Connery Ends His Run

This was not the sort of news I hoped to read on this Halloween morning. Variety offers the bottom line:

Sean Connery, the Scottish-born actor who rocketed to fame as James Bond and became one of the franchise’s most popular and enduring international stars, has died. He was 90.

Connery, long regarded as one of the best actors to have portrayed the iconic spy, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 and marked his 90th birthday in August. His death was confirmed by his family, who said that the actor “died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by family” in the Bahamas. It’s believed he had been unwell for some time. His last acting role had been in Stephen Norrington’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” (2003).

Connery was an audience favorite for more than 40 years and one of the screen’s most reliable and distinctive leading men. The actor was recently voted the best James Bond actor in an August Radio Times poll in the U.K. More than 14,000 voted and Connery claimed 56% of the vote. Global tributes poured in for Connery on Saturday following news of his death.

In its own lengthy obituary, The New York Times recounts some of Connery’s more memorable non-Bond roles:

In the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Connery gracefully transformed himself into one of the grand old men of the movies. If his trained killer in the futuristic fantasy “Zardoz” (1974), his Barbary pirate in “The Wind and the Lion” (1975) or his middle-aged Robin Hood in “Robin and Marian” (1976) did not erase the memory of his James Bond, they certainly blurred the image.

Mr. Connery won a best-actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for “The Name of the Rose” (1986), based on the Umberto Eco novel, in which he played a crime-solving medieval monk, and the Academy Award as best supporting actor for his performance as an honest cop on the corrupt Chicago police force in “The Untouchables” (1987). Mr. Connery taught himself to understand that character — Jim Malone, a cynical, streetwise police officer whose only goal is to be alive at the end of his shift — by noting the other characters’ attitudes toward him.

After reading Malone’s scenes, he told The Times in 1987, he read the scenes in which his character did not appear. “That way,” he said, “I get to know what the character is aware of and, more importantly, what he is not aware of. The trap that bad actors fall into is playing information they don’t have.”

“Despite all that,” writes The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig, “his seven Bond films”—from 1962’s Dr. No to 1983’s Never Say Never Again—“defined his career and made him a star.

Dr. No producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, working with a modest budget, decided on Connery relatively early in pre-production. United Artists, the studio that would release 11 Bond films before it was absorbed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, initially was skeptical.

Eventually, UA executives were sold. It was a decision they would profit from handsomely. The 007 series was UA’s major asset in the 1960s, a decade when the studio also released such films as West Side Story, In the Heat of the Night and low-cost but profitable films featuring The Beatles.

Connery’s Bond was both sophisticated and ruthless. The actor was tutored in the former trait by director Terence Young, who helmed three of the first four 007 movies. It was Young who polished the rough diamond of an actor who came from a working-class background in Scotland.

I didn’t teethe on Bond flicks, but thanks to my father’s stochastic TV-viewing habits, I finally came to them as a teenager—and have watched every one of those pictures since. I won’t argue with the proposition that Connery was the best Bond, especially in productions such as Goldfinger (see here and here). While I am also a fan of Roger Moore’s Live and Let Die (1973), Pierce Brosnan’s GoldenEye (1995), and Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale (2006), whenever I re-read one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels or any of the continuation novels penned by John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Anthony Horowitz, or others, I immediately picture Connery’s face on their protagonist. He may have preferred not to be typecast as incomparably prepared British espionage agent 007, but it will always be that part which defines him for me as well as for millions of other movie-watchers.

READ MORE: “Sean Connery, a Lion of Cinema Whose Roar Went Beyond Bond,” by Jake Coyle (Associated Press); “Sean Connery on Slapping Women: Dangerous Opinions, But a Man of the Time?” by Scott Mccartney (The Scotsman); “Sean Connery: An Appreciation,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command).

The Book You Have to Read: “The Real Gone Goose,” by George Bagby

(Editor’s note: This is the 167th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
The 1960 paperback cover art on George Bagby’s The Real Gone Goose promises a page-turning 1950s beatnik bacchanalia; but surprise, surprise—instead of finding Mingus, marijuana, and murder, The Real Gone Goose is a page-turning procedural that details the crime-solving process of New York Police Homicide Inspector George Schmidt. Readers disappointed by the false advertising of this cover, however, will quickly become engaged, as I was.

The story (originally published by Doubleday in 1959) is recounted by Schmidt’s sounding board and chronicler, who also happens to be named George Bagby, a bit of literary trickery that hints at the author’s avant-garde past. In the novel, Bagby is a bachelor and somewhat on the Walter Mitty side. A successful writer just past age 40, he’s feeling “stodgy and middle-aged.” These whispers of mortality are exacerbated when a comely young hipster named Sabra moves next door to Bagby’s Greenwich Village apartment. Soon the building is hosting not only Sabra, but her entire tribe of self-described “exiles,” rebellious 20-somethings who leave their doors wide-open to any crasher, and who expect George to do the same—as well as supply some of the booze for their moveable cocktail parties and solid-citizen put-downs. The hipsters may be united in their disdain for squares and their post-war conformity, but all is not Edenic in their self-created Heaven-on-earth.

Sabra (real name Barbara Wilson Leckey) is the wet dream of every beatnik in this cool coterie, but her ex-husband just happens to be a suit-wearing stockbroker with deep pockets. He checks in now and then, sometimes using force to punish those suitors who employ violence to control his former spouse. The rumor in the building that Sabra and Bagby have a romance underway is preposterous and is just the beginning of Bagby’s problems. When he returns home late one night to find Sabra shot dead in his apartment with his own pistol, it becomes a dilemma with existential consequences.

To Bagby’s benefit and detriment, Inspector Schmidt is assigned to this case. And while the Doctor Watson/Sherlock Holmes relationship these two enjoy continues, from here on out Schmidt must tread more carefully than usual and not show preferential treatment when his wingman becomes suspect number one.

Sabra’s love interest at the time of her death was Blair Nolan, “a bum out to make a buck.” After the murder, he suddenly cleans up his act, goes on a shopping spree at Brooks Brothers, and regains his job as a talented but unmotivated CPA. Because of his known physical mistreatment of Sabra, he’s on the NYPD’s radar, and the cops lean on him with plenty of weight. The means for Blair’s transformation came from Sabra, who left an unaccounted-for stockpile of cash in her apartment. The motivation for his transformation is Nolan’s failed attempt to woo Sabra on her own anti-establishment terms. Once she tired of the squalid beatnik life, he reasoned, he could swoop in and return her to the safety of the upper-middle-class, and take her to his bed. When this most plausible suspect is eliminated, though, Schmidt and Bagby (when it’s legal or permissible) put their heads together to determine who was where, when they were there, and if they had a motivation to kill the young woman. Unfortunately, all of the physical evidence points directly at Bagby. He and Schmidt begin to follow the money to the mysterious source of Sabra’s bankroll, and by then armchair sleuths should be hunkered-down and nose-deep in The Real Gone Goose, keeping pace as the crime is solved.

The cover of The Real Gone Goose shown at the top of this piece was published by Permabooks in 1960, and features art by Harry Bennett. Just above are two other versions, the one on the left from Doubleday’s 1959 first edition, and on the right, T.V. Boardman’s 1960 version, with art by Denis McLoughlin.

Not content to play it straight, Bagby has fun with the mystery-fiction form. The Real Gone Goose is a parody of the classic locked room whodunit, in which a murderer perpetrates a crime under circumstances that seem to make it impossible for that crime to have been committed and for the perpetrator to be detected. In Bagby’s New York, the city that never sleeps, doors are left wide open and apartments entered with the willy-nilly rhythm of a Marx Brothers movie. The goose, obviously the one that lays the golden egg, is Sabra, and she’s gone.

The fact that this novel’s main character and author share a name might briefly put one’s head aspin, or at least cause some scratching in puzzlement. But George Bagby was the nom de plume of Aaron Marc Stein (1906-1985), who wrote more than 100 novels, 49 of them in the Inspector Schmidt series. His first publications were avant-garde works championed by Theodore Dreiser. However, Stein didn’t gain popularity until he began producing mystery fiction in the mid-1930s.

The Real Gone Goose will keep readers busy as they try to solve the crime in step with Bagby and Schmidt (everybody loves a mystery, don’t they?), and Bagby leaves just enough clues to keep attentive readers headed in the right direction. As far as judging a book by its cover, be attentive to those bearing salacious and misleading art—you might not be as disappointed after all.

Mr. Crane’s Wild Ride

After listening to National Public Radio host Scott Simon’s recent interview with historian Elizabeth Bradley, during which they discussed this year’s 200th anniversary of the publication of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I purchased a collection of several Washington Irving stories, including that haunting yarn about a headless horseman. I don’t think I have read that tale grade school.

Do the Fright Thing

Looking for something new to read that’s also appropriate for this Halloween weekend? Check out Janet Rudolph’s very long list of Halloween-related crime fiction in Mystery Fanfare. I admit to having read only a few of these works, but many of their titles are amusing. For instance: Antiques Maul, by Barbara Allan; All Hallow’s Evil, by Valerie Wolzien; From Bad to Wurst, by Maddie Hunter; Wed and Buried, by Toni L.P. Kelner; A Room with a Brew, by Joyce Tremel; and Trick or Treason, by Kathi Daley.

Revue of Reviewers, 10-27-20

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

Just in Time for All Hallows’ Eve

The Paperback Palette has posted a terrific assortment of book covers featuring frightening beasts, some more unlikely than others. The only one of these works I own is the 1974 Signet edition of Night’s Yawning Peal, edited by August Derleth, with art by Don Ivan Punchatz.

Another Books Purveyor on the Brink

Oh no! This worrying news comes from Slate:

On Friday, New York City’s legendary Strand bookstore announced it was in trouble. With revenue down 70 percent because of the pandemic, owner Nancy Bass Wyden warned in a post on social media, the “loans and cash reserves that have kept us afloat these past months are depleted,” and the 93-year-old landmark is fighting for its survival.

Just as so many businesses and institutions have since March, Bass Wyden turned to her loyal customers for help, asking them to spend their money and spread the word, using the hashtag #SaveThe Strand. But alongside encomia from celebrities and Slate’s former editor in chief, another chorus arose, asking why Bass Wyden, a multimillionaire who is also the wife of a U.S. senator, was passing the hat rather than raiding her own piggy bank. As an article in the Baffler laid out in detail last month, the store received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of between $1 million and 2 million in April with the purpose of protecting the 212 jobs spread across its three locations, including the 188 workers Bass Wyden laid off in late March. Ultimately fewer than two dozen union jobs were restored, and Bass Wyden put her personal fortune to work purchasing stock in Amazon, a mortal enemy of brick-and-mortar booksellers she described as a necessary step toward keeping the Strand afloat.

READ MORE: “‘We Cannot Survive’: New York’s Strand Bookstore Appeals for Help,” by Martin Pengelly (The Guardian).

A Basketful of Oddments

• In late August, Rap Sheet contributor Steven Nester wrote a review of the “forgotten” 1999 neo-noir novel East of A, Russell Atwood’s first of two mysteries starring New York City private eye Payton Sherwood. (Its sequel was 2009’s Losers Live Longer.) Then just last week, I received an e-note from Atwood himself, saying, “I have a new novel out, not a Payton Sherwood mystery but a haunted house novel with a difference.” Titled Apartment Five Is Alive, the book was released in late September. Atwood adds: “Currently, I am a bookshop owner in my hometown of Westfield, Massachusetts, and I wrote this novel specifically to save my bookstore from closing, so I hope you can see your way to promoting it.” His business, it turns out, is Blue Umbrella Books, in downtown Westfield, and as this story for Western Mass News makes clear, it has been hurt partly by “a combination of online book sales, Audibles, and digital books.” This year’s COVID-19 pandemic has done further damage to Blue Umbrella’s prospects. Atwood created a GoFundMe page last December, but he’s apparently not yet achieved his funding goal of $10,000. With Halloween on the horizon, it’s certainly the right time to think about buying a haunted house tale. If your purchase can also improve the chances that an independent bookstore can keep its lights on, so much the better. To learn more about Apartment Five Is Alive, visit its Amazon page. Then scroll down to a video of Atwood reading his new novel’s opening chapter.

• Despite it being only late October, Publishers Weekly is already out with its “best books of 2020” list. Included are a dozen picks from the mystery/thriller stacks, among them Rachel Howzell Hall’s And Now She’s Gone, Matthew Carr’s Black Sun Rising, Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water, Karen Dionne’s The Wicked Sister, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts.

• From In Reference to Murder: The finalists for the An Post Irish Book Awards were announced this week. Readers and fans will be able to vote online for their favorites through November 16, with the category winners to be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on November 25th. Those vying for Best Crime Fiction [are] The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard; The Cutting Place by Jane Casey; Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent; After the Silence by Louise O'Neill; The Guest List by Lucy Foley; and Fifty Fifty by Steve Cavanagh.” Click here to choose your favorite from among those.

• Deadline reports that The Son, Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s 2014 standalone vengeance thriller, The Son, is being adapted as a TV series for HBO. Jake Gyllenhaal (The Sisters Brothers, Velvet Buzzsaw) has been signed to star in the production.

• Meanwhile, actor Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) will take the lead in a six-episode UK TV series based on P.D. James’ stories about UK police detective Adam Dalgliesh. The Killing Times says this show “starts in 1970s England and follows Dalgliesh’s career to present day as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets. Each murder mystery will offer its own unique setting and extraordinary cast. The six episodes will comprise three two-part stories, all of which are based on three of the Dalgiesh novels. The novels being adapted for the first season are Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death.” This new Dalgliesh (not to be confused with previous ITV adaptations starring Roy Marsden and Martin Shaw) is expected to air sometime in 2021.

• And this is more ammunition for critics who say there are no new ideas on television these days. Blogger B.V. Lawson says that “NBC has put in development Always Wright, a drama from For Life executive producer Sonay Hoffman and Sony Pictures TV. Written by Hoffman, Always Wright is set in Los Angeles and revolves around a young, wealthy, and jet-setting African-American couple who solve mysteries, run their own successful empires, and are completely head-over-heels in love with each other.” That sounds suspiciously similar to the premise of that 1979-1984 ABC series Hart to Hart?

• What a cock-up! Last week, the small bookshop where I help out had to send back its copies of John Grisham’s latest novel, A Time for Mercy. Shelf Awareness explains why:

At least some copies of A Time for Mercy by John Grisham contain printing errors so extensive that Doubleday has recalled copies and is replacing them. The book’s pub date was last Tuesday, October 13.

The publisher commented: “Doubleday has discovered some defective copies in the first printing of John Grisham’s A Time for Mercy. We are currently working with our accounts to replace inventory, and have already begun shipping out corrected copies."

One bookseller who is receiving replacement copies tomorrow described the printing errors as including “pages in the wrong order and some repeated with chapter numbers following themselves.” The books were printed in the U.S.

• Finally, we bid a sad good-bye to English novelist Jill Paton Walsh, who died on October 18. Walsh was likely best known to Rap Sheet readers for having completed Dorothy L. Sayers’ previously unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane murder mystery, Thrones, Dominations (1998), and then going on to pen three Wimsey continuation novels, including The Last Scholar, which was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Endeavour Historical Dagger award in 2014. Walsh, who also wrote children’s books, was 83 years old. Martin Edwards offers a fond remembrance of her here.

Trapped Inside with Books? No Problem!

My guess is, you thought I’d forgotten to post a list of recommended crime, mystery, and thriller reads for this season. Or else you figured I had thought about it too late, and wouldn’t bother with it now. Incorrect on both counts! In fact, I’ve been toiling over this mammoth compilation of new releases since mid-August, but two other large projects for CrimeReads (including my recent survey of vintage Agatha Christie covers) got in the way of my finishing it earlier. So buried was I in those other assignments, that I toyed with the idea of just dumping my overview of fall and early winter books this year. However, with my office schedule looking clearer for the nonce, I decided it was better to post this piece late rather than never. If nothing else, perhaps it will give folks some ideas for holiday gifts.

You may already be familiar with some of the September and October titles featured below, but probably not with all of them. And there’s a wealth of November and December debuts still on its way to bookshops. This season’s most anticipated offerings include: Angel’s Inferno, the late William Hjortsberg’s sequel to 1978’s Falling Angel; Robert Littell’s Comrade Koba, about a naïve boy’s education in Soviet dictatorship; The Sentinel, the first Jack Reacher novel co-authored by Lee Child (aka Jim Grant) and his younger brother Andrew Grant (now, for commercial purposes, bylined as Andrew Child); Michael Connelly’s sixth “Lincoln Lawyer” novel, The Law of Innocence; posthumous contributions by Jane Haddam, Karen Harper, Andrea Camilleri, and Ariana Franklin; Anthony Horowitz’s Moonflower Murders, his unexpected follow-up to the deservedly acclaimed Magpie Murders; Harald Gilbers’ Germania, focusing on a Jewish detective who’s coerced into hunting for a serial killer in war-torn Nazi Berlin; Norwegian writer Gunnar Staalesen’s Fallen Angels, starring private eye Varg Veum; and Max Allan Collins’ Skim Deep, his first new Nolan tale since 1999’s Mourn the Living.

With 2020 marking a full century since the publication of Agatha Christie’s first Hercule Poirot outing, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, these closing months of the year offer several Christie-related treats, as well, among them Sophie Hannah’s latest Poirot continuation novel, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill; Mark Aldridge’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World; a handsome hardcover reissue of Death on the Nile, linked to the pending debut of Kenneth Branaugh’s film version of that 1937 whodunit; and Marie Benedict’s The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, which revisits Christie's 11-day disappearance in 1926.

Be on the lookout, too, for fresh fiction by Ruth Ware, Charles Cumming, Liza Cody, Stuart Turton, Anne Perry, Ken Bruen, W.L. Ripley, Anne Holt, Volker Kutscher, Tana French, Jo Nesbø, Val McDermid, Gary Phillips, Jørn Lier Horst, H.B. Lyle, Nev March (winner of the 2019 St. Martin’s Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition), Anthony J. Quinn, Brian Thornton, and Ragnar Jónasson. And don’t overlook the plenitude of reprints of vintage works by authors such as Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Dietrich (aka E. Howard Hunt), Ellery Queen, Brian Flynn, and Anthony Boucher, plus several of Alistair McLean’s thrillers (among them Breakheart Pass).

For inhabitants of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, months of cold and COVID loom ahead. Reading escapes will become increasingly essential. Below are more than 370 books that should appeal to crime-fiction fans, all of them set to premiere between now and New Year’s Day, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. These are primarily novels and short-story collections, but there’s also a handful of non-fiction titles that are of likely interest to readers of this genre, notably Scott Peeples’ The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City and Craig Sisterson’s Southern Cross Crime: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of Australia and New Zealand. Books marked with an asterisk (*) are non-fiction; the rest are fiction.

SEPTEMBER (U.S.):
• The Abstainer, by Ian McGuire (Random House)
• Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy, by Ben
Macintyre (Crown)*
• All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
• The Angel’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Atlantic)
• Apartment Five Is Alive, by Russell Atwood (Independently Published)
• The Awkward Black Man, by Walter Mosley (Grove Press)
• Back Bay Blues, by Peter Colt (Kensington)
• Before She Was Helen, by Caroline B. Cooney (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Big Man’s Daughter, by Owen Fitzstephen (Seventh Street)
• The Book of Lamps and Banners, by Elizabeth Hand (Mulholland)
• Burn You Twice, by Mary Burton (Montlake)
• Chasing Jack, by Parnell Hall (Brash)
• A Christmas Carol Murder, by Heather Redmond (Kensington)
• Cold Malice, by Quentin Bates (Constable)
• The Darkest Evening, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur)
• Deadly Waters, by Dot Hutchison (Thomas & Mercer)
• Dead Woman Crossing, by J.D. Adler (Bookouture)
• Death Deserved, by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger (Orenda)
• Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie (Morrow)
• A Deception at Thornecrest, by Ashley Weaver (Minotaur)
• Don’t Look for Me, by Wendy Walker (St. Martin’s Press)
• Funeral for a Friend, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• Girl Gone Mad, by Avery Bishop (Lake Union)
• The Great Hotel Murder, by Vincent Starrett (American
Mystery Classics)
• Hanging Falls, by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane)
• Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)*
• An Inconvenient Woman, by Stéphanie Buelens (Scarlet)
• Interference, by Brad Parks
(Thomas & Mercer)
• The Judas Hour, by E. Howard Hunt (Cutting Edge)
• The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, by Sophie Hannah (Morrow)
• The Lakehouse, by Joe Clifford (Polis)
• The Last Agent, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• Maigret and Monsieur Charles, by George Simenon (Penguin)
• Make Them Cry, by Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith (Ecco)
• Mortmain Hall, by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Murder at Queen’s Landing, by Andrea Penrose (Kensington)
• Murder in the Piazza, by Jen Collins Moore (Level Best)
• Next to Last Stand, by Craig Johnson (Viking)
• The Nicotine Chronicles, edited by Lee Child (Akashic)
• The Ninja’s Blade, by Tori Eldridge (Agora)
• Nothing Important Happened Today, by Will Carver (Orenda)
• One by One, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)
• One Step Behind, by Lauren North (Berkley)
• Once Two Sisters, by Sarah Warburton (Crooked Lane)
• The Orphan’s Guilt, by Archer Mayor (Minotaur)
• Poetic Justice, by Andrea J. Johnson (Agora)
• The President’s Dossier, by James A. Scott (Oceanview)
• A Pretty Deceit, by Anna Lee Huber (Kensington)
• A Question of Betrayal, by Anne Perry (Ballantine)
• The Red Horse, by James R. Benn (Soho Crime)
• The Residence, by Andrew Pyper (Skybound)
• Road Out of Winter, by Allison Stine (Mira)
• Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise, by Mike Lupica (Putnam)
• The Scarlet Venus, by Chalmers Green (Cutting Edge)
• The Shapeshifter’s Lair, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)
• The Silent House, by Nell Pattison (Avon)
• Sins of the Bees, by Annie Lampman (Pegasus Crime)
• Sins of the Mother, by August Norman (Crooked Lane)
• The Snow Raven, by Connie Dial (Permanent Press)
• Southern Cross Crime: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of Australia and New Zealand, by Craig
Sisterson (Oldcastle)*
• The Talented Miss Farwell, by Emily Gray Tedrowe (Custom House)
• These Violent Delights, by Micah Nemerever (Harper)
• The Three Mrs. Wrights, by Linda Keir (Lake Union)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• Tie Die, by Max Tomlinson (Oceanview)
• To Tell You the Truth, by Ginny Macmillan (Morrow)
• Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland)
• The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes, by Elissa R. Sloan (Morrow)
• When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole (Morrow)

SEPTEMBER (UK):
• Act of Revenge, by John Bishop (Mantid Press)
• After the Silence, by Louise O’Neill (Riverrun)
• The Asylum, by Debra Meller (Bloodhound)
• The Body Under the Bridge, by Nick Louth (Canelo Crime)
• Dead Doubles: The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War’s Most Notorious Spy Rings, by Trevor Barnes
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)*
• A Death Most Monumental, by J.D. Kirk (Zertex Crime)
• Evil Never Dies, by S.M. Hardy (Allison & Busby)
• A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, by Emma Southon (Oneworld)
• Fifty-Fifty, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• Gift or Theft, by Liza Cody (iUniverse)
• Hermit, by S.R. White (Headline)
• House of Correction, by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster)
• The Kingdom, by Jo Nesbø (Harvill Secker)
• Lost Cause, by Rachel Lynch
(Canelo Crime)
• The Mathematical Murder of Innocence, by Michael Carter (Book Guild)
• Murder, Forgotten, by Deb Richardson-Moore (Lion)
• The Point of No Return, by Neil Broadfoot (Constable)
• Sherlock’s Sisters: Stories from the Golden Age of the Female Detective, edited by Nick Rennison (No Exit Press)
• Slaughter in the Sapperton Tunnel, by Edward Marston
(Allison & Busby)
• A Song of Isolation, by Michael Malone (Orenda)
• Stone Cold Trouble, by Amer Anwar (Dialogue)
• To Cook a Bear, by Mikael Niemi (MacLehose Press)
• The Unwanted Dead, by Chris Lloyd (Orion)
• The Webs We Weave, by Michelle Morgan (Bloodhound)
• When the Past Kills, by M.J. Lee (Canelo Crime)
• The Witch Hunter, by Max Seeck (Welbeck)

OCTOBER (U.S.):
• The Art Fiasco, by Fiona Veitch Smith (Lion)
• Be My Victim, by Robert Dietrich (Cutting Edge)
• Beyond a Reasonable Stout, by Ellie Alexander (Minotaur)
• Blood Sisters, by Dharma Kelleher (Dark Pariah Press)
• Brute Madness, by Ledru Baker Jr. (Cutting Edge)
• The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher (American Mystery Classics)
• Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense, by Joyce Carol Oates (Mysterious Press)
• The Clerkenwell Affair, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)
• Collision Course, by Matt Hilton (Severn House)
• Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)
• Conspiracy, by S.J. Parris (Pegasus Crime)
• Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, by Megan Rosenbloom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)*
• Dear Child, by Romy Hausmann (Flatiron)
• Death and the Maiden, by Ariana Franklin and Samantha
Norman (Morrow)
• The Deep, Deep Snow, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• The Devil and the Dark Water, by Stuart Turton
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Devil in a Blue Dress: 30th Anniversary Edition, by Walter Mosley (Washington Square Press)
• The Dirty South, by John Connolly (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• The Dogs of Winter, by Ann Lambert (Second Story Press)
• Echo Chambers, by Richard Himmel (Cutting Edge)
• The Exphoria Code, by Antony Johnston (Pegasus Crime)
• The Eyes of the Queen, by Oliver Clements (Atria/Leopoldo)
• Final Proof, by Rodrigues Ottolengui (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Fortune Favors the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood (Doubleday)
• The Girl in the Mirror, by Rose Carlyle (Morrow)
• The Girl Who Wasn’t There, by Vincent Zandri (Oceanview)
• Goodnight Beautiful, by Aimee Molloy (Harper)
• The Haunting of H.G. Wells, by Robert Masello (47North)
• The Horn, by Brian Flynn (Dean Street Press)
• I Am Dust, by Louise Beech (Orenda)
• Invisible Girl, by Lisa Jewell (Atria)
• The Land, by
Thomas Maltman (Soho Press)
• Leave the World Behind, by
Rumaan Alam (Ecco)
• The Long Shadow, by Anne Buist (Text)
• The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City, by Scott Peeples (Princeton University Press)*
• The Man in Milan, by Vito Racanelli (Polis)
• Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery, by Agatha Christie (Morrow)
• The Mirror Man, by Jane Gilmartin (Mira)
• Ms. Tree, Volume 2: Skeleton in the Closet, by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty (Titan Comics)
• Murder Is in the Air, by Frances Brody (Crooked Lane)
• Murder on Cold Street, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
• Never Turn Back, by Christopher Swann (Crooked Lane)
• The Night Will Find Us, by Matthew Lyons (Keylight)
• The Nightworkers, by Brian Selfon (MCD)
• Old Anger, by Phillip Thompson (Brash)
• One for the Road, by Robert Dietrich (Cutting Edge)
• Only Truth, by Julie Cameron (Scarlet)
• Primary Obsessions, by Charles Demers (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Rattlesnake Rodeo, by Nick Kolakowski (Down & Out)
• The Reflecting Pool, by Otho Eskin (Oceanview)
• The Rock Hole, by Reavis Z. Wortham (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Scavenger, by Christopher Chambers (Three Rooms Press)
• The Searcher, by Tana French (Viking)
• The Secrets of Winter, by Nicola Upson (Crooked Lane)
• The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child (Delacorte Press)
• Sexton Blake Versus the Master Crooks, edited by
Mark Hodder (Rebellion)
• Shadow Ridge, by M.E. Browning (Crooked Lane)
• Sherlock Holmes: The Spider’s Web, by Philip Purser-Hallard (Titan)
• The Shirley Jackson Collection, by Shirley Jackson
(Library of America)
• The Sicilian Method, by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin)
• Silent Bite, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)
• Sister, by Kjell Ola Dahl (Orenda)
• Snake Island, by Ben Hobson (Arcade Crimewise)
• Snow, by John Banville (Hanover Square Press)
• A Solitude of Wolverines, by Alice Henderson (Morrow)
• A Song for the Dark Times, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)
• The Spiked Lion, by Brian Flynn (Dean Street Press)
• Stasi Winter, by David Young (Zaffre)
• Still Life, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• Suicide Blonde: Three Novellas, by Brian Thornton (Down & Out)
• The Sussex Cuckoo, by Brian Flynn (Dean Street Press)
• They Never Learn, by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press)
• A Time for Mercy, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Traveller and Other Stories, by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
• Tread Softly, by Brian Flynn (Dean Street Press)
• The Unspoken, by Ian K. Smith (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Witch Hunter, by Max Seeck (Berkley)
• Wobble to Death: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Peter Lovesey
(Soho Crime)
• Zero Zone, by Scott O’Connor (Counterpoint)

OCTOBER (UK):
• Angel’s Inferno, by William Hjortsberg (No Exit Press)
• Betrayal, by Lilja Sigurdardóttir (Orenda)
• The Book Club, by C.J. Cooper (Constable)
• Box 88, by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins)
• The Choice, by Alex Lake (HarperCollins)
• City of Ghosts, by Ben Creed (Welbeck)
• The Couple in Room 13, by John Rector (Simon & Schuster)
• The Creak on the Stairs, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Orenda)
• Death and the Brewery Queen, by Frances Brody (Piatkus)
• Death and the Singing Birds, by Amy Myers (Severn House)
• Death at the Orange Locks, by Anja de Jager (Constable)
• Death Awaits in Durham, by Helen Cox (Quercus)
• The Evidence,
by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
• The Fuhrer’s Orphans,
by David Laws (Bloodhound)
• The Haunted Shore,
by Neil Spring (Quercus)
• The House, by Tom Watson and Imogen Robertson (Sphere)
• House of the Patriarch,
by Barbara Hambly (Severn House)
• I Follow You, by Peter James (Macmillan)
• The List, by Carys Jones (Orion)
• Lost, by Leona Deakin (Black Swan)
• The Lullaby Man, by Anni Taylor (Bookish Coast)
• Mr. Cadmus, by Peter Ackroyd (Canongate)
• The Moment Before Impact, by Alison Bruce (Constable)
• Mongkok Station, by Jake Needham (Pintuporn Needham)
• Peace, by Garry Disher (Viper)
• People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus)
• Playdate, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)
• Poison in Paris, by Robert Wilton (Elbow)
• The Port of London Murders, by Josephine Bell (British Library)
• The Postscript Murders, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• Pulpit Rock, by Kate Rhodes (Simon & Schuster)
• The Quiet Man, by Caimh McDonnell (McFori Ink)
• The Return, by Harry Sidebottom (Zaffre)
• Scatter Her Ashes, by Heine Bakkeid (Raven)
• The Secret Life of Mr. Roos, by Håkan Nesser (Mantle)
• Smoke Chase, by Jack Callan (Matador)
• The Stolen Sisters, by Louise Jensen (HQ)
• Take Me Home, by Alex Hart (Orion)
• These Are Not Gentle People, by Andrew Harding (MacLehose Press)*
• The Windsor Knot, by S.J. Bennett (Zaffre)

NOVEMBER (U.S.):
• Absence of Mercy, by S.M. Goodwin (Crooked Lane)
• Anonymous, by Elizabeth Breck (Crooked Lane)
• Bangkok Gamble, by Tom Crowley (Down & Out)
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2020, edited by
C.J. Box (Mariner)
• The Big Book of Espionage, edited by Otto Penzler
(Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
• Black Lotus 2: The Vow, by K’wan (Akashic)
• Breakheart Pass, by Alistair MacLean (HarperCollins)
• The Case of the Reincarnated Client, by Tarquin Hall (Severn House)
• A Christmas Resolution, by Anne Perry (Ballantine)
• The Cipher, by Isabella Maldonado (Thomas & Mercer)
• Come Spy With Me, by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens (Wolfpack)
• Comrade Koba, by Robert Littell (Overlook Press)
• Crossed Skis, by Carol Carnac (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Daylight, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
• Death Comes Hot, by Michael Jecks (Severn House)
• Death, Diamonds, and Deception, by Rosemary Simpson (Kensington)
• The Egyptian Cross Mystery, by Ellery Queen (American Mystery Classics)
• A Galway Epiphany, by Ken Bruen (Mysterious Press)
• Girls of Brackenhill, by Kate Moretti (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Golden Gate, by Alistair MacLean (HarperCollins)
• The Haunting of Brynn Wilder, by Wendy Webb (Lake Union)
• Head Wounds, by Michael McGarrity (Norton)
• Hot to Trot, by M.C. Beaton (Minotaur)
• How to Raise an Elephant, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon)
• The Intrusions, by Stav Sherez (Europa World Noir)
• The Kingdom, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)
• The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton (Putnam)
• Last Dance, by Jeffrey Fleishman (Blackstone)
• The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• Little Cruelties, by Liz Nugent (Gallery/Scout Press)
• Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century, by Thomas Doherty (Columbia University Press)
• Little Threats, by Emily Schultz (Putnam)
• Lois Lane: Enemy of the People, by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
• The Lost Adventures of James Bond, by Mark Edlitz (Mark Edlitz)*
• The Magic Bullet, by Larry Millet (University of Minnesota Press)
• Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, by
Gary Phillips (Agora)
• Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford (Akashic)
• Moonflower Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
• Murder by Milk Bottle, by Lynne Truss (Bloomsbury)
• Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March (Minotaur)
• The Murder Specialist, by Bud Clifton (Cutting Edge)
• Night in Tehran, by Philip Kaplan (Melville House)
• The Night of the Fire, by Kjell Eriksson (Minotaur)
• Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology, by Jeffery Deaver, Joseph Badel, Linwood Barclay, Rhys Bowen, and others (Suspense)
• One of Our Own, by Jane Haddam (Minotaur)
• The Outcast Girls, by Alys Clare (Severn House)
• Out of Her Mind, by T.R. Ragan (Thomas & Mercer)
• Piece of My Heart, by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
(Simon & Schuster)
• Prefecture D: Four Novellas, by Hideo Yokoyama
(MCD x FSG Originals)
• The Preserve, by Ariel S. Winter (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• The Russian Pink, by Matthew Hart (Pegasus)
• Secret Santa, by Andrew Shaffer (Quirk)
• Shadow Sands, by Robert Bryndza (Thomas & Mercer)
• Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons, by James Lovegrove (Titan)
• Shills Can’t Cash Chips, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Hard Case Crime)
• The Silver Shooter, by Erin Lindsey (Minotaur)
• Thunder Storme, by W.L. Ripley (Brash)
• Time to Hunt, by Simon Gervais (Thomas & Mercer)
• V2, by Robert Harris (Knopf)
• White Ivy, by Susie Yang (Simon & Schuster)
• A Will to Kill, by R.V. Raman (Agora)
• The Year of the Gun, by
H.B. Lyle (Quercus)
• You Will Never Know, by
S.A. Prentiss (Scarlet)

NOVEMBER (UK):
• The Butcher of Berner Street, by
Alex Reeve (Raven)
• The Coral Bride, by
Roxanne Bouchard (Orenda)
• The Dead of Winter, by S.J. Parris (HarperCollins)
• A Death at the Hotel Mondrian, by Anja de Jager (Constable)
• The Diabolical Bones, by Bella Ellis (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Dog Island, by Philippe Claudel (MacLehose Press)
• The Drowned Woman, by C.J. Lyons (Bookouture)
• Fallen Angels, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)
• Festival of Death, by Laurence Anholt (Constable)
• Fortune Favours the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood (Wildfire)
• The Game, by Luca Veste (Simon & Schuster)
• The Good Samaritan, by C.J. Parsons (Headline)
• Guilt at the Garage, by Simon Brett (Severn House)
• The House of the Hanged Woman, by Kate Ellis (Piatkus)
• I Am Fear, by Ethan Cross (Head of Zeus)
• In Cold Blood, by Jane Bettany (HQ)
• The Inner Darkness, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)
• Letters from the Dead, by Sam Hurcom (Orion)
• The Lost and the Damned, by Olivier Norek (MacLehose Press)
• Lost Hours, by Alex Walters (Canelo Crime)
• The Mitford Trial, by Jessica Fellowes (Sphere)
• Murder on Mustique, by Anne Glenconner (Hodder & Stoughton)
• A Necessary Death, by Anne Holt (Corvus)
• The Package, by Sebastian Fitzek (Head of Zeus)
• River of Sins, by Sarah Hawkswood (Allison & Busby)
• The Roots of Evil, by Quintin Jardine (Headline)
• Sherlock Holmes: Remarkable Power of Stimulus, by
Gretchen Altabef (MX)
• Turncoat, by Anthony J. Quinn (No Exit Press)

DECEMBER (U.S.):
• Accra Noir, edited by Nana-Ama Danquah (Akashic)
• Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World, by Matthew Aldridge (Morrow)*
• The Arctic Fury, by Greer Macallister (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Art of Violence, by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus Crime)
• Athabasca, by Alistair MacLean (HarperCollins)
• Belgrade Noir, edited by Milorad Ivanović (Akashic)
• The Blade Between, by Sam J. Miller (Ecco)
• Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• Cut Me In, by Jack Karney (Stark House Press/Black Gat)
• The Dead of Winter, by S.J. Parris (Pegasus Crime)
• The Dead Season, by Tessa Wegert (Berkley)
• Deity, by Matt Wesolowski (Orenda)
• Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
• Every Last Secret, by A.R. Torre (Thomas & Mercer)
• Fool Me Twice, by Jeff Lindsay (Orion)
• Germania, by Harald Gilbers (Thomas Dunne)
• Goodbye California, by Alistair MacLean (HarperCollins)
• A Hanging at Dawn, by Charles Todd (Witness Impulse)
• Hard Times, by Les Edgerton (Bronzeville)
• In League with Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Crime)
• The Lies You Told, by Harriet Tyce (Grand Central)
• The March Fallen, by Volker Kutscher (Sandstone Press)
• Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder, by T.A. Willberg (Park Row)
• Murder at the Mayfair Hotel, by C.J. Archer (C.J. Archer)
• Murder on a Midnight Clear, by Sara Rosett (McGuffin Ink)
• The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, by Marie Benedict
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics, by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Othes (Dark Horse)
• The Open House, by Sam Carrington (Avon)
• The Opium Prince, by Jasmine Aimaq (Soho Crime)
• Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers, by Tessa Arlen (Berkley)
• Red Hands, by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press)
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition—Last Call, by Darwyn Cooke, Ed Brubaker, and Sean Phillips (IDW)
• Shed No Tears, by Caz Frear (Harper)
• Skim Deep, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• Snowdrift, by Helene Tursten (Soho Crime)
• The Spoilt Kill, by Mary Kelly (Poisoned Pen Press)
• A Spy in the Struggle, by Aya de León (Dafina)
• The System, by Ryan Gattis (MCD)
• Take It Back, by Kia Abdullah (St. Martin’s Press)
• Under a Gilded Moon, by Joy Jordan-Lake (Lake Union)
• Under the Alaskan Ice, by Karen Harper (Mira)
• Vultures in the Sky, by Todd Downing (American Mystery Classics)
• The Wicked Hour, by Alice Blanchard (Minotaur)

DECEMBER (UK):
• Be Careful What You Wish For, by Vivien Brown (One More Chapter)
• The Casebook of Inspector Armstrong: Volume 4, by
Martin Daley (MX)
• Cover Me: The Vintage Art of Pan Books: 1950-1965, by
Colin Larkin (Telos)*
• Dead Perfect, by Noelle Holten (One More Chapter)
• Hard as Nails, by Helen Black (Constable)
• Murder at the Castle, by M.B. Shaw (Trapeze)
• Verbal, by Peter Murphy (No Exit Press)
• Winterkill, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)

So what’s missing? If there are other end-of-2020 crime-fiction releases that you believe deserve special attention, please tell us all about them in the Comments section below.