A Few Tidbits to Share

• Today brings the official release of Lawrence Block’s The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder (LB Productions), plus an interview with the author, whose 85th birthday just happens to be June 24. Kevin Burton Smith, editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, had an opportunity recently to question Block via e-mail, and he combines the results of their exchange with incisive observations about the book itself—and its unlikely existence. Read all about it here.

• Several of PBS-TV’s most-loved Masterpiece Mystery! programs are slated to reappear on U.S. television screens over the next four months. Season 8 of the British historical detective drama Grantchester, starring Tom Brittney and Robson Green, will make its debut on Sunday, July 9. Season 5 of Unforgotten, the cold-case-focused puzzler featuring Sanjeev Bhaskar and this year introducing Sinéad Keenan in the role of Detective Chief Inspector Jessica “Jessie” James, will premiere on Sunday, September 3. On that same date, watch for the Season 3 start of Van der Valk, the Amsterdam-set crime drama starring Marc Warren and Maimie McCoy, and inspired by the novels of Nicolas Freeling. Finally, the sophomore series of Annika—the Scottish mystery featuring Nicola Walker (formerly of Unforgotten) as the head of a Glasgow-based marine homicide unit—is scheduled to begin airing on Sunday, October 15. Click here to see a brief promotional video covering all of these shows.

• This year’s Shirley Jackson Award nominees have been announced. Named for the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, among other works, these prizes recognize “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” There are six categories of contenders, the following works vying for Best Novel:

— Beulah, by Christi Nogle (Cemetery Gates)
— The Dead Friends Society, by Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall (Encyclopocalypse)
— The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland)
— Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
— Unwieldy Creatures, by Addie Tsai (Jaded Ibis Press)
— Where I End, by Sophie White (Tramp Press)

The five remaining divisions of nominees can be found here. Winners are to be declared on Saturday, July 15, at Readercon 32, the Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

• I love cats, but don’t usually gravitate toward mysteries in which they play significant roles. Kate Jackson, the blogger at Cross-Examining Crime, is of quite another mind altogether. Here she lists her 10 favorite crime novels featuring felines, by authors as renowned as Erle Stanley Gardner, Dolores Hitchins, and Stuart Palmer.

• Martin Edwards offers a few comments about (and photos from) last weekend’s Shetland Noir Festival in Lerwick, Scotland.

• Back in late March, CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano enumerated “The 19 Scruffiest Detectives in Crime Film and TV.” Now she’s balanced that out with a rundown of “The 19 Most Polished Detectives in Crime Film and TV.” Andre Braugher’s Frank Pembleton (Homicide), Bertie Carvel’s Adam Dalgliesh (Dalgliesh), Gene Barry’s Amos Burke (Burke’s Law), and both Pierce Brosnan’s Remington Steele and Stephanie Zimbalist’s Laura Holt (Remington Steele) made the cut.

• It seems made-for-TV movies are once more having a moment, thanks to the proliferation of streaming channels. In my younger years, I loved many such one-off wonders, especially those imbued with considerable suspense (The Night Stalker and Duel, for instance), those with a crime or espionage angle (House on Greenapple Road, Assignment: Munich), others focused on natural disasters (The Day After, Hurricane), and those that served as series pilots (Genesis II, Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead). But teleflicks had pretty much fallen out of favor by the 1990s. Now, however, writes Randee Dawn of the Los Angeles Times, “the explosion of content on streamers (along with changes in the theatrical system during and post-pandemic) is causing filmmakers to rethink what a movie made for television can be.”

Edwards Before the Camera

I had the chance last weekend to participate in a Zoom-carried conversation with UK author/crime-fiction historian Martin Edwards. Sponsored by the North American chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association—which I hadn’t previously known existed—that 77-minute event was hosted by Alice K. Boatwright (author of the Ellie Kent mysteries), and found Edwards being interviewed by short-story writer and English professor Art Taylor (The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions). During their exchange, Edwards talked about the CWA, his recent books, the difference between concocting novels and short fiction, how mystery short stories have evolved over the last century, the psychological value of winning awards, and much more. You can now watch it all on YouTube.

By the way, the previous presentation by this same group had Verena Rose talking with Sara Paretsky, the creator of V.I. Warshawski.

Drawing on Various Sources

Every day, I spot intriguing news items or blog features (or obituaries) that I’d really like to share with Rap Sheet readers. Unfortunately, I have not had time recently to compile one of my signature giant “Bullet Points” posts. So I take what free hours I can to gather smaller collections of such reports, and hope they’ll do. For now.

• Organizers of the UK’s annual Capital Crime festival this week previewed the highlights of their 2022 gathering, which will take place live “in the shadow of [London’s] iconic Battersea Power Station” from September 29 to October 1. “Consisting of over 40 events and over 150 panelists,” reads a press release, “the line-up will include appearances from Peter James, Kate Mosse, Mark Billingham, Richard Osman, Robert Harris, S.A. Cosby, Dorothy Koomson, Jeffrey Archer, Anthony Horowitz, Charlie Higson, Jeffery Deaver, Lucy Foley, Bella Mackie, Ragnar Jónasson, Paula Hawkins, Reverend Richard Coles, Mark Edwards, Claire McGowan, Ben Aaronovitch and former President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lady Hale, in conversation with Harriet Tyce.” A complete line-up of events is expected late this coming summer.

• This item comes from Vancouver, British Columbia, author Dietrich Kalteis (Under an Outlaw Moon):

There’s good news for fans of Canadian crime and mystery writing. From May 24-28 some of Canada’s top mystery writers will be gathering for the first ever Virtual Canadian Mystery Conference. The idea for a Canadian conference has been brewing for years, ever since the demise of Bloody Words, a fabulous meet-up of writers and fans. Out of the ashes of the old comes the Maple Leaf Mystery Conference. This year on Zoom and next year … one can only dream.

Scottish novelist Ian Rankin and Toronto’s Maureen Jennings (Murdoch Mysteries) are among the invited guests. Register online here.

• London-based Herb Lester Associates, which already counts among its elegant foldout-guide offerings maps of Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles and Agatha Christie’s England, has a new product for sale. And its text was researched and composed by British author Martin Edwards! As Kate Jackson explains in Cross-Examining Crime, This Deadly Isle: A Golden Age Mystery Map includes 51 locations given significance in GA stories—“private houses, buildings involving the criminal justice system, department stores, political landmarks, key London streets and even royal abodes. The artwork continues to be brilliant and is one of the reasons these products are pleasing to collect. Lots of attention is given to little details, so the map is enjoyable at a visual level as well as on an information level. It is a great gift to self, but also to others who enjoy classic crime fiction.” The map retails for £12 and can be ordered online.

• Martin Edwards writes here about that map project’s history.

• Journalist/true-crime author Keith Roysdon’s latest contribution to CrimeReads is a delightful piece about the history of newspaper crime comic strips, “a once wildly popular, now mostly forgotten art.”

• From the “Fun Facts to Know and Tell” file: The 1965-1969 CBS-TV western/espionage series The Wild Wild West, which starred Robert Conrad as James West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon—both of them U.S. Secret Service agents—went through at least two name changes before reaching the air. According to the MeTV Web site, “Early in production, the pilot was called The Wild West. Playing off the character’s name, The Wild West West was also up for consideration and thankfully scrapped. That’s just confusing.” Collier Young, who produced several of the show’s early episodes, later claimed responsibility for adding the second “Wild” to its title.

• I’m very much enjoying Ben Boulden’s new blog, Dark City Underground. Last week he gathered together newspaper ads for 10 Alistair McLean thrillers that became big-screen films.

• And if you’re a Washington Post subscriber, this new Paul Waldman column is well worth reading. It begins: “In recent years, and especially since the pandemic began, we’ve seen an explosion of our already extraordinary levels of gun manufacturing and sales. If gun advocates—a group that includes pretty much the entire GOP—are correct in their oft-stated assertion that more guns means more safety, shouldn’t we be enjoying a paradise of security, with crime plunging to never-before-seen lows? This isn’t happening, of course. How can we explain this mystery?”

Bullet Points: Wonders Never Cease Edition

• This coming Monday, March 1, will bring—from The Bagley Brief Web site—the release of Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist, Philip Eastwood’s “painstaking reconstruction” of a previously unpublished memoir by English adventure-thriller writer Desmond Bagley (1923-1983). In advance of that, Shotsmag Confidential has posted the foreword to Eastwood’s work, written by Mike Ripley (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and establishing Bagley’s stature as one of the Big Three among contributors to the”Golden Age of the British thriller,” the other two being Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean.

• Can it really be true, at last? According to Deadline,

Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a character created by author Walter Mosley, is getting another shot on television after Amblin Television signed up to develop a series.

The production company has closed a deal to adapt Mosley’s stories—Rawlins has appeared in 15 novels and short stories—with The Americans and Amazing Stories director Sylvain White on board to direct the pilot episode and exec produce.

The series, based on the gritty detective novels, will center around Easy, a Black WWII Army veteran turned hard-boiled private eye. The show will be set in 1950’s Los Angeles and will honor the great traditions of storytelling in the detective genre, while also exploring the racial inequalities and social injustice experienced by Black people and other people of color.

Deadline observes that this “is the latest attempt to get Rawlins on to the small screen—[screenwriter-producer] John Wells attempted an Easy Rawlins series at NBC back in 2011 and USA Network also attempted a version seven years before that. The character of Easy Rawlins also previously appeared on screen in the 1995 film Devil in a Blue Dress, which starred Denzel Washington.”

• Back in December I mentioned that the often humorous British crime drama McDonald & Dodds, featuring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched cops in modern-day Bath, England, would soon return with a second season. Radio Times now brings word that the first of three new two-hour-long McDonald & Dodds episodes will show in the UK on Sunday, February 28, beginning at 8 p.m. Guest stars this season include Rupert Graves, Doctor Who’s Natalie Gumede, and Saira Choudhry. Radio Times provides cursory synopses of each installment’s storyline. It also frets that “these three episodes could be McDonald & Dodds’ last, since DCI McDonald [Gouveia] firmly stated in the previous series that she would only stay in Bath for two years tops.” But hey, we’re dealing here with a work of pure fiction, and if this ITV program continues to pull in audiences, can we not expect someone in charge to contrive a semi-logical excuse for extending its storyline?

• Shortly in advance of the coronavirus pandemic shutting down movie and television production a year ago, British TV channel BBC One announced that it had greenlighted two additional seasons—Series 6 and 7—of the Scottish crime drama Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall. But only now, says The Killing Times, is work on those fresh episodes finally resuming. Beginning in April, it explains, back-to-back series of the show (six episodes apiece) will commence shooting on the subarctic archipelago that gives this prize-winning drama its name. “Both series will be written and created by David Kane (Stonemouth, The Field of Blood), who originated the first series of Shetland and has written on every series since. The islands’ local newspaper, The Shetland Times, reported that producer Louise Say promised ‘absolutely riveting’ and ‘hard-hitting’ storylines.”

• This will likely be worth watching. B.V. Lawson tells us that “Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series update of the classic thriller, The 39 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s novel, which was turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The TV project of The 39 Steps is being described as ‘a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for our times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order.’”

• Even before TV writer and producer William Link’s death in December, I had been trying to catch up with the proliferation of small-screen movies he developed with his writing partner of 43 years, Richard Levinson. I’ve found a variety of them on YouTube, and bought DVDs of some others online. However, I was in the dark about their 1986 mystery Vanishing Act, until Mystery*File reminded me of its existence. As Steve Lewis relates, it finds “Harry Kenyon (Mike Farrell) … on his honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains after a whirlwind romance in Las Vegas with a woman named Christine Prescott. But their wedded bliss is soon interrupted and Harry reports her disappearance to Lieutenant Rudameyer (Elliott Gould), a New Yorker more interested in eating a corned beef sandwich specially imported from a delicatessen on West 87th Street. It seems to be a fuss over nothing as Christine (Margot Kidder) is quickly found--only Harry doesn’t recognize her and refuses to believe she’s his wife!” At least for the present moment, you can watch that full picture here.

• Shoot! We almost got to watch a Wild Wild West reboot.

• Thirty-nine-year-old Morven Christie (formerly of Grantchester) has quit her role as a detective sergeant family liaison officer on The Bay, making way for actress Marsha Thomason to lead the cast in Series 3 of that British crime drama. Understandably, Christie’s sudden departure has fomented speculation about why she gave up that plum part. The Killing Times thinks it may have a clue.

• Holmes and Watson—villains? That’s just one of the twists in a new, eight-episode horror series debuting on March 26. Writes Olivia Rutigliano: “The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes’s organization of motley street urchins, are going to get their own Netflix series. It’s a dark show, full of supernatural mysteries, but the paranormal activity is not the only modification to the Sherlockian world you know and love. The program, titled The Irregulars, posits that the group is manipulated into solving dangerous supernatural crimes by Dr. Watson (who is evil)—feats for which his sketchy business partner Sherlock Holmes gets all the renown.”

• In Reference to Murder reports that among the among the 25 categories of finalists for this year’s Audie Awards, announced this week by the Audio Publishers Association, are two of potentially special interest to Rap Sheet readers: Mystery and Thriller/Suspense. Below are the five Mystery contenders:

— A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones, narrated by Lorelei King (Macmillan Audio)
— Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, narrated by Vivienne Leheny (HarperAudio)
— Fair Warning, by Michael Connelly, narrated by Peter Giles and Zach Villa (Hachette Audio)
— The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, narrated by Chloe Massey, Olivia Dowd, Sarah Ovens, Rich Keeble, Aoife McMahon, and Jot Davies (HarperAudio)
— Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Dion Graham (Hachette Audio)

The full list of 2021 Audie nominees is here. Winners are to be announced during a virtual “gala” on March 22. The festivities are set to start at 9 p.m. EST, and can be streamed live at this link.

• Blogger Evan Lewis has generously taken the time to dig up, from the deep recesses of the Web, as many publicity materials as he could find related to the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film, The Big Sleep. Look for them in two separate posts, here and here.

• Left Coast Crime already rescheduled its 2021 convention for 2022, due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19. And now Malice Domestic is doing the same. “After careful consideration,” its board of directors declared in a news release, “we have decided to postpone Malice 32/33 to 2022. … Instead of a live event in 2021, we are excited to announce More Than Malice, a virtual (online) festival. More Than Malice will be held on July 14-17, 2021, and will feature special guests, unique panels, and the Agatha Awards. We will have much more exciting information for you in the coming days and weeks.” Everyone who’s currently registered for Malice 2021 should receive an Agatha Award nomination form soon. Keep up with developments by following the Malice Twitter page.

• In CrimeReads, editor Dwyer Murphy ponders that immortal question, Why was Raymond Chandler so venomous in attacking Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller, Strangers on a Train?

• How did Victorian homes “go from celebrated to creepy?”

• Excellent news! UK author Martin Edwards spent his weeks in pandemic lockdown researching and penning a third Rachel Savernake/Jacob Flint historical mystery (following Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall). He writes in his blog that it should be published “early next year,” with a fourth installment to follow in 2023.

• Only days ago I recommended that readers check out—with warranted dispatch—the complete, one-season run of NBC-TV’s City of Angels on YouTube. Now comes Steve Aldous with a short review of that show’s three-part first episode, “The November Plan.” He remarks: “The promise on show here would occasionally surface over the series’ next ten episodes before it was cancelled due to low ratings just as it was building a head of steam.”

• Why the Titanic’s 1912 sinking still makes for a good story.

• And it’s true: Director Tim Burton is set to shoot a live-action, young-adult series for Netflix about Wednesday Addams, the wonderfully creepy little girl familiar from small- and big-screen versions of The Addams Family. Variety describes Wednesday as “a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. She attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago—all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.” Tor.com says there is “no official word on the casting yet, but given how sadly awful the last Addams film was (the animated one from 2019, not the gems we got in the ’90s), this might be a slight improvement?”

A Dagger Directed at Edwards

Congratulations to author, critic, and genre historian Martin Edwards, who has been named as this year’s recipient of the Diamond Dagger—“the highest honour in British crime writing”—presented by the Crime Writers’ Association.

In its press release about this award, the CWA explains that “Alongside his career as a prolific novelist, Martin is a renowned editor, reviewer, columnist and versatile writer of non-fiction, and is a leading authority on crime fiction. He has also enjoyed a separate career as a solicitor, and is recognised for his expertise in employment and equal opportunities law. … Originally known for his Harry Devlin and the Lake District Mysteries series, Martin is now making waves with his 1930s-set thrillers. His latest novel Gallows Court revived the Golden Age of crime fiction with a unique twist, featuring the character Rachel Savernake, and was last year nominated for the CWA Historical Dagger and shortlisted for the eDunnit award. The sequel, Mortmain Hall, is published in April by Head of Zeus.

“In 2015, Martin followed in the footsteps of Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, and Dorothy L. Sayers by being elected President of the Detection Club, the world’s oldest social network of crime writers. The Club will celebrate its 90th birthday this year by publishing Howdunit (HarperCollins), edited by Martin; a masterclass of crime writing by leading exponents of the genre. He is consultant to the British Library’s bestselling Crime Classics series, and wrote the award-winning companion volume, The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. He is also archivist of the Detection Club and the CWA and a former Chair of the CWA. Author of over sixty short stories, since 1996 he has been the editor of the CWA’s annual anthology.”

That release concludes: “The CWA Diamond Dagger is selected from nominations provided by CWA members. Nominees have to meet two essential criteria: first, their careers must be marked by sustained excellence, and second, they must have made a significant contribution to crime writing published in the English language.” Previous Diamond Dagger honorees include Ruth Rendell, Andrew Taylor, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, P.D. James, John Harvey, Reginald Hill, Lindsey Davis, Peter Lovesey, and John Le Carré. The 2019 prize went to Robert Goddard.

Edwards will receive his coveted commendation during the CWA’s annual Dagger awards ceremony in October.

READ MORE: “The Diamond Dagger,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).

Gathering Evidence

• A dramatic and promising trailer for the 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die, showed up yesterday, answering some fan questions while raising new ones. This event followed the spread of new character posters promoting the movie, which will star Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux (the “Bond girl” from 2015’s Spectre), Ana de Armas, and Rami Malek. No Time to Die is scheduled to premiere in UK theaters on April 2 of next year, and should reach American screens by April 8.

• I mentioned on this page last month that Max Allan Collins would soon begin work on the first new novel he’s written about professional thief Nolan since 1999, when his series prequel, Mourn the Living, first saw print. Now we have a title for the forthcoming new Hard Case Crime publication: Skim Deep. In his latest blog post, Collins also provides a cover for that paperback—complete with a very Lee Van Cleef interpretation of its protagonist—plus covers for the Hard Case re-releases of all the Nolan yarns, which are to be published in a two-per-book format with art by British artist Mark Eastbrook.

• Meanwhile, Martin Edwards reveals that his next novel, a 416-page sequel to 2018’s acclaimed Gallows Court, is due out from UK publisher Head of Zeus in April 2020. Titled Mortmain Hall, its story will be set in 1930 and again star Fleet Street journalist Jacob Flint—this time, framed for murder. The cover artist is Edward Bettinson.

• Check out this piece I wrote for my other blog, Killer Covers, about Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre’s new book, Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980 (PM Press). It comes complete with a dozen fine selections from among that volume’s more than 350 vintage cover images.

• For those people who are keeping track, it was two years ago today that then 76-year-old Texas mystery novelist and raconteur Bill Crider, who had been writing a most entertaining blog ever since 2002, posted his final entry on that page, concluding: “It saddens me to think of all the great books by many writers that I’ll never read. But I’ve had a great life, and my readers have been a big part of it. Much love to you all.” Crider died two months later of prostate cancer.

• I was saddened to hear last week that 71-year-old mystery fiction historian Willetta Heising had died at her Dearborn, Michigan, home on April 25. (Yes, I know that was a while ago, but the news has apparently been very slow in spreading.) Jiro Kimura provides this short Heising bio in his blog, The Gumshoe Site:

The former financial planner was well-known in mysterydom as the mystery list-maker of Detecting Women: A Reader’s Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Women (1995) … and Detecting Men: A Reader’s Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Men (pocket edition, 1997; large-size trade paperback edition, 1998), an Agatha winner in the non-fiction category. [The updated] Detecting Women 2 (1996), an Edgar nominee, won the 1997 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards, while Detecting Woman 3 (1999) won an Anthony.

I can’t claim to have known Heising at all well, but we did engage in correspondence over the last decade, and I have copies of both Detecting Women and Detecting Men on my reference shelves. They were terrific resources at the time of their publication.

• In British TV news … The BBC One crime drama Shetland, which takes its inspiration from stories by Ann Cleeves and stars Douglas Henshall as Scottish Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, has been renewed for two more series. That same channel’s six-part presentation of The Trial of Christine Keeler, starring Sophie Cookson and Grantchester’s James Norton in a plot based on the infamous 1963 Profumo Affair, is set to begin broadcasting on Sunday, December 29. And we finally have a date on which Wisting, based on Norwegian author Jørn Lier Horst’s best-selling novels, will begin broadcasting: Saturday, December 28, on BBC Four. We can only hope all of these productions someday make their debuts across “the pond.”

• By the way, I recently stumbled across the only small-screen flick made from one of Jonathan Valin’s books starring Cincinnati, Ohio, private eye Harry Stoner: 1989’s Final Notice, headlined by former Buck Rogers star Gil Gerard. At least for the time being, you can watch that two-hour mystery here.

• And CrimeReads today posted a most entertaining essay about “the evolution of the femme fatale in film noir,” penned by Los Angeles writer Halley Sutton.

Small Subjects

• With the presentation of this year’s Edgar Awards coming tomorrow night, CrimeReads invited more than 20 nominees to a roundtable discussion of the state of mystery and crime fiction. UPDATE: Part II of this skull session can now be enjoyed here.

• In his blog, ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?,’ Martin Edwards reflects back on his two-year stint as the head of Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association. “As it turns out,” he writes, “I’m the only person who has served as CWA Chair and Detection Club President at the same time, and I also became the longest-serving Chair of the CWA since our founder, John Creasey, back in the 1950s. So it’s definitely time to step aside and get some more writing done. But I’m going to continue to be involved with the CWA, not least as anthologist and archivist. And I’m very glad to belong to such a thriving and forward-looking organisation.” Author Linda Stratmann has taken over as CWA chair.

• We’re very sorry to hear that Detroit-area writer Patricia “Patti” Abbott has finally lost her husband of 52 years, Dr. Philip Abbott, to colon cancer. She wrote this brief note last evening in her blog: “Died today at 4:00. He reached for my hand, I gave it to him, he died.” Our heartfelt best wishes go out to Patti and her family (including author Megan Abbott) at this difficult time. UPDATE: Patti has more thoughts to offer about Phil and their family here and here.

• Finally, the pseudonymous Nathan Blackwell, author of The Sound of Her Voice (Orion), is Crime Watch blogger Craig Sisterson’s 210th interviewee in his “9mm” series. Read the Q&A here.

Relishing Classic Crime’s New Vogue

(Editor’s note: The Rap Sheet is pleased to once again feature the work of Martin Edwards, an award-winning British novelist and the still newly installed chair of the Crime Writers’ Association. Stopping here early in a blog tour he’s put together to promote his latest non-fiction work, The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, Edwards remarks below on how his once-unhip fascination with vintage mystery tales has finally paid off. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books will be published in the UK on July 7 by the British Library, and in the United States on August 1 by Poisoned Pen Press.)

My crime novels are set, with one exception, in the present day, but I’ve been fascinated by classic detective fiction ever since I first came across Agatha Christie when I was just short of my ninth birthday. I borrowed my grandmother’s copy of The Murder at the Vicarage, and was hooked. As a fan, and also as a would-be writer, for even at that tender age, I dreamed of telling stories, stories of the type that I enjoyed. I especially liked detective shows on the television (one of my schoolbooks as a 6-year old contains a couple of sentences enthusing about “The Chrome Coffin,” apparently an episode of 77 Sunset Strip, which was running on British TV at the time).

It took me a long time to publish my first detective novel, but even longer to find a suitable outlet for my passion for Golden Age mysteries. That first book, All the Lonely People (1991), introduced the down-at-heel Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin, and my aim was to write a series which combined a realistic urban backdrop and contemporary characters with plots that had much of the trickiness I associated with Christie and her peers. Not just “least likely person” culprits, but other tropes such as “dying message clues,” “impossible crimes,” and so on. The reviews were fine, and I was shortlisted every now and then for awards. The snag was that none of the kind reviewers noticed the Golden Age elements. Classic crime was really out of fashion.

When, more than a decade ago, I started writing a non-fiction book about the Golden Age, my then agent, a great supporter of my work, was dubious. She thought I shouldn’t allow myself to be distracted from my novels. But I kept on working at the manuscript, and after she retired, I persuaded the guy who took over the agency that there might be some potential in what would become The Golden Age of Murder (2015). What I didn’t expect was an Edgar Award, an Agatha, a Macavity, and very good sales as well as lovely reviews from all around the world. For pretty much the first time in my life, my tastes coincided with what was suddenly fashionable all over again.

I’m still, first and foremost, very much a novelist, but I felt there was much more to say about classic crime. Thankfully, the British Library agreed, and as a result I’ve composed The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. This is a companion to the British Library’s series of Crime Classics, but it’s rather more than that. The aim is to explore the ways in which the genre developed over the first half of the last century.

(Left) Author Martin Edwards

Of course, the focus is on British books, but I’ve also squeezed in a sampling of American titles (as well as some from elsewhere in the world) to give the story an international context. It’s not an academic work, but an attempt to entertain as well as inform. And I hope that even the most widely read connoisseur will come across unfamiliar titles that seem well worth exploring. Reading or solving a mystery entails a voyage of discovery. And anyone who reads The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books will find that it takes them on a journey with plenty of unexpected ports of call.

* * *

My thanks to Jeff Pierce for hosting this guest post in The Rap Sheet. Over the next few days, I’ll be traveling elsewhere around the blogosphere, talking about different aspects of this new book, and of classic crime. Here’s a list of all the stops on my blog tour:

Wednesday, June 28: Lesa’s Book Critiques
Thursday, June 29: The Rap Sheet
Friday, June 30: Pretty Sinister Books
Saturday, July 1: Confessions of a Mystery Novelist (interview)
Sunday, July 2: Euro Crime
Monday, July 3: Tipping My Fedora
Tuesday, July 4: Desperate Reader
Wednesday, July 5: Clothes in Books
Thursday, July 6: Emma’s Bookish Corner
Friday, July 7: Random Jottings

So the Edwards Era Begins

Congratulations to author Martin Edwards, who this year assumes the role of chair at Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association. “Of course, I am proud to have been picked to lead the CWA,” he writes in his blog. “And I’m startled to find that I’m the only person to have been both chair of the CWA and president of the Detection Club at the same time. Inevitably I’ll make a few mistakes as I try to move things forward, but I plan to do my best to make sure both organizations look after their members, and continue to play a significant part in the crime-writing world, here in the UK and further afield.”

Bullet Points: Completely Hate-Free Edition

• Megan Abbott talks with Entertainment Weekly about the inspiration for her next novel, You Will Know Me (due out in July 2016) “and why the worlds of adolescent girls keep pulling her back.”

• I should make a poster of this quote and hang it above my favorite reading chair. The statement comes from 19th-century Scottish philosopher-essayist Thomas Carlyle: “If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.”

• This is most welcome news: TV Obscurities reports that Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI) has licensed 11 older American TV dramas for future DVD release. They include two of my personal favorites, Bill Bixby’s The Magician (NBC, 1973-1974) and James Franciscus’ Longstreet (ABC, 1971-1972), together with Christopher George’s The Immortal (ABC, 1970-1971), William Conrad’s Nero Wolfe (NBC, 1981), and others. “No release dates or details are available,” explains TV Obscurities. All of these shows appear on VEI’s Coming Soon page alongside others such as Barry Newman’s Petrocelli (NBC, 1974-1976) and Lee Horsley’s Matt Houston (ABC, 1982–1985). All are programs that have languished far too long in limbo, while a variety of second-rate series were moved to the head of the DVD line. Thank goodness VEI is finally stepping up to correct this injustice.


The opening title sequence from Longstreet.

• Let me offer a toast to Martin Edwards, who this month became president of Britain’s esteemed Detection Club. “The high point of my crime writing life” is how he describes the honor in this blog post.

• Linwood Barclay fans, take note. Bookreporter is hosting a contest to promote his latest novel, Broken Promise (NAL). Twenty-three “personalized signed” copies of Barclay’s thriller are set to be given away. The idea is to nominate somebody from your holiday gift list who you think would like to receive Broken Promise. You’ll find the entry form here. This contest is open only to U.S. residents, and entries will be accepted from now through Monday, December 7.

• In my Killer Covers blog today, I look back at the wonderful, mid-20th-century paperback artistry of Robert Foster.

• Janet Rudolph has spent years putting together lists of holiday-appropriate reading material for her blog, Mystery Fanfare. Finally, she has created a separate page dedicated to those sometimes lengthy lists. Click here to find her rundowns of Thanksgiving mysteries, Chanukah mysteries, Christmas mysteries, and more.

• Canadian broadcaster CTV “is getting into the serialized drama game, beginning with Giles Blunt’s award-winning John Cardinal mysteries,” reports TV, Eh? “Bell Media announced the ordering of the six-part Cardinal (working title) from Toronto-based Sienna Films and Entertainment One. Adapted from Forty Words for Sorrow [2000], the upcoming project--set to bow as part of CTV’s 2016-17 broadcast schedule--follows detective John Cardinal and his new partner, Lise Delorme, as they investigate the death of Katie Pine, a 13-year-old discovered in an abandoned mine. Production on Cardinal is scheduled to begin in February 2016 in Northern Ontario ...”

• Shotsmag Confidential offers a wrap-up of book-to-broadcast bits, including this item about one of my favorite Len Deighton novels:

A new period drama for the BBC is SS-GB from the pen of Len Deighton. The drama is likely to end up being a five-part limited series. Kate Bosworth will star in the role [of American reporter] Barbara Barga alongside Sam Riley, who is set [to] play the role of [Detective Superintendent Douglas] Archer. Adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the story takes place in London 1941 and [follows] a ‘what-would-have-happened-if’ scenario. The novel, published in 1978, was a popular book and has become an iconic alternate history tome.

• Literary Hub has posted this fine piece about the ways in which Raymond Chandler’s divided life--he was born in Chicago, but educated in Britain before returning to the States--affected his storytelling.

• If you haven’t been checking in regularly on Nancie Clare’s Speaking of Mysteries podcast series, you have missed out on some fun. In her latest interview--found here--she talks with Robert Crais, author of the new Elvis Cole/Joe Pike/Jon Stone/Scott James and Maggie the LAPD K-9 novel, The Promise (Putnam).

• I am ridiculously far behind in watching NBC-TV’s new crime drama Blindspot, about “a beautiful woman (Jaimie Alexander) with no memories of her past, [who] is found naked in Times Square with her body fully covered in intricate tattoos. Her discovery sets off a vast and complex mystery that immediately ignites the attention of the FBI, which begins to follow the road map on her body to reveal a larger conspiracy of crime while bringing her closer to discovering the truth about her identity.” But news that the program has been renewed for a second season is impetus for me to catch up.

• Meanwhile, Double O Section has word that Agent Carter, Marvel’s kick-ass period spy drama starring Hayley Atwell and James D’Arcy, will return to the ABC-TV schedule on January 5 with a two-hour episode. “This season,” writes Matthew Bradford (aka Tanner), “Peggy Carter relocates to Los Angeles and finds 1949 Tinseltown teeming with noirish plots and conspiracies in the early days of the Cold War.” Click over to Double O Section to watch a Season 2 trailer.

• Another interesting item, this from In Reference to Murder:

Brenda Starr, the glamorous, feisty redheaded reporter created by Dale Messick, captivated newspaper readers from 1940 through the comic’s demise in 2011. But Brenda Starr is staging a comeback to headline a mystery novel series created by USA Today bestselling author J.J. Salem, with the first title, Black Orchid Murders, set for publication in Spring 2016. The 21st-century version finds the character in her early 40s working as a TV pundit and visiting college professor. But she returns to hard news at a digital start-up when a series of murders targeting Chicago’s elite hits too close to home, “all while navigating the complexities of modern life with a younger lover, a tycoon ex-husband and a head-strong, college-aged daughter showing signs of becoming Brenda Starr 2.0.”

Naturally, there’s a Facebook page set up for these new Brenda Starr Mysteries. It includes illustrations of the rebooted reporter that make her look like a woman in her 20s, not one who’s pushing 50.

• Steve Aldous, an expert on the exploits of 1970s New York private eye John Shaft, provides a brief synopsis in his blog of Shaft: Imitation of Life #1, the first of four entries in a new graphic novel series composed by David F. Walker, “due for publication in February 2016 alongside Walker’s novel, Shaft’s Revenge.”

• On the right is a great present idea for fans (yours truly included) of the old Perry Mason TV series. I’d like the dark blue version, please.

• Browsing through these century-old postcards of the sites involved in last week’s Paris terrorist attacks reminds us that “there is something essential to the experience of living in Paris that involves spending time outside on its streets, whether to shop, observe, drink, eat, dance, talk or listen,” writes Alex Toledano in The New York Times Magazine. Paris’ “architecture invites people to continue to explore, to take wrong turns, to fall in love, to protest and simply to have a drink in the same places, streets and buildings that countless others have in the past.”

• Musing on Paris reminds me of some favorite old paperback book covers featuring France and that nation’s capital, specifically.

• David Cranmer is rewatching Breaking Bad for Criminal Element, and writing about each installment along the way. Here are his comments about the show’s 2008 pilot. Cranmer is up to episode five already--only 57 more to go. Follow his whole series of posts here.

• Was best-selling thriller writer Robert Ludlum murdered?

• Brash Books, the independent publishing house created by Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, wins valuable notice on the Mystery Scene Web site, thanks to its three most recent releases, one of which I wrote about recently, The Last Good Place, by Robin Burcell.

• As part of its fifth-anniversary celebration earlier this month, Mystery People--a mystery-fiction seller located within Austin, Texas’ largest independent bookstore, Book People--posted a list of its “Top 100 Crime & Suspense Novels.” The complete list, which you will find here, includes such durable favorites as Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Ross Macdonald’s The Way Some People Die, Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem, Ellis Peters’ A Morbid Taste for Bones, Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280, Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, and … hey, there are 100 of the damn things. Do you expect me to list them all?

• Congratulations to Brian Abbott for his five years of blogging at The Poisoned Martini. “It hardly seems like it’s been that long,” he observes. Boy, can I sympathize! The Rap Sheet is coming up on its 10th anniversary in May, but it seems like only yesterday that I was wondering whether I might have a future in blogging.

• Speaking of 10th anniversaries, editor Elizabeth Foxwell noted earlier this month that she’s also spent the last decade blogging about mystery and crime fiction at The Bunburyist. Excellent work!

• Included in its new selection of “15 Great and Bookish Gift Ideas for the Holidays,” Pornokitsch mentions editor Sarah Weinman’s Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & ’50s (Library of America) as well as one of my favorite volumes from last year, The Art of Robert E. McGinnis (Titan).

• Here’s something I didn’t know until reading about it on cop-turned-author Paul Bishop’s Facebook page:

In 1970, Leave It to Beaver’s Ken Osmond [“Eddie Haskell”] joined the Los Angeles Police Department after typecasting curtailed his acting career. He grew a mustache in an effort to secure his anonymity. He worked in vice and narcotics and as a motorcycle officer.

On September 20, 1980, Osmond was hit by three bullets while in a foot chase with a suspected car thief. He was protected from two of the bullets by his bulletproof vest. The third bullet ricocheting off of his belt buckle. Osmond was placed on disability and eventually retired from the force in 1988. The shooting was later dramatized in a November 1992 episode of the CBS series Top Cops.

• Once Upon a Spy--the James Bond film you’ll never see, penned by Frost/Nixon screenwriter Peter Morgan and featuring a plot that “began during the Cold War with Judi Dench’s M an MI6 agent stationed in Berlin.” Although Morgan’s story was eventually rejected, it had an affect on the new Skyfall.

• I’ve never read Kingsley Amis’ 1968 James Bond novel, Colonel Sun, but David B. Hobbs’ remarks about the book in Hazlitt certainly make me want to track down a copy.

• The mystery of 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior.

• Novelist Ian Rankin (Even Dogs in the Wild) “shares some of the secrets to his success” in this short piece published by Canada’s Globe and Mail. Rankin also takes part in the latest Crime Vault Live podcast, hosted by Michael Carlson and Mark Billingham. Listen to that and previous episodes by clicking here.

• Frederick Forsyth’s new autobiography, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, hasn’t yet found a place in my to-be-read pile. But Irish author-critic Declan Burke’s declaration that it’s “an enthralling account of a life that would make for a thrilling, if delightfully implausible, novel” makes me curious to learn more.

• Some interviews worth checking out: Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette talks with film noir expert Eddie Muller; Sons of Spade’s Jochem van der Steen fires questions at S.W. Lauden, the author of Bad Citizen Corporation; and Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper chats up Frederick Forsyth about the aforementioned The Outsider, which he says is his final book (“I hope I am going out on top.”).

• R.I.P., P.F. Sloan, co-writer of the song “Secret Agent Man,” which The Spy Command calls “an anthem for the 1960s spy craze.” That song figured into the opening titles of at least two TV shows, the 1960-1968 UK series Secret Agent Man (aka Danger Man) and UPN’s somewhat sexier 2000 drama, Secret Agent Man.

• Oh no, not another theory of Jack the Ripper’s identity!

• And I could swear that the last time I passed through North Bend, Washington--where the 1990-1991 ABC-TV series Twin Peaks was partially filmed--the former Mar-T Café, which became that show’s “Double R Diner” and was later rechristened Twede’s Café, had lost its tourist appeal, thanks to arson and a subsequent rebuilding. However, the Atlas Obscura Web site reports that the old diner has recouped its classic character: “As part of the production of the new season of Twin Peaks (and on the production company’s dime), the interior of Twede’s Café has been fully restored to the moody, campy diner of our fondest Lynchian memories. The restaurant will once again serve as the shooting location for the Double R Diner. The renovations are reportedly permanent and will stay in place after shooting wraps.”

Go for the Golden Age

(Editor’s note: British attorney-turned-author Martin Edwards has lately been making a grand tour of crime-fiction blogs [see here, here, and here, for instance], touting the publication of his latest non-fiction volume, The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story--which has its official release today. You might remember reading on this page about Edwards’ superb 2008 standalone thriller, Dancing for the Hangman, but he’s also penned a series of novels starring Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin (Waterloo Sunset) and another succession of mysteries set in England’s Lake District (The Frozen Shroud), and as an editor he’s produced more than a few mystery-fiction anthologies. As if all that weren’t enough to carve his name in the genre’s history, in 2007 Edwards was appointed Archivist of the UK Crime Writers Association and four years later he became the Archivist of the Detection Club. That last role fed his interest in the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction and helped inspire his new book, about which he writes below.)

The first crime novels I ever read, as a young boy, were written by Agatha Christie. I loved the puzzles, the clues, the red herrings, and the surprise solutions, and with the boldness of youth, I conceived an ambition. One day, I wanted to write stories that entertained others the way Christie entertained me. Since I was only 8 or 9 at the time, many years had to pass before I wrote a book good enough to be bought by a publisher. But the ambition never wavered.

In writing my first novel, All the Lonely People (1991), I was combining two contrasting types of story. My setting was urban and dark--Liverpool, at a bleak time in the city’s history--and the tone and content of the book reflected that. After all, by this time, I loved not only Christie, but Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, and all the rest. The story included plenty of sleazy scenes, and a body was found on a municipal rubbish tip rather than in a library, but it was also a whodunit that reflected some, at least, of the plot elements of Golden Age mysteries (much later, I discovered a Golden Age novel with an identical crime scene--it really is hard to be truly original!). There were clues, misdirection, and a twisty ending. The same was true of later books in the Harry Devlin series. Eve of Destruction (1996) had a “dying message clue” in the Ellery Queen style. The Devil in Disguise (1998) was a conscious homage to Christie, although again hidden inside a dark wrapping.

I was lucky with reviews of the Liverpool books, but one thing baffled me. They were frequently described as “gritty,” and Eve of Destruction was even called an “erotic thriller,” which I found slightly over-the-top. But none of the critics picked up on the Golden Age elements in the stories. This set me wondering. Had I been over-subtle? More likely, perhaps, Golden Age tropes were so out of vogue that nobody cared about them anymore. Christie continued to sell, of course, but she is in a league of her own. My enthusiasm for the Golden Age was hopelessly unfashionable. Most of the authors from the years between the two world wars were forgotten. Almost all of their books were unobtainable.

How much has changed since then. The Internet, in general, and the blogosphere, in particular, have enabled people with shared enthusiasms to make contact through cyberspace, and exchange and disseminate information about obscure books and writers. And the revolution in publishing technology, with e-books and print-on-demand, has made it possible for old books to be revived at affordable prices.

I’ve been working on a book about detective fiction’s history for more than a decade, but even five years ago, I’d never have dreamed that I’d be able to persuade a major publisher such as HarperCollins to take it. Recently, though, we’ve seen an astonishing upsurge in interest in mysteries from the past. The distance of time now allows us to see that these books--flawed though some of them are--represent a hugely important part of our cultural heritage. And the authors may not have intended this to be so, but their books cast fascinating light on the times in which they lived as well as on their own, carefully concealed, private lives. Yes, some of the stories are cozy and conventional. But a significant number of the best Golden Age books are daring and very different.

(Right) Author Martin Edwards

This is one of the themes of The Golden Age of Murder. I’ve told the story of the times from the point of view of members of the Detection Club, and this gives the story its narrative thread. But I also wanted to share the fruits of years of research, and include lots of trivia and fun facts. The result is a big book, yes, but a book that I hope readers will want to return to time and again.

Small presses are doing a great job of resurrecting obscure titles, often as very cheap e-books. What is even more extraordinary is the success of the British Library’s Crime Classics series (the books are distributed in the States by Poisoned Pen Press). I’m the series consultant, and I write the introductions to almost all of the books, In the past eighteen months or so, more than a quarter of a million paperbacks have been sold, and last Christmas, Mystery in White (1937), by the long-forgotten J. Jefferson Farjeon, was the number-one best-seller, outselling Gone Girl among other major titles.

For the moment, at least, the Golden Age is back in fashion. So it’s perfect timing for the appearance of The Golden Age of Murder--I hope! I’ve tried to explain why detective novels written between the wars deserve a better fate than to be dismissed as “snobbery with violence.” People do care who killed Roger Ackroyd, and the real snobbery is demonstrated by those who deride readers for caring about mysteries. If my book encourages some folks to think again about early 20th-century novels and authors they dismissed previously, it will have served a worthwhile purpose. There’s a lot of pleasure to be had from the best Golden Age fiction, and plenty to be learned. We’ll see what happens, but suffice to say that I was immensely heartened by an early review from Sarah Weinman which said: “this love he has for crime fiction permeates every page of this book.” That’s exactly what I was trying to convey.

Edwards Draws a Bead on Crippen

(Above) Edwards rides a gondola through Venice, Italy.

About three months ago, I was reading through Irish novelist Declan Burke’s excellent blog, Crime Always Pays, when I happened upon British writer Martin Edwards’ response to a question about the pitch for his next book: “Dr. Crippen tells how it really was,” Edwards wrote. Crippen? I thought. Could this be the same Hawley Harvey Crippen, mild-mannered homeopathic physician, who in 1910 reportedly murdered and then buried the partial remains of his domineering spouse, music hall singer Cora Crippen (aka “Belle Elmore”), beneath the brickwork floor of their London basement? The same Crippen who then fled England for Canada with his young employee and lover, Ethel Le Neve--the two disguised as a father and his son--only to be persuaded and then dramatically captured on the west side of the Atlantic by Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Walter Dew? Surely, I thought, the infamous and much-written-about H.H. Crippen must be Edwards’ fictional inspiration.

I was soon to learn that Edwards’ Crippen novel is called Dancing for the Hangman, and that it’s due for release from UK publisher Flambard Press sometime next week. (An American edition, published by Five Star, is supposed to be available next year.) The author explains the book’s basic plot on his Web site:

It is 1910 and Dr. Hawley Crippen has been convicted of the murder of his wife Cora. In his cell at Pentonville Prison, Crippen faces the prospect of the gallows. Laying bare his innermost feelings, he looks back at his austere childhood in Coldwater, Michigan, his tempestuous marriage and life on the run with his lover Ethel Le Neve. Yet as he revisits his life, Crippen entreats us to consider his ‘confession’: I am not a murderer.

In Dancing for the Hangman, Martin Edwards reopens the file on one of the most notorious and fascinating cases in criminal history. Edwards blends imaginative insight with detailed and extensive research to bring to life the characters and events of a hundred years ago. As he explores all the known facts of the murder case, Edwards skillfully reveals the many questions surrounding Crippen’s conviction and arrives at a fresh interpretation of the case.

Darkly humorous and highly readable, Dancing for the Hangman is also a strikingly vivid portrait of Crippen himself, drawing the reader deep into the mind of this hapless, baffling and complex figure.

Having written a bit about the Crippen case myself in The Rap Sheet, I was intrigued by what Edwards had in mind with Dancing for the Hangman. So, when I ran into this lawyer turned novelist at Bouchercon in Baltimore last month, I proposed sending him a few questions about the forthcoming book, its protagonist, and mysteries still urrounding the Crippen case. He said he’d be delighted to participate in that exchange, the results of which follow here.

J. Kingston Pierce: When did you first become interested in the strange case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen?

Martin Edwards: After writing seven whodunits featuring the Liverpool lawyer, Harry Devlin, I wanted to try something very different. I had an idea which really excited me for a novel of psychological suspense, which became Take My Breath Away [2002]. The central character was a true-crime writer called Nic Gabriel, author of a book about the Crippen case. I’ve always had an interest in classic crimes, and the more I researched Crippen’s story, the more fascinated I became. My agent, Mandy Little, suggested I write a historical mystery about him, and it went on from there.

JKP: Was Dancing for the Hangman a novel you’d been thinking about writing for some years, but had resisted tackling until now? If so, what was it about the story that you found most challenging?

ME: I started the first version of the book about five years ago, right after Take My Breath Away--and enjoyed writing it enormously. However, I’d just moved publishers, and my editor was keen for me to write contemporary whodunits. He encouraged me to come up with the idea for a new series with a rural setting. This led to my dreaming up the concept for the Lake District Mysteries, so Crippen was put on the back burner. As it turned out, the first Lakes book, The Coffin Trail [2004], was very successful, so I had every incentive to continue with that series.

I remained passionately enthusiastic about the Crippen book, but my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic felt it was something of a distraction. They were probably right, since Dancing for the Hangman is totally different from my other books, and doesn’t fit into an obvious category. But I’d rather not be typecast (although I admit being typecast is sometimes commercially sensible!). Another factor was that John Boyne wrote a book about Crippen, and I wanted to let some time pass before my own take on the case appeared. The book now being published is, in effect, an edited-down version of the original manuscript. I lost about 20,000 words along the way, which inevitably helps the story to zing along.

JKP: How do you see the character of H.H. Crippen? And what was it about him that you found especially inviting, as somebody around whom to build your fiction?

ME: Crippen’s character, and the paradoxes of his behavior, have fascinated everyone who has studied the case. He was universally regarded as not merely charming, but kind. Yet apparently he not only murdered his wife, but mutilated her remains (her head was never found) and disposed of them in the strangest fashion. He remained devoted to his mistress right to the end, and she reciprocated his passion. If you know the British TV character Basil Fawlty [played by John Cleese in the 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers], he reminds me slightly of a less irascible Basil--ultimately trapped in his own web of lies. There was obviously something special and intriguing about him--Raymond Chandler said, “You can’t help liking the guy.” My aim in writing the book was to stick to the facts (a bit tricky, since quite a few of the facts are disputed, but even so ...) and then try to provide a psychologically plausible explanation for actions which seem bizarre and inexplicable. A good task for a novelist to undertake, I think.

JKP: A while back, I read the John Boyne novel you referenced earlier, Crippen. He portrayed the title character as someone almost not in control of his own life. Did you see Crippen in that same light?

ME: I’m a fan of John Boyne; books like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are destined to become classics. When I learned his [Crippen] book was coming out, I worried that we might cover much the same ground. In fact, the two stories are entirely different. He invents a great deal of the material, and to be honest, I’m not quite sure why. This is a case where truth was more extraordinary than fiction. So, it’s a well-written book, but I don’t think it tells us too much about the real man.

Having said that, most of us are not entirely in control of our own lives, and that was definitely true of Crippen.

JKP: What hurdles did you face in employing so many real-life figures in your own tale? And how obedient did you try to be, as far as portraying the players authentically?

ME: I decided at the outset not to invent any characters for this book--again, because the people who featured in the real-life case are so intriguing--and I never regretted this. The members of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild, for instance, were determined amateur sleuths who rivaled Miss Marple in their quest for the truth about the fate of their friend Cora Crippen. With people like Ethel Le Neve, my focus was on trying to figure out the differences between her own account of events and what is likely actually to have happened.

JKP: I assume that the volume of research for this book was more extensive than what you have drawn on for some previous novels. Can you give me an idea of what that research entailed?

ME: Among other things, I studied the trial transcript and all the factual books and newspaper reports I could find. I debated it with a leading true-crime specialist (who was kind enough to comment on my first draft). I even went so far as to buy some of Crippen’s letters--including one he sent to his lawyer while awaiting execution--and a little-known booklet he wrote. It’s a familiar story, but I was struck (as I often am in my day job as a solicitor) how many factual contradictions exist in the statements of the witnesses. Many lies were told, but there were also careless mistakes and mysterious inconsistencies. So digging out the precise sequence of events wasn’t straightforward--but I did enjoy the process. And although I’m not a criminal lawyer, I think my professional experience helped me sort the wheat from the chaff.

JKP: You wrote in one of your own blog posts that you didn’t visit “the scene of the crime,” Crippen’s old neighborhood, Hilldrop Crescent in Camden, until after you finished work on Dancing. Why not? And what were your impressions when you did visit there?

ME: My aim in writing the book was to try to get inside the head of the man. I felt that the atmosphere of 21st-century Camden would be very different from that of Crippen’s time. And, in any event, his house was destroyed in the Blitz. But it was interesting to see the neighborhood--quiet, suburban, an incongruous setting for a crime so macabre that it was almost surreal.

JKP: You’ve said that your Crippen yarn adheres closely to the known facts of the story, yet “in some crucial respects it offers a fresh interpretation of the case.” Without giving too much away, can you give me some idea of how differently you see the circumstances of Cora Crippen’s murder and her husband’s fleeing England?

ME: I’ll just offer a few cryptic clues! The elements I focused on to achieve a new interpretation were Crippen’s interest in sex and drugs, the corrupt individuals who sought to make a fortune out of the media frenzy over the case, and the incredible legal shenanigans surrounding his trial.

JKP: I was surprised, in reading through the Dancing for the Hangman page of your Web site, that you suggest Crippen was innocent of the crime for which he was executed. What led you to suspect that he was wrongly tried? And if he didn’t do in his wife, who else might have? And was that other person ever a real suspect?

ME: Well, you’ll have to read the book for a full answer! Suffice to say that one aspect of my “solution” has been discussed in the past, but I have also focused on another murder--which was not that of Crippen’s wife. ...

JKP: Did your conclusions about Crippen fit with what what Michigan scientists determined last year, which was that whoever was buried in Crippen’s basement, it was not his wife? And if not her, then whose dismembered body was it?

ME: The suggestion that DNA evidence proves that the body in the cellar didn’t belong to Crippen’s wife is enthralling. But like most people who have studied the case, I find it exceptionally difficult to believe. If the DNA theory is right, Crippen ranks as the unluckiest man in the history of criminal justice. The whole idea raises far more questions than it answers--including the very pertinent question you’ve asked. I’m sure we will hear more about this theory, but it will be interesting to see how it fares when, in its turn, it encounters detailed forensic scrutiny.

JKP: As much as Crippen and the ill-fated Cora are prime players in this gruesome drama, so are Chief Inspector Walter Dew and Ethel Le Neve. What’s your view of those characters?

ME: Dew was widely criticized--not least for taking Crippen out for lunch!--but in the end, he did get his man. He too liked Crippen a lot, and resigned from Scotland Yard as soon as the trial was over. I don’t think he was a great detective, but he wasn’t a fool, either. Supporters of the DNA theory have sometimes suggested Dew (and pretty much everyone else involved) was corrupt. Not impossible, but I don’t believe it for a minute.

Ethel is a supremely intriguing figure, and it’s hard to believe she knew nothing about what her lover was up to.

JKP: One of the most fascinating tidbits of this story, is that, apparently, Le Neve married after being acquitted in the Crippen murder and lived until 1967. But she never told her husband of several decades about her relationship with the notorious homeopathic physician. How do you suppose somebody keeps such a thing secret for so long? Was she simply embarrassed by her role in Crippen’s story?

ME: I think there’s more to it than that. She was very, very good at keeping secrets, and she took a number of them to her grave. At her trial (she was acquitted) she was portrayed as the meek little woman who was in the “masterful” Crippen’s thrall. But I think she exerted a great deal of influence over him. For his part, Crippen was absolutely determined to protect her from harm, and he succeeded.

JKP: There have been a number of stories written over the years in which Crippen has been portrayed. Do you have any favorites, or do you find them all wanting?

ME: My favorite, by a long way, is Peter Lovesey’s The False Inspector Dew [1982], a modern classic by a brilliant entertainer. It is not a re-telling of the case, but a wonderfully twisty period whodunit.

JKP: I get the impression that pathologist Bernard Spilsbury plays an unusually prominent role in Dancing for the Hangman. Is that correct? And if so, what has led you to promote him in your fiction?

ME: The Crippen trial was a landmark in the use of forensic evidence. Until then, the reputation of forensic pathology was in the doldrums. Spilsbury changed all that, starting with his decisive performance when asked to explain the significance on the shreds of flesh found in Crippen’s cellar. But perhaps it’s as unwise to worship forensic “evidence” unthinkingly as to decry its usefulness.

JKP: So much has been written over the years about Hawley Harvey Crippen. Do you think we’ll ever really know the full facts of his case? And would knowing them destroy the mysterious aspects that keep this story alive?

ME: The case has so many amazing facets that it will cause bafflement and controversy forever. Unlike the [Jack the] Ripper case, a man was convicted and hanged, but in some ways the facts offer almost as much scope for re-interpretation as the Whitechapel murders. I don’t claim that my interpretation is bound to be right--who can know? But I like to think it captures some of the psychological truths about the man, and what happened to him.

JKP: Having now written your Crippen novel, are you encouraged to tackle other historical mysteries?

ME: Definitely. I've written quite a number of short historical mysteries over the years, as well as several Sherlockian pastiches, but I found Dancing for the Hangman even more enjoyable to write. So if a publisher were to be interested ...

READ MORE: “CHAT 100: Crime Writer Martin Edwards on The Lure of Ciphers, The Beauty of Venice, and The Stories That Linger,” by Julia Buckley (Mysterious Musings).