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.

Who Doesn’t Like Free Books?

Don’t forget, you have just five days left to enter The Rap Sheet’s latest book-giveaway contest. The prizes this time: both five copies of Max Allan Collins’ brand-new Nate Heller novel, Better Dead, and five other copies of his previous Heller outing, Ask Not.

To take part in this drawing, all you have to do is e-mail your name and postal address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Be sure to type “Better Dead Contest” in the subject line, and let me know whether you have a preference as to which of these two Collins novels you would prefer to receive as a prize. Entries will be accepted between now and midnight this coming Friday, May 20. The 10 winners will be chosen at random, and their names listed on this page the following day.

Sorry, but at the publisher’s request, this contest is open only to residents of the United States and Canada.

If you haven’t already entered this competition, don’t delay!

Really, That’s a Liability?

This is a rather surprising development. CBS-TV has decided not to pick up a prospective new series, Drew, starring the magnetic Sarah Shahi (Life, Fairly Legal) in the role of “Nancy Drew reimagined as a thirty-something NYPD detective.” Explains The Mary Sue:

Writers Joan Rater and Tony Phelan of Grey’s Anatomy had been working on the concept for the show along with CBS, which co-starred Graceland’s Vanessa Ferlito as George, Nancy’s former partner at the NYPD, and ER’s Anthony Edwards as Nancy’s father. (No news yet on who they’d potentially landed to play that updated version of Bess.)

The reason for the nix? Apparently, “the pilot tested well but skewed too female for CBS’ schedule.” Whatever that means.

Deadline adds Drew “is being shopped to other outlets by CBS TV Studios.” It does seem like a saleable idea, with a good cast attached.

The Return of Copycat Covers

With the approach next weekend of The Rap Sheet’s 10th anniversary, I’ve been thinking about all the subjects this blog has covered over the course of its now almost 6,400 posts. Some things I’d change if I could, and there are instances where I think we our coverage could have been more focused or fun; yet most of what we’ve accomplished here, I believe, has been done well. But one area of personal interest that I realize hasn’t been mentioned of late is “copycat covers.” You know, book fronts that employ the same photographs (usually stock art) or paintings that can be found on one or more others.

For several years I posted somewhat regular pieces about this subject. However, the last time I addressed it was in a minor way in 2015. I still have plenty of copycatting instances, and my computer file of them continues to grow. So beginning today, I’m going to resume highlighting examples of such look-alike book façades, though I shall do so one or two at a time, without writing a great deal about them. (I think it was my self-imposed requirement of creating longer posts, with several covers under consideration, that proved daunting before and caused me to stop writing about copycat covers). I hope you enjoy this resurrected venture. And if spot any more duplicated fronts in your travels through bookstores or across the Web, please drop me an e-mail note here. On to our first two specimens …



Killer Pursuit, by Jeff Gunhus (Seven Guns Press, 2015); and Leave Her Hanging, by Harry St. John (Cheeky Minion, 2013)—which was among our nominees for Best Crime Fiction Cover of 2013.

Bogey’s “Girlfriend” Bids Adieu

This is fairly remarkable news, from The Washington Post:

Madeleine LeBeau, a French actress who fled Nazi-occupied Europe for Hollywood, where she made the best of a small role as the scorned girlfriend of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in Casablanca, died May 1 in Estepona, Spain. She was widely reported to be 92. …

LeBeau (sometimes credited as Lebeau) was the last surviving credited cast member of Casablanca (1942), which the American Film Institute lists—after Citizen Kane—as the second greatest movie of all time.

The story goes on to quote LeBeau as saying that “she hoped Casablanca would catapult her to great demand in Hollywood. It did not. She told Charlotte Chandler, [an Ingrid] Bergman biographer, ‘It wasn't that I was cut out, it was because they kept changing the script and, each time they changed it, I had less of a part. It wasn't personal, but I was so disappointed.’”

Click here to see a good photo of the young LeBeau, plus the famous “La Marseillaise” scene from Casablanca in which she features.

Running the Numbers

One of the advantages of operating two different blogs, both focused around crime fiction, is that I can cross-publicize special projects. So, if you haven’t checked out Killer Covers lately, note that it is celebrating The Rap Sheet’s coming 10th anniversary by posting a countdown series of 10 vintage paperback fronts.

Already up are the covers from Ten Days’ Wonder, by Ellery Queen; The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers; and One Minute Past Eight, by George Harmon Coxe. Do you get the picture? This countdown will run through next Sunday, May 22, which marks the start of my second decade writing and editing The Rap Sheet.

Go enjoy these covers, when you have some free time.

Pierce’s Picks: “Better Dead” — with a 10th Anniversary Book Giveaway

If Chicago private eye Nate Heller was not already a figure plucked from Max Allan Collins’ fertile imagination, some other novelist would surely by now have used him as the inspiration for a detective series. Consider just some of Heller’s career highlights: he’s looked into the “presumed” murder of bank robber John Dillinger (True Crime), the assassinations of Louisiana politician Huey Long (Blood and Thunder) and Las Vegas mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (Neon Mirage), the mystery surrounding aviatrix Amelia Earhart (Flying Blind), the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. (Stolen Away), the 1947 Los Angeles slaying of the enigmatic “Black Dahlia” (Angel in Black), the supposed suicide of actress Marilyn Monroe (Bye, Bye Baby), and an unsuccessful attempt on the life of President John F. Kennedy (Target Lancer). Is it any wonder that producers of the 1958-1961 TV gumshoe drama Peter Gunn recruited Heller as one of their creative consultants? (Oh, wait, that’s fiction too, not fact.)

In Better Dead (Forge), Collins’ new, 16th outing for his resolute but randy protagonist, Heller goes from observing the 1950 “Communist takeover” of a Wisconsin town—at the invitation of Reds-baiting Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy—to being hired three years later by Pinkerton sleuth-turned-author Dashiell Hammett (a one-time member of the Communist Party of America, now representing a contingent of concerned literary leftists), who wants him “to conduct an eleventh-hour investigation into the alleged crimes of two people who are sitting on Death Row”: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a New York City couple convicted of conspiring to commit espionage by leaking American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Heller accepts that assignment, for a respectable fee. But then he turns around and convinces prominent Washington, D.C., syndicated columnist Drew Pearson—who helped hound Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to an early death in Collins’ 1999 novel Majic Man—to provide further funds for the project. (Any suspicions of Heller being less than a capitalist are firmly debunked by this dexterous arrangement.) Pearson wants reports of any fresh findings in the Rosenberg matter. Meanwhile, McCarthy and his odious chief counsel, Roy Cohn, lean on Heller to tell them as well what he learns, if only so they can be sure it won’t result in the Rosenbergs ever again enjoying life outside the walls of Sing Sing prison.

With assistance from Natalie Ash, a confessed Communist and beguiling young Greenwich Village art gallery manager (“tall, in that shapely slender Lauren Bacall way”), who was once a neighbor of the Rosenbergs, Heller interviews and re-interviews witnesses to the incarcerated pair’s putative treachery. Over the course of it, he discovers discrepancies in the trial proceedings, and even turns up evidence that could be used to poke holes in the prosecution’s charges. Furthermore, he exposes secrets that might result in the federal government coming down harder than ever on Communist sympathizers in the United States. And of course, our 47-year-old hero soon winds up in bed with his own Red—in the notably hot form of the aforementioned Miss Ash. Collins’ Heller novels resemble what P.I. tales of the 1950s and ’60s might have been like, had there been fewer societal restrictions on language and sex scenes.

But as promising as Heller’s probe into the Rosenberg case seems, the author isn’t changing history, so we pretty much know how things will turn out (including facts that have come to light only during the last decade).

(Left) Ethel and Julius Rosenberg during their 1951 trial.

The same can’t be said of the second investigation conducted in these pages.

Again, “Tail-Gunner Joe” McCarthy worms into the plot. He wants Heller’s aid in digging up proof that the Central Intelligence Agency is “riddled with Commies and security risks.” In addition, the CIA apparently has a file on the heavy-drinking McCarthy and his sexually suspect cohort, Cohn, that those two men would dearly like to get their hands on. However, it’s another senator, Democrat Estes Kefauver of Tennessee—the “hayseedish” foe of American criminality with whom Heller tangled in 2002’s Chicago Confidential—who really invites the detective’s entry into the separate but linked narrative comprising Better Dead’s latter half. It seems Kefauver has targeted a New York photographer, Irving Klaw, for distributing bondage-and-discipline shots of renowned pin-up model Bettie Page, and Page herself wants Heller to convince her fellow Tennessean to back off. Collins describes the Chi-town shamus’ initial impressions of his fetching new client thusly:

The beauty with the shoulder-brushing black hair in the pageboy cut was both exactly what I expected and not at all. Her face was perfectly framed by black locks, her make-up surprisingly light though the dark red lipstick brought Natalie Ash unsettlingly to mind.

But this was no Bohemian, nor a wicked girl into sadomasochistic fun and games. Her quality was more girl-next-door, if you were that lucky a bastard, with a wholesomeness and a winning personality that leapt at you like a friendly tiger. She wore a pink short-sleeved sweater tight enough that the white bra beneath bled through, with a dark brown leather belt cinching a wasp waist above a tan skirt that hit just under her knees. Her nylons were beige, not dark black, and her high heels were low-slung, not sky-high. Subtracting the heels, I made her as five foot five, and despite a towering personality, she seemed almost petite. The scent of Ivory soap wafted. ...

“Oh, Mis-tuh Heller,” she said, and smiled like a cheerleader, her Southern accent honeying her sultry second soprano, “ah would know you anywhere.”

Heller doesn’t have much trouble persuading Kefauver to scratch Page from his lengthy roster of prospective witnesses, and in almost as quick order the P.I. commences a mutually enjoyable affair with the brunette bombshell. That’s only the introduction, though, to a much more complicated episode. It seems that a bacteriologist and CIA employee named Frank Olson has contacted McCarthy, and the Wisconsin lawmaker believes Dr. Olson can help him gather dirt on the Agency. But what Olson knows about government-condoned experiments with drugs and biological warfare, as well as “radical interrogation techniques,” could have more significance consequences than merely embarrassing America’s “spooks.” It could undermine the nation’s contention that it won’t stoop to the sort of propagandized human guinea pig tests conducted by the Soviets.

“For a certain type of militaristic mind, Nate, biological warfare is the best thing to come along since sliced bread,” Olson warns. “With atomic warfare, there’s complete destruction of private property. But with biological weapons? Only people get destroyed.”

Olson is clearly haunted by his participation in these studies, so it comes as no shock when the scientist suddenly disappears, his unexplained absence followed by assertions that he had been suffering from anxiety, had become a danger to his family, and was “dragged off almost bodily to see a ‘shrink.’” More astonishing is what Heller, acting on behalf of Olson’s spouse, learns about the CIA’s use of the psychedelic drug LSD. When, days later, the scientist perishes in a suspicious fall from Manhattan’s Hotel Statler (today’s Hotel Pennsylvania, across from Madison Square Garden), Heller turns his sights firmly on Olson’s boss, looking for answers that might strip the lid from a particularly egregious CIA undertaking.


Pin-up model Bettie Page, of course.

Iowa writer Collins has made a name for himself by inserting his detective protagonist into some of America’s most infamous crimes, but over the last several novels, he has definitely outdone himself. Fortunately, he and his longtime research associate, George Hagenauer, are quite thorough in their historical inquiries, which brings greater credibility to these yarns than a less-punctilious novelist might have achieved. The result, in Better Dead, is that the backdrop of 1950s New York City—where Heller has one of his A-1 Detective Agency’s three offices (the other two being in his hometown of Chicago and in Los Angeles)—comes alive with identifiable details, including buildings and businesses such as the Waldorf Cafeteria, the Village Vanguard music club, and a country music nightspot called the Village Barn. Collins is no less meticulous in portraying the numerous real-life figures who populate Better Dead. While he lavishes a great deal of attention on Bettie Page and the considerably less alluring Senator McCarthy, and plays up the understandable camaraderie between Heller and Dashiell Hammett (“If you keep talking like Sam Spade,” the Maltese Falcon author says at one point, “I’m going to have to charge you royalties.”), he is no less generous in giving dimension to secondary players whom readers might not realize are plucked from the real past, such as Frank Olson. The author even tosses in the occasional mention of a place or person that only somebody very well acquainted with the setting might recognize—such as James S. Bolan, a former New York police commissioner whose 46th-floor office in the Empire State Building, once home to a detective agency Bolan founded after retiring from public service, has been taken over in this book by Heller and his A-1 operatives.

That Collins executes these feats without fanfare shows how secure he is with his research. That he does so while also delivering witty dialogue, explosive moments of gunplay, and playful amorous twists in a story that would still be interesting even if it did not involve celebrities of yore … well, that’s just plain talent. Collins is more practiced and polished at doing what he does than most of his competitors. Better Dead, an eminently readable introduction to the McCarthy era—a period of political paranoia and division not so dissimilar from our own—puts his skills on full display.

More than three decades have now passed since Collins—who is known as well today for moving the late Mickey Spillane’s numerous unfinished Mike Hammer works toward publication (among them this year’s Murder Never Knocks)—began recording Nate Heller’s escapades, beginning with 1983’s True Detective. And though his storytelling formula has become quite familiar, I’m continually surprised at his ability to plumb new interest from his leading man. Heller, the half-Jewish, half-Irish son of a socialist bookshop owner, who joined the Chicago police force against his father’s wishes and grew up into a man Life magazine heralded as the “Private Eye to the Stars,” is at once a romantic and case-hardened, morally ambivalent individual prepared, when necessary, to exercise summary judgment (as he does in a gun-smoke-laden finish to Better Dead’s Book 1 that brings to mind Spillane’s I, the Jury). With any luck, we can expect his adventures to continue. As Heller noted at his debut, he was born in 1905. Yet Better Dead’s last chapter, composed in the gumshoe’s first-person voice, includes mention of events taking place as late as 2008—when Heller would be 103 years old. 2013’s series entry, Ask Not, brought our hero’s timeline up only so far as 1964. There are 44 years in between, plenty of time for him to have solved more notorious misdeeds, bedded more ballyhooed lovelies, and ventilated more than his share of overconfident malefactors. I, for one, can hardly wait to read about it all.

* * *

This month marks 10 years since I launched The Rap Sheet. To help celebrate the occasion, Forge—Max Allan Collins’ latest publisher of his Nate Heller novels—has agreed to supply us with 10 books from that series, which we’re giving away to this blog’s loyal readers. Available are both five copies of Better Dead and five other copies of the previous Heller outing, Ask Not. If you would like to be entered in a drawing to win one of these fine freebies, all you need do is e-mail your name and postal address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Be sure to type “Better Dead Contest” in the subject line, and let me know whether you have a preference as to which of these two novels you would prefer to receive as a prize.

Entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Friday, May 20. The 10 winners will be chosen completely at random, and their names listed on this page the following day.

Sorry, but at the publisher’s request, this contest is open only to residents of the United States and Canada.

What are you waiting for? Get those entries in now!

READ MORE: “Better Red,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).

Resurrecting Short-Story Gems

Publisher Mulholland Books has announced a deal with The Strand Magazine to create a series called Strand Originals:

Strand Originals will consist of 20 of the best and most popular Strand Magazine short stories of all time, now being published by Mulholland Books as simultaneous e-book and audio digital downloads. The debut of Strand Originals begins with the publication of “Where the Evidence Lies” by Jeffery Deaver, “Meet and Greet” by Ian Rankin, “Jacket Man” by Linwood Barclay, “The Voiceless” by Faye Kellerman, and “Start-Up” by Olen Steinhauer, all published on April 19th, 2016.

The remaining 15 titles in the program, to be published throughout the remainder of 2016, include stories by Tennessee Williams, Michael Connelly, Ray Bradbury and Joseph Heller.

Click here to learn more about this new series, and to see which other works will be included in it.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Offenses for the Ear

Way back in February, the Audio Publishers Association released the lists of nominees for its 2016 Audie Awards, celebrating “distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.” It’s now been announced that The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins (narrated by Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey, and India Fisher; from Penguin Audio/Random House Audiobooks), has won Audiobook of the Year honors.

There are winners in two additional categories that should be of particular interest to Rap Sheet readers:

Mystery: Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith, narrated by Robert Glenister (Hachette Audio)

Also nominated: All the Old Knives, by Olen Steinhauer, narrated by
Ari Fliakos and Juliana Francis Kelly (Macmillan Audio); Corrupted, by Lisa Scottoline, narrated by Kate Burton (Macmillan Audio); Gun Street Girl, by Adrian McKinty, narrated by Gerard Doyle (Blackstone Audio); Malice at the Palace, by Rhys Bowen, narrated by Katherine Kellgren (Audible Studios); and The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny, narrated by Robert Bathurst (Macmillan Audio)

Thriller/Suspense: The Patriot Threat, by Steve Berry, narrated by Scott Brick (Macmillan Audio)

Also nominated: Blue Labyrinth, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, narrated by Rene Auberjonois (Hachette Audio); The President’s Shadow, by Brad Meltzer, narrated by Scott Brick (Hachette Audio); Season of Fear, by Brian Freeman, narrated by Joe Barrett
(Blackstone Audio); and Signal, by Patrick Lee, narrated by Ari Fliakos (Macmillan Audio)

To find a complete list of this year’s Audie winners, click here.

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).

A Most Familiar Face Vanishes

First it was actress Patty Duke, who died in late March at age 69. Now we must say good-bye as well to William Schallert, who played Duke’s father in the 1963-1966 ABC-TV series, The Patty Duke Show. He passed away on Sunday at 93 years of age.

The Los Angeles-born character actor filled a variety of other TV sitcom roles during his more than 60-year career (including on Get Smart, The Nancy Walker Show, and The New Gidget). But Schallert’s extensive résumé is packed as well with appearances on such crime dramas as Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaii Five-O, The Mod Squad, Banacek, Ironside, Ellery Queen, Switch, Matlock, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and Simon & Simon.

The Spy Command recalls that “His roles included Frank Harper, one of the substitute partners for James West (Robert Conrad) in the fourth season of The Wild Wild West when Ross Martin was recovering from a 1968 heart attack. Harper’s appearance took place during the show’s only two-part story, ‘The Night of the Winged Terror.’ Harper, like Martin’s Artemus Gordon, was a master of disguise. Schallert had appeared earlier in the series in other parts.” In addition, this versatile actor played Nilz Baris, the United Federation of Planets’ under-secretary in charge of agricultural affairs, on the famous 1967 Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Twenty-six years later he turned up in a different role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Schallert’s was one of the most ubiquitous faces on the small screen during my growing-up years. Although, as The New York Times observes, he was “never a leading man,” he was certainly “a high-caliber embodiment of the working actor.” Schallert’s calm, mature presence will certainly be missed.

READ MORE: “The Late, Great William Schallert,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).

Now in Line for the Anthonys

Organizers of Bouchercon 2016, which is to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana (September 15-18), today announced the nominees for this year’s Anthony Awards. Winners will be voted on during that convention, and the prizes handed out on Friday, September 16. I’m particularly pleased to see Patricia Abbott, Art Taylor, Lori Rader-Day, Martin Edwards, and Tom Nolan among the contenders.

Best Novel:
• Night Tremors, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
• The Killing Kind, by Chris Holm (Mulholland)
• The Child Garden,
by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
• The Nature of the Beast,
by Louise Penny (Minotaur/Sphere)
• What You See,
by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Best First Novel:
• Concrete Angel, by Patricia Abbott (Polis)
• Past Crimes, by Glen Erik Hamilton (Morrow)
• New Yorked, by Rob Hart (Polis)
• Bull Mountain, by Brian Panowich (Putnam)
• On the Road with Del & Louise, by Art Taylor (Henery Press)

Best Paperback Original:
• The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Gun Street Girl, by Adrian McKinty (Seventh Street)
• Little Pretty Things, by Lori Rader-Day (Seventh Street)
• Young Americans, by Josh Stallings (Heist)
• Stone Cold Dead, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Best Critical or Non-fiction Book:
• The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
• Meanwhile, There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald, edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (Arcade)
• Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime, by Val McDermid (Grove)
• The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett, by Nathan Ward (Bloomsbury USA)
• The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook: Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For, by Kate White, editor (Quirk)

Best Short Story:
• “The Little Men,” by Megan Abbott (Mysterious Press/Open Road)
• “The Siege,” by Hilary Davidson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2015)
• “Feliz Navidead,” by Brace Godfrey and Johnny Shaw (from ThugLit Presents: Cruel Yule, edited by Todd Robinson; ThugLit)
• “Old Hands,” by Erin Mitchell (from Dark City Lights, edited by Lawrence Block; Three Rooms)
• “Quack and Dwight,” by Travis Richardson (from Jewish Noir, edited by Kenneth Wishnia; PM Press)
• “Don’t Fear the Ripper,” by Holly West (from Protectors 2: Heroes, edited by Thomas Pluck; Goombah Gumbo Press)

Best Anthology or Collection:
• Safe Inside the Violence, by Christopher Irvin (280 Steps)
• Protectors 2: Heroes, edited by Thomas Pluck (Goombah Gumbo Press)
• ThugLit Presents: Cruel Yule, edited by Todd Robinson (ThugLit)
• Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015, edited by
Art Taylor (Down & Out)
• Jewish Noir, edited by Kenneth Wishnia (PM Press)

Best Young Adult Novel:
• Need, by Joelle Charbonneau (HMH Books for Young Readers)
• How to Win at High School, by Owen Matthews (HarperTeen)
• A Madness So Discreet, by Mindy McGinnis (Katherine Tegen)
• The Sin Eater’s Daughter, by Melinda Salisbury (Scholastic)
• Fighting Chance, by B.K. Stevens (Poisoned Pencil)
• Ask the Dark, by Henry Turner (Clarion)

Best Crime Fiction Audiobook:
• Dark Waters, by Chris Goff; narrated by Assaf Cohen (Crooked Lane)
• The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins; narrated by Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey, and India Fisher (Penguin Audio/
Random House Audiobooks)
• Causing Chaos, by Deborah J. Ledford; narrated by
Christina Cox (IOF)
• The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny; narrated by Robert Bathurst (Macmillan Audio)
• Young Americans, by Josh Stallings; narrated by Em Eldridge
(Josh Stallings)

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Talton Takes the Owl

The Portland, Oregon-based fan group Friends of Mystery has announced that author and Seattle Times economics columnist Jon Talton has won its 2016 Spotted Owl Award for his novel High Country Nocturne (Poisoned Pen Press). The Spotted Owl is given out annually to a mystery novelist whose primary residence is in the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, or Idaho; or in the Canadian province of British Columbia. A list of previous recipients is available here.

Also nominated for this year’s prize were: Her Final Breath, by Robert Dugoni, (Thomas & Mercer); Never Look Down, by Warren Easley (Poisoned Pen Press); A Banquet of Consequences, by Elizabeth George (Viking); Viking Bay, by M.A. (Mike) Lawson (Blue Rider Press); House Rivals, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press); Threshold, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer); Brutality, by Ingrid Thoft (Putnam); Vanishing Games, by Roger Hobbs (Knopf); and The Ville Rat, by Martin Limón (Soho Crime).

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

Pierce’s Picks

A periodic alert for followers of crime and thriller fiction.




The Strings of Murder, by Oscar de Muriel (Pegasus). This historical whodunit first caught my eye when the jacket of its British edition was featured among the 20 contenders in The Rap Sheet’s Best Crime Fiction Cover of 2015 contest; it wound up taking fifth place. Mexico City-born author De Muriel’s vivid, sometimes macabre, and often humorous tale has now (finally) made it to the States, and if you’re a fan of character-rich locked-room mysteries, you’ll want to pay it some attention. The story opens in November 1888, when foppish Inspector Ian Frey is dismissed from Scotland Yard amid a change of leadership, not only disappointing his well-to-do family (who always thought a policeman’s life was quite beneath him, anyway), but losing his fiancée in the process. Frey’s crime-solving skills have not gone unnoticed, however. In the aftermath of his losing that job, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury personally, but secretly, assigns him another: travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, to look into the vicious slaying of a violinist in his own home, a murder that’s frighteningly reminiscent of Jack the Ripper’s malevolent spree of just a few months back. Oh, and Frey will have to work in the Scottish capital with a dubious new police subdivision devoted to investigating apparitions and commanded by an eccentric, loud, bigger-than-life detective named Adolphus McGray, better known as “Nine-Nails” in recognition of his missing a finger. Frey has a longstanding antipathy toward the Scots, and he and McGray could hardly be more different from one another. Yet—despite their frequent exchanges of insults—the pair learn to work in concert, as they try to figure out who eviscerated virtuoso-teacher Guilleum Fontaine in his music studio, while leaving that room locked from the inside. Could this atrocity be linked to a purportedly famous, and perhaps also cursed, violin in Fontaine’s collection? Of what significance are the black magic symbols left on the floor? And why does Fontaine’s maid say she heard multiple musicians playing in that studio before the homicide took place? Although De Muriel’s insistence on making McGray speak in dialect slows his story a bit, there’s plenty here in the way of historical atmospherics, allusions to paranormal phenomena, and further killings to keep things charging ahead. Furthermore, the odd-couple partnership between the snobbish Frey and the uncouth McGray is entertaining enough to have spawned a sequel, A Fever of the Blood, which was released the UK earlier this year, and with any luck will make it to the States by 2017.

After so enjoying Laura Lippman’s After I’m Gone (2014) and Hush Hush (2015), I’m more than willing to be led into the dicey psychological depths of Wilde Lake (Morrow), her latest standalone thriller. Luisa “Lu” Brant is the ambitious central figure in these pages. She’s recently been elected as the first woman to serve as state’s attorney for Howard County, Maryland—a position once held by her eminent father—and is looking for a case that will justify voters’ faith in her abilities. She thinks she’s found it in the prosecution of a rather unbalanced transient charged with fatally assaulting a woman in her own residence. However, the trial preparations fetch up distressing recollections of another tragedy, from 1980. That was when Lu’s brother, A.J., apparently saved the life of his best friend at the cost of another man’s future. A.J. was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. But as Lu pursues the present-day investigation and its dependence on memories, she wonders whether she knows the truth about her brother’s actions—and whether America’s legal system can even provide the answers she needs. As the blog BOLO Books notes, there are echoes here of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but Lippman strives for much more in Wilde Lake than mere imitation. The Washington Post’s Patrick Anderson calls it “one of her best novels and ... one of her most personal.”

Click here to see more of this season’s most-wanted books.

Bullet Points: Pre-Mother’s Day Edition

• UK critic Mike Ripley is out with the May edition of his Shots column, “Getting Away with Murder.” His wide coverage this time ranges from his experiences at a “select dinner given in honour of Lindsey Davis” and a brief tribute to the late William McIlvanney, to notes about Émile Gaboriau (“widely regarded as France’s greatest writer of detective stories with the creation of his archetypal detective Monsieur Lecoq”), the London-based collective of female crime writers Killer Women, and new books from Andrew Taylor, Pierre Lemaitre, Joyce Carol Oates, Tony Parson, and others.

• Yesterday, April 2, marked the 14th birthday of Bookslut, the book review/author interview site founded in 2002 by Austin, Texas, resident Jessa Crispin. Unfortunately, there won’t be a 15th anniversary celebration. The publication just debuted its May 2016 issue and made clear that this will be the final installment of Bookslut. I only hope the site remains online as an archive, because there’s been a lot of excellent stuff in there over the years, well worth revisiting. Oh, and if you happen to be in New York City, note that a good-bye cocktail-and-conversation event will be held this coming Friday, May 6, at the Melville House Bookstore (46 John St., Brooklyn) for readers who’d like to give Bookslut editors a fond send-off.

• Adios, too, to ThugLit, the short-fiction publication—created and edited by Todd Robinson—that was launched as a free Webzine back in 2007, disappeared in 2010, and in 2012 was re-launched in e-book form. Contributor Jedidiah Ayres serves up a fond remembrance of his association with ThugLit in his blog, Hardboiled Wonderland.

• Back on the subject of birthdays … Today would have been Mary Astor’s 100th, had she not already died back in 1987, at age 81. Born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke in Illinois, she debuted in a 1921 film called Sentimental Tommy, but apparently her small part was ultimately trimmed from the picture. As Astor, she had much better success starring opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941). It’s that movie in which she is now best remembered (and from which the clip below comes), though she was also featured in Red Dust (1932), The Hurricane and The Prisoner of Zenda (both from 1937), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), A Kiss Before Dying (1956, based on Ira Levin’s novel of the same name), and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), which apparently marked her final screen appearance.



• A brief look back at Bogart’s film career.

• This seems unlikely, but according to In Reference to Murder, it’s true: “Office alum[nus] John Krasinski has been cast as the next Jack Ryan in the TV series project based on Tom Clancy’s popular CIA hero, coming to Amazon via Paramount TV. While there is no official green light yet, the move is seen as a way to help secure a series order.”

• Check out Killer Covers’ quite beautiful, and certainly diverse, gallery of vintage paperback fronts featuring brass beds.

• An Agatha Christie graphic novel? That’s right, next week brings the release of Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie. It’s written by Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau, illustrated by Alexandre Franc, and published by British imprint SelfMadeHero. As the blog Past Offences explains, “the 128-page book uses ... Christie’s infamous [1926] disappearance as a way into her life story.”

• You can tell that summer’s on its way, because both Cross-Examining Crime and Brad Friedman’s Ah Sweet Mystery Blog (a new discovery for me) have stories up about novels to take along on your next warm-weather vacation.

• Lovely Swedish actress Alicia Vikander was such a delight in last year’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. film, that I was dearly hoping for a sequel. That’s unlikely to happen, according to The Spy Command, but at least Vikander won’t be without work. Moviefone reports that the 27-year-old “has just landed the plum role of Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot,” replacing Angelina Jolie.

• David Hofstede pays tribute to Get Smart’s ludicrous Cone of Silence in his blog, Comfort TV. “Introduced in the first episode of Get Smart, the Cone of Silence would inspire some of the biggest laughs on what many would argue is still the funniest television series ever created,” he observes.

• If you’re a regular Rap Sheet reader, you know I’m a confirmed fan of the 1972-1974 NBC whodunit Banacek. You can also assume that I gave a small but discernible gasp at learning (only this afternoon!) that a new book about that stylish George Peppard series has been published by BearManor Media. Titled “There’s An Old Polish Proverb That Says, ‘BANACEK’”: A Behind-the-Scenes History and Episode Guide to the 1972-1974 NBC Mystery Movie Series, it was composed by TV historian Jonathan Etter, who also wrote the book Quinn Martin, Producer. Frankly, I can’t order this book fast enough!

• Another work to anticipate: People (like yours truly) who enjoyed Walter Satterthwait’s Miss Lizzie, a 1989 novel that found alleged Massachusetts murderess Lizzie Borden helping pubescent Amanda Burton to solve a 1921 ax slaying, will be interested to know that Satterthwait has penned a sequel. Titled New York Nocturne: The Return of Miss Lizzie and set in 1925 Manhattan, it reunites the now 16-year-old Amanda with Borden in a case involving the hatchet murder of Amanda’s uncle. Publishers Weekly opines that “The novel’s assured and witty voice holds its disparate elements together, and Satterthwait deftly captures the verve of the Prohibition era as well as its unsavory edges.” New York Nocture is due out from Mysterious Press/Open Road in early June.

• How did readers come by their image of Florida “salvage consultant”/investigator Travis McGee? Steve Scott answers that question in The Trap of Solid Gold:

Once John D. MacDonald made the decision to create the series character Travis McGee, he wrote three versions of the first novel before coming up with a person he could “live with.” He sent the book off to his editor at Fawcett Gold Medal, Knox Burger, with the request to hold off publishing it until he could come up with some additional adventures, and once he had three done the go-ahead was given to begin publishing. Then began the editorial preparations for publication, including cover art.

In what seems like an unusual move, Burger chose to have the early covers illustrated by two different artists: one for the main cover and one for an inset of a portrait of McGee himself. Why this was done is anybody’s guess at this point, although I’m sure there is evidence among the MacDonald papers at the University of Florida. Perhaps a clue can be found in the particular artists Burger chose to do these covers, Ron Lesser and, for the likeness of McGee, John McDermott.

Both had done work for Gold Medal up to that point in late 1963, but McDermott was responsible for doing the covers of another crime series, Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm. Beginning with the sixth entry in the series, The Ambushers, published in 1963, McDermott took over the cover duties and began adding an inset depiction of Helm. When Fawcett began reprinting earlier titles they had McDermott create new illustrations along with his version of Helm. This was right around the time that MacDonald was submitting his manuscripts of the McGee novels, and I guess Burger thought it a good idea to have McDermott do the same for McGee. Why he chose Lesser to do the covers proper—always a beautiful girl in some unusual pose—and not McDermott is not known. Perhaps he didn’t want the two series to become confused in the minds of his customers.

• Meanwhile, Dennis Lehane delivers this tribute to John D. MacDonald, which is part of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s evolving “John D. and Me” series being published in anticipation of the July 24 centennial of MacDonald’s birth.

• In Paste Monthly, Kenneth Lowe looks at Hollywood’s fascination with Dashiell Hammett’s crime and detective fiction.

• If you missed President Barack Obama’s uproarious performance at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you can still catch it in Slate. Remarks Daniel Politi: “The best part … came at the end. ‘I would like to close on these two words: Obama out,’ the president said before literally dropping the mic.”

• This trailer for Penny Dreadful, the Showtime TV horror drama starring Eva Green and Timothy Dalton, is so compelling that I might actually have to give that show (the third season of which debuted on May 1) another chance. I watched the first few episodes of Penny Dreadful, but it seemed too dark even for me.

• More here about the original “penny dreadfuls.”

• I may have heard this story before, or maybe not, but evidently South African-born British actor Basil Rathbone resented his over-identification with Sherlock Holmes, the character he played in 14 feature films during the 1930s and ’40s. “‘I was … deeply concerned with the problem of being “typed,” more completely “typed” than any other classic actor has ever been or ever will be again,’ he wrote in his autobiography,” according to Bright Lights Film Journal.

• And that might well be the most awkward way possible of introducing this piece from Tipping My Fedora, in which Sergio Angelini recalls that “For many [1944’s The Scarlet Claw] is the best of the Holmes and Watson films made by Universal.”

• Listen up, all you Star Trek fans: Keith DeCandido is currently in the midst of a Star Trek: The Original Series Rewatch over at Tor.com. He’s just finished commenting on Season 2—which included three of my favorite episodes, “The Trouble with Tribbles,” “A Piece of the Action,” and the back-door pilot, “Assignment: Earth”—and is now moving on to Season 3. Catch up with all of his posts here.

• Last but not least, The Raymond Chandler Website is back! Its founder-editor, Robert F. Moss, who wrote Raymond Chandler: A Literary Reference (as well as an essay for The Rap Sheet about Chandler’s fondness for gimlets), noted in his blog how the site had “disappeared from the Internet for a while when we lost the server on which it was being hosted. Now we’ve finally gotten the site back up and live … [though] we are still in the process of shaking out the broken links and doing a general bit of dusting and polishing …”

A Day at the Races

Perhaps not surprisingly, I survived yesterday’s Independent Bookstore Day “Champion Challenge,” though there were a few moments, especially late in the afternoon, when I could hardly imagine the thought of unbending myself from the car and venturing into yet another Seattle bookshop. The photograph above, taken about halfway through the expedition, shows me (second from the left) at Island Books on Mercer Island with store employees, other Challenge participants, and my two teammates, James Crossley (third from the left, with the old prophet-style beard) and Matthew Fleagle (third from the right, in the glasses). As I noted previously, the goal here was to visit at least 17 of the 21 participating indie stores. If we could accomplish that task by the close of business on Saturday, we’d win a one-year, 25 percent discount at all of those retail outlets.

To give you a sense of this adventure, here are a few stats.

Time we started out: 7 a.m., when the three of us met for a hearty breakfast at Pete’s Egg Nest in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. We traveled in a rented orange, very compact Fiat 500.

First bookstore reached, by ferry across Puget Sound: Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island at about 9 a.m.

Total number of ferry trips necessary: 2, one from Seattle west to Bainbridge Island, and the second from Kingston east to Edmonds (which is north of Seattle).

Number of books purchased along the way: 2, including a 1977 paperback copy of Ross Macdonald’s The Far Side of the Dollar, boasting cover artwork by Mitchell Hooks and bought at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

Number of books I really wanted to purchase: probably in excess of 30, including 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H. Cline, and Richard Russo’s brand-new Everybody’s Fool (his sequel to 1993’s Nobody’s Fool).

Number of bookstores visited yesterday that I had never popped in on before: 3 (Island Books, Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, and Ada’s Technical Books and Café—all of which I’ll return to later).

(Left) Celebrating the end of our day-long journey, at Elliott Bay: Nothing says success like tequila in a paper cup.

Number of times we had to stop for gas: 1

Number of complimentary cookies ingested during the excursion: plus or minus 20

Number of complimentary chili dogs ingested: 1, at Book Larder, a cookbook store in the Fremont neighborhood, where author Kathleen Flinn was promoting her latest work, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir with Recipes from an American Family.

1 lesson learned, in case I ever do this again: take water along! Hours into the trip, I realized that I was severely dehydrated and had to rush into a quickie mart for bottled refreshment.

Number of wrong turns: maybe half a dozen, most of which involved our trying to locate Liberty Books in Poulsbo. At one point, James’ smartphone seemed so confused by our twisting peregrinations, that it finally begged us to make a U-turn. Now!

Number of bands encountered: 1, at Mockingbird Books, a children’s store in the Green Lake area.

Number of tequila shots drunk: 1, at Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill, where we concluded our circuit of shops at 8:30 p.m.

Number of bookstore visits required to earn our 25-percent discount: 17

Number of bookstores actually visited: an overachieving 19

Number of hours spent on the Champion Challenge: 11.5

Number of times I asked myself, “Why in the hell did you join this crazy escapade?”: 0. It was actually a delight from start to finish. I recommend it to any book nerds who can spend an entire day discovering, or rediscovering, some of the dozens of independent bookstores Seattle offers.

I understand that at some point in the next two weeks, all of us who completed this competition will be asked to gather together to celebrate our accomplishment and receive our discount certificates. I expect to learn then how many people were actually running the course. In 2015—the first year this Challenge was mounted in Seattle—42 participants finished. It’s hard to know exactly how many people did the same thing this year, as many of the Seattleites visiting stores yesterday had set themselves a more modest goal: three bookstore stops only, which entered them in a drawing for mystery prizes. Judging from my own experience of the day, I’d guess that the number of people calling on at least 17 stores doubled this year.

Malice Has Its Rewards

Last evening, during a presentation at the annual Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland, it was announced which authors and books have won the 2016 Agatha Awards. They are as follows ...

Best Contemporary Novel: Long Upon the Land, by Margaret Maron (Grand Central)

Also nominaed: Burned Bridges, by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press); The Child Garden, by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink); Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny (Minotaur); and What You See, by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Forge)

Best Historical Novel: Dreaming Spies, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)

Also nominated: Malice at the Palace, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley); The Masque of a Murderer, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur); Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante, by Susan Elia Macneal (Bantam); and Murder on Amsterdam Avenue, by Victoria Thompson (Berkley)

Best First Novel: On the Road with Del & Louise, by Art Taylor
(Henery Press)

Also nominated: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman, by Tessa Arlen (Minotaur); Macdeath, by Cindy Brown (Henery Press); Plantation Shudders, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane); and Just Killing Time, by Julianne Holmes (Berkley)

Best Non-fiction: The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)

Also nominated: The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes, by Zack Dundas (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury USA); Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northeast Ohio, by Jane Ann Turzillo (Arcadia); and The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook: Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For, edited by Kate White (Quirk)

Best Short Story: “A Year Without Santa Claus?” by Barb Goffman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [AHMM], January/February 2015)

Also nominated: “A Questionable Death,” by Edith Maxwell (from History and Mystery, Oh My!, edited by Sarah E. Glenn; Mystery & Horror, LLC); “A Killing at the Beausoleil,” by Terri Farley Moran (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2015); “Suffer the Poor,” by Harriette Sackler (from History and Mystery, Oh My!); and “A Joy Forever,” by B.K. Stevens (AHMM, March, 2015)

Best Children’s/Young Adult: Andi Unstoppable, by Amanda Flower (Zonderkidz)

Also nominated: Pieces and Players, by Blue Balliett (Scholastic Press); Need, by Joelle Charbonneau (HMH Books for Young Readers); Woof, by Spencer Quinn (Scholastic Press); and Fighting Chance, by B.K. Stevens (Poisoned Pen Press)

As Les Blatt notes in his Classic Mysteries blog, “The Agatha Awards are presented to honor books written in the ‘traditional mystery’ style exemplified by the works of Agatha Christie and others. They have no explicit sex, gratuitous gore, or extreme violence. Attendees at Malice Domestic voted by secret ballot to select the winners.”

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and nominees!

READ MORE: “Malice, Agatha & More,” by Art Taylor.