A Modest Man, a Masterful Career

Just a month after celebrating his 97th birthday, British spy novelist Len Deighton—author of The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, SS-GB, and other classics of the genre—died Sunday at his home on the island of Guernsey. No cause for his passing has yet been specified.

In his excellent obituary for The Guardian, Mike Ripley recalls,

When he made the remark that he was “the most illiterate writer ever”, in an interview with Argosy magazine in 1969, Len Deighton ... had already published five bestselling spy novels, starting with The Ipcress File, three of which had been made into successful films. He had also written two cookbooks and a comic novel, edited an iconic guide to London in the swinging 60s and a book on fine wines and spirits, written a television play for the Armchair Theatre [TV anthology] series and two film scripts, become travel editor for Playboy and produced two films. He was to go on to write a further 21 novels and a collection of short stories, and to establish a reputation as a military historian.

Deighton was an established and “quite comfortable” freelance graphic artist when he began writing The Ipcress File “for a lark” while living in France in 1960, completing it the following year while on holiday, but it was not until he met the literary agent Jonathan Clowes at a party in London that he was persuaded to submit it for publication.

Rejected by two publishers, one of whom remarked sniffily that there was no market for spy stories, it was taken by a third and published in November 1962 after serialisation in the London Evening Standard. It was an instant success, the first print-run of 4,000 copies selling out on the day of publication, and its impact on spy fiction has been called seismic.

The New York Times mentions that the London-born Deighton regarded The IPCRESS File (as its title appeared originally) as “a riposte to the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming.

Instead of Bond’s cartoonish and morally simplistic take on spycraft, Mr. Deighton offered a shadow world through which his unnamed hero—christened Harry Palmer for the film versions—made his way, beset by disinformation, triple-crosses and dim bureaucrats.

Unlike the impossibly suave, action-oriented Bond or George Smiley, John le Carré’s dumpy, cerebral, upper-class spy hero, Mr. Deighton’s central character is self-consciously proletarian, with a jaded, frequently hostile attitude toward his superiors, a droll sense of humor and a love of cooking.

Mr. Deighton took a sardonic view of his sudden achievement as a brand-name writer. “All you need is a profound inferiority complex, no training as a writer and growing up a victim of the English class system,” he told Publishers Weekly in 1993.

In its own posthumous tribute, The Washington Post adds,

Mr. Deighton dismissed writing as a “goof-off profession,” but he said he thrilled at the impact his novels had on readers. “When you make a book, it’s like making a hand grenade,” he told the Telegraph. “It’s a dull process but when you throw it, the person at the other end gets the effect.”

His spy works are marked by elliptical narratives short on explanatory details, reflecting the mysteries of espionage, yet filled with unforgettable moles, traitors and other characters who double- and triple-cross one another.

“Deighton’s wry and ironic recognition of the realities of espionage and the crackling energy that motivates his fiction place him in the first rank of spy novelists,” critic George Grella wrote in the 1985 edition of Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. “He writes thrillers that are witty, thoughtful, authentic, and entertaining, a rare combination of merits.”

In his later years, Mr. Deighton’s shyness and his pivot to historical fiction and nonfiction works left him more removed from public awareness. “I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid,” he once said. “I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me.”

“Fiercely protective of his private life, he rarely gave interviews and avoided public appearances at festivals and conventions,” Ripley observes. “He was elected to the Detection Club in 1969, but turned down the offer of a Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement from the Crime Writers’ Association on three occasions, maintaining that ‘two things destroy writers—alcohol and praise.”

Len Deighton was a fictionist of distinction, for sure.

READ MORE: “Len Deighton, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Len Deighton Dies at 97,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “Len Deighton: A Personal Appreciation,” by Mike Ripley (Shotsmag Confidential); “Len Deighton (1929-2026) Remembered,” by Chris Connor (Crime Fiction Lover).

Thursday Trifles

• The 100th anniversary of Elmore Leonard’s birth will be October 11 of this year. Despite the fact that the author died in 2013 at age 87, this coming centenary provides an ideal excuse to reissue some of his best-remembered works. As Barry Forshaw notes in Crime Time, publisher Penguin will bring out new editions of Swag, The Switch, and Rum Punch in June, with more works to follow in its Penguin Modern Classics Crime series. (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

• Dashiell Hammett’s time spent as a soldier in Alaska is not a subject with which most readers are familiar. Which is undoubtedly why historian David Reamer looked into that story for the latest entry in his weekly series for the Anchorage Daily News.

• In CrimeReads, author Danielle Teller (Forged) makes the case that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby was a con artist. “He seeks cheat codes for acquiring wealth,” she explains, “and takes on a false persona at a young age ..., and he displays many of the narcissistic and psychopathic features associated with con artists, including glib charm, grandiosity, need for admiration, impulsivity, egotism, manipulation, and of course, a willingness to lie.”

• Fictionist and genre historian Martin Edwards has published what he says is his “first ever obituary written for a national newspaper”: a choice remembrance of Peter Lovesey for The Guardian.

• In a new pair of posts, Paul Vidich (The Poet’s Game) first celebrates the career of now 95-year-old spy novelist Len Deighton, and then selects “six novels to highlight Deighton’s considerable talent.”

• Another Miami Vice movie? I hope this one, to be directed by Joseph Kosinski (Spiderhead, F1), will be better than Michael Mann’s underdeveloped 2006 filmed based on his 1980s TV series Miami Vice.

• Reporter and animal rights activist Cleveland Amory spent 13 years (1963-1976) as a television critic for TV Guide magazine. I remember reading and often enjoying his columns (which I have occasionally drawn quotes from for The Rap Sheet). But Amory, himself, did not always enjoy the subjects of said critiques. A case in point: his “scorchingly bad [1965] review of the cult-classic television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” which Ben Bolden posted recently in his blog.

• This coming Sunday, May 11, Americans will be celebrating Mother’s Day. Time again for Janet Rudolph to update her list of crime and mystery novels linked to that annual holiday. Kathi Daley’s The Mother's Day Mishap, Jane Haddam’s Murder Superior, and Selma Eichler’s Murder Can Upset Your Mother are among the many titles (novels and short-story collections) mentioned. More here.

• Finally, here are two interviews worth your attention: Sarah Weinman talks with Kate Summerscale, author of the new-in-the-States true-crime history The Peepshow, which revisits the bizarre case of London serial killer Reg Christie; and Jeri Westerson chats up audiobook narrator Noah James Butler, whom she calls the “Man of a Thousand Voices.”

Bullet Points: Full Meal Deal Edition

It’s been too long since I found the time to write one of these news wrap-ups, so I have much to share. Let’s dive right in.

• I was overjoyed last September to learn that Crippen & Landru would be releasing a posthumous collection of short stories by screenwriting partners William Link and Richard Levinson, best known for having created the NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo. C&L publisher Jeffrey Marks said the book was to be titled Shooting Script and Other Mysteries, and that he would send me a copy. Four months passed, no book found its way into my mailbox, and I became busy with other things. It wasn’t until mid-January that I thought to check on Shooting Script’s status … only to learn that it had gone on sale in November, and I just wasn’t aware. Naturally, I ordered a copy immediately, and have been working my way slowly through its 194 pages ever since. The book comprises 17 abbreviated yarns, written between 1954 and 1966. Most appeared originally in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One, “Whistle While You Work,” was composed by the pair while they were still high school students in Philadelphia, and sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but the remainder, explains Jim Noy in The Invisible Event, were turned out when Link and Levinson were in their 30s. “[S]traight away the tonal shift is evident,” he says, “concerned less with immediate narrative cleverness than with capturing the intrusion of crime as a terrifying-but-regenerative thing. ‘Shooting Script’ (1959), ‘Operation Staying-Alive’ (1959), and ‘Robbery, Robbery, Robbery’ (1959)—this last also published under the title ‘Robbery, Robbery!’, which manages to miss the point quite impressively—see ordinary people pulled into the maelstrom and emerging in different ways: bewildered, energised, sometimes terrified.” In Noy’s opinion, the best of the bunch here is “Dear Corpus Delicti” (1960), “in which we follow a man’s perfect scheme to murder his wife and start a new life with his mistress.” It’s obvious from the outset that “Dear Corpus Delicti” was part of the source material these authors harvested when they sat down to write the play and, later, the TV film Prescription: Murder, the figurative first pilot for Columbo.

Earlier this week, I asked Joseph Goodrich, who edited Shooting Script, what he learned about Link and Levinson by bringing their forgotten short stories back to print. He got back to me pronto:

First of all, as a fan of Link and Levinson’s work, it was a pleasure to read the stories and watch them apply what they learned from reading mystery fiction to the writing of it. These aren’t detective stories, even though Columbo’s origins are contained in the collection; to me they have more in common with, say, Stanley Ellin’s stories, in which a shift of focus or perspective throws a new and unexpected (and often-shocking) light on what we assumed was happening.

Apart from 1954’s “Whistle While You Work,” the majority of the stories were written in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and reflect a world that was in the process of vanishing, the world of down-at-heels boarding houses and small-town postmen, and patients who smoke in doctors’ offices. I think there’s also just a hint of the turbulent world that would soon take over in stories like “Top-Flight Aquarium” and "The Man in the Lobby." Gruesome death and a deadly resignation …

Shooting Script and Other Mysteries offers insight into the evolution of Link and Levinson as storytelling masters. Highly recommended.

• Speaking of Messieurs Link and Levinson, what’s been swirling around in the zeitgeist that might explain why so much has been written recently about their 1975-1976 NBC-TV series, Ellery Queen? Early last month, Ah Sweet Mystery! blogger Brad Friedman undertook the formidable task of reviewing—in pairs—all 22 weekly episodes. You should be able to access those pieces here. (Friedman remarked on the March 23, 1975, pilot, “Too Many Suspects,” in his introduction to that project.) After concluding his efforts, he presented this poll page, inviting veteran Ellery Queen enthusiasts as well as newcomers to that hour-long whodunit to identify their favorite episodes. Friedman will keep his survey up until February 16, then reveal its results.

• Meanwhile, Curtis Evans—spurred on by Friedman’s deep dive—presented his own memories and opinions of Ellery Queen in The Passing Tramp. In his case, he covered that short-lived Jim Hutton/David Wayne series in five installments (see here, here, here, here, and here), before presenting his top-10 list of favorite episodes. This all makes me want to go back and watch the full run of the show myself. Maybe after I finish Reacher.

• Author Robert Crais announced this week that his next novel, Racing the Light—starring P.I. Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, and mercenary John Stone—will be released by Putnam on November 1.

• News that Monica Vitti, often referred to as “the Queen of Italian Cinema,” died on February 2 at age 90, left me wondering how best to honor her memory in The Rap Sheet. Then, while reading Terence Towles Canote’s obituary of Vitti, I was reminded that she’d starred as the eponymous criminal-turned-crime fighter in Modesty Blaise, a lightweight but diverting 1966 British spy-fi picture. She also became artist Robert McGinnis’ model for that character, when he sat down to paint the cover for Fawcett’s paperback tie-in novel, Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell. The book front and actress are shown below.

• By the way, at least for now can watch the full two-hour length of Modesty Blaise by clicking over to YouTube.

• The lineup of prominent international authors invited as guests to this year’s Iceland Noir festival, taking place in Reykjavik from November 16 to 19, has been broadcast. It includes Ruth Ware, Richard Osman, Paula Hawkins, Mark Billingham, and Sophie Hannah. Tickets to the popular literary event can be purchased here.

• Coming up sooner than that is Mystery Fest, being planned for Saturday, March 12, in Portsmouth, England. The Guest of Honor at this year’s gathering will be Priscilla Masters, the creator of Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy (Almost a Whisper) and coroner Martha Gunn (Bridge of Sighs). Also appearing for panel discussions that day will be authors Edward Marston, Leigh Russell, and Judith Cutler. Events will take place on the third floor of the Portsmouth Central Library, beginning at 10 a.m. and concluding at 5 p.m.

• Oh, and let us not forget Lyme Crime, which—according to its Web site—“launched online in June 2020 and returns with a full, three-day festival 23 to 25 June 2022.” Tickets go on sale in March, and the program is expected to be publicized soon. For now, Shotsmag Confidential at least provides us with a look at the authors attending this convocation in the Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis.

• Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine is out with its new, digital-only Winter 2022 issue, devoted in substantial part to what its editors (and others) say were the best mysteries, crime novels, and thrillers published over the course of 2021. Editor George Easter has filled these pages with numerous “best of the year” lists he posted in his blog at the end of 2021, then broken the top picks down according to the number of times they were mentioned. (S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears scored best, with an astonishing 44 recommendations!) Elsewhere in the issue, assistant editor Larry Gandle assesses this year’s Edgar Award-nominated books; recent deaths within the crime-fiction community are acknowledged (goodbye again, G.M. Ford); contributor George H. Madison looks back at the rough road to making the Raymond Chandler-scripted 1946 film, The Blue Dahlia; Ted Hertel and Brian Ritt both revisit the work of George Harmon Coxe (1901-1984); and there are myriad critiques of recent releases, including from debut columnist Meredith Anthony. That’s a hell of a lot of copy to cram into one magazine. Good thing that Deadly Pleasures no longer needs to worry about paper and printing costs.

• A rare “best of 2021” compilation that didn’t make it into Deadly Pleasures comes from The Strand Magazine. Its absence may be chalked up simply to the fact that it came out so tardily: managing editor Andrew Gulli posted his top 20 favorites in late January. They include Sleep Well, My Lady, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime); The Whispering Dead, by Darcy Coates (Black Owl ); The Wayward Spy, by Susan Ouellette (CamCat); Her Perfect Life, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge); and The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celadon).

• A different sort of “bests” roster was presented more recently by Robert Lopresti in the Sleuth Sayers blog. As he explains, it’s his “thirteenth annual list of the year’s best mystery [short] stories as determined by yours truly. It goes without saying that the verdicts are subjective, personal, and entirely correct.” Almost a third of Lopresti’s 16 picks originated in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, with almost as many drawn from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

• How his hoax execution affected Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fiction.

• It’s been a long time in coming, but the six-part Apple+ TV series Slow Horses is finally set to premiere on Friday, April 1. And that’s no joke, folks. Mystery Fanfare reports that this spy drama, adapted from Mick Herron’s first Slough House novel of the same name, will start with back-to-back presentations of its opening two installments, “followed by one new episode weekly every Friday.” Slow Horses focuses on a team of British intelligence agents who are considered, well, troublesome and expendable. Gary Oldman plays the arrogant and oft-offensive head of that misfit squad, Jackson Lamb. Also among the cast are Kristin Scott Thomas, Jonathan Pryce, and Olivia Cooke. Anyone who doesn’t know about Herron’s series should check out the cover story from last spring’s edition of Deadly Pleasures.

(Left) Joe Cole plays Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File.

• In other small-screen news, Crime Fiction Lover alerts us that UK network ITV will roll out, sometime in March, its six-part series The Ipcress File, based on both Len Deighton’s 1962 espionage novel, The IPCRESS File, and the 1965 Michael Caine film adapted from that book. Judging by a one-minute trailer, says CFL, “It looks like no expense has been spared … and the initial impression is sexy, witty and dangerous.” Deighton Dossier blogger Rob Mallows adds: “While little of the plot is given away, it’s clear that the series will make some significant departures from both the book and the [film] …, such as the more active agent role for Jean, played by Lucy Boynton, evidence of the backstory of the ‘unnamed spy’—Harry Palmer—and his role in the Berlin black market which led to military prison and ultimately, the job with W.O.O.C.(P)., plus the sidebar story involving the nuclear test in the Pacific, which is a big part of the book but which was of course not featured in the original film.” In addition to Boynton, The Ipcress Files’ cast features Joe Cole and Tom Hollander. UPDATE: This mini-series is supposed to be carried in the States on AMC+, but no airdate has yet been publicized.

• I can’t say I’m terribly surprised to hear this. From Deadline:

Marg Helgenberger is eyeing a possible return to the CSI franchise with a reprisal of her role as Catherine Willows ... Helgenberg would appear in the upcoming second season of CSI: Vegas, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2000 series, in which Helgenberger starred for the first 12 seasons. …

Season 1 opened a new chapter in Las Vegas—the city where it all began, introducing a serialized storytelling to the classic crime procedural drama. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the entire Crime Lab and release thousands of convicted killers back onto the neon-lit streets of Vegas, a brilliant new team of investigators led by Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome) enlisted the help of old friends, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), to investigate a case centered around former colleague David Hodges (Wallace Langham). This combined force deployed the latest forensic techniques to follow the evidence—to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

Actors Petersen and Fox had earlier announced they will not be returning for the sophomore season of CSI: Vegas.

• This Monday is Valentine’s Day. Do you know what books you’ll crack for that occasion? Janet Rudolph offers some suggestions.

• CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz supplies an alternative reading list: “Your Anti-Valentine’s Day Round-Up of the Sexiest Mysteries to Read with Your FWBs.” Yes, I had to look up that initialism, too: it stands for “friends with benefits.”

• Wait just a darn minute here, I thought Christopher Fowler was done penning his time-spanning yarns about detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. When the 20th such mystery, Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down, came out last summer, The Guardian made quite clear that it was “bringing to a close a much-loved series that started in 2003 with Full Dark House.” So much for that. Fowler writes this week in his blog that he’s now “in the final stages of the edit” of a 21st Peculiar Crimes book, which sounds more like a tour guide than a novel. Says Fowler:

For 20 books, London has been a central character in the Bryant & May series, so I decided that the detectives’ next investigation should be of London itself. And that this investigation has been going on—in a sort of louche way—for the last twenty years.

After all, the nation’s oldest serving detectives have spent a lifetime investigating crimes in the murkiest corners of London. They’ve been walking the streets and impulsively arresting citizens for decades. Who better to take you through London’s less savoury side?

They’re going to be remembering old buildings and odd characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing travel routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. The idea is to make strange connections and show readers why it’s almost impossible to tell separate and fiction in the city.

The book will be very much a part of the existing canon; Volume 21, Bryant & May’s Peculiar London. It will have a cover by our usual superb artist Max Schindler and will be the same size and format as all earlier volumes.

Amazon UK says Fowler’s new book will be released on July 14.

• Funny, this 1977 NBC-TV movie was supposed to be set in my hometown of Seattle, Washington, but I’ve never heard of it before. The Modcinema sales site describes Ransom for Alice as “the pilot film for the unsold series The Busters. The protagonists are not narcotics agents as might be assumed, but instead a male-female team of government undercover agents (Gil Gerard, Yvette Mimieux) operating in Seattle in the 1890s. … Ransom for Alice is an uncertain blend of cop drama, western, and espionage caper.” Do any Rap Sheet readers remember watching this 75-minute feature?

• A couple of podcasts have been added to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand column of crime-fiction resources: Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast, which deals with the varied works of Ed McBain, and The le Carré Cast, concentrating on espionage novelist John le Carré.

• While we’re on the topic of le Carré, let us note the coming publication of a new collection of his writings. The following comes from Jeff Quest’s blog, Spy Write: “After being teased by Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré’s sons, during book events surrounding the release of Silverview, we now have additional details on a book of John le Carré/David Cornwell correspondence. The book, currently titled A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, 1945-2020, has a UK release date of November 3rd, 2022 and a healthy page count of 400, although [publisher Viking’s] U.S. page lists a release date of October 11th, 2022 and 144 pages. So there is some conflicting information that will hopefully be cleared up soon.”

• Beware, spoilers ahead! Although the British-French crime drama Death in Paradise debuted way back in 2011, my wife and I only became fans during the months of COVID-19 isolation. That program’s cast has changed a good deal over the last decade, offering viewers four different male leads (my favorite being Kris Marshall as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman), backed up by a trio of female detective sergeants—the best of whom, to my mind, is six-season veteran Florence Cassell, played by lovely French actress Joséphine Jobert. Season 11 was introduced with a 90-minute Christmas special this last December, and has been airing new episodes in Great Britain since early January. So far, there seems to be no U.S. premiere scheduled for this latest series; however, word of its plot progress has been leaking across the pond—including sad news that Jobert is no longer part of the show after Episode 4. Indeed, the UK’s Hello! magazine confirms that in the fifth episode, she’s replaced by Shantol Jackson playing newly promoted DS Naomi Thomas.

• Why is strychnine the mystery writers’ poison of choice?

• Saima Mir, author of the 2021 debut novel Khan, has been named as “the first recipient of the CrimeFest bursary for a crime fiction author of colour.” According to a news release, that scholarship “will cover the cost of a full weekend pass to CrimeFest this May, a night’s accommodation at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, and a guaranteed panel appearance. … Three runners-up were also chosen to receive complementary passes to this year’s convention: Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Amita Murray, and Stella Oni.”

• Sioux Falls, South Dakota, fictionist William Reynolds has been enjoying some favorable press notices of recent date, thanks to the fact of Brash Books reissuing his half-dozen crime novels about Nebraska, a single-monikered writer and private eye operating in Omaha, Nebraska. “From the beginning,” he tells the Sioux Falls blog Pigeon 605, “I wanted him to be sort of this average guy. He’s not 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds of square-jawed raw muscle; he’s average. In fact, there’s instances in which he deliberately uses his averageness to kind of blend in. He’s self-aware, and sometimes he screws up. He blunders into things he shouldn’t blunder into.” Reynolds’ series commences with The Nebraska Quotient (1984) and runs through Drive-By (1995)—at least, so far. Might all of this fresh attention to his work spur the author to compose a new Nebraska tale? Pigeon 605’s Jill Callison says, Reynolds “doesn’t have a new plot in mind. But he did spend time over the summer thinking about it.”

• Also receiving attention is the fourth issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, and released last month. “I’m running out of superlatives to describe what a beautiful publication Men’s Adventure Quarterly is,” enthuses prolific novelist James Reasoner. “Every issue lovingly reprints great covers and interior art from the men’s adventure magazines of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, along with stories and features from those magazines, all of it enhanced by well-written and informative editorials and introductions.” Glorious Trash’s Joe Kenney adds that this edition “is different from the previous three, not only due to its focus on female characters, but also because it features a few stories that were actually written by a female author. As Bob Deis notes in his intro, Jane Dolinger was definitely unique in the world of men’s magazines: a female writer who turned out escapist adventure yarns and who also happened to be a stacked beauty who posed nude for the very magazines she wrote for!” I admit, I haven’t yet purchased any of these magazines. Clearly I have been missing out.

• Count me as lax, too, for not having already mentioned Michael Stradford’s beautiful coffee-table book, Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model (‎St. Clair). Stradford has turned his boyhood fascination with the old Doc Savage paperback series—fronted so often by illustrations including actor-model Steve Holland—into a tribute volume that Paperback Warrior calls “absolutely a mandatory reference for anyone fascinated by 20th-century paperbacks, magazines and male-oriented advertisements. … More than 20 years after his death, Holland’s face is still selling publications. That is a testament to his phenomenal physique, likable face and ability to provide the perfect likeness for all of these amazing visuals. Stradford has honored Holland in such a beautiful way and I can’t thank him enough for his labors in creating it.”

• Should you be unacquainted with Steve Holland’s once-ubiquitous presence on paperbacks and magazines, see examples here.

• PulpFest, the annual celebration of pulp magazines and genre fiction—scheduled to take place this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 4 to 7—is soliciting nominations for two familiar prizes. First is the Munsey Award, named for America’s first pulp mag publisher, Frank A. Munsey, and recognizing “an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.” (Last year’s Munsey recipient was publisher and book designer Rich Harvey.) The second commendation seeking nominees is the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those persons who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” More info about these honors and how to submit names for consideration is available here.

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: Stocking Stuffers Edition

• Agatha Christie fans are familiar with Ariadne Oliver, a fictional mystery writer who occasionally (in novels such as Cards on the Table and Mrs. McGinty’s Dead) helps Christie’s famous Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, solve crimes—and provides a modicum of comic relief in the process. Now for the first time ever, the Swedo-Finnish master detective from Oliver’s books, Sven Hjerson, is set to star in his own TV series, according to The Killing Times. That Swedish production, Agatha Christie’s Sven Hjerson, began shooting earlier this month in southern Finland. The plan is to make four classic whodunit films for airing in Sweden and Germany during the fall of 2021. Actor-comedian Johan Rheborg has signed on to portray Hjerson, described as a retired star criminal investigator “who loves crudités, cold winter baths and solving murder mysteries.” His partner-sidekick is Klara Sandberg (played by Hanna Alström), a former trash TV producer who successfully pitches a true-life crime show starring Hjerson, who will solve a real crime each week.” The Killing Times notes that “no UK broadcaster has been announced yet.” As to when the show might reach the States, well, that is pretty much anybody’s guess.

• Len Deighton’s 1962 spy novel, The IPCRESS File—which was turned into a well-respected 1965 cinematic feature starring Michael Caine—is now also being refashioned as a six-part, Berlin-set television series by British network ITV. Deadline reports, “The adaptation will be penned by BAFTA-winning Trainspotting writer John Hodge, while the cast will be led by Gangs of London and Peaky Blinders star Joe Cole, alongside Bohemian Rhapsody actress Lucy Boynton, and The Night Manager’s Tom Hollander.” The Killing Times offers this plot précis:

It’s 1963. Cold war rages between West and East. Nuclear bombers are permanently airborne. In this highly charged atmosphere, we join Harry Palmer—a British army sergeant on the make in Berlin. In this newly partitioned city, a sharp working-class young man with sophisticated tastes can make a lot of money. Wholesaler, retailer, fixer, smuggler, Harry’s varied interests bring him into contact with everything and everyone—until the law catches up and it all comes crashing to a halt. Harry finds himself sentenced to eight years in a grim military jail in England, all his prospects abruptly torn away.

But his impressive network and efficiency have not gone unnoticed, and a gentleman from British intelligence has a proposal. To avoid prison, Harry Palmer will become a spy. And the case on which he cuts his teeth will be The Ipcress File.

• Mick Herron’s espionage novels will provide the source material for yet another televised drama, this one from AppleTV+. Gary Oldman is signed to star in Slow Horses as Jackson Lamb, “a brilliant but irascible leader of a group of spies who end up in MI5’s Slough House, having been exiled from the mainstream for their mistakes.” Kristin Scott Thomas, Jack Lowden, Olivia Cooke, and Jonathan Pryce round out the main cast. “Six of these episodes will be based on Herron’s first book, [2010’s] Slow Horses,” says Deadline, “and the other six will be based on his second novel, Dead Lions [2013]. Production sources are referring to it as two seasons, or at the very least, two sets of six episodes. Apple sees it as one season, but declined to comment on release plans.” Filming began in November.

• The Killing Times asked “some of the world’s best crime novelists”—Ragnar Jónasson, C.L. Taylor, Doug Johnstone, Laura Lippman, etc.—to identify which TV crime dramas they have most enjoyed watching during this frustrating pandemic year. Among their choices are Baghdad Central, The Nest, Dead to Me, and the classic American detective series Columbo. The Killing Times promises to publish its own “countdown of the best crime dramas of 2020 at the end of this month.”

• The Atlantic magazine’s catalogue of “The 15 Best TV Shows of 2020” is light on mystery and crime fiction, but it does feature the too-soon-cancelled Dare Me. “Glitter and pom-poms shouldn’t pair so well with a murder mystery,” writes Shirley Li. “Yet the peppy positivity and fierce discipline of cheerleading contrasts beautifully with the genre’s messy violence in Dare Me. USA Network’s addictive, seductively shot adaptation of Megan Abbott’s [2012] novel follows a pair of best friends rattled by the arrival of their high-school squad’s enigmatic new coach.” Li adds a thumbs-up to Cobie Smulders’ private-eye series, Stumptown, which was given the ax after a single season on ABC, but is currently being shopped elsewhere.

• Both Season 4 of The Crown (brightened by the presence of Emma Corrin as Princess Diana) and Anya Taylor-Joy’s mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit, also earned The Atlantic’s appreciation ... as they did positive acclaim from Kristi Turnquist, longtime TV critic for The Oregonian, in Portland. Making Turnquist’s picks list, too, are the fifth, penultimate season of Better Call Saul (FX); Season 4 of the anthology series Fargo; and the debut run of HBO’s Perry Mason, starring Matthew Rhys, which has been renewed for a sophomore series of episodes to stream sometime next year.

• Continuing our inventory of “best books” lists, note that critics with the British blog Crime Fiction Lover are slowly rolling out their individual top-five selections for 2020. We’ve heard so far from Sonja van der Westhuizen and Catherine Turnbull, with more still to come. Meanwhile, CrimeReads has added further to it already significant set of favorites with registers of what it dubs “The Best Psychological Thrillers of 2020” and “The Best Espionage Novels of 2020.”

• In Reference to Murder brings word that the Tucson, Arizona, mystery bookshop Clues Unlimited is closing. Christine Burke, who’s owned Clues since 1996, calls it a casualty of ”the global pandemic and advancing age.” The blog adds that “Until the store closes, all new releases will be 20% off, and all used mass-market paperbacks will be $2. Used trade paperbacks and hardcovers will go for $5. The store will be open for appointments until Saturday, December 26.”

• The Strand Magazine has already released previously unpublished work by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, and others. But its latest issue, says The Guardian, includes “Adventure on a Bad Night,” “a ‘lost’ story by Shirley Jackson, in which the author of The Haunting of Hill House shows a microcosm of the racism and sexism in U.S. society through a dissatisfied woman’s trip to a corner shop …” The paper explains further that “Jackson’s [eldest] son, Laurence Hyman, said he found the story ‘among many others haphazardly stuffed into 52 cartons at the Library of Congress.’ All of Jackson’s papers were donated to the library by her husband Stanley a few years after her death” in 1965.

• National Public Radio host Michel Martin spoke with Laurence Hyman about the recent discovery of “Adventure on a Bad Night.”

• With Christmas now less than a week away, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph has finally posted all three parts of her extensive collection of holiday-appropriate crime fiction. The listings are arranged alphabetically by author: A-E, F-L, and M-Z. Additionally, she offers lists of mystery short stories and anthologies that are perfect to tackle at this more-festive-than-normal time of year.

• Separately, Rudolph has compiled a shorter roster of winter solstice-related mysteries. The solstice will take place in the Northern Hemisphere this coming Monday, December 21.

• I, for one, did not know there was a Charlie Chan Christmas mystery! The Postman on Holiday’s Lou Armagno acquaints us with “The Man Who Murdered Santa Claus,” a circa-1946 episode of NBC radio’s The Adventures of Charlie Chan.

• Making the best of a bad situation: Mystery Tribune reports that “Due to COVID-19, one of Canada’s most beloved, long-running period dramas, Murdoch Mysteries, is without a new season this Christmas, which is usually when new episodes premiere. But the good news is that the streaming service Acorn TV and the show’s producers have the next best thing: an intimate concert special shot on the series set, hosted by the Detective William Murdoch himself (Yannick Bisson), consisting of music popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, along with the show’s favorite themes– performed by a world-class ensemble from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A Music Lover’s Guide to Murdoch Mysteries will premiere in the U.S. and Canada, on Christmas Eve, on Thursday, December 24, 2020 on Acorn TV.”

• A Shroud of Thoughts has a nice piece up about the historical association between holiday shopping and department stores. “The Christmas shopping season has long been important to American retailers,” he writes, “and the Christmas shopping season evolved rather early in the United States. It was as early as the 1820s and 1830s that sweet shops and candy stores in New York City began capitalizing on Christmas. By the 1840s many retail shops were already advertising themselves as ‘Santa Claus's headquarters.’”

• Another loss for mystery fiction: Parnell Hall, a California-born former private detective and actor turned novelist, passed away on December 15 at age 76. He was best known for penning separate series about an ambulance-chasing New York City private investigator Stanley Hastings (Detective, A Fool for a Client) and “Puzzle Lady” Cora Felton (Lights! Cameras! Puzzles!), In her obituary, Janet Rudolph remembers Hall as a “funny, supportive, musical, generous, and all around good guy. … Everyone loved him.” His most recent novel, Chasing Jack, was released by Brash Books in September. The Gumshoe Site says Hall died of COVID-19. FOLLOW-UP: Author Robert J. Randisi sent me a note explaining: “Parnell succumbed to COVID-19, but it all started with a lung transplant, after which he had to take dialysis treatments every day until he could get a kidney transplant (didn’t happen), and then he got pneumonia and went into the hospital, where he contracted the COVID. He fought a long time.”

• And though I included, in The Rap Sheet’s last news round-up, a few brief comments about Scottish romance and crime writer Alanna Knight succumbing to illness in early December, at age 97, Mike Ripley’s longer obituary of that prolific author in The Guardian provides a great deal more interesting information.

Bullet Points: Pre-Father’s Day Edition

• If you’re not sufficiently aware of this already, tomorrow night will bring the debut of HBO-TV’s eight-part Perry Mason mini-series starring Matthew Rhys (The Americans). It’s conceived as a prequel to the classic 1957-1966 CBS series of that same name, which cast Raymond Burr as the almost unbeatable Los Angeles criminal defense attorney introduced by Erle Stanley Gardner in 1933’s The Case of the Velvet Claws. HBO’s version, set just one year before that—in 1932—imagines Mason as a down-and-out, heavy-drinking private eye “retained for a sensational child kidnapping trial, and his investigation portends major consequences for Mason, his client, and the city itself.” The character Rhys plays here is actually closer than Burr’s portrayal was to Gardner’s original conception of Mason as (to quote from Otto Penzler’s The Private Lives of Private Eyes, Spies, Crime Fighters and Other Good Guys) a “hard-boiled, two-fisted and noncerebral” advocate for justice. But writers/showrunners Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones have sought to flesh out their protagonist’s back story, as well. The Killing Times explains: “Mason is haunted by his wartime experiences in France and suffering the effects of a broken marriage.” An extended, noir-accented trailer (found here) nicely captures Depression-era L.A., with its recent Olympic Games, its unlikely “evangelical fervor,” the rise of the oil industry, and of course its Hollywood glamour. Vulture calls this new Perry Mason “a simultaneously gorgeous, gritty, and sometimes downright gory period piece filled with fine performances.” John Lithgow, Tatiana Maslany, Shea Whigham, Stephen Root, and Robert Patrick join Rhys in the cast. After disappointing previous attempts to revive Perry Mason (remember Monte Markham’s The New Perry Mason of 1973-1974?), it will be nice if HBO can draw upon what fans like about Gardner’s protagonist, while imbuing his story with greater emotional depth and substance. I’ll be watching with my fingers crossed.

• Scottish writer Lee Randall contributes a useful backgrounder about Gardner to CrimeReads, in which she recalls the lawyer-turned-author’s original intent with Mason: “I want to make my hero a fighter, not by having him be ruthless with women and underlings, but by having him wade into the opposition and battle his way through to victory. … [T]he character I am trying to create for him is that of a fighter who is possessed of infinite patience. He tries to jockey his enemies into a position where he can deliver one good knockout punch.” Yep, that nicely sums up the typical Mason yarn.

• Florida journalist Craig Pittman provides something of a public-service piece to aspiring legal-thriller writers, consulting various attorneys who have become novelists on how one might best compose realistic courtroom dramas. “I would suggest that authors treat courtroom scenes much like any other and not let the legal and technical details override the narrative,” says Alafair Burke, once a prosecutor in Oregon and now a professor at New York’s Hofstra University School of Law. “Too many courtroom scenes read like an intentional display of the research the author conducted to prepare for the scene. Instead, focus on character, setting, plot, dialogue—all the things that drive a good book. If the legal details don’t further a critical aspect of the narrative, skip them.”

• Crimespree Magazine brings word that writer Val McDermid “has unveiled the hotly tipped ‘New Blood’ authors for 2020, showcasing the year’s best breakout crime-writing talent.” Her choices:

— Deepa Anappara, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Chatto & Windus)
— Elizabeth Kay, Seven Lies (Sphere)
— Jessica Moor, Keeper (Penguin)
— Trevor Wood, The Man on the Street (Quercus)

“Since 2004,” explains Crimespree’s Erin Mitchell, “the best-selling Scottish author of the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series has curated an annual celebration of the most formidable debuts taking the crime and thriller genre by storm, with an invitation to join the line-up of the world’s largest and most prestigious crime-fiction festival: Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.” Although this year’s festival was cancelled due to the pandemic, Mitchell says McDermid’s 2020 “New Blood” showcase “will be streamed on the festival’s HIF Player on what would have been the legendary weekender on Saturday 25 July 2020.” You should be able to access the audio here at that time.

• I know, I know, it’s the frickin’ middle of June already, but only now am I finally getting around to remarking upon Mike Ripley’s latest edition of his “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. Featured among his plentiful subjects this time are: older books he’s taken up reading during the COVID-19 lockdown; forgotten writers Douglas Sanderson (Blondes Are My Trouble) and Peter Leslie (Bootleg Angel); fresh crime fiction by Sharon Bolton, Douglas Lindsay, Barbara Nadel, and Martin Walker; and the end of the line for the Top Notch Thrillers and Ostara Crime imprints, for which Ripley served as editor.

• In Reference to Murder features this tidbit:

Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards announced this year's winners, including in the Mystery Category. The Gold winner was Below the Fold by R.G. Belsky; Silver winner was A Plain Vanilla Murder by Susan Wittig Albert; and Bronze winner was Moonscape by Julie Weston. In the Thriller Category, the Gold winner was The Nine by Jeanne Blasberg; the Silver winner was The Unrepentant by E.A. Aymar; and the Bronze winner was Green Valley by Louis Greenberg. The Guilt We Carry by Samuel W. Gailey was also a Thriller Honorable Mention.

• Congratulations to Joe Kenney for 10 years at the helm of Glorious Trash, one of the best blogs about forgotten (and sometimes best-forgotten) works of paperback fiction.

• What a beautiful selection of vintage B-movie posters, all painted by Albert Kallis. I’m particularly fond of his placards for The Brain Eaters and The Astounding She-Monster, two science-fiction productions released in 1958.

• Like so many other writers, San Francisco-area author Mark Coggins has decided to launch a podcast during the COVID-19 lockdown. It’s called Riordan’s Desk, after his series private eye, August Riordan, and he’s currently reading chapters from his latest Riordan novel, The Dead Beat Scroll (2019). Chapter 15 just went up a few days ago. To listen, look for Riordan's Desk on iTunes or any of the popular podcast directories. Or, to listen from the Web, click here.



• Seeing as we’re now just a little over a month away from the TNT-TV premiere of The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, the eight-episode mini-series sequel to last year’s acclaimed Victorian-era thriller, The Alienist, don’t you think it’s time to watch a trailer for that new production? You’ll find a good one embedded above. Both shows are adapted from crime novels published in the 1990s by Caleb Carr. The Killing Times offers this synopsis of the coming sequel:

In The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, Sara [Howard] has opened her own private detective agency and is leading the charge on a brand-new case. She reunites with Dr. [Laszlo] Kreizler and John Moore, now a New York Times reporter, to find Ana Linares, the kidnapped infant daughter of the Spanish Consular. Their investigation leads them down a sinister path of murder and deceit, heading towards a dangerous and elusive killer.

The promo blurb says that series two will “shine a light on the provocative issues of the era—the corruption of institutions, income inequality, yellow press sensationalism, and the role of women in society—themes that still resonate today.”

This new mini-series is set to drop on Sunday, July 26.

• In other small-screen news, Variety reports that “Amazon is developing a series centered on Lisbeth Salander, the character created by Stieg Larsson for the so-called Millenium books. The project, which is currently titled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, will not be a sequel or continuation of the story from the books or the films into which they were adapted. It will instead take Salander and place her in today’s world with a wholly new setting, new characters, and a new story. No writer or lead actress is currently attached to the series.”

• And January Magazine recommends that Harlan Coben followers tune in to “a six-part Netflix mini-series based on The Woods, Coben’s 2007 novel,” it’s action transferred from New Jersey to Poland. “The switch creates some real magic: Coben’s terrific storytelling reimagined here with a gritty European sensibility,” January enthuses. Netflix debuted this six-part mini-series on June 12.

• For some reason, Janet Rudolph posted her list of Father’s Day mysteries last month. But tomorrow is actually Father’s Day here in the States, so let’s revisit that collection of titles now.

• As a veteran newspaper guy, I was interested to read this excerpt of a story from The Wall Street Journal about how some struggling local papers “are shutting down their [printing] presses and, to save money for distant corporate owners, printing their daily editions at other newspaper headquarters hours away. The papers still bear the names of the cities where they’re read, but they roll off presses elsewhere, sometimes in different states.” Included with that excerpt is a fabulous scene from the 1952 picture Deadline—U.S.A., in which “crusading managing editor” Humphrey Bogart instructs his press room foreman to start running the giant presses, churning out copies of the broadsheet containing an exposé of a mobster’s misdeeds. “That’s the press, baby. The press,” he tells the doomed hood over the phone. “And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing.”

• November 1 is the deadline for essay proposals on the theme of “Historical Crime Fiction,” the focus of a future edition of Clues: A Journal of Detection. The mag’s managing editor, Elizabeth Foxwell, explains that Rosemary Erickson Johnsen (Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction) will act guest-edit that issue.

• I’m very sorry to learn that Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafón, best known worldwide for penning 2001’s The Shadow of the Wind, died Friday from colorectal cancer. He was only 55 years old. An obituary in The Guardian notes that this Barcelona-born fictionist “was frequently described as the most-read Spanish author since Cervantes,” and it quotes Zafón as saying “he felt he had ‘no other choice’ but to be a writer: ‘Sometimes people ask me what piece of advice I would give to an aspiring author. I’d tell them that you should only become a writer if the possibility of not becoming one would kill you. Otherwise, you’d be better off doing something else. I became a writer, a teller of tales, because otherwise I would have died, or worse.’”

• Also announced was the demise of Grace F. Edwards, a Harlem mystery writer and former executive director of the Harlem Writers Guild, who passed away on February 25 of this year, at age 87. “Though she began writing at age 7,” recalls The New York Times, “Grace F. Edwards waited until she was 55 to publish her first novel. That book, In the Shadow of the Peacock, was a lush portrayal of Harlem during World War II, a girl’s coming-of-age story set against the race riots of the time. It was a placeholder for the six detective stories she would later write, mysteries set in Harlem starring a female cop turned sociologist and accidental sleuth named Mali Anderson, always with a backbeat of jazz. The first of these, If I Should Die, was published in 1997, when Ms. Edwards was 64.”

• Finally, I offer a sad good-bye to Dennis “Denny” O’Neil. The Spy Command explains that O’Neil was “a comic book writer and editor who [in the 1970s] returned Batman to his dark origins,” following a very lighthearted period “during the run of the 1966-68 television series starring Adam West.” In an obituary of his own, author Scott D. Parker describes O’Neil as “easily one of the people you’d put on the Mt. Rushmore of Batman creators.” Meanwhile, Terence Towles Canote writes that “In addition to his work in comic books, Dennis O’Neil also wrote several novels, including The Bite of Monsters (1971) and Dragon’s Fists – Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Master (with Jim Berry, 1974), as well as novels ... featuring Batman and Green Lantern. Over the years he also wrote several stories and novellas published in such magazines as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.” O’Neil died on June 11 at age 81.

• A few author interviews worth your attention: For her excellent Speaking of Mysteries podcast, Nancie Clare talks with both Craig Robertson (Watch Him Die) and Paul D. Marks (The Blues Don’t Care); Steve Powell goes one-on-one with Shelley Blanton Stroud (Copy Boy); Rich Ehisen quizzes Timothy Jay Smith (A Fire on the Island); and MysteryPeople’s Scott Montgomery chats with James Wade about the latter’s new novel, All Things Left Wild.

• Len Deighton enthusiast Rob Mallows relates the tale of his longtime search for “a simple postcard, part of the marketing materials for the first UK edition of SS-GB.”

• My late father and I generally had quite different TV-watching tastes. He was partial to fare such as Hee Haw, The Benny Hill Show, Hunter, The A-Team, and Walker, Texas Ranger, none of which I fancied. However, we did watch The Rockford Files together. In fact, I think I may have introduced him to that 1974-1980 NBC detective series, after enjoying its pilot film. Only later did I learn that my father had been a fan of actor James Garner ever since the late 1950s, when he starred in Maverick. But my point here is that I enjoyed Rockford when it was originally broadcast, and I take just as much pleasure in watching episodes occasionally more than four decades later. So I was a prime candidate to appreciate Nathan Ward’s recent tribute to the show, in CrimeReads. It contains numerous smile-inducing reminders of what the series offered, the first of those being Ward’s fond memory of the 1974 pilot:

The first show did not reek of tough-guy promise. First of all, [Rockford] turned down the job he was hired for not once but twice, and except for his California P.I. license he seemed like just another big affable guy with ordinary problems: an understocked fridge, people hectoring him through his answering machine. His concerns seemed unheroic and, perhaps worst of all, he did not even carry a gun, keeping one only for emergencies in a cookie jar in the kitchen of his house trailer. And when at one point his client asked, a little concerned, “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” he told her the truth, “You’re damn right I am.”

But what grabbed me from the first episode was one hilarious scene: Jim Rockford, tired of being trailed by … [a] muscular killer (William Smith) in a long red convertible, pulls into the Mayfair Music Hall, a Santa Monica venue of vaudeville-era entertainments. The bow-tied bartender greets Rockford and asks “The usual?” as a young woman performs a slow split atop a wire, meaning Jim either comes here often to lose a tail or he likes novelty acts. After his brawny pursuer enters the bar and growls his drink order, Jim heads to the men’s room to prepare his trap. The Mayfair switches to a troupe of dancing poodles as Rockford’s man stalks to the bathroom, where Jim has drizzled hand soap across the floor and retrieved a roll of nickels from his coat pocket, taunting, “You musclebound guys are always overcompensating.” The charge of latency draws a macho scream and a high kick that slides him back onto the soapy tile, where Jim lands a cheap insurance shot. According to Ed Robertson’s history of The Rockford Files, this scene nearly broke the ASI meter when the pilot was tested, and may have made the show. It did for me. By cheating a little, it seemed a clever man could take down a bully. I was hooked.

Ward has much more to say about The Rockford Files here.

• Not to go overboard in promoting recent CrimeReads articles, but here are a few more I have enjoyed: Olivia Rutigliano’s excellent analysis of Inspector Bucket, Charles Dickens’ “devious, hypocritical ‘nice guy’ cop” in Bleak House (1853); Shane Mawe’s profile of Freeman Wills Crofts, once a prolific Irish mystery novelist (The Cask, The 12:30 from Croydon, etc.) and “a contemporary of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, … [whose] reputation has failed to match that of these luminaries”; Chris McGinley’s profile of Virginia Kellogg, who “wrote some of the greatest crime movies in Hollywood's Golden Age,” but is today pretty much forgotten; and Paul French’s exploration of the various books and authors that have helped make Sydney “Australia’s undisputed capital of Noir.”

• Are you a big Ian Rankin admirer? If you, you might be interested to know that the Scottish creator of Inspector John Rebus is the subject of the latest entry in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series. At more than 400 pages long, Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction is said to include “alphabetized entries on Rankin’s works, characters, and themes; a biography; a chronology; maps of Rebus’ Edinburgh; and an annotated bibliography.”

• Martin Edwards also recommends H.R.F. Keating: A Life of Crime, by Sheila Mitchell (Level Best). He describes this study of the British author behind Indian policeman Inspector Ganesh Ghote as “affectionate and entertaining” and says it “gives wonderful insights into the ups and downs of the crime writing life,” as well as a few curious bits of triva. “For instance,” remarks Edwards, “one thing I didn’t know was that Harry wrote the novelisation of Neil Simon’s Murder by Death.” The prolific Keating passed away in 2011.

• Thirteen years after The Sopranos ended its six-season run on HBO, creator/writer David Chase has finally revealed the meaning of its last episode’s ambiguous ending.

• And the next time you need a musical pick-me-up, try this.