Monday, April 30, 2012

Pierce’s Picks: “The Solitary House”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Solitary House, by Lynn Shepherd (Delacorte Press):
Carrying on from her initial work of historical suspense, 2010’s Murder at Mansfield Park (yes, that’s a witty reworking of Jane Austen’s 1814 novel), British writer Shepherd this time presents a haunting literary homage to both Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. The year is 1850. The place, London. Charles Maddox, recently expelled from the Metropolitan Police force for insubordination, has taken up a far less steady career as a private inquiry agent, with help from his great-uncle, a renowned “thief-taker” of the same name (who, by the way, was the detective hero of Murder at Mansfield Park). In The Solitary House, the former copper is hired by Edward Tulkinghorn, one of the city’s most intimidating attorneys, who wants him to put a quick end to a stream of menacing missives sent to financier Sir Julius Cremorne. Maddox, however, is also occupied with a second case, involving the grandchild of a man who long ago booted his pregnant daughter from his life. As Maddox struggles with these tasks--assignments made all the more daunting when he encounters difficulty in gaining access to Victorian power brokers, and when his efforts on Tulkinghorn’s behalf appear to leave corpses in their wake--he realizes that he can depend on his great-uncle’s help only so far, for the elder Maddox is slipping into age-associated mental illness. Shepherd’s representation of mid-19th-century London is fascinating and often frightening, and one needn’t be a Dickens scholar to appreciate The Solitary House (UK title: Tom-All-Alone’s).

Two other new mystery titles to keep an eye out for this week: The Lola Quartet, by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled Books), about a film-noir-obsessed young journalist who returns to his Florida hometown in search of a 10-year-old who may be his daughter by his high-school girlfriend; and The Stonecutter, by Swedish author Camilla Läckberg (Pegasus), in which Detective Patrik Hedström probes the tragic case of a small girl found in a fisherman’s net, whose death throws a sinister light on an isolated resort town.

Once Around the Blog Block

• This is the final day of Gerald So’s “30 Days of the 5-2 Blog Tour,” which has been celebrating National Poetry Month, crime-fiction-oriented verse, and So’s own blog, The 5-2, ever since the beginning of April. If you haven’t been following closely, rest assured: You can find links to all of the associated posts here.

• Check out The Thrilling Detective’s list of 14 “brilliant but cancelled” TV private-eye TV series, which includes The Outsider, City of Angels, Leg Work, and Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.

Mr. Poe’s deservedly forgotten mystery?

• What a funny and downright wonderful idea for a blog: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. I wish I’d thought of it.

Turning murder into a tourism draw.

• I’d wondered what ever became of Edgar Award winner Wendy Hornsby ... It seems all five of her Maggie MacGowen novels and two of her Kate and Tejeda books have recently been re-released as e-books by The Mysterious Press.

• And at the Mysterious Press site, Gary Phillips recalls what led him to write Violent Springs (1994), his first Ivan Monk novel.

• This last weekend brought the 45th anniversary of Expo 67, the often elegantly designed Montreal world’s fair that first got me interested in such events--both modern and historical.

Still holding out for that storied Matt Helm movie ...

• The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal focuses on stories set in France, and includes an essay by J. Robert Janes, whose long-awaited 13 book featuring World War II-era investigators Hermann Kohler and Jean-Louis St-Cyr, Bellringer, is set to be released on June 5. Kohler and St-Cyr first appeared in Mayhem (1992).

“The most belligerent newspaper apology ever?”

• For the Mystery*File blog, Josef Hoffmann chooses what he says are “the 12 best essays on crime fiction.” They include Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder,” Ross Macdonald’s “The Writer As Detective Hero,” and Stephen King’s “Warning! Warning! Hitchhikers May Be Escaped Lunatics!” (that last piece being a “very direct and frank, rather personal, full insight into Jim Thompson’s work from the viewpoint of a famous storyteller”).

Investigating Nancy Drew’s late mother.

• Did you know that David Simon, creator of the HBO-TV series The Wire (in addition to being author Laura Lippman’s husband), is now composing a blog called The Audacity of Despair?

The 10 most corrupt movie cops?

• Last spring, the blog Tipping My Fedora produced an idiosyncratic list of the top 100 mystery novels of all time. Now, blogger Yvette Banek has published a rundown of “101 Favorite Mysteries and/or Thrillers.” The temptation to assemble my own such list is tempting, but as I’ve written before, it would be no easy task.

• Patrick deWitt’s western-flavored crime novel, The Sisters Brothers, has won this year’s Oregon Book Award for Fiction.

• President Obama learns to make right-wing craziness work for him.

• The Pulp Factory, “an Internet group made up of over one hundred pulp enthusiasts, some professional writers and artists,” handed out its third annual Pulp Factor Awards in Chicago over the weekend.

Here’s the schedule for the 10th Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, slated to take place in Harrogate, England, from July 19 to 22. Sigh ... I wish I could go.

• Jack Balestreri, “believed to have been the last survivor of the thousands of workers who built” San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge, died earlier this month at age 95.

• And get those DVD player ready! The complete runs of Yancy Derringer (1958-1959) and 87th Precinct (1961-1962) are both due out in stores this coming August.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Presence of Malice

This is proving to be a big time for crime-fiction prize presentations.

As you likely know, the Crime Writers of Canada announced the shortlists for its annual Arthur Ellis Awards a little over a week ago. The Mystery Writers of America handed out its Edgar Awards this last Thursday night. Winners of the 2012 Spinetingler Awards are set to be rolled out on Tuesday, May 1.

And the announcement of this year’s Agatha Awards recipients was made last night during a banquet at the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland. The winners are:

Best Novel: Three-Day Town, by Margaret Maron (Grand Central Publishing)

Also nominated: The Real Macaw, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur); The Diva Haunts the House, by Krista Davis (Berkley); Wicked Autumn, by G.M. Malliet (Minotaur); and A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best First Novel: Learning to Swim, by Sara J. Henry (Broadway)

Also nominated: Dire Threads, by Janet Bolin (Berkley); Choke, by Kaye George (Mainly Murder Press); Who Do, Voodoo?, by Rochelle Staab (Berkley); and Tempest in the Tea Leaves, by Kari Lee Townsend (Berkley)

Best Non-fiction: Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure, by Leslie Budewitz (Linden Publishing)

Also nominated: Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks, by John Curran (Harper); On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling, by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press); Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel, by A.B. Emrys (McFarland); and The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, by Charlaine Harris (Ace)

Best Short Story:Disarming,” by Dana Cameron (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Also nominated: “Dead Eye Gravy,” by Krista Davis (from Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology, edited by Ramona DeFelice Long; Wildside Press); “Palace by the Lake,” by Daryl Wood Gerber (from Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology); “Truth and Consequences,” by Barb Goffman (from Mystery Times Ten, edited by MaryChris Bradley; Buddhapuss Ink); and “The Itinerary,” by Roberta Isleib (from Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead, edited by Nelson DeMille; Grand Central Publishing)

Best Children’s/Young Adult: The Black Heart Crypt, by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Books for Young Readers)

Also nominated: Shelter, by Harlan Coben (Putnam Juvenile); Icefall, by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press); The Wizard of Dark Street, by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (EgmontUSA); and The Code Busters Club, Case #1: The Secret of the Skeleton Key, by Penny Warner (EgmontUSA)

Best Historical Novel: Naughty in Nice, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

Also nominated: Murder Your Darlings, by J.J. Murphy (Signet); Mercury’s Rise, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press); Troubled Bones, by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur); and A Lesson in Secrets, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

Three other awards were also given out last evening:

Lifetime Achievement Award -- Simon Brett
Poirot Award -- Lee Goldberg
Amelia Award -- Elizabeth Peters

Congratulations to all of this year’s awards contenders.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

* * *

Meanwhile, Omnimystery News brings word that two works of crime fiction were among yesterday’s winners of the 2012 Manitoba Books Awards: The Thirteen, by Susie Moloney (Random House), picked up “a special genre fiction award named for Winnipeg mystery author Michael Van Rooy, who died last year”; and The Girl in the Wall, by Alison Preston (Signature Editions), walked away with the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction.

READ MORE:Malice -- Day 1” and “Malice Domestic 25: Something to Look Forward To,” by Les Blatt (Classic Mysteries); “Home Again,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life).

Deadline: Mañana

Heads up, all you procrastinators! Tomorrow, April 30, marks your last chance to vote in this year’s Spinetingler Awards competition. The full list of nominees is here. And click here to cast your ballot.

Winners are to be announced this coming Tuesday, May 1.

Friday, April 27, 2012

That’s a Whole Lot of Candles

Happy birthday to American actor Jack Klugman, star of The Odd Couple and Quincy, M.E., who today turns 90 years old.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Edgars Have Been Loosed

During a “gala banquet” held tonight in New York City, the Mystery Writers of America handed out its Edgar Awards for 2012. Here are the fortunate winners as well as the other contenders.

Best Novel: Gone, by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic)

Also nominated: The Ranger, by Ace Atkins (Putnam); The Devotion of Suspect X, by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur); 1222, by Anne Holt (Scribner); and Field Gray, by Philip Kerr (Putnam/Marion Wood)

Best First Novel by an American Author: Bent Road,
by Lori Roy (Dutton)

Also nominated: Red on Red, by Edward Conlon (Spiegel & Grau); Last to Fold, by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne); All Cry Chaos, by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press); and Purgatory Chasm, by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne)

Best Paperback Original: The Company Man, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)

Also nominated: The Faces of Angels, by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press); The Dog Sox, by Russell Hill (Caravel Mystery Books); Death of the Mantis, by Michael Stanley (Harper); and Vienna Twilight, by Frank Tallis (Random House)

Best Fact Crime: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, by Candice
Millard (Doubleday)

Also nominated: The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars, by Paul Collins (Crown); The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge, by T.J. English (Morrow); Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, by Steve Miller (Berkley); and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter, by Mark Seal (Viking)

Best Critical/Biographical: On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling, by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press)

Also nominated: The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of Our Time, by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer and John-Henri Holmberg (St. Martin’s Griffin); Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making, by John Curran (HarperCollins); Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film, by Philippa Gates (SUNY Press); and Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie, by Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick (University of Illinois Press)

Best Short Story: “The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train,” by Peter Turnbull (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM])

Also nominated: “Marley’s Revolution,” by John C. Boland (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine); “Tomorrow’s Dead,” by David Dean (EQMM); “The Adakian Eagle,” by Bradley Denton (from Down These Strange Streets, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois; Ace Books); “Lord John and the Plague of Zombies,” by Diana Gabaldon (from Down These Strange Streets); and “The Case of Death and Honey,” by Neil Gaiman (from A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger; Bantam)

Best Juvenile: Icefall, by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press)

Also nominated: Horton Halfpott, by Tom Angleberger (Amulet); It Happened on a Train, by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers); Vanished, by Sheela Chari (Disney Hyperion); and The Wizard of Dark Street, by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA)

Best Young Adult: The Silence of Murder, by Dandi Daley Mackall (Knopf Young Readers)

Also nominated: Shelter, by Harlan Coben (Putnam Juvenile); The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson (Putnam Juvenile); The Girl Is Murder, by Kathryn Miller Haines (Roaring Creek Press); and Kill You Last, by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA)

Best Play: The Game’s Afoot, by Ken Ludwig (Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland, Ohio)

Also nominated: Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, by Jeffrey Hatcher (Arizona Theatre Company, Phoenix, Arizona)

Best Television Episode Teleplay: “Pilot,” Homeland, teleplay by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff (Showtime)

Also nominated: “Innocence,” Blue Bloods, teleplay by Siobhan Byrne O’Connor (CBS Productions); “The Life Inside,” Justified, teleplay by Benjamin Cavell (FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television); “Part 1,” Whitechapel, teleplay by Ben Court and Caroline Ip (BBC America); and Mask,” Law & Order: SVU, teleplay by Speed Weed (Wolf Films/Universal Media Studios)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“A Good Man of Business,” by David Ingram (EQMM)

Grand Master: Martha Grimes

Raven Awards:
M is for Mystery Bookstore, San Mateo, California
Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries

Ellery Queen Award:
Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group

The Simon & Schuster-Mary Higgins Clark Award: Learning to Swim, by Sara J. Henry (Crown)

Also nominated: Now You See Me, by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur); Come and Find Me, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow); Death on Tour, by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur); and Murder Most Persuasive, by Tracy Kiely (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne)

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

The Story Behind the Story:
“The Inquisitor’s Key,” by Jefferson Bass

(Presenting the 33rd entry in our “Story Behind the Story” series.)

This particular “Story Behind the Story” essay has a backstory: The new crime thriller The Inquisitor’s Key is by New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bass ... but the fact is, there’s no such person as Jefferson Bass. Jefferson Bass is a pen name for journalist-documentary filmmaker Jon Jefferson and forensic anthropologist-god Bill Bass, founder of the “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. Ten years ago, Jefferson and Bass collaborated on Death’s Acre, a non-fiction memoir (jointly bylined) about Bass’ career and murder cases--and about his macabre research facility, which performs groundbreaking studies of postmortem human decomposition and time-since-death determinations. Buoyed by the success of that book, Jefferson persuaded Bass to let him pitch a series of crime novels based on the Body Farm (featuring a Bill Bass doppelgänger named Bill Brockton). HarperCollins imprint William Morrow snapped up the proposal, but Morrow’s editor asked Jefferson and Bass to come up with a pen name ... and in the spirit of equal partnership, “Jefferson Bass” was born. The division of labor is simple: Bass provides the forensic brains and bona fides (bone fides?) and Jefferson provides the words. So this “Story Behind the Story” comes from Jon Jefferson’s keyboard ...

* * *

The year was 1998. I’d recently started writing and producing documentaries for A&E, the Arts & Entertainment Network, and I’d just been handed the best of projects and the worst of projects: a two-hour A&E special about the Vatican. Cool subject; gorgeous footage; serious script problems. Three other writer-producers had already come to grief on the shoals of the project; it was a high-budget, high-stakes, and high-likelihood-of-failure gig. The production company I was working for had somehow wrangled a backstage pass to shoot in the Vatican, but the shoot had to be done quickly. There was no shooting script; there wasn’t even an outline for the show. The initial crew was sent to Rome with instructions to “shoot everything.” The only plan was to figure out a plan later, once the footage was in hand

Some months (and some writer-producers) later, the footage and the project got dumped on me ... er, I mean, entrusted to me. After much research (and much head-scratching), I came up with a script called “The Vatican Revealed,” a title vague enough to allow us to cherry-pick--I mean, “reveal”--choice morsels of history, art, architecture, and even modern Machiavellian maneuvering (Pope John Paul II’s part in toppling the Communist empire--a topic on which I got to interview legendary journalist Carl Bernstein!)

But the footage we had--somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours of footage--didn’t add up to the script I’d written, so we begged for (and got) Vatican permission to go back briefly. We shot in catacombs. Roman ruins. The Vatican Library. The Vatican Museums. On the way home, almost as an afterthought, we made a quick side trip to a small city in southern France--Avignon--which I’d never heard of before this project. During the 1200s and early 1300s, I learned, Italy was ravaged by a deadly feud between two factions, the Guelphs and Gibellines (imagine the Hatfields and the McCoys wearing tights, speaking Italian, and wielding daggers rather than shotguns). So when a French pope was elected in 1305, the papacy soon relocated to a town in Provence called Avignon

When Pope Clement V arrived in 1309, he commandeered the local bishop’s palace--cramped, makeshift quarters in which Clement and two successors made do, until 1334. In that year--while still claiming that the papacy was in Avignon only “temporarily”--Pope Benedict XII began work on more spacious quarters. Considerably more spacious quarters: the “Palace of the Popes” was (and remains) the biggest Gothic palace in Europe. And Avignon itself grew by leaps and bounds, its population soaring from about 3,000 in 1309 to some 50,000 in 1348

(Left) Front image of the mysterious Shroud of Turin

I arrived in Avignon 650 years after that--in 1998, with a camera crew in tow--and I was instantly blown away. The papal palace was misnamed: that sucker was a Mighty Fortress, protected by massive towers and soaring battlements, complete with arrow-slits for archers, and openings through which boiling oil could be poured down on sinful attackers. The papal court wasn’t just formidable, I learned, but lavish, too, with an annual budget 10 times the size of the royal court of France

For a small-town boy from Alabama (i.e., moi), Avignon was eye-popping. After two days of shooting--in the immense audience hall, the cathedral-sized “private” chapel, the fresco-filled walls, the heavily fortified treasure chamber--I left Avignon bewitched and bedazzled. I’ve got to come back someday, I thought. I’m not finished here yet; don’t wanna be, anyhow.
 
Thirteen years later, in the spring of 2011, I returned. No camera crew this time; just my lovely, smart wife ... and an idea for a crime novel that would link the majesty, mystery, and power plays of medieval Avignon with modern-day murder and forensic science. What if a mysterious set of bones was found in the Palace of the Popes, I thought, hidden there in the 14th century--bones that could be the archaeological find of the millennium? Who might be dying--or, rather, who might be killing--to lay their hands on those bones? As the idea took root and grew, and as I delved into the 14th-century backstory that I wanted to link to a modern murder in Avignon, I also realized that the 14th century spawned one of the greatest mysteries of all time: the mystery of the Shroud of Turin, the world’s most famous religious relic, revered by millions as the burial shroud of Jesus. The Shroud made its first indisputable appearance in the 1350s in the small town of Lirey, France ... not too far from Avignon! Might there be a connection between this haunting relic and the powerful papal court, which had become a magnet for artists from throughout Europe? The possibilities were fascinating ..

One lovely lesson I learned from writing The Inquisitor’s Key is to pay attention to that subtle but insistent tug on the sleeve of my mind--my subconscious mind, for years, and then finally (thank goodness) my conscious mind. Actually, by the end, it wasn’t a subtle tug on my sleeve; it was more like a two-by-four whopping me upside the head. I saw stars. And I remain dazzled.

Prepping for CrimeFest

In advance of CrimeFest, the annual crime-fiction convention set to take place this year in Bristol, England, from May 24 to 27, organizers have released the shortlists of nominees for the 2012 CrimeFest Awards in four categories:

Best Abridged Crime Audiobook:
The Affair, by Lee Child; read by Kerry Shale
(Random House Audiobooks)
First Frost, by James Henry; read by David Jason
(Random House Audiobooks)
The Payback, by Simon Kernick; read by Daniel Weyman
(Random House Audiobooks)
Drawing Conclusions, by Donna Leon; read by Andrew Sachs
(Random House Audiobooks)
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, by Alexander McCall Smith; read by Adjoa Andoh (Hachette Digital)

Best Unabridged Crime Audiobook:
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch; read by Kobna
(Orion Audio/Holdbrook-Smith)
The Fifth Witness, by Michael Connelly; read by Peter Giles
(Orion Audio)
The Fallen Angel, by David Hewson; read by Saul Reichlin
(Whole Story Audio Books)
The House of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz; read by Derek Jacobi
(Orion Audio)
Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson; read by Susannah Harker (Random House Audio with AudioGO)

The Goldsboro Last Laugh Award
(for the best humorous crime novel):

Absolute Zero Cool, by Declan Burke (Liberties Press)
Killed at the Whim of a Hat, by Colin Cotterill (Quercus)
The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice, by Chris Ewan (Simon & Schuster)
Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood, by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)
Star Island, by Carl Hiaasen (Sphere)
Smokeheads, by Doug Johnstone (Faber and Faber)
Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Herring on the Nile, by L.C. Tyler (Macmillan)

The e-Dunnit Award (for the best crime-fiction e-book first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format:
The Accident, by Linwood Barclay (Orion)
Burned, by Thomas Enger (Faber and Faber)
Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown)
Death on the Rive Nord, by Adrian Magson (Allison & Busby)
The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Orion)
Black Flowers, by Steve Mosby (Orion)
The Cut, by George Pelecanos (Orion)

There’s more about these awards and what else to expect from CrimeFest in Shotsmag Confidential.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Bullet Points: Mix-and-Match Edition

• For those who are keeping track, tomorrow night will bring the presentation of this year’s Edgar Awards in New York City, while the 24th annual Malice Domestic conference is set to open on Friday.

The Raven, a historical crime drama starring John Cusack as poet-author Edgar Allan Poe, also opens in theaters on Friday. Omnimystery News has the picture’s pretty enthralling trailer here.

• How’d you like to own the notorious Lizzie Borden’s 14-room Queen Anne Victorian home in Fall River, Massachusetts? Now’s your chance.

• Shotsmag Confidential repeats talk about how the film version of Lee Child’s 2005 novel, One Shot, starring the short Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, may be retitled simply Reacher. That might better set it up as the start of a new cinema series.

• Daily Mirror blogger Larry Harnisch stopped by the Los Angeles Police Historical Society’s Black Dahlia exhibit recently to see what was available. “Not all of the material on display is terribly relevant--although the items on Woody Guthrie are worth a look if only to see who was considered a possible suspect,” Harnish writes. “However, some material adds to the portrait of Elizabeth Short and helps dispel the common myth that she ‘slept her way across Tinseltown until death gave her the fame that eluded her all her life.’” See more here.

• Pulp International offers a wonderful new collection of old paperback books that highlight “one of the time-honored motifs in pulp cover art--the woman fighting for her life.”

Check out the Mulholland Books blog to read a pretty entertaining conversation between Nick Santora, author of the new novel Fifteen Digits, and Jimmi Simpson, who stars in the A&E TV series Breakout Kings, which Santora co-created with Matt Olmstead.

• Yahoo! Finance listseight products the Facebook generation will not buy.” Among those is e-mail, which is supposedly “too formal.” Harrumph. That’s one of the things I appreciate about e-mail, that it is merely one small electronic step up from letter-writing. I think informality is overrated. Call me old-fashioned ...

• Author and Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins’ new collection of humorous first-person essays, Prom Night and Other Man-made Disasters, is finally available.

• There’s a good piece in New York magazine about Republican presidential hopeful Willard “Mitt” Romney’s fast-progressing Etch-a-Sketch campaign. “In legal theory,” writes Jonathan Chait, “there exists something called a ‘libel-proof plaintiff,’ which is a figure of such low repute that he cannot claim any monetary damages for his reputation being smeared, on the premise that his reputation is tainted beyond repair. This seems to be the point Romney has reached on the question of consistency. The entire political world regards him as a pure creature of convenience. His supporters have simply calculated that Romney has boxed himself in to the point where he could not afford to betray them.”

• Hilary Davidson (The Next One to Fall) has contributed a fine appreciation of Deadwood’s Al Swearengen to Criminal Minds.

• As a member of the bearded set, this appealed to me greatly.

• And the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the British luxury liner Titanic may have passed, but my fascination with the subject still hasn’t gone away. So I was very interested to read in Galley Cat that recent talk about that long-ago tragedy has returned Walter Lord’s classic, 1955 non-fiction book on the subject, A Night to Remember, to the New York Times bestseller list. Meanwhile, Stephen Bowie writes in his Classic TV History Blog about the 1956 live-action TV adaptation of Lord’s book, which can now be watched on YouTube. That small-screen version featured appearances by Claude Rains as well as Patrick Macnee, who was not yet famous for his starring role in The Avengers. When I find a spare moment over the next few days, you can bet I’ll be watching that YouTube video.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Last Chapter for a Storyteller

Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site tipped us to the news that William F. “Bill” Granger, a longtime Chicago newspaper reporter and columnist turned novelist, passed away this last Sunday night, April 22, at a veterans home in Manteno, Illinois. He was 70 years old.

“In a journalism career that stretched from 1963 to 1999,” recalls Maureen O’Donnell on the Chicago Sun-Times Web site, Granger “wrote for UPI, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune. The energetic, entertaining Mr. Granger did feature stories and TV criticism and reported from hotspots such as Belfast. He liked nothing better than printing a scoop and heading to journalistic watering holes [in the Windy City] such as Ric­cardo’s and the Billy Goat to crow--or argue--about it.”

In an excellent remembrance, the Daily Herald’s Burt Constable states that “Granger always considered himself a newspaper man.” Yet he was successful, as well, at composing political thrillers:
His first book, a spy novel titled “The November Man,” was published in 1979 and attracted international attention because its plot, based on a scheme to assassinate a relative of the British queen, had parallels to the assassination of Lord Mountbatten later that year, remembers his wife, Lori Granger, a lawyer who co-authored some non-fiction books with her husband.

Bill Granger wrote a series of sequels starring the main character, Devereaux, a shadowy spy for the United States. He also wrote a series of police procedural novels, including “Public Murders,” for which he won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best original paperback mystery novel of 1981. Granger once said he made more money from “The November Man” but that “Public Murders” was his favorite “because it was real and gritty.”
A list of Granger’s novels can be found here.

Kimura notes that in addition to publishing work under his real name, Granger saw some of his fiction appear behind noms de plume:
His second novel, Public Murders (Jove, 1980), a police procedural featuring Chicago detective Terry Flynn, won an Edgar Award in the paperback original novel. He wrote the second and third Terry Flynn novels--Priestly Murders (Holt 1984) and Newspaper Murders (Holt, 1985) respectively--under the Joe Gash pseudonym, but from the fourth Flynn novel, The El Murders (Holt, 1987) he returned to the Granger byline. He also authored three Jimmy Drover novels about a forcibly retired newspaperman, starting [with] Drover (Morrow, 1991). He used the Bill Griffith pen-name to write Time for Frankie Coolin (Random, 1982).
Sadly, as Constable reports, Granger suffered a stroke back in January 2000, which detrimentally affected his ability to work, among other things: “No longer able to live in his home in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Granger, who served stateside in the U.S. Army, moved into the veterans home in March 2002.”

We offer our condolences to his family.

My Venting Moment of the Day

Can I just say how much I hate Blogger’s new setup? To get anything done right, you now have to install a bunch of HTML coding that wasn’t necessary before, thus complicating every effort to simply write, illustrate, and post stories. There was nothing wrong with the previous version of Blogger; who had the bright idea to “fix” it?

Monday, April 23, 2012

Pierce’s Picks: “The Mysterium”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Mysterium, by P.C. Doherty (Minotaur):
It’s more than a bit difficult to keep up with the literary productivity of Dr. Paul C. Doherty, the headmaster of Trinity Catholic High School in Essex, England, and author of more than 90 historical novels set in a number of Old World cultures. The best recognized of his many series is undoubtedly the one starring Hugh Corbett--later dubbed Sir Hugh Corbett--which takes place during the reign of King Edward I (1239-1307). Corbett and his protégé, former felon Ranulf-atte-Newgate, debuted in Satan in St. Mary’s (1986) and have continued investigating plots large and small ever since. Their 17th adventure, The Mysterium, finds them in London in 1304. Walter Evesham, Chief Justice in the Court of the King’s Bench, is charged with bribery and corruption, and has retreated to the Abbey of Sion on Thames, seeking sanctuary “from the law he had once exercised so imperiously.” But after Evesham is slain in his cell, Corbett is asked to investigate. Suspicion falls quickly on the Mysterium, a devious killer once pursued by Evesham, who may finally have exacted revenge against the disgraced Chief Justice. It’s possible, though, that a copycat murderer is to blame.

Poe Takes a Stand in Boston

From The Baltimore Sun’s Read Street blog:
Boston may be slipping ahead in the Edgar Allan Poe arms race--the city is preparing for a new bronze statue to honor the great author, even as Baltimore struggles to preserve his former home.

The Baltimore Sun’s Chris Kaltenbach reports that sculptor Stefanie Rocknak was selected for the $125,000 project in Boston, to be located at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street South. Her design shows an adult Poe as though he had just stepped off a train. ...

“The statue chosen for Poe Square is full of life and motion, and is sure to inspire residents and future writers for generations to come,” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said in a news release.
You’ll find the whole post here.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Jack the Giant

Today we celebrate the 75th birthday of American actor John Joseph “Jack” Nicholson, born on this date back in 1937. And we’re celebrating it in appropriate style, we think, with previews from Chinatown, the 1974 film in which he plays a sleazy, 1930s gumshoe, J.J. “Jake” Gittes, who gets mixed up in a knotty case involving power, passion, and paternity. The Moviefone blog recently declared Chinatown to be the second best film Nicholson has ever made, following his 1975 comedy/drama, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and we’re not about to disagree.

The first two video frames below feature trailers for Chinatown (a film that was finally followed, in 1990, by a sequel: The Two Jakes). The third offers Jerry Goldsmith’s fabulous Chinatown theme.





Saturday, April 21, 2012

King Crowned

The 32nd annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books kicked off earlier today on the University of Southern California campus. However, it was last evening that this year’s L.A. Times Book Prizes--honoring work published in 2011--were handed out.

Prominent among the 12 winners was Stephen King, whose doorstop of a novel, 11/22/1963 (Scribner), about a time traveler trying to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination, picked up top honors in the Mystery/Thriller category. He was presented with his award by crime novelist Gar Anthony Haywood. Vying for that same honor were: Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur); Plugged, by Eoin Colfer (Overlook Press); Snowdrops, by A.D. Miller (Doubleday); and The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur).

You’ll find the complete list of last night’s winners here.

The Festival of Books will continue until 6 p.m. tonight, and then run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

READ MORE:Coming Sunday: To Live and Write in L.A.
(Los Angeles Times).

Friday, April 20, 2012

Evidence of Ellis

The Crime Writers of Canada is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. As part of the festivities, it has announced the nominees for its 2012 Arthur Ellis Awards in seven categories.

Best Crime Novel:
A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press)
Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson (McClelland & Stewart)
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley (Doubleday Canada)
I’ll See You in My Dreams, by William Deverell (McClelland & Stewart)
The Guilty Plea, by Robert Rotenberg (Simon & Schuster)

Best First Novel:
The Man Who Killed, by Fraser Nixon (Douglas & McIntrye)
The Survivor, by Sean Slater (Simon & Schuster)
The Water Rat of Wanchai, by Ian Hamilton (House of Anansi Press)
Tight Corner, by Roger White (BPS Books)
Watching Jeopardy, by Norm Foster (XLibris)

Best Crime Book in French:
La chorale du diable, by Martin Michaud (Les Editions Guelette)
Pwazon, by Diane Vincent (Editors Triptyque)
Pour Ne Pas Mourir ce soir, by Guillaume Lapierre-Desnoyers (Levesque Editeur)

Best Juvenile or Young Adult Crime Book:
Blink & Caution, by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press)
Charlie’s Key, by Rob Mills (Orca)
Empire of Ruins, by Arthur Slade (HarperCollins)
Held, by Edeet Ravel (Annick Press)
Missing, by Becky Citra (Orca)

Best Crime Non-fiction:
A Season in Hell, by Robert Fowler (HarperCollins)
Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, by Joshua Knelman (Douglas & McIntyre)
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, by Steven Laffoley (Pottersfield)
The Pirates of Somalia, by Jay Bahader (HarperCollins)
The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob, by Adrian Humphreys (Wiley)

Best Crime Short Story:
“A New Pair of Pants,” by Jas. R. Petrin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2011)
“Beer Money,” by Shane Nelson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2011)
“The Girl with the Golden Hair,” by Scott Mackay (EQMM,
December 2011)
“The Perfect Mark,” by Melodie Campbell (Flash Fiction, July 2011)
“What Kelly Did,” by Catherine Astolfo (North Word Magazine)

Best Unpublished First Novel (“Unhanged Arthur”):
Gunning for Bear, by Madeleine Harris-Callway
Last of the Independents, by Sam Wiebe
Snake in the Snow, by William Bonnell
The Rhymester, by Valerie A. Drego
Too Far to Fall, by Shane Sawyer

The winners will be declared during a banquet on May 31 in Toronto, Canada. Click here to order tickets.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Bullet Points: Feet Up on Friday Edition

• Actor Johnny Depp has already turned Dark Shadows from a vintage TV soap opera into a new big-screen film production. Now it seems he wants to develop “a feature version of the ’70s TV movie The Night Stalker,” which introduced reporter-cum-monster hunter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) to the viewing public, and led to a short-lived Kolchak TV series. Let’s just hope Depp doesn’t try to make Stalker into a comedy, the way he did Dark Shadows.

• Almost a year ago, I mentioned on this page that I had contributed several pieces to an encyclopedic work titled 100 American Crime Writers, which was being brought out by British publisher Palgrave Macmillan. Now a cover for the book has finally been released (see the image at right), and word is that 100 American Crime Writers--all 320 pages of it--will be released on June 29.

• Today’s Web-wide crop of “forgotten books” posts includes write-ups about Philip McCutchan’s The Dead Line, Christopher Bush’s The Case of the Chinese Gong, Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift, Thomas Kindon’s Murder in the Moor, Walter Satterthwait’s Joshua Croft series, and many more unjustly overlooked works of crime fiction. You’ll find a full list in Patti Abbott’s blog.

• Shotsmag Confidential reports that UK publisher Orion has now “acquired two novels from CWA Gold Dagger winner Robert Wilson. The first title, Capital Punishment, opens a new crime series featuring Charles Boxer, ex-army, ex-police with a specialty in kidnap and rescue. He is hired to find Alyshia D’Cruz, the kidnapped daughter of an Indian billionaire. Capital Punishment is due to be published in January 2013.” More on that book can be found here.

• Happy 50th anniversary to the film Cape Fear, which debuted in theaters on April 12, 1962, starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.

• In addition to its e-book release this week of Gar Anthony Haywood’s Aaron Gunner private-eye novels, Mysterious Press is also making available--again in electronic versions--back titles from Jeremiah Healy’s John Cuddy series and Stephen Marlowe’s Chester Drum series, as well as two works by Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.

• This is terrible news! The century-old Sam Wo Restaurant in San Francisco is closing its doors. I’ve been to Sam Wo’s many times. It was a wonderful eccentric eatery, multi-storied and loud with the chatter of Chinese diners and the clatter of plates. I loved every visit!

Agatha Christie’s most oft-overlooked work?

Get a free peek at the opening chapter of Vertigo’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo graphic novel, which is due out in November.

• Portrait of a City Bookstore in Los Angeles’ Studio City neighborhood will be closing its doors on May 17 after more than a quarter-century in business.

• The Los Angeles Review of Books Web site has been relaunched with a handsome new look and an easy functionality. Click here to investigate further.

• I can usually go along with changes made to The Associated Press Stylebook. But the editors’ recent decision to accept the usage of the word “hopefully” as meaning “it’s hoped” or “we hope” just won’t cut it. That word actually means “in a hopeful manner,” as used in the sentence “We look forward hopefully to next year’s Christmas festivities.” The last time I balked at such a stylistic concession pertained to the acceptance of “website” in place of “Web site.” Now I have to hold the barricades against this usage of “hopefully.” Good thing I’m not alone in this fight. (More here.)

• Deborah Lacy of Criminal Element showcases television’s sloppiest sleuths, “character[s] who [make] mistakes to move the story along.”

What a fabulous book cover!

• This ought to be interesting: The original legal contract for the novel Dracula, “hand-written by [author Bram] Stoker himself and which has been kept under lock and key, is to be published in a new version of the vampire tale. It reveals the terms dictated by Stoker--who studied law but never practised--in negotiating a 20 per cent royalty fee for the book on 1 May 1897. This was remarkable at the time and is more than modern authors and their agents can command with the current standard of 10 to 15 per cent.” The Independent offers more on this subject here.

• Sunday is Earth Day, so Janet Rudolph has assembled a rundown of environmental mysteries for consideration.

• Meanwhile, Elizabeth Foxwell points out that “Valancourt Books’ new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite (1894) and Stoker’s The Watter’s Mou (1894) features a 1907 interview of Conan Doyle by Stoker.” That should certainly be worth reading.

• When I interviewed actor James Garner last fall, I made sure to ask him about the 1971-1972 NBC-TV western Nichols, which I knew was a favorite project of his. Most people who read this blog probably don’t remember Nichols, as it was cancelled so fast and hasn’t made it to DVD format (though I hope it will someday). So I was surprised but pleased to see Marty McKee, of Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot, post a complete episode guide to the series. Way to go, Marty!

• Gee, I wonder why this dance never caught on ...

• Amid all of last week’s Titanic hoopla, it was announced that Erik Larson--author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts--is writing his next non-fiction work about the 1915 sinking of quite another ship disaster, that of the RMS Lusitania.

• William Boyd, the British author chosen to pen the next James Bond novel, tells The Daily Telegraph why he was interested in taking on this project. Watch the video here.

• Alan Furst’s 2008 novel, The Spies of Warsaw, is being adapted as a three-hour-long miniseries for BBC America. Former Doctor Who star David Tennant will lead the cast of this spy thriller set in Poland.

• UK publisher Angry Robot has announced the coming debut of its crime-fiction imprint, Exhibit A, which will be headed up by Emlyn Rees, author of the thriller Hunted.

• And even the National Rifle Association isn’t stupid enough to allow musician, NRA board member, and right-wing kook Ted Nugent to continue spewing his ridiculous anti-Obama hatred online.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Straight from the Heart

It seems I missed this news as well. Editor-blogger Janet Rudolph reports that the winners of the 2012 RT (Romantic Times) Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Awards were announced last weekend in several crime-fiction-related categories.

Contemporary Mystery: V Is for Vengeance, by Sue Grafton (Putnam)

Also nominated: Stagestruck, by Peter Lovesey (Soho); Ringer, by Brian M. Wiprud (Minotaur); Killed at the Whim of a Hat, by Colin Cotterill (Minotaur); The Woodcutter, by Reginald Hill (Harper); and In Search of the Rose Notes, by Emily Arsenault (Morrow)

Historical Mystery: A Lonely Death, by Charles Todd (Morrow)

Also nominated: The Beloved Dead, by Tony Hays (Tor); The Illusion of Murder, by Carol McCleary (Forge); Bye Bye, Baby, by Max Allan Collins (Forge); City of Secrets, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur); and Troubled Bones, by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)

First Mystery: Purgatory Chasm, by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur)

Also nominated: The Breath of God, by Jeffrey Small (West Hills); Cookie Dough or Die, by Virginia Lowell (Berkley Prime Crime); Thou Shalt Kill, by Daniel Blake (Gallery); and Death on Tour, by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur)

Amateur Sleuth: The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, by Mary Jane Maffini (Berkley Prime Crime)

Also nominated: To Have and to Kill, by Mary Jane Clark (Morrow); Killing Kate, by Julie Kramer (Atria); Tempest in the Tea Leaves, by Kari Lee Townsend (Berkley Prime Crime); and Naughty in Nice, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley Prime Crime)

Suspense/Thriller: Love You More, by Lisa Gardner (Bantam)

Also nominated: In Desperation, by Rick Mofina (Mira); Among the Missing, by Morag Joss (Delacorte); The Girl Who Disappeared Twice, by Andrea Kane (Mira); Now You See Me, by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur); You’re Next, by Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s); Death in High Places, by Jo Bannister (Minotaur); New York to Dallas, by J.D. Robb (Putnam); and Ghost Hero, by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

In addition, there was a subcategory of “Inspirational” novels called “Inspirational Mystery/Suspense/Thriller.” The winner there was Blood Covenant, by Lisa Harris (Zondervan).

The full breakdown of winners and runners-up is here.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Best and Verse of Poe

This in a bit of interesting news:
Newly discovered Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts will be revealed in a major exhibit at Richmond, Virginia’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum from April 26 to July 11, 2012. Among the recently uncovered pieces are four letters and the only known manuscript for Poe’s important early poem “To Helen,” which was located last month in the album of one of Poe’s cousins. Opening April 26 in honor of the Poe Museum’s 90th anniversary, the exhibit From Poe’s Quill: The Letters and Manuscripts of Edgar Allan Poe will showcase these recent finds alongside dozens of rare Poe manuscripts gathered from seven different public and private collections across the country. According to the Poe Museum’s curator, Chris Semtner, “This is the kind of exhibit that comes around only once in a generation. Because Poe’s manuscripts were not highly valued during his brief life, many have been lost or dispersed over time, making them very rare today. Given that, it is remarkable that this show will feature such items as the only complete Poe short story in private hands, the earliest privately owned Poe manuscript, and even a letter from Poe to Washington Irving.”
You can find out more about this exhibit here.

Dick Clark ... So Long

Sad tidings from the Los Angeles Times: “Dick Clark, the legendary TV producer and host, died Wednesday of a heart attack. He had suffered a stroke in 2004 and had struggled with the effects ever since. The man known as ‘America's oldest living teenager,’ made rock music safe for Middle America and earned a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along the way.” Find out more here.

Clark was 82 years young.

READ MORE:Dick Clark: R.I.P.,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Why I Found Aaron Gunner Necessary

(Editor’s note: Mysterious Press today releases Gar Anthony Haywood’s six Aaron Gunner detective novels--all of which have been out of print for years--in e-book format. The first of that bunch, Fear of the Dark, was originally published in 1988, with the last, All the Lucky Ones Are Dead, released a decade later. We asked author-designer Haywood to recall for Rap Sheet readers the birth of his Los Angeles protagonist. His response appears below.)

Like most aspiring writers, I used to be very good at starting full-length novels and absolutely pathetic at finishing them.

Two or three chapters in, sometimes even sooner, I'd lose the will to go on and would abandon a book just to move on to another one. My fickleness was tied to all kinds of things: insecurity, laziness, and more often than not, the hubris of a young man who thinks baby steps are beneath him. I always wanted to write the “big” book, the surefire bestseller that would instantly make me a millionaire and spare me the indignity of a slow, deliberate climb to the top.

In short, I was an idiot.

So most of my earliest manuscripts were discarded not so much because I found them lacking in quality, but because I found them lacking in blockbuster potential. It was only after I’d decided to write the best book I could, regardless of how likely it was to place me on the New York Times bestsellers list, that I settled down to write--and complete--Fear of the Dark, my first Aaron Gunner novel. It was small and compact, and ambitious only in the way it broke the color barrier for hard-boiled mystery protagonists that Walter Mosley was still a year or so away from shattering, and it was the perfect book for me to be writing at that time.

What I knew about Gunner going in, other than the fact he would be a black man like me, had a lot more to do with what I didn’t want him to be than what I did.

For one thing, I knew I didn’t want him to be a citizen of an earlier time. While I have a great respect for history, I have little affection for much of it, most especially that period before my birth in which black people were still fighting for their civil rights in America. Setting my Gunner stories in the past--specifically in the 1940s or early ’50s--would have placed them in the good company of the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but it would have also required me to write--and Gunner to operate--within the confines of that era. Where Gunner could go, who he could see and talk to--and how he could talk to them, depending on their color and station--all of these things would have been greatly limited if he was to accurately reflect what life was like for a black man at that time, and I was no more interested in going back there myself than writing about someone who’d been born into it.

Additionally, the void I was seeking to fill wasn’t an absence of black protagonists in pre-World War II mystery fiction; Chester Himes, for one, had already answered that call with his Harlem cops, Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. It was contemporary mystery fiction that cried out for central characters of color, not the historical variety, and that was the need I was hoping Gunner could meet.

Then there was the issue of Gunner's general demeanor. I’d always been a huge fan of Lawrence Block’s New York P.I., Matthew Scudder, and one of the things I admired most about Scudder was his complete disinterest in the witty repartee that so many of his fictional peers (or their authors, to state it more accurately) seemed to find necessary. I wanted that same sort of jarring disconnect from the Robert B. Parker/wisecracking P.I. model for Gunner.

I also knew early on that I didn’t want Gunner to be particularly brave, ingenious, or good in the sack, all things that were characteristic of hard-boiled P.I.s at the time. How would a modern-day private investigator handle complicated, often dangerous cases with only the tools of an Ordinary Joe like myself to work with? That was the question I wanted my series (and Fear of the Dark was most certainly going to be the first book in a series) to answer.

Finally, as Gunner's very name would surely make obvious, I borrowed heavily from my favorite television private eye of all time, Blake Edwards’ iconic Peter Gunn. Gunn conducted most of his business out of a smoky jazz club called Mother’s, whose proprietor was a large, sultry white woman with a big heart and a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, and I loved these adjuncts to Gunn’s character so much, I gave Gunner his own version of each: Mother’s jazz club became Gunner’s primary after-hours hangout, the Acey Deuce bar, whose owner is a slightly more imposing, black knock-off of Mother herself, Lilly Tennell. Just as part of Peter Gunn’s modus operandi was to consult with a wide array of snitches, ex-cons, and authorities in every conceivable field over drinks at Mother’s, Gunner would hold similar meetings with acquaintances and informants of his own at the Deuce.

Still, I was reluctant to make Lilly’s bar Gunner’s sole place of business; I wanted him to have a real office where he and clients could actually sit down to talk in private. So I incorporated yet another well-established source of vital information (aka “gossip”) in black communities into Gunner’s life story: the barbershop. I gave Gunner an office in the back of Mickey Moore’s Trueblood Barbershop in South Central L.A. and filled the shop with a host of oddball characters for Gunner to interact with every time he enters or exits the place, starting with his nosy, garrulous landlord, Mickey Moore. Aside from the opportunities Mickey and his customers would give me to lighten things up a bit--most of these people are funny as hell--I would use the barbershop setting, and all its constant chatter, as a window onto Gunner’s everyday existence as a black man trying to get by in the American inner-city of the 20th century.

Fear of the Dark, my first Gunner novel, was essentially written around a single scene that came to me early on. Threatened by some very nasty people to stop working the case he’s on, Gunner does something intended to clearly identify him as someone other than your grandfather's fictional private eye: he quits. Much as you or I would no doubt do, were multiple guns shoved in our face for the same purpose.

Naturally, Gunner takes the case back up eventually, but only after he has demonstrated an occasional willingness to place matters of survival above the need to see justice done. In other words, his altruism only goes so far.

Five books later--my sixth and last Gunner novel, All the Lucky Ones Are Dead, was originally published in 1998--Gunner was still the same contrary hard-boiled P.I. I had designed him to be when the lights went out. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, which had published the last three titles in the series after St. Martin’s Press published the first three, lost interest in doing another, and by that time I was ready to try my hand at standalones. I sold two standalones to Putnam under the pseudonym “Ray Shannon,” expecting to go right on doing so until the mood moved both my publisher and me to bring Aaron Gunner back … But that's not what happened.

Critically acclaimed or not, the standalones tanked, Putnam filed for divorce, and restarting the Gunner series with another house proved to be as difficult as trapping smoke in a birdcage.

Which brings us to today, Tuesday, April 17, 2012.

I hope by re-issuing all six previous Gunner novels, Mysterious Press will rekindle my man’s career on into a seventh adventure.

Because I’m writing that seventh book now, one way or the other, and it sure would be nice if an audience (and a publisher) were out there, ready and waiting for it, upon its arrival.

Get Your Hands Off My “Rockford Files”!

Oh, no, not again.

After NBC-TV failed a couple of years back to resurrect James Garner’s much-loved private-eye series, The Rockford Files, with Dermot Mulroney in the lead role, I’d hoped that Hollywood would have given up on trying to recapture the magic of Garner’s show with a different actor. But now comes this report from Deadline:
Universal Pictures has set David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write The Rockford Files, a feature adaptation of the memorable series that ran on NBC from 1974-80 and featured James Garner as the down-and-out private eye.

The studio will develop the film as a star vehicle for Vince Vaughn to play Rockford, and Vaughn and Victoria Vaughn will produce through their Universal-based Wild West Picture Show Productions banner.
Are you frickin’ kidding me? Vince Vaughn, that over-the-top actor who has made a name for himself portraying one clueless and obnoxious men after the next in inane romantic comedies? That Vince Vaughn? Somebody really thinks he deserves the role originated by the understated and consistently likable Garner?

Sure, Vaughn might be able to dress down like gumshoe Jim Rockford, and pull off the self-interested demeanor Rockford presented. He might even learn a thing or two about racing a Pontiac Firebird through the streets of Los Angeles. But to rephrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s show-stopping putdown of Dan Quayle during their 1988 vice-presidential debate, “I knew Jim Rockford from six seasons of The Rockford Files. Jim Rockford was a welcome guest in my home every Friday night. Vince Vaughn, you’re no Jim Rockford.”

Why is it that Hollywood can’t seem to come up with anything resembling a new idea in the 21st century? Why is it that film studios insist on taking fondly remembered TV dramas--Starsky & Hutch, The Avengers, Charlie’s Angels, 21 Jump Street, I Spy, The Wild Wild West--and turning them into utter crap on the big screen?

The Rockford Files is one of the best TV series ever put together, an excellent tribute to American fiction’s tradition of private-eyes tales and a brilliant showcase for one of our finest performers. Better that it remain a fond memory for people who watched its original run three and four decades ago, or buy it nowadays on DVD, than that it be subjected to the inevitable indignities of being “remade.”

(Hat tip to Joe Guglielmelli.)

Don’t Forget About This

Just a reminder: Voting in this year’s Spinetingler Awards competition will continue only through the end of April, with winners to be announced on Tuesday, May 1. So make your preferences known, before it’s too late. The full list of nominees is here.

Click here to cast your ballot.

So Much for Peace and Quiet

Mark Mills’ House of the Hunted, a historical novel of betrayal and espionage, recently released in the States (after an initial UK publication last year as House of the Hanged), is the subject of my Kirkus Reviews column this week.

It’s a thoroughly rewarding read, more literary than many modern-day thrillers, with a plot that derives its interest from its setting (the French Riviera, 1935) and its protagonist’s back-story (he’s a former British spy in search of peace), rather than from the intensity of its action. As I write in Kirkus, “Readers tired of being dragged bodily through rapid-clip adventures, over one cliffhanger after the next, with only workmanlike prose to lubricate their passage, might find The House of the Hunted to be a splendid alternative.”

You’ll find my review here.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Pierce’s Picks: “The Candle Man”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Candle Man, by Alex Scarrow (Orion UK):
Given all of the recent publicity surrounding the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, it seems an ideal time for the release of this new thriller, which combines that disaster with a still older, more notorious historical episode. Since I haven’t yet read The Candle Man (it’s due out in Britain next week, and my copy has apparently been sidetracked in the public mails), here’s the publisher’s plot description:
1912. Locked in an eerily quiet dining room on the Titanic, a mysterious man tells a young girl his life story as the ship begins to sink. It all starts in Whitechapel, London, in 1888 ... In the small hours of the night in a darkened Whitechapel alley, young Mary Kelly stumbles upon a man who has been seriously injured and is almost unconscious in the gutter. Mary--down on her luck and desperate to survive--steals his bag and runs off into the night. Two days later, an American gentleman wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He has suffered a serious head injury, and with no one to help him remember who he is he starts to wonder how he will ever find his way home. One terrible truth links these two lost souls in the dark world of Victorian London--a truth that could ruin the name of the most influential man in the land ...

Back in 1912, as the
Titanic begins its final shuddering descent to the bottom of the frozen, black Atlantic, one man is about to reveal the truth behind a series of murders that have hung like a dark fog over London for more than two decades ... the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Blogger Ben Hunt once predicted that “by the end of 2007, Alex Scarrow, should be a star in the thriller world.” Well, I wouldn’t say that came true, and Scarrow is almost unknown in the States. But the Norwich, England, author has certainly turned out several cracking novels over the last few years, including Last Light and Afterlight. (He also pens the young-adult science-fiction series TimeRiders.) Combining the Titanic tragedy with the Whitechapel horror sounds like a recipe guaranteed to draw attention. I look forward to finding out whether the results measure up to this book’s potential.

White Hats, Black Hats

Blogger Jen Forbus kicks off her Heroes and Villains Theme Week by posting the concluding ballot in her recent Heroes and Villains bracketed tourney.

The final match-up: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor James Moriarity vs. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch. Click here to register your choice between those two. (Personally, I’m going with the man Sherlock Holmes called “the Napoleon of crime.”)

Other posts associated with this opening day of the theme week can be found here and here. Future installments should be accessible here.

FOLLOW-UP: “We, as readers, definitely favor our great heroes over the great villains,” Forbus wrote on April 26. “That may be why we love crime fiction so much ... we’re looking for the heroes to take care of the crime around us. Anyway, once again, Harry Bosch took the tournament beating out Professor Moriarty almost 3 to 1.”

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Making It in Minnesota

Richard A. Thompson’s 2011 standalone mystery, Big Wheat: A Tale of Bindlestiffs and Blood (Poisoned Pen Press), picked up top honors in the Genre Fiction category during last night’s presentation, in St. Paul, of the 24th annual Minnesota Book Awards.

Also nominated in that category were The Bone House, by Brian Freeman (Minotaur); Northwest Angle, by William Kent Krueger (Atria); and Death of the Mantis, by Michael Stanley (Harper).

Omnimystery News adds that “Another mystery author took home the Readers’ Choice Award: Kurtis Scaletta for his ’tween book The Tanglewood Terror (Knopf/Random House Children's Books).”

A full list of the award finalists and winners can be found on the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library Web site.

100 Years and Thousands of Memories

I hadn’t intended to spend a good chunk of this week writing about the 1912 Titanic disaster for various Web sites, but ... well, it kind of worked out that way. Knowing I probably won’t be around to commemorate the bicentennial of that heart-wrenching event, I decided to make the most of this occasion.

In addition to my wrap-up of fine Titanic history books for Kirkus Reviews, my interview with Titanic authority Hugh Brewster, and my rundown of half a dozen novels that use the White Star liner tragedy as their backdrop or jumping-off point, I posted two collections of Titanic-related stories from the Web (here and here), and--to honor the hour in which that vessel ultimately disappeared beneath the chilly North Atlantic--a moving scene from the 1958 film A Night to Remember.

One hundred years from now, I hope that writers and readers will again choose to honor the memory of that once-great vessel.

READ MORE: Titanic Survivor Stories (RMS Titanic Inc.).

Friday, April 13, 2012

Seeing Through Wiser Eyes

I was prowling the Web earlier today, when I stumbled across a new feature in the A.V. Club blog. A number of staffers there were asked to respond to this interesting question:
Sometimes we relate to pop-culture differently over time, not because it’s changed, but because we have. Maybe it’s something we grew into and matured enough to appreciate. Maybe it’s the opposite, and nostalgia has made that pop-culture represent something to us that it didn’t have when we first encountered it. What pop-culture did you come to appreciate over a long time period?
Among the responses was one from Noel Murray, who has apparently changed his mind about some of the classic televised crime dramas we’ve discussed in The Rap Sheet:
I already liked boring-old-people music and boring-old-people movies when I was a teenager, so nothing much has changed there. What has changed over time is how much I’ve grown to love the TV detective shows of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. My parents gobbled those shows up when I was a kid, but aside from the playful ones, like Remington Steele and Moonlighting, they were all pretty much white noise to me. Then sometime after college, a fellow film buff hipped me to the cinephile bona fides of Columbo, which I became obsessed with when it was airing on A&E every afternoon. From there, I got hooked on Mannix, Banacek, The Rockford Files, Ellery Queen ... heck, these days, I’ll even watch a Matlock or a Murder, She Wrote on a lazy Sunday afternoon when there are no games I want to see. The appeal of these shows is partly their formulaic familiarity, but even more, it’s that their heroes are so clever and witty and resourceful, and it’s so rare on TV that we get to sit and watch people think. Solving mysteries along with these detectives serves the same purpose as working a crossword puzzle: It helps keep the mind sharp as we age.
You’ll find the complete collection of remarks here.