Exit Interview: “I Had the Best Job in Publishing for 20 Years, and I Was Ready for More”

Although the final issue of Mystery Scene magazine reached newsstands and mailboxes in November of 2022, it wasn’t until mid-January of this year that I at last flipped it open to begin reading. That was not because I didn’t want to enjoy its contents, but rather because paging through it meant acknowledging the end of an era.

I don’t recall exactly when I was introduced to Mystery Scene. It certainly wasn’t way back in 1985, when the first, four-page edition of that publication was mailed out as a supplement to Robert “Cap’n Bob” Napier’s old “letterzine,” Mystery & Detective Monthly. Yet it was long enough ago that only the cover of the mag was in color and printed on slick stock, while inside pages remained black and white. I remember being impressed by its broad range of coverage, as well as by the confident authority of its writing. This wasn’t some vanity fan publication; neither was it a sober-sided academic journal. Instead, Mystery Scene reflected the experience and enthusiasms of its editors. As a devoted crime-fiction reader, and someone long-practiced in magazine journalism, I couldn’t help being impressed.

(Right) The last edition of Mystery Scene, Winter 2022.

Credit for founding Mystery Scene belongs to authors Ed Gorman and Robert J. Randisi, who strove to establish a bimonthly newsletter that would serve America’s crime, mystery, and thriller fiction community in a manner similar to how the older, monthly Locus benefited aficionados of science fiction and fantasy. However, it was Kate Stine, an ex-editor of that esteemed quarterly, The Armchair Detective, who—beginning in 2002, and with help from her husband and co-publisher, Brian Skupin—gave Mystery Scene the polish it ultimately boasted.

The magazine offered a wealth of engrossing contents, from author profiles and myriad book reviews to awards news, features about this literary sphere’s history, character retrospectives, television and film critiques, subgenre studies, seasonal gift guides, and even crime-themed crossword puzzles. Rare was the issue I didn’t pick up over and over again, diving into new stories I hoped would expand my knowledge of the genre. While all of its contributors promised to be entertaining, I—like probably every other Mystery Scene follower—had my favorite regulars. For instance, Los Angeles-based journalist Michael Mallory could be depended on to open eccentric windows into the field’s past, whether he was writing about the 1973-1976 late-night ABC-TV anthology series Wide World of Mystery, the 1940s Jack Webb radio drama Pat Novak, for Hire, or the 60th anniversary of Peter Falk’s introduction in Columbo. Florida critic Oline H. Cogdill proved herself to be a most prolific and adept interviewer, welcoming readers into the company of debut and veteran novelists alike, among them Amanda Jayatissa (You’re Invited), Charles Finch (An Extravagant Death), Sujata Massey (The Bombay Prince), and Adrian McKinty (Rain Dogs). Kevin Burton Smith, editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, could always be relied upon for thoughtful, customarily clever commentary about private-eye-related subjects, as in his feature in the Fall 2022 edition about the 100th birthday of the hard-boiled American gumshoe of fiction. And of course, I flipped immediately to the work of Lawrence Block, whenever it appeared in the magazine and whatever he was writing about, be it author Stanley Ellin, the pleasures of re-reading, or the 1947 film The Brasher Doubloon (based on Raymond Chandler’s 1942 novel, The High Window).

(Above) Co-publishers Brian Skupin and Kate Stine.

With such a breadth of talent to draw on, it was hardly a wonder that Mystery Scene racked up a shelf-full of prizes. During the 2004 Bouchercon in Toronto, Ontario, it collected the Anthony Award for Best Fan Publication. (Stine had previously won an Anthony, in 1996, for her non-fiction work, The Armchair Detective Book of Lists.) In 2006, the magazine received the Ellery Queen Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.” And at the 2009 Malice Domestic convention, held just outside Washington, D.C., Stine and Skupin scored Poirot Awards for their “outstanding contributions to the mystery genre.” They were later fêted at the 2011 Bouchercon in St. Louis, Missouri, as Fan Guests of Honor.

Unfortunately, accolades and a reputation for excellence do not guarantee a publication’s longevity. An early public indication that something was amiss came back in late 2019, when it was announced that Mystery Scene would be reducing its frequency from five issues per year to four. Then, in the fall of 2022—shortly after Stine celebrated her 20th year in the editor-in-chief’s seat, and with Mystery Scene enjoying a 23,000-copy circulation—she brought the sad news that the periodical was folding after 37 years in business.

“The publishing industry has changed seismically over the last two decades with the advent of the internet, publisher consolidation, the birth of social media, and the rise of Amazon,” Stine explained in Mystery Scene’s concluding edition. “It has become impossible for us to continue to offer you the high-quality print publication in which we’ve taken so much pride.”

(Left) The first, 1985 issue of Mystery Scene.

For the time being, at least, Mystery Scene is maintaining an active Web site (a refinement of its preceding online endeavors), where material that might once have found residence in the print quarterly is being posted. It also continues to offer a monthly electronic newsletter, filled with notes about fresh books and recent awards, author interviews, and “Favorite First Lines” from crime, mystery, and thriller releases. In addition, the mag’s Facebook and Twitter pages are still being updated, and efforts are underway to win advertising support for these enterprises. But the status of all this obviously remains unsettled, as Stine ponders what she’d like to do next.

I recently took the opportunity to interview Stine, now 62, via e-mail. We discussed her youthful dalliance with a psychology career, her diverse experiences in book and magazine publishing, her history at The Armchair Detective and the Agatha Christie Society, what she liked most about editing Mystery Scene, and a good deal more.

J. Kingston Pierce: As I understand it, you’re from Indiana originally. Where in that state did you grow up?

Kate Stine: I was born in Indianapolis and was raised on a small farm in southern Indiana with my four younger sisters.

JKP: What sort of farming did your parents do?

KS: [It] was more of a hobby farm for raising kids and animals. My parents generally rented out the fields to local farmers.

JKP: How did you become a reader? Was it your parents who introduced you to its abundant wonders?

KS: My mother is a big reader and spent a lot of time reading us all kinds of kids’ books. We made regular weekly trips to the library and could always pick out books that interested us. When I got into chapter books, I discovered the Bobbsey Twins and the Boxcar Children, followed shortly by Nancy Drew. My grandmother gave me my first adult book, a copy of Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie.

The first magazine article I can remember reading on my own was a Readers’ Digest “Drama in Real Life” feature titled “Bear Attack!” So thriller fiction was an early interest as well.

JKP: What most drew you to crime and mystery stories?

KS: I’ve always liked the sense of movement in a mystery. This happens and because of that this happens. Sometimes the consecutive steps aren’t described and you have to imagine how the action got from here to there. Plus, mystery fiction is always so interested in its surroundings. Most of my incidental knowledge of the world comes from reading mysteries and thrillers.

JKP: Your bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington is in psychology, of all things. What led you to that course of study? Did you ever consider moving into psychology as a profession?

KS: I had a varied liberal arts education and eventually focused on a psychology degree. I worked on a number of research studies that involved interviewing elderly people and children of divorce. After college I worked for a couple of years at a group home for developmentally delayed people but eventually went back to psychology research. During this time, I also worked on and off at a Waldenbooks, which was extremely helpful to my later career in publishing.

JKP: How soon after graduation did you enroll in the New York University publishing program? And how long did that program last?

KS: After about four years in Indianapolis, I was ready for something new. I enrolled in the NYU Publishing Institute, an intensive summer-long program that covered both book and magazine publishing. It was a great introduction to the industry and to New York City at the same time. All the major publishers sent representatives to speak and post job notices.

JKP: I understand you spent a year working as an editorial assistant for the Book of the Month Club subscription service. What was that like, and what did you learn from the experience that helped you move up the publishing ladder?

KS: That job at Book of the Month Club was the best. I was there during its heyday in the late 1980s. It was a bird’s-eye view of the industry, because every publisher sent their books to BOMC. They had the best-read editors I’ve ever worked with. The editorial meetings where these editors sat around and talked about all the important books of the day were an education. Everyone in the editorial department wrote book reports, so it was also good, hands-on training for writing jacket and catalogue copy, understanding the market for a book, etc.

JKP: The first publishing job actually listed on your LinkedIn profile has you installed for four years as an editor at Hachette Books, supervising the paperback reprint line for Mysterious Press titles. That must have introduced you to a broad range of noteworthy crime and mystery writers. Do you have any fun or surprising stories to tell about working with or getting to know the greats of that era?

KS: Mysterious Press in the late 1980s and early ’90s was a hotbed of prestigious writers—Donald Westlake, Margaret Maron, Ellis Peters, James Ellroy, Marcia Muller, Ross Thomas, H.R.F. Keating, [and] Charlotte MacLeod are just some of the names. But, since Mysterious Press was located in the same building on [West] 56th Street as the Mysterious Bookshop was at the time, all of these writers plus hundreds of other writers were constantly in and out of the building. If you had any question about a book you could go and find it—and sometimes the author—in the bookshop. It was a great place to get a thorough grounding in the genre.

JKP: Let’s see if I have this chronology right: You went to work for publisher Mysterious Press around the time Manhattan bookseller and editor Otto Penzler sold that company. But was it still through association with Mysterious Press that you came to know Penzler?

KS: Otto was consulting for the Book of the Month Club when I worked there. He needed an assistant and I wanted to move into publishing, so I came over to Mysterious Press. The other editors there were Bill Malloy, Sara Ann Freed, and Michele Slung. That was a lot of genre knowledge and experience in one building!

JKP: You followed Penzler to become editor-in-chief of Otto Penzler Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. What’s he like as a boss?

KS: I became editor-chief of Otto Penzler Books in 1993. It was a new imprint, so literally everything had to be organized from the ground up—from furniture to logos to the lists of authors. We published 35 to 40 hardcovers a year and 12 to 15 paperback reprints. The imprint offices were back in the 56th Street building with the Mysterious Bookshop, so that was fun. Whenever I needed a break, I would go down to the shop and hand-sell a mystery or two. It was a very creative place to work, with lots of interesting challenges popping up every day. I learned a lot there.

As a boss, I think Otto Penzler could best be described as demanding.

JKP: In 1992 Penzler brought you on as editor-in-chief of The Armchair Detective, where you stayed for the next five years. As someone who remembers TAD fondly (and still has more than a few back issues), can you relate some of your experiences with that quarterly? And did you have favorites among its estimable stable of contributors?

KS: I was very fond of many of the contributors and columnists at TAD, some of whom—Jon L. Breen, Dick Lochte, Tom Nolan, Louis Phillips—I brought onboard to Mystery Scene years later. The novelist William L. DeAndrea was an outsize personality at the magazine—he wrote the opinion column “J’Accuse!” and regularly stirred up controversy. It was a tragedy he died so young.

Unlike Mystery Scene, many of the contributors to TAD were academics. This made for a slightly different feel and focus than most fan magazines. It was very interesting to work with such intelligent, highly knowledgeable experts.

JKP: One of the business tasks you took on at TAD was converting it to desktop publishing—never an easy endeavor. Was part of the motivation for that conversion to cut costs? Had the magazine been on rather shaky ground, financially? I remember it as always containing more excellent editorial copy than it did paid advertising ...

KS: TAD used a typesetter in Bloomington, Indiana, when I got there. We’d send marked-up typewritten copy to him and he’d send it back in long shiny strips of coated paper that would have to be cut and pasted down by hand by our graphic designer. One time, the typesetter just disappeared and we had to bribe a former employee to break into the office and get our articles ... Converting to desktop publishing saved us money and a lot of time and trouble.

JKP: The Armchair Detective was founded in 1967 by Allen J. Hubin, and Penzler took it over some years later. Could you remind me exactly when that change of command took place?

KS: This was so far before my time, I had to look it up in Marvin Lachman’s The Heirs of Anthony Boucher: A History of Mystery Fandom. Hubin relinquished the editorship of TAD in 1980. Otto Penzler had bought the magazine a couple of years before that. Michael Seidman, a well-known book editor in New York, took over as TAD’s editor-in-chief after Hubin. He was followed by Kathy Daniel in 1989 and by me in 1992. (I had been the TAD book review editor for several years before that.) In 1995, Judi Vause bought the magazine and acted as publisher, ad sales rep, and managing editor. I resigned in 1997 and Elizabeth Foxwell was the editor-in-chief of one issue [dated Summer 1997] before the magazine folded that year.

The closing came as a surprise to both Beth Foxwell and me, as well as the various columnists and contributors. I believe it was the result of health problems [involving either Vause or her husband], but I don’t know the details. People had a hard time getting in touch with [Vause], I know subscribers were not notified or reimbursed. It was a shame to see the magazine die. You can get into mystery magazine publishing for love—and I have—but it’s still a business, and there are hard realities to it.

JKP: I hadn’t realized until recently that, after departing TAD, one of the posts you took was as senior editor of MysteryNet. Founded as The Case in the mid-1990s, but now long gone, MysteryNet was an extensive online database of information about the genre, offering everything from author biographies and movie recommendations to games. What was that experience like? It sounds as if you were responsible for a bit of everything, including commissioning articles, marketing, and publicity.

KS: I really enjoyed working at MysteryNet. It was a San Francisco Internet company at the height of the dot-com boom and it was exciting to be part of that scene—as long as it lasted. I did a lot of content acquisition and editing and generally acted as a guide to the mystery community for [Web site founder] Steve Schaffer and his colleagues.

JKP: Another position you held between TAD and Mystery Scene was as director of the Agatha Christie Society (owned by Agatha Christie Limited), an international literary organization promoting works by the bestselling creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie is still a big name as a writer, but how big and lucrative is the Christie promotions business? Can you give us some idea of it?

KS: The Agatha Christie Society was another fun, part-time gig for me. I edited a quarterly newsletter full of Christie trivia, interesting articles, and collecting info. Working with Annika Larsson, my usual graphic designer, I created a series of very attractive (if I do say so myself) handouts, postcards, and bookmarks. We had events, including a weekend in New York with Mathew Pritchard, Christie’s grandson. The Society was international, so I got to travel to England several times and visited Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks, at Greenway House before she donated it to the British National Trust.

Agatha Christie is a force in the history of mystery fiction, of course, but the intellectual property value of her work today is still huge. All of her books are in print, her plays are performed regularly, and there’s rarely a TV or film season that doesn’t offer an adaptation of her work. I worked for the Society, but it was very interesting to watch my colleagues wheeling and dealing in the worlds of publishing, film, TV, theater, merchandise, etc. They were very good at it.

JKP: How and when did you meet your husband, Brian Skupin?

KS: I met Brian at the 1996 Magna Cum Murder mystery conference at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He was an IT manager working at Kellogg’s in Michigan and an avid mystery reader. Our first date was at Malice Domestic in 1997—at the time Brian, who is originally from Toronto, was working in England. We had a long-distance relationship, often meeting at mystery conventions, until we married in 1999. We’ve lived in New York since then.

Brian is an integral part of Mystery Scene as the co-publisher and occasional contributor. He has a extensive background in the Golden Age and in locked-room mysteries, among other interests. Even today, he’s helping us out at the Web site with both editorial and IT issues.

JKP: In 2002 you and Brian purchased Mystery Scene. Who, exactly, did you buy it from—co-founders Ed Gorman and Robert J. Randisi, or others? What was the state of the magazine then, both in terms of finances and editorial direction?

KS: When we acquired Mystery Scene in 2002, it was owned by the writer Ed Gorman and by Marty Greenburg, the well-known anthologist. Ed had done an outstanding job editorially, nursing the magazine from infancy to adolescence. Back then, Mystery Scene was targeted mainly to writers, although it did have fans as readers. There were tons of craft articles, market news, publishing gossip, as well as tributes and articles on current and vintage writers, and some reviews.

(Left) Stine’s debut edition as editor-in-chief of Mystery Scene.

Ed is one of the most beloved figures in the history of mystery fiction. In fact, our first issue [September 2002] was a tribute issue to Ed and it was awash in heartfelt submissions. However, Ed wasn’t as interested in the business side of things, and the magazine was in dire shape financially when we took it over.

JKP: How did you see the principal missions of Mystery Scene differently from your predecessors?

KS: I wanted to target the intelligent, curious, and eclectic mystery reader. One who was interested in some “behind the scenes” material, but was ultimately a mystery and crime fiction fan. We thought of ourselves as the Entertainment Weekly magazine of mystery.

JKP: I know you converted Mystery Scene from a black-and-white publication on newsprint to a four-color, glossy mag, but what were the other major changes you made to it over two decades?

KS: We completely redesigned the magazine to make it more readable and attractive. I had the help of our fantastic graphic designer, my friend Annika Larsson, who has worked at Rolling Stone, Esquire, and other publications. She also helped redesign The Armchair Detective many years ago and had a hand in the Agatha Christie Society.

In every issue we tried our hardest to find interesting author photographs, movie and TV stills, book covers, maps, and other items to illustrate the articles and reviews. Although this involved a lot of research, and not a little money, it was one of my favorite tasks. Every article about a writer had a book list, so readers could easily find titles in series order.

There are other technical things that we did, including design a hardworking database, create a large Web site with both original and reprint content, [and] arrange for bookstore and newsstand distribution through Ingram Periodicals and its later iterations. We developed a partnership with Magzter.com, which publishes digital editions of the magazine.

JKP: So what are your fondest memories of Mystery Scene?

KS: The day-to-day work was so enjoyable that 21 years just whizzed by. I loved reading and writing about books, loved talking to the writers, loved our enthusiastic readers. Some of my fondest memories involve the former owner, Ed Gorman, who was a great wit and raconteur. We’d get on the phone and just chat for an hour.

And I really love working with Teri Duerr, our senior editor. She had a background in print and digital magazine publishing when she came to us that was just invaluable. She’s about 20 years younger than me and one of the most competent people I’ve ever met. It’s been a joy to work with her and I’m happy she’s still working with us on the Mystery Scene Web site and e-newsletter.

A definite highlight was Brian and I receiving the Ellery Queen Award in 2006 from Mystery Writers of America for contributions to mystery publishing. It was quite something to look out over that applauding crowd of writers.

JKP: How long ago did you realize the magazine might not survive? And what ultimately compelled its closing?

KS: The pandemic in 2020 accelerated changes in the marketing of mystery books that ultimately did us in. We were always 60/40 on advertising/subscription income. When most book advertising went online to large corporations (Facebook, Amazon, etc.), we couldn’t make the numbers work anymore. Our print bill alone was $32,000 a year, not to mention postage, and we were always a paying market for our contributors, including all of the book reviewers.

Brian and I had always run Mystery Scene as a business. It was not a hobby; we made a decent income from it until recently. Then we had to look at the numbers and make some hard decisions.

JKP: Did any potential buyers step forward in the mag’s final months?

KS: We were approached by several groups of people. But Mystery Scene was a complex business to take over, the book and magazine publishing industry is changing, and ultimately no successors were confident enough they could make the numbers work any better than we could. I would have loved to have been proven wrong about that.

JKP: How difficult has it been to let go of the magazine? And what’s the most crucial bit of advice you’d offer to anyone considering opening another such publication?

KS: It’s been very hard to say goodbye to Mystery Scene. I had the best job in publishing for 20 years, and I was ready for more. The best advice I can offer someone thinking of taking on a mystery-genre magazine is make sure you love the field and have a lot of talented friends who will help you out. And, if at all possible, marry a handsome IT expert with a wide-ranging knowledge of the mystery field and a good sense of humor.

JKP: You’re still updating the Mystery Scene Web site. Do you plan to keep that going, or is that still an unanswerable question?

KS: At the moment we are engaged with the Mystery Scene Web site, the monthly e-newsletter, and our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Teri Duerr is handling a lot of this as well as our online advertising sales. I’m going to be focusing on it more as well, but I’m also going to take some time to just think about what I want to do now. It’s been a busy past two decades!

JKP: After so many years of working with the genre, have your crime-fiction reading tastes changed significantly?

KS: As the years go by, I enjoy crime fiction the more it closely replicates our complex world as a whole. This is not just increasingly varied settings, but culturally diverse characters with wide-ranging backgrounds and viewpoints that challenge readers to really inhabit and understand their stories. That’s not to say that a clever puzzle ever comes amiss!

JKP: Finally, I have to ask: What crime, mystery, or thriller novels are currently in your to-be-read pile?

KS: Right now, I’m reading Daughter of the Morning Star, by Craig Johnson. I have a pile of Emma Lathens waiting for me, Also, So Shall You Reap, by Donna Leon, and various titles by Walter Mosley, Richard Osman, Lindsey Davis, Louise Penny, among others. Also, I highly recommend Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley. I’ve dipped back into that a couple of times.

A Sorrowful Loss for Mystery Readers

Despite fervent hopes to the contrary (mine included), it seems that the Winter 2022 edition of Mystery Scene—on its way now to subscribers and newsstands—will be the final issue of that justly popular publication, which was founded in 1985. Editor-in-chief Kate Stine explains the situation in this introductory letter:

Fall #173 was a benchmark for Brian [Skupin] and me as publishers of Mystery Scene—our 20th Anniversary Issue. Winter #174 marks a sadder occasion—the final issue of Mystery Scene Magazine after 37 years in business.

The publishing industry has changed seismically over the last two decades with the advent of the internet, publisher consolidation, the birth of social media, and the rise of Amazon. It has become impossible for us to continue to offer you the high-quality print publication in which we’ve taken so much pride.

The website will remain functioning for now, as will our monthly e-newsletter. We will be refunding readers for their outstanding subscriptions over the next few months. This is a big job, so please be patient with us. We expect to have this task done by February 2023.

We want to thank our outstanding staff, particularly the indispensable Teri Duerr for all her excellent work editing, writing, and organizing over the years. Annika Larsson made all of us look good with her outstanding design skills. The quality of our contributors is apparent to Mystery Scene readers already—but let me just say how interesting, educational, and fun it was to work with them. And we want to thank all of you—we loved bringing you the magazine. Brian and I had the best job in publishing for 20 years and we want to thank you for coming along for the ride.

I’ll likely have more to say about this regrettable turn of events in days to come, but for now, let me just add my thanks to Kate Stine and Brian Skupin for all they have contributed to this genre over the years.

Bullet Points: Hope and Hype Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now it might be what gets her killed.

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

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

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

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

Bullet Points: Heavy on Nostalgia Edition

• A much-deserved accolade, mentioned yesterday in Literary Hub: “John le Carré, perhaps history’s greatest spy novelist, was this morning announced as the latest recipient of the $100,000 Olof Palme Prize, an award given for ‘an outstanding achievement in any of the areas of anti-racism, human rights, international understanding, peace and common security.’ In their citation, the prize organizers praised le Carré ‘for his engaging and humanistic opinion-making in literary form regarding the freedom of the individual and the fundamental issues of mankind,’ and called his career ‘an extraordinary contribution to the necessary fight for freedom, democracy and social justice.’”

• There are plenty of interesting pieces in the latest edition of Mystery Scene magazine, among them profiles of authors William Kent Krueger and Elly Griffiths, and Kevin Burton Smith’s “2019 Gift Guide for Mystery Lovers” (still worth perusing, even with the holidays now past). However, I was most drawn to Michael Mallory’s retrospective on the 1973-1976 late-night ABC-TV anthology series Wide World of Mystery. As Mallory recalls, that succession of original “mysteries, horror stories, and science-fiction tales”—all of which began at 11:30 p.m.—was ABC’s several-nights-a-week alternative to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. “While the show’s stories and settings ran the gamut,” Mallory writes, “other things remained constant. One was the 90-minute length—actually 70 or so minutes plus commercials. Another was the fact that they were all recorded on videotape rather than being filmed, as were then-popular prime-time movies of the week. Because of this, viewers were occasionally treated to the occupational hazard of live-on-tape shows: bloopers.” Ed Asner, Lynda Day George, Christopher Reeve, Susan Sarandon, and Tom Selleck were all cast in WWoM installments, only a handful of which are available on DVD (with one—1975’s “Alien Lover,” introducing Kate Mulgrew, to be found on YouTube). I wasn’t a big late-night TV viewer as a boy, but I do remember seeing a few of those teleflicks, notably the March 14, 1975, presentation “Nick and Nora.” An unsuccessful “backdoor pilot” for a separate ABC series, it starred Peter Gunn’s Craig Stevens and small-screen fixture Jo Ann Pflug as Dashiell Hammett’s tippling snoops, Nick and Nora Charles, who in this movie “investigated the death of a man found floating in the pool of a posh L.A. hotel,” according to Mallory.

• By the way, The Stiletto Gumshoe notes that in this new issue of Mystery Scene, “publishers Kate Stine and Brian Skupin officially announced the magazine’s switch to a quarterly starting this year. It’ll be tough to wait longer between issues, but the promise of an increased page count while keeping the subscription price untouched was welcome news.”

• Found recently among my mail, too, was the fifth edition of Down & Out: The Magazine. This was long overdue: the previous issue came out in August 2018. In his editor’s note, Rick Ollerman chalks this delay up to multiple personal mishaps—which wouldn’t have been as big a problem at a larger publication, where other employees could have filled in for the recuperating editor, but at shorthanded Down & Out, it spelled trouble. The sad part is that this tardiness probably cost the periodical subscribers, who thought they could no longer trust in its regularity and future. I can only hope that enough readers will give Down & Out: The Magazine a second chance, because it’s new issue is guaranteed to please, with fiction from the likes of Walter Satterthwait, April Kelly, and Brendan DuBois, plus a column I wrote about Erle Stanley Gardner’s Doug Selby mysteries.

• The original 1968 Ford Mustang GT driven by Steve McQueen in the Warner Bros. film Bullitt, was sold at auction recently for a whopping $3,400,000. That car is renowned for having participated in this thrilling on-screen chase scene.

• In 1985, author Ross Thomas won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with Briarpatch. Now that standalone thriller has been adapted as a USA Network series, set to premiere on February 6. Taking the lead in Thomas’ novel was Ben “Pick” Dill, a white former reporter. However, the gender and race of the protagonist in USA’s series have both been flipped, with Rosario Dawson starring. The Hollywood Reporter explains: “Briarpatch follows Allegra Dill (Dawson), an investigator returning to her border-town Texas home after her sister is murdered. What begins as a search for a killer turns into an all-consuming fight to bring her corrupt city to its knees. The series is described as a blend of crime and pulp fiction.” If you’re interested, you can watch a short trailer is here. (Hat tip to Craig Pittman.)

• Also headed for television: Jonathan Lethem’s first novel, 1994’s Gun, with Occasional Music. “The novel,” says Deadline, “is a blend of sci-fi, noir and satire, set in the near future in a trippy world. Evolved animals are part of society, the government placates its citizens with free mind-numbing drugs, and the police monitor people by their karma levels. The protagonist is Conrad Metcalf, a down-and-out P.I. on a loser of a case. His last client—a prominent doctor—just turned up dead, and in order to clear his name and stay out of the deep freeze, the P.I. works for free to get to the bottom of it all. Turns out there is no bottom to this one, though, and Metcalf soon finds there’s nothing simple about this murder.” Deadline adds that “The series will be produced by Aggregate Films’ Jason Bateman, Michael Costigan and Daniel Pipski, along with Francey Grace.”

• Better late than never, let me direct your attention to the second annual Charlie Chan Family Home newsletter. Ohio Chan fan Lou Armagno notes that the newsletter (available here as a PDF document), addresses “two new book releases; a fall ‘Chan’ class taught at the University of Las Vegas, NV; ‘The Other Guys,’ an article on Mr. Wong and Mr. Moto; a recap of my first year blogging at The Postman on Holiday; and a ‘very special’ narrative by Charlie Chan Family Home webmaster, Rush Glick, on his adventure (20 years ago) to pursue the four lost Chan film-scripts. Finally, [there’s] a look at the upcoming Chinese New Year (The Year of the Rat, January 25) and three Charlie Chan events happening at various locations in 2020.”

• Among the “artists, innovators, and thinkers” we lost in 2019, The New York Times honors Peggy Lipton, co-star of The Mod Squad.

• The blog Up and Down These Mean Streets points out that Angel Eyes, Ace Atkins’ recent novel starring Boston private eye Spenser, features a few nods to the work of Dashiell Hammett.

• Speaking of Hammett, Nick Kolakowski records the multiple efforts over the decades to adapt 1929’s Red Harvest for the silver screen. “Red Harvest,” he opines, “seems doomed to remain the Schrödinger’s cat of noir adaptations: often made—and yet never made.”

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

The Audio Publishers Association announced that they will be presenting bestselling author Stephen King with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Audie Awards in March in New York City. King is known for his horror novels such as The Shining and Carrie but also for his crime novels, the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch), The Outsider, The Colorado Kid, and Joyland.

• I’m not usually a Marie Claire reader, but this recent piece in the magazine had me at the headline: “Megan Abbott Wants You to Feel Everything,” with a subhead reading, “With the premiere of her TV series ‘Dare Me’ on December 29, the novelist-turned-showrunner is taking her knack for humanizing the dynamics of gender, rage, and power beyond the page.” Good job, Megan!

• In the blog Mystery*File (which last month celebrated its 13th anniversary), critic Michael Shonk identified his favorite TV series of the last decade, mostly crime dramas, a couple of which I’d never heard of before. So what was his top 2010-2019 pick? “The underrated Person of Interest” (2011-2016).

• Have you seen these Bonnie and Clyde photos?

• Almost a year ago, I mentioned on this page that the 1978 CBS-TV pilot for an unsold series titled The Jordan Chance, starring Raymond Burr, had been posted on YouTube, but that a previous Burr pilot, 1976’s Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, remained unavailable. Suddenly, though, that latter movie has popped up on the video sales site Modcinema. Here’s its plot synopsis: “Raymond Burr stars again as a lawyer, this time named Arthur Mallory. No Perry Mason here, Mallory has been on the outs since being falsely accused of encouraging a witness to lie on the stand. Eventually cleared, Mallory lives hand to mouth as a public defender, with a heightened sense of fair play when it comes to the downtrodden. In this pilot film for the never-sold TV series Mallory, the attorney defends a jailed car thief (Mark Hamill) who has been framed for the killing of another prisoner.” You can buy the video here.

• It’s hard to believe that California-born actress Karen Valentine will turn 73 years old this coming May. As an early birthday present (to the rest of us), Comfort TV blogger David Hofstede has compiled briefs on some of her most prominent small-screen roles, including in Room 222, her short-lived eponymous TV series from 1975, and an ABC Movie of the Week titled The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped (1974)—that last being a flick I recall liking, but hadn’t thought about in years. Here’s Hofstede’s description of the story: “A magazine publisher (Richard Long) receives a bikini-clad girl (Karen Valentine) as a birthday present. Sounds like a set-up for a skit on Love, American Style. But there’s a lot more going on in this surprisingly touching (and funny) TV movie with a wonderful cast—Farrah Fawcett, Tom Bosley, Dave Madden, and Reta Shaw. This may be the best remembered of Valentine’s TV movies—and that’s not a bad choice if it is.” Sadly, you can’t watch The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped online; but I see that Modcinema (again, a site after my own heart) has copies for sale here.

• Incidentally, I glanced through Karen Valentine’s IMDb page and discovered that she was cast not only in comedies, but also in a number of crime, mystery, and legal dramas as well—everything from Eischied and The New Mike Hammer to Murder, She Wrote and Family Law. The site says her last TV performance was in the 2004 teleflick Wedding Daze, in which she co-starred with John Larroquette.

• Before we venture too deep into 2020, let’s look back for a moment at 2019’s “best” book covers, as judged by the sites Literary Hub, Spine, and The Casual Optimist. What do you think?

• Hah! Just as we thought all along: “Why Do So Many Book Covers Look the Same? Blame Getty Images.”

• “Craig Stevens discusses his life and career, including his classic role on Peter Gunn, as well as his long marriage to Alexis Smith, in this 1993 interview with cable TV host Skip E Lowe.”

• If you missed Killer Cover’s end-of-the-year tribute to Anglo-Scots painter and book-cover artist Tom Adams—who created iconic fronts for novels by Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, among others—you can catch up with that whole series here.

• David Zucchino recalls the notorious, long-ago white-supremacist takeover of Wilmington, North Carolina. He writes:

Throughout that summer and autumn, white men had been buying shotguns, six-shot pistols, and repeating rifles at hardware stores in Wilmington ..., a port city set in the low Cape Fear country along the state’s jagged coast. It was 1898, a tumultuous mid-term election year. The city’s white leadership had vowed to remove the city’s multi-racial government by the ballot or the bullet, or both. Few white
men in Wilmington intended to back their candidates that November without a firearm within easy reach. There was concern among whites in Wilmington, where they were outnumbered by blacks, that stores would run dry on guns, and that suppliers in the rest of the state and in South Carolina would be unable to meet demand.

• Chicago-born author Mike Resnick died this last Thursday of lymphoma at age 77. Although he’s most often thought of as a prolific and multiple award-winning producer of science-fiction stories, The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura observes that Resnick also penned “several mystery novels and fantasy novels with mystery elements. John Justice Mallory is a hard-boiled private detective in a fantastical New York, where humans co-habit with vampires and fairy tale beasts such as dragons. Mallory was introduced in Stalking the Unicorn (Tor, 1987) and featured in two more novels and a collection of short stories, Stalking the Zombie (American Fantasy, 2012). The Eli Paxton series features a Cincinnati private eye who appeared in Dog in the Manger (Alexander, 1995) and two more novels.”

• And while I had my attention turned elsewhere, The Rap Sheet somehow registered its 7,600th post.

Of Hype, Holmes, and Haunts

• First, Mystery Scene magazine brought in as contributors Lynn Kaczmarek and Chris Aldrich, following the closure of their Mystery News tabloid. Now, MS editor Kate Stine is touting a deal that adds author Lawrence Block to her stable of writers. His new column, “The Murders in Memory Lane,” will debut in the upcoming holiday issue of Mystery Scene. In it, says Stine, “This hard-hitting, whip-smart writer will share anecdotes, insights, and appreciations of the many people he’s met in his six-decade-long literary career.”

• After successfully presenting a weekend-long load of Saint-related posts in September, actor, novelist, and blogger Gary Dobbs has announced that he’ll try to do something similar with Sherlock Holmes during the weekend of November 7.

• Several familiar crime movie posters feature in this set.

• Actress Collin Wilcox, who played Mayella Ewell, the young white woman who falsely accused a black man (played by Brock Peters) of rape in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, has died of brain cancer at age 74. Writer and film historian Stephen Bowie has posted a nice remembrance of Wilcox (who is not to be confused with American mystery novelist Collins Wilcox).

• Holy nostalgia, Batman! I was just a kid when this film was released in 1966, and I went to see it with my parents and my brother at a drive-in theater. I had a cut-out of the familiar Batman logo from the TV series taped to the back window of our Volvo station wagon, and tried to create a Bat-signal with it using a flashlight. It didn’t work, of course. But I didn’t care. I got to see the movie, and that’s all that really mattered that night.

• From the Weird News file.

• I wasn’t a fan of the 1979 TV series A Man Called Sloane, which starred Robert Conrad (formerly of The Wild Wild West and Assignment: Vienna) as a freelance espionage agent. But I have to admire Christopher Mills’ commitment to watching all 12 episodes of that show in order to write about each and every one of them for his blog Spy-fi Channel. Mills’ review of the last ep, “The Shangri-la Syndrome,” was posted this morning. You can catch up with all of the previous installments here.

• I’ve pretty much given up on the latest U.S. TV season. It seems to offer just more of the same, and (thanks in part to Jay Leno’s hogging of the 10-11 p.m. NBC spot) too few hours in which to try anything new and different. (Hell, I’d settle for something tried and true, like a classic-style private eye show.) But I’m at least willing to give White Collar, the new USA Network series, a shot. Even if it does sound like a rip-off of Robert Wagner’s It Takes a Thief. White Collar debuts this Friday at 10 p.m.

• Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest medieval mystery series (Veil of Lies, Serpent in the Thorns) gets a cool new video trailer.

• And with just over a week to go before Halloween, the Web site Dread Central has come up with a “list of books and some movies every horror fan should at least take a look at, if not outright add to your book or DVD library.” More here. (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

Don’t Stop the Presses!

As all hardcore mystery fans know, this is Bouchercon week, the 40th gathering of crime-fiction enthusiasts, authors, agents, editors, and assorted gadflies in the otherwise calm and collected city of Indianapolis, Indiana. But while the conference will offer much in the way of celebrating this genre (panel discussions, dinners, parties, and the inevitable late nights spent in hotel saloons), there will also be a twinge of sadness, as this will be the final conference graced with the presence of Mystery News. The Anthony Award-winning bimonthly periodical from Black Raven Press will cease publication with the about-to-be-released October/November issue.

Mystery News under the stewardship of Lynn Kaczmarek and Chris Aldrich began in 1997, the “evil twins” of crime fiction having purchased the tabloid from founder Harriet Stay. It was always a labor of love and maintained editorial independence by surviving on subscription revenue only--no advertising ever crossed the eyes of Mystery News’ faithful readers. Yet, despite operating on the proverbial shoestring budget, and having to co-exist within the busy professional lives of Kaczmarek and Aldrich, the bimonthly never missed an issue, nor did it slump in quality over its 11-year run. (Full disclosure: I was a contributing columnist for more than 10 of those years, writing about new authors.)

While the demise of Mystery News is rather depressing, crime-fiction fans will still be well served by other publications, among them Crimespree Magazine, Deadly Pleasures, and Mystery Scene. The last of those is edited by Kate Stine, who was editor of The Armchair Detective (1967-1997) in its final days, and also edited The Armchair Detective Book of Lists (1995). Stine and Mystery Scene will assume the subscription rolls for Mystery News, as they did for The Drood Review of Mystery, another late and lamented journal that covered crime fiction. Stine’s impressive tenure as an editor makes her uniquely qualified to discuss the state of mystery magazines today, and I was fortunate to secure a brief interview with her as she prepared for Bouchercon. Ironically, our exchange took place on the same day Condé Nast Publications announced the termination of Gourmet Magazine and three of its other periodicals.

Stephen Miller: With the growth of the Internet and mystery-themed blogs that provide free content, can a magazine without advertising income continue to be viable?

Kate Stine: I think it’s tough if you don’t take advertising. The economics of a publication with postal and printing costs is very challenging. In addition to advertising, I think you have to have real subscription rates, because newsstand sales, which represents the third pillar, are difficult. [Mystery Scene is] in Barnes & Noble and Borders, but a lot of times what you end up doing is providing some entertainment for those customers while they buy expensive coffees. They don’t buy the magazine; they get returned, so we don’t sell through. You really have to rely on the other two components, subscriptions and advertising.

SM: How would you characterize the quality of mystery magazines you’ve seen over the years?

KS: The Armchair Detective was exceptional. I edited it for five years, but I wouldn’t take credit for what they built there. The writers had incredible expertise, like the professors and long-term collectors who just loved and studied the genre intensely. But it’s tough to get people to put the time and effort into magazines when they don’t get paid, which is what’s happening on the Internet. The writing on blogs is much more personal and in a lot of cases, it’s a lot of marketing, with writers promoting their own work. It isn’t the same thing, though.

SM: So, would I be correct in saying that the blogs aren’t picking up any of the slack left by departing magazines like Mystery News
and Drood Review?

KS: Some of them are. But they’re labors of love and it’s hard to cover the mystery world and do it justice as a hobby.

SM: Blogs and the Internet have broken down a lot of international barriers; we now know more about books published in Europe and other parts of the world. Does this expanding world of crime fiction make a magazine editor’s job more demanding?

KS: Because we’re a primarily U.S. and Canada publication, we focus on books available to our readers here, and most of them are not going to buy books from Amazon UK.

The Web certainly gives us a heads-up on things that are coming this way and it makes it incredibly easy to get ahold of people, which is wonderful. When I edited The Armchair Detective, finding writers for an interview could be a nightmare. Now, you can easily find someone’s e-mail and you can be talking to them the next day. Fortunately, I’m not the sole person keeping track of things at Mystery Scene. We have a great team of freelancers like Betty Webb on the independent publishers, and Jon L. Breen covers the reference books. If something is slipping past me, someone else will bring it up. In one way, it’s a challenge for a magazine to try and cover everything; but the economics of this is such that we’re not going to talk about people who aren’t available to our readers.

SM: How do you see the current landscape for crime-fiction-
focused magazines?

KS: You know, I don’t really know what to tell people other than this is a business. If you’re going to pay your writers, which is what we do, and [pay] the people in the office who handle the subscription stuff, you need to make it work as a business. I think it’s always been difficult. There weren’t that many magazines 20 years ago--it’s not like there were a dozen of them. They always come in and out of publication. I do wonder, though, what’s going to happen to us when electronic publishing gets to be more prevalent. Our job is to talk about what’s good to read and in a sense it’s not going to affect us. But, on the other hand, there are no good electronic readers for magazines yet. A good part of magazines is the design. I don’t think Mystery Scene will be going electronic, which is almost too bad because printing and postage are killing us. People were saying that things like the Kindle were a terrible thing, and I’m not sure that it is. It will be hard on booksellers, but as far as publishers and writers go, I’m not so sure it’s so bad.

SM: Well, we’ll all be a lot smarter about that in five years or so.

KS: We don’t even have a good guess about what will happen.

Everybody’s Doing It

When the folks behind Mystery Scene magazine move into the blogging world, they do it suddenly and in a big way. Editor Kate Stine sent an e-note around today, announcing that “There’s now a Mystery Scene MySpace page, a Crimespace page, and two new Mystery Scene blogs.” Those community Web pages will just have to get by on their own, without my comment. But the blogs ... now, those are interesting enough to remark upon.

The new Mystery Scene Blog is the more traditional of this pair, as it’s apparently going to draw on the talents and knowledge of Stine and her husband/co-publisher, Brian Skupin, as well as some of the mag’s contributors for posts about the history and current state of crime fiction. This blog allows the editors and writers a forum where they can remark on all things mystery-oriented, without concern about page space and word count, or waiting out a magazine production schedule and having to feature artwork with every entry. Of course, this is essentially what The Rap Sheet and other crime-fiction-oriented blogs do already, except that our content providers are usually fewer in number than what Mystery Scene might be able to field. (I wonder if Mystery Scene is actually paying real dough to its blog posters, unlike what the rest of us can do.)

That said, this Mystery Scene Blog makes a good showing straight out of the blocks with Kevin Burton Smith’s recap of a feature he wrote for the latest, 100th issue of the magazine, “100 Eyes of the Mystery Scene Era.” I commented on that piece last month, and am pleased to see that it can now reach readers beyond Mystery Scene’s circle of subscribers. The phenomenally talented Smith, who’s also the editor-creator of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, a contributing editor of January Magazine, and an irregular poster to The Rap Sheet, acknowledges in his personal blog that his list of fictional private eyes who have become prominent and/or important over the last two decades wasn’t comprehensive enough:

The problem, as Bob Seger once put it, was deciding what to leave in, and what to leave out. I wanted the list to be wide-ranging, including the expected, the unexpected and the inexplicable, a list of eyes whom I felt had somehow bent, folded and mutilated the genre--or otherwise stuck in my craw.

But I’ve been kicking myself ever since I first sent it off. How could I forget so-and-so? Why on earth did I include whatzizname? Why, why, why?

But worse are the other people--authors, fans, readers, many of whom I consider friends--who have volunteered to help out in the kicking department. And in some cases, I agree with them.

I was puzzled myself at some of the characters Smith excluded (I mean, how could he have left out Kris Nelscott’s Smokey Dalton, or Edward Wright’s John Ray Horn?). Nonetheless, his rundown represents an excellent primer for readers still relatively new to this genre, providing plenty of works--written, televised, or presented originally in theaters--that are worth catching up with, when one can lift his or her nose from the grindstone.

I’m only hoping that in the future, the Mystery Scene Blog will go well beyond what’s available in the magazine.

Already quite a bit more novel is Skupin’s Bookflings. To me, it’s most interesting elements are: (1) “Rolling Reviews”--two or three critical postings about a book as the reviewer is actually in the process of reading it, rather than just a comprehensive commentary at the end; and (2) “Something Old, Something New” reviews, which pair two books that have some similar characteristics but were published at markedly different times. For instance, Skupin critiques David Morrell’s Scavenger (2007) along with Tony Kenrick’s Blast (1983), in each of which a “former New York police detective ... is deliberately sucked into a drama he wants no part of, and ends up fighting to save the life of the woman he loves.” This is a terrific concept, designed to broaden people’s book-buying habits. As Skupin observes in his introductory note, “A lot of readers only read contemporary books, and don’t want to try something old-fashioned or out-of-date. And a lot of other readers are mired in the Golden Age, reading only tried-and-true books by their favorite writers. The contemporary group is missing out on some of the best books ever written, and the classic group is running out of things to read.” These “Something Old, Something New” reviews provide excellent literary bridges.

Both blogs have been added to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column roster, and we’ll keep you apprised of anything we see there that’s worth your reading, too.