(Editor’s note: The following essay/film critique comes from Thomas Kaufman, an award-winning motion-picture director and cameraman from Maryland, who also pens the Willis Gidney private-eye series [Drink the Tea,Steal the Show]. His e-book, Erased and Other Stories, has just been published by Antenna Books.)
Few movies are as great as 1944’s Double Indemnity. And few people drove Raymond Chandler as crazy as director Billy Wilder. It wasn’t just Wilder’s mannerisms, his walking stick, his constant pacing while they collaborated on the script for Double Indemnity. It was also the constant stream of phone calls--Wilder chatting up young women, and scoring with them at night. How it must have
galled Chandler, 18 years Wilder’s senior, to see this young man with broken
English score with such a lot of babes.
Chandler apparently considered Wilder a good character. In his 1949 Philip Marlowe novel, The Little Sister, Chandler writes about a Hollywood agent with most of Wilder’s mannerisms intact. Take that, Billy!
To me, Double Indemnity is interesting because Wilder and Chandler turned a good book into a great screenplay.
American journalist and author James M. Cain broke new ground with his novels Mildred Pierce (1941), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), and Double Indemnity (1943). Even his lesser-known works, such as Career in C Major and Other Stories (1943), are worth reading. But like many books by the pulp writers of his time, Cain’s are often better in conception than in execution.
So how did co-writers Wilder and Chandler improve Double Indemnity? For one thing, the two enlarged the part of Barton Keyes, played on screen by Edward G. Robinson. In Cain’s novel, Keyes is a minor character, but in the movie Keyes is the third part of a love triangle between Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). I think Wilder and Chandler gave Robinson the best speech in the film, as he berates the front office owner of their insurance company for knowing nothing about the business.
For another, the narrative of the book is a straight chronology of events. In the film version, there’s a narrative frame, consisting of Walter’s confession to
murder. This frame not only gives us all the expositional material we need, it also gives the whole story its tone--we know things are not going to work out for Walter Neff.
Then there’s the dialogue. Nobody wrote it better than Wilder and Chandler. Despite their differences, they clearly enjoyed the use of language. Take this scene as an example:
Listen to the rhythm of the dialogue, how MacMurray and Stanwyck spar with each other, and the great subtext that brings a certain heat to their interaction.
Subsequent movies such as Body Heat (1981) and China Moon (1994) owe debts to Double Indemnity, but I'm hard pressed to think of a modern motion-picture that has the wit and suspense of this classic. How about you? Have you seen a recent film that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Double Indemnity?
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Click here to see the Double Indemnity trailer and Raymond Chandler’s brief, oft-overlooked cameo appearance in that movie.
Thanks to Bill Crider for reminding me that today marks novelist/journalist James M. Cain’s 114th birthday. And I’m sure Cain would be celebrating, had he not already died an alcoholic at age 85, in 1977. Certainly best remembered as the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941), Cain was born in Maryland, aspired early to become a singer like his mother, worked in journalism with both H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann, and moved to Hollywood to write movie scripts but wound up penning cinematic novels, instead.
Most of Cain’s success as an author came between the early Depression years of the ’30s and the end of the Second World War. His hard-boiled yarns were usually set in California (though one of his personal favorites, The Butterfly [1947], involves incest and murder in the West Virginia coalfields). They often revolved around men who fell in love with femmes fatales, only to get mixed up in criminal acts and eventually have their paramours betray them. Raymond Chandler, a Cain contemporary, was not overly fond of having his work compared to that other novelist’s (despite the fact that he helped Billy Wilder adapt Double Indemnity for the silver screen). In a 1942 letter to the wife of his publisher, Alfred K. Knopf, Chandler grumbled:
... I hope the day will come when I won’t have to ride around on [Dashiell] Hammett and James Cain, like an organ grinder’s monkey. Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did he did superbly. But James Cain--faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naïf, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way. Nothing hard and clean and cold and ventilated. A brothel with a smell of cheap scent in the front parlor and a bucket of slops at the back door. Do I, for God’s sake, sound like that?
Others, however, have been more generous to Cain. In his 1997 study of mystery fiction, Guilty Parties, Ian Ousby writes that Cain “is usually put first on the list of those American writers whose crime novels, without adopting the conventions of the hard-boiled school, breathe a distinctly hard-boiled atmosphere.” And The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing (1999) opines that
Compared with the voices and narration of private-eye novelists with whom he was often compared, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the diction of Cain’s narrators has the pure simplicity of Horace McCoy and of the more literary [Ernest] Hemingway; his plots were more unified and tighter. Cain agreed with the observation that his best work was “pure”--conceived and executed to produce an experience for the reader, rather than to illustrate a moral or to lay out any other thematic trappings. The purity and the staccato, metallic style of The Postman Always Rings Twice so affected Albert Camus that, in a revised version, he adapted it to the first-person narration of The Stranger (1942).
Due to the fact that several of his early novels were turned into movies, Cain achieved a renown that probably wouldn’t have come his way otherwise. Yet his later turnout, primarily of tales with historical settings and paltry few of the trappings that would’ve earned them “hard-boiled” classification, were not nearly so well-received. Regardless, in 1970 James M. Cain was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
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During the Monday, July 3, broadcast of her WEBR radio program, “It’s a Mystery,” host Elizabeth Foxwell will commemorate Cain’s birthday by presenting a radio production of Double Indemnity starring Burt Lancaster. The radio drama can be heard here.
This recognition seems due--in fact, long overdue:
One of Los Angeles’ greatest noir writers will be getting a permanent place in the sun: on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Raymond Chandler is one of 30 people who will get such stars in 2015. ...
Chandler was a novelist and then a screenwriter, the man who created the private detective Philip Marlowe. Chandler began writing for the pulps after losing his executive job at an oil company--something to do with drinking and an affair with a girl on staff (a very noir dismissal). ...
The material--about a semi-successful private eye who had a way with women and a stronger moral code than the wealthy and corrupt denizens of Los Angeles--was too delicious for Hollywood to resist. “The Big Sleep” was made into an iconic film not once but twice--first with Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe and then Elliott Gould, directed by Robert Altman.
In the many film adaptations of his work, several actors played Marlowe, including Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, James Garner and Robert Mitchum.
But Chandler didn’t have much to do with his books being made into films--he was a screenwriter on other projects. The greatest of those were adaptations of other novelists’ work: “Strangers on a Train” by Patricia Highsmith, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and “Double Indemnity,” written by James M. Cain.
Chandler, who died in 1959, made just one film appearance--an uncredited, non-speaking role that had remained unnoticed for decades. It was discovered by two different film experts around the same time in 2007--he’s the man sitting outside Keyes’ office in this clip from “Double Indemnity.”
The announcement about the new Walk of Famers doesn’t include where their stars will be. But I have a suggestion: in front of Philip Marlowe’s office in the Cahuenga Building on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar.
You’ll find the full Los Angeles Times piece here.
I didn’t even have this birthday marked down on my calendar, but Criminal Element contributor Jake Hinkson evidently keeps better track of some things than I do. He explains:
This year film noir turns 70. While there had been some intermittent films leading up to the birth of the classic noir, in 1944 the dahlia bloomed with six key films: Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, When Strangers Marry, and The Woman in the Window. In these films you have many of the key figures in noir making some of their first forays into the genre (directors Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, and Robert Siodmak; writers Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Vera Caspary, Phillip Yordan; actors Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Dana Andrews--just to name a few). This onslaught of darkness came in the wake of the bleakest days (from the American perspective, anyway) of WWII. The basis of many of these films were older properties, but it is the way these films came out--physically darker, psychologically denser, and ultimately more pessimistic--that marks the real birth of film noir.
By way of celebrating, Hinkson today posted the first of half a dozen articles, this one recalling the many strengths of Double Indemnity, the Fred MacMurray/Barbara Stanwyck/Edward G. Robinson picture that he says
“might well be the most famous of all film noirs.” Stay tuned for the remaining installments of Hinkson’s series.
On Noir of the Week last week: Stranger on the Third Floor from 1940. They’re calling it “The Film That Gave ‘Birth’ to the Style Called Film Noir.”
So, that’s arguable, right? I’ve heard arguments for Double Indemnity (1944) and, of course, The Maltese Falcon (1941). Still, it looks like a wonderful film: Peter Lorre, John McGuire, Margaret Tallichet, and Charles Waldron. From Noir of the Week:
These are some of the questions that were waiting to be answered when the film that is considered the “first” film noir Stranger on the Third Floor was released in theatre(s) on August 16, 1940. Even though at the time of release this little “sleeper” wasn't considered the “first” film noir but just a “minor” low-budget “B” feature(s) film. Today it is often credited by most film critics, film historians, and film “buffs” as being the “first” film noir.
(The overzealous quotes are not mine.)
So that’s a conversation that needs to be had. What makes this the first film noir? And, if not this, then what? The term was coined by French film critics “who noticed the trend of how ‘dark,’ downbeat, and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), and Laura (1944).”
This according to FilmSite.org. However, the explanation is marred by the fact that, if their reasoning is right, then their timeline is wrong: World War II didn’t end until 1945. And if it’s not the conclusion of the war that altered the spirit, what was it? Arguably (Again! Because all of this is arguable. That’s what makes it fun.) the intense oppression the American film industry was under at that point forced filmmakers with something to say to take their message underground, to use metaphor and innuendo to tell the real stories, because anything approaching real human emotion and sexuality would be censored out.
In any case, Stranger on the Third Floor. Another film to look for. But if you’ve had reason to give any of this thought, let us hear from you: what would you say was the first film noir?
• In late July, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced its shortlists of nominees for the 2019 Dagger Awards, in nine categories. Now comes news that the CWA is adding a 10th category to that set of annual prizes: the Dagger for Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year. Shotsmag Confidential says that “Publishers and specific imprints are being nominated by a representative group of leading book reviewers, booksellers, festival organizers, bloggers, literary agents and journalists,” and a shortlist of contenders for this new Dagger will be made known “later this summer.” The winners of all the 2019 Dagger Awards
are supposed to be declared during a special ceremony, in London, on October 24.
• British author and critic Mike Ripley has now posted two different tributes to Marcel Berlins, the French-born lawyer and law professor who reviewed crime fiction for The Times of London for 37 years, before dying on July 31 at age 77. The first of those can be found in The Guardian, and covers all the highlights of Berlins’ long career; the second, more personal remembrance was posted in Shots.
• While we’re on the subject of passings, let me mention that Chris Sullivan, who writes the blog Morse, Lewis and Endeavour, states on his Facebook page that Barrington Pheloung—best known to Rap Sheet readers for composing the hypnotic theme for the TV series Inspector Morse and its spin-offs—died (also on July 31) from influenza. “Death from influenza at Barrington’s age,” remarks
Sullivan, “normally means there was some underlying health problems.” No specific cause of death had previously been released.
• Well, I have finally done it: added a “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” subsection to The Rap Sheet’s already extensive blogroll. You will find it by scrolling down past the “General Crime Fiction” section in the right-hand column. For the time being, there are only 19 podcasts listed there—those that were recommended by readers. But I’m willing to add more, as the field grows and additional podcast discoveries are made. I hope you like this addition to the page.
• The fifth and final episode of Grantchester, Season 4, will air in the States this coming Sunday evening as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. (Don’t panic: the program has already been renewed for a fifth season.) I’ve watched that cozyish historical mystery drama ever since it debuted on this side of the Atlantic back in January 2015, and have enjoyed it for the most part. Enough so, in fact, that I recently picked up The Road to Grantchester (Bloomsbury), author James Runcie’s prequel novel to the show inspired by his six previous mysteries. I wrote a short review of said work for the newsletter distributed by Madison Books, a Seattle neighborhood bookshop with which I am associated, and am embedding it below:
The Road to Grantchester
By James Runcie
Now, during PBS-TV’s latest run of the British mystery series Grantchester, is an ideal time to dive into this prequel novel, which recalls the circuitous path protagonist Sidney Chambers took from being a Cambridge classics student to becoming an Anglican vicar-cum-sleuth. As World War II consumes Europe, Chambers and his irrepressible friend Robert Kendall join the Scots Guards and are sent to the Italian front, where their ability to maintain optimism amid unrelenting carnage is sorely tested. Crucial to Chambers’ efforts is “Rev Nev” Finnie, an Episcopal chaplain with whom he engages in philosophical discussions—talks that prepare him for Kendall’s subsequent battlefield death and his own return home. Back in England, Chambers finds himself guilt-ridden for having survived, and at a loss to deal with Kendall’s coquettish younger sister, Amanda. Others expect Chambers to become a teacher or diplomat, but his search for peace leads him instead into the priesthood. There’s little crime-solving here, but author Runcie excels at evoking the climate of warfare, and his investigations of the human mind and heart will feel familiar to any Grantchester fan.
• Happy 100th birthday (belatedly) to Jerusalem-born actor Nehemiah Persoff, whose face was once ubiquitous in U.S. films and TV shows—everything from The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone to The Name of the Game, The Mod Squad, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to Wikipedia, Persoff experienced health problems in the 1980s and “retired from acting in 1999” to devote his full time to painting. “He currently lives with his wife, Thia, in Cambria, California.
• And though this also comes late, I want to acknowledge the 75th anniversary of the release of Double Indemnity (1944), co-written by director Billy Wilder and author Raymond Chandler. “That great movie …,” explains blogger George Kelley, “ignited a series of noir movies in the post-World War II era. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novel of the same name (which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine, starting with the February 1936 issue). Fred MacMurray portrays an insurance salesman who fails for the Wrong Woman. Crafty Barbara Stanwyck plays a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead (and that she had the insurance money, too). Savvy Edward G. Robinson plays an insurance claims adjuster whose job is to investigate suspicious claims.” With a cast like that, how can a movie go wrong?
• Can’t get enough of Steely Dan—both the classic rock band and new stories influenced by its song catalogue? Then you’re definitely in luck: Brian
Thornton, the Seattle-based editor of Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan (Down & Out) has let it be known on Facebook that a sequel is being readied for late October publication. Also to be published by Down & Out, under the title A Beast Without a Name: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, this second volume will feature contributions by a “Merry Band of Dan Enthusiast[s]” including Steve Brewer, Bill Cameron (writing as W.H. Cameron), Reed Farrel Coleman, Naomi Hirahara, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Thomas Hottle (writing as Jim Winter).
• Short-story writer Carol Westron considers the sport of fishing as it was portrayed in Golden Age Detective Fiction.
• LaBrava is among my favorite Elmore Leonard novels (a preference shared by author-screenwriter Nora Ephron), so it was good to see Christi Daugherty revisit that 1984 yarn recently as part of Criminal Element’s series on works that, over the last 65 years, have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. “Among the books that did not win the year LaBrava was given the Edgar,” Daugherty observes, “were John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl and Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, both of which are considered classics now. Both are books I’ve read and loved. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I came into this review with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, expecting to find LaBrava somehow inferior. How could this dingy little tale of a sociopath planning to set up a fading film star be better than those giants of twentieth-century fiction? Reading this book changed my mind.”
The cast has been set for Agatha Christie Limited’s The Pale Horse, the latest TV adaptation from Dame Agatha for the BBC. The Pale Horse centers on Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) as he tries to uncover the mystery of a list of names found in the shoe of a dead woman. His investigation leads him to the peculiar village of Much Deeping and also to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives by means of the dark arts, but as the mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.
• Meanwhile, blogger Jerry House draws my attention to a 1982 adaptation of that same 1961 mystery novel by Christie, produced as part of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series (1974-1982). As House explains, this 45-minute version “features the talents of Earl Hammond and Mandel Kramer, with Elspeth Eric and Marianne Sanders, and was introduced by Tammy Grimes. ‘The Pale Horse’ was produced and directed by Himan Brown. The script by Roy Winsor veered from Christie’s original novel. Winsor was an established radio soap-opera writer before he went on to create some of television’s most well-known soaps: Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He also co-created Another Life and was the head writer for Somerset. Winsor also wrote three mystery novels and received an Edgar Award for The Corpse That Walked in 1975.” You can listen to this radio version of “The Pale Horse” either on YouTube or on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site.
• Someday I hope to find time enough to listen to all 1,399 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Like any radio or TV series, it wasn’t perfect, but I remember being mesmerized by many of those old episodes. I used to listen to them at night after going to bed, my earplug firmly planted into whichever ear wasn’t most easily seen, should my mother decide to double-check that I was actually asleep. Host E.G. Marshall (formerly of The Defenders and The Bold Ones) was an ideal—and appropriately spooky—host for most of the program’s run, and the episodes attracted a wide variety of talent, many performers having blossomed during the so-called Golden Age of Radio (the 1920s through the 1940s). Thankfully, all of those episodes are still available today—for free!—through the aforementioned CBS Radio Mystery Theater Web site. Too bad I’m no longer young enough to stay awake into the wee hours of the night, listening.
• Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of Lawfare, suggests in The New York Times that people read the Mueller Report as a detective story. It “may turn out to be more of a film noir than anything else,” she writes. “The detective successfully uncovers the plot, only to discover that the society around him is too rotten to do anything about it. For all the missing pieces in this story, the issue is less whether it can be told and more
whether anyone cares to listen.”
(Editor’s note: This is the 84th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection has been made by Maryland resident Thomas Kaufman, an award-winning motion-picture director and cameraman. His debut mystery novel,Drink the Tea, won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press competition for Best First P.I. Novel. It was released this week by Minotaur.)
Its hero, a private eye named Red Markham, gets a job from a gambler named Whit Sterling to find his girlfriend. That girlfriend, with the improbable name of Mumsie McGonigal, has shot Sterling and taken off with a small fortune in cash. Markham finds the girl, falls in love with her, and attempts to have a life with her, double-crossing Sterling. The two lovers try to hide out, but they’re eventually discovered by Red’s ex-partner, Jack Fisher, who is accidentally shot and killed when he attempts to blackmail Red. Mumsie leaves with the cash, and Red must bury the corpse.
Years go by, and finally Red makes his home in a small California town, falls in live with a nice, quiet girl, and hopes to settle down. But his past catches up with him, in the form of Joe Stefanos, a trigger man for Sterling. Red’s hopes of leading a peaceful existence are crushed by Sterling and Mumsie.
You can’t really talk about Gallows without also talking about its 1947 screen adaptation, Out of the Past, which starred Robert Mitchum and was directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Usually, after I read a book, then see the film version, I’m disappointed. How many times have you left such a movie, hearing murmurs of “the book was better” from your fellow filmgoers?
But, once in a while, a film actually supersedes the novel. Not often. Still, if someone writes a book, then Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler do the adaptation, the screenplay could be better than the source novel. Such is the case with Double Indemnity (1944). Another example is Out of the Past.
I don’t feel bad giving Gallows second place. For one thing, Mainwaring wrote the screenplay for Out of the Past. It seems as though he had been given a second chance to re-imagine his characters. For another, Mumsie McGonigal is now Kathy Moffet, played wonderfully by Jane Greer.
The novel has two principal antagonists: a retired crooked cop, Parker, and a gambler, Sterling. The screenplay combines those two into one badass, played by Kirk Douglas.
(By the way, it’s fun to watch Mitchum and Douglas together--Douglas, who typically chewed the scenery into postage-stamp-size pieces, has to tone himself down to play opposite Mitchum, whose naturalistic underplaying predates by 10 years the bunch from the Actors Studio, who included Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and James Dean.)
There are also two assassins in the novel working for Sterling/Douglas. The screenplay boils them down into a single person--Stefanos.
Another main difference between the book and movie is the story structure. They both begin the same way, in the “present,” then flash back to when Markham was a private eye in New York City, and Sterling asked him to find the missing girl.
But the flashback in the book ends about one-eighth of the way through. Part of the genius of Out of the Past is its structure. Once Markham and Ann--the good girl he wants to settle down with--begin driving to see Sterling, the film goes into flashback. Markham’s voice narrates the events, and we’re on solid P.I. movie footing. Then, at the exact middle point of the film, the car ride ends and so does the flashback. Markham has Ann drop him off at Sterling’s front gate, and the remainder of the film plays out in the present.
What’s great about this is the way the audience is set up for what happens next--all the characters we’ve met in the flashback now come alive in the present, as Markham tries in vain to figure out the kind of jam Sterling is framing for him. After some cat-and-mouse dialogue, Markham turns down what Sterling has in store for him, but agrees to stay for breakfast. In the background, out of focus, we see a woman approach. Sterling says, “You remember Kathy, don’t you?”
The audience is shocked, but not Markham/Mitchum, who turns his sleepy eyes towards this beautiful woman and says, “Yeah, I remember Kathy.”
Then there’s the movie dialogue--it’s classic. Since James M. Cain and Frank Fenton were rumored to have worked on the screenplay without credit, it’s hard to know who came up with the dialogue. When Kathy, the gambler’s girlfriend, shows up for a romantic liaison with Markham, she asks, “Did you miss me?”
“No more than I would my eyes,” he tells her. And Jane Greer is particularly beautiful as she touches Mitchum’s arm, and begs him to believe her when she says she didn’t take the gambler’s money. Mitchum reaches for her, saying, “Baby, I don’t care.” That dialogue is not in Gallows.
It’s important to the story, and to Markham’s motivation, for the reader/viewer to understand how deep Kathy/Mumsie has her hooks in. The book doesn’t go into much detail. Instead, we’re given a kind of shorthand--how the detective tails her, how they meet, how they come together, how they break apart--but the movie devotes much more time to this important element of the tale.
One other interesting aspect is the direction of Past. Jacques Tourneur was a contract director for RKO, one of Hollywood’s smaller and more troubled studios. In this film, he creates an unusual shot, right at the start: he mounts the camera in the back seat of Joe Stefanos’ car. Car mounts today are the norm, but back in the 1940s they were out of the ordinary. The effect Tourneur creates is that the car, Stefanos, and the story we are about to see all appear somehow pre-destined, on an unstoppable course, that Markham’s fate is sealed before he even knows he’s been discovered.
Daniel Mainwaring’s first book, published under his own name, was a sort of proletarian novel called One Against the Earth (1932). After that, he turned out a series of hard-boiled mystery novels (including Forty Whacks, 1941) as Homes, and became a screenwriter for such films as The Big Steal (1949) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). He even wrote for the TV series The Wild Wild West and Mannix. Mainwaring died in 1977 at age 74.
If you can find a copy of Build My Gallows High, read it. Then go see Out of the Past--you won’t be sorry.
(Editor’s note: For this 70th entry in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series, we welcome Seattle, Washington, blogger and screenwriter Vince Keenan—who recently wrote on this page about Ellery Queen’sThe Origin of Evil—along with his wife, Rosemarie Keenan, a research administrator and poet. Under the joint pseudonym Renee Patrick, they’ve now penned two well-received mystery novels, both set in Golden Age Hollywood and featuring the snooping duo of Lillian Frost, a former aspiring actress, and real-life fashion designer Edith Head. The second of those,Dangerous to Know, is due out next week from Forge. Below, the Keenans recall the roots of their interest in vintage Tinseltown and in setting crime fiction there.)
In the beginning, for both of us, there were the movies. We grew up in outer-borough New York City, several subway stations and worlds
apart, hooked on Hollywood.
Rosemarie:For me it was42nd Street (1933). I found it on TV one afternoon and was so entranced that when my friend knocked on the door and asked me to come out and play, I said no. My mother warned me that if I made a habit of it, they might stop knocking. But I had to go back to that world. I loved the camaraderie among the women, the romantic view of the effort it took to put on a show. Above all, I loved Ruby Keeler. Still do. I responded to her lack of sophistication and her desire to be sophisticated. She came across
as a nice person willing to work herself to the bone to get what she wanted. I responded to that, instantly.
Vince:BlameThe Mask of Dimitrios (1944), from an Eric Ambler novel. Which doesn’t even rank in the top three Sydney Greenstreet/Peter Lorre movies. I was 7 years old when I saw it. What I remember most is my parents commenting on how odd it was, a kid that young held rapt by an old movie. But those faces mesmerized me. And the atmosphere. Dark, sensuous, mysterious. It seemed … adult, in a way new movies were not. I stepped into those shadows decades ago and never came out.
We met in Florida, got married—more than 25 years ago now—and headed west. Not all the way to Tinseltown, but at least we were in the
same time zone. Turner Classic Movies was our constant soundtrack, unless the Mets were playing.
Whenever a classic film was revived, we’d be at the theater. 2007 found us in cinephile heaven. That’s when Eddie Muller brought his Noir City Film Festival to Seattle. Double-bills of vintage crime films, every night for a week. We introduced ourselves to Eddie. Within a few years we were manning the Film Noir Foundation table in the theater lobby. Once we even filled in for Eddie, introducing a full day’s slate of movies. Vince was contributing articles to the Film Noir Foundation’s magazine, on his way to becoming managing editor.
Then Rosemarie had an idea. As Jimmy Durante said, “Everybody wants to get into the act.”
Rosemarie:I decided to write an article about costume design in film noir. I started with Edith Head, because of all the classics she’d worked on: Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake films. I began reading about her and couldn’t stop.
(Left) Rosemarie and Vince Keenan (photo by David Hiller, 2015)
Head’s career remains one of the most amazing in film history. Spanning seven decades, from the silent era of the 1920s to the dawn
of corporate Hollywood. For her final film, 1982’s Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, she dressed Steve Martin so he could interact seamlessly with clips from movies she’d designed in the 1940s, even reworking a Barbara Stanwyck costume for him. She would be nominated for 35 Academy Awards, winning eight, the most of any woman.
Unlike her contemporaries and mentors, Head didn’t have a background in fashion. Born Edith Posener, she grew up in Nevada mining camps
where no one ever struck a mother lode of glamour. She was working as a teacher in Hollywood—among her charges were the daughters of director Cecil B. DeMille—but sought a better-paying position. Spotting a classified ad seeking sketch artists at Paramount Pictures, she bluffed her way through the interview, passing off her fellow art students’ work as her own. Once in the job, she set about making herself indispensable. Like Ruby Keeler, she was willing to work herself to the bone to get what she wanted. For all her innate talent at costume design, she was an even more accomplished politician, adept at wrangling actresses, pleasing executives, and collaborating with directors. She’d tell whatever story was necessary to achieve her aims; her three biographies frequently contradict each other, and in later years she’d even discredit her own 1959 memoir, The Dress Doctor. About the only point everyone agrees on when it comes to Edith Head is she was a tireless employee.
Time to put a little more on her plate.
Rosemarie:I wanted to make her a detective, not only because she had such a long career and knew everyone, but because of the nature of her job. She deals with performers when they’re at their most vulnerable. She knows their secrets and keeps them.
Vince:As soon as Rosemarie suggested it, I wanted in. Costume design provided a fantastic window into the old Hollywood studio system. Even more exciting, it would be a true collaboration. Rosemarie knew the period, the movies, and especially the clothes. Plus it was her idea.
Our only problem? Edith’s aforementioned workload kept her tethered to the studio. She couldn’t set aside her sketch pad to go chase down
a lead at the Trocadero. Clearly, she would require an accomplice. Here’s where our other shared love, of classic crime fiction, paid dividends. We were both huge Rex Stout fans. If Edith was our Nero Wolfe, she’d need a wisecracking Archie Goodwin.
Enter Lillian Frost.
We made her a New Yorker, hailing from Rosemarie’s neighborhood. The promise of a screen test brought her, like so many other young women of the era, to Hollywood. Lillian quickly realizes she’s no actress. But we didn’t want her to join the roster of also-rans and never-weres that haunt Hollywood novels of the 1930s, like The Day of the Locust and Horace McCoy’s underrated I Should Have Stayed Home. Instead, Lillian is savvy enough to realize she can make a life if not a name for herself in Southern California, appreciating that whatever hardships she may face her new home always offers the hope, as the song from the Academy Award-winning musical La La Land says, of “Another Day of Sun.” A levelheaded woman still occasionally susceptible to stardust would make the ideal complement to the no-nonsense Edith Head.
Our debut novel, last year’s Design for Dying (nominated for both an Agatha Award and a Left Coast Crime Award), tells how Lillian came into Edith’s orbit. It features cameo appearances from the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Bob Hope, and Preston Sturges, and brims with jokes. The follow-up, Dangerous to Know, hews to the same template but broadens the
scale and ups the stakes. We wove in plenty of the Hollywood history that fascinates us, including a long-forgotten 1938 scandal in which two of
Paramount’s biggest stars found themselves brought up on smuggling charges, and the still-being-unearthed saga of the studio moguls’ clandestine plan to battle the Nazi influence in Southern California in the years before World War II.
All of it viewed through the prism of two career women trying to make their way in a society that didn’t always welcome them. Our ultimate fantasy for the series is to pen a fanciful, fictionalized, female-centered chronicle of the movie industry. If it takes focusing on gorgeous gowns to get there, so be it.
This seems to be a big list-making week here at The Rap Sheet. On Wednesday I posted a rundown of my favorite books from the first half of 2010. Today I take up a more daunting task: choosing five works that represent what I think is best about crime fiction.
Spinetingler Magazine’s Brian Lindenmuth originally posed this challenge, according to Jen Forbus. But others have taken it up since, including Forbus herself, who’s been collecting such lists of five books in her Jen’s Book Thoughts blog. Some of the suggestions made so far have been excellent, including James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Rex Stout’s The Doorbell Rang, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Roseanna, and Robert Crais’ L.A. Requiem. I shall resist repeating any of those selections, though, if only to broaden the scope of discussion. The more ideas shared here the better.
Obviously, each person’s picks will depend on his or her depth of reading in the genre. It will also hinge on one’s taste in storytelling styles and preferences of setting or time period. In my own case, I lean toward private-eye tales and classic works.
Yes, I realize that I’m cheating a wee bit by picking Berlin Noir, which is an omnibus of British author Philip Kerr’s first three Bernie Gunther crime novels--March Violets (1989), The Pale Criminal (1990), and A German Requiem (1991). But as an omnibus it does qualify as a single book, so I declare my choice legal. The others clearly demonstrate my preference for private-eye novels over other subgenres. If I were to extend my list beyond the almost ridiculous limit of five titles, though, it would also incorporate books that have nothing to do with P.I.s, works such as Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, James McClure’s The Sunday Hangman, Peter Robinson’s In a Dry Season, and John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Other books I might have chosen: Robert B. Parker’s Looking for Rachel Wallace, Anne Perry’s Face of a Stranger, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Kris Nelscott’s A Dangerous Road, Jonathan Valin’s The Lime Pit, Max Allan Collins’ Flying Blind, John Harvey’s Lonely Hearts, Sara Paretsky’s Killing Orders, Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem, and of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Stop me now, before my alternative choices get out of hand!
But what about your opinions, dear readers? What five novels--new or old--do you think represent the best of crime fiction? Leave your suggestions in the Comments section below.
READ MORE: “My Five,” by Jen Forbus (Jen’s Book Thoughts).
• I was skeptical when I heard that NBC-TV wanted to remake the highly acclaimed British series Prime Suspect, only this time starring Maria Bello. I was very fond of Bello in the short-lived Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and later in ER. But could she really step into the shoes previously worn by the brilliant Helen Mirren? Well, if the series preview clip here represents what this show will offer, it might just be something to look forward to in the fall. Bello isn’t Mirren, but her protagonist can certainly hold her own amid a cop-shop fraternity.
• I hold out less hope for the sci-fi/cop series Grimm.
• Meanwhile, sneak peaks of this fall’s new ABC shows, including the unnecessary Charlie’s Angels reboot, can be seen here.
• Really, Jessica Fletcher as one of “The 10 Coolest TV Private Investigators”? I don’t think so. But I can go along with Jim Rockford, Joe Mannix, and most of the other characters mentioned.
• Den of Geek brings news about what episodes we can expect from the second series of Sherlock, BBC One’s updated version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Those three 90-minute installments are slated for broadcasting in the fall on both sides of the Atlantic.
• The anonymous author of Tipping My Fedora has chosen his 10 favorites films noir, a rundown that includes Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, and Touch of Evil.
• British author P.D. James and Catherine Ross Nickerson of Emory University have won the latest George N. Dove Awards for their contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction.
• For those unfamiliar with the name Anna Katharine Green, Mystery Sceneoffers an archived profile of this “mother of American mystery.”
• While I’ve long enjoyed watchingLaw & Order: Criminal Intent, was a regular viewer of the original Law & Order, and have liked what I’ve seen of Law & Order: UK, the series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has never been among my favorites, principally because a frequent diet of sex crimes is just too much for me to take. However, I am intrigued by the possibility that Jennifer Love Hewitt might be hired to replace Mariska Hargitay as Christopher Meloni’s partner on that show. Hewitt is not the finest actress in the world, but her sex appeal might stimulate the development of an interesting back-story for her cop character.
• Just Press Play’s Lee Jutton is less enthusiastic about Marlowe as a whole than she is about James Garner’s performance in that 1969 picture, which has the future Rockford Files star playing Raymond Chandler’s series gumshoe, Philip Marlowe. (The movie itself was adapted from Chandler’s 1949 novel, The Little Sister.) A remastered DVD version of Marlowe--which just happens to be one of my favorite private-eye flicks--is due out from Warner Bros. Archive on May 26. But don’t look for Carroll O’Connor to play Marlowe’s client, innocent Orfamay Quest, in the film. No matter what Jutton says, that part belongs instead to Sharon Farrell; O’Connor plays Lieutenant Christy French. Somebody at Just Press Play ought to have caught this error.
• Why is Scotland Yard “fighting an extraordinary legal battle to withhold 123-year-old secret files which experts believe could finally provide the identity of Jack the Ripper”? The Daily Telegraphhas the story.
• And Squeezegut Alley’s Nicolas Pillai isn’t betting on the success of Johnny Depp’s plans to remake The Thin Man, the 1934 film based on Dashiell Hammett’s last novel. He seems particularly concerned by the signing of Jerry Stahl as screenwriter, but also doubts that Depp can do justice to the cinematic role of Nick Charles, which originally went to William Powell. Pillai has an excellent alternative actor in mind, but he’s stumped on who might fill the part of Nora Charles, formerly held by Myrna Loy. If you’d like to offer some suggestions, do so here.
• The long-overdue recent premiere of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final James Bond picture, has provoked a deluge of articles, in print and online, about the actor and whoever will succeed him playing Ian Fleming’s Agent 007. Notable are this piece from Esquire’s Chris Nashawaty, and this other one by Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson. CrimeReads has gone in its own editorial direction, posting Olivia Rutigliano’s rankings of all the Bond movies (to which my sole objections are that Live and Let Die deserves more credit, while The World Is Not Enough deserves less), and Julia Sirmons’ tribute to 1969’s typically malignedOn Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which she insists is actually the franchise’s best entry.
• Staking out his own fringe in all this Bond coverage, author-blogger Gary Dobbs showcases “a professional Daniel Craig lookalike who actually looks nothing like Daniel Craig,” and who now—with Craig’s retirement as 007—“fears his work will dry up.”
• Film noir authority and author Eddie Muller isn’t merely a swell guy, he’s also a sterling interviewee. If you missed hearing his half-hour conversation earlier this week with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, don’t fret, because you can still tune in to the whole thing here. In addition to discussing film noir’s history, some of its landmark productions (including 1944’s Double Indemnity), and Muller’s hosting duties on Turner Classic Movies’ exalted Noir Alley series (shown on Saturdays at midnight), the pair chatted about the new and expanded edition of his book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir; his famous boxing-writer father; and his two novels, both set in 1940s San Francisco and starring a sportswriter, Billy Nichols, modeled on his dad.
• Listening to that exchange reminded me of something I wrote about Eddie Muller on this page five years ago. My latest Kirkus Reviews column had then just appeared, its topic being “crime novels worth re-reading,” and Muller contacted me with the surprising information that he was halfway through composing a third Nichols novel, to follow The Distance (2001) and Shadow Boxer (2003). So whatever happened to that book? I e-mailed Muller for an update this week, and received the following reply:
Still working on it. Now I’m glad it’s taken so long. The reissue of Dark City is selling through the roof, #1 movie book on Amazon for over two months. I have two other books in the pipeline, with contracts—not fiction. Since novels are the hardest sell, all this other work will only help when Billy reemerges. And thanks for asking!
I, for one, shall be pleased to welcome Nichols’ return.
• Three weeks ago, I noted the passing of journalist-turned-crime writer Robert Richardson, who died on August 31 at age 80. Only now, however, is The Guardiancarrying an obituary by Mike Ripley, in which he commends Richardson for penning both traditional English detective yarns and psychological thrillers, and says he “was heavily involved in organising the annual conventions of the CWA [Crime Writers Association], where members spent a weekend, usually in a seaside hotel, being treated to lectures and talks on criminology. On the social side, [Richardson] would devise and host quizzes on crime fiction, which though popular with members were invariably described as ‘fiendishly difficult.’” One thing I hadn’t known before, but that Ripley mentions: “Following a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, in 2017 he moved to Dore, near Sheffield, to be closer to his family.”
• Whilst we’re on the subject of Mr. Ripley, I want to direct your attention to his October “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. It includes remarks on the “sumptuous launch party thrown by Felix Francis for his new novel, Iced”; an “accessible and entertaining” new study of Agatha Christie and her knowledge of forensic science; and fresh fiction by Charles Cumming (Box 62), Oliver Bottini (Night Hunters), Peter Papathanasiou (The Stoning), and others.
• Critic Maxim Jakubowski (who now also serves as chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association) is out with his latest “To the Max” column for Crime Time. In it, he briefly reviews 10 new novels, two of which—Toshihiko Yahagi’s The Wrong Goodbye and Anthony Horowitz’s A Line to Kill—are already on my most wanted list, plus one book that I didn’t even realize fell under the crime classification, but that Jakubowski makes sound like a winner: Mrs. March (Liveright), “a slow-burning psychological thriller” by Virginia Feito.
• I have a paperback copy, in storage, of 1974’s Charlie Chan Returns, composed by Dennis Lynds (with splendid cover art by Howard Rogers), that I inherited from my late father-in-law. I’ve never read the yarn, but maybe I should, for the blog Bloody, Spicy, Books calls it a “curious” yet “nice, light fun mystery novel” that translates “the golden-era detective Chan to groovy 70’s New York where he gets tangled up in big case with the help of his son Jimmy, an NYPD detective. There’s a fish-out-of-water quality to the idea of a very old-fashioned man in the land of discos, dirty politics and rock ’n’ roll clubs. So, it’s like Charlie Chan replacing Telly Savalas as Kojak.”
• By the way, this novel should in no way be confused with the unsuccessful 1973 ABC-TV pilot The Return of Charlie Chan, starring The Wild Wild West’s Ross Martin as Earl Derr Biggers’ fictional Chinese-American police detective. For the nonce, at least, that two-hour movie, which imagines a retired Chan “investigat[ing] a murder case aboard the yacht of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon,” is available on YouTube. One viewer writes: “I won’t say that this is a good Charlie Chan mystery, but it is still a pretty good mystery. Just think of Ross Martin playing an imposter, Artemis Gordon’s grandson in disguise, a ‘Charlie Chang,’ if you will, instead of the actual Charlie Chan.”
• R.I.P., Frank Wheeler Jr., the Wisconsin author of Wowzer (2012) and The Good Life (2014), who passed away on September 16, cut down “after a hard-fought battle with cancer” at age 43.
• The Killing Times reminds us that ITV-TV’s new six-part suspense series, Angela Black, starring Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt, is set to debut in the UK this coming Sunday night, October 10. It finds Froggatt playing the title character, “someone who has the perfect life. Or at least it looks like it,” as the site cautions. “Angela’s life appears idyllic: a lovely house in suburban London, days working volunteer shifts at a dogs home, two beautiful sons and a charming, hard-working husband—Olivier [Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman]. However, beneath this façade of charmed domesticity, Angela is a victim of domestic violence. Olivier is controlling and brutal; but Angela loves him and he’s the father of her children. She can’t leave him, even though she has threatened to countless times. So, she covers her bruises with makeup and fabricates lies to explain away her missing teeth. Until, one day, Angela is approached by Ed [The Watch’s Samuel Adewunmi]—a private investigator—and he smashes her already strained domestic life to pieces. Ed reveals Olivier’s deepest secrets to Angela, and she is faced with horrifying truths about her husband and his betrayals. But can Angela trust Ed? And what truths will be revealed in the ferocious fight between Angela and her husband?” A trailer for this hour-long series—which apparently has no U.S. release date arranged—is embedded below.
• Count this as good news (if not wholly unexpected): “Helena Bonham Carter,” says Variety, “will rejoin Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill for a new Enola Holmes mystery from Legendary and Netflix”—the sequel to one of Netflix’s biggest 2020 draws. “Bonham Carter plays Eudoria Holmes, the matriarch of the famous sleuthing family, in the series that is based on Nancy Springer’s beloved books. The films tell the story of Enola (Brown), the rebellious teen sister of Sherlock Holmes (Cavill), who is a gifted super-sleuth in her own right and often outsmarts her famous siblings.” As reported earlier on this page, Enola Holmes 2 (and I hope that’s not really going to be the title) is being lensed, at least partially, in the English port city of Hull.
• Season 6 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and based on Ann Cleeves’ novels, is just around the corner—at least for British viewers. The first of a half-dozen fresh episodes is slated for an October 10 broadcast on the BBC. “The forthcoming new series,” says The Killing Times, “centres on the doorstep murder of a prominent local figure, a case which strikes at the heart of the Shetland Isles and its people. As Perez and his team uncover a kaleidoscope of motives for the murder, their investigation soon takes a shockingly sinister turn.” Radio Times notes that, to make up for time lost to the COVID-19 crisis, the fifth and sixth seasons of this Scottish crime drama are being filmed back to back, so another run can be expected in 2022. There’s no word at this time of when American couch potatoes might see more of Shetland.
• And a final TV morsel: “Mike Flanagan has found another house to haunt for Netflix,” says Tor.com’s Andrew Liptak. “After adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor (based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw), he’s turning his sights to Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ … According to Deadline, Netflix has given a series order for the project, which will be ‘based on multiple works from Edgar Allan Poe.’ He’ll direct half of the eight-episode series alongside Michael Fimognari (To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You).”
• There appears to be major disagreement over whether the true identity of the “Zodiac Killer,” who taunted police and took the lives of at least five people around San Francisco Bay during the late 1960s, has finally been revealed. From In Reference to Murder:
A team of more than 40 retired and amateur investigators claim they have identified the Zodiac Killer, up to this point an unnamed serial killer that operated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. The team, calling themselves The Case Breakers, which consists of former law enforcement officials, DNA experts, and journalists, believe they have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. But the FBI and police in California say, “Not so fast.”
• Killer Covers has posted a new gallery of classic—and very attractive—paperbacks that take their titles from the first names of female protagonists. Feast your eyes here.
• By my calculations (he was born in 1948), Max Allan Collins is now 73 years old and has been publishing books for 45 years. That’s an impressive career, but one that seems to have taken some toll on the Iowa author. In a blog post put up earlier this week, dealing primarily with his new Fancy Anders novella series and the latest installment of his literary memoir in column form, “A Life of Crime,” Collins mentioned that he and collaborator James Traylor are still hard at work on their Mickey Spillane biography for Mysterious Press. Then he wrote: “I have decided I will never write non-fiction again. I haven’t done much, but projects like The History of Mystery, the Elvgren and other pin-up books, the men’s adventure magazine book with George Hagenauer, two previous Spillane non-fiction works with Jim Traylor, and the two Eliot Ness biographies with Brad Schwartz, were just too punishing for me to consider doing non-fiction again at this stage and age. The Spillane bio is going to be something very good, I think, and will make an excellent capper to this niche of my career.”
(Right) Dilys Winn on To Tell the Truth, February 1972.
• New York City’s first independent mystery bookshop, the beloved Murder Ink, shuttered its premises in December 2006 after 34 years of operation. Last week, a Web site called I Love the Upper West Side, which covers news and entertainment happening in one of Manhattan’s tonier districts, delivered a fine remembrance of Murder Ink and its “quirky” founder, Dilys Winn. Enough time has now passed to leave an entire generation of Upper West Side (UWS) residents without knowledge of Winn’s enterprise, so this “history” piece was called for. Contributor Claudie Benjamin introduces her subject thusly:
In a 1972 segment of the popular TV show To Tell the Truth, [Irish-born former advertising copywriter] Dilys Winn wowed the panel who were grilling contestants all claiming to be her. Winn’s deep familiarity with the mystery genre, including the specifics of authors and their heroes and villains, led the panelists to correctly vote her as the real Dilys Winn.
There’s always been so much creativity and innovative impulse on the UWS, and it’s impressive when someone comes up with something that’s totally new and different. That’s just what Ms. Winn did in 1972 when she opened Murder Ink, an independent bookstore entirely devoted to murder mysteries and true crime. …
The impulse to open the shop came from her love of mysteries and hatred of her job (in advertising). Ms. Winn told the To Tell the Truth panelists, “It was either sell them or commit one.”
• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s “Something Is Going to Happen” blog features a thoughtful new essay by Kevin Mims, remembering American author John Ball (In the Heat of the Night) 33 years after his death on October 15, 1988. “He was a writer,” declares Mims, “who was unafraid to veer out of his own lane and explore the lives of others—people whose experiences of the world were vastly different from his own. He left behind a vast body of work, but if more readers don’t seek it out, it may end up being a dead body. And you don’t want to be one of the suspects in that homicide investigation.”
• As The Deighton Dossier observes, Len Deighton (The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, etc.) “has often eschewed literary prizes and honours, believing his work speaks for itself. But as someone born in London, who lived there during much of his early life until his career as an author really took off, he might appreciate a blue plaque there in his name.” It seems the inner London borough of Southwark plans to salute one individual this year who boasts a significant connection to the area, and to do so by posting a circular blue plaque bearing his or her name and general details. The 92-year-old Deighton, “who is thought to have written the first novel typed on a word processor from his Borough home,” is among the five candidates for said accolade. (More than 50 such plaques already dot the district.) The Southwark News, which co-created this commendation with the Southwark Heritage Association, requests the public’s participation in selecting the 2021 honoree. “To vote, e-mail admin@southwark.org.uk or kit@southwarknews.co.uk, naming the person that you would like to see commemorated with a blue plaque,” the newspaper advises. “Voting closes at midnight on November 30.”
• Vaseem Khan, award-winning author of both the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency novels and the Malabar House series, has been elected as the new chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association. He succeeds editor, writer, and critic Maxim Jakubowski in that post. As The Guardiannotes, Khan is “the first person of colour to take the role in the organisation’s 70-year history.” It adds that “Jakubowski will formally hand over the Creasey Bell—named in honour of the CWA founder [John Creasey]—to Khan at the annual Dagger awards on 6 July. The bell has been passed on from chair to chair for 70 years.”
• The 69th and latest edition of Strand Magazine contains a previously unpublished short story by James M. Cain (1892-1977). Titled “Blackmail,” and for decades cached at the Library of Congress, it “tells of a blind Korean War veteran known as Johnsie; Pat, the former comrade who now employs him; and Myra, a woman from the past with some hard-boiled ideas about money, and love …,” according to the Associated Press. “The themes in ‘Blackmail’ of betrayal, violence, rough sexuality—and blackmail—echo such Cain classics as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.” The Strand remarks: “In just over 3,000 words, Cain offers up all the noir elements we’ve come to expect from him, complete with gritty dialogue and a cunning antagonist, but puts in an unexpected twist that turns the tale on its head, offering a surprisingly nuanced take on these supposedly hard characters.” Order a copy of the issue here.
• We must say farewell to George Maharis, the American actor/singer perhaps best remembered for playing peripatetic Buz Murdock in the first three seasons of the television series Route 66. He died on May 24 at 94 years of age. In the decades following Route 66, Maharis appeared in films such as The Satan Bug (1965) and The Desperadoes (1969); starred as a San Francisco private eye in the 1969 ABC-TV pilot The Monk (written by Blake Edwards); and—alongside Ralph Bellamy and Yvette Mimieux—headlined the 1970-1971 ABC crime drama The Most Deadly Game. He also found roles on shows such as Cade’s County, Mission: Impossible, Police Story, Shaft, McMillan & Wife, Ellery Queen, Switch, and Murder, She Wrote. Something I didn’t know until reading The New York Times’ obituary of this performer: Maharis was gay, and was arrested twice during the less-enlightened 1960s and ’70s for “cruising in men’s bathrooms.”
• Although I will be attending the 2023 Bouchercon in San Diego (August 30-September 3), the price of this banquet is a wee bit steep for my budget. According to a message from convention organizers, “The Wolfe Pack is planning a dinner in a local restaurant near the event, Friday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m. Over the course of the evening, celebrate Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories by singing pastiches; completing hilarious quizzes about the opus; and toasting Mr. Stout, Mr. Wolfe, Archie, Fritz, and ‘Other.’ Very limited seating, so register now. $175 per person.” Click here for more information.
• And this is an unlikely employment opportunity. “M16 spooks are looking for James Bond-loving cabbies to drive cars, minibuses and lorries for the secret service,” reports Britain’s Daily Mail. “The intelligence service is searching for chauffeurs to drive around the capital for £33,029 a year.” The paper goes on to explain: “The day-to-day job will be varied, with drivers picking up staff members in varying authority as well as passengers.” It adds that “experience of driving large vans, minibuses or lorries is vital for you to be successful in this role.” What sensitive materials might those oversized vehicles be transporting? Get your application in now to find out!
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It wasn’t just Wilder’s mannerisms, his walking stick, his constant pacing while they collaborated on the script for Double Indemnity. It was also the constant stream of phone calls--Wilder chatting up young women, and scoring with them at night. How it must have
galled Chandler, 18 years Wilder’s senior, to see this young man with broken
English score with such a lot of babes.
a love triangle between Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). I think Wilder and Chandler gave Robinson the best speech in the film, as he berates the front office owner of their insurance company for knowing nothing about the business.
