Concluding Assessments

• Journalist and author Richard Hammer, who died on October 17 at age 93, is remembered for having penned what The New York Times says were “more than a dozen books explored crimes ranging from the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War to a securities fraud case involving the Vatican Bank …” In addition, though, as The Gumshoe Site notes, Hammer “won two fact-crime Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) for The Vatican Connection (Holt, 1982) and The CBS Murders (Morrow, 1987), and served as executive vice president of MWA (1995-1997). He also co-wrote (with Vincent Murano) two novels featuring NYPD detective Bob Rogers: The Thursday Club (Simon & Schuster, 1992) and The Dead File (St. Martin’s, 1996).”

• New York City-born character actor Italo Valentino “Val” Bisoglio, who made multiple appearances as restaurateur Danny Tovo on Quincy, M.E., died on October 18 of Lewy body dementia, aged 95. The International Movie Database (IMDb) credits Bisoglio with almost half a century's experience in films and on television, including roles in The Hindenburg (1975) and St. Ives (1976), and on such series as Longstreet, The Bold Ones, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Ironside, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, and Miami Vice. Bisoglio played his final TV part as Murf Lupo in three episodes of The Sopranos.

(Left) Gigi Garner announces her mother’s death on Twitter.

• Another significant passing: The former Lois Josephine Fleischman Clarke, who was married to film and TV star James Garner (Maverick, The Rockford Files) for 57 years—until his demise in 2014—died recently at age 98, according to their younger daughter, Gigi. Garner recalled in his 2011 memoir, The Garner Files, that he met Clarke (born on July 6, 1923) during an Adlai Stevenson-for-President rally in Los Angeles. “Stevenson lost,” he wrote, but “I won,” because that Democratic event gave the Oklahoma-born Garner the chance to strike up a conversation with the petite Clarke, a Southern California native. “The lovebirds didn’t waste any time: after two weeks of whirlwind romance, they tied the knot on August 17, 1956,” says a Web site called Fabiosa. “Although James’ family members and friends were skeptical about the marriage because of their contrasting backgrounds—he was a Methodist, she was Jewish—James and Lois didn’t care.” The couple endured difficulties during their long partnership (including two separations), yet they stayed together and reared two daughters, the elder of whom came from Clarke’s previous marriage. No public statement regarding Lois Garner’s cause of death has been released, as far as I can tell.

A Round of Cheers for Garner

Being a longtime fan of American film and TV performer James Garner (1928-2014), I was pleased to watch the rollout this week of a blogathon devoted to his life and career.

The organizer of said event, the anonymous Scottish woman behind Realweemidget Reviews, started things off on a fine note by interviewing the actor’s younger daughter, Greta “Gigi” Garner. They chatted briefly about the animal rescue charity that Gigi established in her father’s memory. Other bloggers posted tributes to Garner’s estimable work on small-screen series such as The Rockford Files and Maverick, and on movies ranging from Skin Game and Support Your Local Sheriff! to The Great Escape and Twilight.

Click here, here, and here to access all those many posts.

Bullet Points: Lots o’ Links Edition

• In The Rap Sheet’s last news wrap-up, I noted that Season 4 of Grantchester will premiere in the States this coming Sunday night, July 14, as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup. Now comes word, courtesy of The Killing Times, that ITV, the British network behind that cozyish historical crime series, has renewed Grantchester for yet another year. “The show’s fifth season,” says The Killing Times, “is set in 1957, the year Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the British people that they had ‘never had it so good.’ For many of the residents of Grantchester, it really will feel like they’re in a delightful new Eden, but for all the talk of paradise on earth and faith-in-action, Geordie Keating (Robson Green) knows that trouble is never far away.”

• American film director Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, The Black Dahlia, etc.) will release his first novel—to be published by Hard Case Crime—in March 2020, according to Entertainment Weekly. Titled Are Snakes Necessary?, and co-authored with Susan Lehman, the book is said to be a “‘a blistering political satire’ that doubles as a female revenge thriller.” Hard Case provides this plot brief:

When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should’ve known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator’s fixer. He’s already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman—how hard could this new one turn out to be? Pursued from Washington, D.C., to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn’t realize is that her life might be as well …

EW quotes Hard Case editor Charles Ardai as calling Are Snakes Necessary? “not just a great crime story, it’s a sharp, ruthless look at the state of affairs—both political and extramarital—in our turbulent modern era.” That certainly sounds promising.

• Margery Allingham’s renown lives on, thanks i part to a decision regarding the future of an annual short-story competition named after her. This note comes from Shotsmag Confidential: “The Margery Allingham Society has agreed with the [British] Crime Writers’ Association that the popular short mystery competition will run for at least another five years, until 2024. The Society, set up to honour and promote the writings of the great Golden Age author whose well-known hero is Albert Campion, works with the CWA to operate and fund the writing competition that opens for entries in the autumn on the CWA’s website and closes every February.” It was only this last May that the winner of the 2019 Margery Allingham Short Story Competition was announced: Ray Bazowski, for “A Perfect Murderer.”

• Blogger, genre historian, and author Curtis Evans seems more than moderately thrilled by news that Freeman Wills Crofts’ Golden Age mysteries starring Inspector French are the inspiration for a forthcoming TV series. “I have read the script of what is to be the first episode,” Evans explains in The Passing Tramp, “based on a Crofts novel which I write about extensively in my 2012 book about Crofts, John Street, and JJ Connington, and I am excited about the whole thing. Crofts readers will be able to tell just from this article that there are changes being made for the adaptation, changes which will be forthrightly aired here, but I think fans of the book will be pleased, as well as mystery fans more generally.” In a follow-up to that original post, Evans interviews Brendan Foley, the program’s writer.

• With Donald Trump’s outrageous and dangerous “nationwide immigration enforcement operation … targeting migrant families” apparently taking place this weekend—his latest ploy to gin up support among his radical base, no matter the damage it does to families as well as America’s reputation—it seems an appropriate time to point readers toward Oline H. Cogdill’s list of “mysteries that include immigrants in their solid plots.” Included among her choices are works by Ragnar Jónasson, Denise Hamilton, and Dennis Lehane.

• And while we’re on the subject of lists, check out Mystery Tribune’s picks of the “Top 10 Great Brazilian Crime Fiction Books.” Several of those works were composed by two authors well represented on my own bookshelves: Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza and Leighton Gage.

• Oh, and author John Galligan offers this CrimeReads piece identifying “8 Novels You Won’t Find in the Crime Section,” but that nonetheless belong there, given their subject matter. Yes, Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog (2013) is among them.

• HBO has chosen September 9 as the date on which its gritty George Pelecanos/David Simon-created drama series, The Deuce, will return for its third and final season. As Deadline explains, the show “chronicles the establishment of the porn industry in the decidedly pre-Disney Times Square of the early 1970s through legalization, the rise of HIV, the cocaine epidemic and the big business of the mid-1980s, with the changing real estate market about to bring the deadly party to a close.” James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal star.

• A premiere date has been set, too, for Stumptown, the ABC-TV detective series I wrote about not long ago. Based on graphic novels by Greg Rucka, this hour-long show stars Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, Friends from College) as Dex Parios, “a sharp-witted army veteran who becomes a private investigator in Portland, Oregon.” ABC will premiere Stumptown on September 25, at 10 p.m.

• Way to kick a dead man while he’s down! In its newest installment of a series revisiting Edgar Allan Poe Award winners from the past, Thomas Wickersham recalls The Rheingold Route, Arthur Maling’s 1979 “espionage novel without spies.” Wickersham remarks: “It is a pity when a book’s place in history is to languish all but forgotten besides its title on a list of awards. It is sadder still to revisit such a book and find that its place in obscurity is earned.” Maybe, though, as Wickersham himself suggests, The Rheingold Route “was a book of its time.” Back in ’79, Kirkus Reviews was much more generous to the novel, calling it “tautly plotted, distinctively populated, convincingly romantic—perfect material for a Hitchcock film or an all-in-one-sitting late-night read.” Author Maling passed away in 2013.

• The Staunch Prize, launched last year to salute thriller novels “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped, or murdered,” has been criticized recently by authors objecting to organizers’ insinuations that their fiction may bias rape juries and trials. In the UK’s Guardian, prize-winning author Sarah Hilary (Never Be Broken) calls the Staunch Prize “not a prize so much as a gagging order,” and she goes on to say: “Violence against women takes many forms, perhaps the most insidious of which is censorship. We’re discouraged from going to the police in case we’re not believed, taught to expect resistance to our version of events, silenced by shame or fear. This prize reinforces all those negative messages, and ignores the very real good that crime fiction can do by reflecting the violent reality of many women’s lives.” Meanwhile, Edinburgh’s Kaite Walsh (The Unquiet Heart), who was herself raped as a younger woman, opines: “I can’t write about a world without rape because I don’t live in one. I won’t sanitise my writing in service of some fictional, feminist utopia. And while I indulge in fictional universes that let me escape, write the world the way I wish it was, my work lies in marrying my imagination with the ugly truth, challenging myself to explore the friction in the places where they collide. I wanted to write someone whose story didn’t end with rape, or even begin with it—but included it as just another bump in the road that has to be dealt with, worked through and lived with.”

• I wouldn’t normally bother with the right-wing “news” site Breitbart. But Gigi Garner, daughter of the late actor James Garner, recommended this Independence Day Breitbart tribute to her father, which touts his 1974-1980 NBC-TV series The Rockford Files as “the most American television show ever made.” Contributor John Nolte lays out a variety of reasons why he believes Garner’s private eye, Jim Rockford, was “TV’s great American,” including:

He’s a gentleman and chivalrous to the ladies—a real Neanderthal who opens car doors, lights cigarettes, steps into harm’s way to protect them, and yet still treats them as equals.

He’s a reluctant hero who keeps his virtues to a minimum “because they’re easier to keep track of.” In other words, he’s not a pompous virtue-signaler. …

Above all, Jim Rockford is first, last, and always his own man. His independence, his unwillingness to conform to anyone’s idea of how he should live his life, work his profession, or bow to authority is as American as it gets. He doesn’t tell anyone else how to live their life, and as long as you don’t cross that busybody line with him, there won’t be a problem.

Nolte goes out of his way to suggest that Rockford was one of those government-hating “real Americans” Sarah Palin was always spouting off about. I wonder if he realizes Garner was a self-described “‘bleeding-heart liberal,’ one of those card-carrying Democrats that Rush Limbaugh thinks is a communist. And I’m proud of it.”

• OK, a show of hands: Who remembers actor George Kennedy’s 1975-1976 CBS-TV series, The Blue Knight, based on Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 novel of the same name? I just noticed that five of that program’s two-dozen episodes are available on YouTube. It’s best to watch them now, before they’re scrubbed from the site.

• Registration is already open for readers and writers hoping to attend the 2012 Left Coast Crime convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Guests of Honor that year will be novelists Mick Herron and Catriona McPherson. Don’t forget about LCC 2020, either, which is scheduled to be held in San Diego, California.

• In advance of the Veronica Mars TV revival series, which begins airing on July 26 on Hulu, the Web site Vox chooses the best and worst episodes from among the show’s original, 2004-2007 run; the 2014 film based on the program also joins the ranking. When you’re done reading through all of those, look back at Cameron Hughes’ 2008 piece about Veronica Mars, posted in The Rap Sheet.

• Finally, a belated (and posthumous) “happy birthday” to composer Earle Hagan, who “would have turned 100 years old on July 9,” as Variety notes. Among his many contributions to popular culture, Hagan gave us the themes for The Andy Griffith Show, I Spy, The Mod Squad, and The New Perry Mason.

Bullet Points: Thanksgiving Links Feast

• As part of its 2017 “New Talent November” celebration, Crime Fiction Lover identifies five women writers it predicts will become much better known over the coming year. Among them are Australia’s Jane Harper, whose debut novel, The Dry, won this year’s Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association; and American Hannah Tinti, who CFL says showed a “talent for almost old-fashioned, proper storytelling ... in her second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley [2017].” To keep up with the “New Talent November” series, which will run through the end of this month, click here.

• Deadline brings this news: “Carmen Ejogo is set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series, True Detective. The new installment of True Detective tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali plays the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.” Sounds good.

• There’s no shortage of Thanksgiving-related mysteries.

• You have to be of a certain age to understand what a big deal David Cassidy—who died this week at age 67—was in the early 1970s. The son of actor Jack Cassidy and the stepson of singer-vedette Shirley Jones, David Cassidy was the teen idol of the time. “With pretty-boy good looks and a long mane of dark hair, Cassidy was every girl’s favorite teen crush,” Variety wrote in its obituary of the New Jersey-born songster and guitarist. His featured role on the popular ABC-TV musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), which had him playing opposite Shirley Jones, gave Cassidy immense public exposure, while songs such as “I Think I Love You” made him a chart-topping sensation in his own right. “During an era when the Big Three broadcast networks still had a monolithic hold on pop culture, Cassidy’s picture was suddenly everywhere—not just on the fronts of magazines and record albums, but on lunch boxes, posters, cereal boxes and toys,” recalls National Public Radio (NPR). “He sold out concert venues across the globe, from New York’s Madison Square Garden to stadiums in London and Melbourne.” Following Partridge’s cancellation, Cassidy expanded his acting résumé (which had previously included turns on Ironside and The Mod Squad), making guest appearances on The Love Boat, Matt Houston, and even CSI. His performance as an undercover officer, Dan Shay, in a 1978 episode of NBC’s Police Story titled “A Chance to Live,” scored Cassidy an Emmy Award nomination for Best Dramatic Actor and led to his reprising the Shay role in David Cassidy: Man Undercover (1978-1979), a Los Angeles-set show that lasted only 10 episodes. But all was not well in his personal life. His six-year marriage to actress Kay Lenz (Breezy, The Underground Man), ended in divorce in 1983; he would wed twice more over the years. “In the 2010s,” NPR recalls, “he had a string of arrests on drunk-driving charges in Florida, New York and California. In 2014 he told CNN, ‘I am most definitely an alcoholic.’ The following year, he declared bankruptcy and was charged with a hit-and-run in Fort Lauderdale.” Wikipedia adds: “On February 20, 2017, Cassidy announced that he was living with non-Alzheimer’s dementia, the condition that his mother suffered from at the end of her life. He retired from performing in early 2017 when the condition became noticeable during a performance in which he forgot lyrics and otherwise struggled.” After being hospitalized in Florida for several days, David Cassidy perished from liver failure on November 21.

• Vox has more to say about Cassidy’s life and career.


(Above) The opening teaser and titles from “RX for Dying,” the December 21, 1978, episode of David Cassidy: Man Undercover.

• Lisa Levy looks at our modern “rape culture” and how it’s reflected in crime fiction. In a piece for Literary Hub, she writes:

[R]ape culture is everywhere in crime fiction. It is in every missing girl or woman. It is in every female cop protagonist who is slighted or doubted by her colleagues and her superiors. It’s in every P.I. novel with a woman at its center, as she negotiates a sexually hostile world to do her job. ... If crime fiction is a mirror of society that reveals our deepest and longest held fears, as I believe it is, then rape culture is one of those fears writ large in novels about men who violate women (sexually or otherwise). But it is also subtext in many, many other novels, where women are denigrated, pushed aside, ignored, hit on, groped, and verbally assaulted.

When I set out to look at rape culture in crime fiction, I found it everywhere. To take a very popular example, it’s no accident that the original title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Swedish translates to The Man Who Hated Women. One of the hallmarks of that series is heroine Lisbeth Salander’s repeated victimization at the hands of men, including her father and her court-appointed guardian, who raped her repeatedly when she was institutionalized as a child.

• In the blog Criminal Element, Con Lehane writes about his decision to set his latest series at New York City’s iconic 42nd Street Library. His second Raymond Ambler mystery, Murder in the Manuscript Room, is out just this week from Minotaur Books.

• Had Anthony Horowitz not done such a convincing job of capturing the character of British spy James Bond in his 2015 novel, Trigger Mortis, we’d probably not now be hanging on every Twitter update of his work on its sequel. But we’re doing just that, with the latest mere morsel, the latest crumb, the latest speck of information being showcased in The Spy Command. I sure hope Horowitz’s finished work rewards all this anticipation.

• In February of next year, Dynamite Entertainment will premiere a 40-page, one-shot James Bond comic spin-off that “centers on the head of the [British] Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI-6), Miles Messervy—we know him more famously as ‘M.’” As The Secret Agent Lair reports, “this incarnation of M is rather different from the source material as well as [from Ms] portrayed in the film franchise. Unlike the original Sir Miles Messervy, a full Anglo-Saxon, this version of M is British of African descent, much like Moneypenny herself in the comics as well as the rebooted 007 timeline of the movies.” The blog adds that the graphic novel, titled simply M, will “delve into [Messervy’s] past and his time in the field before his ascension to the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

• This month marks 15 years since the release of Die Another Day, the 20th James Bond film—and the fourth and final one to feature Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007. Commemorating this occasion, The Secret Agent Lair revisits the poster campaign that promoted that film back in 1997, observing that its imagery was “too flashy for today’s standards, where most action movies get the minimalistic and desaturated artwork treatment—the Daniel Craig-era posters, where the protagonist is set to rather insipid backgrounds, look like a strange cousin in comparison to these pieces. Yet, it is a heartfelt testimony to the days where the 007 films let the drama [run] for a couple of hours, and a cocktail of Martinis, girls and guns were … the order of the day.”

• Speaking of milestones, it was 13 years ago in September that the paperback book line Hard Case Crime was launched, with Lawrence Block’s Grifter’s Game and Max Phillips’ Fade to Blonde being its initial pair of releases. In an interview with small-press publisher Paul Suntup, Hard Case editor Charles Ardai reflects on his company’s history, the process of adding new titles to its hard-boiled catalogue, and the works that helped make it successful. He also reveals why Hard Case’s logo looks the way it does. “Initially,” Ardai explains, “we were going to call the line ‘Kingpin,’ which is why the logo features a crown over the gun. But the day before we went to register the trademark, TV producer Aaron Spelling beat us to the punch, registering it for a TV mini-series about a drug kingpin. So we scrapped the name and came up with ‘Hard Case Crime’ instead. But the logo felt so good and so right that we kept it, even though the crown no longer made any sense.”

• Max Allan Collins gives us an update on the status of his next Nate Heller novel, Do No Harm, which finds the Chicago-based private eye working the 1954 Sam Sheppard homicide case:

The process with Heller has remained largely the same since True Detective back in the early ’80s. I select the historical incident—usually a crime, either unsolved or controversially solved—and approach it as if I’m researching the definitive book on the subject. I never have a firm opinion on the case before research proper begins, even if I’ve read a little about it or seen movies or documentaries on the subject, just as somebody interested in famous true crimes. …

This time I changed my mind about who murdered Marilyn Sheppard, oh, a dozen times. I in part selected the case because it was a more traditional murder mystery than the political subjects of the last four Heller novels—sort of back to basics, plus giving me something that would be a little easier to do, since I was coming out of some health problems and major surgeries.

But it’s turned out to be one of the trickiest Heller novels of all. Figuring out what happened here is very tough. There is no shortage of suspects, and no shortage of existing theories. In addition, a number of the players are still alive (Sam Sheppard’s brother Stephen is 97) and those who aren’t have grown children who are, none of whom would likely be thrilled with me should I lay a murder at the feet of their deceased parents.

• Fascinating. I didn’t know that a film noir had been made from Steve Fisher’s 1941 novel, I Wake Up Screaming. Or that said movie, which was eventually retitled Hot Spot, starred Betty Grable (in a rare dramatic role), along with Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Nor was I aware that Fisher scripted the picture together with Dwight Taylor. I was privy to none of this until I happened across an apparently “unreleased trailer” to I Wake Up Screaming in Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist. Now I have to go out and find the full flick. (By the way, this film was remade in 1953 as Vicki.)

• The Lineup selects “35 gripping true-crime books from the last 55 year,” for those moments when you need creepiness in your life.

• Crime Fiction Lover briefs us on the Hull Noir festival, held this month in the Yorkshire town of Kingston Upon Hull (aka Hull).

• As I’ve made clear in a couple of previous “Bullet Points” posts (see here and here), I’m highly skeptical of plans to make a new film inspired by Ernest Tidyman’s succession of novels featuring 1970s-cool Manhattan private eye John Shaft. Nonetheless, Steve Aldous (whose 2015 book, The World of Shaft, is a must-have for fans of Tidyman’s yarns) keeps posting updates on the movie in his blog. Recently, for instance, he offered this synopsis of the picture’s plot: “Working for the FBI, estranged from his father and determined not to be anything like him, John Shaft Jr. reluctantly enlists his father’s help to find out who killed his best friend Karim and bring down a drug-trafficking/money-laundering operation in NYC.” Aldous adds that this film, presently titled Son of Shaft, is due to start production in December. Jessie T. Usher (Survivor’s Romance) has signed up to portray the aforementioned John Shaft Jr. … who is supposedly the child of Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft, from the awful 2000 film Shaft … who was, in turn, the nephew of Richard Roundtree’s original Shaft. Got all that?

• It was almost exactly two years ago that I reported on plans by Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI), a Toronto-based home video/television distribution company, to produce a DVD collection of James Franciscus’ 1971-1972 detective series, Longstreet. Only now, however, is the Web site TV Shows on DVD finally announcing the release of that boxed set. Although Amazon doesn’t yet show Longstreet: The Complete Series as being available for advance purchase, the $29.99 compilation is scheduled to ship on December 1, and will “contain the pilot telefilm and all 23 regular weekly episodes.” (Click here to buy it directly from VEI.) For those of you who don’t remember Franciscus’ fourth small-screen series (following Mr. Novak, which is being prepared for its own DVD rollout this coming spring), here’s TV Shows on DVD’s short explanation of its concept:

Following a bomb blast that leaves him blind and a widower, New Orleans insurance detective Mike Longstreet (James Franciscus) refuses to quit the business. Together with the help of his dog Pax, assistant Nikki [Marlyn Mason] and friend Duke [Peter Mark Richman], Longstreet continues to investigate thefts, kidnappings, and murders. … Bruce Lee made four guest appearances as Longstreet’s martial arts teacher.

• There’s still no word from Netflix on a U.S. debut date for Babylon Berlin, the much-heralded German drama “set in the seamy, steamy, scheming underworld of 1920s and ’30s Berlin.” While Americans wait, though, The Killing Times has begun reviewing each of the eight Season 1 episodes, currently being shown in Britain. So if, like me, you must hold tight in expectation of this program based on Volker Kutscher’s detective novels, at least you can read a little about the series’ unfurling plot lines and characters.

• Another series to watch for: The Indian Detective. Deadline says this show casts Indian-descended Canadian comedian Russell Peters as “Doug D’Mello, a Toronto cop who unexpectedly finds himself investigating a murder in his parents’ Indian homeland. The investigation leads Doug to uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving David Marlowe (William Shatner), a billionaire property developer, while dealing with his own ambivalence toward a country where, despite his heritage, he is an outsider.” Netflix will launch The Indian Detective on Tuesday, December 19. Canada’s National Post >says there are four episodes in Season 1.

• Also from Deadline comes word that the creators of Columbo, the long-running TV mystery series, are suing Universal City Studios for “holding out on profits from the series.” In a 15-page complaint filed earlier this month in the Los Angeles Superior Court, screenwriter/short-story author William Link, together with the estate of the late Richard Levinson, insist they are owed 15 percent to 20 percent of the Columbo profits, and that Universal took four decades to acknowledge “that they were owed profit participation.”

• James Garner, star of The Rockford Files, Maverick, and an impressive catalogue of films, died during the summer of 2014, but only now have I come across a long, beautifully penned tribute to his work, composed by critic Clive James and published in The Atlantic in 2011, at the time the actor’s memoir, The Garner Files, reached bookstores. Here’s part of what James had to say:

Every sane person’s favorite modern male movie star, Garner might have done even better if he’d been less articulate. In his generation, three male TV stars made it big in the movies: Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Garner. All of them became stars in TV Westerns: McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, Eastwood in Rawhide, and Garner in Maverick. The only one of them who looked and sounded as if he enjoyed communicating by means of the spoken word was Garner. McQueen never felt ready for a film role until he had figured out what the character should do with his hands: that scene-stealing bit in his breakout movie, The Magnificent Seven, in which he shakes the shotgun cartridges beside his ear, was McQueen’s equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy, or of a practice session for a postatomic future in which language had ceased to exist.

As for Eastwood, he puts all that effort into gritting his teeth, because his tongue is tied. …

Garner, a quick study who could learn and deliver speeches long enough to make his awed listeners hold their breath to the breaking point, was the only one who seemed to enjoy producing intelligible noise. But Garner, compared with the other two, never really caught on as a big-screen leading man. Though tall and handsome, he was never remote: he had an air of belonging down here with us. As a small-screen leading man, he had done too thorough a job with the 20 or 30 good lines in every episode of Maverick or The Rockford Files to make an easy transition into a putatively larger medium that gave him many times more square feet of screen to inhabit, but many times less to say.

You can read James’ remarks in their entirety by clicking here.

• Finally, because the season is right for it, I want to give thanks to all of you who regularly read The Rap Sheet. You’ll never know how much your attention, loyalty, and comments mean to me.

Scanning the Web

• As part of its 2017 “Classics in September” celebration, Crime Fiction Lover has posted this terrific piece, by Jeremy Megraw, revisiting Raymond Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe yarn, The Big Sleep. “Although forged from Black Mask’s tough-guy mold,” Megraw observes, “Chandler’s Marlowe is a far cry from Hammett’s iconic blond satan, Sam Spade, who wades indifferently through the mean streets of crime and carnage. Marlowe is tempered by distinct morals. In the steamy, corrupt heart of 1930s Los Angeles, he is a shining knight striving to do the right thing. He is synonymous with the dark sensibility that thrived in Black Mask and was canonized forever in the popular imagination by Humphrey Bogart on film, but Marlowe is a bit more evolved. The contemplative dick plays chess, listens to classical music, and is comfortable with his feminine side. A fastidious dresser, Marlowe’s discerning eye extends to fashion, architecture, and interior design. He is the very model of the metrosexual detective—ahead of his time—in the burgeoning urban sprawl of L.A.” Click here to read the other entries in Crime Fiction Lover’s extensive series.

• Ngaio Marsh Awards organizer Craig Sisterson has launched a month-long blog tour to celebrate this year’s contenders for those prizes. The tour began in Liz Loves Books, with The Rap Sheet scheduled to take part this coming Sunday, September 10. Follow the day-to-day progress of the venture on Facebook or on Twitter.

• The September edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column is currently available for your consideration.

• In her latest podcast, Speaking of Mystery’s Nancie Clare interviews Sheena Kamal, author of the debut crime novel, The Lost Ones.

• I didn’t even know there was an interesting story behind the wristwatch James Garner wore on The Rockford Files. But a blog called Calibre 11 brings it directly to us.

• To accompany today’s release of Legacy of Spies (Viking), the latest entry in John le Carré’s George Smiley series, David Cranmer has put together an excellent primer covering that fictional master espionage agent’s eight previous adventures.

• Since we’re on the subject, let me also point you toward Terry Gross’ fascinating interview with the 85-year-old le Carré, conducted for her National Public Radio show, Fresh Air.

• The Spy Command picks up on a rumor, spread by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, that the next James Bond film “may rework the plot of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).” “‘Bond quits the secret service, and he’s in love and gets married,’ Page Six said. ‘The [Hollywood] source continues that “his wife then gets killed,” bringing Bond back into action.’” In a subsequent post, The Spy Command muses over whether remaking OHMSS might actually be a good idea.

• People like me, who are way behind in their reading of Georges Simenon’s extensive literary oeuvre, really ought to take note of Spanish blogger José Ignacio Escribano’s regular efforts to review that French author’s Inspector Maigret novels.

• With the sixth and final season of Longmire set to be released on Netflix this month, actor Lou Diamond Phillips—who plays Henry Standing Bear on the show—gives Cowboys & Indians a slight preview of what viewers should expect from the season’s 10 episodes.

• Meanwhile, it has been announced that cable-TV network HBO wants a third season of its oft-praised but uneven crime drama, True Detective, with Mahershala Ali (House of Cards) starring as Wayne Hays, “a detective from northwest Arkansas.” TV Insider reports: “Series creator Nic Pizzolatto is helming the new season and has written all the episodes for Season 3 except for the fourth episode which he co-wrote with David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue) … The next entry in the anthology series ‘tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods.’”

• Amazing! A month after I questioned the methodology employed by aggregator Feedspot in developing its “best blogs” lists, I find that The Rap Sheet has suddenly been added to that site’s catalogue of the “Top 50 Mystery Blogs and Websites for Mystery Lovers and Authors.” You’ll find it in the No. 16 position, behind author Joanna Fluke’s blog, but just ahead of Reviewing the Evidence. At least this time, Feedspot correctly states that The Rap Sheet produces “about 5 posts per week,” which is better than can be said for the site’s previous Rap Sheet mention, in its “Top 50 Crime Novel Blogs” tally, which suggested our frequency was about “about 1 posts [sic] per week.”

Bullet Points: Finally, a Mother’s Day Edition

• Author Harper Lee passed away more than a year ago, but the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction lives on. As Mystery Fanfare notes, this commendation—“established in 2011 by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird”—“is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.” Chosen from among 25 entries, the three finalists are:

— Gone Again, by James Grippando (Harper)
— The Last Days of Night, by Graham Moore (Random House)
— Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine)

A panel of four judges has been tasked with choosing the ultimate winner, though the results of an online public poll are also to be weighed in the final decision. You can vote for your favorite among the three books above by clicking here; voting will remain open until Friday, June 30, at 11:59 p.m. CT. (At last check, Grippando’s Gone Again was leading this reader survey.) I don’t see a specific date on which the award is to be presented, but a press release says it will be handed out at the University of Alabama School of Law “for the first time. The winner will be announced prior to the ceremony and will receive a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee.”

• Although I don’t know how she keeps up the energy to do this, B.V. Lawson produces an excellent and consistent weekly wrap-up of crime-fiction-related news in her blog, In Reference to Murder. On occasion, I feel the need to poach interesting things from those columns, such as these two successive items:

Dr. Mary Brown, writing for The Scotsman, made the case for neglected author John Buchan, only known today because of his First World War adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and his great character, Major-General Sir Richard Hannay. However, Edinburgh-based publisher ­Polygon recently announced plans for a new installment, with Dundee-born author Robert J. ­Harris
penning the continuation novel The Thirty-One Kings, [due for release this coming October], the first new Hannay book for more than 80 years. If successful, a series featuring Major-General Hannay could follow.

While we’re on the subject of continuation novels, New Zealand author Stella Duffy talked about the tricky art of completing an abandoned Ngaio Marsh mystery novel [the 1940s Roderick Alleyn tale Money in the Morgue].

• Mike Ripley’s May edition of his Shots column, “Getting Away with Murder,” includes remarks about a wide variety of intriguing subjects: Lee Child’s collection of Jack Reacher short stories, No Middle Name (set to go on sale this week); the TV series based on Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor tales; new works by James Runcie, Tony Park, Dennis Lehane, and Steve Cavanagh; a posthumous James Bond-inspired novel by Donald E. Westlake, and much more. Read all about it here.

• With a sixth Mission: Impossible film currently in production (and due for wide release in July 2018), The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig posts a short retrospective on the man “without whom none of it would be impossible, M:I creator Bruce Geller.” He writes: “Geller died almost four decades ago in a crash of a twin-engine aircraft. It was a sudden end for someone who had brought two popular series to the air (M:I and Mannix) that ran a combined 15 years on CBS. [Geller] was a renaissance man capable of writing, producing, directing and song writing.” Click here to learn more about Geller.

• The Verge reports that California writer Andy Weir, who made it big with his debut science-fiction novel, The Martian (adapted as a 2015 movie of the same name), is coming out in November of this year with a second book—a crime thriller set on Earth’s moon, titled Artemis (Crown). That lunar environment has backdropped previous works of mystery and mayhem (think Anthony O’Neill’s The Dark Side, for instance, or Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Retrieval Artist). However, The Verge’s Andrew Liptak says Weir is “hoping for blockbuster success” with Artemis, which he says focuses on “a young woman named Jasmine Bashara (known as Jazz), who lives in the Moon’s only city, Artemis. If you’re not wealthy, living there isn’t easy, and she gets by as a smuggler. When she comes across the chance to commit the perfect crime, she steps into a bigger struggle for control of the city.” Film rights to Artemis have already been purchased.

• Also from The Verge comes this: BBC-TV is planning “a three-part series based on H.G. Wells’ [1898] novel, The War of the Worlds:

The show is scheduled to go into production next spring, and it appears that, unlike most modern adaptations, it will be set in the Victorian era. The series will be written by screenwriter Peter Hartness, who adapted Susanna Clarke’s Victorian-era fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for the network, as well as a handful of Doctor Who episodes. The North-West Evening Mail has some additional details, quoting Mammoth Studios Managing Director of Productions Damien Timmer as saying that while the film has been adapted many times, “no one has ever attempted to follow Wells and locate the story in Dorking at the turn of the last century.” The project was first announced in 2015, and today’s confirmation of production comes only months after the book entered the public domain.

• Even 43,000 years ago, humans were murdering each other.

• Congratulations to blogger Les Blatt, who observes that his Classic Mysteries podcast “has reached a milestone of sorts. This week’s audio review of John Rhode’s Body Unidentified is podcast 520 in the series. I have been doing a weekly podcast review every week, and this one is number 520—the number of weeks in ten years.” Wow! The last couple of years’ worth of excellent episodes can be enjoyed here.

• I was saddened to hear earlier this month that 78-year-old American sportswriter and novelist Frank Deford has decided to retire from his gig as a commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program after 37 years on the job. The Associated Press reported on May 3 that “Deford gave his 1,656th and final commentary on NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday, ending a run of what he calls ‘little homilies’ that began in 1980. He thanked NPR for allowing him to choose his topics and allowing him ‘to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture.’” Although I am no sports fan, I have enjoyed listening to Deford’s gravelly voiced reflections for many years. If my memory can be relied upon, I started noticing them around the time he became the editor-in-chief of a short-lived (but fondly remembered) tabloid paper called The National. Their topics were always sports-related, though they tended often to incorporate larger themes about life and modern society. You can catch up with Deford’s closing report and many of his previous ones here.

• I don’t think anything will make me attractive again (if I ever was), but according to eHarmony UK, being a reader should do the trick—“especially if you’re a man. The popular online dating site notes that men who listed reading as one of their interests received 19% more messages, while women readers received a 3% bump in communication,” explains the BookBub blog, adding: “Regardless of what you read, eHarmony reports that bibliophiles are considered to be more intellectually curious than non-readers and have an easier time building open and trusting relationships.”

• Why do we love the smell of old books?

• In a piece for The Guardian, Mark Lawson follows up this page’s recent post about former President Bill Clinton throwing in with James Patterson to compose a political thriller novel called The President Is Missing, noting that “special relationships between politicians and political novelists” have been quite common on both sides of the Atlantic. “So,” he explains, “Clinton, in co-authoring fiction, is making official a long informal arrangement. Politicians co-operate partly because they tend to be keen thriller-readers—perhaps an adrenaline-raising genre suits the temperament of those who seek power—but also because they can reveal details and incidents in the knowledge that they will be untraceably disguised, and which could not be confided to journalists or the ghost-writers of their memoirs. In this respect, Clinton might run the risk that every scene in The President Is Missing will be assumed to have happened to him.”

• Ben Terrall, the youngest child of crime novelist Robert Terrall, aka Robert Kyle (1914-2009), has penned a review for January Magazine of three recent books that show the darker, more diabolical side of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

• I’m always wary of pointing readers toward videos that suddenly show up on YouTube, because that Web site has the annoying habit of removing content whenever a film or TV company complains about copyright infringement—even when what has been posted is small and insignificant. But I would be doing Rap Sheet readers a serious disservice if I didn’t mention that the 1998 HBO-TV film Poodle Springs—based on the 1989 novel of that name, begun by Raymond Chandler and finished by Robert B. Parker—is now waiting for your attention on YouTube. I’ve heard mixed reviews of this production starring James Caan as Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, but since I have never had a chance to see it before, it’s a sure bet I’ll be watching soon!

• Speaking of YouTube, I’ve recently made a few additions to The Rap Sheet’s page on that popular video site. Look for the main title sequences to the Scottish crime drama Shetland, William Conrad’s classic Cannon, the short-lived Burt Reynolds series Hawk, and Stephen J. Cannell’s oddball Broken Badges from 1990-1991. There are many more here.

• Nancie Clare’s latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries is Avery Duff, whose first novel, Beach Lawyer, “explores the dark side of sunny Santa Monica,” California. Get an earful of their conversation here.

• The program for the Deadly Ink conference, set to take place in Rockaway, New Jersey, during the weekend of June 16-18, has been announced. Those festivities will include a presentation of the 2017 David Award to one of five nominees.

• If you’ve hesitated to start watching Season 3 of the Amazon TV series Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling police procedurals and starring Titus Welliver, then perhaps you need some incentive from this piece in Criminal Intent, which contends that “Bosch has transformed television mystery.” English professor Andy Adams goes on to argue: “For the first time, viewers can experience the closest approximation to a mystery novel as is possible on screen. The pacing, development of the characters, complexity of the plot, simultaneous themes, and detailed touches make Bosch the template for 21st-century mystery television.” Season 3 debuted in April and comprises 10 episodes. The show has already been renewed.

• Standards of U.S. presidential behavior have seriously slumped under Trump. The New York Times offers this “handy reference list” of new standards for Republicans to consult “should they ever feel tempted to insist on different standards for another president.”

• Melissa McCarthy does do a fabulous Sean Spicer!

• With the cult series Twin Peaks set to return to television next weekend, following a quarter-century absence, the timing of Michael Parks’ demise at age 77 could hardly have been more unfortunately timed. Parks—who starred in the 1969-1970 NBC-TV adventure drama Then Came Bronson before taking guest roles on series from Get Christie Love! and Ellery Queen to Fantasy Island and The Colbys—enjoyed a career revival when he was cast in the original Twin Peaks, playing a murderous French-Canadian drug-runner by the name of Jean Renault. In the decades since, recalls Deadline Hollywood, Parks “would appear in [director Quentin] Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill films, Django Unchained, the Tarantino/[Robert] Rodriguez [picture] Grindhouse, Kevin Smith’s Red State and Tusk, and Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, among others.” Blogger Toby O’Brien’s offers video clips of Parks’ work in Inner Toob.

• Capitalizing on Twin Peaks’ return, Seattle Met magazine has assembled this daytrip plan for fans who want to get a first-hand look at the area around tiny North Bend, Washington, which served as a setting for David Lynch’s original series.

• And I can’t argue with this assessment, from the Classic Film and TV Café, of the 1969 private-eye film Marlowe: “At first blush, James Garner may not seem like the ideal Philip Marlowe. But in screenwriter Stirling Silliphant’s update of [Raymond] Chandler’s The Little Sister (1949), Garner channels his dry wit into an enjoyable, effective performance. It’s just a shame that the producers selected one of the lesser Marlowe novels for their movie.”

You’ve Gotta Love It

I don’t usually think of Rockford Files star James Garner as singing or dancing, yet in the clip below he is doing both rather adeptly. This performance of “Hooray for Love” comes from Bing Crosby’s March 2, 1959, TV special and also features songstress Jo Stafford.

Bullet Points: Eve of Haunts Edition

• Online voting has begun in the contest for the 2014 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. There are seven categories of nominees, but the one that may interest Rap Sheet readers most is the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year. Here are the contenders:

-- Unravelling Oliver, by Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland)
-- The Kill, by Jane Casey (Ebury Publishing)
-- The Final Silence, by Stuart Neville (Harvill Secker)
-- Can Anybody Help Me?, by Sinead Crowley (Quercus)
-- The Secret Place, by Tana French (Hachette Books Ireland)
-- Last Kiss, by Louise Phillips (Hachette Books Ireland)

Choose your favorites here. I don’t see anything about this competition being restricted to Irish citizens, but note that the voting will close at midnight on November 21.

• Unbidden but nonetheless willing, John Harvey--whose recent Charlie Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, I appreciated so much--has put together a list of what he says are his 25 favorite crime novels. “It will immediately become clear there are exceptions: no Hammett, no Chandler nor other ‘classic’ crime--so obvious that to mention them was, to my mind, unnecessary; and some writers--Michael Connelly would serve as an example--are not there on the grounds that the stream of their work is so strong, I would find it impossible to lift one prime example from the rest.” Among the novels that did merit inclusion are Megan Abbott’s The End of Everything, Kent Anderson’s Night Dogs, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss. You’ll find all of Harvey’s picks here.

• Who remembers the 1979 TV series A Man Called Sloane? My only recollection is that star Robert Conrad left another series, Stephen J. Cannell’s The Duke, after only a handful of episodes in order to play freelance spy Thomas R. Sloane III in this nearly as short-lived Quinn Martin production. Writer Christopher Mills, though, appreciated Sloane enough to compose an episode-by-episode series of posts in a blog called Spy-fi Channel. That blog is now defunct, but Mills is in the midst of revising those Sloane posts (“editing them a bit and adding a few new thoughts and observations”) for another of his blogs, Atomic Pulp and Other Meltdowns. Keep up with his series here.

• The latest update of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is now live. It includes editor Kevin Burton Smith’s “spontaneous tribute” to the late Rockford Files star, James Garner, and expanded entries on characters ranging from Stryker McBride and Joey Fly to Yakov Semenovich Stern and Steve Allen’s Los Angeles gumshoe, Roger Dale. Smith also brings the welcome news that Thrilling Detective finally has “a decent search engine,” which you can access here.

• I must admit, I envy author-educator Art Taylor for his recent opportunity to interview Otto Penzler on behalf of the Los Angeles Review of Books. They had a nice long talk about editor Penzler’s work on a couple of new short-story collections, The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century (which I reviewed here) and The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries. Penzler also clues Taylor in on what he’s been working on “since January”: another major compilation, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

• Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) asks, in Criminal Element, why Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) hasn’t received more attention over the years--why has it “slipped through the cracks of popular reading?” He suggests it’s “because nothing can live up to the Great American Novel--Huckleberry Finn--that preceded it. Ernest Hemingway famously said, ‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.’ No such praise met Tom Sawyer: Detective, with the British Guardian’s original review harshly noting, ‘The whole story is poorly conceived and badly put together.’”

• Although I’ve missed the actual anniversary, I still want to bring attention to the fact that last week the Paul Newman-Robert Redford picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid marked 45 years since its general release on October 24, 1969. I’ve watched that romantic adventure many times, and hope for multiple more viewings. It’s just a fantastic film, with one of the best knife-fight scenes ever!

• There are now only two weeks left before the start of Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach. In his BOLO Books blog, Kristopher Zgorski offers a selection of interesting “non-panel-related activities which will be happening during the conference.” Those include the “Author Speed Dating” event scheduled to be held at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 13, during which more than 100 authors will “pitch” their books to Bouchercon attendees, hoping to attract new readers.

• Haven’t registered for Bouchercon? You can still do it here.

• Apparently, author Max Allan Collins (for whom the adjective “prolific” seems to have been invented) composed the liner notes for a new eight-CD set called Jazz on Fillm: Crime Jazz. He describes the line-up of pieces as “astonishing”: “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Checkmate,” “Shotgun Slade,” “The Naked City,” “Richard Diamond,” “Bourbon Street Beat,” “M-Squad,” “The Untouchables,” “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “Staccato” and “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”--“both the TV series soundtrack and the music from the rare Stan Purdy ‘Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story’ LP,” Collins explains. A list of the musicians represented in this CD set is here.

• Patricia Highsmith--comic book writer?

• One of my fellow Kirkus Reviews bloggers, John DeNardo, this week posted a list of “10 Things This Fan Was Surprised to Learn About Science Fiction.” I was no less taken aback by one of his factoids:

Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land is about a man named Valentine Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars. The story concerns Smith’s trip to Earth and his first-ever interaction with Earth culture. The book is considered one of the most popular science-fiction novels of all time. What surprised me was learning that in 1968, the book inspired a man to found a Neopagan religious organization modeled after the religion founded by Smith in the novel, the beliefs of which include polyamory, social libertarianism and non-mainstream family structures.

You learn something new (and maybe weird) every day, I guess.

• I’m not convinced that we really need a new, American version of Wire in the Blood, the British ITV series that ran from 2002 to 2008 and was based on Val McDermid’s novels about a university clinical psychologist who works with police on serial-killer cases. Yet Crimespree Magazine brings word that ABC-TV is developing such a program with the help of a couple of veterans from the underappreciated Detroit 1-8-7. I know I’ve asked this before (and I shall probably ask it again in the future), but why can’t Hollywood come up with new ideas, rather than recycling old ones?

• This doesn’t sound good: In Reference to Murder reports that “CBS reduced the episode order for CSI to 18 episodes, down from 22. The show is in its 15th season, and this is the first time the drama will have produced less than a full season of episodes.”

• While looking back on the 1959 thriller Night Without End, Vintage Pop Fictions remarks that its author, Alistair MacLean, “does not deserve the relative oblivion into which he has fallen.” I made that same point last year in this piece for Kirkus Reviews.

• Brian Drake interviews Anonymous-9 (aka Elaine Ash) on the subject of Bite Harder, the sequel to her 2013 novel, Hard Bite.

• Finally, since tomorrow is Halloween, I’d be remiss in not linking you up with a few associated postings around the Web. TopTenz chooses the “Top 10 Most Haunted Cities in America,” while The Bowery Boys--an excellent New York City history blog--looks back at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stunning announcement, in April 1922, of “an extraordinary discovery--the existence of ectoplasm, the ghostly goo that emits from mediums possessed with the spirits of the dead.” Publishers Weekly tries to identify “The 10 Best Ghost Stories,” but both The Poisoned Martini and Too Much Horror Fiction have other suggestions. Terence Towles Canote rounds up his favorite horror film postings from A Shroud of Thoughts, while Vintage45’s Blog revisits Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1971 British TV program about a London private eye whose late partner is still helping him solve crimes--a show I previously wrote about here. And since this post can’t be completely serious, check out Cracked History’s eye-catching rundown of the “10 Sexiest Halloween Costumes.”

Reflecting on Garner’s Life and Career

Two days after James Garner’s death at age 86, accolades continue to roll in for this charismatic actor who seemed to bear the weight of stardom with such grace and humility.

Charles P. Pierce (no relation) writes on the Esquire site:

[W]hat connected Brett [sic] Maverick with Jim Rockford, and what allowed Garner to send convention for a loop was the fact that, while not being cowards, both Brett and Jim were unconvinced that violence was necessarily a part of being either a Western hero or a private eye. They never saw the logic in it. This doesn't make sense. Somebody might get hurt here. And it might be me. QED, let's try to think our way out of this mess. It took a rare actor to turn that trick without appearing either cowardly or unpleasantly conniving.

After acknowledging Garner’s “crucial” role in the 1969 film Marlowe, an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Little Sister (“The script wasn't vintage noir--there was a martial arts scene--and Garner was not exactly Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but he was droll and melancholy”), Britain’s Guardian newspaper notes that

His second breakthrough came in 1974, when Huggins still in the business, assigned a pilot script to the writer Stephen J. Cannell, who decided to break as many rules of the TV private-eye genre as he could. The obvious casting was Garner: Jim Rockford, the ex-prisoner hero of The Rockford Files, was a downmarket Marlowe, with no office but his mobile home at the beach, an answering machine instead of a secretary. His gun was stored in the biscuit jar. Rockford had a paunch from tacos and beers; he was lazy; and, except for his retired trucker dad, he knew mostly bums, losers and put-upon LAPD cops.

As Maverick had done, the series pushed the televisually possible further. Storylines could be serious--Garner was proud of an episode based on a New Yorker investigation into the grand jury system, so acute that it helped change the law. But it was the sense of a weird Los Angeles, sundried as a lizard up canyon roads, that was new and different. Critics panned it, but the first season was a ratings hit; then [co-creator Roy] Huggins was pushed out, and Garner confronted Universal Television over an enforced change in tone. Rockford lost 20% of its audience but continued for five seasons (Garner won his Emmy in 1977); then it ended suddenly in the sixth season, when Garner told the crew on location that he was exhausted and had no intention of dying early, and walked out.

Garner grew up in Oklahoma, so it’s natural that the state’s major newspaper, The Oklahoman, should devote space to celebrating his long career. Its obituary is here, but the paper also offers a more in-depth look at the actor’s life here. Written by entertainment editor Gene Triplett, the article draw heavily on The Garner Files, the 2011 memoir Garner wrote with Jon Winokur, but notes some discoveries Winokur made while collaborating on that book:

“I had no idea how extensive (Garner’s Korean [War] service) was,” Winokur said in a recent phone interview. “He was in a unit that was thrown into the front lines when the Chinese Communists crossed the 38th Parallel in 1951, and his unit was the first thing they ran into, and they were decimated. They had something like 60 percent casualties in a very short time, and (Garner) was wounded a couple of times … and got a Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster, which he never talked about very much.” …

Another revelation for the author, from interviews with Garner’s friends and associates, was “the number of people whose lives he has enhanced through his generosity. … Something that came up again and again was how tremendously generous he is, both financially and in other ways.”

(Click here to see The Oklahoman’s front-page tribute to Garner.)

Eric Deggans writes in National Public Radio’s Monkey See blog:

I didn’t know, watching Isaac Hayes push James Garner around on The Rockford Files, that I was seeing a special character continue an important television legacy.

All I knew, as a devoted fan of Garner’s put-upon private eye, was that Jim Rockford seemed like a kind of hero you never saw anywhere else on television.

Perpetually strapped for cash and working a case that wasn’t likely to change that situation, Rockford was a wrongly imprisoned ex-con who cloaked his heroism in a cynic’s quips and world-weary attitude (Hayes was a physically intimidating fellow ex-con who always mispronounced his name as “Rockfish”).

“Rockfish” rarely pulled a gun or won a fight with his fists--which could be a little frustrating to those of us weaned on more, say, direct TV private eyes like Mannix or Shaft. Instead, he maneuvered among a seedy universe of corrupt cops and crooks, lame hustlers and earnest victims, using his street smarts and an unerring sense of justice to save the day.

He wasn’t an anti-hero as much as an “unhero”; a regular Joe with a sardonic sense of humor who stepped up when he was needed.

CelebStoner mentions Garner’s support of legalizing marijuana:

“I don’t know where I’d be without it,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir, The Garner Files. “It opened my mind to a lot of things, and now its active ingredient, THC, relaxes me and eases my arthritis pain.”

And this story from The Washington Post’s obituary is one that I’ve heard before, but it is worth repeating here:

Mr. Garner said he most valued collegiality on the set, and it tended to bring out his best performances. One case he cited was “Murphy’s Romance.”

Co-star [Sally] Field told a CBS News reporter of the making of that movie, “He’s so profoundly sexy, and maybe the best kiss I ever had in my life, which was on camera, believe it or not.”

Mr. Garner replied, “I think she’s had a very sheltered life. I mean, poor baby, if that’s the best.”

Thinking further, he added, “I’ve had a couple of them say that. I might not be a bad kisser at all.”

UPDATE I: I want to add another voice to this chorus of praise. In A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence Towles Canote writes:

What always appealed to me about James Garner was that while he was incredibly handsome and charming, at the same time he seemed entirely approachable. Unlike many movie stars James Garner came off as “just one of the guys.” I always imagined that if someone met Mr. Garner in a bar that he or she could sit down with him and talk about the weather, sports, television, and all of the other things about which everyday people talk. Indeed, James Garner treated acting as if it was simply another job. In his memoir, The Garner Files he wrote of acting, “Be on time, know your words, hit your marks, and tell the truth. I don’t have any theories abut acting, and I don’t think about how to do it, except that an actor shouldn’t take himself too seriously, and shouldn’t try to make acting something it isn’t.”

While James Garner may have treated acting as just another job, there can be no doubt that he was great at it. While he will forever be remembered as Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, he played a wide variety of roles throughout his career. Many of them were similar to his two best-known roles, men who preferred to use their wits instead of their fists. There is a marked similarity between Bret Maverick, Jim Rockford, Lt. Hendley of The Great Escape, and Jason McCullough of Support Your Local Sheriff. And while Mr. Garner played such charming rogues well, he was equally adept at the sometimes very different roles he played. He played tough as nails lawman Wyatt Earp not once, but twice, and did so convincingly (once in Hour of the Gun and once in Sunset). And while most of the characters James Garner played were nice guys, he was capable of playing characters who were not so nice. In the television movie Barbarians at the Gate he played real-life millionaire F. Ross Johnson. Like many of James Garner’s characters, real-life F. Ross Johnson is charming, but at the same time he had no problems with thousands of Nabisco employees losing jobs if it made him millions of dollars.

UPDATE II: Meanwhile, author Max Allan Collins remembers the influence Garner had on both his life and work:

Garner’s comic touch was present in much of his work, and of course Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford were essentially the same character. And no matter what literary influences they may cite, my generation of private-eye writers and the next one, too, were as influenced by The Rockford Files as by Hammett, Chandler or Spillane. The off-kilter private eye writing of Huggins and Stephen Cannell made a perfect fit for Garner’s exasperated everyman approach, but it was just notes on a page without the actor’s musicianship.

Not that Garner couldn’t play it straight--he was, in my opinion, the screen’s best Wyatt Earp in Hour of the Gun, and as early as The Children’s Hour and as late as The Notebook he did a fine job minus his humorous touch. But it’s Maverick and Rockford--and the scrounger in The Great Escape, the less-than-brave hero of [The] Americanization of Emily, and his underrated Marlowe--that we will think of when Garner’s name is mentioned or his face appears like a friendly ghost in our popular culture. …

Like all of us, Garner was a flawed guy, though I would say mildly flawed. Provoked, his easygoing ways flared into a temper and he even punched people out (not frequently) in a way Bret Maverick wouldn’t. He never quite came to terms with how important Roy Huggins had been to the creation of his persona, and essentially fired him off Rockford after one season. The lack of Huggins and/or Cannell on Bret Maverick was probably why it somehow didn’t feel like real Maverick.

Garner had great loyalty to his friends, however, and as a Depression-era blue collar guy who kind of stumbled into acting, he never lost a sense of his luck or seemed to get too big a head. He resented being taken advantage of and took on the Hollywood bigwigs over money numerous times, with no appreciable negative impact on his career. He was that good, and that popular.

When he gave a rare interview, Garner displayed intelligence but no particular wit, and it could be disconcerting to see that famed wry delivery wrapped around bland words. Yet no one could convey humor--from a script--with more wry ease than Jim Garner. Perhaps he was funny at home and on the golf course and so on. Or maybe he was just a great musician who couldn’t write a note of music to save his life.

It doesn’t matter. Not to me. He influenced my work--particularly Nate Heller--as much as any writer or any film director. He was a strong, handsome hero with a twist of humor and a mildly exasperated take on life’s absurdities. I can’t imagine navigating my way through those absurdities, either in life or on the page, without having encountered Bret Maverick at an impressionable age.

READ MORE: “James Garner: 1928-2014,” by Ronald Tierney (Life, Death, and Fog); “James Garner, 1928-2014: Remembering Rockford,” by Craig McDonald; “Remembering James Garner and The Rockford Files,” by Julia Buckley (Mysterious Musings); “James Garner, R.I.P.,” by Mitchell Hadley (It’s About TV); “Tribute: James Garner, 1928-2014,” by Christopher Lyons (The Westlake Review); “James Garner: Cowboy, Soldier, Detective, Astronaut, Race Car Driver,” by Susan King (Los Angeles Times); “Yeah, Look, Jimmy: 7 Reasons We Loved James Garner in The Rockford Files,” by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper (Today); “James Garner: R.I.P. Rockford, You Maverick” (The Scott Rollins Film and TV Trivia Blog); “James Garner Was the Perfect Fit in Rockford Files,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times); “An Ode to Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine,” by Helen A.S. Popkin (ReadWrite); “So Long, Jimbo: James Garner 1928-2014,” by Kevin Burton Smith (The Thrilling Detective Web Site); “In Praise of James Garner,” by Kim Messick.