, a British subsidiary of the American publishing house Grove/Atlantic, is rolling out a series of crime-fiction classics, some of them featuring terrifically cool covers.

• Cuban crime novelist José Latour puts his latest book, Crime of Fashion, through the wringer known as Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Guest blogger Steve Steinbock writes at Murderati about what he sees missing from sex scenes penned by men.

• When I heard earlier this week that author Philip José Farmer had died at age 91, I thought immediately of his famous Riverworld series, which I tried to read--unsuccessfully, I should note--back when I was a teenager. But I couldn’t immediately find a crime-fiction angle in the demise of this man who was so well known for his science fiction. Thankfully, Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site did a better job of research. As he explains on his site, Farmer “may have been famous as a science fiction writer, but he wrote a couple of mystery novels and a number of mystery short stories. The Image of the Beast (Essex, 1968) is a pornographic novel featuring a private eye. The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (Aspen, 1974) is a Sherlockian pastiche. “The Problem of the Sore Bridge--Among Others,” also a Sherlockian pastiche, as by “Harry Manders,” was first printed in the September 1975 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and included in Riverworld and Other Stories (Berkley, 1979). He also contributed a chapter for Naked Came the Farmer (Mayfly, 1998; edited by Bill Knight), a round-robin mystery novel.”

• Why am I not surprised by this?

• Edgar Award winner Jeffrey Ford (The Shadow Year) has begun exploring the works of French crime novelist Georges Simenon, wondering “what other kinds of exotic fictions I will find among his books.” See his posts here and here.

• “[Derek] Raymond’s brilliance in his British version of noir fiction stems from his ability to cross-pollinate the form with a bracing existentialism and dark exploration of memory and sadness,” writes Omnivoracious’ Jeff VanderMeer of Raymond’s famous Factory novels. “Even today, with the explosion of interesting hybrids by authors like Ken Bruen, Raymond manages to shock and amaze in his mixture of the hard-boiled and the lyrical. (Not to mention, a surprising gruff humor.)” Read more here.

• The latest short-story offering from Beat to a Pulp: “The Unreal Jesse James,” by Chap O’Keefe.

• Finally, the big-screen version of Stieg Larsson’s highly publicized debut novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), was released yesterday in Sweden. Uriah Robinson’s Crime Scraps blog has more on this subject.

(Hat tips to Brian Lindenmuth.)

Goodies Come in Bunches

Another large bundle of upcoming books has made its way to my inbox. Here are just a few highlights:

• Pictures at an Exhibition, by Sara Houghteling. In her debut novel, the prize-winning Houghteling tells the stories of a Parisian art gallery owner whose collection of paintings was looted by the Nazis, and of his son’s quest to recover his father's lost masterpieces after the war. This book (just released in February) is already being talked about as one of the best books of 2009.

• The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook, by Don Herron. Publisher Vince Emery, who specializes in keeping the spirit of Dashiell Hammett alive, pulls out all the stops for this celebration of what is said to be the longest-enduring literary tour in America, hosted by Hammett expert Herron. “If you can’t go to San Francisco,” said The Mystery Fancier, “you can still take the tour vicariously by purchasing The Dashiell Hammett Tour. It contains photos, maps, bibliography, and the best capsule biography of Hammett I have ever read.” Due out in mid-March.

• The Bellini Card, by Jason Goodwin. The third book in British author Goodwin’s celebrated series takes Yashim, the eunuch detective who works for the sultan, from the winding alleyways of mid-19th-century Istanbul to the decaying grandeur of Venice. Charged by the sultan with finding a stolen painting by Giovanni Bellini, Yashim enlists the help of his friend, Polish ambassador Palewski, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with Venetian dealers--self-made men, faded aristocrats, and dangerous criminals. The Bellini Card is available now.

Ripley, Believe It or Not

(Editor’s note: Tomorrow morning, February 28, the UK’s BBC Radio 4 will present “Looking for Ripley,” a half-hour special hosted by crime novelist Mark Billingham [In the Dark]. That show serves as the introduction to a five-week-long serialized adaptation of all of Patricia Highsmith’s renowned Tom Ripley novels. “Looking for Ripley” will begin on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. GMT, but will also be available to listeners for a week thereafter on BBC iPlayer. Billingham’s presentation will be followed tomorrow by a one-hour dramatization of the first novel in Highsmith’s series, The Talented Mr. Ripley [1955], beginning at 2:30 p.m. GMT. Before “Looking for Ripley” debuts, The Rap Sheet asked Billingham for a preview of his thoughts about Highsmith and her creation. His response is featured below.)

It is virtually unprecedented for the BBC to be broadcasting adaptations of novels by the same author in five consecutive Saturday afternoon slots. Yet that is what it has chosen to do in the case of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels, and the documentary I am presenting serves as an introduction to these adaptations, examining in particular the enduring fascination for the character of Ripley. Fifty-five years after his creation, Ripley still exerts a powerful hold over a great many readers, is a model for writers hoping to create compelling antiheroes, and--as I found out during the program--is still used as a case study by the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists!

These five radio plays, in which the character of Tom Ripley will be portrayed by the brilliant Ian Hart, are, I think, a measure of the esteem in which Highsmith’s work has been held for many years. It is something of a shame that she was somewhat less appreciated when she was alive. This may have been because she was almost impossible to pigeonhole as a writer, but it was probably more to do with the fact that her books presented a version of suburban America that many readers found unpalatable. There was rarely a character to “root for” and if there was, it was usually a killer. Her fictional landscapes contained few, if any good people and the motives for the crimes in her tales were of far less importance than their consequences. She was interested in guilt and the switching of identity and rarely gave two hoots about anything approaching conventional justice. Her humor was savage and she used it to devastating effect, laying bare the sordid nature of the lives that lay behind the façade of American suburbia.

Highsmith longed to be loved, yet preferred animals to people. She was an American who yearned to be European. She was a woman who often bemoaned the fact that she had not been born a man and somewhere, from this tangle of contradictions and fury, she produced Ripley, one of fiction’s most enduring and ambiguous characters.

Tom Ripley--a man who is only truly alive when he is somebody else--is portrayed in the five novels very simply and absolutely without judgment. He kills because there is really nothing else he can do, and, as a reader, there is a real frisson in seeing him get away with it time and time again. You are drawn into Ripley’s world, compelled to empathize with him, and when you get close to this character--a psychopath who kills if there is a problem to be solved, who does not feel guilt in the same way as other people, who is not troubled by conscience or any other trappings of a conventional morality--it is hard not to feel a little (dare I say it?) jealous.

I went “looking for Ripley” by talking to many who had been close to him and his creator, including Highsmith’s biographer, Andrew Wilson, and the actor Jonathan Kent, who Highsmith herself said was the “perfect Ripley.” Did I find him? Well, I caught glimpses of him, and I certainly found out a lot more about Highsmith herself, who often signed herself “Tom” or “Ripley” and to whom her best-known character was unusually real. I discovered that dinner parties round at Pat’s could be unusual, to say the least, and that she often carried her beloved pet snails around in her bra.

As for Ripley himself ... well, I discovered that what he is truly talented at, is hiding.

READ MORE: “Happy Birthday, Mr. Ripley,” by James Campbell (The New York Times); “The Darkly Talented Patricia Highsmith,” by James Sallis (Los Angeles Times).

Free of the Fens

Jim Kelly, the British author of five fine books about journalist Philip Dryden, who lives in a unique marsh-like town in England’s Fen District (Fire Baby, The Skeleton Man, etc.), starts a promising new series in Death Wore White, due out in from Minotaur Books in June. The story stars a pair of British cops in the northern town of King’s Lynn--a young detective chief inspector named Peter Shaw, who is in charge of the disgraced partner of his late father. Their first case together is a puzzler: At 5.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was trapped--stranded in a line of eight cars by a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road. At 8.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was dead--and nobody left a footprint in the snow. As is true of all of Kelly’s books, the physical details in Death Wore White are fresh and important.

I especially miss one character from the Dryden series--the fat old cab jockey who ferried the non-driving copper around. But in his place is a steely Czech female forensic expert, who gives the art of crime-scene investigation a hard new look.

Get a Clue

Sleuthfest, organized by the Florida chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, kicked off yesterday in Deerfield Beach, Florida. I expect that “Bookbitch” blogger Stacy Alesi, who has been posting contributions from Sleuthfest guest authors for the last month, will help lead the coverage of this event. Check her blog here.

READ MORE: “SleuthFest Notes,” by Michael Haskins (Michael Haskins, Key West Writer).

The Returns Are In

If it’s Friday, there must be plenty of “forgotten books” being recommended around the blogosphere. In addition to Jason Starr’s recommendation on this page of Edith’s Diary, by Patricia Highsmith, the latest crop includes: Something in the Shadows, by Vin Packer; The Dream-Detective, by Sax Rohmer; River, by Roderick Thorp; Pink Vodka Blues, by Neal Barrett Jr.; Murder in Metropolis, by Lonnie Cruse; Death and Transfiguration, by Stephen Murray; Bombship, by Bill Knox; Miami Purity, by Vicki Hendricks; Carny Kill, by Robert Edmond; and ... well, today’s offerings are particularly plentiful. For a full rundown, check out “forgotten books” organizer Patti Abbott’s blog (here). That’s also the place to look for four additional picks, one of which is Donald E. Westlake’s The Cutie.

The Book You Have to Read: “Edith’s Diary,” by Patricia Highsmith

(Editor’s note: This is the 44th installment of our Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Jason Starr, the New York author of The Follower and [with Ken Bruen] The Max. He has two other novels due out later this year: Fake I.D., coming from Hard Case Crime in June; and Panic Attack, a Minotaur Books release set to reach stores in August. Starr is also a regular contributor to The Rap Sheet.)

At first glance, Patricia Highsmith’s Edith’s Diary may seem like an odd choice for a “forgotten book” pick. Highsmith, who passed away in 1995, has hardly been forgotten. In many countries, especially in Europe, she remains a household name, and last year she topped a London Times list as the best mystery writers of all time. In the United States she has garnered more of a continuous cult status. She is best known as the author of the crime novels featuring Tom Ripley (especially 1955’s The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Strangers on a Train (the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock classic). In the 1990s, Vintage Crime reissued the Ripley novels and Atlantic Monthly Press published several of her standalones, and over the past several years W.W. Norton has brought the rest of her extensive backlist into print. Still, in the United States Highsmith hasn’t received the same respect in the crime-fiction genre as her contemporaries, such as Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Jim Thompson. And her best standalone novels haven’t received nearly the attention they deserve.

Part of the “problem” with Highsmith is that her books don’t fit neatly into the crime-fiction genre. Her controlled, formal, almost old-fashioned writing style makes her work hard to classify. If she had written in pared-down hard-boiled prose, it would be easy to think of her as the female Jim Thompson, because her books are as dark, or even darker than Thompson’s were. Like Thompson’s classic The Killer Inside Me (1952), The Talented Mr. Ripley was a groundbreaking novel that spawned a whole new genre of crime writing. It’s not surprising that Highsmith and Thompson (coincidentally, both Texas natives) shined when writing standalone works. Thompson wrote entirely standalones, and while Highsmith wrote several additional Ripley novels, they weren’t nearly as compelling as The Talented Mr. Ripley. Her attempt at penning a series seemed artificial and forced, as if she were trying to shoehorn Ripley into become a recurring character. Perhaps novels that focus on a single anti-hero function best as standalones, as they’re really stories about decline and feature protagonists who are in the end too damaged to viably go on to another book. In her standalone novels, however, Highsmith’s talent shined. In addition to The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train, her best works include Deep Water (think John Cheever with murder), The Glass Cell (a thriller about prison torture), This Sweet Sickness (a brilliant novel of obsession), and her flat-out masterpiece, Edith’s Diary.

First published in UK in 1977, Edith’s Diary chronicles the lives of Edith Howland, her husband, Brett, and their son, Cliffie, who leave Manhattan in the mid-1950s for a suburban life in Pennsylvania, near New Hope along the Delaware River. What seems like the beginning of an American Dream becomes a suburban nightmare, as over the course of about 15 years Edith’s life gradually deteriorates. Her husband abandons his responsibilities and eventually leaves Edith for another woman, Cliffie becomes increasingly delinquent and psychotic, and a dying, senile uncle comes to live in the family home. At the center of this novel is Edith, the most compelling and psychologically complex character Highsmith ever created. From the outset, Edith is as unhappy in the suburbs as April Wheeler is in Revolutionary Road. But unlike April, she lacks the ability to express her frustration and doesn’t have the desire to escape her circumstances. Instead, Edith’s only reprieve from her everyday drudgery is her diary. In the beginning, her diary chronicles the accurate details of her life, but as things fall apart around her, her diary eerily becomes increasingly cheerful. In chronicling the dichotomy between Edith’s real-life world and the escape into the alternative universe of happiness that her diary provides, Highsmith is at her absolute best, creating a devastating portrayal of a woman unable to comprehend her own emotions.

The book is written with Highsmith’s usual ethereal weirdness. In a Highsmith novel you never feel like you’re quite in the real world, and the surreal creepiness works especially well here, in a novel in which things are never quite as they seem. The timeline of this book, set against the tragic historical events of the 1960s, gives the downwardly spiraling story another level of resonance.

Edith’s Diary isn’t really a forgotten novel, since it has gained many fans over the years; but it’s certainly a neglected book, and it’s a must-read for crime-fiction fans and any lover of great literature.

Hype or Happenstance?

A brief note to Rap Sheet readers: While it may look as if we had some grand plan to champion author Patricia Highsmith today, it’s pure coincidence. But enjoy the results, nonetheless.

In Keeping with Tradition

The traditional-mysteries fan organization Malice Domestic has announced the nominees for its 2009 Agatha Awards as follows:

Best Novel
• Six Geese A-Slaying, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
• A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
• The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
• Buckingham Palace Gardens, by Anne Perry (Random House)
• I Shall Not Want, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel
• Through a Glass, Deadly, by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
• The Diva Runs Out of Thyme, by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
• Pushing Up Daisies, by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books)
• Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
• Paper, Scissors, Death, by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction
• African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
• How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
• Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography, by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
• Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher, by Kate Summerscale (Walker)

Best Short Story
• “The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron (from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner; Ace)
• “Killing Time,” by Jane Cleland (Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, November 2008)
• “Dangerous Crossing,” by Carla Coupe (from Chesapeake Crimes 3, edited by Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)
• “Skull and Cross Examination,” by Toni L.P. Kelner (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], February 2008)
• “A Nice Old Guy,” by Nancy Pickard (EQMM, August 2008)

Best Children’s/Young Adult
• Into the Dark, by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins)
• A Thief in the Theater, by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl)
• The Crossroads, by Chris Grabenstein (Random House
Children’s Books)
• The Great Circus Train Robbery, by Nancy Means Wright
(Hilliard and Harris)

Anne Perry has been chosen to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Other winners will be selected by attendees at the Malice Domestic 21 convention (May 1-3), and are to be announced during a banquet on Saturday, May 2. Click here for more information.

Rumors of His Oeuvre Finally Drying Up Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Can it be? A new mystery-steeped short story from the renowned Mark Twain? A press release explains:

The Strand Magazine announces the forthcoming publication of a previously unpublished Mark Twain short story in an upcoming issue of The Strand. Adding to a long-running tradition of publishing works by such great writers as Conan Doyle (published in the original Strand--1891-1950), Ray Bradbury, Alexander McCall Smith, and Ruth Rendell, The Strand will feature Twain’s “The Undertaker’s Tale” in its March 2009 issue.

Andrew Gulli, editor of The Strand, said he grew up reading Mark Twain, and calls the opportunity to publish Twain’s work “an editor’s dream.” While “The Undertaker’s Tale,” will be published nearly 99 years after Twain’s death in 1910, Gulli notes that the work is both timely and timeless.

According to Gulli, “Though the story is called ‘The Undertaker's Tale,’ I would hazard against bracing for something gloomy--Twain uses his razor sharp wit to pen a tongue-in-cheek tale about the funeral industry, which could easily have been written today. After rereading several of Twain’s tales and essays, it became even clearer to me that Twain’s writings can never be dated. He tackles the same problems we’re challenged with today, and pokes fun at the same characters that inhabit our present-day world.”

Read more about this coming publication here.

And Then It Was Done

After putting up with so much bad news over the last year, it’s a relief to hear some good news for a change. Consider: Actor Jeff Goldblum is finally set to make his debut on Law & Order: Criminal Intent in April. The Mystery Writers of America is handing out scholarships of $500 apiece to would-be novelists wanting to take part in genre conferences and limited-time writing programs. And while Republicans look toward outdated, partisan strategies in the search for their political relevance, President Barack Obama enjoys stratospheric approval ratings and has won widespread support for his approach to reviving the U.S. economy.

Oh, and the stuccoed Georgian villa known as Greenway in Devon, England--“the only surviving home of Agatha Christie”--will open this weekend to public tours. As the Associated Press reports:

Visitors can see the bedroom where Christie slept, the dining room where she entertained, and the drawing room where she thrilled friends with readings from her latest whodunit.

Craftsmen worked for two years to restore the 18th-century home, Greenway, and the rooms are much as they were when Christie lived there, complete with books, papers, boxes of chocolates and bunches of flowers. Even the scratches on the bedroom door made by the family dog remain.

“It does feel very much in a time warp,” Robyn Brown, who manages Greenway on behalf of the National Trust heritage group, said Tuesday.

Visitors shouldn’t come to this country estate, though, in search of clues to Dame Agatha’s career as a renowned crime-fictionist. Explains The Telegraph:

You won’t see a writing desk, or a study used by the great crime writer when completing one of her 79 mysteries, although she came here every summer from 1938 until her death in 1976. There is no physic garden stocked with deadly nightshade or spotted hemlock. And while three novels and a couple of murders are recognisably set here (the artist Amyas Crale dies in the garden after drinking hemlock-laced beer, and the girl guide Marlene Tucker is found strangled in the boathouse), none were written in the house. Christie saw Greenway as a place of relaxation, not of work, as a chance to enjoy family, friends and the benevolent surroundings of the River Dart. It was also somewhere to indulge the family passion--or obsession--for collecting.

In addition to her basic report on Christie’s refurbished abode, Telegraph travel writer Sophie Campbell offers a video tour and an interview with the National Trust’s Brown.

Click here for the full package.

READ MORE: “The Loveliest Place in the World” (Agatha Christie Web Site); “Witness for the Restoration,” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet); “The Big Question: How Big Is the Agatha Christie Industry, and What Explains Her Enduring Appeal?,” by Jerome Taylor (The Independent).

Brigands and Beads

In celebration of this season, Janet Rudolph presents a list of Mardi Gras-related mysteries for your reading delight. UPDATE: Rudolph has also now posted a rundown of Ash Wednesday-related mysteries.

LISTEN UP: “New Orleans Piano Music,” by Kirsten Kendrick and Nick Morrison (KPLU-FM Radio).

These Are Their Stories, Guv’nor

Assessing last night’s much-heralded debut in Britain of Law & Order: UK, Michael Carlson, the film editor of Crime Time and a columnist for Shots, writes in his blog:

It only occurred to me when Law & Order: UK hit its first courtroom scenes that the script, far from being extraordinarily close in content to the original U.S. series, was actually an adaptation of an episode from one of the early years. A little research then revealed that producer/scripter Chris Chibnall had actually chosen 13 of the American shows to adapt, after watching some 150. (Wonder if the L&O version of the Sunny von Bulow killing will be one of them?)

This trans-Atlantic scripting created quite a bind for the British reviewers, one of whom actually opined that the fast pace and slick dialogue was ‘not what UK TV is about, I’m afraid.’ It must be awful to live one’s life in fear, but anyway. Since the actors and the adapter were British, there was the urge to praise, but since this was an American format, the urge to get the boot in was just as strong. A few people mentioned with smugness that it’s the first time the format-following has gone in this direction (thinking of everything from All in the Family to The Office), which overlooks the sad truth that where the Yanks buy formats and tinker with them, the Brits simply steal the idea and butcher it, to wit The Bill (Hill Street Blues), Casualty (ER), or This Life (‘this ISN’T the British Friends’, Amy Perkins told every interviewer, as if that made it so!).

The finished product is actually a blend of L&O and the kind of pacing which Kudos, the British production company, first showed in Spooks ..., and it works pretty well. But the punch of L&O comes from the legal dilemmas, not the pacy cop show; and those dilemmas are often related to police procedure: the ultimate question of whether the law can be enforced and whether, if it is, it constitutes justice. The interesting thing is that ITV, in its advertising, has made the usual mistake of equating the two halves of the show with its title, but the title is actually backwards, since it's the police who maintain order, while the lawyers play with the law. Order and Law doesn’t really flow, though.

You can read all of Carlson’s commentary here.

READ MORE: “TV Main Title of the Week--Special Foreign Law & Order Edition,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “Law & Order: UK Redux,” by Michael Carlson (Irresistible Targets).

Bullet Points: The Carnaval Edition

While the annual Carnaval celebration roars into being in Brazil, complete with its body-painted queen, the rest of us--pasty-white and in no shape to go parading about thoroughfares in our all-togethers--must content ourselves with watching the 81st annual Academy Awards presentation. And maybe ordering in a pizza. And nosing around the blogosphere for crime-fiction news. To wit:

• Bill Crider brings us the sad news that novelist John Alfred “Jack” Webb (no, not the same Jack Webb who brought us Dragnet) has died at age 92. During the 1950s and ’60s, Webb wrote mysteries featuring the crime-solving pair of Father Joseph Shanley and Sammy Golden. The former was a Catholic priest in Southern California, the latter a Jewish detective-sergeant working with what was apparently the Los Angeles Police Department’s Homicide Division. Among Webb’s titles: The Big Sin (1952), The Damned Lovely (1954), The Brass Halo (1957), and One for My Dame (1961).

• Notice of another death in the crime-fiction community comes from Jiro Kimura’s The Gumshoe Site. He reports that Charles “Chuck” Crayne, “one of the founders of Bouchercon and a co-chairman (with Bruce Pelz) of the first Bouchercon, which was held during Memorial Day weekend in 1970 at the Royal Inn in Santa Monica, California,” died on February 16 of cardiac arrest in Willits, California. Crayne was 71 years old.

• Oline H. Cogdill, who for many years has written about crime and mystery fiction for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, today begins penning twice-weekly posts for the Mystery Scene magazine blog. “As I do for the Sun-Sentinel, I’ll be writing about a variety of subjects, mystery fiction, for sure, but also movies, DVDs, publishing trends, etc.,” she told subscribers to the listserv DorothyL. “The plan is to update the Mystery Scene blog each Sunday and Wednesday, though I may add a bonus or two when the mood strikes.” This is good news indeed, since that particular blog has been updated with disappointing infrequency since its inception in the summer of 2007. Even sadder has been the moribund state of the magazine’s companion blog, Brian Skupin’s Bookflings, which hasn’t offered new material since June 17 of last year.

• How can you not read a story that’s headlined “James Patterson: Evil Genius?” Picking up on a news item, blogger and fictionist Declan Burke reports that “Best-selling crime author James Patterson will release a new kind of novel next month--one that’s been collaboratively written with the crowd. Called Airborne, the upcoming novel will feature 30 chapters, each written by a different author except the first and last--those will be written by Patterson himself. With the release of this book, it appears the Web 2.0 movement of collaborative writing is about to hit the mainstream.” Is this good news? It’s hard to know, really ...

• As somebody with a longtime fondness for the works of author Alistair MacLean, once one of the world’s biggest-selling thriller writers, I am delighted to see Gravetapping’s Ben Boulden having collected five trailers for films made from MacLean’s books: The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Breakheart Pass, and Bear Island. Watch these in between Oscar-night shots of Marisa Tomei, Frank Langella, Anne Hathaway, and Josh Brolin.

• Speaking of the Oscars, celebrity Joan Rivers and her co-author, Los Angeles mystery author Jerilyn Farmer (The Flaming Luau of Death), imagine those glitzy goings-on with more crime than camaraderie in Murder at the Academy Awards.

• Devil on Two Sticks. How is that not the perfect book title?

• Linda L. Richards imagines the casting choices for a movie version of her first Kitty Pangborn mystery, Death Was the Other Woman (2008). Although I might prefer How I Met Your Mother’s Alyson Hannigan in the redheaded Kitty role, I can definitely see Russell Crowe as the besotted but still able Los Angeles private eye, Dexter J. Theroux. Now, would somebody just please make this film?

• British blogger-critic Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) has been posting a multi-part interview with Hawaii resident Rebecca Cantrell, author of the historical crime novel A Trace of Smoke, which is due out from Forge Books in May. Cantrell answers Robinson’s questions about her book, which is set in Berlin in 1931, here, here, and here, with more of their exchange to come. Fine stuff. UPDATE: The fourth and final installment of Robinson’s discussion with Cantrell can be read here.

• Crimespree editors and Bouchercon organizers Jon and Ruth Jordan win star treatment in the Chicago Tribune.

• The Irish Times investigates the explosion in crime fiction turned out by its homeland’s resident novelists. “There was a time when Irish writers of the criminal persuasion were rarer than root canal work on a hen,” writes Arminta Wallace. “Over the past decade, however, Irish crime fiction has emerged as a self-assured genre whose practitioners are not just selling well at home, but are also gaining recognition on the murderously competitive international crime scene.” The full story can be found here.

• After his splendid post last week about the U.S. TV shows that debuted in the fall of 1971, Saskatchewan writer Brent McKee follows up with another post that addresses questions readers have raised, and even features a bonus double-shot of theme music from Henry Mancini. Personally, I’m looking forward to McKee’s future comments about the 1972-1973 TV season, which he says will include “some rather interesting thoughts on Hec Ramsey.”

• Thinking of Hec Ramsey brings back memories of other NBC Sunday Mystery Movie segments, including Dennis Weaver’s McCloud.

• And though it took longer to write than I had expected, I’m rather pleased with my latest post at the Killer Covers blog. It covers the work of Frank Kane, an alcohol-industry promoter and the creator of New York City private eye Johnny Liddell (Grave Danger, 1954). Check it out when you find a bit of free time.

The Enchanting Fiddler

Are you in the market for some good news? Try this: David Thompson, publisher of Busted Flush Press in Houston, Texas (his company’s name being, of course, an homage to Travis McGee) is putting one of his, and my, favorite series ever back into print--the Fiddler books written by A.E. Maxwell, a pseudonym employed by Ann and Evan Maxwell. (She is now best known as “Elizabeth Lowell,” and sells a ton of books under that moniker.)

Just Another Day in Paradise (1985) was the earliest of five Fiddler thrillers to reach bookstores during the 1980s, followed by The Frog and the Scorpion (1986), Gatsby’s Vineyard (1987), Just Enough Light to Kill (1988), and The Art of Survival (1989). Busted Flush will reprint the first four of those as handsome trade-size paperbacks over the next few months.

Paradise finds Fiddler, a Southern California-based investigator with a shady past, still obsessed with his gorgeous investment banker ex-wife, Fiora Flynn. She drafts him into helping her save the life of her self-destructive twin brother. When the Fiddler books first came out, their lean prose and evocative looks at California life won comparisons to Spenser and McGee. Now, thanks to Thompson, we can all relive the pleasures of our youth.

The Book You Have to Read: “Night of the Panther,” by E.C. Ayres

(This marks the 43rd installment of The Rap Sheet’s ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Previous recommendations can be found here.)

Southern Florida has long been in danger of becoming as overused a mystery-thriller setting as Southern California. Once the exclusive haunt of novelist John D. MacDonald’s seductive “salvage expert,” Travis McGee, the area has since grown crowded with Carl Hiaasen’s criminal crazies, James W. Hall’s brooding baddies, the smart-talking sinners of Randy Wayne White’s Marion “Doc” Ford tales, the multiple malcontents of Barbara Parker’s Gail Connor/Anthony Quintana series, the reprehensibles who race through Edna Buchanan’s stories featuring crime reporter Britt Montero, Stuart M. Kaminsky’s unlicensed inquirer, Lew Fonesca, and the occasional double-helping of whack jobs served up by Elmore Leonard. In those authors’ skilled hands, the once promised land of Ponce de León is turned into a land of broken promises, corrupt officials, petty hoods gunning for foreign tourists, and real-estate scammers who would be all too happy to replace the Everglades with cheesy condo developments, if only they could do it without alarms going off at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Gene “E.C.” Ayres is no more generous to the Sunshine State.

A screenwriter who fled to Florida years ago (but later moved on to China and, as I understand, is currently living in my hometown of Seattle), Ayres is best known for turning one of his rejected screenplays into Hour of the Manatee, the 1994 story that won a St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel competition. Manatee introduced Tony Lowell, an aging former star press photographer who has semi-retired to a Gulf Coast cabin and a part-time detective gig. More interested in resurrecting a venerable old wooden schooner (shades of Harry O) than pursuing the justice he once thought could be found in this world, Lowell nonetheless allows himself to be talked into taking on cases that have explosive political or environmental repercussions. In these, he is assisted by a shady but still invaluable Crow Indian named Perry Garwood, as well as by Lena Bedrosian, a police homicide detective every bit as earnest as Lowell is eccentric.

Night of the Panther (1997), Ayres’ third Lowell outing, involves this unlikely trio in the death of Bedrosian’s cousin, a Fish and Game officer working Florida’s alligator-infested Big Cypress Swamp. The woman had taken a gunshot to the back of the head, but she’s on the books as a hunting-accident victim. Bedrosian smells cover-up. However, her boss, wary of conflict of interest, stops Bedrosian from becoming professionally involved, so she hires Lowell to sniff out a lengthening trail of clues that leads him to the loutish members of a local militia, panther poachers, a dangerous bar owner, and a sweetheart deal between a conservative legislator and a trophy-obsessed hunt and gun club that wants more public lands for its own private use.

This whole mystery hinges on modern anti-government sympathies--the underpinnings and consequences of which Ayres has wicked fun exploring. In one memorable scene, an honest longtime senator must face down a roomful of well-to-do NRA loyalists--all of whom have rifles pointed at his noggin. “The very notion of society’s greatest beneficiaries taking to arms against their own government would seem absurd, were it not happening,” Ayres writes. “It was the same logic ... whereby so many of [the senator’s] colleagues up in Washington could be a part of the government, and still denounce it and fawn and pander to reactionary armed militias bent on overthrowing it. While both hands remained deep in that same government’s pocket.” (Hey, never let it be said that American right-wingers aren’t astounding hypocrites.)

Ayres has an ear for humorous dialogue and an excellent eye for atmospherics--the gossipy trailer parks, political independence, and patience-cracking humidity that are all quintessentially Floridian. He also keeps a lid on violence, never allowing it to substitute for more thoughtful plot development. Regrettably, the author seems less concerned about putting flesh around the bones of his protagonists. Tony Lowell remains a cynical cipher, even though he’s had time to develop over the course of two previous outings (in Manatee and 1995’s Eye of the Gator). And Perry Garwood suffers from never getting enough stage time to prove that he can measure up to better-known sidekicks such as Spenser’s super-cool Hawk or Joe Pike, the right-hand thug in Robert Crais’ fine series of Elvis Cole adventures. Lena Bedrosian seems fully formed, but only because she aspires so ardently to one-dimensionality.

Back when this book came out, I wrote in a review that “Though Ayres hasn’t yet distinguished himself from the current glut of Florida crime fictionists, I suspect he could prove as surprising as those gators about which he so often writes.” My expectations of his future didn’t quite come to pass. After producing a quartet of Tony Lowell mysteries (the last one being Lair of the Lizard, 1998), Ayres “went into remission,” as he puts it, “to raise my son.” He apparently moved to Asia for three years and subsequently penned a non-fiction book about his experiences there, called A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. More recently, he’s begun publishing again under the name Gene Ayres, and has revived his Lowell series with a fifth installment, Cry of the Heron (newly available this month for your Kindle). The story is that the previous Lowell books are going to be brought back into print ... or at least into electronic availability. We shall see. Fingers crossed.

Will You Remember Me?

Ten months after Patti Abbott launched her “forgotten books” series on the Web, bloggers continue to make recommendations of written works that have, for one reason or another, fallen by the wayside over time, but deserve to be rediscovered. Today’s batch of remembered reads includes: The Dust and the Heat, by Michael Gilbert; The Valkyrie Encounter, by Stephen Marlowe; The Blue Kimono Kill, by Walt Sheldon; Killer’s Wedge and ’Til Death, by Ed McBain; The Last Song Dogs, by Sinclair Browning; Larry Maddock’s Agent of T.E.R.R.A. series; Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy; David Cole’s Laura Winslow mysteries; and Prey, by Ken Goddard.

Abbott features four more selections in her own blog, including Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Black-eyed Blonde. Go to her site, too, for a full list of today’s fine “forgottens.”

Child Is the Man

Author Lee Child (Nothing to Lose)--a favorite of this page--has been elected as the new president of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). He will serve one year in that capacity, succeeding Harlan Coben. The official announcement is here. No comments yet from Mr. Child himself, but we can assume those will follow.

A Gumshoe’s Multiple Guises

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up on a meme started at the Web site Weekly Geeks that asked bloggers to search out multiple covers for a particular book, those that have appeared on that work over time. I targeted covers from Turn on the Heat, the second installment in the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, written by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.”

Well, with all the recent hoopla surrounding the publication of Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer--an accomplished, if not perfect prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon--I decided to engage in a bit more sleuthing, this time searching out old Falcon jackets. In addition to the front of the September 1929 edition of Black Mask magazine (shown at left), in which the first part of Hammett’s original Sam Spade yarn was published, I tracked down 10 different covers from the United States and Britain, as well as (third row) Germany, and Italy:








Personally, I like the 1930 Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (top row, left) the best. However, the two covers in the fifth row down are definite rivals. My own library features the 1972 Vintage paperback shown in the fourth row, on the left. And the one just to the right of that (published in 1975 by Pan Books), which features a hand reaching for a falcon statue behind corrugated glass, boasts considerable style, too. The others--including the 1945 Pocket edition, with femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy seen waiting behind a curtain, while Spade searches her clothing--are merely passable.

But wouldn’t you know it: Shortly after I finished compiling this collection of handsome covers, I discovered a page of Mike Humbert’s excellent The Dashiell Hammett Web Site where an abundance of other Maltese Falcon covers can be found.

“Books Can Endure ... You Can’t Say That of Much Else in This World”

Author Craig McDonald (who Rap Sheet contributor Jim Winter interviewed last October) sits down yet again to explain himself, this time to the UK-based Webzine Pulp Pusher. In an exchange with his former Bleak House editor, Alison Janssen, McDonald talks about transitioning between journalism and fiction-writing, writing the graphic-novel version of Head Games, the 1955 film noir The Night of the Hunter, and why he’d like to have been writing in the time of Ernest Hemingway, rather than now.

You’ll find the whole fine interview here.

Trash Talking

We often hear about book titles being changed during their transitions between Great Britain and the United States, or vice versa. Usually those alterations seem unnecessary and uninspired, the consequence of overthinking by publicity types. However, there’s occasionally a good reason for a title to be switched.

A case in point is Alafair Burke’s latest Detective Ellie Hatcher novel, Angel’s Tip. Just yesterday, Burke told members of the mystery readers’ listserv DorothyL that

my book, City of Fear, is out just this week in the UK. This is the second Ellie Hatcher book, which was published as Angel’s Tip in the United States in autumn. Apparently City of Fear is #2 at Tesco, which I’m told is a big supermarket chain in the UK. I’ve never seen one of my books in a supermarket in the U.S., so I’m taking that as good news.

Now, I don’t think too many Rap Sheet readers would argue with the idea that Angel’s Tip is a considerably more interesting title than City of Fear. In fact, the latter sounds like one of those cheesy televised “Movie of the Week” presentations from the 1970s. But as blogger and novelist Linda L. Richards pointed out, also on DorothyL, this name change is explained by an understanding of UK slang:

Oh that’s too funny! That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a country change for a title that actually made sense to me. I did not think of it when I read the North American version of this wonderful book--because I had my U.S. English hat on while I read, of course--but in colloquial UK English, wouldn’t an Angel’s Tip be the place where an angel stashed her garbage?

Which raises the question of course, whether angels actually create any garbage. Or has Heaven perfected recycling by now?

Hard Case Scores Again--Need I Say More?

The Cutie, by Donald E. Westlake. Publisher Hard Case Crime planned this reissue of Westlake’s very first book, The Mercenaries (1960), just before his death last New Year’s Eve. It’s a great way to remember the man and his genius: a classy new paperback with a new name and a jazzy cover by Ken Laager. Inside is a taut and terrific story about a mob enforcer trying to keep a connected idiot alive and coming up against a very determined young lady who wants the idiot dead. Due out in March.

Fake I.D., by Jason Starr. Another coup from Hard Case--the first publication in the United States of a tense chiller by the highly lauded Starr, much loved by George Pelecanos, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, and Megan Abbott. Originally issued abroad in 2000, Fake I.D. is about a New York bar bouncer who takes one bounce too many when he joins a horse-racing syndicate. Gregg Kreutz did a gorgeous cover for this paperback, which should reach bookstores in June.

Ludlum Storming Hollywood

Protothriller writer Robert Ludlum died in 2001. Eight years on, he has never been more popular, with up to four more of his blockbusters headed for the big screen.

According to 411mania, this is likely due in part to the fact that Captivate Entertainment, which controls the screen rights to Ludlum’s novels, made a deal with Universal Studios last year:

Run by Jeffrey Weiner and Ben Smith, Captivate’s new deal gave Universal exclusive rights to continue the “Bourne Identity” series, and gave the studio first look at all Ludlum titles, 25 of which haven’t yet been optioned for the screen.

Universal is working on a fourth “Bourne” film for Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass based on an original idea, and Universal and Strike Entertainment are prepping an adaptation of Ludlum’s “The Sigma Protocol.”

The early talks for “The Parsifal Mosaic” come in the wake of Tom Cruise entering negotiations to star with Denzel Washington for director David Cronenberg in the Ludlum thriller “The Matarese Circle” at MGM. The “Matarese” deal was made before Captivate landed at Universal.

The Guardian confirms the scuttlebutt around Matarese:

Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington look set to play rival spies forced to team up in David Cronenberg’s forthcoming adaptation of the Robert Ludlum thriller The Matarese Circle, Variety reports.

Cruise is in talks to play one of the spooks, while Oscar-winner Washington is understood to have already signed on to play the other. Ludlum’s 1979 novel is set during the cold war era and centres on rival U.S. and Russian spies who have been vieing for supremacy for several decades. The screenplay for the new film, by Wanted’s Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, will bring the story up to date, but will still focus on the elite group of the title, an organisation that has infiltrated every layer of society.

More book-to-film news in that same 411mania piece: Clive Barker talks about the possibility of releasing the movie version of Tortured Souls from development hell (“I think it’ll happen. I think it’ll happen probably only when I’ve got back into the swing of directing. There’s a script I like very much.”).

That’s a Lot of Birthday Candles

British historian and spy novelist Len Deighton--the author of such familiar works as The IPCRESS File (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964), and XPD (1981)--turns 80 years old today. To help celebrate, The Telegraph features an interview with the “famously publicity-shy” writer. For more background on Deighton’s life and literary endeavors, check out Rob Mallows’ The Deighton Dossier and the “Unofficial” Len Deighton Home Page.

Before the Black Bird

On February 14, 2009, the 79th anniversary of the publication of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, San Francisco author Joe Gores (left) came to the “M” Is for Mystery bookshop in San Mateo, California, to discuss and sign his prequel to that iconic novel, Spade & Archer (Knopf).

Publisher and Hammett expert Vince Emery was on hand to interview Gores, but he also managed to work in a plug for an exciting new book project: Don Herron’s The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook, which is scheduled for publication on March 16. That expanded edition of the book includes a preface by Jo Hammett (a surviving Hammett daughter), as well as an introduction by the late noir great Charles Willeford (Miami Blues).

Gores started the discussion by giving some of the back story on how his new novel came to be, covering a lot of the same ground he did during this videotaped interview I did with him as part of the NEA’s “Big Read” program at the Pleasanton Public Library in 2007 (start at about 1:37 to hear what he has to say about Spade & Archer).

At “M” Is for Mystery, Gores credited Hammett biographer Richard Layman, in particular, with the idea for doing a prequel. It seems Layman had once commented to Gores that Falcon was the great existential novel, since the reader is dropped into the middle of the action, is never allowed to enter into Spade’s head, and is given almost no background on any of the other characters. That motivated Gores to try to explain a few things in his novel, such as how Spade developed into the hard-boiled SOB he was, why he didn’t like guns or his partner, Miles Archer, and how he came to be having an affair with Archer’s wife, Iva.

Early on in Spade & Archer, for instance, we learn that Spade started out in Spokane, Washington, as a Continental operative (yes, the same Continental Detective Agency for which Hammett’s other famous fictional character, the nameless Continental Op, worked). There he went out with Iva (née Ida Nolan) before volunteering to fight in World War I with the Canadian army. Iva apparently tired of waiting for Spade and married Archer instead, leading to the animosity between Archer and Spade and Spade’s willingness to go “back to the well,” as it were.

Gores explained to his audience that the reason he put Spade in Spokane was because Hammett had mentioned that he based the character of Iva on a woman who worked in a bookstore there. Another Easter egg Gores inserted in the book for the Hammett (and Raymond Chandler) cognoscenti is that Spade’s regiment and uniform would have been the same as the real-life regiment and uniform Chandler fought with and wore in World War I.

At one point, Vince Emery (right) talked about the reception for this new novel, noting that it has received starred reviews from all of the trade publications, as well as raves in newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, where local mystery writer Cara Black recently sang its praises.

Gores was pleased to see all the printed reviews, but it seems the most gratifying comment he received for the book came from Jo Hammett, who said that at times she forgot whether Gores or her father had written the prose, so Hammett-like did it read to her.

I had a little time to talk with Joe Gores before the event and he pointed out a dagger lapel pin he was wearing on his sport coat. He said that the pin was a gift from the Hammett family in appreciation of his effort--and that the pin had a special tie-in with the book.

At the event’s end, I joined a long line with the other attendees hoping to pick up a signed copy of Spade & Archer and have a picture taken with its author. I also took the opportunity to present Gores with a little gift of my own: a framed copy of my Spade and Archer photo, taken last year at the Dashiell Hammett Suite in San Francisco’s Hotel Union Square.

Authors both: Joe Gores with Mark Coggins