Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Bullet Points: A Heady Mix Edition

• When Nellie Bly is remembered at all in our age, it’s usually for her 72-day circumnavigation of the earth in 1889, a stunt meant to beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg, in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eight Days (1872). However, Bly—born Elizabeth Jane Cochran—was also a pioneering female newspaper journalist and, less well-recalled, a novelist. As January Magazine explains, she penned 11 tales in regular installments, mostly for The New York Family Story Paper. “Titles of two of her serial novels, Eva the Adventuress and New York By Night, have long been known,” the blog states. “But the novels themselves were lost …” That is, until their 2019 rediscovery by Michigan writer David Blixt, the author of What Girls Are Good For, a 2018 novel starring the daring Ms. Bly. Those missing works were finally released this month in brand-new editions by Sordelet Ink. The majority of them look to be adventure stories or romances, but the first—The Mystery of Central Park—fits snuggly in the crime category. Here’s a plot synopsis:
Dick and his sweetheart Penelope discover the body of a beautiful young woman posed upon a Central Park bench. Instantly Dick is suspected of having something to do with the young woman’s death. Moreover, Penelope has long been urging the ne’er-do-well Dick to accomplish something with his life. So he sets out to discover the dead woman’s identity and solve the riddle of her death. Was it innocent? Suicide? Or was it murder?

From the twinkling lights of New York’s high society to dens of iniquity, Dick follows every trail until he uncovers a tenuous lead. Saving another young woman from the jaws of death, he puts his happiness in jeopardy to confront the scoundrel responsible for the dead woman’s fate.
• The Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans has announced the recipients of its 2021 Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, each “intended to honor a book which illuminates the reality of women’s lives …” This year’s Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work goes to C.S. Harris (aka Candice Proctor), author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series, while the Pinckley Prize for Debut Fiction goes to Angie Kim for her 2019 novel, Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton)—a work that has already claimed an ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. A new commendation, the Pinckley Prize for True Crime Writing, is being given to Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia (Hachette). Provided the worldwide coronavirus doesn’t alter plans, these honors will be presented during the 2021 Bouchercon, set to take place in New Orleans this coming August.

• Although I wasn’t bowled over by Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the six-part, British-Irish historical crime drama broadcast under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella earlier this year, I did think it merited further episodes. It’s now clear that was not my opinion alone. Mystery Fanfare brings news that the hour-long program, which is set in 1880s London and stars Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin, has had its run extended. Masterpiece executive producer Susanne Simpson is quoted as saying: “Miss Scarlet and The Duke was an instant fan favorite. Our audience couldn’t resist its lighthearted tone and the appealing characters so wonderfully portrayed by Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin. We’re delighted the show will return for a second season.” Season 2 is expected to debut on Masterpiece in 2022, but like its predecessor, will undoubtedly air earlier on the UK’s Alibi channel.

According to The Killing Times, the ITV-TV series Unforgotten is “currently the most-watched crime drama in the UK.” Its Season 4 episodes just finished showing in Great Britain this week, and it hasn’t yet made it across the pond for the entertainment of American viewers. But Unforgotten has already been renewed for a fifth season. (Warning: Serious spoilers at that last link!)

• “Columbo, for the most part, was a pretty family-friendly show,” recalls the anonymous author of The Columbophile. “Negligible use of bad language and sex scenes allied with an absence of violence and gore ensured that even a show about murder—that darkest of human acts—rarely made for unsettling viewing. There were exceptions, though. Sometimes the show dropped stark reminders that murder really is a most foul and grisly business—and at its worst could be cruel and disturbing to boot.” Read more … if you dare!

• Delays, delays, and more delays: In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson says that “Kenneth Branagh’s mystery ensemble-cast movie, Death on the Nile, has seen its premiere date pushed back again, this time to February 11, 2022. The 20th Century Studios production, which also stars Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening, has changed release dates several times due to the pandemic. [It was originally slated for release on December 20, 2019.] However, Deadline reports that the new release date has nothing to do with co-star Armie Hammer, who has been besieged by an alleged sex scandal.”



• Well, here I am again, recommending something I’ve spotted on YouTube, even though I know that videos there can vanish unexpectedly. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to point out the recent appearance of Michael O’Hara the Fourth, a 90-minute film that debuted on the television anthology series The Wonderful World of Disney in 1972. When I was growing up, Disney’s Sunday night presentations were must-see TV in my household. Yet aside from The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963), starring Patrick McGoohan, and a rebroadcast of Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (comprising the first three episodes of a five-part serial originally shot for Disney in the 1950s), I don’t recall many of the shows produced specifically for Wonderful World, as opposed to Disney theatrical pictures that were subsequently rerun on Sunday nights. Oddly, however, I have strong memories of Michael O’Hara the Fourth. Or perhaps it’s not so very odd, as that film left me with a huge crush on its star, Jo Ann Harris. Although she was then 22 years old, Harris was cast as Michael “Mike” O’Hara IV, a teenage wannabe sleuth—very much in the Nancy Drew mode—whose father was Michael O’Hara III, a police captain in an unnamed city, played by Dan Dailey (later to feature in the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie segment Faraday and Company). The Disney Wiki explains how Harris’ character came by her distinctly masculine moniker:
The name Michael O’Hara has become synonymous with law enforcement. There have been three generations of Michael O’Hara’s and all have been exemplary policemen. When Michael O’Hara III’s child was born, he was told that [he and his wife would] not be able to have any more children, and there ha[d] always been a Michael O’Hara, so he named his child Michael O’Hara IV, despite the fact that she [was] a girl.

Now, Mike has a tendency to get involved with police matters and not always with good results, which annoys her father. And despite being told repeatedly to stay out of it, she continues her amateurish detective activities.

Michael O’Hara the Fourth was first shown in two parts, on successive Sunday nights: March 26, 1972, and April 2, 1972. It found the delightful, blonde Miss Mike recruiting her friends, especially her sort-of-boyfriend, Norman (Michael McGreevey), into one harebrained escapade after another, always intending to help her father with his crime-solving—but usually resulting in minor disasters. Although Mike wasn’t a tomboy (she favored short skirts), she didn’t shy away from mixing it up with crooks and killers. In the first part of this film, she and Norman try to get to the bottom of a money-counterfeiting operation, while the second half finds them seeking to crack the alibis of businessmen implicated in a murder. This picture may have been intended for young audiences, but it’s far from silly, and its humor and high jinks remain entertaining even after all these years. I’m a bit surprised Disney didn’t shoot a sequel. Or two.

• By the way, if you are curious, Jo Ann Harris went on to amass a lengthy résumé of credits, including guest roles on The Mod Squad, Banyon, The F.B.I., Nakia, The Manhunter, and Barnaby Jones. She also co-starred with Robert Stack in Most Wanted, a 1976-1977 Quinn Martin series on ABC-TV that “focused on an elite task force of the Los Angeles Police Department … [concentrating] exclusively on criminals on the mayor’s most-wanted list.” (You can watch the original title sequence here.) And no, I don’t have a crush on Harris any longer. Through some cruel trick of time, she’s now 71, not 22.

This 1965 TV promo spot for The Wild Wild West must have left action-adventure fans in drooling anticipation of that CBS series’ September 17 premiere. Firearms, secret smoke bombs, and a quietly calculating Suzanne Pleshette—what’s not to like?

How late-night repeats brought an end to Mannix’s run.

• How does Sherlock Holmes figure into the legend of the Loch Ness monster? CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano recalls the tale. And you can click here for a brief film clip of that “Nessie” in action.

• I neglected to mention, in The Rap Sheet’s last “Bullet Points” round-up, another delightful piece that found its way into CrimeReads earlier this month: “How Shane Black’s Love Letter to 1970s Crime Fiction Put a Spotlight on Robert Terrall.” Composed by Bay Area freelancer (and occasional January Magazine contributor) Ben Terrall, it recounts the story of how his prolific author father, Robert Terrall (aka Robert Kyle), became a ghost writer on the Mike Shayne private-eye series back in the 1960s, after the protagonist’s creator, Davis Dresser, “developed a severe writer’s block.” The piece goes on to note that one of Terrall’s Shayne yarns, 1973’s Blue Murder, became source material for director Shane Black’s 2016 “slapstick buddy movie,” The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling—as was acknowledged in the picture’s collection of credits. “I have no doubt Dad would have loved to see his name on the silver screen,” remarks Ben Terrall. “He was a moviegoer from an early age and was always ready to write for Hollywood, but that never happened. He wrote several movie tie-ins (including one for Moses and the Ten Commandments, which made it possible for me to answer the question ‘What has your father written?’ with ‘The Ten Commandments’), but none of his fifty or so original novels were ever made into films.”

• Coincidentally, the latest episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast focuses on, among assorted other topics, Robert Terrall’s life and literary endeavors. You can listen to that here.

• In his April “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots, Mike Ripley covers subjects ranging from his lockdown reading choices and a case of mistaken author identity to new crime-fiction releases by James Woolf, Erin Kelly, Tom Bradby, and others.

Who knew there were so many birthday-themed mysteries?

The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura mentioned recently that William Heffernan, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated former journalist and the author most recently of The Scientology Murders (2017), died this last December 4 at age 80. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Heffernan labored on behalf of both the New York Post and the Daily News, but left his investigative reporting career in 1978 after scoring a publishing contract for his first novel, Broderick (1980). As blogger Cullen Gallagher wrote, that book “is based on the real-life figure of Johnny Broderick, a tough New York cop as legendary as he is notorious. Nicknamed ‘The Beater,’ Broderick is anything but your conventional heroic policeman; he’s as corrupt, violent, and as crooked as the gangster and hoods he hunts down.” Heffernan went on to compose 18 more books, including 1988’s Ritual (which introduced series protagonist Paul Devlin, a New York City police detective), 1995’s Tarnished Blue (a Devlin yarn that captured the 1996 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original Novel), his 2003 historical thriller, A Time Gone By, and 2010’s The Dead Detective (which launched Heffernan’s second series lead, Henry Doyle, a Tampa, Florida, homicide detective who can hear the postmortem whispers of murder victims). Kimura adds that Heffernan “once served as president of the International Association of Crime Writers/North America.” Oddly, I seem unable to locate an official online obituary of William Heffernan, and his Facebook page is no help—it hasn’t been updated since February 2016. If anyone reading this has spotted more information about the author’s demise, please let me know.

• More recently deceased is Richard Gilliland, a Texas native who, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “starred as Sgt. Steve DiMaggio on NBC’s McMillan & Wife in 1976-77 and as Lt. Nick Holden on ABC’s adaptation of Operation Petticoat in 1977-78, and he was a series regular on ABC’s Just Our Luck in 1983 and the CBC’s Heartland in 1989. Gilliland also had recurring roles on other shows, including Party of Five, The Waltons, Thirtysomething, Dark Skies and Desperate Housewives and guest-starring appearances on Criminal Minds, Dexter, Becker, Scandal, Joan of Arcadia, The Practice and Crossing Jordan, among many other shows.” Gilliland was married to Emmy-winning actress Jean Smart, whom he met when they worked together on the sitcom Designing Women in the 1980s. He was 71 years old at the time of his passing on March 18. More here.

• Last but not least, I am sorry to hear that another child of the Lone Star State, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry breathed his last on March 25 at age 84. McMurtry will be remembered for many novels, among them The Last Picture Show (1966), Terms of Endearment (1975), and Anything for Billy (1988), but for me, it was his 1985 Old West adventure, Lonesome Dove, that most stood out. As I wrote in a piece for January Magazine, naming the 20th century’s foremost books, “McMurtry reinvented the western novel for a modern audience, filling Dove (and its sequel and prequels) with spectacularly quirky characters, oddball episodes that would never have made it into the works of either Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey, and heartwarming scenes that will stick with you forever.” Links to more McMurtry obituaries can be found here. And in the wake of his demise, this fine Texas Monthly profile from 2016 has been resurrected.

• Great Britain will celebrate National Crime Reading Month this coming June, though most of the events are to take place online, due to the continuing COVID-19 crisis. Linda Stratmann, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, which hosts this annual literary fête, says: “We want to invite bookshops, libraries, publishers, conventions and festivals that celebrate the crime genre, to take part. Our sister network, the Crime Readers’ Association (CRA), is one of the largest communities of crime genre readers in the world, so this June is a unique opportunity to get an author event or reading initiative in front of that dedicated audience.” It’s only too bad the United States—which already dedicates months to recognition of mentoring, ice cream, and country music—can’t similarly honor crime and mystery fiction.

• Wales’ first international celebration of crime literature, the Gŵyl Crime Cymru Festival, is set to take place online from April 26 to May 3. As Mystery Fanfare explains, “Lee and Andrew Child, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Ragnar Jónasson, Peter James, Elly Griffiths, Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Khan, and Martin Edwards—amongst others—will discuss their work alongside Welsh crime writers who might not be as well-known, but are playing their part in bringing Welsh crime writing to the fore. There will also be a panel focusing on the great success Welsh crime fiction is enjoying on the small screen, featuring the team that created the globally popular Keeping Faith TV series.” The complete schedule of events can be found here.

• Meanwhile, Crime Fiction Lover offers this handy overview of Welsh contributions to the genre, both on the page and on the screen. It includes a selection of novels and authors to get your explorations of that country’s bilingual crime fiction started.

• Florida journalist Craig Pittman passes along this piece from The New Yorker. It looks at a new film project from Yuko Torihara, focusing on Manhattan’s Chinatown at night. A principal player in that feature? Henry Chang, the 70-year-old author of detective novels such as Chinatown Beat (2006) and Lucky (2017), set in the neighborhood.

• I recently reported on the numerous nominees for this year’s Agatha Awards, which are to be dispensed during an online-only Malice Domestic festival in mid-July. Coincidentally, Elizabeth Foxwell now points me toward a two-part remembrance of the late author Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz), who “played such an integral role” in founding that annual convention. Part I here, Part II here.

Craig Sisterson, a New Zealand writer (and the creator of that country’s Ngaio Marsh Awards), who is currently living in London, has become a contributor to the international blog Murder Is Everywhere. His posts are supposed to appear every second Tuesday. The first, from March 23, is principally an ode to children’s mysteries.

• Speaking of lands Down Under, check out the results of Reading Matters’ month-long tribute to Southern Cross Crime.

• Sometime Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins (The Dead Beat Scroll) is also a Bay Area photographer, and for years he’s posted examples of his street shots on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. He has also used those black-and-white images as chapter illustrations in his novels. Now, says Coggins, he’s put together Street Stories, “a street photography monograph with the best of my work from the last dozen years or so. Published by Poltroon Press—the house that published my first novel—the coffee table-sized book includes 52 images reproduced in tritone by a printer in Italy. It incorporates a reproduction of my Japanese ‘hanko’ stamp on the cover and features end papers in a matching red color.” This $50 book won’t released until mid-May, but in the meantime, Coggins tells me, “Poltroon Press is offering a $10 discount on pre-orders …” Click here to learn more.

Library Finds

I love my urban Seattle neighborhood, with its predominance of single-family residences, its convenient shopping venues and friendly independent bookstore, its proliferation of “Black Lives Matter” placards and—even now—Biden-Harris campaign signs. Since the pandemic began a year ago, I have done a great deal of walking around this area, escaping my office for both fresh air and exercise—outings made even more pleasant lately by my wife’s gift of a portable CD player (currently loaded with The Best of Bread).

During my rambles, I pass more than a handful of Little Free Libraries. Most of these post-topping book exchanges are filled with well-thumbed editions of novels by folks such as Kristin Hannah, Tom Clancy, Jodi Picoult, and Nicholas Sparks, or else with jigsaw puzzles. Recently, however, I peeked inside one such box to find ... two Raymond Chandler yarns. On a different day, I discovered copies in another box of works by Dashiell Hammett, Robert Crais, and Michael Gilbert. Evidently, I’m not the only local crime-fiction lover.

I’ve thought of packing along some advance reader copies, or else finished copies, of newer crime, mystery, and thriller novels as I take my daily perambulations, and slipping them into boxes I already know favor this genre. But what’s the etiquette here? Would those contributions be unwelcome? Not being familiar with how Little Free Libraries operate, I’d be grateful for any advice.

Monday, March 29, 2021

Matters of Merit

Today brings word, from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers, of which books and authors have been shortlisted for its 2020 Hammett Prize. That annual commendation is given to a book, originally published in the English language in the United States or Canada, “that best represents the conception of literary excellence in crime writing.”

Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March (Minotaur)
The Mountains Wild, by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur)
Three Hours in Paris, by Cara Black (Soho Crime)
When These Mountains Burn, by David Joy (Putnam)
Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)

As The Gumshoe Site reports, “Details on [the IACW/NA’s] winner announcement have not been determined yet.”

Friday, March 26, 2021

The Book You Have to Read:
“Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye,” by Horace McCoy

(Editor’s note: This is the 170th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
Author Horace McCoy throws a couple of curveballs in his ambitious Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye (Signet Books, 1948), but readers should not be deterred. To provide background and motivation for the depraved criminality of protagonist Ralph Cotter, McCoy coheres hard-as-nails pulp to Freudian-lite, then mixes in a smattering of Greek mythology. Most readers might rather see criminal activity born of the Seven Deadly Sins than of mommy or daddy issues (or, in Cotter’s case, grandmother issues), and thankfully McCoy is too good a crime writer to allow Sigmund Freud and Thomas Bullfinch to take over completely. However, this book does at times seems a little odd. Even Cotter, who narrates the story, occasionally scratches his head as he undergoes some very ardent introspection. The cultural references and rawness of Cotter’s behavior may be intermittent distractions to some, but the intense, non-stop action and the fine writing will hold the attention of everyone.

The specific book under examination here is Signet’s “Special Edition” (shown on the right), published in 1949, one year after the original saw print. I admit I have not read the first edition, nor can I find anyone who has; so it’s hard to determine whether there are significant differences between the two. The tagline on this later paperback edition—“Love as hot as a blow torch … crime as vicious as the jungle”—promises less than what is contained between the covers, prompting one to ponder how much more lurid (or personality-disorder-centric) the original yarn could possibly be, if at all. After seeing Ralph Cotter in action with a femme fatale named Holiday, a woman “pulsing with a lust straight from the cave,” readers are advised, if they decide to become invested in either character, to consider donning a bullet-proof vest or an asbestos condom, respectively. As these two players are engaged in violent sex or else a fistfight whenever they’re together, a lion tamer (chair, whip, pistol) would also be recommended.

McCoy’s novel centers around a 1930s prison farm breakout and its aftermath. Cotter and his convict pal George are aided in their bloody escape by George’s sister, the above-mentioned Holiday. Cotter murders George during the ensuing gun battle with prison guards (Holiday doesn’t realize this right away, but she finds out), and by the time Cotter makes it to a safe house, readers will realize that Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye is not your standard pulp noir—not by a long shot.

Cotter is a college-educated man, and his lust is fairly tempered by his book learning, which at times seems to keep explicit prose in check. Holiday allows Ralph a glimpse of her naked crotch, which he describes as “the Atlantic, the Route to Cathay, the Seven Cities of Cibola …” Comparing Holiday’s mon veneris to the great wonders of the world is the type of exaggeration one might expect from a guy just sprung from lockup—but more importantly, it gives readers a good idea that Cotter isn’t your run-of-the-mill sociopath. Although Holiday is a distraction, Cotter doesn’t allow her to get in his way.

He has plans, big ones, and the anti-heroes of the 1930s—John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, Alvin Karpis—are both his role models and his competition. Ralph’s aim is to usurp those deities residing in the pantheon of crime and install himself, instead. The distinctions between Ralph Cotter and such folk-hero crooks of the Depression era is that he believes he’s much more intelligent than those mere stick-up artists; and the plot he devises to ensure continued and unimpeded success is a clever one.

(Left) The 1965 Avon edition

Cotter is “reborn” when his damning rap sheet conveniently goes missing; and the official identification he acquires (a gun permit from the local police department, ironically enough) allows him to stay under the radar. Cocksure, and now going by the alias Paul Murphy, he makes his way around City Hall with the swagger and hubris of a thuggish Icarus, daring to be taken down. He meets Margaret Dobson, the young and impressionable daughter of a rich and powerful man, one Ezra Dobson. Margaret is a bit of a lost soul, as well as a disciple of Dr. Darius Green, a new-age charlatan with a shady past. After a one-night stand and a meeting with her father, Murphy and Margaret elope, but Ezra Dobson subsequently has their marriage annulled—or so he says. Paul declines the five-figure payday Dobson offers in recompense, figuring that disappearing is wiser than sticking around. It’d be only a matter of time, he figures, before Dobson’s scrutiny uncovers Paul’s real identity. This is not the last, though, that he sees of the family—or their money.

Having lost a wealthy wife, Murphy now hopes to rid himself as well of Holiday, the amoral hussy whom one “couldn’t turn your back on for five minutes without her having a body scissors on somebody.” But first, there’s that one last criminal job—the big one—that’ll provide him with funds for a clean getaway.

Murphy is always thinking about his plans and about himself. As he begins to understand who he is, and what made him that way, he dials down the rhetoric, changing from a misogynist and homophobe (quick to condemn “dikes and faggots”) into a man who sees better how gays are similar to himself, and therefore acceptable. (“They were rebels too, rebels introverted; I was a rebel extraverted—theirs was the force that did not kill, mine was the force that did kill …”) The proximate impetus for this alteration of attitude was the discovery that one of his associates, a regular-guy grease monkey, is homosexual. This remarkable character development eliminates Cotter’s brutal prejudices as he morphs into Ralph Murphy. It may reflect, too, the mental growth author McCoy underwent during his rough-and-tumble days, as he learned to accept his fellow men for the ways they found to naviage a tough, unforgiving world as outsiders, just as he had.

Horace McCoy possessed the kind of résumé one would expect of a Golden Age pulp writer. He’d been a taxi driver, a capable newspaperman (despite his inclination to fabulate), a war pilot, a professional wrestler, a fruit picker, a failed actor, and a lackluster Hollywood screenwriter. Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye, the fourth of his six novels, was adapted into a 1950 film starring James Cagney, Ward Bond, and Barton MacLane. The movie was famously banned in Ohio as a “sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and an extreme presentation of crime with explicit steps in commission,” which comes as no surprise. McCoy’s books took time to catch on in the United States; yet in Europe his success came earlier, with French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir hailing McCoy’s debut novel, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935), as one of America’s first existentialist novels.

(Right) Author Horace McCoy

The Tennessee-born McCoy described his parents as “book rich-money poor,” and his career arc suggests that was his destiny, too. To pay for his funeral (he passed away in Beverly Hills, California, in 1955), McCoy’s wife had to sell his book collection. Yet the knowledge this author picked up from all of his reading was put to good use. Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye is filled with classical references. Alecto and Tisiphone, for instance, appear several times in these pages, those being the names of two of the three Furies, sisters in ancient Greek mythology who took vengeance upon lying and murderous men. Cotter/Murphy summons their memory again as this story concludes. However, one sister is missing, and he can’t understand why. It is really the Fury who stands before him with a gun in her hand that he should be concerned with.

READ MORE:Tired of Living, Afraid of Dying: Horace McCoy’s Legacy,” by Chris Morgan (Los Angeles Review of Books).

Anticipating Agatha Ovations

Organizers of the Malice Domestic Conference have announced their nominees for the 2020 Agatha Awards. These prizes—meant to celebrate the best in the cozy mystery field—will be given out during this year’s slightly retitlted More Than Malice festival, scheduled to take place online only from July 14 to 17. Click here to register.

Best Contemporary Novel:
Gift of the Magpie, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)
Murder in the Bayou Boneyard, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)
From Beer to Eternity, by Sherry Harris (Kensington)
All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
The Lucky One, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)

Best Historical Novel:
The Last Mrs. Summers, by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley)
Fate of a Flapper, by Susanna Calkins (Griffin)
A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder, by Dianne
Freeman (Kensington)
Taken Too Soon, by Edith Maxwell (Beyond the Page)
The Turning Tide, by Catriona McPherson (Quercus)

Best First Novel:
A Spell for Trouble, by Esme Addison (Crooked Lane)
Winter Witness, by Tina deBellegarde (Level Best)
Derailed, by Mary Keliikoa (Epicenter Press)
Murder at the Mena House, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
Murder Most Sweet, by Laura Jensen Walker (Kensington)

Best Short Story:
“Dear Emily Etiquette,” by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2020)
“The Red Herrings at Killington Inn,” by Shawn Reilly Simmons (from Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories, edited by Verena Rose, Harriette Sackler, and Shawn Reilly Simmons; Level Best)
“The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74,” by Art Taylor (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2020)
“Elysian Fields,” by Gabriel Valjan (from California Schemin’: The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology, edited by Art Taylor; Wildside Press)
“The 25 Year Engagement,” by James Ziskin (from In League with Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger; Pegasus Crime)

Best Non-fiction:
Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy, by Leslie Brody (Seal Press)
American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Putnam)
Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)
Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock, by Christina Lane (Chicago Review Press)
H.R.F. Keating: A Life of Crime, by Sheila Mitchell (Level Best)

Best Children’s/YA Mystery:
Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fleur Bradley
(Viking Books for Young Readers)
Premeditated Myrtle, by Elizabeth C. Bunce
(Algonquin Young Readers)
Saltwater Secrets, by Cindy Callaghan (Aladdin)
From the Desk of Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks
(Katherine Teagen)
Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, by Richard Narvaez (Piñata)

Congratulations to all of this year’s contenders!

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Jessica Walter Makes Her Exit

This sad news comes from The Hollywood Reporter:
Jessica Walter, the sassy actress who excelled at portraying unhinged types, from the obsessed fan of a radio deejay in Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me to nutty matriarchs on Arrested Development and Archer, has died. She was 80.

Walter died Wednesday night at home in New York, her daughter, Fox Entertainment executive Brooke Bowman, said.

“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of my beloved mom, Jessica,” she said. “A working actor for over six decades, her greatest pleasure was bringing joy to others through her storytelling both on screen and off. While her legacy will live on through her body of work, she will also be remembered by many for her wit, class and overall joie de vivre.”
Rolling Stone magazine adds that “Walter began her career as a stage actor in her hometown of New York City, working at the famed Playwright’s Horizons and landing roles in Broadway productions such as Advise and Consent, Neil Simon’s Rumors, A Severed Head, Nightlife, and Photo Finish, for which she earned the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Outside of New York, she starred in Tartuffe opposite her husband, the late Emmy- and Tony-winning actor Ron Liebman, at the Los Angeles Theater Center. More recently, she was cast in the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes, which won several Tony Awards.”

Walter racked up a lengthy collection of film and TV credits, dating back to the 1950s. She appeared in her youth on such dramas as Naked City, East Side/West Side, The Defenders, and The Fugitive. She went on to capture parts in movies such as The Group, Grand Prix, and the aforementioned Play Misty for Me, and in small-screen series ranging from It Takes a Thief, Banyon, and Banacek to Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, and Murder, She Wrote. In 1975, Walter won an Emmy Award for Amy Prentiss, an Ironside spin-off and short-lived NBC Mystery Movie series, on which she played the San Francisco Police Department’s first woman chief of detectives. She was later nominated three times for her portrayal of manipulative and quotable Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. Walter also provided the voice of spymaster Malory Archer on the FXX-TV animated show Archer.

She passed away just over two years after Liebman, her second husband—to whom she’d been married for 36 years—died at age 82.

(Hat tip to The Spy Command.)

READ MORE:Jessica Walter and George Segal Personified a Time When Movies Grew Up,” by Ann Hornaday (The Washington Post).

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Revue of Reviewers, 3-24-21

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















Tuesday, March 23, 2021

We’re All Ears for the Audies

During a virtual ceremony held last evening, the Audio Publishers Association announced the winners of its 2021 Audie Awards. There were 25 categories of recipients, with Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Bloomsbury Audio), walking away with 2021 Audiobook of the Year honors.

Also of interest was that the audiobook version of Michael Connelly’s Fair Warning, narrated by Peter Giles and Zach Villa (Hachette Audio), won in the Mystery category. Its four rivals for that prize: A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones, narrated by Lorelei King (Macmillan Audio); Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, narrated by Vivienne Leheny (HarperAudio); The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, narrated by Chloe Massey, Olivia Dowd, Sarah Ovens, Rich Keeble, Aoife McMahon, and Jot Davies (HarperAudio); and Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Dion Graham (Hachette Audio).

Meanwhile, this year’s Thriller/Suspense award went to When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole, narrated by Susan Dalian and Jay Aaseng (HarperAudio). Nominated as well for that commendation were If It Bleeds, by Stephen King, narrated by Will Patton, Danny Burstein, and Steven Weber (Simon & Schuster Audio); The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett (Simon & Schuster Audio); The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child, narrated by Scott Brick (Penguin Random House Audio); and Yard Work, by David Koepp, narrated by Kevin Bacon (Audible Originals).

Click here to learn about all of the 2021 Audie Award winners.

Monday, March 22, 2021

Leftys Get the Zoom Treatment

As a consequence of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Left Coast Crime gathering—aka “The Unconvention”—has been reduced to an online event scheduled for Saturday, April 10. That session, beginning at 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. EDT, will focus exclusively on the presentation of the 2021 Lefty Awards. There are four categories of contenders, as announced in mid-January.

Participation in this Zoom-broadcast awards ceremony will be free, but you must register in advance. Click here to do so.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

An Expatriated Spade

At last there’s confirmation of a TV project we mentioned here in December. This item comes from In Reference to Murder:
Clive Owen is set to star in Monsieur Spade, a one-hour drama series from Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (City on a Hill). The predominantly French language series centers around writer Dashiell Hammett’s great detective, Sam Spade (Owen), who has been quietly living out his golden years in the small town of Bozouls in the South of France. It’s 1963, the Algerian War has just ended, and in a very short time, so, too, will Spade’s tranquility.
A bit more information is available from Deadline.

Saturday, March 20, 2021

PaperBack: “This Spring of Love”

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



This Spring of Love, by Charles Mergendahl (Popular Library/Eagle, 1954). Sadly, the cover artist is uncredited. To see an earlier edition of this same novel, click here.

(Hat tip to Pulp Covers.)

Send in Your Barry Bests

George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has declared which books are vying for the 2021 Barry Awards. They are:

Best Novel:
The Boy from the Woods, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central)
The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)
And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Forge)
Moonflower Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best First Novel:
Deep State, by Chris Hauty (Emily Bester)
Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March (Minotaur)
The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
The Eighth Detective, by Alex Pavesi (Henry Holt)
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)
Mongkok Station, by Jake Needham (HP)
Hide Away, by Jason Pinter (Thomas & Mercer)
Bad News Travels Fast, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)
Darkness for Light, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)
Turn to Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Best Thriller:
Double Agent, by Tom Bradby (Atlantic Monthly)
Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
One Minute Out, by Mark Greaney (Berkley)
The Last Hunt, by Deon Meyer (Atlantic Monthly)
Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
The Wild One, by Nick Petrie (Putnam)

All Deadly Pleasures readers are deemed eligible to vote for their favorites in each category. Easter asks that they submit their choices to him at george@deadlypleasures.com by July 15. Winners of this year’s Barrys will be declared on August 26, during the opening ceremonies at Bouchercon in New Orleans.

Noting the Nibbies

Nominees for the 2021 British Book Awards, otherwise known as the “Nibbies,” have been announced in nine separate categories. Below are those contending for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year.

The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child (Bantam Press)
The Patient Man, by Joy Ellis (Joffe)
The Guest List, by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins)
Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Viking)
A Song for the Dark Times, by Ian Rankin (Orion)

The winners of this year’s prizes—administered as usual by The Bookseller—will be announced during an online ceremony on May 13.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Bullet Points: March Gladness Edition

• I despise having broken links in The Rap Sheet, so I’m leery of writing about YouTube videos, as those things have a habit of disappearing suddenly and without explanation. Nonetheless, I would be remiss were I not to point out the unexpected availability there of Cutter, a 1972 pilot film for what its developers hoped would become a new NBC Mystery Movie segment. Scripted by Dean Hargrove and directed by Richard Irving, this 90-minute feature starred Peter DeAnda (1938-2016) as Frank Cutter, a black, Texas-reared Chicago private investigator in the John Shaft mode, who was hired to find a missing football quarterback. Former High Chaparral regular Cameron Mitchell guest-starred, along with Barbara Rush, Robert Webber, Janet MacLachlan, and ex-vaudevillian Stepin Fetchit. Protagonist Cutter came off as cool, sophisticated, but with ample street toughness when he needed it. He had an answering service, but no office. His seeming preference for white women added a daring-for-the-time element to the story, and an ambulance pursuit in the dénouement brought at least some novelty to the usual TV car chase scene.



I’d been looking for Cutter online for a decade, before I finally stumbled on it last week. While I enjoyed watching this picture as a cultural artifact, I can’t imagine a subsequent series succeeding alongside McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and Banacek. Apparently, NBC executives were of a like mind, for they passed on Cutter in favor of Tenafly, another show about an African-American gumshoe (played by James McEachin), but one who was rather less courageous and prosperous. Cutter’s opening title sequence is embedded above. Oliver Nelson, who also composed music for It Takes a Thief, The Name of the Game, and Ironside, gave us the Cutter theme.

• Another notable YouTube offering is Charlie Cobb: Nice Night for a Hanging (1977). Again the pilot for a prospective NBC series, it finds Clu Gulager playing Charles A. Cobb, a cheapskate, unabashedly unheroic private detective working the dusty trails of America’s Old West. This really quite enjoyable movie has Cobb being employed by a rancher to find and return his long-lost daughter, kidnapped many years before. Blair Brown puts in a fine performance as the said kidnappee, with Ralph Bellamy, Stella Stevens, and Pernell Roberts helping to further fill out the cast. The pilot was written by Peter S. Fischer, and executive produced by Columbo creators William Link and Richard Levinson, with music by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.

• March marks a full half-century since the big-screen debut of Get Carter, the British crime film starring Michael Caine and adapted from Ted Lewis’ 1970 novel, Jack’s Return Home. In CrimeReads, author and pop-culture critic Andrew Nette examines that movie’s history and lasting impact, while in Shotsmag Confidential, Nick Triplow contemplates Lewis’ past and how his novel influences planning for England’s second Hull Noir festival.

• There’s been plenty of awards news lately, beginning with finalists for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards. I count 24 categories of contenders this year. Those include the following five nominees under the LGBTQ Mystery heading:

Death Before Dessert, by A.E. Radley (Heartsome)
Find Me When I’m Lost, by Cheryl A. Head (Bywater)
Fortune Favors the Dead, Stephen Spotswood, Doubleday
I Hope You’re Listening, by Tom Ryan (Albert Whitman)
Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery, by Rosalie Knecht (Tin House)

Curiously, there’s only one “Lammys” category for mystery novels this time around. Previous years have offered separate Gay Mystery and Lesbian Mystery lists. Winners are expected to be announced during a virtual ceremony on June 1.

• Walter Mosley is competing for a 2021 NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Literary Works category. Under consideration is not one of his many crime novels, but instead his 2020 diverse short-story collection, The Awkward Black Man (Grove Atlantic). Mystery Fanfare has more here. Image Award recipients will be celebrated during a March 27 event, to be televised on BET.

• Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s latest standalone work, Bráðin (The Prey), has received the Icelandic Blood Drop Award (Blóðdropinn) for the best crime novel of 2020. As Shotsmag Confidential explains, “The ‘Blood Drop’ Award is a crime fiction prize, hosted by Crime Writers of Iceland. The novel that receives the prize becomes the Icelandic nomination for the Glass Key, an award given annually to a crime novel from one of the Nordic countries—Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Usually, every Icelandic crime novel published each year is automatically nominated.”

• Last but not least, Winter Counts (Echo)—David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut work in the crime-fiction field—has captured the 2021 Spur Awards for both Best Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel. The annual Spur Awards are sponsored by the Western Writers of America (WWA), and are designed to “honor writers for distinguished writing about the American West,” according to Wikipedia. The full tally of this year’s Spur champs is available here. Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, will be applauded along with the other winners during the WWA’s convention in Loveland, Colorado, to held June 16-19.

• As regular Rap Sheet readers know, I wasn’t exactly thrilled by news that 64-year-old British actress Lesley Manville had been hired to portray books editor-cum-investigator Susan Ryeland in a six-part small-screen adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders; I would have preferred somebody a bit younger (Horowitz imagined Ryeland being in her mid-40s), with greater potential to earn audience sympathy, such as Jodie Whittaker. However, I am pleased to hear that Timothy Spall (The King’s Speech, Mr. Turner) will undertake the plum role of fictitious half-Greek, half-German detective Atticus Pünd is that same Eleventh Hour Films/PBS production. I look forward next to hearing who’ll fill the shoes of prickly Alan Conway, one of Ryeland’s authors and the creator of series sleuth Pünd.

• Meanwhile, Deadline reports that actresses Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o have been engaged to star in an Apple TV+ limited-run drama based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 standalone novel, Lady in the Lake. According to Deadline,
The series will be directed by Honey Boy director Alma Har’el, who co-created and will co-write with Colony and The Man in the High Castle writer Dre Ryan. Lady in the Lake is produced by Jean-Marc Vallée’s Crazyrose and Bad Wolf America, the U.S. arm of the His Dark Materials producer. Endeavor Content is the studio. Har’el is writing the pilot episode.

The limited series takes place in ’60s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother, Maddie Schwartz, played by Portman, to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood, played by Nyong’o, a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.
• From In Reference to Murder comes word that “Queen Latifah is going to hunt more bad guys following the news that CBS has renewed The Equalizer for a second season after only four episodes. The Equalizer stars Latifah as Robyn McCall, an enigmatic woman with a mysterious background who uses her extensive skills as a former CIA operative to help those with nowhere else to turn.” The show is based on Edward Woodward’s 1985-1989 series of the same name.

• The Killing Times features some early still shots from The Ipcress File, British television network ITV’s forthcoming 1960s espionage thriller based, of course, on Len Deighton’s 1962 first novel. “Starring Joe Cole in the iconic role of Harry Palmer alongside Lucy Boynton as Jean and BAFTA award-winning actor Tom Hollander as Dalby, the drama,” explains The Killing Times, “is directed by Emmy award-winner James Watkins … Joining the cast to play further significant roles are Ashley Thomas as Maddox, Joshua James as Chico, David Dencik as Colonel Stok and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Cathcart.” Hopes are for an Ipcress launch sometime later this year.

• The second five-part run of Lupin, Netflix’s French crime drama starring Omar Sy as a cool criminal whose escapades are inspired by the classic stories of gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsène Lupin, isn’t expected to commence streaming until this summer. A short trailer, though, can already be enjoyed here.

• After reading Chris Whitaker’s exceptional novel, We Begin at the End (Henry Holt)—newly released in the States—I can easily see it being adapted for television. So I’m not surprised to learn that Disney has snapped up the rights to do so.

In CrimeReads, Whitaker recalls how he quit his job in finance and went to work for a local library in order to write his book.

• The 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die, is currently slated to premiere on both sides of the Atlantic during the fall 2021, after multiple delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it’s title song by Billie Eilish has already scored a Grammy Award.

• Director Theodore J. Flicker’s 1967 political satire film, The President’s Analyst, is on track to be remade by Paramount Pictures. The Hollywood Reporter says: “Pat Cunnane, who served for six years as President Barack Obama’s senior writer and deputy director of messaging at the White House, wrote the script for the project, which is being developed as a potential star vehicle for [Trevor] Noah,” of The Daily Show fame. The Reporter recalls that “the 1967 movie starred James Coburn as a psychiatrist chosen to act as the President’s top-secret therapist. As the President unloads his troubles on the psychoanalyst, the man begins to crack under the strain of all the secrets, becoming paranoid that agencies, both foreign and national, want what’s inside his head. It’s not a spoiler to say his fears turn out to be real. … Details for the new take are being kept under the couch but it is described as a re-examining the 1967 satire through the lens of the contemporary political landscape.” (A big hat tip to Double O Section.)

• Most of the headlines following American actor Yaphet Kotto’s demise, this last Monday, recalled his villainous role in the 1973 James Bond flick Live and Let Die. While his portrayal of a reprehensible Caribbean dictator as well as that man’s drug-pusher alter ego, Mr. Big, was certainly magnetic and unforgettable, Kotto’s career extended well beyond his menacing Agent 007 and the lovely psychic Solitaire. Variety notes he was born in New York City in 1939, and his acting studies began at age 16. Kotto made his professional theater debut at 19, and he chalked up early movie appearances in Nothing But a Man (1964) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). His Live and Let Die acclaim led to his winning parts in pictures on the order of Alien (1975), Brubaker (1980), and The Running Man (1987). Kotto’s introduction to television audiences came on The Big Valley; he soon returned to the boob tube on such programs as Bonanza, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, The A-Team, Murder, She Wrote, and eventually Homicide: Life on the Street, where he could be seen for seven seasons playing Baltimore Police lieutenant Al Giardello. Kotto was 81 years old when he died in the Philippines.

• The Spy Command draws our attention to the death, at age 85, of another figure well known in Bond World: “Nikki van der Zyl, a German-born actress who provided the voice for various Bond women characters …” Managing editor Bill Koenig observes that “Van der Zyl was used to dub over, among others, Ursula Andress in Dr. No, Eunice Gayson in Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger and Claudine Auger in Thunderball. She worked on various Bond films through Moonraker.” In addition, Van der Zyl lent her voice to The Blue Max, Funeral in Berlin, Krakatoa: East of Java, and assorted other movies. She breathed her last in London.

• I must, too, acknowledge the passing, on January 12, of Judith Van Gieson. Jiro Kimura provides this obituary on The Gumshoe Site:
The former American editor of John le Carré started to write her fiction when she moved to New Mexico. She wrote eight novels, which feature Neil Hamel, an attorney and investigator in Albuquerque, starting with North of the Border (Walker, 1988) and ending with Ditch Rider (HarperCollins, 1998). The Hamel novel The Lies That Bind (1993) was nominated for the 1994 Shamus Award in the best novel category. Her other series of five novels features Claire Reynier (prounced ray-NEER), a buyer of rare books and librarian [at] the University of New Mexico, starting with The Stolen Blue (University of New Mexico Press/Signet Books, 2000) and ending with The Shadow of Venus (2004), which was nominated for the 2004 Barry Award in the best paperback category.

After she retired from writing novels, she formed ABQ Press, an online publishing company, and helped aspiring writers to edit and publish their works. She was 79.
• Even Lieutenant Columbo wasn’t perfect. That’s the bottom line of this piece in The Columbophile, which looks back at “10 times Columbo should have been reported to his superiors.” That blog’s still-anonymous Australian author opines: “[W]hile we know Columbo is pure of heart, there are times when his methods and actions could be considered questionable, if not utterly inappropriate.”

• Speaking of Columbo, The Postman on Holiday’s Lou Armagno recommends this article from Mental Floss that includes mention of star Peter Falk having been “a government worker before becoming an actor.” That piece continues: “Peter Falk wasn’t too far removed from the character he played. In real life he tended to be rumpled and disheveled and was forever misplacing things (he was famous for losing his car keys and having to be driven home from the studio by someone else). He was also intelligent, having earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University, which led to him working for the State of Connecticut’s Budget Bureau as an efficiency expert until the acting bug bit him. He was also used to being underestimated due to his appearance; he’d lost his right eye to cancer at age three, and many of his drama teachers in college warned him of his limited chances in film due to his cockeyed stare. Indeed, after a screen test at Columbia Pictures’ Harry Cohn dismissed him by saying, ‘For the same price I can get an actor with two eyes.’”

• Finally, here’s something to anticipate: The latest newsletter from Portland, Oregon’s Friends of Mystery promises that the winner of its 2021 Spotted Owl Award, plus the runners-up, will be announced during the group’s next meeting, on Thursday, March 25. A preliminary list of novels vying for that coveted prize is here.

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Shamrocks and Shenanigans, Anyone?

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. With COVID-19 still rampant, and considering I have not yet received my vaccine shots, I’m not sure I feel comfortable paying a call on our favorite neighborhood tavern for my annual dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Perhaps I ought to remain at home, instead, and crack open one of the many St. Patrick’s-related mystery works Janet Rudolph mentions in this post.

Friday, March 12, 2021

Optimism Drives Spring Reading Picks



President Joe Biden’s speech to a national television audience on Thursday night, during which he declared that all American adults will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines by May 1, and shared his wish that the United States can “mark our independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July, caused me to recall all that I’ve missed over this last year of the pandemic. I have deliberately tried to avoid such thoughts, while hunkering in against the spread of the contagion and trying to remain patient with the state of things.

Before this novel coronavirus struck, I used to enjoy public book events, including Seattle’s annual Independent Bookstore Day. I used to escape my quiet office on a regular basis in order to sit and read in coffee shops. I used to while away otherwise unclaimed hours in second-hand bookstores. I used to take regular walks around a local lake, a book held out in front of me as I trod the paved pathway. I used to go out to breakfast or lunch with friends, and discuss what books we were then tackling. I used to attend conventions such as Bouchercon and, less often, Left Coast Crime. Reading is generally a private enterprise, yet I’m reminded now of how publicly I once exercised my interest in books. The coronavirus has curtailed most such outings, and I am certainly poorer for that fact.

While I continue to wear face masks and maintain proper social distance, and am still waiting for my vaccine jabs, I’m starting to hope that all of these changes are truly temporary, that we can return to a sense of normality again soon. (Much will depend on whether COVID variants become pernicious, and whether premature decisions by states such as Texas and Mississippi to end their mask mandates and fully reopen businesses will again inflame the virus’ spread.) Way back in March of last year, I took advantage of a limited-time discount deal to register for 2021’s Bouchercon in New Orleans, and I continue to hope that the event will come off as planned. (Judging by the current list of attendees, I am not the only one harboring such optimism.) Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, usually held on the last Saturday in April, is unlikely to take place this year, but it’s cheering to know that it might return in 2022. And whenever coffee shops can throw open their doors again to guys who like to sit around and page through books while making their beverages last as long as possible, you can bet I’ll be standing in line for my triple-grande latte.

For the time being, all of us will just have to be satisfied with sequestered reading. Fortunately, there are ample works of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction to keep us occupied this spring. You can look forward to new fiction by Stephen King, Jacqueline Winspear, Peter May, Anne Perry, David Downing, C.L. Taylor, Simon Scarrow, E.S. Thomson, Martin Walker, Nicci French, Ragnar Jónasson, Linda L. Richards, William Shaw, and others, plus reprints of vintage works by the likes of Julian Symons, Dorothy B. Hughes, Tom Ardies, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Donald E. Westlake. Be on the lookout, too, for non-fiction releases of interest to crime-fiction fans, such as Kate Summerscale’s The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story and Shrabani Basu’s The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village.

Over the last couple of month I’ve searched through multiple catalogues and Web sites of upcoming titles, and have compiled close to 400 works that I think deserve mention, and are being published on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean between now and the end of May. In the finished list—below—books marked with an asterisk (*) are non-fiction; the remainder are novels or short-story collections.

MARCH (U.S.):
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World,
by Mark Aldridge (Morrow)*
The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer, by Liza Rodman
and Jennifer Jordan (Atria)*
Becoming Inspector Chen, by Qiu Xiaolong (Severn House)
The Beirut Protocol, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Tyndale House)
The Big Chill, by Doug Johnstone (Quercus)
The Bounty, by Janet Evanovich and Steve Hamilton (Atria)
By Way of Sorrow, by Robyn Gigl (Kensington)
Call Me Elizabeth Lark, by Melissa Colasanti (Crooked Lane)
Castle in the Air, by Donald E. Westlake (Hard Case Crime)
City of Fallen Angels, by Paul Buchanan (Legend Press)
The Committed, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
The Conductors, by Nicole Glover (John Joseph Adams/Mariner)
The Consequences of Fear, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)
The Cook of the Halcyon, by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin)
The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles, by Chip Jacobs (Rare Bird)*
The Dark Heart of Florence, by Tasha Alexander (Minotaur)
Darkness for Light, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)
Dark Sky, by C.J. Box (Putnam)
Dead Space, by Kali Wallace (Berkley)
Drown Her Sorrows, by Melinda Leigh (Montlake)
The Eagle and the Viper, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge)
The Eighth Girl, by Maxine Mei-Fung Chun (Morrow)
Every Last Fear, by Alex Finlay (Minotaur)
Everything Is Mine, by Ruth Lillegraven (Amazon Crossing)
Every Vow You Break, by Peter Swanson (Morrow)
Fallen Angels, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)
Fatal Intent, by Tammy Euliano (Oceanview)
A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome, by Emma Southon (Abrams Press)*
The Foreign Girls, by Sergio Olguín (Bitter Lemon Press)
Forget Me Not, by Alexandra Oliva (Ballantine)
Fresh Brewed Murder, by Emmeline Duncan (Kensington)
Gathering Dark, by Candice Fox (Forge)
The Girls Are All So Nice Here, by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
(Simon & Schuster)
Heartbreak Bay, by Rachel Caine (Thomas & Mercer)
Her Dark Lies, by J.T. Ellison (Mira)
The Hiding Place, by Paula Munier (Minotaur)
The House Uptown, by Melissa Ginsburg (Flatiron)
Infinite, by Brian Freeman (Thomas & Mercer)
In the Shadow of the Fire, by Hervé Le Corre (Europa Editions)
The Jigsaw Man, by Nadine Matheson (Hanover Square Press)
Judas Horse, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)
Karolina and the Torn Curtain, by Maryla Szymiczkowa (Mariner)
Killer Triggers, by Joe Kenda (Blackstone)*
Kosygin Is Coming, by Tom Ardies (Brash)
The Lamplighters, by Emma Stonex (Viking)
Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, by Elon Green (Celadon)*
Last Nocturne, by M.J. Trow (Severn House)
Later, by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime)
Lightseekers, by Femi Kayode (Mulholland)
Live Fast, Spy Hard, by Max Allan Collins with Matthew V.
Clemens (Wolfpack)
The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner (Park Row)
The Lost Village, by Camilla Sten (Minotaur)
The Lover / The Mistress / The Passionate, by Carter Brown
(Stark House Press)
The Manhunt Companion, by Peter Enfantino and Jeff Vorzimmer
(Stark House Press)*
Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer, by Harold Schechter (Little A)*
A Matter of Life and Death, by Phillip Margolin (Minotaur)
The Mystery of Central Park, by Nellie Bly (Sordelet Ink)
Murder at Wedgefield Manor, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
The Night Gate, by Peter May (Quercus)
Northern Spy, by Flynn Berry (Viking)
Not Dark Yet, by Peter Robinson (Morrow)
On Harrow Hill, by John Verdon (Counterpoint)
Pieces of Eight, by Steve Goble (Seventh Street)
The Postscript Murders, by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Progress of a Crime, by Julian Symons (Poisoned Pen Press)
Red Widow, by Alma Katsu (Putnam)
Ride the Pink Horse, by Dorothy B. Hughes (American
Mystery Classics)
The Rose Code, by Kate Quinn (Morrow)
Saving Grace, by Debbie Babitt (Scarlet)
The Scapegoat, by Sara Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Search for Her, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
She’s Too Pretty to Burn, by Wendy Heard (Henry Holt—YA)
Someone to Watch Over Me, by Dan Bronson (BearMedia)
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, by Benjamin Wood (Europa Editions)
The Stone of Destiny, by Paul Doherty (Severn House)
Stung, by William Deverell (ECW Press)
Summer of Secrets, by Cora Harrison (Severn House)
Tell No Lies, by Allison Brennan (Mira)
13 Days to Die, by Matt Miksa (Crooked Lane)
Those Who Disappeared, by Kevin Wignall (Thomas & Mercer)
The Three Mrs. Greys, by Shelly Ellis (Dafina)
Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s Original Gangster Couple, by Glenn Stout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)*
Too Good to Be True, by Carola Lovering (St. Martin’s Press)
To the Dark, by Chris Nickson (Severn House)
Transient Desires, by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Turncoat, by Anthony J. Quinn (No Exit Press)
An Unexpected Peril, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
The Vines, by Shelley Nolden (Freiling)
The Water Rituals, by Eva García Sáenz (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt)
Wedding Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime)
Where Have You Gone Without Me? by Peter Bonventre (Keylight)
Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown)
Win, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central)
Windhall, by Ava Barry (Pegasus Crime)
The Windsor Knot, by S.J. Bennett (Morrow)
Winterkill, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)
You’ll Thank Me for This, by Nina Siegal (Mulholland)

MARCH (UK):
All The Little Things, by Sarah Lawton (Canelo)
American Sherlocks, edited by Nick Rennison (No Exit Press)
The April Dead, by Alan Parks (Canongate)
Before the Storm, by Alex Gray (Sphere)
Blackout, by Simon Scarrow (Headline)
Blood Runs Thicker, by Sarah Hawkswood (Allison & Busby)
Blood Ties, by Brian McGilloway (Constable)
Bound, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)
The Castaways, by Lucy Clarke (HarperCollins)
The Constant Man, by Peter Steiner (Severn House)
The Cut, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
The Dare, by Lesley Kara (Bantam Press)
The Dockland Murder, by Mike Hollow (Allison & Busby)
Doom Creek, by Alan Carter (Fremantle Press)
Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Macmillan)
The Eighth Girl, by Maxine Mei-Fung Chung (Pushkin Vertigo)
The Embalmer, by Alison Belsham (Trapeze)
The Ex, by Diane Saxon (Boldwood)
The Favour, by Laura Vaughan (Corvus)
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection, by Robert Goddard (Bantam Press)
A Fine Madness, by Alan Judd
(Simon & Schuster)
Five Little Words, by Jackie Walsh
(Canelo Hera)
The Fragile Ones, by Jennifer Chase (Bookouture)
Future Perfect, by Felicia Yap (Wildfire)
The Good Neighbour, by R.J. Parker
(One More Chapter)
The Graves of Whitechapel, by Claire Evans (Sphere)
Hardcastle’s Secret Agent, by Graham Ison (Severn House)
The Hiding Place, by Jenny Quintana (Mantle)
Hotel Cartagena, by Simone Buchholz (Orenda)
Into Deadly Storms, by Judi Daykin (Joffe)
The Lake, by Louise Sharland (Avon)
The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward (Viper)
Lie Beside Me, by Gytha Lodge (Michael Joseph)
Mr. Campion’s Coven, by Mike Ripley (Severn House)
Murder at Beaulieu Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)
Murder-In-Law, by Veronica Heley (Severn House)
Mystery by the Sea, by Verity Bright (Bookouture)
The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village, by
Shrabani Basu (Bloomsbury)*
Out in the Cold, by Stuart Johnstone (Allison & Busby)
A Place to Bury Strangers, by Mark Dawson (Independently published)
Sleep Tight, by Cass Green (HarperCollins)
Spy Game, by John Fullerton (Burning Chair)
The Takers and Keepers, by Ivan Pope (Hookline)
This Nowhere Place, by Natasha Bell (Michael Joseph)
Trust Me, by T.M. Logan (Zaffre)
Two Wrongs, by Mel McGrath (HQ)
The Ullswater Undertaking, by Rebecca Tope (Allison & Busby)
The Wedding, by Ruth Heald (Bookouture)
When the Evil Waits, by M.J. Lee (Canelo Crime)
The Winter Girls, by Roger Stelljes (Bookouture)
The Woman in the Wood, by M.K. Hill (Head of Zeus)

APRIL (U.S.):
All That Fall, by Kris Calvin (Crooked Lane)
Animal Instinct, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)
The Best Assassination in the Nation, by Joshua Cohen (Kasva Press)
Bitterroot Lake, by Alicia Beckman (Crooked Lane)
Bobby March Will Live Forever, by Alan Parks (World Noir)
Brazilian Psycho, by Joe Thomas (Arcadia)
Breakout, by Paul Herron (Grand Central)
Dance with Death, by Will Thomas (Minotaur)
A Deadly Influence, by Mike Omer (Thomas & Mercer)
A Deadly Twist, by Jeffrey Siger (Poisoned Pen Press)
Death of a Showman, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
Death on Ocean Boulevard: Inside the Coronado Mansion Case,
by Caitlin Rother (Citadel)*
Death with a Double Edge, by Anne Perry (Ballantine)
Deceptions, by Anna Porter (ECW Press)
Department of Death, by Lev Raphael (Perseverance Press)
The Devil’s Hand, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)
Dial A for Aunties, by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Berkley)
Done Gone, by Marcia Talley (Severn House)
Endings, by Linda L. Richards (Oceanview)
The Flaming Man, by Kendell Foster Crossen (Steeger)
A Gambling Man, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
The Garden of Angels, by David Hewson (Severn House)
Girl, 11, by Amy Suiter Clarke
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Gone Missing in Harlem, by Karla F.C. Holloway (Triquarterly)
Gone Too Far, by Debra Webb
(Thomas & Mercer)
The Good Sister, by Sally Hepworth
(St. Martin’s Press)
The Granite Coast Murders, by Jean-Luc Bannalec (Minotaur)
The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story, by Kate Summerscale
(Penguin Press)*
Heaven’s a Lie, by Wallace Stroby (Mulholland)
Her Last Holiday, by C.L. Taylor (Avon)
Her Three Lives, by Cate Holahan (Grand Central)
House Standoff, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)
How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child with Laurie R. King (Scribner)*
In Her Tracks, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
In the Company of Killers, by Bryan Christy (Putnam)
The James Bond Lexicon: The Unauthorized Guide to the World of 007 in Novels, Movies, and Comics, by Alan J. Porter and Gillian J. Porter (Independently published)*
Jungle Up, by Nick Pirog (Blackstone)
Just My Luck, by Adele Parks (Mira)
Lady Joker, Volume 1, by Kaoru Takamura (Soho Crime)
Land Rites, by Andy Maslen (Thomas & Mercer)
The Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Atria/Emily Bestler)
A Lethal Lesson, by Iona Whishaw (Touchwood Editions)
Lies We Bury, by Elle Marr (Thomas & Mercer)
Lies with Man, by Michael Nava (Amble Press)
Little Bandaged Days, by Kyra Wilder (The Overlook Press)
The Lost Gallows, by John Dickson Carr (Poisoned Pen Press)
Manila Time, by Jack Trolley (Brash)
A Man in the Middle, by Kendell Foster Crossen (Steeger)
Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall (Grove Press)
The Measure of Time, by Gianrico Carofiglio (Bitter Lemon Press)
Mirrorland, by Carole Johnstone (Scribner)
Mother May I, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)
Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West, by Blaine Harden (Viking)*
Murder in the Cloister, by Tania Bayard (Severn House)
Murder on Wall Street, by Victoria Thompson (Berkley)
The Night Always Comes, by Willy Vlautin (Harper)
Northern Heist, by Richard O’Rawe (Melville House)
No Sleep Till Wonderland, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)
Odor of Violets, by Baynard Kendrick (American Mystery Classics)
On an Outgoing Tide, by Caro Ramsey (Severn House)
One Got Away, by S.A. Lelchuk (Flatiron)
The Others, by Sarah Blau (Mulholland)
The Other Side of the Door, by Nicci French (Morrow)
A Past That Breathes, by Noel Obiora (Rare Bird)
The Perfect Daughter, by D.J. Palmer (St. Martin’s Press)
The Perfect Marriage, by Adam Mitzner (Thomas & Mercer)
Public Enemy #1, by Kiki Swinson (Dafina)
Risk Factor, by Michael Brandman (Poisoned Pen Press)
The Sacrifice of Lester Yates, by Robin Yocum (Arcade Crimewise)
SAS: Red Notice, by Andy McNab (Welbeck)
The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, by Katherine Cowley (Tule)
The Secret Lives of Dentists, by W.A. Winter (Seventh Street)
The Seven Doors, by Agnes Ravatn (Orenda)
The Shadow Man, by Helen Fields (Avon)
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan
Collins (Kensington)
The Silent Bullet, by Arthur B. Reeve (Poisoned Pen Press)
A Song of Isolation, by Michael J. Malone (Orenda)
Sooley, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
So Young, So Wicked, by Jonathan Craig (Stark House Press)
Stargazer, by Anne Hillerman (Harper)
Starr Sign, by C.S. O’Cinneide (Dundurn)
The Three Locks, by Bonnie MacBird (Collins Crime Club)
To Die in Tuscany, by David P. Wagner (Poisoned Pen Press)
Tower of Babel, by Michael Sears (Soho Crime)
Tragedy on the Branch Line, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)
Turn a Blind Eye, by Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin’s Press)
Two For the Money, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
Under the Wave at Waimea, by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Unkindness of Ravens, by M.E.
Hilliard (Crooked Lane)
The Vanishing Museum on the Rue Mistral, by M.L. Longworth (Penguin)
The Venice Sketchbook, by Rhys Bowen (Lake Union)
Whatever the Cost, by Michael Kurland (Severn House)
What the Devil Knows, by C.S.
Harris (Berkley)
What You Never Knew, by Jessica Hamilton (Crooked Lane)
When a Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta
(Hanover Square Press)
When the Stars Go Dark, by Paula McLain (Ballantine)
Whisper Down the Lane, by Clay McLeod Chapman (Quirk)
A Wicked Conceit, by Anna Lee Huber (Berkley)
Wild Midnight Falls, by Kendell Foster Crossen (Steeger)
You Love Me, by Caroline Kepnes (Random House)
Young Blood, by Sifiso Mzobe (Catalyst Press)

APRIL (UK):
Billion-Dollar Brain, by Len Deighton (Penguin Classics)
Bullet Train, by Kotaro Isaka (Harvill Secker)
A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsey Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Crocodile Hunter, by Gerald Seymour (Hodder & Stoughton)
A Darker Reality, by Anne Perry (Headline)
Dark Memories, by Liz Mistry (HQ)
The Deception of Harriet Fleet, by Helen Scarlett (Quercus)
Don’t Let Him In, by Howard Linsky (Penguin)
The Drowned City, by K.J. Maitland (Headline Review)
Farewell My Herring, by L.C. Tyler (Allison & Busby)
The Festival, by Sarah J. Naughton (Trapeze)
Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton (Penguin Classics)
The Girl on the Platform, by Bryony Pearce (Avon)
Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner (Raven)
The Heretic’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)
The Hit List, by Holly Seddon (Trapeze)
Horse Under Water, by Len Deighton (Penguin Classics)
Hyde, by Craig Russell (Constable)
Into the Woods, by David Mark (Head of Zeus)
The Khan, by Saima Mir (Point Blank)
Kiss Me, Kill Me, by Louise Mullins (Aria)
Kiss the Detective, by Élmer Mendoza (MacLehose Press)
Look What You Made Me Do, by Nikki Smith (Orion)
The Lost Hours, by Susan Lewis (HarperCollins)
A Man Named Doll, by Jonathan Ames (Pushkin Vertigo)
Missing Pieces, by Tim Weaver (Michael Joseph)
Murder: The Biography, by Kate Morgan (Mudlark)*
Nightshade, by E.S. Thomson (Constable)
The Old Enemy, by Henry Porter (Quercus)
The Others, by Sarah Blau (Pushkin Vertigo)
The Plague Letters, by V.L. Valentine (Viper)
The Rapunzel Act, by Abi Silver (Lightning)
Rites of Spring, by Anders de la
Motte (Zaffre)
The Royal Secret, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
The Silent Suspect, by Nell Pattison (Avon)
Sixteen Horses, by Greg Buchanan (Mantle)
Skelton’s Guide to Suitcase Murders, by David Stafford (Allison & Busby)
Someone Who Isn’t Me, by Danuta Kot (Simon & Schuster)
The Source, by Sarah Sultoon (Orenda)
Tall Bones, by Anna Bailey (Doubleday)
The Therapist, by B.A. Paris (HQ)
Trafficked, by M.A. Hunter (One More Chapter)
The Untameable, by Guillermo Arriaga (MacLehose Press)
The Venetian Legacy, by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable)
Watch Her Fall, by Erin Kelly (Hodder & Stoughton)
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day, by Ivana Bodrožić
(Seven Stories Press)
When I Was Ten, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan)
The Whispers, by Heidi Perks (Century)
The Whole Truth, by Cara Hunter (Penguin)
The Wild Girls, by Phoebe Morgan (HQ)
A Witch Hunt in Whitby, by Helen Cox (Quercus)

MAY (U.S.):
Above the Rain, by Víctor del Árbol (Other Press)
Against the Law, by David Gordon (Mysterious Press)
Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley)
Auntie Poldi and the Lost Madonna, by Mario Giordano
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Basil’s War, by Stephen Hunter (Mysterious Press)
The Bath Conspiracy, by Jeanne M. Dams (Severn House)
Beyond the Headlines, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
The Body in the Back Seat, by Dick Lochte (Brash)
The Chill Factor, by Richard Falkirk (Collins Crime Club)
City of Dark Corners, by Jon Talton (Poisoned Pen Press)
City on the Edge, by David Swinson (Mulholland)
The Coldest Case, by Martin Walker (Knopf)
Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block (Subterranean)
Dead of Winter, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)
Deadly Revenge, by Leigh Russell (No Exit)
The Devil May Dance, by Jake Tapper (Little, Brown)
The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer, by Joël Dicker
(MacLehose Press)
Family Law, by Gin Phillips (Viking)
The Final Twist, by Jeffery Deaver (Putnam)
Find You First, by Linwood Barclay (Morrow)
Finding Tessa, by Jaime Lynn Hendricks (Scarlet)
The First Day of Spring, by Nancy Tucker (Riverhead)
Friend of the Devil, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image Comics)
The Girl Who Died, by Ragnar Jónasson (Minotaur)
Goblin: A Novel in Six Novellas, by Josh Malerman (Del Rey)
A Hostile State, by Adrian Magson (Severn House)
Hour of the Witch, by Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday)
How Lucky, by Will Leitch (Harper)
How to Betray Your Country, by James Wolff (Bitter Lemon Press)
The Hunting Wives, by May Cobb (Berkley)
Independent Bones, by Carolyn Haines (Minotaur)
The Lady Has a Past, by Amanda Quick (Berkley)
The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave (Simon & Schuster)
Local Woman Missing, by Mary Kubica (Park Row)
Madam, by Phoebe Wynne (St. Martin’s Press)
Make My Bed in Hell, by John Sanford (Brash)
Murder on Mustique, by Anne Glenconner (Quercus)
The Murders That Made Us: How Vigilantes, Hoodlums, Mob Bosses, Serial Killers, and Cult Leaders Built the San Francisco Bay Area, by Bob Calhoun (ECW Press)*
The Next Wife, by Kaira Rouda (Thomas & Mercer)
No Going Back,
by T.R. Ragan (Thomas & Mercer)
The Old Man’s Place,
by John Sanford (Brash)
The Paris Labyrinth,
by Gilles Legardinier (Flammarion)
A Peculiar Combination,
by Ashley Weaver (Minotaur)
People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus)
The Photographer, by Mary Dixie
Carter (Minotaur)
The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)
The Quiet Boy, by Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)
Robert B. Parker’s Payback, by Mike Lupica (Putnam)
The Savage Instinct, by Marjorie DeLuca (Inkshares)
Scorpion, by Christian Cantrell (Random House)
Secret Mischief, by Robin Blake (Severn House)
The Secret Talker, by Yan Geling (HarperVia)
The Siren, by Katherine St. John (Grand Central)
Six Weeks to Live, by Catherine McKenzie (Atria)
The Souls of Clayhatchee, by Anthony Todd Carlisle (Hidden Shelf)
Steal Big / The Big Caper, by Lionel White (Stark House Press)
Stolen Thoughts, by Tim Tigner (Independently published)
Thief of Souls, by Brian Klingborg (Minotaur)
The Vanishing Point, by Elizabeth Brundage (Little, Brown)
Unsettled Ground, by Claire Fuller (Tin House)
Version Zero, by David Yoon (Putnam)
The Wall, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (American Mystery Classics)
While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams (Doubleday)

MAY (UK):
The Assistant, by Kjell Ola Dahl (Orenda)
Both of You, by Adele Parks (HQ)
The Cold North Sea, by Jeff Dawson (Canelo)
The Distant Dead, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)
Face of Evil, by George Morris De’Ath (Aria)
The Final Round, by Bernard O’Keeffe (Muswell Press)
Forfeit, by Barbara Nadel (Headline)
The Ghost of Frederic Chopin, by Éric Faye (Pushkin Press)
Grey Stones, by Joss Stirling (One More Chapter)
The House of Whispers, by Anna Kent (HQ)
Island Reich, by Jack Grimwood (Michael Joseph)
The Killing Kind, by Jane Casey (HarperCollins)
Leave the Lights On, by Egan Hughes (Sphere)
Left You Dead, by Peter James (Macmillan)
Loaded, by Niki Mackay (Orion)
The Man Who Vanished and the Dog Who Waited, by Kate
High (Constable)
Murder Takes a Holiday: Classic Crime Stories for Summer,
edited by Cecily Gayford (Profile)
Mystery at the World’s Edge, by Alanna Knight (Allison & Busby)
One Half Truth, by Eve Dolan (Raven)
Outbreak, by Frank Gardner (Bantam Press)
The Pact, by Sharon Bolton (Trapeze)
The Players, by Darren O’Sullivan (HQ)
A Quiet Man, by Tom Wood (Sphere)
Resistance, by Val McDermid (Wellcome Collection)
Sawbones, by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins)
Seat 7a, by Sebastian Fitzek (Head of Zeus)
The Serial Killer’s Wife, by Alice Hunter (Avon)
Silenced, by Sólveig Pálsdóttir (Corylus)
Time Is Running Out, by Michael Wood (One More Chapter)
The Trawlerman, by William Shaw (Riverrun)
Triple Cross, by Tom Bradby (Bantam Press)
The Waiter, by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill Secker)
When They Find Her, by Lia Middleton (Michael Joseph)
The Widower, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)
The Year of the Locust, by Terry Hayes (Bantam Press)
You Had It Coming, by B.M. Carroll (Viper)

As usual, if you know of other works meriting special recognition, please alert us to their existence in the Comments section at the end of this post. These seasonal lists are often updated.