Local Favors

There’s been a whole lot of news being made this week, some of it disastrous (the striking down of a key provision in the Voting Rights Act), some of it heartening (the overturning of DOMA). But overlooked amid all of this, it seems, was last weekend’s announcement of the winners of the 2013 San Diego Book Awards, “honoring the best published books by San Diego County residents.”

Omnimystery News reports today that among the award recipients were two in categories of potential interest to Rap Sheet readers:

Mystery: The Angry Woman Suite, by Lee Fullbright (Telemachus Press)

Action, Suspense, and Thriller: Assassin’s Game, by Dan Walker and Peggy Lang (CreateSpace)

Congratulations to all three authors.

Follow the Leaders

I decided to go in a somewhat unusual direction with this week’s Mysteries and Thrillers column for Kirkus Reviews, looking at a variety of crime and thriller novels that feature cults of one sort or another--religious, reactionary, sun-worshipping, etc. Only when you start combing closely through this genre’s history do you realize how often cults figure into the plot lines of the novels we read.

You’ll find the results of my research here.

The Story Behind the Story: “Death Was in the Blood,” by Linda L. Richards

(Editor’s note: This 43rd entry in our “Story Behind the Story” series comes from Linda L. Richards, an author and resident of British Columbia, Canada, who also serves as the editor of January Magazine and contributes frequently to The Rap Sheet. In the essay below, she writes about Death Was in the Blood, her new, third novel in a succession of historical mysteries set in Los Angeles. It follows 2008’s Death Was the Other Woman and 2009’s Death Was in the Picture.)

I don’t remember participating in the creation of Kitty Pangborn.

I’ve talked about this before.

I was in a period of reading a great deal of classic noir fiction. More than my share. And amid all the drinking and testosterone-informed shenanigans, I began to see her there, at the edge of things. A voice of sense and sanity (a feminine one, of course) in a rough-edged world peopled by men who’d seen too much and had paid too high a cost in a war years past--one they still carried around with them, emblazoned on their souls.

Men like that, they’re good men, but broken sometimes. It can be as true now as it was then. We’re luckier now, at least some of the time. We have words for things; acronyms even. And we know that post-traumatic stress syndrome can do funny things to a soldier’s mind and heart. But during the first half of the 20th century? They didn’t have words for such problems back then. “He’s busted up inside,” someone might say. Or, “You mean that Theroux boy? He ain’t been right since he came back. There’s nothin’ wrong with him, you understand. But he ain’t been right at all.”

These men--these big-hearted yet shadowy and broken men--loom large in the work of some of my favorite wordsmiths. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon, et al.) is racing from demons, I’m sure of it. We don’t really know that. Hammett never says, but one can imagine that Sam Spade’s story was influenced at least in part by Hammett’s own. Hammett had enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps until he contracted Spanish Flu and then later tuberculosis. Hammett lost his health to the military, and it seems entirely possible he lost more than that. And certainly, the detectives he later wrote about were broken in ways the author never clearly defined, but that we could sense, all the same. Lost boys, in a way. Lost in distant lands and never to find their way back, even when they made it all the way home.

So during all of this noir reading, I began to see that it was not possible for the lost boys peopling that field of fiction to actually be accomplishing what they seemed to be accomplishing. The drinking they were managing all on their own. The occasional womanizing, sure, they were doing all right with that. But, as people, it often seemed they were so shattered, it was unlikely they could keep businesses together. Yet there it was, in tale after tale: their name on the door. Phones ringing. Clients more or less standing in line.

When they were out of the office, though--drinking, or womanizing, or even out on a case--who was looking after things then? And who was keeping it all together, just running the day-to-day business?

I don’t even remembering what wild and crazy hat I pulled Katherine “Kitty” Pangborn out of. The name, I mean. And the girl, as well. Suddenly, she was just standing there, tidy threadbare office suit, sensible shoes, and all. I know she was somewhat inspired by Spade’s capable secretary, Effie Perrine. Effie, whom you had the feeling was young and even lovely, yet whose sister-like relationship with Sam was refreshingly free of that often-all-too-tiresome frisson that can muddy up the clearest noir waters.

Although the latest Kitty Pangborn novel, Death Was in the Blood, stands alone (as all my series books have done) and doesn’t rely on readers having enjoyed the books in sequence, I think it is a darker read than those that have gone before. Kitty herself is in a darker place. No longer just happy to have found a way to keep a roof over her head during America’s Great Depression, she’s thinking about her life and about what might have been, and discovering she’s not entirely happy with the result. For me, that’s one of the things that defines Death Was in the Blood most sharply. Meeting the beautiful and privileged client Flora Woodruff, an aristocratic young woman about Kitty’s own age, forces Kitty to examine her own life and the odd turns it’s taken since her father’s suicide led her to find a job working with Los Angeles private eye Dexter J. Theroux.

* * *

A lot of the action in Death Was in the Blood takes place against preparations for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. That was, in many ways, a ground-breaking Olympics. It took place at the height of the Depression and a number of countries pulled out because they simply couldn’t afford to send their teams on such a big trip. Less than half the number of participants of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam competed in L.A. in 1932.

That competition in Los Angeles marked the first time in history that an Olympic village was built to house the athletes. It was apparently really fantastic, with dining halls and entertainment centers and even a screening room where the athletes could watch moving pictures of their performances from the day. (And nobody had iPhones, so it was a pretty big deal.) Movie stars would drop by every night and give impromptu shows (so L.A.!), but it was all for the men. The women athletes were housed in a hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and got left out of all the fun--though, in fairness, it should be said that 1,206 men competed, compared with only 126 women.

So all of this is known absolutely: we have first-hand accounts, we have photos and even film. What we don’t know exactly is where this village was, because it was dismantled right after the Olympics concluded and, near as anyone can tell, beyond one structure that ended up--and still stands--at the police academy in Elysian Park, the rest of that trailblazing 1932 Olympic village is gone without a trace.

(Left) Author Linda L. Richards

There is agreement that the village was located in the Baldwin Hills, but it might have been in the Blair Hills, an area that’s now actually part of Culver City. Or it might have been near Crenshaw and Vernon in the View Park area and, according to the Baldwin Hills Park Web site, “One account places the village in the Crenshaw or Angeles Mesa district, in the hills to the west of Crenshaw Boulevard south of Vernon Avenue. The roads Olympiad Drive and Athenian Way in this area commemorate its history.”

From that same source:

The village comprised between 500 and more than 600 two-room dwellings and included post and telegraph offices, an amphitheater, a hospital, a fire department, and a bank. The village was built on between 250 and 331 acres that was loaned by the heirs of the estate of Lucky Baldwin. The buildings were removed after the games.

This account is pretty consistent with what I found in other sources: references to developer and stock market speculator Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, who died in 1909 but whose fortune--by the early 1930s--was still largely intact. Mentions of the Olympic village being constructed at great cost during the Depression, then mysteriously disappearing right after the games.

But there are enough things not mentioned, or merely hinted at, that if you’re of a certain disposition, your mind fills in the blanks. The construction of a whole village during the Depression--one that needed to look good, yet not be required to stand the test of any significant amount of time? That would have been a plum contract. A multi-million-dollar contract, even in the dollars of the day. One worth killing over? Well, just wait and see.

Warm Reception in Iceland

Speaking of commendations, Omnimystery News alerts us to the Reykjavik City Library’s announcement that “the thriller Húsið (The House), by Stefán Máni, is the winner of the 2013 Blóðdropinn--Blood Drop Award--for best crime novel of the year. The book will go on to represent Iceland in the annual Glass Key Award competition, which selects the best crime novel written by a Nordic author.”

Private Eyes Receive Public Praise

This morning has brought the Private Eye Writers of America’s long-awaited notice about the finalists for its 2013 Shamus Awards. The winners will be announced on Friday, September 20, during this year’s Bouchercon in Albany, New York.

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel:
• Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)
• Taken, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
• Hunting Rose, by Jack Fredrickson (Minotaur)
• Blues in the Night, by Dick Lochte (Severn House)
• The Other Woman, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Best First P.I. Novel:
• Hush Money, by Chuck Greaves (Minotaur)
• Murder Unscripted, by Clive Rosengren (Perfect Crime)
• Black Fridays, by Michael Sears (Putnam)
• Racing Sweetie the Devil, by Jaden Terrell (Permanent Press)
• The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter (Hard Case Crime)

Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel:
• Death Warmed Over, by Kevin J. Anderson (Kensington)
• And She Was, by Alison Gaylin (Harper)
• Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, by Robert Goldsborough (The Mysterious Press/Open Road)
• False Negative, by Joseph Koenig (Hard Case Crime)
• Pulse, by John Lutz (Kensington)

Best P.I. Short Story:
• “The Sequel,” by Jeffery Deaver (The Strand Magazine, November-February 2012-2013)
• “After Cana,” by Terence Faherty (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October, 2012)
• “O’Nelligan and the Lost Fates,” by Michael Nethercott (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [AHMM], March 2012)
• “Illegitimati Non Carborundum,” by Stephen D. Rogers (Crimespree Magazine, May/June 2012)
• “Ghost Negligence,” by John Shepphird (AHMM, July/August 2012)

Best Indie P.I. Novel:
• Stranger in Town, by Cheryl Bradshaw (CreateSpace)
• Enamored, by O’Neil De Noux (CreateSpace)
• One-Eyed Jack, by Christopher J. Lynch (CreateSpace)
• White Heat, by Paul D. Marks (Timeless Skies)
• Devil May Care, by James Mullaney (James\Mullaney#Books)

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Searching the Sites

• The Wolfe Pack, the New York City-based Nero Wolfe fan group, has begun soliciting entries to its eighth annual Black Orchid Novella Award competition. As a Pack news release explains, “Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length, and must be postmarked by May 31, 2014. The winner will be announced at The Wolfe Pack’s Annual Black Orchid Banquet in New York City, December 6, 2014.” You can find more details about how to enter your work here.

• A never-collected Dashiell Hammett story? It’s not impossible, says blogger Evan Lewis, who has posted “The Diamond Wager,” which originally appeared in the October 19, 1929, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly under the byline “Samuel Dashiell. “If this was truly written by Hammett,” Lewis opines, “it’s far from his best work. But the diamond angle is interesting, because in 1926 and 1927 he worked for Samuels Jewelers of San Francisco writing advertising copy.”

• The BBC America historical drama Copper will make its Season 2 debut tomorrow, June 23, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. See a preview here.

• Thirteen people have been nominated for the 2013 Munsey Award, which is presented “to a deserving person who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.” Among this year’s nominees: Laurie Powers, granddaughter of pulp author Paul S. Powers; Dan Zimmer of Illustration Magazine; and Charles Ardai, the editor at publisher Hard Case Crime. The winner will be announced in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, July 27, during the 2013 PulpFest.

• Nineteen-century daredevil journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochran) is recognized best for stunts such as having herself locked into an insane asylum and racing around the globe in fewer than 80 days, both on behalf of the New York World. But in 1889 she published her one and only novel, The Mystery of Central Park. It’s long been hard to find, and as Clues editor Elizabeth Foxwell notes, “There are only three copies in U.S. libraries ...” But recently, the Library of Congress digitized its copy and has made it available through its Internet archive. Click here to read Bly’s Mystery for yourself.

• When he’s not recalling old TV crime dramas for Mystery*File, Michael Shonk contributes pieces along that same line to the blog Criminal Element. In this recent post, for instance, Shonk looks back at small-screen series featuring private-eye agencies, including Checkmate, Eyes, and (yuck!) Baywatch Nights.

• This is certainly an unusual opening to The Saint.

• A piece last week in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel examined the fast-rising field of culinary whodunits. Among the authors cited were Sandra Balzo, Diane Mott Davidson, and Julie Hyzy.

• This note comes from Rap Sheet reader Gary Akers:

I’ve greatly enjoyed your site for a while, especially all the articles about The NBC Mystery Movie.

Thought you might like to know, and pass on, that while the McCloud releases in the U.S. stalled out at Seasons 1/2 a few years back, they have continued to be released by Madman Entertainment in Australia (which even released the first season with the original unedited six hour-long episodes, while Universal in the U.S. released the cut-and-paste “movie” versions).

Just today I received the final two DVD sets of McCloud Seasons 6 and 7 (season 7 even includes the ’89 telefilm The Return of Sam McCloud), so if you or any of your blog readers would like to get the entire McCloud series (you’ll need a region-free DVD player, as the discs are Region 4), go to www.madman.com.au.

• Nowadays, British author-politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton is known--when he’s known at all--for having concocted that oft-maligned opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” which inspired an annual bad fiction-writing contest. However, as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) points out, a number of his works of fiction have been adapted as films. The 1947 motion picture The Ghost of Rashmon Hall, for instance, was based on Bulwer-Lytton’s 1859 horror story, “The Haunted and the Haunters.” If you’ve never watched that flick, as I never had before today, you can now see it here.

• And if you missed last month’s notice, here’s a special-event reminder: Patti Abbott, founder of the Web-wide “forgotten books” post series, has scheduled this coming Friday, June 28, as Elmore Leonard Day. Series contributors are encouraged to write about one of Leonard’s numerous works, whether it be a crime novel, a western, or something else. To let Abbott know that you’ll be participating in this themed event, drop her an e-note at aa2579@wayne.edu.

The Book You Have to Read: “In Deep,” by Bernard Wolfe

(Editor’s note: This is the 128th entry in our ongoing series about great but forgotten books. Today’s piece comes from Steven Nester, the host of Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a weekly Internet radio show heard on the Public Radio Exchange [PRX]. Steve has become a regular contributor to this series; his last piece looked back at Kem Nunn’s first novel, Tapping the Source [1984]. You’ll find Steve’s previous offerings here.)

In Deep, a 1957 spy thriller written by Bernard Wolfe, is a lot of book. An angry tirade against the socialist cause corrupted by a pernicious and amoral bureaucracy, a full-frontal parody of academics and authors in search of the genuine, a satire of Cuban jazz musicians who eye the big time as they foment revolution in the ghettos, a pithy commentary on human motivation, and an ironic account of the relations between the sexes, In Deep takes it all on without ever becoming too pedantic or too irritating.

The novel has all the ornamentation for a door-stopping epic; but instead of getting his Dr. Zhivago on, Wolfe keeps the story manageable by situating it within the confines of Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1950s. At its simplest, In Deep is an adventure novel in which hubris and revenge galvanize a man of action to engage foreign agents at their own game.

After Cuban idealist Barto Caro is murdered by European spymaster Michael Brod in Key West, his best buddy Robert Garmes determines to avenge that crime. Barto and Brod, we learn, have a very interesting history. While fighting for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Barto’s fellow-traveler father was kidnapped by Brod for challenging Soviet policy and was never heard from again. The younger Caro was luckier: Shot in the back by Brod while battling Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, Barto survived, but Brod was unaware of that fact. Now, 20 years later, Brod hears of Barto Caro’s determination to kill him, and moves quickly to ambush Barto.

Faster than you can say Che Lives!, Barto’s friend Garmes is on his way to Cuba in pursuit of Brod, watched over by CIA agents and Brod’s own people. The CIA needs Garmes to lead them to spymaster Brod, who has information they crave. Time is tight, for Brod has been recalled home--and we all know what that means. First, however, he must eliminate Garmes, before Barto’s vengeful pal can complicate his getaway. But Brod is curious: Just who is this persistent amateur who’s been dogging him?

Any spy novel worth its cloak and dagger must have a clever plot, believable characters, trenchant observations, perhaps a bit of irony showing how similar Cold War antagonists actually were, and a compelling resolution--components that put the bitterness of spy versus spy on a human level. This book has all of those, but it also possesses a keen sense of humor that’s rarely found in espionage novels to the extent that it’s used here--and that’s why you want to read In Deep. While not as sly as say, Our Man in Havana, what distinguishes In Deep from the pack is its veracious and voracious satirizing. Wolfe, with Garmes as his mouthpiece, settles many accounts with humor that entertains and edifies, while also revealing the core of his characters and the folly of their ways.

Vincent Caprio, In Deep’s morally vacant yet highly efficient American espionage agent, walks “with scoutmaster briskness.” He’s described by Garmes as having “something too damned hardworking and clean cut about him, he reminded me of a YMCA counselor who gives a good account of himself on the parallel bars. His hair was despicably neat, and he didn’t blink enough.”

Musicologist and socialist sympathizer Owen Brooke, meanwhile, is “a coupon-clipping professor who thinks he’s a share-cropper” and is unwittingly used to lure Garmes to Cuba and into Brod’s reach. Brooke escorts Garmes into the island nation’s interior to experience the indigenous Afro-Cuban jazz which he believes is unsullied by homogenizing capitalist show-biz exploiters. And the musicians do put on a show, but while the professor believes he’s listening to the real thing, the band--with “New York-rapt eyes above the Congo lips”--is playing for another audience.

This was a Shubert Alley rendition of Africa, the jungle as jazzbo sociology professors dreamed of it behind their box hedges. In his staged Africa there was one and only one rite, the invocation Booking.

The fiction of American novelist Nelson Boyar (a man of the people as well as a yachtsman), who likes to believe that his books aid the socialist cause, is censured here by Brod as a “silly brand of literary proletarianism.” “Movements are inane literary critics,” Brod says as he lambastes the crestfallen writer. “They’ll acclaim any written word that acclaims them.”

And then we have Connie. This witty and wily Key West sex kitten, with whom Robert Garmes maintains a star-crossed romance, is lured to Cuba by U.S. agent Caprio as added bait for Garmes to follow. With a little bit of scratch and a little bit of purr she keeps Garmes off balance. She’s the obtainable vixen who can never to be possessed, and he can’t get enough of her. “I don’t care how many men you’ve had, you’re an incorrigible virgin,” Garmes insists. “You’ve never been had. You’ve only been touched on the outside, where it doesn’t count.” And Connie knows what she’s doing, too.

But in a matter of seconds the quills were out of her voice and she was playing with my earlobes and saying, with tin cups in her words, let’s get out of here, Robbie.

Michael Brod is a seasoned spy, and author Wolfe gives him some pretty heavy credentials. He was the assassin of a Leon Trotsky stand-in, and he played a role in the Soviets attaining American atomic bomb secrets. He’s at the end of a long career and knows his usefulness to his masters is over. Faithful to the cause, he’d never defect to the West, even if it meant saving his own life. Brod is determined to come in from the cold and face execution, if only because it’s the one choice he can make that is solely his. He knows that he’s going to get it, but whether the bullet comes from American agents or his own people--that’s his decision. “I cannot allow just anyone to kill me. I must arrange the circumstances myself. As a last act of will--it’s important, because will is the sign of life.”

(Left) The cover from Alfred A. Knopf’s original, 1957 hardcover edition

Finally, even when getting a little preachy Wolfe’s class observations ring true, as when Garmes travels to a Cuban bordello:

... I noticed this walking on eggshells of theirs. Whores in imperialist countries, pampered by robber barons, have learned to negotiate on French heels, but the ones of the exploited colonies, being long oppressed and cut off from the main sources of imperialistic frilly culture, never seem at home on those luxury item spikes, they look like kids on their first pair of stilts.

And now a little about Bernard Wolfe himself. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, relax. Never a crime or thriller writer, Wolfe is better known to readers of jazz histories than to fans of spy fiction. His most famous work, Really the Blues (1946), is the putative autobiography of Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, perhaps the first-ever “white Negro.” Mezz was a lackluster clarinetist whose main function in life was procuring marijuana for jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Really the Blues is loaded with personality, allegedly Mezzrow’s, but it’s really all Wolfe and a must-read for anyone. What gives Wolfe the authority to sound off on espionage and the seamy side of the socialist cause is the year he spent as the amanuensis of Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, during the latter’s 1930s exile in Mexico. That’s the sort of credential that doesn’t show up on many résumés; and while Wolfe later fictionalized Trotsky’s 1940 murder in The Great Prince Died (1959), readers might ache just a little knowing that Wolfe never sat down to compose his memoirs. His life was richly lived, and while much of it found its way into his fiction, a factual accounting of his experiences might have been the most fascinating book of all.

Back in Tune

Robert J. Randisi made his name as a crime novelist partly because of his books featuring private eyes such as Miles Jacoby and Nick Delvecchio, and partly because of his founding, in 1981, of the Private Eye Writers of America. But lately he’s spent much of his time plotting historical mysteries (such as It Was a Very Bad Year and the forthcoming You Make Me Feel So Dead) around the 1960s “Rat Pack.”

So it’s noteworthy to see Randisi finally returning to the world of gumshoe fiction. His next novel, The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie (to be published in August by Perfect Crime), will introduce Nashville session musician and P.I. Auggie Velez. You can see the cover and read the plot description here.

Marlowe and the Missing Body

Several years ago, I wrote on this page about the 1959-1960 ABC-TV series Philip Marlowe, which starred Philip Carey in the role of Raymond Chandler’s cynical Los Angeles private eye. Episodes of that Tuesday night program ran only 30 minutes long, and just 26 were shot. I’d never seen a single one of those--until today, when I discovered the March 8, 1960, episode of Philip Marlowe, “Murder Is a Grave Affair,” posted on YouTube. You can see it here.

This installment guest stars Connie Hines (later to join the cast of the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed) as a young woman apparently led on by a duplicitous Hollywood director, who also happens to be married. She’s soon found in her apartment, dead as a result of leaking gas. Was it an accident or murder? Also appearing in the show are Jack Weston, William Schallert, and Malcolm Atterbury.

Carey doesn’t really capture Marlowe’s character, but if you’ve never watched the series, this episode is definitely worth a viewing.

“It Feels Like We Lost a Guy We Knew”

In a piece today for Flavorwire, Jason Bailey muses on why TV and film watchers so appreciated actor James Gandolfini, the star of The Sopranos, who died yesterday at age 51.

It doesn’t feel like we lost an actor we liked; it feels like we lost a guy we knew. That personal connection isn’t just what makes his death so unfortunate--it’s part of what made him such a great actor to begin with.

The key to the relatability that defined James Gandolfini was his vulnerability. The entire premise of the character of Tony Soprano--the prism through which most viewers got to know the actor--was that he wasn’t just the hard-nosed, cold-hearted crime boss familiar from gangster fiction. He was also a regular guy with real problems: a prickly relationship with his mother, a complicated dynamic with his strong-willed wife, uncertainty about how to communicate with his kids, and what kind of figure he wanted to be in their lives. The Sopranos showed us the Tony that those in his orbit saw, roaring around the house, busting his underlings’ balls, sneaking and whoring and lying and bruising. But it also allowed us to observe his private moments, alone and in the therapists’ chair, in which the burden of those acts weighed heavily upon him.

You’ll find the whole Flavorwire piece here.

READ MORE: “James Gandolfini Dies: A Look at Tony Soprano’s Best Scenes,” by Patrick Kevin Day (Los Angeles Times).

Pierce’s Picks: “Masaryk Station”

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

Masaryk Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime):
With this sixth installment in his morally complex historical series (following Postdam Station and Lehrter Station), British author Downing is apparently closing out the adventures of John Russell, a well-traveled ­Anglo-American journalist (and onetime communist) who has become caught up in the rife disillusionment and redundant horrors of the Second World War. The series began with 2007’s Zoo Station (set at the end of 1938), and each successive entry has taken its name from a railway depot in Berlin, Germany. Masaryk Station finds Russell in Berlin in 1948, after the war’s conclusion, still working as a double agent for both the USSR’s notorious NKVD and America’s recently launched Central Intelligence Agency, and hoping he can extricate himself from both camps before either discovers his activities. But the ruined former Nazi capital is a city divided between occupying powers, where spies proliferate at the dawning of the Cold War. Worse, there’s talk of Western forces abandoning the city and leaving it prey to Soviet soldiers, who have a long reputation for brutality. Amid these tensions, Russell and his Russian liaison, Shchepkin, chase after one last bit of intelligence that may change the direction of the Cold War--and help answers questions that have plagued Russell’s mind throughout this series. Author Downing works hard, sometimes too hard, to present his period atmospherics, but his understanding of mid-20th-century history and politics is expert. Although Masaryk marks the end of this particular series, he’ll be launching a second one in April 2014 with the U.S. publication of Jack of Spies (Soho Crime), set in 1913 and introducing Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman whose itinerant ways and dexterity with languages make him an espionage asset in the run-up to World War I.

* * *

Also worth looking for is The Heist (Bantam), the opening number in a new series penned jointly by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. Fans of the movie and novel To Catch a Thief, as well as the classic Robert Wagner TV series, It Takes a Thief, should find much to appreciate in this fast-moving yarn about FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare, whose lengthy pursuit of handsome con man and crook Nicolas Fox takes an unexpected turn, when Fox convinces the Feebs to offer him a job, working with none other than O’Hare herself. ... Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Sara Gran’s sprightly follow-up to Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, find private eye DeWitt struggling to solve the murder of her musician ex-boyfriend, Paul Casablancas, in San Francisco--a mystery that will cause her to review some of her previous cases. ... And though I haven’t yet succeeded in reading an e-book myself, I’m going to at least mention this one, because proceeds from its sales go to charity: Grand Central Noir (Metropolitan Crime). Edited by Terrence P. McCauley, its an anthology of tales set in and around New York’s 110-year-old Grand Central Terminal. Among the contributors are Matt Hilton, Ron Fortier, Jen Conley, and R. Narvaez. The release of this book benefits God’s Love, We Deliver, which McCauley says is “a non-profit here in New York City whose mission is to feed those too sick to feed themselves.”

Passing of a Rapp Star

Although this turn of events was certainly not unexpected, I still regret having to announce that Vince Flynn, a popular American author of political thrillers, has died. He was only 47 years old.

More than two years ago, Flynn posted a notice on his Web site, explaining that he’d been “diagnosed with Stage III metastatic prostate cancer.” He added, though, that “my attitude is strong, and I feel better than I have in years,” and he looked forward to at least an “extremely good” near-term prognosis. However, the St. Paul, Minnesota, author lost his battle with cancer very early this morning, “surrounded by family and friends.”

Flynn had suffered from dyslexia in his youth, and he told Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim in 2008 that it took him a long time to overcome that learning disability:

Not being able to read and write above the level of an eighth-grader was very embarrassing. I was a decent athlete, and that kept me out of trouble. During my junior year in college I decided to confront the problem and forced myself to begin reading for the first time. I started with Trinity, by Leon Uris, and then dug into [Robert] Ludlum, [Ken] Follett, [Jack] Higgins, [Tom] Clancy, and many others. Even though I was a slow reader, I realized early on that my dyslexic mind could predict what was going to happen with each story. Almost overnight I became passionate about the thing I feared most as a child.

After college, Flynn worked as an account and sales specialist for Kraft General Foods, then sought to join the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviator, only to eventually be medically disqualified from that second career. In 1997 he self-published his first novel, Term Limits, and went on to produce 13 books featuring undercover CIA counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp, including 2012’s The Last Man, which is due out in paperback this coming August. Amazon.com’s Omnivoracious blog notes that “Flynn’s books were especially embraced by well-known political conservatives. (Flynn was friends with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.) Flynn attributed this to his books’ patriotic and pro-military themes, and he once said that he felt his books were ‘entertainment, educational, and serve as cautionary tales.’”

His 14th Mitch Rapp novel, The Survivor, is due out in the States from Atria/Emily Bestler Books this coming October.

We send our best wishes to Flynn’s family.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Regarding Harry

You knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, right? As Omnimystery News explains:

Amazon Studios has ordered a pilot based on a character created by crime novelist Michael Connelly. Titled Bosch, it will be centered on LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, first introduced in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel the following year.

Deadline reports that Connelly co-wrote the pilot screenplay, though it isn’t clear if it is an original story or based on one of the novels in the series.

A hearty congratulations is due Michael Connelly. I’m only surprised it has taken this long to fashion a TV series from his very popular Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch books.

* * *

Speaking of small-screen endeavors, the British TV series DCI Banks, starring Stephen Tompkinson as author Peter Robinson’s longtime Yorkshire cop, Alan Banks, has been renewed for a third series (aka season). Production on a trio of two-part episodes is scheduled, beginning in August of this year. Those episodes will be based on the novels Wednesday’s Child, Piece of My Heart, and Bad Boy.

In the UK, DCI Banks started showing in 2010, but here in the States, series I and II didn’t debut until this last January, running back to back. Series III is being prepared for broadcast in the UK next year, but there’s no news yet on when it might reach these shores.

“A Writer ... Caught Up in a Real-life Plot”

It’s been most of three decades since I last watched director Wim Wenders’ noirish 1982 film, Hammett, based on Joe Gores’ 1975 novel of that same name. However, the trailer below, which I happened across today on YouTube, makes me want to sample the picture once more. Has anybody else seen this cinematic ode to detective-author Dashiell Hammett more recently? If so, how does it hold up?

Cry Wolfe

Earlier today the New York City-based fan organization, the Nero Wolfe Society, announced its list of nominees for the 2013 Nero Awards, intended to celebrate “the best mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.” Those contenders are:

• Antiques Disposal, by Barbara Allan (aka Max Allan Collins and his wife, Barbara; Kensington)
• Burning Midnight, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge)
• Dead Anyway, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)
• The Truth of All Things, by Kieran Shields (Crown)

As usual, we’ll have to wait a while before we hear who has won this prize. The Nero Award is given out during the Wolfe Pack’s annual Black Orchid Banquet, which is typically held in Manhattan on the first Saturday in December.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Bullet Points: Father’s Day Weekend Edition

• Author and TV writer Peter S. Fischer, who’s probably still best known for his work on such series as Columbo, Ellery Queen, and Murder, She Wrote, has won the gold medal in the Mystery/Suspense category of the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition. That honor was presented in recognition of Fischer’s 2012 novel, The Unkindness of Strangers (The Grove Press). Omnimystery News adds that “The silver winners in the same category are Ripped, by Shelly Dickson Carr (which also won the Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book), and Run to Ground, by D. P. Lyle (Oceanview Publishing).” Amnon Kabatchnik picked up a silver medal in the Reference category for his book Blood on the Stage: 1975-2000: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery, and Detection (Scarecrow Press). The Benjamin Franklin Awards “recognize excellence in independent publishing and are given out by the Independent Book Publishers Association in a number of categories.”

• And Christopher Valen’s novel Bone Shadows (Conquill Press) not only walked away with the 2012 Garcia Memorial Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year, but captured first place in the Mystery/Thriller/Suspense/Horror category of the Reader Views Awards, which honor self-published and independently published works. You can find out more here.

• Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel, Dare Me, looks like it’s going to get the Hollywood treatment. Abbott herself wrote the script, and Natalie Portman is being courted to star in the picture (though, at 32 years of age, she doesn’t seem likely to win one of the high-school cheerleader roles). A big Rap Sheet congratulations to our friend Megan!

• Philadelphia blogger Peter Rozovsky has posted the first part of a multi-installment interview he conducted recently with French author Fred Vargas, whose soon-forthcoming Commissaire Adamsberg mystery novel, The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, he says is her best work yet. UPDATE: Part II of Rozovsky’s Vargas interview is now available here.

• Matt (Beynon) Rees, the author of four novels featuring Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef as well as historical tales such as Mozart’s Last Aria (2011), has posted a rundown of what he insists are “10 Historical Thrillers You Have to Read.” Included on his list are works by J. Sydney Jones, Anne Perry, Barbara Cleverly, and J. Robert Janes.

• Meanwhile, Classic Mysteries’ Les Blatt, who says he has “now read somewhat more than half of Stuart Palmer’s books featuring Hildegarde Withers, the New York City schoolteacher who manages to spend a significant amount of her time solving murders,” lists four of his favorites from that series here. (Withers, by the way, was the featured sleuth in a failed 1972 TV pilot film, A Very Missing Person, about which I wrote earlier this year.)

• Apparently, spelling competence isn’t required of extreme-right nominees for lieutenant governor in Virginia. Just ask E.W. Jackson.

• I have to admit that Michael Shonk, Mystery*File’s specialist in classic crime TV dramas, surprised me with his latest fine column, this one about the 1961-1962 syndicated series Shannon, which starred George Nader as Joe Shannon, “an insurance investigator for Transport Bonding & Surety Company,” with offices in Denver and Los Angeles. “What set Shannon apart from your average syndicated P.I.,” Shonk explains, “was his car, a 1961 Buick Special with enough gadgets to please James Bond (though Bond would have be disappointed by the lack of lethal weapons/gadgets).” Shonk examines four episodes of that forgotten half-hour program here.

• Actor-turned-restaurateur Harry Lewis died this last week at age 93. In 1950, Lewis and his girlfriend (later wife), Marilyn Friedman, opened their first Hamburger Hamlet on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip. The eatery eventually grew into a chain of 24 Hamlets scattered all over the L.A. area. One of the first restaurants I visited during my earliest trip to Southern California was the Hamburger Hamlet in West Hollywood, which I heard closed in late 2011 after half a century in business. Sorry, but I can’t remember what I ordered. That was too many dead brain cells ago. (Hat tip to L.A. Observed.)

• Also gone is Norman Borisoff, a TV writer with credits that extended from The Saint and I Spy to Ironside and Starsky and Hutch. He later penned young adult novels. Borisoff died on April 21 at age 94.

• Film scholar Jake Hinkson has a nice two-part tribute to Robert Mitchum in Criminal Element. Part I is here, Part II is here.

• Is the 1950s-set Magic City really “the crime genre's answer to Mad Men”? You might well think so, after watching this preview. I can’t believe I have heard very little about Magic City up till now. But then, I don’t have Starz as part of my cable-TV package.

• From Think Progress:

The news that Penelope Cruz is in talks to play the romantic lead opposite Daniel Craig in the next James Bond film has prompted all sorts of reactions from across the Web. Is it “a feminist breakthrough” that Craig will be playing across an actress close to his own age? Is noting that Cruz, who will be 39 or 40 when filming begins, the oldest actress to step into those stilettos opposite Bond, “drearily chauvinistic”? Or is age not really what matters here at all?

• This is haunting footage--the only known film of German-Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank, take in Amsterdam in 1941.

• Curtis Evans, author of the non-fiction work Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery, talks with Past Offences’ Rich Westwood about “his longtime fascination with the less-publicized writers of the British ‘Golden Age.’” You’ll find the results of their conversation here.

• Good news for Aussie mystery-fiction fans, quoted from B.V. Lawson’s blog, In Reference to Murder:

There’s a new crime fiction festival coming to Adelaide, Australia, called The Body in the Garden, to be held October 25 to 27. The event will feature a line-up of 22+ writers from Australia and overseas, including Swedish crime writer Hakan Nesser, UK author Anne Cleeves, and Australians Gabrielle Lord, Paul Bangay, Fabian Capomollo and Mat Pember. This is unusual in that it’s a free festival and will be held (as the name suggests) at the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

• London’s Goldsboro Books will host the third annual Crime in the Court gathering on July 4 (6:30-9:30 p.m.) to coincide with Independent Booksellers Week. It’s an opportunity for readers to meet some of Britain’s top crime, mystery, and thriller authors. Among those scheduled to attend this year are Mark Billingham, Robert Goddard, Nicci French, R.N. Morris, Alison Bruce, Adrian Magson, Eva Dolan, and Charles Cumming. Crime in the Court won’t be a ticketed event this time ’round, but you’re asked to confirm your attendance with a brief note sent to crimeinthecourt@goldsborobooks.com.

• Also, the 13th and final series of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot, starring David Suchet as the brainy Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, includes an episode shot at Greenway, author Christie’s old estate in Devon, England. Comprising five adaptations of Christie’s mysteries, this series has already begun broadcasting in the UK, but so far there’s no word from PBS-TV as to when these installments--which also include an adaptation of Christie’s last Poirot tale, Curtain--will show in the United States. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Farewell, Joan Parker

This is sad news, quoted from The Boston Globe:

Joan Parker, the philanthropist and widow of mystery writer Robert B. Parker, has died. Parker, a longtime Cambridge [Massachusetts] resident, died Tuesday, according to Helen Brann, a longtime friend and agent to Robert B. Parker. Joan Parker had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in August 2011, and was receiving treatment. A tireless fundraiser for a host of different charities, Parker was barely slowed by her illness. Last month, she co-chaired the annual fund-raiser of PFLAG, a national nonprofit supporting parents, families, and friends of lesbians and gays. (Parker’s two children, Dan and David, are both gay.)

You’ll recall that Bob Parker, who created the very popular fictional Boston private eye Spenser, died in January 2010 at age 77--but not before repeatedly dedicating his many novels to his wife, the former Joan Hall, whom he fell in love with during a freshman dance at Maine’s Colby College in 1950, while they were both students there. The pair were married in 1956. She went to become the inspiration for the character of Spenser’s longtime girlfriend, Susan Silverman, a school guidance counselor turned psychologist.

I hadn’t expected Joan Parker to perish quite so soon after her husband’s demise. I never met her (though I did once share frappés with author Parker), but I was always given to understood that she was a woman of tremendous drive, and not one to succumb easily to the demands of death. Fortunately, she was also committed to continuing her husband’s legacy, and put the Spenser series into the capable, respectful hands of Ace Atkins before she passed away.

(Hat tip to Kevin R. Tipple.)

READ MORE: “Robert B. Parker Is Dead! Long Live Robert B. Parker!,” by Zac Bissonnette (The Boston Globe Magazine).

Pierce’s Picks: “The Confessions of Al Capone”

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

The Confessions of Al Capone, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge):
One can’t help but admire Loren D. Estleman’s authorial versatility. For the last 33 years--beginning with 1980’s Motor City Blue--he’s been writing up the adventures of unreconstructed Detroit gumshoe Amos Walker (last seen in Burning Midnight). But the now 60-year-old writer has also turned out smaller successions of books about hit man Peter Macklin, Old West marshal Page Murdock, and “film detective” Valentino (Alive!), and he’s concocted historical novels around real-life figures such as “hanging judges” Isaac Parker (The Branch and the Scaffold) and Roy Bean (Roy & Lillie: A Love Story). The Confessions of Al Capone adds to this last category of his storytelling.

Set in 1944, this new yarn introduces Peter Vasco, an FBI “drone” who’s typically “assigned to proofread non-classified instructions to Special Agents in Charge and the odd innocuous press release for errors of spelling and grammar.” One day, though, Vasco is summoned to Director J. Edgar Hoover’s office. He fears that Hoover is going to dismiss him for some incidental slip-up; instead, the director wants young Vasco--posing as a Catholic priest--to infiltrate the guarded inner circle around mob boss Al Capone, who has recently been released after a seven-year prison stint (part of it spent at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay) brought on by his 1931 conviction on federal charges of tax evasion. Capone has returned to his estate in Palm Beach, Florida; however, he’s suffering from syphilis, only irregularly lucid, and prone to spontaneous rants. It’s up to Vasco to gain the declining gangster’s trust and elicit from him as much information as he can about Capone’s confederates before “Scarface” kicks the bucket (which he will do in 1947 at age 48).

Running more than 400 pages in length, this is a big book for Estleman, and one that displays his narrative-writing skills and comprehension of U.S. criminal history most effectively. Its chapters shift back and forth between third-person action and the first-person recollections of Capone himself. Along the way, Estleman provides readers with sharp portrayals of the mobster’s underappreciated wife, Mae, top Capone henchman Frank Nitti, and other members of the so-called Chicago Outfit. One gets the impression that Estleman invested more than mere time in this novel, that he had a genuine connection with the era and people about which he writes. As he told an interviewer recently, his biggest challenge was in capturing Capone’s voice. That, he said, “was the very kernel of the idea of what I wanted to do. ... [Capone] had a fascinating cadence of speech. He loved to tell a story; he loved to talk about himself; he loved publicity. ... I wanted that version of Capone to come through.” It’s only one critic’s opinion, of course, but from what I’ve read of this book so far, I think he succeeded in that task, and more.

* * *

Also new and worth tracking down is The Rules of Wolfe (Mysterious Press), by James Carlos Blake. It rolls out the increasingly tense tale of Eddie Gato Wolfe, a too-impulsive member of a Texas gun-running family, who signs on to work security for a Sonoran drug cartel--only to fall hard for a cinnamon-skinned beauty he should never have touched, and with whom he soon flees, pursued by a pack of killers. A great chase thriller. ... And Brits should look for The Resistance Man (Quercus UK), the sixth entry in Martin Walker’s heralded series about small-town French police chief Bruno Courrèges. Here we find the food-and-wine-loving Bruno investigating a cache of old bank notes and dealing with burglaries, one of which concludes in murder.

Where Old Shows Go to ... Live Again

As I mentioned here last week, the Web site Television Obscurities is celebrating its 10th year of publication. Although that site’s young administrator, the mysterious Robert, worries he “may be overdoing it a bit with these anniversary posts,” I respectfully disagree. His write-ups about vintage (and sometimes justly forgotten) TV programs have been thorough and interesting, and he ought to be commemorating a full decade’s worth of contributions in high style. Already, he’s posted about the history of Television Obscurities in two parts (here and here), and he’s looked back at his “very favorite Obscurity” as well as some of his other favorites. I’ll be watching to see what else Robert can come up with during this week-long anniversary celebration.

You should be able to keep track of all the Television Obscurities anniversary posts at this link.

Crime in All Corners

Here’s something of potential interest to travelers this summer. Publisher Open Road Media has compiled a list of 64 mysteries, thrillers, and assorted other crime stories, set across the breadth of the United States and available in e-book format. “Each novel encapsulates the unique flora and fauna of its home state and weaves in a tale of villainy and intrigue ...,” according to The Open Road Blog. You’ll find those “Map of Mystery” selections listed here, and through next Tuesday, June 18, they can be had for up to 75 percent off.

Uncorking Wine for a New Generation

My latest Mysteries and Thrillers column has now been posted on the Kirkus Reviews Web site. The topic this week: Roger L. Simon’s novel The Big Fix, which introduced Los Angeles private eye Moses Wine--and celebrates its 40th birthday this year. As I write in that piece, Fix was Simon’s attempt to bring something new to a genre then in need of an overhaul:

Simon sought to put an innovative spin on private-eye fiction. He didn’t wish simply to re-wrap the field’s hard-boiled conventions in new, shinier paper, but instead hoped to reboot the genre in a way that would resonate with a generation of readers less wistful for the quieter “good old days” than they were hopeful about how late-20th-century upheavals might redefine modern culture for the better. Moses S. Wine would chronicle that evolution through the course of his cases.

You’ll find the full column here.

No Question About It, That’s a Punchy Name

Look at what I just found on the Amazon U.S. Web site: a sales page for The Black-Eyed Blonde, Irish author John Banville’s long-promised novel featuring Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. According to that page, Banville’s book--which will appear under his Benjamin Black pseudonym--is due out from publisher Henry Holt on March 4, 2014. It was originally slated for release sometime later this year.

As Tom Williams, author of last year’s Chandler biography, A Mysterious Something in the Light, notes in his blog, there’s a history to the name of this new Marlowe outing:

The title was one of several potential pulp titles listed in Chandler’s notebooks. It has been used before, as the title of an authorised short story by Benjamin M. Schutz in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, and, perhaps more interestingly, by Erle Stanley Gardner as the title for one of his Perry Mason stories. Since Gardner and Chandler were great friends it is possible that the Chandler suggested the title to Gardner. There is no mention of it in the correspondence I have read, but Ray and [his wife] Cissy were occasional visitors to the Gardner ranch and perhaps, over a coffee or a whisky, the title was mentioned. We will never know, of course. Gardner’s book is long out of print so it seems, for now at least, Chandler will be associated with the title once again.

Hmm. I own a paperback copy of Gardner’s The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde (1944). Maybe I ought to read that before tackling Banville/Black’s forthcoming tale.

The Book You Have to Read: “Yardie,” by Victor Headley

(Editor’s note: This is the 127th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today we welcome back an old friend and colleague, Michael G. Jacob, who, with Daniela De Gregorio and under the joint pseudonym “Michael Gregorio,” has penned four historical mysteries featuring early 18th-century Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis, most recently 2010’s Unholy Awakening. The pair’s latest novel is a non-series work, Your Money Or Your Life, a mystery set during the 16th-century Italian Renaissance and released in English last month by the French publisher Didier-Paper Planes.)

Murder One used to be a regular stop on my occasional visits to London. It was the first and certainly the best British bookshop for crime-fiction readers. Unfortunately, that store in Charing Cross Road closed down in 2009, after 21 years, when owner and novelist Maxim Jakubowski retired from the business (though Murder One UK continues to operate online as a specialist in crime books).

On one of my visits there 20 years ago, I picked up Yardie (The X Press, 1992), a slim volume by a debut writer that I had never heard of before, Jamaican-born Victor Headley, and I was totally taken by it. As a result, in the succeeding years I bought Headley’s follow-up works: Exce$$ (1993), Yush (1994), Fetish (1995), Here Comes the Bride (1997), and Off Duty (2001).

So, what was the attraction of Yardie, and why am I writing this note today, more than two decades after it first appeared?

The first thing that gripped me was the book’s cover image of a snub-nosed 9mm Saturday night special pointing straight into your face. It was blunt, brutal, threatening--and I loved it. Later editions of Yardie were adorned with smarter, slicker, better-produced images, but the original cover encapsulated the menace that runs like quicksilver throughout Headley’s story.

D., a Jamaican drugs “star,” backstreet “gangsta,” and small-time dealer in the Yard (aka Kingston, Jamaica), visits England for the first time on a “mission,” carrying a kilo of cocaine for the London branch of the Spicers street gang. He likes what he sees--the high life, fancy clothes, fast cars, big money--so he makes his play for fame and fortune, ripping off his bosses and their associates, and setting up his own organization in direct competition.

Right from the start, you know there’s a gang war heating up.

As many critics noted at the time of Yardie’s original release, there was nothing very original about the story. It might have been inspired by James Cagney in The Public Enemy. At the same time, I found it fascinating. Set in a social milieu of which I knew absolutely nothing--north London’s Jamaican underworld--the novel touched on a lot of significant themes. It was about poor people trying to emerge from the shadows, using whatever means they could lay their hands on--drugs, guns, easy money--and there was a compulsive, fast-moving rhythm to the storytelling, an abundance of detail about Britain’s Jamaican community which was eye-opening. D rises to the top of the tree in no time. He has a child, a “baby mother” to cook and clean for him, other lovers, and he always puts business before everything and everyone. His climb seems inevitable, as does the probability that his plans won’t succeed.

You get it? Macbeth, pride coming before a fall, the wheel of fortune turning, turning ...

This was a potential Jamaican low-life tragedy set in London.

If you manage to get beneath the skin of the Yardie patois and the day-to-day banality of trading drugs, there’s a rich world of characters and situations in these pages that you will never have met before in an English crime novel. Jamaican food, Jamaican music, Jamaican friends, Jamaican enemies, the exiled Jamaican’s nostalgia for the Yard, the Caribbean home and poverty he has reluctantly left behind him.

As I said before, I went into Murder One on Charing Cross Road, looking for something different, and I came out holding Victor Headley in my hand.

I re-read Yardie not long ago, and loved it all over again. A crime novel doesn’t have to be packed with twists and turns and explosive denouements to work. All it needs is a man with a tale to tell, and the language to tell it with. Victor Yardley had both. The economy of his prose is truly remarkable. It takes a while to crack the code, but once you do, you’ll enjoy the rich sensuality of the language.

“Is truth you ah talk, Jahman,” D. said after a while. “Black people cyan get a break in dis time unless it’s t’rough music or sports. If a man don’t have dem form of skills, him still ha fe make a living, differently. Dat is why we must take some risks, try fe de best.”

Victor Headley took a lot of risks, and he did his best.

(A previous version of this “forgotten books” review appeared in Michael Gregorio’s blog.)

Well, That Takes the Prize

There have been many fiction-writing commendations dispensed lately, so we can probably be excused for failing to mention the occasional one. However, a pair of recent presentations along these lines deserve at least some small fanfare here.

Late May’s International Latino Book Awards recipients included a couple of works from the crime and mystery fiction category: Missing in Machu Picchu, by Cecilia Velastegui (Libros Publishing), and The Land Grant, by Carlos Cisneros (Arte Publico Press).

In addition, Friend of The Rap Sheet and Private Eye Writers of America founder Robert J. Randisi has won the President’s Literary Excellence Award from The ReadWest Foundation for his “contribution[s] to excellence in Western literature.” (A new video interview with Randisi can be watched here.) ReadWest also announced that Wyoming novelist Craig Johnson, whose series of mysteries featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire inspired the A&E-TV series Longmire, is one of its four Featured Authors for 2013.

We offer our hardy congratulations to all four wordsmiths.

McIlvanney Calls It As He Sees It

(Editor’s note: Over the last few years, I’ve talked with Tony Black several times about the possibility of his interviewing fellow Scottish crime novelist William McIlvanney, who’s best known for penning the cop novel Laidlaw (1977) and its two sequels. Tony--the author of such works as Paying for It, Murder Mile, and Last Orders [that third book an expansion of a short story that ran originally in The Rap Sheet]--repeatedly expressed great interest in such a project. However, he always seemed too busy to approach the elder McIvanney, or else he was having trouble arranging time to speak with him. So imagine my surprise and delight, when Tony recently told me that he would finally be sending me part of an exchange he’d had with Laidlaw’s author, for posting in The Rap Sheet. What follows is that excerpt, taken from a longer piece in Black’s new e-book collection of interviews, Hard Truths: Cross-Examining Crime Writers [UK link here, U.S. link here].)

(Right) William McIlvanney, photo by
Ian Atkinson

William McIlvanney is something of a legend in Scottish crime-writing circles. I choose my words carefully here, for the man himself has described the term Tartan noir as “ersatz.” And who am I to argue with the author of the novel that started the phenomenon?

A good friend of mine recently described McIlvanney as “like meeting a statue that’s come to life,” and that does kind of sum up the reverence with which he’s treated in his home country. But crime writers didn’t always attract such rapturous plaudits.

When McIlvanney wrote Laidlaw, back in the late 1970s, Scotland was not well-known for its crime fiction--something he was to change singlehandedly. McIlvanney’s curmudgeonly cop, Glasgow Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw, provided the imprimatur for the Scottish best-sellers lists, and our longest-running television drama, Taggart, is a very heavy homage to the work.

This Godfather of Tartan Noir has never been out of fashion, but when his books fell out of print it was definitely time for a revival. I spoke with the 76-year-old McIlvanney on the eve of Edinburgh-based Canongate’s re-publication of his ground-breaking Laidlaw series.

Tony Black: You were writing literary fiction and changed to genre fiction with Laidlaw. It’s an accepted career path now--everybody does it--but when you did it, nobody did. What were you thinking?

William Mcilvanney: I suppose I didn’t give a shit. I just thought that I had written Docherty (1975), which was about the first quarter of the 20th century, and I was desperate to reconnect with contemporary life again and I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had this character--who turned out to be Laidlaw--who was persistently hanging about in my head. And I’d always wanted to write about Glasgow--I’m a convert, I come from Ayrshire--so I had the intensity of a convert for Glasgow, I loved it and wanted to write about that. I had to make this character Glaswegian and he's got to go to bad places so he’s got to be a cop. But I didn’t think, I will now write a detective novel; I came upon the necessity to write a detective novel because I wanted to write about Glasgow and I wanted this abrasive character to be part of it, so I kind of stumbled into the fact that he’s got to be a detective.

TB: So Laidlaw could have been a completely different person--say, a journalist or a paramedic, just somebody who touches different echelons of society?

WM: Oh, absolutely. I was fortunate to know a guy from Kilmarnock, Robbie McInness, who was a detective from Glasgow. [He] told me things about the kind of ambiance the guy would work in, and putting all these things together it’s got to be a detective novel about Glasgow, but I didn’t think it was going to be a game-changer. I’ve always felt that detective novels can fight as middle-weight and quite often fight as fly-weight, so I wasn’t deterred by saying this is a detective novel; this was a character I cared about and the story I wanted to write.

TB: You’re on the record as saying “good writing occurs where it occurs”--you don’t put it in a ghetto if it’s genre fiction.

WM: Yeah, absolutely. I haven’t read much detective fiction, but I knew that when I read about [Philip] Marlowe I thought this is serious writing, he can write. I never had that--well, coming from my background you wouldn’t--snobbishness that says you have to write “literature.” It’s all books, and if they work they work and that’s it.

TB: I believe you don’t buy into the Agatha Christie style of crime fiction. You’ve said it gives you “reality starvation.”

WM: That’s right. She’s also one of the most successful writers in the world and I respect that, she did what she did. But certainly it’s not for me, finding dead bodies in the library and all that, I just cannot believe it when I read it. Maybe it works as a puzzle, but it connects to no kind of sense of life that I understand, and what I try to [do when I] write is to connect with the real life that I know and the people I know.

TB: English crime fiction and Scottish crime fiction are completely different, aren’t they?

WM: I would hope so. I don’t think it’s a national thing, it’s about the way you look at books. I mean, why should I be cheeky to Agatha Christie, who’s far more successful than I could dream of being? But for me it was the book as a puzzle. I think Scottish writing’s always been a bit more serious than that, a bit more solemn. I didn’t want to pass two hours on the train, I wanted to relate to the kind of society I live in and encourage people to do that. [Poet John] Keats said a great thing, that when you’re writing you must “load the rifts with ore.” Don’t just go where you’re going, but give the reader observation, presence along the way. A detective story--if you get it right, you’ll have a plot that’s going to make people read on, but along the way give them serious observation and a sense of the society the novel is passing through, and that’s what I wanted to do with Laidlaw. I thought, what you’ve got here is a great form; if you get it right, folk are going to read it to the end. But you can also do the thing of saying here’s the reality of the story by giving them bonuses of observation and reality along the way, and I thought that’s what Laidlaw could do.

TB: But you subverted the traditional structure with Laidlaw by revealing the murderer on page one …

WM:That’s right. I think if you say it’s a whodunit, the puzzle takes over. It dominates the reader’s concentration throughout, and I thought I don’t want to do that. So if I say, this is the man who did it, then in the process of this story I’ve got to produce something else, because you know already who did it, so it’s a why-dunnit and it’s [about] what will result from his having done it. And you’ve still got a hook, but as well as the hook I wanted to say, OK, this is the crime and eventually we’ll get to the core of why it happened, but along the way what about this for a place? Look what’s around us.

TB: It’s a literary writer’s approach to crime fiction. You obviously want your characters and setting to drive the novel, it’s not about ladling in lots of plot turns.

WM: Absolutely. It’s about Laidlaw, it’s about the boy who [committed the crime] and the strange nature of him and why he did it. It just seemed to me that it was a great form.

Gore Vidal said a great thing once in an essay, he said that we should colonize the genre, we should take genre [works] and try to people them with serious reality--so if it’s a detective story, make something happen to make it real, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to take a form that people would like reading, hopefully, and follow it to the end, but almost below their consciousness you would be giving them the presence of observation and a sense of reality. If you can put that all together, to me, you’ve got an utterly valid book.

TB: Inspector Laidlaw is a bit of a curmudgeon--do protagonists in fiction need to be sympathetic?

MW: It’s advice I’ve never followed. I like him, he’s a pain in the arse in many ways, but I think we all are. I’d absolutely go for several pints with him.

TB: You stated early on that you weren’t interested in a man who was a cop, and Laidlaw had to be a cop who was also a man.

WM: Yeah, you’re not defined by your job, you redefine your job by your humanity in the way you handle it. Laidlaw happens to be a cop, but he’s much more than that and he brings the much-more-than-that to the job. If you’re defined by your job, you’re pathetic, you might as well give up. But you can approach the job in such a way that you redefine the job by the humanity you bring to it, and that’s what I think Laidlaw does; he’s aggressive, he’s a pain in the arse, but he’s serious and he means it.

TB: A lot of characters in crime fiction do tend to be quite one-dimensional, but he’s got a hinterland ...

WM: I could sit here and pontificate about how I created him, but I’m not sure how I did it. It was putting a man who was interesting in situations that would test his nature and that’s about that. He’s a guy I like and I think that all the folk I like can be a bit of a pain in the arse at times. I don’t want to meet folk that are so bland that all you do is exchange the same kinds of platitudes. Laidlaw’s not a platitudes person, he keeps his reactions real and I think that’s important, because when that happens the situation becomes real. I mean, if you think about it, you can go to a party and think, Christ, I might not as well have gone at all, it was all so platitudinously pleasant. And a wee bit of frisson of angst or argument; I love that, Laidlaw brings that to every situation. He doesn’t go in and play a role, he becomes himself.

TB: I heard a rumor that the voice of Jack Laidlaw had come back to you recently. Does that mean there is another novel on the cards, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

WM: I don’t know. I don’t want to get too melodramatic, but I am still slightly haunted by him. I have got some ideas, but I don’t know if they’ll come to fruition. I’ve got an idea for a Laidlaw prequel, with Laidlaw as a younger man, perhaps before he became quite so aggressive. I’ve also got an idea for a twilight Laidlaw--where he’s out of the police--that I’ve had for a while. [Sean] Connery once phoned me and said, “I have a window,” and I thought, I’ve got several windows, but what he meant was that in his career there was a gap and could I write a treatment and let him see it. I wrote about 18 pages of a story in which Laidlaw becomes involved after he’s packed up the police. I won’t elaborate on the idea--I know you wouldn’t steal it, Tony, but somebody might--[but] I sent it to him and he said his secretary really likes it, but he thought it was a book not a film. And I think he was probably right. It strikes me that it’s an idea that could be resurrected.

(Right) Hard Truths, the source of this interview excerpt.

TB: Laidlaw, of course, operates in Glasgow--that city does get a bad reputation. It’s a cliché, but it is No Mean City ...

WM: Do you know a city that isn’t hard? I mean, I lived in Paris for a little while and it’s possibly my favorite city, but I remember walking into certain places and thinking, I’d better get out of here. It’s a hard place, I mean, Parisian crime is hard stuff and I think Glasgow has a reputation which is not unearned, but which is exaggerated. Besides being a hard town, it’s a terrifically warm town, I think. It’s a place, as I once said, where Greta Garbo wouldn’t have been alone--she’d have been in a pub somewhere and somebody would shout out, “Hey, you in the funny hat, come over and have a Blue Lagoon!”

Glasgow has a terrific quality of engaging you. I’ve had a lot of people who know about the books, approaching me. I went into the Horseshoe Bar once and ordered a drink, and as I lifted it to my lips a guy said, “It was Friday night in the city of the stare ...” And I thought, Christ, I wrote that, and we went on to have a terrific conversation. I didn’t ask if he’d went beyond the first sentence, though, I didn’t want to spoil a sweet moment.

READ MORE: “William McIlvanney: The Father of Tartan Noir,” by Susan Mansfield (The Scotsman); “William McIlvanney: Laying Down the Law,” by Bram E. Gieben (The Skinny); “Laidlaw,” by Jim Murdoch (The Truth About Lies).