Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Crime of Their Lives

The second and concluding segment of my feature on real-life historical characters being cast as amateur gumshoes in contemporary crime fiction was posted this morning on the Kirkus Reviews Web site. In this piece, I investigate the mystery-solving skills of people such as Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, and Harry Houdini.

You can read all about it here. And click here to find Part I.

By the way, please feel free to add your own thoughts on this matter in the comments section of today’s Kirkus post. Do you have a favorite crime novel or series that employs a genuine figure from the past as a detective? Or are there historical players who have not yet been drafted into these stories, but who you think would make excellent celebrity sleuths? If so, let us all know about them.

READ MORE:50 Novels Featuring Famous Authors as Characters,” by Sarah Seltzer (Flavorwire).

2 comments:

http://www.trackofthecat.blogspot.com said...

Well, I'm unable to leave a comment at that site, because I am not a facebook person.

I'd have to add Stuart Kaminsky who wrote a number of them, including one novel with William Faulkner as the detective.

Then too, there is Swain's THE H. L. Mencken Case and even better, Roy Hoopes OUR MAN IN WASHINGTON which featured James Cain and H. L. Mencken as co-detectives.

I'm sure there are others, and you must be yourself. Nonetheless, a most enjoyable article. I look forward to reading your comments in the Rap Sheet every morning, and I thank you.

Unable to comment at Kirkus due to no facebook account.

J. Kingston Pierce said...

Thank you for your thoughts on this matter. I'm sorry Kirkus Reviews requires that people wishing to comment on stories posted there have Facebook accounts. This has been a source of some consternation in the past, especially when Facebook somehow managed to lose ALL of the comments appended to my earliest Kirkus columns. I'm pleased that you persevered, and left your remarks on The Rap Sheet, instead.

Cheers,
Jeff