Bullet Points: No AI Content Here Edition

• Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh, David Suchet, Alfred Molina, John Malkovich, even Tony Randall—over the decades, they have all portrayed Agatha Christie’s most famous fictional private detective, Hercule Poirot, on the large or small screens. But now 33-year-old English actor Edward Bluemel (Killing Eve, My Lady Jane, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials) is stepping into the role of that fastidious, mustachioed Belgian in Hercule, a BBC/Britbox TV reboot set to start filming in Liverpool, England, this summer and expected to premiere with six episodes in the latter half of 2027. Deadline says “there is a three-season commitment to Hercule,” though that has not been confirmed by either of the production partners. The show is being described as “an intimate study of Hercule the man and an epic portrait of Britain between the wars. The series takes a magnifying glass to three of Christie’s most celebrated stories, while also charting Hercule’s burgeoning friendship with Captain Arthur Hastings, his early encounters with Scotland Yard’s James Japp, and introducing him to one particular nemesis.” Deadline adds that “Responsibility for adapting Christie’s work has fallen to Benji Walters, a relatively unknown writer who has credits on BBC series Noughts + Crosses and spent time developing an adaptation of Brideshead Revisited with Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino in 2020.”

• By the way, did you know that Christie’s third and probably most famous Poirot novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, celebrates its centennial this month? The story was serialized as Who Killed Ackroyd? in the London Evening News between July and September 1925, then released in book form by UK publisher Williams Collins, Sons in June of 1926. (An American edition soon followed.) While Ackroyd—with its deliberate subversion of reader expectations—may not be the perfect place to start in exploring Christie’s extensive oeuvre (instead, try And Then There Were None or a later Poirot tale such as Death on the Nile), it is nonetheless acclaimed for its shell-game plotting and final twist. In his well-respected 1941 study of this genre, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, American writer-editor Howard Haycraft placed Ackroyd in the 16th spot on his list of “the best and most influential” crime novels in print, right behind Christie’s first Poirot yarn, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920).

• Although the “news” is less than timely, let me just point out that Mike Lawson has won 2026’s Spotted Owl Award for Untouchable (Atlantic Monthly Press ), his 18th novel about Washington, D.C., troubleshooter Joe DeMarco. By my count, this is the third occasion on which Lawson has scored the Owl, an honor handed out annually by the Portland, Oregon-based Friends of Mystery fan organization to what it deems was the Best Pacific Northwest Crime Novel published during the previous year. Also in contention were Marc Cameron’s Deadline, Robert Dugoni’s A Dead Draw, Sam Wiebe’s The Last Exile, Elizabeth George’s A Slowly Dying Cause, James Bryne’s Chain Reaction, Daniel Kalla’s The Deepest Fake, J.A. Jance’s Overkill, Phillip Margolin’s False Witness, and Nolan Chase’s A Lonesome Place for Murder.

• As you have probably heard, Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer will end its run after Season 5, which is due for streaming next year. The concluding 10 episodes are “inspired by” Michael Connelly’s Resurrection Walk (2025), the seventh installment in his series about L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller, played on the show by Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. Netflix supplies this plot description:

Mickey Haller’s world is upended when the half-sister he never knew existed, Emi [Cobie Smulders], comes to him with a plea to help free a wrongfully convicted woman. In a season defined by blood ties and buried secrets, Mickey takes on a grueling habeas petition to overturn a six-year-old murder conviction, but the deeper he digs, the more nefarious the forces arrayed against him become.

Meanwhile, the stakes rise for his trusted team as Lorna [Becki Newton], Izzy [Jazz Raycole], and Cisco [Angus Sampson] step up to tackle high-profile challenges of their own. Having just saved himself from a wrongful conviction in Season 4, Mickey is now determined to set right an enormous miscarriage of justice. But as he unravels a dangerous web of corruption and lies, he must grapple with the fractured legacy of his family—both his chosen family and the family he never knew he had.

Lincoln Lawyer’s departure from its schedule has left Netflix looking for a legal-drama replacement to satisfy viewers. One option might be And Justice for All, a series based on Al Pacino’s powerful, Emmy-nominated 1979 film of that same name. Deadline depicts it as “a gritty look at an idealistic attorney’s flawed life as he struggles to fight a corrupted legal system until he finally snaps.” The program will be scripted by Jeremy Miller and Dan Cohn (That Was Then).

• Concurrently, Lincoln Lawyer creator David E. Kelley is adapting another Connelly work for television, the 2025 novel Nightshade. Deadline says, “The project, titled Welcome to Catalina, is in development at HBO Max under the streamer’s model for drama procedurals intended to return each year with sizable orders and moderate cost. … Written by Kelley, Welcome to Catalina centers on Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell who has been ‘exiled’ to a low-key post policing [Southern California’s] rustic Catalina Island. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor.” There’s no word yet on when Welcome to Catalina might be welcomed to your big-screen set, but if it proves a winner, there’s at least one other Stilwell story to turn into a screenplay: Connelly’s Ironwood, which reached U.S. bookstores only last month.

• Sherlock Holmes’ arch-rival, Professor James Moriarty, is finally getting a TV series of his own, in which he will demonstrate his previously undisplayed array of sleuthing skills.

• Are these really the 20 greatest film sleuths of all time?

• It’s always great to see Donald E. Westlake’s storytelling mastery recognized, as The Daily Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge does in this recent essay reprinted by MSN. But how fragile is fame, that the headline labels Westlake—who just died back in 2009 (see our tributes here and here)—“The greatest crime novelist you have probably never heard of.”

• And the crime-fiction community has seen other deaths of late. Actress-turned-writer Sheila Keating (née Mitchell), who for almost six decades was wife to the English crime novelist H.R.F. Keating (creator of the Inspector Ganesh Ghote series), passed away on June 4 just short of her 101st birthday. Canadian fictionist Alan Bradley, the author of a dozen books in the Flavia de Luce mystery series (beginning with 2009’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) died on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea on May 18 at age of 87. Finally, Dennis McMillan, a San Francisco small-press publisher of “the hard-boiled, the noir, and the strikingly unusual,” met his end on May 5 in a Phoenix, Arizona, hospital. Among the authors McMillan published over the years were Kent Anderson, Michael Connelly, Fredric Brown, Leigh Brackett, James Crumley, and Rick DeMarinis.

(Hat tips to In Reference to Murder and Mark Coggins.)

Stitching Up Mickey Haller

We’re now less than a week out from the February 5 Netflix premiere of The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 4. Its 10 episodes will be based on Michael Connelly’s 2020 novel The Law of Innocence, and find Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. As he faces off against a pertinacious district attorney, Dana Berg (Constance Zimmer), he and his friends struggle to prove his his hands clean of the crime.

“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, pretty much,” series co-creator Ted Humphrey told TV Fanatic. “Not just from the obvious legal or professional perspective of facing these charges—that would be terrible for anybody—but also from a personal and family perspective.” While Haller is good at weathering legal dangers on behalf of his clients, he’s less prepared to protect his teenage daughter, Hayley (Krista Warner), from the fallout surrounding his own prosecution. “He sees what it does to his daughter,” explains Humphrey, “and that devastates him. Any parent can relate to having to keep a brave face for your child when you’re facing a situation like that. It’s dire.”

While Garcia-Rulfo is obviously the headline star of this show, the cast also features Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, Angus Sampson, and Cobie Smulders. The Lincoln Lawyer has already been renewed for a fifth season, the script for which will take its cues from Connelly’s 2023 book, Resurrection Walk.

Taking a Spin Through the Blogosphere

• Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare blog has been positively rampant with news—good and bad—about TV crime series lately. On the good side: Season 14 of Death in Paradise, introducing Don Gilet as Detective Inspector Mervin Wilson, is set to commence streaming via BritBox come Wednesday, February 19; the third and concluding season of Bosch: Legacy, starring Titus Welliver, will debut on Prime Video on Monday, March 27; PBS-TV’s Masterpiece has commissioned an adaptation of UK author Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders, the third and last Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd novel (which is to be released in the States in mid-May); and we can look forward to a 10-episode fourth season (maybe later this year?) of The Lincoln Lawyer. Now for the bad news: ITV’s McDonald & Dodds, the Bath, England-set whodunit starring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins, has been cancelled after what I thought were four outstanding seasons.

• Weep not for Watkins, though. Late last year it was announced that he and Grantchester co-star Robson Green would play the leads in Catch You Later, a new Channel 5 (UK) crime drama from Death in Paradise director Toby Frow. Digital Spy describes the show as a cat-and-mouse thriller about “a police detective named Huw Miller (Watkins) who is haunted by a case he failed to solve: a stalker in his town who toyed with his victims before murdering them.

Per the synopsis: “As Huw attempts to settle into retirement, the case is never far from his mind – and when new neighbour Patrick Harbottle (Green) moves in and utters the chilling phrase ‘catch you later’–the sign-off the stalker used to taunt Huw during the investigation–Huw is determined he’s finally got his man. What follows is a high stakes game of psychological chess between the two neighbours as Huw’s world begins to crumble around him.

“Unable to bear the guilt of the stalker taking another victim under his nose, Huw risks everything to unearth the truth. But has he set his sights on the right man, or is his obsession pushing him ever closer to the brink?”

Catch You Later is expected to air before this year is over.

• I evidently missed seeing that the Audio Publishers Association announced its finalists for the 30th annual Audie Awards. There are 28 competitive categories—too many to consider here. Below, though, are the contenders for best mystery audiobook of 2024:

— Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera; narrated by Will Damron and January LaVoy (Macmillan Audio)
— The Midnight Feast, by Lucy Foley; narrated by Joe Eyre, Sarah Slimani, Roly Botha, Laurence Dobiesz, and Tuppence Middleton (HarperAudio)
— Rough Pages, by Lev AC Rosen; narrated by Vikas Adam
(Macmillan Audio)
— Still See You Everywhere, by Lisa Gardner; narrated by Hillary
Huber (Hachette Audio)
— This Is Why We Lied, by Karin Slaughter; narrated by Kathleen
Early (HarperAudio)

The winners will be revealed in New York City on March 4, during a ceremony hosted by actress-comedian Amy Sedaris.

• Author and friend of The Rap Sheet Mark Coggins recently sent along the photo below together with a note reading: “I happened to be in the Manoa Chinese Cemetery in Honolulu and came across the grave of Chang Apana, who supposedly was the inspiration for Charlie Chan.”



• Since January 24, 2025, marked 100 years since Earl Derr Biggers’ The House Without a Key began its serialization in The Saturday Evening Post—introducing Chan to the reading public—this seemed like a good time to post Coggins’ shot. You can learn more about Chan’s literary introduction here and here.

• As we jump into this new month, it might be worth your while to spend a few moments looking back at The Rap Sheet’s extensive roster of crime, mystery, and thriller novels due out during the first quarter of 2025. Since that list went up in mid-January, I’ve added at least a dozen titles, with more to come before the end of March.

• This last January 8, Japanese crime-fiction critic and writer Jiro Kimura kicked off his 30th year (!) in charge of The Gumshoe Site, one of the longest-running Web sources of news regarding crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. (By comparison, The Rap Sheet will celebrate its 20th year in business in 2026.) I last interviewed Kimura when his blog was just 15 years old; you’ll find the results of our exchange here.

• Four interviews worth finding: Crime Fiction Lover talks with Ken Harris about The Ballad of the Great Value Boys (Black Rose), his fourth novel featuring witty Baltimore, Maryland, private detective Steve Rockfish. Meanwhile, renowned American spy novelist Robert Littell sits for conversations with both National Public Radio’s Scott Simon and New York Times book critic Sarah Weinman about Bronshtein in the Bronx (Soho Press), his new historical novel about Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. And And for CrimeReads, Peter Handel quizzes Thomas Perry about his 32nd novel, Pro Bono.

• “Science,” writes James Folta in Literary Hub, “has backed up what many of us have long been saying: the library rocks. A study from the New York Public Library surveyed 1,974 users on how the library makes them feel and how it affects their lives, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.”

• Finally, welcome back, John Norris, the host at Pretty Sinister Books! When that blog appeared to go dark in September 2023, it was a sad day, because for the previous dozen years Norris had presented readers with interesting material having to do with classic mystery, adventure, and supernatural fiction. But then suddenly, this last January 16, he was back, first wrapping up his last year of reading (see here and here), and then moving on to other subjects. Let’s hope Norris’ batteries are now recharged, and he will continue updating his blog for many years to come.

Bullet Points: No Indictments Here Edition

I’m sorry this blog has offered nothing but crickets over the last week, but several things in my personal life demanded attention. With those now resolved, I can get back to the business of news gathering.

• New York bookshop proprietor, editor, and publisher Otto Penzler has announced that his company, Penzler Publishers, will introduce Crime Ink, a new imprint concentrating on literary true crime. Four to six titles annually are to be expected from this imprint, beginning next year. “Tom Wickersham, formerly the manager of The Mysterious Bookshop, will head the imprint as its editor,” explains a press release. “Charles Perry will be the Publisher, a position he currently holds with The Mysterious Press, American Mystery Classics, Scarlet, and MysteriousPress.com, an electronic book publisher—the other imprints of Penzler Publishers. Luisa Smith will oversee as Editor-in-Chief of Penzler Publishers.” Wickersham is quoted as saying: “We are poised to launch in the spring of 2024 with The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, the first modern examination of 1970s serial killer Dean Corll. Also under contract are a biography of New York crime journalist Jimmy Breslin, a comprehensive account of the Son of Sam killings, and a series in translation from France. We will strive to publish revelatory works that shed new light on old cases, expose modern injustices, and expand the classification of true crime as we know it.”

• It’s the first week of August, and you know very well what that means: time again to check The Rap Sheet’s lengthy list of summer crime-fiction releases. As is my wont, I have expanded that roster over the last month, adding new books as well as others still forthcoming between now and Labor Day. There’s something for every taste.

• Wasn’t I just complaining that Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer, based on Michael Connelly’s novels about Los Angeles defense counsel Mickey Haller, had taken an incomprehensible and frustrating break only halfway through its Season 2 run? Well, the show returned on Thursday with five further episodes, bringing the total to 10. Having just finished watching the excellent sophomore (and last) season of HBO-TV’s Perry Mason, I can now pick up where Haller left off—maybe with a little review of where things stood at the end of episode five.

• Good news for American followers of Unforgotten, the British cold-case crime drama starring Sanjeev Bhaskar and now Sinéad Keenan (who joined the program after Nicola Walker’s shocking departure): Season 5 of that popular series will debut as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece lineup on Sunday, September 3. According to The Killing Times, its half-dozen episodes will see “big changes in the Metropolitan Police team charged with investigating historical murders.

Cassie Stewart (Nicola Walker) was tragically killed in an RTA at the end of season four leaving her number two, DI Sunny Kahn (Sanjeev Bhaskar) bereft. Now her replacement has arrived but it’s all sandpaper between DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan) and the normally empathetic and easy-going Sunny.

When a body is discovered inside a bricked in fireplace in an old London townhouse, DCI James isn’t even sure she wants to take the case. Police budgets. But the team quickly show that this was a murder and start generating leads, with connections stretching right up into the British government and across the Thames into the down-and-out squats inhabited by heroin addicts and petty thieves.

Watch the new season trailer at the Killing Times link above.

• Meanwhile, Annika, the Alibi-TV series Nicola Walker leapt to after Unforgotten, is set to introduce its second season on British boob-tubes come next Wednesday, August 9.

• Finally, The Chelsea Detective, on which Adrian Scarborough stars as a rather prickly but brilliant policeman working the streets of London’s prosperous Chelsea district, will return to streamer Acorn TV on Monday, August 28. This year, Scarborough’s Inspector Max Arnold will be given a new partner, Detective Sergeant Layla Walsh (Vanessa Emme), a transfer fresh from Exeter. (Season 1 had found him teamed, instead, with Detective Constable Priya Shamsie, played by Sonita Henry.) Again, The Killing Times has a video introduction to The Chelsea Detective’s four new episodes.

• Had he not succumbed to a heart attack 90 years ago, Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Chinese American police detective Charlie Chan, would be preparing to celebrate his 139th birthday on August 26. In his memory, Lou Armagno, author of the forthcoming book The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside the Charlie Chan Canon (BookBaby), suggests that any readers who happen to be in Honolulu, Hawaii, on that date toast the author at Earl’s, a new bar inside the Halekulani Hotel’s House Without a Key restaurant, named in his honor.

• Sometimes it seems book publishers believe their readers to be absolute morons. Case in point, from In Reference to Murder: “Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is getting a trigger warning from publish[ing] house Vintage. The 1939 novel The Big Sleep, considered among the greatest works of crime fiction, has been reprinted with a cautionary note ... Would-be readers of Chandler’s most famous work are now warned that the book may contain ‘outdated language and cultural representations.’ The note addressed to the ‘dear reader’ cautions that while the story centered on Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe is an outstanding example of crime fiction, it is nevertheless ‘firmly of its time and place.’” Oh gosh, shock, shock!

• Four recent CrimeReads pieces I’ve enjoyed recently: Denise Mina, author of the brand-new Philip Marlowe yarn The Second Murderer, talks with Nancie Clare about Marlowe’s continuing relevancy and what it feels like to be a woman channeling Chandler; Anika Scott (Sinners of Starlight City) on Chicago’s efforts in the early 1930s to bring down local organized crime and build its image-improving Century of Progress International Exposition; and Nathan Ward (Son of the Old West) recalls the strange case of “cowboy mutineers” who vanished in the South Pacific in 1902, only to have their ringleader apparently resurface in Arizona years later.

• And let us remember two people who made significant contributions to modern crime fiction. First, Edward Hume, who (among other things) scripted the pilots for three famous 1970s Quinn Martin TV series: Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones. He passed away last month at age 87. Second, we bid a respectful adieu to author Jill Churchill, perhaps best remembered for her award-winning Jane Jeffry and Grace and Favor mystery series. Churchill was 80 years old when she died on July 12.

Bullet Points: Changes and Chan Edition

• The Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America will soon begin accepting entries to its 7th annual Six-Word Mystery Contest. The idea is to sum up an entire story in the space of just half a dozen words. Last year, for instance, Colorado resident Rita A. Popp won the overall competition with this witty effort: “Magician escapes gallows when witness vanishes.” This year’s contest opens on September 1, with submissions to be accepted until midnight MST on October 7. Entry details will be posted here. As a press release explains, “Six-word ‘whodunits’ can be entered in one or all five of the following categories: Hard-boiled or Noir; Cozy Mystery; Thriller Mystery; Police Procedural Mystery; and/or a mystery involving Romance or Lust. The Six-Word Mystery Contest is open to all adults 18 and over. No residency requirements. The contest entry fee is $6 for one entry or $10 to enter six-word mysteries in all five categories. The grand prize winner will receive $100 in cold, hard cash. Winners in all other categories will receive $25, and all winners and finalists will be featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, on our RMMWA website, and in our popular monthly newsletter, Deadlines. Participants will be invited to the chapter’s annual Mystery & Mistletoe Holiday Party in December, which will be held live and on Zoom.”



• Like so many other people, I suspect, I started watching Season 2 of The Lincoln Lawyer—based on Michael Connelly’s 2011 novel, The Fifth Witness, and starring Manuel Garcia Rulfo as Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller—with the assumption that it would run only five episodes in length, as opposed to last year’s 10; after all, that’s how many installments dropped at once onto its Netflix page on July 6. Also like so many others, I was surprised to discover that those comprised only half the story. “I thought it was a good idea,” co-showrunner/co-creator Ted Humphrey told Deadline recently. Well, I for one object. The second five episodes aren’t slated to drop until Thursday, August 3. By then, I’ll surely have forgotten some of the plot nuances from the initial set, and will have to review. Sigh … At least this season’s second-part trailer (above) makes me want to see more.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

As filming gets underway on the ninth season of the hit Masterpiece and ITV show, Grantchester, lead actor Tom Brittney has confirmed that Season 9 will be his last. Tom, who has played the much-loved character Reverend Will Davenport since 2019, is stepping back from his role to focus on new projects. But it was announced that Rishi Nair (Hollyoaks, Count Abdulla) will take over as charismatic vicar, Alphy Kotteram. Nair will be the third vicar character in the series, following Brittney and the original, James Norton, who was featured from 2014-2019. Robson Green, who has played the various vicars’ police counterpart, Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, will return once again. The series is based on The Grantchester Mysteries, collections of short stories written by James Runcie.

• Nathan Ward, who penned the 2015 Dashiell Hammett biography The Lost Detective, recently had a captivating piece posted in CrimeReads, recalling the circumstances of a 1902 shipboard murder. At the end of that article, it mentions that Ward has a new book coming out in September: Son of the Old West (Atlantic Monthly Press), about Old West lawman, bounty hunter, and Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo. That’s definitely being added to my must-read list.

• Although I never got around to watching the 2014-2016 BBC One TV crime drama The Missing, I did enjoy its 2019-2021 spin-off, Baptiste, starring Turkish-born French performer Tchéky Karyo as police detective Julien Baptiste, a role he had created for the previous series. So I was intrigued to learn that UK author David Hewson—who previously adapted the Danish TV drama The Killing as a trilogy of books—has produced a prequel novel to Baptiste. Titled Baptiste: The Blade Must Fall, it is due out from UK publisher Orion in November of this year. A press release offers the following plot synopsis:

Julien Baptiste is an intelligent but somewhat naïve detective, sent to work in Clermiers, a town filled with corruption. A girl goes missing, presumed dead after bloody clothes are found close to an illicit party near an abandoned chateau. Baptiste believes he’s nailed the culprit, the eccentric Gilles Lellouche. When he appears in court, the public call for the guillotine—and that’s the sentence Lellouche gets. But as Lellouche awaits an appeal for clemency, he asks to see Baptiste, who’s still haunted by the fact the girl’s body remains missing. As the clock ticks towards execution hour, Baptiste begins to realise he may have made a terrible mistake …

• A rather belated congratulations to Elizabeth Foxwell, the managing editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, who has replaced the eminent, now retired Jon L. Breen as a “Jury Box” columnist for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. As she explains, “I am the first woman to write the column--I think I’ll be writing one column per year.” Foxwell’s initial submission features in EQMM’s July/August issue.

• Here’s another book treat for you: Lou Armagno, who masterminds the Charlie Chan-focused blog The Postman on Holiday, will soon release a new non-fiction work about that renowned Hawaiian detective. The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside the Charlie Chan Canon (BookBaby) is set to premiere as an e-book on August 26 (the 139th birthday of Chan creator Biggers), with the print edition due out September 4. “Through the years,” remarks Armagno in his blog, “I’ve read many books on the aphorisms of Charlie Chan. However, all concentrated on the sayings found in films—never those inside the novels. And Ohio author Earl Derr Biggers worked hard to entwine the words of great philosophers into his stories for meaning and enlightenment. So this book is just ‘to set the record straight’ …” Armagno very kindly asked yours truly for a back-cover blurb, along with editor/bookseller Otto Penzler and attorney/writer Leslie S. Klinger. I look forward to procuring a finished copy of this delightful collection.

• Martin Edwards reports in his blog on a delightful visit he made to the “150-year-old coach house” home of novelist Peter Lovesey, in historic Shrewsbury, England. “‘Never meet your heroes’ is one of those ‘rules’ in life that has some merit,” is how Edwards introduces his post, “but there are also various exceptions to it. Perhaps it depends on the hero!”

• It appears that Terry Hayes, the English-born Australian screenwriter and author whose first suspense novel, I Am Pilgrim, came out in 2014 to a widespread chorus of acclaim, finally has a second (and, it should be mentioned, much delayed) book teed up and ready to go. The Real Book Spy says The Year of the Locust, “sure to be one of the biggest releases next year,” is set for release next February from Atria/Emily Bestler Books.

• I missed drawing attention to the nominees for this year’s Scribe Awards, organized by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and intended to honor “licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books.” Blogger B.V. Lawson observes that “There are some honorees of interest to the crime fiction community, including in the General/Adapted Novel category: Murder She Wrote: Death on the Emerald Isle by Terrie Moran, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow (which was also nominated in the Audiobook category).” Winners are to be declared on July 21 during San Diego Comic-Con.

• Mark your calendars: Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival, will return to a venue outside Dublin during the weekend of October 6-8. Among the authors taking part will be Tana French, Jane Casey, Steve Cavanagh, Sophie Hannah, and Alice Feeney, This press bulletin lays out more details.

• And I was saddened to read that American singer Tony Bennett, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died yesterday at age 96. Although for a long time I ignored his work, as I grew more mature, I came to appreciate it greatly. I own a number of his CDs, and was hoping to one day see him perform live. (The closest I ever got was in 2006, when Bennett was invited to attend the 100th anniversary commemoration of San Francisco’s great earthquake and fire. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it.) While I knew that he’d guested as himself in a variety of TV presentations (including one I remember distinctly: a 1997 episode of the Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan), I wasn’t aware that his screen credits also included parts on both 77 Sunset Strip and Remington Steele. Live and learn.

Bullet Points: Father’s Day Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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