Bullet Points: From All Corners Edition

(Above) J. Robert Janes signs his books at Bouchercon 2014.

• Canadian novelist J. Robert Janes has long ranked among my favorite historical crime-fictionists. His 16-volume, World War II-set series starring Jean-Louis St-Cyr, a chief inspector with the French Sûreté, and his unlikely investigative partner, Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo, began with 1992’s Mayhem (aka Mirage) and continued through 2015’s Clandestine. Naturally, I have devoured the whole lot, plus Jones standalones such as The Hunting Ground (2013) and The Sleeper (2015). I had the delightful opportunity a decade ago to interview Janes for Kirkus Reviews and The Rap Sheet, and I finally met him at the 2014 Bouchercon convention in Long Beach, California. Back then, he said he was busy composing more novels, and in fact his old Web site proclaimed that a 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel, Timeweaver, “now awaits a final read. The 18th St-Cyr and Kohler may well conclude the series, but that remains to be seen.” So whatever happened to those promised installments? I recently e-mailed Janes—who lives near Toronto, Ontario, and will turn 86 years old on May 23—to see how he’s doing. His response:

At my age now I’m lucky to be able to manage 18 blocks with my push chair. There are fortunately two little book kiosks en route, so I am able to get a few books now and then, and that kind of keeps me going. As to writing anything more, that’s really hard work and I’m totally retired, and reading the work of others finally, after all these years! You see, when I was writing I didn’t read other fiction because one can pick things up so easily and not even know they’ve done so. Therefore, I was just being careful. As for anybody at my age, my medical conditions are a real damper to doing a lot, and I’m very content just to go for my walks, read fiction books by others, and settle down with a cup of tea.

Janes’ wife of 64 years, Gracia, subsequently sent me an e-mail message, explaining that her husband’s health is fragile, that he suffers from “cancer and congenital heart failure.” She added, “He has retired knowing that he has published 34 books in four different genres (i.e., geology texts for elementary through university levels, children’s fiction, thrillers, and the 16-book St Cyr and Kohler series, and three other co-published books). All the words he has ever written are housed in over 140 boxes in the McMaster University Archives,” in Hamilton, Ontario. As to the existence of that 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel? Well, Gracia says, “Timeweaver presents a puzzle”—and perhaps one that her husband cannot help solve. “Bob has a reluctance to talk about his books,” she confides, “as it saddens him that he is no longer able to write,” after more than three decades spent behind a keyboard, pounding out stories. She suggests the manuscript may be in the McMaster archives, “but not catalogued yet.” She continues to look. I’ll provide any updates Gracia shoots my way.

• Whenever a writer publishes a list purporting to name the “best” of anything, he or she becomes an immediate target of criticism. So it’s no surprise that this recent selection of “the 30 greatest literary detectives of all time,” by ShortList’s Marc Chacksfield, has attracted detractors. Among the sleuths included in Chacksfield’s tally: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Morse, Lew Archer, and Father Brown. Single-appearance players such as William of Baskerville (from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose), Inspector Bucket (from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House), and Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen (the star of Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow) also scored spots on the list, which has predictably stirred questions about why figures such as Ellery Queen, Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Maud Silver, and—for goodness sakes!—Nero Wolfe didn’t make the cut.

• The Sisters in Crime organization has launched its new Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. As Oline H. Cogdill explains in the Mystery Scene blog, “A $2,000 grant will be awarded to an up-and-coming writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. … Candidates must apply by March 15, 2021. The winner will be announced in April, 2021.” Registration information is available here.

• With the 80th anniversary of the release of director John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon coming in October 2021, David Walsh, arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, has posted this excellent assessment of the movie’s history and importance, its messages, and how its development fit into Huston’s filmmaking evolution.

• The Guardian’s Guy Lodge takes advantage of 2021 being the 100th anniversary of author Patricia Highsmith’s birth by highlighting the best film adaptations of her work. He reminds us, too, that “A glossy new Ben Affleck-starring film of her novel Deep Water, the first film from Adrian Lyne in 19 years, is scheduled for August, while a TV version of Ripley, starring Andrew Scott as her most adaptable character, is in the pipeline.”

• Like so many other literary festivals, Granite Noir is moving online this year. According to Shotsmag Confidential, Aberdeen, Scotland’s fifth annual celebration of homegrown and international crime writing will be streamed on the Aberdeen Performing Arts site from Friday, February 19, through Sunday the 21st. Ian Rankin, Camilla Läckberg, Stuart MacBride, Peter May, Jo Nesbø, Attica Locke, and David Baldacci are among the writers scheduled to participate. Click here to find a PDF containing the full roster of events.

• Then on Saturday, March 20, Hull Noir will return as a day-long festival based in the English port city of Kingston upon Hull. This year’s guests includes Mark Billingham, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, “Alex North” (aka Steve Mosby), and Hull-born Ian McGuire. The event will recognize, as well, this year’s “50th anniversary of the British crime [film] classic, Get Carter—adapted from Ted Lewis’s seminal crime novel Jack’s Return Home. For Lewis, who studied at Hull Art School in the late 1950s and whose novels reference the city and its hinterland, the towns on the south bank of the Humber, and the bleak Lincolnshire coast, 2021 is also the 50th anniversary of his novel Plender, this year’s festival read.” As Shotsmag Confidential notes, “There’ll be no charge for tickets, which will be available from Sunday 21 February along with the full festival lineup. Follow the Hull Noir Facebook and Twitter (@hullnoir) for all the most up to date information.”

• Here’s something I didn’t know: James Hong is a phenomenally prolific American actor, born to Hong Kongese parents, whose performance credits include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown. He is also, according to blogger Lou Armagno, “the last living actor to portray a son (or daughter) of the fictional detective [Charlie Chan] in either a television series or film.” Hong was cast as “Number One Son” Barry Chan in the 1957-1958 TV drama The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, starring J. Carrol Naish. Hong will welcome his 92nd birthday this coming February 22nd.

• After applauding Robert McGinnis’ 93rd birthday two years ago in this longish piece for CrimeReads, I somehow managed to forget the artist’s 95th birthday this last Thursday, February 3. Fortunately, Deuce Richardson stepped up with a proper tribute in the DMR Books blog. After acknowledging McGinnis as “a national treasure,” Richardson reminds us that “He’s painted iconic characters ranging from James Bond to Barbarella to Captain America. He’s done covers for authors such as Rafael Sabatini, Neil Gaiman, John Jakes, Gardner F. Fox, Donald Westlake and Ian Fleming … and he’s still at it.” The DMR piece comes with a dozen beautiful examples of McGinnis’ work.



• By the way, whilst prowling around the Web early last week, I stumbled across a fake book front for Twilight Gal, created in imitation of one of McGinnis’ most famous covers, from the 1960 Dell paperback edition of Kill Now, Pay Later, by Robert Kyle. The artist here identifies him- or herself only as “astoralexander,” but explains that Twilight Gal re-imagines the video game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess “as a hard-boiled crime novel.” Both McGinnis’ cover and astroalexander’s respectful knock-off are above.

• My wife and I are currently in the midst of watching the first five episodes of Netflix’s French mystery thriller, Lupin. So I was interested to read, in B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder, that the show “is returning to Netflix for its second half of season one this summer. The series has become a surprising hit for the streamer, with 70M households projected to watch since its launch on January 8, making it easily Netflix’s biggest French original. The project is a contemporary adaptation of the novels penned by French writer Maurice Leblanc and stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop, who uses the world-famous gentleman thief and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin, as his inspiration as he tries to get revenge on those responsible for his father’s death.”

• While we’re on the subject of Netflix, let me point you to this piece in The Killing Times, containing the first trailer for Behind Her Eyes, a six-part TV adaptation of Sarah Pinborough’s 2017 novel of that same name. The KT’s Paul Hirons says this program “stars Eve Hewson, Simona Brown, Tom Bateman and Robert Aramayo, and tells the story of a single mother, whose world is thrown off kilter when she begins an affair with her new boss David and matters take an even stranger turn when she’s drawn into an unlikely friendship with his wife Adele. What starts as an unconventional love triangle soon becomes a dark, psychological tale of suspense and twisted revelations, as Louise finds herself caught in a dangerous web of secrets where nothing and no-one is what they seem.” Behind Her Eyes drops on February 17.

• Another promising trailer is that of Bloodlands, a BBC One mini-series starring “James Nesbitt as a Northern Irish detective on the hunt for a serial killer known as Goliath ...,” explains Radio Times. “In the 40-second trailer we meet detective Tom Brannick (Nesbitt) as he picks up a 20-year-old investigation into [the] ‘possible assassin’ they called Goliath and reveals to his team that the killer at large murdered his wife.” There doesn’t appear to be a set premiere date yet for Bloodlands; Radio Times says to expect it “later in the year.”

• John Porter reports in The Verge that delays in releasing No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film (currently slated to reach theaters on October 8) are “causing problems for its marketing deals, with advertisers concerned that the film may end up featuring outdated product placements.” He says “the movie could face reshoots to hide its outdated products, and … some scenes may be ‘carefully edited.’”

• So that’s what happened to Steve Hamilton. The last book published under his sole moniker, An Honorable Assassin (his third Nick Mason thriller), saw print in 2019. But next month, he will return as the co-author, with Janet Evanovich, of The Bounty, book seven in a series about FBI agent Kate O’Hare and con man Nicholas Fox, originally co-written with Lee Goldberg. The Real Book Spy tells more.

• Max Allan Collins revealed in a recent interview by Publishers Weekly that, with 2022 marking the 75th anniversary of private eye Mike Hammer’s debut, in I, the Jury, “I’ll be doing a biography of [Spillane] with James Traylor for Otto Penzler at Mysterious Press.” It was just two years ago that Collins commemorated the author’s 100th birthday with a blitz of special publications.

• After having picked up Jeff Vorzimmer’s The Best of Manhunt (2019) and last year’s The Best of Manhunt 2, you can bet I’m looking forward to the March 26 release of The Manhunt Companion, also from Stark House Press and co-edited by Peter Enfantino. In his blog Rough Edges, James Reasoner writes: “This book contains a history of the magazine, indexes of authors and stories that Manhunt published, plus reviews of every story from every issue. I’m not sure anything like this has ever been attempted before, let alone pulled off in such great style.” Click here to learn more about Manhunt (1952-1967).

• Washington Post book critic Ron Charles includes this smile-inducing tidbit in his latest newsletter:

After two weeks in office, Vice President Kamala Harris has already improved the economy of some yearbook owners. Used and rare bookseller AbeBooks reports that a set of three Howard University yearbooks—1984, 1985 and 1986—recently sold for $1,500. Those volumes include pictures of Harris, who graduated from the historically black university in D.C. in 1986. A photo of Howard’s Economics Society shows sophomore Harris with her fellow students and sponsor Joseph Houchins, who was once a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Council of Negro Affairs.

• George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has posted two pieces recently that are of likely interest to Rap Sheet readers. The first collects 39 vintage paperback fronts, each of which features one or more things we don’t see around much anymore. The challenge is to identify each of those anachronisms. The answers are all available at the post’s end.

• In this second piece, Easter showcases a splendid variety of “girl with a gun”-themed covers—one of which featured in Killer Covers’ not-long-ago-concluded 12th-anniversary celebration.

• Did you know that you can watch the entire run of Columbia Pictures’ 1943 Batman serial on YouTube? The 15 installments, starring Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, and J. Carrol Naish, begin here with a chapter titled “The Electric Brain.”

• Gothic-style lettering makes a comeback amid our modern plague.

• Mystery & Suspense finally gets around to reviewing The Devil and the Dark Water, by British wordsmith Stuart Turton—one of my favorite mysteries of 2020—and pronounces it “clever and fun. Addictively page-turning. And so very, very entertaining.”

• I don’t relish penning obituaries, yet it seems I must do so regularly. Hal Holbrook, for instance, cannot leave this world without fit acclamation. The Ohio-born theater, film, and TV performer died on January 23 at age 95. Although many younger people know him—if only vaguely—as the guy who won a Tony Award for his stage portrayal of Mark Twain, Holbrook began his movie career in 1966, being cast in Sidney Lumet's The Group. He went on to portray then-unidentified Watergate scandal source “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men (1976) and appeared in other movies such as Wall Street (1987), The Firm (1993), and Lincoln (2012). On the small screen, Holbrook won parts in the series Coronet Blue, The F.B.I., The Name of the Game, Designing Women (featuring his wife, Dixie Carter), Evening Shade, and The West Wing, and in teleflicks on the order That Certain Summer (1972, written by Richard Levinson and William Link) and Pueblo (1973). He starred in The Senator, a much-lauded but sadly short-lived and sometimes-controversial, 1970-1971 NBC “wheel series” drama—part of the Bold Ones rotation—playing Hays Stowe, a progressive and highly principled member of the U.S. Senate. Holbrook later led the cast of three Perry Mason TV movies (following Raymond Burr’s death in 1993), filling the boots of William “Wild Bill” McKenzie, a hotshot attorney and Utah rancher. One of my fondest memories of this actor had him playing a solely vocal part, his craggy voice narrating the 1997 Ken Burns TV documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. The New York Times says Holbrook died at his home in Beverly Hills, California; he was buried at a cemetery in Tennessee, alongside Dixie Carter, who met her own end a decade ago, in 2010.

• Last August, I mentioned on this page that Paul Green, a self-described “biographer specializing in film and television history,” had let it be known he was entering hospice care. The author of books about Roy Huggins, Pete Duel, Jeffrey Hunter, and others, Green told me in an e-mail message, “I suffer from stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to my bones. I have been under treatment for three years.” Now Ed Robertson, host of the radio talk show TV Confidential, brings the sad news that Green passed away on Sunday, January 17, at age 65. “He was a gifted artist, a skilled biographer, and a good friend,” Robertson wrote on Facebook. “Paul and I last spoke about two months ago, at which time he informed me of his prognosis. He was in good spirits, all things considered, and we had a nice visit. It is hard for me to pick a favorite among his books. We met because of his biography of Pete Duel, did a couple of programs about his book on The Virginian, and had memorable conversations about his biographies of Jennifer Jones, Jeffrey Hunter, and Roy Huggins. He brought all of those figures to life and gave us each an understanding of who they were as people. Rest in peace, Paul … and thank you.”

• Finally, we must say good-bye to television producer and screenwriter Cy Chermak, who apparently perished from natural causes on January 29 in Hawaii. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1929 as Seymour Albert Chermak, he went on to develop scripts for Beverly Garland’s Decoy, Cheyenne, the 1977 TV movie Murder at the World Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Additionally, he produced such shows as Ironside, Amy Prentiss, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Barbary Coast, and CHiPS. Chermak was 91.

• Speaking of obits, I tried to do justice to 81-year-old author John Lutz, who breathed his last on January 9. But his friend Francis M. Nevins does a far superior job of recounting Lutz’s illustrious career in this new Mystery*File piece. He also offers this poignant closing:

The last time I saw [Lutz] was in March 2020, shortly before COVID-19 dominated the world. He said nothing, needed a walker to get around, had lost a lot of weight, but he could still function. That soon changed. He deteriorated over the rest of last year and died a little more than a week into this one.

The only other writers with whom I had such a close and rich relationship were Fred Dannay and Ed Hoch, both of them now long dead. Is it any wonder that as the years pass I feel empty and alone more and more often?

• You may not be aware of this, but frequent Rap Sheet contributor also hosts Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a mystery-fiction author interview show heard on the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). That show was off the air for awhile, but it returned to production last August. Since then, Nester has interviewed such authors as J. Todd Scott (Lost River), T. Jefferson Parker (Then She Vanished), S..A. Cosby (Blacktop Wasteland), and most recently, Nick Petrie (The Breaker). I’ve added a link to the index of Nester’s broadcasts to the “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” list in this blog’s right-hand column.

• Promoting his new spy novel, The Mercenary—not to be confused this “orgy of death” Cold War thriller—Paul Vidich submits to an interview with Mystery Tribune, and contributes a piece to CrimeReads about the role imposters play in our literary tradition.

​• Four other CrimeReads posts to read: Vince Keenan’s look back at the never-produced Orson Welles picture The Smiler with a Knife, based on a novel by Nicholas Blake and casting Lucille Ball as its female lead; an interview with David Brawn, the publishing director for the Collins Crime Club, which recently reissued The Conjure-Man Dies, a 1932 work described as “the first detective novel by an African-American author”; Michael Kaufman’s analysis of where police procedurals stand in the age of Black Lives Matter and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump-backing domestic terrorists; and editor in chief Dwyer Murphy’s eulogy for John D. MacDonald’s Point Crisp home in Sarasota, Florida, razed to make room for the sort of “enormous mansions that JDM railed against.”

• And we’ve heard much about small-business closings over these trying last 12 months. However, the British Web site inews.co.uk reports that independent bookshops in the UK have “managed not only to withstand the myriad difficulties thrown at them by the COVID-19 pandemic … but actually increased their numbers.”

(J. Robert Janes photo © 2014 by Ali Karim.)

Bullet Points: Bonus Edition

• Let us all bid a fond farewell to Edd Byrnes, who played wisecracking, comb-wielding hipster and wannabe private investigator Gerald Lloyd “Kookie” Kookson III on the ABC-TV series 77 Sunset Strip. He passed away at age 87 on January 8. As Terence Towles Canote explains in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, “Edd Byrnes was born Edward Byrne Breitenberger on July 30, 1932, in New York City. His father died when he was 13 and he took the name of his grandfather, a New York City firefighter. He eventually took an interest in acting and following his graduation from high school he worked in summer stock. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Mr. Byrnes made his television debut on [a 1955] episode of Crossroads.” TMZ notes that he later played a teen-dance show host Vince Fontaine in the 1978 film Grease.

• First television gave us Hannibal (2013-2015), featuring the depraved forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs. Now, according to the Web site Deadline, “CBS has just closed deals for Clarice, a crime-drama series project based on the famous Thomas Harris character Clarice Starling, which is set after the events in The Silence of the Lambs. The project, written and executive produced by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, has received a big series commitment. … Clarice is set in 1993, a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. The series is a deep dive into the untold personal story of [FBI agent] Clarice Starling, as she returns to the field to pursue serial murderers and sexual predators while navigating the high stakes political world of Washington, D.C.”

• Here’s an intriguing question, addressed by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett: “Did HAL Commit Murder?” You will, of course, remember that HAL 9000 was the artificial intelligence antagonist in the 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• I keep forgetting to mention that blogger Evan Lewis has been posting, since November 1, installments from the 1956-1958 newspaper comic strip Nero Wolfe, based on Rex Stout’s famous detective series. Click here to see them yourself.

• This comes from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Synchronicity Films has optioned Craig Russell’s “Lennox” book series and will adapt the period Scotland-set thrillers for TV, with Robert Murphy (DCI Banks, Inspector George Gently, Vera) attached to handle the adaptation.

The series is set in tough inner-city Glasgow in the 1950s where the titular Lennox is a private eye billed as “a damaged man in a hard city at a hard time,” who finds himself caught between three Glasgow crime bosses.

• Los Angeles sure was a smoggy place before 1970, when “President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, which led to air pollution regulations, and allowed California to make even stricter provisions within its state.” It’s hard to believe that Donald Trump is now moving to relax government requirements that have for so long kept the air Americans breathe both cleaner and safer.

• It’s equally incredible that someone went to the trouble of putting together this 25-minute video “compilation of all guest star introductions from the television series Cannon” (1971–1976).

• Author Jess Nevins is offering, in his blog, this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature's Most Chilling Genre (Praeger).

• Meanwhile, BOLO Books carries this extract from Hilary Davidson’s Don’t Look Down (Thomas & Mercer), due out in February.

• Did you know that author Steve Hamilton has a new Alex McKnight short story, Riddle Island (Blackstone), awaiting release to e-readers on February 4? Yeah, neither did I.

• CrimeReads recently posted Paul French’s survey of crime fiction (and some true-crime books) set in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the titles he includes, and with which I was previously unfamiliar: “Andrei Bely’s Petersburg (first published in serial form in 1913 and then as a revised edition book in 1922). Sadly not much read these days but considered by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, after Joyce’s Ulysses and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and before Proust.”

• The Killing Times assembled this lengthy rundown of TV crime and mystery dramas set to debut in Britain during 2020. Some, though, not the entire assortment, will likely also become available to U.S. viewers. I’m particularly interested in watching the eight-part adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s award-winning novel, The Luminaries, and the small-screen version of Ian McGuire’s Arctic historical thriller, The North Water, both of which are coming from BBC Two.

• The literary magazine NB (short for New Books) has published a fine overview of the three novels British screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote about James Reed, described as “an ex-Scotland Yard detective who became the bodyguard, then lover, then husband, then ex-husband of Hollywood superstar Katherine Long.” The first of those titles, 1986’s Snowball, was republished last summer by Brash Books.

• As the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, is being readied for distribution to theaters in April, the car company most closely associated with Agent 007, Aston Martin, “faces a lot of [financial] uncertainty,” says The Spy Command.

• Finally, Shotsmag Confidential has posted this incomplete inventory of “crime fiction bookish events” taking place in the United Kingdom between now and June 1.

McKnight Will See a New Day

Back in 2016, after he broke away from his longtime publisher, Minotaur, in order to sign with G.P. Putnam’s Sons and launch a new thriller series starring prisoner-turned-assassin Nick Mason, I asked author Steve Hamilton whether this meant he was abandoning his original series protagonist, reluctant detective Alex McKnight, after 10 books. “Alex will definitely be back,” Hamilton averred. “I can’t imagine ever not wanting to know what he’s doing next. He was there from the beginning, and in a way I owe everything to him. When the next McKnight book does come out, I think readers can expect the series to be revitalized, while still retaining everything they loved about this character in the first place, just like I did.”

So I am pleased to read, in The Real Book Spy, that Hamilton has another McKnight novel due out this coming September: Dead Man Running (Putnam)—the first new entry in that northern Michigan-set series since 2013’s Let It Burn. Here’s the official plot brief:

On the Mediterranean Sea, a vacationer logs onto the security camera feed from his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Something about his living room seems not quite right—the room is bright, when he’s certain he’d left the curtains closed. Rewinding through the feed, he sees an intruder. When he shifts to the bedroom camera, he sees the dead body.

Martin T. Livermore is the key suspect in the abduction and murder of at least five women, but he’s never been this sloppy before. When the FBI finally catches him in Scottsdale, he declares he’ll only talk to one person: a retired police officer from Detroit, now a private investigator living in the tiny town of Paradise, Michigan. A man named Alex McKnight.

Livermore means nothing to McKnight, but it soon becomes clear McKnight means something to Livermore … and that Livermore’s capture was only the beginning of an elaborate, twisted plot with McKnight at the center. In a hunt that will take him across the country and to the edge of his limits, McKnight fights to stop a vicious killer before he can exact his ultimate revenge. And his grand finale will cut closer to home than he ever could have imagined.

Meanwhile, I understand Hamilton’s third Nick Mason outing, An Honorable Assassin—which was originally slated to appear next month—has now been pushed back for release in May 2019.

Bullet Points: Pre-Anniversary Edition

• If you haven’t been keeping up with the multi-part celebration, in my Killer Covers blog, of The Rap Sheet’s rapidly approaching 10th anniversary, go check out the “cover countdown” here.

• Bristol, England’s annual CrimeFest is scheduled to begin on Thursday and run through Sunday. Our hyper-energetic UK correspondent, Ali Karim, has promised to provide plenty of photos from the event. And we’ll be sure to report the winners of five different awards being given out at the convention on Saturday night.

• Did you know that this coming Saturday, May 21, is National Readathon Day? Which is known around my humble abode as simply another good excuse to kick back with a book.

• Sunday evening will bring the 12th and concluding episode of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander series—based on the late Henning Mankell’s novels about Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander—to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! The ever-reliable Leslie Gilbert Elman has already recapped Season 4’s initial two Wallander installments (here and here) for Criminal Element. I assume she will deliver her final assessment of this British drama sometime early next week.

• This sounds, right off the bat, like a dubious venture—but who knows, it could turn out to be a box-office smash. From In Reference to Murder:

One of the world’s most famous crime novelists may be headed to the big screen once again: Agatha Christie, based on a script by Tom Shepherd, is in the works at Columbia Pictures. The action-adventure pic, which is being pitched as “Sherlock Holmes meets The Thomas Crown Affair,” finds a young, adventurous Agatha Christie joining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on a mission to track down the whereabouts of a missing oil tycoon.”

• The recent death of actor William Schallert (The Patty Duke Show, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, etc.) will be Topic A on this week’s installment of TV Confidential, the radio talk show hosted by Ed Robertson. This episode of TV Confidential will begin airing tonight, May 18, on a variety of stations, and then be archived here.

• Meanwhile, the blog Comfort TV presents “10 memorable moments from [Schallert’s] stellar career,” including his largely forgotten appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Partridge Family.

• Nancie Clare talks with Steve Hamilton, author of the new series opener The Second Life of Nick Mason, for the latest episode of her podcast Speaking of Mysteries. My own interview with Hamilton can be found in two parts, here and here.

• The Wall Street Journal recaps the twisted story of how Hamilton’s Second Life came to be released by Putnam, following the author’s “ugly breakup” with his previous publisher.

• The Spy Command fires questions at author Larry Loftis, who it notes “has come out with a book, Into the Lion’s Mouth, about real-life World War II spy Dusko Popov, who was said to be an inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond.” Read the exchange here.

• Several other interviews worth your attention: Veteran writer-producer David Levinson, whose television credits include episodes of The Bold Ones, Sons and Daughters, Sarge, Charlie’s Angels, and Hart to Hart, has a wonderful long conversation with Stephen Bowie of The Classic TV History Blog; Robert Goldsborough, author of the new Nero Wolfe novel, Stop the Presses!, chats with Jane K. Cleland of Criminal Element; Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose Vietnam-set spy novel, The Sympathizer, won both the Pulitzer Prize and a recent Edgar Award, engages in an often-moving discussion with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross; Gary Phillips revisits his fiction-writing history with Immix’s J. Sam Williams; and Glen Erik Hamilton answers questions from S.W. Lauden about his series protagonist, Van Shaw, and that character’s second appearance, in the recently released Hard Cold Winter.

• Ah, the humorous frustrations of bookselling.

• R.I.P., Darwyn Cooke, the illustrator and writer who—among so many other efforts—adapted into graphic-novel form several of Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark’s tales about master thief Parker, including The Outfit. Cooke died from cancer at the tender age of 53. Good-bye as well to Portland, Oregon, resident Katherine Dunn, best known as the author of 1989’s “cult comic novel,” Geek Love. She passed away on May 11 at age 70. I would like to claim that I knew her; and yes, we did work together at one point for Willamette Week. However, Dunn—who wrote for that “alternative weekly” about boxing and Portland’s “underbelly”—was rarely spotted around the editorial offices. I couldn’t even remember what she looked like, until I saw this photograph, taken in the late 1960s, long before I knew her. Dunn’s demise is blamed on “complications from lung cancer.” UPDATE: Willamette Week has more to say about Dunn’s passing here.

• From The Gumshoe Site: “Jim Lavene collapsed and died on May 5 unexpectedly at a hospital in Concord, North Carolina. He and his late wife, Joyce (1954-2015), … wrote many cozy mysteries and created many series characters, including Sharyn Howard (a sheriff in North Carolina), Peggy Lee (not the singer but a garden shop owner), Glad Wycznewski (an ex-cop from Chicago), Jessie Morton (an assistant professor), Dae O’Donnell (a psychic mayor in a North Carolina town), Stella Griffin (a fire chief in a Tennessee town), Jessie Morton (an owner of a diner in Alabama), and others … One of their latest novels is Sweet Pepper Hero ..., a Stella Griffin mystery. He was 63.”

• Farewell, too, to advertising executive Bill Backer, who was responsible for the memorable 1971 “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” television ad. He died on May 13 at age 89.

• Is the 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly, based on Mickey Spillane’s 1952 novel of the same name and starring Ralph Meeker as private eye Mike Hammer, really “the most hard-boiled noir ever?” Yes, according to Den of Geek.

• Although she’s unlikely to outdo her in-the-altogether turn through 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Australian actress Margot Robbie is apparently set to extend her appearance as “crazed supervillain and former psychiatrist” Harley Quinn beyond this summer’s DC Comics anti-hero team-up in the film Suicide Squad. Geek Tyrant reports that she’ll “produce and star in a spin-off movie that won’t be a Harley Quinn solo film, but instead will center on a handful of DC’s female heroes and villains. Word is that Robbie had such a strong reaction to the character that she dove into the comic books to learn everything she could and fell in love with DC’s female characters. She brought a female writer (identity currently unknown) on board to write a script for a spinoff, and when they took it to [Warner Bros.], the studio ‘snapped it up.’”

• British performer Toby Jones (Infamous, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl) is evidently slated to do a guest turn in Season 4 of the BBC-TV series Sherlock. He “will star in the second episode of the brand-new three-part season …,” according to Mystery Fanfare. Jones is quoted as saying, “I’m excited and intrigued by the character I shall be playing in Sherlock,” rumored to be a bad guy.

• Whoops! It seems that big plans to turn Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 Western epic, Blood Meridian, into a feature film have been spoiled by the fact that nobody in charge of the project bothered to acquire the necessary rights to that novel. “I was astonished,” remarks author-producer Lee Goldberg. “You’d expect something like this from amateurs … but from experienced professionals and a major international distributor? I can’t imagine how the movie got this far along without anybody in business affairs double-checking that someone had actually secured the rights to the book.”

• Having once supervised the production of a radio drama series (OK, so it was just a college project—are you happy now?), I occasionally like to listen to classic specimens of the breed. Helpfully, Adam Graham of The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio has put together this list of what he says are the top 10 episodes of the mid-20th-century series Adventures of Philip Marlowe, starring Gerald Mohr. I think I have only listened to a couple of these before. Lots more enjoyment still to come.

• Of the far-flung bookshops Britain’s Independent newspaper proclaims “every reader should visit in their lifetime,” I’ve been to precisely four, though I have traveled to the cities where others are located (foolish me for not stopping by!). But wait, am I miscounting, or does this story list 11 stores, not the headline-promised 12?

• I somehow missed noting two lists of awards finalists that Janet Rudolph of Mystery Fanfare caught. It seems there are three contenders for the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal fiction (including Attica Locke’s Pleasantville). And there are more than two dozen crime and thriller works vying for this year’s National Indie Excellence Awards (commendations that require entrants to pay a fee).

• New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath presents a delightful essay looking back at The Thin Man, the 1934 picture based on Dashiell Hammett’s last novel.

• And if I didn’t already highlight this fine piece about the 75th anniversary of John Huston’s 1941 Hammett adaptation, The Maltese Falcon … well, I should have done.

• I’ve mentioned before on this page that in 1976, I won free tickets to the Portland, Oregon, opening of Nicolas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a movie adapted from his 1974 Sherlock Holmes novel of the same name. I haven’t sat through that picture again in the last 20 years, but Steve Vineberg’s fresh assessment of it, in Critics at Large, has me in the mood for another screening.

• A new discovery: The blog Reading Ellery Queen, in which museum curator Jon Mathewson is busily assessing every Queen yarn, chronologically. He’s come as far as the 1967 novel Face to Face. I’ve added Mathewson’s site to The Rap Sheet’s General Crime Fiction links list, for future reference.

• Speaking of Queen … With his summer vacation approaching, teacher Brad Friedman writes in Ah Sweet Mystery Blog about two novels—1933’s The Siamese Twin Mystery and 1949’s Cat of Many Tails—that find mystery writer and amateur sleuth Ellery Queen seeking relaxation, but finding murder, instead.

• Still more thoughts on summer travel: Cross-Examining Crime has gathered together some quite entertaining “Golden Age [of Mystery] Advice on Staying at Country Houses.” Rule No. 8: “Check the owner of the county house is not a collector of weaponry.”

• I wasn’t a fan of the NBC-TV series Movin’ On during its originally broadcast period of 1972-1976, but thanks to YouTube, in recent years I have caught up with some episodes of that program about troubleshooting truckers played by Claude and Frank Converse, and have decided it had more merit than I understood when I was very young. Television Obscurities recounts the story of Movin’ On’s recent revival through the TV streaming service Hulu, and even offers up that show’s first weekly episode, “The Time of His Life.”

• Bookslut founder Jessa Crispin laments the demise of her once-thriving book review/author interview site. The final issue of Bookslut is now available online.

• Better-educated Americans = more liberal Americans.

• This comes as a surprise: SF Signal, the very popular, almost 13-year-old “speculative fiction”-oriented Web site edited by one of my fellow Kirkus Reviews bloggers, John DeNardo, has announced that it’s shutting down.

• Finally, as we prepare to commemorate The Rap Sheet’s initial decade, let us also raise a glass to the recent 10th anniversary of Gravetapping, Ben Boulden’s excellent crime-fiction blog.

Hamilton Grabs His “Second” Chance

If you haven’t noticed already, my latest Mysteries and Thrillers column—posted earlier this morning on the Kirkus Reviews Web site—features an interview with Steve Hamilton, author of both the long-running Alex McKnight detective series (Die a Stranger, Let It Burn) and the soon-forthcoming thriller, The Second Life of Nick Mason (Putnam). I’ve followed Hamilton’s work ever since his early days with the McKnight novels, back when I commissioned Anthony Rainone to interview him for January Magazine. We have since met at a few Bouchercons, including last year’s event in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I’ve found him to be generous with his time and remarkably humble for somebody who’s enjoyed his level of authorial success. So it was a real treat to fire off my own questions to this now 55-year-old resident of Cottekill, New York.

As if often the case, however, I didn’t have enough room in that Kirkus piece to fit our full exchange. So I am embedding the remainder below. Here, Hamilton talks about his former day job, his appreciation for cars, his approach to character development in the Mason series, and a great deal more.

J. Kingston Pierce: At what point did you finally give up your day job as a technical writer with IBM and become a full-time author? How many years did you work for IBM?

Steve Hamilton: I worked for IBM for 32 years, writing in the evenings when I got home from work, after spending time with my family. It was honestly exhausting, but being a writer is what I always wanted to do. It felt like I was leading a double life, especially as I started having some success (winning two Edgars, putting two books on the New York Times bestseller list, writing two New York Times Notable Books of the Year). When the people I was working with were going on vacation with their families, I was going on book tours. So I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally be in a position where I can concentrate on writing full-time. I know I’m very lucky, and I’ll never take it for granted.

JKP: In The Second Life of Nick Mason, your protagonist has the opportunity to wheel around Chicago in a couple of classic cars, first a 1968 Mustang, then a 1967 Camaro. You write rather lovingly of both experiences. Are you a vintage-car enthusiast?

SH: I grew up in Detroit, so cars are in my blood. Even now, you go back there on a Saturday night in the summer, and you’ll see all of the old classic cars doing the “Telegraph Cruise.” The Ford Motor Company, in particular, has been a big part of my extended family. My father worked briefly for Lee Iacocca back in the1960s, when I was just a little kid, and his job was to distribute this new car called the Mustang to all of the local dealerships. As you can imagine, he got to be a pretty popular guy.

JKP: One of the few complaints I’ve heard about Second Life is that not all of the main players are given great dimension. Is that because you looked at this book as the opening chapter in a longer saga, one that will give you time over its full run to flesh out your continuing characters, including the enigmatic pet shop owner, Lauren, and Mason’s daughter, Adriana? How much do you think series characters need to be developed in the early books to keep readers interested?

SH: I wanted this book to be lean and fast, but at the same time I think all of the essential information about these characters is there. You’re right, it is the first book in a series—I’m on number 11 with Alex McKnight, so I’ve learned a lot about how a series should develop. In Nick Mason’s case, I’ve been much more thoughtful upfront about where the series is going. I actually have the first seven books all plotted out in great detail, so I can tell you that readers will learn a lot more about these characters as the series progresses. Every character will have his or her own time, with much more depth and history. And some of the transformations will be pretty dramatic. Allies will become enemies, and enemies will become allies.

JKP: By the way, does Lauren have a last name yet? I don’t remember seeing it mentioned anywhere in your new novel.

SH: She does, but it’s top secret. (Seriously, I’m sure it’ll come out in the next book.)

JKP: Does it have any influence on your writing this new series, knowing that Lionsgate hopes to use your books as the basis for a film franchise? Do you deliberately introduce elements into your stories that might play out well cinematically?

SH: That deal came about months after the first book was completed, but even with the second book, it’s not something I ever consciously think about. Of course, there’s always a certain amount of visualization that goes on in a writer’s head when he’s writing a scene. Many of the same elements that make a scene work on paper, when the “film” is essentially playing in the reader’s head, will naturally translate to a real-life film adaptation. But you can never let yourself get too hung up on that. Your job as a writer is to tell the story, in the best way you can. That’s it.

JKP: I notice that you have two children, Nicholas and Antonia, both of whose names you use in Second Life—Nick being the first name of your protagonist, and Antonia’s being the name of the Rush Street restaurant in Chicago where Nick is ostensibly employed. Why was this book the one in which you chose to honor both of your offspring so?

SH: Nick was a name that came to me early on—it just had the right feel to it, for a character like this. Nick Mason. It just fits him. I’ve always loved that name, even before I had a son and named him Nicholas. For Antonia, I think it was just a matter of giving her a little equal time.

JKP: After all your years of writing fiction, after all your accomplishments in the field, what’s one thing you know now that you wish you’d understood from the very start?

SH: Honestly, I wish I’d known that a publisher is not doing you a big favor by publishing your book. It should be an equal relationship, and promises should be kept on both sides. If it’s not working for you, you should be free to leave. A pretty simple idea, I know, but I wish someone had told me that a long time ago.

JKP: And with these two series going, will you ever find time again to write standalones such as Night Work (2007) and The Lock Artist?

SH: I’m sure I’ll do that again. Although I’m actually more excited about the chance to go back to Michael (from The Lock Artist) again. As long as he has this unforgivable talent for opening safes, and as long as other people know about it, there will always be new trouble for him to get into.

READ MORE: “Writer Steve Hamilton’s Second Chance,” by Richard Turner (The Wall Street Journal).

Bullet Points: Sick Day Edition

I almost never become ill, but I’ve suddenly been hit with a sore throat (what, in summer?) and general fatigue. So if you discover errors or any non-English sentences in the following news wrap-up, please forgive them--I’m not running on all cylinders today.

• I sure hope this is true: Variety reports that filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen “will write and possibly direct an adaptation of Ross Macdonald’s bestselling novel Black Money for Warner Bros.” I’ve found great entertainment in several Coen brothers pictures in the past--from Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing to Fargo and True Grit--so I have no doubt their interpretation of Macdonald’s 1966 Lew Archer private-eye tale could be compelling. Only two other Archer yarns have so far been turned into big-screen dramas: The Moving Target (1949), which was the basis for Paul Newman’s 1966 film Harper (watch clips here and here), and The Drowning Pool (1950), which also became a Newman flick, in 1975. Mission: Impossible’s Peter Graves starred in a better-than-average 1974 NBC-TV series pilot based on Macdonald’s The Underground Man (1971), that failed to earn him a return to America’s weekly small-screen schedule (though it did convince NBC to hire Brian Keith, instead, to lead the 1975 midseason replacement series Archer). And nothing seems to have come of rumors, spread in 2006, that Macdonald’s 1959 turning-point novel, The Galton Case, would become a feature film, courtesy of Random House films and Focus Features. So the prospect that Black Money will show up in movie theaters is--to borrow a line from Vice President Joe Biden--a big fucking deal. Meanwhile, if haven’t already enjoyed the novel Black Money, consider this provocation to catch up on your reading of Macdonald’s work.

• It sounds as if author Steve Hamilton underwent a particularly acrimonious parting recently from his longtime publisher, St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur. Both sides are accusing the other of inciting the split. “In the end,” Hamilton is quoted as saying, “I just want to work with a publisher who’s passionate about my work, and who has a real plan for reaching the widest possible audience. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But I didn’t feel like any of that was in place at St. Martin’s Press, or that it ever would be.” Apparently he has more faith in G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The Associated Press says that Hamilton has already signed a four-book deal with that rival publishing house. This will ensure the release of his next novel, The Second Life of Nick Mason, about a character who “has already spent five years inside a maximum security prison when an offer comes that will grant his release twenty years early.” St. Martin’s had planned to deliver the book to stores in late September, but Putnam now has it listed for a mid-2016 release.

• The August issue of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes notes about the annual “What’s Your Poison?” summer celebration at Cambridge’s Heffers bookshop, thrillers set in an alternative version of the Second World War, the long-running radio escapades of Simon Templar (aka The Saint), and new releases by David Hewson, Sophie Hannah, Felix Francis, and Liberian author Vamba Sherif. Click here to find Ripley’s full column.

• Having watched the dramatic trailers for the Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie--scheduled to debut in U.S. theaters next Friday, August 14(!)--I have had my radar out for associated news reports. And Bill Koenig’s The Spy Command blog has delivered, big-time. Here, for instance, is a list of “five U.N.C.L.E. stories from the 1964-68 [TV] series that may enhance the experience of new fans ahead of the film.” Click here to read an interview with Daniel Pemberton, who composed the picture’s soundtrack. And 81-year-old actor David McCallum, who played “loyal Soviet” spy Illya Kuryakin in the TV series, says he endorses the coming film: “I think it’s a wonderful success.”

• Speaking of Koenig’s blog, it suggests the next fictional spy who should be reanimated for cinematic purposes is … Matt Helm.

• The three-part ITV adaptation of Julian Barnes’ 2005 novel, Arthur & George, starring Martin Clunes, is set to begin showing in the States on Sunday, September 6, under the umbrella of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! As the PBS Web site explains, this mini-series--based on historical events--finds Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle (Clunes) “outraged by injustice to an Anglo-Indian solicitor” and using “the methods of his own fictional detective to get at the truth. Co-starring are Arsher Ali (The Missing) as George Edalji; and Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey) as Alfred Wood, Sir Arthur’s real-life ‘Dr. Watson.’” A preview of Arthur & George is posted below.



• Writing in January Magazine, I couldn’t help but weigh in on the controversial decision by an independent Michigan bookstore to “refund the price of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman (Harper) to any reader who’s dissatisfied with their purchase of said work.” Let me just say, I am not impressed.

• Crime Fiction Lover offers a first look at Ian Rankin’s new John Rebus novel, Even Dogs in the Wild, which is due out in the UK in November (with an as-yet-to-be-determined U.S. release date). Here’s the plot brief: “[Siobhan] Clarke is investigating the death of a lawyer, who was killed during a robbery, but it looks less like a random attack when she receives a note from an anonymous source. Big Ger [Cafferty] gets a similar message--a threat--and as the ageing gangster has been a bit closer to Rebus in the twilight of their respective careers, Clarke calls the ex-detective out of retirement to help save Cafferty’s skin.”

• From In Reference to Murder: “Ever wondered if there was a secret formula behind Agatha Christie's plotting? Research commissioned by UKTV channel Drama for their Agatha Christie Hour says it looks a little something like this: k l,n,s=f[m-lkf+lk+n+s].”

• Did you know there is yet another Star Trek film in the works, this time an independent one called Star Trek: Axanar? It’s already exceeded its public fund-raising goal and has received the endorsement of “Spock’s son,” Adam Nimoy.

• Fancy owning your own Jim Rockford cutout?

• It was only this last weekend that I finally found the free time to see Mr. Holmes, the new film based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind, and starring Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, and Milo Parker. It’s beautifully shot, I found McKellen thoroughly convincing as an aged Sherlock, young Parker’s performance suggests he is destined for a rich on-screen career, and while I missed Cullin’s prose, his story about “a lonely man, increasingly showing signs of frailty and dementia” (to quote from Patti Abbott’s Crimespree review of the film) is generally well-translated. If you haven’t seen Mr. Holmes already, I suggest you add it to your movie-going schedule.

• I’ve been rather remiss in not alerting everyone about Nancie Clare’s recent additions to her excellent Speaking of Mysteries podcast series. Skip tonight’s Republican presidential-wannabe circus … er, “debate” on television and instead turn an ear to the following conversations Clare has had recently with crime-fiction contributors: Vu Tran, the author of Dragonfish; Otto Penzler. “dean of the mystery fiction genre”; Ace Atkins, whose new Quinn Colson thriller, The Redeemers, recently saw print; Ingrid Thoft, author of the latest Fina Ludlow P.I. novel, Brutality; and Robert Rotstein, who’s out with The Bomb Maker’s Son, the third of his Parker Stern mysteries.

• Other interviews worth checking out: Gravetapping’s Ben Boulden has posted a superior conversation with Bill Crider (Between the Living and the Dead); Mark Rubinstein talks with Linwood Barclay (Broken Promise) for The Huffington Post; New Zealand blogger Craig Sisterson has a short exchange with Patricia Melo, Brazilian author of The Body Snatcher; and retired professional basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fields some questions about Mycroft Holmes, his September novel, from Crimespree’s Erica Ruth Neubauer.

• Frank Bill, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw are all on Dead End Follies’ list of “New Generation Genre Writers You Need to Read.”

• Talking about Season 4 of Longmire, which will debut on Netflix come September 10, executive producer Greer Shephard explains the new episodes will focus on “second chances. Who you are as a person is defined by how you handle the second chance. Netflix has incorporated that theme in their campaign. There are a lot of ways in which people can rebuild themselves after devastating experiences. We explore that theme throughout each of our characters. Now that [Sheriff Walt Longmire] knows the murderer of his wife, how does he go on? With Henry [Standing Bear], he has a new-found freedom, what does he do with it?”

• Finally, A.V. Club reports that Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski, who was so captivating as a spy in the 2007-2012 NBC-TV series Chuck, has signed on to star as a “mysterious Pinkerton detective” in Edge, a “post-Civil War-set Western, based on a series of pulpy oaters by novelist George G. Gilman.” She’ll play Beth, “a newcomer to the town of Seward, Kansas, where the various parties at play in Edge come together for their violent confrontations. She’ll be joined by Max Martini, playing Edge himself, a vengeance-seeker who comes to repay his brother’s death upon his former comrade, Meritt Harknett (Ryan Kwanten, from True Blood).”

Pierce’s Picks: “Let It Burn”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Let It Burn, by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur):
Coming off the success of last year’s Die a Stranger, this 10th installment in Hamilton’s justly lauded series about reluctant northern Michigan investigator Alex McKnight sends the ex-cop back to his former stomping grounds, Detroit. His old sergeant, Tony Grimaldi, calls Alex out of the blue to tell him that Darryl King, the teenager he’d put away years ago for the stabbing murder of a woman--a highlight of Alex’s career with the Detroit Police Department--is about to be freed from incarceration. No big deal, there shouldn’t be repercussions to Alex or anyone else as a result of King’s release; Grimaldi just thinks Alex would like to know it’s happening, that’s all. But McKnight, who has more or less retired to the remote Upper Peninsula town of Paradise, where he rents out a string of cabins his father built to summer vacationers and winter snowmobilers, decides this is an opportunity for a rare visit to the Motor City, maybe a chance to see some of his previous police colleagues and reconnect with an FBI agent to whom he once took a romantic shine. So, much to the surprise of Grimaldi--who’d only offhandedly invited him out for a libation the next time they were both in the same place at the same time--McKnight hops in his truck and wheels south to take him up on that offer. That excursion reminds Alex McKnight of how much Detroit has changed (not necessarily for the better) in the time since he worked there. It also provokes him to reconsider the incident that left his partner dead and a bullet lodged in his own chest, and to chew over some facets of the Darryl King investigation that were left unresolved. Could it be that they arrested the wrong person for homicide? Did they leave the real killer at large, free to take other lives? Let It Burn is a tense, well-constructed, and sometimes poignant tale that will make newcomers to Hamilton’s series want to go back and read the previous entries.

Of Drugs, Dads, and Devotion

My Kirkus Reviews column this week is devoted to a review of Die a Stranger, the rewarding ninth installment in Steve Hamilton’s series featuring reluctant sleuth Alex McKnight. The piece begins:

If Steve Hamilton has ever written a boring book chapter, he must have consigned it to the yawning recesses of a desk drawer someplace—back there with furry old Tootsie Rolls and mangled Post-Its—because I’ve certainly never read it.

More often, I’m impressed by the high-pitched tension, multilayered plots and character enrichment that he brings to his tales about former Detroit cop Alex McKnight. I’ve even come to enjoy McKnight’s persistent bitching about the cold weather. He does, after all, live in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula.

In a town called Paradise, of all things.

You’ll find the remainder of my Stranger critique here.