Thanks to recent holiday disruptions, we are a bit tardy in bringing you the winners of the 2019 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.” We trust your enjoyment of the results will in no way be lessened by that delay.
There are 12 categories of victors, the most pertinent to this blog’s readers being Crime/Detective. Top honors go to Jeremy Das of Loughborough, England, for the following above-the-call-of-duty tale:
Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable, fast-acting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy, did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.
There are also half a dozen Dishonorable Mention recipients in that same category, our favorite three being these:
Olivia followed her breasts into my office where I was studying the dead flies on the window sill and dropped a large brown envelope on my desk, which rearranged the dust as it came to rest next to my right elbow, causing me to lose interest in the flies as I watched her walk away, watched carefully while wondering if the motion of her hips could bring a dead man back to life, which led to wondering what she could do to a man who was still alive. — Will Dennehy, Cambridge, Maryland Detective Wilhelm Schmidt’s raspy voice poured through the telephone receiver like a dump truck of gravel unburdening its load—much like the trucks that worked around the clock at Rohrer’s Quarry off of 1-81, transporting payloads of lime, sandstone, crushed rock, and gypsum—though with Detective Schmidt’s heavy German accent, excavation on its own would not suffice, and a second, albeit entirely different industry would need to be invoked to really paint a crystal clear picture of his voice. — Cody Hanna, Lancaster, Pennsylvania Prisoner #4420991 selected two large snow cones for his pre-execution last meal, much to everyone’s surprise, but #4420991 knew that death by lethal injection would come as sweet relief when balanced against the snow cone headache he expected to have. — Greg Homer, Diamond Springs, California
As you’ll recall, this competition—now in it 37th year—is named in honor of Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who in 1830 began a novel with the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night.” So naturally, there’s a Dark & Stormy category. 2019’s honoree in that field is Andrew Lundberg of Los Angeles, California, for this entry:
It was a dark and stormy night, and since this was Miami in July and everyone had left their convertible tops down, the rain fell in Cadillacs.
However, we’re quite fond of this Dishonorable Mention:
It was a Dark & Stormy Night; the rain fell in torrents outside the Breast Western—the country-themed strip club where the exotic dance duo of Stormy and Dark rattled the house (for it was a Tuesday), and fiercely agitated the lustful flames of the patrons who struggled in the darkness to rearrange their Wranglers. — Coby J. Scott, Hollywood, California
By the way, the Bulwer-Lytton contest’s 2019 Grand Prize winner is Maxwell Archer of Mount Pleasant, Ontario, Canada, for this gem:
Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
Again, you can enjoy all of this year’s finalists here.
• Meanwhile, the British site Crime Time is up with its own “books of the year” choices. As is true also of CrimeReads’ lists, there are few unexpected picks among Crime Time’s top 10. But if you read down a bit further, into the preferences of individual contributors, there are some more interesting suggestions, among them Andrew Williams’ Witchfinder, Robert
Jeffrey’s Man at the Window, Ray Celestin’s The Mobster’s Lament, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Blood & Sugar (which I highlighted in my own top-five rundown).
• Abby Endler, author of the blogCrime by the Book, provides Criminal Element with a catalogue of 12 titles—one chosen from every month of 2019—that she believes deserve
particular applause. Winning her approval are Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, Alice Feeney’s I Know Who You Are, Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door, Sara Shepard’s Reputation, and eight others.
• MysteryPeople, the crime-fiction department of Austin’s famously large and commercially independent BookPeople store, is up with its “five favorite Texas crime novels of 2019.”
• The various contributors to Crime Fiction Lover are still in the process of announcing their “top five books of 2019.”
• And in its concluding episode of 2019, the Paperback Warrior podcast “revisit[s] the greatest books we read this year.” Keep in mind that the Paperback Warrior blog’s focus is on older works (predominately crime and thriller fiction), so don’t expect any overlap between its “greatest books” and those mentioned above.
• Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph reports that “with just days to go before it would have to close its doors forever, San Diego’s science fiction, fantasy, young adult, mystery, and horror bookstore Mysterious Galaxy has found a new location and new owners: Jenni Marchisotto and Matthew Berger have bought the store and will run it at its new home, 3555 Rosecrans St., Suite #107, San Diego, CA 92110. Everyone’s keeping their jobs, too. It’s a Christmas miracle.”
• Back in August, we alerted you to the start of the third annual Six-Word Mystery Contest, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It offered prizes to writers who could condense a crime story into just half a dozen words. The victors in five categories have now been announced, but the overall winner is Jeffrey Lockwood, an author and professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming. His punchy submission:
36D, 44 magnum, 20 to life
A press release says that “forty writers from 10 states and Australia submitted 211 six-word mysteries to this year’s competition.”
• Actor Danny Aiello may be remembered best for his roles in movies such as Moonstruck (1987) and Do the Right Thing (1989), but when I heard that he died last week at age 86, my thoughts jumped immediately to his 1997-1998 CBS-TV crime drama, Dellaventura. Yes, that 13-episode series—in which he played Anthony Dellaventura, a former New York City police detective turned private eye, who “rounds up a bunch of crackerjack crime-fighters to right wrongs that are beyond the reach of the criminal justice system”—was derided variously as a knock-off of either The Equalizer or Telly Savalas’ Kojak. However, the Daily News’ Denis Hamil argued in 1997 that the Dellaventura role was “a perfect fit” for Aiello. And as you can see in this episode of the program, “Above Reproach” (the only one I could find on YouTube, with a guest appearance by Tony Franciosa), it boasted an engaging dark air leavened by moments of humor. Aiello seemed fully comfortable leading a cast that also included his son Ricky and Anne Ramsey from Mad About You. And the opening title sequence—featuring a version of Dion DiMucci’s classic “I Was Born to Cry,” and embedded below—set the show’s tone splendidly.
• While searching around for Dellaventura installments, I stumbled across this video collection of memorable clips from the 1984-1987 CBS series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, in which star Stacy Keach catches too-brief looks (in multiple episodes) at an alluring young brunette—referred to simply as “The Face”—“who popped into frame and just as quickly popped out again, much to the chagrin of Mike Hammer, who was dying to meet her.” As the blog TV Character Nicknames reminds us, “The general public was also kept in the dark as to her identity until her credit line appeared on an episode of ABC’s Perfect Strangers. It revealed that ‘The Face’ was model-actress Donna Denton. Finally, after three years of just glimpses, Mike Hammer got to meet the mysterious woman in the spring 1987 episode entitled ‘A Face in the
Dark.’” (Actually, the title was “A Face in the Night,” and it was broadcast originally on May 13, 1987). Of all the women Keach’s Hammer knew—or, in this instance, didn’t know—Denton’s persistently elusive lovely remains my favorite.
• A very sad change for Seattle: First and Pike News—formerly Read All About It—a newsstand landmark in the city’s historic Pike Place Market, is slated to close on December 31 after four decades in business. Back in the days when I covered the media business for Seattle Weekly, this corner shop was one of my most regular stops, a place where I could pick up not only U.S. magazines and newspapers, but also foreign publications. Want to learn more about that enterprise? Read all about it here and here.
Universal Pictures is developingTapping the Source, based on the “surfer noir” novel by Kem Nunn. The story follows a man who heads to Huntington Beach [California] to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her—a search that takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers.
You can check out Rap Sheet contributor Steven Nester’s review of Nunn’s 1984 first novel by clicking here.
• A note in Elizabeth Foxwell’s The Bunburyist leads us to a post on the British Film Institute’s Web site in which freelance writer Pamela Hutchinson selects “10 great whodunnit mysteries,” suspect-packed pictures “in which the audience plays sleuth.”
• The site Best Thrillers has named what it contends are “The 21 Best Legal Thrillers of the 21st Century,” including Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, Marcia Clark’s Blood Defense, Max Allan Collins’ Supreme Justice, and Lisa Cottoline’s Corrupted.
• If you’re planning to attend next year’s Bouchercon in Sacramento, California (October 15 to 18), consider registering by December 31. Until then, the cost is $200; on January 1, it will climb to $225.
Acclaimed screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, has adapted two of international bestseller Peter James’ award-winning novels for ITV from the Roy Grace series, starring John Simm in the lead role of the tenacious detective.
Entitled Grace, the two feature-length screenplays will narrate the first two stories in the series, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, which introduced Brighton based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.,
• Lastly, yesterday added a sad but necessary event to America’s timeline: the impeachment of Donald John Trump. Sad, because the office of the U.S. president is traditionally due respect, but Trump’s corrupt and unconstitutional efforts to pressure a foreign country (Ukraine) to interfere in the 2020 presidential campaign for his personal gain, and then his going to extraordinary lengths to cover up that perfidy, brings shame upon the office. Necessary, because as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-New York) put it, “We cannot rely on the next election as a remedy for presidential misconduct when the president threatens the very integrity of that election. He has shown us he will continue to put his selfish interests above the good of the country. We must act without delay.” I didn’t vote for Republican Trump in 2016, and I never shall; I don’t believe he’s fit, either emotionally or intellectually, to fill the position he holds. What I have learned about him over the last few years—that he’s a bigot, a misogynist, a narcissist, and a serial sex abuser; that he cheats on his wives and demands loyalty from others, but will turn on anyone when the going gets tough; that he’s a braggart and a bully, a whiner and a con man; that he’s petty and paranoia, driven by grievance and a sucker for conspiracy theories; that he’s a habitual liar—none of those characteristics commends him as a leader or a role model, or even as a man. Trump’s mendacity is particularly pernicious. It drew special attention earlier this week, when The Washington Postcounted the lies he’s told over the last three years, and came up with 7,688. One of those became Politifact’s 2019 Lie of the Year: his assertion that the still-anonymous whistle-blower who first drew public attention to Trump’s Ukraine scandal was “almost completely wrong.” A more honorable, more thoughtful, and more experienced president would not be due such condemnations.
Cyprus-born author Alex Michaelides’ first novel, The Silent Patient (Celadon), has been chosen through online voting as the winner of this year’s Goodreads Choice Award for Best Mystery and Thriller novel. Also included among the finalists were Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (Doubleday), Alex North’s The Whisper Man (Celadon), and Adrian McKinty’s The Chain (Mulholland).
There were 20 categories of contenders in this year’s Goodreads competition. You’ll find all of the winners and their rivals here.
New York City author Walter Mosley, best known for penning the esteemed Easy Rawlins mystery series, has won the 2019 Nero Award for Down the River unto the Sea (Mulholland), which marked the 2018 debut of another protagonist, police investigator-turned-prisoner-turned private eye Joe King Oliver. That announcement was made during the 42nd annual Black Orchid Weekend, which took place from December 6 to 8 in Manhattan.
The Nero has been presented annually, ever since 1979, by the New York-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization, The Wolfe Pack, to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.” This was the second time Mosley has taken home that prize. He previously captured the 2004 Nero for Fear Itself, the second book in his Fearless Jones series.
Also over this last weekend, the Wolfe Pack presented its 2019 Black Orchid Novella Award—more familiarly known as the BONA—to author Ted Burge for his story “The Red Taxi.” That honor includes the publication of Burge’s novella in a future issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which co-sponsors the BONA.
The Bookseller, a British magazine covering the publishing industry, brings word that “Samantha Harvey’s The Western Wind (Vintage) has won the £1,000 2019 Staunch Book Prize. The medieval mystery thriller follows priest John Reve as he tries to resolve the death of a wealthy villager under the suspicious eye of the regional dean.”
Also competing for that award were Liar’s Candle, by August Thomas (Simon & Schuster); Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne (Vintage); Honey, by Brenda Brooks (ECW Press); and The Godmother, by Hannelore Cayre (Old Street).
In Reference to Murder reminds us that the controversial Staunch Prize, “now in its second year, is for a thriller novel in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered.” The £1,000 award was set up in 2018 by author Bridget Lawless. Last year’s winner was On the Java Ridge, by Jock Serong.
Last night in the city of Melbourne, Sisters in Crime Australia handed out its 26th annual Scarlet Stiletto Awards for short fiction “written by Australian women and featuring a strong female protagonist.” Although I have not yet been able to locate a press release declaring which books and authors won, I have sought to piece together a complete list (below) based on information featured on the organization’s Facebook page. If there are any errors here, I shall correct them once there’s official word of the winners.
Swinburne University Award 1st Prize: “At Length I Would Be Avenged,” by Blanche Clark
Simon & Schuster Award 2nd Prize: “Dead End,”
by Philomena Horsley
The Sun Bookshop/Wild Dingo Press Award 3rd Prize: “The Fossil Hunters,” by Bridgette Cummings
Melbourne Athenaeum Library Award for Best “Body in the Library” Story: Winner—“At Length I Would Be Avenged,” by Blanche Clark. Runner-up—“Death in the Catacombs,” by Kelly Gardiner
International Association of Forensic Linguists Award for Best Forensic Linguistics Story: “Marie’s Voice,” by Jaimee Sharrett
Kerry Greenwood Award for Best Malice Domestic Story:
“Screwed,” by Caroline de Costa
Every Cloud Productions Award for Best Mystery with History Story: “Loose Lips,” by Eugenie Pusenjak
Writers Victoria Crime and Punishment Award for the Story with the Most Satisfying Retribution: “Plenty More Fish,” by Kristin Murdock
HQ Fiction Award for Best Romantic Suspense Story: “Sweet Baby Dies,” by Sandi Wallace
Clan Destine Press Award for Best Cross-genre Story:
“Manny,” by Natalie Conyer
Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival Award for Best Bushranger Story: “The Emerald Lady,” by Missy Jane Birch
Liz Navratil Award for Best Story with a Disabled Protagonist: “Dead End,” by Philomena Horsley
Scriptworks Award for a Great Film Idea: “Lifeboat,” by Janette Ellis
Elephant Tree Publishing Award for Best Young Writer: “Death by Couch,” by Lyra Philp
If you’d like to see this year’s Stiletto Awards entry form (PDF), telling how much money is given to each prize winner, click here.
• We’ve now entered the concluding round of Goodreads’ voting process to select the winners of its 2019 Choice Awards. The 10 finalists in the Best
Mystery and Thriller category include Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key, Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, Jane Harper’s The Lost Man, Sally Hepworth’s The Mother-in-Law, and Harlan Coben’s Run Away. Click here before December 2 to make your preferences known. Winners in this and 19 other book categories are supposed to be announced on Tuesday, December 10.
• Meanwhile, Amazon has chosenThe Silent Patient as its “best mystery and thriller of the year.” That site’s top 20 picks are here.
• I’m very pleased to hear that British social historian Hallie Rubenhold has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction for her book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. It’s an excellent work that overturns some of our most common beliefs about the Ripper’s “canonical victims.”
• Max Allan Collins mentions, in his most recent blog post, that he’s concocting a follow-up to his 1987 novel Spree, which has long been the penultimate entry in his series about professional
thief Nolan. That protagonist last appeared in 1999’s Mourn the Living.
• Brash Books publisher Lee Goldberg reports on Facebook that a never-before-published 13th installment in the Ralph Dennis’ Jim Hardman crime series is set for release early next year. He explains:
For decades, it was believed there were only 12 books in the late Ralph Dennis’ legendary and acclaimed Hardman series, which was published in paperback in the 1970s and that inspired a generation of crime writers, including Joe R. Lansdale (Hap & Leonard) and screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon). But this summer, we discovered an unpublished 13th Hardman manuscript, written by Dennis in London in 1977, that was stashed away decades ago in a cardboard box in an attic in Chapel Hill, NC.
Brash Books is publishing the novel, All Kinds of Ugly, in February 2020 with an afterword that details the exciting discovery and editing of this final, long-lost adventure in the Hardman series.
Don Johnson, set to reprise the title role in USA Network’s upcoming Nash Bridges revival, confirmed today that longtime co-star Cheech Marin will be back for the reboot reprising his role as Inspector Joe Dominguez. The original series, which ran on CBS from 1996 to 2001, starred Johnson as an investigator in an elite Special Investigations Unit of the San Francisco Police Department.
Hmm. Johnson will turn 70 years of age this coming December 15. Might that not make him a tad too old to again be chasing through the Bay Area after big-time criminals? You can watch the main title sequence from the original Nash Bridgeshere.
• Oh, no. Not a Columbo revival too. Can’t we just be happy with Peter Falk’s long-running classic series? Yes, at least for now. Apparently, Steven Moffat—the co-creator of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock—was hoping to reboot Columbo for new viewers, but was “thwarted by red tape,” according to The Columbophile.
• As I mentioned previously on this page, I’ve been looking forward to watching BBC Two’s three-part production of Vienna Blood, based on Frank Tallis’ Max Liebermann/Oskar Rheinhardt novels. So I was disappointed to read The Killing Times’ take on Episode 1 of the show, which calls it “pretty much a compendium of clichés, handsomely dressed but fairly pedestrian” that “doesn’t do much original with its source material.” The review continues: “All the expected components are present and correct—a bit of psychoanalysis, a bit of hypnotism, a bit of fascism—and the authentic locations bring something to the party, but neither lead performance is compelling, and we feel we’ve found out everything there is to know about the two characters (one insecure and driven, the other grief-stricken by the death of his daughter). … So will Vienna Blood prove to have hidden depths of meaning in the next two episodes? Well, as Sigmund Freud famously probably didn’t say, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’”
• The Killing Times also brings news that British performer Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Child 44) will star as the politically incorrect and
flagrantly flatulent Jackson Lamb in an Apple TV+ adaptation of Mick Herron’s modern espionage series. To be called Slow Horses (the title of Herron’s first book in that series), it will follow “a team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5—Slough
House. Lamb is the brilliant but irascible leader of the spies who end up in Slough House due to their career-ending mistakes.” No word yet on a premiere
date.
• And here is the trailer for Dare Me, the USA Network program based on Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel of that same name. Dare Me, which will follow the lives of some competitive high school cheerleaders in “a small Midwestern town,” is set to debut on December 29, with Abbott as one of its executive producers.
• The “social cataloguing” Web site Goodreads has opened an online voting process to select the winners of its 2019 Choice Awards. The initial round of polling will continue through tomorrow, Sunday, November 10; a second stage will run from November 12 to 17, with the third one extending from November 19 through December 2. Winners are supposed to be announced on Tuesday, December 10. There are 20 categories of contestants, but those vying for Mystery & Thriller honors can be seen—and voted on—right here. Among the nominees are Adrian McKinty’s The Chain, Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key, Jane Harper’s The Lost Man, Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer.
• One of my happiest mail deliveries of late brought a copy of UK critic Barry Forshaw’s brand-new work, Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide (Oldcastle). I have been hearing about this endeavor for the last year, as Forshaw plumped and polished his tally of authors and individual books to include. (An appendix in this 448-page paperback features my personal suggestions of 27 writers Forshaw didn’t have room to address elsewhere in his text.) But the results surpass what I had been expecting. Although I might have made some different choices as far as individual recommendations go (why promote David Hewson’s 2003 Nic Costa tale, A Season for the Dead, but none of his equally gripping Pieter Vos novels? And I’d have substituted Robert Wilson’s “grimly bewitching” The Blind Man of Seville for its sequel, The Silent and the Damned), the author’s portrayal of this genre’s international evolution and current breadth is—like his literary taste—outstanding. And rewardingly diverse. I’m particularly pleased to see less-prominent yarns such as Anthony J. Quinn’s The Listeners, Jonathan Gash’s Spend Game, and James Sallis’ Ghost of a Flea given a boost in these pages. Together with mini-reviews of books (and of films adapted from best-sellers), Forshaw offers brief but percipient biographies of numerous authors, from Ross Macdonald and P.D. James to Kathy Reichs and Alan Williams, as well as short features on subjects ranging from “Sleuths on Screen” to “Ethnic Crime Writing.” This is a work to savor, though it’s not necessary to read it all at once; better to dip in and out casually, finding suggestions of authors you’ve never tackled and insights into works that merit your greater attention. The Times of London callsCrime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide “a labour of literary love,” and it’s definitely that. Yet this is also a product of sly scholarship, enticing veteran mystery readers to expand their familiarity with the field, and gently—with a depth of knowledge and wit—giving those less well acquainted with crime fiction a firm grounding on which to build their experience. Forshaw’s magnum opus was released this week in Great Britain; an American edition of the same book is due in June 2020.
• This coming Monday, November 11, will be Veterans Day here in the States (Remembrance Day in the UK). To honor the occasion, Mystery Fanfare has posted links to lists of Veterans Day-related mysteries.
The shortlist for the second annual Staunch Book Prize was announced recently. The list includes Only to Sleep (in the Philip Marlowe series) by Lawrence Osborne; the 15th-century literary mystery, The Western Wind, by Samantha Harvey; Liar’s Candle by August Thomas; Honey by Brenda Brooks; and The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre. The £1,000 award was set up in 2018 by author Bridget Lawless for the best thrillers in which no woman gets beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped, or murdered. The inaugural prize attracted criticism from authors such as Val McDermid and Sophie Hannah, while CrimeFest organizers withdrew an offer of a complimentary pass and panel appearance for the winning writer. BBC News gathered some authors together to share their thoughts on the controversy.
This year’s Staunch Prize winner should be declared on November 25, which—not coincidentally—will be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
• “An expert panel” assembled by the BBC has chosen “100 novels that have shaped our world,” part of a yearlong British effort to “spark debate about the novels that have had a big impact on us all personally and culturally.” That campaign kicks off tonight at 9 p.m. with the premiere of a three-part BBC Two TV series also titled Novels That Shaped Our World. While I didn’t anticipate crime fiction would dominate this roster, there are several books from the genre included, among them Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, James Ellroy’s American Tabloid, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.
• To learn more about the original, 1985-1989 CBS-TV series The Equalizer, which starred English actor Edward Woodward as an ex-CIA operative who uses his skills to “[help] people who really need it, as penance for his previous life,” click here.
• What was the best episode of Columbo,
Peter Falk’s long-running crime drama? That question could draw many opinions—as it did here. But the unidentified writer behind that wonderful blog, The Columbophile, seems to harbor no doubt as to the correct answer: “The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case,” first broadcast as part of the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie on May 22, 1977, and guest-starring Theo Bikel as “a genius accountant … [who] has been embezzling funds in order to keep his high-maintenance wife in fine frocks and tropical getaways.” The blog goes on to describe that 40th Columbo installment as “70 minutes of television featuring major plot holes, an almost complete lack of cat-and-mouse suspense and, let’s
face it, an episode title so contrived as to be ridiculous. Yet Bye-Bye rises above all this to deliver a thoroughly absorbing and entertaining
adventure that doesn’t just salvage Columbo‘s sixth season—it proves that the show could be as good as, if not better than, ever before.”
• Here’s more proof that reading is beneficial. “Studies have shown,” says BookRiot, “that readers are more empathetic and that it can improve cognitive function. A new study by SuperSummary, an online resource that provides in-depth study guides, suggests reading has yet another benefit: self-identified readers are more satisfied with their lives than those who don’t identify as readers.”
• Earlier this week, author Andrea Bartz (The Lost Night) posted, on Twitter, “a very useful breakdown of why it’s important to preorder from independent bookshops.” Literary Hub offers the highlights.
• I’m very much looking forward to watching the BBC Two TV production Vienna Blood, a three-part mini-series filmed in the Austrian capital and based at least in part on Frank Tallis’ 2006 novel of that same name. As The Killing Times explains, “It’s set in 1900s Vienna and follows Max Liebermann [played by Matthew Beard], a brilliant young English doctor, studying under the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. When Max comes into contact with Oskar Rheinhardt [Jürgen Maurer], an Austrian Detective Inspector struggling with a strange case, he offers his assistance. Max’s extraordinary skills of perception and forensics, and his deep understanding of human behaviour and deviance, help Oskar solve some of Vienna’s most mysterious and deadly cases.” Vienna Blood is scheduled to debut in Great Britain on Monday, November 18. I haven’t seen word yet of when the show will be broadcast in the States; for the time being, I must content myself with the short introductory trailer below.
• By the way, this Vienna Blood is not to be confused with the identically titled 1942 German operetta film (no prominent crimes involved), which I learned only today was “one of the most financially
successful films of the Nazi era.”
• Also due out from the BBC, though not until next year, is an adaptation of Ian McGuire’s historical thriller, The North Water (2016). That three-part TV drama, says The Killing Times, “tells the story of Patrick Sumner [played by Jack O’Connell], a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as ship’s doctor on a whaling expedition to the Arctic. On board he meets the harpooner Henry Drax [Colin Farrell], a brutish killer whose amorality has been shaped to fit the harshness of his world. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself in a male-dominated world, on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath. In search of redemption, his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.” That same Killing Times link contains a few early images from the production.
• Speaking of movie stills, here’s one (and, sadly, only one) from Perry Mason, the forthcoming HBO-TV “origin story” about Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous Los Angeles defense attorney, set in 1931. I have written previously about this project here.
• Finally, Deadline reports that British broadcast network ITV “is in advanced development on a sweeping adaptation of Lindsey Davis’ Falco Roman private detective novels after the project was originally in with the BBC. … [The lead character] Falco is described by Davis as a ‘laid-back’ operator whose adventures take place across the Roman Empire in 70 AD and beyond.”
• Cincinnati, Ohio, writer T.S. Hottie—better known to crime-fiction fans as “Jim Winter” (a sometime Rap Sheet contributor)—has spent the last several months rewatching, and posting about, the James Bond film series. He began in July with Sean Connery’s Dr. No (1962) and on Friday commented on Pierce Brosnan’s Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), the 18th installment in that profitable spy-fi franchise. Hottie originally predicted his marathon rewatch escapade would take him six months, but with that deadline having already passed, it’s time for a reassessment. Click here to read all of his Bond posts.
• Talk about forgotten crime dramas! Who recalls CBS-TV’s Brenner,
the father-and-son police drama starring Edward Binns and James Broderick, which—with breaks between spurts of episode broadcasts—took five years to roll out completely, from 1959 to 1964?
• I, for one, did not know this: The first book banned in America was 1637’s New English Canaan, by English businessman Thomas Morton. The Millions observes that the book “mounted a harsh and heretical critique of Puritan customs and power structures that went far beyond what most New English settlers could accept. So they banned it …”
• Bill S. Ballinger (1912-1980)was an Iowa-born author, college professor, and
screenwriter. He penned standalone novels with titles such as The Wife of the Red-Haired Man (1957) and Not I, Said the Vixen (1965), along with episodes of TV shows such as M Squad, Mike Hammer, Ironside, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. In the 1960s, though, Ballinger also concocted a five-book succession of thrillers starring Joaquin Hawks, a U.S. secret agent of Native American heritage who reported to Horace Burke, CIA Director of Operations in Los Angeles. I have never taken the opportunity to read the Hawks yarns, but have certainly come across mentions of them from time to now. More recently, I found that Joe Kenney, who writes the Glorious Trash blog, has reviewed four of those works already, and will presumably soon enlighten us all about number five, The Spy in the Java Sea (1966). He remarks that “This is a good series,” though Ballinger’s characterization of Hawks is thin and “he really needs to cut back on the arbitrary travelogue stuff and feature some actual pulp espionage thrills.” Worth keeping an eye out for.
• While I haven’t yet seen the new Edward Norton picture, Motherless Brooklyn, I have been reading a lot about it recently: CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano muses on the difficulty of bringing Jonathan Lethem’s original 1999 novel to the silver screen in any coherent fashion; The Bowery Boys, a fine New York City history site, offers a rundown of “10 things to know” about the film’s 1950s setting before you buy your theater tickets; and Slate’s Marissa Martinelli breaks down the many ways in which this flick differs from Lethem’s book (“Edward Norton’s adaptation changes more than it keeps”).
• Yikes! I have been falling behind on my reading of Dervla McTiernan’s fiction. I really enjoyed that Irish-Australian writer’s inaugural novel, The Ruin (2018), but have not yet gotten around to cracking open its sequel, this year’s The Scholar. And now here comes a third tale featuring Galway police detective Cormac Reilly: The Good Turn, planned for publication in March 2020.
Back in December 2018, Bouchercon organizers announced that a new award would debut during their 2019 convention ... which was held late last week in Dallas, Texas. Called the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction—taking its name from the popular late author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries—it offered a first-place reward of $1,000 (plus prizes for second- and third-place winners) to stories “relating to Texas ... with an element of mystery or crime.”
Unfortunately, word of the winners has been quite slow in spreading. But here are their names at last, thanks to Erin Mitchell.
First Place: Joseph S. Walker, “The Last Man in Lafarge” Second Place: Jaap Boekestein, “Long Overdue” Third Place: Douglas Dorow, “Trust Me” Fourth Place: Dixon Hill, “Mi Corazón, Sin Cartero, Sin Timbre de la Puerta” (“My Heart, Sans Postman, Sans Doorbell”)
I’m confident Crider, a fan and writer of short stories himself, would be happy to see his memory celebrated in this fashion.
ADDENDUM: It should be noted that I have reached out to Crider contest coordinator Paula Benson, asking her to confirm these award details. However, I have so far received no response.)
You will doubtless recall that questions lingered after last Friday evening’s presentation, in Dallas, Texas, of the 2019 Shamus Awards. While three of the four winners were broadcast widely—including here—the recipient of this year’s Shamus for Best First Private Eye Novel was frustratingly difficult to identify. However, The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura this morning cleared up that mystery, as follows.
Best First Private Eye Novel: WINNER — The Best Bad Things, by Katrina Carrasco (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Also nominated: Broken Places, by Tracy Clark (Kensington); Last Looks, by Howard Michael Gould (Dutton); What Doesn’t Kill You, by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink); and Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne (Hogarth)
The annual Shamus Awards are sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America, and are usually distributed during Bouchercon.
* * *
Meanwhile, voting has begun in the competition for this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards. You have until Wednesday, November 13, to register your choices. There are 16 different categories of contenders, with those shortlisted for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year honors listed below:
— Rewind, by Catherine Ryan Howard
— Cruel Acts, by Jane Casey
— The Chain, by Adrian McKinty
— Twisted, by Steve Cavanagh
— The Wych Elm, by Tana French
— The Hiding Game, by Louise Phillips
Your votes can be registered here.
Winners will be announced at a “gala ceremony” in Dublin on Wednesday, November 30.
By this point, educator-author Lou Berney must be overjoyed that he sprang for the cost of his travel to Dallas, Texas. Over the course of this year’s Bouchercon, taking place in that city, his 2018 novel November Road won not only the Macavity Award for Best Novel and the Barry Award for Best Novel, but has now also captured the Anthony Award for Best Novel. Well worth the journey!
Last evening’s convention festivities also delivered a quartet of other Anthonys into the hands of deserving wordsmiths. Here are all of the 2019 Anthony Award recipients.
Best Novel:November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
Also nominated: Give Me Your Hand. by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown); Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur); Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); and Blackout, by Alex Segura (Polis)
Best First Novel: My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
Also nominated: Broken Places, by Tracy Clark (Kensington); Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus); What Doesn’t Kill You, by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink); and Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)
Best Paperback Original Novel: Under a Dark Sky, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)
Also nominated: Hollywood Ending, by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink); If I Die Tonight, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow); Hiroshima Boy, by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park); and A Stone’s Throw, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)
Best Short Story:
“The Grass Beneath My Feet,” by S.A. Cosby (Tough, August 20, 2018)
Also nominated: “Bug Appétit,” by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], November/December 2018); “Cold Beer No Flies,” by Greg Herren (from Florida Happens: Tales of Mystery, Mayhem, and Suspense from the Sunshine State, edited by Greg Herren; Three Rooms Press); “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (EQMM, July/August 2018); and “The Best Laid Plans,” by Holly West (from Florida Happens)
Best Critical or Non-fiction Work:I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
Also nominated: Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, by Alice Bolin (Morrow); Mastering Plot Twists: How to Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure to Captivate Your Readers, by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest); Pulp According to David Goodis, by Jay A. Gertzman (Down & Out); Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, annotated by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus); and The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)
On Friday night in Dallas—where this year’s Bouchercon is currently taking place—the Private Eye Writers of America organization hosted a banquet in the city’s Bishop Arts District during which the 2019 Shamus Awards were handed out. There were four prizes up for grabs, but so far I’ve only been able to suss out three of the winners. Even PWA founder and current executive director Robert J. Randisi, communicating from a hotel computer station, wasn’t able to supply me with the recipient of this year’s prize for Best First Private Eye Novel when I contacted him via e-mail yesterday; I’ll just have to add that information to this post later.
For now, here are the other three victors.
Best Private Eye Novel: What You Want to See, by Kristen Lepionka (Minotaur)
Also nominated: Wrong Light, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview); The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime); Baby’s First Felony, by John Straley (Soho Crime); and Cut You Down, by Sam Wiebe (Quercus)
Best Original Private Eye Paperback:The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss, by Max Wirestone (Redhook)
Also nominated: She Talks to Angels, by James D.F. Hannah (Independently published); No Quarter, by John Jantunen (ECW Press); Shark Bait, by Paul Kemprecos (Independently published); and Second Story Man, by Charles Salzberg (Down & Out)
Best Private Eye Short Story:
“Chin Yong-Yun Helps a Fool,” by S.J. Rozan (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], September-October 2018)
Also nominated: “Fear of the Secular,” by Mitch Alderman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November-December 2018); “Three-Star Sushi,” by
Barry Lancet (Down & Out: The Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 3); “The Big Creep,” by Elizabeth McKenzie (from Santa Cruz Noir, edited by Susie
Bright; Akashic); and “Game,” by Twist Phelan (EQMM, September-October 2018)
Congratulations to all of the contenders!
UPDATE: Katrina Carrasco’s The Best Bad Things (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) apparently won the 2019 Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel. Learn more by clicking here.
This has been a big week for Oklahoma City author Lou Berney. His fourth book, November Road, not only won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best Novel, but has now also picked up the Barry Award for Best Novel. The full set of this year’s Barry recipients—announced on Thursday night at Bouchercon in Dallas, Texas—is below.
Best Novel:November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
Also nominated: Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); The Shadows We Hide, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland); Depth of Winter, by Craig Johnson (Viking); Leave No Trace, by Mindy Mejia (Atria); and A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
Best First Novel:The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)
Also nominated: My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday); Need to Know, by Karen Cleveland (Ballantine); Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus); Sweet Little Lies, by Caz Frear (Harper); and Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)
Best Paperback Original:The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan (Penguin)
Also nominated: A Sharp Solitude, by Christine Carbo (Atria); Dead Pretty, by David Mark (Blue Rider Press); The Hollow of Fear, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)
Best Thriller:Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)
Also nominated: The Terminal List, by Jack Carr (Atria); London Rules, by Mick Herron (Soho); Forever and a Day, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper); Light It Up, by Nick Petrie (Putnam); and The King Tides, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)
Dan Sandstrom Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom:Jeff Popple
The Barry Awards have been sponsored, since 1997, by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Previous winners can be found here.
This is what happens when I don’t attend Bouchercon. Last night—Halloween night—during the convention’s opening ceremonies in Dallas, Texas, three different categories of prizes were to be presented: the Barry Awards, the Macavity Awards, and the David Thompson Memorial Special Service Award. I already knew that Ontario bookstore owners Jenn and Don Longmuir were slated to receive the David Thompson. However, I still haven’t found the list of Barry winners anywhere online. If anyone reading this article can please tell me who collected those prizes, I’d be grateful, and will post the news later.
Also nominated: If I Die Tonight, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow); The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Flatiron); Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur); Hiroshima Boy, by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park); and Under My Skin, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)
Best First Novel:Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus)
Also nominated: My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday); Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (Putnam); Something in the Water, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine); and The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)
Best Non-fiction:The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman (HarperCollins)
Also nominated: The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction, by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland); Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer, by Margalit Fox (Random House); Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, annotated by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus); I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins); and Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, by Laura Thompson (Pegasus)
Best Short Story: “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], July/August 2018)
Also nominated: “Race to Judgment,” by Craig Faustus Buck (EQMM, November/December 2018); “All God’s Sparrows,” by Leslie Budewitz (Alfred
Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May/June 2018); “Bug Appétit,” by Barb Goffman (EQMM, November/December 2018); “Three-Star Sushi,” by Barry Lancet (Down & Out: The Magazine, Vol.1, No. 3); and “The Cambodian Curse,” by Gigi Pandian (from The Cambodian Curse & Other Stories, by Gigi Pandian; Henery Press)
Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery:The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
Also nominated: A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington); City of Ink, by Elsa Hart (Minotaur); Island
of the Mad, by Laurie R. King (Bantam); A Dying Note, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press); and A Forgotten Place, by Charles Todd (Morrow)
The Macavitys take their name from the “mystery cat” in T.S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Members of Mystery Readers International and its periodical, Mystery Readers Journal, were eligible to vote in this competition.
UPDATE: The Barry Award winners can now be found here.
During a ceremony held earlier tonight in London, the British Crime Writers’ Association handed out its 2019 Dagger Awards.
CWA chair Linda Stratmann was quoted as saying, “2019’s winners show the incredible range and quality of authors at work in the crime-writing genre today. The Daggers recognize both established and emerging names, and we are incredibly proud of the reputation and longevity the Daggers have, nationally and internationally.”
Although I couldn’t be on the scene to witness these prizes announced and dispensed, The Rap Sheet’s chief UK correspondent, Ali Karim, certainly was. He reports the list of winners as follows.
CWA Gold Dagger: The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven (Constable)
Also nominated: All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton); What We Did, by Christobel Kent (Sphere); Unto Us a Son Is Given, by Donna Leon (Heinemann); American by Day, by Derek B. Miller (Doubleday); and A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, by Benjamin Wood (Scribner)
CWA John Creasey (New Blood): Scrublands, by Chris Hammer (Wildfire)
Also nominated: All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton); The Boy at the Door, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus); Turn a Blind Eye, by Vicky Newham (HQ); Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle); and Overkill, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)
CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre (Viking)
Also nominated: All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black (Doubleday); An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere, by Mikita Brottman (Canongate); Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime, by Claire Harman (Viking); The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Hutchinson); and The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)
CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: To the Lions, by Holly Watt (Bloomsbury)
Also nominated: Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott (Picador); Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Head of Zeus); Killing Eve: No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings (John Murray); Lives Laid Away, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime); and Memo from Turner, by Tim Willocks (Jonathan Cape)
CWA International Dagger:A Long Night in Paris, by Dov Alfon; translated by Daniella Zamir (MacLehose Press)
Also nominated: Weeping Waters, by Karin Brynard, translated by Maya Fowler and Isobel Dixon (World Noir); The Cold Summer, by Gianrico Carofiglio, translated by Howard Curtis (Bitter Lemon Press); Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray (Little, Brown); The Root of Evil, by Håkan Nesser, translated by Sarah Death (Mantle); and The Forger, by Cay Rademacher, translated by Peter Millar (Arcadia)
Also nominated: The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (Harper Fiction); Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker); The House on Half Moon Street, by Alex Reeve (Raven); Tombland, by C.J. Sansom: (Mantle); and Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
CWA Short Story Dagger:
“The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing,” by Danuta Reah (from The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and Other Fantastic Female Fables, by Danuta Reah [aka Danuta Kot]; Fantastic). Highly recommended: “I Detest Mozart,” by Teresa Solana (from The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, by Teresa Solana; Bitter Lemon Press)
Also nominated: “Strangers in a Pub,” by Martin Edwards (from Ten Year Stretch, edited by Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller; No Exit Press); “Death Becomes Her,” by Syd Moore (from The Strange Casebook, by Syd Moore; Point Blank Books); and “Bag Man,” by Lavie Tidhar (from The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin; Solaris)
Dagger in the Library: Kate Ellis
Also nominated: M.C. Beaton, Mark Billingham, John Connolly, C.J. Sansom, and Cath Staincliffe
Debut Dagger (for the opening of a crime novel by an uncontracted writer):WAKE, by Shelley Burr
Also nominated: The Mourning Light, by Jerry Krause; Hardways, by Catherine Hendricks; The Firefly, by David Smith; and A Thin Sharp Blade, by Fran Smith
Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year:
No Exit Press (Oldcastle Books)
Also nominated: Faber and Faber, Harper Fiction (HarperCollins), HQ (HarperCollins), Orenda Books, Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin),
and Raven (Bloomsbury)
• Varietybrings word that “PBS Masterpiece has boarded the remake of classic European detective series Van der Valk and will co-produce and air the show in the U.S. Masterpiece’s Rebecca Eaton will exec produce the project. It is the latest in a healthy line of U.K.-originated drama that Masterpiece has boarded since becoming the U.S. home for British-made hits such as Downton Abbey.” Production of this new Amsterdam-set series is said to be underway, with no firm release date as yet. The original Van der Valk, starring Barry Foster and based on a succession of novels by Nicholas Freeling, was broadcast (on and off) between 1972 and 1992. (Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)
• Meanwhile, Mystery Fanfare reports that Lara Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, along with Adrian McKinty’s acclaimed The Chain are slated for Hollywood film adaptation.
• And Mystery Tribune says Swedish writer Camilla Läckberg (The Girl in the Woods) “has turned her attention into creating a new TV series titled Hammarvik, which can be characterized as a Nordic version of Desperate Housewives with a serial killer on the loose.”
• Not long after the posting of my latest CrimeReads piece, “Detecting During
Disasters”—about mystery and detective novels set amid real-life catastrophes, including San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and city-destroying fire—I received a note from Randal S. Brandt, a librarian with the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. He told me of an article he’d written for a 2006 edition of the Bancroft’s newsletter, about novels featuring that trembler—everything from Sara Dean’s Travers: A Story of the San Francisco Earthquake (1908) and Shaken Down (1925), by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry, to Mignon G. Eberhart’s Casa Madrone (1980) and Dianne Day’s Fire and Fog (1996). Titled “The Big Shake,” Brandt’s feature is accessible in this PDF; simply scroll down to page 10.
• I’d never heard mystery-maker Ngaio Marsh speak—until now.
• Houston-born novelist Attica Locke has won the 2019 Texas Writer Award. Sponsored by the Texas Book Festival, this prize is given out annually to authors who have “significantly contributed to the state’s literary landscape.” Locke is, of course, known for penning such books as Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) and its new sequel, Heaven, My Home. She will be presented with her award during an October 26 ceremony in Texas’ state capitol in Austin. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)
• I’ll be sorry to miss this presentation. “If you’re going to Bouchercon [in Dallas, October 31-November 3],” writes B.V. Lawson in In Reference to Murder, “you won’t want to miss The Ghost Town Mortuary, a radio play by Anthony Boucher, performed by members of Mystery Writers of America NorCal, Friday, November 1, 11 a.m., at the Landmark Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency. Authors scheduled to participate include Laurie R. King, David Corbett, Kelli Stanley, Reece Hirsch, Randal S. Brandt, Dale Berry, Gigi Pandian, James L’Etoile, and Terry Shames.”
• England’s Daily Telegraph newspaper carries a story—reproduced by Chris Sullivan in his blog—about how actor Laurence Fox, late of Inspector Lewis and currently appearing in Victoria, has found solace in his music, after a divorce and the death of his best friend.
• Comfort TV blogger David Hofstede continues his series of posts about two-part television episodes—good and definitely not so good—with write-ups that mention several crime dramas, such as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Fugitive, and Charlie’s Angels.
• It’s always good to be reminded of ABC-TV’s classic gumshoe series, Peter Gunn, and its “jazz chanteuse,” played by Lola Albright.
• Finally, if you could use some financial assistance to attend next year’s Left Coast Crime convention in San Diego, California (March 12-15), you may be in luck. The LCC National Committee has drummed up funds for five scholarships to the event, plus expense money. More information and application procedures are available here.
• 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 ownWayne 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.
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.
• 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.
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