Bullet Points: Memories and Merits Edition

• On the very same day, last weekend, that I posted in The Rap Sheet about Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies’ forthcoming release, The Harry O Viewing Companion: History and Episodes of the Classic Detective Series, I received in the mail a copy of a second non-fiction work dealing in part with that very same 1974-1976 TV private-eye drama. This one bears the name Men of Action, and comes from small-screen historian and radio talk show host Ed Robertson. In addition to David Janssen’s standout series, Men of Action—published in both hardcover and paperback by Lee Goldberg’s Cutting Edge Books—encompasses three other classic TV dramas: The Magician (1973-1974), The Untouchables (1959-1963; revived 1993-1994), and Run for Your Life (1965-1968). Robertson explains in his introduction that “the four series chronicled in this book … were all subjects of articles that I wrote for Television Chronicles,” a quarterly U.S. periodical that was published from April 1995 to January 1998. However, he has greatly expanded on his original research and writing, with subsequently gleaned quotes and episode guides added to form a more complete record of the shows’ development, evolution, and critical reception. For those of us who remember these shows well, Men of Action feeds our appetite for intriguing trivia, from Magician star Bill Bixby’s insistence that all the illusions in each show “be filmed in one take, without trick photography”—a time-consuming task—to the decision never to name the fatal malady destined to take down Ben Gazzara’s protagonist in Run for Your Life (“That’s because there is no such disease,” admitted executive producer Roy Huggins). Like Robertson’s previous titles, including 45 Years of The Rockford Files and The FBI Dossier, Men of Action is a must-have for any classic-TV history fan.

• Recipients of the 2024 Historical Writers’ Association Awards were announced last week, and The Tumbling Girl (Gallic), British author Bridget Walsh’s first Variety Palace Mystery, won for best debut novel. Tumbling introduced Victorian music hall scriptwriter Minnie Ward and her partner in crime-solving, private detective Albert Easterbrook. A sequel, The Innocents, reached print this last April.

• In Reference to Murder says, “the winner of the 2024 Pride Award for emerging LGBTQIA+ writers is Lori Potvin of Perth, Ontario, Canada. Potvin's winning novel-in-progress is a work of contemporary crime fiction. According to Potvin, ‘A Trail’s Tears follows the stories of two women who are strangers to each other—youth wellness worker Grace, who's looking for Sonny, a missing Indigenous teen mom, and Anna, a street-smart young woman caught in the trap of human trafficking and desperate to escape.’ Five runners-up were also chosen: Shelley Kinsman of Ashburn, Ontario; Erick Holmberg of Boston, Massachusetts; Emma Pacchiana of Norfolk, Virginia; Langston Prince of Los Angeles, California; and Shoney Sien of Aptos, California.” Congratulations to them all!

• We have already collected opinionated picks of the “best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2024” from The Washington Post (here and here), The Daily Telegraph, Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, Audible, and various other sources. Now comes Canada’s mighty Globe and Mail newspaper with its 10 favorites—all by women, oddly enough:

— Blood Rubies, by Mailan Doquang (Penzler)
— The Hunter, by Tana French (Viking)
— The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Faber & Faber)
— Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson (Bond Street)
— House of Glass, by Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press)
— Only One Survives, by Hannah Mary McKinnon (Mira)
— Guide Me Home, by Attica Locke (Viper)
— The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
— One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster)
— The Return of Ellie Black, by Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster)

In addition, two works that have appeared on other crime-fiction “bests” lists are found in the Globe and Mail under best “International Fiction”: The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Riverhead); and Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner (Scribner).

• BookPage has its own “Best Mystery & Suspense” list making the rounds. Here are the editors’ 10 choices:

— A Ruse of Shadows, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
— Deadly Animals, by Marie Tierney (Henry Holt)
— Exposure, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
— Guide Me Home, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)
— Shanghai, by Joseph Kanon (Scribner)
— The Close-Up, by Pip Drysdale (Gallery)
— The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)
— Things Don’t Break On Their Own, by Sarah Easter Collins (Crown)
— Trust Her, by Flynn Berry (Viking)
— We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)

• CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano delivers this excellent retrospective on “lady detectives” in Victorian and Edwardian literature.

• Another first-rate CrimeReads offering (originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine) is Dean Jobb’s look back at “detective, swindler, accused killer, [and] spy” Gaston Means, “one of the Greatest Rogues in American History.” Jobb, you will recall, is also the author of this year’s A Gentleman and a Thief, which is likely to appear on my own “best of 2024” book list.

• What is it with British TV shows producing Christmas specials, anyway? Death in Paradise and its first spin-off, Beyond Paradise, have already announced holiday-themed episodes. Add to those now Acorn TV’s The Chelsea Detective, which has scheduled a Christmas installment of its own to drop on Monday, December 16. That series, which stars Adrian Scarborough and Vanessa Emme as unconventional police detectives working the upscale thoroughfares of London’s Chelsea neighborhood, will return in 2025 with three more 90-minute episodes comprising the balance of its third-season run.



• Before starring in the better-remembered Dan August or B.L. Stryker, actor Burt Reynolds won his first eponymous TV role in Hawk, a short-lived crime drama that aired on ABC from September 8, 1966, to December 29, 1966—17 episodes in all. “Hawk was historic,” writes Terence Towles Canote in A Shroud of Thoughts, “as the first American television show to centre on a Native American in a modern-day setting (it was preceded by Brave Eagle and Broken Arrow, which were both Westerns).” He goes on to note that Reynolds played

New York City police lieutenant John Hawk, who was full-blooded Iroquois. [Reynolds himself claimed to be of much-diluted Cherokee descent.] Hawk worked as a special investigator for the District Attorney's office. His partner was Dan Carter (Wayne Grice). Bruce Glover played Assistant District Attorney Murray Slaken, while Leon Janney played Assistant District Attorney Ed Gorton. …

Aside from featuring a lead character who was Native American, Hawk was a bit ahead of its time in other ways. The show was filmed on the streets of New York City. Only a few shows before Hawk, such as Naked City and Route 66 regularly shot on location, with most series during the 1966-1967 season still being shot on studio backlots. Hawk also had a grittier, more realistic feel than many police dramas of its time, and in some ways was closer to such Seventies movies as The French Connection (1971), Serpico (1973), and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974).

If you’re unfamiliar with this early Reynolds series, you can catch at least most of its episodes on YouTube—for now, that is.

• I haven’t even had an opportunity yet to watch the British TV drama The Day of the Jackal, which debuted in the States (on Peacock) earlier this month. But already, The Killing Times says it has been renewed for a second season. Jackal, of course, is a modern take on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 political thriller of the same name.

• The Bunburyist’s Elizabeth Foxwell brings word that “Penguin Random House will publish a graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business (1939) in May 2025 as part of the Pantheon Graphic Library.” The title offering in a 1950 collection of four short Chandler yarns starring Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, “Trouble” finds Marlowe being “hired to scare away a disreputable woman from the adopted son of a wealthy businessman,” as blogger Paul Ferry recalls. “He’s no sooner started following this potential gold-digger before he stumbled across the first murder. From there, the bodies just keep piling up—but who’s responsible? Chandler cheekily waves suspects and red herrings in your face, so the reader—as well as Marlowe—hit many false leads before the final pay-off.” Foxwell explains that the graphic-novel version of this tale brings together writer Arvind Ethan David, illustrator Ilias Kyriazis, and colorist Cris Peter. (A concluding note: When published originally in Dime Detective magazine, “Trouble” starred a different Chandler sleuth, John Dalmas, but Dalmas was subsequently swept away to capitalize on Marlowe’s popularity.)

• By the way, if you would like to listen to a vintage radio dramatization of “Trouble Is My Business,” starring American actor Van Heflin, you can do that right here.

• I have added a new podcast to this page’s right-hand column inventory (scroll down to “Crime/Mystery Podcasts”). It’s called Tipping My Fedora, and comes from Sergio Angelini, who from 2011 to 2017, wrote a superior blog of that same name broadly focused on crime and mystery fiction. His new podcast, launched in early October, covers primarily film noir. Episodes thus far have featured British critics Barry Forshaw and Mike Ripley, as well as James Harrison, co-founder of Film Noir UK and director of its first festival, Film Noir Fest 2024; looked back at “William Friedkin’s 1985 dark and dazzling neo-noir, To Live and Die in L.A.”; and previewed the UK Blu-ray release of the 1954 drama Black Tuesday. Click here to access them all.

• Novelist Stephen Mertz, familiar for his “Cody’s Army” and “Cody’s War” novels, his contributions to Don Pendleton’s “Executioner” series, and numerous other books (many of them published under pseudonyms), died on November 5 at age 77. I didn’t know Mertz, but his friend and fellow novelist Max Allan Collins did. He observes that Mertz “had his cantankerous side but was cheerful and fun and funny even at his crankiest, and mostly he was a sunny presence, enthusiastic about writers whose work he loved and himself a dedicated professional. He was also a musician and a good one. He was a radio d.j. at times, and the kind of ideal presence you’d love to have with you pouring from the car radio on a long drive.” The folks at Wolfpack Publishing, who brought several of Mertz’s books to market, describe him on Facebook as “an extraordinary talent” whose “creativity, humor, and passion for storytelling will be deeply missed by his friends, colleagues, and countless fans.” Finally, another of Mertz’s friends, Ben Boulden, has reposted this interview he did with the author in 2016 to honor Mertz’s passing.

• There are many “words of the year” choices made every 12 months, by sources as varied as the American Dialect Society, Oxford University Press, Dictionary.com, and the folks behind the Collins English Dictionary. And while that last group chose “brat” as 2024’s “most important word or expression in the public sphere,” the Cambridge Dictionary folks have gone with “manifest,” after “celebrities such as pop star Dua Lipa and gymnast Simone Biles spoke of manifesting their success.” I can’t say “manifest” has been added in a big way to my own lexicon, but then I’m neither a singer-songwriter nor a champion Olympics performer.