Gone from the Road Ahead

Just slightly short of four months after celebrating his 90th birthday (on May 1), veteran actor Glenn Ford died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He’d been prominent in Hollywood for more than half a century, but in the late 1980s had experienced circulatory and heart problems, his condition made worse by a series of strokes in the ’90s that kept him out of the limelight and the public eye. His concluding screen role was in the 1991 teleflick Final Verdict.

He was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Quebec, Canada, the only son of Welsh parents. (Ford’s father was not only a railroad executive and the nephew of former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John MacDonald, but was apparently also related to Martin Van Buren, the eighth U.S. president.) The family moved to Santa Monica, California, when Gwyllyn/Glenn was 7 years old, but it wasn’t until 1939--the same year he appeared in his first major movie role, in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence, that Glenn Ford became a naturalized U.S. citizen. During a career slightly interrupted by his service with the Marines in World War II, this actor with a crinkly smile and knowing eyes was featured in more than 100 films, including comedies, romances, and westerns. He appeared opposite Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946) and starred as an idealistic teacher in the 1955 movie The Blackboard Jungle (which was based on a novel by Evan Hunter, aka crime writer Ed McBain). Ford played the father, Tom Corbett, in the 1963 film The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (a role later taken by Bill Bixby in the 1969-1972 TV series based on that movie), headlined the 1969 western Heaven with a Gun, and played young Clark Kent’s adopted father in the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie, Superman. He picked up a Golden Globe Award for his part in the 1961 Frank Capra musical comedy, A Pocketful of Miracles.

However, it’s for a pair of television roles that we have the greatest cause to remember him here. In 1971, at the beginning of the so-called glory years of American TV detectives, Ford starred in the western-cum-crime drama Cade’s County, playing “Sheriff Sam Cade, whose jurisdiction,” explains Richard Meyers in his 1981 book TV Detectives, “covered all of [the fictional] Madrid County, California. The series was contemporary, but the sprawling country it pictured looked little different from the Wild West, except that instead of horses, Cade and his deputies rode Jeeps. His deputies included J.J. Jackson (veteran actor Edgar Buchanan, whose film career began in 1940, after his successful stint as a dentist), Arlo Pritchard (blond newcomer Taylor Lacher), Rudy Davillo (Victor Campos), and a production in-joke, a character known only as Pete. The joke was that this final deputy was played by Peter Ford, Glenn’s son.”

Regrettably, Cade’s County lasted only a single season. Two years later, though, Ford returned to the small screen in the pilot for an NBC-TV series called Jarrett. I was reminded of this recently, while researching a Rap Sheet post about classic-style TV private-eye shows. I have to admit, I don’t really remember much about the 1973 Jarrett teleflick, other than that Ford played an erudite and pretty sophisticated private investigator, Sam Jarrett, who specialized in fine arts cases. The plot found Jarrett facing off against a phony holy man, while trying to locate some missing rare Biblical scrolls. That movie seemed to have lots of things going for it: its script was written by Richard Maibaum (who penned the screenplays for many of the James Bond films) and its director’s chair was occupied by Barry Shear (who was behind the camera for a number of prominent 1960s and ’70s TV series, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Alias Smith and Jones, and Police Woman). Yet it couldn’t seem to find a slot in that fall’s TV schedule, perhaps because, as Maibaum allegedly suggested, the lead role had been intended for a younger, more athletic actor than the middle-aged Ford.

In 1974, Ford appeared in another unsuccessful TV pilot, Punch and Jody (also directed by Shear), in which he played a father who, after abandoning his wife and daughter in order to join a traveling circus, tries to reconcile with the child he left behind. His second and last venture into the world of weekly TV dramas came in The Family Holvak (1975), a Waltons-like show that placed Ford in the role of a 1930s Tennessee reverend who struggles to keep his brood and his community out of trouble. (Child actor Lance Kerwin, who later starred in James at 15, played Ford’s son in the series.)

Glenn Ford was wed four times, all of his marriages ending in divorce. However, with his first wife, actress-dancer Eleanor Powell, he produced the aforementioned son, Peter Ford (now 61), who evidently has a biography of his father, Glenn Ford: A Life in Film, “coming soon” from Terrace Books, a division of the University of Wisconsin Press. It’ll be interesting to see whether there’s anything new in that book about Jarrett, Cade’s County, or other crime-related series projects attached to this actor’s name.

READ MORE: “Glenn Ford, Canadian-born American Actor, Died at 90” (Dead Famous).

Maybe That Explains Why You Can Never Find a Cab After an Evening on the Town

This sounds like the concept for an incredibly cheesy TV series. Too bad it’s not. Speaking yesterday in Belgrade, Montana, during a fundraiser attended by American first lady Laura Bush, embattled third-term U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) told an audience that America must protect itself from a “faceless enemy” of terrorists who “drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.”

“Saucy Jacky” Strikes!

Here’s a grim anniversary for you: Today marks the 118th year since London, England’s notorious Jack the Ripper reportedly claimed his first victim, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, a 43-year-old prostitute. Her mutilated body was found in Buck’s Row, now called Durward Street, a small thoroughfare in the city’s Whitechapel district. “Jack,” never caught or even identified without doubt, went on to murder and eviscerate four additional poor women in the East End (though there are more than a dozen others who, it’s been suggested since, were attacked by the same hand), before suddenly ceasing his homicidal spree three months later, in November 1888.

In 2005, Jack the Ripper was selected by a group of 10 English historians as the “worst Briton” of the 19th century. Hardly a surprise, don’t you think?

Not Your Ordinary Dam List

Those delightful folks at the Waterboro Library in Waterboro, Maine, have published the best book list I’ve seen all year. “Drowned Towns” features mysteries (and other fiction) “... with a featured element of intentional submerging, inundating, and flooding of towns, villages, cities, and other places as a consequence of building dams and reservoirs ...” The mystery section is called “Reservoir Noir.” See the rundown here.

While familiar authors such Peter Robinson, Donald E. Westlake, and Julia Spencer-Fleming are predictably included, so are some more obscure writers, including Michael Miano and Allen Dipper, neither of whom I have encountered before.

Perfect choices of reading matter for this upcoming long weekend at your favorite manmade lake.

(Hat tip to The Millions).

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

The latest edition of Mystery News recently came winging through my mail slot. Its cover story focuses on Dallas’ Harry Hunsicker, author of the new private-eye novel The Next Time You Die. Inside are profiles of Canadian Louise Penny (Still Life) and Australian Kerry Greenwood (Flying Too High), as well as a lively retrospective on Raoul F. Whitfield, “the forgotten man of hardboiled fiction.” And Marv Lachman promotes Dick Francis’ forthcoming novel, Under Orders, by reminding readers of that jockey-turned-author’s past success at penning horse-racing mysteries (he’s especially fond of 1965’s Odds Against).

Unfortunately, out of all the contents mentioned here, only part of Gary Warren Niebuhr’s story about Hunsicker is available online.

Crime and Calamity

As we mark this first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly rampage across the U.S. Gulf Coast, complete with photographs, newspaper recollections (see here and here), reports of promises unkept in the storm’s wake, and efforts by the White House to downplay its too little, too late response to the storm last August, it’s also interesting to look at how disasters of various sorts have been incorporated into crime fiction. This genre has benefited from the occasional integration of real-life characters and historical events into its tales, and disasters--whether natural and manmade--have helped enrich that storytelling.

The most significant purveyor of what might be called “disaster mysteries” has been Max Allan Collins. Over half a dozen years, he produced a series of novels backdropped by noteworthy calamities and featuring familiar mystery writers as their protagonists. Everything got started in 1999 with The Titanic Murders, which found Jacques Futrelle, author of the once-renowned “Thinking Machine” whodunits and an actual casualty of the Titanic sinking in 1912, investigating a pair of murders on board that ill-fated passenger liner. From there, the series offered up 2000’s The Hindenburg Murders (which turned Leslie Charteris, of “The Saint” fame, into a sleuth on board the doomed Zeppelin Hindenburg in 1937), 2001’s The Pearl Harbor Murders (with Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs solving the slaying of a Japanese-American singer during the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii), 2002’s The Lusitania Murders (in which Willard Wright--aka S.S. Van Dine, author of the Philo Vance yarns--covertly probes the World War I-era transportation of munitions aboard the soon-to-be-torpedoed RMS Lusitania), and 2004’s The London Blitz Murders (sending Agatha Christie to figure out the identity of a modern-day Jack the Ripper in bomb-ravaged, 1942 London). Collins apparently ended his “disaster mysteries” series with The War of the Worlds Murder (2005), in which pulp writer Walter Gibson, creator of The Shadow, investigates actor Orson Welles’ part in a killing during the latter’s infamous 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. A seventh installment of this series, The Cocoanut Grove Murders, which was to have followed “Untouchables” honcho Eliot Ness as he looked into the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history, at Boston’s Cocoanut Grove in November 1942, may or may not appear sometime in the future.

Beyond Collins’ contributions to this subgenre, let us not forget William Seil’s Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Tragedy (1996). It imagines the Great Detective and Dr. John H. Watson being summoned out of retirement in order to protect a secret agent, Christine Adler (the daughter of Irene Adler, from “A Scandal in Bohemia”), who’s traveling across the Atlantic on board the world’s largest luxury liner bearing submarine plans for delivery to the U.S. Navy. Naturally, those plans disappear, and Holmes, with help from the convenient Jacques Futrelle, goes looking for them--a task hindered by the looming presence of Colonel Moriarty, brother of Sherlock’s late archenemy.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s protagonists participate in another disaster-based tale, Larry Millett’s Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon (1996). The first of Minnesota newspaperman Millett’s five Holmes novels (and the predecessor to his Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders, 1998), Red Demon removes history’s most famous detective from his native Britain and drops him, instead, into Minnesota in 1894. There, he undertakes an assignment for railroad magnate James J. Hill: to find a homicidal arsonist who’s been plaguing Hill’s Great Northern Railway. Millett makes admirable use of the frontier types so common in the northern Minnesota “pineries” of that time, casting Holmes and Watson into the sometimes malodorous company of hard-fisted loggers, wily backcountry whores, and irritable railroad employees. And he sets his action against the build-up to the Great Hinckley Fire, a devastating blaze that took the lives of 400 people and burned away 400 square miles of timberland.

Even more tragic is the calamity at the heart of James Dalessandro’s 1906: the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Originally published in 2004, this novel takes a few liberties with history--Dalessandro renames the city’s major villain of a century ago, for instance, then draws up from the grave the eccentric “Emperor” Joshua Norton (who had actually succumbed 16 years earlier) in order to increase what would seem to have been the already abundant local color of that period. In addition, the author is rather too fond of cameo appearances by familiar historical figures. But Dalessandro manages to fit the details of the city’s destruction into his narrative without bogging down its pace seriously, and his two interweaving plot lines--following the quake and blaze of ’06 , along with a corruption probe that was set to be unveiled before all the shaking and dying began--serve to keep adventure, crime, and history lovers alike interested. Perhaps only Richard S. Wheeler’s Aftershocks (1999) does a better job of fictionalizing the otherworldly events of the San Francisco disaster, but that’s more a mainstream novel than crime fiction.

I’m surprised that there aren’t many more “disaster mysteries.” Blending criminal activities and investigations together with natural or manmade catastrophes would seem to heighten the urgency of the former, and attract broader audiences with the latter. Look how successfully writers such as Philip Kerr (March Violets), Jonathan Raab (Rosa), and John Katzenbach (Hart’s War) have erected their criminal tales against the vivid background of World Wars I and II, accepting the notion that quotidian crimes must be solved, even when violence on a much larger scale rages all about. Couldn’t the same sort of excitement be generated by murder mysteries set around, say, the 1883 volcanic explosion of Krakatoa, or the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, or the 1692 sinking of Port Royal, Jamaica, or Europe’s 14th-century Black Plague? For that matter, could not a thrilling genre story take place in New Orleans amid the human hardships and desperation of Hurricane Katrina? Maybe someday.

The Good Life of Crime

Most folks, while they may have heard of Arthur J. Raffles, have probably never read any of the stories written about that turn-of-the-last-century “gentleman thief” by E.W. Hornung, the brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. An obvious exception is Mary Reed, who writes a fine, fond reminiscence in Mystery*File of this cricketer-“cracksman” and his Watson-like associate, Harry “Bunny” Manders. Reed, the co-author (with Eric Mayer) of the John the Eunuch novels, including Six for Gold, gives a quite thorough description of Raffles and his criminal ethics, which includes this passage:

Despite his night work [as a burglar and master of disguise], Raffles abides by the unwritten rules of late Victorian life, one of which was there were certain things gentlemen simply did not do. However, he bends this implied code of conduct in an alarming fashion because while he will never rob his host, other guests’ valuables, particularly jewelry and gems, are fair game. On the other hand, while he cheerfully declares he would rob St. Paul’s Cathedral, he would neither pinch money from a shop till nor steal a bag of apples from an old lady. He believes human nature resembles a draughts board, alternatively black and white, asking Bunny why should anyone be all one colour or the other? However, he has not entirely gone to the bow-wows for Bunny also assures us Raffles “liked the light the better for the shade.”

On the other hand, Raffles has a lazy streak. He does not see why he should work when he can steal. He craves excitement and does not want a humdrum life “when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living [are] all going begging together...” (“The Ides of March”). He disarmingly admits his outlook is wrong, but further excuses it by pointing out … the unequal way wealth is distributed, noting not everyone can be a moralist and besides which, he was not out burgling every night. However, he is not Robin Hood stealing for the poor; he is Raffles, stealing for himself.

Two collections of Raffles stories--The Amateur Cracksman and A Thief in the Night--appear to still be in print, along with the only Raffles novel, Mr. Justice Raffles, though a third collection, The Black Mask, is less easily available in book form. However, a number of these stories can be found for free on the Web, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Refer to the end of Reed’s Mystery*File piece for the appropriate links.

Bad from Birth

There have been so many dumb series on television over the years, that separating out those which were obviously doomed from the outset by their central premises demands some pretty serious consideration. Fortunately, the folks over at the Television Obscurities site have done the culling for us, compiling their list of the “10 Most Outlandish Television Concepts Ever.”

Only two crime-related shows appear on the site’s roster. The first is Holmes & Yo-Yo (1976-1977), which starred Richard B. Shull as a klutzy, disheveled police detective who was prone to injuring his partners, and John Schuck (somehow enticed away from McMillan & Wife to participate in this turkey) as his new, freakishly strong android partner. The second is Cop Rock, a much-hyped but short-lived Steven Bochco series that melded the police drama with musical theater. (“Within the course of the premiere episode,” TV Obscurites explains, “viewers witnessed a jury breaking into a gospel song about finding a man guilty, a young mother giving away her baby for $200 [and singing about it], and a police officer gunning down a cop-killer in cold blood.”)

Also making this “Outlandish” roster, but not crime-fiction-related, are The Second Hundred Years (about a man who’s frozen in 1900 and thawed out almost seven decades later), Woops! (a FOX sitcom set in the “aftermath of accidental global nuclear war, started when two boys playing with a toy at a parade set off a nuclear missile”), and the inevitable My Mother the Car, which starred Jerry Van Dyke as a guy whose dead mom is reincarnated as a 1928 “Porter” touring car. According to Wikipedia, Van Dyke passed up the title role in Gilligan’s Island (ultimately filled by Bob Denver) in order to make this Mother, believing Gilligan would be roundly and prompty rejected by TV audiences. Speaking of woops!

Mr. Bond Has You Covered

Following my remarks of the other day concerning the two covers that Esquire magazine has most recently devoted to James Bond (or the actors portraying him, anyway), I was reminded that those haven’t been the only occasions on which this stylish American men’s mag has given over its front to promoting the no less stylish Agent 007.

The fact is, Esquire seems to have made quite a regular practice of touting the Bond films as they’ve rolled into movie houses worldwide. In June 1965, for instance, a dinner-jacketed Sean Connery posed amid a trio of potential femmes fatales in the cause of plumping the fourth Bond flick, Thunderball. There was hardly room enough left for the cover line, which read simply, “12 pages on the new James Bond movie. Wow!” Then, two years later, with You Only Live Twice set to debut, the March 1967 Esquire headlined, “If You’re Sick of James Bond, Rejoice! Rejoice! James Bond Is Dead!” Another three women, this time dressed for grieving rather than seducing, and huddled over an ornate casket, gave newsstand browsers the impression that Britain’s most renowned secret agent had finally been done in by the villainous henchmen of SPECTRE, that impression buttressed on the inside pages with an excerpt from the You Only Live Twice shooting script, describing a scene in which 007 is first trapped and then machine-gunned, post-coitus, inside a Murphy bed. (Only several pages later is the spoiler delivered, complete with a diagram of Bond’s specially made burial-at-sea shroud: “old Jimmy Bond isn’t really dead. It’s all a fake to make SPECTRE think he’s out of the picture.”)

Interestingly, Roger Moore, who starred in seven Bond movies, compared to Connery’s “official” six (with the latter’s seventh Bond outing, in 1983’s Never Say Never Again--a remake of Thunderball--not being considered part of the film canon), never won Esquire cover treatment of his own, at least according to the magazine’s extensive covers archive. Nor did Timothy Dalton, who appeared in The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989), or, for that matter, George Lazenby, who broke Connery’s streak of Bond films by playing 007 in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Not until 18 years after the notorious “James Bond Is Dead!” cover did Ian Fleming’s colorful creation finally front Esquire once more, this time in the person of Pierce Brosnan, the Irish-born actor who’d won a following as the co-star (with Stephanie Zimbalist) of U.S. television’s Remington Steele. The November 1995 magazine trumpeted Brosnan’s Bond debut in the forthcoming GoldenEye, headlining its story (in direct, if not conscious, rebuttal of its previous cover announcement), “Bond Is Back!” As the subhead explained, “He still drinks a lot, drives too fast, shoots people, and sleeps around. Way to go, 007!” The main article inside, which analyzes the screen evolution and continuing appeal of Bond, was penned by British journalist Richard Rayner (who has since gone on to a noteworthy career writing novels, including 2005’s noirish standout, The Devil’s Wind) and is accompanied by a photograph with more than a passing resemblance to the Connery cover from 1965 (see image, above right).

As the teaser on Rayner’s lengthy tribute to the cult of Bond observed, “there’s no man alive who has never wished he were the suave, violent bastard who saved Western civ.” Which likely explains why Fleming’s espionage operative continues to be featured regularly in Esquire, not to mention on the cover of pretty much every other entertainment-oriented mag in America and Europe. If the men holding editorial positions at those publications are not themselves Bond devotees, they’re quite certain that their male readers are, and periodic reinvigorations of the 007 mythos (complete with photographs of Bond girls new and old) only remind everyone what attracted them to this elaborate fantasy in the first place. Such enthusiasm is captured clearly in Esquire’s September 2006 cover story about the forthcoming film Casino Royale, which is touted on the inside under a headline that settles precisely between the magazine’s sales gimmicks of the past:

“Bond Is Dead! Long Live Bond!”

READ MORE: “New 007 Causes a Stir” (The Sun).

What Might Have Been ...

Speaking of all things Bond, London’s Daily Mail reports on how “newly unearthed documents” show that author Ian Fleming originally thought Richard Burton would be “by far the best” actor to portray Agent 007 in the movies. According to the paper,

In 1959, three years before [Sean] Connery made his debut in Dr. No, 007 creator Ian Fleming decided he wanted Burton to play the part--in a movie to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

If the project had gone ahead, it would have had dramatic repercussions for cinematic history.

Burton would almost certainly have missed his role as Marc Antony in Cleopatra, during which he fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor; Hitchcock may never have directed Psycho; and Connery would have lost his opportunity for international stardom and the knighthood that came his way in 2000.

In the past, there have been reports that Fleming’s initial choice to play his suave spy on the screen was either Cary Grant, James Mason, or Roger Moore, the last of whom, of course, eventually got the job.

(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

So Good in SoCal

The Southern California Booksellers Association has announced the nominees for its 2006 SCBA Book Awards in four categories. Included are five contenders in the Mystery division:

• The Fallen, by T. Jefferson Parker (Morrow)
• Solomon vs. Lord, by Paul Levine (Bantam)
• An Unacceptable Death, by Barbara Seranella (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Pardonable Lies, by Jacqueline Winspear (Picador)
• A Prisoner of Memory, by Denise Hamilton (Scribner)

A winner will be announced in late October.

From Pain Comes Gain

Fans of Robert Wilson, whose third novel featuring Seville’s Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón, The Hidden Assassins, is already available in Britain and due out in U.S. bookstores come November, will want to read a new, appreciative profile of this author in The Australian. During the course of Wilson’s encounter with the newspaper reporter, he tells about how a long-ago car accident, which cost him a rugby career, also led him to develop the Spanish detective whose adventures are now making him a literary star.

As The Australian explains:

Then came his pile-up. [Wilson] was a passenger in a putative brother-in-law’s car, and he remembers hearing two paramedics “decide ‘not to bother with that one because he’s gone’. ‘I'm alive,’ I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t make a sound. I was terrified I was going to die because I couldn’t get their attention.”

After a long recovery, he went from being a sport-centric jock “to making different friends, being more open and getting an insight into a different world entirely. In a way, I’ve used Javier Falcón as a way of talking about what happened to me, how my vision was opened up by a traumatic experience. Experiences like that either make you or break you.”

For Wilson, it was clearly the former course.

Connolly Has It His Way

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the headline over today’s profile of novelist John Connolly in Britain’s Independent newspaper--“John Connolly: ‘Never Listen to Readers’”--because it so directly contradicts the opinion expressed by Jeffery Deaver on the cover of this summer’s edition of Mystery Scene: “Readers Are Gods.”

The piece itself talks about Connolly’s latest standalone, The Book of Lost Things, which comes out in the UK this week (but isn’t due for U.S. publication till November). Independent writer Tim Martin describes that novel as a “wartime fairytale fantasy” about “a troubled, bookish 12-year-old ... [who] finds himself entering a shadow-world of allusion and illusion, built from stories and staffed by the characters from his bookshelves. This is a place in which the Seven Dwarfs are a gang of fretful Marxists downtrodden by a slatternly Snow White, in which a gay knight rides to save his lover from the clutches of Sleeping Beauty, in which the Loathly Lady tears apart her hapless courtier after he turns her down.” While such a shift of gears from Connolly’s series about police detective-turned-private eye Charlie “Bird” Parker (The Black Angel) will likely cause some consternation among booksellers, who prefer to see a successful author maintain his stride, Connolly contends that his fans won’t be overly disturbed. As he says:

“Mystery readers are very loyal, and they’ll look forward to their book every year, even if it’s a bad book. They’ll go out next year and buy another one in the hope that it’ll be a bit better.”

A glint of mischief enters his eyes. “And there are certain writers who have made a whole career out of the eternal optimism of the mystery reader. I can think of a couple. I got an e-mail from a woman who works in this bookstore in New York saying, ‘Well, we’ve ordered x number of copies but there was this collective groan from our readers when we heard it wasn’t going to be a Charlie Parker novel!’ Now that’s not really what you want to hear.” His eyes start out a bit. “Actually it makes you want to beat your head against the table, you know?

“Anyway,” he goes on merrily, “the last thing you want to do is to listen to readers. The nice lady who runs my website started a poll so people could nominate their favourite book. And my career looks like a downward ski slope, you know? It’s profoundly depressing!” He is laughing hard. “It picks up again last year for The Black Angel, so it looks a bit like a heart patient who’s going to expire and then just took a little nudge at the end. You can’t listen to your readers, you really can’t.”

Parker enthusiasts, however, can rest assured that Connolly hasn’t abandoned his brooding New York protagonist. He tells The Independent that he’s currently finishing the next Parker outing, called The Unquiet.

Five Easy Questions

Inaugurating a new feature of his blog, Central Crime Zone, Crimespree magazine co-editor Jon Jordan addresses a “quick five” questions to Irish writer Ken Bruen. The biggest news: Bruen, who has a new novel, American Skin, coming out in the States next month, is currently working with Jason Starr on Slant, a sequel to their pulpish Bust. Funniest line: Bruen says that his daughter was recently taught the meaning of pessimism at school, to which she sagely responded, “Oh, like my dad.”

An “Ego-centric Little Creep”

Would-be novelists are commonly taught to be generous when portraying their characters, to employ the depth and background of those imaginative figures as a means of attracting reader interest. However, as P.D. James explains in today’s London Telegraph, renowned whodunit author Agatha Christie didn’t follow that advice with her “best loved detective,” Hercule Poirot. Writing in anticipation of Britain’s second annual Agatha Christie Week, September 11-16, James recalls:

The Mysterious Affair at Styles [which introduced Poirot in 1920], with its complicated plot, foreshadows the development of Christie’s art, but her hero, so far from developing, remains essentially the same. He appears in over 30 novels and 50 stories, but nothing more is heard of his limp, nor of his habit of perching his head to one side. We learn that his eyes appear green in moments of excitement, that he acquires a chauffeur, George, and an efficient secretary, Miss Lemon. He lives in Whitehaven Mansions, a starkly modern London flat which satisfies his love of symmetry and order.

His native language is French, but he speaks it rather like a stage Frenchman, while on occasions speaking perfect English. His work as a private investigator is obviously lucrative since in Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934, he declines $20,000 to protect Mr Ratchett. But he appears to live simply and we are not told anything of his hobbies or intellectual interests, although he does appear to have some knowledge of gardening, including an enthusiasm for growing vegetable marrows.

We are never privy to his private thoughts and we see and know him only through the eyes of other characters. His family and early life remain a mystery except for one reference, in Murder in Three Acts, when he talks to Mr Satterthwaite on the beach at Monte Carlo and reveals that he had been a poor boy from a ‘famille nombreuse’ who had joined the Belgian police force in an attempt to make a name for himself.

His involvement with the affair at Styles is therefore the beginning of a second and successful career, which presented Agatha Christie with problems about his age. She afterwards regretted that she had not made him much younger at his first appearance.

But the fact that we feel we know Poirot intimately while actually knowing very little is an advantage. He is at the centre of the novel, yet we are never distracted from his purpose--the solving of the crime--nor does he compete for psychological interest with other characters.

Interestingly, although Poirot provided his creator with a perfect outsider through which she could explore jealousy, deceit, and murder in British society, Christie wasn’t as charmed by him as were some of the players in her books. “[W]hile Dorothy L. Sayers undoubtedly fell in love with her detective, Lord Peter,” James explains, “and remodelled him according to her idea of a suitable mate, Christie grew to dislike Poirot intensely--she once called him a ‘detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep’. She saw him as an incubus, albeit a profitable one.”

(Hat tip to Marshal Zeringue’s Campaign for the American Reader.)

The Man and His Books

Thanks are due Elizabeth Foxwell for reminding us that today would have been the 131st birthday of Scottish thriller writer and politician John Buchan, aka the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. As Foxwell explains in her blog, The Bunburyist,

Buchan worked for British intelligence during WWI; served as a member of Parliament; and wrote historical fiction, criticism, poetry, history, and biography. But it is probably for his novel The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), in which mining engineer Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in espionage, that he is best known because of the Alfred Hitchcock film of 1935 starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll (don’t we all remember the chill we felt when Mr. Bad Guy holds up his hand, and we see along with Hannay that he is missing part of a finger).

Buchan penned four more Richard Hannay spy thrillers, among them Greenmantle (1916), during and after the “Great War,” but he also wrote biographies of Sir Walter Raleigh, Oliver Cromwell, and Caesar Augustus. In 1935 he was created as Baron Tweedsmuir and dispatched to Canada as the commonwealth’s new Governor General, representing British King George V. A year later, he founded the Governor General’s Awards, which still rank among Canada’s foremost literary commendations. After suffering a stroke while shaving, Buchan/Tweedsmuir died in 1940, just 10 days before his term as Governor General was to have ended.

READ MORE: “The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).

Lesson 1: How to Thoroughly and Completely Lose Control of an Interview

Dylan Schaffer, who two years ago submitted to a lengthy January Magazine interview, is now the recipient of Elaine Flinn “Bubble” treatment over at the Murderati blog. During what is apparently the first installment of a rather bizarre and hopelessly ingratiating two-part conversation, Schaffer (Misdemeanor Man, I Right the Wrongs) talks about bialys, bunions, Oakland, his role on My Mother the Car, and really nothing much whatsoever.

Read the whole exchange (if you can call it that) here. More here.

The Eyes Have It

Now, here’s a proposal I can really get behind. Writing today in Salon, infamous novelist James Frey (yeah, the same guy whose supposedly “factual memoir” led to headlines such as “A Million Little Lies”--but we won’t hold that against him at the moment) remarks that his fondest wish for television’s future would be to see the return of classic-style private-eye series:

When I was growing up, I loved private investigator shows like “The Rockford Files,” “[Mike] Hammer” and “Magnum, P.I.” They all followed a fairly simple formula: beautiful woman arrives with case, P.I. takes case against his better judgment, P.I. starts working on case while driving a bad-ass car, case proves dangerous and troublesome and P.I. gets knocked out at least once, P.I. solves case at the last minute due to stunning combination of brain and brawn, P.I. sleeps with beautiful, and now grateful, woman who brought him the case. It’s a perfect formula for an hourlong show. You know what you’re getting each week, and you watch because you love the main character.

I miss good P.I. shows. There aren’t any on anymore. “Monk,” which is on the USA Network, is the closest thing, but Monk is an obsessive/compulsive weenie. The show is violence-free, sex-free, humorless and boring. There are no car chases, no explosions, no boobs. Monk mumbles, winks and twitches, his sidekick follows him around explaining his brilliance and weirdness. It’s an insult to the genre. Every time I come across it, I turn the channel as fast as my thumb allows.

I want to see a new P.I. show. I think the time has come. ...

The one I want to see takes advantage of the license creators of TV shows are given in today’s world. The violence will be bigger and louder, the women dirtier and in smaller outfits, the hero will smoke, spit and swear. [Mickey] Spillane did it in words 50 years ago, someone should be able to do it with sound and images now. The show would have a flawed, muscle car-driving, antihero P.I. He would get drunk, drive fast, kick ass, solve cases and charm the ladies. Tonally, it would be something like Todd Phillips or Quentin Tarantino, with humor and irony balancing the sex and violence. It would have all the staples of the genre: a beautiful woman, now gone, who broke the P.I.’s heart in the past, a bumbling sidekick, a cop who is an ally, a higher-ranking cop who is an enemy. There will also, of course, be the one case that got away, and that the P.I. is constantly thinking about and trying to put to rest.

I couldn’t have said all that better myself (which I may want to do someday, when nobody’s watching). American television these days has fallen into a seemingly endless loop of scientific crime shows (CSI and its clones, Crossing Jordan, Bones, etc.), police/FBI procedurals (NUMB3RS, Criminal Minds, and the rest) and cop/courtroom dramas (the Law & Order clones, Shark, etc.), with only a few modestly distinctive shows, such as this fall’s Raines, in which Jeff Goldblum plays an eccentric Los Angeles police detective who communicates with dead victims in order to solve crimes (think The Ghost Whisperer meets Law & Order: Criminal Intent). When were we last treated to a good, old-fashioned, weekly private-eye series, anyway? It might have been the technologically stylish but quite disappointing Eyes (2005), with Tim Daly. And before that, maybe Snoops (2002), which was worth seeing only for the interplay between curvaceous Gina Gershon and uptight Paula Marshall. Buddy Faro (1998), with the always watchable Dennis Farina, purported to be a P.I. series, but it was really a comedy, and Nero Wolfe (2001-2002), while it was certainly a cut above some previous presentations of Rex Stout’s characters, buried its appeal as a detective yarn under period color and melodrama. Sadly, the closest things we have anymore to private-eye series are the teen mystery Veronica Mars, the aforementioned Monk, and its USA Network companion show, Psych (which, despite its familiar broadcast billing, is not a real detective series--at least not in my book).

Gone, as Frey observes, are the golden days of Rockford, Mannix, Spenser: For Hire, Harry O, Banyon, Private Eye, Switch, City of Angels, and Barnaby Jones. Even programs such as Moonlighting, Remington Steele, Crazy Like a Fox, and Simon & Simon, which combined criminal investigation with comedic interplay, were a cut above the pallid private-eye programs we’re being offered these days. Heck, many of the crime-fiction shows that didn’t go beyond pilot films in the 1970s--Jarrett (with Glenn Ford), Partners in Crime (with Lee Grant and Lou Antonio), The Adventures of Nick Carter (starring Robert Conrad), and Delaney (with Ed Lauter playing a 1940s hotel dick), to name just a handful--were of Emmy-winning caliber, compared with the disjointed Psych.

The only fortunate thing here, of course, is that U.S. TV programming is cyclical. Viewers tire of one thing, then go on to something new, but eventually wind up wanting again what they’ve been without for a while. Americans have gone through at least two periods of P.I. dominance of the small screen. The first came in the late 1950s/early ’60s, when the networks were rampant with such shows as 77 Sunset Strip, Peter Gunn, Richard Diamond, Private Eye, and an early series built around Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (this one starring actor Philip Carey). By October 1959, the glut of private eyes on television was so obvious, that Time magazine devoted one of its covers to the subject (reproduced above). The second, and more memorable, renaissance of the gumshoe came in the 1970s, when Rockford and Harry O were joined by considerably less memorable shows such as Longstreet, Matt Helm, Tenafly, Griff, Vega$, Richie Brockleman, Private Eye, Shaft, and The Duke.

Could Frey’s (and my) wish for a revival of the TV private eye come true? Undoubtedly. Once the present spate of “reality”-programs, forensic series, and concept serials centered around sleek-bodied, sexually active teens has finally run its oh-so-tedious course, you can almost guarantee that TV producers too young to have experienced the last flowering of the sleuth craze will think themselves geniuses for introducing their audiences to flawed, muscle car-driving, antihero P.I.s who get drunk, drive fast, kick ass, solve cases, and charm the ladies.

I look forward to it. In a million little ways.

READ MORE: “The 10 Coolest TV Private Eyes” (The Crime Scenesters).

Billingham’s Top Billing

In case you missed him, British novelist Mark Billingham (Lifeless, Buried, The Burning Girl) was the guest blogger today over at Sarah Weinman’s blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. You can still catch his posts here, here, and here.

Now Entering Pelecanos Country

“George Pelecanos writes his stories from the ground up. Setting is more than background in his latest standalone, The Night Gardener, where the neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., are as integral to the storyline as the characters,” remarks David Thayer, in his first book review for January Magazine. “Covering the decades between the Reagan era and now, this novel is an informal history of powder cocaine's progression to crack and the violence that has destroyed a generation of black families in the process.”

Read Thayer’s full critique of The Night Gardener here.

Voting Link Corrected

It was pointed out to me that my link to the page on which readers may vote in the 2006 Quill Awards competition was in error. To find the correct page, click here. Voting will close on September 30.

Recovering in the Big Easy

With the one-year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster coming up on August 29, expect to see plenty of commentary on the subject from New Orleans authors. Among those writers is Julie Smith, author of the Skip Langdon series as well as the Talba Wallis/Eddie Valentine series (the latest installment of which is P.I. on a Hot Tin Roof, reissued in paperback earlier this month).

Writing in Critical Mass, “the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors,” Smith explains that, as a result of that hurricane, she’s at least temporarily given up writing mysteries in favor of “a mainstream novel about me and my crazy-acting neighbors in my benighted, messed-up post-K neighborhood ... I’m still working on it,” she writes, “but every time I mention it to my agent, she changes the subject. So I’ve taken to calling it my therapy novel. Clearly, she doesn’t think it has a chance in the marketplace, but I can’t help it, I have to write it.”

In addition, however, Smith has edited New Orleans Noir, one of Akashic Books’ terrific collections of city-based short stories, this one due out in March 2007.

By the way, Smith’s remarks are part of a series Critical Mass is currently hosting. The blog has invited Crescent City writers to talk about how they have weathered the year since Katrina caused devastation all up and down the U.S. Gulf Coast, exposed rank incompetence in both the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the White House, and brought Americans together in the cause of saving one of the nation’s most wonderful cities. Publisher Josh Clark was the first to sound off, novelist-poet Andrei Codrescu has some things of his own to say on the matter, and we’re promised more voices yet from the still-recovering hurricane zone.

* * *

While we’re talking about the Katrina disaster, I should mention that the special New Orleans-themed edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that I wrote about in early June is finally available from the EQMM Web site. Copies go for $3.99 apiece and can be ordered here. Income from advertising sales for this November issue is supposed to be donated to “organizations with rebuilding or relief efforts ongoing in the areas affected by Katrina.” Good reading for a good cause. What’s not to like about that deal?

Blazing While Bouchercon Boils

Following up on an item I wrote in June, it seems that Blazing! Adventures Magazine, the Webzine created by “Omen Spirit” (aka Robert S.P. Lee), is set to debut during the forthcoming Bouchercon blowout, to be held in Madision, Wisconsin, from September 28 through October 1. Contents of this new all-pulp-all-the-time mag will reportedly be found here.

Characters Welcome

It apparently started with screenwriter James Gunn choosing what he says have been the 24 all-time best characters on television, a roster that includes Lieutenant Columbo (Peter Falk), Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) of Prime Suspect, and Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) of HBO’s The Wire, along with such memorable players as Deadwood’s Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), Get Smart’s Maxwell Smart (Don Adams), and Reverend Jim Ignatowski (Christopher Lloyd) from Taxi.

But then Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame, decided to pitch in his own two cents, issuing a rival rundown of two dozen all-time greats, with little crossover. Crime-fiction-related figures making Whedon’s cut are Detective Michael “Mick” Belker (Bruce Weitz) from Hill Street Blues, Dr. R. Quincy (Jack Klugman, shown at right) from Quincy, M.E., Frank McPike (Jonathan Banks) from Wiseguy, Detective Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) from Law & Order, and Lieutenant Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) from the terrific Crime Story.

At least Whedon seems more familiar than Gunn with television’s abundant selection of fictional detectives, private eyes, and amateur sleuths. But they both failed to acknowledge Jim Rockford (James Garner) of The Rockford Files, or Alexander Mundy (Robert Wagner) of It Takes a Thief. And what about the impeccably dressed, umbrella-wielding John Steed (Patrick Macnee) of The Avengers? Or police chief Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr) of Ironside? Or the smoother than smooth Thomas Banacek (George Peppard) of, well, you know, Banacek? Or aw-shucksing Billy Jim Hawkins (Jimmy Stewart) from the 1973-1973 series Hawkins? What of Tony Shalhoub’s obsessive Adrian Monk, or Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, or Sharon Gless’ emotionally fragile Chris Cagney from Cagney & Lacey? And I can hardly believe that neither of these astute authorities mentioned Endeavor Morse (John Thaw) from Britain’s Inspector Morse series. As far as true characters go, I’d also have to throw into the mix Hec Ramsey (Richard Boone, shown below), the gunfighter-turned-crime solver who tried to bring crude forensic science to a cruder Oklahoma town at the turn of the last century, in the 1972-1974 NBC Mystery Movie series Hec Ramsey.

Going beyond series protagonists, a list of noteworthy crime-fiction characters shouldn’t neglect that cowardly con man Evelyn “Angel” Martin (Stuart Margolin) from The Rockford Files. Or the menacing Hawk (Avery Brooks) from Spenser: For Hire. Or Russian secret agent Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. fame. Or even Lieutenant Murray Quint (Clifton James) from the too-short-lived 1976 series City of Angels, as reprehensible and slovenly a Depression-era L.A. cop as has ever been brought to the small screen. Also, though I was never a Starsky and Hutch fan, I’d have a hard time leaving Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas) off any list of the most colorful TV crime-fiction figures.

It seems to me that, while Messrs. Gunn and Whedon have practiced eyes for spotting uncommon TV talent, in general (Deadwood’s magnetic Swearengen, Josh Lyman [Bradley Whitford] of The West Wing, and Titus Polo [Ray Stevenson] of Rome are all splendid choices), they’re neither old enough--at 36 and 32, respectively--to understand the intricate history of televised crime fiction nor, particularly in the case of Gunn, sufficiently attuned to the breadth of mystery-related characters to choose, definitively, which have risen the furthest above the ordinary. I mean, to pick 24’s dimension-challenged Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) or Klugman’s too-earnest Quincy over Jim Rockford or Brett’s Sherlock demonstrates that neither judge in this case did a whole lot of cogitating before posting their lists on the Internet.

Characters don’t have to drive wooden stakes through the hearts of vampires (like the lovely Buffy Summers) or be whining “Peter Pan” types (like Ray Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond) in order to be appreciated by audiences; nor must they jump around on couches (yes, we’re talking about you, Tom Cruise) or fart for laughs in front of new aides, in imitation of America’s frat-boy president, to be noticed. More often, characters win followings because they’re complexly drawn, and demonstrate a capacity for change and growth; or else they attract because of their determination to usurp the conventions of society. One or more of those traits fit all of the players I have mentioned here.

Maybe the next time Whedon, Gunn, or anyone else thinks to assemble a list of television’s greatest characters, they’ll pay a modicum more attention to the myriad colorful figures--working both sides of the law--who’ve made TV crime series so damn popular over the last half century.

No Grudge Matches Here

If you’ve come to The Rap Sheet looking for info about Raw, SmackDown!, or the lowdown on folks who call themselves Big Daddy Destruction, Black Dragon, or “Dirty” Dick Brody, you’re seriously off track. January Magazine contributor Ali Karim alerts me to the fact that somebody in St. Louis, Missouri, known as The Crimefighter, a self-described “fan of pro-wrestling, ever since about Wrestlemania One,” has a completely unrelated blog up, also known as The Rap Sheet. Sheesh! I already knew there was a hip-hop Web site called Rap Sheet.com, a sports-related blog from the Boston Herald entitled The Rap Sheet, and a newsletter called the Rap Sheet, produced by the Monroe County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office. But this additional Internet use of the Rap Sheet name came as a surprise.

Fortunately, it’s hard to imagine that the Rap Sheet you’re looking at right now might ever be confused with a blog that talks about changes at the New Midwest Wrestling organization and bashes casually on gays and lesbians.

The Quill of Victory

Voting is now open on nominations for the second annual Quill Awards, a “consumer-driven award created to inspire reading while promoting literacy.” Nominees have been selected by U.S. booksellers and librarians in 19 different categories, from Debut Author and Illustrated Children’s Book to Graphic Novel and Biography/Memoir. In the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category, there are five contenders:

• The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels, by Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by Leslie S. Klinger (Norton)
• Promise Me, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
• Tomb of the Golden Bird, by Elizabeth Peters (Morrow)
• Twelve Sharp, by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press)

Readers are invited to vote online for their favorite among these five books, as well as their choices in any other Quill category. Polling will close September 30, with winners to be announced on October 10. The awards ceremony will be televised by NBC on October 28.

By the way, last year’s Mystery/Suspense/Thriller winner was Evanovich’s Eleven on Top. Which might suggest that more women than men participate in this poll.

The Bond Identity

So I keep hearing lately about how James Bond, British Secret Agent 007, needs to be “rebooted,” restored to something more reminiscent of the character Ian Fleming created in his post-World War II novels. Talk of finding somebody new to write Bond stories seems to focus greatly on their delivering a suave spy “far removed from the gloss of 007’s cinematic incarnation, marking a return to the dark and complex nature of Fleming’s early works.” And paraphrasing director Martin Campbell, the September issue of Esquire magazine promises that Casino Royale (starring Daniel Craig) “will be darker and more grounded than any of the previous Bond movies. In other words, no sharks with laser beams.” No more Q, either, with his quirky array of electronic gadgets; or Miss Moneypenny, with her adoring glances.

But what might this change of tone really mean? If the transition can be reflected at all in Esquire’s two most recent Bond-related covers--the one shown here on the left from November 2002 (when Die Another Day was being released), and the one on the right from the September 2006 edition--it suggests that 007’s future will be, well, a bit less fun than his past. Certainly, the cover on the left is more suggestive of Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal of Bond as a stylish troubleshooter and trained assassin who takes his job rather more seriously than himself. The Craig cover on the right evokes, instead, a subdued malevolence, but little in the way of delight. (Simply click on the covers to enlarge them.)

Admittedly, the Craig cover fronts on a fashion-related issue, so it pays more attention to showing off the clothes; but that doesn’t mean it had to be so rigid in its styling. Unless, of course, that’s what we’re to expect from our man Bond in the future. Which, I think, would be a tragedy. After all, rigid targets are easier to hit, whether the people firing are terrorists on Madagascar ... or film critics in New York and London.

Saddle Up for Summer

Well, they couldn’t have cut that one much closer. It’s August 22, and the summer edition of Hardluck Stories is finally available. Although they may be late in arriving, the contents of this issue are worth the wait. The theme is “Western Noir,” with guest editor Ed Gorman hoping to make clear that “crime fiction is crime fiction, no matter the era it’s set in. Elmore Leonard’s lads could be found in Brooklyn, New York, as early as the late 1700s. They wore different types of clothes and spoke a different street lingo. But they were the same guys then as they are now.”

Among the authors contributing to this issue are Bill Crider (“Piano Man”), Steve Hockensmith (“Burt Lockhart’s in Town”), Jeremiah Healy (“Vanity”), Jon Breen (“The Cartoonist”), James Reasoner (“The Conversion of Carne Muerto”), and Gorman himself (“The Old Ways”). Check it out soon, pard.

And on the Mayhem Scale ...

Following up on a previous online poll meant to gauge how much fictional violence might affect book purchases, Crime and Suspense editor Tony Burton finds that readers would be more accepting of a story in which gay men, handicapped persons, and cats are killed than they would be of a novel featuring violence--even of the non-graphic variety--directed toward children.

Look over the full results here.

A True Friend of Mystery

Editor, radio host, and blogger Elizabeth Foxwell (with such a raft of responsibilities, does she ever have time to sleep?) reminds us that today would have been the 95th birthday of prominent American books critic, novelist, and anthologist Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White). Yes, that would be the same Boucher who gave his name to Bouchercon, the annual crime-fiction convention. He’s also to be remembered fondly for having championed crime writers, including Ross Macdonald, in the mainstream press at a time--the mid-20th century--when this genre was still thought of as merely escapist, and distinctly non-literary.

Boucher died in 1968.

Say Cheese (Cake)

In the October issue of Writer’s Digest, Ron Hogan writes an interesting piece about the importance of being a photogenic author. While male writers are not immune from the necessity of being media-presentable, Hogan suggests that women authors perhaps bear the greater brunt of the pressures to be attractive.

Citing the recent New York Times Book Review list of supposed best fiction since 1980, which widely “ignored” women writers, Hogan wonders if attractive female authors stand a better chance than others of being recognized. While novelist Lisa Selin Davis (Belly) states in the article that “good looks can work to a writer’s advantage,” crime fiction’s own Laura Lippman (No Good Deeds) is quoted as saying, “It might get someone to pick up the book, but I’m not sure it can do much more than that.” (OK--who agrees with me that Lippman does not have to worry overly much about this?)

It seems that blockbuster authors are the only ones who really need to be concerned about their book jacket photos, according to Hogan. Literary agent Ginger Clark is quoted as saying, “the bigger the deal, the more it matters.” If you aspire to sell Harry Potter quantities of books, you may need to go beyond simple “clean and presentable” and aim instead for the “blonde bombshell” look. (Is that why Tara Moss, pictured above, is now “Australia’s #1 Crime Writer”?)

So which comes first, I wonder: the gym membership, or the dedication to writing a damn good book?

READ MORE: “With Marisha Pessl, You Can’t Judge a Book by the Photo on the Cover,” by Dinitia Smith (The New York Times); “How Much Do Looks Matter?” by Jason Pinter (The Man in Black).

Surf’s Up in Cyberspace

Jeff Shelby, whose second private eye Noah Braddock novel, Wicked Break, was released last month, is quizzed on the Chatterific site about his protagonist’s youth, his resistance to outlining stories, the attractions of a first-person narrative, and his fear of relationships--for Noah, anyway.

Let Us Now Note the Neds

How did I manage to miss the initial nominations for the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards, to be presented by the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia? Well, let me make up for that by at least listing the shortlist of contenders:

Best Novel: Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn, by Marshall Browne (Random House); Saving Billy, by Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin); Crook as Rookwood, by Chris Nyst (HarperCollins); Rubdown, by Leigh Redhead (Allen & Unwin); Five Oranges, by Graham Reilly (Hachette Livre); and The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple (Text Publishing)

Best First Novel: Head Shot, by Jarad Henry (Thompson Walker); Out of Silence: A Story of Love, Betrayal, Politics and Murder, by Wendy James (Random House); and Dead Set, by Kel Robertson (Text Publishing)

Best True Crime: You’ll Never Take Me Alive, by Nick Bleszynski (Random House); In Your Face, by Rochelle Jackson (ABC Books); Norfolk: Island of Secrets, by Tim Latham (Allen & Unwin); Packing Death, by Lachlan McCulloch (Sly Ink); and And Then the Darkness, by Sue Williams (ABC Books)

To find the full roster of nominees in these three categories, click here. The Neds (named in tribute to Australia’s most famous “bushranger”) will be given out on August 30 during the Age Melbourne Writers' Festival.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn more about the current energetic state of Australian crime fiction, refer to this piece from yesterday’s Melbourne Age.

Re-reading Allingham

British novelist Jane Stevenson (The Shadow King), writing in The Guardian, delivers a fulsome tribute to the late crime writer Margery Allingham, creator of detective/adventurer Albert Campion. In one section particularly worth noting, Stevenson opines:

[Allingham] is the least puzzle-minded of great detective-story writers. The question that always interests her most is “why”. Her plotting is a device to express character: why specific people are led to do the things they do, a concern that significantly advanced the genre. One aspect of the enduring appeal of her books is that she was truly interested in how a life which seems monumentally weird from outside can be one particular person’s normality. What “ordinary” means for a dodgy undertaker, perhaps, or a retired chorus girl. It is this capacity for observation which has often made people think of her as “Dickensian”. Dickens invented surprisingly little, but walked about London (he was a great walker), and kept his eyes and ears open.

Allingham, as she moved about in shops, on trains or buses, in the street, did the same. As her books demonstrate, she was a shameless eavesdropper. Fat and friendly, she wandered through life looking innocuous and easy to talk to, and the troubled, the boastful or the just plain weird gravitated towards her. There is a certain advantage for a woman novelist in being middle-aged and overweight. You acquire a curious social invisibility: strangers sometimes carry on in front of you as if you weren’t there; or if they chance to fall into conversation, they talk, on occasion, with a surprising lack of inhibition. Allingham’s uncontrollable weight was a source of anxiety and distress in her life (it arose from a thyroid problem), and she was often sad and anxious, but she kept her griefs strictly to herself. The people she encountered found her charming, sympathetic and jolly, and she made good use of this. She listened, and she remembered--not merely to what people said, but to how they said it. She has as good an ear for the quirks of individual speech as any English novelist, and a great gift for seeing what was in front of her. As with Dickens, the panorama of human oddities she presents reflects reality. I was brought up in London, and I have been much given to mooching about talking to strangers. Over the years, I have encountered not a few London characters who could have come straight out of one of her books.

Wow, Stevenson makes me want to revisit the works of Allingham myself. I think I’ve only ever read The Black Dudley Murder (1929), her first Campion outing, and The Tiger in the Smoke (1952, which was chosen by the London Times as one of the “Best 100 Mysteries of the 20th Century”). And, of course, I caught two or three episodes of Campion (1989-1990), the BBC’s charming adaptations of Allingham’s stories, starring Peter Davison. Evidently, I have been remiss in appreciating this author’s work.

Read the full Guardian essay here.

READ MORE: “The Great Detectives: Albert Campion,” by Mike Ripley (The Strand Magazine).

The President and the Cop Flop

Today marks the birthdays of two well-known American figures who, while they aren’t exactly members of the crime-writing community, nonetheless have been involved with the genre.

The first is former President Bill Clinton, who turns 60 years old today. During his prosperous eight years in the White House, Clinton--an avid, omnivorous reader, unlike his successor--became a champion for this genre. Each summer, the media would inquire about what books he was taking along on his all-too-brief vacations from work. Inevitably, the lists included not only historical texts and novels by famed fictionists such as Gabriel García Márquez, but also mysteries by Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, James W. Hall, and others. And this First Reader was promoting Michael Connelly’s The Concrete Blonde (1994) even before it hit bookstores.

Happy birthday, Bill. We miss you.

It was also on this date, back in 1921, that Gene Roddenberry took his first gasping breath. Now, when most folks think of Roddenberry, what comes to mind isn’t crime fiction. What occurs to them instead is how he created the phenomenally successful Star Trek franchise. But Roddenberry, born in El Paso, Texas, yet reared in Los Angeles, was the son of a cop. After putting in years as a World War II aviator and then as a Pan American World Airways pilot, he joined up with the LAPD himself during the late 1940s, before becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. During his early days in television, Roddenberry penned episodes of Highway Patrol, Have Gun, Will Travel, The Detectives, Naked City, and Dr. Kildare. He was also responsible for a 1963-1964 NBC-TV series called The Lieutenant, a Marine Corps drama set at Camp Pendleton, just outside of San Diego, California.

Of most interest to crime-fiction fans, however, is that after The Lieutenant, Roddenberry sought to launch another TV series, this one called Police Story (not to be confused with the 1970s NBC anthology series of the same name). According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the program was to focus on an “elite squad of police detectives” who handled L.A.’s “toughest and most sensitive cases,” reporting directly to the city’s police commissioner. A half-hour pilot for the series was shot in August 1965, explains David Alexander in his Roddenberry biography, Star Trek Creator (1994)--around the same time that the second Star Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” was being put together. (A previous sample episode, “The Cage,” starring Jeffrey Hunter instead of William Shatner, had already been rejected by NBC execs.) The Police Story pilot starred Steve Ihnat (who would go on to portray a convincingly round-the-bend starship fleet captain in the “Whom Gods Destroy” episode of the original Star Trek series). Also featured in that pilot, but now most familiar from the original Trek, were DeForest Kelley, playing a lab technician (he would instead move into the plum role of Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy), Grace Lee Whitney, later to appear as Captain James T. Kirk’s mini-skirted yeoman aide, and Malachi Throne, playing the chief of police. (Throne subsequently turned down the part of Dr. McCoy, but nonetheless appeared in episodes of both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

Although Police Story ultimately entered the annals of unsold series pilots, Alexander writes that it was the not the fault of “a half-hearted attempt by Gene. He had put a great deal of time and energy into that pilot, as well, pulling a few strings to expose Throne to a real chief of police in hope that would give the show a solid air of reality.” Despite its being filmed in 1965, the IMDb reports that Police Story wasn’t finally shown to TV audiences until 1967.

It’s interesting to speculate on how history might have been changed, had Police Story been picked up by the networks instead of Star Trek. Would Roddenberry have become a storied face in television’s pantheon of crime show creators? Or would be now be remembered for more failed projects than successes?

Roddenberry died at age 70 in 1991 and, quite fittingly, I think, was buried in space.