When “Dolls” Come Out to Play

South Florida resident Robert Deis, with whom I worked on last year’s The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, alerts me to this month’s release of its sequel, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 2: Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls, co-edited by Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Daniel Zimmer. I haven’t yet laid my hands on a copy, but here’s Amazon’s skinny on its intents and contents:

In the late 1950s, while studying with the legendary art teacher Frank J. Reilly at the Art Students League in New York City, Ron Lesser embarked on a long career as one of America’s top illustration artists. Over the next four decades, his artwork was used for thousands of paperback book covers, movie posters, magazines, and advertisements. Many great artists once made a good living doing such illustration artwork and Ron Lesser is among the greatest. He’s also one of the few who are still alive and still painting.

Like a number of other top 20th-century illustrators, Lesser went on to do paintings for galleries as the market for illustration art faded away in the 1990s. His gallery artwork includes Civil War and Western scenes, sports, celebrity portraits, and new versions of the types of subjects he once did for paperback covers. The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 1 is the first in the series covering Ron's paperback, movie and advertising art. The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 2 covers Ron's transition out of paperback illustration and into advertising, movie, and gallery illustration which he continues to this day.

In his Men’s Pulp Mags blog, Deis explains that Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls “showcases scores of the paintings of sexy women Lesser has done in recent decades for galleries. Some are modern versions of the ‘dangerous dame’-style cover art he did for paperbacks in the 1960s and 1970s. Others are paintings of sexy celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Brigitte Bardot, and Pam Anderson, and pop-culture characters like Vampirella, Red Sonja, and Harley Quinn.”

Like its predecessor, this book is said to include “commentary by Ron about his artwork and career.”

It sounds like a beautiful, fun follow-up to our previous work!

Cementing Lesser’s Legacy

Left: Pleasant Places, by Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr. (Fawcett Crest, 1978). Right: Bombshell, by G.G. Fickling (Pyramid, 1964).

Well, it took me a somewhat longer time than I had expected to complete, but I have finally posted—in my Killer Covers blog—a broad interview I did recently with Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, the brains behind the beauteous new book, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens (Pulp 2.0).

Now a spry 81 years old, New York resident Ron Lesser is “one of the last of the top mid-20th-century illustration artists who is not only still alive but still painting,” notes Deis. At the height of his career, Lesser’s creations graced magazines, movie posters, and music album jackets, as well as myriad paperback books. Like fellow artist Robert McGinnis (who is also still around and working, at age 97), Lesser specialized in portraying young, curvaceous, and seemingly biddable women. His works graced inexpensive releases by John D. MacDonald, Carter Brown, Edward S. Aarons, Craig Rice, Robert Dietrich (aka E. Howard Hunt), G.G. Fickling, Frank Kane, Harold Q. Masur, Erle Stanley Gardner, Thomas B. Dewey, Robert Kyle, Henry Kane, Richard S. Prather, and other crime-fiction authors who were once popular but have since been all but forgotten. He also created covers for romance novels, westerns, horror yarns, and espionage thrillers. “He did a bit of everything,” Cunningham observes, “and has been doing it well for a very, very long time. That is something to be celebrated.”

(Left) Strange Friends, by Agnete Holk (Pyramid, 1963).

Indeed, Deadly Dames celebrates Lesser’s talent in grand fashion. As I explain in my introduction to the interview, it is “not only … handsomely illustrated with Lesser’s finished pieces, original art, and some of the model photographs to which he referred when creating his canvasses, but it also features comments from Lesser about his artistic techniques and spreads that highlight a selection of his favorite female models, including his wife of four decades, Claudia.” The book goes a long way toward cementing Lesser’s legacy as one of the great commercial illustrators of the last 60 years.

So numerous were the examples of Lesser’s artistry collected by Deis and Cunningham, that they’re already planning sequels (notice that the subhead of this release reads “Volume 1”). I am pleased to have had an interview I did with Lesser included in this book’s mix. I can’t expect to have an influence on the follow-ups, but it can be guaranteed that I’ll pick them up when they go on sale.

You’ll find my conversation with Deadly Dames’ developers here.

Block from the Beginning

Consider this an early birthday present to Lawrence Block, the prolific New York crime fictionist and Mystery Writers of America Grand Master who will turn an amazing 85 years old on June 24. Robert Deis, an expert on the art of vintage men’s adventure magazines, and Wyatt Doyle, the self-proclaimed “ringmaster” at publisher New Texture—who together produce the Men's Adventure Library line—recently released two editions of their latest entry in that series: The Naked and the Deadly: Lawrence Block in Men's Adventure Magazines.

Block started his writing career in the 1950s, when he was an editorial associate with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, charged with reading and generally rejecting paid submissions by folks angling for entry into the publishing world. He got his feet wet by penning fiction and very lightly researched non-fiction (mostly under pseudonyms such as Sheldon Lord) to be placed in male-oriented periodicals on the order of Real Men, All Man, and For Men Only, earning “a cent a word, sometimes a cent and a half,” as he explains in this book’s introduction. Many of those stories, he recalls, “I wrote of my own initiative,” but other times “an editor would call the office with an assignment. He needed 2,500 words to fill a hole in an issue [of a magazine] that was about to go to press, say, or he had a terrific idea and needed someone to write it up. A shipwreck, or a disaster, or a Very Bad Man—generally something it would never occur to me to write, but more often than not an occasion to which I was prepared to rise.”


(Left) The expanded, full-color hardcover edition of The Naked and the Deadly, with bonus content. (Right) The slimmed-down, black-and-white paperback version, which the editors say honors “Block’s many successes in that format.”

The softcover edition The Naked and the Deadly contains a dozen dusty Block tales, printed in men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) between 1958 and 1968. “Some of the stories included,” says the blog Paperback Warrior, “will be familiar to long-time Blockheads. ‘Great Istanbul Land Grab’ and ‘Bring on the Girls’ are extracts from existing Block novels”—The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep and The Scoreless Thai, respectively—“starring his sleepless adventurer Evan Tanner. There are also three novellas starring his private detective Ed London previously reprinted in Block’s [2008] collection, One Night Stands and Lost Weekends.” Paperback Warrior questions the fact that the initial story on offer here, “Queen of the Clipper Ships,” is included, given that the author asserts he didn’t compose it. But editor Doyle tells me “Clipper Ships” has been previously credited to Block, thanks to its original “Sheldon Lord” byline, and was used at the author’s request:

When [Block] told us the story wasn't his, naturally we said we’d take it out. But he said nope, he wanted it in. So we proposed it as a special bonus for the deluxe hardcover alone, but he insisted it be included in all editions. And then of course in his intro, he says, I didn’t write it, but since it’s been attributed to me all this time, it’s mine now. This kind of playfulness has been a component of nearly every conversation with LB while working on the book, so we like that this bit of it carried over into the book for readers to share in. And of course almost all of the supplementary info in the expanded hardcover’s editorial comments illustrates where various bits and bobs were borrowed, swiped, repurposed, and reused, in the grand MAM tradition.

Though the decision to Include “Clipper Ships” was Block’s, in the end it’s become one more way the book endeavors to immerse the reader in the MAM experience.

As regards that aforereferenced hardcover version of this collection, it features an additional 60 pages of material, including magazine covers and interior spreads; context regarding the oft-salacious slant of MAMs; Block’s history of employing noms de plume; and “an entire 8,000-word story exclusive to the hardcover edition.” Said bonus yarn, “Erotic Life of the ‘Fly Me’ Stewardesses,” is an excerpt from Sex and the Stewardess (1972), “one of far too many purportedly factual books I wrote as John Warren Wells,” Block remarks. Yes, the hardcover edition is priced at $39.95—a full $23 more than the paperback—but it’s handsome and well worth the extra expense.

By the way, if you are a real Lawrence Block enthusiast, there are 200 copies available of a signed and numbered edition of the expanded hardcover. Pick up one of those here while supplies last.

I can only agree with Paperback Warrior’s assessment that “overall, this collection from a mystery grandmaster is an easy recommendation. If you’re on the fence, take the plunge.”

READ MORE: “The Naked and the Deadly—Lawrence Block,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges); “The Naked and the Deadly: Lawrence Block in Men’s Adventure Magazines,” by dfordoom (Vintage Pop Fictions).

SEE MORE: Paperback Parade editor Gary Lovisi examines The Naked and the Deadly in this YouTube video.

Lessons in Lesser

It has actually happened! The beautiful, long-promised book, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, has finally been published. It should be explained here that I had a modest hand in making this possible, as a healthy chunk of the material contained in said work draws from my Killer Covers series about Lesser and his six decades of artistic accomplishment. Therefore, I may be more enthusiastic about this release than the typical reader.

Most of the credit for this 145-page tribute belongs to Bob Deis, an expert in the art of vintage men’s adventure magazines (and the editor of a blog on that very subject), and Bill Cunningham, the head of Pulp 2.0 Press, who, with Deis, now publishes Men’s Adventure Quarterly magazine. Deis contacted me last fall, asking whether I would be willing to let my lengthy 2018 interview with Ron Lesser be reused (and slightly re-edited) in a print release, and I quickly agreed. Since then, I’ve been sent various proofs from the volume, which is not only elegant but eye-catching as hell, thanks both to Cunningham’s design expertise and Lesser’s distinctive talents.

Early responses to this book have been altogether flattering. Leif Peng, author of The Art of the REAL Tom Sawyer and creator of the Today’s Inspiration Group on Facebook, wrote:

The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1 isn’t just a beautifully designed collection of Lesser’s exceptional artwork, we also learn about his career—and the mid-20th-century illustration business in general—as described by artist himself. For fans of popular culture, genre fiction, and lovers of the best in illustration art of the period, this book is a must-have!

Meanwhile, Australian novelist and pop culture critic Andrew Nette (who also edited my contribution to 2019’s Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980) had this to say:

Messrs. Deis, Cunningham and Pierce have cemented themselves as among the foremost fan scholars of pulp. They have put together a book that not only beautifically showcases some of Lesser's stunning artwork. It executes a deep dive into the mechanics of his work and the economic and cultural forces that influenced it, over a range of mediums—paperbacks, magazines and film posters. It also sheds much needed light on the people who were vital to the lurid appeal of pulp paperback cover art but who have for the most part been erased from its history, the cover models.

This is not only a must-have for fans of mid-century pulp artwork, but an essential resource for those interested in changing visual and illustration styles more generally.

And author Max Allan Collins’ remarks were laudatory enough to earn them a spot on the book’s rear cover:

This astonishing book—perhaps the best ever assembled about a key artist of paperback book covers—is a mind-boggling feast for the eyes. What surprised me most was how many books I have purchased over the last fifty years, how many movies I have attended, that were due to Ron Lesser luring me in. Nothing ‘lesser’ about Ron—he is one of the handful of masters, right next to [Robert] McGinnis and [Robert] Maguire.

While the focus of this first volume of Lesser’s work explores his creative turnout between 1959 and 1979, Deis and Cunningham promise that future sequels “will cover different periods and aspects of the artist and his artwork.” I’m very pleased to have been a part of this production, and am planning more coverage of its print appearance in my Killer Covers blog. Stay tuned.

Bullet Points: Full Meal Deal Edition

It’s been too long since I found the time to write one of these news wrap-ups, so I have much to share. Let’s dive right in.

• I was overjoyed last September to learn that Crippen & Landru would be releasing a posthumous collection of short stories by screenwriting partners William Link and Richard Levinson, best known for having created the NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo. C&L publisher Jeffrey Marks said the book was to be titled Shooting Script and Other Mysteries, and that he would send me a copy. Four months passed, no book found its way into my mailbox, and I became busy with other things. It wasn’t until mid-January that I thought to check on Shooting Script’s status … only to learn that it had gone on sale in November, and I just wasn’t aware. Naturally, I ordered a copy immediately, and have been working my way slowly through its 194 pages ever since. The book comprises 17 abbreviated yarns, written between 1954 and 1966. Most appeared originally in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One, “Whistle While You Work,” was composed by the pair while they were still high school students in Philadelphia, and sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but the remainder, explains Jim Noy in The Invisible Event, were turned out when Link and Levinson were in their 30s. “[S]traight away the tonal shift is evident,” he says, “concerned less with immediate narrative cleverness than with capturing the intrusion of crime as a terrifying-but-regenerative thing. ‘Shooting Script’ (1959), ‘Operation Staying-Alive’ (1959), and ‘Robbery, Robbery, Robbery’ (1959)—this last also published under the title ‘Robbery, Robbery!’, which manages to miss the point quite impressively—see ordinary people pulled into the maelstrom and emerging in different ways: bewildered, energised, sometimes terrified.” In Noy’s opinion, the best of the bunch here is “Dear Corpus Delicti” (1960), “in which we follow a man’s perfect scheme to murder his wife and start a new life with his mistress.” It’s obvious from the outset that “Dear Corpus Delicti” was part of the source material these authors harvested when they sat down to write the play and, later, the TV film Prescription: Murder, the figurative first pilot for Columbo.

Earlier this week, I asked Joseph Goodrich, who edited Shooting Script, what he learned about Link and Levinson by bringing their forgotten short stories back to print. He got back to me pronto:

First of all, as a fan of Link and Levinson’s work, it was a pleasure to read the stories and watch them apply what they learned from reading mystery fiction to the writing of it. These aren’t detective stories, even though Columbo’s origins are contained in the collection; to me they have more in common with, say, Stanley Ellin’s stories, in which a shift of focus or perspective throws a new and unexpected (and often-shocking) light on what we assumed was happening.

Apart from 1954’s “Whistle While You Work,” the majority of the stories were written in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and reflect a world that was in the process of vanishing, the world of down-at-heels boarding houses and small-town postmen, and patients who smoke in doctors’ offices. I think there’s also just a hint of the turbulent world that would soon take over in stories like “Top-Flight Aquarium” and "The Man in the Lobby." Gruesome death and a deadly resignation …

Shooting Script and Other Mysteries offers insight into the evolution of Link and Levinson as storytelling masters. Highly recommended.

• Speaking of Messieurs Link and Levinson, what’s been swirling around in the zeitgeist that might explain why so much has been written recently about their 1975-1976 NBC-TV series, Ellery Queen? Early last month, Ah Sweet Mystery! blogger Brad Friedman undertook the formidable task of reviewing—in pairs—all 22 weekly episodes. You should be able to access those pieces here. (Friedman remarked on the March 23, 1975, pilot, “Too Many Suspects,” in his introduction to that project.) After concluding his efforts, he presented this poll page, inviting veteran Ellery Queen enthusiasts as well as newcomers to that hour-long whodunit to identify their favorite episodes. Friedman will keep his survey up until February 16, then reveal its results.

• Meanwhile, Curtis Evans—spurred on by Friedman’s deep dive—presented his own memories and opinions of Ellery Queen in The Passing Tramp. In his case, he covered that short-lived Jim Hutton/David Wayne series in five installments (see here, here, here, here, and here), before presenting his top-10 list of favorite episodes. This all makes me want to go back and watch the full run of the show myself. Maybe after I finish Reacher.

• Author Robert Crais announced this week that his next novel, Racing the Light—starring P.I. Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, and mercenary John Stone—will be released by Putnam on November 1.

• News that Monica Vitti, often referred to as “the Queen of Italian Cinema,” died on February 2 at age 90, left me wondering how best to honor her memory in The Rap Sheet. Then, while reading Terence Towles Canote’s obituary of Vitti, I was reminded that she’d starred as the eponymous criminal-turned-crime fighter in Modesty Blaise, a lightweight but diverting 1966 British spy-fi picture. She also became artist Robert McGinnis’ model for that character, when he sat down to paint the cover for Fawcett’s paperback tie-in novel, Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell. The book front and actress are shown below.

• By the way, at least for now can watch the full two-hour length of Modesty Blaise by clicking over to YouTube.

• The lineup of prominent international authors invited as guests to this year’s Iceland Noir festival, taking place in Reykjavik from November 16 to 19, has been broadcast. It includes Ruth Ware, Richard Osman, Paula Hawkins, Mark Billingham, and Sophie Hannah. Tickets to the popular literary event can be purchased here.

• Coming up sooner than that is Mystery Fest, being planned for Saturday, March 12, in Portsmouth, England. The Guest of Honor at this year’s gathering will be Priscilla Masters, the creator of Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy (Almost a Whisper) and coroner Martha Gunn (Bridge of Sighs). Also appearing for panel discussions that day will be authors Edward Marston, Leigh Russell, and Judith Cutler. Events will take place on the third floor of the Portsmouth Central Library, beginning at 10 a.m. and concluding at 5 p.m.

• Oh, and let us not forget Lyme Crime, which—according to its Web site—“launched online in June 2020 and returns with a full, three-day festival 23 to 25 June 2022.” Tickets go on sale in March, and the program is expected to be publicized soon. For now, Shotsmag Confidential at least provides us with a look at the authors attending this convocation in the Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis.

• Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine is out with its new, digital-only Winter 2022 issue, devoted in substantial part to what its editors (and others) say were the best mysteries, crime novels, and thrillers published over the course of 2021. Editor George Easter has filled these pages with numerous “best of the year” lists he posted in his blog at the end of 2021, then broken the top picks down according to the number of times they were mentioned. (S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears scored best, with an astonishing 44 recommendations!) Elsewhere in the issue, assistant editor Larry Gandle assesses this year’s Edgar Award-nominated books; recent deaths within the crime-fiction community are acknowledged (goodbye again, G.M. Ford); contributor George H. Madison looks back at the rough road to making the Raymond Chandler-scripted 1946 film, The Blue Dahlia; Ted Hertel and Brian Ritt both revisit the work of George Harmon Coxe (1901-1984); and there are myriad critiques of recent releases, including from debut columnist Meredith Anthony. That’s a hell of a lot of copy to cram into one magazine. Good thing that Deadly Pleasures no longer needs to worry about paper and printing costs.

• A rare “best of 2021” compilation that didn’t make it into Deadly Pleasures comes from The Strand Magazine. Its absence may be chalked up simply to the fact that it came out so tardily: managing editor Andrew Gulli posted his top 20 favorites in late January. They include Sleep Well, My Lady, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime); The Whispering Dead, by Darcy Coates (Black Owl ); The Wayward Spy, by Susan Ouellette (CamCat); Her Perfect Life, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge); and The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celadon).

• A different sort of “bests” roster was presented more recently by Robert Lopresti in the Sleuth Sayers blog. As he explains, it’s his “thirteenth annual list of the year’s best mystery [short] stories as determined by yours truly. It goes without saying that the verdicts are subjective, personal, and entirely correct.” Almost a third of Lopresti’s 16 picks originated in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, with almost as many drawn from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

• How his hoax execution affected Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fiction.

• It’s been a long time in coming, but the six-part Apple+ TV series Slow Horses is finally set to premiere on Friday, April 1. And that’s no joke, folks. Mystery Fanfare reports that this spy drama, adapted from Mick Herron’s first Slough House novel of the same name, will start with back-to-back presentations of its opening two installments, “followed by one new episode weekly every Friday.” Slow Horses focuses on a team of British intelligence agents who are considered, well, troublesome and expendable. Gary Oldman plays the arrogant and oft-offensive head of that misfit squad, Jackson Lamb. Also among the cast are Kristin Scott Thomas, Jonathan Pryce, and Olivia Cooke. Anyone who doesn’t know about Herron’s series should check out the cover story from last spring’s edition of Deadly Pleasures.

(Left) Joe Cole plays Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File.

• In other small-screen news, Crime Fiction Lover alerts us that UK network ITV will roll out, sometime in March, its six-part series The Ipcress File, based on both Len Deighton’s 1962 espionage novel, The IPCRESS File, and the 1965 Michael Caine film adapted from that book. Judging by a one-minute trailer, says CFL, “It looks like no expense has been spared … and the initial impression is sexy, witty and dangerous.” Deighton Dossier blogger Rob Mallows adds: “While little of the plot is given away, it’s clear that the series will make some significant departures from both the book and the [film] …, such as the more active agent role for Jean, played by Lucy Boynton, evidence of the backstory of the ‘unnamed spy’—Harry Palmer—and his role in the Berlin black market which led to military prison and ultimately, the job with W.O.O.C.(P)., plus the sidebar story involving the nuclear test in the Pacific, which is a big part of the book but which was of course not featured in the original film.” In addition to Boynton, The Ipcress Files’ cast features Joe Cole and Tom Hollander. UPDATE: This mini-series is supposed to be carried in the States on AMC+, but no airdate has yet been publicized.

• I can’t say I’m terribly surprised to hear this. From Deadline:

Marg Helgenberger is eyeing a possible return to the CSI franchise with a reprisal of her role as Catherine Willows ... Helgenberg would appear in the upcoming second season of CSI: Vegas, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2000 series, in which Helgenberger starred for the first 12 seasons. …

Season 1 opened a new chapter in Las Vegas—the city where it all began, introducing a serialized storytelling to the classic crime procedural drama. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the entire Crime Lab and release thousands of convicted killers back onto the neon-lit streets of Vegas, a brilliant new team of investigators led by Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome) enlisted the help of old friends, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), to investigate a case centered around former colleague David Hodges (Wallace Langham). This combined force deployed the latest forensic techniques to follow the evidence—to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

Actors Petersen and Fox had earlier announced they will not be returning for the sophomore season of CSI: Vegas.

• This Monday is Valentine’s Day. Do you know what books you’ll crack for that occasion? Janet Rudolph offers some suggestions.

• CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz supplies an alternative reading list: “Your Anti-Valentine’s Day Round-Up of the Sexiest Mysteries to Read with Your FWBs.” Yes, I had to look up that initialism, too: it stands for “friends with benefits.”

• Wait just a darn minute here, I thought Christopher Fowler was done penning his time-spanning yarns about detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. When the 20th such mystery, Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down, came out last summer, The Guardian made quite clear that it was “bringing to a close a much-loved series that started in 2003 with Full Dark House.” So much for that. Fowler writes this week in his blog that he’s now “in the final stages of the edit” of a 21st Peculiar Crimes book, which sounds more like a tour guide than a novel. Says Fowler:

For 20 books, London has been a central character in the Bryant & May series, so I decided that the detectives’ next investigation should be of London itself. And that this investigation has been going on—in a sort of louche way—for the last twenty years.

After all, the nation’s oldest serving detectives have spent a lifetime investigating crimes in the murkiest corners of London. They’ve been walking the streets and impulsively arresting citizens for decades. Who better to take you through London’s less savoury side?

They’re going to be remembering old buildings and odd characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing travel routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. The idea is to make strange connections and show readers why it’s almost impossible to tell separate and fiction in the city.

The book will be very much a part of the existing canon; Volume 21, Bryant & May’s Peculiar London. It will have a cover by our usual superb artist Max Schindler and will be the same size and format as all earlier volumes.

Amazon UK says Fowler’s new book will be released on July 14.

• Funny, this 1977 NBC-TV movie was supposed to be set in my hometown of Seattle, Washington, but I’ve never heard of it before. The Modcinema sales site describes Ransom for Alice as “the pilot film for the unsold series The Busters. The protagonists are not narcotics agents as might be assumed, but instead a male-female team of government undercover agents (Gil Gerard, Yvette Mimieux) operating in Seattle in the 1890s. … Ransom for Alice is an uncertain blend of cop drama, western, and espionage caper.” Do any Rap Sheet readers remember watching this 75-minute feature?

• A couple of podcasts have been added to The Rap Sheet’s right-hand column of crime-fiction resources: Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast, which deals with the varied works of Ed McBain, and The le Carré Cast, concentrating on espionage novelist John le Carré.

• While we’re on the topic of le Carré, let us note the coming publication of a new collection of his writings. The following comes from Jeff Quest’s blog, Spy Write: “After being teased by Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré’s sons, during book events surrounding the release of Silverview, we now have additional details on a book of John le Carré/David Cornwell correspondence. The book, currently titled A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, 1945-2020, has a UK release date of November 3rd, 2022 and a healthy page count of 400, although [publisher Viking’s] U.S. page lists a release date of October 11th, 2022 and 144 pages. So there is some conflicting information that will hopefully be cleared up soon.”

• Beware, spoilers ahead! Although the British-French crime drama Death in Paradise debuted way back in 2011, my wife and I only became fans during the months of COVID-19 isolation. That program’s cast has changed a good deal over the last decade, offering viewers four different male leads (my favorite being Kris Marshall as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman), backed up by a trio of female detective sergeants—the best of whom, to my mind, is six-season veteran Florence Cassell, played by lovely French actress Joséphine Jobert. Season 11 was introduced with a 90-minute Christmas special this last December, and has been airing new episodes in Great Britain since early January. So far, there seems to be no U.S. premiere scheduled for this latest series; however, word of its plot progress has been leaking across the pond—including sad news that Jobert is no longer part of the show after Episode 4. Indeed, the UK’s Hello! magazine confirms that in the fifth episode, she’s replaced by Shantol Jackson playing newly promoted DS Naomi Thomas.

• Why is strychnine the mystery writers’ poison of choice?

• Saima Mir, author of the 2021 debut novel Khan, has been named as “the first recipient of the CrimeFest bursary for a crime fiction author of colour.” According to a news release, that scholarship “will cover the cost of a full weekend pass to CrimeFest this May, a night’s accommodation at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, and a guaranteed panel appearance. … Three runners-up were also chosen to receive complementary passes to this year’s convention: Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Amita Murray, and Stella Oni.”

• Sioux Falls, South Dakota, fictionist William Reynolds has been enjoying some favorable press notices of recent date, thanks to the fact of Brash Books reissuing his half-dozen crime novels about Nebraska, a single-monikered writer and private eye operating in Omaha, Nebraska. “From the beginning,” he tells the Sioux Falls blog Pigeon 605, “I wanted him to be sort of this average guy. He’s not 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds of square-jawed raw muscle; he’s average. In fact, there’s instances in which he deliberately uses his averageness to kind of blend in. He’s self-aware, and sometimes he screws up. He blunders into things he shouldn’t blunder into.” Reynolds’ series commences with The Nebraska Quotient (1984) and runs through Drive-By (1995)—at least, so far. Might all of this fresh attention to his work spur the author to compose a new Nebraska tale? Pigeon 605’s Jill Callison says, Reynolds “doesn’t have a new plot in mind. But he did spend time over the summer thinking about it.”

• Also receiving attention is the fourth issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, and released last month. “I’m running out of superlatives to describe what a beautiful publication Men’s Adventure Quarterly is,” enthuses prolific novelist James Reasoner. “Every issue lovingly reprints great covers and interior art from the men’s adventure magazines of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, along with stories and features from those magazines, all of it enhanced by well-written and informative editorials and introductions.” Glorious Trash’s Joe Kenney adds that this edition “is different from the previous three, not only due to its focus on female characters, but also because it features a few stories that were actually written by a female author. As Bob Deis notes in his intro, Jane Dolinger was definitely unique in the world of men’s magazines: a female writer who turned out escapist adventure yarns and who also happened to be a stacked beauty who posed nude for the very magazines she wrote for!” I admit, I haven’t yet purchased any of these magazines. Clearly I have been missing out.

• Count me as lax, too, for not having already mentioned Michael Stradford’s beautiful coffee-table book, Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model (‎St. Clair). Stradford has turned his boyhood fascination with the old Doc Savage paperback series—fronted so often by illustrations including actor-model Steve Holland—into a tribute volume that Paperback Warrior calls “absolutely a mandatory reference for anyone fascinated by 20th-century paperbacks, magazines and male-oriented advertisements. … More than 20 years after his death, Holland’s face is still selling publications. That is a testament to his phenomenal physique, likable face and ability to provide the perfect likeness for all of these amazing visuals. Stradford has honored Holland in such a beautiful way and I can’t thank him enough for his labors in creating it.”

• Should you be unacquainted with Steve Holland’s once-ubiquitous presence on paperbacks and magazines, see examples here.

• PulpFest, the annual celebration of pulp magazines and genre fiction—scheduled to take place this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 4 to 7—is soliciting nominations for two familiar prizes. First is the Munsey Award, named for America’s first pulp mag publisher, Frank A. Munsey, and recognizing “an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.” (Last year’s Munsey recipient was publisher and book designer Rich Harvey.) The second commendation seeking nominees is the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those persons who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” More info about these honors and how to submit names for consideration is available here.

Bullet Points: Pandemic (Yikes!) Edition

• I mentioned here in January that American network CBS-TV was developing a crime-drama series around Clarice Starling, the FBI agent first introduced in Thomas Harris’ best-selling 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs. At the time, there was no star slated to fill the title role in Clarice, but Deadline reported recently that 32-year-old Australian actress Rebecca Breeds (Pretty Little Liars, The Originals) has been hired for the job. Deadline notes that Breeds (right) “is taking on the role that earned Jodie Foster an Oscar for the 1991 movie adaptation directed by Jonathan Demme. In 2001’s Hannibal, based on Harris’ 1999 novel, which was set 10 years after Silence of the Lambs, Clarice was played by Julianne Moore. (Hat tip to January Magazine.)

• The finalists for this year’s Lambda Literary Awards—aka the “Lammys”—have been announced in 24 categories. These annual prizes, now in their 32nd year, are sponsored by Lambda Literary, “the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing LGBTQ literature.” Below are the contenders for best lesbian and gay mystery.

Lesbian Mystery:
— The Blood Runs Cold, by Catherine Maiorisi (Bella)
— Galileo, by Ann McMan (Bywater)
— The Hound of Justice, by Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager)
— The Mirror of Muraro, by Amelia Ellis (Newton Pryce Ingram)
— Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

Gay Mystery:
— Carved in Bone, by Michael Nava (Persigo Press)
— ChoirMaster, by Michael Craft (Questover Press)
— Death Takes a Bow, by David S. Pederson (Bold Strokes)
— The Fourth Courier, by Timothy Jay Smith (Arcade)
— The Nowhere, by Chris Gill (PRNTD)
— The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (World Noir)
— Rewind, by Marshall Thornton (Kenmore)
— Royal Street Reveillon, by Greg Herren (Bold Strokes)

Winners are to be announced during a ceremony held in New York City on Monday, June 8. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• In Reference to Murder reminds us that 2020 brings at least two notable crime-fiction anniversaries: “it’s been sixty years since the [release of the] 1960 Alfred Hitchcock psychological horror film, Psycho, which was based on the Wisconsin killer and graveyard robber, Ed Gein; and it’s also the 50th anniversary of Tony Hillerman’s The Blessing Way, the first book to introduce Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn.” According to The New Mexican, Hillerman’s novel debuted on March 11, 1970. Psycho saw its premiere on June 16, 1960, at New York City’s DeMille Theatre (aka Columbia Theatre).

• Max Allan Collins’ long-awaited 17th Nathan Heller novel, Do No Harm, was released this week by Forge. Concurrently, Collins recalled in his blog some of the difficulties he’d had fitting his fictional Chicago private eye into the real-life case involving Ohio doctor Sam Sheppard and the July 1954 murder of Sheppard’s first wife, Marilyn—a crime that may have helped inspire David Janssen’s 1963-1967 TV series The Fugitive, and that Collins says “has fascinated me since 1961.” An excerpt from Do No Harm can be found here.

• Did Scottish violinist and mystery author William Crawford Honeyman (1845–1919) provide inspiration to Arthur Conan Doyle in his creation of “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes?

• Regrettably, I must acknowledge the recent deaths of three people familiar to the mystery-fiction community. First, Barbara Neely, author of the four-novel Blanche White series (Blanche on the Lam, etc.), “which had at its center a nomadic amateur detective and domestic worker who uses the invisibility inherent to her job as an advantage in pursuit of the truth,” as the Associated Press explains. Just three months ago, Neely was named by the Mystery Writers of America as the winner of its 2020 Grand Master Award. She passed away on March 2, at age 78, as a result of a heart ailment. (CrimeReads provides a fine tribute to Neely’s work here.) Second, former trial attorney Laura Caldwell, who, recalls the Chicago Tribune, penned “a trilogy of mysteries (Red Hot Lies, Red Blooded Murder and Red White & Dead) in 2009, all featuring a Chicago-based attorney/private investigator named Izzy McNeil …” Caldwell was only 52 years old when she died of breast cancer on March 1. Finally, we said good-bye on March 8 to Swedish-born actor Max von Sydow. Although he was closely associated with films by director Ingmar Bergman, and made his U.S. movie debut in 1965’s much-criticized The Greatest Story Ever Told, von Sydow also portrayed villains in Three Days of the Condor (1975) and the 1983 James Bond flick, Never Say Never Again. He even did a turn in a 1985 Kojak TV picture, Kojak: The Belarus File, starring Telly Savalas. Von Sydow perished just one month shy of his 91st birthday.

• Shortly after I posted this obituary of author Clive Cussler, Neil Nyren, the former editor-in-chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons and now editor-at-large for CrimeReads, let me know that Publishers Weekly would soon “be running a piece by me … about being Clive’s editor.” That fine, fond remembrance can finally be relished here.

• For anyone who didn’t know this already:

Humphrey Bogart will go down in history as the actor most associated with the detective character Phillip Marlowe, but he wasn’t the first actor to play him, and he wasn’t author Raymond Chandler’s first preference.

In 1944, the washed-up musical star Dick Powell played the sleuth in the first film adaptation of a Chandler novel, Farewell, My Lovely (retitled to Murder, My Sweet, lest it seem like another musical). The movie relaunched Powell’s career, and Chandler was not disappointed with the casting decision. Powell bought an air of refinement that Chandler had initially envisioned for his P.I. But actually, he said later, the actor he most wanted to play his detective was Cary Grant.

• Deadline reports that “Showtime has found its missing President. Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) has been cast in the key role opposite David Oyelowo in The President Is Missing, Showtime’s drama pilot based on the novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson from Christopher McQuarrie and Anthony Peckham. In The President Is Missing pilot, a powerless and politically aimless vice president (Oyelowo) unexpectedly becomes president halfway into his administration’s first term when President Jillian Stroud (Dowd) goes missing, despite his every wish to the contrary. He walks right into a secret, world-threatening crisis, both inside and outside the White House. Attacked by friends and enemies alike, with scandal and conspiracy swirling around him, he is confronted with a terrible choice: keep his head down, toe the party line and survive, or act on his stubborn, late-developing conscience and take a stand.”

• Short-story writer Chris McGinley makes the case that Charles Brockden Brown’s forgotten Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker (1798) was “the first true rural noir in American letters.”

• I know Lee Goldberg primarily as a prolific author (Fake Truth) and as the co-founder of Brash Books. But not long ago, he also launched Cutting Edge, an imprint he says was “created for stuff that doesn’t fit into Brash … mostly vintage crime and thrillers from the late ’50s and early ’60s, some non-fiction, some literary fiction, and some westerns.” Among the yarns already available from Cutting Edge are e-book versions of Sterling Noel’s I See Red (1955), Geoffrey Wagner’s Season of Assassins (1961), and The House on Q Street (1959), by “Robert Dietrich,” aka E. Howard Hunt, plus paperback reprints of all four of James Howard’s novels starring “itinerant newspaper man” Steve Ashe. I have read only one of those four, 1957’s Die on Easy Street, but can finally now get my hands on the remainder: I’ll Get You Yet (1954), I Like It Tough (1955), and Blow Out My Torch (1956). Such a treat! To learn more about each of these titles, and more, and to see what’s coming soon from Cutting Edge, refer to the imprint’s Web site or its Facebook page.

• If you’re like me, you are hoping soon to enjoy a fifth entry in David Hewson’s dramatic series starring Amsterdam police detective Pieter Vos and his country-reared colleague, Laura Bakker (The House of Dolls, Little Sister, etc.). Unfortunately, no such book yet seems on the horizon. UK author Hewson has, however, just made available for downloading a Vos short story titled “Bad Apple.”

• CrimeReads posted a fascinating piece earlier this week about “poison pen letter crimes” of the early 20th century, by Curtis Evans (Murder in the Closet). While you’re visiting that online periodical—which celebrated its second birthday on March 7—be sure to also take a gander at Paul French’s appraisal of crime fiction based in Saigon, Vietnam, Katie Orphan’s survey of the Los Angeles locales used in James M. Cain’s novels, and Tessa Wegert’s essay, “How Do You Write a Mystery When Every Plot Is Taken?” A trio of slightly older articles worth tracking down, too: Laura James’ “brief history of beauty as a surprisingly effective legal defense”; Ashawnta Jackson’s analysis of “how Isaac Hayes' soundtrack to Shaft ushered in an era of iconic Blaxploitation cinema”; and L. Wayne Hicks’ look back at the writing career of C.W. Grafton, father of author Sue Grafton.

• One of the books I’m looking forward to reading this season is Loren D. Estleman’s Indigo, his fifth novel about L.A. “film detective” Valentino. In advance of that work’s May 26 release, publisher Forge has posted the initial four chapters online. Hurrah!

• San Francisco-area novelist Mark Coggins’ latest August Riordan private eye novel, The Dead Beat Scroll, was published last September. Since, he contributed this photo feature to Mystery Tribune, showcasing some of the Fog City sites figuring into that yarn.

• In his blog, Men’s Pulp Mags, Robert Deis offers a quite favorable critique of a 2019 book to which I contributed, Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. Deis opines, in part: “Sticking It to the Man is not your typical book about vintage paperbacks. It’s one that combines insightful paperback reviews with heavily-researched cultural and political history, pop culture history, and author profiles and interviews. And, it includes contributions written by more than 20 knowledgeable academics and other experts Nette and McIntyre recruited for the project.” Find out more here.

• Meanwhile, a reviewer for the literary mag NB lists my essay, “Black Is Beautiful,” as one of his favorite pieces in Sticking It to the Man.

• Mystery Fanfare alerts us to a special offer being made by the organizers of Bouchercon 2021, to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana: The first 200 registrants will pay only $175 to participate, while other attendees will be charged $195. At last check, the 200 threshold had not yet been reached. It’s your lucky day!

• In a recent interview, Spy Vibe’s Jason Whiton spoke with Ian Dickerson, author of A Saint I Ain’t: The Biography of Leslie Charteris. Of course, Charteris was “the creator of Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood who was better known as The Saint.”

• For Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Peter Swanson (Eight Perfect Murders) addresses the ever-important question, “what can novels teach us about getting away with murder?”

• Speaking of “Getting Away with Murder,” that’s the name of the column UK reviewer/raconteur Mike Ripley composes each month for Shots. His March edition includes remarks about the annual Penguin Books crime party, Icelander Snorri Sturluson’s King Harald’s Saga (“which was [possibly] first published in 1230),” and new or forthcoming works by Kathryn Harkup (Death by Shakespeare), Peter Morfoot (Knock ’Em Dead), Stephanie Wrobel (The Recovery of Rose Gold, aka Darling Rose Gold), and Jim Kelly (Night Raids).

• And as you negotiate the COVID-19 pandemic, revisit this piece I wrote last year about crime novels set amid disasters.

Bullet Points: Barbie and Bangor Edition

• Among the six shortlisted nominees for this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction are two books familiar to true-crime fans: Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep; and The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold. The winner will be announced on November 19. Victory brings £50,000 in prize money.

• Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph spreads the sad news that nurse, artist, and author Bette Golden Lamb has died. “Bette and [her husband] J.J. Lamb,” recalls Rudolph, “have written novels that include a female serial killer who thinks she’s on a noble mission to save barren women from a life of despair (Sisters in Silence) and the Gina Mazzio RN medical thriller “Bone” series (Bone Dry, Sin & Bone, Bone Pit, Bone of Contention, Bone Dust, Bone Crack, Bone Slice, Bone Point). … Bette’s most recent novel, The Russian Girl, was based on a true story of a woman who escapes from a high-security nursing home during the hottest day of the year. Her delirium reveals a harrowing story of a young immigrant Russian girl forced to come to America in the early 1900s. Her turbulent life is filled with upheaval, lost love, and activism in a crushing, brutal 20th-century journey.”

• Farewell, too, to prolific actor Jerry Fogel, who may be best remembered for having co-starred in the sitcom The Mothers-In-Law and in the later drama The White Shadow. Terence Towles Canote notes, in A Shroud of Thoughts, that Fogel died this last Monday, October 21. He was 83 years old and “had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2008.” In addition to the aforementioned two series, Fogel won roles in The Bold Ones, The New Perry Mason, Police Story, Barnaby Jones, Ellery Queen, and Lou Grant.

• A story from earlier this week, about Mattel teaming up with National Geographic magazine to produce “Photojournalist Barbie,” put me in mind of Bouchercon 2019, which will commence in Dallas, Texas, on Halloween. So what’s the link? A distinctive but quite peculiar version of America’s favorite female doll, “Bouchercon Barbie” (below), that I chanced across recently. That unique plaything was evidently auctioned off 16 years ago to benefit the French Red Cross. A photo cutline identified it as “part of the Barbie Jewelry 2003 Collection,” and described it this way: “A water nymph with a serpent necklace of white gold set with diamonds and sparkling emerald eyes, a black gold serpent bracelet set with emerald and diamond eyes. The entire assembly required 250 hours of work in the Place Vendome Workshop.” Has anyone else heard of this? And the 2003 Bouchercon convention was held in Las Vegas; what did that have to do with the French Red Cross?

• Max Allan Collins reports that his next collaboration with the now very late Mickey Spillane, Masquerade for Murder—Collins’ 12th Mike Hammer novel—will be published next March. “This is the second Hammer I’ve written from a Spillane synopsis,” Collins explains, “with only two scraps of Mickey’s prose to work into the book (including the opening, however). That’s an intimidating prospect, but I think it came out well. The novel takes place in the late ’80s and is a follow-up (not a sequel) to Mickey’s The Killing Man. Like the preceding Spillane/Collins Hammer novel, Murder, My Love, the synopsis may have been written by Mickey as a proposed TV episode for the Stacy Keach series. This means I had fleshing out to do, and I hope I’ve done Mike and the Mick justice.”

• From In Reference to Murder comes this item:

In a New York Times profile, author John le Carré revealed that his sons’ production company, The Ink Factory, is plotting an epic new TV series about his most famous character, spymaster George Smiley. The Ink Factory now plans to do new television adaptations of all the novels featuring Cold War spy George Smiley—this time in chronological order. Le Carré says that his sons are interested in casting the British actor Jared Harris (Chernobyl, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Harris was originally cast in Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 le Carré adaptation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, as MI6 chief Percy Alleline, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, in which he played Professor Moriarty.

• I, for one, have fond memories of NBC-TV’s Ghost Story. For more about that short-lived, Sebastian Cabot-hosted series, click here.

• The Library of Congress blog carried a story this week about how James M. Cain’s most famous crime novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), started out with the “limp noodle” title, Bar-B-Q.

• Was Michael Crichton “the Arthur Conan Doyle of the 20th Century”? Brian Hoey endeavors to make that case for Books Tell You Why.

• Members of Britain’s Detection Club have conspired to produce Howdunit, a book “about the art and craft of crime writing,” slated for publication by HarperCollins next June. Martin Edwards explains: “The contributors will include almost all the current members of the Detection Club, including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Ann Cleeves, Mick Herron, James Runcie, Peter James, Sophie Hannah, Peter Robinson, Felix Francis, Elly Griffiths, Peter Lovesey, Mark Billingham, and Len Deighton, to whom the book is dedicated—given that this year, Len celebrates 50 years as an enthusiastic member of the Club. They will offer a marvellous range of insights into the writing life, including personal reminiscences, practical tips for aspiring writers, and an insight into the realities of being a writer—there are terrific pieces, for instance, about ‘imposter syndrome’ and ‘improvisation techniques’ as well as thoughts on social media, writing for radio, and the experience of having your work adapted for TV and film. … The book will also include shorter pieces by a number of illustrious Detection Club members of the past, from G.K. Chesterton onwards.”

• Thanks to a bit of rezoning, Stephen King’s Victorian mansion in Bangor, Maine, has been cleared to become an archive of the author’s work, with an adjacent writers’ retreat. Rolling Stone magazine quotes King on Facebook as saying: “We are in the very beginning of planning the writers’ retreat at the house next door, providing housing for up to five writers in residence at a time. … We are one to two years away from an operating retreat. The archives formerly held at the University of Maine will be accessible for restricted visits by appointment only. There will not be a museum and nothing will be open to the public, but the archives will be available to researchers and scholars.”

• Is crime fiction really “Melbourne’s biggest export”?

• A few interesting stories from CrimeReads: Paul French examines Berlin as a mystery-fiction setting; Michael Gonzales showcases a little-known crime novel by Richard Wright, of Native Son fame; Neil Nyren offers a primer on Dorothy L. Sayers’ work; and as the full scope of Donald Trump’s impeachment-inspiring Ukraine scandal becomes clearer, Noah Berlatsky compares it to Richard Nixon’s equally notorious Watergate scandal, so well examined in All the President’s Men (1974), by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

• For the vintage illustration lover on your Christmas list: Eva: Men’s Adventure Supermodel, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle. It’s described as “a lushly illustrated book that showcases the unique career of the blonde Swedish model and actress Eva Lynd, … well known to fans of men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) as the model for scores of [mid-20th0century] MAM cover paintings and interior illustrations.” Ron Fortier adds, in a review, that “What is captivating here is Ms. Lynd actually narrates the book in her own words as she recalls many of her experiences vividly with charm and melancholy. It truly was a simpler time in many ways and she describes it with an honest sincerity that infuses the volume with a special, elegant grace.”

• “George Lazenby, the one-time film James Bond, is returning to the espionage genre,” writes Spy Command blogger Bill Koenig. “Lazenby stars as Dr. Jason Love in an audio adaptation of author James Leasor’s [1964 novel] Passport to Oblivion.”

• Finally, a few author interviews worth checking out: Jake Hinkston talks with Criminal Element about his new novel, Dry County; Thomas Pluck questions Joyce Carol Oates on the matter of the latter’s new anthology, Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers (Akashic); MysteryPeople converses with Mark Coggins (The Dead Beat Scroll), Martin Limón (G.I. Confidential), and L.A. Chandlar (The Pearl Dagger); The Big Thrill quizzes Robert J. Randisi about The Headstone Detective Agency; and Lori Rader-Day goes one-on-one with Elizabeth Hand, the author of Curious Toys.

Second Helpings

You might have presumed that yesterday’s huge “Bullet Points” post exhausted my current stock of links to crime-fiction news and information of interest. But you would be wrong.

• There are certain historical crimes that are of perpetual interest to me. One of those is the 1906 Madison Square Garden murder of Stanford White. I have more than a couple of books about that scandalous Manhattan homicide, which found Pittsburgh railroad heir Harry K. Thaw shooting the prominent but randy architect thrice in full public view, ostensibly because he had raped Thaw’s wife—actress and artist’s model Evelyn Nesbit—back when she was a teenager. Another book about White’s slaying and the twisted legal case that ensued from it, Simon Baatz’s The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Mulholland), was recently released, and provoked a Web site called The Crime Report to interview the author. That intriguing exchange is here.

• Let us turn now from historical misdeeds to Victorian-era mystery fiction, in order that I may direct you to Laura Purcell’s survey of gaslight Gothic tales and imaginary 19th-century sleuths.

• The Westlake Review presents a missive written, in 1941, by American film censor Joseph I. Breen to Warner Bros. Studios chief Jack L. Warner. It informs the latter of all the reasons why John Huston’s script for a big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, was not appropriate for audience viewing. Clearly (and thank goodness!), director Huston decided to ignore Breen’s prissy complaints.

• In a pretty snappy piece for Criminal Element, author Thomas Pluck (Bad Boy Boogie) offers a variety of reasons why folks should be watching the Sundance-TV series Hap and Leonard, the third season of which premiered on March 7. It begins:

Because it’s Joe Fucking Lansdale.

That really should be the end of this article. If you don’t know the work of Joe R. Lansdale, Hap & Leonard is a wonderful introduction to his most popular books. If you already enjoy his work, watching the series on Sundance is like reading the books for the first time again. They capture the tone and spirit perfectly and bring the characters to life, right down to Hap’s hippie soul and Leonard’s irascible, rugged individualism (and Nilla wafers). Which is quite a feat because, while Joe is a champion storyteller, his voice is a large part of what makes his work so enjoyable. Like Robert Parker, Walter Mosley, and Laura Lippman, he can write about something mundane and make it as gripping as a thriller, because he writes with a voice that we follow like the little bouncing red ball over song lyrics, if you’re old enough to remember those.

• Although it’s been part of this page’s blogroll for awhile, only recently—and in association with my writing about the 50th anniversary of Lieutenant Columbo’s first TV appearance—did I rediscover The Columbophile. Naturally, I have been investigating that site ever since. Three posts to share from my browsing: this one about an evidently “official Columbo YouTube channel”; this list of the unnamed site manager’s 10 favorite Columbo episodes (to which I would definitely add 1973’s “Any Old Port in a Storm,” guest-starring Donald Pleasence and Julie Harris); and this recent piece addressing the matter of Columbo’s first name (a subject I’ve also tackled). I look forward to seeing what The Columbophile can come up with next.

• Here’s a book I missed when it was released last summer: I Watched Them Eat Me Alive: Killer Creatures in Men’s Adventure Magazines, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle (New Texture). Thankfully, Frank Campbell—the guy behind a blog carrying the rather ponderous name Frank the Movie Watcher, Book Lover, Pop Culture Fan—finally brought it to my attention in a new, quite complimentary post. “All in all,” Campbell opines, “I Watched Them Eat Me Alive just goes to prove the old adage about explosives coming in small packages. This one brings the dynamite in two fists along with a testosterone fuse of sweaty, desperate thrills as men battle killer animals to the death. Trust me, it doesn’t get any better than this.” Folks who follow Deis’ Men’s Pulp Mags should probably look up this slim, digest-size volume.

• I must confess that, despite my growth of interest in the book following Kelli Stanley’s promotion of it in The Rap Sheet, I still haven’t gotten around to reading William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley. But it’s jumped back on my radar, thanks to Andrew Nette recapping its virtues in CrimeReads. “Gresham’s book,” Nette enthuses, “is a masterful story about the art of the grift and the best fictional depiction of the carny (slang for the traveling carnival employee). But most of all, it is a stone-cold classic piece of low-life noir fiction, dark, visceral, surprisingly sex-drenched for its time, and utterly devoid of redemption.”

• The latest issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection is out.

• Three more author interviews worth your time: Walter Mosley chats with BookPage about Down the River Unto the Sea, which introduces private eye Joe King Oliver; Lee Goldberg discusses True Fiction with Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare; and J. Todd Scott answers questions from The Real Book Spy about High White Sun, the sequel to his 2016 border-crimes thriller, The Far Empty.

• Finally, when I wrote back in 2010 about Gavilan, Robert Urich’s 1982-1983 NBC-TV crime-cum-espionage series, I never thought I would have another opportunity to watch that show. However, I recently stumbled across three of Gavilan’s 10 episodes on YouTube—here, here, and here. The picture quality isn’t anything to write home about, but the sheer improbability of seeing Urich’s Magnum, P.I. knockoff makes up for such deficiencies.