Bullet Points: Another Beautiful Day Edition

• The last I heard from John Kenyon, the editor of Grift Magazine, he was delivering his favorite books of 2013 list. That was back in early December of last year. Since then, the word went out that Grift had folded--which seemed a damn shame. But suddenly, the print periodical is back. “Things will creak into operation here online in the next couple of weeks,” he writes. “In the meantime, what I’m really excited to announce is that plans are underway for a third print issue. I’m going to try a theme issue this time around, with the content focusing however tangentially on MUSIC. As we explain in the freshly revised submission guidelines, ‘the fiction should include some element of music. Maybe it’s a (literal) roving band that commits crimes, maybe there is a concert, or a favorite song … or a musical instrument used as a weapon. Be inventive. The non-fiction ought to deal at least in part with this subject as well.’” Kenyon will begin accepting submissions again in July.

• This last weekend’s mail brought me a copy of Black Scat Review, the quite handsome, “irregularly” published magazine, which includes in its latest, “Lit Noir” issue an essay I wrote about my fascination with vintage crime and detective novels. It includes remarks on works by Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Ed Lacy, O.G. Benson, Talmage Powell, and others. Also among the contents of this edition are contributions by Kelli Stanley, Michael Hemmingson, Susan Siegrist, Tom Larsen, and others. You can snag a copy for yourself here.

• A year ago, I installed the opening from Return of the Saint on The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. (You can find that here.) But I don’t remember ever watching that 1978-1979 British TV series, which brought new vigor to Leslie Charteris’ do-gooder series character, Simon Templar, portrayed in this case by Ian Ogilvy rather than Roger Moore (who’d starred in the 1962-1969 ITC series, The Saint). Apparently, it was no easy thing to bring Templar back to the small-screen, as the blog Cult TV Lounge explains:

The idea of reviving The Saint had been around almost from the time that production ceased on the original series. A major problem was of course casting. The problem was not just that Roger Moore was so completely identified as Simon Templar, it was also that Moore had very much defined the character. Any new actor stepping into the role was going to have to be to some extent in the same style, otherwise the new series would simply be another generic action series rather than an authentic Saint series. Ian Ogilvy proved to be the best possible choice. He even slightly resembled Roger Moore and he had no difficulty adapting to the role. Perhaps he does not have quite as much charisma as Roger Moore but he does fit the character as defined in the later Saint stories pretty well.

Cult TV Lounge is a recent discovery of mine, and I’ve been quite enjoying it. In addition to that Saint post, check out this one about Stefanie Powers’ 1966-1967 NBC series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

• British critic/wit Mike Ripley is out a wee bit early with his July installment of “Getting Away with Murder,” his column for Shots. Among the topics being considered this time: London’s recent “More Bloody Foreigners” event; the return to print of “two of spy fiction’s hard men--David Callan and John Craig”; and new works by C.J. Sansom, Dominique Manotti, James Ellroy, Deon Meyer, Stella Rimington, David Downing, and “Sam Alexander.”

• A quick reminder: The Wolfe Pack, the New York-based Nero Wolfe/Rex Stout fan group, is soliciting entries to its ninth annual Black Orchid Novella Award competition. As a Pack news release explains, “Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length, and must be postmarked by May 31, 2015. The winner will be announced at The Wolfe Pack’s Annual Black Orchid Banquet in New York City, December 5, 2015.” More details about entering your work are here.

• The New York Times’ Dan Saltzstein takes a spin through San Francisco’s noir side, led by Hammett tour guide Don Herron.

• Who remembers Silk Stalkings?

• Salon’s Julia Cooke isn’t impressed by American television’s growing contingent of female spies, the lot of them trying to balance work and family. As she remarks,

Sex appeal, instincts, singularity of mission: the necessary traits of a female spy on TV. And another characteristic unites these shows: They are male-generated worlds populated by women conceived of by men.

The male-drawn women of TV spyland seem to point toward a singular, blunt perspective on the debates dominating American feminism today. No, they say, you can’t have “it all.” Yes, they say, you will be forever swapping hats, though by occasionally dipping into the “simpler” pleasures of domestic life, you may find relief. Yes, you will be expected to be beautiful. These characters are television clichés, but they are also feminine clichés, bundled together and then pulled apart piece by piece: they can’t be controlled or entirely understood, they are electroshock-therapy-crazy, dangerously seductive, a collection of body parts to be ogled.

• Friend of The Rap Sheet Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniella De Gregorio, penned five novels about early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-sleuth Hanno Stiffeniis (including 2009’s A Visible Darkness), wrote recently to say that he’s hard at work on a fresh project: “Well, we have just sold the first one in a brand-new series, Cry Wolf. Severn House Crime will publish it in England in November and on March 1, 2015, in the States. We are planning to do at least three of them. We’re halfway through number two at the moment (entitled Marzio Dies), having a lot of fun. The central theme is the Calabrian mafia--the ’Ndrangheta--and its rapid spread throughout Italy, bringing violence and corruption to sleepy places like the town in Umbria where we live, and totally devastating the lives of anyone who gets involved with them.” I look forward to seeing Cry Wolf and its sequels in my local bookshop.

• John “J.F.” Norris has posted, in his blog Pretty Sinister Books, a fine assessment of A Sad Song Singing (1963), one of my favorite Thomas B. Dewey novels starring his Chicago private eye, Mac.

• That’s a shame. Eighty-one-year-old actor Robert Vaughn, who starred in the 1964-1968 NBC-TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., “told fans during an appearance at the Dean Martin Expo in New York that he was never approached about doing a cameo” in director Guy Ritchie’s forthcoming Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature film. The HMSS Weblog notes that when Vaughn was asked what sort of cameo appearance he’d have liked to do, he joked, “I would have wanted to be the guy pressing the clothes.”

• Crimespree Magazine’s Jeremy Lynch reports that Stuart Neville’s 2013 thriller, Ratlines, is being developed as a TV program by Ireland-based Ripple World Pictures and Los Angeles-based KGB Films. “Neville will not just handle writing duties, but will also act as an executive producer for the proposed series,” Lynch adds.

• Meanwhile, happy 10th anniversary to Crimespree!

• Which are the 10 episodes that show Peter Falk’s Columbo to be “the most iconic TV detective of all time”? A.V. Club’s Gwen Ihnat’s picks include the pilot, Prescription: Murder, “Étude In Black” (starring John Cassavetes), “A Friend in Need” (starring Richard Kiley), “Try and Catch Me” (starring Ruth Gordon), and “Butterfly in Shades of Grey” (the second episode featuring William Shatner). Sadly, one of my personal favorites, “Negative Reaction” (which featured Dick Van Dyke as a murderous photographer), didn’t make the cut.

• And though 1950’s The Drowning Pool isn’t one of my favorites among Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer P.I. novels, I’m pleased to see it win favorable notice in blogger NancyO’s The Crime Segments.

• Did the often bizarre, 1990-1991 ABC-TV series Twin Peaks really prepare the stage for what some critics call our present “golden age” of television? That’s the case

proffered by Salon’s James Orbesen, who contends that “Many of the defining aspects of Twin Peaks can seem clichéd today: Its narrative intricacy, its darkness, its reliance on antiheroes. But that’s just because we are by now so used to the show’s sensibility in our televised diet. What set this show apart has so thoroughly been assimilated that talking about it is like pointing to the sky and calling it blue. But this engaging, surreal and occasionally frustrating, 30-episode series about the hunt for a prom queen’s killer was ahead of its time. Many of today’s modern classics owe it a debt audiences might not be aware of.”

• If you haven’t noticed yet, Kevin Burton Smith has refreshed his Thrilling Detective Web Site with new stories by Frederick Zackel (looking back at the 1974 film Chinatown), Thomas Pluck (doing his own reassessment of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye), Ben Solomon (reminding us of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation), and others. Click here to find Smith’s comments on this latest update.

• This September conference looks like great fun!

• The Cult TV Blog is busy now, looking back fondly at Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), the 1960-1962 UK series featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake.

• By the way, if you haven’t seen the opening title sequence from that show in a while, it’s one of the latest additions to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. You can see it here.

• Megan Abbott dreamcasts the film to be made someday from her new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown). “I never think of specific people while writing a book,” she remarks in My Book, the Movie. “It would feel too specific, maybe limiting. But, as a movie-lover since childhood, once the book is complete, I often imagine the possibilities. And so I find myself doing that with The Fever.”

• In today’s Guardian, Melanie (aka M.J.) McGrath, author of The Boy in the Snow and the forthcoming The Bone Seeker, muses on why it is that women enjoy reading rater explicit crime fiction. “For women required in youth to be decorous and in maturity to be invisible,” she writes, “crime fiction gives us permission to touch on our own indecorous feelings of rage, aggression and vengefulness, sentiments we’re encouraged to pack away somewhere, along with the big underwear and the tampons, where they won’t offend.”

• Nineteen things you may not know about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Daily Telegraph. No. 3: “He wasn’t knighted for his fiction. In 1902, the writer was knighted by King Edward VII. He was also appointed a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. However, he wasn’t knighted for having created Sherlock Holmes. He was made a knight for his work on a non-fiction pamphlet regarding the Boer War.”

• A fine review of Philip Kerr’s Prayer.

• In a new interview with Neal Thompson of Amazon, Alan Furst talks about his work on Midnight in Europe (Random House), his 13th historical spy thriller.

• Finally, organizers of PulpFest 2014 have announced their latest set of eight nominees for the Munsey Award, “annually presented to a deserving individual who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp [fiction] community …” In addition, one person--convention “grunt work” expert J. Barry Traylor--has been put forward as a possible recipient of the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those individuals within the pulp community who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” Winners will be presented on Saturday, August 9, during PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio.

Slinging Daggers Left and Right

During a dinner ceremony held earlier this evening in London, the Crime Writers’ Association announced the winners of five annual Dagger Awards. They are as follows:

The CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger: The Devil in the Marshalsea, by Antonia Hodgson (Hodder & Stoughton)

Also nominated: The Late Scholar, by Jill Paton Walsh (Hodder & Stoughton); Treachery, by S.J. Parris (HarperCollins); The City of Strangers, by Michael Russell (Avon); Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, by Kate Griffin (Faber & Faber); Theft of Life, by Imogen Robertson (Headline Review); and The Dead Can Wait, by Robert Ryan (Simon & Schuster)

The CWA International Dagger: The Siege, by Arturo Perez-Reverte; translated by Frank Wynne (Weidenfeld)

Also nominated: Strange Shores, by Arnaldur Indridason; translated by Victoria Crib (Harvill Secker); Irène, by Pierre Lemaître; translated by Frank Wynne (Quercus/MacLehose); Forty Days Without Shadow, by Oliver Tru; translated by Louise Rogers LaLaurie (Little, Brown); Plan D, by Simon Urba; translated by Katy Derbyshire (Harvilll Secker); and Dog Will Have His Day, by Fred Vargas; translated by Siân Reynolds (Harvill Secker)

The CWA Non-Fiction Dagger: The Seige, by Adrian Levy & Cathy Scott-Clark (Viking)

Also nominated: Did She Kill Him, by Kate Colquhoun (Little, Brown); Life After Death, by Damien Echols (Atlantic); Undercover, by Rob Evans & Paul Lewis (Faber & Faber/Guardian); The Girl, by Samantha Geimer (Simon & Schuster); and Manson, by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster)

The CWA Short Story Dagger: “Fedora,” by John Harvey (from Deadly Pleasures, edited by Martin Edwards; Severn House)

Also nominated: “Judge Surra,” by Andrea Camilleri (from Judges, by Andrea Camiller, Carlo Lucarelli, and Giancarlo De Cataldo; MacLehose Press); “Reconciliation,” by Jeffery Deaver (from Trouble in Mind, by Jeffery Deaver; Hodder & Stoughton); “In Our Darkened House,” by Inger Frimansson (from A Darker Shade: 17 Swedish Stories of Murder, Mystery, and Suspense, edited by John-Henri Holmberg; Head of Zeus); and “Night Nurse,” by Cath Staincliffe (from Deadly Pleasures)

The CWA Debut Dagger: The Movement, by Jody Sabral

Also nominated: The Long Oblivion, by Tim Baker; A Convenient Ignorance, by Michael Baker; Under the Hanging Tree, by Barb Ettridge; The Father, by Tom Keenan; Motherland, by Garry Abson; The Allegory of Art and Science, by Graham Brack; Convict, by Barb Ettridge; The Dog of Erbill, by Peter Hayes; Burnt, by Kristina Stanley; Deviant Acts, by John J. White; Seeds of a Demon, by Anastasia Tyler; and Colours, by Tim Emery

In addition, Simon Brett received 2014 the Diamond Dagger. That commendation, according to CWA press materials, “is voted for by members of the CWA and celebrates an author with an outstanding body of work in crime fiction.”

Congratulations to all of the honorees!

Still to come--probably later this summer--are the CWA’s shortlists of nominees for its Gold Dagger, Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and John Creasey Dagger.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

“It’s All Fun, Until the Music Stops”

If you have been waiting impatiently for the second season of the British small-screen crime drama Endeavour to begin, you need wait no longer. “Trove,” the first of four new episodes starring Shaun Evans, will premiere tonight on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery!, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The official plot description reads as follows:

Four months after DC Endeavour Morse’s involuntary leave of absence, he returns to the force and a case that unites an unidentifiable corpse, an enigmatic note, and the theft of medieval artifacts--seemingly unrelated cases as fractured as Morse's state of mind after his terrifying brush with death.

Watch a preview of the episode here.

The next three Sunday evenings will bring additional 90-minute installments of this fine Inspector Morse prequel series: “Nocturne” (July 6), “Sway” (July 13), and “Neverland” (July 20).

Nero Nominees, IndieFab Faves

We are indebted this morning to Janet Rudolph of Mystery Fanfare, who has brought us the lists of finalists for the 2014 Nero Award, presented every year by the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin/Rex Stout fan organization, The Wolfe Pack:

• Ask Not, by Max Allan Collins (Forge)
• Three Can Keep a Secret, by Archer Mayor (Minotaur)
• Murder as a Fine Art, by David Morrell (Mulholland)
• A Study in Revenge, by Kieran Shields (Crown)
• A Question of Honor, by Charles Todd (Morrow)

The victorious book and author will be announced on December 6, during the Black Orchid Banquet, to be held in New York City.

* * *

Rudolph also brings word of which works won Foreword Reviews’ 2014 IndieFab Book of the Year Awards. These commendations were handed ’round last evening during the American Library Association annual conference in Las Vegas. Nevada. Recipients, we’re told, were chosen by “a select group of librarians and booksellers from around the country.” There are multiple winners in dozens of categories (find the complete list here), but below are the Gold medal victors that might be of greatest interest to Rap Sheet readers:

Mystery:
As She Left It, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)

Thriller and Suspense:
Utopia, Texas, by Michael E. Glasscock II (Greenleaf)

Noir Star of Tinseltown

This recognition seems due--in fact, long overdue:

One of Los Angeles’ greatest noir writers will be getting a permanent place in the sun: on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Raymond Chandler is one of 30 people who will get such stars in 2015. ...

Chandler was a novelist and then a screenwriter, the man who created the private detective Philip Marlowe. Chandler began writing for the pulps after losing his executive job at an oil company--something to do with drinking and an affair with a girl on staff (a very noir dismissal). ...

The material--about a semi-successful private eye who had a way with women and a stronger moral code than the wealthy and corrupt denizens of Los Angeles--was too delicious for Hollywood to resist. “The Big Sleep” was made into an iconic film not once but twice--first with Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe and then Elliott Gould, directed by Robert Altman.

In the many film adaptations of his work, several actors played Marlowe, including Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, James Garner and Robert Mitchum.

But Chandler didn’t have much to do with his books being made into films--he was a screenwriter on other projects. The greatest of those were adaptations of other novelists’ work: “Strangers on a Train” by Patricia Highsmith, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and “Double Indemnity,” written by James M. Cain.

Chandler, who died in 1959, made just one film appearance--an uncredited, non-speaking role that had remained unnoticed for decades. It was discovered by two different film experts around the same time in 2007--he’s the man sitting outside Keyes’ office in this clip from “Double Indemnity.”

The announcement about the new Walk of Famers doesn’t include where their stars will be. But I have a suggestion: in front of Philip Marlowe’s office in the Cahuenga Building on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar.

You’ll find the full Los Angeles Times piece here.

READ MORE: “Raymond Chandler’s Got One … Which Other Writers Should Have Hollywood Stars?” by Alison Flood (The Guardian).

“You Want to Know What Happens Next”

While searching earlier today through my many boxes of vintage magazines (others might be less generous and call them “old”), looking for something completely unrelated, I happened across the July/August 1993 issue of American Heritage. I could have saved this particular edition for Donald L. Miller’s fine piece about Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, or perhaps for John Steele Gordon’s essay recalling America’s historical debates over free-trade practices. But my suspicion is that I actually held onto this copy of AH because of its cover story by author Lawrence Block. Titled “My Life in Crime,” it recounts Block’s childhood introduction to works of mystery and thriller fiction, tries to separate “cozies” from “hard-boiled” stories, and has nice things to say about Bouchercon, which was then one of the few opportunities mystery writers and readers had to congregate.

In addition to all of that, though, Block offers a rundown of his 16 favorite American crime-fictionists … well, really his 16 favorite dead crime-fictionists, every one of them a man. (If given the same assignment today, I suspect he might throw at least a few women’s names into the mix. There are so many more being published nowadays.) The usual suspects are all included, from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Chester Himes to the two Macs: Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald. In addition to those, I’m pleased to see that he features Stanley Ellin (whose 1958 novel, The Eighth Circle, I so enjoy), Ellery Queen (whose many whodunits have, sadly, fewer followers in 2014 than they once did), and Cornell Woolrich (with whom many younger readers are completely unfamiliar). Mentioned as well is Jack Ritchie, who penned primarily short stories--and is the only person on this list who is all but a stranger to me. (I’ll have to remedy that hole in my education soon.)

Because I think Block’s survey of the genre is still worth reading, if only to remind you of authors you have not sampled in a while (Erle Stanley Gardner? Charles Willeford?), I am embedding it below.

Right-click on the pages below to bring up enlargements.

Revisiting a “Severely Underrated Writer”

During my recent visit with a friend in Minneapolis, I spent some high-quality time just kicking back with a cold beer (well, maybe more than one) and reading a few more Thomas B. Dewey novels. The result is that I devoted my latest Kirkus Reviews column to that once critically acclaimed author, whose detective tales now all seem to be out of print. You’ll find my full piece here.

And when you’re done, click over to Killer Covers to see a gallery of almost three dozen Dewey book fronts from the last 70 years.

Make Room for the Macavitys

Nominees for the 2014 Macavity Awards were announced this morning. As Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph explains, contenders are “nominated and voted on by members and friends of MysteryReaders International and subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal. Nominations are for works published in the U.S. in 2013.”

Best Mystery Novel:
• Sandrine’s Case, by Thomas H. Cook (Mysterious Press)
• Dead Lions, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• The Wicked Girls, by Alex Marwood (Penguin)
• How the Light Gets In, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin (Reagan Arthur)

Best First Mystery:
• Yesterday’s Echo, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman (Minotaur)
• Cover of Snow, by Jenny Milchman (Ballantine)
• Norwegian by Night, by Derek Miller (Faber and Faber)
• A Killing at Cotton Hill, by Terry Shames (Seventh Street)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “The Terminal,” by Reed Farrel Coleman (from Kwik Krimes, edited by Otto Penzler; Thomas & Mercer)
• “The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository,” by John Connolly (Bibliomysteries: Short Tales about Deadly Books, edited by Otto Penzler; Bookspan)
• “The Dragon’s Tail,” by Martin Limon (from Nightmare Range: The Collected Sueno and Bascom Short Stories; Soho Books)
• “The Hindi Houdini,” by Gigi Pandian (from Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, edited by Ramona DeFelice Long; Wildside Press)
• “Incident on the 405,” by Travis Richardson (from The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble, edited by Clare Toohey; Macmillan)
• “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013)

Best Non-fiction:
• The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece, by Roseanne Montillo (Morrow)
• Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard, by Charles J. Rzepka (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War, by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award:
• A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
• Saving Lincoln, by Robert Kresge (ABQ Press)
• Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses, by Catriona McPherson (Minotaur)
• Murder as a Fine Art, by David Morrell (Little, Brown)
• Ratlines, by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)

Winners will be announced on the evening of November 13, during Bouchercon in Long Beach, California.

Bullet Points: Obsessive Tube-Head Edition

• Almost five years ago, I wrote a short tribute on this page to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British TV crime series about two private-eye partners--one living, the other dead but still quite helpful in the way of investigating. At the time, it had been many years since I’d actually watched the program (which aired in the States as My Partner the Ghost). Earlier this week, however, I came across most of the 27 episodes of Randall and Hopkirk on YouTube. The opening segment from Episode 1, “My Late Lamented Friend and Partner”--first broadcast on September 21, 1969--can be found below. The full hour-long episode can be enjoyed below.



• Speaking of old crime and mystery series, are you familiar with Tightrope!, the 1959-1960 CBS drama in which Mike Connors (later of Mannix) played “Nick,” a police undercover agent assigned to infiltrate criminal gangs? Although it proved quite popular with viewers, the show was derided by loudmouthed prudes for “excessive violence” and doomed by a sponsor’s unwillingness to move the show to a more advantageous time slot. As far as I know, there isn’t a DVD collection of Tightrope!, but a Web site called Uncle Earl’s Classic Television has gathered together 30 of the original 37 episodes. The viewing quality is inconsistent, but it’s still good to see Connors (then going by the name “Michael Connors”) in his first series-leading role.

• In a post earlier this month I mentioned that a two-day extravaganza, “The Golden Anniversary Affair,” will be mounted in Los Angeles on September 26 and 27, commemorating half a century since the 1964 debut of NBC’s spy drama, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. A Facebook page promoting this event has long been available, but an associated Web site was just launched this week, giving information about tours, seminars, and celebs who will be on hand to greet attendees. It looks as if a number of details still need to be worked out, but there are probably enough specifics available on this “Affair” to convince veteran U.N.C.L.E. fans that they want to be part of it. Don’t wait too long to decide; attendance is limited to 100 guests, all of whom must be “invited” and pony up $135 for the privilege.

• Something called The Christian Post (which I’ve learned is an evangelical newspaper) brings words that the HBO-TV drama True Detective, which premiered in January of this year, may enjoy only a limited run. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto told an interviewer during Canada’s recent Banff World Media Festival that while he’s happy with the show’s success, he cannot maintain for long the pace of writing an anthology series on his own: “I can’t imagine I would do this more than three years. I mean, I’d like to have a regular TV show. We’ll have some fixed sets, regular actors and I could bring in people to help and I don’t have to be there every second. It’d be great.”

• Meanwhile, FX-TV’s Fargo, the darkly comedic crime drama based on the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film of the same name, has already run its 10-episode first-season course--and I have yet to watch even one installment. (Yeah, it’s been a crazy spring.) But after reading yesterday’s series recap post by Paul Levine, author of the Solomon vs. Lord legal thrillers, I think I need to wade into that program.

• Joe Brosnan has more to say about Fargo in Criminal Element.

• Most readers have probably forgotten Carolyn Weston (1921-2001), but she was the author of three novels featuring a pair of Santa Monica, California, police detectives, Sergeant Al Krug and Detective Casey Kellog. The first of those, 1972’s Poor, Poor Ophelia, inspired the 1972-1977 ABC-TV drama The Streets of San Francisco. Now comes word that Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, the writers behind Brash Books, a new crime-fiction imprint, have acquired Weston’s police procedurals, and plan to republish Poor, Poor Ophelia in 2015. What’s more, Goldberg tells me in an e-mail note, “we own [the three books] outright. So we are planning to continue the series with new novels. We’re in talks with an established female crime writer now about it. We haven’t decided whether to keep them in the ’70s in Santa Monica, or move the setting to San Francisco … or make a big leap and bring them to present-day San Francisco. It’s not as strange as it sounds. [Ed McBain’s] 87th Precinct books spanned decades, but the characters didn’t age. Same goes for Nero Wolfe. So moving our characters to present day, without aging them, has some precedent.”

• E.G. Marshall, star of The Defenders and The Bold Ones, would’ve celebrated his 100th birthday this week. He died in 1998.

• From the lighter side of TV crime comes Police Squad!, the short-lived, 1982 ABC-TV comedy starring Leslie Nielsen. A mere half-dozen episodes of that show were produced before it was cancelled, yet Police Squad! spawned the entertaining Naked Gun film series. The show was given a DVD release in 2006. However, I see it’s also available on YouTube, in case you would like to revisit Sergeant Frank Drebin’s earliest cases, without paying for the privilege.

• And one last television-related item: The Killing, the show that refused to die (its concluding, fourth season is finally set to start on Netflix in August), has now given birth to an original novel by Karen Dionne, The Killing: Uncommon Denominator (Titan). Criminal Element offers “an exclusive excerpt.”

• OK, I lied--one more: Joel Kinnaman, who plays Detective Stephen Holder on The Killing, recently stopped by the Los Angeles Times “for a live Web chat and was happy to report that, yes, restrictions will be loosened for the series’ final six episodes.” Read more here.

• If you’re on the lookout for classic Jim Thompson paperback covers and film posters, begin your searching here.

• Among the underrated detective/mystery films chosen by Jeff Flugel in his new post for the blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks (an allusion to 1983’s The King of Comedy) is P.J., George Peppard’s 1968 (pre-Banacek) big-screen private-eye flick. Flugel writes that P.J. finds Peppard “doing what he does best--being smug, cool and a hit with the ladies--and is peppered (ha ha!) with a lot of action and surprisingly bloody violence.” My own, more extensive remarks on P.J. are here.

• I’m sorry to hear that publisher Angry Robot Books is dropping its crime-fiction imprint, Exhibit A--especially since I was among the people who applied to become that line’s editor (one of several promising positions I sought, but was denied, in the not-distant past). In a statement covering this news, the company said, “We’re constantly trying out new concepts and new ideas, and we continue to publish popular and award-winning books. Our YA imprint Strange Chemistry and our crime/mystery imprint Exhibit A have--due mainly to market saturation--unfortunately been unable to carve out their own niches … We have therefore made the difficult decision to discontinue Strange Chemistry and Exhibit A, effective immediately, and no further titles will be published from these two imprints.” Among the authors recruited by Exhibit A were Daniel O’Shea (Penance), Karen Sandler (Clean Burn), Bartholomew Daniels (A Death Owed God), and Terry Irving (Courier). I hope they all find new publishers soon.

• Blogger Erin Mitchell shares her own thoughts about Exhibit A’s demise in a post for the blog Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Room.

• One falls, another rises: The Washington Post’s Ron Charles reports on plans by Paul Oliver, the director of marketing and publicity for Soho Press, to open a new publishing company, Syndicate Books, which “will focus on out-of-print mysteries and crime fiction.” Its first release, due in September, will be Get Carter, the 1970 novel by British author Ted Lewis that was later turned into a cult film of the same name starring Michael Caine. Charles adds that “Syndicate plans to publish all nine of Lewis’s novels--the result of ‘a couple of years’ of negotiation with the Ted Lewis estate.”

• I had many good things to say about C.J. Sansom’s Dominion, when that alternative-history spy novel was first published in the UK in 2012 (it has since enjoyed a U.S. release as well). Now Shlomo Schwartzberg shares his own thoughts on that book, as well as another similar what-if work, in the blog Critics At Large.

• Megan Abbott’s new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown), wins some important good press in The Atlantic.

• And this could prove interesting. Publishers Weekly reports that “Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke have signed up to collaborate on a new novel, which will revisit characters and plot lines introduced in Clark’s bestselling I’ve Got You Under My Skin. The collaboration, The Cinderella Murder, is slated for a November 2014 publication and marks the first time Clark has written with an outside author.”

Feel Free to Handle Holmes

We can only wait to see the legal repercussions of this ruling:

A federal judge has rejected a copyright appeal brought by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, opening the way for writers, filmmakers and other creators to make free use of Sherlock Holmes, his sidekick Watson and any elements of their story that appeared in Conan Doyle works published prior to Jan. 1, 1923.

The ruling, issued by Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, affirmed a district court ruling, last December, that the characters were no longer protected by American copyright, and so could be used without paying any permission fees.

In a ruling that cited “Star Wars” as well as Shakespeare, Judge Posner also rejected the estate’s claim that Holmes was a “complex” character, who in contrast to “flat” characters like Amos and Andy, was not fully fleshed out until Conan Doyle laid down his pen, and so remained under protection until the last copyright on the 10 Holmes stories published after 1922 expires.

“What this has to do with copyright law eludes us,” Judge Posner wrote tartly.

You can read more on this decision here and here.

Deadly’s David Due

Janet Rudolph reports in Mystery Fanfare that nominations are in for this year’s David Award, named for David G. Sasher and honoring “the best mystery published during the prior year.” They are:

• Lethal Treasure, by Jane Cleland (Minotaur)
• There Was an Old Woman, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow)
• Condemned to Repeat, by Janice MacDonald (Ravenstone)
• The Wrong Girl, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)
• Dark Music, by E.F. Watkins (Amber Quill Press)

Voting in this competition will take place amidst the 2014 Deadly Ink Mystery Conference, August 1-3. It will be presented during the convention’s Saturday night banquet.

Bullet Points: Post-Father’s Day Edition

Sorry things have been a bit quiet on this page over the last week, but I just returned home from a most gratifying visit with my best friend, Byron, who lives in Minneapolis. We managed during our time together to take in a baseball game at Target Field (the Twins lost again, as they always do when I’m in the bleachers), attend an amazing Elvis Costello concert (he played solo, and delivered five energetic encores!), wander through a fine display of Edward Hopper sketches at the Walker Art Museum, enjoy an outdoor evening band concert (featuring Byron’s oboe-playing wife, Karyl), spend hours reading in his sunny backyard, eat our way through several restaurants with curbside seating as well as a couple of exceptional ice-cream shops, and stick to a schedule of walking briskly around the local lakes, which reduced the guilt that might otherwise have been a consequence of our overconsumption. There were certainly more activities we could’ve added to our itinerary, had I spent longer in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. But we made some good memories during the days we had together. And for the record, let me say I didn’t miss being in front of a computer, cell phone, or iPad, when I did not have to be. A week of “unplugged” relaxation was greatly appreciated.

Now, though, it’s time to hop back on the crime-fiction beat. Here are some recent discoveries and newsy items you might have missed.

• As he gears up for the fifth annual Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel competition, judging convener Craig Sisterson recalls in his blog, Crime Watch, how he discovered the delights of New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. By the way, this year’s Ngaio Marsh prize will be presented during the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, August 27-31, so we should hear which books and authors have made the shortlist by some time in early August.

• Heads up! “On June 18th,” writes the unnamed blogger at Down These Mean Streets, “Ellery Queen will celebrate the 75th anniversary of his debut as a radio detective. To celebrate, I’ll feature more of his radio adventures and I’ll be giving away a complete series DVD set of his 1975 television series!” Contest specifics are here.

• I was not familiar with the Web site Thriller Books Journal until it selected The Rap Sheet as a crime-fiction blog “worth investigating.” You’ll find its previous picks here, here, and here.

• After Peter Gunn concluded its three-year run in 1961, Craig Stevens was recruited by Britain’s ITV to star in Man of the World, a 20-episode, 1962-1963 series in which he played globetrotting photojournalist Michael Strait, whose travels often led him to investigate crimes and assorted other odd doings. Before today, I might have seen one or two installments of that Stevens drama. But I just stumbled across more than a dozen of them on the YouTube channel maintained by “Zardon4,” the same person who uploaded a bunch of Name of the Game eps earlier this year. You’ll find “Masquerade in Spain,” described as the pilot for Man of the World here. And click here to watch other, black-and-white episodes.

• I swear, no matter how many giant stacks of pulpish novels I succeed in reading during my life, there will always be more. The latest author I’d never heard of before: Australian James Holledge, perhaps best remembered for penning Notorious Women (1962).

• Surely, I have seen this set of gun-barrel opening sequences from the James Bond films before. But they’re still great nostalgic fun.

• Over the last couple of years, UK-based Titan Books has slowly but surely been bringing all of Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm espionage novels back into print. (You can order them here.) Now, audio book producer Blackstone is preparing to release audio versions of the first five Helm adventures, starting with 1960’s Death of a Citizen. Collecting these audio books should be fun, but it won’t be cheap: each will set you back $49. Further details are available here.

• Happy 10th anniversary to the film/TV blog A Shroud of Thoughts! Recalling its birth in 2004, writer Terence Towles Canote remarks, “At the time I had no idea that A Shroud of Thoughts would last so long. At the same time I had no idea that in some ways the blog would become my life’s work. I have actually been writing A Shroud of Thoughts longer than I have held most jobs!” I know just how he feels …

• This is top-notch artwork for a 1974 Spanish condensation of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, published by Reader’s Digest.

• Boston-area author Linda Barnes (author of the Carlotta Carlyle series and The Perfect Ghost) is the guest on the 162nd episode of Jeff Rutherford’s Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.

• Since I’m not a Showtime subscriber, I haven’t had a chance to follow the new horror-fiction TV series Penny Dreadful, but the trailers certainly make it appear intriguing. Showtime evidently likes it too, for it has already ordered a second season of episodes.

• Lauren Miller’s new science-fiction thriller, Free to Fall (HarperTeen), somehow slipped right past my usually finely tuned radar. Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper, though, took advantage of its publication to ask the author a few questions about her characters and the increasing role of technology in our lives.

• And I can only shake my head at this missed opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, I was in Minneapolis last week, with plenty of free hours on my hands. It’s too bad I didn’t know then about The Red Box, Joseph Goodrich’s theatrical adaptation of Rex Stout’s 1937 Nero Wolfe mystery of that same name. The play had its world premiere at the Park Square Theatre in neighboring St. Paul during the time I was in that area, and it’s scheduled to run through July 30. The St. Paul Pioneer Press delivered plenty of compliments to the show in its recent review, calling it “an ideal summer entertainment,” and Park Square offers a short video trailer for the production here. Had I been prepared, I could’ve seen the show myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t read about it until my return to the Pacific Northwest. Sigh ...

A Long (Beach) Engagement

So it’s done: I have registered to take part in this year’s Bouchercon, which is to be held in Long Beach, California, from November 13 through 16. I deliberated over this move for a while, as I’m not usually much of a convention-goer (the last Bouchercon I went to was in St.Louis back in 2011). But my friend and colleague, the hyper-energetic Ali Karim, finally convinced me, saying that if he could fly all the way from Great Britain to participate, I could certainly arrange the shorter journey from Seattle to Southern California.

My activities during Bouchercon will likely be limited to sitting through panel talks, cheering the various award winners, haunting the book-sales room, and bellying up to the nearest bar whenever it seems wise or necessary. There will be chances to meet authors whose work I have relished, but who I have never met, and still greater opportunities to check in with fellow attendees I know but have not spoken with for a while, such as Gary Phillips, Megan Abbott, Otto Penzler, Kelli Stanley, Max Allan Collins, Janet Rudolph, Linwood Barclay, J. Robert Janes, Lee Goldberg, Sarah Weinman, R.J. Ellory, and Kevin Burton Smith. A full rundown of folks who’ll be on hand for these festivities is here.

And if you’d like to register yourself for this November’s event in Long Beach (where Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer once trained as a policeman), all of the details can be found here.

High on P.I.s

The Private Eye Writers of America today announced the finalists for its 2014 Shamus Awards. Winners will be named during a banquet at Bouchercon in Long Beach, California, on Friday, November 14.

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel:
• Little Elvises, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• The Mojito Coast, by Richard Helms (Five Star)
• W Is for Wasted, by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood/Putnam)
• The Good Cop, by Brad Parks (Minotaur)
• Nemesis, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

Best First P.I. Novel:
• A Good Death, by Christopher R. Cox (Minotaur)
• Montana, by Gwen Florio (Permanent Press)
• Blood Orange, by Karen Keskinen (Minotaur)
• Bear Is Broken, by Lachlan Smith (Mysterious Press)
• Loyalty, by Ingrid Thoft (Putnam)

Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel:
• Seduction of the Innocent, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• Into the Dark, by Alison Gaylin (HarperCollins)
• Purgatory Key, by Darrell James (Midnight Ink)
• Heart of Ice, by P.J. Parrish (Pocket)
• The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie, by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime)

Best P.I. Short Story:
• “So Long, Chief,” by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane (The Strand Magazine, February-May 2013)
• “The Ace I,” by Jack Fredrickson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], June 2013)
• “What We Do,” by Mick Herron (EQMM, September-October 2013)
• “Extra Fries,” by Michael Z. Lewin (EQMM, May 2013)
• “The Lethal Leeteg,” by Hayford Peirce (EQMM, August 2013)

Best Indie P.I. Novel:
• Murder Take Three, by April Kelly and Marsha Lyons (Flight Risk)
• A Small Sacrifice, by Dana King (Amazon Digital)
• No Pat Hands, by J.J. Lamb (Two Black Sheep)
• State vs. Lassiter, by Paul Levine (CreateSpace)
• Don’t Dare a Dame, by M. Ruth Myers (Tuesday House)

(Hat tip to Mystery Scene.)

Summer Specials

Last week I posted an extensive list of new crime, mystery, and thriller novels scheduled for publication between now and Labor Day. Today, in my latest Kirkus Reviews column, I look closely at six of those works--all set to be released in the States, some by authors who are still building their credentials in the genre, and a couple by writers new to me. Check out the full assortment here.

An “Angel” Gets Its Winnings

Courtesy of The Gumshoe Site comes word that Richard Lange has won this year’s Hammett Prize for his 2013 novel, Angel Baby (Mulholland). The Hammett is sponsored by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers and is given annually to a “work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a U.S. or Canadian author.”

Also in contention for the prize were: Cataract City, by Craig Davidson (Doubleday Canada); Green Light for Murder, by Heywood Gould (Tyrus); Caught, by Lisa Moore (House of Anansi Press); and The Double, by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown).

The identity of this year’s Hammett recipient was announced on June 7 during the Bloody Words Conference in Toronto, Ontario. As The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura notes, “Mr. Lange received a bronze trophy, designed by West Coast sculptor Peter Boiger.”

Bright Days, Dark Deeds

So here’s my summer vacation nightmare story.

More than a few years ago, my wife and I decided to spend three unhurried weeks at the beach resort town of Negril, on the western end of Jamaica. We’d both been to the Caribbean before, but this was our first stay in the enchanted land of reggae, on the island where Ian Fleming once owned an estate, and which he’d used periodically as a setting for his James Bond adventures. We figured we could pack light, since the weather was supposed to be clear and temperate. But I also tried to make sure that I stuffed my bags with sufficient reading material to keep me entertained during so much downtime. Regrettably, I miscalculated. Only two weeks into our vacation, I polished off the healthy stack of crime novels and non-fiction works I’d brought along. Meanwhile, my wife had a mere two books in her suitcase, and one of those was a psychological text of some sort. The other was an Anna Quindlen novel, perhaps One True Thing (1994). In any event, it took me mere hours to finish Quindlen’s tale, and then I was right back where I’d been, with nothing to read.

Now, had we been staying in a city of respectable size, it would have been fairly easy to find a bookstore. On the extreme western of Jamaica, though, there were no such amenities. Apparently, people go to Negril merely to snuggle into beach chairs on the sand, sip rum punch, and glance up occasionally at topless young lovelies frolicking in the surf. And while I’m not against any of those activities, I need more intellectual stimulation. Enhancing my tan while fending off roving spliff peddlers was not going to do it. I tried walking down the beach to a minuscule town center, but could find nothing better than a drugstore with a spinner rack full of well-thumbed paperback romance novels and diet guides. Finally, I could do no better than to re-read the books I’d just spent the previous two weeks digesting.

In preparation for every vacation since then, I have erred on the side of overabundance, rather than risk being caught short (and bored) again.

Fortunately, there will be no difficulty finding first-rate mystery, crime, and thriller novels to fill your free time over the coming summer months, regardless of which side of the Atlantic Ocean you call home. Between now and Labor Day we’ll be treated to spanking-new releases by prominent wordsmiths such as Megan Abbott, Alan Furst, Ian Rankin, Karin Fossum, Philip Kerr, and Stephen King, as well as fresh fiction from dependable storytellers on the order of Alafair Burke, Michael Koryta, Kelli Stanley, Andrew Taylor, Jeri Westerson, and Rennie Airth. Checking through publisher catalogues, as well as The Bloodstained Bookshelf, Euro Crime, and other online resources, I came up with a preliminary selection of more than 260 works in this genre that I’ll be watching for over the next 12 weeks. There will be more new books hitting store shelves, of course, but consider this list a good starting point in your search for reading satisfaction.

JUNE (U.S.):

• The Abduction, by Jonathan Holt (Harper)

• All Day and a Night, by Alafair Burke (Harper)

• All the Things You Are, by Declan Hughes (Severn House)

• The American Mission, by Matthew Palmer (Putnam)

• American Woman, by Robert Pobi (Thomas & Mercer)

• Angelica’s Smile, by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin)

• The Antiquarian, by Gustavo Faverón Patriau (Black Cat)

• The Arsonist, by Sue Miller (Knopf)

• The Baklava Club, by Jason Goodwin (Sarah Crichton)

• Barcelona Shadows, by Marc Pastor (Pushkin Press)

• A Barricade in Hell, by Jaime Lee Moyer (Tor)

• A Better World, by Marcus Sakey (Thomas & Mercer)

• Blacklist, by Jerry Ludwig (Forge)

• Bliss House, by Laura Benedict (Pegasus)

• Chimes at Midnight, by Michael A. Black (Five Star)

• Coldsleep Lullaby, by Andrew Brown (Minotaur)

• Cop Town, by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press)

• Cradle to Grave, by Eleanor Kuhns (Minotaur)

• A Dark and Twisted Tide, by Sharon Bolton (Minotaur)

• Dark Angel, by Mari Jungstedt (Stockholm Text)

• The Death of Lucy Kyte, by Nicola Upson (Bourbon Street)

• Denial of Murder, by Peter Turnbull (Severn House)

• The Devil in the Marshalsea, by Antonia Hodgson (Mariner)

• The Devil May Care, by David Housewright (Minotaur)

• The Director, by David Ignatius (Norton)

• Elizabeth Is Missing, by Emma Healey (Harper)

• Eyes on You, by Kate White (Harper)

• Face Value, edited by David Baldacci (Simon & Schuster)

• Face Value, by Michael A. Kahn (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The False Virgin, by The Medieval Murderers (Simon & Schuster)

• The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central)

• The Fever, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

• The Forty-Two, by Ed Kurtz (New Pulp Press)

• Ghost Month, by Ed Lin (Soho Crime)

• The Good Suicides, by Antonio Hill (Crown)

• Hell to Pay, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• Identity, by Ingrid Thoft (Putnam)

• I Love You More, by Jennifer Murphy (Doubleday)

• Indefensible, by Lee Goodman (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Killing the Curse, by Dennis Hetzel (Headline)

• Land of Shadows, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)

• The Last Heir, by Chuck Greaves (Minotaur)

• The Last Taxi Ride, by A.X. Ahmad (Minotaur)

• The Late Scholar, by Jill Paton Walsh (Minotaur)

• Margery Allingham’s Mr. Campion’s Farewell: The Return of Albert Campion, completed by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

• A Matter of Breeding, by J. Sydney Jones (Severn House)

• The Michael Gray Mysteries, by Henry Kuttner (Haffner Press)

• Midnight in Europe, by Alan Furst (Random House)

• Moving Day, by Jonathan Stone (Thomas & Mercer)

• Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King (Scribner)

• The Murder Farm, by Andrea Maria Schenkel (Quercus)

• Murder on Nob Hill, by Shirley Tallman (St. Martin’s Griffin)

• Never Look Back, by Clare Donoghue (Minotaur)

• The Nightmare Place, by Steve Mosby (Orion)

• No Stone Unturned, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

• Of Sea and Cloud, by Jon Keller (Tyrus)

• Phantom Instinct, by Meg Gardiner (Dutton)

• Present Darkness, by Malla Nunn (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Quick, by Lauren Owen (Random House)

• The Quiet Woman, by Terence Faherty (Five Star)

• Reckless Disregard, by Robert Rotstein (Seventh Street)

• Redemption Key, by S.G. Redling (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Red Chameleon, by Erica Wright (Pegasus)

• The Red Room, by Ridley Pearson (Putnam)

• Replay, by Marc Levy (Europa Editions)

• Resurrection Bay, by Wayne McDaniel and Steven Womack
(Midnight Ink)

• Saints of New York, by R.J. Ellory (Overlook Press)

• The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling (Mulholland)

• Skin of the Wolf, by Sam Cabot (Blue Rider Press)

• Someone Else’s Skin, by Sarah Hilary (Penguin)

• The Splintered Paddle, by Mark Troy (Five Star)

• Strange Gods, by Annamaria Alfieri (Minotaur)

• A Swollen Red Sun, by Matthew McBride (Mysterious Press/
Open Road)

• Summer House with Swimming Pool, by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

• That Night, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin's Press)

• Third Rail, by Rory Flynn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Those Who Wish Me Dead, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)

• Top Secret Twenty-One, by Janet Evanovich (Bantam)

• Traitors to All, by Giorgio Scerbanenco (Melville International Crime)

• Two Soldiers, by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström (Quercus)

• Vertigo 42, by Martha Grimes (Scribner)

• The Ways of the Dead, by Neely Tucker (Viking)

JUNE (UK):

• The Art of Killing Well, by Marco Malvaldi (MacLehose Press)

• Blood Med, by Jason Webster (Chatto & Windus)

• Blood Whispers, by John Gordon Sinclair (Faber & Faber)

• Children of War, by Martin Walker (Quercus)

• The Corpse Bridge, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Curse of the House of Foskett, by M.R.C. Kasasian
(Head of Zeus)

• The Dark Horizon, by Simon Hall (Thames River Press)

• The Death Collector, by Neil White (Sphere)

• Death of a Scholar, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Dodger of the Dials, by James Benmore (Heron Books)

• A House of Knives, by William Shaw (Quercus)

• The Human Flies, by Hans Olav Lahlum (Mantle)

• If I Should Die, by Matthew Frank (Michael Joseph)

• The Kill, by Jane Casey (Ebury Press)

• Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson)

• The Memory Killer, by J.A. Kerley (Harper)

• The Murder of Harriet Krohn, by Karin Fossum (Harvill Secker)

• The Night Watchman, by Richard Zimler (Corsair)

• Roseblood, by Paul Doherty (Headline)

• Shredder, by Niall Leonard (Definitions)

• The Spider of Sarajevo, by Robert Wilton (Corvus)

• To the Top of the Mountain, by Arne Dahl (Harvill Secker)

• Twisted, by Lynda La Plante (Simon & Schuster)

• The Visitors, by Simon Sylvester (Quercus)

• Wanted, by Emlyn Rees (C&R Crime)

• Want You Dead, by Peter James (Macmillan)

• The White Sea, by Paul Johnston
(Creme de la Crime)

• Zodiac Station, by Tom Harper
(Hodder & Stoughton)

JULY (U.S.):

• Back Channel, by Stephen L. Carter (Knopf)

• The Black Hour, by Lori Rader-Day (Seventh Street)

• The Bone Orchard, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• The Bone Seeker, by M.J. McGrath (Viking)

• The Bosch Deception, by Alex Connor (Quercus)

• Bravo, by Greg Rucka (Mulholland)

• The Butcher, by Jennifer Hillier (Gallery)

• Candle Flame, by Paul Doherty (Creme de la Crime)

• The Care and Management of Lies, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

• Cataract City, by Craig Davidson (Graywolf Press)

• The Catch, by Taylor Stevens (Crown)

• The City, by Dean Koontz (Bantam)

• City of Devils, by Diana Bretherick (Pegasus)

• Come, Sweet Death, by Wolf Haas (Melville International Crime)

• Cup of Blood, by Jeri Westerson (Old London Press)

• The Dead Will Tell, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• Dear Daughter, by Elizabeth Little (Viking)

• Don’t Try to Find Me, by Holly Brown (Morrow)

• Dry Bones in the Valley, by Tom Bouman (Norton)

• Enemies at Home, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• Everyone Lies, by A.D. Garrett (Minotaur)

• First Light, by Al Lamanda (Five Star)

• Forest of Fortune, by Jim Ruland (Tyrus)

• The Forsaken, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

• Forty Acres, by Dwayne Alexander Smith (Atria)

• Gold Digger, by Frances Fyfield (Witness)

• The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica (Mira)

• The Good, the Bad, and the Emus, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)

• Grave Doubts, by Elizabeth Corley (Minotaur)

• The Heist, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• Herbie’s Game, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)

• The Home Place, by Carrie La Seur (Morrow)

• Hounded, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)

• House Reckoning, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• I Can See in the Dark, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Ice Shear, by M.P. Cooley (Morrow)

• Inside Man, by Jeff Abbott (Grand Central)

• Last to Know, by Elizabeth Adler (Minotaur)

• The Last Town, by Blake Crouch (Thomas & Mercer)

• Lawless & the Flowers of Sin, by William Sutton (Exhibit A)

• The Mad and the Bad, by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB Classics)

• The Madmen of Benghazi, by Gérard de Villiers
(Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

• Murder in Retribution, by Anne Cleeland (Kensington)

• Never Coming Back, by Tim Weaver (Viking)

• The Night Searchers, by Marcia Muller (Grand Central)

• Now and in the Hour of Our Death, by Patrick Taylor (Forge)

• The Pale House, by Luke McCallin (Berkley)

• Peter Pan Must Die, by John Verdon (Crown)

• A Possibility of Violence, by D.A. Mishani (Harper)

• The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam)

• Really the Blues, by Joseph Koenig (Pegasus)

• Red Joan, by Jennie Rooney (Europa Editions)

• Red Winter, by Dan Smith (Pegasus)

• Remains of Innocence, by J.A. Jance (Morrow)

• Rollover, by Susan Slater (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Pickett Country, by C.J. Box (Putnam)

• Snatched, by Bill James (Severn House)

• Sorrow Bound, by David Mark (Blue Rider Press)

• Strangers, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• Supreme Justice, by Max Allan Collins (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Ticket to Oblivion, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Thomas Sweterlitsch (Putnam)

• Vengeance Is Mine, by Reavis Z. Wortham (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Wayfaring Stranger, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)

• The White Magic Five & Dime, by Steve Hockensmith with Lisa Falco (Midnight Ink)

• The Wolf, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Ballantine)

• World of Trouble, by Ben Winters (Quirk)

JULY (UK):

• Abattoir Blues, by Peter Robinson
(Hodder & Stoughton)

• Acts of Omission, by Terry Stiastny
(John Murray)

• Artefacts of the Dead, by Tony Black
(Black and White)

• Believe No One, by A.D. Garrett (C&R Crime)

• The Blooding, by James McGee (HarperCollins)

• Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)

• The Corners of the Globe, by Robert Goddard (Bantam Press)

• Dark Road, by Ian Rankin and Mark Thomson (Orion)

• Dead Men’s Bones, by James Oswald (Penguin)

• The Devil’s Seal, by Peter Tremayne (Headline)

• An Evil Mind, by Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster)

• The Final Silence, by Stuart Neville (Harvill Secker)

• The G File, by Håkan Nesser (Mantle)

• The Hummingbird, by Kati Hiekkapelto (Arcadia)

• Into a Raging Blaze, by Andreas Norman (Quercus)

• The Killing Room, by Christobel Kent (Atlantic Books)

• A Morbid Habit, by Annie Hauxwell (Heinemann)

• The Night Hunter, by Caro Ramsay (Severn House)

• Painting Death, by Tim Parks (Harvill Secker)

• Plague, by C.C. Humphreys (Century)

• Research, by Philip Kerr (Quercus)

• Season of Fear, by Brian Freeman (Quercus)

• The Swimmer, by Joakim Zander (Head of Zeus)

• The Testimony of the Hanged Man, by Ann Granger (Headline)

• The Tottenham Outrage, by M.H. Baylis (Old Street)

• Vagabond, by Gerald Seymour (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Without You, by Saskia Sarginson (Piatkus)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• Alone in the Classroom, by Elizabeth Hay (MacLehose Press)

• The Art Whisperer, by Charlotte and Aaron Elkins (Thomas & Mercer)

• Assassin’s Game, by Ward Larsen (Forge)

• Bagmen, by William Lashner (Thomas & Mercer)

• Before, During, After, by Richard Bausch (Knopf)

• The Beggar & the Hare, by Tuomas Kyrö (Atria/Marble Arch Press)

• Beware Beware, by Steph Cha (Minotaur)

• The Black Road, by Tania Carver (Pegasus)

• Blind Moon Alley, by John Florio (Seventh Street)

• Bones Never Lie, by Kathy Reichs (Bantam)

• Brainquake, by Samuel Fuller (Hard Case Crime)

• By My Hand, by Maurizio de Giovanni (Europa Editions)

• Cat on a Cold Tin Roof, by Mike Resnick (Seventh Street)

• Chain of Events, by Fredrik T. Olsson (Sphere)

• City of Ghosts, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)

• Close Call, by Stella Rimington (Bloomsbury USA)

• A Colder War, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)

• Dead Line, by Chris Ewan (Minotaur)

• Deadout, by Jon McGoran (Forge)

• Designated Daughters, by Margaret Maron (Grand Central)

• Death at Chinatown, by Frances McNamara (Allium Press)

• Don’t Look Back, by Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s Press)

• An Event in Autumn, by Henning Mankell (Vintage/Black Lizard)

• The Frozen Dead, by Bernard Minier (Minotaur)

• The Good Know Nothing, by Ken Kuhlken (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Gun Metal Heart, by Dana Haynes (Minotaur)

• Half in Love with Artful Death, by Bill Crider (Minotaur)

• Haunted, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam)

• Hollow Mountain, by Thomas Mogford (Bloomsbury)

• Inamorata, by Megan Chance (Lake Union)

• Inspector Colbeck’s Casebook, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)

• The Iron Sickle, by Martin Limón (Soho Crime)

• The Kills, by Richard House (Picador)

• The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• The Minotaur’s Head, by Marek Krajewski (Melville
International Crime)

• Moon in a Dead Eye, by Pascal Garnier (Gallic)

• No Safe House, by Linwood Barclay (New American Library)

• One Kick, by Chelsea Cain (Simon & Schuster)

• Payoff, by Douglas Corleone (Minotaur)

• Queen of Hearts, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• The Reckoning, by Rennie Airth (Viking)

• The Spirit and the Skull, by J.M. Hayes (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Strange Shores, by Arnaldur Indridason (Minotaur)

• Summer of the Dead, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

• Tabula Rasa, by Ruth Downie (Bloomsbury USA)

• Three-Card Monte, by Marco Malvaldi (Europa Editions)

• Unmanned, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)

• Windigo Island, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)

• You, by Zoran Drvenkar (Knopf)

AUGUST (UK):

• Alphabet House, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Hesperus Press)

• Confessions, by Kanae Minato (Mulholland)

• The Dark Meadow, by Andrea Maria Schenkel (Quercus)

• The Doll Maker, by Richard Montanari (Sphere)

• Fall From Grace, by Tim Weaver (Penguin)

• Fiddle City, by Dan Kavanagh (Orion)

• The First Horseman, by D.K. Wilson (Sphere)

• The Girl Next Door, by Ruth Rendell (Hutchinson)

• Gods of Gold, by Chris Nickson (Severn House)

• The House on the Hill, by Kevin Sampson (Jonathan Cape)

• The Killing Season, by Mark Pearson (Arrow)

• Murder at the Chase, by Eric Brown (Severn House)

• The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House, by Stephanie Lam (Penguin)

• The Night the Rich Men Burned, by Malcolm Mackay (Mantle)

• Paths of the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Pan)

• The Ploughmen, by Kim J. Zupan (Picador)

• The Root of All Evil, by Roberto Costantini (Quercus)

• The Sandman, by Lars Kepler (Blue Door)

• Savage Magic, by Lloyd Shepherd (Simon & Schuster)

• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Shoot to Kill, by James Craig (Constable)

• The Silent Boy, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

• Summer Lies Bleeding, by Nuala Casey (Quercus)

• Summer of Ghosts, by P.D. Viner (Ebury Press)

• Talking to Ghosts, by Hervé Le Corre (MacLehose Press)

• The Winter Foundlings, by Kate Rhodes (Mulholland)

Did I miss anything? If there are crime, mystery, and thriller novels you think belong on this rundown, but that are not mentioned, please let us all know about them in the Comments section below.