An “Absorbing” Look at Historical Chaos

The German-made historical crime series Babylon Berlin—the third season of which reached Netflix in the States last month—is winning a lot of favorable press lately. Sarah Hughes remarks in The Guardian that writer-director “Tom Tykwer’s ambitious adaptation of Volker Kutscher’s police procedurals … [offers] the chance to lose yourself in a fully realised and beautifully recreated world, populated by people you will come to genuinely care about, driven by tight plots and a wider story of how the after-effects of the First World War would send shockwaves through the German nation, eventually leading to the collapse of an all-too-brief progressive government and the subsequent rise to power of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party.”

Meanwhile, Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk calls Babylon Berlin “an amazing show for right now: politically resonant but historically removed, stylistic and melodramatic, endearing, bracing, and completely absorbing. It’s about the sense that the whole world is teetering on the edge of collapse, so it’s not hard to reach for parallels to the current moment; the final shot of the new third season is one of the most accurate images I’ve seen of what it feels like to be alive in the world in 2020. But that final shot is also perfect, escapist Babylon Berlin: anxiety shaped into Surrealism, a nightmare turned fantasy.”

Hmm. This series didn’t grab me in the same way it has obviously gripped others; I stopped tuning Babylon Berlin in partway through its first season. Maybe I should give it a second chance.

Germany Finally Invades the U.S.

It sounds as if the American streaming-TV service Netflix is betting big on German programming. From The New York Times:

At first glance, “Dark,” Netflix’s first original German-language series, might seem familiar to fans of the streaming service’s other recent hits. The show, which will debut internationally on Dec. 1, centers on a small town plagued by strange goings-on at a nearby power facility. It also features an expansive cast of largely young actors, a time-warped structure and cryptic scenes of a teenager imprisoned in a brightly lit room.

But its creators, the director Baran bo Odar and the writer Jantje Friese, are quick to point out that “Dark” isn’t a blend of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and “The OA.” For one, the show’s episodes were written before those programs were released and lean more toward science fiction than horror. They also point out that its understated sensibility makes it a uniquely German contribution to the rapidly expanding world of premium television. “I don’t know if it’s German angst, but there is something uniquely creepy about Germans, at least from the outside perspective,” Ms. Friese said recently in an interview here. “We are definitely delivering on that.”

Denmark, France and Norway have drawn acclaim for their contributions to the new golden age of television, but few ambitious fictional series have come out of Germany. That began to change in 2015, when “Deutschland 83,” a spy drama, became the first German-language show to be broadcast on an American network. Now, with “Dark” and the recent premiere of “Babylon Berlin,” an expensive historical series that has been sold to 60 international markets and will stream on Netflix in the United States starting in January, German television appears to be entering a new era.

So, precisely when will Babylon Berlin, the 16-part, double-season historical crime series based on German author Volker Kutscher’s two (soon to be three) popular novels, premiere on Netflix? It’s been surprisingly difficult to pin down a specific date. However, this article, also from the Times, says it “will begin streaming on Netflix in the United States on Jan. 30.” I look forward to watching.

(Hat tip to Frederick Zackel.)

READ MORE: “Titan to Publish Babylon Berlin—The Inspiration Behind the Netflix Smash Hit TV Series!” (Graphic Policy); “Netflix Commissions Second German Production, Dogs of Berlin,” by Diane Lodderhose (Deadline).

Bullet Points: Thanksgiving Links Feast

• As part of its 2017 “New Talent November” celebration, Crime Fiction Lover identifies five women writers it predicts will become much better known over the coming year. Among them are Australia’s Jane Harper, whose debut novel, The Dry, won this year’s Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association; and American Hannah Tinti, who CFL says showed a “talent for almost old-fashioned, proper storytelling ... in her second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley [2017].” To keep up with the “New Talent November” series, which will run through the end of this month, click here.

• Deadline brings this news: “Carmen Ejogo is set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series, True Detective. The new installment of True Detective tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali plays the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.” Sounds good.

• There’s no shortage of Thanksgiving-related mysteries.

• You have to be of a certain age to understand what a big deal David Cassidy—who died this week at age 67—was in the early 1970s. The son of actor Jack Cassidy and the stepson of singer-vedette Shirley Jones, David Cassidy was the teen idol of the time. “With pretty-boy good looks and a long mane of dark hair, Cassidy was every girl’s favorite teen crush,” Variety wrote in its obituary of the New Jersey-born songster and guitarist. His featured role on the popular ABC-TV musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), which had him playing opposite Shirley Jones, gave Cassidy immense public exposure, while songs such as “I Think I Love You” made him a chart-topping sensation in his own right. “During an era when the Big Three broadcast networks still had a monolithic hold on pop culture, Cassidy’s picture was suddenly everywhere—not just on the fronts of magazines and record albums, but on lunch boxes, posters, cereal boxes and toys,” recalls National Public Radio (NPR). “He sold out concert venues across the globe, from New York’s Madison Square Garden to stadiums in London and Melbourne.” Following Partridge’s cancellation, Cassidy expanded his acting résumé (which had previously included turns on Ironside and The Mod Squad), making guest appearances on The Love Boat, Matt Houston, and even CSI. His performance as an undercover officer, Dan Shay, in a 1978 episode of NBC’s Police Story titled “A Chance to Live,” scored Cassidy an Emmy Award nomination for Best Dramatic Actor and led to his reprising the Shay role in David Cassidy: Man Undercover (1978-1979), a Los Angeles-set show that lasted only 10 episodes. But all was not well in his personal life. His six-year marriage to actress Kay Lenz (Breezy, The Underground Man), ended in divorce in 1983; he would wed twice more over the years. “In the 2010s,” NPR recalls, “he had a string of arrests on drunk-driving charges in Florida, New York and California. In 2014 he told CNN, ‘I am most definitely an alcoholic.’ The following year, he declared bankruptcy and was charged with a hit-and-run in Fort Lauderdale.” Wikipedia adds: “On February 20, 2017, Cassidy announced that he was living with non-Alzheimer’s dementia, the condition that his mother suffered from at the end of her life. He retired from performing in early 2017 when the condition became noticeable during a performance in which he forgot lyrics and otherwise struggled.” After being hospitalized in Florida for several days, David Cassidy perished from liver failure on November 21.

• Vox has more to say about Cassidy’s life and career.


(Above) The opening teaser and titles from “RX for Dying,” the December 21, 1978, episode of David Cassidy: Man Undercover.

• Lisa Levy looks at our modern “rape culture” and how it’s reflected in crime fiction. In a piece for Literary Hub, she writes:

[R]ape culture is everywhere in crime fiction. It is in every missing girl or woman. It is in every female cop protagonist who is slighted or doubted by her colleagues and her superiors. It’s in every P.I. novel with a woman at its center, as she negotiates a sexually hostile world to do her job. ... If crime fiction is a mirror of society that reveals our deepest and longest held fears, as I believe it is, then rape culture is one of those fears writ large in novels about men who violate women (sexually or otherwise). But it is also subtext in many, many other novels, where women are denigrated, pushed aside, ignored, hit on, groped, and verbally assaulted.

When I set out to look at rape culture in crime fiction, I found it everywhere. To take a very popular example, it’s no accident that the original title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Swedish translates to The Man Who Hated Women. One of the hallmarks of that series is heroine Lisbeth Salander’s repeated victimization at the hands of men, including her father and her court-appointed guardian, who raped her repeatedly when she was institutionalized as a child.

• In the blog Criminal Element, Con Lehane writes about his decision to set his latest series at New York City’s iconic 42nd Street Library. His second Raymond Ambler mystery, Murder in the Manuscript Room, is out just this week from Minotaur Books.

• Had Anthony Horowitz not done such a convincing job of capturing the character of British spy James Bond in his 2015 novel, Trigger Mortis, we’d probably not now be hanging on every Twitter update of his work on its sequel. But we’re doing just that, with the latest mere morsel, the latest crumb, the latest speck of information being showcased in The Spy Command. I sure hope Horowitz’s finished work rewards all this anticipation.

• In February of next year, Dynamite Entertainment will premiere a 40-page, one-shot James Bond comic spin-off that “centers on the head of the [British] Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI-6), Miles Messervy—we know him more famously as ‘M.’” As The Secret Agent Lair reports, “this incarnation of M is rather different from the source material as well as [from Ms] portrayed in the film franchise. Unlike the original Sir Miles Messervy, a full Anglo-Saxon, this version of M is British of African descent, much like Moneypenny herself in the comics as well as the rebooted 007 timeline of the movies.” The blog adds that the graphic novel, titled simply M, will “delve into [Messervy’s] past and his time in the field before his ascension to the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

• This month marks 15 years since the release of Die Another Day, the 20th James Bond film—and the fourth and final one to feature Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007. Commemorating this occasion, The Secret Agent Lair revisits the poster campaign that promoted that film back in 1997, observing that its imagery was “too flashy for today’s standards, where most action movies get the minimalistic and desaturated artwork treatment—the Daniel Craig-era posters, where the protagonist is set to rather insipid backgrounds, look like a strange cousin in comparison to these pieces. Yet, it is a heartfelt testimony to the days where the 007 films let the drama [run] for a couple of hours, and a cocktail of Martinis, girls and guns were … the order of the day.”

• Speaking of milestones, it was 13 years ago in September that the paperback book line Hard Case Crime was launched, with Lawrence Block’s Grifter’s Game and Max Phillips’ Fade to Blonde being its initial pair of releases. In an interview with small-press publisher Paul Suntup, Hard Case editor Charles Ardai reflects on his company’s history, the process of adding new titles to its hard-boiled catalogue, and the works that helped make it successful. He also reveals why Hard Case’s logo looks the way it does. “Initially,” Ardai explains, “we were going to call the line ‘Kingpin,’ which is why the logo features a crown over the gun. But the day before we went to register the trademark, TV producer Aaron Spelling beat us to the punch, registering it for a TV mini-series about a drug kingpin. So we scrapped the name and came up with ‘Hard Case Crime’ instead. But the logo felt so good and so right that we kept it, even though the crown no longer made any sense.”

• Max Allan Collins gives us an update on the status of his next Nate Heller novel, Do No Harm, which finds the Chicago-based private eye working the 1954 Sam Sheppard homicide case:

The process with Heller has remained largely the same since True Detective back in the early ’80s. I select the historical incident—usually a crime, either unsolved or controversially solved—and approach it as if I’m researching the definitive book on the subject. I never have a firm opinion on the case before research proper begins, even if I’ve read a little about it or seen movies or documentaries on the subject, just as somebody interested in famous true crimes. …

This time I changed my mind about who murdered Marilyn Sheppard, oh, a dozen times. I in part selected the case because it was a more traditional murder mystery than the political subjects of the last four Heller novels—sort of back to basics, plus giving me something that would be a little easier to do, since I was coming out of some health problems and major surgeries.

But it’s turned out to be one of the trickiest Heller novels of all. Figuring out what happened here is very tough. There is no shortage of suspects, and no shortage of existing theories. In addition, a number of the players are still alive (Sam Sheppard’s brother Stephen is 97) and those who aren’t have grown children who are, none of whom would likely be thrilled with me should I lay a murder at the feet of their deceased parents.

• Fascinating. I didn’t know that a film noir had been made from Steve Fisher’s 1941 novel, I Wake Up Screaming. Or that said movie, which was eventually retitled Hot Spot, starred Betty Grable (in a rare dramatic role), along with Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Nor was I aware that Fisher scripted the picture together with Dwight Taylor. I was privy to none of this until I happened across an apparently “unreleased trailer” to I Wake Up Screaming in Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist. Now I have to go out and find the full flick. (By the way, this film was remade in 1953 as Vicki.)

• The Lineup selects “35 gripping true-crime books from the last 55 year,” for those moments when you need creepiness in your life.

• Crime Fiction Lover briefs us on the Hull Noir festival, held this month in the Yorkshire town of Kingston Upon Hull (aka Hull).

• As I’ve made clear in a couple of previous “Bullet Points” posts (see here and here), I’m highly skeptical of plans to make a new film inspired by Ernest Tidyman’s succession of novels featuring 1970s-cool Manhattan private eye John Shaft. Nonetheless, Steve Aldous (whose 2015 book, The World of Shaft, is a must-have for fans of Tidyman’s yarns) keeps posting updates on the movie in his blog. Recently, for instance, he offered this synopsis of the picture’s plot: “Working for the FBI, estranged from his father and determined not to be anything like him, John Shaft Jr. reluctantly enlists his father’s help to find out who killed his best friend Karim and bring down a drug-trafficking/money-laundering operation in NYC.” Aldous adds that this film, presently titled Son of Shaft, is due to start production in December. Jessie T. Usher (Survivor’s Romance) has signed up to portray the aforementioned John Shaft Jr. … who is supposedly the child of Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft, from the awful 2000 film Shaft … who was, in turn, the nephew of Richard Roundtree’s original Shaft. Got all that?

• It was almost exactly two years ago that I reported on plans by Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI), a Toronto-based home video/television distribution company, to produce a DVD collection of James Franciscus’ 1971-1972 detective series, Longstreet. Only now, however, is the Web site TV Shows on DVD finally announcing the release of that boxed set. Although Amazon doesn’t yet show Longstreet: The Complete Series as being available for advance purchase, the $29.99 compilation is scheduled to ship on December 1, and will “contain the pilot telefilm and all 23 regular weekly episodes.” (Click here to buy it directly from VEI.) For those of you who don’t remember Franciscus’ fourth small-screen series (following Mr. Novak, which is being prepared for its own DVD rollout this coming spring), here’s TV Shows on DVD’s short explanation of its concept:

Following a bomb blast that leaves him blind and a widower, New Orleans insurance detective Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) refuses to quit the business. Together with the help of his dog Pax, assistant Nikki [Marlyn Mason] and friend Duke [Peter Mark Richman], Longstreet continues to investigate thefts, kidnappings, and murders. … Bruce Lee made four guest appearances as Longstreet’s martial arts teacher.

• There’s still no word from Netflix on a U.S. debut date for Babylon Berlin, the much-heralded German drama “set in the seamy, steamy, scheming underworld of 1920s and ’30s Berlin.” While Americans wait, though, The Killing Times has begun reviewing each of the eight Season 1 episodes, currently being shown in Britain. So if, like me, you must hold tight in expectation of this program based on Volker Kutscher’s detective novels, at least you can read a little about the series’ unfurling plot lines and characters.

• Another series to watch for: The Indian Detective. Deadline says this show casts Indian-descended Canadian comedian Russell Peters as “Doug D’Mello, a Toronto cop who unexpectedly finds himself investigating a murder in his parents’ Indian homeland. The investigation leads Doug to uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving David Marlowe (William Shatner), a billionaire property developer, while dealing with his own ambivalence toward a country where, despite his heritage, he is an outsider.” Netflix will launch The Indian Detective on Tuesday, December 19. Canada’s National Post >says there are four episodes in Season 1.

• Also from Deadline comes word that the creators of Columbo, the long-running TV mystery series, are suing Universal City Studios for “holding out on profits from the series.” In a 15-page complaint filed earlier this month in the Los Angeles Superior Court, screenwriter/short-story author William Link, together with the estate of the late Richard Levinson, insist they are owed 15 percent to 20 percent of the Columbo profits, and that Universal took four decades to acknowledge “that they were owed profit participation.”

• James Garner, star of The Rockford Files, Maverick, and an impressive catalogue of films, died during the summer of 2014, but only now have I come across a long, beautifully penned tribute to his work, composed by critic Clive James and published in The Atlantic in 2011, at the time the actor’s memoir, The Garner Files, reached bookstores. Here’s part of what James had to say:

Every sane person’s favorite modern male movie star, Garner might have done even better if he’d been less articulate. In his generation, three male TV stars made it big in the movies: Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Garner. All of them became stars in TV Westerns: McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, Eastwood in Rawhide, and Garner in Maverick. The only one of them who looked and sounded as if he enjoyed communicating by means of the spoken word was Garner. McQueen never felt ready for a film role until he had figured out what the character should do with his hands: that scene-stealing bit in his breakout movie, The Magnificent Seven, in which he shakes the shotgun cartridges beside his ear, was McQueen’s equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy, or of a practice session for a postatomic future in which language had ceased to exist.

As for Eastwood, he puts all that effort into gritting his teeth, because his tongue is tied. …

Garner, a quick study who could learn and deliver speeches long enough to make his awed listeners hold their breath to the breaking point, was the only one who seemed to enjoy producing intelligible noise. But Garner, compared with the other two, never really caught on as a big-screen leading man. Though tall and handsome, he was never remote: he had an air of belonging down here with us. As a small-screen leading man, he had done too thorough a job with the 20 or 30 good lines in every episode of Maverick or The Rockford Files to make an easy transition into a putatively larger medium that gave him many times more square feet of screen to inhabit, but many times less to say.

You can read James’ remarks in their entirety by clicking here.

• Finally, because the season is right for it, I want to give thanks to all of you who regularly read The Rap Sheet. You’ll never know how much your attention, loyalty, and comments mean to me.

Bullet Points: Day of the Dead Edition

• As Connecticut’s Harford Courant tells it, “The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature award will be given to author Bill Beverly for his novel Dodgers later this month. The Mark Twain House & Museum announced the award, which comes with $25,000, on Wednesday evening. It is presented to an author whose book, published in the previous year, best embodies an ‘American voice’ such as Twain’s in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the museum said in a statement.” Beverly’s writing of Dodgers previously brought him the 2016 Gold Dagger award from Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association.

• How would you like to do your writing on Mickey Spillane’s old typewriter? Mystery Fanfare reports that the circa-1930 Royal Manual machine on which Mike Hammer’s creator may have labored “during his early days as a comic-book writer” will be among the items Heritage Auctions puts up for bids in New York City on March 7, 2018.

• The new German TV series Babylon Berlin, based on a pair (soon to be a trio) of 1920s-set crime novels by Volker Kutscher and featuring a Berlin police inspector named Gereon Rath, has been winning plenty of favorable press since it debuted in Germany on October 13. Kate Connolly of The Guardian writes: “A lavish 16-part TV series set between the two world wars is being tipped as the first big-budget German production that could become a global TV blockbuster. Babylon Berlin, a period drama set in the Weimar Republic replete with crime, corruption, sex and decadence, cost €38m (£33m) to make and is the most expensive TV series filmed in Germany. Critics are predicting it will compete with the likes of Breaking Bad, House of Cards and Downton Abbey.” The Killing Times shorthands the show’s plot thusly: “Set against the social and political upheaval of Germany in 1929—with a failing economy and a rise of right-wing extremists, some may even find timely parallels to events today—nothing is what it seems as the case spirals and Gereon’s life is changed forever.” An English-subtitled version of Babylon Berlin is scheduled to premiere in the UK on November 5 (courtesy of Sky Atlantic), and Netflix has purchased U.S. broadcast rights (though it hasn’t also announced when Americans might be able to watch it). Sky’s trailer for the program is embedded below; a German trailer can be enjoyed here.



For more information, check out the Babylon Berlin Web site.

• “SundanceTV has partnered with Emmy-winning producer and director Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost),” states Criminal Element, “to bring you Cold Blooded, a two-part documentary detailing the murder case that [Truman] Capote made famous [in his 1966 book, In Cold Blood]. The documentary will ‘recount the Clutter murders in detail, using previously unpublished documents, in addition to first-hand accounts from the Clutters’ living relatives’ to provide new insight into this groundbreaking case. Part One premieres on SundanceTV on Saturday, November 18, at 9 p.m. ET.”

• Congratulations to author Duane Swierczynski (Canary, Revolver), whose series pilot adaptation of Dan Simmons’ 2000 novel, Darwin’s Blade—co-written with Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious)—has been sold to NBC-TV. The plot, says Deadline Hollywood, “centers on Darwin ‘Dar’ Minor, a brilliant yet arrogant accident-reconstruction specialist who consults police on the bizarre cases no one else can solve.” Swierczynski is set to co-executive produce the show, as well.

• It had been so long since I last heard anything about director Martin Scorsese’s plans to collaborate with actor Leonard DiCaprio on a big-screen adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 non-fiction book, The Devil in the White City, that I’d nearly lost hope of the project’s viability. However, Scorsese told the Toronto Sun late last year that “there is a script being worked on” (purportedly by Hunger Games writer Billy Ray), and on Halloween, the BookBub Blog brought us up to date (as much as possible) on where things stand with that picture. Unfortunately, there’s still no estimate of when this sixth Scorsese-DiCaprio venture might be released.

• I wasn’t a fan of the original S.W.A.T. (see it’s opening title sequence here), so there’s scant chance of my being interested in the revival of that 1975-1976 crime drama. However, the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Lloyd insists the new show, debuting tonight on CBS, isn’t without its attractions. “Essentially a militarized police procedural, or perhaps a domesticated military drama,” he explains, S.W.A.T. offers “sexy hardware and specialized jargon,” plus “plenty of action to distract you.” Lloyd says that “With its characters at once thin and broad; its L.A. backdrop; and its mix of existential philosophizing, social commentary and corny representations of hot-button issues, S.W.A.T. also recalls and has some of the appeal of Jack Webb’s classic Dragnet, but with a more progressive outlook and a sprinkling of sex scenes.” Watch a trailer for the series here.

• This, though, does sound worth watching. From Slate:

Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in late April with sickening timing. Donald Trump’s presidency hung over Margaret Atwood’s novel, set in a dystopic, misogynist, theocratic near future, making it feel less like fiction than a terrifying prophecy. This Friday, Netflix debuts Alias Grace, another Atwood adaptation that is dreadfully apropos. The 1996 novel is historical fiction, based on an 1843 true crime, in which 16-year-old Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant to Canada, was convicted of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his pregnant housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. But Harvey Weinstein, our pussy-grabbing president, and their ilk loom over Alias Grace; indeed, they seem as though they could be characters in Alias Grace, where men misuse women as if it were their right.

• The November edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots features notes about everything from Lee Child’s latest novel and plans to erect (in north Oxford, England) a statue honoring the late Colin Dexter to the phenomenally prolific James Swallow, the persistently underappreciated works of James Hadley Chase, and new or forthcoming books by Laura Wilson, Håkan Nesser, and Malcolm Mackay. It’s all here.

• Janet Rudolph lets us know that the latest edition of her quarterly magazine, Mystery Readers Journal, is now available. The issue’s theme is Big City Cops, and the contents include this essay by Rennie Airth (The Death of Kings) about the difficulties he faced in shaping his historical British detectives.

• Happy 11th “blogiversary” to Double O Section!

• Speaking of anniversaries, Kevin Burton Smith writes in his blog: “It was 20 years ago today that I uploaded a tentative few pages of what became The Thrilling Detective Web Site, for a pal to see. That pal, Peter Walker, seemed to like it, so I invited a few more friends on Rara-Avis, the old hard-boiled list serv, to check it out. Encouraged by their response, I scrambled to make it more presentable, and I officially released the site to the big bad world on April 1, 1998, trying (and inevitably failing) to keep up with the ever-expanding world of private-eye fiction—past, present, and future.” Smith’s frequently updated site is now an essential resource for folks, like me, who wish to learn more about the last century’s worth of American crime fiction. Good for you, Kevin, for achieving this milestone!

• It seems that Roy Price, the chief of Amazon’s video division and the grandson of legendary TV producer-writer Roy Huggins (77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files, etc.), recently found himself ensnared in the web of sexual-harassment scandals that have also claimed Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein, producer-director Brett Ratner, screenwriter James Toback, celebrity chef John Besh, TV star Jeremy Piven, journalists Michael Oreskes and Mark Halperin, amateur politician Donald Trump, and so many other high-profile American men. As The New York Times revealed, the 50-year-old Price, “who was in charge of Amazon’s efforts to create original movies and television shows,” resigned from Amazon Studios—which he’d helped launch in 2012—“just days after a producer publicly accused him of sexual harassment.” The Washington Post said the move followed accusations from Isa Dick Hackett, an executive producer of Amazon’s popular The Man in the High Castle and the daughter of Philip K. Dick (whose 1962 novel of that same name inspired the series), that Price “made unwanted sexual remarks” and repeatedly propositioned her in 2015. As if all of that weren’t bad enough, Wikipedia explains that in the wake of Hackett’s allegations, “Price’s fiancée, Lila Feinberg, announced that she was calling off their wedding. Her dress was reportedly designed by Georgina Chapman, the wife of Harvey Weinstein …”

(Left) Ex-Amazon executive Roy Price

• Actor Kevin Spacey faces his own charges of inappropriate sexual behavior. According to The Huffington Post, the TV streaming service Netflix “has suspended production on the sixth and final season of House of Cards”—in which Spacey plays Machiavellian and murderous politician Frank Underwood—amid allegations dating back to 1986. It was in that year, says fellow performer Anthony Rapp (now appearing in Star Trek: Discovery), that Spacey made “unwanted sexual advances” on him during a party. At the time, Rapp was 14 years old, while Spacey was in his late 20s. Deadline notes that Spacey has “issued a statement on social media saying he ‘did not remember the encounter’ but added he was ‘horrified’ by what Rapp described. … The Oscar-winning Spacey also used the occasion to announce publicly that chose now to ‘to live as a gay man,’ a move that drew harsh rebukes swiftly online and otherwise.” There’s no telling how this controversy will shake out, but at least for now, the 13-episode sixth season of House of Cards is being readied for broadcast on Netflix in mid-2018.

• Ontario author Linwood Barclay talks with Criminal Element about his new novel, Parting Shot, “a standalone thriller that revisits both the backdrop of Promise Falls”—where his recent trilogy (Broken Promise, Far From True, and The Twenty-Three) was set—and that trilogy’s protagonist, private investigator Cal Weaver. Meanwhile, the movie Never Saw It Coming, based on Barclay’s “dark comic thriller” of the same name and shot from a screenplay by the author, will premiere on December 1 at the Whistler Film Festival in British Columbia.

• Nancie Clare’s latest guest on her Speaking of Mysteries podcast is Clea Simon, talking about her new novel, World Enough, which finds “former music journalist Tara Winton revisit[ing] her mid-1980s beat—Boston’s punk rock club scene—in the wake of the apparently accidental death of one of the scene’s prominent musicians.”

• And in The Thrill Begins, Joe Clifford chats with Danny Gardner, whose distinctive, 1950s-set debut novel, A Negro and an Ofay (Down & Out), reached stores this last spring.

• One of the novels I’ve looked forward to picking up this season is Chris Brookmyre’s science fiction/mystery crossover, Places in the Darkness, which is due out early next week from publisher Orbit. So I was pleased to see this interview with the author in Crime Fiction Lover, which includes his description of the book’s plot line:

It is a thriller in the tradition of the great Shane Black movies like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: a story about two mismatched investigators forced to work together, though unlike in Shane’s scripts, my
protagonists are both women. The whole thing takes place aboard the Ciudad de Cielo, a space station where 300,000 people live and work developing what would be the Earth’s first interstellar craft. It is a place where ambitious scientists and engineers go to work on cutting-edge technology, but also where many people go to escape the things that went wrong in their lives back on Earth. The city’s private police force, the Seguridad, boasts that there has never been a murder aboard (though they do have a liberal interpretation of what constitutes an accidental death), but that changes when a dismembered body is found floating in zero-gravity.

• R.I.P., Donald Bain, described by The New York Times as “the pseudonymous author of the Murder, She Wrote novels, Margaret Truman’s ‘Capital Crimes’ mysteries and Coffee, Tea or Me? (1967), the supposed memoir of two saucy airline stewardesses.” A onetime airline publicist himself, Bain evidently died from congestive heart failure on Saturday, October 21, in White Plains, New York. Beyond the previously mentioned books, The Gumshoe Site notes that Bain “authored, under the house-name J.D. Hardin, a number of soft-pornographic Western action [novels] featuring Doc Weatherbee, a Pinkerton op, and ghosted Sado Cop (Playboy, 1976) for Nick Vasile, a former undercover cop. A few of his other pseudonyms are Donna Bain, Mike Lundy, Stephanie Blake, and Pamela South. He finally wrote his own mystery thriller, Lights Out! (Severn House), in 2014. His forthcoming books are Allied in Danger, a Capital Crimes novel (Forge, 2018), and A Date with Murder, a Murder She Wrote novel (co-written with Jon Land; Berkley, 2018).” Wikipedia says Bain penned “over 115 books in his 40-year career.” Click here to read John Valeri’s fond “personal remembrance” of Bain in Criminal Element.

• Gone, as well, is Jack Bannon, who’s probably best known for the five seasons he spent playing a dapper assistant newspaper city editor, Art Donovan, on the Emmy Award-winning CBS-TV drama Lou Grant (1977-1982). He passed away on October 22 at 77 years of age. The Hollywood Reporter explains that “Bannon's parents were actors. His mother, Bea Benaderet, received two Emmy nominations for her work on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, portrayed Kate Bradley on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, and was the voice of Betty Rubble on [the cartoon series] The Flintstones. His father, Jim Bannon, played the cowboy Red Ryder in four 1940s movies.” Jack Bannon’s acting credits include appearances on The Felony Squad, Judd, for the Defense, Mannix, The Rockford Files, Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and the 1987 teleflick Perry Mason: The Case of the Sinister Spirit. The Hollywood Reporter adds that Bannon died in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he had “lived … with his wife, actress Ellen Travolta—the older sister of John Travolta—since 1995.”

• Finally, since today marks the end of 2017’s Dia de los Muetros (or Day of the Dead) festival, be sure to check out Mystery Fanfare’s list of crime and mystery novels associated with this occasion.