Saturday, December 31, 2011

And So Comes the End

As 2011 slips into the darkness, to be replaced by a fresh new year, we look back at some of the people--all significant to the world of crime and mystery fiction--who passed away during the last 12 months.

Gilbert Adair, 66, Scottish-born novelist, poet, and critic, who penned three Agatha Christie-ish whodunits--The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006), A Mysterious Affair of Style (2007), and And Then There Was No One (2009)--starring the “formidable” Evadne Mount.

Dick Adler, 74, a former magazine and newspaper editor in New York, and a contributor to TV Guide, who became the crime-fiction critic of the Chicago Tribune and much later jointed The Rap Sheet as a frequent blogger. In 2006, Adler received the Ellen Nehr Award for Best Mystery Reviewer from the American Crime Writers League.

James Arness, 88, who not only starred as Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running Gunsmoke, but led the casts of two other small-screen dramas: How the West Was Won (1976-1979) and McClain’s Law. Arness was the elder brother of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves.

John Barry, 77, a British film and television composer who developed the music for 11 James Bond films. He also created scores for the movies Born Free (1966), Out of Africa (1985), and Dances with Wolves (1990), and the theme for the 1971-1972 Tony Curtis/Roger Moore TV series The Persuaders!

Lilian Jackson Braun (Bettinger), 97, who for four decades wrote the popular Cat Who series of mystery novels, beginning with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966).

Alfred Burke, 92, who played Frank Marker, the lonely, unglamorous star of Public Eye, a 1965-1975 British TV series.

Milton T. Burton, 64, the author of four Texas-set crime novels: The Rogues’ Game (2005), The Sweet and the Dead (2006), Nights of the Red Moon (2010), and the forthcoming The Devil’s Odds (2012).

Charlie Callas, 83, a fast-talking and elastic-faced comedian who regularly appeared on The Andy Williams Show and The ABC Comedy Hour, and co-hosted The Joey Bishop Show. Callas played a small-time thief in the 1972 pilot for NBC’s The Snoop Sisters and a con man in the CBS private-eye drama Switch (1975-1978).

Ruth Cavin, 92, who distinguished herself for many years in the role of crime-fiction editor at St. Martin’s Press.

Jackie Cooper, 88, a child star turned TV director who portrayed Metropolis newspaper editor Perry White in the Superman films of the 1970s and ’80s, but also made appearances in such shows as Hawaii Five-O, McCloud, Ironside, Hec Ramsey, Police Story, and The Rockford Files. Cooper won Emmy Awards for his directorial efforts.

Peter Falk, 83, who starred as a disheveled but brilliant Los Angeles police detective in the TV series Columbo.

Gerald Perry Finnerman, 79, who served as the primary director of photography for the original Star Trek series, and later worked on The Bold Ones, Hec Ramsey, Kojak, Police Woman, The New Mike Hammer, and Moonlighting.

Robert Foster, 73, a television writer and producer whose credits included episodes of Run for Your Life, The Bold Ones, The Snoop Sisters, Nichols, Kate McShane, and Chicago Story. He was also executive producer of the 1980s action series Knight Rider.

Anne Francis, 80, who co-starred (with Leslie Nielsen) in the 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet before capturing the sexy title role in Honey West, a 1965-1966 ABC-TV series based on characters created by Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling and his wife, Gloria. Francis later guest-starred in such shows as Banacek, Ellery Queen, Search, Assignment: Vienna, and Riptide.

Ariana Franklin (aka Diana Norman), 77, a Fleet Street journalist turned author who composed four novels featuring 12th-century English coroner-investigator Adelia Aguilar, including Mistress of the Art of Death, which won the Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2007.

Joe Gores, 79, a onetime private eye and repo man who wrote the Dan Kearney and Associates (DKA) detective series, the 1975 novel Hammett (based on the life of Dashiell Hammett), and 2009’s Spade & Archer, a prequel to The Maltese Falcon. During his career, Gores won three Edgar Awards as well as the Maltese Falcon Award (Japan’s highest commendation in the mystery-fiction field), and he served for a time as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Martin H. Greenberg, 70, a prolific editor-anthologist whose mystery and crime-fiction works included Holmes for the Holidays (1998), The Big Book of Noir (1998), Purr-Fect Crime (1997), and Murder Most Irish (1996). Greenberg was given the 1995 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Edward Hardwicke, 78, who for many years played Doctor John Watson opposite Jeremy Brett in the memorable British TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Joyce Harrington, 79, the author of No One Knows My Name (1981), Family Reunion (1982), and Dreamz of the Night (1987). She was given an Edgar Award in 1973 for her first short story, “The Purple Shroud.”

Clark Hulings, 88, a Florida-born painter who, early in his career, produced a wide variety of paperback fronts for mainstream, historical, and crime-fiction works.

William Johnston, 86, the author of numerous movie and TV tie-in novels, including Get Smart! (1965), Banyon (1971), and Klute (1971). In 2010, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ gave Johnston The Faust, its Grand Master Award for excellence.

H.R.F. (Henry Reymond Fitzwalter) Keating, 84, the British crime novelist and scholar who concocted standalone thrillers as well as a prominent series of books featuring Indian detective Inspector Ganesh Ghote. In 1996 the Crime Writers’ Association gave Keating its Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement.

Paul Lindsay, 68, a former Detroit-based FBI agent who--under the pseudonym Noah Boyd--penned the broadly acclaimed novels The Bricklayer (2010) and Agent X (2011).

Sidney Lumet, 86, an American film producer whose work included 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Prince of the City (1981), and Paul Newman’s The Verdict (1982).

Arthur Marx, 89, the only son of comedian Groucho Marx, who--in addition to writing TV scripts, biographies, and memoirs--penned three mystery novels, beginning with Set to Kill (1993).

James McKimmey (aka James Earl McKimmey Jr.), 87, a once-prominent, Nebraska-born author of the Gold Medal paperbacks era, who is remembered for such books as The Perfect Victim (1958), Winner Take All (1959), The Long Ride (1961), and Squeeze Play (1962). McKimmey reportedly died in Nevada on January 19, 2011. An excellent, two-part interview with the author can be found in Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals (part I is here, part II is here).

Harry Morgan, 96, who was cast as Los Angeles Police Officer Bill Gannon in Dragnet 1967, opposite Jack Webb. Morgan went on to co-star with Robert Conrad in The D.A., appear as Doctor Amos Coogan in Hec Ramsey, join the M*A*S*H cast as stern but soft-hearted Colonel Sherman T. Potter, and play Hal Linden’s con man father in Blacke’s Magic. In addition, Morgan portrayed New York Police Inspector Richard Queen in the unsold 1971 TV pilot film Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You, opposite former Rat Pack member Peter Lawford.

Francesco Quinn, 48, the son of film legend Anthony Quinn. He appeared earlier this year as Gilberto Nieddu, police detective Aurelio Zen’s private-eye friend, in the Masterpiece Mystery! mini-series Zen. But Quinn had been previously featured in The Glades, The Shield, CSI: Miami, and Miami Vice.

Stanley Robertson, 85, a former Ebony magazine associate editor who became NBC-TV’s manager of film program operations on the West Coast and later that same network’s vice president of motion pictures for television. Robertson helped bring the now-famous NBC Mystery Movie “wheel series” to the air in the 1970s.

Pietro “Pete” Rugolo, 95, a onetime chief arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, who later became the music director of Capitol Records and a composer for films and television series. The Sicilian-born Rugolo counted among his credits the themes to such TV shows as The Thin Man, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Fugitive, The Outsider, Run for Your Life, and Cool Million.

Enid Schantz, 72, a Colorado book critic and bookseller, and the co-founder (with her husband, Tom Schantz) of The Rue Morgue Press. The Schantzes received the Mystery Writers of America’ Raven Award in 2001 by for their contributions to the genre.

Leonard B. Stern, 88, a Hollywood screenwriter and the producer behind such familiar TV series as Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, The Snoop Sisters, Faraday and Company, and Rosetti and Ryan.

Craig Thomas (aka David Craig Owen Thomas), 68, the Welsh author of such thrillers as Firefox (1977), Snow Falcon (1980), and Jade Tiger (1982). Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site describes Thomas as “the inventor of the techno-thriller genre.”

George J. “Rhino” Thompson, 69, the author of Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion (1993) and Hammett’s Moral Vision (2007).

Newton Thornburg, 81, who is certainly remembered best as the author of Cutter and Bone (1976).

Michael Van Rooy, 42, the Canadian author of An Ordinary Decent Criminal (2005) and A Criminal to Remember (2010), who died of an apparent heart attack in Montreal while on a book tour.

Barbara Whitehead, 80, an ex-chair of England’s York Family History Society, who started out writing historical romances but switched to mysteries with Playing God (1988). She went on to produce eight novels about York Police Chief Inspector Robert Southwell. As fellow author Martin Edwards writes, “she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”

Peter Yates, 81, a British film director best known for making the 1968 cop thriller Bullitt, which starred Steve McQueen and his GT V8 Ford Mustang. Yates also gave us The Hot Rock (1972), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Dresser (1983), and The House on Carroll Street (1988). And in the 1960s he directed episodes of the TV programs The Saint and Danger Man.

Have we forgotten anyone in our accounting? Feel free to suggest additions in the Comments section of this post.

READ MORE:Passages,” by Linda L. Richards (January Magazine); “The Ones We Lost,” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen).

Friday, December 30, 2011

Cover to Cover

Come the end of every year, it’s now a tradition here at The Rap Sheet to look back over the preceding 12 months and choose our favorite crime novel fronts. We commenced this custom way back in 2007, and have no interest in discontinuing it. Especially not when there ample excellent candidates from which to select.

Which isn’t to say that every book cover in this genre produced since January 1, 2011, was a winner. Some of them were boring or downright repulsive, while most were simply unimaginative--lacking in wit or surprise. I mean, how many shadowy figures of men and women do we have to see decorating the jackets of mysteries and thrillers before readers and more imaginative graphic designers finally revolt, demanding less safe, less lackluster concepts? On the whole, bottom-line-oriented publishers are not terribly daring; it’s partly the responsibility of designers to convince them to experiment with fresh approaches. But it’s also up to readers to judge more books by their covers--and reject those that don’t display at least some novelty in their façades. We aren’t robots, after all. Part of the appeal of any new book is the way it looks, not just the author’s name (familiar ones selling the best) or the words inside or the price on the jacket flap.

As in previous years, our demanding panel of judges for 2011 is four strong: Linda L. Richards, a novelist and the editor of January Magazine; David Middleton, a graphic artist, illustrator, and photographer who also holds the title of art and culture editor for January; Kevin Burton Smith, the talented editor-creator of one of the Web’s top crime-fiction resources, The Thrilling Detective Web Site; and your humble servant, J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet. We’ve spent the last year gathering works we thought merited inclusion in this Best Crime Novel Covers competition, and several weeks cutting our roster of two dozen picks in half. Some of the finalists are more audacious than others. One is notorious: the front of Assassin of Secrets, a novel that sparked a plagiarism scandal and was yanked from stores in November. Each of our judges has his or her favorites, but the finalists all rank as remarkable.

Now we want to know your opinions.

Below, you will find our dozen nominees for Best Crime Novel Cover of 2011. At the bottom of this post is a ballot on which you can vote for your favorites. Feel free to choose as many jackets as you think deserve acclaim. We’ll keep the voting open until midnight on Friday, January 6, after which we’ll announce the results.

Click on any of these covers for an enlargement.

















One more thing: If you think we’ve neglected to mention some outstanding example of a crime-fiction front from the last year, please let us know about it in the Comments section of this post. And include a Web address where we can see your nominee for ourselves.

READ MORE:My Year of Reading: Favorite Covers of 2011,” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen); “Favorite Covers of 2011,” by Dan Wagstaff (The Casual Optimist); “The 10 Best Covers of 2011,” by Emily Temple (Flavorwire); “Top Covers of 2011” (Kirkus Reviews).

Creature Feature

Break out the porkpie hat and cassette tape recorder again, along with the garlic cloves and silver bullets, because that monster-hunting investigative reporter, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), is back!

Online, at least.

Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri, who recently wrapped up work on their blog To the Batpoles!, an episode-by-episode recap of the 1960s ABC-TV mega-hit Batman, are readying the launch of It Couldn’t Happen Here ..., a new limited-run blog focused on ABC’s 1974-1975 cult favorite, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and the two earlier teleflicks--The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973)--that introduced Kolchak.

It Couldn’t Happen Here ... will open for business here on January 1.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Surveying the Field

Spinetingler Magazine is currently soliciting nominees for its annual Spinetingler Awards. The categories are:

Best New Voice (authors with 1-3 books published)
Best Rising Star (authors with 4-8 books published)
Best Legends Books (from authors with 9+ books published)
Best Single-Author Short Story Collection
Best Multi-Author Short Story Anthology
Best Crime Comics or Graphic Novels
Best Opening Line
Best Short Story
Best Book Cover

Click here to make your recommendations. The post does not supply a cut-off date for nominations, but it’s probably best to make your opinions known right away, in any case. We will let you known when a final list of contenders is available for public voting.

Can’t You Just Hear the Corks Poppin’?

I’ve probably linked to this before, but it is a natural for the last week of December: Janet Rudolph’s list of New Year’s Mysteries.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The Complex Art of the Elementary



(Editor’s note: British crime writer James McCreet is the author of The Thieves’ Labyrinth, which January Magazine chose as one of its favorite mystery novels of 2011. Timed to this month’s release of the film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, he takes a fresh look at some of the more preposterous deductions made by Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories.)

There was always something slightly fishy about Sherlock Holmes’ remarkable deductions. As Doctor John Watson himself often said, they seem easy after they’ve been explained, but impossible without Holmes’ indulgent revelations. The impression is that if we could just learn to see like the Great Detective, we could emulate his powers.

In fact, Holmes’ skill lies not in his method but in the narrative structure of Arthur Conan Doyle’s now-famous stories. Like an illusionist, the writer asks us to look at the false hand (Watson) while the real hand (Doyle) is busy doing the “magic.” Of course, Edgar Allan Poe had set the template with his stories of the 1840s, but Conan Doyle can be said to have perfected the technique.

Watson, as the “false-hand” narrator, allows us to see only what he sees and therefore we are unable to read the clues without Holmes’ subsequent insight. To this extent, Watson often seems irredeemably dim. For example, in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” Watson sees only a “small dark fellow with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm,” whereas Holmes (and brother Mycroft) see a heavily tanned man dressed all in mourning black, striding with authority, wearing artillery boots and carrying a child’s rattle. Is Watson blind?

Conan Doyle’s other prestidigitator’s trick sees the solutions dictate the facts rather than vice versa. This happens only in writing, never in reality. In “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” a dying man’s words, which sound like “a rat,” turn out to refer to a town in southeastern Australia: Ballarat. Why not “Ararat”? Or “Carat”? And why didn’t the dying man just say his killer’s name rather than the place he once saw him? Because the facts must fit the solution.

Conan Doyle was very careful to make his solutions air-tight. It’s clear in many stories that he has added minor reinforcements to dodgy solutions so that a pedant can’t get a hold on their shortcomings. However, there are lapses in logic as well as in narrative. Here are some of the zingers:

In “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League,” Holmes discerns that a pawnbroker used to be a manual worker because his right hand is “quite a size larger” than his left. Even if Holmes’ eyesight was so acute, would the man still retain such manual muscle development years after he was a ship’s carpenter? Also in this story, Holmes deduces that a man is digging a tunnel because the knees of his trousers are worn, wrinkled, and stained--yet, when the fellow emerges from his tunnel, his hand is described at “white, almost womanly.” Why the mismatch?

In “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” Holmes deduces that a cigar was cut with a blunt knife rather than bitten, because the cut was not clean. Might not a long fingernail have done it? Presumably the cigar was also pinched if the knife was blunt. Either way, the knife is immaterial to the solution as a whole. Holmes is just showing off.

In “The Five Orange Pips,” Holmes deduces that a visitor has come from Horsham, due to the distinctive chalk and clay mixture on his toecap--this, despite the man having walked from Waterloo Station to Baker Street in the pouring rain. Incidentally, when the fellow first rings the bell, Holmes fails utterly to guess who it might be, suggesting “some crony of the landlady’s.”

In “A Case of Identity,” the preposterous solution is that the con man is actually the female victim’s own father-in-law (with whom she lives) wearing a false beard and tinted glasses. She hasn’t noticed because she is short-sighted--not so short-sighted, however, that she wears her glasses when visiting Holmes.

In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” fresh mud splashed on a woman’s sleeve tells Holmes that she had ridden in a dog-cart earlier that morning. Couldn’t she have been splashed by any number of other vehicles as a pedestrian? And how was the mud still fresh after her train journey to London and her walk to Baker Street? Holmes’ encyclopedic knowledge of mud origins is not called upon here.

In “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” Holmes deduces that a lost top hat must belong to an intellectual because the head size is considerably bigger than his own, and that moisture inside shows the owner to be out of shape. Even taking into account the Victorian penchant for phrenology, these are unsafe assumptions.

Finally, in “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott,” Holmes notices a half-obliterated tattoo, “J.A.,” on a man’s inner elbow and deduces the initials represent an intimate associate best forgotten. In fact, it represents the man’s own true initials (his current name being pseudonymous). But why would anyone have their own initials tattooed on their arm ... except as an obvious narrative precursor to the revelation of identity?

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Bullet Points: Post-“Ho Ho Ho” Edition

Another Christmas come, another Christmas gone. Left behind are myriad wonderful gifts from family members and friends, including a package of delicious nonpareils, the DVD Mission: Impossible--The ’88 TV Season, Stephen King’s 11/22/63, and an out-of-print collection of New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell’s stories. I cut back on blogging in observance of the holiday, but am once more ensconced behind the mighty Rap Sheet desk, awaiting the new year. In the interim, let me highlight some crime-fiction bits of recent date.

• These last couple of days brought to the Web a Humphrey Bogart Blogathon hosted by the film fans at Forever Classics. Click here for a full list of the contributions, which include True Classics’ look back at John Huston’s adaption of The Maltese Falcon, Tales of the Easily Distracted’s write-up about The Big Sleep, In the Mood’s recollection of Bogie’s relationship with Lauren Bacall, and Friend of The Rap Sheet Ivan G. Shreve Jr.’s tribute to the 60th anniversary of The African Queen. There’s a good deal of excellent material here.

• Prolific novelist Stuart M. Kaminsky died in October 2009. However, the newly re-launched Mysterious Press has only now gotten around to releasing the majority of his Toby Peters gumshoe novels in inexpensive but handsome e-book form.

• Author Greg Rucka’s fine tribute to Kaminsky is here.

• Another welcome bit of news: Amazon Publishing’s Thomas & Mercer imprint will release 35 of Ed McBain’s famous 87th Precinct police procedurals in both trade paperback and e-book formats. The e-book versions are already available here, but the paperbacks won’t start showing up in bookstores till February 2012. In addition, Thomas & Mercer plans to publish a dozen titles in McBain’s series starring Florida attorney-detective Matthew Hope, beginning in the spring of next year. Lawrence Block, Nelson DeMille, Max Allan Collins, Aaron Elkins, and other crime novelists share their thoughts on McBain’s work and legacy here.

• Following up on its Thanksgiving crime stories, the housing-advocacy Web site FourStory has posted a couple of Christmas-themed tales for your enjoyment: “Third Santa on the Left,” by Gar Anthony Haywood,” and “Home for the Holidays,” by Mike Bullock.

Happy birthday to Steve Lewis’ Mystery*File blog!

• Another old crime fictionist who’s new to me: Lord Ernest William Hamilton, who penned “at least two books that clearly fall with[in] the mystery genre: a thriller, The Perils of Josephine (1899), and a much later detective novel, published when Lord Ernest was seventy years old, The Four Tragedies of Memworth (1928).”

• It looks as if the year-end assessments have not yet petered out. In addition to the many blog posts I already compiled on this page, here are two new ones: Jen Forbes’ collection of revealing reads and rejects from 2011, and Netherlands blogger TomCat’s look back at his 35 favorite detective novels (not all of them published in 2011) that he most enjoyed reading during the last 12 months.

• Omnimystery News carries the trailer and poster promoting 21 Jump Street, a new film--premiering on March 16, 2012--based (kinda, sorta, lamely) on the 1987-1981 Stephen J. Cannell TV series that starred Johnny Depp, Holly Robinson, and others as “youthful-looking undercover police officers investigating crimes in high schools, colleges, and other teenage venues.”

• Meanwhile, The Huffington Post hosts the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the third (and apparently last) Batman film to star Christopher Nolan, and this time co-starring the purr-fectly proportioned Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.

• An article I composed for Mystery Scene about handsome contemporary crime-novel fronts, published in the magazine earlier this year, has now been posted on MS’ Web site.

• Flick Attack’s Ron Lott is surprisingly impressed with the 1938 film Nancy Drew--Detective. He writes: “The squeaky-clean, super-efficient mystery involves chasing a pigeon carrying a secret message; slapstick with a wrench; dressing Ned in drag, disguised as a nurse; and communicating via the cutting-edge technology of Morse code. Speaking of dated, the flick is filled with now-odd slang, like ‘Aw, stop disturbin’ the molecules!’ Even when presented in context, that made so sense to me, but like the rest of the hour-long adventure, I sure did enjoy it.” Hmm. Maybe I should give this a watch too.

Los Angeles Times reviewer Kenneth Turan is much less captivated by film director David Fincher’s interpretation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first of three best-selling thrillers by Stieg Larsson. (For a more favorable critique of that same movie, click over to Ali Karim’s recent posting in The Rap Sheet.)

• University of California, Berkeley librarian Randal S. Brandt writes in Mystery Fanfare about The Long Escape, David Dodge’s fifth mystery, which was recently reissued by Bruin Books. “This book holds a very special place for me,” explains Brandt. “Not only was it the first Dodge novel I ever read, but the story of the circumstances surrounding my discovery of it is one that I’m sure Dodge would have appreciated.” Find out more here.

• R.I.P., George Whitman and Russell Hoban.

• Here’s an unusual case of crime novelists working together: Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins provided the photograph for the end papers of Red Mist, Patricia Cornwell’s latest Kay Scarpetta thriller.

• And author James Gracie passes along news that “Bloomsbury Publishing are reissuing novels by forgotten Scottish writers in e-book form.” Among those novelists are Eric Linklater, Chaim Bermant, and Fitzroy Maclean.” Another Bloomsbury find, notes Gracie, “is crime writer Leo Horace Ognall (born in Canada, raised in Scotland). I’ve never heard of him, never mind read any of his works. He wrote under the pseudonyms Harry Carmichael and Hartley Howard.” It should be fun, rediscovering some of these dusty old works.

First Out of the Gates

Following up on my last Kirkus Reviews column, about exceptional British crime fiction from 2011, I offer yet another reader-friendly list--this time comprising “seven works I’m betting will be big sellers during the opening three months of 2012.” Novels by William Landay, Donald E. Westlake, and Lyndsay Faye all made the cut.

Click here to look over my choices. And please feel free to suggest some of your own recommendations of early 2012 releases in the Comments section at the bottom of that Kirkus page.

Monday, December 26, 2011

“Perfect Defense, Billy Jim”

Several years ago I wrote in The Rap Sheet about the 1973-1974 CBS-TV mystery series Hawkins. For those of you who weren’t around to watch it during its original run, that show starred cinema legend Jimmy Stewart as Billy Jim Hawkins, a deceptively astute country lawyer who hailed from West Virginia, but took on high-profile, typically sordid homicide cases all over the United States, usually with investigative assistance from his less-than-suave cousin, R.J. Hawkins (Strother Martin). The show rotated in a 90-minute, Tuesday-night slot with Richard Roundtree’s Shaft.

I have favorable memories of Hawkins, though I haven’t been able to watch it in years (sadly, the show’s pilot film and seven regular episodes haven’t yet been released on DVD). Only today did I stumble across a short clip from the series’ first Tuesday-night installment, “Murder in Movieland” (broadcast on October 2, 1973). According to The New York Timessynopsis, in that episode “Hawkins arrives in Hollywood to defend the husband of a movie star on a murder charge. The suspect has confessed--to clubbing another man to death, but not to the crime at hand.” Written by Hawkins co-creator David Karp, “Murder in Movieland” guest-starred Sheree North, Cameron Mitchell, and Kenneth Mars.

The clip I found today on YouTube, and have embedded below, gives you a sense of the show’s storytelling tone, as well as a preview of how comfortable Stewart seemed in his lead role. Hawkins’ hummable theme music—in the second clip—was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who also created the scores for Chinatown and L.A. Confidential.

Let’s hope Hawkins someday enjoys a commercial DVD release.



Thursday, December 22, 2011

Speaking of Lists ...

Well, the reading and writing, sifting and sorting processes that all go into producing any end-of-the-year list of “favorite books” have finally been completed, and January Magazine has posted its critics’ rundown of the crime novels they most enjoyed during 2011. This isn’t a “perfect” compilation, of course; each reader has his or her idiosyncratic tastes, and they often don’t overlap with those of reviewers. However, I think the choices are fairly representative of what the genre had to offer during the last 12 months.

Because so many books were chosen--34!--they’re broken down into two separate posts, part I here and part II here. You can look in those posts for the editorial comments about each novel, but here’s the no-frills roster of winners:

The Accident, by Linwood Barclay (Bantam)
A Bad Night’s Sleep, by Michael Wiley (Minotaur)
Bad Signs, by R.J. Ellory (Orion UK)
Bloodland, by Alan Glynn (Faber and Faber UK)
Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s Press)
The Cut, by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur)
A Drop of the Hard Stuff, by Lawrence Block (Mulholland)
The End of Everything, by Megan Abbott (Reagan Arthur/
Little, Brown)
The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur)
Falling Glass, by Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tail)
The Fatal Touch, by Conor Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury)
Feast Day of Fools, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
Field Gray, by Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/Putnam)
The Fifth Witness, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
Fogtown, by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader (Vertigo Crime)
Fun & Games, by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland)
The Gentlemen’s Hour, by Don Winslow (Simon & Schuster)
Heads You Lose, by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward (Putnam)
The Impossible Dead, by Ian Rankin (Reagan Arthur)
The Keeper of Lost Causes, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton)
Liar’s Kiss, by Eric Skillman and Jhomar Soriano (Top Shelf)
Perfect People, by Peter James (Macmillan UK)
Ranchero, by Rick Gavin (Minotaur)
The Retribution, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown UK)
The Revisionists, by Thomas Mullen (Mulholland)
San Diego Noir edited, by Maryelizabeth Hart (Akashic)
The Sentry, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
Spycatcher, by Matthew Dunn (Morrow)
Thick as Thieves, by Peter Spiegelman (Knopf)
The Thieves’ Labyrinth, by James McCreet (Macmillan UK)
White Heat, by M.J. McGrath (Viking)
You're Next, by Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s Press)

I’d like to thank my fellow January critics for their enthusiastic participation in this annual ritual: Declan Burke, Cameron Hughes, Ali Karim, Brendan M. Leonard, Jim Napier, Anthony Rainone, Linda L. Richards, and Kevin Burton Smith. Sadly, Dick Adler--who has contributed regularly to this endeavor for the last few years--was unable to take part this time around. It’s to his memory that I would like to dedicate this year’s “best books” list.

In addition to these many crime-fiction picks, January Magazine is offering inventories of favorite books from 2011 in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, art and culture, cookbooks, books for children, science fiction and fantasy, and biography. Details about the magazine’s annual selection process are available here.

* * *

Of course, January is far from the only print or Web publication to deliver a “best crime fiction of the year” collection this month. Some other lists also worth your attention:

Amazon’s Best Books of 2011: Mystery & Thrillers
The Boston Globe’s Best Crime Novels of the Year
Crime Always Pays’ Favorite Novels of the Year, which includes the Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award
Crime Fiction Lover’s Top Five Books of 2011
Grift Magazine’s Best Books of 2011
House of Crime and Mystery’s Top Five Crime Books of 2011
Kirkus ReviewsBest Mysteries of 2011
Kirkus ReviewsBest Thrillers of 2011
Library Journal’s Best Books 2011: Mystery
Library Journal’s Best Books 2011: Thrillers
Loitering with Intent’s Top Five Books of 2011
Musings of an All Purpose Monkey’s Top 10 Reads of 2011
New York Times critic Marilyn Stasio’s notable crime books of 2011
Publishers’ Weekly’s Best Books 2011: Mystery/Thriller
Poe’s Deadly Daughters’ Favorite Books of 2011
Pulp Pusher’s “Best of the Best,” parts I, II, and III.
The Seattle TimesBest Mysteries of 2011
The Wall Street Journal’s Best Mystery Novels of 2011
And my own list, in Kirkus Reviews, of The Rap Sheet’s 10 Favorite Crime Novels of 2011

Brian Lindenmuth, an editor at Spinetingler Magazine, has been compiling best-of-the-year lists from sources large and small. His rundown can be found here. Related lists include the Favorite Sons of 2011 list from Sons of Spade, and 2011: The Year in Villains, by Ransom Notes’ Jedidiah Ayres. Meanwhile, Grift is asking readers to name their own “five favorite books of 2011.” If you would like to participate in that survey, click here.

UPDATE: Also worth checking out, if you’re in the mood for assessing “best of the year” lists, is Death by Killing’s assortment of short crime fiction. These stories appeared in books and online during 2011, and are recommended by other writers.

Started Early, Saved Some Dough

In all likelihood, I won’t be attending Bouchercon in Cleveland later this year (October 4-7). But you certainly can. In fact, if you register by Saturday, December 31, you’ll be charged a lower registration fee--just $150, rather than $175. All the registration details are here.

Scorsese Brings on the Chills

Crimezine reports that legendary director Martin Scorsese will make a film from Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s novel The Snowman, originally published in 2007 but released in English translation just this year. “The word on Hollyweird Boulevard,” adds Crimezine, “is that Matthew Michael Carnahan is writing the Snowman script, hot on the heels of his work on zombie flick World War Z featuring Brad Pitt.” There’s no word yet about a release date for Scorsese’s picture.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Only the Best for You

I’m sorry to have let The Rap Sheet go pretty quiet over the last several days, but my attention has been drawn away to writing and editing many of January Magazine’s “Best of 2011” reviewlets. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I just posted the first section of this year’s crime-fiction choices. You can read those here.

Part II of those crime-fiction write-ups should appear soon.

Previously published were January critics’ picks of this year’s best art and culture books, best biographies, best books for children and young adults, best cookbooks, and best science fiction and fantasy novels. Non-fiction and general fiction choices are to be announced later this week.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

“I Have a Photogenic Memory, Dude”

After having posted the official trailer for the American film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it seems only right to also offer up this humorous spoof version, promoting a movie that really ought to be made: The Girl with Tramp Stamp Tattoo.

READ MORE:The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut,” by Nora Ephron
(The New Yorker).

Friday, December 16, 2011

Pushed to Pick

Scottish novelist and blogger Tony Black was kind enough to invite me to participate in Pulp Pusher’s end-of-the-year nominations of “best books.” My humble recommendation is in rather exalted company, together with reading preferences from Ian Rankin, Cathi Unsworth, Ray Banks, and Adrian Magson. You’ll find all the choices here.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

New “Girl” on the Block

As you may be aware, it was here in The Rap Sheet that we featured the very first English-language review of Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s soon-to-be-award-winning international bestseller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. We subsequently put up a number of posts about Larsson, including a rare interview with his father, Erland Larsson, an interview with Dragon Tattoo’s UK publisher, Christopher MacLehose, and the first English-language critique of Yellowbird’s 2009 Swedish film version (with English subtitles) of Larsson’s thriller.

So it was a delight when I received a call from Lucy Ramsey, the publicity director at Quercus Publishing, offering me a ticket to the world premiere of the new, English-language film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was scheduled to be held at Leicester Square in London this last Monday, December 12, two weeks prior to the movie’s global release on December 26.

That evening, I met up with Ramsey and my usual partners in crime, Mike Stotter, Ayo Onatade, and Chris Simmons at the Bear and Staff public house to collect our tickets. To say I was excited was an understatement, especially as I had a very early start that morning. So I quaffed a large coffee containing four double espresso shots to ensure that I was sufficiently alert when the projector began rolling. (The result of this preparation was that I became rather “wired,” much to the amusement of my colleagues.)

On the walk to Leicester Square, we bumped into editor MacLehose, who enjoyed my off-the-cuff mention of how surreal it was that Daniel Craig, the silver screen’s current James Bond, should be heading this new movie’s cast. My observation related to something he told me when I interviewed him a few years back:
Ali Karim: So tell us what, in your opinion, makes [Larsson’s] books “unique”?

Christopher MacLehose: Lisbeth Salander, no question. Because [her partner] Mikhael Blomkvist--well, I am very interested in what the film company makes of the material. Will they retain Salander as the main lead, or will they enhance Blomkvist and make them at the same level? My feeling is that people in all translations respond to the utter originality of Lisbeth Salander. No one’s seen anything quite like her. There was a time when people said James Bond was utterly original.
With tickets in hand, we all walked down the film premiere’s red carpet, flash guns popping from the array of photographers and the press swarming like bees around Leicester Square. I had to smile as I overheard one of the photographers say to a colleague, “Who’s the black guy with the tall bloke?” pointing his camera toward me. His colleague responded, “He’s a fucking nobody.” This made me chuckle.

As we took our seats in the theater, the audience was buzzing. The screen before us was filled with a live video feed from the red carpet, showing the array of real celebrities making their way in to see this highly anticipated film debut.

Then, just prior to the movie starting, the managing director from Sony UK (Sony having been this film’s production company) took to the stage and welcomed David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s director, along with screenwriter Steven Zaillian, performers Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, and producer Cean Chaffin. As they finally walked off the stage, a rousing round of applause bid them farewell, just before the screen curtain went up.

Let me say that I enjoyed the original Swedish version directed by Niels Arden Oplev, so I was intrigued to see what the Americans might accomplish with the same material. I was not disappointed, as this new version is, in a word, mesmerizing.

Fincher, who previously directed such pictures as The Game, Alien 3, Benjamin Button, and Zodiac, has crafted a remarkable film here. Screenwriter Zaillian [Hannibal, Schindler’s List, et al.) has toned down the violence of Larsson’s yarn just “a tad” for squeamish American audiences, but this new Dragon Tattoo still packs a startling gut-punch, opening with an outstanding title sequence akin to, and heavily influenced by, Maurice Binder’s James Bond title sequences. The film’s actual start features Trent Reznor’s reworking of the screams from Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song.” With a running time just short of 2.5 hours (the Swedish version was three hours in length), it boasts astounding visuals and fast-cut editing, gripping you to your seat like a vice made of serrated glass.

This film’s cast is remarkable. Especially of note are the supporting actors, including a roster of international cinema luminaries: Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson, Stephen Berkoff, Geraldine James, and Stellan Skarsgard. But Craig’s performance as troubled journalist Mikael Blomkvist is especially arresting. While the cast members generally adopt subtle Swedish accents, Craig’s is the least Swedish of the bunch, which actually plays well as a contextual contrast. Craig/Blomkvist does not meet up with Rooney Mara, playing bisexual computer hacker Lisabeth Salander, until the halfway point of the story (true to the narrative structure of Larsson’s novel as well as the original Swedish film), and by the time they do get together, the chemistry between them is electric. Despite the darkness of his source material, Fincher manages to inject some faint humor here, with
the biggest laugh inspired by a T-shirt Salander/Mara wears to great effect.

The film is very fast-paced, due to exceptional editing, and the tracking shots and visuals are downright stunning. The white snow that covers so many scenes actually made me shiver, and I’ll be surprised if the cinematography of this Dragon Tattoo isn’t recognized in the 2012 film awards. Zaillian and Fincher have wisely downplayed the opening business section, much as the Swedish film version did, and also to save time, the ending has been changed slightly, offering a truncated but equally heart-warming climax. There’s still an epilogue, in which Blomkvist gets his revenge--thanks to Salander--against billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström (played by Ulf Friberg), who had sued him for libel. That jars slightly against the closing reunion scene featuring retired CEO Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), but it’s necessary.

So here’s the question that accompanies all remakes: “Was this new picture as good as the original one?” Hmm. I have to sit firmly on the fence on that one, and state that this new movie is up to the quality of the Swedish version; it’s just different. I must say, though, that Fincher’s film is maybe a tad more accessible to a mainstream audience, not only because it’s in English, but because the sexual violence of the Swedish movie has been toned down marginally. (I still wouldn’t suggest, however, that you take your grandmother to a screening. This is not a movie for people who are averse to thematic challenges, visceral drama, or strong sexual themes.)

Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the 2009 version, isn’t as enthusiastic about the American version as I am. He’s quoted as saying: “Even in Hollywood there seems to be a kind of anger about the remake, like, ‘Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?’ Everybody who loves film will go see the original one. It’s like, what do you want to see, the French version of La Femme Nikita or the American one? You can hope that Fincher does a better job.”

Nonetheless, I strongly encourage you to see this film, which is likely to be the subject of much conversation in the new year.

One last comment: I absolutely love Sony Pictures’ tag-line for Fincher’s film, “The Feel-Bad Movie of 2012.” Somebody certainly deserves a raise for thinking that one up!

(Below) Ali Karim joins Girl with the Dragon Tattoo publisher Christopher MacLehose at the film’s London premiere.

The High Price

Whoever thought that not-so-good 1947 movie, The Brasher Doubloon, starring George Montgomery as Raymond Chandler’s private eye, Philip Marlowe, actually had a basis in fact?
Extremely Rare Gold Brasher Doubloon Minted in 1787 Fetches $7.4 Million

NEW ORLEANS -- An exceedingly rare 1787 gold Brasher doubloon has been sold for $7.4 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a gold coin.

Blanchard and Co., the New Orleans-based coin and precious metals company that brokered the deal, told The Associated Press the doubloon was purchased by a Wall Street investment firm. Identities of the buyer and seller were not disclosed.

Minted by Ephraim Brasher, a goldsmith and neighbor of George Washington, the coin contains 26.66 grams of gold--slightly less than an ounce. Worth about $15 when it was minted, the gold value today would be more than $1,500.

It is the only known example of the doubloon with a distinctive hallmark punch on the eagle’s breast; five other known doubloons have a punch on the eagle’s left wing.

The Brasher doubloon is considered the first American-made gold coin denominated in dollars; the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia didn’t begin striking coins until the 1790s, and foreign coins of various currencies were in use in the nation’s early years.
You’ll find the full AP story here.

READ MORE:Marlowe Goes to the Movies,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(The Rap Sheet).

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

“Worth Your Crossing the Atlantic to Buy”

My Mysteries & Thrillers column today in Kirkus Reviews looks back at five excellent crime-fiction-related books that were published in Britain during 2011 and are not available in the States. In the mix are a couple of historical novels, one Scottish police procedural, an on-the-run thriller with psychological depth, and a non-fiction work analyzing one growing geographical corner of the genre.

In order enjoy the whole piece, simply click here.

Return of Matt Helm

Some good news for Matt Helm fans:
Titan Books announced today that beginning in 2013, they will reissue the original Matt Helm spy thrillers written by Donald Hamilton, starring the famed counter-agent whose career included 27 novels spanning more than three decades, four films, and a network television series.
The Titan site has a bit more information on this deal. I’ll be interested to see how the publisher packages these novels. Will it use the original paperback art? That’s probably too much to hope for ...

READ MORE:Breaking News! Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm Spy Series Returns to Print in 2013, from Titan Books!,” by Nick Jones (Existential Ennui).

Read Adair

I am sorry to admit that I’ve never read the work of Scottish-born novelist, poet, and critic Gilbert Adair, but when I read that he had passed away on December 9, I at least recognized his name. Yet I knew it principally because of three Agatha Christie spoofs he penned in his later years, all featuring the “formidable” whodunit author Evadne Mount: The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006), A Mysterious Affair of Style (2007), and And Then There Was No One (2009).

Prior to working on those, he also produced books such as The Holy Innocents (1988) and The Key of the Tower (1997), and was a film critic for Time Out London magazine. More complete and warm remembrances can be found in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, and Time Out. Adair died at age 66 from a brain hemorrhage, just over a year after he lost his sight to a stroke.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

READ MORE:R.I.P., Gilbert Adair,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).

Monday, December 12, 2011

First Contacts

For the last several years, I’ve made it a practice each December to look back over my reading list for the previous 12 months and see which authors I had the chance to enjoy for the very first time. This ritual began after Brian Lindenmuth, now an editor at Spinetingler Magazine, asked me to share some of my author “discoveries” in 2008. The writers and books didn’t necessarily have to be new, or from the crime-fiction stacks; they just had to be new to me.

2008 happened to be when I first cracked open works by Tony Black, Stieg Larsson, John McFetridge, Michael Stanley, Jane Mayer, and future U.S. president Barack Obama. In the years since, I’ve discovered and become a fan of Stanley Ellin, Kelli Stanley, J. Sydney Jones, Colum McCann, Karen Abbott, Sam Eastland, Leighton Gage, Ernest Tidyman, Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Stefanie Pintoff, Deon Meyer, and ... well, this rundown could go on and on. As it should: I think part of the definition of a thoughtful reader is that he or she be willing to experiment with previously unfamiliar wordsmiths. Who wants to fall into a rut, right?

This has been an unusual year for me. I contributed to a crime-fiction encyclopedia project, and therefore found myself poring through multiple books by a few older writers I already knew, among them Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, and William Campbell Gault. Furthermore, I made a concerted effort in 2011 to fill in some of the gaping holes in my knowledge of the mystery/thriller genre, so I didn’t have the opportunity to explore as much general fiction as I might have liked. However, I was able to tackle a number of exceptional non-fiction works, many by writers I hadn’t sampled before.

So let’s get to the results of all this. First, my 2011 reading list of novels by authors new to me. Debut works are boldfaced. Asterisks denote crime or thriller fiction.

Jussi Adler-Olsen (The Keeper of Lost Causes)*
• Quentin Bates (Frozen Assets)*
Lou Cameron (The Outsider)*
Gianrico Carofiglio (Temporary Perfections)*
Rory Clements (Revenger)*
Douglas Corleone (Night on Fire)*
Arne Dahl (Misterioso)*
• Louis de Bernières (The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts)
Richard Dougherty (Madigan, aka The Commissioner)*
Dave Eggers (Zeitoun)
• Paul Grossman (The Sleepwalkers)*
• Rashad Harrison (Our Man in the Dark)*
Anthony Horowitz (The House of Silk)*
Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis (The Boy in the Suitcase)*
Adrian Magson (Death on the Marais)*
James McCreet (The Thieves’ Labyrinth)*
M.J. McGrath (White Heat)*
Russel D. McLean (The Lost Sister)*
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall)
• Carson Morton (Stealing Mona Lisa)*
Jim Nesbit (Dark Companion)*
Joseph O’Connor (Ghost Light)
• Gerald O’Donovan (The Priest)*
• William Ryan (The Holy Thief)*
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (The Day Is Dark)*
Roger Smith (Wake Up Dead)*
Thomas Sterling (Murder in Venice, aka The Evil of the Day)*
• P.G. Sturges (Shortcut Man)*

Next is my somewhat shorter inventory of non-fiction works by writers I’d not read prior to 2011.

Miranda Carter (George, Nicholas, and William: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I)
Paul Finkelman (Millard Fillmore)
James Garner (The Garner Files)
Annette Gordon-Reed (Andrew Johnson)
Charlotte Gray (Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike)
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
Steve Turner (The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic)
Frances Wilson (How to Survive the Titanic: Or the Sinking
of J. Bruce Ismay
)

But how about you, oh thoughtful Rap Sheet readers? Which authors did you first discover in 2011? Please feel free to list those fresh finds in the Comments section below. Or, if you’d prefer to post your first-reads record in your own blog, just provide the URL among the comments here, so the rest of us can study your list as well.