An Involuntary Hiatus

Sorry for the recent silence on this page, but I suffered a serious fall at my home on Sunday, March 20. It left me with a concussion exacerbated by a subdural hematoma. I have been recovering—slowly but steadily—ever since then. This is the first day I’ve tried to check my computer. I still haven’t been able to resume reading, and have barely succeeded in entertaining myself with television.

There are too many e-mail messages to wade through just now, but I do want to let regular Rap Sheet readers know that I’m OK, and that I shall resume blogging as soon as I feel energetic enough again. I appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Bullet Points: Tuesday Tidbits Edition

• Concurrent with word of this year’s CrimeFest Award nominees comes today’s announcement of finalists for the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards, aka “The Lammys.” There are 24 categories of contenders, but the one that might be of greatest interest to Rap Sheet readers is Best LGBTQ Mystery. Five books are vying to win:

— Bath Haus, by P.J. Vernon (Doubleday)
— Finding the Vein, by Jennifer Hanlon Wilde (Ooligan Press)
— Lies With Man, by Michael Nava (Amble Press)
— Murder Under Her Skin, by Stephen Spotswood (Doubleday)
— The Savage Kind, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus)

The winners are to be announced during a virtual ceremony on Saturday, June 11, beginning at 11 a.m. PDT. Registration starts at $50. Tickets are available here.

• Two authors familiar for their crime fiction are among the recipients of this year’s Spur Awards given out by the Western Writers of America. A press release says David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of 2020’s much-lauded novel Winter Counts, “is getting his fourth Spur Award in three years.” He has won in the Short Fiction category with “Skin,” a story published in Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color (Crooked Lane), edited by Abby L. Vandiver. Meanwhile, C.J. Box scored top honors in the Contemporary Fiction field with Dark Sky (Putnam), his 21st novel starring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

• And it seems the Seattle shop at which I work a couple of days each week, Madison Books, is among the five finalists for this year’s Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year honors. The victor is to be announced during the U.S. Book Show, May 23-26.



• A trailer for Tokyo Vice, the soon-forthcoming HBO Max series “based on Jake Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat,” can now be seen on YouTube (and above). As The Killing Times explains, this eight-part crime drama—scheduled to premiere in the States on April 7, is “set in the late 1990s, [when] American journalist Jake Adelstein relocates to Tokyo to join the staff of a major Japanese newspaper as their first foreign-born reporter. Taken under the wing of a veteran detective in the vice squad, he starts to explore the dark and dangerous world of the Japanese yakuza.” The show was created and written by J.T. Rogers. It stars Ken Watanabe and Ansel Elgort. Michael Mann, who brought us the 1980s drama Miami Vice, directed Tokyo Vice’s pilot.

• This TV news comes from In Reference to Murder:

Oscar winner Geena Davis has been tapped as the co-lead for a CBS untitled mother-son legal drama pilot from Scott Prendergast, who wrote the script and executive produces. In the drama, despite their opposing personalities, a talented but directionless P.I., who is the black sheep of his family, begrudgingly agrees to work as the in-house investigator for his overbearing mother (Davis), a successful attorney reeling from the recent dissolution of her marriage.

• Waggish Shots columnist Mike Ripley is out with the mid-March edition of “Getting Away with Murder.” Included amongst its contents are notes about the unveiling of a statue of jockey-turned-author Dick Francis at England’s Aintree Racecourse; a day-long celebration of the work of Lee Child; vintage fiction by Pierre Boulle and Humphrey Slater; and new novels by Charlotte Philby, Tom Bradby, Gerald Seymour, Zoë Somerville, Robert Goddard, and others.

• Finally, with St. Patrick’s Day coming up on Thursday, Janet Rudolph has updated her list, in Mystery Fanfare, of St. Paddy’s-related mysteries. This year she’s added a compilation of crime films set around this festive annual occasion.

CrimeFest Readies Its Rewards

In advance of this year’s CrimeFest—scheduled to take place in Bristol, England, from May 12 to 15—organizers have announced the shortlists of nominees for awards in seven different categories of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award:
• Girl A, by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)
• The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
• The Khan, by Saima Mir (Point Blank)
• How to Kidnap the Rich, by Rahul Raina (Abacus)
• One Night, New York, by Lara Thompson (Virago)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Simon & Schuster)

Audible Sounds of Crime Award:
• Better Off Dead, by Lee and Andrew Child, read by Jeff Harding (Penguin Random House Audio)
• Girl A, by Abigail Dean, read by Holliday Grainger (HarperFiction)
• Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins, read by Rosamund Pike
(Penguin Random House Audio)
• The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell, read by Joanna Froggatt (Penguin Random House Audio)
• Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty, read by Caroline Lee
(Penguin Random House Audio)
• The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman, read by Lesley Manville (Penguin Random House Audio)
• The Marriage, by K.L. Slater, read by Lucy Price-Lewis
(Audible Studios/Bookouture)
• False Witness, by Karin Slaughter, read by Kathleen Early (HarperCollins)

eDunnit Award:
• The Turnout, by Megan Abbott, (Virago)
• The Measure of Time, by Gianrico Carofiglio (Bitter Lemon Press)
• The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Orion Fiction)
• Girl A, by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)
• Running Out of Road, by Cath Staincliffe (Constable)
• The Royal Secret, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction):
• The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks, by Lucy Andrews (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Richard Bradford (Bloomsbury, Caravel)
• Bond Behind the Iron Curtain, by James Fleming (The Book Collector)
• Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, by Patricia Highsmith (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie, by Carla Valentine (Sphere)
• Hank Janson Under Cover, by Stephen James Walker (Telos)

Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel):
• An Untidy Death, by Simon Brett (Severn House)
• Riccardino, by Andrea Camilleri (Mantle)
• Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down, by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)
• The Appeal, by Janice Hallet (Viper)
• Slough House, by Mick Herron, (Baskerville)
• The Rabbit Factor, by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda)

Best Crime Fiction Novel for Children (aged 8-12):
• Noah’s Gold, by Frank Cottrell-Boyce (Macmillan Children’s Books)
• Vi Spy: Licence to Chill, by Maz Evans (Chicken House)
• Nightshade, by Anthony Horowitz (Walker)
• The Five Clues, by Anthony Kessel (Crown House)
• Lake Evolution, by Jennifer Killick Crater (Firefly Press)
• Twitch, by M.G. Leonard (Walker)
• Wishyouwas: The Tiny Guardian of Lost Letters, by Alexandra Page (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
• The Secret Detectives, by Ella Risbridger (Nosy Crow)

Best Crime Fiction Novel for Young Adults (aged 12-16):
• Ace of Spades, by Faridah Àbíké Íyímídé (Usborne)
• Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley (Rock the Boat)
• The Girl Who …, by Andreina Cordani (Atom)
• The Outrage, by William Hussey (Usborne)
• As Good As Dead, by Holly Jackson (Electric Monkey)
• Splinters of Sunshine, by Patrice Lawrence (Hodder Children’s Books)
• The Outlaws of Scarlett & Browne, by Jonathan Stroud (Walker)
• The Island, by C.L. Taylor (HQ)

According to a press release, the winner of this year’s Specsavers Debut Crime Novel will receive a £1,000 prize. “A further £1,000 prize fund is also awarded to the Audible Sounds of Crime Award, sponsored by Audible. All category winners will receive a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative award.”

This year’s CrimeFest commendations will be presented during a “Gala Awards Dinner” on Saturday, May 14.

CrimeFest is now in its 15th year. The 2022 convention will be its first in-person gathering since 2019; the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of both intervening conferences.

PaperBack: “The Bleeding Scissors”

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



The Bleeding Scissors, by Bruno Fischer (Signet, 1955). Yet another paperback front featuring a giant head! In 2015, Stark House Press released a new edition of this novel, combining it with another Fischer work, The Evil Days. Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

Bosch Set to Return in May

File this under Damn Good News: Amazon has announced that its free streaming service, IMDb TV, will begin showing Bosch: Legacy—the sequel to Prime’s long-running crime drama, Bosch—on May 6.

TV Line provides this plot framework for the new series:

With Titus Welliver, Madison Lintz and Mimi Rogers reprising their roles as Harry Bosch, his daughter Madeline, and top-notch attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, the offshoot follows Bosch as he embarks on the next chapter of his career as a private investigator and finds himself working with his one-time enemy Honey. “His first job calls him to the estate of ailing billionaire Whitney Vance, where Bosch is tasked with finding Vance’s only potential heir,” per the official synopsis. “Along the way, Bosch finds himself clashing with powerful figures who have a vested interest in the heir not being found. Researching the family tree, he uncovers shocking revelations that span generations, all while billions of dollars remain on the line.”

Meanwhile, Maddie is following in her dad’s footsteps as a rookie patrol officer and grapples with what kind of cop she wants to be. “Her father—who continues to live by the code that everybody counts, or nobody counts—believes the issue is clear: Being a cop is either a mission or just a job” ...

The 10-part first-season run of Bosch: Legacy is based, at least in part, on The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016), American author Michael Connelly’s 19th novel starring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch. Click here to view a trailer for this spinoff series.

Let Us Drink a Toast

After sponsoring both the Bloody Scotland Debut Crime Book of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year, the Glencairn Crystal Studio—maker of what it touts as “the world’s favourite whisky glass”—launched, last fall, its very own crime short-story competition, in partnership with Scottish Field magazine. Budding authors were invited to create a yarn of no more than 2,000 words built around the theme “A Crystal-Clear Crime.”

According to a press release, “The competition attracted entries from all over the world …” From those, judges chose the winner and two runners-up.

The first prize of £1,000 goes to Brid Cummings, an Australian fictionist and occupational therapist, for “Halmeoni’s Wisdom,” described as “a dark tale of human trafficking, illegal trade, and a desire for freedom.” The two runners-up are “Teardrops” (“a story about a confession to murder and a need for retribution, born of revenge”), by Jennifer Harvey, a Scottish author based in Denmark; and “Auld Bride” (“about a lost soul returning to the island of her birth, where more than a new job awaits her”), by Judith O’Reilly, a Northumberland-based former political producer with BBC and ITN and a Sunday Times contributor.

“The overall winning entry,” explains that same new media alert, “will be published in the May issue of Scottish Field magazine (on shelf Friday 8th April). The runners’-up stories will also be published from 8th April online on Scottish Field magazine’s website ... You will also be able to read the winning story and the runners-up stories on the Glencairn Glass website ...from Monday 11th April.”

There were three judges of this inaugural short-story contest: Deborah Masson, author of Hold Your Tongue, the 2020 winner of the Bloody Scotland Debut Crime Novel of the Year award; Peter Ranscombe, Scottish Field’s longtime drinks columnist and author of the historical thriller Hare (2014); and Gordon Brown, Glencairn’s marketing director, who pens crime thrillers under the pseudonym Morgan Cry.

Cozy Up to More “Grantchester”

Grantchester, the popular ITV historical mystery series starring Robson Green and Tom Brittany, will return to British TV screens this coming Friday, March 11, for a seventh run. The Killing Times says that its new stories will be set during the 1959 summer wedding season.

“As the Reverend Will Davenport [Brittany] unites happy couples in holy matrimony,” the Web site explains, “Detective Inspective Geordie Keating [Green] is busy as ever investigating a range of local murder cases. With a new decade just around the corner, the question of what the future holds is on everyone’s minds, not least Will’s, but before the ’50s roll over into the swinging sixties there are some crimes to solve and some life-changing decisions to be made that might change life in Grantchester forever.”

There is no word yet on when these fresh Grantchester episodes will premiere as part of PBS-TV’s Sunday Masterpiece schedule in the States. The PBS Web site just says they’re “coming soon.”

The Sounds of Success

Former President Barack Obama, science-fiction author Andy Weir, and suspense novelist Stephen King were among the winners of the 2022 Audie Awards, presented last Friday by the Audio Publishers Association (APA). The full list of recipients—which you can find here—was announced during a virtual ceremony.

Obama scored top honors in the Best Narration by the Author(s) category for his reading of his 2021 memoir, Promised Land (Penguin Random House Audio). Weir was victorious among Science Fiction nominees with Project Hail Mary, narrated by Ray Porter (Audible Studios). Project Hail Mary was also named as Audiobook of the Year.

Meanwhile, Stephen King’s latest Hard Case Crime standalone yarn, Later, narrated by Seth Numrich (Simon & Schuster Audio), beat out four other finalists in the Mystery category: The Bucket List, by Peter Mohlin and Peter Nystrom, narrated by Dion Graham (Recorded Books); Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March, narrated by Vikas Adam (Macmillan Audio); The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie, narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir, with John Lee (Blackstone/Skyboat Media); and The Midnight Man, by Caroline Mitchell, narrated by Emma Gregory and Elliot Fitzpatrick (Embla).

Finally, in the Thriller/Suspense field, Mary Kubica’s Local Woman Missing—narrated by Brittany Pressley, Jennifer Jill Araya, Gary Tiedemann, and Jesse Vilinsky (HarperAudio)—triumphed over a quartet of Audie competitors: The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave, narrated by Rebecca Lowman (Simon & Schuster Audio); Never Far Away, by Michael Koryta, narrated by Robert Petkoff (Hachette Audio); The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell, narrated by Joanne Froggatt (Simon & Schuster Audio); and Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White (Macmillan Audio).

Congratulations to all of this year’s APA contestants!

FOLLOW-UP: Mystery Fanfare identifies one additional mystery-fiction-related prize: this year’s Audie Award for Best Audio Drama went to Sherlock Holmes—The Seamstress of Peckham Rye, by Jonathan Barnes, performed by Nicholas Briggs, Richard Earl, Lucy Briggs-Owen, India Fisher, James Joyce, Anjella MacKintosh, Glen McCready, and Mark Elstob (Big Finish Productions).

Revue of Reviewers: 3-5-22

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

Ripley Rescheduled

This might take some getting used to. Apparently, Shots’ Mike Ripley is now posting his “Getting Away with Murder” column in the middle of each month, rather than at the start. He explains that this change—which is to be permanent—will “coincide better with the schedules of crime fiction publishers.” Regrettably, the rearrangement caused me to overlook GAWM’s mid-February to mid-March edition until now.

Among Ripley’s latest potpourri of news and recent reading highlights: his recommendation of Stephen Hunter’s latest standalone, Basil's War (2021), “a thoroughly diverting WWII spy story”; a few words about publisher John Murray’s new crime and thriller imprint, the appropriately named Baskerville; an item about “crime-writer Elly Griffiths … going to prison in April”; and mentions of fresh works by Paul Vidich, Amy McCulloch, Javier Cercas, Joe Ide, John Simpson, and celebrity chef Prudence Bulstrode. The full report is here.

Evidence of Patterns

Giant hands often appeared on covers during the height of the paperback boom. The example above comes from The Case of the Fiery Fingers, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Great Pan, 1959); illustration by Sam “Peff” Peffer.

I’m back on the subject of vintage paperback book covers in what is, amazingly, my 20th piece for CrimeReads, posted this morning. It seemed time to showcase some of the recurring artistic motifs seen during the mid-20th century. As I explain in my introduction,

Commercial artists were called upon to toil at speed, and usually for rock-bottom remunerations, to meet that era’s escalating demand for paperback-cover illustrations. The most talented of the bunch produced work that’s still cherished by collectors. Yet the pace they maintained in order to make ends meet, coupled with pressures to chase aesthetic trends thought to be especially saleable, led to recognizable—and occasionally eccentric—themes cropping up in their artwork. In the same way that aerial photographs of snow-shrouded forests, central figures captured from behind, and sinister children’s playgrounds have all become clichés on the jackets of modern crime, mystery, and thriller novels, so too were images of women exposing themselves to men, corpses in bathtubs, and damsels reclined—and plainly deceased—on bedsheets overly recurrent fixtures of mid-1900s paperback fronts.

Those, however, weren’t the only motifs once pervasive in this genre. Let us venture now into the deeper, dustier recesses of crime fiction’s past, where oversized pates loomed behind every shoulder, bodies had a nasty habit of tumbling from the sky, malicious mitts demanded the spotlight, and shapely shanks got all the attention they deserved.

You will find—and, I hope, enjoy—the full piece here.

A Pair of Previews

Nicola Walker, who starred as beleaguered Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart in the first four seasons of the British series Unforgotten, will soon be returning to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece in a rather different role. She will lead the cast of Annika, a six-part crime drama that finds her playing Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed, the head of Glasgow, Scotland’s new Marine Homicide Unit.

Mystery Fanfare explains that Annika “will have a special premiere on PBS Passport, an added member benefit which provides extended access to a digital, on-demand library of PBS programs, and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel on April 17, 2022. The series will have a television broadcast on Masterpiece in Fall 2022.”

That blog also features a 30-second trailer for the coming serial.

* * *

While we’re on the subject of small-screen trailers, also take note that The Killing Times has posted a terrific, two-minute preview of Slow Horses, the six-part Apple+ TV spy thriller based on Mick Herron’s 2010 novel of that same name. In the series, Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the arrogant and habitually offensive head of “a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5 known un-affectionately as Slough House.”

Slow Horses will debut on Apple TV+ on Friday, April 1.

Amazon Gets a Little Less Physical

Out of curiosity, I visited the first physical Amazon Books store, at Seattle’s University Village shopping center, shortly before Thanksgiving Day in 2015. That was not long after its doors had opened. The experience was, well, rather peculiar: almost all of the books were placed face-out on shelves, suggesting the stock level was fairly minimal, for how else could there have been sufficient room for that sort of display? Reportedly, titles were chosen for sale based on their having won four- or five-star reviews on Amazon.com.

Pleased enough with that experiment, Amazon soon opened another 23 brick-and-mortar outlets across the United States, making Amazon Books “one of the largest bookstore chains in the country.”

But that’s all now history. Publishers Weekly says the e-commerce giant has announced “it is closing all of its physical bookstores, as well as its 4-star and pop-up stores, which carry a mix of items, including some books. All told, Amazon will close about 68 stores, including its 24 bookstores.” Going forward, explains CNN, Amazon intends to “‘focus more’ on other physical retail efforts, including its dedicated stores for groceries, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods, as well as its recently launched apparel shop, Amazon Style. It will also continue to focus on Amazon Go, its cashierless grocery store concept.”

Closing dates for the two dozen Amazon Books outlets will vary, depending on location. The company has declined to specify how many jobs will be lost because of this change in focus.