Bullet Points: Long Overdue Edition

During the four days I spent in San Francisco this last February, attending the latest Left Coast Crime convention, more than one fellow attendee came up to me to say how much they like my periodic, multiple-subject “Bullet Points” posts. While that gladdened my heart, it also reminded me of how long it had been since I’d produced such a compilation. I think the last one went up in October, which in these tense, turbulent times seems like a lifetime ago.

With a few free hours on my hands today, I went trolling through my computer bookmarks to find new subjects worth sharing.

• Well, what do you know: In Reference to Murder reports that the American author who, since 2013, has published best-selling psychological thrillers (such as The Housemaid, The Tenant, and The Divorce) under the name Freida McFadden has finally revealed her true identity. She is “in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn’t want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. ‘My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was [ready to] step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn’t be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job,’ McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time.” But even her nom de plume is rooted in the medical profession; Cohen told the BBC that “She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke—after a hospital training registry, the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database.”

• April 1 marked the 28th anniversary of Kevin Burton Smith launching that essential online crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective Web Site. His page went live on that date back in 1998! Congratulations to my old friend Kevin for sticking with this project for so long and growing it so expertly.

• Speaking of milestones, it was half a century ago this year—on September 22, 1976, to be precise—that the hour-long “jiggle TV” crime drama Charlie’s Angels debuted on America’s ABC network. In early commemoration of that fact, three of the show’s stars, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd, “reunited” earlier this week at PaleyFest in Los Angeles (“an annual television festival hosted by the Paley Center”). According to the Associated Press, “They were greeted with a standing ovation and whoops and cheers from an audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.” Smith, now 80 years old (!), may have delivered the occasion’s best line: “I knew the show was different, special and unique. Three women chasing danger instead of getting rescued.” Charlie’s Angels aired for five seasons and was a pop-culture hit (despite talk of it undermining feminism), but underwent several cast changes over time, the first of those coming in 1977, when Fawcett left amid a contract dispute. She was replaced by Ladd.

• London’s two-day Capital Crime festival has issued its full program of 2026 events, which are set to kick off at the Leonardo Royal Hotel on Thursday, June 18. Among the headliners will be authors Elly Griffiths, Jeffrey Archer, Jane Harper, and Sophie Hannah, with Irish comedian and actor Ardal O’Hanlon (formerly of Death in Paradise) also participating. An overview of events can be found here. Winners of the annual Fingerprint Awards, celebrating the foremost crime and thriller fiction in more than half a dozen categories, will be honored in a special ceremony on the 18th.

• Erle Stanley Gardner’s The D.A. Calls It Murder (1937)—the first of his legal mysteries starring small-town California district attorney Douglas Selby—was reissued last summer through Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics imprint. What I hadn’t realized until recently, however, was that publisher Open Road Integrated Media has also returned to print seven of the eight other entries in the Selby line. Which is good news! As I wrote in CrimeReads, “While those stories never enjoyed the same level of reader enthusiasm Perry Mason’s escapades did, and were neither as humorous nor as briskly paced as another series Gardner launched in 1939, built around mismatched L.A. gumshoes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, they certainly offered plenty in the way of knotty plots, ill-starred suspects, and razzle-dazzle legal shenanigans.” Click here for more about those paperbacks.

• By the way, the remaining Selby novel, 1948’s The D.A. Takes a Chance, was last reprinted in 2014 by The Murder Room, an imprint of UK publisher Orion. Although The Murder Room is evidently now defunct, Open Road hasn’t yet added it to its catalogue. Maybe soon?

• There seems be no end of television-related news lately, beginning with word that the ITV and BritBox “reimaginging” of Dalziel and Pascoe has begun filming in the North of England. This sex-switching update of characters born in novels by Reginald Hill—and made additionally famous in a 1996-2007 BBC One series—finds grumpy, intransigent, and very politically incorrect Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (played in the original show by Warren Clarke) being transformed into Detective Inspector Andrea Dalziel and portrayed by Kerry Godliman, while Dalziel’s more forward-thinking police partner, DI Peter Pascoe (Colin Buchanan) becomes Detective Sergeant Paige Pascoe, brought to the small screen by Nina Singh. The opening season of this new crime drama will comprise six episodes; there’s no official debut date at present. Jon Farrar, executive vice president of programming, BritBox, is quoted in Variety as assuring fans of the earlier production that this one will hew to familiar themes: “Dalziel and Pascoe has always been about friction, intellect, and the uneasy bond of opposites, forged in pursuit of truth. Dalziel and Pascoe’s chemistry, wit, and moral clarity perfectly complement this richly layered mystery. It’s timeless crime storytelling that not only honours but sharpens its legacy.” I look forward to judging for myself.

• For all of those people who, like me, watched and enjoyed the slow-burning “cat-and-mouse thriller” The Game, and thought its ambiguous but not unsatisfying ending offered zero chance of a sequel … well, what the hell do we know? Even the Web site TVGuide.co.uk concedes this is “rather surprising” news; Channel 5 thrillers are usually one-season wonders, “self-contained nuggets of deliciously daft drama” (e.g., The Au Pair and The Rumour). But The Game, which had its UK airing in 2025 and found Jason Watkins (McDonald & Dodds) playing Huw Miller, a recently retired police detective who becomes convinced that his suave new neighbor, Patrick Harbottle (Grantchester’s Robson Green), is the repeat killer he’s long pursued, “left viewers wanting more,” says TVGuide.co.uk. At the close of Series 1, Patrick was being arrested and Huw was seriously injured. The follow-up is set a year on. It sees Huw having survived and thinking himself free of the psychological grip Patrick held him in. “Retreating with his wife, Alice (Sunetra Sarker), to an isolated house by the sea,” The Killing Times explains, “Huw is determined to rebuild a quiet life, far from the violence that nearly destroyed them. But peace, he soon realises, is an illusion.” Channel 5 says The Game will return in 2027.

• Robson Green is much in demand. The Killing Times reports that, with his work done on Grantchester’s 11th and final season (set to premiere on PBS Masterpiece come June 14), he will assume one of the leading roles in an eight-part BBC serial, The Northumbria Mysteries.

Set against the sweeping Northumberland coastline and its surrounding market towns, the series centres on an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Green will star as Joe Ruby, a jack-of-all-trades whose life has been shaped by mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities, alongside Oxford-educated DI Rose O’Connell (casting to be announced), a rarefied intellectual, a deep thinker with a brilliant mind and an ice-cool disposition. In a classic odd-couple pairing, Joe and Rose combine their talents as they frustrate, confound, and ultimately surprise one another while unravelling a series of compelling crime mysteries.

• Something I should have mentioned long ago: HBO-TV has ordered an eight-episode drama based on Adrian McKinty’s best-selling 2019 child-abduction novel, The Chain. Behind this project is Damon Lindelof, who previously gave us Lost and The Leftovers, and was once a writer on Nash Bridges and Crossing Jordan. As The Wrap recalls, Irish author McKinty’s chilling tale “follows Rachel, a divorcée who is undergoing treatment for cancer, who gets a call that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and is now part of The Chain. To get Kylie back, she must kidnap another child after paying a ransom. Kylie will be released when the parents of the child Rachel has kidnapped take yet another child and continue the chain.” The Wrap notes, however, that “Lindelof is said to be expanding the mythology of McKinty’s award-winning thriller.”

• Blogger Lou Armagno points me toward a piece in Variety that’s likely to delight fans of Earl Derr Biggers’ renowned Charlie Chan. It says actor Tzi Ma (Mulan, Kung Fu) will executive produce and headline a possible new Canadian Chan TV series reimagining Biggers’ Chinese-American Honolulu policeman as a Hong Kong immigrant to Vancouver, British Columbia, “who, after retiring from the Vancouver police department in frustration, quietly launches a private investigation agency, taking on cases for the city’s overlooked and forgotten.”

• Meanwhile, Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke has signed up to play a criminal investigator in Netflix’s adaptation of Liz Moore’s 2024 hit novel, The God of the Woods. … Actor-writer Stephen Fry will star as a quirky but brilliant former MI6 agent in a forthcoming Fox-TV show called The Interrogator. … See-Saw films, the production company behind Slow Horses, has acquired the rights to develop a fresh TV series from Jonathan Gash’s novels about a British antiques dealer-cum-sleuth known only as Lovejoy—books that were already the source material for a 1986-1984 BBC1 comedy-drama featuring Ian McShane. … Filming is underway on the sophomore season of Lynley, based on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley yarns. … And Murder, She Wrote, a Universal Pictures film inspired by the 1984-1996 CBS-TV series starring Angela Lansbury as a mystery writer and amateur crime-solver, is slated to reach theaters just in time for Christmas, 2027. Jamie Lee Curtis will play Fletcher in this version.

• My other blog, Killer Covers, returns from a too-long hiatus with proof that there are simply too many crime, mystery, and thriller novels fronted by silhouettes of people in windows.

• We still await any information regarding the next James Bond feature film (now under the control of Amazon). But in the meantime, we can look forward to a new Bond novel for adults. Titled King Zero, it’s by Charlie Higson, the author of a half a dozen Young Bond yarns, as well as the 2023 007 adventure, On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Shotsmag Confidential provides this plot précis:

Beginning with the murder of an agent in Saudi Arabia by a weapon never before seen by the Secret Service and spanning the globe in an epic race against time to avert global catastrophe, the novel brings the literary Bond squarely into the twenty-first century, where the old world that made him is crumbling and a terrifying new order emerges while a dangerous villain—the most distinctive since Goldfinger –moves in the shadows. Higson explores themes of power, technology, and international tensions over resources in an extraordinarily timely story.

UK publisher Michael Joseph has promised to deliver King Zero to bookshops on the other side of the pond by September 24.

• Wow, a Kickstarter campaign to create action figures based on monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak and other characters featured in two 1970s teleflicks (The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler) and a subsequent TV series collected way more money than was sought! I guess old Carl hasn’t been forgotten, after all.

• Finally, this CrimeReads piece by writer and artist Frank Ladd, comparing the oeuvres of American private eye novelists Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, deserves attention from fans of both. He concludes that “In a way, Macdonald is writing moral ghost stories. The present is haunted by the past, and the novel becomes a kind of exorcism. Chandler is writing moral fever dreams, hallucinatory journeys through corruption. There is no past worth redeeming.”

“Nightmare” Sees the Light of Day

A brief press notice about this discovery recently crossed my desk, and now The Guardian follows up with a full report:

An unpublished short story from one of the 20th century’s greatest authors is appearing for the first time in the Strand magazine this week, offering the suggestion that Raymond Chandler suffered from previously unknown insecurities over his writing talents.

“Nightmare” is an intriguing vignette that portrays Chandler, creator of the gritty fictional private detective Philip Marlowe, on the wrong side of the law, in a cell on death row awaiting execution for murder.

The magazine’s managing editor, Andrew Gulli, described the tale as a “sleep-induced sojourn” that he discovered among a cache of papers belonging to Chandler’s secretary and later-life companion Jean Vounder-Davis. A collection of her possessions, including Chandler’s typewriter, and a number of poems and private letters he had written, was sold at auction in New York in December.

The Guardian goes on to say that “The personal story also features Chandler’s wife, Cissy, who according to Gulli said she thought ‘Nightmare’ was ‘very funny’. It means the story was written prior to her December 1954 death, but dating it precisely gets ‘tricky’ beyond that, he said.” Gulli adds that “Nightmare”—described as being about “a man accused of a heinous crime that he can’t remember committing”—hints at Chandler not being as confident about his authorial success as he liked others to believe.

“The most revealing line in ‘Nightmare’ is Chandler’s aside: ‘It will remind me of the days when I used to get returned manuscripts’,” Chandler biographer Tom Williams said.

“Chandler loved to mythologize his own life. In 1933 he told his friend William Lever that ‘I sold the very first story I sent out’. This was ‘Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,’ published in Black Mask in December that year.

“‘Nightmare’ casts doubt over this. Did he submit stories to Black Mask before ‘Blackmailers Don’t Shoot’ that were turned down? Or was he thinking back to his first literary ambitions in London, or to the years after the [first world] war when he worked in the oil industry?”

Williams said it was “entirely plausible” that Chandler, who lived in London between 1900 and 1912 and became a British subject before returning to the US, had struggled to sell his writings before turning to full-time crime writing in the early 1930s after losing a job in the oil industry.

“Whatever the precise context, ‘Nightmare’ complicates the neat origin story Chandler liked to tell,” he said.

If you aren’t a Strand subscriber, you can pick up an $11.95 copy of Issue 76, featuring “Nightmare,” by clicking here.

READ MORE: “Chandler’s ‘Nightmare’ Sees the Light After Decades in the Shadows” (BookTrib).

A Cluster of Curiosities

When I asked Rap Sheet readers, at the end of my recently posted list of spring book releases, to let me know if I’d missed mentioning anything of import, I did not expect to learn that the sequel to a major heist thriller—the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-known films—had flown completely under my radar!

Randal S. Brandt, an occasional contributor to this blog in addition to his being a librarian at the University of California-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and an authority on the work of 20th-century author David Dodge, got right back to me with big news: In association with the April 1 reissuing of Dodge’s classic caper novel To Catch a Thief, an “official sequel” to that 1952 story will go on sale the same day, Mark ONeill’s To Catch a Spy. Both are coming from Poisoned Pen Press.

Bluffton, South Carolina, resident ONeill (no apostrophe) is described as a former toy designer, newspaper columnist, and private investigator. To Catch a Spy is his first novel. Here’s the plot synopsis:

It’s been a year since John Robie, notorious Riviera jewel thief, proved his innocence by catching a copycat burglar. And it’s been a year since John has seen Francie Stevens, the adventurous socialite who not only saw through his disguise, but helped him catch the copycat.

Now Francie is returning to the Riviera for its first-ever Fashion Week as a model for a top French designer, and John plans on rekindling their romance. But there’s a problem. While helping a friend, John chases down a mysterious courier, whose ruthless associates now want John dead. To make matters worse, when Francie arrives, she has a boyfriend in tow, and tells John that she wants nothing to do with him.

John has to figure out why he’s a hunted man, and why Francie is acting suspiciously. Digging deeper, he discovers a spy ring with evil intent. As John works unofficially to gather evidence, a question begins to haunt him―could Francie Stevens be a spy? With his enemies closing in, John turns to his cat burglar skills to try to save his life and expose the traitors. To survive, he has to catch the spies before they catch―and kill―a retired thief!

I haven’t yet procured a copy of To Catch a Spy, but in his review of it for Goodreads, Brandt calls the yarn “extraordinarily well-written. All of the plot points hold together and bring new dimensions to John Robie and Francie Stevens that are believable and built on the foundations that David Dodge laid in To Catch a Thief in 1952.” He adds, though, that “It helps to read (or have read) Dodge’s book first …, but it is not strictly necessary. Just be aware that the characters are based on Dodge’s book, not on Cary Grant and Grace Kelly!”

ONeill is currently composing his second John Robie thriller.

* * *

ONeill’s novel is just one of several crime-fiction curiosities I’m watching for in 2025. Another is Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, which his due out from publisher Pantheon in late May and is described as “a brilliant graphic adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler novella featuring detective Philip Marlowe.” Writing credit for said title belongs to Arvind Ethan David, with Ilias Kyriazis and Cris Peter responsible for the illustrations and coloring.

The nitpicker in me wants to point out here that “Trouble Is My Business,” which initially appeared in the August 1939 edition of Dime Detective magazine, did not begin as a Marlowe outing. Chandler’s original “Trouble” protagonist was a Los Angeles gumshoe going by the name of John Dalmas, one of several similar loner P.I.s he employed in his early short stories. Later, after Marlowe became commercially popular, Chandler substituted his moniker for that of Dalmas. Reprints since have firmly established “Trouble” as a Marlowe story.

So what’s the criminal inquiry that David, Kyriazis, and Peter have adapted here? A summary reads as follows:

Los Angeles, 1930s. A rich old man who knows trouble when he sees it hires a detective agency to scare off a young woman who seems to be making his adopted son hemorrhage cash. Fortunately for the detective, a hard-drinking man named Philip Marlowe, trouble is his business.

The young woman, Harriet, has an agenda all her own and aspirations beyond being a shill for a gambler. She's nobody’s fool. Nor is the old man, for his part. He’s got serious muscle—a chauffeur with a degree from Dartmouth, the only Black student from his class, who knows his way around a gun and isn’t afraid to use it.

Right in the middle of it all is a big pile of money. And when the bodies begin to drop, only Philip Marlowe can sort out which of these suspects is pulling the trigger.

Not long ago, I received a PDF version of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business. It’s a dark, moody, hardcover work of 128 pages, captivatingly rendered in both color and black-and-white illustrations, with a rewarding twist at the end. Even though it didn’t start out as a case for Philip Marlowe, I’ll certainly have to add a finished print version to my Chandler collection.

* * *

Finally, Randy Brandt informs me that Stark House Press will release a brand-new edition, in June, of Make with the Brains, Pierre, a 1946 tale of psychological suspense by one Dana Wilson … who would eventually go on to become the influential third wife of James Bond film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. Brandt explained in this Rap Sheet post from last year that Make with the Brains, Wilson’s only crime novel, “is narrated by Pierre Bernet, a French ‘film cutter’ who emigrated to Hollywood to escape the Nazi occupation of France and has been unable to secure work for several years. Finding himself in the middle of a romantic triangle—Pierre is desperately in love with Eleanor, an aspiring young actress, but Eleanor is in love with Joe, who also loves Eleanor but is married and refuses to seek a divorce—Pierre gets involved in a blackmail plot that leads to murder.”

Not surprisingly, I have never read Wilson’s book (which was subsequently reissued as Uneasy Virtue and Scenario for Murder). But crime-fictionist Bill Pronzini has said it reminds him of Cornell Woolrich’s fiction “in its incisive examination of a man destroyed by love, hate, and the dark side of his own soul.” And that’s a recommendation that will ensure my picking up a copy when one becomes available.

Mending the Master’s Machine

Author Mark Coggins recently explained on this page how he had acquired Raymond Chandler’s last typewriter, a very elegant Olivetti. More recently, on his own Web site, he posted more information about that machine, including these two interesting tidbits:

Raymond Chandler, one of the progenitors of American hard-boiled detective novel, wrote on an Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter from cerca 1955 until his death in 1959, a period that included composition of his last published novel, Playback (1958), the last Philip Marlowe short story, titled variously, “Marlowe Takes On the Syndicate”, “Wrong Pigeon”, “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” or “The Pencil” (1959), and the first few pages of an unfinished novel with the working title The Poodle Springs Story, later completed by Robert B. Parker as Poodle Springs at the request of the Chandler estate in 1989. …

The machine owned by Chandler—a Series I—was most likely purchased in the UK, most likely in 1955. I base my conclusion for the year and country of purchase on the fact that Chandler made a trip there in 1955 after his wife Cissy passed, and the fact that there is a key on the machine for the UK pound symbol. There is also a key for the dollar sign, but it is not in the usual place above the number 4. In any case, the machine could not have been purchased earlier than 1953 because its serial number, 788236, is in the range of machines that were manufactured that year.

You can enjoy Mark’s entire post here.

Old Tech Becomes New Treasure

Have you ever fantasized about owning something that once belonged to Raymond Chandler? One of his typewriters, for instance?

Well, that’s exactly what Northern California novelist Mark Coggins, creator of the August Riordan private eye series, bought during a recent sale of Chandler estate goods managed by the distinguished auction house Doyle New York. Among the array of items being offered were books once owned by the creator of Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, along with his letters, jewelry, fan mail, postcards, scripts for the 1959-1960 Marlowe TV series, Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories, and a 1957 poem the author wrote about a poodle lost in Palm Springs, California. Plus, of course, that aforementioned typewriter: the Olivetti Studio 44 model on which Chandler reportedly composed his final novel, 1958’s Playback.

(Right) Chandler’s Olivetti, loaded with a Playback quote. (Click the image to enlarge.)

The auction took place this last December 6, and included bidders both on site at Doyle’s in Manhattan and others connected to the rapid-fire proceedings electronically or by phone. Coggins—who participated online, with a live video feed—was interested in more than just Chandler’s Olivetti, but didn’t figure to actually walk away with any of the items up for bid. So, he says, “I was completely shocked to have won [the typewriter], because the original auction estimate was $10,000 to $20,000, and I didn’t expect to be in the hunt at those prices.” Yet, luck turned in his favor. “I’m very pleased and strangely honored to be the steward of the machine, at least for a time,” he adds.

Doyle’s official description of this Olivetti reads:

A tan, full-size portable Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter, manufactured circa 1953 and acquired by Chandler shortly thereafter, held in its red original travel case with handle, the 44-key keyboard with keys likely special ordered by Chandler to include the foreign accent marks on the far right, including a “caret” (excellent with languages, Chandler frequently wrote in French). Some light wear to the typewriter which has not been tested for full functionality; the cover detached at hinges, other wear to case. Offered with a red and black ribbon acquired later.

Said auction write-up goes on to explain that “While Chandler had previously owned an Underwood, he was quite pleased with his new Olivetti, writing: ‘I am apt to get up around 4am, take a mild drink of Scotch and water and start hammering at this lovely Olivetti 44, which is far superior to anything we turn out in America. It is a heavy portable and put together like an Italian racing car, and you mustn't judge it from my typing’ (Raymond Chandler, 21 May 1955). Clearly, Chandler took his typewriter seriously and used it nearly every day, preferring blue ribbons to traditional black.”

Coggins—who in addition to his fiction-writing, contributes occasional articles to The Rap Sheet—tells us that he knew on December 6 he had won Chandler’s mechanical prize, but “I was out of town for almost two months. I had it shipped to a friend’s house and only recently picked it up.” In this period when he’s still aglow with his new acquisition, we decided to ask him a few questions about his longstanding interest in Raymond Chandler, how the Doyle’s auction worked, what became of this Olivetti after the author’s demise in 1959, and what plans he has for it in the near future.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you remember when you first started reading Raymond Chandler’s work? And how did his stories affect you?

Mark Coggins: I remember it distinctly. It was my sophomore year in college [at California’s Stanford University]. I was introduced to him when the instructor of my first creative-writing course read from The Big Sleep to illustrate how certain writers have a very distinctive voice. He also read a parody of Chandler by Woody Allen to show how a style that distinctive could be imitated.

I didn’t know anything about Chandler, and I absolutely loved what I heard. I went to the school bookstore and got all of his books. Then I read there was this guy named Hammett who was Chandler’s predecessor, so I got all of his, too. By the time I took my next class, I was chomping at the bit to write a hard-boiled P.I. story of my own.

The punchline of this anecdote is that the instructor was Tobias Wolff. His first published short story, “Smokers,” came out in The Atlantic Monthly in the middle of our class. Much later, I attended a signing of his for his novel Old School and he told me he didn’t even like Chandler.

JKP: Did Chandler turn you into a crime-fictionist, or were there other more influential forces pushing you in that direction?

MC: It was solely my exposure to Chandler (and, by extension, Hammett) in Wolff’s class that led me to try my hand at hard-boiled P.I. fiction. The next class I took was from Ron Hansen and it was there that I wrote a story called “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” which was ultimately published in The New Black Mask, a revival of the famous Black Mask pulp magazine where Hammett and Chandler got their start. The character of August Riordan was introduced in that story, and I’ve been writing about him ever since.

JKP: Do you own other items closely associated with Chandler?

MC: I had a full set of Chandler first editions, as well as a full set of Hammett firsts. I also had the Black Mask edition featuring Chandler’s story “The Curtain,” which was partly the basis for his first novel, The Big Sleep. I recently donated all of those items and many more volumes of detective fiction to the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where Randal S. Brandt curates the California Detective Fiction Collection.

JKP: How did you hear about this Doyle’s auction? And were there items other than the typewriter in which you were interested?

MC: I’m not on Twitter or Facebook/Instagram any longer, but I am on Mastodon, and I happened to see a post there about the auction the night before it was scheduled. I rushed to register on the auction site, feeling rather awkward and nervous about participating, since I had never bid at a live auction before and had never contemplated bidding on items as valuable as those in the Chandler collection.

I was interested in the typewriter, but I actually thought it would be out of my price range. I was instead focused on Chandler’s edition of The Maltese Falcon, in which Chandler had rather surprisingly pasted the table of contents from the Black Mask edition containing his story “Killer in the Rain.” It was almost like he was saying to Hammett, “Look, I can sling hard-boiled argot, too!” It seemed like a great association piece for the two writers.

(Right) Chandler’s 1931 hardcover edition of The Maltese Falcon.

The estimated auction price for Chandler’s Falcon was $500-$800, but others must have seen the appeal, too, because it ended up selling for a whopping $4,800. I submitted two bids during the auction—which took place before the typewriter—but was quickly outgunned.

JKP: What was the bidding process of that auction like?

MC: The format for the auction was rather unusual. It was live, but there were three sources for bids: people sitting in a room at the auction house raising paddles, people calling in by phone, and people like me who were using the auction house’s Internet bidding software.

Bids from all three sources were coming in fast and furious during the typewriter auction, and I actually don’t remember the starting price or the number of steps. I do recollect that, after a certain point, it seemed like the contest had come down to two bidders who kept one-upping one another. I had decided that my maximum bid would be $7,500, so, at a certain point where there seemed to be a lull, I nervously “shot my wad” with a bid of that amount, fully expecting that one of the two other bidders would quickly outbid me. To my great surprise, there were no other bids and I won the auction.

I have to confess that I didn’t fully understand the concept of a “buyer’s premium,” so my so-called maximum of $7,500 turned into $9,600 when that was included in the tally. I’m still paying it off on my credit card.

JKP: What do you know about Chandler’s use of this typewriter now in your possession? And where has this typewriter been for the last half century? Has it been publicly displayed, or in someone's private collection, hidden from sight?

MC: The typewriter was willed to Jean Vounder-Davis, who was Chandler’s secretary during the final years of his life. Her daughter, Sybil Davis, received it after her mother passed and she is the one who put it and all the other items in the collection up for auction. She shared this with me in e-mail correspondence after the auction:

Congratulations on now owning the typewriter that Ray Chandler used to write Playback, his last novel, as well as his personal correspondence, short stories, and even some poetry. I’m sure having it will bring you much satisfaction, joy, and perhaps inspiration.

Did you know that Chandler once compared it to an Italian racing car? He was not a “touch typist.” He preferred the “hunt and peck” system using only his two index fingers. …

I … observed him using it on a daily basis. I even have some of his stories, letters and poetry that were typed on the Olivetti.

JKP: Will you actually be using Chandler’s typewriter in your work?

MC: I discovered that, through lack of use, the mechanism is pretty gummed up and some of the rubber parts have failed. Also, the carriage return has broken off (perhaps because Chandler liked to fling the carriage back with hard-boiled authority?). I have taken the machine to an expert repairman and he assures me he can get it back into tiptop shape.

(Left) Mark Coggins—only a temporary “steward” of this Chandler souvenir?

I expect to use it minimally—perhaps to compose a few paragraphs of works in progress. I drafted my first few stories on a typewriter, so it will be fun to go back to the old-school way of writing.

Ultimately, I would like to donate the typewriter to an institution that can preserve it and enable others to see it. I’m already in discussion with the Bancroft Library.

JKP: Have you collected relics from the careers of other crime novelists? Hammett, perhaps—I know you are interested in him, too.

MC: Yes, in addition to my full set of Hammett firsts, I had a signature card from him. I donated this to the Bancroft with the other items.

Whose Town Is It Anyway?

By Mark Coggins
Raymond Chandler, who along with Dashiell Hammett perfected the American hard-boiled detective story, is best known for his well-regarded novels set in Los Angeles, The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953) among them. Hammett, on the other hand, made his bones with the masterworks he wrote and set in San Francisco, The Maltese Falcon (1930) being the most famous.

Given the close association of Chandler with L.A. and Hammett with San Francisco, would you be surprised to learn that Chandler lived and worked in “the city that knows how” before Hammett? It’s true.

Upon Chandler’s return to the United States, following his service with the Canadian Army in France during World War I, he lived in San Francisco in 1919 and worked briefly at two banks—the Anglo and London Paris National Bank and the Bank of British North America. That predates Hammett’s arrival in town by two years.

(Above) Anglo and London Paris National Bank building in 1981.

While researching Chandler’s time in San Francisco, I learned that the Bank of British North America was located at 260 California Street in 1918, although by 1919 it had apparently merged with the Bank of Montreal.* (The property, the Newhall Building, now contains a Citibank branch.) I more readily found the location of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank, not far away at the intersection of Sutter and Sansome streets. This is currently home to One Sansome Street, a 42-story office tower, and the conservatory of the new building is actually the façade of the old Anglo and London structure (built in 1910). The original cornice and columned archways, in particular, were preserved to bound the glass-roofed courtyard/conservatory.

Given the Anglo and London’s status as “historically significant,” the developers were required to preserve more than just the building’s granite-clad façade prior to breaking ground for the new skyscraper back in the early 1980s. They documented the appearance and design of the former bank as completely as possible, and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Library of Congress retains that documentation, including original blueprints and photographs taken before demolition.

The accompanying report provides background on the structure’s prolific Mexican-born American designer:

The Anglo and London Paris National Bank was designed by Albert Pissis in 1908 … He was among the chief exponents of what was then called “modern architecture” with its structure derived from the new-invented steel frame, and its imagery inspired by the buildings of ancient Rome and Renaissance …

Many of Pissis’ most noted works survive in San Francisco. The Emporium (835-865 Market Street) and the James Flood Building (870-898 Market Street) were his two largest commissions.

Since the publication of that HABS report, the Emporium (erected originally in 1896, but rebuilt in 1908 after the city’s great earthquake and fire) has been razed to make room for a one-million-square-foot addition to the San Francisco Centre. Yet a portion of Pissis’ work survives once more. The building’s dome was retained to cap the new structure through an impressive feat of hydraulic engineering.

(Right) Flood Building, photo by Mark Coggins.

Just across Market Street, Pissis’ other large commission—the Flood Building—stands today looking much as it did in 1904 when it opened. One of the early tenants of the building was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. And one of the employees of that agency was none other than Dashiell Hammett. In 1915 he had joined “the Pinks” as a clerk, working first in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and later being assigned to the San Francisco office.

All of which leads us to a hard-boiled epiphany: Hammett and Chandler, the two masters of the American detective story, both worked in San Francisco buildings designed by Albert Pissis!

I’ll leave you with a shot of the interior of the Anglo and London Bank. Can you imagine Raymond Chandler there in 1919 waiting for you behind the teller window as you rush in to deposit your weekly paycheck? Maybe he’d greet you with one of his famous Chandlerisms:

“If you’re looking for trouble, I come from where they make it.”

Interior of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank building.

* This information was updated thanks to help from Randal and Maria Brandt.

Bullet Points: Memories and Merits Edition

• On the very same day, last weekend, that I posted in The Rap Sheet about Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies’ forthcoming release, The Harry O Viewing Companion: History and Episodes of the Classic Detective Series, I received in the mail a copy of a second non-fiction work dealing in part with that very same 1974-1976 TV private-eye drama. This one bears the name Men of Action, and comes from small-screen historian and radio talk show host Ed Robertson. In addition to David Janssen’s standout series, Men of Action—published in both hardcover and paperback by Lee Goldberg’s Cutting Edge Books—encompasses three other classic TV dramas: The Magician (1973-1974), The Untouchables (1959-1963; revived 1993-1994), and Run for Your Life (1965-1968). Robertson explains in his introduction that “the four series chronicled in this book … were all subjects of articles that I wrote for Television Chronicles,” a quarterly U.S. periodical that was published from April 1995 to January 1998. However, he has greatly expanded on his original research and writing, with subsequently gleaned quotes and episode guides added to form a more complete record of the shows’ development, evolution, and critical reception. For those of us who remember these shows well, Men of Action feeds our appetite for intriguing trivia, from Magician star Bill Bixby’s insistence that all the illusions in each show “be filmed in one take, without trick photography”—a time-consuming task—to the decision never to name the fatal malady destined to take down Ben Gazzara’s protagonist in Run for Your Life (“That’s because there is no such disease,” admitted executive producer Roy Huggins). Like Robertson’s previous titles, including 45 Years of The Rockford Files and The FBI Dossier, Men of Action is a must-have for any classic-TV history fan.

• Recipients of the 2024 Historical Writers’ Association Awards were announced last week, and The Tumbling Girl (Gallic), British author Bridget Walsh’s first Variety Palace Mystery, won for best debut novel. Tumbling introduced Victorian music hall scriptwriter Minnie Ward and her partner in crime-solving, private detective Albert Easterbrook. A sequel, The Innocents, reached print this last April.

• In Reference to Murder says, “the winner of the 2024 Pride Award for emerging LGBTQIA+ writers is Lori Potvin of Perth, Ontario, Canada. Potvin's winning novel-in-progress is a work of contemporary crime fiction. According to Potvin, ‘A Trail’s Tears follows the stories of two women who are strangers to each other—youth wellness worker Grace, who's looking for Sonny, a missing Indigenous teen mom, and Anna, a street-smart young woman caught in the trap of human trafficking and desperate to escape.’ Five runners-up were also chosen: Shelley Kinsman of Ashburn, Ontario; Erick Holmberg of Boston, Massachusetts; Emma Pacchiana of Norfolk, Virginia; Langston Prince of Los Angeles, California; and Shoney Sien of Aptos, California.” Congratulations to them all!

• We have already collected opinionated picks of the “best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2024” from The Washington Post (here and here), The Daily Telegraph, Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, Audible, and various other sources. Now comes Canada’s mighty Globe and Mail newspaper with its 10 favorites—all by women, oddly enough:

— Blood Rubies, by Mailan Doquang (Penzler)
— The Hunter, by Tana French (Viking)
— The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Faber & Faber)
— Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson (Bond Street)
— House of Glass, by Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press)
— Only One Survives, by Hannah Mary McKinnon (Mira)
— Guide Me Home, by Attica Locke (Viper)
— The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
— One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster)
— The Return of Ellie Black, by Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster)

In addition, two works that have appeared on other crime-fiction “bests” lists are found in the Globe and Mail under best “International Fiction”: The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Riverhead); and Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner (Scribner).

• BookPage has its own “Best Mystery & Suspense” list making the rounds. Here are the editors’ 10 choices:

— A Ruse of Shadows, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
— Deadly Animals, by Marie Tierney (Henry Holt)
— Exposure, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
— Guide Me Home, by Attica Locke (Mulholland)
— Shanghai, by Joseph Kanon (Scribner)
— The Close-Up, by Pip Drysdale (Gallery)
— The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)
— Things Don’t Break On Their Own, by Sarah Easter Collins (Crown)
— Trust Her, by Flynn Berry (Viking)
— We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)

• CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano delivers this excellent retrospective on “lady detectives” in Victorian and Edwardian literature.

• Another first-rate CrimeReads offering (originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine) is Dean Jobb’s look back at “detective, swindler, accused killer, [and] spy” Gaston Means, “one of the Greatest Rogues in American History.” Jobb, you will recall, is also the author of this year’s A Gentleman and a Thief, which is likely to appear on my own “best of 2024” book list.

• What is it with British TV shows producing Christmas specials, anyway? Death in Paradise and its first spin-off, Beyond Paradise, have already announced holiday-themed episodes. Add to those now Acorn TV’s The Chelsea Detective, which has scheduled a Christmas installment of its own to drop on Monday, December 16. That series, which stars Adrian Scarborough and Vanessa Emme as unconventional police detectives working the upscale thoroughfares of London’s Chelsea neighborhood, will return in 2025 with three more 90-minute episodes comprising the balance of its third-season run.



• Before starring in the better-remembered Dan August or B.L. Stryker, actor Burt Reynolds won his first eponymous TV role in Hawk, a short-lived crime drama that aired on ABC from September 8, 1966, to December 29, 1966—17 episodes in all. “Hawk was historic,” writes Terence Towles Canote in A Shroud of Thoughts, “as the first American television show to centre on a Native American in a modern-day setting (it was preceded by Brave Eagle and Broken Arrow, which were both Westerns).” He goes on to note that Reynolds played

New York City police lieutenant John Hawk, who was full-blooded Iroquois. [Reynolds himself claimed to be of much-diluted Cherokee descent.] Hawk worked as a special investigator for the District Attorney's office. His partner was Dan Carter (Wayne Grice). Bruce Glover played Assistant District Attorney Murray Slaken, while Leon Janney played Assistant District Attorney Ed Gorton. …

Aside from featuring a lead character who was Native American, Hawk was a bit ahead of its time in other ways. The show was filmed on the streets of New York City. Only a few shows before Hawk, such as Naked City and Route 66 regularly shot on location, with most series during the 1966-1967 season still being shot on studio backlots. Hawk also had a grittier, more realistic feel than many police dramas of its time, and in some ways was closer to such Seventies movies as The French Connection (1971), Serpico (1973), and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974).

If you’re unfamiliar with this early Reynolds series, you can catch at least most of its episodes on YouTube—for now, that is.

• I haven’t even had an opportunity yet to watch the British TV drama The Day of the Jackal, which debuted in the States (on Peacock) earlier this month. But already, The Killing Times says it has been renewed for a second season. Jackal, of course, is a modern take on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 political thriller of the same name.

• The Bunburyist’s Elizabeth Foxwell brings word that “Penguin Random House will publish a graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business (1939) in May 2025 as part of the Pantheon Graphic Library.” The title offering in a 1950 collection of four short Chandler yarns starring Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, “Trouble” finds Marlowe being “hired to scare away a disreputable woman from the adopted son of a wealthy businessman,” as blogger Paul Ferry recalls. “He’s no sooner started following this potential gold-digger before he stumbled across the first murder. From there, the bodies just keep piling up—but who’s responsible? Chandler cheekily waves suspects and red herrings in your face, so the reader—as well as Marlowe—hit many false leads before the final pay-off.” Foxwell explains that the graphic-novel version of this tale brings together writer Arvind Ethan David, illustrator Ilias Kyriazis, and colorist Cris Peter. (A concluding note: When published originally in Dime Detective magazine, “Trouble” starred a different Chandler sleuth, John Dalmas, but Dalmas was subsequently swept away to capitalize on Marlowe’s popularity.)

• By the way, if you would like to listen to a vintage radio dramatization of “Trouble Is My Business,” starring American actor Van Heflin, you can do that right here.

• I have added a new podcast to this page’s right-hand column inventory (scroll down to “Crime/Mystery Podcasts”). It’s called Tipping My Fedora, and comes from Sergio Angelini, who from 2011 to 2017, wrote a superior blog of that same name broadly focused on crime and mystery fiction. His new podcast, launched in early October, covers primarily film noir. Episodes thus far have featured British critics Barry Forshaw and Mike Ripley, as well as James Harrison, co-founder of Film Noir UK and director of its first festival, Film Noir Fest 2024; looked back at “William Friedkin’s 1985 dark and dazzling neo-noir, To Live and Die in L.A.”; and previewed the UK Blu-ray release of the 1954 drama Black Tuesday. Click here to access them all.

• Novelist Stephen Mertz, familiar for his “Cody’s Army” and “Cody’s War” novels, his contributions to Don Pendleton’s “Executioner” series, and numerous other books (many of them published under pseudonyms), died on November 5 at age 77. I didn’t know Mertz, but his friend and fellow novelist Max Allan Collins did. He observes that Mertz “had his cantankerous side but was cheerful and fun and funny even at his crankiest, and mostly he was a sunny presence, enthusiastic about writers whose work he loved and himself a dedicated professional. He was also a musician and a good one. He was a radio d.j. at times, and the kind of ideal presence you’d love to have with you pouring from the car radio on a long drive.” The folks at Wolfpack Publishing, who brought several of Mertz’s books to market, describe him on Facebook as “an extraordinary talent” whose “creativity, humor, and passion for storytelling will be deeply missed by his friends, colleagues, and countless fans.” Finally, another of Mertz’s friends, Ben Boulden, has reposted this interview he did with the author in 2016 to honor Mertz’s passing.

• There are many “words of the year” choices made every 12 months, by sources as varied as the American Dialect Society, Oxford University Press, Dictionary.com, and the folks behind the Collins English Dictionary. And while that last group chose “brat” as 2024’s “most important word or expression in the public sphere,” the Cambridge Dictionary folks have gone with “manifest,” after “celebrities such as pop star Dua Lipa and gymnast Simone Biles spoke of manifesting their success.” I can’t say “manifest” has been added in a big way to my own lexicon, but then I’m neither a singer-songwriter nor a champion Olympics performer.

Bullet Points: Alarming Week Edition

After the horrific results of this week’s U.S. national elections, I’ve done my best to avoid major news sources. However, as always, I have kept my eyes open for developments in the world of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Here are a few items worth sharing.

(Above) Author Paretsky, from her Facebook page.

• Sara Paretsky has been chosen to receive the 2025 Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award. As In Reference to Murder notes, that prize—named for an ex-editorial director of USA Today—is “bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come.” The Killer Nashville Web site relates some of the reasons Paretsky deserves this commendation:

Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 by introducing V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. Paretsky challenged a genre in which women historically were vamps or victims by creating a detective with the grit and smarts to take on the mean streets. V.I. struck a chord with readers and critics; Indemnity Only was followed by twenty more V.I. novels. Her voice and world remain vital to readers; the New York Times calls V.I. “a proper hero for these times,” adding, “To us, V.I. is perfect.”

While Paretsky’s fiction changed the narrative about women, her work also opened doors for other writers. In 1986, she created Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization that advocates for women crime writers. This organization earned her Ms. Magazine's 1987 Woman of the Year award. More accolades followed: the British Crime Writers awarded her the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement; Blacklist won the Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers for best novel of 2004, and she has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from several universities.

Called “"passionate” and “electrifying,” V.I. reflects her creator’s passion for social justice. After chairing the school's first Commission on the Status of Women as a Kansas University undergraduate, Paretsky worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side during the turbulent race riots of 1966. Since then, Paretsky’s volunteer work has included advocating for healthcare for the mentally ill homeless, mentoring teens in Chicago's most troubled schools, and working for reproductive rights. Through her Sara & Two C-Dogs foundation, she also helps build STEM and arts programs for young people.

The author will be presented with her award during a special dinner at next year’s Killer Nashville conference, to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, from August 21 to 24.

• The shortlists have been announced of this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards contenders. Categories range from Popular Fiction, Non-fiction, and Cookbook to Poetry, Short Story, Newcomer, and Teen and Young Adult. There are also half a dozen candidates for the 2024 Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year. They are:

— A Stranger in the Family, by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press)
— Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh (Headline)
— Where They Lie, by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster)
— Someone in the Attic, by Andrea Mara (Bantam)
— Somebody Knows, by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Ireland)
— When We Were Silent, by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam)

Winners will be revealed during a ceremony in the Convention Centre Dublin on Wednesday, November 27.

• Elizabeth Foxwell points us toward this fascinating piece in Humanities Magazine, which recalls “how a copyright tussle between author Dashiell Hammett and Warner Bros. over his detective Sam Spade changed copyright law.”

• On this first day of Veterans Day Weekend, blogger-editor Janet Rudolph serves up a substantial list of mystery fiction related to this holiday. You will find works ranging from Rennie Airth’s River of Darkness and Susan Elia MacNeal’s Mr. Churchill's Secretary to Max Allan Collins’ The Million Dollar Wound, Elizabeth Speller’s The Return of Captain John Emmett, and Philip Kerr’s earliest Bernie Gunther yarns (March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem).

• Having himself penned a trio of James Bond continuation novels, it’s understandable that Anthony Horowitz might concoct a character in his own fiction who undertakes that same sort of assignment. And so he does in Marble Hall Murders, the forthcoming third entry in his Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd series (Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders). This new work is due out in the UK in April 2025, and in the States come May. Here’s the plot summary from Amazon:

Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.

Freelancing for Causton Books, she’s working on the manuscript of a novel, Pünd’s Last Case, by a young author named Eliot Crace, a continuation of the popular Alan Conway series. Susan is surprised to learn that Eliot is the grandson of legendary children’s author Marian Crace, who died some fifteen years ago—murdered, Elliot insists, by poison.

As Susan begins to read the manuscript’s opening chapters, the skeptical editor is relieved to find that Pünd’s Last Case is actually very good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, who, though mortally ill, is poisoned—perhaps by a member of her own family. But who did it? And why?

The deeper Susan reads, the more it becomes clear that the clues leading to the truth of Marian Crace’s death are hidden within this Atticus Pünd mystery.

While Eliot’s accusation becomes more plausible, his behavior grows increasingly erratic. Then he is suddenly killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Susan finds herself under police scrutiny as a suspect in his killing.

Three mysterious deaths. Multiple motives and possible murderers. If Susan doesn’t solve the mystery of Pund’s Last Case, she may well be the next victim.

I very much enjoyed the first two Ryeland outings, so should be early in line to pick up a copy of this book as well.

• Mystery Fanfare brings word that the latest Death in Paradise Christmas special is coming to UK screens on December 25, courtesy of BBC-TV. That feature-length installment will star Don Gilét, who replaces Ralf Little as the British lead detective on the show. Series 14 of Death in Paradise is expected to debut on the opposite side of the Atlantic early in 2025. There’s no word yet on when it might be available to American viewers.

• Meanwhile, Series 3 of the Death spin-off series Beyond Paradise, featuring Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton, has its own Christmas special planned (the broadcast date will be December 25), with new episodes expected in the spring of next year. And a third spin-off, the Australia-set Return to Paradise, is scheduled to air in the UK beginning on November 22. Six episodes will be on offer this first season.

• Not only has the Prime Video series Reacher received an early fourth-season renewal (Season 3—based on Persuader, Lee Child’s seventh Jack Reacher novel—won’t even debut until 2025), but a spin-off drama is also in the works. As Deadline reports, it will find Danish actress Maria Sten reprising her “fan-favorite” role as Frances Neagley, a corporate security professional in Chicago who served with Reacher in the U.S. Army's 110th Special Investigations Unit. The blog In Reference to Murder says that in this spin-off’s first season, Neagley “learns that a beloved friend from her past has been killed in a suspicious accident, [and] becomes hell bent on justice. Using everything she’s learned from Jack Reacher and her time as a member of the 110th Special Investigators, Neagley puts herself on a dangerous path to uncover a menacing evil.” Look for Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher in the original series, to guest star in the offshoot.

• They don’t amount to much, but The Killing Times has posted a handful of “first look” images from Series 6 of Strike, which BBC One promises to premiere in the UK next month. These latest episodes are adapted from the 2022 novel The Ink Black Heart, by “Robert Gailbraith” (aka J.K. Rowling), and will star Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger. The Web site TVDrama.com provides this plot synopsis:

In the new season, the co-creator of the popular [YouTube cartoon series] The Ink Black Heart shows up frantic at Cormoran Strike [Burke] and Robin Ellacott’s office because she is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure. Ellacott [Grainger] informs her that the agency is too busy to take on the case, but regrets doing so when, weeks later, she discovers that the cartoon co-creator has been murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.

Ellacott and Strike are drawn into a quest to uncover the anonymous online figure who was tormenting the co-creator and are pulled into a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts.

Strike has previously aired in the States on HBO-TV, as C.B. Strike. But I have found no news yet of a U.S. debut for Series 6.

• One final boob tube-related item: The eight-episode Apple TV+ series Presumed Innocent is morphing into an anthology drama. Its acclaimed first season was of course based on Scott Turow’s 1987 novel of the same name, But, according to Deadline, the David E. Kelley-run production may take its sophomore-season inspiration from a legal thriller not even due for publication until 2026: Dissection of a Murder, by Jo Murray. It goes on to explain that Murray’s tale “follows Leila Reynolds who has just been handed her first murder case. She’s way out of her depth but the defendant only wants her—and to make matters worse, her husband is the prosecutor. Soon Leila is fighting to keep her own secrets buried too.”

• The British Crime Writers’ Association has brought on two new sponsors. The editorial consultancy Fiction Feedback, founded in 2008 by editor and former CWA secretary Dea Parkin, will support its Emerging Author Dagger prize. Writer/lecturer Morgen Witzel has volunteered to sponsor the Historical Dagger in memory of his wife, Dr Marilyn Livingstone, with whom—under the pseudonyms A.J. MacKenzie and R.L. Graham—he wrote 13 historical crime novels and thrillers. Livingstone passed away in September 2023.

• Scotland’s Glencairn Crystal Limited, which manufactures the famous Glencairn whisky glass and has for four years underwritten the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing literary awards, is out with a new anthology, The Last Dram, that “features tales from 16 different authors, all of whom have previously entered the Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story competition over the last three years.” Among those writers, says The Bookseller, are “Allan Gaw (2022/23 runner-up, who has since gone on to win this year’s Bloody Scotland Debut Prize); Phillip Wilson (2023/24 winner); Elisabeth Ingram Wallace (2023/24 runner-up); Brid Cummings (2021/22 winner); Jennifer Harvey (2021/22 runner-up); Judith O’Reilly (2021/22 runner-up).” Funds raised through the sale of this anthology will go to Maggie’s, a network of cancer-care drop-in centers located across the United Kingdom.

• While re-reading The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler’s fifth Philip Marlowe novel, author Dana King finds himself surprised by the author’s “misogynistic tendencies.”

• As the DVD and Blu-ray editions of his latest indie film, Blue Christmas, are being readied for Christmastime sale, crime novelist Max Allan Collins reports that he and his fellow-author spouse, Barbara, recently celebrated the “world premiere” of a second new picture, Death by Fruitcake, with two showings in their home town of Muscatine, Iowa. Fruitcake brings to life the main characters in their almost two-decades-old Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series, published under the nom de plume Barbara Allan. “The screenings weren’t flawless,” Collins writes. “These were our first showings anywhere other than on our computers, and Death by Fruitcake is primarily intended for television (streaming most likely) and physical media (Blu-ray and DVD). None of that marketing has begun, as the film is intended for a 2025 holiday release. So there were bumps, chiefly of the audio variety (softer image and audio on Friday, and still not ideal audio on Saturday). But they were eminently watchable and got a terrific reaction from both audiences, with lots of laughs and a good deal of fun at the red carpet event before and after …”

• I’m always a reluctant convention-goer, but I have promised to attend next year’s Bouchercon in New Orleans, during which my friend Ali Karim will serve as Fan Guest of Honor. And now I am giving serious thought to attending the Left Coast Crime get-together in late February 2026. It will be held in San Francisco, which is one of my favorite cities in the world, and feature as its Fan Guest of Honor Randal S. Brandt, a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and an infrequent contributor to The Rap Sheet. For more info or to register for the ’26 LCC, click here.

• Let me wish fond farewells to two lately deceased performers who appeared over the years on many TV programs, including crime dramas: Teri Garr and Alan Rachins.

• And for the many millions of Americans traumatized by the prospect of convicted felon Donald Trump returning to the White House next year, MSNBC-TV’s Rachel Maddow offers this to-do list to defend the nation’s democracy from authoritarian assault.

Bullet Points: No Indictments Here Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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