Screenwriter, producer, and author William Link, who with his longtime writing partner, Richard Levinson, created such classic TV series as Columbo, Mannix, and Ellery Queen, today turns 86 years old. He was born on this date in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, back in 1933.
I was fortunate to be able to interview Link in 2010, and posted the results of our length exchange in The Rap Sheet. You can watch a video of him talking about his work on Columbo by clicking here.
Showing posts with label Birthdays 2019. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthdays 2019. Show all posts
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Of Moonshine, Mobsters, and Moralists
Happy belated birthday to The Untouchables! That weekly ABC-TV crime drama, starring Robert Stack as renowned federal Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, debuted 60 years ago yesterday. Terence Towles Canote offers a fine tribute in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts.
Thursday, August 08, 2019
Bullet Points: Pre-Book Lovers Day Edition
• In late July, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced its shortlists of nominees for the 2019 Dagger Awards, in nine categories. Now comes news that the CWA is adding a 10th category to that set of annual prizes: the Dagger for Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year. Shotsmag Confidential says that “Publishers and specific imprints are being nominated by a representative group of leading book reviewers, booksellers, festival organizers, bloggers, literary agents and journalists,” and a shortlist of contenders for this new Dagger will be made known “later this summer.” The winners of all the 2019 Dagger Awards
are supposed to be declared during a special ceremony, in London, on October 24.
• British author and critic Mike Ripley has now posted two different tributes to Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, before dying on July 31 at age 77. The first of those can be found in The Guardian, and covers all the highlights of Berlins’ long career; the second, more personal remembrance was posted in Shots.
• While we’re on the subject of passings, let me mention that Chris Sullivan, who writes the blog Morse, Lewis and Endeavour, states on his Facebook page that Barrington Pheloung—best known to Rap Sheet readers for composing the hypnotic theme for the TV series Inspector Morse and its spin-offs—died (also on July 31) from influenza. “Death from influenza at Barrington’s age,” remarks Sullivan, “normally means there was some underlying health problems.” No specific cause of death had previously been released.
• Well, I have finally done it: added a “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” subsection to The Rap Sheet’s already extensive blogroll. You will find it by scrolling down past the “General Crime Fiction” section in the right-hand column. For the time being, there are only 19 podcasts listed there—those that were recommended by readers. But I’m willing to add more, as the field grows and additional podcast discoveries are made. I hope you like this addition to the page.
• The fifth and final episode of Grantchester, Season 4, will air in the States this coming Sunday evening as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. (Don’t panic: the program has already been renewed for a fifth season.) I’ve watched that cozyish historical mystery drama ever since it debuted on this side of the Atlantic back in January 2015, and have enjoyed it for the most part. Enough so, in fact, that I recently picked up The Road to Grantchester (Bloomsbury), author James Runcie’s prequel novel to the show inspired by his six previous mysteries. I wrote a short review of
said work for the newsletter distributed by Madison Books, a Seattle neighborhood bookshop with which I am associated, and am embedding it below:
• Happy 100th birthday (belatedly) to Jerusalem-born actor Nehemiah Persoff, whose face was once ubiquitous in U.S. films and TV shows—everything from The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone to The Name of the Game, The Mod Squad, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to Wikipedia, Persoff experienced health problems in the 1980s and “retired from acting in 1999” to devote his full time to painting. “He currently lives with his wife, Thia, in Cambria, California.
• And though this also comes late, I want to acknowledge the 75th anniversary of the release of Double Indemnity (1944), co-written by director Billy Wilder and author Raymond Chandler. “That great movie …,” explains blogger George Kelley, “ignited a series of noir movies in the post-World War II era. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novel of the same name (which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine, starting with the February 1936 issue). Fred MacMurray portrays an insurance salesman who fails for the Wrong Woman. Crafty Barbara Stanwyck plays a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead (and that she had the insurance money, too). Savvy Edward G. Robinson plays an insurance claims adjuster whose job is to investigate suspicious claims.” With a cast like that, how can a movie go wrong?
• National Public Radio celebrates Double Indemnity, too.
• Can’t get enough of Steely Dan—both the classic rock band and new stories influenced by its song catalogue? Then you’re definitely in luck: Brian Thornton, the Seattle-based editor of Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan (Down & Out) has let it be known on Facebook that a sequel is being readied for late October publication. Also to be published by Down & Out, under the title A Beast Without a Name: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, this second volume will feature contributions by a “Merry Band of Dan Enthusiast[s]” including Steve Brewer, Bill Cameron (writing as W.H. Cameron), Reed Farrel Coleman, Naomi Hirahara, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Thomas Hottle (writing as Jim Winter).
• Short-story writer Carol Westron considers the sport of fishing as it was portrayed in Golden Age Detective Fiction.
• LaBrava is among my favorite Elmore Leonard novels (a preference shared by author-screenwriter Nora Ephron), so it was good to see Christi Daugherty revisit that 1984 yarn recently as part of Criminal Element’s series on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. “Among the books that did not win the year LaBrava was given the Edgar,” Daugherty observes, “were John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl and Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, both of which are considered classics now. Both are books I’ve read and loved. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I came into this review with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, expecting to find LaBrava somehow inferior. How could this dingy little tale of a sociopath planning to set up a fading film star be better than those giants of twentieth-century fiction? Reading this book changed my mind.”
• Curtis Evans (Murder in the Closet) offers an excellent piece, in CrimeReads, about “The Rise and Fall and Restoration of Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case.”
• While you’re browsing CrimeReads, don’t miss Derek Milman’s essay on “How North by Northwest Changed Cinema Forever.”
• This comes from In Reference to Murder:
Kramer, with Elspeth Eric and Marianne Sanders, and was introduced by Tammy Grimes. ‘The Pale Horse’ was produced and directed by Himan Brown. The script by Roy Winsor veered from Christie’s original novel. Winsor was an established radio soap-opera writer before he went on to create some of television’s most well-known soaps: Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He also co-created Another Life and was the head writer for Somerset. Winsor also wrote three mystery novels and received an Edgar Award for The Corpse That Walked in 1975.” You can listen to this radio version of “The Pale Horse” either on YouTube or on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site.
• Someday I hope to find time enough to listen to all 1,399 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Like any radio or TV series, it wasn’t perfect, but I remember being mesmerized by many of those old episodes. I used to listen to them at night after going to bed, my earplug firmly planted into whichever ear wasn’t most easily seen, should my mother decide to double-check that I was actually asleep. Host E.G. Marshall (formerly of The Defenders and The Bold Ones) was an ideal—and appropriately spooky—host for most of the program’s run, and the episodes attracted a wide variety of talent, many performers having blossomed during the so-called Golden Age of Radio (the 1920s through the 1940s). Thankfully, all of those episodes are still available today—for free!—through the aforementioned CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site. Too bad I’m no longer young enough to stay awake into the wee hours of the night, listening.
• Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of Lawfare, suggests in The New York Times that people read the Mueller Report as a detective story. It “may turn out to be more of a film noir than anything else,” she writes. “The detective successfully uncovers the plot, only to discover that the society around him is too rotten to do anything about it. For all the missing pieces in this story, the issue is less whether it can be told and more whether anyone cares to listen.”
• Author interviews worth your time: Fresh Air host Terry Gross speaks with Laura Lippman about her impressive new Baltimore-set novel, Lady in the Lake; Hallie Ephron (Careful What You Wish For) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries; John Parker chats with John Connolly (A Game of Ghosts) for Shotsmag Confidential; and MysteryPeople has a few questions for S.J. Rozan (Paper Son).
• Finally, it’s true: tomorrow is National Book Lovers Day here in the States. But really, every day is Book Lovers Day for yours truly.
• British author and critic Mike Ripley has now posted two different tributes to Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, before dying on July 31 at age 77. The first of those can be found in The Guardian, and covers all the highlights of Berlins’ long career; the second, more personal remembrance was posted in Shots.
• While we’re on the subject of passings, let me mention that Chris Sullivan, who writes the blog Morse, Lewis and Endeavour, states on his Facebook page that Barrington Pheloung—best known to Rap Sheet readers for composing the hypnotic theme for the TV series Inspector Morse and its spin-offs—died (also on July 31) from influenza. “Death from influenza at Barrington’s age,” remarks Sullivan, “normally means there was some underlying health problems.” No specific cause of death had previously been released.
• Well, I have finally done it: added a “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” subsection to The Rap Sheet’s already extensive blogroll. You will find it by scrolling down past the “General Crime Fiction” section in the right-hand column. For the time being, there are only 19 podcasts listed there—those that were recommended by readers. But I’m willing to add more, as the field grows and additional podcast discoveries are made. I hope you like this addition to the page.
• The fifth and final episode of Grantchester, Season 4, will air in the States this coming Sunday evening as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. (Don’t panic: the program has already been renewed for a fifth season.) I’ve watched that cozyish historical mystery drama ever since it debuted on this side of the Atlantic back in January 2015, and have enjoyed it for the most part. Enough so, in fact, that I recently picked up The Road to Grantchester (Bloomsbury), author James Runcie’s prequel novel to the show inspired by his six previous mysteries. I wrote a short review of
said work for the newsletter distributed by Madison Books, a Seattle neighborhood bookshop with which I am associated, and am embedding it below:
The Road to Grantchester• Happy 10th anniversary to The View from the Blue House!
By James Runcie
Now, during PBS-TV’s latest run of the British mystery series Grantchester, is an ideal time to dive into this prequel novel, which recalls the circuitous path protagonist Sidney Chambers took from being a Cambridge classics student to becoming an Anglican vicar-cum-sleuth. As World War II consumes Europe, Chambers and his irrepressible friend Robert Kendall join the Scots Guards and are sent to the Italian front, where their ability to maintain optimism amid unrelenting carnage is sorely tested. Crucial to Chambers’ efforts is “Rev Nev” Finnie, an Episcopal chaplain with whom he engages in philosophical discussions—talks that prepare him for Kendall’s subsequent battlefield death and his own return home. Back in England, Chambers finds himself guilt-ridden for having survived, and at a loss to deal with Kendall’s coquettish younger sister, Amanda. Others expect Chambers to become a teacher or diplomat, but his search for peace leads him instead into the priesthood. There’s little crime-solving here, but author Runcie excels at evoking the climate of warfare, and his investigations of the human mind and heart will feel familiar to any Grantchester fan.
• Happy 100th birthday (belatedly) to Jerusalem-born actor Nehemiah Persoff, whose face was once ubiquitous in U.S. films and TV shows—everything from The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone to The Name of the Game, The Mod Squad, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to Wikipedia, Persoff experienced health problems in the 1980s and “retired from acting in 1999” to devote his full time to painting. “He currently lives with his wife, Thia, in Cambria, California.
• And though this also comes late, I want to acknowledge the 75th anniversary of the release of Double Indemnity (1944), co-written by director Billy Wilder and author Raymond Chandler. “That great movie …,” explains blogger George Kelley, “ignited a series of noir movies in the post-World War II era. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novel of the same name (which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine, starting with the February 1936 issue). Fred MacMurray portrays an insurance salesman who fails for the Wrong Woman. Crafty Barbara Stanwyck plays a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead (and that she had the insurance money, too). Savvy Edward G. Robinson plays an insurance claims adjuster whose job is to investigate suspicious claims.” With a cast like that, how can a movie go wrong?
• National Public Radio celebrates Double Indemnity, too.
• Can’t get enough of Steely Dan—both the classic rock band and new stories influenced by its song catalogue? Then you’re definitely in luck: Brian Thornton, the Seattle-based editor of Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan (Down & Out) has let it be known on Facebook that a sequel is being readied for late October publication. Also to be published by Down & Out, under the title A Beast Without a Name: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, this second volume will feature contributions by a “Merry Band of Dan Enthusiast[s]” including Steve Brewer, Bill Cameron (writing as W.H. Cameron), Reed Farrel Coleman, Naomi Hirahara, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Thomas Hottle (writing as Jim Winter).
• Short-story writer Carol Westron considers the sport of fishing as it was portrayed in Golden Age Detective Fiction.
• LaBrava is among my favorite Elmore Leonard novels (a preference shared by author-screenwriter Nora Ephron), so it was good to see Christi Daugherty revisit that 1984 yarn recently as part of Criminal Element’s series on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. “Among the books that did not win the year LaBrava was given the Edgar,” Daugherty observes, “were John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl and Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, both of which are considered classics now. Both are books I’ve read and loved. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I came into this review with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, expecting to find LaBrava somehow inferior. How could this dingy little tale of a sociopath planning to set up a fading film star be better than those giants of twentieth-century fiction? Reading this book changed my mind.”
• Curtis Evans (Murder in the Closet) offers an excellent piece, in CrimeReads, about “The Rise and Fall and Restoration of Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case.”
• While you’re browsing CrimeReads, don’t miss Derek Milman’s essay on “How North by Northwest Changed Cinema Forever.”
• This comes from In Reference to Murder:
The cast has been set for Agatha Christie Limited’s The Pale Horse, the latest TV adaptation from Dame Agatha for the BBC. The Pale Horse centers on Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) as he tries to uncover the mystery of a list of names found in the shoe of a dead woman. His investigation leads him to the peculiar village of Much Deeping and also to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives by means of the dark arts, but as the mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.• Meanwhile, blogger Jerry House draws my attention to a 1982 adaptation of that same 1961 mystery novel by Christie, produced as part of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series (1974-1982). As House explains, this 45-minute version “features the talents of Earl Hammond and Mandel
Kramer, with Elspeth Eric and Marianne Sanders, and was introduced by Tammy Grimes. ‘The Pale Horse’ was produced and directed by Himan Brown. The script by Roy Winsor veered from Christie’s original novel. Winsor was an established radio soap-opera writer before he went on to create some of television’s most well-known soaps: Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He also co-created Another Life and was the head writer for Somerset. Winsor also wrote three mystery novels and received an Edgar Award for The Corpse That Walked in 1975.” You can listen to this radio version of “The Pale Horse” either on YouTube or on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site.• Someday I hope to find time enough to listen to all 1,399 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Like any radio or TV series, it wasn’t perfect, but I remember being mesmerized by many of those old episodes. I used to listen to them at night after going to bed, my earplug firmly planted into whichever ear wasn’t most easily seen, should my mother decide to double-check that I was actually asleep. Host E.G. Marshall (formerly of The Defenders and The Bold Ones) was an ideal—and appropriately spooky—host for most of the program’s run, and the episodes attracted a wide variety of talent, many performers having blossomed during the so-called Golden Age of Radio (the 1920s through the 1940s). Thankfully, all of those episodes are still available today—for free!—through the aforementioned CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site. Too bad I’m no longer young enough to stay awake into the wee hours of the night, listening.
• Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of Lawfare, suggests in The New York Times that people read the Mueller Report as a detective story. It “may turn out to be more of a film noir than anything else,” she writes. “The detective successfully uncovers the plot, only to discover that the society around him is too rotten to do anything about it. For all the missing pieces in this story, the issue is less whether it can be told and more whether anyone cares to listen.”
• Author interviews worth your time: Fresh Air host Terry Gross speaks with Laura Lippman about her impressive new Baltimore-set novel, Lady in the Lake; Hallie Ephron (Careful What You Wish For) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries; John Parker chats with John Connolly (A Game of Ghosts) for Shotsmag Confidential; and MysteryPeople has a few questions for S.J. Rozan (Paper Son).
• Finally, it’s true: tomorrow is National Book Lovers Day here in the States. But really, every day is Book Lovers Day for yours truly.
Thursday, August 01, 2019
Bullet Points: Broad Scope Edition
• Sad news, indeed. The Bookseller reports that Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, died on July 31 from a brain hemorrhage. He was 77 years old. “Berlins started his career at the Times as a legal correspondent in 1971,” The Bookseller explains. “During his decade covering law, Berlins also wrote his first books, including Caught in the Act with Geoffrey Wansell (Penguin, 1974), a study of young offenders. His weekly legal column later moved to the Guardian.” The Rap Sheet’s Ali Karim says Berlins’ book critiques were “always insightful. … He was one of the greatest London critics, providing such elegance in his literary commentary.” And fellow critic Barry Forshaw offered this encomium in Crime Time:
• Also gone is Australian-born composer Barrington Pheloung, who, observes London’s Classic FM Web site, was “best known for his dark, hypnotic music for Inspector Morse, for which he was nominated for Best Original Television Music at the 1992 British Academy Television Awards. He also composed the themes for the sequel Lewis, and the prequel Endeavour.” (Listen to the Morse theme here.) The BBC recalls that Pheloung was “born in Manly, New South Wales, in 1954, … started playing the guitar at the age of five and moved to London in his teens to study at the Royal College of Music.” He was just 65 years old when he passed away yesterday in Australia.
• I missed mentioning earlier this week that the Australian Crime Writers Association has promulgated its longlists of contenders for three different 2019 Ned Kelly Awards. Vying in the Best Fiction category are The Rip, by Mark Brandi; Kill Shot, by Garry Disher; Gone by Midnight, by Candice Fox; The Spotted Dog, by Kerry Greenwood; Scrublands, by Chris Hammer; The Lost Man, by Jane Harper; The Other Wife, by Michael Robotham; Preservation, by Jock Serong; Under Your Wings, by Tiffany Tsao; and Live and Let Fry, by Sue Williams. Click here to see all three of the longlists.
• Meanwhile, London’s Goldsboro Books has announced its shortlist of nominees for the 2019 Glass Bell Award, which honors “compelling storytelling with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realized”:
— Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
— Our House, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster)
— The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown)
— Vox, by Christina Dalcher (HQ)
— Swan Song, by Kelleigh Greenberg- Jephcott (Cornerstone)
— The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris (Bonnier Zaffre)
The winner is to be declared on September 16. He or she will receive “£2,000 and a beautiful, handmade, engraved glass bell.”
• In Reference to Murder brings word of the finalists for the 2019 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. They include James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin, “which also won the Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel.”
• And let’s not forget the 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, which are designed to celebrate “the crime and thriller genre and in a UK festival first, recognize excellence in film and television as well as books.” Among the many finalists are novels by Philip Kerr, Manda Scott, Anthony Horowitz, Louise Candlish, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson. The victor in each of nine categories will be proclaimed on September 26, during London’s Capital Crime Festival.
• Happy 200th birthday today to author Herman Melville, who—thanks to works such as Typee and Moby Dick—became a literary giant of the 19th century, yet “died in obscurity” at age 72.
• The New York Times has more on Melville here.
• Dan Moldea, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist “specializing in organized-crime and political-corruption investigations,” has his own theories about what happened to American labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa 44 years ago this week, and he shares them with the news Web site Deadline Detroit.
• “The body of John Dillinger, the notorious 1930s bank robber from Central Indiana, will be exhumed from his Crown Hill Cemetery burial site in Indianapolis as part of an upcoming History Channel documentary.” The Indianapolis Star has that story.
• Episode 4 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast examines the brand-new Stark House Press release, The Best of Manhunt, and also considers the influence of the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on spy fiction of its time. Listen to the whole show here.
• Blogger B.V. Lawson mentions this development:
• Max Allan Collins notes in his blog that he and co-author A. Brad Schwartz are hard at work on The Untouchable and the Butcher, a second non-fiction book about 20th-century law-enforcement agent Eliot Ness. The pair previously penned Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago (2018).
• Finally, New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal reports that Santa Fe author James McGrath Morris, “who has written books about newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, authors Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and African-American journalist Ethel Payne,” is currently conducting research for a new biography of Tony Hillerman. Hillerman, who died back in 2008, was of course the creator of the “popular mystery novel series featuring Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)
I don’t have to talk here about Marcel being the doyen of British crime fiction critics (though he was French), writing for The Times for many years—all the many obits will talk about that. What I will miss most was a friend of many years: wry, alert to all the arts and always immensely knowledgeable. … I’ll also miss those phone calls when we’d both received proof copies from a publisher—he’d usually discover new talents ahead of me, and was the perfect early warning system: ‘Have you read X?’, he’d enthuse. ‘He/she is terrific!’ (‘Terrific’ was a favourite Marcel adjective.)The City University of London, where Berlins had once been a Media Law lecturer, has posted this additional tribute.
But finally, I can’t avoid saying what everyone who knew
him will say—however much of a cliché it is. The most distinguished of writers on crime fiction will be missed. Much missed, both for his personality and his championing of so many crime writers.
• Also gone is Australian-born composer Barrington Pheloung, who, observes London’s Classic FM Web site, was “best known for his dark, hypnotic music for Inspector Morse, for which he was nominated for Best Original Television Music at the 1992 British Academy Television Awards. He also composed the themes for the sequel Lewis, and the prequel Endeavour.” (Listen to the Morse theme here.) The BBC recalls that Pheloung was “born in Manly, New South Wales, in 1954, … started playing the guitar at the age of five and moved to London in his teens to study at the Royal College of Music.” He was just 65 years old when he passed away yesterday in Australia.
• I missed mentioning earlier this week that the Australian Crime Writers Association has promulgated its longlists of contenders for three different 2019 Ned Kelly Awards. Vying in the Best Fiction category are The Rip, by Mark Brandi; Kill Shot, by Garry Disher; Gone by Midnight, by Candice Fox; The Spotted Dog, by Kerry Greenwood; Scrublands, by Chris Hammer; The Lost Man, by Jane Harper; The Other Wife, by Michael Robotham; Preservation, by Jock Serong; Under Your Wings, by Tiffany Tsao; and Live and Let Fry, by Sue Williams. Click here to see all three of the longlists.
• Meanwhile, London’s Goldsboro Books has announced its shortlist of nominees for the 2019 Glass Bell Award, which honors “compelling storytelling with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realized”:
— Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
— Our House, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster)
— The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown)
— Vox, by Christina Dalcher (HQ)
— Swan Song, by Kelleigh Greenberg- Jephcott (Cornerstone)
— The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris (Bonnier Zaffre)
The winner is to be declared on September 16. He or she will receive “£2,000 and a beautiful, handmade, engraved glass bell.”
• In Reference to Murder brings word of the finalists for the 2019 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. They include James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin, “which also won the Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel.”
• And let’s not forget the 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, which are designed to celebrate “the crime and thriller genre and in a UK festival first, recognize excellence in film and television as well as books.” Among the many finalists are novels by Philip Kerr, Manda Scott, Anthony Horowitz, Louise Candlish, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson. The victor in each of nine categories will be proclaimed on September 26, during London’s Capital Crime Festival.
• Happy 200th birthday today to author Herman Melville, who—thanks to works such as Typee and Moby Dick—became a literary giant of the 19th century, yet “died in obscurity” at age 72.
• The New York Times has more on Melville here.
• Dan Moldea, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist “specializing in organized-crime and political-corruption investigations,” has his own theories about what happened to American labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa 44 years ago this week, and he shares them with the news Web site Deadline Detroit.
• “The body of John Dillinger, the notorious 1930s bank robber from Central Indiana, will be exhumed from his Crown Hill Cemetery burial site in Indianapolis as part of an upcoming History Channel documentary.” The Indianapolis Star has that story.
• Episode 4 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast examines the brand-new Stark House Press release, The Best of Manhunt, and also considers the influence of the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on spy fiction of its time. Listen to the whole show here.
• Blogger B.V. Lawson mentions this development:
Jeffery Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s Quibi short-form streaming service has picked up Skinny Dip, a comedy series based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2004 satirical novel. The project had been set up as a drama pilot at the CW in the 2018 cycle but did not move forward there. The series is described as a darkly comedic odyssey of revenge where a jilted woman miraculously survives a night in the open ocean after her husband suddenly flings her overboard on their anniversary cruise. Plucked to safety serendipitously by a retired cop, the two team up to gaslight her husband.• Someday I want to visit Buenos Aires, which I’ve heard is a beautiful, European-styled city. For right now, though, the closest I can come to there is Paul French’s piece in CrimeReads exploring a range of mystery and thriller fiction set in the Argentinean capital.
• Max Allan Collins notes in his blog that he and co-author A. Brad Schwartz are hard at work on The Untouchable and the Butcher, a second non-fiction book about 20th-century law-enforcement agent Eliot Ness. The pair previously penned Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago (2018).
• Finally, New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal reports that Santa Fe author James McGrath Morris, “who has written books about newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, authors Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and African-American journalist Ethel Payne,” is currently conducting research for a new biography of Tony Hillerman. Hillerman, who died back in 2008, was of course the creator of the “popular mystery novel series featuring Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)
Thursday, April 11, 2019
“Now Old Enough to Drink Legally”
Congratulations to The Thrilling Detective Web Site, which editor Kevin Burton Smith says celebrated its 21st birthday on April 1. That site is a wonderful resource, well worth consulting whenever you have a question about private-eye fiction, old or new.
Monday, February 18, 2019
Deighton, Samson, and Fitting In
British espionage novelist Len Deighton (The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, SS-GB) turns 90 years old today. To help celebrate, Rob Mallows of The Deighton Dossier has collected a wide variety of remarks from the author’s fans addressing one particular question: What do Len Deighton’s books mean to you as a reader?
Among the comments is this one from Simon Hamid, described only as being somewhere in America, who makes clear that reading fiction can help people feel more comfortable in the world:
READ MORE: “Happy Birthday, Len Deighton,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential).
Among the comments is this one from Simon Hamid, described only as being somewhere in America, who makes clear that reading fiction can help people feel more comfortable in the world:
The first time I read Len Deighton’ s work I was a young student in graduate school, struggling to fit in. Being brought up across cultures and countries always made me a little unsure of myself, mainly because it seemed others were unsure of me. Or at least it seemed that way!Click here to read more praise for Deighton’s work.
Reading about Bernard Samson’s life, his struggles and insecurities, and issues with acceptance, made me feel that I was not alone in feeling estranged. I loved the way the character made himself into a sort of working-class hero in his own mind. It allowed Bernie Samson to deal with the intrigues of the office, and also to feel a sense of purpose, as he could communicate across all social classes. He had a unique emotional understanding of people, if not of himself.
In the end, Len Deighton’s portrayal of Samson made me feel understood and more comfortable in my own skin. It finally seemed like there was a writer who could understand the isolation that comes from trying to fit in everywhere, and still remain selfishly unique. When I first became immersed in the initial Samson Trilogy … [Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match], I would often come across issues in real life and ask myself, “How would Bernie handle this?”
Thanks, Len! Your books have given me entertainment, but also consolation and contentment! Your writing made me realise, through fiction, that I was not alone in trying to live among different cultures, and that I could make my own space.
READ MORE: “Happy Birthday, Len Deighton,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential).
Sunday, February 10, 2019
And Harry Palmer Sends His Regards
Len Deighton, the British author of such acclaimed espionage novels as The IPCRESS File (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964), and SS-GB (1978), will celebrate his 90th birthday on February 18.
In advance of that occasion, Rob Mallows of The Deighton Dossier has started posting his own thoughts, as well as those of other fans, on what Deighton’s impact has been on readers. He’s launched a special Twitter Moment page, “which captures the regular tweets that have been going up containing snippets from some of his best-known books and reader responses to them …” And, come the 19th, he’ll post a larger tribute on the main Deighton Dossier Web site.
In advance of that occasion, Rob Mallows of The Deighton Dossier has started posting his own thoughts, as well as those of other fans, on what Deighton’s impact has been on readers. He’s launched a special Twitter Moment page, “which captures the regular tweets that have been going up containing snippets from some of his best-known books and reader responses to them …” And, come the 19th, he’ll post a larger tribute on the main Deighton Dossier Web site.
Friday, February 01, 2019
The “Pop Culture Rembrandt” of Paperbacks
You may have noticed over the years what a big fan I am of American artist and paperback illustrator Robert McGinnis. In 2014, I not only celebrated his career with a month-long exposition of his book fronts in Killer Covers, but I interviewed Art Scott, his co-author on the exquisite book, The Art of Robert E. McGinnis (Titan), for both The Rap Sheet and Kirkus Reviews. Two years later, I posted an additional, smaller selection of his work in celebration of his 90th birthday.
Well, McGinnis’ 93rd birthday is fast approaching—on Sunday, February 3—and I decided to compose one additional encomium to his six decades of work. As I write today in CrimeReads,
The case could well be made that McGinnis, along with contemporary commercial illustrators such as Mitchell Hooks, Ron Lesser, Robert Maguire, and Harry Bennett, was instrumental in raising the profile (and sales) of crime and detective fiction during the latter half of the 20th century. “His work was highly influential, both in the sense that a lot of other painters of paperback covers tried to imitate the McGinnis ‘look’ and in the sense that his beautiful covers got a lot of readers to pick up books they might not otherwise have tried,” explains Ardai. “I know my father bought Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne novels at least as much for the covers as for the stories inside, and I’d much rather look at a Carter Brown cover than read a Carter Brown novel any day.”I have never met McGinnis, and I probably never will. But I own stacks of the paperback books he’s graced with his artistry over the years, and I try to snap up any I don’t already possess, whenever I see them. He’s a master of his art, and it gives me great pleasure to pay tribute to his efforts in CrimeReads. Click here to learn more.
McGinnis has deployed his genius widely over the years. He’s crafted fronts not only for works of crime and spy fiction, but also for historical and Gothic romance novels. He has contributed to slick magazines and developed iconic posters for such Hollywood flicks as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Barbarella, The Odd Couple, Cotton Comes to Harlem, and Sean Connery’s 1967 James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. And he’s exercised “pure self-expression” through an assortment of gallery pieces, primarily portraits of women, rural landscapes, and Old West scenery. His colleagues at the Society of Illustrators recognized McGinnis’ expertise and prolificacy in 1993, when they elected him to the Illustrators’ Hall of Fame, an honor first bestowed on Norman Rockwell in 1958.
Yet this “pop culture Rembrandt” (as he was dubbed by a magazine serving his current hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut) got his start in the book-cover biz illustrating crime novels. And more than half a century later, he’s still influencing that field.
READ MORE: “Happy Birthday, Robert McGinnis!” by J. Kingston
Pierce (Killer Covers).
Sunday, January 06, 2019
Who’d Be Invited to His Party?
Although Arthur Conan Doyle never announced Sherlock Holmes’ birthdate in his stories about him, scholars have since reasoned—not without dispute—that he was born on January 6, 1854. Were he still alive (presuming he ever actually existed), he would be blowing out 165 birthday candles today—perhaps too challenging an endeavor, even for a consulting detective so durable and distinguished.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
