But Wait, There’s More!

A few things I forgot to mention in yesterday’s news wrap-up.

• The New York Times reports that British author Paula Hawkins, who won an impressive following with her first psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train, has a follow-up novel due out on both sides of the Atlantic this coming May. Titled Into the Water and being prepared for U.S. release by Riverhead Books, this new tale will focus (according to the Times) on “two women, a single mother and a teenage girl, [who] are found dead at the bottom of a river in a small town in northern England, just weeks apart. An investigation into the mysterious deaths reveals that the women had a complicated and intertwined history.”

• Happy birthday to author John Dickson Carr! Had that Pennsylvania-born creator of detectives Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale not died in 1977, at age 70, he would today be celebrating the 110th anniversary of his first breath. Even though he’s not around to appreciate it, there are many veteran Carr readers still singing his praises—with good reason: he was, among others things, a major contributor to the field of “locked-room mysteries.” If you’d like to refresh your memory about all things Carr, see this piece about his status as a “forgotten author”; this tribute by his granddaughter; this site dealing specifically with his locked-room yarns; this fine collection of Carr-related posts from The Invisible Event; and this new review of his 1935 Merrivale mystery, The Unicorn Murders, which he penned under his familiar pseudonym, Carter Dickson.

• Ben Affleck’s Live by Night, a crime film based on Dennis Lehane’s 2012 novel of that same name, and due for wide theatrical distribution in early January, is now represented by a new and better trailer, which you can watch at Criminal Element. As that blog explains, Live by Night is set during America’s Prohibition era of the 1920s and finds Affleck playing “the ambitious Joe Coughlin, the son of the Boston Police Superintendent, who turns his back on his strict upbringing for the spoils of being an outlaw—setting him on a path of revenge, ambition, romance, and betrayal that finds him in the seedy rum-running underworld of Tampa.” What’s not to like?

• I bought this 1930s mystery some time ago, but haven’t read it yet. Perhaps a chilly winter offers the perfect opportunity.

• In an interview with Black Gate, Charles Ardai, the editor at Hard Case Crime, talks about getting his hands on the soon-to-be-released 30th installment in Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Lam/Donald Cool detective series, The Knife Slipped, and how he’d like to bring additional Gardner works to market in the future. “I’m a big fan,” Ardai declares, “and would be delighted to do more.” I can’t wait!

• During a conversation with fellow author Mark Rubinstein, David Morrell answers a number of questions about the 19th-century development Britain’s extensive railway system, drug use among fictional sleuths, and other subjects related to his new novel, Ruler of the Night, the third and final installment in his trilogy featuring essayist and notorious opium addict Thomas De Quincey.

• Finally, The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig writes about Caribe, a mostly forgotten, 1975 Quinn Martin-produced ABC-TV series starring Stacy Keach as Lieutenant Ben Logan, the head of a Miami-based law-enforcement unit dealing with crime all over the Caribbean basin. As Koenig notes, the lead in this 13-episode drama had been intended for Robert Wagner; but Keach wound up getting the part, instead. Fortunately, Keach recovered from the Caribe debacle, starring a decade later in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer on CBS.

Collins, Hart Share Top MWA Honor

Authors Max Allan Collins and Ellen Hart have been chosen by the Mystery Writers of America to receive Grand Master Awards in 2017. That annual commendation “represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.” Previous winners include Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Ross Macdonald, Stanley Ellin, and, last year, Walter Mosley.

Collins is the prolific creator of both series private eye Nathan Heller (Better Dead) and hit man Quarry (Quarry in the Black), and continues to serve as Mickey Spillane’s “collaborator” in moving new Mike Hammer tales to market. Hart is a six-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, whose latest private investigator Jane Lawless novel was last year’s The Grave Soul.

These two writers will be given their prizes during the 71st Annual Edgar Awards Banquet, to be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on Thursday, April 27, 2017.

In addition to the Grand Masters, the MWA has named the recipients of two other impressive annual accolades: the 2017 Raven Award—recognizing “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing”—will go to Dru Ann Love, an avid reader and the blogger at Dru’s Book Musings; while next year’s Ellery Queen Award—honoring “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”—will go to Neil Nyren, the executive vice-president and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

READ MORE: “The Grand Master,” by Ray Betzner (Studies in Starrett).

Bullet Points: This and That Edition

• Things appear to be shaping up quite nicely for Scotland’s new Granite Noir festival. The Press and Journal reports that the inaugural event, set to take place in Aberdeen from February 24 to 26 of next year, “will feature famous literary guests including Denise Mina, Christopher Brookmyre, and the north-east’s own Stuart MacBride.”

• The blog It’s About TV! has posted this 1960 film clip in which author Brett Halliday (aka Davis Dresser) endorses the soon-to-debut—and ultimately short-lived—NBC-TV crime drama Michael Shayne, which starred Richard Denning as Halliday’s Miami private eye. Interestingly, one of the many Shayne novels conveniently displayed in front of the eye-patch-wearing Halliday in that clip is 1942’s The Corpse Came Calling, about which I wrote several years ago.

• In case you haven’t noticed yet, Mark Rogers’ excellent Web site, The Ironside Archive—devoted to the 1967-1975 Raymond Burr crime drama Ironside—is up and running once more. Rogers, a graphic designer in the UK, told me that he took his site down some while ago, “after I found it was attracting a lot of attention from some disturbed and disturbing people, who were looking for nude photos of the two regular female cast members, Barbara Anderson and Elizabeth Baur—and (more frighteningly) for images of them tied up.” Fortunately, the six-year-old Archive doesn’t seem to have suffered any during its time offline. In fact, that break allowed Rogers to upgrade his valuable Episode Guide.

• Another site of considerable interest is Reading Ellery Queen. There, museum curator/poet Jon Mathewson remarks on the numerous novels and short stories penned during the 20th century by cousins Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay, who of course employed the joint pseudonym Ellery Queen. Mathewson also looks at fictional sleuth Queen’s appearances in other media, such as in the 1971 NBC-TV pilot Don’t Look Behind You (with a terribly miscast Peter Lawford in the lead role) and the far superior, 1975-1976 NBC series Ellery Queen (about which I wrote here). Mathewson says he’s now “read all but one [of the Queen novels]: the unfinished manuscript for The Tragedy of Errors.” If so, that puts him far ahead of me. I’ve enjoyed a couple of dozen Queen yarns, but still have a boxful of vintage paperback editions to open. Something to look forward to, indeed.

• TV writer-producer Ken Levine has some favorable things to say about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the 1969 film made from Ian Fleming’s 1963 James Bond novel of that same name. “It’s pretty much the forgotten Bond film,” Levine writes, “because it was the only one that starred George Lazenby. He had the misfortune of replacing Sean Connery and for good measure, was not an accomplished actor. He was more of a male model. … But the plot was pretty good. It stayed very true to Ian Fleming’s book and was a lot more realistic than later 007 adventures where he’s on the moon or taking Denise Richards seriously.”

• Meanwhile, Film Noir of the Week takes a look back at the 1997 motion picture L.A. Confidential—“a paradise with secrets behind every palm tree”—based on James Ellroy’s 1990 novel.

• R.I.P., former Barney Miller co-star Ron Glass.

• If you’re keeping track of bloggers delivering their “best novels of 2016” lists, here’s one from Australian booksellers Jon and Kate Page. Note than among their choices is Jane Harper’s The Dry, a debut work finally due out in the States come in January.

• The Amazon book-sales site has its own top-picks rundown of mysteries and thrillers published in 2016. Its choices include Carl Hiaasen’s Razor Girl, Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night, Amy Gentry’s Good as Gone, and Bill Beverly’s Dodgers.

• And I don’t think I mentioned this necessarily opinionated tally of the year’s “best crime and thriller novels” by Jake Kerridge of the British Telegraph. Strangely, it appeared last June, so might not be as comprehensive as it could have been. But Kerridge does mention one novel I’m looking forward to reading: Jill Dawson’s The Crime Writer, which will finally receive a U.S. release this coming June.

• Because I’ve written at some length in the past about early 20th-century American outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (see here and here), I was interested to glance through the design blog Eleven-Nineteen’s collection of photographs celebrating their ill-fated, Depression-era romance. “What’s odd,” observes Jon Wessel, “is that Bonnie and Clyde took so many pictures. Pictures of themselves, their gang, their guns, their loot. They would have been social media sensations had it been 40 years later.”

• The Defenders: Season 1, released in DVD format by Shout Factory! a few months back, is on my Christmas list, and I’m hoping to find it under the tree soon. If and when it appears, I shall be curious to see whether I agree with the Classic Film and TV Café’s recent selection of “the five best episodes” from that 1961 premiere season of the acclaimed CBS courtroom drama.

• After writing recently in my book-art blog, Killer Covers, about Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 political novel, It Can’t Happen Here, I received a note pointing me toward this excellent pre-election piece in The Washington Post, which finds book critic Carlos Lozada musing on how Donald Trump compares with the fictional dictators imagined by both Lewis and by Philip Roth, in 2004’s The Plot Against America.

• By the way, Money magazine notes that in the wake of Trump’s win, copies of It Can’t Happen Here have “sold out on some major online book retailers.” Fear of what the billionaire bigot might do in office can surely be credited with this purchasing stampede.

• While we’re on the subject of this month’s disastrous presidential election, here’s a quote from Washington Monthly that likely echoes many a voter’s thoughts: “The psychological shock progressives felt on November 8 will be minor compared to the shock they will feel on January 20. Not since Bill Clinton turned the White House over to George W. Bush has there been such a disparity in terms of decency and dignity between an outgoing and incoming President.”

• Grrr! As much as I enjoy writing about crime fiction for the Kirkus Reviews Web site, I am frustrated by the fact that reader comments on my biweekly pieces, along with their Facebook “share” counts—both of which are handled, apparently, through Facebook—periodically just … disappear. That happened again this last weekend, when the “share” number on several of my latest columns, after having climbed into the hundreds, suddenly plummeted back to zero. Sigh …

• In a trio of worthwhile author interviews, blogger S.W. Lauden fires questions at Andrew Nette (Gunshine State), Bob Truluck (The Big Nothing), and Angel Luis Colón (No Happy Endings).

• Since I somehow neglected to mention Neil S. Plakcy’s recent post for Criminal Element about the history of gay and lesbian characters in crime fiction, and how the writers responsible for those players influenced Plakcy’s own storytelling (The Next One Will Kill You), let me do it here and now.

• Finally, don’t fret any if The Rap Sheet goes quiet towards the end of this week. I’m taking a bit of time off, hoping to refresh my batteries before the coming holiday posting rush. You’ll hear much more from this corner of the Web next week.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

From The New Yorker, November 30, 1998. Art by William Steig.

A Taste for Royals and Rogues

Martin Edwards brings us the most unwelcome news, that British author Tim Heald “died last Sunday, at the age of 72. Tim was a man of many parts,” Edwards goes on to say, “and novel writing was only one of the strings to his bow. He worked as a journalist, wrote biographies, cricket books, and books about royalty, and was a popular public speaker on a wide range of topics. He was also an entertaining crime writer, best known for the Simon Bognor books [2014’s Yet Another Death in Venice, etc.], which were televised, and he chaired the Crime Writers’ Association. He was immensely convivial.

READ MORE: “Tim Heald: R.I.P.,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Copycat Covers: It Takes a Village

A new entry in our series about remarkably look-alike book fronts.



Buried in the Country, by Carola Dunn (Minotaur, 2016); and In a Dry Season, by Peter Robinson (Morrow, 1999).

If you click on these images to enlarge them, you will see clearly that the front from In a Dry Season—Robinson’s 10th Alan Banks novel—uses the right-hand portion (only slight modified) of the same Jo Parsons/Getty Images stock photo that decorates the façade of Dunn’s latest “Cornish Mystery.”

A Cut Above

’Tis the season for “best crime fiction of the year” lists, and I am chiming in today with my own roster of favorites for the Kirkus Reviews Web site. You’ll find that piece here.

There’s some overlap between my 10 U.S.-published choices and those of other critics. But what’s always most interesting about these sorts of inventories is where they diverge. Today’s crime, mystery, and thriller genre is a broad and diverse one, and each reader brings to it his or her idiosyncratic tastes. There can never be universal agreement on which works published in any given year are the “best.” After long consideration, I have come up with a list of my favorites. Other readers are welcome to offer their own contrary picks.

Cleeves Captures Commendation

As part of its excellent coverage of this weekend’s Iceland Noir festival in Reykjavik, the Web site Crime Fiction Lover reports that British author Ann Cleeves has won the “first ever Honorary Award for Services to the Art of Crime Fiction.

“The author of both the Vera [Stanhope] series, set in North East England, and the Shetland books, with the Shetland Islands as their backdrops, was handed both the award and an authentic Icelandic wool blanket. She has been instrumental in helping the bi-annual event establish itself. She’s also an advocate for reading and library provision, while in her books she explores families and communities and how they’re affected by dramatic events … such as murder.”

Revue of Reviewers, 11-18-16

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

The Irish Smile on French

Tana French’s The Trespasser (Hachette Ireland) has won the 2016 Books Are My Bag Crime Fiction Award, given out as part of this year’s Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards competition.

In doing so, it bested five other works shortlisted for that same prize: Distress Signals, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus); Little Bones, by Sam Blake (Bonnier Zaffre); Lying in Wait, by Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland); The Constant Soldier, by William Ryan (Mantle); and The Drowning Child, by Alex Barclay (HarperCollins).

Crime fiction was one of 14 categories of contestants for this year’s Irish Book Awards. You can read about all of the winners here.

Post Picks

In my effort to keep Rap Sheet readers apprised of what other publications say are the best crime novels of 2016, I am listing below the 10 selections made by Washington Post critics:

• Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (Grand Central)
• The English Teacher, by Yiftach Reicher Atir (Penguin)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• A Hero of France, by Alan Furst (Random House)
• Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry (Penguin)
• Where It Hurts, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam)
• The Whistler, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout)
• The Wrong Side of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

The Post piece containing these choices is paywall protected, but if you subscribe to that newspaper, you can reach it here.

“Ghostman” Author Gives Up the Ghost

It’s always sad to read that an acclaimed author has died, but particularly so when that wordsmith hadn’t even reached his 30th birthday yet. Such is the case with Roger Hobbs, the stocky, rather dapper Portland, Oregon, author of Ghostman (2013) and last year’s Vanishing Games. According to Publishers Lunch, Hobbs “died of an overdose on November 14.” He was just 28 years old.

Hobbs grew up in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. His Web site explains that he “discovered his passion for writing when he was very young. He completed his first novel (a dreadful science-fiction book) at just 13 years old. His first play was produced when he was 19. He had his first publication in The New York Times at 20. … He wrote Ghostman, his debut novel, during his senior year [as an English major at Portland’s Reed College] and sent off the manuscript on the day he graduated. Ghostman has since been published in more than 29 countries around the world and climbed numerous bestseller lists. In 2013 Roger became the youngest person ever to win a CWA [Crime Writers’ Association] Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. In 2014 he won the Strand Critics Award and was nominated for the prestigious Edgar, Barry, and Anthony awards. In 2015, he became the youngest person ever to win [Japan’s] Maltese Falcon Award. Booklist called Ghostman ‘a triumph on every level.’” The New York Times piled on, saying Ghostman “is the debut of a gifted crime writer who will only get better with his next endeavors.”

A good-size 2013 profile in the Portland Oregonian recalled the early source of Hobbs’ association with crime fiction:

He grew up in the Harry Potter era but didn’t read any of the series. He didn’t read many children’s books at all.

“I found them condescending,” he says.

It wasn’t until he was 16 that Hobbs found a book that engaged him completely. It was The Monkey’s Raincoat, the first in a series of crime novels by Robert Crais that feature wisecracking detective Elvis Cole and his partner, taciturn Joe Pike.

“The voice!” Hobbs says, smiling at the memory. “It was my first encounter with that first-person noir voice. I didn’t think people were making books like that anymore, that it was a dead form, the first-person hard-boiled narrator. When I realized the Elvis Cole series was ongoing and has been ongoing for more years than I’ve been alive, I thought there’s really a market for this first-person voice, and it’s so delicious, so propulsive. And Robert Crais is very funny, and I really liked that.”

Hobbs immediately started writing a comic detective novel, “very much a Robert Crais ripoff.” He remembers the title of this one: “The Otaku. It means nerd or fanboy in Japanese. It was about a detective chasing down a stolen multimillion-dollar comic book.”
The Otaku failed, Hobbs says, because the tone was uneven, a common problem for writers of any age. He was hooked on crime fiction and on first-person and began devouring novels by James Patterson and Lee Child. He would break down a book by Patterson onto index cards, “reverse engineering” it to see how the plot worked. The short sentences and cliffhanger chapter endings that are staples of Patterson’s fiction would show up a few years later in Ghostman, a thriller that can be described as being written in Patterson’s style with a hero similar to Child’s Jack Reacher.

When Ghostman’s sequel, Vanishing Games, reached print, The Oregonian was hardly less complimentary. Reviewer Claire Rudy Foster called it “a keeper, and a sign that Hobbs is more than a one-hit wonder. His first novel, Ghostman, was an international bestseller, and it looks like Vanishing Games will follow the same track.”

Earlier this year, Hobbs reported on his Web site that he had a third book in the works: City of Sirens, set in Bangkok, Thailand, and involving “a priceless work of art.” He even put together a soundtrack to get readers in the mood for his new tale. There’s no listing for City of Sirens at Amazon, and I don’t see any other mention online of its future publication. But I will keep my eye out for it.

Meanwhile, Gary Fisketjon, Hobbs’ editor at Knopf, is quoted in Publishers Lunch as saying of his death: “This is a shocking, tragic loss. Roger accomplished so much as a writer in so little time, and his future was sure to be extraordinary in ways we’ll now never know. And as his friend I’m doubly devastated.”

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

READ MORE: A Roger Hobbs obituary is now available from The Oregonian. In addition, this remembrance was posted on the Web site of his former college’s alumni magazine.

Final Eliminations

Today begins the third and last round in Goodreads’ 2016 Choice Awards competition. There are 20 categories of books up for consideration, both fiction and non-fiction, all of which were released in the States over the last year. Included among the 10 Mystery and Thriller finalists are Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall, Tana French’s The Trespasser, Stephen King’s End of Watch, and Megan Miranda’s All the Missing Girls. Click here to make your preference known.

This round of balloting will extend through Sunday, November 27. There are no registration requirements, and you can vote in as many or as few categories as you wish. According to Goodreads, more than 2,600,000 votes have already been cast.

Diverging Opinions

I’m still in the midst of writing a column for the Kirkus Reviews Web site about my favorite crime novels of 2016 (it should appear next Tuesday). But in the meantime, other Kirkus reviewers offer their 18 picks of the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2016:

• The Black Widow, by Daniel Silva (Harper)
• Blind Sight, by Carol O’Connell (Putnam)
• Collecting the Dead, by Spencer Cope (Minotaur)
• Fall from Grace, by Tim Weaver (Viking)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• Fool Me Once, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• I Let You Go, by Claire Mackintosh (Berkley)
• Livia Lone, by Barry Eisler (Thomas & Mercer)
• Missing, Presumed, by Susie Steiner (Random House)
• Only the Hunted Run, by Neely Tucker (Viking)
• Razor Girl, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
• Rise the Dark, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
• The Second Life of Nick Mason, by Steve Hamilton (Putnam)
• A Study in Scarlet Women, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
• The Watcher in the Wall, by Owen Laukkanen (Putnam)
• The Widower’s Wife, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lan)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

Publishers Weekly has followed suit, with a selection of 12 Best Mystery and Thriller Novels that only overlaps Kirkus’ in a few spots. Here are the PW critics’ faves:

• Blood of the Oak, by Eliot Pattison (Counterpoint)
• Don’t Turn Out the Lights, by Bernard Minier (Minotaur)
• The Father: Made in Sweden, Part I, by Anton Svensson (Quercus)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, by Antonia Hodgson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• London Rain, by Nicola Upson (Bourbon Street)
• Redemption Road, by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)
• Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)
• The Vampire Tree, by Paul Halter (Locked Room International)
• The Widow, by Fiona Barton (NAL)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

The Elegant Actor Exits Affair

This was already a terrible week, thanks to the frightening results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the coming installation in the Oval Office of a “hater in chief.” Now comes the news that actor Robert Vaughn, best remembered for co-starring (with David McCallum) in the 1966-1968 NBC-TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., died yesterday—just 11 days short of his 84th birthday.

In its obituary of Vaughn, The New York Times writes:

Mr. Vaughn had numerous roles in film and on television. He played an old boyfriend of Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) on an episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and a gunman in “The Magnificent Seven” (1960). He was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his role as a man accused of murder in “The Young Philadelphians” (1959) and won an Emmy in 1978 for his performance as a White House chief of staff in the mini-series “Washington: Behind Closed Doors.”

But no character he played was as popular as Napoleon Solo. From 1964 to 1968, in the thick of the Cold War, millions of Americans tuned in weekly to “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” to watch Mr. Vaughn, as a super-agent from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, battling T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity), a secret organization intent on achieving world domination through nefarious if far-fetched devices like mind-controlling gas.

At the height of the show’s popularity, Mr. Vaughn said he was receiving 70,000 fan letters a month.

The Spy Command blog adds:

With U.N.C.L.E., Vaughn became a leading man, making the character name Napoleon Solo one of the big names of the 1960s spy boom.

The show flirted with cancellation early in its first season because it was up against a popular CBS variety show hosted by Red Skelton.

But with a time change slot and a surge in interest in spy entertainment thanks to 1964’s Goldfinger, U.N.C.L.E. became a hit. Episodes of the show were re-edited (with extra footage added) to create eight movies for the international market. At the peak of U.N.C.L.E.’s popularity, the early movies were even released in the United States.

However, Vaughn’s career extended far beyond U.N.C.L.E.’s axing in 1968, and was not limited to that charming, cleft-chinned New Yorker’s appearances on screens large and small. Vaughn earned plaudits as a political activist, speaking out frequently against the Vietnam War and raising hopes that this self-described liberal Democrat might one day step into the political sphere (which he did not). While filming U.N.C.L.E., he also studied for a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Southern California. He won that degree in 1970, and two years later published his dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting, which is still in print.

As to Vaughn’s acting credits, though, they were extensive. Blogger Terence Towles Canote explains that “He made his film debut in a bit part in The Ten Commandments (1956). His first substantial role was in Hell’s Crossroads (1957).” He was cast as politician Walter Chalmers in the 1968 Steve McQueen film, Bullitt, and again donned political stripes in 1974’s The Towering Inferno, playing a U.S. senator. From 1972 to 1974, Vaughn returned to TV series work in The Protectors, portraying an affluent troubleshooter named Harry Rule in that Gerry Anderson-created action drama. He later did guest-star turns in The Feather and Father Gang (starring former Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Stefanie Powers), Hawaii Five-O, Trapper John, M.D., Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis: Murder, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the mini-series The Captains and the Kings and Centennial, and two episodes of Columbo. In his 70s, Vaughn accepted a final TV series part in Hustle (2004-2012), playing con man/”roper” Albert Stroller.

The New York Times explains that the actor died from “acute leukemia, for which Mr. Vaughn had been under treatment in Manhattan and Connecticut.”

Below are the opening sequences from the three TV series in which Vaughn starred during his justly celebrated, 60-year career.







READ MORE: “R.I.P., Robert Vaughn,” by Matthew Bradford, aka Tanner (Double O Section); “1965: Time Predicts Big Things for Robert Vaughn,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “Saturday Comics: Remembering Mr. Solo,” by Tony O’B (Inner Toob).

Bullet Points: Post-Election Edition

It’s been a while since I have found the time or energy to compile one of these crime-fiction news briefings, but here goes nothing …

• The espionage-fiction-oriented blog Double O Section has recently been celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding back in 2006 (five months after The Rap Sheet debuted). Matthew Bradford—aka Tanner—has already posted lists of “the best spy movies of the last decade,” the “top seven spy movie set pieces of the last decade,” and the “top seven spy scores of the last decade” (by scores, he means musical themes, not fem-spy conquests).

• My latest Kirkus Reviews column features reviewlets of eight crime and mystery novels I have enjoyed in the past, and would like the chance to re-read. Among those is Eddie Muller’s 2001 work, The Distance, which introduced 1940s San Francisco boxing columnist Billy Nichols. (He followed up in 2003 with a second Nichols outing, Shadow Boxer.) That mention prompted Muller to drop me a quick note, via Facebook, saying he’s currently trying to “finish the third Billy Nichols book, which is about halfway home. I own the rights to all of them now and I’ll probably republish them all when #3 is done.” There’s no release date yet for that next series installment.

• In the second of two crime-fiction reviews Ben Terrall has had posted recently in January Magazine, he opines on Sin Soracco’s Come to Me. He commented previously on John Goins’ second novel, The Coptic Cross. Terrall, of course, is the son of author Robert Terrall, who—during the 1950s and ’60s, under the pseudonym Robert Kyle—produced a succession of novels featuring Manhattan private detective Ben Gates, as well as other crime-fiction works.

• Was the tale of Oedipus “the first classic murder case”?

• I’m not a big reader in this subgenre, so I cannot argue competently with Mary Daheim’s picks of the “top 10 cozy mysteries.” Also from the Strand Magazine Web site comes Rebecca Tope’s “A Cozy Author Goes Dark: Ten Dark Mystery Favorites.”

• Speaking of lists, here are “15 mysterious facts about the Hardy Boys,” including: “In 2005, the boys became secret agents for the government.” Because they had to do something cool ...

• From B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

The crime and noir independent publisher, No Exit Press, has launched a new classics imprint noeXit2. The new imprint plans for around four new titles a year featuring Ace Double editions (two books in one volume) from iconic authors in an upside down and back to front style known as tête-bêche. The new imprint will give titles "a new lease of life" in this format, according to No Exit Press, hoping to introduce its authors to new audiences while attracting authors to the list. It will launch this series with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler’s Severance/Intercourse on December 5.

• And then there’s this:

The CW is developing Marlowe, a drama series that’s not based on the famous Raymond Chandler character Philip Marlowe but on the real-life African-American private investigator—a Jamaican immigrant and World War I veteran—who allegedly inspired him. Marlowe is a character-based procedural with a modern feel and contemporary soundtrack and “follows Samuel Marlowe from the mansions and red carpets of Beverly Hills to the jazz clubs and back alleys of Little Harlem, where he navigates crimes, mysteries and social issues ripped from today’s headlines through the prism of 1937 Los Angeles.”

• Here’s a mystery writer I have never heard of before: James W. Morrison, who was also a silent-film performer during the opening two decades of the 20th century, and later a drama teacher. As Elizabeth Foxwell explains, Morrison composed novels under the pseudonym Woods Morrison, the first of which was Road End (1927), which she says “focuses on murder, the theft of a pearl necklace, strange wailing, and other mysterious occurrences at an elegant Long Island house, with a down-on-his-luck young man taking on the roles of chauffeur and sleuth.” Helpfully, for those of us who have not read Road End, Foxwell provides links to a 1934 serialization of that book in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Click here to find out more.

• In the 100th installment of her Speaking of Mysteries podcast, Nancie Clare interviews Michael Connelly, whose new Harry Bosch novel is The Wrong Side of Goodbye (Little, Brown). Clare has also spoken recently with Melodie Johnson Howe (Hold a Scorpion), Tana French (The Trespasser), and James R. Benn (Blue Madonna).

• Other interviews worth your time: S.W. Lauden talks with Lori Rader-Day about the March 2017 conference, Murder and Mayhem in Chicago, which she co-founded with Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity; Writer’s Bone quizzes Phoef Sutton, the author of Heart Attack and Vine; MysteryPeople chats with Allen Eskens about his latest release, The Heavens May Fall; Ben H. Winters interviews Joe Ide about his new, much-buzzed-about novel, IQ; Steph Post goes one-on-one with Eric Beetner (Rumrunners); Slate has a conversation with John Grisham (The Whistler) about “the issues in our justice system that he continues to wrestle with 25 years later”; and Omnimystery News catches up with Michael Mayo (Jimmy and Faye).

• With David Morrell’s Ruler of the Night (Mulholland)—the final entry in his much-lauded trilogy starring 19th-century writer and notorious “opium eater” Thomas De Quincey—due out next week, the New Republic’s Colin Dickey critiques “a new biography [that] reveals how the drug-addled essayist legitimized our excitement for murder.” You’ll find that piece right here.

• Max Allan Collins evaluates the Quarry TV series.

• New Yorker editor David Remnick offers a thought-provoking recap of this week’s disastrous U.S. presidential election. It begins:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

• Also from The New Yorker: “How Jack Reacher Was Built.”

• TV Week reported recently that the 1999-2007 HBO crime drama The Sopranos will be the first television series ever inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. The ceremony making that official is scheduled for April 26, 2017, in Washington D.C.

• A Web site called The Awl recounts how London’s still-unsolved 1888 Jack the Ripper slayings have become a fertile source of inspiration for works of both fiction and non-fiction.

• Some light housekeeping: In the wake of Ed Gorman’s death, I have relocated The Rap Sheet’s link to his long-running blog from the right-hand column of this page to our Archive Sites folder. I think there are posts of his still worth referring to, so I don’t want to drop Gorman’s blog altogether. Also being moved to Archives are the once-excellent Only Detect and Zachary Klein’s Just Sayin’. Meanwhile, I am removing these long-inactive blogs from the roll: Donna Moore’s Big Beat from Badsville; Kapuki Headhunter Searching for That Next Great Novel; and CrimeSpot, which used to be a go-to aggregator site run by Graham Powell, but which has now failed to be updated for 45 weeks. Powell told me in April that CrimeSpot “really hasn’t been a high priority.” I guess he’s decided finally to throw in the towel.

Revue of Reviewers, 11-10-16

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Second Time Around

Because of a recent home-remodeling project, memorable older crime and mystery novels have been much on my mind lately. So, taking a break from the deluge of political news, I’ve devoted my Kirkus Reviews column this week to a few dusty but still delightful works, all published within the last four decades, that deserve re-reading.

Please feel free to chime in with your own suggestions!

READ MORE: “Hail to the Chief! Presidential Crime Fiction/Presidents’ Day Mysteries,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Get Out There and Vote!

Americans, at least those who have not already participated in early voting drives, will have the opportunity tomorrow—November 8—to cast their ballots in what more than a few commentators have called one of the most important elections in modern U.S. history. It’s historic not simply because it may well result in this country being led for the first time in more than two centuries by a woman president; but also because her opponent has demonstrated a rank disregard for political norms such as disclosing his tax returns and graciously accepting defeat, and an authoritarian antipathy toward not only a free press and civil political discourse, but also shocking disrespect for entire swaths of the American electorate, including immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Nobody who knows me personally or who has read The Rap Sheet over the years should be in any doubt of who I’m voting for this year. My enthusiastic support goes to Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose qualifications for the Oval Office (former secretary of state, former U.S. senator, former first lady of both Arkansas and the nation) are without dispute, and whose temperament and grasp of the issues and tough decisions facing this country over the next four years is far superior to her adversary’s. I didn’t vote for Hillary back in 2008, when she was running for the Democratic nomination against the more charismatic and inspirational Barack Obama. But I have more closely watched her perform on the international and national stage during the last eight years, and been mightily impressed.

Hillary Clinton may not be a perfect candidate for the U.S. presidency: no human being can be. Yet, in the face of often ugly, destructive propaganda from the Republican Party—born amid fevered partisan delusions and take-no-prisoners hatred in the 1990s, when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president, and still infecting politics two decades later—Hillary has maintained a steady and determined demeanor, and been a consistent and assertive voice for such things as human rights, women’s rights, and voting rights. Unlike her bombastic adversary, Hillary believes in the value of science and the dangers inherent in not acting against threats of global warming; believes in the value of maintaining historical alliances with other countries that the United States may need in the event of any emergency; believes that affordable health care should be a right of all Americans, not just those with deep pockets; and believes that the Supreme Court of the United States has an important role in improving our lot as citizens, and should never be held hostage to over-grown schoolyard bullies who contend that only Republican presidents have a right to choose new justices for that high bench.

As The New York Times wrote in its September endorsement of Mrs. Clinton to be the 45th U.S. chief executive:

The next president will take office with bigoted, tribalist movements and their leaders on the march. In the Middle East and across Asia, in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in Britain and the United States, war, terrorism and the pressures of globalization are eroding democratic values, fraying alliances and challenging the ideals of tolerance and charity.

The 2016 campaign has brought to the surface the despair and rage of poor and middle-class Americans who say their government has done little to ease the burdens that recession, technological change, foreign competition and war have heaped on their families.

Over 40 years in public life, Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena. …

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president. A lifetime’s commitment to solving problems in the real world qualifies Hillary Clinton for this job, and the country should put her to work.

Of Hillary’s Republican rival … well, here’s what The New Yorker said about would-be demagogue and notorious pussy-grabber Trump:

On every issue of consequence, including economic policy, the environment, and foreign affairs, Hillary Clinton is a distinctly capable candidate: experienced, serious, schooled, resilient. When the race began, Clinton, who has always been a better office-holder than a campaigner, might have anticipated a clash of ideas and personalities on the conventional scale, against, say, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Instead, the Democratic nominee has ended up playing a sometimes secondary role in a squalid American epic. If she is elected, she will have weathered a prolonged battle against a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground demagogue. Unfortunately, the drama is not likely to end soon. The aftereffects of this campaign may befoul our civic life for some time to come.

If the prospect of a female President represents a departure in the history of American politics, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the real-estate mogul and Republican nominee, does, too—a chilling one. He is manifestly unqualified and unfit for office. Trained in the arts of real-estate promotion and reality television, he exhibits scant interest in or familiarity with policy. He favors conspiracy theory and fantasy, deriving his knowledge from the darker recesses of the Internet and “the shows.” He has never held office or otherwise served his country, never acceded to the authority of competing visions and democratic resolutions.

Worse still, he does not accept the authority of constitutional republicanism—its norms, its faiths and practices, its explicit rules and implicit understandings. That much is clear from his statements about targeting press freedoms, infringing on an independent judiciary, banning Muslim immigration, deporting undocumented immigrants without a fair hearing, reviving the practice of torture, and, in the third and final [presidential] debate, his refusal to say that he will accept the outcome of the election. Trump has even threatened to prosecute and imprison his opponent. The American demagogues from the past century who most closely resemble him—Father [Charles] Coughlin and Senator Joseph McCarthy among them—were dangers to the republic, but they never captured the Presidential nomination of a major political party. Father Coughlin commanded a radio show and its audience. President Trump would command the armed forces of the United States, control its nuclear codes, appoint judges, propose legislation, and conduct foreign policy. It is a convention of our quadrennial pieties to insist that this election is singularly important. But Trump really does represent something singular. The prospect of such a President—erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt—represents a form of national emergency.

Sadly, Trump has pulled the entire Republican Party down to his mud-wrestling level, endangering the future stability of our democratic republic and worsening tensions between the two major political parties. The deceptive practices, racism, sexism, petty vengefulness, and general hatreds Trump demonstrates, and which his fellow Republican candidates all across the country have endorsed (either overtly or through their timorous silence), have convinced me that what was once known as the Grand Old Party has fallen on hard times and must be reconceived; in the meantime, it cannot be trusted anymore with the levers of power. Therefore, not only have I voted for Hillary Clinton as president this year, but I’m casting a straight Democratic ticket. I want to be sure that the new President Clinton enters the White House supported by a serious, cooperative Congress that, beginning in 2017, can go back to legislating for the benefit of all Americans, not just Republican scorched-earthers.

Tomorrow promises a new era in U.S. history, whether favorable or divisive, depending on the vote outcomes. It’s up to all of us to take part in deciding what sort of country we want: one where voices are raised in optimism and mutual support, or where the angry shouts of right-wing extremists overcome common sense? So cast your ballot thoughtfully, as if your future depended on it … because it does.

READ MORE: “The Imperative of Voting for Hillary Clinton,” by Richard North Patterson (The Huffington Post); “Hillary Clinton Has to Be Gracious to Donald Trump. The Rest of Us Don’t,” by Paul Waldman (The Washington Post).

Lehane Conquers Spain

Via Jose Ignacio’s blog, A Crime Is Afoot, comes this news:

North American writer Dennis Lehane has won the 2017 Pepe Carvalho Award. The prize is given by [the] Barcelona City Council and aims to give particular recognition to prestigious national and international crime-fiction writers.

You can learn more about Lehane’s victory here.

Revue of Reviewers, 11-3-16

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

“Longmire” Pink-Slipped — Again

This is unfortunate news. The streaming-TV service Netflix has announced it will take Longmire off the air next year, following that crime drama’s sixth season. The program is based on Craig Johnson’s long-running series of books featuring Wyoming county sheriff Walt Longmire (most recently seen in this fall’s An Obvious Fact), and stars Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoff, and Lou Diamond Phillips.

Moviefone recalls that Netflix picked up Longmire in 2015 “after it was canceled by A&E after three seasons. Even though it was the cable network’s most-watched scripted series, [A&E] network executives worried that the audience for Longmire was too old to appeal to advertisers. Angry fans launched a massive ‘save the show’ campaign, which proved successful.” CinemaBlend adds, though, that “Longmire is a lot different than a lot of the other originals Netflix has produced. The drama is not younger-skewing like a lot of Netflix’s originals. It’s also not a show that translates super well to a lot of different cultures, as it’s a sort-of cowboy procedural with an overarching plot thread.”

Reports are that Season 6 of this show will feature 10 episodes. That’s the same number as were produced for Season 5, which was made available on September 23 of this year. Although this termination notice will certainly upset the show’s fans, one watcher remarks that at least the early announcement will give Longmire’s producers and stars “the chance to truly end with a satisfying conclusion.”

Free to Choose

We’re definitely moving into that period of the year when critics and periodicals—including, eventually, The Rap Sheet—broadcast lists of their preferred crime novels published during the preceding 12 months. The “social cataloguing” Web site Goodreads is getting a jump on some of the rest of us by launching its annual Choice Awards competition. It has posted selections of nominees in 20 different categories, and is asking readers everywhere to identify their favorites. Round one of the voting will conclude this coming Sunday, November 6, so you still have plenty of time to participate.

The Best Mystery and Thriller category features 15 familiar contenders, including David Baldacci’s The Last Mile, Tana French’s The Trespasser, Stephen King’s End of Watch, and Megan Miranda’s All the Missing Girls. If you’d like to participate in this exercise, simply click here to vote. (You can also write in additional candidates.)

Goodreads has announced that the semifinal round of this contest will extend from November 8 through 13, with a roster of finalists becoming available from November 15 to 27. I don’t spot any date for a final announcement of winners to be made, but it’s likely during the final week of November or in early December.

Again, you have until this coming Sunday, the 6th, to take part in round one. You can vote in as many (or as few) of Goodreads’ categories as you wish, and no registration is required.

Ed Gorman Day

Today, November 2, would have been genre novelist and editor Ed Gorman’s 75th birthday. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite make it long enough to blow out candles and lick cake frosting: he passed away this last October 14, having finally lost his long battle with multiple myeloma. Shortly after hearing of his death, I posted a fairly long tribute to his decades of labor as an author and to the support he’d given me as a blogger.

I hadn’t anticipated writing more about Gorman in the short term. But when author Patricia Abbott put out the call for as many bloggers as possible to applaud that late Iowa writer’s work today, I began racking my brains, determined to come up with some new angle to mine, some further way to enshrine his place in crime-fiction history. I thought about reading (or re-reading) and commenting on one of his numerous novels, but realized I didn’t have free hours enough right now to tackle such a project. I thought about profiling one of his series characters—private eye Jack Dwyer, perhaps, or 1950s small-town attorney Sam McCain—but again, time constraints inhibited my ambitions. So instead, I did what I do so often these days: I began with a Web search, keying up every article I could find about Edward Joseph Gorman Jr., hoping that somewhere amid all of those electronic bytes, I’d come up with a brilliant idea of how to proceed.

Instead, I found myself pleasantly immersed in long stories and briefer anecdotes about his life and literary career. I read Jon L. Breen’s piece (pdf) about Gorman’s role in founding Mystery Scene magazine back in 1985. I was delighted by this profile (pdf) of the author from that same periodical, published in 2002. I revisited Cullen Gallagher’s reviews of Gorman’s books starring a lawman-turned-bounty hunter named Leo Guild, and leaped beyond that to this article from Criminal Element, in which David Cranmer critiques a re-released Gorman Western called Relentless. Then I discovered this piece, from Blogcritics, about the McCain books—featuring the author’s particularly wonderful explanation of why he decided to set those mystery yarns during the Eisenhower era. The original quote comes from Gorman’s blog:

Part of the reason I started writing the Sam McCain novels was because I was sick of hearing about how wonderful the decade of the Fifties was. You know, Ozzie & Harriet and Father Knows Best. Most egregious, to me, was Happy Days. By then even the Republicans knew better. If you were white, Christian, middle-class, straight and white collar, the decade was probably more decent to you than not. But given the racism, sexism, Communist witch hunts, union-busting and large pockets of poverty, not even Ozzie’s dopey smile could make the excluded Happy.

From there, I went on to listen to this podcast by author Dean Koontz, in which he recounts his first meeting with Gorman (a sometime literary collaborator) and “describes why it was both an unusual and wonderful visit.” Then I re-read this fine Mystery*File interview Gorman had (lucky guy) with John D. MacDonald, creator of both the Travis McGee yarns and a number of non-series works that Gorman actually preferred. Beyond that, I found and enjoyed this essay, by Tipping the Fedora blogger Sergio Angelini, in which he enthuses over Gorman’s 1993 thriller, Shadow Games. Finally, I revisited Gorman’s “What Ed Read” columns, which he composed for Bookgasm (with varying regularity) between 2006 and 2009—and in which he both mused on his own experiences in the crime and horror genres, and applauded the efforts of younger wordsmiths toiling in those same fields. (Ed always was a generous guy.)

Somewhere in the course of all this Internet surfing and links accumulating, I realized that I didn’t have to produce another protracted encomium to Ed Gorman. What I was doing—reading as much as I could find about this author and his years of word production—was exactly what I should recommend other people interested in his prose undertake. Writers offer themselves to the world through their art, but they protect themselves in the very same manner, showing us only what they want folks to know. We frequently learn more about authors by digesting what others have to say of their life and their work, than they confess themselves. The tributes Patti Abbott has gathered together today, plus previous pieces by and about Gorman on the Web, provide windows into his tastes and ambitions and quirks that help illuminate him as a writer, and also as a human being. Actually reading his novels or short-story collections will, I guarantee, be a rewarding way to complete the picture.

READ MORE: “Interview: Ed Gorman (from 2007, Annotated and Updated),” by Ben Boulden (Gravetapping).