Bullet Points: On the Mend Edition

After spending most of the last two weeks under the weather, it appears I am finally on the rocky road to recovery. My recent decimation of the world’s Kleenex supply has diminished significantly, and I am no longer coughing my way through whatever program happens to be playing on television any given night. I would say these are favorable signs. Maybe I can get back to a more regular schedule of blog writing soon. For the time being, though, here are a few odds and ends drawn from my file of recent crime-fiction news bits.

• Blogger Gerald So, a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, has posted brief, formatted interviews with all 19 of the finalists for this year’s Derringer Awards. The winners of those commendations, in four categories, will be chosen through an online vote of eligible SMFS members (polls to remain open through April 29), with the names of this year’s prize recipients to be declared on May 1.

• Organizers of Bouchercon 2017 have announced the roster of authors whose work will appear in the Passport to Murder Anthology, scheduled to be available for advance ordering this coming summer and on hand for purchase during the Toronto convention in October. Among the 22 honored fictionists are Craig Fautus Buck, Hilary Davidson, Gary Phillips, and Chris Grabenstein.

• Speaking of Bouchercon, anyone who is eligible to nominate this year’s Anthony Awards contenders but has not yet filled out the survey (which should have been sent via e-mail) should remember that the deadline is April 30!

• Here’s a gift opportunity to keep in mind when shopping for Agent 007 fans: The Complete James Bond: Goldfinger—The Classic Comic Strip Collection, 1960-66, released this month by Titan Books. The blog Spy Vibe points out that this is the third in Titan’s series of volumes collecting Bond comic strips that were originally syndicated in British newspapers from 1958 to 1983. Those strips covered 52 story arcs, the earliest ones being based on Ian Fleming’s stories. “The new hardcover edition,” says Spy Vibe, “includes strips from 1960-1966: Goldfinger, Risico, From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, The Man with the Golden Gun, and The Living Daylights.” The two previous volumes, issued last year, were James Bond: Spectre: The Complete Comic Strip Collection and The Complete James Bond: Dr No—The Classic Comic Strip Collection 1958-60. Amazon shows a fourth book, The Complete James Bond: The Hildebrand Rarity—The Classic Comic Strip Collection 1966-69, as due for release this coming November.

• By the way, From Russia with Love—Fleming’s fifth Bond escapade—celebrated its 60th anniversary earlier this month. As The Book Bond notes, the book was first published on April 8, 1957.

• Happy birthday also to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre! That famous Hollywood Boulevard landmark, now known as the TCL Chinese Theatre, opened on May 18, 1927—meaning it commemorates its 90th anniversary of operation today.

• Smithsonian.com supplies some context to America’s early 20th-century “movie palace” boom.

• Having greatly enjoyed 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I am pleased to read that a sequel might finally be in the works. In its post about this, though, The Spy Command cautions that the plan is still in its infancy, and “studios and production offices are littered with scripts that were never made into films.” I’ll keep my eye on this.

• Huh. I hadn’t heard this before. According to Sergio Angelini at Tipping My Fedora, screenwriter Howard Rodman’s “unlikely inspiration” for the 1974 TV film Smile Jenny, You’re Dead—the second of two feature-length pilots for Harry O, the often-underrated 1974-1976 ABC private-eye series—“was Harry Greener, the aged ex-vaudevillian in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust reduced to peddling ‘Miracle Solvent’ silver polish door-to-door until he finally keels over and dies. That book’s feeling for California’s alienated and disenfranchised also comes through in the romantic and mytho-poetic undercurrent to this vehicle for David Janssen.”

• Screen Daily reports that “principal photography has wrapped in Sudbury, Ontario, on Never Saw It Coming,” a suspense film based on Linwood Barclay’s 2013 novel of the same name. The site explains that the story focuses on “a young woman who passes herself off as a psychic. When the charlatan targets the family of a missing woman, she becomes entangled in the dark secrets of the husband and daughter.” The supposed clairvoyant, Keisha Ceylon, is being played on-screen by Montreal-born Emily Hampshire (from the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek); Eric Roberts plays Wendell Garfield, whose wife has gone missing. The Toronto Star says, “the aim is for Never Saw It Coming to be finished by late summer, in time for fall film festivals.”

• Linwood Barclay’s latest thriller, Parting Shot, comes out this week in Great Britain, and Ali Karim had a chance to talk with him for Shotsmag Confidential.

• Elsewhere in that same blog, Ayo Onatade has word of Henning Mankell’s final novel, After the Fire, which is due out on both sides of the Atlantic in October. Here’s the plot brief:

Fredrik Welin is a seventy-year-old retired doctor. Years ago he retreated to the Swedish archipelago, where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He lives a quiet life. Until he wakes up one night to find his house on fire.

Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed wellies, as neighboring islanders arrive to help douse the flames. All that remains in the morning is a stinking ruin and evidence of arson. The house that has been in his family for generations and all his worldly belongings are gone. He cannot think who would do such a thing, or why. Without a suspect, the police begin to think he started the fire himself.

Mankell died back in October 2015.

• “CBS Television Studios has pre-emptively bought the rights to Edgar-winning author Meg Gardiner’s forthcoming novel, UNSUB, to adapt for television,” reports In Reference to Murder. “The thriller follows a female detective on the trail of an infamous serial killer—inspired by the still-unsolved Zodiac case—when he breaks his silence and begins killing again. The detective, who grew up watching her father destroy himself and his family chasing the killer, now finds herself facing the same monster.”

• Look for the May 21 premiere of Site Unseen: An Emma Fielding Mystery, a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries TV presentation based on Dana Cameron’s novels. It’s the opening installment in the network’s newest teleflick franchise, Emma Fielding Mysteries. As Mystery Fanfare explains, Courtney Thorne-Smith (formerly of According to Jim and Ally McBeal) will star as Fielding, “a brilliant, dedicated, and driven archaeologist who discovers artifacts that have been lost for hundreds of years—and she's very, very good at it. Emma has recently unearthed evidence of a possible 17th-century coastal Maine settlement that predates Jamestown, one of the most significant archaeological finds in years. But the dead body she uncovers on the site pushes Emma into a different kind of exploration. Her dig site is suddenly in jeopardy of being shut down, due to the meddling of local treasure-hunters and a second suspicious murder. Emma must team with the handsome FBI agent investigating the case to dig up dirt on the killer, before Emma and her excavation are ancient history.”

• I finally caught up with Season 4 of the British TV series Ripper Street on Netflix. (Yeah, I know, I’m a bit late to the party—again.) I’ve mentioned before what a fan I have become of that sometimes brutal but nonetheless elegantly written crime drama, set in London in the aftermath of Jack the Ripper’s 1888 murder spree. But Season 4 really demonstrates this program’s strengths, with plots involving Detective Inspector Bennet Drake’s promotion as commander of Whitechapel’s H Division police force, forensic expert Homer Jackson’s desperate efforts to save his wife (former brothel madam “Long Susan” Hart) from hanging, Edmund Reid’s return to detective duties after a self-imposed exile (with his once-lost daughter, Matilda) on the English seacoast, police corruption, and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Oh, and there are rumors of a golem leaping about the rooftops of the East End, biting bloody chunks out of his victims, and a rabbi’s murder may be in need of some further investigation. Believe me, this isn’t a program through which one is likely to sleep. What I hadn’t expected was that Season 4 would conclude with such a shocking cliffhanger! A great set-up for the fifth and perhaps concluding series of Ripper Street, which was already broadcast in Britain last October, but likely won’t make it to Netflix in the States until this coming October. You can watch the trailers for Seasons 4 and 5 here.

• Criminal defense attorney-turned-author Allen Eskens has won the 2017 Minnesota Book Award, in the Genre Fiction category, for The Heavens May Fall (Seventh Street).

• Donald Trump isn’t an enthusiastic reader, unlike President Barack Obama, his Democratic predecessor. But yesterday, Republican Trump finally took to Twitter to praise a new book. Wouldn’t you know it, though, the work he touted has no words in it.

• Raymond Chandler was no fan of the FBI.

• But count me as a Mary Ann fan.

• Nancie Clare’s most recent guest on her Speaking of Mysteries podcast is Alex Segura, whose Dangerous Ends—the third novel featuring Miami gumshoe Pete Fernandez—was recently released. You can listen to their exchange here.

• Meanwhile, the third episode of Writer Types, hosted by S.W. Lauden and Eric Beetner, “was mostly recorded on site at the inaugural Murder & Mayhem in Chicago conference and features interviews with none other than Sara Paretsky, William Kent Kreuger, Sean Chercover, Marcus Sakey, Dana Kaye and Lori Rader-Day, among many others.” Click here to hear the whole show.

• And on the latest edition of Two Crime Writers and a Microphone, Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste talk with Steve Mosby “about his brand-new book, You Can Run, his career so far, the dark side of crime fiction, … [and] whether beards have more fun.”

• Other recent interviews of significance: Jeffery Deaver talks with Crimespree Magazine about his new novel, Burial Hour; Robin Yokum answers questions about A Welcome Murder; Joe Ide speaks with S.W. Lauden about his first Isaiah Quintabe novel, IQ, and its coming sequel; Lori Rader-Day (The Day I Died) submits to at least two sets of questions, one from Chicago Review of Books, the other from Mystery Playground; Crime Fiction Lover asks Mason Cross about his new Carter Blake thriller, Don’t Look for Me; Jenni L. Walsh recounts the background of her Bonnie and Clyde novel, Becoming Bonnie, for the Tor/Forge Blog; the Kirkus Reviews Web site carries a brief exchange with authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan on the subject of their second Lillian Frost/Edith Head mystery, Dangerous to Know; Megan Miranda offers MysteryPeople some insights into her latest psychological suspense yarn, The Perfect Stranger; and in advance of this year’s Malice Domestic conference (April 28-30), Art Taylor chats with Martin Edwards, winner of the 2017 Poirot Award.

• Crime drama news from TV Shows on DVD: Be on the lookout for the release of Police Story, Season Two on July 25; T.J. Hooker: The Complete Series on July 18; and the re-release of McCloud: Season One on June 13. Oh, and The Rockford Files: The Complete Series will go on sale—in both DVD and Blu-ray formats—in June.

• Finally, Crime Fiction Ireland offers a selection of noteworthy authors slated to take part in this year’s St. Hilda’s Mystery and Crime Conference, scheduled for August 18-20 in Oxford, England. Iceland’s Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is to be the guest of honor.

Of Films, Finales, and Farewells

I really need to spend some quality time putting together a longer “Bullet Points” post of news briefs. But for now, as I am in the midst of other projects, here are a few short items of interest.

• Lyndsay Faye’s brand-new book, Jane Steele, has been acquired by Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures with the intent of turning it into a big-screen picture. Deadline Hollywood explains: “Inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s classic Jane Eyre, Faye’s novel is a piece of historical fiction that tells the story of Jane Steele, a fresh and determined Victorian orphan, who—unlike her idol Jane Eyre—does not accept her lot in life without a fight. Fiercely intelligent and resourceful, Steele is forced to resort to extreme measures to make sure that life turns out the way she needs it to. The reimagining of Jane Eyre as a serial killer is a humdinger of a potential lead role for a major actress. No word yet on who’s adapting this one, but the world surely is fertile for a mischievous mind.”

• Until today, I had no idea that Isaac Asimov’s 1954 science fiction/detective novel, The Caves of Steel, was adapted for British television more than 50 years ago. Elizabeth Foxwell features a few “tantalizing (if low-budget) clips” in her blog.

• A trio of mystery and suspense novels are among the winners of this year’s Benjamin Franklin Awards, given out by the Independent Book Publishers Association. Those works are: The Fame Equation, by Lisa Wysocky (Cool Titles); The Lost Concerto, by Helaine Mario (Oceanview); and Method 15/33, by Shannon Kirk (Oceanview).

• From B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder comes this intriguing tidbit: “Writer-director Michael Mann has made a deal to launch Michael Mann Books. The imprint will generate a series of novels with a stable of writers, with the properties to simultaneously be developed for film and television. Mann will look through his own long list of credits for ideas, placing high priority on a prequel novel dealing with the principal characters of Heat, Mann’s seminal crime thriller. The prequel novel will cover the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), Chris Shihirles (Val Kilmer), McCauley’s accomplice Nate (Jon Voight), and other characters from the 1995 film.”

• One more from In Reference to Murder: “Amazon announced that Ripper Street will end after its fifth season, which recently began filming in Dublin. In the final season, Joseph Mawle (In the Heart of the Sea) rejoins the series as the feared Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine, intent on a mission of revenge after last being seen in the series two finale when Inspector Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) plotted with Drake (Jerome Flynn) to take Shine’s life.”

• New Zealand crime-fiction watcher Craig Sisterson notes on Facebook that Ngaio Marsh Award-winning Wellington author Neil Cross was recently nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy Television Craft Awards) commendation in the TV drama-writing category, thanks to his work on the acclaimed series Luther. Unfortunately, Cross’ competition in that category includes Peter Straughan, who scripted the historical miniseries Wolf Hall.

• In a Guardian story about the pseudonymous novelist Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend, etc.), John Dugdale mentions “the semi-reclusive crime writer Josephine Tey [The Daughter of Time], who was only linked to her birth name (Elizabeth Mackintosh) posthumously. Friends who attended her funeral in 1952 thought they were mourning Gordon Daviot, another of her pseudonyms, and that was who the Times recorded as having been buried.” I’d never heard that before.

• Neither of these films has anything to do with crime fiction, but they still look like fun: Special Correspondents, a Netflix pic starring Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana, slated to begin streaming on April 29; and Love & Friendship, a big-screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1871 epistolary novel, Lady Susan, that stars the ever-captivating Kate Beckinsale and is set to debut in the States on May 13.

• Finally, a sad good-bye to Joe Santos, the Brooklyn-born actor whose most memorable TV role may have been that of beleaguered Los Angeles cop Dennis Becker in The Rockford Files. Small-screen watchers might also have spotted Santos in Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, Lou Grant, Hill Street Blues, Magnum, P.I., and The Sopranos. (A full list of his performance credits is here.) Santos died of a heart attack on March 18. He was 84 years old.

Ripping Good News

A most welcome note from In Reference to Murder:

Ripper Street fans will rejoice at the return of Victorian police procedural for its fourth season in January, but in the meantime, you can watch the 90-second trailer that includes new cast members David Threlfall (Shameless) and Matthew Lewis (Harry Potter).

Bullet Points: Friday Sweep-Up Edition

• Earlier this month, Agatha Christie’s estate declared the results of an online survey that asked readers to choose their favorite works from among the English mystery writer’s oeuvre. The top vote-getter, it turned out, was And Then There Were None (1939). That didn’t settle the matter, however. Other critics subsequently listed their own top Christie whodunits, all by way of celebrating the author’s 125th birthday on September 15. Now, blogger-editor Curtis J. Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961) has sifted through 31 “best of” compilations to see which novels won the majority of endorsements. Again--as you can see here--And Then There Were None walks away with the top honors, while the second and third spots belong to Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, respectively. The runners-up are here.

• When I read in The New York Times that best-selling author Jackie Collins had died of breast cancer at age 77, I figured the news was well outside my reportorial bailiwick. The Gumshoe Site reminds me, though, that in addition to producing “sex-filled, escapist, utterly unpretentious” works such as The Bitch and Hollywood Wives, Collins “wrote a number of crime novels, including Lovehead (Allen, 1974; retitled The Love Killers, Warner 1975), and [the] Santangelo (Crime) Family series, which started with Chances (Warner, 1981). Her last novel was The Santangelos (St. Martin’s, 2015).”

• Not every Rap Sheet reader is also a Facebook user, I’m sure. But for those of you who are, and would like to see what the office of author James Lee Burke (House of the Rising Sun) offers, click here for thoroughly delightful tour of his writing space, during which he “talks about a few of his favorite things in the office.”

• I confess, I haven’t yet begun watching the new, fourth season of the Western-detective series Longmire on Netflix, which began streaming on September 10. However, Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) has almost finished reviewing all of its 10 episodes for Criminal Element. Click here to read his fine critiques.

• It’s hard to believe that NBC-TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is currently in its 17th year of broadcasting. I was never a fan, having found the program too consistently grim for my tastes. But blogger “Ben” at Dead End Follies has recently begun exploring the show’s numerous seasons, and he has a few interesting things to say about it at this particular link.

• Oh, to spend October in Britain’s capital … Double O Section reports that “Lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg herself does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode ‘The House That Jack Built.’ It’s one of a pair of absolute classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank.”

• Holy obscure holidays! Saturday is Batman Day.

• Meanwhile, Keith DeCandido at Tor.com has announced that “Starting next Friday, I will be doing The Bat-Rewatch! I’ll be looking back at the Batman TV series developed by William Dozier for ABC, and which ran from 1966 to 1968. Between seasons one and two, we’ll also take a gander at the Batman feature film that was released in the summer of 1966.” Follow DeCandido’s series here.

• L.A. Weekly celebrates TV shows, especially Michael Connelly’s Bosch, that make good use of their Los Angeles settings.

• Did you know that American composer Henry Mancini’s famous theme for the 1958-1961 private-eye TV series Peter Gunn has lyrics? Yeah, neither did I--and in fact, they were added after the show’s demise. You can listen to jazz songstress Sarah Vaughan belt out those lyrics below, and follow along with a printed version here.



• When I finished watching the very dramatic third season of Ripper Street earlier this year, I presumed that that historical crime series was over and done. The concluding episode of Season 3 certainly suggested as much. But I must have missed the news, reported in The Guardian, that “Amazon Prime … has recommissioned the Victorian detective drama for a fourth and fifth season.” Hurrah!

• English singer-songwriter Sam Smith’s title song for the forthcoming, 24th James Bond flick, Spectre, was released this morning. And despite former Bond actor Roger Moore declaring that it’s “very haunting and wonderfully orchestrated,” other critical opinions are mixed, at best. Read more here and here.

• Otto Penzler, editor and proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, submits his list of the “5 Most Underappreciated Crime Writers.” I certainly agree with him about Daniel Woodrell.

• This may be the most ludicrous idea yet for turning a once-popular TV series into a big-screen picture. From In Reference to Murder: “NBC has put in development a new take on the 1979 ABC mystery Hart to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a husband-and-wife sleuthing duo. The reboot hails from producer Carol Mendelsohn and Sony TV and will center on a gay couple. The new Hart to Hart is described as ‘a modern and sexy retelling of the classic series that focuses on by-the-book attorney Jonathan Hart and free-spirited investigator Dan Hartman, who must balance the two sides of their life: action-packed crime-solving in the midst of newly found domesticity.’” Why in the hell can’t Hollywood seem to come up with fresh movie-making concepts anymore?

• The captivating Amanda Seyfried has landed a supposedly pivotal but still under-wraps role in Showtime TV’s on-again, off-again, then on-again limited series revival of Twin Peaks. TV Line reports that “Seyfried will appear in multiple episodes, making it her biggest TV gig since Big Love ended in 2011.” Showtime plans to introduce its new Twin Peaks sometime next year.

• Artist Charles McVicar’s name came up in a Killer Covers post I wrote back in June having to do with his painting for the front of The Search for Tabatha Carr (1964). I’m reminded of him once more, thanks to the excellent TV history Web site Television Obscurities, which this week has been rolling out write-ups about small-screen publicity posters from 37 years ago. “To promote its Fall 1978 line-up,” the site explains, “ABC commissioned a series of seven posters--one for each night of the week--depicting characters from its new and returning shows.” McVicar appears to have executed the artwork for all six of the posters showcased thus far: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Check Television Obscurities tomorrow for the final entry in this set. UPDATE: ABC-TV’s Saturday publicity poster can now be found at this link.

• If you’ve never seen the 1972 NBC-TV pilot The Judge and Jake Wyler, starring Bette Davis as a hypochondriac former jurist who employs an ex-con (played by Doug McClure) as her investigative partner, you can now watch it on YouTube, in seven parts. Click here to find Part I as well as links to the succeeding installments. And if you didn’t know this already, The Judge and Jake Wyler was produced by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link.

• Crime Fiction Lover continues it’s “Classics in September” series with this look back at Australian “Queen of Crime” June Wright. Catch up with all the “Classics in September” posts here.

• In the pages of The New Yorker, Michelle Dean recalls “The Secrets of Vera Caspary, the Woman Who Wrote Laura.”

• The blog Longreads provides this reprint of David Lehman’s excellent essay, “The Radical Pessimism of Dashiell Hammett,” which appeared originally in The American Scholar.

• Interviews worth finding: Attica Locke talks with fellow novelist Alafair Burke for The Life Sentence; Scottish writer Paul Johnston (who I also chatted with recently) goes one-on-one with Sandra Dick of the Edinburgh News in an exchange during which Johnston says, “I witter about plagues of boils and the odd book”; basketball star-turned-fictionist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar supplies some background to his brand-new novel, Mycroft Holmes; again for The Life Sentence, editor Lisa Levy quizzes David Lagercrantz about his fourth entry in Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web; Warren Ellis answers some questions about his new James Bond comic book; and recent National Medal of Arts recipient Stephen King asks Lee Child about his 20th Jack Reacher thriller, Make Me.

• The BBC’s Radio 4 gears up for Halloween.

• Congratulations to Jason Pinter, the editor and publisher of Polis Books, who has been named by Publishers Weekly as one of its inaugural Star Watch honorees, a commendation that “recognizes young publishing professionals who have distinguished themselves as future leaders of the industry.”

• Finally, if you haven’t been keeping up with my Killer Covers blog, note that in just the last week I have posted there a collection of classic school-related paperbacks, a “Two-fer Tuesday” entry focusing on tales about black attire, a significant update and expansion of my 2010 gallery of novel fronts by Ernest Chiriacka, aka Darcy, and today’s post about the eye-catching 1949 edition of Bitter Ending.

Tube Talk

• So can we look forward to a Twin Peaks revival, or not? Fans of that ABC-TV cult series were quite excited when news broke last fall that Peaks’ co-creator, director David Lynch, would be resurrecting the 1990-1991 drama for a nine-episode run on cable channel Showtime in early 2016. But now, Business Insider says Lynch has exited the project, and the director is trying to tamp down talk that Showtime has cancelled the revival altogether. If you’re still craving “a damn fine coffee and a piece of cherry pie” from the Double R Diner, your appetite might not be satisfied at any time soon.

• Meanwhile, Tipping My Fedora reports that Season 3 of the acclaimed Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour, starring Shaun Evans, is currently in production, with this latest run of episodes to be set in 1967. “Our next quartet of mysteries,” explains creator-writer Russell Lewis, “will take the audience on a psychedelic Summer of Love fairground ride, filled with twists and turns, shrieks and scares.”

• Author Lee Goldberg turned me on to the nostalgic TV Web site Modcinema--and I may never forgive him, because it promises to blow a big ol’ hole in my budget. In addition to offering myriad forgotten theatrical films, the site has for sale many (and I do mean many) made-for-TV movies from the last half of the 20th century. I haven’t located everything on my wishlist yet, but I did find The Judge and Jake Wyler, a 1972 pilot starring Bette Davis and Doug McClure, and written by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link; another Levinson and Link pilot, Charlie Cobb: Nice Night for a Hanging, with Clu Gulager playing a private detective in the Old West; Beg, Borrow or Steal, a 1973 crime drama featuring familiar series stars Mike Connors, Michael Cole, and Kent McCord as “three ex-cops, disabled while on duty,” who “team up to steal a valuable statue from a museum”; and The Crime Club (1975), the second and last pilot of that name, both about elite crime-solving organizations, this one starring Scott Thomas, Eugene Roche, and Robert Lansing. (The previous Crime Club pilot was broadcast in 1973.) I used to love teleflicks, and I’m sorry that the networks no longer invest their time and money in making them, so Modcinema is a site destined to receive many of my hard-earned dollars, a place where I can finally see those small-screen pictures I failed to watch the first time around.

• If you’ve missed William Petersen, formerly the star of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, this is excellent news: The Los Angeles Times reports that “he’ll be part of the main cast of WGN America’s Manhattan in the drama’s second season. Petersen will play Col. Emmett Darrow, described as an ‘enigmatic new ranking military officer at Los Alamos’ [New Mexico] who is also ‘a deeply religious and patriotic man’ who sees himself as anointed by God to bring America’s nuclear power across the planet. Sounds like exactly the wrong person to be anywhere near nuclear weapons.”

• Did you know that William J. “Bill” Koenig, managing editor of The Spy Command, also maintains a couple of fine online TV episode guides? The first looks back at The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) and its one-season spin-off, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., while the second focuses on The F.B.I., the 1965-1974 Quinn Martin crime drama. Both are worth exploring.

• Finally, the third season of Ripper Street--the British crime drama set in London in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s 1888 killing spree--is scheduled to return to BBC America with eight new episodes, beginning on Wednesday, April 29. You may recall that Ripper Street, starring Matthew Macfadyen, was cancelled in late 2013 as a result of “low viewing figures.” Soon after that, Amazon Prime Instant Video agreed to take the show on, and a completed Season 3 was made available last November--but only in the UK. Responding to widespread viewer support, and now without having to foot all the bills for its production, BBC America has decided to bring back this historical-thriller standout. You can watch a trailer for the coming new season here, and learn more about what else the show has in store, by clicking here.

News Breaking Out All Over

• Just the other day on this page, I was wondering about the future of Ripper Street, the excellent BBC-TV historical crime series starring Matthew Macfadyen, which was cancelled late last year after two broadcast seasons. Now Omnimystery News brings word that “a third season of 8 episodes will be produced with the same cast, courtesy of Amazon, which also acquired the rights to the first two seasons. It will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime several months before it airs on BBC One and BBC America.” It’s expected that filming will commence soon on this next season of Ripper Street, with at least the first episodes to hit Amazon Prime by the close of 2014.

• Ian Fleming’s 1962 James Bond adventure, The Spy Who Loved Me, finds a prominent position on Kelly Robinson’s list, in Book Dirt, of “Literary Embarrassments: 8 Books the Authors Wish They Never Wrote.” Robinson explains:

If you’ve ever wondered why the movie version of this Bond novel is not just somewhat different from the book, but actually has nothing in common with it whatsoever, it’s because Ian Fleming wouldn’t allow it to be filmed. He sold the rights to the title only, after the book proved to be sort of a bomb. He refused a paperback reprint of the book in the UK, effectively trying to bury it completely.

What’s wrong with it? To start with, a lot of Bond fans don’t like that he doesn’t even show up until about 2/3 of the way through the novel, which is told from the point of view of a young Canadian woman. Critics fell over themselves to pan it. “His ability to invent a plot has deserted him almost entirely,” wrote the Glasgow Herald. The Observer went one better: “I hope this doesn’t spell the total eclipse of Bond in a blaze of cornography.”

• After 15 years of wanting to shoot this film, actor Edward Norton has finally found funding for a big-screen adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s extraordinary 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn. The Los Angeles Times reports that Norton himself will star as Lionel Essrog, a small-time detective afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome.

• In Reference to Murder offers this note: “The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes has landed at the COSI Center of Science and Technology in Columbus, Ohio, with a run through September 8. The show brings the world of Sherlock Holmes to life with interactive exhibits that allow visitors to become Holmes’ eyes and ears as he tackles a new case, using investigative tools and techniques from Holmes himself. Other exhibits include original manuscripts, publications, period artifacts, film and television props and costumes and other interactive crime-solving opportunities.”

• In announcing the DVD release, by Warner Archive, of The F.B.I.: The Complete Seventh Season, The HMSS Weblog looks back at that TV drama’s relationship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who died during the show’s year-seven production. (The F.B.I. would continue on ABC for two more seasons.)

• Harriet the Spy celebrates its 50th anniversary.

• Buyer beware: “Readers fancying a journey into the world of the bestselling thriller author Jack Higgins may be getting a different kind of thrill,” explains The Guardian, “courtesy of another writer selling erotic novels under the same name.”

• Two interviews worth reading: Eve Dolan (Long Way Home) talks with Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette, while Laura Lippman (After I’m Gone) has a bit of a chat with The Miami Herald’s Connie Ogle.

• Dr. Seuss’ editorial-cartooning history remains hidden.

• And if you’re in the vicinity of Huntington Beach, California, later this month, you might want to take part in what’s being touted as the “First Annual Ladies of Intrigue Event Featuring Remarkable Women Mystery Writers.” It’s being organized by the Orange County chapter of Sisters in Crime, and will take place on Saturday, March 29. Authors Carolyn Hart and Rhys Bowen are to headline the gathering.

Returning Now to the Dark Side

BBC-TV’s Ripper Street may have concluded its second-series broadcasts in the UK before Christmas of last year, but the first of that show’s eight sophomore-season episodes is only now debuting in the States. It’s scheduled to begin tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC America. Feel free to watch the British trailer below.



You’ll remember that Ripper Street is set in London in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s horrific 1888 murder spree, and focuses on three police officials--Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn), and Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg)--charged with restoring peace and the dominance of law to their city’s notorious Whitechapel district. “In the season-two opener,” explains The Hollywood Reporter, Reid “is thrust into dangerous waters when legalized opium is suddenly being converted into heroin with assistance from the ethically questionable Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine (Joseph Mawle).”

Let’s all hope this second season is not the period drama’s last. Towards the end of last year, the BBC announced that it was canceling Ripper Street. Since then, however, it’s been reported that Amazon-owned video-on-demand company LoveFilm might be interested in reviving the crime series for at least a third season. So far, though, there’s been no final decision on the matter.

Bullet Points: Almost Christmas Edition

• The British Medical Journal analyzes “James Bond’s consumption of alcohol as detailed in the series of novels by Ian Fleming,” and concludes that his “weekly alcohol intake is over four times the advisable maximum alcohol consumption for an adult male. He is at considerable risk of developing alcoholic liver disease, cirrhosis, impotence, and other alcohol-related health problems, together with being at serious risk of injury or death because of his drinking. Although we appreciate the societal pressures to consume alcohol when working with international terrorists and high-stakes gamblers,” the BMJ says, “we would advise Bond be referred for further assessment of his alcohol intake and reduce his intake to safe levels.” UPDATE: Slate’s take on Bond’s alcoholism is here.

• I’m very sorry to hear that Irish-born actor Peter O’Toole has died in London at age 81. Although he’s best remembered for his starring roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Lion in Winter (1968), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), O’Toole also delivered a cameo performance in 1967’s Casino Royale spoof, and he supplied the voice of Sherlock Holmes in four animated films released in 1983. Blogger Steve Thompson celebrates O’Toole’s career with a collection of the faces he offered audiences over the years.

• A sad farewell, too, to Don Mitchell, the Houston-born actor best known for playing delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger in the 1967-1975 NBC-TV crime drama Ironside. Mitchell also appeared in The Fugitive, McMillan & Wife, and Matlock. In what was evidently his last role, he resurrected Mark Sanger for the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside. Mitchell died on December 8. He was only 70 years old.

• The UK blog Crime Fiction Lover recently invited its regular contributors to submit lists of their five favorite crime novels published in 2013. Four such rundowns have already been posted, and can be found here, with more entries still to come. I’m pleased by the diversity of choices, everything from Mari Hannah’s Deadly Deceit and Bill Pronzini’s Kinsmen to Death in St James’ Park, by Susanna Gregory, and Love Story with Murders, by Harry Bingham.

• Bonnie & Clyde, the new two-part, four-hour teleflick dramatizing the lives of Depression-era outlaws Clyde Barrow (played here by Emile Hirsch) and Bonnie Parker (Holliday Grainger), was just broadcast in the States last week. But already it is being prepared for a DVD release on January 28. I found the film to be visually compelling, and though the plot diverged from the facts now and then (which is typical with the legend of Bonnie and Clyde), its distinctive interpretation of the circumstances surrounding those fugitives’ brutal deaths left me with a haunted feeling and caused me to go back and watch the final scene several more times.

• Learn more about Bonnie and Clyde here.

• It looks like Carl Hiaasen’s 2002 novel, Basket Case, will to be adapted for the small screen by Spike TV, with Rob Reiner producing.

• There are so many Christmas-themed mysteries, blogger Janet Rudolph (a splendidly Christmas-y surname, don’t you think?) has had to break her compilation of them into several parts. Click here to see titles beginning with the letters A to D; here for E-H; and here for I-N. She should be rolling out the rest of the alphabet soon.

• This is what I call a whopping “oops.”

• In an essay for Britain’s The Spectator, titled “Who Killed the Golden Age of Crime?,” author P.D. James remembers with fondness “the gentlemanly world of Albert Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey.”

• Here’s a swell gift for ardent newspaper lovers.

• I hadn’t remembered that Gunsmoke offered a Christmas episode in 1971, but Classic Television Showbiz now features it for your viewing pleasure. Click here to watch.

• Another holiday oddity: Vincent Price narrates a compact, 1949 TV dramatization of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.

• Dagnabit! The excellent historical crime series Ripper Street, set in London’s poor Whitechapel district in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s 1889 killing spree, will not be given a third season. It concludes its second-season run tomorrow in Great Britain, and the eight episodes of its sophomore year are supposed to air in the States sometime in 2014 on BBC America. However, the show--which stars Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg--was not deemed successful enough to continue, much to the consternation of many critics and viewers. There are already negotiations underway that could result in a third season of Ripper Street being produced, and I hope they bear fruit; but there are no guarantees.

• This is ample reason to retire to the nearest pub post haste.

• New Jerseyan Wallace Stroby, who I recently interviewed for Kirkus Reviews, is one of the men mentioned in Mysterious Matters’ list of “Five Thriller Writers Who Are Better Than [James] Patterson.”

• Criminal Element reports: In not-surprising-in-the-least news, Tom Cruise is set to return as Lee Child’s silent but intimidating hero, Jack Reacher, in a sequel to 2012’s Jack Reacher. This new film is reported to be based upon the newest Reacher thriller, Never Go Back. Irony, of course, being something completely alien to Hollywood execs.”

• This is considerably better news, from Mystery Fanfare: “UK producers Tracey Scoffield and Frank Doelger are partnering with Germany’s Beta to produce a big-screen version of Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night,” a quirky and endearing tale that I chose as one of my favorite crime novels of the year.

• Bob Douglas considers the novels of Canadian lawyer-author Robert Rotenberg (Stranglehold) in a fine piece for Critics at Large.

• The celebrated British TV drama Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, will begin its third-season, three-episode run on the BBC on Wednesday, January 1, 2014. It will commence showing in the United States on Sunday, January 19, under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella. Watch the preview here.

• As somebody who often contributed over the decades to the Pacific Northwest’s Best Places guidebook series, I am sorry to discover that it has “quietly faded away” after 34 years.

• I’ve read all but one of the books Scottish author Ian Rankin describes as the “five perfect mysteries.” Really, Ian--Muriel Sparks’ The Driver’s Seat? I have to track that down.

• And yes, that’s really Yvonne Craig--Batgirl--on The Dating Game.

“Ripper Street” Fans, Take Note

BBC America has scheduled the second-season debut of that addictive crime series--set in Victorian London and starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg--for Sunday, December 1. Information about the premieres of this and other fine BBC America programs can be found here.

FOLLOW-UP: Subsequent to my penning this post, Ripper Street’s second-season debut on BBC America was postponed until the evening of February 22, 2014. Learn more here.

Taking in the Sites

• Blogger-author Evan Lewis today reports that Doug Allyn (who’s already carried home more of these coveted commendations over the years than anybody else) has won Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s 2012 Readers Award. Here’s how the voting broke down:

1. “Wood-Smoke Boys,” by Doug Allyn (March/April 2012)
2. “Mariel,” by David Dean (December)
3. “Champawat,” by Lia Matera (September/October)
4. “Skyler Hobbs and the Garden Gnome Bandit,” by Evan Lewis (September/October)
5. “Dial Country Code 91 + M for Murder,” by Stewart Brown (December)
6. “Death of a Drama Queen,” by Doug Allyn (September/October)
7. “So Near Any Time Always,” by Joyce Carol Oates (March/April)
8. “Black Pearls,” by Clark Howard (May)
9. “One Angry Julius Katz and Eleven Befuddled Jurors,” by Dave Zeltserman (June)
10. “Golden Chance,” by S.J. Rozan (December)

• It was about a year ago, I think, that my cable-TV provider dropped BBC America from its one-step-up-from-basic package. As a consequence, I lost Law & Order: UK and other programs I’d enjoyed watching regularly. Just this last weekend, though, I discovered that I once more have access to the channel ... which meant that I could finally see Ripper Street, the new crime series set in London’s notorious East End in

1889, shortly after Jack the Ripper’s murderous rampage there. Well, as you might expect, I spent a good few chunk of Saturday and Sunday catching up with Ripper Street via On Demand--and enjoyed every minute of that experience. What a splendidly atmospheric, character-rich, and smartly written show this is, with special credits due Adam Rothenberg, playing Homer Jackson, an American police surgeon with an elusive past, and Jerome Flynn, who appears as laconic but hammer-fisted Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake. If you haven’t partaken of this series, you owe it to yourself to watch. The eighth and final episode of the season is scheduled for broadcast in the States this coming Saturday at 9 p.m. (see the preview on the left), but Ripper Street has already been renewed for 2014. Once I’ve made it through the episodes from this series, I’ll be on to another BBC America crime drama, Copper, set in New York’s notorious Five Points neighborhood in the mid-1860s, which I’ve heard is also a must-see. Thank goodness, BBC America is back!

• Lend an ear, folks! At least for the time being, you can listen to Mark Billingham’s Rule Book of Crime, a three-hour production of BBC Radio’s 4 Extra. During the show, this author best known for his Tom Thorne crime novels (The Demands) “detects his favourite radio sleuthing stars--Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Raymond Chandler, Henning Mankell, and P.D. James.” Billingham has long experience as a stand-up comedian, so you can expect this program to be very entertaining. (Hat tip to Ali Karim.)

• The March edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column was posted in Shots today. It features notes about upcoming crime-fiction commendations, London’s “Murder in the Library” exhibition, new novels by Andrew Taylor, Tom Harper, and Paul Thomas, and the only rude photo I’ve ever seen of Louise Penny.

• The HMSS Weblog looks back a full half-century to the time when author Ian Fleming had to choose between committing himself to making movies from his James Bond novels, or participating in the TV spy drama The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

• You can’t revisit The Maltese Falcon too often.

• Thank you to Steve Powell of The Venetian Vase for choosing The Rap Sheet as one of 2012’s best blogs.

• Well, it’s about damn time! China Beach, the habitually exceptional, 1988-1991 Vietnam War-era drama starring Dana Delaney, is finally due out in a 25-anniversary collector’s edition next month. It won’t be cheap; all 61 episode are being retailed for $199.95. But China Beach was an amazing show. If you have somehow forgotten it, refresh your memory by watching the Season 1 opening here.

• Do you have fond memories of Dean Martin’s Matt Helm spy films (based loosely on Donald Hamilton’s Helm novels)? If so, then a new e-book called Booze, Bullets & Broads: The Story of Matt Helm, Superspy of the Mad Men Era might be well worth your investigating.

• The fourth Kindle edition of ThugLit is now available.

• Organizers of PulpFest 2013 are soliciting nominations for their annual Munsey Award, which recognizes “the efforts of those who work to keep the pulps alive for this and future generations.” The PulpFest Web site adds that “All members of the pulp community, whether they plan to attend PulpFest 2013 or not, are welcome to nominate a deserving person for this year’s award.” Any ideas? The deadline for nominations is April 30.

• Can this really be? Today marks the 60th birthday of Los Angeles-born actress Kay Lenz, whose face was once very familiar on screens large and small. One of her childhood roles was on The Andy Griffith Show, but Lenz went on to appear in Ironside, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, McCloud, Nakia, Petrocelli, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, and numerous other TV series. She played a disturbed woman in the 1974 Peter Graves TV pilot, The Underground Man, and was cast as a mystified witness to a shooting in the 1979 Father Brown series pilot, Sanctuary of Fear. She also portrayed a withdrawn college student in the 1978 TV creepshow, The Initiation of Sarah. Lenz won an Emmy Award for her guest spot in “After It Happened,” an installment of the 1988-1991 NBC drama Midnight Caller. I probably remember her best, though, as a captivating, “free-spirited teenage runaway” in Clint Eastwood’s 1973 romantic film, Breezy, which also starred William Holden. (Watch the trailer here.) Happy birthday, Ms. Lenz!