Bullet Points: Insights and Invasion Edition

• Anyone who knows me well realizes how much I have enjoyed reading Ross Macdonald’s private-eye tales over the years, and that I credit him in large part with making me a mystery-fiction fan. So I was pleased to see Los Angeles federal prosecutor Bruce K. Riordan’s recent piece in CrimeReads recalling how the disappearance of Macdonald’s “troubled” young daughter, Linda, back in 1959 affected his storytelling, and how his subsequent publication of three Lew Archer novels—The Zebra Striped Hearse, The Chill, and The Far Side of the Dollar—“changed the course of crime fiction.” Writes Riordan:

All three novels reflect the author’s traumatic search for Linda. When Archer observes in The Far Side of the Dollar that severe depression and mental exhaustion were “like a sickness, it will pass,” we know that was a truth that Macdonald knew from personal experience. Archer speaks for the author again when he observes in The Chill, “Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born.”

Macdonald would punish himself for the rest of his life for the tragedies that befell his daughter. And in his fiction, he would fashion a knight-errant whose task, again and again, was to find wayward children.

I’m not so sure Archer is a “knight errant,” but he was certainly an influence on me, as well as on many detective-fiction writers.

• If you haven’t watched it already, here’s the first trailer for True Detective, Season 3, starring Mahershala Ali, Sarah Gadon, and Stephen Dorff. This new edition of the HBO-TV anthology series is set to premiere sometime in January 2019.

• The Killing Times has posted what it defines as a “ridiculously enormous autumn/winter 2018 crime drama preview.” Keep in mind that this is a British Web site, so it may take some time before the TV programs highlighted there make their way to small screens in the States—if they ever do. Nonetheless, it’s pleasing to imagine some of these productions showing up in the not-too-distant future.

• Do you want more stories by best-selling authors on your boob tube? It seems Harlan Coben has reached a deal with Netflix “to develop 14 [of his] existing titles and future projects, including his upcoming novel Run Away, into English-language and foreign-language series, as well as films.” Meanwhile, Lee Child hopes to see his Jack Reacher novels adapted into TV mini-series. No specific network is mentioned as a home for those Reacher features.

• Here’s one of the more unexpected books due out this fall: The First Lady Escapes: FLOTUS Flees the White House, by Verity Speeks. Scheduled for release on October 1, the novel offers a villain who sounds, well, depressingly familiar. Publisher Roundfire Books provides the following plot synopsis:

President Rex Funck is a loutish, lying old bully whose affairs have deeply hurt his stunning wife Natalia, a former model from Slovakia. Now he wants to get her pregnant so voters will see him as a macho stud and re-elect him in a landslide. Natalia despises Funck too much to go through with it. With the help of Angel, her gay Mexican hairdresser and BFF, she secretly flees the White House. To take her place they leave Moon, a ballsy trans woman who impersonates FLOTUS at a Miami drag-queen show. Natalia’s suspenseful escape becomes a personal journey of self-awareness with unexpected twists and outrageous characters. Meanwhile, when the truth comes out about Moon at the White House, all hell breaks loose.

In The First Lady Escapes: FLOTUS Flees the White House, Natalia proves herself a true American hero by saving her beloved adopted country from getting Funcked.

Roundtree notes that “Verity Speeks was inspired to write The First Lady Escapes: FLOTUS Flees the White House because of the outrage, frustration and helplessness she has felt since November 8, 2016, when a meteor with a bad comb-over struck the earth and caused devastating consequences that continue to wreak havoc.”

• Before moving on to fall books, though, check out President Barack Obama’s list of “five of the best book he read this summer.”

• The blog Paperback Warrior polled its readers months ago to determine their three favorite men’s adventure novel series. The results aren’t startling, but they’re still worth glancing over.

• I must have missed the memo about Californian David Corbett (The Mercy of the Night) penning a new book, touching on one of the Old West’s most legendary figures. So it came as a surprise to read, in the MysteryPeople blog, about Corbett welcoming this month’s publication of The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday (Black Opal). MysteryPeople’s Scott Montgomery talks with the author about that novel here. And Corbett himself recalls for Crimespree Magazine the research he did in preparation for composing this new work.

• While we’re on the subject of author interviews, here are a few others worth your notice: Mick Herron chats with Spy Write about his history in espionage fiction; William Shaw is grilled on his evolution as a crime writer and his decision to compose a series starring a rather grating detective sergeant named Alexandra Cupidi (Salt Lane); MysteryPeople’s Scott Butki e-mails questions to Amy Stuart (Still Water); and finally, in Do Some Damage, David Nemeth quizzes expat writer Paul D. Brazill (Last Year’s Man) about the use of music in his fiction and his day job as an English teacher in Poland.

• Yet another promising discovery: This week brings us Under an English Heaven: The Remarkable True Story of the 1969 British Invasion of Anguilla, Silvertail Books’ re-release of Donald E. Westlake’s long-forgotten non-fiction book. A bit of background:

In early 1969, word reached London that the little Caribbean island of Anguilla had become a hotbed of rebellion and a haven for gangsters. Such flagrant disregard for the rule of law in one of Britain’s last remaining overseas outposts could not be allowed to stand.

And so Her Majesty’s government acted decisively,
dispatching a force of three hundred paratroopers and commandos backed by warships, helicopters and fifty of the Metropolitan Police’s finest.

But their mission soon descended into farce. On arrival, the troops were welcomed by several bemused islanders, many reporters from around the world, and a handful of entirely indifferent goats. But absolutely no resistance whatsoever. Where, asked Downing Street, are the gangsters? What had happened to the violent insurgency? Could it all have been a terrible misunderstanding?

I haven’t yet received a copy of Silvertail’s new edition of Under the English Sky, but I did come across this piece in The Westlake Review about its release. If you’re a Westlake fan, the book looks like something you’ll want to add to your library.

• Nancie Clare’s latest two guests on the Speaking of Mysteries podcast are Olen Steinhauer, talking about his new thriller, The Middleman, and T. Jefferson Parker, addressing the publication of Swift Vengeance. I’m not a big podcast listener, but Clare’s interviews are well worth taking the time to enjoy.

• In all likelihood, you’ve never seen this 1961 comic-book story, “The Deadly Inheritance,” starring Sherlock Holmes.

• Really, there are unproduced episodes of Columbo?

• Whiskey When We’re Dry author John Larison selects, for CrimeReads, “9 Novels That Show Crime and Westerns Aren’t So Different.” It’s not a bad reading rundown, not bad at all, but it hardly compares with Bill Crider’s excellent 2003 list of crime/Western crossovers, published in January Magazine.