Mosley Takes the Diamond Dagger

The British Crime Writers’ Association has announced that American author Walter Mosley will receive its 2023 Diamond Dagger award. That annual commendation “recognises authors whose crime-writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.” Mosley’s first detective novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, introducing Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, was published in 1990. He has since penned more than 60 other books.

A press release goes on to say:

A multi-award-winning author, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in 2013. His numerous awards include The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy, and a PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and the National Book Foundation presented him with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

“I am truly delighted my friend Walter has been deemed worthy of the Diamond Dagger by my colleagues and members of the CWA,” says CWA chair Maxim Jakubowski. “His voice has dominated the fiction scene for decades and I can think of no more deserving and ground-breaking an author to be given this ultimate accolade, for the so many things he has contributed to our genre but also to modern society.”

Mosley’s latest novel, Every Man a King, his second to feature New York City private eye Joe King Oliver, was published just this month by Mulholland Books. The author joins a stellar lineup of previous Diamond Dagger recipients, including Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin, P.D. James, Peter Lovesey, John Le Carré, Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky, and last year’s winner, C.J. Sansom. He will be given his prestigious prize during a ceremony to take place in London on July 6.

Mosley Praised for Black Life Portrayals

I completely missed this news out of Oklahoma, so I’m glad it was caught by B.V. Lawson of In Reference to Murder:

Award-winning novelist Walter Mosley has been named the recipient of the 2022 Sankofa Freedom Award, presented by Tulsa City-County Library’s African-American Resource Center and the Tulsa Library Trust. Mosley has published more than 60 works of fiction and non-fiction and is best known among the crime fiction community for his Easy Rawlins mysteries, the Fearless Jones mysteries, the Leonid McGill mysteries, and the Socrates Fortlow novels. Along the way, he’s also tried “to help readers understand and appreciate Black life in America, particularly segregated inner-city experiences.” The Sankofa Freedom Award is handed out biennially in February during Black History Month to a nationally acclaimed individual who has dedicated his or her life to educating and improving the greater African-American community.

That original item, plus more awards news, is available here.

Bullet Points: March Gladness Edition

• I despise having broken links in The Rap Sheet, so I’m leery of writing about YouTube videos, as those things have a habit of disappearing suddenly and without explanation. Nonetheless, I would be remiss were I not to point out the unexpected availability there of Cutter, a 1972 pilot film for what its developers hoped would become a new NBC Mystery Movie segment. Scripted by Dean Hargrove and directed by Richard Irving, this 90-minute feature starred Peter DeAnda (1938-2016) as Frank Cutter, a black, Texas-reared Chicago private investigator in the John Shaft mode, who was hired to find a missing football quarterback. Former High Chaparral regular Cameron Mitchell guest-starred, along with Barbara Rush, Robert Webber, Janet MacLachlan, and ex-vaudevillian Stepin Fetchit. Protagonist Cutter came off as cool, sophisticated, but with ample street toughness when he needed it. He had an answering service, but no office. His seeming preference for white women added a daring-for-the-time element to the story, and an ambulance pursuit in the dénouement brought at least some novelty to the usual TV car chase scene.



I’d been looking for Cutter online for a decade, before I finally stumbled on it last week. While I enjoyed watching this picture as a cultural artifact, I can’t imagine a subsequent series succeeding alongside McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and Banacek. Apparently, NBC executives were of a like mind, for they passed on Cutter in favor of Tenafly, another show about an African-American gumshoe (played by James McEachin), but one who was rather less courageous and prosperous. Cutter’s opening title sequence is embedded above. Oliver Nelson, who also composed music for It Takes a Thief, The Name of the Game, and Ironside, gave us the Cutter theme.

• Another notable YouTube offering is Charlie Cobb: Nice Night for a Hanging (1977). Again the pilot for a prospective NBC series, it finds Clu Gulager playing Charles A. Cobb, a cheapskate, unabashedly unheroic private detective working the dusty trails of America’s Old West. This really quite enjoyable movie has Cobb being employed by a rancher to find and return his long-lost daughter, kidnapped many years before. Blair Brown puts in a fine performance as the said kidnappee, with Ralph Bellamy, Stella Stevens, and Pernell Roberts helping to further fill out the cast. The pilot was written by Peter S. Fischer, and executive produced by Columbo creators William Link and Richard Levinson, with music by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.

• March marks a full half-century since the big-screen debut of Get Carter, the British crime film starring Michael Caine and adapted from Ted Lewis’ 1970 novel, Jack’s Return Home. In CrimeReads, author and pop-culture critic Andrew Nette examines that movie’s history and lasting impact, while in Shotsmag Confidential, Nick Triplow contemplates Lewis’ past and how his novel influences planning for England’s second Hull Noir festival.

• There’s been plenty of awards news lately, beginning with finalists for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards. I count 24 categories of contenders this year. Those include the following five nominees under the LGBTQ Mystery heading:

— Death Before Dessert, by A.E. Radley (Heartsome)
— Find Me When I’m Lost, by Cheryl A. Head (Bywater)
— Fortune Favors the Dead, Stephen Spotswood, Doubleday
— I Hope You’re Listening, by Tom Ryan (Albert Whitman)
— Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery, by Rosalie Knecht (Tin House)

Curiously, there’s only one “Lammys” category for mystery novels this time around. Previous years have offered separate Gay Mystery and Lesbian Mystery lists. Winners are expected to be announced during a virtual ceremony on June 1.

• Walter Mosley is competing for a 2021 NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Literary Works category. Under consideration is not one of his many crime novels, but instead his 2020 diverse short-story collection, The Awkward Black Man (Grove Atlantic). Mystery Fanfare has more here. Image Award recipients will be celebrated during a March 27 event, to be televised on BET.

• Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s latest standalone work, Bráðin (The Prey), has received the Icelandic Blood Drop Award (Blóðdropinn) for the best crime novel of 2020. As Shotsmag Confidential explains, “The ‘Blood Drop’ Award is a crime fiction prize, hosted by Crime Writers of Iceland. The novel that receives the prize becomes the Icelandic nomination for the Glass Key, an award given annually to a crime novel from one of the Nordic countries—Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Usually, every Icelandic crime novel published each year is automatically nominated.”

• Last but not least, Winter Counts (Echo)—David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut work in the crime-fiction field—has captured the 2021 Spur Awards for both Best Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel. The annual Spur Awards are sponsored by the Western Writers of America (WWA), and are designed to “honor writers for distinguished writing about the American West,” according to Wikipedia. The full tally of this year’s Spur champs is available here. Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, will be applauded along with the other winners during the WWA’s convention in Loveland, Colorado, to held June 16-19.

• As regular Rap Sheet readers know, I wasn’t exactly thrilled by news that 64-year-old British actress Lesley Manville had been hired to portray books editor-cum-investigator Susan Ryeland in a six-part small-screen adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s 2017 whodunit, Magpie Murders; I would have preferred somebody a bit younger (Horowitz imagined Ryeland being in her mid-40s), with greater potential to earn audience sympathy, such as Jodie Whittaker. However, I am pleased to hear that Timothy Spall (The King’s Speech, Mr. Turner) will undertake the plum role of fictitious half-Greek, half-German detective Atticus Pünd is that same Eleventh Hour Films/PBS production. I look forward next to hearing who’ll fill the shoes of prickly Alan Conway, one of Ryeland’s authors and the creator of series sleuth Pünd.

• Meanwhile, Deadline reports that actresses Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o have been engaged to star in an Apple TV+ limited-run drama based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 standalone novel, Lady in the Lake. According to Deadline,

The series will be directed by Honey Boy director Alma Har’el, who co-created and will co-write with Colony and The Man in the High Castle writer Dre Ryan. Lady in the Lake is produced by Jean-Marc Vallée’s Crazyrose and Bad Wolf America, the U.S. arm of the His Dark Materials producer. Endeavor Content is the studio. Har’el is writing the pilot episode.

The limited series takes place in ’60s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother, Maddie Schwartz, played by Portman, to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood, played by Nyong’o, a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.

• From In Reference to Murder comes word that “Queen Latifah is going to hunt more bad guys following the news that CBS has renewed The Equalizer for a second season after only four episodes. The Equalizer stars Latifah as Robyn McCall, an enigmatic woman with a mysterious background who uses her extensive skills as a former CIA operative to help those with nowhere else to turn.” The show is based on Edward Woodward’s 1985-1989 series of the same name.

• The Killing Times features some early still shots from The Ipcress File, British television network ITV’s forthcoming 1960s espionage thriller based, of course, on Len Deighton’s 1962 first novel. “Starring Joe Cole in the iconic role of Harry Palmer alongside Lucy Boynton as Jean and BAFTA award-winning actor Tom Hollander as Dalby, the drama,” explains The Killing Times, “is directed by Emmy award-winner James Watkins … Joining the cast to play further significant roles are Ashley Thomas as Maddox, Joshua James as Chico, David Dencik as Colonel Stok and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Cathcart.” Hopes are for an Ipcress launch sometime later this year.

• The second five-part run of Lupin, Netflix’s French crime drama starring Omar Sy as a cool criminal whose escapades are inspired by the classic stories of gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsène Lupin, isn’t expected to commence streaming until this summer. A short trailer, though, can already be enjoyed here.

• After reading Chris Whitaker’s exceptional novel, We Begin at the End (Henry Holt)—newly released in the States—I can easily see it being adapted for television. So I’m not surprised to learn that Disney has snapped up the rights to do so.

• In CrimeReads, Whitaker recalls how he quit his job in finance and went to work for a local library in order to write his book.

• The 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die, is currently slated to premiere on both sides of the Atlantic during the fall 2021, after multiple delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it’s title song by Billie Eilish has already scored a Grammy Award.

• Director Theodore J. Flicker’s 1967 political satire film, The President’s Analyst, is on track to be remade by Paramount Pictures. The Hollywood Reporter says: “Pat Cunnane, who served for six years as President Barack Obama’s senior writer and deputy director of messaging at the White House, wrote the script for the project, which is being developed as a potential star vehicle for [Trevor] Noah,” of The Daily Show fame. The Reporter recalls that “the 1967 movie starred James Coburn as a psychiatrist chosen to act as the President’s top-secret therapist. As the President unloads his troubles on the psychoanalyst, the man begins to crack under the strain of all the secrets, becoming paranoid that agencies, both foreign and national, want what’s inside his head. It’s not a spoiler to say his fears turn out to be real. … Details for the new take are being kept under the couch but it is described as a re-examining the 1967 satire through the lens of the contemporary political landscape.” (A big hat tip to Double O Section.)

• Most of the headlines following American actor Yaphet Kotto’s demise, this last Monday, recalled his villainous role in the 1973 James Bond flick Live and Let Die. While his portrayal of a reprehensible Caribbean dictator as well as that man’s drug-pusher alter ego, Mr. Big, was certainly magnetic and unforgettable, Kotto’s career extended well beyond his menacing Agent 007 and the lovely psychic Solitaire. Variety notes he was born in New York City in 1939, and his acting studies began at age 16. Kotto made his professional theater debut at 19, and he chalked up early movie appearances in Nothing But a Man (1964) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). His Live and Let Die acclaim led to his winning parts in pictures on the order of Alien (1975), Brubaker (1980), and The Running Man (1987). Kotto’s introduction to television audiences came on The Big Valley; he soon returned to the boob tube on such programs as Bonanza, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, The A-Team, Murder, She Wrote, and eventually Homicide: Life on the Street, where he could be seen for seven seasons playing Baltimore Police lieutenant Al Giardello. Kotto was 81 years old when he died in the Philippines.

• The Spy Command draws our attention to the death, at age 85, of another figure well known in Bond World: “Nikki van der Zyl, a German-born actress who provided the voice for various Bond women characters …” Managing editor Bill Koenig observes that “Van der Zyl was used to dub over, among others, Ursula Andress in Dr. No, Eunice Gayson in Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger and Claudine Auger in Thunderball. She worked on various Bond films through Moonraker.” In addition, Van der Zyl lent her voice to The Blue Max, Funeral in Berlin, Krakatoa: East of Java, and assorted other movies. She breathed her last in London.

• I must, too, acknowledge the passing, on January 12, of Judith Van Gieson. Jiro Kimura provides this obituary on The Gumshoe Site:

The former American editor of John le Carré started to write her fiction when she moved to New Mexico. She wrote eight novels, which feature Neil Hamel, an attorney and investigator in Albuquerque, starting with North of the Border (Walker, 1988) and ending with Ditch Rider (HarperCollins, 1998). The Hamel novel The Lies That Bind (1993) was nominated for the 1994 Shamus Award in the best novel category. Her other series of five novels features Claire Reynier (prounced ray-NEER), a buyer of rare books and librarian [at] the University of New Mexico, starting with The Stolen Blue (University of New Mexico Press/Signet Books, 2000) and ending with The Shadow of Venus (2004), which was nominated for the 2004 Barry Award in the best paperback category.

After she retired from writing novels, she formed ABQ Press, an online publishing company, and helped aspiring writers to edit and publish their works. She was 79.

• Even Lieutenant Columbo wasn’t perfect. That’s the bottom line of this piece in The Columbophile, which looks back at “10 times Columbo should have been reported to his superiors.” That blog’s still-anonymous Australian author opines: “[W]hile we know Columbo is pure of heart, there are times when his methods and actions could be considered questionable, if not utterly inappropriate.”

• Speaking of Columbo, The Postman on Holiday’s Lou Armagno recommends this article from Mental Floss that includes mention of star Peter Falk having been “a government worker before becoming an actor.” That piece continues: “Peter Falk wasn’t too far removed from the character he played. In real life he tended to be rumpled and disheveled and was forever misplacing things (he was famous for losing his car keys and having to be driven home from the studio by someone else). He was also intelligent, having earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University, which led to him working for the State of Connecticut’s Budget Bureau as an efficiency expert until the acting bug bit him. He was also used to being underestimated due to his appearance; he’d lost his right eye to cancer at age three, and many of his drama teachers in college warned him of his limited chances in film due to his cockeyed stare. Indeed, after a screen test at Columbia Pictures’ Harry Cohn dismissed him by saying, ‘For the same price I can get an actor with two eyes.’”

• Finally, here’s something to anticipate: The latest newsletter from Portland, Oregon’s Friends of Mystery promises that the winner of its 2021 Spotted Owl Award, plus the runners-up, will be announced during the group’s next meeting, on Thursday, March 25. A preliminary list of novels vying for that coveted prize is here.

Bullet Points: Wonders Never Cease Edition

• This coming Monday, March 1, will bring—from The Bagley Brief Web site—the release of Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist, Philip Eastwood’s “painstaking reconstruction” of a previously unpublished memoir by English adventure-thriller writer Desmond Bagley (1923-1983). In advance of that, Shotsmag Confidential has posted the foreword to Eastwood’s work, written by Mike Ripley (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and establishing Bagley’s stature as one of the Big Three among contributors to the”Golden Age of the British thriller,” the other two being Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean.

• Can it really be true, at last? According to Deadline,

Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a character created by author Walter Mosley, is getting another shot on television after Amblin Television signed up to develop a series.

The production company has closed a deal to adapt Mosley’s stories—Rawlins has appeared in 15 novels and short stories—with The Americans and Amazing Stories director Sylvain White on board to direct the pilot episode and exec produce.

The series, based on the gritty detective novels, will center around Easy, a Black WWII Army veteran turned hard-boiled private eye. The show will be set in 1950’s Los Angeles and will honor the great traditions of storytelling in the detective genre, while also exploring the racial inequalities and social injustice experienced by Black people and other people of color.

Deadline observes that this “is the latest attempt to get Rawlins on to the small screen—[screenwriter-producer] John Wells attempted an Easy Rawlins series at NBC back in 2011 and USA Network also attempted a version seven years before that. The character of Easy Rawlins also previously appeared on screen in the 1995 film Devil in a Blue Dress, which starred Denzel Washington.”

• Back in December I mentioned that the often humorous British crime drama McDonald & Dodds, featuring Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins as mismatched cops in modern-day Bath, England, would soon return with a second season. Radio Times now brings word that the first of three new two-hour-long McDonald & Dodds episodes will show in the UK on Sunday, February 28, beginning at 8 p.m. Guest stars this season include Rupert Graves, Doctor Who’s Natalie Gumede, and Saira Choudhry. Radio Times provides cursory synopses of each installment’s storyline. It also frets that “these three episodes could be McDonald & Dodds’ last, since DCI McDonald [Gouveia] firmly stated in the previous series that she would only stay in Bath for two years tops.” But hey, we’re dealing here with a work of pure fiction, and if this ITV program continues to pull in audiences, can we not expect someone in charge to contrive a semi-logical excuse for extending its storyline?

• Shortly in advance of the coronavirus pandemic shutting down movie and television production a year ago, British TV channel BBC One announced that it had greenlighted two additional seasons—Series 6 and 7—of the Scottish crime drama Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall. But only now, says The Killing Times, is work on those fresh episodes finally resuming. Beginning in April, it explains, back-to-back series of the show (six episodes apiece) will commence shooting on the subarctic archipelago that gives this prize-winning drama its name. “Both series will be written and created by David Kane (Stonemouth, The Field of Blood), who originated the first series of Shetland and has written on every series since. The islands’ local newspaper, The Shetland Times, reported that producer Louise Say promised ‘absolutely riveting’ and ‘hard-hitting’ storylines.”

• This will likely be worth watching. B.V. Lawson tells us that “Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series update of the classic thriller, The 39 Steps, inspired by John Buchan’s novel, which was turned into the 1935 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock. The TV project of The 39 Steps is being described as ‘a provocative, action-packed conspiracy thriller series that updates the classic novel for our times. An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, becomes an unwitting pawn in a vast, global conspiracy to reset the world order.’”

• Even before TV writer and producer William Link’s death in December, I had been trying to catch up with the proliferation of small-screen movies he developed with his writing partner of 43 years, Richard Levinson. I’ve found a variety of them on YouTube, and bought DVDs of some others online. However, I was in the dark about their 1986 mystery Vanishing Act, until Mystery*File reminded me of its existence. As Steve Lewis relates, it finds “Harry Kenyon (Mike Farrell) … on his honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains after a whirlwind romance in Las Vegas with a woman named Christine Prescott. But their wedded bliss is soon interrupted and Harry reports her disappearance to Lieutenant Rudameyer (Elliott Gould), a New Yorker more interested in eating a corned beef sandwich specially imported from a delicatessen on West 87th Street. It seems to be a fuss over nothing as Christine (Margot Kidder) is quickly found--only Harry doesn’t recognize her and refuses to believe she’s his wife!” At least for the present moment, you can watch that full picture here.

• Shoot! We almost got to watch a Wild Wild West reboot.

• Thirty-nine-year-old Morven Christie (formerly of Grantchester) has quit her role as a detective sergeant family liaison officer on The Bay, making way for actress Marsha Thomason to lead the cast in Series 3 of that British crime drama. Understandably, Christie’s sudden departure has fomented speculation about why she gave up that plum part. The Killing Times thinks it may have a clue.

• Holmes and Watson—villains? That’s just one of the twists in a new, eight-episode horror series debuting on March 26. Writes Olivia Rutigliano: “The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes’s organization of motley street urchins, are going to get their own Netflix series. It’s a dark show, full of supernatural mysteries, but the paranormal activity is not the only modification to the Sherlockian world you know and love. The program, titled The Irregulars, posits that the group is manipulated into solving dangerous supernatural crimes by Dr. Watson (who is evil)—feats for which his sketchy business partner Sherlock Holmes gets all the renown.”

• In Reference to Murder reports that among the among the 25 categories of finalists for this year’s Audie Awards, announced this week by the Audio Publishers Association, are two of potentially special interest to Rap Sheet readers: Mystery and Thriller/Suspense. Below are the five Mystery contenders:

— A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones, narrated by Lorelei King (Macmillan Audio)
— Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, narrated by Vivienne Leheny (HarperAudio)
— Fair Warning, by Michael Connelly, narrated by Peter Giles and Zach Villa (Hachette Audio)
— The Guest List, by Lucy Foley, narrated by Chloe Massey, Olivia Dowd, Sarah Ovens, Rich Keeble, Aoife McMahon, and Jot Davies (HarperAudio)
— Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Dion Graham (Hachette Audio)

The full list of 2021 Audie nominees is here. Winners are to be announced during a virtual “gala” on March 22. The festivities are set to start at 9 p.m. EST, and can be streamed live at this link.

• Blogger Evan Lewis has generously taken the time to dig up, from the deep recesses of the Web, as many publicity materials as he could find related to the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film, The Big Sleep. Look for them in two separate posts, here and here.

• Left Coast Crime already rescheduled its 2021 convention for 2022, due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19. And now Malice Domestic is doing the same. “After careful consideration,” its board of directors declared in a news release, “we have decided to postpone Malice 32/33 to 2022. … Instead of a live event in 2021, we are excited to announce More Than Malice, a virtual (online) festival. More Than Malice will be held on July 14-17, 2021, and will feature special guests, unique panels, and the Agatha Awards. We will have much more exciting information for you in the coming days and weeks.” Everyone who’s currently registered for Malice 2021 should receive an Agatha Award nomination form soon. Keep up with developments by following the Malice Twitter page.

• In CrimeReads, editor Dwyer Murphy ponders that immortal question, Why was Raymond Chandler so venomous in attacking Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller, Strangers on a Train?

• How did Victorian homes “go from celebrated to creepy?”

• Excellent news! UK author Martin Edwards spent his weeks in pandemic lockdown researching and penning a third Rachel Savernake/Jacob Flint historical mystery (following Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall). He writes in his blog that it should be published “early next year,” with a fourth installment to follow in 2023.

• Only days ago I recommended that readers check out—with warranted dispatch—the complete, one-season run of NBC-TV’s City of Angels on YouTube. Now comes Steve Aldous with a short review of that show’s three-part first episode, “The November Plan.” He remarks: “The promise on show here would occasionally surface over the series’ next ten episodes before it was cancelled due to low ratings just as it was building a head of steam.”

• Why the Titanic’s 1912 sinking still makes for a good story.

• And it’s true: Director Tim Burton is set to shoot a live-action, young-adult series for Netflix about Wednesday Addams, the wonderfully creepy little girl familiar from small- and big-screen versions of The Addams Family. Variety describes Wednesday as “a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. She attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago—all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.” Tor.com says there is “no official word on the casting yet, but given how sadly awful the last Addams film was (the animated one from 2019, not the gems we got in the ’90s), this might be a slight improvement?”

Mosley Takes the Bird

Walter Mosley’s Down the River Unto the Sea has won this year’s Falcon Award, presented by Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society to a superior work of hard-boiled crime fiction. Mosley’s novel, first published in the States in 2018, introduced a welcome new protagonist, New York City policeman turned private eye Joe King Oliver.

This marks Mosley’s first Falcon Award win. Last year’s prize was presented to Don Winslow for The Force.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Mosley’s Rack of Rewards Expands

Walter Mosley—author of the Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill mysteries—will receive this year’s John Seigenthaler Legends Award, to be presented on April 1 during the 2020 Killer Nashville convention (provided that event is not cancelled like so many others).

A press release says this prize is named after John Seigenthaler, “a well-known editor, publisher, writer, TV personality, First Amendment champion, advocate for writers, and longtime supporter of Killer Nashville. Like its namesake, the annual Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award is bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come.”

The same alert observes that in addition to Mosley having been named, in 2016, as a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, “he has won numerous awards, including an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image awards.”

Another Nero for Mosley

New York City author Walter Mosley, best known for penning the esteemed Easy Rawlins mystery series, has won the 2019 Nero Award for Down the River unto the Sea (Mulholland), which marked the 2018 debut of another protagonist, police investigator-turned-prisoner-turned private eye Joe King Oliver. That announcement was made during the 42nd annual Black Orchid Weekend, which took place from December 6 to 8 in Manhattan.

The Nero has been presented annually, ever since 1979, by the New York-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization, The Wolfe Pack, to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.” This was the second time Mosley has taken home that prize. He previously captured the 2004 Nero for Fear Itself, the second book in his Fearless Jones series.

Also over this last weekend, the Wolfe Pack presented its 2019 Black Orchid Novella Award—more familiarly known as the BONA—to author Ted Burge for his story “The Red Taxi.” That honor includes the publication of Burge’s novella in a future issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which co-sponsors the BONA.

(Hat tip to Classic Mysteries.)

Bullet Points: “Day Without a Woman” Edition

Today has brought forth a wide variety of protests by American women, highlighting the importance of women in the modern workplace, spotlighting ridiculous disparities in pay between male and female workers, and opposing anti-woman policies proposed by Donald Trump, who’s notorious for saying that women will let famous guys “do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy.” Obviously, not all women in the United States have the support of their employers to take this day off from their jobs, but many are doing just that. “[A]ll across the country,” observes New York magazine’s Eric Levitz, “women are abandoning their posts. Classes have been canceled; children, left to their fathers; boardrooms, left unmanaged; dinners, left uncooked; blog posts, left unwritten.” It’s to those women enjoying a bit of extra leisure time today that I offer this expanded version of The Rap Sheet’s irregular crime-fiction news wrap-up.

• After my recent viewing of the British TV miniseries The Night Manager, adapted from John le Carré’s 1993 novel of the same name, I’ve been picking up a few le Carré novels that I have not already read. Now it looks as if my choices will increase in number. The author’s U.S. publisher, Viking, told the Associated Press that le Carré’s next novel, A Legacy of Spies (due out on September 5), will star his series espionage agent, George Smiley. According to the AP, “the novel tells of how Smiley and such peers as Peter Guillam receive new scrutiny about their Cold War years with British intelligence and face a younger generation that knows little about their history.”

• Double O Section’s Tanner (aka Matthew Bradford) offers this backgrounder on Smiley’s participation in the le Carré novels.

• The full schedule of events has been announced for this year’s CrimeFest, which will be held (as usual) in Bristol, England, from May 18 to 21. Click here to see which authors will be in attendance, and when they are set to participate in panel discussions.

• Meanwhile, organizers of Left Coast Crime 2019 have spread the news of who will appear as the guests of honor at their “Whale of a Crime” convention in Vancouver, Canada.

• Turner Classic Movies’ brand-new offering, Noir Alley—ably hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller—debuted this last Sunday with a presentation of that 1941 Humphrey Bogart private-eye classic, The Maltese Falcon. The cable station will follow that up this coming weekend with the 1945 movie Detour, starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. If you would like to learn what the future holds for Noir Alley, click here to see the broadcast schedule through July. All of Muller’s films begin at 10 a.m. on Sundays.

• The third season of Bosch, the TV drama based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling series of novels featuring Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch, won’t begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video until Friday, April 21. However, Entertainment Weekly recently posted an ominous trailer for that new 10-episode season, which draws its plot from Connelly’s novels The Black Echo and A Darkness More Than Night. And the author talks in this Q&A from his Web site about what to expect from the forthcoming story arc. By the way, work is already gearing up on Season 4 of Bosch, which will be based on Connelly’s 1999 novel, Angels Flight.

• For the Strand Magazine Web site, Alfred Hitchcock biographer Tony Lee selects what he says are the “Top Ten Alfred Hitchcock Movies of All Time.” (Yes, Notorious makes the cut.)

• I somehow missed the February release, in Great Britain, of Taking Detective Stories Seriously: The Collected Crime Reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers. But Kate Jackson’s critique of that book, at Cross-Examining Crime, makes me want to track down a copy as soon as possible—if only in hopes of sharpening up my own reviewing style. “[T]his is a must-read for all fans of golden age detective fiction,” Jackson opines. “Get it for the laughs, get it to find out what Sayers thought of her friends’ work, or get it to find some new authors to track down. But above all get it!”

• There has been a variety recently of excellent essays penned about crime-fictionists old and not-so-old. Britain’s Guardian, for instance, carried this article by Brian Dillon about how Raymond Chandler’s renowned shamus, Philip Marlowe, “found his voice.” UK crime-culture researcher and author Sarah Trott (War Noir) delivered a two-part analysis, on the Strand Magazine site, of Chandler’s literary legacy; Part I is here, Part II can be enjoyed here. Sarah K. Stephens recounts in the online publication The Millions “how P.D. James and detective fiction healed my broken heart.” And in a review for Literary Web of the new big-screener Tomato Red (watch the trailer here), William Boyle applauds the “genius” of Daniel Woodrell, the “Battle-Hardened Bard of Meth Country.”

• In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson brings the news that author-editor Rick Ollerman “will be launching a new digest-sized magazine this summer called Down & Out: The Magazine. The first issue features a new Moe Prager story by Reed Farrel Coleman, and the second a new Sheriff Dan Rhodes story by Bill Crider.” Yours truly, by the way, has been asked to contribute review columns to this fledgling periodical. Wish me luck on the venture.

• What a terrific project! With the benefit of hefty financial grants, Northern Illinois University is busy digitizing 19th-century “dime novels” for widespread public consumption. “These dime novel format books sold in hundreds of thousands of copies—they were the best sellers of their day,” explains Lynne Thomas, the curator of NIU’s Rare Books and Special Collections. “They were read by more average Americans than anything that is taught in literature classes of the period, including things like Moby Dick or the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Start your exploration of the growing collection here. (Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

• Congratulations to former President Barack Obama for winning the 2017 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In a statement, Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg gave this explanation of why Obama deserved the commendation: “Faced with unrelenting political opposition, President Obama has embodied the definition of courage that my grandfather cites in the opening lines of Profiles in Courage: grace under pressure. Throughout his two terms in office, he represented all Americans with decency, integrity, and an unshakeable commitment to the greater good.” Obama was presented with the award last evening, May 7, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. No doubt Donald Trump will launch one of his whiny tweetstorms in response ...

• R.I.P., men’s adventure magazine writer Walter Kaylin.

• Which long-running CSI TV series is your favorite? Criminal Element wants to know. (In case you’re curious, at last check the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation had amassed the greatest number of votes in this survey—61 percent.)

• Black Gate contributor Bob Byrne has more than a few nice things to say about the 2001-2002 A&E-TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery, which starred Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin and Maury Chaykin as Rex Stout’s agoraphobic, beer-loving Manhattan sleuth, Wolfe. “[E]ven if you’ve never read any Wolfe,” Byrne remarks, “it’s a pretty good period detective series and you should give it a try.”

• I came in on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea after its original prime-time run, but loved weekend repeats of that 1961-1964 Irwin Allen sci-fi TV sea adventure. Apparently I was not alone in my admiration, as the blog Cult TV Lounge proves here and here.

• Lee Goldberg, who wrote three episodes of the 1985-1988 ABC-TV series Spenser: For Hire, inspired by Robert B. Parker’s detective novels, has posted this promotional spot for that program’s 1985 fall premiere, featuring a theme song that Goldberg describes as “a cringe-inducing twisting of Randy Newman’s ‘I Love L.A.’”

• Although nefarious misdeeds are usually solved and their perpetrators captured in crime fiction, Vox informs us that, in fact, “fewer than half of violent crimes and about a third of property crimes in the U.S. are reported to the police each year. Meanwhile, less than half of violent crimes and less than one-fifth of property crimes that are reported are actually cleared by police and referred to prosecution. (Keep in mind that the clearance rate is not even the solved rate, because prosecution doesn’t always lead to conviction.)”

• Since I didn’t happen to tune in for last month’s Oscars presentation, I missed the fact that Robert Vaughn, the Man from U.N.C.L.E. star who died last November, was not mentioned in the broadcast’s “In Memoriam” segment—although some 45 other people were, according to The Spy Command. A damn shame!

• The March edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes witty remarks about Pan Macmillan’s Thin Blue Spine initiative, the proliferation of crime-novel titles featuring the word “Girl” (“American blogger Steve Donoghue ... has identified no less than 41 titles as his ‘Worst Books of 2016—Fiction’”), the coming debut of Michael Connelly’s new series protagonist (in The Late Show), and other anticipated works by Russel D. MacLean, Philip Kerr, Leonardo Padura, and Chris Brookmyre.

• I have to admit, I was not familiar with Harold Blundell (1902-1985), a British banker and crime novelist who—under the nom de plume George Bellairs—concocted a succession of books featuring Scotland Yard Detective-Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. So I was somewhat flummoxed to learn that Mysterious Press is now bringing out e-book versions of those Littlejohn yarns. The half-dozen initial releases include The Case of the Seven Whistlers (1944) and Outrage on Gallows Hill (1948). Blundell/Bellairs kept Littlejohn active through 1980, so there are plenty more stories to put back on the market, should the early ones find new interest among readers.

• Excellent news! Walter Mosley has a new novel, Down the River Unto the Sea, being readied for publication in February 2018. Entertainment Weekly reports that “the novel centers on a former New York City police detective, now working as a Brooklyn P.I., who is investigating the case of a Black civil rights activist convicted of murdering two city policemen. At the same time, he’s still trying to piece together the conspiracy that caused his own downfall at the hands of the police.”

• Having survived last year’s Independent Bookstore Day, I very much look forward to participating again in that competition to visit as many local indie bookshops as possible. This year’s competition is slated for Saturday, April 29. According to Shelf Awareness, “457 stores from around the country are participating, up from around 430 last year and 365 in 2015. Forty-eight states are represented, with only Hawaii and Arkansas missing, and a searchable map featuring the locations of all participating bookstores can be found here.”

• A belated “happy fifth birthday” to Bitter Tea and Mystery!

• A few author interviews worthy of attention: Eliot Pattison answers Criminal Element’s questions about his ninth Inspector Shan Tao Yun mystery, Skeleton God; for Crime Watch, Craig Sisterson quizzes Brad Parks, whose new novel is a standalone titled Say Nothing; for Shots, Kimberley “K.J.” Howe chats with the ubiquitous Ali Karim about her debut thriller, The Freedom Broker; Dave White interrogates Alex Segura about the latter’s forthcoming novel, Dangerous Ends; meanwhile, White fields queries from S.W. Lauden about his own fresh work of fiction, Blind to Sin; John B. Valeri plumbs the life of Rhys Bowen (In Farleigh Field); and Sharon Long interviews Elaine Viets (Brain Storm) for Mystery Playground.

• From The Spy Command comes word that the TV streaming service Hulu has released a trailer for Becoming Bond, a 90-minute “documentary/narrative hybrid chronicling the stranger-than-fiction true story” of how Australian non-actor George Lazenby became British spy James Bond—at least for one movie, 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Den of Geek says this documentary “promise[s] a bit of everything—drama, comedy, romance, drugs, sex, twists, turns, the whole shebang.” Becoming Bond makes its Hulu debut on May 20.

• Speaking of all things 007 … Anne Billson’s Multiglom blog features a nice tribute to Eva Green, who of course played the stunning Vesper Lynd, opposite Daniel Craig, in 2006’s Casino Royale.

• Finally, because I can’t actually imagine spending many days without women (what fun would that be, really?), let me direct you to this online list—from Elle magazine—of “The 10 Best Thrillers and Crime Writing by Women” … and this lengthy rundown—from Goodreads—of the “Best Female Crime/Mystery/Thriller Writers.”

Pierce’s Picks

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.



And Sometimes I Wonder About You, by Walter Mosley (Doubleday), marking the comeback of boxer-turned-New York City private investigator Leonid McGill (All I Did Was Shoot My Man), and involving him in a knotty case about old money and new deaths. Mañana, by William Hjortsberg (Open Road), about a young married couple who’ve escaped to Mexico during the late 1960s, only to be caught up in murder and a likely kidnapping. Some vacation, eh?

Click here to see more of this season’s most-wanted books.

Pierce’s Picks: “Rose Gold”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Rose Gold, by Walter Mosley (Doubleday)

The Gist: L.A. sleuth Easy Rawlins “has his hands full in this story, set not too long after the first Watts riots in 1965, that turbulent period of Vietnam veterans and protesters, free love, black militarism, and hippies …,” explains the blog Read Me Deadly. “For a change, the Los Angeles police acknowledge needing Easy’s help, and are prepared to pay for it. Roger Frisk, Special Assistant to the Chief of Police, approaches Easy, who is in the midst of moving house, and asks him to find Rosemary Goldsmith, daughter of a millionaire arms dealer. Rosemary has disappeared from her college dorm room, likely in the company of a militant young black boxer named Bob Mantle, who is calling himself Uhuru Nolicé. Mantle is wanted for the shooting of three police officers during the course of a robbery. Whether Rosemary went with him willingly or was kidnapped is a matter of conjecture. Frisk wants Easy to find Mantle and recover the girl if possible, but under no circumstances to contact her family.” Adds Kirkus Reviews: “Easy is quickly up to his neck in other LAPD officers, FBI agents and State Department officials, united only in their demand that he drop the case on security grounds. In the course of his investigations, Easy incurs numerous debts that he can pay off only by working other jobs. His trusted police contact, Detective Melvin Suggs, wants Easy to find Mary Donovan, who passed counterfeit money and stole Suggs’ heart. His ex-lover EttaMae Alexander’s white friend Alana Altman wants Easy to find her boy Alton, who she suspects may have been kidnapped by her late husband’s African-American relatives. Local crime lord Art Sugar suggests that Easy pass everything he learns about Bob Mantle on to him first.”

What Else You Should Know: “After 20 years as a private investigator,” writes author Ivy Pochoda in the Los Angeles Times, “Rawlins is uniquely able to navigate the city’s evolving landscape. He understands the shifting ethnic makeup of its neighborhoods, from East Los Angeles to Watts to the Hollywood Hills, as well as the codes of conduct that operate in each of them--no simple feat. Mosley’s novels don’t simply take place in the city or in just one section of the city; they are the city and its residents revealed through plot, dialogue and dialect, landscape and streetscape and countless vivid details of dress and demeanor.” Read Me Deadly points out that “The story [in Rose Gold] is loosely based on the Patty Hearst case of the same era. Patty, a daughter of publishing mogul Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled left-wing revolutionary group, which she later joined. She was convicted of bank robbery and served time in prison, but is still thought by many to have been a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, in which the kidnapped bond closely with their captors. … For those of us who remember those times, Rose Gold is tightly-woven, bittersweet reminder of a turbulent and exhilarating era.”

Pierce’s Picks: “Little Green”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Little Green, by Walter Mosley (Doubleday):
At the conclusion of Mosley’s 10th Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins novel, Blonde Faith (2007), we found his Los Angeles private eye drunk, depressed at the loss of his longtime girlfriend, Bonnie Shay, and wheeling his automobile over a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu, California. “The back of my car hit something hard,” Easy told readers, “a boulder no doubt. Something clenched down on my left foot and pain lanced up my leg. I ignored this, though, realizing that in a few seconds, I’d be dead.” It was hardly unreasonable to think that Mosley had thereby delivered his final Rawlins outing.

Six years later, though, Easy is back, if not in great condition--the plummet from that precipice had thrown him free, but it took most of a day for his old buddy, the ever-armed-and-dangerous Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, to locate him and get him medical attention. After spending two months in bed in a semi-coma, the detective finally reawakens to the world of 1967 ... only to have Mouse ask that he take on a new assignment: locating Evander “Little Green” Noon, a man of 19 or 20 (“but he’s immature for his age”) who disappeared after calling his mother to tell her that he’d met some girl on the Sunset Strip.

A lesser, perhaps smarter man might have said no way, that he needed considerably more bed rest before tackling anything so difficult. But Easy has never been one to fail a friend, and so, bucked up by a “voodoo elixir” supplied by “Southern witch” Mama Jo, he sets off in a bright red 1965 Plymouth Barracuda to bring Evander home--and in the meantime, protect the young man from folks who would rather he ceased breathing immediately. All of this, despite risks to his own life. (“It’s always been my opinion,” Easy tells us at one point, “that if a man’s going to be a fool he should go all the way.”) As the case unfolds, Rawlins will rub elbows (and more intimate body parts) with free-spirited hippie chicks, run afoul of gun-wielding thugs, do his best to hide a small fortune in tainted cash, and try to figure out why Evander’s mother hates Mouse so, despite the lengths Mouse is willing to go to rescue her oldest child. There’s a secondary plot here, too, which has Easy helping another longtime pal, Jackson Blue, squeeze out from under a blackmail threat.

Walter Mosley may have taken a half-dozen-year break from his man Easy, but in the course of it he lost none of his sure footing with this series. Little Green ranks as one of the finest Rawlins novels to date, and that’s no small compliment. These pages are filled with the author’s typically incisive characterizations and careful attention to historical detail. (You can almost smell the patchouli oil and pot smoke so beloved by America’s sexually liberated generation.) While this tale is certainly a mystery, challenging “research and delivery” man Rawlins to sort out why Evander vanished and remains in danger, it also boasts strong social commentary. Easy is always sensitive to the unfairness and insults any black resident of the United States experienced during the mid-20th-century; yet he senses things might be changing a little, that in the age of Martin Luther King Jr. and the African-American civil-rights movement, blacks may see more acceptance and evenhandedness in their future. For a guy who recently died, such revelations can be powerful incentives to go on living.

* * *

Also worth looking for at your local bookshop: Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (Putnam), the second of Ace Atkins’ remarkably successful efforts--following last year’s Lullaby--to extend Parker’s best-selling Spenser series. This time out, the Boston P.I. and his sometime sidekick, Zebulon “Z” Sixkill, rush to the aid of gym owner Henry Cimoli, who faces mounting pressure and threats from a commercial developer intent on purchasing his condominium at Revere Beach, once the site of an oceanfront amusement park and dog-racing track. ... Complex 90 (Titan), by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, in which take-no-shit shamus Mike Hammer (last spotted in 2012’s Lady, Go Die!) precipitates an international incident by, first, traveling with a conservative politician on a fact-finding mission to the Soviet capital, Moscow, and then being arrested for murder. ... Steve Ulfelder’s Shotgun Lullaby (Minotaur), which finds his redemption-craving series protagonist, Conway Sax, trying to help a recovering substance abuser named Gus Biletnikov stay sober--and also stay alive, amid what look like pretty clear threats to the life of Gus, someone who reminds Sax a bit too much of his estranged son. ... And Original Skin (Blue Rider Press), David Mark’s second novel featuring Yorkshire Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. The Scottish-born McAvoy--previously seen in The Dark Winter--and his fellow members of the Serious and Organized Crime Unit start by probing the apparent suicide of a “swinger,” only to have that lead them to the trail of a killer linked to the local erotic sex scene and powerful politicians who would think nothing of breaking a too-curious copper.

READ MORE: “Call It Noir If You Want to: Talking to Walter Mosley About His New Book, Little Green,” by Jeannette Cooperman (St. Louis magazine); “Resisting Little Boxes: The Soul of Walter Mosley,” by Amy Goldschlager (Kirkus Reviews); “America’s Blackest Jewish Writer,” by Harold Heft (Tablet); “Easy Rawlins Lives! Walter Mosley’s Little Green, by Gar Anthony Haywood (Los Angeles Review of Books).

Pleasure Cruiser

Walter Mosley is best known for his Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins novels. But over the last few years he’s also penned science-fiction novels (including The Wave), a young adult novel (47), and collections of short stories (such as Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned) that can only marginally be described as mysteries. Now, he’s breaking into a whole new genre: erotica.

Tracy Quan today evaluates Mosley’s “sexistential novel,” Killing Johnny Fry, in January Magazine. Of that book, which finds narrator Cordell Carmel responding to his lover’s infidelity, she writes:

It starts when he spies his longtime girlfriend, Joelle, having rough sex with Johnny on the living room floor. She doesn’t know Cordell is watching, and he doesn’t let on, but he feels emasculated. The trauma of betrayal transforms this middle-aged New Yorker into a depraved (though kindhearted) beast with a relentless erection. He begins having sex in new positions and unusual locations, with neighbors, colleagues, his unfaithful girlfriend and strangers. He’s not exactly liberated, but he’s going places--to body parts that once were off-limits and to recently discovered parts of Brooklyn, exploring the usual taboos that are pornographic staples. Some of his escapades include wrestlers, designer drugs, and a sex clown.

You don't have to be an authority on raunch, kink or (s)existentialism to appreciate what’s happening to Cordell. But it might help to be a Woody Allen fan, a lover of stories about New Yorkers, their manners and the ironies of infidelity.

You can read the whole review here.

Mosley: “Write Your Novel”

With more than 20 of his own novels in print, Walter Mosley oughta be able to tell the rest of us how it’s done.

Mosley is best known, of course, as the creator of the Easy Rawlins series featuring the Los Angeles private detective who was played so winningly by Denzel Washington in Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley is also three books into a new series featuring a bookstore owner named Paris Minton and his friend, Fearless Jones.

In 2007, however, Mosley will take a break from mystery to share some of what he knows. According to Reuters, “Mosley, 54, will next year release a 100-page book called This Year You Write Your Novel, giving people advice on how to write a novel in a year.”

In an interview, Mosley explains where this book came from, and where it’s going:

People always come to me and say that they really want to write a novel. Some want to do it because they think it will make them rich, some think it will make them famous, or become a movie. This [book] is for if you believe there is a novel in you and you want to write that novel. It tells you how to write a novel in a year. I am not saying how good the novel will be or that it will ever get published. All I am saying is that you can write a novel. The activity of writing a novel is an extraordinary thing. This can have a significant impact on your life. At the end of the book I say congratulations--and the next one will be better!

Even Mosley fans who aren’t planning on penning their own novels will find good stuff in the Reuters interview. Mosley talks about the end of Easy (foreseeable, the author says) and his next novel, Killing Johnny Fry, which the author has subtitled as “a sexistenial novel.”

Mosley is currently on tour promoting Fear of the Dark. You can find tour details here.

Easy Does It

Best news of the day: According to Lee Goldberg, the cable-TV network HBO is planning to make a feature film version of Walter Mosley’s splendid 2004 novel, Little Scarlet, the eighth entry in his series about L.A. private eye Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins. Goldberg says that actors Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def have been signed for the project, “though, in an unusual twist, it’s undecided at this point” who’ll play Rawlins, and who will portray his homicidal crony, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander. HBO has reportedly signed Mosley himself to write the script.