And Did I Happen to Mention …?

• British author Kim Sherwood has announced the title of her second Double-0 novel, the sequel to last year’s Double or Nothing. It will be called A Spy Like Me, and will follow “an elite team of MI6 agents [who] must go undercover to unravel a smuggling network funding violent terror.” The current publication date is April 25, 2024.

• Euro Crime’s Karen Meek reports that “the 43 titles that were eligible for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year have been entered by the publishers.” Those works include Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s Night Shadows, Ragnar Jónasson’s Outside, Anne Mette Hancock’s The Corpse Flower, David Lagercrantz’s Dark Music, and Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s The Fallout. The prize winner will be declared online sometime later this year.

• A trailer has been released for the fall film A Haunting in Venice. That picture will mark the third time Kenneth Branagh has appeared in the role of 20th-century Belgian investigator Hercule Poirot (following 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express and 2022’s Death on the Nile). The story, adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel, Hallowe'en Party, is described by The Hollywood Reporter in the following fashion:

Set in post-Second World War Venice, a retired Poirot is summoned to attend a séance by an old friend, played by Tina Fey, to see if a psychic (Michelle Yeoh) is a fake. When one of the séance guests in the decaying, haunted Venice palazzo is murdered, Poirot steps in to identify the killer, only to face a world of supernatural shadows and secrets. . “Someone is dead. No one shall leave this place until I know who did it,” the former detective tells surprised séance participants now considered suspects in a murder mystery the celebrated sleuth is determined to resolve.

A Haunting in Venice, which also stars Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Riccardo Scamarcio, Emma Laird, and Camille Cottin, is scheduled to premiere in U.S. theaters on September 15.

• Although any longtime reader of The Columbophile, that anonymously penned tribute to Peter Falk’s famous Columbo TV series, would undoubtedly be able to name at least some of the site’s favorite (and least favorite) Columbo episodes, it came out earlier this week with an official ranking of all 69. “The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case” (1977) took the number one spot, while “Murder in Malibu” (1990) finished dead last, even behind “the dreaded ‘Last Salute to the Commodore’” (1976). Installments from the show made after its 1989 revival on ABC are largely deemed inferior to those included in its initial, 1971-1978 run as part of the NBC Mystery Movie.

• Robert Deis, co-editor of the beautiful new book The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, is offering a limited-time deal for the deluxe hardcover edition. “While they last …,” he explains in his MensPulpMags blog, readers can purchase that edition “bundled together with an 8”x10” Giclée print of his original cover painting for The Tigress by Carter Brown (Signet, 1967), hand-signed by Ron. You get both together for $60—with free shipping.”

• And rest in peace, Tom Schantz. Together with his wife, Enid (who died in 2011), Schantz founded The Rue Morgue Mystery Bookstore and The Rue Morgue Press in Lyons, Colorado. The pair were also instrumental in establishing the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA), “a trade association of retail businesses devoted to the sale of mystery books.” As Mystery Fanfare recalls, “Tom was on the Left Coast Crime Board, and with his wife Enid, co-chaired the 1995 Left Coast Crime in Boulder, CO. Tom was Fan Guest of Honor at LCC in 2013. I’m pretty sure Tom and Enid put on a Bouchercon, too, and he was awarded a Raven [Award] from MWA [Mystery Writers of America] in 2001.” Schantz died on June 6 at 79 years of age.