Bits and Pieces

• Say hello again to Ms. Tree! The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the protagonist, who appeared in a series of comic-book adventures during the 1980s and ’90s, and was created by author Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty, will return to print in a collection now being readied by Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime. As the magazine explains, “The eponymous character—whose name is a pun on the word ‘mystery’—is a love letter to American crime fiction as well as a part of the genre; she was inspired by Velda, the assistant to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and was often hinted to be the daughter of Dragnet’s Joe Friday. The high concept behind the character is that she’s a widow carrying on her dead husband’s private detective business, but is even more capable—and more deadly—than he ever was.” A listing at Amazon indicates that this Ms. Tree collection will be published in July.

• Knowing that British TV journalist Tom Bradby, whose career I have been following since the early 2000s—but who hasn’t published a new novel since Blood Money (2009)—finally has a fresh work, Secret Service, due out in the UK in May, I was pleased to find this piece in Shots. Penned by my old friend Ali Karim, it recalls a lunch he attended (sponsored by publisher Transworld), which honored both Bradby and another favorite fictionist of mine, Robert Goddard.

• Washington Post popular culture writer Travis M. Andrews asks, “What makes the third season of True Detective so successful?” His answer: Creator-writer Nic Pizzolatto “basically remade the first season.” To see how he makes that case, click here. FOLLOW-UP: Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall has more to say on this subject.

• Can proper use of the “Oxford comma” help your dating life?

• Back in 2017, I raved a bit about ABC-TV’s Time After Time, a science-fiction crime thriller based on both Karl Alexander’s 1979 novel of that same name and on the Nicholas Meyer-scripted movie made from Alexander’s memorable cat-and-mouse adventure. If you recall, ABC’s mid-season replacement series found not-yet-novelist H.G. Wells (played by English actor Freddie Stroma) constructing a time machine in 1893 London, only to have it used by his longtime friend, surgeon John Stevenson (Josh Bowman), who Wells discovered—too late—was the homicidal Jack the Ripper … and who promptly escaped in said time-travel contraption. Wells gave chase, winding up, like Stevenson, in 21st-century New York City, where he encountered an enchanting young historian/assistant museum curator named Jane Walker (Genesis Rodriguez), willing to help him find and stop the Ripper before he extends his murderous rampage too much farther. Unfortunately, ABC showed just five episodes of Time After Time on Sunday nights before canceling the series, and I was led to believe that only a single further episode had been filmed but left unbroadcast. That last bit of information turns out to be have been wrong. In fact, there were 12 episodes made of this Kevin Williamson-developed series; and though ABC didn’t carry them all, other networks in South Africa, Australia, Spain, and elsewhere did. Now, thanks to a streaming service called CW Seed, those additional Time After Time eps have become available to American viewers. You can watch those you previously missed here. I’m still catching up with the program, hoping that the full Season 1 run left Williamson opportunity enough to tie up multiple mysteries left hanging at the end of Episode 5.

• Don’t be too quick to believe rumors that the title of the 25th James Bond film, currently scheduled for release in April 2020, will be Shatterhand. The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig has the story.

• Are we in the midst of a Cornell Woolrich revival?

• It’s been a while since I last picked up a Dick Francis novel, but Neil Nyren’s recent recap of his horse-racing and writing career, for CrimeReads, makes me want to go searching for all of those Francis thrillers I have not yet enjoyed.

• A month ago, organizers of Maryland’s annual Malice Domestic conference announced the finalists for the 2019 Agatha Awards in six categories, including Best Short Story. More recently, author-educator Art Taylor, a previous Agatha winner, has provided links from his blog to places around the Web where you can find and read 2019’s Best Short Story contenders. Winners of the latest Agatha Awards are to be declared on May 4.

From “Chaos” to Crash

Every now and then, we like to step back from our coverage of crime-fiction news in order to check in with some favorite authors who haven’t been heard from in a while, just to see what they’ve been working on lately. In the past, for instance, we’ve reached out to David Corbett (The Devil’s Redhead) and Gar Anthony Haywood (Firecracker). Yet another writer who seems to have dropped temporarily off the radar is British TV journalist-turned-novelist Tom Bradby. I interviewed him two years ago, not long after the release of his third historical thriller, The God of Chaos (which went on to be picked as one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2005). At the time, Bradby said he was 100 pages into a novel “set in New York in 1929, during the week of the Wall Street Crash,” and he added: “I feel very strongly that it is shaping up to be the best thing I’ve ever written.” However, his prediction that said novel would appear on bookshelves “sometime in 2006” didn’t come true.

So, recently I dropped Bradby an e-mail note at his Independent Television News (ITN) office in London, asking for an update on his efforts. In response, the author first corrected estimates of when his fifth book will go on sale, saying that “my New York novel is due to be published in May 2008.” He sounded optimistic about this delay: “Both Mark Lucas [Bradby’s agent] and I feel this is the best shot we’ve had at really cracking a decent global market and we’d like to try and have a year in proof copy so we can generate us much interest as possible before it is launched.”

Bradby went on to answer my requests for a title of this book and more information about its plot. He’s already revealed that the novel will feature Joseph Quinn, the protagonist from The God of Chaos.

To answer your questions, I haven’t settled on a name. The provisional title is The Bag Man, which was inspired by this quote from my research: “The man at the top was always a politician. And working directly with him there was always a high police officer. All graft was strained through him. He was the ‘bagman.’”--Leo Katcher, The Big Bankroll

You get the idea. However, I think the title will almost certainly change. In terms of plot, it is October 1929, we’re in the middle of an election and Wall Street has just seen the first convulsions of what will become the “crash.”

It is a lousy time for a banker’s body to be found in the middle of Wall Street.

Young detective Joe Quinn, who has just made it onto the [New York Police Department]’s main headquarters squad, is sure it was murder, but everyone else would prefer a suicide, because it turns out the dead man connects a massive Wall Street scam, the mayor’s office, and organised crime.

By the time this has become clear, the body count has begun to rise; first, the mayor’s chief aide is found cut up in the back of an automobile in Central Park, then two other members of the scam are mutilated close to an abattoir on the East River.

The trouble is, the clues don’t really stack up. One of the men by the East River was castrated. The first victim, whose body was found on Wall Street, turns out to have had a plug of cotton wool soaked in chloroform put in his mouth AFTER he fell.

There is an explanation, but it’s an incredibly uncomfortable one for Joe Quinn to confront.

Once, long ago, his beloved, if distant, father was the NYPD’s number-one celebrity cop. His career went south and it looks like the dead men may have had something to do with it.

A young girl disappeared, but her killers were never found. A bunch of corrupt cops at headquarters buried the case. The question is; why? Is it conceivable some of them may even have been involved in her abduction? And if so who, exactly, are we talking about?

For Quinn, the unanswered questions begin to crowd in; why was it, exactly, that his parents chose to adopt an orphan girl from the basement that very same year--the girl for whom he now conceals a dangerous, all-consuming passion?

What is it about his father that he does not know ...?

In Hollywood-speak, Bradby characterizes his forthcoming novel as “L.A. Confidential meets Wall Street.”

Along with those obvious questions about plot and title, I also asked Bradby in my e-note where he thinks his fifth book fits into his evolution as a novelist. His reply:

I think ... it brings everything I have tried to achieve before into one novel; that noirish sense that everything is corrupt and no one is to be trusted, high politics, low crime, a really strong sense of atmosphere, time and place, and a romance with an intense family story at its heart.

I wanted to write something that had the all-round feel of a Presumed Innocent, and although I must obviously be wary of making too many claims, I feel this is my best shot at it. It has just come together well, in short.

And what about a much-rumored U.S. release of The God of Chaos? Strangely, after Bradby’s first two historical thrillers, The Master of Rain (2002) and The White Russian (which numbered among January’s favorite books of 2003), found an American publisher in Doubleday, Chaos has still not managed to leap across the Atlantic--a situation that’s unlikely change at any time soon. “There are no plans for The God of Chaos to be published in the U.S. at the moment,” Bradby writes. “I think it will be much more sensible to get this [Wall Street novel] out first and then see where we are.”

Good enough. Sign me up for a copy.