And So Comes the End

As 2011 slips into the darkness, to be replaced by a fresh new year, we look back at some of the people--all significant to the world of crime and mystery fiction--who passed away during the last 12 months.

Gilbert Adair, 66, Scottish-born novelist, poet, and critic, who penned three Agatha Christie-ish whodunits--The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006), A Mysterious Affair of Style (2007), and And Then There Was No One (2009)--starring the “formidable” Evadne Mount.

Dick Adler, 74, a former magazine and newspaper editor in New York, and a contributor to TV Guide, who became the crime-fiction critic of the Chicago Tribune and much later jointed The Rap Sheet as a frequent blogger. In 2006, Adler received the Ellen Nehr Award for Best Mystery Reviewer from the American Crime Writers League.

James Arness, 88, who not only starred as Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running Gunsmoke, but led the casts of two other small-screen dramas: How the West Was Won (1976-1979) and McClain’s Law. Arness was the elder brother of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves.

John Barry, 77, a British film and television composer who developed the music for 11 James Bond films. He also created scores for the movies Born Free (1966), Out of Africa (1985), and Dances with Wolves (1990), and the theme for the 1971-1972 Tony Curtis/Roger Moore TV series The Persuaders!

Lilian Jackson Braun (Bettinger), 97, who for four decades wrote the popular Cat Who series of mystery novels, beginning with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966).

Alfred Burke, 92, who played Frank Marker, the lonely, unglamorous star of Public Eye, a 1965-1975 British TV series.

Milton T. Burton, 64, the author of four Texas-set crime novels: The Rogues’ Game (2005), The Sweet and the Dead (2006), Nights of the Red Moon (2010), and the forthcoming The Devil’s Odds (2012).

Charlie Callas, 83, a fast-talking and elastic-faced comedian who regularly appeared on The Andy Williams Show and The ABC Comedy Hour, and co-hosted The Joey Bishop Show. Callas played a small-time thief in the 1972 pilot for NBC’s The Snoop Sisters and a con man in the CBS private-eye drama Switch (1975-1978).

Ruth Cavin, 92, who distinguished herself for many years in the role of crime-fiction editor at St. Martin’s Press.

Jackie Cooper, 88, a child star turned TV director who portrayed Metropolis newspaper editor Perry White in the Superman films of the 1970s and ’80s, but also made appearances in such shows as Hawaii Five-O, McCloud, Ironside, Hec Ramsey, Police Story, and The Rockford Files. Cooper won Emmy Awards for his directorial efforts.

Peter Falk, 83, who starred as a disheveled but brilliant Los Angeles police detective in the TV series Columbo.

Gerald Perry Finnerman, 79, who served as the primary director of photography for the original Star Trek series, and later worked on The Bold Ones, Hec Ramsey, Kojak, Police Woman, The New Mike Hammer, and Moonlighting.

Robert Foster, 73, a television writer and producer whose credits included episodes of Run for Your Life, The Bold Ones, The Snoop Sisters, Nichols, Kate McShane, and Chicago Story. He was also executive producer of the 1980s action series Knight Rider.

Anne Francis, 80, who co-starred (with Leslie Nielsen) in the 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet before capturing the sexy title role in Honey West, a 1965-1966 ABC-TV series based on characters created by Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling and his wife, Gloria. Francis later guest-starred in such shows as Banacek, Ellery Queen, Search, Assignment: Vienna, and Riptide.

Ariana Franklin (aka Diana Norman), 77, a Fleet Street journalist turned author who composed four novels featuring 12th-century English coroner-investigator Adelia Aguilar, including Mistress of the Art of Death, which won the Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2007.

Joe Gores, 79, a onetime private eye and repo man who wrote the Dan Kearney and Associates (DKA) detective series, the 1975 novel Hammett (based on the life of Dashiell Hammett), and 2009’s Spade & Archer, a prequel to The Maltese Falcon. During his career, Gores won three Edgar Awards as well as the Maltese Falcon Award (Japan’s highest commendation in the mystery-fiction field), and he served for a time as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Martin H. Greenberg, 70, a prolific editor-anthologist whose mystery and crime-fiction works included Holmes for the Holidays (1998), The Big Book of Noir (1998), Purr-Fect Crime (1997), and Murder Most Irish (1996). Greenberg was given the 1995 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Edward Hardwicke, 78, who for many years played Doctor John Watson opposite Jeremy Brett in the memorable British TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Joyce Harrington, 79, the author of No One Knows My Name (1981), Family Reunion (1982), and Dreamz of the Night (1987). She was given an Edgar Award in 1973 for her first short story, “The Purple Shroud.”

Clark Hulings, 88, a Florida-born painter who, early in his career, produced a wide variety of paperback fronts for mainstream, historical, and crime-fiction works.

William Johnston, 86, the author of numerous movie and TV tie-in novels, including Get Smart! (1965), Banyon (1971), and Klute (1971). In 2010, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ gave Johnston The Faust, its Grand Master Award for excellence.

H.R.F. (Henry Reymond Fitzwalter) Keating, 84, the British crime novelist and scholar who concocted standalone thrillers as well as a prominent series of books featuring Indian detective Inspector Ganesh Ghote. In 1996 the Crime Writers’ Association gave Keating its Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement.

Paul Lindsay, 68, a former Detroit-based FBI agent who--under the pseudonym Noah Boyd--penned the broadly acclaimed novels The Bricklayer (2010) and Agent X (2011).

Sidney Lumet, 86, an American film producer whose work included 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Prince of the City (1981), and Paul Newman’s The Verdict (1982).

Arthur Marx, 89, the only son of comedian Groucho Marx, who--in addition to writing TV scripts, biographies, and memoirs--penned three mystery novels, beginning with Set to Kill (1993).

James McKimmey (aka James Earl McKimmey Jr.), 87, a once-prominent, Nebraska-born author of the Gold Medal paperbacks era, who is remembered for such books as The Perfect Victim (1958), Winner Take All (1959), The Long Ride (1961), and Squeeze Play (1962). McKimmey reportedly died in Nevada on January 19, 2011. An excellent, two-part interview with the author can be found in Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals (part I is here, part II is here).

Harry Morgan, 96, who was cast as Los Angeles Police Officer Bill Gannon in Dragnet 1967, opposite Jack Webb. Morgan went on to co-star with Robert Conrad in The D.A., appear as Doctor Amos Coogan in Hec Ramsey, join the M*A*S*H cast as stern but soft-hearted Colonel Sherman T. Potter, and play Hal Linden’s con man father in Blacke’s Magic. In addition, Morgan portrayed New York Police Inspector Richard Queen in the unsold 1971 TV pilot film Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You, opposite former Rat Pack member Peter Lawford.

Francesco Quinn, 48, the son of film legend Anthony Quinn. He appeared earlier this year as Gilberto Nieddu, police detective Aurelio Zen’s private-eye friend, in the Masterpiece Mystery! mini-series Zen. But Quinn had been previously featured in The Glades, The Shield, CSI: Miami, and Miami Vice.

Stanley Robertson, 85, a former Ebony magazine associate editor who became NBC-TV’s manager of film program operations on the West Coast and later that same network’s vice president of motion pictures for television. Robertson helped bring the now-famous NBC Mystery Movie “wheel series” to the air in the 1970s.

Pietro “Pete” Rugolo, 95, a onetime chief arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, who later became the music director of Capitol Records and a composer for films and television series. The Sicilian-born Rugolo counted among his credits the themes to such TV shows as The Thin Man, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Fugitive, The Outsider, Run for Your Life, and Cool Million.

Enid Schantz, 72, a Colorado book critic and bookseller, and the co-founder (with her husband, Tom Schantz) of The Rue Morgue Press. The Schantzes received the Mystery Writers of America’ Raven Award in 2001 by for their contributions to the genre.

Leonard B. Stern, 88, a Hollywood screenwriter and the producer behind such familiar TV series as Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, The Snoop Sisters, Faraday and Company, and Rosetti and Ryan.

Craig Thomas (aka David Craig Owen Thomas), 68, the Welsh author of such thrillers as Firefox (1977), Snow Falcon (1980), and Jade Tiger (1982). Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site describes Thomas as “the inventor of the techno-thriller genre.”

George J. “Rhino” Thompson, 69, the author of Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion (1993) and Hammett’s Moral Vision (2007).

Newton Thornburg, 81, who is certainly remembered best as the author of Cutter and Bone (1976).

Michael Van Rooy, 42, the Canadian author of An Ordinary Decent Criminal (2005) and A Criminal to Remember (2010), who died of an apparent heart attack in Montreal while on a book tour.

Barbara Whitehead, 80, an ex-chair of England’s York Family History Society, who started out writing historical romances but switched to mysteries with Playing God (1988). She went on to produce eight novels about York Police Chief Inspector Robert Southwell. As fellow author Martin Edwards writes, “she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”

Peter Yates, 81, a British film director best known for making the 1968 cop thriller Bullitt, which starred Steve McQueen and his GT V8 Ford Mustang. Yates also gave us The Hot Rock (1972), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Dresser (1983), and The House on Carroll Street (1988). And in the 1960s he directed episodes of the TV programs The Saint and Danger Man.

Have we forgotten anyone in our accounting? Feel free to suggest additions in the Comments section of this post.

READ MORE: “Passages,” by Linda L. Richards (January Magazine); “The Ones We Lost,” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen).

Read Adair

I am sorry to admit that I’ve never read the work of Scottish-born novelist, poet, and critic Gilbert Adair, but when I read that he had passed away on December 9, I at least recognized his name. Yet I knew it principally because of three Agatha Christie spoofs he penned in his later years, all featuring the “formidable” whodunit author Evadne Mount: The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006), A Mysterious Affair of Style (2007), and And Then There Was No One (2009).

Prior to working on those, he also produced books such as The Holy Innocents (1988) and The Key of the Tower (1997), and was a film critic for Time Out London magazine. More complete and warm remembrances can be found in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, and Time Out. Adair died at age 66 from a brain hemorrhage, just over a year after he lost his sight to a stroke.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

READ MORE: “R.I.P., Gilbert Adair,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).

Another Witness to TV History Lost

It’s likely that not everyone was as struck as I was yesterday by reading this obituary in the Los Angeles Times:

Stanley Robertson, who broke color barriers as a pioneering black network television program executive at NBC in the 1960s and ’70s and later as a movie studio production executive, has died. He was 85.

Robertson, who had been in poor health recently, died Nov. 16 of an apparent heart attack at his Bel-Air home, said his wife, Ruby.

An associate editor at Ebony magazine before quitting in 1954 to study telecommunications, Robertson launched his television career as a page at NBC in Burbank after graduating from USC in 1957.

Rising through the network’s music library and music rights department, he became NBC’s manager of film program operations on the West Coast in 1965. In that role, Robertson oversaw the network’s prime-time filmed series, including Star Trek, The Name of the Game and Bill Cosby’s 1969 sitcom, The Bill Cosby Show.

In 1970, Robertson was appointed to NBC’s newly established executive position of director of motion pictures for television on the West Coast. A year later, he became NBC’s first black vice president when he was promoted to vice president of motion pictures for television.

One thing that obit doesn’t say, is that during the ’70s Stan Robertson was instrumental in bringing The NBC Mystery Movie to the air. Because of my work on a series of posts for The Rap Sheet connected to the 40th anniversary of that “wheel series,” I was interested in interviewing Robertson. William Link, the co-creator (with Richard Levinson) of Columbo and Tenafly, kindly contacted Robertson on my behalf and provided me with a telephone number for the former network exec. I called Robertson in September, hoping to do a phone interview with him, but he said he was feeling ill and asked that I first send him my questions via the regular U.S. mail. (He was apparently not an e-mail user.) I did just that, adding a note to Robertson, suggesting that we talk soon by phone.

Unfortunately, I was never able to reach him again. And now I can only send my condolences to his family.

This saddens me in more ways than one. So here’s my pitch: Before other people intimately associated with The NBC Mystery Movie become similarly unavailable, I would like to talk with them. I hadn’t intended to write the comprehensive history of that wheel series, but that’s what I find myself doing. Therefore, if anybody among the Rap Sheet’s readership knows how to contact screenwriters, producers, or actors who were involved in the 14 crime dramas that once showed under the NBC Mystery Movie umbrella, I ask that you please drop me an e-mail note here. I would like to talk with those folks.

One of the Busiest Actors on TV

I hate to start out with bad news in the morning, but it can’t be helped today. As The New York Times reports, “Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series M*A*S*H, died Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. His son Charles confirmed his death, saying Mr. Morgan had been treated for pneumonia recently.”

Back in 2007, on the occasion of his 92nd birthday, I composed a longish post about Morgan for The Rap Sheet, and I don’t want to reiterate all of that. But I do wish to honor Morgan for his contributions to some of the crime dramas I remember best from my youth: Dragnet, Hec Ramsey, and Blacke’s Magic. He also appeared with Robert Conrad in The D.A. and co-starred with Peter Lawford in the unsold 1971 TV pilot film, Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You. (A short clip from that film can be viewed here.)

Morgan seemed never to give less than a solid performance.

By the way, the Times’ obituary includes an observation that, in our present era of redundant and tedious self-promotion, strikes me as quite wonderful and consistent with this actor having been brought up in an earlier age of the entertainment industry: “Harry Morgan never sat as a guest on a talk show, Charles Morgan said ; it did not seem appropriate or necessary. ‘Appearing on a talk show to focus on himself because he was Harry Morgan,’ he said, ‘was not nearly as natural as appearing in a role as Pete Porter or Bill Gannon or Colonel Potter, or as the cowboy drifter who wandered into town with Henry Fonda and got wrapped up in a vigilante brigade in Ox-Bow Incident.”

(Hat tip to The Education of a Pulp Writer.)

READ MORE: “Harry Morgan, 1915-2011: An appreciation,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times); “The Late, Great Harry Morgan,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts).

Burton Gone, but His Work Lives On

Word comes via writer Patti Abbott that East Texas mystery-fictionist Milton T. Burton, author of Nights of the Red Moon (2010) and the forthcoming The Devil’s Odds, has passed away. According to the Down & Out Books Web site, Burton “was born in 1947 in East Texas and raised locally. He has been employed as a college teacher, cattleman, and political consultant. He has four grown children as well as four grandchildren. He is very much a partisan of the South.”

In addition to his four crime novels, Burton penned short stories, at least two of which are available online: “The Apprentice” and “Grassy Knoll.” Kevin R. Tipple critiqued his short-fiction collection, Texas Noir just a few months back. And a year ago, Burton composed a “How I Came to Write This Book” essay about Nights of the Red Moon for Abbott’s blog. Fellow Texas wordsmith Bill Crider once remarked that “Milton Burton writes about East Texas with wit, spice, and insight.”

After Burton’s debut novel, The Rogues’ Game, was published in 2005, Jerome Weeks of The Dallas Morning News wrote a profile of the author in which he related this delightful anecdote:

At 25, Mr. Burton already knew he wanted to write a novel someday--but didn’t start writing until he was given an old Packard Bell computer in 1996.

“I’m a poor typist,” he explains. “My writing career had to wait for the coming of word processing.”

Well, the author tried after that to make the most of the career he had always wanted. In addition to The Devil’s Odds, due out from Minotaur Books in February 2012, Burton also reportedly has another book, These Mortal Remains, coming in early 2013.

READ MORE: “East Texas Author Milton Travis Burton Dies at Age 64,” by Tim Monzingo (TylerPaper.com).

Unlucky Thompson

Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site brings this news:

It has been found out that George J. “Rhino” Thompson died on June 7, 2011, at his home in Cayuga, New York. He was well-known within law enforcement as a creator of Verbal Judo, a communications methodology to “defuse violence through words and professional presence.”

Before becoming a police officer, he was a university English professor. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on Dashiell Hammett, “The Problem of Moral Vision in Dashiell Hammett’s Novels,” in 1972 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. The dissertation was reprinted in seven issues of The Armchair Detective (TAD) starting with the May 1973 issue. His critical analysis was arguably the first one on Hammett. ... [H]e finally updated his doctoral dissertation, which was published for the first time in book form as Hammett’s Moral Vision (Vince Emery, 2007) with a new introduction by William F. Nolan. He was 69.

The Emory books site features a bit more about Thompson.

Dick Adler Passes Away

I received some very sad news this morning: Dick Adler, who for a decade and a half was the crime-fiction critic of the Chicago Tribune, died last Friday, November 11, at age 74.

Although I never had a chance to meet Dick in person, he was a longtime contributor to The Rap Sheet. In fact, his first post appeared here in the same month the blog launched, back in May 2006. Dick subsequently sent me reviews and occasional observations on culture for posting. In 2007, he began writing a serial novel in The Rap Sheet called Men’s Adventure, inspired by his years as an editor at Argosy magazine (beginning in 1956), but had to give up that project just two months later due to what he described, very vaguely, as “major problems” with his health. Not long after that, he relinquished his Chicago Tribune post, but continued to pen material for The Rap Sheet. In the fall of 2010, he launched another serial novel online, Forget About It: The First Al Zymer Senile Detective Mystery, and as near as I can tell, got as far as Chapter 77 before taking a break in June of this year. (The first sections of Forget About It can be found in this archive, with more of the story available here.)

Even though we knew each other only through e-mail correspondence, I enjoyed Dick’s wit, shared his appreciation for crime fiction and TV crime dramas (he’d been a contributor to TV Guide back in the 1970s, writing about everything from Dragnet creator Jack Webb to Richard Roundtree’s Shaft), and was always glad to receive his recommendation of a new novel--often something that had never even caught my attention before. And he was also there to boost my spirits on those occasions when I was feeling overworked and under-appreciated at the blogging game.

Because I didn’t know him well, I was interested to read an obituary that appeared this last weekend in the Los Angeles Times:

(Click on this image for a more-readable enlargement.)

I’d known previously that he was the author of an e-book called The Mozart Code (1999), and that he wrote, with former California Governor Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown, a non-fiction work called Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor’s Education on Death Row (1989). I was also aware that he’d been honored for his mystery-fiction reviewing with the coveted Ellen Nehr Award. But I wasn’t aware that he had two Maggie Awards from the Western Publishing Association for his editing, or that he’d composed, with Anatole Verbitzky, an account of the infamous, 1980s Richard Miller espionage case. It’s amazing what you can learn from reading obituaries, but it would be far better to have learned those facts of his history from Dick himself.

Now, that’s no longer possible.

* * *

Below, I am going to post tributes sent my way by authors and critics who appreciated Dick Adler’s years of service to the crime-fiction community. Others who would like to pitch in their own tributes should send them to me here: jpwrites@wordcuts.org.

Tom Nolan, the Southern California author of Ross Macdonald: A Biography and Artie Shaw, King of the Clarinet: His Life and Times, is also a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal’s book-review and arts pages:

I knew Dick Adler first as the writer of an excellent 1967 profile (in the Los Angeles Times’ West magazine) of Ross Macdonald, then in the 1970s as a West Coast magazine editor, then as a friend, and last but not least as a book reviewer who was more than generous to my published efforts.

Some of Dick’s fine reviews were gathered a few years ago in Dreams of Justice: Mysteries as Social Documents (Poisoned Pen Press), a volume whose preface I was honored to write.

To paraphrase what I said then:

No writer who came under Dick Adler’s scrutiny could fail to appreciate his knack for seeing and celebrating the best a book had to offer. And no interested reader could help but benefit from Dick’s educated guidance. He had a diesel-strength love for good writing and was blessed with what Isaac Singer called “the greatest gift of all: the gift of enthusiasm.”

He expressed that enthusiasm in a style worthy of the books he explicated.

He was open to all subgenres; but he preferred to write about and bring attention to newer writers. When he did assess a veteran, he took the time and had the knowledge to analyze a late work in the context of an entire oeuvre.

Whatever Dick reviewed, he could always pinpoint what made an author special.

To describe the premise of a novel or thriller in a way that conveys its charms without giving away its secrets, to state your opinion in a non-egotistical way, and to convey a book’s flavor through your own written prose are the marks of a great reviewer. Dick was that, and then some. Like Anthony Boucher, he wrote not just for the moment but for the ages.

I know I’m going to be referring to his book for years to come.

And I can never repay his personal kindness.

Sarah Weinman is news editor for Publishers Marketplace, and was, until early 2011, the proprietor of the crime- and mystery-fiction blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. Her work has appeared in publications on both sides of the border and across the Atlantic:

The world of crime fiction is truly diminished with Dick Adler no longer in it. He wrote and reviewed for a great many places, but by the time I heard of him he was deep into a long, productive stint as the Chicago Tribune’s mystery and thriller critic. His pieces were thoughtful and considered, eager to highlight rising stars (he was, for example, early on the Olen Steinhauer bandwagon) as much as champion the greats or explain why a book didn’t quite work--for him, or generally.

Though Dick and I never met--a real regret of mine, exacerbated by being on opposite sides of the country--his presence was huge in my life. If a piece of mine ran somewhere, there came the ping of my Inbox with a kind note from him. I know he did the same for so many other fellow reviewers and writers. The greatest pleasure came from working alongside him and Oline Cogdill for the two successive stints we judged the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. I hear complaints about the process, its difficulties, and the fights between principals, but that wasn’t us. We disagreed on choices, sure, but the debates were lively and spirited, involving mutual respect and admiration. And a lot of laughter.

I hadn’t heard from Dick in a few months, and life being what it is, the time flew by. He had a great many health problems, but he’d managed to overcome some of the worst and return to his first and greatest love, writing fiction (exemplified by the serial, Men’s Adventure, that ran on this very site a couple of years ago). And with him gone it’s too late for me to drop him a note or give him a call to express how much I admired and thought the world of him. I’m not alone in thinking that. I hope it’s some comfort to his family that Dick was well loved in the mystery world.

Gary Phillips is the Shamus Award-nominated author of The Underbelly and the Ivan Monk private-eye series, as well as the writer of Moonstone’s new Derek Flint graphic novel series:

It was my great pleasure to be friends with Dick Adler for a number of years. How could I not be buddies with a guy who did a pretty damn good imitation of Sydney Greenstreet and shared my vice for a fine cigar? Dick was a longtime fan and reviewer of crime and mystery fiction as well as a writer of such in his own right. Several of us, including John Shannon and Dick Lochte, would gather now and then at the Farmer’s Market here in L.A. This was before it got to be a hipster hangout, but we’d come together as the Suicide Club, named for the infamous underground league of rogues created by Robert Louis Stevenson.

We did not plot the actual demise of ourselves or anyone else, except on the page, as we discussed ideas, old movies, new books and bemoaned the current state of the writing game--all the while having coffee and a beignets or two ... or three. Tonight I’ll light a Macanudo on my desk here and belt down a couple of blasts of Scotch. I’ll think about those times with Mr. Adler and not be sad about his passing so much as glad we got to spend some time together.

Rest easy, man.

Dick Lochte is president of the Private Eye Writers of America, the co-author (with Al Roker) of The Talk Show Murders, and the author of the forthcoming Blues in the Night:

I met Dick Adler many, many years ago, at a luncheon for contributors to Los Angeles magazine. At the time, along with other journalistic gigs, he was doing a sort of Page Two gossip column for the Herald-Examiner in which he’d recently written a few snarky lines about something I’d put in my book column in the L.A. Times. I was not all that happy to be seated next to him. That attitude lingered for at least a minute. Dick was one of the truly great dining companions. A witty, knowledgeable raconteur who could converse on any number of subjects--though movies, travel, opera and, of course, books were at the top of his list. He was, as he often put it in a better-than-fair imitation of Sydney Greenstreet, “a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”

Thinking about it now, I realize that the five or six times we’d meet each year were always at table and the conversation, if not the food, was always excellent. The last time was a few months ago when Dick was feeling well enough for visitors. John Shannon and I drove to the sprawling home about 40 minutes out of the city where he and his wife, Jane, lived in the middle of a lemon grove. Dick had undergone a series of brutal medical procedures that had slowed him down physically. But his conversational and critical faculties were in fine form. He was still a man who liked talking. He was a good friend.

John Shannon is the creator of the Jack Liffey mystery series, the latest installment of which is A Little Too Much:

I met Dick for the first time for lunch right after he had reviewed one of my first mysteries. I had a personal policy of bribing all reviewers after the fact with a lunch, and I found out that despite writing for the Chicago Trib, he lived in L.A. My very first impression of Dick, which turned out to be dead wrong in the first minute, was that he was going to be a bit overpowering, since he looked a lot like Sidney Greenstreet (and could do a passable impression, too). But Dick turned out to be one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met, always full of life, always supportive, and always entertaining, and we started meeting for lunch regularly.

Later I told him I’d heard of a breakfast club in Marin founded by work-at-home computer nerds and maybe we could try something similar to help socialize us stay-at-home writers. Dick started recruiting folks with a mystery and journalism background, and so was born the Suicide Club, which met for late breakfast about once a month for years, eventually ending up in front of the Cajon stand at the Farmer’s Market. Dick was the core of it and he named it after the Robert Louis Stevenson novel about a tontine (look it up).

The club faded a bit when Bruce Cook (pen name Bruce Alexander) died and then collapsed when Dick moved out to Ventura for his health. I visited out there as much as I could and it was heartening to watch Dick struggle mightily against gathering debilities. Few people could so faithfully follow Dylan Thomas, though I rarely saw Dick rage. He just told the gods that he refused to budge.

No one could fill a room with his remarkable and lovable presence like Dick, and the whole world as I know it is much smaller with him gone.

Linda L. Richards is the author of Death Was the Other Woman and Hitting Back. She also edits January Magazine:

So sorry to hear about Dick! If I may say, he always struck me as the perfect critic as he came to the genre with a passion so real, it was visible in every word he wrote. A wonderful blend of auteur and fanboy whose trenchant commentary on our evolving genre will be deeply missed.

David J. Montgomery is the thriller/mystery critic for The Daily Beast and the Chicago Sun-Times:

For several years Dick Adler was the mystery critic at the Chicago Tribune, while I held the same position at the Sun-Times. We were a far cry from Siskel & Ebert, but I was very proud to be the cross-town counterpart of such an esteemed critic. Dick reviewed mysteries for decades, and he was a man of fine taste and judgment. He mostly wrote round-up columns and could always be counted on to highlight a worthy book that might otherwise have been overlooked. As such, he was a definite influence in my own career. He did a great service to both readers and writers with his time in the critic’s chair, and his hard work will be missed.

Marcus Sakey, author of The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes:

I did not know Dick intimately, but I always found him to be a real gentlemen, all class. And of course one doesn’t need to know him to know what a massive impact he had on the crime-fiction field. He was more than a critic; he was a passionate fan. He’ll be missed.

Friends for Life, Brothers Forever

I missed spotting this sad news before, because at the time it broke I was rushing off to Bouchercon in St. Louis. But actor James Garner’s elder brother, Jack--a retired golf pro who was often seen in The Rockford Files, Bret Maverick, and other of his brother’s film and TV projects (as well as in productions separate from James Garner’s)--died last month at age 84. Our belated condolences go out to his family.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Robertson

Sad news from the Los Angeles Times:

Cliff Robertson, who starred as John F. Kennedy in a 1963 World War II drama and later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a mentally disabled bakery janitor in the movie “Charly,” died Saturday, one day after his 88th birthday.

Robertson, who also played a real-life role as the whistle-blower in the check-forging scandal of then-Columbia Pictures President David Begelman that rocked Hollywood in the late 1970s, died at Stony Brook University Medical Center on New York’s Long Island, according to Evelyn Christel, his longtime personal secretary. A family statement said he died of natural causes.

In a more than 50-year career in films, Robertson appeared in some 60 movies, including “PT 109,” “My Six Loves,” “Sunday in New York,” “The Best Man,” “The Devil’s Brigade,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Obsession” and “Star 80.”

Among his lesser roles were guest-star appearances on such TV series as The Untouchables, Riverboat, and Batman. I also remember him fondly from the 1973 TV movie The Man Without a Country and the 1977 mini-series Washington: Behind Closed Doors. Click here for a more thorough catalogue of Robertson’s work.

“A Cop Trapped in an Agent’s Suit”

The federal law-enforcement blog Tickle the Wire is reporting that Paul Lindsay, the former Detroit-based FBI agent who went on to write novels under both his own name and the pseudonym Noah Boyd (The Bricklayer, Agent X), “died peacefully Thursday night at a Boston hospital of pneumonia with his family by his side. He was 68.”

Lindsay, explains Tickle the Wire editor Allan Lengel, “had been diagnosed in 2005 with a blood cancer that compromised his white blood cell count, the possible result of his exposure to chemical defoliates when he served in the Marines in Vietnam ...”

The author is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

READ MORE: “Ex-FBI Agent and Prolific Author Paul Lindsay: He Did It His Way,” by Greg Stejskal (Tickle the Wire).

Greenberg’s Work Is Done Here

This has certainly not been a good week for the mystery-fiction community. First we saw Columbo star Peter Falk go to that great crime scene in the sky. Now comes the announcement that editor and anthologist Martin H. Greenberg has passed away at age 70. His friend and colleague, Ed Gorman, reports that “Marty died peacefully this afternoon in his sleep at home in Green Bay, Wisconsin.”

A political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Greenberg worked over the years not only with Gorman but also with Isaac Asimov, Jon L. Lellenberg, Bill Pronzini, and others to produce short-story collections such as Holmes for the Holidays (1998), The Big Book of Noir (1998), Purr-Fect Crime (1997), and Murder Most Irish (1996).

Bill Crider shares his thoughts online about Greenberg’s demise, as do Max Allan Collins and Russell Davis.

POSTSCRIPT: Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site offers some additional information about Greenberg and his career, which I think is worth noting. He was “called ‘the king of anthologies,’ editing, singularly and collaboratively, too many anthologies in the science-fiction, mystery, military, and romance genres to list them all here,” Kimura writes. “He co-edited Stalkers (ROC, 1990; with Ed Gorman), 14 Vicious Valentines (Avon, 1988; with Isaac Asimov, etc.), The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories (Carroll & Graf, 1988; with Bill Pronzini) among others. He received the 1995 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and The Tony Hillerman Companion (HarperCollins, 1994; edited singularly) and The Fine Art of Murder (Carroll & Graf, 1993; co-edited by Jon L. Breen, Ed Gorman, and Larry Segriff) were Edgar-nominated in the critical/biographical category.” He adds that Greenberg’s death came “after a long battle with cancer.”

READ MORE: “Marty Greenberg Obit,” by Mike Stotter
(Shotsmag Confidential).

Good-bye, Columbo

Yes, I know American actor Peter Falk--who died Thursday night at age 83--did many other things before starring in the long-running TV series Columbo. To quote from The New York Times’ obituary, he had “a wide-ranging career in comedy and drama, in the movies and onstage ... He was nominated for two Oscars; appeared in original stage productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller; worked with the directors Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Blake Edwards and Mike Nichols; and co-starred with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis and Jason Robards.” (The International Movie Database [IMDb] offers a lengthy rundown of his credits).

However, like author Ed Lynskey, I shall always remember Falk best as rumpled but shrewd Los Angeles police detective Lieutenant Columbo (no official first name), a role in which he first appeared 43 years ago. Along with McCloud and McMillan & Wife, Columbo--created by William Link and Richard Levinson--became a bedrock element of the 1970s “wheel series,” the NBC Mystery Movie. And Falk quickly established his protagonist as “Joe Everyman,” according to Link--a cop who didn’t exhibit the investigative pretensions of many classic fictional sleuths, but in fact had no shortage of wits. “[H]e’s got a brain like a computer, although he hides it,” Link says. “And that’s the way he sucks these murderers in. ... He doesn’t seem like the brightest guy, not the sharpest knife in the drawer; he’s always talking about his wife and relatives. So [the murderers] give him leeway. But he’s just conning them there before he goes in for the kill.”

Writing earlier today on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, author Lee Goldberg captured Columbo’s appeal nicely:

Yes, Columbo was brilliant, as outrageously so as Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes. But thanks to Falk’s humanity and humor, his pitch-perfect performance and shrewd choices, he made Columbo more than a character to us and much more than a collection of colorful quirks. He made him a living, breathing person.

With his hang-dog looks, driving up in his wretched car (personally selected by Falk from the Universal Studios motor pool), schlepping into the crime scene in his wrinkled overcoat (pulled from Falk’s own closet), looking at everything with his one, good eye while chewing on a cigar stub, Columbo was immediately relatable to us, to people the world over, in a way that no TV cop had ever been before ... or has been since. We’d all met guys like him. Many of us were guys like him. ...

In every story, Falk’s Columbo showed us what a grave mistake it was to judge a person by how they dressed, the car they drove, or how much education they had. Every time he brought down one of those rich, highly educated, supremely self-confident, outrageously good-looking murderers, he not only chipped away at our ridiculous notions of what makes a hero, he offered us escape in an entirely different way. Falk made us believe, through his deceptively simple performance, that we didn’t have to be rich, well-dressed, or have an Ivy League education to be the smartest person in the room ... nor did we have to be physically perfect, and the consummate tough guy, to be a man.

We just had to be true to ourselves.

I’ve written many times on this page about Columbo and Falk and the series’ development, because that show and character meant a great deal to me when I was growing up. The NBC Mystery Movie first got me interested in crime fiction, and I have been a loyal fan ever since. I own all of the regular Columbo episodes on DVD (though not the subsequent teleflicks), and I was thrilled last year at the chance to interview William Link about that show and his collection of Columbo short stories. To me and many others, I suspect, Falk’s Columbo--with his cigars, his wont to ask “just one more question,” his battered Peugeot, his unseen but evidently extensive family, his lethargic basset hound, and his stealthy genius--became more than a familiar figure; he became a friend. And the news that Falk, and with him the lieutenant, has died comes as a shock. Even though, with the actor’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease, we knew he was not long for this world.

As a small tribute to Columbo, I’ve gathered here some videos--samplings of an acting career well spent, and a series destined to live on well past the hour of Falk’s funeral. They don’t fill the gap of Falk’s absence. But they remind us why that absence seems momentous.

A preview of the Columbo series on DVD:



Columbo with John Cassavetes in 1972’s “Étude in Black”:



Columbo with Robert Conrad in 1974’s “An Exercise in Fatality”:



Columbo’s less-than-elegant descent of a canyon crime scene:



Peter Falk, in character, takes part in a 1977 Dean Martin roast:



READ MORE: “Peter Falk, 1927-2011,” by Andrew O’Hehir (Salon); “Remembering Peter Falk: His 10 Best Movies,” by Gary Susman (The Moviefone Blog).

Peter Falk Is Gone. Long Live Peter Falk!

I’ll have more to say this afternoon about the Columbo star’s death, but for now, here are the basics, courtesy of the Associated Press:

Peter Falk, the stage and movie actor who became identified as the squinty, rumpled detective in Columbo, which spanned 30 years in prime-time television and established one of the most iconic characters in movie police work, has died. He was 83.

Falk died Thursday in his Beverly Hills home, according to a statement released Friday by family friend Larry Larson.

READ MORE: “Peter Falk, TV’s Columbo, Dead at 83,” by Greg Braxton (Los Angeles Times).

Newton Thornburg Has Passed Away

I was sorry to read in The Guardian that American novelist Newton Thornburg, the author most prominently of Cutter and Bone (1976), died in early May at age 81. He’d evidently been paralyzed by a stroke back in 1998 and had been left wheelchair-bound, living in a retirement home near Seattle ever since. Sadly, Thornburg’s passing seems to have generated little public notice.

If you haven’t already read it, check out Bob Cornwell’s interview with Thornburg, which appeared at the Tangled Web site a few years ago.

From Mad Libs to “McMillan”

Some sad news today from the Los Angeles Times:

Leonard Stern, an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director whose career in television spanned “The Honeymooners,” “Get Smart” and “McMillan & Wife” and whose additional career in publishing included co-creating the classic Mad Libs word game books, has died. He was 88.

Stern, a founding partner of the Price Stern Sloan publishing company, died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a 15-month illness, said his daughter-in-law, Laura Stern.

Funny, I was just watching an episode from the second season DVD set of McMillan & Wife and thinking about how much I’d enjoyed that NBC Mystery Movie series when it was first broadcast in the 1970s. Looking through his credits in the International Movie Database (IMDb), I see that Stern was also behind several other Mystery Movie segments: The Snoop Sisters, Faraday and Company, and Lanigan’s Rabbi. And he produced the Richard Widmark TV pilot, Brock’s Last Case. Amid all of those fine contributions, it’s easy to forget that he was also responsible for the abysmal Holmes & Yo-Yo.

My condolences go out to Stern’s family.

READ MORE: “Leonard Stern, Get Smart Producer, Dies at 88”
(The HMSS Weblog); “The Passings Parade,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Thrilling Days of Yesteryear).

Braun Is Gone

Sad news from Henderson, North Carolina’s Times-News:

Lilian Jackson Braun, whom The New York Times labeled “the new detective of the year” after the debut of her first “The Cat Who ...” novel in 1966, died Saturday at the Hospice House of the Carolina Foothills in Landrum, S.C. She was 97. ...

Braun's death was announced by her husband of 33 years, Earl Bettinger, to whom the author always referred in her book dedications as “The Husband Who.”

Braun died of natural causes. No services are planned.

You’ll find more information about Braun’s life and literary efforts here. Our condolences go out to her family.

(Hat tip to Steve Lewis of Mystery*File.)

Literary Greatness Recognized

From one of my favorite writers, William Grimes of The New York Times, comes a poignant and important obituary of novelist and psychoanalyst Hans Keilson. It begins:

Hans Keilson, a German-born psychoanalyst who won literary fame at the very end of his long life when two of his long-forgotten works of fiction, set in Nazi-occupied Europe, were republished to great acclaim, died on Tuesday in Hilversum, the Netherlands. He was 101.

His death was announced by his longtime German publisher, S. Fischer Verlag.

Dr. Keilson, a physician by training, published his first novel at 23. That book, “Life Goes On,” offered a dark picture of German political life between the wars, reflected in the troubles encountered by Max, a Jewish store owner modeled on Dr. Keilson’s father, a textile merchant. It was banned by the Nazis in 1934.

Two years later Dr. Keilson emigrated to the Netherlands with his future wife, Gertrud Manz. He began a new novel, “The Death of the Adversary,” about a young Jewish man’s experiences in Germany as the Nazis gain a grip on power, but he put the manuscript aside after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940 forced him to live in hiding in Delft.

His experiences provided the material for the novella “Comedy in a Minor Key,” about a Dutch couple who shelter an elderly Jew who dies of natural causes. After disposing of the body carelessly, they too must go into hiding.

You will find Grimes’ full piece here.

“I Was Like the Luckiest Guy in the World”

How sad it was to hear, earlier today, that longtime American TV performer James Arness has died at age 88. The elder brother of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves (who himself perished more than a year ago), the 6-foot-7 Arness was best recognized for his role as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. However, he also featured in the small-screen western series How the West Was Won and appeared in the less-successful McClain’s Law as an older, retired cop in modern Southern California, who decides to return to active duty.

In memory of the big man, I’ve embedded below part of an interview conducted with Arness for the Archive of American Television, as well as the most familiar introduction to Gunsmoke, a series I saw often as a child while visiting my grandparents’ home.





READ MORE: “Voices: James Arness, 1923-2011” (Los Angeles Times); “Appreciation: James Arness, 1923-2011,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times); “The Late Great James Arness,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Gunsmoke Actor James Arness Dies” (CNN); “The Other Gunsmoke,” by Jim Meals (Western Fictioneers); “Noir: R.I.P., James ‘Marshall Matt Dillon’ Aurness,” by Lou Boxer (NoirCon); “James Arness -- 1923-2011,” by Brent McKee (I Am a Child of Television); “Six Connections Between John Wayne and James Arness,” by Rett Nelson (Do You Remember).

A Sidekick’s Passing

We’re sorry to hear that Edward Hardwicke, the English actor who for many years played Dr. John Watson opposite Jeremy Brett in Granada Television’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, has died at age 78.

READ MORE: “Edward Hardwicke Passes On,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Edward Hardwicke, Dr. Watson, R.I.P.,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Another Familiar Face, Gone Away

I was sorry to hear about the death yesterday of onetime child actor-turned-director Jackie Cooper.

Although many obituaries (including this one) herald Cooper’s appearance as newspaper editor Perry White in the Superman films of the 1970s and ’80s, and as the star before that of a sitcom called Hennesey, I remember him best as a fixture of some very classic TV crime dramas. His résumé included appearances in Hawaii Five-O, McCloud, Ironside, Columbo, Kojak, Hec Ramsey, Police Story, and The Rockford Files. Cooper was featured as well in the 1975 ABC series Mobile One, playing a resolute TV reporter. He won Emmy Awards for his work as a director on M*A*S*H and The White Shadow.

Cooper passed away in Beverly Hills, California. He was 88 years old.

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

READ MORE: “Skippy Is Dead, R.I.P.,” by Steve Heller (Imprint); “Jackie Cooper Passes On,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts).