Regarding Harry

You knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, right? As Omnimystery News explains:

Amazon Studios has ordered a pilot based on a character created by crime novelist Michael Connelly. Titled Bosch, it will be centered on LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, first introduced in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel the following year.

Deadline reports that Connelly co-wrote the pilot screenplay, though it isn’t clear if it is an original story or based on one of the novels in the series.

A hearty congratulations is due Michael Connelly. I’m only surprised it has taken this long to fashion a TV series from his very popular Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch books.

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Speaking of small-screen endeavors, the British TV series DCI Banks, starring Stephen Tompkinson as author Peter Robinson’s longtime Yorkshire cop, Alan Banks, has been renewed for a third series (aka season). Production on a trio of two-part episodes is scheduled, beginning in August of this year. Those episodes will be based on the novels Wednesday’s Child, Piece of My Heart, and Bad Boy.

In the UK, DCI Banks started showing in 2010, but here in the States, series I and II didn’t debut until this last January, running back to back. Series III is being prepared for broadcast in the UK next year, but there’s no news yet on when it might reach these shores.

“A Writer ... Caught Up in a Real-life Plot”

It’s been most of three decades since I last watched director Wim Wenders’ noirish 1982 film, Hammett, based on Joe Gores’ 1975 novel of that same name. However, the trailer below, which I happened across today on YouTube, makes me want to sample the picture once more. Has anybody else seen this cinematic ode to detective-author Dashiell Hammett more recently? If so, how does it hold up?

Cry Wolfe

Earlier today the New York City-based fan organization, the Nero Wolfe Society, announced its list of nominees for the 2013 Nero Awards, intended to celebrate “the best mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.” Those contenders are:

• Antiques Disposal, by Barbara Allan (aka Max Allan Collins and his wife, Barbara; Kensington)
• Burning Midnight, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge)
• Dead Anyway, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)
• The Truth of All Things, by Kieran Shields (Crown)

As usual, we’ll have to wait a while before we hear who has won this prize. The Nero Award is given out during the Wolfe Pack’s annual Black Orchid Banquet, which is typically held in Manhattan on the first Saturday in December.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Bullet Points: Father’s Day Weekend Edition

• Author and TV writer Peter S. Fischer, who’s probably still best known for his work on such series as Columbo, Ellery Queen, and Murder, She Wrote, has won the gold medal in the Mystery/Suspense category of the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition. That honor was presented in recognition of Fischer’s 2012 novel, The Unkindness of Strangers (The Grove Press). Omnimystery News adds that “The silver winners in the same category are Ripped, by Shelly Dickson Carr (which also won the Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book), and Run to Ground, by D. P. Lyle (Oceanview Publishing).” Amnon Kabatchnik picked up a silver medal in the Reference category for his book Blood on the Stage: 1975-2000: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery, and Detection (Scarecrow Press). The Benjamin Franklin Awards “recognize excellence in independent publishing and are given out by the Independent Book Publishers Association in a number of categories.”

• And Christopher Valen’s novel Bone Shadows (Conquill Press) not only walked away with the 2012 Garcia Memorial Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year, but captured first place in the Mystery/Thriller/Suspense/Horror category of the Reader Views Awards, which honor self-published and independently published works. You can find out more here.

• Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel, Dare Me, looks like it’s going to get the Hollywood treatment. Abbott herself wrote the script, and Natalie Portman is being courted to star in the picture (though, at 32 years of age, she doesn’t seem likely to win one of the high-school cheerleader roles). A big Rap Sheet congratulations to our friend Megan!

• Philadelphia blogger Peter Rozovsky has posted the first part of a multi-installment interview he conducted recently with French author Fred Vargas, whose soon-forthcoming Commissaire Adamsberg mystery novel, The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, he says is her best work yet. UPDATE: Part II of Rozovsky’s Vargas interview is now available here.

• Matt (Beynon) Rees, the author of four novels featuring Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef as well as historical tales such as Mozart’s Last Aria (2011), has posted a rundown of what he insists are “10 Historical Thrillers You Have to Read.” Included on his list are works by J. Sydney Jones, Anne Perry, Barbara Cleverly, and J. Robert Janes.

• Meanwhile, Classic Mysteries’ Les Blatt, who says he has “now read somewhat more than half of Stuart Palmer’s books featuring Hildegarde Withers, the New York City schoolteacher who manages to spend a significant amount of her time solving murders,” lists four of his favorites from that series here. (Withers, by the way, was the featured sleuth in a failed 1972 TV pilot film, A Very Missing Person, about which I wrote earlier this year.)

• Apparently, spelling competence isn’t required of extreme-right nominees for lieutenant governor in Virginia. Just ask E.W. Jackson.

• I have to admit that Michael Shonk, Mystery*File’s specialist in classic crime TV dramas, surprised me with his latest fine column, this one about the 1961-1962 syndicated series Shannon, which starred George Nader as Joe Shannon, “an insurance investigator for Transport Bonding & Surety Company,” with offices in Denver and Los Angeles. “What set Shannon apart from your average syndicated P.I.,” Shonk explains, “was his car, a 1961 Buick Special with enough gadgets to please James Bond (though Bond would have be disappointed by the lack of lethal weapons/gadgets).” Shonk examines four episodes of that forgotten half-hour program here.

• Actor-turned-restaurateur Harry Lewis died this last week at age 93. In 1950, Lewis and his girlfriend (later wife), Marilyn Friedman, opened their first Hamburger Hamlet on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip. The eatery eventually grew into a chain of 24 Hamlets scattered all over the L.A. area. One of the first restaurants I visited during my earliest trip to Southern California was the Hamburger Hamlet in West Hollywood, which I heard closed in late 2011 after half a century in business. Sorry, but I can’t remember what I ordered. That was too many dead brain cells ago. (Hat tip to L.A. Observed.)

• Also gone is Norman Borisoff, a TV writer with credits that extended from The Saint and I Spy to Ironside and Starsky and Hutch. He later penned young adult novels. Borisoff died on April 21 at age 94.

• Film scholar Jake Hinkson has a nice two-part tribute to Robert Mitchum in Criminal Element. Part I is here, Part II is here.

• Is the 1950s-set Magic City really “the crime genre's answer to Mad Men”? You might well think so, after watching this preview. I can’t believe I have heard very little about Magic City up till now. But then, I don’t have Starz as part of my cable-TV package.

• From Think Progress:

The news that Penelope Cruz is in talks to play the romantic lead opposite Daniel Craig in the next James Bond film has prompted all sorts of reactions from across the Web. Is it “a feminist breakthrough” that Craig will be playing across an actress close to his own age? Is noting that Cruz, who will be 39 or 40 when filming begins, the oldest actress to step into those stilettos opposite Bond, “drearily chauvinistic”? Or is age not really what matters here at all?

• This is haunting footage--the only known film of German-Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank, take in Amsterdam in 1941.

• Curtis Evans, author of the non-fiction work Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery, talks with Past Offences’ Rich Westwood about “his longtime fascination with the less-publicized writers of the British ‘Golden Age.’” You’ll find the results of their conversation here.

• Good news for Aussie mystery-fiction fans, quoted from B.V. Lawson’s blog, In Reference to Murder:

There’s a new crime fiction festival coming to Adelaide, Australia, called The Body in the Garden, to be held October 25 to 27. The event will feature a line-up of 22+ writers from Australia and overseas, including Swedish crime writer Hakan Nesser, UK author Anne Cleeves, and Australians Gabrielle Lord, Paul Bangay, Fabian Capomollo and Mat Pember. This is unusual in that it’s a free festival and will be held (as the name suggests) at the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

• London’s Goldsboro Books will host the third annual Crime in the Court gathering on July 4 (6:30-9:30 p.m.) to coincide with Independent Booksellers Week. It’s an opportunity for readers to meet some of Britain’s top crime, mystery, and thriller authors. Among those scheduled to attend this year are Mark Billingham, Robert Goddard, Nicci French, R.N. Morris, Alison Bruce, Adrian Magson, Eva Dolan, and Charles Cumming. Crime in the Court won’t be a ticketed event this time ’round, but you’re asked to confirm your attendance with a brief note sent to crimeinthecourt@goldsborobooks.com.

• Also, the 13th and final series of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot, starring David Suchet as the brainy Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, includes an episode shot at Greenway, author Christie’s old estate in Devon, England. Comprising five adaptations of Christie’s mysteries, this series has already begun broadcasting in the UK, but so far there’s no word from PBS-TV as to when these installments--which also include an adaptation of Christie’s last Poirot tale, Curtain--will show in the United States. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Farewell, Joan Parker

This is sad news, quoted from The Boston Globe:

Joan Parker, the philanthropist and widow of mystery writer Robert B. Parker, has died. Parker, a longtime Cambridge [Massachusetts] resident, died Tuesday, according to Helen Brann, a longtime friend and agent to Robert B. Parker. Joan Parker had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in August 2011, and was receiving treatment. A tireless fundraiser for a host of different charities, Parker was barely slowed by her illness. Last month, she co-chaired the annual fund-raiser of PFLAG, a national nonprofit supporting parents, families, and friends of lesbians and gays. (Parker’s two children, Dan and David, are both gay.)

You’ll recall that Bob Parker, who created the very popular fictional Boston private eye Spenser, died in January 2010 at age 77--but not before repeatedly dedicating his many novels to his wife, the former Joan Hall, whom he fell in love with during a freshman dance at Maine’s Colby College in 1950, while they were both students there. The pair were married in 1956. She went to become the inspiration for the character of Spenser’s longtime girlfriend, Susan Silverman, a school guidance counselor turned psychologist.

I hadn’t expected Joan Parker to perish quite so soon after her husband’s demise. I never met her (though I did once share frappés with author Parker), but I was always given to understood that she was a woman of tremendous drive, and not one to succumb easily to the demands of death. Fortunately, she was also committed to continuing her husband’s legacy, and put the Spenser series into the capable, respectful hands of Ace Atkins before she passed away.

(Hat tip to Kevin R. Tipple.)

READ MORE: “Robert B. Parker Is Dead! Long Live Robert B. Parker!,” by Zac Bissonnette (The Boston Globe Magazine).

Pierce’s Picks: “The Confessions of Al Capone”

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

The Confessions of Al Capone, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge):
One can’t help but admire Loren D. Estleman’s authorial versatility. For the last 33 years--beginning with 1980’s Motor City Blue--he’s been writing up the adventures of unreconstructed Detroit gumshoe Amos Walker (last seen in Burning Midnight). But the now 60-year-old writer has also turned out smaller successions of books about hit man Peter Macklin, Old West marshal Page Murdock, and “film detective” Valentino (Alive!), and he’s concocted historical novels around real-life figures such as “hanging judges” Isaac Parker (The Branch and the Scaffold) and Roy Bean (Roy & Lillie: A Love Story). The Confessions of Al Capone adds to this last category of his storytelling.

Set in 1944, this new yarn introduces Peter Vasco, an FBI “drone” who’s typically “assigned to proofread non-classified instructions to Special Agents in Charge and the odd innocuous press release for errors of spelling and grammar.” One day, though, Vasco is summoned to Director J. Edgar Hoover’s office. He fears that Hoover is going to dismiss him for some incidental slip-up; instead, the director wants young Vasco--posing as a Catholic priest--to infiltrate the guarded inner circle around mob boss Al Capone, who has recently been released after a seven-year prison stint (part of it spent at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay) brought on by his 1931 conviction on federal charges of tax evasion. Capone has returned to his estate in Palm Beach, Florida; however, he’s suffering from syphilis, only irregularly lucid, and prone to spontaneous rants. It’s up to Vasco to gain the declining gangster’s trust and elicit from him as much information as he can about Capone’s confederates before “Scarface” kicks the bucket (which he will do in 1947 at age 48).

Running more than 400 pages in length, this is a big book for Estleman, and one that displays his narrative-writing skills and comprehension of U.S. criminal history most effectively. Its chapters shift back and forth between third-person action and the first-person recollections of Capone himself. Along the way, Estleman provides readers with sharp portrayals of the mobster’s underappreciated wife, Mae, top Capone henchman Frank Nitti, and other members of the so-called Chicago Outfit. One gets the impression that Estleman invested more than mere time in this novel, that he had a genuine connection with the era and people about which he writes. As he told an interviewer recently, his biggest challenge was in capturing Capone’s voice. That, he said, “was the very kernel of the idea of what I wanted to do. ... [Capone] had a fascinating cadence of speech. He loved to tell a story; he loved to talk about himself; he loved publicity. ... I wanted that version of Capone to come through.” It’s only one critic’s opinion, of course, but from what I’ve read of this book so far, I think he succeeded in that task, and more.

* * *

Also new and worth tracking down is The Rules of Wolfe (Mysterious Press), by James Carlos Blake. It rolls out the increasingly tense tale of Eddie Gato Wolfe, a too-impulsive member of a Texas gun-running family, who signs on to work security for a Sonoran drug cartel--only to fall hard for a cinnamon-skinned beauty he should never have touched, and with whom he soon flees, pursued by a pack of killers. A great chase thriller. ... And Brits should look for The Resistance Man (Quercus UK), the sixth entry in Martin Walker’s heralded series about small-town French police chief Bruno Courrèges. Here we find the food-and-wine-loving Bruno investigating a cache of old bank notes and dealing with burglaries, one of which concludes in murder.

Where Old Shows Go to ... Live Again

As I mentioned here last week, the Web site Television Obscurities is celebrating its 10th year of publication. Although that site’s young administrator, the mysterious Robert, worries he “may be overdoing it a bit with these anniversary posts,” I respectfully disagree. His write-ups about vintage (and sometimes justly forgotten) TV programs have been thorough and interesting, and he ought to be commemorating a full decade’s worth of contributions in high style. Already, he’s posted about the history of Television Obscurities in two parts (here and here), and he’s looked back at his “very favorite Obscurity” as well as some of his other favorites. I’ll be watching to see what else Robert can come up with during this week-long anniversary celebration.

You should be able to keep track of all the Television Obscurities anniversary posts at this link.

Crime in All Corners

Here’s something of potential interest to travelers this summer. Publisher Open Road Media has compiled a list of 64 mysteries, thrillers, and assorted other crime stories, set across the breadth of the United States and available in e-book format. “Each novel encapsulates the unique flora and fauna of its home state and weaves in a tale of villainy and intrigue ...,” according to The Open Road Blog. You’ll find those “Map of Mystery” selections listed here, and through next Tuesday, June 18, they can be had for up to 75 percent off.

Uncorking Wine for a New Generation

My latest Mysteries and Thrillers column has now been posted on the Kirkus Reviews Web site. The topic this week: Roger L. Simon’s novel The Big Fix, which introduced Los Angeles private eye Moses Wine--and celebrates its 40th birthday this year. As I write in that piece, Fix was Simon’s attempt to bring something new to a genre then in need of an overhaul:

Simon sought to put an innovative spin on private-eye fiction. He didn’t wish simply to re-wrap the field’s hard-boiled conventions in new, shinier paper, but instead hoped to reboot the genre in a way that would resonate with a generation of readers less wistful for the quieter “good old days” than they were hopeful about how late-20th-century upheavals might redefine modern culture for the better. Moses S. Wine would chronicle that evolution through the course of his cases.

You’ll find the full column here.

No Question About It, That’s a Punchy Name

Look at what I just found on the Amazon U.S. Web site: a sales page for The Black-Eyed Blonde, Irish author John Banville’s long-promised novel featuring Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. According to that page, Banville’s book--which will appear under his Benjamin Black pseudonym--is due out from publisher Henry Holt on March 4, 2014. It was originally slated for release sometime later this year.

As Tom Williams, author of last year’s Chandler biography, A Mysterious Something in the Light, notes in his blog, there’s a history to the name of this new Marlowe outing:

The title was one of several potential pulp titles listed in Chandler’s notebooks. It has been used before, as the title of an authorised short story by Benjamin M. Schutz in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, and, perhaps more interestingly, by Erle Stanley Gardner as the title for one of his Perry Mason stories. Since Gardner and Chandler were great friends it is possible that the Chandler suggested the title to Gardner. There is no mention of it in the correspondence I have read, but Ray and [his wife] Cissy were occasional visitors to the Gardner ranch and perhaps, over a coffee or a whisky, the title was mentioned. We will never know, of course. Gardner’s book is long out of print so it seems, for now at least, Chandler will be associated with the title once again.

Hmm. I own a paperback copy of Gardner’s The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde (1944). Maybe I ought to read that before tackling Banville/Black’s forthcoming tale.

The Book You Have to Read: “Yardie,” by Victor Headley

(Editor’s note: This is the 127th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today we welcome back an old friend and colleague, Michael G. Jacob, who, with Daniela De Gregorio and under the joint pseudonym “Michael Gregorio,” has penned four historical mysteries featuring early 18th-century Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis, most recently 2010’s Unholy Awakening. The pair’s latest novel is a non-series work, Your Money Or Your Life, a mystery set during the 16th-century Italian Renaissance and released in English last month by the French publisher Didier-Paper Planes.)

Murder One used to be a regular stop on my occasional visits to London. It was the first and certainly the best British bookshop for crime-fiction readers. Unfortunately, that store in Charing Cross Road closed down in 2009, after 21 years, when owner and novelist Maxim Jakubowski retired from the business (though Murder One UK continues to operate online as a specialist in crime books).

On one of my visits there 20 years ago, I picked up Yardie (The X Press, 1992), a slim volume by a debut writer that I had never heard of before, Jamaican-born Victor Headley, and I was totally taken by it. As a result, in the succeeding years I bought Headley’s follow-up works: Exce$$ (1993), Yush (1994), Fetish (1995), Here Comes the Bride (1997), and Off Duty (2001).

So, what was the attraction of Yardie, and why am I writing this note today, more than two decades after it first appeared?

The first thing that gripped me was the book’s cover image of a snub-nosed 9mm Saturday night special pointing straight into your face. It was blunt, brutal, threatening--and I loved it. Later editions of Yardie were adorned with smarter, slicker, better-produced images, but the original cover encapsulated the menace that runs like quicksilver throughout Headley’s story.

D., a Jamaican drugs “star,” backstreet “gangsta,” and small-time dealer in the Yard (aka Kingston, Jamaica), visits England for the first time on a “mission,” carrying a kilo of cocaine for the London branch of the Spicers street gang. He likes what he sees--the high life, fancy clothes, fast cars, big money--so he makes his play for fame and fortune, ripping off his bosses and their associates, and setting up his own organization in direct competition.

Right from the start, you know there’s a gang war heating up.

As many critics noted at the time of Yardie’s original release, there was nothing very original about the story. It might have been inspired by James Cagney in The Public Enemy. At the same time, I found it fascinating. Set in a social milieu of which I knew absolutely nothing--north London’s Jamaican underworld--the novel touched on a lot of significant themes. It was about poor people trying to emerge from the shadows, using whatever means they could lay their hands on--drugs, guns, easy money--and there was a compulsive, fast-moving rhythm to the storytelling, an abundance of detail about Britain’s Jamaican community which was eye-opening. D rises to the top of the tree in no time. He has a child, a “baby mother” to cook and clean for him, other lovers, and he always puts business before everything and everyone. His climb seems inevitable, as does the probability that his plans won’t succeed.

You get it? Macbeth, pride coming before a fall, the wheel of fortune turning, turning ...

This was a potential Jamaican low-life tragedy set in London.

If you manage to get beneath the skin of the Yardie patois and the day-to-day banality of trading drugs, there’s a rich world of characters and situations in these pages that you will never have met before in an English crime novel. Jamaican food, Jamaican music, Jamaican friends, Jamaican enemies, the exiled Jamaican’s nostalgia for the Yard, the Caribbean home and poverty he has reluctantly left behind him.

As I said before, I went into Murder One on Charing Cross Road, looking for something different, and I came out holding Victor Headley in my hand.

I re-read Yardie not long ago, and loved it all over again. A crime novel doesn’t have to be packed with twists and turns and explosive denouements to work. All it needs is a man with a tale to tell, and the language to tell it with. Victor Yardley had both. The economy of his prose is truly remarkable. It takes a while to crack the code, but once you do, you’ll enjoy the rich sensuality of the language.

“Is truth you ah talk, Jahman,” D. said after a while. “Black people cyan get a break in dis time unless it’s t’rough music or sports. If a man don’t have dem form of skills, him still ha fe make a living, differently. Dat is why we must take some risks, try fe de best.”

Victor Headley took a lot of risks, and he did his best.

(A previous version of this “forgotten books” review appeared in Michael Gregorio’s blog.)

Well, That Takes the Prize

There have been many fiction-writing commendations dispensed lately, so we can probably be excused for failing to mention the occasional one. However, a pair of recent presentations along these lines deserve at least some small fanfare here.

Late May’s International Latino Book Awards recipients included a couple of works from the crime and mystery fiction category: Missing in Machu Picchu, by Cecilia Velastegui (Libros Publishing), and The Land Grant, by Carlos Cisneros (Arte Publico Press).

In addition, Friend of The Rap Sheet and Private Eye Writers of America founder Robert J. Randisi has won the President’s Literary Excellence Award from The ReadWest Foundation for his “contribution[s] to excellence in Western literature.” (A new video interview with Randisi can be watched here.) ReadWest also announced that Wyoming novelist Craig Johnson, whose series of mysteries featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire inspired the A&E-TV series Longmire, is one of its four Featured Authors for 2013.

We offer our hardy congratulations to all four wordsmiths.

McIlvanney Calls It As He Sees It

(Editor’s note: Over the last few years, I’ve talked with Tony Black several times about the possibility of his interviewing fellow Scottish crime novelist William McIlvanney, who’s best known for penning the cop novel Laidlaw (1977) and its two sequels. Tony--the author of such works as Paying for It, Murder Mile, and Last Orders [that third book an expansion of a short story that ran originally in The Rap Sheet]--repeatedly expressed great interest in such a project. However, he always seemed too busy to approach the elder McIvanney, or else he was having trouble arranging time to speak with him. So imagine my surprise and delight, when Tony recently told me that he would finally be sending me part of an exchange he’d had with Laidlaw’s author, for posting in The Rap Sheet. What follows is that excerpt, taken from a longer piece in Black’s new e-book collection of interviews, Hard Truths: Cross-Examining Crime Writers [UK link here, U.S. link here].)

(Right) William McIlvanney, photo by
Ian Atkinson

William McIlvanney is something of a legend in Scottish crime-writing circles. I choose my words carefully here, for the man himself has described the term Tartan noir as “ersatz.” And who am I to argue with the author of the novel that started the phenomenon?

A good friend of mine recently described McIlvanney as “like meeting a statue that’s come to life,” and that does kind of sum up the reverence with which he’s treated in his home country. But crime writers didn’t always attract such rapturous plaudits.

When McIlvanney wrote Laidlaw, back in the late 1970s, Scotland was not well-known for its crime fiction--something he was to change singlehandedly. McIlvanney’s curmudgeonly cop, Glasgow Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw, provided the imprimatur for the Scottish best-sellers lists, and our longest-running television drama, Taggart, is a very heavy homage to the work.

This Godfather of Tartan Noir has never been out of fashion, but when his books fell out of print it was definitely time for a revival. I spoke with the 76-year-old McIlvanney on the eve of Edinburgh-based Canongate’s re-publication of his ground-breaking Laidlaw series.

Tony Black: You were writing literary fiction and changed to genre fiction with Laidlaw. It’s an accepted career path now--everybody does it--but when you did it, nobody did. What were you thinking?

William Mcilvanney: I suppose I didn’t give a shit. I just thought that I had written Docherty (1975), which was about the first quarter of the 20th century, and I was desperate to reconnect with contemporary life again and I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had this character--who turned out to be Laidlaw--who was persistently hanging about in my head. And I’d always wanted to write about Glasgow--I’m a convert, I come from Ayrshire--so I had the intensity of a convert for Glasgow, I loved it and wanted to write about that. I had to make this character Glaswegian and he's got to go to bad places so he’s got to be a cop. But I didn’t think, I will now write a detective novel; I came upon the necessity to write a detective novel because I wanted to write about Glasgow and I wanted this abrasive character to be part of it, so I kind of stumbled into the fact that he’s got to be a detective.

TB: So Laidlaw could have been a completely different person--say, a journalist or a paramedic, just somebody who touches different echelons of society?

WM: Oh, absolutely. I was fortunate to know a guy from Kilmarnock, Robbie McInness, who was a detective from Glasgow. [He] told me things about the kind of ambiance the guy would work in, and putting all these things together it’s got to be a detective novel about Glasgow, but I didn’t think it was going to be a game-changer. I’ve always felt that detective novels can fight as middle-weight and quite often fight as fly-weight, so I wasn’t deterred by saying this is a detective novel; this was a character I cared about and the story I wanted to write.

TB: You’re on the record as saying “good writing occurs where it occurs”--you don’t put it in a ghetto if it’s genre fiction.

WM: Yeah, absolutely. I haven’t read much detective fiction, but I knew that when I read about [Philip] Marlowe I thought this is serious writing, he can write. I never had that--well, coming from my background you wouldn’t--snobbishness that says you have to write “literature.” It’s all books, and if they work they work and that’s it.

TB: I believe you don’t buy into the Agatha Christie style of crime fiction. You’ve said it gives you “reality starvation.”

WM: That’s right. She’s also one of the most successful writers in the world and I respect that, she did what she did. But certainly it’s not for me, finding dead bodies in the library and all that, I just cannot believe it when I read it. Maybe it works as a puzzle, but it connects to no kind of sense of life that I understand, and what I try to [do when I] write is to connect with the real life that I know and the people I know.

TB: English crime fiction and Scottish crime fiction are completely different, aren’t they?

WM: I would hope so. I don’t think it’s a national thing, it’s about the way you look at books. I mean, why should I be cheeky to Agatha Christie, who’s far more successful than I could dream of being? But for me it was the book as a puzzle. I think Scottish writing’s always been a bit more serious than that, a bit more solemn. I didn’t want to pass two hours on the train, I wanted to relate to the kind of society I live in and encourage people to do that. [Poet John] Keats said a great thing, that when you’re writing you must “load the rifts with ore.” Don’t just go where you’re going, but give the reader observation, presence along the way. A detective story--if you get it right, you’ll have a plot that’s going to make people read on, but along the way give them serious observation and a sense of the society the novel is passing through, and that’s what I wanted to do with Laidlaw. I thought, what you’ve got here is a great form; if you get it right, folk are going to read it to the end. But you can also do the thing of saying here’s the reality of the story by giving them bonuses of observation and reality along the way, and I thought that’s what Laidlaw could do.

TB: But you subverted the traditional structure with Laidlaw by revealing the murderer on page one …

WM:That’s right. I think if you say it’s a whodunit, the puzzle takes over. It dominates the reader’s concentration throughout, and I thought I don’t want to do that. So if I say, this is the man who did it, then in the process of this story I’ve got to produce something else, because you know already who did it, so it’s a why-dunnit and it’s [about] what will result from his having done it. And you’ve still got a hook, but as well as the hook I wanted to say, OK, this is the crime and eventually we’ll get to the core of why it happened, but along the way what about this for a place? Look what’s around us.

TB: It’s a literary writer’s approach to crime fiction. You obviously want your characters and setting to drive the novel, it’s not about ladling in lots of plot turns.

WM: Absolutely. It’s about Laidlaw, it’s about the boy who [committed the crime] and the strange nature of him and why he did it. It just seemed to me that it was a great form.

Gore Vidal said a great thing once in an essay, he said that we should colonize the genre, we should take genre [works] and try to people them with serious reality--so if it’s a detective story, make something happen to make it real, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to take a form that people would like reading, hopefully, and follow it to the end, but almost below their consciousness you would be giving them the presence of observation and a sense of reality. If you can put that all together, to me, you’ve got an utterly valid book.

TB: Inspector Laidlaw is a bit of a curmudgeon--do protagonists in fiction need to be sympathetic?

MW: It’s advice I’ve never followed. I like him, he’s a pain in the arse in many ways, but I think we all are. I’d absolutely go for several pints with him.

TB: You stated early on that you weren’t interested in a man who was a cop, and Laidlaw had to be a cop who was also a man.

WM: Yeah, you’re not defined by your job, you redefine your job by your humanity in the way you handle it. Laidlaw happens to be a cop, but he’s much more than that and he brings the much-more-than-that to the job. If you’re defined by your job, you’re pathetic, you might as well give up. But you can approach the job in such a way that you redefine the job by the humanity you bring to it, and that’s what I think Laidlaw does; he’s aggressive, he’s a pain in the arse, but he’s serious and he means it.

TB: A lot of characters in crime fiction do tend to be quite one-dimensional, but he’s got a hinterland ...

WM: I could sit here and pontificate about how I created him, but I’m not sure how I did it. It was putting a man who was interesting in situations that would test his nature and that’s about that. He’s a guy I like and I think that all the folk I like can be a bit of a pain in the arse at times. I don’t want to meet folk that are so bland that all you do is exchange the same kinds of platitudes. Laidlaw’s not a platitudes person, he keeps his reactions real and I think that’s important, because when that happens the situation becomes real. I mean, if you think about it, you can go to a party and think, Christ, I might not as well have gone at all, it was all so platitudinously pleasant. And a wee bit of frisson of angst or argument; I love that, Laidlaw brings that to every situation. He doesn’t go in and play a role, he becomes himself.

TB: I heard a rumor that the voice of Jack Laidlaw had come back to you recently. Does that mean there is another novel on the cards, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

WM: I don’t know. I don’t want to get too melodramatic, but I am still slightly haunted by him. I have got some ideas, but I don’t know if they’ll come to fruition. I’ve got an idea for a Laidlaw prequel, with Laidlaw as a younger man, perhaps before he became quite so aggressive. I’ve also got an idea for a twilight Laidlaw--where he’s out of the police--that I’ve had for a while. [Sean] Connery once phoned me and said, “I have a window,” and I thought, I’ve got several windows, but what he meant was that in his career there was a gap and could I write a treatment and let him see it. I wrote about 18 pages of a story in which Laidlaw becomes involved after he’s packed up the police. I won’t elaborate on the idea--I know you wouldn’t steal it, Tony, but somebody might--[but] I sent it to him and he said his secretary really likes it, but he thought it was a book not a film. And I think he was probably right. It strikes me that it’s an idea that could be resurrected.

(Right) Hard Truths, the source of this interview excerpt.

TB: Laidlaw, of course, operates in Glasgow--that city does get a bad reputation. It’s a cliché, but it is No Mean City ...

WM: Do you know a city that isn’t hard? I mean, I lived in Paris for a little while and it’s possibly my favorite city, but I remember walking into certain places and thinking, I’d better get out of here. It’s a hard place, I mean, Parisian crime is hard stuff and I think Glasgow has a reputation which is not unearned, but which is exaggerated. Besides being a hard town, it’s a terrifically warm town, I think. It’s a place, as I once said, where Greta Garbo wouldn’t have been alone--she’d have been in a pub somewhere and somebody would shout out, “Hey, you in the funny hat, come over and have a Blue Lagoon!”

Glasgow has a terrific quality of engaging you. I’ve had a lot of people who know about the books, approaching me. I went into the Horseshoe Bar once and ordered a drink, and as I lifted it to my lips a guy said, “It was Friday night in the city of the stare ...” And I thought, Christ, I wrote that, and we went on to have a terrific conversation. I didn’t ask if he’d went beyond the first sentence, though, I didn’t want to spoil a sweet moment.

READ MORE: “William McIlvanney: The Father of Tartan Noir,” by Susan Mansfield (The Scotsman); “William McIlvanney: Laying Down the Law,” by Bram E. Gieben (The Skinny); “Laidlaw,” by Jim Murdoch (The Truth About Lies).

Presenting the Lammys

During a “gala ceremony” in New York City last evening, held a little less than three months after the announcement of which crime/mystery novels and authors were finalists for the 2013 Lamba Literary Awards, the winners were declared.

Gay Mystery: Lake on the Mountain, by Jeffrey Round (Dundurn)

Also nominated: Bokassa’s Last Apostle, by Rod Shelton (Paradise Press UK); Dos Equis, by Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac Press); Fires of London, by Janice Law (Mysterious Press/Open Road); and The Yellow Canary, by Steve Neil Johnson (Clutching Hand)

Lesbian Mystery: Ill Will, by J.M. Redmann (Bold Strokes)

Also nominated: Jacob’s War, by C.P. Rowlands (Bold Strokes); Lemon Reef, by Robin Silverman (Bold Strokes); Molly: House on Fire, by R.E. Bradshaw (R.E. Bradshaw); and Rest for the Wicked, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

There were also winners in 20 other categories of fiction and non-fiction. You’ll find the complete list of “Lammy” recipients here.

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Bullet Points: Comings and Goings Edition

• During this last Saturday’s Weekend Edition program, National Public Radio host Scott Simon talked with Max Allan Collins about the new, 18th Mike Hammer private-eye novel, Complex 90 (Titan), one of several Hammer adventures that Collins has finished since the death of that character’s creator, Mickey Spillane, in 2006. Collins has spoken on a number of occasions with The Rap Sheet, so much of what he tells Simon won’t be new to regular readers of this blog. Still, it can be quite moving to actually hear Collins remark on Spillane’s life and that elder author’s influence on his own writing.

• Meanwhile, Canada’s Howard Shrier talked with CBC Radio about his latest Jonah Geller novel, Miss Montreal (Vintage Canada), which the network explains “is based in Montreal [Quebec] and covers almost every controversy the province has dealt with in the last few years.”

• USA Network has announced that the spy/crime drama Burn Notice--which returns this Thursday night--will end its popular run after the 13 episodes that make up this last, seventh season.

• Curious, I don’t remember seeing any publicity before now about a private-eye drama called King & Maxwell, and yet that series is scheduled to premiere next Monday, June 10, on TNT-TV. Deborah Lacy of Criminal Element explains that the principal players, “Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, are based on characters created by David Baldacci. ... Both are former Secret Service agents who made huge mistakes that ended their careers. Recovering alcoholic Sean King’s mistake occurred when the presidential candidate he was protecting was assassinated. Yikes. Not sure how you get over that one. Former Olympic athlete Michelle Maxwell’s charge disappeared on her. Still, not great to lose the man you are protecting.” Jon Tenney (from The Closer and Steven Bochco’s short-lived Brooklyn South) will star as King, with the fetching Rebecca Romijn portraying Maxwell. A preview of the show is here. It’s only too bad that King & Maxwell is going head to head on Monday nights against A&E’s terrific Longmire.

• By the way, if you’re having trouble (as I am) keeping this summer’s schedule of scripted TV mystery series straight, check out Michael Shonk’s rundown of debut times and dates in Mystery*File.

• The excellent Web site Television Obscurities is preparing to mark the end of its 10th year of “discussing obscure television programs and forgotten aspects of television history.” The actual anniversary of its launching in 2003 will be June 11, but the Webmaster (whose name doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere on the site) is planning “a week-long celebration that will kick off on ... Sunday, June 9th. It will include a look back at the early days of the Web site, a list of my personal favorite obscurities, a preview of the monthly columns I’ll be launching in July, a call for ideas for future articles, and more.” Tune in this coming weekend for the start of the festivities.

• One more reason to party: On June 9 and 10, Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes will commemorate its fourth anniversary. Begun by “a couple of P.I.s who also happen to be writers” (one of whom has since become a criminal defense attorney), that blog will celebrate by re-posting some of its readers’ favorite articles and offering free downloads of the e-books How Do Private Eyes Do That? and How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths.” Check back here on June 8 for more information.

• Congratulations to Patti Abbott, Hilary Davidson, and a dozen other crime-fictionists whose stories have been chosen to appear in the inaugural issue of The Malfeasance Occasional, a thrice-yearly collection of original short works to be published by the Web site Criminal Element. Issue No. 1 of the M.O. was originally supposed to be released in December 2012, but its launch has been delayed several times. Current expectations are that the debut edition--carrying the theme “Girl Trouble”--will appear this summer.

• Republicans really aren’t popular with young voters.

• I somehow missed spotting last week’s announcement of which mystery novels won the 2013 Audie Awards, “recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.” Fortunately, Omnimystery News has the results.

• This makes me miss made-for-television films: a 1968 adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Jack Palance. At least for the time being, you can watch that full two-hour Canadian production here. Palance’s performance is alternately brilliant and melodramatic.

• Here’s a TV film I never thought I’d see again: the 1973 pilot for Poor Devil, starring Sammy Davis Jr. as “a bumbling assistant to Satan ... [who] gets one last chance when he’s assigned get the soul of a down-and-out retail department store accountant (Jack Klugman).” Adam West (Batman) appears as Klugman’s boss.

• Oh, and one last long-forgotten screen gem worth watching: the February 1971 pilot film for Longstreet. That short-lived ABC-TV series starred James Franciscus as Mike Longstreet, an insurance investigator in New Orleans who, even after being blinded by a bomb blast that killed his wife, continued his investigative efforts with some help from a German Shepherd seeing eye dog named Pax. At last check, YouTube also offered the first full episode of Longstreet, “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” which guest-starred a then comparatively unknown martial-arts expert named Bruce Lee.

• Oline Cogdill has some nice things to say about the recently cancelled TNT-TV cop series, Southland.

• What might this mean to the future of crime fighting, and to the boundaries of privacy? “On Monday,” reports Pacific Standard, the U.S. Supreme Court “gave the OK to the controversial practice of cops collecting DNA samples from crime suspects under arrest. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices decided that swabbing a person’s cheek prior to their conviction of any crime did not constitute an unreasonable search—so long as the suspect was under arrest ‘for a serious offense’ and had been brought ‘to the station to be detained in custody.’”

• British critic/author Mike Ripley is back with another “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots. This month’s installment includes remarks about Paul Doherty’s 100th novel, the sometimes “distinctly odd” translation of Massimo Carlotto’s At the End of a Dull Day, James Bond’s Diamond Jubilee, Florence-set thrillers, and the Macmillan Crime Party held recently at London’s Goldsboro Books.

• June 27 will mark 40 years since the release of Live and Let Die, the film that introduced Roger Moore as the third actor to play British super-spy James Bond on the silver screen. Beyond its opening theme, sung by Paul McCartney, and its boat chases through Louisiana bayou country, what I remember best about that picture was the magnetic presence of then 22-year-old actress Jane Seymour, who played a “beautiful virgin tarot expert” named Solitaire.

• Perfect for fans of the annual Malice Domestic convention.

• I’m sorry to hear that Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), one of the U.S. Senate’s “great progressive champions,” died this morning at age 89. “His obituaries will note,” writes Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly, “that he was the last remaining World War II veteran in the Senate (John Dingell of [Mich.] and Ralph Hall of [Texas] remain in the House). More remarkable to me is that Lautenberg made his first attempt at elected office in 1982 (a successful Senate bid), at an age (58) when most people are planning retirement.” Lautenberg, who’d been ill for some while, had already announced that he was retiring after his present six-year term in the upper chamber, and fellow Democrat Cory Booker, presently the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, seems the most likely candidate to succeed him. More here.

• Finally, I must note the deaths of two people connected in different ways to the crime-fiction community. The first is Catholic priest-turned-prolific novelist Andrew M Greeley, who may be best known to readers of this blog for creating the part-time sleuth Father Blackie Ryan, but who was also an outspoken critic of George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Greeley died on May 28 at age 85. (More about him here.) ... Also, TV and film actress Jean Stapleton breathed her last on May 31 at age 90. Although history will likely remember her best for her portrayal of a long-suffering wife in the TV series All in the Family, Wikipedia recalls that the lead role of mystery novelist/amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in CBS-TV’s Murder, She Wrote “was initially offered” to Stapleton, “who turned it down stating that, after nine years of playing the ditsy but well-meaning Edith Bunker on All in the Family and Archie Bunker’s Place, respectively, she did not want to be tied down to another television series. Doris Day was offered the part afterwards, and also declined.” (Angela Lansbury eventually agreed to star in Murder, She Wrote.) Stapleton’s résumé isn’t otherwise thick with roles in mysteries and thrillers, but she did appear in episodes of The Defenders, Naked City, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

Having a Ball in Bristol

Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim--on the scene during this weekend’s CrimeFest in Bristol, England--has not only been keeping us apprised of the awards presented during that convention (see here and here), but he’s also shared a few of his thoughts on the three-day event. He says he’s enjoyed some “fantastic conversations” and “good-mannered interactions,” as well as the “superb hotel facilities providing a very relaxed time for those who read crime thrillers.”

In addition, of course, Ali has been uploading to Facebook a number of photographs. They capture panel discussions and crowds mingling in anticipation of announcements, as well as the many authors and critics attending CrimeFest. We’ve selected some of the best of his pics below, just enough to give you a sense of the convivial atmosphere that reigns at crime-fiction gatherings such as this one.

The Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel, home to CrimeFest 2013



Left to right: Novelists Simon Kernick and Martin Walker


Felix Francis, author and son of the late Dick Francis


Poet and crime-fictionist Sophie Hannah


Author John Lawton with American blogger Peter Rozovsky


TV documentary producer Richard Burke, Shots e-zine editor Mike Stotter, and thriller writer Robert Wilson


Writers Stav Sherez and Chris Ewan


Bouchercon board members Marjory Mogg and Jeff Sieger


Glasgow wordsmiths William McIlvanney and Craig Robertson


Novelists Robert Goddard and Stanley Trollip


Barry Forshaw (far left) moderates the International Writers forum with guest authors Roberto Constantini, David Hewson, Derek Miller, and Thomas Enger.


During a panel discussion about the popular BBC-TV series Sherlock, writers/co-creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat--in the center two seats on stage--entertain the crowd. More on what they said during that session can be learned here.


Nordic novelists Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and K.O. Dahl attend a reception arranged by publisher Severn House.

(All photos © 2013 Ali Karim)

READ MORE: “CrimeFest 2013--Part One,” “Part Two,” and “Part Three,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “CrimeFest 2013,” by Declan Burke (Crime Always Pays); “A Post Post-CrimeFest,” by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (Murder Is Everywhere).

Just Rewards

By all reports, this evening’s awards presentations at CrimeFest 2013 in Bristol, England, have now concluded. Thanks to Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim’s Facebook page, we have the winners of those five much-coveted prizes.

The Audible Sounds of Crime Award (for audiobooks):
Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin, read by James MacPherson (Orion Audio)

Also nominated: The Black Box, by Michael Connelly, read by Michael McConnohie (Orion Audio); The Racketeer, by John Grisham, read by J.D. Jackson (Hodder & Stoughton); The Lewis Man, by Peter May, read by Peter Forbes (Quercus); and Phantom, by Jo Nesbø, read by Sean Barrett (Random House/Isis)

The Goldsboro Last Laugh Award (for humorous crime novels): Killing the Emperors, by Ruth Dudley Edwards (Allison & Busby)

Also nominated: The Prisoner of Brenda, by Colin Bateman (Headline); The Corpse on the Court, by Simon Brett (Severn House); Slaughter’s Hound, by Declan Burke (Liberties Press); Bryant & May and the Invisible Code, by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday); and The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, by Hesh Kestin (Mulholland)

The eDunnit Award (for crime-fiction e-books): Bryant & May and the Invisible Code, by Christopher Fowler (Transworld)

Also nominated: The Age of Doubt, by Andrea Camilleri (Mantle); Killing the Emperors, by Ruth Dudley Edwards (Allison &; Busby); and Dominion, by C.J. Sansom (Mantle)

The H.R.F. Keating Award (for biographical or critical works): British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia, edited by Barry Forshaw (Greenwood World Publishing, 2008)

Also nominated: Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012); Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, by John Curran (HarperCollins, 2009); Invisible Ink, by Christopher Fowler (Strange Attractor, 2012); Following the Detectives: Real Location in Crime Fiction, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (New Holland Publishers, 2010); and Talking About Detective Fiction, by P.D. James (The Bodleian Library, 2009)

Petrona Award (for translated crime fiction): Last Will, by Liza Marklund, translated by Neil Smith (Corgi)

Also nominated: Pierced, by Thomas Enger, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Faber and Faber); Black Skies, by Arnaldur Indridason, translated by Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker); and Another Time, Another Life, by Leif G.W. Persson, translated by Paul Norlen (Doubleday)

Congratulations to the winners and other nominees!

READ MORE: “CrimeFest--Day 1,” by Sarah Ward (Crimepieces); “CrimeFest 2: Drop Your Pants, This Is a Fire Drill,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders).

Daggers Seek Their Targets

The British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) today announced its shortlists of nominees for six different Dagger Awards.

The CWA International Dagger:

• Alex, by Pierre Lemaitre,
translated by Frank Wynne (Quercus)
• The Missing File, by D.A. Mishani,
translated by Steven Cohen (Quercus)
• Two Soldiers, by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström,
translated by Kari Dickson (Quercus)
• Ghost Riders of Ordebec, by Fred Vargas,
translated by Siân Reynolds (Harvill Secker)
• Death in Sardinia, by Marco Vichi,
translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach,
translated by Anthea Bell (Michael Joseph)

The CWA Non-Fiction Dagger:

• Midnight in Peking, by Paul French (Penguin Viking)
• The Boy in the River, by Richard Hoskins (Pan Macmillan)
• Against a Tide of Evil, by Mukesh Kapila, with Damien Lewis (Mainstream)
• A Fine Day for a Hanging, by Carol Ann Lee (Mainstream)
• Injustice, by Clive Stafford Smith (Random House)
• Murder at Wrotham Hill, by Diana Souhami (Quercus)

The CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger:

• The Heretics, by Rory Clements (John Murray)
• Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
• The Paris Winter, by Imogen Robertson (Headline)
• Dead Men and Broken Hearts, by Craig Russell (Quercus)
• The Twelfth Department, by William Ryan (Mantle)
• The Scent of Death, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

The CWA Short Story Dagger:

• “Method Murder,” by Simon Brett (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Constable)
• “Stairway C,” by Piero Colaprico (from Outsiders, edited by Ben Faccini; MacLehose Press)
• “Come Away with Me,” by Stella Duffy (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)

• “The Case of Death and Honey,” by Neil Gaiman (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)

• “Ferengi,” by Carlo Lucarelli (from Outsiders)
• “Lost and Found,” by Zoë Sharp (from Vengeance, edited by Lee Child; Corvus)

The CWA Dagger in the Library:

• Belinda Bauer
• Alison Bruce
• Gordon Ferris

• Christopher Fowler
• Elly Griffiths
• Michael Ridpath

(The longlist of contenders for this prize can be found here.)

The CWA Debut Dagger:

• Aine Oomhnaill (Ireland), The Assassin’s Keeper
• Finn Clarke (UK), Call Time
• Sue Dawes (UK), TAG
• Alex Sweeney (UK), Working in Unison
• Marie Hannan-Mandel (USA), Lesson Plan for Murder
• Ron Puckering (UK), Honour or Justice
• David Evans (UK), Torment
• Jayne Barnard (Canada), When the Bow Breaks
• D.B. Carew (Canada), Fighting Darkness: The Killer Trail
• Mike Craven (UK), Born in a Burial Gown
• Emma Melville (UK), The Journeyman
• Joanna Dodd (UK), A Cure for All Evils

The winners of these prizes will be announced during a July 15 dinner at Kings Place in London. Also included in those festivities will be the presentation, to Lee Child, of this year’s Diamond Dagger and an announcement of the nominees for the CWA’s annual Gold, Steel, and John Creasey Daggers.

The Book You Have to Read: “The Unquiet Night,“ by Patricia Carlon

(Editor’s note: This is the 126th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s recommendation comes from Patrick Balester, a mystery writer, photographer, and computer programmer in Kansas City, Missouri. Balester’s first e-novel, In the Dismal Swamp, was published in 2012. He also writes a blog called Picks by Pat.)

I stumbled across Australian author Patricia Carlon quite by accident. I was taking a break from writing my first novel and decided to wander among the fiction aisles of my local library, looking for an author I hadn’t read before. I started at “A” and stopped at “C” when I pulled the 2003 Soho Crime edition of The Unquiet Night from the shelf. At first glance I was attracted to its garish cover photo--a woman in a flaming red skirt with a torn stocking lying on the grass. Well, I thought, shall we give it a go?

It turned out to be one of the most suspenseful and terrifying novels I have ever read. It lacks the hardcore violence of today’s thrillers, yet the writing is so powerful and straightforward, the author’s mastery of language so complete, that even now--nearly 50 years after it was first published--the story speaks without being dated. Except for its lack of cell phones, it could have been published last week.

In The Unquiet Night we meet Martin Deeford, and by the end of the first sentence (“He hadn't meant her to die”), we know he is in deep trouble. He’s just strangled Rose Gault, a young woman he picked up at a bus stop on a rainy Sunday afternoon and took to an isolated nature reserve. After disposing of her body in a nearby lake and leaving the scene of his crimes in a panic, Martin stumbles across a child, 9-year-old Ann Penghill, and her aunt, Rachel Penghill, who had come to the reserve for a picnic. Rachel looks right at him and Martin quickly realizes that if she comes forward after Rose is declared missing or her body is found, he’ll go to prison for murder. Without knowing little Ann’s name, he is later forced to rely on his knowledge of their small town to track her down. And through her he hopes to find the woman. The woman he plans to silence.

It may seem hard in our own day and age to believe that adults would willingly give up names to a voice over the telephone, but Martin works in a retail shop. He knows his customers and knows how to talk to them. His cleverness only takes him so far, though; each clue to Rachel’s identity and whereabouts becomes a dead end, leaving him angry, frustrated, and--as the night of his crimes progresses--more of a threat to anyone who crosses his path. Yet Martin is no criminal mastermind. He is impulsive, violent, and quick to blame others for his shortcomings. His fear of discovery is palpable and almost sympathetic. When he finally finds his intended victim, it is by luck.

He tricks Rachel into opening the door to her jewelry shop, but confronted by the chance to actually murder her, he vomits, revealing his cowardice. Then Rachel makes a tremendous blunder without even realizing it. She blurts out, “I've seen you before”--a statement that seals her fate. It reminds Martin of his nefarious goal, and a glance around the shop where Rachel works as a designer suddenly shows him how best to finish her: he entombs her in a vault. In there, he’s sure, she will soon suffocate--a slow and agonizing death.

Rachel thinks this is only a robbery, and she waits patiently to be released. Only slowly does it dawn on her that Martin is not coming back. Her only hope is to be missed--and that’s a vague hope, indeed. She had told several people that she’d be out of town at a jewelry convention. She has recently broken it off with a boyfriend. A handyman who was planning to make repairs to the shop fails to show. Small clues which might otherwise have alerted neighbors that something was amiss go unnoticed. The suspense builds painfully over the course of this story, and the reader does not learn Rachel’s fate until the very last sentence.

The Unquiet Night was originally released in 1965, when Patricia Carlon was at the height of her creative powers. (Another of her books, published that same year, was Crime of Silence.) She had been producing romance and mystery stories ever since her teens, when she’d entered a writing contest and won. Unfortunately, Carlon could not initially find a publisher in her native Australia and most of her best work was released first in the United Kingdom. Not until much later, when she was in her 70s, did this author finally see her stories published Down Under, something that brought her great satisfaction.

Isolation and a sense of insignificance are themes that found their way into many of Patricia Carlon’s tales. Her characters often lack the ability to warn others of impending danger or protect themselves. The author’s own life suggested a self-imposed desire to hide from the world. She lived in a small town, next to her parents. She had a handicap--deafness--that she hid so well, her own publisher and most of her neighbors were unaware of it until it was discovered after her death. Yet it may have strongly influenced her writing.

For me, what started out as a one-night stand evolved quickly into a lifelong love affair with this remarkable writer’s works of suspense. Yet even though her books were published through conventional channels in the United States, they aren’t yet available for e-readers. It’s ironic that an author who mastered the sense of isolation in her storytelling is, in a real sense, still isolated from many readers. I hope this will soon be corrected. Carlon deserves a much wider audience.