Bullet Points: Brimming Over Edition

• With so much news about crime-fiction prizes coming out of late, it’s been difficult to keep up with it all. For instance, organizers of the annual Killer Nashville conference (set to take place this year from August 24 to 27 in Tennessee’s capital city) just announced the finalists for their 2017 Silver Falchion Awards. There are 14 categories of contenders for those reader’s choice commendations (10 of which have already been publicized, with more to come), but two of particular interest to Rap Sheet followers are these:

Best Fiction Adult Mystery:
— Amaretto Amber, by Traci Andrighetti
— The Heavens May Fall, by Allen Eskens
— Fighting for Anna, by Pamela Fagan Hutchins
— Love You Dead, by Peter James
— Coyote, by Kelly Oliver
— Grace, by Howard Owen
— Exit, by Twist Phelan
— Dead Secrets, by L.A. Toth
— A Brilliant Death, by Robin Yocum

Best Fiction Adult Thriller:
— Blonde Ice, by R.G. Belsky
— Blood Trails, by Diane Capri
— Ash and Cinders, by Rodd Clark
— The 7th Canon, by Robert Dugoni
— Clawback, by J.A. Jance
— Assassin’s Silence, by Ward Larsen
— Child of the State, by Catherine Lea
— Blood Wedding, by Pierre LeMaitre
— The Last Second Chance, by Jim Nesbitt
— Brain Trust, by Lynn Sholes

A full list of 2017 Silver Falchion nominees can be found here.

• Meanwhile, the recipients of this year’s Scribe Awards—sponsored by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers—were declared on July 21, during the Comic-Con International gathering in San Diego, California. According to a post on the IAMTW’s Facebook page, Assassin’s Creed, by Christie Golden, won in the Best Adapted—General and Speculative category, while Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn, by Ace Atkins, took home honors in the General Original category. The full list of contenders in both of those groups can be found here.

• And Madrid-born Prague writer David Llorente has been given the Dashiell Hammett Black Novel Award for Madrid: Frontera (2016). Sponsored by the International Association of Black Novel Writers and the Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policíaco, this prize was presented earlier in July, during the annual Semana Negra literary festival in Gijón, Spain. (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare.)

• I mentioned way back in March that I had been invited to become a regular columnist for Down & Out: The Magazine, a new crime-fiction digest being planned by Eric Campbell of Down & Out Books, with Rick Ollerman acting as editor. The original idea was to premiere this potential quarterly in June, in both print and e-book formats. However, June came and went, and then July did likewise, and there was still no sign of the thing. As Campbell explained in an e-note sent to contributors this weekend, “due to life events beyond control we are a little behind.” Fortunately, those problems appear to have been resolved at last. The cover of Issue No. 1, touting a new Moe Prager yarn by Reed Farrel Coleman, has been finalized and is shown on the right. Other writers featured this time around include Eric Beetner, Michael A. Black, Jen Conley, Terrence McCauley, and Thomas Pluck. The contents mix will also include a short story from “forgotten master” Frederick Nebel, and the debut of my book review column “Placed in Evidence”—which earns me a welcome cover credit. Campbell’s note suggests Down & Out: The Magazine will be soon become widely available; check its Facebook page and Web page for updates and subscription information. UPDATE: The e-book version of Down & Out: The Magazine can now be purchased from retailers Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

• With a few facts now known about the as-yet-untitled 25th James Bond film, and Daniel Craig having finally been confirmed to star, The Spy Command asks: Might it be appropriate to dedicate that 2019 big-screener to the memory of Roger Moore, who played Agent 007 in seven Bond pictures and died earlier this year at age 89? Were the producers to ask me, I’d say yes, without a doubt.

• There’s lots of speculation about the plot of that next Bond flick. Britain’s Daily Mirror suggests the working title is Shatterhead, and that its story will be based on Raymond Benson’s 2001 Bond continuation novel, Never Dream of Dying. (If so, this would make it the first 007 movie adapted from a continuation novel.) However, in a Facebook post, Benson throws cold water on that rumor: “I know nothing of this, but as I have not spoken with any Mirror journalists at all, I can only assume that the article is a piece of fabrication. It would of course be wonderful if it were true.”

• In association with the release earlier this month of the Library of America omnibus Ross Macdonald: Four Later Novels: Black Money/The Instant Enemy/The Goodbye Look/The Underground Man, editor Tom Nolan has composed an excellent essay about the origins and creation of Black Money, Macdonald’s 1966 Lew Archer private-eye novel. Nolan tells me he’s put together similar pieces about the other three novels contained in this new volume. Those will be posted individually on the Library of America site between now and September, when the three-volume set of LoA’s classic Macdonald tales goes on sale.

• Nancie Clare’s two most recent guests on her Speaking of Mysteries podcast are Glen Erik Hamilton, author of the Van Shaw thriller Every Day Above Ground (Morrow), released just last week; and Karen Dionne, who penned the much-acclaimed psychological suspense yarn The Marsh King’s Daughter (Putnam).

• British “Queen of Crime” P.D. James passed away in 2014, but only now is publisher Faber and Faber getting around to releasing Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales, a collection of her short stories that The Bookseller says all build around the “dark motive of revenge.” It goes on to explain that James’ yarns “feature bullying schoolmasters, unhappy marriages, a murder in the small hours of Christmas Day, and an octogenarian exerting ‘exquisite’ retribution from the safety of his nursing home.” Sleep No More, something of a companion to last year’s The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories, should see print in the UK in early October, with an American edition due out from Knopf in mid-November—just in time for holiday gift-giving.

• Direct from In Reference to Murder:

Toni Collette’s Vocab Films and RadicalMedia are adapting Julia Dahl’s novel Invisible City

into a [TV] series, with Collette already writing the pilot script. The actress optioned the book and will serve as executive producer along with Jen Turner. Dahl’s novel centers on Rebekah Roberts, whose mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter, but her coverage of a story involving a murdered Hasidic woman takes her into some uneasy truths and dangerous territory. Click here to revisit my 2017 interview with author Dahl.

• FirstShowing.net has posted an English-translated trailer for Swedish filmmaker Tarik Saleh’s The Nile Hilton Incident, described as “an intense political thriller set against the backdrop of the Egyptian Revolution. … The story is about a police officer investigating the murder of a woman at [Cairo’s Nile] Hilton hotel, who discovers there’s much more going on than it seems.” The picture, which stars Fares Fares, Mari Malek, and Yasser Ali Maher, is scheduled to premiere at select U.S. theaters on August 11.

• Ohio resident Kristen Lepionka, author of The Last Place You Look, delivers a list to The Guardian of what she contends are the “Top 10 Female Detectives in Fiction.” Among her picks: Tana French’s Antoinette Conway, Rachel Howzell Hall’s Elouise “Lou” Norton, Linda Barnes’ Carlotta Carlyle, and Peter Høeg’s Smilla Jaspersen.

• Another character who might have found a spot among Lepionka’s choices, but did not, is Lynda La Plante’s Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, whom we saw portrayed most recently by fetching Stefanie Martini in the prequel series Prime Suspect: Tennison. I had my doubts going into that three-part mini-series, broadcast last month as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. I was quite thoroughly convinced beforehand that only Helen Mirren could possibly play the role … only to slowly but surely be swept away by the drama’s characters, plot, and 1970s background music. And I was evidently not the only one to be so struck. In a retrospective piece for Criminal Element, Leslie Gilbert Elman writes, “I was hooked from the first moment with Jane on the double-decker bus and Blind Faith on the soundtrack. If Jane had compiled the soundtrack to her life, it would sound like this one (okay, it would sound like my iPod), and Series 2 would kick off with ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’” Unfortunately, there will not be any additional installments; the show was cancelled even before its PBS run. Maybe if it hadn’t sought to resurrect LaPlane’s protagonist, but had instead employed different character names but the same story, it would’ve fared better. We’ll never know.

• Speaking of Masterpiece Mystery!, look to that umbrella series tonight for the seventh and concluding episode of Grantchester, Season 3. Its begins at 9 p.m. ET/PT. If you have missed any of the preceding installments, you can catch yourself up with Leslie Gilbert Elman’s recaps, available here.

• And don’t forget that Season 4 of Endeavour, starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam (and inspired by the last Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels), will commence its four-episode roll-out on Masterpiece Mystery! come Sunday, August 20.

• For several years now, I’ve been pondering whether to give up my subscription to Esquire magazine, a publication I have been reading ever since the early 1980s (and have the boxes of back issues in my basement to prove it). Do I still fit Esquire’s demographic target, since I no longer aspire to be a snappy dresser, am mostly bored by celebrities, and have no need to keep up with the very latest films, musical groups, or vacation destinations? Probably not. But it seems every time I’m prepared to cancel, Esquire publishes something I would have been sorry to miss, and I put off pulling the plug for another month. The August issue, for example, showcases this profile of English actor Idris Elba, former co-star of The Wire and ex-headliner on Luther. And though it fails to answer the question posed on the cover, “Is Idris Elba the Next James Bond,” it does contain this anecdote about Elba scoring his part on HBO’s The Wire:

The role that changed his life, as Elba puts it, came as a consolation prize. He badly wanted to play drug kingpin Avon Barksdale. David Simon, the show’s creator, was on the casting team; he tells me he had no idea Elba was from London because the actor never broke his American accent throughout the audition process. After several callbacks, the Wire team informed Elba that they wanted him not for Barksdale but for [narcotics trafficker] Stringer Bell.

“I was like, ‘Great, great!’” Elba says. “But really, I was like, Who?” As initially sketched out in the pilot, Bell came off as a shrewd Baltimore dealer, but Elba set out to make the character more his own, as though asking himself, How the fuck do I approach this to get anything that no one else has done before? “Where I grew up, gangsters had to be smart,” he says. “That whole flashy thing—no, mate. It was suits and smiles. I said, ‘That's how I’m going to make Stringer.'’”

Elsewhere in the August Esquire—though not available online without charge—is Alex Belth’s mini-preview of Lawrence P. Jackson’s new biography, Chester B. Himes (Norton). It includes the suggestion that anyone embarking on a cruise through Himes’ series of Harlem Detectives novels starring Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson would do well to start with All Shot Up (1959). Good advice.

• Variety reports on a new original-for-TV series, Safe, being concocted by best-selling author Harlan Coben and starring Michael C. Hall (Dexter). In the show, says Variety, Hall “will play a British pediatric surgeon raising two teenage daughters, Jenny and Carrie, alone after the death of his wife. The family is seemingly safe inside a gated community when the elder daughter sneaks out to a party and a murder and disappearance follow, changing all of their lives.” Safe is a joint venture between Netflix and France’s Canal+ Group.

• T. Jefferson Parker (The Room of White Fire) writes in Criminal Element about his favorite crime movies and novels. No great surprises here, but I am pleased to see him include in the latter category Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance, a 1984 murder mystery that doesn’t always receive the respect it deserves.

• The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal focuses on wartime mysteries. You’ll find a complete list of contents, plus links to several stories available online, by clicking here.

• A few author interviews worth checking out, from Mystery People: Rob Hart talks about The Woman from Prague; Bill Loehfelm remarks on The Devil’s Muse; and Jordan Harper has a few things to say about She Rides Shotgun. Finally, one discussion from a different source—K.J. Howe chats with Crimespree Magazine about The Freedom Broker.

• Good news for Amazon streaming customers. According to The Hollywood Reporter, that service is “adding a series of adaptations to its originals lineup from Agatha Christie Limited, the company that manages the literary and media rights to the late English crime novelist’s works. The first show to come from the deal is an adaptation of Ordeal by Innocence, which began production earlier this month in the UK.” No word yet on when these adaptations be broadcast.

• In Shotsmag Confidential, Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip—who write the Botswana-set Detective Kubu series (Dying to Live) as “Michael Stanley”—offer a rather brief, but useful overview of Africa’s underappreciated mystery fiction.

• Jon Jordan on the “10 Best Cop Shows Ever.”

• Late last month we brought you the 2017 Macavity Award nominees, including the half-dozen Best Short Story rivals. The winner is set to be identified on Thursday, October 12, during the opening ceremonies at Bouchercon in Toronto, Ontario. If you’d like to read and judge all of those stories before then, however, just click on over to Mystery Fanfare to find the necessary online links.

• By the way, I have to deliver some bad news regarding this year’s Bouchercon. Although I insisted in March that I was going to take part in those festivities, I have subsequently changed my mind. A variety of factors went into this decision, but what ultimately swayed me was my good friend and colleague Ali Karim’s choice not to make the journey either, due to racism and over-the-top airport searches he’s had to endure as an Anglo-Indian male flying from Britain to North America during the time of Trump. (Ali explains some of his experiences here.) If Ali isn’t traveling to Toronto, then a significant part of the enjoyment I usually find at Bouchercon will be missing, so I’m also bowing out. This doesn’t mean I am swearing off Bouchercons; goodness knows, I have had tremendous fun at such convocations over the years, and would like to have more. But this time around, Bouchercon-goers will just have to get along without me.

Bullet Points: Back in the Game Edition

Sorry for the hiatus, but my computer required a major system upgrade … and I needed a few days without the responsibilities of news gathering. So I wasn’t pushing my technology folks overmuch to get the job done. But now that things seem to be back to normal, let me highlight a few crime fiction-related developments.

• I was still offline when blogger Evan Lewis posted the 18th and concluding chapter of the 1946 comic-book adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. So I couldn’t draw attention to it until now. If you missed any part of that comic, you can enjoy “the whole shebang” right here. Thanks, Even, for this rare treat.

• Here’s something I didn’t know: Famous stage, screen, and radio actor John Barrymore (aka the “greatest living American tragedian”) was originally slated to play San Francisco private detective Sam Spade in the first, 1931 motion-picture adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. Blogger Steven Thompson says Warner Bros. “purchased the then recent Dashiell Hammett story as a vehicle for Barrymore.” Apparently, though, negotiations fell apart when it was announced that former child star Bebe Daniels, one of Warner’s contract players, had been signed as the female lead, and that hers “was actually a bigger part” than the screenplay gave Spade. Barrymore’s retreat from the project left room for Ricardo Cortez to step into his gumshoes, instead.

• If you haven’t watched it already, click here to find the first official trailer promoting this year’s movie adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 whodunit Murder on the Orient Express. Starring a bizarrely mustachioed Kenneth Branagh as brilliant Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, and also featuring fine performers such as Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Derek Jacobi, the film is set to debut in theaters nationwide this coming November 10.



• By the way, which poster do you prefer? The one on the left, touting the 1974 Orient Express (with art by Richard Amsel), or the one displayed on the right, from Branagh’s forthcoming version? Click on either image for an enlargement.

• In Publishers Weekly, Elizabeth Foxwell interviews Joan Hess, who completed the last Amelia Peabody historical mystery left behind when her fellow author, Elizabeth Peters (otherwise known as Barbara Mertz), died in 2013. Hess says her biggest challenge in composing The Painted Queen—which is due out from Morrow in July—“was attempting to capture the subtlety of the somewhat stilted language of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Contractions—how I missed them!”

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

The Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense is named for Daphne du Maurier, the author of Rebecca, a suspense novel with romantic and gothic overtones and a precursor to today’s romantic suspense. Presented annually by the RWA [Romance Writers of America] Kiss of Death organization, this year’s Daphne finalists were named in the category of Mainstream Mystery/Suspense and various Romantic Suspense categories. Finalists in the Mainstream Mystery/Suspense category include Notorious by Carey Baldwin; Death Among the Doilies (A Cora Crafts Mystery) by Mollie Cox Bryan; Elegy in Scarlet by B.V. Lawson; Say No More by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White. For all the finalists (including those both unpublished and published divisions), follow this link.

• On the heels of The Rap Sheet publishing its much longer rundown of summer crime, mystery, and thriller releases, the podcast Writer Types is out with a new episode focusing in part on what works fans of this genre should sample over the next three sunnier months. (If you think you’re too busy to listen to the episode, a list of the recommendations can be found here.) Beyond that part of the show, co-host S.W. Lauden explains, “We’ve also got great interviews with Meg Gardiner (Unsub), John Rector (The Ridge), Jordan Harper (She Rides Shotgun), and Thomas Pluck (Bad Boy Boogie). All that plus a short story by Angel [Luis] Colón.” Listen here.

• What might the 2015 James Bond film Spectre have been like had Roger Moore starred in it, rather than Daniel Craig? It certainly couldn’t have been any more wearisome than the version that reached theaters, and as this what-if trailer in Spy Vibe suggests, it might have provided “a cool juxtaposition between the visceral action and danger of the Craig era and Moore’s undeniable charisma and charm on the screen.” Sadly, we can only imagine the whole of Moore’s Spectre.

• Another tribute to the late Roger Moore. (More here.)

• Lit Reactor is out with its list of “The Best Books of 2017 … So Far.” It includes a quartet of crime/thriller novels. Strangely, several of my own early favorites—Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, Philip Kerr’s Prussian Blue, Don Winslow’s The Force, and Oscar de Muriel’s Fever of the Blood—don’t show up on that roster, but there’s still time for the Lit Reactor folk to come to their senses.

• Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s choices of “37 Books We’ve Loved So Far in 2017” mentions just three crime/mystery novels: The Long Drop, by Denise Mina; Not a Sound, by Heather Gudenkauf; and Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane (which—surprisingly for a Lehane work—I haven’t yet felt compelled to finish).

• Although the cover of its premiere issue could hardly be less intriguing than it is, I’m very pleased to see Maryland publisher Wildside Press introduce Black Cat Mystery Magazine. Scheduled to debut in September, BCMM (not to be confused with the classic, 1895-1922 American literary journal, The Black Cat) will reportedly “focus on contemporary and traditional mysteries, as well as thrillers and suspense stories.” Among the writers contributing to Issue No. 1 are Art Taylor, Meg Opperman, John Floyd, and Barb Goffman. Order a copy here. Hopes are to make BCMM a quarterly publication.

• From blogger-editor Janet Rudolph:

David Schmid, Ph.D. received the 2017 George N. Dove Award for Contributions to the Study of Mystery and Crime Fiction. David Schmid, associate professor in the Department of English at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York), was selected to receive the 2017 Dove Award. The honor is bestowed for outstanding contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction by the Mystery and Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association. The award is named for George N. Dove, one of the area’s early members, a past president of the Popular Culture Association, and author of outstanding presentations, articles, and books on detective fiction, especially the police procedural.

• In Criminal Element, Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai offers some history behind this week’s release of Donald E. Westlake’s long-missing but quite rewarding thriller, Forever and a Death.

• Speaking of previously “lost” fiction … “A collection of short stories by Ruth Rendell, unearthed in the archive of a U.S. detective magazine, are to be published for the first time in the UK this autumn,” reports The Guardian. “The stories were found in magazines—[mostly in] back issues of … Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine—and date as far back at the 1970s. They will be published under the title A Spot of Folly.” Rendell passed away in the spring of 2015, aged 85.

• “Hopalong Cassidy—Detective?”

• I still own two manual typewriters, and am loath to give them up, thinking they might be fun to use again someday. I didn’t know I’m not alone in my nostalgia for such vintage machines. “In the age of smartphones, social media and hacking fears,” reports the Associated Press, “vintage typewriters that once gathered dust in attics and basements are attracting a new generation of fans across the U.S.”

• “On the 129th anniversary of [Raymond] Chandler’s birth, seven writers have gathered to declare how Chandler influenced their own work and continues to shape the landscape of modern crime fiction.” You’ll find their opinions here.

• After years spent as a magazine and newspaper editor, I know how popular lists are with readers. Therefore, I’m not surprised to have seen a bunch of such opinionated inventories pop up online lately. The Strand Magazine Web site seems particularly fond of such tallies, offering: “Five Prescient Political Thrillers,” “Top 10 Mystery or Crime Novels Set in the Country,” “Top 10 Crime Novels Set in London,” and “Top Nine Books with ‘Girl’ in the Title.” Since 2017 marks the centennial of America’s involvement in World War I, Criminal Element weighs in with “Nine Murder Mysteries Set During Wartime.” BookRiot shares its picks of “Five Japanese Crime Writers that Should Be on Your Radar,” and Please Kill Me’s collection of “Ten Great New York City Novels” features (naturally) Dashiell Hammett’s 1933 Nick and Nora Charles mystery, The Thin Man.

• For something a bit different, Mystery Fanfare points us toward Culture Trip’s rundown of “50 Unique Independent Bookstores You Need to Visit in Every U.S. State.” Although the wording of that headline implies we’ll learn about 50 such retailers in each state of the Union, the story actually offers just one store suggestion per state. I’ve stopped by many of these shops, but not nearly all of them.

• Did you know there is a book-length sequel to the 1992 comedy film My Cousin Vinny? Titled Back to Brooklyn, and written by New York City-area resident Lawrence Kelter, it was released last month by Down & Out Books. Oh, and it’s described on Amazon as the first sequel to that persistently entertaining movie.

• I’m always impressed by bloggers who can hang in there for the long haul, when the urge to discontinue an enterprise like this—which brings few obvious rewards and can consume so many hours of one’s life—threatens to overwhelm. Despite reports you may have heard, the business of blogging is not for the faint of heart. Therefore, let’s give a hearty round of applause to Terence Towles Canote, whose pop-culture blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, recently celebrated its 13th anniversary. That’s two more years than The Rap Sheet has been in existence.

• For most of last week, the big Batman news had to do with that fictional crime-fighter’s decision—as spelled out in the latest issue of the DC Universe Rebirth: Batman comic-book series—to finally propose marriage to Catwoman (aka Selina Kyle). Then, however, came word that Adam West, the man who’d brought both the Caped Crusader and his alter ego, “millionaire playboy” Bruce Wayne, to brave if campy life in the 1966-1968 ABC-TV series Batman, had died of leukemia at age 88. According to an obituary in The Hollywood Reporter, West once said, “You can’t play Batman in a serious, square-jawed, straight-ahead way without giving the audience the sense that there’s something behind that mask waiting to get out, that he’s a little crazed, he’s strange.” He added that he’d played Batman “for laughs, but in order to do [that], one had to never think it was funny. You just had to pull on that cowl and believe that no one would recognize you.” Trouble is, everybody came to recognize Adam West for his Batman portrayal. As a consequence, the Walla Walla, Washington-born farm boy turned actor—who’d appeared on such boob-tube dramas as 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Maverick, Perry Mason, and The Detectives before scoring the Batman gig—“never quite got out of Batman’s long shadow, both for better and for worse,” writes National Public Radio’s Colin Dwyer. Yes, West later guest-starred on programs as varied as Emergency!, Laverne & Shirley, Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis: Murder, and The Big Bang Theory; he won a regular part on the 1986 sitcom The Last Precinct and starred in Conan O’Brien’s unsuccessful 1991 TV pilot, Lookwell (which he later referenced as “my favorite” pilot); yet as The Atlantic remembers, it was only after the actor “embraced” his Batman typecasting that he could again find happiness—and consistent employment. “West returned to voice his iconic character in such cartoons as The New Adventures of Batman, Legends of the Superheroes, SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, and The Simpsons,” observes The Hollywood Reporter, “and Warner Bros.’ long-awaited DVD release of ABC’s Batman in 2014 brought him back into the Bat Signal’s spotlight.” (He also did regular voice-overs on the animated series Family Guy.) West’s demise follows that of Yvonne Craig, the onetime dancer who played Batgirl on Batman during its final season; she passed away in 2015 as a result of breast cancer, aged 78. Still around, though, is the second half of West’s Dynamic Duo: Burt Ward, who donned tights and a ridiculously paltry black mask as Robin, “the Boy Wonder,” on the show. He’ll turn 72 come July 6 of this year. Read more about Adam West’s life and career here, here, and here.

• This is the coolest Adam West tribute imaginable! (FOLLOW-UP: Film footage from the event can be found here and here.)

• While we’re honoring the lately departed, let us not forget Boulder, Colorado, author Marlys Millhiser, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease on April 20, just short of her 80th birthday. As Mystery Fanfare notes, the Iowa-born former high school teacher penned “sixteen mysteries and horror novels. She served as a regional vice president of the Mystery Writers of America and is best known for her novel The Mirror (1978) and for the Charlie Greene Mysteries” (the most recent of those being 2002’s The Rampant Reaper).

• Rest in peace, Glenne Headly. As Variety reports, the Connecticut-born actress—“known for starring alongside Warren Beatty in 1990’s Dick Tracy as Tess Trueheart,” and for earning an Emmy nomination for her role in the 1989 TV miniseries Lonesome Dove—died in Santa Monica, California, on June 8 as a result of complications from a pulmonary embolism. She was only 62 years of age.

• Finally, I mentioned in my last “Bullet Points” post that veteran sportswriter-novelist Frank Deford was retiring after 37 years of doing commentary for NPR’s Morning Edition. Just two weeks later, on May 28, the 78-year-old died at his home in Key West, Florida. In honor of his journalism career, Sports Illustrated—the periodical to which he’d contributed so much of his writing over the decades—posted online one of Deford’s most memorable pieces, “The Boxer and the Blonde,” which ran originally in SI’s June 17, 1985, issue.

Moore Plays 007 ... in 1964?

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

Roger and Thee

One day after the death of actor Roger Moore at age 89, there continues to be a flood of discussion on the Web about this former star of The Saint, The Persuaders!, and a series of James Bond films.

Bill Koenig offers a nice appreciation of Moore in The Spy Commend that mentions how generous he was in complimenting other men who played the part of Agent 007. The New York Times’ A.O. Scott and author-blogger Gary Dobbs both seek to make the case that—in spite of criticism to the contrary—Moore made the best big-screen Bond. The Book Bond’s John Cox has posted a gallery of Bond novel fronts featuring Moore. And as others have done, the classic-film blog Silver Scenes effuses over the movie and TV performer’s comportment:

I think what appealed to me most about Roger was his stately bearing. He was a gentleman in an age of very few gentlemen. Tailored suits, the finest cuff-links, impeccable hair … he always dressed for the occasion. Sometimes that occasion was yachting on the Riviera, other times hosting a race in London. If one was to look up the word debonair in the Webster’s dictionary, “Sir Roger Moore” should be the definition. It was like a real baron, no—a prince—took time off from his royal duties to try acting for a lark, to have the pleasure of entertaining the masses. And what pleasure he gave us!

Finally, author Lee Goldberg—who, in his younger days, talked several times with Roger Moore on the set of A View to a Kill for Starlog Magazine (“He was such a nice man, so funny and self-effacing … with an amazing memory for names”)—posted a link from his Facebook page to the published results of their exchanges.

Expect to see more tributes to Moore in the coming days.

READ MORE: “Roger Moore, R.I.P.,” by Jason Whiton (Spy Vibe); “Roger Moore Dead: This Anecdote About the James Bond Actor Just Keeps Getting Better As You Read,” by Christopher Hooten (The Independent); “‘One of Nature’s True Gentlemen’: Your Roger Moore Stories” (The Guardian).

Moore Was More than Ballsy Bond

“With the heaviest of hearts, we must share the awful news that our father, Sir Roger Moore, passed away today. We are all devastated.” — The Twitter announcement of Moore’s demise, from his children.

My association with notably polished English actor Roger Moore dates back to my boyhood. My father was an enthusiastic watcher of the 1962-1969 ITV-TV mystery/spy series The Saint, which starred Moore as Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like criminal/adventurer developed in a succession of books by Leslie Charteris. In fact, my dad’s purchase in the mid-’60s of a Volvo P1800 was almost certainly inspired on the fact that Templar wheeled about on the small screen in that very same model of sports car (though his was bone white, while my father’s was fire-engine red). Moore appeared as well in another program my father favored: the 1957-1962 ABC Western series Maverick, in which he portrayed Beau Maverick, the cross-Atlantic cousin to a pair of gambling brothers played by James Garner and Jack Kelly. (I eventually caught up with both series in Saturday reruns.)

So when I heard this morning that the London-born, four-times-married Moore had died in Switzerland at age 89, “after a short battle with cancer,” I found myself glancing over at the photograph of my father and brother that sits atop my writing desk. My father succumbed to cancer himself 14 years ago, but if he were still around, I’m sure he would have been as saddened as I was by today’s news.

(Left) Jane Seymour and Roger Moore in the movie Live and Let Die.

Of course, there are many people who don’t associate Roger Moore with Maverick or The Saint, or even with his 1971-1972 UK series, The Persuaders!, in which he and Tony Curtis played globe-trotting, crime-solving millionaire playboys. (You can see the opening from that last series here.) For them, Moore will instead, and always, be the face of randy British superspy James Bond, the role he held onto for 12 years, through seven highly publicized feature films based on Ian Fleming’s espionage fiction. As The Spy Command recalls,

[Moore] was the third film Bond, following Sean Connery and George Lazenby.

During his tenure, from 1973 to 1985, the Bond films took a more lighthearted tone. But his films established, once and for all, the series could survive—and more—without Connery, the original film 007.

Moore’s first Bond film, 1973’s Live and Let Die [opening title sequence shown here], was an international hit. Its worldwide box office totaled $161.8 million, the first Bond movie to exceed Thunderball’s $141.2 million. The U.S. box office was more modest, $35.4 million. That didn’t match the U.S. take for Connery’s Eon finale, Diamonds Are Forever ($43.8 million).

Regardless, both Eon Productions and its feuding producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman along with studio United Artists were satisfied. Moore would continue.

Moore would go on to serve as Agent 007 through The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985). He’d be accompanied in those cinematic outings by a variety of stunning “Bond Girls,” ranging from Jane Seymour and Britt Eklund to Barbara Bach and Carole Bouquet. “His Bond was more of a charmer than a fighter,” explains The Hollywood Reporter, “more of a stirrer than was the shaker embodied by the first Bond, Scotsman Sean Connery. Moore took on the role with a grain of salt, not to mention cigars—as part of his contract, he reportedly was given unlimited Montecristos during production.” Moore was the oldest person to play Fleming’s protagonist on screen, retiring from the part at age 58. “Many [James Bond] fans felt Moore … [had] stayed for one 007 adventure too many …,” remarks The Spy Command. “Fans who never warmed to Moore—and there are some who’ve spent decades decrying the actor—felt vindicated. For those who enjoyed Moore’s performances, it felt like the end of an era.” (The part of Bond went next to Timothy Dalton, who starred in only two films before being replaced by Pierce Brosnan, in 1995’s GoldenEye.)

Let us not forget, though, that this performer’s big-screen credits extended well beyond the Bond pictures. He co-starred with Lee Marvin in the 1976 East Africa-set war adventure film, Shout at the Devil, was featured alongside Gregory Peck and David Niven in 1980’s The Sea Wolves, and worked on the 1990 British comedy Bullseye! together with Michael Caine and Sally Kirkland. In addition, Moore was cast as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned “consulting detective” in the 1976 TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York (with Patrick Macnee playing Dr. John H. Watson), and won the part of a novelist turned “hack reporter” in the 1995 mystery teleflick The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.

Moore published two memoirs during his long life—My Word Is My Bond (2009) and Last Man Standing (2014)—and as The Bookseller mentioned earlier today, he had “sent in the manuscript for his last, as-yet-untitled book just two weeks before his death.” There’s no news yet on a release date for that last work.

As The Guardian notes, in his later years Moore took on the duties of goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the international humanitarian organization. It adds: “In 1999, Moore was awarded a CBE which then became a knighthood in 2003, given to him for his charity work.”

All of that represented quite a climb from his days on the black-and-white TV series The Saint and Maverick. But Moore seemed to take things in stride. “During my early acting years I was told that to succeed you needed personality, talent, and luck in equal measure,” Moore said to The Guardian back in 2014. “I contest that. For me it’s been 99 percent luck. It’s no good being talented and not being in the right place at the right time.”

We should be grateful to have been around when that right time arrived for Roger George Moore.

READ MORE: “Sir Roger Moore, James Bond Actor, Dies of Cancer Aged 89,” by Leon Watson and Charlotte Krol (The Telegraph); “Obituary: Roger Moore” (BBC News); “Remembering Roger Moore, the Man Who Saved James Bond,” by Isaac Chotiner (Slate); “Sir Roger Moore—An Appreciation,” by Edward Biddulph (James Bond Memes); “Remembering Roger Moore,” by Matthew Bradford (Double O Section); “Roger Moore, 1927-2017,” by Steve Powell (The Venetian Vase); Roger Moore Dies at 89: Here Are All His James Bond Roles in Pictures Between 1973 and 1985” (Vintage Everyday).

Saints Be Praised

After years of failures in trying to bring Leslie Charteris’ Simon Templar--aka The Saint--back to TV screens (from which the character disappeared after a popular 1962-1969 British series), it appears success may finally be at hand. The trailer for a prospective new Saint production, this one starring Adam Rayner and the lovely Eliza Dushku, was posted by Deadline Hollywood, and is embedded below.



“[P]roducers will attempt to sell this pilot to networks internationally,” reports Double O Section blogger Tanner. “Hopefully it sells and we end up with a whole new Saint series!” Tanner, for one, has high hopes for this Simon West-directed project. He writes:

“I love that it uses the familiar Saint theme music. I love that they found a believable way to get the Saint into a dinner jacket in this day and age. I love that there’s a fight on a funicular! I love the international locations and the high productions values. It looks like a very slick production, for sure. And new Simon Templar Adam Rayner, from what I can tell based on these short clips, looks good in the role! (Needs a shave, though.) Eliza Dushku looks great, too, as the Saint’s on-and-off girlfriend from the Leslie Charteris novels, Patricia Holm.

But hey, you know what I really like best? This pilot managed to find noteworthy roles for two men who’ve already played Templar on the small screen, Ian Ogilvy and Roger Moore.

Bond Books Will Battle

Former James Bond actors Roger Moore and Sean Connery “will go head to head with rival books this autumn, after Weidenfeld cajoled Connery into telling his story, and Michael O’Mara won the battle for Moore’s memoirs,” according to The Bookseller. Both Weidenfeld and Michael O’Mara are prominent--and competitive--publishers in the United Kingdom.

Michael O’ Mara himself has said his company is “delirious with anticipation,” for Moore’s book. “What I have read so far bubbles with wit and is peopled by a ‘Who’s Who’ of Hollywood.” HarperCollins U.S. echoed that excitement by reportedly plunking down close to $1 million for the U.S. rights to the 80-year-old Moore’s My Word Is My Bond, due in stores this October.

For his part, Connery had been playing coy with his autobiography. He was previously signed by HarperCollins but, according to The Bookseller, “pulled out in 2005 after reluctance to discuss certain areas of his private life.” Connery has apparently worked through his shyness, and The Bookseller had this to say about his Being a Scot:

Billed as “an intensely personal account”, the book will fuse Connery’s own experiences, including his acting career, with his efforts to track down what Scots have given to the world in art, science and sport. “Sean Connery is not calling it an autobiography but it’s probably the nearest we will get to it,” said Samson. “He’s a legend--one of the absolute, out and out, movie stars.”

Being a Scot will be available August 25, which means that both books will be out in plenty of time for the holiday gift-giving season: the time of year that booksellers agree is by far their most important.

The Bookseller piece is here.

007 Turns 80

Doubly favored in this genre for once having played Simon Templar (aka The Saint) on television, and later portraying concupiscent British secret spy James Bond in seven Agent 007 feature films, actor Roger Moore turns 80 years old today.

Recapping Moore’s Bond years (1973-1985), Gerald So offers some thoughts and interesting tidbits about the actor in his blog today:

In that time, Moore broadened Bond’s sense of humor and thus his appeal. No one can wrinkle his nose and smirk with disdain better than Sir Roger.

By the same token, Moore is probably most responsible for turning Bond into a caricature, a reputation that followed the character until 2006’s Casino Royale. Moore hates shooting firearms, which caused him to ruin countless Bond takes. All the scenes that involve running in his seven Bond movies were performed by doubles as he felt he looked awkward running. He hates being wet while acting, not the best quality for someone playing a Royal Navy commander.

At the same time as we’re applauding Moore for filling the shoes of Templar and Bond, though, we shouldn’t forget that he also played Lord Brett Sinclair, an aristocratic Englishman who teamed up with oil exec and playboy Danny Wilde (Tony Curtis) to solve crimes in the 1971 UK series The Persuaders!; and later, he donned a deerstalker and pipe as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Great Detective in the 1976 teleflick Sherlock Holmes in New York. All of these roles combined give him near-exalted status in this genre.

If you would like to send the nose-wrinkling Sir Roger a birthday greeting today, you can do so here.

Consider Me Unpersuaded

I have to confess that I don’t have strong memories of The Persuaders!, a 1971-1972 British TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore as a pair of millionaire international playboys from opposite sides of “the pond,” who are coerced into fighting crime, in order to stay out of jail for trashing a restaurant. (If that sounds to you rather like the premise for both Alias Smith and Jones and It Takes a Thief, you’re not alone.)

Apparently, though, the muckety-mucks at DreamWorks recall this short-lived series (which also showed in the States on ABC-TV) with greater fondness than I. More than a year ago, that U.S. movie studio announced its intention to remake The Persuaders! as a feature film, starring--of all people--Ben Stiller. Now, Variety is reporting that Dan Dorfman, whose credits include scripting the comedies Anger Management and My Boss’s Daughter, has been signed to write the Persuaders flick. British actor Steve Coogan has been recruited to fill Roger Moore’s shoes.

Given what a dreadful job the twitchy Stiller did with the 2004 Starsky & Hutch cinematic remake, and the generally poor track record American studios have when it comes to turning once-popular TV series into big-screen hits, I’ll be surprised if this Persuaders doesn’t go straight to video. The only thing that could make the project more unpromising than it already is, would be if DreamWorks chose to stick with the original series’ uninspired theme music.

The film is scheduled for release in 2007.

Following The Saint

I didn’t know that actor Roger Moore had a Web site, much less that it might contain something of specific interest to crime-fiction readers. And yet it has just added an intriguing interview with Burl Barer, author of the Edgar Award-winning book The Saint: A Complete History, as well as Capture the Saint and a novelization of the 1997 Val Kilmer movie The Saint. Clearly, Barer knows a thing or two about Simon Templar, aka The Saint, the fictional detective created by Leslie Charteris in the 1920s, and the character Moore played in a 1962-69 TV series. My favorite part of this new interview, which was conducted by author Wesley Britton, finds Barer answering a question about whether he has any favorite stories concerning his meeting either Charteris or Moore.

I have not yet met Roger Moore, although I have a funny story about the two of us. I wrote him a letter in care of his secretary in the UK asking if I could interview him for my book on the TV series Maverick. About a month later, my young son, about ten or eleven years old, and I returned from the video store where my son picked out three Roger Moore James Bond movies. On the way home he told me how much he liked Roger Moore. When we walked in the door, he noticed the light was blinking on the telephone answering machine. He walked over and pressed the play button. “Hello,” said the distinctive voice, “this is Roger Moore ...” I wish I had a picture of my son’s face when he heard that, standing there still holding his Roger Moore videos! Roger left me his number, but by the time I returned the call, he was gone. We have yet to connect.

(Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)