• If you’re lucky enough to be roaming the streets of London, England, on February 13, you will want to stop by the Victoria Library for this public discussion on historical crime and thriller fiction. One of the three speakers will be Shots columnist and author Mike Ripley.
• And on Tuesday, January 15--the 66th anniversary of the gruesome discovery, in Los Angeles, that gave birth to the durable Black Dahlia murder mystery--British crime-fiction scholar Steven Powell is scheduled to deliver an address in London titled “I Never Knew Her in Life: Cultural Depictions of the Black Dahlia Case.” That event will take place at St. Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum from 7 to 8:30p.m. Rap Sheet readers will remember Powell as the editor of both last year’s must-have resource, 100 American Crime Writers, and of Conversations with James Ellroy.
• The Private Eye Writers of America has announced that it will introduce a new category of Shamus Award in 2013, for the Best Indie P.I. Novel. PWA honchos have “decided it’s time to open the organization to self-published works as the category now includes many established authors who, for one reason or another, have decided to publish their own work.”
• Just when you thought you were done reading “best crime fiction of 2012” compilations, here come a few more. Spinetingler Magazine critics weigh in on the subject here. Jen Forbus has her say here. Ransom Notes’ Jedidiah Ayres presents his 10 “flat-out favorite novels of 2012” here.
The Boston Globe’s Hallie Ephron offers up another
10 remarkable works, at the same time as Elizabeth A. White chooses 10
still different books (two of them by Chris F. Holm) here. John Kenyon’s list in Grift Magazine overlaps with some previous ones, while Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine expresses his own opinions here. In The House of Crime and Mystery, Jacques Filippi shares the results of his blog’s first Readers’ Choice Awards in the genre. Naomi Johnson honors more memorable books with the 2012 Lowhead Dam Awards. Kerrie Smith names her dozen favorite reads of last year, two of which come from her native Australia. At the Scene of the Crime’s Patrick Ohl offers a rundown of his top vintage-novel reads from the past 12 months, while blogger “dfordoom” tackles the same task here, and “TracyK” rolls out her first list of this sort in Bitter Tea and Mystery. The splendidly designated blog Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased catalogues
its favorites in both the mystery-fiction and science-fiction fields, and adds
a handful of “least-favorites” for balance. William I. Lengeman III takes his
own broader approach, making note of the crime-fiction books and films he liked best in 2012. Patti Abbott has a similarly wide-ranging list here. Finally, author James Reasoner--who says he “read 112 books this year”--mixes mysteries, thrillers, and Westerns in his
“favorites” post.
• Going beyond the bounds of those previous rundowns ... Sandra Seamans points out her 10 favorite crime short stories debuting online. Max Allan Collins tips his hat to his favorite and least favorite films of 2012. And David Abrams has posted what he’s convinced are the best opening lines of last year.
• I have found a new source for old TV shows and films.
• Seriously? Hawaii Five-O is planning a choose-your-own-ending episode? It may be a first for a prime-time TV series, but who cares. I’d rather see this show develop more depth in its storytelling and character development. These gimmicks just make me glad I stopped watching the H5-0 reboot midway through its first season.
• Congratulations are owed to The New York Review of Books.
That fortnightly publication will turn 50 years old in February 2013.
• I’m pleased to see that Open Road Integrated Media is finally bringing back into circulation the “gritty, urban” police procedurals concocted by Dorothy Uhnak, who died
in 2006. It is only too bad that those books, including the Christie Opara
trilogy--which inspired the 1974-1975 TV series Get Christie Love! (see here and here)--will be available only as e-books, not in printed form.
• A lengthy excerpt in Salon shows us what to expect from Kinsey and Me: Stories, Sue Grafton’s collection of
tales--due for release in the States this coming Tuesday--that reveal Kinsey [Millhone]’s origins and Sue’s past.” It’s only odd that this 30th anniversary work didn’t come out last year; after all, Grafton’s initial Kinsey novel, “A” Is for Alibi, was published in 1982.
• The third Kindle edition of ThugLit, which began
as a free online crime-fiction publication, is now available for $0.99.
• Expect a James Bond tribute during next month’s Oscars show.
• Ben Boulden celebrates two newly released novellas starring Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective, both of which feature outstanding cover illustrations by Glen Orbik.
• Travel + Leisure’s list of “America’s
Best Bookstores” might just as easily have been headlined “America’s Already
Best-Known Bookstores.” I’ve visited the majority of these establishments at
one time or another, and am not surprised to see any of them included here. But wouldn’t a more novel conception for the article have been nice? Personally, I’d have preferred to hear about great American bookshops that haven’t been so frequently publicized and that aren’t usually included in travelers’ itineraries. Such a focus might have had the added benefit of helping smaller but no less interesting book dealers stay in business. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
• Continuing a theme: the world’s most beautiful bookstores.
• Criminal Element looks back at “crime-solving couples of yesteryear,” among them Agatha Christie’s Thomas and Prudence Beresford, and Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers and Oscar Piper.
• Via Facebook comes news that writer Christopher Mills and artist Rick Burchett will re-launch their hard-boiled comic series Gravedigger
on the Web, beginning on February 4. Writes Mills: “We’ll be posting a page a week every Monday, starting with the original Gravedigger story, ‘The Scavengers’ (which hasn't been seen online or in print for years), and then serializing the new one ... ‘The Predators.’” He promises to announce the series’ Web address “when we get closer to the launch.” So far, Mills is using only a single, deliberately provocative image to promote this project--an illustration that reminds me of some book covers I’ve written about on this page before.
• Speaking of comics, did you ever expect to see a graphic novel featuring both monster hunter Carl Kolchak and curvaceous private eye Honey West? Yeah, I didn’t either. However, someone at Moonstone Books saw the potential in that match-up.
• Don Medford, a resourceful TV director whose credits included the pilot for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Vulcan Affair”) and the last, two-part episode of The Fugitive, died on December 12 in West Hills, California. He was 95 years old. A check through the International Movie Database (IMDb) finds that Medford also directed episodes of M Squad, The Streets of San Francisco, The F.B.I., City of Angels, Baretta, and Dynasty. (Hat tip to The HMSS Weblog.)
• Cheers to five years of Mysteries in Paradise.
• Alternet editors have published a list of the “12 most despicable things Fox News did in 2012,” but something tells me they started with way more than a dozen, and had to pare it down.
• Fans of the Martin Beck police procedurals, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, will want to check out Sarah Ward’s growing catalogue of posts about that early Swedish detective series in Crimepieces.
• I’d never heard of the 1980 TV episonage-show pilot S*H*E until today, but it boasted a cool, James Bond-ish promotional poster painted by Robert McGinnis, who also produced the early promo art for the 007 pictures. Click here to learn more about this film starring Cornelia Sharpe, Omar Sharif, and Robert Lansing; and at least for the time being, you can watch the whole cheesy thing online here.
• And though it has nothing to do with mystery or thriller fiction, I want to remind all those Downton Abbey fans out there among my American readership that the historical drama’s third season premieres
tonight on PBS-TV stations. Having watched this latest round of episodes already (thanks
to a wonderful source), I can tell you that there’s much to expect in the
way of surprises--both favorable and disappointing. Just don’t expect everyone
who deserves his or her comeuppance to receive it.
Showing posts with label Obits 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obits 2012. Show all posts
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Remembering Those We Left Behind
Before we move too deep into this bright new year, I just want to take a moment to recognize a few of the people--all of them somehow important in creating or contributing to contemporary crime fiction--whom we lost to the Grim Reaper in 2012.
Jacques Barzun, 104, a French-born American historian and literary critic who, among his other accomplishments, co-authored (with Wendell Hertig Taylor) a “magisterial critique of crime fiction,” 1971’s A Catalogue of Crime. In 1996 the Mystery Writers of America gave Barzun its Ellery Queen Award, which honors “writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.”
Ray Bradbury, 91, who was most justly renowned for penning science-fiction classics on the order of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but who dabbled as well in the mystery-storytelling field, producing Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002).
Maxine Clarke, 58, an editor of the British scientific journal Nature, an expert on Scandinavian crime fiction, and the author of the excellent blog Petrona. She died after what’s been described as a “lengthy” battle with cancer.
Hal David, 91, a music writer who “contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies” and became especially famous for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach. Among his best-recognized works is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which figured into the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Henry Denker, 99, an American lawyer, playwright, and novelist who composed more than 30 novels in a variety of genres, including the legal thrillers Outrage (1982) and Labyrinth (1994).
Phyllis Diller, 95, the wild-haired American comedienne who, according to TheGumshoe Site, not only “wrote four best-selling funny books, including Housekeeping Hints and The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them,” but also “8 short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, whose [June] 1990 issue featured her on its cover.”
James D. Doss, 73, a former electrical engineer in New Mexico, who produced 17 mysteries (most recently, The Old Gray Wolf) featuring Colorado rancher and sometime tribal investigator Charlie Moon.
Robert Dozier, 81, a film and television writer whose numerous credits included episodes of Have Gun--Will Travel, Dan August, Batman, Harry O, and The Devlin Connection.
Charles Durning, 89, a prolific, New York-born actor who appeared in such movies as Breakheart Pass (based on Alistair MacLean’s novel of the same name), True Confessions, The Rosary Murders, V.I. Warshawski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? In addition, Durning was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his appearance in a 1998 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street titled “Finnegan’s Wake.”
Biff Elliot, 89, the first actor to portray New York gumshoe Mike Hammer in the movies, specifically in 1953’s I, the Jury.
James Farentino, 73, who played lawyer Neil Darrell for three years (1968-1972) on The Bold Ones before taking the lead as spy-turned-private eye Jefferson Keyes in Cool Million (1972), a short-lived component of the original NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. Farentino later starred in the much-hyped high-tech helicopter drama Blue Thunder, a spinoff from Roy Scheider’s 1983 film of the same name.
Sally Fellowes, 77, an enthusiastic mystery-fiction reader and reviewer, retired history teacher and coordinator of the Mayhem in the Midlands convention.
Norman Felton, 99, a British-born writer-director who produced a number of early television series, including Dr. Kildare, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the latter’s less-successful spinoff series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. starring Stefanie Powers.
Charles E. Fritch, 85, an author of science-fiction and mystery yarns, and the onetime editor (1979-1985) of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. William F. Nolan posted a fine tribute to Fritch here.
Ben Gazzara, 81, who starred with Chuck Connors in a short-lived 1960s ABC-TV series called Arrest and Trial, before starring in the NBC drama Run for Your Life, playing a lawyer who’s informed that he has no more than 18 more months to live, and so embarks on a cross-country journey, trying to make the most of whatever time he has remaining. Gazzara also directed two episodes of the NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo in the mid-’70s.
Dorothy Gilman, 88, creator of the long-running Mrs. (Emily) Pollifax mystery series. In 2010, Gilman received the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award.
William F. “Bill” Granger, 70, a veteran Chicago newspaper reporter and columnist who, in his spare time, composed political thrillers such as The November Man (1979), Hemingway’s Notebook (1985), and Burning the Apostle (1993).
Andy Griffith, 86, best known for starring in two very different small-screen series, a half-hour sitcom called The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968) and the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995). Griffith said at least once that Ben Matlock was his favorite role. (Some of his less-well-recalled roles are highlighted here.)
Larry Hagman, 81, an American actor who’s undoubtedly best recognized for his starring roles in the TV series I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas, but who also appeared in myriad boob-tube crime dramas over the years, from The Name of the Game and Ellery Queen to McMillan & Wife and Barnaby Jones.
Marvin Hamlisch, 68, the American composer--winner of the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, as well as a Pulitzer Prize--fondly remembered for giving us the music for motion pictures such as The Sting, The Way We Were, and Sophie’s Choice. Hamlisch also co-wrote (with Carole Bayer Sager) the song “Nobody Does It Better” for the 1977 James Bond flick, The Spy Who Loved Me, and he created the theme music for TV series such as Needles and Pins and Doc Elliot. Hamlisch also left us with the haunting, hum-able theme for the 1974 teleflick The Underground Man, which was the pilot for a series starring Peter Graves as Ross Macdonald’s fictional P.I., Lew Archer.
Reginald Hill, 75, an English crime writer who created the Yorkshire-based detective team of Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe in 1970’s A Clubbable Woman, and then continued exploring those characters’ lives and cases in more than 20 more books penned over the next four decades. The novels inspired a successful BBC-TV series (1996-2007). Hill picked up the Crime Writers Association’s Golden Dagger in 1990 for Bones and Silence, and scored the CWA’s Diamond Dagger for his body of work in 1995.
Ed Kaufman, 82, a once-prominent corporate finance attorney who, in 1996, founded San Mateo, California’s “M” Is for Mystery ... and More bookstore. Under his management, that Third Avenue shop became a regular stop for touring authors and a popular resource for Silicon Valley crime-fiction fans. But Kaufman retired in late 2011, and “M” Is for Mystery was sold; it reopened in 2012 as Otter Books. The Mystery Writers of America gave Kaufman a Raven Award last year for outstanding achievement in the mystery-fiction field outside the realm of creative writing. The San Francisco Chronicle reported his cause of death as complications of kidney disease.
Jack Klugman, 90, who played Dr. R. Quincy in the classic NBC-TV crime drama Quincy, M.E., and before that, co-starred with Tony Randall in the sitcom The Odd Couple. Employing his celebrity to good advantage, Klugman also “played an instrumental role in passing critical health-care legislation, the Orphan Drug Act, through Congress in the early 1980s,” recalled The Washington Post.
Margaret Lawrence (aka Lorrain “Margaret” Keilstrup), 66, who composed three midwife Hannah Trevor historical novels, starting with Hearts and Bones in 1996.
Judi McCoy, 62, author of the Dog Walker Mystery series and assorted other novels. A newspaper obituary explains that this Virginia resident’s 2010 novel, Death in Show, won the Romantic Times Most Humorous Mystery award.
George Murdock, 81, a Kansas-born actor with an enviably extensive résumé of television credits, including appearances on Banyon, Ironside, The Magician, McCloud, Harry O, Police Story, and The Rockford Files. In addition, Murdock had recurring roles as Lieutenant Ben Scanlon on Barney Miller and as a harried insurance company executive on Banacek.
Cliff Osmond, 75, an American character actor whose big ugly mug will be recognizable, even if his name isn’t. As Terence Towles Canote recalls in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, Osmond “appeared in such films as Sweet Sugar (1972), Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), The Front Page (1974), Sharks’ Treasure (1975), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), and Hangar 81 (1980).” Osmond also did guest shots on 77 Sunset Strip, It Takes a Thief, The Mod Squad, Kojak, McMillan & Wife, Matt Houston, and other small-screen crime dramas.
Charles “Skip” Pitts, 65, a Memphis soul and blues guitarist. As the Los Angeles Times recounts, Pitts “helped create the distinctive sound of Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme from Shaft.’ ... Pitts’ riff was angry and bristling with menace, capturing a dangerous vibe that transcended the screen and translated to the streets of a tense nation.” (To learn more about the novel and film Shaft, click here.)
Jerome Ross, 101, a screenwriter whose credits included episodes of The Untouchables, The Defenders, Arrest and Trial, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, and Young Maverick.
Jeff Sherratt, 70, a Southern California businessman who wrote four works of mystery fiction featuring Los Angeles cop-turned-defense attorney Jimmy O’Brien, including last year’s Detour to Murder.
Donald J. Sobol, 87, an American author of children’s books who was best known for writing the Encyclopedia Brown mystery series.
Paul Sussman, 44, an English author and archaeologist who, according to The Gumshoe Site, wrote his “first novel, The Lost Army of Cabyses (Transworld, 2002), featuring Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police in Egypt, in 2002, and Khalifa returns in The Last Secret of the Temple (Transworld, 2005). The third novel was a one-off (or standalone in [the] U.S.), The Hidden Oasis (Bantam Press, 2009). His last one is a Khalifa novel, TheLabyrinth of Osiris, to be out in July [2012] from Bantam Press.”
Gore Vidal, 86, who in addition to composing such unforgettable works of historical fiction as Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), also concocted a trio of mystery novels in the 1950s under the pseudonym Edgar Box (Death Before Bedtime, Death in the Fifth Position, and Death Likes It Hot). On top of his being an author, Vidal was known as a spirited raconteur and as a sharp observer of contemporary society.
Robert Wade, 92, who with his high-school friend, Bill Miller, produced dozens of crime and mystery novels under the joint pseudonym Wade Miller, including half a dozen featuring San Diego, California, private eye Max Thursday. In 1988, the Private Eye Writers of America gave Wade The Eye, its lifetime achievement award.
Nicol Williamson, 75, who I remember best for his role as a cocaine-addled Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a 1976 film adapted from Nicholas Meyer’s 1974 novel of that same name.
William Windom, 88, an actor I first recall seeing in the 1969-1970 NBC sitcom My World and Welcome to It. (He won an Emmy Award for that role.) Windom had previously played a prosecutor in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He went on to deliver a powerful performance as the captain of a destroyed starship in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine,” and later guest-starred in installments of Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, Banacek, and other series. He had a regular role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt on Murder, She Wrote.
Margaret Yorke, 88, an English crime novelist who penned more than 40 books, five of them starring her Oxford Don sleuth, Dr. Patrick Grant. Yorke once chaired Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), and she won the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1999.
So, who have I forgotten in this year-end accounting? Please feel free to suggest additions in the Comments section of this post.
Jacques Barzun, 104, a French-born American historian and literary critic who, among his other accomplishments, co-authored (with Wendell Hertig Taylor) a “magisterial critique of crime fiction,” 1971’s A Catalogue of Crime. In 1996 the Mystery Writers of America gave Barzun its Ellery Queen Award, which honors “writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.”
Ray Bradbury, 91, who was most justly renowned for penning science-fiction classics on the order of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but who dabbled as well in the mystery-storytelling field, producing Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002).
Maxine Clarke, 58, an editor of the British scientific journal Nature, an expert on Scandinavian crime fiction, and the author of the excellent blog Petrona. She died after what’s been described as a “lengthy” battle with cancer.
Hal David, 91, a music writer who “contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies” and became especially famous for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach. Among his best-recognized works is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which figured into the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Henry Denker, 99, an American lawyer, playwright, and novelist who composed more than 30 novels in a variety of genres, including the legal thrillers Outrage (1982) and Labyrinth (1994).
Phyllis Diller, 95, the wild-haired American comedienne who, according to TheGumshoe Site, not only “wrote four best-selling funny books, including Housekeeping Hints and The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them,” but also “8 short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, whose [June] 1990 issue featured her on its cover.”
James D. Doss, 73, a former electrical engineer in New Mexico, who produced 17 mysteries (most recently, The Old Gray Wolf) featuring Colorado rancher and sometime tribal investigator Charlie Moon.
Robert Dozier, 81, a film and television writer whose numerous credits included episodes of Have Gun--Will Travel, Dan August, Batman, Harry O, and The Devlin Connection.
Charles Durning, 89, a prolific, New York-born actor who appeared in such movies as Breakheart Pass (based on Alistair MacLean’s novel of the same name), True Confessions, The Rosary Murders, V.I. Warshawski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? In addition, Durning was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his appearance in a 1998 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street titled “Finnegan’s Wake.”
Biff Elliot, 89, the first actor to portray New York gumshoe Mike Hammer in the movies, specifically in 1953’s I, the Jury.
James Farentino, 73, who played lawyer Neil Darrell for three years (1968-1972) on The Bold Ones before taking the lead as spy-turned-private eye Jefferson Keyes in Cool Million (1972), a short-lived component of the original NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. Farentino later starred in the much-hyped high-tech helicopter drama Blue Thunder, a spinoff from Roy Scheider’s 1983 film of the same name.
Sally Fellowes, 77, an enthusiastic mystery-fiction reader and reviewer, retired history teacher and coordinator of the Mayhem in the Midlands convention.
Norman Felton, 99, a British-born writer-director who produced a number of early television series, including Dr. Kildare, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the latter’s less-successful spinoff series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. starring Stefanie Powers.
Charles E. Fritch, 85, an author of science-fiction and mystery yarns, and the onetime editor (1979-1985) of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. William F. Nolan posted a fine tribute to Fritch here.
Ben Gazzara, 81, who starred with Chuck Connors in a short-lived 1960s ABC-TV series called Arrest and Trial, before starring in the NBC drama Run for Your Life, playing a lawyer who’s informed that he has no more than 18 more months to live, and so embarks on a cross-country journey, trying to make the most of whatever time he has remaining. Gazzara also directed two episodes of the NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo in the mid-’70s.
Dorothy Gilman, 88, creator of the long-running Mrs. (Emily) Pollifax mystery series. In 2010, Gilman received the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award.
William F. “Bill” Granger, 70, a veteran Chicago newspaper reporter and columnist who, in his spare time, composed political thrillers such as The November Man (1979), Hemingway’s Notebook (1985), and Burning the Apostle (1993).
Andy Griffith, 86, best known for starring in two very different small-screen series, a half-hour sitcom called The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968) and the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995). Griffith said at least once that Ben Matlock was his favorite role. (Some of his less-well-recalled roles are highlighted here.)
Larry Hagman, 81, an American actor who’s undoubtedly best recognized for his starring roles in the TV series I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas, but who also appeared in myriad boob-tube crime dramas over the years, from The Name of the Game and Ellery Queen to McMillan & Wife and Barnaby Jones.
Marvin Hamlisch, 68, the American composer--winner of the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, as well as a Pulitzer Prize--fondly remembered for giving us the music for motion pictures such as The Sting, The Way We Were, and Sophie’s Choice. Hamlisch also co-wrote (with Carole Bayer Sager) the song “Nobody Does It Better” for the 1977 James Bond flick, The Spy Who Loved Me, and he created the theme music for TV series such as Needles and Pins and Doc Elliot. Hamlisch also left us with the haunting, hum-able theme for the 1974 teleflick The Underground Man, which was the pilot for a series starring Peter Graves as Ross Macdonald’s fictional P.I., Lew Archer.
Reginald Hill, 75, an English crime writer who created the Yorkshire-based detective team of Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe in 1970’s A Clubbable Woman, and then continued exploring those characters’ lives and cases in more than 20 more books penned over the next four decades. The novels inspired a successful BBC-TV series (1996-2007). Hill picked up the Crime Writers Association’s Golden Dagger in 1990 for Bones and Silence, and scored the CWA’s Diamond Dagger for his body of work in 1995.
Ed Kaufman, 82, a once-prominent corporate finance attorney who, in 1996, founded San Mateo, California’s “M” Is for Mystery ... and More bookstore. Under his management, that Third Avenue shop became a regular stop for touring authors and a popular resource for Silicon Valley crime-fiction fans. But Kaufman retired in late 2011, and “M” Is for Mystery was sold; it reopened in 2012 as Otter Books. The Mystery Writers of America gave Kaufman a Raven Award last year for outstanding achievement in the mystery-fiction field outside the realm of creative writing. The San Francisco Chronicle reported his cause of death as complications of kidney disease.
Jack Klugman, 90, who played Dr. R. Quincy in the classic NBC-TV crime drama Quincy, M.E., and before that, co-starred with Tony Randall in the sitcom The Odd Couple. Employing his celebrity to good advantage, Klugman also “played an instrumental role in passing critical health-care legislation, the Orphan Drug Act, through Congress in the early 1980s,” recalled The Washington Post.
Margaret Lawrence (aka Lorrain “Margaret” Keilstrup), 66, who composed three midwife Hannah Trevor historical novels, starting with Hearts and Bones in 1996.
Judi McCoy, 62, author of the Dog Walker Mystery series and assorted other novels. A newspaper obituary explains that this Virginia resident’s 2010 novel, Death in Show, won the Romantic Times Most Humorous Mystery award.
George Murdock, 81, a Kansas-born actor with an enviably extensive résumé of television credits, including appearances on Banyon, Ironside, The Magician, McCloud, Harry O, Police Story, and The Rockford Files. In addition, Murdock had recurring roles as Lieutenant Ben Scanlon on Barney Miller and as a harried insurance company executive on Banacek.
Cliff Osmond, 75, an American character actor whose big ugly mug will be recognizable, even if his name isn’t. As Terence Towles Canote recalls in his blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, Osmond “appeared in such films as Sweet Sugar (1972), Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), The Front Page (1974), Sharks’ Treasure (1975), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), and Hangar 81 (1980).” Osmond also did guest shots on 77 Sunset Strip, It Takes a Thief, The Mod Squad, Kojak, McMillan & Wife, Matt Houston, and other small-screen crime dramas.
Charles “Skip” Pitts, 65, a Memphis soul and blues guitarist. As the Los Angeles Times recounts, Pitts “helped create the distinctive sound of Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme from Shaft.’ ... Pitts’ riff was angry and bristling with menace, capturing a dangerous vibe that transcended the screen and translated to the streets of a tense nation.” (To learn more about the novel and film Shaft, click here.)
Jerome Ross, 101, a screenwriter whose credits included episodes of The Untouchables, The Defenders, Arrest and Trial, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, and Young Maverick.
Jeff Sherratt, 70, a Southern California businessman who wrote four works of mystery fiction featuring Los Angeles cop-turned-defense attorney Jimmy O’Brien, including last year’s Detour to Murder.
Donald J. Sobol, 87, an American author of children’s books who was best known for writing the Encyclopedia Brown mystery series.
Paul Sussman, 44, an English author and archaeologist who, according to The Gumshoe Site, wrote his “first novel, The Lost Army of Cabyses (Transworld, 2002), featuring Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police in Egypt, in 2002, and Khalifa returns in The Last Secret of the Temple (Transworld, 2005). The third novel was a one-off (or standalone in [the] U.S.), The Hidden Oasis (Bantam Press, 2009). His last one is a Khalifa novel, TheLabyrinth of Osiris, to be out in July [2012] from Bantam Press.”
Gore Vidal, 86, who in addition to composing such unforgettable works of historical fiction as Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), also concocted a trio of mystery novels in the 1950s under the pseudonym Edgar Box (Death Before Bedtime, Death in the Fifth Position, and Death Likes It Hot). On top of his being an author, Vidal was known as a spirited raconteur and as a sharp observer of contemporary society.
Robert Wade, 92, who with his high-school friend, Bill Miller, produced dozens of crime and mystery novels under the joint pseudonym Wade Miller, including half a dozen featuring San Diego, California, private eye Max Thursday. In 1988, the Private Eye Writers of America gave Wade The Eye, its lifetime achievement award.
Nicol Williamson, 75, who I remember best for his role as a cocaine-addled Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a 1976 film adapted from Nicholas Meyer’s 1974 novel of that same name.
William Windom, 88, an actor I first recall seeing in the 1969-1970 NBC sitcom My World and Welcome to It. (He won an Emmy Award for that role.) Windom had previously played a prosecutor in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He went on to deliver a powerful performance as the captain of a destroyed starship in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine,” and later guest-starred in installments of Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, Banacek, and other series. He had a regular role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt on Murder, She Wrote.
Margaret Yorke, 88, an English crime novelist who penned more than 40 books, five of them starring her Oxford Don sleuth, Dr. Patrick Grant. Yorke once chaired Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), and she won the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1999.
So, who have I forgotten in this year-end accounting? Please feel free to suggest additions in the Comments section of this post.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Klugman and Durning Sign Off
I was very sorry to learn last evening that American actor Jack Klugman, who played
Dr. R. Quincy in the classic NBC-TV crime drama Quincy, M.E. (and before that,
co-starred with Tony Randall in the sitcom The Odd Couple) died Monday at age 90.
From the Associated Press obituary of Klugman:
Departing the stage yesterday as well was Charles Durning, who appeared in such films as Breakheart Pass (based on Alistair MacLean’s novel of the same name), True Confessions, The Rosary Murders, V.I. Warshawski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? In addition, Durning was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his appearance in an April 1998 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street titled “Finnegan’s Wake.” During was 89 years old.
READ MORE: “Jack Klugman: April 27, 1922-December 24, 2012,” by Jeremy Lynch (Crimespree Magazine); “Jack Klugman’s Secret, Lifesaving Legacy,” by Joshua Green (The Washington Post); “Appreciation: Jack Klugman Relatable as Oscar, Fervid as Quincy,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times); “Jack Klugman, R.I.P.,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “The Late, Great Jack Klugman” and “Charles Durning Passes On,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).
From the Associated Press obituary of Klugman:
In “Quincy, M.E.,” which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.Klugman also starred with Peter Graves in the underrated 1974 TV pilot The Underground Man, based on Ross Macdonald's 1971 novel.
“We had some wonderful writers,” he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. “Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.
“Everybody said, `Quincy’ll never be a hit.’ I said, `You guys are wrong. He’s two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.’ A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I’d gotten into the theater to do--give a message.
“They were going to do cops and robbers with `Quincy.’ I said, `You promised me I could do causes.’ They said, `Nobody wants to see that.’ I said, `Look at the success of “60 Minutes.” They want to see it if you present it as entertainment.’”
Departing the stage yesterday as well was Charles Durning, who appeared in such films as Breakheart Pass (based on Alistair MacLean’s novel of the same name), True Confessions, The Rosary Murders, V.I. Warshawski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? In addition, Durning was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his appearance in an April 1998 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street titled “Finnegan’s Wake.” During was 89 years old.
READ MORE: “Jack Klugman: April 27, 1922-December 24, 2012,” by Jeremy Lynch (Crimespree Magazine); “Jack Klugman’s Secret, Lifesaving Legacy,” by Joshua Green (The Washington Post); “Appreciation: Jack Klugman Relatable as Oscar, Fervid as Quincy,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times); “Jack Klugman, R.I.P.,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “The Late, Great Jack Klugman” and “Charles Durning Passes On,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Memories of Maxine
This isn’t the first time we have had to report the demise of a crime-fiction blogger; Elaine Flinn and our friend Dick Adler have both “gone to their rewards” over the last several years. But blogging still seems such a new phenomenon, it’s hard to imagine that people who have been engaged in the game can already be passing away.
Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) first brought us the sad news that Maxine Clarke, an editor of the British scientific journal Nature who also--over the last seven years--wrote the excellent blog Petrona, died yesterday after what’s being described as a “lengthy” battle with cancer. But online tributes have been rolling in ever since. Her friend Karen Meek of Euro Crime, to which Clarke often contributed “peerless” book critiques, describes her as “a fast reader” who, “even when ill could read and review a book I’d given her before I’d get back to Birmingham! I can’t imagine how many books have been bought as a result of her well-written reviews, and that is legacy worth leaving.” Norman Price of Crime Scraps Review adds: “She tempted so many inexperienced bloggers to dip their toe in the blogging water and then jump in with her helpful comments and encouragement, that we all owe Maxine a great debt of gratitude. Her own blog, Petrona, was a source of pleasure, excellent writing, valuable opinions, and a constant temptation to plagiarise.” Davies concludes her own post about Clarke’s death with these remarks: “Maxine was a true lover of crime fiction and a rock in the lives of many. It is so hard to believe she is no longer with us but she will always be remembered with love and respect, and for her massive achievements.” Other memories of Clarke can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I don’t yet see an obituary of Clarke anywhere on the Web, or any mention of how old she was at the time of her death. However, the Nature Web site explains that she held degrees in physiology and psychology from the University of Oxford, as well as a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biophysics from that same venerable institution. She’d also done a postdoctoral fellowship in “biophysics of muscle crossbridges” at King’s College. Clarke lived in London.
I regret that I never met Maxine Clarke, but I did appreciate her reviews in Euro Crime and elsewhere. And the eulogies around the Web make it clear that she touched and encouraged many people, authors and critics alike. We can only be grateful that she was among us for as long as she was, sharing her knowledge, talents, and warmth.
UPDATE: Her family has created a Maxine Clarke memorial Web site here, which provides the information that she was “born in Manchester on September 03, 1954.” That means she was only 58 years old when she died. Much too young.
Rhian Davies (aka CrimeFicReader) first brought us the sad news that Maxine Clarke, an editor of the British scientific journal Nature who also--over the last seven years--wrote the excellent blog Petrona, died yesterday after what’s being described as a “lengthy” battle with cancer. But online tributes have been rolling in ever since. Her friend Karen Meek of Euro Crime, to which Clarke often contributed “peerless” book critiques, describes her as “a fast reader” who, “even when ill could read and review a book I’d given her before I’d get back to Birmingham! I can’t imagine how many books have been bought as a result of her well-written reviews, and that is legacy worth leaving.” Norman Price of Crime Scraps Review adds: “She tempted so many inexperienced bloggers to dip their toe in the blogging water and then jump in with her helpful comments and encouragement, that we all owe Maxine a great debt of gratitude. Her own blog, Petrona, was a source of pleasure, excellent writing, valuable opinions, and a constant temptation to plagiarise.” Davies concludes her own post about Clarke’s death with these remarks: “Maxine was a true lover of crime fiction and a rock in the lives of many. It is so hard to believe she is no longer with us but she will always be remembered with love and respect, and for her massive achievements.” Other memories of Clarke can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I don’t yet see an obituary of Clarke anywhere on the Web, or any mention of how old she was at the time of her death. However, the Nature Web site explains that she held degrees in physiology and psychology from the University of Oxford, as well as a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biophysics from that same venerable institution. She’d also done a postdoctoral fellowship in “biophysics of muscle crossbridges” at King’s College. Clarke lived in London.
I regret that I never met Maxine Clarke, but I did appreciate her reviews in Euro Crime and elsewhere. And the eulogies around the Web make it clear that she touched and encouraged many people, authors and critics alike. We can only be grateful that she was among us for as long as she was, sharing her knowledge, talents, and warmth.
UPDATE: Her family has created a Maxine Clarke memorial Web site here, which provides the information that she was “born in Manchester on September 03, 1954.” That means she was only 58 years old when she died. Much too young.
Monday, December 03, 2012
Bits and Bytes
• J.K. Rowling’s recent novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, has received some negative reviews in the press as well as from fans of her best-selling Harry Potter fantasy series. Yet Britain’s BBC One and BBC Drama have reached a deal to create a TV series based on that book about a small English town rife with hidden class and inter-generational struggles. Rowling,
who will reportedly be involved in the book’s adaptation, is quoted in The Hollywood Reporter as saying, “I always felt that, if [The Casual Vacancy] were to be adapted, this novel was best suited to
television, and I think the BBC is the perfect home.” Plans are to debut the
series in 2014.
• Does this 1945 novel by Richard Foster really feature “mysterydom’s only Tibetan-American private detective”?
• A few days ago, I featured in The Rap Sheet a Christmas episode of Man Against Crime, the 1949-1956 TV private-eye series. Today, the blog Classic American Showbiz leads us to a special 1974 Christmas episode of the police drama Adam-12.
• British-born Canadian author Peter Robinson reports on his Web site that DCI Banks, the UK TV production based on his long-running series of Inspector Alan Banks books, and starring Stephen Tompkinson, “is coming to PBS all across the United States.” Although I don’t yet see any notice of this development on PBS’s Web site, Robinson says the series will debut on this side of the Atlantic sometime in January. I’m very familiar with Robinson’s series (after interviewing the author for January Magazine more than decade ago) and have read a number of favorable notices about DCI Banks in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. So this is a show I’d be very happy to add to my otherwise quite limited TV-watching schedule. To see a preview of DCI Banks’ pilot, based on Robinson’s 2001 novel, Aftermath, I refer you back to the author’s Web site. UPDATE: The Crimespree Magazine blog now reports that DCI Banks will debut on PBS “in the 2nd week of January.”
• Prolific novelist James Reasoner is the subject of a new interview in the online pub Lowestoft Chronicle. To read it, click here. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh writer Kathleen George is interviewed by Jeff Rutherford as part of his Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.
• After many delays, the complete series DVD set of McMillan & Wife (1971-1977)--starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a crime-solving police commissioner and his trouble-attracting spouse--is finally set for release tomorrow. It contains 24 discs and boasts a retail price of $169.99.
• Really? The TV series The Killing may return to AMC? What about rumors that this show would wind up instead on Netflix?
• Blogger Jen Forbus offers her nominations for “crime fiction’s sexiest female authors of 2012.” I can only assume that a compilation of male writers will soon be forthcoming.
• R.I.P., Charles E. Fritch, at one time the assistant editor of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He passed away in October. UPDATE: William F. Nolan has penned a fine memorial to Fritch here.
• And here’s an unusual YouTube find: The 1972 teleflick The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted of course from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel of that same name, this small-screen version of the tale featured English film actor Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor John H. Watson. As I’ve explained before on this page, the movie (which also featured William Shatner) was a failed pilot for an ABC-TV series. I have watched this Hound twice, as I recall, but have not seen it in many years. If you would like a gander at it yourself, simply click here. I notice that the superior 1988 TV version of Hound, produced as part of Jeremy Brett’s wonderful Sherlock Holmes series, can also be viewed on YouTube. As can the 1939 theatrical rendition starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hound of the Baskervilles fans (like me) could devote much of a day just to comparing these adaptations. Time well spent, I think.
• Does this 1945 novel by Richard Foster really feature “mysterydom’s only Tibetan-American private detective”?
• A few days ago, I featured in The Rap Sheet a Christmas episode of Man Against Crime, the 1949-1956 TV private-eye series. Today, the blog Classic American Showbiz leads us to a special 1974 Christmas episode of the police drama Adam-12.
• British-born Canadian author Peter Robinson reports on his Web site that DCI Banks, the UK TV production based on his long-running series of Inspector Alan Banks books, and starring Stephen Tompkinson, “is coming to PBS all across the United States.” Although I don’t yet see any notice of this development on PBS’s Web site, Robinson says the series will debut on this side of the Atlantic sometime in January. I’m very familiar with Robinson’s series (after interviewing the author for January Magazine more than decade ago) and have read a number of favorable notices about DCI Banks in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. So this is a show I’d be very happy to add to my otherwise quite limited TV-watching schedule. To see a preview of DCI Banks’ pilot, based on Robinson’s 2001 novel, Aftermath, I refer you back to the author’s Web site. UPDATE: The Crimespree Magazine blog now reports that DCI Banks will debut on PBS “in the 2nd week of January.”
• Prolific novelist James Reasoner is the subject of a new interview in the online pub Lowestoft Chronicle. To read it, click here. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh writer Kathleen George is interviewed by Jeff Rutherford as part of his Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.
• After many delays, the complete series DVD set of McMillan & Wife (1971-1977)--starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a crime-solving police commissioner and his trouble-attracting spouse--is finally set for release tomorrow. It contains 24 discs and boasts a retail price of $169.99.
• Really? The TV series The Killing may return to AMC? What about rumors that this show would wind up instead on Netflix?
• Blogger Jen Forbus offers her nominations for “crime fiction’s sexiest female authors of 2012.” I can only assume that a compilation of male writers will soon be forthcoming.
• R.I.P., Charles E. Fritch, at one time the assistant editor of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He passed away in October. UPDATE: William F. Nolan has penned a fine memorial to Fritch here.
• And here’s an unusual YouTube find: The 1972 teleflick The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted of course from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel of that same name, this small-screen version of the tale featured English film actor Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor John H. Watson. As I’ve explained before on this page, the movie (which also featured William Shatner) was a failed pilot for an ABC-TV series. I have watched this Hound twice, as I recall, but have not seen it in many years. If you would like a gander at it yourself, simply click here. I notice that the superior 1988 TV version of Hound, produced as part of Jeremy Brett’s wonderful Sherlock Holmes series, can also be viewed on YouTube. As can the 1939 theatrical rendition starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hound of the Baskervilles fans (like me) could devote much of a day just to comparing these adaptations. Time well spent, I think.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Hagman Made His Shot Count
It’s only natural that obituaries of American TV and film actor Larry Hagman, who
died on Friday at age 81, should recall him best for only two roles: those of astronaut Major Tony Nelson in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970) and of oil magnate J.R. Ewing in Dallas (1978-1991). Those are certainly the two programs that best broadcast his name, image, and talents.
But Texas-born Hagman, the oldest child of renowned actress-singer Mary Martin, also guest-starred during the 1960s and ’70s on a variety of small-screen crime and detective series. As blogger Terence Towles Canote notes in A Shroud of Thoughts, Hagman appeared on The Defenders, Dan August, The Name of the Game, Police Woman, McCloud, Harry O, Ellery Queen, McCoy, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, and McMillan & Wife. In 1974 he starred with Louis Gossett Jr. in Sidekicks, the unpicked-up pilot for a CBS-TV Western series based on the 1971 theatrical film Skin Game, in which Gossett had starred opposite James Garner. A year later, Hagman teamed with Brock Peters to do The Detective: Bull in a China Shop, a cop drama made for NBC, but so thoroughly forgotten now that it isn’t even listed in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). And in 1976, he took the lead in another teleflick, a comedy-mystery titled The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, playing a Los Angeles motorcycle cop named Sherman Holmes who, after suffering a bad fall, wakes up thinking he’s actually Sherlock Holmes.
The New York Times’ obit says the actor died from “complications of cancer” and that he “had been in Dallas filming an episode of the TNT cable channel’s reboot of [Dallas] ...” Given how much Hagman seemed to relish portraying the villainous (and once famously shot) J.R., it seems only fitting that he should have gone this way.
READ MORE: “Larry Hagman: A Video Retrospective of Jeannie, Dallas, BVDs,” by Scott Sandell (Los Angeles Times); “The Hat Squad: Remembering Larry Hagman,” by Tony O’B (Inner Toob).
But Texas-born Hagman, the oldest child of renowned actress-singer Mary Martin, also guest-starred during the 1960s and ’70s on a variety of small-screen crime and detective series. As blogger Terence Towles Canote notes in A Shroud of Thoughts, Hagman appeared on The Defenders, Dan August, The Name of the Game, Police Woman, McCloud, Harry O, Ellery Queen, McCoy, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, and McMillan & Wife. In 1974 he starred with Louis Gossett Jr. in Sidekicks, the unpicked-up pilot for a CBS-TV Western series based on the 1971 theatrical film Skin Game, in which Gossett had starred opposite James Garner. A year later, Hagman teamed with Brock Peters to do The Detective: Bull in a China Shop, a cop drama made for NBC, but so thoroughly forgotten now that it isn’t even listed in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). And in 1976, he took the lead in another teleflick, a comedy-mystery titled The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, playing a Los Angeles motorcycle cop named Sherman Holmes who, after suffering a bad fall, wakes up thinking he’s actually Sherlock Holmes.
The New York Times’ obit says the actor died from “complications of cancer” and that he “had been in Dallas filming an episode of the TNT cable channel’s reboot of [Dallas] ...” Given how much Hagman seemed to relish portraying the villainous (and once famously shot) J.R., it seems only fitting that he should have gone this way.
READ MORE: “Larry Hagman: A Video Retrospective of Jeannie, Dallas, BVDs,” by Scott Sandell (Los Angeles Times); “The Hat Squad: Remembering Larry Hagman,” by Tony O’B (Inner Toob).
Monday, November 19, 2012
Yorke Passes Away
Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade brings us the sad news today that English crime novelist Margaret Yorke has died. According to another report, in
Mystery Fanfare, she passed away on Saturday at age 88.
Yorke (whose real name was Margaret Beda Nicholson) was born on January 30, 1924, in Compton, Surrey, but spent her growing-up years in Dublin, Ireland. She finally moved back to England in 1937. Twenty years later, she saw her first novel published, Summer Flight. She went on to produce more than 40 other novels, five of which starred her Oxford Don sleuth, Dr. Patrick Grant. All of the Grant tales--including the first, 1970’s Dead in the Morning--were reissued in paperback by House of Stratus earlier this year.
Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) had Yorke as its chairman in 1979 and 1980, and she won not only Sweden’s Martin Beck Award in 1982 but also the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1999.
I don’t yet see any official obituaries of Yorke, or any mention of her cause of death. But I shall update this item as more news comes in.
READ MORE: “Margaret Yorke, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).
Yorke (whose real name was Margaret Beda Nicholson) was born on January 30, 1924, in Compton, Surrey, but spent her growing-up years in Dublin, Ireland. She finally moved back to England in 1937. Twenty years later, she saw her first novel published, Summer Flight. She went on to produce more than 40 other novels, five of which starred her Oxford Don sleuth, Dr. Patrick Grant. All of the Grant tales--including the first, 1970’s Dead in the Morning--were reissued in paperback by House of Stratus earlier this year.
Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) had Yorke as its chairman in 1979 and 1980, and she won not only Sweden’s Martin Beck Award in 1982 but also the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1999.
I don’t yet see any official obituaries of Yorke, or any mention of her cause of death. But I shall update this item as more news comes in.
READ MORE: “Margaret Yorke, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Wade, Karras Exit the Stage
The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura brings us the news that Robert Wade, one of the two authors who, from the 1940s to the 1970s, produced dozens of novels under the joint pseudonym Wade Miller, “died on September 30 at his home in San Carlos, California, after
months of declining health.” Kimura explains further:
Over the course of his screen career, Karras appeared in the western-movie parody Blazing Saddles (1974) and Blake Edwards’ wonderful Victor, Victoria (1982), as well as McMillan & Wife, M*A*S*H, and the TV mini-series Centennial. During the 1980s, Karras starred with his wife, Susan Clark, in the small-screen sitcom Webster.
CNN-TV reports that Karras perished after “a battle with kidney disease, heart disease, dementia and stomach cancer.”
READ MORE: “Alex Karras: The Guardian Obituary,” by Michael Carlson (Irresistible Targets).
Wade and his high-school chum Bill Miller (1920-1961) wrote their first collaborative novel, Deadly Weapon (Farrar Straus, 1946), as “Wade Miller,” featuring Lt. Austin Clapp of the San Diego Police Department. Their second novel, Guilty Bystander (Farrar Straus, 1947), was the first novel that features San Diego private eye Max Thursday. The last Thursday novel was Shoot to Kill (Farrar Straus, 1951). Under the Wade Miller and Whit Masterson pseudonyms, they also wrote non-series novels such as All Through the Night (Dodd Mead, 1955), the basis of the 1956 movie A Cry in the Night starring Natalie Wood and Raymond Burr; and Badge of Evil (Dodd Mead, 1956), which was turned into the 1958 Orson Welles film Touch of Evil. After Miller died in 1961, Wade authored 11 standalones by himself using the Masterson pen-name and his own name until 1979. He started his book-reviewing column, “Spadework,” in 1977 and continued until 2011 for The San Diego Union-Tribune. He received the 1988 Eye Award for his lifetime achievement from the Private Eye Writers of America.Wade was 92 years old at the time of his death.
* * *
We also bid a fond farewell to Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions defensive tackle turned actor, who died this morning at age 77.Over the course of his screen career, Karras appeared in the western-movie parody Blazing Saddles (1974) and Blake Edwards’ wonderful Victor, Victoria (1982), as well as McMillan & Wife, M*A*S*H, and the TV mini-series Centennial. During the 1980s, Karras starred with his wife, Susan Clark, in the small-screen sitcom Webster.
CNN-TV reports that Karras perished after “a battle with kidney disease, heart disease, dementia and stomach cancer.”
READ MORE: “Alex Karras: The Guardian Obituary,” by Michael Carlson (Irresistible Targets).
Monday, September 03, 2012
Bullet Points: Labors of Love Edition
I hadn’t intended to play hooky from The Rap Sheet for much of the last week; things just kind of worked out that way. But I’m back in the captain’s chair now, and rarin’ to go again. Here are a few developments worth mentioning.
• Fair Dinkum Crime brings us the winners of the 2012 Davitt Awards, given out by Sisters in Crime Australia. Among the recipients was Sulari Gentill, who won in the Best Adult Novel category for A Decline in Prophets, a historical crime work set partly in 1930s Australia. Best Debut Novel honors went to Jaye Ford for Beyond Fear.
• Author Deon Meyer has won South Africa’s 2011/2012 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award for his latest crime thriller, 7 Dae, which will be released in the States this next week as Seven Days.
• I’m told that the annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference can be quite enlightening and enjoyable, though I haven’t yet been able to attend. I have, however, stayed in the excellent establishment where guests at this year’s events with be housed: the Hotel Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The convention is scheduled there for November 8–10 and will feature among its faculty David Morrell, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; Andrew Hunt, winner of the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel; and Jo-Ann Mapson, recipient of the American Library Association’s 2011 RUSA Award for women's fiction. A press release explains that “The conference includes an all-day workshop for authors on pacing their work with plenty of opportunity for writing and discussion, a day on the craft of writing, and a day on the business of writing.” Registration information and a calendar of events can be found here.
• Award-winning short-story writer Patti Abbott has issued a new flash-fiction challenge. “Write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled ‘Frank, Jr.,’” she instructs. “The end date will be September 24, 2012. I will post stories for people who have no blog. No winners or losers. Just good fun. Any genre, any style.” Click here to let Abbott know if you’d like to participate.
• It’s good to see ThugLit back in business, even if it’s now a product you must pay to read, rather than a free Webzine. Buy the new issue for 99 cents here. It contains stories by Jordan Harper, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw, plus “an exclusive first look” at Tyrus Books’ 2013 release, The Hard Bounce, by Todd Robinson.
• Mike Ripley’s latest edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” his monthly Shots column, includes notes on Ian Rankins’ new John Rebus novel, James Bond book covers, Shelley Smith’s The Ballad of the Running Man, Romanian crime fiction, John Banville’s forthcoming Philip Marlowe novel, and the death of Gore Vidal.
• Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning economist, explains why plans endorsed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, would lead to the death of Medicare.
• Gabrielle Byrne will play the single-named Dublin pathologist, Quirke, in a BBC One TV series based on John Banville’s succession of mystery novels, written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. “The three feature-length episodes each take their stories from different books in the series, ‘Christine Falls’ and ‘The Silver Swan’ [to be adapted] by Andrew Davies, and ‘Elegy for April’ by Conor McPherson.” Filming is set to begin in Dublin later this year, but no small-screen debut date for Quirke has yet been announced.
• His Futile Occupations has a nice write-up about The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense, which was edited by Otto Penzler and released in paperback this last July by Pegasus. I somehow managed to miss grabbing up this collection, which includes work by Boris Akunin, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Pushkin, and others. The reminder of its existence is most welcome.
• Speaking of Otto Penzler (and it seems we do a lot of that here), he lists in The Daily Beast five crime writers he thinks should be better appreciated. I’m surprised he could keep his choices to five.
• And another list: On the Rag Mag’s “10 Reasons You Should Watch,” the 1971-1977 NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife. That show, of course, starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as “San Francisco’s particularly activist police commissioner” and “his comely, trouble-attracting, and occasionally brilliant younger spouse.”
• R.I.P., Hal David, who “contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies” and became especially famous for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach. David died on Saturday at age 91. Among his best-recognized works is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which figured into the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. BuzzFeed has compiled what it thinks are “The 21 Most Memorable Songs Written by Hal David.” Read more about him here and here.
• Good-bye also to Sally Fellows, “a great supporter of everyone and everything in the mystery community,” as Janet Rudolph recalls. Fellowes died last night in her sleep.
• The blog Criminal Element has announced that it will soon begin publishing an electronic collection of original short stories three times a year, filled with fiction submitted by the public. This new journal is to be called The Malfeasance Occasional, aka The M.O. The schedule for Issue No. 1--themed “Girl Trouble”--is pretty tight, with “never-before-published submissions of 3,000 to 6,000 words” being accepted from September 26 through October 10, and a release date of December 6. Authors whose stories are accepted will receive “$350 for a year’s exclusive use after publication.” Submission details aren’t yet available. Visit the The Malfeasance Occasional feature page for updates and further information.
• I didn’t happen to see Quentin Tarantino’s direct-to-DVD flick, My Name Is Modesty, when it was released in 2003. But I stumbled across it on YouTube today. As Wikipedia explains, “The film stars British actress Alexandra Staden as Modesty”--the fictional criminal-turned-spy created by Peter O’Donnell--“and chronicles a crucial event in the character's life some time prior to the start of the comic strip.” As usual with YouTube, one can’t tell how long these videos will be available. But for now, the movie can be watched in several parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.
• A Web site I’d never heard of before today, Odee, looks back at “9 of the Most Brazen Art Thefts” in history. They include the 1911 filching of the Mona Lisa and the 15th-century rip-off of Hans Memling’s “The Last Judgement.”
• If you haven’t been keeping up with Shotsmag Confidential blogger Ayo Onatade’s “Book to Die For” series, it’s lately added several more installments. Check out Mike Ripley’s write-up about SS-GB, by Len Deighton; Jen Forbus’ recommendation of L.A. Requiem, by Robert Crais; Chris Simmons’ plug for Asta’s Book, by Barbara Vine; Jon Jordan’s reviewlet of Dark Chant in a Crimson Key, by George C. Chesbro; Karen Meek’s build-up of Involuntary Witness, by Gianrico Carofiglio; and Onatade’s own remarks on Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler. The blog also features an interview with John Connolly and Declan Burke, the editors of Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, which inspired Shotsmag Confidential’s series.
• Citing “health problems,” author-editor Ed Gorman explains in his blog that “I won’t be blogging for awhile. Not sure when I’ll be back.” We wish him the best of luck and a quick return to the Web.
• And because this is Labor Day in the United States, don’t forget to check out Janet Rudolph’s list of labor union mysteries in Mystery Fanfare. Also in celebration of hard work, Blogcritics asked a variety of people what jobs they had before they finally made a go of it as published authors.
• Fair Dinkum Crime brings us the winners of the 2012 Davitt Awards, given out by Sisters in Crime Australia. Among the recipients was Sulari Gentill, who won in the Best Adult Novel category for A Decline in Prophets, a historical crime work set partly in 1930s Australia. Best Debut Novel honors went to Jaye Ford for Beyond Fear.
• Author Deon Meyer has won South Africa’s 2011/2012 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award for his latest crime thriller, 7 Dae, which will be released in the States this next week as Seven Days.
• I’m told that the annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference can be quite enlightening and enjoyable, though I haven’t yet been able to attend. I have, however, stayed in the excellent establishment where guests at this year’s events with be housed: the Hotel Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The convention is scheduled there for November 8–10 and will feature among its faculty David Morrell, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; Andrew Hunt, winner of the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel; and Jo-Ann Mapson, recipient of the American Library Association’s 2011 RUSA Award for women's fiction. A press release explains that “The conference includes an all-day workshop for authors on pacing their work with plenty of opportunity for writing and discussion, a day on the craft of writing, and a day on the business of writing.” Registration information and a calendar of events can be found here.
• Award-winning short-story writer Patti Abbott has issued a new flash-fiction challenge. “Write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled ‘Frank, Jr.,’” she instructs. “The end date will be September 24, 2012. I will post stories for people who have no blog. No winners or losers. Just good fun. Any genre, any style.” Click here to let Abbott know if you’d like to participate.
• It’s good to see ThugLit back in business, even if it’s now a product you must pay to read, rather than a free Webzine. Buy the new issue for 99 cents here. It contains stories by Jordan Harper, Hilary Davidson, and Johnny Shaw, plus “an exclusive first look” at Tyrus Books’ 2013 release, The Hard Bounce, by Todd Robinson.
• Mike Ripley’s latest edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” his monthly Shots column, includes notes on Ian Rankins’ new John Rebus novel, James Bond book covers, Shelley Smith’s The Ballad of the Running Man, Romanian crime fiction, John Banville’s forthcoming Philip Marlowe novel, and the death of Gore Vidal.
• Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning economist, explains why plans endorsed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, would lead to the death of Medicare.
• Gabrielle Byrne will play the single-named Dublin pathologist, Quirke, in a BBC One TV series based on John Banville’s succession of mystery novels, written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. “The three feature-length episodes each take their stories from different books in the series, ‘Christine Falls’ and ‘The Silver Swan’ [to be adapted] by Andrew Davies, and ‘Elegy for April’ by Conor McPherson.” Filming is set to begin in Dublin later this year, but no small-screen debut date for Quirke has yet been announced.
• His Futile Occupations has a nice write-up about The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense, which was edited by Otto Penzler and released in paperback this last July by Pegasus. I somehow managed to miss grabbing up this collection, which includes work by Boris Akunin, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Pushkin, and others. The reminder of its existence is most welcome.
• Speaking of Otto Penzler (and it seems we do a lot of that here), he lists in The Daily Beast five crime writers he thinks should be better appreciated. I’m surprised he could keep his choices to five.
• And another list: On the Rag Mag’s “10 Reasons You Should Watch,” the 1971-1977 NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife. That show, of course, starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as “San Francisco’s particularly activist police commissioner” and “his comely, trouble-attracting, and occasionally brilliant younger spouse.”
• R.I.P., Hal David, who “contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies” and became especially famous for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach. David died on Saturday at age 91. Among his best-recognized works is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which figured into the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. BuzzFeed has compiled what it thinks are “The 21 Most Memorable Songs Written by Hal David.” Read more about him here and here.
• Good-bye also to Sally Fellows, “a great supporter of everyone and everything in the mystery community,” as Janet Rudolph recalls. Fellowes died last night in her sleep.
• The blog Criminal Element has announced that it will soon begin publishing an electronic collection of original short stories three times a year, filled with fiction submitted by the public. This new journal is to be called The Malfeasance Occasional, aka The M.O. The schedule for Issue No. 1--themed “Girl Trouble”--is pretty tight, with “never-before-published submissions of 3,000 to 6,000 words” being accepted from September 26 through October 10, and a release date of December 6. Authors whose stories are accepted will receive “$350 for a year’s exclusive use after publication.” Submission details aren’t yet available. Visit the The Malfeasance Occasional feature page for updates and further information.
• I didn’t happen to see Quentin Tarantino’s direct-to-DVD flick, My Name Is Modesty, when it was released in 2003. But I stumbled across it on YouTube today. As Wikipedia explains, “The film stars British actress Alexandra Staden as Modesty”--the fictional criminal-turned-spy created by Peter O’Donnell--“and chronicles a crucial event in the character's life some time prior to the start of the comic strip.” As usual with YouTube, one can’t tell how long these videos will be available. But for now, the movie can be watched in several parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.
• A Web site I’d never heard of before today, Odee, looks back at “9 of the Most Brazen Art Thefts” in history. They include the 1911 filching of the Mona Lisa and the 15th-century rip-off of Hans Memling’s “The Last Judgement.”
• If you haven’t been keeping up with Shotsmag Confidential blogger Ayo Onatade’s “Book to Die For” series, it’s lately added several more installments. Check out Mike Ripley’s write-up about SS-GB, by Len Deighton; Jen Forbus’ recommendation of L.A. Requiem, by Robert Crais; Chris Simmons’ plug for Asta’s Book, by Barbara Vine; Jon Jordan’s reviewlet of Dark Chant in a Crimson Key, by George C. Chesbro; Karen Meek’s build-up of Involuntary Witness, by Gianrico Carofiglio; and Onatade’s own remarks on Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler. The blog also features an interview with John Connolly and Declan Burke, the editors of Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, which inspired Shotsmag Confidential’s series.
• Citing “health problems,” author-editor Ed Gorman explains in his blog that “I won’t be blogging for awhile. Not sure when I’ll be back.” We wish him the best of luck and a quick return to the Web.
• And because this is Labor Day in the United States, don’t forget to check out Janet Rudolph’s list of labor union mysteries in Mystery Fanfare. Also in celebration of hard work, Blogcritics asked a variety of people what jobs they had before they finally made a go of it as published authors.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
“As Tough as He Was Tender”
Max Allan Collins, who has been finishing a number of Mickey Spillane’s novels since that latter author’s death in 2006, has posted a fond farewell to Biff Elliot--“the first actor to portray Mike Hammer in the movies” (in 1953’s I, the Jury, to be exact)--who passed away on August 15 at age 89. Writes Collins:
I count Biff as one of the best Hammers, and obviously a pioneering one. He left an indelible stamp on the role, though, at the time, some (even Mickey himself) expressed disappointment. Biff himself stated that his approach was to make a human being out of Spillane’s comic strip-style character, and I feel he succeeded.You can read the entirety of Collins’ post here. Then click here to watch the trailer for I, the Jury.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
“Ooh-ooh-ooooh!”
This is an unwelcome surprise: As the Los Angeles Times reports, “Ron Palillo, an actor whose signature role was Arnold Horshack in the 1970s TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, died Tuesday. He was 63.”
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Losing a Genius
My brief remarks on the passing of renowned American novelist, essayist, and political commentator Gore Vidal were posted today on the January Magazine Web site.
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Just a Good-Hearted Kind of Guy
The main title sequence from Matlock.
I was sorry to hear that American actor Andy Griffith died this morning at his home in Dare County, North Carolina. He was 86 years old.
My earliest memories of Griffith, of course, are from his 1960-1968 CBS-TV series, The Andy Griffith Show, in which he played a small-town sheriff, Andy Taylor, who worked with a perpetually bungling deputy named Barney Fife (Don Knotts) in fictional Mayberry, North Carolina. (Griffith had evidently filled a similar role in an episode of Danny Thomas’ Make Room for Daddy, and impressed both audiences and TV execs with his performance.) When I was but a wee lad, I learned to whistle the theme from that series, titled “The Fishin’ Hole,” the music having been composed by Earle Hagen (whose credits also include the classic Harlem Nocturne and, incredibly, the theme from The Mod Squad). I was quite a whistler, and still am, and I used to roll out that memorably bouncy melody every morning as I walked the quarter-mile to the corner where my school bus stopped.
(Right) The opening and closing from The Andy Griffith Show.
It was as an adult, though, that I really came to appreciate Griffith’s acting. Following a succession of less-than-successful TV efforts (in The New Andy Griffith Show (1971), Salvage 1 (1979), and other shows), and a bout with Guillain–Barré syndrome, he returned to television in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995), playing Ben Matlock, a thriving defense attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, whose countrified manners and Southern drawl served to mask--at least initially--his remarkable legal and investigative skills. I followed that series most closely during its first year, when the lovely Linda Purl co-starred as Matlock’s co-counsel and daughter Charlene, and Kene Holliday served as his on-call private investigator, Tyler Hudson. Although my loyalty to the program waned in later years, as the series moved from NBC to ABC and other cast members were added, whenever I did catch an episode of Matlock, I couldn’t help but appreciate Griffith’s seemingly effortless talents as an actor. He said at least once that Ben Matlock was his favorite role.
Dennis Rogers of Raleigh, North Carolina’s News & Observer has a piece in his newspaper this morning, and its ending will do well as an end to my own obituary here. He writes:
[In 2005] Griffith was interviewed by Beverly Keel for the online magazine American Profile. In the interview, he talked about the difficulty of life in the shadow of Sheriff Andy Taylor:Good-bye, Andy. I’ll be whistlin’ like a fool in your honor today.
“Don’t pay any attention to that, that is a persona,” he said. “I am not any favorite dad; I am not any kind of all-American person. I am just a 79-year-old person. I worship and I am kind of private.
“I have many failings. My son died of an overdose when he was 36. I was not a good father to him. So I have failed in many ways. I am a man, like any other man.”
Andy Griffith never won an Oscar, an Emmy or a Tony for his acting. But then, around here we never thought of him as an actor. He was just our friend and neighbor and we were so proud of him we couldn’t hardly stand it.
And if the rest of the world happened to tune in to his popular shows and just happened to assume folks in North Carolina were anywhere near as good-hearted as Andy Taylor, Ben Matlock or the good people of Mayberry, well, that was OK with us, too.
“The Fishin’ Hole,” with lyrics sung by Andy Griffith himself.
READ MORE: “Mayberry Was Fine, but A Face in the Crowd Was Special,” by Mark Lacter (L.A. Observed); “Andy Griffith: Last of the Good Guy Sheriffs,” by Mary McNamara (Los Angeles Times); “Griffith’s Tough Second Acts,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Limbo); “The Andy Griffith/Hawaii Five-O/007 Mash-up” (The HMSS Weblog); “Sheriff Who Gave Stature to Small-Town Smarts,” by Neil Genzlinger (The New York Times); “Andy Griffith,” by Tony Figueroa (TV Confidential); “Andy Griffith (1926-2012),” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Radio Spirits); “Andy Griffith Died of a Heart Attack, Death Certificate Says,” by Patrick Kevin Day (Los Angeles Times); “Some Andy Griffith Films,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Our Town: Andy Griffith and the Humor of Mourning,” by Evan Smith Rakoff (Los Angeles Review of Books).
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Picking and Choosing
• Salma Hayek may never outdo her eye-popping, jaw-dropping snake dance in the otherwise mediocre 1996 film, From Dusk Till Dawn, but Jennifer Proffitt is applauding her performance as a femme fatale-cum-drug lord in the crime-thriller film Savages, based on Don Winslow’s 2010 novel of the same name. “Even in the trailers,” writes Proffitt, “Hayek’s character, Elena, comes through as ruthless, a woman in a man’s world. What makes Hayek even stronger is her male counterpart and enforcer played by Benicio Del Toro--a character who makes you wonder just how crazy he is and how long it will take before he snaps. You gotta love a woman who can muzzle a creature like that and look awesome doing it.”
• In addition to mid-July’s Poisoned Pen Conference, which I reminded you of in my last wrap-up post, don’t forget about the 2012 Write Now! Conference, “Criminal Minds: Investigating Today’s Writing Scene,” which is being sponsored by the Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths chapter. As Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph notes, that convention will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona, on August 11 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More information can be found here.
• On top of those events, the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference will take place in Corte Madera, California, from July 19 to 22. Don Winslow (him again?) is to be the keynote speaker.
• Really? The 1983 TV series Casablanca--which featured ex-Starsky & Hutch co-star David Soul in the Humphrey Bogart role, and lasted for a mere five episodes--has been released in DVD format? Hmm. I guess that, with the 70th anniversary of the Bogart film coming up in November, this seemed like a good idea to somebody.
• William Boyd’s quite splendid 2006 spy thriller, Restless, is going to be adapted as a two-part TV miniseries by the Sundance Channel and BBC. “Filming is set to get underway this summer in South Africa and the UK,” reports Omnimystery News. “Restless is expected to air late in the year on BBC One and the Sundance Channel.” Word is that Boyd wrote the screenplay himself.
• Another movie worth adding to my Netflix list.
• Thumbs up to the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision, announced earlier today, to uphold the Affordable Care Act.
• R.I.P., Don Grady. “Although best known as Robbie Douglas on My Three Sons, arguably his biggest legacy will be as a composer,” recalls blogger Terence Towles Canote. “He was very good when it came to writing music.” Canote explains that “Following his acting career, Mr. Grady worked as a composer in television and motion pictures. He served as a composer on the films Switch (1991), Passings (2000), and Good Neighbour (2001). He composed the theme song for the Phil Donahue Show and music for the mini-series The Revolutionary War. He adapted music for Blake Edwards’ movie Skin Deep (1989).”
• Finally, this seemingly good news: Author Janet Evanovich “will team up with Lee Goldberg--author of the ‘Mr. Monk’ novels based on the USA Network series Monk--to write a new book series. According to the publicity materials, it will feature FBI agent Kate Winslow and international fugitive Danny Cole and will be ‘a thrilling combination of crime, romance, and adventure.’ The first in the series is scheduled for publication in Fall 2013.” I only hope this writing partnership works better than the one we were all lead to believe Evanovich had established with Stephen J. Cannell a few years back.
• In addition to mid-July’s Poisoned Pen Conference, which I reminded you of in my last wrap-up post, don’t forget about the 2012 Write Now! Conference, “Criminal Minds: Investigating Today’s Writing Scene,” which is being sponsored by the Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths chapter. As Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph notes, that convention will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona, on August 11 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More information can be found here.
• On top of those events, the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference will take place in Corte Madera, California, from July 19 to 22. Don Winslow (him again?) is to be the keynote speaker.
• Really? The 1983 TV series Casablanca--which featured ex-Starsky & Hutch co-star David Soul in the Humphrey Bogart role, and lasted for a mere five episodes--has been released in DVD format? Hmm. I guess that, with the 70th anniversary of the Bogart film coming up in November, this seemed like a good idea to somebody.
• William Boyd’s quite splendid 2006 spy thriller, Restless, is going to be adapted as a two-part TV miniseries by the Sundance Channel and BBC. “Filming is set to get underway this summer in South Africa and the UK,” reports Omnimystery News. “Restless is expected to air late in the year on BBC One and the Sundance Channel.” Word is that Boyd wrote the screenplay himself.
• Another movie worth adding to my Netflix list.
• Thumbs up to the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision, announced earlier today, to uphold the Affordable Care Act.
• R.I.P., Don Grady. “Although best known as Robbie Douglas on My Three Sons, arguably his biggest legacy will be as a composer,” recalls blogger Terence Towles Canote. “He was very good when it came to writing music.” Canote explains that “Following his acting career, Mr. Grady worked as a composer in television and motion pictures. He served as a composer on the films Switch (1991), Passings (2000), and Good Neighbour (2001). He composed the theme song for the Phil Donahue Show and music for the mini-series The Revolutionary War. He adapted music for Blake Edwards’ movie Skin Deep (1989).”
• Finally, this seemingly good news: Author Janet Evanovich “will team up with Lee Goldberg--author of the ‘Mr. Monk’ novels based on the USA Network series Monk--to write a new book series. According to the publicity materials, it will feature FBI agent Kate Winslow and international fugitive Danny Cole and will be ‘a thrilling combination of crime, romance, and adventure.’ The first in the series is scheduled for publication in Fall 2013.” I only hope this writing partnership works better than the one we were all lead to believe Evanovich had established with Stephen J. Cannell a few years back.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
On the Passing of Ray Bradbury
Although he often looked toward the future in his fiction, author Ray Bradbury is now part of the past. He died last night at age 91.
As is probably the case for most people noticing this post, I have read Bradbury’s most famous works of fiction--The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Dandelion Wine (1957), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Surprisingly, though, I was less good about tackling his mystery novels--Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002)--but only because I was distracted at the time by other, newer wordsmiths.
I enjoyed a great deal of science fiction in my youth (the same stage of life when Bradbury himself discovered the genre), before I turned mostly to crime fiction in my college years. And even then, I could see that Bradbury was another rung up from most of his contemporaries in the genre. As the Los Angeles Times explains in an obituary:
READ MORE: “Ray Bradbury: Twitter Pays Tribute to SF Writer,” by Hannah Freeman (The Guardian); “Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203,” by Sam Weller (The Paris Review); “Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Radio Spirits); “The Mystery Pulp Past of Ray Bradbury,” by Elizabeth Foxwell (The Bunburyist); “Words Obeyed Him: Ray Bradbury (1920-2012),” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen); “Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), by Ray Bradbury,” by Sergio Angelini (Tipping My Fedora).
As is probably the case for most people noticing this post, I have read Bradbury’s most famous works of fiction--The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Dandelion Wine (1957), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Surprisingly, though, I was less good about tackling his mystery novels--Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002)--but only because I was distracted at the time by other, newer wordsmiths.
I enjoyed a great deal of science fiction in my youth (the same stage of life when Bradbury himself discovered the genre), before I turned mostly to crime fiction in my college years. And even then, I could see that Bradbury was another rung up from most of his contemporaries in the genre. As the Los Angeles Times explains in an obituary:
Bradbury has frequently been credited with elevating the often maligned reputation of science fiction. Some say he singlehandedly helped to move the genre into the realm of literature.Bradbury inspired devotion and sometimes remarkable passions in his followers, and his longevity and great popularity as an author contributed to his influence over the genre. His presence in our world, our time, our space will most certainly be missed.
“The only figure comparable to mention would be [Robert A.] Heinlein and then later [Arthur C.] Clarke,” said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine physics professor and Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer. “But Bradbury, in the ’40s and ’50s, became the name brand.”
READ MORE: “Ray Bradbury: Twitter Pays Tribute to SF Writer,” by Hannah Freeman (The Guardian); “Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203,” by Sam Weller (The Paris Review); “Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Radio Spirits); “The Mystery Pulp Past of Ray Bradbury,” by Elizabeth Foxwell (The Bunburyist); “Words Obeyed Him: Ray Bradbury (1920-2012),” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen); “Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), by Ray Bradbury,” by Sergio Angelini (Tipping My Fedora).
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Last Chapter for a Storyteller
Jiro Kimura of The
Gumshoe Site tipped us to the news that William F. “Bill”
Granger, a longtime Chicago newspaper reporter and columnist turned
novelist, passed away this last Sunday night, April 22, at a veterans home in
Manteno, Illinois. He was 70 years old.
Kimura notes that in addition to publishing work under his real name, Granger saw some of his fiction appear behind noms de plume:
“In a journalism career that stretched from 1963 to 1999,” recalls
Maureen O’Donnell on the Chicago
Sun-Times Web site, Granger “wrote for UPI, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily
Herald and the Chicago Tribune.
The energetic, entertaining Mr. Granger did feature stories and TV criticism
and reported from hotspots such as Belfast. He liked nothing better than
printing a scoop and heading to journalistic watering holes [in the Windy City]
such as Riccardo’s and the Billy Goat to crow--or argue--about it.”
In an excellent remembrance, the Daily Herald’s
Burt Constable states
that “Granger always considered himself a newspaper man.” Yet he was
successful, as well, at composing political thrillers:
His first book, a spy novel titled “The November Man,” was published in 1979 and attracted international attention because its plot, based on a scheme to assassinate a relative of the British queen, had parallels to the assassination of Lord Mountbatten later that year, remembers his wife, Lori Granger, a lawyer who co-authored some non-fiction books with her husband.
Bill Granger wrote a series of sequels starring the main character, Devereaux, a shadowy spy for the United States. He also wrote a series of police procedural novels, including “Public Murders,” for which he won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best original paperback mystery novel of 1981. Granger once said he made more money from “The November Man” but that “Public Murders” was his favorite “because it was real and gritty.”
A list of Granger’s novels can be found here.
Kimura notes that in addition to publishing work under his real name, Granger saw some of his fiction appear behind noms de plume:
His second novel, Public Murders (Jove, 1980), a police procedural featuring Chicago detective Terry Flynn, won an Edgar Award in the paperback original novel. He wrote the second and third Terry Flynn novels--Priestly Murders (Holt 1984) and Newspaper Murders (Holt, 1985) respectively--under the Joe Gash pseudonym, but from the fourth Flynn novel, The El Murders (Holt, 1987) he returned to the Granger byline. He also authored three Jimmy Drover novels about a forcibly retired newspaperman, starting [with] Drover (Morrow, 1991). He used the Bill Griffith pen-name to write Time for Frankie Coolin (Random, 1982).
Sadly, as Constable reports, Granger suffered a stroke back
in January 2000, which detrimentally affected his ability to work, among other things: “No longer able to live in his home in the Streeterville
neighborhood of Chicago, Granger, who served stateside in the U.S. Army, moved
into the veterans home in March 2002.”
We offer our condolences to his family.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Dick Clark ... So Long
Sad tidings from the Los Angeles Times: “Dick Clark, the legendary TV producer and host, died Wednesday of a heart attack. He had suffered a stroke in 2004 and had struggled with the effects ever since. The man known as ‘America's oldest living teenager,’ made rock music safe for Middle America and earned a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along the way.” Find out more here.
Clark was 82 years young.
READ MORE: “Dick Clark: R.I.P.,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).
Clark was 82 years young.
READ MORE: “Dick Clark: R.I.P.,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).
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