Closing the Book on Dickinson

Africa-born British author and poet Peter Dickinson certainly tied things up neatly for his obituary writers when he passed away yesterday, December 16--which also happened to be his 88th birthday. He died after what’s being termed “a brief illness.”

Britain’s Telegraph remembers Dickinson as a “prolific children’s author who combined riveting plots with historical and psychological insight.” But he also gained a fine reputation for penning adult mystery novels. As The Bookseller explains, “He was the first author to win the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for two consecutive novels: Skin Deep in 1968 [a novel rechristened in the States as The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest] ... and A Pride of Heroes in 1969 …” Both stories starred Scotland Yard Superintendent James Pibble, who had “a knack for solving the most extraordinary of crimes.” Among Dickinson’s other mysteries, fellow author Martin Edwards writes that “The Yellow Room Conspiracy (1992) is probably my favorite.” Several of Dickinson’s Pibble mysteries are available in e-book format from Open Road Media, which also circulates more of his works.

READ MORE: “Peter Dickinson Obituary,” by Julia Eccleshare
(The Guardian).

Holt Passes Away

Mystery Fanfare brings the sad and belated news that Hazel Holt, author of the long-running Mrs. Malory mystery series, died on November 23. She was 87 years old.

Holt came from Birmingham, England, and according to Wikipedia, she “studied at King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham …, and then Newnham College, Cambridge. She went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote. She also finished one of Pym’s novels after Pym died. Holt has published My Dear Charlotte [2009], a story that uses the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra to construct a Regency murder mystery.”

In the book Detecting Women, Willetta L. Heising explains that “Holt’s first fiction, published when she was 60, introduced 50-something Sheila Malory, a widowed literary magazine writer from the English seaside village of Taviscombe, in Mrs. Malory Investigates.” A paperback edition of Holt’s final novel, Mrs. Malory and Death Is a Word (originally published in the UK in 2014) is set to be released in the States come May of next year.

Good-bye to the “Godfather of Tartan Noir”

Glasgow writers William McIlvanney (left) and Craig Robertson sign books during CrimeFest in 2013. (Photo © Ali Karim.)

What’s now known among the Scottish fiction set as Tartan Noir lost a bit of its luster today with the passing of William McIlvanney, the creator of philosophical Glasgow police detective Jack Laidlaw. He died this morning in Netherlee, Glasgow, after what’s being described as “a short illness.” The author was 79 years old.

Scotland’s Herald recalls in its obituary of McIlvanney:

Born in Kilmarnock in 1936 to William and Helen, he attended Kilmarnock Academy before graduating MA (Hons) at Glasgow University. He taught English from 1960 until 1975 in Irvine Royal Academy and then Greenwood Academy, Dreghorn, where he was also assistant head teacher. He held a series of creative writing posts at Grenoble, Vancouver, Strathclyde and Aberdeen universities.

In 1975 he left teaching to devote himself to writing full-time. He was garlanded with prizes, with Docherty (1975) winning the Whitbread Prize. Other awards for his work included the Crime Writers’ Silver Dagger, the Saltire Award and the Glasgow Herald People’s Prize. He influenced heavily a generation of writers both in his native country and further beyond with the debt of U.S. writers being acknowledged last year with the re-publication of his novels in the USA as a standard bearer of European noir.

Britain’s Guardian notes it was McIlvanney’s fourth novel, Laidlaw (1977), that really “caught the fancy of the broader reading public.

Detectives with existential anxieties, marriage problems and a deep literary hinterland are not uncommon now, but Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw was a bright arrival on a dull Scottish literary scene in 1977. In policing the rougher territories of Glasgow and environs, Laidlaw found many things stacked against him; what he had going for him [was] a realistic outlook on life, abundantly laced with wit and philosophical reflection--a voice he inherited from his highly articulate creator.

No one had previously encountered a Glasgow cop who described his regular tipple as “low-proof hemlock” and who hid his Camus and Kierkegaard in the desk drawer, the way an alcoholic keeps a secret stash. McIlvanney could say of Laidlaw, “He knew nothing to do but inhabit the paradoxes,” and make it sound like Glaswegian common sense.

On the back of my 1977 Popular Library edition of Laidlaw (a tale I didn’t get around to reading until 1980), a Los Angeles Herald Examiner critic is quoted as gushing over McIlvanney’s book, calling it “the best detective novel in ages … a brutal, sophisticated, outstanding, unforgettable reading experience.” The author subsequently penned two sequels to that tough and unforgettable work, The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991).

McIlvanney’s fellow author Tony Black, who was fortunate enough to interview him back in 2013, wrote on Facebook earlier today that “Willie was an artist of the finest quality and skill. To be talked about as the greatest writer of his generation was an enormous achievement for a man who grew up with the notion that having your name on a book was akin to walking on the moon.” Meanwhile, novelist John Harvey (Darkness, Darkness) had this to say in his blog:

William McIlvanney was a writer, not a crime writer, though his influence on crime writers and crime writing, in the UK especially, was immense. I first read Laidlaw, the first of his three novels featuring the Glasgow-based police detective Jack Laidlaw, in the late ’70s, soon after it was published. It made an impression that was close to indelible, the writing precise and in the proper sense, poetic, for he was an accomplished poet as well as a novelist, carrying with it the rhythms, sometimes harsh, of the place and people it conveyed and contained. So that when I came to write the first [Charlie] Resnick novel, some ten years later, much of Laidlaw--its force and its ambition--lay behind what I was attempting to do. It was to take me another ten years, no, more, before I even came close.

I first met him some ten years ago, at a festival of crime writing at Frontignan, in the South of France, and I have to say the prospect all but terrified me. It was his reputation, of course, both as [a] writer I revered and as an apocryphal hard drinker who didn’t suffer fools gladly. The real Mac, I found--at least, the one I was privileged to spend time with over that long weekend--was something different. He was generous, surprisingly gentle--he was, in the most positive but old-fashioned sense, a gentleman.

Each evening we met before dinner and sat at a corner table outside one of the cafés by the canal, drank a glass of two of Scotch--it was Aberlour, as I remember--and talked. I enjoyed those times, brief as they were, and cherish them now.

A full catalogue of McIlvanney’s books can be found here.

READ MORE: “William McIlvanney Is Dead,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders); “In Loving Memory,” by Tony Black (The Highland Times).

A Tough Guy’s Quiet End

The opening title sequence from T.H.E. Cat.

“He struggled with Alzheimer’s disease for five years,” Audrey Loggia, the longtime spouse of veteran character actor Robert Loggia, is quoted in The New York Times as saying. “It just took its natural progression.” And that progression ended earlier today, when Loggia died at his home in Los Angeles at age 85.

The Times goes on to note that “Mr. Loggia’s career began on the New York stage in the 1950s and soon moved into film and television in its early years. His rugged looks and gravelly voice made him a natural for playing characters with a hard edge, like a drug lord in Scarface (1983), a Sicilian mobster in Prizzi’s Honor (1985) and a private detective in Jagged Edge (1985), a role that got him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. (Don Ameche won that year, for Cocoon.)” Variety adds that Loggia, who was born on Staten Island, New York, in January 1930, racked up additional film credits with his appearances in An Officer and a Gentleman, Independence Day, and Big. In the last of those, “he played a toy company owner and performed a memorable duet on a giant foot-operated piano with Tom Hanks.”

The first starring role for Loggia, however, was as circus performer and cat burglar-turned-bodyguard Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat in the fondly remembered 1966-1967 NBC-TV drama T.H.E. Cat. He went on from there to score parts in an extensive array of small-screen series, from The Wild Wild West, Mannix, and Harry O to The Rockford Files, Magnum, P.I., Ellery Queen, The Sopranos, and Monk. (Click here to see his page on the Internet Movie Database.) Loggia was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1989 for his portrayal of no-nonsense federal investigator Nick Mancuso in the short-lived NBC crime series Mancuso, FBI. “Loggia also appeared in five films for comedy director Blake Edwards,” recalls the Associated Press, “including three Pink Panther films and the dark comedy S.O.B. He also portrayed Joseph, husband of Mary, in George Stevens’ biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

Loggia’s widow told Variety, “He loved being an actor. He used to say that he never had to work. He never had to wait tables.” It’s not hard to argue that this performer who could summon up a tough guy’s demeanor without breaking a sweat, and command a scene simply by turning his silent gaze upon fellow actors, was far better off enjoying a life of movie-making rather than slinging burgers and fries.

FOLLOW-UP: I tend to see Robert Loggia through the lens of his more serious movie and TV roles. But as Jeremy Lynch of Crimespree Magazine observes, “Many may know him as the boss in Big and will remember Tom Hanks and Robert playing ‘Chop Sticks’ on the giant keyboard.” A video clip of that performance is here.

Bullet Points: Completely Hate-Free Edition

• Megan Abbott talks with Entertainment Weekly about the inspiration for her next novel, You Will Know Me (due out in July 2016) “and why the worlds of adolescent girls keep pulling her back.”

• I should make a poster of this quote and hang it above my favorite reading chair. The statement comes from 19th-century Scottish philosopher-essayist Thomas Carlyle: “If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.”

• This is most welcome news: TV Obscurities reports that Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI) has licensed 11 older American TV dramas for future DVD release. They include two of my personal favorites, Bill Bixby’s The Magician (NBC, 1973-1974) and James Franciscus’ Longstreet (ABC, 1971-1972), together with Christopher George’s The Immortal (ABC, 1970-1971), William Conrad’s Nero Wolfe (NBC, 1981), and others. “No release dates or details are available,” explains TV Obscurities. All of these shows appear on VEI’s Coming Soon page alongside others such as Barry Newman’s Petrocelli (NBC, 1974-1976) and Lee Horsley’s Matt Houston (ABC, 1982–1985). All are programs that have languished far too long in limbo, while a variety of second-rate series were moved to the head of the DVD line. Thank goodness VEI is finally stepping up to correct this injustice.


The opening title sequence from Longstreet.

• Let me offer a toast to Martin Edwards, who this month became president of Britain’s esteemed Detection Club. “The high point of my crime writing life” is how he describes the honor in this blog post.

• Linwood Barclay fans, take note. Bookreporter is hosting a contest to promote his latest novel, Broken Promise (NAL). Twenty-three “personalized signed” copies of Barclay’s thriller are set to be given away. The idea is to nominate somebody from your holiday gift list who you think would like to receive Broken Promise. You’ll find the entry form here. This contest is open only to U.S. residents, and entries will be accepted from now through Monday, December 7.

• In my Killer Covers blog today, I look back at the wonderful, mid-20th-century paperback artistry of Robert Foster.

• Janet Rudolph has spent years putting together lists of holiday-appropriate reading material for her blog, Mystery Fanfare. Finally, she has created a separate page dedicated to those sometimes lengthy lists. Click here to find her rundowns of Thanksgiving mysteries, Chanukah mysteries, Christmas mysteries, and more.

• Canadian broadcaster CTV “is getting into the serialized drama game, beginning with Giles Blunt’s award-winning John Cardinal mysteries,” reports TV, Eh? “Bell Media announced the ordering of the six-part Cardinal (working title) from Toronto-based Sienna Films and Entertainment One. Adapted from Forty Words for Sorrow [2000], the upcoming project--set to bow as part of CTV’s 2016-17 broadcast schedule--follows detective John Cardinal and his new partner, Lise Delorme, as they investigate the death of Katie Pine, a 13-year-old discovered in an abandoned mine. Production on Cardinal is scheduled to begin in February 2016 in Northern Ontario ...”

• Shotsmag Confidential offers a wrap-up of book-to-broadcast bits, including this item about one of my favorite Len Deighton novels:

A new period drama for the BBC is SS-GB from the pen of Len Deighton. The drama is likely to end up being a five-part limited series. Kate Bosworth will star in the role [of American reporter] Barbara Barga alongside Sam Riley, who is set [to] play the role of [Detective Superintendent Douglas] Archer. Adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the story takes place in London 1941 and [follows] a ‘what-would-have-happened-if’ scenario. The novel, published in 1978, was a popular book and has become an iconic alternate history tome.

• Literary Hub has posted this fine piece about the ways in which Raymond Chandler’s divided life--he was born in Chicago, but educated in Britain before returning to the States--affected his storytelling.

• If you haven’t been checking in regularly on Nancie Clare’s Speaking of Mysteries podcast series, you have missed out on some fun. In her latest interview--found here--she talks with Robert Crais, author of the new Elvis Cole/Joe Pike/Jon Stone/Scott James and Maggie the LAPD K-9 novel, The Promise (Putnam).

• I am ridiculously far behind in watching NBC-TV’s new crime drama Blindspot, about “a beautiful woman (Jaimie Alexander) with no memories of her past, [who] is found naked in Times Square with her body fully covered in intricate tattoos. Her discovery sets off a vast and complex mystery that immediately ignites the attention of the FBI, which begins to follow the road map on her body to reveal a larger conspiracy of crime while bringing her closer to discovering the truth about her identity.” But news that the program has been renewed for a second season is impetus for me to catch up.

• Meanwhile, Double O Section has word that Agent Carter, Marvel’s kick-ass period spy drama starring Hayley Atwell and James D’Arcy, will return to the ABC-TV schedule on January 5 with a two-hour episode. “This season,” writes Matthew Bradford (aka Tanner), “Peggy Carter relocates to Los Angeles and finds 1949 Tinseltown teeming with noirish plots and conspiracies in the early days of the Cold War.” Click over to Double O Section to watch a Season 2 trailer.

• Another interesting item, this from In Reference to Murder:

Brenda Starr, the glamorous, feisty redheaded reporter created by Dale Messick, captivated newspaper readers from 1940 through the comic’s demise in 2011. But Brenda Starr is staging a comeback to headline a mystery novel series created by USA Today bestselling author J.J. Salem, with the first title, Black Orchid Murders, set for publication in Spring 2016. The 21st-century version finds the character in her early 40s working as a TV pundit and visiting college professor. But she returns to hard news at a digital start-up when a series of murders targeting Chicago’s elite hits too close to home, “all while navigating the complexities of modern life with a younger lover, a tycoon ex-husband and a head-strong, college-aged daughter showing signs of becoming Brenda Starr 2.0.”

Naturally, there’s a Facebook page set up for these new Brenda Starr Mysteries. It includes illustrations of the rebooted reporter that make her look like a woman in her 20s, not one who’s pushing 50.

• Steve Aldous, an expert on the exploits of 1970s New York private eye John Shaft, provides a brief synopsis in his blog of Shaft: Imitation of Life #1, the first of four entries in a new graphic novel series composed by David F. Walker, “due for publication in February 2016 alongside Walker’s novel, Shaft’s Revenge.”

• On the right is a great present idea for fans (yours truly included) of the old Perry Mason TV series. I’d like the dark blue version, please.

• Browsing through these century-old postcards of the sites involved in last week’s Paris terrorist attacks reminds us that “there is something essential to the experience of living in Paris that involves spending time outside on its streets, whether to shop, observe, drink, eat, dance, talk or listen,” writes Alex Toledano in The New York Times Magazine. Paris’ “architecture invites people to continue to explore, to take wrong turns, to fall in love, to protest and simply to have a drink in the same places, streets and buildings that countless others have in the past.”

• Musing on Paris reminds me of some favorite old paperback book covers featuring France and that nation’s capital, specifically.

• David Cranmer is rewatching Breaking Bad for Criminal Element, and writing about each installment along the way. Here are his comments about the show’s 2008 pilot. Cranmer is up to episode five already--only 57 more to go. Follow his whole series of posts here.

• Was best-selling thriller writer Robert Ludlum murdered?

• Brash Books, the independent publishing house created by Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, wins valuable notice on the Mystery Scene Web site, thanks to its three most recent releases, one of which I wrote about recently, The Last Good Place, by Robin Burcell.

• As part of its fifth-anniversary celebration earlier this month, Mystery People--a mystery-fiction seller located within Austin, Texas’ largest independent bookstore, Book People--posted a list of its “Top 100 Crime & Suspense Novels.” The complete list, which you will find here, includes such durable favorites as Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Ross Macdonald’s The Way Some People Die, Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem, Ellis Peters’ A Morbid Taste for Bones, Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280, Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, and … hey, there are 100 of the damn things. Do you expect me to list them all?

• Congratulations to Brian Abbott for his five years of blogging at The Poisoned Martini. “It hardly seems like it’s been that long,” he observes. Boy, can I sympathize! The Rap Sheet is coming up on its 10th anniversary in May, but it seems like only yesterday that I was wondering whether I might have a future in blogging.

• Speaking of 10th anniversaries, editor Elizabeth Foxwell noted earlier this month that she’s also spent the last decade blogging about mystery and crime fiction at The Bunburyist. Excellent work!

• Included in its new selection of “15 Great and Bookish Gift Ideas for the Holidays,” Pornokitsch mentions editor Sarah Weinman’s Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & ’50s (Library of America) as well as one of my favorite volumes from last year, The Art of Robert E. McGinnis (Titan).

• Here’s something I didn’t know until reading about it on cop-turned-author Paul Bishop’s Facebook page:

In 1970, Leave It to Beaver’s Ken Osmond [“Eddie Haskell”] joined the Los Angeles Police Department after typecasting curtailed his acting career. He grew a mustache in an effort to secure his anonymity. He worked in vice and narcotics and as a motorcycle officer.

On September 20, 1980, Osmond was hit by three bullets while in a foot chase with a suspected car thief. He was protected from two of the bullets by his bulletproof vest. The third bullet ricocheting off of his belt buckle. Osmond was placed on disability and eventually retired from the force in 1988. The shooting was later dramatized in a November 1992 episode of the CBS series Top Cops.

• Once Upon a Spy--the James Bond film you’ll never see, penned by Frost/Nixon screenwriter Peter Morgan and featuring a plot that “began during the Cold War with Judi Dench’s M an MI6 agent stationed in Berlin.” Although Morgan’s story was eventually rejected, it had an affect on the new Skyfall.

• I’ve never read Kingsley Amis’ 1968 James Bond novel, Colonel Sun, but David B. Hobbs’ remarks about the book in Hazlitt certainly make me want to track down a copy.

• The mystery of 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior.

• Novelist Ian Rankin (Even Dogs in the Wild) “shares some of the secrets to his success” in this short piece published by Canada’s Globe and Mail. Rankin also takes part in the latest Crime Vault Live podcast, hosted by Michael Carlson and Mark Billingham. Listen to that and previous episodes by clicking here.

• Frederick Forsyth’s new autobiography, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, hasn’t yet found a place in my to-be-read pile. But Irish author-critic Declan Burke’s declaration that it’s “an enthralling account of a life that would make for a thrilling, if delightfully implausible, novel” makes me curious to learn more.

• Some interviews worth checking out: Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette talks with film noir expert Eddie Muller; Sons of Spade’s Jochem van der Steen fires questions at S.W. Lauden, the author of Bad Citizen Corporation; and Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper chats up Frederick Forsyth about the aforementioned The Outsider, which he says is his final book (“I hope I am going out on top.”).

• R.I.P., P.F. Sloan, co-writer of the song “Secret Agent Man,” which The Spy Command calls “an anthem for the 1960s spy craze.” That song figured into the opening titles of at least two TV shows, the 1960-1968 UK series Secret Agent Man (aka Danger Man) and UPN’s somewhat sexier 2000 drama, Secret Agent Man.

• Oh no, not another theory of Jack the Ripper’s identity!

• And I could swear that the last time I passed through North Bend, Washington--where the 1990-1991 ABC-TV series Twin Peaks was partially filmed--the former Mar-T Café, which became that show’s “Double R Diner” and was later rechristened Twede’s Café, had lost its tourist appeal, thanks to arson and a subsequent rebuilding. However, the Atlas Obscura Web site reports that the old diner has recouped its classic character: “As part of the production of the new season of Twin Peaks (and on the production company’s dime), the interior of Twede’s Café has been fully restored to the moody, campy diner of our fondest Lynchian memories. The restaurant will once again serve as the shooting location for the Double R Diner. The renovations are reportedly permanent and will stay in place after shooting wraps.”

Bullet Points: Election Day Special

• While most print and online editors (myself included) are still planning out their Best Books of 2015 coverage, Publishers Weekly has released its favorites in a dozen categories, one of which is Mystery/Thriller. Among PW’s top-10 choices: Dark Rooms, by Lili Anolik (Morrow); House of the Rising Sun, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster); The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead); and The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf). You’ll find the full list here.

• Meanwhile, Goodreads is asking its users to make their preferences known among dozens of 2015 nominees in 20 “best” categories. Mystery & Thriller contenders include Daniel Silva’s The English Spy (Harper), C.J. Sansom’s Lamentation (Mulholland), Stephen King’s Finders Keepers (Scribner), and Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls (Morrow). Click here to take part in this opening round of voting.

• Max Allan Collins reports that he’s seen “the first cut of the final episode of the eight-episode run” of Quarry, the forthcoming Cinemax TV series based on his novels about a hired killer of that same name. “Frankly it’s great,” he writes. “For the first time you see Quarry in Vietnam, in an extended series of flashbacks. Again I warn hardcore fans that the series is an extended look at the character’s back story, and often goes its own way, though always with underpinnings of my work. And I’m told if the series is picked up for a second season, the next batch of episodes will draw heavily on Quarry’s Choice, which is among my personal favorites of the novels.”

• Double O Section has posted the first trailer for BBC Two’s London Spy, a five-part espionage drama created and written by Tom Rob Smith (Child 44), and debuting in Britain on November 9 (and on BBC America at some still-to-be-decided date). Watch the trailer below.



• Click here to see Dame Diana Rigg being interviewed recently in association with the screening of a classic Avengers episode at the British Film Institute. “She is completely open, candidly discussing a number of aspects of The Avengers and her career at large,” writes blogger Matthew Bradford (aka Tanner).

• Speaking of The Avengers, is Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller serious about rebooting that 1961-1969 UK TV series? Talk is that he would like to see Eddie Izzard (really, that Eddie Izzard?) playing John Steed. Less outlandish, I think, would be to hire Jenna Coleman for the role of Mrs. Peel. We already know she looks great in leather!

• Yikes! I haven’t even gotten around to watching Season 4 of Longmire (which began streaming back in September), but already Netflix has announced that there will be a fifth season of that contemporary Western crime drama based on Craig Johnson’s books about Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire (Dry Bones).

• Two continuing projects worth following: The British blog Crime Fiction Lover has commenced rolling out its 2015 New Talent November features, including a look at Todd Moss’ new Minute Zero, Tom Callaghan’s A Killing Winter, and Saira Viola’s Jukebox; and Ellery Queen’s classic whodunits are much on the minds of several “bloggers who work in the general area of Golden Age Mysteries,” as they spend Tuesdays in November writing about Queen’s work. Noah’s Archives introduces the series here.

• Mike Ripley is up in Shots with his latest “Getting Away with Murder” column--and it turns out that yours truly makes an appearance there (thanks to my recent participation at Bouchercon). Also hitting Ripley’s radar: the sadly forgotten novels of Francis Clifford (The Naked Runner, Act of Mercy, etc.); Fergus Fleming’s new biography of his uncle, James Bond creator Ian Fleming, titled The Man with the Golden Typewriter; and new novels by Eva Dolan, Anthony Quinn, Phil Redmond, and Sophie Hannah.

• Robert Crais talks with Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine about his new Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novel, The Promise (Putnam).

• Congratulations to the blog Pulp International on its seventh anniversary. That’s seven whole years of sexy, funny, and sometimes outrageous posts. Good job, folks!

• Steve Scott, who writes about author John D. MacDonald in his blog, The Trap of Solid Gold, has posted an excellent interview with MacDonald. It was conducted by Miami Herald reporter Mike Baxter back in 1969, at the time the “first-ever Travis McGee movie, Darker Than Amber” (with Rod Taylor), was being filmed in Florida.

• Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, is set to premiere this weekend in the States. Capitalizing on that fact, author Simon Wood (The One That Got Away) has ranked all of the preceding flicks in the 007 series according to his idiosyncratic tastes. Which, I have to say, do not swing far from my own tastes in this matter.

• Actor, lawyer, politician, and lobbyist Fred Thompson, who served as a Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee before making a rather lackluster bid for the White House in 2008, and who appeared for several years on Law & Order (2002–2007) as the Manhattan district attorney, died in Nasvhille on October 1. He was 73 years old. The New York Times has more on his life and career here.

• Finally, Martin Dolan, who recently left the Arizona Republic newspaper editorial staff under an early retirement buyout plan, wrote a long and wonderful letter to his colleagues heading out the door with him as well as the folks remaining at the daily broadsheet, recalling his more than three decades in journalism. It contains one line that expresses exactly why I got into journalism so many years ago: “In the old days, being a journalist was about as cool as you could get. You hung around smart people every day, you knew stuff most other people didn’t and you knew it before they did.”

Bullet Points: Treats Only Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prolific Klausner Silenced

Like many people in the crime and mystery fiction community, I have taken issue on occasion with Georgia-based book critic Harriet Klausner. Once the No. 1-ranked reviewer on Amazon.com, with tens of thousands of book appraisals posted there (and elsewhere), Klausner never seemed to dislike anything she read--and she supposedly read a hell of a lot of novels. Her writing style was nothing better than formulaic, and she became notorious in some quarters for selling the free review copies she received for free.

But when I read today that the 63-year-old Klausner, a “former librarian with a master’s degree in library science,” passed away on October 15, I felt nothing but sadness that an individual so evidently passionate about books should have been taken so soon. I was not alone. “I know there was much controversy about her, but, as a beneficiary of her intent to bring lesser-known writers without big publicity to the fore, I always appreciated her kind reviews,” reads one comment attached to Mystery Fanfare’s Klausner obituary. Adds another: “Whatever else she did, she was dedicated to spreading the word about books, and for that I am grateful.”

READ MORE: “The Woman Who Wrote 31,014 Amazon Book Reviews and Upended the Internet, Dead at 63,” by Sarah Kaplan (The Washington Post); “RIP: Prolific Amazon Reviewer Harriet Klausner (1952-2015),” by Chris Meadows (TeleRead); “Rage, Rage Against the Amazon Reviewers,” by Annoyed Librarian (Library Journal).

Leuci, Wright Meet Their Ends

Jiro Kimura’s The Gumshoe Site--which, by the way, will celebrate its 20th anniversary this coming January (wow!)--brings us the sad news of two more deaths in the crime-fiction community.

First is Robert Leuci, who, Kimura writes, “may have been (in)famous as a rogue cop turned informer who exposed corruption in the Special Investigation Unit of the Narcotics Division of the New York Police Department in the 1970s. He became the main character of the non-fiction book Prince of the City (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), by a former New York Times reporter and a former NYPD deputy commissioner … After [his] retirement in 1981, Leuci became a crime writer of six novels, starting with Doyle’s Disciples (Freundlich, 1984). He also wrote short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and anthologies such as Murder Is My Racquet (New Millennium Press, 2002) and Providence Noir (Akashic, 2015).” Leuci died on October 12 at his Rhode Island home. He was 75 years old.

Passing away only days before Leuci, on October 9, was Eric Wright, a “former university professor [whose] his first novel, The Night the Gods Smiled (Scribner, 1983), introduce[ed] Police Inspector Charles Salter in Toronto, Canada. The novel won the 1984 Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) and the 1983 John Creasey [Memorial] Award from the Crime Writers’ Association of Britain (CWA). The third Salter novel, Death in the Old Country (1985) won the 1986 Arthur Ellis Award, while the first Joe Barley novel, The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn (Perseverance, 2000), won the Barry Award in the paperback category. Barley is a part-time English lecturer and part-time security guard. Wright also won two Arthurs in the short-story category and received the 1998 Derrick Murdoch Award from the CWC. He created two other series characters: Mel Pickett, a retired Toronto policeman; and Lucy Trimble Brenner, a private eye and librarian in Toronto. His last novel was A Likely Story (Cormorant, 2010), featuring Joe Barley.” Wright was 86 at the time of his demise in Toronto.

On the Passing of Henning Mankell

In this 2012 interview for the Louisiana Channel, Henning Mankell “reflects upon his work, inspirations, and the role of the intellectual in society.”

This is not the sort of news any crime-fiction enthusiast wishes to read on a Monday morning. From The New York Times:

Henning Mankell, the Swedish novelist and playwright best known for police procedurals that were translated into a score of languages and sold by the millions throughout the world, died on Monday in Goteborg, Sweden. He was 67.

The cause was cancer, said his literary agent Anneli Hoier. Last year, Mr. Mankell disclosed that doctors had found tumors in his neck and left lung.

Mr. Mankell was considered the dean of the so-called Scandinavian noir writers who gained global prominence for novels that blended edge-of-your-seat suspense with flawed, compelling protagonists and strong social themes. The genre includes Arnaldur Indridason of Iceland, Jo Nesbø of Norway and Stieg Larsson of Sweden, among others.

But it was Mr. Mankell who led the way with 10 mystery novels featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander, a gruff but humane detective troubled by self-doubt, overeating, alcoholism and eventually dementia. Most of the action takes place in and around Ystad, a real-life town of 18,350 inhabitants on the Baltic Sea, about 380 miles south of Stockholm and now a magnet for Wallander buffs.

More from The Guardian:

[Swedish publisher] Leopard, which he founded in 2001 with Dan Israel, and which published his books, described him as “one of the great Swedish authors of our time.” His British publisher Harvill Secker said this morning in a statement that its staff were “deeply saddened--and shocked--to hear of the news of the untimely death of Henning Mankell this morning.”

“Beloved by readers across the world, especially for his Kurt Wallander series, it was a privilege to have worked with a man of such talent and passion, and to have been his UK publisher for so many years,” said a spokesperson at Harvill Secker. “He was an inspiration not just as a writer, but as someone who always stood up for the rights of others. He will be so very sorely missed. The world is a sadder place for having lost such a charismatic and honourable man.”

The Independent adds:

Mankell announced last year that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and began documenting his experiences in a newspaper column.

“My anxiety is very profound, although by and large I can keep it under control,” he said, writing of his diagnosis in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten.

Of his decision to document his treatment, he said: “I have decided to write it just as it is, about the difficult battle it always is.

“But,” he added, “I will write from life's perspective, not death’s.”

In February 2014, The Guardian carried an English-translated piece Mankell had written about “how it feels to be diagnosed with cancer.” The UK Telegraph explains that the author “wrote about his experience of the disease in his most recent book, Quicksand: What it Means to Be a Human Being, to be published next year.”

I enjoyed this excerpt from The New York Times’ obituary:

Mr. Mankell grew irritated over attempts by readers to trace elements from his life in Wallander’s. Still, the parallels were there. Born in Stockholm on Feb. 3, 1948, he was abandoned by his mother, along with his two siblings, and they moved in with their father, a judge, in Sveg, a small community in northern Sweden.

Through his father’s court activities, Mr. Mankell learned about criminal cases in a small-town setting not unlike Wallander’s investigations in Ystad. And like the author’s mother, Wallander is an errant parent who abandons a child--though the two reconcile in the course of the detective series.

Mr. Mankell, whose grandfather was a composer, passed on his love of classical music to his famous detective. Wallander spends many lonely nights listening to Mozart operas or walking the windswept beaches of Ystad with his dog, Jussi--named after Jussi Bjorling, the great Swedish tenor.

And Wallander’s repeated failures at lasting romances echoed the author’s own: Mr. Mankell was married four times, the last to Eva Bergman, daughter of the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. “It shows I am an optimist,” Mr. Mankell said in a 2013 interview with The Guardian.

Then there’s this, again from The Guardian:

The Nordic crime-writing community was quick to pay tribute, with Norwegian Jo Nesbø describing him as “generous, committed, reflective and warm.” He continued: “As I see it, Henning Mankell both carried on and modernized the Scandinavian crime fiction tradition dating back to Sjöwall & Wahlöö, in style as well as content. He was one of the most important pioneers of Scandinavian crime literature, if not the most important of all.”

The bestselling Icelandic crime writer Yrsa Sigurdardottir said that Mankell “was undoubtedly the single most important person involved in bringing Scandinavian crime fiction to the rest of the world.

“His novels were immensely popular and for a reason; his mastery lay in being able to combine compelling characters, intriguing crimes and matters of social injustice into stories that were not only enjoyable but also very well written. So much so that they transcended borders and made the foreign reader forget the odd names and unfamiliar locations,” she said.

READ MORE: “Henning Mankell’s Ability to Write Anything Anywhere Saw Him to the End,” by Mark Lawson (The Guardian); “Henning Mankell in Quotes: 10 of the Best” (The Guardian); “Wallender Writer Henning Mankell Dies at 67,” by Leo Barraclough (Variety); “Henning Mankell, Swedish Author of Wallander Book Series, Dies at 67,” by Alex Ritman (The Hollywood Reporter); “A Tribute to Henning Mankell” (Crime Fiction Lover); “Henning Mankell -- Appreciation: The Master of Crime Writing with a Keen Social Conscience,” by Barry Forshaw (The Independent): “Henning Mankell: In Memoriam,” by Michael Carlson (Irresistible Targets).

Bullet Points: Friday Sweep-Up Edition

• Earlier this month, Agatha Christie’s estate declared the results of an online survey that asked readers to choose their favorite works from among the English mystery writer’s oeuvre. The top vote-getter, it turned out, was And Then There Were None (1939). That didn’t settle the matter, however. Other critics subsequently listed their own top Christie whodunits, all by way of celebrating the author’s 125th birthday on September 15. Now, blogger-editor Curtis J. Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961) has sifted through 31 “best of” compilations to see which novels won the majority of endorsements. Again--as you can see here--And Then There Were None walks away with the top honors, while the second and third spots belong to Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, respectively. The runners-up are here.

• When I read in The New York Times that best-selling author Jackie Collins had died of breast cancer at age 77, I figured the news was well outside my reportorial bailiwick. The Gumshoe Site reminds me, though, that in addition to producing “sex-filled, escapist, utterly unpretentious” works such as The Bitch and Hollywood Wives, Collins “wrote a number of crime novels, including Lovehead (Allen, 1974; retitled The Love Killers, Warner 1975), and [the] Santangelo (Crime) Family series, which started with Chances (Warner, 1981). Her last novel was The Santangelos (St. Martin’s, 2015).”

• Not every Rap Sheet reader is also a Facebook user, I’m sure. But for those of you who are, and would like to see what the office of author James Lee Burke (House of the Rising Sun) offers, click here for thoroughly delightful tour of his writing space, during which he “talks about a few of his favorite things in the office.”

• I confess, I haven’t yet begun watching the new, fourth season of the Western-detective series Longmire on Netflix, which began streaming on September 10. However, Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) has almost finished reviewing all of its 10 episodes for Criminal Element. Click here to read his fine critiques.

• It’s hard to believe that NBC-TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is currently in its 17th year of broadcasting. I was never a fan, having found the program too consistently grim for my tastes. But blogger “Ben” at Dead End Follies has recently begun exploring the show’s numerous seasons, and he has a few interesting things to say about it at this particular link.

• Oh, to spend October in Britain’s capital … Double O Section reports that “Lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg herself does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode ‘The House That Jack Built.’ It’s one of a pair of absolute classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank.”

• Holy obscure holidays! Saturday is Batman Day.

• Meanwhile, Keith DeCandido at Tor.com has announced that “Starting next Friday, I will be doing The Bat-Rewatch! I’ll be looking back at the Batman TV series developed by William Dozier for ABC, and which ran from 1966 to 1968. Between seasons one and two, we’ll also take a gander at the Batman feature film that was released in the summer of 1966.” Follow DeCandido’s series here.

• L.A. Weekly celebrates TV shows, especially Michael Connelly’s Bosch, that make good use of their Los Angeles settings.

• Did you know that American composer Henry Mancini’s famous theme for the 1958-1961 private-eye TV series Peter Gunn has lyrics? Yeah, neither did I--and in fact, they were added after the show’s demise. You can listen to jazz songstress Sarah Vaughan belt out those lyrics below, and follow along with a printed version here.



• When I finished watching the very dramatic third season of Ripper Street earlier this year, I presumed that that historical crime series was over and done. The concluding episode of Season 3 certainly suggested as much. But I must have missed the news, reported in The Guardian, that “Amazon Prime … has recommissioned the Victorian detective drama for a fourth and fifth season.” Hurrah!

• English singer-songwriter Sam Smith’s title song for the forthcoming, 24th James Bond flick, Spectre, was released this morning. And despite former Bond actor Roger Moore declaring that it’s “very haunting and wonderfully orchestrated,” other critical opinions are mixed, at best. Read more here and here.

• Otto Penzler, editor and proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, submits his list of the “5 Most Underappreciated Crime Writers.” I certainly agree with him about Daniel Woodrell.

• This may be the most ludicrous idea yet for turning a once-popular TV series into a big-screen picture. From In Reference to Murder: “NBC has put in development a new take on the 1979 ABC mystery Hart to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a husband-and-wife sleuthing duo. The reboot hails from producer Carol Mendelsohn and Sony TV and will center on a gay couple. The new Hart to Hart is described as ‘a modern and sexy retelling of the classic series that focuses on by-the-book attorney Jonathan Hart and free-spirited investigator Dan Hartman, who must balance the two sides of their life: action-packed crime-solving in the midst of newly found domesticity.’” Why in the hell can’t Hollywood seem to come up with fresh movie-making concepts anymore?

• The captivating Amanda Seyfried has landed a supposedly pivotal but still under-wraps role in Showtime TV’s on-again, off-again, then on-again limited series revival of Twin Peaks. TV Line reports that “Seyfried will appear in multiple episodes, making it her biggest TV gig since Big Love ended in 2011.” Showtime plans to introduce its new Twin Peaks sometime next year.

• Artist Charles McVicar’s name came up in a Killer Covers post I wrote back in June having to do with his painting for the front of The Search for Tabatha Carr (1964). I’m reminded of him once more, thanks to the excellent TV history Web site Television Obscurities, which this week has been rolling out write-ups about small-screen publicity posters from 37 years ago. “To promote its Fall 1978 line-up,” the site explains, “ABC commissioned a series of seven posters--one for each night of the week--depicting characters from its new and returning shows.” McVicar appears to have executed the artwork for all six of the posters showcased thus far: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Check Television Obscurities tomorrow for the final entry in this set. UPDATE: ABC-TV’s Saturday publicity poster can now be found at this link.

• If you’ve never seen the 1972 NBC-TV pilot The Judge and Jake Wyler, starring Bette Davis as a hypochondriac former jurist who employs an ex-con (played by Doug McClure) as her investigative partner, you can now watch it on YouTube, in seven parts. Click here to find Part I as well as links to the succeeding installments. And if you didn’t know this already, The Judge and Jake Wyler was produced by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link.

• Crime Fiction Lover continues it’s “Classics in September” series with this look back at Australian “Queen of Crime” June Wright. Catch up with all the “Classics in September” posts here.

• In the pages of The New Yorker, Michelle Dean recalls “The Secrets of Vera Caspary, the Woman Who Wrote Laura.”

• The blog Longreads provides this reprint of David Lehman’s excellent essay, “The Radical Pessimism of Dashiell Hammett,” which appeared originally in The American Scholar.

• Interviews worth finding: Attica Locke talks with fellow novelist Alafair Burke for The Life Sentence; Scottish writer Paul Johnston (who I also chatted with recently) goes one-on-one with Sandra Dick of the Edinburgh News in an exchange during which Johnston says, “I witter about plagues of boils and the odd book”; basketball star-turned-fictionist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar supplies some background to his brand-new novel, Mycroft Holmes; again for The Life Sentence, editor Lisa Levy quizzes David Lagercrantz about his fourth entry in Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web; Warren Ellis answers some questions about his new James Bond comic book; and recent National Medal of Arts recipient Stephen King asks Lee Child about his 20th Jack Reacher thriller, Make Me.

• The BBC’s Radio 4 gears up for Halloween.

• Congratulations to Jason Pinter, the editor and publisher of Polis Books, who has been named by Publishers Weekly as one of its inaugural Star Watch honorees, a commendation that “recognizes young publishing professionals who have distinguished themselves as future leaders of the industry.”

• Finally, if you haven’t been keeping up with my Killer Covers blog, note that in just the last week I have posted there a collection of classic school-related paperbacks, a “Two-fer Tuesday” entry focusing on tales about black attire, a significant update and expansion of my 2010 gallery of novel fronts by Ernest Chiriacka, aka Darcy, and today’s post about the eye-catching 1949 edition of Bitter Ending.