Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Sacrifices Must Be Made
For the last 2013 installment of my “Two-fer Tuesday” series, over in the Killer Covers blog, I’m highlighting a pair of painful-looking but classic paperback fronts illustrated by Paul Kresse. Enjoy!
But Tell Us What You Really Think, Ray
“I hope the day will come when I don’t have to ride around on [Dashiell] Hammett and James Cain, like an organ grinder’s monkey. Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did he did superbly. But James [M.] Cain--faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naif, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things but because they do it in a dirty way.”
-- Raymond Chandler to his publisher, 1943
-- Raymond Chandler to his publisher, 1943
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Lost Friends, Lasting Influences
One of the saddest tasks I undertake at the end of each year is to compile a list of people who--for various reasons--were significant to the crime-fiction community, and who perished during the previous 12 months. I keep hoping that every new such inventory will be shorter than the last, that the folks
so familiar to us through their fiction writing or their roles in mystery/thriller-related films and TV shows will do a better job of surviving. Unfortunately, even more names appear below than were featured in my 2012 rundown.
Michael Ansara, 91, a Syrian-born American actor who came to prominence playing Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise in the 1956-1958 ABC-TV series Broken Arrow. Ansara
later appeared on Law of the Plainsman, Daniel Boone, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, McMillan & Wife, Police Story, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and many other programs.
Jakob Arjouni (né Jakob Bothe), 48, a German crime novelist who saw his first book, Happy Birthday, Türke!, published in 1985, when he was just 20 years old. Arjouni went on to create four more novels starring private detective Kemal Kayankaya, including Brother Kemal, which was released in the States earlier this year.
Robert Barnard, 76, an English crime writer who in 2003 won the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement. “Robert Barnard,” explained British critic-columnist Mike Ripley, “was one of a quartet of writers born in 1936--his contemporaries being Reginald Hill, Jonathan Gash and Peter Lovesey--who formed a solid backbone for traditional English crime writing of the highest order in the last quarter of the twentieth century.” Barnard’s first novel was Death of an Old Goat (1974). He also wrote under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable, producing two alternative historical mysteries starring an elderly Wolfgang Mozart in a sleuthing role.
Eileen Brennan, 80, the Los Angeles-born actress who appeared in so many roles, including that of Captain Doreen Lewis in the 1980 comedy Private Benjamin, and as singer Betty DeBoop in the 1978 Neil Simon comedy, The Cheap Detective, which starred Peter Falk.
Gwendoline Butler, 90, the British author of more than two dozen novels featuring Inspector John Coffin (beginning with 1958’s Receipt for Murder, in which the character was introduced playing second fiddle to another detective, Inspector Winter). Butler also concocted a series of women’s police procedurals under the pseudonym Jennie Melville. She won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger Award in 1973 for her novel A Coffin for Pandora.
Tom Clancy, 66, the American author of more than 20 thriller and espionage novels, among them The Hunt for Red October (1984), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and his latest, Command Authority, which was released by Putnam earlier this month. Clancy, wrote Dave Rosenthal in the Baltimore Sun, “almost single-handedly created the techno-thriller genre …”
Robert H. Colfelt, 79. He wasn’t a famous author, although he did publish one collection of personal essays, Together in the Dark: Mysteries of Healing (1987). He wasn’t a movie producer or a Hollywood star. But Seattle neurologist Bob Colfelt was an avid reader of crime and thriller fiction--particularly works by Philip Kerr, Dan Fesperman, and Ian Rankin--and he was a strong supporter of independent bookstores. He was also my friend. For all of those reasons he deserves a place among these remembrances.
Basil Copper, 89. He was best-known as a writer of horror fiction, but from the 1960s through the ’80s he also concocted dozens of stories featuring Los Angeles P.I. Mike Faraday. Following the death in 1971 of August Derleth, Copper continued the former’s series of pastiches featuring Sherlockian sleuth Solar Pons.
Gordon Cotler, 89, whose screenwriting credits included episodes of McMillan & Wife and Lanigan’s Rabbi, as well as the 1987 TV movie Deadly Deception, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. He wrote half a dozen mystery novels, among them The Bottletop Affair (1959), which was adapted to film in 1962 as The Horizontal Lieutenant. Cotler also produced nine short stories about Detective Lieutenant Bernie Farber for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine during the first decade of the 21st century.
Ava Dianne Day, 75, a psychologist turned author who penned romantic suspense fiction before finding a place among mystery tale-makers. She created half a dozen novels featuring turn-of-the-last-century
San Francisco heroine Caroline Fremont Jones, beginning with 1996’s The Strange Files of Fremont Jones.
Gérard de Villiers, 83, a French fictionist and journalist. According to The Gumshoe Site, de Villiers “wrote 200 spy novels featuring an Austrian prince called Malko Linge, who worked as a freelance CIA agent, starting with SAS in Istanbul in 1965 (SAS stands for Son Altesse Serenissime, meaning His Most Serene Highness), and ending with SAS: The Kremlin Revenge, his last and 200th, in 2012. He was almost unknown in the USA and UK, but … sold about 100 million copies worldwide. Less than 20 SAS titles in English have been published in the U.S., but Vintage Books will start publishing SAS novels in the U.S. and Canada in 2014.”
Nate Esformes, 79, a New York City-born character actor who appeared in TV series such as Quincy, M.E., The Streets of San Francisco, Barbary Coast, Mission: Impossible, Ironside, Mannix, Police Story, and Search. Stephen Bowie adds, in The Classic TV History Blog, that “He played one of the Watergate burglars in All the President’s Men, and most of his other films have achieved either critical acclaim or cult fame: Petulia, [James Garner’s] Marlowe, Black Belt Jones, Henry Jaglom’s Tracks, Battle Beyond the Stars, Vice Squad, Invasion U.S.A.”
Dennis Farina, 69, a Chicago policeman turned performer who starred in the television series Law & Order, Buddy Faro, and Crime Story. His other credits include appearances in such films as Get Shorty, Saving Private Ryan, Out of Sight, and Snatch.
Vince Flynn, 47, a popular author of political thrillers, including 13 books starring undercover CIA counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp.
Joan Fontaine, 96, a British-American actress (and the elder sister of fellow star Olivia de Havilland), who appeared as a haunted wife in the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca (1940) and subsequently picked up the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of a spooked newlywed in Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). You can find out much more about Fontaine in her New York Times obituary.
Steve Forrest, 87, who starred in the 1966-1967 British crime drama The Baron as well as in the 1975-1976 ABC police drama S.W.A.T.
Gail Frazer, 66, who--with her journalist friend, Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld, and under the pseudonym Margaret Frazer--created the Sister Frevisee mystery series. Kuhfeld ceased to be involved in that historical series after its first six installments, but Gail Frazer carried on to pen another 11 Sister (later Dame) Frevisee books.
Leighton Gage, 71, the author of seven novels featuring Brazilian Chief Inspector Mario Silva, including this year’s Perfect Hatred and The Ways of Evil Men, to be published next month by Soho Crime.
James Gandolfini, 51, who played patriarch Tony Soprano in the 1999-2007 New Jersey-based mobster drama, The Sopranos.
Andrew M. Greeley, 85, a Catholic priest turned prolific novelist. Although he is surely best known to readers of this blog for creating the part-time sleuth Father Blackie Ryan, Greeley was also an outspoken critic of George W. Bush’s Iraq war.
Noel Harrison, 79, who co-starred with Stefanie Powers in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), playing British secret agent Mark Slate.
Robin Hathaway, 79, author of the Dr. Fenimore and Jo Banks series. Fellow author Elizabeth Zelvin had more to say about Hathaway’s passing here.
Mitchell Hooks, 89, a Detroit-born artist-illustrator who created numerous memorable paperback crime-novel covers during the latter half of the 20th century.
Ed Koch, 88, a former U.S. congressman and New York City mayor, who co-authored a succession of four mystery novels, all featuring a fictional character named Ed Koch. That series began with Murder at City Hall (1995, composed with Herbert Resnicow) and concluded with The Senator Must Die (1998; with Wendy Corsi Staub).
Ed Lauter, 74, who for four decades was a fixture on U.S. television and movie screens. He appeared in an abundance of TV series, including Longstreet, Ironside, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Nero Wolfe, Magnum,P.I., The A-Team, Cold Case, Miami Vice, NYPD Blue, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lauter also starred in Last Hours Before Morning, an unsuccessful 1975 pilot film for NBC. He played Bud Delaney, a 1940s Los Angeles cop who was booted from the force “after being framed by a mysterious higher-up,” and took a job as the house detective at a B-grade Hollywood hotel.
Elmore Leonard, 87, the author of more than 45 novels--including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Hombre, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, Mr. Majestyk, LaBrava, Tishomingo Blues, and Rum Punch--many of which were adapted over the years for entertainment screens large and small. His contributions were recognized during the National Book Awards presentations in 2012, when this Detroit-area storyteller won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution. Leonard was also given the Crime Writers’ Association’s Diamond Dagger award in 2006, the F. Scott Fitzgerald
award in 2008, and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. The Rap Sheet paid homage to Leonard’s legacy in two large posts. Click here and here to find those tributes.
Richard Matheson, 87. Although he was principally recognized as the author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction (1954’s I Am Legend being perhaps his most popular work of the imagination), Matheson also concocted a trio of nourish novels, including 1953’s Someone Is Bleeding, and he won 1973 Edgar Award in the TV feature category for his work on The Night Stalker, a 1972 ABC “movie of the week” starring Darren McGavin as a seersucker-wrapped reporter and part-time monster hunter.
Cortright McMeel, 41, a Boston-born novelist and short-story writer, and the founder of Murdaland, a high-quality publication devoted to crime fiction that (sadly) lasted only two issues.
Barbara Mertz, 85, the author and Egyptologist best known under two pseudonyms, Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. Wikipedia notes that Mertz--who, as Peters, produced a popular historical mysteries series starring Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody--was “the recipient of a number of grandmaster and lifetime achievement awards, including being named Grand Master at the Anthony Awards in 1986 and Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1998; in 2003, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Malice Domestic Convention. In 2012 she was honored with the first Amelia Peabody Award at the Malice Domestic Convention ...”
Don Mitchell, 70, the Houston-born actor best known for playing delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger in the 1967-1975 NBC-TV crime drama Ironside. Mitchell also appeared in The Fugitive, McMillan & Wife, and Matlock. In what was evidently his last role, he resurrected Mark Sanger for the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside.
Tony Musante, 77, who starred in the 1973-1974 ABC-TV crime drama Toma, based on the real-life undercover exploits of Newark, New Jersey, police detective David Toma.
Hal Needham, 82, a stuntman who worked “for the television series Mike Hammer before getting his big break serving as Richard Boone’s stunt double on the popular Western series Have Gun--Will Travel.” At one point, writes blogger Terence Towles Canote, Needham was said to be “the highest paid stuntman in the world.”
Michael Palmer, 71, a doctor turned novelist who penned 18 medical thrillers, the last two of which--Oath of Office (2012) and Political Suicide (2013)--featured Washington, D.C., physician Lou Welcome. Palmer’s 20th novel, Resistant, is scheduled for publication (by St. Martin’s Press) on May 20 of next year.
Joan H. Parker, 80, a psychologist and specialist in early childhood development--and not incidentally the only wife of prominent private-eye novelist Robert B. Parker, who died back in January 2010 at age 77. Joan Parker is said to have inspired the character Susan Silverman, the girlfriend of her husband’s fictional Boston private eye, Spenser. Read more about Joan Parker’s life here and here.
Dale Robertson, 89, who starred in a couple of small-screen western dramas, Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-1962) and The Iron Horse (1966-1968), as well as the Stephen J. Cannell-created series, J.J. Starbuck, on which he played Jerome Jeremiah “J.J.” Starbuck, an oil-rich Texan inclined toward detective work.
Nick Robinson, 58, the chairman at publisher Constable & Robinson.
Harry Sims, 90. As The HMSS Weblog explains, Sims was “an announcer best known for [uttering] the words ‘a Quinn Martin production!’” on such TV programs as The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, and Banyon. Click here to learn more about Sims’ life and career.
Malachi Throne, 84, who played thief-turned-spy Alexander Mundy’s SIA boss, Noah Bain, on the 1968-1970 ABC-TV series It Takes a Thief, Throne also appeared on episodes of The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. A more extensive rundown of his professional roles can be found here.
Jack Vance, 96, who picked up three Hugo Awards as well as a Nebula, and was familiar as a prolific science-fiction writer. In addition, though, Vance penned a number of mystery novels, including the Edgar Award-winning The Man in the Cage (1960) and three that were released under the “Ellery Queen” house name: The Four Johns (1964), A Room to Die In (1965), and The Madman Theory (1966).
Colin Wilson, 82, the English author who, according to The Gumshoe Site, “became famous at 26 when his first book, The Outsider (Gollancz, 1956), hit the street … He was a prolific writer of philosophy, literature, history, and the occult. He also wrote science fiction as well as crime fiction, including Ritual in the Dark (Gollancz, 1960), The Glass Cage (Barker 1966), and The Schoolgirl Murder Case (Hart-Davis, 1974), which is the first of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet series.” Learn more from The Daily Telegraph’s obituary.
So, have I forgotten to include anybody? Please feel free to suggest any additions in the Comments section of this post.
READ MORE: “Good-bye 2013, Good-bye Audrey Totter!,” by Terence Faherty (SleuthSayers).
Michael Ansara, 91, a Syrian-born American actor who came to prominence playing Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise in the 1956-1958 ABC-TV series Broken Arrow. Ansara
later appeared on Law of the Plainsman, Daniel Boone, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, McMillan & Wife, Police Story, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and many other programs.Jakob Arjouni (né Jakob Bothe), 48, a German crime novelist who saw his first book, Happy Birthday, Türke!, published in 1985, when he was just 20 years old. Arjouni went on to create four more novels starring private detective Kemal Kayankaya, including Brother Kemal, which was released in the States earlier this year.
Robert Barnard, 76, an English crime writer who in 2003 won the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement. “Robert Barnard,” explained British critic-columnist Mike Ripley, “was one of a quartet of writers born in 1936--his contemporaries being Reginald Hill, Jonathan Gash and Peter Lovesey--who formed a solid backbone for traditional English crime writing of the highest order in the last quarter of the twentieth century.” Barnard’s first novel was Death of an Old Goat (1974). He also wrote under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable, producing two alternative historical mysteries starring an elderly Wolfgang Mozart in a sleuthing role.
Eileen Brennan, 80, the Los Angeles-born actress who appeared in so many roles, including that of Captain Doreen Lewis in the 1980 comedy Private Benjamin, and as singer Betty DeBoop in the 1978 Neil Simon comedy, The Cheap Detective, which starred Peter Falk.
Gwendoline Butler, 90, the British author of more than two dozen novels featuring Inspector John Coffin (beginning with 1958’s Receipt for Murder, in which the character was introduced playing second fiddle to another detective, Inspector Winter). Butler also concocted a series of women’s police procedurals under the pseudonym Jennie Melville. She won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger Award in 1973 for her novel A Coffin for Pandora.
Tom Clancy, 66, the American author of more than 20 thriller and espionage novels, among them The Hunt for Red October (1984), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and his latest, Command Authority, which was released by Putnam earlier this month. Clancy, wrote Dave Rosenthal in the Baltimore Sun, “almost single-handedly created the techno-thriller genre …”
Robert H. Colfelt, 79. He wasn’t a famous author, although he did publish one collection of personal essays, Together in the Dark: Mysteries of Healing (1987). He wasn’t a movie producer or a Hollywood star. But Seattle neurologist Bob Colfelt was an avid reader of crime and thriller fiction--particularly works by Philip Kerr, Dan Fesperman, and Ian Rankin--and he was a strong supporter of independent bookstores. He was also my friend. For all of those reasons he deserves a place among these remembrances.
Basil Copper, 89. He was best-known as a writer of horror fiction, but from the 1960s through the ’80s he also concocted dozens of stories featuring Los Angeles P.I. Mike Faraday. Following the death in 1971 of August Derleth, Copper continued the former’s series of pastiches featuring Sherlockian sleuth Solar Pons.
Gordon Cotler, 89, whose screenwriting credits included episodes of McMillan & Wife and Lanigan’s Rabbi, as well as the 1987 TV movie Deadly Deception, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. He wrote half a dozen mystery novels, among them The Bottletop Affair (1959), which was adapted to film in 1962 as The Horizontal Lieutenant. Cotler also produced nine short stories about Detective Lieutenant Bernie Farber for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine during the first decade of the 21st century.
Ava Dianne Day, 75, a psychologist turned author who penned romantic suspense fiction before finding a place among mystery tale-makers. She created half a dozen novels featuring turn-of-the-last-century
San Francisco heroine Caroline Fremont Jones, beginning with 1996’s The Strange Files of Fremont Jones.Gérard de Villiers, 83, a French fictionist and journalist. According to The Gumshoe Site, de Villiers “wrote 200 spy novels featuring an Austrian prince called Malko Linge, who worked as a freelance CIA agent, starting with SAS in Istanbul in 1965 (SAS stands for Son Altesse Serenissime, meaning His Most Serene Highness), and ending with SAS: The Kremlin Revenge, his last and 200th, in 2012. He was almost unknown in the USA and UK, but … sold about 100 million copies worldwide. Less than 20 SAS titles in English have been published in the U.S., but Vintage Books will start publishing SAS novels in the U.S. and Canada in 2014.”
Nate Esformes, 79, a New York City-born character actor who appeared in TV series such as Quincy, M.E., The Streets of San Francisco, Barbary Coast, Mission: Impossible, Ironside, Mannix, Police Story, and Search. Stephen Bowie adds, in The Classic TV History Blog, that “He played one of the Watergate burglars in All the President’s Men, and most of his other films have achieved either critical acclaim or cult fame: Petulia, [James Garner’s] Marlowe, Black Belt Jones, Henry Jaglom’s Tracks, Battle Beyond the Stars, Vice Squad, Invasion U.S.A.”
Dennis Farina, 69, a Chicago policeman turned performer who starred in the television series Law & Order, Buddy Faro, and Crime Story. His other credits include appearances in such films as Get Shorty, Saving Private Ryan, Out of Sight, and Snatch.
Vince Flynn, 47, a popular author of political thrillers, including 13 books starring undercover CIA counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp.
Joan Fontaine, 96, a British-American actress (and the elder sister of fellow star Olivia de Havilland), who appeared as a haunted wife in the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca (1940) and subsequently picked up the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of a spooked newlywed in Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). You can find out much more about Fontaine in her New York Times obituary.
Steve Forrest, 87, who starred in the 1966-1967 British crime drama The Baron as well as in the 1975-1976 ABC police drama S.W.A.T.
Gail Frazer, 66, who--with her journalist friend, Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld, and under the pseudonym Margaret Frazer--created the Sister Frevisee mystery series. Kuhfeld ceased to be involved in that historical series after its first six installments, but Gail Frazer carried on to pen another 11 Sister (later Dame) Frevisee books.
Leighton Gage, 71, the author of seven novels featuring Brazilian Chief Inspector Mario Silva, including this year’s Perfect Hatred and The Ways of Evil Men, to be published next month by Soho Crime.
James Gandolfini, 51, who played patriarch Tony Soprano in the 1999-2007 New Jersey-based mobster drama, The Sopranos.
Andrew M. Greeley, 85, a Catholic priest turned prolific novelist. Although he is surely best known to readers of this blog for creating the part-time sleuth Father Blackie Ryan, Greeley was also an outspoken critic of George W. Bush’s Iraq war.
Noel Harrison, 79, who co-starred with Stefanie Powers in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), playing British secret agent Mark Slate.
Robin Hathaway, 79, author of the Dr. Fenimore and Jo Banks series. Fellow author Elizabeth Zelvin had more to say about Hathaway’s passing here.
Mitchell Hooks, 89, a Detroit-born artist-illustrator who created numerous memorable paperback crime-novel covers during the latter half of the 20th century.
Ed Koch, 88, a former U.S. congressman and New York City mayor, who co-authored a succession of four mystery novels, all featuring a fictional character named Ed Koch. That series began with Murder at City Hall (1995, composed with Herbert Resnicow) and concluded with The Senator Must Die (1998; with Wendy Corsi Staub).
Ed Lauter, 74, who for four decades was a fixture on U.S. television and movie screens. He appeared in an abundance of TV series, including Longstreet, Ironside, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Nero Wolfe, Magnum,P.I., The A-Team, Cold Case, Miami Vice, NYPD Blue, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lauter also starred in Last Hours Before Morning, an unsuccessful 1975 pilot film for NBC. He played Bud Delaney, a 1940s Los Angeles cop who was booted from the force “after being framed by a mysterious higher-up,” and took a job as the house detective at a B-grade Hollywood hotel.
Elmore Leonard, 87, the author of more than 45 novels--including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Hombre, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, Mr. Majestyk, LaBrava, Tishomingo Blues, and Rum Punch--many of which were adapted over the years for entertainment screens large and small. His contributions were recognized during the National Book Awards presentations in 2012, when this Detroit-area storyteller won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution. Leonard was also given the Crime Writers’ Association’s Diamond Dagger award in 2006, the F. Scott Fitzgerald
award in 2008, and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. The Rap Sheet paid homage to Leonard’s legacy in two large posts. Click here and here to find those tributes.Richard Matheson, 87. Although he was principally recognized as the author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction (1954’s I Am Legend being perhaps his most popular work of the imagination), Matheson also concocted a trio of nourish novels, including 1953’s Someone Is Bleeding, and he won 1973 Edgar Award in the TV feature category for his work on The Night Stalker, a 1972 ABC “movie of the week” starring Darren McGavin as a seersucker-wrapped reporter and part-time monster hunter.
Cortright McMeel, 41, a Boston-born novelist and short-story writer, and the founder of Murdaland, a high-quality publication devoted to crime fiction that (sadly) lasted only two issues.
Barbara Mertz, 85, the author and Egyptologist best known under two pseudonyms, Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. Wikipedia notes that Mertz--who, as Peters, produced a popular historical mysteries series starring Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody--was “the recipient of a number of grandmaster and lifetime achievement awards, including being named Grand Master at the Anthony Awards in 1986 and Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1998; in 2003, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Malice Domestic Convention. In 2012 she was honored with the first Amelia Peabody Award at the Malice Domestic Convention ...”
Don Mitchell, 70, the Houston-born actor best known for playing delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger in the 1967-1975 NBC-TV crime drama Ironside. Mitchell also appeared in The Fugitive, McMillan & Wife, and Matlock. In what was evidently his last role, he resurrected Mark Sanger for the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside.
Tony Musante, 77, who starred in the 1973-1974 ABC-TV crime drama Toma, based on the real-life undercover exploits of Newark, New Jersey, police detective David Toma.
Hal Needham, 82, a stuntman who worked “for the television series Mike Hammer before getting his big break serving as Richard Boone’s stunt double on the popular Western series Have Gun--Will Travel.” At one point, writes blogger Terence Towles Canote, Needham was said to be “the highest paid stuntman in the world.”
Michael Palmer, 71, a doctor turned novelist who penned 18 medical thrillers, the last two of which--Oath of Office (2012) and Political Suicide (2013)--featured Washington, D.C., physician Lou Welcome. Palmer’s 20th novel, Resistant, is scheduled for publication (by St. Martin’s Press) on May 20 of next year.
Joan H. Parker, 80, a psychologist and specialist in early childhood development--and not incidentally the only wife of prominent private-eye novelist Robert B. Parker, who died back in January 2010 at age 77. Joan Parker is said to have inspired the character Susan Silverman, the girlfriend of her husband’s fictional Boston private eye, Spenser. Read more about Joan Parker’s life here and here.
Dale Robertson, 89, who starred in a couple of small-screen western dramas, Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-1962) and The Iron Horse (1966-1968), as well as the Stephen J. Cannell-created series, J.J. Starbuck, on which he played Jerome Jeremiah “J.J.” Starbuck, an oil-rich Texan inclined toward detective work.
Nick Robinson, 58, the chairman at publisher Constable & Robinson.
Harry Sims, 90. As The HMSS Weblog explains, Sims was “an announcer best known for [uttering] the words ‘a Quinn Martin production!’” on such TV programs as The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, and Banyon. Click here to learn more about Sims’ life and career.
Malachi Throne, 84, who played thief-turned-spy Alexander Mundy’s SIA boss, Noah Bain, on the 1968-1970 ABC-TV series It Takes a Thief, Throne also appeared on episodes of The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. A more extensive rundown of his professional roles can be found here.
Jack Vance, 96, who picked up three Hugo Awards as well as a Nebula, and was familiar as a prolific science-fiction writer. In addition, though, Vance penned a number of mystery novels, including the Edgar Award-winning The Man in the Cage (1960) and three that were released under the “Ellery Queen” house name: The Four Johns (1964), A Room to Die In (1965), and The Madman Theory (1966).
Colin Wilson, 82, the English author who, according to The Gumshoe Site, “became famous at 26 when his first book, The Outsider (Gollancz, 1956), hit the street … He was a prolific writer of philosophy, literature, history, and the occult. He also wrote science fiction as well as crime fiction, including Ritual in the Dark (Gollancz, 1960), The Glass Cage (Barker 1966), and The Schoolgirl Murder Case (Hart-Davis, 1974), which is the first of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet series.” Learn more from The Daily Telegraph’s obituary.
So, have I forgotten to include anybody? Please feel free to suggest any additions in the Comments section of this post.
READ MORE: “Good-bye 2013, Good-bye Audrey Totter!,” by Terence Faherty (SleuthSayers).
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Everybody Wants in on the Act
Each year at this time we see publications and their individual critics earnestly releasing lists of their favorite crime and thriller novels published during the previous dozen months. (I’ve done it twice already--see here and here.) This can be an enjoyable exercise, at least so long as everyone concerned--and that includes readers--understands that there’s nothing remotely scientific
about the list-making. Such picks are a matter of opinion, and each reader is likely to differ about what he or she likes best. With that in mind, here are some additional rundowns of 2013’s “bests” to consider:
• Like me, critic-editor Sarah Weinman takes a couple of shots at identifying her favorite genre novels of the year. For Canada’s National Post newspaper, she catalogues what she thinks were 2013’s top picks in Canadian crime, including works by Owen Laukkanen, A.S.A. Harrison, and Louise Penny. Meanwhile, in her blog, she chooses her 10 favorite mystery and crime novels of the year, regardless of where their authors reside--a rundown that features Alafair Burke’s If You Were Here, Hallie Ephron’s There Was an Old Woman, and Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night (which also figured prominently among my best-of-2013 choices).
• Philadelphia blogger Peter Rozovsky steers clear of the “best” designation by listing “some good books I’ve read so far in 2013”--not all of which were first published during the last twelvemonth, and some of which don’t even fall under the crime-fiction rubric. Included among his choices are J. Robert Janes’ Tapestry, Charlie Stella’s Maifya, and The Hunter and Other Stories, by Dashiell Hammett.
• The Boston Globe today announced its “Best 2013 Crime Fiction” list containing 10 titles, some of which are: Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman; Shoot the Woman First, by Wallace Stroby; and A Tap on the Window, by Linwood Barclay.
• Sarah Ward, who blogs at Crimepieces, delivers what she calls “My Top Five Crime Reads of 2013.” Among her favorites: Leif G.W. Persson’s Linda, As in the Linda Murder, Mark Oldfield’s The Sentinel, and Fred Vargas’ The Ghost Riders of Ordebec.
• The Austin, Texas, bookstore MysteryPeople has posted two separate mystery-fiction lists. First up: Its employees’ choices of the “Top 10 Novels of 2013,” among which can be found George Pelecanos’ The Double and Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Version. Then we’re treated to the shop’s “Top 5 Debut Novels of 2013,” a list that includes Todd Robinson’s The Hard Bounce and Anonymous-9’s Hard Bite.
• London-based journalist and author Woody Haut presents his “Best of 2013” list in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The works that made his cut include Ask Not, by Max Allan Collins; Under the Eye of God, by Jerome Charyn; and Others of My Kind, by James Sallis.
• Australian Andrew Nette, who writes fiction as well as the excellent blog Pulp Curry, reviews his last year of reading and comes up with a list of five books he particularly enjoyed, among them two genre classics: The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley, and Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.
• Scottish crime-fictionist Tony Black asked some of his fellow wordsmiths to submit their “Best of 2013” choices to his blog, Pulp Pusher. Click here to see what releases Matt Hilton, Dave Zeltserman, Paul D. Brazill, and other found most intriguing.
• Over at the Euro Crime blog, editor Karen Meek suggested that her stable of reviewers reveal their favorite crime-fiction discoveries of the past year, whether they were books, films, or television series. Already she’s heard from Rich Westwood, Norman Price, Amanda Gillies, and Geoff Jones, with more lists still to be posted.
• Among its “Editors’ Picks for 2013: Fiction,” the online Barnes & Noble Review features at least three novels that could be designated crime and mystery fiction: Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Philip Kerr’s A Man Without Breath, and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
• Pynchon’s latest novel also finds a spot on Gizmodo’s “Best Books of 2013” compilation, though most of the choices are from the non-fiction stacks.
• Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) split her “Best of 2013” coverage into three posts. Click here to find her favorite non-fiction release, her favorite discovery, and her commendations for best “developing police procedural series.” Click here for Davies’ remarks about authors and tales that took unexpected directions. And see this post to learn which thriller and debut works she most enjoyed.
• British author John Harvey has announced his four favorite novels of 2013, none of which is a crime- or mystery-related work.
• On the other hand, Curtis Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery) has commenced compiling a rundown of the 20 best classic crime novels he’s reviewed this year in his blog, The Passing Tramp. The first installment appears here; the second is here.
• Oh, there always has to be some contrarian in the bunch. This year it’s the pseudonymous TomCat, who offers up seven of the worst mysteries he read all year. Surprisingly, Ed McBain’s name appears on that list of losers.
• And to finish off this post, let me direct you toward the pseudonymous Puzzle Doctor’s picks of the “top five underappreciated authors” in the mystery/crime field. Mark Billingham and Stuart McBride are included, but you’ll have to click the link to find out which other names earned his respect in 2013.
Have you spotted other lists of what critics claim are the best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2013? Then, please, let the rest of us know about them in the Comments section of this post.
UPDATES: In Beneath the Stains of Time, blogger TomCat now presents his list of “the best mysteries read in 2013”--almost all of them older titles, heavy on locked-room mysteries. Author Heath Lowrance has just “two picks for best novels of the year,” both from the crime-fiction shelves. Over at The Poisoned Martini, Brian Abbott ponders whether the mystery novels most frequently checked out from the library at which he works also qualify as 2013’s “best.” Finally, in Confessions of a Mystery Novelist …, Margot Kinberg shares “some great releases from this year in case you missed ’em.”
• Like me, critic-editor Sarah Weinman takes a couple of shots at identifying her favorite genre novels of the year. For Canada’s National Post newspaper, she catalogues what she thinks were 2013’s top picks in Canadian crime, including works by Owen Laukkanen, A.S.A. Harrison, and Louise Penny. Meanwhile, in her blog, she chooses her 10 favorite mystery and crime novels of the year, regardless of where their authors reside--a rundown that features Alafair Burke’s If You Were Here, Hallie Ephron’s There Was an Old Woman, and Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night (which also figured prominently among my best-of-2013 choices).
• Philadelphia blogger Peter Rozovsky steers clear of the “best” designation by listing “some good books I’ve read so far in 2013”--not all of which were first published during the last twelvemonth, and some of which don’t even fall under the crime-fiction rubric. Included among his choices are J. Robert Janes’ Tapestry, Charlie Stella’s Maifya, and The Hunter and Other Stories, by Dashiell Hammett.
• The Boston Globe today announced its “Best 2013 Crime Fiction” list containing 10 titles, some of which are: Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman; Shoot the Woman First, by Wallace Stroby; and A Tap on the Window, by Linwood Barclay.
• Sarah Ward, who blogs at Crimepieces, delivers what she calls “My Top Five Crime Reads of 2013.” Among her favorites: Leif G.W. Persson’s Linda, As in the Linda Murder, Mark Oldfield’s The Sentinel, and Fred Vargas’ The Ghost Riders of Ordebec.
• The Austin, Texas, bookstore MysteryPeople has posted two separate mystery-fiction lists. First up: Its employees’ choices of the “Top 10 Novels of 2013,” among which can be found George Pelecanos’ The Double and Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Version. Then we’re treated to the shop’s “Top 5 Debut Novels of 2013,” a list that includes Todd Robinson’s The Hard Bounce and Anonymous-9’s Hard Bite.
• London-based journalist and author Woody Haut presents his “Best of 2013” list in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The works that made his cut include Ask Not, by Max Allan Collins; Under the Eye of God, by Jerome Charyn; and Others of My Kind, by James Sallis.
• Australian Andrew Nette, who writes fiction as well as the excellent blog Pulp Curry, reviews his last year of reading and comes up with a list of five books he particularly enjoyed, among them two genre classics: The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley, and Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.
• Scottish crime-fictionist Tony Black asked some of his fellow wordsmiths to submit their “Best of 2013” choices to his blog, Pulp Pusher. Click here to see what releases Matt Hilton, Dave Zeltserman, Paul D. Brazill, and other found most intriguing.
• Over at the Euro Crime blog, editor Karen Meek suggested that her stable of reviewers reveal their favorite crime-fiction discoveries of the past year, whether they were books, films, or television series. Already she’s heard from Rich Westwood, Norman Price, Amanda Gillies, and Geoff Jones, with more lists still to be posted.
• Among its “Editors’ Picks for 2013: Fiction,” the online Barnes & Noble Review features at least three novels that could be designated crime and mystery fiction: Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Philip Kerr’s A Man Without Breath, and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
• Pynchon’s latest novel also finds a spot on Gizmodo’s “Best Books of 2013” compilation, though most of the choices are from the non-fiction stacks.
• Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) split her “Best of 2013” coverage into three posts. Click here to find her favorite non-fiction release, her favorite discovery, and her commendations for best “developing police procedural series.” Click here for Davies’ remarks about authors and tales that took unexpected directions. And see this post to learn which thriller and debut works she most enjoyed.
• British author John Harvey has announced his four favorite novels of 2013, none of which is a crime- or mystery-related work.
• On the other hand, Curtis Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery) has commenced compiling a rundown of the 20 best classic crime novels he’s reviewed this year in his blog, The Passing Tramp. The first installment appears here; the second is here.
• Oh, there always has to be some contrarian in the bunch. This year it’s the pseudonymous TomCat, who offers up seven of the worst mysteries he read all year. Surprisingly, Ed McBain’s name appears on that list of losers.
• And to finish off this post, let me direct you toward the pseudonymous Puzzle Doctor’s picks of the “top five underappreciated authors” in the mystery/crime field. Mark Billingham and Stuart McBride are included, but you’ll have to click the link to find out which other names earned his respect in 2013.
Have you spotted other lists of what critics claim are the best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2013? Then, please, let the rest of us know about them in the Comments section of this post.
UPDATES: In Beneath the Stains of Time, blogger TomCat now presents his list of “the best mysteries read in 2013”--almost all of them older titles, heavy on locked-room mysteries. Author Heath Lowrance has just “two picks for best novels of the year,” both from the crime-fiction shelves. Over at The Poisoned Martini, Brian Abbott ponders whether the mystery novels most frequently checked out from the library at which he works also qualify as 2013’s “best.” Finally, in Confessions of a Mystery Novelist …, Margot Kinberg shares “some great releases from this year in case you missed ’em.”
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
An Unexpected Gift
Merry Christmas, everyone, from The Rap Sheet!
Homicide at Yuletide, by Henry Kane (Signet, 1966). Unfortunately, the girly cover art here is not attributed. This Peter Chambers novel was originally released in 1951 as A Corpse for Christmas.
READ MORE: “Forgotten Books: A Corpse for Christmas--Henry Kane,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges).
Homicide at Yuletide, by Henry Kane (Signet, 1966). Unfortunately, the girly cover art here is not attributed. This Peter Chambers novel was originally released in 1951 as A Corpse for Christmas.
READ MORE: “Forgotten Books: A Corpse for Christmas--Henry Kane,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges).
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Preliminary Investigations
I know most of you are probably focused either on getting ready for family visits or tracking down last-minute Christmas gifts, but I just want to point out that my latest column for Kirkus Reviews was posted this morning. It’s devoted primarily to a rundown of eight crime, mystery, and thrillers novels, all of which are due out in U.S. bookshops during the first three months of 2014--and all of which I think would be worth your time to investigate. Those works come from such authors as Robert Harris, Wiley Cash, Kim Cooper, and John Straley. Check out the column when you have a spare moment.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
It’s Just Nice to Be Noticed
Well, whaddya know about that? Communizine--a Web site that describes itself as “one man’s dream … a place where we can share our thoughts or link to crazy crap and not have to worry about who likes it and who doesn’t like it”--has picked The Rap Sheet as one of today’s top five literary blogs. Here’s its
write-up:
The Rap Sheet – The crime fiction genre is filled with lurid tales and hard-boiled protagonists, and The Rap Sheet offers a weekly roundup of the best options currently available on bookshelves. In addition to reviews of the latest releases, you’ll find lots of offbeat tidbits, author interviews, and links to some of the leading writers in the field. Hardcore literary types may turn up their collective noses, but fans of homicide and mystery should feel right at home.You can find Communizine’s full rundown of “The 30 Best Entertainment Bloggers and Blogs on the Internet”--including many I’d never heard of before--can be found right here.
Weighing In
Today begins the much-anticipated roll-out of January Magazine’s multi-part “Best Books of 2013” feature.
First up: our critics picks their five favorite crime-fiction works published over the last 12 months. They have chosen books (sometimes more than once!) by authors as diverse as George Pelecanos, Lachlan Smith, Noah Hawley, Barbara Fradkin, Robert Ryan, Walter Mosley, Lisa Brackman, and Derek B. Miller. Click here to enjoy the complete assortment.
And don’t hesitate to add--in the Comments section at the bottom of that post--some of your own suggestions: What books do you think crime-fiction readers should have enjoyed this year?
First up: our critics picks their five favorite crime-fiction works published over the last 12 months. They have chosen books (sometimes more than once!) by authors as diverse as George Pelecanos, Lachlan Smith, Noah Hawley, Barbara Fradkin, Robert Ryan, Walter Mosley, Lisa Brackman, and Derek B. Miller. Click here to enjoy the complete assortment.
And don’t hesitate to add--in the Comments section at the bottom of that post--some of your own suggestions: What books do you think crime-fiction readers should have enjoyed this year?
Monday, December 16, 2013
Getting to Know You
For a long while now, I have maintained annual records of the books I read. But it’s only been since 2008, and an indirect invitation from blogger Brian Lindenmuth, that I’ve kept track of the authors I read each year whose work is 
new to me. Some years have brought me many of these “first encounters.” Others, like 2013, leave me with far fewer such personal “discoveries.”
I didn’t consume or enjoy any fewer books than is normal for me over the last 12 months. However, an unusually large percentage of them came from writers whose prose I had previously sampled, everyone from Martin Cruz Smith (Tatiana) and William Boyd (Solo) to Daniel Woodrell (The Maid’s Version), Kevin Baker (The Big Crowd), Theresa Schwegel (The Good Boy), Anthony Quinn (Border Angels), Ed Gorman (Flashpoint), Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism), Max Allan Collins (Ask Not and Complex 90), and Robert Wilson (Capital Punishment). This was certainly not by design; that’s just the way things worked out. I’m not usually somebody who makes New Year’s resolutions, but one of mine should probably be to acquaint myself with more new wordsmiths in 2014.
Below I have inventoried the novelists whose work--mostly new, but with some older titles in the mix--I first checked out in 2013. Debut efforts are boldfaced. Asterisks identify crime or thriller fiction.
• David Gordon (Mystery Girl)*
• Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr. (Empty Mansions: The
Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune)
OK, so there’s my count. Now, what about your own? Which authors’ work did you initially sample in 2013? Please let us all know in the Comments section of this post.
new to me. Some years have brought me many of these “first encounters.” Others, like 2013, leave me with far fewer such personal “discoveries.”I didn’t consume or enjoy any fewer books than is normal for me over the last 12 months. However, an unusually large percentage of them came from writers whose prose I had previously sampled, everyone from Martin Cruz Smith (Tatiana) and William Boyd (Solo) to Daniel Woodrell (The Maid’s Version), Kevin Baker (The Big Crowd), Theresa Schwegel (The Good Boy), Anthony Quinn (Border Angels), Ed Gorman (Flashpoint), Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism), Max Allan Collins (Ask Not and Complex 90), and Robert Wilson (Capital Punishment). This was certainly not by design; that’s just the way things worked out. I’m not usually somebody who makes New Year’s resolutions, but one of mine should probably be to acquaint myself with more new wordsmiths in 2014.
Below I have inventoried the novelists whose work--mostly new, but with some older titles in the mix--I first checked out in 2013. Debut efforts are boldfaced. Asterisks identify crime or thriller fiction.
• Siân Busby (A
Commonplace Killing)*
• Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries)
• Paul Cleave (The Laughterhouse)*
• Spencer Dean (Murder After a Fashion)*
• Gregory Gibson (The Old Turk’s Load)*
• David Gordon (Mystery Girl)*
• Allen Haden (My
Enemy, My Wife)
• Richard Helms (The Mojito
Coast)*
• Anne Hillerman
(Spider Woman’s Daughter)*
• Ewart Hutton (Good
People)*
• Henry Kane (Peter Gunn)*
• Pierre Lemaitre (Alex)*
• Derek B. Miller (Norwegian
by Night)*
• Julian Novitz (Little Sister)*
• Thomas Perry (The
Boyfriend)*
• Marisha Pessl (Night Film)
• Robert Ryan (Dead Man’s Land)*
• John Sandrolini
(One for Our Baby)*
• Theresa Schwegel (The Good Boy)*
• Vanda Symon (The Faceless)*
• Paul Thomas (Death on Demand)*
• Sam Toperoff (Lillian and Dash)*
My list of non-fiction books read during 2013 and
produced by authors new to me isn’t quite as long, but most of these works
brought me great delight in addition to information:
• Edward Ball (The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age
Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures)
• Molly Caldwell Crosby (The Great Pearl Heist: London’s
Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace)
• Michael Daly (Topsy: The
Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American
Wizard, Thomas Edison)
• Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr. (Empty Mansions: The
Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune)
• Judith Flanders (The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime)
• Paul French (Midnight
in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman
Haunted the Last Days of Old China)
• Andrew C. Isenberg (Wyatt Earp:
A Vigilante Life)
• Greg King and Sue Woolmans (The Assassination of the
Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World)
• Ann Kirschner (Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of
Josephine Marcus Earp)
• Sam Roberts (Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed
America)
• John Taliaferro (All the Great Prizes: The Life of John
Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt)
• Tom Williams (A
Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler)
OK, so there’s my count. Now, what about your own? Which authors’ work did you initially sample in 2013? Please let us all know in the Comments section of this post.
Stand-in Scribblers
Irishman John Banville (whose new Philip Marlowe novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, is due out in March) and Brit Sophie Hannah (who’s working on her own Hercule Poirot mystery) are just two of the people cited in a Financial Times article about the challenges facing wordsmiths who try to adopt a dead writer’s voice.
READ MORE: “The Brand Is My Business,” by Sarah Weinman
(The Nation).
READ MORE: “The Brand Is My Business,” by Sarah Weinman
(The Nation).
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Bullet Points: Almost Christmas Edition
• The British Medical Journal analyzes “James Bond’s consumption of alcohol as detailed in the series of novels by Ian Fleming,” and concludes that his “weekly alcohol intake is over four times the advisable maximum alcohol consumption for an adult male. He is at considerable risk of developing alcoholic liver disease, cirrhosis, impotence, and other alcohol-related health problems, together with being at serious risk of injury or death because of his drinking. Although we appreciate the societal pressures to consume alcohol when working with international terrorists and high-stakes gamblers,” the BMJ says, “we would advise Bond be referred for further assessment of his alcohol intake and reduce his intake to safe levels.” UPDATE: Slate’s take on Bond’s alcoholism is here.
• I’m very sorry to hear that Irish-born actor Peter O’Toole has died in London at age 81. Although he’s best remembered for his starring roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Lion in Winter (1968), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), O’Toole also delivered a cameo performance in 1967’s Casino Royale spoof, and he supplied the voice of Sherlock Holmes in four animated films released in 1983. Blogger Steve Thompson celebrates O’Toole’s career with a collection of the faces he offered audiences over the years.
• A sad farewell, too, to Don Mitchell, the Houston-born actor best known for playing delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger in the 1967-1975 NBC-TV crime drama Ironside. Mitchell also appeared in The Fugitive, McMillan & Wife, and Matlock. In what was evidently his last role, he resurrected Mark Sanger for the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside. Mitchell died on December 8. He was only 70 years old.
• The UK blog Crime Fiction Lover recently invited its regular contributors to submit lists of their five favorite crime novels published in 2013. Four such rundowns have already been posted, and can be found here, with more entries still to come. I’m pleased by the diversity of choices, everything from Mari Hannah’s Deadly Deceit and
Bill Pronzini’s Kinsmen to Death in St James’ Park, by
Susanna Gregory, and Love Story with Murders, by Harry Bingham.
• Bonnie & Clyde, the new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the lives of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger), was just broadcast in the States last week. But already it is being prepared for a DVD release on January 28. I found the film to be visually compelling, and though the plot diverged from the facts now and then (which is typical with the legend of Bonnie and Clyde), its distinctive interpretation of the circumstances surrounding those fugitives’ brutal deaths left me with a haunted feeling and caused me to go back and watch the final scene several more times.
• Learn more about Bonnie and Clyde here.
• It looks like Carl Hiaasen’s 2002 novel, Basket Case, will to be adapted for the small screen by Spike TV, with Rob Reiner producing.
• There are so many Christmas-themed mysteries, blogger Janet Rudolph (a splendidly Christmas-y surname, don’t you think?) has had to break her compilation of them into several parts. Click here to see titles beginning with the letters A to D; here for E-H; and here for I-N. She should be rolling out the rest of the alphabet soon.
• This is what I call a whopping “oops.”
• In an essay for Britain’s The Spectator, titled “Who Killed the Golden Age of Crime?,” author P.D. James remembers with fondness “the gentlemanly world of Albert Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey.”
• Here’s a swell gift for ardent newspaper lovers.
• I hadn’t remembered that Gunsmoke offered a Christmas episode in 1971, but Classic Television Showbiz now features it for your viewing pleasure. Click here to watch.
• Another holiday oddity: Vincent Price narrates a compact, 1949 TV dramatization of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.
• Dagnabit! The excellent historical crime series Ripper Street, set in London’s poor Whitechapel district in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s 1889 killing spree, will not be given a third season. It concludes its second-season run tomorrow in Great Britain, and the eight episodes of its sophomore year are supposed to air in the States sometime in 2014 on BBC America. However, the show--which stars Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg--was not deemed successful enough to continue, much to the consternation of many critics and viewers. There are already negotiations underway that could result in a third season of Ripper Street being produced, and I hope they bear fruit; but there are no guarantees.
• This is ample reason to retire to the nearest pub post haste.
• New Jerseyan Wallace Stroby, who I recently interviewed for Kirkus Reviews, is one of the men mentioned in Mysterious Matters’ list of “Five Thriller Writers Who Are Better Than [James] Patterson.”
• Criminal Element reports: In not-surprising-in-the-least news, Tom Cruise is set to return as Lee Child’s silent but intimidating hero, Jack Reacher, in a sequel to 2012’s Jack Reacher. This new film is reported to be based upon the newest Reacher thriller, Never Go Back. Irony, of course, being something completely alien to Hollywood execs.”
• This is considerably better news, from Mystery Fanfare: “UK producers Tracey Scoffield and Frank Doelger are partnering with Germany’s Beta to produce a big-screen version of Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night,” a quirky and endearing tale that I chose as one of my favorite crime novels of the year.
• Bob Douglas considers the novels of Canadian lawyer-author Robert Rotenberg (Stranglehold) in a fine piece for Critics at Large.
• The celebrated British TV drama Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, will begin its third-season, three-episode run on the BBC on Wednesday, January 1, 2014. It will commence showing in the United States on Sunday, January 19, under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella. Watch the preview here.
• As somebody who often contributed over the decades to the Pacific Northwest’s Best Places guidebook series, I am sorry to discover that it has “quietly faded away” after 34 years.
• I’ve read all but one of the books Scottish author Ian Rankin describes as the “five perfect mysteries.” Really, Ian--Muriel Sparks’ The Driver’s Seat? I have to track that down.
• And yes, that’s really Yvonne Craig--Batgirl--on The Dating Game.
• I’m very sorry to hear that Irish-born actor Peter O’Toole has died in London at age 81. Although he’s best remembered for his starring roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Lion in Winter (1968), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), O’Toole also delivered a cameo performance in 1967’s Casino Royale spoof, and he supplied the voice of Sherlock Holmes in four animated films released in 1983. Blogger Steve Thompson celebrates O’Toole’s career with a collection of the faces he offered audiences over the years.
• A sad farewell, too, to Don Mitchell, the Houston-born actor best known for playing delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger in the 1967-1975 NBC-TV crime drama Ironside. Mitchell also appeared in The Fugitive, McMillan & Wife, and Matlock. In what was evidently his last role, he resurrected Mark Sanger for the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside. Mitchell died on December 8. He was only 70 years old.
• The UK blog Crime Fiction Lover recently invited its regular contributors to submit lists of their five favorite crime novels published in 2013. Four such rundowns have already been posted, and can be found here, with more entries still to come. I’m pleased by the diversity of choices, everything from Mari Hannah’s Deadly Deceit and
Bill Pronzini’s Kinsmen to Death in St James’ Park, by
Susanna Gregory, and Love Story with Murders, by Harry Bingham.• Bonnie & Clyde, the new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the lives of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger), was just broadcast in the States last week. But already it is being prepared for a DVD release on January 28. I found the film to be visually compelling, and though the plot diverged from the facts now and then (which is typical with the legend of Bonnie and Clyde), its distinctive interpretation of the circumstances surrounding those fugitives’ brutal deaths left me with a haunted feeling and caused me to go back and watch the final scene several more times.
• Learn more about Bonnie and Clyde here.
• It looks like Carl Hiaasen’s 2002 novel, Basket Case, will to be adapted for the small screen by Spike TV, with Rob Reiner producing.
• There are so many Christmas-themed mysteries, blogger Janet Rudolph (a splendidly Christmas-y surname, don’t you think?) has had to break her compilation of them into several parts. Click here to see titles beginning with the letters A to D; here for E-H; and here for I-N. She should be rolling out the rest of the alphabet soon.
• This is what I call a whopping “oops.”
• In an essay for Britain’s The Spectator, titled “Who Killed the Golden Age of Crime?,” author P.D. James remembers with fondness “the gentlemanly world of Albert Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey.”
• Here’s a swell gift for ardent newspaper lovers.
• I hadn’t remembered that Gunsmoke offered a Christmas episode in 1971, but Classic Television Showbiz now features it for your viewing pleasure. Click here to watch.
• Another holiday oddity: Vincent Price narrates a compact, 1949 TV dramatization of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.
• Dagnabit! The excellent historical crime series Ripper Street, set in London’s poor Whitechapel district in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s 1889 killing spree, will not be given a third season. It concludes its second-season run tomorrow in Great Britain, and the eight episodes of its sophomore year are supposed to air in the States sometime in 2014 on BBC America. However, the show--which stars Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg--was not deemed successful enough to continue, much to the consternation of many critics and viewers. There are already negotiations underway that could result in a third season of Ripper Street being produced, and I hope they bear fruit; but there are no guarantees.
• This is ample reason to retire to the nearest pub post haste.
• New Jerseyan Wallace Stroby, who I recently interviewed for Kirkus Reviews, is one of the men mentioned in Mysterious Matters’ list of “Five Thriller Writers Who Are Better Than [James] Patterson.”
• Criminal Element reports: In not-surprising-in-the-least news, Tom Cruise is set to return as Lee Child’s silent but intimidating hero, Jack Reacher, in a sequel to 2012’s Jack Reacher. This new film is reported to be based upon the newest Reacher thriller, Never Go Back. Irony, of course, being something completely alien to Hollywood execs.”
• This is considerably better news, from Mystery Fanfare: “UK producers Tracey Scoffield and Frank Doelger are partnering with Germany’s Beta to produce a big-screen version of Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night,” a quirky and endearing tale that I chose as one of my favorite crime novels of the year.
• Bob Douglas considers the novels of Canadian lawyer-author Robert Rotenberg (Stranglehold) in a fine piece for Critics at Large.
• The celebrated British TV drama Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, will begin its third-season, three-episode run on the BBC on Wednesday, January 1, 2014. It will commence showing in the United States on Sunday, January 19, under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella. Watch the preview here.
• As somebody who often contributed over the decades to the Pacific Northwest’s Best Places guidebook series, I am sorry to discover that it has “quietly faded away” after 34 years.
• I’ve read all but one of the books Scottish author Ian Rankin describes as the “five perfect mysteries.” Really, Ian--Muriel Sparks’ The Driver’s Seat? I have to track that down.
• And yes, that’s really Yvonne Craig--Batgirl--on The Dating Game.
Imagine Yourself as a Bookshop Owner
If any readers out there have ever wanted to own an excellent small, independent bookshop in one of Seattle, Washington’s best-read neighborhoods, this might well be your opportunity. I’m not going to reveal many details here, but I can say that the owner of a well-established, much-loved store selling new books of all kinds in this city is looking to retire soon. And it would be a shame if this particular shop were to close, rather than find an energetic new proprietor.
Anyone who’s interested in learning more about this prospect should contact me via e-mail here.
Anyone who’s interested in learning more about this prospect should contact me via e-mail here.
Taking My Foot Off the Gas Pedal
Due to various other business and family commitments, I’ll be reducing the frequency of Rap Sheet updates for the next two weeks. The blog should return to normal operating speed after all the Christmas excitement has abated.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Architecture from Imagination
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” If the famous opening line from Daphne DuMaurier’s proto-suspense novel, Rebecca, throws a shiver down your spine and a picture into your mind, then you might want to 
see what the geek team from Manchester’s NeoMam Studios have been up to.
That British inforgraphic outfit digs creating visuals from our most undescribed moments. Recent projects have included a “History of Halloween Costumes,” the “Health Benefits of Sex,” and now, layouts from some of literature’s favorite houses. Manderly, of course, but also Bag End from The Hobbit, 221B Baker Street from A Study in Scarlet and other Sherlock Holmes novels, Thrushcross Grange from Wuthering Heights, and many more.
We’re not entirely sure this exercise was as successful as some of the other infographics NeoMam has created. Maybe seeing something fictional finally imagined into being by someone other than the reader or the author is always going to be at least a little disappointing. (Hence, all those movies that are never as good as the books from which they’re made.) You can make up your own mind, though because The Huffington Post shares the inforgraphic here.
And below is NeoMam’s conception of the flat Holmes shared with Dr. John H. Watson on Baker Street in London.
see what the geek team from Manchester’s NeoMam Studios have been up to.That British inforgraphic outfit digs creating visuals from our most undescribed moments. Recent projects have included a “History of Halloween Costumes,” the “Health Benefits of Sex,” and now, layouts from some of literature’s favorite houses. Manderly, of course, but also Bag End from The Hobbit, 221B Baker Street from A Study in Scarlet and other Sherlock Holmes novels, Thrushcross Grange from Wuthering Heights, and many more.
We’re not entirely sure this exercise was as successful as some of the other infographics NeoMam has created. Maybe seeing something fictional finally imagined into being by someone other than the reader or the author is always going to be at least a little disappointing. (Hence, all those movies that are never as good as the books from which they’re made.) You can make up your own mind, though because The Huffington Post shares the inforgraphic here.
And below is NeoMam’s conception of the flat Holmes shared with Dr. John H. Watson on Baker Street in London.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Crime Makes a Killing in UK Awards
British book circles were abuzz this evening, as the 2013 Specsavers National Book Award winners were announced during a ceremony held at London’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel. There were 10 categories of competitors, but the following four should be of particular interest to fans of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year:
An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)
An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)
Also nominated: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, by Helen
Fielding (Jonathan Cape); Oh Dear Silvia, by Dawn French (Michael Joseph); Solo,
by William Boyd (Jonathan Cape); The State We’re In, by Adele Parks (Headline
Review); and The White Princess, by Philippa Gregory (Simon & Schuster)
Crime & Thriller Book of the Year:
The Carrier, by Sophie Hannah (Hodder)
The Carrier, by Sophie Hannah (Hodder)
Also nominated: Apple Tree Yard, by Louise Doughty (Faber
& Faber); Dead Man’s Time, by Peter James (Macmillan); Never Coming Back, by
Tim Weaver (Penguin); Never Go Back, by Lee Child (Bantam Press); and The
Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling (Sphere)
International Author of the Year:
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (Orion)
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (Orion)
Also nominated: And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
(Bloomsbury); Inferno, by Dan Brown (Bantam Press); The Goldfinch, by Donna
Tartt (Little, Brown); The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton (Granta); and Wonder, by
R.J. Palacio (Doubleday)
Waterstones UK
Author of the Year:
Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson (Transworld)
Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson (Transworld)
Also nominated: Harvest, by Jim Crace (Picador); Instructions
for a Heatwave, by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press); The Crane Wife, by Patrick
Ness (Canongate); The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman (Headline);
and The Quarry, by Iain Banks (Little, Brown)
Congratulations to all of this year’s contenders!
The full rundown of the 2013 winners is here.
Or click
here if you’d like to study the shortlists for each of the categories in
this competition.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Stroby and the Bad Girl
If you haven’t become aware of it already, my latest column for Kirkus Reviews is devoted entirely to an interview with New Jerseyan Wallace Stroby, author of the brand-new thriller Shoot the Woman First (Minotaur Books), the third of his novels to feature professional thief Crissa Stone. You’ll find that Kirkus piece here.
Stroby was very generous in answering--via e-mail, and rather quickly--my almost two-dozen questions about his history and his present fiction-writing efforts. Even as I was composing the queries to send his way, though, I knew they’d generate more words than Kirkus would accept. Not being one to effortlessly trash leftovers, I’ve posted below the parts that didn’t fit into the original article. It’s best to read Part I first, since it provides background to my questions about Shoot the Woman First, and then scroll down in Part II to find out about Stroby’s youthful writing escapades, his newspaper-editing past, the real world
of career crooks, and the minor error in his new novel that he will unfortunately have to live with--at least until a paperback edition of Shoot the Woman First is published.
J. Kingston Pierce: At what point in your life did you first realize that you wanted to be a full-time writer? And was it always fiction you eventually wanted to be writing?
Wallace Stroby: Ever since I was a child, I was always drawn toward writing in one form or another. When I was 10, I edited and published a mimeographed fanzine about horror films. I advertised it in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and, before I knew it, I had a couple hundred subscribers. Only published about seven issues, but it was fun while it lasted.
Being an avid reader from an early age, I always knew I wanted to write fiction. Journalism helped me gain some of the skills to do that.
JKP: That’s right, you spent 13 years as an editor at The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. How did that experience, as well as the years you put in before that covering the police beat for the Asbury Park Press, help prepare you to become a fiction author?
WS: There are a lot of skills you learn in daily journalism that prepare you for fiction writing, or long-form writing of any sort. You learn how to write on deadline, how to organize your thoughts quickly, how to give and take criticism and generally how to be a professional. Because, even if you’re making art--to quote Tom Waits--you’ve still got to get behind the mule every morning and plow.
JKP: The Star-Ledger is still the largest-circulation newspaper in the Garden State. But I’m sure things have changed there considerably over the last decade or so. Is there anything you miss from your newspapering days? And what do you think the future holds for broadsheets such as the Star-Ledger?
WS: I miss the people and the buzz of the newsroom, but not so much the business, which is changing and reshaping itself in ways that are often depressing. A lot of really talented and experienced people I know have lost their jobs in recent years. Others have been working without raises and with reduced benefits, and are still plagued by the constant worry their own jobs might be in jeopardy soon. When I left The Star-Ledger in 2008, it was via a wide-scale buyout offer made by the owners and accompanied by the threat that, if enough people didn’t leave of their own accord, the paper would be closed and everyone summarily fired. Nearly half the newsroom staff took that buyout. I was one of them.
JKP: Prior to Shoot the Woman First, you had written stories partly from the perspective of a career criminal. But was there additional research necessary in order to create a series told mostly from that viewpoint? And how did you go about doing the research?
WS: That kind of research can be a tricky thing. Generally, people who live that sort of life don’t talk about it much, especially not to outsiders. And when they do, they’re not always truthful. Any number of first-person mob memoirs over the last few decades have been filled with exaggerations and self-aggrandizing. At least two former mobsters have written books in which they take credit for killing Jimmy Hoffa, both under totally different circumstances.
Newspapers are often a better source for that type of research, especially stories written by reporters who really know their beats. The Star-Ledger at one point had three veteran organized-crime reporters, all of whom had written non-fiction books. They were an invaluable resource to me.
JKP: You’ve described your series protagonist, Crissa Stone, as someone who commits crimes for money, but is not personally greedy. Why did you decide to make those important elements of her character? And how do we see such choices demonstrated in her life?
WS: I wanted to write about someone who was a professional criminal, but do it from a woman’s viewpoint. Because, unlike the traditional lone-wolf male protagonist, a woman will operate differently. She’ll have relationships, make alliances and avoid violence, if possible. Those choices also help steer the story farther away from cliché, and open it up to lots of interesting sidelights worth exploring.
JKP: Are there, comparatively speaking, many more male career criminals than female ones? I notice that when Crissa puts together a team to carry out jobs, she usually hires a predominance of men.
WS: Yes. As James Brown put it, “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world.” She’ll probably come up against another female criminal before too long, when I figure out a way to make that work. In an earlier draft of Shoot the Woman First, I had Crissa briefly encounter Sara Cross, the Florida sheriff’s deputy from [2010’s] Gone ’Til November. But I eventually tossed the scene, as it didn’t really serve the narrative.
JKP: Not to give too much of your story away, but Shoot the Woman First kicks off with a theft of drug money that goes terribly wrong. In the aftermath, Crissa decides to take the proceeds owed to one of her late associates, and deliver them to his estranged wife and daughter, Haley. Crissa’s quick-developing attachment to young Haley, and her determination to protect the girl, leads your protagonist into a still more dangerous confrontation. Are we to assume that Crissa’s willingness to put her own life on the line for Haley and the girl’s mother stems from the guilt Crissa feels for having left her own daughter, Maddie, in the care of a relative, her cousin Leah? Does the girl simply remind Crissa of herself as a youngster? Or is there something else going on there?
WS: All three. They’re both outsiders, growing up in bad environments. Crissa knows she can’t really do anything for Haley on a lasting basis--as she reminds herself, Haley’s already got a mother. But she does want to do as much as she can. And she does.
JKP: I always find it interesting, in the Crissa Stone books, how--despite the fact that most of your characters are “bad guys”--you find ways to make some characters truly despicable, without turning them into outright crazies or sadists. The latest example is former cop Frank Burke, in Shoot the Woman First, who takes on the task of finding Crissa and the drug money with which she’s made off. How do you create credible “bad guys” in a fictional world where almost no one can be considered “good”?
WS: Every villain is the hero of their own story. Everybody has their reasons. It’s not too difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, almost as an actor does. All my villains have gripes that motivate them, many of them legitimate.
JKP: Although you’re working in these books with a female protagonist, do you think the stories you tell--which can be violent--really appeal to women readers?
WS: I’d hope so. My editor, agent and first reader on all the books have been women. But who knows? It’s not for me to say. I’d hope anyone who likes that type of novel would respond to it, regardless of gender.
JKP: I hate to even point this out, and maybe my math is screwed up, but on page 55 of Shoot the Woman First you say that the haul from the drug-money theft was $325,000. Minus the $5,000 “off the top” that went to Crissa, that leaves $320,000. And yet, you write that the dough--split four ways--would leave each criminal participant $90,000. Shouldn’t that be $80,000?
WS: Probably. But no one caught it along the way, and now it is, alas, too late.
JKP: Finally, if you could have written one novel--any novel--that does not already feature your byline, what would it be?
WS: That’s an endless list. Just a few: Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone. Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris. George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Gerald Seymour’s Harry’s Game. Just about any novel that I liked a lot, I wish I’d written.
One female character I wish I’d created: Jane Tennison from the Granada Television series Prime Suspect. A beautifully written, nuanced, and not always sympathetic character. Given, of course, extraordinary on-screen life by Helen Mirren.
Stroby was very generous in answering--via e-mail, and rather quickly--my almost two-dozen questions about his history and his present fiction-writing efforts. Even as I was composing the queries to send his way, though, I knew they’d generate more words than Kirkus would accept. Not being one to effortlessly trash leftovers, I’ve posted below the parts that didn’t fit into the original article. It’s best to read Part I first, since it provides background to my questions about Shoot the Woman First, and then scroll down in Part II to find out about Stroby’s youthful writing escapades, his newspaper-editing past, the real world
of career crooks, and the minor error in his new novel that he will unfortunately have to live with--at least until a paperback edition of Shoot the Woman First is published.J. Kingston Pierce: At what point in your life did you first realize that you wanted to be a full-time writer? And was it always fiction you eventually wanted to be writing?
Wallace Stroby: Ever since I was a child, I was always drawn toward writing in one form or another. When I was 10, I edited and published a mimeographed fanzine about horror films. I advertised it in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and, before I knew it, I had a couple hundred subscribers. Only published about seven issues, but it was fun while it lasted.
Being an avid reader from an early age, I always knew I wanted to write fiction. Journalism helped me gain some of the skills to do that.
JKP: That’s right, you spent 13 years as an editor at The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. How did that experience, as well as the years you put in before that covering the police beat for the Asbury Park Press, help prepare you to become a fiction author?
WS: There are a lot of skills you learn in daily journalism that prepare you for fiction writing, or long-form writing of any sort. You learn how to write on deadline, how to organize your thoughts quickly, how to give and take criticism and generally how to be a professional. Because, even if you’re making art--to quote Tom Waits--you’ve still got to get behind the mule every morning and plow.
JKP: The Star-Ledger is still the largest-circulation newspaper in the Garden State. But I’m sure things have changed there considerably over the last decade or so. Is there anything you miss from your newspapering days? And what do you think the future holds for broadsheets such as the Star-Ledger?
WS: I miss the people and the buzz of the newsroom, but not so much the business, which is changing and reshaping itself in ways that are often depressing. A lot of really talented and experienced people I know have lost their jobs in recent years. Others have been working without raises and with reduced benefits, and are still plagued by the constant worry their own jobs might be in jeopardy soon. When I left The Star-Ledger in 2008, it was via a wide-scale buyout offer made by the owners and accompanied by the threat that, if enough people didn’t leave of their own accord, the paper would be closed and everyone summarily fired. Nearly half the newsroom staff took that buyout. I was one of them.
JKP: Prior to Shoot the Woman First, you had written stories partly from the perspective of a career criminal. But was there additional research necessary in order to create a series told mostly from that viewpoint? And how did you go about doing the research?
WS: That kind of research can be a tricky thing. Generally, people who live that sort of life don’t talk about it much, especially not to outsiders. And when they do, they’re not always truthful. Any number of first-person mob memoirs over the last few decades have been filled with exaggerations and self-aggrandizing. At least two former mobsters have written books in which they take credit for killing Jimmy Hoffa, both under totally different circumstances.
Newspapers are often a better source for that type of research, especially stories written by reporters who really know their beats. The Star-Ledger at one point had three veteran organized-crime reporters, all of whom had written non-fiction books. They were an invaluable resource to me.JKP: You’ve described your series protagonist, Crissa Stone, as someone who commits crimes for money, but is not personally greedy. Why did you decide to make those important elements of her character? And how do we see such choices demonstrated in her life?
WS: I wanted to write about someone who was a professional criminal, but do it from a woman’s viewpoint. Because, unlike the traditional lone-wolf male protagonist, a woman will operate differently. She’ll have relationships, make alliances and avoid violence, if possible. Those choices also help steer the story farther away from cliché, and open it up to lots of interesting sidelights worth exploring.
JKP: Are there, comparatively speaking, many more male career criminals than female ones? I notice that when Crissa puts together a team to carry out jobs, she usually hires a predominance of men.
WS: Yes. As James Brown put it, “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world.” She’ll probably come up against another female criminal before too long, when I figure out a way to make that work. In an earlier draft of Shoot the Woman First, I had Crissa briefly encounter Sara Cross, the Florida sheriff’s deputy from [2010’s] Gone ’Til November. But I eventually tossed the scene, as it didn’t really serve the narrative.
JKP: Not to give too much of your story away, but Shoot the Woman First kicks off with a theft of drug money that goes terribly wrong. In the aftermath, Crissa decides to take the proceeds owed to one of her late associates, and deliver them to his estranged wife and daughter, Haley. Crissa’s quick-developing attachment to young Haley, and her determination to protect the girl, leads your protagonist into a still more dangerous confrontation. Are we to assume that Crissa’s willingness to put her own life on the line for Haley and the girl’s mother stems from the guilt Crissa feels for having left her own daughter, Maddie, in the care of a relative, her cousin Leah? Does the girl simply remind Crissa of herself as a youngster? Or is there something else going on there?
WS: All three. They’re both outsiders, growing up in bad environments. Crissa knows she can’t really do anything for Haley on a lasting basis--as she reminds herself, Haley’s already got a mother. But she does want to do as much as she can. And she does.
JKP: I always find it interesting, in the Crissa Stone books, how--despite the fact that most of your characters are “bad guys”--you find ways to make some characters truly despicable, without turning them into outright crazies or sadists. The latest example is former cop Frank Burke, in Shoot the Woman First, who takes on the task of finding Crissa and the drug money with which she’s made off. How do you create credible “bad guys” in a fictional world where almost no one can be considered “good”?
WS: Every villain is the hero of their own story. Everybody has their reasons. It’s not too difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, almost as an actor does. All my villains have gripes that motivate them, many of them legitimate.
JKP: Although you’re working in these books with a female protagonist, do you think the stories you tell--which can be violent--really appeal to women readers?
WS: I’d hope so. My editor, agent and first reader on all the books have been women. But who knows? It’s not for me to say. I’d hope anyone who likes that type of novel would respond to it, regardless of gender.
JKP: I hate to even point this out, and maybe my math is screwed up, but on page 55 of Shoot the Woman First you say that the haul from the drug-money theft was $325,000. Minus the $5,000 “off the top” that went to Crissa, that leaves $320,000. And yet, you write that the dough--split four ways--would leave each criminal participant $90,000. Shouldn’t that be $80,000?
WS: Probably. But no one caught it along the way, and now it is, alas, too late.
JKP: Finally, if you could have written one novel--any novel--that does not already feature your byline, what would it be?
WS: That’s an endless list. Just a few: Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone. Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris. George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Gerald Seymour’s Harry’s Game. Just about any novel that I liked a lot, I wish I’d written.
One female character I wish I’d created: Jane Tennison from the Granada Television series Prime Suspect. A beautifully written, nuanced, and not always sympathetic character. Given, of course, extraordinary on-screen life by Helen Mirren.
Monday, December 09, 2013
All Eyes on P.I.s
As if the annual holiday season didn’t already generate enough book-buying and -reading lists, Crime Fiction Lover has assembled a new catalogue of works featuring what that blog's editors contend are “The 12 Best Private Detectives in Crime Fiction.” Among the selections are C.W. Sughrue in The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley; Amos Walker in Motor City Blue, by Loren D. Estleman; V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only, by Sara Paretsky; and Lew Archer in The Moving Target, by Ross Macdonald.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Bullet Points: Freezing in Seattle Edition
• It was announced on Friday, during the annual Black Orchid Banquet of the Wolfe Pack in New
York City, that Susan Thibadeau won the 2013 Black Orchid Novella Award for “The Discarded Spouse.” As Les Blatt explains
in Classic Mysteries, that commendation is “presented in conjunction with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [and] given to the author of a novella, the intermediate-length form employed so effectively so often by Rex Stout for his Nero Wolfe stories. The award includes a $1,000 prize, with the award-winning novella to be published next summer in AHMM.” During the course of those same festivities, Connecticut author
Chris Knopf was presented with the 2013 Nero Award for his standalone novel Dead Anyway (Permanent Press). It was announced in September that he’d captured the Nero.
• Tonight brings the debut of Bonnie & Clyde, a new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the rise and bloody fall of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger). The preview--viewable here--demonstrates considerable potential, but I’m not expecting the boob tube to do a better job with the basic story than Arthur Penn did in his 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde. This new picture is set for simultaneous broadcasting tonight on A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime, beginning at 9 p.m.
• One of the more interesting and thoughtful selections of “best crime novels” from 2013 is delivered in the Barnes & Noble Review by Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe. Among her less-than-conventional recommendations are The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton, and Jim Crace’s Harvest.
• Meanwhile, The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2013” rundown features several works that could fit into the field of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, including Herman Koch’s The Dinner and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
• Laura Wilson chooses her own favorite crime novels of 2013--including Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites--for The Guardian.
• At least two crime-fictiony works make an appearance in Slate’s “best books” picks for the year: Cartwheel, by Jennifer DuBois, and The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harrison.
• And one more post along this same line: Goodreads has announced the results of its Choice Awards 2013 contest. As was expected, the picks made by online voters are unremarkable, but they’re here.
• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura notes the passing, on December 5, of 82-year-old English author Colin Wilson, who he says “became famous at 26 when his first book, The Outsider (Gollancz, 1956), hit the street … He was a prolific writer of philosophy, literature, history, and the occult. He also wrote science fiction as well as crime fiction, including Ritual in the Dark (Gollancz, 1960), The Glass Cage (Barker 1966), and The Schoolgirl Murder Case (Hart-Davis, 1974), which is the first of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet series.”
• Among the subjects covered by Mike Ripley in his December “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots: Peter Guttridge’s recent public interrogation of Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5; the sadly forgotten works of mid-20th-century American novelist Charles Williams; publisher Orion’s “Murder Room” initiative to make classic but out-of-print works of crime fiction available again in e-book format; and the release of David Suchet’s Poirot and Me, “as neat and fastidious a memoir as one might expect from Hercule Poirot.” In addition, Ripley publicizes the winners of his 2013 Shots of the Year Awards, which he’d previously posted here.
• In Criminal Element, Robert K. Lewis applauds the noir aspects of David Janssen’s 1974-1976 TV private-eye series, Harry O.
• I’d somehow missed hearing, until yesterday, about AMC-TV’s historical espionage series, Turn, which is set in the summer of 1778 and based on Alexander Rose’s 2006 book, Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. Wikipedia explains that this program will focus around “a New York farmer and his childhood friends [who] form an unlikely group of spies, called the The Culper Ring, who eventually turn the tide during the American Revolutionary War.” Turn is scheduled to debut next year. Click here to watch a preview.
• Speaking of previews, here’s one for Death Comes to Pemberley, the three-part BBC-TV drama based on P.D. James’ 2011 novel of the same name. UK viewers can begin enjoying Pemberley on December 26 of this year, but Americans will have to be content with the promise that PBS-TV stations plan to air the program sometime in 2014.
• Rob W. Hart, the associate publisher of MysteriousPress.com, has compiled a list of his top 10 crime-fiction clichés for the Mulholland Books blog. Almost as interesting are the additional chestnuts suggested in that post’s Comments section.
• Underground London is endlessly fascinating.
• Declan Burke interviews Lee Child, who he says “is acutely aware of how long [his series protagonist, Jack] Reacher has been on the road, and how implausible his journey grows with each succeeding story.” Well, now we know.
• I’m pleased to hear that the NBC-TV crime drama The Blacklist, starring James Spader and Megan Boone, has been renewed for “a full 22-episode second season.”
• Crime Time Preview has launched a series of posts focusing on “crime shows that blow us away.” His first of 50 picks is Copper, the BBC America historical drama that was cancelled in September.
• Here’s a fun Australian condom ad that’s unlikely ever to be shown in the persistently prudish United States.
• Hurray! The UK TV series Foyle’s War will return in 2015.
• Finally, make a note of this: On Tuesday, January 7, PBS-TV’s American Experience series will broadcast a two-hour episode titled “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” based on Deborah Blum’s terrific 2010 non-fiction book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Here’s the news release synopsis of that show: “In 1918, on the brink of becoming the largest metropolis in the world, New York City hired Charles Norris as its first scientifically trained medical examiner. Over the course of a decade and a half, Norris and his extraordinarily driven and talented chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science, sending impatient heirs, jilted lovers, and desperate debtors to the electric chair.” You’ll find a preview of the show here. American Experience begins at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
• Tonight brings the debut of Bonnie & Clyde, a new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the rise and bloody fall of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger). The preview--viewable here--demonstrates considerable potential, but I’m not expecting the boob tube to do a better job with the basic story than Arthur Penn did in his 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde. This new picture is set for simultaneous broadcasting tonight on A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime, beginning at 9 p.m.
• One of the more interesting and thoughtful selections of “best crime novels” from 2013 is delivered in the Barnes & Noble Review by Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe. Among her less-than-conventional recommendations are The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton, and Jim Crace’s Harvest.
• Meanwhile, The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2013” rundown features several works that could fit into the field of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, including Herman Koch’s The Dinner and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
• Laura Wilson chooses her own favorite crime novels of 2013--including Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites--for The Guardian.
• At least two crime-fictiony works make an appearance in Slate’s “best books” picks for the year: Cartwheel, by Jennifer DuBois, and The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harrison.
• And one more post along this same line: Goodreads has announced the results of its Choice Awards 2013 contest. As was expected, the picks made by online voters are unremarkable, but they’re here.
• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura notes the passing, on December 5, of 82-year-old English author Colin Wilson, who he says “became famous at 26 when his first book, The Outsider (Gollancz, 1956), hit the street … He was a prolific writer of philosophy, literature, history, and the occult. He also wrote science fiction as well as crime fiction, including Ritual in the Dark (Gollancz, 1960), The Glass Cage (Barker 1966), and The Schoolgirl Murder Case (Hart-Davis, 1974), which is the first of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet series.”
• Among the subjects covered by Mike Ripley in his December “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots: Peter Guttridge’s recent public interrogation of Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5; the sadly forgotten works of mid-20th-century American novelist Charles Williams; publisher Orion’s “Murder Room” initiative to make classic but out-of-print works of crime fiction available again in e-book format; and the release of David Suchet’s Poirot and Me, “as neat and fastidious a memoir as one might expect from Hercule Poirot.” In addition, Ripley publicizes the winners of his 2013 Shots of the Year Awards, which he’d previously posted here.
• In Criminal Element, Robert K. Lewis applauds the noir aspects of David Janssen’s 1974-1976 TV private-eye series, Harry O.
• I’d somehow missed hearing, until yesterday, about AMC-TV’s historical espionage series, Turn, which is set in the summer of 1778 and based on Alexander Rose’s 2006 book, Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. Wikipedia explains that this program will focus around “a New York farmer and his childhood friends [who] form an unlikely group of spies, called the The Culper Ring, who eventually turn the tide during the American Revolutionary War.” Turn is scheduled to debut next year. Click here to watch a preview.
• Speaking of previews, here’s one for Death Comes to Pemberley, the three-part BBC-TV drama based on P.D. James’ 2011 novel of the same name. UK viewers can begin enjoying Pemberley on December 26 of this year, but Americans will have to be content with the promise that PBS-TV stations plan to air the program sometime in 2014.
• Rob W. Hart, the associate publisher of MysteriousPress.com, has compiled a list of his top 10 crime-fiction clichés for the Mulholland Books blog. Almost as interesting are the additional chestnuts suggested in that post’s Comments section.
• Underground London is endlessly fascinating.
• Declan Burke interviews Lee Child, who he says “is acutely aware of how long [his series protagonist, Jack] Reacher has been on the road, and how implausible his journey grows with each succeeding story.” Well, now we know.
• I’m pleased to hear that the NBC-TV crime drama The Blacklist, starring James Spader and Megan Boone, has been renewed for “a full 22-episode second season.”
• Crime Time Preview has launched a series of posts focusing on “crime shows that blow us away.” His first of 50 picks is Copper, the BBC America historical drama that was cancelled in September.
• Here’s a fun Australian condom ad that’s unlikely ever to be shown in the persistently prudish United States.
• Hurray! The UK TV series Foyle’s War will return in 2015.
• Finally, make a note of this: On Tuesday, January 7, PBS-TV’s American Experience series will broadcast a two-hour episode titled “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” based on Deborah Blum’s terrific 2010 non-fiction book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Here’s the news release synopsis of that show: “In 1918, on the brink of becoming the largest metropolis in the world, New York City hired Charles Norris as its first scientifically trained medical examiner. Over the course of a decade and a half, Norris and his extraordinarily driven and talented chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science, sending impatient heirs, jilted lovers, and desperate debtors to the electric chair.” You’ll find a preview of the show here. American Experience begins at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
“This City Owns You”
If all goes as scheduled, tonight will bring the debut, on American TV network TNT, of Mob City, a crime drama mini-series set in Los Angeles during its gangster days of the 1940s. Wikipedia synopsizes the show’s plot thusly: “Mob City is the true story of a decades-long conflict between the Los Angeles Police Department, under the determined leadership of Police Chief William Parker, and ruthless criminal elements led by Mickey Cohen, a one-time boxer who rose to the top of L.A.’s criminal world. The series is a fast-paced crime drama set in Los Angeles during the 1940s and ’50s. It is a world of glamorous movie stars, powerful studio heads, returning war heroes, a powerful and corrupt police force, and an even more dangerous criminal network determined to make L.A. its West Coast base.”
The series is designed to run for three weeks, with two episodes being broadcast every Wednesday. I’d be shocked if it proves to be faithful to history. But with producer Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Walking Dead, etc.) behind the camera, and stars such as Neal McDonough and Ed Burns in front of it, Mob City should at least be entertaining. The trailer above certainly demonstrates that.
Episode No. 1 starts this evening at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
READ MORE: “Before You Watch ‘Mob City’--Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, and Chief Parker” and “Another Good Story Ruined: William Parker vs. Bugsy Siegel” (The Daily Mirror); “‘Mob City’ Review: Is It Really Noir?,” by Anthony Venutolo (Bukowski’s Basement); “Before ‘Mob City’: A Look Back at the Mobsters of L.A. on Screen,” by Patrick Kevin Day and Jevon Phillips (Los Angeles Times); “Mob City,” by Brent Allard (Criminal Movies).
Sure Shots
In addition to this morning’s news about Grand Master Award winners, British critic and columnist Mike Ripley
has also released the list of his 2013 Shots of the Year Award recipients, in seven categories. He’s made some excellent selections, honoring fiction by Martin Cruz Smith, Robert Ryan, M.D. Villiers, and others. But of course, I would expect no less from an authority in this field such as Ripley.
If you’re looking for gifts to present to crime-fiction fans in your family this Christmas, start with Ripley’s list.
If you’re looking for gifts to present to crime-fiction fans in your family this Christmas, start with Ripley’s list.
Grand Times for Crais and Hart
The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) has announced that authors Robert Crais and Carolyn Hart will both receive its 2014 Grand Master Awards, “represent[ing] the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing.”
Those two join a pantheon of previous Grand Masters that includes Martha Grimes, James Lee Burke, Bill Pronzini, Robert B. Parker, Helen McCloy, and many others.
In addition, the MWA has chosen Aunt Agatha’s bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the winner of its 2014 Raven Award, “recognize[ing] outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.”
These commendations will be presented, together with the rest of next year’s Edgar Awards, during a banquet in New York City on May 1.
Our hearty congratulations go out to all the winners.
(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
In addition, the MWA has chosen Aunt Agatha’s bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the winner of its 2014 Raven Award, “recognize[ing] outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.”
These commendations will be presented, together with the rest of next year’s Edgar Awards, during a banquet in New York City on May 1.
Our hearty congratulations go out to all the winners.
(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
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