Killed in the Ratings: “Karen Sisco”

(The 14th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

 

Title: Karen Sisco

Starring: Carla Gugino, Robert Forster, and Bill Duke

Original Run: 2003-2004 (10 episodes), ABC-TV

Premise: Taking on a character created by novelist Elmore Leonard and previously portrayed by Jennifer Lopez in the 1998 film Out of Sight (trailer here), Sarasota-born actress Gugino played Karen Sisco, a feisty, sexy, and independent young U.S. deputy marshal working out of Miami, Florida. Sisco spent most of her time locating and apprehending well-armed but often not terribly bright fugitives who tried to hide out in the glitzy, glamorous environs of South Beach, or elsewhere in the southeastern Florida district. And she was extremely good at her job, though some of her male colleagues needed to be taught that through experience--oftentimes to their embarrassment. Although she didn’t have much luck with men on a social basis, she was backed up professionally by two able males: her boss, U.S. Marshal Amos Andrews (Duke), and her father, an ex-Miami police officer turned private eye with the unlikely name of Marshall Sisco (Forster of Banyon and Nakia fame), who frequently served as her confessor. Speaking with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel back in 2003, Gugino--who had co-starred with Michael J. Fox in the first season of Spin City before launching a big-screen career--said: “I wasn’t looking to do a series. But I wanted this character. ... She’s very much a woman yet functions a lot like a bachelor. She has an incredible relationship with her father, which is one of the things I also found to be so great.” The show’s opening episode, “Blown Away,” was based on Elmore Leonard’s 1996 short story, “Karen Makes Out,” which first introduced the Sisco character.

Developed for television by Jason Smilovic

Additional Notes: Karen Sisco seemed to have everything going for it when it debuted on October 1, 2003. It was spun off from a popular theatrical release, it boasted a most photogenic former model as its star, and Danny DeVito (who had previously brought two other Leonard properties to the silver screen--Out of Sight and Get Shorty) was one of the program’s executive producers. In its 2003 Fall Preview edition, TV Guide called Sisco “easily the season’s coolest new show. Wry, ironic, sexy.” Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker struggled to keep from salivating even harder over this series, writing:

“Karen Sisco” is an old-fashioned crime show, which I intend as a compliment--a welcome alternative to the new-fashioned, is-that-a-bloodstained-rug-fiber-or-are-you-just-glad-to-magnify-me crime shows. “Sisco,” by contrast, is a hunt-the-bad-guys series with a heroine who’s stubborn, charming, bourbon-drinking, and occasionally in need of help from her irascible father and his ex-con friends. Indeed, it’s a lot like “The Rockford Files,” except I doubt James Garner’s gams ever looked this good.

Carla Gugino (“Spy Kids”) plays Miami federal marshal Sisco, taking over Jennifer Lopez’s role from director Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 movie “'Out of Sight” ... Lopez was very good, but a bit too steamy to get on [Elmore] Leonard’s wavelength, which is one of ice-cold serenity. Gugino, however, has that tone down. She’s simultaneously calm and dogged in her pursuit of a bank robber or a German cop killer who likes to look for songs featuring the names of women he admires (he works hard to come up with one that includes “Karen”). ...

It’s fun to watch Gugino, who used to snuggle up to Michael J. Fox on “Spin City,” hold her own on a show in the company of big guys like [Robert] Forster and Bill Duke, the formidable actor-director who plays her boss, Amos. In the two episodes I’ve seen, she’s flirted with Patrick Dempsey (“Once and Again”) and Peter Horton (“Thirtysomething'”) yet managed to maintain her soft-on-the-outside, steel-on-the-inside persona. When still another date (Carlos Ponce), a tad unnerved when he finds out what she does for a living, asks Karen how many men she has killed, she just sighs and asks him to kiss her. “See?” she murmurs, coming out of the clinch. “I’m just a girl.” ...

If you’re looking for the season’s smartest, most comfy and engaging new thriller, “Sisco'” is it.

Yet this series disappeared from the prime-time schedule almost as swiftly as a previous show based on one of Leonard’s novels, the abundantly quirky Maximum Bob (1998). ABC, which had hoped Karen Sisco could take a much larger bite than it did out of the audience for its chief Wednesday-night rival, Law & Order, canceled Gugino’s series in November 2003 after running only seven episodes. Three more installments that had been shot as part of the first-season order weren’t broadcast until Sisco was re-aired on the USA Network during the spring of 2004. Ever since, fans of this show have been waiting for a DVD release, but so far without satisfaction.

Above: The write-up about Karen Sisco from the September 13-19, 2003, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The show’s opening title sequence, which employed an edited version of the 1969 Isley Brothers funk anthem, “It’s Your Thing,” as its theme.



(The TV Guide spread about Karen Sisco was provided by Brian Sheridan. It’s part of the collection in the Communication Department at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. It is used with permission.)

REQUIRED READING: In the blog Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot, copywriter-critic Marty McKee has reviewed--individually--all 10 episodes of Karen Sisco. You’ll find that whole set here.

Killed in the Ratings: “Mancuso, FBI”

(The 13th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Mancuso, FBI

Starring: Robert Loggia

Original Run: 1989-1990 (20 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: Character actor Loggia’s tough-guy face has to be one of the most familiar in American television history. He claims a curriculum vitae that runs on and on ... and on. During the mid-1960s Loggia starred as a circus performer and cat burglar turned bodyguard in T.H.E. Cat, and before that he appeared in a 10-part Walt Disney Presents TV serial based on the real-life experiences of 19th-century western lawman-politician Elfego Baca. He’s guest-starred in everything from Route 66 and The Name of the Game to Mannix, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, Murder, She Wrote, Magnum, P.I., The Sopranos, and most recently, Men of a Certain Age. Then there are his numerous theatrical film roles.

Given how comfortable TV viewers must be with Loggia, it’s surprising that Mancuso, FBI wasn’t more of a success. His character, federal investigator Nick Mancuso, was introduced in 1988’s six-part NBC miniseries, Favorite Son, based on a 1987 novel of that same name by Steve Sohmer. The miniseries centered around a mediagenic young senator from Texas (played by Harry Hamlin), who after surviving the assassination of a Central American contra leader, was chosen as the running mate of the current U.S. president, Sam Baker. Only later did Baker discover that his new vice-presidential pick was also “a fascist and a militarist, ready to turn the Americas into an armed camp for the greater honor and glory of the United States.” Mancuso was assigned to find out who had snuffed the contra leader, a task at which some folks in the government would have preferred he fail.

Loggia played Mancuso as a gruff, world-weary, and plainspoken agent on the cusp of retirement, whose outward cynicism regarding the modern political scene and the ethical drift of his nation contrasted with his privately held hopefulness about America’s future and his faith in the FBI. Loggia scored enough plaudits with his portrayal, that NBC decided to try his fedora-topped character out in a regular Friday-night series of his own. Writing about Mancuso, FBI in their 2007 book, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh explained:

As the press releases put it, [Mancuso] had “a passionate love affair with the United States Constitution.” His politically oriented superiors dismissed him as “a lonely misanthrope with no respect for authority,” but it’s not easy to get rid of FBI agents so he got to continue his one-man crusade against corruption and murder in high government places in this action-filled series.

During Mancuso’s run, Loggia’s agent got mixed up with political smear campaigns, international drug dealing, plutonium theft, judicial corruption, and even an IRS scam.

Additional Notes: With the long-established CBS prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest and ABC’s “television newsmagazine,” 20/20, as its competition on Friday nights between 10 and 11 p.m., Mancuso fought an uphill battle for ratings. Critics debated what was going wrong with the new show, and many determined that what had really made the miniseries Favorite Son a winner was not Loggia’s crotchety investigator, but rather Hamlin’s appearance as a guileful senator. They charged that, on his own, Nick Mancuso couldn’t draw the same sort of audience numbers. It didn’t help this new series, either, that as The New York Times reported, Loggia had just turned 60 years old, and was “already demanding lighter work schedules.” After carrying 20 episodes of Mancuso, FBI, NBC finally decided to let the agent retire as he’d wanted to do for so long.

Above: The write-up about Mancuso, FBI from the September 9-15, 1989, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: That show’s opening title sequence, with theme music composed by Doug Katsaros.

An Extra, Then an Ending

Way back at the beginning of September, as America’s new fall TV season was just getting under way, I promised to write posts about 13 prime-time crime dramas, all launched in previous falls, that “viewers were expected to like, but didn’t.” Shows that received big send-offs, but were soon dumped due to mediocre ratings.

Well, I lied. Instead of 13 such shows, you’re going to get 14.

In the end, I simply couldn’t drop one of the programs I had toyed with leaving out of this month-long series. It really belonged, and my ambition got the better of my good sense, and before I really thought about it, I’d gone ahead and penned the post. So, given that this is the final day of The Rap Sheet’s “Killed in the Ratings” series, you will see two new entries go up on this page. Would you care to guess which crime dramas they’ll cover? OK, here are a couple of hints. One program was a spin-off from a successful TV miniseries, the other was inspired by a theatrical film starring George Clooney. One featured a veteran character actor with an ostensibly gruff demeanor, while the other showcased a short but comely former model who can do both comedy and crime fiction.

But before we get to those last “Killed in the Ratings” selections, let’s recap the other dozen U.S. series I’ve addressed thus far. In reverse order of posting, they are:

• McClain’s Law (1981-1982)
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1996)
• Paris (1979-1980)
• Griff (1973-1974)
• Get Christie Love! (1974-1975)
• The Delphi Bureau (1972-1973)
• Nakia (1974)
• The Devlin Connection (1982)
• Gavilan (1982-1983)
• Joe Forrester (1975-1976)
• Leg Work (1987)
• Serpico (1976-1977)

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this series as much as I have relished writing it. And I’ll be curious to know, once it has reached its conclusion this afternoon, whether you think I have missed any short-run shows that deserved mentioning. Comments are always welcome.

Playing the Links

• Latino Review reports that actor Jared Harris, who currently appears as financial officer Lane Pryce on AMC-TV’s Mad Men, will play nefarious Professor James Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes II, the sequel to last year’s Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law action thriller.

• Season 4 of the Raymond Burr crime drama Ironside is due for DVD release on October 19. Meanwhile, November 30 is the date for Have Gun--Will Travel fans to remember. That’s when the first half of that old show’s Season 5 will reach stores.

• Followers of British author Peter Cheyney, rejoice. The official Cheyney Web site reports that it has “been comprehensively up-dated with the addition of ‘The Cheyney Papers,’” taken from his estate’s files. Much of that material has not been seen during the last half century. Click here to learn more.

• Bouchercon is looking for volunteers to help during next month’s convention in San Francisco. There are plenty of job and time options.

• R.I.P., Arthur Penn, the director who gave us Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man, Night Moves, and The Missouri Breaks, among other memorable motion pictures. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• Yes, today is National Coffee Day.

• Author John Harvey was less than impressed by this week’s screening, on Britain’s ITV, of DCI Banks: Aftermath, the two-part pilot for a new series starring Peter Robinson’s detective, Alan Banks.

• But Double O Section’s Tanner kind of, sort of likes the new J.J. Abrams spy series, Undercovers. However, he’s still withholding judgment. More or less.

• Interviews worth reading: Sara Townsend talks with author Elena Forbes (Evil in Return); Laura Harman chats up Dreda Say Mitchell (Gangster Girl); and Bill Crider does a Q&A with fellow novelist Reed Farrel Coleman (Innocent Monster).

• I never realized that the A-frame design theme was so popular.

• And click here to listen to a reading of Dashiell Hammett’s 1926 short story, “The Creeping Chinese,” which debuted in Black Mask.

Morse Sends His Regards

We want to send out our fondest wishes to Colin Dexter, the British schoolteacher turned author who created the now-famous mystery fiction characters Inspector Endeavour Morse and Sergeant (later Inspector) Robbie Lewis. He turns 80 years old today.

A Big Deal for “Little Girl”

Entertainment Weekly announced today that Universal Pictures has purchased the film rights to Little Girl Lost, the 2004 Hard Case Crime paperback release by Richard Aleas (aka HCC editor Charles Ardai). As EW explains, “The novel centers on John Blake, an NYU dropout-turned-private-investigator who learns that his high school girlfriend who he thought went to medical school actually became a stripper and has been murdered.” Little Girl Lost was Aleas/Ardai’s first novel featuring P.I. Blake. The character appeared once more in the 2007 sequel, Songs of Innocence.

There’s a bit more information about this deal here and here.

Does Reading Influence Writing?

I find that as I plow ahead in writing my serial novel, Forget About It: The First Al Zymer Senile Detective Mystery, I turn back to some of my favorite authors for fuel and inspiration.

Does this happen to anyone else?

For instance, I’ve lately been dipping into the works of William Gibson, whose last book was Spook Country (which should definitely be read before his newest, Zero History). Also, I have right at hand a great Laurie R. King novel, The Art of Detection, in which she combined her two crime series into a fabulous story. And many of Lawrence Block’s classic Matt Scudder books (including Eight Million Ways to Die) wait nearby, in case I need them to stimulate my own prose creation.

With mentors such as these, how can I go wrong?

Killed in the Ratings: “McClain’s Law”

(The 12th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: McClain’s Law

Starring: James Arness and Marshall Colt

Original Run: 1981-1982 (16 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: Former Gunsmoke star Arness played Jim McClain, a veteran detective with the police department in San Pedro, California, who had retired after being injured, then spent a decade and a half working on a fishing boat. But when his fishing partner is murdered, McClain--long known as a rule-breaker who prefers to conduct his investigations “by the gut”--pushes for reinstatement on the force in order to solve that homicide. Afterwards, he remains on active duty, much to the dismay of his new boss, Lieutenant Ed DeNisco (George DiCenzo), as well as his 30-year-old, by-the-book partner, Detective Harry Gates (Colt), who McClain doesn’t particularly like, but who seems destined to learn a lot from the elder lawman.

Created by Eric Bercovici

Additional Notes: According to TV Guide, “NBC bought this series without a pilot or even a script. What they had was a Living Legend and a Concept.” Sadly, that wasn’t good enough to make McClain’s Law a hit. Maybe Arness should have found more excuses to get out of his car and up into a saddle, where viewers expected to find him.

Above: The write-up on McClain’s Law from the September 12-18, 1981, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge it.) Below: The program’s opening sequence, with an episode preview.

A Special Request

If any Rap Sheet reader out there happens to have a copy of the 2003 Fall Preview edition of TV Guide, and would be willing to scan something from it for me, please drop me e-mail note here. I’d appreciate it.

Catch the Buzz

The Swedish film version of Stieg Larsson’s third novel, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, isn’t due for release in the States until late October. But the trailer can already be appreciated here.

For more about this picture, click here.

Save the Candles, Prize the Memories

Well, it looks as if I’m not the only one who remembered that today would have been the 90th birthday of Kentucky-born actor William Conrad. Earlier this morning, Ivan G. Shreve Jr. had a fine posting on the subject, which included this paragraph (with added Web links):

Growing up, Bill Conrad was the portly detective on my TV screen known as Cannon; it wouldn’t be until much later on in life when I discovered his first-rate work as Marshal Matt Dillon on radio’s Gunsmoke ... and all the other radio shows on which he performed (including the memorable announcer on Escape: “... want to get away from it all?”) I’m sure I don’t need to re-tell the story of how CBS screwed Conrad out of the TV version of Gunsmoke along the rest of the fine radio cast (Parley Baer, Howard McNear, Georgia Ellis, John Dehner, Lawrence Dobkin, Harry Bartell, Sam Edwards, Vic Perrin ... I could go on and on); they had pretty much settled on James Arness for the boob tube edition of Dodge City’s famous lawman, even though OTR actress-historian Lois Culver once remarked during an online chat that “most real lawmen looked more like Bill than Arness anyway.” Conrad held a grudge against both the series and the network for many years, but finally made peace once Cannon became a hit (he’d even direct a couple of shows for the TV western) and would later go on to star in another series in the late ’80s/early ’90s--the appropriately titled Jake and the Fatman.

And let’s not forget that Conrad also starred (with Lee Horsley) in NBC’s 1981 midseason replacement series, Nero Wolfe, based on Rex Stout’s famous novels. Or that he narrated the cartoon series Rocky and Bullwinkle from 1959 to 1964.

Conrad died in February 1994, at age 73, of congestive heart failure. He’s buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles. The world was left a less interesting place with the silencing of his baritone voice.

READ MORE: “William Conrad Birthday Fun,” by Christine A. Miller (Escape and Suspense!); “Cannon Novel Covers,” by Randy Johnson (Not the Baseball Pitcher).

An Appropriate Farewell

Author and blogger Bill Crider (Murder in the Air) attended yesterday’s memorial service, in Houston, for bookstore co-owner and publisher David Thompson, who died earlier this month at age 38. Today Crider writes about that event. “It wasn’t really a service so much as a celebration of David’s life,” he explains. “Margaritas and Mexican food, the way David would’ve wanted it. Hundreds (and hundreds) of people turned out to show their support for David’s wife, McKenna, for David’s family, and for David’s friends at Murder by the Book.”

You can read all of Crider’s post here.

What’s the Good Word from Brooklyn?

The fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival was finally brought to a close on an overcast Sunday, September 13, at Brooklyn’s historic Borough Hall. Despite the weather, thousands of readers congregated at this geographically massive event, which spanned several blocks and occupied both state and city government buildings and the local St. Francis College. Perhaps more significant for this writer, the 2010 festival offered a greater number of crime-fiction panels than the four prior festivals. Let the good times roll!

First out of the box at a fitting one o’clock in the afternoon (leaving plenty of time beforehand for brunch) was “Poetry of the Gumshoe.” That panel discussion, held in the Borough Hall Courtroom, featured Michael Connelly (The Reversal), Gabriel Cohen (The Ninth Step), and Paco Ignacio Taibo II (The Uncomfortable Dead). It was moderated by Charlotte Abbott of Publishers Weekly. Each author read briefly from his work and then answered questions posed by the moderator or else offered up by people sitting in the packed audience.

Taibo regaled his listeners with stories of intrigue involving his co-writer on Uncomfortable Dead, Subcomandante Marcos, a member of the Zapatistas in Mexico who he keeps his identity and whereabouts well-hidden. Marcos chose to communicate with Taibo through a series of letters exacting peculiar demands on their joint writing project. Those communiqués were always delivered by mysterious men under unusual conditions. For example, a knock would come at Taibo’s door, he would answer, and a man would hand him a letter, then simply walk away. On another occasion, Marcos made Taibo (shown at left) wait well past the deadline for his next chapter, because it was arriving “by burro.”

Gabriel Cohen’s new novel, The Ninth Step, is the fourth in his series about Brooklyn South homicide detective Jack Leightner. He told the audience that part of his inspiration for that novel came in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when many of the Pakistanis who lived in his Ditmars Park neighborhood were rounded up by authorities and held temporarily in detention centers. “No one knows about this,” remarked Cohen. He then read from his book’s exhilarating first chapter and most likely won many buyers for his work that morning.

Connelly is a pro on the book-promoting circuit. His presentation that afternoon was concise and to the point. He read a section of his soon-forthcoming new novel, The Reversal, which finds defense lawyer Mickey Haller and Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch joining forces to stop a child killer. Connelly’s reading came from the beginning chapters of his book, which showed his skill at mixing themes that are often the milieu of his stories: politics, criminal intrigue, and an up-tempo plot. When an audience member asked Connelly how he had created Harry Bosch, he replied that the character came “from hanging around cops” when he covered the crime beat as a newspaper reporter.

Following immediately on the heels of the “Gumshoe” panel was “Doing Time With.” That panel featured performance artist Lemon Anderson (County of Kings), defense attorney Daniel Serrano (Boogie Down), and novelist Alafair Burke (212), and was moderated by Marcela Landres. The intent of the discussion--taking place on the festival’s outdoor Main Stage--was to present authors who have either been behind bars (Anderson) or have worked the halls of justice (Burke and Serrano). A light rain developed at the outset and continued steadily. But this is Brooklyn. Listeners simply pulled out their umbrellas and sat in rapture amidst the moisture on the courthouse steps.

Burke (shown on the right, with Anderson) read an emotionally charged scene in which her fictional creation NYPD detective, Ellie Hatcher, gives notification to the family of a young homicide victim. Burke later commented that she had lost part of the material she was going to read, but no one would have guessed that. She nailed her reading as it was. Anderson chose to read a passage detailing a jailhouse character with whom he become acquainted at Rikers Island. He read his piece in a hip-hop sing-songy rhythm that blended well with the narrative of hardened men in an unforgiving setting. Serrano, meanwhile, delivered to the audience a section from his book that was at once violent and heartrending. He informed the audience that his fictional female NYPD detective, Cassandra Maldonado, was not an intentional creation but rather one who exerted her dominance during the course of rewriting his book. Burke added that she had always been a storyteller and that writing novels was a natural extension of that talent. Plenty of which she has, by the way.

The St. Francis Auditorium at 5 p.m. was the setting for one of the highlights of this year’s festival: a discussion with Dennis Lehane (Moonlight Mile) and Connelly, as moderated by Burke. The last time I had seen Lehane on a panel was in October 2001. He was being interviewed by fellow author S.J. Rozan at the 92nd Street Y, in a city that had not yet recovered from the terrorist attacks. I found him to be down-to-earth in his commentary and entertaining to listen to. He easily became my favorite panel author at this year’s festival for the same reasons. He was entertaining, funny, informative, reflective, and honest. Commenting on the writing of his new Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novel (a long-awaited sequel to 1998’s Gone, Baby, Gone), he stated: “It was like putting on that old favorite pair of jeans ... but then discovering that you put on some weight and they didn’t quite fit the same anymore.” In response to a question about the benefits of attending a Master’s of Fine Arts program, he said: “It won’t make you a writer. You either go into the program having it or you don’t.” Lehane remarked at various times that he doesn’t suffer from writer’s block, but rather suffers “a coma” that he eventually comes out of, and it doesn’t bother him that it happens; that all writers should “write the book you want to read”; and that he doesn’t read fiction right now, only non-fiction. Echoing that last note, Connelly said that reading fiction while writing a novel was “intrusive.” He added that his reading suffers as a result of this, and that it was perhaps ironic for a writer to not be able to read.

Both authors also had several things to say about American filmmaking. Lehane mentioned that every time Hollywood has made a movie from one of his books, the studio big-wigs “wanted to change the ending,” though both Clint Eastwood (Mystic River) and Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) went to bat for him. Connelly let it be known that he was not pleased with the 2002 film version of Blood Work and hopes to fare better when The Lincoln Lawyer is brought to the screen, with Matthew McConaughy slated to play the role of Mickey Haller.

It was still raining when I left the festival at its close. I found that a proper dénouement to a day of crime-fiction panel presentations. I knew the rain would never wash away the Brooklyn grit, or the good vibe I carried from the day.

And the Story Continues ...

I may have gotten a bit ambitious, but I think you’ll enjoy the results: Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of my new serial novel, Forget About It: The First Al Zymer Senile Detective Mystery, have now been posted in my blog. An archive of previous installments is available here.

If you would like to let me know what you think about the story thus far, drop an e-note to me at richardadler72@gmail.com. Comments are cheerfully and gratefully accepted.

All the News Fit to Post

• Tonight on PBS-TV, Masterpiece Mystery! will air “Falling Darkness,” the fifth and concluding installment in Series III of Inspector Lewis, the wonderful Oxford-set whodunit starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. Set around Halloween, the story focuses on a succession of homicides associated with the detectives’ favorite pathologist, Dr. Laura Hobson (Clare Holman). Is it conceivable that Hobson herself could be the murderer? As the PBS Web site teases: “It’s a case that will conjure ghosts from the past and may well deliver the fatal blow to the team of Lewis, Hathaway, and Hobson.” Refer to your local listings for times and channels. Next week, Masterpiece Mystery! will introduce three new episodes of Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh.

• Speaking of Oxford, England, British novelist Val McDermid (Fever of the Bone) picks her 10 favorite Oxford novels for The Guardian. Not surprisingly, one of them is an Inspector Morse mystery, 1992’s The Way Through the Woods, by Colin Dexter.

• This week’s new short-story offering in Beat to a Pulp comes from former biotechnology businesswoman Katharine A. Russell. Her hang glider-related tale is called “Icarus of the Cliffs.”

• Zoë Ferraris submits her new novel, City of Veils, to Marshal Zeringue’s revealing Page 69 Test. You’ll find the results here.

• The pulp art lover in me wants this book for Christmas.

• Recognizing the growing international popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction, the Swedish Book Review has produced a rare special edition devoted to its country’s mystery-makers--not just Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, but also an assortment of writers still undiscovered outside of their native Sweden.

• From the “Unexpected Inventions” file.

• Bare•bones continues its series about digest-size crime-fiction magazines in Part I of a remembrance of “the best crime digest ever published, Manhunt.”

• American crime and suspense novelist Jeffery Deaver is the subject of Jeff Rutherford’s newest interview for the Reading and Writing Podcast. You can listen to their conversation here.

• Meanwhile, Kelli Stanley (City of Dragons) interviews herself as part of Sea Minor’s “Dancing with Myself” series. Learn more here.

• And Jenny White (The Winter Thief) talks with J. Sydney Jones about her historical thrillers starring 19th-century Turkish detective Kamil Pasha. Read their exchange here.

• Some wonderful French espionage and war fiction covers.

• This is good to know: When polled on their attitudes toward President Obama’s six-month-old health-care reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act, the number of “Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.” Observes The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen: “This is particularly important when it comes to the Republican campaign to kill the new law in 2011. The GOP looks at the polls and assumes the party has the public’s backing on health care policy, but they’re mistaken--the vast majority of Americans didn’t like the pre-reform status quo and consider Republican ‘reform’ plans wholly inadequate.”

• How cool is this story?: “11 Astounding Sci-fi Predictions That Came True.” (Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

• On the subject of Christopher Bray’s new biography, Sean Connery: The Measure of a Man, Irish author-blogger Declan Burke writes: “[T]his is the perfect book for that audience that still believes Sean Connery is God’s gift to the Silver Screen. Unfortunately for Christopher Bray, that audience is likely to consist only of Christopher Bray.” Ouch!

• “In the discussion of great female detectives of the golden radio era, one name is invariably left out of the discussion: Pamela North” of Mr. and Mrs. North fame. Endeavoring to remedy that ignorance, the blog Great Detectives of Old Time Radio presents a rather engaging look back at the plucky Pam.

• Earlier this month we heard that Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (so captivating in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) would be joining the cast of Sherlock Holmes II, the sequel to the 2009 Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law action thriller. Now comes news that UK actor-author Stephen Fry will appear in that same film (scheduled for release in December 2011) as the Great Detective’s brilliant but unambitious older brother, Mycroft Holmes. Talk about perfect casting!

Columbo Goes House Hunting

I’ve been working lately on a Rap Sheet post related to the classic TV crime drama Columbo. And while searching through my files yesterday, I happened across what I think is a very interesting 1974 TV Guide article about efforts by the location managers at Universal Studios to find suitably upper-crust homes in the Los Angeles area where episodes of that Peter Falk series could be shot. It seems the well-to-do were often pleased to have film crews trooping through their residences, if only so they could later watch the shabbily attired Falk thwart a murderer in their own living room or swimming pool. As one unit manager told TV Guide, “Columbo is a very magic word” when it comes to opening doors.

I thought you’d enjoy reading the piece too, so I’ve embedded it below. Simply click on the pages to enlarge them more readable size.

Making Introductions

Just a couple of years back, I wrote a piece for this page about four of what I think are the best TV crime-drama pilots ever produced, only one of which didn’t wind up spawning a series. Now Salon’s Matt Zoller Seitz has his own list of 10 favorite pilots to spread around, a selection that includes not only the 1984 introduction of Miami Vice (also on my rundown), but four more police or spy dramas.

You’ll find all of Seitz’s picks here.

It’s the Little Things That Count

Probably two months ago, I installed a small “Donate” button in the right-hand column of this page. I didn’t draw a lot of attention to it, but just added a line that reads, “If You Can, Please Help The Rap Sheet to Survive and Thrive.”

The venture has hardly been a great moneymaker. However, since that button appeared on the page, several readers have taken advantage of the opportunity to pitch small donations The Rap Sheet’s way. I just want to say how much I appreciate your contributions. In these times, after a decade of corporate greed and deregulation have left Americans in a precarious position, it’s good to know there are still people willing to put their hard-earned cash toward keeping projects such as this one alive.

Thank you for your support.

Somewhere, Beck Is Actually Smiling

Maj Sjöwall, the Edgar Award-winning Swedish author and translator who, with her partner Per Wahlöö, wrote 10 highly acclaimed novels featuring sullen Stockholm police detective Martin Beck, today turns 75 years old.

(Hat tip to Murder, Mystery & Mayhem.)

Free to Read, You and Me

Banned Books Week--an annual event that celebrates “the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment”--begins today, September 25, and runs through next Saturday, October 2. It’s amazing that in the 21st century, we’re still having to put up with people who challenge the value of literature, trying to impose their narrow-mindedness on every other reader.

And yet we do. As B.V. Lawson of In Reference to Murder notes, the American Library Association “received 4,312 challenges to books in their member libraries between 2001 and 2009: 1,413 for ‘sexually explicit’ material, 1,125 due to ‘offensive language,’ 897 challenges due to material deemed ‘unsuited to age group,’ 514 challenges due to ‘violence,’ 344 challenges due to ‘homosexuality,’ 109 materials were challenged because they were ‘anti-family,’ and 269 because of their ‘religious viewpoints.’” How ludicrous! As author Gary Dobbs commented on this occasion last year, “These people who seek to ban books from libraries are the PC brigade. They usually challenge books or ask the library to ban them with the best intentions in mind: to protect others, especially children, from difficult ideas and information. I’d much rather they piss off and protect us from their puerile nonsense.”

I agree. If you look over the list of most commonly challenged books in the United States, you find many classics (such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Call of the Wild, Brave New World, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Of Mice and Men), but also works that seem far too silly for anyone except those who value ideology over sense to bother complaining about (James and the Giant Peach, the Goosebumps series, Captain Underpants, etc.). It’s hard to take seriously folks who would spend so much energy campaigning in favor of literary censorship--and yet at the same time, decry (hypocritically) governmental intrusion into people’s affairs. But when we live in a country that still produces right-wing attorneys general who think it’s vitally important to cover up women’s breasts on 234-year-old state seals, you realize that we still have a whole lot of evolutionary development to go.

Express your freedom this week--read a banned book.

READ MORE: “The 11 Most Surprising Banned Books,” by Jessie Kunhardt and Amy Hertz (The Huffington Post).

Killed in the Ratings: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

(The 11th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Starring: Scott Bakula
and Maria Bello

Original Run: 1996 (13 episodes, including pilot), CBS-TV

Premise: Other than its title and the fact that it was also a romantic comedy of sorts, this Mr. & Mrs. Smith had little in common with the better-remembered 2005 Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt film. CBS’ Friday-night series focused on a couple of globetrotting young spies, the pseudonymous Mr. Smith (Bakula) and Mrs. Smith (Bello), who were employed by a super-secret private security agency known as “The Factory.” Together they conducted covert operations under the guise of a married couple--a humorous thing, since neither knew much of anything about the other, not even their partner’s true identity. As the Smiths shared--or more likely lied to each other about--their traits and trails through life, and bickered with a frequency not uncommon to truly-weds, they managed to complete hazardous missions involving high explosives, stolen currency, missing missiles, assassination plots, and (as part of their cover) suburban get-togethers. The pair took their assignments from an equally cloaked boss, Mr. Big (Roy Dotrice). The sexual chemistry that was cooked up by the Smiths’ involuntary but not entirely displeasing association was supposed to remind television viewers of either the private-eye series Moonlighting or the Thin Man movies, or maybe both.

Created by Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar

Additional Notes: Executive producer Lenhart told TV Guide why he liked the anonymity of his two lead characters. “Having worked on Remington Steele, a fun thing was that you never knew who Remington was, but you know who [private eye] Laura [Holt] was. This is like double fun because you’re really not sure who either one of them is.” Certainly, that mystery offered opportunities for some surprises, as one partner would suddenly demonstrate talents or knowledge that the other didn’t know he or she had. More interesting, however, was the evolving relationship--professional and personal--between Bakula (who was then best known for his years flipping through time on Quantum Leap) and Bello (whose appearance in Mr. & Mrs. Smith proved to be her breakout role). Bakula’s Smith seemed rather too wholesome and naïve to be an espionage agent, but the alternately sassy and sultry Bello came off as clever and audacious enough to thrive in that shadowy trade--and to benefit, if begrudgingly, from Bakula’s less seat-of-the-pants professionalism. If anyone, she really sold this show. Unfortunately, critics weren’t buying it. Commenting on the September 1996 pilot film, which was shot in Seattle and found Mr. Smith first meeting Mrs. Smith (who then worked for a competing “rent-a-spy company”), The New York Times said that Bakula “seems to be sleepwalking as Mr. Smith,” while Bello played her part “as if she were auditioning for the role of a Bond-girl understudy.” The newspaper called this program “so banal it makes life-threatening espionage combined with sexual tension seem dull.” Ouch! Even as a 9-10 p.m. bridge between the popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and Don Johnson’s Nash Bridges, Mr. & Mrs. Smith couldn’t find an audience. CBS yanked it after broadcasting just eight or nine of its 13 episodes; the remainder were only shown overseas, according to Wikipedia.

Above: Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s write-up in the September 14-20, 1996, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The series’ opening title sequence.



READ MORE: “A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1996)” (Mystery*File); “Home of the Forgotten: TV Spies,” by Michael Shonk (Criminal Element).

But I’m Nowhere Near So Natty

Over at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, blogger Margot Kinberg has posted a distinctly unscientific quiz that helps you identify which famous sleuth you would most resemble, were you to go into the detective business. After the answering all of the questions, it turns out that I’d be the next Hercule Poirot. Here’s the description:

You notice small details and nuances of people’s behavior, dress and manner. You’ve found that casual conversation is a very useful tool to find out what you want to know--especially if it is something people would rather not tell you. You’ve got a gift for getting people to confide in you, and you put that to good use. You’re good at intellectual puzzles, and find them engaging. Some people call you egotistical--even arrogant--but you know your own skills!

Hmm. I was kind of hoping to be the next Lew Archer, or maybe discover my cognitive commonalities with Ellery Queen. But neither of those characters is among Kinberg’s choices. Instead, her quiz pairs you up with Harry Bosch, Stephanie Plum, Precious Ramotswe, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, or Agatha Christie’s brilliant, mustachioed little Belgian. Given those choices, I suppose I can’t really complain too much.

Click here to try your own hand at this quiz.

Treasured Tomes

The Friday “forgotten books” train continues chugging right along, today picking up a new array of crime-fiction recommendations, including: Assignment: Budapest, by Edward S. Aarons; Night Never Ends, by Frederick Lorenz; Through a Glass Darkly, by Helen McCloy; Peeper, by Loren D. Estleman; The Red Citroën, by Timothy Williams; The Distant Echo, by Val McDermid; One for Hell, by Jada M. Davis; Cruel Cuts, by J.R. Lindermuth; The Double Take, by Roy Huggins; At Death’s Door, by Robert Barnard; The Green Ripper, by John D. MacDonald; The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie; The Recycled Citizen, by Charlotte MacLeod; R.T.M. Scott’s Secret Service Smith stories; J.J. Montague’s Black Swan series; and The Crime of My Life, a short-story collection edited by Brian Garfield.

Oh, and of course I wrote about Alistair MacLean’s Breakheart Pass in The Rap Sheet. You will find that piece here.

Series organizer Patti Abbott has listed all of today’s participating critics in her own blog, where she also features an endorsement of the not-so-forgotten but still terrific Murder on the Yellow Brick Road, by Stuart M. Kaminsky.

Just Three Weeks Away Now

Shotsmag Confidential reminds us that the 2010 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards presentations will be made on Friday, October 8, in London. That ceremony will then be broadcast via Britain’s ITV3 on Tuesday, October 12.

The renowned Crime Writers’ Association, in partnership with Specsavers, Cactus TV, and ITV3, announced its list of finalists for the three top CWA Dagger Awards in August.

The Book You Have to Read: “Breakheart Pass,” by Alistair MacLean

(This piece, which appeared originally in Patti Abbott’s blog, marks the 105th installment of The Rap Sheet’s continuing Friday series highlighting great but forgotten books. Click here to find more than 100 previous recommendations.)

My introduction to Scottish author Alistair MacLean came in high school, when one of my English teachers assigned us all to read The Guns of Navarone, a 1957 thriller centered around the efforts of a specialist team of Allied commandos, during World War II, to silence the notorious weaponry at a German fortress in the Aegean Sea. Most of the books we’d had to read that year were pretty quiet stuff, along the lines of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories. Navarone was something else altogether, an adventure novel that read more like one of the high-stakes action tales in my grandfather’s Argosy magazines than it did a work that some earnest curriculum planner thought would be healthy grist for the minds of teenage boys. If this was what the future of English classes held in store, I thought, let me at it!

Predictably, though, Navarone was an aberration; afterward, we went right back to reading safe “classics.” But by then I had developed an appetite for MacLean’s lean, edge-of-the-seat yarns. Finished with Navarone, I dove into Puppet on a Chain, then Fear Is the Key, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, The Way to Dusty Death, and finally, during my sophomore year in college, Breakheart Pass.

That last novel, published in 1974, wove MacLean’s traditional, best-selling formula of manifold tight plot twists and a cynical protagonist facing long odds into the tapestry of the familiar American Western. Supposedly set in the 1870s, the story takes place primarily aboard an ill-fated Union Pacific train steaming east to west across northern Nevada in the midst of a daunting snowstorm. Among the passengers are the governor of Nevada, Charles Fairchild; his mid-20s, black-haired niece, Marica; a tough-shelled cavalry officer, Colonel Claremont, who’s accompanied by two train cars full of troops; Indian fighter-turned-U.S. marshal Nathan Pearce and his newly acquired prisoner, John Deakin, a taciturn ex-university lecturer wanted on multiple counts of arson and murder; and an expert on tropical diseases, Dr. Edward Molyneux. The doctor’s seemingly inappropriate presence is soon explained by word that the train’s next destination, Fort Humboldt--commanded by Marica’s father--is under epidemic assault by cholera. Molyneux is reportedly taking medicine to the fort, along with coffins.

Things start to go amiss from the first, though. A couple of Claremont’s men disappear even before the train sets off from its final remote town stop. Then the doctor is discovered dead, and the locomotive’s fireman tumbles from a high overpass into a yawning ravine. When the last three train wagons--“the troop-carrying coaches and the brake van”--come uncoupled from the rest of the cars, and careen off backward into a forested gorge, it’s plain that some wicked mind is behind all of these “accidents.” Suspicion naturally focuses on Pearce’s captive, Deakin, who appears unperturbed by the lethal calamities occurring around him. However, the fact that Deakin was shackled at the time of at least one passenger death seems to absolve him of blame. But if he isn’t responsible, then who is? And what do those disasters have to do with misemployed coffins in the train’s supply wagons, or Deakin’s nocturnal wanderings over the roof of the hustling express, or Paiute Indians being welcomed at Fort Humboldt?

Author MacLean was allegedly past his prime when he wrote Breakheart Pass. Yet pretty much everything one could want in a historical thriller is found in these pages: rampant deceptions, schemes designed to incite fear, prodigious greed, calculated homicides, unexpected heroics. (Well, everything except sex: MacLean thought such complications only hobbled the pace of storytelling.) And the whole adventure takes place within a winter that’s as unforgiving as the villains who hope to profit from the carnage. MacLean’s prose may have been more pedestrian than poetic, but he could definitely keep readers on the edge of their seats.

I am not the first reader, nor will I be the last, I’m sure, to remark on the author’s disordering of historical facts. While MacLean makes clear in the book that America’s Civil War has been fought and finished, and the United States Secret Service (founded in 1865) is active in bringing malefactors to justice, he confuses things by mentioning that “the Big Bonanza strike in [Nevada’s] Comstock Lode” occurred some months ago. Actually, that rich discovery took place in 1859, when Nevada was still part of the Utah Territory. Two more years would pass before Nevada broke away, and it wasn’t until 1864 that it became the 36th state in the Union. I can only imagine that MacLean decided that such discrepancies were OK if they contributed to his story’s intent.

And reading this book again now, I find myself more able than I was originally to overlook them. The building of tension, not the exposition of historical events, was the author’s purpose in these pages, and he succeeded marvelously. Even today, and knowing how it all ends, every time I sit down with Breakheart Pass or watch the 1975 Charles Bronson film adaptation of that tale, I feel anew the frisson of anticipation, wondering who will survive that dangerous train ride ... and how the men behind the crimes on board will be brought to justice. That’s great storytelling for you!

* * *

As one might expect, considerable liberties were taken with dialogue, action, and characterization to turn Breakheart Pass into the Jerry Gershwin/Elliott Kastner movie of that same name. For instance, Governor Fairchild became much younger in the personage of actor Richard Crenna, and Marica (played by Charles Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland) morphed from being his daughter, to being his mistress. However, since MacLean apparently wrote the screenplay, the story remains faithful to the essence of the novel, and Ben Johnson turns in a wonderful performance as Marshal Pearce. It’s definitely worth watching. Below, I have embedded both the film’s trailer and its opening sequence. The theme was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who also provided the scores for Chinatown, Planet of the Apes, and several Star Trek films.





READ MORE: “Alistair MacLean and the Human Cost of War,” by Barbara D’Amato (The Outfit); “Murder on the Literary Express: Top 10 Train Thrillers” (AbeBooks); “Fit to Thrill: Alistair MacLean Deserves to Be Read Again,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Kirkus Reviews).

Beating a Dragon Tattoo

Today in Blue Coupe, January Magazine contributing editor Tony Buchsbaum explores the music from the film versions of Stieg Larsson’s remarkable books:

What with the global mania about Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, wasn’t it only a matter of time before we had the film scores released on CD? Well, Salander fans, wait no more. Composer Jacob Groth’s dark, twisty, and highly thematic scores for all three films are now available on two discs from two different labels.

Buchsbaum’s piece is here.

Be the Envy of Others

Are you well rested from the summer and ready for a new flash-fiction challenge? Patti Abbott explains the rules:

The theme is jealousy. I’ll write the first 1,000ish words that play on a theme: a story about a character who is jealous of someone else.

The next writer ... centers their story on the person my character is jealous of and the object of his/her jealousy. The reason for the jealousy would, of course, be different in every story.

I’d say we could take a week between segments. Every Tuesday then? Does this seem do-able to you? If so, let me know. Of course, we couldn’t knock off our nemeses ... but certainly they can be less than respectable citizens. Or murders other than that of the protagonist can take place.

Abbott is proposing to start this progressive challenge on Tuesday, October 5. If you’d like to participate, contact her here.

Another Good Idea Quashed

Die-hard Veronica Mars fans who continue to hope for a big-screen follow-up to that 2004-2007 series will no doubt take heart from this TV Squad headline: “Kristen Bell Would Finance a ‘Veronica Mars’ Film ... If Warner Bros. Lets Her.” Unfortunately, as Omnimystery News notes, production company Warner Bros. “owns the rights and has no interest in making a film.” Sigh ...

Knowing Their Places

Among the bills and books in yesterday’s mail delivery was a copy of Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction (New Holland Publishers), a British non-fiction work I contributed to, and which I very much looked forward to seeing in print.

During the summer of 2009, UK editor and former bookstore proprietor had asked 11 authors, including me, to contribute to this volume of 21 essays about cities and other places in the world that are closely associated with famous fictional sleuths. Given that he wanted me to write about Dashiell Hammett and San Francisco, a city I have long adored (and about which I had penned two previous books), I was pleased to accept his invitation. Although I’ve composed numerous crime novel reviews over the years, and have been writing The Rap Sheet (separately and as part of January Magazine) for almost a decade, this was the first time I’d been asked to submit a chapter for a book about crime fiction.

I’m not really in a position to review Following the Detectives, but I will say that the results are pretty darn impressive. Oversized and suffused with photographs and colorful maps of the regions over which the fictional crime-solvers roam, it is a reference book for mystery and crime-fiction fans, but also a travel guide of sorts for literature lovers.

Chapters cover such pairings as Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus’ Edinburgh (written by Ross Macdonald and Lew Archer’s Southern California (Michael Carlson), Colin Dexter and Inspector Endeavour Morse’s Oxford (Martin Edwards), Arnaldur Indridason and Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson’s Iceland (Peter Rozovsky), Philip Kerr, Leonardo Padura, Boris Akunin, and Michael Walters.

This book is fairly heavily designed, and there are a few pages on which the type is hard to read against a colorful backdrop. But for the most part, the visual appearance of Following the Detectives contributes to the text’s intrigue. Jakubowski has sprinkled the chapters with sidebars, some of them featuring quirky facts about the authors or their protagonists (did you know, for instance, that Donna Leon “will not sanction translation of her books into Italian”?), others looking at how the fictional characters under discussion have been featured in films. In many cases, lists have been made of other novelists who set their stories in the cities addressed in the main chapters, and in the Boston section--which concentrates instead on works by and Robert B. Parker--there’s a longer sidebar about Dennis Lehane. Jakubowski must have recognized from the outset of this project that he would be criticized for not commissioning separate chapters about Loren D. Estleman and Detroit, Martin Cruz Smith and Moscow, Kathy Reichs and Montreal, Robert Wilson and Seville, Frank Tallis and Vienna, Earl Emerson and Seattle, and other such obvious pairings, but covering all of that territory might have made Following the Detectives several volumes long. He’s found a middle ground in at least mentioning as many imaginary investigators as possible in this 256-page work.

I shall leave it up to others to applaud more of this book’s assets and nitpick its deficiencies. I can only say that I am proud to appear in these pages with such excellent company, and I look forward to giving copies of Following the Detectives away as Christmas presents (even though I’ll have to order them from Britain). There’s lots of material here to satisfy longtime crime-fiction enthusiasts as well as newcomers to the genre.