All Hail All Hallows’ Eve

With plenty of candy in hand (perhaps too much—again), and a carved pumpkin waiting to greet tonight’s crepuscular treat-seekers, I’m feeling quite prepared for Halloween. Which leaves me free to explore some of the associated coverage rolling out online.

Smithsonian magazine’s Web site, for instance, carries a story about how much more mischievous and unsettling Halloween was during the 19th century. The History Channel offers a video backgrounder on trick-or-treating. Then there’s this rundown of “12 Things You May Not Know About Halloween,” and this collection, in The Lineup, of “14 Creepy and Utterly Bizarre Vintage Halloween Costumes.” Meanwhile, the blog Today I Found Out has put together two worth-invesigating posts—one inquiring into whether “anyone [has] ever actually poisoned or put razor blades or needles in Halloween candy,” and the other exploring the source of werewolf legends.

In Sweet Freedom, Todd Mason looks back at horror anthologies that haunted his childhood, while Janet Rudolph suggests wines and cocktails appropriate to your October 31 festivities. And Terence Towles Canote gathers together another assortment of classic Halloween pin-up images for his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts.

(Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

Bullet Points: Revivals and Retreads Edition

• It has now been just over 12 years since crime-fictionist Dennis Lynds died. I was reminded of this by a note in Mystery*File from his widow, thriller writer Gayle Lynds, who explains that her husband’s best-remembered protagonist, one-armed New York City gumshoe Dan Fortune, has recently been resurrected in print. She writes: “The entire 17-book series of private eye novels”—which Lynds published under his pseudonym Michael Collins—“are available again, for the first time in Kindle and trade paperback. We hope a new generation of readers will discover Dan, and that longtime fans will enjoy re-reading the classic tales.” Click here to find Amazon’s list of these reprinted works, from Act of Fear (1967) to Cassandra in Red (1993).

• Coincidentally, TracyK recently reviewed The Nightrunners—a Fortune yarn originally released in 1978—in her blog Bitter Tea and Mystery. She applauded the fact that it contains “twists and turns I did not anticipate” and that “there is less action and gun play, and more emphasis on brains and persistence” than she’d expected.

• A little behind schedule, but welcome nonetheless. The last I heard, Spinetingler Magazine was planning to release “its first [print] issue in years” sometime this month. Today, however, a news release reached my e-mailbox, saying that Down & Out Books expects to publish the Fall 2017 edition of Spinetingler in November. Its contents will include “original stories by Tracy Falenwolfe, Karen Montin, Jennifer Soosar, B.V. Lawson, Nick Kolakowski, David Rachels, and more. There are author snapshots of Con Lehane, Rusty Barnes, Mindy Tarquini, and others. Book features and reviews fill out the magazine’s pages.” There’s no word yet on ordering this new issue.

• In June, I drew your attention to the first trailer for The Alienist, TNT-TV’s historical mini-series based on Caleb Carr’s 1994 psychological thriller of that same name. ScreenRant has now posted a second trailer (which is also embedded below), and finally shares a date for the debut of that program: Monday, January 22, 2018. It also suggests that there will be eight episodes, rather than the previously mentioned 10, all written by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga and starring Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning as “19th-century investigators on the trail of a serial killer.” Hmm. With three months to go until this mini-series begins airing, I might actually find free time enough to re-read Carr’s book.



• A British blog called The Killing Times brings word that Bron Studios, a Canadian production company, plans to build a new TV series around Louise Rick, the Copenhagen detective inspector who features in more than half a dozen novels from Danish writer Sara Blædel. “Deadline reports that the first Louise Rick story, The Forgotten Girls, will serve [as] the basis for Season One,” but Bron “has optioned the whole series,” according to The Killing Times.

• Variety carries the unexpected news that actor John Turturro (The Night Of) has been signed to play 14th-century Franciscan friar-cum-sleuth William of Baskerville in a “high-end TV adaptation” of Umberto Eco’s 1980 mystery novel, The Name of the Rose. The eight-episode English-language production will be produced by Italy’s Matteo Levi and Carlo Degli Esposti, and is set to start shooting in January at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. In addition to the hangdog-faced Turturro, this mini-series will feature English performer Rupert Everett as the monk’s antagonist, Italian inquisitor Bernard Gui. An excellent 1986 film interpretation of Eco’s debut novel starred Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham, and it’s hard to imagine that an extended remake is really needed. But of course, nobody asked me …

• … Just as no one solicited my opinion on whether the world requires a new version of Tom Selleck’s 1980-1988 private-eye TV series, Magnum, P.I. It seems screenwriters Peter Lenkov and Eric Guggenheim—the guys behind the disappointing current Hawaii Five-0 reboot and the latest version of MacGyver—think we need Magnum back, and have convinced CBS (the series’ original home network) to at least bankroll a pilot. The Hollywood Reporter describes the prospective series as an update of Selleck’s show.

It follows Thomas Magnum …, a decorated ex-Navy SEAL (also like the original) who, upon returning home from Afghanistan, repurposes his military skills to become a private investigator. With help from fellow vets Theodore “T.C.” Calvin and Orville “Rick” Wright, as well as that of disavowed former MI6 agent Juliet Higgins, Magnum takes on the cases no one else will, helping those who have no one else to turn to. Action, adventure and comedy aside, Magnum P.I. will also explore a brotherhood forged by the trauma of combat, what it means to return home an ex-soldier, and a commitment to continuing to serve while in the private sector.

This is the third time I remembering hearing that a Magnum comeback was on the drawing boards. The first was back in 2006, when Ben Affleck was set to star. Then, just last year, news broke that actress Eva Longoria had pitched a sequel that would have refocused the crime drama on “Magnum’s daughter, Lily ‘Tommy’ Magnum, who returns to Hawaii to take up the mantle of her father’s P.I. firm.” Neither of those efforts resulted in an actual show. Maybe we’ll be just as lucky this time around. Has Hollywood considered that not every once-popular series needs to be remade?

• Oh, and as In Reference to Murder relates,

A “Nancy Drew” TV series is once again in the works, with NBC developing a new series based on the iconic novel series after CBS attempted such a project last season. The new series still hails from writers and executive producers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater and executive producer Dan Jinks, who developed the CBS version, but the new series follows the author of the most famous female teen-detective book series who is thrust into a real-life murder mystery. In need of help, she turns to her two best friends from childhood, who were the inspiration for all those books, and the women who have a real axe to grind about the way their supposed best friend chose to portray them all those years ago. This will be a completely different version than the original at CBS. That project would have focused on Drew, now an adult who works as a detective for the NYPD. Sarah Shahi, who starred in the CBS drama Person of Interest since its second season, starred in the pilot as Drew but isn't currently attached to the NBC version.

• Barry Forshaw alerts us that, with this month’s release of Modesty Blaise: The Killing Game, Titan Books has completed its “all-inclusive run of Peter O’Donnell’s imperishable [British] comic strip Modesty Blaise (drawn by a variety of artists, including the great Jim Holdaway who inaugurated the strip and Enric Badia Romero, who concluded it).” Click here to find all of the preceding titles in this series.

• I’ve added several vintage TV openings to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page, including those from Shotgun Slade, Johnny Bago (which features theme music by Jimmy Buffett), and Jack Palance’s Bronk.

• Florida’s Tampa Bay Times recently carried an interesting feature about how smoothly and satisfyingly author Michael Connelly has transferred his original series protagonist, Harry Bosch, from the page to the TV screen, in Amazon’s Bosch.

• Bookseller-turned-writer/editor Maxim Jakubowski has returned to CrimeTime as a monthly columnist, penning “To the Max.

• Fans of author Ted Lewis (Get Carter, GBH, etc.) should be interested to learn of a new volume, Nick Triplow’s Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir, being brought out by No Exit Press. Crime Fiction Lover opines that “meticulous and thorough detective work is at the heart of this compelling and detailed biography of Ted Lewis, the Humberside author of nine novels, who was a huge influence on Brit Noir and remains so for leading names in crime fiction today.” Sadly, Triplow’s work is currently available only in Britain, but a U.S. release (from Oldcastle Books) is slated for May 2018.

• Three author interviews worth your time: Thomas Mullen talks with MysteryPeople about Lightning Men, his exceptional sequel to last year’s Darktown; Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare chats with Joe Ide about Righteous, the second installment in his Isiah Quintabe series; and Geoffrey Girard fields a few queries from Mystery Tribune about his “contemporary gothic ghost story,” Mary Rose.

• And Peter Rozovsky, the Philadelphia editor, essayist, and photographer with whom I have frequently associated at Bouchercons over the last decade, takes questions from S.W. Lauden.

• With Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express set to reach theaters in November, Crime Fiction Lover has posted a photo tour of the author’s native Devon, England.

• Wow, this blog’s Facebook page seems to be experiencing a remarkable run of attention lately. In early October, I was impressed when a post there about the 60th anniversary of Have Gun—Will Travel “reached” more than 9,000 people. I thought that was some kind of record, but more recently, a post leading to The Rap Sheet’s coverage of the 2017 Anthony Award winners jetted right past that high bar, “reaching” 15,246 people. With 694 followers, the blog’s Facebook presence seems to be justifying my efforts to keep it lively.

• Feeding the grand debate over which of Raymond Chandler’s handful of novels qualifies as his “best,” Tablet magazine columnist Alexander Aciman delivers an outstanding appraisal of 1953’s The Long Goodbye. He writes, in part:

If Raymond Chandler’s earlier novels were detective stories that just so happened to be good, The Long Goodbye is a full reversal; it is a great novel that just so happens to be a detective story. It should be no different than saying Moby-Dick is a great novel that happens to be about whalers, or that Ulysses is a great novel that happens to take place in Dublin. But by describing it as detective fiction, we can obscure the fact for more than 60 years that it was one of the greatest novels ever written in America. There is hardly a novel more human, more heartbreaking, strung together with prose as boozily and as meticulously exacting as The Long Goodbye’s.

• I’ve lived in four U.S. states during my lifetime—Oregon, Michigan, Colorado, and Washington—and have gotten around to reading only one of the books Travel & Leisure magazine editors say best represent those places: Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson, set in the Seattle area. In my defense, I did see the Jack Nicholson movie version of Stephen King’s The Shining (which ostensibly takes place in Colorado), and have read many other works on T&L’s list.

• For fans of “impossible crime” yarns.

• Here’s an excellent review of two new books that explore the fight against World War II-era Nazism in Los Angeles, California, and specifically in its glitziest quarter, Hollywood.

• This, too, sounds like a book I should have. In its write-up on Sinclair MacKay’s new non-fiction work, The Mile End Murder: The Case Conan Doyle Couldn't Solve (Aurum Press), Amazon explains: “In 1860, a 70-year-old widow turned landlady named Mary Emsley was found dead in her own home, killed by a blow to the back of her head. What followed was a murder case that gripped the nation, a veritable locked-room mystery which baffled even legendary Sherlock Holmes author, Arthur Conan Doyle. With an abundance of suspects, from disgruntled stepchildren concerned about their inheritance and a spurned admirer repeatedly rejected by the widow, to a trusted employee, former police officer and spy, the case led to a public trial dominated by surprise revelations and shock witnesses, before culminating with one of the final public executions at Newgate.”

• Your chance to get better acquainted with Frederic Brown: “‘Murder Draws a Crowd’ and ‘Death in the Dark’ by Fredric Brown (Haffner Press, $50 each) are the first two volumes in a well-designed, excellent new series edited by Steve Haffner, collecting all of Brown’s mystery fiction. … If you’ve never read anything by Fredric Brown, (1906-1972) you’re in for a real treat—he’s one of the genre’s most respected authors, long overdue for increased attention.”

• Who’d have thought that reading in bed could be dangerous? Many people once harbored such fears, according to The Atlantic:

Writings from the 18th and 19th centuries frequently dramatize the potentially horrifying consequences of reading in bed. Hannah Robertson’s 1791 memoir, Tale of Truth as well as of Sorrow, offers one example. It is a dramatic story of downward mobility, hinging on the unfortunate bedtime activities of a Norwegian visitor, who falls asleep with a book: “The curtains took fire, and [with] the flames communicating with other parts of the furniture and buildings, a great share of our possessions were consumed.”

Even the famous and the dead could be censured for engaging in the practice. In 1778, a posthumous biography chastised the late Samuel Johnson for his bad bedside reading habits, characterizing the British writer as an insolent child. A biography of Jonathan Swift alleged that the satirist and cleric nearly burned down the Castle of Dublin—and tried to conceal the incident with a bribe.

(Hat tip to January Magazine.)

• The Web’s latest plethora of Halloween-linked stories is just getting started. A site called Thrillist features this piece focusing on “the creepiest urban legend in every state.” BuzzFeed looks to Google Maps to find “the 31 most haunted places in America.” Mental Floss examines “the origins of 25 monsters, ghosts, and spooky things.” And adding a comical coda to these selections, Neatorama presents “The Story of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

• Los Angeles’ 1947 “Black Dahlia murder” is among that city’s most unsettling unsolved crimes. So it can only be with a chill that anyone would dress up as victim Elizabeth Short for Halloween.

• I usually think of H.G. Wells as a science-fiction writer (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, etc.). But he also produced a great deal of non-fiction, and evidently experimented as well with “criminous misadventures,” as Ontos recalls here.

• The Bookseller brings the sad news that Britain’s “campaign group Voices for the Library is to disband due to the pressures of the workload on its members. The group, which counts Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and author Julia Donaldson among its supporters, was created in 2010 to speak out and fight against the ‘assault’ on public libraries caused by deep cuts to the sector. In a statement posted on the Voices for the Library website, the group said: ‘Unfortunately, we ourselves are volunteers running an organisation in our spare time. We are unhappy to say that we can no longer undertake the work required to be a voice for public libraries. It is with great sorrow that we have decided that it’s time to close the doors on Voices for the Library. The irony of this is not lost on us.’”

• Finally, these are dark days, indeed, for “alternative newsweeklies.” The Village Voice, historically one of the strongest and most influential such newspapers, discontinued its print publication in September (though it’s still available online), and L.A. Weekly is currently experiencing a transition limbo likely to result in employee layoffs and a refocusing on its digital presence. Meanwhile, it appears that 41-year-old Seattle Weekly—which I was proud to work for during the late 1980s—will soon become unrecognizable. The Seattle news Web site Crosscut says that for budgetary reasons South Publishing, which has owned the tabloid-size paper since 2013, will restructure Seattle Weekly as a far less creative or challenging “community news weekly.” The paper’s staff will be slashed to just three employees (down from dozens of people who worked there when I did), and they will have no independent offices, but will be left to share editorial space and production facilities with Sound Publishing’s 16 other local small-time papers. This is tragic news, so far as I am concerned. I started out with “alt-weeklies” after college, working first for Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon, and eventually (after regrettable detours to a monthly magazine in Detroit and a daily broadsheet in Boulder, Colorado) wound up on the staff at Seattle Weekly, which was then known simply as The Weekly. That publication has had its ups and downs since David Brewster founded it in 1976, but it’s also produced a hell of a lot of solid, incisive reporting on politics, civic growth, the arts, local history, and much more. As with other alt-weeklies, Seattle Weekly suffered greatly with the rise of Internet advertising; however, I assumed it would ultimately find a way to make up for lost ad dollars and rebuild its journalistic stature. I guess I was wrong.

Treat Yourself

I didn’t realize that choosing a book to read specifically for All Hallows’ Eve was a popular thing. Apparently, I was out of the loop—again. As Rap Sheet contributor Ali Karim explained in a Facebook post yesterday, “Each Halloween, I plan to watch a scary film or read a scary book.” His scheduled novel this year? Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, a first U.S. edition of which he owns, signed by the author during “his last visit to the UK.” Ali says he intends to follow that up with a rewatch of Mary Lambert’s 1989 big-screen adaptation of King’s yarn, just to keep the fright alive.

Coincidentally, I had already dived into a novel selected for its association with Halloween: H.G. Wells’ 1898 alien-invasion thriller, The War of the Worlds. You may not be aware of this, but October 31, 2017, will mark 79 years since the 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles’ radio drama based on that book scared many American listeners (though it may not have led to widespread public panic, as some sources claim). I think the last time I read The War of the Worlds was in high school, so I was overdue to be reacquainted with Wells’ sixth novel. And though there are parts of the first-person narrative that require more patience than today’s readers have been trained to expect, I am enjoying this Victorian yarn immensely. At my current pace, I should be done with it well in advance of October 31.

If you’d like to embark on a Halloween reading experience of your own, but are stymied for ideas, consider consulting Janet Rudolph’s list of crime and mystery novels appropriate to this spirited occasion. She offers the titles of more than 240 works, everything from Stacey Alabaster’s The Pumpkin Killer and E.J. Copperman’s Night of the Living Deed to Kathi Daley’s Trick or Treason, David Robbins’ Spook Night, and Agatha Christie’s 1969 Hercule Poirot whodunit, Hallowe'en Party. Mentioned, too, are more than a dozen anthologies of haunting short stories to sample when you’re not handing out candy or trying to keep your pumpkin lit amid crepuscular breezes.

Happy Halloween, Everyone!

(Left) The New Yorker, October 31, 1959, with cover art by William Steig. (Right) The New Yorker, October 27, 1954, with cover art by Edna Eicke. Click the images for enlargements.

READ MORE: “Halloween Crime Fiction: A List,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Bullet Points: Treats Only Edition

• Since tomorrow is Halloween, it seems appropriate to begin here with some ghost-and-ghoul-related links: Author Michael Koryta (Last Words) identifies his “10 Favorite Halloween-Season Reads,” including Ray Bradbury’s The October Country and Stephen King’s Christine; meanwhile, Janet Rudolph has posted a much more comprehensive rundown of Halloween crime and mystery fiction in Mystery Fanfare; a site called Electric Lit picks “Twelve Haunting American Short Stories to Read This Halloween,” only a couple of which I’ve already enjoyed; some additional suggestions of books suitable to Saturday’s celebration, this time from BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski and Bookgasm; for Criminal Element, Poe scholar Chuck Caruso talks with Leslie S. Klinger about this new collection, In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Terror 1816-1914; e-book publisher Open Road recommends “Five Halloween Books You Haven’t Read Yet”; blogger NancyO recommends picking up a classic to go with this celebration--Agatha Christie’s 1969 Hercule Poirot mystery, Hallowe’en Party; Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette presents a splendid selection of book covers featuring Satanism and witchcraft; in this Mystery*File post from last October, Michael Shonk ignores “TV series with monsters as the villains,” and instead samples “the shows with a monster as a good guy”; in A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence Towles Canote recommends “Ten Classic TV Show Episodes Suitable for Halloween Viewing,” one of which is the 1967 Star Trek installment “Catspaw,” written by “legendary horror writer Robert Bloch”; young adult novelist Sonia Gensler recaps her “spooky movie viewing” over the last year; the Classic Film and TV Café blog chooses the best and worst Dracula films made by Britain’s Hammer Pictures; short-story author Evan Lewis showcases dozens of vintage Halloween masks, while the blog Vintage Everyday hosts this gallery of “Strange and Terrifying Halloween Costumes from Between the 1900s and 1920s”; a magazine called Smart Meetings looks at “10 Famously Haunted Hotels of America”; and the photo above showing lovely Ava Gardner perched on a broomstick (lucky damn broomstick!) comes from a Film Noir Photos display of “Halloween Honeys.” UPDATE: Also check out this Halloween-themed radio episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, first broadcast on October 31, 1948; Studies in Starrett’s examination of correspondence between fellow lovers of the macabre Vincent Starrett, a Sherlock Holmes expert, and “the man behind the Cthulhu mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft”; and the Universal Blogathon’s history of the horror films produced by Universal Pictures.

• The much-anticipated historical episode of Sherlock, titled “The Abominable Bride,” is set to premiere on January 1 as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. “Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman return as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the modern retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories,” explains Mystery Fanfare. “But now our heroes find themselves in 1890s London. Beloved characters Mary Morstan (Amanda Abbington), Inspector Lestrade (Rupert Graves) and Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs) also turn up at 221B Baker Street.” At the link you will find a short video preview of “The Abominable Bride.”

• Meanwhile, Red Carpet Crash has posted a short trailer for the forthcoming HBO/Cinemax TV series Quarry, based on Max Allan Collins’ continuing book series about a killer-for-hire. “The trailer is getting a very positive response on the Net,” Collins writes in his blog, “and I like it very much myself--great noir-ish mood and a fine evocation of the early ’70s.” It’s still unclear exactly when in 2016 Quarry might reach TV screens, but the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has six episodes listed so far.

• Ben Affleck’s big-screen adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s 2012 historical crime novel, Live by Night, just commenced shooting this month, and already there’s a first image circulating. The movie is tentatively scheduled for release in 2017.

• David Cole, the Michigan-born author of seven novels set the American Southwest and starring part-Hopi cyber-investigator Laura Winslow (including the 2006 Shamus Award finalist Falling Down), passed away on October 21 at a hospital in Syracuse, New York. He was 79 years old. An online obituary says, “David was a graduate of Michigan Technological University with a degree in electrical engineering; San Diego State University with degrees in English and Creative Writing; and was a doctoral student of Drama at Stanford University. He had a deep love of the Southwest … Tucson [Arizona] was his second home. David lived his life to the fullest, he was a multi-dimensional man. He was a trained engineer, an actor, a technical writer, a teacher of computer software, a musician, as well as a published author. He had an indomitable spirit and his joy of life and living was infectious to all.” In tribute, Janet Rudolph has republished an essay by Cole that appeared originally in the Winter 2000-2001 edition of Mystery Readers Journal.

• I somehow missed hearing this excellent news: J. Robert Janes, creator of the acclaimed World War II-set Jean-Louis St-Cyr/Hermann Kohler mysteries, has a new standalone thriller due out in mid-December. It’s titled The Sleeper. I’ve added this title to my already extensive list of fall-winter 2015 crime-fiction releases.

• Too good to be true? Actor Garret Dillahunt, who played two different roles on the 2004-2006 HBO-TV Western Deadwood, tweeted recently that he’s “hearing credible rumors about a Deadwood movie.”

• With the latest James Bond film, Spectre, having already debuted in Great Britain, and due out in American cinemaplexes early next month, Variety glances back at four Bond flicks that never quite made it into production. Those include a spin-off series of motion pictures starring Halle Berry as Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, the National Security Agency (NSA) operative she played in 2002’s Die Another Day.

• Speaking of Spectre … The Book Bond cites a report saying there’s a pivotal scene in that flick inspired by events in the first James Bond continuation novel, Colonel Sun (1968), by Kingsley Amis.

• If you haven’t been paying attention to my Killer Covers blog, note that just days ago I posted this piece about the beautiful front of Clyde Allison’s 1962 novel Have Nude, Will Travel, then followed that up with this article about the Robert McGinnis-painted covers of Max Allan Collins’ brand-new Quarry novel reprints and this update of my work to expand an older gallery of Carter Brown paperback façades.

• In association with the early November release of Stephen King’s new short-fiction collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has teamed up with King’s UK publisher “to run a short-story competition, in which King himself will pick the winner. … We’re looking for original and gripping stories of not more than 4,000 words” inspired by this vague King prompt: “There’s something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark, or a beautiful curio for sale at a street bazaar.” Click here for details about how to enter this contest.

• We can now add “author” to the list of Gary Oldman’s occupations. The Bookseller reports that the star of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Child 44 is set to publish, with co-author and film producer Douglas Urbanski, a debut vampire novel called Blood Riders. “We have always wanted to write a story of vampire cowboys, set in the Wild West, the gold rush--and we have had these characters and this story kicking around in our heads for years,” the pair explained in a joint statement. “We hope everyone is drawn to Magnus and we envision a series of books that follow his curse and struggles with the forces of good and evil, and also the ever-present vampire ingredients of blood, and love.” This book should reach stories in the fall of 2016.

• Who says that reading novels won’t make you a better citizen of the world? Certainly not President Barack Obama.

• I was honored to have been “friended” not long ago on Facebook by author Sara Paretsky (Brush Back). Shortly afterward, in late October, she posted this short, humorous item on that social network site, recalling the birth of her series sleuth, V.I. Warshawski:

A gloomy late-fall day in Chicago, cool, drizzle, dying leaves. It was on a day much like this that V.I. Warshawski was conceived. Some of you have heard this tale before, but I was working for CNA Insurance in Chicago, part of the wave of young women entering management and the professions in large numbers in the 1970s. We had male bosses who were great mentors, some who were ordinary average managers, and a handful of pills who liked to throw boulders in front of us so they could laugh when we tripped and fell. I was working for one of those, Fred, I call him, at a meeting in his office, looking down on Grant Park in the dreary drizzly day. For about 8 years I’d been imagining writing a crime novel with a woman P.I., someone to turn the tables on Chandler, et al, but I wasn’t getting traction. And suddenly in that meeting, my lips [were] saying, “Gosh, Fred, heck of an idea,” while the balloon over my head was saying, “you expletive-deleted turkey bird,” [and] V.I. came to me. Not Philip Marlowe in drag, but a woman like me and my friends, doing a job that hadn’t existed for women when we were growing up, but saying what was in the balloon over her head because she dealt with the turkey birds without fear or favor. I guess I should send Fred a thank-you note (although at the rate he ate eggs Benedict when I had to travel with him and see him at breakfast may mean he’s sunk beneath his cholesterol by now. Although, of course, only the good die young.).

• I only just became aware that e-book publisher Open Road Media and the Mysterious Press have gotten together to resurrect Howard Engel’s Benny Cooperman series. So far, nine Cooperman tales are available for Kindle e-readers, including the Canadian gumshoe’s first outing, The Suicide Murders (1980).

• “The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., where Stephen King was inspired to create his 1977 bestseller The Shining, wants to go one step closer to the dark side,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Last week, the landmark hotel near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park released plans to create a building that would house a horror-themed museum, film production studio and film archive.” The Stanley is certainly not the first movie location hoping to capitalize on its Hollywood connections.

• Editor-blogger Elizabeth Foxwell notes that “Intellect Books in the UK will launch a new non-fiction series, Crime Uncovered, in November, which seeks to ‘explor[e the] genre in an intelligent, critical and accessible manner.’ Its first two volumes will be on the antihero (ed. Bath Spa University's Fiona Peters and Rebecca Stewart) and the detective (ed. Crime Time’s Barry Forshaw). In March will be a volume on the private investigator (ed. University of Newcastle’s Alistair Rolls and Rachel Franks).”

• Happy anniversary to BOLO Books, which celebrated the beginning of its third year in business on October 24.

• New Zealand critic-blogger Craig Sisterson has finally posted both parts of his rundown of the 10 Kiwi scribes he’d most like to see “chained up until they write another crime novel.” Click here to see his first five choices, and here to consider the remainder.

• Guaranteed to delight fans of the British TV detective drama Foyle’s War is news that a 29-DVD complete series set will be released on November 3. “Priced at $199.99 SRP, you’ll get 28 mysteries plus over 6 hours of bonus features,” says the blog TV Shows on DVD.

• Finally, here are a few interviews to check out around the Web: Editor Otto Penzler talks with Paste about the new Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories; Matthew V. Clemens is quizzed by Ava Black of Crimespree Magazine about Fate of the Union, the sequel to last year’s Supreme Justice, co-authored with Max Allan Collins; Bonnie MacBird chats with Nancie Clare at Speaking of Mysteries about her Sherlock Holmes adventure, Art in the Blood; Jason Starr answers questions at Crime Fiction Lover about his new novel, Savage Lane; S.W. Lauden conducts an e-mail interrogation of the mysterious St. Louis writer Jedidiah Ayres, author of Peckerwood; Sarah Weinman takes questions about her new work, Women Crime Writers, from both Cullen Gallagher (writing in The Paris Review) and Nancie Clare (again in Speaking of Mysteries); and National Public Radio’s Scott Simon carries on a delightful exchange with Stanford University professors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold, authors of The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism (Oxford University Press).

Scaring Up a Finale

Have you been keeping up with the month-long celebration of artist-illustrator Robert McGinnis’ work in my book-design blog, Killer Covers? Of course you have. Which is why you’re now familiar with his contribution to the Marvel Comics universe, the sometimes odd double uses of his imagery, McGinnis’ visual support for novels by John D. MacDonald and Ed McBain and Robert Terrall, and what might be called his One Shoe Off gimmick. It’s also why you recognize the source of the artwork fronting The Art of Robert E. McGinnis (Titan), a handsome forthcoming book by McGinnis and Art Scott (the latter of whom I recently interviewed for The Rap Sheet).

But that Killer Covers tribute finally ends today. I’ve been holding onto two Halloween-appropriate paperback façades especially for this occasion, both of them from Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series: The Case of the Glamorous Ghost (1962) and The Case of the Haunted Husband (1962). You’ll find those here. And if you wish to revisit all of Killer Covers’ McGinnis posts, this is the place to look.

By the way, both of the aforementioned novels were adapted for the classic Perry Mason TV show: Glamorous Ghost in Season 5, Haunted Husband in Season 1. Since we could all use some spooky-good entertainment today, I am embedding the initial segments of those episodes below, with links to where you can watch them in full.


See all of The Case of the Glamorous Ghost here.

See all of The Case of the Haunted Husband here.

Bullet Points: Wheeling Around the Web

• Today brought the opening, at the Museum of London, of an exhibit called “Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die.” As Mystery Fanfare explains, this show “celebrates the world of the greatest fictional detective of all time. The exhibit will run through April 12, 2015, with a variety of rare treasures,” including “the original manuscript of ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903).”

• We’re still almost two weeks out from Halloween, but blogger Janet Rudolph has already posted a lengthy list of mystery and crime fiction associated with that celebration.

• The All Hallows’ Eve posts keep on coming. Following the success of their recent “Summer of Sleaze” series at Tor.com, bloggers Will Errickson and Grady Hendrix have launched a brand-new series called “The Bloody Books of Halloween” (which I presume will continue through October 31). Today’s entry, by Errickson, looks back at Ray Bradbury’s 1955 short-story collection, The October Country.

• A belated “happy birthday” to Sir Roger Moore! The former James Bond star celebrated his 87th birthday this last Tuesday.

• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Tana French’s In the Woods, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale--they all feature prominently on Flavorwire’s list of “50 of the Greatest Debut Novels Since 1950.”

• While we’re on the subject of Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first Bond thriller, let me refer your attention to The HMSS Weblog’s “reappraisal” of CBS-TV’s early, much-maligned adaptation of that 1953 novel. As I’ve mentioned previously, this small-screen version of the tale starred American actor Barry Nelson alongside Mexico-born actress Linda Christian and the familiar Peter Lorre. It was first broadcast on October 21, 1954--60 years ago next week--as part of the CBS-TV series Climax! “While Ian Fleming’s first novel was short, it still covered too much ground to be covered in a 60-minute time slot,” opines blogger Bill Koenig. “Excluding commercials and titles, only about 50 minutes was available to tell the story. … This version of Casino Royale’s main value is that of a time capsule, a reminder of when television was mostly done live. Lorre is suitably villainous. If you find him fun to watch on movies and other television shows, nothing here will change your mind.” You can watch the whole show here.

• I’m pleased to see Moonlighting and Hill Street Blues included in this piece about “The Top 20 Theme Songs of the 1980s.” But really, Highway to Heaven made it, too?

• And this latest addition to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page should inspire happy memories of 1970s television programming.

• This Sunday night, October 19, will bring to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series the last installment of Inspector Lewis’ latest, three-episode season. It’s titled “Beyond Good and Evil,” and the plot synopsis reads: “Thirteen years after [Robbie] Lewis’ first successful arrest as a Detective Inspector, the forensics have been called into question and the case reopened for appeal. Lewis fears the worst, but nothing can prepare him for the resumption of the original murders with the original weapon. Did he arrest an innocent man? With Lewis’ reputation in jeopardy, [DI James] Hathaway and [DS Lizzie] Maddox race to catch the killer.” The episode is set to begin broadcasting at 9 p.m. on Sunday. You should find a video preview here.

• Spicy Detective magazine must have drawn a great deal of (male) attention during its years of publication 1934-1942). If you’re interested in ogling more Spicy Detective fronts, you can do so here.

• Speaking of covers--though of the book sort this time--have you been keeping up with Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to renowned paperback illustrator Robert McGinnis? You can see all the daily posts here. This series will conclude on October 31.

• The new, 600th post for the blog In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel suggests some nominees for the “Top Five Underappreciated Books.” I’ve read all but one of those listed, and would certainly have come up with far different choices, had I been assigned to the project. But each reader has his or her own preferences. So be it.

• Reassessing Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry.

• I wasn’t aware of this until today, but Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” a short story published in 1845, has been adapted for the big screen as Stonehearst Asylum. This movie stars the ever-divine Kate Beckinsale and is scheduled for release on October 24. Criminal Element offers the trailer.

• On top of the news that director David Lynch plans to revive Twin Peaks, the 1990-1991 cult TV series, for cable channel Showtime in early 2016, comes word that series co-creator Mark Frost is writing a book titled The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks. According to a press release, “The novel reveals what has happened to the people of the iconic fictional town since we last saw them 25 years ago, and offers a deeper glimpse into the central mystery from the original series.” It’s set for release in late 2015.

• Meanwhile, the great Twin Peaks rewatch continues.

• And novelist Megan Abbott comments, in New York magazine’s Vulture blog, on how Twin Peaks influenced her own writing.

• After an unplanned three-year hiatus, The Trap of Solid Gold--Steve Scott’s excellent blog about author John D. MacDonald and his works--has suddenly reappeared. Scott reports here that his extended quiet was attributable to family health problems. But he’s moved quickly to dust off his site and begin posting again, including on the subject of MacDonald’s 1957 novel A Man of Affairs (the paperback cover of which was illustrated by the great Victor Kalin). Let me just welcome The Trap of Solid Gold back into the blogging fold.

• This comes from The New York Times: “Elmore Leonard died in 2013, but now some of his signature Hawaiian shirts will be preserved forever at the University of South Carolina, which has acquired more than 150 boxes of Mr. Leonard’s archive.”

• Who would have imagined it? “Publicity makes for strange bedfellows,” writes Jake Hinkson in Criminal Element. “So does crime. So does religion, for that matter. Add publicity, crime, and religion together, and you get the fascinating story of how the Reverend Billy Graham set out to save the soul of the most notorious gangster in the history of Los Angeles: crime lord Mickey Cohen.”

• And I must say good-bye to an old friend, Geoffrey Cowley. Many years before he took up his post as Newsweek’s health editor and was later hired as a national writer for MSNBC, Geoff attended college with me. He was also the editor of our school’s newspaper, in the year I served as its managing editor. (Most everyone on the staff called him “Gee-off,” in order to distinguish between us.) I went on to succeed him in the editor’s post. Geoff and I had not stay in close touch in recent years; there are undoubtedly many people who knew the older Geoff Cowley better than I did. But I always remember him as a fine, bright, and generous human being. We need more people like him in this world, not fewer. According to this obituary in The New York Times, Geoff died of colon cancer on October 14. Very, very sad.

Happy Halloween, Everyone

Let’s start off the morning with some spook-tacular links.

Author Jeri Westerson has put together a revised history of this holiday. “Some,” she explains, “would have you believe that [Halloween is] Satanic in origin. Nothing could be further from the truth!” After taking all of that in, click over to Flavorwire for a look at 10 “Real-Life Haunted Houses Around the World,” three of which, I’m proud to say, I have already been privileged to tour. Addicting Info, meanwhile, tallies up “10 Haunted Places that Aren’t So Famous,” including the Miami Biltmore Hotel (at which I have dined) and Canada’s Banff Springs Hotel (where I once stayed). Flavorwire is back with a list of “20 Cemeteries You Need to Visit Before You Die”--because, I guess, you might only be visiting one afterward.

In case you want some spinetingling reading material to get you through this holiday, go to The Huffington Post for its picks of “10 Novels that Will Scare the Hell Out of You.” Joseph D’Lacey, author of the eco-horror novel Meat, selects his own top 10 works of horror fiction for The Guardian. Oline Cogdill suggests a few more such books in the Mystery Scene blog, while Blogging for a Good Book recommends Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology. Finally, Criminal Element has posted a full story from its Girl Trouble e-book compilation, totally appropriate to this day: “Her Haunted House,” by Brendan DuBois.

It’s been 75 years now since a notorious October 30, 1938, radio broadcast established an intimate link between H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Halloween. In 1957, the weekly TV anthology series Studio One dramatized the hysteria that reportedly resulted as listeners were taken in by Orson Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air transmission, believing that Martians had indeed invaded New Jersey. Click over to YouTube to watch that hour-long show, The Night America Trembled. Eighteen years later, in 1975, an ABC made-for-television flick revisited that controversy: The Night That America Panicked, all 90 minutes of which you can enjoy here. Just don’t get too swept up in the excitement surrounding that 1938 scare: Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow contend in Slate that “The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... [A]lmost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast.”

READ MORE: “Mystery Melange, Halloween Edition,” by B.V. Lawson (In Reference to Murder); “Cool Flicks: I Put a Spell on You--Halloween Movie Fest,” by J.F. Norris (Pretty Sinister Books); “Halloween Was So Much Weirder Back Then: Creepy and Disturbing Vintage Halloween Photos” (Weird Tales).

More Treats Than Tricks

With Halloween due to be celebrated around the world next Wednesday, it’s high time to highlight a feature from SFX magazine’s Web site about the top 10 ghost tales of all time--as chosen by its readers. The list includes books, movies, and short stories.

Meanwhile, Open Road Media is offering 40 “scary reads” in e-book form for less than $3 apiece. Among the authors represented are Ira Levin, Robert McCammon, Lois Duncan, and Caroline R. Cooney.

READ MORE: “A Highbrow Halloween Reading List,” by Emily Temple (Flavorwire); “Frightfully Good,” by Les Blatt (Classic Mysteries).

Fright Gigs

Happy Halloween, everyone! Do you have your pumpkins carved? Is your costume all ready to wear? Have you bought enough candy to satisfy tonight’s trick-or-treaters? Actually, that last concern may be mostly my own. Recalling a few stingy homeowners I had to deal with as a tyke, I like to give the youngsters who knock on my door fistfuls of candy, rather than single Baby Ruths, Butterfingers, or KitKats.

Last year on this date, I featured in The Rap Sheet a couple of spooky TV sitcom openers I remember fondly from my youth. Today, I’ll treat you instead to a quartet of trailers from Halloween-appropriate Abbott and Costello movies. Former burlesque entertainers Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were favorite weekend-afternoon film figures of mine growing up, and I still chuckle whenever I watch one of their old pictures. After World War II, they put together a popular series of slapstick horror movies in which they confronted fearsome monsters familiar from previous flicks. I remember those with special fondness.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948:



Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, 1951:



Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1953:



Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, 1955:



Although it’s not generally considered part of this series, Abbott and Costello also appeared in 1941’s Hold That Ghost. The film plot finds them among a small group of people abandoned by a thieving bus driver at a rural tavern, where a gangster’s loot is supposedly hidden. As the night wears on, the group come to believe that this groggery just might be ... haunted. In one of the funniest scenes in Hold That Ghost, a frightfully clumsy Costello performs a mime dance with future TV comedienne Joan Davis, set to Johann Strauss’ famous Blue Danube waltz, while an exasperated Abbott looks on:



READ MORE: “Happy Halloween 2010!” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts); “I’m Crazy About Baseball,” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet).

A Bagful of Goodies

• To commemorate Halloween, AbeBooks has assembled a collection of vintage fright novels. “They were all published before 1960,” the book-selling site explains, “and these books--some of them forgotten, many out-of-print--illustrate how authors and publishers tried to scare people in the days before JFK, The Beatles and everything else that came with the Swinging Sixties. You will find ghosts, monsters, witches, the undead, general strange happenings and a diverse range of supernatural elements in this selection. Some stories might not have aged as well as others--are tales of giant beetles and huge spiders really horrifying for a modern reader?” See for yourself.

• The Little Professor provides a rundown of “19th-century (and a few Edwardian) haunted house tales.” Works by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Margaret Oliphant, H.G. Wells, and Bram Stoker are all included.

• Retrospace recalls some “wicked reads” from the 1970s.

• Meanwhile, English author Kate Mosse (Sepulchre, The Winter Ghosts) writes in The Guardian about her 10 favorite ghost stories, a list that includes Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart,” Edith Wharton’s “Bewitched,” and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. (Hat tip to The Campaign for the American Reader.)

• If you’re still stuck for reading material befitting Halloween, click on over to The Broke and the Bookish, Reading in Reykjavik, or Bookgasm for a few interesting ideas.

• Alternatively, turn to Bill Crider’s “Boppin’ at the High School Hop.” Or try out “Amanda,” by horror writer Juliette “Rizzy” Rodham.

• TV Confidential hosts a 15-minute-long “pitch episode” for The Munsters (1964-1966), shot in color and featuring only two of the cast monsters ... er, members who became so familiar from the finished series, Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis. Watch it here.

• Classic TV Showbiz offers scenes from the 1964 Halloween episode of Bewitched, the situation comedy in which Elizabeth Montgomery starred as spellbinding suburban witch with a twitchy nose, whose husband doesn’t want anyone else to know about her powers. Click here to see these scenes, with guest star Shelley Berman.

• Yes, you too can turn yourself into a zombie.

• Crime Time Preview reports that in honor of this occasion, BBC Radio 7 will unearth its 90-minute, 2007 adaptation of Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula (1978) for an encore airing. The show is set to begin on Sunday at 9:30 p.m. GMT, and--if the usual rules apply--should be available for the next seven days. Listen to it here.

• Gary Dobbs is raising lots of spirits with his weekend-long “Fangs for the Memory” celebration of All Hallows’ Eve. Contents include a hair-raising homage to The Wolf Man, a compact history of cinematic spooks, and an interview with Shaun Hutson (Epitaph).

• Master of the horror film Wes Craven picks his top 10 scary movies (among them War of the Worlds, Psycho, and Don’t Look Now) for The Daily Beast. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare).

• The Classic Film and TV Café suggests satisfying today’s hunger for fearsome flicks with showings of The Shining or Village of the Damned.

• Still more “films that give you nightmares.”

• Ed Gorman’s “favorite horrific film”? The Seventh Victim (1943).

• For the male viewers out there, Nobody Move! showcases a beauteous bevy of “scream queens” from moviemaking’s past.

• She Blogged by Night has its own phantom-packed photo tribute to this occasion. Don’t miss the “Halloween cheesecake” posts.

• Three good pieces from Mercurie’s A Shroud of Thoughts: “The Golden Age of Horror Movies,” “The Second Golden Age of Horror Movies,” and “ This ... Is a Thriller,” a remembrance of Boris Karloff’s 1960-1962 TV anthology series, Thriller.

• Script-penning demons Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunston, contributors to the Saw series of big-screen horror movies, write in the Mulholland Books blog about “the culture of the scare.”

• The 1988 film Vampires on Bikini Beach is among the Halloween treasures, horrific and horrible, that you can watch from the safety of your computer screen this weekend, thanks to the Web site SlashControl. Also available: original Addams Family episodes and the beloved Peanuts special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

• Sink your teeth into Evan Lewis’ gallery of Dracula film posters.

• What were trick-or-treaters wearing a century ago? National Geographic’s Web site provides a gallery of the ghoulish and weird. (Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

• Spooky fingernail paintings. (Hat tip to Women of Mystery.)

• Author Timothy Hallinan (The Queen of Patpong) explains why “Thais take their ghosts pretty seriously,” in a post for Murder Is Everywhere.

• Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph, who has recently put together a series of guest posts having to do with October 31, invited mystery writer and party planner Penny Warner to give readers instructions on “How to Host a Vampire Party.”

• Finally, in this era of easy mobility, it seems there are travel opportunities for every taste. The Virginia radio program With Good Reason recently sampled paranormal tours. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

Monsters from My Boyhood

Boo!

If you’re in the mood this Halloween for some frightful reading, there are plenty of stories from which to choose. Book Sense offers its top 10 list of Halloween books. Brad Leithauser, editor of The Norton Book of Ghost Stories, made up a list for The Wall Street Journal of his five favorite ghost tales. Britain’s Guardian newspaper has a fang-tastic rundown of the top 10 vampire tales, while London Times reviewer offers her own selection of six vampiric yarns. And Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph has her own choices of Halloween-appropriate reading matter. More suggestions are available from MyShelf.com, the Springfield (Massachusetts) City Library, Classic Mysteries, and Suite 101.

Perhaps the scariest thing of all, though, is the idiocy being propagated this Halloween by people such as those at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, who wrote in a blog post yesterday: “During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.” Who is being tricked here, I ask you.

(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

Monster Mash-up

I finally managed to carve my pumpkin--just in time to light the candle inside and lie in wait, with a basketful of bite-size candies (some of which I have already consumed) for the few trick-or-treaters who traditionally stop by my house on Halloween night. It’s too late now to bother making a big deal of this delightful pagan holiday in The Rap Sheet. Nonetheless, there are a few links still worth checking out, if--like me--you suddenly have some free time on your hands.

• Two horror movie quizzes, here and here.
• The Cinematical movie site has been posting Halloween-related stories over the last couple of weeks, about such hot topics as the greatest movie monsters of all time, non-horror flicks that can still “scare the crap” out of children, an obsessive-compulsive’s guide to the Friday the 13th movies, Halloween flicks that could ruin relationships, and the inevitable much, much more.
• Speaking of Halloween pictures, blogger Dave Nadler picks his four favorites here. And he writes here about what he says are the “two scariest books ever written.”
• At RogerEbert.com, editor Jim Emerson chooses four “undervalued scary movies” on DVD.
• And if you’re really ready to be spooked, the AfterEllen site offers a list of its 10 favorite lesbian vampire movies. (Yes, there really are 10--and more.)
• TV Squad selects the all-time scariest small-screen characters (another roster of 10), including players familiar from Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, and Doctor Who.
• In Criminal Brief, James Lincoln Warren takes a look back at early American fright fictionists, including the “first American writer of short stories, Charles Brockden Brown, [who] wrote stories of Gothic horror.”
• Meanwhile, The Little Professor’s Miriam Burstein scans the Web for free-access 19th and early 20th century tales of Things That Go Bump in the Night. (Which reminds us inevitably of our own similar survey from last Halloween.)
• And finally, Bill Crider points us to a Web page recalling “the worst Halloween costumes of all time.” Who ever thought it was a good idea to dress up as Tattoo from Fantasy Island and go out prowling for Mars Bars? Now, that’s scary.

Tricks, Treats, Terrors

Here’s just the thing to put you in the right mood on this Halloween eve: Victorian ghost stories. A number of fine examples are available online, in their entirety. So as I worry over last-minute preparations for the trick-or-treaters preparing to descend upon my front door (I had a whole 20 last year--whatever happened to children in my Seattle neighborhood?), I’m also trying to figure out which spooky and forgotten yarn to print out and take with me to the living room couch. Will it be Bram Stoker’s “The Judge’s House,” or maybe H.G. Wells’ “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost,” or perhaps Wilkie Collins’ “Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman”?

Those prudish Victorians might’ve done everything they could to conceal the human body, lest the baring of skin lead to temptation; but they sure knew how to scare the pants off a reader.

READ MORE: “Halloween Historical Horrorama,” by Miriam Burstein (The Little Professor).

Scaring Up a Fitting Read

If any holiday seems perfectly paired to crime fiction, it’s Halloween. You don’t see bloody knives used as decorations at Christmas, or gravestones punctuating front yards at Easter. No, Halloween--with its hints of occult-born misdeeds and its celebration of the darker side of human existence--best evokes the traditional elements of this genre: mystery, mayhem, and the restless spirits of the unjustly deceased. Which may be why so many crime novels have been written over the years with Halloween elements and settings, or with features that at least make reading them seem especially appropriate on October 31.

Just consider, for instance, Agatha Christie’s Halloween Party (a Hercule Poirot mystery), or Charles Williams’ All Hallows’ Eve, or David Robbins’ Spook Night. How about Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who ... Talked to Ghosts, or Ed McBain’s Tricks (an 87th Precinct Mystery), or Susan Wittig Albert’s Witches Bane?

If you’re in the market for an enchanting mystery to match the mood of this centuries-old holiday, look no further than these two lists--from MyShelf.com and the Springfield (Massachusetts) City Library.

READ MORE: “The Mystery of the Halloween Jack o’Lantern” (MysteryNet.com).