Sunday Best

This is just a quick reminder, via Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare blog, that the second season of The Marlow Murder Club and the sixth season of Unforgotten are both slated to premiere this coming Sunday, August 24, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. The two shows will each have half a dozen episodes on offer.

Bullet Points: No Indictments Here Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bullet Points: Coronavirus-Free Edition

That’s right: It’s taken me two weeks, but I have apparently survived the dreaded COVID-19. I had taken all of the shots and all of the boosters, and yet it still managed to tackle me. The virus manifested in my body mostly as a minor cold, though I did lose my sense of taste, as well. After a negative COVID test yesterday, I look forward to spending some quality time outside of my house!

• Among the festivities marking its “70th Jubilee” this year, the British Crime Writers’ Association will present an exhibition of “memorabilia from its archives,” which date back to the organization’s founding (by prolific author John Creasey) in 1953. Shotsmag Confidential reports that this display “will be part of the Alibis in the Archives crime writing weekend which runs 9-11 June at Gladstone’s Library in Wales, as well as other special events linked to National Crime Reading Month in June.” More specifics to come.

• “Amazon continues its cost-cutting measures apace,” observes In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson. “First it was laying off almost 30,000 staffers, then it was eliminating its newspaper/magazine subscription service, closing the textbook buy-back service, shuttering all of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, and cutting off the publishing house, Westland, which published works of several bestselling authors in India. Now, Amazon is also shutting down the Book Depository online shop that it bought in 2011 …” I’m sad to hear about Book Depository. I’ve ordered a variety of British crime novels from there over the last few years, though most of my UK-buying lately has been through Blackwell’s. Lawson goes on to speculate whether “other [Amazon-owned] book services are under the gun, including AbeBooks, et al.—especially since Kobo just announced it’s opening its Kobo Plus subscription service to the U.S. market, making it a viable alternative to Kindle Unlimited and Audible.”

• Easter is this coming Sunday, April 9, and blogger Janet Rudolph welcomes the occasion with an update of her lengthy list of crime and mystery fiction connected to the holiday. From Laurien Berenson’s Show Me the Bunny and J.M. Griffin’s Hop ’Til You Drop, to Julie Hyzy’s Eggsecutive Orders and Robert Wilson’s fabulous The Blind Man of Seville (which I’d forgotten takes place during Easter), there’s something in that collection to satisfy most tastes.

• And enjoy your påskekrim, everyone!

• The history of that most iconic of 20th-century crime-pulp periodicals, Black Mask, is the focus of a new series from Pulp Flakes blogger Sai Shankar. His fellow blog writer, Evan Lewis (of Davy Crockett’s Almanack fame), notes that Shankar will be “looking into the history of the magazine, reviewing random issues from different editors, and seeing how the magazine changed under them.” You can check out the series’ first installment by clicking here.

• Now, this is how readers ought to be cautioned in regard to older books containing material that may be offensive to modern-day sensibilities! Literary Hub says Britain-based publisher Pan Macmillan’s latest edition of Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, features an introductory message reading:

Gone with the Wind is a novel which includes problematic elements including the romanticisation of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery.

The novel includes the representation of unacceptable practices, racist and stereotypical depictions and troubling themes, characterisation, language and imagery.

The text of this book remains true to the original in every way and is reflective of the language and period in which it was originally written.

We want to alert readers that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written and which are true to the context of the historical setting of this novel.

Pan Macmillan believes changing the text to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so has chosen to leave the text in its entirety.

This does not, however, constitute an endorsement of the characterisation, content or language used.

Better this, than recent, ham-handed efforts to strip dubious references and phrasings from classic works by Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and Roald Dahl—practices The New York Times says “have drawn intense public scrutiny” and “left publishers and literary estates grappling with how to preserve an author’s original intent while ensuring that their work continues to resonate—and sell.”

• In her latest blog post, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine editor Janet Hutchings provides a number of interesting facts about her publication’s subscription history. Including that, during the mid-1900s era of “more lurid and sexually explicit” cover illustrations, “only newsstand buyers could obtain issues with cover art. Subscribers got plain-type covers.” I would’ve joined the former crowd!

(Above) A trailer for the sophomore series of Dalgliesh.

• Season 2 of the 1970s-set TV drama Dalgliesh, starring Bertie Carver as P.D. James protagonist Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, will premiere on Monday, April 24, on the subscription streaming service AcornTV. The Web site Premiere Date explains that six episodes will comprise this sophomore run, bringing three different James books to the small screen, each of them two parts long. First up will be Death of an Expert Witness; second will come A Certain Justice, debuting on Monday, May 1; and the final adaptation will be of The Murder Room, beginning on Monday, May 8. A third-season renewal of Dalgliesh has already been confirmed.

• Although Season 5 of Unforgotten, now starring Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar, has already run its course in Great Britain, while American viewers await news of its broadcast on this side of the Atlantic. Yet The Killing Times brings news that this cold-case crime drama has been awarded a sixth season by UK network ITV. Furthermore, series writer Chris Lang discloses that those future episodes will find London detectives Jessica “Jessie” James and Sunil “Sunny” Khan pursuing a murder case “that’ll take them all the way from the wild north Devon coast, to the railroads of Birmingham, Alabama. Yes sir, Unforgotten is heading Stateside.”

• English author Sarah Pinborough is currently adapting her 2022 thriller, Insomnia, into a series for TV streamer Paramount+ . Deadline says the story tells of “successful career woman Emma Averill, who fears she is losing her mind after suffering from sleep deprivation two weeks before turning 40. Her mother had a similar experience at the same age, suffering a violent psychotic breakdown on the night of her 40th birthday. But even as she relives the experience of her mother, Averill believes other forces may be at work. Her mother is hospitalized with a sudden injury, her estranged sister returns without warning, and she feels as if she is being watched. Only by investigating the truth of her painful past, can she find the answers to her present.” Filming on the show is set to commence later this year.

• Finally, I bid an appreciative adieu to Canadian-born actress Sharon Acker, who apparently died at a Toronto, Ontario, retirement home on March 16. She was 87 years old. Acker made her film debut in the 1957 British comedy Lucky Jim, based on Kingsley Amis’ novel of that same name. She went on to roles in the thriller Point Blank and the drama Don’t Let the Angels Fall. But it was the TV field where Acker really grew her career, featuring in shows such as It Takes a Thief, Alias Smith and Jones, McMillan & Wife, Harry O, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, Quincy, M.E., and Crazy Like a Fox. She portrayed an alien from an overpopulated planet on the original Star Trek; the wife of an idealistic national legislator in The Bold Ones: The Senator; a widowed love interest for Richard Boone in the Old West mystery Hec Ramsey; and secretary Della Street to Monte Markham’s eponymous defense attorney in 1973’s ill-fated reboot, The New Perry Mason. Variety says, “Her final TV credit came in 1992 with an appearance on The Young and the Restless.” I always found Acker’s performances watchable, even when she was working with mediocre scripts. Hers is a face not soon to fade from my memory.

Bullet Points: Random Finds Edition

• It seems that British comedy writer John Finnemore (Cabin Pressure), one of the few people known to have solved the literary puzzle Cain’s Jawbone, has penned “an official sequel” to that work. As The Guardian’s Sarah Shaffi explains, the Cain’s Jawbone murder mystery was originally published in 1934, and was created by Edward Powys Mathers (aka “Torquemada”), the “cryptic crossword compiler” for Britain’s Observer newspaper. Mathers’ puzzle “can only be solved if readers rearrange its 100 pages in the correct order,” says Shaffi. “It became a literary phenomenon after book fans on TikTok discovered it.” About the contents of Finnemore’s sequel—set for release next year—The Guardian provides the following:

A locked room mystery, Finnemore’s new whodunnit hinges on a person found stabbed to death in the study of a complete stranger. The room was securely locked from the inside, but no weapon—or murderer—has ever been found, and the police investigation discovered no credible suspects or likely motive.

The murderer keeps, safely locked in a drawer, a box of 100 picture postcards. If arranged in the correct order and properly understood, these postcards will explain the murder in the study, and nine others that took place the same year. Readers need to re-order the postcards, one side of which features text, the other an image which is also a clue, in sequence to correctly solve and explain the 10 murders.

For now, Finnemore’s book, due out from crowdfunding publisher Unbound, is listed only as Untitled Mystery. However, Shaffi reports that “the title will be revealed to those who pledge during the crowdfunding campaign.” As of this writing, that campaign has 1,061 supporters at various reward levels.

• Crime Fiction Lover reports that the popular ITV-TV crime drama Unforgotten will return to British airwaves on Monday, February 27. This fifth season of the show finds Irish actress Sinéad Keenan stepping into shoes vacated by Nicola Walker, whose character, Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, was killed suddenly in a car crash at the end of Series 4. (Walker subsequently went on to headline the Alibi network’s Annika, which has been renewed for a second season.) Keenan has been cast as DCI Jessica James, who joins series regular DCI Sunil “Sunny” Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) in managing a team of London police detectives who specialize in solving cold cases. Their initial investigation together will, of course, be a “devilishly tricky one,” CFL explains. “During the renovation of a period property in [the West London district of] Hammersmith, a body is found bricked into the chimney. At first, Jessica is sceptical and warns that with its tight resources the team can only afford to investigate cases that have consequences in the here-and-now. After all, there’s the suggestion that the body could date as far back as the 1930s.” As usual, Season 5 will comprise six episodes. The UK blog What to Watch notes that “A U.S. release date has still to be announced.”

• Meanwhile, the ninth and concluding season of Endeavour—a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse—is scheduled to begin its run on the same British network, ITV, come Sunday, February 26. There will be just three 90-minute episodes this time out, concluding on March 12. Although The Killing Times says Season 9 “plot details are currently embargoed,” Radio Times observes that the program’s “fans are bracing themselves for some sad scenes in the final three episodes, which will reveal how Morse (Shaun Evans) came to be estranged from his crime-solving partner, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam).” The PBS-TV Web site supplies nary a clue as to when this last season of Endeavour might become available to American viewers, but it does offer a brief video that recaps scenes from Evans’ decade spent in the role of Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse.

• Speaking of Shaun Evans, it appears he will star with Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty) in a four-part ITV adaptation of Delia Balmer’s 2017 true-crime memoir, Living with a Serial Killer. The story, according to Deadline, will focus on Balmer, a nurse “who fell for murderer John Sweeney (Evans) and overcame a horrific attack to provide vital evidence in the prosecution against her former lover.” Using a script by Nick Stevens (The Pembrokeshire Murders), filming on this mini-series is expected to begin next month.

• Season 2 of the HBO-TV series Perry Mason, starring Matthew Rhys, is slated to premiere on Monday, March 6. I haven’t seen much information about what to expect from those eight new episodes, but the Web site FedRegsAdvisor states they’ll be set in 1933—the last year of America’s failed Prohibition experiment—“with the protagonist’s law company taking on civil issues as opposed to criminal justice cases.” After the offspring of a powerful oil company exec is slain cruelly, and Los Angeles’ Depression-era “Hoovervilles” are searched for “the most obvious suspects, … Perry, Della [Street], and Paul [Drake] find themselves at the center of a case that reveals vast conspiracies and forces them to consider what it means to be truly guilty.” A most promising trailer for Season 2 is available here.

• A final TV note: The UK channel BBC One has released early images from Wolf, an upcoming crime drama based on the late author Mo Hayder’s novels about Detective Inspector Jack Caffery. English actor Ukweli Roach will be portraying Caffery.

• Because I have committed myself to attending this year’s Bouchercon, I’ve been on alert for news about that event. Which is why I noticed this generous offer. From In Reference to Murder: “A new Bouchercon Scholarship Award Program has been established to help mystery fans and writers with a financial subsidy. This subsidy covers registration fees for the annual Bouchercon convention, scheduled to be held in San Diego in 2023, as well as travel and lodging costs, reimbursed up to $500.00 (for up to five awardees). Interested applicants will need to write a 300- to 500-word essay on the applicant’s interest in attending Bouchercon and in the mystery genre and be willing to volunteer for no less than four hours at the event. The deadline is May 1st, with scholarship winners announced June 1.” Click here to find applications specifics.

• Nero Wolfe fans will find something extra to like about this San Diego Bouchercon. A banquet in honor of their favorite fictional sleuth has been scheduled for Friday, September 1, at Morton’s Steakhouse on J Street, “a 2-minute walk from the convention hotel, with shuttle rides available.” The cost is $175 per person, and it looks as if attendance is limited to members of the Wolfe Pack literary society.

• Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor have been scoring plenty of favorable press coverage for their new, first-ever Mickey Spillane biography, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction (Mysterious Press). That includes a joint interview with the Web site Bookreporter, from which we learn, for instance, why Spillane took a decade-long hiatus from writing after Kiss Me, Deadly was published in 1952. My humble contribution to these kudos is a short critique I posted earlier this week in January Magazine. Here it is in its entirety:

“The chewing gum of American literature” is how crime novelist Mickey Spillane described his books, which typically blended eye-for-an-eye justice with risqué innuendos and granite-chinned philosophizing (“Too many times naked women and death walked side by side”). And boy, did readers eat up his fiction, making his first Mike Hammer private-eye yarn, 1947’s I, the Jury, into a best-seller that spawned a dozen sequels and turned its protagonist into a radio, film, and TV fixture. Spillane developed his own media persona along the way, part-Hammer (he portrayed his Gotham gumshoe in a 1963 film, The Girl Hunters) and part-ham (he spoofed himself in a succession of Miller Lite beer commercials). In this enlightening biography, fellow writers Collins (his friend and posthumous collaborator) and Traylor make the most of their extraordinary access to Spillane’s personal archives, delivering incisive perspectives on his comic-book years, his multiple marriages, his pugnaciousness and wont to embellish the facts of his life, his surprising conversion by Jehovah’s Witnesses, his vexation with Hollywood, and his eventual recognition by peers who’d earlier condemned him as “a vulgar pulpmeister.” This book’s paramount success, though, is in casting Spillane as a trendsetting stylist, who recognized early the value of paperback publication and helped shape late-20th-century detective fiction.

• Until recently, I knew Mark Dawidziak mainly as the author of a fine 1989 TV retrospective, The Columbo Phile: A Casebook. But he is the man, too, behind a new biography that features prominently on my must-have list: A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe (St. Martin’s Press). In a CrimeReads extract from that book, Dawidziak recounts the “ongoing fascination” with Poe’s death, in Baltimore, at the tender age of 40—a subject that A Mystery of Mysteries addresses in some detail. Also posted recently in CrimeReads was Dean Jobb’s terrific look back at Poe’s 1843 horror story, “The Black Cat,” and the real-life murder that inspired it.

• Dammit! As I mentioned here last month, I have been looking forward to watching Marlowe, an adaptation of Benjamin Black’s 2014 Philip Marlowe continuation novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, which debuted in theaters last week. Unfortunately, The A.V. Club’s Ray Greene is rather less than enthusiastic about this Liam Neeson film. As he remarks in a review, “Marlowe has seen it all—he’s a voyeur of the very worst human behaviors, and he’s world-weary to a fault. Liam is just plain weary—laconic, not iconic. Where Bogie and even a comparably aged Robert Mitchum were able to convey Marlowe as a man who at least remembers what caring felt like, Neeson is going through the motions of going through the motions. And the age thing doesn’t help. The only time Neeson’s Marlowe seems truly vulnerable is when he talks about the possibility of regaining his police pension. ‘I’m getting too old for this’ he moans after a fistfight, tempting audience agreement with the very phrase.” I’ll still plump for tickets to Marlowe, but go into it with lowered expectations.

• Thanks to the release of Poker Face on the Peacock streaming service, a 10-part “howcatchem” crime/comedy series that has garnered plenty of comparisons to Columbo, Peter Falk’s iconic L.A. police lieutenant has been enjoying a recent wave of reconsideration in critical circles. In this piece for the Web site of Boston’s WBUR-FM radio, Ed Siegel recalls an interview he had over dinner with Falk in the mid-’80s. In the meantime, Slate’s Cameron Gorman explains how the Internet turned Columbo “into a sex symbol and queer icon.”

• I am dearly hoping that this celebration of crime novelist Peter Robinson’s life and literary endeavors, to be held at England’s University of Leeds in early April, will be broadcast live via the Web. Robinson, you’ll recall, died last October at age 72.

• Tomorrow is Presidents’ Day here in the States—time to pour through Janet Rudolph’s extensive collection of mysteries that guest star or are built around American chief executives. You might also wish to revisit this article I wrote for CrimeReads about novels featuring authentic or imagined U.S. presidents.

• Subjects covered in Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots range from his long-ago stroke to the 1951 espionage film Decision Before Dawn and Steven Powell’s biography of James Ellroy, plus mentions of brand-new works by Stephen O’Shea, Kathleen Kent, David Brierley, Karen Smirnoff, and others.

• Worth checking out as well is the new, Winter 2013 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, which is stuffed full of “best crime fiction” choices from the year that just was—selected both by DP critics and outside sources. Among this edition’s other contents are a wrap-up of Depression-era mysteries; reviews columns from such regulars as Ted Hertel, Meredith Anthony, and Kristopher Zgorski; and news that DP has added four contributors to its stable, all refugees from the recently closed Mystery Scene magazine: Kevin Burton Smith, Robin Agnew, Hank Wagner, and Craig Sisterson. Subscribe to this quarterly, or buy the Winter 2013 issue alone, by clicking here.

• And isn’t this interesting. Ramona Emerson’s 2022 crime/horror thriller, Shutter (Soho Crime), has moved up to the shortlist of titles vying for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards. It’s been nominated for both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Winners are to be announced on March 2 during an evening ceremony at The Town Hall in New York City.

Big Time for the Small Screen

(Above) A trailer for the latest—and last—series of Happy Valley.

Sarah Lancashire’s much-anticipated third season of the BBC One TV series Happy Valley debuted on New Year’s Day in the UK, and it’s hoped that U.S. audiences might soon see it turn up as well on Netflix (though no broadcast date has yet been confirmed). However, that’s only one of myriad crime dramas set to premiere in the coming months, both in Europe and America. The Killing Times today posted what it calls “a terrifying amount to look forward to”—almost 100 shows, both new and returning productions.

In addition to Happy Valley, that latter category includes Vera, Unforgotten (with Sinéad Keenan replacing Nicola Walker as co-star), Grace, Grantchester, the final season of Endeavour, Van der Valk, Dalgliesh, Perry Mason, Candice Renoir, The Chelsea Detective, and True Detective (this time set in Alaska, and starring Jodie Foster).

They’ll be joined by newcomers such as Blue Lights, about a mother in her 40s who leaves her post as a social worker to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland; The Gallow’s Pole, based on a book by Benjamin Myers and following “a gang of weavers and land-workers [who] embark upon a revolutionary criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history”; Mystery Road: Origin, a prequel to the Australian show starring Aaron Pedersen; Six Four, inspired by the 2012 novel of that same name by Japanese author Hideo Yokoyama; The Good Ship Murder, “set aboard a luxury cruise liner touring everyone’s favourite Mediterranean holiday hotspots” and leading to “a wave of murder mysteries”; Faking Hitler, in which a reporter falls for the story of a phony Adolf Hitler diary; White House Plumbers, “a five-part series that tells the true story of how [Richard] Nixon’s own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, accidentally toppled the presidency they were trying to protect”; The Breakthrough, about the original use of genealogical research to solve a murder—really two, in Sweden; and Sophie Rundle’s The Diplomat, focusing on efforts by the UK’s Barcelona Consul “to protect British nationals who find themselves in trouble in the Catalan city.”

(Left) Sophie Rundle is slated to star in Alibi-TV’s The Diplomat.

There’s no mention here of Acorn’s The Brokenwood Mysteries, which has been renewed for a ninth series, or Prime Video’s Spanish historical whodunit, A Private Affair, which was one of my favorite finds of 2022, and with any luck will be back for a sophomore season. Nor does The Killing Times list all of the American programs kicking off in early 2023, among them Will Trent, based on Karin Slaughter’s books following Special Agent Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez), and Poker Face, the first televised offering from Knives Out director Rian Johnson, starring Natasha Lyonne as peripatetic private investigator Charlie Cale. But then, doing so would well exceed 100 entries.

* * *

Along similar lines, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph is out today with news regarding three mystery dramas coming to PBS-TV this year: the third season of Vienna Blood, premiering on January 8; Ridley, starring Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar and coming in June; and the police procedural D.I. Ray, to be broadcast in July (but made available in February through the member benefit service PBS Passport).

Bullet Points: Another Overstuffed Edition

• Let’s have a show of hands: Who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. playing private investigator Larry Miller in the 1969 movie The Pigeon? I would’ve counted myself among the uninformed until the other day, when I happened across that 90-minute ABC Movie of the Week on YouTube. (Watch it here, while you can!) Scripted by Edward J. Lakso (The Mod Squad, Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels) and Stanley Roberts (Mannix, Petrocelli, Police Woman), the teleflick “is great,” according to an IMDb review, “because Sammy … doesn’t take himself too seriously and the dialogue uses a number of clichés from the 60’s. Sammy is searching for a girl who doesn’t want to be found. I especially love the scenes between Sammy and Roy Glenn, the veteran actor who plays his dad, a police lieutenant.” Why Wikipedia doesn’t list The Pigeon among Davis’ motion-picture and TV credits, but does include Poor Devil, an awful NBC comedy pilot from 1973, is really anybody’s guess.

• Speaking of forgotten crime-solvers, how about Valerie Bertinelli in the 1990 CBS-TV series Sydney? As Wikipedia recalls, that erstwhile One Day at a Time actress headlined as Sydney Kells, “the daughter of a now-deceased policeman, [who] brings her New York City detective agency (in which she is the only investigator) back to her hometown and her family.” Matthew Perry (later of Friends) held forth as Kells’ rookie-cop brother, while Craig Bierko portrayed an attorney “with whom she shares sexual chemistry.” This spring replacement series lasted only 13 episodes. The best thing about it may have been its opening theme, “Finish What Ya Started,” by Bertinelli’s then-hubby Eddie Van Halen. Clickety-clack right here to watch the main title sequence from Sydney, paired with the introduction to her 1993-1994 sitcom, Café Americain.

• One more YouTube discovery: The Blue Knight, a 1973 NBC mini-series starring William Holden, Lee Remick, Sam Elliott, and Joe Santos, and based on Joseph Wambaugh’s 1972 novel of that same title. It’s been many years since I saw this teleflick with Holden as William “Bumper” Morgan, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department—long enough that I didn’t even remember it was originally broadcast in one-hour segments over four consecutive nights. The production was popular enough to spawn a subsequent series, likewise called The Blue Knight (but on CBS, rather than NBC), starring George Kennedy as Morgan; it ran for two seasons, from 1975 to 1976.

• Oh alright, here’s another: Jigsaw, a 1968 film (“originally made for television,” says Wikipedia, “but shown first in theaters”) starring Bradford Dillman, Harry Guardino, Hope Lange, Michael J. Pollard, and a young Susan Saint James. “After someone places sugar cubes laced with LSD in his cup of coffee,” the YouTube plot synopsis reads, “Jonathan Fields [Dillman] regains consciousness, only to find a woman drowned in his bathtub and flecks of blood on his hands and clothes. Suffering from amnesia, Fields can't think of anyplace else to turn, so he hires Arthur Belding [Guardino], a private detective, to help him find out what happened.” Jigsaw is a remake of 1965’s Mirage.

• Dexter: New Blood, the 10-episode revival of Michael C. Hall’s 2006-2013 drama, Dexter, is now expected to appear on Showtime come November 7. Wikipedia says this show will open “approximately ten years after the original series’ finale.” In the meanwhile, Hall’s Dexter Morgan “has moved to the fictional small town of Iron Lake, New York, hiding his identity under the name of Jimmy Lindsay, a local shopkeeper. He has developed a relationship with Angela Bishop, the town’s chief of police, and has suppressed his serial killing urges. A string of incidents around Iron Lake cause Dexter to fear that the ‘dark passenger’ within him will reveal itself.” The Killing Times offers a 90-second trailer for Dexter: New Blood, which incorporates a version of Del Shannon’s 1961 hit song, “Runaway” (previously employed as the theme for the 1986-1988 NBC police drama Crime Story).

• Almost five years ago, NBC-TV optioned Ben H. Winters’ Edgar Award-winning 2012 science fiction/mystery novel, The Last Policeman, with hopes of creating a series from it. Nothing came of that deal. Now, reports Tor.com, writer-producer Kyle Killen (Awake, Mind Games) is working on a pilot for Fox-TV, based on the same book, the resulting series—to be retitled The Last Police—expected to debut as part of the 2021/2022 season. Deadline explains that this show will follow “a small-town police detective, who, as an asteroid races toward an apocalyptic collision with Earth, believes she’s been chosen to save humanity, while her cynical partner can’t decide what he’ll enjoy more: her delusional failure, or the end of the world itself.” In Winters’ “existential detective novel,” the protagonist was a young male police detective in New Hampshire, one Henry Palace. In 2012, the author suggested that the role go to Jim True-Frost (The Wire, Manifest); no word yet on who might headline Fox’s adaptation.

• This is splendid news, from In Reference to Murder: “The new season of BritBox’s modern cozy mystery series, McDonald & Dodds, premieres on August 3rd. The series follows newly promoted DCI McDonald and veteran sergeant Dodds as they investigate complex mysteries with a web of clues that has everyone guessing who are the real victims and villains. Ahead of the new season, BritBox dropped a trailer, which you can view here.”

• Actress Jessica Walter, who died in March at age 80, has been nominated for a posthumous Emmy Award “for her voice-over work in FX/FXX’s animated comedy series Archer,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Walter voiced the toxic matriarch Malory Archer, the abrasive mother of H. Jon Benjamin’s Sterling Archer. She’s being recognized for her work in the sixth episode of the 11th season, ‘The Double Date.’” Should Walter secure this Emmy, it would be the second of her career; in 1975, she won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series honors for her portrayal of San Francisco’s first female chief of detectives in the NBC Mystery Movie rotator Amy Prentiss.

• In the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, author and New York Times crime-fiction columnist Sarah Weinman gives us a sneak peek of her latest true-crime book, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free. Due out in February 2022, it tells the bizarre story of Edgar Herbert Smith, who killed a 15-year-old New Jersey honor student in 1957, subsequently contested his case in the media—being given special support by conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.—and, after winning a retrial and release, kidnapped and tried to kill another woman, this time in California. “By the time Scoundrel is published next year,” Weinman explains, “more than seven years will have passed since I first began researching and reporting the project. I can’t wait to fill you all in on what that entailed, the voluminous trove of documents and letters I consulted across multiple archives, the people I spoke with, and the strange juxtaposition of criminal justice, conservative thought, and book publishing that connected the crimes and misdeeds of one man who fooled so many into looking past his worst instincts to see what was never really there.”

• The Southern California town of Agoura Hills has selected Lee Goldberg’s Lost Hills (2020), his first novel featuring Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Eve Ronin, as its One City One Book 2021 honoree. “That means,” says Goldberg in his blog, “the local libraries, schools, etc. will be encouraging everyone to read the book and to come to City Hall on Sept. 30th to see me in conversation, buy a copy of my book if they haven’t already … and get their copies signed. Past honorees include Michael Connelly and Dick Van Dyke.” Admission to Goldberg’s Thursday, September 30, appearance will be free, but space is limited and advance registration is required; click here after August 1 to find out more.

• A big change for Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association:

For the first time in its 68-year history, the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association will allow self-published authors to join its ranks. The move comes after the CWA consulted its members, who voted with an 84% majority in favour to accept self-published authors.

Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, said: “The founding mission of the CWA was to support, promote and celebrate the crime genre and its authors. In the past, we only accepted traditionally published authors into the CWA, as this was the best indicator of quality. The publishing landscape has changed in recent years, and self-publishing has become a route for professional writers, and indeed there are many trailblazers in this field. The time is right to update our membership criteria.”

The news release adds: “Self-published authors wishing to become a CWA member will need to demonstrate a level of professionalism through a simple-to-complete application form. This will be available on the CWA website from 13 September, when the CWA will first accept applications.”

• It sounds as if this year’s Killer Nashville convention, expected to take place in Franklin, Tennessee, from August 19 to 22, is coming along right on schedule. Keynote speakers at this in-person event will be Walter Mosley, J.T. Ellison, and Lisa Black. More information is available here for anyone who would like to participate, but hasn’t yet registered. The full four-day registration will set you back $419.

• “Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is honoring the memory of its 2020 Grand Master, the late Barbara Neely, with a scholarship to new Black writers …,” writes Mystery Scene magazine’s Oline Cogdill. “MWA will annually present two scholarships of $2,000 each. One scholarship will be for an aspiring Black writer who has yet to publish in the crime or mystery field, and another for Black authors who have already published in crime or mystery.” September 30, 2021, is the deadline for applications (available here); a winner will be declared “in the late fall.” Click here for more information.

• Like millions of other Americans, my wife and I have been watching Season 4 of Unforgotten, part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! summer schedule. There are three additional Sunday-night installments yet to come, but already, Crimespree Magazine’s Erin Mitchell has declared Unforgotten, which stars Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as London-based cold-case detectives, “the best show on television.” She continues: “Unforgotten is one of those rare shows that does not tell a story at its surface, doesn’t just lead us on a step-by-step procedural journey. The procedure is there, of course, but the subtlety of the remarkable performances addresses the characters’ motivation to allow us to experience the often painful journey though the case. In that way, the experience of watching it is more akin to reading a book, which is the highest praise I can give a TV show.” A 90-second introduction to Season 4 is embedded below.



• Regé-Jean Page, a popular alumnus of the Netflix series Bridgerton, is set to star as The Saint, aka Simon Templar, in a new film based around that Leslie Charteris-created, “Robin Hood-esque criminal and thief for hire.” Deadline says the forthcoming Paramount picture “will be a completely new take that reimagines the character and world around him.” Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg, nephew of Saint authority Burl Barer (The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Television, and Film), opines on Facebook that Page “will make a great Saint, but I hope they don’t stray too far from what we all loved about Leslie Charteris’ books, the George Sanders movies, and the [1962-1969] Roger Moore TV series.”

• With the abundance of resources provided in The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column blogroll, you can be excused for not noticing when a new site is added. But let me direct your attention to one in particular: The Ross Macdonald Blog. Composed by Neil Albert, author of the Dave Garrett series (The January Corpse, etc.), it’s turning the critical microscope on every one of Macdonald’s novels, in chronological order, beginning with his non-Lew Archer yarns. Albert—who calls Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar) “one of the three greatest writers in the genre of the hardboiled private eye, along with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler” (no argument from yours truly)—has been working on this site primarily since the end of last year, and has so far progressed to The Three Roads (1948), Macdonald’s fourth novel. Each book is being considered in detail, over a succession of postings, The Dark Tunnel (1944) and Trouble Follows Me (1946) having each generated 11 entries. (Hat tip to Kevin Burton Smith.)

• Nobody who reads this page regularly should be surprised to hear that I own the 30th-anniversary edition of Mark Dawidziak’s The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, a work originally published in 1989. But now comes word of Bonaventure Press’ Shooting Columbo: The Lives and Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective, due out this coming September and written by David Koenig. Although somewhat shorter than Dawidziak’s book (only 248 pages, compared with 410), Shooting Columbo promises behind-the-scenes intelligence about that iconic Peter Falk series, plus “a blow-by-blow account of the making of all 69 classic mysteries, from the first [figurative] pilot, Prescription: Murder, to the last special, Columbo Likes the Nightlife.” The question is, do I need Koenig’s book on my shelves, too?

• Caroline Crampton hosts the podcast Shedunnit, but she’s also the author of a map and guide called Agatha Christie’s England, from London-based Herb Lester Associates, which years ago produced The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles. Already out in England, and due for a September release in the States, Crampton’s publication focuses on “the real and fictional locations in the Queen of Crime’s canon,” as she writes in her e-mail newsletter. “There are dozens of places included, and for each I’ve researched why and how Christie wrote about them. I certainly felt like I gained a greater understanding of her work in the process of putting the guide together, and if you read it I hope you will feel the same.”

• From the “everything old is new again” department: TV Guide critic Matt Roush recently included this exchange in his blog:

Question: Will some forward-thinking Hollywood executive reboot the George Peppard vehicle Banacek? —Steve O.

Matt Roush: Would a reboot of a 1970s private-eye series really be forward-thinking? I loved the randomness of this suggestion, because there were so many higher-profile spokes of NBC’s “Mystery Movie” wheel: McCloud, McMillan and Wife, and, of course, Columbo. Seriously, though, because Banacek is lesser known, reviving a show and a hero that had a sense of humor about itself wouldn’t be the worst idea. In the bigger picture, I’d like to see a network try the “mystery wheel” format again, rotating its series on a weekly or monthly basis. Something like that could air year-round with fewer episodes per series, and that might be refreshing.

While I cringe a bit at Roush labeling Thomas Banacek a “private eye” (he was actually a Boston insurance investigator), I applaud his optimism on the matter of resuscitating television’s once-widespread “wheel series” format (about which I wrote last summer in CrimeReads). And Banacek—with its suave, totally immodest lead and supposedly impossible crimes—might, indeed, make for a fun reboot. But who do you think should fill Peppard’s loafers?

• Bay Area author-photographer Mark Coggins is out with Season 2 of his podcast, Riordan’s Desk. He launched this project in May 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a chapter-by-chapter reading of his seventh August Riordan private-eye novel, 2019’s The Dead Beat Scroll. Earlier this month, he packaged up the final installment of Season 2, a full reading (35 chapters in all) of his 2015 Riordan yarn, No Hard Feelings. And Coggins has already begun reading from Candy from Strangers (2006), his third Riordan mystery. Listen to the complete run of Riordan’s Desk by clicking here.

• Listen up, Bosch fans! “The Everybody Counts Podcast talks Bosch Season 7, Episode 5 and interviews Michael Connelly.”

• Charlie Chan authority Lou Armagno informs us that 92-year-old actor James Hong, who portrayed “Son No.1 to J. Carrol Naish’s Charlie Chan in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan [1957-1958], is to be honored next year with a star on Los Angeles’ Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hong, born in Minneapolis to Hong Kongese parents, and “the last living actor to star as a primary Chan character, either in film or television,” will be the third Chan cast member honored in this fashion; Keye Luke and the aforementioned J. Carrol Naish both won stars before him. Hong’s list of credits extends well beyond The New Adventures of Charlie Chan to include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, Harry O, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown.

• “Edgar Allan Poe: Self-Help Guru”?

• From a patron of The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page: “I’m not making light of the condominium disaster in Florida, but every time a reporter who is covering that story says ‘Surfside,’ this song pops into my head.” Learn more about this other Surfside here.

• The blog maintained by History (formerly The History Channel) recently highlighted what it claims are “the most influential classic shows” from the 1950s, “TV’s “Golden Age.” In the category of crime (click here, then scroll to the bottom of the page), it mentions Martin Kane, Private Eye (1949-1954), Man Against Crime (1949-1954), and Dragnet (1951-1959). But what about Naked City (1958-1959, 1960-1963), Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-1959), M Squad (1957-1960), Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960), Decoy (1957-1959), Have Gun—Will Travel (1957-1963), 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964), Perry Mason (1957-1966), and Peter Gunn (1958-1961)? Today’s younger viewers may be unaware of this, but the ’50s brought us myriad TV detective shows that are still worth watching.

• On the subject of vintage small-screen shows, how about T.H.E. Cat (1966-1967), which starred Robert Loggia as a San Francisco cat burglar named Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, and spun off a quartet of comic-book adventures?

• Was this really a good idea? You may recall that Deadline reported last year, “James Patterson and Condé Nast are teaming to revive vintage crime fighter The Shadow in a series of books that will also aim to be adapted for the screen.” Hachette Book Group imprint Little, Brown will publish the original series … The Shadow [aka society gadabout Lamont Cranston], a signature New York vigilante, originated in the 1930s as a series of pulp novels by Walter B. Gibson. A popular radio drama based on the books featured the voice of Orson Welles. In 1994, Universal released a feature film adaptation starring Alec Baldwin.” Anyway, Patterson’s introductory entry in this new series, set in the late 21st century and simply titled The Shadow, came out on July 13, and was greeted with more than a modicum of skepticism. San Francisco tour guide and author Don Herron remarks, “I had thought about giving it a shot, and then I saw the cover [shown on the left]. The only thought I could process was Where the fuck is HIS HAT???”

• Yellow Perils is no more enthusiastic about the book.

• Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest (1929), has inspired a number of cinematic creations over the years, including the 1930 picture Roadhouse Nights and the 2005 neo-noir mystery Brick. But the book, which stars Hammett’s nameless San Francisco private eye, the Continental Op, has never been given a faithful adaptation. It did once come close, however, as a series of newspaper clippings in Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West makes clear. In 1941, the Los Angeles Times carried word of Paramount Pictures decision not to remake its 1935 film based on Hammett’s fourth novel, The Glass Key, but to instead develop a script from Red Harvest. Brian Donlevy was slated to portray the Op, with Paulette Goddard and a young Alan Ladd helping to fill out the cast. Unfortunately, that film was first “postponed” and later abandoned. Hoping to boost Ladd’s Hollywood career, Paramount decided to remake The Glass Key after all. Donlevy was nominally the headliner, but Ladd was the real star of that production, while Veronica Lake replaced Goddard as its distaff attraction.

• Did author Hammett really break the window of a downtown department store in Miami, Florida, during a four-day visit he made to that city in 1934? The Palm Beach Post recalled the story late last year, but it may just be an urban legend.

• Talk about dropping the ball! I realized this week that, while I had reported on nominees for the 2021 Scribe Awards, I never announced the winners. In the category of greatest interested to crime-fiction readers—“General Original Novel and Adapted Novel”—Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s 12th Mike Hammer novel, Masquerade for Murder (2020), lost out to a video-game-related adventure, Day Zero: Watchdogs Legion, by James Swallow and Josh Reynolds (Aconyte).

• Were I able to attend this year’s PulpFest, taking place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 19th through 22nd, I would definitely want to be in the audience for “popular culture scholar” Doug Ellis’ presentation, “The Weird Tales of Margaret Brundage.” “Initially disguising her gender by signing her work as M. Brundage, the artist redefined sensuality for the already scandalous pulp market,” observes the PulpFest Web site. “Her work was later targeted by New York Mayor LaGuardia’s 1938 decency campaign. … Margaret Brundage [1900-1976] created 66 covers for Weird Tales between 1932 and 1945, making her the most in-demand cover artist for the fantasy, horror, and science-fiction magazine. Only Virgil Finlay was a close rival.” Ellis’ remarks on Brundage are scheduled for Friday, August 20.

• The best interview I’ve heard with T.J. Newman, the former flight attendant and author of the new thriller Falling (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), was conducted by Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air program. You can listen to their whole conversation here.

• Powell’s Books, the Portland, Oregon, landmark heralded as “the world’s largest independent bookstore,” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. As part of the celebration, it has assembled “a curated collection of 50 books from the past 50 years.” I’d be more enthusiastic about this list if—in addition to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future—it contained even one crime, mystery, or thriller novel. No such luck!

• Max Allan Collins mentions in his blog that the 13th Mike Hammer novel he’s “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane, is due out from Titan Books in 2022—75 years after the appearance of Spillane’s first Hammer yarn, I, the Jury. This one will be titled Kill Me If You Can.

• There have been so many crime novels backdropped by San Francisco, that Paul French was bound to fail when he determined to collect, for CrimeReads, a representative sample of their diversity. Why, for instance, does he mention Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Poor Butterfly (2012)—the only Toby Peters mystery set in the Bay Area (most of them took place in L.A.)—or Charles Willeford’s one-off, Wild Wives (1956), but completely ignore the oeuvres of Colin Willcox, Stephen Greenleaf, Kelli Stanley, and Bill Pronzini? That said, French’s piece—parked here—is entertaining, and might give you some ideas of things to read as this summer season winds to an end.

• For broader exposure to fictional offenses set in and around San Francisco, consult Randal S. Brandt’s Golden Gate Mysteries wiki.

• And how much fun is this? Blogger Evan Lewis is showcasing the covers, contents pages, copyright information, and occasional lagniappes from every early edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As he explains in this introductory post, “Some months ago, my old friend and fellow book collector Jim Rogers passed away, and left behind a complete run of EQMM from 1941 to 1959. Those mags have now passed into the care of another old friend, Mr. Larry Paschelke, and Larry agreed to let me scan the covers and share them with you here. (Jim, I have no doubt, would have done the same had I asked, but I didn't know he had them!)” Click here to catch up with Lewis’ project in progress.

Bullet Points: A Heady Mix Edition

• When Nellie Bly is remembered at all in our age, it’s usually for her 72-day circumnavigation of the earth in 1889, a stunt meant to beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg, in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eight Days (1872). However, Bly—born Elizabeth Jane Cochran—was also a pioneering female newspaper journalist and, less well-recalled, a novelist. As January Magazine explains, she penned 11 tales in regular installments, mostly for The New York Family Story Paper. “Titles of two of her serial novels, Eva the Adventuress and New York By Night, have long been known,” the blog states. “But the novels themselves were lost …” That is, until their 2019 rediscovery by Michigan writer David Blixt, the author of What Girls Are Good For, a 2018 novel starring the daring Ms. Bly. Those missing works were finally released this month in brand-new editions by Sordelet Ink. The majority of them look to be adventure stories or romances, but the first—The Mystery of Central Park—fits snuggly in the crime category. Here’s a plot synopsis:

Dick and his sweetheart Penelope discover the body of a beautiful young woman posed upon a Central Park bench. Instantly Dick is suspected of having something to do with the young woman’s death. Moreover, Penelope has long been urging the ne’er-do-well Dick to accomplish something with his life. So he sets out to discover the dead woman’s identity and solve the riddle of her death. Was it innocent? Suicide? Or was it murder?

From the twinkling lights of New York’s high society to dens of iniquity, Dick follows every trail until he uncovers a tenuous lead. Saving another young woman from the jaws of death, he puts his happiness in jeopardy to confront the scoundrel responsible for the dead woman’s fate.

• The Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans has announced the recipients of its 2021 Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, each “intended to honor a book which illuminates the reality of women’s lives …” This year’s Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work goes to C.S. Harris (aka Candice Proctor), author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series, while the Pinckley Prize for Debut Fiction goes to Angie Kim for her 2019 novel, Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton)—a work that has already claimed an ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. A new commendation, the Pinckley Prize for True Crime Writing, is being given to Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia (Hachette). Provided the worldwide coronavirus doesn’t alter plans, these honors will be presented during the 2021 Bouchercon, set to take place in New Orleans this coming August.

• Although I wasn’t bowled over by Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the six-part, British-Irish historical crime drama broadcast under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella earlier this year, I did think it merited further episodes. It’s now clear that was not my opinion alone. Mystery Fanfare brings news that the hour-long program, which is set in 1880s London and stars Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin, has had its run extended. Masterpiece executive producer Susanne Simpson is quoted as saying: “Miss Scarlet and The Duke was an instant fan favorite. Our audience couldn’t resist its lighthearted tone and the appealing characters so wonderfully portrayed by Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin. We’re delighted the show will return for a second season.” Season 2 is expected to debut on Masterpiece in 2022, but like its predecessor, will undoubtedly air earlier on the UK’s Alibi channel.

• According to The Killing Times, the ITV-TV series Unforgotten is “currently the most-watched crime drama in the UK.” Its Season 4 episodes just finished showing in Great Britain this week, and it hasn’t yet made it across the pond for the entertainment of American viewers. But Unforgotten has already been renewed for a fifth season. (Warning: Serious spoilers at that last link!)

• “Columbo, for the most part, was a pretty family-friendly show,” recalls the anonymous author of The Columbophile. “Negligible use of bad language and sex scenes allied with an absence of violence and gore ensured that even a show about murder—that darkest of human acts—rarely made for unsettling viewing. There were exceptions, though. Sometimes the show dropped stark reminders that murder really is a most foul and grisly business—and at its worst could be cruel and disturbing to boot.” Read more … if you dare!

• Delays, delays, and more delays: In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson says that “Kenneth Branagh’s mystery ensemble-cast movie, Death on the Nile, has seen its premiere date pushed back again, this time to February 11, 2022. The 20th Century Studios production, which also stars Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening, has changed release dates several times due to the pandemic. [It was originally slated for release on December 20, 2019.] However, Deadline reports that the new release date has nothing to do with co-star Armie Hammer, who has been besieged by an alleged sex scandal.”



• Well, here I am again, recommending something I’ve spotted on YouTube, even though I know that videos there can vanish unexpectedly. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to point out the recent appearance of Michael O’Hara the Fourth, a 90-minute film that debuted on the television anthology series The Wonderful World of Disney in 1972. When I was growing up, Disney’s Sunday night presentations were must-see TV in my household. Yet aside from The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963), starring Patrick McGoohan, and a rebroadcast of Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (comprising the first three episodes of a five-part serial originally shot for Disney in the 1950s), I don’t recall many of the shows produced specifically for Wonderful World, as opposed to Disney theatrical pictures that were subsequently rerun on Sunday nights. Oddly, however, I have strong memories of Michael O’Hara the Fourth. Or perhaps it’s not so very odd, as that film left me with a huge crush on its star, Jo Ann Harris. Although she was then 22 years old, Harris was cast as Michael “Mike” O’Hara IV, a teenage wannabe sleuth—very much in the Nancy Drew mode—whose father was Michael O’Hara III, a police captain in an unnamed city, played by Dan Dailey (later to feature in the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie segment Faraday and Company). The Disney Wiki explains how Harris’ character came by her distinctly masculine moniker:

The name Michael O’Hara has become synonymous with law enforcement. There have been three generations of Michael O’Hara’s and all have been exemplary policemen. When Michael O’Hara III’s child was born, he was told that [he and his wife would] not be able to have any more children, and there ha[d] always been a Michael O’Hara, so he named his child Michael O’Hara IV, despite the fact that she [was] a girl.

Now, Mike has a tendency to get involved with police matters and not always with good results, which annoys her father. And despite being told repeatedly to stay out of it, she continues her amateurish detective activities.

Michael O’Hara the Fourth was first shown in two parts, on successive Sunday nights: March 26, 1972, and April 2, 1972. It found the delightful, blonde Miss Mike recruiting her friends, especially her sort-of-boyfriend, Norman (Michael McGreevey), into one harebrained escapade after another, always intending to help her father with his crime-solving—but usually resulting in minor disasters. Although Mike wasn’t a tomboy (she favored short skirts), she didn’t shy away from mixing it up with crooks and killers. In the first part of this film, she and Norman try to get to the bottom of a money-counterfeiting operation, while the second half finds them seeking to crack the alibis of businessmen implicated in a murder. This picture may have been intended for young audiences, but it’s far from silly, and its humor and high jinks remain entertaining even after all these years. I’m a bit surprised Disney didn’t shoot a sequel. Or two.

• By the way, if you are curious, Jo Ann Harris went on to amass a lengthy résumé of credits, including guest roles on The Mod Squad, Banyon, The F.B.I., Nakia, The Manhunter, and Barnaby Jones. She also co-starred with Robert Stack in Most Wanted, a 1976-1977 Quinn Martin series on ABC-TV that “focused on an elite task force of the Los Angeles Police Department … [concentrating] exclusively on criminals on the mayor’s most-wanted list.” (You can watch the original title sequence here.) And no, I don’t have a crush on Harris any longer. Through some cruel trick of time, she’s now 71, not 22.

• This 1965 TV promo spot for The Wild Wild West must have left action-adventure fans in drooling anticipation of that CBS series’ September 17 premiere. Firearms, secret smoke bombs, and a quietly calculating Suzanne Pleshette—what’s not to like?

• How late-night repeats brought an end to Mannix’s run.

• How does Sherlock Holmes figure into the legend of the Loch Ness monster? CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano recalls the tale. And you can click here for a brief film clip of that “Nessie” in action.

• I neglected to mention, in The Rap Sheet’s last “Bullet Points” round-up, another delightful piece that found its way into CrimeReads earlier this month: “How Shane Black’s Love Letter to 1970s Crime Fiction Put a Spotlight on Robert Terrall.” Composed by Bay Area freelancer (and occasional January Magazine contributor) Ben Terrall, it recounts the story of how his prolific author father, Robert Terrall (aka Robert Kyle), became a ghost writer on the Mike Shayne private-eye series back in the 1960s, after the protagonist’s creator, Davis Dresser, “developed a severe writer’s block.” The piece goes on to note that one of Terrall’s Shayne yarns, 1973’s Blue Murder, became source material for director Shane Black’s 2016 “slapstick buddy movie,” The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling—as was acknowledged in the picture’s collection of credits. “I have no doubt Dad would have loved to see his name on the silver screen,” remarks Ben Terrall. “He was a moviegoer from an early age and was always ready to write for Hollywood, but that never happened. He wrote several movie tie-ins (including one for Moses and the Ten Commandments, which made it possible for me to answer the question ‘What has your father written?’ with ‘The Ten Commandments’), but none of his fifty or so original novels were ever made into films.”

• Coincidentally, the latest episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast focuses on, among assorted other topics, Robert Terrall’s life and literary endeavors. You can listen to that here.

• In his April “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots, Mike Ripley covers subjects ranging from his lockdown reading choices and a case of mistaken author identity to new crime-fiction releases by James Woolf, Erin Kelly, Tom Bradby, and others.

• Who knew there were so many birthday-themed mysteries?

• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura mentioned recently that William Heffernan, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated former journalist and the author most recently of The Scientology Murders (2017), died this last December 4 at age 80. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Heffernan labored on behalf of both the New York Post and the Daily News, but left his investigative reporting career in 1978 after scoring a publishing contract for his first novel, Broderick (1980). As blogger Cullen Gallagher wrote, that book “is based on the real-life figure of Johnny Broderick, a tough New York cop as legendary as he is notorious. Nicknamed ‘The Beater,’ Broderick is anything but your conventional heroic policeman; he’s as corrupt, violent, and as crooked as the gangster and hoods he hunts down.” Heffernan went on to compose 18 more books, including 1988’s Ritual (which introduced series protagonist Paul Devlin, a New York City police detective), 1995’s Tarnished Blue (a Devlin yarn that captured the 1996 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original Novel), his 2003 historical thriller, A Time Gone By, and 2010’s The Dead Detective (which launched Heffernan’s second series lead, Henry Doyle, a Tampa, Florida, homicide detective who can hear the postmortem whispers of murder victims). Kimura adds that Heffernan “once served as president of the International Association of Crime Writers/North America.” Oddly, I seem unable to locate an official online obituary of William Heffernan, and his Facebook page is no help—it hasn’t been updated since February 2016. If anyone reading this has spotted more information about the author’s demise, please let me know.

• More recently deceased is Richard Gilliland, a Texas native who, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “starred as Sgt. Steve DiMaggio on NBC’s McMillan & Wife in 1976-77 and as Lt. Nick Holden on ABC’s adaptation of Operation Petticoat in 1977-78, and he was a series regular on ABC’s Just Our Luck in 1983 and the CBC’s Heartland in 1989. Gilliland also had recurring roles on other shows, including Party of Five, The Waltons, Thirtysomething, Dark Skies and Desperate Housewives and guest-starring appearances on Criminal Minds, Dexter, Becker, Scandal, Joan of Arcadia, The Practice and Crossing Jordan, among many other shows.” Gilliland was married to Emmy-winning actress Jean Smart, whom he met when they worked together on the sitcom Designing Women in the 1980s. He was 71 years old at the time of his passing on March 18. More here.

• Last but not least, I am sorry to hear that another child of the Lone Star State, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry breathed his last on March 25 at age 84. McMurtry will be remembered for many novels, among them The Last Picture Show (1966), Terms of Endearment (1975), and Anything for Billy (1988), but for me, it was his 1985 Old West adventure, Lonesome Dove, that most stood out. As I wrote in a piece for January Magazine, naming the 20th century’s foremost books, “McMurtry reinvented the western novel for a modern audience, filling Dove (and its sequel and prequels) with spectacularly quirky characters, oddball episodes that would never have made it into the works of either Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey, and heartwarming scenes that will stick with you forever.” Links to more McMurtry obituaries can be found here. And in the wake of his demise, this fine Texas Monthly profile from 2016 has been resurrected.

• Great Britain will celebrate National Crime Reading Month this coming June, though most of the events are to take place online, due to the continuing COVID-19 crisis. Linda Stratmann, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, which hosts this annual literary fête, says: “We want to invite bookshops, libraries, publishers, conventions and festivals that celebrate the crime genre, to take part. Our sister network, the Crime Readers’ Association (CRA), is one of the largest communities of crime genre readers in the world, so this June is a unique opportunity to get an author event or reading initiative in front of that dedicated audience.” It’s only too bad the United States—which already dedicates months to recognition of mentoring, ice cream, and country music—can’t similarly honor crime and mystery fiction.

• Wales’ first international celebration of crime literature, the Gŵyl Crime Cymru Festival, is set to take place online from April 26 to May 3. As Mystery Fanfare explains, “Lee and Andrew Child, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Ragnar Jónasson, Peter James, Elly Griffiths, Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Khan, and Martin Edwards—amongst others—will discuss their work alongside Welsh crime writers who might not be as well-known, but are playing their part in bringing Welsh crime writing to the fore. There will also be a panel focusing on the great success Welsh crime fiction is enjoying on the small screen, featuring the team that created the globally popular Keeping Faith TV series.” The complete schedule of events can be found here.

• Meanwhile, Crime Fiction Lover offers this handy overview of Welsh contributions to the genre, both on the page and on the screen. It includes a selection of novels and authors to get your explorations of that country’s bilingual crime fiction started.

• Florida journalist Craig Pittman passes along this piece from The New Yorker. It looks at a new film project from Yuko Torihara, focusing on Manhattan’s Chinatown at night. A principal player in that feature? Henry Chang, the 70-year-old author of detective novels such as Chinatown Beat (2006) and Lucky (2017), set in the neighborhood.

• I recently reported on the numerous nominees for this year’s Agatha Awards, which are to be dispensed during an online-only Malice Domestic festival in mid-July. Coincidentally, Elizabeth Foxwell now points me toward a two-part remembrance of the late author Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz), who “played such an integral role” in founding that annual convention. Part I here, Part II here.

• Craig Sisterson, a New Zealand writer (and the creator of that country’s Ngaio Marsh Awards), who is currently living in London, has become a contributor to the international blog Murder Is Everywhere. His posts are supposed to appear every second Tuesday. The first, from March 23, is principally an ode to children’s mysteries.

• Speaking of lands Down Under, check out the results of Reading Matters’ month-long tribute to Southern Cross Crime.

• Sometime Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins (The Dead Beat Scroll) is also a Bay Area photographer, and for years he’s posted examples of his street shots on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. He has also used those black-and-white images as chapter illustrations in his novels. Now, says Coggins, he’s put together Street Stories, “a street photography monograph with the best of my work from the last dozen years or so. Published by Poltroon Press—the house that published my first novel—the coffee table-sized book includes 52 images reproduced in tritone by a printer in Italy. It incorporates a reproduction of my Japanese ‘hanko’ stamp on the cover and features end papers in a matching red color.” This $50 book won’t released until mid-May, but in the meantime, Coggins tells me, “Poltroon Press is offering a $10 discount on pre-orders …” Click here to learn more.