Bullet Points: All Over the Place Edition

• Here’s a mystery for you: Earlier this year—following TNT-TV’s late-2018 broadcast of a mini-series based on The Alienist, Caleb Carr’s 1994 historical crime thriller—Mulholland Books announced that it would publish two brand-new Carr tales starring psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. The first of those, to be titled The Alienist at Armageddon, was supposed to take place in 1915 and find Kreizler and his cohort, New York Times reporter John Moore, probing a series of deadly explosions on the eve of World War I. Mulholland proclaimed the book would be released on September 1, 2019. Well, that date has obviously come and gone, and there’s no Armageddon. In fact, Mulholland has scrubbed a page devoted to the novel from its Web site. The Amazon sales site claims an e-book version of Armageddon will appear in September 2022—three years away!—but even that could change, and it makes no mention of a print edition. Is this a case of an author blowing past his deadline? Or has the decision been made to hold off on Armageddon’s release until after TNT broadcasts its Alienist sequel, The Angel of Darkness (based on Carr’s 1997 work of the same name)? And what does this all mean for the promised fourth book in the Kreizler series, a prequel titled The Strange Case of Miss Sara X? I wish I had the answers, but only time will tell.

• Mystery Scene magazine’s latest issue (Fall 2019) leads with a fine profile of Ruth Ware, the British author of The Turn of the Key. Elsewhere in its pages can be found Michael Mallory’s look back at fictional detective Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond, a fixture of fiction between the two world wars; Oline H. Cogdill’s assessment of half a dozen recently introduced “writers to watch,” among them Rachel Howell Hall and Stephen Mack Jones; a piece by Craig Sisterson on translated crime and mystery fiction; and a remembrance of the encounter between author Stuart Palmer (the creator of amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers) and Groucho Marx on a 1954 episode of You Bet Your Life.

• Let’s hope this comes to pass: Anthony Horowitz, who has already penned two remarkable James Bond novels—Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018)— tells the Radio Times that he’s “in discussions” to write a third 007 yarn.

“I would certainly consider it,” he said. “I don’t know when [it’ll happen], because I’m pretty busy at the moment.

“I’ve got a sequel to [the 2016 book] Magpie Murders I’ve just finished, literally last week, and I’ve got two more Hawthorne novels [featuring private investigator Daniel Hawthorne] to write, another Alex Rider … but if I can, and if the estate—the Ian Fleming family—and the publishers are happy for me to do it, then I’m certainly game.

“I would love to. I think there’s one more in me at least.”

• BBC One has confirmed that it will begin airing the psychological thriller Dublin Murders, based on Tana French’s best-selling succession of haunting modern-day mysteries, on Monday, October 14. The second of that program’s initial eight episodes will be shown the next evening. Dublin Murders is still slated to premiere in the States on Sunday, November 10, courtesy of the premium channel Starz.

• In honor of Graham Greene’s birth, 115 years ago this week, CrimeReads managing editor Dwyer Murphy has compiled 10 of that author’s most memorable opening paragraphs. Let me recommend, especially, his excerpt from The Third Man (1949).

• I’m very sorry to hear about the death last week of Wayne Fitzgerald, “the main title designer who set the tone and atmosphere for hundreds of films, from Auntie Mame and Pillow Talk to The Godfather: Part II and Total Recall,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. He passed away on September 30 “on South Whidbey Island in Washington after a brief illness.” Fitzgerald was 89 years old. Over the last few years, I have sought to contract Fitzgerald through several avenues, hoping to talk with him about his TV work, but I was never successful. Now he’s forever beyond my reach. As the Web site The Art of the Title recalls, the Los Angeles-born designer put in 17 years at Pacific Title & Art Studio, creating the opening sequences for such films as The Music Man and My Fair Lady, and for small-screen shows including Maverick and Mr. Ed, before starting his own design firm in 1967. Among his numerous other credits were the main titles for television programs on the order of The Bold Ones, Sarge, Switch, Tucker’s Witch, Quincy, M.E. and Matlock, and for movies ranging from Chinatown (1974) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975) to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), The Electric Horseman (1979), and Terms of Endearment (1983). I’m embedding four of my favorite Fitzgerald title designs below, in this order: the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (with theme music by Henry Mancini), It Takes a Thief (theme by Dave Grusin), Night Gallery (music by Gil Mellé), and the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde (theme by Charles Strouse). The Hollywood Reporter observes that Fitzgerald picked up three Emmy Awards for his introductions. (Hat tip to The Spy Command.)

• Terence Towles Canote has his own Wayne Fitzgerald obituary, in his blog A Shroud of Thoughts. It includes this tidbit: “While his contemporaries were often known for a specific style, Mr. Fitzgerald's titles could vary stylistically. If there is one thing that his titles had in common, it is that in many ways they were movies in and of themselves. His titles were closely-knit, but never cluttered, and in many cases told stories all their own. It was his talent at montage, at creating what were essentially ‘mini-movies’ with his titles, that allowed him to be so prolific. In being able to create titles that were works of art in and of themselves, Wayne Fitzgerald guaranteed he would always be in demand.”

• Whoops! In my post earlier this week about the recipients of prizes presented during London’s inaugural Capital Crime festival, I failed to mention that Ashley Harrison had been named as the winner of the New Voices Award for her book, The Dysconnect. Victoria Goldman and Patti Buff were identified as runners-up for that same commendation.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Rebus is set to return to TV screens after over a decade away. The detective drama starred Ken Stott in the role of DI John Rebus for three seasons when John Hannah quit the role after the first series. Rebus creator, Scottish author Ian Rankin, has confirmed its long-awaited comeback and that new episodes are on the way with Gregory Burke penning the scripts. It’s said the new episode could have a Nordic Noir-style, while Rankin (who has penned 22 books featuring Rebus) will have a much bigger say in how the series is run.

No broadcast date has been set yet, and there is no word on whether the show would return to ITV.

• That same blog notes that today marks 30 years since the founding of Scottsdale, Arizona’s now landmark Poisoned Pen Bookstore. “To celebrate,” it explains, “owner Barbara Peters and her staff will host a cake and champagne party featuring author Joe Hill (NOS4A2) in conversation with attorney and editor, Leslie Klinger. Other guests include John Sandford, author of the Prey series; James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force series; and Anne Perry, author of the Thomas Pitt and William Monk series.” Congratulations are certainly in order!

• The latest Paperback Warrior podcast focuses on Max Allan Collins’ series of novels starring the hit man known as Quarry, as well as Appointment in Iran, the 23rd action-packed Butcher novel by “Stuart Jason” (aka James Dockery). Listen here.

• Meanwhile, Stark House Press and its still-new short-story compilation, The Best of Manhunt, are the subject of The BookPeople Podcast’s latest episode. Numbering among the guests on that particular show are author Joe R. Landsdale and Rick Ollerman, editor of Down & Out: The Magazine. Listen here.

• I didn’t know until now that The Killing Times also produces a podcast. The most recent episode features Margrét Örnólfsdóttir, who wrote Sagafilm’s four-part TV adaptation of Icelandic author Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson’s best-selling novel, The Flatey Enigma (Flateyjargáta). More about the series—which showed in Britain in September—can be found here and here.

• So that’s where Nero Wolfe’s New York brownstone was!

• Mystery Writers of America has planned a weeklong celebration of crime and mystery fiction, to take place at various locations in California from October 19 through 26. Mystery Fanfare offers the list of events, all of which will be free and open to the public.

• Only one novel from our favorite genre appears on Literary Hub’s list of “The 10 Best Debut Novels of the Decade”: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 work, The Sympathizer, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author.

• Worrisome news, from The New York Times: “Wherever authoritarian regimes are growing in strength, from Brazil, to Hungary, to the Philippines, literature that expresses any kind of political opposition is under a unique, renewed threat. Books that challenge normative values, especially those with L.G.B.T. themes, have been hit especially hard. History textbooks crafted by independent scholars are being replaced with those produced by the state at a disturbing rate. In Russia, a new even stricter set of censorship laws was announced in March to punish those expressing ‘clear disrespect’ for the state (i.e. effectively Putin himself).” Along these lines, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point to hear Donald Trump call for censoring authors who disagree with his increasingly unhinged and authoritarian behavior. No doubt, he will declare that they, too, are committing “treason.”

• Finally, a few author interviews worth finding: Lori Rader-Day talks with Ann Cleeves (The Long Call) for the Chicago Review of Books; Barry Eisler submits to questions from Omnivoracious’ Chris Schluep about his new, third Livia Lone book, All the Devils; and Swedish novelist-journalist David Lagercrantz fields queries about his third and final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice, for the aforementioned BookPeople Podcast.

Bullet Points: On Heavy Meds Edition

Please pardon my silence of the week, for as tardy schoolchildren worldwide are often heard to say, “I have a good excuse!”

Within an hour of my wife and I returning home last Saturday from a couple of days away, I somehow managed to fall down my back steps and hit the concrete sidewalk below. There were no consequent head or neck injuries, but I did break five ribs on my left side, as well as one small bone in the elbow of my left arm, and I seriously knocked the wind out of myself. Now, I’ve broken ribs on two previous occasions, so I wasn’t terribly worried at first. However, when my left arm started to freeze up, I decided to take my wife’s advice and head for the nearest emergency room. There, it was discovered that my accident offered one further complication: I had a hematoma on my spleen. This combination of ills sent me in an ambulance to an intensive care unit, where I spent Sunday and Monday. After being thoroughly poked and prodded, and reassured that the hematoma was dissipating, I was finally sent home with pain medication and recommendations that I take it easy for a while. That lasted a couple of days, before I felt the need to jump back into at least some modest work schedule.

So look at the “Bullet Points” news compilation below as part of my recovery. I hope to post at least one additional thing on this page before week’s end, but we’ll see how my energy level holds up. Because, of course, I don’t want to tire myself out so greatly that I can’t also spend some of this downtime reading.

• Thirty-one-year-old Swedish actor Adam Pålsson will star as Henning Mankell’s renowned detective protagonist, Kurt Wallander, in a six-episode English-language series for Netflix, due out next year. This Young Wallander, which is apparently hoping to generate some of the same magic that has made a hit of Shaun Evans’ Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour, will explore “Wallander’s first case and the experiences that shaped him as a person,” explains The Killing Times. “When the series begins, Wallander is in his 20s and a recent graduate from university now working as a uniformed police officer.” Beyond Pålsson, the show will feature Richard Dillane as Police Commissioner Hemberg, Leanne Best as Frida Rask, and Ellise Chappell as Mona Wallander. Filming is said to be currently underway.



• The BBC is spreading a trailer—embedded above—to promote its upcoming TV series Dublin Murders, which is based on Tana French’s succession of haunting modern-day mysteries. The eight episodes of Season 1 have been adapted from French’s first two best-sellers, In the Woods and The Likeness, and will star Killian Scott (Ripper Street) and Sarah Greene (Ransom). Dublin Murders will show next month in the UK, but as The Killing Times points out, it won’t premiere in the States until November 10, courtesy of the premium channel Starz.

• By the way, Dublin Murders is just one of many interesting new crime dramas being readied for small-screen broadcast in Britain over the next several months. Also among that bunch will be Vienna Blood, a BBC Two production based on Frank Tallis’ 2007 historical novel of that same name. Here’s a plot précis:

Starring Matthew Beard, and Jürgen Maurer, Vienna Blood is set in 1900s Vienna, a hotbed of philosophy, science and art, where a clash of cultures and ideas play out in the city’s grand cafés and opera houses. Max Liebermann (Beard) is a brilliant young English doctor, studying under the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. When Max comes into contact with Oskar Rheinhardt (Maurer), an Austrian Detective Inspector struggling with a strange case, he offers his assistance. Max’s extraordinary skills of perception and forensics and his deep understanding of human behaviour and deviance help Oskar solve some of Vienna’s most mysterious and deadly cases.

We can only hope that Vienna Blood will make its way to this side of the Atlantic very soon.

• As TV Guide notes, “Sacha Baron Cohen is best known as the comedian and impersonator who has brought to life quirky characters like Ali G, Borat and Bruno, and whose character work in Who Is America? convinced several real-life politicians to say some hilarious and disturbing things. But his next dramatic role—playing real-life Israeli spy Eli Cohen in Netflix’s [new] thriller The Spy—looks like the perfect fit, especially based on the first trailer for the limited series.” You’ll find that preview here; The Spy debuted on Netflix last Friday, though I haven’t yet found time enough to watch it.

• Organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival (to be held in Stirling, Scotland, from September 20 to 22) have announced their list of finalists for the 2019 McIlvanney Prize:

— Breakers, by Doug Johnstone (Orenda)
— Conviction, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
— The Way of All Flesh, by “Ambrose Parry,” aka Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman (Canongate)
— A Treachery of Spies, by Manda Scott (Transworld)

You’ll find the longlist of nominees for that commendation here, together with the five books vying to take home the inaugural Debut Prize. The winners of these two awards will be made known during an opening reception for Bloody Scotland at Stirling’s Church of the Holy Rude on Friday, September 20. (Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

• Meanwhile, the Australian Crime Writers Association has chosen the recipients of its 2019 Ned Kelly Awards as follows:

— Best Fiction: The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)
— Best True Crime: Eggshell Skull, by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin)
— Best First Fiction: The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan
(HarperCollins Australia)

Click here to see the shortlisted works in each of those categories.

• Could a woman play British spy James Bond in future installments of the still-popular film series? According to two men who have portrayed Ian Fleming’s protagonist in the past, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, the answer is yes. “I think we’ve watched the guys do it for the last 40 years, get out of the way, guys, and put a woman up there,” Brosnan (GoldenEye, Die Another Day) is quoted in The Washington Post as saying. “I think it would be exhilarating, it would be exciting.” Brosnan conceded, though, “that a female James Bond was unlikely, given executive producer Barbara Broccoli’s insistence that ‘Bond is male.’”

• Speaking of Agent 007, The Spy Command reports that French actress Léa Seydoux, who appeared as psychiatrist Dr. Madeleine Swann in 2015’s Spectre, will be given a larger-than-earlier-anticipated part in next year’s 25th Bond flick, No Time to Die. A Google translation of a story published in Brazil says Swann “will also play a considerable role in the plot, as her character will again appear working in a psychiatric clinic.” No Time to Die is due to be released in the UK on April 3, 2020, with its U.S. debut expected on April 8.

• Finally, the James Bond Radio podcast is expected to return sometime in October. Its future had been left in doubt, following the recent departure of co-host Chris Wright. An Apple podcast archive of existing installments can be found here.

• I was saddened to hear this news, in the wake of my being discharged from the hospital: Onetime child model and actress Carol Lynley—known for her roles in such theatrical releases as Under the Yum Yum Tree, Bunny Lake Is Missing and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as in TV programs ranging from Mannix and It Takes a Thief to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Fall Guy—died on September 3 at age 77. I first remember spotting Lynley (who was born in New York City as Carole Ann Jones) in The Night Stalker, a 1972 ABC Movie of the Week in which she played the winsome blonde girlfriend of journalist-turned-monster hunter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin). I later enjoyed her performance in a two-part, 1974 episode of Bill Bixby’s The Magician, and subsequently saw her in Quincy, M.E., Kojak, and Richie Brockelman: Private Eye. Variety says that Lynley (left) perished at her home in Pacific Palisades, California, “after suffering a heart attack.”

• Sorry, but not even the addition of Agent Carter star Hayley Atwell to the expanding cast of Tom Cruise’s next Mission: Impossible picture (the seventh entry in that franchise) will convince me to plunk down real money for the “privilege” of watching Cruise struggle to appear tough again on screen.

• I’m far more likely to enjoy a very different Atwell role. This news item comes from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

The first trailer for Netflix’s new procedural drama, Criminal, is out, with David Tennant and Hayley Atwell starring as uncooperative suspects in the “innovative” police-procedural anthology series. Set entirely in the confines of a police interview suite, the show features 12 distinct stories that take place in four countries: the UK, France, Germany, and Spain.

• The latest edition of Clues: The Journal of Detection was recently published. As managing editor Elizabeth Foxwell explains, it’s a “theme issue on interwar mysteries guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester, UK).” Topics include: “‘The Ghost of Dr. Freud Haunts Everything Today’: Criminal Minds in the Golden-Age Psychological Thriller”; “Capital Punishment and Women in the British Police Procedural: Josephine Tey’s A Shilling for Candles and To Love and Be Wise”; and “Whose Trauma? Dorothy L. Sayers’s Use of Shell Shock and the Role of Memory in Interwar Detective Fiction.”

• Three terrific historical pieces from CrimeReads: “The Spectacle of Degradation,” in which Dominique Kalifa looks back at 19th-century tours of big-city underworlds; Kerri Maniscalco’s essay, “Was H.H. Holmes the Real Jack the Ripper?”; and “100 Years Ago, the Country Debated Arming Women to Combat Sexual Assaults,” by Amy Stewart, whose fifth and newest entry in her acclaimed Kopp Sisters series, Kopp Sisters on the March, will reach bookstores this month.

• Lee Goldberg makes a good point in this Facebook post:

I don’t get why author Carolyn Weston (1921-2001) is never mentioned in articles about ground-breaking female writers in the crime-writing genre. She was the author of three hard-boiled police procedurals in the late 1960s set in Santa Monica, California, and featuring detectives Al Krug, a seasoned veteran, and his partner Casey Kellog, a younger, college-educated surfer. It was a strong pairing … so strong that it led to [TV producer] Quinn Martin optioning the books, and adapting the first one, Poor, Poor Ophelia, into the pilot for The Streets of San Francisco. The [1972-1977] series was a huge hit, and yet (to my knowledge), Weston and her publisher never capitalized on the success. To my knowledge, no Streets of San Francisco tie-in editions of her books were ever released—which is astonishing. Weston also never wrote another book and is forgotten, even though her books became the basis for one of the best-known TV cop shows in history.

Five years ago, Brash Books acquired the copyright to the trilogy, republished them, and hired Robin Burcell to write a new book, The Last Good Place, in the literary series (though we moved the action to present-day San Francisco to better align it with the TV series. …)

• Pay attention, folks: The submission process for Canada’s 2020 Arthur Ellis Awards opened on September 1. Submission rules and entry forms can be found at the link.

• Last but not least, here are a few author interviews worth checking out: CrimeReads interrogates Rachel Moore on the subject of her new non-fiction book, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession; Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare chats with Sherri Leigh James about her two Cissy Huntington whodunits, Blood Red and Iced Blue; and MysteryPeople has a few questions for Reed Farrel Coleman, whose brand-new Jessie Stone novel is Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill.

Tana French Series Heads to TV

As Tana French’s latest novel—a standalone titled The Witch Elm—finds a place on more and more “best crime fiction of 2018” lists, In Reference to Murder blogger B.V. Lawson highlights this news about her series of Dublin Murder Squad yarns:

Starz has acquired the eight-episode crime drama series Dublin Murders, adapted from Tana French’s first two novels in the Dublin Murder Squad crime series, In the Woods and The Likeness. Dublin Murders follows Rob Reilly (Killian Scott)—a smart-suited detective whose English accent marks him as an outsider—who is dispatched to investigate the murder of a young girl on the outskirts of Dublin with his partner, Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene). Reilly is pulled back into another case of missing children and forced to confront his own darkness even as Cassie is sent undercover for another murder case and forced to come face to face with her own brutal reckoning.

U.S. TV viewers should see Dublin Murders premiere in 2019.

READ MORE: “Dublin Murders Makes a Murky Mess of Tana French’s Lyrical Crime Novels,” by Laura Miller (Slate).

Bullet Points: Phooey on Rules Edition

That’s funny, I didn’t know there were any rules to follow when crafting “link posts” such as this one. I rarely see such compilations, and can think of only two other crime-fiction Web sites that regularly carry them: B.V. Lawson’s wonderful In Reference to Murder and the publisher-backed Criminal Element. So imagine my surprise at discovering, in The Digital Reader, Nate Hoffelder’s “Practical Guide to Developing Your Weekly or Monthly Link Post.” Coincidentally, I already follow his first two guidelines; but I regularly break the latter pair, especially Rule No. 4: “Keep it short. No one wants to read a link post with 30 links; readers’ eyes will glaze over by the tenth link, or they will be interrupted, or they’ll simply be overwhelmed. Try to aim for links to six to ten stories.” Hah! Anyone who’s been enjoying The Rap Sheet for a while knows that my “Bullet Points” gleanings of news from the world of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction can run on for 2,000 or more words, with dozens of Web links. And from what I’ve heard, that’s just the way most readers of this blog like them.

Now on with this week’s links compendium ...

• In Reference to Murder brings news that “BBC One has given the greenlight to an eight-part crime drama, The Dublin Murders, based on Tana French’s award-winning series of mysteries. Sarah Phelps, who recently reimagined several Agatha Christie novels for the BBC, will adapt the first two books about the fictional Dublin Murder Squad, drawn from French’s In the Woods and The Likeness. Blending psychological mystery and darkness, each novel is led by a different detective or detectives from the same Dublin squad.” Sounds terrific!

• I have to admit, my interest in another motion picture featuring Ernest Tidyman’s renowned black Manhattan private eye, John Shaft, waned seriously after it was announced that the film—tentatively titled Son of Shaft, and beginning production later this fall—would be an action-comedy, rather than a straight action pic. However, Steve Aldous, the UK-based author of The World of Shaft, continues to keep track of the venture, reporting in his blog that Netflix has agreed “to fund half the [movie’s] $30m budget in exchange for international rights. The deal reportedly means Netflix will be able to stream the movie just two weeks after its release.”

• Speaking of crime-related films, Criminal Element’s Peter Foy chooses his 10 favorites from the 21st century. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2010), The Departed (2006), and Kill Bill (2003) all made the cut. Sadly, other likely suspects, such as The Killer Inside Me (2010), Hart’s War (2001), and Road to Perdition (2002), did not.

• The mail recently brought me the Fall 2017 issue of Mystery Scene magazine. Beyond its well-executed cover profile of author Attica Locke (Bluebird, Bluebird), written by Ross Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan, this mag features Mark Mallory’s rewarding examination of Mark Twain’s crime fiction; a Martin Edwards piece about the revival of Golden Age mystery novels; Craig Sisterson’s fine report on New Zealand thriller writer Paul Cleave, a three-time winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel; a new column by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, in which they eulogize the late Ed Gorman; a look at James R. Benn’s World War II mysteries (the latest of those being The Devouring); and the inevitable much more. Mystery Scene is widely available at newsstands, but can also be ordered through the magazine’s Web site.

• In other print-publication news, this is the first and only review I have seen thus far of Down & Out: The Magazine, which debuted this summer. Although it fails to comment on my “Placed in Evidence” column, it is complimentary of both Reed Farrel Coleman’s original Moe Prager story, “Breakage,” and Michael A. Black’s “punchy Ron Shade tale,” “Dress Blues.” I’m not sure when, over the next three months, the second edition of Down & Out: The Magazine will appear, but editor Rick Ollerman has already gathered together its contents.

• The Houston, Texas-born Attica Locke makes another appearance, this time in the slick cyberpages of Literary Hub, writing about “her roots, the blues, and cowboy boots.”

• I won’t be attending next week’s Bouchercon in Toronto, Ontario, but Quebec-based Rap Sheet contributor Jacques Filippi has been asked to represent this blog at those festivities, complete with his trusty camera. I hope Bouchercon-goers will offer him the same respect and assistance they would me.

• Since we’re on the subject of Bouchercon, remember that attendees of that convention will have the opportunity to select the winners of this year’s Anthony Awards. The contenders are listed here. If you haven’t read (and judged) the five nominees for Best Short Story, and would like to do so before leaving for Toronto, simply click here for links to PDF versions of those abbreviated yarns.

• Have you heard of Medium, a partial-subscription site that blends wide-ranging original content with stories picked up from elsewhere on the Web? Yeah, neither had I, until I stumbled the other day over its readers’ picks list of “350 Mysteries and Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime.” There are many obvious selections among this bunch, including Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, Ross Macdonald’s The Galton Case, and John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the list make room as well for such works as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, Richard Hoyt’s Whoo?, Kate Ross’ Cut to the Quick, Arthur W. Upfield’s Man of Two Tribes, Alistair MacLean’s Where Eagles Dare, Michael Innes’ Hamlet, Revenge!, and Maurizio de Giovanni’s The Crocodile. There are lots of ideas there to build up your to-be-read stack.

• That reference to Alistair MacLean reminds me: Not long ago I came across, on YouTube, the much-lauded 1971 British thriller film Puppet on a Chain, based on MacLean’s Amsterdam-set novel of that same name. At least for the time being, you can watch the entire movie for yourself right here.

• And here is a better-than-average Eurospy flick, 1965’s Our Man in Jamaica. Wikipedia explains the plot this way:

Agent 001 Ken Stewart [played by American actor Larry Pennell] is sent to Jamaica to locate the missing Agent 009, who vanished [while] investigating an arms-smuggling operation. After two of Stewart’s friends are found dead of electrocution, 001’s investigation leads him to an expatriate American criminal who was sentenced to the electric chair but escaped from prison. Seeking revenge, he assembles an army of terrorists based on an island seven miles from Jamaica called Dominica. His arms smuggling is the beginning of a scheme to attack the United States with the aid of Red China and Cuba.

• Seattle Mystery Bookshop shut its doors this last weekend, after 27 years of business in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square area. But some of its employees have launched a post-store blog. It will be interesting to see how that develops. Meanwhile, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop—Hardboiled page, which focuses on covers from vintage crime novels and magazines, continues to be active on Tumblr.

• Here’s some exciting news: Tour guide/author Don Herron reports that Dashiell Hammett authority Richard Layman and Hammett’s best-known granddaughter, Julie M. Rivett, have co-edited The Big Book of the Continental Op (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard), which he says will, “for the first time ever … [gather] all the Op stories in one place.” This 752-page paperback collection is expected to reach bookstores by late November—conveniently in time for Christmas gift giving.

• In the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, Sarah Weinman writes that “Max Haines, the dean of Canadian true-crime writing, has died. I grew up reading his columns [in the Toronto Sun], which were smart, incisive, and always worth reading.” Haines succumbed to progressive supranuclear palsy at age 86.

• The October number of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes observations on prolific author James Hadley Chase, the “rediscovery” of Golden Age novelist Christopher Bush, Minette Walters’ turn toward historical fiction, and new books by Christopher Brookmyre, Margaret Kirk, Chris Pettit, and Ben Aaronovich. Read all of Ripley’s musings here.

• How’d you like your own Jim Rockford business cards?

• Oh no, Charlie’s Angels is back, this time in film form, with notoriously wooden Twilight star Kristen Stewart tipped to play one of the curvaceous crime solvers.

• Los Angeles history specialist Larry Harnisch worked for many years as a copy editor at the L.A. Times, while simultaneously producing a Web-based feature for that newspaper called The Daily Mirror. In 2011, the Times killed his blog “because of low Web traffic,” but let Harnisch continue his history-journaling as a personal project—which is exactly what he’s done, writing about photos, intriguing myths, curious characters, and ephemera from L.A.’s past. Harnisch has also made himself an expert on the January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, aka “The Black Dahlia.” And he’s become a frequent critic of books and other reports claiming to have solved that sensational homicide. Those include documentary producer Piu Eatwell’s Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder (Liveright), which goes on sale next week. Although he remarks in a new post, “I don’t plan to do a line-by-line debunking,” Harnisch observes that there are “two elementary blunders” on the first page of Eatwell’s preface, which suggests “that poor work is ahead.” He promises further observations on the book, “as time allows.”

• Much has been said over the decades about plot holes Raymond Chandler left in his first novel, 1939’s The Big Sleep (see here and here)—enough that some clever soul decided to redesign the 1958 Pocket Books edition of Chandler’s yarn with a title reflecting such confusion. The artwork for both this modified cover, on the left, and the original paperback, is credited to Ernest Chiriacka, aka Darcy. (Hat tip to J.R. Sanders on Facebook.)

• I don’t think I mentioned this previously, but English actress Claire Foy—perhaps best recognized of late for her starring role as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix’s The Crown—has been tapped to play a much rougher role, that of abundantly tattooed Lisbeth Salander in a film adaptation of David Lagercrantz’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Set for release in October 2018, this movie will launch Sony Pictures’ reboot of its Millennium series, which began with the 2011 American film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on Stieg Larsson’s 2007 novel of that same name.

• It sounds as if British author Anthony Horowitz is moving right along with his second James Bond novel, the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2015’s splendid Trigger Mortis.

• Congratulations to Bill Selnes, the lawyer who blogs at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan, for producing his 1,000th post.

• With the 168th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth coming up this Saturday, October 7, Criminal Element is hosting a poll to determine that author’s most popular short story.

• Augustus Rose’s premiere crime novel, The Readymade Thief (Viking), is one of seven finalists in the running for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction.

• The Web site Cinephilia & Beyond revisits the 1981 motion picture Thief, exploring “how [director] Michael Mann’s cinema debut stole the world’s attention.” Which reminds me, I really should screen that movie again sometime soon.

• Who remembers Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, the 1951-1955 NBC Radio drama series starring William Gargan as a Manhattan private eye who, explains The Thrilling Detective Web Site, was “your man when you can’t go to the cops. Confidentiality a specialty”? Well, I certainly did not. But the classic-radio blog Down These Mean Streets recently posted this fine profile of Gargan (who also portrayed P.I. Martin Kane), and I tracked down 59 episodes of the Craig series online. That’s plenty of listening pleasure for yours truly.

• I don’t usually say much here about The Rap Sheet’s presence on social media—Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Those other pages exist primarily to promote this blog, not to substitute for it. And they all register fairly high traffic volumes, but I was surprised to see that a post noting the 60th anniversary of Have Gun—Will Travel’s debut on September 14, 1957, received much more attention than any other I’ve ever posted on Facebook. At last count, it had “reached” 9,474 people. It seems there’s a huge crossover between Rap Sheet readers and fans of that long-ago Richard Boone Western/detective series.

• Felix Francis, whose latest novel, Pulse, is out this month in the States, recalls for Shotsmag Confidential how he started taking over the family business of mystery writing even before the death, in 2010, of his famous jockey-turned-novelist father, Dick Francis.

• And here are a few crime fiction-related interviews worth your time to check out: Diane B. Saxton (Peregrine Island) and Brad Abraham (Magicians Impossible) are Nancie Clare’s latest guests on her podcast, Speaking of Mysteries; reviewer Alex Hawley presents his conversation with Craig Sisterson, the founder of New Zealand’s Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction, over the course of two blog posts—here and here; Sujata Massey, author of a forthcoming Bombay-set mystery, The Widows of Malabar Hill, talks with her editor, Juliet Grames, about that novel’s background; the blog Black Gates chats with Grady Hendrix about his distinctive new non-fiction work, Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction; among the guests on Episode 9 of Writer Types are Attica Locke, Frank Zafiro, Emma Viskic, and Andrew Nette; and during lawyer F. Lee Bailey’s 1967 conversation with Sean Connery, the actor who had by then portrayed James Bond in five films says he has finally tired of the role: “It’s some sort of Frankenstein,” he groused.