Without Malice

Sue Grafton was honored with Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph received the Poirot Award at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier this evening when the 2011 Agatha Awards were announced during Malice Domestic. “What a wonderful evening at Malice!” Rudolph enthused on Mystery Fanfare, where she also shared the results:

Best Novel: Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Stork Raving Mad, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur); The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine); Drive Time, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Mira); and Truly, Madly, by Heather Webber (St. Martin’s)

Best First Novel: The Long Quiche Goodbye, by Avery Aames (Berkley)

Also nominated: Murder at the PTA, by Laura Alden (Signet); Maid of Murder, by Amanda Flower (Five Star); Full Mortality, by Sasscer Hill (Wildside Press); and Diamonds for the Dead, by Alan Orloff (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction: Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (Harper)

Also nominated: The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum (Penguin Press); Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, by Stephen Doyle and David A. Crowder (For Dummies); Have Faith in Your Kitchen, by Katherine Hall Page (Orchises Press); and Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)

Best Short Story: “So Much in Common,” by Mary Jane Maffini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010)

Also nominated: “Swing Shift,” by Dana Cameron (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley); “Size Matters,” by Sheila Connolly (from Thin Ice, edited by Mark Ammons, Kat Fast, Barbara Ross, and Leslie Wheeler; Level Best Books); “Volunteer of the Year,” by Barb Goffman (from Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, edited by Marcia Talley; Wildside Press); and “The Green Cross,” by Elizabeth Zelvin (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, August 2010)

Best Children’s/Young Adult: The Other Side of Dark, by Sarah Smith (Atheneum)

Also nominated: Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer, by John Grisham (Dutton); Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus, by R. L. LaFevers (Houghton Mifflin); The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y. S. Lee (Candlewick); and Virals, by Kathy Reichs (Razorbill)

Author! Arthur!

Last night Crime Writers of Canada announced the nominees for its 2011 Arthur Ellis Awards. These prizes take their name from Arthur Ellis, which was the pseudonym used by Canada’s official hangmen. Broken down by category, this year’s contenders are:

Best Novel:

• Slow Recoil, by C.B. Forrest (RendezVous Crime)

• In Plain Sight, by Mike Knowles (ECW Press)

• The Extinction Club, by Jeffrey Moore (Penguin Group)

• Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (Little, Brown UK)

• A Criminal to Remember, by Michael Van Rooy (Turnstone Press)

Best Short Story:

• “So Much in Common,” by Mary Jane Maffini (Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine)

• “In It Up to My Neck,” by Jas R. Petrin (Alfred Hitchcock
Mystery Magazine)

• “The Big Touch,” by Jordan McPeek (ThugLit)

• “The Piper's Door,” by James Powell (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

• “The Bust,” by William Deverall (from Whodunnit: Sun Media’s Canadian Crime Fiction Showcase)

Best Non-Fiction:

• On the Farm, by Stevie Cameron (Knopf Canada)

• Our Man in Tehran, by Robert Wright (HarperCollins)

• Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him, by Roy MacGregor (Random House)

Best Juvenile/Young Adult:

• Borderline, by Allan Stratton (HarperCollins)

• The Worst Thing She Ever Did, by Alice Kuipers (HarperCollins)

• Pluto’s Ghost, by Sharee Fitch (Doubleday Canada)

• Victim Rights, by Norah McClintock (Red Deer Press)

• The Vinyl Princess, by Yvonne Prinz (HarperCollins)

Best Crime Writing in French:

• Cinq secondes, by Jacques Savoie (Libre Expression)

• Dans le quartier des agités, by Jacques Côté (Alire)

• Vanités, by Johanne Seymour (Libre Expression)

• La société des pères meurtriers, by Michel Châteauneuf (Vents D’ouest)

• Quand la mort s’invite à la première, by Bernard Gilbert
(Québec Amérique)

Best First Novel:

• The Damage Done, by Hilary Davidson (Tom Doherty Associates)

• The Debba, by Avner Mandleman (Other Press)

• The Penalty Killing, by Michael McKinley (McClelland & Stewart)

• The Parabolist, by Nicholas Ruddock (Doubleday)

• Still Missing, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)

Unhanged Arthur (Best Unpublished First Crime Novel):

• Better Off Dead, by John Jeneroux

• Uncoiled, by Kevin Thornton

• When the Bow Breaks, by Jayne Barnard

Winners will be declared during a banquet to be held on June 2 in Victoria, British Columbia, on the eve of this year’s Bloody Words convention. To buy tickets for that event, click here.

Complete lists of entries in all categories of the 2001 Arthur Ellis Awards competition can be found here.

Matching Edgars with Authors

Thanks to Spinetingler Magazine and its reporter-on-the-spot, Elaine Ash, we now have the winners of this year’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards, announced tonight during a Mystery Writers of America banquet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

Best Novel: The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Caught, by Harlan Coben (Dutton); Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Morrow); Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking); The Queen of Patpong, by Timothy Hallinan (Morrow); and I’d Know You Anywhere, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Best First Novel by an American Author: Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge)

Also nominated: The Poacher’s Son, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur); The Serialist, by David Gordon (Simon & Schuster); Galveston, by Nic Pizzolatto (Scribner); and Snow Angels, by James Thompson (Putnam)

Best Paperback Original: Long Time Coming, by Robert Goddard (Bantam)

Also nominated: The News Where You Are, by Catherine O’Flynn (Henry Holt); Expiration Date, by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur); Vienna Secrets, by Frank Tallis (Random House); and Ten Little Herrings, by L.C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press)

Best Fact Crime: Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity, by Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry (University of Nebraska Press-Bison)

Also nominated: The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South, by Alex Heard (HarperCollins); Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery, by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz (Scribner); Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, by Hampton Sides (Doubleday); and The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science, by Douglas Starr (Knopf)

Best Critical/Biographical: Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)

Also nominated: The Wire: Truth Be Told, by Rafael Alvarez (Grove Press); Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (HarperCollins); Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder (Wiley); and Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner (Oceanview Publishing)

Best Short Story: “The Scent of Lilacs,” by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010)

Also nominated: “The Plot,” by Jeffery Deaver (from First Thrills, edited by Lee Child; Forge); “A Good Safe Place,” by Judith Green (from Thin Ice, edited by Mark Ammons, Kat Fast, Barbara Ross, and Leslie Wheeler; Level Best Books); “Monsieur Alice Is Absent, by Stephen Ross (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, October 2010); and “The Creative Writing Murders,” by Edmund White (from Dark End of the Street, edited by Jonathan Santlofer and S.J. Rozan; Bloomsbury)

Best Juvenile: The Buddy Files: The Case of the Lost Boy, by Dori Hillestad Butler (Albert Whitman & Co.)

Also nominated: Zora and Me, by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon (Candlewick Press); The Haunting of Charles Dickens, by Lewis Buzbee (Feiwel & Friends); Griff Carver: Hallway Patrol, by Jim Krieg (Razorbill); and The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, by Ben H. Winters (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

Best Young Adult: The Interrogation of Gabriel James, by Charlie Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers)

Also nominated: The River, by Mary Jane Beaufrand (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers); Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A.S. King (Knopf Books for Young Readers); 7 Souls, by Barnabas Miller and Jordan Orlando (Delacorte Books for Young Readers); and Dust City, by Robert Paul Weston (Razorbill)

Best Play: The Psychic, by Sam Bobrick (Falcon Theatre, Burbank, California)

Also nominated: The Tangled Skirt, by Steve Braunstein (New Jersey Repertory Co.), and The Fall of the House, by Robert Ford (Alabama Shakespeare Festival)

Best Television Episode Teleplay: “Episode 1,” Luther, teleplay by Neil Cross (BBC America)

Also nominated: “Episode 4,” Luther, teleplay by Neil Cross (BBC America); “Full Measure,” Breaking Bad, teleplay by Vince Gilligan (AMC/Sony); “No Mas,” Breaking Bad, teleplay by Vince Gilligan (AMC/Sony); and “The Next One’s Gonna Go In Your Throat,” Damages, teleplay by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman (FX Networks)

The Simon & Schuster-Mary Higgins Clark Award: The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Also nominated: Wild Penance, by Sandi Ault (Berkley Prime Crime); Blood Harvest, by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur); Down River, by Karen Harper (Mira); and Live to Tell, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Avon)

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED:

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: “Skyler Hobbs and the Rabbit Man,” by Evan Lewis (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2010)

Grand Master: Sara Paretsky

Raven Awards: Centuries & Sleuths (owned by Augie Alesky) in Chicago, and Once Upon a Crime (owned by Pat Frovarp and Gary Schulze) in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

READ MORE: “Fear and Loathing at the Edgars” and “Fear and Loathing at the Edgars, Part Two,” by Elaine Ash and Albert Tucher (Spinetingler Magazine); “Edgar Week in New York,” by Ruth Jordan (Crimespree Magazine); “Fear and Loathing at the Edgars: Part 3, Sober Reflection,” by Elaine Ash (Spinetingler Magazine).

Bullet Points: Spring Has Finally Sprung Edition

I’m sorry for the somewhat reduced schedule of postings here in recent days, but I have been trying to complete work on a rather large book project. Other Rap Sheet contributors have been kind enough to pitch in, but the frequency and length of posts here should pick up again soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of news tidbits worth noting.

• It’s deadline time, people. Ballots for the 2011 Anthony Awards must be mailed in by this coming Saturday, April 30. That’s also the last day you will have a voice in choosing nominees for the 2011 Spinetingler Awards. You had better get cracking!

• The Spring 2011 edition of Plots with Guns has just been posted. It includes short stories by Schuyler Dickson, Frederick Zackel, Richard Godwin, and Graham Powell.

• Cincinnati, Ohio-based publisher F+W Media has purchased small press Tyrus Books, according to Publishers Weekly. Tyrus founder Ben Leroy has been hired as publisher and community leader, F+W Crime.

• Law & Order: Criminal Intent, again featuring Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe in the leading roles, will return to the USA Network schedule for the opening episode of its final season this coming Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. It will be followed by the season premiere of In Plain Sight, starring Mary McCormack.

• Jake Hinkson has a good piece on publisher Macmillan’s newly relaunched Web site, Criminal Element, about noir crime tales that turn on memory loss. Read it here.

• In the same publication, Bill Crider writes about the similarities between the private-eye novel and the western--a subject he also addressed some years ago in January Magazine.

• Warner Bros. has issued a newly remastered DVD version of James Garner’s 1969 film, Marlowe, which was based on Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Little Sister (1949). That picture’s a private-eye fiction classic. Save me a copy!

• J.F. Norris offers a fine look back at Martin Cruz Smith’s debut novel, Gypsy in Amber (1971). Norris writes:

For his first book he took a decidedly different and very unusual topic--the gypsy culture of New Jersey and New York in the 1970s--and created a story that forty years later still seems more original than most of what is being published today.

• Author Alafair Burke has initiated a “Read Men Read Women” campaign to raise the profile of female crime novelists and also promote youth literacy. You’ll find details here.

• Republicans have been showing their racism lately.

• The 2011 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books kicks off this weekend at the University of Southern California campus. Among the attendees will be Yunte Huang, the author of last year’s fascinating non-fiction book, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. Times books blogger Carolyn Kellogg is covering the festival here.

• Might Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond books inspire a TV series?

• In his blog, Scene of the Crime, J. Sydney Jones features a fine interview with Jim Kelly, the British author of Death Toll.

• Meanwhile, Cullen Gallagher chats up Greg Shepard from book publisher Stark House Press.

• And in case you haven’t already heard, on April 21 romantic suspense novelist Beverly Barton died suddenly of heart failure in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her latest novel, Dead By Morning (Zebra)--the second installment in her “Dead By” trilogy--was just released this week. The concluding book of those three, Dead By Nightfall, isn’t due out till December. Barton was only 64 years old.

Checking in with Zephyr

Roberta Alexander’s review of Hotel No Tell (Bantam), author Daphne Uviller’s second novel about New York probationary detective Zephyr Zuckerman, was posted this morning in January Magazine. Read it here.

Hand-off Play

I’m not surprised by this news from Publishers Weekly:

In a deal cut by Robert B. Parker’s estate, Penguin’s Putnam imprint will continue to publish two of the author’s most popular series--Spenser and Jesse Stone--under the authorship of writers Michael Brandman and Ace Atkins. The Spenser series debuted in 1974 and is made up of 39 novels; the Jesse Stone series began in 1997 and [comprises] nine novels.

Brandman produced (and wrote the screenplays) for the TV movies based on Parker’s small-town Massachusetts detective, Jesse Stone, that appeared on CBS and starred Tom Selleck in the title role. The first Jesse Stone novel Brandman will release is Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues, which is scheduled for September 13, 2011. Atkins, a tested crime author at Putnam with books like White Shadow and Infamous to his credit, will release the first new Parker-branded Spenser novel in Spring 2012. Parker’s longtime editor, Chris Pepe, will be overseeing both projects.

Parker, who wrote over 60 novels, died in January 2010.

While I don’t know Michael Brandman, I am familiar with the work of Ace Atkins (who was interviewed by Megan Abbott for this page in association with his 2009 novel, Devil’s Garden).

From a business perspective, I can certainly understand Penguin wanting to continue the Stone and Spenser series indefinitely--they’ve become cash cows: many readers buy new installments every year simply because they’ve gotten in the habit. But Spenser, especially, has had a long enough run. And though I’m sure Atkins can do a serviceable job concocting new tales about that Boston gumshoe, his girlfriend, Susan Silverman, and the ever-ominous Hawk, I’ll be surprised to see him make any substantial shifts in the series’ all-too-familiar format. (Fans would likely cry “foul” if he thought of killing off Ms. Silverman, for instance.) So one has to ask: Why can’t we just be happy with Parker’s legacy as it is, and not try to artificially extend it?

In the meantime, I’m still looking forward to seeing Parker’s last real Spenser novel, Sixkill, which is due out from Putnam on May 3.

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

READ MORE: “Spenser, Continued,” by Bill Crider (Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine).

More Fiction to Fancy

Today brings Part XIV of “Black Lens,” the Ken Bruen and Russell Ackerman story being serialized in the Mulholland Books blog.

And this week’s new short story in Beat to a Pulp is “The Monster and the Mob,” a morality play penned by Washington author James Valvis.

When Harry Met Jenny

Some good news for Harry O fans: Although there’s still no word on a DVD release of that full and oft-acclaimed 1974-1976 TV series, which starred David Janssen as Southern California cop-turned-private eye Harry Orwell, the Web site TV Shows on DVD has announced that the second pilot film for the series will go on sale on May 3. You’ll be able to purchase it as a $19.95 manufacture-on-demand DVD through the Warner Archive Collection site.

Yes, there were two pilots made for Harry O. The first one ran 73 minutes long, was titled “Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On,” and featured both Martin Sheen and Margot Kidder. It was originally broadcast on March 11, 1973. After ABC-TV passed on turning it into a weekly program, a second and quite a bit better, 100-minute Harry O film, “Smile Jenny, You’re Dead,” was made co-starring Andrea Marcovicci, Clu Gulager, and Jodie Foster.” It was shown for the first time on February 3, 1974, and convinced the network to give Harry Orwell a Thursday night timeslot.

If you have never seen Harry O before, or haven’t already purchased a bootleg copy of that series’ 44 regular episodes, then “Smile Jenny, You’re Dead” should serve as a great reminder of why it’s considered one of American television’s best-ever P.I. shows.

Click Clack Here

Yikes! The world’s last typewriter factory has shut its doors.

Getting an Earful

Omnimystery News brings this alert: “The nominees for the 2011 Audie Awards have been announced by the Audio Publishers Association, recognizing the best in audiobooks. The winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on May 24th, 2011, at The TimesCenter in New York City.” Click here to find the list of nominees.

Aussie Rules

Thanks to Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare, we have the longlist of nominees for the 2011 Ned Kelly Awards, given out by the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia.

Best First Fiction:
• Diamond Eyes, by A.A. Bell
• Undercover, by Keith Bulfin
• Prime Cut, by Alan Carter
• While I Have Perdo, by John Chesterman
• Who Killed Dave?, by Linda Cockburn
• The Pericles Commission, by Gary Corby
• Mosquito Creek, by Robert Engwerds
• Beyond Fear, by Jaye Ford
• Beautiful Malice, by Rebecca James
• The Old School, by P.M. Newton
• Five Parts Dead, by Tim Pegler
• Line of Sight, by David Whish-Wilson

Best Fiction:
• The Ghost of Waterloo, by Robin Adair
• Follow the Money, by Peter Corris
• Sharp Turn, by Marianne Delacourt
• The Maya Codex, by Adrian d’Hage
• Death Mask, by Kathryn Fox
• Watch the World Burn, by Leah Giarrantano
• Dead Man’s Chest, by Kerry Greenwood
• Violent Exposure, by Katherine Howell
• Gunshot Road, by Adrian Hyland
• Fall Girl, by Toni Jordan
• Silk Chaser, by Peter Klein
• The Genesis Flaw, by L.A. Larkin
• Naked Cruelty, by Colleen McCullough
• Diggers Rest Hotel, by Geoff McGeachin
• Let the Dead Lie, by Malla Nunn
• How the Dead See, by David Owen
• Red Ice, by James Phelan
• Thrill City, by Leigh Redhead
• Mice, by Gordon Reece
• Hot Rock Dreaming, by Martin Roth
• The Half-Child, by Angela Savage
• The Neon Lady of Towitta, by Patricia Summerling
• Bereft, by Chris Womersley
• Shattered Sky, by Helene Young

Best True Crime:
• They Shot Phar Lap, Didn’t They?, by Geoff Armstrong and
Peter Thompson
• The Job, by Charlie Bezzina with Ben Collins
• Enforcer, by Caesar and Donna Campbell
• Murder No More, by Colleen Egan
• Sin Bin, by John Elias
• City of Evil, by Sean Fewster
• Badlands, by Liam Houlihan
• Abandoned, by Geesche Jacobsen
• Inside Story, by Peter Lloyd
• McVillain: The Man Who Got Away, by David McMillan
• Shot Gun and Standover, by James Morton and Russell Robinson
• Bank Robbery for Beginners, by Anthony Prince
• King of Thieves, by Adam Shand
• Mr. Asia, by Jim Sheperd
• Honeymoon Dive, by Lindsay Simpson and Jennifer Cooke
• Snitch, by Jimmy Thomson
• Bumper, by Larry Writer

The shortlists for these awards will be announced in August. The date for an announcement of winners has yet to be chosen.

In addition, a competition is being held for the 2011 S.D. Harvey Short Story Award. Submissions will be accepted through May 31. Full guidelines and an entry form are available here.

Attention All Writers and Wannabes

From that carnival of delights, Boing Boing, comes author V.S. Naipaul’s seven-point strategy for improving as a writer. (I especially like #4.)

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.

4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.

5. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of colour, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.

6. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.

7. Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.

* * *

You can see how well I’ve done at following these rules in the latest installment of my serial novel, Forget About It: The First Al Zymer Senile Detective Mystery, which has been posted in my other blog. All comments happily read and responded to. (Oops, I just ended a sentence with a preposition.)

Come Back, Little Shamus

My new column at the Kirkus Reviews site focuses on five “once-interesting series detectives who have gone AWOL from the literary landscape.” I’ll tell you right now that two of them are Jonathan Valin’s private eye, Harry Stoner, and Martha C. Lawrence’s parapsychologist sleuth, Elizabeth Chase, but you’ll have to go to Kirkus to find out the names of the other three.

Click here to enjoy that full article.

And after you’ve read it, why don’t you suggest in the Comments section at the bottom one or two other missing crime-fiction protagonists you would like to see resurrected in print.

The Story Behind the Story: “Borrowed Trouble,” by J.B. Kohl and Eric Beetner

(Editor’s note: To write the 20th installment in our “Story Behind the Story” series, we welcome Eric Beetner of Los Angeles and J.B. Kohl of Virginia, who have so far co-authored a pair of underworld thrillers--One Too Many Blows to the Head [2009] and Borrowed Trouble [2011], both set in the early 20th century--without once meeting each other. Their two novels feature detective Dean Fokoli and boxing promoter Ray Ward, and have enjoyed a good deal of critical attention. Megan Abbott [Bury Me Deep] said the first Fokoli-Ward outing offered “a delicious mix of classic hard-boiled grit and the heart-heavy world of film noir,” while Hilary Davidson [The Damage Done] praised Borrowed Trouble for its “sharp writing, head-spinning twists, and pair of protagonists haunted by memory and loss.”)

Eric Beetner: Oh, what a story we have to tell, and we’re going to tell it the way we write our books--by e-mail. But it always seems like I start these things. We write in alternating chapters and in both of our books I have written chapter 1 then 3, 5, etc. So to buck tradition I will let Jennifer start by telling how we began this crazy way of writing.

J.B. Kohl: Aw, thanks my friend! I’m so happy to go first this time.

I guess we met (virtually) in 2008. I contacted Eric through the Film Noir Foundation’s Web site, asking to put a link up on my own site (one which I neglect terribly these days). Eric [who was a staff writer for the Noir City Sentinel, the foundation’s regular newsletter] was the guy who answered. As I recall, he said, “Sure, you can put up a link. We love links.” So I put up a link.

At some point after that Eric sent me a note saying he had read my [2008] book, The Deputy’s Widow, and that he liked it. I found out he was a writer too. He sent me a short story which I loved. Here’s the thing about that story: it sounded a little like me. I don’t mean that I could have written it ... because they were Eric’s words and Eric’s thoughts and I don’t pretend for an instant to know what goes on in that chess-club-sized brain of his. But I think it’s something more along the lines of looking at a picture of a family: They all look different, but you can tell just by looking that they’re related.

I remember thinking--actually knowing--that we could write something together and that whatever we wrote would be good, because our styles were similar. My husband was a little worried when I told him my idea. “Are you sure? It’s really hard to write stuff with other people.”

OK, maybe it would be hard. But I figured that Eric and I lived on opposite coasts, so if it didn’t work out it would be OK. No harm done.

So I sent him a note asking him if he’d consider writing something together.

His immediate response? Nothing. Nada. Radio silence. Dead air. Well, I thought, so much for that. Luckily, it didn’t end there ... or we wouldn’t be telling you this story here and now.

EB: I honestly don’t remember not responding. Sorry about that. I hate being left to hang on an e-mail reply. I’m so glad I did [reply], though. When the idea for the first book, One Too Many Blows to the Head, came about I loved it, because I knew it was a book I would read.

A desperate man seeking revenge, a cop with more on his plate than just the case he’s working on. I would have loved that book even I didn’t write half of it.

What I knew from reading The Deputy’s Widow is that you can take a stock character--in our case the jaded homicide detective--and make him interesting once more. I love [Kansas City cop] Dean Fokoli’s back-story and the depths of his character flaws. Both of the characters in the books--Fokoli and Ray Ward--are deeply damaged; yet, I think you root for them. In One Too Many Blows to the Head, I love that you kind of root for each of them, even though their goals are at odds.

Bringing them together for our new book, Borrowed Trouble, worked out better than I expected. I’ll tell you, though, I knew our partnership had a future when we already had a plot for the sequel by the time we were done with the first book.

JBK: Seriously, you didn’t leave me hanging long. We talked about [working together] again after a couple of months ... tentatively at first. And then, bam! You sent this great idea and it just sort of rolled right out from there. Seamless and easy. I really liked writing Fokoli, because he was so troubled and flawed. I think that those characteristics make for a character that readers can identify with. Take Ray Ward, for example. You had the opportunity [in Too Many Blows] to make him do some really nasty things, but it was all done in a way that made the audience cheer. When you can make a character like that, it’s a sign of talent. And the fact that Fokoli and Ward were after different things made it challenging to write my chapters. I always reviewed the chapters you sent me as a reader first ... and was very sympathetic toward Ray. Sometimes it was hard to make Fokoli go after him with determination, to stay true to his character as a writer, when the reader in me wanted to see Ray succeed. Wow, that sounds really schizophrenic!

EB: Either way, it helps that we each like our own characters and each other’s.

I know for Borrowed Trouble we spent some time outlining, but then quickly deviated from that while writing. Not radical differences, I guess; more like taking different roads on the same map. It is a good example of not being too inflexible with an outline--which reminds me, I am so glad we decided to cut the planned epilogue from One Too Many Blows to the Head, [which had] set up Borrowed Trouble. I think just the pressure of knowing that we were already locked into an idea, even though the core of the plot didn’t change; but being tied down to that I think would have stifled our creativity in coming up with the rest of the book. Y’know, the other 90 percent.

JBK: Yeah, epilogues are tough. I’ve read series before that have been out for quite a while. The epilogue in one book is supposed to be the first chapter of the next book, but when the actual “next” book came out the chapter had changed. Someone who read the first book early on and had been waiting for the next installment might not have noticed, but to have both copies in front of me, to finish one and pick up the next and see the change, was frustrating. I can only imagine the writer felt locked into the direction they were going and felt they had to change a thing or two right away when they actually got down to the business of writing the book.

The longer I work as a writer, until there’s an outline that shows a beginning and an end, I can’t really get my characters to move forward. I liked your description earlier: that sometimes we take different paths to get to our destination ... but the destination is known, and that’s really key for me.

EB: Amen, sister. We’re both outliners, another thing that contributes to the success of our partnership. And since we work so similarly in so many ways, the added weirdness of passing ideas over e-mail doesn’t throw a wrench in the works the way you’d think it would.

More often than not the people who tell me they could never write with someone else are talking about being in the same room, and trying to hash out ideas with one person on the keys and one person presumably up pacing and chain-smoking. With us, we still get to write alone in quiet rooms with no one to bother us. It’s ideal. I couldn’t do it the other way either, and I know you couldn’t.

Somehow we’ve lucked into this perfect set-up and are making it work.

It’s funny, but the longer we go, the more superstitious I get about us ever meeting--and the harder it seems to avoid it. One day we’ll end up at the same conference or, fingers crossed, we’ll start to do well enough that people will want us to appear together. At this point I want to protect our anonymity from each other as much as a game as anything else. How long can we sustain it?

JBK: I agree about the perfect writing set-up. We’ll have to hire our own Secret Service if we’re ever at the same conference. They can radio ahead to one another--my guy can call ahead to your guy to have you clear the room. We can sector off the city ahead of time, so we’re sure to avoid the same restaurants and shops. Like you said, a game. Could be fun.

In reality, I’m not sure if never meeting will always be an option for us. It depends on the work we’re doing and the success we have as writers. I think we both take our work seriously enough that we would do whatever was best for whatever book we’re working on.

For now, I like my isolation. I do some writing with my sisters on a blog, and I can tell you that if we all wrote in the same room, we’d never get anything done. As it is, we all live in different states, so it works out just fine. When I write, I need the quiet of my own space where my thoughts can ramble around without suggestions from others, no matter how well-intentioned.

EB: I’m sure we will meet someday, maybe at our kids’ weddings or some event like that. Until then, I hope people get a chance to read what we’ve created over the digital miles.

* * *

ENTER TO WIN A BOOK! As a way of introducing more people to their fiction, authors Beetner and Kohl have generously offered to send one free copy each of Too Many Blows to the Head (set in the seedy underworld of crooked boxing) and Borrowed Trouble (set in the seedy underworld of the movies) to Rap Sheet readers. Here’s how to enter this contest: (1) e-mail your name and snail-mail address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org; (2) along with that information, please tell us the title of your favorite novel or film set in America’s criminal underworld, and include any comments you’d like to make about that book or movie. We’ll post a selection of your submissions in The Rap Sheet.

Oh, and be sure to write “Underworld Contest” in the subject line of your e-mail note. Contest entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Monday, May 2. Winners will be selected at random and their names announced on this page the next day.

Sorry, but this competition is restricted to U.S. residents.

READ MORE: “One Too Many Blows to the Head/Borrowed Trouble,” by Bruce Grossman (Bookgasm).

Crime at the Big Apple’s Core

With an announcement of the 2011 Edgar Award winners expected this coming Thursday night (you’ll find the lists of nominees here), Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared that April 25 through May 2 will be “Mystery Week in New York.” Omnimystery News has posted some of the scheduled highlights here.

On a (Blog) Roll

We’ve added two new blogs to the right-hand column on this page, and encourage you to check them out when you have a spare moment: Tipping My Fedora and In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

Get Your Ballots in Now!

I haven’t decided for sure whether I’ll attend this coming September’s Bouchercon in St. Louis, Missouri. However, several factors incline me in that direction: (1) My British friends Ali Karim and R.J. “Roger” Ellory, who helped make my Bouchercon experience in San Francisco such a delight, will both be attending; (2) my father’s family came from the St. Louis area, so I would welcome the chance to do some genealogical research there; and (3) I have long wanted to visit the small town of Hannibal, about 100 miles to the northwest of St. Louis (a mere care ride away!), where author Mark Twain grew up.

Even if I can’t ultimately go, though, I am going to fill out my ballot for the 2011 Anthony Awards. (Those ballots should have gone to anyone who’s registered for the St. Louis event, or who participated in the San Francisco Bouchercon.) The survey was sent my way weeks ago, asking me to make my picks of the best crime novel published in 2010, the best crime-fiction short story of 2010, last year’s best critical non-fiction related to this genre, and other works worth commending.

I’ve been procrastinating about entering my choices and returning the ballot. But I can’t dawdle much longer. As anyone who received one of these ballots should know, they’re due to be posted by next Saturday, April 30. If you haven’t already sent yours in, please remember to do so within the next few days. If you have questions, drop an e-mail note to jratease@comcast.net, and put “Bouchercon” in the subject line.

The list of nominees will be announced on Wednesday, June 1.

Finding a Future in the Past

(Editor’s note: The following author profile was written by Roberta Alexander, an editor and mystery reviewer in the San Francisco Bay Area. A former fan of Nancy Drew, Alexander is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and can be reached via her Web site.)

Kenneth Wishnia knows about hard work.

The New York professor and novelist spent nearly seven years researching and writing The Fifth Servant (HarperCollins), a mystery set in late-16th-century Prague.

He’d already published five novels (under the byline K.J.A Wishnia), but they had a contemporary setting and featured a female Ecuadorian detective, Filomena Buscarsela.

The Fifth Servant presented a whole new universe. And new challenges. Brought up in a secular household, Wishnia plunged into Jewish history, amassing 1,200 pages of single-spaced notes, three handwritten notebooks, and a 42-inch pile of drafts. The novel, he says, required three years of research and three and a half of writing.

But even as he studied, he had to keep his goal in mind.

“I wanted depth and complexity, but I knew I had to compete in a commercial medium,” he says. “That meant having a body found by page 20 and an ultimatum [threatening Prague’s ghetto community] by page 30.”

A professor of literature and writing at Suffolk Community College on Long Island, Wishnia is well versed in the academic and writing processes. But this book (originally released in 2010, but recently reissued in paperback) made new demands of him. “It was more work than I ever put into anything,” he says. “It was like getting another doctorate. The Fifth Servant is my honorary doctorate.” Among his source material: the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Midrash, Jewish history, and Czech history.

His path toward writing The Fifth Servant started when Wishnia, nominally Jewish but from what he calls “a thoroughly assimilated family,” married a Catholic woman. He decided he wanted to learn about her beliefs and in the process discovered, by reading the New Testament, that he already knew much of it, which he attributes to “living in the U.S., where the dominant culture is overwhelmingly Christian.”

From there he began his studies of Jewish culture, wanting to know what lay beyond the bagels and Woody Allen films of his childhood.

In his latest novel, Wishnia chose to blend fact and fiction, which gives the story many layers of complexity. By focusing on the late 16th century, he was able to incorporate the real-life Rabbi Judah Loew, a well-known scholar and mystic, as well as golems, those amorphous figures of folklore that figured in much of Loew’s writing.

“I found this amazingly democratic society,” Wishnia says of his research. “It was so different from the autocratic churches I knew about. … The Catholic Church is not a democracy.”

In the end, his journey was as invigorating as his destination. “This is the Jewish education I never had,” explains Wishnia. The research also gave him “a previously nonexistent respect” for for rabbinic traditions.

(Left) Author Wishnia at Prague’s Jewish Cemetery.

And make no mistake: life in the Prague ghetto was hard, and danger was never far off. Jews in Central Europe lived on sufferance from whatever ruler was in power. Some of them were tolerant, others were politically astute and a few were bloodthirsty.

In The Fifth Servant, the plot turns on a “blood libel” charge after the corpse of a Christian girl is found in a ghetto shop. (Blood libel is the false, anti-Semitic claim that the blood of children is being sought for use in religious rituals.)

Despite its serious subject matter, the book contains plenty of humor.

“There’s the classic smart-ass Jewish humor, which I imbibed with my mother’s milk,” Wishnia says. “In my contemporary series, the humor is more out there. My character has attitude. But in this, the psychological weight of the blood libel is so heavy, I’ve got to inject a joke here and there.”

Early on, Wishnia thought maybe his manuscript didn’t have enough humor. “But when I read the Spanish version,” he recalls, “I laughed out loud. I astonished myself.”

This was the first time Wishnia modeled a character on his grown autistic son, who is very strong but minimally verbal. The character Yosele is what might be called a village simpleton--powerful, but unable to communicate well. “Yosele’s mannerisms are my son’s. There is more of me in this than people would think,” Wishnia says.

Looking ahead, Wishnia thinks he might want to delve into even older history, setting his next novel in the sixth century BCE. No doubt it will be an education for him as well as his many fans.

READ MORE: “How I Came to Write This Book--Kenneth Wishnia, The Fifth Servant” (Pattinase).

Green for Danger

To help celebrate this Earth Day, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph offers a rundown of environmental mystery novels here.

Return Engagements

There’s a wealth in fine reading material available in today’s Web-wide selections of “forgotten books.” Here are some of the detective fiction and thriller choices: 30 for a Harry, by Richard Hoyt; The Sands of Windee, by Arthur W. Upfield; A Touch of Danger, by James Jones; The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop, by Gladys Mitchell; Dead Man’s Walk, by Richard S. Prather; The Rainy City, by Earl Emerson; Soft Touch, by John D. MacDonald; The French Key Mystery, by Frank Gruber; The IPCRESS File, by Len Deighton; Footprints on the Ceiling, by Clayton Rawson; Grim Pickings, by Jennifer Rowe; The Troubleshooter, by Austin S. Camacho; Quarantined, by Joe McKinney; and a related non-fiction work, Crime Scenes: Movie Poster Art of the Film Noir, The Classic Period (1941-1959), by Lawrence Bassoff.

To find a complete list of this week’s participating bloggers, plus Ed Gorman’s review of The Vengeful Virgin, by Gil Brewer (which I agree is a splendid read), click here.

A New Flag Worth Saluting

Today I introduce the spiffy new banner head shown above in my other blog, Killer Covers. It’s the work of New Jersey freelance illustrator Rob Kelly, who I’ve mentioned before on this page in relation to his faux-vintage book cover concepts. In addition to debuting this new blog banner, I’ve interviewed Kelly on the subjects of his background in illustration, his favorite old paperback fronts, and his hope to add more book-cover creations to his résumé in the near future.

You can read our exchange and see some of his other work here.

Second Sighting

My review of Stolen Lives (Soho Press), Jassy Mackenzie’s second South Africa-set detective novel, following last year’s Random Violence, appears today at the Kirkus Reviews site. It begins:

After flip-flopping politicians, tax-complaining millionaires and Charlie Sheen, second novels might be the easiest targets for critical skewering. Well-received literary introductions have a way of sucking the excitement right out of whatever books trail them. Second entries in crime-fiction series face the same challenges. The familiar grumble is that the author poured everything he or she had into the original book, and the sophomore endeavor lacks the same energy and commitment. Thus, for instance, Martin Cruz Smith’s Polar Star (1989) foundered in the wake of Gorky Park (1981), Caleb Carr’s The Angel of Darkness (1997) was met with yawns by many admirers of The Alienist (1994) and Rennie Airth’s The Blood-Dimmed Tide (2004) never attained the high-water mark of acclaim set by its hypnotic predecessor, River of Darkness (1999).

Jassy Mackenzie’s Stolen Lives, though, manages to dodge that curse. In fact, for my money, this second Jade de Jong detective novel outshines her debut.

You’ll find the full critique here. Let me know what you think.

No Laughing Matter

This is pretty exciting news: Hard Case Crime has announced “the discovery of an unpublished novel by acclaimed mystery writer Donald E. Westlake. The Comedy Is Finished, which Hard Case Crime will publish as its lead title in 2012, tells the story of an aging, politically conservative comedian kidnapped by a domestic terrorist group that threatens to kill him unless the government frees some of their imprisoned comrades.”

The Comedy Is Finished--with its fabulous cover illustration by Greg Manchess--is due out in hardcover next February. Read more about that novel here. And you’ll find a sample chapter here.

READ MORE: “From the Basement It Arises,” by Max Allan Collins.

Oh, and Thanks for the Meals

Geoff Miller, the shrewd and genial founding editor of what’s now Los Angeles Magazine, and the man who for three decades gave many wordsmiths (including me) the chance to write and survive in Southern California, died on Saturday, according to L.A. Observed (via The Wrap). Miller passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, brought down by progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disease. He was 74 years old.

In my favorite line from the various obits celebrating Miller’s life and legend, Miller is credited with getting prominent writers “to agree to do some of their best work for almost no money by providing them with a journalistic freedom they rarely found in other publications of the day--as well as with frequent three-martini lunches.”

Good-bye, old friend (and provider of small but welcome checks).

Doyle Me In

It’s awfully early to start thinking about Christmas presents, I know. But the publication of A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon (Bantam), edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, seems perfectly timed to make it a gift for lovers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective fiction. It’s due out near the end of October.

Here’s King’s status report on the collection:

The last of the stories for A Study in Sherlock have come in--Les Klinger and I read them, made some small changes, and now we’ve sent the manuscript off to Random House: Whee!

And the best part? They’re all fabulous. Absolutely great.

Neil Gaiman writes about bees, China, and A Certain Beekeeper. Tom Perry set his story in 1901 Buffalo, New York. S.J. Rozan’s is built around “The Man With the Crooked Lip.” Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak meets “The Eyak Interpreter.” Colin Cotterill did us a graphic story--that’s graphic as in drawings, not as in overt gore. And the 90 files he sent his story in has given Random House a ... challenge (better them than me, thank heavens). And by way of bonus, Les Klinger and I did an introduction--plus, there’s Twinterview (an interview, in 140 characters) between Les and Mary Russell!

Other contributors to A Study in Sherlock include Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Thomas Perry, Jacqueline Winspear, and Charles Todd.

It almost makes you wish Christmas was just around the corner. Almost.

Lost His Marbles

Beat to a Pulp’s fresh short-story offering for this week is called “For Keepsies,” and it comes from New Yorker Terrie Farley Moran.

His Life Was a Business Expense

From The New York Times Book Review:

Edmund Wilson was the leading literary critic of his generation. He was also an accomplished tax delinquent. From 1946 to 1955, Wilson did not file any income tax returns. Taxes were withheld from his salary at The New Yorker, but the proceeds from his best-selling novel “Memoirs of Hecate County” and other freelance work went to pay for his two divorces, three children and various houses. The Internal Revenue Service eventually caught up with him, hitting him with some $68,000 in back taxes and penalties. Even after his death in 1972, his wife was still dealing with the paperwork.

Wilson’s friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr. would later blame the mess on a “drunken lawyer.” But in “The Cold War and the Income Tax,” a blistering polemic published in 1963, Wilson saw more sinister forces at work. His own ordeal, he argued, was just one example of the “high tide of taxation” that was engulfing ordinary citizens and feeding our “frantic” nuclear rivalry with the Soviet Union. He was particularly irate about I.R.S. rules on deductions, which he deemed insensitive to writers. “It is difficult, at my time of life, to think of anything that I do or anywhere that I go which could not be called a business expense,” he wrote, sounding less like a lifelong man of the left than like Ron Paul. “It is an insufferable impertinence of the federal government to ask why I have entertained my guests or why I have chosen to travel--to say nothing of how many times I have been married, whom I have voted for and whether or not I buy my dog a bed.”

(Hat tip to Sarah Weinman.)

Son of a Grouch

One of the first books I reviewed for The New York Times was Son of Groucho (1972), the second volume that tennis player and author Arthur Marx wrote about his famous father. That came to mind as I read that Arthur died at his Los Angeles home this last Thursday at age 89.

In his Times obituary of the younger Marx, William Grimes recalls:

His own show-business career was varied and long, writing Hollywood screenplays and scripts for some of television’s most popular sitcoms. ...

But his father’s life and career provided Mr. Marx with perhaps his richest source of material. “Life With Groucho,” published in 1954, captivated readers with its sharp but affectionate portrait of Groucho--who peppered the narrative with kibitzing footnote[s]--and its shrewd account of the show-business milieu in which he thrived. A sequel, “Son of Groucho,” was published in 1972. ...

Taken together, Arthur Marx’s two books about his father offered a bittersweet picture of life in the Marx home. He described himself as desperate both to escape from his father’s shadow and to please him, an impossible task. The comic genius who kept millions in stitches was, in his private life, miserly and emotionally distant.

“No matter how much he loves you, he’ll rarely stick up for you,” Mr. Marx wrote in “Son of Groucho.” “He’ll make some sort of wisecrack instead to keep from getting involved. It’s a form of cowardice that can be more frustrating than his monetary habits.”

READ MORE: “Arthur Marx Obituary,” by Michael Carlson (The Guardian).

UPDATE: Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site notes that, in addition to being a biographer and memoirist, Arthur Marx “also wrote several novels, including three mystery novels: Set to Kill (Barricade, 1993); Tulip (PublishAmerica, 2004); and Lust for Death (PublishAmerica, 2008).”

Now Only Memories Remain

(Editor’s note: UK crime novelist and scholar H.R.F. Keating died on March 27 at age 84, but it wasn’t until today that he was finally laid to rest. His friend and fellow author, Mike Ripley, was among the mourners and brings us this brief report on the event.)

The funeral took place today of British crime writer H.R.F. “Harry” Keating, at Mortlake Crematorium in west London, on the banks of the river Thames.

Baroness P.D. James gave the opening tribute, recounting her friendship with Harry and praising not only his Inspector Ghote as one of the “great creations of detective fiction,” but also his work as a critic and reviewer of crime novels and the many books he wrote outside the crime genre.

Family tributes came from his widow, Sheila (who wore Harry’s Cartier Diamond Dagger pin in his memory), as well as their children: Simon, Bryony, Piers, and Hugo.

Many colleagues from The Detection Club and the Crime Writers’ Association attended, including Margaret Yorke, Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey, Donald Rumbelow, and Andrew Taylor.

At numerous times during the remembrance service, reference was made to Harry’s pleasure at being seen as something of an eccentric. To celebrate this, those attending were asked to sing not a dirge or a hymn, but Harry’s favorite Christmas Carol, “Good King Wenceslas”!

Bullet Points: Tax Day Edition

• In his blog, Squeezegut Alley, Nicolas Pillai offers up a pleasant remembrance of the film scores from two classic private-eye pictures: Harper (1966), starring Paul Newman in a story based on Ross Macdonald’s first novel; and The Long Goodbye (1973), featuring Elliott Gould as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

• Among today’s offerings of “forgotten books” posts are mentioned these works of crime and espionage fiction: Nice Weekend for a Murder, by Max Allan Collins; The Baby Game, by Randall Hicks; Night Judgment at Sinos, by Jack Higgins; The Hog’s Back Mystery, by Freeman Wills Crofts; Blue Octavo and Broken Boy, both by John Blackburn; and Double in Trouble, by Richard S. Prather and Stephen Marlowe. A full list of this week’s participating bloggers is available here.

• I’m sure I have never once seen the 1957-1958 TV series, Decoy. But since it was apparently “the first American TV series to feature, as its main character, a policewoman”--played by Beverly Garland--I really ought to try and get my hands on the show sometime.

• The USA Network announces its Summer 2011 broadcast schedule.

• Which reminds me, USA’s two-hour Burn Notice prequel film, The Fall of Sam Axe, starring Bruce Campbell, will air this coming Sunday, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PST. Click here to watch a preview.

• Meanwhile, TV Squad offers a peek at Sunday’s episode of The Killing, the AMC series that has won fans among Rap Sheet writers.

• If you’re planning to be in California’s central coast region in mid-June, and are interested in learning more about independent e-book publishing, here’s the ideal “five-day intensive” for you. This workshop will be taught by January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards and the mag’s exceptional art director, David Middleton. For more information, e-mail here or call 250-539-9845.

• Nearly every Congressional Republican voted today in favor of a budget plan that “eliminates Medicare, guts Medicaid, slashes funding for key domestic priorities, and lavishes another massive tax break on millionaires and billionaires,” explains The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen. “The whole initiative is sold as a deficit reduction plan, but it doesn’t actually reduce the deficit--it just shrinks government and transfers wealth from the bottom up, imposing cruelty on elderly, disabled, and working families.” Salon’s Steve Kornacki notes that “Democrats are already promising to use this vote as the basis for their effort to win back the House in 2012.” With good reason: Medicare’s an extremely popular program, even within the GOP. Maybe somebody should remind would-be presidential candidate Rick Santorum of that, too. More on the potential consequences of today’s vote here.

• R.I.P., Walter Bruening, the world’s oldest man, who died this last Thursday at age 114. Yes, you read that right: 114.

• Also gone to that great reading room in the sky is Gerald Perry Finnerman, described as “the primary director of photography for Star Trek and then, two decades later, Moonlighting. In between came Night Gallery, The Bold Ones, Kojak, Police Woman, and a number of TV movies (he won an Emmy for 1978′s Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women).” Finnerman passed away on April 6 at age 79.

• McMillan & Wife fans, take note: The Web site TV Shows on DVD has the release schedule for seasons 2 through 6 of that NBC Mystery Movie series, plus box art for seasons 4 and 5. As a formerly huge fan of McMillan & Wife, which starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, I anticipate these sets will soon be appearing on my gift wish lists. (Hat tip to Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.)

• Author-signing technology for the e-book era.

• In anticipation of Passover, which evidently begins on Monday of next week, Janet Rudolph has updated her rundown of mystery fiction appropriate to the holiday.

• Peter Andrew Leonard of The Man Eating Bookworm has devoted this week to championing Blake Crouch, author of the recent thriller Run.

• Speaking of fan tributes, Existential Ennui has spent the last few days gushing over books by American author Ross Thomas (1926-1995).

• Arizona builds on its reputation for nuttiness.

• Allan Guthrie interviews Steve Mosby (Black Flowers), while Jen Forbus interrogates Alafair Burke, author of the forthcoming Long Gone.

• Lee Goldberg has compiled all four of his Jury novels, featuring Brett Macklin (“a one-man judge, jury, and executioner, fighting a war on terror on the streets of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s”), into a single volume. The Jury Series comes in a print edition or as an e-book. Goldberg originally published this series under the pseudonym Ian Ludlow.

• Independent publishers Severn House, Canongate Books, and Granta Publications will now be digitally distributed by Ingram’s CoreSource.

• And a year after it was relegated to back-burner status, Spinetingler Magazine’s Brian Lindenmuth seems to have reinvigorated his series, “Conversations with the Bookless.” His latest subjects include Matthew Funk, Chris Holm, and Matthew McBride.

Tournament of Tension

The International Thriller Writers (ITW) today announced the nominees for its 2011 Thriller Awards as follows ...

Best Hardcover Novel:

• The Reversal, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

• Edge, by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster)

• The Burying Place, by Brian Freeman (Minotaur)

• Skin, by Mo Hayder (Grove)

• Bad Blood, by John Sanford (Putnam)

Best Paperback Original:
• Down Among the Dead Men, by Robert Gregory Browne (St. Martin’s)

• You Can’t Stop Me, by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens (Pinnacle)

• The Cold Room, by J.T. Ellison (Mira)

• Torn Apart, by Shane Gericke (Pinnacle)

• The Venice Conspiracy, by John Trace (Hachette Digital)

Best First Novel:
• The Things That Keep Us Here, by Carla Buckley (Random House)

• The Poacher’s Son, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• The Insider, by Reece Hirsch (Berkley)

• Drink the Tea, by Thomas Kaufman (Minotaur)

• Still Missing, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s)

Best Short Story:

• “Second Wind,” by Mike Carey (from The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology, edited by Christopher Golden; St. Martin's)

• “Blue on Black,” by Michael Connelly (The Strand Magazine)

• “The Gods for Vengeance Cry,” by Richard Helms (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

• “Madeeda,” by Harley Jane Kozak (from Crimes By Midnight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley)

• “Chasing the Dragon,” by Nicolas Kaufman (ChiZine Magazine)

• “Long Time Dead,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (The Strand Magazine)

Winners will be announced during ThrillerFest VI, to be held at New York City’s Grand Hyatt Hotel from July 6 to 9.

Mixing with a Master

When you’ve banged on about a fine Southern California writer like John Shannon as many times as I have, you’re bound to find yourself making the same points and/or jokes on occasion. Some editors (you know who you are) worry about such things. Get over it.

For example, I think that first time I delivered this particular line was in The Rap Sheet:

In 1999, some silly bastard wrote: “The hands-down winner in the ‘Where Is the Next Raymond Chandler Coming From?’ sweepstakes--[this honor belongs] to The Cracked Earth, by John Shannon ...”

That silly bastard was me, of course. But was I writing for the august digital journal you’re now reading? Or was it maybe for my own humble blog, or for the Chicago Tribune or the Los Angeles Times, before they became bound at the bum?

No matter. The point is that I’ve reveled ever since in the skills--wit, action, acid humor, heartbreaking characters--on full display in Shannon’s books about Jack Liffey, the aerospace writer turned Los Angeles private detective and finder of lost children. The first few installments of that series (beginning with 1998’s The Concrete River) were Berkley paperback originals of an unusually high literary caliber, which opened my eyes and provoked me to arrange a breakfast interview with the author at the Firehouse restaurant on Main Street in Santa Monica. Out of that exchange evolved the Suicide Club (named after a cycle of Robert Louis Stevenson short stories), whose members met at the Farmers Market in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday mornings, our ranks eventually growing to include Dick Lochte, Richard Brewer, Tom Nolan, Gary Phillips, the late and much-missed Bruce Cook (aka Bruce Alexander), and our most gorgeous member, Twist Phelan.

Now comes the 13th entry in the Liffey series, A Little Too Much, just out from that smart British publisher, Severn House. Here’s some of what Booklist’s Bill Ott had to say about the novel in a starred review:

It starts out as a simple missing-persons case--find a marquee-caliber but notoriously troublesome African-American actor who has disappeared in the middle of a shoot. But soon enough L.A. private investigator Jack Liffey is doing what he always does, trying desperately to help set the world right: “He wished he were three of four different people so he could watch over everything that needed watching over.” Maybe five or six would be good this time, as the watching over includes not only the actor, who is suffering from schizophrenia while trying to find his father, a former ’60s radical turned drug dealer who is also in desperate need of help. Also in jeopardy are Jack’s daughter, Maeve, now a UCLA student; his live-in lover, Gloria, who is undergoing a midlife crisis that has landed her in the bed of a detective friend of Jack’s; and a good-hearted Jamaican who has fallen into the employ of a drug kingpin.

“I’m not much of a detective,” says Jack at one point, “but I keep coming. That’s my virtue ...”

Since my own first piece about Liffey, I have been joined by a ragtag bunch of reviewers in praising Shannon’s work--everyone from Michael Connelly and Kent Anderson to Mike Davis and Clancy Sigal. Shannon was also the first author I knew personally who made the daunting jump from writing paperback originals to being published in hardcover. Other Liffey titles include Palos Verdes Blue, The Devils of Bakersfield, The Dark Streets, City of Strangers, and Terminal Island.

It’s hard not to become fond of somebody like Liffey, whose life has taken some substantial turns since he gave up penning technical manuals, fell into the private-eye game, and began building a new relationship with the daughter separated from him by divorce. “His satisfactions now,” writes Shannon, “lay in disdain and self-control, in his resistance to all the easy compensations that had once sustained him--cigarettes or drugs or drink or even the tough, edgy novels he had once read endlessly and that now seemed to be weirdly leaking back into his world.”

But let’s hear a few words from Jack himself.

About a South American drug-runner named Jhon Orteguaza: “Jhon had been her only child, an accident of religious intoxication from dancing too near a tall, handsome Colombian wrestler.”

About his latest assignment: “It was probably the strangest job that had ever swept Jack Liffey into its orbit, and that was saying a lot. His worries had begun in earnest just after his wife (his live-in womanfriend, to be accurate, though he had begged her many times to marry him) had taken herself off for a while with a lover, his daughter had just about got herself killed by L.A. SWAT as she was so characteristically trying to rescue a crazy armed kid at UCLA, and a Colombian drug-runner’s gang had dropped out of the blue and were running wild in town, shooting, bombing, and maiming so outrageously that they pushed the sexual scandals of a TV preacher right off the news.”

About his daughter: “Maeve came back and hugged her father more reticently than he was used to. He supposed that was just part of the long slow separation of the lander module from the main spacecraft. He knew, in fact, with great pride, that she was a far better human being in many ways than he was.”

And about the Hollywood studio bosses for whom he’s working:

“You probably never heard of it, but there’s this damn book by a guy named Chester Himes called If He Hollers Let Him Go ...”

Jack Liffey let out a slow breath. It was like being told they were making Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. No sane Hollywood studio would try it. He couldn’t help saying it. “Yeah, I know the book. What were you people thinking? It’s the angriest book about the black American experience that’s ever been written.”

Last year, when Shannon’s On the Nickel was released by Severn House, I declared that it was the finest book he had published. Well, I have to amend that. We have a new champ in A Little Too Much.

Fame Was in the Cards

Another worthy reminder, this one coming from The Sly Oyster: It was on this date in 1953 that Ian Fleming’s very first James Bond spy novel, Casino Royale (aka You Asked for It) was published in Britain.