Bullet Points: Hunkered Down Edition

It’s been more than a couple of months since I’ve taken on the task of  compiling crime-fiction news bits that don’t necessarily merit posts of their own ... which means I have a lot of information to impart. Fortunately, Seattle is heavily socked in with snow today, so I have little interest in spending much time outside in the cold. Better to snug in with a cup of coffee and my computer keyboard. Let us begin ...

• Lisbeth Salander fans, take note: BookRiot reports that “An unseen investigation by Stieg Larsson, the late journalist and author of the Millennium Trilogy, has come to light and will be revealed in a new true-crime book. Larsson was a leading expert on antidemocratic, right-wing, extremist organizations.” The site goes on to synopsize the plot of the new book, which is due out from AmazonCrossing in October:

On February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead in Stockholm. The crime is still unsolved today. It’s now known that Larsson began his own investigation into the assassination—continuing the search until his own death. In 2014, journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jan Stocklassa gained access to the 20 boxes of Larsson’s research into the case.

To quote from an Amazon press release:

In The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin, Stocklassa reveals new facts about the case and reveals the hitherto unknown research of the best-selling author in a fascinating true crime story. For the first time in many years, the police in Sweden have taken active measures to investigate a new suspect in the murder case and are pursuing leads based on the research revealed in Stocklassa’s book.

• What matters most is making money, right? The New Yorker reported recently that Dan Mallory, the book editor turned author who—as “A.J. Finn”—penned last year’s best-selling The Woman in the Window, has made a variety of false assertions regarding his health, his education, and his career achievements. Mallory has since sought to excuse his actions, but his deceptions have left many folks in the publishing industry wary of the author. In The Washington Post, critic Ron Charles wrote: “If James Frey taught us anything with his infamous memoir, it’s that autobiographical claims can collapse into a million little pieces of exaggeration and deception. Mallory’s situation is different, though, if more bizarre. How do we reconsider a work of fiction—or any work of art—when confronted with troubling information about its creator?” Despite all of this controversy, Mallory’s publisher, HarperCollins, says it is holding firm on plans to bring out his sophomore novel in January 2020—a San Francisco-set yarn The New Yorker describes as “a story of revenge … involving a female thriller writer and an interviewer who learns of a dark past.”

• Julie Adams, an Iowa-born actress who co-starred opposite an amphibious “Gill man” in the 1954 movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon before going on to a long and prolific TV career, passed away in Los Angeles on February 3 at age 92. Among her many television roles were appearances on Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, Darren McGavin’s The Outsider, Ironside, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Ellery Queen, Mannix, Cagney & Lacey, Murder, She Wrote, and Diagnosis: Murder. An interesting tidbit: Adams’ fleeting first marriage was to Leonard B. Stern, a screenwriter and producer responsible for such memorable series as Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, and The Snoop Sisters.

• Via Shotsmag Confidential comes news that Karin Slaughter’s 2018 novel, Pieces of Her, will become an eight-episode Netflix series directed—at least initially—by Lesli Linka Glatter. “The story,” explains the blog (quoting from a press release), “follows as an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed after a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall together suddenly explodes into violence. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood.”

• With Series 6 of Endeavour scheduled to debut in Great Britain tomorrow, February 10, ITV Magazine—a consumer periodical just launched last month by the show’s principal broadcasting network—has published a rather satisfying article about what viewers can expect from Endeavour’s latest four episodes. Chris Sullivan has posted scans of that piece in his blog, Morse, Lewis and Endeavour. Meanwhile, he has embedded a new morning TV show interview with a bushy-bearded Roger Allam, who plays Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday on the program opposite Shaun Evans, starring as Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse.

• From B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

USA Network has picked up to series its drama pilot Dare Me, based on Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel of the same name. Set in the world of competitive high school cheerleading, it follows the fraught relationship between two best friends (Herizen Guardiola and Mario Kelly) after a new coach (Willa Fitzgerald) arrives to bring their team to prominence. While the girls’ friendship is put to the test, their young lives are changed forever when a shocking crime rocks their quiet suburban world.

• Lawson also reports that “ABC has ordered the drama pilot Stumptown, inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios, a strong, assertive, and unapologetically sharp-witted Army veteran working as a P.I. in Portland, Oregon. With a complicated personal history and only herself to rely on, she solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own.”

• As an unflagging fan of Lou Grant, the 1977-1982 CBS-TV series starring Ed Asner as the sometimes crusty city editor of a fictional Southern California daily newspaper called the Los Angeles Tribune, I was pleased to discover at least the vast majority of that show’s episodes are available for free on YouTube. The picture quality is sometimes less than ideal, but until I drop the dough for Shout! Factory’s DVD releases of all five seasons, it’s probably the best I can expect. If you want to learn more about this drama series—which was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—check out The Canonical Lou Grant Episode Guide. And I’ve added the main title sequences from the first three seasons of Lou Grant to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page.

• Speaking of vintage shows, The Spy Command alerts me to the fact that La-La Land Records will soon release “Jerry Goldsmith[‘s] music to a mostly forgotten 1975 TV show, Archer.” Wikipedia explains that this is “a limited-edition soundtrack containing the one episode … Goldsmith scored (paired with a re-issue of the score to the film Warning Shot, from newly discovered better elements).” If you, too, have difficulties remembering Archer, let me point out that it was a short-lived NBC mid-season replacement series starred Brian Keith (Family Affair) as L.A. private investigator Lew Archer, the character so masterfully developed over three decades by Ross Macdonald. Keith’ show wasn’t awful, without ever being really good; I much preferred Peter Graves’ portrayal of the same protagonist in an unsuccessful 1974 TV pilot based on one of Macdonald’s later yarns, The Underground Man. And though, as one TV critic observed, Keith was mustered up “weary cynicism” enough to play Archer, he did not seem to respect the source material. In fact, Keith even had visions of moving the series’ setting from the City of Angels to Honolulu! Regardless, I’d like to get my hands on the six episodes of Archer that were originally broadcast, if only for nostalgic reasons. I might even be willing to purchase La-La Land’s presumably high-quality cut of Goldsmith’s Archer theme, if only because the version I have—and which is featured in The Spy Command’s post—is terrible.


(Above) J. Kingston Pierce and Chelsea Cain enjoy a bit of fun at Bouchercon 2011, high above St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

• I have many fond memories of attending Bouchercon 2011, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri. But one of the few captured on film was my meeting with Portland, Oregon, author Chelsea Cain, who turned out to be personable, downright funny, and nowhere near as dark-spirited a woman as her fiction might suggest. So I was pleased to read that her 2014 novel, One Kick, has been adapted as a 12-part TV series titled Gone, scheduled for broadcast on WGN America, beginning on 9 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday, February 27. Deadline Hollywood sums up the plot this way: “Gone follows the story of Kit ‘Kick’ Lannigan ([played by] Leven Rambin), survivor of a highly publicized child-abduction case, and 20-year veteran Frank Novak ([Chris]Noth), the FBI agent who rescued her. Years later, he recruits her to join a special task force dedicated to solving abductions and missing-persons cases. Paired with former Army intelligence officer John Bishop (Danny Pino), Lannigan uses her intuitive wit and martial arts skills to solve cases and bring victims home.”

• Yet another Agatha Christie yarn appears due for big-screen treatment, with a possible 2020 release date. The Killing Times reports that UK screenwriter Sarah Phelps (The A.B.C. Murders, Murder by Innocence, And Then There Were None) “has signed up to adapt Christie’s [1961] stand-alone novel, The Pale Horse.”

• Also to be filmed: Stephen King’s Mile 81.

• Ann Cleeves closed out her nine-volume Shetland Islands/Jimmy Perez series with last year’s Wild Fire. Fear not, though, for EuroCrime says she’s “turning her hand to a new series set in Devon.” The first of those new books, introducing Detective Matthew Venn, will be The Long Call, due out from Minotaur in September.

• Two other far-off releases to watch for: Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky (Little, Brown), her fifth novel starring Cambridge private eye Jackson Brodie, is scheduled for publication on both sides of the Atlanticin June; and Anne Perry will inaugurate a brand-new, pre-World War II series, starring “intrepid photographer” Elena Standish, with the September release Death in Focus (Ballantine).

• Before we leave Ann Cleeves too far behind, a reminder should be issued that Series 5 of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, will debut in the UK on BBC One next Tuesday, February 12. There’s no word yet n when those six new episodes will become available to Netflix users in the States.

• Among the digital audio series CrimeReads contributing editor Emily Stein showcases on her list of the “8 True-Crime Podcasts to Listen to in 2019” is The Murder Book, which premiered on January 28, and which Stein says “is the first podcast produced by bestselling crime novelist Michael Connelly.” She continues:

In Season 1, “The Tell Tale Bullet,” Connelly returns to his roots as a crime beat reporter to investigate a real, 30-year-old cold case of a fatal carjacking in Hollywood, and of a murderer who walked free. Connelly promises that every season of Murder Book will end with a crime solved; to get there, he employs a wide array of sources, including court recordings, wiretaps, and interviews with witnesses and detectives.

Complete with hardboiled narration and a jazzy soundtrack, Murder Book is the perfect podcast both for fans of true crime, and fans of classic noir. It also takes a serious look at the limitations and flaws of our criminal justice system, which leaves the listener with the unavoidable impression that in the past three decades, far too little has changed.

Listen to Connelly’s episodes on the Murder Book Web site or via Apple Podcasts. Full transcripts of each installment are also available on the Web site. New episodes drop every Monday for 10 or 12 weeks.

• One podcast that isn’t mentioned in Stein’s wrap-up is We Never Solved Anything. No, I’d never heard of it either, until its hosts e-mailed me an invitation to listen. As they explain, “It is a funny podcast where we explore a new unsolved mystery theme each week such as serial killers, spontaneous human combustion, and medical mystery stories.” Find the 11 existing episode here.

• Literary Hub’s Emily Temple chooses “10 Contemporary ‘Dickensian’ Novels,” including Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013), Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002), and Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001).

• “A great teacher is a gift. A great line editor is a miracle,” declares Nick Ripatrazone, a staff writer for The Millions.

• The Winter 2018/2019 edition of Mystery Readers Journal—built around the theme “Mystery in the American South—“is available now as a PDF and will shortly be available in hardcopy …,” writes editor Janet Rudolph. “We had so many articles, author essays, and reviews, that we had to split this themed issue into two.” A list of contents for this new issue, plus info on buying a copy, can be found here.

• I periodically like to revisit episodes from the classic NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo. Knowing whodunit, and sometimes remembering exactly how the rumpled Los Angeles police lieutenant pins the blame, doesn’t spoil the re-watching one iota. Not long ago I came across this piece The Columbophile, revealing which four among the almost 70 episodes of that show were star Peter Falk’s favorites. “It might come as a surprise to fans,” writes the blog’s anonymous editor, “that pivotal episodes ‘Etude in Black’ and ‘Murder by the Book’ don’t feature here—particularly ‘Etude,’ which starred Falk’s BFF John Cassavetes. Instead, all of Falk’s personal favourites come from Seasons 3 or 5, when the show was more firmly established. Notably, three of the four are from Season 5 alone. What does this tell us? Well for one thing it suggests that Falk was at his happiest in the crumpled raincoat once he had a couple of full seasons under his belt.”

• As we prepare for the June release of James Ellroy’s This Storm (Knopf)—book two in his “Second L.A. Quartet” (following 2014’s Perfidia)—Steve Powell, a British student of that author’s work, feels compelled to ask, “is James Ellroy losing his touch?” Writing in his blog, The Venetian Vase, Powell continues: “I’ve decided to broach the subject as the critical response to Ellroy’s last novel Perfidia was mixed, as were the reviews for his novel before that Blood’s a Rover. … I’ve sensed a certain weariness about Ellroy’s recent efforts when I talk with fans of the author. … So Ellroy cannot expect his new novel, This Storm, to be met with universal acclaim as critical opinion has started to shift. In fact, the opposite may be the case. Ellroy may have to win back some critics who are getting cynical about the author’s once unassailable reputation.”

• What a terrific couple of short-story titles, from classic crime-fiction magazines found here and here. On top of that, both of these publications feature cover art by the great Norman Saunders.

• Mystery Tribune chooses the “45 Best Cozy Mystery Novels.”

• New York bookshop proprietor and anthologist Otto Penzler continues to count down what he contends are the “Greatest Crime Films of All-Time.” Most recently he has considered The Ipcress File (1965), The Kennel Murder Case (1933), and The Glass Key (1942). Keep track of this developing series here.

• While we’re on the subject of Penzler, it should be mentioned that he will be partnering with Pegasus Books to launch Scarlet, an imprint “specializing in psychological suspense aimed at female readers.” Publishers Weekly explains: “The new venture has [tapped] Luisa Smith, longtime buying director at Book Passage, a Corte Madera, Ca., bookstore, to be Scarlet editor-in-chief. Nat Sobel, founder of the Nat Sobel Associates literary agency, will act as a consultant to the imprint. Scarlet will launch in winter 2020 with six to eight titles. The Scarlet list will be distributed by W.W. Norton, which also distributes the titles of its parent companies, Penzler Publishing and Pegasus Books.” Although there’s been some grumbling about the name Scarlet being applied to a literary line intended to promote women’s fiction and female authors (shades of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter!), and Penzler’s heated objections to the Mystery Writers of America’s decision to deny Linda Fairstein a Grand Master Award due to her involvement in a 1990 New York City rape-case prosecution left some authors questioning his compassion toward women, I look forward to seeing what Scarlet can contribute to the already rich field of psychological suspense novels.

• A similarly promising venture comes from Polis Books, which has announced the creation of Agora, an imprint designed to “focus on diverse voices, putting out between six and ten books per year.” Chantelle Aimée Osman will serve as the editor of this line, which plans to begin releasing books in the fall of 2019. Read more here.

• I’m not a big social-media user, but over the years I have established a Rap Sheet presence on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Google+. Now it appears that last page is set to vanish forever. I was recently given this warning:

In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.

The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.

I don’t remember when I signed up for Google+, but I know I only did so because fellow blogger Bill Crider already had. Thankfully, my contributions to The Rap Sheet’s page there have been minimal. I’ll keep updating it for as long as possible, but if you notice that the Google+ link available from the right-hand column of this blog disappears in the next couple of months, you’ll know why.

• In its latest look back at Edgar Award winners of the past, Criminal Element revisits one of my favorite private-eye novels of the past: 1958’s The Eighth Circle, by Stanley Ellin. Sadly, critic Joe Brosnan is too rigid in applying our modern social and sexual sensibilities to a work that was penned more than six decades ago.

• TV fandom is no crazier today than it’s always been. According to this 1959 newspaper report, overenthusiastic followers of the 1958-1964 ABC private-eye series 77 Sunset Strip flocked to the Los Angeles site that stood in for the agency’s offices.

• Finally, here are a few author interviews worth checking out: Jane Harper talks with The New York Times about her new Australia-set crime novel, The Lost Man; Christobel Kent chats with CrimeReads about What We Did; Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare goes one-on-one with H.B. Lyle (The Red Ribbon), Val McDermid (Broken Ground), and James Rollins (Crucible); Ronald H. Balson answers questions from Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper about The Girl from Berlin; and Laura K. Benedict discusses The Stranger Inside with Criminal Element’s John Valeri.

Music to Murder By

Like so many modern crime-fiction fans, I include 1974’s Chinatown among my favorite films of all time. Aside from its noirish story line and its stellar cast of performers (Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, etc.), one of that movie’s great strengths is its moody soundtrack, responsibility for which belongs to Jerry Goldsmith. I’ve previously showcased that music here, but only today did I happen across the YouTube video below, in which Goldsmith talks about the process of composing his memorable motion-picture score.

Solo Assignment

Opening title sequence from the seventh episode of U.N.C.L.E.'s first season, “The Giuoco Piano Affair” (November 10, 1964), featuring Jerry Goldsmith's original theme.

On September 22, 1964--precisely 50 years ago today--NBC-TV introduced a new weekly spy-adventure series titled The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It starred Robert Vaughn as American Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as his Russian partner, Illya Kuryakin, who made up a troubleshooting team in the employ of an international espionage agency known by the acronym U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). Veteran English actor Leo G. Carroll played their organization’s head, Alexander Waverly. By the time this program went off the air on January 15, 1968, 105 episodes had been broadcast (in both black-and-white and, later, color). U.N.C.L.E. would win the 1966 Golden Globe Award for Best TV Show (and be nominated for a stack of Emmy Awards), spin off another short-lived serial (Stefanie Powers’ The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.) as well as a succession of feature films, and generate associated merchandise such as children’s lunch boxes, board games, toy weapons, and tie-in novels. In addition, the series would become an enduring pop-culture reference point. For instance, as Wikipedia notes, the Promenade directory on the 1990s TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine listed “Del Floria’s Tailor Shop” among its offerings, recalling one of the secret entrances to U.N.C.L.E.’s New York City headquarters.

Although Sam Rolfe and Norman Felton are credited as the show’s co-creators, British naval intelligence agent-turned-author Ian Fleming--yes, the man who gave us James Bond--also had a hand in its conception. In fact, Ian Fleming’s Solo was originally bandied about as the show’s title. But a Web site called Read the Spirit synopsizes the “unforeseen problems … that doomed the plan to personally involve Fleming in the series.

Among these problems: Fleming was near the end of his life, trying to recover from a heart attack. In the recollections of the U.N.C.L.E. creative team included [as “extras” in a 2008 complete series DVD release of the show], Fleming was difficult to corner for specific materials. In one remembrance included in the DVD set, Fleming is described as only wanting to walk around New York City (part of his physical recovery program) and talk endlessly about his own life and experiences. While fun, it didn’t accomplish a lot of solid work.

What’s fascinating about these U.N.C.L.E. crew memories is the way they depict an Ian Fleming obviously weaving together important strands of his own life’s reflections.

One bit of Fleming’s “weaving” got him into serious trouble. He played a role in naming the lead character “Napoleon Solo” and thought the entire series should revolve around him. Unfortunately, just before Christmas 1964, the movie Goldfinger was due to be released in the U.S. and the TV producers of U.N.C.L.E. discovered that “Solo” also was the name of an American mob boss who joins forces with [conniving gold magnate Auric] Goldfinger. This Solo is not only an evil fellow, but he meets an evil end at the hands of Oddjob--crushed inside a car. …

The TV producers were horrified. The whole thing became entangled in a lawsuit. The series name was changed to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And Ian Fleming quickly retreated from working with the TV team, signing away any creative ideas he had shared with them. Sadly, by August 12, 1964, Fleming was dead.

(Right) A 1966 Man from U.N.C.L.E. metal lunch box

Other obstacles faced the series in its debut year. “Airing on Tuesday nights,” The HMSS Weblog recalls, “it was up against The Red Skeleton Show on CBS, which nearly led to cancellation before a mid-season switch to Monday nights.” Furthermore, critics offered mixed opinions of the show. In 1987’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Book: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of a Television Classic, Jon Heitland explains:

The reviewers did not know quite what to make of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The reviewer for TV Guide had apparently viewed the pilot and “The Double Affair,” and hated the show … He criticized both the writing and the casting. After this first review, TV Guide received many letters stating that he had missed the point, including a letter from a nine-year-old fan of the show stating, “I think you are a T.H.R.U.S.H. member trying to kill everyone who works on U.N.C.L.E. I also think you are trying to kill me by writing those boring articles for TV Guide.” The letter was from David Rolfe, Sam Rolfe’s son.

(T.H.R.U.S.H.--or Thrush--was, of course, U.N.C.L.E.’s world-conquering adversary, a body that, as Napoleon Solo once declares, “believes in the two-party system--the masters and the slaves.”)

Fortunately, NBC did not give up on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. simply because a few columnists panned it. Ed Tracey of The Daily Kos remembers that the show went on to receive “critical success in its first season (1964-1965), and during its second season (1965-1966, which is when I started watching) briefly reached #1 in the ratings (ahead of Bonanza, Bewitched, and The Dick Van Dyke Show) with a 50-share rating: unbelievable in this 500-channel era. And its second season theme music was scored by Lalo Schifrin, the best version during the life of the show, in my opinion.”

By Season 2 Rolfe had left as the program’s producer, and U.N.C.L.E. took on a more tongue-in-cheek tone. Viewers seemed to respond well to that change. So did humorists. As Heitland writes, “The final indicator of the success of the series was the number of times The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was parodied. Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin, and U.N.C.L.E. became household words. The title lent itself readily to parody, and thus very early on Mad magazine ran its spoof of the show, titled ‘The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E.’ … The best U.N.C.L.E. parody, however, occurred on the ‘Say Uncle’ episode of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. The episode features cameo appearances by both Vaughn and McCallum, and the story concerned the children mistaking their father for a secret agent. The episode featured a tailor shop (although Felton declined to allow the use of Del Floria’s, to preserve the mystique--B&C Tailor shop, another set seen in [1966’s] “The Dippy Blonde Affair” was used instead) and the U.N.C.L.E. theme music, and the twin children even wore U.N.C.L.E. sweatshirts.”


A short but dramatic clip from this series’ pilot, “The Vulcan Affair,” guest starring Patricia Crowley.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. unquestionably benefited from its association (no matter how troubled) with Fleming and the concurrent box-office success of the Bond films (three of which were brought to the silver screen during U.N.C.L.E.’s four-season run). It also profited from its pair of telegenic leads, its often outlandish gadgetry, its quirky plots, its throng of alluring female guest stars, and its era’s real-life news about Cold War tensions and global surveillance tactics. However, by 1966 the U.S. TV schedule was thick with agents of intrigue (in such dramas as Blue Light, Amos Burke, Secret Agent, The Baron, and I Spy), all hoping to win over the same audience U.N.C.L.E. had worked to build. Combined with U.N.C.L.E.’s increasing shift toward campiness and self-parody--allegedly, the result of its effort to duplicate the success then being enjoyed by a new ABC series, Batman--The Man from U.N.C.L.E. suffered a ratings drop from which it couldn’t recover, even by restoring some of its seriousness. The show was axed midway through its fourth season.

By then, though, U.N.C.L.E. had already earned itself a prominent place in the history of American television.

A reunion movie, The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair--in which Vaughn and McCallum reprised their familiar roles--was shown on CBS-TV in April 1983. (You can watch a preview here.) A new theatrical film based on the series, starring Armie Hammer, Henry Cavill, and Hugh Grant, is scheduled for release in August 2015. And this coming weekend, September 26 and 27, will bring to Los Angeles a 50th anniversary celebration of U.N.C.L.E.’s 1964 TV premiere, open to only 100 fans hoping to “gather and share their memories and their love of this classic series.”

Clearly, U.N.C.L.E. touched a nerve--and continues to do so.

READ MORE: The Fans from U.N.C.L.E.

Jack the Giant

Today we celebrate the 75th birthday of American actor John Joseph “Jack” Nicholson, born on this date back in 1937. And we’re celebrating it in appropriate style, we think, with previews from Chinatown, the 1974 film in which he plays a sleazy, 1930s gumshoe, J.J. “Jake” Gittes, who gets mixed up in a knotty case involving power, passion, and paternity. The Moviefone blog recently declared Chinatown to be the second best film Nicholson has ever made, following his 1975 comedy/drama, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and we’re not about to disagree.

The first two video frames below feature trailers for Chinatown (a film that was finally followed, in 1990, by a sequel: The Two Jakes). The third offers Jerry Goldsmith’s fabulous Chinatown theme.

“Perfect Defense, Billy Jim”

Several years ago I wrote in The Rap Sheet about the 1973-1974 CBS-TV mystery series Hawkins. For those of you who weren’t around to watch it during its original run, that show starred cinema legend Jimmy Stewart as Billy Jim Hawkins, a deceptively astute country lawyer who hailed from West Virginia, but took on high-profile, typically sordid homicide cases all over the United States, usually with investigative assistance from his less-than-suave cousin, R.J. Hawkins (Strother Martin). The show rotated in a 90-minute, Tuesday-night slot with Richard Roundtree’s Shaft.

I have favorable memories of Hawkins, though I haven’t been able to watch it in years (sadly, the show’s pilot film and seven regular episodes haven’t yet been released on DVD). Only today did I stumble across a short clip from the series’ first Tuesday-night installment, “Murder in Movieland” (broadcast on October 2, 1973). According to The New York Times’ synopsis, in that episode “Hawkins arrives in Hollywood to defend the husband of a movie star on a murder charge. The suspect has confessed--to clubbing another man to death, but not to the crime at hand.” Written by Hawkins co-creator David Karp, “Murder in Movieland” guest-starred Sheree North, Cameron Mitchell, and Kenneth Mars.

The clip I found today on YouTube, and have embedded below, gives you a sense of the show’s storytelling tone, as well as a preview of how comfortable Stewart seemed in his lead role. Hawkins’ hummable theme music—in the second clip—was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who also created the scores for Chinatown and L.A. Confidential.

Let’s hope Hawkins someday enjoys a commercial DVD release.

The Book You Have to Read: “Breakheart Pass,” by Alistair MacLean

(This piece, which appeared originally in Patti Abbott’s blog, marks the 105th installment of The Rap Sheet’s continuing Friday series highlighting great but forgotten books. Click here to find more than 100 previous recommendations.)

My introduction to Scottish author Alistair MacLean came in high school, when one of my English teachers assigned us all to read The Guns of Navarone, a 1957 thriller centered around the efforts of a specialist team of Allied commandos, during World War II, to silence the notorious weaponry at a German fortress in the Aegean Sea. Most of the books we’d had to read that year were pretty quiet stuff, along the lines of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories. Navarone was something else altogether, an adventure novel that read more like one of the high-stakes action tales in my grandfather’s Argosy magazines than it did a work that some earnest curriculum planner thought would be healthy grist for the minds of teenage boys. If this was what the future of English classes held in store, I thought, let me at it!

Predictably, though, Navarone was an aberration; afterward, we went right back to reading safe “classics.” But by then I had developed an appetite for MacLean’s lean, edge-of-the-seat yarns. Finished with Navarone, I dove into Puppet on a Chain, then Fear Is the Key, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, The Way to Dusty Death, and finally, during my sophomore year in college, Breakheart Pass.

That last novel, published in 1974, wove MacLean’s traditional, best-selling formula of manifold tight plot twists and a cynical protagonist facing long odds into the tapestry of the familiar American Western. Supposedly set in the 1870s, the story takes place primarily aboard an ill-fated Union Pacific train steaming east to west across northern Nevada in the midst of a daunting snowstorm. Among the passengers are the governor of Nevada, Charles Fairchild; his mid-20s, black-haired niece, Marica; a tough-shelled cavalry officer, Colonel Claremont, who’s accompanied by two train cars full of troops; Indian fighter-turned-U.S. marshal Nathan Pearce and his newly acquired prisoner, John Deakin, a taciturn ex-university lecturer wanted on multiple counts of arson and murder; and an expert on tropical diseases, Dr. Edward Molyneux. The doctor’s seemingly inappropriate presence is soon explained by word that the train’s next destination, Fort Humboldt--commanded by Marica’s father--is under epidemic assault by cholera. Molyneux is reportedly taking medicine to the fort, along with coffins.

Things start to go amiss from the first, though. A couple of Claremont’s men disappear even before the train sets off from its final remote town stop. Then the doctor is discovered dead, and the locomotive’s fireman tumbles from a high overpass into a yawning ravine. When the last three train wagons--“the troop-carrying coaches and the brake van”--come uncoupled from the rest of the cars, and careen off backward into a forested gorge, it’s plain that some wicked mind is behind all of these “accidents.” Suspicion naturally focuses on Pearce’s captive, Deakin, who appears unperturbed by the lethal calamities occurring around him. However, the fact that Deakin was shackled at the time of at least one passenger death seems to absolve him of blame. But if he isn’t responsible, then who is? And what do those disasters have to do with misemployed coffins in the train’s supply wagons, or Deakin’s nocturnal wanderings over the roof of the hustling express, or Paiute Indians being welcomed at Fort Humboldt?

Author MacLean was allegedly past his prime when he wrote Breakheart Pass. Yet pretty much everything one could want in a historical thriller is found in these pages: rampant deceptions, schemes designed to incite fear, prodigious greed, calculated homicides, unexpected heroics. (Well, everything except sex: MacLean thought such complications only hobbled the pace of storytelling.) And the whole adventure takes place within a winter that’s as unforgiving as the villains who hope to profit from the carnage. MacLean’s prose may have been more pedestrian than poetic, but he could definitely keep readers on the edge of their seats.

I am not the first reader, nor will I be the last, I’m sure, to remark on the author’s disordering of historical facts. While MacLean makes clear in the book that America’s Civil War has been fought and finished, and the United States Secret Service (founded in 1865) is active in bringing malefactors to justice, he confuses things by mentioning that “the Big Bonanza strike in [Nevada’s] Comstock Lode” occurred some months ago. Actually, that rich discovery took place in 1859, when Nevada was still part of the Utah Territory. Two more years would pass before Nevada broke away, and it wasn’t until 1864 that it became the 36th state in the Union. I can only imagine that MacLean decided that such discrepancies were OK if they contributed to his story’s intent.

And reading this book again now, I find myself more able than I was originally to overlook them. The building of tension, not the exposition of historical events, was the author’s purpose in these pages, and he succeeded marvelously. Even today, and knowing how it all ends, every time I sit down with Breakheart Pass or watch the 1975 Charles Bronson film adaptation of that tale, I feel anew the frisson of anticipation, wondering who will survive that dangerous train ride ... and how the men behind the crimes on board will be brought to justice. That’s great storytelling for you!

* * *

As one might expect, considerable liberties were taken with dialogue, action, and characterization to turn Breakheart Pass into the Jerry Gershwin/Elliott Kastner movie of that same name. For instance, Governor Fairchild became much younger in the personage of actor Richard Crenna, and Marica (played by Charles Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland) morphed from being his daughter, to being his mistress. However, since MacLean apparently wrote the screenplay, the story remains faithful to the essence of the novel, and Ben Johnson turns in a wonderful performance as Marshal Pearce. It’s definitely worth watching. Below, I have embedded both the film’s trailer and its opening sequence. The theme was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who also provided the scores for Chinatown, Planet of the Apes, and several Star Trek films.





READ MORE: “Alistair MacLean and the Human Cost of War,” by Barbara D’Amato (The Outfit); “Murder on the Literary Express: Top 10 Train Thrillers” (AbeBooks); “Fit to Thrill: Alistair MacLean Deserves to Be Read Again,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Kirkus Reviews).

Of Scores Written and Scores Settled

• The spy fiction-oriented HMSS Weblog applauds the work of American composer Jerry Goldsmith, who of course gave us the theme to television’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well as the scores for James Coburn’s two James Bond parody flicks, Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Flint (1967). Goldsmith, who died five years ago, also created the music for such films as Chinatown and Planet of the Apes, and the themes for TV series on the order of Police Story, Hawkins, Barnaby Jones, and Archer, not to mention Star Trek: The Next Generation. UPDATE: More Flint fun here.

• Indianapolis author Alec Cizak supplies the latest short-story offering at Beat to a Pulp, “Diseases from Loving.”

• English actress Kate Winslet is evidently interested in making a miniseries based on James M. Cain’s 1941 novel, Mildred Pierce. “Sources said HBO is the lead contender to get the series, but pay Web sources said no deal has been struck,” reports Variety.

• Steve Hockensmith has submitted his lighthearted new Old West mystery, The Crack in the Lens, starring brothers Otto “Big Red” and Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer, to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. The results can be found here.

• Here’s a clip from the forthcoming FX series, Lawman, starring Timothy Olyphant of Deadwood fame and based on a character created by Elmore Leonard.

• A big hat tip goes to Elizabeth Foxwell for alerting me to the Australian Broadcasting Company’s “special series dedicated to five classic Australian novels.” The second installment of that radio presentation looks at Fergus Hume’s famous Mystery of a Hansom Cab. “This best seller, published in 1886, set the stage for much detective fiction that was to come, including [Arthur] Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series,” explains the Web site of ABC’s The Book Show. “Hume’s story captures Melbourne in its gold-rush glory days. The cast includes wealthy squatters with murky pasts, a noble love-struck couple, and a slum princess with a secret identity. It’s a classic formative text, the next chapter in a young country’s sense of itself, and it’s also a fabulous swipe at respectability.” You can listen to the whole show here.

• If you’re curious, the other four, non-crime books addressed in this ABC Radio National series are: Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia, Thea Astley’s The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala, and Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life.

• I loved UK writer Mike Dash’s last criminal history, Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century (which I added to January Magazine’s Best Books of 2007 list). Now he has a new book out: The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia. Vincent Rossmeier of Salon interviews the author about “the lengthy, sordid career of Giuseppe Morello, aka ‘The Clutch Hand,’ a Sicilian immigrant who became America’s first true Mafia don.” Fascinating reading.

• David Cole continues his “Cool Canadian Crime” series for Mystery Fanfare by talking with Ontario’s Lou Allin, author of the Belle Palmer mysteries (Memories Are Murder). To read all of Cole’s Canadian interviews, click here.

• And if you missed it, Laura Lippman mused in Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post about “killing her ace P.I.,” Tess Monaghan.

Crombie Takes to the Airwaves

Texas novelist Deborah Crombie--whose latest Duncan Kincaid-Gemma James book, Water Like a Stone, recently arrived in bookstores--will be the guest tomorrow, Monday, February 12, on Elizabeth Foxwell’s It’s a Mystery, a production of WEBR radio in Fairfax, Virginia. The show is set to be Webcast at 11 a.m. ET. Click here to listen. (If you miss hearing the show live, you should be able to catch the audio clip later at Foxwell’s It’s a Mystery Web site.)

Also during the show, Foxwell will honor film and TV composer Jerry Goldsmith by playing selections from the soundtrack of the 1974 movie Chinatown as well as from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Goldsmith wrote those and other crime-fiction-related themes, and--had he not died in 2004--would have turned 78 yesterday.