Bullet Points: Tariffs-Free Edition

• Who should be the next cinematic Bond? With Daniel Craig having departed the role of James Bond following 2021’s No Time to Die, speculation on which actor might next play Ian Fleming’s famous British superspy has revolved at various times around Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Jack Lowden, and even 21-year-old Louis Partridge. CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano has her own suggestion: “Joshua Bowman, the charming English actor who played Krasko on Doctor Who, and Daniel Grayson on ABC’s Revenge.” While I’m not yet on board with Bowman as Agent 007, I heartily endorse her idea that the next movie should be set in the 1950s, pre-Sean Connery. Remember that the ending of No Time to Die makes it pretty ridiculous to resurrect that protagonist for further feats in the 2020s. So why not return Bond to his roots, at the height of the Cold War? “It could be an origination story of the character,” writes Rutigliano, “rather like how Craig’s era rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale and used the Vesper Lynd love story as a consistent anchor for Bond’s choices, across multiple films. This could do something like that, with a nostalgic temporal re-contextualization that could stand out in a franchise that has historically insisted on contemporaneity.” Hey, everyone over at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Amazon (which now owns the intellectual property rights to Bond), are you listening?

• Meanwhile, The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig notes that “This year marks the 60th anniversary of Thunderball, the fourth Bond film and the apex of the 1960s spy craze.” He also alerts us to a Bond fan event, Gatherall at Goldeneye, set to take place in Jamaica this coming fall, and mentions that a new, expanded edition of Joseph Darlington’s 2013 book, Being James Bond: Volume One, is coming in August—though there’s not yet an Amazon “pre-order” link to share.

• Do you know the retro film and TV Web site Modcinema? I’ve ordered low-cost, made-on-demand DVD copies of forgotten small-screen features from that enterprise before, but its latest newsletter alerts me to a wealth of new offerings. Among them: the 1972 teleflick Assignment: Munich, which spawned Robert Conrad’s short-lived show Assignment: Vienna; a three-disc set containing all five episodes of the 1978 series Richie Brockelman, Private Eye starring Dennis Dugan; three episodes (including the pilot) of Cool Million, the James Farentino series that was one spoke of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie “wheel series” (two additional eps can be found in this set); and Fame Is the Name of the Game, the 1966 made-for-television picture starring Tony Franciosa, which “served as the pilot episode of the subsequent series The Name of the Game.”

• As a longtime follower of Peter Falk’s NBC Mystery Movie series, I’m surprised this February release didn’t hit my radar before now: Columbo Explains the Seventies: A TV Cop’s Pop Culture Journey, by Glenn Stewart (Bonaventure Press). UPDATE: Stewart tells The Columbophile about what inspired him to write this book.

• My suspicion is there aren’t many people around these days boasting solid memories of the 1980 ABC-TV action series B.A.D. Cats. As Wikipedia recalls, that Douglas S. Cramer/Aaron Spelling production starred Asher Brauner and Steve Hanks as “two former race car drivers who joined the Los Angeles Police Department as part of the ‘B.A.D. C.A.T.’ Squad (a double acronym for ‘Burglary Auto Detail–Commercial Auto Theft’).” Then 21-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer appeared on the program too, playing Officer Samantha “Sunshine” Jensen, who “would occasionally lend a hand when a more feminine approach was called for.” B.A.D. Cats didn’t last long; it was cancelled in February 1980 after a pilot (which you can view here) and five other episodes had been broadcast. But as Vintage Everyday observes, the show was an important stepping stone on Pfeiffer’s path to Hollywood renown. A few days ago, that blog posted almost four dozen promotional photos of her from B.A.D. Cats, which it says demonstrated “Pfeiffer’s youthful charm and emerging star quality.” The actress would go on to play a different breed of bad cat in Batman Returns (1992).

• While I greatly enjoyed Netflix’s first two Enola Holmes movies (in 2020 and 2022), based on the middle-reader mysteries by Nancy Springer, I forgot there was to be another. Variety brings the news that its production is already well underway. “The third instalment,” that publication explains, “sees adventure chase Enola Holmes to Malta, where, according to the description, ‘personal and professional dreams collide on a case more tangled and treacherous than any she has faced before.’” As in the previous pictures, Millie Bobby Brown will play Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister. There’s no release date yet.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Wallander, the globally acclaimed Swedish detective drama, is getting “a modernized and reimagined reboot” with Gustaf Skarsgård (Oppenheimer, Vikings) playing the iconic role. The first season of the new Swedish-language adaptation will comprise three 90-minute films and will see Kurt Wallander, now 42, recently separated, after two decades of marriage, and estranged from his daughter. On the edge as his life seemingly unravels, Wallander drinks too much, sleeps too little, and carries the weight of every unsolved case.

Penned by bestselling author Henning Mankell, the Wallander novels have sold over 40 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages. The original Swedish series and film adaptations, which aired between 1994 and 2013, garnered wide international success and were followed by a British mini-series adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh that earned him a BAFTA for his portrayal of the detective.

• Sunday, June 15, will bring the return of Grantchester to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! timeslot. Mystery Fanfare has the trailer for Season 10 of that historical whodunit.

• As Saturday Evening Post columnist Bob Sassone writes, “Dragnet’s Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) was known for the food he ate, which often confused and worried his partner Joe Friday (Jack Webb). Barry Enderwick of the terrific Sandwiches of History decided to try it, at the suggestion of many of his fans.” Watch the video here.

• The small-screen period crime drama Peaky Blinders is coming back! So are the rebooted Bergerac and the Death in Paradise spin-off Return to Paradise (even though I haven’t seen either of their opening seasons yet). And Acorn TV has scheduled the two-episode premiere, on Monday, June 9, of Art Detectives, which “revolves around the Heritage Crime Unit, a [UK] police department hired to solve murders connected to the world of art and antiques.”

• I was a huge fan of Leverage, the 2008-2012 TNT-TV crime caper series starring Timothy Hutton, Gina Bellman, Aldis Hodge, Christian Kane, and Beth Riesgraf. I must have watched every episode four times or more! Yet when that show was revived in 2021 as Leverage: Redemption, with Noah Wyle replacing Hutton, I hesitated tuning in, partly because I wasn’t sure I could believe the “gang” being a decade older and still as active. I think I’ve seen only two episodes of Redemption, and I completely missed the news that it had been renewed for a third season. The first three of 10 new installments aired on April 17, with more to come every Thursday through June 5. I guess it’s time I started catching up! See the trailer below.



• The Web site Geek Girl Authority (yeah, I’d never heard of it until today either) features a review of Leverage: Redemption, Season 3, plus this tribute to my favorite Leverage team member, Riesgraf’s prodigiously eccentric Parker, “truly the world’s greatest thief.”

• Speaking of TV trailers, CrimeReads has posted one for Season 2 of Poker Face, the crime comedy-drama starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, “a casino worker on the run who entangles herself into several mysterious deaths of strangers along the way.” That show will return to the streaming service Peacock on Thursday, May 8, with 12 new episodes (two more than were broadcast in 2023).

• And while you are at CrimeReads, enjoy these three other posts that went up there recently: Patrick Sauer’s salute to Tony Rome, the South Florida gumshoe introduced in 1960’s Miami Mayhem by Marvin H. Albert, and a character Frank Sinatra played in a couple of “groovy” films; Christopher Chambers’ case for reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (which celebrated its 100th anniversary earlier this month) as noir; and Scott Montgomery’s look back at the first quarter-century of Stark House Press’ efforts to return to print many hard-boiled authors and novels from the 1950s and ’60s.

• Thomas Pynchon has a new private-eye novel coming in October!

• National Public Radio weekend host Scott Simon interviews film historian Jason Bailey about his brand-new biography, Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend (Abrams Press). That book is being promoted as “a detailed and nuanced appraisal of an enduring artist,” Jim Gandolfini, who was apparently quite different from the New Jersey Mafia boss he played on HBO’s The Sopranos.

• Why can’t the United States have nice things like this? The British Writers’ Association and the Reading Agency, a UK charity, have jointly organized National Crime Reading Month (NCRM) in June. “This year,” says a press release, “it opens with an exclusive online panel, The Lives of Crime, featuring bestselling crime authors. On 4 June at 6 p.m., the CWA chair and bestselling author, Vaseem Khan, will host authors Fiona Cummins, Adele Parks, and Penny Batchelor in the free online panel event.” They’ll be talking about “the genre’s universal appeal—from psychological thrillers to cozy mysteries—and how it creates accessible pathways to reading for audiences who might otherwise never discover the joy of books.” (Click here to register.) Beyond that presentation, NCRM will offer “over a hundred local author events and talks that run throughout June across the UK and Ireland, which take place in libraries, theatres, bookshops and online.” A page devoted to keeping track of NCRM events is available at this link.

• I am way behind in reading Paperback Warrior’s occasional “primers” on vintage crime novelists and pulp-fiction characters. The latest entry in that series recalls Kendell Foster Crossen (1910-1981), who “wrote crime-fiction novels under the name of M.E. Chaber, a pseudonym he used to construct the wildly successful Milo March series from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.” Fun stuff! UPDATE: Another such primer has just “gone live,” this one relating the background of Charles Williams, who “authored 22 books and was one of the best-selling writers in the Fawcett Gold Medal stable.”

• Historical mystery novelist Jeri Westerson used to produce a blog called Getting Medieval, offering interviews and articles—only to suddenly delete that journal from the Web, leaving links at other sites broken. She says now that “it was too much work and social media was rising.” Recently, though, Westerson decided to return to blogging. She has subsequently posted several author exchanges of interest. Gary Phillips, James R. Benn, and Rebecca Cantrell have all fielded questions from her. I hesitate slightly to link to these conversations, leery of their also disappearing someday, but transience is unfortunately a Web foible.

• Is this creative or creepy? From The Hollywood Reporter:

BBC Studios, the commercial arm of British broadcaster BBC, and the Agatha Christie estate have teamed up to launch a writing course on education-focused streaming service BBC Maestro taught by Christie herself. Well, to be precise, it is taught by the queen of crime, brought to life by actress Vivien Keene and AI, using the author’s own words.

“In a world first, Agatha Christie—best-selling novelist of all time—will be offering aspiring writers an unparalleled opportunity to learn the secrets behind her writing, in her own words,’ the partners said. ‘Using meticulously restored archival interviews, private letters and writings researched by a team of Christie experts, this pioneering course reconstructs Christie’s own voice and insights, guiding you through the art of suspense, plot twists and unforgettable characters.”

James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and the CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, is quoted in The Guardian as saying that the educators and researchers behind this subscription-based video series “extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write. Through this course, you truly will receive a lesson in crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.” OK, maybe it’s creative, after all.

• I have given precisely zero thought to what might be the “best crime novels of 2025 … so far.” However, both The Times of London and The Week have already shared their favorites.

• Over at my Killer Covers blog, I’ve written a great deal about the American artist Robert McGinnis this year, both prior to his demise in March (at age 99!), and after. But author Max Allan Collins had his own memories to share, in this post that talks about how he scored an unusual number of McGinnis’ paintings for use on his novels about the hired killer known only as Quarry.

• Can we ever get enough of Belgian author Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret mysteries? Penguin Books has been publishing paperback versions of them over the last decade, and has brand-new editions set to become available beginning in July. And now the U.S. imprint Picador is joining in the game, launching its own Maigret lineup this month. Over the next three years, Picador says, it too will reissue all 75 Maigrets, plus “thirty of his darker standalone ‘romans durs’ beginning March 2026.” Pietr the Latvian will reach stores on May 6, together with The Late Monsieur Gallet and The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, all of which originally saw print back in 1931. It may be time to clear some space on your bookshelves!

• This is a terrible loss—at least from my perspective. The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which celebrated appallingly bad initial sentences to (fortunately) never-to-be-completed books, is no more. Scott Rice, who, as an English professor at California’s San Jose State University, founded the competition in 1982, says he finds it “becoming increasingly burdensome and [I] would like to put myself out to pasture while I still have some vim and vigor!” The Rap Sheet has posted many of the winners over time, and we’re sorry not to be able to keep up that tradition for decades more to come.

• California author J. Sydney Jones produced half a dozen books in his Viennese Mysteries series, beginning with The Empty Mirror (2008) and ending—it was presumed—with The Third Place (2015). They were complicated and propulsive stories of crime in the Austrian capital that took place during the very early 20th century, had as their leads lawyer Karl Werthen and real-life criminologist Doktor Hanns Gross, and seemed to fare well in the marketplace. However, Jones writes in his blog, “The original series stopped after book six. I had originally planned it for another three to four installments. But other projects came up, other publishers.” The author nonetheless returned to that series during the COVID-19 pandemic, penning a “capstone” titled Lilacs of the Dead Land, which he published in February of this year—a novel that somehow managed to avoid my radar. He calls it “a stirring historical thriller set in Austria shortly after the German annexation, or Anschluss, of March 1938.” As one who very much appreciated his Viennese Mysteries, I’ll want to find a copy soon.

• It should be mentioned that one of those “other projects” Jones embarked upon was a new crime series, set on California’s central coast during World War II and adopting as its protagonist a wounded former New York City police detective, Max Byrns. The second Byrns book, Play It in Between (Werthen Press), debuted in April.

• April 17 brought the presentation, at New York City’s New School, of the 37th annual Publishing Triangle Awards celebrating “LGBTQ+ literary excellence.” During that event, Massachusetts author and creative writing professor Margot Douaihy was given the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing for her second Sister Holiday novel, 2024’s Blessed Water (Zando/Gillian Flynn Books). Hansen, you will remember, penned a dozen novels in the late 20th century starring gay death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter.

• Just as “authors hitting the best seller list are approaching gender equality for the first time,” a new independent press in Great Britain proposes to center its business on male writers. Reporting on this development, Lit Hub’s James Folta acknowledges that “female authorship is on the rise, especially recently,” but he adds, “to conclude that men therefore need an urgent champion seems naïve and near-sighted. To look at this trend or, perhaps more accurately, to feel the vibes and conclude that male authors are in danger is pushing it. Male authors going from 80% to 50% of the market is far from a crisis in need of another intervening corrective.”

• And here’s one more instance of a blog rising from the dead. The Stiletto Gumshoe debuted back in November 2018, focusing on crime and mystery fiction and the artwork associated with same. But it went dormant just two years later, with its author, C.J. Thomas, apologizing that “some troubling ‘real-life’ issues need to be wrestled with right now, so there’ll be a break from blogging here for a while. Hope to be back soon …” Soon was not soon at all. When The Stiletto Gumshoe finally disappeared altogether from the Internet (forcing me to substitute links to its posts from The Wayback Machine), I struck it from this page’s lengthy blogroll, too. Then, just as abruptly as it was gone, Thomas’ creation returned! This last April 23, Thomas put up a tribute to Sergeant DeeDee McCall, the role Stepfanie Kramer played in the 1980s TV crime drama Hunter. He has followed that with posts about the 1950 film noir Where Danger Lives, J. Robert Lennon’s new Buzz Kill, French 1980s print ads from DIM Paris, and much more. Welcome back, C.J., I hope you can stick around this time.

Bullet Points: Hope and Hype Edition

• I first read about the possible shutting down of Mystery Scene magazine in Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare blog. Then came a bit more information in Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter’s post-Bouchercon round-up. There seems no escaping the truth of this matter: the Winter 2022 (mid-November) issue of Mystery Scene will be the last one produced by editor-in-chief Kate Stine (a veteran of the still-lamented Armchair Detective) and her husband, Brian Skupin, who acquired the publication in 2002 from previous owners Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg. That’s 20 years of success, marked in part by their winning an Anthony Award for Best Mystery Magazine in 2004 and, in 2006, an Ellery Queen Award for contributions to mystery publishing. But can this really be the end of Mystery Scene, a periodical so many of us have come to rely on for news, reviews, interviews, and features about the genre’s history? Stine tells me in an e-mail message that she and Skupin are definitely quitting as publishers. However, she adds, they are “putting the word out to anyone interested that the magazine is available [for sale]. We would be willing to work closely with new owners.” Anybody who could rescue this important asset to the mystery-fiction community is encouraged to contact Stine at katestine@mysteryscenemag.com. “So, we’ll have to wait and see if the magazine ends with us or carries on,” says Stine. “We’re planning on keeping the Web site and the monthly newsletter going through the end of the year.”

• Because I was a big fan of Louis Bayard’s 2006 historical whodunit, The Pale Blue Eye, I have been following closely news about that book’s adaptation as a forthcoming Netflix film. The streaming company recently released “a first-look image” of actor Christian Bale in the role of Augustus “Gus” Landor, a lonely, alcoholic New York City detective, who—with help from cadet Edgar Allan Poe—investigates the vicious murder of another cadet at the West Point military academy in 1830. In addition, it was announced that this version of The Pale Blue Eye “will arrive on Netflix on January 6, after a limited awards-qualifying theatrical run that begins on December 23.” Harry Melling (The Queen’s Gambit) will play the young Poe, with Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the ever-lovely Lucy Boynton (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) helping to round out the cast.

• Meanwhile, word has spread that Enola Holmes 2, the quite unimaginatively titled sequel to Millie Bobby Brown’s enjoyable 2020 Netflix movie, Enola Holmes, is being readied for its small-screen premiere on November 4. “Enola’s newest adventure,” says Entertainment Weekly, “begins after a young girl working in a match factory hires her to locate her missing sister. Before long, Enola finds herself drawn into a high-stakes chase across London, journeying from the city’s seedy industrial underbelly to the glitzy galas of high society. In other words, the game is most certainly afoot.” Henry Cavill will again portray Enola’s elder sibling, Sherlock Holmes, with Helena Bonham Carter returning as Eudoria Holmes, and Adeel Akhtar slipping into the shoes of Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Lestrade.

• The broadcast news source Radio Times reports that Professor T., the humorous ITV-TV crime drama based on a Belgian program of the same name, will return to UK boob tubes with fresh episodes, beginning tonight. “Starring [Ben] Miller as Jasper Tempest and Harry Potter star Frances de la Tour as his mother Adelaide,” the magazine’s Web site explains, “the story will once again be set in Cambridge as the Professor continues to help the police solve unusual crimes. Season 2 may finally see the Professor get the help he needs as he embarks on therapy, which unearths more secrets from his troubled childhood.” There’s no word on when Season 2 might reach U.S. screens.

• Having concluded its run in the UK, Season 7 of Shetland premiered this week on BritBox in the States, bringing viewers the first of six final episodes to star Douglas Henshall as Shetland Islands Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, a character created by Ann Cleeves. The plot line this time out finds Perez being cleared, after a year’s uneasy suspension, of any wrongdoing in the shocking suicide of terminally ill patient Donna Killick. He then moves on quickly to investigate the disappearance and subsequent demise of a “sensitive” young graphic novelist, Connor Cairns. The Killing Times offers recaps of this week’s episode, plus the five others to come, though you may wish to exercise caution in reading, as spoilers are on offer.

• The Killing Times also brings news that filming has begun on the third season of Grace, the ITV-TV series starring John Simm and based on Peter James’ novels about Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Like Season 2 (which I watched only last week), that upcoming series will comprise three episodes. I only hope Zoë Tapper returns as forensic pathologist Cleo Moray, whose relationship with the DSU helped flesh out his character and soften his intensity.

• And with James’ 18th Grace novel, Picture You Dead, due for release on this side of the Atlantic in late September, it’s worth looking over an interview he did with The Guardian a while back. In it, the author talks about how he learned a few pointers on techniques of art forgery—a major component of this new book’s story.

• Nobody should be surprised by news that I’m a huge fan of newspaper book-review sections, so I was pleased to read this in The Complete Review: “The Washington Post’s old stand-alone Book World section was discontinued in 2009 but, as former editor Ron Charles now reports: ‘The Washington Post’s stand-alone print book section is coming back!’—on 25 September. This is certainly good to hear. With the Canadian The Globe & Mail apparently also re-making their Arts & Books section as a stand-alone (on 10 September), this almost looks like a trend … Who will be next?”

• At the end of last month, I mentioned on this page that the anonymous author of The Columbophile Blog would soon welcome into the world his new book, The Columbo Companion, 1968-78: Investigating Every Detail of All 45 ‘Classic Era’ Columbo Adventures (Bonaventure Press). Back then, there were no ordering links online, but now I see it’s at least available from Amazon.

• While we’re talking about The Columbophile Blog, let me draw your attention to a trio of posts there that deserve your notice. Two of them finally identify the mysterious actresses behind memorable minor characters in Peter Falk’s original series—the nude model from “Suitable for Framing” and the “snooty” Tricon Industries from “An Exercise in Fatality”—while the third explains the “gargantuan” task of casting Columbo. (Included are many performers who never quite made it onto that rotating NBC Mystery Movie drama.)

• From In Reference to Murder: “Writing for The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik profiled Georges Simenon and ‘The Mysterious Case of Inspector Maigret.’ He concluded that the Maigret books, seventy-five in all, seem more likely to be remembered than [Simenon’s] romans durs, the ‘hard books’ often set outside Paris and meant ‘as works of more self-conscious art.’” Time will tell. Andrew Nette looked back at those romans durs earlier this year in a fine CrimeReads piece.

• In its tweet touting “James Bond Day” on October 5, Ian Fleming Publications teased the coming of a major—though unspecified—announcement. Rumors are now rife that there will be a new Bond continuation novel, to follow the last three by Anthony Horowitz.

• Former James Bond portrayer George Lazenby may want to amend some of his moral positions before again seeking public attention.

• In a long, thoughtful piece for The Conversation, a news and analysis site, writers Stewart King, Alistair Rolls, and Jesper Gulddal consider “how crime fiction went global, embracing themes from decolonisation to climate change.”

• With two months or so yet to go before a winner is pronounced, Karen Meek writes in the Euro Crime blog that “31 of the 34 titles that were eligible for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year have been entered by the publishers.” Among them are works by Anders de la Motte, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Arnaldur Indridason, Antti Tuomainen, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir.

• Believe it or not, there’s a certifiable whodunit on this year’s longlist of 10 National Book Award nominees in the Fiction category. It’s Shutter, by Ramona Emerson, released in early August by Soho Crime. Here’s the plot synopsis from Amazon:

Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook.

As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law.

And now it might be what gets her killed.

The competition for this annual prize is likely to be fierce, and Shutter may not triumph in the end. Still, it’s nice to see a work of crime fiction recognized for its literary excellence.

• I won’t argue with this assessment, in the blog Paperback Warrior, of Alistair MacLean’s already much-praised 1957 novel: “The Guns of Navarone is an absolute masterpiece of high-adventure, and I give it the highest recommendation. You won’t be disappointed with the story, plot development, or characters. MacLean deserved the heaps of praise his early and mid-career novels received. He was a master craftsman and you owe it to yourself to read one of his best. Whether this one is as good, or better, than Where Eagles Dare [1966] is up for debate. I love them both equally.”

• R.I.P., Elizabeth Gunn, “author of the Detective Jake Hines series and the Sarah Burke series,” and best-selling American horror writer Peter Straub (Ghost Story). Also gone is Williams Reynolds, who starred as Special Agent Tom Colby on 161 episodes of The F.B.I.

• Finally, the death last week of Queen Elizabeth II led publications worldwide to reflect not only on the real-life, 70-year career of that British monarch, but also on her numerous appearances—without her express permission, of course—in works of fiction. An Associated Press piece, for instance, recalled the queen’s role in the plots of various films and TV shows, and observed that author S.J. Bennett has turned her into a sleuth in two novels thus far, with another (Murder Most Royal) due out in November. The article might also have noted Canadian author Douglas Whiteway’s three novels, penned under the pseudonym C.C. Benison, about a fictional royal housemaid, one Jane Bee, who is infrequently called upon by Her Majesty to solve crimes at the Queen’s estates; that series’ opening installment was Death at Buckingham Palace (1996). And what of Susan Elia MacNeal’s 2021 mystery, Princess Elizabeth's Spy, in which MI5 agent-in-training Maggie Hope safeguards the young future soverign and her sister from possible Nazi provocateurs at Windsor Castle? Or William F. Buckley’s Saving the Queen (1976)? Although that first Blackford Oakes espionage novel, set in 1952, finds the undercover CIA agent in Britain protecting (and eventually bedding) a young “Queen Caroline,” that character is unquestionably based on Elizabeth, who ascended to the thrown in 1952 after the demise of her father, King George VI.

Bullet Points: Success in Excess Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sequel Is Afoot!

One of the television offerings that helped me weather the early months of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown was the Netflix flick Enola Holmes. While not a perfect picture, that historical mystery featuring Sherlock Holmes’ previously unknown younger sister was unquestionably entertaining, with teenage star Millie Bobby Brown utterly charming in the protagonist’s role. So I’m pleased to hear that a sequel is actually in the works.

According to Hull Daily Mail, Enola Holmes 2 will be shot, at least in part, in the English port city of Kingston upon Hull, aka simply Hull. “Residents living on city-centre streets,” the paper reports, “were informed over the weekend [in early August] that roads in the area will be closed in October” to make way for movie crews. “The production company, Matchsticks Productions, said the filming will take place on Tuesday, October 5, and Wednesday, October 6, later this year.”

Hull’s High Street is to be restored to a late-19th-century version of itself. “With permission from Hull City Council, location manager Esther Aja said, modern street furnishings and signage will be temporarily removed and the street will be dressed in a Victorian fashion,” the Daily Mail says. “High Street, Scale Lane, Bishops Lane and Chapel Lane will be closed off to traffic, but pedestrians would still be able to cross when the cameras are not rolling.”

Radio Times points out that Netflix has not yet announced a release date for this sequel. “The first film in the franchise began production in July 2019 before arriving on Netflix in September 2020,” it explains, “so working on the basis that the sequel will follow the same timeline, the earliest we predict Enola Holmes 2 getting released is summer 2022.” It adds that “as the franchise is based on Nancy Springer’s book series, The Enola Holmes Mysteries, it’s likely that Enola Holmes 2 will follow the events of the second book—The Case of the Left-Handed Lady [2007], which sees Enola search for a missing young girl with a talent for drawing.” The previous picture was, of course, based on Springer’s 2006 book, The Case of the Missing Marquess.

Folks who would prefer not to wait for another year before hearing more from the sprightly, perspicacious Miss Holmes should note that a seventh installment in Springer’s series, Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche, is due out from Wednesday Books on August 31.

READ MORE: “Mystery Minus Murder with Nancy Springer,” by Nancy Springer (Criminal Element).

Bullet Points: 2021—At Last Edition

• Down & Out: The Magazine, founded as a quarterly print/e-book periodical and helmed by the ever-resilient Rick Ollerman, debuted in the summer of 2017 and has since produced just five additional issues, their frequency having become quite unpredictable. The fifth edition came out in November 2019, and the sixth went on sale last month. This new one, by the way, is the first not to carry a “Placed in Evidence” column from yours truly. My schedule made it impossible for me to produce a creditable non-fiction essay by the deadline of January 31, 2020. Had I known that this issue wouldn’t be appearing until 11 months later, I might have asked for an extension on that due date. Oh, well. It sounds as if the latest number has enough to commend it, including “correspondence between two legends of crime fiction, Walter Satterthwait and Bill Crider, both of whom recently passed away”; a short story by the prolific Stephen Marlowe (1928-2008), plus an introduction to Marlowe’s work by Jeff Vorzimmer, the editor of last year’s The Best of Manhunt collection; and fresh short stories from James O. Born, Josh Pachter, and Rap Sheet regular Steven Nester.

• Is it merely my imagination, or has there really been less and less attention paid annually to Britain’s Staunch Book Prize ever since that commendation—which honors “a thriller novel in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”—was created back in 2018? I do not remember seeing any significant coverage of the 2020 shortlist when it was announced in early November. And I wasn’t aware until today (courtesy of Shotmag Confidential) that a winner had been declared on November 25: Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail). Locke, incidentally, is the first American to walk off with this award, which comes with £1000 in prize money. For the record, here are this year’s other five Staunch finalists:

— The Chemical Reaction, by Fiona Erskine (Point Blank)
— Glorious Boy, by Aimee Liu (Red Hen Press)
— Death in Her Hands, by Ottessa Moshfegh (Vintage)
— The Burning Island, by Jock Serong (Text)
— The Coldest Warrior, by Paul Vidich (No Exit Press)

• As everyone knows by now, writer and Columbo co-creator William Link died earlier this week. The Columbophile, though, doesn’t want us to forget about these other Columboworld stars we lost in 2020—Robert Conrad, Honor Blackman, and yes, Dawn Wells among them.

• Immediately before Christmas, CrimeReads published a fairly wonderful piece by Paul Vidich (The Coldest Warrior, The Mercenary) about his fellow author John le Carré, who died on December 12 at 89 years of age. In it, Vidich observes:

Le Carré’s distinction and originality is that he used the conventions of the spy novel for the purposes of social criticism. The British intelligence bureaucracy and the men (and they are largely men) represent the social attitudes and vanities of a certain class of Englishmen. They marry, cheat, divorce, spy and play their games of political and sexual betrayal. Le Carré used espionage as Conrad used the sea and Kipling India, as an exotic world in which to explore the inconvenient truths that exist in a democracy that finds it hard to balance openness with the need to keep secrets.

Intelligence agents in this world often act as legally sanctioned criminals. Lies are told in the service of truth, friends suborned in the name of national security, and extrajudicial murder qualifies as justice. We are fascinated by these contradictions and are entertained by the inherent hypocrisy.

• Steele Curry offers up his own le Carré tribute.

• The Killing Times spent this week applauding what it declares are the top 20 TV crime dramas shown in 2020. Among its picks: The Outsider, The Undoing, Deadwater Fell, Perry Mason, Deadwind, Dare Me, Baghdad Central, and I May Destroy You. Obviously, those good folks at The Killing Times spent way more time staring at small screens over the last 12 months than I did! They count down their endorsements in four posts: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

• That site’s focus isn’t only rearward, though. In this long feature, Killing Times editors preview some of the new crime, mystery, and thriller programming bound for TV screens in 2021—all of it accessible to British audiences, some of it available to American watchers as well. Who knows what will draw the biggest ratings, but I am looking forward to seeing The Serpent (starring Tahar Rahim and the magnetic Jenna Coleman), Series 2 of Baptiste, The North Water (based on Ian McGuire’s 2016 historical adventure), Series 2 of McDonald & Dodds, Lupin, Amsterdam Vice, and of course Season 6 of Endeavour. The post also includes the first trailer I’ve seen for Clarice, a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, starring Rebecca Breeds as FBI agent Clarice Starling. It’s not very revealing, but still welcome.

• There’s more than a modicum of overlap between the aforementioned recommendations and Dead Good Books’ tally of “20 Crime Shows You Shouldn’t Miss in 2021.”

• One of the programs I most look forward to seeing this season is Miss Scarlet and the Duke, a period mystery premiering under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece banner on Sunday, January 17. Already broadcast last spring in the UK, this six-part production is “set in 1882 Victorian London, with a fearless, quick-witted, and sassy female aspiring detective facing all manner of obstacles, from Victorian conventions to the efforts of her rakish and wily longtime friend/competition/potential love interest!” Kate Phillips, who portrayed Princess Mary (Queen Elizabeth II’s aunt) in The Crown, stars as Eliza Scarlet, the daughter of a London private detective who takes over her father’s agency after he dies in order to avoid penury. Stuart Martin, familiar as Silas Sharrow on Jamestown, plays Scotland Yard Detective Inspector William Wellington, aka The Duke, Eliza’s childhood companion and reluctant colleague. The PBS Masterpiece site offers more information about this drama. Below is a video trailer.



• CrimeReads editor-in-chief Dwyer Murphy touts “The Best Crime Shows of the Decade.” If I didn’t sit through all of them, I at least knew about these programs, which range from The Night Of and True Detective to Bosch and Justified. Just one exception: the American psychological thriller You. That Lifetime-turned-Netflix series, entering its third season in 2021, passed me by completely.

• It’s good to see that “The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and Netflix have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the author’s estate, which alleged that the film Enola Holmes infringed copyright by depicting a warmer and more emotional version of Sherlock Holmes.” The Guardian adds, “The lawsuit, brought against Netflix, the film’s producers Legendary Pictures, the Enola Holmes author Nancy Springer and others associated with the adaptation, argued that Conan Doyle created ‘significant new character traits for Holmes and Watson’ in the 10 stories still under copyright in the U.S., which were written between 1923 and 1927.” Lets hope this settlement clears the way to shoot a sequel to Enola Holmes, as I quite enjoyed that lighthearted picture starring Millie Bobby Brown, released this last September.

• Significant dates to remember, from In Reference to Murder:

Somehow, these deadlines slipped past me until now, but there are a couple of contests seeking submissions for first novelists due soon if you just happen to have an unpublished manuscript in your desk drawer.

The St. Martin’s Press Tony Hillerman Prize is accepting submissions for a debut mystery novel set in the American Southwest, with a prize of $10,000 advance against royalties and publication. The deadline for that one is January 2, 2021.

Also, the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Competition is taking submissions from the author of any unpublished novel who is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a novel (except that authors of self-published works may enter, as long as the manuscript submitted is not the self-published work). That one also has a prize of [a] $10,000 advance, with a deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST on January 1, 2021. Fortunately, you have more time to enter the CWA’s Debut Dagger competition, with a deadline of February 26th.

• The Private Eye Writers of America is currrently accepting submissions to its 2021 Shamus Awards competition. There will be four categories of honorees: Best Hardcover P.I. Novel, Best First P.I. Novel, Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel, and Best P.I. Short Story. As Guns, Gams & Gumshoes explains, “Submissions must be postmarked by March 31, 2021. No extensions can be given.”

• I’m still cobbling together The Rap Sheet’s lengthy rundown of crime-fiction works set for original release in the first quarter of this brand-new year. But already, Ayo Onatade has posted her list of British titles she’s most looking forward to reading in 2021, among them Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn, Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Daughters of Night, and K.J. Maitland’s The Drowned City. George Easter of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has assembled his own inventory of anticipated novels, running from Mick Herron’s Slough House to Jonathan Ames’ A Man Named Doll.

• “Best of 2020” lists continue to draw attention. MysteryPeople’s Scott Montgomery identifies his 10 favorite crime releases here, including one book I missed completely: James Queally’s Line of Sight, which Montgomery calls “my favorite private eye novel of the year.” The Web site Crime Fiction Lover has posted two additional sets of endorsements here and here. Librarian-turned-blogger Lesa Holstine has fond memories of S.J. Bennett’s The Windsor Knot, Bree Baker’s Closely Harbored Secrets, Harlan Coben’s The Boy from the Woods, and other yarns. Choices from the anonymous blogger at For Winter Nights take in Jane Casey’s The Cutting Place, Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water, Antonia Hodgson’s The Silver Collar, and We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker. CrimeReads and Book Marks present “The Best-Reviewed Crime and Mystery Fiction of 2020” (spoiler: Tana French’s The Searcher scored top honors, according to their accounting). Finally, a non-book compilation: Art of the Title’s top-10 movie and TV openings from 2020, featuring the title sequences from both Defending Jacob (adapted from William Landay’s 2012 novel of the same name) and The Good Lord Bird (based on James McBride’s 2013 book).

• Tardy though I am, I wish to direct your attention to this piece in The Stiletto Gumshoe, which recounts how famous American paperback illustrator Robert McGinnis employed, among his many models, one Shere Hite. That’s right, the very same Ms. Hite who composed such sexology classics as Sexual Honesty, by Women, for Women (1974) and The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976). Hite died this last September 9 at age 77.

• Rest in peace, as well, Guy N. Smith. A hard-working English concocter of pulpy horror fiction, Smith passed away on December 24 after testing positive for COVID-19. He was 81 years old. Smith may be best remembered for having penned a strangely popular series of novels about giant killer crabs, but he also wrote non-fiction, soft-core porn, and children’s stories. The blog Too Much Horror Fiction has posted a gallery of his creepy book covers. FOLLOW-UP: In his Dispatches from the Last Outlaw blog, Thomas McNulty recalls his meeting with author Smith in the fall of 2019.

• What a fun end-of-the-year project! Houston author and blogger Scott D. Parker devoted part of December to screening all half-dozen of the 1930s and ’40s Thin Man movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, and inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s 1934 novel, The Thin Man. You will find his spirited assessments here. “I enjoyed these films so much,” Parker remarks in conclusion, “that I’m going to seek out and find the other films Powell and Loy starred in together.”

• Kudos to Publishers Weekly! After considering the abundant challenges and disruptions that faced the book-publishing industry in COVID-clobbered 2020, that American trade magazine announced that its Person of the Year (actually, People of the Year) “are not the powerhouse agents or the megabestselling authors or the Big Five CEOs. They are the booksellers, debut and midlist authors, editors, librarians, printers, publicists, sales representatives, and warehouse workers, to mention just a few—the workers, who have been the most important people in the business all along.” Without those individual booksellers and the products they continued to place in our hands, despite the rigors of the pandemic and their risks of exposure to the disease, 2020 would have been an even more lonely and agitating time than it was. They may not have been considered “essential workers,” but for many of us, they were essential, indeed.

• And of course there’s a Free Little Library in Antarctica.

Two Further Cures for Boredom

In The Rap Sheet’s last news round-up, I mentioned some of the television series and movies that have gotten me through these last eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, I forgot to highlight two others that really ought not to be missed.

First is Enola Holmes. A lighthearted Netflix mystery feature, it stars teenager Millie Bobby Brown as Sherlock’s younger but equally perceptive sister, who’s trying in this story to save the life of a new friend, while also searching for her eccentric missing mother. Adapted from the opening installment in a six-book young-adult book series by Nancy Springer, this teleflick was popular enough to merit a sequel, though a lawsuit brought by Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate may discourage such a possibility.

My second viewing recommendation, The Queen's Gambit, comes via Netflix, too, but it strays from the crime and mystery lane. Instead, this beautifully filmed seven-part mini-series, based on a 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, follows a chess prodigy—played by the consistently bewitching Anya Taylor-Joy—who, thanks to a janitor instructing her in the finer points of chess, escapes the privations of an orphan’s life, achieves unlikely renown as a tournament champ, and then must overcome addiction issues and fears of intimacy in order to become a world chess champion. A concern that this tale would be one long downer prevented me initially from watching it; but thank goodness, I overcame my hesitation, because The Queen’s Gambit provides one hell of a satisfying ride. Again, there’s talk of a sequel, but I for one am happy to see the plot conclude as it does.

READ MORE: “There’s a Very Good Reason Why Everyone Is Watching The Queen’s Gambit,” by Elamin Abdelmahmoud (BuzzFeed).