Victor Methos’ 2019 legal thriller, The Hallows (Thomas & Mercer), has won the 2020 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. That commendation is, of course, named in honor of the author best known for having written the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
In achieving its victory, The Hallows beat out two other finalists for this award, which is presented annually by the University of Alabama School of Law: The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime), and An Equal Justice, by Chad Zunker (Thomas & Mercer).
A UA news release about this result quotes Methos, a Utah criminal defense attorney turned author, as saying: “It is such a privilege to receive this award. Every criminal lawyer will tell you the same thing: Atticus Finch was our earliest inspiration. I first read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 13, and to this day, when the injustices of our legal system discourage me, it is that book I turn to for inspiritment. To think the committee saw something of it in my own work humbles me, and I will always be grateful.”
That same official notice explains: “Methos will be honored with a signed special edition of To Kill a Mockingbird. The 2020 prize will be awarded virtually as part of the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival,” September 25-27.
(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)
Showing posts with label Harper Lee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harper Lee. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Sundries and Snippets
• No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film, had been slated to debut in April 2020, but the
COVID-19 pandemic provoked its postponement. Its new premiere dates: November 12 in the UK, and November 20 in the United States. A 2.5-minute trailer was released today to drum up excitement around this Daniel Craig picture. (A previous sneak peak of similar length came out last December.) As Bill Koenig observes in The Spy Command, this preview “emphasizes action and large stakes for the story. Specifically, the 25th James Bond film is back to ‘saving the world’ (or a substantial piece of it).”
• A clever alternative trailer for that movie finds Roger Moore reprising his role as Agent 007. Watch it here.
• I mentioned two months ago that New York City bookseller and publisher Otto Penzler had been replaced as the series editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s annual anthology, The Best American Mystery Stories, which he founded back in 1997. Now Publishers Weekly brings word that California “author, critic, and editor Steph Cha has been tapped as the new series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories, which will be reframed as The Best American Mystery & Suspense, under Cha’s direction, starting with the fall 2021 edition.” Cha penned Your House Will Pay (2019) and the Juniper Song private detective novels, and she served for almost half a decade as noir editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. The latest edition of Sarah Weinman’s newsletter, The Crime Lady, features an interview with Cha, about whom Weinman opines: “I could not think of a more perfect person to edit this annual anthology.”
• Literary Hub reports that Monroeville, Alabama, the town Harper Lee fictionalized as “Maycomb” in her classic 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, last week last week elected “its first Black mayor.”
• B.V. Lawson’s blog, In Reference to Murder, notes that “In keeping with many events this year, the International Agatha Christie Festival is going online. The free 2020 virtual festival will be live on the festival’s new YouTube channel on September 15. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can subscribe now by visiting this link. Sophie Hannah, Laura Thompson, and Mathew Prichard are among the special guests with topics to include Christie’s childhood; her home, Greenway; Hercule Poirot; and Christie’s plays, Witness for the Prosecution and The Mousetrap, among other subjects.”
• Meanwhile, Christie’s French publisher has finally decided to change the title on its translation of her best-selling, 1939 mystery novel from Dix Petits Negres, or Ten Little Niggers, to Ils Etaient Dix, or They Were Ten. Ten Little Niggers was the title featured on the original British release of Christie’s gripping story, but when that book came out in the States in 1940, it instead bore the less-offensive name And Then There Were None. The Paris-based Agence France-Presse news agency says, “the decision to change the French title … was taken by her great-grandson James Prichard, who heads the company that owns the literary and media rights to Christie’s works. … Not using words ‘that upset people,’ Prichard said, ‘just seems to me a very sensible position to have in 2020.’”
• Lastly, Martin Edwards conveys the sad news that Welsh-born novelist Dorothy Simpson died on August 20, at age 87. “I knew her as the author of the Inspector Thanet novels,” he writes, “but I gather that she came to writing (as did a number of her predecessors, including Freeman Wills Crofts, G.D.H. Cole, and Patricia Moyes) after a period of convalescence. She began with a suspense novel, Harbingers of Fear, which was published in 1977. After that came some rejections, but then she created Thanet and never looked back after publishing The Night She Died in 1981. Something I didn’t know until recently was that she spent thirteen years as a marriage guidance counsellor. This was an experience she found invaluable as a writer. As she pointed out in a comment on her website, murder mysteries are about relationships that go wrong, and her understanding of what makes people tick was a great asset.” Simpson won the 1985 Silver Dagger Award from Britain’s Crime Writers Association for her fifth Kent-set Thanet novel, Last Seen Alive.
• A clever alternative trailer for that movie finds Roger Moore reprising his role as Agent 007. Watch it here.
• I mentioned two months ago that New York City bookseller and publisher Otto Penzler had been replaced as the series editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s annual anthology, The Best American Mystery Stories, which he founded back in 1997. Now Publishers Weekly brings word that California “author, critic, and editor Steph Cha has been tapped as the new series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories, which will be reframed as The Best American Mystery & Suspense, under Cha’s direction, starting with the fall 2021 edition.” Cha penned Your House Will Pay (2019) and the Juniper Song private detective novels, and she served for almost half a decade as noir editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. The latest edition of Sarah Weinman’s newsletter, The Crime Lady, features an interview with Cha, about whom Weinman opines: “I could not think of a more perfect person to edit this annual anthology.”
• Literary Hub reports that Monroeville, Alabama, the town Harper Lee fictionalized as “Maycomb” in her classic 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, last week last week elected “its first Black mayor.”
• B.V. Lawson’s blog, In Reference to Murder, notes that “In keeping with many events this year, the International Agatha Christie Festival is going online. The free 2020 virtual festival will be live on the festival’s new YouTube channel on September 15. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can subscribe now by visiting this link. Sophie Hannah, Laura Thompson, and Mathew Prichard are among the special guests with topics to include Christie’s childhood; her home, Greenway; Hercule Poirot; and Christie’s plays, Witness for the Prosecution and The Mousetrap, among other subjects.”
• Meanwhile, Christie’s French publisher has finally decided to change the title on its translation of her best-selling, 1939 mystery novel from Dix Petits Negres, or Ten Little Niggers, to Ils Etaient Dix, or They Were Ten. Ten Little Niggers was the title featured on the original British release of Christie’s gripping story, but when that book came out in the States in 1940, it instead bore the less-offensive name And Then There Were None. The Paris-based Agence France-Presse news agency says, “the decision to change the French title … was taken by her great-grandson James Prichard, who heads the company that owns the literary and media rights to Christie’s works. … Not using words ‘that upset people,’ Prichard said, ‘just seems to me a very sensible position to have in 2020.’”
• Lastly, Martin Edwards conveys the sad news that Welsh-born novelist Dorothy Simpson died on August 20, at age 87. “I knew her as the author of the Inspector Thanet novels,” he writes, “but I gather that she came to writing (as did a number of her predecessors, including Freeman Wills Crofts, G.D.H. Cole, and Patricia Moyes) after a period of convalescence. She began with a suspense novel, Harbingers of Fear, which was published in 1977. After that came some rejections, but then she created Thanet and never looked back after publishing The Night She Died in 1981. Something I didn’t know until recently was that she spent thirteen years as a marriage guidance counsellor. This was an experience she found invaluable as a writer. As she pointed out in a comment on her website, murder mysteries are about relationships that go wrong, and her understanding of what makes people tick was a great asset.” Simpson won the 1985 Silver Dagger Award from Britain’s Crime Writers Association for her fifth Kent-set Thanet novel, Last Seen Alive.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
A Win, But Still a Mystery
Thanks to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times, on Tuesday an Alabama court unsealed the will left behind by Harper Lee, famous as the author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). According to the paper, that document, “signed on February 11, 2016, eight days before her death, directed that the bulk of her assets, including her literary properties, be transferred into a trust she formed in 2011. … The will named Tonja B. Carter, Ms. Lee’s longtime lawyer, as the executor ... of the estate, and it provided her with wide-ranging powers to shepherd Ms. Lee’s literary legacy and the rest of her assets.”
Even before the 89-year-old author’s demise, though, questions arose as to whether some of Carter’s actions were consistent with what the very private Lee would have wanted. “Carter was involved in the controversial [2015] release of Go Set a Watchman,” BookRiot recalls. “At the time of the release of [that] ‘sequel’ to the classic, there was much debate about whether Lee had actually wanted the novel published, particularly since it was a book made up of what was originally the cut-out framing device of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee at the time had suffered a stroke and had several mental and physical infirmities, and many doubted that she was capable of making a coherent decision about something like publication.”
Unfortunately, this week’s unsealing of Lee’s will “only deepened” the “mystery surrounding one of American literature’s most cherished authors …,” says the Times. “Trust documents are private, so all questions about what will become of her literary papers and who beyond her closest relatives might benefit from her assets, will remain unanswered for now.” Notice those telling words “for now,” suggesting this is not the concluding chapter in the campaign to learn more about Harper Lee wanted to become of her work after her passing.
Even before the 89-year-old author’s demise, though, questions arose as to whether some of Carter’s actions were consistent with what the very private Lee would have wanted. “Carter was involved in the controversial [2015] release of Go Set a Watchman,” BookRiot recalls. “At the time of the release of [that] ‘sequel’ to the classic, there was much debate about whether Lee had actually wanted the novel published, particularly since it was a book made up of what was originally the cut-out framing device of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee at the time had suffered a stroke and had several mental and physical infirmities, and many doubted that she was capable of making a coherent decision about something like publication.”
Unfortunately, this week’s unsealing of Lee’s will “only deepened” the “mystery surrounding one of American literature’s most cherished authors …,” says the Times. “Trust documents are private, so all questions about what will become of her literary papers and who beyond her closest relatives might benefit from her assets, will remain unanswered for now.” Notice those telling words “for now,” suggesting this is not the concluding chapter in the campaign to learn more about Harper Lee wanted to become of her work after her passing.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Bullet Points: Discoveries and Losses Edition
• The next few days will bring plenty of welcome excitement to the American crime-fiction community. Tonight we can expect to hear which books and fortunate authors have won the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America (the list of nominees is here). And then, as Les Blatt reminds me, tomorrow begins this year’s Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland, during which the latest batch of Agatha Awards is to be handed ’round (click here to be reminded of the contenders). I’ll post the winners in both contests as soon as I receive the results.
• In Reference to Murder reports that “Harper Lee’s biographer, Charles J Shields, believes he’s found a new, previously unknown Harper Lee text, a feature article written for the March 1960 issue of the Grapevine, a magazine for FBI professionals. The article focused on the gruesome [1959] murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, at their farmhouse in Kansas, the subject of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied Capote, her childhood friend, on his assignment for The New Yorker, reporting on how the community was reacting to the brutal murders.”
• This Sunday, May 1, will bring the sixth and last episode of Grantchester, Season 2, a PBS-TV Masterpiece offering based on James Runcie’s Grantchester Mysteries. (A third season has already been ordered. You will find recaps of the second-season eps here.) Beginning on Sunday, May 8, Masterpiece will begin hosting the final, three-episode run of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander. Omnimystery News has a brief synopsis of the show; a preview clip is below.
• Here’s something I haven’t seen in, oh, four decades, and might not have spotted even now had it not been for a tip from author-publisher Lee Goldberg. As you may know or perhaps remember, from the fall of 1975 through most of 1978, Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert starred in a CBS-TV detective drama titled Switch. They portrayed Los Angeles private-eye partners, Wagner’s Peterson T. Ryan being an erstwhile con man, while Albert played retired bunco cop Frank McBride. A few years ago, I managed to purchase a bootleg copy of the Season 1 episodes of Switch (the show’s best year, from what I recall), but the guy who sold it to me didn’t also have available the series’ 90-minute pilot film, Las Vegas Roundabout (originally shown on March 21, 1975). Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for that pilot—and thanks to Goldberg, I finally found it! Click here to watch the movie for yourself. It co-stars Sharon Gless, Charlie Callas, Charles Durning, Jaclyn Smith, and Ken Swofford.
• In addition to carrying early reviews of Shaft: Imitation of Life, Part 3, the latest graphic-novel collaboration between by David F. Walker and artist Dietrich Smith, Steve Aldous—author of The World of Shaft—has posted in his blog Dynamite Entertainment’s Robert Hack-painted cover for the paperback reprint of Ernest Tidyman’s original, 1970 novel, Shaft, due out in August.
• Vince Keenan has a splendid piece in his blog about screenwriter and novelist Roy Huggins (1914-2002), who’s best known for creating TV series such as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Rockford Files, but who also scripted the 1949 noir film Too Late for Tears.
• Critic-anthologist Sarah Weinman notes, in the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, that
• Congratulations to Linda Boa and her crime fiction-oriented blog Crimeworm, which today turns two years old.
• Let’s also hear a hearty round of applause for Patricia Abbott’s weekly “forgotten books” series, which celebrated its eighth anniversary a few days ago. The Rap Sheet’s many contributions to that series can be enjoyed here.
• I noted earlier this month that Ian Fleming’s onetime literary agent, Peter Janson-Smith, had passed away at age 93. But now author Raymond Benson, who revived Fleming’s James Bond series long after the creator’s death, offers up a short tribute in CinemaRetro.
• Since I recently interviewed Con Lehane, author of the April series opener Murder at the 42nd Street Library, I was very interested to read his summation of that particular New York City library’s abundant “wonders,” posted in Criminal Element.
• Yeah, yeah, it’s only the end of April. But Bill Ott, who reviews crime, mystery, and thriller fiction for the American Library Association’s
Booklist, has already selected what he says are the best crime novels of 2016 (as reviewed in Booklist from May 1, 2015, through April 15, 2016). Included among his picks: Don Winslow’s The Cartel, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele, and Lori Rader-Day’s Pretty Little Things. In addition, Ott chooses—at the same link—a number of standout crime-fiction debuts, among them Nicholas Seeley’s Cambodia Noir, L. S. Hilton’s Maestra, and Scott Frank’s Shaker. This is certainly a thoughtful rundown of recent genre releases, but I think I’ll wait until December to assemble my own subjective tally of the year’s “bests.” (Hat tip to Randal S. Brandt)
• Registration is now open for NoirCon 2016, which is set to take place in Philadelphia, October 26-30. If you wish to attend but haven’t yet registered, you can do so either online or via snail-mail.
• R.I.P., James Bond film director Guy Hamilton.
• Republican former House Speaker John Boehner’s recent remarks about underdog GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz being “Lucifer in the flesh … I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” inevitably reminded me of a post I composed last November for my Killer Covers blog.
• Alex Segura, author of the recent Miami-set novel, Down the Darkest Street, has put together a list, for Mental Floss, of his eight favorite Florida crime-fiction characters.
• Here’s a perfect gift for fans of historical true crime.
• While we’re on the subject of weird history, consider this tale from The Lineup about a husband who had so much trouble being parted from his deceased wife, that he eventually moved right into her mausoleum at Brooklyn, New York’s Evergreen Cemetery.
• Wow, the roster of guest performers scheduled to appear in the coming Twin Peaks revival (set to air on Showtime at some as-yet-undecided date in 2017) has grown immensely.
• Meanwhile, the first trailer is available for the film adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (which was one of my favorite crime novels of 2015). The action has apparently been moved from London to New York City, but the trailer suggests that most of Hawkins’ original intent has been maintained on screen. This film, which is due for release in early October, stars Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, “a heavy-drinker who develops an obsession with a couple she regularly sees while on her commute to work,” explains The Guardian. “After the woman disappears, Rachel becomes entangled in the investigation.” Watch the trailer for yourself here.
• From Mystery Fanfare: “Dean Street Press announces the first 10 Patricia Wentworth novel reissues will be out on May 2. This is part of a major project to republish all 33 of her non-Miss Silver mysteries, some of which haven’t been in print or available for many decades. The remaining 23 will be published in a further two batches in June and July. The first 10 include the four Benbow Smith mysteries, featuring the eminence grise Benbow Smith, and his loquacious parrot Ananias. The first batch also includes Silence in Court from 1945, which is an exceptional courtroom mystery.”
• Although he wasn’t technically invited to contribute to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s “John D. and Me” series of posts, all celebrating the coming July 24 centennial of John D. MacDonald’s birth, educator-turned-novelist Bill Crider decided to post his own remembrance of MacDonald’s influence on his reading and writing life.
• The next time I read a new work described as a “fiction novel,” I’m going to haul my sorry ass out to some secluded spot and scream at the top of my lungs. Pay attention, people! Think before you write!
• Tipping My Fedora blogger Sergio Angelini decided to poll his readers on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films from each decade of the director’s career. He wound up with 11 selections, including Blackmail (1929), The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), and Rear Window (1954). You’ll have to click here to see which production won the most votes.
• Jordan Foster, formerly an editor at The Life Sentence, chooses 10 of her favorite police-procedural writers for Library Journal. I’m pleased to see both John Ball (author of the Virgil Tibbs novels) and Elizabeth Linington (aka Dell Shannon, creator of the Lieutenant Luis Mendoza series) make the cut.
• A few interviews worth checking out: Laura Lippman talks with Baltimore magazine about her brand-new standalone thriller, Wilde Lake; Dan Fesperman gives Speaking of Mystery’s Nancie Clare the lowdown on his new historical mystery, The Letter Writer; Allison Brennan talks with Crimespree’s Elise Cooper about her psychologically intense new tale, Poisonous; and Chet Williamson addresses questions from Crime Fiction Lover about Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Sanitarium, his follow-up to Bloch’s 1959 novel.
• And it’s quite pleasing to see another reader fall for the multiple delights of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series (The Other Side of Silence). “I think there are three elements that make the books so fascinating,” David Edgerley Gates writes in SleuthSayers. “The first is historical irony. In more than one novel, actually, the story’s framed with a look back, from the later 1940s or the early 1950s. Secondly, there’s a constant sense of threat, the Nazi regime [being] a bunch of backstabbers ... One dangerous patron is Reinhard Heydrich, a chilly bastard who meets an appropriate end. And thirdly, Bernie is really trying to be a moral person, against all odds. You go along to get along, to simply survive, in a nest of vipers, and hope it doesn’t rub off on you. After seeing the Special Action Groups at work in Russia, and himself participating, Bernie is sickened by the whole enterprise. He suspects, too, that the handwriting’s on the wall.”
• In Reference to Murder reports that “Harper Lee’s biographer, Charles J Shields, believes he’s found a new, previously unknown Harper Lee text, a feature article written for the March 1960 issue of the Grapevine, a magazine for FBI professionals. The article focused on the gruesome [1959] murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, at their farmhouse in Kansas, the subject of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied Capote, her childhood friend, on his assignment for The New Yorker, reporting on how the community was reacting to the brutal murders.”
• This Sunday, May 1, will bring the sixth and last episode of Grantchester, Season 2, a PBS-TV Masterpiece offering based on James Runcie’s Grantchester Mysteries. (A third season has already been ordered. You will find recaps of the second-season eps here.) Beginning on Sunday, May 8, Masterpiece will begin hosting the final, three-episode run of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander. Omnimystery News has a brief synopsis of the show; a preview clip is below.
• Here’s something I haven’t seen in, oh, four decades, and might not have spotted even now had it not been for a tip from author-publisher Lee Goldberg. As you may know or perhaps remember, from the fall of 1975 through most of 1978, Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert starred in a CBS-TV detective drama titled Switch. They portrayed Los Angeles private-eye partners, Wagner’s Peterson T. Ryan being an erstwhile con man, while Albert played retired bunco cop Frank McBride. A few years ago, I managed to purchase a bootleg copy of the Season 1 episodes of Switch (the show’s best year, from what I recall), but the guy who sold it to me didn’t also have available the series’ 90-minute pilot film, Las Vegas Roundabout (originally shown on March 21, 1975). Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for that pilot—and thanks to Goldberg, I finally found it! Click here to watch the movie for yourself. It co-stars Sharon Gless, Charlie Callas, Charles Durning, Jaclyn Smith, and Ken Swofford.
• In addition to carrying early reviews of Shaft: Imitation of Life, Part 3, the latest graphic-novel collaboration between by David F. Walker and artist Dietrich Smith, Steve Aldous—author of The World of Shaft—has posted in his blog Dynamite Entertainment’s Robert Hack-painted cover for the paperback reprint of Ernest Tidyman’s original, 1970 novel, Shaft, due out in August.
• Vince Keenan has a splendid piece in his blog about screenwriter and novelist Roy Huggins (1914-2002), who’s best known for creating TV series such as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Rockford Files, but who also scripted the 1949 noir film Too Late for Tears.
• Critic-anthologist Sarah Weinman notes, in the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, that
Masako Togawa, icon of Japanese cabaret and of crime fiction, died earlier this week in her mid-80s (I’ve seen reports of her being 83 and 85). Her work was woefully under-translated into English; just four of dozens of novels, and a single short story that [Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine] published in the late 1970s. My own favorites are The Master Key and Lady Killer, dark, psycho-sexual examinations of femaleness and oppression that were weird and prescient, and both fit well within American and UK domestic suspense and also blasted right past. I also wish I could have seen the TV show she starred in and produced, Playgirl, which essentially predicted Charlie’s Angels but without the overseeing male specter; it was all badass women. It’s sad to think Togawa’s death might spur some enterprising publisher to translate and issue her work in a proper manner, but if that’s what it takes, then somebody do that. (Also see Jiro Kimura’s short obit and reminiscence.)• My favorite cover of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.
• Congratulations to Linda Boa and her crime fiction-oriented blog Crimeworm, which today turns two years old.
• Let’s also hear a hearty round of applause for Patricia Abbott’s weekly “forgotten books” series, which celebrated its eighth anniversary a few days ago. The Rap Sheet’s many contributions to that series can be enjoyed here.
• I noted earlier this month that Ian Fleming’s onetime literary agent, Peter Janson-Smith, had passed away at age 93. But now author Raymond Benson, who revived Fleming’s James Bond series long after the creator’s death, offers up a short tribute in CinemaRetro.
• Since I recently interviewed Con Lehane, author of the April series opener Murder at the 42nd Street Library, I was very interested to read his summation of that particular New York City library’s abundant “wonders,” posted in Criminal Element.
• Yeah, yeah, it’s only the end of April. But Bill Ott, who reviews crime, mystery, and thriller fiction for the American Library Association’s
Booklist, has already selected what he says are the best crime novels of 2016 (as reviewed in Booklist from May 1, 2015, through April 15, 2016). Included among his picks: Don Winslow’s The Cartel, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele, and Lori Rader-Day’s Pretty Little Things. In addition, Ott chooses—at the same link—a number of standout crime-fiction debuts, among them Nicholas Seeley’s Cambodia Noir, L. S. Hilton’s Maestra, and Scott Frank’s Shaker. This is certainly a thoughtful rundown of recent genre releases, but I think I’ll wait until December to assemble my own subjective tally of the year’s “bests.” (Hat tip to Randal S. Brandt)• Registration is now open for NoirCon 2016, which is set to take place in Philadelphia, October 26-30. If you wish to attend but haven’t yet registered, you can do so either online or via snail-mail.
• R.I.P., James Bond film director Guy Hamilton.
• Republican former House Speaker John Boehner’s recent remarks about underdog GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz being “Lucifer in the flesh … I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” inevitably reminded me of a post I composed last November for my Killer Covers blog.
• Alex Segura, author of the recent Miami-set novel, Down the Darkest Street, has put together a list, for Mental Floss, of his eight favorite Florida crime-fiction characters.
• Here’s a perfect gift for fans of historical true crime.
• While we’re on the subject of weird history, consider this tale from The Lineup about a husband who had so much trouble being parted from his deceased wife, that he eventually moved right into her mausoleum at Brooklyn, New York’s Evergreen Cemetery.
• Wow, the roster of guest performers scheduled to appear in the coming Twin Peaks revival (set to air on Showtime at some as-yet-undecided date in 2017) has grown immensely.
• Meanwhile, the first trailer is available for the film adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (which was one of my favorite crime novels of 2015). The action has apparently been moved from London to New York City, but the trailer suggests that most of Hawkins’ original intent has been maintained on screen. This film, which is due for release in early October, stars Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, “a heavy-drinker who develops an obsession with a couple she regularly sees while on her commute to work,” explains The Guardian. “After the woman disappears, Rachel becomes entangled in the investigation.” Watch the trailer for yourself here.
• From Mystery Fanfare: “Dean Street Press announces the first 10 Patricia Wentworth novel reissues will be out on May 2. This is part of a major project to republish all 33 of her non-Miss Silver mysteries, some of which haven’t been in print or available for many decades. The remaining 23 will be published in a further two batches in June and July. The first 10 include the four Benbow Smith mysteries, featuring the eminence grise Benbow Smith, and his loquacious parrot Ananias. The first batch also includes Silence in Court from 1945, which is an exceptional courtroom mystery.”
• Although he wasn’t technically invited to contribute to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s “John D. and Me” series of posts, all celebrating the coming July 24 centennial of John D. MacDonald’s birth, educator-turned-novelist Bill Crider decided to post his own remembrance of MacDonald’s influence on his reading and writing life.
• The next time I read a new work described as a “fiction novel,” I’m going to haul my sorry ass out to some secluded spot and scream at the top of my lungs. Pay attention, people! Think before you write!
• Tipping My Fedora blogger Sergio Angelini decided to poll his readers on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films from each decade of the director’s career. He wound up with 11 selections, including Blackmail (1929), The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), and Rear Window (1954). You’ll have to click here to see which production won the most votes.
• Jordan Foster, formerly an editor at The Life Sentence, chooses 10 of her favorite police-procedural writers for Library Journal. I’m pleased to see both John Ball (author of the Virgil Tibbs novels) and Elizabeth Linington (aka Dell Shannon, creator of the Lieutenant Luis Mendoza series) make the cut.
• A few interviews worth checking out: Laura Lippman talks with Baltimore magazine about her brand-new standalone thriller, Wilde Lake; Dan Fesperman gives Speaking of Mystery’s Nancie Clare the lowdown on his new historical mystery, The Letter Writer; Allison Brennan talks with Crimespree’s Elise Cooper about her psychologically intense new tale, Poisonous; and Chet Williamson addresses questions from Crime Fiction Lover about Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Sanitarium, his follow-up to Bloch’s 1959 novel.
• And it’s quite pleasing to see another reader fall for the multiple delights of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series (The Other Side of Silence). “I think there are three elements that make the books so fascinating,” David Edgerley Gates writes in SleuthSayers. “The first is historical irony. In more than one novel, actually, the story’s framed with a look back, from the later 1940s or the early 1950s. Secondly, there’s a constant sense of threat, the Nazi regime [being] a bunch of backstabbers ... One dangerous patron is Reinhard Heydrich, a chilly bastard who meets an appropriate end. And thirdly, Bernie is really trying to be a moral person, against all odds. You go along to get along, to simply survive, in a nest of vipers, and hope it doesn’t rub off on you. After seeing the Special Action Groups at work in Russia, and himself participating, Bernie is sickened by the whole enterprise. He suspects, too, that the handwriting’s on the wall.”
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Bullet Points: Starts and Finishes Edition
• There are five nominees for this year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category:
-- The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
-- The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
-- Bull Mountain, by Brian Panowich (Putnam)
-- The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Henry Holt)
-- The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)
The fact that all of these contenders are of the distinctly male persuasion has irritated critic Sarah Weinman, who remarked on her Facebook page that “it is the only one of the 10 categories that does not include a woman … [and] it is entirely unrepresentative of the genre as it stands now …” She added: “[I]t is part of the larger systemic problem of men, for reasons that always strike me as baffling and incomprehensible, shying away from reading books by women, and valuing novels by men as somehow ‘worthier,’ when of course that is patently untrue.” Click here to see the full rundown of Times Book Prize contestants. The winners will be declared during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 9.
• Already announced is the recipient of this year’s Innovator’s Award, which will also be presented during the Festival: it’s thriller mega-seller James Patterson.
• This weekend will fill Phoenix, Arizona, with crime and mystery readers, as the 2016 Left Coast Crime convention opens there tomorrow and runs through Sunday
morning. If you’d like to attend that event but still haven’t registered, you can do so here.
• The death last Friday of 89-year-old Harper Lee, best known for having written the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, was pretty much a shock, even though her health was known to be fragile. However, it also goaded Criminal Element’s Adam Wagner to compose this piece in which he makes the case that Lee “could have very well become an author of crime fiction.” Learn more about Lee’s “reclusive” life here.
• Close on the heels of Lee’s passing was the death of Umberto Eco, the Italian author-philosopher probably best known by Rap Sheet readers for having penned the 1980 historical whodunit The Name of the Rose. Now comes word, via The Bookseller, that the Italian release date for Eco’s “final book”—a collection of magazine essays titled Pape Satan Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society—has been moved up from May to this coming Friday, February 26. No word yet on when an English translation of this collection might become available.
• As a boy, I loved this movie! It was the first and only film I recall going to see at a drive-in theater with my parents and brother.
• I missed spotting this news item earlier: California author J. Sydney Jones has let it be known through his blog that last year’s The Third Place, his sixth historical Viennese Mystery (due out in paperback this coming June), will be “the final volume in the series. It feels a bit odd saying good-bye to that world,” writes Jones, “and to those characters who have become so real for me, and I hope, for you, as well.” He notes, however, that “I am still publishing other standalone titles,” including a suspenser called The Edit, which he promises will be published by Mysterious Press later this year.
• Gee, I thought I was conversant in all the various subgenres of crime and thriller fiction, but the label “cli-fi,” short for “climate fiction,” caught me off-guard. It came my way in relation to a May 2016 release called Cold Blood, Hot Sea (Torrey House Press), by marine ecologist Charlene D’Avanzo. An e-mail pitch says this novel “pits ocean scientists over big energy corporations in a thrilling addition to the new wave of cli-fi hitting the shelves.”
• This sounds like a fitting tribute: “[Britain’s] National Literacy Trust (NLT) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) have launched an award in memory of Ruth Rendell for champions of literacy,” reports The Bookseller. “The prize is for an author or writer who has worked towards raising literacy levels in the UK, either through their writing and books or through their advocacy and championing of the cause of literacy. Schools, charities, libraries, booksellers and individuals can nominate candidates via the NLT website by the 31st May.”
• Classic Mysteries’ Les Blatt brings the “terrible news” that Boulder, Colorado-based independent publisher Rue Morgue Press “has gone out of business.” Adds Blatt: “Tom Schantz and his late wife, Enid, were pioneers in republishing some of the great—and often little-known—classic authors and their works, long before many of today’s smaller presses got into the business. RMP was responsible for republishing several of the finest John Dickson Carr mysteries, but they also specialized in other first-rate, if often obscure, mysteries. RMP introduced me to Dorothy Bowers, Glyn Carr, Clyde B. Clason, Gladys Mitchell, Craig Rice, Kelley Roos, Margaret Scherf and many more authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and beyond. Each book had a brief, literate and entertaining introduction written by Tom and Enid which provided information about the author and his/her works. The Rue Morgue Press books remain centerpieces of my classic mystery collection. I’ll miss them.” Me, too.
• Beneath the Stains of Time writer TomCat explains that Rue Morgue’s “output was severely cut back after Enid Schantz passed away [in 2011] and completely stopped a year or two ago. Now the entire website has disappeared.” Meanwhile, the anonymous blogger at The Invisible Event delivers this “open love letter” to the publisher.
• And this sad news comes from In Reference to Murder:
• Series 3 of Endeavour, the ITV period drama inspired by Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels, hasn’t even had an American showing yet, but a fourth series has already been commissioned.
• I was surprised to see the 2014 “stoner crime comedy” Inherent Vice on CinemaNerdz’s list of the “20 Best Detective Movies of All Time,” but the rest of them—especially the top five—were predictable.
• Two DVD releases to anticipate: May 24 will bring the debut of Lou Grant: The Complete First Season, finally introducing what I hope will be a whole new crowd of future fans to that frequently excellent 1977-1982 newspaper drama, starring Ed Asner as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune; and The Untouchables: The Compete Series is slated to go on sale May 10.
• Would you sign up for this ocean voyage?
• And don’t forget that voting is still open to anyone who would like to nominate authors for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2016 Dagger in the Library award. This commendation will be given “not for an individual book but for an author’s entire body of work.” Polls close on March 1, so get your ballots in now!
-- The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
-- The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
-- Bull Mountain, by Brian Panowich (Putnam)
-- The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Henry Holt)
-- The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)
The fact that all of these contenders are of the distinctly male persuasion has irritated critic Sarah Weinman, who remarked on her Facebook page that “it is the only one of the 10 categories that does not include a woman … [and] it is entirely unrepresentative of the genre as it stands now …” She added: “[I]t is part of the larger systemic problem of men, for reasons that always strike me as baffling and incomprehensible, shying away from reading books by women, and valuing novels by men as somehow ‘worthier,’ when of course that is patently untrue.” Click here to see the full rundown of Times Book Prize contestants. The winners will be declared during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 9.
• Already announced is the recipient of this year’s Innovator’s Award, which will also be presented during the Festival: it’s thriller mega-seller James Patterson.
• This weekend will fill Phoenix, Arizona, with crime and mystery readers, as the 2016 Left Coast Crime convention opens there tomorrow and runs through Sunday
morning. If you’d like to attend that event but still haven’t registered, you can do so here.• The death last Friday of 89-year-old Harper Lee, best known for having written the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, was pretty much a shock, even though her health was known to be fragile. However, it also goaded Criminal Element’s Adam Wagner to compose this piece in which he makes the case that Lee “could have very well become an author of crime fiction.” Learn more about Lee’s “reclusive” life here.
• Close on the heels of Lee’s passing was the death of Umberto Eco, the Italian author-philosopher probably best known by Rap Sheet readers for having penned the 1980 historical whodunit The Name of the Rose. Now comes word, via The Bookseller, that the Italian release date for Eco’s “final book”—a collection of magazine essays titled Pape Satan Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society—has been moved up from May to this coming Friday, February 26. No word yet on when an English translation of this collection might become available.
• As a boy, I loved this movie! It was the first and only film I recall going to see at a drive-in theater with my parents and brother.
• I missed spotting this news item earlier: California author J. Sydney Jones has let it be known through his blog that last year’s The Third Place, his sixth historical Viennese Mystery (due out in paperback this coming June), will be “the final volume in the series. It feels a bit odd saying good-bye to that world,” writes Jones, “and to those characters who have become so real for me, and I hope, for you, as well.” He notes, however, that “I am still publishing other standalone titles,” including a suspenser called The Edit, which he promises will be published by Mysterious Press later this year.
• Gee, I thought I was conversant in all the various subgenres of crime and thriller fiction, but the label “cli-fi,” short for “climate fiction,” caught me off-guard. It came my way in relation to a May 2016 release called Cold Blood, Hot Sea (Torrey House Press), by marine ecologist Charlene D’Avanzo. An e-mail pitch says this novel “pits ocean scientists over big energy corporations in a thrilling addition to the new wave of cli-fi hitting the shelves.”
• This sounds like a fitting tribute: “[Britain’s] National Literacy Trust (NLT) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) have launched an award in memory of Ruth Rendell for champions of literacy,” reports The Bookseller. “The prize is for an author or writer who has worked towards raising literacy levels in the UK, either through their writing and books or through their advocacy and championing of the cause of literacy. Schools, charities, libraries, booksellers and individuals can nominate candidates via the NLT website by the 31st May.”
• Classic Mysteries’ Les Blatt brings the “terrible news” that Boulder, Colorado-based independent publisher Rue Morgue Press “has gone out of business.” Adds Blatt: “Tom Schantz and his late wife, Enid, were pioneers in republishing some of the great—and often little-known—classic authors and their works, long before many of today’s smaller presses got into the business. RMP was responsible for republishing several of the finest John Dickson Carr mysteries, but they also specialized in other first-rate, if often obscure, mysteries. RMP introduced me to Dorothy Bowers, Glyn Carr, Clyde B. Clason, Gladys Mitchell, Craig Rice, Kelley Roos, Margaret Scherf and many more authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and beyond. Each book had a brief, literate and entertaining introduction written by Tom and Enid which provided information about the author and his/her works. The Rue Morgue Press books remain centerpieces of my classic mystery collection. I’ll miss them.” Me, too.
• Beneath the Stains of Time writer TomCat explains that Rue Morgue’s “output was severely cut back after Enid Schantz passed away [in 2011] and completely stopped a year or two ago. Now the entire website has disappeared.” Meanwhile, the anonymous blogger at The Invisible Event delivers this “open love letter” to the publisher.
• And this sad news comes from In Reference to Murder:
Five Star is dropping its mystery line to focus on the Western and Frontier Fiction lines. Since 2000, the imprint has published exclusively first-edition books, many of which went on to earn starred reviews, Edgar Award and Anthony Award nominations, and land on bestseller lists. Apparently, Five Star will be honoring its already-signed contracts for books in the pipeline.• Having enjoyed the first (2014) series of Happy Valley, the award-winning British TV crime drama starring Sarah Lancashire, I was pleased to see Criminal Element mention that Series 2, which is already being shown in the UK, will become available on Netflix in the States on March 16. Wikipedia says there are six episodes to come. That officially ranks as the happiest news so far today.
• Series 3 of Endeavour, the ITV period drama inspired by Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels, hasn’t even had an American showing yet, but a fourth series has already been commissioned.
• I was surprised to see the 2014 “stoner crime comedy” Inherent Vice on CinemaNerdz’s list of the “20 Best Detective Movies of All Time,” but the rest of them—especially the top five—were predictable.
• Two DVD releases to anticipate: May 24 will bring the debut of Lou Grant: The Complete First Season, finally introducing what I hope will be a whole new crowd of future fans to that frequently excellent 1977-1982 newspaper drama, starring Ed Asner as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune; and The Untouchables: The Compete Series is slated to go on sale May 10.
• Would you sign up for this ocean voyage?
• And don’t forget that voting is still open to anyone who would like to nominate authors for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2016 Dagger in the Library award. This commendation will be given “not for an individual book but for an author’s entire body of work.” Polls close on March 1, so get your ballots in now!
Friday, February 19, 2016
Lee Dies, Atticus and Scout Live On
The first time I read Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was back in high school. That tale of racism and courtroom drama was one of the assigned texts in a popular-literature course I took, together with Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, George Orwell’s 1984, and Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight. The next time I read Mockingbird was in 2010, when a 50th-anniversary hardcover edition of the book was released, and after Rap Sheet readers had chosen the yarn’s adult star, Atticus Finch, as “the best TV/movie criminal attorney in history.” I remember not appreciating the book the first time around, at least not until my classmates and I discussed it at length. The second time, it was pure pleasure.
When Lee’s original and quite different version of that classic story, Go Set a Watchman, was finally published last year, I bought and read it, because I’d so enjoyed the previous book. And though some people felt cheated by this immature work, I came away appreciating Watchman for the familiarity of its voice. At the time, though, I recall there was talk of Lee, in her 89th year, not being in good health. Therefore, today’s news of her demise seems unsurprising.
As The New York Times reports:
Lee’s death today is unlikely to change that triumphal record.
READ MORE: “Legendary Author Harper Lee Dies at Age 89,” by Nick Ostdick (Books Tell You Why); “Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Is a Perfectly Built Novel, Despite Its Flaws,” by Todd VanDerWerff (Vox); “How Harper Lee Lost Her Voice,” by Sarah Weinman (The New Republic); “Harper Lee Tribute (1926-2016): From To Kill a Mockingbird to Go Set a Watchman” (Abebooks); “Obama on Harper Lee: ‘She Changed America for the Better,’” by Tierney Sneed (Talking Points Memo); “Godspeed Harper Lee,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).
When Lee’s original and quite different version of that classic story, Go Set a Watchman, was finally published last year, I bought and read it, because I’d so enjoyed the previous book. And though some people felt cheated by this immature work, I came away appreciating Watchman for the familiarity of its voice. At the time, though, I recall there was talk of Lee, in her 89th year, not being in good health. Therefore, today’s news of her demise seems unsurprising.
As The New York Times reports:
Harper Lee, whose first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 40 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction everNational Public Radio’s Lynn Neary adds thatwritten by an American, died on Friday in Monroeville, Ala., where she lived. She was 89.
Hank Conner, a nephew of Ms. Lee’s, said that she died in her sleep at the Meadows, an assisted living facility.
The instant success of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the next year, turned Ms. Lee into a literary celebrity, a role she found oppressive and never learned to accept.
“I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird,” Ms. Lee told a radio interviewer in 1964. “I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers, but, at the same time I sort of hoped someone would like it well enough to give me encouragement.”
The book depicts the strivings of a small-town Alabama lawyer, Atticus Finch, on behalf of Tom Robinson, a black man charged with raping a white woman, and it casts the events through the lens of Finch’s precocious daughter, Scout. Despite its relative brevity, the book bears considerable weight, both in the gravity of its themes and the care with which it treats them.It may have been the 1962 big-screen adaptation, starring Gregory Peck, that brought Lee’s (still sometimes controversial) novel much of its early renown, but it’s the story itself that has kept To Kill a Mockingbird popular. As the blog FiveThirtyEight notes, “In 2012, the Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank, surveyed 484 high school English teachers about which books they assigned. According to the group’s study, Mockingbird was taught by more ninth- and 10th-grade teachers—35 percent of them—than any other book of fiction listed. It also tops most works in other categories, including poetry and plays. Mockingbird beats the most-taught works of Mark Twain, Shakespeare or John Steinbeck. The only reading material that topped it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, which was taught by 38 percent of teachers in those grades.”
Perhaps, then, it should be no surprise that Lee and her editor, Tay Hohoff, weren’t exactly expecting this book to fly off store shelves.
Hohoff “cautioned her that a book with racism at its center involving a rape trial was not a thing in 1960 to make people run to the bookstores for,” says Charles J. Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. “She counselled her client and said, ‘If we sell 2,500 copies and break even, you should be proud.’”
You already know this twist: Turns out they were flat wrong.
Lee’s death today is unlikely to change that triumphal record.
READ MORE: “Legendary Author Harper Lee Dies at Age 89,” by Nick Ostdick (Books Tell You Why); “Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Is a Perfectly Built Novel, Despite Its Flaws,” by Todd VanDerWerff (Vox); “How Harper Lee Lost Her Voice,” by Sarah Weinman (The New Republic); “Harper Lee Tribute (1926-2016): From To Kill a Mockingbird to Go Set a Watchman” (Abebooks); “Obama on Harper Lee: ‘She Changed America for the Better,’” by Tierney Sneed (Talking Points Memo); “Godspeed Harper Lee,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Wandering the Web
• The date on which to expect an announcement of which author has won this year’s Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel has finally been set for Sunday, October 4, in Christchurch, New Zealand. If you need reminding of the five books in contention, click here.
• Hallie Ephron (Night Night, Sleep Tight) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on the podcast Speaking of Mysteries. Listen to their exchange here. And Clare has a good selection of interviewees coming up later this month, including Matthew Guinn, author of The Scribe, and former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who, along with Anna Waterhouse, wrote Mycroft Holmes, which tells of “how Sherlock Holmes’s older brother evolved into the shadowy political fixer for Her Majesty’s Government that he became.” You might as well bookmark Speaking of Mysteries now, as you’ll need it for later reference.
• This new piece in The New Yorker looks at Agatha Christie’s altogether liberal use of toxins in her mystery fiction, an entertaining record of which has been made in chemist Kathryn Harkup’s new book, A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie (Bloomsbury).
• Having read and rather enjoyed Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (despite its jarring inconsistencies with To Kill a Mockingbird), I was interested to read this story in The Christian Science Monitor about a crime novel Lee apparently began researching in the late 1970s. It was to be based on the true story of Robert Burns, “who had stood up in a crowded Alexander City [Alabama] funeral home in 1977 and put a bullet in the brain of a preacher who was rumored to have dabbled in voodoo and suspected in a string of deaths …” As the Monitor explains, “Lee worked on the Alabama book for months, maybe even years, but it never materialized. Now even her notes are nowhere to be found, giving rise to another mystery: What became of the novel she had tentatively titled The Reverend?”
• As the blog Double O Section explains, “British singer Sam Smith will perform the theme song [‘Writing's on the Wall’] for the 24th James Bond movie, Spectre … The news comes on the heels of months’ worth of rumors and speculation that Smith would be the one belting out a Spectre song come November.”
• The latest entry in Killer Covers’ “haven’t we seen this front someplace before?” series looks at Campus Sex Club.
• In an “Appreciation” essay for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd writes that actor Martin Milner, who starred in both Route 66 and Adam-12--and died this last Sunday at age 83--excelled as an observer in his major TV roles. “[F]or the viewer, much of watching Milner consists in watching him watch; indeed, much of what we know about his characters--in both series, the background is sketchy--is expressed in these moments, in how he reacts to what the world is showing him, and how those reactions evolve. It's often said that good acting is good listening, and Milner was a minor master of the art of attention. He draws you in most when he appears to do the least; he was powerful because he was present.” Read all of Lloyd’s piece here.
• I’m pleased to see that Criminal Element’s Leslie Gilbert Elman--who has previously reviewed the Masterpiece Mystery! series Grantchester, Inspector Lewis, and Endeavour--has now assumed responsibility for critiquing the three-part PBS-TV mystery drama Arthur & George. You will find her thoughts on Part I here. Part II of this show about a historical investigation conducted by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle will be broadcast this coming Sunday evening.
• I was once an avid follower of the late-night CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but I don’t remember listening to this haunting adaptation of Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Methinks this might best be appreciated on Halloween Night. Just a thought …
• Author-publisher Debbie Mack recently launched Crime Cafe, a vlog (translated: “video blog”) in which she interviews crime, mystery, and thriller novelists of note. The episodes run from 15 to 20 minutes in length. I stumbled across her vlog on YouTube when Mack talked with Bill Crider (Between the Living and the Dead), but she’s conversed as well with Thomas Kaufman, Frank Zafiro, and others. You should find the complete run of Crime Cafe at this YouTube link.
• Another new online offering: The Crime Vault Live, a podcast “about crime fiction, films and television, audio books, and true crime” that British journalist Michael Carlson is putting together, along with novelist Mark Billingham and producer Harry Holgate. The first episode, which can be acquired through iTunes (for free, no less), welcomes guest Martyn Waites--“who also writes novels under the nom de guerre Tania Carver”--and finds the hosts talking not only about new works by Gilly Macmillan, Johan Theorin, and Simon Toyne, but also comparing notes on recent TV shows and movies. There’s no mention of how often new Crime Vault Live podcasts will appear, but that might depend on the popularity of its initial installments.
• From In Reference to Murder: “Sara Paretsky has been named the fourth recipient of the Paul Engle Prize, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization. The award is handed out to ‘a pioneering spirit in the world of literature through writing, editing, publishing, or teaching, and whose active participation in the larger issues of the day has contributed to the betterment of the world through the literary arts.’” Good for Paretsky!
• Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) proclaims that Meursault, the French Algerian protagonist in Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), “is the ultimate noir outsider, cynical and unrepentant to the very bleak end.” More thoughts on reading Camus’ novel as crime fiction, this time from novelist Patrick Lennon, can be enjoyed here.
• Finally, congratulations to Queen Elizabeth II, “who today, September 9, 2015, became the longest-reigning British monarch in history, surpassing her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.” The now 89-year-old Elizabeth has been on the thrown since 1952, more than 63 years ago. More from Vox.
• Hallie Ephron (Night Night, Sleep Tight) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on the podcast Speaking of Mysteries. Listen to their exchange here. And Clare has a good selection of interviewees coming up later this month, including Matthew Guinn, author of The Scribe, and former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who, along with Anna Waterhouse, wrote Mycroft Holmes, which tells of “how Sherlock Holmes’s older brother evolved into the shadowy political fixer for Her Majesty’s Government that he became.” You might as well bookmark Speaking of Mysteries now, as you’ll need it for later reference.
• This new piece in The New Yorker looks at Agatha Christie’s altogether liberal use of toxins in her mystery fiction, an entertaining record of which has been made in chemist Kathryn Harkup’s new book, A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie (Bloomsbury).• Having read and rather enjoyed Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (despite its jarring inconsistencies with To Kill a Mockingbird), I was interested to read this story in The Christian Science Monitor about a crime novel Lee apparently began researching in the late 1970s. It was to be based on the true story of Robert Burns, “who had stood up in a crowded Alexander City [Alabama] funeral home in 1977 and put a bullet in the brain of a preacher who was rumored to have dabbled in voodoo and suspected in a string of deaths …” As the Monitor explains, “Lee worked on the Alabama book for months, maybe even years, but it never materialized. Now even her notes are nowhere to be found, giving rise to another mystery: What became of the novel she had tentatively titled The Reverend?”
• As the blog Double O Section explains, “British singer Sam Smith will perform the theme song [‘Writing's on the Wall’] for the 24th James Bond movie, Spectre … The news comes on the heels of months’ worth of rumors and speculation that Smith would be the one belting out a Spectre song come November.”
• The latest entry in Killer Covers’ “haven’t we seen this front someplace before?” series looks at Campus Sex Club.
• In an “Appreciation” essay for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd writes that actor Martin Milner, who starred in both Route 66 and Adam-12--and died this last Sunday at age 83--excelled as an observer in his major TV roles. “[F]or the viewer, much of watching Milner consists in watching him watch; indeed, much of what we know about his characters--in both series, the background is sketchy--is expressed in these moments, in how he reacts to what the world is showing him, and how those reactions evolve. It's often said that good acting is good listening, and Milner was a minor master of the art of attention. He draws you in most when he appears to do the least; he was powerful because he was present.” Read all of Lloyd’s piece here.
• I’m pleased to see that Criminal Element’s Leslie Gilbert Elman--who has previously reviewed the Masterpiece Mystery! series Grantchester, Inspector Lewis, and Endeavour--has now assumed responsibility for critiquing the three-part PBS-TV mystery drama Arthur & George. You will find her thoughts on Part I here. Part II of this show about a historical investigation conducted by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle will be broadcast this coming Sunday evening.
• I was once an avid follower of the late-night CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but I don’t remember listening to this haunting adaptation of Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Methinks this might best be appreciated on Halloween Night. Just a thought …
• Author-publisher Debbie Mack recently launched Crime Cafe, a vlog (translated: “video blog”) in which she interviews crime, mystery, and thriller novelists of note. The episodes run from 15 to 20 minutes in length. I stumbled across her vlog on YouTube when Mack talked with Bill Crider (Between the Living and the Dead), but she’s conversed as well with Thomas Kaufman, Frank Zafiro, and others. You should find the complete run of Crime Cafe at this YouTube link.
• Another new online offering: The Crime Vault Live, a podcast “about crime fiction, films and television, audio books, and true crime” that British journalist Michael Carlson is putting together, along with novelist Mark Billingham and producer Harry Holgate. The first episode, which can be acquired through iTunes (for free, no less), welcomes guest Martyn Waites--“who also writes novels under the nom de guerre Tania Carver”--and finds the hosts talking not only about new works by Gilly Macmillan, Johan Theorin, and Simon Toyne, but also comparing notes on recent TV shows and movies. There’s no mention of how often new Crime Vault Live podcasts will appear, but that might depend on the popularity of its initial installments.
• From In Reference to Murder: “Sara Paretsky has been named the fourth recipient of the Paul Engle Prize, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization. The award is handed out to ‘a pioneering spirit in the world of literature through writing, editing, publishing, or teaching, and whose active participation in the larger issues of the day has contributed to the betterment of the world through the literary arts.’” Good for Paretsky!
• Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) proclaims that Meursault, the French Algerian protagonist in Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), “is the ultimate noir outsider, cynical and unrepentant to the very bleak end.” More thoughts on reading Camus’ novel as crime fiction, this time from novelist Patrick Lennon, can be enjoyed here.
• Finally, congratulations to Queen Elizabeth II, “who today, September 9, 2015, became the longest-reigning British monarch in history, surpassing her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.” The now 89-year-old Elizabeth has been on the thrown since 1952, more than 63 years ago. More from Vox.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Bullet Points: Sick Day Edition
I almost never become ill, but I’ve suddenly been hit with a sore throat (what, in summer?) and general fatigue. So if you discover errors or any non-English sentences in the following news wrap-up, please forgive them--I’m not running on all cylinders today.
• I sure hope this is true: Variety reports that filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen “will write and possibly direct an adaptation of Ross Macdonald’s bestselling novel Black Money for Warner Bros.” I’ve found great entertainment in several Coen brothers pictures in the past--from Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing
to Fargo and True Grit--so I have no doubt their interpretation of Macdonald’s 1966 Lew Archer private-eye tale could be compelling. Only two other Archer yarns have so far been turned into big-screen dramas: The Moving Target (1949), which was the basis for Paul Newman’s 1966 film Harper (watch clips here and here), and The Drowning Pool (1950), which also became a Newman flick, in 1975. Mission:
Impossible’s Peter Graves starred in a better-than-average 1974 NBC-TV series pilot based on Macdonald’s The Underground Man (1971), that failed
to earn him a return to America’s weekly small-screen schedule (though it did convince NBC to hire Brian Keith, instead, to lead the 1975 midseason replacement series Archer). And
nothing seems to have come of rumors, spread in 2006, that Macdonald’s 1959 turning-point novel, The Galton Case, would become a feature film, courtesy of Random House films and Focus Features. So the prospect that Black Money will show up in movie theaters is--to borrow a line from Vice President Joe Biden--a big fucking deal. Meanwhile, if haven’t already enjoyed the novel Black Money, consider this provocation to catch up on your reading of Macdonald’s work.
• It sounds as if author Steve Hamilton underwent a particularly acrimonious parting recently from his longtime publisher, St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur. Both sides are accusing the other of inciting the split. “In the end,” Hamilton is quoted as saying, “I just want to work with a publisher who’s passionate about my work, and who has a real plan for reaching the widest possible audience. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But I didn’t feel like any of that was in place at St. Martin’s Press, or that it ever would be.” Apparently he has more faith in G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The Associated Press says that Hamilton has already signed a four-book deal with that rival publishing house. This will ensure the release of his next novel, The Second Life of Nick Mason, about a character who “has already spent five years inside a maximum security prison when an offer comes that will grant his release twenty years early.” St. Martin’s had planned to deliver the book to stores in late September, but Putnam now has it listed for a mid-2016 release.
• The August issue of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes notes about the annual “What’s Your Poison?” summer celebration at Cambridge’s Heffers bookshop, thrillers set in an alternative version of the Second World War, the long-running radio escapades of Simon Templar (aka The Saint), and new releases by David Hewson, Sophie Hannah, Felix Francis, and Liberian author Vamba Sherif. Click here to find Ripley’s full column.
• Having watched the dramatic trailers for the Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie--scheduled to debut in U.S. theaters next Friday, August 14(!)--I have had my radar out for associated news reports. And Bill Koenig’s The Spy Command blog has delivered, big-time. Here, for instance, is a list of “five U.N.C.L.E. stories from the 1964-68 [TV] series that may enhance the experience of new fans ahead of the film.” Click here to read an interview with Daniel Pemberton, who composed the picture’s soundtrack. And 81-year-old actor David McCallum, who played “loyal Soviet” spy Illya Kuryakin in the TV series, says he endorses the coming film: “I think it’s a wonderful success.”
• Speaking of Koenig’s blog, it suggests the next fictional spy who should be reanimated for cinematic purposes is … Matt Helm.
• The three-part ITV adaptation of Julian Barnes’ 2005 novel, Arthur & George, starring Martin Clunes, is set to begin showing in the States on Sunday, September 6, under the umbrella of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! As the PBS Web site explains, this mini-series--based on historical events--finds Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle (Clunes) “outraged by injustice to an Anglo-Indian solicitor” and using “the methods of his own fictional detective to get at the truth. Co-starring are Arsher Ali (The Missing) as George Edalji; and Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey) as Alfred Wood, Sir Arthur’s real-life ‘Dr. Watson.’” A preview of Arthur & George is posted below.
• Writing in January Magazine, I couldn’t help but weigh in on the controversial decision by an independent Michigan bookstore to “refund the price of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman (Harper) to any reader who’s dissatisfied with their purchase of said work.” Let me just say, I am not impressed.
• Crime Fiction Lover offers a first look at Ian Rankin’s new John Rebus novel, Even Dogs in the Wild, which is due out in the UK in November (with an as-yet-to-be-determined U.S. release date). Here’s the plot brief: “[Siobhan] Clarke is investigating the death of a lawyer, who was killed during a robbery, but it looks less like a random attack when she receives a note from an anonymous source. Big Ger [Cafferty] gets a similar message--a threat--and as the ageing gangster has been a bit closer to Rebus in the twilight of their respective careers, Clarke calls the ex-detective out of retirement to help save Cafferty’s skin.”
• From In Reference to Murder: “Ever wondered if there was a secret formula behind Agatha Christie's plotting? Research commissioned by UKTV channel Drama for their Agatha Christie Hour says it looks a little something like this: k l,n,s=f[m-lkf+lk+n+s].”
• Did you know there is yet another Star Trek film in the works, this time an independent one called Star Trek: Axanar? It’s already exceeded its public fund-raising goal and has received the endorsement of “Spock’s son,” Adam Nimoy.
• Fancy owning your own Jim Rockford cutout?
• It was only this last weekend that I finally found the free time to see Mr. Holmes, the new film based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind, and starring Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, and Milo Parker. It’s beautifully shot, I found McKellen thoroughly convincing as an aged Sherlock, young Parker’s performance suggests he is destined for a rich on-screen career, and while I missed Cullin’s prose, his story about “a lonely man, increasingly showing signs of frailty and dementia” (to quote from Patti Abbott’s Crimespree review of the film) is generally well-translated. If you haven’t seen Mr. Holmes already, I suggest you add it to your movie-going schedule.
• I’ve been rather remiss in not alerting everyone about Nancie Clare’s recent additions to her excellent Speaking of Mysteries podcast series. Skip tonight’s Republican presidential-wannabe circus … er, “debate” on television and instead turn an ear to the following conversations Clare has had recently with crime-fiction contributors: Vu Tran, the author of Dragonfish; Otto Penzler. “dean of the mystery fiction genre”; Ace Atkins, whose new Quinn Colson thriller, The Redeemers, recently saw print; Ingrid Thoft, author of the latest Fina Ludlow P.I. novel, Brutality; and Robert Rotstein, who’s out with The Bomb Maker’s Son, the third of his Parker Stern mysteries.
• Other interviews worth checking out: Gravetapping’s Ben Boulden has posted a superior conversation with Bill Crider (Between the Living and the Dead); Mark Rubinstein talks with Linwood Barclay (Broken Promise) for The Huffington Post; New Zealand blogger Craig Sisterson has a short exchange with Patricia Melo, Brazilian author of The Body Snatcher; and retired professional basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fields some questions about Mycroft Holmes, his September novel, from Crimespree’s Erica Ruth Neubauer.
• Frank Bill, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw are all on Dead End Follies’ list of “New Generation Genre Writers You Need to Read.”
• Talking about Season 4 of Longmire, which will debut on Netflix come September 10, executive producer Greer Shephard explains the new episodes will focus on “second chances. Who you are as a person is defined by how you handle the second chance. Netflix has incorporated that theme in their campaign. There are a lot of ways in which people can rebuild themselves after devastating experiences. We explore that theme throughout each of our characters. Now that [Sheriff Walt Longmire] knows the murderer of his wife, how does he go on? With Henry [Standing Bear], he has a new-found freedom, what does he do with it?”
• Finally, A.V. Club reports that Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski, who was so captivating as a spy in the 2007-2012 NBC-TV series Chuck, has signed on to star as a “mysterious Pinkerton detective” in Edge, a “post-Civil War-set Western, based on a series of pulpy oaters by novelist George G. Gilman.” She’ll play Beth, “a newcomer to the town of Seward, Kansas, where the various parties at play in Edge come together for their violent confrontations. She’ll be joined by Max Martini, playing Edge himself, a vengeance-seeker who comes to repay his brother’s death upon his former comrade, Meritt Harknett (Ryan Kwanten, from True Blood).”
• I sure hope this is true: Variety reports that filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen “will write and possibly direct an adaptation of Ross Macdonald’s bestselling novel Black Money for Warner Bros.” I’ve found great entertainment in several Coen brothers pictures in the past--from Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing
to Fargo and True Grit--so I have no doubt their interpretation of Macdonald’s 1966 Lew Archer private-eye tale could be compelling. Only two other Archer yarns have so far been turned into big-screen dramas: The Moving Target (1949), which was the basis for Paul Newman’s 1966 film Harper (watch clips here and here), and The Drowning Pool (1950), which also became a Newman flick, in 1975. Mission:
Impossible’s Peter Graves starred in a better-than-average 1974 NBC-TV series pilot based on Macdonald’s The Underground Man (1971), that failed
to earn him a return to America’s weekly small-screen schedule (though it did convince NBC to hire Brian Keith, instead, to lead the 1975 midseason replacement series Archer). And
nothing seems to have come of rumors, spread in 2006, that Macdonald’s 1959 turning-point novel, The Galton Case, would become a feature film, courtesy of Random House films and Focus Features. So the prospect that Black Money will show up in movie theaters is--to borrow a line from Vice President Joe Biden--a big fucking deal. Meanwhile, if haven’t already enjoyed the novel Black Money, consider this provocation to catch up on your reading of Macdonald’s work.• It sounds as if author Steve Hamilton underwent a particularly acrimonious parting recently from his longtime publisher, St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur. Both sides are accusing the other of inciting the split. “In the end,” Hamilton is quoted as saying, “I just want to work with a publisher who’s passionate about my work, and who has a real plan for reaching the widest possible audience. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But I didn’t feel like any of that was in place at St. Martin’s Press, or that it ever would be.” Apparently he has more faith in G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The Associated Press says that Hamilton has already signed a four-book deal with that rival publishing house. This will ensure the release of his next novel, The Second Life of Nick Mason, about a character who “has already spent five years inside a maximum security prison when an offer comes that will grant his release twenty years early.” St. Martin’s had planned to deliver the book to stores in late September, but Putnam now has it listed for a mid-2016 release.
• The August issue of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes notes about the annual “What’s Your Poison?” summer celebration at Cambridge’s Heffers bookshop, thrillers set in an alternative version of the Second World War, the long-running radio escapades of Simon Templar (aka The Saint), and new releases by David Hewson, Sophie Hannah, Felix Francis, and Liberian author Vamba Sherif. Click here to find Ripley’s full column.
• Having watched the dramatic trailers for the Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie--scheduled to debut in U.S. theaters next Friday, August 14(!)--I have had my radar out for associated news reports. And Bill Koenig’s The Spy Command blog has delivered, big-time. Here, for instance, is a list of “five U.N.C.L.E. stories from the 1964-68 [TV] series that may enhance the experience of new fans ahead of the film.” Click here to read an interview with Daniel Pemberton, who composed the picture’s soundtrack. And 81-year-old actor David McCallum, who played “loyal Soviet” spy Illya Kuryakin in the TV series, says he endorses the coming film: “I think it’s a wonderful success.”
• Speaking of Koenig’s blog, it suggests the next fictional spy who should be reanimated for cinematic purposes is … Matt Helm.
• The three-part ITV adaptation of Julian Barnes’ 2005 novel, Arthur & George, starring Martin Clunes, is set to begin showing in the States on Sunday, September 6, under the umbrella of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! As the PBS Web site explains, this mini-series--based on historical events--finds Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle (Clunes) “outraged by injustice to an Anglo-Indian solicitor” and using “the methods of his own fictional detective to get at the truth. Co-starring are Arsher Ali (The Missing) as George Edalji; and Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey) as Alfred Wood, Sir Arthur’s real-life ‘Dr. Watson.’” A preview of Arthur & George is posted below.
• Writing in January Magazine, I couldn’t help but weigh in on the controversial decision by an independent Michigan bookstore to “refund the price of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman (Harper) to any reader who’s dissatisfied with their purchase of said work.” Let me just say, I am not impressed.
• Crime Fiction Lover offers a first look at Ian Rankin’s new John Rebus novel, Even Dogs in the Wild, which is due out in the UK in November (with an as-yet-to-be-determined U.S. release date). Here’s the plot brief: “[Siobhan] Clarke is investigating the death of a lawyer, who was killed during a robbery, but it looks less like a random attack when she receives a note from an anonymous source. Big Ger [Cafferty] gets a similar message--a threat--and as the ageing gangster has been a bit closer to Rebus in the twilight of their respective careers, Clarke calls the ex-detective out of retirement to help save Cafferty’s skin.”
• From In Reference to Murder: “Ever wondered if there was a secret formula behind Agatha Christie's plotting? Research commissioned by UKTV channel Drama for their Agatha Christie Hour says it looks a little something like this: k l,n,s=f[m-lkf+lk+n+s].”
• Did you know there is yet another Star Trek film in the works, this time an independent one called Star Trek: Axanar? It’s already exceeded its public fund-raising goal and has received the endorsement of “Spock’s son,” Adam Nimoy.
• Fancy owning your own Jim Rockford cutout?
• It was only this last weekend that I finally found the free time to see Mr. Holmes, the new film based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind, and starring Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, and Milo Parker. It’s beautifully shot, I found McKellen thoroughly convincing as an aged Sherlock, young Parker’s performance suggests he is destined for a rich on-screen career, and while I missed Cullin’s prose, his story about “a lonely man, increasingly showing signs of frailty and dementia” (to quote from Patti Abbott’s Crimespree review of the film) is generally well-translated. If you haven’t seen Mr. Holmes already, I suggest you add it to your movie-going schedule.
• I’ve been rather remiss in not alerting everyone about Nancie Clare’s recent additions to her excellent Speaking of Mysteries podcast series. Skip tonight’s Republican presidential-wannabe circus … er, “debate” on television and instead turn an ear to the following conversations Clare has had recently with crime-fiction contributors: Vu Tran, the author of Dragonfish; Otto Penzler. “dean of the mystery fiction genre”; Ace Atkins, whose new Quinn Colson thriller, The Redeemers, recently saw print; Ingrid Thoft, author of the latest Fina Ludlow P.I. novel, Brutality; and Robert Rotstein, who’s out with The Bomb Maker’s Son, the third of his Parker Stern mysteries.
• Other interviews worth checking out: Gravetapping’s Ben Boulden has posted a superior conversation with Bill Crider (Between the Living and the Dead); Mark Rubinstein talks with Linwood Barclay (Broken Promise) for The Huffington Post; New Zealand blogger Craig Sisterson has a short exchange with Patricia Melo, Brazilian author of The Body Snatcher; and retired professional basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fields some questions about Mycroft Holmes, his September novel, from Crimespree’s Erica Ruth Neubauer.
• Frank Bill, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw are all on Dead End Follies’ list of “New Generation Genre Writers You Need to Read.”
• Talking about Season 4 of Longmire, which will debut on Netflix come September 10, executive producer Greer Shephard explains the new episodes will focus on “second chances. Who you are as a person is defined by how you handle the second chance. Netflix has incorporated that theme in their campaign. There are a lot of ways in which people can rebuild themselves after devastating experiences. We explore that theme throughout each of our characters. Now that [Sheriff Walt Longmire] knows the murderer of his wife, how does he go on? With Henry [Standing Bear], he has a new-found freedom, what does he do with it?”
• Finally, A.V. Club reports that Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski, who was so captivating as a spy in the 2007-2012 NBC-TV series Chuck, has signed on to star as a “mysterious Pinkerton detective” in Edge, a “post-Civil War-set Western, based on a series of pulpy oaters by novelist George G. Gilman.” She’ll play Beth, “a newcomer to the town of Seward, Kansas, where the various parties at play in Edge come together for their violent confrontations. She’ll be joined by Max Martini, playing Edge himself, a vengeance-seeker who comes to repay his brother’s death upon his former comrade, Meritt Harknett (Ryan Kwanten, from True Blood).”
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Bullet Points: Harper Lee Week Edition
My life can be lonely at times, but it certainly wasn’t last week, when my best friend, Byron Rice, flew in to Seattle to join me for some mutual entertainment and a week away from my quotidian responsibilities. Byron and I met in college (oh, so long ago) and have remained close ever since, winging our ways back and forth across the country in alternating years to catch up on what’s new, swap funny stories, share fine cigars and malted beverages, and generally delight in each other’s company. With some people, you become locked into a time warp; no matter how long you’ve know them, you never quite understand how they have matured, and you talk about the same things over and over again. That’s not the case with Byron. Both of us have changed greatly since college, and we recognize and respect that evolution; yet we still haven’t lost the ability to talk and laugh outrageously and have quirky adventures together, just as we have always done. (Hell, he even helped me paint my front and back porches during last week’s visit. That’s a friend for you!) It’s too bad Byron lives way out in Minnesota, and I’m settled here in the Pacific Northwest. But at least we can see each other on a regular basis. Good memories fill the space between those encounters.
So anyway, after my week playing hooky from work, I’m now reinstalled at Rap Sheet headquarters to collect sundry bits of crime-fiction news and info, such as those that follow.
• If I’m not mistaken, the last trailer for this summer’s Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie was released on June 11 and ran just under three minutes long. However, a new preview--embedded above--was showcased at last week’s San Diego Comic-Con. Although we have seen some scattered clips from the trailer before, its length (more than five minutes!) offers several new hints at the picture’s delights.
• Another preview worth watching, this one from the upcoming, Victorian era-set Christmas episode of BBC’s Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and a broadly mustachioed Martin Freeman.
• ThrillerFest X took place last week in New York City. Because I wasn’t on hand for the festivities (as I suspect most of you were not), I must depend on Criminal Element contributor Thomas Pluck for reports from the scene. He penned two posts (here and here) about the convention’s “pre-game” CraftFest component, during which he says “thriller masters such as David Morrell, and agents like Donald Maass (also an author), host[ed] panels on the craft [of fiction writing].” And here you’ll find Pluck’s notes from Day One of the main event, which included a public interview with author Greg Iles.
• Speaking of Criminal Element, it has finally posted the winning entry in its latest short-story contest, “The M.O.” Titled “The Cocoon,” the tale was written by Louis Rakovich.
• Neda Semnani’s excellent Life Sentence piece about Chester Himes reminds me that I really must get back to reading his work.
• The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) announced the winners of its 2015 Scribe Awards on Friday, July 10, during San Diego Comic-Con. Included among those victors were Max Collins and Mickey Spillane (for their Mike Hammer short-story collaboration, “It’s in the Book”), Christa Faust (for her original speculative novel, Fringe: Sins of the Father, and Andrew Kaplan (who won Best Original Novel honors for Homeland: Saul’s Game).
• Meanwhile, Collins talks here about his long friendship with the late Mr. Spillane and his work on “It’s in the Book.”
• There’s still more prize-related news: The Shirley Jackson Awards, named for the author of The Haunting of Hill House, and honoring “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic,” were handed out during Readercon (July 9-12) in Burlington, Massachusetts. Todd Mason has the rundown of winners in his blog, Sweet Freedom.
• And SCIBA, also known as the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association, has broadcast its shortlists of contenders for the 2015 SCIBA Book Awards. In the running for this year’s T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award are:
-- Marry, Kiss, Kill, by Anne Flett-Giordano (Prospect Park)
-- The Replacements, by David Putnam (Oceanview)
-- The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)
Winners in all the categories will be announced on October 24.
• As a way to commemorate what would have been novelist Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday (on September 15, 2015), organizers of the Bloody Scotland convention are holding a special short-story competition. Writers are invited to submit “up to 3,000 words of unpublished work,” written in English and “inspired by Christie and her writing.” The deadline for submissions is this coming July 27. More details about the contest can be found here.
• I was very sorry to hear that Welsh-born actor Roger Rees--who picked up Olivier and Tony awards for his performance in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, but was probably better known in the States for playing an English tycoon on Cheers--perished on Friday from stomach cancer. He was 71 years old. No matter his many other roles (in The Return of Sam McCloud, M.A.N.T.I.S., Law & Order, Elementary, etc.), my personal favorite was his recurring portrayal, on The West Wing, of delightfully arrogant British Ambassador Lord John Marbury. You can enjoy clips of that work here.
• The blog Almost Holmes recalls Rees’ ties to Sherlock Holmes.
• Good-bye as well to Omar Sharif. The Egypt-born, Golden Globe Award-winning actor, best known for his roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Funny Girl (1968), died on July 10 at age 83. In addition to those other big-screen flicks I mentioned, Sharif appeared in the 1969 Western Mackenna’s Gold, the 1974 thriller Juggernaut, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976).
• The Wall Street Journal’s Brenda Cronin has posted a complimentary assessment of Meanwhile There Are Letters, the abundant collection of correspondence between American authors Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar), edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (the latter of whom was also behind the recent omnibus, Ross Macdonald: Four Novels of the 1950s). An excerpt from Meanwhile can be found here.
• Anthony Horowitz’s James Bond continuation novel, Trigger Mortis, will reach bookstores in early September. Two months after that, you can expect to see the release of License Expired, an unauthorized, 400-page “anthology of collected stories from various Canadian authors, based on Ian Fleming’s
fourteen published Bond novels …” So far, it appears that License Expired
will be available only in Canada.
• Wallace Stroby talks with Stephen Campbell of the Crime Fiction FM podcast about his new, fourth Crissa Stone novel, The Devil’s Share.
• Did you know that UK author Jay Stringer (Ways to Die in Glasgow) also does a podcast series in which he interviews crime and mystery writers? Yeah, neither did I until today, but you can find the latest episode here.
• A fresh interview with Stringer himself is here.
• Crime Fiction Lover looks at five films noir that it says are better than the books on which they were based. “Chuck Palahniuk famously said he preferred David Fincher’s Fight Club movie over his own book,” writes Zachary Colbert. “But reading calls on us to use our imaginations and subsequently put ourselves into the story to a greater extent than watching a movie, therefore consumers often become more attached to books than movies. Yet, as deftly and as sharply as some novelists write, sometimes there’s nothing more incisive than the image of a smoking gun in grainy black and white.”
• And what’s “The Noir-est of All Film Noir Flicks”?
• Seattle-based online retail giant Amazon.com, which originally promoted itself as “Earth’s biggest bookstore” and sold its first book in July 1995, is all set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this week. But Salon has put together “5 Reasons to Wish Amazon an Unhappy Birthday,” topped by this important one:
• I love this quote about Erle Stanley Gardner’s best-selling Perry Mason yarns, taken from a vintage review in Mystery*File: “[T]he stories he tells--I can’t resist ’em. They’re low on action and high in idea content. The plot and red herrings are simply mind-dazzling--if only you could sort them out!” Oh, how true …
• Andrew Kaplan’s choice thrillers, “and what makes them great.”
• Stacia Kissick Jones checks out Spenser: For Hire, Season Two.
• I hope the wait is worth it. This report comes from the entertainment Web site Consequence of Sound: “The road to Showtime’s Twin Peaks is long and winding and … murky. First David Lynch signed on. Then he signed off. Then he signed back on. Then they doubled the episode count from nine to 18. Now, it appears the highly anticipated third season of the series won’t arrive until 2017. Well, at least if co-creator Mark Frost is to be trusted.”
• Last but certainly not least, this is destined to be Harper Lee Week, as her second novel, a To Kill a Mockingbird sequel titled Go Set a Watchman, is finally brought to market after a more than half-century delay. It’s official publication date is Tuesday, and I already have a copy on order. Meanwhile, The Guardian previews the book’s first chapter, National Public Radio examines “How Harper Lee Went from Wannabe Writer to the Jane Austen of Alabama,” and The New York Times has this early review.
So anyway, after my week playing hooky from work, I’m now reinstalled at Rap Sheet headquarters to collect sundry bits of crime-fiction news and info, such as those that follow.
• If I’m not mistaken, the last trailer for this summer’s Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie was released on June 11 and ran just under three minutes long. However, a new preview--embedded above--was showcased at last week’s San Diego Comic-Con. Although we have seen some scattered clips from the trailer before, its length (more than five minutes!) offers several new hints at the picture’s delights.
• Another preview worth watching, this one from the upcoming, Victorian era-set Christmas episode of BBC’s Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and a broadly mustachioed Martin Freeman.
• ThrillerFest X took place last week in New York City. Because I wasn’t on hand for the festivities (as I suspect most of you were not), I must depend on Criminal Element contributor Thomas Pluck for reports from the scene. He penned two posts (here and here) about the convention’s “pre-game” CraftFest component, during which he says “thriller masters such as David Morrell, and agents like Donald Maass (also an author), host[ed] panels on the craft [of fiction writing].” And here you’ll find Pluck’s notes from Day One of the main event, which included a public interview with author Greg Iles.
• Speaking of Criminal Element, it has finally posted the winning entry in its latest short-story contest, “The M.O.” Titled “The Cocoon,” the tale was written by Louis Rakovich.
• Neda Semnani’s excellent Life Sentence piece about Chester Himes reminds me that I really must get back to reading his work.
• The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) announced the winners of its 2015 Scribe Awards on Friday, July 10, during San Diego Comic-Con. Included among those victors were Max Collins and Mickey Spillane (for their Mike Hammer short-story collaboration, “It’s in the Book”), Christa Faust (for her original speculative novel, Fringe: Sins of the Father, and Andrew Kaplan (who won Best Original Novel honors for Homeland: Saul’s Game).
• Meanwhile, Collins talks here about his long friendship with the late Mr. Spillane and his work on “It’s in the Book.”
• There’s still more prize-related news: The Shirley Jackson Awards, named for the author of The Haunting of Hill House, and honoring “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic,” were handed out during Readercon (July 9-12) in Burlington, Massachusetts. Todd Mason has the rundown of winners in his blog, Sweet Freedom.
• And SCIBA, also known as the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association, has broadcast its shortlists of contenders for the 2015 SCIBA Book Awards. In the running for this year’s T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award are:
-- Marry, Kiss, Kill, by Anne Flett-Giordano (Prospect Park)
-- The Replacements, by David Putnam (Oceanview)
-- The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)
Winners in all the categories will be announced on October 24.
• As a way to commemorate what would have been novelist Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday (on September 15, 2015), organizers of the Bloody Scotland convention are holding a special short-story competition. Writers are invited to submit “up to 3,000 words of unpublished work,” written in English and “inspired by Christie and her writing.” The deadline for submissions is this coming July 27. More details about the contest can be found here.
• I was very sorry to hear that Welsh-born actor Roger Rees--who picked up Olivier and Tony awards for his performance in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, but was probably better known in the States for playing an English tycoon on Cheers--perished on Friday from stomach cancer. He was 71 years old. No matter his many other roles (in The Return of Sam McCloud, M.A.N.T.I.S., Law & Order, Elementary, etc.), my personal favorite was his recurring portrayal, on The West Wing, of delightfully arrogant British Ambassador Lord John Marbury. You can enjoy clips of that work here.
• The blog Almost Holmes recalls Rees’ ties to Sherlock Holmes.
• Good-bye as well to Omar Sharif. The Egypt-born, Golden Globe Award-winning actor, best known for his roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Funny Girl (1968), died on July 10 at age 83. In addition to those other big-screen flicks I mentioned, Sharif appeared in the 1969 Western Mackenna’s Gold, the 1974 thriller Juggernaut, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976).
• The Wall Street Journal’s Brenda Cronin has posted a complimentary assessment of Meanwhile There Are Letters, the abundant collection of correspondence between American authors Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar), edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (the latter of whom was also behind the recent omnibus, Ross Macdonald: Four Novels of the 1950s). An excerpt from Meanwhile can be found here.
• Anthony Horowitz’s James Bond continuation novel, Trigger Mortis, will reach bookstores in early September. Two months after that, you can expect to see the release of License Expired, an unauthorized, 400-page “anthology of collected stories from various Canadian authors, based on Ian Fleming’s
fourteen published Bond novels …” So far, it appears that License Expired
will be available only in Canada.• Wallace Stroby talks with Stephen Campbell of the Crime Fiction FM podcast about his new, fourth Crissa Stone novel, The Devil’s Share.
• Did you know that UK author Jay Stringer (Ways to Die in Glasgow) also does a podcast series in which he interviews crime and mystery writers? Yeah, neither did I until today, but you can find the latest episode here.
• A fresh interview with Stringer himself is here.
• Crime Fiction Lover looks at five films noir that it says are better than the books on which they were based. “Chuck Palahniuk famously said he preferred David Fincher’s Fight Club movie over his own book,” writes Zachary Colbert. “But reading calls on us to use our imaginations and subsequently put ourselves into the story to a greater extent than watching a movie, therefore consumers often become more attached to books than movies. Yet, as deftly and as sharply as some novelists write, sometimes there’s nothing more incisive than the image of a smoking gun in grainy black and white.”
• And what’s “The Noir-est of All Film Noir Flicks”?
• Seattle-based online retail giant Amazon.com, which originally promoted itself as “Earth’s biggest bookstore” and sold its first book in July 1995, is all set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this week. But Salon has put together “5 Reasons to Wish Amazon an Unhappy Birthday,” topped by this important one:
The most direct and tangible effect of Amazon’s arrival in the bookselling market has been to shutter actual brick-and-mortar bookstores that allow people to browse through books, connect with the literary zealots who work there, and see authors read. If you have a favorite indie--Powell’s or the Tattered Cover or Politics and Prose or Carmichael’s or The Regulator or Skylight--you know how valuable these places are.• By the way, here is how Amazon looked in its early days.
And there are about half as many indies as there were when Amazon arrived, from about 4,000 to about 2,000, according to George Packer’s virtuoso New Yorker essay, “Cheap Words.” In this time the U.S. population has added more than 60 million people. And the number of indies has plummeted.
• I love this quote about Erle Stanley Gardner’s best-selling Perry Mason yarns, taken from a vintage review in Mystery*File: “[T]he stories he tells--I can’t resist ’em. They’re low on action and high in idea content. The plot and red herrings are simply mind-dazzling--if only you could sort them out!” Oh, how true …
• Andrew Kaplan’s choice thrillers, “and what makes them great.”
• Stacia Kissick Jones checks out Spenser: For Hire, Season Two.
• I hope the wait is worth it. This report comes from the entertainment Web site Consequence of Sound: “The road to Showtime’s Twin Peaks is long and winding and … murky. First David Lynch signed on. Then he signed off. Then he signed back on. Then they doubled the episode count from nine to 18. Now, it appears the highly anticipated third season of the series won’t arrive until 2017. Well, at least if co-creator Mark Frost is to be trusted.”
• Last but certainly not least, this is destined to be Harper Lee Week, as her second novel, a To Kill a Mockingbird sequel titled Go Set a Watchman, is finally brought to market after a more than half-century delay. It’s official publication date is Tuesday, and I already have a copy on order. Meanwhile, The Guardian previews the book’s first chapter, National Public Radio examines “How Harper Lee Went from Wannabe Writer to the Jane Austen of Alabama,” and The New York Times has this early review.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Bullet Points: Typewriter Nostalgia Edition
Sorry for the less-than-consistent postings this week, but I have learned that my day-job is going to end in a couple of months. As a consequence, I’m having to figure out how to replace that work with something else. If you know of an opening for a high-quality editor--one that doesn’t require my relocating from Seattle--please let me know. Now on to another collection of crime-fiction news items that don’t necessarily justify separate posts:
• Although she tried to hide behind a pseudonym, at least initially, British author J.K. Rowling seems now to have embraced her role as a crime novelist. Following up on The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she published last year as “Robert Galbraith,” Rowling has happily announced the coming of a sequel, Silkworm, in June of this year. “According to the novel’s publisher, Little, Brown, Silkworm will find [series sleuth Cormoran] Strike hired to investigate the disappearance of writer Owen Quine,” reports The Christian Science Monitor. “His wife, who hires Strike, believes Owen has simply left for a few days and wants Strike to locate him, but the detective soon discovers that Quine’s whereabouts aren’t quite so easily solved and that the writer recently finished a book that contains thinly veiled and nasty versions of just about all his acquaintances.”
• February is Black History Month in the United States, and author John F. Allen is celebrating with a look back at the life and work of African-American crime writer Chester Himes (Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Rage in Harlem, etc.)
• A posthumous honor for Rex Stout: The New York Center for the Book has selected the renowned creator of detective characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin for induction into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame (even though he was actually born in Indiana in 1886). The ceremony--which will also honor half a dozen other inductees--is scheduled to take place on Tuesday evening, June 3, 2014, at the Princeton Club on 43rd Street in Manhattan. “For cost and further details regarding the dinner,” advises a news release, “check the Wolfe Pack Web site, www.nerowolfe.org, or send an e-mail to the Wolfe Pack ‘Werowance’ (‘Indian Chief,’ as Archie addressed Mr. Wolfe in Too Many Cooks), Ira Brad Matetsky, at Werowance@nerowolfe.org.”
• Who remembers this 1970-1971 TV crime drama?
• If you’re planning to attend the 2014 Left Coast Crime convention, to be held in Monterey, California, from March 20 to 23, be sure to check out this tentative program schedule and this “nearly final panel schedule.” I wish I could attend.
• Thank goodness for The Gumshoe Site and its longtime writer, Jiro Kimura, who always seems to catch the deaths of prominent people when I miss noticing them for one reason or another. Kimura recently mentioned the passing of Eric Bercovici, who was
• For The Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Rozovsky talks with Julie M. Rivett, Dashiell Hammett’s granddaughter and the co-editor (with Richard Layman) of The Hunter and Other Stories, “a new volume of previously uncollected and/or unpublished writing” by Hammett.
• This is International Typewriter Appreciation Month!
• Shotmag Confidential reports that “AM Heath, in association with The Writers’ Workshop” has announced the creation of “Criminal Lines 2014, a new crime-writing prize open to unagented, debut authors, born or resident in the UK and Ireland.”
• From The New York Times: “Harper Lee, the author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is settling a lawsuit filed last year against a museum in her Alabama hometown claiming that it had sold merchandise featuring her name and the title of her novel without compensation.” You can read more about that settlement here.
• If only I had $20,000 to $30,000 to spare …
• With the first season of HBO-TV’s dramatic new series, True Detective, set to conclude its U.S. run on March 9, it might be a good idea to check out BuzzFeed’s list of “dark, weird, and southern gothic books,” prepared especially for fans of the show. Even if True Detective is renewed for another season (and my guess is, it will be), there’s still going to be a whole lot of time in between for viewers to get better acquainted with the mythology and philosophy behind the series. These books might help you fill the hours.
• It seems there’s a great deal being written about True Detective lately. The always-captivating Michelle Monaghan talks with The Playlist about her role as Maggie Hart, the wife of Woody Harrelson’s Detective Martin “Marty” Hart. In The New Republic, Isaac Chotiner says the series’ detractors are just plain wrong. And Chris Philpott, TV critic for The New Zealand Herald, writes that “if you’re not watching True Detective yet, you should be.”
• Or is NBC’s Hannibal really the program to watch? Matt Zoller Seitz tells the readers of New York magazine that it’s “the best drama you’ll find on network TV.” He elaborates:
• Ed Gorman champions “old” fiction writers--and does it well.
• Damn! I wish I’d thought of this first: For everybody who’s been tuning in so hungrily to watch televised events from the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Open Road Media blog highlights four “tales of historical intrigue [and] high-stakes espionage” set in Russia--in addition to a collection of Cold War zombie stories.
• Congratulations to our good friend Mike Ripley, who writes the “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. As blogger Ayo Onatade notes, “A new Telos Crime edition of his 1989 novel Angel Touch has been published this week [in the UK] to mark the 25th anniversary of the title winning the first-ever Last Laugh Award, created by the Crime Writers’ Association to celebrate comedy in crime writing. Nowadays sponsored by Goldsboro Books and presented during the annual CrimeFest convention, winners of the Last Laugh have included Carl Hiaasen, Janet Evanovich, Christopher Fowler and Ruth Dudley Edwards.” You can order Angel Touch here.
• I haven’t given much thought to Richard Hoyt’s Trotsky’s Run in many years. However, I just happened upon Ben Boulden’s new review of that 1982 novel in Gravetapping. “Trotsky’s Run is as smooth an espionage novel as you will read,” Boulden says. “The prose is sparse and economical. It is long on narrative and short on dialogue. The plot is crisp, complicated, and at times outlandish--although not in bad way, but rather in a mildly satirical manner that feeds off extreme cold war paranoia.” I remember the novel fondly myself.
• Are books that receive awards more likely to be reviewed negatively online than other works? The question is addressed here and here.
• You haven’t forgotten about Matt Houston, have you?
• Louise Doughty, the author of Apple Tree Yard and other novels, shares with The Guardian a list of her 10 favorite courtroom dramas. Please forgive the fact that this list is offered as one of those gimmicky, time-consuming slide shows.
• Patrick Stewart continues to be cool.
• Finally, it’s a shame that newspapers and so many other publications these days have made the cost-cutting decision to reduce the size of their proofreading staffs--or do away with them altogether. That’s the reason you now see typographical errors plaguing the print media. I’m pleased to learn this woman has stepped up to fix the problem, at least in Florida’s St. Augustine Record, but it’s unfortunate that she has to do it on a volunteer basis. Why must intelligent readers accept poorly copy-edited and proofread material, in order that corporate owners can pocket bigger profits? You can read more thoughts on the importance of copy editing here.
• Although she tried to hide behind a pseudonym, at least initially, British author J.K. Rowling seems now to have embraced her role as a crime novelist. Following up on The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she published last year as “Robert Galbraith,” Rowling has happily announced the coming of a sequel, Silkworm, in June of this year. “According to the novel’s publisher, Little, Brown, Silkworm will find [series sleuth Cormoran] Strike hired to investigate the disappearance of writer Owen Quine,” reports The Christian Science Monitor. “His wife, who hires Strike, believes Owen has simply left for a few days and wants Strike to locate him, but the detective soon discovers that Quine’s whereabouts aren’t quite so easily solved and that the writer recently finished a book that contains thinly veiled and nasty versions of just about all his acquaintances.”
• February is Black History Month in the United States, and author John F. Allen is celebrating with a look back at the life and work of African-American crime writer Chester Himes (Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Rage in Harlem, etc.)
• A posthumous honor for Rex Stout: The New York Center for the Book has selected the renowned creator of detective characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin for induction into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame (even though he was actually born in Indiana in 1886). The ceremony--which will also honor half a dozen other inductees--is scheduled to take place on Tuesday evening, June 3, 2014, at the Princeton Club on 43rd Street in Manhattan. “For cost and further details regarding the dinner,” advises a news release, “check the Wolfe Pack Web site, www.nerowolfe.org, or send an e-mail to the Wolfe Pack ‘Werowance’ (‘Indian Chief,’ as Archie addressed Mr. Wolfe in Too Many Cooks), Ira Brad Matetsky, at Werowance@nerowolfe.org.”
• Who remembers this 1970-1971 TV crime drama?
• If you’re planning to attend the 2014 Left Coast Crime convention, to be held in Monterey, California, from March 20 to 23, be sure to check out this tentative program schedule and this “nearly final panel schedule.” I wish I could attend.
• Thank goodness for The Gumshoe Site and its longtime writer, Jiro Kimura, who always seems to catch the deaths of prominent people when I miss noticing them for one reason or another. Kimura recently mentioned the passing of Eric Bercovici, who was
the writer-producer of TV movies and miniseries and co-won an Emmy for the NBC epic Shogun with author James Clavell. He penned TV scripts for I, Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, [and] Hawaii Five-O, among others.” He also wrote three crime novels: Wolftrap (Antheneum, 1979); So Little Cause for Caroline (Antheneum, 1981); and Tread Lightly, My Dear (Birch Lane, 1990). So Little Cause, a private eye novel set in California, was turned into the 1982 TV movie One Shoe Makes It Murder, starring Robert Mitchum. Its TV script writer, Felix Culver, was nominated for the 1983 Edgar in the TV feature category.You can watch a clip from One Shoe Makes It Murder here. Bercovici was 80 years old and died at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• For The Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Rozovsky talks with Julie M. Rivett, Dashiell Hammett’s granddaughter and the co-editor (with Richard Layman) of The Hunter and Other Stories, “a new volume of previously uncollected and/or unpublished writing” by Hammett.
• This is International Typewriter Appreciation Month!
• Shotmag Confidential reports that “AM Heath, in association with The Writers’ Workshop” has announced the creation of “Criminal Lines 2014, a new crime-writing prize open to unagented, debut authors, born or resident in the UK and Ireland.”
• From The New York Times: “Harper Lee, the author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is settling a lawsuit filed last year against a museum in her Alabama hometown claiming that it had sold merchandise featuring her name and the title of her novel without compensation.” You can read more about that settlement here.
• If only I had $20,000 to $30,000 to spare …
• With the first season of HBO-TV’s dramatic new series, True Detective, set to conclude its U.S. run on March 9, it might be a good idea to check out BuzzFeed’s list of “dark, weird, and southern gothic books,” prepared especially for fans of the show. Even if True Detective is renewed for another season (and my guess is, it will be), there’s still going to be a whole lot of time in between for viewers to get better acquainted with the mythology and philosophy behind the series. These books might help you fill the hours.
• It seems there’s a great deal being written about True Detective lately. The always-captivating Michelle Monaghan talks with The Playlist about her role as Maggie Hart, the wife of Woody Harrelson’s Detective Martin “Marty” Hart. In The New Republic, Isaac Chotiner says the series’ detractors are just plain wrong. And Chris Philpott, TV critic for The New Zealand Herald, writes that “if you’re not watching True Detective yet, you should be.”
• Or is NBC’s Hannibal really the program to watch? Matt Zoller Seitz tells the readers of New York magazine that it’s “the best drama you’ll find on network TV.” He elaborates:
Drawn from the fiction of Thomas Harris, this brooding drama from Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) seemed a bad idea on paper--especially if, like me, you found the Howard Roark-like Hannibal the Cannibal more tiresome with each book and movie sequel and the Diabolical Serial Killer genre intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt, with a few exceptions. But in practice, this program is serenely unlike anything else on TV or anything that ever has been on TV. Although it’s intricately plotted and packed with strong actors playing psychologically complex human beings--including Caroline Dhavernas as psychiatry professor Alana Bloom, who adores and wants to save Will, and Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford, the FBI’s agent-in-charge of the Behavioral Science Unit--it goes against the grain of so much so-called quality TV, in that it is not interested in being a mere script-delivery device.• I mostly disagree with Flavorwire’s new rundown of novels that we should stop calling “classics.” But I think it’s worth checking out, nonetheless--if only to marvel at how dismissive some critics can be of writing superior than their own.
• Ed Gorman champions “old” fiction writers--and does it well.
• Damn! I wish I’d thought of this first: For everybody who’s been tuning in so hungrily to watch televised events from the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Open Road Media blog highlights four “tales of historical intrigue [and] high-stakes espionage” set in Russia--in addition to a collection of Cold War zombie stories.
• Congratulations to our good friend Mike Ripley, who writes the “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. As blogger Ayo Onatade notes, “A new Telos Crime edition of his 1989 novel Angel Touch has been published this week [in the UK] to mark the 25th anniversary of the title winning the first-ever Last Laugh Award, created by the Crime Writers’ Association to celebrate comedy in crime writing. Nowadays sponsored by Goldsboro Books and presented during the annual CrimeFest convention, winners of the Last Laugh have included Carl Hiaasen, Janet Evanovich, Christopher Fowler and Ruth Dudley Edwards.” You can order Angel Touch here.
• I haven’t given much thought to Richard Hoyt’s Trotsky’s Run in many years. However, I just happened upon Ben Boulden’s new review of that 1982 novel in Gravetapping. “Trotsky’s Run is as smooth an espionage novel as you will read,” Boulden says. “The prose is sparse and economical. It is long on narrative and short on dialogue. The plot is crisp, complicated, and at times outlandish--although not in bad way, but rather in a mildly satirical manner that feeds off extreme cold war paranoia.” I remember the novel fondly myself.
• Are books that receive awards more likely to be reviewed negatively online than other works? The question is addressed here and here.
• You haven’t forgotten about Matt Houston, have you?
• Louise Doughty, the author of Apple Tree Yard and other novels, shares with The Guardian a list of her 10 favorite courtroom dramas. Please forgive the fact that this list is offered as one of those gimmicky, time-consuming slide shows.
• Patrick Stewart continues to be cool.
• Finally, it’s a shame that newspapers and so many other publications these days have made the cost-cutting decision to reduce the size of their proofreading staffs--or do away with them altogether. That’s the reason you now see typographical errors plaguing the print media. I’m pleased to learn this woman has stepped up to fix the problem, at least in Florida’s St. Augustine Record, but it’s unfortunate that she has to do it on a volunteer basis. Why must intelligent readers accept poorly copy-edited and proofread material, in order that corporate owners can pocket bigger profits? You can read more thoughts on the importance of copy editing here.
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