Saturday, January 30, 2021
“The A-Team” Goes Vaudeville
It was 38 years ago tonight—on Sunday, January 30, 1983—that the first regular episode of The A-Team aired. I was never a fan of that NBC-TV action-adventure series, even though it starred George Peppard (whose performances in Banacek I had very much enjoyed) and was co-created by Stephen J. Cannell (who’d also been behind The Rockford Files and City of Angels). Still, I have found plenty of laughs in mash-ups between The A-Team’s outrageous opening title sequence and other programs, including this one with Star Trek.
But none of those has been as outright funny as a video I discovered on YouTube, recasting The A-Team with The Three Stooges. The results are embedded above. Just try not to crack a smile as you watch.
Friday, January 29, 2021
The Book You Have to Read:
“The Big Clock,” by Kenneth Fearing
(Editor’s note: This is the 169th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)
By Steven Nester
In general, novels penned by poets seem like daunting reads. (Can anyone really be certain what some modern poets are attempting to say in their works? Now, imagine those works at book length.) But not all modern poets are inscrutable, and luckily for readers, neither is their prose. Many have succeeded in producing long fiction, gaining a popular readership along with critical acclaim. Among those was Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961). A pulp writer and left-leaning poet in the 1930s (with five collections to his credit), Fearing
turned to fiction writing in the 1940s and ’50s. His fourth novel, 1946’s The Big Clock, brought him the greatest fame and fortune, becoming the source material for not one, but two Hollywood films, shot three decades apart. A psychological thriller, told through several first-person narrators, it is an acknowledged classic.
The better part of The Big Clock is recounted by George Stroud, executive editor of the New York City-based Crimeways, a Janoth Enterprises publication known as “the nation’s police blotter.” Stroud is intelligent, a hard worker, and a good father. He’s also a bit of a cynic whose wandering eye gets him into the jam of a lifetime (and into the middle of a very clever plot) when he steps out with Pauline Delos. “Tall, ice-blond, and splendid,” Delos also happens to be the love interest of Stroud’s boss, Earl Janoth, who presides over a faltering magazine syndicate (reportedly based on Time Incorporated, for which the author himself once worked), and who expects much from his employees, giving Stroud the opportunity to pass judgment on the capitalist grind “that seemed to prefer human sacrifices of the flesh and of the spirit over any other token of devotion.”
After spending a wild weekend together, Stroud goes to drop the delectable Delos off at her apartment building. But the couple spot Janoth waiting out front. Janoth sees them as well. He recognizes Delos, but not Stroud. It’s a close call for the philandering Crimeways editor, but he’s far from home free.
Once upstairs, Janoth and Delos argue, and things get out of hand. Taunted and berated beyond the breaking point, Janoth finally beats Delos to death. Then, with nowhere else to go, he flees to the apartment of his right-hand man, Steve Hagen, and admits his crime. Weak and cowardly, and already against the ropes with his troubled magazine empire, Janoth wants to surrender himself to the police, but Hagen will have none of it. He’s all cunning, with plenty of backbone that’s as crooked as a snake. After talking Janoth off the hangman’s scaffold, the pair begin to conspire. To save Janoth’s skin (and Hagen’s power and prestige), they know they must identify and find the man who brought Delos home that day—and then deal with him, letting the fall guy fall where he may. To make that happen, Hagen lets loose some of the best bloodhounds there are—the staff of Crimeways—who are told to locate the man, but not why he’s wanted. For Stroud, though, the reason is obvious: He’s being asked to implicate himself in the murder of Pauline Delos. It doesn’t take long for the investigative team to discover every stop Delos and her mystery lover made during that fatal weekend. Those who witnessed their drunken traipsing can put a name to Delos, but not Stroud.
With George Stroud feeling his pursuers closing in, author Fearing suddenly throws out a wild card.
Louise Patterson is an underappreciated artist whose works Stroud collects. He and Patterson bickered that fatal weekend over the purchase of one of the artist’s pieces at an antiques shop. Stroud eventually won the painting—and now it’s the only piece of physical evidence that can link him to Delos. Patterson is a hot mess. Disheveled and bibulous, with a face “like an arrested cyclone,” she comes across as an irascible crackpot with a mouth like a sailor’s. A determined believer in her worth as an artist, she’s been buying back all of her paintings, hoping to feature them in an upcoming retrospective. She can positively finger Stroud, and he has the damning framed canvas that proves they met. When, in the midst of this evolving investigation, Patterson is called to the Janoth Building, and she sights Stroud, she knows exactly who he is. Yet her reaction isn’t what he had expected.
Although Patterson is thrown off-balance by their office encounter, she recovers quickly, and engages in a private conversation with Stroud that is a most delicate minuet of innuendo and threat. Any reader not brought to the edge of their seat while listening to their exchange possesses a tin ear. The artist wants the picture back that Stroud outbid her for, but Stroud wants more. She realizes she’s being blackmailed—the picture in trade for her silence—and the ante is upped still further when Patterson notices a painting of hers on the wall of Stroud’s office, one of several she learns are in his possession. Stroud is reckless and a gambler; Patterson could turn him in and connive to repossess her art … except that the notoriety bestowed upon the piece when it’s linked to a sensational homicide would certainly increase its value far beyond her means. An agreement of some kind must be struck—but not before another dire turn is encountered.
(Above) A poster for the 1948 film based on Fearing’s novel.
For you see, the dogged Crimeways hounds—still on the hunt for answers—are busily searching the headquarters of Janoth Enterprises. As they make their way to the boardroom, where Janoth, Stroud, Hagen, and others await, Stroud prepares to accept his fate as an accused murderer. But just when all seems lost … well, telling any more would spoil the surprise. Suffice to say that afterward, Stroud must still deal with Patterson.
She stalks Stroud and at length confronts him in a bar. Drunk, she demands the painting be returned to her, but Stroud sticks to his guns and refuses. They hold each other in a tenuous abeyance, each at the mercy of the other, with Stroud at the disadvantage. However, that standoff confirms for Patterson her own worth as an artist, as Stroud puts his freedom, reputation, and family on the line to keep the painting—an ultimate compliment if there ever was one.
An arrangement of sorts is struck, unspoken and definitely non-binding. Will Patterson hold to it, though? No one knows. The “big clock,” that implacable mechanism “to which one automatically adjusts his entire life,” continues to tick away as the book ends, leaving readers twisting in the wind.
The Big Clock was first adapted for the silver screen—under that same title—in 1948, with a script by Jonathan Latimer (author of the book Solomon’s Vineyard), and starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Rita Johnson. In 1987, director Roger Donaldson plumbed Fearing’s tale a second time, producing No Way Out, a tense Washington, D.C.-set thriller starring Kevin Costner, Sean Young, and Gene Hackman. As well-received as those pictures were, the novel is still better—a cunning twist of classic noir, complete with crisp dialogue and pretty darn mean streets.
By Steven Nester
In general, novels penned by poets seem like daunting reads. (Can anyone really be certain what some modern poets are attempting to say in their works? Now, imagine those works at book length.) But not all modern poets are inscrutable, and luckily for readers, neither is their prose. Many have succeeded in producing long fiction, gaining a popular readership along with critical acclaim. Among those was Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961). A pulp writer and left-leaning poet in the 1930s (with five collections to his credit), Fearing
turned to fiction writing in the 1940s and ’50s. His fourth novel, 1946’s The Big Clock, brought him the greatest fame and fortune, becoming the source material for not one, but two Hollywood films, shot three decades apart. A psychological thriller, told through several first-person narrators, it is an acknowledged classic.The better part of The Big Clock is recounted by George Stroud, executive editor of the New York City-based Crimeways, a Janoth Enterprises publication known as “the nation’s police blotter.” Stroud is intelligent, a hard worker, and a good father. He’s also a bit of a cynic whose wandering eye gets him into the jam of a lifetime (and into the middle of a very clever plot) when he steps out with Pauline Delos. “Tall, ice-blond, and splendid,” Delos also happens to be the love interest of Stroud’s boss, Earl Janoth, who presides over a faltering magazine syndicate (reportedly based on Time Incorporated, for which the author himself once worked), and who expects much from his employees, giving Stroud the opportunity to pass judgment on the capitalist grind “that seemed to prefer human sacrifices of the flesh and of the spirit over any other token of devotion.”
After spending a wild weekend together, Stroud goes to drop the delectable Delos off at her apartment building. But the couple spot Janoth waiting out front. Janoth sees them as well. He recognizes Delos, but not Stroud. It’s a close call for the philandering Crimeways editor, but he’s far from home free.
Once upstairs, Janoth and Delos argue, and things get out of hand. Taunted and berated beyond the breaking point, Janoth finally beats Delos to death. Then, with nowhere else to go, he flees to the apartment of his right-hand man, Steve Hagen, and admits his crime. Weak and cowardly, and already against the ropes with his troubled magazine empire, Janoth wants to surrender himself to the police, but Hagen will have none of it. He’s all cunning, with plenty of backbone that’s as crooked as a snake. After talking Janoth off the hangman’s scaffold, the pair begin to conspire. To save Janoth’s skin (and Hagen’s power and prestige), they know they must identify and find the man who brought Delos home that day—and then deal with him, letting the fall guy fall where he may. To make that happen, Hagen lets loose some of the best bloodhounds there are—the staff of Crimeways—who are told to locate the man, but not why he’s wanted. For Stroud, though, the reason is obvious: He’s being asked to implicate himself in the murder of Pauline Delos. It doesn’t take long for the investigative team to discover every stop Delos and her mystery lover made during that fatal weekend. Those who witnessed their drunken traipsing can put a name to Delos, but not Stroud.
With George Stroud feeling his pursuers closing in, author Fearing suddenly throws out a wild card.
Louise Patterson is an underappreciated artist whose works Stroud collects. He and Patterson bickered that fatal weekend over the purchase of one of the artist’s pieces at an antiques shop. Stroud eventually won the painting—and now it’s the only piece of physical evidence that can link him to Delos. Patterson is a hot mess. Disheveled and bibulous, with a face “like an arrested cyclone,” she comes across as an irascible crackpot with a mouth like a sailor’s. A determined believer in her worth as an artist, she’s been buying back all of her paintings, hoping to feature them in an upcoming retrospective. She can positively finger Stroud, and he has the damning framed canvas that proves they met. When, in the midst of this evolving investigation, Patterson is called to the Janoth Building, and she sights Stroud, she knows exactly who he is. Yet her reaction isn’t what he had expected.
Although Patterson is thrown off-balance by their office encounter, she recovers quickly, and engages in a private conversation with Stroud that is a most delicate minuet of innuendo and threat. Any reader not brought to the edge of their seat while listening to their exchange possesses a tin ear. The artist wants the picture back that Stroud outbid her for, but Stroud wants more. She realizes she’s being blackmailed—the picture in trade for her silence—and the ante is upped still further when Patterson notices a painting of hers on the wall of Stroud’s office, one of several she learns are in his possession. Stroud is reckless and a gambler; Patterson could turn him in and connive to repossess her art … except that the notoriety bestowed upon the piece when it’s linked to a sensational homicide would certainly increase its value far beyond her means. An agreement of some kind must be struck—but not before another dire turn is encountered.
(Above) A poster for the 1948 film based on Fearing’s novel.
For you see, the dogged Crimeways hounds—still on the hunt for answers—are busily searching the headquarters of Janoth Enterprises. As they make their way to the boardroom, where Janoth, Stroud, Hagen, and others await, Stroud prepares to accept his fate as an accused murderer. But just when all seems lost … well, telling any more would spoil the surprise. Suffice to say that afterward, Stroud must still deal with Patterson.
She stalks Stroud and at length confronts him in a bar. Drunk, she demands the painting be returned to her, but Stroud sticks to his guns and refuses. They hold each other in a tenuous abeyance, each at the mercy of the other, with Stroud at the disadvantage. However, that standoff confirms for Patterson her own worth as an artist, as Stroud puts his freedom, reputation, and family on the line to keep the painting—an ultimate compliment if there ever was one.
An arrangement of sorts is struck, unspoken and definitely non-binding. Will Patterson hold to it, though? No one knows. The “big clock,” that implacable mechanism “to which one automatically adjusts his entire life,” continues to tick away as the book ends, leaving readers twisting in the wind.
The Big Clock was first adapted for the silver screen—under that same title—in 1948, with a script by Jonathan Latimer (author of the book Solomon’s Vineyard), and starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Rita Johnson. In 1987, director Roger Donaldson plumbed Fearing’s tale a second time, producing No Way Out, a tense Washington, D.C.-set thriller starring Kevin Costner, Sean Young, and Gene Hackman. As well-received as those pictures were, the novel is still better—a cunning twist of classic noir, complete with crisp dialogue and pretty darn mean streets.
Final Words
• Iowa-born actress Cloris Leachman, who passed away on January 27, was so well known for her roles in comedies such as the 1974 movie Young Frankenstein and TV sitcoms on the order of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis, and The Facts of Life, that it’s easy to neglect her many crime and mystery contributions. Don’t forget, though, that Leachman played the desperate, under-dressed woman who private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) finds running down a desolate country road at the start of Kiss Me Deadly (1955). She went on to win parts on Johnny Staccato, Hawaiian Eye, The Untouchables, 77 Sunset Strip, The Defenders, Perry Mason, The Name of the Game, Mannix, and Ironside. In addition, Leachman portrayed the duplicitous Anna Sage—“The Woman in Red”—in the 1973 flick Dillinger. Just glancing through her lengthy catalogue of performance credits shows the significance of Cloris Leachman’s impact on modern entertainment. She reportedly died of natural causes at age 94. The Web site Vintage Everyday has posted a series of Leachman photographs from the 1960s and ’70s.
• The Columbophile pays tribute to Italian-American actor Bruce Kirby, who featured in nine episodes of Columbo, initially as a lab attendant in 1973’s “Lovely But Lethal,” but most often in the shoes of “gullible” Los Angeles police sergeant George Kramer. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) notes that Kirby was seen as well in installments of Ironside, Banacek, McCloud, Toma, Harry O, Kojak, The Rockford Files, In the Heat of the Night, Murder, She Wrote, and The Sopranos. He was 95 when he died on January 24.
• In her too-brief obituary of Sharon Kay Penman, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph mentions that that British author composed “nine critically acclaimed historical novels: The Sunne in Splendour, Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning, When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, Devil’s Brood, Lionheart, and A King’s Ransom. Her tenth historical novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, was published in March of 2020. She also wrote four medieval mysteries. Her first was The Queen’s Man, the queen in question being Eleanor of Aquitaine, a finalist for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America. Her other mysteries: Cruel as the Grave, Dragon’s Lair, and Prince of Darkness.” Penman was 75 and had been “having various health issues for some time” before she finally succumbed to pneumonia on January 22.
• Last but not least, the demise of Cicely Tyson (she perished yesterday at 96) has provoked Bill Koenig of The Spy Command to remind us that, in addition to her better-remembered, award-winning performances on both the large and small screens, Tyson “made her presence known during television shows created during the 1960s spy craze.” He recalls her guest spots on I Spy and Mission: Impossible. He might have mentioned, too, as Tyson’s IMDb page does, her roles on Naked City, Judd, for the Defense, The F.B.I., Burt Reynolds’ B.L. Stryker, and the 1994-1995 NBC legal drama, Sweet Justice.
• The Columbophile pays tribute to Italian-American actor Bruce Kirby, who featured in nine episodes of Columbo, initially as a lab attendant in 1973’s “Lovely But Lethal,” but most often in the shoes of “gullible” Los Angeles police sergeant George Kramer. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) notes that Kirby was seen as well in installments of Ironside, Banacek, McCloud, Toma, Harry O, Kojak, The Rockford Files, In the Heat of the Night, Murder, She Wrote, and The Sopranos. He was 95 when he died on January 24.
• In her too-brief obituary of Sharon Kay Penman, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph mentions that that British author composed “nine critically acclaimed historical novels: The Sunne in Splendour, Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning, When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, Devil’s Brood, Lionheart, and A King’s Ransom. Her tenth historical novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, was published in March of 2020. She also wrote four medieval mysteries. Her first was The Queen’s Man, the queen in question being Eleanor of Aquitaine, a finalist for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America. Her other mysteries: Cruel as the Grave, Dragon’s Lair, and Prince of Darkness.” Penman was 75 and had been “having various health issues for some time” before she finally succumbed to pneumonia on January 22.
• Last but not least, the demise of Cicely Tyson (she perished yesterday at 96) has provoked Bill Koenig of The Spy Command to remind us that, in addition to her better-remembered, award-winning performances on both the large and small screens, Tyson “made her presence known during television shows created during the 1960s spy craze.” He recalls her guest spots on I Spy and Mission: Impossible. He might have mentioned, too, as Tyson’s IMDb page does, her roles on Naked City, Judd, for the Defense, The F.B.I., Burt Reynolds’ B.L. Stryker, and the 1994-1995 NBC legal drama, Sweet Justice.
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Revue of Reviewers, 1-28-21
Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.
All in on Allingham
You still have a month to arrange your submission to the 2021 Margery Allingham Short Story competition, sponsored by Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association. As a press release explains, “The Margery Allingham Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition. Each year the competition attracts many entries from the UK and overseas.”
Entrants should focus their brief yarns on elements matching Allingham’s definition of a mystery: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” Submissions are to run no longer than 3,500 words. The charge to enter is £12. This competition’s winner will receive £500, a selection of Allingham books, and two free passes to CrimeFest in 2022.
The deadline for submissions is 6 p.m. on February 26. For information about the contest’s rules and how to enter, click here.
Entrants should focus their brief yarns on elements matching Allingham’s definition of a mystery: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” Submissions are to run no longer than 3,500 words. The charge to enter is £12. This competition’s winner will receive £500, a selection of Allingham books, and two free passes to CrimeFest in 2022.
The deadline for submissions is 6 p.m. on February 26. For information about the contest’s rules and how to enter, click here.
Monday, January 25, 2021
Acclaim All Around
The Mystery Writers of America today announced the nominees for its 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. This year marks the 75th annual presentation of these prestigious prizes. Winners are scheduled to be declared on April 29, 2021.
Best Novel:
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, by Deepa Anappara (Random House)
• Before She Was Helen, by Caroline B. Cooney (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (Ecco)
• The Missing American, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime)
• The Distant Dead, by Heather Young (Morrow)
Best First Novel by an American Author:
• Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March (Minotaur)
• Please See Us, by Caitlin Mullen (Gallery)
• Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas (Morrow)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)
• Darling Rose Gold, by Stephanie Wrobel (Berkley)
Best Paperback Original:
• When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole (Morrow)
• The Deep, Deep Snow, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• Unspeakable Things, by Jess Lourey (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Keeper, by Jessica Moor (Penguin)
• East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (Harper 360)
Best Fact Crime:
• Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America, by Mark A. Bradley (Norton)
• The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, by Emma Copley Eisenberg (Hachette)
• Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, by Eric Eyre (Scribner)
• Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, by Sierra Crane Murdoch (Random House)
• Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, by Ariel Sabar (Doubleday)
Best Critical/Biographical:
• Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards (Harper360/
Collins Crime Club)
• Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock, by Christina Lane (Chicago Review Press)
• Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by Erin E. MacDonald (McFarland)
• Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction, by Elizabeth Mannion and Brian Cliff (Syracuse University Press)
• This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing, by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Press)
Best Short Story:
• “The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay,” by Leslie Elman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January/February 2020)
• “Dust, Ash, Flight,” by Maaza Mengiste (from Addis Ababa Noir, edited by Maaza Mengiste; Akashic)
• “Etta at the End of the World,” by Joseph S. Walker (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020)
• “The Twenty-Five Year Engagement,” by James W. Ziskin (from In League with Sherlock Holmes, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger; Pegasus Crime)
Best Juvenile:
• Premeditated Myrtle, by Elizabeth C. Bunce
(Algonquin Young Readers)
• Me and Banksy, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi (Puffin Canada)
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks (Katherine Tegen)
• Ikenga, by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)
• Nessie Quest, by Melissa Savage (Crown Books for Young Readers)
• Coop Knows the Scoop, by Taryn Souders (Sourcebooks
Young Readers)
Best Young Adult:
• The Companion, by Katie Alender (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
• The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Little, Brown
Books for Young Readers)
• They Went Left, by Monica Hesse (Little, Brown Books for
Young Readers)
• The Silence of Bones, by June Hur (Feiwel & Friends)
• The Cousins, by Karen M. McManus (Delacorte Press)
Best Television Episode Teleplay:
• “Episode 1, The Stranger,” Harlan Coben’s The Stranger,
teleplay by Danny Brocklehurst (Netflix)
• “Episode 1, Open Water,” The Sounds,
teleplay by Sarah-Kate Lynch (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1, Photochemistry,” Dead Still,
teleplay by John Morton (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1,” Des, teleplay by Luke Neal (Sundance Now)
• “What I Know,” The Boys, teleplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine; based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson (Amazon)
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“The Bite,” by Colette Bancroft (from Tampa Bay Noir, edited by Colette Bancroft; Akashic)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
• Death of an American Beauty, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, by Elsa Hart (Minotaur)
• The Lucky One, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)
• The First to Lie, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)
• Cold Wind, by Paige Shelton (Minotaur)
The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
• The Burn, by Kathleen Kent (Mulholland)
• Riviera Gold, by Laurie R. King (Ballantine)
• Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery, by Rosalie Knecht (Tin House)
• Dead Land, by Sara Paretsky (Morrow)
• The Sleeping Nymph, by Ilaria Tuti (Soho Crime)
• Turn to Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)
Grand Masters: Jeffery Deaver and Charlaine Harris
Raven Award: Malice Domestic
Ellery Queen Award: Reagan Arthur, Alfred A. Knopf
Congratulations to all of the nominees!
UPDATE: “Fearless,” by Walter Mosley (from California Schemin,’ edited by Art Taylor; Wildside Press), was originally included among the contenders in this year’s Best Short Story category. However, notes The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura, “Mosley himself notified the MWA that his story was ineligible, and the story was removed from the list.”
Best Novel:
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, by Deepa Anappara (Random House)
• Before She Was Helen, by Caroline B. Cooney (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (Ecco)
• The Missing American, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime)
• The Distant Dead, by Heather Young (Morrow)
Best First Novel by an American Author:
• Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March (Minotaur)
• Please See Us, by Caitlin Mullen (Gallery)
• Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas (Morrow)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)
• Darling Rose Gold, by Stephanie Wrobel (Berkley)
Best Paperback Original:
• When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole (Morrow)
• The Deep, Deep Snow, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• Unspeakable Things, by Jess Lourey (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Keeper, by Jessica Moor (Penguin)
• East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (Harper 360)
Best Fact Crime:
• Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America, by Mark A. Bradley (Norton)
• The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, by Emma Copley Eisenberg (Hachette)
• Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, by Eric Eyre (Scribner)
• Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, by Sierra Crane Murdoch (Random House)
• Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, by Ariel Sabar (Doubleday)
Best Critical/Biographical:
• Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards (Harper360/
Collins Crime Club)
• Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock, by Christina Lane (Chicago Review Press)
• Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by Erin E. MacDonald (McFarland)
• Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction, by Elizabeth Mannion and Brian Cliff (Syracuse University Press)
• This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing, by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Press)
Best Short Story:
• “The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay,” by Leslie Elman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January/February 2020)
• “Dust, Ash, Flight,” by Maaza Mengiste (from Addis Ababa Noir, edited by Maaza Mengiste; Akashic)
• “Etta at the End of the World,” by Joseph S. Walker (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020)
• “The Twenty-Five Year Engagement,” by James W. Ziskin (from In League with Sherlock Holmes, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger; Pegasus Crime)
Best Juvenile:
• Premeditated Myrtle, by Elizabeth C. Bunce
(Algonquin Young Readers)
• Me and Banksy, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi (Puffin Canada)
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks (Katherine Tegen)
• Ikenga, by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)
• Nessie Quest, by Melissa Savage (Crown Books for Young Readers)
• Coop Knows the Scoop, by Taryn Souders (Sourcebooks
Young Readers)
Best Young Adult:
• The Companion, by Katie Alender (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
• The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Little, Brown
Books for Young Readers)
• They Went Left, by Monica Hesse (Little, Brown Books for
Young Readers)
• The Silence of Bones, by June Hur (Feiwel & Friends)
• The Cousins, by Karen M. McManus (Delacorte Press)
Best Television Episode Teleplay:
• “Episode 1, The Stranger,” Harlan Coben’s The Stranger,
teleplay by Danny Brocklehurst (Netflix)
• “Episode 1, Open Water,” The Sounds,
teleplay by Sarah-Kate Lynch (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1, Photochemistry,” Dead Still,
teleplay by John Morton (Acorn TV)
• “Episode 1,” Des, teleplay by Luke Neal (Sundance Now)
• “What I Know,” The Boys, teleplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine; based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson (Amazon)
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
“The Bite,” by Colette Bancroft (from Tampa Bay Noir, edited by Colette Bancroft; Akashic)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
• Death of an American Beauty, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, by Elsa Hart (Minotaur)
• The Lucky One, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)
• The First to Lie, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)
• Cold Wind, by Paige Shelton (Minotaur)
The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
• The Burn, by Kathleen Kent (Mulholland)
• Riviera Gold, by Laurie R. King (Ballantine)
• Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery, by Rosalie Knecht (Tin House)
• Dead Land, by Sara Paretsky (Morrow)
• The Sleeping Nymph, by Ilaria Tuti (Soho Crime)
• Turn to Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)
Grand Masters: Jeffery Deaver and Charlaine Harris
Raven Award: Malice Domestic
Ellery Queen Award: Reagan Arthur, Alfred A. Knopf
Congratulations to all of the nominees!
UPDATE: “Fearless,” by Walter Mosley (from California Schemin,’ edited by Art Taylor; Wildside Press), was originally included among the contenders in this year’s Best Short Story category. However, notes The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura, “Mosley himself notified the MWA that his story was ineligible, and the story was removed from the list.”
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Bullet Points: Justly Overloaded Edition
• Earlier this month, I noted that among the authors whose work I read for the first time in 2020 were Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz, who last year gave us the remarkable—and remarkably sleazy—Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. That non-fiction tale recounts the swift rise and ignominious toppling, in 1973, of Spiro Agnew, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s first vice president. Prior to picking up Maddow and Yarvitz’s book, I had only a vague recollection of the financial kicbacks that had provoked Agnew’s (not wholly voluntary) resignation, just 10 months before Nixon himself quit in the wake of the Watergate scandal. And I had no memory whatsoever of the fact, 
mentioned in their penultimate chapter, that Agnew had tried his hand at fiction writing after leaving government. They explain that his 1976 political thriller, The Canfield Decision,
• The British Crime Writers’ Association has a new sponsor for its annual international writing competition for unpublished authors. Crimespree Magazine reports that “ProWritingAid, a platform that operates as a grammar checker, style editor and writing mentor,” will lend its support to the CWA’s Debut Dagger award. Incidentally, submissions to the 2021 contest are currently being accepted. Entrants should “send in their first 3,000 words and a 1,500-word synopsis of their novel. Writers do not need to have completed their novel in order to enter.” The deadline for entries is Friday, February 26.
• With COVID-19 still raging around the globe, is anybody remotely shocked by news that the release of the 25th James Bond picture, No Time to Die, has been delayed—again? As The Hollywood Reporter recalls, that picture “was set to open on April 2. Now, it is planning to hit the big screen on Oct. 8 as Hollywood faces more delays before moviegoing resumes in earnest. No Time to Die is likely to spark another wave of high-profile moves among spring and early summer movies.” There’s one surprise regarding this latest rescheduling, though, writes Bill Koenig in The Spy Command: “The announcement on [production company] Eon’s official website said No Time to Die will be released ‘globally’ on Oct. 8. Typically, Bond films are spread out a bit, often starting in the U.K. but not arriving in the U.S. until days later. We’ll see if a simultaneous release actually happens.”
• I mentioned on this page last summer that the PBS-TV umbrella series Masterpiece is co-producing, with Eleventh Hour Films, a six-part drama based on Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders. Now comes word that 64-year-old British actress Lesley Manville has been cast in the prominent role of Susan Ryeland, a book editor “who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest mystery novel, with little idea it will change her life.” A Masterpiece news release quotes Manville as saying, “I could not be happier to be playing Susan Ryeland—what a fabulous character for me to grapple with!” The actress’ stage, film, and TV career of more than four decades long has made her a critical success, but I’m not sure I would have signed her up to play Ryeland. For one thing, she’s quite a bit older than the character Horowitz describes. In last year’s Magpie sequel, Moonflower Murders, the author gives Ryeland’s age as 48, which means that she would’ve been in her mid-40s in Magpie Murders, not her mid-60s. I might have hesitated over hiring Manville, too, because I see Ryeland as a sympathetic figure, and Manville has made herself synonymous with some demonstrably unsympathetic characters in the past. For instance, she appeared as starchy British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK’s 2009 drama-documentary The Queen; as James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s snobbish mother in the 2014 mini-series Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond; and as the chilly, misanthropic Robina Chase in BBC One’s more recent World on Fire. Still, part of appreciating fiction to the fullest is suspending one’s disbelief in the improbable. So let’s wait and see what Manville can bring to her portrayal of Susan Ryeland. Horowitz is preparing the script for this small-screen rendering, and he’s sufficiently creative to reshape his character to fit whoever plays her.
• A new series based on P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh novels is coming to Acorn TV, according to Mystery Fanfare. “Bertie Carvel will play Detective Chief Inspector Dalgliesh,” explains Janet Rudolph. “The 43-year-old English actor is best known for his roles in Doctor Foster, The Crown, The Pale Horse, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. [This new] Dalgliesh will begin in 1970s England, following Dalgliesh’s career as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets.” Watch for this show’s premiere sometime later in 2021.
• It seems next month is shaping up to be a good one for television viewing. Literary Hub reports that The Luminaries, a six-part adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning 2013 novel of that same name, will finally begin streaming in the States on Valentine’s Day, February 14, via STARZ. This British-New Zealand mini-series starring Eve Hewson, Himesh Patel, and ex-“Bond girl” Eva Green was broadcast last summer in the UK. A trailer is below.
• The recent posting of an official teaser for the CBS-TV psychological thriller Clarice—inspired by Thomas Harris’ best-selling 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs, and debuting on February 11—has Literary Hub wondering when Dr. Hannibal Lecter will make an appearance on this midseason replacement series.
• In Reference to Murder brings word that “Netflix has given a series order to The Lincoln Lawyer, a drama based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, from Big Little Lies and Big Sky creator, David E. Kelley and A+E Studios. This is a new incarnation of the project, which originally was set up at CBS with a series production commitment last season. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven) has been tapped to play the titular character in the Netflix series as it honors the story’s Hispanic origins. The 10-episode first season is based on the second book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, The Brass Verdict.” A big-screen adaptation of Connelly’s 2005 Edgar-nominated novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, debuted in 2011.
• The Fall River, Massachusetts, home in which Lizzie Borden resided when her father and stepmother were murdered in August 1892—allegedly by Lizzie’s own axe-wielding hand—is currently for sale. CNN says that eight-bedroom house, built in 1845, can be yours for the paltry sum of $2 million. Any takers out there?
• Your quirky musical entertainment for this weekend.
• Perfect for Ellery Queen fans: “The American Mystery Classics Book Club”—linked to Otto Penzler’s publishing line of that same name, which last year released a fresh edition of Queen’s The Dutch Shoe Mystery—“will be meeting on Zoom on February 1st at 6:30 p.m. EST to discuss [that] puzzling tale of murder in the hospital …” The event will be free to the public, and feature a special guest: Richard Dannay, the son of Ellery Queen co-creator Frederic Dannay. Simply drop an e-mail note to charles@penzlerpublishers.com to RSVP.
• Well, this should be fun! Down & Out Books will publish, in February, The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett. The collection takes its title from an early and boisterous Buffett song, first released as a single in 1973. (On the flipside was “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”) As Kristopher Zgorski writes in BOLO Books, “editor Josh Pachter presents sixteen short crime stories by sixteen popular and up-and-coming crime writers, each story based on a song from one of the twenty-eight studio albums Jimmy has released over the last half century, from Leigh Lundin’s take on ‘Truckstop Salvation’ (which appeared on Jimmy’s first LP, 1970’s Down to Earth) to M.E. Browning’s interpretation of ‘Einstein Was a Surfer’ (from Jimmy’s most recent recording, 2013’s Songs from St. Somewhere).” Other contributors include Michael Bracken, Don Bruns, Isabella Maldonado, Rick Ollerman, John M. Floyd, Alison McMahan, and Robert J. Randisi. As a veteran fan of Buffett’s music (I was introduced to it by my roommates way back in college), I’m more than likely to procure a copy of this book for my library. There’s no listing for it yet on Amazon, but Down & Out invites you to “pre-order” it here. The book boasts a most eye-catching cover!
• Author Max Allan Collins wrote, in a recent blog post, that he’s working on a “coda” to his popular series about the hired killer known only as Quarry. Since Collins referenced this in association with remarks about Skim Deep (2020), which he says is “a coda”—or concluding entry—“to the Nolan series,” I presumed that his forthcoming Quarry novel, to be titled Quarry’s Blood and published by Hard Case Crime, would also bring the Quarry series to a close. Au contraire! As Collins tells me in an e-mail note, “Quarry’s Blood is a coda but not necessarily the last book. If we know anything about the series, it’s that I don’t write them in chronological order.” Ah, so Quarry’s Blood
will follow chronologically from The Last Quarry (2006), but won’t mark an end to the often-sexy adventures of Collins’ hit man. I haven’t seen a publication date yet for Quarry’s Blood, but it will carry cover art (left) by the great Ron Lesser.
• Although Quarry’s end isn’t near, Collins explains that “Quarry production will likely slow” in the near future, because the author is planning to move his longer-running series, about Chicago private eye Nathan Heller (Do No Harm), to Hard Case Crime as well. And HCC editor “Charles [Ardai]—who is incredibly supportive—doesn’t want more than one book a year from me. So I’ll likely do a Heller, a Quarry, a Heller, and so on in a yearly fashion until the show is over.”
• I’m a bit tardy in offering my condolences to the family of Peter Mark Richman, the Philadelphia-born actor who passed away on January 14, aged 93, but am no less sincere because of that delay. If you look at Richman’s credits on the International Movie Database (IMDb), you’ll see he was incredibly prolific during his six-decades-long career. Richman appeared in more than two dozens films and on TV shows ranging from The Wild Wild West, Blue Light, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, Banacek, and McCloud to Barnaby Jones, Starsky and Hutch, T.J. Hooker, Matlock, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He starred in the 1961-1962 TV crime drama Cain’s Hundred (see its opening and closing sequences here), and he played Duke Paige, the friend and occasional employer of blinded insurance investigator Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) on ABC-TV’s 1971-1972 series Longstreet. Richman also produced at least three books: Hollander’s Deal (2000) and The Rebirth of Ira Masters (2001), both novels; and Peter Mark Richman: I Saw a Molten, White Light …: An Autobiography of My Artistic and Spiritual Journey (2018).
• Also now deceased is Gregory Sierra, who—to quote from The Hollywood Reporter—“endeared himself to 1970s sitcom fans as the genial Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and the impassioned Sgt. Miguel ‘Chano’ Amenguale on Barney Miller.” Defined by the Reporter as a “proud Puerto Rican New Yorker,” Sierra died on January 4 at age 83, following “a battle with cancer.” In addition to his aforementioned small-screen roles, Sierra filled guest slots on It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Mission: Impossible, Banyon, Columbo, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, and Murder, She Wrote.
• Before we venture too far from the subject of Longstreet, let me point out that it’s one of seven series highlighted in Keith Roysdon’s CrimeReads piece about “classic TV’s most unusual investigators.” Other shows he recalls include Coronet Blue, The Immortal, and Cannon. I’m only surprised he didn’t bring up Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British series featuring a really offbeat mystery-solver—the ghost of a gumshoe slain in the line of duty.
• Four other CrimeReads pieces worth reading: Olivia Rutigliano’s introduction to Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc, who also inspired the character played by Omar Sy in the new Netflix series Lupin; a second piece by Rutigliano, looking back at how Leblanc endeavored to incorporate Sherlock Holmes into a Lupin story; Neil Nyren’s excellent primer on the 10 Martin Beck detective novels composed in the 1960s and ’70s by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; Camilla Bruce’s mini-biographies of “The Most Notorious Lonely Hearts Killers of All Time”; Sabina Stent’s reassessment of Hollywoodland, the 2006 movie portraying the complex life and alleged 1959 suicide of George Reeves, who starred in The Adventures of Superman; and yet another Rutigliano article (she has been busy of late), this one about how Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin changed detective fiction forever.
• I, for one, am enjoying the new, all-digital, full-color version of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, edited by George Easter. Its latest quarterly edition (#90) was sent out earlier this week. Among the contents can be found a profile of author Louise Penny; George H. Madison’s delightful remembrance of Harold Q. Masur’s Scott Jordan mysteries; another recap of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck tales, this one by Donus Roberts; obituaries of Parnell Hall, John le Carré, Alanna Knight, John Lutz, and DPMM reviewer Sally Sugarman; and the typical abundance of reviews covering books issued on both sides of the Atlantic. The magazine is now e-mailed to subscribers, for the low annual price of $10. Click here for ordering information.
• If you thought critics had long ago finished applauding the crime and mystery fiction of 2020, you would be incorrect. Earlier this month Sons of Spade’s Jochem van der Steen identified his favorite private-eye stories from last year, while Robert Lopresti provides his 12th annual list of best short stories in this SleuthSayers post.
• Finally, Amazon’s online book review, formerly called Omnivoracious, has sadly gone downhill over the last few years, becoming even more celebrity-oriented than it started. I have continued, however, to check out its contents every once in a while, and even included it in Killer Covers’ news-aggregating blogroll. But now I give up. An announcement reached my e-mailbox yesterday, saying that what’s now known simply as The Amazon Book Review (boy, I hope nobody made a dime off that pinheaded name change!) has migrated from its previous location to this one inside the larger Amazon.com sales realm. In the process it abandoned its RSS Web feed, so can no longer be accessed by news-aggregating tools built into blog-publishing services. So arrivederci, Amazon Book Review!
mentioned in their penultimate chapter, that Agnew had tried his hand at fiction writing after leaving government. They explain that his 1976 political thriller, The Canfield Decision,
centered on a fictional vice president who—and this was not much of a stretch—was eventually crippled by his own ambition. The protagonist, Porter Canfield (“wealthy, handsome and self-assured”), did manage to bed the “beautiful, amber-eyed” secretary of health, education and welfare. Agnew was sarcastically credited for “extreme inventiveness,” in a New York Times review, but that was as good as it got. The book was widely panned as a “mean-spirited piece of work” in which Agnew bitterly took aim at his old targets. “The book is anti-press, anti-Semitic, anti-woman and anti-black,” wrote one reviewer.A frequent Goodreads reviewer describes The Canfield Decision as “wondrous in its baffling badness.” Nonetheless, if you would like a copy for yourself, I see Abebooks currently has used editions available for as little as $1 for a paperback, and $4 for a hardcover. Before his death in 1996, Agnew penned one more book, this time a memoir, Go Quietly ... or Else (1980), which Wikipedia says “protested his total innocence of the charges that had brought his resignation, and claimed that he had been coerced by the White House to ‘go quietly’ or face an unspoken threat of possible assassination.”
• The British Crime Writers’ Association has a new sponsor for its annual international writing competition for unpublished authors. Crimespree Magazine reports that “ProWritingAid, a platform that operates as a grammar checker, style editor and writing mentor,” will lend its support to the CWA’s Debut Dagger award. Incidentally, submissions to the 2021 contest are currently being accepted. Entrants should “send in their first 3,000 words and a 1,500-word synopsis of their novel. Writers do not need to have completed their novel in order to enter.” The deadline for entries is Friday, February 26.
• With COVID-19 still raging around the globe, is anybody remotely shocked by news that the release of the 25th James Bond picture, No Time to Die, has been delayed—again? As The Hollywood Reporter recalls, that picture “was set to open on April 2. Now, it is planning to hit the big screen on Oct. 8 as Hollywood faces more delays before moviegoing resumes in earnest. No Time to Die is likely to spark another wave of high-profile moves among spring and early summer movies.” There’s one surprise regarding this latest rescheduling, though, writes Bill Koenig in The Spy Command: “The announcement on [production company] Eon’s official website said No Time to Die will be released ‘globally’ on Oct. 8. Typically, Bond films are spread out a bit, often starting in the U.K. but not arriving in the U.S. until days later. We’ll see if a simultaneous release actually happens.”
• I mentioned on this page last summer that the PBS-TV umbrella series Masterpiece is co-producing, with Eleventh Hour Films, a six-part drama based on Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders. Now comes word that 64-year-old British actress Lesley Manville has been cast in the prominent role of Susan Ryeland, a book editor “who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest mystery novel, with little idea it will change her life.” A Masterpiece news release quotes Manville as saying, “I could not be happier to be playing Susan Ryeland—what a fabulous character for me to grapple with!” The actress’ stage, film, and TV career of more than four decades long has made her a critical success, but I’m not sure I would have signed her up to play Ryeland. For one thing, she’s quite a bit older than the character Horowitz describes. In last year’s Magpie sequel, Moonflower Murders, the author gives Ryeland’s age as 48, which means that she would’ve been in her mid-40s in Magpie Murders, not her mid-60s. I might have hesitated over hiring Manville, too, because I see Ryeland as a sympathetic figure, and Manville has made herself synonymous with some demonstrably unsympathetic characters in the past. For instance, she appeared as starchy British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK’s 2009 drama-documentary The Queen; as James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s snobbish mother in the 2014 mini-series Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond; and as the chilly, misanthropic Robina Chase in BBC One’s more recent World on Fire. Still, part of appreciating fiction to the fullest is suspending one’s disbelief in the improbable. So let’s wait and see what Manville can bring to her portrayal of Susan Ryeland. Horowitz is preparing the script for this small-screen rendering, and he’s sufficiently creative to reshape his character to fit whoever plays her.
• A new series based on P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh novels is coming to Acorn TV, according to Mystery Fanfare. “Bertie Carvel will play Detective Chief Inspector Dalgliesh,” explains Janet Rudolph. “The 43-year-old English actor is best known for his roles in Doctor Foster, The Crown, The Pale Horse, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. [This new] Dalgliesh will begin in 1970s England, following Dalgliesh’s career as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets.” Watch for this show’s premiere sometime later in 2021.
• It seems next month is shaping up to be a good one for television viewing. Literary Hub reports that The Luminaries, a six-part adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning 2013 novel of that same name, will finally begin streaming in the States on Valentine’s Day, February 14, via STARZ. This British-New Zealand mini-series starring Eve Hewson, Himesh Patel, and ex-“Bond girl” Eva Green was broadcast last summer in the UK. A trailer is below.
• The recent posting of an official teaser for the CBS-TV psychological thriller Clarice—inspired by Thomas Harris’ best-selling 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs, and debuting on February 11—has Literary Hub wondering when Dr. Hannibal Lecter will make an appearance on this midseason replacement series.
• In Reference to Murder brings word that “Netflix has given a series order to The Lincoln Lawyer, a drama based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, from Big Little Lies and Big Sky creator, David E. Kelley and A+E Studios. This is a new incarnation of the project, which originally was set up at CBS with a series production commitment last season. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven) has been tapped to play the titular character in the Netflix series as it honors the story’s Hispanic origins. The 10-episode first season is based on the second book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, The Brass Verdict.” A big-screen adaptation of Connelly’s 2005 Edgar-nominated novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, debuted in 2011.
• The Fall River, Massachusetts, home in which Lizzie Borden resided when her father and stepmother were murdered in August 1892—allegedly by Lizzie’s own axe-wielding hand—is currently for sale. CNN says that eight-bedroom house, built in 1845, can be yours for the paltry sum of $2 million. Any takers out there?
• Your quirky musical entertainment for this weekend.
• Perfect for Ellery Queen fans: “The American Mystery Classics Book Club”—linked to Otto Penzler’s publishing line of that same name, which last year released a fresh edition of Queen’s The Dutch Shoe Mystery—“will be meeting on Zoom on February 1st at 6:30 p.m. EST to discuss [that] puzzling tale of murder in the hospital …” The event will be free to the public, and feature a special guest: Richard Dannay, the son of Ellery Queen co-creator Frederic Dannay. Simply drop an e-mail note to charles@penzlerpublishers.com to RSVP.
• Well, this should be fun! Down & Out Books will publish, in February, The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett. The collection takes its title from an early and boisterous Buffett song, first released as a single in 1973. (On the flipside was “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”) As Kristopher Zgorski writes in BOLO Books, “editor Josh Pachter presents sixteen short crime stories by sixteen popular and up-and-coming crime writers, each story based on a song from one of the twenty-eight studio albums Jimmy has released over the last half century, from Leigh Lundin’s take on ‘Truckstop Salvation’ (which appeared on Jimmy’s first LP, 1970’s Down to Earth) to M.E. Browning’s interpretation of ‘Einstein Was a Surfer’ (from Jimmy’s most recent recording, 2013’s Songs from St. Somewhere).” Other contributors include Michael Bracken, Don Bruns, Isabella Maldonado, Rick Ollerman, John M. Floyd, Alison McMahan, and Robert J. Randisi. As a veteran fan of Buffett’s music (I was introduced to it by my roommates way back in college), I’m more than likely to procure a copy of this book for my library. There’s no listing for it yet on Amazon, but Down & Out invites you to “pre-order” it here. The book boasts a most eye-catching cover!
• Author Max Allan Collins wrote, in a recent blog post, that he’s working on a “coda” to his popular series about the hired killer known only as Quarry. Since Collins referenced this in association with remarks about Skim Deep (2020), which he says is “a coda”—or concluding entry—“to the Nolan series,” I presumed that his forthcoming Quarry novel, to be titled Quarry’s Blood and published by Hard Case Crime, would also bring the Quarry series to a close. Au contraire! As Collins tells me in an e-mail note, “Quarry’s Blood is a coda but not necessarily the last book. If we know anything about the series, it’s that I don’t write them in chronological order.” Ah, so Quarry’s Blood
will follow chronologically from The Last Quarry (2006), but won’t mark an end to the often-sexy adventures of Collins’ hit man. I haven’t seen a publication date yet for Quarry’s Blood, but it will carry cover art (left) by the great Ron Lesser.• Although Quarry’s end isn’t near, Collins explains that “Quarry production will likely slow” in the near future, because the author is planning to move his longer-running series, about Chicago private eye Nathan Heller (Do No Harm), to Hard Case Crime as well. And HCC editor “Charles [Ardai]—who is incredibly supportive—doesn’t want more than one book a year from me. So I’ll likely do a Heller, a Quarry, a Heller, and so on in a yearly fashion until the show is over.”
• I’m a bit tardy in offering my condolences to the family of Peter Mark Richman, the Philadelphia-born actor who passed away on January 14, aged 93, but am no less sincere because of that delay. If you look at Richman’s credits on the International Movie Database (IMDb), you’ll see he was incredibly prolific during his six-decades-long career. Richman appeared in more than two dozens films and on TV shows ranging from The Wild Wild West, Blue Light, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, Banacek, and McCloud to Barnaby Jones, Starsky and Hutch, T.J. Hooker, Matlock, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He starred in the 1961-1962 TV crime drama Cain’s Hundred (see its opening and closing sequences here), and he played Duke Paige, the friend and occasional employer of blinded insurance investigator Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) on ABC-TV’s 1971-1972 series Longstreet. Richman also produced at least three books: Hollander’s Deal (2000) and The Rebirth of Ira Masters (2001), both novels; and Peter Mark Richman: I Saw a Molten, White Light …: An Autobiography of My Artistic and Spiritual Journey (2018).
• Also now deceased is Gregory Sierra, who—to quote from The Hollywood Reporter—“endeared himself to 1970s sitcom fans as the genial Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and the impassioned Sgt. Miguel ‘Chano’ Amenguale on Barney Miller.” Defined by the Reporter as a “proud Puerto Rican New Yorker,” Sierra died on January 4 at age 83, following “a battle with cancer.” In addition to his aforementioned small-screen roles, Sierra filled guest slots on It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Mission: Impossible, Banyon, Columbo, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, and Murder, She Wrote.
• Before we venture too far from the subject of Longstreet, let me point out that it’s one of seven series highlighted in Keith Roysdon’s CrimeReads piece about “classic TV’s most unusual investigators.” Other shows he recalls include Coronet Blue, The Immortal, and Cannon. I’m only surprised he didn’t bring up Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British series featuring a really offbeat mystery-solver—the ghost of a gumshoe slain in the line of duty.
• Four other CrimeReads pieces worth reading: Olivia Rutigliano’s introduction to Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc, who also inspired the character played by Omar Sy in the new Netflix series Lupin; a second piece by Rutigliano, looking back at how Leblanc endeavored to incorporate Sherlock Holmes into a Lupin story; Neil Nyren’s excellent primer on the 10 Martin Beck detective novels composed in the 1960s and ’70s by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; Camilla Bruce’s mini-biographies of “The Most Notorious Lonely Hearts Killers of All Time”; Sabina Stent’s reassessment of Hollywoodland, the 2006 movie portraying the complex life and alleged 1959 suicide of George Reeves, who starred in The Adventures of Superman; and yet another Rutigliano article (she has been busy of late), this one about how Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin changed detective fiction forever.
• I, for one, am enjoying the new, all-digital, full-color version of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, edited by George Easter. Its latest quarterly edition (#90) was sent out earlier this week. Among the contents can be found a profile of author Louise Penny; George H. Madison’s delightful remembrance of Harold Q. Masur’s Scott Jordan mysteries; another recap of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck tales, this one by Donus Roberts; obituaries of Parnell Hall, John le Carré, Alanna Knight, John Lutz, and DPMM reviewer Sally Sugarman; and the typical abundance of reviews covering books issued on both sides of the Atlantic. The magazine is now e-mailed to subscribers, for the low annual price of $10. Click here for ordering information.
• If you thought critics had long ago finished applauding the crime and mystery fiction of 2020, you would be incorrect. Earlier this month Sons of Spade’s Jochem van der Steen identified his favorite private-eye stories from last year, while Robert Lopresti provides his 12th annual list of best short stories in this SleuthSayers post.
• Finally, Amazon’s online book review, formerly called Omnivoracious, has sadly gone downhill over the last few years, becoming even more celebrity-oriented than it started. I have continued, however, to check out its contents every once in a while, and even included it in Killer Covers’ news-aggregating blogroll. But now I give up. An announcement reached my e-mailbox yesterday, saying that what’s now known simply as The Amazon Book Review (boy, I hope nobody made a dime off that pinheaded name change!) has migrated from its previous location to this one inside the larger Amazon.com sales realm. In the process it abandoned its RSS Web feed, so can no longer be accessed by news-aggregating tools built into blog-publishing services. So arrivederci, Amazon Book Review!
Thursday, January 21, 2021
PaperBack: “The Deadly Lover”
Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.
The Deadly Lover, by “Robert O. Saber,” aka Milton K. Ozaki (Phantom, 1951). This was the first of five novels featuring overweight Chicago gumshoe Carl Good, all published in the early 1950s. The cover illustration is credited to Raymond Johnson. That artist’s original painting can be appreciated here.
The Deadly Lover, by “Robert O. Saber,” aka Milton K. Ozaki (Phantom, 1951). This was the first of five novels featuring overweight Chicago gumshoe Carl Good, all published in the early 1950s. The cover illustration is credited to Raymond Johnson. That artist’s original painting can be appreciated here.
Captivated by Christie’s “Captivist” Yarns
Since I wrote not long ago, in CrimeReads, about Agatha Christie’s first published novel, this In Reference to Murder item caught my eye:
Exactly a 100 years ago, on January 21, 1921, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first novel by Agatha Christie was published in the UK. There have been many tributes and essays penned about the centenary, but if you’re a fan of Christie and geography, you might check out this article by Sebastian Beck and Dominique Jeannerod on the International Crime Fiction blog. It takes a closer look at the different dimensions of space in the 45 novels featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and how the places where homicides were committed evolved over the course of Christie’s career.
Take Covers
This week brought the 12th anniversary of my having launched The Rap Sheet’s sister blog, Killer Covers. To mark the occasion, I began posting—one per day—a dozen “classic book fronts that have attracted my attention over this last pandemic-seared year, and that I would like to share with readers.” Catch up with the whole series here.
Monday, January 18, 2021
Leftys Out on Their Own
Today brings an announcement of the books and authors vying for the 2021 Lefty Awards. Normally, these commendations would be given out during the annual Left Coast Crime Convention. But this year’s convention was “rescheduled for 2022.” So, instead, the Leftys “will be voted on virtually and presented online [on] April 10, 2021,” according to Mystery Fanfare.
The nominees, in four categories, are listed below.
Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
• Murder in the Bayou Boneyard, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)
• Mimi Lee Gets a Clue, by Jennifer J. Chow (Berkley Prime Crime)
• Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
• The Study of Secrets, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)
• The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing, by J. Michael Orenduff (Aakenbaaken & Kent)
• Skin Deep, by Sung J. Woo (Agora)
Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (for books set before 1970):
• The Fate of a Flapper, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
• A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• Riviera Gold, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Turning Tide, by Catriona McPherson (Quercus)
• Mortal Music, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Turn to Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)
Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
• Murder Goes to Market, by Daisy Bateman (Seventh Street)
• Derailed, by Mary Keliikoa (Camel Press)
• Murder at the Mena House, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Viking)
• The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton (Putnam)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)
Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
• What You Don’t See, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
• All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
Congratulations to all of the contenders!
The nominees, in four categories, are listed below.
Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
• Murder in the Bayou Boneyard, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)
• Mimi Lee Gets a Clue, by Jennifer J. Chow (Berkley Prime Crime)
• Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
• The Study of Secrets, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)
• The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing, by J. Michael Orenduff (Aakenbaaken & Kent)
• Skin Deep, by Sung J. Woo (Agora)
Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (for books set before 1970):
• The Fate of a Flapper, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
• A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• Riviera Gold, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Turning Tide, by Catriona McPherson (Quercus)
• Mortal Music, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Turn to Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)
Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
• Murder Goes to Market, by Daisy Bateman (Seventh Street)
• Derailed, by Mary Keliikoa (Camel Press)
• Murder at the Mena House, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Viking)
• The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton (Putnam)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)
Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
• What You Don’t See, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
• All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
Congratulations to all of the contenders!
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Revue of Reviewers, 1-16-21
Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.
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