Bullet Points: Pre-Corned Beef Feast Edition

Today’s installment of crime-fiction-related news items that don’t necessarily merit their own posts, but may still be of interest.

• Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column is up at Shots, and it’s packed with his usual amalgam of substantive and sassy items. You’ll find observations about The Shadows of London, the sixth of Andrew Taylor’s 17th-century thrillers starring Cat Hakesby (née Lovett) and James Marwood; Peter Robinson’s posthumously published, 28th Alan Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows; hard-boiled British author Douglas Sanderson (Pure Sweet Hell); Blessin Adams’ forthcoming historical true-crime release, Great and Horrible News; and a crowd of other March mystery/crime premieres, including Owen Matthews’ White Fox, T.M. Logan’s The Mother, and Rebecca Rogers’ The Purgatory Poisoning.

• This year’s 70th-anniversary celebration of James Bond, the British super-spy introduced in the 1953 novel Casino Royale, includes fresh paperback editions of Ian Fleming’s famous Agent 007 yarns. As The Spy Command explains, credit for their simple but striking new look belongs to UK-based Webb & Webb Design, which previously created posters and book art for a world-traveling exhibition called Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design. In addition to the 007 adventures, Webb & Webb has developed new fronts for Fleming’s non-fiction books, The Diamond Smugglers (1957) and Thrilling Cities (1963). They’re all set to debut on April 13.

• A rather belated “happy birthday” to Pennsylvania-born actress Barbara Feldon, who played eye-catching Agent 99 in the 1965–1970 spy sitcom Get Smart. She turned 90 years old on March 12!

• This Friday is Saint Patrick’s Day, which means the enforced wearing of green and plentiful servings of corned beef and cabbage. Mystery Fanfare suggests it might also be time to pick up a celebration-related crime or mystery novel. The blog has a wide variety of suggestions, from Kathi Daley’s Shamrock Shenanigans and Ralph M. McInerny’s Lack of the Irish to The Whites, by Harry Brandt (aka Richard Price) and Paddy Whacked, by S. Furlong-Bollinger.

• Deadly Pleasures editor George Easter surveys the growing field of do-it-yourself murder yarns. “Authors are coming up with such words as ‘how to’ or ‘guide’ to describe their mysteries,” he observes. “Others use ‘art of’ or ‘unsolicited advice.’ If you are planning to knock off your significant other, my unsolicited advice to you would be to discard these before the police show up.”

• Deadline brings word that David Kane, lead writer for the BBC One crime drama Shetland, will adapt Denise Mina’s Alex Morrow novels for the small screen. “Set in Glasgow, Morrow, which consists of five books, follows [Detective Sergeant] Alex Morrow, a formidable detective who can’t face talking to her husband or bear to sleep in the family home following a recent trauma. As she investigates a crime with partner Bannerman for season one titled Still Midnight, questions arise about whether their ambitious Machiavellian boss McKechnie has their backs. … Kane and Mina are exec producing Morrow, having combined on BBC drama cult hit The Field of Blood, which starred Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey and was also BAFTA Scotland nominated.”

• There’s still no announced date for the U.S. launch of Endeavour, Season 9. However, that final three-episode run of the Inspector Morse prequel series starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam concluded last weekend in Great Britain. Sad to report, The Killing Times says that it left “big questions unanswered.” The site goes on to rate all nine seasons of the show (with the 2012 pilot and Series 2 winning the most stars), and muses on whether there might be more stories from the Morse universe deserving to be told.

• At least a couple of crime-themed works are among the victors in this year’s Spur Awards competition, hosted by the Western Writers of America. Ann Parker’s The Secret in the Wall (Poisoned Pen Press) won in the Traditional Novel category, while Dead Man’s Trail, by Nate Morgan (Kensington), trotted away with Original Mass-Market Paperback Novel honors. These prizes will be bestowed during the 70th annual WWA convention to be held in Rapid City, South Dakota, from June 21 to 24. Registration information is available here.

• R.I.P., Rupert Heath, the founder and publisher of Dean Street Press, who died of a heart attack on March 6 at the tender age of 54. Both Curtis J. Evans, at The Passing Tramp, and Steve Barge, at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, have posted tributes.

• We mentioned last month that Michael Stradford, author of the 2021 book Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model, had completed another look back at Holland’s prolific appearances, this time on paperback fronts. But there wasn’t yet an Amazon link available for those wishing to purchase the new, 216-page book, Steve Holland: Paperback Hero (St. Clair). Now there is!

• Have you checked out The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page recently? We’ve added to it a number of TV opening title sequences, including those from M Squad, Bosch: Legacy, Leverage, My Friend Tony, 87th Precinct, and David Caruso’s forgotten Michael Hayes.

• And in an amusing extract from his new book, Gentleman Bandit: The True Story of Black Bart, the Old West’s Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber (Hanover Street Press), John Boessenecker recalls his stylish subject’s initial California stagecoach robbery, in 1875.

Mina Scores the McIlvanney

Glasgow author-playwright Denise Mina has won the 2017 McIlvanney Prize for her 13th and latest novel, this year’s The Long Drop (Random House UK). The announcement was made earlier tonight during opening festivities at the Bloody Scotland conference being held in Stirling (September 8-10). Expressing the judges’ enthusiasm for Mina’s standalone period thriller, judging chair Lee Randall said: “Full of astute psychological observations, this novel’s not only about what happened in the 1950s, but about storytelling itself. It shows how legends grow wings, and how memories shape-shift and mark us. For my money this is one of the books of 2017—in any genre.”

The McIlvanney Prize was formerly known as the Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award, but was rechristened last year in honor of the late author William McIlvanney (Laidlaw). To score the 2017 award, The Long Drop had to beat out four other finalists: Out of Bounds, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown); Murderabilia, by Craig Robertson (Simon & Schuster); The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid, by Craig Russell (Quercus); and How to Kill Friends and Implicate People, by Jay Stringer (Thomas & Mercer).

In 2016, Mina’s fellow Glaswegian, Chris Brookmyre, picked up the inaugural McIlvanney Prize for his novel Black Widow.

Bullet Points: First Day of Spring Edition

• Scottish crime writer Denise Mina (Gods and Beasts), who penned the Vertigo graphic-novel version of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has also signed up to adapt the other two books in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. Mina says she already “halfway through the script for The Girl Who Played with Fire and moving on to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I’m loving it.” I don’t see any release date yet for that latter couple of works.

• Did you know that Boston, Massachusetts, will be hosting a Nancy Drew Sleuths Convention, May 28-June 2? Included in the events schedule is a walk amongst locations mentioned in The Secret of the Wooden Lady (1967) and The Case of the Vanishing Veil (1988). If you would like to attend, note that registration ends this coming Monday, March 25. (Hat tip to Criminal Intent.)

• Wow, that’s quite a project! Pornokitsch bloggers have taken on the task of reviewing all 77 (so far) releases from publisher Hard Case Crime, “one every week.” The latest entry focuses on David Dodge’s Plunder of the Sun (1949). You can keep up with this series here.

• Sigh ... Another Stanley Ellin novel I haven’t yet read.

• One of my favorite Ross Macdonald novels, The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962), receives favorable notice from Tipping My Fedora.

• There’s still more about Macdonald: In MysteryPeople’s interview with Hilary Davidson, author of the new novel Evil in All Its Disguises--her third book featuring trouble-attracting travel writer Lily Moore--she has this to say about Macdonald’s 1951 Lew Archer private-eye tale, The Way Some People Die:

The Way Some People Die is a masterpiece, and I wish more people would read it. One of the ways that Macdonald’s work influences mine is the understanding that the main character is carrying around wounds from the past that could split open at any time. Don’t get me wrong: Lew Archer is a cipher compared to Lily Moore, and you have to read several books in Macdonald’s series to get a strong sense of him. But once you do, you realize that Lew Archer has been damaged, and there are hints at physical abuse in his past and a dark cloud of depression that follows him. It’s something that evolves over the course of many books, and Macdonald handles it beautifully. Archer, for all of his world-weariness, cares deeply about people. There’s a lot of pain in him, and a surprising amount of empathy. If Lew Archer met up with Detective Bruxton, I think they’d have a lot of common ground.

There’s also an intensity to MacDonald’s best work that I love. Many of his novels are set over the course of two days. That was something I did with Evil: most of the book is compressed into a 36-hour period.

• My, that is one dog-ugly book cover.

• Speaking of covers, the London literary mag Libro asked me to pick my 12 favorite vintage crime-novel fronts. Those selections are now posted here, with another eight runner-ups to be found here.

• Writer Vince Keenan and his wife, Rosemarie, have won the 2013 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers. The award, given annually by the organizers of the Malice Domestic conference to new novelists, is for their comic mystery, Design for Dying. The pair will pick up their prize during the Malice Domestic convention to be held in Bethesda, Maryland, from May 3 to 5.

• Mystery*File’s Michael Shonk finishes his series of posts about the 1972-1973 high-tech detective/adventure series Search with a look back at co-star Doug McClure’s role.

• Really, must Tom Cruise ruin everything ...?

• Two deaths in need of reporting: Henry Bromell, a TV writer and producer who served as an executive producer on Showtime’s CIA drama, Homeland, and before that worked on Homicide: Life on the Street, I’ll Fly Away, and other programs, died this week at age 66; and Harry Reems, notorious for his starring role in the 1972 porno flick Deep Throat, succumbed to cancer yesterday at 65 years of age.

• Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that character actor Malachi Throne, who was so memorably featured in such classic small-screen series as It Takes a Thief, Star Trek, and Batman, died last week--on March 13, to be exact--at age 84. An extensive rundown of his professional roles can be found here.

• Today would have been the 107th birthday of Ozzie Nelson, had the radio and TV star not passed away back in 1975. This also marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Ned Buntline, né Edward Zane Carroll Judson, an early author of “dime novel” adventure yarns.

• Hill Street Blues--a show well worth revisiting.

• I’ve never heard of Tightrope magazine before.

• The program schedule for CrimeFest 2013, set to take place in Bristol, England, from May 30 through June 2, has been released. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

• Rolling Stone has published a very fine (and sometimes frightening) article about the Republican Party’s “real agenda.” It seems we can forget about anything such as political moderation or honest appeals to minority voters from the GOP.

• Jake Hinkson does his best to reinvigorate interest in Elisabeth Sanxay, who he proclaims is the “godmother of noir.”

• And among the nominees for this year’s Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, designed to showcase “the best of [horse] racing literature,” is Sasscer Hill’s 2012 “Nikki Latrelle Racing Mystery,” Racing from Death. See all of the contenders here.

Mina’s Major Coup

Scottish crime writer Denise Mina’s 2010 novel, The End of the Wasp Season (Orion), has won this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, according to the Euro Crime blog. That commendation was presented this evening during the opening ceremony at England’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival (July 19-22).

The other five finalists for that same prize were Now You See Me, by S.J. Bolton (Transworld); Where the Bodies Are Buried, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown); The Burning Soul, by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton); Black Flowers, by Steve Mosby (Orion); and Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson (Transworld).

Eighteen books were on the longlist of contenders for the 2012 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, but that list was shortened to half a dozen in early July. An online public balloting process was then launched to help determine the winner.

In addition to Mina’s win, Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse series, was presented with the third Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award.

READ MORE: “Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Day One,” “Day Two,” and “Day Three,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential); “Harrogate,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “The Harrogate Festival,” by Craig Sisterson (Crime Watch); Euro Crime’s Karen Meek offers several posts from Harrogate; “Final Days of Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, and Reflections,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential).

Mina’s Lighter Side

(Editor’s note: In association with the new American publication of Still Midnight, Denise Mina’s eighth novel, Jim Napier, a mystery and crime fiction critic living in Quebec, Canada, has sent us the following profile of the author. This piece appeared originally in the Quebec daily newspaper, the Sherbrooke Record.)

I approached my interview with Scottish crime writer Denise Mina with the same trepidation and dread I usually reserve for visits to my dentist or tax accountant. After all, the rumor was that she used to screen her first dates by subjecting them to slasher films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to determine whether they were really compatible! And Mina’s novels, infused with a strong sense of justice gone awry, and set against the bleak desolation of Glasgow, are no less dark.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Denise Mina is not at all like her books. She is an open, engaging person with a strong sense of humor, petite, and with a haircut that reminds you of Peter Pan--if you add to the mix a bit of Darth Vader. We got together last June at Bloody Words, the annual Canadian crime-writing festival, where she was--not coincidentally--the International Guest of Honor. Managing to snare an out-of-the-way corner where we could chat, I began by asking Mina about her unusual technique for screening dates. Flashing a mischievous smile, she acknowledged that her favorite movie is The Exorcist. Her only surprise, she said, was learning that not everyone shared her taste.

Noting that she wrote her very first novel, Garnethill, while she was still a university student, I asked Mina whether her success--that book went on to win the John Creasey Award for Best First Crime Novel of 1998--motivated her to end her university studies in law and turn to writing full-time. “I was astonished,” she admitted. “I only wrote it to exorcise the dream of being a writer from my head, and then it got published. I was looking forward to a very grim future as an academic, I’m afraid. I took on too much admin and had no confidence in my own research--which is essential. My academic supervisor was thrilled for me when I got published and gave up. He’s a good guy and still a friend.”

Mina’s novels--including the brand-new U.S. release, Still Midnight--often go well beyond the conventional legal resolution of conflicts, to raise complex moral questions about what is right or just. When I asked her what that tells us about her view of the law and how it functions, she said, “It’s a very old-fashioned thing to want to develop the ability to question and examine issues of morality, but I think I benefited from not being taught that way in the sense that I strove to think about these things myself. The law is a social construct and I don’t see it as a separate entity from how society works.” Apparently, that thinking strikes a chord with readers, for her books regularly find spots at the top of the bestseller lists in British crime fiction.

One of the most compelling things about Mina’s fiction is her intense portrayal of flawed and conflicted personalities. I asked her how she managed to get into the skin of such characters, whether she deliberately sought out such people, and to what extent she based her portrayals on real individuals. Her response was insightful, in itself a commentary on our times: “They are based on the people around me. I know all of these people, the gangsters, the damaged, the struggling. I think we all do. For example, one in four people will suffer from a mental illness at some point in our lives, so I don’t really need to go to [a] day care center to meet people with mental health issues.”

A chilling thought, and I followed it up with a question about the protagonist featured in her most recent novels, investigative reporter Paddy Meehan. “Paddy is a diffident, yet driven woman,” I said, “struggling to transcend her own background and resolve her own issues. How much of Paddy is in you?” Mina paused for a moment and her reply was typically perceptive. “Well, you know, my generation was the first to go to university and I think we all feel an educational chasm between ourselves and our parents, who struggled for us to have that right. To a certain extent everyone tries to transcend their background, which is heartbreaking only when you become a parent and realize with a start [that] I am the future problem you’ll be pushing against.”

I looked around and saw that others were waiting to speak with Mina. Our time was drawing to an end, but I had to ask her one more question. “Crime fiction--especially ‘Tartan Noir’--has become much edgier and darker in recent years,” I began. “Where do you think it’s headed in the future, and where would you like to take it?”

Her response was immediate and, for those who know her work, predictable: “I’d like to take it to a new place, a darker place, a more authentic place where plot and characterization seem self-evidently true and the plot mechanisms are better hidden.” She flashed her Peter Pan grin. “Wish me luck!”

Mina’s latest work, Still Midnight, is about the kidnapping of an elderly man from a middle-class suburb, with the kidnappers demanding a king’s ransom for his safe return. But the hapless hoodlums seem to have targeted the wrong house: their victim is a first-generation immigrant to Britain, an elderly Asian who runs a small corner store. Detective Sergeant Alex Morrow gets landed with the case, and worse, is paired with Grant Bannerman, a career-oriented officer she has reason to loathe. No one in the missing man’s family can--or will--shed any light on why their father has been taken, but Morrow has her suspicions, and while sparring with Bannerman, she vows to dig beneath the surface of the secretive family and discover their hidden secrets.

Mina combines gritty, street-level realism in these pages with graphic, explicit language and a raw, cynical take on the world. Evocative but unsentimental, Still Midnight is a literary novel, raising themes of fear, guilt, shame, and personal integrity; it is also simply a cracking good tale, compelling, layered and nuanced, fast-paced and utterly believable.