Where Bosch Began

Directly on the heels of Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, and the spin-off Ballard—all TV shows based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels—the world of Los Angeles detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch looks destined to expand further. Deadline reports that Amazon Prime has greenlighted a prequel series from MGM+ Studios titled Bosch: Start of Watch that will explore the protagonist’s original story.

The article goes on to explain that 32-year-old American actor Cameron Monaghan (Shameless, Gotham) will play newbie cop Bosch on the forthcoming drama, with Omari Hardwick (Power, Army of the Dead) “portraying his training officer, police veteran Eli Bridges, a new character not in the book mythology.” What makes this series especially notable is that “There is no direct source material for Start of Watch since Connelly’s novels do not include a Bosch prequel, though bits and pieces from Harry’s early years are planted in various books in the universe.”

So what’s the setup of this franchise addition? Deadline says it

goes back to 1991 Los Angeles and follows 26-year-old Harry Bosch during his earliest days as a rookie cop. The series will explore a city on the edge, teeming with racial tension, gang violence and a fractured LAPD. Amid routine calls and growing unrest, Bosch finds himself drawn into a high-profile heist and a web of criminal corruption that will test his loyalty to the badge and shape his future as the detective who lives by the code, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”

Author Connelly, one of several Start of Watch executive producers, is quoted as saying, “I’m deeply grateful to Michael Wright [head of MGM+] and the team at MGM+ for championing this next chapter in Bosch’s journey with such remarkable care and integrity. Being able to see how Harry Bosch became the man we have loved for 10 seasons is a gift to me and his many fans. I can’t wait to dig in with Cameron and the writers to explore this uncharted character territory.”

(Hat tip to Ali Karim.)

Bullet Points: Channel Surfing Edition

• Comic-actor Bill Cosby is now an understandably controversial figure, thanks to multiple women having levied sexual assault allegations against him over the last decade. However, he was once beloved, in part because of his live and recorded comedy routines (my father was a big listener to his 1973 stand-up comedy album, Fat Albert) and also his starring roles on television and in films. One of his less successful small-screen efforts was The Cosby Mysteries, which debuted in September 1994—two years after his long-running The Cosby Show ended—and was cancelled in April of the following year, with just 19 episodes having aired. Created in part by William Link, who had given us Columbo, the show found Cosby playing Guy Hanks, “a New York City Police Department criminalist, who retired from the police force after winning $44 million in the lottery.” Wikipedia adds that “Link developed the series at Cosby’s request, as Cosby wanted to make an intelligent, character-driven mystery series that did not rely on graphic violence.” I remembered it with a mix of nostalgia (having enjoyed Cosby’s performances at times, but also those of James Naughton as police detective Adam Sully and Rita Moreno as his feisty, health-conscious housekeeper, Angie Corea) and disappointment that Link & Co. hadn’t managed to do more with that crime drama. However, I hadn’t actually seen the show since the ’90s. That changed three weeks ago, when a poster to YouTube began uploading all 19 eps, one per day. I wound up rewatching the 90-minute pilot, which was broadcast originally on January 31, 1994, and have since taken in two or three more installments. At least currently, all are available here. One thing I’d forgotten is that Lee Goldberg, who’d previously penned scripts for Spenser: For Hire and Dick Van Dyke’s Diagnosis: Murder, wrote as well for The Cosby Mysteries. He and his former UCLA classmate William Rabkin later also served as supervising producers on the show. He evidently noticed YouTube’s surprising resurrection of the show as well. In a post on his Web site last week, he gave some background on the April 5, 1995, episode “Goldilocks,” which he and Rabkin wrote jointly with Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Wolf of Wall Street):

Cosby called two days before we wrapped the episode and asked us to add ninja assassins to the finale … “with those flying stars and everything.” We thought he was joking. He wasn’t. When we told him there was nothing remotely related to ninjas in the episode, he said “there is now.” So we wrote the damn ninjas into the episode. But when he got the pages, he said it was obviously not our best work, and he wasn’t going to show up to shoot the finale.

So … the bad guys basically out themselves for the crime and then “Cosby” just shows up to arrest them. We used Cosby’s stunt double and footage from another episode to cobble together the incoherent ending.

NBC took one look at the rough cut and said, you know, this is insane, let’s end our misery. We couldn’t agree more. They cancelled the show and we were paid off for the remaining four or five unproduced episodes.

Since I’ve now poured through “Goldilocks” several times, and can spot nary a sign of flying stars (shuriken), I can only assume that in the end, Goldberg, Rabkin, and Winter had their way, and those Japanese concealed weapons were excised from the plot.

• Speaking of my friend Lee, he reports that 26-year-old actress Madison Lintz, late of Prime Video’s Bosch: Legacy, will star in a TV adaptation of his series about Eve Ronin, the Los Angeles County Sherif’s Department’s youngest-ever homicide detective. “I am beyond thrilled to bring Eve Ronin to life,” Lintz is quoted by Variety as saying. “From the moment I picked up Lee’s books, I knew this was a character and a story I needed to be a part of. Eve’s determination, complexity, and resilience make her a dream role, and I am honored to take on this challenge on both sides of the camera.” Ronin was introduced in the 2020 novel Lost Hills and is set to make her sixth appearance in Fallen Star, due out from Thomas & Mercer in October.

• Ballard, based on Michael Connelly’s six novels about L.A. homicide detective Renée Ballard, debuted earlier this week on TV streamer Amazon Prime. All 10 episodes of Season 1 have dropped. Polish-Vietnamese actress Maggie Q (neé Margaret Quigley) headlines this hour-long police procedural, which also stars Courtney Taylor, Michael Mosley, and John Carroll Lynch. A press release explains that Ballard finds Q leading “the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold case division, tackling the city’s most challenging long-forgotten crimes with empathy and relentless determination. As she peels back layers of crimes spanning decades, including a serial killer’s string of murders and a murdered John Doe, she soon uncovers a dangerous conspiracy within the LAPD. With the help of her volunteer team and retired detective Harry Bosch [Titus Welliver, reprising his role from Bosch: Legacy in a trinity of this season’s episodes], Detective Ballard navigates personal trauma, professional challenges, and life-threatening dangers to expose the truth.” I have not yet watched Ballard, but will correct that situation as of this evening.

• The Killing Times' Paul Hirons considers the question of “Where Ballard Fits in Amazon’s Expanding Crime Universe.”

• Meanwhile, Season 2 of The Marlow Murder Club is set to debut in the States on Sunday, August 24, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. (It already aired in the UK this last spring.) Season 1 principals Samantha Bond, Jo Martin, Cara Horgan, and Natalie Dew are all back for more cozy but engaging antics in six new episodes. A one-minute trailer can be enjoyed here.

• Here’s one more trailer worth watching, for She Rides Shotgun. That two-hour film—slated for theatrical release on August 1—has been adapted from Jordan Harper’s propulsive and moving 2017 novel of the same name about “a recently released ex-con who finds himself protecting his estranged 11-year-old daughter Polly against a corrupt sheriff and a brutal gang leader.” Taran Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Rob Yang, and (again!) John Carroll Lynch lead the cast.



• American author Martin Cruz Smith, most widely recognized for his novels about Russian police investigator Arkady Renko, died last night at 82 years of age. His 11th Renko yarn, Hotel Ukraine—about the slaying of a deputy defense minister at the outset of Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion—was published only just last week. The son of a jazz musician, Smith was a journalist before he began composing fiction in the 1970s, often under pseudonyms, many of his early paperbacks now forgotten. Several of Smith’s works issued under his own moniker, though, were nominated for Edgar Awards, and he twice picked up the Dashiell Hammett Award from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers—first for the standalone historical mystery Rose (1996), and then for his fourth Renko thriller, Havana Bay, in 1999. The author was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in his mid-50s, but only in 2013 did he begin speaking publicly about it. I’ve read every one of Smith’s Renko tales, my favorites being the first, Gorky Park (1981), along with the aforementioned Havana Bay, Wolves Eat Dogs (2004), Tatiana (2013), and Hotel Ukraine, which takes its title from a Moscow luxury property but also sends the sleuth to the embattled nation of Ukraine, which previously featured in his 2023 novel, Independence Square (the same story in which Renko was told that he, too, has Parkinson’s). Smith announced in the latest novel’s Acknowledgements that it would be his final Renko thriller, but until today’s notice that he died, there still seemed hope he might relent and produce another. Sadly, that is now not to be.

• Maybe I should be reading more James Hadley Chase.

• Although The Rap Sheet has carried a profusion of other awards news lately, I missed mentioning the winner of this year’s Margery Allingham Short Story Competition. Fortunately, B.V. Lawson at In Reference to Murder was more on top of things. Her notice:

The CWA [Crime Writers Association] and the Margery Allingham Society have jointly held an annual international competition since 2014 for a short story of up to 3,500 words. The goal is to find the best unpublished short mystery that fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” The 2025 winner is Helen Gray for “Unsupervised Dead Women.” The other finalists include: “The Human Imperative” by Michael Bird; “Best Served Cold” by Ajay Chowdhury; “The Treasure Hunter” by Jane Corry; “Only Forward” by Hayley Dunning; and “A Woman of No Consequence” by Laure Van Rensberg.

• And isn’t this a very familiar debate, examined most recently on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday program: “Does listening to an audiobook count as reading?”

The Time Is Nigh, Harry

Although it’s been a while now since I last read one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels (blame that on my desire to continually add works by new writers into my diet), I have kept up with both of the police-procedural TV series based on those stories, Bosch (Amazon Prime, 2014-2021) and Bosch: Legacy (which debuted on Amazon Freevee in 2022). The latter’s third and final season debuts later this month, and Collider has some of the details:

The end of an era is near for Bosch: Legacy, tragically. Prime Video has officially released the trailer for the third and final season, set to premiere on March 27. The ten-episode season will debut with four episodes on March 27, followed by two new episodes every Thursday until the series finale on April 17. Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels Desert Star (2022) and The Black Ice (1993), the final season will see Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) facing one of his most challenging cases yet ... The murder investigation of Kurt Dockweiler unearths dangerous secrets, putting Bosch, attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers), and Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz) in grave danger as usual. Come on Harry, give them a break.

The trailer also shows Harry crossing the border for some black ops work, heading back to his days in Afghanistan, and we also get our first introduction to Maggie Q's Renee Ballard, ahead of her offshoot series Ballard, which is filming now.

Meanwhile, Honey is on the verge of becoming the next District Attorney of Los Angeles, but political ambition comes at a cost for the former defense attorney, and Maddie, now fully immersed in her career as an LAPD patrol officer, finds herself entangled in a series of violent follow-home robberies, pushing her to her limits as she begins to question what exactly it is that she's meant to do in her career.

Like millions of other crime-fiction enthusiasts, I’m sure, I shall mourn the passing of Harry Bosch on the small screen.

READ MORE: “The Complete Guide to Bosch on Amazon Prime,” by Sandra Mangan (Crime Fiction Lover).

Taking a Spin Through the Blogosphere

• Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare blog has been positively rampant with news—good and bad—about TV crime series lately. On the good side: Season 14 of Death in Paradise, introducing Don Gilet as Detective Inspector Mervin Wilson, is set to commence streaming via BritBox come Wednesday, February 19; the third and concluding season of Bosch: Legacy, starring Titus Welliver, will debut on Prime Video on Monday, March 27; PBS-TV’s Masterpiece has commissioned an adaptation of UK author Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders, the third and last Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd novel (which is to be released in the States in mid-May); and we can look forward to a 10-episode fourth season (maybe later this year?) of The Lincoln Lawyer. Now for the bad news: ITV’s McDonald & Dodds, the Bath, England-set whodunit starring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins, has been cancelled after what I thought were four outstanding seasons.

• Weep not for Watkins, though. Late last year it was announced that he and Grantchester co-star Robson Green would play the leads in Catch You Later, a new Channel 5 (UK) crime drama from Death in Paradise director Toby Frow. Digital Spy describes the show as a cat-and-mouse thriller about “a police detective named Huw Miller (Watkins) who is haunted by a case he failed to solve: a stalker in his town who toyed with his victims before murdering them.

Per the synopsis: “As Huw attempts to settle into retirement, the case is never far from his mind – and when new neighbour Patrick Harbottle (Green) moves in and utters the chilling phrase ‘catch you later’–the sign-off the stalker used to taunt Huw during the investigation–Huw is determined he’s finally got his man. What follows is a high stakes game of psychological chess between the two neighbours as Huw’s world begins to crumble around him.

“Unable to bear the guilt of the stalker taking another victim under his nose, Huw risks everything to unearth the truth. But has he set his sights on the right man, or is his obsession pushing him ever closer to the brink?”

Catch You Later is expected to air before this year is over.

• I evidently missed seeing that the Audio Publishers Association announced its finalists for the 30th annual Audie Awards. There are 28 competitive categories—too many to consider here. Below, though, are the contenders for best mystery audiobook of 2024:

— Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera; narrated by Will Damron and January LaVoy (Macmillan Audio)
— The Midnight Feast, by Lucy Foley; narrated by Joe Eyre, Sarah Slimani, Roly Botha, Laurence Dobiesz, and Tuppence Middleton (HarperAudio)
— Rough Pages, by Lev AC Rosen; narrated by Vikas Adam
(Macmillan Audio)
— Still See You Everywhere, by Lisa Gardner; narrated by Hillary
Huber (Hachette Audio)
— This Is Why We Lied, by Karin Slaughter; narrated by Kathleen
Early (HarperAudio)

The winners will be revealed in New York City on March 4, during a ceremony hosted by actress-comedian Amy Sedaris.

• Author and friend of The Rap Sheet Mark Coggins recently sent along the photo below together with a note reading: “I happened to be in the Manoa Chinese Cemetery in Honolulu and came across the grave of Chang Apana, who supposedly was the inspiration for Charlie Chan.”



• Since January 24, 2025, marked 100 years since Earl Derr Biggers’ The House Without a Key began its serialization in The Saturday Evening Post—introducing Chan to the reading public—this seemed like a good time to post Coggins’ shot. You can learn more about Chan’s literary introduction here and here.

• As we jump into this new month, it might be worth your while to spend a few moments looking back at The Rap Sheet’s extensive roster of crime, mystery, and thriller novels due out during the first quarter of 2025. Since that list went up in mid-January, I’ve added at least a dozen titles, with more to come before the end of March.

• This last January 8, Japanese crime-fiction critic and writer Jiro Kimura kicked off his 30th year (!) in charge of The Gumshoe Site, one of the longest-running Web sources of news regarding crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. (By comparison, The Rap Sheet will celebrate its 20th year in business in 2026.) I last interviewed Kimura when his blog was just 15 years old; you’ll find the results of our exchange here.

• Four interviews worth finding: Crime Fiction Lover talks with Ken Harris about The Ballad of the Great Value Boys (Black Rose), his fourth novel featuring witty Baltimore, Maryland, private detective Steve Rockfish. Meanwhile, renowned American spy novelist Robert Littell sits for conversations with both National Public Radio’s Scott Simon and New York Times book critic Sarah Weinman about Bronshtein in the Bronx (Soho Press), his new historical novel about Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. And And for CrimeReads, Peter Handel quizzes Thomas Perry about his 32nd novel, Pro Bono.

• “Science,” writes James Folta in Literary Hub, “has backed up what many of us have long been saying: the library rocks. A study from the New York Public Library surveyed 1,974 users on how the library makes them feel and how it affects their lives, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.”

• Finally, welcome back, John Norris, the host at Pretty Sinister Books! When that blog appeared to go dark in September 2023, it was a sad day, because for the previous dozen years Norris had presented readers with interesting material having to do with classic mystery, adventure, and supernatural fiction. But then suddenly, this last January 16, he was back, first wrapping up his last year of reading (see here and here), and then moving on to other subjects. Let’s hope Norris’ batteries are now recharged, and he will continue updating his blog for many years to come.

Three and You’re Out

This is unhappy news, reported by The Killing Times:

Bosch: Legacy, the spin-off of, well, Bosch, is to end after the third season, Amazon Prime Video says.

The series follows Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), a retired homicide detective-turned-private investigator, as he embarks on the next chapter of his career; attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers), who struggles to maintain her faith in the justice system after surviving a murder attempt; and Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz), as she discovers the possibilities and challenges of being a rookie patrol cop on the streets of Los Angeles.

The final, third season will premiere on the streaming service in March 2025, and there will also be a cold case detective Renée Ballard series starring Maggie Q (another Bosch spin-off) in the autumn next year.

Michael Connelly, who created Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch in his novels and has executive produced both series, is quoted as saying, “I am so proud of what we have accomplished with this show. Ten years ago I asked Titus Welliver if he could stick with Harry Bosch for five seasons, and he said he could do it forever. Well, five became 10, and the character, thanks to Titus, will live forever in the hearts of viewers and in the streaming world as the detective who knows that everybody counts or nobody counts. The good news here is that we have not seen the last of Harry Bosch. As in the books, Bosch is part of the Renée Ballard world, and I can’t wait for the next chapter to open.”

This Comes as No Surprise

Season 2 of Bosch: Legacy, the sequel to (or is it spin-off from?) Amazon Prime’s long-running crime drama Bosch, isn’t expected to return to small screens until this coming fall. However, that show—now part of the lineup on Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, Freevee—has already been renewed for a third season.

“The Season 3 pickup,” explains Deadline, “follows strong ratings for Season 1, which Amazon Freevee says delivered a higher number of viewers than any previous season of the mothership series Bosch.”

Both programs are, of course, based on Michael Connelly’s very popular succession of novels featuring Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. The TV adaptations find actor Titus Welliver playing Connelly’s Los Angeles cop turned private eye, with Mimi Rogers in the role of Honey “Money” Chandler, a prominent defense attorney who sometimes turns to Bosch for investigative assignments, and Madison Lintz appearing as Harry’s daughter, Maddie, who has now become a rookie police officer.

Bullet Points: Torpid Tuesday Edition

• Deadline reports that actor Max Martini (The Purge, The Order, NCIS: Los Angeles) “is set for a heavily recurring role opposite Titus Welliver on the upcoming second season of Bosch: Legacy, the spin-off of the long-running Amazon series, on Freevee. … Martini [pictured at left] will play Detective Don Ellis, a hardened vice cop in the LAPD. He’s intelligent and fierce, and not above getting down and dirty with the criminals he polices to get the job done.” Based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling Harry Bosch novels, this Freevee TV sequel finds Bosch (Welliver) having retired from the Los Angeles Police Department and set himself up as a private eye. Mimi Rogers plays Honey “Money” Chandler, a prominent L.A. defense attorney who sometimes turns to Bosch for investigative work, and Madison Lintz appears as Harry’s daughter, Maddie, who’s become a rookie police officer. Connelly has already said that Season 2 of Bosch: Legacy will draw on his 2015 novel, The Crossing, for its principal storyline. “In The Crossing,” explains Showbiz CheatSheet, “a defense attorney hires Harry to help find evidence that will prove his client is innocent of murder. While there’s DNA evidence that seems to point to his guilt, the man says he didn’t commit the crime. At first, Harry is reluctant to work with the defense, but after he takes the job and begins to dig into the case, his investigation leads him to look inside the LAPD.” The counsel for the defense in Connelly’s book was of course Bosch’s half-brother, Mickey Haller, but since Haller is now the star of his own Netflix series, I’m guessing—and I doubt this is going too far out on a limb—that Honey Chandler will be the one hiring Bosch on television. Season 2 should debut in early 2023.

• Meanwhile, the Oxford Mail brings word that filming is underway in Oxford, England, on Season 9 of Endeavour, starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam. “Location trucks have been spotted at the Kings Centre on the Osney Mead industrial estate and it is understood scenes will be filmed … in and around Radcliffe Square,” says the tabloid. It adds: “Filming for the popular ITV detective drama, based on Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse stories, also took place in May in Christ Church Meadow.” The three-episodes of Season 9—Endeavour’s concluding season—may premiere “as late as February 2023.”

• Because I remain a big fan of TV “wheel series,” I can’t help but point you toward this piece, by pop-culture critic Herbie J. Pilato, about McMillan & Wife and the rest of the vintage NBC Mystery Movie lineup. It includes a charming story about how Susan Saint James wound up playing Rock Hudson’s spouse on McMillan:

Saint James was a prime candidate. Also contracted with Universal, the actress with the unique voice she describes today as “scratchy,” had just completed a three-year run on NBC’s The Name of the Game. One of the producers of that series had written a script for her [Magic Carpet] and, as she remembered, “I was off to Europe to shoot a pilot.”

But in the middle of filming, Saint James was instructed by her agent to return to the States to meet with [McMillan & Wife creator Leonard B.] Stern and Hudson about a leading role in a new TV show.

“Rock was having lunch with every actress in Hollywood who was in my kind of category,” Saint James said.

The following day, she received a phone call from her agent, who said, “That’s it. Go to wardrobe. You got the job.”

Years later, Hudson joked with Saint James about why she won the role. As she recalled, “He told me, ‘I was gaining so much weight just having lunch with people, so I figured, Let’s just go with this woman because I don’t want to have any more lunches.’”

• Kris Calvin, author of the July-released thriller Under a Broken Sky (Crooked Lane), has posted—in CrimeReads—a list of four underrated TV crime series that she says have “the potential to be your next bingeing obsession.” I’m pleased to see the quirky British mystery McDonald & Dodds make the cut, but cannot imagine sitting through all 57 episodes of Mr. and Mrs. North, the 1952-1954 show based on Frances and Richard Lockridge’s books, which I think can be interesting but is likely too old-fashioned for most modern viewers.

• For what it’s worth, the UK-based retail site Book Depository has joined Amazon and CrimeReads in posting lists of what it says are “the best books of 2022 (so far).” Among its 20 crime- and thriller-fiction picks are Janice Hallett’s The Twyford Code, Adrian McKinty’s The Island, Louise Welsh’s The Second Cut, and Tom Bradby’s Yesterday’s Spy. Check out those choices and more in other categories here.

• Australian critic Jeff Popple posts his own selections along this same line. His “best so far” choices include John Connolly’s The Furies, Emma Viskic’s Those Who Perish, Michael Robotham’s Lying Beside You, Shelley Burr’s WAKE, and Deon Meyer’s The Dark Flood.

• Drought-provoked water-level depletion at Lake Mead, an enormous reservoir on the Nevada/Arizona border that was created in the 1930s by construction of the Hoover Dam, has revealed still more human remains. The first set (those of a gun-shot homicide victim concealed in a barrel) were discovered on May 1, with two more skeletons found later that same month and then in late July. More remains turned up in early August. As CBS News explains, “The discoveries have prompted speculation that the lake was used as a burial ground by organized crime and gangs from the early days of Las Vegas, which is just a 30-minute drive from the lake.”

• I read about this proposed novel in a recent newsletter from New York City’s renowned Mysterious Bookshop:

Murray Sinclair, best known for his Ben Crandel series, a trio of Los Angeles-based mystery novels set in the criminal underbelly of early 1980's Hollywood, has created a Kickstarter to help fund his next project: F. Scott Fitzgerald: American Spy.

What if F. Scott Fitzgerald was recruited by the French Resistance to embark upon a secret mission on the eve of World War II? Through the lost correspondence of Henri Duval, a member of the French Resistance, the historical espionage novel F. Scott Fitzgerald: American Spy tells the story of Fitzgerald’s recruitment by the French Resistance to assassinate the premier of Vichy France on the eve of America's entry into World War II.

You can find out more about Sinclair’s latest endeavor and, if you wish, help fund it by clickety-clacking right here.

• Leave it to Kevin Burton Smith, founding editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, to remember that 2022 marks the 100th birthday of the hard-boiled American gumshoe of fiction. He traces that character’s propitious delivery back to the December 1922 edition of Black Mask magazine, which led with stories by Carroll John Daly (“The False Burton Combs”) and “Peter Collinson,” aka Dashiell Hammett (“The Road Home”), both featuring models for the classic shamus we know today. As Smith recalls in the brand-new, fall edition of Mystery Scene magazine, those yarns preceded by only three months the introduction—also in Black Mask—of “the first official hard-boiled private eye,” Terry Mack, appearing in Daly’s “Three Gun Terry.” Smith’s essay, however, is only one of the reasons to grab a copy of the latest Mystery Scene. Among its other attractions are Michael Mallory’s piece about movies based on Vera Caspary’s Laura; Craig Sisterson’s assessment of modern indigenous crime writers; and Oline H. Cogdill’s picks of six authors tipped for greater success in this genre (among them Kellye Garrett, May Cobb, and Gary Phillips). Click here for information about obtaining a copy of Mystery Scene #173.

• Worth checking out, too, is the Summer 2022 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, with its excellent cover profile of Javier Cercas, Spanish author of Even the Darkest Night (Knopf).

• Author Max Allan Collins recently sat for an enjoyable video interview with Titan Books editor Andrew Sumner, during which they discussed the soon-forthcoming Mike Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can. The footage includes, too, Collins’ announcement that he’s “signed with Titan to complete the Mike Hammer Legacy series with two final Mike Hammer novels, to be published in 2023 and 2024. These final two books will, as have all of the books in this series of Collins-completed novels, contain genuine Spillane content.”

• I long ago turned on the comments moderation function for this blog, and it was partly to head off junk messages such as a recent one suggesting readers “buy crystal meth online in Alaska.” The bizarre ad went on to make that dangerous recreational drug sound benign: “It is chemically similar to amphetamine, a drug used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, a sleep disorder.” Why anyone would think these sorts of harmful messages are acceptable, or that a blogger like me would simply let them pass into circulation without hesitation? Amazing!

• I’m sometimes sorry that I wasn’t born early enough to sample the wares of coin-operated book vending machines.

• After years of talk about adapting Erik Larson’s outstanding 2003 non-fiction book, The Devil in the White City, as a movie or small-screen drama (actor Leonard DiCaprio bought the film rights way back in 2010!), the TV streaming service Hulu has finally commissioned an eight-episode series starring Keanu Reeves. Deadline notes that Larson’s book “tells the story of Daniel H. Burnham, a demanding but visionary architect who races to make his mark on history with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, America’s first modern serial killer and the man behind the notorious ‘Murder Castle’ built in the Fair’s shadow. This marks Reeves’ first major U.S. TV role. He will also serve as an executive producer.” DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will also serve as executive producers. The limited series is expected to launch in 2024. Reporting isn’t clear on which of the two leading characters Reeves will play, but I’m assuming a portrayal of Burnham would be more beneficial to his reputation.

• Finally, I continue to be impressed with Curtis Evans’ in-depth features for CrimeReads, the most recent of which recalls author Edmund Crispin (the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery), creator of amateur detective and locked-room mystery expert Gervase Fen. “Love interest is not what distinguishes Edmund Crispin mystery tales,” Evans remarks, “but rather intelligence, humor, wit, narrative zest and … clever fair-play plotting. Edmund Crispin—let us use this name to discuss Montgomery in his authorial guise—has something of the formidable literary intellect of Michael Innes, yet his humor is earthier, less precious, less an acquired taste, with Innes forever remaining the indulgent don and Crispin the precocious, puckish schoolboy. Despite his small output, Crispin is, in my view, one of the great comedic writers in British detective fiction.”

In Case You Haven’t Heard …

• I’m fairly certain I have never read any works by Anglo-American author Alice Campbell. But In Reference to Murder says we may all have access to her entire oeuvre.

Dean Street Press is republishing the works of golden age crime novelist, Alice Campbell, beginning June 6th. They’ll be reissuing the first ten of her mysteries initially, with the remainder to follow next year. As the publisher noted, the novels are “not merely excellent detective stories, but atmospheric works of suspense, many set in France.” This is [the] first time these novels have been in print for over seventy years, and are prefaced by an introduction from crime-fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Campbell (1887-1955) came originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was part of the socially prominent Ormond family, before she moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and quickly became a socialist and women’s suffragist. She later moved to Paris, marrying the American-born artist and writer, James Lawrence Campbell, and ultimately to England just before World War One. Campbell wrote crime fiction until 1950, though many of her novels continued to have French settings. She published her first work (Juggernaut) in 1928 and published nineteen detective novels during her career.

The aforementioned Mr. Evans offers the covers from Dean Street’s first 10 Campbell reissues here, plus this look back at classic Campbell dust jackets. A decade ago, he also reviewed her sixth crime novel, Desire to Kill (1934), for Mystery*File. If you’d like to sample Campbell’s work yourself, Juggernaut is due for release on June 6.

• The May edition of Mike Ripley’s Shots column, “Getting Away with Murder,” carries news about fresh releases from Tom Bradby (Yesterday’s Spy), Anthony Horowitz (With a Mind to Kill), Jo Spain (The Last to Disappear), and William Shaw (Dead Rich, published under his pseudonym G.W. Shaw); a glance back at the crime novels Ripley touted a quarter-century ago; odd publisher’s freebies; and the results of a poll asking readers to name their favorite Harry Patterson/Jack Higgins novel (other than The Eagle Has Landed).

• In a piece for CrimeReads, Connie Berry, author of the new historical mystery The Shadow of Memory, offers “10 Reasons Why Victorian England Is the Perfect Setting for Murder.”

• The series Bosch: Legacy just debuted last Friday on Amazon-owned Freevee (formerly IMDb TV), but the show—a follow-up to Prime’s Bosch—has already been renewed for a second season.

• The Guardian compares Ian Fleming’s long-forgotten and “much more serious,” 1956 film treatment for his novel Moonraker to the “lightweight” Roger Moore picture brought to theaters in 1979.

• And here’s an unlikely result of global warming. The water level at Lake Mead, a reservoir created by the Hoover Dam and located not far east of Las Vegas, Nevada, “has dropped more than 170 feet since 1983,” says NBC News. As a result, the drinking water supplies of homes, casinos, and farms in the area are at risk—and some disappearances linked to Vegas’ underworld history may finally be solved. In early May, “boaters spotted the decomposed body of a man in a rusted barrel stuck in the mud of newly exposed shoreline. The corpse has not been identified, but Las Vegas police say he had been shot, probably between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s, according to the shoes found with him. The death is being investigated as a homicide. A few days later, a second barrel was found by a KLAS-TV news crew, not far from the first. It was empty.” NBC goes on to quote Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as saying, “‘If the lake goes down much farther, it’s very possible we’re going to have some very interesting things surface. … I wouldn’t bet the mortgage that we’re going to solve who killed Bugsy Siegel,’ Green said, referring to the infamous gangster who opened the Flamingo in 1946 on what would become the Strip. Siegel was shot dead in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California. His assassin has never been identified. ‘But I would be willing to bet there are going to be a few more bodies,’ Green said.”

Returns, Reinventions, and Reprisals

There are just over two weeks to go now, before the May 6 premiere of Bosch: Legacy, the spin-off series from Amazon Prime Video’s long-running police procedural, Bosch. Like its predecessor, this new production will be headlined by Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch, the Los Angeles police detective turned private eye created by author Michael Connelly. The new show will also star Mimi Rogers as defense attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, and Madison Lintz as Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, who is training as a rookie patrol officer.

Crime Fiction Lover offers a useful preview of Bosch: Legacy, Season 1, noting that it “offers mystery, intrigue and action as the trio face off against the Russian mafia, corrupt corporate suits, street-level psychopaths and even the LAPD. This is a multi-layered look at contemporary Los Angeles—and American society—with plenty of talking points and a load of swerving and twisting storylines to enjoy across 10 hour-long episodes.” The site goes on to explain:

The theme of legacy plays throughout but comes through most clearly in the main story, which comes from Michael Connelly’s [2016] Bosch novel The Wrong Side of Goodbye. Harry Bosch [now working as an investigator for Chandler] … is summoned to meet Witney Vance (William Devane), the billionaire owner of an aerospace company who is coming to the end of his life. Vance wants Bosch to find out what happened to the girl he got pregnant when he was in college. One of his dying regrets is not standing up to his father, who forced Vance to end their relationship. More than that—could Vance have a living heir? …

Over to Honey Chandler, powerfully played by Mimi Rogers. She has physically recovered from the gunshot wounds that nearly killed her in Bosch season 7 and now harbours a deep hatred of the man who tried to have her killed—hedge fund finagler Carl Rogers (Michael Rose). When one of the witnesses against Rogers recants his testimony, Rogers walks free which fuels Chandler’s rage. Witness her pumping off rounds at the firing range. Witness her in therapy, swearing her head off and envisaging Rogers’ death. She may be healed in body, but her mind is a different matter entirely.

A new trailer for Bosch: Legacy—which will air on Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, Freevee (formerly IMDb TV)—is below.

Bosch Set to Return in May

File this under Damn Good News: Amazon has announced that its free streaming service, IMDb TV, will begin showing Bosch: Legacy—the sequel to Prime’s long-running crime drama, Bosch—on May 6.

TV Line provides this plot framework for the new series:

With Titus Welliver, Madison Lintz and Mimi Rogers reprising their roles as Harry Bosch, his daughter Madeline, and top-notch attorney Honey “Money” Chandler, the offshoot follows Bosch as he embarks on the next chapter of his career as a private investigator and finds himself working with his one-time enemy Honey. “His first job calls him to the estate of ailing billionaire Whitney Vance, where Bosch is tasked with finding Vance’s only potential heir,” per the official synopsis. “Along the way, Bosch finds himself clashing with powerful figures who have a vested interest in the heir not being found. Researching the family tree, he uncovers shocking revelations that span generations, all while billions of dollars remain on the line.”

Meanwhile, Maddie is following in her dad’s footsteps as a rookie patrol officer and grapples with what kind of cop she wants to be. “Her father—who continues to live by the code that everybody counts, or nobody counts—believes the issue is clear: Being a cop is either a mission or just a job” ...

The 10-part first-season run of Bosch: Legacy is based, at least in part, on The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016), American author Michael Connelly’s 19th novel starring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch. Click here to view a trailer for this spinoff series.

Bullet Points: Another Overstuffed Edition

• Let’s have a show of hands: Who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. playing private investigator Larry Miller in the 1969 movie The Pigeon? I would’ve counted myself among the uninformed until the other day, when I happened across that 90-minute ABC Movie of the Week on YouTube. (Watch it here, while you can!) Scripted by Edward J. Lakso (The Mod Squad, Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels) and Stanley Roberts (Mannix, Petrocelli, Police Woman), the teleflick “is great,” according to an IMDb review, “because Sammy … doesn’t take himself too seriously and the dialogue uses a number of clichés from the 60’s. Sammy is searching for a girl who doesn’t want to be found. I especially love the scenes between Sammy and Roy Glenn, the veteran actor who plays his dad, a police lieutenant.” Why Wikipedia doesn’t list The Pigeon among Davis’ motion-picture and TV credits, but does include Poor Devil, an awful NBC comedy pilot from 1973, is really anybody’s guess.

• Speaking of forgotten crime-solvers, how about Valerie Bertinelli in the 1990 CBS-TV series Sydney? As Wikipedia recalls, that erstwhile One Day at a Time actress headlined as Sydney Kells, “the daughter of a now-deceased policeman, [who] brings her New York City detective agency (in which she is the only investigator) back to her hometown and her family.” Matthew Perry (later of Friends) held forth as Kells’ rookie-cop brother, while Craig Bierko portrayed an attorney “with whom she shares sexual chemistry.” This spring replacement series lasted only 13 episodes. The best thing about it may have been its opening theme, “Finish What Ya Started,” by Bertinelli’s then-hubby Eddie Van Halen. Clickety-clack right here to watch the main title sequence from Sydney, paired with the introduction to her 1993-1994 sitcom, Café Americain.

• One more YouTube discovery: The Blue Knight, a 1973 NBC mini-series starring William Holden, Lee Remick, Sam Elliott, and Joe Santos, and based on Joseph Wambaugh’s 1972 novel of that same title. It’s been many years since I saw this teleflick with Holden as William “Bumper” Morgan, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department—long enough that I didn’t even remember it was originally broadcast in one-hour segments over four consecutive nights. The production was popular enough to spawn a subsequent series, likewise called The Blue Knight (but on CBS, rather than NBC), starring George Kennedy as Morgan; it ran for two seasons, from 1975 to 1976.

• Oh alright, here’s another: Jigsaw, a 1968 film (“originally made for television,” says Wikipedia, “but shown first in theaters”) starring Bradford Dillman, Harry Guardino, Hope Lange, Michael J. Pollard, and a young Susan Saint James. “After someone places sugar cubes laced with LSD in his cup of coffee,” the YouTube plot synopsis reads, “Jonathan Fields [Dillman] regains consciousness, only to find a woman drowned in his bathtub and flecks of blood on his hands and clothes. Suffering from amnesia, Fields can't think of anyplace else to turn, so he hires Arthur Belding [Guardino], a private detective, to help him find out what happened.” Jigsaw is a remake of 1965’s Mirage.

• Dexter: New Blood, the 10-episode revival of Michael C. Hall’s 2006-2013 drama, Dexter, is now expected to appear on Showtime come November 7. Wikipedia says this show will open “approximately ten years after the original series’ finale.” In the meanwhile, Hall’s Dexter Morgan “has moved to the fictional small town of Iron Lake, New York, hiding his identity under the name of Jimmy Lindsay, a local shopkeeper. He has developed a relationship with Angela Bishop, the town’s chief of police, and has suppressed his serial killing urges. A string of incidents around Iron Lake cause Dexter to fear that the ‘dark passenger’ within him will reveal itself.” The Killing Times offers a 90-second trailer for Dexter: New Blood, which incorporates a version of Del Shannon’s 1961 hit song, “Runaway” (previously employed as the theme for the 1986-1988 NBC police drama Crime Story).

• Almost five years ago, NBC-TV optioned Ben H. Winters’ Edgar Award-winning 2012 science fiction/mystery novel, The Last Policeman, with hopes of creating a series from it. Nothing came of that deal. Now, reports Tor.com, writer-producer Kyle Killen (Awake, Mind Games) is working on a pilot for Fox-TV, based on the same book, the resulting series—to be retitled The Last Police—expected to debut as part of the 2021/2022 season. Deadline explains that this show will follow “a small-town police detective, who, as an asteroid races toward an apocalyptic collision with Earth, believes she’s been chosen to save humanity, while her cynical partner can’t decide what he’ll enjoy more: her delusional failure, or the end of the world itself.” In Winters’ “existential detective novel,” the protagonist was a young male police detective in New Hampshire, one Henry Palace. In 2012, the author suggested that the role go to Jim True-Frost (The Wire, Manifest); no word yet on who might headline Fox’s adaptation.

• This is splendid news, from In Reference to Murder: “The new season of BritBox’s modern cozy mystery series, McDonald & Dodds, premieres on August 3rd. The series follows newly promoted DCI McDonald and veteran sergeant Dodds as they investigate complex mysteries with a web of clues that has everyone guessing who are the real victims and villains. Ahead of the new season, BritBox dropped a trailer, which you can view here.”

• Actress Jessica Walter, who died in March at age 80, has been nominated for a posthumous Emmy Award “for her voice-over work in FX/FXX’s animated comedy series Archer,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Walter voiced the toxic matriarch Malory Archer, the abrasive mother of H. Jon Benjamin’s Sterling Archer. She’s being recognized for her work in the sixth episode of the 11th season, ‘The Double Date.’” Should Walter secure this Emmy, it would be the second of her career; in 1975, she won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series honors for her portrayal of San Francisco’s first female chief of detectives in the NBC Mystery Movie rotator Amy Prentiss.

• In the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, author and New York Times crime-fiction columnist Sarah Weinman gives us a sneak peek of her latest true-crime book, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free. Due out in February 2022, it tells the bizarre story of Edgar Herbert Smith, who killed a 15-year-old New Jersey honor student in 1957, subsequently contested his case in the media—being given special support by conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.—and, after winning a retrial and release, kidnapped and tried to kill another woman, this time in California. “By the time Scoundrel is published next year,” Weinman explains, “more than seven years will have passed since I first began researching and reporting the project. I can’t wait to fill you all in on what that entailed, the voluminous trove of documents and letters I consulted across multiple archives, the people I spoke with, and the strange juxtaposition of criminal justice, conservative thought, and book publishing that connected the crimes and misdeeds of one man who fooled so many into looking past his worst instincts to see what was never really there.”

• The Southern California town of Agoura Hills has selected Lee Goldberg’s Lost Hills (2020), his first novel featuring Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Eve Ronin, as its One City One Book 2021 honoree. “That means,” says Goldberg in his blog, “the local libraries, schools, etc. will be encouraging everyone to read the book and to come to City Hall on Sept. 30th to see me in conversation, buy a copy of my book if they haven’t already … and get their copies signed. Past honorees include Michael Connelly and Dick Van Dyke.” Admission to Goldberg’s Thursday, September 30, appearance will be free, but space is limited and advance registration is required; click here after August 1 to find out more.

• A big change for Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association:

For the first time in its 68-year history, the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association will allow self-published authors to join its ranks. The move comes after the CWA consulted its members, who voted with an 84% majority in favour to accept self-published authors.

Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, said: “The founding mission of the CWA was to support, promote and celebrate the crime genre and its authors. In the past, we only accepted traditionally published authors into the CWA, as this was the best indicator of quality. The publishing landscape has changed in recent years, and self-publishing has become a route for professional writers, and indeed there are many trailblazers in this field. The time is right to update our membership criteria.”

The news release adds: “Self-published authors wishing to become a CWA member will need to demonstrate a level of professionalism through a simple-to-complete application form. This will be available on the CWA website from 13 September, when the CWA will first accept applications.”

• It sounds as if this year’s Killer Nashville convention, expected to take place in Franklin, Tennessee, from August 19 to 22, is coming along right on schedule. Keynote speakers at this in-person event will be Walter Mosley, J.T. Ellison, and Lisa Black. More information is available here for anyone who would like to participate, but hasn’t yet registered. The full four-day registration will set you back $419.

• “Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is honoring the memory of its 2020 Grand Master, the late Barbara Neely, with a scholarship to new Black writers …,” writes Mystery Scene magazine’s Oline Cogdill. “MWA will annually present two scholarships of $2,000 each. One scholarship will be for an aspiring Black writer who has yet to publish in the crime or mystery field, and another for Black authors who have already published in crime or mystery.” September 30, 2021, is the deadline for applications (available here); a winner will be declared “in the late fall.” Click here for more information.

• Like millions of other Americans, my wife and I have been watching Season 4 of Unforgotten, part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! summer schedule. There are three additional Sunday-night installments yet to come, but already, Crimespree Magazine’s Erin Mitchell has declared Unforgotten, which stars Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as London-based cold-case detectives, “the best show on television.” She continues: “Unforgotten is one of those rare shows that does not tell a story at its surface, doesn’t just lead us on a step-by-step procedural journey. The procedure is there, of course, but the subtlety of the remarkable performances addresses the characters’ motivation to allow us to experience the often painful journey though the case. In that way, the experience of watching it is more akin to reading a book, which is the highest praise I can give a TV show.” A 90-second introduction to Season 4 is embedded below.



• Regé-Jean Page, a popular alumnus of the Netflix series Bridgerton, is set to star as The Saint, aka Simon Templar, in a new film based around that Leslie Charteris-created, “Robin Hood-esque criminal and thief for hire.” Deadline says the forthcoming Paramount picture “will be a completely new take that reimagines the character and world around him.” Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg, nephew of Saint authority Burl Barer (The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Television, and Film), opines on Facebook that Page “will make a great Saint, but I hope they don’t stray too far from what we all loved about Leslie Charteris’ books, the George Sanders movies, and the [1962-1969] Roger Moore TV series.”

• With the abundance of resources provided in The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column blogroll, you can be excused for not noticing when a new site is added. But let me direct your attention to one in particular: The Ross Macdonald Blog. Composed by Neil Albert, author of the Dave Garrett series (The January Corpse, etc.), it’s turning the critical microscope on every one of Macdonald’s novels, in chronological order, beginning with his non-Lew Archer yarns. Albert—who calls Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar) “one of the three greatest writers in the genre of the hardboiled private eye, along with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler” (no argument from yours truly)—has been working on this site primarily since the end of last year, and has so far progressed to The Three Roads (1948), Macdonald’s fourth novel. Each book is being considered in detail, over a succession of postings, The Dark Tunnel (1944) and Trouble Follows Me (1946) having each generated 11 entries. (Hat tip to Kevin Burton Smith.)

• Nobody who reads this page regularly should be surprised to hear that I own the 30th-anniversary edition of Mark Dawidziak’s The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, a work originally published in 1989. But now comes word of Bonaventure Press’ Shooting Columbo: The Lives and Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective, due out this coming September and written by David Koenig. Although somewhat shorter than Dawidziak’s book (only 248 pages, compared with 410), Shooting Columbo promises behind-the-scenes intelligence about that iconic Peter Falk series, plus “a blow-by-blow account of the making of all 69 classic mysteries, from the first [figurative] pilot, Prescription: Murder, to the last special, Columbo Likes the Nightlife.” The question is, do I need Koenig’s book on my shelves, too?

• Caroline Crampton hosts the podcast Shedunnit, but she’s also the author of a map and guide called Agatha Christie’s England, from London-based Herb Lester Associates, which years ago produced The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles. Already out in England, and due for a September release in the States, Crampton’s publication focuses on “the real and fictional locations in the Queen of Crime’s canon,” as she writes in her e-mail newsletter. “There are dozens of places included, and for each I’ve researched why and how Christie wrote about them. I certainly felt like I gained a greater understanding of her work in the process of putting the guide together, and if you read it I hope you will feel the same.”

• From the “everything old is new again” department: TV Guide critic Matt Roush recently included this exchange in his blog:

Question: Will some forward-thinking Hollywood executive reboot the George Peppard vehicle Banacek? —Steve O.

Matt Roush: Would a reboot of a 1970s private-eye series really be forward-thinking? I loved the randomness of this suggestion, because there were so many higher-profile spokes of NBC’s “Mystery Movie” wheel: McCloud, McMillan and Wife, and, of course, Columbo. Seriously, though, because Banacek is lesser known, reviving a show and a hero that had a sense of humor about itself wouldn’t be the worst idea. In the bigger picture, I’d like to see a network try the “mystery wheel” format again, rotating its series on a weekly or monthly basis. Something like that could air year-round with fewer episodes per series, and that might be refreshing.

While I cringe a bit at Roush labeling Thomas Banacek a “private eye” (he was actually a Boston insurance investigator), I applaud his optimism on the matter of resuscitating television’s once-widespread “wheel series” format (about which I wrote last summer in CrimeReads). And Banacek—with its suave, totally immodest lead and supposedly impossible crimes—might, indeed, make for a fun reboot. But who do you think should fill Peppard’s loafers?

• Bay Area author-photographer Mark Coggins is out with Season 2 of his podcast, Riordan’s Desk. He launched this project in May 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a chapter-by-chapter reading of his seventh August Riordan private-eye novel, 2019’s The Dead Beat Scroll. Earlier this month, he packaged up the final installment of Season 2, a full reading (35 chapters in all) of his 2015 Riordan yarn, No Hard Feelings. And Coggins has already begun reading from Candy from Strangers (2006), his third Riordan mystery. Listen to the complete run of Riordan’s Desk by clicking here.

• Listen up, Bosch fans! “The Everybody Counts Podcast talks Bosch Season 7, Episode 5 and interviews Michael Connelly.”

• Charlie Chan authority Lou Armagno informs us that 92-year-old actor James Hong, who portrayed “Son No.1 to J. Carrol Naish’s Charlie Chan in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan [1957-1958], is to be honored next year with a star on Los Angeles’ Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hong, born in Minneapolis to Hong Kongese parents, and “the last living actor to star as a primary Chan character, either in film or television,” will be the third Chan cast member honored in this fashion; Keye Luke and the aforementioned J. Carrol Naish both won stars before him. Hong’s list of credits extends well beyond The New Adventures of Charlie Chan to include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, Harry O, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown.

• “Edgar Allan Poe: Self-Help Guru”?

• From a patron of The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page: “I’m not making light of the condominium disaster in Florida, but every time a reporter who is covering that story says ‘Surfside,’ this song pops into my head.” Learn more about this other Surfside here.

• The blog maintained by History (formerly The History Channel) recently highlighted what it claims are “the most influential classic shows” from the 1950s, “TV’s “Golden Age.” In the category of crime (click here, then scroll to the bottom of the page), it mentions Martin Kane, Private Eye (1949-1954), Man Against Crime (1949-1954), and Dragnet (1951-1959). But what about Naked City (1958-1959, 1960-1963), Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-1959), M Squad (1957-1960), Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960), Decoy (1957-1959), Have Gun—Will Travel (1957-1963), 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964), Perry Mason (1957-1966), and Peter Gunn (1958-1961)? Today’s younger viewers may be unaware of this, but the ’50s brought us myriad TV detective shows that are still worth watching.

• On the subject of vintage small-screen shows, how about T.H.E. Cat (1966-1967), which starred Robert Loggia as a San Francisco cat burglar named Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, and spun off a quartet of comic-book adventures?

• Was this really a good idea? You may recall that Deadline reported last year, “James Patterson and Condé Nast are teaming to revive vintage crime fighter The Shadow in a series of books that will also aim to be adapted for the screen.” Hachette Book Group imprint Little, Brown will publish the original series … The Shadow [aka society gadabout Lamont Cranston], a signature New York vigilante, originated in the 1930s as a series of pulp novels by Walter B. Gibson. A popular radio drama based on the books featured the voice of Orson Welles. In 1994, Universal released a feature film adaptation starring Alec Baldwin.” Anyway, Patterson’s introductory entry in this new series, set in the late 21st century and simply titled The Shadow, came out on July 13, and was greeted with more than a modicum of skepticism. San Francisco tour guide and author Don Herron remarks, “I had thought about giving it a shot, and then I saw the cover [shown on the left]. The only thought I could process was Where the fuck is HIS HAT???”

• Yellow Perils is no more enthusiastic about the book.

• Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest (1929), has inspired a number of cinematic creations over the years, including the 1930 picture Roadhouse Nights and the 2005 neo-noir mystery Brick. But the book, which stars Hammett’s nameless San Francisco private eye, the Continental Op, has never been given a faithful adaptation. It did once come close, however, as a series of newspaper clippings in Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West makes clear. In 1941, the Los Angeles Times carried word of Paramount Pictures decision not to remake its 1935 film based on Hammett’s fourth novel, The Glass Key, but to instead develop a script from Red Harvest. Brian Donlevy was slated to portray the Op, with Paulette Goddard and a young Alan Ladd helping to fill out the cast. Unfortunately, that film was first “postponed” and later abandoned. Hoping to boost Ladd’s Hollywood career, Paramount decided to remake The Glass Key after all. Donlevy was nominally the headliner, but Ladd was the real star of that production, while Veronica Lake replaced Goddard as its distaff attraction.

• Did author Hammett really break the window of a downtown department store in Miami, Florida, during a four-day visit he made to that city in 1934? The Palm Beach Post recalled the story late last year, but it may just be an urban legend.

• Talk about dropping the ball! I realized this week that, while I had reported on nominees for the 2021 Scribe Awards, I never announced the winners. In the category of greatest interested to crime-fiction readers—“General Original Novel and Adapted Novel”—Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s 12th Mike Hammer novel, Masquerade for Murder (2020), lost out to a video-game-related adventure, Day Zero: Watchdogs Legion, by James Swallow and Josh Reynolds (Aconyte).

• Were I able to attend this year’s PulpFest, taking place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 19th through 22nd, I would definitely want to be in the audience for “popular culture scholar” Doug Ellis’ presentation, “The Weird Tales of Margaret Brundage.” “Initially disguising her gender by signing her work as M. Brundage, the artist redefined sensuality for the already scandalous pulp market,” observes the PulpFest Web site. “Her work was later targeted by New York Mayor LaGuardia’s 1938 decency campaign. … Margaret Brundage [1900-1976] created 66 covers for Weird Tales between 1932 and 1945, making her the most in-demand cover artist for the fantasy, horror, and science-fiction magazine. Only Virgil Finlay was a close rival.” Ellis’ remarks on Brundage are scheduled for Friday, August 20.

• The best interview I’ve heard with T.J. Newman, the former flight attendant and author of the new thriller Falling (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), was conducted by Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air program. You can listen to their whole conversation here.

• Powell’s Books, the Portland, Oregon, landmark heralded as “the world’s largest independent bookstore,” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. As part of the celebration, it has assembled “a curated collection of 50 books from the past 50 years.” I’d be more enthusiastic about this list if—in addition to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future—it contained even one crime, mystery, or thriller novel. No such luck!

• Max Allan Collins mentions in his blog that the 13th Mike Hammer novel he’s “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane, is due out from Titan Books in 2022—75 years after the appearance of Spillane’s first Hammer yarn, I, the Jury. This one will be titled Kill Me If You Can.

• There have been so many crime novels backdropped by San Francisco, that Paul French was bound to fail when he determined to collect, for CrimeReads, a representative sample of their diversity. Why, for instance, does he mention Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Poor Butterfly (2012)—the only Toby Peters mystery set in the Bay Area (most of them took place in L.A.)—or Charles Willeford’s one-off, Wild Wives (1956), but completely ignore the oeuvres of Colin Willcox, Stephen Greenleaf, Kelli Stanley, and Bill Pronzini? That said, French’s piece—parked here—is entertaining, and might give you some ideas of things to read as this summer season winds to an end.

• For broader exposure to fictional offenses set in and around San Francisco, consult Randal S. Brandt’s Golden Gate Mysteries wiki.

• And how much fun is this? Blogger Evan Lewis is showcasing the covers, contents pages, copyright information, and occasional lagniappes from every early edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As he explains in this introductory post, “Some months ago, my old friend and fellow book collector Jim Rogers passed away, and left behind a complete run of EQMM from 1941 to 1959. Those mags have now passed into the care of another old friend, Mr. Larry Paschelke, and Larry agreed to let me scan the covers and share them with you here. (Jim, I have no doubt, would have done the same had I asked, but I didn't know he had them!)” Click here to catch up with Lewis’ project in progress.