Clearing the Backlog

• The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced its shortlists of nominees for four 2026 Ned Kelly Awards. Here are the contenders in its Best Crime Fiction category:

— Liar’s Game, by Jack Beaumont (Allen & Unwin)
— Lyrebird, by Jane Caro (Allen & Unwin)
— The Other Child, by Susi Fox (Penguin Australia)
— Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (Pan Macmillan Australia)
— The Ghost Walk, by Karen Herbert (Fremantle Press)
— Fire in the Head, by Daniel Oakman (Black Inc)
— The White Crow, by Michael Robotham (Hachette Australia)
— The Casino, by Iain Ryan (Ultimo Press)

Also released are candidate lists for the Best International, Best Debut Crime Fiction, and Best True Crime prizes. The winners are to be revealed sometime in September.

• After 30 years in print, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine is suddenly a free, digital-only publication. Editor George Easter explains in the new, Summer 2026 issue that “I’m doing away with subscriptions. … I’ve been handling subscriptions for 45 years (30 with my wife Michele’s consumer magazine and 34 years with DP, with some overlap) and I’m burned out. I want to simplify my life. It doesn’t cost much to get each issue out and I can handle that just fine. Also, no more filing a tax return for DP. Hooray! Those of you who still have current subscriptions with future issues paid for will still get those issues and just think, you’ll get free ones from that point on.” Access the latest PDF mag here, and digital back issues here.

• Incidentally, note that on page 23 of the brand-new Deadly Pleasures you will find four categories of nominees for the 2026 Barry Awards, sponsored as ever by the magazine. All readers are invited to cast their votes for favorite works, one title per division, by sending Easter an e-mail message at george@deadlypleasures.com. The deadline for expressing opinions is Tuesday, September 15.

• In Reference to Murder points us to a first photo of “Edward Bluemel as Agatha Christie’s iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in BritBox’s upcoming six-part drama series Hercule. The origin series, which is currently shooting in Liverpool, is an intimate study of legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Britain between the wars. Hercule will center around three of Agatha Christie’s early stories, while also introducing Hercule Poirot to future friends and allies and one particular nemesis.” Deadline adds that “the series will premiere on the BBC and BritBox in North America in 2027,” and it is said to enjoy a three-season production commitment.

• Below is a 90-second trailer for Marble Hall Murders, the six-part TV adaptation of of Anthony Horowitz’s third Susan Ryeland mystery, set to begin airing in the States on PBS come Sunday, September 6.



• The Rap Sheet’s UK correspondent, Ali Karim, had the chance recently to address some questions to Jack Jewers, author of The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys (2023) and its sequel, Seething Lane, due out on the other side of the pond early next month. Ali describes Seething Lane as “a dark swashbuckling adventure-cum-detective whodunit-cum-historical thriller.” His interview can be relished here.

• The Disney-oriented Web site Inside the Magic quotes Amy Pascal, one of a pair of veteran producers working on a new, MGM Amazon iteration of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, as saying it’s “a good bet” that we’ll know who will next portray British Agent 007 on screen “by the end of this year.” In addition, the site offers tidbits of information regarding the forthcoming children’s adventure novel James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy, penned by Gold Dagger award-winning author M.W. Craven and set to reach stores in April 2027. It’s apparently the first entry in a projected series.

• Frank Gregorsky is back with a fresh (August 2026) edition of the quarterly PDF periodical Detective Drama Gems, which revisits episodes of classic TV crime and mystery shows. Under consideration this time are stories from Dragnet, The Felony Squad, and the Canada/USA hybrid series Night Heat. You can read all about them here.

A Bumper Crop of Commentaries

The Winter 2026 edition of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine was transmitted last week to subscribers, and at 106 pages in length (which editor George Easter says makes it the “largest issue ever”), it furnishes a great deal of material for enjoyment.

Dominating the mag this time are 89 lists of the “best” mystery, crime, and suspense novels published in 2025. We’re given picks by DP’s usual contributors, but also those from myriad other print and Web publications (including The Rap Sheet) as well as large booksellers on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, Easter has sifted through all of those selections to determine which titles appear most frequently (S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes and Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune win that race). He noticed a couple of trends while compiling these lists: “There didn’t appear to be any diminution of the number of psychological/domestic suspense novels, but there did seem to be an evident uptick in the number of traditional mysteries published. Also there seems to be a blending of the line between mystery/crime fiction and horror fiction. A few titles that I would consider horror fiction have made it onto best mysteries of the year lists.”

Ah, but there’s more (as so many TV commercials often like to promise)! Filling out his electronic pages, Easter includes here a “Most Anticipated Mysteries of 2026 list” that runs to “300+ titles”; an interview with author Elizabeth Heider and reviews of her two books starring Naples, Italy, investigator Nikki Serafino (May the Wolf Die and the brand-new Children of the Savage City); and of course, DP’s stable of critics have their say about recent releases in this genre (Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon wins plenty of attention). Easter’s quarterly is always strong on book reviews, but this number provides many more than we have come to expect.

Gone are the days when Deadly Pleasures was available in print; it’s now a more handsome digital periodical, available for an annual subscription price of $10. Learn more here.

Bullet Points: Valentines Edition

Forgive me, dear readers, for I have sinned. It’s been three and a half months since my last “Bullet Points” news wrap-up. Which doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting on my ass in the meantime, doing nothing. In fact, the closing months of 2023 were some of last year’s busiest here at The Rap Sheet. But they were crammed full of “best books of the year” posts, leaving me little time to concentrate on compiling miscellaneous items related to this genre. Which is too bad, because I’ve always enjoyed producing pieces of this sort.

Long before The Rap Sheet existed, way back in my college days, I penned (actually, typed—on a manual typewriter!) a column of information and opinion for the school’s weekly newspaper called “In the Fast Lane.” Since that time, I’ve launched similar wrap-ups for the assorted publications at which I found employment (most of which no longer exist), from Oregon Magazine’s “Grapevine” and Monthly Detroit’s “Lip Service” to “Native Intelligence” (Washington Magazine) and a media-news compendium known as “Cuff Notes” (Seattle Weekly). While my journalism career has allowed me ample opportunities to compose longer, more in-depth pieces, I’ve never lost my taste for gathering together tidings of greater and lesser import, all for the education and entertainment of the reading public.

In that sense, “Bullet Points” might be thought of as the latest incarnation of an enterprise I’ve engaged in since I was too young to order bar service. Herewith, my first wrap-up of 2024.

• At almost 900 pages in length, there’s no question that The FBI Dossier: A Guide to the Classic TV Series Produced by Quinn Martin and Starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (Black Pawn Press), by Bill Sullivan with Ed Robertson, is the definitive resource for fans of ABC’s The FBI (1965-1974). It may also provide a supposedly large segment of modern society with an introduction—or reintroduction—to that hour-long law-enforcement procedural. Despite the broadcast having scored top-10 or at least top-20 ratings during most of its nine years on the boob-tube, Sullivan and Robertson quote one source as calling it “the most successful long-running show that no one seems to remember.” And they appear determined, with this paperback doorstopper, to overcome that astonishing cultural amnesia. The FBI Dossier isn’t merely an episode guide, though you can certainly find in its pages detailed material about all 241 installments of the series. It boasts, as well, a brief history of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; listings of the various performers who trod across the program’s sets (Ed Asner, Suzanne Pleshette, Henry Darrow, Lindsay Wagner, Roy Thinnes, etc.); promotional materials and advertisements for The FBI; and a veritable flood of intriguing info about the show’s regulars (notably the friendship between Zimbalist and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), its creators (Quinn Martin and Philip Saltzman), and its place in the history of American television. I was far from a loyal follower of The FBI, yet I found myself sitting for significant stretches of time recently with this book propped open on my lap, jumping randomly between its sections, enthralled throughout by the knowledge and insights its authors have to share. An index at the back might have made finding such particulars easier, but its lack isn’t a terrible knock on the product as a whole. As It’s About TV! blogger Mitchell Hadley wrote in his own critique of this work, “Don’t let the book’s size be daunting; if you’re a fan of The FBI—either from its original run or through the DVDs that Warner [Bros.] issued in the last few years—The FBI Dossier is a must-have. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, or have seen just a few episodes, you’ll find yourself wanting to read, and watch, more.”

• Remember A.J. Finn, otherwise known by his real moniker, Daniel Mallory? His 2018 psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, became an international best-seller and was adapted into a 2021 film of that same name. But as The Real Book Spy’s Ryan Steck recalls, the book editor-turned-novelist’s skyrocketing renown took a severe hit in 2019, when The New Yorker published a “scathing and surgical takedown of Mallory/Finn, taking nearly 12,000 words to paint a full picture of Mallory’s antics—which range from ‘borrowing story ideas’ to lying about having brain cancer to lying about relatives dying to lying about his own background and education (specifically that he had a master’s degree from Oxford; he, apparently, does not) to lying about his past work history.” Only now, five years after The Woman in the Window debuted, does Finn have a second novel in the offing: End of Story, due out from William Morrow on February 20. Bookpage says that its story, “billed as “part Knives Out, part Agatha Christie, … centers on mystery novelist Sebastian Trapp, who invites Nicky Hunter, an expert on detective fiction, to his luxurious home to help draft his memoirs. But while there, Nicky becomes obsessed with solving the mysterious disappearance of Sebastian’s first wife and son.”

• Next Wednesday, February 14, will be Valentine’s Day. In anticipation of that, The Book Decoder has selected “10 Gripping Mystery Novels Where Romance Takes a Dark Turn.” And yes, before you ask, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is included.

• The blog Promoting Crime Fiction presents its own impressive aggregation of Valentine’s Day mysteries, while Janet Rudolph tenders a no-less-substantial list in Mystery Fanfare.

• U.S. publisher Soho Press is introducing a new horror-fiction imprint called Hell’s Hundred. “Named after the once bleak, now chic New York City neighborhood of SoHo—formerly known as ‘hell’s hundred acres’ for its grim industrial facades and deadly fires—Hell’s Hundred provides fertile ground for new nightmares to take root,” explains the imprint’s inaugral catalogue. Publishers Weekly adds: “The first two books from Hell’s Hundred will debut this summer. First up is youthjuice, by former beauty editor E.K. Sathue [the pseudonym of Erin Mayer], which Soho associate editor Taz Urnov bills as ‘a horror satire about the beauty industry that really puts the gore in gorgeous,’ slated for June. And in August, Soho Crime list stalwart Stuart Neville, whose noir mysteries often incorporate supernatural elements and regularly border on horror proper, will jump to the Hell’s Hundred list with Blood Like Mine, his tenth book for the publisher. Soho calls the novel ‘a chilling monster story about a mother and daughter on the run across the Southwest’ and ‘as much an inauguration of Hell’s Hundred as it is a new chapter in Neville’s oeuvre.’”

• Deadline notes that​, 30 years after his initial appearance on NBC-TV’s Law & Order, actor Sam Waterston is leaving the show. “Waterston’s final appearance as District Attorney Jack McCoy, whom he played across more than 400 episodes, will air on February 22,” we’re told. “As Waterston exits, the cast will be joined by Tony Goldwyn (Oppenheimer, Scandal), who will portray the new district attorney. Goldwyn has previously starred in the Law & Order spinoff Criminal Intent as Frank Goren, a character who died in the series. Goldwyn will be playing a new character on Law & Order.”

• Editor George Easter is out with the first issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine for 2024. Roughly the opening quarter of this 88-page PDF-only quarterly is devoted to “best crime fiction of 2023” lists, gleaned from DP’s own critics as well as those from assorted other sources (including The Rap Sheet). In addition, there are myriad reviews of new and soon-to-be-published fiction released on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in Australia (thanks to contributor Jeff Popple), and a selection of the “most anticipated mysteries of 2024.” Robin Agnew’s “Historical Emporium” column of historical mysteries is always a DP go-to for me, and Easter introduces here “Ripster’s Revivals,” a new feature by Mike Ripley (also to be found in Shots) that focuses on crime novels and thrillers he’s been intending to read for years, but never quite got around to. Finally, Easter’s “Editor’s Message” contains tidbits of news about the health of people long involved with the magazine, including L.J. Roberts, who he says “has unfortunately not rebounded from her most recent health crisis and will have to discontinue her review column for the foreseeable future.” Click here to subscribe to Deadly Pleasures for $10 per annum.

• After many years as a journalist, I am naturally drawn to books and movies in which reporters play prominent roles. A few years back I wrote a CrimeReads piece about news gatherers involved in the solving of fictional mysteries. More recently, and for the same online publication, fellow ink-stained wretch Keith Roysdon dwelt upon the intersection of films and newspapers, while in an earlier piece author Tara Lush celebrated the appearance of reporters in cozy whodunits. It all makes me want to break out one of my old reporter’s notebooks and set to questioning somebody about something!

• If you’re already on the CrimeReads site, poking around, search out these three terrific February posts: “The 1931 Murder That Foretold a New Era of Crime and Corruption in New York City,” an excerpt from Michael Wolraich’s new non-fiction work, The Bishop and the Butterfly (which just happens to be the next book on my TBR stack); “Drama King: Hake Talbot and the Art of the Impossible,” Curtis Evans’ appreciation of “two cleverly deceptive tales by mystery's greatest showman”; and the latest fine entry in Neil Nyren’s “Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics” series, appraising the three-decades-long career of Laurie R. King, whose 18th Mary Russell book, The Lantern’s Dance, will be released next week by Bantam Books.

• Brydon Coverdale, a journalist based in Melbourne, has won the 2024 Louie Award, given by the Australian Crime Writers Association for best fast fiction (stories of up to 500 words in length). His entry, “Good Old Collingwood Forever,” followed this year’s theme of “artificial intelligence.” The ACWA also commended two other writers for their submissions: Catherine Craig for “Abe Taught Me,” and Brent Towns for “She Made Me.” According to a press notice, “The winner receives $500 cash and the two highly commended writers receive $125 each.” You will find links to all of their stories here.

• The Essential Chester Himes, a new Everyman’s Library collection of that author’s four best-remembered Grave Digger Jones/Coffin Ed Johnson novels, is prominently on my birthday wishlist this spring. So I was delighted to read, in advance, this adaptation of S.A. Cosby’s introduction to said work in The New York Times. “If Chandler is considered the poet of crime fiction and Hammett its great journalist,” Cosby opines, “then Himes is the songwriter of the downtrodden. His stories sing with a fire and light that comes from a simmering sense of loss. A loss of respect, of humanity, of honor.”

(Left) Toby Jones stars in Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office on PBS.

• My TV viewing habits have been all over the map so far in 2024. I really enjoyed watching former Happy Valley star Sarah Lancashire’s warm-hearted and multi-layered portrayal of cookbook author/cooking show chef Julia Child in HBO Max’s Julia, only to learn that series was cancelled after two seasons on the air. I’m four episodes into Monsieur Spade, which casts Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett’s former San Francisco gumshoe, Sam Spade, in a complex yarn about slain nuns and a much-sought-after but mysterious boy. Owen is entirely credible as Spade, and the program’s periodic references to The Maltese Falcon just make me smile. Hulu-TV’s Death and Other Details, about a locked-room murder on board a luxury cruise line, I find far less captivating—and more than moderately confusing—but will try to stick with it through all 10 of its weekly installments. And now I’m looking forward to the U.S. presentation of Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, set to premiere under PBS’ Masterpiece umbrella on Sunday, April 7. This four-part drama, based on a true story and aired originally on UK screens in January, isn’t crime fiction, but it is certainly rooted in wrongdoings. Here’s a plot synopsis supplied by PBS:

When money started to seemingly disappear from its local branches, [Great Britain’s] government-owned Post Office wrongly blamed their own managers for its apparent loss. For more than a decade, hundreds were accused of theft and fraud, and many were even sent to prison—leaving lives, marriages, and reputations in ruins. But the issue was actually caused by errors in the Post Office’s own computer system—something it denied for years. Revealing a shocking David vs. Goliath fight for justice, this is the story of the decent ordinary people who were relentlessly pursued, coerced and controlled by a powerful corporation, and their ongoing battle, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to right so many horrific wrongs.

Toby Jones (The Witness for the Prosecution, The Pale Blue Eye) leads the ensemble cast of this series, which The Guardian called “a devastating tale of a national scandal.”

• Oh, and I still haven’t seen all of Jodi Foster’s True Detective: Night Country. I tuned in to the first of its half-dozen episodes on HBO back in mid-January, but found the plot—with its supernatural elements—more than a tad confounding. Maybe I simply wasn’t in the right mood, or my workday had left me unable to relax and soak it in. Whatever the case might have been, I determined to wait until the final installment was broadcast on February 18, and then binge-watch this fourth season of True Detective over a week. I’ve done that on occasions when a show’s story is so involved that viewing one episode every seven days allows me time to forget plot nuances.

• A belated “happy birthday” to Batman co-creator Bill Finger!

• I came to Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s fiction fairly early, reviewing his first Department Q mystery, One Last Chance, for Kirkus Reviews back in 2011. Now The Killing Times brings word that Netflix is preparing a small-screen series based on those books, actually adapted from a succession of earlier Danish films and featuring British actor Matthew Goode (Downtown Abbey, The Crown) as homicide cop Carl Morck. This new show will be set in Edinburgh, rather than Copenhagen. The Killing Times offers the following summary of its storyline: “After a violent incident turns Morck’s life upside down, the emotionally scarred detective is charged with setting up a cold case unit, Department Q, upon his return to work. At first, the disillusioned cop is happy to waste his days away, but his detective instincts are ultimately reawakened and his new department becomes a magnet for a crew of misfits and mavericks.” There is as yet no reliable estimation of a debut date for this program.

• Speaking of forthcoming TV presentations, Deadline reports:

The BBC is keeping its Agatha Christie tradition alive by setting Towards Zero as its next adaptation of the great author’s work.

Following on from 2023’s limited series Murder Is Easy, the BBC has commissioned Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited to reimagine the writer’s 1944 novel.

Towards Zero unfolds around the murder of an elderly widow at a clifftop seaside house, linking a failed suicide attempt, a schoolgirl wrongfully accused of theft, and the romantic life of a famous tennis player.

• Neil Albert, author of the Dave Garrett detective series, has spent much of the last few years writing an excellent blog about another crime-fictionist, the renowned Ross Macdonald. However, he has determined that his multi-post approach to analyzing each of Macdonald’s books hasn’t been paying off in readership stats. So he announced recently that he’s changing his approach. “I will write one post per book, briefly summarizing the plot without spoilers,” he says. “I will start again at the beginning, with The Dark Tunnel. The follow-up posts, released every five days, will be posts on specific subjects related to the book under discussion. No more chapter-by-chapter summaries; if you want to see those, they will remain available and are searchable. I expect to have two or three follow-up posts per book. … I hope the readership finds it more agreeable. Ross Macdonald deserves to be remembered one way or another.” Do check out Albert’s endeavors here when you get a free moment or two.

• Should you happen by Chicago between March and October of this year, don’t miss the Museum of Science and Industry’s new exhibit, “007 Science: Inventing the World of James Bond.”

• The online platform Substack doesn’t draw a great deal of my attention, but I have become fond of one weekly offering there: “Secret Sleuths,” by British crime historian (and host of Murder by the Sea) Dr. Nell Darby. A source of fascination for those of us hungry for more unusual stories of crimes through time.

• R.I.P., Don Murray. The California-born actor, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 1956 film Bus Stop, and who starred on TV in The Outcasts (1968-1969) and Knots Landing (1979-1981), died on February 2 at age 94. In addition to those better-known parts, Murray appeared in episodes of Amy Prentiss, Police Story, T.J. Hooker, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, and Twin Peaks.

• It’s nice to see Christopher Huang’s second mystery, Unnatural Ends—one of my favorite books of 2023—selected by Cross-Examining Crime blogger Kate Jackson as her January “Book of the Month.” She observed recently that Unnatural Ends “is not an alibi-focused mystery, nor is it one in which lots of physical evidence is poured over for postmarks, fingerprints, or DNA. In that sense it reminds me of Five Little Pigs (1942) by Agatha Christie. It is a mystery of character and only by understanding the people involved and the past, will the truth emerge. You really get to know the characters, but it doesn’t drag as a book. I did anticipate the final solution, as it fits the characters perfectly, but I don’t think it was a cast-iron idea in my head—I did consider other possibilities as I went along. Given its character-driven nature, its dramatic secrets, and the engaging way the story is told, I think this would make for a great TV series.”

• Joe Peschi starred in a TV crime drama? Well, 1985’s Half Nelson was really more of a comedy-drama that found the pint-size Peschi portraying Rocky Nelson, described by Wikipedia as “a former New York City cop who moved to Beverly Hills, where he got a job at a private security service for the rich and famous, while attempting to make it as an actor. In addition to guarding celebrities, he also helps solve crimes.” Professional football players Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus, and singer-actor Dean Martin, helped fill out the cast of this show from producer Glen A. Larson. With such a lineup, you would have expected its run to be longer than six episodes. For the time being, you can watch the first episode of Half Nelson on YouTube.

Bullet Points: Totally Jam-Packed Edition

• Coming off his recent success with the Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, filmmaker Scott Frank is said to now be “working on the development of a Sam Spade TV series that he is hoping [English actor] Clive Owen will star in. And his pitch for the series, which follows the adventures of the protagonist from The Maltese Falcon, sounds like it could be pretty incredible,” remarks The Playlist. “‘What if you do Sam Spade later in life, when he’s 60 years old?’ explained Frank. ‘He’s now an ex-pat living in the South of France … And his past finds him in this small town. We’re doing six episodes. Clive Owen is going to play Sam Spade.’” The idea reminds me of the concept behind Lawrence Osborne’s Only to Sleep, a remarkably satisfying 2018 Philip Marlowe novel that imagined Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles private eye as a 72-year-old man, living in retirement in Baja California and being hired to investigate the suspicious swimming death of a debt-ridden con man/developer. Owen, as you might recall, was talked of years ago as the perfect person to play Marlowe in a feature-length film based on one of Chandler’s famous yarns. Are we any more likely to see him star in a Sam Spade TV drama than we were to witness his performance in a Marlowe flick? Time will tell. (Hat tip to Frederick Zackel.)

• The Gumshoe Site brings this exciting news: “Canogate Books asked [Scottish author] Ian Rankin to complete William McIlvanney’s handwritten manuscript of [a] final Inspector Jack Laidlaw novel. McIlvanney, often called ‘The Godfather of Tartan Noir,’ was the author of three novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw of Glasgow CID, and died in December 2015 at the age of 79. His living partner, Siobhan Lynch, found an unfinished novel, The Dark Remains, the story of Laidlaw’s first case, and took the manuscript to Canongate Books, which had republished McIlvanney’s books in 2013. As McIlvanney was a literary hero of Rankin, Rankin … accepted the offer [to complete that novel]. The Dark Remains will be published by Canongate in September 2021.” In its own report on this posthumous literary partnership, The Guardian quotes Rankin as saying that McIlvanney left behind only “notes towards a book, a few scenes, some central characters, a sense of what the story might actually be about, but fairly incomplete. … Willie doesn’t quite lay out who the killer is, so I had to get inside his head to see what he was actually saying,’ he said. ‘It seemed like he had two or three stories that he was juggling … It was an act of archaeology, and an act of detection.’” Regardless, you can count on me to purchase a copy of the finished product!

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Sisters in Crime announced the creation of the new SinC Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. The SinC Pride Award will be a $2,000 annual award to support an emerging writer of the LGBTQIA+ crime-fiction writing community with both financial and practical career guidance and support. Similar to the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the recipient of the SinC Pride Award may use funds for activities including workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of the work. An unpublished writer is preferred, however, publication of not more than 10 pieces of short fiction and/or up to two self-published or traditionally published books will not disqualify an applicant. John Copenhaver, Cheryl Head, and Kristen Lepionka will serve as judges for the inaugural award. Applications will open on January 15 and run through March 15, with the winner announced in early April. For more information, contact grants@sistersincrime.org.

• I never knew that H.G. Wells wrote a mermaid novel.

• CrimeReads is out with its “choices for 2020’s best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers.” Several of its 10 top titles were predictable, but there are a few surprises. Liz Nugent’s Little Cruelties (Scout), for one. Elizabeth Hand’s The Book of Lamps and Banners (Mulholland), for another. And Alexandra Burt’s Shadow Garden (Berkley).

• Tom Nolan’s 10-best list for The Wall Street Journal contains another handful of eye-openers. He turns thumbs-up on not only Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris (Soho Crime) and Tom Bouman’s The Bramble and the Rose (Norton), but also Anne Perry’s One Fatal Flaw (Ballantine) and Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders (Morrow).

• Despite all of my recent attention to “best crime fiction of the year” lists, I missed spotting BookPage’s post about its own 10 mystery and suspense choices. Among that monthly review’s picks are Sophie Hannah’s Perfect Little Children (Morrow), Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water (Sourcebooks Landmark), Sara Sliger’s Take Me Apart (MCD), and Heather Young’s The Distant Dead (Morrow).

• Earlier this week I provided a link to New York Times columnist Marilyn Stasio’s inventory of her favorite crime novels of 2020, but I failed to note the publication of Times writer-at-large Sarah Lyall’s list of what she claims are “The Best Thrillers of 2020.” Her nominees stretch from Tana French’s The Searcher (Viking) and Gilly Macmillan’s To Tell You the Truth (Morrow) to Debra Jo Immergut’s “startling” You Again (Ecco). The question, however, is do these books really qualify as “thrillers”?

• Meanwhile, George Easter at Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has collected his own review staff’s reading favorites from the last dozen months. There are eight contributors represented in his compilation—too many titles for me to mention. But offered below are editor Easter’s 12 “best novel” selections:

— The Last Flight, by Julie Clark (Sourcebooks Landmark)
— Victim 2117, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton)
— The Finisher, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)
— The Last Hunt, by Deon Meyer (Atlantic Monthly Press)
— Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
— Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
— The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
— House Privilege, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)
— Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
— The Boy in the Woods, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central)
— Moonflower Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
— The Curator, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• By the way, not long ago Deadly Pleasures launched a brand-new Web site to coincide with its transformation from a print publication to a full-color quarterly digital periodical. Easter says his “goal is to post something new [there] every day or two.” Online contents will include book reviews and newsy bits about crime-fiction commendations, as well as vintage reprints from the magazine’s past (such as Ted Fitzgerald’s 1997 interview with author Stephen Marlowe). The editor has also begun a series called “George’s Mystery Library Videos,” episodes of which are fairly short (lasting 15 or fewer minutes) and have thus far found him talking on camera about “signed material with the same cover art,” James Grady’s “Condor” novels and short fiction, and what makes a “true” first edition. I look forward to seeing how the Deadly Pleasures site evolves in the near future.

• Deadline brings word that “Netflix has greenlit a five-part Swedish-language series on Stig Engström, the man who was named as the probable murderer [in 1986] of former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. The Unlikely Murderer is made by Swedish producer FLX—which is behind Netflix series Quicksand and Love & Anarchy—and stars Robert Gustafsson as Engström. The part-fictionalized story is based on a 2018 book [The Unbelievable Truth] by Thomas Pettersson. Following the assassination of Palme in 1986, Engström managed to elude justice right up to his death through a combination of audacity, luck, and a perplexed police force.”

• Jane Harper’s The Dry was one of my favorite crime novels of 2017, so I’m pleased to learn that a big-screen adaptation of that suspenseful yarn is due out on January 1. The bad news is that it will only be showing in Australian theaters—for the time being, anyway. As a post on Harper’s Web site explains, this movie stars Aussie actor Eric Bana, was directed by Robert Connolly (Balibo, Paper Planes, Deep State), and “was filmed across more than 15 towns in rural Victoria, Australia, last year.” The Dry had originally been planned to premiere last August, but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no word yet on when it might reach viewers outside of Australia.

• My breath caught for a moment when I heard that FOX-TV was preparing a new Banyon series. What came immediately to mind was the short-lived, 1972 NBC crime drama Banyon, starring Robert Forster as a hard-headed private investigator in 1930s Los Angeles. Could it really be that after all these years, someone was intending to revive/reboot that underrated show? Alas, no. As The Hollywood Reporter makes clear, FOX is “developing an animated comedy based on the Crag Banyon Mysteries books by James Mullaney.

Mullaney and Shane Black will write and executive produce the project, which is titled “Crag Banyon P.I.” It follows the supernatural adventures of an alcoholic ex-cop and current private investigator, Banyon, as he solves cases in an alternate noir, otherworldly reality.

The project marks Mullaney’s first television writing gig. He has published nine books in the Crag Banyon series to date, as well as writing numerous entries in the “Destroyer” and “Red Menace” book series.

• January 8 will bring, to British TV viewers, the return of Rebecka Martinsson, a crime series based on a succession of books by Åsa Larsson—only this season’s episodes introduce a new lead actress.  “[S]eries one of Rebecka Martinsson was a big hit with Nordic Noir fans,” notes The Killing Times. “Starring Ida Engvoll, the Swedish series told the story of a prosecutor who returned to her roots in Kiruna to attend the funeral of the priest that confirmed her. Series two sees Engvoll replaced by Sascha Zacharias in the lead role.” Setting up the storytelling arc of this eight-installment run, The Killing Times says: “Several years have passed and Rebecka’s anxieties about truly fitting in and whether she made the right choice have worsened. As a distraction she throws herself head-first into work to solve gruesome crimes in the area.” Click on the Killing Times link for a trailer.

• In the States, Rebecka Martinsson is available via Acorn TV.

• With the novel coronavirus continuing to discourage social activities of any sort, my search continues for spirited, thoughtful, and at least moderately distinctive small-screen entertainments. A recent discovery was McDonald & Dodds, a light-hearted and oft-clever two-episode ITV show initially broadcast in the spring of 2020. It features Tala Gouveia as Detective Chief Inspector Lauren McDonald, a young, black, thorough-going go-getter from London who has been reassigned to the much quieter city of Bath, England. There she’s partnered with Detective Sergeant Dodds (Jason Watkins), an older white male who has spent years trapped behind a desk, yet retains an uncommon perspicacity when it comes to crime solving. In his review of that program’s pilot, Steve Lewis of Mystery*File writes: “I don’t know about you, but I’m always interested in yet another pair of mismatched homicide policemen, whether British or American. I love watching how their differences play off each other, how get to know each other, and maybe even get to respect each other. Old and worn-out stuff, I know, but when the show is well-written, which it is in this case, and when the players are perfectly selected, even more so this time around, well, to sum it up, I enjoyed this one.” You can see a trailer for the series here. Radio Times reports that a second three-part series of McDonald & Dodds is already in production. Hurrah!

• The Guardian posted a fine review of that series last spring.



• Next up on my to-be-screened list: Amazon Prime’s new neo-noir film I’m Your Woman (trailer above), starring The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan as a sheltered wife and mother who’s “forced to go on the run after her [thief] husband betrays his business partner.” Have any of you faithful Rap Sheet readers seen this two-hour picture? Are you willing to share your opinions of it?

• TV Guide’s look back at what it calls “The 15 Best TV Performances of 2020” applauds, among others, Nathan Lane for his appearance in Showtime’s quirky Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and Matthew Rhys for his headline turn in HBO’s eight-episode Perry Mason. “The mostly-good-but-definitely-not-perfect reboot of Perry Mason was buoyed by an all-good-and-damn-near-perfect performance by Matthew Rhys,” writes Tim Surette, “who brought the classic character to the modern age not just with boozing and f---ing, but with an inner rage that we all could relate to. Rhys was actually the second choice to play Perry Mason; Robert Downey Jr. (who is an executive producer on the series) was slated to take on the role, but his feature film commitments made it impossible, and frankly, we’re all better for it. Fresh off receiving long overdue recognition for The Americans, Rhys made Perry an exhausted grump with a bent moral compass that saw him skirt the law to get justice, but with his soulful eyes during times of defeat and menacing outbursts during times of rage, we not only allowed it, we forgave it. Rhys is the regular-guy hero that our generation needs.”

• IndieWire names Max Allan Collins’ Nate Heller P.I. books among several others that it says deserve TV series treatment:

There’s a reason there are so many detective series on this list—they’re addictive, easily digestible, and the format lends itself perfectly to television. IndieWire’s Kristen Lopez recommends Max Allan Collins’ Nathan Heller series, which follows a wise-cracking private detective who is instrumental in cracking plenty of historically significant cases. The books [17 of them published so far] vacillate between hard-boiled detective novels and historical thrillers, and the ride begins with 1983’s “True Detective,” which finds Heller investigating mob corruption in 1932 Chicago.

• Andrew Nette, my editor on 2019’s wonderful Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, has a new post up in CrimeReads about the late William Hjortsberg and his recently published posthumous novel, Angel’s Inferno (No Exit Press), a sequel to Hjortsberg’s 1978 occult-tinged crime tale, Falling Angel. Much of Nette’s article focuses on differences between the novel Falling Angel and its cinematic adaptation, 1987’s Angel Heart. “A posthumously published book can be tricky property,” writes Nette in CrimeReads, “given the inevitable question of whether the author was able to finalize the manuscript to the degree they wanted, were they alive. Although Angel’s Inferno does not feel incomplete, it lacks the economy and flow of Falling Angel. It is also far darker, more debauched and violent. When you’ve made a pact to sell your soul to Satan, in terms of what you’re prepared to do, the sky, or in Angel’s case, the depths are the limit.”

• Three other CrimeReads pieces worth finding: Dwyer Murphy unearths a 1965 BBC interview between British spy-turned-talk-show host Malcolm Muggeridge and British intelligence officer-turned-espionage-novelist John le Carré; Gabino Iglesias praises the “politically engaged, wildly entertaining novels of Paco Ignacio Taibo II”; and Olivia Rutigliano recalls UK author Evelyn Waugh’s unexpected admiration for the works of Erle Stanley Gardner.

• Happy 10th anniversary to Pulp Covers, a Web site presenting some of the finest scans available of classic novel and magazine fronts. (As you might expect, I’m a frequent visitor.) I don’t see any notice of this milestone on the Pulp Covers main page, but its associated Twitter page mentions that the site now boasts “over 20,000 posts,” and its unidentified editor offers “a big shout-out to all the loyal fans who have stuck with this project over the past decade and encouraged us to continue. Without you, I’d have a lot more free time on my hands.” If you’d like to see how Pulp Covers started, visit its December 2010 postings.

• A half-century-old Columbo mystery, finally solved.

• Interviews to enjoy: Nancie Clare chats with E.A. Barres (They’re Gone), Anthony Horowitz (Moonflower Murders), and H.B. Lyle (The Year of the Gun) for her Speaking of Mysteries podcast; Max Allan Collins—yes, him again—talks with Andrew Sumner of Forbidden Planet about his latest paperback original, Skim Deep, his first Nolan novel in 21 years; and Scott Montgomery of Mystery People scores a brief Q&A with Jeff Vorzimmer, editor of 2020’s The Best of Manhunt 2.

• Finally, a couple of belated good-byes. First, to Sue Henry, who penned separate mystery series featuring either dog-sled racer Jessie Arnold or peripatetic Alaska widow Maxine “Maxie” McNabb. My introduction to her work came in the late 1990s, after I returned from a hike over the historic Chilkoot Pass Trail between Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, and was hungry for books about that path to Klondike gold; Henry’s Termination Dust (1995) fit the bill perfectly. Henry died on November 20 at age 80. Also no longer with us is Alanna Knight, the prolific Scottish author of historical mysteries and romantic thrillers, who passed away on December 2 at age 97. Fellow novelist Martin Edwards remembers her in his blog as “a leading light in Scottish literary circles” and a “stalwart” of the British Crime Writers’ Association, as well as “a biographer and playwright and expert on the work of that gifted fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson.” Knight has at least one last novel, Murder at the World’s Edge (Allison & Busby), due out next year. I offer my condolences to both of their families.

Still Deadly at 50

While I was in London’s Murder One bookstore last week, I picked up the latest issue--No. 99--of Mystery Scene. And it occurred to me what a momentous milestone that magazine is just about to celebrate. Meanwhile, I see that editor George Easter has mailed out the 50th issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine (DP).

I’ve enjoyed reading both magazines for years now, and in 2001 joined the list of contributors to Deadly Pleasures. Over this long time, I have enjoyed my friendship with the DP team of Easter, Larry Gandle, Jay Waggoner, Marv Lachman, Ted Hertel, Bev DeWeese, Mary Mason, Gary Niebuhr, Cath Staincliffe, Martin Edwards, Sally Sugarman, and many others. The first time I had a chance to meet some of my colleagues was during the 2003 Bouchercon in Las Vegas (click here for a photo of the team). Then I spent a wonderful time talking about our respective crime-fiction obsessions with Easter, Gandle, Hertel, and Mason at ThrillerFest last summer in Phoenix.

I was looking forward to reading the 50th edition of Deadly Pleasures (Spring 2007), and can say that I’m not disappointed with the results. The cover feature focuses on British police procedurals, and Easter reveals in his introduction that he’s a confirmed Anglophile, his father having been born in the UK. This article pays particular attention to Peter Lovesey (The Secret Hangman), Reginald Hill (The Death of Dalziel), and Stephen Booth (Dying to Sin), but it also takes the time to list and review practically every UK police crime-fiction series, old and new. Elsewhere in the issue, and on a sadder note, Easter offers a moving tribute to the late American novelist Barbara Seranella (Deadman’s Switch). Gandle writes about taking over as the mag’s assistant editor, and what judging thrillers for the International Thriller Writers has meant to him. He also gives a critical appraisal of all this year’s Edgar Award nominees. DP has begun, too, to publish edited versions of critic-novelist Mike Ripley’s column, “Getting Away with Murder,” which he writes for Shots. And of course, this issue contains the usual pages upon pages of book reviews, plus a new section of audio book assessments.

So, congratulations to George Easter and the gang on this golden occasion. And if you’ve never had a chance to read Deadly Pleasures, Issue No. 49 (originally priced at $4.50 U.S.) is currently being offered for free as a downloadable PDF file.