Revue of Reviewers, 1-25-20

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

Pursuing the Petrona

There are 37 novels on the longlist of books hoping to win the 2020 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

That prize was established back in 2013, in memory of Maxine Clarke, a British editor and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction” who died in 2012. (Petrona was the name of her long-running blog). All entries for the Petrona Award “must be in translation and published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar,” and their authors “must either be born in Scandinavia or the submission must be set in Scandinavia.” The latest winner will be announced during the 2020 Crimefest convention, to be held in Bristol, England, from June 4 to 7.

Norwegian author Jørn Lier Horst won the 2019 Petrona for his novel The Katharina Code (Michael Joseph), translated by Anne Bruce.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

All Eyes on the Edgars

Following on yesterday’s announcement about finalists for the 2020 Agatha Awards, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) today broadcast its lists of nominees for this year’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards. The individual categories can be found below, including a new one—partnering the MWA with publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons—that honors author Sue Grafton, who passed away in December 2017.

Best Novel:
• Fake Like Me, by Barbara Bourland (Grand Central)
• The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• The River, by Peter Heller (Knopf)
• Smoke and Ashes, by Abir
Mukherjee (Pegasus)
• Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael
Robotham (Scribner)

Best First Novel by an American Author:
• My Lovely Wife,
by Samantha Downing (Berkley)
• Miracle Creek,
by Angie Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• The Good Detective,
by John McMahon (Putnam)
• The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott (Knopf)
• Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Agora)
• American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)

Best Paperback Original:
• Dread of Winter, by Susan Alice Bickford (Kensington)
• Freedom Road, by William Lashner (Thomas & Mercer)
• Blood Relations, by Jonathan Moore (Mariner)
• February’s Son, by Alan Parks (World Noir)
• The Hotel Neversink, by Adam O’Fallon Price (Tin House)
• The Bird Boys, by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)

Best Fact Crime:
• The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who
Pursued Him, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz-Age America, by Karen Abbott (Crown)
• The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity, by Axton Betz-Hamilton (Grand Central)
• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan (Viking)
• Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint Press)
• Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall, by James Polchin (Counterpoint Press)

Best Critical/Biographical:
• Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University
Press of Kentucky)
• Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan,
by Ursula Buchan (Bloomsbury)
• The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club,
by John Curran (Collins Crime Club)
• Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview, by Anne
McKendry (McFarland)
• The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, by Mo Moulton (Basic)

Best Short Story:
• “Turistas,” by Hector Acosta (from ¡Pa’Que Tu Lo Sepas!,
edited by Angel Luis Colón; Down & Out)
• “One of These Nights,” by Livia Llewellyn (from Cutting Edge:
New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers, edited by Joyce Carol Oates; Akashic)
• “The Passenger,” by Kirsten Tranter (from Sydney Noir, edited by John Dale; Akashic)
• “Home at Last,” by Sam Wiebe (from Die Behind the Wheel:
Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, edited by Brian Thornton; Down & Out)
• “Brother’s Keeper,” by Dave Zeltserman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2019)

Best Juvenile:
• The Collected Works of Gretchen Oyster, by Cary Fagan (Tundra)
• Eventown, by Corey Ann Haydu (Katherine Tegen)
• The Whispers, by Greg Howard (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
• All the Greys on Greene Street, by Laura Tucker (Viking Books
for Young Readers)
• Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse, by Susan Vaught
(Paula Wiseman)

Best Young Adult:
• Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
• Killing November, by Adriana Mather (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
• Patron Saints of Nothing, by Randy Ribay (Kokila)
• The Deceivers,
by Kristen Simmons (Tor Teen)
• Wild and Crooked,
by Leah Thomas (Bloomsbury)

Best Television Episode Teleplay:
• “Season 5, Episode 3” – Line of Duty, teleplay by Jed Mercurio (Acorn TV)
• “Season 5, Episode 4” – Line of Duty, teleplay by Jed Mercurio (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1” – Dublin Murders, teleplay by Sarah Phelps (STARZ)
• “Episode 1” – Manhunt, teleplay by Ed Whitmore (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1” – The Wisting, teleplay by Katherine Valen Zeiner and Trygve Allister Diesen (Sundance Now)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” by Derrick Harriell (from Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessey; Akashic)

The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
• The Night Visitors, by Carol Goodman (Morrow)
• One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)
• Strangers at the Gate, by Catriona McPherson (Minotaur)
• Where the Missing Go, by Emma Rowley (Kensington)
• The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
• Shamed, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
• Borrowed Time, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
• The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• The Alchemist’s Illusion, by Gigi Pandian (Midnight Ink)
• Girl Gone Missing, by Marcie R. Rendon (Cincos Puntos Press)

The winners of these many coveted commendations will be announced during the MWA’s 74th Gala Banquet, to be held on April 30 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

Recipients of the MWA’s 2020 Grand Master, Raven, and Ellery Queen awards were previously broadcast.

Following Christie’s Lead

While I was away from my office yesterday, organizers of the annual Malice Domestic conference announced their finalists for this year’s Agatha Awards, in six categories. Those prizes celebrate the “traditional mystery” (books typified by the works of Agatha Christie, containing little violence, sex, or gore).

Best Contemporary Novel:
• Fatal Cajun Festival, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)
• The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur)
• Fair Game, by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press)
• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Murder List, by Hank Philippi Ryan (Forge)

Best First Mystery Novel:
• A Dream of Death, by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane)
• One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)
• Murder Once Removed, by S.C. Perkins (Minotaur)
• When It’s Time for Leaving, by Ang Pompano (Encircle)
• Staging for Murder, by Grace Topping (Henery Press)

Best Historical Mystery:
• Love and Death Among the Cheetahs, by Rhys Bowen (Penquin)
• Murder Knocks Twice, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
• The Pearl Dagger, by L. A. Chandlar (Kensington)
• Charity’s Burden, by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink)
• The Naming Game, by Gabriel Valjan (Winter Goose)

Best Non-fiction:
• Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story, by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland)
• Blonde Rattlesnake: Burmah Adams, Tom White, and the 1933 Crime Spree that Terrified Los Angeles, by Julia Bricklin (Lyons Press)
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,
by Casey Cep (Knopf)
• The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, by Mo Moulton (Basic)
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Best Children/Young Adult:
• Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers, by Shauna Holyoak
(Disney Hyperion)
• Two Can Keep a Secret, by Karen MacManus (Delacorte Press)
• The Last Crystal, by Frances Schoonmaker (Auctus Press)
• Top Marks for Murder, by Robin Stevens (Puffin)
• Jada Sly, Artist and Spy, by Sherri Winston (Little, Brown Books
for Young Readers)

Best Short Story:
• “Grist for the Mill,” by Kaye George (from A Murder of Crows,
edited by Sandra Murphy; Darkhouse)
• “Alex’s Choice,” by Barb Goffman (from Crime Travel, edited by
Barb Goffman; Wildside Press)
• “The Blue Ribbon,” by Cynthia Kuhn (from Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and
Shawn Reilly Simmons; Wildside Press)
• “The Last Word,” by Shawn Reilly Simmons (from Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible)
• “Better Days,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2019)

The winners are to be selected by attendees of Malice Domestic 32, which will be held in Bethesda, Maryland, from May 1 to 3. Congratulations to all of the nominees!

PaperBack: “After Hours”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



After Hours, by Brian Black (Beacon Signal, 1964). The Facebook page Vintage Paperback & Book Covers says: “Brian Black is yet another unimaginative pen or house name employed by unnamed purveyors of fine 1960s sleaze. I care not for its provenance and it matters not a whit who exactly penned the following. Revel, as always in the art of the covers and concern yourself not with what lies beneath.” Cover illustration by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriaka.

An Unrecognizable Spenser?

Page 45 of Ace Atkins’ 2019 Spenser novel, Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes, features a brief exchange between the veteran Boston private eye and a film producer in Hollywood. After inquiring whether Spenser has come all the way out to Los Angeles in hopes of peddling his life story to television, the producer suggests that changing “a few details” in Spenser’s biography might help sell the idea.

“Like what?” asks the P.I.

“You’re too much of an old-fashioned good guy,” says the producer. “White knight and all that crap. I’d make the hero fresh out of prison.” That minor alteration, he suggests, might give the character some valuable “mystery and edge.”

One presumes that by the time Atkins wrote those lines, he was well aware of what the screenwriters behind Netflix’s forthcoming film, Spenser Confidential, had in mind for his protagonist. As The Hollywood Reporter explains, this teleflick—set to debut on March 6, and starring Mark Wahlberg as the mono-monikered Spenser—“follows ex-cop Spenser …, who, after being let out of prison, gets roped into helping his old boxing coach and mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), with promising amateur Hawk (Winston Duke). When two of Spenser’s former colleagues are murdered, he recruits Hawk and his ex-girlfriend, Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), to help him investigate and bring the culprits to justice.”

Wahlberg claimed, during a recent interview with Ellen Lee DeGeneres, that this Netflix project is “based on one of my favorite TV series as a kid, Spenser: For Hire.” However, a trailer for Spenser Confidential bears little, if any, resemblance to that 1985-1988 ABC crime drama starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks. Nor does it seem to have much in common with Atkins’ 2013 novel, Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, which marked the return to print of Parker’s best-known character (after the author’s death in 2020), and from which Spenser Confidential was reportedly adapted. Instead, Wahlberg and fellow producer Neal H. Moritz (one of the people behind the Fast & Furious movie franchise) have filled Spenser Confidential with video-game-paced violence and other shallow distractions, and have turned Spenser and Hawk into the stars of yet another throwaway “buddy picture,” not unlike the rebooted Hawaii Five-O.

Wahlberg says that with so many Spenser novels from which to draw material (48 so far), “we’re hopefully doing a couple more” movie adaptations. Maybe so, but don’t count on me watching. As a longtime fan of the books, I prefer my Spenser with more charm, compassion, and sly wit, and less “mystery and edge.”

Child Keeps It in the Family

This news from The Guardian is more than a bit surprising:

The author of the Jack Reacher series of novels is retiring and handing over the writing duties to his brother, according to a report.

Lee Child said he has been searching for a way to kill off the title character, portrayed on film by Tom Cruise, for years but has ultimately decided his fans deserve to see him live on in books which will now be written by Andrew Grant.

But Child, who was born James Grant, has reportedly set out a condition for his brother: he too must change his surname to Child.

“For years I thought about different ways of killing Reacher off. First of all, I thought he would go out in a blaze of bullets, something like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It would take an army to bring him down [but] Reacher had to have an afterlife after I was done,” Child told the Times.

Andrew Grant—born in Birmingham, England, but currently living in Wyoming with his wife, fellow novelist Tasha Alexander—has established his own thriller-writing career. His latest book is Too Close to Home, released earlier this month by Ballantine.

FOLLOW-UP: The Gumshoe Site says that “The next and 25th Reacher novel, The Sentinel (Transworld UK), written by Lee Child and Andrew Child, will be out coming October.”

Revue of Reviewers, 1-17-20

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

Let’s Not Forget These Items

• Scottish crime novelist Ian Rankin has been tapped as programming chair for the 2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which is to be held in Harrogate, England, from July 23 to 26. Helen Donkin, the Harrogate International Festivals literature festival manager, explains that “The Programme Chair, which changes each year, is responsible for the various themes the discussion panels debate, as well as which authors sit on them. And by having a different chair each year this helps keep the festival fresh and exciting.”

• Deadline is reporting that “Amazon Studios has greenlit Jack Reacher, a drama series based on the character from Lee Child’s international bestselling series of books. Produced by Amazon Studios, Skydance Television and Paramount Television Studios, the television series will be written by Nick Santora (Scorpion, Prison Break), who will also executive produce and serve as showrunner for the series. The first season will be based on the first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor.” So who should be cast as Reacher for this forthcoming program? CrimeReads offers a few ideas.

• A calendar note from In Reference to Murder:

Coming up this weekend, Baltimore will celebrate the 211th birthday of the inventor of the detective novel and an early master of the horror genre, Edgar Allan Poe. Festivities include the free PoeZella Birthday Bash with food and a display of Poe-themed photographs (courtesy of the Baltimore Camera Club); a free Edgar Allan Poe House Literary Landmark Dedication; and the Edgar Allan Poe Birthday Celebration at Poe’s final resting place, Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, with the Poe Project’s “Poe-pourri!” staged adaptations of three of Poe’s works: “The Coliseum,” “Eldorado” and “The Raven.”

• News this week that 18-year-old singer Billie Eilish will perform the title song in this year’s 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die (set to premiere in April), provoked The Spy Command to research the ages of previous Bond vocalists. Not surprisingly, Eilish is the youngest among them. The next closest in age was Sheena Easton, who was only 22 years old when she recorded the title number for the 1981 Roger Moore 007 flick, For Your Eyes Only. Learn more here.

• I’ve added a new name to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column list of “Crime/Mystery Podcasts”: Doings of Doyle, which “celebrat[es] the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Professor Challenger, Brigadier Gerard and Sherlock Holmes.”

• No wonder American voters crave change: As Donald John Trump’s impeachment trial begins in the U.S. Senate, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley tells CNN that its impossible to measure Trump against previous Oval Office occupants. “We always are trying to compare presidents to each other,” he says, “but we haven’t had an outlaw president before, and that’s what you have with Donald Trump.”

• Thank you to The Stiletto Gumshoe. In its post about how stock photos have reduced the novelty of today’s book covers, the blog has some complimentary things to say about The Rap Sheet.

• And I forgot to mention this earlier: “The family of 20th-century killer Dr. Crippen—who gained a reputation as one of the most notorious murderers in British history—want his body to be returned to the United States where he was born,” reports the UK’s Daily Mail. “Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen murdered his opera singer wife Cora in their home in London in July 1910, and then told everyone she had gone to America before fleeing Britain with his mistress Ethel Le Neve. Now, nearly 110 years after he was hanged for the killing, Dr. Crippen's family want his body to be exhumed from the grounds of Pentonville Prison in Islington, north London and returned to Dayton, Ohio, in the U.S.” The newspaper adds: “In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and seen by The Daily Telegraph, a descendant of Dr. Crippen, retired marketing executive Patrick Crippen, writes that his ancestor is innocent and that he wants the body buried in the family plot.”

Bullet Points: Bonus Edition

• Let us all bid a fond farewell to Edd Byrnes, who played wisecracking, comb-wielding hipster and wannabe private investigator Gerald Lloyd “Kookie” Kookson III on the ABC-TV series 77 Sunset Strip. He passed away at age 87 on January 8. As Terence Towles Canote explains in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, “Edd Byrnes was born Edward Byrne Breitenberger on July 30, 1932, in New York City. His father died when he was 13 and he took the name of his grandfather, a New York City firefighter. He eventually took an interest in acting and following his graduation from high school he worked in summer stock. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Mr. Byrnes made his television debut on [a 1955] episode of Crossroads.” TMZ notes that he later played a teen-dance show host Vince Fontaine in the 1978 film Grease.

• First television gave us Hannibal (2013-2015), featuring the depraved forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs. Now, according to the Web site Deadline, “CBS has just closed deals for Clarice, a crime-drama series project based on the famous Thomas Harris character Clarice Starling, which is set after the events in The Silence of the Lambs. The project, written and executive produced by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, has received a big series commitment. … Clarice is set in 1993, a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. The series is a deep dive into the untold personal story of [FBI agent] Clarice Starling, as she returns to the field to pursue serial murderers and sexual predators while navigating the high stakes political world of Washington, D.C.”

• Here’s an intriguing question, addressed by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett: “Did HAL Commit Murder?” You will, of course, remember that HAL 9000 was the artificial intelligence antagonist in the 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• I keep forgetting to mention that blogger Evan Lewis has been posting, since November 1, installments from the 1956-1958 newspaper comic strip Nero Wolfe, based on Rex Stout’s famous detective series. Click here to see them yourself.

• This comes from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Synchronicity Films has optioned Craig Russell’s “Lennox” book series and will adapt the period Scotland-set thrillers for TV, with Robert Murphy (DCI Banks, Inspector George Gently, Vera) attached to handle the adaptation.

The series is set in tough inner-city Glasgow in the 1950s where the titular Lennox is a private eye billed as “a damaged man in a hard city at a hard time,” who finds himself caught between three Glasgow crime bosses.

• Los Angeles sure was a smoggy place before 1970, when “President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, which led to air pollution regulations, and allowed California to make even stricter provisions within its state.” It’s hard to believe that Donald Trump is now moving to relax government requirements that have for so long kept the air Americans breathe both cleaner and safer.

• It’s equally incredible that someone went to the trouble of putting together this 25-minute video “compilation of all guest star introductions from the television series Cannon” (1971–1976).

• Author Jess Nevins is offering, in his blog, this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature's Most Chilling Genre (Praeger).

• Meanwhile, BOLO Books carries this extract from Hilary Davidson’s Don’t Look Down (Thomas & Mercer), due out in February.

• Did you know that author Steve Hamilton has a new Alex McKnight short story, Riddle Island (Blackstone), awaiting release to e-readers on February 4? Yeah, neither did I.

• CrimeReads recently posted Paul French’s survey of crime fiction (and some true-crime books) set in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the titles he includes, and with which I was previously unfamiliar: “Andrei Bely’s Petersburg (first published in serial form in 1913 and then as a revised edition book in 1922). Sadly not much read these days but considered by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, after Joyce’s Ulysses and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and before Proust.”

• The Killing Times assembled this lengthy rundown of TV crime and mystery dramas set to debut in Britain during 2020. Some, though, not the entire assortment, will likely also become available to U.S. viewers. I’m particularly interested in watching the eight-part adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s award-winning novel, The Luminaries, and the small-screen version of Ian McGuire’s Arctic historical thriller, The North Water, both of which are coming from BBC Two.

• The literary magazine NB (short for New Books) has published a fine overview of the three novels British screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote about James Reed, described as “an ex-Scotland Yard detective who became the bodyguard, then lover, then husband, then ex-husband of Hollywood superstar Katherine Long.” The first of those titles, 1986’s Snowball, was republished last summer by Brash Books.

• As the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, is being readied for distribution to theaters in April, the car company most closely associated with Agent 007, Aston Martin, “faces a lot of [financial] uncertainty,” says The Spy Command.

• Finally, Shotsmag Confidential has posted this incomplete inventory of “crime fiction bookish events” taking place in the United Kingdom between now and June 1.

Who’s Right for the Leftys?

Organizers of this year’s Left Coast Crime convention, “Murder’s a Beach”—scheduled to be held in San Diego, California, from March 12 to 15—this morning announced their nominees for the 2020 Lefty Awards, in four categories. Winners are to be declared on Saturday, March 14, during a ceremony at San Diego’s Marriot Mission Valley. The lists of contenders featured below were selected by registrants for both the 2019 and 2020 LCC gatherings.

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
• Fatal Cajun Festival, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)
• Murder from Scratch, by Leslie Karst (Crooked Lane)
• The Subject of Malice, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)
• Scot & Soda, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
• Drowned Under, by Wendall Thomas (Poisoned Pen Press)

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (for books set before 1970):
• Murder Knocks Twice, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
• The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandlar (Kensington)
• A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)
• The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
• The Ninja Daughter, by Tori Eldridge (Agora)
• Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton)
• One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House)
• Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Agora)
• Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
• Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco)
• Borrowed Time, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• Lost Tomorrows, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• They All Fall Down, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
• Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)

According to a press release, “this year’s Guests of Honor are authors Rachel Howzell Hall and T. Jefferson Parker. Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore is the Fan Guest of Honor, and author Matt Coyle will serve as Toastmaster.”

Bullet Points: Heavy on Nostalgia Edition

• A much-deserved accolade, mentioned yesterday in Literary Hub: “John le Carré, perhaps history’s greatest spy novelist, was this morning announced as the latest recipient of the $100,000 Olof Palme Prize, an award given for ‘an outstanding achievement in any of the areas of anti-racism, human rights, international understanding, peace and common security.’ In their citation, the prize organizers praised le Carré ‘for his engaging and humanistic opinion-making in literary form regarding the freedom of the individual and the fundamental issues of mankind,’ and called his career ‘an extraordinary contribution to the necessary fight for freedom, democracy and social justice.’”

• There are plenty of interesting pieces in the latest edition of Mystery Scene magazine, among them profiles of authors William Kent Krueger and Elly Griffiths, and Kevin Burton Smith’s “2019 Gift Guide for Mystery Lovers” (still worth perusing, even with the holidays now past). However, I was most drawn to Michael Mallory’s retrospective on the 1973-1976 late-night ABC-TV anthology series Wide World of Mystery. As Mallory recalls, that succession of original “mysteries, horror stories, and science-fiction tales”—all of which began at 11:30 p.m.—was ABC’s several-nights-a-week alternative to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. “While the show’s stories and settings ran the gamut,” Mallory writes, “other things remained constant. One was the 90-minute length—actually 70 or so minutes plus commercials. Another was the fact that they were all recorded on videotape rather than being filmed, as were then-popular prime-time movies of the week. Because of this, viewers were occasionally treated to the occupational hazard of live-on-tape shows: bloopers.” Ed Asner, Lynda Day George, Christopher Reeve, Susan Sarandon, and Tom Selleck were all cast in WWoM installments, only a handful of which are available on DVD (with one—1975’s “Alien Lover,” introducing Kate Mulgrew, to be found on YouTube). I wasn’t a big late-night TV viewer as a boy, but I do remember seeing a few of those teleflicks, notably the March 14, 1975, presentation “Nick and Nora.” An unsuccessful “backdoor pilot” for a separate ABC series, it starred Peter Gunn’s Craig Stevens and small-screen fixture Jo Ann Pflug as Dashiell Hammett’s tippling snoops, Nick and Nora Charles, who in this movie “investigated the death of a man found floating in the pool of a posh L.A. hotel,” according to Mallory.

• By the way, The Stiletto Gumshoe notes that in this new issue of Mystery Scene, “publishers Kate Stine and Brian Skupin officially announced the magazine’s switch to a quarterly starting this year. It’ll be tough to wait longer between issues, but the promise of an increased page count while keeping the subscription price untouched was welcome news.”

• Found recently among my mail, too, was the fifth edition of Down & Out: The Magazine. This was long overdue: the previous issue came out in August 2018. In his editor’s note, Rick Ollerman chalks this delay up to multiple personal mishaps—which wouldn’t have been as big a problem at a larger publication, where other employees could have filled in for the recuperating editor, but at shorthanded Down & Out, it spelled trouble. The sad part is that this tardiness probably cost the periodical subscribers, who thought they could no longer trust in its regularity and future. I can only hope that enough readers will give Down & Out: The Magazine a second chance, because it’s new issue is guaranteed to please, with fiction from the likes of Walter Satterthwait, April Kelly, and Brendan DuBois, plus a column I wrote about Erle Stanley Gardner’s Doug Selby mysteries.

• The original 1968 Ford Mustang GT driven by Steve McQueen in the Warner Bros. film Bullitt, was sold at auction recently for a whopping $3,400,000. That car is renowned for having participated in this thrilling on-screen chase scene.

• In 1985, author Ross Thomas won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with Briarpatch. Now that standalone thriller has been adapted as a USA Network series, set to premiere on February 6. Taking the lead in Thomas’ novel was Ben “Pick” Dill, a white former reporter. However, the gender and race of the protagonist in USA’s series have both been flipped, with Rosario Dawson starring. The Hollywood Reporter explains: “Briarpatch follows Allegra Dill (Dawson), an investigator returning to her border-town Texas home after her sister is murdered. What begins as a search for a killer turns into an all-consuming fight to bring her corrupt city to its knees. The series is described as a blend of crime and pulp fiction.” If you’re interested, you can watch a short trailer is here. (Hat tip to Craig Pittman.)

• Also headed for television: Jonathan Lethem’s first novel, 1994’s Gun, with Occasional Music. “The novel,” says Deadline, “is a blend of sci-fi, noir and satire, set in the near future in a trippy world. Evolved animals are part of society, the government placates its citizens with free mind-numbing drugs, and the police monitor people by their karma levels. The protagonist is Conrad Metcalf, a down-and-out P.I. on a loser of a case. His last client—a prominent doctor—just turned up dead, and in order to clear his name and stay out of the deep freeze, the P.I. works for free to get to the bottom of it all. Turns out there is no bottom to this one, though, and Metcalf soon finds there’s nothing simple about this murder.” Deadline adds that “The series will be produced by Aggregate Films’ Jason Bateman, Michael Costigan and Daniel Pipski, along with Francey Grace.”

• Better late than never, let me direct your attention to the second annual Charlie Chan Family Home newsletter. Ohio Chan fan Lou Armagno notes that the newsletter (available here as a PDF document), addresses “two new book releases; a fall ‘Chan’ class taught at the University of Las Vegas, NV; ‘The Other Guys,’ an article on Mr. Wong and Mr. Moto; a recap of my first year blogging at The Postman on Holiday; and a ‘very special’ narrative by Charlie Chan Family Home webmaster, Rush Glick, on his adventure (20 years ago) to pursue the four lost Chan film-scripts. Finally, [there’s] a look at the upcoming Chinese New Year (The Year of the Rat, January 25) and three Charlie Chan events happening at various locations in 2020.”

• Among the “artists, innovators, and thinkers” we lost in 2019, The New York Times honors Peggy Lipton, co-star of The Mod Squad.

• The blog Up and Down These Mean Streets points out that Angel Eyes, Ace Atkins’ recent novel starring Boston private eye Spenser, features a few nods to the work of Dashiell Hammett.

• Speaking of Hammett, Nick Kolakowski records the multiple efforts over the decades to adapt 1929’s Red Harvest for the silver screen. “Red Harvest,” he opines, “seems doomed to remain the Schrödinger’s cat of noir adaptations: often made—and yet never made.”

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

The Audio Publishers Association announced that they will be presenting bestselling author Stephen King with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Audie Awards in March in New York City. King is known for his horror novels such as The Shining and Carrie but also for his crime novels, the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch), The Outsider, The Colorado Kid, and Joyland.

• I’m not usually a Marie Claire reader, but this recent piece in the magazine had me at the headline: “Megan Abbott Wants You to Feel Everything,” with a subhead reading, “With the premiere of her TV series ‘Dare Me’ on December 29, the novelist-turned-showrunner is taking her knack for humanizing the dynamics of gender, rage, and power beyond the page.” Good job, Megan!

• In the blog Mystery*File (which last month celebrated its 13th anniversary), critic Michael Shonk identified his favorite TV series of the last decade, mostly crime dramas, a couple of which I’d never heard of before. So what was his top 2010-2019 pick? “The underrated Person of Interest” (2011-2016).

• Have you seen these Bonnie and Clyde photos?

• Almost a year ago, I mentioned on this page that the 1978 CBS-TV pilot for an unsold series titled The Jordan Chance, starring Raymond Burr, had been posted on YouTube, but that a previous Burr pilot, 1976’s Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, remained unavailable. Suddenly, though, that latter movie has popped up on the video sales site Modcinema. Here’s its plot synopsis: “Raymond Burr stars again as a lawyer, this time named Arthur Mallory. No Perry Mason here, Mallory has been on the outs since being falsely accused of encouraging a witness to lie on the stand. Eventually cleared, Mallory lives hand to mouth as a public defender, with a heightened sense of fair play when it comes to the downtrodden. In this pilot film for the never-sold TV series Mallory, the attorney defends a jailed car thief (Mark Hamill) who has been framed for the killing of another prisoner.” You can buy the video here.

• It’s hard to believe that California-born actress Karen Valentine will turn 73 years old this coming May. As an early birthday present (to the rest of us), Comfort TV blogger David Hofstede has compiled briefs on some of her most prominent small-screen roles, including in Room 222, her short-lived eponymous TV series from 1975, and an ABC Movie of the Week titled The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped (1974)—that last being a flick I recall liking, but hadn’t thought about in years. Here’s Hofstede’s description of the story: “A magazine publisher (Richard Long) receives a bikini-clad girl (Karen Valentine) as a birthday present. Sounds like a set-up for a skit on Love, American Style. But there’s a lot more going on in this surprisingly touching (and funny) TV movie with a wonderful cast—Farrah Fawcett, Tom Bosley, Dave Madden, and Reta Shaw. This may be the best remembered of Valentine’s TV movies—and that’s not a bad choice if it is.” Sadly, you can’t watch The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped online; but I see that Modcinema (again, a site after my own heart) has copies for sale here.

• Incidentally, I glanced through Karen Valentine’s IMDb page and discovered that she was cast not only in comedies, but also in a number of crime, mystery, and legal dramas as well—everything from Eischied and The New Mike Hammer to Murder, She Wrote and Family Law. The site says her last TV performance was in the 2004 teleflick Wedding Daze, in which she co-starred with John Larroquette.

• Before we venture too deep into 2020, let’s look back for a moment at 2019’s “best” book covers, as judged by the sites Literary Hub, Spine, and The Casual Optimist. What do you think?

• Hah! Just as we thought all along: “Why Do So Many Book Covers Look the Same? Blame Getty Images.”

• “Craig Stevens discusses his life and career, including his classic role on Peter Gunn, as well as his long marriage to Alexis Smith, in this 1993 interview with cable TV host Skip E Lowe.”

• If you missed Killer Cover’s end-of-the-year tribute to Anglo-Scots painter and book-cover artist Tom Adams—who created iconic fronts for novels by Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, among others—you can catch up with that whole series here.

• David Zucchino recalls the notorious, long-ago white-supremacist takeover of Wilmington, North Carolina. He writes:

Throughout that summer and autumn, white men had been buying shotguns, six-shot pistols, and repeating rifles at hardware stores in Wilmington ..., a port city set in the low Cape Fear country along the state’s jagged coast. It was 1898, a tumultuous mid-term election year. The city’s white leadership had vowed to remove the city’s multi-racial government by the ballot or the bullet, or both. Few white
men in Wilmington intended to back their candidates that November without a firearm within easy reach. There was concern among whites in Wilmington, where they were outnumbered by blacks, that stores would run dry on guns, and that suppliers in the rest of the state and in South Carolina would be unable to meet demand.

• Chicago-born author Mike Resnick died this last Thursday of lymphoma at age 77. Although he’s most often thought of as a prolific and multiple award-winning producer of science-fiction stories, The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura observes that Resnick also penned “several mystery novels and fantasy novels with mystery elements. John Justice Mallory is a hard-boiled private detective in a fantastical New York, where humans co-habit with vampires and fairy tale beasts such as dragons. Mallory was introduced in Stalking the Unicorn (Tor, 1987) and featured in two more novels and a collection of short stories, Stalking the Zombie (American Fantasy, 2012). The Eli Paxton series features a Cincinnati private eye who appeared in Dog in the Manger (Alexander, 1995) and two more novels.”

• And while I had my attention turned elsewhere, The Rap Sheet somehow registered its 7,600th post.

PaperBack: “Ashenden”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Ashenden: Or the British Agent, by W. Somerset Maugham (Avon, 1966). Published originally in 1922, this collection of roughly connected short stories was inspired by the author’s experience as a British Intelligence agent in Europe during World War I.

Cover illustration by Robert K. Abbett.

SEE IT NOW: In 1991, the British network BBC One adapted several stories from Ashenden into a four-part TV series. At least for the time being, you can watch those episodes on YouTube.

Well Worth Remembering

Back in the old days, before there were quite so many insistent calls upon my time, I used to find some free hours at the end of each year in which to compile short obituaries of people—linked to crime, mystery, and thriller fiction—who had expired during the previous 12 months. Nowadays, I’m lucky to mention such deaths in my irregular “Bullet Points” news wrap-ups.

Before we leave 2019 behind, though, I want to draw your attention to four recent passings that deserve mention on this page. I didn’t know any of these people, as I suspect most of you did not, but that doesn’t reduce the significance of their departures from this world.

• M.C. Beaton, whose real name was Marion Chesney Gibbons, died on December 30, 2019, at age 83. She was the Scottish author of the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery series, both of which have been adapted for television. Britain’s Guardian newspaper featured two fine remembrances of Beaton and her various fictions, the first by Alison Flood, the second by sometime Rap Sheet contributor Mike Ripley. Lists of Beaton’s numerous works can be found in Wikipedia.

• P.J. Nunn was a “former college instructor and freelance writer [who] founded a public relations firm named BreakThrough Promotions, mostly for mystery authors, in 1998,” The Gumshoe Site recalls. “She released her first novel, Angel Killer (Dark Oak Mystery, 2013) and followed it with Shadow in the Pines (Tidal Wave, 2013).” Nunn was just 63 when she perished from a heart attack on December 19.

• Earl Staggs, who passed away on January 3, “earned a long list of five-star reviews for his novels Memory of a Murder and Justified Action, and twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year,” explains Mystery Fanfare. “He served as managing editor of Futures Mystery Magazine [and] president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, [and] is a contributing blog member of Murderous Musings and Make Mine Mystery …” A remembrance of Staggs can be found in the blog Meanderings and Musings.

• Steven Kerry Brown, an FBI agent turned private investigator, died in Florida on Christmas Day, aged 72 years. Again according to Jiro Kimura’s Gumshoe Site, Brown “wrote three books: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating (Alpha, 1st ed. 2002; 2nd ed. 2007; 3rd ed. 2013); 5 Things Women Need to Know About the Men They Date (Hard Row, 2013); and Redeeming the Dead, a novel (Hard Row, 2014). The novel features Mormon private investigator Winchester Young, with a sequel to come.”

Viewpoints May Vary

2019 may be safely behind us now, but there are still several “best books of the year” rolls left to mention and ponder. First off, I want to cite the choices made by Wall Street Journal critic Tom Nolan. Since I don’t subscribe to the Journal, I have been unable to read his comments about each of the 10 books he applauded in mid-December, but he was kind enough to e-mail me his list:

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson
• Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha
• Confessions of an Innocent Man, by David R. Dow
• The Sentence Is Death, by Anthony Horowitz
• Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman
• Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny
• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason
• Conviction, by Denise Mina
• The Good Cop, by Peter Steiner

Sadly, I didn’t find time over the last year to read a few of Nolan’s picks. But I’m most pleased to see Mason’s The Darwin Affair—one of my own favorite historical crime novels—make the cut.

Meanwhile, the British site Crime Fiction Lover appears to have concluded its rollout of reviewers’ reading choices. That page’s final selections include William Shaw’s Deadland, Elizabeth Haynes’ The Murder of Harriet Monckton, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, Ann Cleeves’ The Long Call, and Adrian McKinty’s shocker, The Chain.

Over at Shotsmag Confidential, Ayo Onatade presents a terrific catalogue of 2019 preferences, among them Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Blood & Sugar, James Lee Burke’s The New Iberia Blues, and John Curran’s The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club. MysteryPeople weighs in with two lists, one from Scott Montgomery (mentioning William Boyle’s A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, Jake Hinkson’s Dry County, etc.), the other by a part-time bookseller named Meike (cheering Lisa Lutz’s The Swallows, Mark Pryor’s The Book Artist, etc.). And the blog Raven Crime Reads presents a top 10 inventory that extends from James Delargy’s 55 and Alan Parks’ February’s Son to Ilaria Tuti-Flowers’ Over the Inferno and Nicolás Obregón ’s Unknown Male.

The anonymous blogger at For Winter Nights includes tales beyond crime fiction in his/her list, but the choices made from this genre (Jane Harper’s The Lost Man, Fiona Cummins’ The Neighbour, and others) are certainly estimable. Reviewer/blogger L.J. Roberts offers both “bests” and “honorable mentions” in her rundown, with Tuti-Flowers’ Over the Inferno being her “#1 book of the year.” In Murder, Mayhem and Long Dogs, Australian Jeff Popple turns thumbs up on Garry Disher’s Peace, Dervla McTiernan’s The Scholar, Adrian Magson’s Terminal Black, and more. Finally, The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog salutes five works not published this last year, including Jonathan Valin’s Final Notice and Frank Kane’s The Lineup.

To find additional “best crime fiction of 2019” assortments, click here, or refer to this compilation in Mystery Fanfare.

A “Lost” Dennis Novel Makes Its Debut

(Editor’s note: You have to admire the single-minded determination and industry of Calabasas, California, author Lee Goldberg. After being first introduced, in 2013, to the work of deceased and long-forgotten novelist Ralph Dennis—and finding that he loved it—Goldberg set out to resurrect Dennis’ literary output through his own independent publishing company, Brash Books. Over the past couple of years, Brash has reissued all 12 of Dennis’ crime novels starring Jim Hardman, an Atlanta, Georgia, cop turned private eye—with a previously unpublished 13th installment in the series, All Kinds of Ugly, due out in early February. In addition, Goldberg has brought back into circulation a handful of Dennis’ non-series novels; and drawing from “a suitcase full of unpublished manuscripts” the author left behind at his death more than 30 years ago, he has expanded Dennis’ oeuvre. One of those “new” novels was The Spy in a Box, published in December. The other is Dust in the Heart, a “disturbing” police procedural that’s finally being released today. In the essay below, Goldberg recalls the circuitous path Dust in the Heart followed to finally seeing print.)

Dust in the Heart was Ralph Dennis’ final manuscript. It was completed only a few months before his death in 1988. He was a writer no longer at the top of his game, beaten by his demons and his failures, and it showed in the typewritten manuscript.

I’ve now read most of Ralph’s published and unpublished work. So, for me, reading and editing this book was a revealing glimpse into Ralph’s personality and creative process. Dust in the Heart is a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, made up of bits and pieces of his other unpublished manuscripts, primarily a book entitled Just Child’s Play, which itself was stitched together from his prior published and unpublished work.

The hero of Just Child’s Play is Phil Hannah, an ex-Atlanta police detective who moves to a small-town force after the long, grueling death of his wife from cancer (a relationship that is lifted from the back story of a key character in his 1975 novel Atlanta, which Brash Books republished last year as The Broken Fixer). The detective investigates the rape and murder of a teenage girl and has a very rushed romance, the substance of which is lifted almost entirely from Ralph’s 1979 novel MacTaggart’s War (and that I largely omitted from our revised edition of the book, entitled The War Heist). The hero is aided in his detecting by a young deputy, who is almost identical to the young deputy in Dust in the Heart.

Many of the relationships and politics of the town in Just Child’s Play are replicated in Dust in the Heart, which also borrows a key plot point from Kane #2, an unpublished sequel to Ralph’s 1976 novel Deadman’s Game (both of which I combined and republished as A Talent for Killing). In Kane #2, the hero pursues the man who raped and murdered two young boys, and who is being protected by the government. Ralph lifted the same situation for Dust in the Heart.

Just Child’s Play is a deeply flawed and often incoherent book that justifiably never attracted a publisher. But there must have been something about the central concept—the heart-broken, small-town police detective seeking redemption and love while pursuing a child-murder investigation—that intrigued Ralph, because he ultimately gave it a second shot.

(Left) Author Ralph Dennis

For Dust in the Heart, Ralph recast the Atlanta detective as Wilt Drake, an injured war hero who is abandoned by his wife. And Ralph swapped out the romance for a new one that he seemingly lifted from Gunsmoke. But that wasn’t the only thing Ralph may have lifted from that long-running TV western series. In Gunsmoke, Marshal Matt Dillon enforces the law in Dodge City, Kansas, with the help of his eager young deputy, Chester Goode … and is romantically involved with Miss Kitty, the local madam and saloon owner. He also often seeks the wise counsel of ornery old Doc Adams, the town’s physician.

In Dust in the Heart, Wilt is Matt Dillon, Deputy Joe is Chester, stripper Diane is Miss Kitty, and Doc is, well, Doc. Ralph even gave Wilt the limp that actor James Arness, who played Dillon, had as a result of a real-life war injury.

And perhaps there’s also a message in the hero’s name. The hero of Ralph’s first novel (1974’s Atlanta Deathwatch) was Jim Hardman. The hero of his last book is Wilton “Wilt” Drake. From a Hard man, to a Wilted man. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I struggled over whether to publish Dust in the Heart or to keep it in a drawer. The original manuscript was nearly 100,000 words and it was a mess … and yet, there was still something haunting, melancholy, and powerful about the book that wouldn’t let me go. I knew that Ralph was passionate about this novel. He told a newspaper reporter, and several people who were close to him, that he’d put a lot of work into it and had high hopes that it would be his comeback. It was also his final novel. Given all of those factors, I felt we had to release it to complete the full arc of his literary career.

So I dove into the manuscript, found the essence of the characters and the spine of the story … and began reshaping the book around that. I cut more than 30,000 words, including many long, irrelevant asides unrelated to the characters or the story, as well as several gratuitous, explicit sex scenes between a deputy and his rich, older lover, and other scenes with secondary characters that took place outside of the hero’s point of view, or that were repetitive, didn’t further the plot, or slowed the pace. I also fixed some tracking errors and other common mistakes that all writers make in their initial drafts.

I believe that the final, published draft of Dust in the Heart is a strong police procedural, dark and haunting, and a worthy capstone to Ralph’s career. But what really makes it special, at least for scholars and admirers of this author’s work, is the fascinating insight it offers into Ralph Dennis himself, an alcoholic who never found a woman to love him, who was reduced to working as a clerk in a used bookstore after a decade of being rejected by publishers, and who would soon die without achieving the recognition that he deserved.