Bullet Points: Long Overdue Edition

During the four days I spent in San Francisco this last February, attending the latest Left Coast Crime convention, more than one fellow attendee came up to me to say how much they like my periodic, multiple-subject “Bullet Points” posts. While that gladdened my heart, it also reminded me of how long it had been since I’d produced such a compilation. I think the last one went up in October, which in these tense, turbulent times seems like a lifetime ago.

With a few free hours on my hands today, I went trolling through my computer bookmarks to find new subjects worth sharing.

• Well, what do you know: In Reference to Murder reports that the American author who, since 2013, has published best-selling psychological thrillers (such as The Housemaid, The Tenant, and The Divorce) under the name Freida McFadden has finally revealed her true identity. She is “in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn’t want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. ‘My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was [ready to] step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn’t be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job,’ McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time.” But even her nom de plume is rooted in the medical profession; Cohen told the BBC that “She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke—after a hospital training registry, the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database.”

• April 1 marked the 28th anniversary of Kevin Burton Smith launching that essential online crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective Web Site. His page went live on that date back in 1998! Congratulations to my old friend Kevin for sticking with this project for so long and growing it so expertly.

• Speaking of milestones, it was half a century ago this year—on September 22, 1976, to be precise—that the hour-long “jiggle TV” crime drama Charlie’s Angels debuted on America’s ABC network. In early commemoration of that fact, three of the show’s stars, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd, “reunited” earlier this week at PaleyFest in Los Angeles (“an annual television festival hosted by the Paley Center”). According to the Associated Press, “They were greeted with a standing ovation and whoops and cheers from an audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.” Smith, now 80 years old (!), may have delivered the occasion’s best line: “I knew the show was different, special and unique. Three women chasing danger instead of getting rescued.” Charlie’s Angels aired for five seasons and was a pop-culture hit (despite talk of it undermining feminism), but underwent several cast changes over time, the first of those coming in 1977, when Fawcett left amid a contract dispute. She was replaced by Ladd.

• London’s two-day Capital Crime festival has issued its full program of 2026 events, which are set to kick off at the Leonardo Royal Hotel on Thursday, June 18. Among the headliners will be authors Elly Griffiths, Jeffrey Archer, Jane Harper, and Sophie Hannah, with Irish comedian and actor Ardal O’Hanlon (formerly of Death in Paradise) also participating. An overview of events can be found here. Winners of the annual Fingerprint Awards, celebrating the foremost crime and thriller fiction in more than half a dozen categories, will be honored in a special ceremony on the 18th.

• Erle Stanley Gardner’s The D.A. Calls It Murder (1937)—the first of his legal mysteries starring small-town California district attorney Douglas Selby—was reissued last summer through Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics imprint. What I hadn’t realized until recently, however, was that publisher Open Road Integrated Media has also returned to print seven of the eight other entries in the Selby line. Which is good news! As I wrote in CrimeReads, “While those stories never enjoyed the same level of reader enthusiasm Perry Mason’s escapades did, and were neither as humorous nor as briskly paced as another series Gardner launched in 1939, built around mismatched L.A. gumshoes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, they certainly offered plenty in the way of knotty plots, ill-starred suspects, and razzle-dazzle legal shenanigans.” Click here for more about those paperbacks.

• By the way, the remaining Selby novel, 1948’s The D.A. Takes a Chance, was last reprinted in 2014 by The Murder Room, an imprint of UK publisher Orion. Although The Murder Room is evidently now defunct, Open Road hasn’t yet added it to its catalogue. Maybe soon?

• There seems be no end of television-related news lately, beginning with word that the ITV and BritBox “reimaginging” of Dalziel and Pascoe has begun filming in the North of England. This sex-switching update of characters born in novels by Reginald Hill—and made additionally famous in a 1996-2007 BBC One series—finds grumpy, intransigent, and very politically incorrect Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (played in the original show by Warren Clarke) being transformed into Detective Inspector Andrea Dalziel and portrayed by Kerry Godliman, while Dalziel’s more forward-thinking police partner, DI Peter Pascoe (Colin Buchanan) becomes Detective Sergeant Paige Pascoe, brought to the small screen by Nina Singh. The opening season of this new crime drama will comprise six episodes; there’s no official debut date at present. Jon Farrar, executive vice president of programming, BritBox, is quoted in Variety as assuring fans of the earlier production that this one will hew to familiar themes: “Dalziel and Pascoe has always been about friction, intellect, and the uneasy bond of opposites, forged in pursuit of truth. Dalziel and Pascoe’s chemistry, wit, and moral clarity perfectly complement this richly layered mystery. It’s timeless crime storytelling that not only honours but sharpens its legacy.” I look forward to judging for myself.

• For all of those people who, like me, watched and enjoyed the slow-burning “cat-and-mouse thriller” The Game, and thought its ambiguous but not unsatisfying ending offered zero chance of a sequel … well, what the hell do we know? Even the Web site TVGuide.co.uk concedes this is “rather surprising” news; Channel 5 thrillers are usually one-season wonders, “self-contained nuggets of deliciously daft drama” (e.g., The Au Pair and The Rumour). But The Game, which had its UK airing in 2025 and found Jason Watkins (McDonald & Dodds) playing Huw Miller, a recently retired police detective who becomes convinced that his suave new neighbor, Patrick Harbottle (Grantchester’s Robson Green), is the repeat killer he’s long pursued, “left viewers wanting more,” says TVGuide.co.uk. At the close of Series 1, Patrick was being arrested and Huw was seriously injured. The follow-up is set a year on. It sees Huw having survived and thinking himself free of the psychological grip Patrick held him in. “Retreating with his wife, Alice (Sunetra Sarker), to an isolated house by the sea,” The Killing Times explains, “Huw is determined to rebuild a quiet life, far from the violence that nearly destroyed them. But peace, he soon realises, is an illusion.” Channel 5 says The Game will return in 2027.

• Robson Green is much in demand. The Killing Times reports that, with his work done on Grantchester’s 11th and final season (set to premiere on PBS Masterpiece come June 14), he will assume one of the leading roles in an eight-part BBC serial, The Northumbria Mysteries.

Set against the sweeping Northumberland coastline and its surrounding market towns, the series centres on an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Green will star as Joe Ruby, a jack-of-all-trades whose life has been shaped by mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities, alongside Oxford-educated DI Rose O’Connell (casting to be announced), a rarefied intellectual, a deep thinker with a brilliant mind and an ice-cool disposition. In a classic odd-couple pairing, Joe and Rose combine their talents as they frustrate, confound, and ultimately surprise one another while unravelling a series of compelling crime mysteries.

• Something I should have mentioned long ago: HBO-TV has ordered an eight-episode drama based on Adrian McKinty’s best-selling 2019 child-abduction novel, The Chain. Behind this project is Damon Lindelof, who previously gave us Lost and The Leftovers, and was once a writer on Nash Bridges and Crossing Jordan. As The Wrap recalls, Irish author McKinty’s chilling tale “follows Rachel, a divorcée who is undergoing treatment for cancer, who gets a call that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and is now part of The Chain. To get Kylie back, she must kidnap another child after paying a ransom. Kylie will be released when the parents of the child Rachel has kidnapped take yet another child and continue the chain.” The Wrap notes, however, that “Lindelof is said to be expanding the mythology of McKinty’s award-winning thriller.”

• Blogger Lou Armagno points me toward a piece in Variety that’s likely to delight fans of Earl Derr Biggers’ renowned Charlie Chan. It says actor Tzi Ma (Mulan, Kung Fu) will executive produce and headline a possible new Canadian Chan TV series reimagining Biggers’ Chinese-American Honolulu policeman as a Hong Kong immigrant to Vancouver, British Columbia, “who, after retiring from the Vancouver police department in frustration, quietly launches a private investigation agency, taking on cases for the city’s overlooked and forgotten.”

• Meanwhile, Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke has signed up to play a criminal investigator in Netflix’s adaptation of Liz Moore’s 2024 hit novel, The God of the Woods. … Actor-writer Stephen Fry will star as a quirky but brilliant former MI6 agent in a forthcoming Fox-TV show called The Interrogator. … See-Saw films, the production company behind Slow Horses, has acquired the rights to develop a fresh TV series from Jonathan Gash’s novels about a British antiques dealer-cum-sleuth known only as Lovejoy—books that were already the source material for a 1986-1984 BBC1 comedy-drama featuring Ian McShane. … Filming is underway on the sophomore season of Lynley, based on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley yarns. … And Murder, She Wrote, a Universal Pictures film inspired by the 1984-1996 CBS-TV series starring Angela Lansbury as a mystery writer and amateur crime-solver, is slated to reach theaters just in time for Christmas, 2027. Jamie Lee Curtis will play Fletcher in this version.

• My other blog, Killer Covers, returns from a too-long hiatus with proof that there are simply too many crime, mystery, and thriller novels fronted by silhouettes of people in windows.

• We still await any information regarding the next James Bond feature film (now under the control of Amazon). But in the meantime, we can look forward to a new Bond novel for adults. Titled King Zero, it’s by Charlie Higson, the author of a half a dozen Young Bond yarns, as well as the 2023 007 adventure, On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Shotsmag Confidential provides this plot précis:

Beginning with the murder of an agent in Saudi Arabia by a weapon never before seen by the Secret Service and spanning the globe in an epic race against time to avert global catastrophe, the novel brings the literary Bond squarely into the twenty-first century, where the old world that made him is crumbling and a terrifying new order emerges while a dangerous villain—the most distinctive since Goldfinger –moves in the shadows. Higson explores themes of power, technology, and international tensions over resources in an extraordinarily timely story.

UK publisher Michael Joseph has promised to deliver King Zero to bookshops on the other side of the pond by September 24.

• Wow, a Kickstarter campaign to create action figures based on monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak and other characters featured in two 1970s teleflicks (The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler) and a subsequent TV series collected way more money than was sought! I guess old Carl hasn’t been forgotten, after all.

• Finally, this CrimeReads piece by writer and artist Frank Ladd, comparing the oeuvres of American private eye novelists Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, deserves attention from fans of both. He concludes that “In a way, Macdonald is writing moral ghost stories. The present is haunted by the past, and the novel becomes a kind of exorcism. Chandler is writing moral fever dreams, hallucinatory journeys through corruption. There is no past worth redeeming.”

Bullet Points: Seeking Sanity Edition

• Chan authority Lou Armagno notes that this coming Friday, August 15, fans are invited to mark “the 100th anniversary of author Earl Derr Biggers’ literary and film creation, Detective Charlie Chan.” There are two public events scheduled in Biggers’ birthplace of Warren, Ohio, to commemorate the publication of the first Chan novel, The House Without a Key, in 1925. A free panel discussion titled “A Century of Charlie Chan” will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Warren-Trumbull Country Public Library. Then hop over to the historic Robins Theatre to take in a big-screen showing of what Armagno says is “one of the most intriguing of the 40-plus Chan films, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, 1939,” starring Sidney Toler. The Robins’ doors will open at 7 p.m. Tickets go for $9.25 apiece.

These events are actually part of a four-day Chan celebration in Warren, August 14-17, organized by followers of Rush Glick’s Web site, The Charlie Chan Family Home. A complete schedule can be found here. If others would like to participate further, Armagno suggests they show up at the library at 2 p.m. on Friday, and let Rush Glick, Dr. Mike Votta, or Barbara McNeal—“the regulars”—know of their interest.

• Following up on a recent post, the Australian Crime Writers Association has now released two new shortlists of contenders for the 2025 Ned Kelly Awards. First, the nominees for Best True Crime:

— They’ll Never Hold Me, by Michael Adams (Affirm Press)
— A Thousand Miles from Care, by Steve Johnson (William Collins)
— The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop, by Neil Mercer (Allen & Unwin)
— Meadow’s Law, by Quentin McDermott (HarperCollins)
— The Lasting Harm, by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (HarperCollins)

Now, the candidates for Best International Crime Fiction:

— Return to Blood, by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster UK)
— Leave the Girls Behind, by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin)
— The Waiting, by Michael Connelly (Allen & Unwin)
— A Case of Matricide, by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Text)
— Moscow X, by David McCloskey (Swift Press)
— Home Truths, by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)

The winners of these commendations, along with that for Best Crime Fiction, will revealed in September.

• I neglected to mention that the latest edition of Frank Gregorsky’s free, PDF-formatted Web quarterly called Detective Drama Gems (dated Spring 2025) is now available. Contents include a thorough analysis of “Deal With the Devil,” the January 11, 1972, installment of The Mod Squad, and looks back at episodes of two Hawaii-based crime dramas: Magnum, P.I., and Hawaiian Eye.

• Also now to be had: the Summer 2025 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Its cover feature is devoted to Lisa Gardner’s Frankie Elkin series, as well as other novels starring finders of missing persons. In addition, editor George Easter has filled his 80 electronic pages with myriad reviews of new and upcoming crime titles; news of “Mystery” Mike Bursaw’s retirement from selling books at Bouchercon; an interview with Australian author Geoff Parkes (When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole); Mike Ripley’s new “Ripster’s Revivals” column; and much more. Deadly Pleasures is published quarterly, only in an electronic edition, for an annual price of $10. Learn more here.

• This was unexpected. The Associated Press has announced it is discontinuing its weekly reviews of books at the end of August. Anthony McCartney, the AP’s global entertainment and lifestyle editor, explained in a note to the news agency’s regular critics that “This was a difficult decision but one made after a thorough review of AP’s story offerings and what is being most read on our website and mobile apps as well as what customers are using. Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews. AP will continue covering books as stories, but at the moment those will handled exclusively by staffers.” I have often referenced AP critiques in The Rap Sheet’s “Revue of Reviewers” posts, and other publications have been in the habit of reprinting those literary assessments whole, giving them greater influence. It’s sad to see them disappearing.

• And on the same day that Saturday Evening Post columnist Bob Sassone advocated for writers to “bring back blogs,” the book-review blog Only Detect suddenly kicked into life once more. Its author, identified only as “Mike,” had seemed to cease his postings in April 2021, when he published this analysis of Isaac Asimov’s 1957 science-fiction whodunit, The Naked Sun. But just last week, he returned with two smart new classic-mystery critiques—of John Dickson Carr’s The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933) and Baynard Kendrick’s Blind Man’s Bluff (1943). Let’s hope this portends more good things to come!

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.

What Say You, Charlie Chan?

(Editor’s note: Lou Armagno is a Cleveland, Ohio, writer, former U.S. Air Force postman, singer, and the brains behind The Postman on Holiday, a blog devoted to the career of fictional Honolulu police detective Charlie Chan and his creator, Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933]. He’s also author of The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside the Charlie Chan Canon (BookBaby), a book debuting in print next week. To help introduce that slender volume to readers—both current Chan fans and future ones—Armagno explains in the following essay how he became interested in Detective Chan and that character’s pearls of wisdom.)

“Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.”
—Behind That Curtain, 1928, Chapter 19

My introduction to Chinese-Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan was probably similar to that of many who grew up in the era of black-and-white television, followed by those awesome color TV sets (red, blue, and green screens) and just three channels. It was through watching the 44 Charlie Chan movies on late-night or weekend television, starring Warner Oland, Sydney Toler, and finally Roland Winters—a Swede, a Missourian, and a Bostonian, respectively—that I first met the detective. All Caucasians in yellow face accompanied by Sons No.’s 1, 2, 3, and even 4, and sometimes Charlie’s daughters. I loved those movies in my youth. And while everyone had their favorite Chan performer, I remember actor Sydney Toler the best.

Sure, there were other fictional sleuths, but this detective seemed to tickle my fancy in ways the others did not. Yes, Detective Chan of film was known for his whimsical sayings, such as “Any powder that kills flea is good powder.” However, I believe it was something else? In a way Chan was like me—like you and me. He wasn’t a rich aristocrat with a butler and money to burn, or a tough private eye, or a cop who could take a beating, or give one, then shake it off. He didn’t possess the cold analytical mind of Sherlock Holmes, nor was he always pulling out a gat and shooting someone. Chan was quite nonviolent; a family man who solved cases with intelligence, persistence, and as Charlie would say, “a little luck.” In effect, he was an underdog, an outsider, and just a normal good person—like you and me. But unlike you and me, he was a marksman of sorts … with his tongue. Oh yes, those aphorisms!

After reading Earl Derr Biggers’ six Charlie Chan stories, my eyes were opened to a very different detective from the one I’d known on screen. The Charlie Chan of literature was just as sagacious an Oriental sleuth as Sherlock Holmes was as an Occidental detective. They were the ying and the yang on opposite sides of the world, both fighting to right wrongs. The Charlie Chan inside those novels was not comedic, nor were the aphorisms I found there.

And it was then I really noticed the aphorisms, Biggers’ aphorisms. Those on film were funny, often slapstick in nature. However, those in the novels were not the same. An example: “Moment comes when gold and pearls can not buy back the raven locks of youth.” The author injected his sage adages for insight and enlightenment. They were, contrary to those in the movies, strategically placed within the novels and masterfully fit to the particular situation in which they were found.

(Left) Writer, singer, and No. 1 Charlie Chan fan Lou Armagno

And they made you think! Perhaps even made something stir inside you. Maybe made you remember an incident that happened to you, and wish you had offered that same retort; or led you to file that saying away for your own future use! And that’s because those aphorisms in the books were borrowed from the great philosophers of history: Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, the I Ching. And I found it remarkable how seemingly effortless the author injected aphorisms into his prose. Since reading those six Chan novels, I have not come across such a technique again, at least not to that magnitude. I’ve seen it occasionally, as inside the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels by Louise Penny, and from time to time elsewhere. But other authors have not employed maxims to the same degree, and as effectively, as Biggers did through the voice of Detective Charlie Chan.

So was it stereotypical? Sure, of course it was. Probably not many of those Chinese immigrants working in gold mines, the garment industries, and factories, or those building railroads spouted off many aphorisms through the course of each day. But it made for damn good reading! And while some debate Biggers’ benevolence in creating his detective, the novels were an indisputable success. And they portrayed an Asian American in a positive light amid probably the most significant period of anti-Asian sentiment in America.

Since the publication of that first “little Red Book,” Quotations from Charlie Chan (1968), compiled and edited by Harvey Chertok and Martha Torge, there have been several works written to address the aphorisms of Charlie Chan on the silver screen. Now—to set the record straight, and with my humble involvement—there exists a collection of those penned (between 1925 and 1932) by Ohio author Earl Derr Biggers inside his half-dozen Charlie Chan novels. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did in finding them.

“Life would be a dreary waste, if there was no thing called loyalty.”—
The Chinese Parrot, 1926, Chapter 2

Introduction

(Editor’s note: Chicago resident Barbara Gregorich studied at Kent State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard. Before embarking on a writing career, she worked as an English instructor, a typesetter, and a letter carrier. She is the author of Charlie Chan’s Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers (2018), and penned the introduction to The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan. As a bonus treat, we now bring you that brief preface in its entirety.)

Language is always changing, both its words and its structure. A 21st-century American would have at least mild difficulty understanding what one of the Mayflower immigrants was saying. Yet there is one small part of language that has remained intact over the millennia, and that is the aphorism. An aphorism’s short observation on life or on others is pithy and often witty. More importantly, it offers a subtle encouragement on how to live. (Or sometimes how not to live.) And even though many aphorisms are ancient, people of all ages love them as if they were fresh. They’re intrigued by the picture most adages paint, and intrigued as well by what the saying means. They recognize that when they encounter an adage, they’re encountering only the surface—more depth of meaning lies within.

As a writer and a respected raconteur, Earl Derr Biggers must have sensed the power of aphorisms. Whether he ever thought of putting them into a novel before he created Charlie Chan, we don’t know. Biggers requested of his wife, Eleanor, that when he died, all his working papers be destroyed, and she honored his request. So all we know of Biggers’ thinking is contained in the files of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, which are held by the Lilly Library of Indiana University. In the letters that Biggers exchanged with his editor, David Laurance Chambers, there is no mention of how the author came to make Charlie Chan a font of adages.

That his decision was the right one, however, is not in doubt. No sooner was The House Without a Key published [in 1925] than the public began demanding more—more of Charlie Chan, and more of his adages. After Fox Film cast Warner Oland as Chan, the scriptwriters not only kept the aphorisms of the novel, but multiplied them. Multiplied them to the degree that Biggers, who loved Warner Oland as Chan, thought the movies contained too many weak, wise-crack sayings.

And he was right in that assessment, too. The Hollywood-created adages call attention to themselves. They are meant to do so. The adages in Biggers’ six novels are clever. They are witty. They are fun to read. But in no way do they call attention to themselves for the sake of calling attention. And in no way are they superficial. At their foundation, they are serious offerings to the public—you, me, all of us—on the attitudes and actions we should emulate as we live our lives. They tell us how to live with wisdom, not against it.

This book, The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan, offers the reader all the aphorisms within Earl Derr Biggers six novels, unadulterated by Hollywood add-ons. The various wise and playful ways in which Lou Armagno groups the adages is a delight in itself. Adages are pithy. So—read and enjoy.

Bullet Points: Changes and Chan Edition

• The Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America will soon begin accepting entries to its 7th annual Six-Word Mystery Contest. The idea is to sum up an entire story in the space of just half a dozen words. Last year, for instance, Colorado resident Rita A. Popp won the overall competition with this witty effort: “Magician escapes gallows when witness vanishes.” This year’s contest opens on September 1, with submissions to be accepted until midnight MST on October 7. Entry details will be posted here. As a press release explains, “Six-word ‘whodunits’ can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard-boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery involving Romance or Lust. The Six-Word Mystery Contest is open to all adults 18 and over. No residency requirements. The contest entry fee is $6 for one entry or $10 to enter six-word mysteries in all five categories. The grand prize winner will receive $100 in cold, hard cash. Winners in all other categories will receive $25, and all winners and finalists will be featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, on our RMMWA website, and in our popular monthly newsletter, Deadlines. Participants will be invited to the chapter’s annual Mystery & Mistletoe Holiday Party in December, which will be held live and on Zoom.”



• Like so many other people, I suspect, I started watching Season 2 of The Lincoln Lawyer—based on Michael Connelly’s 2011 novel, The Fifth Witness, and starring Manuel Garcia Rulfo as Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller—with the assumption that it would run only five episodes in length, as opposed to last year’s 10; after all, that’s how many installments dropped at once onto its Netflix page on July 6. Also like so many others, I was surprised to discover that those comprised only half the story. “I thought it was a good idea,” co-showrunner/co-creator Ted Humphrey told Deadline recently. Well, I for one object. The second five episodes aren’t slated to drop until Thursday, August 3. By then, I’ll surely have forgotten some of the plot nuances from the initial set, and will have to review. Sigh … At least this season’s second-part trailer (above) makes me want to see more.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

As filming gets underway on the ninth season of the hit Masterpiece and ITV show, Grantchester, lead actor Tom Brittney has confirmed that Season 9 will be his last. Tom, who has played the much-loved character Reverend Will Davenport since 2019, is stepping back from his role to focus on new projects. But it was announced that Rishi Nair (Hollyoaks, Count Abdulla) will take over as charismatic vicar, Alphy Kotteram. Nair will be the third vicar character in the series, following Brittney and the original, James Norton, who was featured from 2014-2019. Robson Green, who has played the various vicars’ police counterpart, Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, will return once again. The series is based on The Grantchester Mysteries, collections of short stories written by James Runcie.

• Nathan Ward, who penned the 2015 Dashiell Hammett biography The Lost Detective, recently had a captivating piece posted in CrimeReads, recalling the circumstances of a 1902 shipboard murder. At the end of that article, it mentions that Ward has a new book coming out in September: Son of the Old West (Atlantic Monthly Press), about Old West lawman, bounty hunter, and Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo. That’s definitely being added to my must-read list.

• Although I never got around to watching the 2014-2016 BBC One TV crime drama The Missing, I did enjoy its 2019-2021 spin-off, Baptiste, starring Turkish-born French performer Tchéky Karyo as police detective Julien Baptiste, a role he had created for the previous series. So I was intrigued to learn that UK author David Hewson—who previously adapted the Danish TV drama The Killing as a trilogy of books—has produced a prequel novel to Baptiste. Titled Baptiste: The Blade Must Fall, it is due out from UK publisher Orion in November of this year. A press release offers the following plot synopsis:

Julien Baptiste is an intelligent but somewhat naïve detective, sent to work in Clermiers, a town filled with corruption. A girl goes missing, presumed dead after bloody clothes are found close to an illicit party near an abandoned chateau. Baptiste believes he’s nailed the culprit, the eccentric Gilles Lellouche. When he appears in court, the public call for the guillotine—and that’s the sentence Lellouche gets. But as Lellouche awaits an appeal for clemency, he asks to see Baptiste, who’s still haunted by the fact the girl’s body remains missing. As the clock ticks towards execution hour, Baptiste begins to realise he may have made a terrible mistake …

• A rather belated congratulations to Elizabeth Foxwell, the managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, who has replaced the eminent, now retired Jon L. Breen as a “Jury Box” columnist for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. As she explains, “I am the first woman to write the column--I think I’ll be writing one column per year.” Foxwell’s initial submission features in EQMM’s July/August issue.

• Here’s another book treat for you: Lou Armagno, who masterminds the Charlie Chan-focused blog The Postman on Holiday, will soon release a new non-fiction work about that renowned Hawaiian detective. The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside the Charlie Chan Canon (BookBaby) is set to premiere as an e-book on August 26 (the 139th birthday of Chan creator Biggers), with the print edition due out September 4. “Through the years,” remarks Armagno in his blog, “I’ve read many books on the aphorisms of Charlie Chan. However, all concentrated on the sayings found in films—never those inside the novels. And Ohio author Earl Derr Biggers worked hard to entwine the words of great philosophers into his stories for meaning and enlightenment. So this book is just ‘to set the record straight’ …” Armagno very kindly asked yours truly for a back-cover blurb, along with editor/bookseller Otto Penzler and attorney/writer Leslie S. Klinger. I look forward to procuring a finished copy of this delightful collection.

• Martin Edwards reports in his blog on a delightful visit he made to the “150-year-old coach house” home of novelist Peter Lovesey, in historic Shrewsbury, England. “‘Never meet your heroes’ is one of those ‘rules’ in life that has some merit,” is how Edwards introduces his post, “but there are also various exceptions to it. Perhaps it depends on the hero!”

• It appears that Terry Hayes, the English-born Australian screenwriter and author whose first suspense novel, I Am Pilgrim, came out in 2014 to a widespread chorus of acclaim, finally has a second (and, it should be mentioned, much delayed) book teed up and ready to go. The Real Book Spy says The Year of the Locust, “sure to be one of the biggest releases next year,” is set for release next February from Atria/Emily Bestler Books.

• I missed drawing attention to the nominees for this year’s Scribe Awards, organized by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and intended to honor “licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books.” Blogger B.V. Lawson observes that “There are some honorees of interest to the crime fiction community, including in the General/Adapted Novel category: Murder She Wrote: Death on the Emerald Isle by Terrie Moran, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow (which was also nominated in the Audiobook category).” Winners are to be declared on July 21 during San Diego Comic-Con.

• Mark your calendars: Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival, will return to a venue outside Dublin during the weekend of October 6-8. Among the authors taking part will be Tana French, Jane Casey, Steve Cavanagh, Sophie Hannah, and Alice Feeney, This press bulletin lays out more details.

• And I was saddened to read that American singer Tony Bennett, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died yesterday at age 96. Although for a long time I ignored his work, as I grew more mature, I came to appreciate it greatly. I own a number of his CDs, and was hoping to one day see him perform live. (The closest I ever got was in 2006, when Bennett was invited to attend the 100th anniversary commemoration of San Francisco’s great earthquake and fire. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it.) While I knew that he’d guested as himself in a variety of TV presentations (including one I remember distinctly: a 1997 episode of the Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan), I wasn’t aware that his screen credits also included parts on both 77 Sunset Strip and Remington Steele. Live and learn.

Bullet Points: Dog Days Edition

It feels like forever ago that I last compiled a “Bullet Points” post of crime-fiction news items. In fact, the last time was in early June. My preference is to write these every couple of weeks, but editorial responsibilities unrelated to The Rap Sheet stood in my way for almost two months. With any luck, I can now return to my usual timetable.

• Count me among those delighted by news of a Death in Paradise spin-off series starring Kris Marshall, who played Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman for roughly three and a half seasons (after replacing Ben Miller as DI Richard Poole). As The Killing Times reports, this new BBC-TV show—to be titled Beyond Paradise—“will tell the story of what happened to Goodman … after he returned to the UK. Seeking a quieter life away from the stress of the city, Humphrey has taken a job as Detective Inspector in fiancée Martha’s hometown. However, they soon find that country life is anything but peaceful and Humphrey can’t help but be distracted by the town’s surprisingly high crime rate with a new, and very different, case challenging him each week.” Mystery Fanfare adds that Beyond Paradise will begin airing on BBC and, in the States, on BritBox in 2023, and that “many of the characters from Death in Paradise will make cameo appearances.” I hope producers can convince the lovely Joséphine Jobert to reprise her role as Detective Sergeant Florence Cassell. She and Marshall made a splendid team on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie.

• While we’re on the subject of Death in Paradise, the TV site WhatToWatch says the 12th season of that popular series is “very likely to start in January 2023,” again with Ralf Little playing DI Neville Parker. In advance of that, a second Christmas special is due!

• When last we checked on ITV-TV’s McDonald & Dodds, in mid-June, word was that its third season would debut in Britain on June 19. However, there was no clue then as to a U.S. showing. Now, finally, Mystery Fanfare brings news that this lighthearted whodunit, starring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched police partners in modern Bath, England, will have its BritBox premiere here in the States on Tuesday, August 16. Three 90-minute episodes are due, with the streaming service dropping one per week.

• Still reeling from the sad news that star Douglas Henshall has quit Shetland, we learn that his last, six-episode season with the BBC-TV series will begin airing in the UK on Wednesday, August 10.

• A confession: I haven’t yet watched the opening season of Slow Horses, the AppleTV+ spy series based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and starring Gary Olman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas. But I am hoping to get around to it soon. I’d like to least take in those half-dozen episodes before the program’s sophomore season—based on Herron’s Dead Lions (2013)—premieres, probably in November. (You can already enjoy the trailer by clicking here.) But it’s becoming difficult to keep up: The Killing Times reports that production of Seasons 3 and 4—being shot back-to-back—is already underway, though there are no particulars regarding which other Slough House novels are being adapted for the small screen.

• Despite the numerous accolades Herron has received for his novels about a band of misfit former MI5 agents (including his recently capturing the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for Slough House), the author is apparently stepping away from those characters in order to next pen another standalone yarn. Soho Press, though, intends to keep fans happy by releasing, in November, a paperback collection of Slough House novellas. The List, The Drop, The Last Dead Letter, and The Catch—all of which have previously been published—are to be featured, together with a new, Christmas-themed tale that gives the book its title, Standing by the Wall.

• The folks behind PBS-TV’s Masterpiece have posted a trailer (see below) for Magpie Murders, the six-part mini-series scripted by Anthony Horowitz and based on his 2017 whodunit of the same name. This show stars Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan, and is scheduled to commence its Masterpiece run on Sunday, October 16.



• Speaking of Masterpiece, it has now not only confirmed that the historical mystery drama Miss Scarlet and the Duke will kick off its six-episode Season 2 run on Sunday, October 16 (see the video trailer here), but that Season 3 of that show will follow closely on its heels, beginning on Sunday, January 8, 2023. This British-Irish production is set in 1880s London, and stars Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet, a spirited young female private investigator who often finds herself in professional (and personal) rivalry with Detective Inspector William Wellington, aka “The Duke,” played by Stuart Martin.

• This show sneaked right up on me. The U.S. streaming service Acorn TV will introduce a new Australian series on Monday, August 8. Titled Darby and Joan, it’s a road-trip dramedy starring Breaker Morant’s Bryan Brown as retired Australian homicide detective Jack Darby, and Greta Saachi (Presumed Innocent) playing widowed English nurse Joan Kirkhope. As Mystery Tribune says, “They couldn’t be more different: the low key, ruggedly charming Aussie and the tightly-wound, yet warm, witty and determined Englishwoman, but when they collide in the Australian outback, and become drawn into a series of unexpected mysteries, this unlikely investigative duo soon realize the most intriguing puzzle they face is each other.” Darby and Joan is slated to continue through August 29.

• Last but hardly least important on the boob-tube beat, Crime Fiction Lover lets it be known that “Val McDermid’s cold case police detective Karen Pirie is coming to the small screen in September 2022 in a new three-part ITV crime drama. Adapted from the first novel in the six-book series, The Distant Echo, the programme will star Lauren Lyle of Outlander fame as the lead detective.” McDermid herself is one of this show’s co-producers. You’ll find a short trailer at the link.

• Five authors are shortlisted for the 2022 Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, a competition “open to all writers who are from, or whose work celebrates the North East of England, and who have not previously had their submission published in any form.” They are:

— Clare Sewell, Can't Hide
— Duncan Robb, Sharp Focus
— Katherine Graham, Salted Earth
— Jacqueline Auld, The Children of Gaia
— Ramona Slusarczyk, The Taste of Iron

Founded in 2019 by British author L.J. Ross, this commendation is sponsored by her publishing imprint, Dark Skies Publishing, along with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival and Newcastle Libraries. According to the prize’s Web site, “The winning entry”—to be announced on August 31—“will be awarded a prize of £2,500 to support the completion of their work and funding towards a year’s membership of both the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi),” with other shortlisted candidates receiving lesser sums of prize money. To find previous winners, click here.

• As summer winds down, it’s time to re-check The Rap Sheet’s compilation of crime, mystery, and thriller works set to go on sale—on both sides of the Atlantic—between now and Labor Day. The number of picks has grown greatly since I initially posted that list on June 1.

• Also peruse Crime by the Book’s list of 16 novels that it says are must-reads for these closing days of the sunny season.

• Although the actual date was more than a week ago, I want to wish In Reference to Murder a happy 15th blogiversary! Writer B.V. Lawson does an outstanding job with her site … and somehow manages to keep up a consistent schedule, unlike some bloggers we know.

• Can it really have been 50 years ago? The blaxploitation crime film Super Fly, starring Ron O’Neil and directed by Gordon Parks Jr., was released on August 4, 1972. While many African Americans were displeased with that picture’s glorification of “black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males,” few could complain about Curtis Mayfield’s eminently danceable theme music. As George Kelley opined last week, “Mayfield’s soundtrack … became a landmark in exposing the threat of drugs to the Black Community.”

• My e-mail brings this note from frequent Rap Sheet contributor Fraser Massey, based in London: “While reading The Observer today (my favourite of Britain’s Sunday papers), I came across a fascinating piece where they asked a range of top crime novelists to list both their favourite crime novels of all time, but also their favourite recent thrillers. It makes for an impressive reading list.” That piece is walled off to non-subscribers, but fortunately The Observer’s sister newspaper, The Guardian, carries it here for free.

• Another missive comes from Ohioan Lou Armagno, author of the blog The Postman’s Holiday, who reminds me that this coming August 26 will mark the 138th birthday of Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Don’t bother buying Biggers a present; he died way back in 1933. But fan Armagno would appreciate the gift of some assistance in tracking down three “rare treasures” associated with Biggers and the vintage Chan films, among them a waxwork representation of the fictional Honolulu police officer that was used in 1940’s Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, one of 22 Chan movies starring Sidney Toler. Click here to read more about Armagno’s search for those long-gone artifacts.

• I’m not sure many people noticed, but in July Bouchercon rolled out a new look for the Anthony Award—“a design which will be used each year from now on,” says author Art Taylor, “as opposed to having each new Bouchercon design a specific award for their host year.” The official introduction of the prize came in this video.

• In a blog post devoted chiefly to the movies he takes in while writing fiction, author Max Allan Collins drops news that the book he’s currently working on—his 18th, and possibly last, Nate Heller novel—will be titled Too Many Bullets. It involves Chicago-based private dick Heller in the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he explains, but will also “cover both Jimmy Hoffa and Sirhan Sirhan.” Expect Bullets to come from Hard Case Crime, which is already readying Collins’ 17th Heller yarn, The Big Bundle, for release in early December. [FOLLOW-UP: In a subsequent blog post, Collins updated this account, explaining that “I have already decided to turn Too Many Bullets into two Heller novels. Too Many Bullets will be the RFK assassination novel. The as-yet-untitled Heller after that will go back and deal with the Jimmy Hoffa story. This came about because—as is always the case—the research has led me places I did not expect to go.”]

• Now joining Amazon in selecting the “best books of the years (so far)” is CrimeReads, which last month posted a list of 10 crime, mystery, and thrillers yarns (heavy on the noir) that it declares stood out from all others reaching print in the first six months of 2022. It’s not a bad list, though I was considerably less fond of Brendan Slocumb’s The Violin Conspiracy than others seem to have been. Interestingly, I’ve read more of CrimeReads’ second string of “Notable Selections” than I have its top 10.

• A few other CrimeReads pieces I have enjoyed lately: Lisa Levy’s interview with “the people behind some of today’s best small publishers specializing in crime fiction,” among them Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, Paul Oliver of Syndicate Books, and Dreamland Books’ Sara Gran; Keith Roysdon’s look back at producer Quinn Martin’s remarkable string of popular TV crime dramas; this piece about New York City’s notorious heat wave of 1896, which provides the setting for Hot Time (Arcade Crimewise), W.H. Flint’s terrific debut historical mystery; Curtis Evans’ outstanding but sad story about Milton M. Propper, a once-applauded American writer of police procedurals (The Strange Disappearance of Mary Young, The Ticker-Tape Murder, etc.), who ended up destitute and suicidal in Philadelphia; a listicle of choice locked-room mysteries by Tom Mead, UK-based author of the new locked-room whodunit Death and the Conjuror (Mysterious Press); and an extract from the new non-fiction book Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (Morrow), recalling how, “in the early days of jazz, the music and the mob were inextricable” down in New Orleans.

• One final CrimeReads-related subject: Dwyer Murphy, my editor at that excellent Web site, has seen his new sort-of-detective-novel, An Honest Living (Viking), greeted warmly by critics. Christopher Bollen offers this plot précis in The New York Times:

Murphy’s lonely, misanthropic [and unnamed] narrator, fitted with the soul of a poet and the ethics of a dice thrower, is hired by a wealthy young woman to investigate the illicit behavior of her estranged husband. The narrator quickly catches the husband in the act; however, it turns out that the woman who hired him was only masquerading as the man’s wife. Following the rules of the noir genre, the would-be detective is ruled by the stars of pride and lust, determined to discover who duped him even as he finds himself inexplicably drawn to an enigmatic femme fatale, the real wife.

Murphy has also been the subject of several interviews, one of the best being his exchange with Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare, which you can listen to here.

• Worth tuning in for, too, is this conversation between National Public Radio’s Elissa Nadworny and Megan Miranda about the latter’s brand-new woodlands thriller, The Last to Vanish (Scribner). Among the things focused on is that North Carolina author’s multiple fears. “‘I have an overactive imagination, so I am afraid of many things,’ [Miranda] says. She’s especially afraid of being alone in the woods at night. Feeling vulnerable and on edge, not knowing what else is out there. ‘The idea that you hear footsteps behind you and you can’t see it and they stop when you stop,’ she says, ‘that to me is this terrifying idea.’ That feeling when the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you feel the tension in your shoulders, and you have a sharp focus on just getting to safety—that’s the feeling Miranda is trying to capture in her books.” The Last to Vanish is Miranda’s sixth adult novel.

• This year’s winners of the Scribe Awards, given out by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, were announced late last month during San Diego Comic-Con. As far as I can discern, there was only one category that included works definable as crime or mystery fiction: Original Novel, General. The vast majority of nominees were either fantasy or science fiction. Taking home the Original Novel, General prize was Pandemic: Patient Zero, by Amanda Bridgeman (Aconyte), which as you might guess is about a fast-spreading killer virus. Also nominated in that category were Murder She Wrote: Debonair in Death, by Terrie Farley Moran (Berkley), and Shootout at Sugar Creek, by Max Allan Collins (Kensington). A complete rundown of the 2022 nominees is located here.

• Darn lucky Londoners! Capital Crime, trumpeted as the city’s “only crime and thriller festival,” is set to return on Thursday, September 29, and continue through Saturday, October 1, bringing more than 164 panelists, plus readers, others authors, and book-publishing execs to Battersea Park on the River Thames’ south bank. Shotsmag Confidential offers a handy round-up of main festival events, which will kick off with a Thursday evening discussion of James Bond and London’s role in that fictional spy’s life, featuring Anthony Horowitz, Charlie Higson and Kim Sherwood, author of Double or Nothing (HarperCollins), the first in a triology of novels focusing on Double O Section agents other than Bond, due out in September. The full program and ticket info can be accessed here.

• The Gumshoe Site notes the death, on July 22, of Stuart Woods, author of the Stone Barrington series. “The former advertising man’s first book, Blue Water, Green Skipper (Norton, 1977), was not a novel, but a non-fiction book about the 1976 adventure in the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race,” recalls blogger Jiro Kimura. “His third book was a novel, entitled Chiefs (Norton, 1981), about three generations of lawmen and the murder of a teenager in a small town in Georgia, which won the 1982 Edgar Award in the first novel category, and was made into the TV miniseries starring Charlton Heston and Danny Glover, among others. He wrote about five books a year singularly or collaboratively with several series characters. New York Dead (Harper & Row, 1991) is the first novel featuring Stone Barrington, an ex-cop and attorney in New York City. His 62nd Barrington book, Black Dog, will be released in August, the 63rd book in the Barrington series, Distant Thunder (both from Putnam) in October, [and] the 64th Barrington book (untitled yet) next year.” Kimura adds that Woods “died in his sleep on July 22 at his home in Litchfield County, Connecticut.” He was 84.

• Woods is not the only loss the crime-fiction community has had to endure during the last month. Gone now, as well, are actor James Caan (The Godfather, Misery, Poodle Springs), actress Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Out of the Past, McMillan & Wife), author Susie Steiner (Missing, Presumed), James Bond theme composer Monty Norman, and Douglas Dannay, author and the eldest son of Frederic Dannay, who co-created the Ellery Queen mystery series. Farewell, too, to Leave It to Beaver’s Tony Dow, Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, and F Troop’s Larry Storch, all three of whom made an impact on me as a boy.

• Having grown up in the glow of 1970s films, I’m very much a fan of Peter Hanson’s blog, Every ’70s Movie, which recently clocked in its six-millionth pageview. Congratulations! (Just for perspective, The Rap Sheet has almost reached its eight-millionth pageview.)

• And still more bodies are turning up in Lake Mead, a mammoth reservoir created in the 1930s by construction of the Hoover Dam, located on the border between Nevada and Arizona. As I wrote back in May, global warming is causing the lake’s water level to recede to historic lows, exposing sunken boats, a World War II landing craft, and other articles previously hidden from sight. Bones among them! CNN reported late last month that a third set of human remains was found in the reservoir. The earlier discovery of a long-ago murder victim raised serious questions as to whether these skeletons might be related to nearby Las Vegas’ mobster past.

Bullet Points: Success in Excess Edition

• The long-overdue recent premiere of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final James Bond picture, has provoked a deluge of articles, in print and online, about the actor and whoever will succeed him playing Ian Fleming’s Agent 007. Notable are this piece from Esquire’s Chris Nashawaty, and this other one by Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson. CrimeReads has gone in its own editorial direction, posting Olivia Rutigliano’s rankings of all the Bond movies (to which my sole objections are that Live and Let Die deserves more credit, while The World Is Not Enough deserves less), and Julia Sirmons’ tribute to 1969’s typically maligned On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which she insists is actually the franchise’s best entry.

• Staking out his own fringe in all this Bond coverage, author-blogger Gary Dobbs showcases “a professional Daniel Craig lookalike who actually looks nothing like Daniel Craig,” and who now—with Craig’s retirement as 007—“fears his work will dry up.”

• Film noir authority and author Eddie Muller isn’t merely a swell guy, he’s also a sterling interviewee. If you missed hearing his half-hour conversation earlier this week with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, don’t fret, because you can still tune in to the whole thing here. In addition to discussing film noir’s history, some of its landmark productions (including 1944’s Double Indemnity), and Muller’s hosting duties on Turner Classic Movies’ exalted Noir Alley series (shown on Saturdays at midnight), the pair chatted about the new and expanded edition of his book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir; his famous boxing-writer father; and his two novels, both set in 1940s San Francisco and starring a sportswriter, Billy Nichols, modeled on his dad.

• Listening to that exchange reminded me of something I wrote about Eddie Muller on this page five years ago. My latest Kirkus Reviews column had then just appeared, its topic being “crime novels worth re-reading,” and Muller contacted me with the surprising information that he was halfway through composing a third Nichols novel, to follow The Distance (2001) and Shadow Boxer (2003). So whatever happened to that book? I e-mailed Muller for an update this week, and received the following reply:

Still working on it. Now I’m glad it’s taken so long. The reissue of Dark City is selling through the roof, #1 movie book on Amazon for over two months. I have two other books in the pipeline, with contracts—not fiction. Since novels are the hardest sell, all this other work will only help when Billy reemerges. And thanks for asking!

I, for one, shall be pleased to welcome Nichols’ return.

• Three weeks ago, I noted the passing of journalist-turned-crime writer Robert Richardson, who died on August 31 at age 80. Only now, however, is The Guardian carrying an obituary by Mike Ripley, in which he commends Richardson for penning both traditional English detective yarns and psychological thrillers, and says he “was heavily involved in organising the annual conventions of the CWA [Crime Writers Association], where members spent a weekend, usually in a seaside hotel, being treated to lectures and talks on criminology. On the social side, [Richardson] would devise and host quizzes on crime fiction, which though popular with members were invariably described as ‘fiendishly difficult.’” One thing I hadn’t known before, but that Ripley mentions: “Following a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, in 2017 he moved to Dore, near Sheffield, to be closer to his family.”

• Whilst we’re on the subject of Mr. Ripley, I want to direct your attention to his October “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. It includes remarks on the “sumptuous launch party thrown by Felix Francis for his new novel, Iced”; an “accessible and entertaining” new study of Agatha Christie and her knowledge of forensic science; and fresh fiction by Charles Cumming (Box 62), Oliver Bottini (Night Hunters), Peter Papathanasiou (The Stoning), and others.

• Critic Maxim Jakubowski (who now also serves as chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association) is out with his latest “To the Max” column for Crime Time. In it, he briefly reviews 10 new novels, two of which—Toshihiko Yahagi’s The Wrong Goodbye and Anthony Horowitz’s A Line to Kill—are already on my most wanted list, plus one book that I didn’t even realize fell under the crime classification, but that Jakubowski makes sound like a winner: Mrs. March (Liveright), “a slow-burning psychological thriller” by Virginia Feito.

• I have a paperback copy, in storage, of 1974’s Charlie Chan Returns, composed by Dennis Lynds (with splendid cover art by Howard Rogers), that I inherited from my late father-in-law. I’ve never read the yarn, but maybe I should, for the blog Bloody, Spicy, Books calls it a “curious” yet “nice, light fun mystery novel” that translates “the golden-era detective Chan to groovy 70’s New York where he gets tangled up in big case with the help of his son Jimmy, an NYPD detective. There’s a fish-out-of-water quality to the idea of a very old-fashioned man in the land of discos, dirty politics and rock ’n’ roll clubs. So, it’s like Charlie Chan replacing Telly Savalas as Kojak.”

• By the way, this novel should in no way be confused with the unsuccessful 1973 ABC-TV pilot The Return of Charlie Chan, starring The Wild Wild West’s Ross Martin as Earl Derr Biggers’ fictional Chinese-American police detective. For the nonce, at least, that two-hour movie, which imagines a retired Chan “investigat[ing] a murder case aboard the yacht of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon,” is available on YouTube. One viewer writes: “I won’t say that this is a good Charlie Chan mystery, but it is still a pretty good mystery. Just think of Ross Martin playing an imposter, Artemis Gordon’s grandson in disguise, a ‘Charlie Chang,’ if you will, instead of the actual Charlie Chan.”

• R.I.P., Frank Wheeler Jr., the Wisconsin author of Wowzer (2012) and The Good Life (2014), who passed away on September 16, cut down “after a hard-fought battle with cancer” at age 43.

• The Killing Times reminds us that ITV-TV’s new six-part suspense series, Angela Black, starring Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt, is set to debut in the UK this coming Sunday night, October 10. It finds Froggatt playing the title character, “someone who has the perfect life. Or at least it looks like it,” as the site cautions. “Angela’s life appears idyllic: a lovely house in suburban London, days working volunteer shifts at a dogs home, two beautiful sons and a charming, hard-working husband—Olivier [Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman]. However, beneath this façade of charmed domesticity, Angela is a victim of domestic violence. Olivier is controlling and brutal; but Angela loves him and he’s the father of her children. She can’t leave him, even though she has threatened to countless times. So, she covers her bruises with makeup and fabricates lies to explain away her missing teeth. Until, one day, Angela is approached by Ed [The Watch’s Samuel Adewunmi]—a private investigator—and he smashes her already strained domestic life to pieces. Ed reveals Olivier’s deepest secrets to Angela, and she is faced with horrifying truths about her husband and his betrayals. But can Angela trust Ed? And what truths will be revealed in the ferocious fight between Angela and her husband?” A trailer for this hour-long series—which apparently has no U.S. release date arranged—is embedded below.



• Count this as good news (if not wholly unexpected): “Helena Bonham Carter,” says Variety, “will rejoin Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill for a new Enola Holmes mystery from Legendary and Netflix”—the sequel to one of Netflix’s biggest 2020 draws. “Bonham Carter plays Eudoria Holmes, the matriarch of the famous sleuthing family, in the series that is based on Nancy Springer’s beloved books. The films tell the story of Enola (Brown), the rebellious teen sister of Sherlock Holmes (Cavill), who is a gifted super-sleuth in her own right and often outsmarts her famous siblings.” As reported earlier on this page, Enola Holmes 2 (and I hope that’s not really going to be the title) is being lensed, at least partially, in the English port city of Hull.

• Season 6 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and based on Ann Cleeves’ novels, is just around the corner—at least for British viewers. The first of a half-dozen fresh episodes is slated for an October 10 broadcast on the BBC. “The forthcoming new series,” says The Killing Times, “centres on the doorstep murder of a prominent local figure, a case which strikes at the heart of the Shetland Isles and its people. As Perez and his team uncover a kaleidoscope of motives for the murder, their investigation soon takes a shockingly sinister turn.” Radio Times notes that, to make up for time lost to the COVID-19 crisis, the fifth and sixth seasons of this Scottish crime drama are being filmed back to back, so another run can be expected in 2022. There’s no word at this time of when American couch potatoes might see more of Shetland.

• And a final TV morsel: “Mike Flanagan has found another house to haunt for Netflix,” says Tor.com’s Andrew Liptak. “After adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor (based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw), he’s turning his sights to Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ … According to Deadline, Netflix has given a series order for the project, which will be ‘based on multiple works from Edgar Allan Poe.’ He’ll direct half of the eight-episode series alongside Michael Fimognari (To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You).”

• There appears to be major disagreement over whether the true identity of the “Zodiac Killer,” who taunted police and took the lives of at least five people around San Francisco Bay during the late 1960s, has finally been revealed. From In Reference to Murder:

A team of more than 40 retired and amateur investigators claim they have identified the Zodiac Killer, up to this point an unnamed serial killer that operated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. The team, calling themselves The Case Breakers, which consists of former law enforcement officials, DNA experts, and journalists, believe they have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. But the FBI and police in California say, “Not so fast.”

• Killer Covers has posted a new gallery of classic—and very attractive—paperbacks that take their titles from the first names of female protagonists. Feast your eyes here.

• By my calculations (he was born in 1948), Max Allan Collins is now 73 years old and has been publishing books for 45 years. That’s an impressive career, but one that seems to have taken some toll on the Iowa author. In a blog post put up earlier this week, dealing primarily with his new Fancy Anders novella series and the latest installment of his literary memoir in column form, “A Life of Crime,” Collins mentioned that he and collaborator James Traylor are still hard at work on their Mickey Spillane biography for Mysterious Press. Then he wrote: “I have decided I will never write non-fiction again. I haven’t done much, but projects like The History of Mystery, the Elvgren and other pin-up books, the men’s adventure magazine book with George Hagenauer, two previous Spillane non-fiction works with Jim Traylor, and the two Eliot Ness biographies with Brad Schwartz, were just too punishing for me to consider doing non-fiction again at this stage and age. The Spillane bio is going to be something very good, I think, and will make an excellent capper to this niche of my career.”

(Right) Dilys Winn on To Tell the Truth, February 1972.

• New York City’s first independent mystery bookshop, the beloved Murder Ink, shuttered its premises in December 2006 after 34 years of operation. Last week, a Web site called I Love the Upper West Side, which covers news and entertainment happening in one of Manhattan’s tonier districts, delivered a fine remembrance of Murder Ink and its “quirky” founder, Dilys Winn. Enough time has now passed to leave an entire generation of Upper West Side (UWS) residents without knowledge of Winn’s enterprise, so this “history” piece was called for. Contributor Claudie Benjamin introduces her subject thusly:

In a 1972 segment of the popular TV show To Tell the Truth, [Irish-born former advertising copywriter] Dilys Winn wowed the panel who were grilling contestants all claiming to be her. Winn’s deep familiarity with the mystery genre, including the specifics of authors and their heroes and villains, led the panelists to correctly vote her as the real Dilys Winn.

There’s always been so much creativity and innovative impulse on the UWS, and it’s impressive when someone comes up with something that’s totally new and different. That’s just what Ms. Winn did in 1972 when she opened Murder Ink, an independent bookstore entirely devoted to murder mysteries and true crime. …

The impulse to open the shop came from her love of mysteries and hatred of her job (in advertising). Ms. Winn told the To Tell the Truth panelists, “It was either sell them or commit one.”

Winn sold Murder Ink to her friend Carol Brener in 1976, and died in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2016 at age 76.

• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s “Something Is Going to Happen” blog features a thoughtful new essay by Kevin Mims, remembering American author John Ball (In the Heat of the Night) 33 years after his death on October 15, 1988. “He was a writer,” declares Mims, “who was unafraid to veer out of his own lane and explore the lives of others—people whose experiences of the world were vastly different from his own. He left behind a vast body of work, but if more readers don’t seek it out, it may end up being a dead body. And you don’t want to be one of the suspects in that homicide investigation.”

• As The Deighton Dossier observes, Len Deighton (The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, etc.) “has often eschewed literary prizes and honours, believing his work speaks for itself. But as someone born in London, who lived there during much of his early life until his career as an author really took off, he might appreciate a blue plaque there in his name.” It seems the inner London borough of Southwark plans to salute one individual this year who boasts a significant connection to the area, and to do so by posting a circular blue plaque bearing his or her name and general details. The 92-year-old Deighton, “who is thought to have written the first novel typed on a word processor from his Borough home,” is among the five candidates for said accolade. (More than 50 such plaques already dot the district.) The Southwark News, which co-created this commendation with the Southwark Heritage Association, requests the public’s participation in selecting the 2021 honoree. “To vote, e-mail admin@southwark.org.uk or kit@southwarknews.co.uk, naming the person that you would like to see commemorated with a blue plaque,” the newspaper advises. “Voting closes at midnight on November 30.”