Collaborating in the Darkness, Part I

Börge Hellström, Quercus CEO Mark Smith, and Anders Roslund

(Editor’s note: This is the first half of an exclusive, two-part interview with Swedish crime novelists Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström. The second part will appear on this page tomorrow.)

In addition to seeing some of my friends and a couple of editors at next week’s Bouchercon in San Francisco, and maybe meeting some new authors, I’m most looking forward to once more visiting with the Swedish crime-writing duo Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström. In my opinion, those two are the most viscerally challenging writers to work in this genre since the now-famous Stieg Larsson.

My introduction to Roslund (a journalist) and Hellström (a reformed ex-criminal who works to help place ex-cons back into society) came during the winter of 2005. As usual, I was reading more books than I ever had time to review. But one that I did want to comment on--The Beast, Roslund and Hellström’s debut novel--I found I could not write a word about. Although I’ve read many shocking and disturbing works of crime fiction in my time, The Beast took my psyche beyond anything I had ever experienced before. After I’d finished the book, I reflected back with new insight on the précis that publisher Little, Brown had sent along with it:

Two children are found dead in a basement. Four years later their murderer escapes from prison. The police know if he is not found quickly, he will kill again. But when their worst fears come true and another child is murdered in the nearby town of Strengnas, the situation spirals out of control. In an atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by the media, Fredrik Steffansson, the father of the murdered child, decides he must take revenge. His actions will have devastating consequences. As anger spreads across the whole country, the two [Stockholm] detectives assigned to the case--Ewert Grens and Sven Sunkist--find themselves caught up in a situation of escalating violence. A powerful and at times profoundly shocking novel, The Beast has been likened to both Hitchcock and Le Carré. It is also an important and timely exploration of what can happen when we take the law into our own hands. It has been shortlisted for Glasnyckeln 2005 [The Glass Key Award] for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

I am the father of three children, and what The Beast did was challenge my bleeding-heart-liberal values system. It made me think about the question: What would I be capable of doing, should a predatory pedophile commit the unthinkable act of murdering my offspring? I found it as disturbing as Dennis Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone, another book about youngsters victimized by adults, published seven years earlier. I thought perhaps I would be capable of exacting a terrible retribution from my children’s attacker. But Roslund and Hellström added a further dimension to their tale, detailing the consequences that can come of such vengeful, blind-rage acts.

After I finished that novel, I couldn’t rid myself of the images it had embedded in my mind. And the idea of revisiting the world of The Beast in order to write a review repulsed me. So I put the book away in a box and tried to erase the memory of having read it.

Then along came Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008). I was already interested in Swedish crime fiction, but that work made me so much more so. After hassling the delightful Lucy Ramsey and Nicci Praça at Quercus Publishing for an early copy of Dragon Tattoo, I published the first English-language review of it here in The Rap Sheet. I went on to write more about Larsson and his debut novel. But, like everybody else, I had to wait ... and wait ... and wait until its sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, was released by Quercus in 2009. In the meantime, I found a copy of Roslund and Hellström’s Box 21 (published in the States as The Vault), the follow-up to The Beast--also starring detectives Sven Sundkvist and Ewert Grens--in my possible-review pile. I held it in my hands as if it were a cobra preparing to strike. The Beast still haunted me; was I ready yet to give Box 21 a try?

Thankfully, Box 21’s plot did not involve children. Here’s the synopsis:

When a severely wounded woman is brought to a hospital in Stockholm, doctors are horrified to learn that her injuries are the result of a brutal whipping. She is Lydia, a victim of people-trafficking, a young girl from Lithuania sold by her boyfriend and now trapped in a Stockholm brothel, forced to repay her “debt.” In the same hospital, police officer Sven Sundkvist and senior officer Ewert Grens are chasing a lead that may just expose a notorious mafia boss, a dangerous man Grens hates with a vengeance. Two stories of passionate reprisal twist together, ending in a dramatic climax: two bullet-riddled bodies and a room full of hostages in the hospital’s basement. But in the cold light of day, will Sven protect the senior officer he so admires, even from his own corruption?

So I brewed up some coffee one evening, cracked Box 21’s spine, and discovered another deeply twisted yarn that held a mirror to my values system. Petrona’s Maxine Clarke summed up my own reaction to Box 21, calling it “a very dark book indeed, a compelling, fast-paced and fresh take on those well-worn staples of crime fiction: the hostage drama and sex-trafficking. It is also a police procedural, told with relentless cynicism. I think it’s an excellent novel, but you have been warned!”

Following the release of Box 21, though, Roslund and Hellström pretty much fell off my radar, because Little, Brown UK stopped publishing their work in English. Which was a great disappointment. Even though their stories were disquieting and forbidding, I was impressed by their writing abilities and their sheer brilliance in unfolding a tale ripped from the headlines. The pair were also fearless in handling subjects unflinchingly, that many other scribes would have avoided.

More recently, publicist Lucy Ramsey, who had heard me talk on occasion about Roslund and Hellström, informed me that Quercus had just picked up a novel by that duo called Three Seconds. At the time there were no printed proofs of the book to be read, but she kindly sent me a copy of the manuscript, fresh from the translator, for my opinion. It was a whopping big book (almost 600 pages when ready for publication), but I found myself consumed wholly by its story.

Three Seconds ushers you into the grim, violent world of undercover police and the Polish mafia’s plan to corner the drug market in the prison systems of Sweden, Finland, and Norway. When a clandestine drug operation handled by undercover Swedish agent Piet Hoffmann goes wrong, and a Danish covert operative is murdered, Hoffmann’s handler, Erik Wilson, concocts a scheme that will place his agent in full view of the Polish mafia, to take control of the drug supply at a Swedish penal complex. Sniffing an irregularity in the investigation of the dead Danish agent are Roslund and Hellström’s series cops, Ewert Grens and Sven Sundqvist, who encounter barriers at every turn. Meanwhile, agent Hoffmann infiltrates a maximum-security penitentiary with the idea of assuming dominion there, using the drugs supply as leverage. However, the Polish mafia, in the guise of Wojtek Security, has other ideas.

Tense and gripping, with a chilling climax, Three Seconds is not a book to miss if you like your crime fiction edged with the steel blades of reality. Roslund and Hellström pepper their narrative with insider knowledge and perspectives, and their story’s brutal violence pushes this new book firmly into the thriller category.

I was delighted recently to receive an invitation from Quercus to meet these two Swedish authors at (appropriately) London’s Nordic Bar in Newman Street. Also attending that event were other London critics and bloggers, including Mike Stotter and Ayo Onatade of Shots, Barry Forshaw, Maxine Clarke, and Euro Crime’s Karen Meek. I’m often surprised to find that the darker the subjects crime-fiction writers explore, the nicer those writers are in person. Roslund and Hellström fit that pattern, being delightful company when tipping back a few libations.

The authors were amazed that I knew a great deal about their work, and they kindly agreed to sign my copies of their books. I learned in the course of talking with them, and with CEO Mark Smith, that Quercus has also purchased the rights to Roslund and Hellström’s backlist, not only The Beast and Box 21, but also the third and fourth Ewert Grens/Sven Sundqvist novels, which are currently in the process of being translated into English. (Three Seconds is actually the authors’ fifth book, but it’s the third to be published in Great Britain.)

Soon I was able to find a quiet corner where I could interview Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström for The Rap Sheet. The two opened up about their lives, which have provided the backdrop for their fiction. We talked about some disturbing truths behind The Beast; the pair’s relationship with fellow Swedish crime writer Maj Sjöwall; how Stieg Larsson helped Roslund by exposing the Swedish neo-Nazi movement; and the authors’ taste in reading material.

Ali Karim: You both have rather eclectic backgrounds. What drew you to write novels? Were you both from bookish families?

Anders Roslund: I used to read all the time. But I also played a lot of soccer--but not at the same time. [Laughs] In the beginning, I read the big Swedish writers; Johan August Strindberg was, and remains, my favorite. I discovered crime through Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and I read them when I was very young and probably without being aware of their influence on my future writing.

I have written every day since I was 15 years old. I wrote five full novels for practice before having the guts to go all the way, before submitting one to a publisher. The early novels are still in my drawer, and that’s where they will stay [locked away], since they are memories from a person much younger, learning to write. But they fulfilled their mission, being my own personal writing school. I knew from the beginning that writing was meant to be my future. I could not see any other way to live my life.

Börge Hellström: In my family we read a lot of books and still do, but I can’t say that we were a particularly bookish family. I actually didn’t start reading avidly until I was a teenager, around 14, 15 years old, I guess. Of course, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö did make a big impression on me. I also liked a prolific English writer very much, named Dennis Wheatley [The Devil Rides Out], and I read a lot of books by him, though he is not so popular now, as his work is a little dated.

Karim: While we’re on the subject of the influential Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, do you have a favorite among their 10 Martin Beck novels?

AR: Maj Sjöwall is a dear friend of ours, and from our many discussions I have adjusted my opinion into Maj’s [work]. ... [S]he and Per considered their 10 novels as one complete work, one long book divided into 10 parts. I agree now that you have to read them all to get the full idea, their full intention.

BH: I agree with Anders that their 10 novels form a complete series. However, I do have a soft spot for their 1971 novel, Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle [The Abominable Man].

Karim: So how did you guys first meet?

AR: I worked for Sveriges Television, the Swedish equivalent of the BBC, for 15 years. I was with the news program Rapport och Aktuellt, similar to the Nine O’Clock News, for 10 years and then I started a daily program called Kulturnyheterna [Cultural News], which was and still is a great success. I was the head of this program for the first four years. As a news reporter and editor for Rapport och Aktuellt, I produced a lot of long, ambitious reports about the consequences of crime that were shown on prime-time television, to millions of viewers each time. Most of the Swedish population watched. But no one remembered. And that’s what this is all about. That was my starting point for this joint authorship. Producing TV reports was like writing in sand. I found my way into the sitting rooms of every home in the country, but somehow the content got lost on the way. Which is often the case with news programs. What do you actually remember later? Try asking yourself next time you watch one--what did I actually see? But this--writing crime fiction, tense thrillers that are primary intended to entertain, divert, but also help to inform people about a society, a reality that most of us know nothing about--this is a much better way [to work]. To entertain using a genre that is so well loved, and at the same time, educate a little.

I first met Börge when I was making a report as news editor for Aktuellt, and then again later when I was making a documentary about the organization KRIS (Criminals’ Revenge in Society), a non-profit organization that Börge had helped to establish for former criminals and drug addicts.

I had for a long time worked as a probation officer in my spare time, supporting serious criminals, and so had Börge. And I had been looking for something like this--an organization beyond the establishment, made up of former criminals who knew how things worked but had decided to change their lives, [that was designed to help] others who had also decided that they wanted to make the journey from prison to society and were then met at the gate when they were released.

Börge was one of five people who participated in the film, and when it was ready, and had been shown on television in a number of countries, we just continued to meet. We discovered that we were good at developing stories together, and that we could weave our knowledge into them.

BH: I would add, that [at the time] I had just created (together with 10 more people) KRIS in Sweden, and I sat down at the KRIS office on Bondegatan [Street] in Stockholm when the phone rang. A man with a weird accent (and very obsequious) presented himself as Anders Roslund, news director at the evening news from Sveriges Television. He said he thought that KRIS was the best idea he ever heard of, and he wanted to do a story and a documentary about us.

Guess what answer he got? Of course, we wanted to [cooperate]! As we were filled with our grandiose personalities, [and would be] seen and heard on TV ... who could refuse? [Laughs]

Karim: And what first sparked your desire to write together?

BH: After Anders had completed the documentary film on KRIS, we continued to meet, and we talked about writing together. That’s how it started, in 1998. So today, we have worked together for 12 years, [and] have been working full-time [on] writing now for six years. I guess we had realized during the time we were filming that we had a number of common interests. Incidentally, both Anders and I were parole officers for some very heavy criminals, and we had the same experience of the Swedish prison system. We soon realized that crime is a word for a multitude of strange behaviors in people, and these we could write about.

Karim: There is plenty of social commentary in your own novels, but it’s less overtly political in tone than what you find in, say, the Martin Beck novels. So why do you think social politics is such a strong theme in much of Swedish crime fiction?

BH: Social commentary is perhaps one of the reasons why many Swedish crime novels have become so popular, because we are addressing social issues. What Roslund-Hellström are doing is we’re taking it one step further and describing the events that get the reader to question their choice[s] and their idea[s] about that particular problem. We want readers to think for themselves about what they read in our work, rather than force-feed them our own opinions and thoughts. But the social issues that pepper the narrative in our books are actually secondary. The most important thing for us is still to entertain our readers. If you want to read our books to get information about a problem, you can do that; but you can also read [them] as pure entertainment, as that is our primary purpose. If you learn something, or the work provokes you to think, then, well, that’s wonderful too.

Karim: I first stumbled upon your work a few years ago when I read The Beast, your debut novel. That book not only disturbed me deeply, but it introduced me to your series detectives, Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist. So which came first, your detectives as characters or the disturbing plot?

AR: Definitely the plot. Since Börge had a troubled background, and I had worked for quite some time producing reports concerning the treatment of child molesters/pedophiles, we both had knowledge from different angles.

Karim: The Beast is a cautionary tale of morality, and it made me wonder why you chose the disturbing theme of child murder and its consequences.

BH: It’s a matter of personal history for me. As a child I was sexually abused by men three times. And I did not tell anyone about it. But it was a trauma to me that I carried inside me for almost 30 years. I was 37 years old when I first started to talk about what those men had done to me sexually, abusively. As painful as it is for me to reopen that chapter in my life, I do understand you asking about The Beast, as it was our debut novel. We wrote The Beast 10 years ago and we are very proud of the book and honored about the awards and recognition it gave us as writers. But The Beast to me is no longer current. It is a different story about other characters and events that lie in the past, a past that I would like to move on from. For each subsequent book that we wrote following The Beast, we have changed the way we write. We have also introduced new main characters in each successive book. Each book is written with a view toward being different. So with our latest, Three Seconds, we have changed direction again.

Karim: I’m sorry to reopen old wounds. But now I understand better why--as a father--The Beast gave me nightmares and made me question my own values system. Let me just ask one more question, Börge: What were you like when, during the writing process, you had to re-immerse yourself in that horrific chapter from your past?

BH: It brought terrible memories to me, when we wrote it. Memories of sexual abuse from my childhood. These memories were also one of the reasons that we wrote The Beast. For me it was an opportunity to get even with my history, my self-loathing, and my own hatred. When Frederick Steffanson shot Bernt Lund [in the book], it’s me who is holding the rifle. And I have to admit it felt good. Very good. Cathartic. Our question throughout the book is “How far can/will I go as a parent to protect my own and other peoples’ children?” If I have to kill someone to protect these kids, will society allow it? If they ever allow it, it is surely when the father [in this book], punishes her daughter’s killer. And that is The Beast at its core.

Karim: Was The Beast your first collaboration? And had either of you written or published fiction prior to working on that novel?

AR: I’d published some smaller stuff in my 20s--before those 15 years at Sveriges Television occupied all my time and strength--with a small publishing house which is not in business anymore. But I doubt that it was my fault they are no longer in existence. [Laughs]

Karim: One last question about The Beast, and then we’ll move on. Can you tell me a little about that book’s path to publication?

AR: Maj Sjöwall was one of the first to read our work--she was impressed, and later on also the Swedish publishing house Piratförlaget, where we still publish our novels, was very enthusiastic. I still remember that day when we arrived early to Old City in Stockholm, where the publisher was situated; how we had a coffee in the corner shop with the manuscript in my bag; and how I took one paper out and on the back side wrote the word “vi,” which means “us.” We talked about this “us”--us working together, us producing this together, us never taking credit from each other, us dropping our first names on the cover in order to create the authorship Roslund & Hellström. ... Then [after dropping off the manuscript we] just waited, waited, for a couple of weeks ... [the] longest wait except for when my son was born.

(Part II of this interview can be enjoyed here.)

Really?

From the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog:

The way Stieg Larsson’s father tells it, there is another book in the Millennium series, which started  with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”  He’s seen it. He’s held it. Larsson’s father, Erland, and brother Joakim will appear on “CBS Sunday Morning” on Sunday to tell the story of the controversial manuscript.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which also includes “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” has been an international bestseller. It’s the kind of success any author would welcome, and doubtless, Larsson would have continued to add to the series if he hadn’t died in 2004 of a heart attack at age 50, shortly before “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” was published.

“I got the e-mail from Stieg 10 days before he died where he wrote book number four is nearly finished,” brother Joakim says in the Sunday interview, according to a  CBS News press release. ...

It has long been known that there was a manuscript for a fourth book, but there have been varied reports of how long and how complete it might be. It was thought to have been on Stieg Larsson’s laptop, which was in the possession of [Larsson’s girlfriend of 32 years, Eva] Gabrielsson, who the family wasn’t communicating with. How exactly has Erland held the manuscript?

Perhaps on Sunday family members will explain what they’ve seen. Is the book making its way to publication? When can Americans expect to see it on shelves?

You’ll find Carolyn Kellogg’s full report here.

Brothers in Arms

OK, we admit it: We haven’t checked in for a while on Scott Monty’s podcast, I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. But he has posted a new installment, the focus of which is described thusly:

Christopher Morley once said that the Sherlock Holmes stories were a textbook of friendship. We’ve heard this platitude before, but what does it mean? How did the relationship between Holmes and Watson manifest itself in the Canon and how does that impact us as Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts today, in the digital age?

We discuss the elements of Holmes and Watson and how they were influenced most notably by the personality of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the difficulty in portraying the depth of the characters and their relationship on stage and screen; and how Sherlockians make each other’s acquaintance.

Click here to listen in.

“You’re Gonna Meet Some Gentle People There”

Bouchercon 2010 begins in San Francisco just one week from today. To get everybody who will be attending in the proper, joyous frame of mind, here’s Scott McKenzie singing one of the most memorable works associated with that beautiful and historic Northern California city, a generational anthem of sorts, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” This song was composed by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas and released as a single in 1967 to promote the Monterey Pop Festival. It’s a song of innocence, of hopefulness, of love. It’s a song that captures San Francisco’s distinctiveness, then and now.

Please pass the daisies ...

READ MORE: “The Top 10 Reasons to Attend Bouchercon,” by Jared Case (A Case of Murder); “Bouchercon Comes to San Francisco!” by Kelli Stanley (Writing in the Dark).

There’s Never Enough News, Right?

• Bouchercon in San Francisco is still a week away, but already many people are looking forward to NoirCon 2010 in Philadelphia (November 4-7). Here’s the schedule for that gathering, which will include appearances by Christa Faust, Duane Swierczynski, George Pelecanos, and Laura Lippman. And here’s a short profile of keynote speaker Joan Schenkar, the author of The Talented Miss Highsmith.

• In the lead-up to next week’s Bouchercon, Mystery Scene contributor Oline Cogdill has been writing posts for the magazine’s blog about San Francisco-set crime fiction. There aren’t any tags on the posts to make it easy to pull them all up on one page, but you can go to them separately. Here are some headline links: “San Francisco Legal Thrillers”; “Read Dashiell Hammett--It’s the Law”; “Marcia Muller and More San Francisco Authors”; “Historicals Set in San Francisco”; and “Bouchercon, San Francisco Short Stories.”

• A reminder from Sandra Seamans: “Patti Abbott’s flash-fiction challenge, La Ronde, is underway. The first story went up yesterday and there will be one every Tuesday until December 21. Lots of good reading ahead!” Abbott’s Part 1 posting is here. You can find out more about the challenge by clicking here.

• A collection of classic Mike Shayne paperback book covers, with illustrations by Robert McGinnis.

• Author Reed Farrel Coleman has been popping up all over the Web in the last several days, talking about his new novel, Innocent Monster (Tyrus). Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes interviews him here. Spinetingler Magazine’s Keith Rawson chats with him here. And Coleman even puts some questions to himself here.

• Speaking of interviews, Cullen Gallagher recently spoke at some length with Hilary Davidson (The Damage Done), and J. Sydney Jones goes one-on-one with Will Thomas, author of the Cyrus Barker/Thomas Llewelyn historical mysteries.

• With CBS-TV’s rebooted Hawaii Five-O series still trying to establish itself as distinctive from its 1968-1980 namesake and stay entertaining enough to remain on the air, TV Squad suggests “Four Ways Hawaii Five-O Can Stand Out from Other Procedurals.”

• In the wake of TV producer Stephen J. Cannell’s death last week, blogger Marty McKee looks back at one of Cannell’s lesser-known series, Unsub (1989). I have to admit, I’d forgotten about this show, too.

• Republicans want to turn back the culture clock in America.

• On the other hand, this is good news.

• Esquire magazine’s Tom Junod has posted a fine remembrance of actor Tony Curtis, who died last week at age 85. (Hat tip to Ed Gorman.)

• I’ve never been a big collector of TV tie-in novels, but there sure have been a lot of them published over the years--more than I remember. Click on the links here to see examples of the breed linked to Griff, The Mod Squad, and The Persuaders!

• And the Web site Five Books speaks with M.C. Beaton, Scottish-born author of the Agatha Raisin novels, about her favorite cozy mysteries. (Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

Job Hunting, Gonzo Style

Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t yet famous in October 1958, and he had not yet become the father of “Gonzo journalism.” However, as the Ottawa Citizen points out, he could be “brutally honest.” You can see that by reading his application for a job with The Vancouver Sun newspaper in British Columbia, Canada. Said missive appeared in a 1998 collection of Thompson’s correspondence called The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1). Here is part of what he had to tell Sun editor Jack Scott half a century ago:

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley.

By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you.

I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That's a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.)

Nothing beats having good references. ...

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations.

I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.

You can read the full letter here.

Oh, and by the way, Thompson didn’t get the job.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

All Pulped Up

(Editor’s note: Most Rap Sheet readers probably know Gary Phillips best as the Shamus-nominated creator of both doughnut-shop-owning Los Angeles private eye Ivan Monk [Violent Spring] and Las Vegas showgirl-turned-mob courier Martha Chainey [High Hand]. But he has also branched out to work in the comic books field. Below, he writes about taking on a classic--albeit, not particularly famous--pulp character for publisher Moonstone in a series to be introduced next year.)

(Left) A mock-up of the cover for Moonstone’s Spider #1, in which Phillips’ Operator 5 will debut. Illustration by Dan Brereton.

I first discovered pulp fiction when I was a teenager and Bantam Books was republishing Doc Savage stories in paperback for 50 cents apiece. Initially, I had no idea who this Doc Savage was other than he had a cool name and his adventures were introduced by great magazine covers, which turned out to have been painted by commercial artist James Bama. Titles such as Land of Always-Night, Mystery Under the Sea, Death in Silver, and Resurrection Day (in which Clark Savage Jr., aka Doc--who was not only a giant of a man, supremely trained in the fighting arts, but a scientist, gadgeteer, and surgeon as well--brings a pharaoh back to life to run amok in Depression-era New York City) had me hooked. I’d find out later that Lester Dent, who had created the protagonist and his crew for Street & Smith Publications, pounded out most of those monthly novel-length tales for more than 16 years, while also writing western and detective yarns. In some issues of Doc Savage Magazine, Dent (using various names) wrote all of the stories--not just the Doc main tale, but the short stories too. This in a magazine that originally cost 10 cents for all that pulp goodness.

The success of those Bantam reprints incited reissues as well of The Shadow, featuring a character not created by, but certainly realized by Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant), an amateur magician and friend of Harry Houdini. Indeed, back in the 1930s, The Shadow was the number-one seller and Doc Savage number two for Street & Smith. After The Shadow came reprints of The Spider, starring a character who began as rival Popular Publications’ answer to Street & Smith’s vigilante with the hawk nose and sinister laugh. Like The Shadow, The Spider hefted twin .45-caliber automatics, but as I recall, he was far more bloodthirsty than his predecessor, shooting unarmed villains in the head. “Millionaire playboy” Richard Wentworth underwent a psychological transformation when he put in his set of false vampire fangs and a fright wig to become The Spider, the “Master of Men.”

Another of my discoveries as a teenager was The Avenger, a character reportedly “brainstormed” by Dent and Gibson and then handed off to writer Paul Ernst. In The Avenger magazine, Richard Henry Benson was a career adventurer and millionaire (not an uncommon background among pulp heroes--Doc Savage, for instance, got his money from a hidden gold mine in Latin America) whose wife and daughter were thrown out of an airplane by gangsters. Benson was so devastated by this tragedy that his face turned chalk white and dead (“like something out of a cemetery”), though the flesh also became malleable enough that he could mold it to resemble the countenance of anyone he chose. (This “facial affliction,” though, was later dropped.) Interesting for the time period, too, was that a pair of The Avenger’s crew were black, husband-and-wife graduates of the Tuskegee Institute.

Flash forward. Maybe it’s no coincidence that as the United States reels through the Great Recession, pulp has returned--to comics. It doesn’t hurt that a number of the characters from the pulps of the Great Depression have fallen into public domain. At any rate, DC Comics earlier this year introduced its “First Wave” series. This line offers a kind of alternative reality--alternative to the DC superhero universe, that is--in which Doc Savage, the Bat-Man (returning Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego to its Shadow-like roots, complete with automatic pistol), the Blackhawks (aviator mercenaries), Rima the Jungle Girl (yep, that’s what she’s called), Black Canary, and The Spirit exist together in a world of zeppelins and cell phones. Reviews have been mixed on how these stories have played out so far, but they still hold promise.

Meanwhile, Moonstone Books, an indie outfit headquartered out of Calumet City, west of Chicago, has launched its “Return of the Originals” (ROTO) pulp line.

Off and on in the past, I’ve done some writing for that company. The Moonstone folks hold the comic-book license for Kolchak: The Night Stalker, based on the 1970s teleflicks and TV series. They’ve presented monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak in prose works, comics, and “wide-vision stories.” Wide-vision is Moonstone’s term, applied to works that combine prose pages with full-page illustrations. I’ve done short stories for their Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook and Kolchak: The Night Stalker Chronicles anthologies, plus another brief tale for Moonstone’s The Avenger Chronicles. In addition, I’ve used a character--Louis Trent, “The Envoy,” the hit man for Heaven--who I created for a one-shot Moonstone comic book (Twilight Crusade) in a short story I wrote for their Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes anthology.

As a contributor to the ROTO line, I’ve been tasked with composing the new and continuing adventures of a licensed pulp-era character Moonstone has acquired, Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5. Christopher is a World War I veteran, the son of a spy. He’s also an undercover operative for the American Intelligence Service, who takes on wild super villains, their strange weapons, and their bold schemes in order to protect democracy. Christopher appeared originally in adventures such as Revolt of the Devil Men, Invasion of the Crimson Death Cult, and a yearlong saga, The Purple Invasion (played out over 13 issues), in which America was taken over by the notorious Purple Empire, a thinly disguised Germany. The Purple Invasion is credited to Emile C. Tepperman, one of three writers (the other two being Frederick C. Davis and Wayne Rogers [born Archibald Bittner]) who penned Op 5’s adventures under the house name “Curtis Steele.” (You can check out some classic Operator 5 comic covers here.)

(Right) An unlettered interior page of Operator 5 by series artist Roberto Castro.

In terms of my approach to writing this particular pulp character, I’ll keep an eye toward nostalgia but also a foot planted firmly in the revisionist-history camp.

To get a sense of the potential readers for Moonstone’s ROTO line--which is just now being rolled out--I’ve been reading some of the blogs devoted to pulps and comics in general, looking for reader reactions to DC’s First Wave series. It seems there are the old-school pulp enthusiasts, who want a certain kind of good guys versus bad guys story, with none of those post-modern, angst-driven, fallacy-prone main characters. Then there are the more entrenched comics fans, who don’t really give a damn about the historical pulp characters, so are wondering just what the fuss is about. And, in the middle, you mostly don’t hear from what I presume are comics readers who have grown up on Batman as the Dark Knight, The Punisher dispatching Lord knows how many mafiosi, and Wolverine skewering foes a’plenty. Which is to say I want to split some differences here to create interest in Jimmy’s adventures.

As I’ve written on the Moonstone Web site, my interest in resurrecting the Operator 5 series is to emphasize the psychological toll that going undercover for the U.S. government has on Jimmy Christopher. After all, he must undertake questionable acts at times in order to maintain his disguise; how does that affect his relationships with his lady love, reporter Diane Elliot, as well as with others? Also, I’m very interested in providing some depth between Jimmy and his dad, John Christopher, a retired spy once known as Q-6. What was it like growing up with such a secretive father, who at some point made the decision to train his son in spycraft--to lie, cheat, and steal in the service of his country? Additionally I plan to weave in real-life historical figures and situations from the Great Depression, hoping to better ground the character and his life in the time period of his stories.

My first Operator 5 story, “The Faithful,” involves a charismatic “America for Americans” preacher intent on assassinating a Marcus Garvey-type figure who leads a back-to-Africa movement for black folks in Harlem. Christopher has infiltrated the preacher’s goon squad. “The Faithful” will debut as the back-up feature in Moonstone’s new Spider comic book, premiering this coming January. I hope the mystery prose community will give this and future Operator 5 stories a read.

Lifting a Hero Out of Obscurity

I hadn’t heard about this project until today, but it sounds interesting. Former Salon editor David Talbot and Zap Comics cartoonist Spain Rodriguez have conspired to produce Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America (Simon & Schuster). It’s the first installment in a new series of “Pulp History” books, non-fiction graphic works designed, as Talbot puts it, to “take history out of the hands of Ken Burns, the Texas School Board, and other cultural commissars and make it passionately relevant.”

Devil Dog tells the generally forgotten story of retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who, during the depths of the Great Depression, “saved American democracy by exposing a plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt.” That conspiracy among wealthy conservative capitalists is often referred to as the Business Plot. It was the inspiration for “The November Plan,” the excellent, three-part pilot episode of City of Angels, a 1976 NBC-TV crime drama, created by Roy Huggins and the late Stephen J. Cannell, that starred Wayne Rogers as a 1930s private eye in Los Angeles. In the episode, Rogers’ character, Jake Axminster, stumbles across the coup d’état planning while he’s investigating a murder. Lloyd Nolan played Butler.

Both Devil Dog and a second “Pulp History” volume, Shadow Knights: The Secret War Against Hitler, by Salon’s quondam executive editor, Gary Kamiya, are scheduled for release this week. I’m not usually a graphic novel reader, but I might have to drop some dollars for these two. And I’ll be curious to see what “Pulp History” books come down the pike next.

Have Your Say -- But Do It Fast

This coming Friday, October 8, an announcement is expected from London of the winners of the 2010 Crime Thriller Awards. There are three prestigious categories of book contestants, plus seven sets of rivals for the film and television awards. We’ll bring you the results in The Rap Sheet as soon as they’re available.

But in the meantime, there’s one other awards category in which reader and viewer opinions are still being sought: The People’s Detective Dagger. A dozen series detectives familiar from British TV shows--including Christopher Foyle (Foyle’s War), Inspector Robbie Lewis (Lewis), Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect), and Sherlock Holmes (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)--are in contention for that commendation. If you’d like to vote for your favorite among these sleuths, simply click here.

Voting will remain open until 9 a.m. this coming Friday.

A special awards ceremony will be held on October 8 at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair, to be broadcast via Britain’s ITV3 on Tuesday, October 12.

The Crime Thriller Awards are presented by the British Crime Writers’ Association and its corporate partners, Specsavers, Cactus TV and ITV3.

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Last Hope of the Hopeless

Tonight’s U.S. television schedule includes the start of a second series of Wallander, the British crime drama that stars Kenneth Branaugh and is based on Henning Mankell’s novels about a depressed but still determined Swedish detective named Kurt Wallander. Three new 90-minute episodes have been queued up to run under the Masterpiece Mystery! umbrella on PBS-TV this month.

The first of those, tonight’s “Faceless Killers,” finds Inspector Wallander called out to a rural farmhouse, where an elderly couple have been assaulted and one of them has already died. The wife is busy taking her final, halting breaths when Wallander asks her, “Who did this?” He thinks she answered “farmer,” but it might have been “foreigner,” instead. When the latter suggestion is leaked to the media (against the inspector’s orders), it sets off a torrent of xenophobic hatred and incites violence against migrant workers around the town of Ystad. Wallander tries to stay above such shallow intolerance, but he can’t escape his own discomfort with “foreigners” as he endeavors to relate to his daughter Linda’s new boyfriend, an otherwise perfectly pleasant-seeming young chap of Syrian heritage. Rumors of the late farmer’s hidden riches, Wallander’s irritation with an unknown press informant within his department, and the inspector’s own doubts about his motives in this case complicate his investigation and push him even closer than normal to his psychological edge.

The consequences of all those events will be writ large on Wallander as he launches into next Sunday’s episode, “The Man Who Smiled,” which involves an apparent suicide, the missing financial records of a philanthropist interested in African “good works,” and black-market body parts. Finally, in “The Fifth Woman” (October 17), the agitated and lonely inspector is called out to the isolated residence of a retired automobile dealer and birdwatcher, who has been brutally impaled upon the ends of sharpened bamboo poles stuck into a ditch. Soon afterward, a florist is strangled and left tied to a tree. As the bodies accumulate, Wallander looks for a pattern, and finally thinks he has found one in a women’s support group. Meanwhile, he must deal with his father’s rapidly declining health and his ex-wife’s sudden reappearance in his life.

Although Branaugh’s Wallander can be a bit too intense and self-destructive at times, and it’s hard to imagine how he manages to face each bleak new day, there’s great power in his portrayal of Mankell’s man. For folks who’ve read the Wallander novels, these adaptations can seem a bit disjointed or thin (for instance, the third episode doesn’t adequately explain the meaning of the title “the fifth woman”). But they do capture the storytelling pace and psychological anxieties of the books. I’ve even come to accept the fact that everyone in this TV series speaks with a British accent, rather than a Swedish one. It may not be true to reality, but portraying mere reality was never Mankell’s intention.

Check your local TV listings to see what time and on what channel Wallander begins in your area.

READ MORE: “Kenneth Branagh Brings Swedish Detective Kurt Wallander Back to American TV,” by John Timpane (Philadelphia Daily News).

The Art of Series Blending

Author Laurie R. King is so good at creating unforgettable characters from the past (I’ve mentioned her flawless standalone, Touchstone, several times, along with her stunning Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series), that her Kate Martinelli books, about a lesbian cop in present-day San Francisco, California, tend not to receive the attention they deserve. However, in 2007’s The Art of Detection, which I’m reading for inspiration as I pound away at my first “senile detective” serial novel, Forget About It, she really demonstrates her talents, combining her two series into a compelling, heartbreaking personal story that stands on its own lovely legs in both periods.

I’ll try to post a full review of The Art of Detection at some later date. But for right now, let me just say that it’s about a visit by someone (Arthur Conan Doyle? Sherlock Holmes his own self?) to San Francisco in 1924--which leads to a mysterious and possibly tremendously valuable manuscript and the murder of an eminent, inscrutable Sherlockian named Philip Gilbert, a character Conan Doyle might well have enjoyed.

* * *

While I have your attention, I should also mention that I’ve posted the seventh and eight chapters of Forget About It. To read them, click here and then scroll down to the bottom of the page.

“What a Way to Do Your Time”

This week brings a tough little prison tale to the Webzine Beat to a Pulp. It’s called “The King of Mardi Gras” and was written by Minnesota author Plots With Guns.

Buckle Up for “Bolt”

Rap Sheet readers already know about my fascination with conspiracy thrillers. Well, a little while back I heard that Nick Sayers, the publishing director of Britain’s Hodder & Stoughton, had picked up an interesting-sounding debut novel called Bolt Action. It was part of a two-book deal with a UK-born, Fiji-reared scribe named Charlie Charters. I was curious about the novel’s tense plot, which incorporates international espionage, Muslim militants, counter-terrorism efforts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a thrilling jet-hijacking scenario. But, of course, many authors have built their tales around terrorism and war in the last few years, so I remained wary that cliché might only be a reveille away. What finally won me over was this short précis of Charters’ storytelling trajectory:

Set on a plane--where, since the 9/11 attacks, the door between the cockpit and the cabin must be locked--Bolt Action tells the story of what happens when the pilot and crew have all been poisoned.

Despite a maddening workload, I recently tore through this just-released novel, in the process acquiring a damned paper cut, so fast was I turning the pages. Nick Sayers was right to call Bolt Action “a high-octane thriller with terrific military and spycraft background and a ... nail-biting climax.”

Like all of the best modern thrillers, Bolt Action hinges on a simple premise, in this case the post-9/11 requirement that cockpits on commercial airliners be locked to prevent any attacks by rogue passengers. In Charters’ yarn, an Al-Qaeda-linked steward cons his way into the cockpit of a Boeing jet bound for the U.S. mainland, and dispenses poisoned drinks to members of the flight crew, all of whom die. The steward then bolts the cockpit door shut and resets the combination, so nobody else can follow him in.

This tale alternates between the high drama in the air and that on the ground as the politics of war and terror play out on the broadest of canvases. Charters introduces into his narrative a maverick band of British ex-soldiers, including eye-catching Captain Tristie Merritt and her subordinate, the wonderfully named Whiffler. And the author uses humor effectively in describing the frantic machinations that lie behind this airliner-in-distress tale. The situation is nowhere so simple as the locked-room theme premise, because back on the ground, the CIA and MI5, together with politicians and the press, contemplate the unthinkable: mounting a military response to the incoming jet.

Demonstrating a deep understanding of military politics, Charters has created a rectum-clenching tale that speeds along almost as fast as the jet of its focus. He hits all the techno-thriller conventions, but also delivers characters of uncommon complexity, not the cardboard variety so often seen in such books. Charters’ debut is one of the most assured I’ve ever read in a long while, and I eagerly await his future storytelling.

Shortly after closing the covers of Bolt Action, I contacted delightful Hodder & Stoughton publicist Kerry Hood (who had organized my short but memorable meeting with Stephen King back in 2006). She put me in touch with Charlie Charters straightaway. He, in turn, kindly agreed to provide Rap Sheet readers with the following insights into how he’d pushed his first book into print:

My story starts with what is probably the lousiest book pitch of all time.

The date is February 2008 and I’m in a pub in Fulham with my agent, trying to explain the winning premise of my next book.

Despite three swift pints of cider, I’m rattling with nerves as I get myself ready for the Big Pitch. Everything he needs to know about why this book is The One That Will Get Published. As opposed to The Previous Two Books That Were Rejected By All and Sundry.

What should be flowing effortlessly from me is something like this: there’s a vengeful Pakistani general who unleashes a mid-air hijacking on a New York-bound passenger jet, the simplicity and cunning of which the world has never seen. Mixed up in all of this are a group of ex-para[trooper]s led by a female former Army officer who are running from the very British government they have been holding to ransom in order to improve the lot of veterans and their families.

Die Hard meets Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders with a sprinkling of Seven Samurai and The A-Team, or words to that effect.

Instead of which I am stalling, staring into the crisp bubbles of cider rising effortlessly to the surface of my drink, my eyes locked rigid on the wonderful effervescence. My agent waits patiently ... what are the right words here? Where do I start? What is the killer pitch?

All afternoon I’ve felt the tension rising within me, measured in a sickly breathlessness, to a point now that I’m quite literally brittle with anxiety. Then suddenly it happens. I feel something go rising deep inside of me, and I’m beginning to unravel.

I do something I have never done in my life before, I mean never, being an ex-rugby player, six-foot-seven and all. For no obvious reason and in public, I burst into tears.

And no matter how hard I try, the same thing happens again and again. I just can’t seem to explain myself without tearing up. There is something buried deep in this book that opens a trapdoor for me.

I do know the trigger for this. And at this point, you need to have a bit of background.

I am not military, not even remotely, but have a number of friends who have served or continue to. Also, coming from Fiji (there are about 3,000 Fijians in the British forces) and living in the UK, I have family and extended family in the Army who regularly come to visit. Through this spider’s web of contacts, I was hearing stories of troops not being properly equipped and, if injured, being effectively discarded by the Ministry of Defence [MoD] with a derisory sliding-scale of compensation (Google Ben Parkinson, if in any doubt).

By 2007, when I was casting around for ideas for a new book, Iraq was a short-term military success that had morphed into a political and civilian disaster ... and, only a year on from British troops being committed to Helmand province, it appeared Afghanistan was following the same script. Whether you supported one or both of the interventions, or neither, it was clear the British Army would be seeing more deaths and casualties, rather than less.

The politicians, senior Army officers, and MoD worked hard at being reassuringly upbeat.

But, in one of those Great Teachable Moments, like the run on the bank that happened the moment the government said Northern Rock was safe, the public just didn’t believe. Their response was, If these aren’t bare-faced lies we’re being told, they’re certainly half-truths. And from this flowed many spontaneous and original outbreaks of civic action--from the creation of Help for Heroes to the emotional scenes at Wooton Bassett.

My book, Bolt Action, was born of those times, when right-thinking people could see the injustice being visited on the soldiers, but the soldiers themselves, locked into a top-down command structure, were powerless to speak out.

So I wrote Bolt Action to try to give voice to those soldiers, quoting at length from the Military Covenant that sets out the moral code that is supposed to ensure the armed forces are fairly treated.

My sense of anger had been sharpened by a wonderful documentary series called Guarding the Queen, in which the filmmakers had access to one of the companies in the Household Division of the Grenadier Guards. A particularly powerful sequence [showed] the young man who the filmmakers followed through basic training at Catterick and then to his first posting at Wellington Barracks in London.

To the lad’s great embarrassment, his mum spoke movingly on his account, genuinely saddened by the upbringing she had not been able to provide for her boy. It was clear she’d fallen in with some bad men, and that her poor choices had put her children in harm’s way. It had been up to the son to protect Mum, and to effectively raise his little sister too. He had clearly seen things, done things in his young life, to protect his family that had shamed his mother. Becoming a soldier, a Guardsmen, was a great moment of redemption.

In my research this soldier’s tale bears out an almost universal truth about the Army, that they recruit from poverty. That the reason many of the country’s best soldiers (but not all, of course) take so well to the strictures and discipline of military life is because their own young lives have been dysfunctional, by some measure or another.

And that is the premise or motivation, that betrayal of the Armed Forces, that helps explain why a female Army officer called Tristie Merritt is able to recruit six former paras and form them into a group she calls Ward 13--after an infamous psychiatric unit at a military hospital in Woolwich.

This was the reason for my becoming so tearful as I tried to talk: that out there, far beyond the coziness of a Fulham pub, soldiers were returning home in caskets or on stretchers. They were not the sort of people to make a whining fuss, or gum up the courts with lawsuits. These were honorable people looking to their higher-ups to honor their end of the so-called Military Covenant ... and in a totally dishonorable way, this was not happening.

It made me angry then, and it makes me angry today. And for one night in Fulham, trying to explain myself to my agent, it also made me feel so humbled, and damn grateful too, that they were on our side. That was when I knew I had to write this book, and that this definitely this was The One That Will Get Published.

With its velocious pace, magnetic players, and intriguing explorations of military tradecraft, Bolt Action looks destined to find a place on Best Thriller of the Year shortlists. It’s also likely to be tapped for film adaptation soon. But don’t wait for the movie. This book is one hell of a thrill ride. Grab a seat before they’re all taken.

(Author photo © 2010 Charlie Charters)

Happy Birthday, Mr. Peppard

Had he not perished of pneumonia back in 1994, actor George Peppard would today be celebrating his 82nd birthday. Thanks to his roles in the TV mystery series Banacek (1972–1974) and the underappreciated detective feature P.J. (1968), not to mention the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s  and the teleflick Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case, I’ve long been a Peppard fan. Even though he’s no longer with us, I shall be tipping a toast in his honor this evening.

Ripley’s Revels

With the start of October comes a new “Getting Away with Murder” column from author and Shots contributor Mike Ripley. Among the subjects on tap are comedic crime, Brian Freeman’s new Bone House, Jed Rubenfeld’s just-released Death Instinct, the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for New Zealand crime writing, and the subgenre of “quest thriller.” As a special treat, Ripley offers a remembrance by Len Deighton of book designer Raymond Hawkey, who died in August.

You’ll find all of that and more by clicking here.

Screen Rivals

With just a week left before the presentations of this year’s Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, the contenders in the film and television categories have been announced. Those nominees are …

The Film Dagger:
• District 9 (Sony Pictures)
• Inception (Warner Bros.)
• Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Momentum Pictures)

The TV Dagger:
• Ashes to Ashes, Series 3 (Kudos)
• Luther (BBC)
• Sherlock (BBC)
• Wallander, Series 2 (Left Bank Pictures)

The International TV Dagger:
• Damages, Season 3 (Sony Pictures)
• The Good Wife, Season 1 (CBS)
• Wallander, Series 2 (Yellow Bird Films)

The Best Actress Dagger:
• Glenn Close (Damages)
• Hermione Norris (Spooks)
• Keeley Hawes (Ashes to Ashes and Identity)
• Maxine Peake (Criminal Justice)
• Sue Johnston (Waking the Dead)

The Best Actor Dagger:
• Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)
• Idris Elba (Luther)
• Kenneth Branagh (Wallander)
• Philip Glenister (Ashes to Ashes)

The Best Supporting Actor Dagger:
• Laurence Fox (Lewis)
• Matthew Macfadyen (Criminal Justice)
• Rupert Graves (Sherlock)
• Tom Hiddleston (Wallander)

The Best Supporting Actress Dagger:
• Dervla Kirwan (The Silence)
• Gina McKee (The Silence)
• Saskia Reeves (Luther)
• Sophie Okonedo (Criminal Justice)

The winners in these and other categories will be declared next Friday, October 8, during a ceremony in London. That event will then be broadcast via Britain’s ITV3 on Tuesday, October 12.

Cannell Signs Off

This is terrible news with which to end the week. TV producer, screenwriter, and novelist Stephen J. Cannell--the man who gave us such memorable shows as The Rockford Files, City of Angels, The A-Team, Wiseguy, Hardcastle and McCormick, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Riptide, and Tenspeed and Brown Shoe--died at his home in Pasadena, California, last evening “due to complications associated with melanoma.” He was 69 years old.

Cannell’s latest book, The Prostitute’s Ball (St. Martin’s Press)--the 10th installment in his detective Shane Scully series--is due to arrive in bookstores on October 12.

UPDATE: In the video segment below, Cannell’s gorgeous daughter Chelsea, star of E!’s That Morning Show, looks back at one of her dad’s earliest hit shows for television.



READ MORE: “Stephen J. Cannell Dies,” by Jaime Weinman (Macleans); “Stephen J. Cannell,” by Tony Figueroa (TV Confidential); “David Chase, Steven Bochco, and Other Hollywood Folks Remember Stephen J. Cannell,” by T.L. Stanley (Los Angeles Times); “Remembering Stephen J. Cannell: His Best Shows,” by Bob Sassone (TV Squad); “TV Producer Stephen J. Cannell Created 40 Shows,” by Paige Wiser (Chicago Sun-Times); “Stephen J. Cannell Passes On,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Legendary TV Producer Stephen J. Cannell Was Also a Strong Voice for Indie Producers,” by Joe Flint (Los Angeles Times); “Remembering Steve,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “Stephen Cannell,” by Tod Goldberg; “A Stephen J. Cannell Production” (The Lipstick Chronicles); “Better Late Than ...,” by Max Allan Collins (Friends/Family/Fans of Max Allan Collins).

The Early Read

• Patti Abbott’s “forgotten books” series is officially on hiatus today. But there are some diehard contributors who just won’t take a vacation, when it’s offered. Four of the crime-fiction titles being touted around the Web today are: Headbanger, by Hugo Hamilton; This Girl for Hire, by G.G. Fickling; Turnaround Jack, by Richard Abshire; and a novel I was hoping to revisit myself sometime, Brad Solomon’s The Gone Man.

• For the first-ever interview in his blog, writer and videogame designer Vince Keenan has chosen as his subject Hilary Davidson, author of the newly released novel, The Damage Done.

• Happy 50th anniversary to The Flintstones. More here.

• I don’t know what I’d have done had I been standing in Antwerp, Belgium’s train station when such merriment broke out. But I would like to think that I’d have joined in.

• Wow! The list of noteworthy figures signed up to attend this month’s Bouchercon in San Francisco suddenly seems to have become extra-long.

• The rise and fall of German pulp magazines.

• A pretty effective use of a white board.

• My Year in Crime’s Dan Fleming declares this Elmore Leonard Month. Bookgasm, at least, seems inclined to go along with that.

• Bare•bones resumes its celebration of Manhunt magazine.

• Who remembers the 1962 Ian Fleming spoof novel, Alligator?

• A Web site called Criminal Justice University has put together a fairly interesting list of “10 Books on the Lives of Police Officers.”

• Republicans continue to plan their assault on Medicare and other social services. But are American voters paying attention?

• And I was saddened to hear that American actor Tony Curtis died yesterday at age 85. While I remember him best for his film roles in Some Like It Hot, The Defiant Ones, The Great Race, and The Boston Strangler, Curtis also featured in a trio of TV crime dramas: The Persuaders! (1971), the short-lived NBC Mystery Movie component McCoy (1975-1976), and the Robert Urich detective drama Vega$ (1978-1981). (And of course he also voiced a Flintstones parody of himself.) Vince Keenan has some nice things to say about Curtis here, Janet Rudolph chimes in here, with Mercurie adding his own two cents here. And if you’d like to watch the opening from the Persuaders pilot, simply click here. A public memorial is planned for Monday in Las Vegas. Thank you, Mr. Curtis, for shedding your light on Hollywood for so long.