“Fair” Treatment

When Michael Callahan remarks, in Vanity Fair, that “Much of the public doesn’t know Robert McGinnis,” he is certainly not talking about yours truly. In my book-design blog, Killer Covers, I’ve frequently highlighted the work of that now 91-year-old Connecticut artist, including in a series of posts last year timed to McGinnis’ 90th birthday. In addition, I wrote about his more than half-century-long career for the Kirkus Reviews Web site, and followed that piece up with an even longer one in The Rap Sheet. It’s actually Callahan who seems a bit late in showcasing McGinnis and his talents. Nonetheless, his new Vanity Fair feature is welcome, recapping the painter’s years spent building his reputation, noting the artist’s “pathological modesty,” and winning some rare face time with the man who gave us “the McGinnis Woman.” Give the piece a read.

A Conflict Lives on in Fiction

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered program noted this afternoon that “The U.S. entered [World War I] a century ago, on April 6, 1917, nearly three years after [fighting] erupted in Europe during the summer of 1914. The Americans made quite a splash, turning a stalemate in favor of their British and French allies.” This provides an excellent occasion to remind readers of a piece I put together for Kirkus Reviews three years ago, looking back at the so-called Great War’s continuing impact on crime and mystery fiction.

Also worth listening to on All Things Considered today was this story about the 1918 lynching of a German immigrant in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. It struck a personal chord. My maternal grandfather, who was born in Canada but fought with the British Army during World War I, before moving to the United States, used to tell me how even after the war’s end, he kept secret the fact that his mother was German. She’d married his father, a tailor in Great Britain, before heading across the Atlantic in the very late 19th century.

Thrilling Results to Come

Thanks to Mystery Fanfare blogger Janet Rudolph, we now have the list of 2017 Thriller Award nominees, in six categories. They are:

Best Hardcover Novel:
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)
• Where It Hurts, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam)
• Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (Grand Central)
• Arrowood, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau)
• Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)

Best First Novel:
• Deadly Kiss, by Bob Bickford (Black Opal)
• Type and Cross, by J.L. Delozier (WiDo)
• Recall, by David McCaleb (Lyrical Underground)
• The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie (Putnam)
• Palindrome, by E.Z. Rinsky (Witness Impulse)

Best Paperback Original Novel:
• In the Clearing, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Body Reader, by Anne Frasier (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Minoan Cipher, by Paul Kemprecos (Suspense)
• Kill Switch, by Jonathan Maberry
(St. Martin’s Griffin)
• Salvage, by Stephen Maher (Dundurn)

Best Short Story:
• “The Business of Death,” by Eric Beetner (from Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns, edited by Eric Beetner;
Down & Out)
• “The Peter Rabbit Killers,” by Laura Benedict (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], July 2016)
• “The Man from Away,” by Brendan DuBois (EQMM, July 2016)
• “Big Momma,” by Joyce Carol Oates (EQMM, March/April 2016)
• “Parallel Play,” by Art Taylor (from Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)

Best Young Adult Novel:
• Morning Star, by Pierce Brown (Del Rey)
• Holding Smoke, by Elle Cosimano (Disney-Hyperion)
• Steeplejack, by A.J. Hartley (Tor Teen)
• Thieving Weasels, by Billy Taylor (Dial)
• The Darkest Corners, by Kara Thomas (Delacorte Press)

Best E-Book Original Novel:
• Romeo’s Way, by James Scott Bell (Compendium Press)
• The Edge of Alone, by Sean Black (Sean Black)
• Untouchable, by Sibel Hodge (Wonder Women)
• Destroyer of Worlds, by J.F. Penn (J.F. Penn)
• Breaker, by Richard Thomas (Alibi)

The winners will be declared in New York City on July 15, during the 2017 ThrillerFest. Congratulations to all of the contenders!

FOLLOW-UP: The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura notes that two other ITV prize winners were previously announced: Lee Child, 2017 ThrillerMaster recipient; and Lisa Gardner, 2017 Silver Bullet recipient.

Bloch Party

Today marks 100 years since the birth, on April 5, 1917, of Robert Bloch, the American novelist and inveterate punster remembered for penning The Scarf (1947), The Will to Kill (1954), Psycho (1959), Star Stalker (1968), and further works of crime, suspense, and science fiction. To commemorate this occasion, bloggers across the Web have been paying tribute all week to his more than half-century-long career. Todd Mason offers his own and other fine retrospectives on Bloch’s literary efforts, with additional salutes coming from Jerry House, James Reasoner, Patti Abbott, and Bill Crider (here and here). You have your work cut out for you, if you hope to read this wide range of articles, so you’d better get started right away.

Revue of Reviewers, 4-3-17

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Marlowe’s Coming Cinematic Comeback

While it’s hard for me to envisage Irish actor Liam Neeson starring in this production, I’m pleased to learn that the book will be adapted for the big screen. From In Reference to Murder:

Liam Neeson has signed on to play the lead role in Marlowe, which is based on the iconic Raymond Chandler character Philip Marlowe. The film is being adapted from The Black-Eyed Blonde follow-on novel by Benjamin Black, which centers on the private eye during the early 1950s where Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. That is, until a beautiful blonde client comes in and asks Marlowe to find her ex-lover, which soon has Marlowe wrapped up with one of the more powerful families in Bay Cities [sic] who are willing to go to any lengths to protect their fortune.

READ MORE: “No Question About It, That’s a Punchy Name,” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet).

Shorts to Triumph in the Long Run

The Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) today announced its nominees for the 2017 Derringer Awards in four categories:

Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words):
• “Aftermath,” by Craig Faustus Buck (Flash Bang Mysteries,
Spring 2016)
• “The Phone Call,” by Herschel Cozine (Flash Bang Mysteries,
Summer 2016)
• “A Just Reward,” by O’Neil de Noux (Flash Bang Mysteries,
Winter 2016)
• “The Orphan,” by Billy Kring (Shotgun Honey, March 18, 2016)
• “An Ill Wind,” by R.T. Lawton (Flash Bang Mysteries, Spring 2016)

Best Short Story (1,001-4,000 words):
• “Beks and the Second Note,” by Bruce Arthurs (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [AHMM], December 2016)
• “The Way They Do It in Boston,” by Linda Barnes (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], September/October 2016)
• “YOLO,” by Libby Cudmore (Beat to a Pulp, May 2016)
• “The Woman in the Briefcase,” by Joseph D’Agnese (EQMM, March/April 2016)
• “The Lighthouse,” by Hilde Vandermeeren (EQMM, March/April 2016)

Best Long Story (4,001-8,000 words):
• “Swan Song,” by Hilary Davidson (from Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns, edited by Eric Beetner; Down & Out)
• “Effect on Men,” by O’Neil De Noux, (The Strand Magazine, February-May 2016)
• “The Cumberland Package,” by Robert Mangeot (AHMM, May 2016)
• “Murder Under the Baobab,” by Meg Opperman (EQMM,
November 2016)
• “Breadcrumbs,” by Victoria Weisfeld (Betty Fedora, Issue Three, September 2016)

Best Novelette (8,000-20,000 words):
• “Coup de Grace,” by Doug Allyn (EQMM, September/October 2016)
• “The Chemistry of Heroes,” by Catherine Dilts (AHMM, May 2016)
• “Inquiry and Assistance,” by Terrie Farley Moran (AHMM, January/February 2016)
• “The Educator,” by Travis Richardson (44 Caliber Funk: Tales of Crime, Soul, and Payback, edited by Gary Phillips and Robert J. Randisi; Moonstone)
• “The Last Blue Glass,” by B.K. Stevens (AHMM, April 2016)

Winners will be chosen through an online vote among eligible SMFS members (polls to remain open through April 29), with the names of this year’s four award recipients to be declared on May 1. Congratulations to all of the contenders!

Fool’s Paradise

Pulling once more from her extensive lineup of holiday mysteries, editor-blogger Janet Rudolph has posted a collection of April Fool’s Day crime fiction. And no, that’s not a prank.

The Story Behind the Story: “The Hunt,” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

(Editor’s note: This is the 69th entry in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. It’s also our second submission from Columbus, Ohio, resident Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a legal affairs reporter with the Associated Press and the creator of private eye Andy Hayes. [He wrote previously about his 2016 novel, Capitol Punishment.] Welsh-Huggins’ fourth Hayes yarn, The Hunt, is due out in mid-April from Swallow Press. Below, he recalls some of the difficulties he faced in enlarging on Hayes’ personal history in this new book.)

One of the most important tasks when creating a mystery series from scratch is developing your protagonist’s back story. It’s safe to say you should have the basics down first: a straight, male ex-military police officer running a one-person investigative agency; a married gay cop overseeing a cold-case squad; a divorced female private eye with a background in insurance fraud and a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, etc. But where do you go from there? How much should you know about your character’s personal life when starting out? Maybe part of what makes her tick is that she’s widowed and averse to long-term relationships. But is that the whole story? And if there’s more, how do you provide the information without dragging down the narrative?

When I started writing about Andy Hayes, my fictional private eye in Columbus, Ohio, I knew three things for certain: he was an ex-Ohio State quarterback with a sullied reputation from his playing days; he was twice divorced with a son from each marriage; and he lived in German Village, a trendy neighborhood south of downtown, with his Labrador, Hopalong (named for the 1955 Ohio State Heisman Trophy winner, Howard Albert “Hopalong” Cassady).

Beyond these bare-bone details, there was a lot I didn’t know about Hayes. The fun has been in discovering new things as I went along, many of them unknown to me until the day they popped up on the screen as I wrote. For instance, at the end of the first Hayes book, Fourth Down and Out (2014), we learn exactly what led to my protagonist’s downfall as a player. In Slow Burn (2015), I explored the years Hayes spent battling his demons after his football burnout through the back story of an ex-fiancée whose help he must enlist to solve a triple-arson homicide. In both Slow Burn and Capitol Punishment (2016) I reveal more about Hayes’ life growing up in Homer, Ohio (a real town), including an episode with his pig-farming uncle who takes Hayes in after he hits rock bottom and clears his head by forcing him to work with the hogs over one long, hot summer.

By the time I started work on The Hunt (Swallow Press), I knew I was ready to parse out Hayes’ fractured relationship with his father. The early attempts didn’t go well, as I tried to chronicle their troubled relationship in flashback form with several overly long passages. Details about childhood, parents, and traumatic events of yore can paint a richer portrait of your character, but I knew that the line between explication and overload is razor thin. Less is almost always more. Here are examples of the right way to do it, from some of the best in the business:

• “Dropping my ashes in my empty teacup, I noticed the arrangement of the leaves. My grandmother would have said it meant money and a dark stranger.” That’s Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, talking about his relative in The Way Some People Die (1951), one of many subtle references to a formative person in Archer’s life—his uncle being another—that Macdonald sprinkled through his short stories and novels. Consider how much it tells us is so few words: his grandmother drank tea and read the leaves afterward, with all that connotes about superstition and prognostication. She also had an eye for things that could mean trouble.

(Left) Author Andrew Welsh-Huggins

• “[Harry] Bosch watched the squadron of helicopters, like dragonflies from this distance, dodging in and out of the smoke, dropping their payloads of water and pink fire retardant on burning homes and trees. It reminded him of the dustoffs in Vietnam. The noise …” So writes Michael Connelly in the opening of The Black Ice (1993). As Connelly observed in an essay for the 2002 book Writing Mysteries, “In a short eight-word sentence, I was able to deliver characterization through the past without disturbing the forward progress of the story.”

• Or consider this snippet of dialogue from Bright Futures (2009), the sixth and final book in the late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s series about Sarasota, Florida, process server Lew Fonesca:

“Mind my asking who that is?” asked Greg.

“Victor Woo.”

“And what’s he doing sleeping on the floor of your office?”

“He walked in one afternoon,” I said.

“Why?”

“He killed my wife in Chicago. He feels guilty and depressed.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Greg.

“No,” I said.

After re-reading such examples (and more), I went back to the drawing board. I deleted several long flashback passages from The Hunt and with them hundreds of words that, in hindsight, were not just dragging down the narrative but grinding it to a halt at points. For instance: I shrank a three-paragraph-long description of the Parthenon, the bar in fictional Mount Alexandria, Ohio, where Hayes’ father used to drink, down to these four sentences: “I nodded. I knew it. A bar just off the main square. I’d pulled my father out of there more than once, back in the day.”

Relieved of the burden of writing history as opposed to hinting at it, I was free to focus on Hayes’ task at hand—finding a missing prostitute as a serial killer stalks human-trafficking victims. The result, I hope, is a faster-moving story with less baggage and more bang. As Laura Lippman, a genius at the slow unspooling of back story, put it in her 2007 standalone, What the Dead Know:

“A good liar survives by using as little truth as possible, because the truth trips you up far more often.”

Spotlighting Scandi Crime

Six “outstanding crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden” have found places on the shortlist of nominees for the 2017 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. According to the Euro Crime blog, those contenders—half of which were published by Orenda Books—are:

• The Exiled, by Kati Hiekkapelto, translated by David Hackston (Orenda Books; Finland)
• The Dying Detective, by Leif G.W. Persson, translated by Neil Smith (Doubleday; Sweden)
• The Bird Tribunal, by Agnes Ravatn, translated by Rosie Hedger (Orenda Books; Norway)
• Why Did You Lie? by Yrsa Sigurđardóttir, translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton; Iceland)
• Where Roses Never Die, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)
• The Wednesday Club, by Kjell Westö, translated by Neil Smith (MacLehose Press; Finland)

The name of this year’s winning work will be announced in Bristol, England, during a “gala dinner” on Saturday, May 21, to be held as part of 2017’s CrimeFest (May 18-21).

Mystery Fanfare notes that the Petrona Award was “established to celebrate the work of the late Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime-fiction reviewers and bloggers, [and] is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.”

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Steps Down

As reported by various sources now, well-respected Norway-based independent publisher 280 Steps is shutting its doors this week. Although the company has not yet explained this sudden development on its Web site, 280 Steps authors have been broadcasting word of their unexpected availability to other publishing enterprises.

“I am sad to see [280 Steps] close up and for my books to be homeless for a while,” remarks hard-boiled stylist Eric Beetner, who’s released four novels through that house, including Rumrunners (2015) and a pair of entries in his Lars and Shaine hit man series (The Devil Doesn't Want Me and When the Devil Comes to Call). “This also means the final Lars and Shaine novel, The Devil At Your Door, won’t be out April 25th. My apologies to anyone who pre-ordered it.” Meanwhile, Australian Andrew Nette, whose Gunshine State reached the market last fall thanks to 280 Steps, writes on Facebook: “I’m pretty gutted about this, and my thoughts also go out to my fellow 280 Steps authors, many of whom had a number of books out through the outfit. 280 Steps [was] a good publisher, did some great books, with wonderful cover art, and I didn’t see their closure coming. I’m very proud of Gunshine State. The book had been well received, appeared to have a lot of life left in it and I’ve been contemplating a sequel. Frankly, I am not sure where to go with it now. Obviously, I have no intention of giving up fiction writing, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say this latest news has stopped me in my tracks a bit.”

Despite the brevity of its existence (the company was founded in 2014), 280 Steps had collected a great deal of praise for its range of authors—from Jake Hinkson and A.I. Bezzerides to Patrick Shawn Bagley and Preston Lang—as well as the “striking artwork” to be found on its book covers. In 2016, Josh K. Stevens’s Scratch the Surface won The Rap Sheet’s Best Crime Novel Cover of the Year contest. We’re sorry to see this publisher’s presence disappear from book racks.

Dahl’s Pursuit of Justice—in Fact and Fiction

(Above) Author Julia Dahl (photo by Chasi Annexy)

Julia Dahl has been chasing stories ever since she was in high school back in the mid-1990s. And more often than not, she’s caught them—first as a student journalist, later as an intern for a national magazine, then as a tabloid “stringer” and a criminal justice reporter for CBSNews.com’s Crimesider blog, and now as a prize-amassing crime novelist. Along the way this Fresno, California, native has learned a thing or two about herself, including: she’s more comfortable than many people would be with researching the seamier side of life (“As a crime reporter, I bear witness to a lot of evil”); she doesn’t need to outline her novels before beginning their composition (“Since I’ve been writing mysteries, I start each book knowing who dies, who did it, and having a loose idea of why.”); and life can occasionally provide all the inspiration one needs for fiction.

Dahl emphasized that last point during a lengthy conversation she had with a Chicago magazine contributor several years ago, around the time her first novel, Invisible City (2014)—about a young tabloid reporter’s struggle to solve a murder committed within New York City’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community—first reached U.S. bookstores. After explaining that she’d relocated to America’s East Coast in order to attend college in Connecticut (at Yale University, if you must know), and then settled in Gotham in 1999, Dahl recalled:

My family on my mom’s side is Jewish, but I had no idea that the ultra-Orthodox even existed in the U.S. Then I moved out east. … If you’re in New York City, you see men with black hats and women in wigs on the subway all the time, but it wasn’t until I moved to Brooklyn that I started seeing them a lot, and a couple of things happened that piqued my interest and made me focus on the community. It was something that I wanted to explore in fiction. One was just that I saw these people and thought they’re so like me and yet so unlike me. So there was just this sense of wanting to know more about them. In the fall of 2007, I had just started working at the New York Post, and my then-boyfriend—he’s now my husband—and I were looking for an apartment in Brooklyn. We went to visit an apartment that looked great on paper. It had a great price, it was right by the park in a neighborhood we like. On the way there, the broker told us that he felt like he needed to tell us that the previous occupant of the apartment had committed suicide there.

So, we went and we saw the apartment. It was a great apartment, and there certainly were no signs that anyone had committed suicide there. We decided to take it, and after we moved in, I went to sign the lease. It turned out that the building was owned by an old Orthodox man in Borough Park. When I met him he said he was really glad we took the apartment, that the man who lived there was “really sick” and so on. He didn’t really tell me any more, and then I started talking to the neighbors and I found out that the man who lived there had been an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had a wife and children, but he was gay. He was shunned by the community, and he ended up alone in this apartment where he died. I started having this kind of imaginary relationship with this guy who used to live in the apartment. I would get his mail because, as you know, you often get mail from the previous tenant. These people didn’t know he was dead. I never opened the letters, but I would keep them all with the idea that maybe I would give them to his family or—I don’t know. I just kept them and started building this idea of who the guy was.

At about the same time, the Post sent me out to Borough Park to cover a story where an ultra-Orthodox young man had gotten married—they tend to get married very young—and jumped out of his honeymoon suite the night after his wedding and died. He had committed suicide, basically. So they sent me out to Borough Park to try to talk to his family. Both of those things happened at about the same time. I was also living in a neighborhood that was on the border of a very ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, so it kind of just became this thing that I kept bumping into. I was just really curious about who these people were and how they lived, and when writers get curious we start to write. I was also covering crime and it sort of came together.

In Invisible City, Dahl introduced readers to Rebekah Roberts, an anxiety-bedeviled, 20-something journalism-school graduate from Florida, currently laboring in the role of overworked, underpaid stringer for the fictional New York Tribune. (No relation to the famous Manhattan newspaper of yore.) Building on her study of the city’s influential but insular Hasidic Jewish subculture, the author imagined the nude body of a Hasidic woman being pulled from a Brooklyn scrap yard. Rebekah, who Dahl has described as “braver than I am, and angrier,” determines to figure out who the deceased was and why her life was so cruelly ended. This newsie is particularly interested in the case, because her long-vanished mother, Aviva Kagan, was also Hasidic. However, the odds are against our intrepid heroine succeeding. The New York City Police Department is quite deferential toward the ultra-Orthodox population, and Hasidic leaders are prone to stymie close examination of misdeeds within their community, even going so far as to let the dead woman in Invisible City be buried without an autopsy. In the end, Rebekah’s efforts to cut through obstruction and obfuscation, and to peel back the layers of the closed society that had ushered her own mother into the world, led her to solve the murder mystery. They also won Dahl a Barry Award for Best Novel, a Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, and the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel.

Making further good use of her research into the history and practices of New York’s Hasidic minority, Dahl came back in 2015 with a sequel, Run You Down. That tale found Rebekah scrutinizing the bathtub demise of a Hasidic housewife, facing off against neo-Nazi hatemongers, and locating a surprisingly large contingent of ultra-Orthodox Jews who’d rejected their religious upbringing. Oh, and Run You Down reintroduced Rebekah to her mother, who narrates alternating chapters of the novel.

Now—just this week, in fact—comes Conviction (Minotaur), the third installment in the Rebekah Roberts series. The story starts with Dahl’s protagonist being exasperated by her insecure position with the scoop- and scandal-hungry Tribune, and prospecting around for a bigger news story that might propel her onto the staff of a superior publication. Conveniently, a lead may have just landed in her lap, via a note that causes the reporter to re-examine the 1992 slaying of a black family in Brooklyn. The problem is, memories of that bloodshed are short and undependable, and even people who were once conversant in its details (such as her ex-cop friend Saul Katz) don’t want to revisit the incident. Worse, Rebekah’s digging has drawn the unwanted notice of folks with secrets they’d prefer not to share, and who might go to deadly lengths to protect them. In its brief assessment of Conviction, New York magazine says “Dahl writes deftly about race, religion, and politics in NYC, both then and now.” Kirkus Reviews adds: “The novel’s authenticity is enhanced by Dahl’s painfully spot-on grievances about the deteriorating newspaper industry and her cogent observations about Brooklyn in both its post-millennium growth and its past lives—which somehow never seem all that far in the past.”

After first meeting Julia Dahl at Bouchercon 2015, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then reconnecting with her last year during Bouchercon in New Orleans, I took the opportunity recently to ask her questions (via e-mail) about her reading history, her reporting career, and how becoming a mother in her late 30s has affected her fiction writing.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you come from a family of readers?

Julia Dahl: Absolutely. Growing up, my mother’s motto was, “bring a book.” To the dentist, to the grocery store, to camp. If you have a book, you’ll never be bored. My parents are both retired now, and they take classes at their local university. My mom just finished a class in the detective novel. We talk about what we’re reading all the time. She is usually reading more than one book at a time—one “serious” (like Flannery O’Conner), one “fun” (like Liane Moriarty). My parents have been doing cross-country road trips since the 1970s, and when they drive, they read to each other. And all four of my grandparents were readers, too. My grandmother died just two years ago, at 93, and read novels voraciously until the very end.

JKP: What were your early reading experiences like?

JD: I read everything, from the Oz books. by L. Frank Baum, to Agatha Christie and Stephen King. But I think the first time books expanded my empathy toward other human beings—which is, I think, what art is supposed to do—was when I read The Diary of Anne Frank with my elementary school best friend. During fifth and sixth grade, we read probably a dozen biographies and historical novels about the Holocaust, and as a Jew, it became “read: these girls could have been me.”

JKP: Did you show a bent toward writing at an early age, or did you develop that interest later in life?

JD: Other than bad poetry, I wrote almost exclusively non-fiction until my mid-20s. I had a lot of opinions, so I wrote editorials and reviews in high school and college. I lacked the creativity—or maybe the courage—to make things up. At some point I realized that good fiction reflects and examines the truth. Once I figured that out, I was hooked. I’ll be making up stories until the day I die.

JKP: Unlike your protagonist, Rebekah Roberts, your move to New York City did not launch you immediately into tabloid reporting. You started, instead, as a freelance reporter/fact checker for Entertainment Weekly, then moved to Redbook and Marie Claire magazines. How did you make the leap from Yale into Manhattan journalism circles?

JD: Basically, I got an internship. I applied to dozens of magazines and newspapers—from Vogue to The Village Voice—and Entertainment Weekly hired me. I had no real path I was trying to follow during those first few years in New York. I went where the opportunities took me, and I’m glad I did. I got my first assignment writing about crime for Seventeen magazine from an editor I’d known while at Marie Claire. That story changed my life.

JKP: Rebekah is often frustrated with the assignments she receives as a stringer for the fictional New York Tribune, and disturbed by what editors there do with her copy. Is all of that a reflection of your own experiences in the tabloid world? Was the Post the model for the Trib? And does it function in similar fashion?

JD: Not really. But after going to journalism school I knew I wanted to test myself, to write and report every day, and that was why I took a job at the New York Post. Would I have rather gotten the same gig at the Times? Sure—but they weren’t hiring. And if it weren’t for my work at the Post I don’t think I’d have the career I have as a novelist. Being a good reporter means being good at talking to people, and at the Post I talked to every possible kind of person you can imagine—often about things they did not want to be discussing. I had to be respectful and aggressive, simultaneously. I had to be fearless, and I had to constantly check in with my gut: was I about to do something I considered immoral in the name of getting the quote for my editor? It would have been easy to just say, I’m doing my job. But that’s not the kind of person I am, and that challenge was one I wanted the protagonist in my novels, Rebekah, to grapple with.

JKP: What was the oddest assignment you were given by the Post?

JD: When Isiah Thomas was still coaching the Knicks, I was sent to Madison Square Garden with two homemade signs that said “Fire Isaiah” and told to hold them up until I got kicked out. It was horrible. Somehow they’d finagled floor seats, so I was down there with all the people who’d paid hundreds of dollars to watch the game and I’m silently holding this sign, wishing I could just run away. Somebody finally ripped them from my hands and I bailed. The next day, my editor apologized. I think it was the only time an editor has ever apologized to me.

JKP: What is it about Rebekah Roberts that makes her the ideal protagonist for the stories you wish to tell? And if you could do it all over again, are there elements of her character that you would have changed?

JD: Honestly, when I began writing Invisible City in 2007 it didn’t occur to me that 10 years later I would still be writing about Rebekah. I didn’t conceive the book as a series, but as soon as I finished writing it, I knew I had more to tell. I’m actually pretty happy with how I’ve drawn her. She started very young, just out of college, so she has a lot of room to make mistakes and mature.

JKP: I’ve read that you originally wanted to call Invisible City something else. What was that other title?

JD: The Stringer.

JKP: Your stories about New York’s Hasidic community paint it in both favorable and questionable tones. How has that community reacted to your representations of its traditions and practices?

JD: I haven’t heard much from those deep in the community, but what I have has been mixed. One woman I used as a source told me she was hanging out with some frum women who were talking about how much they “hated” me—though she didn’t think they’d actually read the books. But another Hasidic man I know recently told me that his wife loved my books. I thought maybe he was kidding, but he swears it’s the truth!

JKP: A big component of Invisible City was Rebekah’s search for her missing mother, Aviva Kagan. But that search ended in your first novel, and since then, Aviva’s importance to the stories has become rather less clear. How do you see their relationship, and Aviva’s role in your stories, evolving over time?

JD: Run You Down focused heavily on Aviva’s life, and I think that now that she and Rebekah have met, even though their relationship is fraught and evolving, it won’t be as central to the plots of the novels. Honestly, there are just other stories about other people that I want to tell.

JKP: Conviction is your first novel to employ third-person storytelling. Your previous two books were both told in the first-person, either by Rebekah or, in Run You Down, also by Aviva. How do you think the decision to use third-person narration in this new novel benefited the story, and perhaps also benefited you as its author?

JD: Because I didn’t anticipate writing a series, I didn’t write Invisible City thinking I was locking myself in to a particular style for the next three books. As I started conceiving Conviction I knew I wanted to create different points of view, not just Rebekah’s. I ran the idea by my editor at Minotaur and she basically said, if it works, you can do whatever you want! So I did. And I’m really happy with the result. I’m working on the fourth book in the series now doing the same thing. It’s made the writing process more exciting and more of a challenge.

JKP: I understand that you owe a debt to Gillian Flynn, of Gone Girl fame, for turning you into a crime-fictionist. Can you explain?

JD: I met Gillian when I was an intern at Entertainment Weekly and she was a TV writer. We didn’t know each other well at all, and years later I remember seeing [her 2006 novel] Sharp Objects in the bookstore and thinking, “I remember that girl!” I read it and something clicked in me. I’d been reading mysteries and watching crime shows and writing articles about true crime, but somehow it had never occurred to me that I could write crime fiction. So she inspired me, and then, when I finished Invisible City, I e-mailed her, saying I wasn’t sure if she remembered me but that I’d written a novel and wondered if she had any advice. She wrote back and recommended I contact her agent. I did, and she’s been my agent ever since. Then, she was kind enough to give me a pretty amazing blurb. She didn’t have to do any of that but, like so many people I’ve met in the crime-fiction world, she is generous and supportive.

JKP: Can you see yourself eventually penning novels that don’t include Rebekah? Might you already have one or two of those in mind?

JD: Yes! I have two ideas percolating, but that’s all I’ll say for how.

(Left) A pregnant Julia Dahl accepts the Shamus Award at Bouchercon 2015

JKP: How much of a boost was it to your self-confidence and profile as an author to win the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel?

JD: A huge boost. Being recognized by my peers is the highest honor. When I won that award I looked around the room and thought, all these people write books I want to read, and they chose me. It was unreal.

JKP: I assume that in addition to all of the positive things reviewers have said about your fiction, you’ve also received negative responses here and there. Are you somebody capable of ignoring knocks, or do you obsess over less-than-enthusiastic assessments and swear to one day get back at those critics in wholly satisfying ways?

JD: I’m pretty sensitive and bad reviews hurt. I can handle them, even ones I consider unfair, but it takes me awhile. All I can do is try to feel as good about the good reviews as I feel bad about the bad ones.

JKP: When you began writing fiction, you were single, pushing 30. Now you’re married and the mother of a son, Mick, who’s just over one year old. Has motherhood changed your approach to fiction writing?

JD: Motherhood has changed my writing only insofar as it has dramatically decreased the amount of time I have to write. Suddenly, there is a human being who lives in my home and must be watched 12 hours every day. I’m nervous about getting this fourth book done on time, but I’ve been nervous about that before, and somehow I’ve always managed to pull it off.

JKP: Can you say something about your intentions with that fourth Rebekah novel, or the direction of its plot?

JD: It revolves around a missing New York University student whose family is one of the wealthiest in Manhattan, and who lives in the same dorm as Rebekah’s brother.

JKP: Your husband, Joel Bukiewicz, designs and creates “world-class kitchen cutlery.” Does this mean that you have kitchen drawers filled with beautifully sharpened knives for every possible use? Or are you still the one-knife-for-all-occasions sort of person?

JD: Joel’s been making knives since 2004, and I’ve learned a lot since then. One thing I’ve learned is that most people really only need one or two knives. A big chef’s knife and a smaller paring knife. If they’re sharp, they can do anything you need.

JKP: Finally, what novel that doesn’t already bear your byline would you most like to have written, and why?

JD: I would love to have written almost anything by Joan Didion. Play It As It Lays or Slouching Toward Bethlehem, if I had to narrow it to two. She sees people so clearly, sees right into them. She looks at the world and its inhabitants with both tenderness and real concern. I admire her prose, of course, but it’s her vision, her anger, her bravado that I admire most.

READ MORE: An excerpt from Conviction can be enjoyed here; “Julia Dahl: Crime Fiction Among the Pious,” by Lisa Levy (Lit Hub); “To Expose Injustice,” by Hella Winston (Los Angeles Review of Books); “Episode 113: Julia Dahl,” by Nancie Clare (Speaking of Mysteries).

Revue of Reviewers, 3-25-17

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Edie Has Now Left the Stage

First it was British author and Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter, who passed away this last Tuesday. Now comes word that Lola Albright, the model turned actress who starred with Craig Stevens in the 1958-1961 TV crime drama Peter Gunn, has died at age 92. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Albright died Thursday in a home in the Toluca Lake enclave of Los Angeles, her friend, Eric Anderson, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. News of her death was first reported by the Akron Beacon Journal; she was born and raised in the Ohio city.

Albright was perhaps best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Craig Stevens, on all three seasons of the Blake Edwards NBC-ABC series Peter Gunn. She received an Emmy Award nomination in 1959 for her work.

While the series was on the air, Albright released the album Dreamsville, backed by Henry Mancini’s orchestra (he, of course, composed the theme song for Peter Gunn), in 1959. She had done an album two years earlier, Lola Wants You.

On the big screen, the blue-eyed blonde was memorable in a leading role as an aging burlesque stripper who seduces a teenager (Scott Marlowe) in A Cold Wind in August (1961), and she received the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for portraying Tuesday Weld's suicidal mother in Lord Love a Duck (1966).

Variety adds that “Albright had an extensive TV career and substituted for Dorothy Malone on ABC’s prime-time soap opera Peyton Place in 1966. Other credits included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Three Sons, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Kojak, Columbo, McMillan & Wife, Starsky & Hutch, and The Incredible Hulk.”

Bullet Points: Myriad Morsels Edition

• Why am I not surprised by this? “Lisbeth Salander, the cult figure and title character of the acclaimed Millennium book series created by Stieg Larsson, will return to the screen in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a first-time adaptation of the recent global bestseller written by David Lagercrantz,” reads a news alert from MacLehose Press. “Fede Alvarez, the director of 2016’s breakout thriller Don’t Breathe, will helm the project from a screenplay by Steven Knight and Fede Alvarez and Jay Basu. … The new film will feature an entirely new cast, and the announcement marks the kickoff of a global search for an actress to portray in the iconic role of Lisbeth Salander. The production will begin principal photography in September of this year with a release date scheduled for October 5, 2018.”

• Two months after the death of actor Mike Connors, TV Shows on DVD has announced that a complete series set of Mannix, the 1967-1975 private-eye drama with which he is best associated, will be released by CBS/Paramount on May 9. Reads a press release: “Here are all 194 episodes together, that bring the action, the music, and the style of an era back to life. Developed for television by executive producer Bruce Geller (TV’s Mission: Impossible), Mannix cruises the mean streets of Los Angeles, cracking cases that feature an array of ne’er-do-wells, from the most dangerous of criminals to the syndicates of high society.” The 48-disc set will retail for $129.98.

• Via Eurocrime comes news that Booker Award-winning author Eleanor Catton’s third novel (following The Luminaries) will be Birnam Wood, “a psychological thriller, set in a remote area of New Zealand where scores of ultra-rich foreigners are building fortress-like homes, … following the guerilla gardening outfit Birnam Wood, a ragtag group of leftists who move about the country cultivating other people's land … [Their] chance encounter with an American billionaire sparks a tragic sequence of events which questions how far each of us would go to ensure our own survival—and at what cost.” The book has been sold “to Farrar, Straus (U.S.); McClelland & Stewart (Canada); Granta (UK/Australia); and Victoria University Press (NZ).”

• And this from In Reference to Murder: “Mystery Fest Key West has announced a call for submissions for this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition. The winner will claim a book-publishing contract with Absolutely Amazing eBooks, free Mystery Fest Key West 2017 registration, airfare, hotel accommodations for two nights, meals, and a Whodunit Award trophy to be presented at the 4th Annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 16-18 in Key West, Florida. For more information and deadlines, follow this link.”

• I feel like I’m always behind in listening to Nancie Clare’s Speaking of Mysteries podcasts. That may be because they tend to come out irregularly, yet in bunches at a time. Since I last made note of Clare’s work here, she has added exchanges with Scott Reardon (The Prometheus Man), David Mark (Cruel Mercy), Suzanne Chazin (No Witness But the Moon), David Joy (Weight of this World), Rhys Bowen (In Farleigh Field), and Kate White (The Secrets You Keep). Clare’s count of podcast interviewees now exceeds 110, and the previous installments remain available for your listening pleasure.

• Speaking of Nancie Clare, she sent me an e-mail note not too long ago, posing a question that I have so far been unable to answer on my own, so let me seek assistance from The Rap Sheet’s extraordinarily well-read audience. Her note reads: “A friend of mine is trying to recall a series of mysteries set in Boston. The detective/fixer works for a bank executive (who has something over him) and looks into things that the bank’s clients wouldn’t, or couldn’t, go to the authorities for. He describes them as funny and a bit quirky, Joe Lansdale-esque (that’s my interpretation anyway). Any, ahem, clue?” If you think you know which mystery series Clare is describing here, please drop me a message in the Comments section at the end of this post.

• In advance of marketing its paperback edition of Patrick E. McLean’s The Soak in May, publisher Brash Books has released its very first audiobook: an adaptation of McLean’s novella prequel, The Lucky Dime, read by none other than the author himself.

• Here’s a work I look forward to reading: Mike Ripley’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed (HarperCollins). In a preview for Shots, Ripley explains that “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang—or KK-BB as it is known in certain circles in honor of Len Deighton—has been many years in its gestation, you might say about 50 years since, as a callow youth, I realized that I was reading my way through a purple path of British thriller writing. Was it a ‘Golden Age’? Well, that is, as with all ‘Golden Ages’ a matter for debate, but it was undeniably a boom time for British thriller writers, who dominated international bestseller lists.” Ripley’s volume seems destined to find a choice spot on my overcrowded bookshelves beside Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder.

• The third episode of Writer Types, a podcast hosted by S.W. Lauden and Eric Beetner, is now ready for your inspection. Lauden touts the contents thusly: “Check out interviews with Johnny Shaw and Sue Ann Jaffarian. Spend a night at Noir at the Bar—L.A. with Glen Erik Hamilton, Nolan Knight, Sarah M. Chen, Travis Richardson, John Lansing, and Stephen Blackmoore. Go to rock school with Alex Segura, Joe Clifford, and Corey Lynn Fayman. And listen to a haunting short story from Jen Conley. Plus, reviews from Kate Hackbarth Malmon and Dan Malmon.” Lots to keep you interested.

• I’ve added a couple more vintage TV show intros to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page—from the Elmore Leonard-inspired Maximum Bob (1998) and Stephen J. Cannell’s Broken Badges (1990-1991).

• Foreword Reviews has broadcast its lists of finalists for the annual INDIES Book of the Year Awards, including contenders in both the Mystery and Thriller categories. The winners in each category will be declared on June 24 during the 2017 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago.

• Say good-bye to Blasted Heath. That small press, spearheaded by Al Guthrie and Kyle MacRae, is closing up shop. Which is a damn shame, because ever since it was launched in November 2011, it’s been turning out intriguing crime fiction by the likes of Anthony Neil Smith, Elaine Ash (aka Anonymous-9), Nigel Bird, Gerard Brennan, Ray Banks, and others. As Brennan notes in his blog, “the books are going to be available for a few more days, I think. You can’t keep good talent down, so they won’t be unavailable forever, but if you want the Blasted Heath version of any of their great titles, you need to move your hole.” Oh so quaintly put.

• While Crimespree Magazine celebrates the 30th anniversary of the release of Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses, the novel that introduced maverick Detective Inspector John Rebus, the author himself brings us new details about the program for the inaugural RebusFest, to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from June 30 to July 2.

• Also online now is the schedule of events being put in place for this year’s Newcastle Noir (April 29-30), “a festival dedicated to promoting crime fiction under all its guises from all over the world.” Authors taking part include William Ryan, Erik Axl Sund, Quentin Bates, Sarah Ward, and Michael J. Malone.

• I did something last week that was fairly unusual for me: I registered early for this year’s Bouchercon, which is set to take place in Toronto, Canada, from October 12 to 15. If memory serves, I finally signed up for Bouchercon 2015 sometime late in the summer preceding that Raleigh event, and for Bouchercon 2016 only two months prior to festivities beginning in New Orleans. This could well be the last Bouchercon I attend for a while (subsequent conventions in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dallas, Texas, and Sacramento, California, aren’t big draws for me), so I wanted to make sure I had all of my ducks in a row as soon as possible. See who else will be at Bouchercon 2017 by clicking here. And if you’d like to register yourself, you can do so here.

• From Kevin Burton Smith of The Thrilling Detective Web Site:

Adam Lerner and Bill Boyle have launched a fund-raising IndieGoGo campaign to get Raymond Chandler a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the approval of the Chandler Estate and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. This would make Chandler the first writer (who is not also a director, producer, or animator) to get a star.

They argue that “If there were no Raymond Chandler there would certainly be no Philip Marlowe. and if there were no Philip Marlowe there would arguably be no Hollywood Noir or Hollywood Walk of Fame.”

I’m not sure if I buy all that argument, but if there’s a writer who deserves that star, it’s definitely Chandler. Let’s help give him his due.

• As part of a piece in The Guardian about the 21st-century relevance of fictional private eyes, author Christa Faust argues that the hard-boiled essence of such protagonists remains vital. That is, she says, “if you mean a complex, conflicted loner with a generally cynical worldview who gets mixed up in criminal endeavors but maintains a strong, though often unconventional, moral code. A wise-cracking, ruggedly handsome middle-aged white guy in a fedora and trenchcoat who slaps women and then kisses them? Maybe not so much.”

• Hooray for the return of Dan Wagner’s The Hungry Detective!

• A few author interviews worth reading: In Criminal Element, Ardi Alspach questions Lyndsay Faye about her new Sherlock Holmes short-story collection, The Whole Art of Detection; Melissa Scrivner Love chats with Mystery Tribune about her debut thriller, Lola; Crime Fiction Lover quizzes Iceland’s Arnaldur Indridason on the subject of his new novel, The Shadow District, which is the opening entry in a new series; an Australian Web site called Daily Review does a quickie interview with Peter Robinson, whose next Alan Banks yarn, Sleeping in the Ground, is due out in the States come August; and Do Some Damage’s Steve Weddle talks briefly with Kieran Shea about his soon- forthcoming “space heist” yarn, Off Rock.

• R.I.P., Robert Day, the UK director behind four Tarzan flicks, who devoted a majority of his efforts during the mid-20th-century to TV projects. According to Deadline Hollywood, he helmed “multiple episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Avengers, The F.B.I., The Name of the Game, Cade’s County and earn[ed] a DGA [Directors Guild of America] nom for 1970’s The Bold Ones: The Senator. He continued to direct TV dramas throughout the ’70s, including episodes of such classics as Police Story, The Streets of San Francisco, McCloud, Kojak, and Dallas.” Day was 94 years old.

• Talk about depressing charts!

• And this news, reported last year, reminds me of another, older TV series of the same name. According to Deadline Hollywood, “The Mark Gordon Company has put together big TV series package The Barbary Coast. The series will be directed and co-written by Mel Gibson, with Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson set to star. Gibson also will have a recurring role on the series. The project is inspired by Gangs of New York author Herbert Asbury’s book The Barbary Coast, about the birth of San Francisco. … The Barbary Coast begins with the [California] Gold Rush in 1849 which saw the biggest influx of gold-seekers, gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians. and other felonious parasites to the infant city. Thus arose a unique criminal district that for almost 70 years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity—yet at the same time possessed more glamour and intrigue—than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent.” I wonder whatever happened to this project. I’ve seen only one small update since.

On the Passing of Colin Dexter

It was with sadness that I learned today of the death, at age 86, of British educator-turned-author Colin Dexter. Born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, back in 1930 as Norman Colin Dexter, he went on to create the often-cantankerous and Oxford-based mystery-series protagonist Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse, who first appeared in 1975’s Last Bus to Woodstock. Dexter’s 13 Morse yarns and additional short stories later provided the basis for the 1987-2000 ITV detective drama Inspector Morse starring John Thaw, and inspired a small-screen sequel, Inspector Lewis (2006-2015), as well as the prequel Endeavour (2012-present). According to the Daily Mail, Dexter “died peacefully at home in Oxford this morning.”

In its obituary of Dexter, The Guardian writes:

Though he thought of himself primarily as a school teacher, Colin Dexter will be remembered as the crime writer who created the curmudgeonly but entertaining Inspector Morse. Morse, the beer, crossword and Wagner-loving detective who drives a vintage Jaguar around Oxford, solves murders by deep thinking, often about chance remarks made by his sidekick, Sergeant [Robbie] Lewis.

Dexter … claimed that he was no writer, but could revise his “bad starts” into something that worked. The formula was certainly a success for some dozen Morse novels and many original scripts for television, the medium that delivered the doings of the idiosyncratic Morse to an audience across 50 countries. “I just started writing and forced myself to keep going,” he said. “And it’s been the same ever since.” …

Dexter happily went along with publicity strategies to boost Morse because he felt he owed a debt of gratitude to his publishers but, like Morse, he hated cant and pretentiousness. He made millions out of Morse but lived in the same four-bedroomed house in Oxford that he had occupied since moving to the city in 1966.

He was neither impressed by displays of wealth nor anxious to live up to his income, his main sybaritic expenditure being on red wine, Flowers beer, whisky and his car. The last of these was as elderly as Morse’s, but of a lesser make. The one extravagance to which Dexter would admit was his purchase of the first editions of the works of [English scholar-poet] A.E. Housman. He had planned to write a book on Housman when he finished with his detective, but found by that time that other writers had cornered the market.

The Guardian adds this touching note:

Dexter was often asked whether he wrote for a readership or for himself. His answer was that he wrote for his old English teacher Mr. Sharp. He would write a page and then ask himself, “Would Mr. Sharp like that?” His aim was to feel that Mr. Sharp would give it at least eight out of 10.

Among the encomia delivered today in memory of Dexter are these remarks from UK crime-fiction critic Barry Forshaw:

“Dexter’s Oxford copper is one of the defining figures in British detective fiction—a multifaceted, fascinating protagonist who readers have followed avidly through a series of beautifully turned and ingenious novels. In a line of descent that extends back to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (notably via the laser-sharp intellect), Inspector Morse is a character who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best in the genre. Interestingly, his creator shared several characteristics and traits with his hero; he was classically erudite (with a particular love of the poetry of Housman, as mentioned above), and shrewdly analytical in terms of the varied personalities he encountered. But Dexter was the polar opposite of Morse in terms of his character: extremely affable, immensely charming and humorous—and (most of all) sensitive to the feelings of those around him. An anti-Morse, in fact.”

And this piece in The Bookseller adds more to Dexter’s story:

In later life, Dexter had type 2 diabetes, a condition that he also gave Morse in the last few books of the series. Morse was killed off in Dexter’s final book, The Remorseful Day, which published in 1999.

Dexter was awarded an OBE [Order of the British Empire] for services to literature in 2000 and was given the Freedom of the City in Oxford in 2001. He also won the CWA [Crime Writers’ Association’s] Diamond Dagger award and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction. ...

“I’m extremely sorry to hear of the death of Colin Dexter. He was the first crime writer I really discovered, having been led to his books through an obsession with the Morse television series,” [Waterstones fiction buyer Chris] White told The Bookseller. “The intelligence, wit and melancholy which were the hallmarks of his writing established a legacy of page-turning erudition which will ensure his books are bought and read long into the future.”

All of us here at The Rap Sheet offer our sympathies to Colin Dexter’s family and friends in the wake of his passing.

READ MORE: “Inspector Morse Creator Colin Dexter Dead at 86,” by Sian Cain (The Guardian); “Colin Dexter, Creator of Inspector Morse, Who Sleuthed in Novels and on TV, Dies at 86,” by William Grimes (The New York Times); “Inspector Morse Creator Colin Dexter Dead at 86” (The Sydney Morning Herald); “How Colin Dexter Changed the Face of Crime Fiction,” by John Dugdale (The Guardian); “Colin Dexter—Goodbye to an Old Friend,” by Mike Ripley (Shots).

Get Your Leftys Right Here

Last evening, during a special event held as part of this year’s Left Coast Crime convention, in Honolulu, Hawaii, the winners of the 2017 Lefty Awards were announced in four categories. Mystery Fanfare reports the rundown of victors as follows:

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel: Body on the Bayou, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)

Also nominated: Die Like an Eagle, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur); Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime); The CEO Came DOA, by Heather Haven (Wives of Bath Press); Floodgate, by Johnny Shaw (Thomas & Mercer); and A Disguise to Die For, by Diane Vallere (Berkley Prime Crime)

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bruce Alexander Memorial), for books covering events before 1960: The Reek of Red Herrings, by Catriona McPherson (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Crowned and Dangerous, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley Prime Crime); A Death Along the River Fleet, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur); The Murder of Mary Russell, by Laurie R. King (Bantam); and What Gold Buys, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel: Murder in G Major, by Alexia Gordon (Henery Press)

Also nominated: Cleaning Up Finn, by Sarah M. Chen (All Due Respect); Terror in Taffeta, by Marla Cooper (Minotaur); Decanting a Murder, by Nadine Nettmann (Midnight Ink); and Design for Dying, by Renee Patrick (Forge)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories): A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Dark Fissures, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview); Michelangelo’s Ghost, by Gigi Pandian (Henery Press); The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake, by Terry Shames (Seventh Street); and Heart of Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

The 2018 Left Coast Crime gathering, aka “Crime on the Comstock,” will be held in Reno, Nevada, from March 22 to 25.

READ MORE: “Weekend with Lefty,” by Les Blatt (Classic Mysteries).

Revue of Reviewers, 3-17-17

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Flocking of the Lammys

Lambda Literary, “the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing LGBTQ literature,” has announced its finalists for the 29th annual Lambda Literary Awards, aka the “Lammys.” There are 24 categories of contestants this year, but Rap Sheet readers might be most interested in the following two:

Best Lesbian Mystery:
• Blood Money Murder, by Jessie Chandler (Bella)
• Bury Me When I’m Dead, by Cheryl A. Head (Bywater)
• Collide-O-Scope, by Andrea Bramhall (Ylva)
• Final Cut, by Lynn Ames (Phoenix Rising Press)
• Pathogen, by Jessica L. Webb (Bold Strokes)
• Requiem for Immortals, by Lee Winter (Ylva)
• Under Contract, by Jennifer L. Jordan (Clover Valley Press)
• Walk-in, by T.L. Hart (Bella)

Best Gay Mystery:
• Bitter Legacy, by Dal Maclean (Blind Eye)
• Homo Superiors, by L. A. Fields (Lethe Press)
• Lay Your Sleeping Head, by Michael Nava (Korima Press)
• Nights in Berlin, by Janice Law (MysteriousPress/Open Road)
• Speakers of the Dead, by J. Aaron Sanders (Plume)

The winning works in all categories will be declared on Monday, June 12, during a special ceremony to be held at the New York University Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan.

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

School’s Out, the Heat Is On

Well, this is a rather significant video find. One Archibald Von Unknowski (real name or alias?) has posted, on YouTube, the 72-minute pilot and all five episodes of Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, a 1978 NBC-TV series starring Dennis Dugan as a surfer turned low-budget Los Angeles gumshoe. I wasn’t a big fan of this show when it first aired (even though it was created by Stephen J. Cannell and Steven Bochco, and launched from The Rockford Files). However, I’m prepared to give it a second watch after all these years.

READ MORE: “Never Send A Boy King to Do a Man’s Job,” by Marty McKee (Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot).