And I Can’t Fail to Mention …

• Criminal Element’s continuing series focusing on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Novel, last Friday showcased Margaret Maron’s The Bootlegger’s Daughter, which captured that prize way back in 1993. In a departure from the norm, on that same day Hector DeJean, the associate director of publicity at Minotaur Books, posted a fine essay in Criminal Element about Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo, which won the 1993 Edgar for Best First Novel and launched the fictional career of Los Angeles homicide detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. Reflecting on that novel and its many sequels, DeJean wrote:

Adjustments have been made to Bosch over the years, as the character and his city have evolved. For one thing, he no longer sports a mustache, that once-standard identifying trait of all veteran cops. His past has been filled in a little more, and on the TV series his military service has been updated to the Gulf War. Connelly has tackled such topics as the Los Angeles Riots and the police department opening up to LGBTQ officers in later books. But what may work so well about Bosch is that he basically fits the mold; he’s a close cousin of several other thick-skinned knights-errant policemen, one brought to fuller life and given a deeper relationship with his city.

• Lawrence Block is already teasing his February release, The Burglar in Short Order (Subterranean), which he describes as “a complete collection” of short-form appearances by his series thief, Bernie Rhodenbarr. He says “its fifteen chapters include four short stories, three extracts from novels, five op-ed columns, and an essay—well, some would call it a rant—about Bernie’s experiences in Hollywood.” The Amazon page for this book adds that “you’ll find every published story, article, and standalone excerpt Bernie has ever appeared in—plus two new, unpublished pieces: an introduction discussing the character’s colorful origins and an afterword in which the author, contemplating retirement, comes face to face with his own creation.”

• Congratulations to The Spy Command, which today celebrates its 11th birthday! Managing editor Bill Koenig’s espionage fiction-oriented blog debuted in 2008 as The HMSS Weblog, but was renamed in 2015, following the failure of its partner Web site, Her Majesty’s Secret Servant. It remains a superior source of news about James Bond projects as well as other crime and cloak-and-dagger works.

• As we move ever closer to New Year’s Day, 2020, these sorts of features are bound to multiply. The Killing Times recently began enumerating what it says have been “the top 20 crime dramas of the decade.” So far, it has rolled out only the first half of its choices—in two parts, here and here—but I presume the balance of that Web site’s selections will soon follow. Watch for updates here.

• The Australia-based Columbophile blog typically celebrates the legacy of Peter Falk’s long-running NBC-TV series, Columbo. But not long ago, its unnamed editor put together a list of “the 10 least-satisfying Columbo ‘gotchas’ of the ’70s.” As he explains: “A Columbo without a magnificent ‘gotcha’ is like a porcupine without quills; a snake without fangs; a cat without claws. In short, it lacks a certain clout. Granted, not every episode can have a rousing finale in the mould of ‘Suitable for Framing’ [1971] or ‘Candidate for Crime’ [1973], but the strength of the gotcha plays a big part in our overall enjoyment of the episode.” Indeed, most of the 10 episodes The Columbophile cites for their disappointing denouements are also among those I remember least well, though I am fond of one: 1973’s “Requiem for a Falling Star,” which features Anne Baxter as a fading actress and includes a cameo by eminent costume designer Edith Head.

• Two CrimeReads pieces worth investigating: Sarah Weinman recalls how, during the summer of 1947, U.S. mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart narrowly escaped being murdered by her longtime chef; and Crawford Smith, the author of this year’s Jackrabbit (Sweet Weasel Words), writes here about persist rumors that John Dillinger—“America’s first celebrity criminal”—escaped being gunned down outside a Chicago theater in 1934, and how such talk has resulted in efforts to disinter Dillinger’s remains from an Indiana cemetery.

• I’ve long been a fan of Ellery Queen, the 1975-1976 series developed for NBC-TV by Richard Levinson and William Link, and starring Jim Hutton. So I was pleased to learn recently that the anonymous blogger “dfordoom” has been slowly reviewing that show’s episodes for Cult TV Lounge. He tackles three of them here, and another trio here. To read his overview of the show, click here.

• Having been a Star Trek enthusiast since childhood, I am naturally thrilled by the prospect of a new series that will bring Patrick Stewart back to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which he created for Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). A new trailer for Star Trek: Picard, released during this month’s New York Comic Con, carries the same adventurous, hopeful spirit that has always drawn me to the Star Trek universe. And the moment in that trailer when Picard revisits his old Enterprise shipmates William Riker and Deanna Troi … well, it brought cheerful tears to my eyes. Although I resisted subscribing to the CBS All Access streaming service in order to watch Star Trek: Discovery (I instead purchased Season 1 on DVD), Star Trek: Picard—slated to debut there on January 23, 2020—may finally compel me to take that step.

• While we’re on the subject of Star Trek (and yes, I’ll get back to matters of crime fiction anon), my fellow fans should check out Trek on the Tube, the YouTube channel created by a Trekkie named Sean and covering what seems like an ever-growing assortment of Star Trek projects. Sean has set up a Patreon page, too, to solicit funds to keep his efforts on track. It seems a worthwhile cause.

• Also deserving of consideration, I think, is a solicitation from “Norman Conquest,” aka Derek Pell, who has published my work in his literary magazine, Black Scat Review. He has established an Indiegogo crowd-funding page in hopes of raising money enough to keep his enterprises afloat. This “Fund-o-Rama,” as he calls it, will continue through Halloween. Please send him treats, not tricks.

• New author interviews of note: Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare fires questions at both Deborah Crombie (A Bitter Feast) and “Nicci French” (aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French), whose latest thriller is The Lying Room; and blogger Lesa Holstine chats with Dana Ridenour about her new novel, Below the Radar.

• Finally, some essay-writing fun for students: The Bunburyist’s Elizabeth Foxwell reports that the Beacon Society, a “scion society” of that well-known Sherlock Holmes fan group, the Baker Street Irregulars, “is sponsoring an essay contest for U.S. and Canadian students in 4th to 12th grades that focuses on the Sherlock Holmes stories ‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League,’ ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,’ and ‘The Greek Interpreter.’ There are cash prizes for first to third place. The submission deadline is February 1, 2020.” Click here to find more entry details.

Bullet Points: All Over the Place Edition

• Here’s a mystery for you: Earlier this year—following TNT-TV’s late-2018 broadcast of a mini-series based on The Alienist, Caleb Carr’s 1994 historical crime thriller—Mulholland Books announced that it would publish two brand-new Carr tales starring psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. The first of those, to be titled The Alienist at Armageddon, was supposed to take place in 1915 and find Kreizler and his cohort, New York Times reporter John Moore, probing a series of deadly explosions on the eve of World War I. Mulholland proclaimed the book would be released on September 1, 2019. Well, that date has obviously come and gone, and there’s no Armageddon. In fact, Mulholland has scrubbed a page devoted to the novel from its Web site. The Amazon sales site claims an e-book version of Armageddon will appear in September 2022—three years away!—but even that could change, and it makes no mention of a print edition. Is this a case of an author blowing past his deadline? Or has the decision been made to hold off on Armageddon’s release until after TNT broadcasts its Alienist sequel, The Angel of Darkness (based on Carr’s 1997 work of the same name)? And what does this all mean for the promised fourth book in the Kreizler series, a prequel titled The Strange Case of Miss Sara X? I wish I had the answers, but only time will tell.

• Mystery Scene magazine’s latest issue (Fall 2019) leads with a fine profile of Ruth Ware, the British author of The Turn of the Key. Elsewhere in its pages can be found Michael Mallory’s look back at fictional detective Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond, a fixture of fiction between the two world wars; Oline H. Cogdill’s assessment of half a dozen recently introduced “writers to watch,” among them Rachel Howell Hall and Stephen Mack Jones; a piece by Craig Sisterson on translated crime and mystery fiction; and a remembrance of the encounter between author Stuart Palmer (the creator of amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers) and Groucho Marx on a 1954 episode of You Bet Your Life.

• Let’s hope this comes to pass: Anthony Horowitz, who has already penned two remarkable James Bond novels—Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018)— tells the Radio Times that he’s “in discussions” to write a third 007 yarn.

“I would certainly consider it,” he said. “I don’t know when [it’ll happen], because I’m pretty busy at the moment.

“I’ve got a sequel to [the 2016 book] Magpie Murders I’ve just finished, literally last week, and I’ve got two more Hawthorne novels [featuring private investigator Daniel Hawthorne] to write, another Alex Rider … but if I can, and if the estate—the Ian Fleming family—and the publishers are happy for me to do it, then I’m certainly game.

“I would love to. I think there’s one more in me at least.”

• BBC One has confirmed that it will begin airing the psychological thriller Dublin Murders, based on Tana French’s best-selling succession of haunting modern-day mysteries, on Monday, October 14. The second of that program’s initial eight episodes will be shown the next evening. Dublin Murders is still slated to premiere in the States on Sunday, November 10, courtesy of the premium channel Starz.

• In honor of Graham Greene’s birth, 115 years ago this week, CrimeReads managing editor Dwyer Murphy has compiled 10 of that author’s most memorable opening paragraphs. Let me recommend, especially, his excerpt from The Third Man (1949).

• I’m very sorry to hear about the death last week of Wayne Fitzgerald, “the main title designer who set the tone and atmosphere for hundreds of films, from Auntie Mame and Pillow Talk to The Godfather: Part II and Total Recall,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. He passed away on September 30 “on South Whidbey Island in Washington after a brief illness.” Fitzgerald was 89 years old. Over the last few years, I have sought to contract Fitzgerald through several avenues, hoping to talk with him about his TV work, but I was never successful. Now he’s forever beyond my reach. As the Web site The Art of the Title recalls, the Los Angeles-born designer put in 17 years at Pacific Title & Art Studio, creating the opening sequences for such films as The Music Man and My Fair Lady, and for small-screen shows including Maverick and Mr. Ed, before starting his own design firm in 1967. Among his numerous other credits were the main titles for television programs on the order of The Bold Ones, Sarge, Switch, Tucker’s Witch, Quincy, M.E. and Matlock, and for movies ranging from Chinatown (1974) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975) to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), The Electric Horseman (1979), and Terms of Endearment (1983). I’m embedding four of my favorite Fitzgerald title designs below, in this order: the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (with theme music by Henry Mancini), It Takes a Thief (theme by Dave Grusin), Night Gallery (music by Gil Mellé), and the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde (theme by Charles Strouse). The Hollywood Reporter observes that Fitzgerald picked up three Emmy Awards for his introductions. (Hat tip to The Spy Command.)

• Terence Towles Canote has his own Wayne Fitzgerald obituary, in his blog A Shroud of Thoughts. It includes this tidbit: “While his contemporaries were often known for a specific style, Mr. Fitzgerald's titles could vary stylistically. If there is one thing that his titles had in common, it is that in many ways they were movies in and of themselves. His titles were closely-knit, but never cluttered, and in many cases told stories all their own. It was his talent at montage, at creating what were essentially ‘mini-movies’ with his titles, that allowed him to be so prolific. In being able to create titles that were works of art in and of themselves, Wayne Fitzgerald guaranteed he would always be in demand.”

• Whoops! In my post earlier this week about the recipients of prizes presented during London’s inaugural Capital Crime festival, I failed to mention that Ashley Harrison had been named as the winner of the New Voices Award for her book, The Dysconnect. Victoria Goldman and Patti Buff were identified as runners-up for that same commendation.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Rebus is set to return to TV screens after over a decade away. The detective drama starred Ken Stott in the role of DI John Rebus for three seasons when John Hannah quit the role after the first series. Rebus creator, Scottish author Ian Rankin, has confirmed its long-awaited comeback and that new episodes are on the way with Gregory Burke penning the scripts. It’s said the new episode could have a Nordic Noir-style, while Rankin (who has penned 22 books featuring Rebus) will have a much bigger say in how the series is run.

No broadcast date has been set yet, and there is no word on whether the show would return to ITV.

• That same blog notes that today marks 30 years since the founding of Scottsdale, Arizona’s now landmark Poisoned Pen Bookstore. “To celebrate,” it explains, “owner Barbara Peters and her staff will host a cake and champagne party featuring author Joe Hill (NOS4A2) in conversation with attorney and editor, Leslie Klinger. Other guests include John Sandford, author of the Prey series; James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force series; and Anne Perry, author of the Thomas Pitt and William Monk series.” Congratulations are certainly in order!

• The latest Paperback Warrior podcast focuses on Max Allan Collins’ series of novels starring the hit man known as Quarry, as well as Appointment in Iran, the 23rd action-packed Butcher novel by “Stuart Jason” (aka James Dockery). Listen here.

• Meanwhile, Stark House Press and its still-new short-story compilation, The Best of Manhunt, are the subject of The BookPeople Podcast’s latest episode. Numbering among the guests on that particular show are author Joe R. Landsdale and Rick Ollerman, editor of Down & Out: The Magazine. Listen here.

• I didn’t know until now that The Killing Times also produces a podcast. The most recent episode features Margrét Örnólfsdóttir, who wrote Sagafilm’s four-part TV adaptation of Icelandic author Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson’s best-selling novel, The Flatey Enigma (Flateyjargáta). More about the series—which showed in Britain in September—can be found here and here.

• So that’s where Nero Wolfe’s New York brownstone was!

• Mystery Writers of America has planned a weeklong celebration of crime and mystery fiction, to take place at various locations in California from October 19 through 26. Mystery Fanfare offers the list of events, all of which will be free and open to the public.

• Only one novel from our favorite genre appears on Literary Hub’s list of “The 10 Best Debut Novels of the Decade”: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 work, The Sympathizer, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author.

• Worrisome news, from The New York Times: “Wherever authoritarian regimes are growing in strength, from Brazil, to Hungary, to the Philippines, literature that expresses any kind of political opposition is under a unique, renewed threat. Books that challenge normative values, especially those with L.G.B.T. themes, have been hit especially hard. History textbooks crafted by independent scholars are being replaced with those produced by the state at a disturbing rate. In Russia, a new even stricter set of censorship laws was announced in March to punish those expressing ‘clear disrespect’ for the state (i.e. effectively Putin himself).” Along these lines, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point to hear Donald Trump call for censoring authors who disagree with his increasingly unhinged and authoritarian behavior. No doubt, he will declare that they, too, are committing “treason.”

• Finally, a few author interviews worth finding: Lori Rader-Day talks with Ann Cleeves (The Long Call) for the Chicago Review of Books; Barry Eisler submits to questions from Omnivoracious’ Chris Schluep about his new, third Livia Lone book, All the Devils; and Swedish novelist-journalist David Lagercrantz fields queries about his third and final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice, for the aforementioned BookPeople Podcast.

Phantom of an Operative

Spy Vibe reminds us that today marks 50 years since the debut of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), a short-lived “cult-classic” TV series that focused on the investigative endeavors of two British private eyes, one of whom was dead but—incredibly—still on the job. As I explained in a post from 2009,

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) revolved around … Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt) and Marty Hopkirk (Kenneth Cope), the latter of whom was run down and killed in the first episode, during a probe into marital infidelity. Even death, though, doesn’t keep Marty down. Having acquired a new wardrobe (all of saintly white), he comes back in revenant form to aid Jeff in catching the killer. “However ...,” Wikipedia notes, “Marty stays out of his new grave for too long and is cursed to walk the Earth for 100 years. Seeing the advantages of having a ghost at the detective agency, Marty stays as an invisible partner, playing the key role in helping Jeff solve crime thereafter ...”

This supernatural detective drama debuted on the UK network ITV on Sunday, September 21, 1969. It was created by English television scripter Dennis Spooner, whose small-screen credits also included The Avengers, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, The Baron, UFO, The New Avengers, and Bergerac. In addition to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Spooner created such crime/spy series as Man in a Suitcase (1967-1968), The Champions (1968-1969), and Gene Barry’s The Adventurer (1972-1973).

Spy Vibe recalls Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)—which was retitled My Partner the Ghost for 1970s U.S. distribution—as being “markedly different to its ITC stablemates.

Not only was it proudly fantastical, it was also killingly funny, and where most of ITC’s other shows aimed for a seductive fantasy of transatlantic sophistication, Randall and Hopkirk presented a scuzzier and more recognisably real world.

Key to Randall and Hopkirk’s uniqueness in the ITC canon, was the casting of Mike Pratt. He may have only been 37 when he played Jeff Randall, but he already had the deep-grooved face lines of someone 20 years older. Randall seemed to be someone more at home in the grungier, fag-stained world of Public Eye than a series about a private dick partnered up with a crime-solving ghost.

If you’re unfamiliar with this long-ago program, you can learn more about it history, casting, and filming locations at the Web site Randall and Hopkirk (Declassified). Episode 1, “My Late Lamented Friend and Partner,” can be watched here, in three parts.

A Monday Morning Medley

• Double O Section brings word that, five years after its development was initially announced, the William Boyd-created, Cold War-backdropped series Spy City finally appears to be taking off: “Originally set up as a 10-part series at Gaumont, Deadline reports that Boyd’s vision will finally come to life as a 6-part series for Miramax and Germany’s H&V Entertainment and ZDF.” The show will star Dominic Cooper (of Agent Carter and Fleming fame) as “a British agent dispatched to Berlin in 1961 to root out a traitor in the UK Embassy or among the Allies, shortly before the construction of the Berlin Wall. ‘The city, declared by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as “the most dangerous place on earth,” is teeming with spies and double agents. One wrong move could trigger the looming threat of nuclear war as American, British and French troops in West Berlin remain separated from their Soviet and East German counterparts by nothing more than an imaginary line.’” No debut date has yet been publicized.

• Maine author Lea Wait, who penned the Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries series, the Shadows Antique Print mysteries, and the Maine Murder Mystery series, died on August 9 of pancreatic cancer, according to this obituary in Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare. Wait was 73 years old. Her latest Needlepoint Mystery, Thread on Arrival, was published in April 2019, and she has another, Thread and Buried, due out this coming November. In The Gumshoe Site, Jiro Kimura recalls that Lea Wait was “the single mother of four adopted daughters,” and Shadows at the Fair (2002)—the first novel in her Shadows Antique Print series featuring Maggie Summer—was nominated for the 2003 Agatha Award for Best First Novel.

• Somehow, I missed seeing this news before: Brash Books, which has already published a couple of novels by the late British screenwriter and director, Jimmy Sangster (Touchfeather and Touchfeather, Too), is bringing back into print Sangster’s trilogy of hard-boiled thrillers starring former Scotland Yard detective and now self-styled beach bum James Reed. The first of those books, Snowball (1986), came out at the end of July. Hardball (1988) is due for re-release later this month, with Blackball (1987) to follow. Meanwhile, Brash paperback editions of Sangster’s two John Smith espionage novels, The Spy Killer (aka Private I, 1967) and Foreign Exchange (1968), should turn up in stores come September.

• Although he died in February 2018, author Bill Crider is far from forgotten. Designer Richard Greene notes in Facebook that Issue 104 of Paperback Parade (left)—currently being printed—features a tribute to the Texas creator of Sheriff Dan Rhodes.

• Happy 10th anniversary to Do Some Damage!

• I learned this last weekend that publication of the non-fiction book Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre (PM Press)—a work to which I contributed a piece—has been postponed until October 1. Grrr!

• The Web site BookRiot is proving to be a useful cheerleader for Polis Books’ brand-new crime-fiction imprint, Agora, which it says will “focus on diverse voices, putting out between six and ten books per year.” Under the direction of Polis founder Jason Pinter and editor Chantelle Aimée Osman, the Agora line is being readied for a September launch. BookRiot takes a peek at some of those Agora titles due out this fall, as well as others for 2020—fresh works by John Vercher, Patricia Smith, Gary Phillips, and others.

• This is an unexpected turn. From In Reference to Murder:

In one of the biggest surprises this past pilot season, ABC’s NYPD Blue reboot did not go to series but was kept in midseason contention with a possibility for redevelopment. It now appears that particular iteration of NYPD Blue, a sequel to the original Emmy-winning series, is dead. However, it’s not the end of NYPD Blue’s comeback at the network, which aired the iconic 1990s cop drama series. According to ABC Entertainment president Karey Burke, “There are conversations about continuing it but possibly in a different iteration.” The recent NYPD Blue pilot starred newcomer Fabien Frankel and co-starred original cast members Kim Delaney and Bill Brochtrup. The sequel centers on Theo (Frankel), the son of Dennis Franz’s Detective Andy Sipowicz character from the original series, who tries to earn his detective shield and work in the 15th squad while investigating his father’s murder.

• Will Lee Child join the judging panel for the 2020 Booker Prize? The Bookseller quotes Child biographer Andy Martin as saying that the author of the Jack Reacher thriller series, who “also won Author of the Year at this year’s British Book Awards and has sold 13.2 million books for £80m, would be a ‘natural’ judge. ‘Lee’s a natural because he reads so many books already (300 a year roughly). Although he is a commercial writer, there is an intellectual, professorial side to him. As he says, he is “100% commerce, 100% art.”’”

• Editor Elizabeth Foxwell alerts me to the fact that the latest installment in her McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series—this one focusing on the works of Ian Rankin—is due out in February 2020. The volume, she explains in her blog, “provides a comprehensive examination of Rankin’s writing career, including short stories that the Scottish author had forgotten he had written and interesting sidelights such as the Rebus play Long Shadows.”

• The sixth and newest episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast examines “the mysterious career of author and publisher Peter McCurtin,” notes host Tom Simon. “We examine McCurtin’s Escape from Devil’s Island as well as [offer] two new reviews—[of] Duel in the Snow by German author Hans Meissner and the debut Malko novel, West of Jerusalem by Gerard De Villiers.” Listen here.

• It was on this date in 1964 that “Ian Fleming, a World War II naval intelligence officer, journalist and author of the James Bond thrillers, died.” He was only 56 years old.

• Following last week’s news that the 1981-1991 British TV series Bergerac may be rebooted for modern audiences, World of Shaft author Steve Aldous has posted a short review of the original show’s first episode, starring John Nettles.

• Classic Film and TV Café revisits 1973’s “gritty, urban cop picture,” The Seven-Ups, starring Roy Scheider and featuring a 10-minute car chase that’s arguably “the best … in movie history.”

• In the wake of America’s most recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio—and Republican Donald Trump’s resistance to gun reforms—The Washington Post’s Ronald G. Shafer looks back in this piece to the 1930s, when a rash of gangsters wielding Thompson submachine guns convinced a very different president, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, to champion what was known unofficially as the “Anti-Machine Gun Bill.” As Shafer recalls, “Rather than a federal ban on machine guns, the Roosevelt administration proposed taxing the high-powered weapons virtually out of existence. It would place a $200 tax on the purchase of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. The tax—equal to about $3,800 today—was steep at a time when the average annual income was about $1,780.” Although “Congress eventually stripped the bill of regulations on pistols and revolvers,” it “passed the firearms act in June [1934[, and Roosevelt signed it into law along with more than 100 other bills.” Why do the White House and Congress today lack the same sort of courage to take decisive action in defense of American lives?

Bullet Points: Pre-Book Lovers Day Edition

• In late July, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced its shortlists of nominees for the 2019 Dagger Awards, in nine categories. Now comes news that the CWA is adding a 10th category to that set of annual prizes: the Dagger for Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year. Shotsmag Confidential says that “Publishers and specific imprints are being nominated by a representative group of leading book reviewers, booksellers, festival organizers, bloggers, literary agents and journalists,” and a shortlist of contenders for this new Dagger will be made known “later this summer.” The winners of all the 2019 Dagger Awards are supposed to be declared during a special ceremony, in London, on October 24.

• British author and critic Mike Ripley has now posted two different tributes to Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, before dying on July 31 at age 77. The first of those can be found in The Guardian, and covers all the highlights of Berlins’ long career; the second, more personal remembrance was posted in Shots.

• While we’re on the subject of passings, let me mention that Chris Sullivan, who writes the blog Morse, Lewis and Endeavour, states on his Facebook page that Barrington Pheloung—best known to Rap Sheet readers for composing the hypnotic theme for the TV series Inspector Morse and its spin-offs—died (also on July 31) from influenza. “Death from influenza at Barrington’s age,” remarks Sullivan, “normally means there was some underlying health problems.” No specific cause of death had previously been released.

• Well, I have finally done it: added a “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” subsection to The Rap Sheet’s already extensive blogroll. You will find it by scrolling down past the “General Crime Fiction” section in the right-hand column. For the time being, there are only 19 podcasts listed there—those that were recommended by readers. But I’m willing to add more, as the field grows and additional podcast discoveries are made. I hope you like this addition to the page.

• The fifth and final episode of Grantchester, Season 4, will air in the States this coming Sunday evening as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. (Don’t panic: the program has already been renewed for a fifth season.) I’ve watched that cozyish historical mystery drama ever since it debuted on this side of the Atlantic back in January 2015, and have enjoyed it for the most part. Enough so, in fact, that I recently picked up The Road to Grantchester (Bloomsbury), author James Runcie’s prequel novel to the show inspired by his six previous mysteries. I wrote a short review of said work for the newsletter distributed by Madison Books, a Seattle neighborhood bookshop with which I am associated, and am embedding it below:

The Road to Grantchester
By James Runcie
Now, during PBS-TV’s latest run of the British mystery series Grantchester, is an ideal time to dive into this prequel novel, which recalls the circuitous path protagonist Sidney Chambers took from being a Cambridge classics student to becoming an Anglican vicar-cum-sleuth. As World War II consumes Europe, Chambers and his irrepressible friend Robert Kendall join the Scots Guards and are sent to the Italian front, where their ability to maintain optimism amid unrelenting carnage is sorely tested. Crucial to Chambers’ efforts is “Rev Nev” Finnie, an Episcopal chaplain with whom he engages in philosophical discussions—talks that prepare him for Kendall’s subsequent battlefield death and his own return home. Back in England, Chambers finds himself guilt-ridden for having survived, and at a loss to deal with Kendall’s coquettish younger sister, Amanda. Others expect Chambers to become a teacher or diplomat, but his search for peace leads him instead into the priesthood. There’s little crime-solving here, but author Runcie excels at evoking the climate of warfare, and his investigations of the human mind and heart will feel familiar to any Grantchester fan.

• Happy 10th anniversary to The View from the Blue House!

• Happy 100th birthday (belatedly) to Jerusalem-born actor Nehemiah Persoff, whose face was once ubiquitous in U.S. films and TV shows—everything from The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone to The Name of the Game, The Mod Squad, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to Wikipedia, Persoff experienced health problems in the 1980s and “retired from acting in 1999” to devote his full time to painting. “He currently lives with his wife, Thia, in Cambria, California.

• And though this also comes late, I want to acknowledge the 75th anniversary of the release of Double Indemnity (1944), co-written by director Billy Wilder and author Raymond Chandler. “That great movie …,” explains blogger George Kelley, “ignited a series of noir movies in the post-World War II era. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novel of the same name (which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine, starting with the February 1936 issue). Fred MacMurray portrays an insurance salesman who fails for the Wrong Woman. Crafty Barbara Stanwyck plays a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead (and that she had the insurance money, too). Savvy Edward G. Robinson plays an insurance claims adjuster whose job is to investigate suspicious claims.” With a cast like that, how can a movie go wrong?

• National Public Radio celebrates Double Indemnity, too.

• Can’t get enough of Steely Dan—both the classic rock band and new stories influenced by its song catalogue? Then you’re definitely in luck: Brian Thornton, the Seattle-based editor of Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan (Down & Out) has let it be known on Facebook that a sequel is being readied for late October publication. Also to be published by Down & Out, under the title A Beast Without a Name: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, this second volume will feature contributions by a “Merry Band of Dan Enthusiast[s]” including Steve Brewer, Bill Cameron (writing as W.H. Cameron), Reed Farrel Coleman, Naomi Hirahara, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Thomas Hottle (writing as Jim Winter).

• Short-story writer Carol Westron considers the sport of fishing as it was portrayed in Golden Age Detective Fiction.

• LaBrava is among my favorite Elmore Leonard novels (a preference shared by author-screenwriter Nora Ephron), so it was good to see Christi Daugherty revisit that 1984 yarn recently as part of Criminal Element’s series on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. “Among the books that did not win the year LaBrava was given the Edgar,” Daugherty observes, “were John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl and Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, both of which are considered classics now. Both are books I’ve read and loved. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I came into this review with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, expecting to find LaBrava somehow inferior. How could this dingy little tale of a sociopath planning to set up a fading film star be better than those giants of twentieth-century fiction? Reading this book changed my mind.”

• Curtis Evans (Murder in the Closet) offers an excellent piece, in CrimeReads, about “The Rise and Fall and Restoration of Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case.”

• While you’re browsing CrimeReads, don’t miss Derek Milman’s essay on “How North by Northwest Changed Cinema Forever.”

• This comes from In Reference to Murder:

The cast has been set for Agatha Christie Limited’s The Pale Horse, the latest TV adaptation from Dame Agatha for the BBC. The Pale Horse centers on Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) as he tries to uncover the mystery of a list of names found in the shoe of a dead woman. His investigation leads him to the peculiar village of Much Deeping and also to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives by means of the dark arts, but as the mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.

• Meanwhile, blogger Jerry House draws my attention to a 1982 adaptation of that same 1961 mystery novel by Christie, produced as part of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series (1974-1982). As House explains, this 45-minute version “features the talents of Earl Hammond and Mandel Kramer, with Elspeth Eric and Marianne Sanders, and was introduced by Tammy Grimes. ‘The Pale Horse’ was produced and directed by Himan Brown. The script by Roy Winsor veered from Christie’s original novel. Winsor was an established radio soap-opera writer before he went on to create some of television’s most well-known soaps: Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He also co-created Another Life and was the head writer for Somerset. Winsor also wrote three mystery novels and received an Edgar Award for The Corpse That Walked in 1975.” You can listen to this radio version of “The Pale Horse” either on YouTube or on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site.

• Someday I hope to find time enough to listen to all 1,399 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Like any radio or TV series, it wasn’t perfect, but I remember being mesmerized by many of those old episodes. I used to listen to them at night after going to bed, my earplug firmly planted into whichever ear wasn’t most easily seen, should my mother decide to double-check that I was actually asleep. Host E.G. Marshall (formerly of The Defenders and The Bold Ones) was an ideal—and appropriately spooky—host for most of the program’s run, and the episodes attracted a wide variety of talent, many performers having blossomed during the so-called Golden Age of Radio (the 1920s through the 1940s). Thankfully, all of those episodes are still available today—for free!—through the aforementioned CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site. Too bad I’m no longer young enough to stay awake into the wee hours of the night, listening.

• Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of Lawfare, suggests in The New York Times that people read the Mueller Report as a detective story. It “may turn out to be more of a film noir than anything else,” she writes. “The detective successfully uncovers the plot, only to discover that the society around him is too rotten to do anything about it. For all the missing pieces in this story, the issue is less whether it can be told and more whether anyone cares to listen.”

• Author interviews worth your time: Fresh Air host Terry Gross speaks with Laura Lippman about her impressive new Baltimore-set novel, Lady in the Lake; Hallie Ephron (Careful What You Wish For) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries; John Parker chats with John Connolly (A Game of Ghosts) for Shotsmag Confidential; and MysteryPeople has a few questions for S.J. Rozan (Paper Son).

• Finally, it’s true: tomorrow is National Book Lovers Day here in the States. But really, every day is Book Lovers Day for yours truly.

Digging the Art of “Chinatown”

It was 45 years ago today—on June 20, 1974—that French-Polish film director Roman Polanski’s now renowned period detective film, Chinatown, was first released by Paramount Pictures. I didn’t see it until years later, however, when, as a member of my college’s movie-selection committee, I helped bring Chinatown to campus for a two-night showing on a big theater screen. As a result of that effort, I wound up with a copy of the original promotional poster shown above, which is now prominently displayed in my office.

The painting for that placard—which the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) says is “arguably the greatest movie poster of all-time”—is credited to Pennsylvania-born artist Jim Pearsall. His image of Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, both of them at risk of being upstaged by a lazy drift of cigarette smoke, was reportedly inspired by a famous 1890s advertisement for JOB cigarette rolling papers, created by Czech graphic artist Alphonse Mucha.

While Pearsall’s Chinatown poster is unquestionably the best remembered, there have been alternative notices created over the last four decades, several recalling a painful-to-watch nose-cutting scene in the flick. I’m embedding a dozen of the most memorable examples below, including the one at the very bottom—a European version created by prolific American artist Richard Amsel.















READ MORE: “The Most Iconic Nose Injuries in the History of (Crime) Film,” by Dwyer Murphy (CrimeReads); “The Big Town” (Pulp International).

12 Months, 12 Fronts

Yesterday marked the official 10th birthday of our sister blog, Killer Coves. However, the celebration will continue for the next week and a half, as Killer Covers goes about posting “a year’s worth of books bearing titles that include the names of months—our own ‘calendar of crime,’ if you will.” Click here to keep up with the whole series.

Still a Source of Macabre Curiosity

It was 72 years ago today, on January 15, 1947, that the victim of one of the most notorious unsolved murders in the long history of Los Angeles, California, was discovered. She was a 22-year-old New England-born waitress, Elizabeth Short, who is best remembered by a nickname of disputed provenance: the Black Dahlia.

I wrote about her slaying and the subsequent decades of its mythologizing two years ago on this page, in association with the 70th anniversary of the crime. More recently, though, retired Los Angeles Times reporter Larry Harnisch has been revisiting Short’s case and the all-too-frequently flawed record of its details in his L.A. history blog, The Daily Mirror. Here, for instance, Harnisch cites “five obvious errors” made by modern writers attempting to recall that case. In two other posts—here and here—he considers the question, “Are There Any Good Books on the Black Dahlia Case?” His conclusion: “No. But there are a lot of really, really bad ones and you should avoid them all or you will just have to unlearn everything. And your head may explode from all the nonsense.” Meanwhile, in a couple of other blog posts—accessible here and here—Harnisch considers a parallel query: “Are There Any Good Black Dahlia Sites on the Internet?” Again, it’s probably best to lower your expectations. And in this post, Harnisch debunks talk of Short having met her death at the hands of physician George H. Hodel, a theory promulgated by Hodel’s own son, Steve, in his 2003 book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder.

Harnisch is said to be working on his own history of the Black Dahlia. We can only to see it before too much more time has passed.

READ MORE: “January 15, 1947: A Werewolf on the Loose,” by Joan Renner (Deranged L.A. Crimes); “Black Dahlia: Common Myths About the Black Dahlia and Their Origins,” by Larry Harnisch (The Daily Mirror); “Black Dahlia: Complete Guide on Elizabeth Short, Related Books and Movies” (Mystery Tribune).