Sue Grafton Sold Out

By Linda L. Richards
Sue Grafton, the internationally bestselling author of the Alphabet Mysteries (who died in 2017), hated Hollywood. And it wasn’t a random dislike: Prior to her success as a novelist, Grafton spent years working in the film industry, an experience that led to her making an oath that she would never sell Kinsey Millhone, the ex-cop private eye who was the protagonist in her 25-book series, to Hollywood.

When I interviewed her in 1997, Grafton was emphatic on this point. “I will never sell [Kinsey] to Hollywood,” she declared. “And, I have made my children promise not to sell her. We’ve taken a blood oath, and if they do so I will come back from the grave: which they know I can do. They’re going to have to pass the word on to my grandchildren: we do not sell out our grandma. I just will not let them touch her.”

That interview was widely quoted last week, when the announcement came that Kinsey had, in fact, been sold out. From Deadline:

In a very competitive situation with multiple bidders, A+E Studios has landed the exclusive rights to #1 New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton’s alphabet book series featuring private investigator protagonist Kinsey Millhone. Under the pact, the studio can develop and produce the entire library of Grafton’s wildly popular alphabet mysteries for television.

This marks the first time the screen rights to the book series has been made available, with Steve Humphrey, Grafton’s husband for more than 40 years, serving as executive producer on the adaptations.

Humphrey himself spoke to this decision in a statement posted on Grafton’s Facebook page and in a statement from A+E: “Television has greatly evolved since Sue was writing in Hollywood in the 1980s. From her experience then, she was concerned that her stories and characters would be diminished when they were adapted. But as the power of television has transformed over time, so too has the quality from writing and acting to the production values and viewing experience.”

I’m guessing Grafton’s descendants are now ducking and running, wary of her spirit making a reproachful appearance.

* * *

Linda L. Richards, the author of Endings, is also a Rap Sheet contributing editor.

The Story Behind the Story: “Endings,” by Linda L. Richards

(Editor’s note: This is the 88th installment in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Our guest author today is Linda L. Richards, the editor of January Magazine and the author of more than a dozen books, including three series of novels featuring strong female protagonists. Her latest book, Endings, is being released today by Oceanview Publishing. She writes below about the unexpected roots of that tale.)

In 2011 I got an idea for a short story. Which is weird, because I usually don’t think in short stories: the flashes of ideas I get tend to go long.

In this case the idea I got came to me complete (a total gift!) and the premise was simple: what would have to happen in the life of one totally “normal” woman to make her kill people for money?

Now before we really begin, understand this: I am as close to a pacifist as you are likely to meet. More: even though I live in Phoenix these days, I am Canadian. That means I don’t have to pretend the Second Amendment makes any kind of sense and I don’t have a political axe to grind other than, in a very general and civilian sense, I am by nature peaceful and I think guns are bad. Full stop. But I am also a crime-fictionist, so these scenarios come to me: what if, what if, what if?

So what if some completely normal middle-aged woman lost everything, and lost it horribly. What might happen then?

And I wrote the short story. It was a set piece, I thought. I saw nothing more, in that moment, for the character. As it happened, I wrote it at the time of the first e-book wave, and I like to experiment in technology, so I decided to publish the short story in e-book format because, well, it was there. That short story was published as “Hitting Back” and was reviewed in The Rap Sheet all those years ago. (A decade ago? What?)

So I did that and it was done. Complete. Next. I never imagined more. Why would I? A hit woman, running around killing people. Beyond the short story, that did not seem interesting to me. So even though I was very proud of the story, and reader mail let me know it had touched some people, I moved on.

One of the things I moved on to was a succession of books for newly literate readers, produced by British Columbia-based Orca Publishing as part of its Rapid Reads series. And after the first of those, If It Bleeds, came out in 2014, I was invited to read at a Noir at the Bar event in Vancouver. Don’t get me wrong, I love If It Bleeds; but when I looked for a portion of the story to read that night, I was stumped. Because of the nature of the Rapid Reads books, there was nothing in my new novel—the one I was supposed to be promoting—that I felt would be quite right for an audience craving edgy and dark material. So, instead, I dusted off “Hitting Back,” and tried reading the first few pages aloud to my cat in my own office. To my astonishment, I started to cry as I read. And I’m not talking a couple of attractive little tears, either. I mean, halfway through the reading I was choked with tears, which I have to tell you, is not a particularly good look for me.

“So this is weird,” I said to myself, deciding right then and there that I would go ahead and read from “Hitting Back” at the Noir at the Bar gathering, and just see what happened.

And so, yeah: you have probably already guessed what happened: I cried. Despite the embarrassing moisture that came from my eyes, I knew it was the best reading I’d ever done. From that moment, people started asking me when the completed novel was coming. At that point, of course, it wasn’t. I just wanted to read something that might have impact. And this did. But, still, I couldn’t see myself writing a hit-woman book. I mean, why? Hadn’t it been done before? And how interesting could it be? Lady goes around killing people. Big deal. Not a book.

(Left) Author Linda L. Richards

A few months later, I was invited to speak at another Noir at the Bar event. I decided to read from the same story—and surprised myself by crying again. And I wondered again why I’d cried. I couldn’t come up with a coherent answer. Something in the material was speaking to me, that was obvious. But what? I really didn’t know, and—still—despite the entreaties of several fellow authors, I could not imagine my short story morphing into a full novel.

So fast-forward some more. In the summer of 2016, the talented novelist and superb human Dietrich Kalteis had put together a series of author tours in outlying regions of British Columbia. It happened that he, along with Sam Wiebe, Owen Laukkanen, and I were all promoting novels at that time, and we would go on these grand expeditions together. At the time I had a curmudgeonly giant Volvo sedan, which somehow got nicknamed The Codger, that we would take on these tours. Quite often it would be me, Sam, and Dietrich in The Codger and Owen in his Jeep, because he liked to chase trains. (I’ll tell that story on a different occasion.) I will never forget the day, returning from one of these trips, that Dietrich asked me—again!—when I was going to turn that story into a book.

“But there’s nothing there, Dieter,” I said, or something very like that. “That’s it. The whole story. I’ve told the whole tale.”

“Why do you cry?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“There’s more, Linda.”

“But who wants to read about a hit woman running around killing people? That’s boring.”

“It isn’t about that,” he said. And he said it in a way that made me understand he was stating something obvious. “It’s about her redemption.”

I did not cry when he said that. But something very like that happened inside me. The instant he said it, something clicked into place. Of course that was it. The book would not be about her killing people. That was the mission of the short story: what would make a nice lady kill? But in the novel, we get to explore the larger question: when you have broken all of society’s rules, how do you walk back? How do you redeem yourself? Or, more basic yet, can you?

I don’t remember the rest of the trip. I only recall dropping Dietrich and Sam off (Owen was away somewhere, photographing trains), and then heading to my computer and writing. And writing. And writing. Until, one day, redemption was at hand. A lot of tears were shed. Endings was born. And now here we are.

READ MORE: “Linda Richards: Endings Is (Fortunately) Only the Beginning” (Jungle Red Writers); “Off the Cuff with Linda L. Richards,” by Dietrich Kalteis (Off the Cuff).

Nice Work by Nasty Woman

By Linda L. Richards
In some ways, Nasty Woman Press was born almost the moment Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president back in 2016. Award-winning author Kelli Stanley knew something had to be done. But what could one writer—a fiction writer, at that—do in the face of all that she sensed was about to come? Stanley allowed the moment to galvanize her, and she started putting together a crew.

The organization that resulted from all of that galvanizing is a registered non-profit called the Creative Resistance. Members are authors, readers, attorneys, librarians, editors, literary agents, artists, entertainers, publishers, performers, and others. “People who value creativity and imagination. People who value education, the environment, human rights, and a saner, more compassionate world,” says the organization’s Web site. Their imprint takes its name from an insult Trump directed at his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during a 2016 presidential debate (“such a nasty woman”).

The first book-length publication from this resistance-driven organization drops this week, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Shattering Glass is intended to be the first in a series of anthologies, and if this one is a taste, we have some great reading ahead of us.

The book collects essays, interviews, articles, and short fiction on the stated theme—the empowerment of women—but it really is so much more. A sharp and beautifully rendered window into this cultural moment, crafted by passion and a deep need to try and right, or at least articulate, something that has gone terribly wrong.

And this is just the crew we want to have sharing stellar thoughts not only about but also around this moment in history. Contributors include Heather Graham, Valerie Plame (yes, that Valerie Plame), Sandi Ault, Eric Beetner, Cara Black, Rhys Bowen, former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, Hallie Ephron, Rachael Howzell Hall, Charlaine Harris, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Toni L.P. Kelner, Catriona McPherson, S.J. Rozan, Clea Simon, Alexandra Sokoloff, Kelli Stanley, Kate Thornton, Jacqueline Winspear, and several others. Profits from the sale of this collection will go to Planned Parenthood.

It’s a stunning lineup of authors writing to us from their hearts at an incredible moment in time. Run, don’t walk.

Favorite Crime Fiction of 2017, Part III: Linda L. Richards

Linda L. Richards is a journalist, photographer, and the author of 15 books, including three series of novels featuring strong female protagonists. She is the former publisher of Self-Counsel Press and the founder and publisher of award-winning January Magazine. Richards is currently based in Vancouver, Canada, but you can find her wherever her laptop decides to rest for awhile.

• Every Breath You Take, by Mary Higgins Clark and
Alafair Burke (Simon & Schuster):
While on the surface of things, this fourth entry in the Higgins Clarke/Burke partnership might seem like an outlier in a best-of-the-year round-up, I just can’t help but love these books that much. Their Under Suspicion series is high-end candy for suspense lovers. Or maybe top-of-the-line caviar. The good stuff, anyway. In Every Breath You Take, Higgins Clark and Burke have us again spending time with TV producer Laurie Moran as she goes about solving another cold case. This time it’s the Met Gala Murder, and the goal is to discover who shoved wealthy widow Virginia Wakeling to her death from atop Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although Wakeling’s much-younger boyfriend seems like a ready-made guilty party, as Laurie begins to probe the crime, she discovers that the victim’s super-rich family has a lot to hide … and they might even prove dangerous to Laurie herself, if provoked. Higgins Clark and Burke are both master plotters in their own rights. But get them together? This is the kind of novel for which the term “unputdownable” was created. The only thing I don’t like: the authors are going to make me wait a while for the next entry in their series.

• Invisible Dead, by Sam Wiebe (Quercus):
Sam Wiebe is one of the few writers I would read no matter the topic or genre or day of the week. Margaret Atwood is another. Stephen King. Salman Rushdie. A mixed bag, certainly, but good company, any way you figure it. This young author’s second novel (after 2014’s Last of the Independents) is a stunning accomplishment. Wiebe here grabs at a whole bunch of the tropes of crime fiction and turns them around, pulling them masterfully beyond the cliché. Dave Wakeland is an ex-cop turned private eye. In Invisible Dead he’s hired by a terminally ill woman to find her adopted daughter, who vanished a decade earlier. Like Sheena Kamal’s debut yarn, highlighted below, Wiebe’s tale deals at its core with the disappearance and loss of indigenous Canadian women from Vancouver, British Columbia’s Downtown East Side, and the horror and travesty of the fact that not more has been made of their loss. Both books are brilliant, though in starkly different ways. Wiebe navigates crime fiction’s mean streets in a manner that absolutely honors the heritage of his subgenre, yet pushes it towards sharp new directions. Ever wanted to find the perfect P.I. novel? This is it.

• The Lost Ones (aka Eyes Like Mine), by Sheena Kamal (Morrow):
The thing I like least about Sheena Kamal’s debut work is that it was published under different titles in North America and in the UK. This may confuse readers who are trying to figure out which of her books they’ve already picked up. Relax: until sometime in mid-2018, there is only one. Like Sam Wiebe’s Invisible Dead, the action in these pages focuses around an indigenous Canadian woman gone missing from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. And while, on the surface of things, that would seem to make them very similar books, they just could not be more different. Both are magnificent in their own right. A lot of the tension and, in fact, the success of The Lost Ones comes to us through Nora, Kamal’s damaged and world-weary narrator. In reviews, this story has often been compared to Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—and not without reason. There is an equivalent darkness and edge to the two novels, and thanks to the British Columbia backdrop of The Lost Ones, even some shared feeling of spiritual and emotional overcast. There is an unexpected virtuosity in Kamal’s pen. This is the first installment in a promised trilogy, and though the story concludes solidly, The Lost Ones leaves us, quite appropriately, wanting more.

• Montreal Noir, edited by John McFetridge and
Jacques Filippi (Akashic):
Montreal, Quebec, isn’t like other places. It’s a holdout from old Europe, nestled in a traditionally largely Anglo country. That juxtaposition hasn’t always been entirely comfortable. Montreal is not like the rest of Canada, that’s what I’m saying. Culturally, physically, and emotionally, Montreal is not like any other place at all. The totality of its differences play a part in the melting-pot soup that is Montreal Noir. This diverse collection of short fiction, like the city itself, is not always easy or even. It’s not always comfortable. The 15 stories gathered here were written originally in English and French, the latter having been translated for this latest volume in Akashic Books’ Noir series. The writers contributing to this work will mostly be unfamiliar to readers outside (and possibly even within) Canada: Samuel Archibald, Michel Basilières, Arjun Basu, Tess Fragoulis, Peter Kirby, Robert Pobi, Patrick Senécal, Geneviève Lefebvre, Ian Truman, Johanne Seymour, Howard Shrier, Martin Michaud, Melissa Yi, Catherine McKenzie, and Brad Smith. In their introduction, editors McFetridge and Filippi say that “Today, the city has its own language: Franglais (or Frenglish). Maybe the first word spoken in that language was noir …” Appropriate, then, to have it said here in so many ways. For me, this was an eye-opening collection, showing off parts of my country that I didn’t know existed, in ways that I won’t easily forget.

• The Seagull, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur):
During a recent interview, bestselling author Ann Cleeves told me that The Seagull is her most personal book to date. That’s because it is set in the English seaside town where she has lived for many years. But it also may be because Cleeves’ best-known and best-loved creation, Vera Stanhope, is dealing here with a case that has deeply personal roots, leading back to Detective Inspector Stanhope’s very own late father and some of his cronies. There is something of a British Columbo about Vera Stanhope. She has a sort of bumbling energy, is the furthest thing one can imagine from a fashion plate, and occasionally seems to solve crimes despite herself. Even so, Vera is no fool and there is no element of comedy—except as it is naturally found in life—about either her or the action in The Seagull. The fictional nightclub that gives this book its title looms over the story, even though it was destroyed many years before the book’s present day. It was a luxury establishment, run by the son of a Scottish mobster, and the illegal goings-on that took place there were always suspected though never proven. The themes in this story are the family ties that bind and how old secrets can eat through the heart of a community. This is Cleeves’ eighth outing for Vera Stanhope, in a book series that has received a great deal of attention, not only because of the excellent BBC-TV production based on it, but also because of Shetland, which is based on Cleeves’ newer series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez. In both series the writing—and also the television!—is top-notch. Anne Cleeves has always been a fantastic writer. It’s good to see her getting the attention she deserves.

Noir Doesn’t Come Much Darker

By Linda L. Richards
I once heard his fellow Canadian author Owen Laukannen describe Dietrich Kalteis’ writing as being like “jazz on the page.” If you want to boil Kalteis’ work down very tightly, for me descriptions just don’t get any better than that.

Kalteis’ voice is taut, tight, and if it were any more noir, it would be too dark to see. With all of that, there is a graceful muscularity to his writing. And a sparseness that reminds one of jazz, as well.

Zero Avenue (ECW Press) is Kalteis’ fifth novel, and it is confident and mature. No uneven beats here, at all. Publishers Weekly said in its review that “if a literary prize existed for depicting the most offensive club lavatories, [Zero Avenue] would win it hands down.” And while that’s pretty much true, there is so much more here than that. Kalteis’ highest ninja skill is that he can make the reader feel deeply with a simple shrug of his super-cool shoulder. The aforementioned bathroom scene is a good example. It is vivid and classically, achingly noir, and he accomplishes it in just a few bold strokes:

A lone bulb hung from the center of the room, a dead fluorescent tube horizontal over the sink, two toilets, only one with an enclosed stall, a urinal and a plugged-up sink, soapy brown scum floating in it. Toilet paper unfurled like crime scene tape across the floor. Graffiti all over—the voice of the people.

Another example of this seemingly effortless intensity can be found in what may be the best-drawn chase scene I’ve ever read. In it, Frankie, a young punk musician running drugs to raise enough money to cut her debut EP, thinks she’s picked up a tail in the middle of doing a delivery. Her battered Karmann Ghia is running on fumes, and the rubber on its tires is so low, a gas-station attendant feels it necessary to point out the potential danger. She’s stoned and paranoid; and between evading the tail and checking in with the mad-dog gangster who is her handler, and finally (spoiler alert) making her delivery, there is enough tension here that it can be difficult to read. With all of this against her, you just know it can’t turn out well.

Passing the Italian joint, Paesano’s, the place Marty wanted to take her to dinner, night she clocked the blonde. Everything slow-cooked and homemade, mozzarella and olives shipped from the old country. Espresso done right. Cannoli to die for.

Bopping to “Fan Club” now, she licked somebody else’s tongue around her mouth, her nerves still shot. Frankie thinking she could use a chunk of bhang. Her eye on the rearview, keeping watch for the four-by-four, Serpico with the shades and beanie.

Past Pender, she stomped the brakes, some kid in a ball cap on backwards dashed from behind a parked Buick, dashing across the lane, a paper bag in his hand. She yelled at him, sounding like somebody’s mother, the kid flipping her the bird, Frankie flipping it back.

Frankie has put together a little band called Waves of Nausea, which is playing low-level gigs in 1979 Vancouver, British Columbia, near the birth of the punk rock movement. Johnny Falco runs Falco’s Nest, the fictional club just down the street from the non-fictional Smilin’ Buddha, where a lot of significant punk acts got their start. Falco is sweet on Frankie from the beginning, and wondering if she’d ever entertain the thought of going out with a mug like him, especially since we open on her at the beginning of an uncomfortable relationship with local gangster Marty Sayles.

Among other things, Marty is involved with an ingenious pot-growing operation that has seen his goons seeding pot in farmers’ fields hidden in rows of corn. After harvest, the pot is processed in an old barn Marty owns on a property he picked up along Zero Avenue.

I grew up in the area described, so I came to this novel knowing that Zero Avenue is the street that runs on the northern side of the U.S./Canada border for, well, a long ways. But the part of it I knew, and the part described in this book, runs from South Surrey all the way to Abbotsford and probably beyond: just a double ditch and a country road—no fence or guards or anything but the occasional patrol run separating two big countries that have a lot of inhabitants who like drugs of various descriptions. Obviously, a recipe for drug-related high jinks, in reality and now in fiction. While this local knowledge possibly added to my enjoyment of the book, one could come to Zero Avenue without it, as Kalteis does a good job of making the reader feel not only the where but the when.

With sex, drugs, and rock-’n-roll on the menu, crime is not far off. This rich combination pushes Zero Avenue along at a graceful burn. The book is tight and rich and as hard to pin down as smoke. If you love noir, you’ll love Zero Avenue. Simply as good as it gets.

READ MORE: “Zero Avenue: Dietrich Pulls a Fast One,” by Kevin Burton Smith (The Thrilling Detective Blog).

The Story Behind the Story: “Death Was in the Blood,” by Linda L. Richards

(Editor’s note: This 43rd entry in our “Story Behind the Story” series comes from Linda L. Richards, an author and resident of British Columbia, Canada, who also serves as the editor of January Magazine and contributes frequently to The Rap Sheet. In the essay below, she writes about Death Was in the Blood, her new, third novel in a succession of historical mysteries set in Los Angeles. It follows 2008’s Death Was the Other Woman and 2009’s Death Was in the Picture.)

I don’t remember participating in the creation of Kitty Pangborn.

I’ve talked about this before.

I was in a period of reading a great deal of classic noir fiction. More than my share. And amid all the drinking and testosterone-informed shenanigans, I began to see her there, at the edge of things. A voice of sense and sanity (a feminine one, of course) in a rough-edged world peopled by men who’d seen too much and had paid too high a cost in a war years past--one they still carried around with them, emblazoned on their souls.

Men like that, they’re good men, but broken sometimes. It can be as true now as it was then. We’re luckier now, at least some of the time. We have words for things; acronyms even. And we know that post-traumatic stress syndrome can do funny things to a soldier’s mind and heart. But during the first half of the 20th century? They didn’t have words for such problems back then. “He’s busted up inside,” someone might say. Or, “You mean that Theroux boy? He ain’t been right since he came back. There’s nothin’ wrong with him, you understand. But he ain’t been right at all.”

These men--these big-hearted yet shadowy and broken men--loom large in the work of some of my favorite wordsmiths. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon, et al.) is racing from demons, I’m sure of it. We don’t really know that. Hammett never says, but one can imagine that Sam Spade’s story was influenced at least in part by Hammett’s own. Hammett had enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps until he contracted Spanish Flu and then later tuberculosis. Hammett lost his health to the military, and it seems entirely possible he lost more than that. And certainly, the detectives he later wrote about were broken in ways the author never clearly defined, but that we could sense, all the same. Lost boys, in a way. Lost in distant lands and never to find their way back, even when they made it all the way home.

So during all of this noir reading, I began to see that it was not possible for the lost boys peopling that field of fiction to actually be accomplishing what they seemed to be accomplishing. The drinking they were managing all on their own. The occasional womanizing, sure, they were doing all right with that. But, as people, it often seemed they were so shattered, it was unlikely they could keep businesses together. Yet there it was, in tale after tale: their name on the door. Phones ringing. Clients more or less standing in line.

When they were out of the office, though--drinking, or womanizing, or even out on a case--who was looking after things then? And who was keeping it all together, just running the day-to-day business?

I don’t even remembering what wild and crazy hat I pulled Katherine “Kitty” Pangborn out of. The name, I mean. And the girl, as well. Suddenly, she was just standing there, tidy threadbare office suit, sensible shoes, and all. I know she was somewhat inspired by Spade’s capable secretary, Effie Perrine. Effie, whom you had the feeling was young and even lovely, yet whose sister-like relationship with Sam was refreshingly free of that often-all-too-tiresome frisson that can muddy up the clearest noir waters.

Although the latest Kitty Pangborn novel, Death Was in the Blood, stands alone (as all my series books have done) and doesn’t rely on readers having enjoyed the books in sequence, I think it is a darker read than those that have gone before. Kitty herself is in a darker place. No longer just happy to have found a way to keep a roof over her head during America’s Great Depression, she’s thinking about her life and about what might have been, and discovering she’s not entirely happy with the result. For me, that’s one of the things that defines Death Was in the Blood most sharply. Meeting the beautiful and privileged client Flora Woodruff, an aristocratic young woman about Kitty’s own age, forces Kitty to examine her own life and the odd turns it’s taken since her father’s suicide led her to find a job working with Los Angeles private eye Dexter J. Theroux.

* * *

A lot of the action in Death Was in the Blood takes place against preparations for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. That was, in many ways, a ground-breaking Olympics. It took place at the height of the Depression and a number of countries pulled out because they simply couldn’t afford to send their teams on such a big trip. Less than half the number of participants of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam competed in L.A. in 1932.

That competition in Los Angeles marked the first time in history that an Olympic village was built to house the athletes. It was apparently really fantastic, with dining halls and entertainment centers and even a screening room where the athletes could watch moving pictures of their performances from the day. (And nobody had iPhones, so it was a pretty big deal.) Movie stars would drop by every night and give impromptu shows (so L.A.!), but it was all for the men. The women athletes were housed in a hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and got left out of all the fun--though, in fairness, it should be said that 1,206 men competed, compared with only 126 women.

So all of this is known absolutely: we have first-hand accounts, we have photos and even film. What we don’t know exactly is where this village was, because it was dismantled right after the Olympics concluded and, near as anyone can tell, beyond one structure that ended up--and still stands--at the police academy in Elysian Park, the rest of that trailblazing 1932 Olympic village is gone without a trace.

(Left) Author Linda L. Richards

There is agreement that the village was located in the Baldwin Hills, but it might have been in the Blair Hills, an area that’s now actually part of Culver City. Or it might have been near Crenshaw and Vernon in the View Park area and, according to the Baldwin Hills Park Web site, “One account places the village in the Crenshaw or Angeles Mesa district, in the hills to the west of Crenshaw Boulevard south of Vernon Avenue. The roads Olympiad Drive and Athenian Way in this area commemorate its history.”

From that same source:

The village comprised between 500 and more than 600 two-room dwellings and included post and telegraph offices, an amphitheater, a hospital, a fire department, and a bank. The village was built on between 250 and 331 acres that was loaned by the heirs of the estate of Lucky Baldwin. The buildings were removed after the games.

This account is pretty consistent with what I found in other sources: references to developer and stock market speculator Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, who died in 1909 but whose fortune--by the early 1930s--was still largely intact. Mentions of the Olympic village being constructed at great cost during the Depression, then mysteriously disappearing right after the games.

But there are enough things not mentioned, or merely hinted at, that if you’re of a certain disposition, your mind fills in the blanks. The construction of a whole village during the Depression--one that needed to look good, yet not be required to stand the test of any significant amount of time? That would have been a plum contract. A multi-million-dollar contract, even in the dollars of the day. One worth killing over? Well, just wait and see.

The Story Behind the Story: “The Indigo Factor,” by Linda L. Richards

(Editor’s note: This 34th entry in our “Story Behind the Story” series comes from Linda L. Richards, author of the stockbroker Madeline Carter mystery series and two novels (Death Was the Other Woman and Death Was in the Picture) starring Kitty Pangborn, the resourceful “girl Friday” to Los Angeles private eye Dexter Theroux. A resident of British Columbia, Canada, Richards is also the editor of January Magazine, an award-winning book review and author interview site. After releasing a couple of short stories for e-readers--Hitting Back and Dearborn 9-1-1--Richards this week debuts her first original e-novel, The Indigo Factor, which she describes as “Fringe meets The Sixth Sense” and “a taut and muscular thriller that takes readers behind the scenes at the CIA, deep inside a doomsday cult and beyond.” Below, she recalls how she came to write this novel and release it in electronic format, rather than print.)

Write the book that’s in your heart. It’s what I have always told people: readers, students, people who read my blog, basically anyone who will listen.

Write the book that’s in your heart.

And that’s what I’ve always done.

And then there was The Indigo Factor. A few years ago, I started hearing about indigo children, youngsters who--though they may have been diagnosed with learning disabilities--are thought to be endowed with special, perhaps supernatural traits. In my life, I’m always waiting for threes. And hearing about indigo children came to me in threes and I knew I had to act.

I have a difficult time now remembering exactly where the story that would become The Indigo Factor came from, or how the people who inhabit it grew. After a while, see, they were so much a part of me that their origins were lost in the mist of all of that. It seems to me that I blinked my eyes one day, and they were just there: Olivia, peaceful of mien but of a tortured military background; little Faun with her questionable heritage and her unnameable gifts; Royce, just doing his job, because what else is there for him to do?; and Jamison--conflicted, beautiful and, in the end, supremely compromised.

So the story began, as the stories I tell always do, with a distant thought and a feeling. That is, when I began the journey, I didn't know where it would all end or what impossible lengths it would put me through. Every aspect of the novel I researched led more deeply into another, more impossible place. And so what started as a story involving indigo children ended up looking at so much more: cults, physic hot spots, remote viewing, black helicopters. More. So much more, my heart and head swam with the story that was unfolding under my fingers. And still--still--I wrote.

When it was done, I knew it was done. I knew, also, that I could write a sequel: could see the place that this story would go. I sent the book to my agent, who fell in love with it instantly. “Linda,” she said, “you’ve written a bunch of terrific books, but this? This is the best by far.” The Indigo Children, she said, would be my breakthrough book. How could it not be? That was how good she thought it was.

Of course she tried selling it right away. Lots of editors wanted to see it, too. The very best at every house. After a while, reports started coming back. Editors loved The Indigo Factor. I have a file of beautiful notes. Editors loved the story. They loved the characters. They loved the writing. What they didn’t love: where would it fit? I understand. Sure I do. It’s a thriller, at its core. But there are vestiges of the paranormal about it, even though it is not a paranormal book. Editors of paranormal lines felt it was not paranormal enough. Straight-up thriller and mystery editors thought it danced too closely to that edge.

We came very close a couple of times with significant publishers. But for some it was too Canadian. For others, not Canadian enough. And no matter where readers fell on the Canadian thing, we’d be back to the issues of paranormal and not. Suffice it to say this was not a formulaic book and it was difficult to know exactly where it would fit.

I’ve written several novels that were critically acclaimed, and I’ve built a readership for my work, but my numbers were not--are not--significant enough for editors to take a risk. Certainly not for a book that is too Canadian and not Canadian enough, and is not completely paranormal but has too much of the paranormal about it. A book that was not an easy fit.

See, I had set out convinced that the last thing the world needed was the story of yet another damaged cop or another hard-done-by reporter. It seemed to me there were enough of those available already. Maybe more than enough. I didn’t follow a formula. I told the story that was in my heart. What was it? Mystery? Thriller? Art? I didn’t care. I don’t care now. It was a story tinged--touched?--by all the mystery we have in our world. I wanted readers to wonder, when they’d finished it, what was real and what was not. More than one reader told me afterwards that she spent time with Google siphoning the real from the not-so-much. That’s a journey I’m proud of, as well: the one that moves you from your seat.

Several editors suggested that if I made The Indigo Factor into something else--a little more of this, a little less of that--they could find it a comfortable place on their lists. More than once I sat down with the manuscript thinking I would begin that journey of taking what it appeared had become a square peg and stuffing it into a round hole. But it just stuck in my craw.

I loved these characters. I still do. And I love this story. And I’m lucky: authors in other eras would have had to either shove the book into a deep drawer to hope someone stumbled across it when they were dead and had more clout ... or take the trip at altering what they’d written in passion and turning it into something the gatekeepers would accept. For better or for worse, I didn’t have to do those things and have instead opted to have it be my first original novel to debut in electronic formats. A book, also, completely unlike anything I’ve written before. Darker, I think. More violent. And with a reality that shifts so quickly, I hope you don’t ever stay steady on your feet.

Anthony Sends Regards from St. Louis

As Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis winds down, J. Kingston Pierce, our man on the scene, gives us the winners of this year’s Anthony Awards, pretty much as they happened.

Here are the winners and all of the nominees:

Best Novel: Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Also nominated: I’d Know You Anywhere, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Morrow); The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur); Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking)

Best First Novel: Damage Done, by Hilary Davidson (Forge)

Also nominated: Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge); The Poacher’s Son, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur); Snow Angels, by James Thompson (Putnam); and The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore (Twelve)

Best Paperback Original: Expiration Date, by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur)

Also nominated: The Hanging Tree, by Brian Gruley (Touchstone); Drive Time, by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Mira); Long Time Coming, by Robert Goddard (Bantam); and Vienna Secrets, by Frank Tallis (Random House)

Best Short Story: “Swing Shift,” by Dana Cameron (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley)

Also nominated: “The Frame Maker,” by Simon Wood (The Back Alley); “Homeless,” by Pat L. Morin (from Mystery Montage; Top); “Scent of Lilacs,” by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010; “The Hitter,” by Chris Holm (Needle); and “So Much in Common,” by Mary Jane Maffini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2010

Best Graphic Novel: The Chill, by Jason Starr (Vertigo Crime)

Also nominated: A Sickness in the Family, by Denise Mina (Vertigo Crime); Beasts of Burden, by Jill Thompson and Evan Dorkin (Dark Horse); Richard Stark’s Parker, Vol. 2: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke (IDW); Scalped Vol. 6: The Gnawing, by Jason Aaron (Vertigo); and Tumor, by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon (Archaia Studios Press)

Best Critical/Non-Fiction: Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (Harper)

Also nominated: Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner (Oceanview Publishing); Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder (Wiley/For Dummies): The Wire: Truth Be Told, by Rafael Alvarez (Grove Press); and Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)

Best Web Site/Blog: Stop, You’re Killing Me!, edited by Stan Ulrich and Lucinda Surber

Also nominated: Jen’s Book Thoughts, edited by Jen Forbus; The Rap Sheet, edited by J. Kingston Pierce; The Sirens of Suspense, edited by Chantelle Aimée Osman; and Spinetingler Magazine, edited by Sandra Ruttan

David Thompson Special Services Award: Ali Karim

Congratulations to all the winners!

Insider Track

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor Ali Karim reviews the book known as Spycatcher in the United States and Spartan in the UK. Says Karim:

There can be no doubt that the man who composed this novel is someone who has survived residency in the realm of modern espionage. Novels by people only claiming an inside track just try too hard. Dunn gives the reader the sense of being on the Titanic and seeing the fatal iceberg emerging from the ocean mist ahead. Only the tip of that behemoth is visible, but you know that you’re sailing inexorably toward a beast, and that the real horrors remain hidden. Dunn’s story focuses on to the uncertainty of fear, and the matter-of-fact brutality that people in the intelligence game witness. Through the eyes of his characters we follow that brutal path. What we see and feel is not pleasant, but at times the recoil of catharsis in such a random world seems comforting.

The full review is here.

Baldacci and the Nature of the Thrill

In a far-ranging profile of bestselling author David Baldacci (Absolute Power, First Family), published in the March 30 edition of Newsweek, writer Louisa Thomas muses on what makes thrillers so darn ... thrilling:

What makes a thriller work is a million-dollar question, but why they matter is more than an economic concern. Baldacci’s prose might be clumsy (a typical Baldacci line: “As with scissors, one should avoid running with a loaded gun while the safety was off”), but if anyone could do it, more people would. On the most basic level, a thriller works if it can persuade the reader to turn the pages as fast as possible. The easiest way to get someone to keep reading is to withhold information expertly, but a blockbuster has to offer more than just suspense.

What Baldacci offers, Thomas suggests, is the whole package:

Like other thriller writers, Baldacci depends on a mixture of inventive plotting, appealing characters, luck and consistency. Unlike others, his books rely more on characters’ relationships than whiz-bang technology or procedural twists. Baldacci is more likely to set a scene in the Washington suburbs than a submarine (though any thriller worth its name has a decent armory), and the courtroom is rarely the site for drama (though, as a former lawyer, Baldacci usually includes a little law and order). What he offers is in some ways more unusual.

Although the article covers a lot of personal and professional ground, I really like this image of Baldacci at home:

Baldacci clearly has an ambivalent relationship to his wealth. His house is huge and his Reston office is well appointed -- the enormous wooden conference table is polished to a shine; the library furniture is soft and deep. (“I always wanted a room like this,” he says as he looks around the library, his tone more surprised than satisfied.)

Thomas’ piece can be found online right here. One of the things Baldacci talks about with her is his literacy foundation, which he established with his wife, Michelle. Information on that Wish You Well Foundation is here.

Bullet Points: The Carnaval Edition

While the annual Carnaval celebration roars into being in Brazil, complete with its body-painted queen, the rest of us--pasty-white and in no shape to go parading about thoroughfares in our all-togethers--must content ourselves with watching the 81st annual Academy Awards presentation. And maybe ordering in a pizza. And nosing around the blogosphere for crime-fiction news. To wit:

• Bill Crider brings us the sad news that novelist John Alfred “Jack” Webb (no, not the same Jack Webb who brought us Dragnet) has died at age 92. During the 1950s and ’60s, Webb wrote mysteries featuring the crime-solving pair of Father Joseph Shanley and Sammy Golden. The former was a Catholic priest in Southern California, the latter a Jewish detective-sergeant working with what was apparently the Los Angeles Police Department’s Homicide Division. Among Webb’s titles: The Big Sin (1952), The Damned Lovely (1954), The Brass Halo (1957), and One for My Dame (1961).

• Notice of another death in the crime-fiction community comes from Jiro Kimura’s The Gumshoe Site. He reports that Charles “Chuck” Crayne, “one of the founders of Bouchercon and a co-chairman (with Bruce Pelz) of the first Bouchercon, which was held during Memorial Day weekend in 1970 at the Royal Inn in Santa Monica, California,” died on February 16 of cardiac arrest in Willits, California. Crayne was 71 years old.

• Oline H. Cogdill, who for many years has written about crime and mystery fiction for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, today begins penning twice-weekly posts for the Mystery Scene magazine blog. “As I do for the Sun-Sentinel, I’ll be writing about a variety of subjects, mystery fiction, for sure, but also movies, DVDs, publishing trends, etc.,” she told subscribers to the listserv DorothyL. “The plan is to update the Mystery Scene blog each Sunday and Wednesday, though I may add a bonus or two when the mood strikes.” This is good news indeed, since that particular blog has been updated with disappointing infrequency since its inception in the summer of 2007. Even sadder has been the moribund state of the magazine’s companion blog, Brian Skupin’s Bookflings, which hasn’t offered new material since June 17 of last year.

• How can you not read a story that’s headlined “James Patterson: Evil Genius?” Picking up on a news item, blogger and fictionist Declan Burke reports that “Best-selling crime author James Patterson will release a new kind of novel next month--one that’s been collaboratively written with the crowd. Called Airborne, the upcoming novel will feature 30 chapters, each written by a different author except the first and last--those will be written by Patterson himself. With the release of this book, it appears the Web 2.0 movement of collaborative writing is about to hit the mainstream.” Is this good news? It’s hard to know, really ...

• As somebody with a longtime fondness for the works of author Alistair MacLean, once one of the world’s biggest-selling thriller writers, I am delighted to see Gravetapping’s Ben Boulden having collected five trailers for films made from MacLean’s books: The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Breakheart Pass, and Bear Island. Watch these in between Oscar-night shots of Marisa Tomei, Frank Langella, Anne Hathaway, and Josh Brolin.

• Speaking of the Oscars, celebrity Joan Rivers and her co-author, Los Angeles mystery author Jerilyn Farmer (The Flaming Luau of Death), imagine those glitzy goings-on with more crime than camaraderie in Murder at the Academy Awards.

• Devil on Two Sticks. How is that not the perfect book title?

• Linda L. Richards imagines the casting choices for a movie version of her first Kitty Pangborn mystery, Death Was the Other Woman (2008). Although I might prefer How I Met Your Mother’s Alyson Hannigan in the redheaded Kitty role, I can definitely see Russell Crowe as the besotted but still able Los Angeles private eye, Dexter J. Theroux. Now, would somebody just please make this film?

• British blogger-critic Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) has been posting a multi-part interview with Hawaii resident Rebecca Cantrell, author of the historical crime novel A Trace of Smoke, which is due out from Forge Books in May. Cantrell answers Robinson’s questions about her book, which is set in Berlin in 1931, here, here, and here, with more of their exchange to come. Fine stuff. UPDATE: The fourth and final installment of Robinson’s discussion with Cantrell can be read here.

• Crimespree editors and Bouchercon organizers Jon and Ruth Jordan win star treatment in the Chicago Tribune.

• The Irish Times investigates the explosion in crime fiction turned out by its homeland’s resident novelists. “There was a time when Irish writers of the criminal persuasion were rarer than root canal work on a hen,” writes Arminta Wallace. “Over the past decade, however, Irish crime fiction has emerged as a self-assured genre whose practitioners are not just selling well at home, but are also gaining recognition on the murderously competitive international crime scene.” The full story can be found here.

• After his splendid post last week about the U.S. TV shows that debuted in the fall of 1971, Saskatchewan writer Brent McKee follows up with another post that addresses questions readers have raised, and even features a bonus double-shot of theme music from Henry Mancini. Personally, I’m looking forward to McKee’s future comments about the 1972-1973 TV season, which he says will include “some rather interesting thoughts on Hec Ramsey.”

• Thinking of Hec Ramsey brings back memories of other NBC Sunday Mystery Movie segments, including Dennis Weaver’s McCloud.

• And though it took longer to write than I had expected, I’m rather pleased with my latest post at the Killer Covers blog. It covers the work of Frank Kane, an alcohol-industry promoter and the creator of New York City private eye Johnny Liddell (Grave Danger, 1954). Check it out when you find a bit of free time.

Keep It Brief

• January Magazine is up today with an excerpt from Death Was the Other Woman, the fourth and latest novel by its editor, Linda L. Richards. Since Richards is also a contributor to The Rap Sheet, and a friend of mine, I should stay away from offering a review of this new work, the first in a series set in 1930s Los Angeles. But I will say that the story, which focuses primarily on Kitty Pangborn, the daughter of a deceased industrialist who’s had to make her own way in the world--by going to work for a tough-talking, liberally imbibing private eye, Dexter J. Theroux--is a delightful homage to classic hard-boiled P.I. yarns. Apparently, the character of Kitty was inspired by Effie Perrine, gumshoe Sam Spade’s faithful secretary in The Maltese Falcon, who Richards reasoned must have had more active role in keeping Spade’s business affairs going, since her boss seemed always to be hitting the bottle and skirts hard. Richards is already working on a sequel, having something to do with film censorship in the pre-World War II years. Find the book excerpt here.

• By the way, Richards is also guest-blogging this week at fellow novelist Clea Simon’s Cats & Crime & Rock & Roll. In her first post, she reveals the super-secret source of Dexter Theroux’s first name. You’ll never guess ...

• Tennessee author James E. Cherry, whose debut novel, Shadow of Light, is already out in the UK (though a U.S. edition won’t be released till June) sits for a Pulp Pusher interview that touches on his spiritual awakening, the risk of his being pigeonholed as a black writer, and his labors as a poet. Click here for the full exchange.

• The sixth edition of The Outpost, editor Damien Gay’s quarterly Webzine of Australian crime and mystery short stories, has been posted. Gay promises stories about “the dangerous cut-throat underworld of the flower industry, an ingenious, very convoluted bank robbery attempt, a neighbourly dispute that began with an overhanging tree branch (they never end well), some Op Shop action, one crazy ole artist, a police procedural investigation into a brutal assault that develops into a much deeper mystery, an almighty murder trial, and a lesson ... about the dangers of making rash assumptions.” Submissions for Issue #8 are due by July 10, 2008.

• After posting a 13-part collection of “favorite books of 2007” lists, blogger-critic David J. Montgomery has compiled the results of his very informal survey. The four books chosen most often by the authors and others he asked to contribute: The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke; What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman; Bad Luck and Trouble, by Lee Child; and The Shotgun Rule, by Charlie Huston. Read more here.

• Asked recently to name his favorite Golden Age mysteries, Washington Post Book World columnist and reviewer Michael Dirda offered up 10 titles, including Trent’s Last Case, by E.C. Bentley; The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen; and Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers. B.V. Lawson of In Reference to Murder has Dirda’s whole rundown here.

• Finally, we warned you in October that the British Royal Mail would be issuing James Bond commemorative stamps this year, in association with the centenary of author Ian Fleming’s birth in 1908. And now those stamps have finally gone on sale. (Hat tip to Steve Lewis and Mystery*File.)

By the Sweat of Her Brow

Inkspot, the Midnight Ink author’s blog, today offers up a great interview with Donna Andrews (The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, No Nest for the Wicket). Though Andrews is not a Midnight Ink author, interviewer G.M. Malliet is, or rather will be: Death of a Cozy Writer--winner of a Malice Domestic grant--will be published July 2008. Look for Death and the Lit Chick in April 2009.

Among other things in the interview, Andrews talks about the role of hard work and perseverance required on the path to becoming a published mystery author:

I suspect many people groan when I talk about writing in terms of professionalism and discipline--I think they expect to hear novelists talk about inspiration and creativity. Well, yes, those are important--but they’re a lot easier to come by. All too often, the difference between an aspiring writer and a successful, published one isn’t a matter of inspiration and creativity--a lot of people are creative and get great ideas for books. I’ve read a statistic that only ten percent of people who begin a novel actually persevere to complete it, so anyone who has a finished manuscript is already in the minority. And an even smaller number of people, after finishing their draft, do the revising needed to turn it into a really good book, and then do the research required to learn about the publishing industry and persevere through what can be a long and grueling quest to land a good agent and a contract with an established publisher.

Part one of the interview is here. The date for part two hasn’t been announced.

Galley Kitty Moves On

Since 2005, Sarah Weinman’s idiosyncratic voice has reverberated through Galley Cat, the self-proclaimed “first word on the book publishing industry.”

Last Wednesday, though, Weinman announced that she was leaving the galley to editor Ron Hogan in order to pursue other interests:

In other words: after two years, thousands of posts, scores of parties and readership that's more than quadrupled since Ron and I took over GalleyCat in October 2005, it's time to see what's out there beyond the publishing industry's idiosyncratic, mercurial and fascinating borders.

Weinman, who is a January Magazine contributing editor, will continue to helm her own blog and contribute columns to the Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun. In addition, she plans to “spend more time on neglected matters: fiction-writing, my own crime fiction-centric site, or making some use of that forensic science degree after all.”

Good luck, Sarah! We’ll be watching you.

Listen, Shamus, Don’t Come Knocking Down My Homeroom Door

I recently had the chance to see a film that should interest crime-fiction enthusiasts on a couple of levels.

Brick, from 2005, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, and a whole lot of other people you’ve probably never heard of. (Aside from Richard Roundtree, who you almost don’t recognize as a high school vice-principal.)

If Raymond Chandler and Stanley Kubrick had met in high school and decided to make a movie together, Brick is the film they would have crafted. Kubrick for scenes that are distantly beautiful and carefully choreographed, Chandler for dialogue you would have thought it was impossible to duplicate, even in spirit.

Of course, neither Chandler nor Kubrick put a word or an image in here. Writer-director Rian Johnson is guilty on both counts. Guilty enough that CHUD.com said that Johnson’s “debut film, Brick, is impossibly assured and great filmmaking, especially when you consider how easy it would have been to fuck up-–the movie is essentially a hard-boiled noir set in a Southern California high school, where the teens talk like they’ve got Mickey Spillane in their DNA.”

CHUD tells us that Johnson, a University of Southern California film school grad (class of 1996) had originally written Brick as a novella, but then turned it into a screenplay. You can download both the shooting script and the original novella for free from Johnson’s Web site.

The story is classic, classic noir--more Chandler or Hammett than Spillane, truth be told. There were moments I felt I’d read what I was watching. The Little Sister? I asked myself. Red Harvest? Elements of both or all, but it ends up being all Johnson, inspiration having been provided in the best possible way: as a boost to originality.

But the story: there are drugs involved and cash and gangsters. It’s set in a contemporary high school, but the kids don’t talk like kids. At all. They talk the film noir speak popularized in the 1930s and ’40s. And the dialect, the nuances, and inflections are all dead-on. It’s a little unnerving, at first. (As is the hauntingly beautiful visual storytelling.) But you pick up the rhythm after a while. You settle in to a familiar world, re-imagined; a world where you keep your back to the light, where dames are dangerous and you’ll do just about anything to prevent the bulls from knocking on your homeroom door.

If this sounds like a lark, I’ve not told it well. Brick is dark and gritty and the only laughs seen are issued with a sneer. The film is rated R for violence and drug-related stuff and is available now on DVD.

Hugh Is in the House

Most of the mystery fiction lovers I’ve talked with just can’t seem to get enough of the TV series House, which features an acerbic diagnostician played with a flawless mid-Atlantic American accent by Golden Globe-winning British performer Hugh Laurie.

Although House is a medical drama, the series’ creator and executive producer, Canadian David Shore (Law & Order, Due South), has said it’s no coincidence that the mystery elements of House are so compelling. One reason is that the character of Dr. Gregory House was inspired in part by that original party sleuth and fellow drug user, Sherlock Holmes. As well, Shore’s intention with this Tuesday night FOX-TV series was that it be a detection show, like CSI, but one in which “germs were the suspects.”

While Shore has stayed true to that goal, he’s also allowed the personal characteristics of his show’s principal players to develop. Lisa Edelstein, as New Jersey hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy, is officious and prickly, yet retains a passion for medicine. Lovely Jennifer Morrison is self-righteous as Dr. Allison Cameron, Omar Epps shows his hotshot stripes as Dr. Eric Foreman, and Robert Sean and Jesse Spencer come off as totally believable in their respective roles as House’s best (and perhaps only) friend and a hot young Australian doctor. In season two, guest stars included Sela Ward (as House’s ex-wife), Ron Livingston, LL Cool J, and Cynthia Nixon.

But as talented as the cast and guest stars may be, the show’s growing fanbase tunes in week after week for Laurie’s occasionally obnoxious, damaged, but endearing Dr. Gregory House, who complains freely about his “nine to three” job, lacks the social skills to maintain a relationship, and whose constant pain from an injury he sustained prior to the show’s premiere gives the character’s lack of patience with his patients the roots to make it all believable.

With House we have a young show--season three is set to premiere on September 5--that was spot-on coming out of the box. The writing, under Shore’s direction, is sharp and witty, the characters well thought out and developed, and the acting ... well, I’m a fan, but I can’t help but think it was tough to go wrong with Hugh Laurie. He’s come a long (long, long, long) way from his Blackadder days or even his time with the Cambridge Footlights, where he met--and for a while dated--Emma Thompson. Thompson later cast him in her 1995 production of Sense and Sensibility and was once quoted as calling Laurie “one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel.”

If you’ve not yet taken the House plunge, season two of the series goes on sale on DVD August 22. The six-disc collection features all 24 episodes from the second season and includes some bonus material, including Valley Girl versions of a couple of key scenes.