• Deadly Pleasures’ George Easter points me toward a very entertaining, 90-minute podcast discussion of this year’s top crime and mystery novels, organized by Crime Time and with Barry Forshaw serving as master of ceremonies. The “august” panelists are novelist-critic Laura Wilson, Crime Writers’ Association chair Maxim Jakubowski, Shots blogger and critic Ayo Onatade, Daily Telegraph crime-fiction critic Jake Kerridge, novelist-podcast presenter Victoria Selman, and critic-podcast editor Paul Burke. Easter compiled at least most the titles of the recommended books here.
• Thanks, too, to Elizabeth Foxwell of The Bunburyist for drawing my attention to a soon-upcoming exhibition in New York City titled “Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects.” Among the rarities to be included—all drawn from the “preeminent collection assembled by Glen S. Miranker”—will be “leaves from The Hound of the Baskervilles; four short story manuscripts; original artwork by the British and American illustrators who created Sherlock’s iconic look for readers; a wealth of holograph letters from Arthur Conan Doyle to friends, colleagues, and well-wishers; a fascinating cache of pirated editions; the only known salesman’s dummy for the U.S. Hound; an ‘idea book’ of Conan Doyle’s private musings in which he (in)famously penned ‘Killed Holmes’ on his calendar for December 1893; and a handwritten speech—never before displayed—with the author’s explanation for killing Holmes …” “Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects” will open on January 21, 2022, at Manhattan’s Grolier Club, and continue through April 16.
• Shoot, I wish I had known, before scratching out this year’s Christmas wish list, that Harlan P. Halsey’s 1874 work Old Sleuth, the Detective: Or, The Bay Ridge Mystery, was being reissued. As Wikipedia explains, “The Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper beginning in 1872, was the first dime-novel detective and began the trend away from the western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time. He was the first character to use the word sleuth to denote a detective, the word’s original definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. He is also responsible for the popularity of the use of the word old in the names of competing dime novel detectives, such as Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, and Old Ferret, among many others.” In his new introduction to this classic yarn, journalist Henry Stewart notes:
He’s not, by the way, a sleuth—his name is Sleuth. He lives in New York City, and he’s respected by the police but operates independently; the only times he interacts with official lawmen are when they’ve apprehended him, and he needs discreetly to reveal his identity to get back on the street. He’s a master of disguise; any character in this book might turn out to be him—and often does (maybe a few too many times). One critic called him “two-fisted, handsome, brilliant, strong and tough.” He was inspired by Allan Pinkerton, who soon rushed out his own chronicles of his private-detective career to compete.
I guess I’ll just have to pick this one up on my own dime.
• Shotsmag Confidential reports that Britain’s annual CrimeFest convention “is offering a bursary [or scholarship] for a crime fiction writer of colour to attend its festival next May. The bursary will cover the cost of a full Weekend Pass to the convention and a night’s accommodation at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, and a guaranteed panel appearance. Eligible authors must have published at least one English-language book in traditional print by a British commercial publisher.” Applications are being accepted through January 30. Click here for additional information.
• Spy Command blogger Bill Koenig has compiled a (sadly long) register of people who “contributed to spy entertainment (or at least spy-related),” and died over the last 12 months.
There’s no great mystery here. Due to conflicting editorial responsibilities, I have fallen terribly behind in acknowledging the deaths of people who made important contributions to the world of crime and thriller fiction. I failed to note the passing of author Caroline Roe in mid-November, and the loss of best-seller Wilbur Smith around that same time. I bookmarked the obituaries of “distinguished mystery scholar” LeRoy Lad Panek, novelist John Malcolm, Ian Fleming biographer John Pearson, and TV writer/producer Arthur Weingarten, but never said any final words about them on this page.
I don’t wish the same to be true of G.M. “Jerry” Ford, creator of the Seattle-based Leo Waterman private-eye series, who reportedly perished on December 1. Ford was 76 years old. His byline sounded like a merger of Detroit car manufacturers, and the fact that his first name was “Gerald” led him to be confused with a certain former U.S. president notorious for his clumsiness. However, G.M. Ford earned a distinctive reputation over the last quarter century.
According to a fine remembrance in the Seattle Mystery Bookshop blog, the future author was born on July 9, 1945, in Everett, Massachusetts. Wikipedia says his father died when he was young, so he was brought up mostly by his secretary-mother. Ford later attended Nathaniel Hawthorne College (now defunct) in Antrim, New Hampshire, and then Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, leaving the latter institution with a master’s degree in 18th-century literature. Subsequently, as he told me when I interviewed him for January Magazine in 1999, he “taught English, Language Arts—whatever it was being called that week—in high school through university levels, for 20-some-odd years.” He joked about that academic experience having taught him “that what I didn't want to write were art novels: 300 pages of well-crafted prose in which absolutely nothing happens to people we don’t care about, anyway.” Instead, in the early 1980s Ford moved to Seattle, Washington, and tried his hand at detective fiction.
His first novel, 1995’s Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?, introduced the man who would become his longest-running protagonist, underachieving gumshoe Waterman, one of several fictional P.I.s operating in Seattle at the time. Ford described his man to me as “one part Travis McGee, one part Fletch, and one part Spenser. He is a perpetual adolescent; his behavior is often dictated by the fact that he knows he's coming into serious amounts of money on his 45th birthday. Leo is only dangerous if you threaten him or his, at which point, he can get violent in a hurry. He speaks with my voice and shares my general attitudes. In general, however, Leo’s a much nicer character than I am.”
Wanda Fuca was nominated for several prominent prizes, among them an Anthony Award and the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. It was soon followed by other Waterman works, such as Cast in Stone (1996), which the author once said was his favorite; The Bum's Rush (1997), a book that was originally titled Pigeon Shit Shuffle, much to his publisher’s consternation; Slow Burn (1998) and Salvation Lake (2016). The 12th and final Waterman yarn was 2019’s Heavy on the Dead. Meanwhile, Ford debuted a second series lead, Seattle reporter and true-crime writer Frank Corso, in 2001’s Fury, chasing that with 2002’s Black River (which won the Spotted Owl Award) and A Blind Eye (2003). The concluding Corso novel—his sixth—was Blown Away, released in 2006. Ford’s résumé also featured a trio of standalone thrillers, the most recently released of those being Threshold (2015).
During the two decades since I first interviewed him for January Magazine, I think I saw Jerry Ford only a couple of times, at Bouchercons, our last meeting being at the 2010 event in San Francisco. He could be gruff, but he always seemed approachable and funny, and he was a great storyteller. While I enjoyed some of his Corso thrillers, I shall miss most of all his Waterman adventures, which were eccentric, funny, and heartfelt in near equal measures.
• Journalist and author Richard Hammer, who died on October 17 at age 93, is remembered for having penned what The New York Timessays were “more than a dozen books explored crimes ranging from the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War to a securities fraud case involving the Vatican Bank …” In addition, though, as The Gumshoe Site notes, Hammer “won two fact-crime Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) for The Vatican Connection (Holt, 1982) and The CBS Murders (Morrow, 1987), and served as executive vice president of MWA (1995-1997). He also co-wrote (with Vincent Murano) two novels featuring NYPD detective Bob Rogers: The Thursday Club (Simon & Schuster, 1992) and The Dead File (St. Martin’s, 1996).”
• New York City-born character actorItalo Valentino “Val” Bisoglio, who made multiple appearances as restaurateur Danny Tovo on Quincy, M.E., died on October 18 of Lewy body dementia, aged 95. The International Movie Database (IMDb) credits Bisoglio with almost half a century's experience in films and on television, including roles in The Hindenburg (1975) and St. Ives (1976), and on such series as Longstreet, The Bold Ones, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Ironside, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, and Miami Vice. Bisoglio played his final TV part as Murf Lupo in three episodes of The Sopranos.
(Left) Gigi Garner announces her mother’s death on Twitter.
• Another significant passing: The former Lois Josephine Fleischman Clarke, who was married to film and TV star James Garner (Maverick, The Rockford Files) for 57 years—until his demise in 2014—died recently at age 98, according to their younger daughter, Gigi. Garner recalled in his 2011 memoir, The Garner Files, that he met Clarke (born on July 6, 1923) during an Adlai Stevenson-for-President rally in Los Angeles. “Stevenson lost,” he wrote, but “I won,” because that Democratic event gave the Oklahoma-born Garner the chance to strike up a conversation with the petite Clarke, a Southern California native. “The lovebirds didn’t waste any time: after two weeks of whirlwind romance, they tied the knot on August 17, 1956,” says a Web site called Fabiosa. “Although James’ family members and friends were skeptical about the marriage because of their contrasting backgrounds—he was a Methodist, she was Jewish—James and Lois didn’t care.” The couple endured difficulties during their long partnership (including two separations), yet they stayed together and reared two daughters, the elder of whom came from Clarke’s previous marriage. No public statement regarding Lois Garner’s cause of death has been released, as far as I can tell.
Arnold Hano was born in New York City back in March 1922. He grew up to become a copy boy for the New York Daily News, a book editor, an award-winning sportswriter, and the first president of a group dedicated to preserving the “unique village character and cultural heritage” of Laguna Beach, California, where he and his wife had lived since 1955. Oh, and along the way, Hano penned novels—noir thrillers, westerns, and sports yarns, often published under pseudonyms.
Hano finally died this last Sunday, October 24, aged 99.
In its obituary, The Laguna Beach Independentrecalls that Hano’s “writing career encompassed 26 books, including A Day in the Bleachers [2004]”—his much-lauded memoir of attending Game 1 of the 1954 World Series—“as well as hundreds of magazine articles and over 200 newspaper columns compiled in It Takes a Villager: Wit and Wisdom by Laguna’s Irreverent Observer [2013].” He also authored the crime yarn So I'm a Heel (1957), which was republished, along with Flint (1957) and The Big Out (1951), in a 2012 Stark House Press omnibus edition titled 3 Steps to Hell. Fellow Southern California author and sometime Rap Sheet contributor Gary Phillips, who composed that omnibus’ introduction, brings my attention to the fact that Hano served as managing editor at Bantam Books, then as editor-in-chief at Lion Books, working with David Goodis and with Jim Thompson “during his most prolific period.”
In an e-mail note, Phillips tells me, “It was my great pleasure to know him and hang out a bit with him and his wife, Bonnie, these past few years. Great guy and wonderful writer.”
Would that we could all be remembered in like fashion.
• Looking for another crime-writing contest? According to a press release, the Glencairn Glass—touted as “the world’s favourite whisky glass”—has launched “its very own crime short-story competition, in partnership with Scottish Field magazine. … The competition opens for entries on 20th October and runs until 31st December, inviting all budding crime writers to build their stories around the theme ‘A Crystal-Clear Crime’ in no more than 2,000 words.” A trio of cash prizes is being offered: first place fetching £1,000, while two runners-up will each receive £250. “All three winners,” the media notice explains, “will also receive a set of six bespoke engraved Glencairn Glasses to enjoy their favourite dram with. The overall winning entry will be published by Scottish Field in spring 2022 as well as on the Glencairn Glass website.” Among the judges of this contest is Peter Ranscombe, drinks columnist at Scottish Field and author of a historical thriller titled Hare, about which I wrote half a dozen years ago. For more entry details, click here.
• Provided there are no disastrous flare-ups of COVID-19 in the near future, CrimeFest should return next year as an in-person event. It’s currently scheduled to take place in Bristol, England, from May 12 to 15. Mystery Fanfare brings word that author Ann Cleeves will be among 2022’s featured guests. Diamond Dagger recipients Martin Edwards and Robert Goddard are both set to be interviewed during the weekend, and Dick Francis will be celebrated as the convention’s first “Ghost of Honor.” (Click here for a list of other participating authors.) Finally, the Crime Writers’ Association is expected to resume its annual tradition of announcing its Dagger Awards shortlists during a Friday-night reception at CrimeFest. Tickets are already on sale here, with an Early Bird rate of £145 ending on Monday, November 1—so you’d best not delay if you hope to take advantage of that discount.
• Speaking of crime-fiction gatherings, here are the events arranged for this year’s online-only Midwest Mystery Conference (November 5-6). Registration is required, but will set you back only $25.
• And of course, Iceland Noir will return next month for the first time since 2018! “[C]o-founded in 2013 by Quentin Bates, Ragnar Jónasson and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir …,” writes Abby Endler in Crime by the Book, “the festival typically takes place every other year in Reykjavik (though of course, the 2020 festival was cancelled [due to the pandemic]), and includes a whole variety of fantastic author events (panels, spotlight interviews, and more) as well as fun special events for festival attendees, too!” This year’s festival will run from Wednesday, November 17, through Saturday, November 20. Featured guests are to include Ian Rankin, Anthony Horowitz, Sara Blædel, Emelie Schepp, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Ragnar Jónasson, and Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir. Tickets can be purchased here. For scheduling details and updates, refer to Iceland Noir’s Twitter page.
• TV viewers in the UK, take note:Dalgliesh, a six-episode crime drama set in the 1970s and based on P.D. James’ beloved Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, will debut on Channel 5 come Thursday, November 4, with the second half of that two-part episode to be broadcast the following night, November 5. A blog called The British TV Place says three of James’ novels have been adapted for this new series: Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death. Bertie Carvel portrays “the titular, enigmatic detective and poet,” while Jerry Irvine has been cast as his partner, Detective Sergeant Charles Masterson. The U.S. streaming service Acorn TV is bringing Dalgliesh across the pond, reportedly beginning on November 1.
• Actress Emma Corrin, who shone in Pennyworth and as Princess Diana in The Crown, has been recruited to star in a new limited series for pay channel FX-TV. Titled Retreat, the project comes from Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij (creators of The OA) and finds Corrin in the role of “‘Gen Z amateur sleuth’ Darby Hart …, who is ‘invited by a reclusive billionaire to participate in a Retreat at a remote and dazzling location,’” according to The Wrap. “When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must fight to prove it was murder against a tide of competing interests and before the killer takes another life.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has Retreat’s debut slated for 2022.
• Included in The New York Times Book Review’s jam-packed 125th-anniversary “keepsake edition”—available in print this Sunday, but already to be found online—are the newspaper’s 1912 review of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and a selection of vintage comments addressing such crime-fiction favorites as Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Ellery Queen’s The Dutch Shoe Mystery, Margery Allingham’s The Death of a Ghost, S.S. Van Dine’s The Kidnap Murder Case, and Ngaio Marsh’s Death and the Dancing Footman.
• Well, this is a pleasant surprise: “Though the pandemic caused financial hardship for many independent bookstores,” explains Publishers Weekly, “particularly those in cities and states that forced retailers to close their doors for months, it has also paved the way for a mini-boom of bookstore openings.”
• I wasn’t even aware that Britain’s Telos Publishing has, for the last several years, been reissuing the mid-20th-century hard-boiled detective novels credited to “Hank Janson.” But Shotsmag Confidential now reports the imminent appearance of two further reprints: Milady Took the Rap (1951), and The Jane with Green Eyes (1950), both expected back in print next month. We’re also told to be on watch, in December, for Hank Janson Under Cover, “a sumptuous large-format, full colour, guide to every cover that the Hank Janson books have enjoyed world-wide, including many rarities and hard-to-find editions.” For readers who don’t know, the Janson yarns were actually produced by London-born clerk-turned-journalist Stephen Daniel Frances. “[S]tarring the Chicago Chronicle reporter Hank Janson,” Shotsmag Confidential explains, “the books sold in their millions back in the day, and were also subject to various 'obscenity' trials and court cases for their content and 'salacious' covers.”
• The blog Paperback Warrior has postedan “extensive” backgrounder on Orrie Hitt (1916-1975), “a suburban family man in upper New York who was quietly one of the most successful creators of sleaze paperbacks in the 1950s and 1960s.”
• Carole Nelson Douglas, a former journalist with the St. Paul Pioneer Press who went on to compose more than 60 novels across a range of genres (including mystery), passed away on October 20—just a month shy of her 77th birthday. Wikipedia says Douglas “began writing fiction in the late 1970s,” becoming a full-time author in 1984, after she moved to Texas. She started out crafting fantasy novels such as Amberleigh (1980), but in the early ’90s launched what turned out to be a very successful succession of mysteries starring “a feline supersleuth” named Midnight Louise (Catnap, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday, etc.). Douglas also published Good Night, Mr. Holmes (1990), the first of what would be eight novels starring Irene Adler, the American adventuress who bested Sherlock Holmes and thereby won his admiration (in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia”); I reviewed the sixth of those, 2002’s Castle Rouge, in the old Rap Sheet newsletter. Douglas was born in Everett, Washington, in 1944. Her friend and fellow fictionist, Jean Marie Ward, posted on Twitter that Douglas died “after an illness following hip surgery.”
• Finally, we bid good-bye to Leslie Bricusse, “a prolific songwriter whose work included some of the best-known songs of the 1960s spy craze …,” according to The Spy Command. “He collaborated with composer John Barry and wrote the lyrics to two of the most famous James Bond songs, Goldfinger(with Anthony Newley) and You Only Live Twice.” Bricusse was 90 years old at the time of his demise.
We must acknowledge, if belatedly, the death of William P. “Bill” Arney, who is said to have “reclaimed” the apartment, at 891 Post Street in San Francisco, once occupied by Dashiell Hammett and his best-recalled private-eye creation, Sam Spade. He passed away this last September 28.
Hammett lived in the building during the period [1927-1929] he wrote his first three novels and he put Spade in the same building in The Maltese Falcon. With a close reading of the Falcon text, and a comparison of the other apartments in the building, Hammett scholars have determined that #401 is the most likely to be Spade’s and Hammett’s, although there are no records of the particular apartment in which Hammett lived.”
From what I can learn online, Arney, an architect who arrived in the Bay Area from Peoria, Illinois, in 1981, rented that fourth-floor studio apartment, #401—all 275 square feet of it—a dozen years later, in 1993. He’d been a Hammett fan for the previous decade, so set about to renovate the place, “fixing the floorboards, installing a ceiling light, stripping paint off the window frames, and rehabilitating an old frosted-glass door he found in the basement to its former glory,” according to a 2001 piece in SF Weekly. “He invested in a desk and padded rocking chair, which are mentioned often in the book.”
Not surprisingly, Arney’s studio became a periodic stop on literary historian Don Herron’s popular Dashiell Hammett Tour, with participants riding up to it in what the Royal Rosamund Press blog calls “an elevator much like the one we see at the end of John Huston’s film version of Falcon—the one Brigid O’Shaughnessy gets ushered into after Sam Spade refuses to play the sap for her.”
The apartment building at 891 Post Street, San Francisco, where Hammett lived while batting out The Maltese Falcon.
The Great Recession of 2007-2009 cost Arney both his architectural post and his parallel job as occupant-caretaker of #401. But his fears that that historic place would be stripped of its original fixtures (including a Murphy bed and claw-footed bathtub) and otherwise modernized beyond recognition after he was gone were ultimately not realized. According to a piece by author Thomas Burchfield, “a local philanthropist, Robert Mailer Anderson, stepped in, took over the apartment and has kept it as Bill left it, a most fitting memory.”
In addition to preserving Hammett’s onetime digs, Arney had a second claim to renown: For many years he was “the Voice of Noir City,” San Francisco’s annual film noir festival, delivering “wry, wisecracking introductions” to the movies on show. “From the start,” recalls Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, “Bill’s omniscient Master of Ceremonies became an essential part of the Noir City experience. He too became a fixture, making friends with many of the regular patrons. What a lot of people didn’t know is that his wardrobe—the hats, spats, trench coat—wasn’t a costume donned for the show. That was Mr. Arney himself.”
I haven’t yet located an authoritative report of how old Arney was at the time of his demise. Muller says, though: “He’d been battling an assortment of maladies over the past few months, but none that seemed lethal. In fact, Bill called me the day before he died and he sounded the same as always—charming and avuncular, with that gruff voice straight out of a 1940s film noir. An undetected virus in his lungs dropped him for the count the following day.”
We offer our most sincere condolences to Arney’s family.
• The long-overdue recent premiere of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final James Bond picture, has provoked a deluge of articles, in print and online, about the actor and whoever will succeed him playing Ian Fleming’s Agent 007. Notable are this piece from Esquire’s Chris Nashawaty, and this other one by Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson. CrimeReads has gone in its own editorial direction, posting Olivia Rutigliano’s rankings of all the Bond movies (to which my sole objections are that Live and Let Die deserves more credit, while The World Is Not Enough deserves less), and Julia Sirmons’ tribute to 1969’s typically malignedOn Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which she insists is actually the franchise’s best entry.
• Staking out his own fringe in all this Bond coverage, author-blogger Gary Dobbs showcases “a professional Daniel Craig lookalike who actually looks nothing like Daniel Craig,” and who now—with Craig’s retirement as 007—“fears his work will dry up.”
• Film noir authority and author Eddie Muller isn’t merely a swell guy, he’s also a sterling interviewee. If you missed hearing his half-hour conversation earlier this week with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, don’t fret, because you can still tune in to the whole thing here. In addition to discussing film noir’s history, some of its landmark productions (including 1944’s Double Indemnity), and Muller’s hosting duties on Turner Classic Movies’ exalted Noir Alley series (shown on Saturdays at midnight), the pair chatted about the new and expanded edition of his book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir; his famous boxing-writer father; and his two novels, both set in 1940s San Francisco and starring a sportswriter, Billy Nichols, modeled on his dad.
• Listening to that exchange reminded me of something I wrote about Eddie Muller on this page five years ago. My latest Kirkus Reviews column had then just appeared, its topic being “crime novels worth re-reading,” and Muller contacted me with the surprising information that he was halfway through composing a third Nichols novel, to follow The Distance (2001) and Shadow Boxer (2003). So whatever happened to that book? I e-mailed Muller for an update this week, and received the following reply:
Still working on it. Now I’m glad it’s taken so long. The reissue of Dark City is selling through the roof, #1 movie book on Amazon for over two months. I have two other books in the pipeline, with contracts—not fiction. Since novels are the hardest sell, all this other work will only help when Billy reemerges. And thanks for asking!
I, for one, shall be pleased to welcome Nichols’ return.
• Three weeks ago, I noted the passing of journalist-turned-crime writer Robert Richardson, who died on August 31 at age 80. Only now, however, is The Guardiancarrying an obituary by Mike Ripley, in which he commends Richardson for penning both traditional English detective yarns and psychological thrillers, and says he “was heavily involved in organising the annual conventions of the CWA [Crime Writers Association], where members spent a weekend, usually in a seaside hotel, being treated to lectures and talks on criminology. On the social side, [Richardson] would devise and host quizzes on crime fiction, which though popular with members were invariably described as ‘fiendishly difficult.’” One thing I hadn’t known before, but that Ripley mentions: “Following a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, in 2017 he moved to Dore, near Sheffield, to be closer to his family.”
• Whilst we’re on the subject of Mr. Ripley, I want to direct your attention to his October “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. It includes remarks on the “sumptuous launch party thrown by Felix Francis for his new novel, Iced”; an “accessible and entertaining” new study of Agatha Christie and her knowledge of forensic science; and fresh fiction by Charles Cumming (Box 62), Oliver Bottini (Night Hunters), Peter Papathanasiou (The Stoning), and others.
• Critic Maxim Jakubowski (who now also serves as chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association) is out with his latest “To the Max” column for Crime Time. In it, he briefly reviews 10 new novels, two of which—Toshihiko Yahagi’s The Wrong Goodbye and Anthony Horowitz’s A Line to Kill—are already on my most wanted list, plus one book that I didn’t even realize fell under the crime classification, but that Jakubowski makes sound like a winner: Mrs. March (Liveright), “a slow-burning psychological thriller” by Virginia Feito.
• I have a paperback copy, in storage, of 1974’s Charlie Chan Returns, composed by Dennis Lynds (with splendid cover art by Howard Rogers), that I inherited from my late father-in-law. I’ve never read the yarn, but maybe I should, for the blog Bloody, Spicy, Books calls it a “curious” yet “nice, light fun mystery novel” that translates “the golden-era detective Chan to groovy 70’s New York where he gets tangled up in big case with the help of his son Jimmy, an NYPD detective. There’s a fish-out-of-water quality to the idea of a very old-fashioned man in the land of discos, dirty politics and rock ’n’ roll clubs. So, it’s like Charlie Chan replacing Telly Savalas as Kojak.”
• By the way, this novel should in no way be confused with the unsuccessful 1973 ABC-TV pilot The Return of Charlie Chan, starring The Wild Wild West’s Ross Martin as Earl Derr Biggers’ fictional Chinese-American police detective. For the nonce, at least, that two-hour movie, which imagines a retired Chan “investigat[ing] a murder case aboard the yacht of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon,” is available on YouTube. One viewer writes: “I won’t say that this is a good Charlie Chan mystery, but it is still a pretty good mystery. Just think of Ross Martin playing an imposter, Artemis Gordon’s grandson in disguise, a ‘Charlie Chang,’ if you will, instead of the actual Charlie Chan.”
• R.I.P., Frank Wheeler Jr., the Wisconsin author of Wowzer (2012) and The Good Life (2014), who passed away on September 16, cut down “after a hard-fought battle with cancer” at age 43.
• The Killing Times reminds us that ITV-TV’s new six-part suspense series, Angela Black, starring Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt, is set to debut in the UK this coming Sunday night, October 10. It finds Froggatt playing the title character, “someone who has the perfect life. Or at least it looks like it,” as the site cautions. “Angela’s life appears idyllic: a lovely house in suburban London, days working volunteer shifts at a dogs home, two beautiful sons and a charming, hard-working husband—Olivier [Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman]. However, beneath this façade of charmed domesticity, Angela is a victim of domestic violence. Olivier is controlling and brutal; but Angela loves him and he’s the father of her children. She can’t leave him, even though she has threatened to countless times. So, she covers her bruises with makeup and fabricates lies to explain away her missing teeth. Until, one day, Angela is approached by Ed [The Watch’s Samuel Adewunmi]—a private investigator—and he smashes her already strained domestic life to pieces. Ed reveals Olivier’s deepest secrets to Angela, and she is faced with horrifying truths about her husband and his betrayals. But can Angela trust Ed? And what truths will be revealed in the ferocious fight between Angela and her husband?” A trailer for this hour-long series—which apparently has no U.S. release date arranged—is embedded below.
• Count this as good news (if not wholly unexpected): “Helena Bonham Carter,” says Variety, “will rejoin Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill for a new Enola Holmes mystery from Legendary and Netflix”—the sequel to one of Netflix’s biggest 2020 draws. “Bonham Carter plays Eudoria Holmes, the matriarch of the famous sleuthing family, in the series that is based on Nancy Springer’s beloved books. The films tell the story of Enola (Brown), the rebellious teen sister of Sherlock Holmes (Cavill), who is a gifted super-sleuth in her own right and often outsmarts her famous siblings.” As reported earlier on this page, Enola Holmes 2 (and I hope that’s not really going to be the title) is being lensed, at least partially, in the English port city of Hull.
• Season 6 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and based on Ann Cleeves’ novels, is just around the corner—at least for British viewers. The first of a half-dozen fresh episodes is slated for an October 10 broadcast on the BBC. “The forthcoming new series,” says The Killing Times, “centres on the doorstep murder of a prominent local figure, a case which strikes at the heart of the Shetland Isles and its people. As Perez and his team uncover a kaleidoscope of motives for the murder, their investigation soon takes a shockingly sinister turn.” Radio Times notes that, to make up for time lost to the COVID-19 crisis, the fifth and sixth seasons of this Scottish crime drama are being filmed back to back, so another run can be expected in 2022. There’s no word at this time of when American couch potatoes might see more of Shetland.
• And a final TV morsel: “Mike Flanagan has found another house to haunt for Netflix,” says Tor.com’s Andrew Liptak. “After adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor (based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw), he’s turning his sights to Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ … According to Deadline, Netflix has given a series order for the project, which will be ‘based on multiple works from Edgar Allan Poe.’ He’ll direct half of the eight-episode series alongside Michael Fimognari (To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You).”
• There appears to be major disagreement over whether the true identity of the “Zodiac Killer,” who taunted police and took the lives of at least five people around San Francisco Bay during the late 1960s, has finally been revealed. From In Reference to Murder:
A team of more than 40 retired and amateur investigators claim they have identified the Zodiac Killer, up to this point an unnamed serial killer that operated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. The team, calling themselves The Case Breakers, which consists of former law enforcement officials, DNA experts, and journalists, believe they have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. But the FBI and police in California say, “Not so fast.”
• Killer Covers has posted a new gallery of classic—and very attractive—paperbacks that take their titles from the first names of female protagonists. Feast your eyes here.
• By my calculations (he was born in 1948), Max Allan Collins is now 73 years old and has been publishing books for 45 years. That’s an impressive career, but one that seems to have taken some toll on the Iowa author. In a blog post put up earlier this week, dealing primarily with his new Fancy Anders novella series and the latest installment of his literary memoir in column form, “A Life of Crime,” Collins mentioned that he and collaborator James Traylor are still hard at work on their Mickey Spillane biography for Mysterious Press. Then he wrote: “I have decided I will never write non-fiction again. I haven’t done much, but projects like The History of Mystery, the Elvgren and other pin-up books, the men’s adventure magazine book with George Hagenauer, two previous Spillane non-fiction works with Jim Traylor, and the two Eliot Ness biographies with Brad Schwartz, were just too punishing for me to consider doing non-fiction again at this stage and age. The Spillane bio is going to be something very good, I think, and will make an excellent capper to this niche of my career.”
(Right) Dilys Winn on To Tell the Truth, February 1972.
• New York City’s first independent mystery bookshop, the beloved Murder Ink, shuttered its premises in December 2006 after 34 years of operation. Last week, a Web site called I Love the Upper West Side, which covers news and entertainment happening in one of Manhattan’s tonier districts, delivered a fine remembrance of Murder Ink and its “quirky” founder, Dilys Winn. Enough time has now passed to leave an entire generation of Upper West Side (UWS) residents without knowledge of Winn’s enterprise, so this “history” piece was called for. Contributor Claudie Benjamin introduces her subject thusly:
In a 1972 segment of the popular TV show To Tell the Truth, [Irish-born former advertising copywriter] Dilys Winn wowed the panel who were grilling contestants all claiming to be her. Winn’s deep familiarity with the mystery genre, including the specifics of authors and their heroes and villains, led the panelists to correctly vote her as the real Dilys Winn.
There’s always been so much creativity and innovative impulse on the UWS, and it’s impressive when someone comes up with something that’s totally new and different. That’s just what Ms. Winn did in 1972 when she opened Murder Ink, an independent bookstore entirely devoted to murder mysteries and true crime. …
The impulse to open the shop came from her love of mysteries and hatred of her job (in advertising). Ms. Winn told the To Tell the Truth panelists, “It was either sell them or commit one.”
• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s “Something Is Going to Happen” blog features a thoughtful new essay by Kevin Mims, remembering American author John Ball (In the Heat of the Night) 33 years after his death on October 15, 1988. “He was a writer,” declares Mims, “who was unafraid to veer out of his own lane and explore the lives of others—people whose experiences of the world were vastly different from his own. He left behind a vast body of work, but if more readers don’t seek it out, it may end up being a dead body. And you don’t want to be one of the suspects in that homicide investigation.”
• As The Deighton Dossier observes, Len Deighton (The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, etc.) “has often eschewed literary prizes and honours, believing his work speaks for itself. But as someone born in London, who lived there during much of his early life until his career as an author really took off, he might appreciate a blue plaque there in his name.” It seems the inner London borough of Southwark plans to salute one individual this year who boasts a significant connection to the area, and to do so by posting a circular blue plaque bearing his or her name and general details. The 92-year-old Deighton, “who is thought to have written the first novel typed on a word processor from his Borough home,” is among the five candidates for said accolade. (More than 50 such plaques already dot the district.) The Southwark News, which co-created this commendation with the Southwark Heritage Association, requests the public’s participation in selecting the 2021 honoree. “To vote, e-mail admin@southwark.org.uk or kit@southwarknews.co.uk, naming the person that you would like to see commemorated with a blue plaque,” the newspaper advises. “Voting closes at midnight on November 30.”
• Having enjoyed Simon Scarrow’sBlackout, a World War II-era thriller released in Great Britain earlier this year, I was overjoyed to hear him tell Crime Time FM podcast host Paul Burke that the book is only the beginning of a series starring German Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke. Regarding the second installment, he says: “I’m busy doing the last bit of research before I start writing it … I know exactly how it’s going to start and where it’s going. … I have no idea how long the series will last, because even though it may be five or six novels across five years of war, but I do have a view of how it might end, and that would be after the war, because I think that’s an interesting time as well.” You can listen to their whole conversation here.
• France’s capital, on the edge of violence, is the setting for Paris Police 1900, premiering on BBC Four in the UK on Saturday, October 9. Variety supplies this plot summary: “The eight-part series kicks off with a scandal: Félix Faure, president of the French Republic, collapsing and dying after being intimately pleasured by his lover Meg Steinheil. As anti-Semitism rages in Paris—a young newspaper seller is viciously beaten by Anti-Semitic League leader Jules Guérin for merely selling the liberal paper L’Aurore, with an article by Émile Zola—a young woman’s torso is found in a suit-case floating down the Seine. Based out of the Paris Prefecture, its police H.Q., Antoine Jouin, an ambitious but principled young inspector, volunteers to investigate—and begin to put together the pieces behind the woman’s death, stumbling on far more evil than a single psychopath.” Despite its title, this English-subtitled series takes place in 1899, as anarchists, nationalists, and anti-Semites—all enraged by the Dreyfuss Affair—threaten the city’s harmony and future. Look to The Killing Times for a terrific trailer. There’s no word yet on when this program might reach American audiences, but it will reportedly come via Netflix.
• BBC One has announced the return of Shetland at an as-yet-unspecified date in autumn 2021. “Soon, then!” enthuses The Killing Times, which provides a first image from Season 6 of that crime drama based on Ann Cleeves’ Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez novels, along with this modicum of news: “The forthcoming new series centres on the doorstep murder of a prominent local figure, a case which strikes at the heart of the Shetland Isles and its people. As Perez and his team uncover a kaleidoscope of motives for the murder, their investigation soon takes a shockingly sinister turn.”
• And this is unquestionably off-topic … but how did I miss word that a second Downton Abbey film is in rapid development? “The eagerly-anticipated Downton Abbey sequel has been given an official title along with a new release date,” Harper’s Bazaar magazine reported in late August. “Downton Abbey: A New Era will arrive in cinemas globally on March 18, 2022, it was confirmed at the Las Vegas CinemaCon last week (via Deadline). An exclusive clip from the film was also unveiled during the event, which features the aristocratic Crawley family preparing for a trip overseas. Jim Carter’s beloved Mr. Carson announces in the footage: ‘The British are coming.’” Deadline adds that this movie will feature “lots of glitz and glamour and jazz, as well as, evidently, a wedding. … The pic’s original principal cast including Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Laura Charmichael, Carter and more have returned for the second film. New additions include Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye and Dominic West.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page for this release shows that Tuppence Middleton—introduced in the 2019 Downton Abbey big-screener as Lucy Smith, hush-hush heiress and new romantic interest of ex-chauffeur Tom Branson—will be back in New Era, too. Might it be their nuptials we’re to anticipate?
• I did not read Richard Osman’s first novel, last year’s The Thursday Murder Club, nor have I picked up its new sequel. Yet that apparently leaves me among a minority. As The Guardianstates, The Man Who Died Twice—released on September 16 in the UK—“has become one of the fastest-selling novels since [British] records began. … It sold 114,202 copies in its first three days on sale … (including pre-orders), according to Nielsen BookScan—a performance which the sales monitor said made it one of the fastest-selling novels since it began to track sales in the late 1990s. Since that time, explains the paper’s books reporter, Alison Flood, “just four hardback adult novels just four hardback adult novels have sold more in their first week on shelves: Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (550,946 sold in its first week) and Inferno (228,961), J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (124,603), and the late Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (168,455).”
• I mentioned in last week's “Bullet Points” post that author Max Allan Collins has recently been contributing a very handsomely illustrated literary memoir in column form to the Web site of publisher NeoText, with his latest “A Life in Crime” entry focusing on the roots of Road to Perdition. Now it seems that column’s life is to be extended. “Next week,” Collins notes in his blog, “will be part seven and focus on Fancy Anders on the very week of Fancy Anders Goes to War being published. … Initially, this was to end this run of ‘A Life in Crime’ for now, with appropriate installments to be written and appearing in support of future books. But I decided to keep going with these essays right up to the publication of The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton [co-authored with Dave Thomas, and due out October 25], so three more installments are (as they delicately say) in the can.”
• Retired physician and reading enthusiast William Gottfried, who—together with his wife, Toby—became a welcome fixture on the mystery-fiction convention circuit, passed away last night at age 85. From what I can tell via a Web search, Gottfried was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1936; received his medical degree from that same city’s Jefferson Medical College, and became a pediatrician; then eventually moved to Northern California. At the time of his death, he and Toby were living in the Contra Costa County town of Orinda, east of Berkeley. His longtime friend Janet Rudolph, who met Gottfried at the 1985 Bouchercon in San Francisco and later worked with him on other conventions, writes today in Mystery Fanfare:
Bill was a terrific resource for all things mystery and medical. That was a great combination for me, personally, as it was always good to have a ‘doctor in the house.’ And, in case you didn't know, Bill personally saved the lives of several of our mystery friends. Bill was a world traveler, a collector of masks and ethnic artifacts, a gardener, a bird watcher, a scholar. Religion played an important part in his life, and recently during the pandemic, he continued to expand his personal education in a number of fields. He always wanted to learn more, taking classes online and before that in person during his retirement. He also shared information about these courses to make sure others got the opportunity to attend. Bill loved to share his knowledge and his love of many different subjects. …
We had so many things we shared: collecting, mystery, history, maps, religion, art, reference books. If you knew Bill you knew he bought books, often several copies of the same one, much to Toby’s chagrin. But instead of returning the extra copy or two, he gave them to others who would appreciate them.
Even though we were not related by blood, I thought of him as family. … He was brilliant and loving, warm, and unique. But most of all, he will be remembered for his acts of Chesed (Look it up, Bill would say!).
Unlike Janet, I didn’t know Bill Gottfried well. However, I enjoyed chatting with him at two or three Bouchercons over the years, and we were “Facebook friends” (for what that’s worth). He seemed to be as interested as I am in both historical mysteries and older, largely forgotten crime novelists; and we certainly shared a liberal political perspective. My sympathies go out to his family. The Gottfrieds’ son Louis wrote on Facebook this morning that “Right now we are all in state of shock and processing the passing of this great father, husband and grandfather. As we know about funeral arrangements we will let everyone know. Right now we just wanted you to know so you can grieve in your own way. His memory will be for a blessing.”
• Jiro Kimura adds more information about Bill Gottfried in The Gumshoe Site, writing that “He and his wife, Toby, co-chaired the 2004 Left Coast Crime (LCC) in Monterey [California], the 2009 LCC in Hawaii, and the 2014 LCC with Lucinda Suber and Stan Ulrich in Monterey …” In addition, the couple “received the 2008 Don Sandstrom Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and the 2015 David Thompson Special Service Award from the Bouchercon committee.”
• Gone now, too, is Samoan-American actor Al Harrington, who died in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 21 after suffering a “massive stroke.” He had been “a regular cast member on the original Hawaii Five-O series …,” recalls The Spy Command. “Harrington played detective Ben Kokua during the fifth through seventh seasons. Harrington was a local entertainer who was hired by Leonard Freeman, the creator and executive producer of the series. Harrington had played criminals in earlier Five-O seasons.” He later signed up for a recurring role as Mamo Kahike on the 2010 reboot of Hawaii Five-0.
• This sounds like a promising partnership: “Wolfpack Publishing announced the acquisition of Rough Edges Press (REP), an independent publisher started by award-winning author James Reasoner. As Wolfpack’s newest imprint, REP will focus on publishing crime, mystery and thriller novels. The acquisition also includes REP’s existing catalogue of work, including several novels written by current Wolfpack authors such as Robert J. Randisi, Wayne Dundee, Steve Mertz and many others. ... Wolfpack will be announcing new titles to be released under the Rough Edges Press imprint in coming weeks.”
• Les Blatt, New Jersey author of that excellent blog Classic Mysteries, has for months now been complaining about assorted computer issues. So when I noticed that his site hadn’t been updated since mid-July, I e-mailed him an inquiry. He responded thusly: “I'm still struggling with in-your-face Microsoft, and I’m trying to learn a lot of new software at one time. I WILL be back, and sooner rather than later—like most of us, I have WAY too many books awaiting me. So yes, I’ll be back. Soon, I hope! And thanks for checking—which acts as a powerful motive for getting off my backside and back online.”
• The Invisible Event is pretty brutal in its late-to-the-party assessment of Dashiell Hammett’s debut novel, Red Harvest (1929), calling it “a classic because of all the imitators who flocked in to occasionally improve on what Hammett showed them how to do. As a novel in its own right, however, it is unpleasantly unrepentant, glorying in a dismissal of human life in a manner that is tawdry in the worst incarnation of its Pulpish roots. The fascination of disbelief is strong here, and not something I’m keen to revisit any time soon.”
• Meanwhile, Lit Reactor humorously chastises Lee Child for the number of times his characters “shrug” or “nod” or pointedly “say nothing.” I’ll never read Child’s work the same way again!
I’ve been trying for some while now to find time enough to compile one of my lengthy “Bullet Points” posts, in which I could mention a few recent deaths among members of the crime-fiction community. However, those free hours never seem to be available. Rather than wait longer, let me pay final respects here to six different people who have made contributions of one sort or another to this genre.
• Character actor Michael Constantine, who passed away from natural causes on August 31 at age 94, may now be—as Deadline insists—“best known as the fruit- and Windex-obsessed father Gus Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, an indie film that rose out of nowhere to become a smash hit.” However, Constantine’s extensive list of TV and movie credits collected over a more-than-half-century-long career found him in everything from comedies to crime dramas, in both starring and secondary roles. For instance, he featured in films such as The Hustler (1961), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), and Prancer (1989). On the small screen he played the beleaguered school principal on Room 222; a night court judge in the short-lived sitcom Sirota’s Court; a wannabe private eye in his first of two turns on Perry Mason; and the lovable loser George Edward Mulch in three episodes of Remington Steele. Constantine scored parts as well on The Untouchables, The Fugitive, The Name of the Game, The Streets of San Francisco, McMillan & Wife, Ellery Queen, Quincy, M.E., Crazy Like a Fox, Simon & Simon, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Law & Order. He was born Constantine Ioannides on May 22, 1927, in Reading, Pennsylvania—the same city in which he’s said to have died.
• Art Metrano, born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 22, 1936, evidently made his big-screen debut playing a truck driver in the 1958 espionage/science-fiction thriller Rocket Attack U.S.A. He was later cast in other pictures, among them They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), They Only Kill Their Masters (1972), and a pair of Police Academy comedies. Nonetheless, Metrano is better remembered for his small-screen work, which included roles on The Mod Squad, Mannix, Kojak, Ironside, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Police Story, Baretta, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law. In addition, he was a regular on the Ironside spin-off Amy Prentiss, playing San Francisco Detective Rod Pena. In 1989, Metrano tumbled from a ladder while repairing the roof of his Los Angeles home, and broke three vertebrae, leaving him a quadriplegic. That misfortune, says the entertainment Web site Enstars, “did not let it stop him from pursuing his career. Even after the fall, he returned in a one-man play, ‘Metrano’s Accidental Comedy,’ where he performed while riding on a motorized wheelchair.” Metrano perished in Florida on September 8 at 84 years of age.
• It was author Martin Edwards who first brought to my attention the demise, on August 31, of Robert Richardson, an author who served twice as chair of Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (1993-1994 and again in 2006-2007). “Robert,” Edwards explained here, “was a journalist who moved from writing whodunits featuring an amateur sleuth to novels of psychological suspense.
His first crime novel, The Latimer Mercy (1985), won the John Creasey Memorial Award for the best debut of the year. Firmly in the classic detective story tradition, it benefited from a cathedral setting (in Vercaster, a fictionalised St. Albans), and an amateur detective [and playwright] who rejoiced in the name of Augustus Maltravers. … Maltravers appeared in three more novels before Robert published The Hand of Strange Children (1993), a book nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger. He blended extracts from news agency reports detailing the discovery of two bodies in a wealthy banker’s house with flashbacks so as to build considerable tension. Significant Others (1995), in which he made use of his knowledge of the newspaper industry, and Victims (1997), are also entertaining stand-alone novels.
Shotsmag Confidential adds that Richardson was presented with the CWA Red Herring Award in 2020 “for giving generously of his time and expertise, benefiting not only the CWA but the wider crime-writing community.” Eighty years old, he succumbed in South Yorkshire, England, after what’s said to have been a short, unspecified illness.
• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura writes: “J. Randolph Cox died on September 14 at a care center in Northfield, Minnesota. The former librarian at St. Olaf College in Northfield served as the editor-publisher of Dime Novel Round-Up for more than 20 years, edited Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction (Scarecrow Press, 1989), and authored Man of Magic and Mystery (Scarecrow Press, 1989; a biblio-biography of the creator of The Shadow), The Dime Novel Companion (Greenwood Press, 2000), and Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer (Book Hunter Press, 2005; with David S. Siegel), among other [books]. He frequently contributed articles for many mystery reference books and fanzines and received the 2014 Munsey Award presented by PulpFest.” Cox had achieved 84 years of life before he took his last breath. UPDATE: Mystery*File supplies a bit more info about Cox here.
• Being a regular reader of his eclectic, often humorous, and long-running blog, Matt Paust’s Crime Time, I was surprised, along with so many others, to hear that journalist-turned-fictionist Paust has died from bladder cancer. Or, as he phrased it in an obituary he penned and left behind, “Mathew David Paust has at last slipped quietly away from the furiously whirling social experiment known throughout the galaxy, and perhaps beyond—and not without a chuckle, groan, snort, or perhaps something more imaginative—as ‘Earth.’” The brief biographical sketch explains that Paust—who had retired from the Newport News, Virginia, Daily Press to concoct and self-publish several books, among them the satirical Executive Pink (2010) and Sacrifice (2012)—“was born in Columbus, Wisconsin, two days before Japanese war planes bombed U.S. Naval ships at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.” Which made him 79 years old. The final entry in his blog, which he launched eight years ago, was posted in July.
• Finally, a few words about the late, great Ed Asner. I was introduced to this Kansas City, Missouri-born actor by my mother, who was a loyal fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), on which Asner played a news producer at Minneapolis station WJM-TV. My interest in him was significantly enhanced when, after that situation comedy’s cancellation, he reappeared on the wonderful spinoff series Lou Grant (1977–1982), portraying the same tough-talking character in a much different setting, as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. As David Von Drehle wrote in The Washington Post, Asner became “the first actor to win Emmy awards for the same role in both a comedy and a drama. That tells you something about the depth of the character and of Asner’s portrayal—for what is more true of human existence than its inseparable tangle of comedy and drama?” However, Asner’s TV and movie credits extended well beyond those two landmark series. As The Spy Command recalls, he earned screen time on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, and House on Greenapple Road, a teleflick that spawned the Burt Reynolds series Dan August. Asner racked up roles, too, on everything from Naked City, Cain’s Hundred, Route 66, The Untouchables, and The Defenders to Burke’s Law, The Fugitive, Judd, for the Defense, They Call It Murder (the unsuccessful 1971 pilot for a TV series based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s Doug Selby novels), The Mod Squad, Police Story, Roots, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill, and even Mad About You. Asner’s face was hardly less familiar on the silver screen; he was seen in The Satan Bug (1965), Gunn (1967, based on the TV series Peter Gunn), James Garner’s Skin Game (1971), Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), Elf (2003), and the 2009 animated film Up. Varietynotes in addition that “Within the industry he was respected for his activism on liberal causes that were close to his heart and for his service as Screen Actors Guild president from 1981 to 1985. In recent years he had been vocal in his opposition to the current SAG-AFTRA leadership regime. In December Asner was one of 10 actors who filed a class-action lawsuit against the union over changes made to its health care plan.” Ed Asner was 91 when he expired this last August 29, reportedly of natural causes.
It was late yesterday afternoon, shortly before the start of Bouchercon’s Anthony Awards presentation, when I heard that Caroline Todd—who, with her son Charles Todd, was supposed to present this year’s Best Critical or Non-fiction Work commendation—had passed away. As most Rap Sheet readers will know, the Todds together penned dozens of mysteries, primarily those starring early 20th-century Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge (A Fatal Lie) and World War I-era battlefield nurse Bess Crawford (An Irish Hostage).
Charles Todd brought the sad news via Facebook:
It is with a heavy heart that I along with my sister Linda [Watjen] and Caroline’s sister Martha must tell you we lost Caroline this morning, 8-27-21, at 10 a.m. She passed peacefully and was with Linda at the end. Caroline left the world a better place and was immensely happy to have met and gotten to know so many readers, authors and booksellers. She was to the very end a class act. More information will follow. I am delighted we have completed A Game of Fear featuring Ian Rutledge and the next in the Bess Crawford [series]. Caroline will always be alive in the hearts of all she touched. Everyone’s notes have been greatly appreciated. Charles
The tributes have since been pouring in. In a post on his blog, fellow novelist Martin Edwards calls Caroline Todd “a woman of charm, intelligence, and kindliness,” and adds:
I first became aware of the name of Charles Todd (the name under which the mother and son duo wrote) twenty-five years ago, when I delighted in their first historical mystery featuring Inspector Rutledge, A Test of Wills. The popularity of that book paved the way for a long and successful career. Their love of England shone through in their writing: it's not easy to capture the sense of a foreign country in a long series of novels, but they achieved this thanks to meticulous research and a great deal of empathy. …
Four years ago, when I agreed to give a talk in [the English village of] Grasmere to a group of Americans visiting the Lake District, I was surprised and delighted to find that their number included Caroline and Charles, who were on another research trip—as I say, they researched expertly and extensively together. I've also had the pleasure of including their stories in anthologies; their contributions were always entertaining and highly professional.
Blogger and editor Janet Rudolph describes Caroline as “one of the most gracious, warm, and charming members of the mystery community.” She offers these memories:
I first met Caroline many years ago when I was seated next to her at her publisher dinner at the Baltimore Bouchercon. She was the perfect dining companion. She shared so many wonderful and interesting personal stories. Since that meeting, we always made sure to have coffee or a short talk at every Left Coast Crime, Malice [Domestic], and Bouchercon. She was so very special and someone I counted as a friend.
Over the years she was on several panels that I moderated, but my last “meeting” with her was this summer at More Than Malice, the virtual Malice Domestic. She was on a panel I moderated on “Past as Prologue.” She was animated and interested, not just in her own writing and role on the panel, but in that of the other newer authors. The panelists all had such a good discussion that I was able to step back and enjoy, too. Caroline valued the younger new additions to the mystery world. And that's how I will remember her—always so gracious and welcoming.
I didn’t know Caroline Todd well, but like so many others, I had opportunities to meet and speak with her at Bouchercons, notably in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2015 (click here and scroll down to see a photo) and in New Orleans in 2016. I was also fortunate enough to interview her and her son in 2002 on behalf of January Magazine, at a time when they were still hiding behind their joint “Charles Todd” pseudonym. Caroline reminded me very much of my British maternal grandmother, which is a compliment, indeed.
So far, I haven’t spotted any obituaries of Caroline Todd, nor have I found out so much as how old she was at the time of her demise. Word has also not got around as to whether her son Charles will continue writing their series in his mother’s absence (though I presume he will). But I shall update this post as I hear more.
FOLLOW-UP: Jiro Kimura has a nice obit of Caroline Todd in The Gumshoe Site, which includes her age at passing:
Caroline Todd, one-half of the mother-and-son writing team that authors under the joint pseudonym Charles Todd, died peacefully on August 27 in Delaware. The former Associated Press reporter started to co-write (with her son, Charles Todd, the former corporate trouble-shooter) [by producing] A Test of Wills (St. Martin’s, 1986), introducing Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard inspector with shell shock from World War One. This historical novel won the 1997 Barry Award and was nominated for the Edgar Award in the first novel category, resulting in their continuing to produce almost one Rutledge book every year. In addition, they started another historical mystery series featuring Bess Crawford, a British army nurse in World War One, starting [with] A Duty to the Dead (Morrow, 2009). An Unmarked Grave (Crawford #4, 2012), A Question of Honor (Crawford #5, 2013) and The Shattered Tree (Crawford #8, 2016) won the 2013 Macavity, the 2013 Agatha and the 2017 Mary Higgins Clark Awards, respectively. The 24th Rutledge book, A Game of Fear, and the 13th, not-yet-titled Crawford book will be published in 2022 from Morrow. To my surprise, I have found out the real names of Caroline Todd and Charles Todd are Carolyn Teachey Watjen and David Wheaton Watjen, respectively. She was 86.
• First it was former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Now country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton is collaborating with best-seller James Patterson to produce a work of fiction. Titled Run, Rose, Run, and due out from Little,
Brown in March 2022, this will be Parton’s first novel. As Literary Hub explains, the yarn follows “a young woman who moves to Nashville to fulfill her dreams of becoming a star
while simultaneously hiding from her past … An accompanying Dolly Parton album containing 12 original songs inspired by the book will be released
simultaneously on Parton’s label Butterfly Records. ‘The mind-blowing thing about this project is that reading the novel is enhanced by listening to the album and vice versa,’ Patterson told People. ‘It’s a really unique experience that I know readers (and listeners) will love.’” We’ll just have to see about that.
• Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman have worked on and off over the last seven years—ever since they founded their publishing imprint, Brash Books—to convince South Dakota author William J. Reynolds that he should let them republish his once-popular novels starring an Omaha-based private investigator-turned-writer known only as Nebraska. The effort finally paid off. “We have licensed all six novels in the Nebraska series,” Goldberg tells me. “Our intention is to release them all at once in October in e-book and trade paperback.” The Nebraska Quotient (1984) is the opening entry in that series, but Goldberg sent me the cover art for its 1986 sequel, Moving Targets, displayed on the right. I, for one, look forward to re-reading the whole set!
Gun Honey, the new 4-part [Titan] comic book series launching in September 2021 by Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus award winning author and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, is being developed for television by Piller/Segan, producers of Private
Eyes, Haven, Greek, Wildfire, and The Dead Zone, and Malaysia-based Double Vision, the production arm of the Vision New Media Group and the award-winning producers behind the acclaimed Asian adaptation of The Bridge.
Featuring interior art by Malaysian illustrator Ang Hor Kheng as well as two covers by legendary movie-poster painter Robert McGinnis (creator of the posters for the original James Bond films), Gun Honey tells the story of Singapore-born weapons expert Joanna Tan, the best in the world at providing her clients with the perfect weapon at the perfect moment. When her new assignment leads to the escape of a brutal criminal from a high-security prison, Joanna is forced to track him down—and to confront secrets about her own past that will challenge her sense of who she is.
Gun Honey will be the second television collaboration between Hard Case Crime and Piller/Segan, who previously worked together to produce Haven, based on the first of three bestselling novels written for Hard Case Crime by Stephen King. Haven ran for six years on SyFy in the U.S. and was distributed in 185 territories worldwide.
• Well, it’s about damn time! After witnessing its release date delayed five times over the last two years—three of those due to the spread of COVID-19—the 25th James Bond picture, No Time to Die, looks to finally be rolling out on September 30 in the UK, and on October 8 in the States. Eon Productions has already announced the film’s world premiere will come on September 28, at London’s Royal Albert Hall. But Bill Koenig of The Spy Command notes
that the Bond Web site MI6 HQ “tweeted out that Australia has postponed No Time to Die to Nov. 11 from Oct. 8. Theater lists like this one from an IMAX theater carry the Nov. 11 date. Later, MI6 HQ tweeted
that New Zealand is also delayed to Nov. 11.” It seems even 007 is powerless against this persistent pandemic.
• Word from In Reference to Murder is that, “Following a highly competitive auction, Amazon Studios has acquired a star vehicle that will have Emily Blunt playing Kate Warne, the first woman to become a detective at the Pinkerton Agency. Based on a script by Gustin Nash, the movie is a propulsive action adventure built around Warne, a real-life female Sherlock Holmes in a male-dominated industry whose singular sleuthing skills paved the way for future women in law enforcement and forever changed how detective work was done.” Writer and producer Nile Cappello supplies interesting background on Warne in this 2019 piece for CrimeReads.
• I mentioned not long ago that Season 6 of Grantchester is scheduled to begin broadcasting in the States on Sunday, October 3, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. British viewers, though, won’t have such a lengthy wait. According to The Killing Times, that historical whodunit will debut in the UK on September 3.
• British actor Martin Clunes is returning for a second series of Manhunt, the ITV-TV crime drama he headlined back in 2019. As before, he’ll portray real-life Detective Chief
Inspector Colin Sutton of London’s Metropolitan Police. Radio Times provides this plot synopsis for Manhunt II: The Night Stalker: “Based on a true story, Manhunt series two will see … Sutton pursue a notorious southeast London serial rapist whose 17-year reign of terror left thousands of elderly people fearing for their lives.” Digital Spy saysManhunt II will reach TV screens across the pond sometime this fall.
• Here’s a story I missed earlier in the month: The Showtime network is “in its early stages” of developing a TV series about Depression-era Chicago gangster Al Capone and his most ardent pursuer, Prohibition agent Eliot Ness. “The show will delve into Prohibition-era politics, industrialization, mass media, the immigrant experience, law enforcement and the birth of organized crime,” according to Deadline. “It will show how Al Capone corporatized crime on a level never before imagined,
and how Eliot Ness, one of the most revolutionary cops in American history, fought an uphill battle to reform law enforcement, a battle that continues to
this day.” This potential drama finds its inspiration in 2018’s Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago, by
Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz. While that all sounds promising, Collins cautions in his blog that Scarface has only been “optioned” for adaptation: “[R]esist holding your breaths ... for the show to appear.”
• Bloody Scotland, set this year to be a hybrid festival of on-site events and video presentations, will begin in Stirling, Scotland, on September 17 and run through the 19th. A news release says, “huge names including Stephen King, Kathy Reichs, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Jeanine Cummins, Linwood Barclay and Robert Peston” will
be available on-screen, while interviewers fire questions at them in front of live audiences. “Meanwhile,” it adds, “pacing the boards in Stirling itself will be the great and the good of the Scottish crime scene, including Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Chris Brookmyre, Marisa Haetzman, Lin Anderson, Abir Mukherjee, Craig Robertson, Alan Parks, Morgan Cry, Craig Russell and Stuart MacBride. Plus some big names from outside Scotland: Paula Hawkins, Luca Veste, Mark Billingham, Mick Herron, S.J. Watson, Lisa Jewell, Stuart Neville, Kia Abdullah, E.S. Thomson and Louise Candlish.” Opening-night festivities will feature the presentation of two awards: the 2021 McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. The full program of convention events, plus ticket information, can be accessed here.
• Speaking of crime-fiction conventions, SlaughterFest—a single-day online event “curated by internationally best-selling author Karin Slaughter”—is scheduled for Saturday, September 4. Click here to see the lineup of speakers. All of the conversations will be broadcast on the Killer Reads Facebook page, which is also where you should go to make your interest in SlaughterFest known.
• Just to remind you, the abbreviated roster of online events comprising this year’s postponed Bouchercon will kick off next Friday, August 27. In the run-up to that date, organizers are reminding everyone that “the hilariously ironically titled This Time for Sure, the 2021 Bouchercon short-story anthology,” is ready for ordering. Edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan and published by Down & Out, the book features tales by such familiar authors as Karen Dionne, Heather Graham, G. Miki Hayden, Edwin Hill, Craig Johnson, Ellen Clair Lamb, Kristen Lepionka, Alan Orloff, Alex Segura, Charles Todd, Gabriel Valjan, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and Andrew Welsh-Huggins.
• As always, I hesitate to recommend films and TV shows I stumble across on YouTube, fearing they might disappear at any moment. (That’s exactly what happened to “Enough Rope,” for instance, a rare 1960 episode of the TV anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show that introduced Bert Freed as the later-legendary Lieutenant Columbo; it flashed onto YouTube recently, but was gone again before I could alert readers.) Nonetheless, I must draw attention to the fact that Travis McGee, a 1983 pilot for an ABC series starring Sam Elliott and based on John D. MacDonald’s The Empty Copper Sea (1978), is ready for your viewing pleasure here. My opinion of Travis McGee both before and after rewatching it is identical: I like Elliott in this role, and find the flick generally entertaining, but don’t think it accurately captures MacDonald’s “salvage consultant”-cum-sleuth. Steve Scott, who writes the fine MacDonald-focused blog The Trap of Solid Gold, is rather less generous:
I watched it when it was first broadcast, then forced myself to watch it again on videotape, then erased the tape. I recall it as possibly
the worst attempt of adapting JDM to the screen, ever. Elliott apparently couldn’t be bothered to shave his bushy mustache, so he looked nothing like
Travis. He spoke in his characteristic twang, dropping his g’s and sounding more like a rodeo clown than MacDonald’s melancholy, intelligent hero. The feel of the thing was all wrong, so that even the sections of dialogue and voice-over that were taken directly from the book sounded trite and worn.
Writing in The Washington Post, Tom Shales called Elliott “not so much a craggy actor as one great crag; his voice comes up straight from Middle Earth and his countenance is rangy and dry to the point of characterature.”
JDM was not happy with the result either. He called Elliott “an OK actor, but he was swimming upstream.” [MacDonald] was especially angry at the
changing of the title. “What did they expect to call the sequel?” he fumed, and labeled the whole project a “mishmash.”
The ratings, however, were apparently good enough to get Warners to green-light a series, but the producers diddled, and by the time they had made up their minds to go forward, Elliott was committed to other projects and unavailable.
• Cross-Examining Crime reviews a new book titled Sherlock in the Seventies: A Wild Decade of Sherlock Holmes Films, by Derham Groves (Visible Spectrum), and in the course of it argues that that those offerings were not only varied, but also “weird and bizarre.” Do you remember, for example, 1970’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, or 1971’s They Might Be Giants? How about The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), the teleflick Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976), or Murder by Decree (1979)? I don’t know. In my opinion, most of these movies weren’t so “weird and bizarre” as they were ... wonderful.
• Whilst we’re on the subject of Messrs. Holmes and Watson, let me direct your attention to Murder & Mayhem’s selection of nine books that take an unusual approach toward the world of Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned Victorian investigators.
• On a related note, The Bunburyist’s Elizabeth Foxwell writes: “The new Arthur Conan Doyle Society (spearheaded by George Mason University’s Ross Davies) is devoted to the study and enjoyment of the works of Conan Doyle. It is accepting nominations until November 1, 2021, for the best scholarly writing on Conan Doyle’s works or life that was published in 2020–21.” Any suggestions?
• I didn’t even know there was a Public Library of the Year award, presented by the Scotland-based International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Evidently, though, it exists, and has just chosen a winner from among five finalists. The only hint I’ll give, is that you probably live nowhere near this signal institution.
• New York-born actor—and childhood polio survivor—Alex Cord passed away on August 9 at age 88. As blogger Terence Towles Canote reminds us, Cord (originally Alexander Viespi Jr.) “was a particularly talented actor who played a variety of roles. He was the Ringo Kid in the 1966 remake of Stagecoach, Dylan Hunt in Gene Roddenberry’s failed pilot Genesis II, and Archangel on Airwolf. He could play heroes as easily as he could play villains, and was as comfortable in Westerns as he was science fiction or action movies.” My strongest memories of Cord, who was once married to actress Joanna Pettet, come from his starring role in 1973’s Genesis II, which I fervently hoped at the time would generate a series for CBS; unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and Cord found himself replaced in the 1974 follow-up pilot, Planet Earth, by John Saxon (who died about a year ago). Cord’s other credits included parts on Naked City, Route 66, Police Story, Simon & Simon, and Jake and the Fatman. In addition, he appeared as Angie Dickinson’s ex-husband on the 1982 P.I. series Cassie & Co. (watch that show’s leggy main title sequence here).
• The Reprobate looks back at the “double life” of Clare Dunkel, “one of the biggest glamour models of the 1980s,” who “became an acclaimed author of ultra-violent crime fiction”: the recently deceased Mo Hayder (Birdman, The Devil of Nanking).
• Solicitations and more solicitations: First off, Mystery Readers Journalhas put out a call for reviews, articles, and essays having to do with cold-case mysteries, all to be featured in its next quarterly issue. Second, Gerald So is asking for submissions of crime-related poetry to his blog The Five-Two, which is about to begin its 11th year in business; he says he needs them by August 31.
And third, Kevin R. Tipple is welcoming guest posts to his own site, Kevin’s Corner. “Topic—pretty much anything goes,” he explains. “While my blog is mainly aimed towards items of interest for readers and writers of mystery and crime fiction, I am open to pretty much anything. I do ask that folks avoid the topics of religion and politics unless either or both directly relate to the work being discussed or promoted.”
• What’s The Private Eye Writers Bulletin Board? Kevin Burton Smith, who cooked up this project for The Thrilling Detective Web Site, explains: “If you’re a private eye writer, and you’ve got something in a private eye vein coming out in the next little while, please let me know via e-mail (or
DM me, for you youngsters) and I’ll post the news here. All I ask is that you keep it short, keep it pithy and keep it relevant. If you’re not sure,
check out “What the Hell Is a Private Eye, Anyway?”
• Finally, if you haven’t noticed yet, I have added a link from the right-hand column of this page to “The Dick of the Day,” a delightful Thrilling Detective feature that introduces—or reintroduces—detective-fiction fans to familiar or obscure protagonists plucked from the pages of history. Of late, it has spotlighted everyone from Peter Scratch and Mitch Roberts to Jinx Alameda, Nameless (no, not Bill Pronzini’s Nameless), and … Donald J. Trump. Yes, before he was a failed, serial-lying former White House occupant, Trump did gumshoe work in a story River Clegg sold to The New Yorker.
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