Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Revue of Reviewers, 3-31-20
Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.
Agent on the Air
Among the many books I recovered from my family home some years ago, after both of my parents had died, was a copy—almost surely bought by my architect/cartoonist father—of a 1983 paperback collection of Secret Agent X-9 action/adventure comic strips, written by detective-turned-fictionist Dashiell Hammett and drawn by Alex Raymond (the latter known better for having created Flash Gordon). Until then, I don’t believe I had ever heard of that long-ago syndicated newspaper feature. But I have since had the pleasure to read the book, and to learn a bit about the strip’s history, thanks to Kevin Burton Smith’s write-up in The Thrilling Detective Web Site:
I was reminded of all this recently when Evan Lewis began posting, in his blog, a four-part, gunplay-packed BBC Radio adaptation of Hammett’s early Secret Agent X-9 yarns, starring Stuart Milligan as X-9 and Connie Booth as Grace Powers. You can already listen to the first two episodes here, with the final couple yet to be posted.
READ MORE: “Hammett Herald-Tribune: Secret Agent X-9 (1934),” by Evan Lewis (Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure,
and the Wild West).
The strip was originally conceived [in the early 1930s] by King Features to compete with Dick Tracy’s growing popularity, but somewhere along the line, they decided it wasn’t enough for the hero of this new strip to be a hardboiled private eye. He would also be a secret agent. G-Men were doing boffo box office and one of the previous year’s more popular films had been Private Detective 62, based on a series of stories that appeared in Black Mask, written by Hammett’s pal, Raoul Whitfield, about a disgraced government agent, Donald Free, who becomes a private eye.The original daily strip debuted on January 22, 1934. Despite Hammett washing his hands of the project (and reportedly losing a weekly fee of $500 for its modest scripting), Secret Agent X-9 carried on under a variety of other writers and artists until February 10, 1996.
Alas, somewhere along the line, the competing visions of Hammett and King Features came to a head. Hammett evidently wanted to write a series about a private eye (no surprise there—he had already made a name for himself as creator of Sam Spade, The Continental Op and Nick and Nora Charles). But King wanted a strip about a nameless, mysterious secret agent. …
Neither artist nor writer were happy with the results, and both were eager to quit King Features. Within a year, Hammett was gone (his contract having expired) having only scripted four continuities. Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint, took over the scripting chores.
I was reminded of all this recently when Evan Lewis began posting, in his blog, a four-part, gunplay-packed BBC Radio adaptation of Hammett’s early Secret Agent X-9 yarns, starring Stuart Milligan as X-9 and Connie Booth as Grace Powers. You can already listen to the first two episodes here, with the final couple yet to be posted.
READ MORE: “Hammett Herald-Tribune: Secret Agent X-9 (1934),” by Evan Lewis (Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure,
and the Wild West).
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Bullet Points: Housebound Edition
This was inevitable: Last Monday, Washington Governor Jay Inslee—responding to growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the Evergreen State—issued a stay-at-home directive that required all “non-essential businesses” here to close by Wednesday evening, and all state residents to remain inside “except for absolutely necessary activities, such as restocking essential supplies or accessing vital public services.” The order is supposed to “stay in effect for at least two weeks,” though the end date could be pushed back further, depending on the success of efforts to stem the 
virus’ spread. (Inslee, like most U.S. governors, rejects Donald Trump’s arbitrary suggestion that people should head back to work by Easter.)
All of this means I’m currently enjoying an unplanned vacation from work at the independent Seattle neighborhood bookshop where I have been helping out for the last year. Fortunately, I have plenty of writing to keep me busy, plus a stack of reading material for entertainment. Included in that soaring assortment are Harry Dolan’s The Good Killer, Max Allan Collins’ Do No Harm, William Boyle’s City of Margins, Peter Robinson’s Many Rivers to Cross, advance copies of Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris and Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer, and a couple of non-fiction releases: Kate Winkler Dawson’s American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI (I loved her 2017 book, Death in the Air) and Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood. Should I require an interlude between books, I have at the ready complete DVD collections of Dan August, Longstreet and Peter Gunn, plus an unsuccessful Raymond Burr pilot film from 1975, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, that I picked up from Modcinema. So I am unlikely to become bored, even if—as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns—this quarantine lasts longer than any of us would prefer.
In a pinch, I can always surf the Web, as I did recently for new stories related to crime fiction. Below are some of my finds.
• “While most of us today are not sick,” writes CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz,” we are stuck at home, and perhaps now is the time to rediscover the lengthy novel.” Specifically, the lengthy crime or thriller novel. Odintz recommends 14 “long-ass books” (exceeding 500 pages) to try, among them James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential (512 pages), Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four (576), Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (576), and John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy (606). Let me propose these eight additional candidates:
— By Gaslight, by Steven Price (730 pages)
— The Death of the Detective, by Mark Smith (608)
— Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (544)
— The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter (700)
— The Price of Butcher’s Meat, by Reginald Hill (528)
— The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox (720)
— The Company, by Robert Littell (896)
— Lamentation, by C.J. Sansom (656)
What about you? Are there excellent extended works of crime and mystery fiction that you think the rest of us should consider tackling as we wait out our mass-seclusion? Feel free to mention them in the Comments section at the end of this post.
• Plans to demolish a residence in Beaconsfield, England, once owned by G.K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries, have been “thrown out by the local council,” reports the Catholic Herald. “South Bucks District Council dismissed proposals by Octagon Developments to demolish the house, called ‘Overroads,’ … and replace it with a block of nine apartments. Planning officers concluded that the size and the scale of the proposed flats would make them ‘intrusive’ and incompatible with the character of the area. Further, they would ‘adversely impact’ upon Top Meadow, the Grade II-listed home that also once belonged to Chesterton, which directly faces Overroads.” This may not ensure the home’s survival, however. As the Herald says: “Given that Overroads is not listed [as a historical site], or otherwise protected, there is nothing to prevent Octagon from appealing against the decision or from other developers submitting alternative applications in the future.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)
• To read about one couple’s pilgrimage to Overroads and other UK spots that were once significant to Chesterton, click here.
• It seems that some incorrect information about this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Contest, sponsored by Mystery Fest Key West, has been making the rounds. So let’s take it from the top: Even though this year’s Mystery Fest has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its annual writing competition will go on. All interested participants are instructed to “submit the first three pages (no more than 750 words) of a finished, unpublished manuscript” to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com by Wednesday, April 15 (not by the 31st, as previously reported). “Attach your manuscript submission as a Word document and include the title, author name, and e-mail address in the header. Judging will be ‘blind.’ Finalists will be notified by May 1 and have until May 10 to submit full, never-before-published manuscripts.” Among the rewards awaiting the author of the victorious entry are publication of his or her work by Absolutely Amazing eBooks and free registration for the next Mystery Fest Key West. Any questions should be addressed to info@mysteryfestkeywest.com.
• Mystery Fanfare brings the sorrowful news that Kate Mattes, who once owned Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts (it was closed in 2009), passed away on Wednesday at her home in Vermont. “It was a sudden cardiac event,” says her sister Emily McAdoo, “and she had been in poor health and getting weaker all along.” The Gumshoe Site says Mattes was 73 years old. A “memorial/reflection” for Mattes is said to be in the planning stages.
• R.I.P., Mark Halegua, a noted pulp-fiction collector and frequent attendee of pulp conventions. A Queens borough resident of New York City, Halegua died on March 18, at 66 years of age.
• I first visited The Mysterious Bookshop in the early 1980s, during my brief inaugural visit to New York City, and now make a point of shopping there whenever I am in Manhattan (which is never often enough). It’s a wonderful place, a palace of riches for crime-fiction lovers. I have always assumed it would be around forever, but this note from owner Otto Penzler, sent out on Monday, has me concerned:
• In a brief but heartwarming essay for Literary Hub, writer Bill Hayes remembers a rewarding walk he took last week amid the mostly shuttered retailers of Lower Manhattan, in quest of a new book.
• Do you really want to help a bookstore? Buy a gift card.
• Will virtual book events lead to virtual sales?
• I was not aware there were any crime novels set in the surprisingly-less-dangerous-than-it-used-to-be Colombian capital of Bogotá, much less excellent ones. But CrimeReads’ Paul French this week posted a survey of Bogotá-based yarns in English translation, ranging from Laura Restrepo’s Delirium (2008) and Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018) to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s The Shape of the Ruins (2015). Is it possible our current quarantine will last long enough that I can try one or more of these?
• Another recent CrimeReads piece I enjoyed: Alix Lambert’s feature about Arnold Mesches, who served as courtroom sketch artist during some of the highest-profile trials of the last century.
• Are you missing the 1970s (presuming that you even lived through them)? Then revisit that era via these 16 notable works of crime fiction, set mostly in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I years.
• Foreword Reviews has announced the finalists for its 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards. The two categories likely to be of greatest interest to Rap Sheet readers are these:
Best Mystery:
— Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)
— Moonscape, by Julie Weston (Five Star)
— The Suicide Sonata, by B.V. Lawson (Crimetime Press)
— A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)
— Below the Fold, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
— Boxing the Octopus, by Tim Maleeny (Poisoned Pen Press)
— In the Clutches of the Wicked, by David Carlson (Coffeetown Press)
— Survival Can Be Deadly, by Charlotte Stuart (Amphorae)
— This Will Destroy You, by Pedram Navab (Spuyten Duyvil)
— Treacherous Strand, by Andrea Carter (Oceanview)
Best Thriller/Suspense:
— Green Valley, by Louis Greenberg (Titan)
— Looking for Garbo, by Jon James Miller (Blank Slate Press)
— A Cross to Kill, by Andrew Huff (Kregel)
— Angel in the Fog, by T.J. Turner (Oceanview)
— High Stakes, by John F Dobbyn (Oceanview)
— Passport to Death, by Yigal Zur (Oceanview)
— Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)
— The Guilt We Carry, by Samuel W. Gailey (Oceanview)
— The Nine, by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg (She Writes Press)
— The Unrepentant, by E.A. Aymar (Down & Out)
Per the Foreword Reviews Web site: “Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 17, 2020.” (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)
• This is too bad. From the NW Book Lovers blog: “Out of an abundance of caution and concern for everyone, this year’s Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, originally scheduled for April 25, has been postponed. August 29, 2020, a Saturday, is the tentative new date.” I first took part in this joyous race on behalf of reading back in 2016 (the event’s sophomore year), and have continued to participate ever since. Although delaying IBD because of the novel coronavirus scare is regrettable, the fact is that August usually brings better weather to Seattle than April does. So maybe this is good news?
• Happy 15th birthday to the UK site Crimesquad!
• In my last “Bullet Points” wrap-up, I mentioned that the 1978 TV film No Prince for My Cinderella, starring former Brady Bunch paterfamilias Robert Reed as a psychologist-cum-detective “who specializes in finding teen runaways,” can now be purchased in DVD format from Modcinema. What I didn’t know then, but that author Lee Goldberg has since informed me, is that No Prince for My Cinderella served as the pilot for Operation: Runaway, a Quinn Martin series that debuted in April 1978. Reed evidently starred in the initial three episodes. But, says Goldberg, he “was so difficult to work with that he was fired after the first season and replaced by Alan Feinstein,” who played Steve Arizzio, “former juvenile officer, now a clinical psychologist.” With Feinstein’s entry, the show became The Runaways, and lasted 13 more episodes, ending in September 1979. For the time being, at least, you can watch No Prince for My Cinderella on YouTube. The second series main title sequence is embedded below.
• As Wikipedia explains, in 1959 Vienna-born actor Kurt Kasznar and Quebec-born performer William Shatner (the latter then 28 years old, not yet famous for his role in Star Trek) were cast as Rex Stout characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the pilot for a prospective weekly series on CBS-TV, titled simply Nero Wolfe. “The pilot episode, ‘Count the Man Down,’ … was filmed in Manhattan in March 1959,” Wikipedia says. “The half-hour program concerned the mysterious death of a scientist during a guided missile launch at Cape Canaveral.” Plans were to slot Nero Wolfe into the CBS schedule at 10 p.m. on Mondays, beginning in September 1959. That didn’t happen. Why? The show “was considered too good to be confined to half an hour,” according to one critic. So it was scrapped. Only recently did that unsold pilot appear on YouTube. It’s quite fun, and it is impossible not to wonder, while viewing it, how different Shatner’s career might’ve been, had this Nero Wolfe been a success.
• Wired, a three-part British TV drama, passed me by when it was originally broadcast in 2008. However, this write-up in Mystery*File has me wanting to watch it while I’m cooped up inside. And I notice all three episodes are available on YouTube. See it while you can!
• I know Carolyn Weston as the author of Poor, Poor Ophelia, a 1972 procedural adapted as the pilot for ABC-TV’s The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). I didn’t remember that she, along with Jan Huckins, had also penned Face of My Assassin, a 1959 novel described as being “in the tradition of In the Heat of the Night and To Kill a Mockingbird.” A new paperback edition of their book was released this week by Cutting Edge, together with this plot synopsis:
• In his blog, Max Allan Collins provides some useful background to Masquerade for Murder, the latest Mike Hammer novel he “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane.
• I don’t know where he finds the energy, but all this month Spanish blogger José Ignacio Escribano—the brains behind A Crime Is Afoot—has been posting mini-biographies (in English) of classic contributors to mystery fiction. Some of his subjects are still well recognized (Margaret Millar, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ellery Queen), while others are today far less familiar (J. Jefferson Farjeon, Francis Vivian, S.S. Van Dine, J.J. Connington, Dorothy Bowers). If you’d like to expand your knowledge of this field’s history, set aside some time to page through Escribano’s latest posts.
• Speaking of blog series, Paperback Warrior has been busily “unmasking” pseudonymous, obscure, but frequently prolific paperback authors of the 20th century in an irregular succession of posts. We’re talking about people such as “Jack Baynes” (aka Bertram Baynes Fowler), “James Marcott” (Duane Schermerhorn), and “James P. Cody” (Peter Thomas Rohrbach). Although not all of the entries in this series are properly labeled, most can be accessed here.
• Finally, do you, like so many others, have extra time on your hands lately? Why not use it to help librarians and archivists with their “digital detective work”?
virus’ spread. (Inslee, like most U.S. governors, rejects Donald Trump’s arbitrary suggestion that people should head back to work by Easter.)All of this means I’m currently enjoying an unplanned vacation from work at the independent Seattle neighborhood bookshop where I have been helping out for the last year. Fortunately, I have plenty of writing to keep me busy, plus a stack of reading material for entertainment. Included in that soaring assortment are Harry Dolan’s The Good Killer, Max Allan Collins’ Do No Harm, William Boyle’s City of Margins, Peter Robinson’s Many Rivers to Cross, advance copies of Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris and Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer, and a couple of non-fiction releases: Kate Winkler Dawson’s American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI (I loved her 2017 book, Death in the Air) and Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood. Should I require an interlude between books, I have at the ready complete DVD collections of Dan August, Longstreet and Peter Gunn, plus an unsuccessful Raymond Burr pilot film from 1975, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, that I picked up from Modcinema. So I am unlikely to become bored, even if—as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns—this quarantine lasts longer than any of us would prefer.
In a pinch, I can always surf the Web, as I did recently for new stories related to crime fiction. Below are some of my finds.
• “While most of us today are not sick,” writes CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz,” we are stuck at home, and perhaps now is the time to rediscover the lengthy novel.” Specifically, the lengthy crime or thriller novel. Odintz recommends 14 “long-ass books” (exceeding 500 pages) to try, among them James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential (512 pages), Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four (576), Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (576), and John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy (606). Let me propose these eight additional candidates:
— By Gaslight, by Steven Price (730 pages)
— The Death of the Detective, by Mark Smith (608)
— Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (544)
— The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter (700)
— The Price of Butcher’s Meat, by Reginald Hill (528)
— The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox (720)
— The Company, by Robert Littell (896)
— Lamentation, by C.J. Sansom (656)
What about you? Are there excellent extended works of crime and mystery fiction that you think the rest of us should consider tackling as we wait out our mass-seclusion? Feel free to mention them in the Comments section at the end of this post.
• Plans to demolish a residence in Beaconsfield, England, once owned by G.K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries, have been “thrown out by the local council,” reports the Catholic Herald. “South Bucks District Council dismissed proposals by Octagon Developments to demolish the house, called ‘Overroads,’ … and replace it with a block of nine apartments. Planning officers concluded that the size and the scale of the proposed flats would make them ‘intrusive’ and incompatible with the character of the area. Further, they would ‘adversely impact’ upon Top Meadow, the Grade II-listed home that also once belonged to Chesterton, which directly faces Overroads.” This may not ensure the home’s survival, however. As the Herald says: “Given that Overroads is not listed [as a historical site], or otherwise protected, there is nothing to prevent Octagon from appealing against the decision or from other developers submitting alternative applications in the future.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)
• To read about one couple’s pilgrimage to Overroads and other UK spots that were once significant to Chesterton, click here.
• It seems that some incorrect information about this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Contest, sponsored by Mystery Fest Key West, has been making the rounds. So let’s take it from the top: Even though this year’s Mystery Fest has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its annual writing competition will go on. All interested participants are instructed to “submit the first three pages (no more than 750 words) of a finished, unpublished manuscript” to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com by Wednesday, April 15 (not by the 31st, as previously reported). “Attach your manuscript submission as a Word document and include the title, author name, and e-mail address in the header. Judging will be ‘blind.’ Finalists will be notified by May 1 and have until May 10 to submit full, never-before-published manuscripts.” Among the rewards awaiting the author of the victorious entry are publication of his or her work by Absolutely Amazing eBooks and free registration for the next Mystery Fest Key West. Any questions should be addressed to info@mysteryfestkeywest.com.
• Mystery Fanfare brings the sorrowful news that Kate Mattes, who once owned Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts (it was closed in 2009), passed away on Wednesday at her home in Vermont. “It was a sudden cardiac event,” says her sister Emily McAdoo, “and she had been in poor health and getting weaker all along.” The Gumshoe Site says Mattes was 73 years old. A “memorial/reflection” for Mattes is said to be in the planning stages.
• R.I.P., Mark Halegua, a noted pulp-fiction collector and frequent attendee of pulp conventions. A Queens borough resident of New York City, Halegua died on March 18, at 66 years of age.
• I first visited The Mysterious Bookshop in the early 1980s, during my brief inaugural visit to New York City, and now make a point of shopping there whenever I am in Manhattan (which is never often enough). It’s a wonderful place, a palace of riches for crime-fiction lovers. I have always assumed it would be around forever, but this note from owner Otto Penzler, sent out on Monday, has me concerned:
If you don’t live in the New York area, you may not know that the governor has ordered the shutdown of all non-essential businesses. Although I regard bookstores as essential, we nonetheless closed our doors on Friday. Many of our customers showed tremendous loyalty and support in that week, for which I cannot thank you adequately. People in the city have been told to stay home, so we cannot be of service to you at this time.With the number of U.S. crime-fiction stores on the wane, we simply can’t afford to let a gem like The Mysterious Bookshop go out of business. So forget about Amazon; it’s already taken enough of your money. Go here, instead, to find your next memorable read.
Without any income, the store faces a serious existential crisis. If you have not been crushed by being laid off and are in a position to help, your continued support would be mightily welcome. Check our website and find some books that you’d like to have and order them online; it’s easy. We cannot send them until we’re allowed back in the store, but finding a bigbacklog of orders when we return would breathe life into the operation.
If you don’t want to choose a book right now, you can purchase a gift card, good for a future purchase.
Anything you are able to do would mean a lot to all of us. The rent here is brutal, as are such other expenses as insurance, utilities, taxes, and others too plentiful and boring to mention. They don’t stop just because we’re closed. Staff salaries—my greatest concern—will be covered, it seems, with several plans from the federal and state governments.
I admit to being a little uncomfortable asking for your help but, with the unavoidable prospect of seeing the store close forever, I am shamelessly looking to you to give us hope.
• In a brief but heartwarming essay for Literary Hub, writer Bill Hayes remembers a rewarding walk he took last week amid the mostly shuttered retailers of Lower Manhattan, in quest of a new book.
• Do you really want to help a bookstore? Buy a gift card.
• Will virtual book events lead to virtual sales?
• I was not aware there were any crime novels set in the surprisingly-less-dangerous-than-it-used-to-be Colombian capital of Bogotá, much less excellent ones. But CrimeReads’ Paul French this week posted a survey of Bogotá-based yarns in English translation, ranging from Laura Restrepo’s Delirium (2008) and Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018) to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s The Shape of the Ruins (2015). Is it possible our current quarantine will last long enough that I can try one or more of these?
• Another recent CrimeReads piece I enjoyed: Alix Lambert’s feature about Arnold Mesches, who served as courtroom sketch artist during some of the highest-profile trials of the last century.
• Are you missing the 1970s (presuming that you even lived through them)? Then revisit that era via these 16 notable works of crime fiction, set mostly in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I years.
• Foreword Reviews has announced the finalists for its 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards. The two categories likely to be of greatest interest to Rap Sheet readers are these:
Best Mystery:
— Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)
— Moonscape, by Julie Weston (Five Star)
— The Suicide Sonata, by B.V. Lawson (Crimetime Press)
— A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)
— Below the Fold, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
— Boxing the Octopus, by Tim Maleeny (Poisoned Pen Press)
— In the Clutches of the Wicked, by David Carlson (Coffeetown Press)
— Survival Can Be Deadly, by Charlotte Stuart (Amphorae)
— This Will Destroy You, by Pedram Navab (Spuyten Duyvil)
— Treacherous Strand, by Andrea Carter (Oceanview)
Best Thriller/Suspense:
— Green Valley, by Louis Greenberg (Titan)
— Looking for Garbo, by Jon James Miller (Blank Slate Press)
— A Cross to Kill, by Andrew Huff (Kregel)
— Angel in the Fog, by T.J. Turner (Oceanview)
— High Stakes, by John F Dobbyn (Oceanview)
— Passport to Death, by Yigal Zur (Oceanview)
— Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)
— The Guilt We Carry, by Samuel W. Gailey (Oceanview)
— The Nine, by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg (She Writes Press)
— The Unrepentant, by E.A. Aymar (Down & Out)
Per the Foreword Reviews Web site: “Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 17, 2020.” (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)
• This is too bad. From the NW Book Lovers blog: “Out of an abundance of caution and concern for everyone, this year’s Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, originally scheduled for April 25, has been postponed. August 29, 2020, a Saturday, is the tentative new date.” I first took part in this joyous race on behalf of reading back in 2016 (the event’s sophomore year), and have continued to participate ever since. Although delaying IBD because of the novel coronavirus scare is regrettable, the fact is that August usually brings better weather to Seattle than April does. So maybe this is good news?
• Happy 15th birthday to the UK site Crimesquad!
• In my last “Bullet Points” wrap-up, I mentioned that the 1978 TV film No Prince for My Cinderella, starring former Brady Bunch paterfamilias Robert Reed as a psychologist-cum-detective “who specializes in finding teen runaways,” can now be purchased in DVD format from Modcinema. What I didn’t know then, but that author Lee Goldberg has since informed me, is that No Prince for My Cinderella served as the pilot for Operation: Runaway, a Quinn Martin series that debuted in April 1978. Reed evidently starred in the initial three episodes. But, says Goldberg, he “was so difficult to work with that he was fired after the first season and replaced by Alan Feinstein,” who played Steve Arizzio, “former juvenile officer, now a clinical psychologist.” With Feinstein’s entry, the show became The Runaways, and lasted 13 more episodes, ending in September 1979. For the time being, at least, you can watch No Prince for My Cinderella on YouTube. The second series main title sequence is embedded below.
• As Wikipedia explains, in 1959 Vienna-born actor Kurt Kasznar and Quebec-born performer William Shatner (the latter then 28 years old, not yet famous for his role in Star Trek) were cast as Rex Stout characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the pilot for a prospective weekly series on CBS-TV, titled simply Nero Wolfe. “The pilot episode, ‘Count the Man Down,’ … was filmed in Manhattan in March 1959,” Wikipedia says. “The half-hour program concerned the mysterious death of a scientist during a guided missile launch at Cape Canaveral.” Plans were to slot Nero Wolfe into the CBS schedule at 10 p.m. on Mondays, beginning in September 1959. That didn’t happen. Why? The show “was considered too good to be confined to half an hour,” according to one critic. So it was scrapped. Only recently did that unsold pilot appear on YouTube. It’s quite fun, and it is impossible not to wonder, while viewing it, how different Shatner’s career might’ve been, had this Nero Wolfe been a success.
• Wired, a three-part British TV drama, passed me by when it was originally broadcast in 2008. However, this write-up in Mystery*File has me wanting to watch it while I’m cooped up inside. And I notice all three episodes are available on YouTube. See it while you can!
• I know Carolyn Weston as the author of Poor, Poor Ophelia, a 1972 procedural adapted as the pilot for ABC-TV’s The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). I didn’t remember that she, along with Jan Huckins, had also penned Face of My Assassin, a 1959 novel described as being “in the tradition of In the Heat of the Night and To Kill a Mockingbird.” A new paperback edition of their book was released this week by Cutting Edge, together with this plot synopsis:
It’s 1959. Matthew Scott is a widowed, alcoholic reporter from New York who seeks personal and professional redemption when he’s sent to the Deep South to write about a town that is defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision to integrate blacks into schools. His mere presence is a catalyst that ignites long-buried racial, political, religious, and personal conflicts among the residents, both white and black, ripping the town apart. Those tensions violently explode when Scott is falsely arrested by the bigoted, tyrannical sheriff for the rape and murder of an out-spoken black schoolteacher.In addition, Cutting Edge recently re-released (for e-readers) Weston’s debut novel, 1956’s Tormented, ballyhooed as “a searing novel of erotic obsession.” Clearly, my previous conception of Weston’s range as an author was markedly too limited.
This is a stunning, shockingly vivid portrait of a dark time in America’s history, a tale of intolerance, bigotry and hope that's as relevant today as it was sixty years ago.
• In his blog, Max Allan Collins provides some useful background to Masquerade for Murder, the latest Mike Hammer novel he “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane.
• I don’t know where he finds the energy, but all this month Spanish blogger José Ignacio Escribano—the brains behind A Crime Is Afoot—has been posting mini-biographies (in English) of classic contributors to mystery fiction. Some of his subjects are still well recognized (Margaret Millar, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ellery Queen), while others are today far less familiar (J. Jefferson Farjeon, Francis Vivian, S.S. Van Dine, J.J. Connington, Dorothy Bowers). If you’d like to expand your knowledge of this field’s history, set aside some time to page through Escribano’s latest posts.
• Speaking of blog series, Paperback Warrior has been busily “unmasking” pseudonymous, obscure, but frequently prolific paperback authors of the 20th century in an irregular succession of posts. We’re talking about people such as “Jack Baynes” (aka Bertram Baynes Fowler), “James Marcott” (Duane Schermerhorn), and “James P. Cody” (Peter Thomas Rohrbach). Although not all of the entries in this series are properly labeled, most can be accessed here.
• Finally, do you, like so many others, have extra time on your hands lately? Why not use it to help librarians and archivists with their “digital detective work”?
Friday, March 27, 2020
A Rainy City of Dark Desires
Earlier this morning, my 14th article for CrimeReads appeared in that excellent online publication. Its topic—Seattle, Washington, as a setting for crime and thriller fiction—is one that I have been thinking about for quite a while, but tackling it required that I first read or re-read a variety of novels in my possession.
All of the ingredients necessary to make Seattle a fertile environment for tales of homicide, turmoil, and detection seem to exist in this Pacific Northwest city: a history boasting “criminality of all sorts and severities”; an ethnically, culturally, and financially diverse population; an economy powered by both modern, rising enterprises (Microsoft, Amazon, and other high-tech trailblazers) and long-established businesses (Boeing, Starbucks, Nordstrom, etc.); and of course, oft-inclement weather that lends a noirish aspect to any story’s backdrop, with local rain and cloud shadow supplying cover to malefactors.
That Seattle hasn’t yet become synonymous with crime fiction in the same way that, say, New York City, L.A., and San Francisco have certainly isn’t for wont of trying. Indeed, there have been many fine Seattle-set novels in this genre produced over the last 80 years—10 of which I highlight today in CrimeReads, by authors including Stuart Brock, Bernadette Pajer, G.M. Ford, and K.K. Beck.
* * *
While assembling my piece, I couldn’t help but think about how several famous contributors to this field of fiction once had experience
with Seattle, yet failed to employ the city in their work.In 1920, for instance, Dashiell Hammett sought hospital treatment for tuberculosis in Tacoma (just 33 miles south of Seattle), and while there stumbled across the inspiration for the famous “Flitcraft Parable” that his gumshoe Sam Spade recites in The Maltese Falcon (1930). Hammett likely found time during his weeks-long stay, or perhaps amid his previous travels up the West Coast as a Pinkerton detective, to see Seattle’s sights. But they must not have impressed him greatly, for the town didn’t star in his later stories. Raymond Chandler, too, knew this so-called Emerald City. He stayed here with friends awhile in 1932, after being dismissed from his oil company job in Los Angeles for alcoholism and absenteeism. Once again, though, Chandler’s fiction reflected no significant interest in this locale.
Alan Furst also resided in these parts for a spell, though the historical espionage yarns he’s now turning out (A Hero of France, Under Occupation) take place primarily in Europe. Likewise, British-born author Michael Dibdin made his home here from the 1990s through the mid-2000s, but wrote primarily about an Italian police commissioner named Aurelio Zen. And as far as I know, thriller author Robert Ferrigno still resides in Kirkland, a historic burg on the east side of Lake Washington, but prefers to place his mayhem-packed stories as far away from this place—and his family—as he can. The sole exception, I believe, is his 2013 novel, The Girl Who Cried Wolf.
If any or all of these writers had done more to integrate the Northwest’s largest metropolis into their storytelling, there’s no question that Seattle would be recognized more widely as an ideal milieu for crime fiction. But would their books have been better than those that already exist? It’s impossible to know.
READ MORE: “What Makes Seattle Such a Good Setting for Thrillers?” by Burt Weissbourd (CrimeReads).
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
PaperBack: “The Hound of the Baskervilles”
Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Dell, 15th printing, 1971). This third of Conan Doyle’s four Sherlock Holmes novels was published as a book in 1902 by George Newnes, after first being serialized in The Strand Magazine. The Dell paperback edition shown above was the one I read in high school. It remains on my bookshelves even to this day.
Cover illustrator unidentified.
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Dell, 15th printing, 1971). This third of Conan Doyle’s four Sherlock Holmes novels was published as a book in 1902 by George Newnes, after first being serialized in The Strand Magazine. The Dell paperback edition shown above was the one I read in high school. It remains on my bookshelves even to this day.
Cover illustrator unidentified.
Mosley’s Rack of Rewards Expands
Walter Mosley—author of the Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill mysteries—will receive this year’s John Seigenthaler Legends Award, to be presented on April 1 during the 2020 Killer Nashville convention (provided that event is not cancelled like so many others).
A press release says this prize is named after John Seigenthaler, “a well-known editor, publisher, writer, TV personality, First Amendment champion, advocate for writers, and longtime supporter of Killer Nashville. Like its namesake, the annual Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award is bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come.”
The same alert observes that in addition to Mosley having been named, in 2016, as a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, “he has won numerous awards, including an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image awards.”
A press release says this prize is named after John Seigenthaler, “a well-known editor, publisher, writer, TV personality, First Amendment champion, advocate for writers, and longtime supporter of Killer Nashville. Like its namesake, the annual Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award is bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come.”
The same alert observes that in addition to Mosley having been named, in 2016, as a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, “he has won numerous awards, including an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image awards.”
Malice Domestic: See You Next Year
COVID-19 claims yet another victim: this year’s Malice Domestic conference, which was to have taken place from April 30 to May 3 in Bethesda, Maryland. Earlier this month, the event had been postponed, as a result of the virus pandemic. But a new note posted on the convention’s Web site reads:
In Reference to Murder adds: “Despite not having an in-person event this year, the Agatha Awards will go on, with electronic voting to take place on the dates it would have during the conference. Winners will then be announced during a special live streamed event.”
Click here to see a list of 2020 Agatha Award nominees.
After careful consideration, the Malice Domestic board has reached the decision to cancel this year’s Malice. We had hoped to be able to postpone this year’s event, but given the uncertainty we face, the most prudent decision at this time is to cancel this year’s event and focus our efforts on a spectacular Malice Domestic 33, which will beDetails regarding this cancellation can be found here.
April 29-May 2, 2021.
In Reference to Murder adds: “Despite not having an in-person event this year, the Agatha Awards will go on, with electronic voting to take place on the dates it would have during the conference. Winners will then be announced during a special live streamed event.”
Click here to see a list of 2020 Agatha Award nominees.
Monday, March 23, 2020
The Leftys Come Through After All
This year’s Left Coast Crime convention (scheduled for March 12-15 in San Diego, California) may have been cancelled partway through due to the worsening coronavirus pandemic, but today still brings an announcement of the 2020 Lefty Award winners, in four categories.
Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
Scot & Soda, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
Also nominated for this prize: 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);
and Drowned Under, by Wendall Thomas (Poisoned Pen Press)
Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (for books set before 1970):
The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
Also nominated: 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); and The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)
Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)
Also nominated: The Ninja Daughter, by Tori Eldridge (Agora); Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton); One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House); and Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Agora)
Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
Lost Tomorrows, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
Also nominated: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco); Borrowed Time, by Tracy Clark (Kensington); They All Fall Down, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge); and Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)
Victors were supposed to have been chosen by a vote of convention attendees, with the presentation of prizes to have taken place on Saturday, March 14. Instead, awards co-chair Lucinda Surber tells me that eligible voters—which means everyone who was registered for LCC as of March 1, whether they attended the convention or not—were given the chance to cast their ballots online during a seven-day period ending at midnight (PDT) on Sunday, March 22.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners, who should soon receive their awards via the public mail.
Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
Scot & Soda, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
Also nominated for this prize: 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);
and Drowned Under, by Wendall Thomas (Poisoned Pen Press)Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (for books set before 1970):
The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
Also nominated: 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); and The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)
Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)
Also nominated: The Ninja Daughter, by Tori Eldridge (Agora); Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim (Sarah Crichton); One Night Gone, by Tara Laskowski (Graydon House); and Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Agora)
Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
Lost Tomorrows, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
Also nominated: Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco); Borrowed Time, by Tracy Clark (Kensington); They All Fall Down, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge); and Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)
Victors were supposed to have been chosen by a vote of convention attendees, with the presentation of prizes to have taken place on Saturday, March 14. Instead, awards co-chair Lucinda Surber tells me that eligible voters—which means everyone who was registered for LCC as of March 1, whether they attended the convention or not—were given the chance to cast their ballots online during a seven-day period ending at midnight (PDT) on Sunday, March 22.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners, who should soon receive their awards via the public mail.
Rogers and Call Take Their Final Bows
I not a big country music enthusiast—jazz and classical are more my style—so I can’t claim great familiarity with the career of Kenny Rogers, who died this last Friday night, March 20, of “natural causes” at age 81. Sure, I remember some of his songs—notably “The Gambler” (1978) and “Islands in the Stream,” the latter of which he performed as a duet with Dolly Parton. But most of the works on Rogers’ discography are unfamiliar to me.
What I do recall, though, are a few of his acting roles. While I watched him in the 1980 TV movie The Gambler (which further exploited his number of that same title), Rogers’ performances in the only two episodes of the mystery MacShayne are more firmly lodged in my memory. You may or may not know that show, and you can be forgiven if you do not. Part of NBC’s short-lived 1990s “wheel series,” the Friday Night Mystery (which also featured a Hart to Hart revival and Lou Gossett Jr.’s Ray Alexander), it cast Rogers as John J. MacShayne, the head of security at a Las Vegas casino. The Thrilling Detective Web Site describes the character this way:
It’s likely that memories of MacShayne will fade further with time, and that Rogers will be remembered solely for his singing. (Which may have included the theme from ABC’s 1969-1970 drama The New People.) Despite the “sandpapery” nature of his voice, The Washington Post’s pop music critic, Chris Richards, opined that it “was a rough, fine, reliable thing that made every sound around it feel smooth.”
As Deadline explains, Call “made his TV debut in 1979 on CBS’ Barnaby Jones. Appearances on Little House on the Prairie, V, and Trapper John, M.D. followed.” His résumé also included parts on small-screen dramas such as The X Files, Family Law, Burn Notice, Castle, and EZ Streets, the last being a 1996-1997 CBS crime series on which Call held a regular slot as gangster Michael “Fivers” Dugan. His films varied from At Close Range, I Am Sam, and Born on the Fourth of July to Waterworld and Murder by Numbers.
Call was 70 years old when he passed away.
What I do recall, though, are a few of his acting roles. While I watched him in the 1980 TV movie The Gambler (which further exploited his number of that same title), Rogers’ performances in the only two episodes of the mystery MacShayne are more firmly lodged in my memory. You may or may not know that show, and you can be forgiven if you do not. Part of NBC’s short-lived 1990s “wheel series,” the Friday Night Mystery (which also featured a Hart to Hart revival and Lou Gossett Jr.’s Ray Alexander), it cast Rogers as John J. MacShayne, the head of security at a Las Vegas casino. The Thrilling Detective Web Site describes the character this way:
MacShayne, played by Rogers with all the shaggy charm he could muster, was an inveterate gambler whose bad luck streak seemed endless. So the casino’s board of directors strikes a deal with MacShayne, whereby he can work off his rather large hotel bill by becoming a sort of troubleshooter, protecting the hotel and casino from “thieves and con men.”As I said, only two of these films were shown, both in 1994: MacShayne:Winner Takes All and MacShayne: The Final Roll of the Dice. They’re available through Amazon, at the links provided here.
Of course, who was going to protect the casino/hotel from MacShayne was another story. A compulsive gambler and con artist himself, recently out of jail after serving ninety days (“the only man I know [who] can get arrested for illegal gambling in a state where gambling's legal”), MacShayne has his work cut out for him.
It’s likely that memories of MacShayne will fade further with time, and that Rogers will be remembered solely for his singing. (Which may have included the theme from ABC’s 1969-1970 drama The New People.) Despite the “sandpapery” nature of his voice, The Washington Post’s pop music critic, Chris Richards, opined that it “was a rough, fine, reliable thing that made every sound around it feel smooth.”
* * *
Another loss to the entertainment world came earlier, on February 27, when American actor Roy Dana “R.D.” Call died as a result of complications
from back surgery in Layton, Utah.As Deadline explains, Call “made his TV debut in 1979 on CBS’ Barnaby Jones. Appearances on Little House on the Prairie, V, and Trapper John, M.D. followed.” His résumé also included parts on small-screen dramas such as The X Files, Family Law, Burn Notice, Castle, and EZ Streets, the last being a 1996-1997 CBS crime series on which Call held a regular slot as gangster Michael “Fivers” Dugan. His films varied from At Close Range, I Am Sam, and Born on the Fourth of July to Waterworld and Murder by Numbers.
Call was 70 years old when he passed away.
Stock Up Now
Do you need more books to get you through our present mass-seclusion? Then take a gander over The Rap Sheet’s spring release guide, which features more than 350 works—primarily crime and thriller novels—scheduled for publication on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean between now and the end of May. There should be enough suggestions there to fit every reading taste.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Bullet Points: Age of Anxiety Edition
• Nominees for the 2020 British Book Awards—aka The Nibbies—were announced earlier today, in 24 categories. There’s no guarantee that this year’s presentations (administered as usual by The Bookseller) will go ahead, amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic; they’ve already been postponed until June 29, in London. But we can hope for the best. Below are the
half-dozen novels shortlisted for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year.
— My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic)
— The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins)
— How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
— The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides (Orion)
— Impostor, by L.J. Ross
(Dark Skies)
— Blue Moon, by Lee Child (Bantam Press)
Click here to see all of this year’s shortlisted nominees for the Nibbies.
• Swedish author David Lagercrantz (right), who penned three additional Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequels after that series’ creator, Stieg Larsson, died in 2004 (the most recent of Lagercrantz’s entries being The Girl Who Lived Twice), has a crime-fiction trilogy of his own devising due out soon from the UK’s MacLehose Press. “Described as ‘a modern Sherlock Holmes saga,’ the Rekke trilogy features a young police officer, raised in a rough neighbourhood, and an older professor specialised in psychopathy and interrogational techniques,” explains The Bookseller. The first novel is expected to appear in bookshops by August or September of 2021, with Alfred A. Knopf having picked up the U.S. rights to that yarn.
• Sisters in Crime is accepting applications for its seventh annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, with a $2,000 grant up for grabs. This prize of course honors African-American author Bland, the creator of a series starring Illinois police detective Marti MacAlister (Dead Time, Suddenly a Stranger), who died in 2010. Those wishing to apply for the 2020 award must do so by June 8. The winner is supposed to be announced by July 15. Previous recipients include Jessica Martinez (2019), Mia Manansala (2018), Jessica Ellis Laine (2017), and Stephane Dunn (2016).
• When I mentioned last weekend that the Murder and Mayhem in Chicago conference, planned for Saturday, March 21, had been cancelled, I wasn’t aware that it was being moved online. Sign in here ahead of time in order to watch the events, which begin tomorrow at 9 a.m. CDT and run through 4 p.m.
• Senior Editor Molly Odintz asserts, in CrimeReads, that mystery and thriller novels provide ideal escapes from our present worries:
• Tor.com brings word that this country’s “biggest publishing trade event and conference, Book Expo America and its associated convention BookCon, have officially been postponed until this summer because of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak … BEA will take place between July 22nd and 24th, while BookCon will shift to July 25th and 26th at New York City’s Javits Center. This is currently the same weekend that San Diego Comic Con is scheduled to take place, leaving an open question as to what conference publishers and authors will prioritize. (If SDCC isn’t delayed, in any case.)”
• In the meantime, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, previously slated to take place from April 18 to 19 at the University of Southern California campus in L.A., has been postponed until the weekend of October 3-4. Additionally, according to a press alert, the Book Prizes ceremony—planned for April 17, and including five contenders in the Mystery/Thriller category—“will not be held this year. Book Prizes honorees and winners will be acknowledged through an announcement which remains scheduled for April 17.”
• Robert E. Howard Days, a pulp-fiction celebration that takes its name from the prolific creator of Conan the Barbarian, had been set to draw visitors to Howard’s birthplace of Cross Plains, Texas, in June. But it, too, has been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis.
• Another unfortunate turn: Manhattan’s famous Mysterious Bookshop is shuttered “for the foreseeable future,” as the State of New York decrees “that all nonessential businesses must close their doors until an end to this pandemic is in sight.”
• Is this the right time to begin composing a COVID-19-inspired novel? Essayist Sloane Crosley suggests not. “From an artistic standpoint,” she writes in The New York Times, “it’s best to let tragedy cool before gulping it down and spitting it back into everyone’s faces. After all, Don Quixote was published about a century into the Spanish Inquisition. Art should be given a metaphorical berth as wide as the literal one we’re giving one another.”
• I hadn’t heard before that Marilyn Stasio, who has penned the Times Book Review’s must-read crime-fiction column ever since 1988, had suffered an accident. But the Review’s latest newsletter includes this note: “And for the many readers who have been writing and asking about our cherished crime columnist, you will be glad to know that the hardened New York City taxi that tried to mow her down found its match in Marilyn. She has fully recovered from the accident and is back to her biweekly habit of reviewing.” Well, thank goodness!
• R.I.P., Stuart Whitman. Born in San Francisco, California, in February 1928, the productive and versatile actor—who featured in such films as The Comancheros (1961), The Mark (1961, for which he received an Oscar nomination), and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965)—died from skin cancer this last Monday at age 92. In addition to his big-screen credits, Whitman appeared in more than a dozen episodes of the 1955-1959 TV series Highway Patrol, starred in the 1967-1968 TV western Cimarron Strip, and led the 1971 Irwin Allen-produced TV pilot City Beneath the Sea. Also decorating his résumé were guest-starring parts on Night Gallery, The Streets of San Francisco, Hec Ramsey, Police Story, Ellery Queen, Harry O, and Simon and Simon. Terence Towles Canote offers a fairly thorough record of Whitman’s career in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts.
• Another actor gone from this world: Lyle Waggoner. He may be best remembered for his roles on The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, but Waggoner also guest-starred on such small-screen crime dramas as Charlie’s Angels, Hardcastle and McCormick, The New Mike Hammer, and Murder, She Wrote. He perished on March 17 at age 84, his cause of death being an unspecified form of cancer.
• In Reference to Murder's B.V. Lawson reports that “The International Book Publishers Association [has] announced the finalists for the annual Ben Franklin Award, celebrating excellence in book editorial and design. The Mystery & Thriller category shortlist [comprises] Bleed Through: Alex Greco, ADA Series Book 2, by Roger Canaff (Brooklyn Writers Press); The Last Getaway, by Clay Savage (Ocean Park Press); and A Veil Removed: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel, by Michelle Cox (She Writes Press).”
• One of the books I’ve acquired to stave off cabin fever amid our present mass-seclusion is the 30th-anniversary edition of Mark Dawidziak’s The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, a long-out-of-print and wonderfully deep dive into Peter Falk’s Columbo, which premiered as part of the NBC Mystery Movie series back in 1971. That purchase, in turn, reminded me to check up a favorite blog coincidentally also called The Columbophile, where I discovered two fresh posts of interest. First, this critical assessment of “the very best” Columbo elements from the ’70s. (Yes, 1977’s “The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case” wins a mention.) And second, this compilation of what the blog’s anonymous author contends are the series’ lowest points from that same era (the greatest derision being heaped upon 1976’s “Last Salute to the Commodore”). I’ve been thinking a lot about Columbo over the last week, as it figures into a writing assignment I have taken on, and preparation for that project will require my rewatching a variety of episodes, so these resources should help refine my choices.
• By the way, if you’re at all curious about Dawidziak and his book, don’t miss The Columbophile’s 2019 interview with him.
• And speaking of literary interviews, peruse this exchange between Spy Command managing editor Bill Koenig and Mark A. Altman, the co-author (with Edward Gross) of Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond. It includes Altman’s succinct analysis of what impact the delayed release of No Time to Die might have on that 25th 007 film:
• Author Lee Goldberg alerts me to the fact that a five-disc DVD set of Matt Helm, containing all 13 episodes of that 1975-1976 Tony Franciosa TV series, can now be purchased in a version from France. However, he explains, those discs (with their English soundtrack, but French subtitles) “are unplayable on U.S. DVD players … unless you have a multi-standard DVD player (which I do) or software that
allows you to watch it on your computer’s DVD drive.” Thus far, no official Region 1 release of Matt Helm (viewable in the United States and Canada) is yet available.
• Over time, I have amassed a collection of DVDs from the Web site Modcinema, which sells movies and made-for-TV flicks produced during the 1960s and ’70s. I’m usually familiar with the small-screen offerings, either because I watched them once upon a time, or because I’ve read about them in Goldberg’s fat volume, Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989. But this one escaped my notice: 1978’s No Prince for My Cinderella, starring Robert Reed as David McKay, a psychologist “who specializes in finding teen runaways.” Of McKay, the site says:
• Caroline Crampton, host of the podcast Shedunnit, has posted a new episode, “Happily Ever After.” As she explains in her latest newsletter, her topic this time “is something that I've been wanting to do for ages: I’m a big fan of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane romance in Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, and it was a real pleasure to consider that in detail. I also read the four Jill Paton Walsh ‘continuation’ novels to see how that relationship develops in different hands, and … against my expectations I mostly enjoyed them. My favourite was the WWII one A Presumption of Death, in case you were wondering.”
• While we’re on the subject of podcasts, I have failed to mention Nancie Clare’s most recent Speaking of Mysteries guests: Jason Pinter (Hide Away), Hilary Davidson (Don’t Look Down), Susan Elia MacNeal (The King’s Justice), and Heather Chavez (No Bad Deed). I think I might have drawn your attention already to her conversations with Lee Goldberg (Lost Hills) and Alan Furst (Under Occupation), but just in case I forgot to do so, you now have the necessary links.
• Did you know that there’s a blog called JJ Gittes Investigations, focusing on “the films of private investigator Jake Gittes” (Chinatown, The Two Jakes)? Yeah, neither did I—until yesterday, when I found that the site’s unidentified author had posted a favorable review of Sam Wasson’s February-released non-fiction book, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (Flatiron), another work I look toward for entertainment during my coronavirus sheltering. “While much of the ground has been covered before,” this blog observes, “The Big Goodbye reveals so much more about the creation of Chinatown, in such rich detail and depth, that sometimes you feel as if you’re really there. However, this is not a run-of-the-mill account of the making of the film; rather, it is an elaborate, careful illustration of Wasson’s thesis that Chinatown was a product of multiple personalities and events which converged to produce a perfect storm that is not only a cinematic masterpiece, but also the high water mark of Hollywood artistry before its decline into the ‘cinema of sensation,’ which began with 1970s disaster movies, such as The Towering Inferno, Airport and Earthquake.”
• Finally, here’s some good advice from Sergeant Phil Esterhaus to get you through these frightening days of disease.
Stay safe, everyone. We’ll get through this together.
— My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic)
— The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins)
— How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
— The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides (Orion)— Impostor, by L.J. Ross
(Dark Skies)
— Blue Moon, by Lee Child (Bantam Press)
Click here to see all of this year’s shortlisted nominees for the Nibbies.
• Swedish author David Lagercrantz (right), who penned three additional Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequels after that series’ creator, Stieg Larsson, died in 2004 (the most recent of Lagercrantz’s entries being The Girl Who Lived Twice), has a crime-fiction trilogy of his own devising due out soon from the UK’s MacLehose Press. “Described as ‘a modern Sherlock Holmes saga,’ the Rekke trilogy features a young police officer, raised in a rough neighbourhood, and an older professor specialised in psychopathy and interrogational techniques,” explains The Bookseller. The first novel is expected to appear in bookshops by August or September of 2021, with Alfred A. Knopf having picked up the U.S. rights to that yarn.
• Sisters in Crime is accepting applications for its seventh annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, with a $2,000 grant up for grabs. This prize of course honors African-American author Bland, the creator of a series starring Illinois police detective Marti MacAlister (Dead Time, Suddenly a Stranger), who died in 2010. Those wishing to apply for the 2020 award must do so by June 8. The winner is supposed to be announced by July 15. Previous recipients include Jessica Martinez (2019), Mia Manansala (2018), Jessica Ellis Laine (2017), and Stephane Dunn (2016).
• When I mentioned last weekend that the Murder and Mayhem in Chicago conference, planned for Saturday, March 21, had been cancelled, I wasn’t aware that it was being moved online. Sign in here ahead of time in order to watch the events, which begin tomorrow at 9 a.m. CDT and run through 4 p.m.
• Senior Editor Molly Odintz asserts, in CrimeReads, that mystery and thriller novels provide ideal escapes from our present worries:
Why are crime books so soothing? Or for that matter, why is genre fiction, or even fiction in general, a place of solace in times of need?• Other recent CrimeReads offerings of note: Rebecca Rego Barry remarks on how mystery author and rare book collector Carolyn Wells “helped to create the ‘biblio-mystery’ genre”; Suzanne Redfearn lists “six current novels in which architecture plays an important role”; in this piece Stephanie Wrobel “breaks down the nine types of twist endings and the books that executed them best”; and in an interview with Harlan Coben, the author insists that the original Planet of the Apes movie provides “the best twist ending in history.”
Fiction in general, and much narrative nonfiction, is immersive, and perhaps that is part of the answer. Genre fiction, with its need to pay attention to both the contents of the book and how those contents measure up to genre conventions, seems particularly good at distracting busy minds. I tend to judge the success of fiction by the following measure: does it require enough concentration, or grip my attention so fully, that I don’t start thinking about doing my laundry?
Maybe right now, we can all enjoy reading whatever books grip our attention so fully that we don’t have to think about anything outside the closed world of storytelling, for at least the few hours that it takes to read that story.
• Tor.com brings word that this country’s “biggest publishing trade event and conference, Book Expo America and its associated convention BookCon, have officially been postponed until this summer because of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak … BEA will take place between July 22nd and 24th, while BookCon will shift to July 25th and 26th at New York City’s Javits Center. This is currently the same weekend that San Diego Comic Con is scheduled to take place, leaving an open question as to what conference publishers and authors will prioritize. (If SDCC isn’t delayed, in any case.)”
• In the meantime, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, previously slated to take place from April 18 to 19 at the University of Southern California campus in L.A., has been postponed until the weekend of October 3-4. Additionally, according to a press alert, the Book Prizes ceremony—planned for April 17, and including five contenders in the Mystery/Thriller category—“will not be held this year. Book Prizes honorees and winners will be acknowledged through an announcement which remains scheduled for April 17.”
• Robert E. Howard Days, a pulp-fiction celebration that takes its name from the prolific creator of Conan the Barbarian, had been set to draw visitors to Howard’s birthplace of Cross Plains, Texas, in June. But it, too, has been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis.
• Another unfortunate turn: Manhattan’s famous Mysterious Bookshop is shuttered “for the foreseeable future,” as the State of New York decrees “that all nonessential businesses must close their doors until an end to this pandemic is in sight.”
• Is this the right time to begin composing a COVID-19-inspired novel? Essayist Sloane Crosley suggests not. “From an artistic standpoint,” she writes in The New York Times, “it’s best to let tragedy cool before gulping it down and spitting it back into everyone’s faces. After all, Don Quixote was published about a century into the Spanish Inquisition. Art should be given a metaphorical berth as wide as the literal one we’re giving one another.”
• I hadn’t heard before that Marilyn Stasio, who has penned the Times Book Review’s must-read crime-fiction column ever since 1988, had suffered an accident. But the Review’s latest newsletter includes this note: “And for the many readers who have been writing and asking about our cherished crime columnist, you will be glad to know that the hardened New York City taxi that tried to mow her down found its match in Marilyn. She has fully recovered from the accident and is back to her biweekly habit of reviewing.” Well, thank goodness!
• R.I.P., Stuart Whitman. Born in San Francisco, California, in February 1928, the productive and versatile actor—who featured in such films as The Comancheros (1961), The Mark (1961, for which he received an Oscar nomination), and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965)—died from skin cancer this last Monday at age 92. In addition to his big-screen credits, Whitman appeared in more than a dozen episodes of the 1955-1959 TV series Highway Patrol, starred in the 1967-1968 TV western Cimarron Strip, and led the 1971 Irwin Allen-produced TV pilot City Beneath the Sea. Also decorating his résumé were guest-starring parts on Night Gallery, The Streets of San Francisco, Hec Ramsey, Police Story, Ellery Queen, Harry O, and Simon and Simon. Terence Towles Canote offers a fairly thorough record of Whitman’s career in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts.
• Another actor gone from this world: Lyle Waggoner. He may be best remembered for his roles on The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, but Waggoner also guest-starred on such small-screen crime dramas as Charlie’s Angels, Hardcastle and McCormick, The New Mike Hammer, and Murder, She Wrote. He perished on March 17 at age 84, his cause of death being an unspecified form of cancer.
• In Reference to Murder's B.V. Lawson reports that “The International Book Publishers Association [has] announced the finalists for the annual Ben Franklin Award, celebrating excellence in book editorial and design. The Mystery & Thriller category shortlist [comprises] Bleed Through: Alex Greco, ADA Series Book 2, by Roger Canaff (Brooklyn Writers Press); The Last Getaway, by Clay Savage (Ocean Park Press); and A Veil Removed: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel, by Michelle Cox (She Writes Press).”
• One of the books I’ve acquired to stave off cabin fever amid our present mass-seclusion is the 30th-anniversary edition of Mark Dawidziak’s The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, a long-out-of-print and wonderfully deep dive into Peter Falk’s Columbo, which premiered as part of the NBC Mystery Movie series back in 1971. That purchase, in turn, reminded me to check up a favorite blog coincidentally also called The Columbophile, where I discovered two fresh posts of interest. First, this critical assessment of “the very best” Columbo elements from the ’70s. (Yes, 1977’s “The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case” wins a mention.) And second, this compilation of what the blog’s anonymous author contends are the series’ lowest points from that same era (the greatest derision being heaped upon 1976’s “Last Salute to the Commodore”). I’ve been thinking a lot about Columbo over the last week, as it figures into a writing assignment I have taken on, and preparation for that project will require my rewatching a variety of episodes, so these resources should help refine my choices.
• By the way, if you’re at all curious about Dawidziak and his book, don’t miss The Columbophile’s 2019 interview with him.
• And speaking of literary interviews, peruse this exchange between Spy Command managing editor Bill Koenig and Mark A. Altman, the co-author (with Edward Gross) of Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond. It includes Altman’s succinct analysis of what impact the delayed release of No Time to Die might have on that 25th 007 film:
I was really disappointed when No Time to Die was pushed to Thanksgiving, but obviously in retrospect it was a very smart and necessary decision. I’m really hoping that it is a fitting capper to the [Daniel] Craig era and takes its cues from Casino Royale, not to mention On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and doesn’t double down on the family drama of Spectre.• Following its limited release this month in U.S. theaters, the Australian film Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears—based on the 2012-2015 TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and starring Essie Davis as a glamorous private eye in late 1920s Melbourne—will begin streaming in the States on Monday, March 23, via the Acorn TV platform. Its premiere in Great Britain, on Alibi, is scheduled for Friday, April 10. Click here to watch a trailer for this picture.
But I always go into every 007 movie hoping it’ll be the best one ever and sometimes I [am] more disappointed than others. I actually think the release date might help the film as it could play all through the holidays. It’s not unlike when Force Awakens got bumped from summer and ended up being a huge hit for Christmas and changed the whole release pattern for Star Wars films, with Solo proving a notable outlier.
• Author Lee Goldberg alerts me to the fact that a five-disc DVD set of Matt Helm, containing all 13 episodes of that 1975-1976 Tony Franciosa TV series, can now be purchased in a version from France. However, he explains, those discs (with their English soundtrack, but French subtitles) “are unplayable on U.S. DVD players … unless you have a multi-standard DVD player (which I do) or software that
allows you to watch it on your computer’s DVD drive.” Thus far, no official Region 1 release of Matt Helm (viewable in the United States and Canada) is yet available.• Over time, I have amassed a collection of DVDs from the Web site Modcinema, which sells movies and made-for-TV flicks produced during the 1960s and ’70s. I’m usually familiar with the small-screen offerings, either because I watched them once upon a time, or because I’ve read about them in Goldberg’s fat volume, Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989. But this one escaped my notice: 1978’s No Prince for My Cinderella, starring Robert Reed as David McKay, a psychologist “who specializes in finding teen runaways.” Of McKay, the site says:
He’s firm when he needs to be but adds just the rightHmm. “Mike Brady” as a gumshoe? I think I’ll pass.
dose of humor to lighten things up. One case has him chasing down a scrappy Scott Baio as a confused kid who forms a bond of respect with Reed. The main story has a troubled teenage girl (Terri Nunn, future singer of [the band] Berlin) who suffers from split personality. To make matters worse her alter ego is a hardened prostitute.
The film goes back and forth between Reed’s efforts to find Nunn and her sleazy descent from innocent street hooker to high-class call girl. Nunn (who was only 17 when she made this) gives a surprisingly solid performance as she snaps back and forth, from one personality to the other.
• Caroline Crampton, host of the podcast Shedunnit, has posted a new episode, “Happily Ever After.” As she explains in her latest newsletter, her topic this time “is something that I've been wanting to do for ages: I’m a big fan of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane romance in Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, and it was a real pleasure to consider that in detail. I also read the four Jill Paton Walsh ‘continuation’ novels to see how that relationship develops in different hands, and … against my expectations I mostly enjoyed them. My favourite was the WWII one A Presumption of Death, in case you were wondering.”
• While we’re on the subject of podcasts, I have failed to mention Nancie Clare’s most recent Speaking of Mysteries guests: Jason Pinter (Hide Away), Hilary Davidson (Don’t Look Down), Susan Elia MacNeal (The King’s Justice), and Heather Chavez (No Bad Deed). I think I might have drawn your attention already to her conversations with Lee Goldberg (Lost Hills) and Alan Furst (Under Occupation), but just in case I forgot to do so, you now have the necessary links.
• Did you know that there’s a blog called JJ Gittes Investigations, focusing on “the films of private investigator Jake Gittes” (Chinatown, The Two Jakes)? Yeah, neither did I—until yesterday, when I found that the site’s unidentified author had posted a favorable review of Sam Wasson’s February-released non-fiction book, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (Flatiron), another work I look toward for entertainment during my coronavirus sheltering. “While much of the ground has been covered before,” this blog observes, “The Big Goodbye reveals so much more about the creation of Chinatown, in such rich detail and depth, that sometimes you feel as if you’re really there. However, this is not a run-of-the-mill account of the making of the film; rather, it is an elaborate, careful illustration of Wasson’s thesis that Chinatown was a product of multiple personalities and events which converged to produce a perfect storm that is not only a cinematic masterpiece, but also the high water mark of Hollywood artistry before its decline into the ‘cinema of sensation,’ which began with 1970s disaster movies, such as The Towering Inferno, Airport and Earthquake.”
• Finally, here’s some good advice from Sergeant Phil Esterhaus to get you through these frightening days of disease.
Stay safe, everyone. We’ll get through this together.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
“Never a Dull Moment. Like It or Not.”
With so many of us stuck inside for the foreseeable future, it’s extra good news that the sixth season of Bosch—the Amazon Prime streaming TV series based on Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch police procedurals—is set to debut on Friday, April 17.
As Mystery Tribune tells it, the coming run of 10 episodes is based on two Connelly novels: The Overlook (2007) and Dark Sacred Night (2018). The official Season 6 plot synopsis reads as follows: “After a medical physicist is executed and the deadly radioactive material he had with him goes missing, Detective Harry Bosch finds himself at the center of a complex murder case, a messy federal investigation, and catastrophic threat to Los Angeles—the city he’s pledged to serve and protect.” A trailer, starring Titus Welliver in the title role, Jamie Hector as Bosch’s LAPD partner, Detective II Jerry Edgar, and Madison Lintz as Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, is embedded below.
Bosch has already been renewed for a seventh season, though that will unfortunately bring an end to this popular show.
As Mystery Tribune tells it, the coming run of 10 episodes is based on two Connelly novels: The Overlook (2007) and Dark Sacred Night (2018). The official Season 6 plot synopsis reads as follows: “After a medical physicist is executed and the deadly radioactive material he had with him goes missing, Detective Harry Bosch finds himself at the center of a complex murder case, a messy federal investigation, and catastrophic threat to Los Angeles—the city he’s pledged to serve and protect.” A trailer, starring Titus Welliver in the title role, Jamie Hector as Bosch’s LAPD partner, Detective II Jerry Edgar, and Madison Lintz as Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, is embedded below.
Bosch has already been renewed for a seventh season, though that will unfortunately bring an end to this popular show.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Fishing for Hooks
From now through the end of March, my book-design blog, Killer Covers, will salute the artistry of Detroit-born painter and illustrator Mitchell Hooks, who died seven years ago today at age 89. At least one new book cover, film poster, or piece of magazine art credited to Hooks will be posted each day, the first of those being his work on the 1956 Dell release While the City Sleeps. Enjoy it here.
Coping with Our Disease Crisis
• Concerns over the rapid spread of COVID-19 are leading to more event cancellations or postponements. The Mystery Writers of America announced that there will be no Edgar Awards Mystery Week this year; it had been scheduled to take place in late April. This means, in part, that there will be a delay in the presentation of the 2020 Edgar Awards (all of the nominees are here). The MWA says: “We still plan on celebrating the achievements of our finalists and announcing the winners; how we will do that is currently under discussion. We also still intend to publish this year’s Edgar annual.”
• Meanwhile, the organizers of Mystery Fest Key West sent around a notice yesterday, explaining that the convention—scheduled for June 28-30—has been postponed “until early next year.” Mystery Fest co-founder Shirrel Rhoades adds that “The annual Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition will continue as usual this year. However, the award presentations will be by notice, rather than during the Mystery Fest.” Submissions to that contest (soliciting “the first three pages of a finished, never-before-published mystery novel”) are due by April 15, and should be sent to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com.
• Also rescheduled: The Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, now set to take place in the Chicago suburb of Lombard from September 11 to 13. In a Facebook note, writer-editor Ron Fortier notes that “this year’s Pulp Factory Awards winner will be announced via a special video and press release. Once the actual awards have been made and addresses for the winners obtained, regular hosts Ron Fortier and Rob Davis will do a short video announcing the winners of each of the five categories. At that same time, the actual awards will then be mailed out to each recipient.”
• And In Reference to Murder brings us a discouragingly long list of international film festivals and TV crime/thriller productions that have been shut down by this novel coronavirus. “[T]here's no telling when or if these shows will be going forward,” writes B.V. Lawson.
• Our current contagion scare is adversely affecting struggling independent bookshops, including the one at which I work part-time in one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. Beginning today, that small retailer will serve customers at the front door and via local deliveries, but people will be asked not to come inside and browse—eliminating of the most enjoyable parts of visiting a bookshop. Other stores have closed temporarily, or have found creative ways to get their wares to customers, such as delivering even-more-needed-now-than-usual reading material via skateboards and bicycles. Josh Cook from Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers advice here on ways to support indie stores during this trying time. And Literary Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond reminds us that if there isn’t an indie in your area to support, it’s always possible to “order from Bookshop.org, a great—and important—alternative to Amazon that shares proceeds of every sale with small, independent stores, and is a much-needed affiliate revenue stream for anyone who covers books online. You can also use BookstoreLink.com to find your nearest indie, and if you like audiobooks, Libro.fm (same people behind BookstoreLink) are offering two-for-one deals if you use the code SHOPBOOKSTORESNOW (and 100 percent of the money goes to the store!).”
• Bookshop.org declared this morning that it will now “give more money to [independent] stores in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on small businesses,” increasing its “bookstore partners’ affiliate share to 30 percent for every sale they refer to the site. The other 70 percent goes to operating costs like fulfillment, fees, and paying publishers.”
Stay safe and healthy, everyone.
• Meanwhile, the organizers of Mystery Fest Key West sent around a notice yesterday, explaining that the convention—scheduled for June 28-30—has been postponed “until early next year.” Mystery Fest co-founder Shirrel Rhoades adds that “The annual Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition will continue as usual this year. However, the award presentations will be by notice, rather than during the Mystery Fest.” Submissions to that contest (soliciting “the first three pages of a finished, never-before-published mystery novel”) are due by April 15, and should be sent to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com.
• Also rescheduled: The Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, now set to take place in the Chicago suburb of Lombard from September 11 to 13. In a Facebook note, writer-editor Ron Fortier notes that “this year’s Pulp Factory Awards winner will be announced via a special video and press release. Once the actual awards have been made and addresses for the winners obtained, regular hosts Ron Fortier and Rob Davis will do a short video announcing the winners of each of the five categories. At that same time, the actual awards will then be mailed out to each recipient.”
• And In Reference to Murder brings us a discouragingly long list of international film festivals and TV crime/thriller productions that have been shut down by this novel coronavirus. “[T]here's no telling when or if these shows will be going forward,” writes B.V. Lawson.
• Our current contagion scare is adversely affecting struggling independent bookshops, including the one at which I work part-time in one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. Beginning today, that small retailer will serve customers at the front door and via local deliveries, but people will be asked not to come inside and browse—eliminating of the most enjoyable parts of visiting a bookshop. Other stores have closed temporarily, or have found creative ways to get their wares to customers, such as delivering even-more-needed-now-than-usual reading material via skateboards and bicycles. Josh Cook from Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers advice here on ways to support indie stores during this trying time. And Literary Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond reminds us that if there isn’t an indie in your area to support, it’s always possible to “order from Bookshop.org, a great—and important—alternative to Amazon that shares proceeds of every sale with small, independent stores, and is a much-needed affiliate revenue stream for anyone who covers books online. You can also use BookstoreLink.com to find your nearest indie, and if you like audiobooks, Libro.fm (same people behind BookstoreLink) are offering two-for-one deals if you use the code SHOPBOOKSTORESNOW (and 100 percent of the money goes to the store!).”
• Bookshop.org declared this morning that it will now “give more money to [independent] stores in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on small businesses,” increasing its “bookstore partners’ affiliate share to 30 percent for every sale they refer to the site. The other 70 percent goes to operating costs like fulfillment, fees, and paying publishers.”
Stay safe and healthy, everyone.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Revue of Reviewers, 3-14-20
Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.
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