(Editor’s note: This is the 117th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s pick comes from Steve Aldous, who works in the British banking industry and has written a number of well-received short stories. His tale “Lightning Never Strikes Twice,” an affectionate parody of the pulp private-eye novels of the 1940s and ’50s, was recently a finalist for the Writer’s Forum short-story competition. The character of John Shaft provided inspiration for his first full-length novel, the recently completed Poisoned Veins, featuring black Manchester-based private investigator Joe Gibbs. A second book, provisionally titled Gibbs and the Human Traffickers, is already in the works [and looking for publishing interest]. Aldous lives with his wife and two sons in Bury, Lancashire, UK. He also has a daughter and granddaughter.)
I have a tremendous fondness for Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft series, which I read as a fairly innocent teenager in the mid-1970s. The uncompromising character of John Shaft--a tough, black New York City private eye with a mean attitude--provided sheer escapism for me during my school years. The mix of violent action, sex, and hard-edged dialogue kept me coming back for more, until the series reached an abrupt end with its seventh entry, The Last Shaft, in 1975.
But, perhaps surprisingly, it was the 1973-1974 American TV series, and not the films (which I was too young to go and see), that switched me onto the character. I used to tape the episodes of Shaft on audio cassette (long before the days of even VHS) and play them back religiously, so I could recite every line of dialogue and anticipate every gunshot. I was, therefore, surprised at how much more abrasive, arrogant, and downright mean Tidyman’s creation was in the books.
I didn’t read those novels in sequence; in fact, the first one I read was Shaft Has a Ball (1973), which was actually the fourth in Tidyman’s series. I then caught up with the previous three and read the rest in sequence as they were released. I remember taking a monthly trip by bus to Bolton and hastily making for W.H. Smith’s, hoping to find a new book in the series on the shelves. The only one I missed the first time around was Shaft’s Carnival of Killers (1974), which for some reason quickly disappeared from the bookstores. I caught up with it (albeit the U.S. Bantam edition) 13 years ago, after I was introduced to the wonderful world of the Internet.
Shaft Among the Jews--in my opinion, the best entry in this series--is the follow-up to Tidyman’s Shaft (1970), and was published in hardback in June 1972. That was one year after the release of the phenomenally successful movie starring Richard Roundtree and just ahead of the sequel, Shaft’s Big Score!. I think it is fair to say it was the success of the film, rather than Tidyman’s original novel, that led to him extending the series of books.
By the second novel’s release, Roundtree was very much the public image of John Shaft. This influence can be seen in the painted paperback cover illustrations. In the novels, Shaft had no mustache, and it is interesting that the U.S. and UK editions of Shaft Among the Jews both use the same cover painting, but for the UK cover a mustache was added to Shaft. Despite Roundtree’s presence in the role, Tidyman continued to write the Shaft character true to his original outline.
Shaft Among the Jews sees Shaft facing off against a team of crooked diamond merchants, who are using an old Jewish diamond cutter’s secret formula to create synthetic diamonds. Also involved here are members of the Israeli Secret Service, secretly operating in Manhattan, who want both the formula and the diamond cutter back. Shaft is caught in the middle, and the story builds to a satisfying climax.
It is a more-than-worthy continuation of the series, and whilst Tidyman adopted a more traditional crime-thriller plot here, he manages to exude a style, wit, and viciousness in his writing that takes the reader right along with him. It is his penchant for highly descriptive prose, often using exaggerated metaphors, that lends the action a unique style and grace. Although the style could sometimes be confusing if you weren’t on Tidyman’s wavelength, it carried a good dose of dark humor and sharp, quotable dialogue.
A small stable of supporting characters, all of whom were introduced in the original Shaft novel, appear in a number of the books. Principal amongst these is Shaft’s “friend” from the New York Police Department’s 17th Precinct, Lieutenant Vic Anderozzi. He and Shaft engage in numerous exchanges of one-upmanship, and their friendship is built more on mutual respect than any closer personal bonding. Rollie Nickerson is a part-time actor/part-time bartender at the No Name Bar, but primarily a drinking buddy who is on hand to provide the odd favor. Shaft’s childhood friend, Ben Buford (Shaft and Shaft Has a Ball), has become a political activist with a race-based agenda, and his friendship with Shaft has cooled somewhat. In fact, John Shaft isn’t really close to anyone in any of these books, with the possible exceptions of his accountant, Marvin Green, and Marvin’s wife, Helen, who is perhaps Shaft’s only Platonic female friend. The Greens’ domestic happiness provides a stark contrast to the violent and unpleasant world Shaft normally inhabits.
The sleuth’s girlfriend in Shaft Among the Jews, Amy Taylor-Davis, is seen as a pain in the ass who wants to remodel his life. This leads him to reach out to the vulnerable Cara Herzel, the old diamond cutter’s daughter, who is in the city looking for her father. His fondness for Cara is evident in the book’s finale and represents the only time in the series where Shaft seems to see women as anything other than recreational. It is these deeper explorations of Shaft’s psyche that make this second book stand above its successors, and the complexity of its plot that places it above even the original.
Later books in the series would become more formulaic, but remain fun. Shaft was taken out of New York for 1973’s Goodbye, Mr. Shaft (set in London) and 1974’s Shaft’s Carnival of Killers (Jamaica), before returning to the Big Apple for his big finale in The Last Shaft.
Whilst I love all three motion pictures based on Tidyman’s protagonist, and still have a fondness for the diluted TV series, it is the books that I treasure the most--and Shaft Among the Jews stands as the best representation of the series and a recommended read for any enthusiast of the tough private-eye genre.
I hope someday a sympathetic publisher will see the potential in bringing these books back into print, and open them up to a new readership.
• Remember to mark your calendars for the October 14 special mystery edition of the University of California, Berkeley library’s “Story Hour in the Library” series. As Mystery Fanfare reminds us, this 4-6 p.m. event will “feature a panel discussion with authors Kelli Stanley, Eddie Muller, and Lucha Corpi, moderated by Janet Rudolph.” There will be no admission charge, and the public is welcome to attend. A question-and-answer session with the moderators of the library’s latest exhibit, “Bullets Across the Bay: The San Francisco Bay Area in Crime Fiction,” will precede the panel discussion, beginning at 3 p.m.
• Author Mark Coggins has put together a free podcast of all the chapters featured in Candy from Strangers, his 2006 novel featuring San Francisco private eye August Riordan. Look for all of the episodes, plus a subscription link on iTunes, here.
• Speaking of motion pictures, the five guest members of Bouchercon St. Louis’ “Shadows Rising” panel discussion--Megan Abbott, David Corbett, Russel D. McLean, Todd Ritter, and Wallace Stroby--have now posted their favorite three noirish picks from several important periods of the 20th century. Click here to find those.
• Meanwhile, David Corbett goes into greater detail about his choices (with film clips) in a post for Murderati. You’ll find that post here.
• And this TV show--“the first dramatic series to be shot on film”--was broadcast way before my time. Fortunately, Vintage45’s write-up about it makes it sound like something I needn’t rush out and find.
Premise: Rumpled, stogie-chomping, and unassuming Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department matches wits with prominent, devious, and generally prosperous murderers. And through a combination of professional smarts, subtlety, and persistence (“Just one more thing ...”), he finds a weakness in the criminals’ meticulous planning that finally brings them down. The series’ creators acknowledged that Columbo was based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Porfiry Petrovich, the investigator in Crime and Punishment (1866).
Levinson and Link initially developed the character of LAPD Lieutenant Columbo (no given name, despite some evidence to the contrary) as a secondary player in “Enough Rope,” an episode they penned for The Chevy Mystery Show, an hour-long NBC anthology series that served in 1960 as a summer replacement for The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. (In that episode, Columbo was portrayed by actor Bert Freed.) Not long after that, they turned their small-screen drama into a stage play, Prescription: Murder, which enjoyed a year-and-a-half run starring Gone with the Wind’s Thomas Mitchell as the deceptively brilliant homicide detective. Then, in 1968 Levinson and Link took Prescription: Murder to Universal Studios as a TV series pilot.
Their plan was to hire Bing Crosby as Columbo, but the aging crooner-actor kindly passed on the role. Subsequently, a younger performer from New York named Peter Falk contacted Levinson and Link, saying, “I’ll kill to play that cop,” and he quickly won them over with his offbeat sense of humor and Everyman persona. Although Falk’s Prescription: Murder failed to spawn a series, its impressive audience ratings convinced the writers to give their concept another shot. And in March 1971, their second Columbo pilot, the even-better Ransom for a Dead Man(featuring Lee Grant as a clever, self-controlled killer), was broadcast, convincing NBC at last that Columbo should become a regular series.
“The problem was, though, Falk didn’t want to do another series,” Link recalls. “He’d done a show called The Trials of O’Brien [1965-1966], and that was a disaster. He wanted to do movies, instead.” Finally resolving this dilemma was Jennings Lang, a talent agent turned producer, who’d become the head of Universal’s television department. Link credits Lang with proposing that Columbo be part of a new “wheel series,” rotating with other shows in a 90-minute slot. That way, Falk would be committed to only half a dozen shows each year, leaving him time enough for feature-film assignments.
And thus was born the NBC Mystery Movie.
From the outset, Columbo was really the spoke that drove the rest of this wheel series. It was the biggest audience draw, the big award winner, and even the inspiration for a succession of paperback novels. Viewers loved the program’s “inverted detective story” format, which revealed the perpetrator’s identity at the beginning but then left it up to the lieutenant to gather proof of his or her crimes. They were still fonder of Falk’s portrayal of Columbo as an ostensibly bumbling and slow-witted Italian-American sleuth--a man who drives a beat-up old Peugeot, evidently owns only ill-fitting suits and one shabby raincoat, is obviously fond of his wife (though she’s never seen on the show) and indulgent of his pet Basset hound, but on the surface looks quite outmatched when it comes to collaring sophisticated slayers. As British novelist Mark Billingham wrote several years ago in The Rap Sheet:
[F]or me and many others the joy of watching Columbo is in observing the beautifully choreographed dance of death between the cop and the killer. The viewer becomes the fascinated voyeur, relishing each step or misstep, enjoying every moment as the tension is ratcheted up, until that final ‘pop’ when the murderer makes his or her one mistake and Columbo pounces.*
Columbo became illustrious in part simply for the caliber of villains Falk faced, everyone from Robert Vaughn and George Hamilton, to Robert Culp, Patrick McGoohan, Ruth Gordon, John Cassavetes, Leonard Nimoy, and Dick Van Dyke. (The series was almost as renowned for its various directors, including Jonathan Demme, Leo Penn, Ben Gazzara, and the aforementioned McGoohan.)
The pattern for this show was firmly established with its very first episode, “Murder by the Book,” which also introduced the NBC Mystery Movie on September 15, 1971. “Murder by the Book” featured Jack Cassidy (later to appear in two additional Columbo installments) as Ken Franklin, the handsome but ruthless, and less-talented of two mystery writers, who shoots his partner (played by Adam-12’s Martin Milner) before the latter can dissolve their lucrative affiliation.
When I ask him about “Murder by the Book,” the now 77-year-old Link explains that “Jack Cassidy was one of our favorite villains, because he had the proper amused contempt for the cop character.” Yet what was equally interesting about that earliest regular Columbo episode is that it featured “this young brilliant director named Steven Speilberg,” who was still at the beginning of his career, having worked on Marcus Welby, M.D., Night Gallery, and an unusual episode of The Name of the Game. “He was only in his early 20s,” remembers Link, “but he could stage things within the [camera] frame using techniques that stage directors used when they moved over to making movies--and yet [Spielberg] had never directed for the stage.”
Below I have embedded a video trailer for “Murder by the Book.”
Here’s a delightful collection of clips (borrowed from YouTube’s Columbo channel) in which the lieutenant asks his murder suspects “just one more thing”—ultimately to their detriment.
And here’s the closing scene from the Season 4 episode “An Exercise in Fatality,” in which Columbo finally drops his well-crafted net around killer and fitness expert Milo Janus (played by Robert Conrad).
Despite its continuing popularity, Columbo--the last vestige of the NBC Mystery Movie--was finally cancelled in 1978. By that time, Peter Falk had reportedly turned his best-known dramatic role into a pot of gold, pulling down $2 million a year for work on only four two-hour episodes. He’d begun racking up prominent parts in big-screen pictures such as Murder by Death, The Cheap Detective, and The Brink’s Job, and wasn’t inclined to invest more time in his series protagonist. He even once quit the show, at least temporarily.
“I love Columbo,” Falk was quoted as saying at the time, “but there’s only so much you can do with it. I love pork chops, too. It’s just that I don’t want to eat pork chops every day for the rest of my life.”
Additional Notes:Columbo was one of only two NBC Mystery Movie components to outlast that wheel series, the other being Jack Klugman’s medical-examiner drama, Quincy, M.E.In 1989, 11 years after it concluded its original run, Columbo was revived as part of a new wheel, this time on a competing network and a different night (first Monday, later moved to Saturday). It was reintroduced on February 6, 1989, as one of three shows broadcast under the banner of The ABC Mystery Movie. (The other programs were B.L. Stryker, with Burt Reynolds as a houseboat-living Miami private eye, and Gideon Oliver, based loosely on Aaron Elkins’ novels and starring Louis Gossett Jr. as a Columbia University anthropologist-cum-detective. In Season 2, Telly Savalas’ Kojak was revived as part of this wheel, and a new Jaclyn Smith series, Christine Cromwell, was added.)
William Link explains that it was no easy matter getting Falk back into Columbo’s wrinkled raincoat. “Peter was doing feature motion-picture work in New York at the time, and I used to fly back and forth every weekend [from Los Angeles] and meet with him at his hotel ...,” says Link. “Finally I got him to say that if I could get him half-a-dozen well-worked-out scripts, all with that final ‘pop’ we liked so much, he’d look at them. So I went back to Hollywood and called in some good mystery writers who could handle scripts for Columbo. It was very tough finding writers who could handle these stories, because they were basically about one person circling another for 90 minutes, or later two hours. But of course I did get the scripts, and Peter said yes. I think at the back of his mind he always wanted to do Columbo again. It was the hit that made him so popular all over the world. Why not experience that some more?”
(Left) TV Guide’s October 1, 1988, reintroduction of Columbo, now as part of The ABC Mystery Movie. Click to enlarge.
Although The ABC Mystery Movie (eventually relocated to Monday nights) was cancelled during the summer of 1990, Columbo lived on in a string of occasional ABC movies of the week, beginning with Columbo Goes to College (December 9, 1990) and concluding with Columbo Likes the Nightlife (January 30, 2003). By that stage, however, William Link--whose writing and producing partner, Richard Levinson, died of a heart attack in March 1987--was no longer associated with the crime drama he’d created and done so much to make famous. Falk engineered his removal as the show’s executive producer after the first six Columbos ran on The ABC Mystery Movie. “It wasn’t exactly a ‘firing,’” Link points out. “I was told that I’d done great work on the series, but Peter would like to do them on his own from now on.”
Falk had long wanted to take complete control of Columbo’s reins, says Link, “but the problem was, he was very bright and was obsessed with the character and the show ... but he didn’t know how to work with writers. Dick and I were writers, and even we found it hard to hire people who could tackle the Columbo format. But Peter wasn’t that accustomed to working with writers, and the episodes after I left were weaker and less clever. I just don’t think those Columbos were really up to par.”
My own memory of the later Columbo movie specials was that they sometimes made their cop protagonist a caricature of himself, and were rather flabby in their plotting.
But even lesser Columbos usually had much to commend them. And the brand remained sturdy. In 1999, TV Guide listed Lieutenant Columbo in the No. 7 spot on its rundown of the “50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time.” A Sleuth Channel poll of its viewers in 2006 ranked the LAPD detective as the second-most-popular TV or movie sleuth of all time, right between Thomas Magnum (No. 1) and Jim Rockford (No. 3). And a subsequent online survey, this one conducted by The Rap Sheet, picked Columbo as the “Best TV Police Detective in History.”
Recognizing the enduring interest in his character’s exploits, in 2007--the year he turned 80 years old--Falk proclaimed, according to Wikipedia, that
he had chosen a script for one last Columbo episode, Columbo: Hear No Evil. The script was renamed Columbo’s Last Case. ABC, the network that aired the more recent Columbo series (beginning in 1989), declined the project. In response, producers for the series announced that they were attempting to shop the project to foreign production companies. However, Falk’s involvement in the project was put into doubt after he was diagnosed with dementia in late 2007, following a dental procedure. During a 2009 court trial over Falk’s care, Dr Stephen Read stated that the actor’s condition had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer remember the character of Columbo.
Peter Falk died on June 23, 2011. But Lieutenant Columbo lives on in a collection of short stories William Link published last year, in DVD releases of the series, and certainly in the hearts of ever viewer who, like yours truly, followed that stoop-shouldered sleuth through years of twisty TV investigations, confident that sooner or later he’d find the key piece of evidence he needed to apprehend his overconfident quarry.
* Actually, the murderers on Columbo don’t make their mistakes near the end of the show, but rather earlier. It is at the end, however, when the lieutenant makes it clear to his adversary that he’s discovered the damning mistake.
This is just one part of a fascinating, four-and-a-half hour interview with Columbo co-creator William Link, conducted in 2002 by Stephen J. Abramson for the Archive of American Television. In this clip, Link talks about why Columbo wasn’t a weekly series, some of the show’s guest performers, a few of its directors (including a young Steven Spielberg), a number of the program’s signature elements, and several of his favorite Columbo clues and least favorite episodes from that long-running series. The entire interview can be found here.
Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis is the subject of my new post on the Kirkus Reviews site. As you’ll tell by reading the piece, I had a busy but enjoyable time--more about which I hope to write soon in The Rap Sheet. Check out my latest Kirkus column here.
I am frequently amazed by J.F. “John” Norris’ breadth of reading experience within the crime-fiction genre. It seems that every week or so, his blog--Pretty Sinister Books--introduces me to a new but classic novelist. Recently, for instance, he wrote about prolific British editor-author E. Charles Vivian, who, in the early 20th century and under the pseudonym Jack Mann, penned stories about Gregory George Gordon Green, “a private investigator who had a habit of stumbling upon mysterious crimes and murders that had supernatural origins.”
I can pretty definitively say that I have never read a Vivian yarn; and though I’m not a big fan of supernatural stories, Norris makes Vivian/Mann’s work sound interesting enough that I shall have to keep my eyes open for one of his books. If not Maker of Shadows (1938), then something else.
A book worth looking forward to in the summer of 2012: Ed McBain/Evan Hunter: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by Erin E. MacDonald. Additional details are available here.
OK, so life got in my way. As it so often does. Because of my participation in Bouchercon in St. Louis, and the work I’ve had to do since then to catch up, my plans to begin a gala 40th-anniversary tribute to The NBC Mystery Movie in The Rap Sheet last week had to be set back slightly. Instead, that series will kick off this afternoon. Sorry this took me longer than I’d expected, but I hope you will find the results pleasing.
I very much enjoyed reading Alan Glynn’s 2001 debut novel, the Dagger Award-nominated techno-thriller, The Dark Fields, which was recently adapted by Hollywood as Limitless. So I was pleased when, shortly after returning from this last summer’s Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival, I received a copy in my mail of Glynn’s third novel, Bloodland (recentlyreleased in the UK, and due for publication in the States in January 2012). This political conspiracy thriller is a neat follow-up to his last tale of power and corruption, Winterland (2009).
I was so energized after reading Bloodland, that it took me some time to get the story out of my head and pen a review that would do it justice. Here’s an extract from my piece in the e-zine Shots:
Glynn’s narrative has what seem disparate strands, such as a U.S. political dynasty involved in a mining venture in war-torn Congo; an Irish property tycoon, Dave Conway, about to face financial Armageddon; the former Irish Taoiseach [aka prime minister/president], Larry Bolger, mentally “lost and adrift,” following his removal from power vis-à-vis [a] post-economic meltdown; a UN official caught between his sexual needs and … the responsibilities of office; a U.S. security contractor and their (non-accountable) activities; a shallow grave in the Wicklow mountains---and right in the epicenter, and hidden from view, is the involvement of a PR company using “perception management” to misdirect a secret that would have a ripple effect that could destroy the careers and lives of some very powerful figures.
Due to the diverse angles that open Bloodland, there is a general sense of unease in the reader, as the global economic crisis forms the realistic landscape--making this novel read more like non-fiction, akin to Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men. Not a difficult feat for former journalist Glynn; but … the remarkable aspect to the task is Glynn’s ability to inject empathy into even the darkest of men (and women) that lurk like chess pieces on this blooded board.
Jimmy Gilroy is torn in his loyalties to his late (and respected) journalist father’s heritage, his growing fondness for Susie Monaghan’s sister, Maria, the allure of ghost-writing … Larry Bolger’s autobiography (a job sent Gilroy’s way by the mysterious PR guru, Phil Sweeney), and a feeling that something is not quite “right” about the accidental helicopter crash that claimed drug-addicted media-diva Susie Monaghan’s life and that of the others that took that [same] fatal flight.
Glynn interweaves the (seemingly) surface banality of today’s media with the high-powered corruption, collusion, and conspiracy that lurk beneath those very headlines manufactured for the masses as a “perceptual construct,” one devised and manipulated by those who have the power to misdirect purposefully.
After submitting that review to Shots, I contacted Angus Cargill, the publishing director at Faber & Faber, who in turn put me in touch with author Glynn. The author and I subsequently talked on the phone about his impressions of Limitless, his life in Dublin, the woes of being a journalist nowadays, the present economic crisis and its affects on Dublin bookstores, and one of my favorite subjects, conspiracy theories.
And stay tuned, because at the end of this interview you’ll be given the chance to win free, signed copies of Glynn novels.
Ali Karim: Did you come from a family of readers?
Alan Glynn: I was the first one in my family to go to university. There were books in the house, books my father bought when he was young and fully intended to read, but unfortunately work and kids got in the way and he never had the time. I cracked the spines on a lot of them in my teens.
AK: Tell us a little about your early years. I read that you attended Trinity College and majored in Literature?
AG: I was a Beano and Dandy [British comic books] man for the longest time and didn’t graduate to proper books until I was 10 or 11. The earliest novels I remember really pile-driving into my consciousness were Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Nothing was the same after reading those. I was never a good student, though--undiagnosed ADD, probably--and have always been a slow reader. I did Eng Lit at Trinity, but as I was the product of an all-boys Catholic school, the first couple of years at university for me were a distracted haze of trying to talk to these amazing creatures called “girls.” I also discovered Thomas Pynchon, who wasn’t on any of the courses on offer, so that was more distraction from the syllabus.
AK: Did you spend time in your youth around the second-hand book shops in Dublin--now, sadly, all gone and replaced by cell phone shops?
AG: Yes, in the ’70s and early ’80s I spent a lot of time haunting Dublin’s second-hand bookshops--Greene’s on Clare Street, Webb’s on the quays, Hannah’s on Nassau Street. It’s a shame they’re gone, but in Dublin things are so bad now that even the Waterstone’s is gone, and sadly Murder Ink in Dawson Street has closed.
AK: I read once that you were a journalist. But I’ve learned since that that’s not fully correct. So what’s the real story?
AG: No, I’ve never been a journalist. The nearest I ever got was proof-reading the monthly schedules for a cable-TV guide in New York. Glamorous, huh? I was also the production editor on another small trade magazine. This has translated into “he worked in magazine publishing in New York,” which has morphed into “he was a journalist.” I’d love to have been an investigative journalist, but I just don’t have the right kind of personality for it.
AK: When did you decide to try your hand at writing fiction? And what do you put down to as the inspiration?
AG: I’ve been a writer in my head since I was a kid. I never trained for anything else and never made any contingency plans. This was always the plan. I actually think it was the feel of a pen in my hand that kicked it off. I remember it as being something that felt right, physically, sitting at a desk with a pen and paper, and then crouching forward and forming words and sentences. I think that any significant book or teacher that came along later provided confirmation for me rather than inspiration.
AK: Had you written much fiction before penning The Dark Fields?
AG: Two novels, at least, plus several attempted plays and about 20 short stories. All unpublished. Just this year one of those stories was finally published in The Strand Magazine, which I was delighted about, but it’s a pretty low strike rate.
AK: Can you tell us how you got your first novel into print?
AG: My agent sent it out, and after half a dozen passes Little, Brown UK picked it up. This was 1999, and I was 39 years old, so having someone buy The Dark Fields--publishing something I’d written and actually paying me for it--was certainly one of the most significant events of my life.
AG: That was a big thrill, too, a real validation. But almost as soon as I heard it had been nominated I found out that it hadn’t won. I knew very little about the CWA at the time and may not have fully appreciated how cool it was to have been shortlisted.
AK: What did you think of Limitless, the 2011 film based on The Dark Fields?
AG: I loved the movie, and even though the whole process was painfully long it was an entirely positive experience for me. I was shielded from the horrors of Hollywood by Leslie Dixon, who wrote the script and co-produced. The movie is very faithful to the book for about 40 minutes--incredibly so--and then it takes off in its own direction, which is fine. It’s a different riff on the same premise. But believe me, seeing accurate, meticulous re-creations of scenes that you thought up in your head on a big cinema screen is an absolute blast.
AK: Did you have any involvement in the film process? And did you have a chance to meet Robert De Niro, one of the movie’s stars?
AG: I had no direct involvement in the making of Limitless, but I was kept up to speed on every development by Leslie. I didn’t meet De Niro, which is a pity. I was in the room with him, at the premiere, but he proved quite elusive and didn’t go to the party afterwards. I met Bradley Cooper a couple of times, and he was great, very friendly and available. He had also clearly read the book, not just the script, which was gratifying.
AK: Your second novel, Winterland, which puts the Irish boom-bust in clear focus, also shows that you have an eye for a tale from the Grassy Knoll. Do you enjoy investigating conspiracy theories?
AG: Reading about them, or even making them up, rather than investigating them, I’d say. I’m fascinated by conspiracy theories, but also quite ambivalent about them. Did you notice in Winterland that one of the characters, the weed-smoking nephew, was known as “Grassy” Noel. Shameless, I know.
AK: I’ve seen Ireland in the early 1980s when things were economically grim, and then the Celtic Tiger years. So tell me, what is the general mood of the camp in Dublin in these days of austerity?
AG: The mood is angry, but we’re not great at expressing it. I think part of the problem is that we don’t know where to begin. When I was a kid, priests, bank managers, doctors, lawyers, policemen, and politicians were both respected and feared. Now they are held, almost universally, in contempt. The mental and moral landscape has changed so much from my parents’ time that I think we are sort of paralyzed by it. We need to go into collective therapy, but we can’t afford it.
AK: You use the background of the Irish economic meltdown as a theme in your disturbing novel Bloodland, which in some way is a coda to Winterland. Tell us about the context in which you penned this novel.
AG: I wanted to expand on the main theme in Winterland, to sort of globalize it--this idea that most business and politics are just highly evolved forms of criminality. I also had a keen and longstanding interest in the Congo from books such as Michela Wrong’s In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz and Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost. And while this ended up being only one strand in the story, it was a very important one, because it provided the perfect paradigm.
What’s being perpetrated in the extractive industries in Africa today, by various corporations and governments, is plunder on a global scale. There’s nothing new in this, it’s been going on in one form or another for well over a century, but it has accelerated rapidly in the last 10 or 15 years, and is mind-boggling in its disastrous human consequences. Bloodland is not meant to be polemical, however. What really interests me is the psychology of the people involved in this--people at the highest levels of this new super-evolved form of criminality.
AK:Bloodland boasts a complex plot that unravels like a ball of string. Did you plan heavily before writing, or did you let the muse take you by the hand?
AG: I don’t plan heavily at all, but I do spend months sort of dreaming a book into existence. Then, once I get started, I plan a little bit ahead, until things get fuzzy, work towards that, and then plan a little bit further. It’s like that great E.L. Doctorow quote where he compares writing a novel to driving a car at night--you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. Plus, with a novel you get to go back afterwards and re-jig and rearrange and recalibrate.
AK: And of course Bloodland is a gold-mine for those of us who enjoy a good old campfire conspiracy tale. So, do you believe that there are some conspiracy theories out there, that are perhaps not theories?
AG: Sure. But look at the greatest hits of the conspiracy-theory back catalogue--Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the moon landings, Princess Diana, 9/11, the New World Order--and you quickly see the problem. Each one on its own is a tantalizing mystery that can easily pull you in and seduce you with unexplained facts and plausible retrofits, but put them all together and you soon feel gorged and slightly ashamed of yourself for having succumbed in the first place. Having said that, I think JFK is a slam dunk and that the collapse of World Trade Center 7 has not been convincingly explained. I also believe that the world banking system is a total racket and that Europe is being shock-doctrined into becoming a centralized superstate.
AK: Are you a fan of the 1970s conspiracy films and novels by James Grady, Richard Condon, etc.? Which such works did you most enjoy?
AG: I have to admit I haven’t actually read Grady and Condon, but the movies were key. Chinatown is the ur-text. Then it’s Klute, The Parallax View, The Conversation, All the President’s Men, and Marathon Man. With the scores of Michael Small and David Shire. Pure bliss. More recently, I’ve loved Syriana, Michael Clayton, and Rubicon.
AK: What do you think is the appeal of conspiracy theories?
AG: I think it’s that at some level people believe conspiracies do exist and that every once in a while it is satisfying to see someone pull at the ball of string and unravel one. It’s a form of myth-making that has a basis in a very real collective sense of anxiety. It’s just that with a lot of them, because they remain theories, they depend on a leap of faith, and the danger then is that they become absolutist and fundamentalist--it becomes a worldview that won’t brook contradiction or debate. You’d be amazed--or maybe you wouldn’t--how easy it is to offend a conspiracy theorist. I do believe that consent is manufactured, and that we are manipulated and lied to all the time, but I also believe that stupidity and inefficiency and randomness play a big part in how our world works as well. An awful lot of conspiracy is not so much forward-looking master plan as over-the-shoulder covering-up of careless mistakes.
AK: What have you read recently that excited you?
AG: Peter Temple’s Truth is the best crime thriller I’ve read in years. I also adored Megan Abbott’s Queenpin. I don’t read a lot of crime fiction these days. Partly because of the anxiety of influence and partly because I find myself reading so much research material.
AK: What’s next for Alan Glynn?
AG: I’ve started Graveland, the final part of my loose trilogy. It opens with the CEO of a Wall Street bank getting shot dead while jogging in Central Park. What’s not to like?
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Now that you know a few things about author Alan Glynn, it’s time to sample his fiction. The Rap Sheet is delighted to give away two of his books: a free, signed copy of Bloodland, as well as a free, signed copy of Limitless (aka The Dark Fields). If you’d like to win one of these novels, all you need do is e-mail your name and postal address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And please write “Alan Glynn Contest” in the subject line. Contest entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Monday, October 3. Winners will be selected at random and their names announced on this page the next day.
There are no geographical restrictions to this contest.
It Takes a Thief fans, take note: The 18-disc, full-run DVD release of that 1968-1970 spy adventure series, starring Robert Wagner, has been slightly delayed. TV Shows on DVD now reports that the boxed set will go on sale October 25, rather than the previously announced October 11. Unfortunately, the steep, $199.98 retail price isn’t also changing.
First we had word that Hard Case Crime will issue a “lost” book by James M. Cain next year. Now a never-before-published novel called The Narrative of John Smith, by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, is finally being released to a wide audience.
As author Jeri Westerson (Troubled Bones) explains in her blog:
Another dead guy publishes. It’s getting annoying. Ah, well. The crux of it seems that Conan Doyle sent this manuscript, written between 1883 and 1884, to his publisher and it was lost in the post. He reconstructed it from memory (another cautionary tale to back up your work, people) but it was never published because it was never finished. He worked on it over the years but it is reported he was embarrassed by this first effort, as most of us are. I certainly wouldn’t want any of my first novels to see the light of day.
The New York Timesreports that The Narrative of John Smith is a “semi-autobiographical” work written “from the perspective of a 50-year-old man who is confined to his room when he suffers an attack of gout.” Not exactly what Conan Doyle readers would soon come to expect from this Scottish physician turned detective novelist. But then, in addition to the Holmes yarns this author penned the Professor Challenger adventures, science-fiction stories, many historical novels, and other works. Seventy-one years after Conan Doyle’s death, readers may be as interested in his Narrative as a historical document, as much as a piece of fiction, and forgive the weaknesses of a nascent wordsmith.
Check your boob tube tonight for “The Mind Has Mountains,” the third and latest episode of Inspector Lewis, starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox, and showing as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. That 90-minute drama is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
After this, there’s only one more episode to go in the U.S. run of Inspector Lewis, Series IV: “The Gift of Promise,” which is set to air on Sunday, October 9. That will be followed on October 16 by Case Histories, a three-part series based on Kate Atkinson’s popular first trio of Jackson Brodie detective novels.
• Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai (“clearly the Indiana Jones of pulp fiction”) recounts the story of how he unearthed the manuscript of James M. Cain’s unpublished last novel, The Cocktail Waitress.
• Omnimystery News has posted the new trailer for One for the Money, a film adaptation of Janet Evanovich’s first novel about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. This picture stars the ever-captivating Katherine Heigl, with Jason O’Mara (Life on Mars) playing Joe Morelli, and is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on January 27 of next year. I have to admit, the trailer (see left) doesn’t look bad. But then, trailers do not necessarily reflect the overall quality of a movie.
• Registration is now open for NoirCon 2012, to be held in Philadelphia from November 8 through 11 of next year. Meanwhile, the conference is also hosting its first-ever poetry contest. The deadline for entries is March 2, 2012. More details here.
• In assessing Ross Macdonald’s 1962 novel, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, At the Scene of the Crime opines: “You might sum everything up by saying that Ross Macdonald may be the hard-boiled author for those who don't like hard-boiled authors.” Click here to read the full post.
• Hoping to reap ballot-box benefits, hyper-partisan Republicans in Washington, D.C., have escalated their legislative obstruction tactics, the result being to keep the U.S. economy in recession and stifle job creation. Gee, thanks guys.
• Congratulations are due author Lee Goldberg on his new deal with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, which he says, “has picked up the Dead Man series in a unique and exclusive 12-book digital & print deal ... with an option for more. But that’s not all. Brilliance Audio will be also be rolling out their own editions of the books.”
• And a toast as well to Peter Rozovsky, whose award-winning blog, Detectives Without Borders, just celebrated its fifth anniversary.
If you missed attending this year’s Bouchercon in St. Louis, or were there and want to revisit some of the better panel discussions, you’ll be interested to know that those conversations were recorded. The audio is being made available in both CD and MP3 formats throughout the next two months. You can find more information here.
The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has named The Nearest Exit (Minotaur), by Olen Steinhauer, the winner of its 2011 Hammett Prize. This commendation is given annually to “a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing.”
According to a press release, Steinhauer received his award--“a bronze trophy, designed by West Coast sculptor Peter Boiger”--during a ceremony held yesterday in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as part of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fall Conference.
Also nominated for this year’s prize were: Get Capone: The Secret Plot that Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster, by Jonathan Eig (Simon & Schuster); Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Morrow); and Iron River, by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton).
If you’re an author who’d like to have one of those bronze Hammett Prizes for yourself, note that the deadline for entry into the 2012 contest is this coming December 10.
The Kirkus Reviews Web site today carries a good-size chunk of an interview I conducted recently with San Francisco novelist Kelli Stanley, the author of City of Secrets (Minotaur)--her new and second book featuring 1940s San Francisco private eye Miranda Corbie, following last year’s City of Dragons. You’ll find that Kirkus interview here.
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But as I have suggested, there’s more. Only about a third of the exchange I had with Stanley about her work actually made it into Kirkus. So below, I am featuring much of what was left behind. The questions here cover Corbie’s history, the author’s long-standing interest in world’s fairs, and the right-wing hate groups that figure so prominently in City of Secrets.
J. Kingston Pierce: From reading your novels, as well as the Web-posted yarn, “Memory Book,” we know that Miranda Corbie was born in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire and that she’s now a chain-smoking private eye, with an office in the Monadnock Building, on Market Street. But give us some more details of her past, including things you haven’t yet incorporated into the novels.
Kelli Stanley: After college (at Mills College in Oakland) she undertook a number of jobs. One of them was teaching farm workers displaced by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Later, in the mid-’30s, she traveled to New York and met Johnny, a reporter for The New York Times.
He became the love of her life, someone that she could finally trust and give herself to. They traveled to Spain during the Civil War--Miranda trained as a nurse briefly and talked her way in as a volunteer so she could be with John. He was killed in ’37, and she returned to the city of her birth, and drifted into working for Dianne’s Escort Service and Tea Room (an actual business, as most of the businesses are in the series).
Eventually she met Charlie Burnett, a P.I. on the shady side of the street, and worked for him as divorce-case bait. After solving his murder, she was hired by the [San Francisco] world’s fair administration, and secured her own P.I. license. Her second big case (at the world’s fair) involved the Incubator Babies. When she’s not working for herself, she acts as a security guard for Sally Rand’s girls at the infamous Nude Ranch on Treasure Island’s Gayway.
That’s the skeleton of Miranda’s story ... and you’ll notice a lot of gaps. I delve into her history little by little, mostly as it’s revealed to me. The reason for this is simple: when we meet someone for the first time, they don’t come complete with a detailed biography, and I find fictional characters that supply life dossiers to the reader to be unrealistic.
So Miranda--when she first appeared, in City of Dragons--should feel like a 33-year-old woman with a dark past and an uncertain future, at a time in her life when she’s groping for something even she’s not sure about.
A video tour of San Francisco’s 1939-1940 world’s fair
JKP: As you just said, Miranda does part-time work along the Gayway entertainment zone at San Francisco’s 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. What attracted you to that world’s fair, and why is it a useful part of your novels?
KS: I’ve always been drawn to the idea of a world’s fair ... maybe it’s because I attended Expo 67 in Montreal as a 3-year-old!
They were such spectacular, giant epic events, and so ephemeral--and yet so important in the history of Western culture. They helped spur technological advances like electricity and television, they exposed Middle America to foreign countries and cultures, and they helped shape and define the future. Artists like [Pablo] Picasso and [Georges] Braque, who were heavily influenced by African art, saw it for the first time at a world’s fair, and with that inspiration, of course completely redefined modern art.
They were also grossly racist and colonialist. Historically, world’s fairs were like a cultural Olympics, with each country competing against each other and trying to demonstrate its cultural and political superiority. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, they became a showcase for colonialism, and colonized peoples--along with midgets, dwarves, and people with physical abnormalities--were put on display as a combination trophy/freak show.
Even in 1939/1940, Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured sideshow performers, and a “Midget Village” was a staple on the Gayway.
Miranda’s world’s fair, in other words, represents the tension between the beauty and ugliness of the era I’m writing about, all on a larger-than-life scale. Treasure Island was truly spectacular ... the colored lights at night in fountains of cascading water, the Art Deco statues, the flowers and trees and plants and the Tower of the Sun.
It’s the ideal setting for Miranda, because as much as she’s drawn to the beauty, she’s not blinded by it.
JKP:City of Secrets is a murder mystery, focusing on the slayings of two young women, whose bodies were despoiled after death with anti-Semitic insults. However, the book also ties those crimes in with what were then current, and ugly, themes of “racial hygiene” and eugenics. In your Author’s Note at the front of Secrets, you say that Nero Wolfe creator Rex Stout became a leading defender of human rights and a foe of American fascists before and during World War II. Is that true?
KS: Yes! Isn’t that cool? I had no idea about Stout’s heroism. I mean, we know about [Dashiell] Hammett and what the McCarthyites put him through--but Stout was a committed and fervent anti-fascist.
He was a member of the Friends of Democracy, an organization founded by the Reverend L.M. Birkhead. In the course of researching Birkhead I learned about Stout’s activism. Nero Wolfe’s creator was also on the original Board for the ACLU, and founded the Writers War Board immediately after Pearl Harbor.
[FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover hated him (of course) and thought he was a communist, but the truth is that Stout abhorred totalitarianism of any kind. He was a true liberal.
JKP: While writing City of Secrets, were you conscious of parallels between the rise of American right-wing hate groups in the 1930s and ’40s and similar threats today?
KS: Unfortunately, the similarities are all too apparent.
Right-wing hate groups follow the same pattern today that they did 70 years ago:
• Appeal to middle-class and working-class fears of an “outsider” appropriating power and money--the outsider could be black, Jewish, Chinese, female, gay, Catholic, Irish, Italian, Polish ... just about any category other than male, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.
• Wrap said appeal in the American flag and proclaim it patriotism, particularly by identifying the cause with the American Revolution ... The Defenders of the Christian Faith and (in City of Secrets) the Musketeers were actual groups.
• Vilify the president (if a Democrat) and refuse to work with the government. Conspiracy theories tend to run amok in these organizations ... a popular corollary to the “Birthers” was the claim that Franklin Roosevelt was “secretly Jewish.”
• Get very, very angry, and recognize no rights other than your own. This is the fundamental difference between true “social conservatives”--like, say, the Amish--and people who want to ram their own, privately held beliefs down everyone else’s throat.
I think that sums it up pretty well. FDR was absolutely loathed by these people, even though New Deal programs helped make it possible for group members to dole out their dollars for hate sheets. FDR represented change--perhaps the greatest change in U.S. government history. For the first time, “for the people” would mean something tangible to the poor.
This scared a lot of people. And corporate fat cats--like Henry Ford and Robert McCormick--wanted to fan the flames of fear and anger, because it helped preserve their power. Ford was a notorious anti-Semite, and of course he hated labor unions.
Perhaps the tragedy of our own era is the lack of real dialogue and willingness to work together. A lack of moderation and tolerance. I respect a healthy difference of opinion, especially if it’s grounded in reason, logic, and good faith. In my opinion, the unwillingness to listen to others is the first step toward political fascism.
As the adage goes, if we don’t remember our history ...
JKP: You allude periodically in your stories to the Incubator Baby Case of 1939 as being important to Miranda Corbie’s career and reputation. Yet I don’t believe you’ve ever told the specifics of that investigation. Will readers ever learn them, or is this going to be like one of those elusive cases so often referred to by Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes tales?
KS: Well, it was certainly not my intention to be a tease! I originally thought I’d write two books “in the middle,” then two that were prequels, then go forward with the sequels. Sort of like Star Wars, though hopefully the prequels would be better!
The two prequels are the Incubator Babies case and the murder of Burnett, Miranda’s old boss. I hope to write them after books three and four. Who knows, maybe I can convince my publisher to make book four one of the prequels! I think they would like the series to be a bit more well-established before I crank out novel-length sequels, though, so that’s the reason for the delay. I’m really looking forward to the Incubator Babies, in particular. I received an e-mail from a reader who actually was an incubator baby at Luna Park, and it was so cool to hear from her!
And, as I mentioned earlier, since we meet Miranda when she’s 33 (and with a dark and complex history), these cases will be mentioned because they were crucial to her career as a PI. As a matter of fact, someone involved with one of those cases plays a role in the third book.
JKP: In City of Secrets, Miranda receives a post card from the mother she never knew, who’s living abroad but wants to see her after so long. How might that affect the plots of future Miranda novels?
KS: Because I continuously research, scenes and events morph and change as the novel develops, and characters do, too. [But] I can tell you that Miranda is obsessed with finding her mother when the [next] book opens.
I mean, think about it: Here’s a woman who’s never known parental love, unconditional love. Who found a person [Johnny] to trust and to depend upon and whom she adored once in her life, only to lose him. She’s never really had a family. Rick and Bente and Alan and Gladys, No-Legs Norris, the girls at Sally’s, Shorty Glick at Midget Village ... her friends have been her only family.
So now she’s handed a mother. She’s excited, terrified, wanting to hope, but not trusting to fate because she has every reason not to. There’s a mystery at the heart of that post card, and that’s also Miranda’s job ... to uncover the truth, to unearth secrets.
One of the biggest mysteries at the core of this series is the discovery of who and what Miranda is. The search for identity is a potent one, hero’s journey aside. I also think it speaks to women in particular, because we are so often defined by our roles in relationships.
Well, Miranda has no real relationship other than a few good friendships. She’s not really a daughter, she’s not a wife. She’s her own woman. And here’s a post card from someone who claims to be her mother, someone of whom she has dim but cherished memories, someone she’s been able to create for herself over time, a kind of fantasy parent.
What if her mother isn’t the kind of person she wants her to be? What if she is? And what if the woman who wrote her isn’t her mother at all?
JKP: Finally, I think it’s interesting that, in the dedication to City of Secrets, you mention that your own mother, Patricia, is your “best friend.” Not every daughter can say the same thing about her mother. What makes your relationship with Patricia so special?
KS: First, thank you for reading the dedication!
Motherhood is one of the themes of City of Secrets ... it’s filtered throughout the novel, both in the main case and within Miranda’s personal life. I wanted to dedicate this particular book to my mom, because she is, to me, the ideal mother, my greatest friend and source of wisdom, and because she’s fighting cancer.
My mom is truly a special person. My father once said she’s the “kind of person who makes flowers grow.” That’s a beautiful thought, and very true about Mom.
As an only child, I’m very close to my parents, and Mom and I have an incredibly strong daughter-mother bond. We’ve been through so much together ... we owned a business (a comic-book store) [and] traveled together whenever we could. Mom has always loved me unconditionally and has supported me in whatever I wanted to do. She’s a gentle person who is loyal, and only gets angry over social and political injustices or if her family is threatened. She’s also extremely strong, patient, and just, I don’t know ... pure of heart, I guess. She spends most of her time trying to help other people.
She’s currently on chemotherapy for cancer, and recently fractured her hip. But she still wanted to come to Bouchercon [in St. Louis] with me. She routinely sells my books to every medical person she meets while she’s being treated. That’s my mom. I only wish Miranda (and everyone else I know) had a mom like mine.
Do you think there are already enough crime-fiction festivals? Well, don’t expect to convince these two Scottish scribblers of that:
An idea dreamed up between two of the country’s best known crime writers over a bottle of Prosecco moved a step closer to reality yesterday with the announcement of Scotland’s first international crime writing festival.
The Bloody Scotland festival, to be held in Stirling next September, will feature authors in the genre from overseas along with some of Scotland’s finest crime writers.
At the event’s launch in Stirling’s Smith Art Gallery and Museum yesterday, Lin Anderson and Alex Gray, the writers behind the idea, outlined their plans to build a crime writing festival to match, if not surpass, anything south of the Border--where they already exist at Bristol, Reading and (the biggest of them all) Harrogate.
Plans are already afoot to bring top-flight international guests to join Scottish crime writers Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Val McDermid, Stuart McBride, and Louise Welsh on a programme that will be announced in the spring.
As the Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper notes, 2012 would be an excellent time to begin such an annual event:
Next year is also auspiciously full of anniversaries that could be linked to events at the inaugural Bloody Scotland festival, which will take place from 14-16 September. It is 125 years since the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes’ story, 35 years since William McIlvanney’s hugely influential novel Laidlaw--and 25 years since the first publication of Ian Rankin’s own Rebus novels.
More information about Bloody Scotland is available here.
I just returned late yesterday afternoon from Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis, and still have much to do to catch up. The time away was energizing, rewarding, and comforting, and I shall have much more to say about some of the events later this week. For now, though, I need to thank January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards for taking over the Rap Sheet helm, and posting all of the awards results in a timely fashion, while I was off drinking and palling about.
I also need to announce the four winners--chosen at random from among the entries--of The Rap Sheet’s Hard Case Crime book-giveaway contest. As you’ll recall, we took it upon ourselves to dispense a single copy each of Hard Case’s four brand-new paperback novels: Lawrence Block’s Getting Off, Max Allan Collins’ Quarry’s Ex, Christa Faust’s Choke Hold, and The Consummata, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins.
Here are the lucky book recipients:
• Scott F. Hartshorn of Hernando, Florida
• Andrew D. Eichner of Chicago, Illinois
• Barbara Workman of Auburn, Washington
• James Kelly of Nashville, Tennessee
Congratulations to all of these Rap Sheet readers. Your books will be sent out directly from the Hard Case offices in New York, and you should receive them shortly.
And thanks again to all who entered this drawing. We wish that everybody could win every time, but life doesn’t deal out such good fortune. Never fear, though, another book-giveaway competition is in the offing.
The final unpublished novel by the author of Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and The Postman Always Rings Twice has found its way to light and will be published by Hard Case Crime in the autumn of 2012.
According to a press release from Hard Case, James M. Cain was working on revisions to The Cocktail Waitress close to the time of his death in 1977. Author Max Allan Collins (Bye Bye, Baby, Road to Perdition) first told Hard Case Crime editor and co-founder Charles Ardai about the book nine years ago. Ardai spent the time since first tracking down the original manuscript, then arranging for the rights to publish the book.
“Together with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler,” says Ardai, “James M. Cain is universally considered one of the three greatest writers of noir crime fiction who ever lived, and for fans of the genre, The Cocktail Waitress is the Holy Grail. It’s like finding a lost manuscript by Hemingway or a lost score by Gershwin--that’s how big a deal this is.”
From the press release:
Combining themes from Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Cocktail Waitress tells the story of a beautiful young widow, Joan Medford, whose husband died under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make ends meet after his death, she takes a job as a waitress in a cocktail lounge, where he meets two new men: a handsome young schemer she falls in love with, and a wealthy older man she marries.
“Why am I taping this?” Joan narrates. “It’s in the hope of getting it printed to clear my name of the charges made against me…of being a femme fatale who knew ways of killing a husband so slick they couldn’t be proved. Unfortunately, they cannot be disproved either… All I know to do is to tell it and tell it all, including some things no woman would willingly tell …”
The book will be published in hardcover and electronic editions in 2012, with a paperback edition available the following year. Fans of The Rap Sheet will be waiting for the icing: Like all of this outfit’s novels, Hard Case Crime will commission a new cover illustration in classic pulp style.
Our biggest complaint? It’s just too long to wait!
As Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis winds down, J. Kingston Pierce, our man on the scene, gives us the winners of this year’s Anthony Awards, pretty much as they happened.
Here are the winners and all of the nominees:
Best Novel:Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
Also nominated:I’d Know You Anywhere, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Morrow); The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur); Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking)
Best First Novel: Damage Done, by Hilary Davidson (Forge)
Also nominated: Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge);The Poacher’s Son, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur); Snow Angels, by James Thompson (Putnam); andThe Sherlockian, by Graham Moore (Twelve)
Best Paperback Original: Expiration Date, by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur)
Also nominated: The Hanging Tree, by Brian Gruley (Touchstone);Drive Time, by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Mira); Long Time Coming, by Robert Goddard (Bantam); and Vienna Secrets, by Frank Tallis (Random House)
Best Short Story: “Swing Shift,” by Dana Cameron (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley)
Also nominated: “The Frame Maker,” by Simon Wood (The Back Alley); “Homeless,” by Pat L. Morin (from Mystery Montage; Top); “Scent of Lilacs,” by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010; “The Hitter,” by Chris Holm (Needle); and “So Much in Common,” by Mary Jane Maffini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010
Best Graphic Novel: The Chill, by Jason Starr (Vertigo Crime)
Also nominated: ASickness in the Family, by Denise Mina (Vertigo Crime); Beasts of Burden, by Jill Thompson and Evan Dorkin (Dark Horse); Richard Stark’s Parker, Vol. 2: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke (IDW); Scalped Vol. 6: The Gnawing, by Jason Aaron (Vertigo); and Tumor, by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon (Archaia Studios Press)
Best Critical/Non-Fiction: Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (Harper)
Also nominated: Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner (Oceanview Publishing); Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder (Wiley/For Dummies): The Wire: Truth Be Told, by Rafael Alvarez (Grove Press); and Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)
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The One Book Project
In honor of The Rap Sheet’s first birthday, we invited more than 100 crime writers, book critics, and bloggers from all over the English-speaking world to choose the one crime/mystery/thriller novel that they thought had been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.” Their choices can be found here.
In the Beginning ...
Before The Rap Sheet was a blog, it was a monthly newsletter in January Magazine. To find all the old editions of that newsletter, just click here.
for his first full-length novel, the recently completed Poisoned Veins, featuring black Manchester-based private investigator Joe Gibbs. A second book, provisionally titled Gibbs and the Human Traffickers, is already in the works [and looking for publishing interest]. Aldous lives with his wife and two sons in Bury, Lancashire, UK. He also has a daughter and granddaughter.)
descriptive prose, often using exaggerated metaphors, that lends the action a unique style and grace. Although the style could sometimes be confusing if you weren’t on Tidyman’s wavelength, it carried a good dose of dark humor and sharp, quotable dialogue.
