Bullet Points: Father’s Day Edition

• Mystery Fanfare reminds us that tonight will bring the U.S. broadcast, on PBS-TV, of the first episode (of three) in the very last season of Endeavour. That British detective drama series, launched in 2012, is a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse, both based on Colin Dexter’s novels about the same Oxford investigator. Shaun Evans stars as Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse, with Roger Allam playing his immediate superior, Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday (a character not included in Dexter’s tales). There are many loose ends to tie up in Season 9, which already aired in the UK back in March and April. The Killing Times provides the following overview:

Set in 1972, [this concluding season] kicks off with “Prelude,” in which murders in an orchestra track back to childhood bullying; but two other deaths are unexplained, leading to a reinvestigation of Blenheim Vale. In “Uniform,” it all becomes a bit self-referential as a TV detective filming in Oxford is tied to two murders; and in the finale, “Exeunt,” there’s some resolution to the Blenheim Vale case, and at least an attempt (if not entirely successful) to explain the subsequent fate of the Thursday family.

Endeavour begins at 9 p.m. ET/PT as part of PBS Masterpiece.

• In other TV news, In Reference to Murder reports that Season 2 of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer, “based on the series of bestselling novels by Michael Connelly, will return with a two-part launch this summer. Part 1 premieres on July 6 while Part 2 drops Aug. 3. Created for TV by David E. Kelley, The Lincoln Lawyer tells the story of Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia Rulfo), who runs his legal practice from the back of his Lincoln Town Car. Season 1 was based on the second book, The Brass Verdict, while the second season draws from the fourth book in the series called The Fifth Witness.”

• We wish a slightly belated happy 20th anniversary to Television Chronicles, an invaluable Web resource that launched in 2003.

• To have and have another? Eddie Muller's Noir Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir has brought its author, the colorful host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley, a good deal of favorable press attention since it was dropped onto the market in late May by Running Press. Entertainment Weekly explains that the 224-page work “pairs 50 different noir films with 50 unique craft cocktails, some of which Muller invented himself, hearkening back to his earliest career as a bartender in noir-worthy haunts.” Reviewer C.J. Bunce of the blog Borg notes, “This book is certainly not for everyone, but its full-color photographs and Muller’s eye for detail might draw in even teetotaling fans of the Golden Age of cinema. Basically each section is arranged with screencaps from a film, an image of a vintage movie poster or lobby card, and then a recipe for a drink to be paired with the movie, accompanied by commentary where Muller tries to tie his ingredients to a character’s mood or style.” Finally, Terence Towles Canote remarks, “while Eddie Muller's Noir Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir is somewhat unique, in some ways it is surprising that a book of its sort had not been published years ago. It is no secret that drinking figures heavily in film noir. Bars, nightclubs, and seedy backrooms are tropes of the film style. And while many film noir protagonists took their liquor straight up, cocktails do appear frequently in film noir. There is a good reason many film noir fans are also cocktail connoisseurs.”

• This certainly seems to be the year for celebrating connections between crime fiction and spirited libations. In September, publisher Skyhorse will debut Agatha Whiskey: 50 Cocktails to Celebrate the Bestselling Novelist of All Time, by Colleen Mullaney.

• Editors at the mammoth Internet retailer Amazon are out with a list of what they proclaim are the 20 best mystery, thriller, and suspense novels of the year—so far:

1. All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby
2. Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane
3. Symphony of Secrets, by Brendan Slocumb
4. Sisters of the Lost Nation, by Nick Medina
5. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
6. Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide,
by Rupert Holmes
7. Better the Blood, by Michael Bennett
8. The White Lady, by Jacqueline Winspear
9. The Maid’s Diary, by Loreth Anne White
10. A Disappearance in Fiji, by Nilima Rao
11. Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum
12. Murder Book, by Thomas Perry
13. No Life for a Lady, by Hannah Dolby
14. Central Park West, by James Comey
15. Those Empty Eyes, by Charlie Donlea
16. A House With Good Bones, by T. Kingfisher
17. The Bandit Queens, by Parini Shroff
18. All the Dangerous Things, by Stacy Willingham
19. Age of Vice, by Deepti Kapoor
20. Drowning, by T.J. Newman

I’ve read only a few of these works, and there are several I simply won’t find time to tackle. Needless to say, not everyone will agree with Amazon’s choices. Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter suggests that Michael Robotham’s Lying Beside You and Juan Gomez-Jurado’s Red Queen would be among his own top 20. Confining myself to U.S. publications only, I’d wish to add The Nightingale Affair, by Tim Mason, and perhaps Paris Requiem, by Chris Lloyd to the mix. If allowed to incorporate releases from across the pond, I’d nominate Simon Scarrow’s Dead of Night and Simon Mason’s The Broken Afternoon, as well. But the year is still young, with plenty of promising new works yet to appear.

• Not to be seen slacking, Library Journal has selected what it says are the 15 best thriller books published thus far in 2023. Choices include Thomas Mullen’s Blind Spots, Ivy Pochada’s new Sing Her Down, Lee Goldberg’s Malibu Rising (which won’t actually reach stores until September), Don Winslow’s City of Dreams, and of course Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed and Newman’s Drowning.

• There are just three more months to go, if Mike Ripley follows through on the threat to retire his “Getting Away with Murder” column from Shots come August. His June installment finds Ripley reflecting on his “34 years as a reviewer of crime fiction”; applauding fresh hardcover editions of two Agatha Christie works; recalling his discovery of a Stanley Ellin short-story collection he’d not known existed; and plugging recent releases by Craig Russell, Catherine Aird, Hansjörg Schneider, and others. Click here to read it all.

• Timed to this weekend’s Shetland Noir crime-fiction festival in northern Scotland, author Ann Cleeves’ publisher is making available—free of charge—a brand-new short story featuring her beloved Shetland police protagonists, Jimmy Perez and Alison “Tosh” McIntosh. To procure your own copy of “Missing in the Snow,” simply sign up here to receive the Pan Macmillian newsletter.

• Washington resident Jim Thomsen, a writer, infrequent Rap Sheet contributor, and book editor for Blackstone Publishing, announced on Twitter not long ago that he’s been chosen to edit a short-story anthology pegged to next year’s Left Coast Crime convention, which will be held in Seattle from April 11 to 14.” Stay tuned for a call for submissions!” Thomsen suggested in that same posting.

• Editor Cynthia Swanson has captured the 2023 Colorado Book Award for Best Anthology with her short-story collection, Denver Noir (Akashic). UPDATE: I neglected to mention that two other mystery-fiction works numbered among this year’s Colorado Book Award recipients. Aunt Dimity & the Enchanted Cottage, by Nancy Atherton (Viking), won for Best Mystery, while Leanne Kale Sparks’ The Wrong Woman (Crooked Lane) picked up Best Thriller honors.

• Amid all the chatter about ChatGPT, Nicholas Fuller, at The Grandest Game in the World blog, decided to ask that artificial intelligence chatbot to create new stories by classic mystery novelists—with dubious results. You’ll find ChatGPT’s version of Agatha Christie stories here, and its take on John Dickson Carr tales here.

• R.I.P., Carol Higgins Clark. As The Washington Post explains, Higgins Clark, “a writer of popular suspense novels who infused the corpses-and-clues genre with doses of dark humor, while also teaming up with her mother, famed mystery author Mary Higgins Clark, on Christmas-themed whodunits, died June 12 at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 66.” The cause of death is said to have been appendix cancer. Deadline recalls that Carol Higgins Clark’s “career highlight was an 18-novel series starring private investigator Regan Reilly, several of them made into television movies. She appeared in each one.” The 15th and presumably final Reilly novel was Gypped (2012). A 16th series installment, Knocked, was announced for 2019 publication, but never reached print.

The Book You Have to Read: “Shadow Boxer,” by Eddie Muller

(Editor’s note: For this 174th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing series about great but forgotten books, I have resurrected a review [slightly edited] that I penned back in the days when this blog was still an occasional newsletter distributed by January Magazine. I was reminded of it while reporting recently on plans by Eddie Muller, film noir expert and host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley series, to produce a third book in his historical crime series starring San Francisco sports columnist Billy Nichols. The character was introduced in The Distance, which won the 2003 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel from the Private Eye Writers of America. He returned in the yarn under consideration here today, Shadow Boxer.)

Intersections between the often sordid world of professional boxing and crime fiction aren’t unknown. (I’m reminded particularly of Steve Monroe’s ’57, Chicago and Robert J. Randisi’s Miles “Kid” Jacoby series.) But rarely has that world been so thoroughly or convincingly portrayed as it is in Eddie Muller’s two historical novels. The son of a renowned San Francisco boxing journalist (also named Eddie Muller), and founder of the now-closed San Francisco Historical Boxing Museum, this guy knows whereof he writes. And he writes of where he knows: a post-World War II Bay Area that exudes authenticity, whether Muller is setting a scene in the now-extinct Bank Exchange Bar (birthplace of the Pisco Punch) or near the Pacific-hugging Cliff House (“a sawed-off stepchild of the spectacular Bavarian confection that glowered over Seal Rock in the late 1800s”). These are the stomping grounds, too, of newspaper sports columnist and sometimes-detective William Nicholovich—better known as Billy Nichols, “Dean of the Fistic Fraternity” or simply “Mr. Boxing.”

In The Distance (2001), set in 1948, Nichols helped to cover up the murder of heavyweight fighter Hack Escalante’s manager, doing the seemingly ingenuous pug a favor. However, the reporter’s actions led to worse trouble, as he fell dangerously for Escalante’s “knockout redhead” of a wife, Claire, and as a cop who wasn’t nearly so thick-headed as he appeared closed in on the truth.

By the end of that initial outing, Nichols—having exposed a pestiferous extortion racket and pinned blame for Claire Escalante’s killing on the deserving party—figured he was a smart guy. Yet not long after Muller sounds the opening bell in his 2003 sequel, Shadow Boxer (Scribner), it becomes obvious that Mr. Boxing didn’t know half of what was really going on. It’s now late 1948, a few months after Claire suffered a terminal hemorrhage, and Nichols is looking forward to seeing her murderer “rot in a prison cell, for life.” The last thing this celebrated scribbler for the San Francisco Inquirer wants to do is help the accused prove that he’s being unjustly sacrificed to protect “the real operators” in a more extensive criminal enterprise. However, when the defendant’s former secretary—a shapely limbed, chain-smoking, Buick-coupe-driving number named Ginny Wagner—emerges from self-protective seclusion to share with Nichols a file containing dubious trust documents linking her ex-boss with a prominent but recently deceased lawyer, Nichols can’t help but recognize the ingredients of a good story. And a juicy scandal, to boot—one that will eventually connect a Napa Valley camp for underprivileged black youths with a gaggle of dummy corporations, a backroom abortion clinic (those were sorry days before Roe v. Wade), and a conflicts-fraught deputy district attorney.

Muller, whose interest in film noir has led him to pen several non-fiction books (including 2001’s Dark City Dames and 2002’s The Art of Noir), lards Shadow Boxer with characters familiar from that genre: unctuous grifters, macho-spitting hoodlums and femmes who you know from the get-go are going to be fatale. In addition, he throws in a few extraordinary players, such as the good-hearted Manny Gold, a bulky peddler of promotional novelties, married to a mentally deteriorating socialite, who is torn between doing what he knows is right and what he thinks is necessary. Given this author’s pedigree, one might only expect that his ringside episodes (of which there are regrettably fewer here than in The Distance) should be finely framed masterpieces of anticipation and sweat and cigar smoke. But even some of Muller’s minor, binding paragraphs capture the postwar era with such tonal precision that you’re inclined to recheck the novel’s publication date. For instance, when introducing a scene in which Ginny recalls for a tea-sipping Nichols how she acquired those trust documents, the author writes:

She perched on a plump ottoman that matched the couch and took a drag of the tar-bar, her knees drawn together demurely: Little Miss Muffet’s more experienced sister. … I peered expectantly over the rim of the cup, mimicking the eager first-nighter waiting for the curtain to rise. Trying to resemble someone who actually gave a shit.

That Muller pulls off this sort of hard-bitten wordsmithing without overstepping into cliché is an enviable feat.

Of course, none of this would be quite so enjoyable were it not for the presence of Billy Nichols, an ass-protecting moral relativist who’s signally short on heroics and long on complicating flaws. Bespectacled, with a “rakish mustache,” false teeth that he has to remove before lovemaking, and a repertoire of resentments that don’t begin or end with the fact that his wife cuckolded him (and now insists that Billy help her to rear that other man’s son), the 30-something Nichols enjoys in his profession an influence and romance that otherwise elude him in life. This deadline demon can’t fully compensate for Shadow Boxer’s sometimes convoluted plot; nor does he seem inclined to explain why his paper, so obviously William Randolph Hearst’s flagship San Francisco Examiner, has been barely cloaked in these books as the Inquirer. But, fast on his feet and with a wisecracking patter, Nichols shows that he can take a punch and still go on to wow the crowd. Can round three in Eddie Muller’s series be too soon in coming?

A Steward of Hammett’s Digs, Now Gone

We must acknowledge, if belatedly, the death of William P. “Bill” Arney, who is said to have “reclaimed” the apartment, at 891 Post Street in San Francisco, once occupied by Dashiell Hammett and his best-recalled private-eye creation, Sam Spade. He passed away this last September 28.

As author Mark Coggins explains in his blog,

Hammett lived in the building during the period [1927-1929] he wrote his first three novels and he put Spade in the same building in The Maltese Falcon. With a close reading of the Falcon text, and a comparison of the other apartments in the building, Hammett scholars have determined that #401 is the most likely to be Spade’s and Hammett’s, although there are no records of the particular apartment in which Hammett lived.”

From what I can learn online, Arney, an architect who arrived in the Bay Area from Peoria, Illinois, in 1981, rented that fourth-floor studio apartment, #401—all 275 square feet of it—a dozen years later, in 1993. He’d been a Hammett fan for the previous decade, so set about to renovate the place, “fixing the floorboards, installing a ceiling light, stripping paint off the window frames, and rehabilitating an old frosted-glass door he found in the basement to its former glory,” according to a 2001 piece in SF Weekly. “He invested in a desk and padded rocking chair, which are mentioned often in the book.”

Not surprisingly, Arney’s studio became a periodic stop on literary historian Don Herron’s popular Dashiell Hammett Tour, with participants riding up to it in what the Royal Rosamund Press blog calls “an elevator much like the one we see at the end of John Huston’s film version of Falcon—the one Brigid O’Shaughnessy gets ushered into after Sam Spade refuses to play the sap for her.”

The apartment building at 891 Post Street, San Francisco, where Hammett lived while batting out The Maltese Falcon.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 cost Arney both his architectural post and his parallel job as occupant-caretaker of #401. But his fears that that historic place would be stripped of its original fixtures (including a Murphy bed and claw-footed bathtub) and otherwise modernized beyond recognition after he was gone were ultimately not realized. According to a piece by author Thomas Burchfield, “a local philanthropist, Robert Mailer Anderson, stepped in, took over the apartment and has kept it as Bill left it, a most fitting memory.”

In addition to preserving Hammett’s onetime digs, Arney had a second claim to renown: For many years he was “the Voice of Noir City,” San Francisco’s annual film noir festival, delivering “wry, wisecracking introductions” to the movies on show. “From the start,” recalls Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, “Bill’s omniscient Master of Ceremonies became an essential part of the Noir City experience. He too became a fixture, making friends with many of the regular patrons. What a lot of people didn’t know is that his wardrobe—the hats, spats, trench coat—wasn’t a costume donned for the show. That was Mr. Arney himself.”

I haven’t yet located an authoritative report of how old Arney was at the time of his demise. Muller says, though: “He’d been battling an assortment of maladies over the past few months, but none that seemed lethal. In fact, Bill called me the day before he died and he sounded the same as always—charming and avuncular, with that gruff voice straight out of a 1940s film noir. An undetected virus in his lungs dropped him for the count the following day.”

We offer our most sincere condolences to Arney’s family.

Bullet Points: Success in Excess Edition

• The long-overdue recent premiere of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final James Bond picture, has provoked a deluge of articles, in print and online, about the actor and whoever will succeed him playing Ian Fleming’s Agent 007. Notable are this piece from Esquire’s Chris Nashawaty, and this other one by Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson. CrimeReads has gone in its own editorial direction, posting Olivia Rutigliano’s rankings of all the Bond movies (to which my sole objections are that Live and Let Die deserves more credit, while The World Is Not Enough deserves less), and Julia Sirmons’ tribute to 1969’s typically maligned On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which she insists is actually the franchise’s best entry.

• Staking out his own fringe in all this Bond coverage, author-blogger Gary Dobbs showcases “a professional Daniel Craig lookalike who actually looks nothing like Daniel Craig,” and who now—with Craig’s retirement as 007—“fears his work will dry up.”

• Film noir authority and author Eddie Muller isn’t merely a swell guy, he’s also a sterling interviewee. If you missed hearing his half-hour conversation earlier this week with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, don’t fret, because you can still tune in to the whole thing here. In addition to discussing film noir’s history, some of its landmark productions (including 1944’s Double Indemnity), and Muller’s hosting duties on Turner Classic Movies’ exalted Noir Alley series (shown on Saturdays at midnight), the pair chatted about the new and expanded edition of his book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir; his famous boxing-writer father; and his two novels, both set in 1940s San Francisco and starring a sportswriter, Billy Nichols, modeled on his dad.

• Listening to that exchange reminded me of something I wrote about Eddie Muller on this page five years ago. My latest Kirkus Reviews column had then just appeared, its topic being “crime novels worth re-reading,” and Muller contacted me with the surprising information that he was halfway through composing a third Nichols novel, to follow The Distance (2001) and Shadow Boxer (2003). So whatever happened to that book? I e-mailed Muller for an update this week, and received the following reply:

Still working on it. Now I’m glad it’s taken so long. The reissue of Dark City is selling through the roof, #1 movie book on Amazon for over two months. I have two other books in the pipeline, with contracts—not fiction. Since novels are the hardest sell, all this other work will only help when Billy reemerges. And thanks for asking!

I, for one, shall be pleased to welcome Nichols’ return.

• Three weeks ago, I noted the passing of journalist-turned-crime writer Robert Richardson, who died on August 31 at age 80. Only now, however, is The Guardian carrying an obituary by Mike Ripley, in which he commends Richardson for penning both traditional English detective yarns and psychological thrillers, and says he “was heavily involved in organising the annual conventions of the CWA [Crime Writers Association], where members spent a weekend, usually in a seaside hotel, being treated to lectures and talks on criminology. On the social side, [Richardson] would devise and host quizzes on crime fiction, which though popular with members were invariably described as ‘fiendishly difficult.’” One thing I hadn’t known before, but that Ripley mentions: “Following a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, in 2017 he moved to Dore, near Sheffield, to be closer to his family.”

• Whilst we’re on the subject of Mr. Ripley, I want to direct your attention to his October “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. It includes remarks on the “sumptuous launch party thrown by Felix Francis for his new novel, Iced”; an “accessible and entertaining” new study of Agatha Christie and her knowledge of forensic science; and fresh fiction by Charles Cumming (Box 62), Oliver Bottini (Night Hunters), Peter Papathanasiou (The Stoning), and others.

• Critic Maxim Jakubowski (who now also serves as chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association) is out with his latest “To the Max” column for Crime Time. In it, he briefly reviews 10 new novels, two of which—Toshihiko Yahagi’s The Wrong Goodbye and Anthony Horowitz’s A Line to Kill—are already on my most wanted list, plus one book that I didn’t even realize fell under the crime classification, but that Jakubowski makes sound like a winner: Mrs. March (Liveright), “a slow-burning psychological thriller” by Virginia Feito.

• I have a paperback copy, in storage, of 1974’s Charlie Chan Returns, composed by Dennis Lynds (with splendid cover art by Howard Rogers), that I inherited from my late father-in-law. I’ve never read the yarn, but maybe I should, for the blog Bloody, Spicy, Books calls it a “curious” yet “nice, light fun mystery novel” that translates “the golden-era detective Chan to groovy 70’s New York where he gets tangled up in big case with the help of his son Jimmy, an NYPD detective. There’s a fish-out-of-water quality to the idea of a very old-fashioned man in the land of discos, dirty politics and rock ’n’ roll clubs. So, it’s like Charlie Chan replacing Telly Savalas as Kojak.”

• By the way, this novel should in no way be confused with the unsuccessful 1973 ABC-TV pilot The Return of Charlie Chan, starring The Wild Wild West’s Ross Martin as Earl Derr Biggers’ fictional Chinese-American police detective. For the nonce, at least, that two-hour movie, which imagines a retired Chan “investigat[ing] a murder case aboard the yacht of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon,” is available on YouTube. One viewer writes: “I won’t say that this is a good Charlie Chan mystery, but it is still a pretty good mystery. Just think of Ross Martin playing an imposter, Artemis Gordon’s grandson in disguise, a ‘Charlie Chang,’ if you will, instead of the actual Charlie Chan.”

• R.I.P., Frank Wheeler Jr., the Wisconsin author of Wowzer (2012) and The Good Life (2014), who passed away on September 16, cut down “after a hard-fought battle with cancer” at age 43.

• The Killing Times reminds us that ITV-TV’s new six-part suspense series, Angela Black, starring Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt, is set to debut in the UK this coming Sunday night, October 10. It finds Froggatt playing the title character, “someone who has the perfect life. Or at least it looks like it,” as the site cautions. “Angela’s life appears idyllic: a lovely house in suburban London, days working volunteer shifts at a dogs home, two beautiful sons and a charming, hard-working husband—Olivier [Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman]. However, beneath this façade of charmed domesticity, Angela is a victim of domestic violence. Olivier is controlling and brutal; but Angela loves him and he’s the father of her children. She can’t leave him, even though she has threatened to countless times. So, she covers her bruises with makeup and fabricates lies to explain away her missing teeth. Until, one day, Angela is approached by Ed [The Watch’s Samuel Adewunmi]—a private investigator—and he smashes her already strained domestic life to pieces. Ed reveals Olivier’s deepest secrets to Angela, and she is faced with horrifying truths about her husband and his betrayals. But can Angela trust Ed? And what truths will be revealed in the ferocious fight between Angela and her husband?” A trailer for this hour-long series—which apparently has no U.S. release date arranged—is embedded below.



• Count this as good news (if not wholly unexpected): “Helena Bonham Carter,” says Variety, “will rejoin Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill for a new Enola Holmes mystery from Legendary and Netflix”—the sequel to one of Netflix’s biggest 2020 draws. “Bonham Carter plays Eudoria Holmes, the matriarch of the famous sleuthing family, in the series that is based on Nancy Springer’s beloved books. The films tell the story of Enola (Brown), the rebellious teen sister of Sherlock Holmes (Cavill), who is a gifted super-sleuth in her own right and often outsmarts her famous siblings.” As reported earlier on this page, Enola Holmes 2 (and I hope that’s not really going to be the title) is being lensed, at least partially, in the English port city of Hull.

• Season 6 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and based on Ann Cleeves’ novels, is just around the corner—at least for British viewers. The first of a half-dozen fresh episodes is slated for an October 10 broadcast on the BBC. “The forthcoming new series,” says The Killing Times, “centres on the doorstep murder of a prominent local figure, a case which strikes at the heart of the Shetland Isles and its people. As Perez and his team uncover a kaleidoscope of motives for the murder, their investigation soon takes a shockingly sinister turn.” Radio Times notes that, to make up for time lost to the COVID-19 crisis, the fifth and sixth seasons of this Scottish crime drama are being filmed back to back, so another run can be expected in 2022. There’s no word at this time of when American couch potatoes might see more of Shetland.

• And a final TV morsel: “Mike Flanagan has found another house to haunt for Netflix,” says Tor.com’s Andrew Liptak. “After adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor (based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw), he’s turning his sights to Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ … According to Deadline, Netflix has given a series order for the project, which will be ‘based on multiple works from Edgar Allan Poe.’ He’ll direct half of the eight-episode series alongside Michael Fimognari (To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You).”

• There appears to be major disagreement over whether the true identity of the “Zodiac Killer,” who taunted police and took the lives of at least five people around San Francisco Bay during the late 1960s, has finally been revealed. From In Reference to Murder:

A team of more than 40 retired and amateur investigators claim they have identified the Zodiac Killer, up to this point an unnamed serial killer that operated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. The team, calling themselves The Case Breakers, which consists of former law enforcement officials, DNA experts, and journalists, believe they have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. But the FBI and police in California say, “Not so fast.”

• Killer Covers has posted a new gallery of classic—and very attractive—paperbacks that take their titles from the first names of female protagonists. Feast your eyes here.

• By my calculations (he was born in 1948), Max Allan Collins is now 73 years old and has been publishing books for 45 years. That’s an impressive career, but one that seems to have taken some toll on the Iowa author. In a blog post put up earlier this week, dealing primarily with his new Fancy Anders novella series and the latest installment of his literary memoir in column form, “A Life of Crime,” Collins mentioned that he and collaborator James Traylor are still hard at work on their Mickey Spillane biography for Mysterious Press. Then he wrote: “I have decided I will never write non-fiction again. I haven’t done much, but projects like The History of Mystery, the Elvgren and other pin-up books, the men’s adventure magazine book with George Hagenauer, two previous Spillane non-fiction works with Jim Traylor, and the two Eliot Ness biographies with Brad Schwartz, were just too punishing for me to consider doing non-fiction again at this stage and age. The Spillane bio is going to be something very good, I think, and will make an excellent capper to this niche of my career.”

(Right) Dilys Winn on To Tell the Truth, February 1972.

• New York City’s first independent mystery bookshop, the beloved Murder Ink, shuttered its premises in December 2006 after 34 years of operation. Last week, a Web site called I Love the Upper West Side, which covers news and entertainment happening in one of Manhattan’s tonier districts, delivered a fine remembrance of Murder Ink and its “quirky” founder, Dilys Winn. Enough time has now passed to leave an entire generation of Upper West Side (UWS) residents without knowledge of Winn’s enterprise, so this “history” piece was called for. Contributor Claudie Benjamin introduces her subject thusly:

In a 1972 segment of the popular TV show To Tell the Truth, [Irish-born former advertising copywriter] Dilys Winn wowed the panel who were grilling contestants all claiming to be her. Winn’s deep familiarity with the mystery genre, including the specifics of authors and their heroes and villains, led the panelists to correctly vote her as the real Dilys Winn.

There’s always been so much creativity and innovative impulse on the UWS, and it’s impressive when someone comes up with something that’s totally new and different. That’s just what Ms. Winn did in 1972 when she opened Murder Ink, an independent bookstore entirely devoted to murder mysteries and true crime. …

The impulse to open the shop came from her love of mysteries and hatred of her job (in advertising). Ms. Winn told the To Tell the Truth panelists, “It was either sell them or commit one.”

Winn sold Murder Ink to her friend Carol Brener in 1976, and died in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2016 at age 76.

• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s “Something Is Going to Happen” blog features a thoughtful new essay by Kevin Mims, remembering American author John Ball (In the Heat of the Night) 33 years after his death on October 15, 1988. “He was a writer,” declares Mims, “who was unafraid to veer out of his own lane and explore the lives of others—people whose experiences of the world were vastly different from his own. He left behind a vast body of work, but if more readers don’t seek it out, it may end up being a dead body. And you don’t want to be one of the suspects in that homicide investigation.”

• As The Deighton Dossier observes, Len Deighton (The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, etc.) “has often eschewed literary prizes and honours, believing his work speaks for itself. But as someone born in London, who lived there during much of his early life until his career as an author really took off, he might appreciate a blue plaque there in his name.” It seems the inner London borough of Southwark plans to salute one individual this year who boasts a significant connection to the area, and to do so by posting a circular blue plaque bearing his or her name and general details. The 92-year-old Deighton, “who is thought to have written the first novel typed on a word processor from his Borough home,” is among the five candidates for said accolade. (More than 50 such plaques already dot the district.) The Southwark News, which co-created this commendation with the Southwark Heritage Association, requests the public’s participation in selecting the 2021 honoree. “To vote, e-mail admin@southwark.org.uk or kit@southwarknews.co.uk, naming the person that you would like to see commemorated with a blue plaque,” the newspaper advises. “Voting closes at midnight on November 30.”

Bullet Points: “Day Without a Woman” Edition

Today has brought forth a wide variety of protests by American women, highlighting the importance of women in the modern workplace, spotlighting ridiculous disparities in pay between male and female workers, and opposing anti-woman policies proposed by Donald Trump, who’s notorious for saying that women will let famous guys “do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy.” Obviously, not all women in the United States have the support of their employers to take this day off from their jobs, but many are doing just that. “[A]ll across the country,” observes New York magazine’s Eric Levitz, “women are abandoning their posts. Classes have been canceled; children, left to their fathers; boardrooms, left unmanaged; dinners, left uncooked; blog posts, left unwritten.” It’s to those women enjoying a bit of extra leisure time today that I offer this expanded version of The Rap Sheet’s irregular crime-fiction news wrap-up.

• After my recent viewing of the British TV miniseries The Night Manager, adapted from John le Carré’s 1993 novel of the same name, I’ve been picking up a few le Carré novels that I have not already read. Now it looks as if my choices will increase in number. The author’s U.S. publisher, Viking, told the Associated Press that le Carré’s next novel, A Legacy of Spies (due out on September 5), will star his series espionage agent, George Smiley. According to the AP, “the novel tells of how Smiley and such peers as Peter Guillam receive new scrutiny about their Cold War years with British intelligence and face a younger generation that knows little about their history.”

• Double O Section’s Tanner (aka Matthew Bradford) offers this backgrounder on Smiley’s participation in the le Carré novels.

• The full schedule of events has been announced for this year’s CrimeFest, which will be held (as usual) in Bristol, England, from May 18 to 21. Click here to see which authors will be in attendance, and when they are set to participate in panel discussions.

• Meanwhile, organizers of Left Coast Crime 2019 have spread the news of who will appear as the guests of honor at their “Whale of a Crime” convention in Vancouver, Canada.

• Turner Classic Movies’ brand-new offering, Noir Alley—ably hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller—debuted this last Sunday with a presentation of that 1941 Humphrey Bogart private-eye classic, The Maltese Falcon. The cable station will follow that up this coming weekend with the 1945 movie Detour, starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. If you would like to learn what the future holds for Noir Alley, click here to see the broadcast schedule through July. All of Muller’s films begin at 10 a.m. on Sundays.

• The third season of Bosch, the TV drama based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling series of novels featuring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch, won’t begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video until Friday, April 21. However, Entertainment Weekly recently posted an ominous trailer for that new 10-episode season, which draws its plot from Connelly’s novels The Black Echo and A Darkness More Than Night. And the author talks in this Q&A from his Web site about what to expect from the forthcoming story arc. By the way, work is already gearing up on Season 4 of Bosch, which will be based on Connelly’s 1999 novel, Angels Flight.

• For the Strand Magazine Web site, Alfred Hitchcock biographer Tony Lee selects what he says are the “Top Ten Alfred Hitchcock Movies of All Time.” (Yes, Notorious makes the cut.)

• I somehow missed the February release, in Great Britain, of Taking Detective Stories Seriously: The Collected Crime Reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers. But Kate Jackson’s critique of that book, at Cross-Examining Crime, makes me want to track down a copy as soon as possible—if only in hopes of sharpening up my own reviewing style. “[T]his is a must-read for all fans of golden age detective fiction,” Jackson opines. “Get it for the laughs, get it to find out what Sayers thought of her friends’ work, or get it to find some new authors to track down. But above all get it!”

• There has been a variety recently of excellent essays penned about crime-fictionists old and not-so-old. Britain’s Guardian, for instance, carried this article by Brian Dillon about how Raymond Chandler’s renowned shamus, Philip Marlowe, “found his voice.” UK crime-culture researcher and author Sarah Trott (War Noir) delivered a two-part analysis, on the Strand Magazine site, of Chandler’s literary legacy; Part I is here, Part II can be enjoyed here. Sarah K. Stephens recounts in the online publication The Millions “how P.D. James and detective fiction healed my broken heart.” And in a review for Literary Web of the new big-screener Tomato Red (watch the trailer here), William Boyle applauds the “genius” of Daniel Woodrell, the “Battle-Hardened Bard of Meth Country.”

• In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson brings the news that author-editor Rick Ollerman “will be launching a new digest-sized magazine this summer called Down & Out: The Magazine. The first issue features a new Moe Prager story by Reed Farrel Coleman, and the second a new Sheriff Dan Rhodes story by Bill Crider.” Yours truly, by the way, has been asked to contribute review columns to this fledgling periodical. Wish me luck on the venture.

• What a terrific project! With the benefit of hefty financial grants, Northern Illinois University is busy digitizing 19th-century “dime novels” for widespread public consumption. “These dime novel format books sold in hundreds of thousands of copies—they were the best sellers of their day,” explains Lynne Thomas, the curator of NIU’s Rare Books and Special Collections. “They were read by more average Americans than anything that is taught in literature classes of the period, including things like Moby Dick or the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Start your exploration of the growing collection here. (Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

• Congratulations to former President Barack Obama for winning the 2017 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In a statement, Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg gave this explanation of why Obama deserved the commendation: “Faced with unrelenting political opposition, President Obama has embodied the definition of courage that my grandfather cites in the opening lines of Profiles in Courage: grace under pressure. Throughout his two terms in office, he represented all Americans with decency, integrity, and an unshakeable commitment to the greater good.” Obama was presented with the award last evening, May 7, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. No doubt Donald Trump will launch one of his whiny tweetstorms in response ...

• R.I.P., men’s adventure magazine writer Walter Kaylin.

• Which long-running CSI TV series is your favorite? Criminal Element wants to know. (In case you’re curious, at last check the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation had amassed the greatest number of votes in this survey—61 percent.)

• Black Gate contributor Bob Byrne has more than a few nice things to say about the 2001-2002 A&E-TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery, which starred Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin and Maury Chaykin as Rex Stout’s agoraphobic, beer-loving Manhattan sleuth, Wolfe. “[E]ven if you’ve never read any Wolfe,” Byrne remarks, “it’s a pretty good period detective series and you should give it a try.”

• I came in on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea after its original prime-time run, but loved weekend repeats of that 1961-1964 Irwin Allen sci-fi TV sea adventure. Apparently I was not alone in my admiration, as the blog Cult TV Lounge proves here and here.

• Lee Goldberg, who wrote three episodes of the 1985-1988 ABC-TV series Spenser: For Hire, inspired by Robert B. Parker’s detective novels, has posted this promotional spot for that program’s 1985 fall premiere, featuring a theme song that Goldberg describes as “a cringe-inducing twisting of Randy Newman’s ‘I Love L.A.’”

• Although nefarious misdeeds are usually solved and their perpetrators captured in crime fiction, Vox informs us that, in fact, “fewer than half of violent crimes and about a third of property crimes in the U.S. are reported to the police each year. Meanwhile, less than half of violent crimes and less than one-fifth of property crimes that are reported are actually cleared by police and referred to prosecution. (Keep in mind that the clearance rate is not even the solved rate, because prosecution doesn’t always lead to conviction.)”

• Since I didn’t happen to tune in for last month’s Oscars presentation, I missed the fact that Robert Vaughn, the Man from U.N.C.L.E. star who died last November, was not mentioned in the broadcast’s “In Memoriam” segment—although some 45 other people were, according to The Spy Command. A damn shame!

• The March edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes witty remarks about Pan Macmillan’s Thin Blue Spine initiative, the proliferation of crime-novel titles featuring the word “Girl” (“American blogger Steve Donoghue ... has identified no less than 41 titles as his ‘Worst Books of 2016—Fiction’”), the coming debut of Michael Connelly’s new series protagonist (in The Late Show), and other anticipated works by Russel D. MacLean, Philip Kerr, Leonardo Padura, and Chris Brookmyre.

• I have to admit, I was not familiar with Harold Blundell (1902-1985), a British banker and crime novelist who—under the nom de plume George Bellairs—concocted a succession of books featuring Scotland Yard Detective-Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. So I was somewhat flummoxed to learn that Mysterious Press is now bringing out e-book versions of those Littlejohn yarns. The half-dozen initial releases include The Case of the Seven Whistlers (1944) and Outrage on Gallows Hill (1948). Blundell/Bellairs kept Littlejohn active through 1980, so there are plenty more stories to put back on the market, should the early ones find new interest among readers.

• Excellent news! Walter Mosley has a new novel, Down the River Unto the Sea, being readied for publication in February 2018. Entertainment Weekly reports that “the novel centers on a former New York City police detective, now working as a Brooklyn P.I., who is investigating the case of a Black civil rights activist convicted of murdering two city policemen. At the same time, he’s still trying to piece together the conspiracy that caused his own downfall at the hands of the police.”

• Having survived last year’s Independent Bookstore Day, I very much look forward to participating again in that competition to visit as many local indie bookshops as possible. This year’s competition is slated for Saturday, April 29. According to Shelf Awareness, “457 stores from around the country are participating, up from around 430 last year and 365 in 2015. Forty-eight states are represented, with only Hawaii and Arkansas missing, and a searchable map featuring the locations of all participating bookstores can be found here.”

• A belated “happy fifth birthday” to Bitter Tea and Mystery!

• A few author interviews worthy of attention: Eliot Pattison answers Criminal Element’s questions about his ninth Inspector Shan Tao Yun mystery, Skeleton God; for Crime Watch, Craig Sisterson quizzes Brad Parks, whose new novel is a standalone titled Say Nothing; for Shots, Kimberley “K.J.” Howe chats with the ubiquitous Ali Karim about her debut thriller, The Freedom Broker; Dave White interrogates Alex Segura about the latter’s forthcoming novel, Dangerous Ends; meanwhile, White fields queries from S.W. Lauden about his own fresh work of fiction, Blind to Sin; John B. Valeri plumbs the life of Rhys Bowen (In Farleigh Field); and Sharon Long interviews Elaine Viets (Brain Storm) for Mystery Playground.

• From The Spy Command comes word that the TV streaming service Hulu has released a trailer for Becoming Bond, a 90-minute “documentary/narrative hybrid chronicling the stranger-than-fiction true story” of how Australian non-actor George Lazenby became British spy James Bond—at least for one movie, 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Den of Geek says this documentary “promise[s] a bit of everything—drama, comedy, romance, drugs, sex, twists, turns, the whole shebang.” Becoming Bond makes its Hulu debut on May 20.

• Speaking of all things 007 … Anne Billson’s Multiglom blog features a nice tribute to Eva Green, who of course played the stunning Vesper Lynd, opposite Daniel Craig, in 2006’s Casino Royale.

• Finally, because I can’t actually imagine spending many days without women (what fun would that be, really?), let me direct you to this online list—from Elle magazine—of “The 10 Best Thrillers and Crime Writing by Women” … and this lengthy rundown—from Goodreads—of the “Best Female Crime/Mystery/Thriller Writers.”

Bullet Points: Post-Election Edition

It’s been a while since I have found the time or energy to compile one of these crime-fiction news briefings, but here goes nothing …

• The espionage-fiction-oriented blog Double O Section has recently been celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding back in 2006 (five months after The Rap Sheet debuted). Matthew Bradford—aka Tanner—has already posted lists of “the best spy movies of the last decade,” the “top seven spy movie set pieces of the last decade,” and the “top seven spy scores of the last decade” (by scores, he means musical themes, not fem-spy conquests).

• My latest Kirkus Reviews column features reviewlets of eight crime and mystery novels I have enjoyed in the past, and would like the chance to re-read. Among those is Eddie Muller’s 2001 work, The Distance, which introduced 1940s San Francisco boxing columnist Billy Nichols. (He followed up in 2003 with a second Nichols outing, Shadow Boxer.) That mention prompted Muller to drop me a quick note, via Facebook, saying he’s currently trying to “finish the third Billy Nichols book, which is about halfway home. I own the rights to all of them now and I’ll probably republish them all when #3 is done.” There’s no release date yet for that next series installment.

• In the second of two crime-fiction reviews Ben Terrall has had posted recently in January Magazine, he opines on Sin Soracco’s Come to Me. He commented previously on John Goins’ second novel, The Coptic Cross. Terrall, of course, is the son of author Robert Terrall, who—during the 1950s and ’60s, under the pseudonym Robert Kyle—produced a succession of novels featuring Manhattan private detective Ben Gates, as well as other crime-fiction works.

• Was the tale of Oedipus “the first classic murder case”?

• I’m not a big reader in this subgenre, so I cannot argue competently with Mary Daheim’s picks of the “top 10 cozy mysteries.” Also from the Strand Magazine Web site comes Rebecca Tope’s “A Cozy Author Goes Dark: Ten Dark Mystery Favorites.”

• Speaking of lists, here are “15 mysterious facts about the Hardy Boys,” including: “In 2005, the boys became secret agents for the government.” Because they had to do something cool ...

• From B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

The crime and noir independent publisher, No Exit Press, has launched a new classics imprint noeXit2. The new imprint plans for around four new titles a year featuring Ace Double editions (two books in one volume) from iconic authors in an upside down and back to front style known as tête-bêche. The new imprint will give titles "a new lease of life" in this format, according to No Exit Press, hoping to introduce its authors to new audiences while attracting authors to the list. It will launch this series with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler’s Severance/Intercourse on December 5.

• And then there’s this:

The CW is developing Marlowe, a drama series that’s not based on the famous Raymond Chandler character Philip Marlowe but on the real-life African-American private investigator—a Jamaican immigrant and World War I veteran—who allegedly inspired him. Marlowe is a character-based procedural with a modern feel and contemporary soundtrack and “follows Samuel Marlowe from the mansions and red carpets of Beverly Hills to the jazz clubs and back alleys of Little Harlem, where he navigates crimes, mysteries and social issues ripped from today’s headlines through the prism of 1937 Los Angeles.”

• Here’s a mystery writer I have never heard of before: James W. Morrison, who was also a silent-film performer during the opening two decades of the 20th century, and later a drama teacher. As Elizabeth Foxwell explains, Morrison composed novels under the pseudonym Woods Morrison, the first of which was Road End (1927), which she says “focuses on murder, the theft of a pearl necklace, strange wailing, and other mysterious occurrences at an elegant Long Island house, with a down-on-his-luck young man taking on the roles of chauffeur and sleuth.” Helpfully, for those of us who have not read Road End, Foxwell provides links to a 1934 serialization of that book in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Click here to find out more.

• In the 100th installment of her Speaking of Mysteries podcast, Nancie Clare interviews Michael Connelly, whose new Harry Bosch novel is The Wrong Side of Goodbye (Little, Brown). Clare has also spoken recently with Melodie Johnson Howe (Hold a Scorpion), Tana French (The Trespasser), and James R. Benn (Blue Madonna).

• Other interviews worth your time: S.W. Lauden talks with Lori Rader-Day about the March 2017 conference, Murder and Mayhem in Chicago, which she co-founded with Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity; Writer’s Bone quizzes Phoef Sutton, the author of Heart Attack and Vine; MysteryPeople chats with Allen Eskens about his latest release, The Heavens May Fall; Ben H. Winters interviews Joe Ide about his new, much-buzzed-about novel, IQ; Steph Post goes one-on-one with Eric Beetner (Rumrunners); Slate has a conversation with John Grisham (The Whistler) about “the issues in our justice system that he continues to wrestle with 25 years later”; and Omnimystery News catches up with Michael Mayo (Jimmy and Faye).

• With David Morrell’s Ruler of the Night (Mulholland)—the final entry in his much-lauded trilogy starring 19th-century writer and notorious “opium eater” Thomas De Quincey—due out next week, the New Republic’s Colin Dickey critiques “a new biography [that] reveals how the drug-addled essayist legitimized our excitement for murder.” You’ll find that piece right here.

• Max Allan Collins evaluates the Quarry TV series.

• New Yorker editor David Remnick offers a thought-provoking recap of this week’s disastrous U.S. presidential election. It begins:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

• Also from The New Yorker: “How Jack Reacher Was Built.”

• TV Week reported recently that the 1999-2007 HBO crime drama The Sopranos will be the first television series ever inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. The ceremony making that official is scheduled for April 26, 2017, in Washington D.C.

• A Web site called The Awl recounts how London’s still-unsolved 1888 Jack the Ripper slayings have become a fertile source of inspiration for works of both fiction and non-fiction.

• Some light housekeeping: In the wake of Ed Gorman’s death, I have relocated The Rap Sheet’s link to his long-running blog from the right-hand column of this page to our Archive Sites folder. I think there are posts of his still worth referring to, so I don’t want to drop Gorman’s blog altogether. Also being moved to Archives are the once-excellent Only Detect and Zachary Klein’s Just Sayin’. Meanwhile, I am removing these long-inactive blogs from the roll: Donna Moore’s Big Beat from Badsville; Kapuki Headhunter Searching for That Next Great Novel; and CrimeSpot, which used to be a go-to aggregator site run by Graham Powell, but which has now failed to be updated for 45 weeks. Powell told me in April that CrimeSpot “really hasn’t been a high priority.” I guess he’s decided finally to throw in the towel.

Power of 10

Author Eddie Muller benefits from an impressive write-up today in the San Francisco Chronicle (a paper for which he once served as crime-fiction critic). The article’s principal hook is that the 10th annual version of Muller’s San Francisco Film Noir Festival--aka Noir City--is scheduled to begin on Friday, January 20, and run through Sunday, January 29. (Details of that event can be found here.)

But staff writer G. Allen Johnson also takes advantage of this occasion to explore Dashiell Hammett’s old apartment at 891 Post Street, in which the Pinkerton detective turned detective novelist wrote several of the books that made him famous, including The Maltese Falcon (1930). Johnson notes that this Post Street flat--which was declared a local literary landmark in 2005--served as the basis for private eye Sam Spade’s apartment in Falcon. He goes on to explain:

For years, the apartment was leased by Noir City festival announcer Bill Arney. When he left for a bigger place, local writer Robert Mailer Anderson took over and has painstakingly been re-doing the apartment exactly as it was when Hammett lived there, complete with vintage refrigerator and the apartment’s original bathtub and toilet.

Although Anderson and Muller are not exactly sure what to do with the place once restoration is complete (open it to the public? private tours? “Right now, it’s kind of like a boys’ club,” Muller chuckled), it’s coming in handy as the Noir City festival celebrates its 10th year. The festival’s poster was photographed here, with Muller and this year’s Miss Noir City, Helena Blanca Stoddard, and why not? Noir City began with an all-San Francisco program in 2003, and that festival’s opening and closing films also open and close this year’s festival: Dark Passage (on Jan. 20) and The Maltese Falcon (Jan. 29).

Click here to read more about those two classic movies. And below is the video teaser for this year’s film festival.*



* The Film Noir Festival’s Web site accompanies that video with the following explanation: “To commemorate its 10th anniversary, Noir City has returned to the source. This year’s poster was created in the San Francisco apartment where Dashiell Hammett, between 1927 [and] ’29, wrote Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon, laying the foundation for film noir. Ms. Noir City 2012, Helena Bianca Stoddard, portrays The Maltese Falcon’s duplicitous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, in a variation on a scene cut from all filmed versions of the book. When one of the ten $1,000 bills he’s been paid to locate the Black Bird goes missing, Sam Spade demands that Brigid undress to prove she’s hasn't stolen the money.”

READ MORE: “Up in Sam Spade’s Room,” by Thomas Burchfield.

Scouting About

• Thankfully, NBC-TV’s rebooting of the classic James Garner series, The Rockford Files, has been shelved--at least for the time being. But ABC appears to have given the go-ahead for a remake of Charlie’s Angels, the 1976-1981 series about three underutilized young women cops--originally Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and Jaclyn Smith--who abandon the force to become private eyes, working for a never-seen boss, Charlie Townsend. TV Squad says the remake would move all the action to Miami (necessitating a skimpy wardrobe, I presume) and recruit veteran leading man Robert Wagner (of It Takes a Thief, Switch, and Hart to Hart fame) as Charlie. There’s no word yet on who might play his “three little girls who went to the police academy,” but I’m in agreement with a couple of TV Squad’s suggestions: ex-Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell and Gugu Mbatha-Raw of the short-lived Undercovers. Plus, I would throw in Without a Trace’s Roselyn Sánchez. And to play Charlie’s day-to-day liaison, Bosley? Well, since Dermot Mulroney won’t be getting the keys to Jim Rockford’s Firebird at anytime soon, maybe he’d like to take a shot at the role.

• I was quite skeptical about a British version of American television’s most enduring cops-and-prosecutors drama, but Law & Order: UK has managed to set itself apart, thanks to some fine performances (especially by Bradley Walsh as Detective Sergeant Ronnie Brooks and Ben Daniels as Senior Crown Prosecutor James Steel). The series’ second season will begin tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC America.

• “Tired of writing weepy things about bookstores closing in L.A.,” author-journalist Denise Hamilton took an unusual direction in her report, for L.A. Observed, on the imminent shuttering of Westwood’s Mystery Bookstore. You can find her piece here.

• Photos from last weekend’s David Goodis Memorial in Philly.

• Irish novelist and blogger Declan Burke looks ahead to what 2011 will offer in the way of crime fiction, including new books by Tana French, John Connolly, and Gene Kerrigan.

• With the start of Noir City, the ninth annual San Francisco Film Noir festival, coming up this Friday, “cultural archaeologist” Eddie Muller (who’s also president and founder of the Film Noir Foundation) talks with Indianapolis Star correspondent Joe Shearer about “the cultural and historical importance of film noir and film preservation--and whether Batman can truly be considered noir.” Read their exchange here.

• Meanwhile, Pulp Serenade’s Cullen Gallagher interviews Jonathon Woods, author of the short-story collection Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (New Pulp Press), which he calls “one of the wildest literary rides of 2010.”

• The espionage-fiction blog Double O Section offers up a belated but entertaining collection of “bests”--movies, TV, DVDs--from 2010.

• Vince Keenan turns his magnifying glass on Ellery Queen.

• And R.I.P., David Nelson.

Whew!

Back from a week away, visiting family and friends, I’m still trying to catch up with everything that happened during my mini-vacation. It’s usually the case that Thanksgiving week is slower than molasses in the Yukon. But there was a lot going on over the last seven days to miss, and more matters of note since.

• Marcus Sakey’s first novel, The Blade Itself, made Esquire magazine’s list of the “Year’s 5 Best Reads.” Writes contributor T. Jefferson Parker:

This book landed on my desk uninvited. With it was a letter from the book’s editor saying that he had never published a better debut crime novel. I looked at the stack of manuscripts sent to me for quotes. There were spiderwebs on them. I decided to read one page. Just one. Three hundred pages later I put it down. It’s smart, sad, relentless, and believable. It has style and attitude. I love Sakey’s Chicago. I love the way his characters fight the riptides of place and time that carry them so far from their good intentions. They remind me of people I’ve known.

• Speaking of “best of the year” lists, we neglected to mention that San Francisco Chronicle crime-fiction critic Eddie Muller has published his list of 10 faves from 2007. They include Christine Falls, by the pseudonymous Benjamin Black; Queenpin, by The Rap Sheet’s own Megan Abbott; In the Woods, by Tana French; and one novel that caught me completely off-guard: De Niro’s Gate, by Beirut-born author Rawi Hage. You’ll find all of Muller’s picks here.

• I was getting tired of my old computer wallpaper (tulips--yeah, I know, weak) so I was happy to find a pair of old paperback book-cover collages assembled by Bookgasm’s Bruce Grossman. One combines the fronts from works by Ellery Queen, Richard S. Prather, Mickey Spillane, and others. The second--which is the image I chose for my own screen--concentrates on Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne novels, all of which were illustrated by the talented Robert McGinnis. You’ll find both desktop alternatives at The Big Adios.

• Barry Forshaw, author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, provides the London Times with his list of “six American noir masters.” No real shockers here, although lumping David Goodis and Jim Thompson together with Ross Macdonald and Donald E. Westlake isn’t always done. (I wonder what distinction Forshaw makes between “noir” and “hard-boiled” fiction.) Meanwhile, Allan Guthrie (Hard Man) offers up his own “idiosyncratic” list of 200 noir novels, published between 1929 and 1997. Find Guthrie’s rundown here.

• How did I miss the memo about HarperCollins reissuing (in mass-market paperback size) Lawrence Block’s eight novels featuring sleepless spy Evan Tanner? Luckily, Bookgasm has been keeping up with the roll-outs. See here and here.

• While I was out of town, pseudonymous blogger CrimeFicReader continued collecting recommendations from noteworthy British and Irish crime writers of books that really ought to be placed in “the crime aficionado’s stocking” this Christmas. Since we last checked in, she’s added picks from Chris Ewan, Declan Burke, John Baker, Bernard Knight, Margaret Murphy, Steve Mosby, Brian McGilloway, Donna Moore, and our friend R.N. “Roger” Morris.

• Sad news comes from Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site: Peter Haining, a onetime reporter in Britain who went on to edit anthologies of fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction, died from a heart attack on November 19. He was only 67 years old. Kimura notes that Haining “wrote a number of books about Dr. Who, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Hercule Poirot, Jules Maigret and pulps” (a list of his numerous works can be found here). But I remember Haining best for a wonderful overview of this genre’s development called The Classic Era of Crime Fiction. Shortly after the publication of that book in 2002, I remarked in The Rap Sheet:

Finally, let me tout a handsome new volume of cultural history, The Classic Era of Crime Fiction (Chicago Review Press). Written by Peter Haining, it traces the evolution of the modern mystery story from the 19th century through the 1950s, covering Sherlock Holmes and Britain’s “yellow-back” thrillers, as well as America’s Black Mask period and the rise of more literary yarns.

Like last year’s excellent The History of Mystery, by Max Allan Collins, Haining’s book shows both an appreciation for and an infectious curiosity about this genre’s colorful development. Even people who consider themselves well read in crime fiction are likely to discover authors they’ve never heard of--such as Peter Cheyney, whose hard-boiled novels featuring British private eye Lemmy Caution (including This Man Is Dangerous, 1936) were precursors to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer books. And who remembers the exploits of professor-sleuth Craig Kennedy, “the American Sherlock Holmes,” who appeared in more than two dozen novels (such as The Exploits of Elaine, 1915) written by Arthur B. Reeve? In addition to excavating the roots of detective fiction, Haining devotes an intriguing--what else?--chapter to the maturation of the spy story, from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy (1821), starring Revolutionary War agent Harvey Birch, all the way through John Buchan’s renowned The Thirty-nine Steps (1913), Herman McNeile’s Bulldog Drummond series (including The Female of the Species, 1928), Eric Ambler’s espionage classics (such as The Mask of Dimitrios, 1939) and, of course, the best-selling titles by Ian Fleming and John le Carré.

As good as its text is, though, The Classic Era of Crime Fiction probably wouldn’t attract nearly so much attention were it not for its abundant original magazine and book jacket illustrations, from the startling (the cover of George Manville’s 1899 A Crimson Crime shows a frilly-hatted woman shooting a man in the head) to the suggestive (Bevis Winter’s Redheads Are Poison, 1948, is fronted by a long-legged beauty in a dress so sheer that one’s imagination hasn’t far to leap).

Mr. Haining will definitely be missed.

UPDATE: UK novelist Martin Edwards has posted a short tribute to Haining in his blog, ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’ You can find his contribution here.

• If you need an escape from the chill and psychological blues this winter, New York magazine recommends picking up a spy novel set in some distant corner of the planet. Among its 10 selections: The Midnight Choir, by Gene Kerrigan (Dublin, Ireland); Salamander Cotton, by Richard Kunzmann (South Africa); and Hidden Moon, by James Church (Pyongyang, North Korea). Read the whole list here.

• Novelist Richard Helms is back with the second edition of his crime-fiction Webzine, The Back Alley. Included this time are stories by Bryon Quertermous, Megan Powell, and Keith Gilman. There’s also a good chunk of Frank Norris’ “classic noir” tale, McTeague, which Helms promises will “be continued in the next issue.” Look for the full Back Alley contents here.

• Here’s an odd development. Reports the Associated Press:

Deployed on high-stakes missions across the globe and surrounded by glamorous admirers, James Bond should be the perfect recruitment tool for Britain’s intelligence agencies.

But the icon gives a disorted impression of MI6’s work and may be hampering its drive to hire more minorities, Muslims and women, the service’s chief recruiter said in an interview Monday with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Read the full story here.

• We’re very late to the party on this one, we know ... but writer-editor Anthony Neil Smith reports that the once-popular Webzine Plots With Guns, which posted its “final issue” at the end of 2004, “will go back online in the new year, as soon as I get enough good stories to fill an issue.” Smith adds:

I’ll be doing quarterly issues. The pay will be ... well, it’ll be me buying you your drink of choice the next time I happen to see you. The standards will be higher than ever, and I’ll be pickier than ever. Looking for hard-boiled, noir and transgressive crime fiction. Every story has to have a gun in it somehow, some way (doesn’t have to play a big role. Just needs to be there). No pastiche. It’s got to feel right to find a home in PWG. ...

In 2008, we’re starting over with Issue #1. Send me your best (e-mail only). You know how to get in touch. And I promise you this won’t be a Ross Perot thing (he’s running, he’s not, he’s running again, he’s not). This time, I’m sticking around for the long haul.

It’ll be good to have Plots With Guns back in the game. We’ll let you know when the first new issue is posted.

• And British writer Mark Billingham (Death Message) is Angie Johnson-Schmit’s latest victim ... er, interviewee on the In for Questioning podcast. “In this episode,” she says, “Mark talks about his Tom Thorne police procedurals, his upcoming stand-alone novel, In The Dark, and the foreword he wrote for the fab anthology, Expletive Deleted. He also joins in the debate about genre vs. literary novels and how much sex/violence/cussin’ is too much. Find out what's on Mark’s iPod, the perks of mentioning favorite restaurants in your novels and what celebrities are reading his books.” Click here to listen in.