Thursday Trifles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McCallum Finally Says “U.N.C.L.E.”

This is sad. It was only a week ago that the Scottish-born performer was celebrating his 90th birthday. From the Associated Press:

Actor David McCallum, who became a teen heartthrob in the hit series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and was the eccentric medical examiner in the popular “NCIS” 40 years later, has died. ... McCallum died Monday of natural causes surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital ...

The blog Spy Vibe goes on to note that “McCallum grew up between Scotland and London, where his father became a prominent figure in the London Philharmonic Orchestra (he played on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!). Young David studied the oboe and, later in his career, recorded a number of albums for Capitol Records as an arranger interpreting hits of the mid-to-late Sixties.” Wikipedia recalls that, after he served a stint in the British Army, McCallum “attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art …, where Joan Collins was a classmate. ... He began his acting career doing boy voices for BBC Radio in 1947 and taking bit parts in British films from the late 1950s.”

McCallum went on to appear in the movies Hell Drivers (with Sean Connery and Patrick McGoohan), A Night to Remember (1958, playing a radio operative on the ill-fated RMS Titanic), The Great Escape (1963), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). In 1964, he began co-starring with Robert Vaughn in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., an NBC-TV series hoping to capitalize on growing public interest in spy fiction—a craze kicked off in large part by the recent success of Connery’s James Bond films. (In fact, Bond creator Ian Fleming contributed ideas to the program’s initial conception.)

The Spy Command writes of McCallum’s U.N.C.L.E. role:

Illya Kuryakin, a Russian agent who worked for the multi-national U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) was envisioned as a secondary character for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The show originally was titled Solo, after Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn.

Still, even in the earliest days of the project, the makers of the show apparently felt they had something more. …

Starting with the third episode, “The Quadripartite Affair,” Illya began to get more attention. Writer Alan Caillou, a British spy during World War II, provided scripts that hinted at an intriguing character. That combined with McCallum’s acting, caught the attention of audiences.

Something else helped. Robert Vaughn began studying for a Ph.D. Starring in a television series is time-consuming. David McCallum’s rising popularity meant someone else could shoulder some of the responsibility for carrying the show. Before the end of the first season, Solo and Illya were a duo.

Despite early mixed revises, and concern in those Cold War years about Kuryakin being a Russian espionage agent, U.N.C.L.E. eventually attracted a wide audience, and turned McCallum’s intelligent, enigmatic character—who sported a Beatles-style blond haircut—into a sex symbol among teenage girls. “Kuryakin became so popular,” says The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig, that “he appeared in ads marketing U.S. Savings Bonds. For American audiences, Illya may have been a Soviet, but he was our Soviet.”

After The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was cancelled in early 1968—halfway through its fourth season (and with 105 episodes already in the can)—McCallum returned to the boob tube in shows such as Colditz (1972-1974), the science-fiction series Sapphire & Steel (1979-1982), and The Invisible Man (1975-1976, which also featured former Peter Gunn headliner Craig Stevens). He guested as well on programs ranging from The A-Team and McCloud to Murder, She Wrote, Father Dowling Mysteries, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Not until 2003 did McCallum win another small-screen role worthy of his talents, playing an erudite pathologist for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, on CBS-TV’s military police series, NCIS.

Variety’s obituary mentions that, in addition to his work on-screen and on four Capitol Records albums, McCallum wrote an oft-humorous crime novel titled Once a Crooked Man (2016). As his son Peter said in a statement, David McCallum was “a true Renaissance man.”

READ MORE: “David McCallum, Heartthrob Spy of ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90,” by Leslie Kaufman (The New York Times); “Close Channel D: The Late, Great David McCallum,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Top TV Moments: David McCallum,” by David Hofstede (Comfort TV).

When Agents Fade

Bill Koenig, managing editor of The Spy Command, identifies January 15, 1968—55 years ago today—as the beginning of the end for television’s 1960s spy craze. That was the date NBC cancelled The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which had helped kick off such “spymania,” followed by subsequent shows such as I Spy and The Wild Wild West.

Bullet Points: Bursting at the Seams Edition

(Above) A word cloud generated from this post’s text.

Today begins the historic third week of mass-seclusion here in Washington state, and I cannot say that I’m bored yet. If my work situation were more unstable, or if I lived alone, this downtime might be giving me fits. Instead, it has rewarded me with extra hours in which to write (notice how busy The Rap Sheet has been lately with posts), and some wonderfully quiet time for reading. Beyond the many DVD collections of vintage TV series I have at the ready, I’ve been sampling newer shows, among them Vienna Blood (which I found delightful), SS-GB (which I loved … until the bizarrely inconclusive final episode), Dublin Murders (which I gave up on watching halfway through, no longer interested in the redundantly troubled pair of protagonist cops), Star Trek: Picard (which got off to a rocky start but ended powerfully), and Jamestown (which stars a couple of actresses I’ve also appreciated in other productions: Sophie Rundle from Dickensian; and Niamh Walsh from The English Game).

If it hadn’t been so cold and damp in Seattle of late, I would probably have spent more time outside—maintaining the necessary social distance from my fellow humans, of course. As it is, I have managed to walk a few times around the local lake, and I’m seriously thinking (believe it or not) about doing some gardening, should predications hold true of warmer days ahead. I ought to have prepared my front and back yards better before winter clamped down, but was hampered last fall by the inconvenience of several broken bones.

For today, here are a few bits and bobs from the Web that are of likely interest to readers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

• Oh no, it’s come to this! CrimeFest organizers Adrian Muller and Donna Moore have placed at the top of their Web page a note explaining that this year’s convention—originally slated to take place from June 4 to 7 in Bristol, England—has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, CrimeFest is in need of financial assistance. “Due to contractual obligations which have already been met,” they explain, “we need to raise emergency funds for the sole purpose of ensuring the continuity of CrimeFest, and next year’s convention, and finding new ways to connect writers and readers to the crime fiction we all love. Whatever you can spare, will make a big difference. And if it is not convenient to donate directly, sharing this plea further will assist us greatly.” Click here to make a contribution via the JustGiving crowd-funding platform. The goal is to bring in £35,000. At last check, £5,470 had been raised already.

• Headliners at this year’s CrimeFest were to have been Lynda La Plante, Laura Lippman, and Robert Goddard. Let’s hope they’re all available in 2021.

• Big-selling American novelist James Patterson, who “has a long history of helping independent bookstores,” is stepping up again to support the cause. He is donating half a million bucks to help indie stores endangered by the novel coronavirus. “I can’t imagine anything more important right now, in terms of the book world, than helping indies survive,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

• Also on the disease front, Elizabeth Foxwell notes, in The Bunburyist, that a dinner ceremony during which new authors are to be inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame has now been pushed back from June 2 to September 14. Among this year’s honorees is Brooklyn-born Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935), author of The Leavenworth Case (1878) and one of America’s first detective fictionists. The delayed ceremony will apparently be attended by Rebecca Crozier, Green’s great-great granddaughter.

• As an aid to all of us folks trapped at home with our fast-declining surplusages of toilet paper and run-amok coiffures, CrimeReads senior editor (and former bookseller) Molly Odintz has begun making recommendations to individual readers of what books they might tackle next. Her first advice-packed post is here, and she promises “an ongoing series.” If you’d like to know what additions the CrimeReads staff might suggest to you, shoot an e-mail request to crimereads@lithub.com. This undertaking follows the “Personalized Quarantine Book Recommendation” series already in progress at CrimeReads’ mother ship, Literary Hub.

• “To help us, and him, through the quarantine,” U.S. screenwriter/comic-book writer Damon Lindelof has begun composing an “exclusive, serialized” mystery story for venture capitalist Dave Pell’s blog, Next Draft. It’s titled “Something, Something, Something Murder,” and we’re told “chapters will update … periodically.”

• Oh, and John Connolly is now two chapters into posting a “Web-exclusive Charlie Parker novella,” “The Sisters Strange.”

• Most of us, when we think of Blake Edwards’ TV endeavors, immediately flash on Peter Gunn, his 1958-1961 private-eye drama starring Craig Stevens. A smaller percentage might recall that he also created the 1959-1960 adventure/drama Mr. Lucky. But I’m willing to wager that few people, save perhaps for those who were adults during the Kennedy administration, still remember Dante, the 1960-1961 NBC Monday-night series starring Howard Duff (the radio voice of Sam Spade) as William “Willie” Dante, an erstwhile gambler who now manages a downtown San Francisco nightclub called Dante’s Inferno. Edwards developed Dante as a recurring character—played originally by film star Dick Powell—on the 1950s CBS anthology series Four Star Playhouse. In the subsequent series Dante, says Wikipedia, Duff’s protagonist “claims to have put his past behind him,” but still keeps on his payroll longtime associates Stewart Styles (played by Alan Mowbray), serving as the club’s maître d’, and a thief-turned-bartender named Biff (Tom D’Andrea). “Every week,” wrote Michael Shonk in his 2013 Mystery*File overview of the series, “Willie would find himself caught in the middle of two or more opposing forces, usually the cops and bad guys. No one believed Willie was going straight, both the good guys and bad guys suspected him to be up to something.” What brought all of this to mind was a more recent Mystery*File post, in which editor Steve Lewis opined on the 22nd of 26 Dante episodes, “Dante in the Dark,” which guest-starred Marion Ross, the future Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. Sadly, that isn’t among the handful of episodes available on YouTube.

• Here’s an altogether remarkable resource for fans of vintage TV crime dramas: Uncle Earl’s Classic Television Channel. I can’t tell you who the heck Earl is, but he has amassed a trove of old-time films and small-screen delights. The site’s “Mystery, Detective and Crime Drama” features multiple episodes of series including 77 Sunset Strip, Burke’s Law, Checkmate, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Ellery Queen, The Fugitive, It Takes a Thief, Judd, for the Defense, Richard Diamond, Private Eye, Switch, and Mike Connors’ short-lived Tightrope. Oh, expect to find Dante there, too.

• A newsletter received last week from the Web site Modcinema, which sells movies and made-for-TV flicks produced during the 1960s and ’70s, reminded me that U.S. television audiences were offered a Law and Order before the Law & Order we now recall best. I’m talking about the 1976 NBC pilot film adapted from former policewoman Dorothy Uhnak’s 1973 novel, Law and Order. As Lee Goldberg summarized it in Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989, that two-and-a-half-hour drama followed “three generations of an Irish American family of NYPD officers. The focal point of the envisioned series would be the Deputy Chief of Public Affairs [played by Darren McGavin], who is in constant conflict with his son [Art Hindle], a Vietnam veteran-turned-beat cop who opposes his father’s way of achieving law and order.” Also featured in the movie: Suzanne Pleshette, Keir Dullea, Jeanette Nolan, and Biff McGuire. It’s only too bad NBC didn’t turn this into a series. You can buy a copy of Law and Order here. At least for the nonce, it can also be enjoyed on YouTube.

• Looking for something else to watch during these low-activity times? Evan Lewis has posted the 1936 film Meet Nero Wolfe in his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West. Based on Rex Stout’s 1934 novel, Fer-de-Lance, which introduced the characters of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, this movie stars Edward Arnold and Lionel Stander, with Rita Hayworth (then billed as Rita Cansino, and not even 20 years old yet) playing their client, Maria Maringola.

• Here’s some good news for the many fans of that 2006-2007 UK science-fiction police procedural Life on Mars and its sequel, Ashes to Ashes: The Killing Times reports that co-creator Matthew Graham is talking up “a third and final installment of the story. Graham told fans that he’s expecting all the main stars—John Simm, Phillip Glenister and Keeley Hawes among them—for the installment, and sees it as ‘four or five episodes.’” Graham commented recently on Twitter: “We would never make another Mars unless we really had something to say and could push the envelope all over again. Finally we have something.”

• I had some misgivings about Defending Jacob, William Landay’s 2012 thriller about “the extremes to which parents might go out of love for their children.” But this hew trailer for the Apple TV+ miniseries set to premiere on April 24, reminds me how successfully Landay built up the tensions that course through his plot.

• Mike Ripley serves up his usual smörgåsbord of drollery, idiosyncratic recollections, and reading recommendations in Shots’ April “Getting Away with Murder” column. Covered are subjects ranging from Golden Age mystery writer Evadne Childe and Jacobean “revenge tragedies” to Dean Street Press’ republication of classic detective stories by Christopher Bush and forthcoming works by the likes of S.A. Cosby, Lindsey Davis, Camilla Lackberg, and Mai Jia (“who may be China’s John Le Carré”). Ripley’s column finishes with a comic sign-off appropriate for our disease-ridden present: “Stay safe, Stay Home, Stay Away from Me, The Ripster.”

• Meanwhile, Maxim Jakubowski delivers his latest “To the Max” column in Crime Time. His “Book of the Month” is Joe Ide’s Hi Five, followed by thoughtful comments on Malcolm Pryce’s The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness, Margarita Montimore’s The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart, and other works with shorter titles.

• It’s rather unnerving to go back and watch some of the TV programs that were popular during the mid-20th century, and see just how strange they often were. CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano recently gathered together the plot descriptions from numerous Man from U.N.C.L.E episodes, and found they could be truly “bonkers.”

• Jerry House offers this primer on Paul W. Fairman, a largely forgotten author of both science-fiction and crime-fiction tales. One section that caught my eye: “Probably his best-known work was in Ellery Queen’s A Study in Terror [1966], in which Fairman anonymously wrote the crux of the novel centering on Sherlock Holmes and Jack Ripper, while ‘Ellery Queen’ wrote the framing device.”

• “J.J.,” the blogger at The Invisible Event, has just launched “a Golden Age Detection-focused podcast called In GAD We Trust. With so many people being at home,” he says, “and with so many of us seeking solace in books, I thought I’d take the opportunity to rustle up some GAD-based discussion with my fellow bloggers and enthusiasts, and record the results for your listening pleasure.” J.J.’s first guest is Kate Jackson, from Cross-Examining Crime, who talks about female sleuths. You can listen to their conversation here.

• Incidentally, I’ve added In GAD We Trust to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column selection of Crime/Mystery Podcasts.

• Speaking of podcasts, the new episode of Shedunnit is “all about Agatha Christie’s work as a hospital dispenser during both world wars, and how she applied what she learned there about poisons to her detective fiction,” says host Caroline Crampton. “My guest for this one was Dr Kathryn Harkup, science communicator, Agatha Christie fan, and author of A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie.”

• An intriguing item, “borrowed” from The Millions:

At JSTOR Daily, Erin Blakemore takes a look at a small publishing trend from the 1840s and 1850s that followed female murderers and gave middle-class women a brief escape from Victorian values. Literary scholar Dawn Keetley studied the “relatively unknown literary form” extensively. “It’s a genre with conventions of its own: a beautiful white heroine who murders her man, then embarks on a crime spree, ‘indulging in everything from sexual promiscuity, drinking, gambling, and dressing as a man to counterfeiting, robbery, infanticide, and serial murder.’ Dime novels weren’t a thing yet—the stories were printed in pamphlets and sold by traveling salesmen. Keetley thinks they were mainly read by middle-class women. Since the stories masqueraded as morality plays, they were seen as appropriate for women readers.”

• Mystery Readers Journal is soliciting stories having to do with Italian mysteries for its next issue. The deadline is April 20. Submission specifics are available here.

• Although No Time to Die’s release has been delayed because of the coronavirus spread, director Cary Joji Fukunaga says work on that 25th James Bond movie is done, with no further changes expected. The Spy Command quotes Fukunaga as saying, “[W]e had to put our pencils down when we finished our post-production window, which was thankfully before COVID shut everything else down.”

• In this excerpt from the Slate podcast Thirst Aid Kit, Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins explore “the potent trope of Unresolved Sexual Tension” as it was exemplified by the 1985-1989 comedy-cum-private investigator drama Moonlighting.

• New York book editor Gerald Howard asks, in this piece for Bookforum: “Do you find it as obvious as I do that Don DeLillo richly deserves to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature? And right away, as in this year?” Yeah, I can get behind that, as well!

• After reading reviews of two novels by Charles Williams in the blog Narrative Drive—this one of The Concrete Flamingo (aka All the Way, 1958), and this other one of The Sailcloth Shroud (1960)—it’s clear that I should be paying way more attention to his work than I have in the past. Opines blogger Andrew Cartmel: “What a pleasure—discovering an outstanding crime novelist who looks destined to become a favourite of mine.”

• The Rap Sheet’s last “Bullet Points” post included a brief mention of New York City’s famous Mysterious Bookshop confronting financial concerns amid the pandemic. Another week’s passage, however, seems to have brightened proprietor Otto Penzler’s outlook on matters somewhat. He writes in the shop’s current newsletter: “For those of you who responded to my letter last week by buying books and gift cards (and it was a surprisingly and gratifyingly large number), my heartfelt gratitude goes out to you at a magnitude that you cannot imagine. Here’s what you did: 1. My entire staff was paid in full until the end of the month; 2. Rent and all utilities are covered through the end of April; 3. Individuals from whom I bought books were paid in full; 4. February bills to major publishers were paid.” To help further, order books from The Mysterious Bookshop’s Web site, or purchase a gift card.

• Of course, it’s not solely independent bookstores in the Empire State that are suffering during our mutual hibernation period. Whichever indie you most frequently patronize (assuming there’s one left in your area at all) could surely use some of your money to keep things afloat during the short term. Buying books and especially purchasing gift cards can help. The point is, you want to make sure those retailers are still in business whenever we are able to patronize them again. We must all do our part.

• Here’s a list of Washington bookstores that continue to serve customers, through various means, while this COVID-19 crisis lasts. Search out similar lists in your own city or state. Books help us thrive; we need to make sure the shops selling them thrive in addition.

• Writing in Literary Hub, Lucy Kogler contends that because bookstores serve ideas and people, they are essential businesses—no matter what lawmakers or others might say.

• OK, I couldn’t resist finding out which fictional character I supposedly best resemble. I read about the Statistical “Which Character” Personality Quiz in Literary Hub. “To play,” explains senior editor Emily Temple, “you choose where you land on a series of spectra. The result is a ranked list of the fictional characters whose personalities most align with yours. It is weirdly accurate—and after taking the quiz, you can contribute to the research behind it by ranking the personalities of characters with whom you are familiar.” Click here to take the quiz. By the way, if you’re interested, the best match for me (78 percent!) was evidently dwarf Tyrion Lannister, from Game of Thrones. As Wikipedia observes, “Tyrion is intelligent, witty, well-read, and shares his father's skill for business and political maneuvering” Not far off the mark. Except for the dwarf part.

• Killer Covers’ salute to paperback artist Mitchell Hooks has been extended for a fortnight. Catch up with all of those posts here.

• Passover, the eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the departure of Jews from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, is slated to take place this year from April 8 to 16. Like most other recent events, Passover plans are likely to be cancelled. But you can still read mysteries with Passover connections.

• Molly Odintz makes a strong case here for why Passover is “by far the most noir of Jewish holidays.”

• New on The Thrilling Detective Web Site: Kevin Burton Smith’s catalogue of “The Best Anthologies of Original P.I. Stories.”

• Cara Black is interviewed in regard to her brand-new novel, the World War II-set standalone Three Hours in Paris (Soho Crime). Concurrently, Elle Marr (The Missing Sister) provides Criminal Element with a list of her five favorite Paris-set thrillers.

• In association with the release this week of Don Winslow’s new short-story collection, Broken (Morrow), U.S. federal prosecutor Bruce K. Riordan has assembled “a list of ten Winslow crime novels that you should read now. Read in sequence,” says Riordan, “they not only chart the author’s evolving vision of crime in America but also the potential for crime fiction to tell stories that capture the intricate webs of corruption, violence and deceit at the heart of the American Dream.”

• Lyndsay Faye conjectures why so many people seem to be turning to crime and mystery novels during our present quarantining.

• Finally, let me bid farewell to singer-songwriter Bill Withers, whose music filled the soundtrack of my youth, and who performed at the presidential inaugurations of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. “The three-time Grammy Award winner, who withdrew from making music in the mid-1980s, died on Monday in Los Angeles,” according to the Associated Press. Two classic Withers songs are here.

Bullet Points: Broad Scope Edition

• Sad news, indeed. The Bookseller reports that Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, died on July 31 from a brain hemorrhage. He was 77 years old. “Berlins started his career at the Times as a legal correspondent in 1971,” The Bookseller explains. “During his decade covering law, Berlins also wrote his first books, including Caught in the Act with Geoffrey Wansell (Penguin, 1974), a study of young offenders. His weekly legal column later moved to the Guardian.” The Rap Sheet’s Ali Karim says Berlins’ book critiques were “always insightful. … He was one of the greatest London critics, providing such elegance in his literary commentary.” And fellow critic Barry Forshaw offered this encomium in Crime Time:

I don’t have to talk here about Marcel being the doyen of British crime fiction critics (though he was French), writing for The Times for many years—all the many obits will talk about that. What I will miss most was a friend of many years: wry, alert to all the arts and always immensely knowledgeable. … I’ll also miss those phone calls when we’d both received proof copies from a publisher—he’d usually discover new talents ahead of me, and was the perfect early warning system: ‘Have you read X?’, he’d enthuse. ‘He/she is terrific!’ (‘Terrific’ was a favourite Marcel adjective.)

But finally, I can’t avoid saying what everyone who knew
him will say—however much of a cliché it is. The most distinguished of writers on crime fiction will be missed. Much missed, both for his personality and his championing of so many crime writers.

The City University of London, where Berlins had once been a Media Law lecturer, has posted this additional tribute.

• Also gone is Australian-born composer Barrington Pheloung, who, observes London’s Classic FM Web site, was “best known for his dark, hypnotic music for Inspector Morse, for which he was nominated for Best Original Television Music at the 1992 British Academy Television Awards. He also composed the themes for the sequel Lewis, and the prequel Endeavour.” (Listen to the Morse theme here.) The BBC recalls that Pheloung was “born in Manly, New South Wales, in 1954, … started playing the guitar at the age of five and moved to London in his teens to study at the Royal College of Music.” He was just 65 years old when he passed away yesterday in Australia.

• I missed mentioning earlier this week that the Australian Crime Writers Association has promulgated its longlists of contenders for three different 2019 Ned Kelly Awards. Vying in the Best Fiction category are The Rip, by Mark Brandi; Kill Shot, by Garry Disher; Gone by Midnight, by Candice Fox; The Spotted Dog, by Kerry Greenwood; Scrublands, by Chris Hammer; The Lost Man, by Jane Harper; The Other Wife, by Michael Robotham; Preservation, by Jock Serong; Under Your Wings, by Tiffany Tsao; and Live and Let Fry, by Sue Williams. Click here to see all three of the longlists.

• Meanwhile, London’s Goldsboro Books has announced its shortlist of nominees for the 2019 Glass Bell Award, which honors “compelling storytelling with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realized”:

— Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
— Our House, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster)
— The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown)
— Vox, by Christina Dalcher (HQ)
— Swan Song, by Kelleigh Greenberg- Jephcott (Cornerstone)
— The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris (Bonnier Zaffre)

The winner is to be declared on September 16. He or she will receive “£2,000 and a beautiful, handmade, engraved glass bell.”

• In Reference to Murder brings word of the finalists for the 2019 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. They include James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin, “which also won the Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel.”

• And let’s not forget the 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, which are designed to celebrate “the crime and thriller genre and in a UK festival first, recognize excellence in film and television as well as books.” Among the many finalists are novels by Philip Kerr, Manda Scott, Anthony Horowitz, Louise Candlish, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson. The victor in each of nine categories will be proclaimed on September 26, during London’s Capital Crime Festival.

• Happy 200th birthday today to author Herman Melville, who—thanks to works such as Typee and Moby Dick—became a literary giant of the 19th century, yet “died in obscurity” at age 72.

• The New York Times has more on Melville here.

• Dan Moldea, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist “specializing in organized-crime and political-corruption investigations,” has his own theories about what happened to American labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa 44 years ago this week, and he shares them with the news Web site Deadline Detroit.

• “The body of John Dillinger, the notorious 1930s bank robber from Central Indiana, will be exhumed from his Crown Hill Cemetery burial site in Indianapolis as part of an upcoming History Channel documentary.” The Indianapolis Star has that story.

• Episode 4 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast examines the brand-new Stark House Press release, The Best of Manhunt, and also considers the influence of the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on spy fiction of its time. Listen to the whole show here.

• Blogger B.V. Lawson mentions this development:

Jeffery Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s Quibi short-form streaming service has picked up Skinny Dip, a comedy series based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2004 satirical novel. The project had been set up as a drama pilot at the CW in the 2018 cycle but did not move forward there. The series is described as a darkly comedic odyssey of revenge where a jilted woman miraculously survives a night in the open ocean after her husband suddenly flings her overboard on their anniversary cruise. Plucked to safety serendipitously by a retired cop, the two team up to gaslight her husband.

• Someday I want to visit Buenos Aires, which I’ve heard is a beautiful, European-styled city. For right now, though, the closest I can come to there is Paul French’s piece in CrimeReads exploring a range of mystery and thriller fiction set in the Argentinean capital.

• Max Allan Collins notes in his blog that he and co-author A. Brad Schwartz are hard at work on The Untouchable and the Butcher, a second non-fiction book about 20th-century law-enforcement agent Eliot Ness. The pair previously penned Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago (2018).

• Finally, New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal reports that Santa Fe author James McGrath Morris, “who has written books about newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, authors Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and African-American journalist Ethel Payne,” is currently conducting research for a new biography of Tony Hillerman. Hillerman, who died back in 2008, was of course the creator of the “popular mystery novel series featuring Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)

Bullet Points: Media Medley Edition

• Argentina-born pianist and composer Lalo Schifrin, who has scored such films as Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry, and created the theme music for TV productions including Mission: Impossible, Petrocelli, and Mannix, was honored this last weekend with a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition to the 86-year-old Schifrin, two other recognizable Hollywood figures received Governors Awards: 93-year-old actress Cicely Tyson and Marvin Levy, a longtime public relations exec who was once a member of the AMPAS board of governors. You can watch Schifrin accept his award on YouTube.

• The Classic Film and TV Café calls producer-writer Stirling Silliphant “the poet laureate of 1960s television” in this tribute looking back at his scripts for the 1960-1964 CBS series Route 66. “Silliphant, who co-created the series with producer Herbert B. Leonard, wrote an incredible 73 of the 116 episodes over the show’s four-year run,” observes the blogger known as Rick29. “In terms of entertainment value, the plots were consistently above-average, but it’s Silliphant's dialogue that gave Route 66 its unique voice. As David Mamet would do later, Silliphant embellished his characters with dialogue that would never pass for natural—but which conveyed a singular poetry all its own.” In addition to Route 66, Silliphant (shown on the left) is remembered for his work on the TV programs Naked City and Longstreet, and his screenplays for such pictures as In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Marlowe (1969), which starred James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s justly famous Los Angeles private eye, Philip Marlowe.

• While we’re on the subject of bygone boob-tube shows, check out Michael Shonk’s new Mystery*File post about Gavilan, a 1982-1983 NBC series that featured Robert Urich (later of Spenser: For Hire fame) as a former intelligence operative who has gone to work for an oceanographic research organization called the Dewitt Institute, but keeps trying to help people—especially attractive young females—in trouble. Shonk opines:

The series had its good moments, but it also had many of the flaws of 1980s television. The plots were better than average but had to really stretch to connect to the Institute. In “By the Sword” the brilliant beautiful woman was a scientist working on a project to study the krill as a food source, but the plot was about an ancient samurai sword she stole from the Yakuza to regain her family honor.

The stories were entertaining but mindless, predictable and too willing to sacrifice story and character for a joke or twist. In “By the Sword,” the female scientist is trained in the martial arts and had done something her entire family had not done in over a hundred years, got her family’s ancient honored Japanese sword back from the Yakuza. So in the final confrontation for the sword it is Gavilan—as she watched—who sword fights to the death for the sword and her family honor. Of course, Gavilan out duels the unbeatable Master Samurai.

Shonk’s piece includes two episodes of Gavilan found on YouTube. A few of my own thoughts on this show can be found here.

• NBC-TV has reportedly made a script commitment for The Bone Collector, a series based both on Jeffery Deaver’s 1997 psychological thriller of the same name and on the 1990 Denzel Washington movie already adapted from that novel. According to Deadline Hollywood, NBC’s project “hails from writers V.J. Boyd and Mark Bianculli (S.W.A.T.), Universal Television and Sony Pictures Television … Written by Boyd and Bianculli, The Bone Collector follows Lincoln Rhyme, a retired genius forensic criminologist left paralyzed after an accident on the job. When a harrowing case brings him back to the force, Rhyme partners up with an ambitious young detective, Amelia Sachs, to take down some of the most dangerous criminals in the U.S.” There’s no information yet on who might star in this series, but plenty of speculation on what it could draw from Deaver’s 14 existing Rhyme novels, the latest of which is 2017’s The Cutting Edge.

• The Killing Times says that America’s Audience Network has renewed the Stephen King-inspired, David E. Kelley-developed crime drama, Mr. Mercedes, for a third season.

• I’m not surprised by news that Netflix’s Tony Danza/Josh Groban “dramedy,” The Good Cop, hasn’t been picked up for a second season. While I really wanted to like the series—in part because its creator-showrunner was Monk mastermind Andy Breckman—it came off as way too cute too much of the time, with an excess of thin plots and ridiculous turns. I did, however, like Danza’s portrayal of a disgraced ex-New York City policeman as part con man, part reluctant troubleshooter; and dancer-actress Monica Barbaro consistently brightened up the screen playing Grogan’s ballsier partner, Cora Vasquez. I’ve only seen half of the 10 episodes of The Good Cop, but their performances will keep me watching through to the end.

• I’d heard about this before, and was convinced that I’d mentioned it here, but evidently I was wrong. Anyway, Mystery Tribune notes that Christopher Huang’s debut novel, A Gentleman’s Murder—which featured in my recent CrimeReads piece about nine post-World War I mysteries—has been optioned for TV adaptation.

• Deadline Hollywood brings word that Tom Shepherd, who scripted Robert Downey Jr.’s forthcoming The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle, has been signed to pen Matt Helm, based on Donald Hamilton’s long-running series of spy thrillers. Bradley Cooper will star in this Paramount project, with George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci all serving as executive producers.



• Continuing The Rap Sheet’s series on “copycat covers,” book fronts that employ artwork previously displayed on other titles, we offer—above—the façades of Blow Out the Candles and Say Goodbye (Lamplighter Suspense), Linda S. Glaz’s 2017 novel, and 2016’s Stealing People (Europa Editions), the third entry in Robert Wilson’s series starring kidnap consultant Charlie Boxer.

• A new book suggests that Arthur Conan Doyle based the character of Professor James Moriarty, sleuth Sherlock Holmes’ principal nemesis, on a brilliant 19th-century professor of mathematics named George Boole. “A thorough comparison between Conan Doyle’s fictional Moriarty and the real Boole,” writes The Irish Times, “reveals numerous persuasive similarities. Both characters held chairs at small provincial universities; both won appointments on the basis of outstanding early work; both had interests in astronomy; the two were of similar appearance—an illustration of Moriarty in Conan Doyle’s work bears a striking resemblance to a photograph of Boole and may well have been based on it. The major discrepancy between Boole and Moriarty is that Boole was a man of high morals and excellent character, a social reformer, religious thinker and family man.” While Moriarty … well, as Conan Doyle put it in The Valley of Fear, he was “the greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every devilry …”

• Murder & Mayhem picks “11 must-read mysteries set in Los Angeles,” and I’m relieved to discover that I’ve read all but one: Dorothy B. Hughes’ The Expendable Man (1963).

• To his excellent John D. MacDonald blog, The Trap of Solid Gold, Steve Scott has recently added two worth-reading vintage profiles of Travis McGee’s creator—one from Florida’s Tampa Bay Times, dated April 26, 1981; and the other from a 1978 edition of the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s (you’ll find that second piece here).

• Authors are generally quite reticent to reveal which books they prefer among those they have written, so it’s interesting to see Max Allan Collins identify his two favorite entries in his rapidly expanding series about the hit man known as Quarry.

• Which reminds me, I wasn’t aware before reading this piece in The Guardian, that Agatha Christie’s 1967 novel, Endless Night, was her favorite. Sam Jordison says more about that standalone here.

• A weekend spent organizing my late in-laws' long-forgotten boxes of books turned up some surprising and welcome literary gems.

• I am, of course, an enthusiastic follower of the Web site Pulp Covers, with its ever-growing abundance of classic book and magazine fronts. And one of the reasons for my interest is that the site’s unidentified editor frequently posts links to full issues of periodicals such as Dime Mystery Magazine, Detective Book Magazine, Manhunt, and New Detective. Those issues are easily downloaded and can be wonderfully entertaining.

• So much has already been said about the demise, late last week, of 87-year-old novelist and screenwriter William Goldman, that I fear I have nothing to add. Obituaries in The New York Times and in the British Guardian covered the highlights of his career: his scripting of movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Maverick, and Paul Newman’s Harper; his penning of novels that included Marathon Man, The Princess Bride, and Magic; and his late-life success with a memoir titled Adventures in the Screen Trade. CrimeReads adds to those encomia a collection of notable Goldman quotes. My own first experience with Goldman was way back in high school, when I was introduced to Magic … which put me off of ventriloquist’s dummies for the remainder of my mortal life. I’ve often watched Goldman’s motion pictures, with Harper—based on Ross Macdonald’s 1949 private-eye novel, The Moving Target—and Butch Cassidy being my favorites. I never met the man, but the power and precision of his prose, and the pleasure I’ve derived from listening to his dialogue and reading his stories made me care about him nonetheless. Really, a storyteller could hope for nothing better than that.

• The Gumshoe Site reminds us that William Goldman’s first mystery novel was No Way to Treat a Lady. In another blog, Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini recalls that that book was “originally published in 1964 under the pseudonym ‘Harry Longbaugh,’ the real name of the outlaw ‘The Sundance Kid.’ Written in just 10 days, this brief novel is 160 pages long and broken down into 53 chapters and is an exciting, blackly comic work reminiscent of the best of the Ed McBain thrillers of the time.” Adam Groves of The Bedlam Files adds that No Way to Treat a Lady “lacks the slickness and polish of [Goldman’s] later novels, with much slapdash prose and an uncertain grasp of tone (it’s difficult to discern if all the comedic elements were meant to be funny). Yet the wit, verve and imagination that characterize Goldman’s best work are very much evident in this suspenseful and macabre novel that predates everything from Dexter to Natural Born Killers in its furiously inventive account of the fortunes of a mass murderer.” Concludes Groves: “I say it’s one of William Goldman’s finest books.”

• By the way, No Way to Treat a Lady was made into a 1968 film starring Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, and George Segal. As I’ve never read Goldman’s original book, or seen the movie, I guess I have some serious catching up to do.

• Want to learn more about classic New Zealand mystery writer Ngaio Marsh? CrimeReads’ Neil Nyren provides a bit of background as well as recommendations of four works from her oeuvre.

• Here’s something I didn’t know before: Wisconsin-born, Japanese-American crime novelist Milton K Ozaki (1913-1989)—who often wrote under the moniker Robert O Saber—was not only “a newspaperman, an artist, and the operator of a beauty parlor” (per Bill Crider), but also something of a con man, according to Paperback Warrior.

• In The Spy Command, Bill Koenig traces the complicated roots of the 1964-1968 NBC-TV spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and its connections to James Bond creator Ian Fleming. This is a continuing series, but you can find Part I here, with Part II here.

• The New York Times’ Alexandra Alter recently caught up with Megan Abbott, whose commitments both as an author and as the executive producer of a TV pilot film based on her 2012 novel, Dare Me, must leave her little time for relaxation.

• Leo W. Banks has claimed another prize for his 2017 debut novel, Double Wide. His publisher’s Web site says Banks “just received the 2018 Best Mystery Novel award from the New Mexico Book Co-op, announced at a gala awards banquet in Albuquerque on November 16th. Along with this latest honor, Double Wide also has received two Western Writers of America 2018 Spur Awards and [the] Best Crime Novel of the Year Award by True West magazine.”

• Finally, I’ve spent several years now trying to procure copies of the four episodes made of Faraday and Company, a 1973-1974 detective series that starred Dan Dailey and James Naughton, and was part of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie line-up. Then, just today, I happened across a Web site called DVD Planet Store, which offers the full run of Faraday for $16. The trouble is, after reading negative online reviews of this Pakistan-based enterprise, I fear I might never receive the DVDs I sought to purchase. Has anybody else tried to buy from DVD Planet Store? What were your experiences with it?

The Elegant Actor Exits Affair

This was already a terrible week, thanks to the frightening results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the coming installation in the Oval Office of a “hater in chief.” Now comes the news that actor Robert Vaughn, best remembered for co-starring (with David McCallum) in the 1966-1968 NBC-TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., died yesterday—just 11 days short of his 84th birthday.

In its obituary of Vaughn, The New York Times writes:

Mr. Vaughn had numerous roles in film and on television. He played an old boyfriend of Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) on an episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and a gunman in “The Magnificent Seven” (1960). He was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his role as a man accused of murder in “The Young Philadelphians” (1959) and won an Emmy in 1978 for his performance as a White House chief of staff in the mini-series “Washington: Behind Closed Doors.”

But no character he played was as popular as Napoleon Solo. From 1964 to 1968, in the thick of the Cold War, millions of Americans tuned in weekly to “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” to watch Mr. Vaughn, as a super-agent from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, battling T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity), a secret organization intent on achieving world domination through nefarious if far-fetched devices like mind-controlling gas.

At the height of the show’s popularity, Mr. Vaughn said he was receiving 70,000 fan letters a month.

The Spy Command blog adds:

With U.N.C.L.E., Vaughn became a leading man, making the character name Napoleon Solo one of the big names of the 1960s spy boom.

The show flirted with cancellation early in its first season because it was up against a popular CBS variety show hosted by Red Skelton.

But with a time change slot and a surge in interest in spy entertainment thanks to 1964’s Goldfinger, U.N.C.L.E. became a hit. Episodes of the show were re-edited (with extra footage added) to create eight movies for the international market. At the peak of U.N.C.L.E.’s popularity, the early movies were even released in the United States.

However, Vaughn’s career extended far beyond U.N.C.L.E.’s axing in 1968, and was not limited to that charming, cleft-chinned New Yorker’s appearances on screens large and small. Vaughn earned plaudits as a political activist, speaking out frequently against the Vietnam War and raising hopes that this self-described liberal Democrat might one day step into the political sphere (which he did not). While filming U.N.C.L.E., he also studied for a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Southern California. He won that degree in 1970, and two years later published his dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting, which is still in print.

As to Vaughn’s acting credits, though, they were extensive. Blogger Terence Towles Canote explains that “He made his film debut in a bit part in The Ten Commandments (1956). His first substantial role was in Hell’s Crossroads (1957).” He was cast as politician Walter Chalmers in the 1968 Steve McQueen film, Bullitt, and again donned political stripes in 1974’s The Towering Inferno, playing a U.S. senator. From 1972 to 1974, Vaughn returned to TV series work in The Protectors, portraying an affluent troubleshooter named Harry Rule in that Gerry Anderson-created action drama. He later did guest-star turns in The Feather and Father Gang (starring former Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Stefanie Powers), Hawaii Five-O, Trapper John, M.D., Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis: Murder, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the mini-series The Captains and the Kings and Centennial, and two episodes of Columbo. In his 70s, Vaughn accepted a final TV series part in Hustle (2004-2012), playing con man/”roper” Albert Stroller.

The New York Times explains that the actor died from “acute leukemia, for which Mr. Vaughn had been under treatment in Manhattan and Connecticut.”

Below are the opening sequences from the three TV series in which Vaughn starred during his justly celebrated, 60-year career.

READ MORE: “R.I.P., Robert Vaughn,” by Matthew Bradford, aka Tanner (Double O Section); “1965: Time Predicts Big Things for Robert Vaughn,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “Saturday Comics: Remembering Mr. Solo,” by Tony O’B (Inner Toob).

Bullet Points: Happy Distractions Edition

If you can tear your eyes away from this week’s train wreck of a Republican Party convention in Cleveland, here are some crime-fiction-related items worth your attention.

• Please take a moment today to send good wishes in the direction of Alvin, Texas, author Bill Crider (Survivors Will Be Shot Again), whose 75th birthday is coming up on July 28. He reported in his blog yesterday that his doctor wanted him to “check into the hospital ASAP, as he thinks I might be having kidney failure. This can’t be good.” Crider, whose wife of 49 years, Judy, passed away in 2014, has always come across—in print and in person (on those several occasions I’ve seen him at Bouchercons)—as a fine and funny individual. His recent adoption of three abandoned kittens demonstrated his generosity, as well. Our thoughts are with you, Bill. Get well soon.

• Having gained renown for bringing out hard-boiled paperback crime fiction, Hard Case Crime is now preparing to launch a companion comic-books line in association with publishing partner Titan. “Kicking-off the imprint,” reports Comic Book Resources, “are two new crime series: Triggerman by writer Walter Hill, the acclaimed director of The Warriors, and artist Matz (Body and Soul), and Peepland from crime authors Christa Faust and Gary Phillips and artist Andrea Camerini (Il Troio). Also launching in 2017 is a comic adaptation of author Max Allan Collins’ Quarry, which is currently being developed for television.” News-a-Rama adds that Triggerman—which will debut in stores on October 5, “is an operatic Prohibition-era mini-series,” while Peepland—scheduled to be available a week later—is “a semi-autobiographical neo-noir mini-series with a punk edge set in the seedy Times Square peep booths of 1980s New York City.” In his blog, author Collins explains that “no artist has been selected” for his Quarry tale, “and I probably won’t start writing for two or three months; the graphic novel will likely be called Quarry’s War and will deal more directly with his Vietnam experiences than I’ve ever done in the novels.” It’s been many years since I was a regular reader of comic books, but these Hard Case releases are definitely of interest to me, if only because I know some of the writers involved. Also, the issues I’ve seen boast beautiful covers, one of which is shown on the right.

• By the way, that Collins post I just mentioned also features a new trailer for the coming Cinemax TV series, Quarry. It’s apparently narrated by South Africa-born actress Jodi Balfour, who plays Joni, the ex-wife of Collins’ protagonist—looking quite a bit less glamorous than she did in the Canadian series Bomb Girls, which my wife and I are currently in the process of watching on Netflix.

• Another graphic novel of interest: Last Fair Deal Gone Down (12 Gauge), an adaptation of Ace Atkins’ first story starring Louisiana footballer-turned-sometime private eye Nick Travers. The Crimespree Magazine blog says the artwork dramatizing Atkins’ story was done by Marco Finnegan, who is “a fan of the Travers stories and the genre of crime. You feel the mood and the atmosphere on every page.”

• MysteryPeople also weighs in on Atkins’ graphic novel.

• There are apparently three finalists vying for the 2016T. Jefferson Parker Mystery and Thriller Award: Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (Grand Central); Orphan X, by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur); and The Promise, by Robert Crais (Putnam). The Parker award is given out annually by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association. It is one of seven categories of prizes sponsored by SCIBA. Winners are expected to be announced during the SCIBA Trade Show to be held in Los Angeles, October 21-22.

• Jose Ignacio Escribano reports in A Crime Is Afoot that “The 2016 Dashiell Hammett Prize—awarded each year by the International Crime Fiction Festival, la Semana Negra de Gijón—has been bestowed to the novel Subsuelo, by the Argentine writer Marcelo Luján.”

• Blogger-editor Janet Rudolph needs submissions to her next edition of Mystery Readers Journal. She says that issue “will focus on mysteries featuring Small Town Cops,” and that she’s “looking for reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays. Reviews: 50-250 words; articles: 250-1000 words; Author! Author! essays: 500-1,500 words.” The deadline for submissions is August 10. Learn more here.

• Just last month I mentioned on this page that I was very happy to see David Cranmer writing, in the Criminal Element blog, about Isaac Asimov’s trilogy of Elijah Baley/Daneel Olivaw yarns. Yesterday Cranmer completed his critiques of those science-fiction whodunits, posting this fine piece about The Robots of Dawn (1983) to add to his earlier remarks on The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957). Good going, Mr. Cranmer!

• This is an interesting development: “Steeger Properties, LLC, is pleased to announce that it has added the most prominent pulp magazine ever published, Black Mask, to its intellectual property holdings. As the periodical where the hard-boiled detective story was created and cultivated, Black Mask’s historical significance in popular fiction is unequaled. … Black Mask rejoins Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly in Steeger Properties, LLC’s holdings once owned by Popular Publications Inc. ... This marks the first time in over 50 years that all three titles [are] owned by one entity.”

• If you need a Caribbean mystery fix, check this out.

• Columbo star Peter Falk, who passed away in 2011 at age 83, will be the subject of this week’s installment of TV Confidential, Ed Robertson’s popular two-hour radio talk show. William Link (who, with Richard Levinson, created that NBC Mystery Movie series) and TV critic Mark Dawidziak will join Robertson on the show, which is set to air from Friday, July 22, through Monday, July 25, on a variety of radio stations. It will later be archived here for your enjoyment.

• It was two years ago yesterday that prolific actor James Garner died at 86 years of age. Quite to my surprise, I am still discovering new films and small-screen productions in which he starred. Just last week, for instance, I finally got around to watching 1997’s Dead Silence, adapted from Jeffery Deaver’s 1995 novel, A Maiden’s Grave, and starring Garner as a hostage negotiator.

• Author brothers Lee and Tod Goldberg have won valuable attention in Palm Springs, California’s Desert Sun newspaper for the fact that they “have pulled off a rare feat by both appearing on the same New York Times Best Sellers list at the same time for different books.” (Yes, I know I mentioned this previously.)

• The real reason Showtime’s Penny Dreadful was canceled?

• I was just thinking the other night about how much I’d like to rewatch last year’s thrills-packed Guy Ritchie picture, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.—which I very much enjoyed at the time of its release—when what should appear in Bill Crider’s blog but this favorable assessment of that flick as an “overlooked movie.” (Crider also offered this trailer.) These stars having thus aligned, I now have The Man from U.N.C.L.E. stored in my TV queue for imminent viewing.

• Sadly, while Ritchie’s U.N.C.L.E. survived the first round of online voting in the 2016 MTV Fandom of the Year awards, it fell out of the running in round two.

• Stephen Bowie presents a superior write-up in The Classic TV History Blog about The Defenders, the often-acclaimed 1961-1965 CBS-TV legal drama, Season One of which was finally released in DVD format last week by Shout! Factory.

• Meanwhile, Ivan G. Shreve Jr. applauds Shout!’s recent release of Lou Grant: Season One. Lou Grant, you will recall, was the excellent 1977-1982 CBS series in which Edward Asner played the tough but thoughtful city editor of the (fictional) Los Angeles Tribune newspaper. He’d previously appeared as Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Lou Grant: Season Two will go on sale in August.

• Again on the subject of TV programs, have you heard about Wayne State University Press’ evolving collection of releases about such memorable boob-tube productions as Have Gun—Will Travel, The X Files, Maverick, The Fugitive, and Miami Vice? This might be something to keep a watch on for the near future.

• Some author interviews worth your attention: Underground Airlines’ Ben H. Winters goes one-on-one with Lori Rader-Day for the Chicago Review of Books; in that same publication, Lauren Sacks quizzes David Baker (Vintage); Todd Robinson (Rough Trade) chats with Crimespree Magazine; writer-publisher Jason Pinter submits to an interrogation by S.W. Lauden; MysteryPeople turns its attention to both Peter Spiegelman (Dr. Knox) and Douglas Graham Purdy (We Were Kings); James Henry, aka James Gurbutt, talks with Cleopatra Loves Books about his new UK release, Blackwater; Mystery Playground fires questions at Terrence McCauley (A Murder of Crows); In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel discusses the old Sergeant Cuff novels with Martin Edwards; and Camilla Way (Watching Edie) stops by for a bit of a palaver with Crime Fiction Lover.

• Seattleite Vince Keenan, the managing editor of Noir City (the Film Noir Foundation’s “house rag”), offers this short but snappy look back at the film and television career or Roy Huggins, the creator of Maverick and the co-creator of The Rockford Files.

• Despite its hype and publishing success, I found Stephanie Meyer’s vampire-themed Twilight series unreadable, so I won’t be buying her forthcoming adult thriller, The Chemist, which she describes as “the love child created from the union of my romantic sensibilities and my obsession with Jason Bourne/Aaron Cross.” But for those of you who are curious to know more, click over to this Omnivoracious post.

• Darn! I wish I could be in Britain this week to watch “BBC 1’s lavish new adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel, The Secret Agent.” (There’s a trailer at the link.) Fortunately, Wikipedia says this three-part mini-series, starring Toby Jones, will cross the Atlantic at some as-yet-unannounced date, courtesy of Acorn TV.

• In The Guardian, Mark Lawson calls Conrad’s The Secret Agent “a prescient masterpiece that has shaped depictions of terrorism and espionage.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment.

• For folks who like lists, try these on for size. Wolf Lake author John Verdon recommends the “10 Best Whodunits” in Publishers Weekly, while Joseph Finder (Guilty Minds) serves up his picks of the “10 Best Movie Thrillers” on the Strand Magazine Web site.

• Among Brooklyn Magazine’s list of “100 Books to Read for the Rest of 2016” are several crime and mystery fiction picks, including Good as Gone, by Amy Gentry, The Kingdom, by Fuminori Nakamura, and Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters.

• From In Reference to Murder: “There are plans afoot to bring the Idris Elba-starring crime drama Luther to the big screen. Luther creator Neil Cross indicated that the Luther movie would play as [a] prequel to the series, meaning that some of the characters from early in the show could return, including Luther’s old partner Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh), and his sidekick Justin Ripley (Warren Brown). Cross added, ‘It will follow his career in the earlier days when he is still married to Zoe [Indira Varma], and the final scene in the film is the first of the initial TV series.’”

• With only two months to go now (yikes!) before Bouchercon 2016 kicks off in New Orleans, Louisiana, conference organizes have made all six of this year’s Anthony Award-nominated short stories available online here for your consideration.

• Finally, because Donald Trump & Co. are still huffing and puffing and blowing themselves up on stage in Ohio, here’s a note of interest from the online Seattle Review of Books: “Would you care to guess what Donald Trump reads? Is ‘not much of anything’ your answer? The good news is, you’re right! (The bad news is: you’re right.)” More about Trump’s anti-intellectualism can be found here.