It’s not often that we learn what happened to the props used on TV shows and in movies. Unlike, say, the piano played by Dooley Wilson in Casablanca (which was auctioned off a few years ago for $3.4 million), or some of the downed airplane fuselage that backdroppped scenes in Lost (and was purchased for $3,000 in 2010), most such set decorations aren’t recognizable enough to merit collecting. Instead, they are repurposed for future Hollywood productions or, if they’ve been designed too specifically to use again, they are trashed or reshaped into something different.
But as it turns out, there’s no mystery as to the fate of a brass plaque that once supposedly welcomed guests and clients to the pricey Boston
abode of a small-screen sleuth named Thomas Banacek, the insurance investigator protagonist (played by George Peppard) in the 1972-1974 NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie series Banacek.
Not long ago, I was contacted via e-mail by 73-year-old Stan Marks, who lives in the western Pennsylvania city of Hermitage. He told me that, from the 1970s through the early ’80s he worked as “a driver captain in charge of picture cars and drove stunts in many of the cop shows” made by Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Banacek was one of Universal’s properties. As Marks tells it, he was on the set of Peppard’s series when its 16th and final regular episode (“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”) was shot. After that filming wrapped, he recalls, “I removed the brass plaque that was on the front door of [Banacek’s] Beacon Hill residence”—and kept it as a memento.
Banacek’s home (middle) was commissioned by a Boston pol.
Anyone who has watched Banacek will likely remember the gleaming plate to which Marks refers. It appeared briefly in a number of the show’s episodes, but featured prominently in the Banacek pilot (aka “Detour to Nowhere,” broadcast originally on March 20, 1972). I have embedded that full pilot atop this post. Beginning at the 6:21 mark, you will see Peppard navigate a 1941 Packard convertible (certainly his character’s classiest vehicle) down the snow-bordered thoroughfares of Boston’s tony Beacon Hill, and turn into the gated driveway at 85 Mount Vernon Street. In the show, the three-story Federal-style brick mansion served by that cobblestone lane was where the urbane, rarely bamboozled Banacek lived and had the headquarters of his investigative business; its front door was decorated with the brass plaque seen near the video clip’s end, reading “T. Banacek—Restorations.” In reality, however, that house—constructed in what had once been a pasture owned by painter John Singleton Copley—was among three built in Boston for prosperous lawyer and early American politician Harrison Gray Otis (1765-1848), a one-time mayor of Massachusetts’ capital city. Like Otis’ other two elegant habitats, these digs were designed by architect Charles Bulfinch, who also created the gold-domed Massachusetts State House and several additional public structures in Boston; the Maine State House in Augusta; and parts of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
The Web site Historic Buildings of Massachusetts says Banacek’s ostensible dwelling, better known as the Second Harrison Gray Otis House, was erected between 1800 and 1802, and is the only detached, single-family mansion remaining on Beacon Hill. “Bulfinch hoped that the freestanding home on a landscaped property with outbuildings in back would be a model for the rest of Beacon Hill,” the site explains, “but the neighborhood would end up being much more densely developed. Otis sold the house in 1806 …” It has been listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places since 1973. Interestingly, that cupola-topped manse on Mount Vernon Street did duty not only as Thomas Banacek’s residence, but had previously appeared as the domicile of Thomas Crown, the Beantown businessman turned bank robber (played by Steve McQueen) in director Norman Jewison’s 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair. It’s been suggested that Banacek creator Anthony Wilson conceived his tough but whimsical Polish crime-solver as a synthesis of the cigar-smoking Crown and Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway), the tenacious insurance investigator who alternately pursued and romanced him in the movie. So installing Peppard’s character at the same address would’ve been a clever hat tip.
(Left) Marks’ souvenir. Click to enlarge.
Stan Marks insists he wasn’t channeling thief Crown when he absconded with the “T. Banacek—Restorations” plaque from a Universal sound stage in L.A.: he had cleared its capture with the show’s props department. Today, he says, that slightly tarnished brass plate is “located on the inside of my front door”—a reminder of the years he spent, during his 20s and 30s, earning a paycheck from Universal Studios for his labors not just on Banacek but on other NBC Mystery Movie series (including Columbo, McMillan & Wife,Quincy, M.E., and McCloud), as well as on such memorable crime dramas as Kojak, Delvecchio, Switch, Adam-12, and The Rockford Files. (He mentions Rockford star James Garner as “one of the nicest actors” he worked with over the years.) Those Hollywood experiences are now increasingly far in the past for Marks. Born and reared in Philadelphia, he moved with his family to L.A. in 1962, when he still was a high school student, and then put in a few years with the California National Guard (rather than joining the war in Vietnam) before going into the movie/TV industry. Marks left Southern California in 1983, following the births of his two children (“I didn’t want to raise them in L.A.”), and resettled in western Pennsylvania, where his then-wife had grown up. He retired four years ago, after two decades spent driving chartered motor coaches around the country.
When I first began exchanging e-mail notes with Marks about his souvenir plaque, I assumed he’d positioned it at his entryway in order to give it prominence, to make it a conversation piece. He soon disabused me of that notion, though, writing: “I never use my front door, Jeff. The main entrance is along the side of my home, that leads to the family room. I placed the plate there, because the door is wooden. There’s no significance to the placement. Friends who come over don’t even notice it. And I don’t point it out.”
Nonetheless, that generally forgotten, 45-year-old Banacek artifact sure makes for a good story. Wouldn’t you agree?
Ex-Universal driver Marks in Palm Springs, California, 2014.
Its headline suggests it’s a straightforward list of “The Best Crime Books and Thrillers of 2017.” But Mark Lawson’s latest contribution to The Guardian is actually a much more pleasant—and broader—cruise through this year’s abundant crime-fiction offerings.
Yes, the UK broadcaster and critic touts a variety of familiar releases from the last 12 months (including John le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies, Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird, Mick Herron’s Spook Street, and Emma Flint’s Little Deaths). Lawson also goes beyond that, though, to remark on the welcome “republication of vintage crime bestsellers,” and he tips his hat to the late P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, both of whom, he notes, “continue a consoling publishing afterlife.”
Congratulations to New Zealand-born radio producer-turned-author Julie Parsons, whose latest novel, The Therapy House (New Island), has captured the Irish Independent Crime Novel of the Year prize. That announcement was made last evening during a celebrity-filled ceremony honoring 13 categories of works and authors chosen to receive the 2017 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.
Parsons’ compulsive thriller was one of only five books shortlisted for Crime Novel of the Year acclaim. Its rivals were Can You Keep a Secret?, by Karen Perry (Michael Joseph); Here and Gone, by Haylen Beck (Harvill Secker); Let the Dead Speak, by Jane Casey (HarperCollins); One Bad Turn, by Sinéad Crowley (Quercus); and There Was a Crooked Man, by Cat Hogan (Poolbeg Press).
In addition to Parsons’ victory, detective novelist John Connolly took the Ryan Tubridy Listeners’ Choice Award for his most recent non-detective novel, He (Hodder & Stoughton), about the life of early 20th-century English comic Stan Laurel.
BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski joins other bloggers and print publications in posting his “Top Reads of 2017” list. His choices of 12 crime, mystery, and thriller novels include Jeff Abbott’s Blame, Lori Rader-Day’s The Day I Died, Peter Swanson’s Her Every Fear, and Karen Dionne’s The Marsh King’s Daughter. Click here to read Zgorski’s comments about those books and others.
My friend and colleague Adam Woog, who has been writing about mystery and thriller fiction for The Seattle Times since, well, almost exactly forever, is currently in the process of identifying a dozen of his favorite 2017 works from “various subgenres of crime fiction.” He began rolling out those choices with his November 12 Times column, and continued the exercise with his November 26 column. If picking 12 books is his goal, then it will take at least one more column for him to finish the job. Here are the eight novels he’s selected thus far:
•The Twilight Wife, by A.J. Banner (Simon & Schuster) •Spook Street, by Mick Herron (Soho) •A Climate of Fear, by Fred Vargas (Penguin) •Arrowood, by Mick Finlay (Mira) •Dangerous to Know, by Renee Patrick (Forge) •The Painted Queen, by Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess (Morrow) •Sleep No More, by P.D. James (Knopf) •Glass Houses, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
Since Woog’s Times column is published on the second and fourth Sundays of every month, we should expect to see the last installment of his 2017 “bests” on December 10.
We’ve been hearing for months about plans to turn Caleb Carr’s 1994 novel, The Alienist, into a series for U.S. cable-TV network TNT, but it has never been clear as to when the program might air. Until now. Mystery Fanfare reports that this 10-episode psychological thriller—starring Daniel Brühl (Rush), Luke Evans (The Girl on the Train), Dakota Fanning (American Pastoral), and Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker)—will debut on Monday, January 22, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
“Set in 1896 amidst a backdrop of vast wealth, extreme poverty, and technological innovation …,” writes Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph, “The Alienist opens when a series of haunting, gruesome murders of boy prostitutes grips New York City. Newly appointed police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt (Geraghty) calls upon criminal psychologist (aka ‘alienist’) Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and newspaper illustrator John Moore (Evans) to conduct the investigation in secret. They are joined by Sara Howard (Fanning), a headstrong secretary determined to become the city’s first female police detective. Using the emerging disciplines of psychology and early forensic investigation techniques, this band of social outsiders set out to find and apprehend one of New York City’s first serial killers.”
Rudolph has embedded a trailer for The Alienistin her post.
It was 75 years ago today that Casablanca, the classic film (and World War II propaganda picture) starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere in New York City. I’ve enjoyed that movie, oh, a dozen times or more over the years. But today seems like a good occasion for another re-watch, don’t you think?
It sounds as if the American streaming-TV service Netflix is betting big on German programming. From The New York Times:
At first glance, “Dark,” Netflix’s first original German-language series, might seem familiar to fans of the streaming service’s
other recent hits. The show, which will debut internationally on Dec. 1, centers on a small town plagued by strange goings-on at a nearby power
facility. It also features an expansive cast of largely young actors, a time-warped structure and cryptic scenes of a teenager imprisoned in a brightly lit room.
But its creators, the director Baran bo Odar and the writer Jantje Friese, are quick to point out that “Dark” isn’t a blend of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and “The OA.” For one, the show’s episodes were written before those programs were released and lean more toward science fiction than horror. They also point out that its understated sensibility makes it a uniquely German contribution to the rapidly expanding world of premium television. “I don’t know if it’s German angst, but there is something uniquely creepy about Germans, at least from the outside perspective,” Ms. Friese said recently in an interview here. “We are definitely delivering on that.”
Denmark, France and Norway have drawn acclaim for their contributions to the new golden age of television, but few ambitious fictional
series have come out of Germany. That began to change in 2015, when “Deutschland 83,” a spy drama, became the first German-language show to be broadcast on
an American network. Now, with “Dark” and the recent premiere of “Babylon Berlin,” an expensive historical series that has been sold to 60 international markets and will stream on Netflix in the United States starting in January, German television appears to be entering a new era.
So, precisely when will Babylon Berlin, the 16-part, double-season historical crime series based on German author Volker Kutscher’s two (soon to be three) popular novels, premiere on Netflix? It’s been surprisingly difficult to pin down a specific date. However, this article, also from the Times, says it “will begin streaming on Netflix in the United States on Jan. 30.” I look forward to watching.
Joan Hess was the author of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, formally known as the Maggody Mysteries. She won the American Mystery Award, the Agatha Award [in 1991, for her short story “Too Much to Bare”] ..., and the Macavity Award. She was a member of Sisters in Crime and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She contributed to multiple anthologies and book series, including Crosswinds, Deadly Allies, Malice Domestic [9], and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories [1997]. She also wrote the Theo Bloomer mystery series under the pseudonym Joan Hadley.
This past year Joan completed an unfinished manuscript of Elizabeth Peters. Based on extensive notes and conversations with Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters), her devoted friend, Joan took on the task of completing [The Painted Queen,] the last edition of this cherished series. Joan delivered a story brimming with intrigue and humor, blending Victorian formality with a clever, tongue-in-cheek wit, true to Barbara’s style.
Looking through the various comments made about Hess’ death on Facebook, I was struck by this one from her fellow author Les Roberts: “Joan was one of the funniest and most charming people I’ve ever met. Her wit was brilliant, her sarcasm devastating, and behind the sawmill delivery, a kind, thoughtful, delightful person—one of my FIRST friends 30 years ago when I first began writing mysteries.” On that same site, Harlan Coben wrote: “Really heartbroken to hear about the death of the funny, talented, generous Joan Hess, author of the Maggody mystery series. Thank you for everything, Joan. I’d say ‘R.I.P.,’ but alas, I know you better!”
We offer our heartfelt condolences to Ms. Hess’ family.
UPDATE: Jiro Kimura adds these bits of information in his blog, The Gumshoe Site: “Joan Hess died on November 23 at her new home in Austin, Texas. The former art teacher started writing romances to make money, but her nicely plotted unsold romance novels lacked romance. She switched to mysteries and wrote Strangled Prose (St. Martin’s, 1986), the first in the series featuring Claire Malloy, a small-town bookstore owner in Farberville, Arkansas” (a fictionalized version of Hess’ former hometown, Fayetteville).
• As part of its 2017 “New Talent November” celebration, Crime Fiction Lover identifies five women writers it predicts will become much better known over the coming year. Among them are Australia’s Jane Harper, whose debut novel, The Dry, won this year’s Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association; and American Hannah Tinti, who CFL says showed a “talent for almost old-fashioned, proper storytelling ... in her second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley [2017].” To keep up with the “New Talent November” series, which will run through the end of this month, click here.
• Deadline brings this news: “Carmen Ejogo is set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series, True Detective. The new installment of True Detective tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali plays the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.” Sounds good.
• You have to be of a certain age to understand what a big deal David Cassidy—who died
this week at age 67—was in the early 1970s. The son of actor Jack Cassidy and the stepson of singer-vedette Shirley Jones, David Cassidy was the teen idol of the time. “With pretty-boy good looks and a long mane of dark hair, Cassidy was every girl’s favorite teen crush,” Variety wrote in its obituary of the New Jersey-born songster and guitarist. His featured role on the popular ABC-TV musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), which had him playing opposite Shirley Jones, gave Cassidy immense public exposure, while songs such as “I Think I Love You” made him a chart-topping sensation in his own right. “During an era when the Big Three broadcast networks still had a monolithic hold on pop culture, Cassidy’s picture was suddenly everywhere—not just on the fronts of magazines and record albums, but on lunch boxes, posters, cereal boxes and toys,” recalls
National Public Radio (NPR). “He sold out concert venues across the globe, from New York’s Madison Square Garden to stadiums in London and Melbourne.”
Following Partridge’s cancellation, Cassidy expanded his acting résumé (which had previously included turns on Ironside and The Mod Squad), making guest appearances on The Love Boat, Matt Houston, and even CSI. His performance as an undercover officer, Dan Shay, in a 1978 episode of NBC’s Police Story titled “A Chance to Live,” scored Cassidy an Emmy Award nomination for Best Dramatic Actor and led to his reprising the Shay role in David Cassidy: Man Undercover (1978-1979), a Los Angeles-set show that lasted only 10 episodes. But all was not well in his personal life. His six-year marriage to actress Kay Lenz (Breezy, The Underground Man), ended in divorce in 1983; he would wed twice more over the years. “In the 2010s,” NPR recalls, “he had a string of arrests on drunk-driving charges in Florida, New York and California. In 2014 he told CNN, ‘I am most definitely an alcoholic.’ The following year, he declared bankruptcy and was charged with a hit-and-run in Fort Lauderdale.” Wikipedia adds: “On February 20, 2017, Cassidy announced that he was living with non-Alzheimer’s dementia, the condition that his mother suffered from at the end of her life. He retired from performing in early 2017 when the condition became noticeable during a performance in which he forgot lyrics and otherwise struggled.” After being hospitalized in Florida for several days, David Cassidy perished from liver failure on November 21.
(Above) The opening teaser and titles from “RX for Dying,” the December 21, 1978, episode of David Cassidy: Man Undercover.
• Lisa Levy looks at our modern “rape culture” and how it’s reflected in crime fiction. In a piece for Literary Hub, she writes:
[R]ape culture is everywhere in crime fiction. It is in every missing girl or woman. It is in every female cop protagonist who is
slighted or doubted by her colleagues and her superiors. It’s in every P.I. novel with a woman at its center, as she negotiates a sexually hostile world to
do her job. ... If crime fiction is a mirror of society that reveals our deepest and longest held fears, as I believe it is, then rape culture is one of those fears writ large in novels about men who violate women (sexually or otherwise). But it is also subtext in many, many other novels, where women are denigrated, pushed aside, ignored, hit on, groped, and verbally assaulted.
When I set out to look at rape culture in crime fiction, I found it everywhere. To take a very popular example, it’s no accident that the
original title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Swedish translates to The Man Who Hated Women. One of the hallmarks of that series is heroine Lisbeth Salander’s repeated victimization at the hands of men, including her father and her court-appointed guardian, who raped her repeatedly when she was institutionalized as a child.
• In the blog Criminal Element, Con Lehane writes about his decision to set his latest series at New York City’s iconic 42nd Street Library. His second Raymond Ambler mystery, Murder in the Manuscript Room, is out just this week from Minotaur Books.
• Had Anthony Horowitz not done such a convincing job of capturing the character of British spy James Bond in his 2015 novel, Trigger Mortis, we’d probably not now be hanging on every Twitter update of his work on its
sequel. But we’re doing just that, with the latest mere morsel, the latest crumb, the latest speck of information being showcased in The Spy Command. I sure hope Horowitz’s finished work rewards all this anticipation.
• In February of next year, Dynamite Entertainment will premiere a 40-page, one-shot James Bond comic spin-off that “centers on the head of the [British] Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI-6), Miles Messervy—we know him more famously as ‘M.’” As The Secret Agent Lair reports, “this incarnation of M is rather different from the source material as well as [from Ms] portrayed in the film franchise. Unlike the original Sir Miles Messervy, a full Anglo-Saxon, this version of M is British of African descent, much like Moneypenny herself in the comics as well as the rebooted 007 timeline of the movies.” The blog adds that the graphic novel, titled simply M, will “delve into [Messervy’s] past and his time in the field before his ascension to the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
• This month marks 15 years since the release of Die Another Day, the 20th James Bond film—and the fourth and final one to feature Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007. Commemorating this occasion, The Secret Agent Lair revisits the poster campaign that promoted that film back in 1997, observing that its imagery was “too flashy for today’s standards, where most action movies get the minimalistic and desaturated artwork treatment—the Daniel Craig-era posters, where the protagonist is set to rather insipid backgrounds, look like a strange cousin in comparison to these pieces. Yet, it is a heartfelt testimony to the days where the 007 films let the drama [run] for a couple of hours, and a cocktail of Martinis, girls and guns were … the order of the day.”
• Speaking of milestones, it was 13 years ago in September that the paperback book line Hard Case Crime was launched, with Lawrence Block’s Grifter’s Game and Max Phillips’ Fade to Blonde being its initial pair of releases. In an interview with small-press publisher Paul Suntup, Hard Case editor Charles Ardai reflects on his company’s history, the process of adding new titles to its hard-boiled catalogue, and the works that helped make it successful. He also reveals why Hard Case’s logo looks the way it does. “Initially,” Ardai explains, “we were going to call the line ‘Kingpin,’ which is why the logo features a crown over the gun. But the day before we went to register the trademark, TV producer Aaron Spelling beat us to the punch, registering it for a TV mini-series about a drug kingpin. So we scrapped the name and came up with ‘Hard Case Crime’ instead. But the logo felt so good and so right that we kept it, even though the crown no longer made any sense.”
The process with Heller has remained largely the same since True Detective
back in the early ’80s. I select the historical incident—usually a crime, either unsolved or controversially solved—and approach it as if I’m researching
the definitive book on the subject. I never have a firm opinion on the case before research proper begins, even if I’ve read a little about it or seen movies or documentaries on the subject, just as somebody interested in famous true crimes. …
This time I changed my mind about who murdered Marilyn Sheppard, oh, a dozen times. I in part selected the case because it was a more traditional murder mystery than the political subjects of the last four Heller novels—sort of back to basics, plus giving me something that would be a little easier to do, since I was coming out of some health problems and major surgeries.
But it’s turned out to be one of the trickiest Heller novels of all. Figuring out what happened here is very tough. There is no shortage of suspects, and no shortage of existing theories. In addition, a number of the players are still alive (Sam Sheppard’s brother Stephen is 97) and those who aren’t have grown children who are, none of whom would likely be thrilled with me should I lay a murder at the feet of their deceased parents.
• Fascinating. I didn’t know that a film noir had been made from Steve Fisher’s 1941 novel, I Wake Up Screaming. Or that said movie, which was eventually retitled Hot Spot, starred Betty Grable (in a rare dramatic role), along with Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Nor was I aware that Fisher scripted the picture together with Dwight Taylor. I was privy to none of this until I happened across an apparently “unreleased trailer” to I Wake Up Screamingin Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist. Now I have to go out and find the full flick. (By the way, this film was remade in 1953 as Vicki.)
• Crime Fiction Lover briefs us on the Hull Noir festival, held this month in the Yorkshire town of Kingston Upon Hull (aka Hull).
• As I’ve made clear in a couple of previous “Bullet Points” posts (see here and here), I’m highly skeptical of plans to make a new film inspired by Ernest Tidyman’s succession of novels featuring 1970s-cool Manhattan private eye John Shaft. Nonetheless, Steve Aldous (whose 2015 book, The World of Shaft, is a must-have for fans of Tidyman’s yarns) keeps
posting updates on the movie in his blog. Recently, for instance, he offered
this synopsis of the picture’s plot: “Working for the FBI, estranged from his father and determined not to be anything like him, John Shaft Jr. reluctantly enlists his father’s help to find out who killed his best friend Karim and bring down a drug-trafficking/money-laundering operation in NYC.” Aldous adds that this film, presently titled Son of Shaft, is due to start production in December. Jessie T. Usher (Survivor’s Romance) has signed up to portray the aforementioned John Shaft Jr. … who is supposedly the child of Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft, from the awful 2000 film Shaft … who was, in turn, the nephew of Richard Roundtree’s original Shaft. Got all that?
• It was almost exactly two years ago that I
reported on plans by Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI), a Toronto-based home video/television distribution company, to produce a DVD collection of James
Franciscus’ 1971-1972 detective series, Longstreet. Only now, however, is the Web site TV Shows on DVD finally announcing the release of that boxed set. Although Amazon doesn’t yet show Longstreet: The Complete Series as being available for advance purchase, the $29.99 compilation is scheduled to ship on December 1, and will “contain the pilot telefilm and all 23 regular weekly episodes.” (Click here to buy it directly from VEI.) For those of you who don’t remember Franciscus’ fourth small-screen series (following Mr. Novak, which is being prepared for its own DVD rollout this coming spring), here’s TV Shows on DVD’s short explanation of its concept:
Following a bomb blast that leaves him blind and a widower, New Orleans insurance detective Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) refuses to
quit the business. Together with the help of his dog Pax, assistant Nikki [Marlyn Mason] and friend Duke [Peter Mark Richman], Longstreet continues to investigate thefts, kidnappings, and murders. … Bruce Lee made four guest appearances as Longstreet’s martial arts teacher.
• There’s still no word from Netflix on a U.S. debut date for Babylon
Berlin, the much-heralded German drama “set in the seamy, steamy, scheming underworld of 1920s and ’30s Berlin.” While Americans wait, though, The
Killing Times has begun reviewing each of the eight Season 1 episodes, currently being shown in Britain. So if, like me, you must hold tight in expectation of this program based on Volker Kutscher’s detective novels, at least you can read a little about the series’ unfurling plot lines and characters.
• Another series to watch for:The Indian Detective. Deadline says this show casts Indian-descended Canadian comedian Russell Peters as “Doug D’Mello, a Toronto cop who unexpectedly finds himself investigating a murder in his parents’ Indian homeland. The investigation leads Doug to uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving David Marlowe (William Shatner), a billionaire property developer, while dealing with his own ambivalence toward a country where, despite his heritage, he is an outsider.” Netflix will launch The Indian Detective on Tuesday, December 19. Canada’s National Post>says there are four episodes in Season 1.
• Also from Deadline comes word that the creators of Columbo, the long-running TV mystery series, are suing Universal City Studios for “holding out on profits from the series.” In a 15-page complaint filed earlier this month in the Los Angeles Superior Court, screenwriter/short-story author William Link, together with the estate of the late Richard Levinson, insist they are owed 15 percent to 20 percent of the Columbo profits, and that Universal took four decades to acknowledge “that they were owed profit participation.”
• James Garner, star of The Rockford Files, Maverick, and an impressive catalogue of films, died during the summer of 2014, but only now have I come across a long, beautifully penned tribute to his work, composed by critic Clive James and published in The Atlantic in 2011, at the time the actor’s memoir, The Garner Files, reached bookstores. Here’s part of what James had to say:
Every sane person’s favorite modern male movie star, Garner might have done even better if he’d been less articulate. In his generation, three male TV stars made it big in the movies: Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Garner. All of them became stars in TV Westerns: McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, Eastwood in Rawhide, and Garner in Maverick. The only one of them who looked and sounded as if he enjoyed communicating by means of the spoken word was Garner. McQueen never felt ready for a film role until he had figured out what the character should do with his hands: that scene-stealing bit in his breakout movie, The Magnificent Seven, in which he shakes the shotgun cartridges beside his ear, was McQueen’s equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy, or of a practice session for a postatomic future in which language had ceased to exist.
As for Eastwood, he puts all that effort into gritting his teeth, because his tongue is tied. …
Garner, a quick study who could learn and deliver speeches long enough to make his awed listeners hold their breath to the breaking point, was the only one who seemed to enjoy producing intelligible noise. But Garner, compared with the other two, never really caught on as a big-screen leading man. Though tall and handsome, he was never remote: he had an air of belonging down here with us. As a small-screen leading man, he had done too thorough a job with the 20 or 30 good lines in every episode of Maverick or The Rockford Files to make an easy transition into a putatively larger medium that gave him many times more square feet of screen to inhabit, but many times less to say.
You can read James’ remarks in their entirety by clicking here.
• Finally, because the season is right for it, I want to give thanks to all of you who regularly read The Rap Sheet. You’ll never know how much your attention, loyalty, and comments mean to me.
By Linda L. Richards
I once heard his fellow Canadian author Owen Laukannen describe Dietrich Kalteis’ writing as being like “jazz on the page.” If you want to boil Kalteis’ work down very tightly, for me descriptions just don’t get any better than that.
Kalteis’ voice is taut, tight, and if it were any more noir, it would be too dark to see. With all of that, there is a graceful muscularity
to his writing. And a sparseness that reminds one of jazz, as well.
Zero Avenue (ECW Press) is Kalteis’ fifth novel, and it is confident and mature. No uneven beats here, at all. Publishers Weekly said in its review that “if a literary prize existed for depicting the most offensive club lavatories, [Zero Avenue] would win it hands down.” And while that’s pretty much true, there is so much more here than that. Kalteis’ highest ninja skill is that he can make the reader feel deeply with a simple shrug of his super-cool shoulder. The aforementioned bathroom scene is a good example. It is vivid and classically, achingly noir, and he accomplishes it in just a few bold strokes:
A lone bulb hung from the center of the room, a dead fluorescent tube horizontal over the sink, two toilets, only one with an
enclosed stall, a urinal and a plugged-up sink, soapy brown scum floating in it. Toilet paper unfurled like crime scene tape across the floor. Graffiti all over—the voice of the people.
Another example of this seemingly effortless intensity can be found in what may be the best-drawn chase scene I’ve ever read. In it, Frankie, a young punk musician running drugs to raise enough money to cut her debut EP, thinks she’s picked up a tail in the middle of doing a delivery. Her battered Karmann Ghia is running on fumes, and the rubber on its tires is so low, a gas-station attendant feels it necessary to point out the potential danger. She’s stoned and paranoid; and between evading the tail and checking in with the mad-dog gangster who is her handler, and finally (spoiler alert) making her delivery, there is enough tension here that it can be difficult to read. With all of this against her, you just know it can’t turn out well.
Passing the Italian joint, Paesano’s, the place Marty wanted to take her to dinner, night she clocked the blonde. Everything
slow-cooked and homemade, mozzarella and olives shipped from the old country. Espresso done right. Cannoli to die for.
Bopping to “Fan Club” now, she licked somebody else’s tongue around her mouth, her nerves still shot. Frankie thinking she could use a chunk of bhang. Her eye on the rearview, keeping watch for the four-by-four, Serpico with the shades and beanie.
Past Pender, she stomped the brakes, some kid in a ball cap on backwards dashed from behind a parked Buick, dashing across the lane, a paper bag in his hand. She yelled at him, sounding like somebody’s mother, the kid flipping her the bird, Frankie flipping it back.
Frankie has put together a little band called Waves of Nausea, which is playing low-level gigs in 1979 Vancouver, British Columbia, near the birth of the punk rock movement. Johnny Falco runs Falco’s Nest, the fictional club just down the street from the non-fictional Smilin’ Buddha, where a lot of significant punk acts got their start. Falco is sweet on Frankie from the beginning, and wondering if she’d ever entertain the thought of going out with a mug like him, especially since we open on her at the beginning of an uncomfortable relationship with local gangster Marty Sayles.
Among other things, Marty is involved with an ingenious pot-growing operation that has seen his goons seeding pot in farmers’ fields hidden in rows of corn. After harvest, the pot is processed in an old barn Marty owns on a property he picked up along Zero Avenue.
I grew up in the area described, so I came to this novel knowing that Zero Avenue is the street that runs on the northern side of the U.S./Canada border for, well, a long ways. But the part of it I knew, and the part described in this book, runs from South Surrey all the way to Abbotsford and probably beyond: just a double ditch and a country road—no fence or guards or anything but the occasional patrol run separating two big countries that have a lot of inhabitants who like drugs of various descriptions. Obviously, a recipe for drug-related high jinks, in reality and now in fiction. While this local knowledge possibly added to my enjoyment of the book, one could come to Zero Avenue without it, as Kalteis
does a good job of making the reader feel not only the where but the when.
With sex, drugs, and rock-’n-roll on the menu, crime is not far off. This rich combination pushes Zero Avenue along at a graceful burn. The book is tight and rich and as hard to pin down as smoke. If you love noir, you’ll love Zero Avenue. Simply as good as it gets.
The Mystery Writers of America has announced
three people as the recipients of its 2018 Grand Master Awards: author and illustrator Jane Langton; screenwriter, producer, and short-story writer William Link, who (with Richard Levinson) co-created such TV classics as Mannix and Columbo; and British author Peter Lovesey, best known for his series featuring Sergeant Cribb and Peter Diamond. As Mystery Fanfare explains, “MWA’s Grand Master Award 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.”
At the same time, the MWA identified the 30-year-old Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and BOLO Books
blogger Kristopher Zgorski as the winners of its Raven Award, which “recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.” And it has decided to give the 2018 Ellery Queen Award (meant to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”) to French translator, editor, and publisher Robert Pépin.
These prizes will be presented during the 72nd Annual Edgar Awards Banquet, set to take place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on
April 26, 2018. Congratulations to all of the winners!
Selections of the best crime, mystery, and thriller novels published over the course of 2017 continue to grow in number. Amazon has now weighed in with a top-20 list that includes Philip Kerr’s Prussian Blue, Jane Harper’s The Dry, Marcus Sakey’s After Life, Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game, and John le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies.
(Editor’s note: In early September, after I decided against attending this year’s Bouchercon—set to take place in Toronto, Ontario, from October 12 to 15—I turned for back-up to Quebec writer, photographer, and translator Jacques Filippi. Rap Sheet readers will recognize Jacques, a Montreal-area resident, as a periodic contributor to this page and as the creator of a fine blog called The House of Crime and Mystery. In addition, he and John McFetridge co-edited a new short-story collection,Montreal Noir(Akashic). I knew Jacques was planning to be in Toronto for Bouchercon, so I asked him whether he would be willing to take notes on the proceedings and shoot pictures of convention participants, and submit a wrap-up of the event to The Rap Sheet. He accepted the assignment, and I looked forward to receiving his report. Unfortunately, not long after Bouchercon ended, Jacques was faced with a family crisis that delayed his finishing the project. It wasn’t until a few days ago that he sent me his text and images. I’m glad to be able to finally present them below.)
Road Trip: Of Wrong Turns and Right Words
With Canada having celebrated its 150th birthday not long before Bouchercon kicked off last month in the Ontario capital, Toronto, some attendees decided to visit the country early, or to remain here a few extra days to see more of the place. During the pre-Bouchercon weekend, I welcomed to Montreal author Karin Salvalaggio (Silent Rain), who came all the way from England, as well as editor-blogger Peter Rozovsky (the brains behind Noir at the Bar), from Philadelphia. Over the course of Bouchercon week, more than a few American visitors asked about living in Canada, and some even tried to find rooms where they might stay after the gathering closed. As you can see in the image on the right, Karin was one of the first to experiment with trying to actually pass as a Canadian (she’s been living in London for many years, but was born in West Virginia and still retains her U.S. citizenship).
(Right) Karin Salvalaggio wearing a Canadian toque (in French: tuque) and holding a false Canadian passport, issued by the Unemployed Philosophers Guild.
The three of us spent a lot of time the weekend before the convention walking through my city’s Old Town (2017 also marks the 375th anniversary of Montreal’s founding), just taking pictures, chatting with locals, and of course, eating and drinking. The neighborhoods of Little Burgundy and Little Italy were also favorite destinations, with their plenitude of cafés, restaurants, and boutiques. In the latter quarter’s Jean-Talon Market, Karin was amazed that pumpkins were so easy to come by—and at such ridiculously low prices, too. One evening, I took Karin and Peter to a “secret” spot I very much enjoy, a parking lot at the foot of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, where we almost ruined our shoes treading through mud and gaping puddles of dirty water.
There’s nothing like taking a road trip to help people get better acquainted, especially when—as in the case of Highway 401, between Montreal and Toronto—the scenery along the way is far from entertaining (to say the least). That drive usually takes five or six hours, depending on how many stops you make; but Karin, Peter, and I completed it in an astounding eight-and-a-half hours, due to three sites of major road construction. (One of them left us at a standstill for 50 minutes!) Peter used the time to take an abundance of photographs—mostly of empty fields, stationary automobiles, and clouds that he likely tweaked later on, with the help of technology, to become busy plains, fast-running cars, and rainstorms. I invite you to look over his brief account of our trip, and the rest of his Bouchercon coverage, in the blog Detectives Beyond Borders.
Peter Rozovsky playing it cool in front of a sign advertising the Canadian dish poutine, at Jean-Talon Market, in Montreal.
That Monday (October 9), we piled into the car and sped off west. It happened to be Canadian Thanksgiving, so we fell into talking about all things Canadian—from maple syrup, maple-glazed doughnuts, and maple-stuffed doughnuts to Tim Hortons (a fast-food chain co-founded by a former hockey player with the Toronto Maple Leafs), our colorful Canadian currency (worth somewhat less than the maple syrup), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and much more. We also listened to a lot of music—some of it Canadian, and even some in French. We experienced moments of exhaustion and of being fed up with the journey (especially toward the end), but we managed to find fun en route, too, as when we decided to share our favorite lists of swear words in diverse languages. It turned out that Peter was well-versed in Yiddish and Portuguese expletives; Karin showed how a life spent in different countries had enriched her vocabulary (the Brits and Italians were especially to thank for that); and I, naturally, instructed my guests in how to curse like true Québécois. Many laughs and great memories. The next time you see any one of us, don’t hesitate to share your own choice foreign obscenities: we’re always looking to improve our international conversational skills.
After finally reaching Toronto, we bumped into writer, editor, lawyer, and British Crime Writers Association chair Martin Edwards and
convinced him to have dinner with us. I think at the mention of wine he was in, given his long flight from the UK.
We spent Bouchercon week in Canada’s most populous city much in the same way as we had our time in Montreal—walking. We paid a call on the Hockey Hall of Fame, and we explored the beautiful Art Gallery of Ontario, noteworthy in particular for its “At Home with Monsters” exhibit (a personal project from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro). Oh, and we enjoyed multiple coffees and scones at Dineen’s.
Sightseeing below Niagara Falls.
On Wednesday (October 11), I took part in a doomed trip to Niagara Falls, on the Ontario-New York border, accompanied by Karin and her good friend, UK crime writer Steph Broadribb (Deep Down Dead). The two buses carrying tour participants departed our convention hotel (the Sheraton Toronto on Queen Street West) around 9 a.m., and we stopped in transit at Pillitteri Estates Winery for a quick wine and icewine tasting. Niagara Falls was, well, wet and windy and cold. However, it was the trip back that proved to be most memorable. Our bus started making weird noises, and the driver let it be known that mechanical problems made it impossible for him to reverse the vehicle. Plus, he didn’t want to stop anywhere until we got back to our hotel, because he was afraid the engine wouldn’t start again.
But those difficulties were nothing compared with what happened to our companion bus. At one point it slipped sideways, somehow, and careered
off the pavement after first knocking over a big pot of flowers decorating the roadway median. Police were called in to straighten out the situation. Once it was determined that the bus had suffered no appreciable damages, it was towed to the road once more and wound its way back to Toronto—at close to midnight. Our own bus had returned earlier, at 8 p.m. or so, after enjoying the closeness of Torontonians during rush hour, and traveling at 10 km/hour.
Bouchercon: Of Protagonists, Flawed and Forceful
On Thursday, it was time to start the convention. As usual, the schedule offered too many panel
discussions at the same time—or sometimes not enough, depending on what you were looking for. The sessions were always interesting, and often inspiring. Though occasionally they were a bit weird. Or funny.
My favorite such presentation was actually the first one I attended. Titled “Heroes and Antiheroes,” it was moderated by J. Kent Messum, a Canadian writer (who is also a creative-writing instructor at the University of Toronto), and featured Down & Out Books publisher Eric Campbell together with authors Alison Gaylin, Stuart Neville, Dana King, and David Swinson. The group quickly tossed the label “heroes” out of the equation, insisting true heroes don’t exist any longer in fiction (at least not in the sense that they used to be represented). Besides, they agreed, perfect protagonists aren’t very interesting in the long run. The panelists contended that nowadays, authors as well as readers and moviegoers prefer antiheroes, or flawed protagonists. To back up this assertion, they placed in evidence today’s superhero films, noting that Batman, Iron Man, Captain America, and their ilk are portrayed as characters undergoing emotional turmoil; in other words, players closer to “normal” mortals. Panelists worked to define the attributes of an appealing antihero, one who seeks to make the world a better place while also getting in closer touch with his/her human side. They agreed that their goal was to create antiheroes with tough choices before them—choices that often ride the fine line between being right and wrong; choices that might not lead to ideal outcomes, but can often lead to deserved ones.
The “Heroes and Antiheroes” panelists. Left to right: Alison Gaylin, Eric Campbell, Stuart Neville, Dana King, David Swinson, and moderator J. Kent Messum. They’re laughing because I said the magic word “poutine.”
Another panel exchange, intriguing for the wide range of crime-fiction styles it considered, was called “Duos—Two Lead Characters Are Better Than One.” Moderated by Georgia novelist Roger Johns (Dark River Rising), it offered an eclectic group of authors: Thomas Enger, James Hayman, Heather Gudenkauf, Craig Robertson, and D.D. Ayres (aka Laura Castoro). Their back-and-forth extended from conventional investigations steered by partnered detectives to stories involving paired protagonists from separate series and yarns in which K-9 Rescue dogs work with police officers. It wasn’t always easy for Johns to keep the conversation flowing in one direction, but the results were nonetheless thought-provoking.
I also quite enjoyed a presentation refereed by Rob Hart (The Woman from Prague) and featuring fellow wordsmiths Bill Beverly, David Housewright, Rick Mofina, D.M. Pulley, and Bob Truluck. It was titled “Did I Write That?—Characters Take on a Life of Their Own.” I’ve never really believed that a player plucked from the author’s imagination should be allowed to abscond with the storytelling reins, preferring the idea of the writer maintaining control. But apparently, there are authors out there (including one from this panel) who allow their characters to run away with their tales, if they demonstrate both inclination and ability. Or that’s the way they say it works, anyhow. If a yarn takes an unexpected turn, though, is it really a character forcing that change, or does the writer simply (perhaps unconsciously) desire a new direction? Should a protagonist who appears to demand story-steering privileges be described as a “ghost writer”? And is an exorcism then needed in order for the author to wrest back the management of his or her narrative? This panel may not have answered all of those questions during its hour-long extent, but it still provided a rare and stimulating look into assorted creative minds.
“Did I Write That?” panelists Bill Beverly (who was given the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature prize not long after Bouchercon ended), David Housewright, and Rick Mofina.
The Sheraton Hotel was well located, right in the middle of downtown. However, Bouchercon attendees regularly commented negatively about its configuration. “It’s too big,” several groused. “There are too many floors for the panels,” said others, while a few disparaged the lodgings’ imbibing facilities: “There are two bars in the hotel, but they’re both too small” (which evidently convinced many people to search out watering holes beyond the hotel’s walls—it was a good thing there were plenty nearby). Another complaint I heard repeated: “We have one perfect location in the entrance hall for meet-and-greets, but we’re not allowed to drink there.”
Beyond these criticisms, comments on Bouchercon 2017 were generally favorable. I think everyone agreed that this year’s organizers did a
bang-up job. Yes, this event was pretty intense, but the week provided a multitude of opportunities for people to bump into old friends and make new
ones, to meet with publishers and schedule lunches with editors, and to seek cafés as escapes from the craziness of the convention crowd. Each evening was busy with attendees socializing over drinks, and then dropping with exhaustion in their rooms, barely reaching their beds in time.
My last dinner in the city, on Saturday night, was a welcome, quiet affair involving British publisher Ruth Tross, from Hodder &
Stoughton; Bliss House author Laura Benedict (who has yet another new novel due out next year, from Mulholland Books); and Karin Salvalaggio (her again!). Then, on Sunday, it was time to hit the road once more. The drive back to Montreal—which I took alone—lasted only 5 hours and 15 minutes. Hey, Peter Rozovsky. Did you hear that? It wasn’t my fault that we spent so long wheeling west from Toronto. I made considerably better time when there was no road construction!
Scottish author Craig Robertson (Murderabilia) wearing a kilt. After Bouchercon, he wed novelist Alexandra Sokoloff.
Writers Joe Clifford and Hilary Davidson.
Screenwriter-turned-author Guy Bolton (far left) poses with fellow Brit Mark Billingham and American Bill Beverly.
Award-winning Missouri novelist Laura McHugh.
William Shaw (The Birdwatcher) and Joe Ide (IQ) with Hachette publicists extraordinaire Sabrina Callahan and Pamela Porter.
My friend and Montreal Noir collaborator/co-editor, John McFetridge, alongside author Eric Beetner.
Orenda publisher Karen Sullivan squeezed between two of her popular authors, Antti Tuomainen and Steph Broadribb.
New Jersey journalist-turned-novelist Cate Holahan, whose latest book, Lies She Told, was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2017.
Fictionists Jeffrey Siger and Jay Stringer stand with Erin Mitchell, who will be helping to organize next year’s Bouchercon in St. Petersburg—Florida, that is, not Russia.
Last but not least, we have Larry Gandle of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine; K.J. Howe, ThrillerFest executive director and new author; and of course, yours truly, Jacques Filippi.
Think you’ve read all of Raymond Chandler’s fiction? Think again. As Britain’s Guardian newspaper reports,
A lost story by Raymond Chandler, written almost at the end of his life, sees the author taking on a different sort of villain to the hardboiled criminals of his beloved Philip Marlowe stories: the US healthcare system.
Found in Chandler’s archives at the Bodleian Library in Oxford by Andrew Gulli, managing editor of The Strand Magazine, the story, “It’s All Right—He Only Died,” opens as a “filthy figure on a stretcher” arrives at a hospital. The man, who smells of whisky, has been hit by a truck, and staff at the hospital are loth to treat him because they assume he will be unable to pay for his care. “The hospital rule was adamant: A fifty dollar deposit or no admission,” writes Chandler.
Gulli said the story was one of the last things Chandler ever wrote—it is believed to have been written between July 1956 and spring 1958. Chandler died in 1959. “He’d been in and out of hospital, he’d tried committing suicide once, and he’d had a fall down the stairs,” said Gulli. “The story mirrors some of his experiences of that time. It’s about what he calls a ‘transient,’ a homeless man who gets hit by a truck and who finds himself in a hospital that is reluctant to treat someone who can’t pay the bill. And of course there’s a twist at the end.”
The Strand is publishing the story this weekend, complete with an author’s note from Chandler in which he reveals his fury at the US healthcare system. The doctor who turned away the patient, Chandler writes, had “disgrace[d] himself as a person, as a healer, as a saviour of life, as a man required by his profession never to turn aside from anyone his long-acquired skill might help or save.”
You can purchase a copy of The Strand, Issue 53—containing “It’s All Right—He Only Died”—by clicking here.
I am often amused by the grammatical errors to be found in press releases. You would think that with the amount of money publicists are paid, they could at least invest in good dictionaries.
But one release that came my way today, sent by a book publisher’s representative, really caught me off guard. It began:
As the holiday (and gift guide selection!) season approaches, I wanted to reach out to put a few books on your radar that would make for the perfect stalking stuffers. Both books are small enough to easily add to any stalking!
Of course, neither of the books mentioned thereafter had a darn thing to do with anybody following, pestering, or otherwise threatening another person; clearly, the publicist intended to use “stocking” rather than “stalking.” This is one of many cases where spell-checking software can’t save an incautious writer.
On Monday, Kirkus Reviewsannounced its selection of 2017’s best works of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Today it’s The Washington Post’s turn. That newspaper’s 10 choices—almost entirely different from Kirkus’—are listed below.
•Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Mulholland) •Glass Houses, by Louise Penny (Minotaur) •A Legacy of Spies, by John le Carré (Viking) •Little Deaths, by Emma Flint (Hachette) •The Long Drop, by Denise Mina (Little, Brown) •Not a Sound, by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row) •Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/Putnam) •Six Four, by Hideo Yokoyama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) •Sleep No More, by P.D. James (Knopf) •The Switch, by Joseph Finder (Dutton)
The Post’s complete assortment of book picks for this year, in 11 categories, can be found by clicking here.
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In honor of The Rap Sheet’s first birthday, we invited more than 100 crime writers, book critics, and bloggers from all over the English-speaking world to choose the one crime/mystery/thriller novel that they thought had been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.” Their choices can be found here.
In the Beginning ...
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(Left) Marks’ souvenir. Click to enlarge.
