PaperBack: “Blood of My Brother”

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



Blood of My Brother, by “C.H. Thames,” aka Milton Lesser (Permabooks, 1963). The Virginia-born Lesser also penned novels under the pseudonym Stephen Marlowe, including his famous series featuring well-traveled private eye Chester Drum.

Cover illustration by Harry Bennett.

Selecting the Marsh Maestros

Organizers of New Zealand’s annual Ngaio Marsh Awards have announced their finalists for the 2022 prizes, in two categories.

Best Novel:
• The Devils You Know, by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin)
• Before You Knew My Name, by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin)
• She’s a Killer, by Kirsten McDougall (Te Herenga Waka
University Press)
• Quiet in Her Bones, by Nalini Singh (Hachette)
• The Quiet People, by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press)
• Nancy Business, by R.W.R. McDonald (Allen & Unwin)

Best First Novel:
• Isobar Precinct, by Angelique Kasmara (Cuba Press)
• Before You Knew My Name, by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin)
• Waking the Tiger, by Mark Wightman (Hobeck)
• Small Mouth Demon, by Matt Zwartz (Poetry in Motion)
• Shadow Over Edmund Street, by Suzanne Frankham (Journeys
to Words)

Both of the category winners will be revealed during a special event at this year’s WORD Christchurch Festival, to be held on the South Island of New Zealand from August 31 to September 4.

Another Contribution to Columbo Lore

Here’s a book I’m definitely looking forward to next month: The Columbo Companion, 1968-78 (Bonaventure Press), compiled by the anonymous author of The Columbophile Blog.

As he explains, “the book is a collection of my reviews of all 45 ‘classic era’ Columbo episodes that aired between 1968’s Prescription: Murder and 1978’s “The Conspirators.” All the reviews have been revised and updated for print, and include new information not available at the time of publishing the original posts. There are even some very rare updates where I’ve changed my mind on an issue, sometimes after good-natured debate with readers of this very blog. …

“[M]y reviews go into great detail on every aspect of each episode, from the strength of the central clues and gotchas, to the performances, production values and key milestones in Columbo’s character development. What is changing in print is that the episode synopses have been abridged to provide a more succinct overview of each crime and its conclusion before the analysis kicks in. The aim of the book is for it to be an immediate companion to the Columbo viewing experience, wherever readers may be.”

Mark Dawidziak, author of The Columbo Phile (1989, revised 2019) has penned the foreword to this new book, which is supposed to be released on Monday September 19. There are still no ordering links at Amazon or elsewhere online, but they’re promised soon.

The Story Behind the Story: “A Deadly Covenant,” by Michael Stanley

(Editor’s note: This is the 91st installment in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. It comes from Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, who write under the name Michael Stanley. Their award-winning mystery series, set in the fascinating southern African nation of Botswana, features Detective David “Kubu” Bengu of the Botswana Police Service Criminal Investigation Department. This week brings the release of their latest entry in that line, A Deadly Covenant (White Sun)—the subject of their essay below. The pair have also penned a thriller, Shoot the Bastards (2019), which introduced Minnesota environmental journalist Crystal Nguyen. Set mainly in South Africa, it has as its back story the vicious trade in rhino horn. Sears has lived in South Africa, Kenya, Australia, and the United States, but now resides in Knysna on the Cape south coast of South Africa. Trollip splits his time between Minneapolis, Cape Town, and Denmark. Learn more about these authors and their books by clicking here.)

When we first visited the Shakawe area on the Kavango (or Okavango) River in northwestern Botswana many years ago, we were blown away by the multitude of birds and animals to be found there. The falling river had trapped thousands of fish, and water birds were there in abundance. We experienced “bird overload”—not knowing where to look next. The trees were packed with majestic fish eagles; the banks were lined with herons and egrets literally waiting their turn to move to the riverfront to help themselves to a juicy morsel. At night we spotted the iconic Pel’s fishing owl going after the same prey. It was a magnificent experience. When we started our Botswana mystery series, we knew that one day we’d want to set a book in the area.

The Kavango River rises in the sandy uplands of Angola and usually floods in January. Each year, after generous summer rains there, it flows down through Namibia, into Botswana, and eventually spreads out into the Okavango Delta in the middle of the Kalahari Desert during the dry winter months. The water never reaches a sea, but forms a mass of waterways and lush islands before soaking into the desert. Since the Okavango is a huge oasis in the desert, animals abound, attracted to the water and green vegetation from miles around, forming one of Botswana’s superstar tourist attractions.

However, water is a precious resource in southern Africa, and the Kavango crosses Namibian territory north of Botswana. At one stage, Windhoek, the growing capital city of Namibia, proposed a plan for a water pipeline from the river to supply the city’s residents hundreds of kilometers away. Tempers flared as Botswana accused its neighbor of endeavoring to steal its water. Fortunately, the idea seems to have been shelved—for the moment at least.

(Above) Sunset over the Kavango.

The Kavango River not only floods the Okavango every year, but it is also the source of water for Batswana people living and farming along the river all the way from Shakawe until it spreads out into the Delta. What, we wondered, would be the result of a significant water project designed to open up the desert area further back from the river for cultivation? Could it be done without damaging the Okavango environment? How would people react? Water and water rights seemed a promising back story for a mystery.

Another theme which has featured in several of our Botswana mysteries (including the first, 2008’s A Carrion Death) is the history and culture of the Bushman peoples of the Kalahari. In fact, there were Bushman groups, the River Bushmen, who populated the region around the Kavango River and the Okavango. Their descendants still live in that area—there is even a tourist camp named Bushman Plains, owned and managed by the local Bushman people.

Not far from Shakawe is Tsodilo Hills, a World Heritage site with an amazing profusion of rock art. The Bushmen believe it is the birthplace of humankind, so the importance of the area to them is very clear.

Of course, there has been conflict over the years between these Bushmen and the Tswana people, who need the river for their livelihood. We wondered how that might play out in modern times. Suppose that in the midst of a controversy over water issues, evidence was found of a violent conflict from the past. Not the distant past, but rather 30 or 40 years earlier—recent enough that people would not want to talk about it, let alone be held accountable for it. Now we could see the first glimmer of an actual plot.

A leopard in a tree near the Kavango.

A Deadly Covenant is the eighth mystery featuring Detective David Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department (CID). His nickname is Kubu, which means hippopotamus in the local language. This mainly refers to what he would describe as his generous size and healthy appetite, but he also shares the hippo’s determination to reach its goal, no matter what gets in its way.

In the series’ first six books, Kubu was portrayed as the senior detective in the Botswana Police Service CID and a close associate of its director, Jacob Mabaku. We then took a step back, realizing that Kubu’s history needed filling in, and that there had to be interesting stories from the time he was maturing into being an expert detective.

Facets of Death (2020) was a prequel covering his first big case—a massive heist from one of the world’s richest diamond mines, Botswana’s Jwaneng. Facets of Death seemed to suggest a new Kubu series, one which followed his growth as a young detective as he built a professional role and a personal life for himself.

So A Deadly Covenant is set at the end of the 20th century, a few months after Facets of Death. Kubu is still a new detective, cutting his teeth on police work.

While digging a trench for a controversial new project using water from the Kavango River, a backhoe operator unearths the skeleton of a long-dead Bushman. Kubu and Scottish pathologist Ian MacGregor are sent to sort out the formalities, but the situation rapidly gets out of hand. MacGregor discovers eight more skeletons—a massacre of Bushmen including women and children. However, the locals deny any knowledge of such an event.

(Left) Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip.

When an elder of the village is murdered at his home, the local police believe it was the result of a robbery gone wrong. Kubu thinks otherwise. So does an elderly woman who believes it was connected with Mami Wata, a powerful river spirit. After she dies in an apparent crocodile attack, suspicions rise.

Things become still more complicated when a mysterious Bushman appears at the massacre site, collapses, and then disappears again, but seems connected to the murders in some way.

Kubu’s superior, Assistant Superintendent Mabaku, joins them as accusations of corruption are leveled at the water project, and international anger builds over the massacre of the Bushman families. Do the recent murders link somehow to the long-deceased Bushmen? As Kubu and his colleagues investigate, they uncover a deadly covenant made many years before by an unknown group, and they begin to fear that their own lives may be at risk.

So the threads come together in what we hope is an enjoyable murder mystery, at the same time illustrating some features of Bushman culture and the idyllic setting of Shakawe, a gateway to the fabulous Okavango Delta.

(Photo credits: The two Kavango River shots come from Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. The photo of the authors was taken by Ali Karim at the 2016 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.)

Lend a Hand Here, Will You?

There are already so many prizes given out annually for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction that I’m not sure we need more. Nonetheless, here come the Fingerprint Awards, to be presented in association with London’s Capital Crime Festival (September 29-October 1).

As a news release explains, the Fingerprints will recognize “the best titles in the crime genre.” Most winners are to be selected by the public, though recipients in two categories are being left up to the judgment of the Capital Crime advisory board: “the Industry Award of the Year, recognizing the best marketing campaign, editorial work, or publishing strategy, and the Thalia Proctor Lifetime Achievement Award, marking an outstanding contribution to the crime-writing industry.” All of this year’s nominees were released in 2021.

The shortlisted nominees are enumerated below.

Crime Book of the Year:
• The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse (Transworld)
• 1979, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
• Girls Who Lie, by Eva Björg Ægisdottir (Orenda)
• Slough House, by Mick Herron (John Murray Press)

Thriller Book of the Year:
• A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins (Transworld)
• Dead Ground, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown)
• The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell (Cornerstone)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton)

Historical Crime Book of the Year:
• A Net for Small Fishes, by Lucy Jago (Bloomsbury)
• The Shape of Darkness, by Laura Purcell (Bloomsbury)
• Daughters of Night, by Laura-Shepherd Robinson (Pan Macmillan)
• The Shadows of Men, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)
• A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsay Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)

Debut Book of the Year:
• Girl A, by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)
• Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner (Bloomsbury)
• Welcome to Cooper, by Tariq Ashkanani (Thomas & Mercer)
• How to Kidnap the Rich, by Rahul Raina (Little, Brown)
• Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Pan Macmillan)

Genre-Busting Book of the Year:
• The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Bloomsbury)
• How to Kill Your Family, by Bella Mackie (HarperCollins)
• The Burning Girls, by C.J. Tudor Penguin)
• Eight Detectives, by Alex Pavesi (Penguin)
• What Abigail Did That Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion)

Audiobook of the Year:
• People Like Her, by Ellery Lloyd (Pan Macmillan)
• The Girl Who Died, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)
• True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Transworld)
• A Line to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz (Cornerstone)
• I Know What I Saw, by Imran Mahmood (Bloomsbury)

If you would like to vote for this year’s Fingerprint Award winners, please do so by September 19; click here for a ballot. All recipients are to be announced on September 29.

What’s the Best Book You Read This Summer?

I recently refrained from following the examples of Amazon, CrimeReads, and Book Depository, all of which put together lists of what they insisted were the best new crime, mystery, and thriller novels published during the first six months of 2022. I simply didn’t think I had read enough of those releases yet to make a proper judgment. However, as we enter this summer’s final weeks (fall begins officially on September 22), I’m far less reticent to identify the book I most enjoyed over these last three balmy months.

I hope you’ll be equally willing to share your own favorites.

While there are several alluring summer titles still awaiting my attention, I am prepared already to give special kudos to Shelley Burr’s WAKE, which is due out next week from U.S. publisher William Morrow. Set amid a declining community in Central New South Wales, Australia, this modern tale first came to my attention by winning the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger award in 2019. Its plotline is not altogether unique, but Burr—who grew up around Australian sheep farmers and now works at the Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment in Canberra—lards her yarn with enough raw disappointments, mental traumas, tension, twists, and obstinacy in the face of ridiculously long odds, that you can be forgiven any reticence to put it down when other responsibilities call.

Nannine is a former outback boomtown, currently reduced to a proliferation of padlocked storefronts and a minimum of essential businesses. Its stockyards and sheep stations were long ago peddled to multinational corporations or abandoned to the corrosive advances of wind and time. It’s a wonder the place even bothers to exist anymore; as Burr remarks, “its primary industry now was stubbornness.” Had Nannine not been the site of a pretty schoogirl’s still-enigmatic disappearance 19 years back, chances are nobody would remember its name.

It’s in that town we find Wilhelmina “Mina” McCreery, the semi-reclusive, late-20s twin sister of Evelyn McCreery, who was supposedly snatched from their shared bedroom all those years ago without waking Mina or raising alarms elsewhere in the house. The mystery has since become fodder for Internet forums, where lonely people in their pajamas theorize endlessly about the crime, one persistent hypothesis being that Mina did in her sister. (There’s even an acronym, usually applied to such crackpot conspiracists, that at once recognizes Mina’s “rather striking resemblance to Christina Ricci’s Wednesday [Addams]” in the 1993 film Addams Family Values, and pins her as the killer: WAKE, or “Wednesday Addams Killed Evie.”) Beverley McCreery, the girls’ mother, had been Evelyn’s fierce advocate, appearing on TV news programs and writing a book about the case, trying in all ways to keep the public—and the police—interested in solving her daughter’s abduction. After Beverley’s own death a few years ago, Mina shied away from stepping in as substitute champion, and her silence has only fueled suspicions of her involvement in Evelyn’s fate.

Mina wants simply to be left unmolested on her family’s remote old farm. The last thing she desires is for some ambitious private investigator to come snooping around, looking to open old wounds in pursuit of the $2 million reward for closing Evelyn’s case. But Lane Holland needs that money (he has a younger sister to support through college), and he could use the publicity. Once a rising law-enforcement star, he has since specialized in locating missing persons—with varying degrees of success. Holland believes he can find clues in Evelyn’s vanishing that have eluded other detectives. Of course, he’ll require Mina’s cooperation to accomplish that, and she doesn’t seem inclined to give it. Not initially, anyway. Holland, though, perseveres and slowly gains her trust, in part by helping a friend of Mina’s to locate her own missing sibling.

(Left) Author Shelley Burr.

While Holland struggles to crack the conundrums surrounding young Evelyn, he and Mina—whose life has been overshadowed by her sister’s death, and whose loneliness has become a species of security—establish a hesitant closeness. But the gumshoe is concealing his real intent in identifying the 9-year-old’s kidnapper. As his obsession with this puzzle grows, he takes risks that lead both he and Mina into danger … and unearth answers neither ever expected.

Author Burr is adroit in dribbling out bits of the McCreery twins’ dark back story as WAKE speeds along, withholding just enough to fuel several genuine surprises at the end. Her complex portrayal of Mina as at once fearful and pugnacious, a lifelong patient of counselors unable to fathom her contradictions, leaves the reader wondering throughout: Is she actually the victim of loony speculations involving her sister’s demise, or the unrecognized architect of her clan’s sorrow? Burr’s rendering of Lane Holland is less subtle; yet she executes his evolutionary (or devolutionary?) arc from would-be hero to, well, something rather less virtuous without excessive loss of credibility. And her descriptions of the Australian outback—with its red-dirt roadways, water-starved trees, and distances measured by the number of beers that can be consumed along the way, instead of miles—are no less vivid than those offered by Jane Harper in 2017’s The Dry.

For a debut novel, WAKE is a remarkable achievement—not perfect (the pacing does lurch every now and then), but perfect enough to pack along on a summer getaway. I flew through its pages over a mid-week escape to a lakeside bed-and-breakfast near Seattle.

So what book—new or not-so-much—have you read over this season that really stuck with you, and that you’ll be recommending to friends for months to come? Please let us all know by dropping a note into the Comments section at the end of this post.

READ MORE: “For Canberra Author Shelley Burr, Grief and Families Are a Complicated Mix,” by Amy Walters (The Canberra Times).

A Mystery to Obsess Her Fans

In a Guardian newspaper excerpt from the soon-to-be-released biography Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman (Pegasus Crime), author Lucy Worsley revisits one of the most remarkable aspects of Christie’s 85-year life: her 11-day “disappearance” in 1926.

As Worsley recalls, the 36-year-old “Christie was already a celebrity. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, her ingenious masterpiece, had just been published and her literary agent was pushing for a follow-up.” But at the same time, her marriage to British businessman Archibald “Archie” Christie, whom she’d wed in 1914, was being undermined by his affair with Nancy Neele, the daughter of a Great Central Railway electrical engineer; he’d already declared his intention of seeking a divorce. The recent death of Agatha’s mother, with whom she had been close, also weighed heavily on the author’s psyche.

Then, on the evening of December 3, 1926, following yet another row with Archie, Agatha vanished from Styles, their “grand 12-bedroom house in Sunningdale, Berkshire.” Her car, a Morris Cowley, was discovered the next morning in Surrey, “lodged in a hedge” on the dangerous edge of a chalk pit. There were clothes left in the car, along with an expired driver’s license, but no sign of the famous author. The mystery of her whereabouts became a worldwide newspaper sensation, and launched a wide-ranging police manhunt.

“It has often been claimed,” Worsley writes in The Guardian’s extract, “that Christie went into hiding in order to frame her husband for her murder. Was this true? It’s also frequently said that Christie remained silent about this notorious incident for the rest of her life. But that’s incorrect, and I’ve pieced together the surprising number of statements she did in fact make about it.

“What Christie said has the unfortunate effect of sounding like one of her novels, in which the ‘loss of memory’ plot would feature time and time again. But her writings about her life have had this novelising tendency all along. It doesn’t mean she is lying.”

Worsley goes on the recount Agatha Christie’s decision to travel to the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate, where she slipped into a new identity and sought to ignore fervid speculation about her fate—until she could do so no longer. Read the whole piece here.

Bragging Rights for Florid Prose

Has it really been 17 years now since I began recording the annual winners of the whimsical Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest? It just goes to show much entertainment I derive from that labor. As you’ll recall, this competition has been sponsored since 1982 by the English Department at California’s San Jose State University, and applauds particularly awful opening sentences to (fortunately) never-to-be-completed books. How can you not love such an erudite endeavor?

According to the contest’s home page, there were 5,000 entries this year, in 12 categories. The Grand Prize winner was Aurora, Colorado’s John Farmer, who submitted a most appetizing lead-in:

I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn’t help—I was fresh out of salami.

Since this is a mystery-fiction blog, let’s move right along to the Crime & Detective section. Top-most honors here go to Jim Anderson of Flushing, Michigan, for the following nostalgic bit:

The detectives wore booties, body suits, hair nets, masks and gloves and longed for the good old days when they could poke a corpse with the toes of their wingtips if they damn well felt like it.

However, I’m more fond of Brunswick, Maine, resident Doug Self’s entry, which scored Dishonorable Mention honors:

As detective Harry Bolton knelt down looking at the fifth murdered prostitute in as many weeks, he thought his was a cold cruel city and that maybe he should have taken that job in rural North Carolina but he didn’t think he could be like sheriff Andy Taylor all in black and white, plus he couldn’t stand Aunt Bea’s falsetto voice, and who names their kid Opie anyway, he had to know it rhymed with dopey, you might as well just call him dipstick, that doesn’t rhyme with much.

Another personal favorite is this one from John Shafer of Tonbridge, Kent, UK, who also picked up a Dishonorable Mention, but in the Adventure category:

It was only when the booming voice of the Sergeant-at-Arms rang out declaiming the surprising order for each and every member of the firing squad to shoot the Sergeant-at-Arms himself and then turn their rifles on each other, an order assiduously followed by the well-trained soldiers, that the cigarette-smoking, blindfolded Gerry Corker truly appreciated the seemingly endless hours his mother had denied him on the baseball field during his lonely childhood, instead sending him every afternoon to Crazy Barney’s School of Mimicry and Ventriloquism.

Before I dissolve again in laughter, let me point you to the Web page where you can find all of this year’s victors and runners-up.

If you’re interested, the deadline for submissions to next year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is June 30, 2023.

An Esteemed Poet of Southern Crime

I am sorry to hear that Edgar and Emmy award-winning novelist and TV soap-opera writer Michael Malone, who penned three well-reviewed mysteries set in a fictional North Carolina town, passed away on August 19 from pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.

A recent obituary in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer recalls that Malone was born in Durham in 1942, “the oldest of six children.” He went on to study English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then procured a Ph.D. in English from Harvard. In 1975 he published Painting the Roses Red, the first of his more than a dozen novels. After living for years with his wife, Renaissance scholar Maureen Quilligan, in such diverse places as London, New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, in 2000 the couple resettled in Hillsborough, N.C. which greatly resembled the pocket-edition community that backgrounded his “Cuddy and Justin” novels. Here’s what I wrote of those books, following a very entertaining interview I conducted with Malone back in 2002:

While his standalone novels and single collection of short stories (Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, released in mid-2002) have found enthusiastic audiences among readers who enjoy conscientiously plotted but often humorous works replete with eccentric characters, it may be Malone's mysteries that have won him the most consistent following. All three are set in fictional, class-stratified Hillston, North Carolina, a small Piedmont burg of familiar rhythms and history, prejudices and crimes. And they all feature the odd-couple pairing of Lieutenant Justin Bartholomew Savile V (black-sheep scion of the town's founding family and head of the Hillston Police Department's homicide division) with HPD chief Cudberth "Cuddy" Mangum (a Vietnam vet and prodigious consumer of junk food, who feigns ignorance behind country-boy witticisms).

The first installment of this series, Uncivil Seasons (1983), has the two officers investigating a brutal slaying that serves as the pretext for a more thorough delving into the deceits on which Hillston's past and privileged depend. Time's Witness (1989) builds from the pending execution of George Hall, a black man Mangum had arrested seven years before for killing a white policeman, while First Lady [2001] ... finds Justin and Cuddy pursuing a serial killer, who is targeting local women—among them, it's thought, chart-topping Irish singer Mavis Mahar, who's in Hillston to give a concert. In these novels, Malone's Southern sense of place is compelling and poetic, not forced (no frequent mentions of magnolia trees and mint juleps), and his dialogue rumbles with sarcasm and wisecracks.

According to a second obituary, this one submitted by his family, Malone “was working on a fourth book in his ‘Cuddy and Justin’ series when he fell ill with cancer.”

In addition to his literary endeavors, the theater-loving Michael Malone served as head writer on the ABC-TV soap opera One Life to Live from 1991 to 1996 (for which he won a Daytime Emmy in 1994), before moving over to NBC-TV’s Another World in 1997. He returned to OLTL in 2003, and spent another year or so with that show. His obit shares these further facts about his life: “Malone loved cooking, musicals, jazz, dancing and justice for all unfairly incarcerated. In his creative works, he spoke out against the death penalty, raised awareness about the AIDS crisis and Lupus, and was an early advocate for LGBTQ rights. His novels set in the South continuously reminded readers of the dangers of white supremacy. A donor to the Southern Poverty Law Center for over 40 years, Michael’s family asks that any donations in his name be made to this increasingly crucial institution.”

The author’s funeral, says the News & Observer, “is scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday, Aug. 29, at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church on St. Mary’s Road in Hillsborough. Malone will be buried in the church’s cemetery.”

Who Carried Off the Falchions?

Winners of the 2022 Silver Falchion Awards were announced over this last weekend at the Killer Nashville convention. There were 21 categories of nominees, covering everything from adventure fiction and science fiction to historical yarns and juvenile tales. Below are two that I think will be of interest to Rap Sheet readers.

Best Mystery: An Ambush of Widows, by Jeff Abbot (Grand Central)

Also nominated: Red Rabbit on the Run, by Jodi Bowersox (Independently published); Bluff, by John DeDakis (Speaking Volumes); A Killer’s Daughter, by Jenna Kernan (Bookouture); When Silence Screams, by Mark Edward Langley (Independently published); The Dark Remains, by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin (Europa); Spirit, by Elle Andrews Patt (Blue Beech Press); The Archivist, by Rex Pickett (Blackstone); The Scorpion’s Tail, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central); Grave Reservations, by Cherie Priest (Atria); The Ruthless, by David Putnam (Oceanview); Hunted in the Holler, by Drew Strickland (Independently published); Death and Consequences, by Cheril Thomas (Tred Avon Press); The First Day of Spring, by Nancy Tucker (Riverhead); and Bye, Buy Baby, by Becki Willis (Clear Creek)

Best Investigator: Girl Missing, by Kate Gable (Byrd)

Also nominated: All That Fall, by Kris Calvin (Crooked Lane); The Blessed Bones, by Kathryn Casey (Bookouture); Be Mine Forever, by D.K. Hood (Bookouture); In the Name Of, by Candace Irving (Blind Edge Press); Now & Then, by Justin M. Kiska (Level Best); The Lost Dragon Murder, by Michael Allan Mallory (Booklocker); The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon, by Marcy McCreary (CamCat); Striking Range, by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane); Hide in Place, by Emilya Naymark (Crooked Lane); At First Light, by Barbara Nickless (Thomas & Mercer); The Labyrinth, by Owen Parr (Independently published); and The Winter Girls, by Roger Stelljes (Bookouture)

Click here to find a full list of this year’s Silver Falchion winners. The previous list of nominees in all 21 categories is available here.

Revue of Reviewers: 8-20-22

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

Ripley’s Regular Round-up

Among my online reading pleasures each month is to discover that British author and raconteur Mike Ripley has issued a new edition of his Shots column, “Getting Away with Murder.” The combination of news, nostalgia, and wit Ripley imparts is wholly satisfying.

Take his August appraisal of crime-fiction-related subjects, for instance. The contents encompass not only Ripley’s recollections of “the little-known 1968 thriller Counter Paradise by Nichol Fleming, Ian Fleming’s nephew,” but also word that Sunday Telegraph TV critic and spy novelist Philip Purser has died at age 95. There are notes, too, about Joan Lock’s non-fiction study of how real-life crime compared with fictional misdeeds during the so-called Golden Age of English detective fiction; Impact, the new thriller by Mark Mills, who previously penned The Information Officer and House of the Hanged; Robert Massie’s “Bordeaux Quartet” of thrillers, set in France during World War II; and new fiction from Vaseem Khan (The Lost Man of Bombay), Simon Mayo (Tick Tock), Ann Granger (Deadly Company), Ilaria Bernardini (The Girls Are Good), and others.

As Ripley informed us in his July column, and reminds us in this new one, there will be no September edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” as he’ll be away in Italy, “officiating at the annual Chianti Crime Festival.” We will all just have to be patient until his spirited return to Shots in mid-October.

All the Crime in Half the Time

I returned home this afternoon from a short, out-of-Seattle fishing excursion with my nephew, only to discover 411 new junk-mail messages needing to be removed from my e-maibox … and my latest CrimeReads piece having been posted for public consumption.

My subject on this occasion is half-hour American TV crime dramas. Although such offerings long ago fell out of favor—overwhelmed by the spread of hour-long series—there were myriad 30-minute shows available from the 1950s through the early ’70s. As I write:

Billboard brought word in May 1948 that “the first half-hour mystery series,” NBC-TV’s Barney Blake, Police Reporter—centered on an indomitable newspaperman (played by Gene O’Donnell) and his trusty secretary, who together interview suspects and solve crimes—had recently flashed onto American television sets. The magazine then proceeded to excoriate that live-action drama for employing “just about every cliché in the whodunit book.” Barney Blake hung on for 13 weeks before being axed.

By the fall of 1959, the U.S. television landscape had changed markedly. Westerns continued to ride high on the nighttime schedule, but as Time magazine explained in an October cover story, that season also dished up a whopping “62 shows (network and syndicated) devoted to some variation of Cops & Robbers”—the majority of them lasting 30 minutes and headlined by fictional private eyes. There were so many such programs, Time quipped, that “as the evenings pass, one Eye blurs inevitably into another, a TV trouble that even an honest repairman cannot cure.”

Do you remember Peter Gunn or Staccato? How about Martin Kane, Private Eye or Honey West? And it wasn’t only gumshoe dramas shooting up the mid-20th-century airwaves. Divertissements also came in the form of abbreviated police procedurals, such as The Naked City, M Squad, and Decoy, in addition to amateur or part-time detective mysteries, among them The Adventures of Ellery Queen, Mr. and Mrs. North, Man with a Camera, and T.H.E. Cat.

Chances are, the majority of people reading this post weren’t around to take in those programs when they originally aired on network television or in syndication. (I was not either.) However, episodes of vintage half-hour series can still be found and enjoyed on YouTube, or can be purchased in DVD sets. I say they can be “enjoyed,” because over the months I spent sampling early, mostly black-and-white whodunits and cop shows on behalf of CrimeReads, I found myself far from bored. Yes, a few of the programs now seem hopelessly dated; yet many hold up reasonably well after half a century or more of gathering dust and being forgotten.

So recognize my latest CrimeReads piece as a curated guide to the lost world of classic, condensed TV crime and mystery dramas. And on some evening when you’re stumped for what to watch next, ditch the supposedly must-see shows of today in favor of a streaming installment of Peter Gunn or Decoy or Mr. Lucky, or a YouTube-borne episode of Dante or N.Y.P.D. or Markham. You just might find that half-hour stories can be as entertaining as their 60-minute cousins.

Begin your boob-tube investigations right here.

Bullet Points: Torpid Tuesday Edition

• Deadline reports that actor Max Martini (The Purge, The Order, NCIS: Los Angeles) “is set for a heavily recurring role opposite Titus Welliver on the upcoming second season of Bosch: Legacy, the spin-off of the long-running Amazon series, on Freevee. … Martini [pictured at left] will play Detective Don Ellis, a hardened vice cop in the LAPD. He’s intelligent and fierce, and not above getting down and dirty with the criminals he polices to get the job done.” Based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling Harry Bosch novels, this Freevee TV sequel finds Bosch (Welliver) having retired from the Los Angeles Police Department and set himself up as a private eye. Mimi Rogers plays Honey “Money” Chandler, a prominent L.A. defense attorney who sometimes turns to Bosch for investigative work, and Madison Lintz appears as Harry’s daughter, Maddie, who’s become a rookie police officer. Connelly has already said that Season 2 of Bosch: Legacy will draw on his 2015 novel, The Crossing, for its principal storyline. “In The Crossing,” explains Showbiz CheatSheet, “a defense attorney hires Harry to help find evidence that will prove his client is innocent of murder. While there’s DNA evidence that seems to point to his guilt, the man says he didn’t commit the crime. At first, Harry is reluctant to work with the defense, but after he takes the job and begins to dig into the case, his investigation leads him to look inside the LAPD.” The counsel for the defense in Connelly’s book was of course Bosch’s half-brother, Mickey Haller, but since Haller is now the star of his own Netflix series, I’m guessing—and I doubt this is going too far out on a limb—that Honey Chandler will be the one hiring Bosch on television. Season 2 should debut in early 2023.

• Meanwhile, the Oxford Mail brings word that filming is underway in Oxford, England, on Season 9 of Endeavour, starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam. “Location trucks have been spotted at the Kings Centre on the Osney Mead industrial estate and it is understood scenes will be filmed … in and around Radcliffe Square,” says the tabloid. It adds: “Filming for the popular ITV detective drama, based on Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse stories, also took place in May in Christ Church Meadow.” The three-episodes of Season 9—Endeavour’s concluding season—may premiere “as late as February 2023.”

• Because I remain a big fan of TV “wheel series,” I can’t help but point you toward this piece, by pop-culture critic Herbie J. Pilato, about McMillan & Wife and the rest of the vintage NBC Mystery Movie lineup. It includes a charming story about how Susan Saint James wound up playing Rock Hudson’s spouse on McMillan:

Saint James was a prime candidate. Also contracted with Universal, the actress with the unique voice she describes today as “scratchy,” had just completed a three-year run on NBC’s The Name of the Game. One of the producers of that series had written a script for her [Magic Carpet] and, as she remembered, “I was off to Europe to shoot a pilot.”

But in the middle of filming, Saint James was instructed by her agent to return to the States to meet with [McMillan & Wife creator Leonard B.] Stern and Hudson about a leading role in a new TV show.

“Rock was having lunch with every actress in Hollywood who was in my kind of category,” Saint James said.

The following day, she received a phone call from her agent, who said, “That’s it. Go to wardrobe. You got the job.”

Years later, Hudson joked with Saint James about why she won the role. As she recalled, “He told me, ‘I was gaining so much weight just having lunch with people, so I figured, Let’s just go with this woman because I don’t want to have any more lunches.’”

• Kris Calvin, author of the July-released thriller Under a Broken Sky (Crooked Lane), has posted—in CrimeReads—a list of four underrated TV crime series that she says have “the potential to be your next bingeing obsession.” I’m pleased to see the quirky British mystery McDonald & Dodds make the cut, but cannot imagine sitting through all 57 episodes of Mr. and Mrs. North, the 1952-1954 show based on Frances and Richard Lockridge’s books, which I think can be interesting but is likely too old-fashioned for most modern viewers.

• For what it’s worth, the UK-based retail site Book Depository has joined Amazon and CrimeReads in posting lists of what it says are “the best books of 2022 (so far).” Among its 20 crime- and thriller-fiction picks are Janice Hallett’s The Twyford Code, Adrian McKinty’s The Island, Louise Welsh’s The Second Cut, and Tom Bradby’s Yesterday’s Spy. Check out those choices and more in other categories here.

• Australian critic Jeff Popple posts his own selections along this same line. His “best so far” choices include John Connolly’s The Furies, Emma Viskic’s Those Who Perish, Michael Robotham’s Lying Beside You, Shelley Burr’s WAKE, and Deon Meyer’s The Dark Flood.

• Drought-provoked water-level depletion at Lake Mead, an enormous reservoir on the Nevada/Arizona border that was created in the 1930s by construction of the Hoover Dam, has revealed still more human remains. The first set (those of a gun-shot homicide victim concealed in a barrel) were discovered on May 1, with two more skeletons found later that same month and then in late July. More remains turned up in early August. As CBS News explains, “The discoveries have prompted speculation that the lake was used as a burial ground by organized crime and gangs from the early days of Las Vegas, which is just a 30-minute drive from the lake.”

• I read about this proposed novel in a recent newsletter from New York City’s renowned Mysterious Bookshop:

Murray Sinclair, best known for his Ben Crandel series, a trio of Los Angeles-based mystery novels set in the criminal underbelly of early 1980's Hollywood, has created a Kickstarter to help fund his next project: F. Scott Fitzgerald: American Spy.

What if F. Scott Fitzgerald was recruited by the French Resistance to embark upon a secret mission on the eve of World War II? Through the lost correspondence of Henri Duval, a member of the French Resistance, the historical espionage novel F. Scott Fitzgerald: American Spy tells the story of Fitzgerald’s recruitment by the French Resistance to assassinate the premier of Vichy France on the eve of America's entry into World War II.

You can find out more about Sinclair’s latest endeavor and, if you wish, help fund it by clickety-clacking right here.

• Leave it to Kevin Burton Smith, founding editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, to remember that 2022 marks the 100th birthday of the hard-boiled American gumshoe of fiction. He traces that character’s propitious delivery back to the December 1922 edition of Black Mask magazine, which led with stories by Carroll John Daly (“The False Burton Combs”) and “Peter Collinson,” aka Dashiell Hammett (“The Road Home”), both featuring models for the classic shamus we know today. As Smith recalls in the brand-new, fall edition of Mystery Scene magazine, those yarns preceded by only three months the introduction—also in Black Mask—of “the first official hard-boiled private eye,” Terry Mack, appearing in Daly’s “Three Gun Terry.” Smith’s essay, however, is only one of the reasons to grab a copy of the latest Mystery Scene. Among its other attractions are Michael Mallory’s piece about movies based on Vera Caspary’s Laura; Craig Sisterson’s assessment of modern indigenous crime writers; and Oline H. Cogdill’s picks of six authors tipped for greater success in this genre (among them Kellye Garrett, May Cobb, and Gary Phillips). Click here for information about obtaining a copy of Mystery Scene #173.

• Worth checking out, too, is the Summer 2022 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, with its excellent cover profile of Javier Cercas, Spanish author of Even the Darkest Night (Knopf).

• Author Max Allan Collins recently sat for an enjoyable video interview with Titan Books editor Andrew Sumner, during which they discussed the soon-forthcoming Mike Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can. The footage includes, too, Collins’ announcement that he’s “signed with Titan to complete the Mike Hammer Legacy series with two final Mike Hammer novels, to be published in 2023 and 2024. These final two books will, as have all of the books in this series of Collins-completed novels, contain genuine Spillane content.”

• I long ago turned on the comments moderation function for this blog, and it was partly to head off junk messages such as a recent one suggesting readers “buy crystal meth online in Alaska.” The bizarre ad went on to make that dangerous recreational drug sound benign: “It is chemically similar to amphetamine, a drug used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, a sleep disorder.” Why anyone would think these sorts of harmful messages are acceptable, or that a blogger like me would simply let them pass into circulation without hesitation? Amazing!

• I’m sometimes sorry that I wasn’t born early enough to sample the wares of coin-operated book vending machines.

• After years of talk about adapting Erik Larson’s outstanding 2003 non-fiction book, The Devil in the White City, as a movie or small-screen drama (actor Leonard DiCaprio bought the film rights way back in 2010!), the TV streaming service Hulu has finally commissioned an eight-episode series starring Keanu Reeves. Deadline notes that Larson’s book “tells the story of Daniel H. Burnham, a demanding but visionary architect who races to make his mark on history with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, America’s first modern serial killer and the man behind the notorious ‘Murder Castle’ built in the Fair’s shadow. This marks Reeves’ first major U.S. TV role. He will also serve as an executive producer.” DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will also serve as executive producers. The limited series is expected to launch in 2024. Reporting isn’t clear on which of the two leading characters Reeves will play, but I’m assuming a portrayal of Burnham would be more beneficial to his reputation.

• Finally, I continue to be impressed with Curtis Evans’ in-depth features for CrimeReads, the most recent of which recalls author Edmund Crispin (the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery), creator of amateur detective and locked-room mystery expert Gervase Fen. “Love interest is not what distinguishes Edmund Crispin mystery tales,” Evans remarks, “but rather intelligence, humor, wit, narrative zest and … clever fair-play plotting. Edmund Crispin—let us use this name to discuss Montgomery in his authorial guise—has something of the formidable literary intellect of Michael Innes, yet his humor is earthier, less precious, less an acquired taste, with Innes forever remaining the indulgent don and Crispin the precocious, puckish schoolboy. Despite his small output, Crispin is, in my view, one of the great comedic writers in British detective fiction.”

British Boob-Tube Bits

• Production has begun on Season 5 of Strike (aka C.B. Strike), the moody BBC One series starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger, and based on novels written by J.K. Rowling under her pen name, Robert Galbraith. The latest episodes are adapted from Troubled Blood, Rowling’s fifth case for London private eye Cormoran Strike (played by Burke) and his secretary-turned-colleague, Robin Ellacott (Grainger). The Killing Times explains the new season’s story arc:

Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he’s approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough, who went missing under mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike’s never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old, but despite the slim chance of success he’s intrigued and takes it on, adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency Robin Ellacott are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn even cases 40 years old can prove to be deadly.

• This is hardly surprising news: The UK detective drama Grantchester will return for an eighth season on ITV-TV in Great Britain and PBS-TV’s Masterpiece series here in the States. “Filming has started,” reports Mystery Fanfare, “with Robson Green returning as [Detective Inspector] Geordie Keating and Tom Brittney as Reverend Will Davenport. The eighth season of Grantchester will range from Speedway to spies, exploring the lives of invisible women and the very visible problems caused by [former Anglican curate Leonard Finch’s] new vocation which may, once again, find him battling the law.” Expect the entirety of those plots to roll out sometime in 2023.

• But this is surprising: Plans for a sophomore season of ITV’s The Long Call, which debuted four fairly interesting episodes last year and was based on the first of Ann Cleeves’ two DI Matthew Venn novels, have been abandoned—at least for the time being. “ITV have now confirmed,” says TVZone, “that they have no plans for a second series of The Long Call. The series was stripped across one week in October [2021], and opened to an audience of over 6m, before falling to under 4m for the final episode.” This Devon-set program starred Ben Aldridge, Pearl Mackie, and Juliet Stevenson.

• As for that other Ann Cleeves-inspired crime drama … The seventh season of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Jimmy Perez, a DI responsible for maintaining the peace (as best as possible) in Scotland’s far-north Shetland Islands, premiered this week in the UK. Six fresh episodes will appear, one per week, until mid-September. The first of those installments is recapped here. Henshall—who announced recently that he’s leaving the show—talked with The Killing Times about the Season 7 storyline, why he decided to seek employment elsewhere, and giving up Pérez’s wardrobe (“I chose not to keep the coat, though—I kind of figure I can never wear a pea coat again!”). Quite to my surprise, the Web site I Heart British TV says Shetland will go on without Henshall. No new lead actor has yet been identified, but an eighth season of the program is currently being planned.

• I confess, I struggled through Season 1 of Annika, Nicola Walker’s Alibi-TV series based on her long-running BBC Radio 4 drama, Annika Stranded. It definitely has its strengths: Walker’s Norwegian-descended protagonist, Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed of Scotland’s Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit, periodically displays a ripe cynical humor and unexpected insecurity about her leadership position, plus an unembarrassed erudition that causes others to shake their heads in confusion. She bears as much human depth as Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, the character Walker portrayed over four seasons of ITV’s Unforgotten, but appears rather less vulnerable to depressive pressures and psychological strain, which I’m glad to see. Additionally, I enjoy the maritime setting—different from most small-screen crime dramas. On the other hand, Annika’s relationship with her sexually experimenting teenage daughter, Morgan, quickly grew tedious in Season 1, with Morgan being fairly impenetrable as a character and neither mother nor daughter comfortable talking about their feelings. By the time the episodes were spent, I questioned whether watching more was worth my time. Nonetheless, I find I am in the minority with that viewpoint. Although the first season of Annika isn’t scheduled to debut on PBS’s Masterpiece until October 16, word is the show has already been renewed for a second season.

• Perhaps more promising—judging solely by its trailer—is ITV’s The Suspect. That four-part thriller stars Aidan Turner (And Then There Were None, Poldark) as Doctor Joe O’Loughlin, who, says The Killing Times, “appears to have a perfect life with a devoted wife, loving daughter, successful practice as a criminal psychologist, media profile and publishing deal. When a young woman is found dead he is only too willing to offer help with his profiling and expertise. But as the investigation into the woman’s death gathers pace, we start to ask, do we know the real Joe, or does he have a secret life?” The Suspect is adapted from Michael Robotham’s 2004 novel of that same time, and is supposed to premiere sometime this month across the pond; no American broadcast date has yet been released.

PaperBack: “Musk, Hashish and Blood”

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



Musk, Hashish and Blood, by Hector France (Avon, 1951). Coincidentally, France (1837–1908) was born in France, became a soldier in Algeria, and later served as an officer of the revolutionary Paris Commune before being deported in 1872. Afterward, France re-created himself as a writer, turning out a variety of books, most famously Sous le Burnous (1886), a collection of tales about life among the peoples of North Africa. Sous le Burnous was translated into English by British academic Alfred Allinson and released in 1902 as Musk, Hashish and Blood.

Cover illustration by Raymond Johnson, the subject of a fine new video presentation hosted by Rubén “DaCollector” Azcona.

Respect from the Pulp Community

PulpFest 2022 concludes this afternoon in Pittsburgh, but it was last night that the convention’s annual Munsey Award was presented to Rick Lai, a New York pulp-fiction collector and author.

This prize honors America’s first pulp magazine publisher, Frank A. Munsey, and “recognizes an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.”

Also among this year’s Munsey nominees were Los Angeles writer Gary Phillips (One Shot Harry); Airship 27 Productions, created by veteran comic-book writer Ron Fortier; John Betancourt, the publisher of Wildside Press; pulp collector and frequent pulp-fiction conventiongoer Sheila Vanderbeek; and Dan Zimmer, the publisher of Illustration Magazine. The full list of contenders is here.

READ MORE: “2022 50th Anniversary PulpFest Convention Report, by Walker Martin” (Mystery*File).

An Author Affronted

The World of Shaft author Steve Aldous reminds us it was 50 years ago today that Shaft’s Big Score!, Ernest Tidyman’s novelization of his screenplay for the 1972 movie of that same title, reached print. But it “nearly wasn’t published at all,” he writes, adding:

Production of the film had run from January to April 1972 and it was intended the paperback adaptation be published in May ahead of the film’s release.

However, a disagreement over royalties between Tidyman and MGM (who had determined the split) along with his partners in Shaft Productions (who claimed others were also involved with screenplay development), led to the paperback release being postponed and it seemed the book may never be published. “MGM let it be known they wanted 25% of the royalties,” said Tidyman, “and my partners said they wanted a slice. I insisted no one was to get a piece of any novel, [n]or would I let anyone do a novelization of my Shaft character. He’s a valuable entity—he’s been bastardized in films.” ...

Tidyman informed The Pittsburgh Press: “I told them I would tear up the book, which represented six months’ hard work, and give the publisher back the money rather than give MGM money it had not earned nor in any way contributed to. I startled the hell out of them. They never heard of a writer who would give back money or tear up a book because of a principle. They were very upset.”

Read about how this squabble concluded in Aldous’ full post.

Smile Pretty for the Cameras, Everyone

PulpFest, the annual celebration of vintage pulp magazines and other pulpish fiction, concludes tomorrow in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are not able to attend (as I am not), you can at least appreciate the festivities at some remove, thanks to Yellowed Perils blogger William Lampkin and the photographs he’s been posting since Thursday. The first set is available here; the second set is here; and he’ll be rolling out a selection of images from today, right here.

READ MORE: “Why PulpFest?” by Madeleine Gagné.

Bullet Points: Dog Days Edition

It feels like forever ago that I last compiled a “Bullet Points” post of crime-fiction news items. In fact, the last time was in early June. My preference is to write these every couple of weeks, but editorial responsibilities unrelated to The Rap Sheet stood in my way for almost two months. With any luck, I can now return to my usual timetable.

• Count me among those delighted by news of a Death in Paradise spin-off series starring Kris Marshall, who played Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman for roughly three and a half seasons (after replacing Ben Miller as DI Richard Poole). As The Killing Times reports, this new BBC-TV show—to be titled Beyond Paradise—“will tell the story of what happened to Goodman … after he returned to the UK. Seeking a quieter life away from the stress of the city, Humphrey has taken a job as Detective Inspector in fiancée Martha’s hometown. However, they soon find that country life is anything but peaceful and Humphrey can’t help but be distracted by the town’s surprisingly high crime rate with a new, and very different, case challenging him each week.” Mystery Fanfare adds that Beyond Paradise will begin airing on BBC and, in the States, on BritBox in 2023, and that “many of the characters from Death in Paradise will make cameo appearances.” I hope producers can convince the lovely Joséphine Jobert to reprise her role as Detective Sergeant Florence Cassell. She and Marshall made a splendid team on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie.

• While we’re on the subject of Death in Paradise, the TV site WhatToWatch says the 12th season of that popular series is “very likely to start in January 2023,” again with Ralf Little playing DI Neville Parker. In advance of that, a second Christmas special is due!

• When last we checked on ITV-TV’s McDonald & Dodds, in mid-June, word was that its third season would debut in Britain on June 19. However, there was no clue then as to a U.S. showing. Now, finally, Mystery Fanfare brings news that this lighthearted whodunit, starring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched police partners in modern Bath, England, will have its BritBox premiere here in the States on Tuesday, August 16. Three 90-minute episodes are due, with the streaming service dropping one per week.

• Still reeling from the sad news that star Douglas Henshall has quit Shetland, we learn that his last, six-episode season with the BBC-TV series will begin airing in the UK on Wednesday, August 10.

• A confession: I haven’t yet watched the opening season of Slow Horses, the AppleTV+ spy series based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and starring Gary Olman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas. But I am hoping to get around to it soon. I’d like to least take in those half-dozen episodes before the program’s sophomore season—based on Herron’s Dead Lions (2013)—premieres, probably in November. (You can already enjoy the trailer by clicking here.) But it’s becoming difficult to keep up: The Killing Times reports that production of Seasons 3 and 4—being shot back-to-back—is already underway, though there are no particulars regarding which other Slough House novels are being adapted for the small screen.

• Despite the numerous accolades Herron has received for his novels about a band of misfit former MI5 agents (including his recently capturing the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for Slough House), the author is apparently stepping away from those characters in order to next pen another standalone yarn. Soho Press, though, intends to keep fans happy by releasing, in November, a paperback collection of Slough House novellas. The List, The Drop, The Last Dead Letter, and The Catch—all of which have previously been published—are to be featured, together with a new, Christmas-themed tale that gives the book its title, Standing by the Wall.

• The folks behind PBS-TV’s Masterpiece have posted a trailer (see below) for Magpie Murders, the six-part mini-series scripted by Anthony Horowitz and based on his 2017 whodunit of the same name. This show stars Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan, and is scheduled to commence its Masterpiece run on Sunday, October 16.



• Speaking of Masterpiece, it has now not only confirmed that the historical mystery drama Miss Scarlet and the Duke will kick off its six-episode Season 2 run on Sunday, October 16 (see the video trailer here), but that Season 3 of that show will follow closely on its heels, beginning on Sunday, January 8, 2023. This British-Irish production is set in 1880s London, and stars Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet, a spirited young female private investigator who often finds herself in professional (and personal) rivalry with Detective Inspector William Wellington, aka “The Duke,” played by Stuart Martin.

• This show sneaked right up on me. The U.S. streaming service Acorn TV will introduce a new Australian series on Monday, August 8. Titled Darby and Joan, it’s a road-trip dramedy starring Breaker Morant’s Bryan Brown as retired Australian homicide detective Jack Darby, and Greta Saachi (Presumed Innocent) playing widowed English nurse Joan Kirkhope. As Mystery Tribune says, “They couldn’t be more different: the low key, ruggedly charming Aussie and the tightly-wound, yet warm, witty and determined Englishwoman, but when they collide in the Australian outback, and become drawn into a series of unexpected mysteries, this unlikely investigative duo soon realize the most intriguing puzzle they face is each other.” Darby and Joan is slated to continue through August 29.

• Last but hardly least important on the boob-tube beat, Crime Fiction Lover lets it be known that “Val McDermid’s cold case police detective Karen Pirie is coming to the small screen in September 2022 in a new three-part ITV crime drama. Adapted from the first novel in the six-book series, The Distant Echo, the programme will star Lauren Lyle of Outlander fame as the lead detective.” McDermid herself is one of this show’s co-producers. You’ll find a short trailer at the link.

• Five authors are shortlisted for the 2022 Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, a competition “open to all writers who are from, or whose work celebrates the North East of England, and who have not previously had their submission published in any form.” They are:

— Clare Sewell, Can't Hide
— Duncan Robb, Sharp Focus
— Katherine Graham, Salted Earth
— Jacqueline Auld, The Children of Gaia
— Ramona Slusarczyk, The Taste of Iron

Founded in 2019 by British author L.J. Ross, this commendation is sponsored by her publishing imprint, Dark Skies Publishing, along with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival and Newcastle Libraries. According to the prize’s Web site, “The winning entry”—to be announced on August 31—“will be awarded a prize of £2,500 to support the completion of their work and funding towards a year’s membership of both the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi),” with other shortlisted candidates receiving lesser sums of prize money. To find previous winners, click here.

• As summer winds down, it’s time to re-check The Rap Sheet’s compilation of crime, mystery, and thriller works set to go on sale—on both sides of the Atlantic—between now and Labor Day. The number of picks has grown greatly since I initially posted that list on June 1.

• Also peruse Crime by the Book’s list of 16 novels that it says are must-reads for these closing days of the sunny season.

• Although the actual date was more than a week ago, I want to wish In Reference to Murder a happy 15th blogiversary! Writer B.V. Lawson does an outstanding job with her site … and somehow manages to keep up a consistent schedule, unlike some bloggers we know.

• Can it really have been 50 years ago? The blaxploitation crime film Super Fly, starring Ron O’Neil and directed by Gordon Parks Jr., was released on August 4, 1972. While many African Americans were displeased with that picture’s glorification of “black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males,” few could complain about Curtis Mayfield’s eminently danceable theme music. As George Kelley opined last week, “Mayfield’s soundtrack … became a landmark in exposing the threat of drugs to the Black Community.”

• My e-mail brings this note from frequent Rap Sheet contributor Fraser Massey, based in London: “While reading The Observer today (my favourite of Britain’s Sunday papers), I came across a fascinating piece where they asked a range of top crime novelists to list both their favourite crime novels of all time, but also their favourite recent thrillers. It makes for an impressive reading list.” That piece is walled off to non-subscribers, but fortunately The Observer’s sister newspaper, The Guardian, carries it here for free.

• Another missive comes from Ohioan Lou Armagno, author of the blog The Postman’s Holiday, who reminds me that this coming August 26 will mark the 138th birthday of Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Don’t bother buying Biggers a present; he died way back in 1933. But fan Armagno would appreciate the gift of some assistance in tracking down three “rare treasures” associated with Biggers and the vintage Chan films, among them a waxwork representation of the fictional Honolulu police officer that was used in 1940’s Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, one of 22 Chan movies starring Sidney Toler. Click here to read more about Armagno’s search for those long-gone artifacts.

• I’m not sure many people noticed, but in July Bouchercon rolled out a new look for the Anthony Award—“a design which will be used each year from now on,” says author Art Taylor, “as opposed to having each new Bouchercon design a specific award for their host year.” The official introduction of the prize came in this video.

• In a blog post devoted chiefly to the movies he takes in while writing fiction, author Max Allan Collins drops news that the book he’s currently working on—his 18th, and possibly last, Nate Heller novel—will be titled Too Many Bullets. It involves Chicago-based private dick Heller in the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he explains, but will also “cover both Jimmy Hoffa and Sirhan Sirhan.” Expect Bullets to come from Hard Case Crime, which is already readying Collins’ 17th Heller yarn, The Big Bundle, for release in early December. [FOLLOW-UP: In a subsequent blog post, Collins updated this account, explaining that “I have already decided to turn Too Many Bullets into two Heller novels. Too Many Bullets will be the RFK assassination novel. The as-yet-untitled Heller after that will go back and deal with the Jimmy Hoffa story. This came about because—as is always the case—the research has led me places I did not expect to go.”]

• Now joining Amazon in selecting the “best books of the years (so far)” is CrimeReads, which last month posted a list of 10 crime, mystery, and thrillers yarns (heavy on the noir) that it declares stood out from all others reaching print in the first six months of 2022. It’s not a bad list, though I was considerably less fond of Brendan Slocumb’s The Violin Conspiracy than others seem to have been. Interestingly, I’ve read more of CrimeReads’ second string of “Notable Selections” than I have its top 10.

• A few other CrimeReads pieces I have enjoyed lately: Lisa Levy’s interview with “the people behind some of today’s best small publishers specializing in crime fiction,” among them Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, Paul Oliver of Syndicate Books, and Dreamland Books’ Sara Gran; Keith Roysdon’s look back at producer Quinn Martin’s remarkable string of popular TV crime dramas; this piece about New York City’s notorious heat wave of 1896, which provides the setting for Hot Time (Arcade Crimewise), W.H. Flint’s terrific debut historical mystery; Curtis Evans’ outstanding but sad story about Milton M. Propper, a once-applauded American writer of police procedurals (The Strange Disappearance of Mary Young, The Ticker-Tape Murder, etc.), who ended up destitute and suicidal in Philadelphia; a listicle of choice locked-room mysteries by Tom Mead, UK-based author of the new locked-room whodunit Death and the Conjuror (Mysterious Press); and an extract from the new non-fiction book Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (Morrow), recalling how, “in the early days of jazz, the music and the mob were inextricable” down in New Orleans.

• One final CrimeReads-related subject: Dwyer Murphy, my editor at that excellent Web site, has seen his new sort-of-detective-novel, An Honest Living (Viking), greeted warmly by critics. Christopher Bollen offers this plot précis in The New York Times:

Murphy’s lonely, misanthropic [and unnamed] narrator, fitted with the soul of a poet and the ethics of a dice thrower, is hired by a wealthy young woman to investigate the illicit behavior of her estranged husband. The narrator quickly catches the husband in the act; however, it turns out that the woman who hired him was only masquerading as the man’s wife. Following the rules of the noir genre, the would-be detective is ruled by the stars of pride and lust, determined to discover who duped him even as he finds himself inexplicably drawn to an enigmatic femme fatale, the real wife.

Murphy has also been the subject of several interviews, one of the best being his exchange with Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare, which you can listen to here.

• Worth tuning in for, too, is this conversation between National Public Radio’s Elissa Nadworny and Megan Miranda about the latter’s brand-new woodlands thriller, The Last to Vanish (Scribner). Among the things focused on is that North Carolina author’s multiple fears. “‘I have an overactive imagination, so I am afraid of many things,’ [Miranda] says. She’s especially afraid of being alone in the woods at night. Feeling vulnerable and on edge, not knowing what else is out there. ‘The idea that you hear footsteps behind you and you can’t see it and they stop when you stop,’ she says, ‘that to me is this terrifying idea.’ That feeling when the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you feel the tension in your shoulders, and you have a sharp focus on just getting to safety—that’s the feeling Miranda is trying to capture in her books.” The Last to Vanish is Miranda’s sixth adult novel.

• This year’s winners of the Scribe Awards, given out by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, were announced late last month during San Diego Comic-Con. As far as I can discern, there was only one category that included works definable as crime or mystery fiction: Original Novel, General. The vast majority of nominees were either fantasy or science fiction. Taking home the Original Novel, General prize was Pandemic: Patient Zero, by Amanda Bridgeman (Aconyte), which as you might guess is about a fast-spreading killer virus. Also nominated in that category were Murder She Wrote: Debonair in Death, by Terrie Farley Moran (Berkley), and Shootout at Sugar Creek, by Max Allan Collins (Kensington). A complete rundown of the 2022 nominees is located here.

• Darn lucky Londoners! Capital Crime, trumpeted as the city’s “only crime and thriller festival,” is set to return on Thursday, September 29, and continue through Saturday, October 1, bringing more than 164 panelists, plus readers, others authors, and book-publishing execs to Battersea Park on the River Thames’ south bank. Shotsmag Confidential offers a handy round-up of main festival events, which will kick off with a Thursday evening discussion of James Bond and London’s role in that fictional spy’s life, featuring Anthony Horowitz, Charlie Higson and Kim Sherwood, author of Double or Nothing (HarperCollins), the first in a triology of novels focusing on Double O Section agents other than Bond, due out in September. The full program and ticket info can be accessed here.

• The Gumshoe Site notes the death, on July 22, of Stuart Woods, author of the Stone Barrington series. “The former advertising man’s first book, Blue Water, Green Skipper (Norton, 1977), was not a novel, but a non-fiction book about the 1976 adventure in the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race,” recalls blogger Jiro Kimura. “His third book was a novel, entitled Chiefs (Norton, 1981), about three generations of lawmen and the murder of a teenager in a small town in Georgia, which won the 1982 Edgar Award in the first novel category, and was made into the TV miniseries starring Charlton Heston and Danny Glover, among others. He wrote about five books a year singularly or collaboratively with several series characters. New York Dead (Harper & Row, 1991) is the first novel featuring Stone Barrington, an ex-cop and attorney in New York City. His 62nd Barrington book, Black Dog, will be released in August, the 63rd book in the Barrington series, Distant Thunder (both from Putnam) in October, [and] the 64th Barrington book (untitled yet) next year.” Kimura adds that Woods “died in his sleep on July 22 at his home in Litchfield County, Connecticut.” He was 84.

• Woods is not the only loss the crime-fiction community has had to endure during the last month. Gone now, as well, are actor James Caan (The Godfather, Misery, Poodle Springs), actress Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Out of the Past, McMillan & Wife), author Susie Steiner (Missing, Presumed), James Bond theme composer Monty Norman, and Douglas Dannay, author and the eldest son of Frederic Dannay, who co-created the Ellery Queen mystery series. Farewell, too, to Leave It to Beaver’s Tony Dow, Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, and F Troop’s Larry Storch, all three of whom made an impact on me as a boy.

• Having grown up in the glow of 1970s films, I’m very much a fan of Peter Hanson’s blog, Every ’70s Movie, which recently clocked in its six-millionth pageview. Congratulations! (Just for perspective, The Rap Sheet has almost reached its eight-millionth pageview.)

• And still more bodies are turning up in Lake Mead, a mammoth reservoir created in the 1930s by construction of the Hoover Dam, located on the border between Nevada and Arizona. As I wrote back in May, global warming is causing the lake’s water level to recede to historic lows, exposing sunken boats, a World War II landing craft, and other articles previously hidden from sight. Bones among them! CNN reported late last month that a third set of human remains was found in the reservoir. The earlier discovery of a long-ago murder victim raised serious questions as to whether these skeletons might be related to nearby Las Vegas’ mobster past.