Next Stop, 10,000!

So this happened: Yesterday, I put up my 9,000th post in The Rap Sheet! Nine thousand! I knew this milestone was in the offing, and had been trying to keep a fairly close track, to ensure that I didn’t accidentally zip past 9,000 without proper fanfare.

I had no idea, when I launched this blog in May 2006, that I’d still be working on it 18 years later. Or that I would see it now approaching 10 million pageviews. Or that I could publish 9,000 posts here (not every one of them written by me, of course). It all rather astounds me. But I’m still having fun—and that’s the most important part.

Thank you, dear readers, for taking this long journey with me!

Revue of Reviewers: 7-14-23

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.













This week marks a surprising seven years since The Rap Sheet launched its “Revue of Reviewers” series. In the beginning, I imagined directing readers to three or maybe half a dozen reviews of crime, mystery, and thriller works per week. I’d been thinking for a while that the blog needed to feature more book covers, and that it could also use the occasional straight-out review. Linking off-site critiques by a diversity of arbiters to a selection of hardcover and paperback fronts here seemed like it might be the perfect solution.

Indeed, things have gone quite to plan. Over the previous 189 installments, “Revue of Reviewers” has covered many hundreds of new releases—primarily fiction, but including as well some works of non-fiction I believe would be of interest to fans of this genre. In quest of thoughtful commentary, I have drawn from an ever-expanding circle of blogs and Web sites, many of which I’d never have discovered were it not for my having to assemble this recurring feature. Some of those I check regularly, such as Crime Fiction Lover, New York Journal of Books, Aunt Agatha’s, Live and Deadly, Tzer Island, Book Reviews to Ponder, Reading Reality, Gumshoe Review, Lesa’s Book Critiques, Kevin’s Corner, BOLO Books, The Quick and the Read, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, and Criminal Element. Others I pull from as I can, hoping they will become reliable resources in the future.

The downside to all of this, of course, is that blogs and Web sites have a nasty habit of suddenly vanishing—even those that seem solidly entrenched (e.g., Bookgasm, the disappearance of which has caused me to replace links to its reviews throughout this series). Technical changes can lead to no less havoc. Aunt Agatha’s, for instance, recently revised its file path syntax structure, the result being that old links will take you to that site’s main page, but not to the specific critique I had in mind. If you find any broken links of this sort—or any sort—while browsing “Revue of Reviewers” posts, I ask that you please drop me a note and tell me where they can be found.

As the number of “Revue of Reviewers” posts has risen, and their individual size grown, I’ve been pleased to hear readers say how much they appreciate this element of The Rap Sheet. Know that it has proven as useful to me in planning my reading (and encountering new authors) as it has been to anyone else. Seven years later, and 190 entries in, I smile, glad to have taken a chance on this series.

Suddenly Seventeen

I’m not the first person to mention that today would have been the 164th birthday of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22, 1859. (Unfortunately, the author died in 1930.) But it’s another birthday, as well, that of the humble blog through which you’re currently scrolling.

Although it doesn’t seem as if so much time has passed, The Rap Sheet debuted on this date in 2006—a full 17 years ago!

All in all, I am pretty satisfied with how The Rap Sheet has grown and evolved. It has so far racked up just under 8.4 million pageviews, and boasts almost 8,600 posts. There are several editorial projects I have in mind for the near future, and at least one overall design modification I hope to tackle before 2023 is over.

At the same time, I’ve experienced a few frustrations in this undertaking, most recently the Blogger online publishing system’s seemingly random—and new, in my experience—practice of unpublishing a post here and there (claiming erroneously that its content “has violated our Malware and Viruses policy”), and then subsequently republishing it without adequate explanation of its acts or my having done a darn thing. My other chief annoyance is the need to update links as Web sites either go out of business or change the entirety of their post addresses. For instance, I continue to replace links to pages on The Thrilling Detective Web Site, following its disruptive server switch in 2021; and with the fine blog Bookgasm still offline after six months, I’ve been slowly but surely substituting links to archived copies of its stories and reviews as they appear on the wonderful Wayback Machine. (As editor Rod Lott informed me several months ago, this mess is the result of belligerent hacking.)

Despite abundant evidence that everything on the Internet is transient, and that readers will forgive that impermanence, I want The Rap Sheet to be as up-to-date as possible—even in its older material.

So as another blog birthday comes and goes, let me finish by thanking The Rap Sheet’s abundant readers. Without you and your encouragement, I’d have long since terminated this endeavor. I didn’t know in 2006 that I would still be writing about crime fiction—the books, the authors who produce them, the artists who develop their covers, and the movies and TV shows made from them—almost 20 years later. But here I am, damn proud to have made my small contribution to the genre and its future.

How’s That for Productivity?

Wow, The Rap Sheet yesterday added its 8,500th post! I guess my greatest worry, early on in this venture, that I wouldn’t find enough to write about in a crime-fiction blog was unfounded. Thanks to all you readers who’ve joined us here over the last 16-plus years.

That’s an Awful Lot of Eyeballs

I’m not one to obsess over readership stats, so I missed the fact that The Rap Sheet recently registered its eight-millionth pageview! Although the traffic on commercial sites is undoubtedly many times greater, eight million still strikes me as rather dramatic growth for the blog since its launching 16 years ago, and since we counted our one-millionth pageview in the spring of 2011. Another sure sign that things are humming along nicely: we’ll soon put up our 8,400th post.

Thanks to everyone who has followed this humble crime-fiction blog over the years. Onward now to the nine-millionth mark!

Sixteen Candles

Break out the cake, the party hats, and the beribboned gifts—today is The Rap Sheet’s 16th birthday! It’s now old enough to procure a driver’s license as well as to “legally engage in sexual intercourse in most [U.S.] states,” says this facts-of-the-day blog post.

Not a great deal has changed here since this time last year, though The Rap Sheet continues to rack up statistical advancements. It’s nearing its 8,300th post, and its eight-millionth pageview. (Weren’t we just crowing about it reaching 5,000,000?) I have a couple of design modifications in mind for the near future, and I’d really like to get back to interviewing authors more often—something I used to do quite frequently. I would also enjoy visiting a crime-fiction festival or two, but continuing waves of COVID-19 variants provide serious disincentives to gathering in large groups.

I’m not a frequent complainer, though if pressed, I could share my dissatisfaction with such matters as the worsening political crisis in the United States and the alarming spread of white supremacy. One thing I cannot grouse about is my work on this page. Sixteen years of writing and editing The Rap Sheet have brought me so many memorable joys, not merely from reading but from meeting other people with similar passions for crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. When I created this blog in 2006, I had no idea that I’d still be happily laboring over it all these years later.

So on those occasions when the woes of the world seem far too extensive to endure, I can refocus at least part of my attention on The Rap Sheet. And apparently, this Web page is now able to ask even more of me than it has in the past, because it’s legal in this country for a 16-year-old to finally demand fulltime work hours. 😀

Stay healthy, everyone, and thank you for following The Rap Sheet through all of these long years!

Revue of Reviewers: 7-12-21

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.













It’s not typical that I should put up two “Revue of Reviewers” posts within a single week’s time. But this is not your typical week. In fact, today marks five years—and 144 installments—since I launched the “Revue of Reviewers” series in The Rap Sheet.

Back in July 2016, I explained that this new, irregular feature would bring book reviews—which I had previously and deliberately de-emphasized (not wishing to poach on territory already claimed by our sister publication, January Magazine)—to The Rap Sheet’s traditional amalgam of news and features, even though those critiques would be coming from outside sources. I noted as well my plan to highlight three to six new releases at a time, both fiction and crime-related non-fiction. What I didn’t say was that part of my motivation in establishing this series was to push more artwork (in the form of book covers) onto The Rap Sheet, something I thought it needed.

Half a decade on, I can declare with confidence that “Revue of Reviewers” has proved its value. The posts have also grown. Rather than boasting three to six book appraisals every time, they may now offer 18 to 30. And while the series has certainly served to alert readers to published works they might not have otherwise encountered, its secondary benefit is that it has introduced Rap Sheet followers—and me—to myriad other blogs and Web sites covering the world of mystery, crime, and thriller fiction. Were it not for my scouting around for write-ups to use in “Revue of Reviewers,” I might never have heard, for instance, of For Winter Nights, Crime by the Book, Kittling: Books, NB magazine, Grab This Book, Doyleockian, Kingdom Books, or Live and Deadly.

After such success, “Revue of Reviewers” looks here to stay.

Attention Seeking

Just for the record, it should be noted that The Rap Sheet last week added its 8,000th post. It only took 15 years to reach that goal!

The Fifteen Years Later Affair

Sometimes I wish I’d been more modest in my expectations for The Rap Sheet—which celebrates its 15th birthday today. I could have created this blog as a place to occasionally share random thoughts on crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, both new and vintage. At the least I could have been in the habit of posting less ardently. Instead, after having spent many years editing magazines and newspapers, I envisioned The Rap Sheet as a frequently updated resource to which fans of this genre could turn to find news, information, and commentary. I essentially wanted it to be CrimeReads, only without anywhere near the manpower or financial backing that that more youthful site claims. And when I have to take a hiatus of a week or two in order to finish a project for another publication? Well, visitors start to wonder at my absence. “Did this fuckin’ guy die?” an anonymous reader inquired after I’d let 13 days pass recently between posts.

None of this is to say that I’m unhappy about how The Rap Sheet has turned out. Quite the contrary, in fact. It has been a wonderful experience getting to know the magnitude of works in this genre, and to meet plenty of the writers who have provided that remarkable breadth. This blog has given me entrée into corners of the literary world that I would not otherwise have enjoyed, and led me into some invaluable friendships.

That The Rap Sheet has brought me more than a few frustrations is likewise true. I cringe every time I discover a broken link within an older post, and try my best to update those connections (often using the Wayback Machine). Last year’s sudden disappearance of most of the blog’s embedded videos almost convinced me to give up this enterprise completely. And the news in May that The Thrilling Detective Web Site had switched servers, and as a consequence hundreds (if not thousands) of links in this blog were now inoperable struck me as the even crueler part of a double whammy. (The only thing worse would have been for Wikipedia to go out of business!) Nonetheless, I persevered. While I still have various videos awaiting my attention, most have been replaced; and I remain hopeful that creator/editor Kevin Burton Smith will find a clever way to redirect The Thrilling Detective’s links, so I don’t need to change all of their Web addresses—a likely impossible task.

As I sit to compose this post, I think back on my launching The Rap Sheet in May 2006. I was then incredibly naïve in the business of blogging, but I imagined it as a way to share my curiosity about—and my knowledge of—crime and mystery fiction with readers. My wish was that their interest would push me to further investigation of the field. That’s certainly the way things have worked out. So maybe my ambitions weren’t ridiculous after all.

Thank you for your continuing support of this page.

A Stumble, Rather Than a Fall

Yesterday marked 14 years since I began writing and editing The Rap Sheet as a blog. (It had previously been a newsletter distributed by January Magazine.) When I first accepted the challenge of commenting on, recording, and occasionally helping to better illuminate the history and evolution of crime fiction, I had no realistic understanding of the time and commitment all of that would require. I had no idea of the friendships composing this blog would bring into my life, or the rewards and frustrations it would offer.

The frustrations have seemed overwhelming of late. As I noted recently, almost all of the videos I’ve uploaded to my blog-publishing service—Blogger—since 2006, suddenly disappeared in mid-April. Efforts to solve this mystery and undo the damage in a comprehensive fashion have been unsuccessful. The most likely explanation seems to be a technical one: Blogger has made so many platform changes over the years, that those video uploads of mine are finally no longer acceptable via my version of the software. Which may also explain why I am unable to upload new videos to Blogger.

I have been reduced to relocating the original videos, either online or on my computer (thank heavens I’m a pack rat about these things!), and re-embedding them or—the worst-case scenario—installing them on YouTube so that I can then “share” them to The Rap Sheet. Ironically, the reason I took Blogger up on its offer to let me upload videos directly to its platform in the first place, was that YouTube has been an unreliable partner in the past, capriciously deleting videos to which I wished to link. I thought I was being clever in avoiding such failures, but instead set myself up for a worse result.

There was a point, shortly after this catastrophic failure of my video clips, that I considered shutting down The Rap Sheet. The thought of having to reconstruct so much of what already existed before April seemed daunting. This spell of intense discouragement lasted for more than a week, as I struggled to shrug off my despair and ignore the many gaping holes in past blog posts, kept plugging away at work, and eventually reached the stage where my long passion for blogging here, and my determination not to be defeated by electronic snags, overcame my impulse to just give up and do something else. I feel odd admitting this, but it was largely thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent slack it created in my work schedule that I found time enough to begin the rebuilding process.

As my grandfather always used to say, when facing large and small hurdles, “It could be worse.” And I suppose that’s true.

I realized long ago that I am rather proud of The Rap Sheet, and that I want it to be part of my writing legacy. I want it to be a permanent Internet fixture, if that is possible. Although I try to be conscientious about fixing or eliminating broken links (caused when a Web site, blog, or single Web page ceases to exist), I can’t completely overcome those problems. But I don’t want to see this page riddled with “Video Is Unavailable” notices where film and TV clips belong. So, although it will take time and diligence, I am determined to repair all of the chaos caused by this season’s apparent technical issues.

Meanwhile, thank you for sticking with The Rap Sheet all this time. I hope that by the blog’s 15th birthday, both the novel coronavirus and these aggravating computer obstacles will be well behind us.

13 Is a Lucky Number, Right?

Whether or not it’s a scientific fact, it is anecdotally indisputable that the older one becomes, the less one is conscious of time’s relentless passage. I am reminded of this every May 22, when I sit down to celebrate another dozen months in the “life” of The Rap Sheet. Incredibly, it was 13 years ago today—on Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday, by coincidence—that this blog debuted, being a necessary reworking of an irregular newsletter I’d been writing for January Magazine.

Although I am frustrated on occasion by not having the freedom, energy, or financial resources to do much more with this blog, I am proud to see that it remains popular. What you’re reading right now, for instance, is the 7,503rd post to appear here. And the Blogger software tells me that The Rap Sheet has enjoyed almost 6.3 million pageviews over its history. That’s remarkable, considering it took most of the first half decade just to reach 1 million; we’ve increased that pageview count sixfold over the last eight years.

Thanks to all of you who have followed The Rap Sheet during its electronic existence. It’s been a largely marvelous, fulfilling trip, and one that—barring some disaster—won’t end anytime soon.

The Mighty Dozen

For the 12th year in a row now, I am celebrating The Rap Sheet’s birthday. It was on this date, way back in 2006, that I expressed (with some trepidation) my optimism about turning what had been an irregular newsletter for January Magazine into an independent blog. As to The Rap Sheet’s future contents, I wrote:

We’ll limit our tendency to review books here, and concentrate such criticism in the well-trafficked main pages of January Magazine. However, we’ll be taking advantage of this new format to occasionally expand our field of view from books to television and film, since crime fiction isn’t confined to a single modern medium. We’ll also try to keep you apprised of any close encounters we have with members of the crime-writing fraternity, especially if those meetings are (1) educational, (2) humorous in some regard, or (3) lubricated with copious amounts of drinking. Or all of the aforementioned.

When I began The Rap Sheet, after many years of editing magazines and newspapers, I had some pretty ambitious goals for it. Those have since been minimized due to a shortage of free time, an inability to pay others for their contributions to the blog (I have become something of a past master at distributing sincere compliments to freelancers, in lieu of dollars), and the fact that this project is essentially a one-person operation—I don’t have the staff here that used to back me up on monthly or weekly publications, and that occasionally made impossible things possible after all.

Over the last dozen years, I have felt burned out now and then by the work necessary to keep a news-oriented blog like this going, and frustrated at the absence of professional recognition for what The Rap Sheet has accomplished. (Attention seems always to turn toward the newest shiny thing.) Nonetheless, I am singularly proud of the almost 7,100 posts that have appeared on this page, and the more than 5.7 million pageviews it has racked up. Other blogs and Web sites, some of them boasting the monetary and staffing resources this one lacks, have come and gone over the years, but The Rap Sheet is still here. Still very active. Still trying new things. Still interested in the world of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

I used to wonder how I could possibly keep things going on this page. Now I wonder how I could possibly end what I have begun. While The Rap Sheet has led to my meeting many fascinating authors and given me entrée to a variety of other opportunities—writing for Kirkus Reviews for six years, now penning a column for Down & Out: The Magazine and contributing to CrimeReads—I feel most of the time like a guy in a lonely garret, producing the sorts of things I most want to read and just hoping that others notice. That so many have—and continue to do—has become the best reward of all.

Thanks to everyone for supporting The Rap Sheet all this time.

Another Record for the Books

Well, this is embarrassing. I noticed a couple of months ago that, according to our Blogger software, we were coming near to putting up our 7,000th post here at The Rap Sheet. I kept track for a while as that milestone approached. But then just as the crucial time arrived, I got busy and failed to check in. As it turns out, this post in our new “PaperBack” series was the 7,000th entry on the page.

I want to thank all of The Rap Sheet’s regular contributors, as well as our many guest posters over the years, for making this blog the valuable resource it has become. I couldn’t have been nearly so prolific or informative as we all have been together.

Remembering the “Forgottens”

When, in April 2008, Detroit short-story author (and now novelist) Patricia “Patti” Abbott launched what would soon become a Web-wide Friday tribute to “forgotten books,” it seemed like an excellent idea with a limited shelf life. Certainly, I thought, this weekly delivery of posts about what Abbott called “books we love but might have forgotten over the years” would soon run its course, as bloggers and other literary pundits sought fresh challenges, convinced they’d done enough already to highlight works deserving of renewed attention. But I must have been projecting, believing my own tendency as a freelance journalist (one sadly divorced from the collective energies of an office environment) to lose interest in even worthwhile efforts over time would be shared broadly. I had not expected that nine years later, the Friday forgotten books venture would still be going strong, with a few writers—including Bill Crider, Martin Edwards, B.V. Lawson, and James Reasoner—ponying up fresh posts with astounding regularity.

The Rap Sheet’s contributions to Abbott’s series began quite early on, with indefatigable British correspondent Ali Karim writing on May 2, 2008, about H.F. Saint’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man. After that, our “Books You Have to Read” posts accumulated quickly, with each week’s guest reviewer asked to pass the baton off to another person he or she thought could further enliven the mix. Some weeks even brought more than one new nomination to the lineup, so enthusiastically did crime novelists and critics take to the task. Within a little over two years, The Rap Sheet had touted 100 unjustly neglected books.

At that stage, I decided to slow things down to a saner pace. The result being, though, that it’s taken seven years for this blog to amass another 49 “Books You Have to Read” posts. And tomorrow The Rap Sheet will finally publish its 150th such piece—a look back at William Murray’s 1967 “sin and surf and sand” novel, The Sweet Ride.

Glancing over the list below of our “forgotten books” endorsements, I am pleased by their diversity. Only a handful of authors—Eric Ambler, Ellery Queen, William Campbell Gault, Bernard Wolfe, David Markson, Derek Raymond, Newton Thornburg, Jim Thompson, and John D. MacDonald—have had more than one example of their work considered. I’d like to see more writers of color featured, but at least there are many women included on the roster. Also needed are additional non-American wordsmiths, and more tales that combine crime fiction with other genres, such as science fiction. If all this sounds as if I am planning to continue The Rap Sheet’s “Books You Have to Read” series, that’s because I am. There are still other works I would like to remark upon, and I know Steven Nester—who has become a frequent contributor—has further ideas up his own sleeve. With any luck, some of the reviewers and authors reading this post will drop me an e-mail note, suggesting vintage yarns they’d like to write about, too.

Following each book title and author name here, I’ve identified (in parentheses) the person who commented on the work.

• The Sweet Ride, by William Murray (Steven Nester)

• Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone (Steven Nester)

• Beverly Gray in the Orient, by Clair Blank (Carmen Amato)

• Durango Street, by Frank Bonham (Steven Nester)

• The Origin of Evil, by Ellery Queen (Vince Keenan)

• Angels, by Denis Johnson (Steven Nester)

• Desert Town, by Ramona Stewart (Steven Nester)

• Junky, by William S. Burroughs (Steven Nester)

• A Dandy in Aspic, by Derek Marlow (Jim Napier)

• Persuader, by Lee Child (Diane Capri)

• Dreamland, by Newton Thornburg (Steven Nester)

• Sidewalk Caesar, by Donald Honig (Steven Nester)

• The Hunter, by Richard Stark
(Terrence P. McCauley)

• Epitaph for a Tramp,
by David Markson (Steven Nester)

• The Fear Makers,
by Darwin L. Teilhet (Steven Nester)

• The Black and the Red,
by Elliot Paul (Steven Nester)

• The Late Risers,
by Bernard Wolfe (Steven Nester)

• Epitaph for a Dead Beat,
by David Markson (Steven Nester)

• The Red Carnelian, by Phyllis A. Whitney (Erica Obey)

• Siam, by Lily Tuck (Jame DiBiasio)

• The Name of the Game Is Death, by Dan J. Marlowe (Jed Power)

• They Don’t Dance Much, by James Ross (Steven Nester)

• In Deep, by Bernard Wolfe (Steven Nester)

• Yardie, by Victor Headley (Michael G. Jacob)

• The Unquiet Night, by Patricia Carlon (Patrick Balester)

• Carambola, by David Dodge (Randal S. Brandt)

• A Rage in Harlem, by Chester Himes (Ayo Onatade)

• Life’s Work, by Jonathan Valin (Linda Barnes)

• Tapping the Source, by Kem Nunn (Steven Nester)

• Bimini Run, by E. Howard Hunt (Steven Nester)

• True Confessions, by John Gregory Dunne (Steven Nester)

• Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, by William Kennedy (Steven Nester)

• Cut Numbers, by Nick Tosches (Steven Nester)

• Shaft Among the Jews, by Ernest Tidyman (Steve Aldous)

• The Egyptian Cross Mystery, by Ellery Queen (Tony Hays)

• The Labyrinth Makers, by Anthony Price (Jim Napier)

• The Dead Lie Still, by William L. Stuart (J.F. Norris)

• The Man with a Load of Mischief, by Martha Grimes (Dana Cameron)

• New Hope for the Dead, by Charles Willeford (Kevin McCarthy)

• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, by P.D. James
(Kristine Kathryn Rusch)

• Money, Money, Money, by Ed McBain (Richard L. Pangburn)

• Street of the Lost, by David Goodis (Michael Lipkin)

• Doctor Frigo, by Eric Ambler (James Thompson)

• Rose, by Martin Cruz Smith (Ann Parker)

• A Gypsy Good Time, by Gustav Hasford (Dan Fleming)

• Breakheart Pass, by Alistair MacLean (J. Kingston Pierce)

• Up at the Villa, by W. Somerset Maugham (Sam Millar)

• The Prone Gunman, by Jean-Patrick Manchette (R.J. Ellory)

• The Other Girl, by Theodora Keogh (Steven Powell)

• Diva, by Delacorta (Ronald Tierney)

• The Iron Gates, by Margaret Millar (Patti Abbott)
• Tony and Susan, by Austin Wright (Maxim Jakubowski)
• The Song Dog, by James McClure (Stanley Trollip)
• Caleb Williams, by William Godwin (Andrew Taylor)
• Drink to Yesterday, by Manning Coles (Irene Fleming)
• Thumbprint, by Friedrich Glauser (Patrick Lennon)
• The Black Path of Fear, by Cornell Woolrich (Thomas Kaufman)
• Blanche on the Lam, by Barbara Neely (Naomi Hirahara)
• The Zimmerman Telegram, by Barbara Tuchman (J. Sydney Jones)
• Murder Fantastical, by Patricia Moyes (Jim Napier)

• Death of a Peer, by Ngaio Marsh (Les Blatt)
• Shoot, by Douglas Fairbairn (Mike Dennis)
• Train, by Pete Dexter (David Thayer)
• The Great Zapruder Film Hoax,
by James H. Fetzer (Michael Atkinson)
• The Adventures of Max Latin,
by Norbert Davis (Ed Lin)
• Swag, by Elmore Leonard (Mike Dennis)
• Build My Gallows High, by Geoffrey Homes (Thomas Kaufman)
• Light of Day, by Eric Ambler
(Leighton Gage)
• Alley Kat Blues, by Karen Kijewski
(Karen E. Olson)
• The Most Dangerous Game, by Gavin Lyall (Calum MacLeod)
• The Saint-Fiacre Affair, by Georges Simenon (Matt Beynon Rees)
• The Body on the Bench, by Dorothy B. Hughes (Jeri Westerson)
• The Drowner, by John D. MacDonald (Ace Atkins)
• Dead Man Upright, by Derek Raymond (Ray Banks)
• I Was Dora Suarez, by Derek Raymond (Cathi Unsworth)
• How the Dead Live, by Derek Raymond (Russel D. McLean)
• The Devil’s Home on Leave, by Derek Raymond (John Harvey)
• He Died with His Eyes Open, by Derek Raymond (Tony Black)
• The Staked Goat, by Jeremiah Healy (Libby Fischer Hellmann)
• Nightmare Alley, by William Linday Gresham (Kelli Stanley)
• The First Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders (L.J. Sellers)
• The Dolly Dolly Spy, by Adam Diment (Tom Cain)
• Freak, by Michael Collins (Russell Atwood)
• Who Killed Palomino Molero?, by Mario Vargas Llosa
(Marshall Browne)
• The Cracked Earth, by John Shannon (Dick Adler)
• The Last One Left, by John D. MacDonald (Bill Cameron)
• Room to Swing, by Ed Lacy (Art Taylor)
• Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, by Nan and Ivan Lyons (Jeffrey Cohen)
• Solomon’s Vineyard, by Jonathan Latimer (Mike Ripley)
• Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell (Vicki Delany)
• Modus Operandi, by Robin W. Winks (Stephen Miller)
• The Eighth Circle, by Stanley Ellin (J. Kingston Pierce)
• The Woman Chaser, by Charles Willeford (Kathryn Miller Haines)
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins (William Landay)
• GBH, by Ted Lewis (Ray Banks)
• The Criminal, by Jim Thompson (Nate Flexer)
• Trent’s Last Case, by E.C. Bentley (Stefanie Pintoff)
• The Depths of the Forest, by Eugenio Fuentes (Ann Cleeves)
• Putting the Boot In, by Dan Kavanagh (Michael Walters)
• Switch, by William Bayer (Col Bury)
• Sympathy for the Devil, by Kent Anderson (John Shannon)
• The Quiet Strangers, by John Buxton Hilton (Stephen Booth)
• Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, by E.W. Hornung (Chris Ewan)
• No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by James Hadley Chase (James R. Benn)
• War Against the Mafia,
by Don Pendleton (Matt Hilton)
• Daddy Cool,
by Donald Goines (Gary Phillips)
• Edith’s Diary,
by Patricia Highsmith (Jason Starr)
• Night of the Panther,
by E.C. Ayres (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Death of a Unicorn,
by Peter Dickinson (Keith Raffel)

• The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (Anthony Rainone)
• The Bigger They Come, by A.A. Fair (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Death of a Citizen, by Donald Hamilton (Rob Kantner)
• The Double Take, by Roy Huggins (J. Kingston Pierce)
• The Overseer, by Jonathan Rabb (Simon Wood)
• A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler (Ali Karim)
• The Scarf, by Robert Bloch (John Peyton Cooke)
• The Ebony Tower, by John Fowles (Michael G. Jacob)
• The Grifters, by Jim Thompson (Chris Knopf)
• A Clubbable Woman, by Reginald Hill (Simon Wood)
• The Bloody Bokhara, by William Campbell Gault (David Fulmer)
• Journey into Fear, by Eric Ambler (Charles Cumming)
• Despair, by Vladimir Nabokov (Robert Eversz)
• Marathon Man, by William Goldman (Linwood Barclay)
• Mayhem, by J. Robert Janes (Cara Black)
• The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov (Jane Finnis)
• The 12:30 from Croydon, by Freeman Wills Crofts
(Dolores Gordon-Smith)
• The Golden Crucible, by Jean Stubbs (Amy Myers)
• Rilke on Black, by Ken Bruen (Tony Black)
• The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey (Judith Cutler)
• Nine Times Nine, by Anthony Boucher (Jeffrey Marks)
• The Three Coffins, by John Dickson Carr (Edward Marston)
• Some Must Watch, by Ethel Lina White (Mary Reed)
• The Golden Gate Murders, by Peter King (Anthony Flacco)
• The Big Bow Mystery, by Israel Zangwill (Will Thomas)
• Coffin’s Got the Dead Guy on the Inside, by Keith Snyder
(Timothy Hallinan)
• The Twisted Thing, by Mickey Spillane (Max Allan Collins)
• The Falling Man, by Mark Sadler (Robert J. Randisi)
• Don’t Cry for Me, by William Campbell Gault (Ed Gorman)
• No Human Involved, by Barbara Seranella (Louise Ure)
• Watcher in the Shadows, by Geoffrey Household (Mike Ripley)
• Cutter and Bone, by Newton Thornburg (Kirk Russell)
• Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton (Tony Broadbent)
• God’s Pocket, by Pete Dexter (David Corbett)
• Chinaman’s Chance, by Ross Thomas (Tim Maleeny)
• I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier (Steve Hockensmith)
• The Honest Dealer, by Frank Gruber (Dick Lochte)
• When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes, by Lawrence Block (Dick Adler)
• The January Corpse, by Neil Albert (Kevin Burton Smith)
• The Lunatic Fringe, by William L. DeAndrea (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man, by H.F. Saint (Ali Karim)

READ MORE: “Kirkus Reviews’ ‘Rediscovered Reads’ Series,”
by J. Kingston Pierce.

And the Lucky Number Is ...

Yowza! Sometime over the last several days, The Rap Sheet registered its five-millionth pageview! We’ve certainly come a long way since this blog’s start more than 11 years ago, and also since we counted our one-millionth pageview during the spring of 2011. As we rapidly approach the publication of our 6,800th post, it’s time again to thank everyone who follows and trusts in the value of this humble site.

This Blog Has Now Entered Puberty

Last May 22, I made a big deal of The Rap Sheet’s birthday. But then, that date marked 10 years since this blog was officially launched. Today is, well, The Rap Sheet’s 11th birthday, and as such anniversaries go, anything between 10 and 15 tends to be overlooked. I have nothing profound to say on this occasion.

However, let me share just a few interesting statistics.

We’ve now put up more than 6,800 posts on this page, and have registered almost 4.9 million page views. Something happened over the last year—I don’t know what, maybe just word-of-mouth publicity—which has resulted in The Rap Sheet clocking in far more visitors than it had previously: in excess of 3,500 each day, up from 1,500 to 2,500 visitors a day back in early 2016. Such stats are probably chicken feed when compared with what prominent news sites such as The New York Times or The Washington Post register, or what a publisher-backed, daily updated crime-fiction site such as Criminal Element boasts. But for The Rap Sheet—which is really more a labor of love than a paying proposition—I think they’re pretty outstanding.

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog on a regular, or even irregular, basis. Your interest in the genre and your warm reception of our efforts to cover it keep us going.

Thanks, Rap Sheet Fans!

I remember being amazed when, back in March of 2011—as The Rap Sheet was approaching its fifth birthday—Blogger’s statistics-keeping software reported that this site had registered its one-millionth visitor. Today, three months after The Rap Sheet celebrated its 10th anniversary, we clocked in our four-millionth visitor!

The Rap Sheet: 10 Years in the Making

I’ve wanted to be a book critic for a very long while. The first review I ever wrote was for The Oregonian, the daily newspaper in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. My eighth-grade teacher, Jeanne Leeson, had a program in place that allowed her more promising students to publish reviews in that broadsheet, and she asked me to critique a new book about U.S. Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) and his efforts to limit the deployment of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems in the United States and the Soviet Union. (A rather complicated topic, though I don’t remember feeling out of my depth.) From there, it was some years before I took on another reviewing assignment, this time for my college paper. Protests had erupted on campus after the administration foolishly invited a South African government official to address the student body (this was during South Africa’s racial-segregation era, after all), and one of my contributions to the coverage looked at James McClure’s crime novels starring white Afrikaan Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Murder and Robbery Squad and his Zulu assistant, Sergeant Mickey Zondi.

After college, during my stint with Portland’s “alternative weekly,” Willamette Week, I composed a great number of crime- and mystery-fiction reviews for the paper’s entertainment section, Fresh Weekly, and took advantage of what I now see were incredibly lucky opportunities to interview authors in this genre. (It was during that period, for instance, that I traveled—on my own dime—to interview Ross Macdonald in Santa Barbara, California, Arthur Lyons in Palm Springs, and Bill Pronzini in Petaluma; plus Robert B. Parker in Boston and George C. Chesbro in New York.) Although I was interested as well, back then, in science fiction (particularly work by Larry Niven, who I also went to chat with in Tarzana, California), my passion for stories marked by a crime or mystery bent soon dominated my pleasure-reading hours. It was just the beginning of a long education in the field that has carried me through the rest of my life so far.

When Linda L. Richards invited me, in 1997, to begin contributing to her online review/author interview site, January Magazine, I was thrilled. It gave me a soapbox from which to comment regularly on crime fiction (though my first review for January was actually of Larry McMurtry’s Comanche Moon). Within a couple of years my contributions to the publication increased, when I launched what was originally an e-mail newsletter about the genre called The Rap Sheet. I took responsibility, too, for building up January’s crime-fiction department, which in 2005 won the Gumshoe Award, presented by David J. Montgomery’s then-substantial Mystery Ink Web site.

Around the same time I received that commendation, I concluded that The Rap Sheet needed to be something more than a newsletter, and that I needed to have more design control over the product if it was ever to fulfill what I imagined was its potential. Coincidentally, in 2005, my technophobic copy-editor colleague and longtime friend, Charles Smyth, asked me to help him figure out how to use the Blogger software. He wanted to create his own blog (then still a new idea—imagine!), but didn’t know how. In the course of assisting Charlie, I realized that blogging could be the way of the future for The Rap Sheet. It would allow me to update the information

J. Kingston Pierce

I wished to convey in a more timely fashion, and lift the burden of putting The Rap Sheet together off Linda, who was already buried in other work on January, as well as her fiction-writing.

So on May 22, 2006—10 years ago today—after several weeks of experimenting with the Blogger software, trying to adapt elements of the Rap Sheet newsletter design to a blog format, I finally began publishing on this page. The site has grown tremendously since then, recording its 500th post by November 2006, and its 1,000th post by April 2007; registering half a million page views by March 2009, and a cool million two years later; attracting a small but enthusiastic lineup of guest contributors; winning a Spinetingler Award in 2009; and in 2008 being nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Web Site/Blog—the first of two times that commendation was dangled in front of me, the second occasion being in 2011. (Sadly, in neither case did I actually take the Anthony home, and now the Best Web Site/Blog category seems to have been eliminated from the competition.) Oh, and when I checked this morning, Blogger’s statistics-keeping software told me that almost 6,400 posts have gone up in The Rap Sheet, and the site has exceeded 3.8 million page views. Not bad for a little “Weblog” that rose out of my enthusiasm for crime fiction of all sorts and wasn’t intended to be much more than a hobby.

Over the last 10 years, I have sought to make The Rap Sheet something I’d want to read, even if I weren’t responsible for its production. Because I have spent my entire professional career as a writer and editor, somebody more interested in finely crafted and thoughtful prose than in brief and pithy reportage, I have pretty much ignored the advice dispensed by “experts” who claim that people are too busy in the 21st century to read anything online that’s longer than 500 words, or that forces them occasionally to refer to a dictionary. I want to create here a spirited, lasting, non-academic resource for readers interested in gleaning more than a shallow understanding of this genre’s depth and breadth. The fact that many of our articles have won considerable attention suggests we’re on the right track. The following 10 posts have been, by far, the most popular:

1. NBC’s “Mystery Movie” Turns 40: “Banacek” (December 7, 2011)
2. The Return of Lisbeth Salander (January 2, 2009)
3. Distinction by Design: Best Crime Covers, 2015 (January 7, 2016)
4. Say Good-bye to Kolchak’s “Father” (July 27, 2015)
5. But Really, Sally McMillan Is Ageless (August 14, 2006)
6. “Money,” Shot (December 4, 2007)
7. NBC’s “Mystery Movie” Turns 40: “McMillan & Wife”
(November 10, 2011)
8. Happy Birthday, Doctor Watson? (March 31, 2009)
9. The Book You Have to Read: “Tapping the Source,” by Kem Nunn (March 15, 2013)
10. Quinn’s Border Blues (October 15, 2013)

(I won’t clue you in here to what these posts entail, but will instead let you explore and enjoy them for yourself.)

It’s also interesting to see who’s paying attention to this blog. As might be expected, the overwhelming majority of readers hail from the United States, where I also live, with the United Kingdom holding second place. After that, the countries most often clicking over to The Rap Sheet rank in this order: Germany, Canada, France, Russia, Ukraine, The Netherlands, Poland, and Australia.

When I first took up this venture, I was editing and contributing to a wide variety of publications, all of which kept me busy and intellectually stimulated. Nowadays, I spend far too many hours working by myself, and my outlets for journalism and other writing have been severely reduced in number. I’d expected by this stage of my life to have moved confidently from writing non-fiction to penning novels. But my labors in that direction have proven … well, frustrating at best. Alternatively, I imagined The Rap Sheet might become a well-paying enterprise, perhaps an adjunct to some book-publisher’s Web site, but that hasn’t come to pass, either.

Producing The Rap Sheet has gone from being a sideline to being a central occupational endeavor, perhaps a legacy of sorts. And while there are often moments when I feel the blog doesn’t quite measure up to my (admittedly unrealistic) ambitions for it, I have drawn tremendous energy from some of the supportive notes I’ve received during these last 10 years. One reader, for instance, wrote to say, “The Rap Sheet is, in my opinion, by far the best of the best in the mystery-fiction blogging field.” Another remarked: “After reading your latest Rap Sheet, I wanted to convey how much I appreciate all your efforts in producing that blog. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am stuck in southeast Georgia. The Rap Sheet is a true highlight for me. When I lived in Berkeley and in New York City, I was active as a fan in the crime-fiction scenes there. To say The Rap Sheet ‘keeps me in touch’ only scratches the surface of how it functions for me. Thanks again for your efforts!” No less heartening are compliments I have received on occasion from writers whose work I’ve edited over the years, either at January or The Rap Sheet. Read one: “You have made me a better writer, my friend.” And in a post highlighting blogs that provide “good crime-fiction recommendations,” critic/anthologist Sarah Weinman described The Rap Sheet as “one of the oldest [such sites] ... and still one of the best—plus editor J. Kingston Pierce was the first person to seriously edit my reviews, for which I am forever grateful).”

I can’t tell you what I shall be doing in another 10 years, or whether The Rap Sheet will still be around to celebrate its 20th anniversary. But I can say that this last decade has brought unexpected treats and memorable successes to yours truly. It’s through The Rap Sheet that I won my column-writing gig for Kirkus Reviews, and it is because of this modest blog (and my work with January Magazine) that I established some of my most prized friendships, including those with Ali Karim and Linda Richards. If I had to give it all up tomorrow, I’d be more heartbroken than I might’ve expected back in 2006, but I would also be extremely proud of what has been created here.

Thank you, everyone, for following along on this adventure.

SEE MORE: Killer Covers joins this anniversary celebration with its own “Rap Party” countdown of vintage paperback fronts.