Polis Books Is Fini

I only just received this news from In Reference to Murder:

It’s a tough game out there in the publishing world, and thus it’s not too surprising when indie publishing companies go under. The latest is Polis Books, founded in 2013 by Jason Pinter (an editor, agent, and author himself, [his works] including the Henry Parker thriller series), which announced it was closing its doors. Polis started out with a strong focus on crime fiction and has published works by Patricia Abbott, Rob Hart, Steph Post, J.D. Rhoades, Alex Segura, Clea Simon, Lily Wang, and others. As Pinter noted on social media, the company was able to find new homes for a fairly large portion of its list, with several publishers expressing interest, “and we were able to re-home a number of great books.”

Agora Books, an imprint Polis added to its line in 2019, and which focused on “socially and culturally unique crime fiction and horror,” has also been shuttered. Agora editor Chantelle Aimée Osman has moved over to become acquisitions editor at Lake Union Publishing.

Revue of Reviewers: 5-29-24

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

Canada Declares Its Preferences

Right on schedule, Crime Writers of Canada has announced the winners of its 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing (former known as the Arthur Ellis Awards).

The Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel:
The Maid's Diary, by Loreth Anne White (Montlake)

Also nominated: The Drowning Woman, by Robyn Harding (Grand Central); Everyone Here Is Lying, by Shari Lapena (Doubleday Canada); Middlemen, by Scott Thornley (House of Anansi Press); and Sunset and Jericho, by Sam Wiebe (Harbour)

Best Crime First Novel:
The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters (Harper Perennial)

Also nominated: The Bittlemores, by Jann Arden (Random House Canada); Adrift, by Lisa Brideau (Sourcebooks); The End Game, by Charlotte Morganti (Halfdan Press); and Perfect Shot, by Steve Urszenyi (Minotaur)

The Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada:
Wild Hope, by Joan Thomas (Harper Perennial)

Also nominated: The Almost Widow, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz (Harper Avenue); Elmington, by Renee Lehnen (Storeyline Press); Cruel Light, by Cyndi MacMillan (Crooked Lane); and Shapes of Wrath, by elissa Yi (Windtree Press)

The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery:
The Mystery Guest, by Nita Prose (Viking)

Also nominated: The Legacy, by Gail Bowen (ECW Press); Steeped in Malice, by Vicki Delany (Kensington); The Game Is a Footnote, by Vicki Delany (Crooked Lane); and To Track a Traitor, by Iona Whishaw (TouchWood Editions)

Best Crime Short Story:
“Reversion,” Marcelle Dubé (Mystery Magazine, April 2023)

Also nominated: “Wisteria Cottage,” by M.H. Callway (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Traditional, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons; Wildside Press); “The Canadians,” by Mary Keenan (from Killin’ Time in San Diego, edited by Holly West; Down & Out); “Troubled Water,” by Donalee Moulton (Black Cat Weekly #75); and “American Night,” by Zandra Renwick (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January/February 2023)

The Best French Language Crime Book (Fiction and Non-fiction):
La sainte paix, by André Marois (Héliotrope)

Also nominated: La punition, by Jean-Philippe Bernié (Glénat Québec); Le mois des morts, by Chrystine Brouillet (Éditions Druide); Le dernier souffle est le plus lourd, by Catherine Lafrance (Éditions Druide); and Rien, by Jean-Jacques Pelletier (Alire)

Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book:
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, by Cherie Dimaline (Tundra)

Also nominated: Someone Is Always Watching, by Kelley Armstrong (Tundra); The Big Sting, by Rachelle Delaney (Tundra); Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai (Penguin Teen Canada); and Champions of the Fox, by Kevin Sands (Puffin Canada)

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
The Human Scale: Murder, Mischief and Other Selected Mayhems, by Michael Lista (Véhicule Press)

Also nominated: The Survivor: How I Survived Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter, by Josef Lewkowicz with Michael Calvin (HarperCollins); Jukebox Empire: The Mob and the Dark Side of the American Dream, by David Rabinovitch (Rowman & Littlefield); Cheated: The Laurier Liberals and the Theft of First Nations Reserve Land, by Bill Waiser and Jennie Hansen (ECW Press); and Clara at the Door with a Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, the Exemplary White Son, and the Murder That Shocked Toronto, by Carolyn Whitzman (On Point Press)

Best Unpublished Crime Novel (written by an unpublished author):
Requiem for a Lotus, by Craig H. Bowlsby

Also nominated: The Patient, by Tom Blackwell; Murder on Richmond Road, by Sheilla Jones and James Burns; The Forest Beyond, by Nora Sellers; and Thirty Feet Under, by William Wodhams

In addition, Toronto author Maureen Jennings is this year’s recipient of the Grand Master Award, which “recognizes a Canadian crime writer with a substantial body of work that has garnered national and international recognition.”

Mustering Macavity Seekers

Mystery Readers International (MRI) has announced its contenders for the 2024 Macavity Awards, in five different categories.

Best Mystery:
• Dark Ride, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Hide, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer)
• All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim (Hogarth)
• Murder Book, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
• Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

Best First Mystery:
• The Peacock and the Sparrow, by I.S. Berry (Atria)
• The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua (Minotaur)
• Scorched Grace, by Margot Douaihy (Zando/Gillian Flynn)
• Murder by Degrees, by Ritu Mukerji (Simon & Schuster)
• Dutch Threat, by Josh Pachter (Genius)
• Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon (Morrow)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “Real Courage,” by Barb Goffman (Black Cat Mystery Magazine #14, October 2023)
• “Green and California Bound,” by Curtis Ippolito (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2023)
• “Ticket to Ride,” by Dru Ann Love and Kristopher Zgorski, (from Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of The Beatles, edited by Josh Pachter; Down & Out)
• “Pigeon Tony’s Last Stand,” by Lisa Scottoline (Amazon Originals)
• “One Night in 1965,” by Stacy Woodson (from More Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties, edited by Michael Bracken; Down & Out)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery:
• Time's Undoing, by Cheryl Head (Dutton)
• Evergreen, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)
• The River We Remember, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• Our Lying Kin, by Claudia Hagadus Long (Kasva Press)
• The Mistress of Bhatia House, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride (Riverhead)

Best Mystery-related Non-fiction/Critical:
• Finders: Justice, Faith, and Identity in Irish Crime Fiction, by Anjili Babbar (Syracuse University Press)
• Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, by Max Allan Collins & James L. Traylor (Mysterious Press)
• A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe,
by Mark Dawidziak (St. Martin’s Press)
• Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall,
by Zeke Faux (Crown Currency)
• Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, by Robert
Morgan (LSU Press)

The Macavity Awards are named for T.S. Eliot’s “mystery cat” (in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), with winners selected by MRI members and subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal. The prize recipients are usually announced at Bouchercon, which will take place this year in Nashville, Tennessee, from August 28 to September 1.

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Pursuing Justice in the Jungle

Author Anthony Horowitz is definitely making the most of his rising renown. Having already brought to the TV screen an adaptation of his 2016 whodunit, Magpie Murders, and with a six-part version of its 2020 sequel, Moonflowers Murders, expected to premiere sometime later this year, Horowitz has embarked on what sounds like a very different TV project, according to In Reference to Murder:

Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, MGM+’s upcoming original mystery thriller series, created and executive produced by author Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders), has set its full ensemble cast. In addition to previously announced Eric McCormack, the ensemble cast includes David Ajala (Star Trek: Discovery) as Zack; Lydia Wilson (The Swarm) as Sonja; Peter Gadiot (Yellowjackets) as Carlos; Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) as Lisa; Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The Tourist) as Travis; Adam Long (Happy Valley) as Dan, and Jan Le (The Capture) as Amy. Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue revolves around a plane carrying a small group of passengers, crew and pilot, that crashes in the Mexican jungle. All the bodies are recovered and placed in a morgue, but it turns out that only one of them died in the crash. The other passengers were murdered afterwards, each one in a unique way. But by whom? And why?

Wikipedia says that the filming of Nine Bodies, which is planned for a six-part run, began earlier this spring.

A Surfeit of Treats for Mystery Fans

Organizers of Britain’s annual National Crime Reading Month (NCRM) have announced major elements of this year’s program.

Scheduled events will kick off this coming Saturday, June 1, when the Capital Crime Festival opens in London. That evening, at 6:30 p.m., NCRM ambassador and book blogger Stu Cummins will interview authors C.L. Taylor and T.M. Logan. Another highlight for the month, says a press release, will find the Cambridge University Library hosting “a brand-new exhibition, ‘Murder by the Book,’ celebrating 20th-century British crime fiction, curated by the award-winning novelist Nicola Upson. Supported by Arts Council England, the exhibition features rare books, and audio-visual recordings exploring the genre from its origins, with Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens to contemporary bestsellers, such as Val McDermid and Ian Rankin. There will also be a series of free online events, accessible to all.”

Later in the month will come live author appearances, online discussions of this most popular genre, new book launches, and the Essex Book Festival’s Criminally Good Day Out on June 29. Throughout, expect to hear much about how reading is good for you. The aforementioned media bulletin goes on to explain that “Research from The Reading Agency, the national charity who work across the UK to empower people of all ages to read, shows that just 30 minutes of reading a week helps adults to report greater life satisfaction.”

All of this hoopla will lead up to the presentation of the Crime Writers’ Association’s 2024 Dagger Awards on Thursday, July 4.

More information about National Crime Reading Month, and an updated events lineup can be found here.

PaperBack: “The Dragon’s Eye”

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



The Dragon’s Eye, by Scott C.S. Stone (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1969). As the back cover explains, this amateur spy tale won the 1970 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

Cover illustration by Robert McGinnis.

The Memorial Day Murders

Like many other people, I shall be working all through Memorial Day. But should you be able to take tomorrow off as a holiday, and wish to do some reading, then check out Janet Rudolph’s catalogue of Memorial Day Mysteries. It’s not a very long list, but it does contain works of interest to adults as well as children, among them David Baldacci’s Last Man Standing, Leslie Budewitz’s Treble at the Jam Fest, Michael Connelly’s Black Echo, and Kathryn Kenny’s Trixie Belden: The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire.

A Historian Is Now History Himself

Caleb Carr, the Manhattan-born military historian and author most widely recognized for penning the 1994 period crime novel The Alienist, died from cancer this last Thursday, May 23, at his home in Cherry Plain, New York. He was 68 years old.

As Deadline recalls, “Carr was born on August 2, 1955, into a New York City family haunted by violence and abuse: His father was Lucien Carr, a Beat Generation journalist convicted of manslaughter for the 1944 killing of what today would be deemed a sexual predator. The fatal stabbing, which made headlines and history not least because Lucien’s friend and Columbia University classmate Jack Kerouac helped dispose of the knife, was depicted in the 2013 film Kill Your Darlings starring Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan. Caleb Carr would later say that the incident, along his own childhood abuse at the hands of his father, spawned a lifelong obsession with violence ...”

A 1977 graduate of New York University, Carr published non-fiction pieces in newspapers and magazines before seeing his first novel, a coming-of-age work titled Casing the Promised Land, released by Harper & Row back in 1980. He subsequently became a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; co-wrote the non-fiction book America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1912 to Star Wars (1989) with his friend and mentor, James Chace; and in 1992 welcome the debut of The Devil Soldier (1992), his biography of 19th-century mercenary Frederick Townsend Ward.

The Alienist’s publication brought Carr best-seller fame but also overshadowed his reputation as a military historian. The novel’s story takes place in New York City in 1896, and embroils three principal characters—Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or “alienist”; New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore; and Sara Howard, a plucky and perspicacious secretary in Theodore Roosevelt’s New York Police Department—in a horrifying early serial-murder investigation, during which they employ then-new scientific methods to catch the killer. The novel was called “finely crafted,” “absorbing,” and “richly atmospheric,” with The New York Times’ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt saying: “You can practically hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves echoing down old Broadway … You can taste the good food at Delmonico’s. You can smell the fear in the air …”

Just two years later, in 1997, Carr came out with The Angel of Darkness, a 600-page sequel that, while it suffered some in comparison to its predecessor, was nonetheless engrossing. Set in 1897, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the novel follows Kreizler, Moore, and Howard (the last now a private detective) as they pursue the kidnapper of a Spanish diplomat’s daughter, only to discover what Amazon describes as “a shocking suspect: a woman who appears to the world to be a heroic nurse and a loving mother, but who may in reality be a ruthless murderer of children.”

Both The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness were eventually adapted as mini-series for TNT-TV, the former in 2018, the latter in 2020. Daniel Brühl took the role of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, Luke Evans played John Moore, and Dakota Fanning excelled as Sara Howard.

Although readers were hungry to see more of Carr’s Victorian-era sleuthing trio, the author went on instead to deliver several unrelated works of fiction. Those included the dystopian tale Killing Time (2000) and The Italian Secretary (2005), a better-than-average Sherlock Holmes outing that finds him, along with Doctor John Watson, looking for answers to slayings at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland—crimes that may portend danger to elderly Queen Victoria. Carr’s most recent novel was Surrender, New York (2016), a modern-day thriller that finds a psychological profiler and a trace evidence expert being called upon to probe the violent deaths of “throwaway children” in an upstate New York county. The author also produced My Beloved Monster, a much-lauded memoir from earlier this year that detailed his 17-year relationship with a rescue cat, Masha, with whom he bonded “as tightly as any cat and human possibly can.”

In 2016, Entertainment Weekly finally—finally—announced that Carr was busy developing a new couple of Laszlo Kreizler yarns. “The first of the two books …,” it explained, “is set 20 years after The Angel of Darkness, in 1915 New York City, and is ‘centered on nativist violence and terrorism during America’s involvement in World War I’ …The second book will be called The Strange Case of Miss Sarah X, and will be a prequel to the Alienist series. In this novel, the publisher explains, ‘A youthful Kreizler, after finishing his psychology training at Harvard, falls under the spell of William James, has his first run-in with Roosevelt, and delves into the secret life of Sara Howard, heroine of the first books.’” Mulholland Books declared it would publish the first of those, tentatively titled The Alienist at Armageddon, on September 1, 2019. But that date came and went, and no book appeared. According to 17th Street, a Caleb Carr-focused Web site, “the books suffered a significant delay due to a necessary change in their concept and plot from what had originally been announced.” Carr’s “formidable” battle with cancer delayed their progress, as well.

Now, it seems, we’ll never have the chance to read either work.

We offer our sympathies to Caleb Carr’s family.

READ MORE: “What Caleb Carr Taught Me About the Families We Make,” by Zack Budryk (CrimeReads).

The Book You Have to Read: “Dr. Nyet,” by Ted Mark

(Editor’s note: This is the 184th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
The James Bond franchise—the film adaptations, especially—have spawned a plethora of spin-offs, rip-offs, spoofs, and goofs. Books, comics, films, television shows (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart), video games, and more have proliferated over the years, mocking Agent 007 all the way to the bank. There’s really no secret to their success: the spies depicted in those parodic homages are invincible (despite their Austin Powers ineptitude), and they are legion. Seemingly bullet-proof, they also possess an unflappable nonchalance, a wry wit undamped by danger, and the ability to improvise their way out of a bad situation or into the bed of almost any woman they desire.

Which begs the question: Who wouldn’t want to be a superspy? Who wouldn’t want to be Steve Victor, the leading man in Ted Mark’s “The Man from O.R.G.Y.” series? Yet Dr. Nyet (Lancer, 1966), the fourth of those 15 paperback adventures, shows that while life is a bowl of cherries for a superspy, one must be wary of bullets in the mix.

(Right) Dr. Nyet (1966), with cover art by Stanley Borack.

Victor is a freelance sex researcher from the States, who occasionally undertakes odd jobs for an unnamed U.S. espionage organization. His one-man company is called O.R.G.Y., an acronym for the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth, and his reputation is well-established. In Dr. Nyet, he’s recruited in flagrante delicto by the British Secret Service for a top-secret mission. An anti-sex organization known as S.M.U.T. (Society of Moral Uplift Today) is determined to stamp out “illegal sexuality” in everything from “bra ads to ballet costumes.” Although its imputed puritanism makes Hugh Hefner resemble Jerry Falwell, S.M.U.T.’s real intention (no spoiler alert needed here) is to take over the world. And it plans to accomplish that through sex.

It seems the eponymous Dr. Nyet, a comely Russian scientist, has invented a drug that counteracts birth-control pills, while at the same time acting as an aphrodisiac. Now she’s defecting to S.M.U.T. and taking her secret formula with her. The short-term goal of their alliance? To create a “catastrophic population increase.” Their long game? Well, you’ll just have to take this ride with Victor to find out.

The Russians and the Chinese are already in hot pursuit of Dr. Nyet, but Victor hopes to get out in front of them, mustering his best 007 bravado to infiltrate S.M.U.T. Posing as a sympathetic researcher, he decides to snoop around the organization’s New York headquarters, but gets off to a bad start. He’s interviewed by S.M.U.T. executive Prudence Highman, “a dried fig labeled female by the clothing she wore,” as the cruel and captious Victor observes, with plenty of Swingin’ ’60s chauvinism. As far as salacious double entendres go, author Mark is just getting warmed up. Horace Crampdick, Jock O’Steele, and brothel madam Mrs. Vendergash all have walk-ons in this then racy (but by today’s standards, squeaky clean) parody. Highman is at the top of the organizational chart, and Victor scoring an audience with her should’ve tipped him off that his cover has been blown. When Prudence is subsequently murdered by her husband, Peter, who attempts to frame Victor for the crime, it’s game on. Fortunately, Victor finds an ally in his efforts to bring S.M.U.T. down: Singh Huy-eva, a Nepalese Gurkha, who, like our randy hero, is on a mission.

Victor is looking to save the world; Singh is looking to save his national heritage. He brings O.R.G.Y.’s man up to speed by explaining how S.M.U.T. finances its operations, in part by looting ancient erotic religious art from around the world and then fencing it on the black market. Singh’s current quest is to recover a piece of sculpture: a four-foot-long, solid-gold, jewel-encrusted phallus wrested from a sacred statue. Readers can’t avoid the low Freudian humor provided at the expense of Singh, who tells Victor he was emasculated in battle. In short order, Victor and Singh bond and begin a global journey that allows author Mark to school his readers on geopolitical issues, starting with a discourse on Ghurkas, going on from there to recall the colonialism and racism inflicted on Rhodesia by nefarious folks in pursuit of its gold reserves (S.M.U.T. has its grubby fingers in that pie, too), and offering a diatribe on African pygmy tribes, besides. All of that background seeks to establish the humanitarianism behind Victor’s quest. A quest that here includes his introducing oral sex to Eskimos, once he’s made his way to the Arctic lair of S.M.U.T.

That’s where the not-so-pure driven snow finally hits the fan.

Author Ted Mark, who also hid behind other pen names during his career, was born Theodore Mark Gottfried in 1928. He is credited with turning out more than 100 books, many of them non-fiction titles for young readers. In addition, of course, he wrote literate smut with a light and fatuous touch that alternately danced just above the belt (“her oven of love was starting to rekindle itself”) and went full-throttle adolescent braggadocio (“She had both fists around me like a sports car enthusiast going gaga over a new stick shift. And I was strumming her little passion switch like a banjo player mad with palsy.”).

(Left) Dr. Nyet’s back cover.

How anybody thought such mischevious “sexploits” might be translated to film is anybody’s guess. But there was indeed one movie made from Mark/Gottfried’s books: 1970’s The Man from O.R.G.Y. It starred Robert Walker Jr., along with comics Steve Rossi and Slappy White. Walker Jr. was a bargain-basement Jack Lemmon, who was lucky enough to have entrée into the American film community. The son of performers Robert Walker (Strangers on a Train, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo) and Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing), he boasted a lengthy movie and television résumé (including roles in 1969’s Easy Rider, an episode of the original Star Trek, and Columbo). Possessing an affable and bungling comedic style, Walker Jr. could turn on the intensity for psychological dramas when needed, but didn’t possess the gravitas needed to make the A-list. As for The Man from O.R.G.Y., the production company and director James Hill did what they could by meeting the sexual revolution head on. The picture was marketed with this tagline: “Meet Steve Victor, a new breed of agent. He stands up for what he believes in ... SEX!” Yet at the time, Hollywood was bursting at the seams with sex, and perhaps that was part of the problem. The movie bombed, and aside from its presumed lack of quality (has anyone out there actually viewed it?), it got lost in the mosh pit of carnal frivolity surrounding the sexual revolution.

Steve Victor may have faded into cinematic history, but he does complete his mission in Dr. Nyet. The story’s evildoers get their come-uppance and Victor, who was unceremoniously wrested from the bed of a willing lass in Chapter One, is lucky enough to meet her again on his return to London. This time, though, it’s truly a happy ending for our man Steve. And, in a way, for readers as well.

Should you prefer to ignore parodies such as this one, and stick with the real thing instead, it’s fortunate that James Bond lives on. As, in a sense, does Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming. A newly published biography of the spy/author/bon vivant, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man (Harper), by Nicholas Shakespeare, reached U.S. bookstore shelves earlier this spring. At 800-plus pages in length, it should satisfy any spy-fiction lover, because in many respects, Fleming resembled Bond, or vice-versa—confirming that there’s plenty of truth in the fiction. Shakespeare demonstrates his insight when he calls Agent 007 “Peter Pan with a gun.” One wonders why Bond never starred in a novel, or at least a film, titled The Spy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Not unlike Steve Victor, he’s the stuff of fantasy, at least partly.

Five on the Fly

I haven’t deliberately been taking time off from blogging this week; it just looks that way. But I’m back with these news bits of interest.

• The PBS-TV series Masterpiece Mystery! announced this week that The Marlow Murder Club, its two-part adaptation of Robert Thorogood’s 2021 novel of the same name, will premiere in the States on Sunday, October 27. The cozy whodunit, which stars Samantha Bond, Jo Martin, Cara Horgan, and Natalie Dew, has already been renewed for a second season. Watch a trailer here.

• Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder brings news that the fourth, “starriest season yet” of Only Murders in the Building, with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, will debut on Hulu-TV come Tuesday, August 27. In addition, “a third season of [the] Acorn TV and Channel 5 detective drama Dalgliesh, based on the novels by P.D. James, has begun filming in Northern Ireland …”

• Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg dropped me a line this morning, letting me know that he has been busy lately uploading to YouTube a couple of older TV series on which he worked. Click here to revisit the 1992-1993, half-hour Fox crime drama Likely Suspects, described by Wikipedia as “an interactive crime drama where the viewer was treated as a rookie partner.” And look over here for the complete run of Murphy’s Law (“including,” says Goldberg, “the unaired/uncut pilot, unaired final episode and unaired spin-off pilot presentation”), a 1988-1989 ABC-TV show starring George Segal as a recovering alcoholic and San Francisco insurance-fraud investigator, with Maggie Han playing his model-girlfriend. “People keep hounding me for episodes of both short-lived crime series,” Goldberg tells me, “so I decided to share them … So far, YouTube hasn't slapped me down.”

• British publisher Joffe Books “is looking for a talented new crime fiction writer of colour, with one of the UK’s largest literary prizes for the winner,” reports Shotsmag Confidential.

The prize invites submissions from un-agented authors from Black, Asian, Indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds writing in crime fiction genres including: electrifying psychological thrillers, cosy mysteries, gritty police procedurals, twisty chillers, unputdownable suspense mysteries and shocking domestic noirs.

The winner will be offered a prize package consisting of a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize, and a £25,000 audiobook offer from Audible for the first book.

The submission period ends at midnight on 30 September 2024.

• And The Observer’s Tim Adams has filed this delightful piece asking whether “a visit to the Bristol CrimeFest—this year featuring G.T. Karber, creator of the world-conquering whodunnit series Murdle—[can] help pin down why the [crime fiction] genre is booming.”

The Book You Have to Read: “Shadows on the Mirror,” by Frances Fyfield

(Editor’s note: This is the 183rd installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Peter Handel
Over the years, the dedicated crime-fiction reader encounters a number of memorable female protagonists. Everyone has their own list; my (inexhaustive) one would include quirky characters such as M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin; Lynda La Plante’s legendary DCI Tennyson; any number of women anchoring the wonderful novels of Ruth Rendell; Janet Evanovitch’s whack-job, Stephanie Plum; Laurie R. King’s compelling, if rather a stretch, Mary Russell … and the list goes on.

But I have never come across a character so unusual, so distinctive as British novelist Frances Fyfield’s (née Hegarty) bored slacker (practically), London barrister Sarah Fortune.

Shadows on the Mirror (1989), the first entry in a five-book series with Fortune (she later reappears in another series, the Diana Porteous books, and a 2009 standalone, Cold to the Touch), introduces us to the lawyer, a recent widow, who has, shall we say, an offbeat sideline. “I’m a tart,” [she] says to herself, “Tart with heart.”

But let’s back up. We first meet Sarah at a dull party she wishes she were not attending, where the “star” of the gathering—and many previous ones—is an obese, neurotic Crown Prosecutor, Malcolm Cook. “In the courtroom, Malcolm … was a man of charisma, compassion and great forensic skill, a gentle giant with powerful weapons,” the author explains. “Everywhere else he was regarded as a perfect clown.”

As the faux-enjoyable party drags on interminably, Malcolm, the exploited drawing card, performs his expected “comedic” role (those self-deprecating fat guys can be so funny!). Sarah observes the man from a distance: “[She] watched him closely, wondering if she was wrong to sense a kindred spirit, another outsider like herself, being used on a hostess ego-trip, someone who had arrived for dinner as an alternative to loneliness.”

The man needed intravenous confidence, something to make him love himself. “I know what you need,” Sarah told herself, “…and I should like to provide it, by way of experiment.” Not a whole cure, but a start perhaps.

Sarah invites herself home from the party with Malcolm—she needs coffee—and eyes his flat: “A man’s womanly touch, clearly distinguishable from a woman’s touch, existed in the kind of austere comfort produced. Small and tidy, the lair of an isolated creature who exerted rigid control over his life, dared not encourage visitors for the contrasts of their departures, and clung to his home for the rock of peace it offered.”

She’s more than intrigued about this lonely, gentle giant: “[S]he had been drawn to his loneliness and knew she would not leave it untouched.” She asks him direct questions, a bit like the lawyer she is: “‘Why do you let them use you like that?’ Malcolm replies, ‘I exist to be a jester, he said slowly. ‘What else can I do?’”

As their conversation deepens into the wounded psyche of this corpulent man, and his utterly traumatic past experiences with women, Sarah tries to alter his perspective. But, “‘Look at me,’ cries Malcolm, ‘I’m disgusting. I’m the object of revulsion in half the human race, and I can’t even blame them.’”

“‘I’m looking,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking all the time.’ And I like outsiders like me, she added to herself. They make me feel at home.’”

Finally, the seduction begins:

Miraculously naked, flesh upon flesh, tingling and weightless, aware and ashamed, stunned into agonizing life, he wanted her to stop, but never stop, helpless with wanting, conscious of warmth, enveloping affection, rhythmic movement of his hips against her own until the dim light of the room faded in the mounting wave of sensation. Hold me, Sarah, hold me please, I can’t help it, don’t stop.

Eventually, Malcolm Cook wakes up, alone, only to find a note from Sarah. Encouragement expressed at him, post-coitus, but also including this: “Please don’t try and find me; you must change yourself, or it will not count for anything. Besides, you’re on the way up, and I’m definitely on the way down. Just love yourself as much as I did. I shan’t ever forget you.”

Malcolm remains a prominent character throughout this story. The self-driven personal transformation he undergoes leads him to hope that somehow he will reconnect with Sarah … if only he can find her.

Malcolm’s stepfather, who manages the law firm (where Sarah is bored beyond belief and does as little actual work as possible), and his mother also play roles in the novel’s plot, as do both Sarah’s sour, newly separated secretary and her sleazy ex, a disgraced former cop.

The firm’s most important—feared and reviled—client is a rich businessman, Charles Tysall. A predator in all ways, from business takeovers and layoffs to his vile treatment of women. He’s also recently become a widower, and the circumstances around that fact are addressed in the prologue. It’s not pretty.

In countless crime novels from the UK, a long line of the Tysall man exists. It’s a prominent trope, this seemingly untouchable, utterly amoral type, well-connected to their rarified class protections, charismatic yet vile, and rotten to the misogynist core of their wretched souls.

A sadistic streak—de rigueur. Here’s Tysall waiting for Maria, his regular call girl: “Charles sipped the Sancerre, not waiting for Maria, simply expecting her. When the entry phone buzzed from the street he did not rise, but pressed the electric device by his chair, and sipped another mouthful. She would sense the nature of his mood from the fact that the door was not locked and he did not rise to greet her.”

Here's Tysall a few moments later:

She … ran her fingers across his fat belly, listening to his even breathing as she lay with her face against his chest. … He did not kiss her. Instead he fondled her neck, and pushed her head downwards. Without further prompting, she obeyed, one hand kneading the inside of one thigh while her mouth found her target, crouched above it, held in small fingers as she began a delicate circular motion with her tongue, slowly then quicker, waiting for the imperceptible signs which would show his pleasure. … As the sensation grew, he arched further, felt her pull back, pulled her head down savagely by the hair. And held it there, silently, throughout his own climax, and her choking, panicking struggle.

Fyfield adroitly moves her charges through a plot that heads just where we would expect: It is, naturally, Sarah’s fate to be initially stalked, then aggressively, stridently, pursued by Charles Tysall. Not her fault that she is practically a double for Tysall’s late wife (who’s simply regarded as “missing”). Lithe, with flaming red hair, she embodies both a sense of perfection and the ideal candidate for his next conquest.

(Left) Author Frances Fyfield.

While Sarah has a coterie of men to whom she “ministers,” she does not want Tysall to be one of them. She enjoys such fellows she nicknames as “Hurried Hugo,” the “Ticker” (bad heart, counts in his sleep), and “Henry Hypochondria” (who “knew hugging was good for his health”). Her time spent in and out of their company is altogether well ordered:

So far, she was committed to two mornings, two lunchtimes and three evenings a week. Her bank balance was healthy, there was a beginning of an escape route from the hatred of work, and even if her sense of humour and her energy was under strain, life was still tenable. … She was not good at collecting fees, tended to forget to collect them. Fun and money, never mind law, sex and secrecy, all made for different, attractive combinations, suitable for an outsider who had ceased to care.

Once Tysall wants her, though, the game becomes unlike any she has experienced. One day she comes home, and guess who’s waiting?

He was behind her, grabbing the thick hair in the same moment she had turned to run.

“Don’t scream,” he said. “There’s no point in screaming and I detest women screaming.”

Sarah stood still and did not scream. She clenched her hands by her side to stop the trembling, mastered it slowly while he waited, holding her so close she could feel the buckle of his belt pressed into the small of her back, close as any lover, but holding in his hands two fistfuls of hair.

What follows is a finale with classic Grand Guignol overtones … involving a broken mirror, a dog’s slashed neck, and a battle which would be almost madcap, were it not so bloody.

The sadism, both overt (Tysall) and nuanced (that tedious party) permeating Shadows on the Mirror is undeniable.

This book can be read in several different ways, including as a feminist story of an independent, sex-positive woman, or simply a fabulously literary crime yarn.

Still with us at age 75, Frances Fyfield has written a wide range of novels, all with crime stories at their heart. She is, I think, rather under-appreciated in the United States. She deserves a higher profile in the crime-fiction pantheon.

Introducing the Lammy Five

I was just reading this morning that “LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual.” And now here come the nominees for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBTQ+ Mystery category:

• A Calculated Risk, by Cari Hunter (Bold Strokes)
• Don’t Forget the Girl, by Rebecca McKanna (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Good Ones, by Polly Stewart (HarperCollins)
• Transitory, by J.M. Redmann (Bold Strokes)
• Where the Dead Sleep, by Joshua Moehling (Poisoned Pen Press)

Click here to see the Lambda finalists in 25 additional divisions. Winners will be announced on June 11 during the 2024 Lammy Awards ceremony at New York City’s Sony Hall.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Women on the Case

Laura Lippman earns her second mention in The Rap Sheet this week, thanks to the following news item from In Reference to Murder:

Apple TV+ released a first-look at its upcoming limited seven-part series, Lady in the Lake, ahead of its premiere on Friday, July 19. The film is based on Laura Lippman’s bestselling [2020] novel of the same name and takes place in ’60s Baltimore. An unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Moses Ingram), a hardworking woman juggling motherhood, many jobs, and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.

Speaking of propitious book-to-screen ventures, Variety reports that “Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel are set to headline a series adaptation of the Alafair Burke novel The Better Sister at Amazon Prime Video.” It goes on to describe the story as a thriller about “Chloe (Biel), who moves through the world with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side, while her estranged sister Nicky (Banks) hustles to make ends meet while trying to stay clean … When Adam is brutally murdered, the prime suspect sends shockwaves through the family, laying bare long-buried secrets.”

Jewell and Karber Earn Nibbies

In case you missed hearing about it, the 2024 British Book Awards—or Nibbies—were given out this last Monday night in London.

Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True (Century) triumphed in the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year category. It topped rivals The Woman Who Lied, by Claire Douglas (Michael Joseph); Damascus Station, by David McCloskey (Swift Press); The Running Game, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere); and The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Baskerville).

Also of interest to Rap Sheet readers may be that G.T Karber’s first murder-mystery puzzle book, Murdle (Souvenir Press), won in the Non-fiction: Lifestyle and Illustrated category and picked up Book of the Year honors. Meanwhile, Georgian-Russian author Grigori Chkhartishvili, who pens historical mysteries under the byline “Boris Akunin,” became only the third recipient of the Freedom to Publish Award (following Arabella Pike and Salman Rushdie).

The annual British Book Awards are currently managed by The Bookseller, “the United Kingdom’s news medium of record for the publishing industry.”

Lippman and the Lieutenant

Peter Falk in his famous role as Lieutenant Columbo.

This last weekend brought the 16th CrimeFest convention to Bristol, England. Although, much to my regret, I was unable to be there in person, I did play a modest role in its programming.

Two months ago, author and past chair of the Crime Writers’ Association Maxim Jakubowski sent me the following e-mail note:

For the past 10 years or so, I’ve run the Criminal Mastermind quiz at the Bristol CrimeFest. It’s a mystery and thriller variation on a highly popular British TV programme where participants have to answer a set of questions on both a specialist subject and then on general knowledge.

Laura Lippman has agreed to participate and as her specialist subject chosen the Columbo TV series!

I was wondering whether you’d be willing to set these questions, in view of your own expertise and knowledge of the subject? I’d need 20 or so questions by mid-April ranging from easy to more arduous. The questions should be around 2 lines long. Would you be willing?

Now, I can’t legitimately claim to be a Columbo “authority,” not like writers Mark Dawidziak (The Columbo Phile) and David Koenig (Shooting Columbo and Unshot Columbo), or the anonymous Australian author of The Columbophile Blog. But I have written about that long-running series for The Rap Sheet on many occasions (notably here), and did score a lengthy interview with Columbo co-creator William Link back in 2010. Plus, I own all of the episodes (if not the later teleflicks, which I have never thought quite measured up to the original NBC Mystery Movie drama), as well as Link’s 2010 short-story compilation, The Columbo Collection. So I am at least a fan.

After pondering the matter, I finally deciding to take Jakubowski up on his invitation. It sounded like fun, and the opportunity to test the popular culture competence of Laura Lippman—a novelist I very much respect—at a British crime-fiction convention I hope to someday attend was simply too enticing to pass up.

In the end, I sent Jakubowski 21 questions, just to be sure he had enough good ones from which to choose. I arranged them in descending order, beginning with those I thought were the least challenging and finishing with others that might test a real Columbo nerd’s knowledge. My questions were finally posed to Lippman midday on Sunday, as part of this year’s Criminal Mastermind quiz. Joining her as contestants were Stuart Field, creator of the Detective John Steel thrillers, who had volunteered to answer trivia questions about M.J. Craven’s Washington Poe novels; and Zoë Sharp, fielding queries about the Amazon Prime TV series Reacher, which had been submitted by my friend and fellow Rap Sheet contributor, Ali Karim.

(Left to right) Novelists Zoë Sharp, Stuart Field, and Laura Lippman prepare to meet the challenge of this year’s CrimeFest Criminal Mastermind quiz. (Photo © Ali Karim 2024.)

So how did Laura Lippman fare against my trivia test? “Very well—she is a Columbo fan,” Ali tells me. “And she enjoyed your questions, though she did say they were tough (with a twinkle in her eye), as she got most of them correct.” There was evidently some controversy regarding the breed of the Los Angeles police detective’s dog, but Ali suggests that was provoked by Jakubowski trying to pull Lippman’s leg. (It seems the attendees all had a good laugh about it.) In the end, Lippman earned second place in this quiz, behind Zoë Sharp.

Are you curious about your own Columbo expertise? Rather than shove my quiz questions into a dusty corner of my computer, and forget about them, I have decided to post them below. See how many you can answer. The correct responses can be found here.

1: Richard Levinson and William Link co-created the series, but how many of the shows in which Columbo appeared did they actually write?

2: Link said that he and Levinson never had a first name in mind for Columbo. But in a Season 1 episode, we got a quick screen shot of the lieutenant’s LAPD badge, which featured a first name. What was it?

3: Columbo came from a large Italian family. How many siblings did he have?

4: Columbo often arrives hungry at murder scenes in the middle of the night. What snack item does he commonly bring with him?

5: What musical instrument can Columbo play?

6: Columbo once said that his boyhood hero was who?

7: Name the single most featured recurring guest character on the show.

8: What was his dog’s favorite food?

9: In the Season 10 episode “No Time to Die,” Columbo says that he and his never-seen wife were married where?

10: And what was said to be Mrs. Columbo’s favorite piece of music?

11: Columbo episodes generally followed an “inverted mystery” format, showing the crime taking place first and then having Lieutenant Columbo solve it. But there was one episode that reversed that format, and was a genuine whodunit—what was the episode’s title?

12: Peter Falk personally supplied the tatty wardrobe for his L.A. police detective. He purchased the famous raincoat from a store on 57th Street in New York City when he was caught in a rainstorm in 1967. How much did he pay for that garment?

13: Columbo drove a battered and unreliable 1959 (or 1960) Peugeot 403 convertible. Over the course of the show’s 69-episode run—first on NBC-TV, then on ABC—that car sported two different license plate numbers. What was the second one?

14: In only one episode did Lieutenant Columbo let the killer get away with the crime. Which episode was that, and who was its big-name guest murderer?

15: “Forgotten Lady” was one of Peter Falk’s four favorite Columbo episodes. Name one of the other three.

16: Beginning with an ad-libbed performance in the Season 3 episode “Any Old Port in a Storm,” Columbo is periodically heard whistling a traditional children’s song. What is it?

17: It was a love of magic that first brought Levinson and Link together, when they were boys and shopped at the same magic store in downtown Philadelphia. But it wasn’t until Season 5 that they and their writing collaborators finally built an episode around magic. What was the name of that episode, and who played the illusionist?

18: Speaking of that episode, the solution to its crime turned on a once-ubiquitous piece of office equipment. What was that instrument?

19: Columbo’s first police assignment was with New York City’s 12th Precinct. There he trained under an Irish officer who mentored him and who he mentions often. What was that officer’s name?

20: Even before Lieutenant Columbo’s first introduction to TV audiences, in “Enough Rope,” a 1960 Chevy Mystery Show production that starred Bert Freed in the role, Levinson and Link created a prototype for the character in “Dear Corpus Delicti,” a short story they sold to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1960. What name did they give to their slight, seemingly insignificant police detective in that story?

21: During the early 2000s, Falk was asked by a newspaper reporter which other actor he could have imagined playing Columbo instead of him. Who did he suggest? (Hint: It wasn’t Bing Crosby.)

I don’t how many of these 21 queries “inquizitor” Jakubowski had a chance to fire at Lippman, or which of them she answered without fault. But the big question is, how did you do at this same game? Please let us all know in the Comments section of this post.

CrimeFest Commendations

Let us all hail the winners of this year’s CrimeFest Awards, announced this evening during the 16th CrimeFest held in Bristol, England.

Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award:
Death Under a Little Sky, by Stig Abell (Hemlock Press)

Also nominated: In the Blink of an Eye, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster); The Messenger, by Megan Davis (Zaffre); Thirty Days of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen, translated by Megan Turney (Orenda); Needless Alley, by Natalie Marlow (Baskerville); and Death of a Bookseller, by Alice Slater (Hodder & Stoughton)

eDunnit Award (for the best e-book): Prom Mom, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)

Also nominated: Don’t Look Away, by Rachel Abbott (Wildfire); The Close, by Jane Casey (HarperCollins); Sepulchre Street, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus); Murder at Bletchley Park, by Christina Koning (Allison & Busby); and The Devil’s Playground, by Craig Russell (Constable)

Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel):
The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Baskerville)

Also nominated: The Last Dance, by Mark Billingham (Sphere); The Great Deceiver, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus); Mr. Campion’s Memory, by Mike Ripley (Severn House); Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Sutanto (HQ); and The Beaver Theory, by Antti Tuomianen (Orenda)

H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical
book related to crime fiction): The Secret Life of John le Carré, by Adam Sisman (Profile)

Also nominated: Contemporary European Crime Fiction: Representing History and Politics, edited by Monica Dall’Asta, Jacques Migozzi, Federico Pagello, and Andrew Pepper (Palgrave); Ocular Proof and the Spectacled Detective in British Crime Fiction, by Lisa Hopkins (Palgrave); How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel, by Kate Jackson (British Library); Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy, by Steven Powell (Bloomsbury Academic); and Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, by Nicholas Shakespeare (Harvill Secker)

Best Crime Fiction Novel for Children (aged 8-12):
The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries: Portraits and Poison, by J.T. Williams, illustrated by Simone Douglas (Farshore)

Also nominated: Mysteries at Sea: Peril on the Atlantic, by A.M. Howell (Usborne); The Detention Detectives, by Lis Jardine (Penguin Random House Children’s UK); The Swifts, by Beth Lincoln (Penguin Random House Children’s UK); The Breakfast Club Adventures: The Ghoul in the School, by Marcus Rashford (with Alex Falase-Koya) (Macmillan Children’s Books); and The Ministry of Unladylike Activity 2: The Body in the Blitz, by Robin Stevens (Penguin Random House Children’s UK)

Best Crime Fiction Novel for Young Adults (aged 12-16): Stateless, by Elizabeth Wein (Bloomsbury YA)

Also nominated: The Brothers Hawthorne, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Penguin Random House Children’s UK); Promise Boys, by Nick Brooks (Macmillan Children’s Books); This Book Kills, by Ravena Guron (Usborne); Catch Your Death, by Ravena Guron (Usborne); and One of Us Is Back, by Karen M. McManus (Penguin Random House Children’s UK)

Thalia Proctor Memorial Award for Best Adapted TV Crime Drama:
Slow Horses (series 3), based on the Slough House books by Mick Herron (Apple)

Also nominated: Dalgliesh (series 2), based on the Inspector Adam Dalgliesh books by P.D. James (Channel 5); Reacher (series 2), based on the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child (Amazon Prime); Shetland (series 8), based on the Shetland books by Ann Cleeves (BBC); The Serial Killer's Wife, based on the Serial Killer books by Alice Hunter (Paramount+); and Vera (series 12), based on the Vera Stanhope books by Ann Cleeves (ITV)

The Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award winner, Stig Abell, receives a £1,000 prize. All category winners are given a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative prize.

READ MORE: “Thoughts on CrimeFest 2024,” by Steven Powell
(The Venetian Vase).

Culling from the Crowd

During a festive reception at CrimeFest, taking place this weekend in Bristol, England, the UK Crime Writers’ Association announced its shortlists of nominees for the 2024 Dagger Awards.

Gold Dagger:
• Over My Dead Body, by Maz Evans (Headline)
• The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron (Baskerville)
• Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane (Abacus)
• Tell Me What I Am, by Una Mannion (Faber and Faber)
• Black River, by Nilanjana Roy (Pushkin Vertigo)
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Sutanto (HQ)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• Ozark Dogs, by Eli Cranor (Headline)
• Everybody Knows, by Jordan Harper (Faber and Faber)
• The Mantis, by Kotaro Isaka (Harvill Secker)
• Gaslight, by Femi Kayode (Raven)
• Drowning, by T.J. Newman (Simon & Schuster)

ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
• In the Blink of an Eye, by Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua (Corvus)
• The Maiden, by Kate Foster (Mantle)
• West Heart Kill, by Dann McDorman (Raven)
• Go Seek, by Michelle Teahan (Headline)
• The Tumbling Girl, by Bridget Walsh (Gallic)

Historical Dagger:
• Clara & Olivia, by Lucy Ashe (Magpie)
• Harlem After Midnight, by Louise Hare Harlem (HQ)
• A Bitter Remedy, by Alis Hawkins (Canelo)
• Viper's Dream, by Jake Lamar (No Exit Press)
• Scarlet Town, by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)
• Voices of the Dead, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger:
• Red Queen, by Juan Gómez-Jurado,
translated by Nick Caistor (Macmillan)
• The Sins of Our Fathers, by Åsa Larsson,
translated by Frank Perry (Maclehose Press)
• Nothing Is Lost, by Cloé Mehdi,
translated by Howard Curtis (Europa Editions UK)
• The Consultant, by Im Seong-sun,
translated by An Seong Jae (Raven)
• The Prey, by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton)
• My Husband, by Maud Ventura,
translated by Emma Ramadan (Hutchinson Heinemann)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel (Simon & Schuster)
• No Ordinary Day: Espionage, Betrayal, Terrorism and Corruption—The Truth Behind the Murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, by Matt Johnson with John Murray (Ad Lib)
• Devil’s Coin: My Battle to Take Down the Notorious OneCoin Cryptoqueen, by Jennifer McAdam with Douglas Thompson (Ad Lib)
• Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy, by Alex Mar (Bedford Square)
• How Many More Women?: The Silencing of Women by the Law and How to Stop It, by Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida (Endeavour)
• Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, by Nicholas Shakespeare (Vintage)

Short Story Dagger:
• “Safe Enough,” by Lee Child (from An Unnecessary Assassin, edited by Lorraine Stevens; Rivertree)
• “The Last Best Thing,” by Mia Dalia (from Bang!: An Anthology of Modern Noir Fiction, edited by Andrew Hook; Head Shot Press)
• “The Also-Rans,” by Benedict J. Jones (from Bang!: An Anthology of Modern Noir Fiction)
• “The Divide,” by Sanjida Kay (from The Book of Bristol, edited by Joe Melia and Heather Marks; Comma Press)
• “The Spendthrift and the Swallow,” by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)
• “Best Served Cold,” by F.D. Quinn (from An Unnecessary Assassin)

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”):
• Louise Candlish
• M.W. Craven
• Cara Hunter
• Anthony Horowitz
• L.J. Ross

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”):
• Canelo
• Headline (Hachette)
• Joffe Books
• Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House)
• Pushkin Press
• Simon & Schuster

Debut Dagger (“for the opening of a crime novel by an
unpublished writer”):
• Burnt Ranch, by Katherine Ahlert
• Unnatural Predators, by Caroline Arnoul
• Makoto Murders, by Richard Jerram
• Not a Good Mother, by Karabi Mitra
• Long Way Home, by Lynn McCall
• The Last Days of Forever, by Jeremy Tinker
• The Blond, by Megan Toogood

The longlist of 2024 contenders is available here.

This year’s winners will be announced during an awards ceremony at the CWA gala dinner on July 4.

Bullet Points: Almost Mother’s Day Edition

• The Strand Magazine has gained fame in recent years for unearthing previously unpublished works by well-recognized authors, among them James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Shirley Jackson. Its latest issue includes “First Squad, First Platoon,” a story penned in the 1940s by future Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. As The Guardian explains, this 70-year-old tale “concerns the experiences of American paratroopers in the Philippines towards the end of [World War II].” Serling had fought with the U.S. Army against Japanese forces in the Philippines, and as National Public Radio relates, “First Squad, First Platoon” was “one of his earliest stories, starting a writing career that Serling once said helped him get the war ‘out of his gut.’”

• In its mammoth preview of the finest new TV crime series coming to British screens in 2024, The Killing Times mentioned ITV’s After the Flood. starring Sophie Rundle and Philip Glenister. That program debuted on the other side of the pond in January, and will finally make its way to BritBox beginning on Monday, May 13. Its six episodes, we’re told, are “set in a town hit by a devastating flood. When an unidentified man is found dead in a lift in an underground car park, police assume he became trapped as the waters rose, and as the investigation unfolds PC Joanna Marshall [Rundle] … becomes obsessed with discovering what happened to him. How did he get in the lift and why does no one know who he is? The mystery unfolds across the series while we also see the real impact of climate change on the lives of residents in this small town. The floods threaten to expose secrets, and fortunes and reputations are at stake. But how far will people go to protect themselves?” After the Flood’s first two episodes will drop on May 13, with two more due on successive Mondays until May 27.



• The recent announcement of 18 nominees longlisted for this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year prize has drawn criticism, due to an absence of books by authors of color. Part of the reason for said dearth, a spokesperson for the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate told The Guardian, is that “of the books submitted for the awards this year, just 7% were by known authors of colour ... ‘This year’s longlist is unusual—the longlist for the awards over the last six years have all featured writers of colour—but not something we take lightly.” Author Vaseem Khan, chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association and last year’s Theakston festival programming chair, told the newspaper: “I have seen, first-hand, the efforts the committee has made to bring more writers from minority communities on to the programme. While these efforts have seen more writers of colour being programmed in recent years, we haven’t yet seen as many submitted for the awards. This is something the committee is acutely aware of and is actively working with the industry to find solutions to.” The winner of the 2024 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel is scheduled to be declared on Thursday, July 18.

• Sherlock Holmes fans are already looking forward to the premiere, in August, of Nicholas Meyer’s sixth novel featuring the great detective, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell (Mysterious Press), and Bonnie MacBird’s The Serpent Under (Collins Crime Club), coming in January 2025. Now, In Reference to Murder brings word that “The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has approved a new novel from thriller writer Gareth Rubin [The Turnglass] that will focus on Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s greatest nemesis, endorsing Rubin’s book, Holmes and Moriarty, as a worthy successor. ‘Gareth has drawn these characters very well, including Colonel Moran, who is key to this story,’ said Richard Pooley, Conan Doyle’s step-great-grandson. ‘Moran was once described by Holmes as “the second most dangerous man in London,” and he tells half of this new mystery. As Moriarty’s right-hand man, he only crops up in a couple of original Holmes stories, I believe.’” Publisher Simon & Schuster plans to release Holmes and Moriarty in the UK on September 12.

• Iowa author Max Allan Collins says a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign will be launched imminently in support of True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks, “a fully immersive audio production based on the first book in the series, True Detective. I am writing all ten scripts myself.” The drama will star Todd Stashwick (Star Trek: Picard) as Depression-era Chicago gumshoe Heller. “It’s truly odd returning to True Detective (no relation to the HBO show that came after) for the first time in over forty years (!),” writes Collins. “Also the form is one that has special challenges. The story has to be told in completely audio terms. Its length ultimately will be three times longer than a film adaptation, but still substantially shorter than the 100,000-word novel I’m adapting.” Click here to listen to a “proof-of-concept audio” based on the first chapter of Collins’ 1991 novel Stolen Away.

• Here’s a new book destined to find a place on my shelves: Jon Burlingame’s Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn, and Music for TV (BearMedia). Spy Vibe quotes a press release as saying:

Henry Mancini (1924-1994) is renowned as the Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer of such timeless standards as “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses,” as well as such memorable instrumental themes as “The Pink Panther” and “Baby Elephant Walk.” But preceding all of them was the wildly popular theme from Peter Gunn, a television series whose soundtrack won the very first Grammy ever awarded for Album of the Year. Award-winning author and journalist Jon Burlingame chronicles the back-story of Peter Gunn and how its music propelled Mancini to fame and fortune, launching a decades-long collaboration with filmmaker Blake Edwards that encompassed nearly 30 movies, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Victor/Victoria and beyond.

Burlingame (author of six books including The Music of James Bond and Music for Prime Time) relates the untold story of Peter Gunn and its companion series Mr. Lucky; examines the music Mancini wrote for both series and their chart-topping success as modern jazz albums; and tells how this 1958-61 period in TV history set the stage for one of the most remarkable careers of any American composer in the Twentieth Century.

• With Mother’s Day coming on Sunday, Janet Rudolph has updated her list of associated mysteries for the blog Mystery Fanfare.

• From The Guardian: “Three of the four leading roles in the film adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling mystery book [The Thursday Murder Club] have now been cast, with A-listers Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley set to play septuagenarian sleuths in a retirement community.”

• I had forgotten that Apple TV+ commissioned an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1987 novel, Presumed Innocent, as an eight-part limited series starring and executive produced by Jake Gyllenhaal. But Crimespree Magazine has posted a trailer for it. The show itself will premiere on Wednesday, June 12.

• And British network ITV confirms that the coming 14th season of Vera, the TV mystery series starring Brenda Blethyn and based on popular novels by Ann Cleeves, is going to be its last. The Killing Times says that that new season, to air initially in early 2025, “will comprise two feature-length episodes.”

• Released yesterday: The Spring 2024 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Its cover story looks at the career of best-selling Northern Irish writer Steve Cavanagh, the author most recently of a standalone thriller titled Kill for Me, Kill for You. Other contents include a profile of British crime-fictionist Cara Hunter (Murder in the Family); the early nominees to DP’s “Best of 2024” list; Kevin Burton Smith’ wrap-up of recent private-eye yarns; Robin Agnew’s cozy-crime and historical-crime reviews; Craig Sisterson’s interview with Michael Bennett, author of Better the Blood and Return to Blood; and Mike Ripley’s retrospective on English litterateur Nevil Shute. Subscriptions to Deadly Pleasures are available here.

• Late last month, when I posted the longlists of contenders for this year’s Dagger Awards, sponsored by the British Crime Writers’ Association, I neglected to mention that the CWA had also announced its shortlist of a nominees for the 2024 Margery Allingham Short Mystery prize. Those candidates are:

— “Olga Popova,” by Susan Breen
— “The Pact,” by Kirsten Ehrlich Davies
— “A Quarrel Between Friends,” by Emma O’Driscoll
— “The Ladies’ Tailor,” by Meeti Shah
— “Horses for Courses,” by Camilla Smith
— “Right Place Wrong Time,” Yvonne Walus

Tales submitted to this annual contest must be under 3,500 words in length and follow the spirit of English author Allingham’s rule that “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” This year’s winner will be declared on Friday, May 10, during an evening Daggers shortlist reception at CrimeFest, in Bristol, England.

• I’m very sorry to hear about the passing of Frederick W. Zackel at age 77. In addition to his two decades spent as a teacher of literature, writing, and the humanities at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, Zackel published a variety of crime-fiction works, beginning with the 1978 private-eye novel Cocaine and Blue Eyes (1978), which was adapted as a TV movie in 1983 starring O.J. Simpson. In this long-ago piece for January Magazine, he recalled how he got start in fiction writing with help from the great Ross Macdonald. Zackel periodically sent me e-mail notes about pieces in The Rap Sheet, and was generous in his encouragement of my efforts to stay apprised of developments in the crime-fiction field. I believe the last time I heard from him, though, was at the end of 2022. He died on December 24, 2023, but it was only a recent note from blogger-author Patti Abbott’s that brought his demise to my attention. Rest in peace, my friend.

• And a moderately less-belated farewell to New York City-reared actor Terry Carter (born John Everett DeCoste), who breathed his last on April 23 at age 95. Although I remember him best for his seven years spent playing Dennis Weaver’s sidekick, Sergeant Joe Broadhurst, on the NBC Mystery Movie segment McCloud, Carter first became widely known as a weekend newscaster—“the first Black TV news anchor for Boston’s WBZ-TV Eyewitness News, where he also became their first opening night drama and movie critic,” recalls Variety. His initial small-screen TV entertainment break came with his casting as Private Sugie Sugarman on the 1955-1959 CBS sitcom The Phil Silvers Show. He went on to guest spots on Naked City, The Defenders, and The Bold Ones before landing his McCloud gig. Carter subsequently took the regular role of Colonel Tigh on the original Battlestar Galactica series, and also appeared on The Jeffersons, The Fall Guy, and One West Waikiki. But his career was not spent only in front of the cameras; as The New York Times notes, “Mr. Carter formed his own production company in 1975 and made educational documentaries. In the 1980s, he expanded into more sophisticated documentaries for PBS, the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1988, his two-part documentary, A Duke Named Ellington, for the PBS American Masters Series, became the United States entry in television festivals around the world.”