Bullet Points: Packed Potpourri Edition

• Audible, the online audiobook/podcast service, has chosen its “10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2024” (all of them Audible releases):

— Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera
— First Lie Wins, by Ashley Elston
— We Play Games, by Sarah A. Denzil (Audible Original)
— The Teacher, by Freida McFadden
— The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz
— All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker
— We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman
— The Safe Man, by Michael Connelly (Audible Original)
— After You’ve Gone, by Margot Hunt (Audible Original)

(Hat tip the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)

• CrimeReads seems to have launched what has become its annual rollout of top crime- and mystery-fiction picks, unaccompanied by fanfare, starting with Molly Odintz’s rundown of what she says are the 10 “Best Gothic Novels of 2024.”

• Mick Herron, author of the Slough House spy novels (from which Apple+ TV’s Slow Horses is being adapted) has been tapped as programming chair for the 2025 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, set to take place in Harrogate, England, from July 17 to 20.

• The third season of Dalgliesh, the fine British TV crime drama based on novels by P.D. James and starring Bertie Carvel, is scheduled to start airing on both sides of the Atlantic in early December. Click here to watch a trailer. The Killing Times explains that the three books being adapted this time are Death in Holy Orders, Cover Her Face, and Devices and Desires. “Each story will be a two-parter, mirroring previous series’ approach. In the first, [Detective Chief Inspector Adam] Dalgliesh travels to a remote seminary overlooking a windswept lake, where a body has been found gruesomely murdered, while the second will see him look into a murder in the Essex home of a staggeringly wealthy family with connections to the British government.” This third go-round for Dalgliesh will begin in the States on Acorn TV come Sunday, December 2, and in the UK on December 5.

• Meanwhile, UK broadcaster ITV has ordered up a second series of After the Flood, with Sophie Rundle set to reprise her lead role as small-town English copper Joanna Marshall. Six new episodes will find “newly promoted detective Jo Marshall on the trail of a baffling murder investigation,” reports The Killing Times. “As tensions simmer in Waterside amid the rising threat of moorland fires and the subsequent risk of further flooding, a body is discovered in bizarre circumstances. Jo’s race to stop the killer will put her in opposition to dark, influential forces within the town, and ultimately take her on a much more personal investigation. One that will require her to operate in secret if she is to have any hope of rooting out the corruption that has blighted the town’s police force—and her own family—for decades. Philip Glenister is also back as Jack Radcliffe and Lorraine Ashbourne is confirmed to return as Jo’s mother, Molly.”

• Harry O fans, rejoice! Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies’ book, The Harry O Viewing Companion: History and Episodes of the Classic Detective Series (McFarland), is due out in early February of next year. I knew this work was in progress, but only just learned of its imminent publication. Here’s a contents description from Amazon:

In the golden era of 1970s TV detective shows, Harry O stood out. David Janssen, already renowned for his role in The Fugitive, played Harry Orwell, a San Diego cop who retired after being shot in the back. The chemistry between Janssen and Anthony Zerbe, who delivered an Emmy-Award winning performance as Lt. K.C. Trench, captivated viewers and contributed to the show's popularity. While Harry O was largely character-driven, it also featured compelling plots that retained the show's audience throughout its two seasons.

In this viewing companion to Harry O, all episodes are covered, along with information about cast, crew, locations, and story analysis. The book contains examinations of archival material, including series creator Howard Rodman's papers. It also features new interviews conducted by the authors, providing insight into the creation of the series [plus an introduction by Les Lannom, who played private-eye wannabe Lester Hodges]. From the filming of the pilot episodes in 1972 to the show's cancellation in '76, the book offers a comprehensive history of each step in the show's development.

This book’s British co-author, Aldous, is an occasional Rap Sheet contributor, who previously penned The World of Shaft: A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films, and Television Series (McFarland, 2015). Gillies is a Scottish musician and record producer, as well as the co-creator of a theatrical production called Alien War. I’m dearly hoping to rope at least one of them into an interview for this blog, sometime closer to when their new book hits print.

• If you would care to revisit a Harry O tribute I wrote for CrimeReads a few years back, you will find that right here.

• Slate columnist Laura Miller disparages the clichés that riddle Amazon Prime’s new thriller TV series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge, yet she applauds that show’s racial awareness. “Apart from a few higher-ups in the police brass, all the significant characters in [Alex] Cross’ life are Black,” she writes, “and their social world—from family karaoke nights to house parties—feels warm, rich, and authentic.”

• Need more cozy crime in your life? Deadline brings word that streamer Acorn TV and Paramount‘s Channel 5 “are co-producing an adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles‘ bestselling book Murder Before Evensong. … Murder Before Evensong was published in 2022 and introduces Canon Daniel Clement, a rector of Champton who becomes embroiled in a murder case when a cousin to the church’s patron is found stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs.”

• Mark this down on your calendar: The Series 5 debut of Miss Scarlet (formerly Miss Scarlet and the Duke) to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece lineup will come on Sunday, January 12, 2025—though it will be accessible earlier (on December 8) to PBS Passport subscribers. With the departure of Stuart Martin, who played struggling London sleuth Eliza Scarlet’s childhood friend and sometimes rival in this show’s initial four seasons, Detective Inspector William “Duke” Wellington, we find Miss Scarlet (played by Kate Phillips) now returned to her own, finally thriving detective agency, but with a new Scotland Yard antagonist and potential love interest, Alexander Blake (Tom Durant Pritchard). Synopses of the new episodes, as well as a Season 5 trailer, can be found on the Masterpiece Web site.

• And on December 11, the Scottish crime drama Shetland will kick off its ninth-season run on streamer BritBox. That BBC One-originating series, which stars Ashley Jensen as Detective Inspector Ruth Calder and Alison O'Donnell as Detective Sergeant Alison “Tosh” McIntosh, has already been showing in the UK for the last two weeks. Mystery Fanfare says the latest half-dozen episodes will focus on “a double missing person’s case that ‘blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, as Calder and Tosh are drawn into a labyrinthine investigation’ … When Tosh’s friend, Annie Bett (Sarah MacGillivray), goes missing, Ruth Calder—now living in Shetland—has no time to recover from a life-threatening ordeal of her own, and instead teams with Tosh to search for Annie and her young son, Noah (Jacob Ferguson).” I don’t know whether I am ready for more of Shetland. The show started to change, to grow darker, after its sophomore season, when episodes were no longer being adapted from Ann Cleeves’ Jimmy Perez novels, and were instead scripted exclusively for the small-screen. Star Douglas Henshall giving up his role as Perez after the seventh season left a hole in the cast that hasn’t adequately been filled by Jensen, who plays yet another troubled/damaged TV police detective. I may have to move on.

• I don’t know much about this yet, only what I have read in Ayo Onatade’s Shotsmag Confidential blog:

CrimeFest, one of the UK’s leading crime fiction conventions, will feature an exclusive John le Carré event featuring the author’s two sons.

Considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era, the ‘Ghost of Honour’ panel sees le Carré’s son, Nick Harkaway, discuss his latest novel, Karla’s Choice. In the book, Nick brought back one of his father’s most famous literary creations—George Smiley.

The panel also welcomes Le Carre’s older son, the film producer Simon Cornwell, who is the CEO and co-founder of the independent studio, The Ink Factory. He is currently executive producing the much-anticipated second season of The Night Manager for Amazon and the BBC, starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman.

CrimeFest 2025 will take place in Bristol, England, May 15-18.

• Editor George Easter this week e-mailed the Fall 2024 edition of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine to online subscribers. Its contents include a cover feature about UK novelist Jo Callaghan (Leave No Trace), plus extensive lists of other recent and recommended crime/thriller novels from across the pond; Mike Ripley’s latest “Ripster Revivals” column, weighing “the joys and disappointments of rediscovering books I should have read many years ago,” among them Morris West’s The Big Story (1957) and Gavin Lyall’s The Conduct of Major Maxim (1982); and a wide variety of new-book reviews by contributors Kevin Burton Smith, Meredith Anthony, Ted Hertel, Robin Agnew, Hank Wagner, and others. I’m always impressed by how much content Easter manages to squeeze into every issue of DP! Subscription information is available here.

• For fans of William Lindsay Gresham, best known for his 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley, Mystery*File editor Steve Lewis offers this interesting interview with the author’s stepson, Bob Pierce (no relation to yours truly). “In our interview,” Lewis writes, “Bob recalls growing up with Gresham, and some memories of spending time with Gresham’s sons, David and Douglas, in 1952-1953 before they moved away with [Gresham’s first wife, Joy] Davidman.”

• Finally, this might make a good present for the young readers (4-8 years old) on your Christmas list: a condensed 32-page version of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie’s 1920 Hercule Poirot whodunit. The well-illustrated work is being touted as “the first in a series of interactive picture book mysteries for children.”

Bullet Points: Info Dump Edition

• It’s only the third week of October, but already American bookseller Barnes & Noble has announced what it says are the “Best Mystery Books of 2023.” Here are that chain’s 10 selections:

— After That Night, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)
— The River We Remember, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
— The Last Devil to Die, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
— The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur)
— The Only One Left, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
— Zero Days, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)
— Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane (Harper)
— All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
— You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, by Jeneva Rose (Blackstone)
— Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide, by Rupert Holmes (Avid Reader Press)

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter observes that, in addition to those, B&N’s “Best Fiction of 2023 list [contains] two titles that some consider mystery fiction”: Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll (Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci); and I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai (Viking).

• Author Max Allan Collins spreads the word that actor Todd Stashwick, who commanded such attention as the irksome Captain Liam Shaw in Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard, has been cast as Chicago private investigator Nathan Heller in the pilot for a podcast version of Collins’ longest-running crime series. Said pilot is adapted from Chapter 1 of Stolen Away (1991), the fifth Heller yarn.

• This page has frequently highlighted instances of stock photography being overused on crime and thriller novels. Here are two additional examples: Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen, by Sarah James (Sourcebooks Landmark, November 2024); Hard Girls, by J. Robert Lennon (‎Mulholland, February 2024).



Do publishers think readers don’t notice such blatant duplications, or that we just don’t care about them? I can’t decide.

• It’s sad to hear that the respected books Web site LitReactor is going out of business after a dozen years. Financing problems and the death of one of its co-founders are cited as reasons for LitReactor shutting down as of December 31. “The site will no longer be accessible after that,” we are informed. As it turns out, there were several links to LitReactor pieces in The Rap Sheet. I have already replaced those with archive pages from The Wayback Machine.

• Just in time for Halloween, Mystery Fanfare blogger Janet Rudolph has posted her updated (and remarkably lengthy) lists of mystery novels and short-story anthologies linked to that celebration.

• In a CrimeReads piece from 2019, Olivia Rutigliano argues that Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel, Dracula, is also “an incredibly complex, fascinating mystery.” Well, I for one am convinced.

• Longtime boob-tube fanatics should find more treats than tricks in this post from Comfort TV that sees David Hofstede digging up an assortment of haunted houses in classic television shows.

• And Caroline Crampton is back with the latest episode of her podcast, Shedunnit. The topic this time around is how “the supernatural and the rational come together in the murder mystery.” Works referenced include Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, Margery Allingham’s Look to the Lady, John Dickson Carr’s The Red Widow Murders, and Gladys Mitchell’s Wraiths and Changelings.

• Texas Monthly’s Chris Vognar profiles Houston’s Murder by the Book as part of the magazine’s Indie Bookstore Week salute, writing:

For all of the foreboding tales within, Houston’s Murder by the Book feels soft and inviting, with massive windows up front and plenty of places inside to kick back and dig into something grisly. With its coffee mugs and T-shirts shouting out famous crime-solving heroes (plenty of “Holmes& Watson& Marple& Poirot” merch), the place looks downright friendly. “There’s a lot of natural light and, depending on the time of day, natural darkness,” says Lou Berney, an Edgar-winning thriller author, who always looks forward to reading from his novels at the venerable crime bookstore. “Events start out cheerful and end up kind of ominous and spooky. I love that.”

Don Winslow, a dean of crime fiction, visits Murder by the Book whenever he’s on tour, including a recent stop to discuss his new novel, City of Dreams. The British thriller master Ruth Ware came through in June to promote Zero Days. Best-selling novelists Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke are regulars. The store, a Houston literary staple since 1980, draws throngs of crime aficionados to these events, and at four thousand square feet, it has plenty of room for them to roam.

Murder by the Book harvests a sort of glee in terrible doings. It serves up bloodshed not just with a smile, but also with a flurry of knowledgeable recommendations based on devoted clients’ interests. “I never get out of there without buying three or four excellent novels I wouldn’t have found otherwise,” Berney says. It’s like Cheers, but with poison in the beer.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

• Owlcation’s Ronald E. Franklin once more raises that eternal question: Were Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason and Della Street ever connected romantically? “The fact that his secretary never became Mrs. Della Mason,” he explains, “was certainly not due to lack of trying on Perry’s part—he proposed five separate times, but Della turned him down every time.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)

• Speaking of Mason, a video games and sports Web site called JStationX has posted a piece about the 1960 Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Violent Village.” It’s pretty bland, overall, but mentions that Mason “made appearances in other novels written [by] Erle Stanley Gardner, such as the Cool and Lam series.” What? Thanks to an extraordinary bit of luck, I own all 30 of the Bertha Cool/Donald Lam detective novels. And though I haven’t worked my way through every single one of those yet, nowhere have I come across a cameo appearance by Los Angeles’ best-known fictional defense attorney. Can anyone tell me in which book Mason figures, if he does?

• Hard as this may be to believe, I completely failed to notice the 65th anniversary of 77 Sunset Strip’s ABC-TV premiere in 1958. Fortunately, blogger Terence Towles Canote’s did not.

• It was half a century ago this month that “Shaft made its move from big to small screen with the broadcast of ‘The Executioners’ as part of the CBS New Tuesday Night Movie series,” recalls Steve Aldous, author of The World of Shaft (2015). The show didn’t fare well in prime time, not well at all. “The series,” adds Aldous, “lasted for only seven feature-length episodes playing every third week as part of a rotating series with James Stewart’s country lawyer show Hawkins and a standalone CBS TV movie on a Tuesday night over five months.” A 111-day Hollywood writers strike in 1973 and an egregious watering-down of the sexy, ass-kicking protagonist Richard Roundtree had made famous in theaters were blamed for the show’s early demise.

• Meanwhile, Aldous has lately been stuffing his World of Shaft Facebook page with historical ephemera (newspaper clippings, magazine stories, etc.) related not only to the Shaft TV show, but also to the third and final Shaft film, Shaft in Africa, which marked its 50th anniversary this year, too.

• I’m only halfway through watching Season 3 of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. Yet already the streaming channel has picked up that mystery-comedy series for a fourth season.

• Season 8 of the BBC One TV series Shetland, with Scottish actress Ashley Jensen taking over as lead from Douglas Henshall (who left after seven seasons), is set to debut in the UK on Wednesday, November 1. You can watch a brief trailer below. So far, there hasn’t been any announcement of when the new set of episodes will reach American TV screens, but we are hoping to hear soon.



• This I didn’t see coming. From In Reference to Murder:

Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap and Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company are in talks to co-produce a remake of the classic 1934 comedy mystery, The Thin Man, after the rights recently became available. Previously, Rob Marshall and Johnny Depp were set to direct and star, respectively, in a remake, until Warner Brothers scrapped that project in 2012. Based on the Dashiell Hammett crime novel, The Thin Man is a murder mystery about a husband and wife who partner up to find a missing acquaintance, later discovered to be murdered. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the 1934 film starred William Powell as husband Nick Charles and Myrna Loy as wife Nora Charles and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for William Powell. (It was followed by five sequels.)

• The graphic novel version of Agatha Christie’s 1934 Hercule Poirot whodunit, Murder on the Orient Express—adapted and illustrated by Bob Al-Greene—was released in September and has been enjoying favorable notices since. BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski, for instance, calls it “a beautiful and faithful recreation of the narrative we all know and love in visual format.” His fellow critic Lesa Holstine opines, “This is an excellent way to introduce Agatha Christie to fans of graphic novels or new readers of the author.” I have a copy of that paperback book myself, and have been wending my way through it before bed each night. The fact that I know how the story ends doesn’t inhibit my relishing this new treatment; nor am I bothered by Al-Greene having condensed portions of the text for visual-storytelling purposes. Frankly, the only thing I find slightly jarring is the artist’s portrayal of Poirot as having a completely bald noggin and an imposing mustache that sweeps up to the tops of his ears (but is still less peculiar than the cookie duster Kenneth Branaugh sported in his three Poirot pictures). I don’t remember either of those from the many book-cover illustrations of Christie’s brilliant Belgian sleuth.

• Although you may not have noticed, I followed through on my commitment to give this page’s right-hand blogroll a trim. But one of the sites I’d targeted, Alpha-60 books, managed to stave off the knife by posting a new review (of William Campbell Gault’s 1958 Joe Puma novel, Night Lady) right before I began pruning.

• In The Girl with All the Crime Books, critic and blogger Louise Fairbairn interviews E.S. (Elaine) Thomson, whose fifth Jem Flockhart/Will Quartermain historical mystery, Under Ground, is new on shelves in Great Britain this month. (It’s not slated for distribution in the States until next March.)

• Young Depression-era robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow hold a prominent, infamous place in U.S. history. But how many remember Lucille Walker and Alexander Mackay, who “captured countless headlines as they led a six-week rampage of robberies across Los Angeles,” commencing in late 1930?

• Finally, let us pay our respects to California-born actress Suzanne Somers, who passed away on October 15. As A Shroud of Thoughts notes, she was most familiar for co-starring in the TV sitcoms Three's Company and Step by Step. However, my earliest memory of Somers comes from a 1974 Rockford Files episode, “The Big Rip-off,” that was broadcast three years before Three’s Company hit the airwaves, and in which the then-28-year-old blonde played a woman suspected of offing her husband. Her list of subsequent TV drama guest spots is short (Starsky and Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man), but prior to Rockford she did have uncredited roles in the films Bullitt and Magnum Force. Eventually, Somers became a controversial spokesperson on subjects related to health and well-being. She died at age 76 after being diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. FOLLOW-UP: The Los Angeles Times says Somers “died of ‘breast cancer with metastasis to the brain,’ according to a report citing her death certificate.”

Bullet Points: World Cup Edition

• We’ve now entered the final round of voting in this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards competition. The original collection of 20 books vying for “Best Mystery & Thriller” honors has now been chopped in half, with the following candidates remaining:

— All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam)
— The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)
— Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron)
— The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
— Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
— A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur)
— Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
— The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
— The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James (Berkley)
— The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)

Click here to select your favorite from among those, but tarry not—voting in this round will end on December 4, with winners in this and other categories to be announced on Thursday, December 8.

• Just when you thought you had heard the last of Lisbeth Salander, she’s back. The antisocial and troubled computer hacker, who made her initial appearance in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2007) and was last spotted in David Lagercrantz’s third series continuation novel, The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019), returned earlier this month in Swedish author Karin Smirnoff’s Havsörnens Skrik, a thriller that’s set to be published in English next August 29 as The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons. The Guardian reported recently that “Smirnoff’s book moves Salander’s story from Stockholm to northern Sweden, which [the yarn’s] UK publisher MacLehose Press said was ‘an area vast and beautiful, but also dealing with economic and social problems and the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation,’” American readers should be pleased to learn that The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be brought out simultaneously on this side of the Atlantic under the Alfred A. Knopf imprint.

• English author Stuart Turton has won Germany’s 2022 Viktor Crime Award for The Devil and Dark Water, a standalone historical thriller first released in English in 2020—and one of my favorite books of that year. This announcement was made earlier in November at Mord am Hellweg, described as “Europe’s largest international crime film festival.” Also shortlisted for the 2022 Viktor Award were Kazltes Herz (Cold Heart), by Henri Faber, and Horvath und die verschwundenen Schüler (Horvath and the Missing Students), by Marc Hofmann. The Viktor Crime Award has been presented ever since 2018, when Michaela Kastel won it for her thriller So Dark the Forest.

• Double or Nothing, Kim Sherwood’s first (of three) Double 0 agents thrillers, hit the shelves in Britain early this last September; it won’t see print in the United States until April 2023. However, the author says she has already completed work on her second installment, which runs 101,042 words in length (before editing). That sequel’s title—if it even has one yet—has not been publicly circulated.

• Entries in next year’s Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition are due by Saturday, December 31. Those stories should not exceed 2,000 words in length, and must not have been published previously in any format. The theme for this year’s brief yarns is “A Crime Story Set in Scotland.” Writers from anywhere in the world are eligible to take part in this contest, but all must be over 16 years old. Prizes of £1,000 and £500 will go, respectively, to the First Place winner and a Runner-up. “The overall winning entry,” says the Glencairn Glass Web site, “will be published in Scottish Field Magazine and online at www.whiskyglass.com.” Click here to enter.

• Well, this is unfortunate TV news. From Variety:

ABC has reversed course on the drama series “Avalon,” opting not to move forward with the show despite giving it a straight-to-series order in February.

“Avalon” hailed from David E. Kelley and executive producer Michael Connelly, with the show based on a short story that Connelly wrote. Neve Campbell was set to star in the lead role. Other cast members included Demetrius Grosse, Alexa Mansour, Steven Pasquale, and Roslyn Ruff.

Per the official logline, the show “takes place in the main city of Avalon on Catalina Island, where LA Sheriff Department Detective Nicole “Nic” Searcy (Campbell) heads up a small office. Catalina has a local population that serves more than 1 million tourists a year, and each day when the ferries arrive, hundreds of potential new stories enter the island. Detective Searcy is pulled into a career-defining mystery that will challenge everything she knows about herself and the island.”

According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, ABC opted not to move forward with the series order for “Avalon” after screening the pilot. A+E Studios is said to still be bullish about the project and are weighing options on how to proceed.

• Adam Graham, host of The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, shares his authoritative opinions about “The Top Ten Police Foils In Old Time Radio” (click here and here), and “The Four Worst Old Time Radio Detective Police Characters.”

• The mid-November edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes observations on the annual Richard Lancelyn Green lecture; Francis Clifford’s 1976 novel, Drummer in the Dark; this year’s “ultimate Christmas mystery,” Alexandra Benedict’s Murder on the Christmas Express; a quartet of Czechoslovakian thrillers; plus fresh releases from Louise Penny, Ant Middleton, and B.A. Paris. Read about all of that and more here.

• Congratulations to The Bunburyist for having clocked its one-millionth pageview! As I wrote in a brief comment attached to blogger Elizabeth Foxwell’s post yesterday about this achievement, “I check The Bunburyist regularly, and consider it a great source of both information and enjoyment.”

• Max Allan Collins’ 18th Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle, isn’t due out until January (a month later than expected, because of shipping issues). But he says he’s already completed the writing of his 19th series entry, Too Many Bullets, which finds private eye Heller investigating Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination. “It’s a big book,” he writes in his blog, “on the lines of [1983’s] True Detective, and in a sense it’s the bookend to that first Heller memoir. It’s been very difficult, in part because of my health issues (doing better, thanks) but also because it’s one of the most complicated cases I’ve dealt with.” The 74-year-old author says his next Heller tale for publisher Hard Case Crime will tackle the mysterious 1975 disappearance of labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa. After that? Collins admits he’s “wrestling with … how long I should to stay at it with Heller. The degree of difficulty ... is tough at this age. Right now I am considering a kind of coda novel (much like Skim Deep for Nolan and Quarry’s Blood for Quarry) that would wrap things up. … Should I go that direction, and should my health and degree of interest continue on a positive course, I might do an occasional Heller in a somewhat shorter format. Of course, the problem with that is these crimes are always more complex than I think they’re going to be.”

• On the subject of forthcoming works, English professor and author Art Taylor mentions in his blog that he has a new short-story collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, due out from Crippen & Landru in February 2023 (though I see no Amazon ordering link yet). Packing in 14 abbreviated yarns, plus an introduction by the esteemed Martin Edwards, Castle Thief will be Taylor’s second book from Crippen, following 2020’s The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense. Taylor was generous enough to send me an advanced readers copy of his new collection, but I’ve had to hold off opening it until after I get The Rap Sheet’s end-of-the-year features organized.

• Seriously, Universal Pictures is going to shoot a big-screen flick based on the 1981-1986 Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy? Deadline reports Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and Teresa Palmer are all in the cast, and that this movie will premiere in March 2024. The original series was about Hollywood stunt people who moonlight as bounty hunters. Click here to watch that show’s opening title sequence.

• Crime by the Book’s Abby Endler attended this month’s Iceland Noir festival in Reykjavik, and she wants to tell us all about it.

• Having greatly enjoyed the six-part, 2016 BBC One/AMC TV drama The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel of that same name, I look forward to seeing how this project from the same producer turns out. As stated In Reference to Murder:

The Night Manager producer, The Ink Factory, is creating a TV version of John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man almost a decade after making a feature film version, with Snabba Cash writer, Oskar Söderlund, serving as showrunner. No broadcaster is attached as of yet, although Söderlund’s version is said to be updated to a modern-day European context. One of le Carré’s best known works, A Most Wanted Man follows a young Chechen ex-prisoner who arrives illegally in Germany with a claim to a fortune held in a private bank. It was written against the backdrop of George W. Bush’s policy of “extraordinary rendition” and inspired by the real-life story of Murat Kurnaz.

• In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore asks that immortal question, “Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation?”

• There’s no topping George Easter when it comes to tracking down lists of 2022’s best crime, mystery, and thriller works. Just over the last few days, the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor has pointed us toward collections in The Financial Times (by both Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor), Crime Time (by columnist Maxim Jakubowski), The Irish Times (by author Jane Casey), New Zealand Listener magazine, and a couple of Web sites that are new to me: The List and Lifehacker AU. He has also helpfully edited National Public Radio’s original list of what it calls this year’s 46 best mysteries to remove horror fiction, young-adult works, non-fiction books, and others that exceed the limits of the genre.

• The only picks I don’t think Easter has mentioned yet are those from British blogger Rekha Rao, at The Book Decoder. She’s assembled a long post of book covers that lead to reviews written over the last 12 months. Her many categories of choices include Best Cozy Mystery (Series Debut), Best Crime and Mystery (in a Series), and Best Standalone Mysteries and Thrillers. There are also selections in the fields of general fiction and romance, if you swing that way.

• Although The New York Times hasn’t yet revealed its crime, mystery, and thriller “bests” of this year, it did recently come out with a rundown of “100 Notable Books of 2022.” Featured there are Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detectives Club, Percival Everett’s Dr. No, and Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road.

• Mere days after announcing that Scottish actress Ashley Jensen will assume the helm of BBC One’s Shetland, now that Douglas Henshall has left his role on that TV series as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, The Killing Times asks: Was this new hire really a good idea? After all, it’s noted, viewers expected Perez’s number two, Detective Sergeant Alison “Tosh” McIntosh (played by Alison O’Donnell) to step into the breach. Editor Paul Hirons writes that “it felt like she was primed for a promotion—she had just become a mum, had come through a sticky moment after surviving a bomb attack in series seven, and had seemed to have accrued and soaked up all the knowledge and expertise from Jimmy she needed. Many will be disappointed that Tosh is not the show lead.” We’ll have to wait until Shetland’s eighth-season debut to see how Tosh herself views this surprising turn of events.

• This seems right: Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster’s 2022 Word of the Year is … gaslighting. “In our age of misinformation—‘fake news,’ conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time,” explains M-W editor at large Peter Sokolowski. “From politics to pop culture to relationships, it has become a favored word for the perception of deception.” Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman reflects here on the recent history of gaslighting in politics.

• And Mystery Fanfare notes the death, on November 10, of Shelley Singer. It goes on to say that she was “the author of 12 novels, including the Jake Samson mystery series. She taught fiction writing and worked one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant on non-fiction, literary novels, and in every genre from memoir to mystery to science fiction to horror.” A resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Singer was 83 when she died of “heart failure and other complications.”

Some Pre-Thanksgiving Treats

• The Masterpiece Mystery! historical whodunit series Miss Scarlet and the Duke, starring Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin, is slated to return to PBS-TV with its third season, beginning on Sunday, January 8, of next year. However, the network will make that entire six-episode season available to PBS Passport and PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel subscribers as of tomorrow, Thursday, November 24. A frustratingly brief Season 3 preview can be found here.

• Speaking of TV reappearances, the Victorian-era detective drama Vienna Blood, based on books by Frank Tallis, is expected back on BBC Two in Britain come Wednesday, December 4. According to The Killing Times, this third season of the delightful Matthew Beard/Jürgen Maurer mystery will be based on Tallis’ fifth Max Liebermann novel, Deadly Communion (aka Vienna Twilight). The PBS Web page devoted to Vienna Blood supplies no information yet on when its third season will debut in America. But the sooner the better, I say.

• And I just learned this morning that there is going to be an eighth novel in Tallis’ Liebermann series, titled Mortal Secrets. Amazon says it’s due out in the UK from Little, Brown on May 9, 2024. The author announced on his Twitter page this last June 15 that he’d finally submitted his manuscript to the publisher. I loved 2018’s Mephisto Waltz, which found Vienna psychiatrist Liebermann and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt investigating a most peculiar murder in an abandoned piano factory, in 1904. I look forward enthusiastically to getting my hands on this forthcoming sequel. UPDATE: More information about this forthcoming book can be found here.

• We have been aware for the last five months that Douglas Henshall was giving up his starring role as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez in the BBC One crime drama Shetland, but we didn’t know who would replace him. Until today, that is. The Killing Times reports that 53-year-old Scottish actress Ashley Jensen—“whose illustrious and critically acclaimed career includes cosy crime drama Agatha Raisin—will star as DI Ruth Calder, a native Shetlander who returns to the isles after 20 years working for the Met in London. Ruth takes on the lead detective role left vacant by DI Jimmy Perez …, working closely with DS Alison ‘Tosh’ McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell) and will make her debut when the series returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer next year.”

• And I neglected to flag this previously. Also from The Killing Times:

Sir Ian Rankin will partner [with the streaming service] Viaplay UK for a major reimagining of his iconic detective, Inspector John Rebus, drawn from the instantly recognisable universe of Rankin’s books.

Set in contemporary Edinburgh, the six-part series places Rebus at the heart of a compelling new story.

In the drama, Rebus is in his 30s, recently divorced and demoted to Detective Sergeant. He has a new colleague, Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, and is struggling to deal with the changes in his personal and professional life. At the same time, Rebus’s daughter, Sammy, and ex-wife, Rhona, are enjoying an affluent existence with Rhona’s new partner—while Rebus’s brother Michael is finding out that in a society where the gaps between the `haves and have-nots’ keep widening, taking shortcuts to provide for your family is no longer a temptation, but a necessity.”

Casting specifics have not yet been released, but filming on this series is expected to begin this coming spring.

• Wow! I didn’t even know this was in the works. In Reference to Murder brings news that “Steven Spielberg has found his Frank Bullitt, according to Deadline. Bradley Cooper has closed a deal to play the no-nonsense San Francisco cop in the new original Bullitt story centered on the classic character famously played by Steven McQueen in the 1968 thriller. Cooper will also produce the movie along with Spielberg and his producing partner, Kristie Macosko Krieger (marking their second collaboration after Maestro), with Josh Singer on board to pen the script. Steve McQueen’s son, Chad, and granddaughter, Molly McQueen, will exec produce the new movie. Sources are adamant this is not a remake of the original film but a new idea centered on the character.” In case don’t know this, Bullitt was created by author Robert L. Fish for his 1962 novel, Mute Witness. While the film adaptation was based in San Francisco (complete with a renowned car-chase scene), the book takes place in New York City. There’s no word at this time on where Cooper’s flick will be set.

• Really? Singer Taylor Swift played a corpse on CSI?

• Two deadlines to bear in mind: This coming Sunday, November 27, is the cutoff date for votes to be entered in stage one of the annual Goodreads Choice Awards competition. You’ll find the list of 20 contenders for “Best Mystery & Thriller” honors here. And next Wednesday, November 30 (at noon GMT), will be your last chance to choose favorites among shortlisted contenders for the 2022 Crime Fiction Lover Awards. Go here to fill out your ballot.

• And with tomorrow being Thanksgiving Day here in the United States, it’s time to check on Janet Rudolph’s updated list of Thanksgiving-related mysteries. Should you require a reading escape sometime on Thursday, Rudolph suggests Cindy Bell’s Fatal Festivities, Sammi Carter’s Goody Goody Gunshots, Evelyn David’s Murder Takes the Cake, and so many more works from years past.

Bullet Points: Hope and Hype Edition

• I first read about the possible shutting down of Mystery Scene magazine in Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare blog. Then came a bit more information in Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter’s post-Bouchercon round-up. There seems no escaping the truth of this matter: the Winter 2022 (mid-November) issue of Mystery Scene will be the last one produced by editor-in-chief Kate Stine (a veteran of the still-lamented Armchair Detective) and her husband, Brian Skupin, who acquired the publication in 2002 from previous owners Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg. That’s 20 years of success, marked in part by their winning an Anthony Award for Best Mystery Magazine in 2004 and, in 2006, an Ellery Queen Award for contributions to mystery publishing. But can this really be the end of Mystery Scene, a periodical so many of us have come to rely on for news, reviews, interviews, and features about the genre’s history? Stine tells me in an e-mail message that she and Skupin are definitely quitting as publishers. However, she adds, they are “putting the word out to anyone interested that the magazine is available [for sale]. We would be willing to work closely with new owners.” Anybody who could rescue this important asset to the mystery-fiction community is encouraged to contact Stine at katestine@mysteryscenemag.com. “So, we’ll have to wait and see if the magazine ends with us or carries on,” says Stine. “We’re planning on keeping the Web site and the monthly newsletter going through the end of the year.”

• Because I was a big fan of Louis Bayard’s 2006 historical whodunit, The Pale Blue Eye, I have been following closely news about that book’s adaptation as a forthcoming Netflix film. The streaming company recently released “a first-look image” of actor Christian Bale in the role of Augustus “Gus” Landor, a lonely, alcoholic New York City detective, who—with help from cadet Edgar Allan Poe—investigates the vicious murder of another cadet at the West Point military academy in 1830. In addition, it was announced that this version of The Pale Blue Eye “will arrive on Netflix on January 6, after a limited awards-qualifying theatrical run that begins on December 23.” Harry Melling (The Queen’s Gambit) will play the young Poe, with Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the ever-lovely Lucy Boynton (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) helping to round out the cast.

• Meanwhile, word has spread that Enola Holmes 2, the quite unimaginatively titled sequel to Millie Bobby Brown’s enjoyable 2020 Netflix movie, Enola Holmes, is being readied for its small-screen premiere on November 4. “Enola’s newest adventure,” says Entertainment Weekly, “begins after a young girl working in a match factory hires her to locate her missing sister. Before long, Enola finds herself drawn into a high-stakes chase across London, journeying from the city’s seedy industrial underbelly to the glitzy galas of high society. In other words, the game is most certainly afoot.” Henry Cavill will again portray Enola’s elder sibling, Sherlock Holmes, with Helena Bonham Carter returning as Eudoria Holmes, and Adeel Akhtar slipping into the shoes of Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Lestrade.

• The broadcast news source Radio Times reports that Professor T., the humorous ITV-TV crime drama based on a Belgian program of the same name, will return to UK boob tubes with fresh episodes, beginning tonight. “Starring [Ben] Miller as Jasper Tempest and Harry Potter star Frances de la Tour as his mother Adelaide,” the magazine’s Web site explains, “the story will once again be set in Cambridge as the Professor continues to help the police solve unusual crimes. Season 2 may finally see the Professor get the help he needs as he embarks on therapy, which unearths more secrets from his troubled childhood.” There’s no word on when Season 2 might reach U.S. screens.

• Having concluded its run in the UK, Season 7 of Shetland premiered this week on BritBox in the States, bringing viewers the first of six final episodes to star Douglas Henshall as Shetland Islands Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, a character created by Ann Cleeves. The plot line this time out finds Perez being cleared, after a year’s uneasy suspension, of any wrongdoing in the shocking suicide of terminally ill patient Donna Killick. He then moves on quickly to investigate the disappearance and subsequent demise of a “sensitive” young graphic novelist, Connor Cairns. The Killing Times offers recaps of this week’s episode, plus the five others to come, though you may wish to exercise caution in reading, as spoilers are on offer.

• The Killing Times also brings news that filming has begun on the third season of Grace, the ITV-TV series starring John Simm and based on Peter James’ novels about Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Like Season 2 (which I watched only last week), that upcoming series will comprise three episodes. I only hope Zoë Tapper returns as forensic pathologist Cleo Moray, whose relationship with the DSU helped flesh out his character and soften his intensity.

• And with James’ 18th Grace novel, Picture You Dead, due for release on this side of the Atlantic in late September, it’s worth looking over an interview he did with The Guardian a while back. In it, the author talks about how he learned a few pointers on techniques of art forgery—a major component of this new book’s story.

• Nobody should be surprised by news that I’m a huge fan of newspaper book-review sections, so I was pleased to read this in The Complete Review: “The Washington Post’s old stand-alone Book World section was discontinued in 2009 but, as former editor Ron Charles now reports: ‘The Washington Post’s stand-alone print book section is coming back!’—on 25 September. This is certainly good to hear. With the Canadian The Globe & Mail apparently also re-making their Arts & Books section as a stand-alone (on 10 September), this almost looks like a trend … Who will be next?”

• At the end of last month, I mentioned on this page that the anonymous author of The Columbophile Blog would soon welcome into the world his new book, The Columbo Companion, 1968-78: Investigating Every Detail of All 45 ‘Classic Era’ Columbo Adventures (Bonaventure Press). Back then, there were no ordering links online, but now I see it’s at least available from Amazon.

• While we’re talking about The Columbophile Blog, let me draw your attention to a trio of posts there that deserve your notice. Two of them finally identify the mysterious actresses behind memorable minor characters in Peter Falk’s original series—the nude model from “Suitable for Framing” and the “snooty” Tricon Industries from “An Exercise in Fatality”—while the third explains the “gargantuan” task of casting Columbo. (Included are many performers who never quite made it onto that rotating NBC Mystery Movie drama.)

• From In Reference to Murder: “Writing for The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik profiled Georges Simenon and ‘The Mysterious Case of Inspector Maigret.’ He concluded that the Maigret books, seventy-five in all, seem more likely to be remembered than [Simenon’s] romans durs, the ‘hard books’ often set outside Paris and meant ‘as works of more self-conscious art.’” Time will tell. Andrew Nette looked back at those romans durs earlier this year in a fine CrimeReads piece.

• In its tweet touting “James Bond Day” on October 5, Ian Fleming Publications teased the coming of a major—though unspecified—announcement. Rumors are now rife that there will be a new Bond continuation novel, to follow the last three by Anthony Horowitz.

• Former James Bond portrayer George Lazenby may want to amend some of his moral positions before again seeking public attention.

• In a long, thoughtful piece for The Conversation, a news and analysis site, writers Stewart King, Alistair Rolls, and Jesper Gulddal consider “how crime fiction went global, embracing themes from decolonisation to climate change.”

• With two months or so yet to go before a winner is pronounced, Karen Meek writes in the Euro Crime blog that “31 of the 34 titles that were eligible for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year have been entered by the publishers.” Among them are works by Anders de la Motte, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Arnaldur Indridason, Antti Tuomainen, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir.

• Believe it or not, there’s a certifiable whodunit on this year’s longlist of 10 National Book Award nominees in the Fiction category. It’s Shutter, by Ramona Emerson, released in early August by Soho Crime. Here’s the plot synopsis from Amazon:

Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook.

As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law.

And now it might be what gets her killed.

The competition for this annual prize is likely to be fierce, and Shutter may not triumph in the end. Still, it’s nice to see a work of crime fiction recognized for its literary excellence.

• I won’t argue with this assessment, in the blog Paperback Warrior, of Alistair MacLean’s already much-praised 1957 novel: “The Guns of Navarone is an absolute masterpiece of high-adventure, and I give it the highest recommendation. You won’t be disappointed with the story, plot development, or characters. MacLean deserved the heaps of praise his early and mid-career novels received. He was a master craftsman and you owe it to yourself to read one of his best. Whether this one is as good, or better, than Where Eagles Dare [1966] is up for debate. I love them both equally.”

• R.I.P., Elizabeth Gunn, “author of the Detective Jake Hines series and the Sarah Burke series,” and best-selling American horror writer Peter Straub (Ghost Story). Also gone is Williams Reynolds, who starred as Special Agent Tom Colby on 161 episodes of The F.B.I.

• Finally, the death last week of Queen Elizabeth II led publications worldwide to reflect not only on the real-life, 70-year career of that British monarch, but also on her numerous appearances—without her express permission, of course—in works of fiction. An Associated Press piece, for instance, recalled the queen’s role in the plots of various films and TV shows, and observed that author S.J. Bennett has turned her into a sleuth in two novels thus far, with another (Murder Most Royal) due out in November. The article might also have noted Canadian author Douglas Whiteway’s three novels, penned under the pseudonym C.C. Benison, about a fictional royal housemaid, one Jane Bee, who is infrequently called upon by Her Majesty to solve crimes at the Queen’s estates; that series’ opening installment was Death at Buckingham Palace (1996). And what of Susan Elia MacNeal’s 2021 mystery, Princess Elizabeth's Spy, in which MI5 agent-in-training Maggie Hope safeguards the young future soverign and her sister from possible Nazi provocateurs at Windsor Castle? Or William F. Buckley’s Saving the Queen (1976)? Although that first Blackford Oakes espionage novel, set in 1952, finds the undercover CIA agent in Britain protecting (and eventually bedding) a young “Queen Caroline,” that character is unquestionably based on Elizabeth, who ascended to the thrown in 1952 after the demise of her father, King George VI.

British Boob-Tube Bits

• Production has begun on Season 5 of Strike (aka C.B. Strike), the moody BBC One series starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger, and based on novels written by J.K. Rowling under her pen name, Robert Galbraith. The latest episodes are adapted from Troubled Blood, Rowling’s fifth case for London private eye Cormoran Strike (played by Burke) and his secretary-turned-colleague, Robin Ellacott (Grainger). The Killing Times explains the new season’s story arc:

Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he’s approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough, who went missing under mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike’s never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old, but despite the slim chance of success he’s intrigued and takes it on, adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency Robin Ellacott are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn even cases 40 years old can prove to be deadly.

• This is hardly surprising news: The UK detective drama Grantchester will return for an eighth season on ITV-TV in Great Britain and PBS-TV’s Masterpiece series here in the States. “Filming has started,” reports Mystery Fanfare, “with Robson Green returning as [Detective Inspector] Geordie Keating and Tom Brittney as Reverend Will Davenport. The eighth season of Grantchester will range from Speedway to spies, exploring the lives of invisible women and the very visible problems caused by [former Anglican curate Leonard Finch’s] new vocation which may, once again, find him battling the law.” Expect the entirety of those plots to roll out sometime in 2023.

• But this is surprising: Plans for a sophomore season of ITV’s The Long Call, which debuted four fairly interesting episodes last year and was based on the first of Ann Cleeves’ two DI Matthew Venn novels, have been abandoned—at least for the time being. “ITV have now confirmed,” says TVZone, “that they have no plans for a second series of The Long Call. The series was stripped across one week in October [2021], and opened to an audience of over 6m, before falling to under 4m for the final episode.” This Devon-set program starred Ben Aldridge, Pearl Mackie, and Juliet Stevenson.

• As for that other Ann Cleeves-inspired crime drama … The seventh season of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Jimmy Perez, a DI responsible for maintaining the peace (as best as possible) in Scotland’s far-north Shetland Islands, premiered this week in the UK. Six fresh episodes will appear, one per week, until mid-September. The first of those installments is recapped here. Henshall—who announced recently that he’s leaving the show—talked with The Killing Times about the Season 7 storyline, why he decided to seek employment elsewhere, and giving up Pérez’s wardrobe (“I chose not to keep the coat, though—I kind of figure I can never wear a pea coat again!”). Quite to my surprise, the Web site I Heart British TV says Shetland will go on without Henshall. No new lead actor has yet been identified, but an eighth season of the program is currently being planned.

• I confess, I struggled through Season 1 of Annika, Nicola Walker’s Alibi-TV series based on her long-running BBC Radio 4 drama, Annika Stranded. It definitely has its strengths: Walker’s Norwegian-descended protagonist, Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed of Scotland’s Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit, periodically displays a ripe cynical humor and unexpected insecurity about her leadership position, plus an unembarrassed erudition that causes others to shake their heads in confusion. She bears as much human depth as Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, the character Walker portrayed over four seasons of ITV’s Unforgotten, but appears rather less vulnerable to depressive pressures and psychological strain, which I’m glad to see. Additionally, I enjoy the maritime setting—different from most small-screen crime dramas. On the other hand, Annika’s relationship with her sexually experimenting teenage daughter, Morgan, quickly grew tedious in Season 1, with Morgan being fairly impenetrable as a character and neither mother nor daughter comfortable talking about their feelings. By the time the episodes were spent, I questioned whether watching more was worth my time. Nonetheless, I find I am in the minority with that viewpoint. Although the first season of Annika isn’t scheduled to debut on PBS’s Masterpiece until October 16, word is the show has already been renewed for a second season.

• Perhaps more promising—judging solely by its trailer—is ITV’s The Suspect. That four-part thriller stars Aidan Turner (And Then There Were None, Poldark) as Doctor Joe O’Loughlin, who, says The Killing Times, “appears to have a perfect life with a devoted wife, loving daughter, successful practice as a criminal psychologist, media profile and publishing deal. When a young woman is found dead he is only too willing to offer help with his profiling and expertise. But as the investigation into the woman’s death gathers pace, we start to ask, do we know the real Joe, or does he have a secret life?” The Suspect is adapted from Michael Robotham’s 2004 novel of that same time, and is supposed to premiere sometime this month across the pond; no American broadcast date has yet been released.

Bullet Points: Dog Days Edition

It feels like forever ago that I last compiled a “Bullet Points” post of crime-fiction news items. In fact, the last time was in early June. My preference is to write these every couple of weeks, but editorial responsibilities unrelated to The Rap Sheet stood in my way for almost two months. With any luck, I can now return to my usual timetable.

• Count me among those delighted by news of a Death in Paradise spin-off series starring Kris Marshall, who played Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman for roughly three and a half seasons (after replacing Ben Miller as DI Richard Poole). As The Killing Times reports, this new BBC-TV show—to be titled Beyond Paradise—“will tell the story of what happened to Goodman … after he returned to the UK. Seeking a quieter life away from the stress of the city, Humphrey has taken a job as Detective Inspector in fiancée Martha’s hometown. However, they soon find that country life is anything but peaceful and Humphrey can’t help but be distracted by the town’s surprisingly high crime rate with a new, and very different, case challenging him each week.” Mystery Fanfare adds that Beyond Paradise will begin airing on BBC and, in the States, on BritBox in 2023, and that “many of the characters from Death in Paradise will make cameo appearances.” I hope producers can convince the lovely Joséphine Jobert to reprise her role as Detective Sergeant Florence Cassell. She and Marshall made a splendid team on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie.

• While we’re on the subject of Death in Paradise, the TV site WhatToWatch says the 12th season of that popular series is “very likely to start in January 2023,” again with Ralf Little playing DI Neville Parker. In advance of that, a second Christmas special is due!

• When last we checked on ITV-TV’s McDonald & Dodds, in mid-June, word was that its third season would debut in Britain on June 19. However, there was no clue then as to a U.S. showing. Now, finally, Mystery Fanfare brings news that this lighthearted whodunit, starring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched police partners in modern Bath, England, will have its BritBox premiere here in the States on Tuesday, August 16. Three 90-minute episodes are due, with the streaming service dropping one per week.

• Still reeling from the sad news that star Douglas Henshall has quit Shetland, we learn that his last, six-episode season with the BBC-TV series will begin airing in the UK on Wednesday, August 10.

• A confession: I haven’t yet watched the opening season of Slow Horses, the AppleTV+ spy series based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and starring Gary Olman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas. But I am hoping to get around to it soon. I’d like to least take in those half-dozen episodes before the program’s sophomore season—based on Herron’s Dead Lions (2013)—premieres, probably in November. (You can already enjoy the trailer by clicking here.) But it’s becoming difficult to keep up: The Killing Times reports that production of Seasons 3 and 4—being shot back-to-back—is already underway, though there are no particulars regarding which other Slough House novels are being adapted for the small screen.

• Despite the numerous accolades Herron has received for his novels about a band of misfit former MI5 agents (including his recently capturing the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for Slough House), the author is apparently stepping away from those characters in order to next pen another standalone yarn. Soho Press, though, intends to keep fans happy by releasing, in November, a paperback collection of Slough House novellas. The List, The Drop, The Last Dead Letter, and The Catch—all of which have previously been published—are to be featured, together with a new, Christmas-themed tale that gives the book its title, Standing by the Wall.

• The folks behind PBS-TV’s Masterpiece have posted a trailer (see below) for Magpie Murders, the six-part mini-series scripted by Anthony Horowitz and based on his 2017 whodunit of the same name. This show stars Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan, and is scheduled to commence its Masterpiece run on Sunday, October 16.



• Speaking of Masterpiece, it has now not only confirmed that the historical mystery drama Miss Scarlet and the Duke will kick off its six-episode Season 2 run on Sunday, October 16 (see the video trailer here), but that Season 3 of that show will follow closely on its heels, beginning on Sunday, January 8, 2023. This British-Irish production is set in 1880s London, and stars Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet, a spirited young female private investigator who often finds herself in professional (and personal) rivalry with Detective Inspector William Wellington, aka “The Duke,” played by Stuart Martin.

• This show sneaked right up on me. The U.S. streaming service Acorn TV will introduce a new Australian series on Monday, August 8. Titled Darby and Joan, it’s a road-trip dramedy starring Breaker Morant’s Bryan Brown as retired Australian homicide detective Jack Darby, and Greta Saachi (Presumed Innocent) playing widowed English nurse Joan Kirkhope. As Mystery Tribune says, “They couldn’t be more different: the low key, ruggedly charming Aussie and the tightly-wound, yet warm, witty and determined Englishwoman, but when they collide in the Australian outback, and become drawn into a series of unexpected mysteries, this unlikely investigative duo soon realize the most intriguing puzzle they face is each other.” Darby and Joan is slated to continue through August 29.

• Last but hardly least important on the boob-tube beat, Crime Fiction Lover lets it be known that “Val McDermid’s cold case police detective Karen Pirie is coming to the small screen in September 2022 in a new three-part ITV crime drama. Adapted from the first novel in the six-book series, The Distant Echo, the programme will star Lauren Lyle of Outlander fame as the lead detective.” McDermid herself is one of this show’s co-producers. You’ll find a short trailer at the link.

• Five authors are shortlisted for the 2022 Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, a competition “open to all writers who are from, or whose work celebrates the North East of England, and who have not previously had their submission published in any form.” They are:

— Clare Sewell, Can't Hide
— Duncan Robb, Sharp Focus
— Katherine Graham, Salted Earth
— Jacqueline Auld, The Children of Gaia
— Ramona Slusarczyk, The Taste of Iron

Founded in 2019 by British author L.J. Ross, this commendation is sponsored by her publishing imprint, Dark Skies Publishing, along with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival and Newcastle Libraries. According to the prize’s Web site, “The winning entry”—to be announced on August 31—“will be awarded a prize of £2,500 to support the completion of their work and funding towards a year’s membership of both the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi),” with other shortlisted candidates receiving lesser sums of prize money. To find previous winners, click here.

• As summer winds down, it’s time to re-check The Rap Sheet’s compilation of crime, mystery, and thriller works set to go on sale—on both sides of the Atlantic—between now and Labor Day. The number of picks has grown greatly since I initially posted that list on June 1.

• Also peruse Crime by the Book’s list of 16 novels that it says are must-reads for these closing days of the sunny season.

• Although the actual date was more than a week ago, I want to wish In Reference to Murder a happy 15th blogiversary! Writer B.V. Lawson does an outstanding job with her site … and somehow manages to keep up a consistent schedule, unlike some bloggers we know.

• Can it really have been 50 years ago? The blaxploitation crime film Super Fly, starring Ron O’Neil and directed by Gordon Parks Jr., was released on August 4, 1972. While many African Americans were displeased with that picture’s glorification of “black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males,” few could complain about Curtis Mayfield’s eminently danceable theme music. As George Kelley opined last week, “Mayfield’s soundtrack … became a landmark in exposing the threat of drugs to the Black Community.”

• My e-mail brings this note from frequent Rap Sheet contributor Fraser Massey, based in London: “While reading The Observer today (my favourite of Britain’s Sunday papers), I came across a fascinating piece where they asked a range of top crime novelists to list both their favourite crime novels of all time, but also their favourite recent thrillers. It makes for an impressive reading list.” That piece is walled off to non-subscribers, but fortunately The Observer’s sister newspaper, The Guardian, carries it here for free.

• Another missive comes from Ohioan Lou Armagno, author of the blog The Postman’s Holiday, who reminds me that this coming August 26 will mark the 138th birthday of Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Don’t bother buying Biggers a present; he died way back in 1933. But fan Armagno would appreciate the gift of some assistance in tracking down three “rare treasures” associated with Biggers and the vintage Chan films, among them a waxwork representation of the fictional Honolulu police officer that was used in 1940’s Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, one of 22 Chan movies starring Sidney Toler. Click here to read more about Armagno’s search for those long-gone artifacts.

• I’m not sure many people noticed, but in July Bouchercon rolled out a new look for the Anthony Award—“a design which will be used each year from now on,” says author Art Taylor, “as opposed to having each new Bouchercon design a specific award for their host year.” The official introduction of the prize came in this video.

• In a blog post devoted chiefly to the movies he takes in while writing fiction, author Max Allan Collins drops news that the book he’s currently working on—his 18th, and possibly last, Nate Heller novel—will be titled Too Many Bullets. It involves Chicago-based private dick Heller in the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he explains, but will also “cover both Jimmy Hoffa and Sirhan Sirhan.” Expect Bullets to come from Hard Case Crime, which is already readying Collins’ 17th Heller yarn, The Big Bundle, for release in early December. [FOLLOW-UP: In a subsequent blog post, Collins updated this account, explaining that “I have already decided to turn Too Many Bullets into two Heller novels. Too Many Bullets will be the RFK assassination novel. The as-yet-untitled Heller after that will go back and deal with the Jimmy Hoffa story. This came about because—as is always the case—the research has led me places I did not expect to go.”]

• Now joining Amazon in selecting the “best books of the years (so far)” is CrimeReads, which last month posted a list of 10 crime, mystery, and thrillers yarns (heavy on the noir) that it declares stood out from all others reaching print in the first six months of 2022. It’s not a bad list, though I was considerably less fond of Brendan Slocumb’s The Violin Conspiracy than others seem to have been. Interestingly, I’ve read more of CrimeReads’ second string of “Notable Selections” than I have its top 10.

• A few other CrimeReads pieces I have enjoyed lately: Lisa Levy’s interview with “the people behind some of today’s best small publishers specializing in crime fiction,” among them Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, Paul Oliver of Syndicate Books, and Dreamland Books’ Sara Gran; Keith Roysdon’s look back at producer Quinn Martin’s remarkable string of popular TV crime dramas; this piece about New York City’s notorious heat wave of 1896, which provides the setting for Hot Time (Arcade Crimewise), W.H. Flint’s terrific debut historical mystery; Curtis Evans’ outstanding but sad story about Milton M. Propper, a once-applauded American writer of police procedurals (The Strange Disappearance of Mary Young, The Ticker-Tape Murder, etc.), who ended up destitute and suicidal in Philadelphia; a listicle of choice locked-room mysteries by Tom Mead, UK-based author of the new locked-room whodunit Death and the Conjuror (Mysterious Press); and an extract from the new non-fiction book Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (Morrow), recalling how, “in the early days of jazz, the music and the mob were inextricable” down in New Orleans.

• One final CrimeReads-related subject: Dwyer Murphy, my editor at that excellent Web site, has seen his new sort-of-detective-novel, An Honest Living (Viking), greeted warmly by critics. Christopher Bollen offers this plot précis in The New York Times:

Murphy’s lonely, misanthropic [and unnamed] narrator, fitted with the soul of a poet and the ethics of a dice thrower, is hired by a wealthy young woman to investigate the illicit behavior of her estranged husband. The narrator quickly catches the husband in the act; however, it turns out that the woman who hired him was only masquerading as the man’s wife. Following the rules of the noir genre, the would-be detective is ruled by the stars of pride and lust, determined to discover who duped him even as he finds himself inexplicably drawn to an enigmatic femme fatale, the real wife.

Murphy has also been the subject of several interviews, one of the best being his exchange with Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare, which you can listen to here.

• Worth tuning in for, too, is this conversation between National Public Radio’s Elissa Nadworny and Megan Miranda about the latter’s brand-new woodlands thriller, The Last to Vanish (Scribner). Among the things focused on is that North Carolina author’s multiple fears. “‘I have an overactive imagination, so I am afraid of many things,’ [Miranda] says. She’s especially afraid of being alone in the woods at night. Feeling vulnerable and on edge, not knowing what else is out there. ‘The idea that you hear footsteps behind you and you can’t see it and they stop when you stop,’ she says, ‘that to me is this terrifying idea.’ That feeling when the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you feel the tension in your shoulders, and you have a sharp focus on just getting to safety—that’s the feeling Miranda is trying to capture in her books.” The Last to Vanish is Miranda’s sixth adult novel.

• This year’s winners of the Scribe Awards, given out by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, were announced late last month during San Diego Comic-Con. As far as I can discern, there was only one category that included works definable as crime or mystery fiction: Original Novel, General. The vast majority of nominees were either fantasy or science fiction. Taking home the Original Novel, General prize was Pandemic: Patient Zero, by Amanda Bridgeman (Aconyte), which as you might guess is about a fast-spreading killer virus. Also nominated in that category were Murder She Wrote: Debonair in Death, by Terrie Farley Moran (Berkley), and Shootout at Sugar Creek, by Max Allan Collins (Kensington). A complete rundown of the 2022 nominees is located here.

• Darn lucky Londoners! Capital Crime, trumpeted as the city’s “only crime and thriller festival,” is set to return on Thursday, September 29, and continue through Saturday, October 1, bringing more than 164 panelists, plus readers, others authors, and book-publishing execs to Battersea Park on the River Thames’ south bank. Shotsmag Confidential offers a handy round-up of main festival events, which will kick off with a Thursday evening discussion of James Bond and London’s role in that fictional spy’s life, featuring Anthony Horowitz, Charlie Higson and Kim Sherwood, author of Double or Nothing (HarperCollins), the first in a triology of novels focusing on Double O Section agents other than Bond, due out in September. The full program and ticket info can be accessed here.

• The Gumshoe Site notes the death, on July 22, of Stuart Woods, author of the Stone Barrington series. “The former advertising man’s first book, Blue Water, Green Skipper (Norton, 1977), was not a novel, but a non-fiction book about the 1976 adventure in the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race,” recalls blogger Jiro Kimura. “His third book was a novel, entitled Chiefs (Norton, 1981), about three generations of lawmen and the murder of a teenager in a small town in Georgia, which won the 1982 Edgar Award in the first novel category, and was made into the TV miniseries starring Charlton Heston and Danny Glover, among others. He wrote about five books a year singularly or collaboratively with several series characters. New York Dead (Harper & Row, 1991) is the first novel featuring Stone Barrington, an ex-cop and attorney in New York City. His 62nd Barrington book, Black Dog, will be released in August, the 63rd book in the Barrington series, Distant Thunder (both from Putnam) in October, [and] the 64th Barrington book (untitled yet) next year.” Kimura adds that Woods “died in his sleep on July 22 at his home in Litchfield County, Connecticut.” He was 84.

• Woods is not the only loss the crime-fiction community has had to endure during the last month. Gone now, as well, are actor James Caan (The Godfather, Misery, Poodle Springs), actress Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Out of the Past, McMillan & Wife), author Susie Steiner (Missing, Presumed), James Bond theme composer Monty Norman, and Douglas Dannay, author and the eldest son of Frederic Dannay, who co-created the Ellery Queen mystery series. Farewell, too, to Leave It to Beaver’s Tony Dow, Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, and F Troop’s Larry Storch, all three of whom made an impact on me as a boy.

• Having grown up in the glow of 1970s films, I’m very much a fan of Peter Hanson’s blog, Every ’70s Movie, which recently clocked in its six-millionth pageview. Congratulations! (Just for perspective, The Rap Sheet has almost reached its eight-millionth pageview.)

• And still more bodies are turning up in Lake Mead, a mammoth reservoir created in the 1930s by construction of the Hoover Dam, located on the border between Nevada and Arizona. As I wrote back in May, global warming is causing the lake’s water level to recede to historic lows, exposing sunken boats, a World War II landing craft, and other articles previously hidden from sight. Bones among them! CNN reported late last month that a third set of human remains was found in the reservoir. The earlier discovery of a long-ago murder victim raised serious questions as to whether these skeletons might be related to nearby Las Vegas’ mobster past.