Bullet Points: No “Alternative Facts” Edition*

• Good news for David Fulmer fans! The Atlanta, Georgia, creator of the Shamus Award-winning Valentin St. Cyr/Storyville historical mystery series e-mailed me recently to say, “I just signed a contract for a new round of releases for the Storyville mysteries. The owner of Crescent City Books in New Orleans [Louisiana] is creating a new publishing imprint, and the first release will be a new edition of Chasing the Devil’s Tail in April, followed by the other four—Jass, Rampart Street, Lost River, and The Iron Angel—each month thereafter, followed by the in-progress Eclipse Alley, probably in October. Then the whole set for the holidays. Followed by the yet-untitled seventh—and last—installment in January 2018.” Fulmer adds: “The deal was, by the way, the handiwork of Michael Zell, a fine noir author out of [New Orleans].”

• More than 13 years after the demise of his creator, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (shown at right), Spanish gumshoe and gourmand Pepe Carvalho “is to rise again to walk the mean streets of Barcelona at the fingertips of another renowned writer,” according to The Guardian. Responsibility for continuing Carvalho’s career has been passed to Catalan poet-novelist Carlos Zanón, who is said to be “working on a new novel set to appear next year.”

• Last week brought the debut of Writer Types, a podcast that focuses on crime and mystery fiction, hosted by Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden. In Episode 1, you’ll hear “interviews with authors Megan Abbott, Lou Berney, and Steph Post; check in with Down & Out Books publisher Eric Campbell; hear about the best of 2016 and what to look forward to in 2017 from our reviewers, Kate Malmon and Dan Malmon; enjoy a live reading of the short story ‘Whoops’ by Nick Kolakowski, and have a little bookstore fun with S.G. Redling, Gary Phillips, and Jay Stringer.” The hosts hope to launch fresh episodes every month through the remainder of 2017, at least.

• Mystery Fanfare alerts us all to a new convention coming to star-spangled Las Vegas, Nevada: the Miss Fisher Con (May 4-7, 2017), celebrating Australian author Kerry Greenwood’s fictional aristocrat turned private eye. To register, click here.

• Congratulations to Tipping My Fedora for six blogging years.

• And I’m pleased to see that Only Detect has returned after a two-year-long hiatus. Blogger “Mike” says he aims at “posting something every week or so.”

• I should also mention that last Thursday brought the eighth anniversary of the launching of my other blog, Killer Covers. For the occasion, I posted “eight lovely book fronts … by artists whose identities seem to have been forgotten.”

• I once owned both of these Corgi cars, before my younger brother suddenly sold the entire collection of vintage automobiles we’d amassed during our childhood. Grrr!

• Since I’ve been rather lax lately in compiling these news wrap-up posts, I should probably mention—a tad belatedly—the death of American actor Dick Gautier, who passed away in an assisted living facility on January 13. He was 85 years old. Although Gautier is remembered best for his comedic work (he played humanoid robot agent Hymie on Get Smart and starred in the awful 1975 Robin Hood TV parody series, When Things Were Rotten), he also won guest roles on Banacek, The Rockford Files, Jimmy Stewart’s Hawkins, Raymond Burr’s Kingston: Confidential, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Quincy, M.E., and a variety of other crime dramas. Steve Thompson shares more memories of Gautier in his Booksteve’s Library blog.

• Following his less-than-stellar appraisal of the new Ben Affleck film, Live by Night (based on Dennis Lehane’s 2012 novel of the same name), author Max Allan Collins reports in his blog: “I am working on a Quarry graphic novel, which Titan will publish in four issues and then collect. Don’t know the artist yet, though I approved several based on samples. It’s very, very hard. I have been away from this format for a while, and the story takes place partly in Vietnam in 1969 and then back in the America of 1972. Providing visual reference for the artist has been a dizzying, daunting task. A 22-page script runs to 60 pages with panel descriptions and links to reference photos. I doubt I will do many more such projects. Prose is far less taxing.”

• Meanwhile, Naomi Hirahara announced on her Facebook page recently that “the seventh and final book in the Edgar-winning Mas Arai mystery series,” tentatively titled Hiroshima Boy, should be published in March 2018 by Prospect Park Books. The plot has Hirahara’s protagonist, a Japanese atomic bomb survivor, “returning to Hiroshima in his old age, only to find himself embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy.”

• Kristen Lepionka’s “driving tour of Midwestern mysteries.”

• Just what we needed—a CHiPS revival. Only dumber.

• And L.A. Law, too? At least writers Steven Bochco and Billy Finkelstein don’t look intent on turning the Emmy Award-winning 1980s legal drama into a lame comedy.

• Rap Sheet contributor Ali Karim previews Cast Iron, the sixth and concluding entry in Peter May’s France-set series featuring a half-Italian, half-Scottish former forensic scientist named Enzo Macleod. The novel went on sale this month in Britain, thanks to publisher Riverrun, but does not yet have an American release date, as far as I can tell. Read an excerpt from Cast Iron here.

• For the books-oriented Signature, Andrew Grant (False Friend) identifies “Five Must-Haves for a Great Detective in Fiction.”

• Keeping with the lists theme, check out Brian Boone’s “Five Great Novels That Will Probably Never Be Made Into Movies” (among them Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian); Crime Fiction Lover’s “10 of the Best Golden Age Crime Novels”; Lee Horsley’s choices of “five of the best missing-persons novels”; Bob Rivers’ picks, at the Strand Magazine Web site, of “The Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Films” (thank goodness he included 1971’s They Might Be Giants); Janie Chang’s choices (also from The Strand) of “The Top Eight Mysteries Set in China”; “Five Favorite Lawyers in Crime Fiction,” by Peter Manus (Fickle) for Crimespree Magazine; and, from Miriam C. Davis—author of the forthcoming non-fiction book The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story—a rundown of the “Top Five Fictional Stories Inspired by [the] Real-Life Axeman of New Orleans.”

• Submissions are currently being accepted for the 2017 Shamus Awards, which will be given out by the Private Eye Writers of America next October, during Bouchercon in Toronto, Canada. The deadline for submissions is March 31.

• Really, Anton Chekhov wrote psychological suspense tales?

• From In Reference to Murder:

Four days after TNT’s drama Good Behavior ended its 10-episode first-season run, the show has been picked up for a fall 2017 second season. The series, based on a series of books by Blake Crouch, tells the story of Letty Raines (Michelle Dockery), a thief and con artist whose life is always one wrong turn or one bad decision from implosion. Fresh out of prison, Letty tries to stay afloat but gets sucked back into the criminal world when she overhears a hit man being hired to kill a man’s wife and decides to derail the job, with the help of her parole officer (Terry Kinney).

• The BookBub Blog’s list of “19 Anticipated Breakthrough Novels of 2017” features a small handful of crime and thriller yarns.

• A rather late entry in the “best crime-fiction reads of 2016” category: Irresistible Targets blogger Michael Carlson names several works he enjoyed, but says his “favorite crime novel of the year was Sara Gran’s Dope,” published in 2006.

• And in Hardboiled Wonderland, Jedidiah Ayres touts his “favorite crime flicks of 2016” as well as his “2016 honorable mentions.”

• Being less widely read than I should be in the plentiful works of John Dickson Carr (1906-1977), I appreciate this list by Puzzle Doctor, at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, of his 10 favorite Carr novels. Sadly, I own none of the books mentioned.

• I do, however, have this 1956 Perry Mason novel, by Erle Stanley Gardner, and it sounds as if it’s one I should crack open soon.

• Wow, what a gorgeous time-travel tour down Route 66!

• A few interviews worth checking out: Ali Karim talks with Simon Kernick about the latter’s fresh UK thriller release, The Bone Field; MysteryPeople’s Meike Alana quizzes Terry Shames about her latest novel, An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock; Ingrid Thoft chats with Crimespree Magazine about the new Duplicity; Scott Montgomery questions Tim Bryant about Old Mother Curridge; and Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade chats up Ragnar Jónasson on the subject of his fourth Detective Ari Thor novel, Rupture.

• Finally, there’s a nice reminder, in Peter Hanson’s Every ’70s Movie blog, of the 1971 NBC-TV flick Ransom for a Dead Man, which guest-starred the abundantly talented Lee Grant and served as a second formal pilot for Peter Falk’s Columbo series. Grant went on two years later to star (with Lou Antonio) in another Richard Levinson/William Link television production, Partners in Crime, which was a pilot film reworked from their earlier Bette Davis/Doug McClure picture, The Judge and Jake Wyler.

* “With ‘Alternative Facts,’ Trump World Swimming in a Sea of Dishonesty,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog).

And the “Bests” Keep Coming

Although they’re a bit late in being delivered, Euro Crime’s “favorite reads of 2016” posts are most welcome. Three critics so far have compiled their lists of British/European/translated crime, mystery, and thriller novels—Amanda Gillies, Geoff Jones, and Norman Price—with more still to come. Watch for additions here.

You Thought We Were Done with These?

Since it’s only early January, there’s nothing wrong in continuing The Rap Sheet’s cataloguing of “best crime fiction of 2016” posts.

Criminal Element’s 11 picks include John Hart’s Redemption Road, Louise Penny’s A Great Reckoning, and James Church’s The Gentleman from Japan. MysteryPeople brings us three different lists of favorites: Scott Montgomery’s “top 10 of 2016” (Steve Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason, Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me, Peter Spiegelman’s Dr. Knox, etc.); Montgomery’s “top five debuts of 2016” rundown (yes, David Swinson’s The Second Girl earns a thumbs-up); and Molly Odintz’s “top 10 international crime novels of 2016” (among them Tana French’s The Trespasser and Raphael Montes’ Perfect Days). Not surprisingly, Vintage Pop Fictions’ “favorite reads in 2016” are all older works, including Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Baited Hook (one I don’t think I’ve enjoyed yet) and Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra (which I most certainly have read). Rob Kitchin at The View from the Blue House anoints 13 books—fiction and non-fiction—as his “best reads of 2016.” Jen Forbus offers her own unique combination of crime-fiction and non-fiction picks here. Finally, I think I neglected to mention British critic Mike Ripley’s choices of top releases from last year, named in his December Shots column: Philip Kerr’s The Other Side of Silence, Alexandra Benedict’s Jonathan Dark or the Evidence of Ghosts, Andrew Taylor’s The Ashes of London, and Ruth Dudley Edwards’ The Seven.

READ MORE: “Favorite 2016 Books” (Pop Culture Nerd).

Fiction Favorites Galore

How about if we squeeze in one more post about “best crime fiction of 2016” compilations before ringing in the new year in?

Check out these pieces: Ayo Onatade runs down her 11 favorite reads of the last 12 months in Shotsmag Confidential, a list that features Colin Winnette’ Coyote, Erik Storey’s Nothing Short of Dying, and Adam Christopher’s Made to Kill; Puzzle Doctor picks the “Best New Crime Fiction (of the Books That I’ve Read) 2016 (in My Opinion),” among them being The Great Revolt, by Paul Doherty, and A High Mortality of Doves, by Kate Ellis; Clinton Greaves anoints 16 new novels as the best of ’16, including Stuart Neville’s So Say the Fallen and Ian Rankin’s Even Dogs in the Wild; and five different Crime Fiction Lover bloggers deliver their “bests” lists—Vicki Weisfeld (on whose inventory we find Bill Beverly’s Dodgers and J. Todd Scott’s The Far Empty, as well as other titles), Keith Nixon (Sarah Ward’s A Deadly Thaw, Tim Baker’s Fever City), Spriteby (Ben Aaronovitch’s The Hanging Tree, Chris Nickson’s The Iron Water), NagaiSayonara (Alan Furst’s A Hero in France, Jill Dawson’s The Crime Writer), and RoughJustice (Reed Farrel Coleman’s Where It Hurts, Conrad Williams’ third Joel Sorrell novel, Hell Is Empty).

Meanwhile, Open Letters Monthly contributor Steve Donoghue has released his tally of the worst new novels of 2016, containing mention—much to the chagrin of Stephen King fans—of that author’s third Bill Hodges novel, End of Watch.

Different Tastes, Different Choices

Chances are that critics will still be naming their favorite books of 2016 well into January of next year. If so, you can guarantee we’ll be paying attention. Among the latest offerings in this regard: The Seattle Times’ Adam Woog chooses what he thinks are the “10 Best Mysteries of 2016,” including Michael Connelly’s The Wrong Side of Goodbye, Laurie R. King’s The Murder of Mary Russell, and Timothy Hallinan’s King Maybe; Open Letters Monthly contributor Steve Donoghue offers his own, quite different 10, among the books he applauds being Jeri Westerson’s The Silence of Stones and Conor Brady’s The Eloquence of the Dead; Crime Fiction Lover reviewers continue to roll out their preferences, with Marina Sofia declaring her picks here, while Mal McEwan posts his own here; the Web site Dead Good solicited suggestions from 17 authors and received still more selections, covering everything from Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10 to Agnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal and Bill Beverly’s Dodgers; Crime Watch’s Craig Sisterson promised to deliver his 12 “best reads of the year” on an unambiguous schedule, but seems already to have fallen behind; and though its list extends beyond crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, Vox finds room on its favorite books roster for Emma Cline’s The Girls and Tana French’s The Trespasser.

“One Cracking Year for Crime Fiction”

While other blogs and Web sites continue to broadcast their critics’ comparatively paltry five or 10 individual choices of the “best crime fiction” published over the last 12 months, Barry Forshaw’s Crime Time has dashed out in front of the pack, waving its list of the “Top 100 Books of 2016.” The choices are so numerous, they had to be split three ways. Part I is available now, featuring the first 50 picks, everything from Alan Furst’s A Hero of France and Lisa Lutz’s The Passenger to Anthony J. Quinn’s Trespass, William Shaw’s The Birdwatcher, and Melissa Ginsburg’s Sunset City.

There’s no telling yet when Parts II and III of Crime Time’s rundown might appear, but we’ll update this post when they do.

FOLLOW-UP: The second part of Crime Time’s list—which gives effusive thumbs-up to Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10, Reed Farrel Coleman’s Where It Hurts, Ian Rankin’s Rather Be the Devil, and Walter Mosley’s Charcoal Joe, among other books—can be found here. Finally, Part III focuses on the top 21 vote-getters, from Chris Brookmyre’s Black Widow and Eva Dolan’s After You Die to Ray Celestin’s Dead Man Blues, Abhir Mukherjee’s A Rising Man, and ... sorry, but you’ll have to click here to find out which novel Crime Time chose as this year’s best.

In Need of More Novels to Read?

Here are two more “best books of 2016” features that might be of interest to studious Rap Sheet followers.

In Crime Fiction Lover, Philip Rafferty names his five favorite works of the year, including Carl Hiaasen’s Razor Girl and Max Allan Collins’ Quarry in the Black. Meanwhile, on the Strand Magazine Web site, reviewer John B. Valeri chooses his “Top 10 Thrillers of 2016,” a roster comprising only books by women, from Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me to Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire.

Are These on Your Radar Already?

As we speed toward the end of a very tumultuous year, crime-fiction critics seem to be tumbling over each other to broadcast their “favorite books of 2016” lists. Prominent among those arbiters of literary taste is Friend of The Rap Sheet Tom Nolan, whose “bests” choices appear in The Wall Street Journal. Because the online version of Nolan’s article is available only to subscribers, I’m posting his choices below (in order of his remarking on them):

• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)
• His Bloody Project, by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Skyhorse)
• All Things Cease to Appear, by Elizabeth Brundage (Knopf)
• The North Water, by Ian McGuire (Henry Holt)
• Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• The Gun, by Fuminori Nakamura (Soho Crime)
• Nitro Mountain, by Lee Clay Johnson (Knopf)
• Every Man a Menace, by Patrick Hoffman (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• The Trespasser, by Tana French (Viking)
• Missing, Presumed, by Susie Steiner (Random House)

Hmm. I completely missed checking out a couple of those works (McGuire’s and Johnson’s), and disagree about one other choice, but otherwise this is a solid selection. As I would expect from Nolan.

Included among The Globe and Mail’s “100 Best Books of the Year” roster are just five nominations from the crime/thriller stacks:

• The Night Bell, by Inger Ash Wolfe (Pegasus)
• The Ashes of London, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
• The Trap, by Melanie Raabe (Spiderline)
• Conclave, by Robert Harris (Random House)
• The Letter Writer, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)

The Boston Globe picks a wholly different four mysteries:

• Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty (Seventh Street)
• South Village, by Rob Hart (Polis)
• Silence of the Sea, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (Minotaur)
• So Say the Fallen, by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)

Only one work of crime fiction features on National Public Radio’s “10 Best Books of 2016” roster (Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters), but NPR’s broader “Book Concierge” list of “2016’s Great Reads” recommends 13 meritorious novels.

I’m expecting several more of these lists from Crime Fiction Lover, but for now, we must be satisfied with critic Jeremy Megraw’s five top choices, which include Nick Seeley’s Cambodia Noir and Agnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal.

Finally, the usually interesting Ms. Wordopolis Reads mentions two favorite crime novels for 2016, while Words & Music blogger Don Coffin has nice things to say about 15 mysteries, not all of which first saw print over the last 12 months.

Making a List and Checking It Twice

Through a three-step balloting process, visitors to the “social cataloguing” Web site Goodreads have chosen Stephen King’s End of Watch (Scribner)—the concluding entry in his Bill Hodges trilogy—as the best mystery or thriller novel of 2016. It won with 42,382 votes, compared with the 23,038 votes given to the second-place finisher, Louise Penny’s A Great Reckoning, and the 21,621 votes that went to Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10, which scored third-place honors in this online contest. Click here to see all of the nominees and their relative polling counts.

And as part of my continuing effort to stay on top of this year’s proliferating “best crime novels” lists, let me point you toward Kristopher Zgorski’s top 11 choices in his BOLO Books blog. A couple of his picks—Thomas Mullen’s Darktown and Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me—also appeared on my “favorites” list, but otherwise, they rosters are different. Which just proves that dusty adage about no two readers being alike.

FOLLOW-UP: South Florida Sun-Sentinel critic Oline H. Cogdill is out with her own “best of 2016” rundown, and though you’ll be forced to click through one of those annoying online slideshows to see all of her crime-fiction picks, at least they’re good ones.

Bullet Points: This and That Edition

• Things appear to be shaping up quite nicely for Scotland’s new Granite Noir festival. The Press and Journal reports that the inaugural event, set to take place in Aberdeen from February 24 to 26 of next year, “will feature famous literary guests including Denise Mina, Christopher Brookmyre, and the north-east’s own Stuart MacBride.”

• The blog It’s About TV! has posted this 1960 film clip in which author Brett Halliday (aka Davis Dresser) endorses the soon-to-debut—and ultimately short-lived—NBC-TV crime drama Michael Shayne, which starred Richard Denning as Halliday’s Miami private eye. Interestingly, one of the many Shayne novels conveniently displayed in front of the eye-patch-wearing Halliday in that clip is 1942’s The Corpse Came Calling, about which I wrote several years ago.

• In case you haven’t noticed yet, Mark Rogers’ excellent Web site, The Ironside Archive—devoted to the 1967-1975 Raymond Burr crime drama Ironside—is up and running once more. Rogers, a graphic designer in the UK, told me that he took his site down some while ago, “after I found it was attracting a lot of attention from some disturbed and disturbing people, who were looking for nude photos of the two regular female cast members, Barbara Anderson and Elizabeth Baur—and (more frighteningly) for images of them tied up.” Fortunately, the six-year-old Archive doesn’t seem to have suffered any during its time offline. In fact, that break allowed Rogers to upgrade his valuable Episode Guide.

• Another site of considerable interest is Reading Ellery Queen. There, museum curator/poet Jon Mathewson remarks on the numerous novels and short stories penned during the 20th century by cousins Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay, who of course employed the joint pseudonym Ellery Queen. Mathewson also looks at fictional sleuth Queen’s appearances in other media, such as in the 1971 NBC-TV pilot Don’t Look Behind You (with a terribly miscast Peter Lawford in the lead role) and the far superior, 1975-1976 NBC series Ellery Queen (about which I wrote here). Mathewson says he’s now “read all but one [of the Queen novels]: the unfinished manuscript for The Tragedy of Errors.” If so, that puts him far ahead of me. I’ve enjoyed a couple of dozen Queen yarns, but still have a boxful of vintage paperback editions to open. Something to look forward to, indeed.

• TV writer-producer Ken Levine has some favorable things to say about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the 1969 film made from Ian Fleming’s 1963 James Bond novel of that same name. “It’s pretty much the forgotten Bond film,” Levine writes, “because it was the only one that starred George Lazenby. He had the misfortune of replacing Sean Connery and for good measure, was not an accomplished actor. He was more of a male model. … But the plot was pretty good. It stayed very true to Ian Fleming’s book and was a lot more realistic than later 007 adventures where he’s on the moon or taking Denise Richards seriously.”

• Meanwhile, Film Noir of the Week takes a look back at the 1997 motion picture L.A. Confidential—“a paradise with secrets behind every palm tree”—based on James Ellroy’s 1990 novel.

• R.I.P., former Barney Miller co-star Ron Glass.

• If you’re keeping track of bloggers delivering their “best novels of 2016” lists, here’s one from Australian booksellers Jon and Kate Page. Note than among their choices is Jane Harper’s The Dry, a debut work finally due out in the States come in January.

• The Amazon book-sales site has its own top-picks rundown of mysteries and thrillers published in 2016. Its choices include Carl Hiaasen’s Razor Girl, Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night, Amy Gentry’s Good as Gone, and Bill Beverly’s Dodgers.

• And I don’t think I mentioned this necessarily opinionated tally of the year’s “best crime and thriller novels” by Jake Kerridge of the British Telegraph. Strangely, it appeared last June, so might not be as comprehensive as it could have been. But Kerridge does mention one novel I’m looking forward to reading: Jill Dawson’s The Crime Writer, which will finally receive a U.S. release this coming June.

• Because I’ve written at some length in the past about early 20th-century American outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (see here and here), I was interested to glance through the design blog Eleven-Nineteen’s collection of photographs celebrating their ill-fated, Depression-era romance. “What’s odd,” observes Jon Wessel, “is that Bonnie and Clyde took so many pictures. Pictures of themselves, their gang, their guns, their loot. They would have been social media sensations had it been 40 years later.”

• The Defenders: Season 1, released in DVD format by Shout Factory! a few months back, is on my Christmas list, and I’m hoping to find it under the tree soon. If and when it appears, I shall be curious to see whether I agree with the Classic Film and TV Café’s recent selection of “the five best episodes” from that 1961 premiere season of the acclaimed CBS courtroom drama.

• After writing recently in my book-art blog, Killer Covers, about Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 political novel, It Can’t Happen Here, I received a note pointing me toward this excellent pre-election piece in The Washington Post, which finds book critic Carlos Lozada musing on how Donald Trump compares with the fictional dictators imagined by both Lewis and by Philip Roth, in 2004’s The Plot Against America.

• By the way, Money magazine notes that in the wake of Trump’s win, copies of It Can’t Happen Here have “sold out on some major online book retailers.” Fear of what the billionaire bigot might do in office can surely be credited with this purchasing stampede.

• While we’re on the subject of this month’s disastrous presidential election, here’s a quote from Washington Monthly that likely echoes many a voter’s thoughts: “The psychological shock progressives felt on November 8 will be minor compared to the shock they will feel on January 20. Not since Bill Clinton turned the White House over to George W. Bush has there been such a disparity in terms of decency and dignity between an outgoing and incoming President.”

• Grrr! As much as I enjoy writing about crime fiction for the Kirkus Reviews Web site, I am frustrated by the fact that reader comments on my biweekly pieces, along with their Facebook “share” counts—both of which are handled, apparently, through Facebook—periodically just … disappear. That happened again this last weekend, when the “share” number on several of my latest columns, after having climbed into the hundreds, suddenly plummeted back to zero. Sigh …

• In a trio of worthwhile author interviews, blogger S.W. Lauden fires questions at Andrew Nette (Gunshine State), Bob Truluck (The Big Nothing), and Angel Luis Colón (No Happy Endings).

• Since I somehow neglected to mention Neil S. Plakcy’s recent post for Criminal Element about the history of gay and lesbian characters in crime fiction, and how the writers responsible for those players influenced Plakcy’s own storytelling (The Next One Will Kill You), let me do it here and now.

• Finally, don’t fret any if The Rap Sheet goes quiet towards the end of this week. I’m taking a bit of time off, hoping to refresh my batteries before the coming holiday posting rush. You’ll hear much more from this corner of the Web next week.

A Cut Above

’Tis the season for “best crime fiction of the year” lists, and I am chiming in today with my own roster of favorites for the Kirkus Reviews Web site. You’ll find that piece here.

There’s some overlap between my 10 U.S.-published choices and those of other critics. But what’s always most interesting about these sorts of inventories is where they diverge. Today’s crime, mystery, and thriller genre is a broad and diverse one, and each reader brings to it his or her idiosyncratic tastes. There can never be universal agreement on which works published in any given year are the “best.” After long consideration, I have come up with a list of my favorites. Other readers are welcome to offer their own contrary picks.

Post Picks

In my effort to keep Rap Sheet readers apprised of what other publications say are the best crime novels of 2016, I am listing below the 10 selections made by Washington Post critics:

• Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (Grand Central)
• The English Teacher, by Yiftach Reicher Atir (Penguin)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• A Hero of France, by Alan Furst (Random House)
• Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry (Penguin)
• Where It Hurts, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam)
• The Whistler, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout)
• The Wrong Side of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

The Post piece containing these choices is paywall protected, but if you subscribe to that newspaper, you can reach it here.

Diverging Opinions

I’m still in the midst of writing a column for the Kirkus Reviews Web site about my favorite crime novels of 2016 (it should appear next Tuesday). But in the meantime, other Kirkus reviewers offer their 18 picks of the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2016:

• The Black Widow, by Daniel Silva (Harper)
• Blind Sight, by Carol O’Connell (Putnam)
• Collecting the Dead, by Spencer Cope (Minotaur)
• Fall from Grace, by Tim Weaver (Viking)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• Fool Me Once, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• I Let You Go, by Claire Mackintosh (Berkley)
• Livia Lone, by Barry Eisler (Thomas & Mercer)
• Missing, Presumed, by Susie Steiner (Random House)
• Only the Hunted Run, by Neely Tucker (Viking)
• Razor Girl, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
• Rise the Dark, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
• The Second Life of Nick Mason, by Steve Hamilton (Putnam)
• A Study in Scarlet Women, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
• The Watcher in the Wall, by Owen Laukkanen (Putnam)
• The Widower’s Wife, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lan)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

Publishers Weekly has followed suit, with a selection of 12 Best Mystery and Thriller Novels that only overlaps Kirkus’ in a few spots. Here are the PW critics’ faves:

• Blood of the Oak, by Eliot Pattison (Counterpoint)
• Don’t Turn Out the Lights, by Bernard Minier (Minotaur)
• The Father: Made in Sweden, Part I, by Anton Svensson (Quercus)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, by Antonia Hodgson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• London Rain, by Nicola Upson (Bourbon Street)
• Redemption Road, by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)
• Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)
• The Vampire Tree, by Paul Halter (Locked Room International)
• The Widow, by Fiona Barton (NAL)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

But It’s Not Even Halloween Yet …

While it might seem a tad early in the year to be issuing a Best Crime Novels of 2016 list, The Strand Magazine has done just that. According to posts on Facebook, and confirmed by Strand managing editor Andrew F. Gulli, here are its choices:

1. Every Man a Menace, by Patrick Hoffman (Mysterious Press)
2. The Second Girl, by David Swinson (Mulholland)
3. Dr. Knox, by Peter Spiegelman (Knopf)
4. The Hanged Man, by Gary Inbinder (Pegasus)
5. Rough Trade, by Todd Robinson (Polis)
6. The Invisible Guardian, by Dorores Redondo (Atria)
7. Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
8. Die of Shame, by Mark Billingham (Mysterious Press)
9. Missing Pieces, by Heather Gudenkauf (Mira)
10. Friday on My Mind, by Nicci French (Penguin)
11. The One Man, by Andrew Gross (Minotaur)
12. Heart of Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Bullet Points: Post-Vacation Edition

If you were wondering last week why The Rap Sheet seemed so paltry with its postings, it was because I took eight days off for a trip to Minneapolis to see my best friend, Byron. We’ve known each other since college (he was a class year ahead of me), and have since been in the habit of visiting each other during the summer months, alternating back and forth; this was my year to fly east. We’d talked in advance of my departure about doing all kinds of active things when I was in Minnesota, including taking a long drive north to the shores of Lake Superior and maybe taking a hike someplace. But once I was in the company of my friend and his wife, all such planning went out the window.

Byron and I actually wound up doing the things we so often do together: comparing observations about our lives while sampling beers at local pubs (The Lowbrow on Nicollet Avenue has become a favorite stop), checking out new-to-us eateries (among them, on this trip, the Hot Plate Diner for breakfast), going for long walks around the lakes near his suburban neighborhood, and of course, sitting out on his home’s sun-baked back patio, just reading. I’d packed along a quartet of novels, including David Fuller’s terrific Sweetsmoke and William Kittredge’s The Willow Field, and made it through all of them, while helping to keep Byron’s dog, Shiloh, exercised with occasionally thrown tennis balls. Worried that I might be without books for the return flight to Seattle, we made a trip to Once Upon a Crime, the local independent mystery bookstore that successfully changed hands earlier this year. (For evidence of our drop-in, see the photograph above: I am the dumpy, overheated guy on the left, with Byron on the right.) We also paid a call on radio legend Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books, situated along Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, which turned out to be an uncommonly handsome and appealing shop—definitely one worth revisiting sometime.

I don’t often find the time for holidays, but this one was made especially, if unexpectedly, relaxing by the fact that I couldn’t seem to recall my e-mail password. Therefore, I had no way to check my messages remotely for a week. Yes, it meant that I needed to scroll through and weed the junk mail from among 871 e-notes when I returned home. Yet for eight blissful days, all I really had to do was think about what to read next, where to eat with my friends, and what movies we all wanted to screen during the evening hours. My batteries were thus recharged for another few months.

My file of intriguing crime-fiction links was overflowing before I left, and is even larger now that I’ve been looking around to see what I missed last week. I can’t hope to mention everything of interest, but here a few items I think you will find worthy of attention.

• A very well-deserved commendation: New York City bookseller, editor, and publisher Otto Penzler, 73, has been named as the winner of this year’s David Thompson Special Service Award for his “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime-fiction field.” Penzler should receive his prize during Bouchercon 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana (September 15-18). Previous recipients of this accolade, named for the late co-owner of Houston’s Murder by the Book, are my Rap Sheet colleague Ali Karim, Len and June Moffatt, Judy Bobalik, and Bill and Toby Gottfried.

• If you haven’t already voted for your favorite nominees in the 2016 Dead Good Reader Awards competition, you can still do so here. As I stated in an earlier post, the winners are set to be declared at a special event on Friday, July 22, during this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

• The Twenty-Three, the concluding volume in Linwood Barclay’s Promise Falls Trilogy, isn’t even due out in the States till November. But already there’s word of this Ontario author’s next novel—and it’s a work for children. As The Bookseller explains, “Chase is a middle-grade novel about a dog called Chipper who has been melded with state-of-the-art computer technology to carry out secret missions for an organization called The Institute. When Chipper’s natural instincts, such as chasing squirrels, start taking over during missions, The Institute decides to pull the plug on him.” Expect to see Chipper in bookstores sometime next year.

• While we’re on the subject of Canadian crime-fictionists (and with Canada Day fast approaching on July 1), note that Mystery Scene’s Oline H. Cogdill has put together “a quick primer” on some of that country’s finest genre writers, including Giles Blunt, Maureen Jennings, Howard Engel, and Ausma Zehanat Khan. If you’d like to learn more about the field’s history and present stars, refer to a two-part survey of Canadian mystery-makers I wrote for Kirkus Reviews back in 2013. Part I of that report is here, with Part II to be found here.

• With the sunny season having finally begun in North America, it’s totally appropriate for Janet Rudolph to have posted this list of summer-oriented mysteries in her blog.

• Just when I thought Plots with Guns was dead, buried, and eulogized, that once-popular e-zine abruptly reappears with an issue containing stories by Patricia Abbott, Rusty Barnes, Benjamin Whitmer, and others. Read them all for free here.

• Isn’t it a bit early to be writing about the best books of 2016? Well, apparently not if you’re working for BookRiot or Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review, both of which have weighed in recently with their initial-six-months assessments. The BookRiot rundown includes Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele and John Lawton’s The Unfortunate Englishman, as well as Skip Hollandsworth’s gripping non-fiction serial-killer yarn, The Midnight Assassin. Introducing its own list, Omnivoracious calls Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall “[one of] our universally favorite novels of the year so far,” and then goes on to applaud Stephen King’s End of Watch, John Hart’s Redemption Road, Mary Kubica’s Don’t You Cry, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, Joyce Maynard’s Under the Influence, and 15 additional titles.

• To nobody’s surprise, Criminal Element’s Leslie Gilbert Elman—who most ably covered the opening two seasons of Endeavour on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery!—is now writing about Season 3 of that Shaun Evans series. Click here to enjoy her write-up on “Ride,” the first of this season’s four episodes, and here to see what she had to say about last weekend’s installment, “Arcadia.” (By the way, for anyone not conversant in the classic Inspector Morse TV series, from which Endeavour derives, the English actress Abigail Thaw, to whom Elman refers in her post, and who plays newspaper editor Dorothea Frazil in Endeavour, happens to be the now 50-year-old daughter of John Thaw, who portrayed Morse in that previous, 1987-2000 series.)

• In case I failed to mention this before, once Endeavour has completed its broadcast run for the year (it has already been renewed for a fourth season—hurrah!), you can look forward to the final season of Inspector Lewis on Masterpiece Mystery! Three episodes will be shown, beginning on Sunday, August 7.

• Mystery Scene celebrates yet another British TV whodunit in its new issue: Grantchester, starring James Norton and Robson Green (which recently concluded its second-season run on PBS). The brightly penned cover feature has Craig Sisterson, the New Zealander behind the annual Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, interviewing James Runcie, author of the The Grantchester Mysteries (the latest of which is Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation). Elsewhere in that same issue, Kevin Burton Smith offers a survey of fictionists famous in other fields who have tried their hand at composing private-eye yarns; Tom Nolan profiles both Naomi Hirahara (Sayonara Slam) and another California writer—one who has heretofore escaped my radar—Bart Paul (Cheatgrass); and Kate Jackson, who blogs at Cross-Examining Crime, looks back at “The Wimsey Papers,” Dorothy L. Sayers’ serialized observations on World War II through the eyes of her fictitious sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey.

• Oh, and happy first birthday to Cross-Examining Crime!

• Den of Geek! offers a new teaser trailer for Quarry, the eight-episode Cinemax TV series—based on Max Allan Collins’ novels about an itinerant Vietnam War vet turned hit man (Quarry’s Choice, Quarry in the Black), and starring Logan Marshall-Green—that’s set to premiere on September 9 at 10 p.m.

• “10 Hit Man Novels that Everyone Should Read.”

• I’ve been a fan of actress Carla Gugino ever since she starred in the 2003-2004 ABC-TV series Karen Sisco, based on the character created by Elmore Leonard, so I am pleased to hear that she’s returned to the boob tube with Roadies, a Cameron Crowe-created comedy-drama that debuted on Showtime on June 26.

• Note to Karen Sisco fans: Although that short-lived series hasn’t yet earned a DVD release (and why the hell not?), I see all 10 episodes of the show have suddenly become available on YouTube, thanks to a kind soul calling himself Oliver Martin. Check them out quickly before the copyright police come to steal them away!

• Speaking of unexpected YouTube discoveries, click here to watch a 1971 teleflick called Love Hate Love, which as far as I can tell was made from the last screenplay composed by British spy-fictionist Eric Ambler (A Coffin for Dimitrios). The plot description reads: “Ryan O’Neal plays Russ Emery, a glib engineer who steals the heart of a fashion model named Sheila Blunden [played by the lovely Lesley Ann Warren]. She in turn leaves her jet-setter fiancé, who turns out to be a psychotic who will not let go of Sheila that easily.”

• OK, I’m just stealing these next two items straight from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder. First on the docket:

Hulu announced the premiere date of Hugh Laurie's new ten-part psychological thriller Chance, set for Wednesday, October 19. Laurie will star as forensic neuropsychiatrist Dr. Eldon Chance, who is dragged against his better wishes into an extremely dangerous world of corrupt cops, mistaken identities and mental illness. The cast also includes Gretchen Mol as Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused wife of a detective (Paul Adelstein) whose possible dissociative identity disorder causes big problems for the doc. Chance was created by Desperate Housewives and Bates Motel writer/director Alexandra Cunningham and author Kem Nunn, who wrote the novel that the show is based on.

• And then there’s this reminder:

First Monday is a new monthly crime fiction/thriller night held in Central London at the College Building of City University. The upcoming July 4th event, sponsored by Killer Reads, will feature award-winning authors Andrew Taylor, Stephen Booth, Anna Mazzola, and Beth Lewis. The evening will be chaired by Claire McGowan, bestselling author of the Paula Maguire series and senior lecturer on the City University Crime Writing MA course.

• For The Strand Magazine’s Web site, author William Lashner (The Four-Night Run) has compiled a list of “ten writing tips I learned from the books of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who together pretty much invented the modern detective story.”

• What does Chandler owe to The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

• I have definitely fallen behind in recommending new installments of Nancie Clare’s excellent Speaking of Mysteries podcast. A few recent guests worth hearing from: Cara Black (Murder on the Quai), Erik Axl Sund (The Crow Girl), Steve Hamilton (The Second Life of Nick Mason), and Dan Fesperman (The Letter Writer).

• Several other author interviews worth reading: Former ThugLit editor and author (Rough Trade) Todd Robinson chats with Entropy; Joe Clifford (December Boys) goes one-on-one with S.W. Lauden; Paul Bishop posts a two-part interview with W.L. Ripley (Hail Storme)—Part I here, Part II here; Patricia Abbott (Shot in Detroit) answers 20 questions posed by fellow novelist Dana King; All Is Not Forgotten writer Wendy Walker fields queries from BOLO Books; and Double O Section grills Warren Ellis about his James Bond comic books.

• For some bizarre reason, failing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes he’s mentally far superior to other human beings (a real “man of the people,” eh?). Yet there are apparently no books or bookcases in his home.

• In a welcome break from all the sorry economic predictions surrounding Great Britain’s public vote to leave the European Union, Crime Fiction Lover has posted blurbs covering a dozen “great” crime novels set in as many UK cities. The list includes Ian Rankin’s Even Dogs in the Wild (Edinburgh), Belinda Bauer’s Rubbernecker (Cardiff), Adrian McKinty’s Rain Dogs (Belfast), and a book that completely escaped my notice when it was distributed last year, Shallow Waters, by Rebecca Bradley (Nottingham).

• Maybe it’s time to pay more attention to women crime writers. Both Terrence Rafferty, in The Atlantic, and Barry Forshaw, in The Independent, have recently made that argument quite convincingly.

• Michael Herr wasn’t a crime novelist. The Kentucky native was instead best known for penning Dispatches, an entertaining and often moving 1977 memoir of his work as a correspondent for Esquire magazine, covering the Vietnam War during the late 1960s. When I heard the news last week that Herr had died at age 76, I recalled how Dispatches had been one of the first non-fiction works I’d really enjoyed in my early 20s, a splendid example of what was once called “new journalism,” combining serious reportage with literary storytelling techniques. It had led me to other Vietnam books, such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, as well as to Herr’s memorable 1990 novel, Walter Winchell. Long ago, in a faraway life that I only barely recognize, I’d hoped one day to write a journalistic work as classic as Dispatches. That I never accomplished that goal is my own damn fault. That I can at least look back upon Dispatches and marvel at the dexterity with which its author delivered his yarn is pale succor, but succor nonetheless. Thank you, Michael Herr. (More here and here.)

• Don Winslow is writing a sequel to The Cartel.

• The Seattle Times provides a guide to some of the best TV series adaptations of literary sleuths, including both Bosch and Jack Irish.

• Being among those many readers who’ve refused to make a transition from traditional print books to e-books, I was pleased to see Alexis Boncy’s recent short essay, “Why I Still Love Actual Paper Books,” in The Week. She writes, in part:

I want to be absorbed by a book in a way that actual page-turning, not pixel-moving finger flips, allows. Choosing print over e-books means separating my reading from anything else—everything else, I should say, given the enormity of what we can do and information we can access from smartphones and tablets. It means I put down one thing before I pick up another, that I allow my attention to be taken wholly and open myself to feeling the full weight of the words on the page. That they will make me laugh or cry or think a little differently or discover something new.

And I want to finish a book and slot it on the shelf according to my personal Dewey Decimal system, a complex algorithm that accounts for genre, subject, author, how much I liked it, and how much I liked it compared to everything else. The e-alternative is to finish and watch as the book’s cover, once a full-screen image, shrinks and recedes to its tiny place on my e-bookshelf. The diminishment extends to the whole experience; the story fades, the memories go unvisited.

• Someday I want to put together a feature about the numerous novels combining crime fiction with science fiction. In the meantime, though, I can appreciate David Cranmer’s reviews, in Criminal Element, of Isaac Asimov’s Elijah Baley/Daneel Olivaw yarns. He’s already commented on The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957). I hope he will soon cover The Robots of Dawn (1983), the third book in Asimov’s Robot series, as well.

• This is a book I should definitely add to my shelves.

• Finally, what did Donald Hamilton think of the four 1960s Matt Helm films adapted from his novels and starring Dean Martin? A letter he wrote in 1991 gives us some clues: “[M]y philosophy is that I write to entertain and once I’ve done a book or story to my satisfaction, anybody who can use my material entertainingly, and is willing to pay me for the privilege, is welcome, even if he doesn’t stick very closely to my original vision (if I may use a fancy word for it).”

Bullet Points: Discoveries and Losses Edition

• The next few days will bring plenty of welcome excitement to the American crime-fiction community. Tonight we can expect to hear which books and fortunate authors have won the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America (the list of nominees is here). And then, as Les Blatt reminds me, tomorrow begins this year’s Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland, during which the latest batch of Agatha Awards is to be handed ’round (click here to be reminded of the contenders). I’ll post the winners in both contests as soon as I receive the results.

• In Reference to Murder reports that “Harper Lee’s biographer, Charles J Shields, believes he’s found a new, previously unknown Harper Lee text, a feature article written for the March 1960 issue of the Grapevine, a magazine for FBI professionals. The article focused on the gruesome [1959] murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, at their farmhouse in Kansas, the subject of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied Capote, her childhood friend, on his assignment for The New Yorker, reporting on how the community was reacting to the brutal murders.”

• This Sunday, May 1, will bring the sixth and last episode of Grantchester, Season 2, a PBS-TV Masterpiece offering based on James Runcie’s Grantchester Mysteries. (A third season has already been ordered. You will find recaps of the second-season eps here.) Beginning on Sunday, May 8, Masterpiece will begin hosting the final, three-episode run of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander. Omnimystery News has a brief synopsis of the show; a preview clip is below.



• Here’s something I haven’t seen in, oh, four decades, and might not have spotted even now had it not been for a tip from author-publisher Lee Goldberg. As you may know or perhaps remember, from the fall of 1975 through most of 1978, Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert starred in a CBS-TV detective drama titled Switch. They portrayed Los Angeles private-eye partners, Wagner’s Peterson T. Ryan being an erstwhile con man, while Albert played retired bunco cop Frank McBride. A few years ago, I managed to purchase a bootleg copy of the Season 1 episodes of Switch (the show’s best year, from what I recall), but the guy who sold it to me didn’t also have available the series’ 90-minute pilot film, Las Vegas Roundabout (originally shown on March 21, 1975). Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for that pilot—and thanks to Goldberg, I finally found it! Click here to watch the movie for yourself. It co-stars Sharon Gless, Charlie Callas, Charles Durning, Jaclyn Smith, and Ken Swofford.

• In addition to carrying early reviews of Shaft: Imitation of Life, Part 3, the latest graphic-novel collaboration between by David F. Walker and artist Dietrich Smith, Steve Aldous—author of The World of Shaft—has posted in his blog Dynamite Entertainment’s Robert Hack-painted cover for the paperback reprint of Ernest Tidyman’s original, 1970 novel, Shaft, due out in August.

• Vince Keenan has a splendid piece in his blog about screenwriter and novelist Roy Huggins (1914-2002), who’s best known for creating TV series such as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Rockford Files, but who also scripted the 1949 noir film Too Late for Tears.

• Critic-anthologist Sarah Weinman notes, in the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, that

Masako Togawa, icon of Japanese cabaret and of crime fiction, died earlier this week in her mid-80s (I’ve seen reports of her being 83 and 85). Her work was woefully under-translated into English; just four of dozens of novels, and a single short story that [Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine] published in the late 1970s. My own favorites are The Master Key and Lady Killer, dark, psycho-sexual examinations of femaleness and oppression that were weird and prescient, and both fit well within American and UK domestic suspense and also blasted right past. I also wish I could have seen the TV show she starred in and produced, Playgirl, which essentially predicted Charlie’s Angels but without the overseeing male specter; it was all badass women. It’s sad to think Togawa’s death might spur some enterprising publisher to translate and issue her work in a proper manner, but if that’s what it takes, then somebody do that. (Also see Jiro Kimura’s short obit and reminiscence.)

• My favorite cover of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.

• Congratulations to Linda Boa and her crime fiction-oriented blog Crimeworm, which today turns two years old.

• Let’s also hear a hearty round of applause for Patricia Abbott’s weekly “forgotten books” series, which celebrated its eighth anniversary a few days ago. The Rap Sheet’s many contributions to that series can be enjoyed here.

• I noted earlier this month that Ian Fleming’s onetime literary agent, Peter Janson-Smith, had passed away at age 93. But now author Raymond Benson, who revived Fleming’s James Bond series long after the creator’s death, offers up a short tribute in CinemaRetro.

• Since I recently interviewed Con Lehane, author of the April series opener Murder at the 42nd Street Library, I was very interested to read his summation of that particular New York City library’s abundant “wonders,” posted in Criminal Element.

• Yeah, yeah, it’s only the end of April. But Bill Ott, who reviews crime, mystery, and thriller fiction for the American Library Association’s Booklist, has already selected what he says are the best crime novels of 2016 (as reviewed in Booklist from May 1, 2015, through April 15, 2016). Included among his picks: Don Winslow’s The Cartel, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele, and Lori Rader-Day’s Pretty Little Things. In addition, Ott chooses—at the same link—a number of standout crime-fiction debuts, among them Nicholas Seeley’s Cambodia Noir, L. S. Hilton’s Maestra, and Scott Frank’s Shaker. This is certainly a thoughtful rundown of recent genre releases, but I think I’ll wait until December to assemble my own subjective tally of the year’s “bests.” (Hat tip to Randal S. Brandt)

• Registration is now open for NoirCon 2016, which is set to take place in Philadelphia, October 26-30. If you wish to attend but haven’t yet registered, you can do so either online or via snail-mail.

• R.I.P., James Bond film director Guy Hamilton.

• Republican former House Speaker John Boehner’s recent remarks about underdog GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz being “Lucifer in the flesh … I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” inevitably reminded me of a post I composed last November for my Killer Covers blog.

• Alex Segura, author of the recent Miami-set novel, Down the Darkest Street, has put together a list, for Mental Floss, of his eight favorite Florida crime-fiction characters.

• Here’s a perfect gift for fans of historical true crime.

• While we’re on the subject of weird history, consider this tale from The Lineup about a husband who had so much trouble being parted from his deceased wife, that he eventually moved right into her mausoleum at Brooklyn, New York’s Evergreen Cemetery.

• Wow, the roster of guest performers scheduled to appear in the coming Twin Peaks revival (set to air on Showtime at some as-yet-undecided date in 2017) has grown immensely.

• Meanwhile, the first trailer is available for the film adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (which was one of my favorite crime novels of 2015). The action has apparently been moved from London to New York City, but the trailer suggests that most of Hawkins’ original intent has been maintained on screen. This film, which is due for release in early October, stars Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, “a heavy-drinker who develops an obsession with a couple she regularly sees while on her commute to work,” explains The Guardian. “After the woman disappears, Rachel becomes entangled in the investigation.” Watch the trailer for yourself here.

• From Mystery Fanfare: “Dean Street Press announces the first 10 Patricia Wentworth novel reissues will be out on May 2. This is part of a major project to republish all 33 of her non-Miss Silver mysteries, some of which haven’t been in print or available for many decades. The remaining 23 will be published in a further two batches in June and July. The first 10 include the four Benbow Smith mysteries, featuring the eminence grise Benbow Smith, and his loquacious parrot Ananias. The first batch also includes Silence in Court from 1945, which is an exceptional courtroom mystery.”

• Although he wasn’t technically invited to contribute to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s “John D. and Me” series of posts, all celebrating the coming July 24 centennial of John D. MacDonald’s birth, educator-turned-novelist Bill Crider decided to post his own remembrance of MacDonald’s influence on his reading and writing life.

• The next time I read a new work described as a “fiction novel,” I’m going to haul my sorry ass out to some secluded spot and scream at the top of my lungs. Pay attention, people! Think before you write!

• Tipping My Fedora blogger Sergio Angelini decided to poll his readers on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films from each decade of the director’s career. He wound up with 11 selections, including Blackmail (1929), The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), and Rear Window (1954). You’ll have to click here to see which production won the most votes.

• Jordan Foster, formerly an editor at The Life Sentence, chooses 10 of her favorite police-procedural writers for Library Journal. I’m pleased to see both John Ball (author of the Virgil Tibbs novels) and Elizabeth Linington (aka Dell Shannon, creator of the Lieutenant Luis Mendoza series) make the cut.

•  A few interviews worth checking out: Laura Lippman talks with Baltimore magazine about her brand-new standalone thriller, Wilde Lake; Dan Fesperman gives Speaking of Mystery’s Nancie Clare the lowdown on his new historical mystery, The Letter Writer; Allison Brennan talks with Crimespree’s Elise Cooper about her psychologically intense new tale, Poisonous; and Chet Williamson addresses questions from Crime Fiction Lover about Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Sanitarium, his follow-up to Bloch’s 1959 novel.

• And it’s quite pleasing to see another reader fall for the multiple delights of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series (The Other Side of Silence). “I think there are three elements that make the books so fascinating,” David Edgerley Gates writes in SleuthSayers. “The first is historical irony. In more than one novel, actually, the story’s framed with a look back, from the later 1940s or the early 1950s. Secondly, there’s a constant sense of threat, the Nazi regime [being] a bunch of backstabbers ... One dangerous patron is Reinhard Heydrich, a chilly bastard who meets an appropriate end. And thirdly, Bernie is really trying to be a moral person, against all odds. You go along to get along, to simply survive, in a nest of vipers, and hope it doesn’t rub off on you. After seeing the Special Action Groups at work in Russia, and himself participating, Bernie is sickened by the whole enterprise. He suspects, too, that the handwriting’s on the wall.”