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.”

For Better or Way Worse

Alafair Burke’s latest novel, The Wife (Harper), was just released last month, but already it’s in line for feature-film treatment. From Deadline Hollywood comes this report:

In a seven-figure deal, Amazon Studios has acquired the rights to the Alafair Burke novel The Wife, with the author set to write the feature script. ... [T]he novel seems a perfect fit for this #MeToo moment. Book deal is high six figures and scripting fees put it into seven-figures.

Angela, a woman who suffered extreme trauma in her teen years, learns that her celebrity husband may be a sexual predator. Jason Powell is a handsome NYU prof whose book on socially conscious investing called Equalonomics is a raging bestseller. He runs a successful consulting firm and hosts a top-rated podcast that has enabled Angela and her husband to live an idyllic life with their son in Greenwich Village. Then, his intern files a complaint at the NYPD Special Victims Unit claiming he made inappropriate sexual suggestions at the office. A second alleged victim surfaces and soon there is a murder and Angela has to confront past personal trauma she thought was far in the rear view mirror.

Find out more about this project by clicking here.

Bullet Points: Obsessive Tube-Head Edition

• Almost five years ago, I wrote a short tribute on this page to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British TV crime series about two private-eye partners--one living, the other dead but still quite helpful in the way of investigating. At the time, it had been many years since I’d actually watched the program (which aired in the States as My Partner the Ghost). Earlier this week, however, I came across most of the 27 episodes of Randall and Hopkirk on YouTube. The opening segment from Episode 1, “My Late Lamented Friend and Partner”--first broadcast on September 21, 1969--can be found below. The full hour-long episode can be enjoyed below.



• Speaking of old crime and mystery series, are you familiar with Tightrope!, the 1959-1960 CBS drama in which Mike Connors (later of Mannix) played “Nick,” a police undercover agent assigned to infiltrate criminal gangs? Although it proved quite popular with viewers, the show was derided by loudmouthed prudes for “excessive violence” and doomed by a sponsor’s unwillingness to move the show to a more advantageous time slot. As far as I know, there isn’t a DVD collection of Tightrope!, but a Web site called Uncle Earl’s Classic Television has gathered together 30 of the original 37 episodes. The viewing quality is inconsistent, but it’s still good to see Connors (then going by the name “Michael Connors”) in his first series-leading role.

• In a post earlier this month I mentioned that a two-day extravaganza, “The Golden Anniversary Affair,” will be mounted in Los Angeles on September 26 and 27, commemorating half a century since the 1964 debut of NBC’s spy drama, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. A Facebook page promoting this event has long been available, but an associated Web site was just launched this week, giving information about tours, seminars, and celebs who will be on hand to greet attendees. It looks as if a number of details still need to be worked out, but there are probably enough specifics available on this “Affair” to convince veteran U.N.C.L.E. fans that they want to be part of it. Don’t wait too long to decide; attendance is limited to 100 guests, all of whom must be “invited” and pony up $135 for the privilege.

• Something called The Christian Post (which I’ve learned is an evangelical newspaper) brings words that the HBO-TV drama True Detective, which premiered in January of this year, may enjoy only a limited run. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto told an interviewer during Canada’s recent Banff World Media Festival that while he’s happy with the show’s success, he cannot maintain for long the pace of writing an anthology series on his own: “I can’t imagine I would do this more than three years. I mean, I’d like to have a regular TV show. We’ll have some fixed sets, regular actors and I could bring in people to help and I don’t have to be there every second. It’d be great.”

• Meanwhile, FX-TV’s Fargo, the darkly comedic crime drama based on the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film of the same name, has already run its 10-episode first-season course--and I have yet to watch even one installment. (Yeah, it’s been a crazy spring.) But after reading yesterday’s series recap post by Paul Levine, author of the Solomon vs. Lord legal thrillers, I think I need to wade into that program.

• Joe Brosnan has more to say about Fargo in Criminal Element.

• Most readers have probably forgotten Carolyn Weston (1921-2001), but she was the author of three novels featuring a pair of Santa Monica, California, police detectives, Sergeant Al Krug and Detective Casey Kellog. The first of those, 1972’s Poor, Poor Ophelia, inspired the 1972-1977 ABC-TV drama The Streets of San Francisco. Now comes word that Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, the writers behind Brash Books, a new crime-fiction imprint, have acquired Weston’s police procedurals, and plan to republish Poor, Poor Ophelia in 2015. What’s more, Goldberg tells me in an e-mail note, “we own [the three books] outright. So we are planning to continue the series with new novels. We’re in talks with an established female crime writer now about it. We haven’t decided whether to keep them in the ’70s in Santa Monica, or move the setting to San Francisco … or make a big leap and bring them to present-day San Francisco. It’s not as strange as it sounds. [Ed McBain’s] 87th Precinct books spanned decades, but the characters didn’t age. Same goes for Nero Wolfe. So moving our characters to present day, without aging them, has some precedent.”

• E.G. Marshall, star of The Defenders and The Bold Ones, would’ve celebrated his 100th birthday this week. He died in 1998.

• From the lighter side of TV crime comes Police Squad!, the short-lived, 1982 ABC-TV comedy starring Leslie Nielsen. A mere half-dozen episodes of that show were produced before it was cancelled, yet Police Squad! spawned the entertaining Naked Gun film series. The show was given a DVD release in 2006. However, I see it’s also available on YouTube, in case you would like to revisit Sergeant Frank Drebin’s earliest cases, without paying for the privilege.

• And one last television-related item: The Killing, the show that refused to die (its concluding, fourth season is finally set to start on Netflix in August), has now given birth to an original novel by Karen Dionne, The Killing: Uncommon Denominator (Titan). Criminal Element offers “an exclusive excerpt.”

• OK, I lied--one more: Joel Kinnaman, who plays Detective Stephen Holder on The Killing, recently stopped by the Los Angeles Times “for a live Web chat and was happy to report that, yes, restrictions will be loosened for the series’ final six episodes.” Read more here.

• If you’re on the lookout for classic Jim Thompson paperback covers and film posters, begin your searching here.

• Among the underrated detective/mystery films chosen by Jeff Flugel in his new post for the blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks (an allusion to 1983’s The King of Comedy) is P.J., George Peppard’s 1968 (pre-Banacek) big-screen private-eye flick. Flugel writes that P.J. finds Peppard “doing what he does best--being smug, cool and a hit with the ladies--and is peppered (ha ha!) with a lot of action and surprisingly bloody violence.” My own, more extensive remarks on P.J. are here.

• I’m sorry to hear that publisher Angry Robot Books is dropping its crime-fiction imprint, Exhibit A--especially since I was among the people who applied to become that line’s editor (one of several promising positions I sought, but was denied, in the not-distant past). In a statement covering this news, the company said, “We’re constantly trying out new concepts and new ideas, and we continue to publish popular and award-winning books. Our YA imprint Strange Chemistry and our crime/mystery imprint Exhibit A have--due mainly to market saturation--unfortunately been unable to carve out their own niches … We have therefore made the difficult decision to discontinue Strange Chemistry and Exhibit A, effective immediately, and no further titles will be published from these two imprints.” Among the authors recruited by Exhibit A were Daniel O’Shea (Penance), Karen Sandler (Clean Burn), Bartholomew Daniels (A Death Owed God), and Terry Irving (Courier). I hope they all find new publishers soon.

• Blogger Erin Mitchell shares her own thoughts about Exhibit A’s demise in a post for the blog Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Room.

• One falls, another rises: The Washington Post’s Ron Charles reports on plans by Paul Oliver, the director of marketing and publicity for Soho Press, to open a new publishing company, Syndicate Books, which “will focus on out-of-print mysteries and crime fiction.” Its first release, due in September, will be Get Carter, the 1970 novel by British author Ted Lewis that was later turned into a cult film of the same name starring Michael Caine. Charles adds that “Syndicate plans to publish all nine of Lewis’s novels--the result of ‘a couple of years’ of negotiation with the Ted Lewis estate.”

• I had many good things to say about C.J. Sansom’s Dominion, when that alternative-history spy novel was first published in the UK in 2012 (it has since enjoyed a U.S. release as well). Now Shlomo Schwartzberg shares his own thoughts on that book, as well as another similar what-if work, in the blog Critics At Large.

• Megan Abbott’s new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown), wins some important good press in The Atlantic.

• And this could prove interesting. Publishers Weekly reports that “Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke have signed up to collaborate on a new novel, which will revisit characters and plot lines introduced in Clark’s bestselling I’ve Got You Under My Skin. The collaboration, The Cinderella Murder, is slated for a November 2014 publication and marks the first time Clark has written with an outside author.”

If the Truth Be Told ...

One week ago, we invited attorney-turned-author Alafair Burke to participate in a competition to give away a free hardcover copy of her new Detective Ellie Hatcher novel, 212 (which will be released by Harper on March 23). Picking up on a recently popular Web meme, Burke made seven outrageous statements on this page about her life, one of which was a bald-faced lie. Rap Sheet readers were invited to distinguish the facts from the fraud, and those who guessed correctly were then eligible to win that copy of 212.

Just to recap, here are the statements Burke made about herself:

1. I once spotted Adam Ant in front of me at a hot dog cart in Central Park. I muttered, “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, but apparently you do eat hot dogs.”

2. I once wandered au naturel from a gym locker room into the free weight area.

3. I initially named my dog Stacy Keach, but my husband vetoed the decision.

4. I once went to the gym during a trial recess, had my blouse stolen from the locker room, and returned in front of the same jury, minus the shirt I’d been wearing under my suit that morning.

5. I once reached for a magic marker in my jacket pocket during closing argument and instead pulled out a similarly shaped object I had purchased from a machine in the ladies’ restroom.

6. Bill Clinton once called me to say he liked my books.

7. I once played the lion in The Wizard of Oz.

The truth can now be revealed: the lie was statement number 1.

We received more than three dozen entries to this contest, but only six people guessed the correct answer. The two biggest vote-getters were in fact numbers 2 and 4. Apparently, folks didn’t expect that the falsehood would rank in the No. 1 position.

Commenting on these results, Burke says: “I’m both pleased and embarrassed to have stumped so many of your readers: pleased because I like to think I have a way of misleading even the most savvy clue-solvers; embarrassed because those other six facts are actually true. Can I at least have brownie points for unabashed honesty? If anyone wants the back story on those ridiculous facts, feel free to reach out at www.facebook.com/alafairburkebooks or www.alafairburke.com.”

OK, now on to the single lucky winner of this contest. Chosen at random from among the six correct respondents was John F. Frost of Brooklyn, New York. Congratulations, sir. Your name has been passed along to Alafair Burke, who promises to drop your free copy of her new book in the mail without delay.

Thanks to everyone who entered this contest. We hope to have another book giveaway arranged in the very near future.

And remember, you can still take part in Burke’s “mystery gift” promotion, which will bring early orderers of 212 a prize designed by the author herself. Details of that promotion can be found here.

We’ve Got Your Number: “212”

ConIt’s astounding to see what authors--even well-known and best-selling authors--must do these days to promote themselves. I received a note yesterday from Alafair Burke, a former Oregon deputy district attorney and now a professor of law in New York City, whose new Detective Ellie Hatcher novel, 212, will be released by Harper on March 23. In that note, she directed me to a Web page that tells all about a “surprise gift” promotion, available to purchasers of her latest book. As Burke explains:

To thank you for your early support, I will send you a mystery gift for every hardback copy of 212 that you purchase prior to midnight on March 22. You can find your favorite booksellers here to order. Just e-mail a copy of your receipt to offer@alafairburke.com

(Unfortunately, it seems that this offer is limited to copies of 212 purchased in the United States.)

While Burke doesn’t reveal what her “mystery gift” is (for then it wouldn’t be a mystery, right?), she does say that it’s “small but special, I designed it myself, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”

All that sounds good--but wait (as the pitchmen declare on television), there’s more! Publisher Harper has agreed to send a free hardcover copy of 212 to one lucky Rap Sheet reader. To win it, you need only demonstrate your reasoning--or guessing--skills.

Since I had so much fun recently with a meme that asked bloggers to post a series of outrageous truths and lies about themselves, I invited the brilliant Ms. Burke to try her hand at the same challenge. Herewith, she presents six facts about herself, plus one wholly untrue statement. Can you tell which is which?

1. I once spotted Adam Ant in front of me at a hot dog cart in Central Park. I muttered, “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, but apparently you do eat hot dogs.”

2. I once wandered au naturel from a gym locker room into
the free weight area.

3. I initially named my dog Stacy Keach, but my husband vetoed the decision.

4. I once went to the gym during a trial recess, had my blouse stolen from the locker room, and returned in front of the same jury, minus the shirt I’d been wearing under my suit
that morning.

5. I once reached for a magic marker in my jacket pocket during closing argument and instead pulled out a similarly shaped object I had purchased from a machine in the
ladies’ restroom.

6. Bill Clinton once called me to say he liked my books.

7. I once played the lion in The Wizard of Oz.

If you think you know which one of these statements is a bald-faced lie, type your answer in an e-mail note and send it (along with your mailing address) to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Please write “Alafair Burke Contest” in the subject line. You can make only one guess, and you have to make it by next Wednesday, March 10. At that time, I’ll collect all of the right answers (presuming anyone gets it right), and randomly choose one person to receive a free copy of 212.

Good luck!

(Author photograph by Douglas Mott)

Roll the Tape

If you’ve never seen attorney-turned-novelist Alafair Burke speak before, now is your chance. During an event late last month at the public library in Muskego, Wisconsin (part of greater Milwaukee), blogger Jen Forbus interviewed Burke on subjects ranging from the author’s interest in entertainment law to her start as a writer, her experience with Internet dating, her research with the New York police, her different fictional protagonists, and of course her new book, 212, which is due out later this month from Harper. Their exchange was filmed, and is now available in Forbus’ blog.

Burke (who is of course the daughter of the famous James Lee Burke) looks like a delightful interviewee, full of stories and humor. If Forbus appears a bit less comfortable ... well, anyone who has ever been seated in front of a video camera and told to act grown-up and insightful can certainly sympathize.

Trash Talking

We often hear about book titles being changed during their transitions between Great Britain and the United States, or vice versa. Usually those alterations seem unnecessary and uninspired, the consequence of overthinking by publicity types. However, there’s occasionally a good reason for a title to be switched.

A case in point is Alafair Burke’s latest Detective Ellie Hatcher novel, Angel’s Tip. Just yesterday, Burke told members of the mystery readers’ listserv DorothyL that

my book, City of Fear, is out just this week in the UK. This is the second Ellie Hatcher book, which was published as Angel’s Tip in the United States in autumn. Apparently City of Fear is #2 at Tesco, which I’m told is a big supermarket chain in the UK. I’ve never seen one of my books in a supermarket in the U.S., so I’m taking that as good news.

Now, I don’t think too many Rap Sheet readers would argue with the idea that Angel’s Tip is a considerably more interesting title than City of Fear. In fact, the latter sounds like one of those cheesy televised “Movie of the Week” presentations from the 1970s. But as blogger and novelist Linda L. Richards pointed out, also on DorothyL, this name change is explained by an understanding of UK slang:

Oh that’s too funny! That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a country change for a title that actually made sense to me. I did not think of it when I read the North American version of this wonderful book--because I had my U.S. English hat on while I read, of course--but in colloquial UK English, wouldn’t an Angel’s Tip be the place where an angel stashed her garbage?

Which raises the question of course, whether angels actually create any garbage. Or has Heaven perfected recycling by now?

Finding Mr. Wrong

Assessing the new novel Angel’s Tip, Alafair Burke’s sophomore outing for Detective Ellie Hatcher (following last year’s Dead Connection), January Magazine contributing editor Jim Winter concludes that “It’s not a perfect thriller, but it delivers where it counts.”

The story begins with the slaying of Chelsea Hart, a young Indiana woman who’s found (by Hatcher, no less) dead after a night spent on the town in New York City with some of her spring-break buddies. Hatcher and her new partner, J.J. Rogan, are handed the case, which doesn’t at first look like the work of a serial-killer, but may be just that. “The connective thread is there, if not readily apparent, in the unsolved murders of three women five years earlier,” Winter writes. “Still, that long-ago destroyer targeted women from New York’s seedier side, not fresh-faced college girls from out of town. Regardless, Ellie Hatcher can sense the link.”

You will find the full review here.

The Lively “Dead”

Linda L. Richards has nothing bad to say about Alafair Burke’s new novel, Dead Connection. In fact, any normal author would probably want to quit writing right now, after receiving such glowing critical praise as this:

Midway through Dead Connection there’s this moment where everything seems to hang in the balance and you wonder how author Alafair Burke is going to pull this thing off. The story is just so ambitious. And there are enough good ideas here for three smart books. Internet dating. The Russian mafia. Corrupt cops and compromised FBI agents. Identity theft. A possible serial killer. More. And in this midway moment you think there’s just no way that all these things will come together in a manner that will make any kind of satisfying sense. And then it does. I mean, it really does.

But then, Burke isn’t any normal author. She’s the daughter of James Lee Burke (whose latest novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, I am currently reading), and has received sumptuous praise in the past for her crime fiction. Richards confirms that such congratulations were not at all misplaced, and that more are likely to come Ms. Burke’s way. After reprising the plot of Dead Connection, which finds a young New York City police detective named Ellie Hatcher helping a more “colorful” homicide detective investigate a series of murders that appear linked to “an Internet introduction service,” she remarks: “As much as I enjoyed Burke’s earlier novels--and I really, really did--Dead Connection leaves them in the dust. Smart, sophisticated and with a plot so twisty, no one will beat the protagonist to the conclusion, Burke has delivered her best book thus far.”

You can read all of Richards’ fine review here.

How Does that Saying Go About Art and Life?

I have to confess, I wasn’t familiar with New Mystery Reader Magazine until just the other day, but already I’m plugging one of its stories. In connection with the release of Alafair Burke’s new novel, Dead Connection--a New York City-set departure from her District Attorney Samantha Kincaid series (Judgment Calls)--New Mystery Reader presents an interview with the author in which she reveals just how her life can influence her fiction. Asked to explain the plot of Dead Connection, Burke says that it

introduces NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher. Ellie has been a detective for only a year when a more seasoned but controversial and publicity-hungry detective in the homicide squad taps her to help him track down a killer. The killer is using an online dating service to target young women. Ellie fits the profile of the victims, and she herself is haunted by thoughts of a serial killer who she believes killed her detective father where she grew up in Wichita, Kansas.

A bit later in this exchange, and in relation to a question about why, after writing three successful novels with a Portland backdrop, she decided to depart from that formula with her new book, Burke says (boldface added):

DEAD CONNECTION turned out to be the right book to make the changes. When I met my husband online a few years ago, I knew the experience was great crime fiction fodder, and the story was perfect for both a Manhattan setting and a police procedural.

Well, fiction-writing instructors are always advising that you ought to write about what you know best. And that no experience is ever really wasted on a novelist. It would seem that both of those axioms hold true in this instance.

You can read the whole interview here.

READ MORE: “The Page 69 Test: Dead Connection,” by Alafair Burke.

Birthday Candles and Bikinis

As you may have noticed from all the hoopla hereabouts, today is The Rap Sheet’s first birthday. And we’ll resume our previously scheduled nominations of overlooked/underappreciated crime novels presently. But there are things going on elsewhere in the crime-fiction realm, too, that deserve attention.

• Speaking of birthdays, there will be Sherlock Holmes fans all over the world celebrating what would have been Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 148th birthday today (had he not died in the summer of 1930). But another birthday may be more easily forgotten. May 22 was also the birthday of Douglas Heyes (born in 1919), a screenwriter who worked on many films and TV shows of note. In addition to penning the screenplays for Beau Geste (1966) and Ice Station Zebra (1968), Heyes--who seemed to be a favorite of legendary producer Roy Huggins--wrote episodes of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Checkmate, Alias Smith and Jones, Night Gallery, McCloud, The Bold Ones, City of Angels, and others. He also wrote a fine but largely forgotten 1969 teleflick called The Lonely Profession, which starred Harry Guardino as a San Francisco private eye embroiled in a case involving too much money and too few scruples. In addition, Heyes adapted Taylor Caldwell’s novel Captains and the Kings as a 1976 NBC miniseries, created the too-short-lived William Shatner-Doug McClure historical adventure Barbary Coast, and served as executive producer of the 1971 “post-Western” series Bearcats! Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: Heyes was a novelist. I own one of his books, a pretty exciting 1930s P.I. tale called The Kill (1985), but he apparently also wrote two previous novels, The Kiss-Off and The 12th of Never. Heyes died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles in February 1993.

• “BookBitch” blogger Stacy Alesi interviews author Alafair Burke on the subjects of her famous father, crossover crime characters, her Manhattan commute, and her forthcoming novel Dead Connection. Their exchange can be enjoyed here.

• Meanwhile, John Kenyon of Things I’d Rather Be Doing asks Michael Connelly about his remarkably short new novel, The Overlook.

• Have you ever wondered what author Ian Rankin’s work space looks like? Well, wonder no more.

• Christian Science Monitor writer Daniel B. Wood takes readers on “a gumshoe’s tour” of Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, complete with “passage-quoting noir junkies.” Ride along with him here.

• And Bookgasm’s Bruce Grossman readies us for summer with notes on a trio of older paperback novels that remind us of what is really important this coming sunnier season: bikinis and Berettas. You’ll find his comments here.