Bullet Points: Full Meal Deal Edition

It’s been too long since I found the time to write one of these news wrap-ups, so I have much to share. Let’s dive right in.

• I was overjoyed last September to learn that Crippen & Landru would be releasing a posthumous collection of short stories by screenwriting partners William Link and Richard Levinson, best known for having created the NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo. C&L publisher Jeffrey Marks said the book was to be titled Shooting Script and Other Mysteries, and that he would send me a copy. Four months passed, no book found its way into my mailbox, and I became busy with other things. It wasn’t until mid-January that I thought to check on Shooting Script’s status … only to learn that it had gone on sale in November, and I just wasn’t aware. Naturally, I ordered a copy immediately, and have been working my way slowly through its 194 pages ever since. The book comprises 17 abbreviated yarns, written between 1954 and 1966. Most appeared originally in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One, “Whistle While You Work,” was composed by the pair while they were still high school students in Philadelphia, and sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but the remainder, explains Jim Noy in The Invisible Event, were turned out when Link and Levinson were in their 30s. “[S]traight away the tonal shift is evident,” he says, “concerned less with immediate narrative cleverness than with capturing the intrusion of crime as a terrifying-but-regenerative thing. ‘Shooting Script’ (1959), ‘Operation Staying-Alive’ (1959), and ‘Robbery, Robbery, Robbery’ (1959)—this last also published under the title ‘Robbery, Robbery!’, which manages to miss the point quite impressively—see ordinary people pulled into the maelstrom and emerging in different ways: bewildered, energised, sometimes terrified.” In Noy’s opinion, the best of the bunch here is “Dear Corpus Delicti” (1960), “in which we follow a man’s perfect scheme to murder his wife and start a new life with his mistress.” It’s obvious from the outset that “Dear Corpus Delicti” was part of the source material these authors harvested when they sat down to write the play and, later, the TV film Prescription: Murder, the figurative first pilot for Columbo.

Earlier this week, I asked Joseph Goodrich, who edited Shooting Script, what he learned about Link and Levinson by bringing their forgotten short stories back to print. He got back to me pronto:

First of all, as a fan of Link and Levinson’s work, it was a pleasure to read the stories and watch them apply what they learned from reading mystery fiction to the writing of it. These aren’t detective stories, even though Columbo’s origins are contained in the collection; to me they have more in common with, say, Stanley Ellin’s stories, in which a shift of focus or perspective throws a new and unexpected (and often-shocking) light on what we assumed was happening.

Apart from 1954’s “Whistle While You Work,” the majority of the stories were written in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and reflect a world that was in the process of vanishing, the world of down-at-heels boarding houses and small-town postmen, and patients who smoke in doctors’ offices. I think there’s also just a hint of the turbulent world that would soon take over in stories like “Top-Flight Aquarium” and "The Man in the Lobby." Gruesome death and a deadly resignation …

Shooting Script and Other Mysteries offers insight into the evolution of Link and Levinson as storytelling masters. Highly recommended.

• Speaking of Messieurs Link and Levinson, what’s been swirling around in the zeitgeist that might explain why so much has been written recently about their 1975-1976 NBC-TV series, Ellery Queen? Early last month, Ah Sweet Mystery! blogger Brad Friedman undertook the formidable task of reviewing—in pairs—all 22 weekly episodes. You should be able to access those pieces here. (Friedman remarked on the March 23, 1975, pilot, “Too Many Suspects,” in his introduction to that project.) After concluding his efforts, he presented this poll page, inviting veteran Ellery Queen enthusiasts as well as newcomers to that hour-long whodunit to identify their favorite episodes. Friedman will keep his survey up until February 16, then reveal its results.

• Meanwhile, Curtis Evans—spurred on by Friedman’s deep dive—presented his own memories and opinions of Ellery Queen in The Passing Tramp. In his case, he covered that short-lived Jim Hutton/David Wayne series in five installments (see here, here, here, here, and here), before presenting his top-10 list of favorite episodes. This all makes me want to go back and watch the full run of the show myself. Maybe after I finish Reacher.

• Author Robert Crais announced this week that his next novel, Racing the Light—starring P.I. Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, and mercenary John Stone—will be released by Putnam on November 1.

• News that Monica Vitti, often referred to as “the Queen of Italian Cinema,” died on February 2 at age 90, left me wondering how best to honor her memory in The Rap Sheet. Then, while reading Terence Towles Canote’s obituary of Vitti, I was reminded that she’d starred as the eponymous criminal-turned-crime fighter in Modesty Blaise, a lightweight but diverting 1966 British spy-fi picture. She also became artist Robert McGinnis’ model for that character, when he sat down to paint the cover for Fawcett’s paperback tie-in novel, Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell. The book front and actress are shown below.

• By the way, at least for now can watch the full two-hour length of Modesty Blaise by clicking over to YouTube.

• The lineup of prominent international authors invited as guests to this year’s Iceland Noir festival, taking place in Reykjavik from November 16 to 19, has been broadcast. It includes Ruth Ware, Richard Osman, Paula Hawkins, Mark Billingham, and Sophie Hannah. Tickets to the popular literary event can be purchased here.

• Coming up sooner than that is Mystery Fest, being planned for Saturday, March 12, in Portsmouth, England. The Guest of Honor at this year’s gathering will be Priscilla Masters, the creator of Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy (Almost a Whisper) and coroner Martha Gunn (Bridge of Sighs). Also appearing for panel discussions that day will be authors Edward Marston, Leigh Russell, and Judith Cutler. Events will take place on the third floor of the Portsmouth Central Library, beginning at 10 a.m. and concluding at 5 p.m.

• Oh, and let us not forget Lyme Crime, which—according to its Web site—“launched online in June 2020 and returns with a full, three-day festival 23 to 25 June 2022.” Tickets go on sale in March, and the program is expected to be publicized soon. For now, Shotsmag Confidential at least provides us with a look at the authors attending this convocation in the Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis.

• Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine is out with its new, digital-only Winter 2022 issue, devoted in substantial part to what its editors (and others) say were the best mysteries, crime novels, and thrillers published over the course of 2021. Editor George Easter has filled these pages with numerous “best of the year” lists he posted in his blog at the end of 2021, then broken the top picks down according to the number of times they were mentioned. (S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears scored best, with an astonishing 44 recommendations!) Elsewhere in the issue, assistant editor Larry Gandle assesses this year’s Edgar Award-nominated books; recent deaths within the crime-fiction community are acknowledged (goodbye again, G.M. Ford); contributor George H. Madison looks back at the rough road to making the Raymond Chandler-scripted 1946 film, The Blue Dahlia; Ted Hertel and Brian Ritt both revisit the work of George Harmon Coxe (1901-1984); and there are myriad critiques of recent releases, including from debut columnist Meredith Anthony. That’s a hell of a lot of copy to cram into one magazine. Good thing that Deadly Pleasures no longer needs to worry about paper and printing costs.

• A rare “best of 2021” compilation that didn’t make it into Deadly Pleasures comes from The Strand Magazine. Its absence may be chalked up simply to the fact that it came out so tardily: managing editor Andrew Gulli posted his top 20 favorites in late January. They include Sleep Well, My Lady, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime); The Whispering Dead, by Darcy Coates (Black Owl ); The Wayward Spy, by Susan Ouellette (CamCat); Her Perfect Life, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge); and The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celadon).

• A different sort of “bests” roster was presented more recently by Robert Lopresti in the Sleuth Sayers blog. As he explains, it’s his “thirteenth annual list of the year’s best mystery [short] stories as determined by yours truly. It goes without saying that the verdicts are subjective, personal, and entirely correct.” Almost a third of Lopresti’s 16 picks originated in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, with almost as many drawn from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

• How his hoax execution affected Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fiction.

• It’s been a long time in coming, but the six-part Apple+ TV series Slow Horses is finally set to premiere on Friday, April 1. And that’s no joke, folks. Mystery Fanfare reports that this spy drama, adapted from Mick Herron’s first Slough House novel of the same name, will start with back-to-back presentations of its opening two installments, “followed by one new episode weekly every Friday.” Slow Horses focuses on a team of British intelligence agents who are considered, well, troublesome and expendable. Gary Oldman plays the arrogant and oft-offensive head of that misfit squad, Jackson Lamb. Also among the cast are Kristin Scott Thomas, Jonathan Pryce, and Olivia Cooke. Anyone who doesn’t know about Herron’s series should check out the cover story from last spring’s edition of Deadly Pleasures.

(Left) Joe Cole plays Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File.

• In other small-screen news, Crime Fiction Lover alerts us that UK network ITV will roll out, sometime in March, its six-part series The Ipcress File, based on both Len Deighton’s 1962 espionage novel, The IPCRESS File, and the 1965 Michael Caine film adapted from that book. Judging by a one-minute trailer, says CFL, “It looks like no expense has been spared … and the initial impression is sexy, witty and dangerous.” Deighton Dossier blogger Rob Mallows adds: “While little of the plot is given away, it’s clear that the series will make some significant departures from both the book and the [film] …, such as the more active agent role for Jean, played by Lucy Boynton, evidence of the backstory of the ‘unnamed spy’—Harry Palmer—and his role in the Berlin black market which led to military prison and ultimately, the job with W.O.O.C.(P)., plus the sidebar story involving the nuclear test in the Pacific, which is a big part of the book but which was of course not featured in the original film.” In addition to Boynton, The Ipcress Files’ cast features Joe Cole and Tom Hollander. UPDATE: This mini-series is supposed to be carried in the States on AMC+, but no airdate has yet been publicized.

• I can’t say I’m terribly surprised to hear this. From Deadline:

Marg Helgenberger is eyeing a possible return to the CSI franchise with a reprisal of her role as Catherine Willows ... Helgenberg would appear in the upcoming second season of CSI: Vegas, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2000 series, in which Helgenberger starred for the first 12 seasons. …

Season 1 opened a new chapter in Las Vegas—the city where it all began, introducing a serialized storytelling to the classic crime procedural drama. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the entire Crime Lab and release thousands of convicted killers back onto the neon-lit streets of Vegas, a brilliant new team of investigators led by Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome) enlisted the help of old friends, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), to investigate a case centered around former colleague David Hodges (Wallace Langham). This combined force deployed the latest forensic techniques to follow the evidence—to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

Actors Petersen and Fox had earlier announced they will not be returning for the sophomore season of CSI: Vegas.

• This Monday is Valentine’s Day. Do you know what books you’ll crack for that occasion? Janet Rudolph offers some suggestions.

• CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz supplies an alternative reading list: “Your Anti-Valentine’s Day Round-Up of the Sexiest Mysteries to Read with Your FWBs.” Yes, I had to look up that initialism, too: it stands for “friends with benefits.”

• Wait just a darn minute here, I thought Christopher Fowler was done penning his time-spanning yarns about detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. When the 20th such mystery, Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down, came out last summer, The Guardian made quite clear that it was “bringing to a close a much-loved series that started in 2003 with Full Dark House.” So much for that. Fowler writes this week in his blog that he’s now “in the final stages of the edit” of a 21st Peculiar Crimes book, which sounds more like a tour guide than a novel. Says Fowler:

For 20 books, London has been a central character in the Bryant & May series, so I decided that the detectives’ next investigation should be of London itself. And that this investigation has been going on—in a sort of louche way—for the last twenty years.

After all, the nation’s oldest serving detectives have spent a lifetime investigating crimes in the murkiest corners of London. They’ve been walking the streets and impulsively arresting citizens for decades. Who better to take you through London’s less savoury side?

They’re going to be remembering old buildings and odd characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing travel routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. The idea is to make strange connections and show readers why it’s almost impossible to tell separate and fiction in the city.

The book will be very much a part of the existing canon; Volume 21, Bryant & May’s Peculiar London. It will have a cover by our usual superb artist Max Schindler and will be the same size and format as all earlier volumes.

Amazon UK says Fowler’s new book will be released on July 14.

• Funny, this 1977 NBC-TV movie was supposed to be set in my hometown of Seattle, Washington, but I’ve never heard of it before. The Modcinema sales site describes Ransom for Alice as “the pilot film for the unsold series The Busters. The protagonists are not narcotics agents as might be assumed, but instead a male-female team of government undercover agents (Gil Gerard, Yvette Mimieux) operating in Seattle in the 1890s. … Ransom for Alice is an uncertain blend of cop drama, western, and espionage caper.” Do any Rap Sheet readers remember watching this 75-minute feature?

• A couple of podcasts have been added to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand column of crime-fiction resources: Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast, which deals with the varied works of Ed McBain, and The le Carré Cast, concentrating on espionage novelist John le Carré.

• While we’re on the topic of le Carré, let us note the coming publication of a new collection of his writings. The following comes from Jeff Quest’s blog, Spy Write: “After being teased by Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré’s sons, during book events surrounding the release of Silverview, we now have additional details on a book of John le Carré/David Cornwell correspondence. The book, currently titled A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, 1945-2020, has a UK release date of November 3rd, 2022 and a healthy page count of 400, although [publisher Viking’s] U.S. page lists a release date of October 11th, 2022 and 144 pages. So there is some conflicting information that will hopefully be cleared up soon.”

• Beware, spoilers ahead! Although the British-French crime drama Death in Paradise debuted way back in 2011, my wife and I only became fans during the months of COVID-19 isolation. That program’s cast has changed a good deal over the last decade, offering viewers four different male leads (my favorite being Kris Marshall as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman), backed up by a trio of female detective sergeants—the best of whom, to my mind, is six-season veteran Florence Cassell, played by lovely French actress Joséphine Jobert. Season 11 was introduced with a 90-minute Christmas special this last December, and has been airing new episodes in Great Britain since early January. So far, there seems to be no U.S. premiere scheduled for this latest series; however, word of its plot progress has been leaking across the pond—including sad news that Jobert is no longer part of the show after Episode 4. Indeed, the UK’s Hello! magazine confirms that in the fifth episode, she’s replaced by Shantol Jackson playing newly promoted DS Naomi Thomas.

• Why is strychnine the mystery writers’ poison of choice?

• Saima Mir, author of the 2021 debut novel Khan, has been named as “the first recipient of the CrimeFest bursary for a crime fiction author of colour.” According to a news release, that scholarship “will cover the cost of a full weekend pass to CrimeFest this May, a night’s accommodation at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, and a guaranteed panel appearance. … Three runners-up were also chosen to receive complementary passes to this year’s convention: Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Amita Murray, and Stella Oni.”

• Sioux Falls, South Dakota, fictionist William Reynolds has been enjoying some favorable press notices of recent date, thanks to the fact of Brash Books reissuing his half-dozen crime novels about Nebraska, a single-monikered writer and private eye operating in Omaha, Nebraska. “From the beginning,” he tells the Sioux Falls blog Pigeon 605, “I wanted him to be sort of this average guy. He’s not 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds of square-jawed raw muscle; he’s average. In fact, there’s instances in which he deliberately uses his averageness to kind of blend in. He’s self-aware, and sometimes he screws up. He blunders into things he shouldn’t blunder into.” Reynolds’ series commences with The Nebraska Quotient (1984) and runs through Drive-By (1995)—at least, so far. Might all of this fresh attention to his work spur the author to compose a new Nebraska tale? Pigeon 605’s Jill Callison says, Reynolds “doesn’t have a new plot in mind. But he did spend time over the summer thinking about it.”

• Also receiving attention is the fourth issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, and released last month. “I’m running out of superlatives to describe what a beautiful publication Men’s Adventure Quarterly is,” enthuses prolific novelist James Reasoner. “Every issue lovingly reprints great covers and interior art from the men’s adventure magazines of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, along with stories and features from those magazines, all of it enhanced by well-written and informative editorials and introductions.” Glorious Trash’s Joe Kenney adds that this edition “is different from the previous three, not only due to its focus on female characters, but also because it features a few stories that were actually written by a female author. As Bob Deis notes in his intro, Jane Dolinger was definitely unique in the world of men’s magazines: a female writer who turned out escapist adventure yarns and who also happened to be a stacked beauty who posed nude for the very magazines she wrote for!” I admit, I haven’t yet purchased any of these magazines. Clearly I have been missing out.

• Count me as lax, too, for not having already mentioned Michael Stradford’s beautiful coffee-table book, Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model (‎St. Clair). Stradford has turned his boyhood fascination with the old Doc Savage paperback series—fronted so often by illustrations including actor-model Steve Holland—into a tribute volume that Paperback Warrior calls “absolutely a mandatory reference for anyone fascinated by 20th-century paperbacks, magazines and male-oriented advertisements. … More than 20 years after his death, Holland’s face is still selling publications. That is a testament to his phenomenal physique, likable face and ability to provide the perfect likeness for all of these amazing visuals. Stradford has honored Holland in such a beautiful way and I can’t thank him enough for his labors in creating it.”

• Should you be unacquainted with Steve Holland’s once-ubiquitous presence on paperbacks and magazines, see examples here.

• PulpFest, the annual celebration of pulp magazines and genre fiction—scheduled to take place this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 4 to 7—is soliciting nominations for two familiar prizes. First is the Munsey Award, named for America’s first pulp mag publisher, Frank A. Munsey, and recognizing “an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.” (Last year’s Munsey recipient was publisher and book designer Rich Harvey.) The second commendation seeking nominees is the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those persons who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” More info about these honors and how to submit names for consideration is available here.

Bullet Points: Revivals and Retreads Edition

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

• Oh, and as In Reference to Murder relates,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• For fans of “impossible crime” yarns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Hat tip to January Magazine.)

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

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

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

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

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

Bullet Points: Labors of Love Edition

I hadn’t intended to play hooky from The Rap Sheet for much of the last week; things just kind of worked out that way. But I’m back in the captain’s chair now, and rarin’ to go again. Here are a few developments worth mentioning.

• Fair Dinkum Crime brings us the winners of the 2012 Davitt Awards, given out by Sisters in Crime Australia. Among the recipients was Sulari Gentill, who won in the Best Adult Novel category for A Decline in Prophets, a historical crime work set partly in 1930s Australia. Best Debut Novel honors went to Jaye Ford for Beyond Fear.

• Author Deon Meyer has won South Africa’s 2011/2012 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award for his latest crime thriller, 7 Dae, which will be released in the States this next week as Seven Days.

• I’m told that the annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference can be quite enlightening and enjoyable, though I haven’t yet been able to attend. I have, however, stayed in the excellent establishment where guests at this year’s events with be housed: the Hotel Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The convention is scheduled there for November 8–10 and will feature among its faculty David Morrell, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; Andrew Hunt, winner of the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel; and Jo-Ann Mapson, recipient of the American Library Association’s 2011 RUSA Award for women's fiction. A press release explains that “The conference includes an all-day workshop for authors on pacing their work with plenty of opportunity for writing and discussion, a day on the craft of writing, and a day on the business of writing.” Registration information and a calendar of events can be found here.

• Award-winning short-story writer Patti Abbott has issued a new flash-fiction challenge. “Write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled ‘Frank, Jr.,’” she instructs. “The end date will be September 24, 2012. I will post stories for people who have no blog. No winners or losers. Just good fun. Any genre, any style.” Click here to let Abbott know if you’d like to participate.

• It’s good to see ThugLit back in business, even if it’s now a product you must pay to read, rather than a free Webzine. Buy the new issue for 99 cents here. It contains stories by Jordan Harper, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw, plus “an exclusive first look” at Tyrus Books’ 2013 release, The Hard Bounce, by Todd Robinson.

• Mike Ripley’s latest edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” his monthly Shots column, includes notes on Ian Rankins’ new John Rebus novel, James Bond book covers, Shelley Smith’s The Ballad of the Running Man, Romanian crime fiction, John Banville’s forthcoming Philip Marlowe novel, and the death of Gore Vidal.

• Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning economist, explains why plans endorsed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, would lead to the death of Medicare.

• Gabrielle Byrne will play the single-named Dublin pathologist, Quirke, in a BBC One TV series based on John Banville’s succession of mystery novels, written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. “The three feature-length episodes each take their stories from different books in the series, ‘Christine Falls’ and ‘The Silver Swan’ [to be adapted] by Andrew Davies, and ‘Elegy for April’ by Conor McPherson.” Filming is set to begin in Dublin later this year, but no small-screen debut date for Quirke has yet been announced.

• His Futile Occupations has a nice write-up about The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense, which was edited by Otto Penzler and released in paperback this last July by Pegasus. I somehow managed to miss grabbing up this collection, which includes work by Boris Akunin, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Pushkin, and others. The reminder of its existence is most welcome.

• Speaking of Otto Penzler (and it seems we do a lot of that here), he lists in The Daily Beast five crime writers he thinks should be better appreciated. I’m surprised he could keep his choices to five.

• And another list: On the Rag Mag’s “10 Reasons You Should Watch,” the 1971-1977 NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife. That show, of course, starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as “San Francisco’s particularly activist police commissioner” and “his comely, trouble-attracting, and occasionally brilliant younger spouse.”

• R.I.P., Hal David, who “contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies” and became especially famous for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach. David died on Saturday at age 91. Among his best-recognized works is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which figured into the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. BuzzFeed has compiled what it thinks are “The 21 Most Memorable Songs Written by Hal David.” Read more about him here and here.

• Good-bye also to Sally Fellows, “a great supporter of everyone and everything in the mystery community,” as Janet Rudolph recalls. Fellowes died last night in her sleep.

• The blog Criminal Element has announced that it will soon begin publishing an electronic collection of original short stories three times a year, filled with fiction submitted by the public. This new journal is to be called The Malfeasance Occasional, aka The M.O. The schedule for Issue No. 1--themed “Girl Trouble”--is pretty tight, with “never-before-published submissions of 3,000 to 6,000 words” being accepted from September 26 through October 10, and a release date of December 6. Authors whose stories are accepted will receive “$350 for a year’s exclusive use after publication.” Submission details aren’t yet available. Visit the The Malfeasance Occasional feature page for updates and further information.

• I didn’t happen to see Quentin Tarantino’s direct-to-DVD flick, My Name Is Modesty, when it was released in 2003. But I stumbled across it on YouTube today. As Wikipedia explains, “The film stars British actress Alexandra Staden as Modesty”--the fictional criminal-turned-spy created by Peter O’Donnell--“and chronicles a crucial event in the character's life some time prior to the start of the comic strip.” As usual with YouTube, one can’t tell how long these videos will be available. But for now, the movie can be watched in several parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

• A Web site I’d never heard of before today, Odee, looks back at “9 of the Most Brazen Art Thefts” in history. They include the 1911 filching of the Mona Lisa and the 15th-century rip-off of Hans Memling’s “The Last Judgement.”

• If you haven’t been keeping up with Shotsmag Confidential blogger Ayo Onatade’s “Book to Die For” series, it’s lately added several more installments. Check out Mike Ripley’s write-up about SS-GB, by Len Deighton; Jen Forbus’ recommendation of L.A. Requiem, by Robert Crais; Chris Simmons’ plug for Asta’s Book, by Barbara Vine; Jon Jordan’s reviewlet of Dark Chant in a Crimson Key, by George C. Chesbro; Karen Meek’s build-up of Involuntary Witness, by Gianrico Carofiglio; and Onatade’s own remarks on Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler. The blog also features an interview with John Connolly and Declan Burke, the editors of Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, which inspired Shotsmag Confidential’s series.

• Citing “health problems,” author-editor Ed Gorman explains in his blog that “I won’t be blogging for awhile. Not sure when I’ll be back.” We wish him the best of luck and a quick return to the Web.

• And because this is Labor Day in the United States, don’t forget to check out Janet Rudolph’s list of labor union mysteries in Mystery Fanfare. Also in celebration of hard work, Blogcritics asked a variety of people what jobs they had before they finally made a go of it as published authors.

High (Posthumous) Expectations

The pseudonymous blogger Mercurie at A Shroud of Thoughts has some very nice things to say about the recently deceased writer, Peter O’Donnell, who of course created the character Modesty Blaise:

I rather suspect that Peter O’Donnell was always ... rather under-appreciated by many during his lifetime. I do not think he was ever given credit for creating one of the most iconic characters of post-war Britain, Modesty Blaise. It is true that Mrs. Cathy Gale of The Avengers pre-dates Modesty, but she was among the earliest strong female heroes to appear in any medium. She has inspired many imitators over the years, and has had considerable influence on every female superspy to appear ever since.

It must be pointed out that while Mr. O’Donnell received few kudos for the Modesty Blaise novels, they are among the best pulp fiction and spy novels written in the late 20th century. There are others of more fame than myself who agree with me on this. Novelist and critic Kingsley Amis actually sent Mr. O’Donnell a handwritten note thanking him for the Modesty Blaise novels. Quentin Tarantino has consistently expressed his admiration for the novels. Beyond the novels, it must be noted that the comic strip was among the best written adventure strips of all time. Indeed, between the storylines included in the comic strip and stories in comic books and the graphic novel published for DC Comics, there would be 99 Modesty Blaise storylines in all. In the end I think Peter O’Donnell will be remembered as more than the creator of Modesty Blaise. I think he will be remembered as one of the best comic strip writers and best pulp writers of all time.

Mercurie’s full post can be found here.

READ MORE: “Modesty Blaise: Death in Slow Motion,” by Rod Lott (Bookgasm); The Complete Modesty Blaise Dossier.

His Virtue Was Modesty

Peter O’Donnell, the British-born creator of troubleshooter/action heroine Modesty Blaise, passed away yesterday, less than a month after celebrating his 90th birthday. He had long been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

As UK comics expert Steve Holland explains in his blog, Bear Alley:

Peter had a 75-year-long career as a writer, his first story appearing in the pages of Scout in 1936. He then joined the staff of the Amalgamated Press, working on Butterfly, Comic Cuts, and Illustrated Chips. He served with the Royal Signal Corps during the war. After being demobbed in 1946 he worked for a small publishing firm before taking up writing full time.

In 1952 he was asked to take over the ‘Belinda’ strip in the Daily Mirror while the regular author was ill; soon after he was invited to take over the writing of ‘Garth,’ which he went on to write for the next thirteen years. Other strips written by O’Donnell include ‘For Better or Worse,’ ‘Tug Transom,’ and ‘Romeo Brown,’ the latter teaming him up with Jim Holdaway for the first time.

In 1962 Kennedy Aitken asked him to create a new character for the Daily Express. O’Donnell, already writing stories featuring a macho male hero, decided on a female character who would have the confidence and combat skills of male comic strip stars without losing her femininity. The strip was snatched up by the Evening Standard and Modesty Blaise began appearing on 13 May 1963. The strip survived the death of artist Jim Holdaway in 1970 and continued to appear until O’Donnell’s retirement in 2001, with Enrique Romero (1970-79, 1986-2001), John M. Burns (1978-79), Pat Wright (1979-80) and Neville Colvin (1980-86) providing the artwork.

In addition to scripting the Modesty Blaise comic strip, O’Donnell penned 11 novels featuring the character. The first of those, simply titled Modesty Blaise, was published in 1965 as a tie-in with a comedic spy-fi film of the same name, released in 1966 and starring Italian actress Monica Vitti. (Watch the trailer here.) At least two books of Modesty Blaise short stories were also released over the years.

Nick Landau, the managing editor of Titan Books, which has recently been issuing collections of the Modesty Blaise comic strip in book form, had this to say in response to news of the author’s demise: “Peter O’Donnell was respected as one of the greatest writers in the comics medium today and had a devout following amongst comics professionals and fans alike.”

Somewhere, the usually resilient Modesty weeps.

READ MORE: “Peter O’Donnell,1920-2010,” by Mike Gold (Comic Mix); “Madeleine Brent/Peter O’Donnell: An Appreciation,” by Elizabeth Foxwell (The Bunburyist); “Thank You, Peter O’Donnell, for Letting Me Be Part Modesty,” by Anna Toss (Anna Toss & Co.); “R.I.P., Peter O’Donnell, the Man Behind Modesty Blaise,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders); “Modesty Blaise,” by David Foster (Permission to Kill).

The Book You Have to Read: “Modesty Blaise,” by Peter O’Donnell

(Editor’s note: This is the 61st installment of our Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Canadian author Vicki Delany, who writes everything from standalone novels of suspense [Burden of Memory] to a traditional village/police procedural series set in British Columbia [In the Shadow of the Glacier, Valley of the Lost] to a light-hearted historical series [Gold Digger] set during the Klondike Gold Rush. Next up: Winter of Secrets, due out in November. Delany blogs with five other crime writers at Type M for Murder. Her Web site can be found here.)

My forgotten book isn’t a single book, but a series, a character really: Modesty Blaise, star of the novels by Peter O’Donnell, popular during the late 1960s and ’70s (the last book, Cobra Trap, was published in 1996).

Like many women who were once girls, I particularly remember being introduced to Nancy Drew, “girl detective.” Nancy was a girl just like us. Just like us, except that she was wealthy, beautiful, popular, and had exciting adventures. Other than that she was just like us.

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, girls of my age read all the stories starring Nancy Drew, followed her adventures with enthusiasm, and thought she had a wildly exciting life, but at heart we knew that Nancy was “safe.” Nancy had a good home, a loving father, loyal friends, a stouthearted boyfriend, lots of money, and even a housekeeper to provide the necessities of life so that Nancy could devote her time to sleuthing rather than cooking her father’s dinner.

We knew that eventually Nancy would have to grow up. Her life would then be totally predictable--as predictable as our lives were going to be. She would leave school, marry Ned Nickerson (or some equally suitable boy from her social set), have 2.5 children, acquire a Golden Retriever, do volunteer work, and start popping Valium.

It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s, settled down (like I imagined Nancy Drew was), with a husband, house, children, and dog that I first came across the Modesty Blaise books.

Modesty Blaise was nothing at all like my friends and me. She was exotic, mysterious, and had a shady criminal past. She was all grown up and she still had an exciting life. Modesty had once been the leader of a notorious criminal gang called “The Network,” and now, having given up her life of crime, she and her sidekick, Willie Garvin, traveled the world fighting wrongs.

Reading about Modesty Blaise for the first time was like being hit by a thunderbolt. Those books probably gave me my first realization that adult women could be strong and fearless and independent. Just like men.

The origins of Modesty Blaise were in a comic strip O’Donnell did for a British newspaper, the London Evening Standard. The first strip appeared in May 1963. The first of O’Donnell’s books, titled simply Modesty Blaise, was published in 1965. There was a movie deal in the interim, resulting in a 1966 film starring Monica Vitti as Modesty. I don’t recall seeing the movie, but opinion is generally that it’s for die-hard fans only.

Nevertheless, the books were hugely popular, and more followed. I was living in South Africa in the 1970s: I don’t think the books got as much attention in North America. Please correct me if I’m wrong. There were 13 books in all, I believe, and they are still in print, including U.S. editions. O’Connell continued writing the comic strip until 2001, when he was 81 years old. Two more movies, as unmemorable as the first, were made.

In the crime-writing world today there are plenty of strong women, but Modesty blazed (pardon the pun) the trail.

Her beginnings were in a displaced person’s camp in Greece at the end of World War II. She was simply discovered, a young girl surviving on her own, with no idea of where she came from or who she was. She was taken under the wing of a man named Lob, who educated her and taught her that people could be trusted. Lob gave her the name Modesty because, well, she had none. She chose the last name Blaise herself.

Unlike Nancy Drew, Modesty was a survivor, a woman who knew from the very beginning that she had to look after herself. As an adult, Modesty took over control of a criminal gang called “The Network.” Even when Modesty was a criminal, she was a “good” crook, and she ran The Network like a business, caring for her employees and strictly avoiding anything to do with vice. Modesty would never prey, or allow anyone working for her to prey, on the weak and helpless.

Eventually Modesty Blaise retired, and disbanded The Network. She moved to England and attempted to live the life of the idle rich, her only contact from her criminal days being her ever-loyal right-hand man, Willie Garvin.

It is at that point in his character’s fictional life that Peter O’Donnell’s books begin. Modesty and Willie are constantly called out of retirement by people from their past lives, and on occasion are asked to do off-the-record work for British Intelligence.

The relationship between Modesty and Willie forms the crux of the books. She is, clearly, the boss. He adores her, and respects her, but they are never lovers. In the first book Modesty has to rescue Willie from prison, where he’s been confined after recklessly joining a mercenary group after the disbanding of The Network. Thus their relationship is set--she is in charge and he is the sidekick.

If there is an earlier adult adventure/crime book in which the female is the main character, and the male the sidekick, I don’t know of it.

In retrospect, I can see that Modesty is what she started out as--a cartoon character. Modesty is beautiful, wealthy (no trust-fund babe or rich man’s widow here--she earned all her money herself), the leader of men, a successful businesswoman, multilingual, an expert in unarmed combat, intelligent, fiercely loyal to her friends, and dangerous to her enemies.

She is no more realistic than Nancy Drew, but Modesty provided women with an example of what women can achieve, both in terms of careers and in relationships. Fictionally speaking, Modesty showed us that a woman could be not only the protagonist in an adventure book, but a multidimensional character as well. And she didn’t even have to sleep with anyone!

As a crime writer, and as an independent woman, I owe a lot to Modesty Blaise.