Bouchercon Discord Hits Social Media

Organizers of this year’s Bouchercon conference in Nashville, Tennessee (August 28-September 1), seem to have courted controversy by inviting longtime New York City bookseller, critic, and publisher Otto Penzler to interview Lifetime Achievement guest of honor Anthony Horowitz on stage. Author Lee Goldberg opines on Facebook:

I do not understand why Otto Penzler is still treated like some kind of royalty. He is the Rudy Guiliani of crime fiction. He did some admirable things a long, long time ago … and is a disgrace now. Why would the conference want to align itself with Otto and his *decades* of well-documented misogyny (with a dollop of racism on top).

Yes, I understand that Horowitz supposedly asked for Otto to be his interviewer because they edited [2024’s] edition of Best Mystery Stories [of the Year] together … but Bouchercon should have had the sensitivity and the spine to say, sorry, Tony, he’s not welcome on our stage so, with all due respect, please pick someone else or we will pick someone for you. Someone who hasn’t shit on women writers for years (and yet championed giving the MWA Grandmaster award to a woman who sent five innocent men to prison for a rape). Someone who didn’t create a women’s fiction imprint … and then hire men to write the books under women’s names.

Surely there is someone out there in the mystery community capable of interviewing Horowitz who doesn't have that kind of loathsome baggage. How about Steph Cha, if she’s attending? That would be poetic justice.

This dispute has generated plenty of social media posts, but still no official response from Bouchercon—at least none I’ve spotted.

Bullet Points: No Indictments Here Edition

I’m sorry this blog has offered nothing but crickets over the last week, but several things in my personal life demanded attention. With those now resolved, I can get back to the business of news gathering.

• New York bookshop proprietor, editor, and publisher Otto Penzler has announced that his company, Penzler Publishers, will introduce Crime Ink, a new imprint concentrating on literary true crime. Four to six titles annually are to be expected from this imprint, beginning next year. “Tom Wickersham, formerly the manager of The Mysterious Bookshop, will head the imprint as its editor,” explains a press release. “Charles Perry will be the Publisher, a position he currently holds with The Mysterious Press, American Mystery Classics, Scarlet, and MysteriousPress.com, an electronic book publisher—the other imprints of Penzler Publishers. Luisa Smith will oversee as Editor-in-Chief of Penzler Publishers.” Wickersham is quoted as saying: “We are poised to launch in the spring of 2024 with The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, the first modern examination of 1970s serial killer Dean Corll. Also under contract are a biography of New York crime journalist Jimmy Breslin, a comprehensive account of the Son of Sam killings, and a series in translation from France. We will strive to publish revelatory works that shed new light on old cases, expose modern injustices, and expand the classification of true crime as we know it.”

• It’s the first week of August, and you know very well what that means: time again to check The Rap Sheet’s lengthy list of summer crime-fiction releases. As is my wont, I have expanded that roster over the last month, adding new books as well as others still forthcoming between now and Labor Day. There’s something for every taste.

• Wasn’t I just complaining that Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer, based on Michael Connelly’s novels about Los Angeles defense counsel Mickey Haller, had taken an incomprehensible and frustrating break only halfway through its Season 2 run? Well, the show returned on Thursday with five further episodes, bringing the total to 10. Having just finished watching the excellent sophomore (and last) season of HBO-TV’s Perry Mason, I can now pick up where Haller left off—maybe with a little review of where things stood at the end of episode five.

• Good news for American followers of Unforgotten, the British cold-case crime drama starring Sanjeev Bhaskar and now Sinéad Keenan (who joined the program after Nicola Walker’s shocking departure): Season 5 of that popular series will debut as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece lineup on Sunday, September 3. According to The Killing Times, its half-dozen episodes will see “big changes in the Metropolitan Police team charged with investigating historical murders.

Cassie Stewart (Nicola Walker) was tragically killed in an RTA at the end of season four leaving her number two, DI Sunny Kahn (Sanjeev Bhaskar) bereft. Now her replacement has arrived but it’s all sandpaper between DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan) and the normally empathetic and easy-going Sunny.

When a body is discovered inside a bricked in fireplace in an old London townhouse, DCI James isn’t even sure she wants to take the case. Police budgets. But the team quickly show that this was a murder and start generating leads, with connections stretching right up into the British government and across the Thames into the down-and-out squats inhabited by heroin addicts and petty thieves.

Watch the new season trailer at the Killing Times link above.

• Meanwhile, Annika, the Alibi-TV series Nicola Walker leapt to after Unforgotten, is set to introduce its second season on British boob-tubes come next Wednesday, August 9.

• Finally, The Chelsea Detective, on which Adrian Scarborough stars as a rather prickly but brilliant policeman working the streets of London’s prosperous Chelsea district, will return to streamer Acorn TV on Monday, August 28. This year, Scarborough’s Inspector Max Arnold will be given a new partner, Detective Sergeant Layla Walsh (Vanessa Emme), a transfer fresh from Exeter. (Season 1 had found him teamed, instead, with Detective Constable Priya Shamsie, played by Sonita Henry.) Again, The Killing Times has a video introduction to The Chelsea Detective’s four new episodes.

• Had he not succumbed to a heart attack 90 years ago, Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Chinese American police detective Charlie Chan, would be preparing to celebrate his 139th birthday on August 26. In his memory, Lou Armagno, author of the forthcoming book The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside the Charlie Chan Canon (BookBaby), suggests that any readers who happen to be in Honolulu, Hawaii, on that date toast the author at Earl’s, a new bar inside the Halekulani Hotel’s House Without a Key restaurant, named in his honor.

• Sometimes it seems book publishers believe their readers to be absolute morons. Case in point, from In Reference to Murder: “Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is getting a trigger warning from publish[ing] house Vintage. The 1939 novel The Big Sleep, considered among the greatest works of crime fiction, has been reprinted with a cautionary note ... Would-be readers of Chandler’s most famous work are now warned that the book may contain ‘outdated language and cultural representations.’ The note addressed to the ‘dear reader’ cautions that while the story centered on Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe is an outstanding example of crime fiction, it is nevertheless ‘firmly of its time and place.’” Oh gosh, shock, shock!

• Four recent CrimeReads pieces I’ve enjoyed recently: Denise Mina, author of the brand-new Philip Marlowe yarn The Second Murderer, talks with Nancie Clare about Marlowe’s continuing relevancy and what it feels like to be a woman channeling Chandler; Anika Scott (Sinners of Starlight City) on Chicago’s efforts in the early 1930s to bring down local organized crime and build its image-improving Century of Progress International Exposition; and Nathan Ward (Son of the Old West) recalls the strange case of “cowboy mutineers” who vanished in the South Pacific in 1902, only to have their ringleader apparently resurface in Arizona years later.

• And let us remember two people who made significant contributions to modern crime fiction. First, Edward Hume, who (among other things) scripted the pilots for three famous 1970s Quinn Martin TV series: Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones. He passed away last month at age 87. Second, we bid a respectful adieu to author Jill Churchill, perhaps best remembered for her award-winning Jane Jeffry and Grace and Favor mystery series. Churchill was 80 years old when she died on July 12.

A Quick Five

• Twenty months after he began posting his choices of the 106 “Greatest Crime Films of All Time,” in CrimeReads, New York City bookseller and editor Otto Penzler yesterday finally announced his No. 1 pick: The Third Man (1949), based on Graham Greene’s novella of that same name and starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, (Alida) Valli, and Trevor Howard. Of the picture, Penzler writes:

Graham Greene based the villainous Harry Lime on Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent. Greene had been a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service until 1944, when he abruptly resigned. It has been suggested that the reason for his resignation was that he suspected Philby of being a traitor and did not want to actively assist him. Greene, himself a communist sympathizer, did not report Philby, who continued his activities for some time after Greene’s resignation.

A trailer for The Third Man can be enjoyed here. Penzler’s full list of film favorites is available here.

• Can you tell a whole story in just half a dozen words? That’s the challenge being posed by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (RMMWA), which will open its fourth annual Six-Word Mystery Contest on Tuesday, September 15. A news release explains that “Six-word ‘whodunits’ can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard-boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery with Romance or Lust. The Six-Word Mystery Contest is open to all adults 18 and over. No residency requirements. … The contest entry fee is $6 for one entry (just $1 per word); or $10 to enter six-word mysteries in all five categories. The grand prize winner will receive $100 in cold, hard cash. Winners in all other categories will receive $25 gift certificates, and all winners and finalists will be featured in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, on our RMMWA website, and in our popular newsletter, Deadlines.” Last year’s the overall winner is Jeffrey Lockwood, an author and professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, whose punchy submission read simply: 36D, 44 magnum, 20 to life.

• The crime-fiction social networking site Crimespace has shut down. Sydney, Australia, writer Daniel Hatadi, who founded that online community for crime-fiction enthusiasts back in 2007, recently sent out the following message:

As you may be aware, Ning.com, the company who provides the servers and service for Crimespace to run on, charges an annual fee. The fee is $USD 239.90 and based on the donations and my current financial situation I cannot afford to run Crimespace any longer.

I’ve been checking activity on Crimespace and it is extremely minimal these days, most likely due to the more popular social networks.

As such, I’ve decided to close Crimespace.

This was supposed to happen soon but it appears that it already has been deactivated from July 20th 2020. Please accept my apologies for this short notice.

For blogs, there is a function to duplicate posts to other blog services so if you have used this so far there will most likely not be much work for you to transition.

Thanks to everyone who has donated along the way, it’s much appreciated.

• San Francisco-area author Mark Coggins launched a podcast in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown. Called Riordan’s Desk, after his series private eye, August Riordan, it began with him reading—chapter by chapter—his latest Riordan novel, The Dead Beat Scroll (2019). Last week, he concluded that 30-part presentation by sitting for an interview with Randal S. Brandt, curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, who asked him questions about the podcast project and about his full Riordan series. Listen to their exchange here.

• Speaking of podcasts, Sunshine State journalist Craig Pittman is now co-hosting one called Welcome to Florida. He writes that “our latest episode features a discussion with Colette Bancroft of the new short-story collection Tampa Bay Noir, which features tales of shady people in sunny places from Michael Connelly, Lisa Unger, Ace Atkins, Lori Roy, and a host of others.” That episode can he heard here.

Bullet Points: Screen Gems Edition

• For the last 20 months, New York City bookseller and editor Otto Penzler has been counting down, in the electronic pages of CrimeReads, a sometimes idiosyncratic list of what he says are the 106 “Greatest Crime Films of All Time.” This week he finally cracked the top five (thanks to The Godfather: Part II and The Godfather), with just three more picks to go. If you haven’t been keeping up, click here to find links to all of Penzler’s write-ups, from Sleuth (oddly numbered at 107) through Bullitt, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Killing, Strangers on a Train, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mystic River … and well, I’m not going to run through the whole lot here. The question now is, what three big-screeners will round out Penzler’s rundown? Chinatown and The Maltese Falcon, maybe? What else?

• Speaking of 1974’s Chinatown, I had forgotten—until reading Max Allan Collins’ latest blog post, devoted in large part to its sequel, The Two Jakes—that the Paramount Pictures presentation “originally had what is said to be a lousy score, and Jerry Goldsmith was brought in at the last minute to write (in a little over a week) what is now considered one of most memorable film scores of all time.” Interestingly, Phillip Lambro’s initial soundtrack was not always derided, according to the blog J.J. Gittes Investigations (named for Jack Nicholson’s P.I. protagonist). It recalls that, early on, “Robert Evans, Paramount’s head of production and Chinatown’s producer, was impressed with [Lambro’s] music, requesting even more and hinting at a possible Oscar for the score …” A later audience preview-screening, though, “was a disaster, and the one solution everyone seemed to agree on was replacing the score.” Goldsmith, who by that time had created music for TV shows such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Room 222, and for movies including Our Man Flint, Planet of the Apes, and Tora! Tora! Tora!, was brought in to replace Lambro’s score. Nonetheless, Lambro’s music survived in “the theatrical film trailer, TV commercials and radio spots.” Below is, first, Lambro’s proposed main title theme for Chinatown, followed by Goldsmith’s better-remembered opening music.





Eight years ago, Lambro’s Chinatown score was released in CD format by Perseverance Records under the title Los Angeles 1937. “It’s interesting,” concludes Collins, “but not a patch on Goldsmith.”

• The story of Lambro’s missing music reminds me of another episode about which I’ve previously written: How composer Alex North’s soundtrack for the big-budget 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey was replaced only in post-production by “a variety of classical works, among them Richard Strauss’ ‘Also sprach Zarathustra,’ which served as the main title theme.”

• This is most welcome news: Deadline reports that PBS-TV’s Masterpiece “is set to co-produce and broadcast [the] murder mystery Magpie Murders, a six-part drama series based on Foyle’s War creator Anthony Horowitz’s best-selling novel.” Like my colleague Ali Karim, I loved Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, and am pleased to hear that the author will pen the screenplay for Magpie Murders, which “revolves around the character Susan Ryeland, an editor who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest novel, but has little idea it will change her life.” Deadline quotes Horowitz as saying, “Magpie Murders is my most successful novel and it wasn’t easy to adapt. But I think the result is a completely original drama that will delight and beguile audiences in equal measure.” The series will stream in Britain on BritBox UK.

• While no air date has yet been announced for that small-screen adaptation, we do know that Horowitz’s print sequel to Magpie Murders, titled Moonflower Murders, is due out in the UK in August from Century. A U.S. edition will appear in November from Harper.

• I still haven’t warmed up to Will Davenport, the Anglican vicar-cum-sleuth—played by Tom Brittney—who replaced James Norton’s Sidney Chambers in Season 4 of Grantchester. He’s a far less well layered figure than Chambers, and his inconsistent reluctance, in Season 5, to engage in a romantic relationship with enticing newspaper reporter Ellie Harding (Lauren Carse) tested the bounds of credibility. Nonetheless, I’m pleased to hear learn that this 1950s-set series has been renewed for a sixth season. Maybe more time spent in the company of the great Robson Green, who plays Detective Inspector Geordie Keating on the show, will polish Brittney’s presentation.

• Also given extended life is HBO-TV’s Perry Mason, though it’s still only five episodes into its eight-installment premiere season. The Hollywood Reporter quotes Francesca Orsi, HBO programming executive VP, as saying: “It has been an exciting journey to work with the immensely talented team behind Perry Mason. Viewers have relished being transported back in time to 1930s Los Angeles each week, and we are thrilled to welcome the show back for a second season.” As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on this rebooted Mason. I like the period setting and the corrupt fragrances of pre-World War II L.A. that flood through it. I’ve enjoyed, too, watching the immensely talented John Lithgow play a veteran but troubled attorney; Chris Chalk portray African-American policeman (not yet shamus) Paul Drake; and Tatiana Maslany serve up an engagingly melodramatic performance as a religious evangelist and celebrity cut from the same con artist’s cloth as Aimee Semple McPherson. But screenwriters Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald appear more interested in supplying their principal players with unexpected back stories (Mason as once a heavy-drinking, low-rent private investigator living on his family’s decrepit dairy farm; Della Street as a closeted lesbian and aspiring attorney) than they do in capturing the essence of Erle Stanley Gardner’s storytelling. Up to now, at least, this show has only nominally been Perry Mason. Last week’s episode, however, found actor Matthew Rhys’ Mason finally passing the bar (even if we were witness to none of his studying for that qualification), so he can commence his defense of Emily Dodson, a mother allegedly complicit in the abduction and killing of her only child. Maybe over the final three episodes Mason can prove himself worthy of his moniker. If so, I’ll be happy he has another season in which to develop his courtroom prowess.

• TNT-TV’s The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, the eight-episode mini-series follow-up to last year’s acclaimed Victorian-era thriller, The Alienist, was supposed to have premiered tomorrow, July 26. Instead, its kickoff was moved forward by one week, though TNT didn’t explain why other than to say it was “an effort to continuously bring consumers thrilling, event television at a faster pace.” The opening two installments of Angel began streaming last Sunday, though I’ve only had the chance to watch one so far. Collider explains that this sequel, based on Caleb Carr’s 1997 novel The Angel of Darkness, finds “Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning)—previously a secretary for Theodore Roosevelt—now head[ing] up her own detective agency. Meanwhile, John Moore (Luke Evans), previously an illustrator, is now a reporter for The New York Times; and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl) … well, Dr. Kreizler is still putting his expertise as an alienist to good use. When a kidnapped baby turns up dead and displayed in grisly fashion, followed by the kidnapping of another baby, Sara suspects a serial killer may be on the loose. She reconnects with Laszlo and John to try and find this recently kidnapped child before it’s too late, and as happened in the show’s first season, their investigation leads them down some shady paths.” Two more episodes should drop tomorrow.

• Adrian McKinty’s haunting child-abduction thriller, The Chain, was recently named as the 2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and now it’s bound for cinematic adaptation. Deadline reports that “In a seven-figure deal, Universal Pictures has optioned The Chain … Baby Driver helmer Edgar Wright will direct, while Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle and X-Men: First Class) is writing the script. The novel had been in talks to be acquired by Paramount before it was published last July by Little, Brown/Mulholland, but the deal never crossed the finish line. It has come together quite nicely in this new iteration. Working Title’s Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan will produce alongside Complete Fiction’s Nira Park and Wright, and The Story Factory’s Shane Salerno.”

• Blogger B.V. Lawson brings word that Mad Men alumnus Jon Hamm “is set to star in and produce a feature film reboot of Fletch, the brazen investigative reporter from Gregory Mcdonald’s 1970s and 1980s Fletch mystery novels. The new film adaptation will specifically be based on the second book in the Mcdonald series, Confess, Fletch [1976]. In a mysterious chain of wild events, Fletch finds himself in the middle of multiple murders, one of which implicates him as a prime suspect. While on a quest to prove his innocence, Fletch is tasked with finding his fiancée’s stolen art collection, the only inheritance she’s acquired after her father goes missing and is presumed dead. Zev Borow, consulting producer of the Lethal Weapon TV series, will be penning the feature adaptation.”

• This is coincidental, I’m sure, but less than a week after The Columbophile blog completed its countdown of what it says are “The 100 Greatest Columbo Scenes of the 1970s,” The New York Times’ Elisabeth Vincentelli is out with a delightful essay contending that “Columbo was all about sticking it to the man.” She opines:

“Columbo” is one of the very few American series fueled by class warfare. Whether they are driven by coldblooded entitlement, delusions of grandeur or simple greed, the murderers treat the self-deprecating, ostentatiously low-grade cop with seething annoyance, willful condescension or hypocritical benevolence.

It is hard to overstate how satisfying it is to see smug
criminals get caught right now. Imagine the joy of seeing a rebooted Columbo go after hedge-fund managers, big-game hunters, studio chiefs, YouTube influencers, real-estate magnates or celebrity chefs who picked killing as an acceptable problem-solving method.

• It’s been more than a few years since I last sat through the 1974 disaster flick The Towering Inferno. But Andrew Catmel’s recent appreciation post about that Stirling Sillipant-scripted picture makes me think a rewatch might be in order.

• Here’s a bit more nostalgia: To get us through the COVID-19 lockdown, CrimeReads recommends digging into an “iconic” 1970s crime-fiction series, whether it be Robert B. Parker’s Spenser yarns, the Kate Fansler stories by Amanda Cross (aka Carolyn Heilbrun), Donald Goines’ four Kenyatta novels, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Pepe Carvalho books, or half a dozen other choices.

• Are you missing the surprises and camaraderie of crime-fiction conventions? This may be the next best thing. As In Reference to Murder explains, “The virtual Harrogate Festival, ‘HIF Weekender,’ will be available for free this weekend. Events will include interviews with Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Mark Billingham; a panel celebrating debut authors; the live-streaming of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, and much more.”

• Who knew there was a Japanese term for “a person who owns a lot of unread literature”? Not that I’m guilty of tsundoku …

• Bloody cool! A Victorian vampire-slaying kit!

• Two podcasts worth tuning in: Episode 53 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast looks back at Kendell Foster Crossen, who—under the pseudonym M.E. Chaber—penned 23 novels starring insurance investigator Milo March. (Steeger Books is currently in the process of re-releasing all of those works in both paperback and e-book formats.) And in her latest edition of Shedunnit, the remarkably sweet-voiced Caroline Crampton considers the many instances of detectives undertaking investigations whilst on holiday.

• One cannot help but wonder at the provocation behind a new “Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy” from organizers of the annual Bouchercon convention, and applying to “all attendees at future Bouchercon events.” An e-mail note sent out by registration chair Teresa Wilson cites “recent events,” but provides no specifics. Nonetheless, the policy seems clear. It reads, in part:

For over fifty years, we have observed all applicable laws and regulations, and have practiced strict adherence to the highest standards of conduct. Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated. We view harassment as any behavior, whether physical, verbal and/or emotional, that threatens, alarms, or makes someone uncomfortable. Examples may include, but are not limited to the following: verbal or written comments and/or innuendos of a sexual or violent nature, unwanted physical and/or sexual contact and/or advances, ethnic and/or racial slurs or epithets, recording or photographing individuals without consent, following or stalking and/or unwanted coercive behavior of any kind.

Any member who believes that they have been or are being subject to a violation of Bouchercon’s Code of Conduct & Anti-Harassment Policy, or who witnesses a violation, is encouraged to immediately report any such violation to the event organizer or a Bouchercon® Board member. Contact with the hotel, convention event space owner and/or operator or police is also encouraged. All such reporting shall remain confidential. In the event there is a formal legal investigation, all contact information shall remain confidential and protected against unnecessary disclosure—including the identity of the accused individual, the individual reporting the violation, and that of any witness. Should they desire to do so, individuals may consent in writing to Bouchercon® event Local Organizer Chair(s) to disclose their identities.

Any attendee asked to stop any behavior deemed to be harassing, is expected to comply immediately. If the situation is of an urgent nature, such as the fear of immediate, physical danger, the victim of the harassment should immediately contact hotel staff, convention event leaders, or the police.

Taking advantage of a limited-time discount deal, I registered for Bouchercon 2021, in New Orleans, way back in March, but was asked only earlier this week to study the new Code of Conduct and respond “with a simple statement saying you’ve read and agree” to its provisions. (Updated procedures now make such compliance part of the regular registration process.) I had no qualms about agreeing. But this all leaves me curious as to what went wrong at some previous gathering to make such a document necessary.

• While others (including yours truly) announced their favorite 2020 crime and mystery novels—so far—in June, two familiar contributors to the MysteryPeople blog waited until now to weigh in. Meike Alana offers her 10 top choices, among them Scott Phillips’ That Left Turn at Albuquerque, Jennifer Hillier’s Little Secrets, James Ziskin’s Turn to Stone, and Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. In the meantime, Scott Montgomery’s 11 picks range from Amy Engel’s The Familiar Dark and Joe R. Lansdale’s Of Mice and Minestrone to Kathleen Kent’s The Burn and Walter Mosley’s Trouble Is What I Do.

• Looking for some crimes in cooler climes to get you through the depths of this coronavirus summer? In The New York Times Book Review, Tina Jordan and Marilyn Stasio recommend works by more than 40 Scandinavian noir writers.

• Canadian journalist Dean Jobb revisits an 1882 murder, in Chicago, that took place at one of that town’s swankest hotels, pitted a singer turned prostitute against the scion of an Illinois banker, featured claims of insanity, and—unusual for the Gilded Age—put not only the accused murderess on trial, but also “her abusive lover,” the deceased. A terrific piece, one that I wish I’d written!

Penzler Strikes Back

New York City bookseller, editor, and publisher Otto Penzler seems to be in the midst of a rough couple of years, the fault for that not exclusively attributable to others.

In 2018, for instance, after the Mystery Writers of America withdrew its nomination of Linda Fairstein for a lifetime achievement award (due to her involvement, as an assistant district attorney, in Manhattan’s notorious 1989 Central Park Five rape prosecutions), Penzler penned a poisonous response to the MWA’s decision. In it, he denounced the organization’s board members as “cowardly” and damned the crime writers (among them Steph Cha and Attica Locke) who’d complained of Fairstein’s part in that legal case as a “small coterie of frightened sheep caving to political correctness.”

Only months later, news that Penzler and Pegasus Books were planning to launch Scarlet, “a joint publishing venture specializing in psychological suspense aimed at female readers,” drew additional disapproval. As short-story writer and blogger David Nemeth opined in Do Some Damage, “what a dumb idea it is to have a man to team up with a publisher with the intent of ‘specializing in psychological suspense aimed at female readers’ in the throes of #MeToo and female empowerment. Does Pegasus Books know how to read a room?” Further criticism flowed Penzler’s way, recalls writer Nick Kolakowski, following word of Scarlet’s decision “to have male authors write or co-write its initial slate of books with ‘complex women,’ and then fade those authors behind either a woman’s pseudonym or a woman co-author.” (The first Scarlet title due for release, in September, will be An Inconvenient Woman, by Stéphanie Buelens.)

And then just two months ago, it was announced that Penzler had been replaced as series editor of the annual anthology Best American Mystery Stories, which he founded back in 1997. It seems Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (which publishes BAMS under its Mariner Books imprint) had taken on a new adult trade publisher, Deb Brody. She, in turn, had decided to let Penzler go and to rebrand his series—beginning in 2021—as The Best American Mystery and Suspense. These changes didn’t sit at all well with Penzler, who responded in a cantankerous Facebook post (which has since been deleted):

According to an announcement from the editor-in-chief of HMH on Monday, the series "is going in an exciting new direction in response to the changing market and evolving readership and with an increased focus on traditionally marginalized voices." This means that stories will no longer be selected for excellence, the major criterion evidently now being the race, ethnicity, or sexual preference of the author. Forgive my bitterness. First off, I published lots of black writers and probably more than I knew since I never required a photo ID. I also published some writers who I know are gay but, again, doubtless others whose sexual preferences were unknown to me--as they should be. No one was marginalized when my first reader Michele Slung, and I, and the guest editors, sought the best stories. I'm now glad that I was not asked to stay on as I never would have agreed to edit a book on these terms.

Intriguingly, his post concluded, “It’s not over. I’ll make an announcement soon.” Only now do we know that remark’s import.

Yesterday brought this notice:



Given Penzler’s penchant for rubbing many people the wrong way, it wasn’t surprising to see this latest news met with doubts, but also with some ringside curiosity. “This has the potential to get … interesting,” Jim Thomsen, a Washington manuscript editor and member of the Mystery Writers of America—Northwest Chapter, observed on Facebook. “Will the author rosters for [Best American Mystery and Suspense and the rival Mysterious Bookshop anthology] break down along tribal lines? What if the competing anthologies want the same story? How old and white and male—Penzler’s core constituency—will the new anthology be? What will the selection criteria and process he for each? Which will sell better, if you had to guess?”

We have another year to wait before such questions can be answered. Meanwhile, the 2020 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories, guest-edited by C.J. Box, and featuring Otto Penzler in his final turn as series editor, will be released on Election Day, November 3.

Penzler Solidifies His Empire

Shelf Awareness reports that New York City bookseller and editor Otto Penzler “has taken sole ownership of the Mysterious Press and added it to his publishing company, Penzler Publishers.” You may remember that Penzler founded the Mysterious Press way back in 1975. But that imprint has been the property of Grove Atlantic ever since 2011, even though its offices have apparently remained on the site of Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop, in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood.

“Beginning in 2021,” explains Shelf Awareness, a book-industry e-newsletter, “the Mysterious Press will be distributed by Norton, which also distributes two other imprints of Penzler Publishers: American Mystery Classics, which is issuing hardcover and trade paperbacks of Golden Age detective novels; and Scarlet, which will release its first list of psychological/domestic suspense in the fall.” Charles Perry, currently the head of MysteriousPress.com, Penzler’s digital publishing company, has already “been named publisher of Penzler Publishers and will be in charge of all three imprints.”

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

READ MORE: “Interview with a Bookstore: The Mysterious Bookshop” (Literary Hub).

Bullet Points: Hunkered Down Edition

It’s been more than a couple of months since I’ve taken on the task of  compiling crime-fiction news bits that don’t necessarily merit posts of their own ... which means I have a lot of information to impart. Fortunately, Seattle is heavily socked in with snow today, so I have little interest in spending much time outside in the cold. Better to snug in with a cup of coffee and my computer keyboard. Let us begin ...

• Lisbeth Salander fans, take note: BookRiot reports that “An unseen investigation by Stieg Larsson, the late journalist and author of the Millennium Trilogy, has come to light and will be revealed in a new true-crime book. Larsson was a leading expert on antidemocratic, right-wing, extremist organizations.” The site goes on to synopsize the plot of the new book, which is due out from AmazonCrossing in October:

On February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead in Stockholm. The crime is still unsolved today. It’s now known that Larsson began his own investigation into the assassination—continuing the search until his own death. In 2014, journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jan Stocklassa gained access to the 20 boxes of Larsson’s research into the case.

To quote from an Amazon press release:

In The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin, Stocklassa reveals new facts about the case and reveals the hitherto unknown research of the best-selling author in a fascinating true crime story. For the first time in many years, the police in Sweden have taken active measures to investigate a new suspect in the murder case and are pursuing leads based on the research revealed in Stocklassa’s book.

• What matters most is making money, right? The New Yorker reported recently that Dan Mallory, the book editor turned author who—as “A.J. Finn”—penned last year’s best-selling The Woman in the Window, has made a variety of false assertions regarding his health, his education, and his career achievements. Mallory has since sought to excuse his actions, but his deceptions have left many folks in the publishing industry wary of the author. In The Washington Post, critic Ron Charles wrote: “If James Frey taught us anything with his infamous memoir, it’s that autobiographical claims can collapse into a million little pieces of exaggeration and deception. Mallory’s situation is different, though, if more bizarre. How do we reconsider a work of fiction—or any work of art—when confronted with troubling information about its creator?” Despite all of this controversy, Mallory’s publisher, HarperCollins, says it is holding firm on plans to bring out his sophomore novel in January 2020—a San Francisco-set yarn The New Yorker describes as “a story of revenge … involving a female thriller writer and an interviewer who learns of a dark past.”

• Julie Adams, an Iowa-born actress who co-starred opposite an amphibious “Gill man” in the 1954 movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon before going on to a long and prolific TV career, passed away in Los Angeles on February 3 at age 92. Among her many television roles were appearances on Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, Darren McGavin’s The Outsider, Ironside, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Ellery Queen, Mannix, Cagney & Lacey, Murder, She Wrote, and Diagnosis: Murder. An interesting tidbit: Adams’ fleeting first marriage was to Leonard B. Stern, a screenwriter and producer responsible for such memorable series as Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, and The Snoop Sisters.

• Via Shotsmag Confidential comes news that Karin Slaughter’s 2018 novel, Pieces of Her, will become an eight-episode Netflix series directed—at least initially—by Lesli Linka Glatter. “The story,” explains the blog (quoting from a press release), “follows as an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed after a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall together suddenly explodes into violence. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood.”

• With Series 6 of Endeavour scheduled to debut in Great Britain tomorrow, February 10, ITV Magazine—a consumer periodical just launched last month by the show’s principal broadcasting network—has published a rather satisfying article about what viewers can expect from Endeavour’s latest four episodes. Chris Sullivan has posted scans of that piece in his blog, Morse, Lewis and Endeavour. Meanwhile, he has embedded a new morning TV show interview with a bushy-bearded Roger Allam, who plays Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday on the program opposite Shaun Evans, starring as Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse.

• From B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

USA Network has picked up to series its drama pilot Dare Me, based on Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel of the same name. Set in the world of competitive high school cheerleading, it follows the fraught relationship between two best friends (Herizen Guardiola and Mario Kelly) after a new coach (Willa Fitzgerald) arrives to bring their team to prominence. While the girls’ friendship is put to the test, their young lives are changed forever when a shocking crime rocks their quiet suburban world.

• Lawson also reports that “ABC has ordered the drama pilot Stumptown, inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios, a strong, assertive, and unapologetically sharp-witted Army veteran working as a P.I. in Portland, Oregon. With a complicated personal history and only herself to rely on, she solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own.”

• As an unflagging fan of Lou Grant, the 1977-1982 CBS-TV series starring Ed Asner as the sometimes crusty city editor of a fictional Southern California daily newspaper called the Los Angeles Tribune, I was pleased to discover at least the vast majority of that show’s episodes are available for free on YouTube. The picture quality is sometimes less than ideal, but until I drop the dough for Shout! Factory’s DVD releases of all five seasons, it’s probably the best I can expect. If you want to learn more about this drama series—which was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—check out The Canonical Lou Grant Episode Guide. And I’ve added the main title sequences from the first three seasons of Lou Grant to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page.

• Speaking of vintage shows, The Spy Command alerts me to the fact that La-La Land Records will soon release “Jerry Goldsmith[‘s] music to a mostly forgotten 1975 TV show, Archer.” Wikipedia explains that this is “a limited-edition soundtrack containing the one episode … Goldsmith scored (paired with a re-issue of the score to the film Warning Shot, from newly discovered better elements).” If you, too, have difficulties remembering Archer, let me point out that it was a short-lived NBC mid-season replacement series starred Brian Keith (Family Affair) as L.A. private investigator Lew Archer, the character so masterfully developed over three decades by Ross Macdonald. Keith’ show wasn’t awful, without ever being really good; I much preferred Peter Graves’ portrayal of the same protagonist in an unsuccessful 1974 TV pilot based on one of Macdonald’s later yarns, The Underground Man. And though, as one TV critic observed, Keith was mustered up “weary cynicism” enough to play Archer, he did not seem to respect the source material. In fact, Keith even had visions of moving the series’ setting from the City of Angels to Honolulu! Regardless, I’d like to get my hands on the six episodes of Archer that were originally broadcast, if only for nostalgic reasons. I might even be willing to purchase La-La Land’s presumably high-quality cut of Goldsmith’s Archer theme, if only because the version I have—and which is featured in The Spy Command’s post—is terrible.


(Above) J. Kingston Pierce and Chelsea Cain enjoy a bit of fun at Bouchercon 2011, high above St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

• I have many fond memories of attending Bouchercon 2011, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri. But one of the few captured on film was my meeting with Portland, Oregon, author Chelsea Cain, who turned out to be personable, downright funny, and nowhere near as dark-spirited a woman as her fiction might suggest. So I was pleased to read that her 2014 novel, One Kick, has been adapted as a 12-part TV series titled Gone, scheduled for broadcast on WGN America, beginning on 9 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday, February 27. Deadline Hollywood sums up the plot this way: “Gone follows the story of Kit ‘Kick’ Lannigan ([played by] Leven Rambin), survivor of a highly publicized child-abduction case, and 20-year veteran Frank Novak ([Chris]Noth), the FBI agent who rescued her. Years later, he recruits her to join a special task force dedicated to solving abductions and missing-persons cases. Paired with former Army intelligence officer John Bishop (Danny Pino), Lannigan uses her intuitive wit and martial arts skills to solve cases and bring victims home.”

• Yet another Agatha Christie yarn appears due for big-screen treatment, with a possible 2020 release date. The Killing Times reports that UK screenwriter Sarah Phelps (The A.B.C. Murders, Murder by Innocence, And Then There Were None) “has signed up to adapt Christie’s [1961] stand-alone novel, The Pale Horse.”

• Also to be filmed: Stephen King’s Mile 81.

• Ann Cleeves closed out her nine-volume Shetland Islands/Jimmy Perez series with last year’s Wild Fire. Fear not, though, for EuroCrime says she’s “turning her hand to a new series set in Devon.” The first of those new books, introducing Detective Matthew Venn, will be The Long Call, due out from Minotaur in September.

• Two other far-off releases to watch for: Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky (Little, Brown), her fifth novel starring Cambridge private eye Jackson Brodie, is scheduled for publication on both sides of the Atlanticin June; and Anne Perry will inaugurate a brand-new, pre-World War II series, starring “intrepid photographer” Elena Standish, with the September release Death in Focus (Ballantine).

• Before we leave Ann Cleeves too far behind, a reminder should be issued that Series 5 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, will debut in the UK on BBC One next Tuesday, February 12. There’s no word yet n when those six new episodes will become available to Netflix users in the States.

• Among the digital audio series CrimeReads contributing editor Emily Stein showcases on her list of the “8 True-Crime Podcasts to Listen to in 2019” is The Murder Book, which premiered on January 28, and which Stein says “is the first podcast produced by bestselling crime novelist Michael Connelly.” She continues:

In Season 1, “The Tell Tale Bullet,” Connelly returns to his roots as a crime beat reporter to investigate a real, 30-year-old cold case of a fatal carjacking in Hollywood, and of a murderer who walked free. Connelly promises that every season of Murder Book will end with a crime solved; to get there, he employs a wide array of sources, including court recordings, wiretaps, and interviews with witnesses and detectives.

Complete with hardboiled narration and a jazzy soundtrack, Murder Book is the perfect podcast both for fans of true crime, and fans of classic noir. It also takes a serious look at the limitations and flaws of our criminal justice system, which leaves the listener with the unavoidable impression that in the past three decades, far too little has changed.

Listen to Connelly’s episodes on the Murder Book Web site or via Apple Podcasts. Full transcripts of each installment are also available on the Web site. New episodes drop every Monday for 10 or 12 weeks.

• One podcast that isn’t mentioned in Stein’s wrap-up is We Never Solved Anything. No, I’d never heard of it either, until its hosts e-mailed me an invitation to listen. As they explain, “It is a funny podcast where we explore a new unsolved mystery theme each week such as serial killers, spontaneous human combustion, and medical mystery stories.” Find the 11 existing episode here.

• Literary Hub’s Emily Temple chooses “10 Contemporary ‘Dickensian’ Novels,” including Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013), Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002), and Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001).

• “A great teacher is a gift. A great line editor is a miracle,” declares Nick Ripatrazone, a staff writer for The Millions.

• The Winter 2018/2019 edition of Mystery Readers Journal—built around the theme “Mystery in the American South—“is available now as a PDF and will shortly be available in hardcopy …,” writes editor Janet Rudolph. “We had so many articles, author essays, and reviews, that we had to split this themed issue into two.” A list of contents for this new issue, plus info on buying a copy, can be found here.

• I periodically like to revisit episodes from the classic NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo. Knowing whodunit, and sometimes remembering exactly how the rumpled Los Angeles police lieutenant pins the blame, doesn’t spoil the re-watching one iota. Not long ago I came across this piece The Columbophile, revealing which four among the almost 70 episodes of that show were star Peter Falk’s favorites. “It might come as a surprise to fans,” writes the blog’s anonymous editor, “that pivotal episodes ‘Etude in Black’ and ‘Murder by the Book’ don’t feature here—particularly ‘Etude,’ which starred Falk’s BFF John Cassavetes. Instead, all of Falk’s personal favourites come from Seasons 3 or 5, when the show was more firmly established. Notably, three of the four are from Season 5 alone. What does this tell us? Well for one thing it suggests that Falk was at his happiest in the crumpled raincoat once he had a couple of full seasons under his belt.”

• As we prepare for the June release of James Ellroy’s This Storm (Knopf)—book two in his “Second L.A. Quartet” (following 2014’s Perfidia)—Steve Powell, a British student of that author’s work, feels compelled to ask, “is James Ellroy losing his touch?” Writing in his blog, The Venetian Vase, Powell continues: “I’ve decided to broach the subject as the critical response to Ellroy’s last novel Perfidia was mixed, as were the reviews for his novel before that Blood’s a Rover. … I’ve sensed a certain weariness about Ellroy’s recent efforts when I talk with fans of the author. … So Ellroy cannot expect his new novel, This Storm, to be met with universal acclaim as critical opinion has started to shift. In fact, the opposite may be the case. Ellroy may have to win back some critics who are getting cynical about the author’s once unassailable reputation.”

• What a terrific couple of short-story titles, from classic crime-fiction magazines found here and here. On top of that, both of these publications feature cover art by the great Norman Saunders.

• Mystery Tribune chooses the “45 Best Cozy Mystery Novels.”

• New York bookshop proprietor and anthologist Otto Penzler continues to count down what he contends are the “Greatest Crime Films of All-Time.” Most recently he has considered The Ipcress File (1965), The Kennel Murder Case (1933), and The Glass Key (1942). Keep track of this developing series here.

• While we’re on the subject of Penzler, it should be mentioned that he will be partnering with Pegasus Books to launch Scarlet, an imprint “specializing in psychological suspense aimed at female readers.” Publishers Weekly explains: “The new venture has [tapped] Luisa Smith, longtime buying director at Book Passage, a Corte Madera, Ca., bookstore, to be Scarlet editor-in-chief. Nat Sobel, founder of the Nat Sobel Associates literary agency, will act as a consultant to the imprint. Scarlet will launch in winter 2020 with six to eight titles. The Scarlet list will be distributed by W.W. Norton, which also distributes the titles of its parent companies, Penzler Publishing and Pegasus Books.” Although there’s been some grumbling about the name Scarlet being applied to a literary line intended to promote women’s fiction and female authors (shades of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter!), and Penzler’s heated objections to the Mystery Writers of America’s decision to deny Linda Fairstein a Grand Master Award due to her involvement in a 1990 New York City rape-case prosecution left some authors questioning his compassion toward women, I look forward to seeing what Scarlet can contribute to the already rich field of psychological suspense novels.

• A similarly promising venture comes from Polis Books, which has announced the creation of Agora, an imprint designed to “focus on diverse voices, putting out between six and ten books per year.” Chantelle Aimée Osman will serve as the editor of this line, which plans to begin releasing books in the fall of 2019. Read more here.

• I’m not a big social-media user, but over the years I have established a Rap Sheet presence on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Google+. Now it appears that last page is set to vanish forever. I was recently given this warning:

In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.

The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.

I don’t remember when I signed up for Google+, but I know I only did so because fellow blogger Bill Crider already had. Thankfully, my contributions to The Rap Sheet’s page there have been minimal. I’ll keep updating it for as long as possible, but if you notice that the Google+ link available from the right-hand column of this blog disappears in the next couple of months, you’ll know why.

• In its latest look back at Edgar Award winners of the past, Criminal Element revisits one of my favorite private-eye novels of the past: 1958’s The Eighth Circle, by Stanley Ellin. Sadly, critic Joe Brosnan is too rigid in applying our modern social and sexual sensibilities to a work that was penned more than six decades ago.

• TV fandom is no crazier today than it’s always been. According to this 1959 newspaper report, overenthusiastic followers of the 1958-1964 ABC private-eye series 77 Sunset Strip flocked to the Los Angeles site that stood in for the agency’s offices.

• Finally, here are a few author interviews worth checking out: Jane Harper talks with The New York Times about her new Australia-set crime novel, The Lost Man; Christobel Kent chats with CrimeReads about What We Did; Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare goes one-on-one with H.B. Lyle (The Red Ribbon), Val McDermid (Broken Ground), and James Rollins (Crucible); Ronald H. Balson answers questions from Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper about The Girl from Berlin; and Laura K. Benedict discusses The Stranger Inside with Criminal Element’s John Valeri.

Commending Crime in Music City

Thanks to Kevin R. Tipple’s blog, Kevin’s Corner, we also now have the winners of the 2018 Killer Nashville Awards. There were two sets of prizes dispensed during that three-day conference in Nashville, Tennessee—both the Silver Falchion Awards and the Claymore Awards. Rather than list all of the recipients, let me direct you to Killer Nashville’s official prize page for the full rundown.

Note that in addition to the regular book honors, New York City bookseller and editor Otto Penzler was presented with the 2018 John Seigenthaler Legends Award.

Learning the Lines

One of the popular intellectual exercises among folks (like me) who read more crime fiction than is probably healthy for them, is to debate the sub-genre boundaries of this sprawling literary field. What’s the definition of a thriller? Which books qualify as works of noir? How fluid are the lines between traditional mysteries and suspense yarns?

In hopes of “help[ing] guide readers to the type of book they are most likely to enjoy,” editor, critic, and New York City bookseller Otto Penzler has spent this week breaking down the most familiar categories of crime fiction in a series of posts for CrimeReads. Each of his pieces has examined a separate sub-genre in terms of its storytelling structure, its popular clichés, its history, and the writers who have been most instrumental in establishing its value—both past and present. This last Monday, Penzler looked at traditional mysteries; he followed that with studies of hard-boiled novels and thrillers. Today’s entry in the series spotlights police procedurals, with favorable mentions of fiction by Reginald Hill, Dorothy Uhnak, James McClure, Louise Penny, Georges Simenon, and others. If his introduction to these posts provides an accurate clue, then tomorrow’s installment will tackle the subject of psychological suspense novels.

Penzler’s guides aren’t likely to deter crime-fiction writers and readers bent on erudite discourse for its own sake (there’s way too much fun in that!), but they should prove useful to readers who are still getting comfortable with this genre’s broad scope.

FOLLOW-UP: OK, so I guessed wrong. Penzler’s fifth column actually deals with “the crime novel.” As he explains it, “The major element that most clearly distinguishes the crime novel from the rest of mystery fiction is that there is, in fact, no mystery. It is a depiction of criminal life, and it is told from the viewpoint of the criminal. It is not very much a ‘whodunnit’ but more of a ‘whydunnit.’”

“A Downward Spiral ... They Cannot Escape”

Thanks to author-blogger Bill Crider for pointing me toward this definition of noir fiction, offered by editor and bookseller Otto Penzler in a 2010 column for The Huffington Post:

Noir fiction has attracted some of the best writers in the United States (mostly) and many of its aficionados are among the most sophisticated readers in the crime genre. Having said that, I am constantly baffled by the fact that a huge number of those readers don't seem to know what noir fiction is. When they begin to speak of their favorite titles in the category, they invariably include a preponderance of books and short stories that are about as noir as strawberry shortcake.

Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they'd be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let's face it, they deserve it.

Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn't find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.

Penzler’s full piece can be found here.

Bullet Points: Eve of Haunts Edition

• Online voting has begun in the contest for the 2014 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. There are seven categories of nominees, but the one that may interest Rap Sheet readers most is the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year. Here are the contenders:

-- Unravelling Oliver, by Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland)
-- The Kill, by Jane Casey (Ebury Publishing)
-- The Final Silence, by Stuart Neville (Harvill Secker)
-- Can Anybody Help Me?, by Sinead Crowley (Quercus)
-- The Secret Place, by Tana French (Hachette Books Ireland)
-- Last Kiss, by Louise Phillips (Hachette Books Ireland)

Choose your favorites here. I don’t see anything about this competition being restricted to Irish citizens, but note that the voting will close at midnight on November 21.

• Unbidden but nonetheless willing, John Harvey--whose recent Charlie Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, I appreciated so much--has put together a list of what he says are his 25 favorite crime novels. “It will immediately become clear there are exceptions: no Hammett, no Chandler nor other ‘classic’ crime--so obvious that to mention them was, to my mind, unnecessary; and some writers--Michael Connelly would serve as an example--are not there on the grounds that the stream of their work is so strong, I would find it impossible to lift one prime example from the rest.” Among the novels that did merit inclusion are Megan Abbott’s The End of Everything, Kent Anderson’s Night Dogs, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss. You’ll find all of Harvey’s picks here.

• Who remembers the 1979 TV series A Man Called Sloane? My only recollection is that star Robert Conrad left another series, Stephen J. Cannell’s The Duke, after only a handful of episodes in order to play freelance spy Thomas R. Sloane III in this nearly as short-lived Quinn Martin production. Writer Christopher Mills, though, appreciated Sloane enough to compose an episode-by-episode series of posts in a blog called Spy-fi Channel. That blog is now defunct, but Mills is in the midst of revising those Sloane posts (“editing them a bit and adding a few new thoughts and observations”) for another of his blogs, Atomic Pulp and Other Meltdowns. Keep up with his series here.

• The latest update of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is now live. It includes editor Kevin Burton Smith’s “spontaneous tribute” to the late Rockford Files star, James Garner, and expanded entries on characters ranging from Stryker McBride and Joey Fly to Yakov Semenovich Stern and Steve Allen’s Los Angeles gumshoe, Roger Dale. Smith also brings the welcome news that Thrilling Detective finally has “a decent search engine,” which you can access here.

• I must admit, I envy author-educator Art Taylor for his recent opportunity to interview Otto Penzler on behalf of the Los Angeles Review of Books. They had a nice long talk about editor Penzler’s work on a couple of new short-story collections, The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century (which I reviewed here) and The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries. Penzler also clues Taylor in on what he’s been working on “since January”: another major compilation, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

• Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) asks, in Criminal Element, why Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) hasn’t received more attention over the years--why has it “slipped through the cracks of popular reading?” He suggests it’s “because nothing can live up to the Great American Novel--Huckleberry Finn--that preceded it. Ernest Hemingway famously said, ‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.’ No such praise met Tom Sawyer: Detective, with the British Guardian’s original review harshly noting, ‘The whole story is poorly conceived and badly put together.’”

• Although I’ve missed the actual anniversary, I still want to bring attention to the fact that last week the Paul Newman-Robert Redford picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid marked 45 years since its general release on October 24, 1969. I’ve watched that romantic adventure many times, and hope for multiple more viewings. It’s just a fantastic film, with one of the best knife-fight scenes ever!

• There are now only two weeks left before the start of Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach. In his BOLO Books blog, Kristopher Zgorski offers a selection of interesting “non-panel-related activities which will be happening during the conference.” Those include the “Author Speed Dating” event scheduled to be held at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 13, during which more than 100 authors will “pitch” their books to Bouchercon attendees, hoping to attract new readers.

• Haven’t registered for Bouchercon? You can still do it here.

• Apparently, author Max Allan Collins (for whom the adjective “prolific” seems to have been invented) composed the liner notes for a new eight-CD set called Jazz on Fillm: Crime Jazz. He describes the line-up of pieces as “astonishing”: “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Checkmate,” “Shotgun Slade,” “The Naked City,” “Richard Diamond,” “Bourbon Street Beat,” “M-Squad,” “The Untouchables,” “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “Staccato” and “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”--“both the TV series soundtrack and the music from the rare Stan Purdy ‘Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story’ LP,” Collins explains. A list of the musicians represented in this CD set is here.

• Patricia Highsmith--comic book writer?

• One of my fellow Kirkus Reviews bloggers, John DeNardo, this week posted a list of “10 Things This Fan Was Surprised to Learn About Science Fiction.” I was no less taken aback by one of his factoids:

Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land is about a man named Valentine Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars. The story concerns Smith’s trip to Earth and his first-ever interaction with Earth culture. The book is considered one of the most popular science-fiction novels of all time. What surprised me was learning that in 1968, the book inspired a man to found a Neopagan religious organization modeled after the religion founded by Smith in the novel, the beliefs of which include polyamory, social libertarianism and non-mainstream family structures.

You learn something new (and maybe weird) every day, I guess.

• I’m not convinced that we really need a new, American version of Wire in the Blood, the British ITV series that ran from 2002 to 2008 and was based on Val McDermid’s novels about a university clinical psychologist who works with police on serial-killer cases. Yet Crimespree Magazine brings word that ABC-TV is developing such a program with the help of a couple of veterans from the underappreciated Detroit 1-8-7. I know I’ve asked this before (and I shall probably ask it again in the future), but why can’t Hollywood come up with new ideas, rather than recycling old ones?

• This doesn’t sound good: In Reference to Murder reports that “CBS reduced the episode order for CSI to 18 episodes, down from 22. The show is in its 15th season, and this is the first time the drama will have produced less than a full season of episodes.”

• While looking back on the 1959 thriller Night Without End, Vintage Pop Fictions remarks that its author, Alistair MacLean, “does not deserve the relative oblivion into which he has fallen.” I made that same point last year in this piece for Kirkus Reviews.

• Brian Drake interviews Anonymous-9 (aka Elaine Ash) on the subject of Bite Harder, the sequel to her 2013 novel, Hard Bite.

• Finally, since tomorrow is Halloween, I’d be remiss in not linking you up with a few associated postings around the Web. TopTenz chooses the “Top 10 Most Haunted Cities in America,” while The Bowery Boys--an excellent New York City history blog--looks back at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stunning announcement, in April 1922, of “an extraordinary discovery--the existence of ectoplasm, the ghostly goo that emits from mediums possessed with the spirits of the dead.” Publishers Weekly tries to identify “The 10 Best Ghost Stories,” but both The Poisoned Martini and Too Much Horror Fiction have other suggestions. Terence Towles Canote rounds up his favorite horror film postings from A Shroud of Thoughts, while Vintage45’s Blog revisits Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1971 British TV program about a London private eye whose late partner is still helping him solve crimes--a show I previously wrote about here. And since this post can’t be completely serious, check out Cracked History’s eye-catching rundown of the “10 Sexiest Halloween Costumes.”